The Olivetree Review Issue 55

THE OLIVETREE REVIEW

ISSUE 55 SPRING 2014

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© The Olivetree Review, CUNY Hunter College, Thomas Hunter Room 212, 695 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10065. theolivetreereview.com Spring 2014, No. 55. This journal is funded by Hunter College’s student activity fees and is distributed free to the university community.

The artwork featured on the cover is “Beauty Beast” by Celina Giraud. The inside cover features selected content from Issue 55. The fonts used are Bebas, Biko., and Avenir. Layout design by Theadora Hadzi.

Submissions are reviewed September through November and February through April. We consider submissions of visual art, fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and drama. The Olivetree Review is staffed by undergraduate students of Hunter College. All submissions are reviewed anonymously by Hunter College students.

Post-production editing by Jacob Cintron.

Permission to publish the content in this issue was granted to the Olivetree Review by the artists and authors. These contributors retain all original copyright ownership of works appearing in the Olivetree Review before and after its publication. Copying, reprinting, or reproducing any material in this journal is strictly prohibited.

Printed by Sun Ray Printing, St. Cloud, Minnesota.

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THE OLIVETREE REVIEW

ISSUE55 SPRING 2014

THE LITERARY AND ARTS JOURNAL OF HUNTER COLLEGE SINCE 1983

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CONTENTS INTERVIEWS with CHONG CHON-SMITH 112 with KATIE MURRAY 118

ART

THEADORA HADZI Smoke & Mirrors 20 Firefly 62 Surpass The Heights, Stir The Waters 109 Soledad 116 SUN HAN Affection

85

55

LUYING WANG The Plague Doctor Twisted World A Lost Sheep

TOM HART Iboga Ritual Series

38

10 112 90

SAMANTHA BARRETT Achluophobia

DUSTIN HOGAN Nothings Promised Drank Felon

19 122 123

115

KRISTIE KISH Octopus India Rubber 1+1

12 37 53

JESSICA KURLAND Mermaid

61

CONTEST PRIZE NELLY GORDPOUR Untitled

JACOB CINTRON Lost Flowers PAOLA EMHARDT Sociology of the Emotons CELINA GIRAUD Beauty Beast

92 103 86

JANTSANKHOROL ERDENEBAYAR The Unknown 104

DAVE PETRAGLIA Ducks Flood

35 110

MAX SCHILLING At The Zoo A Study In Drawing

48 54

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PROSE DRAMA CONTEST PRIZE STEPHEN SHERWOOD Sexual Perversity of The Ducks & The Fountain 22 LOUIS GAUDIO Real Blueberries

50

CHIREAU WHITE Top of The Food Chain

94

POETRY CONTEST PRIZE NICOLE PERGUE Two Halves

11

TIM McGRATH In The Valley

36

JOSEPH HARMS Recrude GRIFFIN IRVINE Look While You Walk Away

CONTEST PRIZE PHILIP FALCO Day of Ceremony

106

DAVID CARMONA Insurance

14

JOSEPH HARMS Stilts

64

SALLY MIZRACHI No Man’s Land

114

JASON SLOAN Somewhere Out There

CONTRIBUTORS

42 124

113 60

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SPRING 2014 ADMINISTRATIVE AND EDITORIAL STAFF EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ASSOCIATE EDITORS Jacob Cintron Tatiana Acevedo Nina Balverdy MANAGING EDITOR Michael Betza Rubana Rahman Alexander Blaha David Carmona Jacob Cintron TREASURER Stefania D’Andrea Anjelica Enaje Jacob Daniels Charles Dix Nelly Gorpour ART EDITOR Theadora Hadzi David Carmona Bella Hamilton Amanda Hohenberg DRAMA EDITOR Farjana Islam Stacy Seever Lev Izraelit Marissa Johns Sara Kaplan DRAMA ASSITANT Brian Kelley Amanda Hohenburg Diana Kosianka Wes Lau PROSE EDITOR Glenn Liu Louis Gaudio Sally Mizrahi Kathlene Molina Alan Nemirovsky POETRY EDITOR Nicole Pergue Meghann Williams Rubana Rahman Kris Santos Stephen Sherwood CREATIVE DIRECTOR Jason Sloan Theadora Hadzi Teresa Soto Pau Toro Vlad Velicu EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Nisha Wadhwani Kevin Zych Chireau White Meghann Williams PUBLICITY MANAGER Brenda Wong Lev Izraelit Leying Zhang Kevin Zynch

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR JACOB CINTRON

W

hen I came upon the open office door of the Olivetree Review almost two years ago, I was too terrified to even walk through the door. I stumbled upon a room full of people milling over computers, reading in their desperate corners and finishing up assignments on the couch. If it hadn’t been for someone who noticed me hovering around outside the office door, getting ready to leave school for the day, who knows if I ever would’ve made it back.

From that first day, the Olivetree Review office has been something of a second home to me. Helping out to flyer, restocking magazine bins, doing anything and everything I could to be a part of the community.

The people who usually walk through our door are some of the most creative, intelligent and tolerant people I’ve met in my life.

When I was voted in as Vice-President of the magazine for the Fall 2013 semester, it was my biggest achievement at Hunter. My goal was to help be a part in maintaining the Olivetree Review as the place away from the monotony of only going to college for classes and to break away from the sense of anonymity such a large school can create. When I was subsequently voted in as Editor-in-Chief for the Spring 2014 semester, not only was it my responsibility to make our office as inviting as possible, but I was now in charge of leading the printing of an incredibly proactive and diverse body of Hunter’s student’s literary and art works.

Sincerely,

Jacob Cintron

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CONTESTS ART This semester’s art contest asked for a visual art piece in which the concept of “The Unknown” is creatively portrayed or confronted. The untitled piece was chosen as the winner of this semester’s Art Contest because it so wholly exemplifies the concept of “The Unknown.” The time lapse photography and indistinct subject matter lend the image a mysterious atmosphere, while the bright vertical lines in the center of the frame provide a gripping visual focus. This piece is both pleasing to the eye and representative of the artist’s skillful expression of the contest theme.

Untitled by Nelly Gordpour

49

DRAMA This semester’s contest promt was: “Write a terrible one act play and spend no longer than an hour writing it.” The winner of this contest was The Sexual Perversity of the Ducks and the Fountain.This was submitted as a bad play and was performed at Hunter College’s Bad Play Festival. However, it turned out to be a huge hit with the audience, and now might actually be considered a good one act play. In doing this contest, we were faced with the question: “What is terrible theatre?” and found that it is harder to intentionally write a terrible play than we thought it would be.

The Sexual Perversity of the Ducks and the Fountain by Stephen Sherwood 22

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POETRY For the poetry contest this semester, I asked contributors to create poems that played with the senses - perhaps confusing them, enhancing them, or just using them to create a image. The poem I chose - “Two Halves” - did all these things. There was a certain emotional weight to this poem that seemed at odds with the simple action of eating an avecado, but the language managed to reconcile and explain this feeling through crisp descriptions of the taste, feel, and sight of the subject. The physical became visceral; the visceral, emotional.

Two Halves by Nicole Pergue

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PROSE This semester’s prose contest called for writers to tell a short story based on the following prompt: “One day you decide to go fishing. While fishing, your entire village is killed. It’s your fault. Why?” Day of Ceremony crafts a morality tale with elements of magic and mystery and just the right amount of description. This piece stands out as a fine example of short fiction.

Day of Ceremony by Philip Falco

106

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THE PLAGUE DOCTOR "

WATERCOLOR ON PAPER

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POETRY PRIZE WINNER

TWO HALVES NICOLE PERGUE POETRY I cut it wide open.

The pebbled exterior curves around the perfect face.

The skin breaks open, and inside, the fleshmalleable painter’s brush, swamp thing-green, one eye stares where its twin has none, the brown hole of grief-eating.

I have an appetite.

I clean the inside out.

This green curves like sharp summer grass at the edges, a green sunset of the waning yellow at the center, this green cuts my heart open with a spoon.

I push inward, I hollow out a chunk that tips the flesh, gushing over the edges I’ve severed.

Green is suggestible, it does what I need it to do.

Specks of brown coat the underbelly of this half, I hold it in my mouth, I move it from side to side.

Nothing has ever tasted so bracing, nothing I ever needed to eat with my teeth.

This is the pliable food, I gouge the twin and lick the spoon.

I am sufferable, I am chilled green summer sun, you can set me with your hands.

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OCTOPUS KIRSTIE KISH INK ON PAPER

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INSURANCE DAVID CARMONA PROSE The soothing sounds of harmonized voices sailed faintly out the windows of a large, creamcolored house. The melody caught the wings of butterflies out in the yard and graced flocks of birds as if it had always been one in their number. Sunlight glanced off of the windows of the house’s second story, and brought a radiant dazzle to the low-laying garden below. At once the placid scene was broken by a dark figure advancing briskly through the yard, sending pigeons and squirrels off to more secure pastures. The figure walked up into the gray shade of the narrow porch and rang the doorbell twice.

The music that had been playing was cut short while the visitor stood in straight-backed anticipation. Out of the silence sounded the muffled approach of light footfalls, and a faint squeak as the hinge of a peep-hole was drawn aside. The man before the door wore a sharp black suit, with a dark leather briefcase to match.

No one, not even the two on either

side of the door, could tell how long the moment that followed lasted. There was a humid silence in it, weighed down by its own vacuous immensity. The door slid open a crack, revealing the face of the young woman peeking out from behind it.

“Hello ma’am,” he pulled his hat off and tipped his head with an amiable grin “Would I be right in assuming you are the owner of this fine house?”

She swallowed. “No, that would be my husband. What is this concerning?”

“Well I’ve been asking around the neighborhood getting a sense of how satisfied the people here are with their rates. My name’s Ned Wallace. I am a representative of Holman Life Insurance, and from what I’ve been hearing so far you guys haven’t been getting the fairest deal.”

She had answered her caller with the carefully honed countenance that embodied the polite courtesy of decent folk. A quiet demeanor that was equally

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pleasant and cautious towards The pillar of darkness that those with unknown identity and had separated them widened and motive. She now lowered her she reached to take the booklet. guard a little, however, and tilted As the sunlight illuminated the her head with a skeptical smile. pathway inside, it caught her “And of course, you’re lemon-yellow hair, and the starchthe fairest deal?” white dress it laid upon. Her body Ned chuckled breathily. was slim and wiry underneath, “I invite you to take a look at the with jagged pale shoulders that numbers yourself. We can’t be feebly propped up her broad beat,” he said, eyebrows raised. shoulder-straps. She was made “Well, I’m up in as heavy a way sorry Mr. Wallace, I as one could be in THE PILLAR OF don’t think it would one’s own home be right to make DARKNESS THAT HAD without foregoing a decision like semblance of SEPARATED THEM all that without my sense. Her eyes WIDENED AND SHE were a very dark husband’s input.”

“Ah, of REACHED TO TAKE brown, and as she course,” he said with leaned her weight THE BOOKLET. a tone of distracted against the frame of embarrassment, the doorway both “He probably handles the financial of them considered the booklet decisions here.” He unlatched in her hands. the clasps on his briefcase, “Well, “On second thought, I can leave a few pamphlets would you mind walking me behind, detailing all of our family through it? I would hate to packages. We’ve already had waste my husband’s time with several of the neighbors switch.” something that wasn’t worth it,” She craned her neck she said. forward a degree, “Is that so?”

“Not a problem ma’am, “Oh yes, a bunch. In fact, I couples often ask me to help walk just finished talking it through with them through the plan, so they Ann Gable down the street,” he know what they’re getting into,” said, his head still in the briefcase. he said enthusiastically.

He pulled a thin booklet out from She withdrew into the inside and grinned once more, dark, sanctioning his advance. “here you go, ma’am, I trust you The interior of the house offered can explain it to your husband him welcome relief from the when he gets back.” hot midsummer sun outside.

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He followed her to the sitting offered a slow, highly simplified room that sat just explanation that if " EVEN THEN IT'S to the right of the her husband were entrance, sliding injured on the job, along the lightly BETTER TO BE SAFE particularly due polished floor of THAN SORRY," HE to some falling the room.

The machinery or SAID, HIS VOICE sitting room was malfunctioning RESIGNED AND sensibly furnished, equipment, he and featured a would be covered COLORED WITH considerable for the damages.

GENERAL REGRET, presence of dark “Ah, we "YOU NEVER KNOW probably oak. don’t “Take a need that,” she WHAT COULD seat,” she offered, said, “My husband HAPPEN." gesturing to a manages accounts. luxurious couch General Dynamics. with rich green upholstery, sitting You know, fighters and jets? I beneath the front window. She can’t very well see him in such a sat herself on a matching loveseat predicament.” that lay adjacent, and began to “They manufacture thumb through the brochure. He them?” watched her as she skimmed the “Yes. But of course, he passages, the dark poles of her works in the office. I could see eyes roving listlessly over the why this might appeal to Ann tedious wording. At certain points Gable, though, considering her her eyebrows furrowed, then husband’s a foreman and all.” relaxed as she moved on to some “Even then it’s better to other passage. Neither of the be safe than sorry,” he said, his two kept the time, but however voice resigned and colored with long it took for her to look over general regret, “you never know the passages, he sat still as stone what could happen.” its duration. Suddenly her voice “But of course the whole cut the soft sounds of children business of insurance is based on playing outside. you not knowing what is going to “What’s this? Workplace- happen,” she said playfully.

Related Personal Injury He responded to her Compensation?” she asked with smile with one of his own, but it bemusement. seemed as if it were affected in He cleared his throat and some manner. She went back to

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her absent-minded perusal, her vague attendance to the text now met by him with a slight working of the legs, just shy of a fidget. He felt the sunlight from the window hot on the back of his neck, and watched how it fell on the ridges of his pants, permeating the fabric with warmth.

“Do you have any questions, miss...” The entire time they had been talking he hadn’t gotten her name, and she hadn’t offered it. The realization of this strange fact threw him off for a second causing him, without intending to, to catalogue the interactions that he had earlier in the day. It had been a plain neighborhood with plain people, and the conversations had been as perfectly plain and predictable as one would expect.

The woman looked up from her brochure, just noticing his hanging question. Her eyes met his with their ochre glint.

“Mrs. Robinson.”

“Yes, Mrs. Robinson. Do you have any questions pertaining to any of our plans?”

“How come they cost so much?” She said abruptly. She flipped back to the front of the booklet and tilted it towards him, craning her neck to read the prices. “We only pay 48 dollars a month for our current insurance.”

She looked back up at him.

