The Olivetree Review Issue 56

The Olivetree Review ISSUE 56 Fall 2014

The Literary & Arts Journal Of Hunter College Since 1983

Errata: Below will be a list of all known errors found in Issue 55, along with the corrected information and page number.

Nelly Gordpour Nelly Gordpour's Art Contest winning piece was wrongly printed as being on page 49 In the magazine's directory when it is in fact on page 55. On page 55, her last name was misspelled as "Gourpor" instead of the proper "Gordpour."

Luying Wang The art pieces on page 10, page 90 and page 112 were created and submitted by Luying Wang but wrongly attributed to one "Cecilia Charlton". The pieces on page 90 and page 112 have had their titles swapped; page 90 shows "A Lost Sheep" and page 112 shows "Twisted World". "Twisted World" 's medium has been wrongly recorded as Watercolor on Paper when it is actually Ceramic Sculpture.

Theadora Hadzi Theadora Hadzi's digital photography piece "Surpass the Heights, Stir the Waters" was printed as being on page 09 in the magazine's directory but can correctly be found on page 109 Louis Gaudio Louis's drama submission, "Real Blueberries" on page 50, has his name misspelled alongside his piece. His proper name is not Guadio but Louis Gaudio.

Nicole Pergue Nicole Pergue's poem "Two Halves" on page 11, which won the Poetry Contest Prize, is labeled twice within the directory as both the contest winner and as a regular submission.

Š The Olivetree Review, CUNY Hunter College, 695 Park Avenue, Thomas Hunter Room 212, New York, NY 10065 theolivetreereview.com Fall 2014, No. 56. This journal is funded by Hunter College's student activity fee and is distributed free in the university community.

The artwork featured on the cover is "Calling and Passage" by Sarah Leber. The fonts used are Cheddar Jack, GeosansLight, and Neou. Layout design by Theadora Hadzi.

Assistant editing provided by Carmen Quang, Maha Paracha, Jacob Cintron.

Post-production editing by Jacob Cintron.

Submissions are reviewed September through November and February through April.

We consider submissions of visual art, fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and drama writing. The Olivetree Review is completely staffed by undergraduate students of Hunter College. All submissions are reviewed anonymously by Hunter College students.

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

Contents Art JAKE ANDREWS Fractal Innuendo JACOB CINTRON Blend Candy Piercing Suspended

Drama CONTEST WINNER

86 29 55 83 44 21

ANGEL EDUARDO Red Rocks Sleeping Dogs Lie Sullen Prayers

22 23 45

NELLY GORDPOUR Untitled Roslyn House Untitled Untitled

54 78 74 75

THEADORA HADZI Samana Life's a Clown Untitled

10 35 88

SARAH LEBER Calling and Passage

46

LEYING ZHANG Descendants of the Dragon

68

KRISTINE AMBROSCH Sibling Rivalry 76 CONRADO FALCO Nosferatu is my Dentist RACHEL SATHER Video Nasty GAMAL ELSAWAH Wanna See my Werewolf

56

24 40

Poetry CONTEST WINNER

KRISTINE AMBROSCH Timing 47 CHARLIE GUZMAN Angel on Dust KATHARINE DIEHL Before the War in Austria, his Niece Permafrost Horned King MARCO YAN Eden

11 79 87 34 69

Prose KRISTIN BROPHY Through a Moon, Blue.

ANGEL EDUARDO Island

70

36

CATHARINE FRANKLIN The Modernist Poets 48 as a Case for Eliot's "Tradition" LOUIS GAUDIO Danny & The Hammerhead

12

SARAH KAPLAN Upon My Sole: Portrait of an Artist

80

BETTINA MANGIARACINA On a Sahara Run 84 MAHA PARACHA How to build a better life.

90

ContributOrs 92

5

Contest Winners Po etry The Poem As A Movie Camera: The movie is one of the most modern art forms and poetry one of the most ancient. Combine these two media in a poem that shifts through images like a movie camera. When we see the outside of a building in a film and are then shown someone in a room, we have an understanding that the room is contained within the building. Connect images through implicit logic rather than explicit narrative. Or you can just write about movies, but what's the fun in that?

Kristine Ambrosch's "Timing" is a witty and self-aware response to the prompt. Though it does not travel far into the implicit, the poem does call into question the very conventions of its form—both poetic and cinematic.

Few ever read the script once the film is completed, so "Timing" also hints at a loss of art at art's completion.

Tim i n g

by Kristine Ambrosch Page 42

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D rama Write a scene wherein the "ugliest" character you can conceive of interacts with the "purest" character you can conceive of. Adjust the following terms to your own definitions.

Kristine Ambrosch's "Sibling Rivalry" is a concise and thoughtful response to the prompt. This piece effectively evokes the emotions of the two wellcrafted characters contrasting the “ugliest” and “purest” characters that the playwright could conceive. Drama pieces not only have to evoke emotions, but they also need to lift from the page for actors to bring to life. Kristine Ambrosch took the prompt and created a beautifully relatable situation in an imaginative form that theater thrives on.

S i b l i n g Ri va lry

by Kristine Ambrosch Page 76

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Fall 2014 Editor-In-Chief Associate Editors

Jacob Cintron Munawar Abbas David Attali Creative Director David Carmona Theadora Hadzi Jacob Cintron Stefania D'Andrea LAYOUT EDITOR Carmen Quang Fabian Francis Theadora Hadzi Treasurer Joseph Harms Anjelica Enaje Diana Kosianka Glenn Liu Administrative Editor Michael Marbella Maha Paracha Nicole Pergue Jessica Roserain Art Editor Kris Santos David Carmona Enzo Scavone Drama EDITOR Eva Senatore Brian Kelly

Prose Editor Rachel DeCesario

Poetry Editor Meg Williams

Publicity Manager

Kevin Zaw

Social Media Manager Kris Santos

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Letter From the Editor It is incredible, the hard work and cooperation needed to print an issue of the Olivetree each semester. I’ve witnessed the production of the magazine for several semesters now and taken part in the production of slightly fewer, yet both the effort required to create a final product as well as the final product itself continues to amaze me.

Whats equally as incredible is how fast things can go wrong. There are a myriad of things that need to fall exactly into place at the right times to ensure that printing deadlines are met. The smallest mistake, the seemingly most inconsequential delay or setback and suddenly everything can snowball out of control.

If I made no mention of it here then would probably be no record of it but I’m not ashamed of our situation; this issue of the Olivetree is being released nearly a semester late. I’m not going to name names or blame any kind of administration, I’m only going to say this: life happens. We take with what life throws at us and do our best to roll with punches. In the end, Issue 56 may have taken an unusually long time to be released, but in turn we neither sacrificed quality or integrity with the final product.

I have high expectations for the next, and one of the last semesters I will be here at Hunter College, and thus involved with the Olivetree Review. I only hope you all are as excited as I am to see this all through. yours truly,

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Samana

Theadora Hadzi DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

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Angel On Dust

CHARLIE GUZMAN POETRY As the boy kisses the stain of sunlight flooding through the window, he thinks: ¿Que cuerpo/What body esta fluyendo/is flowing en las palabras/in the words que se forman/forming en los pulmones/in my lungs?

The boy thinks about all the times he has repeated that question.

It was the thirteenth of July, as it had been the twelfth, the eleventh, the tenth…

He watches the angel fly from his finger. It reminds him of his mother’s saying: No te preocupes/Don’t worry por el quenepa/for the quenepa alojada /lodged en el pecho; /in your chest; los arboles florecen/ trees bloom como flores. /like flowers.

The angel spreads its wings of loose verse, floating toward the glass firmament.

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Danny & The Hammerhead

LOUIS GAUDIO PROSE

I

n Milan’s version of the story, the whale was trying to mate with the ship. I don’t think that’s what happened, but Milan’s credentials exceed mine on the matter. He was a Sonar Technician, and had been for three years. Milan and I were in boot camp together, but then I was sent to Navigation A-School and SCUBA training in Hawaii. After graduating I got orders to the USS City of Corpus Christi, a fast-attack patrol submarine stationed in Guam. Milan stayed in Great Lakes, Illinois for Sonar A-School, but eventually got orders to the same boat: the Corpus Christi.

Milan was something of an idiot savant. He’d graduated top of his class, so I never doubted that he knew his equipment. Every time I looked at his sonar screen I only saw green blips and frequency readouts. He described it like he was looking at photographs.

“This here’s a doubleengine fishin trawler eighteen miles south but they’re runnin on only one engine. You got down here a Nimitz class carrier operating both nuclear reactors at niney percent output. Over here is just shrimp ‘n dolphins ‘n other such ambient noise.”

That kinda thing. On the other side of the coin, Corey Milan belonged to a select group of people who believe ice hockey, Nascar, and fishing will one day be combined

into an Olympic triathlon. He was from Backwater, Arkansas, and if his hometown had a real name he never called it anything else. According to him, there was no post office, so most of the 300 residents called it whatever they liked. I remember on the first day of boot camp we were issued seabags with all the clothes we would need, and Milan was genuinely freaked out by socks.

“What the cheery hell am I supposed to do with these?”

“Is that a serious question, Milan?” I’m from Connecticut, and I’d never met a southerner before.

I found myself wishing Milan would stop hitting all the bullet-points on the stereotype checklist, because he was personifying the narrow-minded image my haughty Connecticut friends liked to make fun of.

“I know they’re for your feet ‘n shit but how do you know which one’s left and which one’s right?”

When we surfaced underneath the whale (a 41-foot Gray Whale weighing approximately 30.5 tons, according to sonar data), Milan posited his theory: “Fucker got his big ole whale-dick stuck in the propellor. Chopped ‘im right up”.

I countered that if it was a dude-whale it wouldn’t have been trying to mate, because females tend to be smaller, and our ship was

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unmistakably 300 feet long. We decided to look it up in the marine life reference guide. It turned out that in the case of the Gray Whale, females are larger than males. Not 260 feet larger, but larger. Milan wanted to gloat, but I’d found a chapter about speculative research on the Megalodon and the Colossal Squid and took the book with me to go read.

The ironic thing about hitting the whale is that we were surfacing in order to avoid it. We had just completed a successful mission taking photos of [TOP SECRET] off the coast of [TOP SECRET], which their president, Mr. [TOP SECRET], claimed to be testing for a space exploration program. The crew had been at sea for three months, and we were heading to San Diego for re-supply, general maintenance, and a few days of “R&R”. Sonar detected the large biological mass in our vicinity and the Captain got nervous because the USS Houston had recently come under fire in the press.

During a training exercise,

the military’s rampant spending and lack of environmental awareness.

So, we surfaced the ship in order to broadcast our location, but the whale changed direction and moved directly behind the sail. It must have been injured by the impact and sucked into the enormous eight-bladed propellor where it was butchered into pieces. When we hit it from the bottom our ascent halted momentarily, and the Chief of the Watch ordered an emergency blow on the ballast tanks to get us moving up again. We surfaced and found that the propellor shaft was gummed up and wouldn’t spin. There we were, dead in the water, 2,000 miles from California.

The Captain wouldn’t let anyone go topside. He said one word when he looked through the periscope: “Carnage”. Then he ordered the emergency outboard motor to be lowered and we transited east at a crawling 1.5 knots, for two days straight, until the outboard ran out of fuel. Finally, he alerted the Coast Guard to come give us a tow.

THE IRONIC THING ABOUT HITTING THE WHALE IS THAT WE WERE SURFACING IN ORDER TO AVOID IT.

their active sonar beacon interfered with a pod of migrating dolphins off the Gulf of Mexico. Instead of reaching mating waters, the crossed signals caused them to swim into a nest of predators. Greenpeace and the Environmental Protection Agency had a field day with the story and used it as an opportunity to condemn

During those two days he called me into his state-room on three separate occasions. He needed my assurance that I could take care of the problem discreetly. The first time I promised “an assessment at best”. When he talked to me the second time I assured him that “if there’s anything I can do, I’ll try”.

He called me in a third time and I told

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him, “I honestly don’t know what we were dealing with or how bad it is.”

I felt bad for the whale, until it became my job to clean up the mess. I shouldn’t have been surprised.

I was one of only two divers on the 120-man crew, and the other guy was in Japan for a training exercise.

We got towed into Pearl Harbor, since that was the closest port with a repair dock. The Captain officially reported that we collided with an uncharted navigation buoy, but unofficially gave me orders to dive under the hull and try to untangle two miles of intestine from the prop.

The Captain assigned Danny to be my line-tender. Danny was my best friend, but honestly I would have picked Milan or anyone else.

Danny was supposed to be a diver; would have been our third.

He went to scuba school with me and Shafer but he washed out. During a testing exercise in the hyperbaric chamber, it was discovered he had a medical limitation that made it impossible for him to swim underwater without rupturing his eardrums. He gazed down at the water while holding on to the safety line I was tying around my waist.

“Alright,” I said, finishing my bowline knot, “One pull means I’m ok.

Two pulls means I’m diving deeper.”

“I know the drill,” Danny said. “Three means you’re coming up. I remember.” I looked at him.

His eyes were fixed on the water like he was trying very hard to find something below the surface.

“I know you know this, Danny, but it would make me feel better if we reviewed it. I was looking over the harbor report from this

morning, and apparently August is hammerhead mating season.”

