The Olivetree Review Issue 59

The Olivetree Review Issue 59

SPRING 2016

The Literary & Arts Magazine of Hunter College Since 1983

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OTR 59

Errata Within the Table of Contents for Issue 58, Alyson Fusaro's poetry piece "Incident" was listed as a Prose Contest Winner. As it is correctly stated later in the issue, this piece was actually the Poetry Contest Winner of that issue.

Š The Olivetree Review, CUNY Hunter College, 695 Park Avenue, Thomas Hunter Room 212, New York, NY 10065 theolivetreereview.com Spring 2016, No. 59. This journal is funded by Hunter College's student activity fee and is distributed free in the university committee.

The artwork featured on the cover is "Projected" by Keka Marzagao.

The fonts used throughout are multiple versions of Linux Libertine, and Linux Libertine Capitals. Layout design by Jacob Cintron.

Submissions are reviewed beginning in the the summer months, through November, and again from December through April. We consider submissions of visual art, fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and drama. The Olivetree Review is completely staffed by full and Part time 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.

Appreciation and thanks to all those who made this issue possible, from our printers, to the Hunter College institutions and offices, the student and public submitters, our volunteer editors, and last but certainly not least, our Olivetree staff.

Printed by Sunray Printing Solutions St. Cloud, MN

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Administrative & Editorial Staff Spring 2016 Editors-In-Chief Associate Editors Rachel DeCesario Jacob Cintron

Treasurer Jacob Cintron

Editorial Assista nt Stefania D'Andrea

Office Manager

Richard Portilla

Art Editor

Eliana Resnick Sam Meyerson

Drama Editor

Eva Senatore

David Attali Selena Barrientos SadĂŠ Bobb Jacob Cintron Kristina D'Angelo Rachel DeCesario Tasnim Halim Ahmed Hassan Diana Kosianka Victoria Lau Michael Marbella Benny Morduchowitz Thomas Newman Julia Papell Avery Phlipps Oscar Vargas Tanisha Williams

Prose Editor

Stefania D'Andrea

Poetry Editor Luisa Nin

Publicity Managers

Kaitlyn Wong Tanisha Williams

Social Media Manager Ahmed Hassan

Webmaster

Piotr Maryniak

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OTR 59

Contents PROSE Across the Pasture Rachel DeCesario

The Bird-Watch Hans Freiwald

PG. 34

PG. 56

PG. 12

Madre

Michele Kirichanskaya PG. 132

The Ninja Burglar Diana Kosianka

The Party

Julia Papell

PG. 115

PG. 76

Julia Papell

Four Stages

Lucia Cappuccio

PG. 88

PG. 40

The Girl Who Carries Her Mattress PG. 60

I Am Not a Poet PG. 99

I Slide Into Myself PG. 10

PG. 50

Of Acids and Alkalines

PG. 102

Nettles

POETRY A Little Black Boy Abe Douek

Oscar Vargas

Erica Brunner

Prose Contest Winner

Tree Pose

Easter Confessions on 4/1

Poetry Contest Winner

Julia Papell PG. 123

Sketchpad (the)

Diana Kosianka

PG. 74

Meriam Pacheco Salazar PG. 89

Victoria Lau

Silent Suffering Avery Phlipps

Jelane DeSilva

Aneurisma

The Knife in America Hans Freiwald

Acidic Laughter

PG. 114

Evan Leone

Rachel DeCesario

PG. 30

PG. 129

The 2AM Sky is a Weird

Purple Blue Oscar Vargas

PG. 32

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The Foiled Plan of

Summer 2009 Julia Papell

PG. 136

ART Acid (series)

Jelane DeSilva

Heater

Chang Jung Lu

Intestines

Julian Rosen

Larissa

Keka Marzagao

Luminous

Jacob Cintron

Mary Magdalena Keka Marzagao

David Carmona

PG. 122

Sister Solace

Untitled

Keka Marzagao

Untitled (Fear) Keka Marzagao

PG. 11 PG. 54 PG. 113

PG. 62

Anxiety

Avery Phlipps

PG. 131

PG. 119

Drama Contest Winner

PG. 42

Ahmed Hassan

I Heart You Jesus

PG. 63

PG. 43

Johnny's Kitchenette (Excerpt from the play "Symphonic")

