Minetta Review Fall 2019 by Minetta Review

FALL 2019

Cover featuring art by Brett Stout. Cover designed by Cristina Villegas. Minetta Review logo created by Carol Ourivio.

CONTENTS 6

Minetta Statement

Alex Cullina Elliot Williams

Contributor Notes

Editorial Board & Special Thanks

POETRY

SPIRITUAL FATHER

Jan Wiezorek

MEMOIR

Maeghan Mary Suzik

PORTRAIT OF A SMALL TOWN WITH LOW FIRE WARNING TODAY

Eli Karren

HOW WE WADE

Angela Cai

CONTINENCE

Daisy Bassen

BRUEGEL BRUEGEL #1

Glen Armstrong

AMONG THE FORGETERS #10

Glen Armstrong

FATHER

Siyun Fang

RETICENCE

Sarah Marn Å½enko

POETRY (cont.) 60

MEMORY QUESTIONS.

DS Maolalai

A DELICACY

Nate Maxson

REACHING KEEN

Jared Gentile

ATAVISM 3

Heikki Huotari

MAUI

Cameron Morse

MINOR GRIMOIRE

David Boyer

UNDER THE TENT

Peter Leight

PROSE 11

AND THE AIR

Andrenae Jones

A PORTRAIT OF THE FAIR, AS SEEN FROM ABOVE

Jeremy Lawrence

A BRIEF ECLIPSE

Jared Gentile

BEYOND TWONESS

Rebecca Ruth Gold

MOZART ENTERS THE ROOM WITHOUT USING THE DOOR

Harry Cash

ART 10

SUNSET CROSSWALK

Lisa Cooley

SUMMER SHADOWS

Natalie Osmond

ORCHID

Natalie Osmond

REAL SPACES

Robin Crookall

TUCKAHOE MARBLE AND GLASS

Lara Saget

PORTRAIT OF A GIRL

Isabel Sanchez Hodoyan

THE JADE RABBIT

Moira Zhang

TWO MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

Don Edler

VISUAL ADULATION

Brooke Landry

PORTRAIT BUST OF A FLAVIAN WOMAN (FONSECA BUST)

Chason Matthams

IN THE SERVICE OF BOREDOM AND HARDENED HANDS

Brett Stout

DIBUJO TEJIDO

Daniela Libetrad

VISUAL FIELD (MAGENTA)

Omer Ben-Zvi

A NOTE FROM THE EDITORS

Hello All! Here we are, again, stronger and wiser than ever. This season we received many submissions, and though we here at Minetta we are not outrageously fond of themed issues, there is a noticeable abundance of “weirder” work in this collection. Many of these pieces test boundaries– of thought, preference, and sometimes taste. The issue collects confounding dreams, uncomfortable fables, and incantations of all walks and sorts. Please enjoy these pieces; we are remarkably proud. We count ourselves outrageously privileged to be able to work with the people we do, read the work we receive, and create the magazine we manage. It’s here where we have to thank just a few of the many, many people who brought this issue to fruition. This period has been one of big ideas and radical changes, of increased productivity and creative fervor among our Editorial Board, and we would like to sincerely thank each and every one of our E-Board and general members, for their continued work to make Minetta the best publication it can possibly be. We would also like to thank the evergenerous Randy Reeves and Art Communication Systems for, once again, printing a beautiful issue, and our advisor, Emily Anderson, for her countless contributions.

Even though our readers hear this rah-rah every semester, this issue and season is totally unique in a few respects: we changed our election and appointment procedure, took steps towards greater transparency, and most impactfully, pivoted following changes over the inclusion of New York University-affiliated authors vs. outside authors, which now requires a significantly higher portion of the former. This experience has posed an extraordinary challenge, testing the limits of both our solicitation and managerial abilities, as we enter into a crowded field of New York University publications that have more institutional ties, resources, and momentum in that department. It is not often that a publication established in 1974, the oldest continuously running student publication at New York University, finds itself in a dangerous new market environment. But our Editorial Board and general members have risen to the challenge, leading a two-pronged effort to balance of University-affiliated pieces to outside pieces, and conduct a sweeping solicitation campaign to maintain the quality of our submitted pieces in the wake of drastically reduced recruiting pool. With these efforts, our board and members have put together an exemplary issue. The future of this now 45-year-old magazine is more exciting than ever. This prompts us, as always, to thank you, the readers. It is with your interest and support that Minetta can flourish in the first place. We are constantly and forever grateful. Hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s to many more issues to come. Alex Cullina & Elliot Williams Co-Editors-in-Chief Minetta Review Fall 2019

SPIRITUAL FATHER Jan Wiezorek

In Memory of W. S. Merwin Through the weeds up past our ankles with gravestones coming upon us as destinations to shout about we approach the one who did for us but then mother sighs in the sun like blood sugar with railroad in her ears so we retire to the house with slates of wood and tell the waitress: bring something soothing later I turn through the grove again to see this father of faith and all those planted around him as if these farmers need more than frontier and sun and rain to know better

Sunset Crosswalk Lisa Cooley

AND THE AIR Andrenae Jones

You ever notice that Orlando has a specific smell? Like sporadic thunderstorms and unusually hot mornings and thighs that stick to every surface. It’s not the type of smell you’d find at Yankee Candle but I think it may be my favorite in the entire world. Orlando has my favorite air, too. Even though it makes my hair all frizzy and my hands all slippery, I can’t help but find myself standing barefoot on the new white pavement in front of the new timeshare house that sits along the new cul-de-sac. I like to let my eyes kind of glaze over as the heat embraces me the same way that aunt you haven’t seen in a few years would. We don’t really do anything when we go to Orlando. We always say we’re going to hit up DisneyWorld and Universal and Busch Gardens or whatever, but by the time we’re all dressed it’s 3:30 in the afternoon 11

and my dad sighs and says, “Y’all took too long...Imagine the crowds at this time!” and we all just shrug and plop on the couch and start scrolling on Instagram without really looking at the pictures. We do this for a few hours. Then I hear my stomach rumble and realize I haven’t had anything since my sisters and I all walked to the Dunkin’ Donuts half-a-mile away sometime in the morning. I glance at my watch that’s kind of falling apart because it’s made out of velcro and because I don’t take it off when I shower and see it’s like nine p.m. or something. “Daddy? Are we going out to dinner? We’ve done, like...nothing all day.” “You went out. You guys went to Waffle House in the morning. And didn’t even have the courtesy to wake me up.” “No.We walked to Dunkin’. Daddy—we’re in Or-land-o. We’re on vacation and we haven’t even done anything cool yet so I just think we should at least go out to International Drive and go to dinner and maybe we can even go to the go-cart place after because, oh my God, I’m so bored.” “Well, ok, fine, but you have to go rally up everybody in the house so we can all go.” “Fine.” I swear, we used to do more in Orlando before this. Orlando is kind of a yearly thing (except when Tianah had the baby and Adri had to start school at Spelman) and I swear we used to do a whole lot. Like the go-cart place. We used to go to the go-cart place with the big slingshot thing that shot you up into the air and made you feel like you were just falling. Hundreds of feet up in the air and just as you accepted your death the contraption somehow bounced you back in the air and you would bounce and bounce and bounce until suddenly 12