“Oh shit. And we dragged a buffet in behind us? I’m glad it’s you splashing.” Danny laughed, but I could read on his face that he would have happily geared up and jumped into the shark-infested pier alongside me. He seemed to relax as a response to my tension. He casually took off his brown utility shirt to catch a tan. Standing tall by the edge of the boat, wearing aviators that mirrored the green palm trees and yellow sun behind me, he looked like a magazine ad for men’s cologne. He unstrapped his knife and handed it to me. I strapped the sheath around my leg, held the blade in my hand to get used to the weight, and sheathed it again. The blade was six inches long and titanium, making it illegal to carry in most states. A diver never wants to get in a fight underwater, but this knife would be a formidable last resort. On my other leg was my three-inch flat-bladed diver knife, which was not a weapon but a practical tool for untangling lines, prying covers open, and screwing on watertight bolts. Danny unlaced his boots. “What’s four pulls, again?”

“Assistance required.” My tone was mechanical and deliberate.

I had thought about this signal earlier when planning the dive. “It means I’m in trouble. But listen, Danny.

Today, if you feel more than three pulls, stop counting and start hauling me up. If you see a fin or a splash or anything from up here, same thing. Just get me out of the water.”

“Who are you talking to?” Danny put his big hand on my shoulder. “We’re the Bad Boys of the Pacific. Hoo-yah?”

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“Hoo-yah. Just don’t let me become shark-shit of the Pacific, alright?”

I walked to the centerline of the ship. It was the highest point I could jump from, and I wanted to make as much noise as possible to scare off nearby creatures. I pressed my mask into my face and splashed.

There was almost no temperature difference between the air and the tropical water. In Hawaii you can expect to see the bottom from any depth, but the ship had kicked up a lot of silt while docking.

I had approximately twenty feet of visibility, and that was as good as it was gonna get. I tested my flashlight.

Hammerheads are bottom-dwellers but they’re ambitious and aggressive.

They like to eat stingrays, crustaceans, and things that move. The harbor was eighty feet deep and I needed to do my work at forty. I gave two pulls on my rope. Danny responded with two pulls to let me know he was paying out slack in the line. I tried not to think about how fast a ten-foot mass of muscle, teeth, and hunger can glide through the water, and instead focused on how fast I could swim as I moved toward the aft end of the ship.

For the past few days I had imagined what a decimated whale carcass would look like, but as I approached a real one I realized there were certain details I never considered. I was expecting the area around the propeller to be a cloud of blood, but the remains had drained out and been rinsed clean by the current while we were transiting towards the island. There was no fin, or eye, or any other distinguishable feature to convince me that what I was looking at was ever a mammal.

Just hunks of meat attached to long thick ribbons of entrails sinking down below my depth of sight. It looked as though the ship had crashed through a linen warehouse and thousands of red and gray blankets got tangled in the prop. Swarms of neon reef fish were competing to take tiny bites, but they scattered as I swam closer. I thought I saw a large shadow circling the schools of fish, but it vanished with them. I gave one pull on my rope and waited.

Danny acknowledged. I got to work.

For the first twenty minutes I tried to untangle and untwist the intestines. Even though I was breathing compressed gas from a tank on my back, the sight of a literal ton of thick sinew and shattered bone convinced me I could smell death. I reminded myself that I hadn’t smelled anything but hibiscus and plumeria when I was topside, and that it made no logical sense for me to detect a scent underwater, but I couldn’t shake the visceral effect. I grabbed and squished and pulled with my gloved hands, but the effort was useless because I couldn’t find an end or a beginning to any of the strands. I tried hauling up one of the danglers hand-over-hand, but the weight of the accumulated mass started to drag me deeper, so I let it go. I watched it sink and looked down at the knives on my legs. I didn’t like it, and Danny wouldn’t either, but his blade had a serrated edge whereas mine was deliberately unsharpened.

I needed to saw through the guts.

For an hour, I imagined myself as a dangerously unskilled surgeon hacking away at a patient. I felt a tug at my waist and it snapped me out of

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the daydream. I hadn’t made much progress and I was running low on air.

I felt another tug. It occurred to me that I hadn’t communicated with Danny in a while and he was probably checking up on me. The tugs turned into violent pulls in three directions. I angled the beam of my flashlight to follow the tending line until I saw where a piece of intestine had gotten itself wrapped around in a knot, plunging down into the silt cloud below. I could see triangular shapes dancing like demons underneath, and the intestine whipped erratically back and forth and straight down.

but watch as the shredded tip of intestine appeared from below. Three hammerheads emerged, stalking their prize. One had a significant chunk of a fin missing and another had a series of pink scars along its gills. I saw their horrible black eyes protruding from each side of their heads as they snapped their tawny bodies back and forth. Each was trying as hard for the meat as they were to prevent the others from getting it. Watching their infighting gave me a sense of terror and relief. I kicked my fins hard. Between my swimming and Danny’s yanking, I reached the surface in seconds.

I COULD SEE TRIANGULAR SHAPES DANCING LIKE DEMONS UNDERNEATH, AND THE INTESTINE WHIPPED ERRATICALLY BACK AND FORTH AND STRAIGHT DOWN.

I checked my grip on the knife and squeezed the handle tight. My instinct was to give the emergency signal, but I stopped myself when I realized that if Danny started reeling me in now he’d pull the bait up with me, and the sharks would follow it toward the surface. I kicked my fins deliberately and methodically, foot by foot closer to the knot, watching the rope and the intestine fighting for direction.

The sharks were tugging from below, and Danny must have read the pulls as my attempts to communicate, because he was tugging the attached tending line with increasing urgency.

It was chaos on one end and confusion on the other. I felt the slack tighten and pull hard against my hipbone. Danny was hauling me out. There was nothing I could do

Petty Officer Tucker was the only other person topside with Danny. Tucker had been standing armed watch at the brow wearing battle fatigues, an M12 shotgun, and a bushy mustache shaved to precise military standards. When he heard splashing and yelling he ran over to help. Danny and Tucker hauled me onboard by the straps on my air tanks. Danny had dropped his end of the rope and I saw it coiled on the deck. Plopped on my fin was the mushy knot of rope and intestine, still dancing around in every direction.

“--nt let go!” I ripped my breather out and gasped. “Danny don’t let go. Gimme a second.” I checked my grip on the knife and reached for the knot on my waist. I tried to cut the line, but I had the sharp

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side facing down. I twisted it around to the serrated side and started sawing, one eye on the coil of slack unraveling back into the water. I got halfway through the rope when it suddenly tensed up and I felt myself flying off the boat.

The jolt sent my arms flailing, and my wrist smacked hard against the steel scuba tank. The knife freed itself from my hand and I was dragged under. I looked up, and just past the surface of the water I saw Tucker aiming his M12 over the side of the ship. I looked down and saw a living seabed. The first three hammerheads were joined by an army of sharks, battling a civil war for whale meat. The rope was frayed from where I sawed it and the fibers were separating, but not fast enough.

I was at least ten feet under by now and my regulator floated above me, out of reach. I cinched the rope at my waist with both hands and kicked my fins in large sweeping motions. My quads seared with lactic acid. For seven oxygen-less seconds I didn’t move in either direction, until finally the rope snapped and I was free. I broached the surface about twenty feet from the side of the ship, and I heard Danny and Tucker screaming at each other. Danny had the shotgun, but he was holding the shotgun by the barrel, clutching it with both hands at the same level as Tucker’s face.

“I was trying to save him!

Gimme back the gun, Carmona,” Tucker shouted. Tucker was half a foot shorter than Danny but stocky; he had about twenty pounds over him. Tucker knew how to throw his weight around, and most people didn’t pick fights with him. Yet there he was in his boots and body armor, slowly backing away from

a shirtless, barefoot Texan wielding a fifteen pound M12 like a baseball bat.

“Save him, you asshole?

You know buckshot spreads?”

Danny was growling behind every word. “You’d hit the shark and him!” I truly believe, in that moment, Danny could have knocked Tucker’s head off his body with one swing.

“You want me to tell the Chief you took a weapon from an armed watchstander, Carmona?”

Tucker’s voice was assertive but shaky from genuine fear. I had reached the ship and dragged myself on board to start taking my gear off. “You’ll get masted and DQ’d, no question.”

“Hey guys. I’m ok. If anyone’s wondering.” I took my fins off so I could walk properly. “Hello?”

“Disqual?

Really?

You want me to tell him you pointed your weapon at a shipmate? Forget DQ, motherfucker. You’ll get courtmartialed and discharged!” Danny lowered the gun but clutched it tight.

“Give me back the damn shotgun, Carmona!” Tucker had his back to the sail and it looked like he’d decided to stand his ground.

Watchstanders are issued a sidearm, but if Tucker was thinking of reaching for the Beretta 9mm on his hip he wasn’t broadcasting the intention.

His face and hands, the only parts of his body not covered in tactical dress, were as red as the shells on his ammo belt, but he was maintaining control. “The UCMJ clearly states that an armed watchstander has jurisdiction to--” I stormed over but kept a practical distance.

“Tucker, shut up! You’re both gonna get masted if someone comes up topside and sees this bullshit.

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Danny, give him the gun!” Danny leered at Tucker like he was deciding which piece of him to carve off and throw to the sharks. “Danny. I’m ok.

I’m fine. Look!” He glanced back and gave me a once-over, then fixated on Tucker again. I waited for him to give back the shotgun, which he thrusted hard into Tucker’s chest. I took one step forward. “I owe you a new knife.”

“No. You don’t.” Danny grabbed his shirt and went below deck onto the ship. ǽ I made my report to the Captain, leaving out the confrontation between the two alpha males. There was no way to clear up the mess in the propellor without more divers working in tandem, and we would need a dedicated oxygen feed instead of compressed tanks. Furthermore, the stress from the impact followed by the dragging weight of the remains had bent the prop shaft by two degrees, compromising the submarine’s water-tight integrity. The only option was to tow the ship to dry-dock for a six-month overhaul.

The Captain was delighted by my news. It meant that while the ship was under repair, the officers could fly their wives and families out to stay with them until well after Christmas. When I told him about the sharks, he got the idea to withhold his report for a few days.

“Let’s let ‘em pick the propeller clean before we go to dry dock, eh?”

That man was promoted to Admiral two years later. ǽ

The enlisted personnel were assigned two-person bunk rooms in Seawolf Tower, a dorm facility on Pearl Harbor meant to house visiting Sailors. Milan’s collateral duty was Berthing Watchbill Coordinator. It was a fancy title meaning he made bunk assignments at sea and room assignments wherever we pulled into port; a tedious but necessary bureaucratic task. Milan let me and Danny be roommates, and put himself with Shafer, who was in Japan, so he could have a room to himself. Milan wasn’t smart, but he was clever. He asked me if I’d saved the whale dick for him so he could mount it. I told him he could probably scrape some pieces off my wetsuit if he wanted.

The day after we settled in I got an email from Tucker. He had some friends from back home in Tennessee who lived on Oahu, and he wanted to invite me out to dinner on Friday to meet them, and also to apologize for pointing a weapon at me. I let the email sit in my inbox.

I wasn’t angry at him, but things were tense between him and Danny.

Friday morning we got news that a part we needed to continue repairs was on back-order, so the crew got the rest of the day off. I stopped at a roadside pineapple stand on my way back to the Towers. When I got there, Danny wasn’t around. I placed a ripe pineapple on the counter by the sink, and it dawned on me that I had no idea how to go about eating it. There was a knock at the door.

Tucker stood in the hallway wearing a hideous green polo that was too tight for his wide shoulders, and onion-purple

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pants that didn’t match the shirt.

“Oh hey, Tucker. You got any idea how to open a pineapple?”

“Hey, Gaudio. Did you get my email?” He still wore his boot-camp issue glasses: giant brown plastic frames that were endearingly referred to as BCDs (Birth Control Devices).

Without his watchcap on, the hairline of his high-and-tight segregated pale white skin on top from the sunburnt red below. I wondered why a guy like Tucker bothered wearing civilian clothes when he was off-duty.

“Right! Hey sorry I didn’t get back to you. I was, umm,” I couldn’t think of anything, and something about

holding a black metal case in his right hand. He held it up.

“I got something for your boyfriend.”

“Yeah, Tucker, jokes like that aren’t gonna make him any less angry at you,” I laughed. I invited him in the room, and he placed the case on the kitchen counter. He dialed four numbered wheels and told me the code was customizable, then opened the latches on either side.

Sitting on black felt was a 6-inch titanium blade. The handle was snakewood, and it had four finger holes carved into it, like a pair of brass knuckles, to increase grip security.

DANNY LEERED AT TUCKER LIKE HE WAS DECIDING WHICH PIECE OF HIM TO CARVE OFF AND THROW TO THE SHARKS.

Tucker’s combination of earnestness and dorkiness made me feel like I shouldn’t lie to him. “Look, Patrick.

Danny doesn’t think sometimes.”

“I’ll say.” He was still standing outside the room. He wasn’t at attention, but his posture had not shifted. Feet shoulder width, hands by his waist. He had hardly blinked.

“Yeah but sometimes you don’t either,” I said, “Look, I’m glad you were willing to do something, even if it was desperate. And could have possibly resulted in clipping me, thus drawing blood, thus exacerbating my situation.” Patrick’s shoulders sunk half an inch. “I’m kidding. Well, I’m not. But I’m saying don’t worry about it. I know you’ve got my back.”

