E D I T O R’ S N O T E
For g iv e our tal k of p alm s , spines, and balmy w inters (you’ ll understand).
Ta bl e o f C on t e n t s Page
Title
Author
1
Summer in February
Amy Welch
2
Accomplished
Cassiel Moroney
3
Untitled
Anya Karagulina
4
Nine ways of looking at a mushroom
Zazie Tobey
5
Femme Futura
Hattie McLean
6
Open-ended
Anonymous
7-9
Millenial Does Romance-- A Thread of
Allison Elliott
Haikus via Email 10
Untitled
Allegra Dufresne
11
Untitled
Anya Karagulina
12
Walking
Mia Mazzaferro
13
Bad Moon Rising
Michelle Ora’a Ali
14
I really shouldn’t be thinking this
Sarah Lofstrom
15-16
Dani Planer
17
Mass violence & human rights lecture—w4w
Allegra Dufresne
18
Untitled
Shannon Pace
19
sand
Rosalyn Leban
20
Matchbox
Ali Rossi
21
Nightlight
Kaitlin Boheim
22
i’m just really waiting to have a wet dream
Dani Planer
because like
23
white orchids
Rachel Schmieder-Gropen
24
The Psychosis of Vaslav Nijinsky
Emily Williams
25
BREAKBONE FEVER
Cassiel Moroney
26
Two Towers in Bologna, Italy
Stephanie Corrales
27
Bruised
Rachel Schmieder-Gropen
28
Untitled
Shannon Pace
29-30
have a good snooze
Anya Karagulina
31
Untitled
Shannon Pace
32
things I never sent to her on a postcard and
Cassiel Moroney
that's why we're still friends 33
Hamamelis virginiana
Katie Clark
34
Vessel (Week 3)
Mia Mazzaferro
35-36
Untitled
Anya Karagulina
37-39
Wake
Katie Clark
40
Boat House Kitchen
Merryn Kleider
41
La luz de tu cintura
Cassiel Moroney
42
Untitled
Shannon Pace
43
Winding Road
Merryn Kleider
44
this has to be a fire hazard
Rosalyn Leban
45-46
Mi Papa es de Costa Rica / My dad is from
Stephanie Corrales
Costa Rica 47
because it was simple and quiet and february
Cameron Graham
and we were 48
Untitled
Michelle Simon
49
Slump
Zazie Tobey
50
Terraces
Kaitlin Boheim
51
81st of November
Cassiel Moroney
52
Secret
Anonymous
53
escaping brunch
Katie Clark
54
Rabbit
Deirdre Brazenall
Cover
#BlackGirlMagic on Instagram
Stephanie Corrales art is italicized
Summer in February Amy Welch Damp earth beneath my back I look up at the Blue the Three o’ clock Sun and I shade my eyes. Shading my eyes with my golden traced fingertips —now they glow. Little greens and tiny critters awake with the earth again, and the black berries dance. I breathe it in. Today is the eye of the storm. A day in February. I’m thinking of my heart And I watch the gauzy white and blue fade and move. The earth is turning. A black hawk swoops And a white spider climbs across the sky. Breathe out.
1
Accomplished
Cassiel Moroney
2
3
Anya Karagulina
Untitled
4
V Feeding on the crusts of shadow, they go on and on, surviving everywhere.
IV An army in the thousands waves slowly with the wind. Sunhats jostling, flouncy brims settling. abundant straw mushrooms, rising up with the steam.
III A new house stands on the hill. Inside, onions and garlic wail and whimper curling pink caps watch silently, from the jar on the counter.
II the fungal network fills in the wake of my heavy boots, Feeding on my steps, I search for hen of the wood.
I The mushroom sings a swan song. A slippery mass fractures the soil fleshy head crowning, acquiring the air.
Zazie Tobey
Nine ways of looking at a mushroom
IX Gathered together in a bloom of trumpet’s blaring The oyster mushroom seeps out of a maple knot. I cup my hand around the hollow stem, snapping the neck of a mute swan
VIII Coming up to a mushroom, one must squat. With a nose and two eyes pressed down to the soil a clear wet pearl balances on a grass blade.
