Hyphen Spring 2010 by Hyphen Magazine

HYPHEN Spring 2010

HYPHEN

edition 2010 Temple University

Contents | Reuben Wilson | Her First Tattoo Was Sunshine and a Broken Heart. . . . . Cover Elizabeth Kim | The Alchemy of Our Hands. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 Michelle Macinsky |

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Drew Charles Kalbach| The Meadow Covered in Water. . . . . .10 Thomas Riese | Apogee, or West Diamond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 Rachel Milligan | Supposedly Terminable Things Like Hunger and Waiting. . . . . . . 12 Sarah Jagiela | Sadness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13 H. B. Irwin | Mutedness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Jessie Bennett | Altitude Sickness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 H. B. Irwin | Response to W. T. Stace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Rachel Elizabeth Szewczuk | Peru . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17 Nate Hartman | Remember, Remember the Breath of Worms. . . . . . . . . .18 Maria Flaccavento | Heavenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s is a vast circumference. . . . . . . . .19 Wajeeha Choudhary | Henna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20 Hannah McMinn | Fragrace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21 Nate Hartman | Monster, I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Jennie Burd | Blitzkrieg!, or a Little Tragedy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 R. Alexander Bell | Tesuji. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Jaclyn Sadicario | in an aeroplane. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 R. Alexander Bell | Slumber. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Nicole Renninger |

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Jessie Bennett | Chasing the Dreams I Couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Catch. . . . . . . 30 Elizabeth Kim| The Post. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Carmen Emmi | Danielle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Jordyn Kimelheim | Cliché as Expressed in a Series of 1950’s Clichés. . . . . . . . . .34 Tyler Antoine |19 May 2008 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Elizabeth Kim| Finches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Nicole Beck | Queen’s Wish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38 Brittany Harmon |

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Brittany Esser | Fire for Love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Nina Rosenberg | Gratitude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41 Marc Manley | Be Bop Ruminations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Jaclyn Sadicario | Musings on a Moving Train . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Carmen Emmi |

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Nina Rosenberg | Steam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46 Elizabeth Dumas | Frieze . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Jennie Nguyen |

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Rachel Mulligan | Hearing It Through My Teeth. . . . . . . . . . . 49 Tyler Antoine | Attachment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Toni White | Musings in a Tree. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51 Maria Flaccavento | [Things Fall Apart] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Brittany Harmon | Traffic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53 Elizabeth Kim | Nests in the Concourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54 Jeremy Degler | Utrillo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55 Jeremy Degler | The Flowers Are Dead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56 Sarah Iagiela | Männer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .57 Jenna Pagano | The Forever Kids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Drew Charles Kalbach | POLIS, O POLIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Jaclyn Sadicario | well, isn’t that the point? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .60 Kristen Stabile |

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Elizabeth Dumas | O, Empire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Rachel Elizabeth Szewczuk | Lima . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Rachel Mulligan | This Is My Grayed Lavender Poem . . . . . . . 64 Marc Snitzer | The Cutting-Room Floor (a villanelle) . . . . . . . 65 Sierra Gladfelter | The Beard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Emily Gleason |

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Jessie Bennett |

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Emma Wenzel |

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Alyssa Nelson | Som Američan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72 Carmen Emmi | 9/2009 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73 Nina Rosenberg | Considering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .74 Nina Rosenberg | What You Aren’t Anymore or Were . . . . . . . 75 Max Marin | Deliverance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .76 Sarah Ruland |

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Sierra Gladfelter | V . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .78 Nina Rosenberg | grand larceny . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .79 Michelle Macinsky |

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Hannah McMinn | Day’s End . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

“When you are old and grey and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book and slowly read, and dream of the soft look your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;” –William Butler Yeats

Elizabeth Kim | The Alchemy of Our Hands The aging meaning of autumn becomes a sweet science between ourselves when the alchemy of our hands grazing against a robe mingling with hymns and holy doors makes to forget the former things the sparkling wings turning all minutes into a genius gold

Michelle Macinsky |

Drew Charles Kalbach | The Meadow Covered in Water My name feels wrong in my head and right in your mouth. You could be anybody: half asleep on a train, drool extending from your jaw. Our bodies jostle like baby alligators swimming in a bucket. I reach for my eyes and find televisions. I reach for my knees and get tired. You take a defensive posture. There is gangrene. In the distance someone comments on the distance. Your shoulders grow broader every day. Hands alone in a truck. * You take off your shirt and say something statuesque. I wish we were more willing to take long naked strolls. All of our walls are covered in bleach. If I weren’t so afraid of the meadow covered in water, I’d sleep inside your chest. * I wish you were pretty. My skin is a product of stress and heavy eating. The cold is coming to the meadow covered in water, and our yellow raincoats and rain boots won’t keep your excess saliva out of our bodies. My ironic mustache is an affront to the meadow covered in water. The larks and the alligators are an affront to my self-esteem. One day when you come home and I’m halfway through the ceiling I hope you’ll cut off my toes and keep them in a jar beside your bed. That’s my idea of romance.

Thomas Riese | Apogee, or West Diamond on the flat black-top roof, alone. birdsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; nests nestled in crumbling bricks, brown broken bereft of cohesion. a hidden pond yields unnameable stalks, dead blades of beige. up, and up. oceanic horizon forgets streetlight steeple chimney treetops. escape the city stoned staring upright into blue void changing slight, slowly. Here is the pool of dictionary pictures. 13

Rachel Milligan | Supposedly Terminable Things Like Hunger and Waiting Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve never seen owl feathers fall from the branches of trees, neither oak nor cypress. Nor inky shadows of grandmothers knocking decorative plates to crack and crumble on hard -wood floors. But you left all that behind when you forgot how filling your mouth with bread felt: like an anchor, like a swirling dust cloud, like an endless search that ends in a prayer. So here you stand, quivering, your ankles thick with soggy leaves, mumbling words you could not spell in your second grade spelling bee - angst, sarsaparilla, and, most embarrassingly, strength: that which carries stone after stone across the backs of the men that are building your house, their mouths are filled with leaves, they are building it, they are carrying you, they cannot hear you scream-you are not a stone.

H. B. Irwin | Mutedness I know exactly everything about god. She is white and muscular with featherless skin between her eyes and nose when it is cold I wish she would wear a sweater I was conceived in a wool woven womb, in blood and blood and yarn. I talked about exactly everything. The Mute Swan is closely related to but larger than as I grow my neck is narrower and the places I can speak are more secret She wants as I crawl through the esophagus afghan to be onto thread needle lips committed.