I noticed he was

“Patrick, this is… much did this cost?”

“Don’t worry about it, shipmate. I’m something of a collector myself. Don’t tell him it’s from me, though. I had to sneak it onto base by chatting up one of my MP buddies so he wouldn’t check the case.” Tucker had MP buddies. We hadn’t been in Pearl Harbor a week and he had chummed it up with the base's Military Police. Amazing. I decided I wanted to meet his friends from Tennessee.

I came back much later that night and Danny was sitting in the armchair in the middle of the small room. Moonlight and a dim lamp cast a pale glare on him. There was a half empty bottle of Sailor Jerry by the chair, the small tin strip from How

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the cap-seal discarded nearby on the carpet. It was his second-favorite rum. The day before he complained about how the Navy Exchange in Pearl didn’t sell Private Stock.

In his right hand, Danny held the knife from the case. With his fingers through each of the grip holes it looked like it was a natural extension of his arm. In his left hand he held the pineapple up like it was Simba, and with a swish of the blade he cut the green plume off the top.

“Went golfing with Milan,” he said between bites of pineapple.

“Exact quote from the kid, who by the way, was playing his first ever round in his life: ‘I’m gonna lay it up on the green every time!’ He scored a 97, and we only played the back 9.

ǿ

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S uspended

JACOB CINTRON Sculpture

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Red Rocks

Angel Eduardo DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

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Sleeping Dogs Lie

Angel Eduardo DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

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Video Nasty Rachel Sather

(Blackout onstage. A law and order-esque voice-over speaks.)

VOICE In the early 1980’s, over seventy films on videocassette were banned throughout the UK. Deemed, obscene, violent, and unfit for public viewing, these “video nasties” were believed to have violated the obscene publications act of 1959, causing them to be forced off the market by British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. This is the completely factual account of how these films were recovered.

(Lights up on Thatcher's office) THATCHER Ah, what a lovely day it is. Approval ratings are high, trade unions are weak, and most importantly, Britain is robust with the sweet smell of censorship. Yes indeed. (She sighs, then suddenly screams) Cynthia!!!!

(Her assistant, Cynthia, runs in and stands at the ready.)

CYNTHIA Yes, madam?

THATCHER Cynthia, darling, I’m feeling a tad sluggish this morning. Be a dear and fetch me some scotch for my tea, would you?

CYNTHIA Forgive me for saying so, prime minister, but it’s half past eight in the morningTHATCHER Did i stutter?

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CYNTHIA (Sighs) Right away, madam.

(She grabs a large bottle of scotch and begins pouring it into a tea kettle as they speak) THATCHER So, what’s on the agenda for today?

CYNTHIA Well, the miner’s strike is still going strong. Those coal miners have really been suffering since all of those manufacturing jobs were lost.

THATCHER Ah Cynthia. Darling Cynthia. You know i don’t give a shit.

CYNTHIA But prime minister, unemployment has skyrocketed. Those people have families!

THATCHER Don’t sass me. I know what i’m doing. I wasn’t reelected for nothing, you know! (She takes a large swig of “tea”) now, i beg of you, tell me something i actually care about.

CYNTHIA (checking clipboard) Hmm………ah yes! We confiscated quite a few more films today.

THATCHER Splendid! Read the list to me.

CYNTHIA There’s cannibal holocaust, i spit on your grave, the driller killer, zombie flesh eaters, gestapo’s last orgy, and……oh this can’t be right……

THATCHER What? What isn’t right?

CYNTHIA The best little whorehouse in Texas?

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THATCHER Ah yes! I requested that one personally.

CYNTHIA But madam, that’s a Dolly Parton film. It’s a musical.

THATCHER Cynthia, i will not be promoting prostitution in this country!

CYNTHIA But prime ministerTHATCHER No buts! Whorehouse is banned.

CYNTHIA (sighs) Yes, prime minister.

(Thatcher smiles and has another swig.)

THATCHER God bless censorship. I, for one, feel much safer knowing Britain’s impressionable youth are protected from these disgusting, obscene films. Who knows what could be unleashed if we allowed these tapes to be sold?

(Suddenly, two American agents burst through the door, pointing guns at thatcher and Cynthia.)

AGENT A Freeze, you film-hating swine!

(Cynthia and thatcher raise their hands over their heads and scream.)

THATCHER Cynthia, call security!

AGENT B (pointing their gun at Cynthia) don’t move, bitch!

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CYNTHIA Who are you?! What do you want?!

AGENT A We’re from the federal institute of the liberation of trash and horror.

CYNTHIA ……Filth?

AGENT A More or less.

AGENT B We traveled here from the year 2000 to free these so-called “video nasties” from your grasp and allow the British people the freedom to watch all of the gory, violent movies you’ve banned.

CYNTHIA Why are you meddling in British affairs? You’re Americans!

AGENT B It’s kinda' what we do best.

THATCHER You’ll never lift the ban, you yankee scum! I would die first!

AGENT A That can be arranged.

THATCHER You would kill me just so people can freely watch evil dead?

AGENT B We’d do anything for evil dead.

AGENT A Hell, we’d kill you over flesh for Frankenstein, and we fucking hate Andy Warhol.

AGENT B Point is, film censorship is wrong and you’re a frigid bitch for allowing it. Besides, have you even seen any of the films on that list?

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THATCHER Of course i haven’t! I’m not a barbarian like you!

AGENT A (scoffs) figures.

AGENT B Look, you either lift the ban, or we kill you. Simple as that.

THATCHER But you don’t understand! You don’t know the type of horror that will be unleashed if the ban is abolished!

AGENT A You have ten seconds, thatcher.

THATCHER But……what about the children?

AGENT B Three……two……one.

(They shoot thatcher. She drops to her knees, but doesn’t die.)

THATCHER You’ll never kill me!

(They shoot again. She recoils, becoming demon-like.)

THATCHER I tried……to protect you……

(They shoot again. She falls.)

THATCHER Oh……fuck you, you horror-loving trash!

(She collapses, dead. She continues to twitch before lying still. The agents go to her.)

AGENT B Wow. They didn’t call her the iron lady for nothing.

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CYNTHIA You really shouldn’t have done that.

AGENT A We can’t allow censorship to continue, ma’am.

AGENT B That’s what our beautiful country was built upon.

AGENTS Freedom. (They nod at each other in unison) CYNTHIA Well, in case you haven’t noticed, we’re in Britain, not America.

And there was a reason why those films were banned.

AGENT B Which is……?

CYNTHIA You really wanna know?

AGENT A Well yeah.

CYNTHIA Okay. When these films were released, some people noticed some strange occurrences on the videotapes when they viewed them. Apparently these films are so horrifying that a curse was implanted into the cassettes. The only one that could tame them was Margaret Thatcher, so she confiscated them all and locked them up. But now that she’s dead……

AGENT A What happens now?

CYNTHIA That’s what I’m afraid of……

(A part of the evil dead score begins to play.)

CYNTHIA What was that?

(Suddenly, a deadite bursts through the

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door, laughing horrendously. Cynthia screams.)

AGENT B Holy shit.

DEADITE I’ll swallow your soul! I’ll swallow your soul!

AGENT A What do we do?

AGENT B What do you think? Use your boomstick!

(They take out their guns and shoot the DEADITE multiple times.)

DEADITE (gurgles and dies) AGENT B Groovy.

CYNTHIA (smugly) would you still do anything for evil Dead?

AGENT A Oh absolutely.

AGENT B Definitely.

AGENT A Great fucking movie.

CYNTHIA God. What’s next?

(The drum beat for blood feast begins.)

AGENT B Oh shit.

CYNTHIA What?

AGENT B I know this one.

(A deep, vicious laugh offstage.)

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AGENT B Blood feast.

CYNTHIA Which one is that?

AGENT A Herschell Gordon Lewis’s 1964 horror debut. Regarded as the first gore film.

CYNTHIA Oh. Great.

AGENT B So that means……

(Fuad Ramses walks through the door, an Egyptian statue in one hand and a butcher knife in the other, behind his back. His eyebrows move wildly.)

AGENTS Fuad Ramses.

FUAD (Gross, distorted laughter) ha! Hahaha. Ha. (He speaks to his statue) what’s that Ishtar? You want me to kill this virgin for our blood feast? Well, if you say so. (He lifts his knife and slowly moves towards Cynthia) CYNTHIA Do something!

(As the agents are about to fire, Fuad drops his statue. Agent b quickly runs and grabs it, throwing it to agent a, who fires into the statue. Fuad screams in pain, collapsing. He is dead.)

AGENT A (to Cynthia) you’re a virgin?

CYNTHIA Shut the fuck up. Now do you see why we needed thatcher?

AGENT B Nobody needed thatcher.

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AGENT A We got this. Chill.

(The cannibal holocaust theme begins.)

AGENTS Fuck.

CYNTHIA What? What movie is it this time?

AGENT A The big one.

CYNTHIA You don’t mean……?

AGENT B Yep. (A cannibal bursts onstage, a human arm in one hand and a monkey in the other.)

CYNTHIA Not cannibal holocaust!

(The cannibal slowly approaches, gnawing on the arm. The three back away.)

AGENT B Let’s just relax. I mean, if you think about it, the cannibals aren’t even the real villains in the movie, right?

(The cannibal rips off the monkey’s head and starts to eat it. Everyone freaks out.)

AGENT A Fuck that! He ate the monkey!

AGENT B Kill him, kill him with fire!

(Agent a shoots the cannibal. He dies. The three sigh with relief.)

32

CYNTHIA Well, now that you’ve killed my boss and literally unleashed hell, i don’t see any more reason for me to stay here. So, uh, bye, and good luck getting home. Assholes.

(Cynthia exits.)

AGENT A Bye! AGENT B Good luck getting laid!

CYNTHIA (offstage) fuck you!

(The agents shrug. They sit on Thatcher's desk and take out a joint. They pour some “tea”.)

AGENT A You know, i really do wonder who the real cannibals are.

AGENT B You’re such a pretentious piece of shit.

AGENT A Why do you think i got into this business?

(The laugh and clink glasses. Curtain.)

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Horned King

KATHARINE DIEHL POETRY Speak of him- think he appears but won’t show himself. Don’t he seem sly like a ritual dog or a horse that is trampling ground swell, but Lord, like a sad beast, this old magic turns over. A wooly thing calm in repose, then frightful with slavering. Speak of artfulness, augur those gutsyou can’t see why they were sliced or what should be done.

Had we planned to hold hands in the May place, our wedding, would he plan to appear like the bridegroom in furs, his own self?

A wild man for his maiden, but if he feed on ritual, you might bring up the howls of old Tom.

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Life's a Clown

Theadora Hadzi DIGITAL art

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Island

Angel Eduardo PROSE

T

he airport is a raucous blur. Men in short-sleeved collared shirts hoisting bags and suitcases onto conveyor belts; women in navy skirt suits smiling across countertops, asking for passports, proof of identification, boarding passes; throngs of travelers moving back and forth across the wide, white tiles to their terminals. All of it cakes into slow motion, a dreamy sea of sloth and white noise that I slice through as my mother, brother, and I make our way in to check our baggage. Francisco, an olive-toned, thickly mustachioed man somehow related to my father, helps Mom along with the heavier suitcases.

He was kind enough to chauffeur us to the airport and see us off, and I begin to get the sense that I may never see him again. We sulk towards a grinning airline clerk who checks our bags, prints out our tickets, and vacantly bids us buen viaje.

I don’t want to leave. Francisco and my mother embrace, exchanging the words and gestures that make up the typical Dominican goodbye: an endless string of well wishes and platitudes that delays the actual separation.

“Pue’, no’ vemo’ entonce’…”

“Gracia’ por todo…” “¿Cuidate, oi’te?”

For once in my life, I revel in the time it takes for my mother to

disconnect. The last ten days have been my first conscious experience of my native soil, and the pangs of detaching are beginning to set in. I think of my first few days here, being awoken at dawn by the rooster in Papá’s backyard; the ice-cold showers I grew to love in spite of the incessant shivering they incited; the slow rise to life on the dusty, rural streets of Los Alcarrizos, where coconut vendors pushed their carts along the side of the road and shouted through suntinged, stubble-lined lips, “¡Coco’! ¡Mango’! ¡Fruta’ fre’ca’!”

I think of the children from the barrio running outside, barefoot and bare-backed, playing checkers on old boards with milk caps, or kicking a worn, lopsided volleyball around in a game of futbol; the way I’d reply with, “New Jersey,” or “Los Estados Unidos,” to questions of where I was from and get blank stares, and the sudden flash of recognition in their eyes when I gave up and answered, “Nueva York.”

In my mind I can see the crystal blue waters and white-sanded beaches from the window of El Hotel Napoleon; I remember the smell of palm trees and mangos on the breeze; the thunderous monsoons that came for fifteen minutes at a time; the random power outages that sometimes went for hours; the old men

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playing dominos over a milk crate by the colmado down the street; the taste of platanos and tostones from Mamá’s kitchen; all of it is tearing away from me in this moment, and I can’t bear it.

As Francisco turns and pulls me in for a hug, I shatter. My tears soak his shirt, and all he can do is smile.

We board our plane and I huddle into my seat by the window.