VII A morel mushroom stands alone on soft bedding. Honey comb, pia matter, ghost tree.
VI An old house sits by a lake. Feeling nothing but the brush of the moon and the sun, And the mushrooms loosening the squares of cedar.
Femme Futura Hattie McLean Light over her hands in the morning. They peel an orange. What stirs under the blue blonde of her dancing to the news in our small warm bubble in icy January— rain smell coming through the curtains like a slap of last month: it was that rare, shining day the thunder startled us and the way she looked back at me, her eye flying like a kite and the water washing out the snow in sheets, dirt and ice and flush sun streaming her way forever
5
Open-ended Anonymous
6
Millenial Does Romance-- A Thread of Haikus via Email Allison Elliott
Her <anonymous@anonymous.net> 12/4/15 7:49pm to me Subject: Weezle Muse. Allison Elliott <ellio22a@mtholyoke.edu> 12/5/15 3:21pm to Her a haiku of weezle thought on being a muse: i am weezle trash i am trashy weezle muse musing/ wee-zel-ing #fartsy Allison Elliott <ellio22a@mtholyoke.edu> 12/7/15 1:03am to Her a haiku about spooning cause i cant stop thinkin â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;bout cha: in your arms, big spoon i am warmer than soup, love which is pretty warm
7
Allison Elliott <ellio22a@mtholyoke.edu> to Her
12/8/15
2:10am
12/7/15
1:03am
a haiku about my least favorite things: fuckboys-mac-miller heterosexual shoveling-winter Allison Elliott <ellio22a@mtholyoke.edu> to Her
(i hope you know iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m now using this email thread as a draft for my collection of haikus) (i will probably cry over these someday, NAHT because they awful) (that was a haiku about my lack of poetry skill) Her <anonymous@anonymous.net> to me
12/9/15
7:22am
Being bad at shit Is no less important than Killing it softly. (responding to you thinking you are bad at poetry even though i think you are good and sharp and spot on).
Continued on page 9â&#x20AC;Ś
8
Allison Elliott <ellio22a@mtholyoke.edu> to Her
12/9/15
7:28pm
I want to kiss you Into: tasting your being Face,neck,inner thighs Allison Elliott <ellio22a@mtholyoke.edu> to Her
1/5/16
6:43am
2/4/16
10:10pm
Gay snot factory That is me-- boogers and girls Snot and girls are cute Me <imtypingthis@rightnow.org> to the readers of Moneta a haiku about the present: email thread--idle better to haiku-ed than not they say // so it goes a haiku about how the people you meet bring out different parts of yourself: at least you unleashed something creative in me â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;stead of destructive
9
Untitled
Allegra Dufresne
10
11
Anya Karagulina
Untitled
12 Finally, this lacuna stretches beyond returning. I am resting, free of your looming figure. I wave my feet in front of me, the lolling tongues of tired dachshunds.
I want to soak or be soaked in the smell of this rottenness, relieved in this stasis while you shrink into the distance.
Climbing behind I pause beneath an apple tree. The gap widens as I stumble over long-dropped apples. Toppling like them-- graceless to the grass, both of us groggy in our fermentation.
a lacuna always between them, and us: my stride never near long enough to keep up with yours.
My feet call to each other two staggering dachshunds chasing and gaining before falling back,
Mia Mazzaferro
Walking
Bad Moon Rising Michelle Oraâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;a Ali
13
I really shouldn’t be thinking this Sarah Lofstrom
I want you to take little bits of me And touch them With the soft beating curves of your words Make them shiver With the rolling language of your fingers That speak only in tongues Use my spine as a roadmap The edges of your smile As a scale by which to measure The leaps and bounds And before you go… Ask me why you ever waited And I’ll rise up to meet you Then grin and my eyes will ask That you take the little bits And make them yours.