She sticks her fingers in her mouth and presses on my tongue like a piano key. “It’s ineffable, but not as ineffable as all that.” The Mute Swan is closely related to but larger than all that. I know exactly everyone there abouts. Come hug my neck, check to see if it disintegrates in your lap while you are not looking. I can’t talk about weak curves bent over floors don’t touch yourself you are not yourself come hug my neck She is drinking just milk out of all that blood--a trait I admire but could never replicate. My fingers are wrapped in a cat’s cradle with a walrus, walking on his knit-needle teeth.

Jessie Bennett | Altitude Sickness One morning when the clouds coated the ground like a worn baby blanket, the fog whispered into my numbing ears, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Why canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t I be alive like you?â&#x20AC;? As I reached my palms toward the sky, the moisture mirrored me, stretching down to touch it tingling fingertips to the cold cement, during the first waking moments of the day. I have questions, too, and people are prone to spout answers, rushed and loud like dandelions. They say the only road to worth is up, groping through blindness for brand-name bricks to pile onto unsteady foundations. Until, towards false freedom, we build towers so tall, we think we can breathe the clouds. We believe salvation lies beyond the beauty of that single breath which God was never obligated to give us. We greedily fill our lungs with each promise to be sustained for a few more feeble seconds. But the wisps of white long only to be born like us. To live by lungs instead of inside them, left to spin webs between our pumping muscle fibers. Mist has no name, no lungs to weave air into words, and all of eternity to utter silence. Wind kisses warm cheeks but never receives a touch in return, remembered only by tangles clinging like lost children in our hair. We fear silence like we fear prayer, and we believe we are above soft voices. Only the unanswered air will ever know how beautiful it is to simply breathe.

H. B. Irwin | Response to W. T. Stace Rub your face, daughter. It has been long. A long time since you lost your divinity in a field night wind, alone in Arkansas. You know that river bed down from the ear neck shoulder crook rapid to collar boneâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; rub it down. Leave your hand on chest, your chest! Other waters run down. I am waiting for the day, once in a billion years, when water runs up hill.

Nate Hartman | Remember, Remember The Breath Of Worms Remember, remember the breath of worms When rage seems fitting, think: Raskolnikov Kill karma and know that the deed returns Youth preserved, therein, mortality churns Though the label seems to be written off Remember, remember the breath of worms The father, my stars, rests in peace, yet yearns For more than infinity, one must cough Kill karma and know that the deed returns The bearded philosophe who knows still learns The worth of fate is like a flame to cloth Remember, remember the breath of worms Dead men whisper in their sleep: â&#x20AC;&#x153;know the termsâ&#x20AC;? When to squeal in your fear is to scoff Kill karma and know that the deed returns Where dirt is friendly, these bones shall take turns Close these eyes, pierce the dark, as often doth Remember, remember the breath of worms Kill karma and know the deed returns

Maria Flaccavento | Heavens Is A Vast And Great Circumference Its floors and ceilings made of worldly consternations are divine myriads of goddesses refract the light prismatic with their voices somewhere inside the chest an arm is reaching. The joints of it disjointed the fingers from the palm outstretched are willing. The shoulder from the neck enthralled by upward motion moves as if attached to strings Soon other limbs will follow, then after them the organs tucked away beneath the skin all ancient foreign reaches of them, incandescent and aglow. And when I am alive again the fractured heart still beating underneath the heaving lungs I will be much smaller than I had believed before. I will be one body moving in a sea of bodies moving while voices echo voices in the space between the walls Of a dark box, on a cold night, like a heartbeat.

Wajeeha Choudhary| Henna

Hannah McMinn | Fragrance Memories flit like dragonflies, As intangible As specters. smoky reflections Dance And watch With pale Green eyes The color of Mint Silk And snow. Kissed by a ghost of passion, Yesterdayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fingers Run through My hair. A forgotten fragrance Lingers Like Rose petals Before They hit the ground.

And Memory sighs In her dreams Of ivory Sassafras And Nutmeg. An iridescent Glimmer of Wings, And I wake To find that Tomorrow Was Today Yesterday.

Nate Hartman | Monster, I Cut where the tiny scissors told me to Pasting and pacing, wasting the candle fat Growing and gluing as carpenters do My fingers sweeping pinched the dotted line They swept so tenderly, slower than slug, that Never was there a gift thrifty as mine An ache, err made, he looms with the moon, Lamenting he shakes, eating his skin Alas! But a brother I made, electric soon Who threw plates and asked again to die, Cursing the craft, from him, cut and grew He knew to die but not that it was I Growing and gluing as carpenters do I knew that I knew and died because I Cut where the tiny scissors told me to.

Jennie Burd | Blitzkreig!, Or a Little Tragedy Members of the School Board: This letter pertains to the unwarranted absence of Mr. Roger Motts, first year Physical Education and Health teacher, and hopefully it will help you in deciding on the appropriate disciplinary action to be taken against Mr. Motts. Roger Motts’ lunch break goes from 1:00-2:00 in the afternoon. On Tuesday, the third of April, Mr. Motts chose to neglect the Study Hall to which he had been assigned to supervise from 2:00-2:45. When questioned regarding his absence, Mr. Motts recounted the following story, roughly. I, Vice Principal Schwartzman’s Administrative Assistant, was asked to sit in on Mr. Motts’ interview to take notes. I have included the details of Mr. Motts’ story upon his own request: Mr. Motts left school at 1:00 as usual, but instead of fetching “the usual Big Buford and chili-cheese fries” and returning to eat in the staff lounge, Mr. Motts proceeded to “The Café Z,” a modern-themed bar and restaurant that recently opened downtown. He had seen a flyer at the local grocery store that advertised “5 Minute Dating,” in which, over a meal, participants meet ten other-gendered participants for five minutes each. Said flyer is enclosed. Mr. Motts emphasized that upon leaving school, he had not intended to stay for the duration of the event in question. Once seated, Mr. Motts ordered what he assumed to be a “ladykilling” lunch of champagne and a lobster of his choosing. The first female participant that Mr. Motts met was “a shriveled, portly old gal” who claimed to be 38-years-old, although Mr. Mott suspected that she was “more in the neighborhood of fifty.” Her name was Patricia and she worked for the post office. Although Mr. Motts was not attracted to her, he chose to engage in conversation with her, as he wished to “hone his moves” on her. [Note: the Administrative Assistant is skeptical concerning Mr. Motts’ actual ability to remember his conversations in such detail].