Sadé Bobb PG. 110

PG. 98

Hanging By a Light Avery Phlipps

PG. 135

PG. 73

DRAMA

PG. 22

Madonna and Child

Julian Rosen

PG. 90 PG. 91

Julian Rosen PG. 20 PG. 75

Carlos Khalil Guzman PG. 33

Julian Rosen

Keka Marzagao

Strange

American Muslims Friend (series)

Projected (series)

PG. 92

Nights Sweep of Fate

Abe Douek

PG. 23

PG. 101

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Contest Winners PROSE The Effect of Loss: Write a piece that portrays how the addition or loss of someone or something affects a character.

Diana Kosianka's "The Sketchpad" is the winner of the Prose contest because it descriptively tells a simple story of how a seemingly ordinary possession's loss has a profound impact on its owner. The protagonist, a nameless Hunter college student and "daughter of the forgotten borough" of Staten Island, is enduring her typical arduous commute to school. An everyday occurrence is told in a way we can relate to and see clearly, thanks to the author's vivid imagery of forging through the rain and cramming herself onto packed train cars. Along the way, she repeatedly checks her pocket for her prized possession: not a credit card or an ID, but her sketchpad. An object that appears easily replaceable to most becomes irreplaceable to our narrator, and we feel her pain when she loses the myriad of intricate portraits she's created.

The Sketchpad by Diana Kosianka page 50

POETRY The Good, The Bad, & Human Nature: Anne Frank

said, “In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.” Franz Kafka, however, said, “Everyone has his sharptoothed sleep-destroying devil inside him and this is neither good nor bad, but is life. If one did not have him, one would not live.”

Write a poem where you explore either, or both, of these concepts.

The contest prompt for this issue was inspired by questions of good and evil that I have found prominent in literature, media, and my own self. The poem "Easter Confessions on 4/1" immediately

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stuck out to me because it added religious imagery to the question.

In it, Oscar Vargas not only speaks about basic human nature but also about goodness and sin. He uses simple language to describe the troubles of the speaker, giving the reader an inside look into their thought process with colorful details. The last line of the poem, "I am not a sinner, I am not a sinner," brings this poem together and shows, in the repetition, the underlying anxiety of the question: Are we sinners because we sin, or are we absolved once we confess?

Easter Confessions on 4/1 by Oscar Vargas page 88

DRAMA A Crash & A Change: Write a scene (maximum 10 pages), that includes the following, not necessarily in this order: ~ A collision ~ Something meaningful gets destroyed ~ A dramatic shift in tone

“Hanging by a Light� not only beautifully incorporated the contest prompt with an intriguing story, but it also brought the concept of theater to life and gave a little taste of what life is like working behind the scenes of the magical productions that most people take for granted. This piece delves into the idea of how much drama can happen before the show even goes up with a group of fully realized characters that can easily be visualized. Avery wrote this piece with such concise detail that it could easily be produced for a live theatrical experience. With an overall arching story of engaging characters in an everyday situation, it was written with a larger than life message and is a great example of a dynamic piece filled with personality.

Hanging Light by Avery Philipps page 63

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OTR 59

Letter From The Editor

F

ellow Olivetree Review staff, members, and readers, this is officially my final letter from the Editor. To say that this one is going to be unavoidably clichĂŠ is a massive understatement.

I had already been wandering somewhat aimlessly through Hunter for two years when I finally walked through the open door of The Olivetree Review office nearly four years ago. For four years I have laughed in this office, cried in this office, panicked and created, quietly accepted defeats and boisterously celebrated victories with the people who have come through that door. For four years I have met people who I will miss, people who I wish to know better, people who I would happily never cross paths with again, and people who I only hope now want me in their lives as much as I do them.

For the last two of those years here, I have been Editor-in -Chief of this publication, an eternity in Hunter College time. I have written these letters and used them to, the best of my ability, give all readers an honest view of each issue and semester of the Olivetree Review. I have either helped to make or personaly had the final word as to what the issues will look like, what direction we should take as a club, and where we need to try harder. It hasn't by any means always been an easy job, and I will in no small way be grateful for the small break that both stepping down and graduating will bring me. Yet at the same time, I will miss this place immensely.