14
Dani Planer FALL ASLEEP INSIDE OF THIS COTTAGE THAT I HAVE CONSTRUCTED AND THAT U SLEEP IN AND THAT IS LITTLE / FALL ASLEEP INSIDE OF THIS SINGULAR TREE THAT I HAVE HACKED SO THAT IT HITS THE FLOOR OF THE EARTH SO THAT U CAN MAKE LOVE TO IT / FALL ASLEEP AND IN UR SLEEP WATCH ME CARVE THIS LITTLE COTTAGE OUT OF THIS SINGULAR TREE AND WATCH UR THUMB REST UPWARDLY INSIDE IT ((UR THUMB WILL BE RESTING UPWARDLY INSIDE MY LITTLE COTTAGE AS U FALL ASLEEP)) / FALL ASLEEP TO LOOPS OF VOICES SINGING THE SOUND OF TREES HITTING THE FLOOR OF THE EARTH AND DO THIS IN A PLACE WITH MANY WINDOWS THAT WE CAN MAKE CLEAN WITH OUR COMBINED HEAT / FALL ASLEEP IN THIS PLACE WITH WINDOWS FULL OF FOG SO THAT I CAN SHOW U WHAT A GOOD TIME REALLY LOOKS LIKE SO I CAN SHOW U HOW TO WRITE WITH UR FINGERS ON THESE THINGS BUILT FOR LIGHT / HERE IS A PICTURE OF ME AND HERE IS A PICTURE OF ME REIMAGINED AS A CEMENT MIXER / I SHOW U THESE TWO THINGS WHEN THE EARTH IS VIBRATING AND VIBRATING UR EYELIDS DIRECTLY OPEN / U SAY “MY THUMB IS STIFF STUCK I SEE NO DIFFERENCE” / U SAY “MY THUMB IS STIFF STUCK HOW THE
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HECK DID I FALL ASLEEP TO EDM WITH MY THUMB RESTING UPWARDS LIKE THIS YET AGAIN” / UR LEGS SPILL OUT OF THE WINDOW OF MY COTTAGE AND U R A PERSON OF MANY UNUSUAL HABITS / UR LEGS SPILL OUT OF THE WINDOW OF MY COTTAGE AND U LIGHT UP A FAT ONE BROTHER / U SIT ON THE TABLE OF MY COTTAGE DOING A VERY SIMILAR THING / U SIT ON THE ROOF OF MY COTTAGE AND POWER MY COTTAGE WITH UR UNCONTROLLABLE LIGHT AND UR UNCONTROLLABLE ENERGY THAT IS BEAMING TO-AND-FRO IN THE ROOF OF THE SKY AND / UR SIMPLY NOTHING MORE THAN FIRE IN EVERY REGARD IF LOOKED AT LONG ENOUGH AND / U R SIMPLY NOTHING MORE THAN CHEM TRAILS IN EVERY REGARD IF LOOKED AT LONG ENOUGH AND / U R A BOOK ABOUT A TUBE SALESMAN / U R A BOOK THAT IS FIRE / FALL ASLEEP POURING TUBES OF GLITTER INTO URSELF IN THE COUCHES OF MY COTTAGE / FALL ASLEEP AND BURN MY COTTAGE DOWN WITH UR IMMENSE HEAT AND WITH UR IMMENSE FIRE / FALL ASLEEP HOT AND BURN BIG AND BURN LOUD AND BURN GLISTENING / U R LOUD AND / U R FIRE SCREAMING FOR MORE TUBES OF GLITTER TO POUR INTO UR ALREADY GLISTENING BODY / U R FIRE AND U BURN HOT IN THIS COTTAGE MADE FOR UR THUMBS / U BURN HOT IN THIS COTTAGE MADE FROM THE SEA OF UR THUMBS
16
17
Allegra Dufresne
Mass violence & human rights lectureâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;w4w
18
Shannon Pace
Untitled
sand
Rosalyn Leban she took my hand in hers formed a pearl in my palm didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t let go when the water willed it; we lay there the waves wore us down and we were sand.