the bounces were so small and slow that you were close to the ground and you could just get off. I rode it only once when I was eight, every year after I just got too afraid. We all used to do so much more when we were younger. I’m able to corral, like a cowboy, my sisters and my brother and my dad who decided to take a nap just as I was almost done corralling and we end up at Joe’s Crab Shack. It’s like ten p.m. but somehow we’re not the only ones there. I’m not a huge seafood fan but I’m only sixteen and as my brother says I’m too young to have formidable opinions on cuisine. This is funny considering all I’ve ever seen him order at restaurants is chicken tenders and steak fries. “Just try the crab! I promiseyou’ll love it more than you think.” We choose outdoor seating because it’s that perfect temperature outside that you can only find in Orlando at ten p.m. Ten p.m.’s in Orlando. That would make a perfect Kanye song, I think to myself. “Ok, whatever, but only because you promise,” I retort to my sister, Adri, who’s my favorite sister because she’s closest to me in age and she doesn’t treat me like I’m one of my nephews the way everybody else does. My response sounds so inadequate when I do an instantplay in my head. I should have just said nothing at all. No wonder everybody treats me like I’m six. But I feel like If I had said anything else I would have cried. Do you ever feel that way? When you can’t say what you really want to say because you’re sure you’ll just burst into tears because you already feel it trembling up your throat so you just say something stupid and childish? I don’t see Adri that much because she’s all the way in Georgia when I’m all the way in Boston so I really have to make everything I say to her kind of perfect because I don’t want her to outgrow me. Or maybe I just want to cry because we’re at a Joe’s Crab Shack at ten. 13

My dad unleashes his classic one-liners as we wait for our grand crab feast and we all cannot stop laughing as he makes fun of the waitress with the lazy eye or my brother who just dropped out of college. Everything he says is the funniest thing in the world. I also think my dad and my brother and my sisters are a little drunk but I don’t even feel left out because we’re all laughing the exact same way. I’m laughing and it’s dark out and I’m so hungry and everything feels like it’s not really happening because I’m feeling everything all at once. Everyone looks so beautiful in the dark. We all look so beautiful. And there’s this pit in my stomach that means I’m scared of all of this to end and go away but I’m trying to ignore it. The crab comes. It’s this whole event apparently because everyone’s just watching me like I’m an NBA finals game and the Warriors and the Cavs are tied. They’re just staring at me with these wide eyes and wide smiles, looking all stupid with their crab bibs around their necks. I’m rolling my eyes pretending that this isn’t the best I’ve felt all year. My oldest sister starts cracking my crab open and the meat honestly looks pretty good and I wonder why I’ve never had crab before. So in this goofy dramatic way, I pick up my fork and deliberately puncture it into a tiny sliver of seasoned crab and slowly put it in my mouth. And I close my eyes. I know we’re not gonna make it to the go-cart place with the slingshot ride. I don’t even care if we ever get to Disney or Islands of Adventure. And the air. It feels so nice and it smells just like an Orlando trip should. I open my eyes and realize that I think there’s tears in them. Everyone’s still staring at me. Adri grabs my arm: “Was it too spicy for you? The seasoning is a little hot.” I shake my head and swallow, blinking the tears away. 14

“It’s just so good,” I say in this weary, breathy voice that doesn’t sound like my voice. Everyone sort of chuckles and exhales and starts to focus on their own food. I think the moment is gone for everyone but me like it always is until my six-year-old nephew with the huge dimples nudges my thigh with a grin and raised eyebrows: “And it smells good!” “Right?!” I respond. But I think he’s just talking about the crab.

Summer Shadows / Orchid Natalie Osmond

MEMOIR

Maeghan Mary Suzik

I shall never get you glued together entirely: scrap metal mouth to a crowning thicket of blue, piles of disinfectant wipes and ticking brain hands, flustered, stirring blood yellow. You plum colored shell of faux glitter, the moon scars the tip of your tongue. Even a green eyed thread couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t mend your pillow seat. Tip toe on the willow tree branch every night, but nature is no talker. The horizon line strips your will and you eat your fist in anticipation of the rain. Maybe you think of yourself as Anubis: a dark guide of solvents and spirits. Your jackaled gaze has labored over dreamy red filled tubs and open palms. But within the lightning bolt on private ground in ruin, your downpour begins to seep into leather seats and under the low bearing clouds: you realize lying down like a dogâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sixth sense will forever be your cracked pedestal.

PORTRAIT OF A SMALL TOWN WITH LOW FIRE WARNING TODAY Eli Karren

Once upon a time everything lived and died and Shirley Jackson reappeared in a tiny room that was neither wine cellar or French bakery just bow legged floorboards and a river pleading with itself to wake up or to get sober so Shirley knelt down beside it slowly adding lapels to a wedding cake where the plastic groom had been lashed to a cross and covered in burning leaves she kept muttering something that sounded like imagine how cold this bathing in fire but I could have it all wrong I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t remember anything besides the swimming glitters my lips purple and her knife at my throat

Real Spaces Robin Crookall

Cactus and Lamp 21

Bathroom

TV and Lamp

Split

Ranch house

A PORTRAIT OF THE FAIR, AS SEEN FROM ABOVE Jeremy Lawrence

Somewhere it was uttered once, subsequently generating the semi-backhanded reassurance iterated again and again that there are no small parts, only small actors. Original intent and context notwithstanding, there is an inherent scent of dependence attendant with the phrase. Each role is equal in the realm of the performance. There is a silent understanding between each, but not necessarily the people playing them. Bizarre reliance, a cosmic game where if the gimmick is acknowledged the whole great façade gets violently torn down leaving a blankness. The roles are dished out—or assumed— and the show goes on. In the free spaces of walkways between tents, hotdog and cotton candy stands, rigged carnival games, and rickety one-off rides, swarms the motley cast of characters maintaining the vision. It’s late July, midday, and the county fair is in full, terrifying effect. 27