For a second there was

only the distant sound of children playing outside. This was a question that he had encountered many times during his visit to the neighborhood. In fact, he had been asked it countless times, even before he came to Sherwood.

Ned often attributed it to some part of the human condition that needs to hear people like him blather on about his business before he could satisfy whatever it was within them that needed the reassurance.

“You see, Mrs. Robinson-I’m somewhat familiar with those corporate plans. I don’t have specific numbers on General Dynamics, but aircraft manufacturers are especially notorious for offering only the most barebone of plans...”

Her face fell, “But I thought you said you had the best rates around?”

“Yes, we do-- but, that is comparable to other plans that offer the same value.”

“But I don’t understand, if you don’t have numbers on my husband’s company, how can you know for certain?” She asked in as polite a tone as was ever heard.

He cleared his throat.

“Mrs. Robinson, my company performs a great deal of analysis, and I can assure you we check every market thoroughly. I don’t have the numbers for all the companies in this city at the

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moment, but I can assure you, She sat where she we’re the best in the industry. was, her face blank and forever There is a chart, on page 23, indecipherable. Still as a statue, that shows our place among our motionless in the face of the closest competitors--” mysterious energy that now filled “Oh yes, I remember,” her living room. The children were She said. He doubted her every still playing outside and the sun word. “But I still hardly understand hit the room in the same places, why, if my husband isn’t working wearing those spots down ever so in an automobile factory like Bob slowly with its roiling assault. The Gable for instance, why we would room no longer felt as if it offered even go for those comparable solace from the elements, and the plans?” colorless motion within the room “Because, even at an adopted a sweltering fury. A bead airplane manufacturer you never of sweat slid down Mr. Wallace’s know--.” forehead.

“But he works in the Mrs. Robinson’s face slid office.” into a pleasant expression. Her “Mrs. Robinson-- I mean- eyebrows furrowed as she nodded - you need insurance. Of course, in his direction, acknowledging you already have insurance, but his heat. “Would you like some there’s nothing there for if your iced tea, Ned? We have biscuits husband injures himself driving too.” on his way to the office, you see?

Or if someone injures him. You just don’t know how many car wrecks we’ve had to cover. People, completely blindsided. And every time there’s a widow, or... Without a plan that covers all that you won’t be able to pay hospital bills, or, God forbid, plan for funeral rites. I’ve seen it before. People driven deep into debt, without a hope left to their name. And your house, and your children, there won’t be anything left.” He was now leaning several inches closer to her than he had been before.

“There’s a great deal at stake here.”

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NOTHINGS PROMISED DUSTIN HOGAN OIL ON CANVAS

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SMOKE & MIRRORS THEADORA HADZI DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

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SEXUAL PERVERSITY OF THE DUCKS & THE FOUNTAIN STEPHEN SHERWOOD DRAMA SCENE 1 AT RISE: A bare stage with the image of a cypress tree painted on the backstage wall.

Two ducks enter from opposite sides of the stage and meet in the center. They waddle around, chatting.

How’s it going, Frank?

Can’t complain. You?

DENNY FRANK

DENNY Eh , the wife ruffled my tail feathers this morning butThat’s too bad.

FRANK

DENNY Fucking pain in my feathery ass. What you gonna do?

FRANK Nothing.

DENNY

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DRAMA PRIZE WINNER Nothing to be done.

Nope.

Nope.

Pause.

Hey? Yeah?

FRANK DENNY

DENNY FRANK

DENNY Let me ask you something.

Okay.

It’s been bothering me.

So ask me.

I’m just wondering...

Yes? It’s strange...

What?

FRANK DENNY FRANK DENNY FRANK DENNY FRANK

DENNY This thing I’ve been thinking.

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Uh-huh?

FRANK

DENNY Maybe you have thoughts on it?

I might.

It’s justYes? Well...

Yes?

FRANK DENNY FRANK DENNY FRANK

DENNY You know how everybody says-

Yes? ...thatYes? ...you never see-

FRANK DENNY FRANK DENNY

FRANK

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Yes

DENNY

...Cats?

FRANK

Cats, what?

DENNY

Cats... doing it?

FRANK Oh. Yes. I have heard that.

DENNY

Yes.

FRANK

Yes. Pause.

So? Well... what about us?

You mean-

FRANK DENNY FRANK

DENNY I mean... nobody ever talksYes. Or even mentions it.

FRANK DENNY FRANK

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True.

But dogs!

Oh, yes!

DENNY FRANK

DENNY Now dogs people see all the time.

Yes. Doing it.

I’ve seen them.

In factWhat?

FRANK DENNY FRANK DENNY FRANK

DENNY In fact, you don’t see that many other animals doing it.

True.

Except dogs.

They’re always doing it.

And yet somehow...

FRANK DENNY FRANK DENNY

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FRANK

Somehow?

No. For some reasonYes.

DENNY FRANK

DENNY For some reason, cats get this special...

Yes.

FRANK

DENNY ...this special place in the “not doing it” sphere.

It’s fucked up.

It’s pretty fucked up.

FRANK

DENNY

Frank Yes.

Why is that?!

DENNY (emphatically) Long pause as they both think.

FRANK (breaking silence)

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I was just thinkingDENNY (curious)

Yes?

FRANK

I never fucked a swan.

DENNY

Oh! Well...

FRANK

I wish I had fucked a swan.

DENNY

Yeah.

Pause.

One time I fucked a goose.

Oh! Yeah. It was...

Tall?

DENNY

FRANK DENNY FRANK DENNY

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Yes. Tall.

Tall.

Pause

Holy duck shit !

Whoa! What?

FRANK

FRANK (seeing something offstage)

DENNY

FRANK I think I see a swan right now!

Where?!

Over there!

Where?!

Over there!

DENNY FRANK DENNY FRANK They both waddle off stage left.

LIGHTS FADE OUT.

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SCENE 2 LIGHTS UP: HAROLD PINTER, the playwright, wanders in from stage right. He is aging and holds a cell phone. He stands upstage right, fiddling with the phone and trying to contact someone. He is constantly fiddling with the phone throughout the scene.

JIM, a young man, comes on from stage left. He is dressed up in a tuxedo, holding a small pistol. He fancies himself a James Bond type.

Harold?!

Oh. Hello, Jim.

JIM (crossing to him) HAROLD PINTER

JIM What the fuck are you doing outside my grandmother’s house?!

HAROLD PINTER I’m trying to get in contact with Esmerelda.

Esmer e lda ?! You know her?!

Yes, of course.

JIM

HAROLD PINTER

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JIM I’m also looking for her. We were just about to snog HAROLD PINTER Oh, really.

JIM Yes. She was my contact for the mission.

HAROLD PINTER That’s very interesting.

How do you know her?

She’s my girlfriend.

Oh. WellIt’s alright.

JIM

HAROLD PINTER JIM HAROLD PINTER

JIM No. I just wish someone would have told me.

HAROLD PINTER It’s alright. It was for the mission.

JIM Yes, of course. For the mission. I just wishHAROLD PINTER She won’t answer her damn phone.

Fucking bitch!

JIM I was just with her and then she disappeared.

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HAROLD PINTER Because you were going to snog ?

JIM What?

HAROLD PINTER That’s why you were with her?

JIM Yes, of course. And the mission.

HAROLD PINTER Of course. Where did you meet?

What?

JIM

HAROLD PINTER Where did you meet her ?

JIM Yes, right. Outside the hotel. Next to the fountain.

HAROLD PINTER The fountain? What kind of fountain?

Well, I-

JIM

HAROLD PINTER Like a Greek or Roman fountain?

JIM What? No! Not like a fucking Greek or Roman fountain. Just some paltry, cheap

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fucking fountain. Not a fucking Greek or fucking Roman, tra-la-la fountain. This isn’t fucking Venice.

Right.

HAROLD PINTER

JIM Anyway, yes. That’s where we met.

By the cheap fucking fountain?

Yes. The cheap fucking fountain. And-

HAROLD PINTER

JIM

HAROLD PINTER (seeing something offstage) Wait. I think I see her.

Where?!

Over there!

JIM (excited)

HAROLD PINTER JIM

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Where?!

HAROLD PINTER By that fountain. Is that the same one?

JIM

Where?!

HAROLD PINTER

Over there!

JIM (seeing it) I don’t... oh. No. That’s a different fountain. That’s more like a wadding pool.

It’s not a fountain?

HAROLD PINTER

JIM No! It’s not a fucking fountain. Christ, Harold! Put on your fucking glasses.

HAROLD PINTER I thought it was a fountain.

That’s not her.

What is it?

JIM (seeing what is offstage) HAROLD PINTER

JIM It looks like a couple of ducks fucking a swan.

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HAROLD PINTER (astounded) Really! I’ve never seen that.

JIM Me neither. Very rare. Let’s have a look.

Yes. Let’s.

HAROLD PINTER They slowly walk offstage left.

LIGHTS OUT. END.

DUCKS DAVE PETRAGLIA DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

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IN THE VALLEY TIM MCGRATH POETRY Descending After harsh words I left with guitar

thumb out

from Herndon, Va to D.C. by VW bug West Virginia, Dodge Dart, Kansas City, Karmann Ghia Des Moines, Caddy convertible to Nebraska in an RV that night I slept in a cloverleaf awoke covered in dew a skunk snuffled nearby I got up slowly outside Lincoln, traffic hissed&roared&blurred 18 wheeler stopped “where ya going, son?”

“L.A.” “climb in” drove&drove&drove over miles of bulging corn then up and down to Denver I dozed in the cab one-eye-open

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in a poppy fume blaze from Rockies to Vegas Vegas to--after harsh words guitar missing

thumb out

waves of heat and heatwaves heatwaves and waves of heat and circling condors smirking a sign in the distance smudges on the sky first only letters W T WE TO

D DE

V VAY

WELCOME TO DEATH VALLEY

INDIA RUBBER KRISTIE KISH ACRYLIC & SPRAY PAINT

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IBOGA RITUAL SERIES: ADDICTION TOM HART INK ON PAPER

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POSSESSION

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RELEASE

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SOMEWHERE OUT THERE JASON SLOAN PROSE Jonas breathed in the twilit They reached the peak of night. It swirled around in his the hill, gasping and sweating in lungs like a Van Gogh painting the starlight. It was apparent that before returning to the nighttime the trees had ceded their rights to atmosphere. He was holding a the hilltop, creating a thirty-foot modified radio transmitter in his diameter perimeter around the right hand and Cassandra’s hand flat, grassy clearing. It resembled in his left. She was also holding the a monk’s tonsure, which had receiving dish. They had begun to earned it the moniker Monk’s Hill climb the hill before sunset, when upon the founding of the town it was clear the night sky would at its base more than a century be cloudless. Locals said that the ago. Cassandra collapsed on the park was mostly forest, and it was grass, holding the receiving dish proven true by the heavy tree close to her chest. It rose and cover the two encountered on fell with her breathing as though their ascent. Occasionally, when it were alive. Cassandra wasn’t the mossy tree trunks encroached tired, but, rather, overwhelmed on their tandem stride, Jonas with excitement and the potential would let go of Cassandra’s hand the night held. Jonas and she had and the tips of their knuckles been dating for almost a year, would brush against the damp and this was the night Jonas had felt coating the trees, leaving elected as the night he would cool impressions that evaporated divulge his “secret” project to her. when their hands rejoined. They Jonas was more somber were both very careful to keep than Cassandra, and was kneeling the equipment dry. at the center of the clearing, “How much longer is it?” setting up the transmitter beside asked Cassandra. his backpack. He plugged it “About ten minutes,” into an external lithium-ion Jonas replied. “It’s worth it,” he battery and switched it on. It added, hopping over a boulder. clicked and emitted a low static

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that punctuated the crickets’ toward its center. And then he chirping and the flapping from pounced on Cassandra, snatching the occasional bat flyby, adding the receiving dish from her grasp. another note to the “Ah hah! Got it!” he evening symphony. said. He rolled off of JONAS LOOKED He spotted her, but stayed on AT HER SUPINE Jupiter in the sky the ground beside and adjusted FORM, AT HOW THE her. They were both the transmitter’s and the TREES AROUND HER laughing, orientation to 58˚ bats retreated from SILHOUETTED HER the sudden noise in relative to the gas giant. He sat down BODY AND HOW THE a whoosh. and dragged his Jonas rose fingers through STARS GLINTED OFF and attached the the grass, testing receiver to the OF HER DEFIANT each individual transmitter via a EYES. blade’s resilience small cable he to pressure before had brought in his it shot back to its erect position. backpack. He turned it on, too, Then he looked at Cassandra. and a small, red LED flashed.

“Cassandra, can I get the “Okay! Looks like everything’s dish?” Jonas asked. working,” he said.

Cassandra looked toward Cassandra crawled over to him and smiled. She began to join him, and he placed his arm stand up, but thought better of around her shoulder. She had it and dropped back down to the some grass stuck to her sweater, grass. “Take it from me,” she said. and, when he wiped it off, the “Can you just give it to me? severed leaves joined those still I really don’t want to break it,” attached to the dark ground and Jonas said. disappeared from their thoughts.

“Nope,” Cassandra replied. “So, this is it?” she asked.

Jonas looked at her supine Jonas lifted his arm from form, at how the trees around her Cassandra’s shoulder and pointed silhouetted her body and how the to the transmitter. “Yup. This is stars glinted off of her defiant eyes. basically just a radio transmitter, “Alright, you asked for it,” he said. like what policemen use, or local He stood up slowly, as though radio stations. I tweaked it a bit Monk’s Hill was its own planet so the signal is clearer and more with twice as much mass and half concentrated, but that’s about the radius of Earth, drawing him it. But this,” Jonas continued,

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pointing at the receiver, “is the at the receiver’s display, which receiver. It’s a dish like on roofs for had begun flashing toward the satellite TV, but it picks up signals east, and pointed in Cassandra’s that are much weaker and farther direction. “Found you!” he said. away. I worked pretty hard on it.”

“Pretty impressive,” Jonas picked it up. “It even tells Cassandra said, returning to me where the signal’s coming where Jonas was seated. “So, from, here.” Jonas pointed to the are we gonna talk to the aliens digital display and then put the tonight?” dish back down.

“I hope so,” Jonas said. “I “Jonas, did you make all just have to tune the resonator this?” Cassandra asked. to receive the Kliks’ signal.” He “YouTube videos are magical, adjusted a knob on the receiver Cassie.” Jonas turned a knob until the static disappeared and on the receiver. a faint, arrhythmic “Wanna try it out?” clicking sound SHE LOOKED UP “Sure!

Of emanated from the AT THE STARS, course!” Cassandra transmitter.