19
Matchbox Ali Rossi
20
21
Kaitlin Boheim
Nightlight
22
and you said … “you want to be a train conductor. you want to write and you want to end up in new mexico with all of the rusty air particles attaching themselves to your skin” … and you said that you couldn’t stop discovering bug bites up and down the sides of your body … that the rust wouldn’t eat at your skin and harvest life in your feet like survival would … that south western heat wouldn’t boil out holes in the legs of everything you knew the way that georgia would … that georgia heat (your sweat) never stopped to change direction and never stopped to retreat from dips in concrete the way that mountains cascaded and eroded or to consider beat out sounds the way that trees fell … you said … “this isn’t georiga” … you said … “you want to keep on finding the death of grasshoppers on windshields as rebirth in dots and you want to consider the place of the pizza parlor pressure washer and his value and his life and i hope he’s okay too” … and we knew what you would say next … you would say something about considering depth and drowning and something about estimated arrival times as paths to success and profit margins and i knew everything was so physical for you … you would wake up up and the mattress would grab at your skin and it always had been physical getting up like that … and you said … “these train tracks need to be hammered down fast … promise we’ll never make our way home.”
Dani Planer
i’m just really waiting to have a wet dream because like
white orchids
Rachel Schmieder-Gropen she has hands like white orchids with petals curling up from the shadowy earth, hungry for the sun; like swimmers breaking the surface of salty water and gasping for air; she has hands like white orchids and I have skin the color of the sun.
23
The Psychosis of Vaslav Nijinsky Emily Williams
Though I have seen I cannot understand The power in each dazzled web of wings That bore him up, and swept him forth to land Amid a thousand one resplendent golden strings. But painted cheeks and fingers, flitting, bled; He convulsed with a cry he never made-When Paris missed his screams and cheered instead, Cracked lips and teeth and popping eyes decayed. And through the silence ringing black and hot His canvas landed, splattered through with spite; Left mind to waste and body, living, rot-His essence torn in sacrificial Rite. I have seen him rising at the break of day-Mad golden slave, now violet cloaked in gray.
24
BREAKBONE FEVER Cassiel Moroney
i know it’s not your fault, but just being by you brings all my inadequacies to the surface. it’s not good for us (for anyone) to peel through my sediment, destabilize me down to the cambrian era, and leave me glassy under the jackhammer of your gaze. almost instantly i regret having noticed anything { } a t { } a l l it’s better to know n o t h in g than to be acutely aware of how bad i t ’ s going down. it’s not really that messy though. this is controlled. mastery unsurpassed is mine, your denial would lose any fistfight to the shredded bulk of mine. but the virus is malignant, that’s just its nature, so we go out with poisons to wreck what’s left and quarantine the squirming remains { you are so unlike me. i often wonder why you bother with my incongruity of my nature. the meek and bitter to your Arthurian grandeur. you’d drown in armor if you could }
{ it’s like you’re biting my spine; you pop a vertebra out and suck it like a jawbreaker, grin as sweet as a child been chastised. i’m so ok with this. i grow shorter for the pleasure of your devoted experiment in whole destruction. i am ok. }
25
Two Towers in Bologna, Italy Stephanie Corrales
26
27
The shredded clouds must have been scudding past in winds we could not feel from that green field, but everything , we could have sworn, was still — the clouds, our breath, our two revolving hands — except the moon, which, drawn through shifting clouds, was racing by. A roving eye. Grey as the sky until it burst between two clouds, filling the pocket of darkness with painful light like blood beneath the surface of a bruise.
The morning comes without my noticing, exhaled in breaths I did not know the night had held. Slow sighs. We two, we’ve been awake all night, or mostly — slipping sometimes into skin-thin sleep. I kiss purple planets across the hazy stratosphere of your neck, go floating off through airless dark. I want to say, do you remember last night’s moon? An optical illusion in real time:
Rachel Schmieder-Gropen
Bruised
28
Shannon Pace
Untitled
29
(and) there were encyclopedias lining the floors tender to the step like you were like the words iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d written, or what i wanted them to be. iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d said: you have nice teeth. nice like sleep next to you every night for weeks nice. familiar. like you were shifting with the lake ice, loud, tho the potomac didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t reach me quite and any murder was buried safe within me or you. still, all the hidden hands hovered, telling you: this is whatever you want this to be
(1) saw myself writing homes for specters, saw the same in another, saw myself guiltless gleeful, lying to preserve, saw how the bad taste in my mouth lasted months, saw pourings, saw myself remembering, then watched as you saw her choking me, as i told you of the same brutal tugging in different bodies, watched how he never smelled clean even with soap, saw you hold and release, saw you weep while the splitting split then tried to see how that same love could be turned outwards, then i saw how to turn that same love outwards, how to turn that same love out how to turn your love out turn your love out
Anya Karagulina
have a good snooze
30
(4) and then i dreamt i knew your hands
(and then,) i told you: this collection of parts holds itself together with tape and i wanted to tell you that i dreamt i knew your hands. (because i have no one to write poems for)
but i said nothing new, took pieces that i’d already made and washed them til they flowed broken together because i need a direction. where else is the blue?