The entire arena is swept back and forth by a hot undercurrent, radiating heat waves turning the stands and the guests on a slow pinwheel rotation, a gentle breath swirling the meat smoke, perspiration, and screams of joy or something more sinister. There are hulks in t-shirts pushing strollers. They are family men no doubt flanked by a wife or girlfriend who looks more than marginally irritated. One or both hold(s) an overpriced and far oversized plastic cup (24 oz, $8 soda purchase, $3 refill at any food and beverage vendor; alcohol excluded) with retractable straw pulled way out. They walk past—!Don’t Miss It!—the tent advertising a real life dinosaur, a holdover from the Mesozoic, a Florida-native alligator that measures no less than fourteen feet from tail to snout. It’s true. It lies on its belly in a six-inch pool of murky water behind a short glass barrier. The water line is tinged with algae. For two dollars you get to walk around it once and back out the entrance. Next to this is an exotic bird exhibit. The squawks of the neon avians are indistinguishable from those of the children in the storage unit-sized cage with them. Flirting with a health mandate violation disaster, a food court is right around the corner. A spotted assortment of vendors and Quik-Build units, each large enough for only one skinny attendant at a time. The lady selling water bottles knows it’s a precious commodity and treasures her position as one of the chosen water barons. Her fleshy jowls sag past her rough chin like melting dough. She paws the exact change for the water and slumps back into the shade of the small shack. In her voice is intention and her eyes, death. The water is delicious and worth every penny but swallowing is difficult. Reeling from the water shack, pivoting on heels to face the jovial bells and canned music oozing from a multi-story, glistening metal ride. Signs warn: 10 tickets to ride, 61” height requirement. Like pro sheepherders the ride attendants hustle kids about to piss their khaki shorts up the flimsy aluminum steps to the available seats. Glistening from hours unprotected in the sun and no time for bullshit, 28

they thrust in the helpless riders and secure them with over-theshoulder bars before they can change their minds. The two attendants retreat with a few backwards steps. The thin metal mesa drops away from the dangling feet and the children are airborne; sneakers flapping ragdoll in the wind, legs somersaulting over the axis of the ride’s apex with every turn, knuckles white from the death grip on the shoulder bars, jaws clenched, more than one cell phone coming loose and careening down to the asphalt earth and cracking well-beyond repair. The unstained blue of a cloudless sky is momentarily seared with the entertainment of the innocent. For a brief moment, as they cross the sky upside down, they are limitless. Staggering off the ride, each kid in their own way looks for a haven. Some, with clown grins, waddle to their friends. Others make beelines for garbage receptacles, and still others, hands covering stomachs and eyes unfocused, weak-kneed, find their way to open seats in front of a stage hastily constructed on the adjacent dry grass lawn. A hypnotist is finishing his act and the less interested are vacating. Sitting down just in time, before the inner ear ceases all normal function, they get to see the end of the rotund madman’s psychomanipulative act. The physical respite is welcome but comes with the cost of finding strings of minds lost to the hypnotist strutting back and forth across the stage. His sweat glands are working double-time. Frameless glasses keep sliding down his long nose and the two midmost buttons of his Hawaiian shirt are in a tense standoff with his belly. On stage with him are, allegedly, six members chosen randomly from the audience. To keep their minds soft and in his control he repeats a series of commands combining clicks with his tongue, pinches of their necks, and gentle pushes on their skulls. They are powerless and there is a level of perverted satisfaction emanating from the hypnotist. He giggles to himself continuously. While all the volunteers are unconscious—limp in their chairs on the stage, heads lolled to one side or the other, limbs splayed across their neighbors— the hypnotist plugs his seminar series at the Marriott in town, with a devilish look at the audience promising After Dark, Adults Only 29

lessons. Two-hour sessions, $99, now for a limited time $79. With a snap of his fat fingers he makes the volunteers dance to some deep house music and his show ends. There is a brief intermission, enough for one to catch their breath, center their mind, and reassure their self that they are, undeniably, free from the mental control of a balding, pot-bellied, scummy sorcery, and the next act is up. The show is split into distinct chapters. Part I: Chinese acrobats— amid flurries of frighteningly small carnies in burlap clothes carrying their equipment—twirl plates on sticks and hurl themselves through suspended hoops. II: after stacking thirteen wooden chairs, alternately angled to maximize balance and account for the dry wind coming up in the late afternoon, one ideally proportioned male acrobat preforms a perfect handstand on the final chair, 20+ feet up. Braced by steel forearms he does a split before the perilous downward climb. III: a woman in glittering full body spandex gyrates her small frame to keep a growing number of hula-hoops, increasingly infinite, suspended round her middle. This movement and the addition of hoop after hoop hiked up from one leg at a time stretches her well under 5’5” body to a staggering 8’0”. No doubt her bones and tissues are reaching a critical stretching point, riding the edge of a gruesome break. But, collected and without breaking rhythm, and to the awe of the growing audience, she descends. With each hoop removal her torso shrinks more and more. Her head and shoulders return from the height of the stage’s upper metalwork. And then, with the final flourish and catch of the last two hoops, she is human again. And reminds the crowd that they, too, are human. Each body, with a creak of cheap plastic, lifts itself from the chair in which it was dumped. The sun is setting, the sunset wind coming up. The audience leaves, recalled to their responsibility, each in their own shape and form reasserting their role. Sweaty pig people from the inland empire, orthopedic shoes galore, couples in black denim despite the ebbing heat, earlobes heavy with piercings, children in striped shirts and polka dot dresses, hair stiff from the long day of sweat and excitement, 30

each being dripping with the absorbed rays of the Southern Californian sun, a thin layer of agitation emanating off the shared skin. It’s a mass exodus out of the Orange County Fair & Events Center. The parking lot is rush hour crowded. The automobiles have retained the heat of the day. If the masses aren’t too drunk on beer and domestic wine then they are angry, harboring micro grudges against the world: for the stuffed prize that isn’t theirs, for the imposing stranger who bumped into them and didn’t apologize, for their kid scraping their knee on the grainy asphalt, for the $25 they spent on lemonade (“LEMONADE!”). But outside the grounds it all dissolves. They are rendered, once again, blissfully mortal. The funneled crowd of county fair goers—surveyors of the strange, peddlers of the unneeded—atomizes. The curtain has fallen and the players file home. Distance from each other becomes exponentially related to their distance from the fairgrounds, each step and each mile bringing them closer to a peace they have not known in God knows how long.

Tuckahoe Marble and Glass Lara Saget

HOW WE WADE Angela Cai

[CHORUS: we had a beautiful vision of all of our children singing a song full of hope atop mauna kea] I’ve never seen the water in New York. Only in snatches, through window, sorrow, screen, the cracks between your fingers. But today, it glitters, lush, bitter, coralsweet. Bearing me towards my birth mother. I see boats, small enough to be birds, gentle enough to be dogs, spread heaving, healing, wandering green-blue. I’ve never seen the water in New¬¬ York. But today, today, today – Today I am knee-deep in it. I have only been here for so long.