As we take off, I stare out. My view tilts away from the land’s patches of brown, black, and green, and toward the deep, endless blue of the Caribbean. Soon, even the sea vanishes beneath the plush white blanket of clouds at 30,000 feet, and my eyes well up again. I look down at my ticket stub, fingering the edge where the lady at our terminal tore it in half. My eyes pass over the tiny, black type and I notice the date. September 6th, 1998. I’m thirteen years old the

Ricans settled here over the last few decades, bringing pieces of their homelands with them. Learning English in the Heights is hardly necessary, as even the signs on storefronts are in Spanish, and anyone who works in them is descendant from the islands.

Every business in a thirty-block radius is run, operated and frequented by Hispanics.

Besides providing the usual groceries, the bodegas on every corner are fully stocked with plantains, sugarcanes, coconuts and mangos.

Dominican and Puerto Rican flags line the tiny, iron-barred windows of the six-story walk-ups from block to block, and along with the sounds of bachata or merengue music, the unmistakable smell of adobo seasoning tinges the air around dinnertime. Yellow taxicabs don’t make it up here from downtown.

Instead the neighborhood is patrolled

DOMINICAN AND PUERTO RICAN FLAGS LINE THE TINY, IRON-BARRED WINDOWS OF THE SIX-STORY WALK-UPS FROM BLOCK TO BLOCK, AND ALONG WITH THE SOUNDS OF BACHATA OR MERENGUE MUSIC, THE UNMISTAKABLE SMELL OF ADOBO SEASONING TINGES THE AIR AROUND DINNERTIME. last time I set foot on my island. ǽ There’s a grumble, then a hiss as the bus shakes to a stop and its double doors open, spitting me out onto the corner of 178th Street and Broadway—the epicenter of a neighborhood on Manhattan Island called Washington Heights. This is New York City, but for a mile in any direction, it might as well be the Caribbean. Dominicans and Puerto

by black Lincoln Towncars, their phone number prominently displayed on their bumpers and back windows, along with a Dominican flag decal.

I used to live here. Before we moved to Fort Lee, New Jersey when I was seven, my parents, sister, brother and I had a tiny apartment on Wadsworth Avenue, directly above my father’s dental lab, which he still works out of today. Even after moving, though, we came back to the Heights for everything—doctor’s appointments, haircuts, grocery shopping—and now

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that I’m thirteen and allowed to take the bus over on my own, I’ve made it a habit to do my clothes shopping here, too.

Today, I’m looking for something special, and in a little boutique on 181st and Amsterdam, I find it. I’ve had my eye on it for a while, and decided I’d scrounge up the lunch money to get it for myself.

It’s a white baseball jersey with the Dominican flag printed on the back.

One sleeve is red, the other is blue, and the Dominican coat of arms is silk-screened on the left breast. I walk up to the attendant and ask him how much the jersey is, even though I already know.

“Veinte peso’,” he says.

“Okay.”

As the pot-bellied old man stuffs the jersey into a black plastic grocery bag for me, I notice a red, white, and blue peaked cap, with a tiny Dominican crest on the brim, sitting on the counter. It matches perfectly. Without asking how much it costs, I buy it, too.

ǿ

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Innuendo

Jake Andrews DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

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Wanna See My Werewolf

Gamal El Sawah DRAMA (MARC and PETUNIA are alone on a hayride. It is romantic, or at least it is supposed to be. The characters speak in an exaggerated 1940s style speech. Maybe later, he'll take her to the malt shop or something.)

MARC By golly gee, Petty! Thanks so much for agreeing to take this hay ride with me!

PETUNIA Oh, any time, Marc. I've never been asked on one before.

(She blushes.)

MARC Well, I can't possibly see why. You're swell!

PETUNIA Ohhh, Marc. You're sweller.

MARC I am swelling.

PETUNIA What?

MARC Oh...nothing.

PETUNIA Marc? Can I ask you a question?

MARC Sure ya can!

PETUNIA How come you asked me out on this hay ride? I know I'm not

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the prettiest girl in...

MARC You're beautiful!

PETUNIA And even though you're not the prettiest guy in MARC Huh? PETUNIA ... Oh, I said even though I'm not the prettiest girl in class, you still asked me out. Why? MARC Well, you're... You're the bees-knees, Petunia! And I feel...I don't know... Safe around you. Gosh, I'm wide open now.

PETUNIA Oh, Marc, you're swell.

MARC (he looks down) Is it noticeable?

PETUNIA. Well. I feel safe with you, too. Sensibly enough, seeing as we're not all too familiar.

MARC You sure are sensible!

(He pauses and musters up some courage.)

Say, Petunia?

PETUNIA. Yes, Marc?

MARC Would you ever consider... goin' steady with me?

PETUNIA Oh, Marc... remember that sensibility we just talked about?

MARC Oh. Yeah...

PETUNIA But maybe. Let's give it some time.

MARC Oh! Ya mean it?!

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PETUNIA I do!

MARC ... Has it been enough time yet?

PETUNIA Marc...

MARC Sorry... How about now?

PETUNIA Oh, What the heck. Yes! MARC Whoa Petunia, the H word, you sure have an edge to ya.

Wait, yes?! No foolin'?

PETUNIA No foolin'.

MARC Oh, Gee wiz, Petty! This night is so beautiful. And look! The full moon just makes it so much better!

PETUNIA It sure is a sight to see.

(They look up at the moon.)

MARC Gosh, isn't it neat? You know what they say about full moons?

PETUNIA Oh do I ever. I've seen some of those frightening pictures what with their who-wolves.

MARC Werewolves, Petty.

PETUNIA Oh, who, what, when. Whatever it is, It's all done for the pictures. You don't think things like that are real, do you?

MARC I mean, you never know, right? ...Hey, Petunia, do you wanna see my werewolf?!

PETUNIA Sensible, remember?

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MARC No, really! Whenever the moon is full, and it's chilly, I think of turning into a werewolf.

PETUNIA Oh, Marc. Quit foolin'. I know those aren't real.

MARC No! They are! Look...

(Marc turns to his knapsack and fishes out a winter hat that he puts on his head. It is knit to have the face of a cute wolf on it, complete with ears and all. His "werewolf."

He turns back to Petunia.)

MARC Rawr(While Marc is turning around, Petunia takes a bite of his shoulder. He starts to bleed and screams.)

MARC AGH!!! Petunia?!!

(Petunia releases her jaw and her mouth is revealed to be full of fangs, now wet with Marc's blood.)

PETUNIA Oh... I thought... You shouldn't have done that, Marc!

MARC (terrified) Jesus Mary and Joseph, Petunia, wh...what are you?!

PETUNIA Oh, Marc. I'm a- we eat people. (beat) I thought you were a real wolf! I thought you were a threat to us!

MARC What?! What are...

PETUNIA You can't know we exist, Marc. I'm so sorry. I really thought we'd swing it. You sure were swell...

MARC What? No g-get away from(Petunia begins eating Marc, as he screams, to no avail.)

END.

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Piercing

Jacob Cintron Film PHOTOGRAPHY

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Sullen Prayers

Angel Eduardo DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

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Calling and Passage

Sarah Leber DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

5/11/15 4:40 PM

Timing

Kristine Ambrosch POETRY A woman’s face: her eyes suddenly wide.

Cut to the man walking ahead of her.

Back to her face— still large unblinking eyes.

Zoom in on his hat: a flat brown one.

Now his backpack: hunter green with leather patches.

Cue montage and sappy music.

She’s sitting in a hoodie and jeans; his blue eyes, his red smiling lips; the girl’s averting eyes, shaking hands.

Finish with shot of her walking away.

Back to her; hear her heart, full but now steady.

The man turns, close up on profile.

Quick to woman— her heavy eye lids flicker and pupils cast down, stiff mouth now loose and angled to her feet.

Slowly zoom out.

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The Modernist Poets as a Case for Eliot's "Tradition"

Catharine FRANKLIN PROSE

C

olumbia wouldn’t have me, so I went to Oberlin, mostly because they’ve never held anything against my kind. Yes, that’s a euphemism. You know the word I mean. How would you like to have that word flung at you every day?

I’ve had it flung at me three times in an hour. But Columbia. Columbia is where we met. He’s in the third year of his doctorate, studying the new poets—Eliot, Pound, Williams—much to the chagrin of the stuffy old men in his department. His name is Jonathan Coxcomb.

“Coxcomb?” I think.

“Coxcomb, archaic for dandy?” He’s everything but. I call him Jack. My name, too, has a history: Alnoth, the seventh-century martyr, the herder and hermit slain by robbers in his own home. I’m a martyr, too. And, despite what appearances might lead one to believe, I am well-versed in sixteenthcentury language, the whole catalog of barbs and stings levied at one man by another, the sort of words that helped Christopher Marlowe get himself killed. I’ve read the collected Shakespeare. Don’t think I haven’t.

If Sadie Tanner Mossell can earn a doctorate from Pennsylvania, then I’ll be damned if I’m not going to earn a doctorate myself.

At first I think he’s staring at me because he’s wondering what a colored girl is doing in Low Memorial,

but really he’s staring at me because I’m engrossed in the very thing he wants: Bradley’s Poetry for Poetry’s Sake. But the library won’t let me borrow it; I’m not enrolled. I suppose they don’t think a colored girl knows what to do with books. Never mind that no one has ever bothered to say one word to me in those stacks.

Lupine cheek and jawbones, intense brown eyes, and that narrow mouth draw my attention for a moment, only because his face takes a bit of getting used to, but the thing that does it is this—he asks politely. He speaks to me as if I exist. “Could I please take a look at it when you’re done? ” And when he realizes that I don’t have circulation privileges, he meets me on the steps of St. John the Divine later that week. We trade the book there.

He has something else for me, too—a St. Honoré from a pastry shop on the Upper East Side. That’s how I know he’s serious.

We fall into a familiar rhythm.

He brings me sandwiches—smoked salmon on a crusty baguette, the best fried eggs I’ve had in a long time. We take our clandestine lunches in the stacks, guarded by fortress walls of books. I’m not going to say no. Who else will talk Donne, Dryden, Milton, and that whole wondrous crew?

Besides, color has never mattered to me. It is not authentic.

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I find that with him I can be myself, and we are lucky. We live in that teeming metropolis where, for the most part, we can be ourselves together, as long as we don’t hold hands in public and we make sure to steal our kisses. There was that night we went to La Boheme. I’d never been to the opera. “O soave fanciulla” has the tears running down my face. When I glance at Jack, I see that he is very bravely fighting back tears himself.

Leaving by the 39th Street side, we pass the great doors through which they move the enormous sets required to bring Italy, Egypt, and other far-off lands to life. Scenery from a halfdozen productions leans against the side of the building. There’s no room to store the massive things backstage.

That is how you know what is going on at the Met. You walk on the 39th Street side. I think I catch a glimpse of one of the stagehands—a huge man, John Henry’s older brother— with a lion’s head stole draped over his shoulders. Is it? I edge closer to get a better look and suddenly I’m sprawling over somebody else’s feet, and a brawny arm is helping me up.

“Mind where you’re going, miss!” He, too, is larger than life.

He holds my elbow for a second and then I realizes he’s looking me up and down, looking at my figure and the nice clothes that I got at the consignment shop. Momma was so exasperated that she forgot her punctuation: “Frances Alnoth I don’t understand how you can insist on wearing clothes that make you look like you got no class whatsoever but if altering these things is the only way I’m going to get you to learn to sew then I suppose this will have to be it

Lord have mercy my own daughter I don’t know why I do the things I do for her and don’t you forget about those tablecloths and napkins missy we will start on those first”—and he’s smiling broadly because I’m a colored girl walking out of the Met thinking I’m next in line to assume the title of Black Goddess/Modernity after Josephine Baker. He looks me up and down again, the gaze searching and appreciative, and then he looks at Jack and says: “You a lucky man.”

And then he bursts into laughter, bursts! like a water main because Jack is turning fairly crimson but smiling too.

“Get home safe, now, and don’t let these Park Avenue peckerwoods give you any guff.”

It has us grinning for the rest of the night.

We get up the courage to go to the Savoy. Late is the only time you can get in. They turned two thousand people away on opening night. I wear the raciest dress I own—a sleeveless sheath that shows my knees—and, even though it would give her a heart attack if she knew, my grandmother’s glass pearls. Two hours of dancing go by in a blur, and we stumble outside, gulping the familiar city air, giddy from the champagne we’ve been drinking all night, and he presses me against the wall and kisses me deeply. That kiss says something. In the apartment he gathers me in his arms, the feelings overtaking both of us in a rush, and then with a wicked grin he whispers, “I like my body when it is with your body . . .” and both of us laugh and we trade the lines between kisses as only people who study English literature

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can, and by the time we get to the end of the poem, we’ve stopped laughing and are not merely reciting the poem, but acting it out, for my body is under his body and his body is over my body and now they are together, arching one after the other into some indefinite, hazy place.

We lie in bed, whispering, happy, content, and we quietly marvel at the contrast between the color of my skin and the color of his skin and we agree that, no, it doesn’t matter to us, and if it doesn’t matter to us, why should it matter to anyone else? ǽ Taking a deep breath, we hold hands, and then I open the screen door.

My father’s a tall man, a dignified man, a strong man whose hair is running salt-and-pepper along his ears. Daddy is so very handsome with his square jaw and easy smile.

And Momma is a beauty. Broad face, skin like coffee and cream, big brown eyes. But she is tired. Or, more to the point, she’s battered into submission by the white people who expect her to scrubscrubscrub on her hands and knees because of course no one ever got a floor clean with just a mop.

