Marginalia
volume 3 issue 1 fall 2017
Marginalia
volume 3 issue 1 fall 2017
editorial board Rachel Whalen ‘19 editor-in-chief
Madeline Day ‘18 managing editor
Peter Szilagyi ‘20 copy editor
Stephen Meisel ‘18 associate editor
Amy Wood ‘18 design editor
Jessica Brofsky ‘18 communications
Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon faculty advisor
Nicole Yan ‘20 cover art “Left, Right, and Center”
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general staff Yongyu Chen ‘20 Aelya Ehtasham ‘19 Jake Hawkes ‘20 Leo Levy ‘20 Shaloni Pinto ‘20 Via Romano ‘21 Jesse Smith ‘21 Ramya Yandava ‘21
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table of contents vii 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 12 13 14 16 17
Letter from the Editor Introduction and Conclusion Dream & Antidream Introduction to Semiconducting Physics The Daughter of Apollo Stuck on the puzzle 5:42 am Untitled Japan America: Points of Contact, 1876 - 1970 Liebesträume Premature Chromatic Memories Wednesdays eclipsed
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Dear Readers,
letter from the editor
As my time on this campus comes to a close, I’ve been thinking about the little things in life: Libe Café in the early hours of the morning, the sight of the clocktower on a clear day, and walking across the gorges to class (with a CTB coffee in hand). It’s these little memories that will be the most important part of my Cornell experience, the ones that constitute my story. And what this publication is about is all of those moments — more accurately, all of yours. At Marginalia we want your chaotic dreams, your chromatic memories, your late-night escapades on the Commons, the Slope, and beyond. It’s these entrancing details of life that we can latch on to — your cheap train coffee and your ambulance rides, your yellow paper and your anti-dreams — and we’re insatiable. We love your memories, we love your passions, we love your loves, even in the turmoil of prelims season or the dark, early hours of the winter morning. In the words of Arundhati Roy, “Nothing much matters. Nothing matters much.” But it is exactly your ‘nothings’ that keep this wonderful magazine afloat. You, our readers and our writers, have taught me so much about appreciating life by sharing your experiences in such striking lines of verse. Marginalia is not only the leaves of paper that you hold in your hands — it’s a sample of Cornell’s most creative and inspiring individuals that will now be preserved in print. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for being a part of that. I would be remiss not to mention Marginalia’s outstanding g-body; you bring in the new ideas and vibrant energy that drive us to be better year after year. Next up we have our editorial board members including the lovely (and utterly vital) Amy Wood, Jessica Brofsky, and Peter Szilagyi. And of course, all of our efforts culminate in our ever-dauntless editorin-chief, Rachel Whalen. All of you make me proud to be a part of Marginalia, and I can’t wait to see how you’ll contribute to the future pages of Cornell’s literary history. You’re great people with great stories, and here is where you can tell them. The lines I’ve read and the time I’ve spent with you will last long in my memory. Cheers to another issue, Madeline Day
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Introduction and Conclusion
Yongyu Chen ‘20
Tonight the night reminds me of what I can’t see. Outside, the hungry mouths of dogs or ghosts. Across the sea an abandoned sailboat, Hiroshima, early spring, lonely men slowdancing to jazz in six. thousand hotel rooms, all a bit cramped, a bit. cold, every second passes, every river misses its mark. What I want to say was this. What I wanted to say was everything and this: Nora — if you want it, it’s yours.
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Dream and Antidream
Yongyu Chen ‘20
Laura — the dog has died again, drunk on bones. We can’t refute this. It’s nineteen twenty-two. The rain comes early. The cold front is a sign of the ice age that never leaves. Laura — the past stares away from us. Tonight, I’m wasting thousands of hours again, convincing the bombs to believe in the wreckage that’s their own. Question number 1. When did the verb tenses all change for the worse? Question number 6. When did the projector splinter into the film? One night I wake up miles from midnight. Off stage the last encounter misses the axis of its own happening. Don’t cry. I’m eighteen years old. I’m on day fiftysix of my great heist of hunger and I’m still escaping like a slave out of poetry and aphasia. Laura — in the volta between everything and anything, I ended up as this half opened door — as this left hand on a counterpage, digging into language, trying to fail at everything. (Epilogue. Ithaca. 2017. My first ambulance ride stops at the green light and this takes my breath away. I’m thinking of first names and of how Laura sounds, from a distance and a story too far away, like love.) 4
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Introduction to Semiconducting Physics
Emily Greenstein ‘18
The silicon in sand is learned by crystal system, organized into branches and the seed crystal is cubic imagine diamonds in the grains imagine cut against the grain a glass tree doesn’t know enough of crystal symmetry to grow back imagine it opens a book leaves to pages to learn only half how to help the other half how to dissociate ions scattered across the earth crust never enough. This is how sand is made.