Onshore a girl is singing The water goes up to her neck She is trying to reach us but Her mouth is choked with salt, her ears are plugged with weed, her eyes are shut with pitch. And yet â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Here The water cradles her towards me Bears her to us like so much strange driftwood. In her cupped palms is the bluest water I have ever seen. She bids me drink, tip my chin back, let the cool whisper of home pass over my lips. She calls us back, To be skinned again in swollen shell. And yet It is too soon to go. So she brings a coral wreath for each of us Spears mango, and peach, and biting juice on her wrist Wave of writhing bodies delivers me to the sea, joyous, back to her, and the water recedes, laps at my toes the stranger I sing and the stronger she mourns. I wonder if sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ever seen the water in New York or has it always been six feet over her head?

[CHORUS: Give them back â&#x20AC;&#x201C; your hungry your thirsty your young. Your homeless, your tempest-tossed, your children. Do not confuse them for your mighty.] A girl I hold in the palm of my hand clings to my thumb, laurelvoice no paler than a sailboat. She tells me: I have never seen the water in New York.

portrait of a girl

Isabel Sanchez Hodoyan 41

CONTINENCE Daisy Bassen

I’m not the first woman To wish Monica dead. Augustine’s nameless mistress Had a name of course, one We weren’t given; I think He called her Passerine, My songbird, instead of Julia Or Tertia, an endearment That caught something of her voice In the night, that told her he loved The sound of her pleasure. She only carried one child to term. That’s why they called him a gift Of God, they were happy enough Before Monica arrived With her convictions parceled. Passerine hummed while she ground The spices, she let her hand fondle The herbs that would have meant All our deliverance. Augustine Had his mother’s eyes and so she chose Not to be haunted by his suspicions. She preferred his grief, though we have not. We have not had Carthage to return to, All these long years of his rejection, Trying to forget how she cried out—more.

A BRIEF ECLIPSE Jared Gentile

Once the initial shock and disgust subsided, Gabriel decided that the slugs were a sign. The way they’d blotted out the sun for a moment, falling thickly in one place until landing in a mushy heap on the street, suggested a curtain being drawn. The significance of the cloudless blue sky they’d disrupted was also telling. It was telling Gabriel that his complacency had been punctured, the curse was lifted—he had been recognized and redeemed. Gabriel felt this exorcism deeply, felt the ugly sloth sitting on his heart tear in two, and the earthy smell of dead slugs was proof of sacrifice. Through their mass death, he was to be transfigured. Already Gabriel could feel his overweight, aching body lighten. Was he rising off the deck chair he’d been smoking on, or was it only his imagination? Tears welled to blur Gabriel’s vision. Finally, he could move, he could cook for himself, he could earn a living and live on his own—no more borrowing money from Dad and receiving 44

shame in return, no more keeping Mom up at night to sympathize with his vitriolic accounts of dishonest friends, no more falling asleep in his own mess after beating off to the idea of women in bikinis. He envisioned his life unfolding before him, the hours of hard work he’d spend in a suit, a faceless woman holding his faceless baby, his body sculpted and shining, diving below churning waves, the grace with which he would swim. Gabriel lit another cigarette and settled back down into his deck chair, a smile dawning on his lips. He was twentynine and his life was just beginning. The spell had been broken: his heart’s sloth was slain. Gabriel’s fantasy carried him far away from his body, and far from the mess of dead slugs on the street before him (some of which were still twitching in the throes of death). One of these slugs, which was splattered with its dead compatriots’ slime but had not quite joined them yet, used to be a snail. As a snail, this slug had been relatively happy. To be a snail is to be always at home, merely by inhabiting your body. The sun came and went, food was found and eaten, and slowly the land had been explored. Despite the intense and fatal pain the slug who had been a snail was now experiencing, the slug’s consciousness was consumed with memories. Incoherent fragments jumbled together, flashes of giant stalks of grass, a wide, blank blue, the moon from a patch of mud, the feeling of a shell on your back, the feeling of nothing on your back, the free, unencumbered feeling of nothing touching you but air, the smell of something burning, the burning feeling of blocking the sun, the bright taste of algae, the pride of seeming like a rock to a predator, the shame of being caught and stripped of your home and tossed in a bag with many slugs all fervently apologizing to one another for violating each other’s personal space, the cold, dark silence when the bag stopped moving for a long time, the joy of learning through touch, the breathtaking feeling of exploding on the ground amidst many other slugs, only some of whom you’d learned the names of. 45

As these bursts of memory fired through the slug’s remaining neurons, it glimpsed a dark speck sliding across the otherwise unblemished blue. This speck was an airplane, specifically a cargo-carrying airplane, specifically carrying fresh food and ingredients as its cargo. The plane was piloted by Ajax, a young Grecian man who’d joined his family’s ingredient-delivery business. For sixty proud years his family had catered to high end restaurants around the globe, the memory of which only made Ajax feel worse about the crate-loads of ingredients he’d just dropped out of the plane. What lie could possibly excuse how he’d forgotten to tie down the crates and lock the bay door, gone wildly off course and not even radioed anyone to say “my bad” once the crates fell? The truth would not suffice, as all the men in his family flew while drunk—just because Ajax couldn’t handle his liquor would be no excuse. Flying drunk was something his family had always practiced to prove that it wasn’t about cold rationalism, it was an act of passion. Naturally they counted their victory over common ignorance in secret, to avoid suffering for their views. But now, his head spinning from the cocktail of gin mixed with plane turbulence, Ajax had the feeling that his ignorance was going to make this a very brief and unfulfilling flight.

The Jade Rabbit Moira Zhang

Two Minutes to Midnight Don Edler

BRUEGEL BRUEGEL #1 Glen Armstrong

I want to see the dogs and watch the fish die. Their barking is a philosophy and one that I can get behind. Not every line crossed was drawn by a master. I want to wake up on the first and utter, Bruegel Bruegel as if there is no rabbit, no fish, no dog. Nothing here to see.

AMONG THE FORGETTERS #10 Glen Armstrong

He says he will not interfere with the furniture. He says he will leave the wasps’ nest be. Wasps, after all, prey on garden pests even if pollination isn’t quite their thing. They respond to darkness and what light does to it. He will wait until the package arrives. He says he doesn’t mind the weird murmur in the stillness of the pines.