Daddy stares at us. At six foot, Jack is almost as tall as Daddy.

Almost. Big orange monarchs begin to circle. Not just brushfoots, but swallowtails and birdwings and metalmarks, too. The entire order Lepidoptera flutters in my stomach.

Jack takes my hand very firmly in his.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Alnoth.”

I can see Daddy’s muscles

begin to ossify before my eyes. First the broad neck, then the shoulders that I used to ride on as a child, then those arms that helped me learn how to ride a bicycle, to dig in the little garden that we had in Georgia, the same arms that propped up a ramshackle old house in Flushing and turned it into a tidy little home.

“Excuse me? Excuse me?

Who the hell are you?”

“Daddy, this is Jonathan Cox—” “I wasn’t talking to you, Frances, I was talking to him!” There’s the tinge of Southern-ness, the inherent black-ness in his voice. “Who do you think you are, walking into my house, holding my daughter’s hand?”

I hate it. The hot tears are pricking at my eyes, trying to get out.

I feel as if I’m five or six again, being punished for swiping or lying or talking back. Jack looks down at me, his face drawn in concern, but he doesn’t let go.

I can’t help it. I blurt it out.

“Daddy, please!” It’s just as if I were five again. And I’m holding Jack’s arm now, turning my body toward his, because I don’t want to look at that face, that face that I love, that radiates indignation and howdareyou. His expression softens a bit when he sees what’s etched on my own face. His anger is gone but the shock and hurt are still there.

“We sent you to that tomfool place in Ohio so you could make something of yourself. And you’re going to be a fine teacher and you’re going to earn that doctorate of yours and be a finer teacher yet. I love you, baby girl. But . . . a white boy?

A white college boy who’s never

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worked or suffered a day in his life like your father has? Like your mother has? No. No.” “Tell him,” I say through gritted teeth. As if it’s going to matter.

As if he’s going to think of Dan Storms, tough old Dan Storms who he’s known for years, Dan Storms who won the Croix de Guerre when he fought for the French, Dan Storms who is as black as he is.

My face is fierce now, the tears beginning to well up. “Tell him.”

Jack shakes his head.

“He fought in France. He won a medal.” I choke back a sob.

It made a terrible impression on me when he first told me. I don’t know why. I somehow think it will make just

out of me in a rush. “Please, Daddy, please, just—” He stands there, working his hands together, shaking his head back and forth.

Jack leans forward and brushes my forehead with a kiss. “Think I’d better go,” he whispers, and he squeezes my hands and turns away. I grab onto his shoulder, the whole right side of his body. Barnacles and hulls.

“I’m going too.”

“Now, wait a minute, wait a minute. Wait just a minute there, Frances.” I don’t turn around, but I hear him exhale a breath or two, hard. Doesn’t he realize that I know how brave he is for doing this? Dan Storms has nothing on my father for

HIS EXPRESSION SOFTENS A BIT WHEN HE SEES WHAT’S ETCHED ON MY OWN FACE. HIS ANGER IS GONE BUT THE SHOCK AND HURT ARE STILL THERE.

as terrible an impression on others, too.

He stops. “France?” He can’t believe it.

“Yes, sir.”

“You fought in France.”

“Yes,” Jack says. His voice, rough and hoarse, fills my heart with a gout of love.

“You won a medal.”

“Yes.” “What medal?”

“Bronze Star for valor.” He’s thoroughly embarrassed; I can tell because the edges of his ears and his jaws have turned red.

The words come tumbling

bravery—nothing. He must know what I’m thinking because he clears his throat, cracks his strong fingers, and says, “Wait just a minute there, son.

You’re not going anywhere with my baby girl.”

We watch him. In the space of thirty seconds he looks at the floor, the clock, the armchair, the little side table, the little painting of the sea that my father did in oil when he was a young man, my mother, the armchair again, and then, at last, our little Jack Russell terrier, Bob, who is very confused.

He still can’t make sense of it.

“Enlisted or officer?”

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“Officer, sir.”

“France, huh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I can’t believe this,” he mutters to himself. “A white boy is calling me sir in my own house.”

“Mr. Alnoth . . .”

“What did you do to win that medal?”

He swallows hard. He hates talking about it. Oh, but it’s glorious— romantic, even—something straight out of Mallory.

“Took my horse up a hill at Saint-Mihiel. Took out a machine gun nest. Sir.” My father stands there for a while. And then, in another display of God’s wisdom, Bob walks over to Jack and sniffs his shoes.

The whole time, my mother has been standing in the door frame, arms folded across her chest, watching us without saying a word.

Now my father looks right at her without looking at me. “Frances, your mother and I need to talk.”

Jack grabs my hand and gives it a great big squeeze. My heart soars, soars like the eagle.

My father shakes his head back and forth. I know what he’s thinking. White boy. White boy?

We turn to go.

“Frances!”

“Yes, Daddy?”

I turn, obedient, always his little girl.

“Wait by the phone.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

The next three hours are some of the most awful of my entire life. We sit in Jack’s little apartment, looking listlessly at the books (so many books). We don’t actually read the books. Our brains are too snow-filled

for that. We just stare at the books as they sit on the shelves. We stare at the art, the one or two original oils by nobody painters that are actually very, very, good, the hardwood floor, the white walls, out the windows at Convent Avenue, the books, and then at the walls again. But we don’t look at each other. Jack puts on shorts and a v-neck undershirt and goes for a run. He doesn’t come back for forty minutes, and, when he returns, he’s soaked in sweat. We sit around for a while. He strips off the wet undershirt and starts knocking out push-ups. He has such a fine body—broad, wellmuscled shoulders, flat back, the veins that stand out on his forearms, the part where his elbows meet his triceps. Twenty, thirty, forty-two, fiftythree, sixty-one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, seventy, seventyone, seventy-two, and then he’s done.

He lies on his back, panting with the exertion of it.

The phone rings. He rolls up, bounces to his feet, and I very calmly take the receiver from his hand with a declaratory look. He knows that look.

He lets go of the receiver.

“Yes, Daddy.”

“Dinner at seven. Both of you.” ǽ We bring flowers and a bottle of wine, even though my parents don’t really drink wine. Jack asks my father what he does. My father is a railroad engineer. Jack looks at Momma, unsure of himself, and she casts him a very piercing glance and says, “I clean people’s houses.” The conversation is strained, forced. My

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mother and I start to wash the dishes.

“You. In the living room.”

Forty-five minutes later, when we’re done making the blackberry pie (does that set a record for the slowest preparation ever of a fruit dessert?) I put my head in the door frame. They’re sitting there with a bottle of bourbon between them. And they’re talking.

They’re having a serious conversation, a mostly one-sided conversation in which my father punctuates his words with a stern shake of his finger, his voice a low but constant hum. Jack is sitting at attention. He nods every once in a while and says, “Yes, Mr. Alnoth.” He says that quite a lot.

My mother clears her throat.

She hesitates. She doesn’t know what to call him. She certainly won’t call him Mr. Coxcomb. She’s not going to call him Jonathan either. Then she settles on something. “Young man.”

Yes, that’s it. “Young man. I have just one question for you.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Are you messing around with my daughter?”

There go the ears again. I duck my head, mortified, blushing.

He licks the inside of his mouth. He can’t make the words come out—he just nods.

“You being careful?”

“Yes, ma’am. Very careful.”

“What do you plan to do if you give my daughter a baby?”

He doesn’t hesitate. “Marry her.”

“And the baby?” She draws out every word, enunciating the syllables, exaggerating them so that there’s no misunderstanding. “Would you keep the baby?”

He nods, making his certainty

clear. “Yes.” She thinks.

“What if she doesn’t want to keep the baby?”

He’s thrown, but soon recovers. “It’s up to her.”

My mother ponders this for a minute and then says darkly, “You best not be giving my daughter a baby.” And then, “Can’t stop them anyhow,” looking despairingly at the ceiling. God lives in the attic, my father says.

Daddy takes us all by surprise. He smiles.

“No,” he says, laughing, “no, you can’t.” He shakes his head, still laughing. “Now, for goodness sake, Mary, let’s change the subject. That’s not polite talk, and you know it.”

We stay until ten o’clock, and then my mother pretends to stifle a yawn that tells us that it’s time to go. I know not to mistake my father’s new ease for something it isn’t. He’s still wary, and they don’t shake hands.

But something has changed. It’s in the way he says good-bye: “Good night, Lieutenant.” ǽ We stand on the Brooklyn Bridge at twilight and gaze at lower Manhattan, the gold-dappled darkness rising before us. Intertwined with the past and measured beside it, borne along by an ever-shifting present that we ourselves change, and entirely ignorant of the future, which is the one thing not known to us, we escape from tradition as we become it.

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Untitled

Nelly Gordpour DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

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Blend

Jacob Cintron DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

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Nosferatu is My Dentist

Conrado Falco DRAMA inspired by “The Story of Little Suck-aThumb” by Heinrich Hoffmann Real Characters: Nosferatu, the Vampyre The Boy The Creepy Nurse The Thumbless Crusader Imaginary Characters These characters don’t have any lines, so they don’t have to be performed by actors. They can be silhouettes, or puppets, or can be taken off the play completely. Although the author would rather they be shown in some way.

Little Konrad His Mamma The Tall Tailor The room looks like something between a dungeon and a dentist’s office. There is a dentist’s chair in the middle of the room. There is also a stool.

Other dental supplies like tools and trays lie on a small table next to the chair. There is also a door .

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(Enter the CREEPY NURSE and the BOY.) CREEPY NURSE Right this way, love. The Doctor will be with you shortly.

(The CREEPY NURSE sits the BOY on the dentist’s chair and hangs a paper towel around his neck.)

BOY Are you sure my mom can’t come in with me?

CREEPY NURSE Don’t tell me you’re scared. Why, I thought you were a brave boy. Brave boys don’t need their mommies to come in with them. They come in by themselves. Now, are you a brave little boy, or are you a coward?

(The CREEPY NURSE stares at him creepily.)

BOY ...a brave boy?

CREEPY NURSE That’s what I thought.

(The CREEPY NURSE is about to leave.)

BOY Wait.

CREEPY NURSE Yes, love?

BOY What are all these things for?

CREEPY NURSE Those are the doctor’s tools. He uses them to get rid of all the filthy things in you mouth. He’ll make sure you leave herewith a white, healthy smile.

BOY Will he be putting… those things… in my mouth?

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CREEPY NURSE Not all of them.

BOY Will he use that drill?

CREEPY NURSE I don’t see why not.

(The CREEPY NURSE smiles creepily. She is about to leave.)

BOY Wait.

CREEPY NURSE Yes, love?

BOY Will it hurt? Can I have some anesthesia?

CREEPY NURSE Look at you, where did you learn such a fancy word?

BOY I heard it on tv.

CREEPY NURSE A little boy like you shouldn’t lose his time watching television.

You will end up with a rotten brain. Television makes you stupid.

BOY That’s what my mom says. I’m only allowed to watch one hour a day.

CREEPY NURSE Your mother must be a very smart lady.

(The CREEPY NURSE is about to leave.)

BOY Wait. Can I? (The CREEPY NURSE looks at him confused.)

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BOY …have some anesthesia?

CREEPY NURSE We’ll see.

BOY Oh... Ok… CREEPY NURSE Is that all?

BOY Yes. No. Can you tell my mom to wait for me?

CREEPY NURSE Of course, dear. She will be right here in the waiting room with me. We’ll be having a great time. And so will you.

(The CREEPY NURSE turns on a radio. Old German music plays. She leaves.)

(The BOY stands up from the chair. He walks to the small table and examines the tools that are on it.

These tools don’t have to be devices usually used by dentists, but they should look old and scary. It’s even better if they’re rusting. The BOY takes the tools one by one and looks at them. As the BOY is looking at the tools, the door opens partially. NOSFERATU, the vampire, sticks his head through the door.)

NOSFERATU Argh, Naughty little one, what are you doing?

BOY (shocked) I… I’m sorry.

(The BOY walks away from the table.

NOSFERATU enters the room and turns off the radio. He takes a look at the tools.)

NOSFERATU Worry not, little friend. ‘Twas only “a joke”.

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BOY Are you my dentist... sir?

NOSFERATU Dentist? What I am is a doctor of darkness. A shadow in the night. A cursed, and forgotten, demon... But yes, I too hold a degree in odontology.

(The BOY is confused and frightened.)

NOSFERATU That is the scientific study of the structure and diseases of the teeth...

(Silence.)

NOSFERATU ...I shall seize your intrigue. Yes, I am a dentist.

BOY Oh, ok.

NOSFERATU Now, sit back young child.

(The BOY sits back. NOSFERATU sits on the stool, and picks up some of his tools. Turns to the boy.)

NOSFERATU Open wide.

(The BOY opens his mouth. NOSFERATU inspects it.)

NOSFERATU Do not close. ‌ I said do not close.

(The BOY opens his mouth as much as he can.

NOSFERATU A-ha!

BOY Is something wrong?

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NOSFERATU Poor boy, there is a horrific situation developing in your mouth.

The gates of hell have not seen something as monstrous.

BOY So… NOSFERATU Hush! Do not say a word.

(NOSFERATU grabs the drill.)

NOSFERATU Worry not, I’ll get rid of the problem.