WONDERING WHICH stood up. “What “Is that them?” should I do?”

Cassandra asked.

ONE COULD BE THE “Um… Okay, “Yup. I heard so I’m going to CENTER OF THE ALIEN this from my close my eyes and rooftop last night SOLAR SYSTEM. you go somewhere when I was making and hum quietly. I’ll some last-minute figure out where you are,” Jonas changes,” Jonas said. said.

“This is amazing! I read that “Okay,” Cassandra said. a bunch of people started making “You ready?” these once the government “Ready,” Jonas said, and confirmed that the clicks were he closed his eyes. Cassandra actually coming from space, but I jogged to the north edge of the never thought this was what you clearing and started humming. were working on this whole time!”

“Do it quieter, Cassie. I can Cassandra said. She lay down on still hear you,” Jonas said. the grass and propped her head “Okay. Sorry. I’m gonna on her hands. She looked up at move, then.” the stars, wondering which one Cassandra ran over to could be the center of the alien the east side of the trees and solar system. hummed quietly. Jonas looked “Thanks, Cassie. Yeah, I

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dunno why I decided to make it, but I guess it’s not every day we learn that we aren’t alone in the universe,” Jonas said. He joined Cassandra on the darkened grass. They lay together in silence, listening to the crickets and the clicking from the Kliks via the transmitter.

“I also read that they started decoding the language,” Cassandra said.

“I heard that, too. Hopefully soon we’ll know what they’re saying. Do you think it’s a distress signal? Or just them searching for other life forms like we do?”

Jonas asked.

“I’m thinking just searching, letting us know they’re around,” Cassandra answered. She sat up and bent over toward the apparatus. “I want to tell them we’re around, too!”

Jonas sat up and pointed at a button on the transmitter.

“Hold that down and speak into the little microphone. Let go when you’re done so you can hear their response,” he said.

Cassandra brought her head down to the microphone and pressed the button. The clicking stopped and the static returned.

“Hello, Klik people. Or whatever you call yourselves. My name is Cassandra. I’m from Earth. And, um, I like swimming?” Cassandra said into the microphone. She let go of the button and the clicking

resumed. “Did it work?”

“I think so,” Jonas said.

Cassandra brought her head back to the microphone and started making clicking noises.

“Whoa, stop!” Jonas cut her off and held her shoulder.

“What?” Cassandra asked.

“Don’t do that! You don’t want to offend them!” Jonas said.

He let go and Cassandra started laughing.

“My bad,” she said.

“This shit is serious. Aliens are no laughing matter,” Jonas said, pointing at the digital display.

“According to this, they’re about 20,000 light years away. So, since radio waves travel at the speed of light in a vacuum, it’ll take about 20,000 years for them to hear you and be offended. And then kill us all.”

“Oh good. I was worried there for a second,” Cassandra said.

“No problem. We’ll be dead by then, anyway. I was just a little embarrassed by all those insults you were dishing out,” Jonas said.

“Haha. But if they’re 20,000 light years away, then are we hearing what they broadcasted 20,000 years ago?” Cassandra asked.

“Yeah. Most people say that their entire civilization and species is gone by now,” Jonas said.

“So then what’s the point

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of sending them messages? Why are we even bothering trying to figure out what they’re saying?”

Cassandra asked.

“Maybe they aren’t dead, though. What if they’re still alive now?” Jonas asked.

“Even if they are, they won’t know we exist until another 20,000 years from now. Will they be around then? 40,000 years from when they sent this signal?”

Cassandra asked.

“I don’t know. Personally, I’d like to think they’re still around, colonizing some solar systems nearby. Eventually they’ll hear us and find us,” Jonas said.

“If we’re still around by then,” Cassandra said.

“Yeah. I hope we are. Maybe one day humans will actually be able to interact with other intelligent life forms. That would literally change everything,” Jonas said.

“For better or for worse, yeah,” Cassandra said. “But I don’t get the point of trying to communicate with aliens.

Anything we eventually reach would be too far to respond to or make contact with. Seems pointless.”

“Maybe it is pointless. But I think it’s important for humanity to acknowledge that there are other life forms out there, even if we never do make contact. You can see how much our whole

perspective has changed in less than a year since the clicks started,” Jonas said.

“I know, Jonas. I know.

But it kinda sucks that this is all the evidence of extraterrestrial life we’re going to have in our lifetimes. At least they could speak English, right?” Cassandra asked.

“At least,” Jonas said.

“And who knows? Anything can happen. Maybe they’ll drop by in our lifetime. No one believed this was possible, right?”

“Where are they? Like, where’s the signal coming from?”

Cassandra asked.

Jonas looked at the digital display and peered at the night sky. “NASA says that the signal is strongest at 58˚ from where Jupiter is now, right there.” He pointed at Jupiter. “Which would put the signal right in the middle of Gemini.” He lay back and pointed at the Gemini constellation.

Cassandra followed his finger with her eyes. They had become habituated to the clicking, which continued irregularly and had thrown off the beat of the crickets’ chirping, leading them to flee the clearing in confusion. The stars had never seemed so familiar to either of them, and Cassandra realized how minuscule Earth and the sun were in the grand scheme of things. What if their sun had been that blue one? Or

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the orange one? Would their eyes be different? What would things look like? Would they click to talk?

“We’re so insignificant,” Cassandra whispered.

Jonas reached for Cassandra’s hand and squeezed it. He turned his head to look into her eyes and caught a bat crossing the sky in his peripherals, blocking Jupiter for a split second.

“Nothing is insignificant, Cassie.

Or everything is,” he said.

Cassandra sat up and brought her mouth back down to the microphone on the transmitter and held the button. “If you guys are still alive when this reaches you, remember to be cool and don’t destroy our planet. Thanks. Over and out.” She let go and pressed the off switch. The clicking ceased, and there was silence for half a minute in the clearing while the two of them appreciated the vast celestial expanses twinkling and revolving above them. Jonas sat up and began to pack the external battery into his backpack, while Cassandra unplugged the receiver dish from the transmitter. “I’d like to think that we’re significant,” Cassandra said, seeking Jonas’s hand. He closed his fingers around hers and swung the backpack over his shoulder.

“I know we are,” he said, and kissed Cassandra on the cheek.

“We should head back. I don’t

want your parents to lose their minds.”

“Yeah, it’s late,” Cassandra said, winding the cord around the receiver. She looked back up at the sky and scrutinized the pinpricks of light that had traveled so far to reach her. She and Jonas finished packing away the equipment and commenced their descent, vanishing into the musty darkness of the dense tree line together, like stellar rays into an event horizon.

When all traces of Jonas and Cassandra had faded from the clearing, with the exception of the bent and torn grass in the cooling depressions their bodies left behind, a lone cricket returned. Attracted to the dwindling warmth, it hopped to where the transmitter had been, at the center of the circle.

Distorted reflections of the starscape flashed on its glossy exoskeleton while it raised its wings and began to chirp. More of the crickets that had fled returned and added their own melodies to the din. A bat reappeared above the hilltop and emitted a highfrequency call before zeroing in on its meal. It swooped down, catching a cricket mid-chirp in its mouth, and flew away to enjoy its meal. The surviving crickets fled while more bats materialized over the site and the ambience of Monk’s Hill was restored.

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AT THE ZOO MAX SCHILLING DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

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REAL BLUEBERRIES LOUIS GA DIO DRAMA A SMALL TABLE WITH A HARD PLASTIC FOLDING CHAIR IS PLACED IN THE MIDDLE OF A STAGE AND SET AS THOUGH IT IS A BOOTH IN A TYPICAL NEW YORK DELI. A MAN SITS AT THE TABLE, HOLDING A MEDIUM PAPER COFFEE CUP AND MIMING A MUFFIN. FOR ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES THE COFFEE CUP CAN BE A PHYSICAL PROP BUT SHOULD REMAIN EMPTY, WHEREAS ALL ACTION INVOLVING THE MUFFIN SHOULD BE MIMED AS WELL AS POSSIBLE. THIS IS BECAUSE IT IS VERY MESSY TO CLEAN UP MUFFIN CRUMBS OFF A STAGE. IF YOU DECIDE YOU WANT TO CLEAN UP AFTER THE PERFORMANCE,

BY ALL MEANS STAGE IT WITH A REAL MUFFIN. JUST MAKE SURE IT HAS REAL BLUEBERRIES. VOICE: An offstage voice narrates while the man on stage carries out each action in time. “You’re eating a muffin. You just bought this muffin

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for $3.75 from the deli. Of all the muffin options, you know you wanted blueberry, and out of all the blueberry muffins you selected this particular muffin to pay $3.75 for and enjoy. You really shouldn’t be eating muffins. You know that. You charmingly told the cashier that and he grunted politely because he frankly doesn’t have time to care. He has a long line. You don’t give him that information so he could do anything with it. The statement was for yourself.

You’ve been eating pretty well lately. You ordered your coffee black, no sugar, so this sweet muffin will be a perfect balance. How much sugar could there really be in just one muffin anyway? Probably less than a cup of coffee, you know that much.

Part of you knows that the amount of sugar in one muffin is much greater than in an average cup of coffee.

That part of you stays quiet while a different part pipes up to remind you that you didn’t get coffee for the sugar today. You got it for the caffeine. You got the muffin for the sugar. Sure, that coffee is gonna wake you up, but you need serious energy if you’re gonna get any work done today. You have to eat this muffin. It’s a good thing you bought it. And these are real blueberries, so...vitamins.

You’re enjoying a muffin with the proper degree of entitled dignity. You’ve earned this muffin. And it’s a good muffin, too. You payed $3.75 for it. You don’t mind paying a little extra for good quality. You’re sure it doesn’t have a lot of processed ingredients or preservatives. It’s too tasty for that. It must be home-baked. You wonder if the cashier owns this deli and also bakes everything. Of course he does. That explains why he politely dismissed your comment about how you shouldn’t be eating muffins. You insulted his baking! You have to apologize to him promptly. As soon as you finish eating. It’s a priority.

And you should buy another muffin to show him that you do appreciate his baking skills. Maybe you’ll ask him if he has a card.

You’re almost finished with the muffin. The unfolded wrapper has caught all of the crumbs and small pieces that broke off as you were eating it, and now you’re staring at them. You estimate it to be about 1/6th of your

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muffin sitting there on that wrapper. A quick calculation on your smartphone tells you that’s almost $0.62 worth of food right there. You can’t just leave it. There are starving children in the world who would kick a puppy for that much food.

There’s no dignified way to eat muffin crumbs out of the paper wrapper. You’ve been in this situation before.

At home. Alone. You simply pick it up and open your gullet like you’re a pelican and dump it in there like you’re finishing a bag of chips (another food you try to eat only in private). But now everyone is watching you. Every eye in the deli is judging you and only you for the way you’re going to eat this crumb plate. You know what would solve this? Edible wrappers. You’ll suggest that to the cashier when you apologize later.

Maybe you can go up and ask for a spoon. You’re worried if you leave the table the busboy might clear it thinking it’s trash. That’s because it is trash. You should just throw it out. You know you should, but you paid $3.75 for it and it was really good.”

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1 + 1 KRISTI KISHI MIXED MEDIA COLLAGE

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A STUDY IN DRAWING MAX SCHILLING FIBER DARKROOM PRINT

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ART PRIZE WINNER

UNTITLED NELLY GOUR POR TIME LAPSE DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

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INTERVIEW WITH CHONG CHON-SMITH ANJELICA ENAJE Professor Chon-Smith is an Assistant Professor in the English Department and the Asian American Studies Program at Hunter College. His focus is on cultural studies, social movements, and literature of the post-civil rights era. He has an upcoming novel entitled East Meets Black (University Press of Mississippi), the first book to look into the post-civil rights era in comparative studies, media, and popular culture on Asian and African American masculinities.

You pose a lot of thought-provoking questions to your students, such as “What does it mean to be human, in a global age?” or “What is the role of literature?” — How is the human condition changing in our global age, and how does it relate to literature?

I think the human condition is going through several different stages of metamorphosis. At times there is coherence, where we think about the nation, the community, and the global society. On the other hand, there are these internal frictions and contradictions that arise from trying to achieve that coherence. For me, “the human” is an openended question that we need to have a dialogue about and to come to a consensus on how we define “the human”. Ultimately, at this stage of human development, I think that there is a condition of the human that is under a condition of imprisonment, of bondage, of alienation. But I also think, simultaneously, there is an impulse to reach out and connect, to find moments and places, people and spaces to identify with.

We can talk about the different turning points of this century (i.e., digital, economic, cultural), but ultimately, the literature itself raises the parameters of that conversation. Literature itself provokes and inspires us to think of the best ideals of what the human can potentially be.

Literature taps into a part of us that wants to hope, to inspire, and to believe in something that is greater outside of ourselves. Literature

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wants us to believe in the human project and its new possibilities.

How can students apply to this mode of thinking, both inside and outside the classroom?

For the readers of the Olivetree Review—those of you who are writers, artists, thinkers, or just conscientious people—you are always thinking, always observing and discerning. The faculties of the mind are always actively working or animating. So I think the students themselves are already doing it. It is part of our curiosity; it is part of who we are as people. We want to connect and understand, to have some sort of positive linking with those around us. We are always asking ourselves, What is my role in this? What is my part? How do I make a contribution?

It all leads up to the ultimate question: “How do I have a sense of purpose to my creative endeavors that works within a certain type of economic logic, but at the same time, keeps a certain integrity and a certain independence about that inspiration?” As millenials, who are full of fear and doubt, but wanting inspiration and hope, they should be feeling this way…if not, it is a force of violence.

How important is it for young artists and writers to invest themselves in the arts and literature, especially in our time? How can they transcend the problems of today into creative projects?

I think this is a fascinating age for artists and writers. We’re bypassing the studios and publishing houses. We’re moving into an era where everyone has access to voice and to making an audience. We are going to see this intensify and multiply. We are going to see more density in thinking and in conversation. We can only be inspired and galvanized by that. We can only theorize the possibilities of what this truly means because this is revolutionary, in terms of voice.

We need more storytellers. We need more translators. We need students to become vessels or filters that are able to distill the multiple facets of life into a certain narrative or story that activates. I see storytellers as shamans and visionaries that will translate in a way that quivers the soul. If we think about it, Hunter College is a sort of masala, people coming from different backgrounds, communities, and diasporas. Even New York City is made up of diasporas and interlocking connections of power.

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So I think students are already transcending their problems into creative projects, by venturing into other media and becoming storytellers themselves. But how can it become a movement to social change? We need students to learn leadership, to not be afraid to become leaders.

