CALENDAR 2016-2017
SPECTRUM
Northeastern University’s Literary Arts Magazine
Staff
Editor in Chief....................................................Elke Thoms Layout & Design Editor.....................................Natalya Jean Financial Manager............................................Kaley Bachelder Secretary............................................................Andrew Madanjian Advertising Manager........................................Remenna Xu
Contact
Website: www.spectrum.neu.edu
Office:
234 Curry Student Center
Email:
spectrum.magazine@gmail.com Facebook: fb.com/spectrumneu
Mailbox: 434 Curry Student Center
Twitter:
@NUSpectrum
Title page art adapted from “Jungle Jim” by Ben Landsberg. Cover art adapted from “Coast Rock” by Sam Penney. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the permission of Spectrum Literary Arts Magazine and/or respective authors. Spectrum Literary Arts Magazine reserves the right to edit submissions for layout, grammar, spelling, and punctuation unless otherwise indicated by the author. Any references to people living or dead are purely coincidental except in the case of public figures. The views and opinions represented in this media do not necessarily reflect those of Northeastern University or the staff of Spectrum Literary Arts Magazine. Copyright© Spectrum Literary Arts Magazine and respective authors. All rights reserved.
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• Save your writing as a Word (.doc/.docx), text, or PDF file • Name your submission “Author-Title” • Include only one piece per document • Include title of work at top of the page, do NOT include
author name in document • Indicate special layout/tabulation specifications (if applicable) • Limit each submission to five double-spaced pages at 12 pt font
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• Name your submission file “Author-Title” • Include name, contact info, and any editing restrictions • Email submissions to spectrum.magazine@gmail.com with your name and the title of your work in the subject line
• Via our website, www.spectrum.neu.edu • Leave a hard copy of your work at a meeting
Atalanta’s Song // Alyssa Rubin
September Sunday
Monday
4
11
18
25
Tuesday
5
Labor Day
Wednesday
6
12
13
19
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26
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Canoe // Elijah McTigue
It’s raining hard today and I swear to God I’ve never seen someone wear the rain quite like she does. She makes thunder sound like Olympian gods waltzing on avalanches. (She’s got Atalanta in her blood.) She has blades woven into her heels, and somewhere, far beneath the guns she proudly bares, the water seeps up over her toes and up her fighter’s calves as she lets the flood consume her.
Thursday
Friday
2016 Saturday
1
2
3
8
9
10
14
15
16
17
21
22
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24
7 First day of fall classes
28
Autumnal Equinox
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30
i wasn’t prepared to be this hand-sewn thing on a woman’s body. i like autumn for the scarecrows, dry leaves, the hollow things, like hay and brick chimneys with no smoke coming out for dying gourds, carved to perfection apple cores and seeds i like fall much better than ripe and rotten heat but women are summer, aren’t they? hollow is a girl’s fantasy like glitter sprinkles on a chocolate cake here we are white, whipped, poised and cooled before we are frosted women, heavy with words walk down the aisles onyx and amethyst here we are lips and lashes and wet and soft, no longer bones, no longer allowed to relish our shriveled skin we must invite them in the men, like visitors, we must be warm enough to drape over them like death
October Sunday
Seeds of Autumn // Connor Tripp
Penitence // Jennifer Kronmiller
and still keep their fingers from going numb because we are spring, golden slumbers, rain and they tart and cool and metallic like snakeskin, like bent nails like menstrual blood.
2016 Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday 1
2 Rosh Hashanah begins at sundown
9
16
4
5
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7
8
10
11
12
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25
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Spectrum fall issue submission deadline/ Columbus Day/ No classes
17
30 23
3
31 24 Halloween
Yom Kippur begins at sundown
Frustrated You // Melissa Fitzgerald
Good Luck Trunk // Kelly Burgess of course I cannot cram you into a poem those cheekbones you chameleon-eyed bastard i hate that look on your face when you were amused but not enough to laugh I can only give a stanza, an ellipsis half a semi-colon every sentence i said ended in a comma you were all periods this was not prescriptive grammar i wrote your name on a scrap of paper and ripped it in two rough edges slightly crumpled frustrated and out of use yes yes that is close to the truth
2016
November Sunday
Monday
6 Daylight Saving Time ends
13
Tuesday
7
14
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
1
2
3
4
5
8
9
10
11
12
Election Day
Veterans’ Day/ No classes
15
16
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22
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25
26
Thanksgiving break begins
Thanksgiving Day
Spring registration begins
20
27
21
28 Classes resume
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30
xt // Elke Thom e N s
Memories Stubbornly remind me The sequel is never better. Nevertheless, I wait eagerly at the ticket booth For the release Of my next chapter.
Peet’s Coffee // Justine Newman
2016
December Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday 1
Saturday 2
3
10
Spectrum fall issue release party
4
11
18
5
12
19
6
13
20
Winter break begins
7
8
9
Last day of fall classes
Reading day
Fall final exams begin
14
21
15
22
16
17
Fall final exams end
Fall final exams makeup day
23
Hannukah begins at sundown/ Christmas Eve
Winter Solstice
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26
Christmas Day
Kwanzaa begins
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28
24
29
30
31 New Year’s Eve
Urban Dusk // Justine Newman
january like spring crossing the street, last train’s past quiet in the lamplight body is quite warm, content the water, thin sheets of ice
Tanka // Aidan Meyer-Golden
2017
January Sunday
Monday 1
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
2
3
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5
6
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9
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12
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18
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New Year’s Day
8
15
22
29
First day of spring classes
16
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day/ No classes
23
30
Inauguration Day
24
31
25
26
27
28 Chinese New Year
¿Qué pasó, dead possum? // Anika Krause
District // Liza Ashley
Roadkill. I didn’t see you slinking round the corner. Slam the breaks, race the pulse. A memorable crisis. Are you washing me out of your fender while I bleed out on your neighbor’s lawn? Yawning, you turn to your bed. Roll me over, run me over…
2017
February Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday 1
Thursday
Friday 2
Saturday 3
4
Groundhog Day
5
6
7
8
9
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20
Spectrum spring issue submission deadline/ Presidents’ Day/ No classes
27
Valentine’s Day
21
Summer registration begins
28
second to none // Alyssa Rubin
Where I Am // Remenna Xu
behind your ears a clock ticks, metronome promises that can’t be broken by anything less unsteady than hands torn apart, lost beneath a blanket of smoke, blackened by slivered wind exploding hearts keeping beat, breathing shaken, but steady, unfettered but the defeat is in the details, missiles in the milliseconds between trigger and release each eternal second wound against your wrist wishing that you could change gears pendulum platitudes: time heals all wounds even the ones it inflicts?