(The BOY want to protest, but before he can say a word, NOSFERATU shoots him a defiant look. The BOY is quiet.)

NOSFERATU Shall we begin?

(NOSFERATU is about to put the drill in the boy’s mouth.)

BOY Wait!

NOSFERATU And… why are you interrupting?

BOY Can I… can I get some anesthesia… sir?

A beat.

NOSFERATU Of course… Of course. My bad.

(NOSFERATU stands up, opens the door.)

NOSFERATU Nurse! Come to me!

CREEPY NURSE

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Yes, doctor?

NOSFERATU The boy here has asked for a dose of anesthesia. Would you be so kind?

(The NURSE walks across the room. Looks at the tools.)

CREEPY NURSE I’m afraid we’re out of anesthesia.

NOSFERATU Pity.

CREEPY NURSE I’m sorry.

NOSFERATU: Do not worry…

(The CREEPY NURSE leaves.)

NOSFERATU ...We will find a way around that problem.

BOY Really?

NOSFERATU Of course! For what is being under the effects of anesthesia, really, if not being sound asleep?

BOY Am I going to sleep?

NOSFERATU Yes… Yesss.. You will sleep. Quietly, and peacefully.

BOY But I’m not sleepy…

NOSFERATU

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Not a problem. I will narrate a bedtime story. Now, if I may, this is… well, this is a story my own grandmother, Oma Grettelhein, told me back in old Bavaria when I was, like you, a sleepless little boy.

(The BOY is uncomfortable. NOSFERATU pulls up the stool, sits very close to him. The lighting changes.

It gets darker. A soft spotlight on NOSFERATU and the BOY, and a hard one on the space where the characters of the story will appear.)

(On spotlight: little KONRAD sucking his thumb. His MAMMA appears.)

NOSFERATU One day, Mamma said “Konrad, dear, I must go and leave you here.

But mind now, Konrad, what I say, Don’t suck your thumb while I’m away The great tall tailor always comes To little boys that suck their thumbs.

And ere they dream what he’s about He takes his great sharp scissors out And cuts their thumbs clean off, and then You know, they never grow again (MAMMA goes away. KONRAD is left alone.)

NOSFERATU Mamma had scarcely turn’d her back, The thumb was in, alack! alack!

(KONRAD scuks his thumb.)

NOSFERATU The door flew open, in he ran, The great, long, red-legged scissorman.

Oh! children, see! The tailor’s come And caught our little Suck-a-Thumb.

(The TALL TAILOR enters the room, wielding a pair of giant scissors.)

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NOSFERATU Snip! Snap! Snip! The scissors go; And Konrad cries out - Oh! Oh! Oh! Snip! Snap! Snip! They go so fast; That both his thumbs are off at last…

(The TALL TAILOR has cut off KONRAD’s thumbs. KONRAD stands alone. Thumbless.)

NOSFERATU Mamma comes home; there Konrad stands, And looks quite sad, and shows his hands;"Ah!” said Mamma “I knew he’d come To naughty little Suck-a-Thumb.”

(The lights come up.)

NOSFERATU Did you like it?

(The BOY is in full state of shock.)

NOSFERATU Remember, sucking your thumb will get you bad teeth, and you don’t want a visit from the Tall Tailor, do you?... Now, shall we operate?

BOY But I am not asleep!

NOSFERATU Right… Nurse!

(The CREEPY NURSE opens the door, she is bathed in blood, falls down dead on the floor of the doctor’s office.)

NOSFERATU Argh! My nurse!

(NOSFERATU leans next to the CREEPY NURSE, holding her dead body.)

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NOSFERATU Oh, my lovely nurse. Your time has come. You’ve been taken from my hands…. And yet, time is an abyss… profound as a thousand nights… and death is not the worst. There are things more horrible than that.

(NOSFERATU weeps blood.)

NOSFERATU Who slayed my faithful nurse?! Villain, if you are here, show yourself! And prepare to meet your doom!

(The THUMBLESS CRUSADER enters the stage. He has no thumbs.)

CRUSADER Oh.. I’d take that back if I were you.

NOSFERATU And who are you?!

CRUSADER I guess you haven’t heard of me, evil creature… I’m the thumbless crusader! Guardian of fingerlickers and Protector of thumbsuckers.

NOSFERATU Fingerlickers? That sounds fairly sexual….

CRUSADER Quiet, evil demon! Your time has come!

(THE THUMBLESS CRUSADER extends his hand, he holds a crucifix. NOSFERATU screams as he falls to the floor twisting his body in agony.)

NOSFERATU Don’t do it! What are you doing to my office!

CRUSADER This is hardly your office any longer!

NOSFERATU Mercy! Mercy!

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CRUSADER Why should I have mercy on you, evil monster? Did anyone have mercy on me?

NOSFERATU I am just like you! I am not a monster! I… am… a victim!

(The THUMBLESS CRUSADER stops.)

CRUSADER What’s that you said?

NOSFERATU I am a victim… Just like you…

CRUSADER Wait… What do you mean?

(The THUMBLESS CRUSADER leans and holds NOSFERATU in his hands.)

NOSFERATU Come closer.

(The THUMBLESS CRUSADER comes as close as he can. Their faces are so close, it looks as if they’re about to kiss.)

NOSFERATU Too close.

(The THUMBLESS CRUSADER goes a little further back. Then, NOSFERATU reveals that he is wearing prosthetic thumbs.)

NOSFERATU I...am...just...like...you…

(NOSFERATU falls dead.)

CRUSADER Noooo! He wasn’t a demon. He, like me, was a victim of the evil tailor. We were two sides of the same coin. Me, a heroic avenger, and him… a victim of darkness. A thumbless brother has fallen, and there is no one to blame… but me…

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BOY Don’t be sad Mr. Crusader…

CRUSADER Quiet boy! I shall commit to a long meditation that will provide the existential answers that I’m missing at the moment. My job here is done… and I have failed.

(The THUMBLESS CRUSADER exits. The BOY is left alone. He looks at the bodies of NOSFERATU and the CREEPY NURSE, lying on the floor.))

BOY Mr. Crusader?.... Mr. Crusader!

(The door opens, and the body of the THUMBLESS CRUSADER falls on the floor, soaked in blood.)

BOY Mr. Crusader?... Mr. Crusader, who did this to you?

VOICE Don’t be afraid, boy.

BOY Who are you?

VOICE You don’t have to be afraid, boy. That is, unless you’ve been sucking your thumbs…

(The lights go down slowly, leaving the room in complete darkness.)

(The BOY sits alone and the VOICE of the tailor cackles in the dark.)

END.

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Descendants of the Dragon

Leying Zhang SculpTure

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Eden

MARCO YAN POETRY We are here, sanitized, naked in God’s basin.

The best part, we agree, is that we have innocence, and the worst? There’re no trees, not a damned one.

We’re bored, and boring, where’s the snake that speaks?

Not that we live with pure pleasure, not that we fool ourselves, thinking all things are bright and beautiful but we’re not prepared for periodic flash floods brought by a water pillar from the sky. We cope well enough and think of them as bath-time until we are part of a swirl, a whirlpool catching wilted follicles of His moustache, phlegm from a recent cold, brown toothpaste foam.

When blood from His gum falls upon us, we pray the drain unblocked, so we can go under.

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Through A Moon, Blue

Kristin Brophy PROSE

S

moke billows up, stretching its way over the jagged tops of a boreal forest, and hangs languorously before fleeting away with a rustle of feathers and branches.

Tracing the smoke to its origin back down the uneven boughs of white firs ends in a small cottage, its walls covered in a fading wash of white.

Almost hidden beneath a canopy of limbs kneels a young girl, no more than fifteen, her flaxen hair bobbing about as she scrubs a garment over a washboard. After a few minutes, the girl is satisfied with its cleanliness and drapes the garment, a black dress, over a line strung from the cottage to a low-hanging branch skirting the woods. The sun dips low in the east, the day yet to be warmed: the garment will likely dry by night.

“Elin?”

A voice calls from a small window on the second story of the cottage, and the girl turns her head toward it, drying her hands upon the pinafore protecting the midnight-blue dress she wears underneath.

“Yes, Aunt?” Elin steps a bit further back, tilting her head upward.

Her aunt leans out, arms crossed upon the windowsill. “We have a visitor,” her aunt says, a hitch in her voice. Elin furrows her brow, and her aunt disappears from the frame for a moment before reappearing, holding up a pale white rabbit.

“Suki!” Elin claps her hands in delight. The rabbit, holding still in her aunt’s hands, wiggles its ears. Since Elin came to live with her aunt thirteen years ago, Suki has visited four times, but never this close to tomorrow, her name day. For Suki to come now it must be an omen. “Will you bring her down? It’s been so long since the last time!”

The rabbit tilts its face toward the woman, almost as if waiting for a reply, its whiskers poking into her cheeks. She offers a slow, brittle smile and shakes her head. “I think she should stay inside today; I fear she will want to leave soon enough. Close the door behind you.”

The window is closed with more force than is necessary, panes of glass rattling in their frames.

Her aunt’s voice clawed with a quiet certainty, and Elin shivers and nods, heading toward the cottage entrance, and stepping around two rusting bicycles that lean against the wall. Once inside, she pushes both halves of the door shut and latches them together. Turning toward the sitting room, Elin observes her aunt stirring the contents of the large fireplace cauldron. A long wooden spoon is grasped tightly in her hands, and every now and again she shoots a quick, furtive glance at the rabbit sprawled on the back of the sofa.

Stir, rabbit, stir, rabbit.

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The cauldron, her aunt had told her, came with the cottage when she bought it for almost nothing as a girl. Out of reach of Elin’s memory, but well within her aunt’s, are stories of Elin’s mother and aunt chopping onions with a knife over the bubbling stock. There are traps a few meters into the woods for game; the meat goes into the pot, and little else to waste. Elin remembers little of her parents, having been left here as just a wee girl. Her aunt, often reluctant to divulge stories of them, only does so seemingly once in a blue moon, blotto, and around the times of Suki’s visits.

Curious at the scene before her, Elin sits down on the couch, stroking the rabbit’s silken white fur.

“Have you completed your studies for tomorrow?

Her aunt casts her glance upon Elin, weighing her into place.

She straightens her shoulders and sits up slightly, though her hand does not

wooden table by the window, sunlight not yet pouring in. A few minutes later, Elin, now hunched over the table and writing neatly in her notebook pauses to ask, “What is for supper?”

“Stew.”

“Which kind?”

“Rabbit.”

Elin’s eyes shoot open, her pencil dropping from between her fingers. “Aunt, that’s repugnant.”

Her aunt, now cutting potatoes over the open top, casts her a stern glance. “And was I to know that…Suki would be making an appearance today? We trap game, Elin, and we don’t waste.”

Elin bites her lip, and pushes her long hair out of her eyes. Suki had never once gotten caught in a trap, which had often surprised Elin, but she always ended up more grateful than anything else. Living this far away from most people meant that they had to be careful with supplies, particularly

OUT OF REACH OF ELIN’S MEMORY, BUT WELL WITHIN HER AUNT’S, ARE STORIES OF ELIN’S MOTHER AND AUNT CHOPPING ONIONS WITH A KNIFE OVER THE BUBBLING STOCK.

stop its ministrations of Suki’s fur. It is only almost noon, and her aunt must know well that she has not. After all, the older woman is the one who creates the assignments.

“Not as of yet,” Elin says, raising her hand from Suki’s back. The rabbit pushes itsforelegs into a sitting position and twitches her nose at Elin in protest. Standing, Elin walks to the bookshelf and removes her school materials and lays them out an old

with the hay moon looming. Later, and halfway through an equation, a blur of black swooshes upon the table: her headscarf. One of the scant pieces of information she has about—and from— her parents was a note tied to a piece of shadowy fabric that had been in hersack when she was left upon the doorstep as a child. The piece Elin was allowed to read went, “If you insist upon this charade, then this she must wear

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when the moon is nigh.” The bottom of the note, now stashed in her desk drawer, was visibly torn off. One of her first memories of the cottage was the sight of that ripped parchment curling as the flames consumed it, the only other piece of her parents destroyed. Her aunt interpreted the note strictly, leaving no room for error.

Elin could time her day around the hour she tucked her hair inside the scarf. She still had an hour to go, and a table full of work.

“I will do it today, Elin,” her aunt says, picking up the fabric and folding it up and over Elin’s hair, eventually tying it into place so that nothing of her hair could be seen.

Though it was tighter than Elin might have done it, it felt secure, so she bobs her head in acknowledgement, and continues with her work.

On the sofa, the rabbit watches and waits. ǽ After a disconcerting but delicious dinner in addition to an afternoon of working in the garden, Elin sneaks open the bottom half of the stable door and ducks underneath into the refreshing night air, easing the door shut behind her. On most days it is not possible to see four or five meters past the slate pavers in front of the door, but the nascent light of the hay moon illuminates the form of her aunt, sitting upon a wooden bench they had carved when Elin was ten.

Smiling, Elin starts toward her aunt when the sound of hushed sniffles echo into the quiet night.

“Aunt!” she cries, lifting her skirts and running over, only stopping

to kneel in front of the bench. “What’s wrong?”

Her aunt smiles, her skin wan in the light. “It will soon be your name day, child. Hours now.” She reaches out a hand to Elin’s cheek, thumbing over it gently. “And how old will you be?”