To my current fellow E-I-C, Office Manager, Senior Editors, and Publicity and Media Managers reading this: anybody would be lucky to call you all friends, and it's truly been an honor. This final semester for me not only here but at Hunter has been a rough one that I wouldn't have made it through without the friendship and support I've found in you. The Olivetree Review is an amazing place, full of incredible people, truly talented, dedicated people. I can only hope to find more places and people in life who can create as much a enjoyable workspace, be a source of inspiration, and create a second home as the OTR office and you, its staff, has done for me.

One final shoutout of special thanks to Eva Senatore, Rachel DeCesario, Benjamin Morduchowitz, Stefania D'Andrea, and Charles Mingus, for doing your extra parts that have kept me sane throughout this final semester.

Farewell for now,

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History of The Olivetree

S

ince the Fall semester of the year 1983, The Olivetree Review has been a Hunter institution, allowing a place for student writers to submit their work and see it published. Under the auspices of their faculty advisor, Professor David Winn, a small group of Hunter students successfully petitioned Hunter for the funds to start a publication. This allowed Olivetree's original staff members, Pamela Barbell, Michael Hariton, Mimi Ross DeMars, and Adam Vinueza,to create their issue of student work and dedicate it to the memory of the late Hunter College professor and poet James Wright.

The Olivetree Review has come a long way since that original first issue. Digital printing allows for both the inclusion of full color images and extra design elements to be available for all projects.

We began including photography submissions in Issue #7, and advancements in scanning and digital photography have allowed for us to accept nearly any form of art that can be captured in one or more frames. We've also begun accepting drama writing submissions as of Issue #52, meaning we're finally accepting and printing all forms of creative writing and art that it's currently possible to.

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I Slide Into Myself

by Erica Brunner

Poetry

There are potted ferns on the wood bench that will last a few more days. The tops of skyscrapers lost in clouds. Ride me until I come and spit until you’re out of me.

Poppy tea.

I put the white daisies in a beer mug for you.

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Friend

(Photography series)

Julian Rosen

Film Photography 11

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OTR 59

The Knife in America

by Hans Freiwald

T

Prose

here is an old Senegalese parable about an arrogant, inventive little spider named Anansi. While listening to a story one day, the spider became very upset upon discovering that the story was neither about him, nor by him. He took his concerns to the local chief of the village and asked permission to have all stories, from then on, be about him and by him. The chief said that he would grant the spider this request only if he would single-handedly bring a tiger back to him, alive and willing.

The spider agreed, and traveled to a cave that he knew the tiger lived. The spider then sewed up both of his eyes, and began singing and dancing wildly outside of the cave. When the tiger came out to investigate, the spider told him that since sewing up his eyes, he now sees the most beautiful colors and cannot help but to dance and sing all day. The tiger quickly insisted upon the spider sewing up his eyes as well, so he too could see these colors. The spider quickly complied, and

danced with the tiger, all the way back to the astonished chief.

Impressed, the chief granted the spider’s request.

Alpha enjoyed this story very much, and since moving to America, if pressed about his origin long enough, he would tell it.

"Ok bro, here is a good story from Senegal, bro. It's very good. Funny too,” he’d start. He'd tell the story, and based upon the response he would tweak it each time.

If “his audience” wasn’t laughing Alpha (as Anansi) would conclude by breaking into a flailing jig that would eventually send him crashing to the ground. If his listeners were enjoying themselves he could often elaborate upon the story until neither he nor anyone else could keep it straight (Anansi has been known to end up on the moon selling breadfruit).

You see, to Alpha, the story was not nearly as important as the response. He would do the same kind of tweaking with his own story. He told people

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he was from Senegal, and not really from Guinea, because he feared people would associate or even blame him for the Ebola Virus. He told people that his father was a scholar from France, rather than tell of how he had really fled his home country of Sierra Leone, to avoid a bloody revolution. He even told people his name was Alpha, because he feared his real name of Mamadu, which is “Mohamed” translated, would give people the impression that he might be a member of Boko Haram, or “even worse Al Qaeda,” he’d think to himself and get anxious (of course there was a slim chance in hell any

"

boy, always offering to help, if he saw something needed to be carried or worked upon.

The younger women, because he was a very handsome young man, with very rich dark skin, his face clear of any imperfections or scars. He was tall and thin, which allowed for his muscles to protrude from his tightly-wound frame.