They should always be a part of a creative community, but no one should be negative, as in, you cannot get anything done with negative people.

We always need people to validate who we are, especially as artists and writer, and that helps to create art, humanness, and conversations. A certain key needs to be unlocked for creative power, to keep the “torch of human” alive, and artists, intellectuals, game changers, and activists are able to do that; they are the “ancestors of freedom dreams” You bring up the concept of “the intimacies of the 4 continents” in your classes. What does it mean, and how can students brings themselves to think about it?

The concept comes from an article written by Lisa Lowe called, “The Intimacies of Four Continents” (2006). It’s about the merging of those continents, the interconnection of ideas, the grand ideals of democracy and freedom. It’s about the quickening of different bodies in one place, how it brings the conversation of the human experience to the surface. New York City is a barometer for human experience, where it is a normal condition for us to create a boundary between ourselves and others. It makes us think, How have we sharpened alienation? We are headed towards a “global citizenship,” the umbrella that saves us from ourselves. We dream to eliminate these barriers. So how do we get students to connect with each other? The university can serve as a space for students to learn how to break boundaries and be the change they want to be, not to follow suit. Culture is hard to connect, but you as the individual can break that boundary.

How do you compare your experience in teaching literature at Hunter College and other universities, like UC San Diego? What are your expectations for your students?

I’ve taught at National University in California, as well as UC San Diego and UC Irvine. The environment in those colleges is mostly middle class and suburban, and most of the students there were conscientious; they

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were good at being students. (I’ve seen two to three generations move in conversation.) The differences between teaching in the East coast and the West coast are the space and the people. Teaching at Hunter College is an amazing experience because it is located in a global city.

The students here are very diverse—coming from middle and working classes—and amazing not only for their ideas, but also for where they come from. This is a jackpot for teachers because this is an intellectual base, a center of youth and social change.

I became a professor to be a part of social change, and from this semester, I have been inspired by the writing and consciousness of the students, and potentially for their hope. I expect students to become critical thinkers, to gain global citizenship. I expect them to care about the world around them, to be conscientious of others, and to understand that the university can be a part of social change. Millenials are a generation that seeks change, but they don’t know how. Most importantly, I expect students to realize that we need them. We need the youth. We need them to not fall into line of cubicle life, to realize that there is more to life than paying off debts or producing a family.

Our life has purpose, meaning; to somewhat negate what Socrates said, “An examined life is a life well-lived.”

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LOOK WHILE YOU WALK AWAY GRIFFIN IRVINE POETRY maple street hemmed in by oaks down straight to the hudson dotted with white capped sails and freight trains that ran like toys out in the distance, indian point power plant in the earth waiting to detonate—so evacuation was drilled into us early always to run far away in case of disaster —and Will ran straight into a noose as the chair fell in slow motion over years, but i still jumped with him off of cliffs when i was ten because he told me to, into that small winding river where i later ran from a police boat and was arrested for jumping the same cliff thinking how his feet once stepped through this muddy hill but no longer stepped, and how the cops never gave a shit when they busted him (and probably snickered when he ODed), so in company we pissed in their boat stored behind the precinct every night we could and made them work in conditions

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they deserved below beating summer sun. thirteen years my memory still penned-in like the public high school between the graveyard and the croton free library, and st augustine’s episcopal church where we’d both been altar boys who ran out at the end of each service to watch horror movies in his dark basement bedroom with curtains drawn, and how his ashes lay below the dirt in that same churchyard now behind the uneven greying fence we used to run around before faith ran out, and the world opened up, and every step on old ground became just a walk over another grave.

MERMAID JESSICA KURLAND 35MM PRINT

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FIREFLY THEADORA HADZI DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

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STILTS JOSEPH HARMS PROSE

Tthe backside of Miriam’s

hirtyfoot stilts supported

house.

Though midMarch lakeeffect snow inhumed the subjacent valley. Miriam looked out her kitchen window with a hand on the steel sink, brought tea to mouth. She closed her eyes to sip. A liminal gray ended night and the dramatic fog that ghosted about the sleeping deer wanned. Steam rose from their bodies. One and the next doglike shook itself awake. Miriam made another cup and watched the deers’ rolecall. Each touched a part of itself to the herd entire.

She blew on her tea, kept her nose above the water’s darkling and watched her deer. Her eyes stilled, dried. She couldn’t move or look away.

A beast with clumps of snow in its gray dreadlocks fell more than debouched down the dunewall opposite her home. Tall as the largest bucks it crashed into the yet somniferous herd.

Its alligatorlike snout snapped among the gracile pelts without once connecting. Miriam shrieked

and burned her nose and upper lip with tea when it encompassed a fawn in a perfervid mount as the last of the herd vanished up the valley and over the col.

Neck retrorse in a silent howl the beast missed its mark by a foot, pumping all the harder for this frustration.

Miriam couldn’t watch. She sat on the floor under the sink and didn’t know at all what to do until she felt the blister fill the bulb of her nose.

She’d not be late for the Harbors’. After speaking to both on the phone she could find only one reason why they’d want to settle in Bridgeman, what such an impoverished dump could offer them hold the lake, and they’d soon enough learn of the nuclear powerplant set off the beach.

They no doubt were rich not wealthy and wanted a lakefront mansion they could afford. In her bathroom she looked at the circular bandage on her nose. She peeled it off and looked at the pale blister. She put the bandage back on. At the front door she

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took it off, pressed it into a ball through a pane in her front door between her fingers and put it in at a dog she recognized, some her purse. At least the Harbors outlandish purebred she’d would know she seen in a movie or didn’t have a wart MY GOD, MIRIAM, SHE magazine. It helped on her nose. little that it was a Miriam THOUGHT AND SIMPLY documented beast. got as far as her TURNED THE KNOB It sat five feet from front porch. Fog on her small AND FELL INTO HER her obfuscated her car. porch. It didn’t HOME KICKING THE wag its tail, lick its Roughly a foot of snow had melted DOOR SHUT AS SHE chops or scratch during the night. itself and it had LANDED. The sky had cleared. amber eyes. Finally A shadow in the fog it moved. It arched about the sodden stairs that led its neck as it’d done earlier and down to her drive loomed forward, stared at the sun. An ague of announced itself with a wheeze barks produced only muffled accompanied by a highpitched wheezewhoos mimetic of an whistle. asthmatic child’s imitation of a Miriam lunged at her front trainwhistle or like the sound door, clicked the key around the resultant from a suckerpunch to slot for which it’d been made. It the stomach. Miriam winced. A wheezewhooed again and the cicatricial mouth separated head keys shook themselves loose from body. She couldn’t help but from her hand. They landed on compare it to an elongated vulva the deck between her and the and wondered who’d do such beast she dared not look back a thing and for what reason and at. As if anyone but her had been why hadn’t it died. behind it for over a decade she Miriam more than most knew began to bang against the door. how crucial first impressions were She couldn’t hear the soft pad and she’d not keep the Harbors’ of its paws on the rotting wood. waiting. She ran to the kitchen Mephitis presaged its approach. and prepared the beast dinner.

My God, Miriam, she thought and Then she ran to her bedroom and simply turned the knob and fell opened the window facing the into her home kicking the door front lawn. She set the plastic bin shut as she landed. of cold noodles and sardines on Ten minutes later the fog the woodchips and sand between had evaporated and she stared two rosebushes covered in

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styrofoam buckets, called for the A tall gaunt man in a black woolen beast and ran back to the front trenchcoat and a black fedora door where through a window in stood behind her. The fur collar of the anteroom of coats and shoes Mrs. Harbor’s purple trenchcoat met with the hat, she watched it lug her face lost within its awkward body "ASHLEY," MR. an animal. Miriam toward the meal. made out an Miriam made it to HARBOR SAID AND elbowed nose and her car just fine. At the end of her dirt GAVE HER HIS HAND. a frame of black hair.

The shadows cast drive, way down by the man’s fedora, at the bottom of another valley, she allowed a brow, deep eyesockets and minute to collect herself before phthisic cheeks brought to mind charred driftwood. A downward entering society. glance eclipsed his face. Mrs. Harbor tapped the window again • and Miriam realized she’d been Happy she’d beaten the staring. She heard her own heart Harbors Miriam parked in front as she sprang to let the couple in.

“Hello! Hello! Come in! of her office, a silver trailer set on cinderblocks with a red awning Come in!” Miriam said over a in the parkinglot of the small caravan of army trucks passing town’s government housing, overhead and touched the tip of orangebrick complexes built her nose.

The Harbors’ took off their against mountainous dunes of stour black trees. The interstate hats in the gentle light of her overpass shadowed her trailer till office and Miriam sighed and well past noon. Just a mile down rubbed their shoulders as if to the valley road Lake Michigan warm them up.

“Ashley,” Mr. Harbor said oceaned. Being competitive and one of five agents in the county and gave her his hand.

“Miriam. And what a Miriam had six available lakeside mansions, two more than the best pleasure! You’re my first clients of the others. She fanned the six in a decade from New York City, folders on her desk and put on and may I say you look strikingly, just strikingly like my very favorite the coffee.

Miriam shrieked at the sight singer. Guess who.”

“The billywilly!” Mrs. Harbor of Mrs. Harbor’s shaggy Russian hat on the other side of the blinds. said and gave Miriam her hand.

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“Celesta.”

“And you!” Miriam held Celesta’s hand in hers. “You are the prettiest thing to grace this town in memory. Keep the dogs at bay, Ash!” Miriam frowned.

“Billywilly?”

“She meant hillbilly.” To Celesta: “Not all countrysingers are billywillies.” “ H a w h e e h a w h e e h a w,” Celesta donkied.

To Ashley: “You must get the comparison a lot.” Ashley shrugged.

They sat around her desk.

“And where are you from?

You have such a wonderful accent!” Miriam asked Celesta. If not for her bent nose and all those crooked teeth lynched about her bright tongue Miriam would have likened to some actress or other.

“Paris.”

“No!” “No?” “I mean, you really are? Paris to New York to Bridgeman!”

“But I am,” Celesta said.

“I know,” Miriam said. “But what a change this must be!”

“We just need a place to rest a bit,” Ashley said.

“Well, I have six such places all prepared to show you. In fact, I’m not sure how you two are going to make up your minds they’re all so lovely!”

“But Miriam,” Celesta said, her serried smile gone for the

first time since she’d entered the trailer, “how can you know the place we need?”

Miriam tried to speak and made a strange noise. Sans smile Celesta’s eyes were insensate.

Miriam thought of the wartorn eyes that’d accuse her from the pages of National Geographic, the eyes of people who’d died a long time ago. When a moment later Celesta smiled Miriam forgot that dead pause and went into her spiel about the only affordable ‘oceanfront’ property in America.

“So shall we get started?

Couples often want to see the same home two, even three times in a day to ensure they make the perfect choice.”

“Miriam,” Ashley said, “we’ll be happy and grateful to you if you can set us up in one of those apartments right there out your window. Just a mile to the beach, right?”

Miriam cracked up. “Ok! Let’s go!” She clapped her hands and rose from her desk.

“But you haven’t even checked my credit,” Ashley said.

“Minor details can be handled later. We gotta jump on these puppies while they’re still squirming!”

“Squirming puppies!”

Celesta cachinnated.

A clonic tightening rucked Miriam’s salesmile as she remembered the whooo the

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beast had made.

“Miriam,” Ashley said, “I have terrible credit and Celesta isn’t even a citizen.”

“But you’re married,” Miriam said as much as asked.

“And I’ve the bread in the box,” Celesta said.

“Bun in the oven,” Ashley said. “And the McKiegans’ will be back in their place at the end of the month which gives us two weeks.”

“Every place we go in Brooklyn,” Celesta said, “even that nasty, nasty place Bedstuy, doesn’t let us for this or that reason get a home, and then we had enough money, and when I try to beg, to say I have the baby coming, they say no way because babies stink and make noise and need building insurance and cages for windows and I could have just popped their…”

“Celesta, you brave woman,” Miriam took her hand, “not another word.” She looked to Ashley. “On my word you will not end up in those apartments. You may not be on the lake, but you’ll be pretty damn close by March first! That’s a promise.”

Miriam excused herself to the bathroom before the tears brimmed over. And to think I was worried about a spot on my nose when the whole state of New York has turned away a pregnant couple! she thought. She blew

her nose, winced. Turned their backs on a miracle in waiting!

When she returned both had a handful of cashews from the bowl on her desk.

“Wait! They’re stale!”

“No, they’re just fine,” Ashley said. “Sorry we didn’t ask, but we can never resist nuts.”

“Or cheese,” Celesta said.

“Gruyere! Camambere! Pecorino!”

“Tell you what,” Miriam worked her jaw to stay a fresh spate of tears, “I’m sick of my office for the day! Let’s make our game plan over brunch on me! As a Welcome to Bridgeman gift!”

And she ran this time to the bathroom to sob. She’d been overwhelmed by her own generosity and insight and the morning’s excess adrenalin. “I’ve a cream for that!” Celesta called after her and Ashley laughed into the crook of his arm.

• Miriam made sure to end her day before dusk settled, for night arrived as if by switch. She took Beach Road to Main Street with its Five-n-Dime, Benjamin Franklin, Payless Shoes, barbershop, the recently added Sera’s Hair and Nail Salon, liquorstore, minimart, Mobile gasstation, Al’s Steakhouse and Bar, a closed Dairy Queen connected to an opened A&W and so on all the

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way to the onramp that connected she entered.

Bridgeman to the interstate, to the “Miriam!” they said together. rest of the world. The apartments “Need some throwaways.” above the businesses had long “Not feeding them coons been in desuetude, windows again, are you?” one asked. broken or plywood slabs. Old “What kind of animal just people moved without purpose leaves its litter, that’s what I want over sidewalks and streets near to know?” Miriam said, not sure cleared of snow. Uncle Sam why she felt compelled to lie to and bleached flags from last them. year’s Fourth of July declared “Kind whose babies grow mailboxes along the sidestreets up just like it I imagine,” the other and no one ever went into the said. “Know it’s harsh, Miriam, but Radio Shack that refused to close. you outta let them coon pups just A few teenagers skateboarded die off like nature intended.” down the drag. Sometime ago “You know, you’re the those between second asked for um eighteen and fifty bottom scrapings,” had vanished while OLD PEOPLE MOVED the other said.

Miriam had been “Only the WITHOUT PURPOSE looking the other other wanted only OVER SIDEWALKS um hearts we got,” way. The youth, near all male, were kept AND STREETS NEAR the other said. by the senescent.