“This year I will be…sixteen! I will be sixteen. Isn’t that wild?”

“Wild indeed,” her aunt murmurs, dropping her hand back upon her lap. “What do you wish for this year?” She pats the bench. “Sit down, Elin.”

Elin complies, and takes her aunt’s hand with a sigh. She wants the only thing she has ever wanted: the other half of the verboten note. When she says so, her aunt bows her head.

“How apropos. Very well, in hours you shall be an adult, and that was to be my gift, regardless. Be mindful, is all I ask. It read, ‘But remember, the first of hay is yours; the second of hay is ours.’”

“If you insist upon this charade, then this she must wear when the moon is nigh. But remember, the first of hay is yours; the second of hay is ours,” Elin quotes aloud, her voice thoughtful. “The second of hay, won’t that be a blue moon? That’s tonight!”

“And so it is.”

She feels her aunt’s pulse quickening through her hand, and Elin squeezes her fingers. “What does it mean? The moon is always ours, Aunt.”

Her aunt pushes herself to her feet, letting go of Elin. Elin watches as she scrubs her hands over her face before offering Elin a smile, the first genuine one she has seen today.

“Just remember that I always

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wanted you to have a choice. And remember that you still do. You are Elin, and that is what you make of it.”

Elin stares after her aunt as she opens both the doors to the cottage, and leaves them open. Elin sits and sits, pensive, until she cannot sit anymore, until her body slumps sideways in sleep. She sleeps for what feels like an expanse of hours, but what must only have been a few.

Her head tilts back and forth to remove the kink from her neck as she stretches her arms above her head. It is only then that she notices her scarf has fallen from her head, resting now at her feet. Her flaxen hair glows around her, appearing to be almost an extension of the moon’s rays.

“Elin.” A voice says from before her, the voice of dreams. “It is time.”

Her hair glows, her stomach is in knots, and the voice of her childhood dreams speaks before her.

It’s too much, too much.

“How…” she breathes, looking up at the form of her mother standing incandescent before her.

“I can only come when the moon fills itself twice in one cycle.”

Elin inhales deeply, holding the air in her lungs until it wants to burst out of her. “Suki.”

“Tsuki, Suki, name me as you may. I came because you would not.” Her mother pauses, her face tightening. “Or because she would not let you come.”

“You dropped me off on your sister’s doorstep when I was four!” Elin hisses, thinking in part that this is not at all how any reunion between them

would be “How can a four year-old make a decision about whether to… whether to remain a girl, or a rabbit?”

“You are light, child. You must come. We are tiring, and the blue moon must continue.”

“You…want me to come to be moonlight? I am only a girl.”

“You are our daughter. This,” she gestures to the light splayed around them, “is your birthright.”

“I have a choice. Aunt kept me so that I could choose to live my life as the Elin I want to be. So, yes, I will choose, but only when I am ready.

Please, go. Scatter. I will make my choice, and I will not be pressured, not even by you.”

Elin’s mother, once resplendent, undulates into the shadows between rays, leaving her daughter once again. Collapsing onto the bench, Elin drops her face in her hands, her hair falling around her in a curtain of light. Above her head, the second hay moon shines on. ǽ Later, under the light of the blue moon, a rabbit sits on the edge of the boreal forest, watching and waiting.

A girl stands luminous in the night, and raises a hand in parting.

ǿ

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Untitled

Nelly Gordpour Film PHOTOGRAPHY

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Untitled

Nelly Gordpour Film PHOTOGRAPHY

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Sibling Rivalry

Kristine Ambrosch Drama A boy, Jacob, sits on the brick stoop of his house. He has on new grey shorts and green t-shirt; a dirty stuffed elephant hangs upside down in his left hand. A girl, Nicole, stands in front of him, a few years older.

She wears jeans with a hole in the right knee and stained black tank top.

NICOLE

He’s an ass.

JACOB No, he’s not.

NICOLE Yes. He. Is. JACOB No, he’s not! Don’t say that about my dad.

NICOLE He’s my dad too.

JACOB No, he’s my dad.

NICOLE He’s our dad. And he’s an asshole.

JACOB Stop! He is mine!

NICOLE He is both our dad. We have different moms but our dad is the same, okay?

JACOB But you can’t say mean things like that.

NICOLE Why not? They're true..

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JACOB No, they’re not.

NICOLE Where is he right now then?

JACOB He’s gettin’ dinner.

NICOLE Really? ’Cause he says that every time. And he’s gone all day.

JACOB So? NICOLE So . . . he’s a liar. He’s at the bar the whole time.

JACOB No. NICOLE Yes. JACOB How do you know?

NICOLE It's obvious.

JACOB He brings home cookies.

NICOLE Yeah but that doesn’t take six hours to get, idiot.

JACOB I’m not an idiot!

NICOLE No, but dad is.

JACOB No. He’s not. Stop saying that about my dad!

NICOLE He is my dad too!

JACOB No he’s not. And I’m gonna tell on you! I’m gonna tell my dad what you said!

NICOLE Go ahead. He already knows.

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Roslyn House Nelly Gordpour Film PHOTOGRAPHY

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Before the War in Austria, his Niece

KATHARINE DIEHL POETRY

The fire warped all our negatives, or else I’d have baskets full of prints for you. Stiff girl with a mourning jewel at her throat, wrist circled with hair (a friend’s, a lover’s, it is hard to tell today). She’d daily washed as was typical, in a marble-veined tub. (Duly institutionalized, some of them, for knocking their scalps against the glass in distress. It was the times.) Imagine words that sound like German but in fact, wholly invented by this young woman. Steinlichkeit. Totenliepf.

Kinderboch. Seemed sane enough, until she started shouting: titer, doktor herr, nitrate.

Images of war are defiling my daguerrotypes.

Gott im Himmel she said the mirror’s turning green with lies. You have heard of Alfred Kubin?

She anticipated his nightmares, the egg and the eye and the war more terrible than a black forest, rustling into each thought.

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Upon My Sole; Portrait of An Artist

Sarah kaplan PROSE

W

hat remains of my paternal grandmother are vestigial traces. Her name was Marilyn and she died when I was three years old. I have no memory of her. I have glimpses of her through the oft-told tales of my family members and in a few photographs. I have a couple of pieces of clunky silver jewelry of hers that I’ve never worn.

I have a gold disc-covered evening clutch and a white pebbled leather bowling ball-sized handbag from a French label that belonged to her, both of which I’ve worn. I have a few of her paintings.

“A poster of her collage ‘No More War’ is in the Smithsonian collection of Vietnam War era protest art,” my grandpa tells me, quietly proud, pointing to the artwork on the wall of his home office. Images ripped from newspapers or magazines are haphazardly slapped on the canvas; soldiers forever frozen in a disordered band, the face of a creepy bright blueeyed porcelain doll with a crack in her facade and a tear running down her cheek, a blond toddler against a brick wall, looking forlornly at the camera.

Paint drips down and mixes with strips of newsprint stock market reports. The bold graphic from which the piece takes its name demands NO MORE WAR! in large red letters.

Her paintings adorned

the walls of every room of every bland, generic Long Island house my grandfather lived in when I knew him.

The home where my grandmother and grandfather raised my father and uncle was not all shades of vanilla like the rest. I remember fragments of that house, which had her stylistic touches all over it. A trio of brilliantly colored stone eggs sat in a bowl on the side table in their den; I liked to touch them to feel their cool, smooth surfaces, and their novel, ellipsoid forms. Clear plastic containers filled with seashells might be found in any number of places, on a side table, on a sink, on a ledge. An enormous conch shell sat on the living room coffee table and someone, I can’t remember who, would encourage me to hold it up to my ear to listen for the sound of waves. Her dank and dusty old studio off the den was not a place I was welcome, but a shrine of storage where a few paintings and easels still stood, waiting. It is here my grandpa must have built by hand the frames for each of her hundreds of paintings.

The den’s powder room had mirrors on two opposite walls and I spent hours there trying to puzzle out the mystery of a thousand selves reflected infinitely.

“She screamed at me to put you down,” my mother tells me. “Your grandmother believed that I picked

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you up too much, that I was spoiling you by carrying you everywhere I went when you were small enough to be held, which was not very long.

Everyone I knew had these teeny, tiny babies, but you and your sister were BABIES; you came out practically sitting up and crawling around on your own. And I understood what you were saying, even when you didn’t have words. I always knew what you meant and I talked to you all the time.

That’s not how your grandmother raised your father. She bought a fur coat for herself and nothing for your father and his brother. She only liked me after you were born.”

“She was kind of a jap,” my uncle tells me when I ask about her while we are sitting a single day of shiva for my grandfather. “She was a second-generation immigrant.

Her parents never spoke Yiddish

about to marry his second wife more than a decade after Marilyn is dead, and the Kaplan men are fighting about money, my father tells me a story. “A few days before she died, she called me into her hospital room and told me to put her family money in a trust for my brother and me, separate from your grandfather. ‘He’s gonna blow it all on the next wife,’ she told me, and so I drew up those papers and she signed them on her deathbed.”

Soon after he tells me this tale, while we’re on vacation in the Bahamas, my father brings his laptop out to the beach where my sister and I are laying out in the sun. He shows me a copy of a letter my grandmother wrote almost five years before she died, which my mother had found while going through her wardrobe after she succumbed to the cancer.

The envelope was addressed to her

"SHE BOUGHT A FUR COAT FOR HERSELF AND NOTHING FOR YOUR FATHER AND HIS BROTHER. SHE ONLY LIKED ME AFTER YOU WERE BORN.”

to her, and she wanted the best of everything, which in our family, was not really possible. She went to Syracuse and was in a sorority and then she married your grandfather and moved to Long Island, near all her sorority sisters and their husbands. She resented the fact that she had to paint to supplement the family’s income; she wanted her art to be uncompromised by mercenary interest, art for art’s sake. My parents argued all the time, it never stopped.”

When my grandfather is

children, my uncle and my father, though she writes to my grandfather.

She paints a picture of his anger issues and alcoholism and how he has hurt her over the years. “You scream!

Your temper flashes, your voice roars, the eyes bulge, the mouth hangs and jaws clench! You don’t see this in yourself but you become a RAGING BULL. At times it’s uncontrollable, your voice elevates so it is frightening to watch…I know too living with you has been very hard for me at times. While you have never struck me or exhibited

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any physical violence, (I am grateful for this) I have been verbally and emotionally abused repeatedly.” She blames his rage for the deterioration of her physical health. I don’t know if she knew she had multiple myeloma at the time, I think only in the previous year or two she was coming to realize that something was very wrong.

She says his anger triggered her nosebleeds, and rheumatism, and fasciculation. “You made me sick! I wanted to run away from you. Why did you have to give me such stress— Your behavior was totally abusive to me…Think what you may about this. It doesn’t really matter about how you think. I know how I felt. I know my body.” I suppose she had to get this off her chest, to give these feelings and thoughts a place in the world outside of her head, but why did she not throw it away, or give it to my grandfather? She must have been too scared of his reaction to confront him directly, but ensuring that the last of her words to be read by her children are a condemnation of their father—it seems manipulative.

I remember things she must have touched but not the woman herself. I look at a picture of her on her last birthday. She is in the kitchen of our first house and a colorful silk scarf covers most of her chemo-thinned hair.

Her lips are pursed to blow out the candles on her cake but she is turned towards me, her eyes focus on me, as if she indulges me on the last of her birthdays, letting me make the wish in her place.

“She painted this for you,” my mother tells me of a painting that hangs on my wall. It is a landscape depiction of a multicolored field of

wheat or reeds that disappears into the sea. The sky takes up the majority of the canvas, a big, open, cloudless blue, with a few patches of varied hues of sunrise or perhaps sunset, reflected in the distant purpling shoreline. Her landscapes are like that, dreamy, the colors often washed out with hints of bolder, darker hidden depths. They have a sedative quality to them, a calm mingling of color, a peaceful merging of land and sea and sky. It was the only artwork of hers I possessed until my grandfather died and I asked my uncle for a few more.

I never asked my grandpa for any of them; I felt they belonged to him, that he wanted to hold on to them.

I favor her collages; from my grandfather’s collection I took five from a larger series she called El Barrio. They are much busier than the landscapes with their arrangement of other people’s photographs of a civilization in decay. Sepia-toned city buildings are the backdrop behind street signs and rundown buildings.

Ragged people wait on line, a man cradles his baby, a girl hides behind the curtain of her window; they all reek of polluted air, of grubby bleakness, of the slog of everyday existence in an impoverished urban environment.

Her brushstrokes add bits of red and green to these dreary composites of city life. “They are depressing, but in a good way,” my friend tells me when I show them to her.

In her collages I search for a glimpse of my grandmother’s soul, beyond the placidity of her oil paint landscapes, beyond the accusatory letter, and the unlovely stories, beneath the superficial shell and lingering resentment. Her absence

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is almost tangible to me at times, especially when I gaze at her work upon my walls. I try to form a clearer picture of the woman she was from the fragments I’ve collected, but she eludes my grasp. The evidence suggests me that Marilyn was a woman I would both admire and sometimes revile, but the lack of any memory of her haunts me.

ǿ

Candy JACOB CINTRON Film PHOTOGRAPHY

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On A Sahara Run

Bettina Mangiaracina PROSE

I

remember the tajine in Morocco. reflections of setting orange suns.