“What do you do for a living, Roger?”

“Well Patricia, I’ve done a lot of things. I was a lawyer for a while but I got—well [chuckle] respectfully let go. Then I got a great job- I was an assistant manager at the Gap, but that didn’t quite work out either. But, don’t get me wrong; I still have connections there. After that I worked construction for a few months. Then I decided to go back to school, and 25

now I teach Phys. Ed. at Sunnybrook Middle School. What do you do?” Mr. Motts noted that his first date, which he thought would be “a whirl” based on the woman’s appearance, did not go as smoothly as he had imagined. Mr. Motts only described his second date as “unremarkable.” She also asked about his profession. This time, he decided to “explain himself ”: “I’ve worked plenty of jobs. I was a lawyer for a couple of years. That didn’t work out. Then I was an assistant manager at the Gap. But I wasn’t happy there, I didn’t feel fulfilled, you see. I wanted to do men’s work, [pause] outside, [pause] with my hands [looks at his hands]. So I got into the construction biz, which was all very good, but there was still something missing. I went back to school to become…” At this point, according to Mr. Motts, a bell rang signifying the end of the date. The unremarkable woman commented that she would like to see Mr. Motts again. Mr. Motts “respectfully declined [chuckle].” Mr. Motts’ next date was with a lovely, youthful, red-haired woman. The red-haired woman, however, refused to talk to Mr. Motts at all, as she had chosen instead to “silently cry into her tomato soup.” This gave Mr. Motts an opportunity to listen. He had met the man in the booth next to his in the restaurant parking lot, and the man had told Mr. Motts that he sold insurance. However, Mr. Motts overheard the man tell the unremarkable woman that he was an Air Force pilot, had won a purple heart in Afghanistan, and had been honorably discharged. Mr. Motts commented that he had found this “effed up in a big way.” At this point in the meeting, Vice Principal Schwartzman indicated towards the clock and requested that Mr. Motts “wrap it up,” as his wife was preparing meatloaf at home. Vice Principal Schwartzman’s Administrative Assistant commented that if Mr. Motts might lay the theatrics to rest, Vice Principal Schwartzman, God allowing, might be home with his meatloaf shortly. Mr. Motts said “sorry, bro’” to Vice Principal Schwartzman and continued. Mr. Motts, after counting on his fingers, said that had been on seven more dates that afternoon. Of the next six, one was “hot,” another was “really hot,” and the other four were “errr…lacking in the looks department.” Mr. Motts repeated the latter of his two previous speeches to each of them: 26

I’ve worked plenty of jobs. I was a lawyer for a couple of years. That didn’t work out. Then I was an assistant manager at the Gap. But I wasn’t happy there, I didn’t feel fulfilled, you see. I wanted to do men’s work, [pause] outside, [pause] with my hands [looks at his hands]. So I got into the construction biz, which was all very good, but there was still something missing. I went back to school to become…

Only one woman, whom Mr. Motts noted was one of the “uggos,” asked Mr. Motts to speak with her again privately. This was on the only other date in which he hadn’t had time to mention his employment. The last woman, an attractive “cougar” of “40ish,” said that she was there looking for a date for her shy friend. She didn’t ask about Mr. Motts’ profession, and he agreed to meet her friend. At this point Mr. Motts cradled his face in his hand and began speaking slowly and in an agitated voice: “It…was…my…grandmother.” Vice Principal Schwartzman asked [with disgust in his eyes] if Mr. Motts was referring to the “cougar.” “No,” continued Mr. Motts, “I went… on a date… with my grandmother. Couldn’t say no. She was the shy friend. God, she had such a great time. She thought Jesus was telling me to call her more often.” Mr. Motts shook his head vigorously as if trying to rid it of something parasitic. Mr. Motts added, “Please, tell them they shouldn’t fire me because I never win [shakes head]… I never win.” It is the recommendation of Vice Principal Schwartzman’s Administrative Assistant that Mr. Motts’ employment be terminated. As it is still his first year of teaching at Sunnybrook Middle School, he is on probation. Additionally, Mr. Motts seems to have forgotten that he lied in his job interview. The School Board was not aware that he had been fired from his previous jobs as a lawyer and Gap employee, and we have no way of knowing where his glowing letters of recommendation came from. Mr. Motts’ apparent assertion that it is punishment enough not to be able to get a date because of his job does not help his case either. Sincerely, Beverly Hancock Administrative Assistant to Vice Principal Schwartzman Sunnybrook Middle School 27

R. Alexander Bell | Tesuji The phone rings. (Such a harsh sound, isn’t it?) & thus the dilemma: don’t want to listen to either of the whinings. Can formulize the proof but can’t formalize the proof & again the difference between fuseki and joseki is realized. & the cats make holes in the brain. Always was a man of faith even if it wasn’t the sort mother encouraged. & now the sounds from upstairs begin again. (Are they real? Well, it wouldn’t be much worth mentioning if they were.) Two sounds are two too many. Always saw the solution, never solved the problem. & so, pull the chord and pour another solution.

Jaclyn Sadicario | in an aeroplane i went to sleep dreamt pennsylvania was the pacific specifically the expanse youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d pass over. all the little lights were howland islands & you were brave & alone. i got sucked back into 1937 waiting back home for you to hear news of your landing. i deduced that the ocean took you sucked you into its caverns, & you were a feast for the flesh eating bottom dwelling day-glo fish who usually dine on filter feeders. i awoke and there was news you had landed safe had not been swept away in a windstorm mass of land in the windiest city i can think of in the country. you were no amelia you were not brave enough to stay or disappear.