“Said nothing CLEARED OF SNOW. Most of the else but that.” town thought the “Vac ationer s. twin butchers with their long Entrails fine?” ensanguined tonsuregrown hair “Yeah, just perfect, Earl. and teenaged beards a force to Were they a really handsome be feared, all the more so because couple? Big city?” Miriam asked. they were necessary. Each “Regular movie stars,” Earl weighed around three hundred said. “Only man seemed bit pounds on any given day. Miriam unhealthy. Reminded me of liked them. They were two of the someone. Me and Ernie had us only men left her age. um good debate over it.”

The green walls, yellow “Hank Williams?” Miriam floortiles and fluorescents said. sallowed the vespertine light, “Goddamn, Miriam! Damn aged the displayed meat. right!” Ernie said.

“Hey boys!” Miriam called as “That’s it, by God!”

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“They’re my clients. pepperspray. The snow had left Practically kicked out of New an integument of ice atop the York for being pregnant! And so sand that cracked and slipped they’re here. You know what most beneath her foot. Squirrels people from a big city like New clucked and the owl began its York or Paris would do, don’t you? haunt. An offal pleat collimated Before they let themselves get the to her footprints. When she got old Joseph and Mary treatment, to the top of the soft wooden stairs and stood level with her don’t you?”

“Like um raccoons only home Miriam scanned her meek worse cause um they’re people,” yard of sand and tree detritus, the planked path to her front one of the two said.

Before leaving Main Street porch. Its massive prints were she stopped at the hardware everywhere. It’d dug many holes without filling them. It buried store for pepperspray. nothing. A nuchal tickle: the mantic certainty of its approach.

• At the sound of its wheezewhoo Despite how awful she’d she flung the entrails into the air knew it’d be an imp prompted and ejected the pepperspray Miriam to look at her reflection down the front of her skirt. in the swag of blood on her black leather passenger seat. Shadow • scurried to meet shadow as the last idea of the sun was aspirated She’d been awake for by rocks and the nooks of gnarled a minute staring unfocused trees and the crawlspace among through a slit in her blinds at the the stilts beneath her home eoan harlequin on her front lawn. she’d entered but once and in She must have hit snooze twice in a different lifetime. A cloacal her sleep. The labial scar where its collop from the poorly wrapped throat had been incised wiggled innards hit the counterblister and and she ran to the shower where shuddered her reflection. Though for some time she tried to decide the effluvium of iron and shit if the dog had been there since demanded a quick exit Miriam first she woke. remained in her car until she’d Out her shower window command her heart to relative she saw the intestines it couldn’t stillness. She loosened the twine reach festooned from the black so she might discard the aperient branches of the walnut tree cords in one motion, readied the that shaded her front yard so

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well in the summer, pawprints constellated by offaldrip ordained by windsway.

should lie.

“Took her as one myself. But nope, she’s just asking about for a job.” Georgie laughed. “Like a • woman like that ever worked one day in her pretty little life.”

Miriam finished her “You’re not hiring? Pretty hardboiled eggs and toast, the young lady like that might be only things she knew she could good for business.” keep down, and took her time “You think my wife wouldn’t with her tea in the windowbooth guess what’d be on my mind of Diner Elvis, a small silver trailer every damn minute of the day? much like her office just off Main Ha! Plus she came on all strange.”

Street. She kept her mind on the “That’s ‘cause she’s not Harbors whom she’d meet in an American. You’ve never seen one hour. Just to whisper their name of those, huh, Georgie?” had the tears eager to well. To be “How’d you know that, in such a position. To be the only Miriam?” one able to remedy a tragedy. “’Cause you’re as backwoods Miriam made herself think of the as they get, hun.” beast to hold the “I meant her tears back, paid "YOU'RE NOT HIRING? being not American. and left.

How could you Out front PRETTY YOUNG LADY have known, just she saw Celesta, LIKE THAT MIGHT BE watching her leave?” same as yesterday gives it GOOD FOR BUSINESS" away“Jacket minus the fur hat, in a heartbeat.” leave the Hallmark Miriam felt a bit giftshop a block from Diner Elvis proud of her newfound ease with and enter Bibi’s Flowers one door lies. “Think I spent all my life in over.

Bridgeman?”

Miriam thought for a “Yeah, well, it wasn’t moment and headed opposite on account of her being not the direction of her office.

American. When I said we weren’t In Hallmark she cut the a hiring at the moment she did smalltalk short with Georgie. this thing that got my shorthairs “What’d that young lady in all on end.” the purple coat want, Georgie?

“What’d she do?”

Didn’t recognize her. Tourist?”

Georgie thought, scratched Again she didn’t know why she his gut through his flannel. “Funny.

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I can’t quite member. Maybe was smear no larger than the head just a feeling is all.” of a nail had been left where had “You didn’t like that young, it been a residence a doorbell gorgeous woman, Georgie? She would be expected. It looked as if not your type?” it’d been there for years. Probably “Oh no, like I said, I liked her it had, Miriam told herself. She all too good and plenty, but then pressed it and waited. she just did something. Teeth was fucked up, for sure!” Georgie • laughed. “Never seen such a pretty one with such a mouth.

“I got you a job if you want Too big a mouth too. Big alligator it, Celesta,” Miriam said at the mouth.” He shook his head to end of a day of rejections from himself. “Hell, all she did was stop potential houses, trailers and her smiling and look at me. That’s apartments, hold one where the all.” landlord said he’d give it to them Back outside if it hadn’t sold by Miriam saw Celesta the first and if they exit the Radio Shack MIRIAM OPENED HER could come up with across the street MOUTH TO CALL OUT an extra month’s and stop in its rent to make up for TO HER AND ONLY Ashley’s entrance to search bad credit.

A STUNTED VOWEL “I know it’s none of in the pocket of her purple jacket. my business, but, ISSUED. Miriam opened I…I thought maybe her mouth to call you could use one. out to her and only a stunted It’d help a lot with you guys vowel issued.

Elbowdeep getting a place. Probably would Celesta’s jacket sleeve had have scored any of those today if been accordioned into a loud they knew you were working.” foreskin. Celesta adjusted her “We go to the lake?” Celesta stance like an oldtimer at a urinal, asked when Miriam drove past removed her arm and with that her silver trailer. hand touched the desquamated “Love,” Ashley said, “Miriam paint as if ringing a doorbell. just said she got you a job.”

Celesta tugged her sleeve down, “I thought we’d discuss our pelvisforward headed toward the gameplan for tomorrow on the State bank on the corner. When pier, if that’s fine.” she entered the bank Miriam Celesta clapped her hands. crossed the street. A ferrous “We haven’t seen the ‘ocean’

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yet,” Ashley said.

“What! Really?”

“No time.”

“But where exactly are you staying?” Miriam asked. “Pretty much anywhere in Bridgeman is close enough to walk to the lake.”

“Oh, I thought you knew where the McKiegans’ place was.”

“There’s so many of them, Mckiegans, I mean. Most are right downtown.”

“Way out on Burns Road, a few miles north of the powerplant.”

“But how do you get all the way into town, Ash?” Miriam reached across the front seats to touch his forearm then further cracked her window against the causticity of bleach and pinescent and dross.

“What kind of job did you find Celesta?” he asked.

“Oh! It’s at the Methodist Home. It pays way way better than most of the lousy jobs you can land in this town.”

“Methodist?” Celesta asked from the back seat, unbuckled and scooted forward to sit between them, hands dangled over their shoulders. “Method house?”

“Methodist is a church, love.”

“With Jesus?”

“Yeah, that kind, baby.”

“Is that ok?” Miriam asked as they descended into the crepuscular flume.

“But then must I go inside of…”

“They’re usually very old and pretty over here too, Celesta,” Ashley said. “Not France but close.”

Head craned between Miriam and Ashley Celesta stared out the front window up at the trees that left but a creak of sky.

“It’s just owned by the church,” Miriam said. “It’s an oldfolks home. You’d be caring for the elderly and infirmed. Very rewarding work, Celesta. I know because that’s where I worked for two years while getting my license and establishing myself out here in Bridgemen. And, and you get health insurance after just three months which will definitely come in handy soon enough, believe me!”

“Do you think ever how this can never, ever,” Miriam felt Celesta’s eyes on the side of her face, those wartorn eyes that’d not look any different if focused on a walnut tree partyfavored with entrails, “happen again and how that’s the only thing making this at all something important?”

• Four days later Miriam threw last night’s meatloaf out her bedroom window into the trampled rosebushes of styrofoamchunk bones and leaves and left for work, pepperspray braceleted on her right wrist. It’d

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not mattered she’d forgotten wouldbe starlet. Miriam imagined to set her alarm due to the wine her and her handsome foreign she had allowed herself, for the husband as strong people who wheezewhoo announced hunger preferred the humble niceties and a new day as it did every of life over the absurdity of morning. It’d be the first time she fame, glamour. They’d stay in saw them since Celesta started Bridgeman and have a baby of work at theMethodist Home. She their own and it’d live and grow had explained to them, Ashley up healthy and the grandparents mostly, that they didn’t want to would be fulfilled in their old age. exhaust their options before they “Miriam, you’re plain had steady employment on their sobbing,” Nancy said and forced side, hence the break in the hunt. her ponderous body into the At Diner Elvis Miriam booth across from her. Miriam mourned her ritual wakeup with hadn’t told Celesta about Nancy. the deer in the valley. When “Get a hold of yourself, dearie, she’d finished her first cup of I got something to talk to you tea she touched the dull throb about.” on her nose and ordered a side “Oh,” Miriam made a noise of sausage and grits. While she a bit like the dog’s wheezewhoo, waited Miriam did something “sorry, Ms…Nancy. Just got… she’d yet to do. She imagined carried away I suppose.” the baby born and growing up in “First of all your foreign Bridgeman. Its summers on the queen refuses to wipe asses beach and winters sledding down and…” the sugarbowls off the coast.

“But…” The safety the town provided.

“Second of all she says she’ll Paradise for a child who has no only bathe the men and only if eyes for poverty. She went as far it’s a shower, something about as to imagine its teenage years ragwater and…” when all it wanted was to move “But she was joking I’m sure away to New York or Paris, and and…” how healthy and good that would “And I haven’t even gotten be, though it’d drive the knowing to the big blamo, dearie. And, parents crazy. She imagined her for that matter, a hundred other in Paris in love and ten years later pieces of utter nonsense as if that moving back to Bridgeman with baby no bigger than a walnut,” her handsome foreign husband, Miriam frowned, “made her an as handsome as Hank Williams. everloving princess. Anyway, The tiny baby grown up into a listen to what you’re little foreign

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devil did just a halfhour ago.” spitting on this white rag gone Nancy raised the purple virgules all sooty in the courtyard and of her factitious eyebrows and putting it to Mr. McGorrlick’s waited for Miriam’s interest to head, the last one left I was to pique. “Well, she cleaned the learn, with such a fury the poor ashes from every last one of their old man’s begging her to stop foreheads.” but what can he do, the poor old Miriam thought, man, as his very own everloving remembered, felt ashamed of religion’s wiped clean away by her aloofness. “But Nancy, she’s some foreign devil’s spit. And European! She thought the batty then. And then! Here she…” old buggers were dirty!” She paused. “Or something.”

• “Oh no. Oh no! She knew exactly, to the everloving T, what “What’s all this?” Ashley she was doing.” asked after Miriam had popped “But how do you…” the trunk of her car.

“She came to me after the “Yours,” she said to the bus dropped them couple out front of all off after the " her office after a service in a panic, WELL, SHE CLEANED long day of refusals only she wasn’t all THE ASHES FROM and requests for panicky, mind, but deposits EVERY LAST ONE OF exorbitant still, so still, and with that amounted to this terrible look THEIR FOREHEADS." the same thing. in those unsightly “And! I’m driving you eyes, and she asks, home today and ‘Why the dirt on their heads?’ And picking you up tomorrow. From in very patient and great detail I now on.” explain the whole thing to her, as “But, Miriam,” he said, you would a child, mind, and the returned a canned good to the whole time I see her getting even brimful trunk. more still and more panicked in “No, Ash. This is my way of that still way certain oddballs get saying,” she tried to spit it out, panicked and so she leaves very “of saying…saying fuck you to slow with her hands out at her this…this bigoted town. First that hips, like them Japanese women terrible, awful –and I’m so sorry in the Bond movies do, like she I didn’t warn you, Celesta, I just was some sort of princess dancer. didn’t want to scare you away from Twenty minutes later I see her health insurance- but that terrible,

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awful…bitch fires Celesta, now and sleep would not return. An even the slumlords get high and alterity unidentifiable with herself mighty ‘cause you don’t talk hick had never before come to her in and cut wood! Damn it! I’ll say it her sleep, let alone commanded again, Fuck Bridgeman!” her. A sudden the presence of “But…” Ashley said. space beneath her where the stilts “No buts about it! And my and their darkness held the home fee is waved. This has gotten together diastoled. She could personal.” They got into her car feel and hear it, the crawlspace and she started off where the toward the sticks. foundation began.

“You know what?” AT FIRSTLIGHT SHE An ululate draught she said to them, DARED NOT OBSERVE through some radiant, as if she vacant land equal THE DEER. were pregnant. “I to it arrived with a think after I get you rarefied moment of two all set up and inspiration. She’d secure I’m getting the hell out of only ever heard of people waking Dodge!” from dreams inspired and in “The hell out of Dodge?” her case she’d no idea how her Celesta said and pushed up inspiration derived from her between them to take in the view. dream, though she could not “Ashley, explain.” deny their connection. She’d make the offer when all else had been exhausted and they’d have • no choice but to accept.

At firstlight she dared not That night a wheezewhoo woke Miriam from a nightmare. A observe the deer.

She pitched some leftover magnificent angel in a desert of charred telephone poles bare of innards onto the thorned scapes wire had commanded her to kill and mammocked styrofoam and their baby. Couchant in bed she without a shower or tea skittered listened for the beast and from under the changing entrails to the nightsounds distinguished its her car while the mammoth dog pacing along her porch. Dreams, feasted and whinnied like some Miriam thought, are not meant to eunuch horse. They swayed as be taken literally. For moments ornaments do. Peacefully. Their she’d zoneout to the clockwork stench a weight on the yard. of her sentry’s onus but the angel and its command were persistent •

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When Miriam at dusk returned to her office she saw on the welcome mat a set of keys, just two keys on a ring, and she remembered clearly as they left for the hunt that morning Celesta taking them from Ashley and putting them into the same pocket of her purplejacket she’d dug so deeply into in front of Radio Shack. And Miriam did remember hearing the sound of something metallic clanking on the ground as she turned to shut and lock her trailer door but then she’d been distracted from scanning the ground, for the twin butchers had driven by in their Bronco honking like it was the end of the world.