what if i can’t find your hands – but who else will stain me blue? there has to be a direction my body moves in and right now that direction is you. besides, i’ve been searching for blue ever since i read bluets, plodding through jamaica plain looking for roadside lavender thistles. i translated them better than i could translate the park with the necklace and the fishermen and the rocks where i hid, those off-blue places that i could not mouth
but what if when my neck is loose and there’s that same loose tongue on that same loose neck,
31
Shannon Pace
Untitled
32
Cassiel Moroney
things I never sent to her on a postcard and thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s why weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re still friends
Hamamelis virginiana Katie Clark
when spring comes stumbling into january whispering its excuses, i hardly notice:
skipping glances across the water,
stuck on the ways the river runs through those frozen parts of itself, on the soft wonder of your voice in lamp light lulling the wind warm enough.
i forget to shiver walking to your room,
your gentle gravity ghosting fingers on the backs of my hands, these walls are still enough to hear my watch ticks talking over silence louder than that world beneath your window. (those poems might as well have been written on your walls). in our breathing, soundless, winding as these rivers within us,
(tonight iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll hear your radiator in my sleep)
yellow ribbons bloom again, the ice on the lake cracks february into a kaleidoscope turning in side by side palms (your head on my chest would turn my heart to a fistful of plums)
and walking home smells like snow
beginning to start
melting
33
Vessel (Week 3) Mia Mazzaferro
My fingertips prune once I break the skin of the water’s surface. My palms like the pulp of a peach against the white-calcium smile of a claw foot tub. My spine rounded by the hull of the bath, I sink. Lower into the groan, breathe into the deepening. The peaks of my breasts stand stoic as bare floating islands. I capsize, my palms ripening and chest tightening. ”Comadrona, ahora.”
34
Untitled
Anya Karagulina
35
Untitled
Anya Karagulina
36
Wake
Katie Clark noun 1. A watch or vigil held beside the body of someone who has died, sometimes accompanied by ritual observances including eating and drinking 2. A group of buzzards The first thing they told me was to focus on facts, but facts blur when they tell me my facts are concussed memories, broken syllables my tongue made up, the left-over I forgot to hand over when the campus sang gunshots I told them Fact: My favorite Spanish teacher taught himself in Spain with a two-dollar dictionary and a guitar and your hands shook when you spoke and you edited all of your sisterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s essays and you didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t believe in car insurance and on my 15th birthday you let us have a party in class and you smiled when you sang and they waved their hands, unimportant, beside the point, get to the blood of it Fact: He was fired mid-year in the middle of a class you taught us Spanish fascism and film instead of conjugations; you got an official escort off campus and then, they said, meteorologists trained to find flashfloods, their breath turning whistle as the buzzards blocked the sun Fact: My favorite Spanish teacher killed himself in Florida with a gun he hid in his guitar case Jacksonville, you had said, is the 6th unhappiest city in the United States. Why did no one tell you we all knew kids with scars on their wrists, necks, that the picture of your childhood bunny that you had framed on your
37
desk (the one someone took, copied, hung in every hall) was not an attack so much as a warning– a get-out-while-you-can– but what happened before, one perches on each shoulder, their eyes on my hands Fact: When the emergency bell went off he was everyone’s first guess murder loses its mystery when you can hear the gunshots: ceramics class, after lunch, clay on our palms we carved sanctuary out of the desks they told us to hide beneath. Was that the first time you realized your body had an organ full of acid? was it not until you felt it in your throat? Fact: There was a woman who used to make rock cairns. And read children’s books in chapel. And talked of oak trees like they were the very hands of God and treated them as such. The buzzards’ wings knock the annals off the shelves, the play section trembles Fact: I never saw him with a gun in his hand. But you pulled the trigger and my hands didn’t stop shaking for three years. Facts, stick to the facts, the buzzards are tearing at each other now, beginning to eye other students, one moves to the space between my shoulders, its beak on the back of my neck, Fact: No one told me how to mourn the monster. They only showed me your teeth. The buzzard begins bending my spine