R. Alexander Bell | Slumber Sleep, drowsy sleep. Warmth fills the sheets as I am deceived into dream. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m hazy, not yet asleep, but my thoughts are softened. My bed creaks as I roll over, my eyes half open, I can see the long slender teeth of my eyelashes, chomping on the drywall, breaking white to bits and swallowing them down the gullet of my eye sockets. The white turns iridescent as it falls into my brain and starts singing its colors, making music in my head. My nose is a tuning fork for the composition, sounding out the waltz as I write the lines in my head, but the notes tickle, so I sneeze awake with a jolt, the feeling scattered forever despite my best efforts to return to it. 30

Nicole Renninger |

Jessie Bennett | Chasing the Dreams I Couldn’t Catch When the sandman’s kisses still stain my cheeks like charcoal, it is hard to remember what it means to see. Awoken by the reverberating whispers of the dawn, the only feeling left across my tingling palms is the gentle tug of thread-Because I long to catch you like a dream. To embrace wishes like sleeping children, to entangle nightmares like moths, and to embed your contours between pearlescent beads like constellations. I am dizzied in that immeasurable moment between night and day, seeing stars of spilt neon. My slumbering subconscious could have woven any world it chose yet it painted your features in watercolor, leaving only light to linger with the dew upon your skin. But the sunbeams burn your perfection, pale across my gardenia irises and without the comfort of contrast, I can’t find your form. I fear you will slip through my fingers-and even captured dreams tarnish with each retelling. So I’ll count skipped heartbeats like jumping sheep to lull me awake, until I can trace your shadows as well.

Elizabeth Kim | The Post The Post brought stamps from Antarctica, where frozen seas tell of adventures without time The Post quieted the towns, save for galloping hooves and screaming chariots of ice The Post knows the state of the grieving widow who waits upon her loverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s words The Post comes with crinkled corners, tattered telegrams by broken soldiers The Post will collect within a vacant home, never to be returned or claimed by phantom travelers The Post may weather while in wait, unlike the tremendous winters from whence it came The Post cannot answer impatient pleas or nervous pacing, simply for the fact of Sunday

Jordyn Kimelheim | Cliché as Expressed in a Series of 1950s Clichés It creeps like a communist into your words, tugging you by the apron strings down the least Revolutionary Road imaginable. But you don’t notice the way your body is snatched and replaced by this derivative doppelganger, and all the clever space-age sauces in Good Housekeeping will not stop the readers from tasting this freeze-dried meat loaf of a poem, and all the kitschy cocktails you can mix won’t get them drunk enough to think that you are talented. When you finally realize what has happened to your writing, you are trapped in the front seat of your boyfriend’s pink Cadillac screaming as the horror movie of what remains of your potential plays out in front of you on a big screen— as black and white as your pale, vapid imagery, the acting as wooden as your prose. So blacklist it like a socialist screenwriter. Smoke it like an unfiltered cigarette. Repress it like homosexuality. Send it to the back of the bus like it is a black woman and you, an angry Alabaman. Give it electroshock therapy. 36

Pop some valium and pray it’ll be gone when you wake up— Anything to reverse this creative lobotomy. Or just stick your head in the oven like Sylvia Path. A far better poet than you— who also knew when it was time to give up.

Tyler Antoine | 19 May 2008 It’s your hands, when they’re clutching the steering wheel, when the one, sole ring that you cannot take off, the one, sole ring that you have tried to take off, sparks just as it should, for a moment, from the trees, for a moment in the light that comes as waves between trees The wrinkled expression with which your fingers seem to say, We did not want to leave the house today The fickle tone that your fingers use when they seem to speak, when they say We have seen faces looking back at us from the sliced meats at the deli stand, and they remind us of the poses our soap opera idols have made, repeated with season and repossessed by the wealthy sons of evil heiresses It’s your hands, it’s your hands, it’s your hands Can’t you hear, they are woofing like tree bark, they are calling out charlatan to my gelded replies Your hands that match the bag under each of your eyes, but in the winter, they are wrapped with bargain-priced designer gloves, they are brownshawled to bring out the dye in your hair Your hands that are cold from the Advil, from the cans of Diet Pepsi, they miss the den of your pillows It’s your hands I will take into mine, to hold up to my face, eyes closed and hair parted, on the edge of Fenwick beach with wild, resplendent horses; on the Atlantic bank of storm-swept, wild Nags Head; on a toweldraped bureau at the end of your bed, to warm with my breath, to pry and to furrow

Elizabeth Kim | Finches Rather than what is not, why not state what is: the finches gather by your feet only because you have scattered the seeds. 39

Nicole Beck | Queen’s Wish I’m stealing Snow White’s apple I want to be the one who sleeps forever Within my fine glass coffin Bought from years of frugality At my feet, I keep the magic mirror To distract any disturbing passers-by Who may wish to kiss my cold lips Not today My chrysalis cannot be opened Not yet When I do awaken, Emerge Peel off my old skin like a brittle cornhusk My first thought will be to embrace the sun My second, to bite the flesh of a ruby apple

Brittany Harmon | as electric ghosts orbit time, arctic words sound&go by. the first explosion burns, and the volcano is high on pills. for romance, look beneath a rock. taste sex through music. You are Oscar Wilde. wicked is the psychedelia of magnetic souls. your weird brain is delicious.

Nina Rosenberg | Gratitude White iron beams and bones hold concrete skin pulled tight Shattered structures cast in plaster and smoothed to mend under pink fleshy muscles; tide pool ripples with each movement: One foot forward One arm stretched One head bowed 2 lips 2 lips 4 eyes And taut smooth rough tough spongy streaky slimy silken skin And hot red lava bubbling boiling breathing And swirling thought dancing memory blue green red white yellow And soles and souls and steps and heels. And each dip and dive into satin skin. Each cracked palm like broken peach flesh Jointed fingers withered pads calloused with the creation Of White bone beams and sockets and clicking joints holding fast to sinewy strands of tide pool ripples with each little movement and red lava dancing shadowy colors glowing forming becoming taste sound scent sight touch floating in iron cast skulls on spinal beams cloaked in satiny skin

Marc Manley | Be Bop Ruminations I can’t rightly put a time or date stamp on it, But it was in the time of the Barracudas: That much is sure. A kind of jazz Sahara, if you will, on the Nile, where Yasmina, a black woman, recited a poem for Malcolm. So now I hear a rhapsody when incense burns, Like A Song We Once Knew. It echoed from Airegin to Liberia. It was something like all the things you are or All the things you could be by now if Sigmund Freud’s wife was your Mother. You know, that blue rondo That was groovin’ high on a slow boat to China. In those days, everything was an East-West Exodus – Un Poco Loco If you catch my drift. The echo continued to reverberate, washing up on the Shores of Barbados, where it became a Haitian fight song, A black saint, but not in a silent way. You know…, That whole caravan thing. Rumbling, the echo persisted for miles and miles, Straight ahead and around the bend Where Sonny’s fortune lie like darkness on the delta Where its banks were washed with the sufi’s tears. The echo ended with a low peal, and like all good endings, This one being no different, along came Betty, she and Sonny, With his mohawk – damn!, he looked bad! – after A night in Tunisia, where all evening was spent doing The Las Vegas tango. Look man – either you’re down with it or You’re not. He commanded me, “speak to me of love, speak to me of Truth!” – That was so like Sonny. These foolish things, only on planet earth, The in between of autumn leaves and skating in Central Park – No, scratch that. I never learned how to ice skate so darn that dream. Besides, I was doing allright without it, for in my heart Dexter rides again. Like mom always said: “The caravan moves on.” 44