Father

Siyun Fang

My father comes through the door one after another His footprints come through first, and then his hands and arms arrive right after his feet, together with his shadow, his smell, pulsating genes and finally, he comes through, with his face I see his weakness through marketplace gossip I make up his loneliness from motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s detesting tones My father comes into my life one after another He should be old; although I have never seen him. He is old pouring his amorality and laziness into my body I see him through my weakness I am more and more like him, just like the way people described him when I was young; I have grey hair; I weep over my misfortunes weaklyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; it seems that he has been growing in my body from the very beginning of my life

Visual Adulation Brooke Landry

Thank You Debussy

Thank You Liszt 54

Thank You Schubert

Thank You Piazzola 55

Thank You Richter

Thank You Sant-SaĂŤns 56

RETICENCE

Sarah Marn Ženko, trans. from Slovenian by the author

Povprečna ženska na dan izgovori 20.000 besed Rekla bi, da sem zaradi svojih številnih stikov In lingvistično napredne vzgoje poleg svoje ekstrovertiranosti (lahko bi rekla, da sem pač rada govorila) Izgovorila še nekoliko več, recimo 25.000, ko sem nastopala, pa seveda še nekaj tisoč več- predvsem v zaodrju in v zatišju ozvočenosti Včasih sem kar tako pela na glas. Še nekaj sto dodatnih. Klicala sem sestro v avto. Na kosilo. Še petdeset. Videla sem ljubezen okusila sem ljubezen rekla sem ljubezen 27.000 Danes sem spregovorila 278 besed. V to sem vštela pesem, ki sem si jo zapela v svoji sobi. V to sem vštela 4 ‘excuse me’, ki sem jih rekla tujcem na ulici Ker jih nisem želela pokolesariti ali umazati. Vštela sem ‘is anyone sitting here?’ in ‘Parce-qu’on utilise vue avec la forme féminine’. Prebrala sem odstavek eseja pri angleščini. 130 besed. Vse ostale besede, ki jih je iz mene želela univerza. Dva pozdrava za dva moja cimra. 278. V dnevu sem tisočina svojega glasu. Ironično pa je, da sem ves čas hripava. Jih je bilo v resnici manj?

On average, a woman speaks 20,000 words daily I would say that due to my many interactions And linguistically progressive upbringing besides my extroverted nature (could say I just liked to talk) My daily average was slightly higher, say 25,000, and hundreds were added to the score On days of our performances—mostly backstage in the quiet of the sound system Sometimes I would sing out loud just for fun. A couple hundred more. I called my sister to the car. To lunch. Fifty more. I saw love I tasted love I spoke love 27,000 My count today is 278 words. Including the song I sang to myself in my room Including the 4 “excuse me”-s aimed at strangers on the street While trying not to run them over or ruin their Louis Vutton Including ‘is anyone sitting here?’ and ‘Parce-qu’on utilise vue avec la forme féminine’ I read an essay paragraph in an Essay class. 130 words. All the other words that the university wanted out of me. Two hellos for my roomates. 278. I am a thousandth of my voice in a day. What’s ironic is that my voice is hoarse all the time. 278. Were there actually less?

MEMORY QUESTIONS. DS Maolalai

she’d complained of double vision, and when she went to cork’s hospital they sent her to dublin immediately for something on the stem of her brain. she’s 14 now - jesus - and I hadn’t seen her since she was 7; a falling out between our parents from something stupid which doesn’t matter. jesus christ. and she was in bed all thick bandages with her eyes pointing everywhere, and a slow mouth - this pretty girl I only remember younger, and as bright as tiny bells. I chatted with her and with her mother. talked about normal things. when the nurse came to ask the memory questions

Portrait Bust of a Flavian Woman (Fonseca Bust) Chason Matthams

BEYOND TWONESS Rebecca Ruth Gold

It was 5 p.m. in the afternoon in the month of April. Light spread out over St John the Divineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cathedral as she waited for him along Amsterdam Avenue, at the intersection of 113th Street. Morningside Heights was bustling with people headed home from work. He had never been to the Hungarian Pastry Shop, so she had offered to wait for him outside. While waiting for him to arrive, she imagined what he might look like as she leaned against the cathedralâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cold grey stone. He had been born in Egypt. Would he have an accent? She was not disappointed. Although he did not conform to any stereotype of attractiveness, his trimmed beard and spectacles were charming. He was clearly bookish and serious, capable of perceiving layers of meaning beneath action and sign. There was more to him than met the eye. 62

He ordered tiramisu for them both, and gave his name at the counter. They sat down at a table against the wall. They knew each other well, though they had never met in person. He had helped her write her articles, and she had given him advice about his son, all over the phone. Now, at long last, they were meeting in the flesh, and did not know what to say to each other. She opened by talking about a friend who would be visiting her from Syria. She had helped him with his application for asylum and was now anxiously waiting for him to get a visa. “In this political climate,” she said, “I’m not holding my breathe.” The Muslim ban had just come into effect. Syria was on the list of restricted countries, but she held out the hope that he could obtain a waiver, given that he had been imprisoned and tortured for his resistance to the regime. He nodded and asked whether she had a personal connection to her Syrian visitor. Such a good listener! “Yes,” she said, without missing a beat. His question conveniently enabled her to displace her unsolicited interest in her new acquaintance onto a familiar object, who was far away and therefore could not object to the distortion. He carried the thread of their conversation forward. They spoke about her year in Syria, just before the war, about learning Arabic in Jami al-Nour, a mosque complex located in Muhi al-Din, named after the famous Sufi Ibn al-Arabi who is buried there. She revealed the reaction of her neighbours when they learned that she was of Shia background, recollected fondly the migrants from the Philippines who cleaned her room, and remembered listening to Bob Marley as she coasted with her friend through Damascus’ Salihiyya Quarter. They talked about everything under the sun, everything that was on their minds other than the thing that was staring them in the face: what their future 63

together held. Were they to be friends? Lovers? Strangers who would only meet once and then never see each other again? It was clear to her that she was more interested in that future than him, or at least she was more eager to attain clarity regarding their future, so she steered the conversation in a direction that she hoped would lead to illumination. She told him about an article that she had taught to Columbia undergraduates, as part of the always oversubscribed course Introduction to Islamic Civilization, by an Egyptian named Sayyid Qutb. In the article, Qutb argued that polygamy was a more natural state of being for women and men than monogamy. To her surprise, one woman in her class praised the article for its realism and honesty and said that it had caused her to think differently about woman’s sexuality. This wasn’t to say that she agreed with it all, just that it had stimulated her thinking. The tiramisu arrived, two towering slices criss-crossed by layers of dark chocolate and cream, with two café lattes. She moved the fork through the cake, savouring its moist texture, and anticipating its feel on her tongue. Introducing this memory from her teaching was an indirect attempt to steer the conversation towards polyamory, or non-monogamy in medical jargon, a lifestyle she had been reading about with increasing interest. She wanted to use the concept not just to extend her list of sexual partners, but also, and more importantly, to change the very meaning of partnership, and ultimately of love. She wanted to know what he thought about this, but was not sure how to elicit his opinion. At last she said, “Tell me about your wife.” He spoke of her intelligence, her integrity, and her independence. She had reluctantly agreed to have children, he said, but only on the condition that he would do the child rearing himself. They planned together: she would keep her full-time job working as a curator for the 64

Met’s South Asian galleries, while he would reduce his hours at his law firm and work at home. The more he told her about his wife, the more she was reminded of herself, or at least of her self image. He pulled out his wallet and showed a picture of the three of them—wife, five-year old son, and himself—atop Mt. Kilimanjaro. It was uncanny: his wife looked like her too. Like her, she was tall and red-haired, with glasses and curls that covered her shoulders. They resembled each other in personality too: they both loved their work. The conversation dragged on for hours, so excited was he by the stories he was telling her about his wife. He recollected meeting her while working at the UN, and then falling in love, and persuading her to have children. The more she learned about this woman, the more she liked her. “Can you introduce me to your wife?” she finally asked. The conversation was entering new, unchartered terrain. But life was short. She couldn’t wait any longer, and she needed to reassert control of the direction their conversation was taking. What was it that she wanted from this woman, the wife of the man she had briefly— only briefly—fancied as a lover? She didn’t know. She had a feeling, however, that she could be friends with her forever, and that the bond that might emerge from that union would be stronger than the magnetic attraction for the man in front of her. If only he would introduce them to each other. “Why do you want to meet her?” he asked. “I thought we met here so that we could get to know each other.” “I thought she might be able to teach me something about love,” she said.