She remembered all this in the moment it took to stoop and pick up the keys that’d fallen through the hole in Celesta’s pocket.

Miriam got back in her car to drive back to Burns Road.

She put both hands on the wheel without turning the ignition and stared at the goosepimples along her forearms while Radio Shack’s new doorbell anamestically amplified to the size and color of the sun contained within her rearview mirror. How far she’d dug in her arm. Past the elbow. Her grotesque downward squat and wiggle. Then Miriam foresaw the couple standing at the front door of her home with the beast between them, their

hands on its head, wanting their keys. But the angel…Miriam whispered. She turned the car on and left, the sun in her rearview mirror for most of the drive.

A sinister piece of symphony music blared from the fourroom country shack set far off a dirt road at the bottom of a sugarbowl coppice. Miriam heard it before she could see the home.

Though nearly night no lights shone from the shack. She turned off the car. The windowpane by the front door handle had been smashed. An alterity akin to that exuded by the dreamt angel again arrived as if she’d entered into a moment beyond the pale of those foreordained her own.

As the symphony crescendoed Miriam feared her inertia might be eternal, that possibly she’d died and was to be so planted forever.

She would never exit her car, drop the keys in front of their door and speed off toward home and the dog if she didn’t act immediately, so she acknowledged each part of her body, moved each part slightly to know it was there, all the while noting each breath and heartbeat, and opened the door.

She walked a step at a time to the front door.

Through the hole in the pane that gave view the living room Miriam saw the Harbors naked, Celesta on her knees on the hardwood floor with her

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mouth around Ashley’s bleeding wrist. Foiled by imbrued carapace her opalescent eyes looked up into his. Blood mapped the floor. When she switched to his disgusting curved verrucose erection, Miriam set the keys on the welcome mat and ran to her car.

• Miriam had forgotten to go to the butchers and it was too late to go back to town. They’d be closed. Absently she touched her nose, turned off her car. The dog sat atop the steps darker than the night about it. It whinnied and thumped its tail when Miriam got out, hand readied on the pepperspray.

“I don’t want to use this,” she called, her first words to the dog, “so you just scat and I’ll feed you in the morning.”

Its tail thumped, an anticipatory wiping of ass on step.

Miriam stood at the bottom of the stairs. It made no move toward her though its asswiping and tailthumping grew more frenzied.

It wheezewhooed and Miriam laughed.

“I guess a big thing like you needs a lot of food, huh? No, just let me squeeze on by.”

When she reached the third step, two from the dog, it scooted to one side and craned its long

neck toward her, its alligatorlike mouth parted to let its tongue out, as if it’d been trained to stay sitting to receive its treat. Her property smelled of roadkill.

“That’s right. Good boy. You stay. Stay. Sit.” A strange imp had her stop beside the dog, its head level with her breasts. She told it to stay and stared down at it. A Jim Henson Muppet, she thought. A ridiculous creature. She walked backwards to her front door all the while commanding it to stay.

Before she entered her house she flicked a precipitate collop from the padded shoulder of her jacket.

• After her third glass of wine Miriam put a roast in the oven to make sandwiches with for the rest of the week. She drank another glass and went into the kitchen.

She took the roast from the oven, cut off a third, put it on a paper plate and went to her bedroom.

She whistled and called once out her window, tossed the meat to the rosebushes.

Back in the livingroom supported by the stilts Miriam called her competitors and each laughed at her ‘gift’ of the Harbors. When for a moment she fell asleep in her chair she dreamt she heard the glass pane of her

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front door shatter. She opened That morning Miriam simply her eyes and heard the dog’s tossed the rest of the roast sentinelpace along her front toward where the dog sat just off porch. Miriam grinned, shook the porch on her way beneath the her head and fell asleep again ropes to her car. to see Celesta at “Bye, Beast,” the bottom of a she called and MIRIAM AWOKE TO sugarbowl on her slammed the door.

THE CACOPHONIC back, legs spread, At the bottom moaning and SOBS OF NEWBORNS of her drive Miriam wailing pleasurably MUFFLED WITHIN THE stayed parked at an in childbirth. A idle for one hour. freshet of tar and CRAWLSPACE BEYOND At half past sandwhite bones THE ROTTING PILLARS noon Miriam pulled belched from her up to her silver trailer vagina, solidified THAT KEPT HER HOME in the government into a black hand FROM ROLLING DOWN housing parkinglot. with white claws Semis roared by THE VALLEY. that grew up the overhead. She let steep wall of sand herself in, threw toward where Miriam stood her bag on the desk and stalked watching. At twenty yards in to the bathroom where she took length the arm rose like the head some aspirin to mollify her first of a cobra and in that instant hangover in over a decade. When grew another twenty yards so Miriam returned from john the that it swayed unsteady and blind Harbors were seated in their before Miriam’s face sniffing with chairs in front of her desk eating its tusks. her stale cashews.

Miriam awoke to the “Wow! Miriam, you walked cacophonic sobs of newborns past us like we are to be ghosts!” muffled within the crawlspace Celesta said. beyond the rotting pillars that “Sorry to intrude, but we kept her home from rolling down were getting cold waiting and the the valley. The sobs became no door was unlocked, so…” more than echoes of nightmare “But, I…” Miriam had both and memory. Dead now to the hands pressed to her heart, head steady pacing of the dog. nodding yes. “I’m so sorry I didn’t pick you up like I said…or call…it’s • just the dog…this beast has been terrorizing me. Literally terrorizing

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me day and night. Holding me hostage in my own home and…I just couldn’t face it this morning and I…” “What kind of dog?” Ashley asked.

“Big dog. Huge dog,” she said between gasps. “Full of hair.

Giant.”

“But you call the police, no?”

Celesta asked.

“I haven’t told anybody. I know that’s crazy. I don’t know why.”

Ashley stood. He paused there, then walked to Miriam and put a hand on each padded shoulder. Like Celesta wars seemed to have been witnessed by his eyes, but from them came a kind of awesome Jesuscompassion. The eyes of a mystagogue. Miriam felt her knees go soft. His scrofulous gored cock lodged in her mind.

Those horrible lumps.

“Well, now you have, Miriam.

And it’s not crazy. Not at all.

Sometimes things are so strange you become ashamed to even acknowledge them to yourself.”

“It’s just…”

Miriam let Ashley sit her down. When his hands and eyes had left her Miriam looked past him and for a moment saw Celesta’s face as it’d been while engorging.

Ashley leaned toward her, elbows on her desk.

“Miriam,” he said as if they were sharing a pillow, “you can forget about that beast. I promise.

I’ll call the pound and set it up.

But we’ve less than a week left and then me and Celesta have nowhere to go. That’s not an exaggeration. And I know you said you’ll wave your fee, but I promise you, with time we will pay it. It’s just I can’t seem to land a job.”

“But,” Miriam paused, “but I thought you were a writer, or an artist or something, that you were waiting on a check from New York City.”

Ashley sat back down by Celesta. “I’m not sure why you thought that. But no.”

“But I swear you said so.”

“Nope. Why would I tell a lie like that? But it’s ok, Miriam, I get it a lot. Got the face of an artist, I suppose, but the only thing I’ve ever created is in Celesta. Fact is, second to a home, I need a job, Miriam, and I was hoping you could help me with that. It’s hard getting people to trust you being an out-of-towner.”

• Two days later Miriam pulled over to the side of a graveled road to let Celesta out of the car to vomit. Ashley was painting the interior of an old lady’s home by

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the Main Street bank. He’d given couldn’t speak. Celesta hadn’t Celesta a signed check should smiled once that day and Miriam they find a place that’d accept couldn’t look her way or speak them as tenants. without godly effort. “How weird “Some mornings I vomit, to come from there to here, no? some no, who knows.” Celesta Like you said, no?” got back in.

Miriam nodded, glanced Miriam said nothing. She into her mouth, teeth twodeep continued onward, further from like a shark’s and almost pointed.

Bridgman, from the apartment She noticed Celesta hadn’t put she’d found that morning she her seatbelt back on and began knew the Harbors and their baby- studying the lone roadside tree or to-be could get. She’d no idea cinderblock mailbox. the right choice “You and I and MIRIAM NODDED, to make. She’d Ashley, we are so awoken falsely at GLANCED INTO HER very the same. Who dawn from one isn’t? But we can MOUTH, TEETH dream to another, name what is the beside her in bed precious thing, no?

TWODEEP LIKE A the Harbors and Many feel but can’t SHARK'S AND ALMOST nameit, no?” their pitchblack POINTED. newborn. Foreign M i r i a m paintings and nodded and photos decorated her walls. The remembered the oak round the dog wheezewhooed from the next sharp curve that’d been split crawlspace. When she awoke truly by lightning last fall. She slowed she for the first time in memory down a bit and began playing or ever felt thankful for bitter with the radio as if certain it held knowledge, for by it the dream’s something she had to hear, the realization would be obviated. volume too low to distinguish The angel’s command had to be even the genre of music, eyes not reinterpreted. on the road, hands lose on the “If you could imagine, wheel.

Miriam,” Celesta said and Miriam “Many say, oh, ‘being alive’ cracked her window against the or ‘setting sun’ or ‘servitude’ but an empty stomach’s bilious purge, we know they are too right but “where we come from. Just like only in a piece. We know what is you said when first we met and precious is not what can leave like then you liked us.” Out of habit the snap of the fingers, without Miriam tried to protest but warning whatsoever, but, how do

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you say it as an expression…” funny sounds as she fought and Celesta locked and won each breath. The dog was unlocked the doors in thought. upon her in furious mount, neck “Ah! It is the Act of Leaving! arched and strained. Spotlighted The Act of Leaving. Not what’s by headlights its eunuchhowls left. And what it leaves us until devitrified the calm above the dark fury where goodbye cruel world!

Miriam sobbed But how alien is the act THE DOG WAS UPON pinned in the of leaving and not for HER IN FURIOUS murk of fungus, us to say? How terrible, a bloodless death. A MOUNT, NECK ARCHED dirt, leafrot, old blood and shit, cheat. TREE!” AND STRAINED. dreadlocked Celesta shouted fur abrasive as and cracking up at the perfection of the moment she’d cornleaves, forelegs clamped to enticed into being she plugged padded shoulders, a rumble from in her safety belt and managed to the very deep of its body.

As sudden the dog began clap her hands twice. wildly circling Miriam to better lick every part of her face and the • hands she held up as a shield. It From the darkness between then plopped its osteal weight the headlight beams Miriam across her lap and touched its yanked ferns from the grill of her dry cold nose to her nose. Miriam car; she’d simply driven through wrapped her arms around its neck some foliage before regaining the and continued to cry.

Miriam would have let it stay road. A large fern would not easily break and its anfractuous knot in the house that night had she would not be undone. Worried been certain it’d pace the interior a harsh yank would tear the grill as it did the porch and yard in the from the car Miriam slowly put her hypnotic clockwork of security. weight into tugging it free.

She craned her head back • all the way to watch her breath fog As it had for the last two the stark trees that segmented weeks a wheezewhoo woke the stars, a puzzle slightly apart. Miriam just before a bit of light Long after she’d forgotten her changed everything, only it’d purpose the branch came free come not from the window by and Miriam fell on her tailbone. her bed but the hollows of the Curled upon herself Miriam made forest. The lakeeffect snow had

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reginned the world without. There’s a bit of food in your hair, She took her tea to the kitchen I think.” window and looked down into “And your nose, Miriam!” the valley, the irradiant snow.

“Fell from the tree.” Miriam Can’t have everything, she said opened the door. “And Voila!” to herself of the herd’s absence. She spread her arms in embrace The dog lay where the deer had, of the meager room. its hindquarters snowcovered.

“Funny,” Ashley said, “that Steam rose from the shadow that the last tenant left this.” burgeoned about its head.

“Not quite,” Miriam said My poor baby, Miriam and forced herself to blush. “It’s thought before she submerged a housewarming gift from me to her nose into her tea and squeezed you! Or from me to baby, actually!” shut her eyes, recalled her dream.

“But Miriam,” Celesta said, The magnificent angel had “it’s all spiderstringy and like it commanded her to do something used to hold flowers and was even more unthinkable and to do emptied.” it with her typical charity. It spoke “Celesta,” Ashley said, clearly and promised her that this “Miriam has made us a gift. We was the answer, enjoined her not can clean it later.” to get ‘inspired’. To what hell will I “But Miriam,” Celesta said, next be delivered if I don’t obey? “it’s just…”

Miriam asked herself, removed “Celesta, it’s a gift for the her scalded nose, made for the baby. It’s good luck, my love.” space under her home amongst “It’s just,” Celesta turned the stilts in her pink nightgown from Miriam to Ashley, “I’m sorry, careful not to look valleyward that Ashley,” she turned back, “but an action began so long ago and Miriam, there is no baby.” now so close to completion not Miriam didn’t say anything. be unhinged.

Then she said, “It’s pink. You can “And this,” Miriam said as rock her to sleep with just your she led them down the hallway, toe while you read a book and “is the office for the young writer, drink tea looking out the window. that is until baby is old enough There was so much to choose to have her own room, but by from, but I was told to choose this. then I’m sure you’ll be back in It’s pink.” the bustle of New York or Paris “Miriam,” Celesta walked to thanking God Himself you didn’t the window careful not to touch literally die from boredom!” the gift, her cheeks as flush as “I’m not a writer, Miriam. Miriam’s, “there’s no baby. We

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lied so you’d work good and we’d not have to pay because we can’t pay. You are so good a woman I just must tell you that we lied.”

“Lied,” Miriam repeated, shook her head.

“Look!” Celesta shouted, opened the window and stuck her head into the warming noon air.

“Your office! Hi office! Hi Miriam!”

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AFFECTION SUN HAN ACRYLIC ON CANVAS

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BEAUTY BEAST CELINA GIRAUD DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

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THE PIERS NICOLE PERGUE POETRY You were a natural daughter of the city, a red rocket coming straight from the hills of Queens, you only rode the R trainthat rancid R with the stained orange slice seats that took you straight onto Christopher Street. At the Piers, you and your friends would play tag, spinning to a giddy end on stony ground, spinning the bottle with strangersgirls with scowling puffed faces and knife-sharp mohawks, Joey and Jason and Jordan with the iridescent purple shadow rubbed in circles around his eyes, a shimmering pigeon throwing his head back as the last of the liquor emptied out into his mouth, streaking his cheeks and shining in the face of the sticky June sun.

The Piers are my office, storage space and living room, he laughed as the plastic bottle picked each of us.

Tell the truth, do the dare, are you around today?