Well mom, I’m comin’ up in this world, so ways I see it, I better Git it in your soul. Don’t hold back now! Give it to me Straight, no chaser. Never did figure out why anyone invented Cardboard. So I will try and live a lush life, in a capricornian way, of course. A sanctified waltz, A Dance of the Infidels if you will. And I am Most certainly the infidel here. Oh, no? You better believe it! Whether here, Medina, or dear old Stockholm, Ones’ visions have to be con alma, if you catch my drift. Otherwise, we just spiral off into that abyss. “From here on now, looking ahead. Forward flight, Misterioso or not!” – those were your words, were they not? Or va da du?...

Jaclyn Sadicario | Musings on a Moving Train i often think of you after a cup of tea when my breath shortens and quickens and my hands only hold but warmth a stimulant housed in porcelain or in those moments right before sleeping i think of the infinite physics of space and the fact that when i yawn a cop car always slides past the back of my apartment so it looks as if the siren is being emitted from my mouth 46

Nina Rosenberg | Steam Steam-showerSorry-steam We are growing apart, and I don’t like it Porcelain quiet Quiet tile Remember: you are the only person I want to talk to anymore it is one of THOSE days Remember: I think I need a break And late night texts in butchered French And past-late night texts in frantic English, all spelt Wrong [you can’t spell in the pre-past-late-night either] And sunken-ship eyes because no one sleeps Anymore Soap-scent Scented hair Je t’aime. Je suis desole. Mais, je t’aime 48

Elizabeth Dumas | Frieze Snow slips over Two women. Time displaces, and They superimpose. Daughter, pent desire, The threads on the loom taut and unformed. Mother, soft sighs, the blanket on the bed wrinkled and worn. Wrapped in the cotton sound of matching steps.

Jennie Nguyen |

Rachel Milligan | Hearing it Through My Teeth I fell down the stairs and took an impossibly thin rivulet of pale yellow paint with me. It curled free in the nanosecond my fingernail dragged down the wall. My father was in the easy chair sewing his ears back together, watching the Weather Channel on mute. The paint-string gasped, and I was turned away from examining my probably-broken toes to inspect it instead. The paint spoke too quietly for me to hear. My father maintained his steady glassy eye contact with the television. In the other room, you placed old brass keys in a dusty wooden box away from all sound because they could hear the echo and be frightened by it. Now, my fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ears are mended except he will occasionally hear antiphonal chants from far off in a field somewhere that will usually go unanswered. You close the box because it smells like the dew. My skin is sheets of cold chalk. I comb my hair out with my fingers. The hairs fall unseen silently to the carpet. The knot in the back of your throat stretches across a canvas as your eyes follow me, two sad boats, while I am dressing.

Tyler Antoine | Attachment Last night I dreamt you e-mailed me an attachment of a picture of you 15 years old and biking topless In the snow and you wrote about your sister how she used to ride horses until she had her first period at the roller rink but in this dream I did not reply because I didnt have to I beta-tested your body dripping in milk our bodies ROTF your hair smelled like citrus And we never grew old

Toni White | Musings in a Tree I swing gaily from your branches holding leaves you change, like play clothes we dance in carefully. This spring, your stench is of blossoms, rotting our play with innocence I’m too old to accept. Perhaps were I spry as the child lurking, happy, in my conscience— I’d stretch to be your twin; and my toes would taste rain and drink; sans polluted worries of hygiene for axioms wouldn’t matter. But now, for the moment I dream, carving nostalgia in the bark (I hadn’t the sense to lose). The enormity of your charm is only surpassed by freedom you’ve placed in the breeze to billow the adolescence I’ve carried to rest on your limbs. 53

Maria Flaccavento | [Things Fall Apart] as if a puzzle I am working from the inside out no bucolic cardboard scene to guide me no rounded corner pieces hints. enough that in the limelight I am squandering- my hands a dirtied workmanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tools- my toes and their hard calloused whims ungrounded. now Home the walls are splitting into segments things fall apart and with them breaks the soil into river bed My heart beats and the things around it waverthe tree line as it moves along the ocean fractioning into uneven quadrants the spaces and the barren space between them. 54

Brittany Harmon | Traffic

Elizabeth Kim | Nests in the Concourse Coffee on the subway tracks— a morning massacre— cream, maybe sugar. The birds, too, know morning when they see one and another and another and… They’ve carried dawn underground. Wings once weighted by rain: now nests in the concourse like laborers to a lounge. Sweet chirrups, again and again, beckon travelers: awake.

Jeremy Degler | Utrillo For an afternoon’s work (the clock is poised forever before three), you’re satisfied, your thirst quenched (you never look at faces, only at bottle’s mouth), the fading cobblestone boulevard (down which you’re drained into an uncertain future), the still wet church, white (though smudged with the people having passed), another one done, down (in which the candle still burns), burns bright, glaring (another couple of years and then oblivion). 57

Jeremy Degler | The Flowers Are Dead You said that the flowers were dead, that drawing a portrait for money isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t the same as giving away a painting for liquor. That taking clay from beauty and reshaping it in oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own image results in shrines, postcards and cafes. Yes, the flowers are dead and the streets are filled with people.

Jenna Pagano | The Forever Kids Cities pouring Forever Kids from a flower is very extraordinary living, conjured up images of wasted, strung-out junkies, Police confirmed the powdered candy being passed is wild and free love but my hospital gown was not pretty. We lose our families and T.V.sgoing to communion. Maybe the pawn shops are hungry, there’s always a secret stash somewhere. Flowerdust gone just a week after heartache. Kids with no heroes stumble on happiness but none of us love each other. Enough enough! Help us please. Emergency rooms won’t they? My doctor told me you can never tell with the Russians how pure it’s going to be but after day three it will get better; we are all just pretty china dolls getting sick together.