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The Daughter of Apollo
Emily Greenstein ‘18
the daughter of Apollo whistles back at birds reminding them to stay close, she knows that Icarus was a dense bloke so it goes, they circle in the overexposed sky and come back just shy of the shine, and the cicadas always know when it’s time. then she says, “come along,” and they all know to go, following the whistle of the daughter of Apollo.
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Stuck on the puzzle
Emily Greenstein ‘18
From the sixth floor on a Sunday night you can see the snake of green lights switch to red, cars jarred back a hundred times stopped in tracks. There is the jolt when the robin’s egg cracks in my hands that is the jerk motion of waking up from falling backwards. There is the second hand, second law of thermodynamic arrow of time, the red leaves want the earth beneath them and sooner die than go back up. There is sitting cross-legged next to a jigsaw waiting to see why one can only wait in one direction. Of course, you can see the traffic lights change on other nights too, but Sunday is the one I’m thinking of.
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5:42 am
Nathaniel LaCelle-Peterson ‘18
Train coffee comes in small blue cups; it is cheap, and hot, and bad but I drink it eagerly as the rocking metal train races the sun to Flagstaff, Arizona On the scratched plastic window the sun arrives rung off rocks and scrub, kindling the quiet vigil of the dining car, ensconced in steel and rushing home
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Untitled
Nathaniel LaCelle-Peterson ‘18
Dirty knotty pine fingers all twisted up with glue the memory is not in the mark but in the hands which make it — hissing sap (sounding tap) let’s make a day of it: grind the sap into the dirt and behold the world making sense of us
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Japan America: Points of Contact, 1876 - 1970 In Conversation with “Frost Flowers, Ipswich, Massachusetts” by Arthur Wesley Dow
Kimberly Murstein ‘18
So delicate, pretty, really pretty. Cherry blossoms, cranes, the Tiffany + Co dragonfly lamp
and the orchard.
In the museum, I am alone. I am cold in white cotton. I stare at the beauty of frost flowers, a periwinkle oil canvas a field of spring sprinkles on vanilla ice cream on sticky knuckled childhood Sundays. Touch me. I must stay inside my golden frame. Kiss me. I must keep tame. In my notebook, I write to its charming stillness and straight spine. I stare at frost flowers, skinny and fragile and light.
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Footsteps. The security guard.
behind me
.
is going .
to rape me.
I am aware it is just the three of us here. I am tight-lipped, dozy, imbecilic scribbling in my notebook as I hear his shoes groan against the hardwood floor.
I keep
The flowers still like frightened deer. I look to them for an answer. I notice a butterfly. I write it down. The guard leaves. I feel loss.
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Liebesträume
Rachel Whalen ‘19
With wisps of Liszt wafting from a farther door, the room swallows us. We ping in it like a fingernail across a glass vase full of waning geraniums. Eyes full of ocean, wearing English around his neck, the boy speaks of other cities; the boy does not know he is not yet what he wants. And as we push on I trip over the almanac; tulip; trombone; halved grapefruit; whole honey and skin; we trace our sentences forwards and backwards in the dark; tremble when we argue over what kind of heaven we’d rather have. I like him better in Spanish. I could carve into this minute with my grapefruit spoon a hole; I could burrow here; I could tell him my name is a palindrome; I could open my palms to catch the phrase though it would be translucent; though it would fall through my hands; though it would splash at our feet.
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Premature
Sylvia Claire Onorato ‘19
Unraveled fists lose their grip on firm orbs of immature fruit, plucked before they swelled into orbs full or ripe enough to draw a painter’s eye. These apricots were supposed to become jam, translucent as the golden afternoon, thick as the lethargy it lays upon a child who, hours ago, scurried squirrel-like up the tree to pluck them, pebble-hard.