Come to the Piers, we’re playing uno and who cares

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that you can’t get a drink at Stonewall, there’s here and there under these trash-vibed Pier-fumes, and we got cigarettes and the good shit-talking: You know how many dykes are named Sarah? Too many!

The night you Iearned to throw your first punchbrawling with low-brows outside that pizza spot, straight arm shot out with knuckled up fist, thumb curved over, not under, or you’ll break your index to the sounds of faggot and bitch. You shot toughness around, we threw empty beer bottles and said, Fuck this, fuck them, what kinda asshole tries to hit a girl?

We walked to the Piers as the sun rose, looked out to the waves from the concrete ‘cause no one wanted to go home. We told jokes and laughed like quivering florets.

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ú ú "

MIXED MEDIA SCULPTURE

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LOST FLOWERS JACOB CINTRON DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

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TOP OF THE FOOD CHAIN CHIREAU WHITE DRAMA ACT I, SCENE 1 The setting of the play takes place in the holding cell of the 65th precinct, located in Manhattan, New York.

The outside of the door is guarded by two police officers at all times while the inside of the room has two hidden cameras. One single flickering florescent light illuminates the area. Inside the cell sits a silver toilet, center stage left, and two metal benches positioned perpendicular to one another, covering center stage to downstage right.

AT RISE: THELMA, a 60-yearold woman in a blue floral housedress, sits on one of the benches picking at her nails. LIZZY, a 40-yearold vegan in a t-shirt that reads “Animal Liberation�, is arguing with DETECTIVE ANDERSON, dressed in a blue police outfit, offstage left.

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LIZZY (offstage) You’re intimidation won’t work on me!

THELMA looks offstage right and begins to ease drop.

LIZZY (loudly) Let go of me, I know my rights! I said let go of me!

A brief scuffle is heard offstage left and then suddenly from offstage right.

Enter, stage right, OFFICER ANDERSON and LIZZY, in handcuffs.

OFFICER ANDERSON (to LIZZY) I’ve never had a woman give me as much trouble as you. (unlocks LIZZY’S cuffs) Excluding my ex-wife Sheila, now she, (Laughs) she was an untamable bitch.

LIZZY gives OFFICER ANDERSON a dirty look.

Anyways I think a stay in the cage will do you some good.

OFFICER ANDERSON opens the cell, and quickly shuts it back.

shoves LIZZY in,

LIZZY (angry) You have no grounds to hold me here. I’ve done nothing wrong.

OFFICER ANDERSON After that elbow in the face, I’d call this--

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LIZZY (interrupts) You disrupted our protest. The person who you should be arresting is McDonald’s CEO for doing business with farmers who not only force feed their animals but keep them in small confined living quarters that are rarely cleaned.

OFFICER ANDERSON (sighs) You assaulted an officer and organized several unauthorized protests around the city. Be happy no one’s pressing charges.

LIZZY (calmly) Well I didn’t hit you on purpose. (short pause) It was done out of impulse.

I apologize.

(shorter pause)

OFFICER ANDERSON Although I appreciate the sentiment I’m not letting you out until someone posts bail for you, Ms. Rosetti.

(Turns towards the exit) Have a nice day. back to the door.

OFFICER ANDERSON makes his way

LIZZY (furious) Come back here! I’m not done talking to you!

THELMA rises from her seat and slowly approaches the front of the cell.

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THELMA (sweetly) Mister Anderson, before you go, could you let me know how long you plan on keeping me here. I’m getting a bit hungry.

OFFICER ANDERSON stops at the door and looks back at THELMA holding her gaze for a moment. He then stiffly turns back to the door and exits.

THELMA frowns as she slowly makes her way back to the bench.

LIZZY (loudly) I see how the NYPD works now! Locking up old ladies and women instead of real criminals!

Cowards.

(whispers)

(turns to THELMA) It seems we’re both in quite a way here, huh?

It seems so.

THELMA (sighs)

LIZZY (Extends hand) My names Lizzy by the way.

THELMA (Grasps LIZZY’S hand) Nice to meet you. I’m Thelma.

(LIZZY smiles at Thelma then frowns. She begins to pace back and forth.)

LIZZY (Worried)

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What am I going to do? My husband is going to be furious once he finds out I’m in jail again.

THELMA I’m sure after you cook him a good meal and he has a quick nap; he’ll be fine.

LIZZY (Laughs) I don’t cook for him.

I see

THELMA (Shocked)

(Short Pause) I’m sure things will work out.

LIZZY (Defensively) Well you see I’m a vegan so I don’t cook what he likes.

A vegan?

THELMA (Uncertainly)

LIZZY (Stops Pacing) So the short version is that I don’t eat meat or products made from animals, like cheese or milk. I don’t wear fur, I don’t condone animals used for entertainment, and I don’t use products that utilize animal testing.

THELMA (Quizzical Look) Oh (Pause) I see. I don’t really understand why a person would do that though?

Well why not?

LIZZY

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THELMA Because we are people.

(Opens mouth to show teeth) We’re born with canines to eat meat.

LIZZY But we don’t have to. Although I do understand that meat is the fastest and most convenient source of protein, there are other sources like soy and nuts that can compensate for that. We’ve evolved to a point where we can even make meat substitutes like tofu. We could survive without it. We don’t have to beat pigs unconscious, slit their bellies open, and hang them upside down to get “quality meat.”

We don’t have to skin fish alive to preserve the freshness.

We don’t have to steal the children of cows, chicken, or other animals to sate our own appetites. Yeah if we give up meat, we’ll be giving up a part of our own pleasure that we’re not used to living without. However, we’ll stop the cycle of murder that we’ve made a tradition in our society rather than a necessity. We can stop needlessly pumping animals with steroids and GMOs. We can pick up an apple or a tomato and start from there.

Foolishness.

THELMA (Flabbergasted)

(Pause) Complete and utter foolishness.

(Rises from her seat with a scowl) We are humans. We hunt. We prey on the weak. And if we were to fall to any half-witted animal then we should be consumed too.

(Gets into LIZZY’s face) It’s this pansy talk and this lazy society that has created doubt like yours. When I was a kid, we looked our food in the eye, stabbed it in the gut, and cooked it for Sunday dinner.

LIZZY takes a step back, fearfully.

THELMA smiles and sits back down on the bench.

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I remember one summer when my father brought me along with his hunting buddies. I was a girl, but I was the only child he had, so he made due with what he had. I remember after hours of following deer tracks and feces, our hunting crew stumbled upon a herd of deer grazing near Lake Ontario. I remember the three rounds fired from my father’s new Marlin 336XLR piercing two does and a fawn. You know what he said to me after we had collected the bodies? He said “that everything has a place in the circle of life. There are those who hunt and there are those who are hunted. People who are not like us are simple. They hunt for food. But the ones who are on top, hunt for sport.”

Your father is sick.

LIZZY (Horrified)

THELMA (Menacingly) No, you’re sick! You care about animals as if they have souls as if their lives make a big difference in the grand scheme of things, but they don’t. They eat, mate, poop, and sleep. Nothing exceptional, nothing note-worthy, nothing worth compassion. The only possible purpose I could see for animals is food or game.

LIZZY (Unsettled) Don’t we do all those things as well? Are you saying humans are better than animals?

THELMA Of course we’re no better. We just take longer to kill (Pause) Longer to die.

(Short Pause) We’re at the top of the food chain. Nothing more. Nothing less.

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of the cell.

THELMA lets out a long unsettling laugh.

LIZZY moves back to the farthest corner

THELMA (Slowly approaches LIZZY) What’s wrong dear? Afraid of the thought of being nothing special? (Smiles) Of being just another animal, another slab on a person’s plate. Don’t be scared Lizzy.

I’m sure the taste of your flesh would bring purpose to your otherwise meaningless life. It would bring pleasure.

(Licks lips) It would taste like a fusion between goose and steak.

LIZZY (Frantic) Thelma, get away from me! I don’t know what’s wrong with you but you need help!

THELMA (Stands inches away from LIZZY’S face) I’d cut the jugular vein in your neck, wait for your body to go into shock, and in two minutes bleed out. Your corpse would still be warm after that. (Pause) Fresh. (Smiles) I wouldn’t want any piece of you to go to waste. I’d separate you’re organs into plastic bags and freeze them for later. (Smiles Wider) I’d cook your heart fresh though.

(Reminiscently) There’s a particular recipe for deer heart my father used to use. He’d dice the heart into thick slices, trim the fat, and marinate it in Worcestershire sauce. A bit of oregano, some thyme, some salt, some pepper.

Over the years, I’ve added my own twist to preparing it.

Before putting the heart slices into a frying pan, I would throw in two diced onions and several strips of yellow bell peppers. It gives it a nice tangy taste, especially with a glass of Cabernet. After seven minutes on a medium flame, you’d be ready. (Hungrily) You’d taste delicious.

LIZZY (Screams) Get away from me! Get away!

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OFFICER 1 and OFFICER 2 hear LIZZY’S screams and burst into the room. They find THELMA on top of LIZZY, her lips covered in blood. The officers hurryto open the cell.

THELMA (Sighs) I told him I was getting hungry.

BLACKOUT

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SOCIOLOGY OF THE EMOTIONS PAOLA EMHARDT OIL ON CANVAS & PAPER MACHE

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THE UNKNOWN JANTSANKHOROL ERDENEBAYAR MIXED MEDIA SCULPTURE

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LPTURE

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DAY OF CEREMONY PHILIP FALCO PROSE The lake is still, without even the tiniest ripple creeping across the cyan waters. I sit at the lakeside, fishing rod in hand, and lick my lips in anticipation for the serene silence to shatter. From the corner of my eye, I glance at the pile of fish that I’ve already caught, easily three feet high. A testament to fourteen long hours of work.

At the slightest tug on my rod, a sadistic grin spreads across my face. One more for the pile. I pull backwards, nearly toppling over onto my back. The line sails out of the water, a cascade of red dots surrounding it, and brings with it an auburn carp.

I laugh at the flailing creature on the shore, my fishhook puncturing the scales just above its mouth. The destitute animal slowly suffocates, its glassy eyes losing all sentience, until it finally stills. I pull out a dagger and press it into the fish’s scales, not uttering a single prayer.

If my people could see me now, they’d recoil in horror at my impiety. I’d surely be lectured,

whipped, and forced to pray on the fish’s behalf…Especially today, on the Day of Ceremony.

A day dedicated to “praising the natural world”. Bowing to insects, offering paper dolls to the wind, thanking the gods for all they provide. It leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Why should I praise these insignificant fish? I hold complete dominion over their life and death. Isn’t that the definition of a god?

“Uck,” I groan. There’s only one thing I do not like about fishing: the smell. The nauseating mix of salt and blood emanating from the carcasses. It stings my nose, burning the hairs inside.

Almost making me regret my actions…Almost. But I remain strong, taking a step back to admire the heap of death at my feet.

Dusk begins to settle around me, transforming the tranquility of the water into foreboding darkness. A chill runs through my spine – the worried sensation that the lake is about to strike back at me. No! I purse

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PROSE PRIZE WINNER my lips. Don’t let the idiocy of turn to enter the village square, your village pollute your mind. I and come face-to-face with the take one final look at the pile – a source of the stink. religious edifice to my greatness.

Directly in the center sits Satisfied, I leave it behind to rot a pile of human bodies. The and begin the short trek back to bloodied corpses of my people, my village. all stacked on top of one another.

In the darkness, I almost Each carcass wounded with deep, lose my way several long cuts running times. The winds vertically along A HORRIBLE SCENT seem to whisper their abdomens. as they blow past. FILLS THE AIR AROUND Red plasma oozes “Impious.” I press ME; THE SAME STINK from the gashes, my hands against radiating the salty OF SALT AND BLOOD odor. my ears, not Their eyes are THAT RUMINATED empty and glassy, all wanting to hear the conditioning looking accusingly FROM THE FISH of my upbringing at me. And on each REMAINS. play tricks on body, just above the me. “Sinful.” The lips, there is a small crunching twigs beneath my feet puncture wound. A hole just big grunt at me. “Immoral.” enough to run a fishhook through Suddenly, I notice a familiar it. stinging within my nostrils. A I recoil in horror, pressing horrible scent fills the air around my face into my sleeve. But even me; the same stink of salt and with closed eyes, I can see the blood that ruminated from the heap of death; friends and family fish remains. Holding my breath, who once looked at me fondly, I quicken my pace as I enter the now staring at me with blank village gates. denunciation. My breaths turned “Hello?” I call out, my voice into heaving sobs, I sprint out of made gruff by not breathing the village. through my nose. I am met The stench only seems to with silence. Odd. The Day of grow stronger as I distance myself Ceremony should not have from the corpses. It fills my entire ended yet. My people should body, entering as I breathe and still be crowded at the gates, circulating throughout my system. offering thanks to the grass they Scalding me from the inside, just crush beneath their feet. Feeling beneath the flesh. I cry out from lightheaded from the fumes, I the pain of the invisible burns.

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Beneath my feet, I hear the crunching of twigs. “Your fault.” The winds cruelly whisper.

“Know your place.” The gods have punished me, the very gods that I had scorned. They made my people into the fish that I had so thanklessly slaughtered.

Displayed their harsh dominion over me. Reminded me of my place, an insect at their feet.

I dash out of a brush, onto the familiar lakeside, and am met by the pile of fish. A monument to my impiety. Accusing stares all pointed at me.

I hobble towards the lake, the invisible burns making me weak. I pull up a stick from the ground, sturdy enough to support my weight as I make the infinite five-foot journey to the water.

Kneeling down in the dark liquid, I stare into the lake, frantically searching for answers.

And then I spot it – an idle shadow. The final fish in the lake, offering itself to me. I know what I must do.

Uttering a short prayer, I raise the stick up high and drive it into the waters, piercing the fish between the eyes.

Without a moment’s passing, I topple over, feeling a sharp stabbing sensation in my head. The world is becoming as dark as the waters I lay in. And as I am swallowed by the lake, I humbly offer myself to all of the fish I have murdered.

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SURPASS THE HEIGHTS, STIR THE WATERS THEADORA HADZI DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

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FLOOD DAVE PETRAGLIA DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

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WATERCOLOR ON PAPER

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RECRUDE JOSEPH HARMS POETRY The stoaoaks of vestal doppelgangs deboned to bone; their guttered clabber; torussnow on carroofs mailboxes lamps and chimneygrots; aloft and out then lachrymose; a goose resounds; the rye almost unbends; a winterday abeyed; atresic once is now of lytic…; sexless aliter is now…; fetlocks dehisce, resume the shadows’ reck; a freshet kined and fowled from barns’ll fall for love; the banns annulled, the fear installed, the trope of spring too soon: with cig in hand alone can Az watch Bel, the bone to ash, her eyes abroad, the man on Main their fathers’ age: rapine. Shellacked.