Drew Charles Kalbach | POLIS, O POLIS Polis, I can’t come inside of you anymore. I’m scared. Concrete children with nail file fingers keep me awake at night. I can still sit inside of your closet and watch you cry every time the news comes on. I can even touch you. But I can’t put my face inside of your legs anymore. The smell is grease and flowers. Polis wants to kill her father. That’s the only way to become promiscuous! New York looks in our window. Her hair falls out In the shower, and I build shoeboxes from her skin. Nothing can beat your first time! Not even our polis standing naked on your toes. * Nothing is great about a polis without a vagina. The subway is like a mailman with a shotgun directed at your mouth. Our pants are off. The great outer polis rotates on its axis and we get a view of its underwear and thighs. Large, beautiful wet thighs. Nothing is great without a vagina. I am uncertain about the new people, but the old people are like spoiled milk. I smell awful but you can still drink me.

Jaclyn Sadicario | well, isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t that the point? you and Iâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; we talk around each other using parentheses and modifiers in between (integral) clauses to offset the strength of honesty whatever truth may mean in a cold still corner of the bustling city we do not know but we do know it is bigger than both of us, individually. (with every examination a pang growls inside of me of an unidentifiable certainty of some kind of beauty of Rittenhouse in autumn) like a gestalt, i see the vase i see the silhouette of a young womanâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; but i cannot see it all at once.

Kristin Stabile | a couple; in watercolor

candlelit

melting, oozing through the flames of the crackling wick that is barely lit two

bodies; entwined

vindictive curvatures elbows, limbs and limbs and limbs flickering; painfully picturesque flesh so lush you could eat it.

Elizabeth Dumas | O, Empire Wallpaper, torn in sifted strips, gold-leaf painted on colonial paisleys, smell cumin, smell merlot. Skin spice and ferment all aged and pressed and conquered with a little paste and water. Here, plaster falls, coating carpet, Tehran wool snowed over. Caravans in the high pass. Conquests. They cut off our hands in the diamond mines. We torn from coal, tasting bloody, touch tongues. They blew opium smoke into the trade winds. Too close we breathe, chest to chest while The printer prints tracts, revolutionary in nature and Baroque in style. Inked panels warped with the weather, splitting seams. we are moving in and hanging paper, prayer scarves. Flutter, pulses!

Rachel Milligan | This Is My Grayed Lavender Poem I know you are thinking of the blue light of the TV set, but you should be thinking of the pink fur of a mouse in a field where the sun is huge in the sky, considering sleeping. You are thinking of the dipping motion a hawk makes, inching closer to the highway, when you should be thinking of the tides. This cola-colored beach is too dark for us to stroll but snarl our legs in seaweed. You are humming incomprehensibly. There are wind chimes in the vibrations and spiders in your hair. That coffee you smell when you close your eyes has been resting, buried under countless feet of soil, for decades, feeding thin-stemmed mushrooms. In the five-second interval it takes for you to remember that inarticulate scratch of my toenails on your ankle, I have eaten the last of the grapes in the refrigerator, and until you return, my breath will smell of them.

Marc Snitzer | The Cutting-Room Floor (a villanelle) They lay, scattered, on the cutting room floor. Once vivid portraits now worn and gray; I can’t even remember anymore. July explosions and the faces we wore, Now long forgotten by the light of day, Lay scattered on the cutting room floor. The tide’s savage cry, its feral roar Thunders a distance too far away; I can’t even remember anymore. Our swim through rapids, when you washed ashore Laughing and swearing you were okay Lays scattered on the cutting room floor. Tell me, while we lie in the eye of this storm, Do your words last night mean as much today? You can’t even remember anymore. Every waking moment is ripe for Harvest; they will be torn by the wind, sway Softly and scatter on the cutting room floor. I don’t even remember anymore.

Sierra Gladfelter | The Beard The man stood in front of the mirror holding a razor in his trembling hand. Boring, steel-gray eyes embedded with chards of green flint, rose to meet those staring back at him. Toothpaste splatters flecked the edges of the mirror, and a smear of yellow soap grease, long ago dried. The man had been gone so long, he had forgotten the color of his own eyes. He hadn’t seen his face in five years except in the tranquil shallows of sacred lakes. But reflections on water only supply what is worth showing the sky. In a mirror we see all our flaws. Every damn scar. The city shrieked and hummed through the tiny grated window of the cramped bathroom. Yet even in the dull leaking light, there were sparks burning in the man’s eyes. He had not yet let go of the wild within him, fed on years living in the wilderness unhindered by the ideas of other men. The man’s chin was hidden in the wool of a beast untamed, proven too ragged to be held by the eyes of the civilized. Human stares are not as innocent as those of trees, he had found in the week since he had returned. In this way, they told him he must cut it off. The man ran his fingers through the roots of his beard, thick as the shag of a sun-bleached grizzly. In order to let him back through their gates, a sacrifice must be made. Order must be maintained. Some things are just kept outside of the city. When he had left he had no intentions of returning. And maybe he should have stayed on the other side, but he was a man and needed to see other men again. So he had reentered. His hands moved on the rim of the glassy white sink, quivering as he reached for a bar of Ivory. Cupped in his hand, he raised it like a foreign and ancient artifact. Even though it was only a stick of cheap hotel soap, it was critical to the ritual.

The man worked a lather into the bristle of his chin and held the blade against the stream of water. The faucet raged in excess, but in the artificial doll house he found himself in, the man felt relief in the waste. He turned the water off, and silence flooded the claustrophobic bathroom. One drop slid down the drain, apologetically. Raising the blade to his face, the first stroke grated across the hollow pores of the manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cheek. The razor snagged in the forest of beard, tangled and bound in years of unkept growth. Hacking away, the man freed the blade and slowly began taming the mass. Naked pink skin tingled in the air and against the burn of soap. Mats of severed hair fell away in clumps. The man nicked his upper lip and a bead of blood quivered on the edge of his mouth. When the act was done, the man turned the water on. It rushed through miles of pipes to meet him. He held the tarnished silver handle as his five years of growth washed down the sink, swallowed by the voluminous throat of the city. He scraped the stray hairs remaining on the sink into the palm of his hand, dropping them into the mouth of the swan-necked toilet. Sucking up all the shit we canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t bare to look at. The man lifted his gaze to meet the naked face staring back at him. Changed and yet somehow the same. Though his face was exposed for the first time in seven years, it was if he had just put a mask on. The man stared blandly through his own reflection. Even the fire in his eyes was dying. Stepping outside, he locked the narrow door to his apartment with a single brass key and stood on the edge of the concrete. Staring up into the blazing red eye of the traffic light, he waited for permission to cross the street. Stop. Go. You may walk now. The man stepped beneath the green and approving light. His cheeks were cold in the long shadows of steel and brick slipping off the rooftops. Many people passed the man, but no one seemed to notice him. As he wove through crowds of down-cast eyes, their indifference embraced him. In their passing, the man too was passing their test.