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Chromatic Memories
Victor Gan ‘20
A few weeks ago, when the smooth, cool breezes of May carrying the calm scent of Sakura petals began to herald the end of the perennial April rain When it was still spring and the earthen buds of the gingko trees were beginning to bloom We saw each other again across a single-lane street between Omotesando and Shibuya neon-lit highways and towering glass edifices lining the horizon the distant Tokyo skyline shimmering The afternoon sunlight was nascent, rays like gilded leaves as they stretched into the streets and that long, flowing, hazel hair of hers seemed just a little longer than last time I flashed a surprised smirk she returned a beaming smile and I felt a little warmer for want of it I was looking for fresh tonkatsu after last night’s tasteless takeout Shopping bags with gold-lined lettering hung from her left wrist It’s been a while, I said, The streets vacant but for a few tourists with fanny-packs, salarymen on bicycles, quiet but for the distant whoosh of the Yamanote Line crossing an overpass We found a café with a French name and a rich coffee aroma Chose a counter facing the street, and sat beside each other Legs crossed, warming our hands on large, steaming mugs Outside the window, the crannies between the skyscrapers glimmered a rich orange and the fragrance in the air left a soothing aftertaste on our tongues You changed your glasses, she remarked as the steaming cup fogged my lenses And you’ve gotten taller, I replied And we shared stories about what we’d done since back then, back when we were still in Secondary, when we weren’t yet old enough to drink Kirin or Sapporo when Friday night meant a trip to Akihabara for karaoke when having a singing voice meant we were going into the pop-idol industry and wearing leggings with the school uniform was enough to draw boys’ stares
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She was auditioning to be an actress in a Shakespeare group I was trying to get published in America And both of us had been told by our friends that we should smile more often So we clinked our mugs together and took long, slurping sips sighing, here’s to the English language gazing out the window as the crimson sunlight began to fade the headlights of passing taxicabs flickering with sharp reds and whites and the neon lamps of the clothing boutiques across the street beginning to illuminate themselves with soft viridian hues She turned to me then and asked me, in her accented English What is it like past the Sea of Japan, across the Pacific; what is it like in the States, in New York, perhaps? And I replied, it’s a place where nobody speaks our mother tongue, where the trains don’t have a Japanese announcer after the English one, where the streets are lined with fluorescent lights instead of neon signs there are 7-11’s on the corners of city blocks where the Lawson’s would normally be and the subway lines don’t have fancy names like Oedo or Namboku. She smiled and mused, so, then, why do we both want to make our careers there? And we finished our coffees, lapsed back into Japanese, and laughed at our shared presumptuousness I carried the shopping bags for her on the way back to her Shibuya apartment As the reddened evening sun disappeared beneath the distant towers, the streets buzzed with salarymen searching for dinner after the workday the glimmering buildings flickered and hummed in a cascade of electric colors and the occasional Toyota drove slowly along the pedestrian-packed one-lane roads I gave her a kiss on the cheek as we made our good-nights, our oyasuminasai’s and wondered, then, if the cerise shade on her countenance was just a reflection of the neon lights from the next-door ramen restaurant On the blue days, bluer than the pattering rain against my shuttered window bluer than the hazy aquamarine signpost of the Lawson across the street, I ask her what it takes to be a writer in America She replies with a pithy one-liner about the blind leading the blind before saying, try telling them about the neon, its vividness, the bright red headlights of Japan-Rail trains after dark, the forest-green and light-aqua of the FamilyMart two blocks from her place the brilliant, chromatic hues of lime and yellow and pink that never cease to ignite the evening Tokyo sky 15
Wednesdays
Joshua Kurisko ‘18
Scraps of yellow paper Each maybe inches square Floating on the lake-water. And us on the shore, hands hungry. The winds and waves scatter them We leave shortly. Back to the factories and chalk rooms To the crowded place where I heard your laugh from another. The papers sink and shrivel. Our votes Cast, and counted. Deep in the cattails and lily blossoms, Your words were not among them. Silence spreads out And small plants crunch beneath our feet. A car rushes by in the wet darkness Its lights whirring in a different yellow.
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eclipsed
Jessica Brofsky ‘18
she pries the matryoshka doll open when the sun juts behind the new moon & drags a high tide the doll’s waist opens like doors to a lineage carved inwards, children hugging each other away from the world: Pandora for the first time again she writhes with the sea tearing away at the shore flesh opened up drowning under the world’s doused fuse she is the water & it is her blood deconstructed, nothing but half pieces, painted driftwood a body damp between the legs missing something it didn’t ask to lose
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contributors
Jessica Brofsky ‘18 Yongyu Chen ‘20 Victor Gan ‘20 Emily Greenstein ‘18 Joshua Kurisko ‘18 Nathaniel LaCelle-Peterson ‘18 Kimberly Murstein ‘18 Sylvia Claire Onorato ‘19 Rachel Whalen ‘19
It has come to our attention that the work of art on the back cover of the Fall 2016 issue was plagiarized. Marginalia regrets its publication and apologizes to the rightful owner of this work, as well as to the Cornell community. Accordingly, the online version has been updated to include none of the contributor’s work. 18
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acknowledgements Marginalia would like to extend special thanks to the following people: Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, for her inaugural semester as our faculty advisor; Ishion Hutchinson, for his support during our founding years and continued support from abroad; Corinne Bruno, for her unending patience and support; Karen Kudej, for putting up with our constant room reservations; Nicole Yan, for sharing her art with us; Cornell Printing Services, for their patience and timely publishing of all our issues; Jesse Gonzalez, whose exuberance is fondly remembered;
and every poet who submitted, for allowing us the honor of reading your work.
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Marginalia is an independent publication and is not affiliated with any other publication, on or off Cornell’s campus. It is funded by the SAFC. Any and all views expressed in these poems are of the poets themselves, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board, the magazine itself, or Cornell University.
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