Your hand as it passed me a cigarette. My hand as it held “Miss miss miss!” “Over yours. Our taxi driver screaming. here!” “Miss, for the baby?”

“You’re not allowed to do A snake appears on my neck. A that here.” cameraman yells at me to kiss it.

My bag is being searched for food, A long orange dress, a dusty hot day, money, anything to satisfy these a hotel room of our own. merchants.

“Mint tea?”

Little kids run up and down. Their mothers watching close by, following Two Americans in bliss overlooking a my every move, signaling their busy Marrakech, sun beating down, children when to attack. My dress is exhaling. being grabbed, searched, felt up.

The Arab Spring blasts on TV, black “I don’t have anything!” I covers enwrap us. The room is smoke scream. stacked, the call of Allah wailing in the breeze. Perhaps our foreshadowed “Don’t lose me,” he says. warship. ǽ Children, run.

On the train, I prop the window. Let in He throws a scarf around me. Prepares dry heat. Watch giraffes determined me for Old Medina. to keep up with our speed, go to smoke in the bathroom. A man comes “You must cover your hair. in to share the space. He keeps No man can see you. Hold on tight. closing the door. He doesn’t want to We can’t let anyone think they get in trouble, but I’d rather not. I push can take you.” it open and ask him how much longer he thinks the ride will be. He doesn’t No more are we secure in the know. He doesn’t speak English. We walled structure of Ibis. Berber throw both smile and I go back to sit down pillows, shared hookahs. African pool with the women who won’t stop giving

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me dirty looks, but can’t stop feeding me.

I look down at my hands. Black from soot and sun. I Imagine I grab hold of my mother’s, a comfort I so desperately need right now. Play with my rings, trinkets of who I believe I am. More wishniks, more lonely bus rides to kindergarten.

To my left, there are strangers. To my right, I’m alone.

The train halts to a stop. Time falls into one of those things I will remember later on. Dirt settles in the air. The wind whistles, like an eerie foreboding before a storm. I want it to rain, to rain hard and strong. To be wrapped up with dates. Succulent medjool dates. And I want you. On a train to Marrakech. The Sahara passing by.

ǿ

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Fractal

JAke Andrews Film PHOTOGRAPHY

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Permafrost

KATHARINE DIEHL POETRY You said something is melting.

You should come here and see what it’s like. The freeze extends, works on the climate. There’s a place at the back of the skull you’ve got to protect, especially in winter, where the mind floats in fluid. You must come in a hat.

My mind’s made up already. Grain bending in the wind would not move me. Yes you hiked rivers and mountains, ran with your pants cuffed, you say the apples are ripening too early.

Talk of cold with me? Hold out your hand. ǽ A pebble that’s thrown makes a whole window shatter.

The wind howls with such violence gutting each room. Oh his children will shiver. And his little surrender to the mercury level: his palms and teeth clench against cold.

His wife, skilled at crawl-holes and pills, has never seen the high water.

She could cling to dry bedposts or wait to be taken.

You could show her some atlas or history, what you’d claimed was important.

She’d blink at you slowly. She’s left the house only one day this year, I think for a wedding. It wasn’t her own.

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Untitled

Theadora Hadzi Sculpture

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How To Build A Better Life

Maha Paracha PROSE

O

btain the following materials: that hate is actually the strongest form of flattery and even if they don't, now • a little bit of self-doubt you believe they do. Forget about • a dash of self-esteem any future loves, they'll only matter • three cups of a shitty past then but right now all you need to • two parents in whatever way, think about is you. Learn yourself, shape, or form you want them love yourself. How are you supposed • a couple of good friends to love others if you can't even do • a local bully that? This is as much about your • an ex-boyfriend, or girlfriend, or future lover(s) as it is about yourself. both • And yourself.

Step three: when you feel like there's nothing left to do but wallow in selfStep one: do not think about your past pity, sing. Sing to yourself silent songs self. You are different now. It makes no of your woes until it feels like all your difference. Who you were a day ago, problems are stupid and don't matter a month ago, year ago, two, three or anymore. Pick yourself up when you even seventeen no longer matters. feel like you can no longer walk.

That person is dead. They're not better Winston Churchill once said, “If you're or worse or anywhere in-between. The going through hell, keep going.” starting point between then and now So brush yourself off, look forward doesn't matter, what happened in- and move. Do not fall in love with a between doesn't matter. What matters broken boy or girl, or both, because now, is that you are you. The way you that's not you anymore. You don't look at yourself in the mirror every fix people; you're too damaged to morning and try to smile, but your fix anyone but yourself. So when eyes are dead and lost. That matters. you wake up in the morning think to That is you. Tomorrow, don't let it be. yourself; who am I today? It doesn't matter who you were yesterday, but Step two: forget about your past who you are today. Think about how lover(s). They're gone. They played you're going to live today; and think with your heart and you don't need about the things that you want to do that. They can crawl back to you, they for yourself. Slowly lace up the cords can cry, or they can even continuously that have come lose around your be ruining your life to this day. But, heart until it is all together again. Put that doesn't matter either. They say it in a glass case so others can see

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your heart, but never touch it. It will are good enough, or if they don't tell not be broken again, you won't let it. you anything at all, just nod and say okay. Pretend they're right if they're Step four: thank your local bully for wrong and thank them for picking you knocking you over again and again up when you were a child, when you until your knees are raw and bloody couldn't stand on your own. Tell them and the palms of your hands are you're grown now, that you have your bleeding endlessly. Thank them for own life apart from them. But also, the scars that have been covered by tell them that you understand what the tissues of your negativity and self- they're saying and you're thankful for doubt, and thank them for making you their words of wisdom. Tell them you're stand tall. Thank them for showing you leaving before you go; and even that you do not take things like that if it’s a lie, tell them you love them. any longer. Thank them for being cruel to you when you didn't know how to Step six: don’t forget your friends. stand on your own. Where would you They're waiting for you to get out be today without them? Still unable to of your constant string of bad days. speak, quaking in your boots thinking They'll want to ask you about those about all the things others say about terrible days, try to cushion your you. But now, because of them, it blows, but you have to tell them no. doesn't matter. They steeled you for Wear your pain like a crown, show the hatred the world is full of and made it off, and show the world that; yes, you apathetic to taunting. They might you have had a hard life—but it’s up be the most important piece of the to you what you do with the rest of puzzle after all. Resent them for their it. Tell them that you are made up of words, but love them for their cruelty. your past, of scars left by words that are not usually seen but hidden away.

Step five: when your parents tell you Tell them that while you are not your that you're wrong, don't ignore them. past, it makes you who you are. It runs Simply nod and agree and tell them through you like blood in your veins, that you'll try your best. When they look always changing, shifting. You are not at you with disappointment and bleed that person any longer. Every day you you dry of any esteem you thought are better. Tell them that you are okay, you had, look them in the eye and that you are strong. Tell them that you agree with them. Sometimes parents are living a better life. Tell them you don't understand; sometimes they try are not who you used to be. More than to understand and just can't. They're anything, say it like you mean it. At one not your enemies, or maybe sometime point, even if you don't, now you will. they are. But they fed you and clothed you and in their own way loved you; ǿ and if they didn't, does it really matter in the end? You will get out of it; you will stand up and continue to walk on. When your parents tell you that you're not good enough, or when you

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Contributors Jake Andrews is an amateur photographer trying to figure out what to do with life. His biggest hobbies are working in the darkroom and sleeping. Jake is excited, and also quite surprised, to have his work published in this issue of the Olivetree.

Kristine Ambrosch 's work tends to be dangerously close to nonfiction-it is the only way she knows how to write. She enjoys writing in all genres, each giving a different effect to a story. If not reading, Kristine can usually be found meditatively eating vegan food or searching ways to help the environment. She is glad to be leaving something behind at Hunter through the journal. Kristine is graduating, more confused then ever, in the spring with an English degree.

Kristin Brophy is a writer or a cat. She isn't yet sure. When she

isn't eating or napping in sunbeams, she likes to play with words, do ballet, recycle, and enthusiastically read comics. She will graduate Hunter this May and begin her MFA at the Vermont College of Fine Arts in the hopes of writing books for children and young adults—small and wonderful humans with great imagination. Bring her cupcakes or wish her luck.

Jacob Cintron is a photographer with an interest in fine art, street, and documentary photography. He also has a large interest in most forms of digital media, particularly 2D animation and film. At the moment he is some evolved form of super-senior at Hunter College, where he spends most of his time between creating new work, running the Olivetree, and wishing he could sleep. Jacob can be reached at UDP.Jacob@gmail.com Katharine Diehl is currently a student in the educational

psychology MA program at Hunter. She has previously been published in Passages North, burntdistrict, Revolution House, and other journals online and in print. She attended St. Francis for her BA where she completed two theses: an empirical study on helping behavior and an interdisciplinary ramble through Peter Pan. Her brain is split between social science and the humanities, which leaves her confused but happy. Visit her at frozenseawriting. tumblr.com for occasional crazy updates.

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Angel Eduardo is a writer, musician, and photographer from

North Jersey. He writes poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. More of his work can be found on his official website, http://www.angeleduardo.net.

Gamal ElSawah is a Junior at Hunter College majoring in Theatre.

He likes tacos.

Conrado Falco is, rather foolishly, pursuing a double-major in

Media Studies and Theatre. He writes plays, and also directs them. He'd also be happy if you can hook him up with a job.

Catharine Franklin is an alumna of Hunter and the City College of New York, has a BA in English Literature and American Studies.

She is now an assistant professor of history. How that happened, she has no idea. Even so, she still has fond memories of the night that Dr. Alex Alexander took the entire Russian I class to Uncle Vanya's on 54th.

Louis Gaudio is majoring in both film and creative writing. He enjoys writing non-fiction and creative non-fiction about his experience in the US Navy. Some of his favorite authors are Vladimir Nabokov, Alice Walker, and Charles Dickens.

Nelly Gordpour is a Muse Scholar majoring in Sociology and Human Rights, inspired by photography as a vehicle for change. She has been a photographer since the age of 16. She is a co-founder of the Photographers' Collective of Hunter College. In addition, Nelly is currently involved with the administrations at both the International Center of Photography and Magnum Foundation. She is also a volunteer docent at the Museum of Tolerance. Her photography has typically focused on the Buddhist concept of impermanence and sociological nature and of rust and decay in industrialized cities. Lately, Nelly has been exploring the Iranian diaspora in America, with her lens pointed inwards at her family.

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Charlie Guzman is aspiring poet out of Brooklyn, New York.

Through his work, he attempts to explore the borders consuming our day to day lives including those of identity and emotion. He has been published in several other magazines, including: The Same Magazine, Tribe Magazine, Shot Class Journal, Symmetry Pebbles, and anthologized in the short collection Blanket Stories. He’s currently taking a handful of classes and writing as much as possible.

Theadora Hadzi is a graphic designer, studio artist, photographer,

and computer enthusiast. Preferring to go by "Thea," the weirdly animated tiny person has been submitting artwork to The Olivetree Review since she was a freshman-sophomore hybrid in Fall 2012. She's excited to finally be graduating and see where life takes her next. For now, find her at the GC Fruitstand. ;) (PS. Eva likes pickles)

Sarah Kaplan is a Hunter College student who submitted to The Olivetree Review. (PS. We think Sarah is cool!)

Sarah Leber is a New York based artist. See more of her work at

Sarahleber.com

Bettina Mangiaracina first published in A.W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts’ Seeds Magazine. She then graduated early and moved to NYC to pursue an acting career with Steinberg Talent Management. She’s a four-time alumnus of University of Virginia’s Semester at Sea program, where Paul Muldoon encouraged her to keep writing. She is currently studying in India and is traveling on the Trans-Siberian in May. Read what she’s up to and where she’s at here: www.antidotesandesires.com Maha Paracha is a little bit sad, a lot of the time, because of

stress. Please bring her food at the Olivetree Review room of TH212. She's a Creative Writing Major who is wondering if she should double major in History or not. She's also our Senior Prose Editor, Rachel DeCesario's biggest fan.

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Rachel Sather is a theatre major in her senior year. She has

appearedely with in many productions at Hunter, and can be seen in "A Doll's House" this next Spring. She has written for several magazines, including 'Rue Morgue' and 'Blood and Thunder', and enjoys writing poetry in her spare time. Rachel is obsessed with comedy, and will begin an editorial internship with ' Funny or Die' in Spring 2016.

Marco Yan Born and raised in Hong Kong, Marco Yan has moved

recently to study poetry at New York University. His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Folio, Foothill, Cha and more. Email: szonyan@hotmail. com

Leying Zhang is a senior at Hunter College, majoring in Chinese and Studio Art. Currently she is working largely with both videos and sound.

She also teaches Mandarin and drawing in school settings. Leying will be attending Teachers College in the fall to become not only an artist but also an educator.

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All students are encouraged to become editors, graphic designers, publicity associates, production assistance, or senior staff members. We are always looking for new members and staff. Attend our many events, such as open houses, writing essions, art trips, open mics, and lunch parties. Or you can simply come by our office, visit our website or find us on Facebook.

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

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The OTR welcomes Hunter students 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.

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The Olivetree Review

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Issue 56 Fall 2014

The Olivetree RevieW THE LITERARY & ARTS MAGAZINE OF HUNTER COLLEGE

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