Continued on page 39…
38
into a question mark, swallowing up the silence Fact: The bullet never hit me. Show us the scar, show us the shrapnel. Fact: I don’t know what it tasted like. But I’ve been writing poems about you long enough to know how it feels to suck on bullets. They are pulling my teeth, evidence. Fact: He shot her five times. Fact: She is past tense because of him. Fact: They did not find a list. But you had a Ziploc bag full of bullets and I don’t know whose names you carved into them. It is quiet. Fact: His name tastes like blood. So does Tuesday. So does March. Fact: I wrote his mother nine letters and never sent a single one of them. The buzzards notice the holes in my chest, try to stanch them with their talons Fact: He swallowed the barrel. I didn’t notice the AK-47 rounds lodged in my smile, or the ones stuck in between my ribs or the way your name is a sword in my throat. when I go down they put me with the others, the truth kills people, they say.
39
Boat House Kitchen Merryn Kleider
40
41
I throw away your coffee cup and Your dead hair in the drain title from “La infinita,” Pablo Neruda
(What I meant to say is “make me happy” and instead I said “do you love me?”)
In the air of our disregard you asked me, “I never liked this?” you never liked this, sister you always complained about the sunlight the gravel the wait the pride ur families eat each other raw I lost my ear two winters ago You’ve been missing a spine longer than I can remember
Cassiel Moroney
La luz de tu cintura
42
Shannon Pace
Untitled
43
Merryn Kleider
Winding Road
44
I was thinking about you but not really about you just about us just about this stain on the carpet that I can’t get out even with vinegar or whatever my mom told me to use so I just covered it with this chair but I can feel it through the seat when I press myself into it and the sour smell of my failed attempt at housekeeping soaks the air even though my friends claim that they can’t detect it and that I just need to get out and I do, I do, it’s true but piled up at the door and blocking out the light from the bay window I was so excited about when I moved in are the feelings I’ve been pushing aside so I have a space to sit on this chair on this stain above of your apartment and I don’t know if you’re still living there but I imagine that you are when I imagine you imagining me and I hope you still think of me
this has to be a fire hazard Rosalyn Leban
Mi Papa es de Costa Rica / My dad is from Costa Rica Stephanie Corrales
Pienso en los recuerdos falsos Las duchas afuera Sin techo
Me recuerdo del día en que te fuiste Una maleta en la mano Mientras saliste.
Y el carro de color verde menta En el cual paseábamos Por las calles empedradas. Después me entere’ que el carro existía.
Una mama de pie con una hija en la matriz Otra muy joven para hablar Y yo, suficiente grande para verte
Me recuerdo jugar con mi vecino Con un peluche de Pluto Este niñito de ojos verdes Y cabello rubio Me rompió el muñeco. Pensé que no era real Hasta que encontré el animal Sin media cola.
Regresamos a los estados unidos Dejamos un país que no nos quería Para llegar a otro Dejamos a un papa que no nos quería Para quedarnos solas. Estos son mis recuerdos falsos Verdaderos, aunque pican Como pies dormidos Un vacío insensible Un peso muerto con cada paso.
45
I think of false recollections The showers outside Without a roof.
I remember the day in which you left A suitcase in your hand As you walked out
And the mint green car In which we rode Through the gravel roads. Later I found out the car existed.
A mother standing with a daughter in her womb Another too young to speak And me, big enough to watch you.
I remember playing with my neighbor With a stuffed animal Pluto This little boy with green eyes And blonde hair Broke my toy. I didn’t think it was real Until I found the animal Without half a tail.
We returned to the united states. We left a country that didn’t want us To arrive at another We left a father that didn’t want us To remain alone. These are my false recollections True, though they itch Like numb feet An unfeeling emptiness A dead weight with each step.