A DELICACY Nate Maxson

The most decadent of French foods, the Ortolan songbird/you force feed it grain by keeping it in the dark/then drown it in Armagnac (an anecdote among chefs is that thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a pretty good way to die)/then you bake it for ten minutes/cover your head in a towel (supposedly to hide your face from god) and devour it whole from the feet first, spitting out the bigger bones/the secret ingredient is sadism/says me, watching the sparrows on the tree outside my window with increasing curiosity

In the Service of Boredom and Hardened Hands Brett Stout

REACHING KEEN Jared Gentile

There’s something in this heart unpurged not winnowed down by winter’s urge Sticks in the thicket of hearts’ thick audience applauds huddled round burning wick Love like hands to cross the space to cross those gone Against the grain wood splinters stab interred too young (interred or flung?) pit gaping maw unfathomed Shrieking birds beat wings to rise rise and hide to live must fly Must beat and leave the damned to die damned us all the mourners cry I call upon a keen so wide as grieves the leaves to autumn lie These hands shall wring our tears to rent these hands shall reach pray reaching mends

which they have to ask everyone she answered in a mild angry tone, thinking the questions were stupid and getting the answers right. honestly she seemed ok, except for the eyes and the bandages. and all the wires through her gown. oh fuck. fuck. anyway, I left before sunset so cars could still see me cycling, then got drunk in the kitchen and cried at 9pm - big, heavy fucking tears like rolling tennis balls feeling like the whore I was, my cousin sick in hospital and me already drafting her poem.

ATAVISM 3 Heikki Huotari

Knowing nothing of your antecedents precludes seeing through you. A mistake of nature, I investigate mistakes of nature that do not investigate themselves. When extrasensory perception turns on me, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll have momenta to dismember, have an atavism to communicate, to better balance when I leap from tree to tree. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s better to have loved and lost three times than to have loved and lost but twice.

Dibujo tejido

Daniela Libertad 71

MAUI

Cameron Morse

We go grocery shopping with a pregnant woman who does and does not want the Hawaii rolls, a woman who drops the cockroach in a salsa jar full of bleach, who washes her hair in volcanic ash. She says I killed her interest in mixed nuts by packing too many in the lunch bag. Says I’ll never pass my driver’s test. I don’t talk enough, no, I never talk enough. At first, when I tell her that the roach is disappearing, she cannot believe it. Yet every time I go to pee, I look in on the thinning sliver of its body.

MOZART ENTERS THE ROOM WITHOUT USING THE DOOR

In Which a Daring Act of Immense Bravery Is Undertaken and Our Hero Becomes a Thunderous Bother to a Well-Meaning Elderly Person Harry Cash

The man seated to my right in the checkered coat is barefoot. He has smoked three cigarettes, filter first. The filter is tough to burn, and he spends around three minutes of each cigarette trying to light that gummy inch of orange. Each time he is rewarded for his efforts with a newly filterless cigarette. He burns through them in half the time that the filters took to melt and sputter away. Smoking indoors has been illegal for years, but no one seems to mind the grey-blue cloud that has settled, halo-like, above his table. He cuts an impressive figure sitting there proudly in his bushy fur cap. He smells like heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s balding under there. I have decided that he is sitting and smoking through a mystery encoded in the only surviving manuscript of a missing opera by Mozart. He is determined, mind held aloft by the thin line of smoke 74

rising from cigarette number four, to arrive at a solution to the puzzle in one go. The could be no second draft, and only conditionally could there possibly be a third. I laughed to myself, not expecting him to be so devilishly absurd. People are endlessly surprising. I am stuck, though, on the mystery that I have decided he is puzzling over. On the walk home I can think of nothing but this forgotten manuscript, this operatic cryptogram that contained some miraculous truth—some lost and valuable knowledge. I take a nap when I get home. I dream of Mozart and clouds.

the clouds. He opens his mouth to speak, to yell, but only the gasping sound of an orchestra tuning comes out. The clouds laugh most serenely from outside the window. I watch Mozart writhe and honk at the shapes that the clouds take on. First, a head of broccoli, next the head of a table, then the head of a king. Mozart weeps in his corner, making lakes and streams on the checkered tiles. I wake up in a cold sweat with the taste of fennel in my mouth. The clouds out my window are full and proud in the night sky.

In my dream, Mozart, panicking in the corner of the the room, cowers from the window and tears at his hair. He is trying to communicate some pressing bit of information to me as he points and quivers at

I go back to the café in the late afternoon the next day. The man in the fur cap is back again, this time on a metal stool to my left. He is halfway through a cigarette, the smoke spelling out a word I don’t know. He is back to thinking about Mozart’s mystery opera and I can tell he is close to figuring the whole thing out. This I know by the fifteen-degree angle that his brow has taken under his hat. I have been studying the intricacies of facial expressions for nearly a quartercentury, and if I could see you now at this very moment, I could tell from the tremor in your left temple that you’ve finally forgiven your father after years of excuses and bargaining for peace. Plain as day. 75

The man is nearing the conclusion to his mental sleuthing, his internal exploration, pouring over page after page of score and libretto in his mind. I spend the next twenty minutes searching his face for clues, but it is clear now that he knew of my parallel investigation and that his eyebrows were only teasing earlier. His ears wiggle about rabbits, his nose twitches, concerned about the weather next Tuesday. I decide that he is intent on leading me astray. He is clouding the waters so that I might not profit from his efforts. Whatever is contained in that manuscript must be very important indeed. I move closer to his table. He doesn’t notice, but his mustache twitches threateningly and I look away and wait for a few moments before resuming my surveillance. After another hour of snooping, I realize that he isn’t hiding his investigations from me—he is encrypting them. Perhaps there was another after the manuscript’s secret message in the café. He could trust me, he knew that. I could now see how his nonsensical expressions from earlier were in fact meaningful—the rabbits and meteorological messages were simply part of larger coded explanation of Mozart’s complex encryption. I stare at him, not wanting to miss a single shifting muscle underneath his greying beard. He looks at me. His furrowed brow seems to hold a question. He grimaces. What does this mean? He leaves. I go too. Mozart’s unknown opera plays on a borrowed gramophone in my dreams—I will go back to the café tomorrow I think. Yes.