Jessie Bennett | Eclipse of blankets. Sunbeams break to pinprick stars, masking daylight into dark. Damp breaths warm our false night air. Your back holds up the heavens. 71

Emma Wenzel | You cut the headlights a half mile before you reach the meeting place. Your radio, and Elliott Smith’s doomed voice along with it, you cut off, I don’t know, a quarter mile before that. The ski masks and assorted bandannas that will be covering your faces, you put those on as that distinctly church-shaped behemoth of a building, centuries old, once undeniably grand and now crumbling into the landscape and latticed with ivy, comes into your limited and obstructed field of vision.

Sardines.

Sardines we said, sardines is what we called it. Nothing more than a bastardized hide and go seek, a slight departure from your garden variety children’s game. A game in which all one needs is a group of friends, a lack of good sense, a dark and moonless night, an abandoned building, a handle or two of cheap vodka, and the feelings of invincibility which only youth can bring. Sardines is the name of the game, now here’s the rub; the bravest or drunkest of your party (and how the too are entwined!) hides alone. Hides alone, mindful of loose floorboards, derelicts, and roving bands of mice and rats. Hides alone, in this archaic monument to the abstract concept of God. Hides alone. The rest of you attempt to find him, and upon doing so, perch, squeeze, or bend and hide there a long with him. A game where, if successful, all seekers become hiders; all hiders, all crammed and jammed together, balanced on cramping legs and trying not to make a sound, in the pitch black of a building without electricity for decades; sardines. Our game took us all over that church, guided only by the lights of our cellular phones and by the various substances consumed. We found each other in the bell tower, where no bells sound anymore. We found ourselves perched along, step by step, a white marble staircase, a white so stark, so bright, that not even the pervasive and utter darkness could muffle its glow. We found ourselves attempting to squeeze beneath the altar, the crucifix hanging mastodonic and menacing above our heads, Jesus Christ in his final and private throes, unaffected by the sacrilege taking place at his very feet. 72

The final hiding took place around the baptismal well, still filled after all these years. I was the last to find them, this time; I traversed a hall, negotiated a turn, went through a door, and then I heard it: various shouts and screams from my friends, those poor wretches, as disconsolate and sardonic as I; “Stop! Be careful!” “Don’t fall in the Jesus water!” “Finally, you found us! Do you have the last bottle?”. We sat and we drank, then, ‘til that last bottle was as dry as the deserts of Jerusalem. As I was the last to enter, I was also the last to leave. My friends filed out and yet I sat, sat on that narrow ledge with the stagnant water beneath me. I dangled my feet above it, and I sat. I sat and I thought of the men who once built this church, our Irish or Italian grandfathers, new to this country, sneered at, yet good enough to build the places of worship. You think of all the thousands of parishioners who once moved through these halls, many of them absolved of their original sin in these very waters. You think of the priests, black robed and long faced, the years of study and the lifetime of celibacy they gave up for their beliefs. You wonder what they, the congregation, the workmen, the clergy, would think of you; a group of half drunk and irreverent suburban teenagers disrespecting utterly and totally the place they believe to be literally God’s House. You feel ashamed, and you wonder where this life could ever lead. You worry for you, and for your friends, for whenever the bottom falls out, for whenever the pendulum swings back.

Alyssa Nelson | Som Američan The people, they say, Premôž svoj hnev, pokým je malý. Kill your anger while it is still small. I am sitting on a wall in Trencin, wishing I was holding your new niece And you were looking at me, saying (with only your eyes) Someday. You wrote me a letter and said Forgive me while you still can, do not be my stubborn girl. I should have listened to my ancestors, But I am not Slovak enough, only in the eyes. Not so much in the mind. (Maybe I am too Italian) The Slovaks say, Čoho sa kto bojí, o tom sa mu najskôr sníva The thing we fear, we soon dream about. Last night, on a train to Nitra, I dreamt of Those nights under the street lamps, From the summers before, Of feeling again of Wanting to feel more Of wanting to want more.

Carmen Emmi | 9/2009

Nina Rosenberg | Considering I packed up my books. Limited to only one cardboard box, I found in the dining room corner the dog-eared pages with the worn words buckle at the bottom, supporting my to-be-reads and never-finished. Bukowski and Vonnegut make pleasant conversation under the weight of Safron Foer and Capote. Robbins and Kesey suggest Eugenides and Kundera find somewhere else to sit less-than-politely and Salinger hasn’t said a word, but he is near the top. Plath and Carroll have unlimited air, resting on a sturdy Whitman, and McEwan was too tall to play Atlas to Milne or Krauss. Would that I could furnish a room all in pages and bindings and sit on chairs of words and eat only apostrophes and exclamation points when it suited me. A pantry of poems, and prose for a quilt, friends would stop by for T and we’d bathe in a stream of conscienceless running through the backyard. Paperthin walls would be perpetually permeated by the neighborhood scorn but we’d catch their condescension in blank notebook pages and burn them in the winter to keep warm (nothing fuels a fire as well as ignorance). There would be sunflowers out front.

Nina Rosenberg | What You Aren’t Anymore or Were an existence of gray sky mornings pressed heavy upon amber leaves. and sometimes its rains. And sometimes you forget how you got from one place to another. And you walk head down back curved to make sure your feet are going heel-toe-step-step-step-thump-thump-thump and you aren’t seeing

anything but heel-toe-heel-toe

and no one else is seeing anything but the place where your hair attaches to your scalp and the valleys of your spine

Remind me when last you looked me in the eye and Your smile wasn’t hollow and your Teeth showed when you laughed or even the last time You laughed at all just because someone said something silly maybe just The last time you said that anything was silly

We don’t know how you curl yourself up that small at your desk because we can’t possibly twist ourselves up that much and I know my legs don’t bend that way But you don’t seem to notice how little space you take up now or how big your voice still is

Even when you are trying to barely breathe your words

And they are the only big part of you left.