46
because it was simple and quiet and february and we were Cameron Graham
drinking lemonade and smoking blue spirits and feeling the sun iron itself into us for the first time this year we smiled together and you said somehow the citrus smoke made you feel like you had flowers between your teeth and i tasted them too and i wondered what kind of garden we would have if we pulled them out one by one and planted them and let them grow all wild and tangled and iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not very good at talking about beautiful things but i think they would be the kind of flowers i would let you tattoo onto my palms so years from now when i have a daughter and she gets scared or sleepy and reaches for my hands she can hold that same bouquet we picked, you and i, a hundred years earlier, on a saturday afternoon in springtime
47
Untitled
Michelle Simon
48
49
you take slow heavy steps.
A meniscus is floating alone, deflated to grinding bone and toughened tendons.
I have imagined its dark blue line I’ve laid it out and cut it like a pattern, silhouetted cowboy leaning on the front peeling wood somewhere on a porch in northern Vermont.
I trace your body.
I woke up with the darkness mama wears on her blouse cat hairs waltz with the rayon acrylic loops plastic feather a reminder of the florescent lighting and the biggest hits of the seventies stuck on the needle. There’s a landfill we used to pretend was mars, That was back when you could still dance. and we’re pinching doughy thighs sitting on our hands, measuring ourselves against each other’s minds.
Zazie Tobey
Slump
50
Kaitlin Boheim
Terraces
81st of November Cassiel Moroney
“are you sure this is ok?” it’s not, but I need it to be, and so I hand her the matches the following Tuesday, uninvited, the ocean drains and lets herself into my house. she helps herself to crackers & cheese; I find her in my bathtub “you made the wrong decision,” she says “no shit,” I say, “thanks. never would have guessed” “it’s polite to offer your guests a drink” I pour my coffee into her; she spits a spiny fish at my face; I pull the plug and she makes a graceful exit into municipal plumbing the consequences get stuck in my gutters and caught in my teeth. every single one of my umbrellas break under the deluge “I’m cold,” I complain, soaked through and plastered under the eaves of a storefront. the bricks of the wall tell me to shut up or they’ll collapse and crush me faster than my own self-pity she (the original one) still picks up her phone before the first ring. the precognition hurts “i warned you. i let you make the choice” “but you shouldn’t have” I watch the liquid methane infiltrate our aqueducts on TV, crashing over dams and bursting into fire the tectonic plates shift; atmospheric pressure rises the air tastes burnt and oil settles like mist “where’s your ring?” she asks when she finds me packing I sent it to my cousin in New Mexico with a tag labelled SELL ME
51
Secret
Anonymous
52
escaping brunch Katie Clark
december decided to dress up for us: the sun sounded like april and our misplaced footsteps found spring in the daisies left over, in the current on the water, in all of the beginning dancing lake-like on the shore
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Rabbit
Deirdre Brazenall I. Silhouettes have dropped from the walls. Outdoors, dusk is a drugged musk, And the grass, like marzipan, Sits under a late rain. II. Pollen slogs to a paste, Yellowing her whiskers. The medicine bite of dandelion Rouses her gut. She shifts her padded toes in the calm soil. III. Walking up the road, The street, spotted with ginger lamplight, Behind me, the whale-cry of the highway. Ahead, the somber blue of disappearing. IV. A car pulls out of a driveway, Swinging light across the street. Her tawny, cropped haunches, A happy oval in the sighted moment. V. On my belly, I know I wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t get close to her, But I have to try. I can see her sea snail eye, And the mindless motor of the perfect jaw. VI. And with the agility of the hunted, That tuft of surrender, Off like a bobbin, Vanishes beneath the hedgerow.