Visual Field (Magenta) Omer Ben-Zvi

MINOR GRIMOIRE David Boyer

over the strangersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; sarcophagi the sea argues with itself by the time you hit the ground your teeth filed to points in her secret room a portrait of the estranged familiar if going for gnomic you gnaw off your foot plastic roses what the worm knows of winter suddenly awake at 3

UNDER THE TENT Peter Leight

It’s open on all sides, as if nothing’s at stake. Walking around or walking toward someone without veering or turning away, or moving out of the way, at first it’s an interruption, then it’s something you don’t want to interrupt. Nobody says please don’t touch, nobody’s asking you to come to the point. Looking at each other the way you look for something in the lost and found, something that belongs to you if you can only find it—it doesn’t matter where you are or what side you’re on, or who’s sitting next to you, as in the kind of negotiation where everybody gets something and nobody gets everything. It’s okay to think about something without pretending you’re thinking about something else—there’s no need to make anything up. You’re not waiting for someone who’s not waiting for you, as if you’re taking turns reading out loud. You don’t need to raise your voice in order to be heard. When you’re tired you find somebody to lie down next to, not even touching, it’s okay to uncover your abdomen and enough of your chest so that they know everything about you, like a kiss without lips—what if things are happening to you because of something you don’t know, or because of the way you are? What if you only know people when you know everything about them? Not turning away, or pushing anyone away, gently like a mattress or a coffeecake: as far as forgiveness is concerned it doesn’t cost anything.

CONTRIBUTOR NOTES

GLEN ARMSTRONG holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and teaches writing at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters and has two new chapbooks: Simpler Times and Staring Down Miracles. His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Conduit, and Cream City Review. DAISY BASSEN is a practicing physician and poet who graduated from Princeton University’s Creative Writing Program and completed her medical training at The University of Rochester and Brown. Her work has been published in The Minetta Review, Oberon, The Delmarva Review, The Sow’s Ear, Tuck Magazine, and elsewhere. She was a semifinalist for the 2016 Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry, a finalist in the 2018 Adelaide Literary Prize, a recent winner of the So to Speak 2019 Poetry Contest and was doubly nominated for a 2019 Pushcart Prize. She lives in Rhode Island with her family. OMER BEN-ZVI (b.1984), Ein Harod, Israel, lives and works in New York. Ben-Zvi’s work combines photography, installations, printmaking, ceramics, and other photo-based objects; it deals with representations of narratives, ideas, and discourses, mainly in relation to territorial conflicts and identity. Ben-Zvi graduated (2018) from the New York University Steinhardt MFA program in Studio Art. Holds a BFA (2015) in photography from The NB School of Design in Haifa, Israel. Participated in solo and group exhibitions in Israel, New York, and Europe.

DAVID BOYER’S work has been published in Adelaide Literary Magazine and haiku journals including Frogpond, Modern Haiku, The Heron’s Nest, Bones, is/let and Roadrunner. ANGELA CAI is a sophomore at NYU studying English and Social and Cultural Analysis. HARRY CASH is a junior at NYU studying philosophy. LISA COOLEY is a senior in Gallatin studying psychology and visual art, hoping to pursue art therapy. She is primarily a painter but is dipping into printmaking and poetry in her final semester and wonders why she didn’t sooner. ROBIN CROOKALL came from Washington State to New York to pursue her Masters in Fine Arts. In 2016 she received her MFA from New York University. There she continued to fine tune her sculpture and photography skills to create uncanny images of small scale architectural models. Crookall is a 2019 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in photography from The New York Foundation for the Arts. In 2017, she participated in a group show at Seattle’s Soil Art Gallery, showed at Art Basel in Miami, and completed a two person show at Brooklyn’s McCarren Park. In 2016, Crookall was interviewed by local NY artist and writer, Wenxin Zhang, for an online Chinese photography magazine, IndieFoto. In 2015 she completed a solo show at Seattle’s 4Culture Gallery and her post-bacc at the University of Montana. She is currently living and creating in Brooklyn.

DON EDLER was born in Bremen, Germany and lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Edler attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and received an MFA in Studio Art from New York University, as well as a BFA in Sculpture from University of Florida, Gainesville FL. Recent solo and two person exhibitions include 6871 California Ave, Five Car Garage, Los Angeles (2018); The Father The Sun and The Holy Road, San Diego Art Institute, San Diego CA (2016); COBRA DESTROYER, Central Park Gallery, Los Angeles CA (2016). Recent group exhibitions include Ecoshamanism curated by Ian James, Leroyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Happy Place, Los Angeles CA (2018); Mile To Mile, Rogerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Office, Los Angeles CA (2018); To Have or To Be, Ochi Projects, Los Angeles CA (2018); Corpus Alienum, Hunter Shaw Fine Art, Los Angeles CA (2017); The Useful and The Decorative, The Landing, Los Angeles CA (2017); Memory Room curated by Andrew Ross, Outpost Artist Resources, Queens, NY (2016). Don Edler is also the founder and curator of ELEVATOR MONDAYS, a social exhibition space in Los Angeles founded in 2017. SIYUN FANG is a poet and translator. A graduate of Centre College and New York University, she is currently attending The New School MFA Program. Her poems have appeared in Rigorous, Tule Review, In Parentheses, Seven CirclePress and other journals and magazines. Her research interests include the modern and contemporary poetry, poetic theories, theories of narrative, American fiction, as well as dramatic arts. JARED GENTILE is a writer studying at NYU.

REBECCA RUTH GOULD’S work has appeared in Nimrod, Kenyon Review, Tin House, The Hudson Review, Salt Hill, and The Atlantic Review. She translates from Persian, Russian, and Georgian, and has translated books such as After Tomorrow the Days Disappear: Ghazals and Other Poems of Hasan Sijzi of Delhi (Northwestern University Press, 2016) and The Death of Bagrat Zakharych and other Stories by Vazha-Pshavela (Paper & Ink, 2019). Her poem “Grocery Shopping” was a finalist for the Luminaire Award for Best Poetry in 2017, and she is a Pushcart Prize nominee. In a past century HEIKKI HUOTARI attended a one-room school and spent summers on a forest-fire lookout tower. He is now a retired math professor and has published three chapbooks, one of which won the Gambling The Aisle prize, and two collections, Fractal Idyll (a...p Press) and The Knowable Emotions (Lynx House Press). ANDRENAE JONES is a current freshman at the College of Arts and Sciences of New York University. She is an aspiring writer and cultural analyst from Massachusetts and finds inspiration from the nostalgic qualities of American pop culture. In her downtime, Andrenae enjoys watching the fruits of Peak TV and independent cinema and playing with her Shar-Pei named Phife. ELI KARREN is a storyteller, poet, and second grade teacher currently residing in Austin, TX. He was the 2017 recipient of the Benjamin C. Wainwright poetry prize and has had his works appear in Redlands Review, Geometry Magazine, and In Layman’s Terms. His work is also forthcoming in Turn it Up: Poetry in Music from Jazz to Hip Hop.