Max Marin | Deliverance Our dream – it wasn’t coincidence. So I hopped in my car and made for The End. I even took the back way which was your way. Two hours through those lazy farm roads headed for the coast, alone with the static radio. Through the windshield I gazed onto the once bustling turnpike, there was no one. But you were everywhere. Don’t show me how skillful you are – I’m not interested in your skill. What do you get out of nature? Why do you paint this subject? What is life to you? This was where we’d talked about landscapes and baked ham and Eakins. Your advice on other people’s advice. Yet, back then I always warmed up knowing you were the original. Driving, I went through you methodically, memory by memory, polishing any charred edges. (I, a child, half-clutching a boogie board in the backseat say, “C’mon, Nana! Will you chump in the wooder wif me this time?” But I know you won’t. On Four Mile Road, we laugh about how it feels closer to ten. As a teenager, in the great expanse of the pine-barrens, I explain to you the difference between a touchdown and a home run. Summer break and back from college, as the bikers passed en route, I go along with your caustic criticism of tattoos [did you notice me itch the right leg of my jeans?]) That last one seemed negative, but don’t worry – I chalked up your repulsion to the generation gap.

It only seemed right.

The sky was a deep overcast when I crossed the bridge, but I didn’t blame it. This was winter on a ghost-towned shoreline. If anyone was left, I knew it was you. It took a while to find the place searching on the fumes of that mental image. I drove up and down the beachfront until I found it. The place at the tip of the isle, set far back, concealed by the rolling dunes. Even from a distance, I knew: the two-story Victorian, cornflower blue shingles and shabby hipped roof – even the high dune grass swayed heavily in the wind, just as I recalled. Parked, door left ajar. I took off fast between the sand banks. There wasn’t much time. I hurried past the uncanny semblances of the old Victorian and tumbled down several feet of dune onto the beach. You stood just ahead, facing out toward the ocean. Your pant-legs were rolled up to the shins as you stood on the wet penumbra of sand near the water’s edge. I staggered 78

toward you, out of breath, panting. Your cracked lips curved into a frail smile. You mouthed something to me, but it was too late. Nothing could be heard over that immortal, deafening roar. And just like that, before I could tell you how I found you, before I could tell you it was your dream that led me here, that dream you told me about so many years ago, that dream of us on the beach with the old Victorian, before I could tell you I had the dream too, before I could ask you if it had to end this way, before we could pretend like going inside to classical music and iced tea was an option, before you could tell me, “Don’t paint good landscapes, dear, anyone can paint good landscapes,” before I could tell you Four Mile Road was still too long, before I could ask you why you never chumped, before baked ham, before touchdowns and advice, before false hope, before words, it was all over.

The wave engulfed us.

Sarah Ruland |

Sierra Gladfelter | V I. The yellow leaf poised on the edge of the ripple, has little choice but to be sucked into the v. It is swirled, tugged; downstream over the lip of black glass. As it rides the river the dried edges curl up like the bow of a fragile boat. II. The geese rearrange themselves tired birds drifting back strong ones shifting forward. A rotation conducted in mid-flight. In this way the v is maintained. Blackened wingtips push air, packing atmosphere beneath them. III. The macadam stretches until it cracks like the splintered skin of an elephant. Asphalt poured across the desert decades ago and drawn out to the horizon. The end of the v pins the setting sun. There is only one direction to go in.

Nina Rosenberg | grand larceny The glow at the ridges of your cheekbones I place in my back pocket, I’ll hang the sun-rouge of your nose from around my neck Ring my eyes in the soft shadow your chin makes against the stone wall And tie the sadness in your eyes around my waist. lend me your sternum, there must be an impression by now where my ear fits right. Heartbeats— like the freckles I’m sporting— your eyes are filled with sunspots and the craters of the moon someone took the hills and valleys of your spine, or else I would have— to string on my cinder-dust veins Your carbon-paper skin is riddled with ridges and furrows. come back sometime and find me swallowing you whole from behind baby blues and blunt bangs and a bit of black lace, near vanished and maybe I’ll return the things I borrowed.

Hannah McMinn | Day’s End At day’s end, dark slowly infiltrates. Velvet figures clothed in nothing dress the sky with simple elegance. Receding light colors the world, golden for a moment, held up against the silken locks of time. Running through fields of gold, reveling in the last glory of the daytoo late to love what is already slipping away. At day’s end light finds its resting place: buried by eventuality, clarity soon fades into murky dusk. Prisms of light waltz in the eyes of a child. silence steals in on silently slippered feet, catching the city in the field by surprise. The sky spreads wings of burnished beauty, the sun’s last stand. Strands of light crisscross the sky, caging all in gold. Light a field afire, for a moment, at day’s end.

Editors Note: A hyphen is a bridge from a thought you’re leaving to the place you’re forever arriving at. A hyphen is a tie to your past, a nostalgic half-dash, reminiscent of when the jointed word was once left alone, but tying a knot in place to show it’s not. In this year’s edition, we found that many of the pieces we had received for submission slipped together like pieces of a scrapbook, sewing together a sense of sweeping nostalgia, remembering, and the courage of moving with those moments that ceaselessly pull us back into the past within our hands. This edition serves as a pocket to keep your hands free from those thoughts that can cloud the sensibilities of the present and convolute the path to the future. This edition allows a place to keep what troubles or pleases us from the light of the everyday, and to keep those memories within those moments where we know we can dive fully back into them. A hyphen eventually ends in a new beginning.

The Hyphen staff would like to thank the English Department for their ongoing support and bolstering of this project. A special thanks to Gabe, Rose and Gloria for always having their doors open to us during stressful times. 85

Hyphen Staff:

Senior Executive Editors | Managing Editor | Krupa Patel

Creative Editor | Jaclyn Sadicario

Senior Editors | Lauren Faralli

Frances Buzzard

Editorial Staff | Brittany Harmon Mark Christian Inchoco Jordyn Kimelheim Juli谩n L贸pez Max Marin Hannah McMinn Kendra Royster Kristen Stabile

Faculty Advisor | Jena Osman

Layout Staff | Michele Aweeky Alison Bakker Kristin Gallagher Danielle Marinese

Staff | Julisa Basak Cassandra Emmons Allison Boggmann

Graduate Assistant | Ian Davisson

Hyphen Literary & Art Magazine features the finest written and visual art works of the Temple University undergraduate community. For more information please visit: http://www.temple.edu/hyphen or contact: hyphen@temple.edu. 88