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NO MAN'S LAND SALLY MIZRACHI PROSE

Iweeds

n a small town where the The son was not at all one grew much too for cracked roads and weeds much out of the jagged cracks and told his parents very angrily along the road and onto the so. He left one day for a city so actual road, Casey met Marla and large, his sister hardly knew where they knew they would get married. to look for him. She didn’t care The dust blew in sideways on the for the weeds either, but would day they told Marla’s father, and never tell her parents, and so she like the sun that never seemed only told Buck and stroked his to leave even a glimmer of gold ears and watched him wiggle his behind, he said that he was glad brown spotted tail. of them, and gave his blessing.

The son never married but Casey and Marla where sent a letter by postage stamp young and not at all old, but down to a sweetheart in Louisiana, sooner or later dust gets the better who also knew from weeds and of everyone and everything, or at other nasty things. He did not least that’s what the textbooks know that she had children of her say. For this reason own and a husband on their wedding SHE SHOOK SLIGHTLY too. He didn’t night Casey got BUT PARTED HER LIPS know because she very serious and AND WHISPERED YES never told him so. told Marla in words One day her INTO HIS EAR. none too soft that husband came they would have a home and found family now, and this he believed a letter, one of the more creased and wanted with all his heart. She ones. He screamed a scream shook slightly but parted her lips that rent the clouds above and and whispered yes into his ear said scowling to the sunshine and in a few years they had a son that he would never let his wife and a daughter and a handsome travel to one of those big cities young dog they called Buck. forevermore. He meant to tell her

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in between the crop and the rain and the children, but never did seem to find the time. She didn’t need reminding anyhow, it was almost three years since the last letter.

The son had gone back to the small town, all alive and tough on the outside. His sister he liked to see, feeding Buck with one hand and soothing old Casey with another. She had hands that were always a bit too large and a face and hair the color of honey. It was true that she was a fright to see but beautiful too. She knew none of this and only knew Buck, her parents, and the weeds.

It was enough to curl her brother’s fists in bouts of frustration, and enough to make the long gone city seem a paradise. But he remembered the streets paved with tar and

the masses of nobodies, and the big glaring ugly-ish red sign that announced divorce rates of just $250.00, one signature needed.

His parents died with the dust blowing sideways, and he felt it coming for him.

He told his sister so. She smiled a sad smile and watched Buck pass on. She knew it was her turn too. “Why Not?” her shoulders seemed to say, and finding here nor there to rest themselves, they both moved right on along. The small towns were almost all now covered in growth, and the cities were filled with people who did not know one from the other. No one had ever heard of a Casey or of a Marla, or if they had lived at all.

ACHLUOPHOBIA SAMANTHA BARRETT CHARCOAL ON PAPER

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SOLEDAD THEADORA HADZI DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

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INTERVIEW WITH KATIE MURRAY THEADORA HADZI Katie Murray (b. 1974) is a photographer and video artist. She received her BFA in 1997 from the School of Visual Arts and her MFA from Yale University School of Art in 2000. Murray’s work concerns itself with the primal and mythological. She has exhibited in solo and group shows to include: The Photographers’ Gallery, UK Chashama Gallery, NY (2013) College of the Canyons Art Gallery (2012), HomeFront Gallery, NY (2011), World Class Boxing, Miami (2010), Kate Werble Gallery, NY (2009), International Center for Photography (2008) White Columns, NY (2004) Jen Bekman Gallery (2004), Queens Museum of Art, NY (2004), and The Yale Art Gallery, CT (2000). She received the New York State Residents Grant for Excellence in Photography in 1996, the Robin Forbes Memorial Award in Photography in 1997, the Barry Cohen Award for Excellence in Art in 2000, and a NYFA grant in 2012. Murray’s work has been published in various magazines, books and catalogues.

Murray’s first monograph All The Queens Men published in 2013 by Daylight Books is a decade long investigation into the rites, rituals, and relationships of men. Murray is a faculty member at Sarah Lawrence College, Hunter College, New York University and School of Visual Arts.

How did you begin taking photographs? (What inspired you, what type of camera did you initially use?)

I took a photography class as an undergraduate student. I had room in my schedule and had a mild interest in photography, and so signed up for a black and white darkroom class. I used a 35mm film camera to begin with. I can still remember my first roll of film and the excitement I felt when I had emerged from the darkroom to see my images, it was magical, and I was hooked.

Why do you explain taking a photograph as “making a picture”?

I believe consciously made, thoughtful pictures are constructed or made. “Taking pictures” implies a certain kind of passivity, as if the

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camera, the machine itself takes the pictures and the human being behind it is irrelevant, therefore I always use the term making pictures as a way to remind my students that the machine is just a tool and they are the makers of their pictures.

How has living in Queens, and the greater New York area in general, impacted your work?

The impact that Queens and New York in general have had on my work is crucial to the kind of work I make, but this has more to do with growing up in this landscape than it does with living here currently.

This urban landscape has been the backdrop for so many of my most cherished, difficult and surprising memories and experiences.

I am very attracted to this landscape because it is unconventionally beautiful, it carries with it the potential for great meaning, and when I am photographing in it, I am always searching for the metaphor within.

The title of my recently published book is All The Queens Men, which I think suggests how important this place is to me. From the onset of this project I knew I wanted to play off of the word Queens because I think it’s such an interesting word as it calls to mind that which is majestic or mythological. It is also a powerful word as it relates to women, and I always thought it was interesting to be a woman photographing men in a place named Queens. I began to think about these men and this place as a mythological kingdom albeit a fictitious one, but this idea altered the way in which I approached the subject matter and allowed me to play with fiction and non fiction and be free to make work that existed somewhere between the two. In short, growing up, living in Queens and the greater New York area has set ablaze my imagination and inspired my book.

Has being a female photographer influenced your decisions as a photographer? What about other people’s opinions of you and your work?

I think ones gender is always a factor in the work one makes, and in my case being a women has allowed me a certain level of trust and accessibility especially as it relates to the portraits in All The Queens Men. What would you say is your greatest achievement as a photographer?

Probably the publication of my book All The Queens Men, as this was a thirteen-year project that from the start I had imagined as a book.

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The ways in which images relate to each other and inform each other is one of the things I thought a great deal about when creating this book.

Often times I would be making a picture while thinking about how it would relate to a previous image and how you can build upon ideas in multiple pictures. The entire book was edited with this thought in mind.

So that you would have a book of images that tell a story, and then with more time spent, another deeper story would be revealed. In book form I could also play with time, creating sequences of images where characters could age and become young again as the book unfolded.

Publishing this work as a book allows it to circulate in the world. This work finally has a life beyond my head and that in some ways is all I can ask for.

You have various teaching positions, what makes you so passionate to teach other people?

Teaching is a privilege, and it allows me to be intellectually active as well as engaged in students and their work. I am passionate about being an artist and what that means in terms of having a fulfilling meaningful life. Teaching photography is especially challenging today, since it is a common practice amongst my students in the sense that they are all using pictures in their daily lives with facebook, instagram, twitter and the like, so my approach is to try to get them to realize the potential of the medium as a meaningful tool, and hopefully inspire them with my genuine enthusiasm and love for photography.

If you could retake or re-do one photo that you’ve taken in your life, what would it be?

I have a picture in my book entitled “11 boys” this picture is a fictitious rite of passage photograph. It’s a birthday present of sorts, I had asked my brother in lieu of a birthday gift to gather as many boys as he could for a photograph. When I arrived to meet him he had gathered 11 boys hence the title. The boys had between them about five or six cars, we drove to the location and I made the picture. If I could do it again I would have pulled back more to include the scattered cars littering the abandoned lot.

What feedback have you received about your recently published book/work?

The feedback has been wonderful. People most often describe the book as intimate, revealing, and surprisingly vulnerable. It’s also

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referred to as authentic, psychological, and historical. All of which makes me extremely pleased.

Do you have a new project in mind for the future?

I’ve recently completed a video piece entitled “Gazelle” that reflects upon the struggles one faces as an artist, mother, and wife. It is the first time that I appear in my work, and it’s also the first piece I’ve made that is humorous. “Gazelle” is being shown in the exhibition entitled Home Truths: Motherhood and Photography curated by Susan Bright. This show opened in October at The Photographer’s Gallery in London and is currently on view at The Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, from there it will travel to Belfast, Ireland.

The piece I’m currently working on is “My Dearest Darling Peggy”. I have been working on this video piece for the last few years, which in some ways picks up where All The Queens Men leaves off. I’m still looking at men and masculinity and playing with the sequence of time, but the piece functions differently in large part because it is video.

If you could photograph any person or thing, what would it be?

I’ve had this fantasy to photograph stars in the darkest places in the world, places where there are no traces of reflected light from human occupancy, places like the Badlands, where there is a pure sky, lit solely by the light being reflected off the moon and stars. Photography is literally drawing with light and there is something about traveling to the darkest places in the world to see light that gets me excited.

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DRANK DUSTAN HOGAN OIL ON CANVAS

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FELON DUSTAN HOGAN OIL ON CANVAS

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CONTRIBUTORS SAMANTHA BARRETT is a studio art major at Hunter college with a concentration in painting. Her works tend to embody realism and a colorful pallet.

CECILIA CHARLTON moved to New York City

from China in 2010, at the same time that her art began to crystalize into its own language. Her paintings (oil, acrylic, and watercolor), drawings, and multimedia sculptures are visual music, and the harmonies and rhythms are universal. Her art is without irony, politics, or other trendy localisms. Lu Ying blends observations, dreams, and stories into a world that glows and beckons.

JACOB CINTRON is a young photographtrician

who enjoys finding himself surrounded by liberal minded peoples. Glimpses of his work can be found at Instagram: @cantimaginewhy or on Facebook at Uncommon Decency Photography.

JANTSANKHOROL ERDENEBAYAR was born and

raised in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. He grew up during the Mongolian government’s revolution from a communist to democratic state.As a child he used to vacation at his grandmothers countryside home where he helped her with livestock and other rural duties. This brought him closer to animals, nature, and his Mongolian tradition.

After his experiences, Jantsa found himself close to the spirits of animals, especially wolves-a very spiritual animal in Mongolian tradition. His art deals mainly with human and nature relationships.

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PAOLA EMHARDT was born in Pereira, Colombia.

She is a research assistant at The Rockefeller University.

After years of studying science she decided to enroll in Studio Art and Sociology at Hunter College. Paola explores and studies the world of inner feelings/ archetype psychological gestures and sociological emotions. She engages the viewer in personal dialogues with her work. With painting and photography she is rediscovering her own culture and reinventing herself.

CELINA GIRAUD is a junior in the Studio Art

program and an active artist living in Brooklyn. Already having shown in multiple galleries in the New York region, she has recently begun experimenting with film photography. Her work details the expressive nature of the feminine figure, and the beauty of finding new space on a familiar form. Only working with one model, she feels that the connection to her subject brings forward the compelling qualities found within this body of work

LOU GUADIO is a Film Major, Creative Writing Major,

full-time student, part-time employee, actor, writer, producer, runner, jumper, and swimmer. He has more ambition and drive than time and talent, but that’s not going to stop him in his relentless pursuit to be awesome.

Some of his favorite writers are Edith Wharton, Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway, and Michael Crichton.

NELLY GORDPOUR is a Muse Scholar, interested in

both sociology and photography. She has been recognized as Long Island Best Young Artist at the Heckscher Museum of Art, and selected among top 100 in the national photography contest at Drexel University. Nelly’s photography work can be accessed at nellygordpour.co.nr and she can be reached at gordpourphoto@gmail.com.

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THEADORA HADZI is a freelance graphic designer, fine arts painter, and digital photographer who is currently in her second year at Hunter. Already heavily into her media and studio art majors, she hopes to apply for the BFA program in the fall. This semester has brought insight into what she truly loves in photography, and she plans on exploring that over the next few months. Her work can be seen on her Facebook page, Thadzi Photography.

SUN HAN, who is majoring in Fine Arts, feels that

painting is one of the most powerful tools to express her feelings. Han communicates with myself and the world.

DUSTAN HOGAN is in his last semester as a studio art major at Hunter College. He is currently in the process of becoming the greatest artist alive.

KRISTIE KISH is a second year undergrad. Having emerged from Flushing, she tries to extend her familiarity from sea to shining sea. Fueled by the city’s energy and zest, she can’t seem to stop coming back. At Hunter, she searches for her place in this world of art, eager and willing to fight. She tap tap taps her feet to Jazz and kickboxes her way through the semester, also studying Jeet Kune Do. SALLY MIZRACHI is a Hunter College Junior with

a major in English Literature. She has published work in creative, journalistic, and commercial writing. In each piece, Sally attempts to portray optimism, ambition, and confidence. She can be contacted via email at Sally.

Mizrachi50@myhunter.cuny.edu

NICOLE PERGUE is a Creative Writing major at Hunter.

She writes poetry and science fiction. She is a native New Yorker and a part-time secretary. She can be contacted at nicolepergue@aol.com.

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DAVE PETRAGLIA has appeared in Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, and Better Homes & Gardens.

Most recently in the Dark Matter Journal, Thought Catalog, Gravel Literary Journal, Loco Magazine, eFiction India and theNewerYork. He’s a writer, web and graphics designer, photographer and lives near Jacksonville, Florida. His blog is drowningbook.com JASON SLOAN is a rising senior who loves writing, creating and hustling. He’s also a biology major, but, no, he does not intend to write about biology. Stop suggesting it. He hopes you enjoy his work.

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SUBMIT Passionate about writing or art? Submit your visual art, fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, drama, and crossgenre pieces every semester. See our website for details on how to submit online.

GET INVOLVED Students are encouraged to become editors, graphic designers, publicity associates, production assistants, or senior staff members. Attend our many events, such as our open houses, writing sessions, art sessions, open mics, and launch parties. Or, just come by our office. Visit our website and find us on Facebook.

EDIT The OTR welcomes Hunter undergraduates of all experience levels to become editors for art, drama, prose, or poetry. Editors decide together which pieces are accepted into the issue every semester. For more information, please visit our website.

CONTACT TheOlivetreeReview.com Thomas Hunter Room 212 olivetreereview@gmail.com

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THE OLIVETREE REVIEW

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ISSUE 55 SPRING 2014

THE OLIVETREE REVIEW

THE LITERARY & ARTS MAGAZINE OF HUNTER COLLEGE

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