Currently studying Collaborative Arts at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, BROOKE LANDRY actively delves into interdisciplinary modes of expression. Though a strong visual artist, she has spent the last several years delving into other artistic practices, becoming a skilled vocalist, pianist, composer, flutist, dancer, and videographer. Using drawing as a medium, she seeks to explore the relationship between music, movement, visual art, and emotion as well as to pay homage to personally inspiring composers. JEREMY LAWRENCE is a recent NYU graduate, holding a degree in Cinema Studies and minors in Creative Writing and Philosophy. He currently lives in southern California, where he folds towels for a living. His work has previously been published in October Hill Magazine’s Contest Issue and he is working on his first novel. PETER LEIGHT’S poetry has appeared in the Paris Review, AGNI, FIELD, Beloit Poetry Review, Raritan, and elsewhere. DANIELA LIBERTAD graduated from New York University’s Masters Program in Visual Art (2010) and the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado “La Esmeralda” (2007). In addition, she studied at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe in Germany (2006) with Professor Ernst Caramelle. She lives and works in Mexico City, where she was born in 1983. DS MAOLALAI has been nominated four times for Best of the Net and twice for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in two collections, Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden (Encircle Press, 2016) and Sad Havoc Among the Birds (Turas Press, 2019)

CHASON MATTHAMS (b. 1981, from Pacific Grove, California) lives and works in New York, NY. He received an MFA and a BFA from New York University. Matthams has had solo shows at Thierry Goldberg Gallery (New York, NY), Tyler Wood Gallery (San Francisco, CA), and has participated in group shows at Interstate Projects (Brooklyn, NY), Frédéric de Goldschmidt (Brussels, BE), Launch F18 (New York, NY), Danese Corey (New York, NY), among others. NATE MAXSON is a writer and performance artist. The author of several collections of poetry, he lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. CAMERON MORSE was diagnosed with a glioblastoma in 2014. With a 14.6 month life expectancy, he entered the Creative Writing Program at the University of Missouri--Kansas City and, in 2018, graduated with an M.F.A. His poems have been published in numerous magazines, including New Letters, Bridge Eight, Portland Review and South Dakota Review. His first poetry collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. His three subsequent collections are Father Me Again (Spartan Press, 2018), Coming Home with Cancer (Blue Lyra Press, 2019), and Terminal Destination (Spartan Press, 2019). He lives with his pregnant wife Lili and son Theodore in Blue Springs, Missouri, where he manages Inklings’ Fourth Fridays Reading Series with Eve Brackenbury and serves as poetry editor for Harbor Review.

LARA SAGET has been an exhibiting artist for over ten years. Her work has been exhibited in varied spaces including Fortnight Institute, New York, NY; 80 Washington Square East Gallery, New York, NY; Studio 106, Los Angeles, CA; Wells Studio, Paris, France; Peninsula Art Space, Brooklyn, NY; A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; McCagg Gallery, New York, NY, and more. She has received grants and awards including the 2017 New York University MFA Artistic Practice Award, the 2016 Steinhardt Scholarship Award, and the 2017/18 Urban Glass Scholarship Award. Her writing on art has appeared in Artcards and On-Verge, among other publications. She co-founded Studio 200, an art exhibition collective in which shows curated coincide thematically with workshops, lectures, and installations of various media. Lara received her BA from Barnard College, Columbia University and her MFA in Fine Arts from New York University. ISABEL SANCHEZ HODOYAN is a sophomore at New York University where she is double majoring in English Literature and Social and Cultural Analysis. Having studied film photography for many years, she is passionate about sharing and creating her art. BRETT STOUT is a 40-year-old artist and writer. He is a high school dropout and former construction worker turned college graduate and Paramedic. He creates mostly controversial art usually while breathing toxic paint fumes from a small cramped apartment known as â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Nerd Labâ&#x20AC;? in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. His artwork has appeared in a vast range of diverse media, from international indie zines like Litro Magazine to the University of Oklahoma Medical School Journal and Brown University. He is tired of talking about himself at this point and prefers that his artwork speaks for itself.

MAEGHAN MARY SUZIK is a New York City based actor, poet, and arts activist in her senior year at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her poetry was just displayed at the 2019 NYU Diversity Arts Festival as well as The International Human Rights Arts Festival. Recent publications include Catfish Creek, The Rational Creature, and October Hill Magazine. JAN WIEZOREK writes from Barron Lake in Michigan. He has taught writing at St. Augustine College, Chicago, and writes for The Paper in Buchanan, Mich. His poetry has appeared in The London Magazine, Cabildo Quarterly, Yes Poetry, L’Ephemere Review, Leaping Clear, and Adelaide Literary Magazine, among other print and online journals. Jan is author of Awesome Art Projects That Spark Super Writing (Scholastic, 2011) and holds a master’s degree in English Composition/Writing from Northeastern Illinois University. MOIRA ZHANG is a student at NYU Tisch and a former winner of multiple art shows in Michigan. Although she is a film major, she is interested in painting and designing, as well as all things multimedia such as VR, 3D modeling and games, and she writes cience fiction as a hobby. SARAH MARN ŽENKO was born in Slovenia in 2000 and delivered to NYU in 2018.

MINETTA REVIEW EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

Alex Cullina Elliot Williams

ART EDITOR

Cristina Villegas

POETRY EDITOR

Arahi Fletcher

PROSE EDITOR

Marley Kinser

ART ASSISTANT

Julia Kley

POETRY ASSISTANTS

Matthew Fishchetti Elizabeth Makris

PROSE ASSISTANTS

Marguerite Alley Cassi Quayson

TREASURER

Jamie Ryu

SOCIAL MEDIA/EVENTS COORDINATOR

Olivia Malesco

PUBLICATION STAFF

Cosmo Hinsman Sanya Khurana Bix Komita Moussa Brianna Vera Jasper Wong

PROGRAM ADVISOR

Emily Anderson

Minetta Review, established in 1974, is a literary and arts publication managed by undergraduate students at New York University. Please visit our website for submissions guidelines. Book design and layout by Alex Cullina & Cristina Villegas. Copy edited and proofread by Alex Cullina. Minetta Review logo created by Carol Ourivio. All rights revert to the contributor, whose authorization is required for reprints. ISSN 1065-9196 A special thank you to Emily Anderson and the Student Activities Board at New York University for their continued support of Minetta and its dedicated editorial board. An enormous thanks to Randy Reeves at Art Communications Systems, Inc. for printing another beautiful issue.

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