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Staff Editor-in-Chief Hattie McLean ’16
Fiction Editor Libby Kao ’17
Layout Editors Kaitlin Boheim ’18 Casey Linenberg ’19
Nonfiction Editor Trisha Kelly ’18
SGA Senator Katie Clark ’19 PR Representative Mariza Mathea ’17 Treasurer Megha Kymal ’16 Poetry Editors Mia Mazzaferro ’16 Aria Pahari ’17
Art/ Photography Editor Meaghan Sullivan ’17 General Editors Namrata Ahuja ’18 Zoë Barnstone-Clark ’19 Cameron Graham ’19 Anya Karagulina ’17 Rosalyn Leban ’18 Sarah Lofstrom ’19 Cassiel Moroney ’19 Marisca Pichette ’19 Rebecca Pittel ’17
C ont r i but o r B i o s Michelle ‘Misha’ Ora’a Ali ’17 Misha is a Neuroscience and Behavior major with a minor in Graphic Narrative. They are Indo-Filipino and love brains, zines and visual storytelling. Kaitlin Boheim ’18 Kaitlin Boheim is from eastern Massachusetts. She studies psychology with an interest in neuroscience and enjoys traveling, writing and photography. Deirdre Brazenall ’16 Deirdre is a Frances Perkins Scholar studying Literature. She dedicates her poem, “Rabbit” to her grandfather, John Mullin, as a token of appreciation for his support of her writing, and for the remarkable care he gives to all animals.
Katie Clark ’19 Katherine Clark (who is often referred to as Katie-Clark as if she has a compound name which makes her feel like an entity // makes her feel cool sometimes and weird others) has a lot of lines on her palms and a delightfully inconvenient number of coffee mugs. Stephanie Corrales ’16 Stephanie is a Posse scholar from Miami, FL planning to relocate to Los Angeles after graduation. She is an unofficial studio art and film minor with a degree in Italian and Psych. She dedicates her work to the LGBTQ Latinx community at Mount Holyoke and beyond.
Allegra Dufresne ’18 Allegra Dufresne lives in the North Mandelles basement with their wife Katherine, two children, and three cats. They have never eaten an entire vegetable. Allison Elliott ’18 Allison is a Politics and Gender Studies double major from coastal Maine. Generally drinking coffee in the library. Likes to get down from time to time, but mostly likes to snooze. Cameron Graham ’19 Cameron Graham is an unapologetic jock with a soft side for oyster crackers and starting romances in Spanish class. Anya Karagulina ’17 Anya Karagulina is a young coconut and also wine that's been spilled on the floor. Merryn Kleider ’19 Merryn is currently in the process of moving to California. She’s excited to have new subject matter and to wander around taking photos. Rosalyn Leban ’18 Rosalyn is an English, Chinese, and Education student who just wants to go home. Her hobbies include falling asleep on the floor and messing with her hair. Sarah Lofstrom ’19 Sarah has a lot of feelings. She likes to share them. Mia Mazzaferro ’16 Mia Mazzaferro, like her favorite poet Louise Glück, thinks about plants a lot. She studies English and Gender studies. If she were a scent it would be “bruschetta lavender.” Hattie McLean ’16 Hattie’s favorite words right now: babymoon, gillyflower, olio, umlaut.
Cassiel Moroney ’19 Cassiel once swallowed all components of a cafeteria salt packet in order to prove a point about dominance. She does computer science, I guess. Shannon Pace ’16 Shannon Pace is a senior studying Architecture and English. She is a lover of art, peppermint tea, and moments of serendipity. Dani Planer ’19 palmspine Alessandra Rossi ’16 Ali likes matches but doesn't like cigarettes anymore. Rachel Schmieder-Gropen ’18 Rachel Schmieder-Gropen is a sophomore double majoring in English and French. She has a cartoon-style small dog and a drawer full of disposable fountain pens. Michelle Simon ’16 From Hong Kong, studies International Relations and Chinese, happy to be drawing again. Zazie Tobey ’16 Zazie Tobey grew up in the pioneer valley. When she's not studying English and Dance, she can be found with her foot in her mouth at fancy parties, or frolicking through the woods. Amy Welch ’18 Amy Welch is a Massachusetts native and art enthusiast. She is a theatre major, english minor, and studies film as well. She enjoys writing songs and poetry in her free time. Emily Williams ’18 Emily enjoys natural history and consignment shopping.
Moneta: The Art and Literary Journal of Mount Holyoke College Spring 2016 Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/monetalitmag Follow us on Twitter @Monetamhc Email us at moneta.mhc@gmail.com