March Sunday
2017 Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday 1
5
6
7
8
Thursday
Friday 2
Saturday 3
9
10
16
17
4 Spring break begins
11
International Women’s Day
12
13
Daylight Saving Time begins
Classes resume
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20
14
15
21
22
23
28
29
30
St. Patrick’s Day
24
Vernal Equinox
26
27
31
18
25
Hillside // Kelly Burgess
it’s been occurring to me, since I left, that the place where I come from is a catalog of disasters, most of them still waiting to happen. the next California quake, the geologists say, is overdue, the whole coast ready to slip when the Juan de Fuca plate does. at some point I learned that Los Angeles was built with fire in mind, that real tsunamis crush the Oregon coast. the first sign I read out loud wasn’t slow or stop, words I skip over even now. it was Caution: Sneaker Waves, another warning I’m still learning; eight years later I was five miles from that sign when I almost drowned because the waves hit harder on the Pacific, because the waves hit like they know that one day, you’ll try to forget them. I remember climbing Mt. St. Helens thirty years after the blast, the trees all still blown sideways like a house of cards. ten years later I met a professor who wrote his thesis on that eruption: a life built on that half-scalped mountain traced against the skyline, lit blue every morning through the window of my childhood bedroom. I’ve written my flaws in fault lines and sediment, but disloyalty has never been one: I chase down new dangers like I’m making a hazards map, but I remember where old wildfires left burn scars and I come running back to the ones I left behind.
st. helens // Julia Renner
April Sunday
2017 Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday 1 April Fool’s Day
2
9
16
Easter
30 23
3
4
5
6
7
8
10
11
12
13
14
15
Spectrum spring issue release party
Good Friday
21
22
Reading day
Spring final exams begin
Earth Day
Fall registration begins/ Passover begins at sundown
17
Patriots’ Day/ No classes
24
18
25
19 Last day of spring classes
26
20
27
28
Spring final exams end
29
through the bars // Natalya Jean
ten thousand stringy lines shiver a vital trance around some center set by math or god. wiggling along rounded borders, out, then in, reworked, and out again. numerals bud from coiling grooves and churn the fractal’s geometric dance, each shaky symbol bathed in iridescent drops that wash the wall in pigment splots anew. a pioneer reaches toward the billows. the waves spin counter to the clock, contract and shift their frame, until I hesitantly tap, unfurling dimensions on some other plane. one touch enough to shrivel up the sea, one single ripple pulses to eternity.
the yellow wall on the 5th floor // Raquel Massoud
2017
May Sunday
Monday
Tuesday 1
Wednesday 2
3
Thursday
Friday 4
8
5
6
Cinco de Mayo/ Commencement
May Day
7
Saturday
9
10
11
12
13
15
16
17
18
19
20
22
23
24
25
26
27
Full Summer and Summer I classes begin
14
Mother’s Day
21
28
29 Memorial Day/ No classes
30
31
Ramadan begins at sundown
Jungle Jim // Ben Landsberg
Nightstand Notebook // Stephanie Eisemann I thought though it’s been months I might feel better if I stayed up writing And like the unwanted thoughts these scribbles just keep coming But unless sleep deprived, squinting, and hand cramped count as better (I mostly don’t.)
2017
June Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
21
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24
Summer Solstice
Last day of Summer I classes
18
Father’s Day
25
19
26
20
27
Summer I final Summer I final exams end exams begin
Flag Day
28
29
30
Standard Operating Procedure // Anika Krause
Sell Me Things // Ashlyn Wiebalck
“I’m so glad you turned out pretty” He wipes a tear from his eye as if he didn’t open fire, shrapnel of attaboys lodging in the couch cushions.
Head cocked, the sharpshooter spills misty comments about headshots and spotlights and I’m afraid someday I’ll know exactly what he’s talking about.
2017
July Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday 1
2
3
4
Summer II classes begin
Independence Day/ No classes
16
17
30
31
9
23
10
24
5
6
7
8
11
12
13
14
15
18
19
20
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25
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Coast Rock // Sam Penney
so it is swelled and grand in its stillness that is yet becoming more violet, more velvet each time I glance up at my softly lit rectangle of window in this motionless yet somehow darkening room.
2017
August Sunday
Monday
6
13
20
27
Still in Transition // Ivy Pepin
One of those late afternoons when the sky can only be described as rosy, flushed and desperate because suddenly it only has a short while in this blurry petal softness
Tuesday
7
14
Wednesday
3
4
5
8
9
10
11
12
17
18
19
24
25
26
22
23
Summer II final Summer II final exams begin exams end
Vacation begins
28
Saturday
2
16
21
Friday
1
15
Full summer final exams begin
Thursday
29
30
Last day of full summer classes Last day of Summer II classes/full summer final exams end
31
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