But what most attracted these women was Alpha's perfectly sculpted, symmetrically shaped skull, which he meticulously shaved every morning, with an ivory and bone-handled knife that his father had acquired on a hunting trip to Namibia, when he was a boy. The other

He even told people his name was Alpha, because he feared his real name of Mamadu, which is “Mohamed” translated...

American would ever research the origin of his, or anyone else’s name for that matter.

Most jingoists these days make their “terrorist judgments” preresearch anyhow). However, he too chose the name of Alpha because he had once thought highly of himself.

Back in his homevillage Alpha always attracted a lot of attention from the women.

The older women, because he was a very kind and gentle

young men in the village let their hair grow dirty and wild.

They would much rather ride their bikes to the estuaries, take camping trips to Mount Nimba, and most important of all, prepare to get work at the hydroelectric plant that had recently opened at the base of the river. In doing this they could hopefully avoid a life of toil in one of the bauxite mines, becoming miserable like all the men that wake up to work early,

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OTR 59 then drink and cough all night after. The other boys thought Alpha was too concerned with his looks and they would tease him.

"Hey bald-boy!

Hey pretty boy! Just like a woman.

F'you're not careful you gonna wind up one!" They would laugh and slap each other on the backs.

"Nah bro, I'm going to America, to college; then, a millionaire bro,” He’d respond.

This would cause them to laugh even harder, and laughing, stumble off to do those man- things that I mentioned “real” African men do.

But, Alpha would study hard, and go to the local school every day, even though this was not required. He would save his money and buy books that had "New York Public Library" stamped in the front cover; because they were checked out under a false name by enterprising Africans, who quickly mailed them back to their home-villages. And he would win himself a scholarship to go study in Paris.

Alpha loved Paris. He would stroll around the city with books by Camus and Sartre, holding them high in hopes of sparking a conversation,

thus allowing him to strut his thickened French accent.

Je suis Meursault. Et toi aussi! He’d exclaim, looking up from his copy of the Stranger.

Unfortunately France does not suffer from a shortage of pseudo-philosophers and Alpha struggled to make his mark. He got a job working as a bellhop in a French hotel just off of the Sorbonne, and stopped going to classes. He stopped philosophizing and started fetishizing all of the wealth he would see in the American guests at his hotel. He would carry their luggage up to their rooms under a watchful eye, and imagine the bags being filled with American money, which their owners would dump out and roll around in the moment they closed the door. They would tip him well and say things like “where’s the loovrah, and where’s a good spot for snails?”

J’aime l’Amérique, he’d respond while rubbing the tip between his fingers in his pocket. As his tips started to mount his passions started to return within him. He would flirt with girls at the hotel café, offering to show them the Declaration of Independence he kept in his wallet. He would carry around books by Twain and Truman Capote in hopes

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that someone would ask if he was from the Dakotas or Chicago or New York City. Soon Alpha had scrimped enough money together to make his way to America. Soon he would be the one doing the tipping.

Once arriving in New York, Alpha quickly realized that his hopes had been hinged on a false vision. The money he had seen in Paris was not waiting for him when he got off the plane. He took a taxi to the address of a hotel that one of his Parisian bosses had promised would give some work. The driver took him to a run-down two-story on West TwentyThird Street. The neon sign outside glowed “Gem Hotel,” well “ em H el” as the rest of the letters had burned out in the same fashion as its edifice.

There were men in lawn chairs out front on the stoop drinking cans of Coors beer. They eyed him as the car pulled up. Alpha paid the driver tipping him five dollars. He walked toward the hotel doors trying to avoid eye contact with the beer drinkers.

One of them reached out and stooped him.

“You need help brotha?”

The man looked to kill him in stare.

“No sir, I have a job at this hotel. Sir.” Alpha felt his toes grip his shoes as if he were

about to bound away down the street. The man burst out in laughter. It was the wheezing kind of cancer-smoke laughter that you could imagine a villainous cat to have.

“Ain’t no hotel here no mo, you got had.” He took a swig out of his tall beer can and licked for a drop that had dribbled on his chin. Alpha was confused, but moreover he was frightened. He contemplated his next move. He was about to ask for clarification when the man spoke again.

“Naw you ain’t got to be thinkin. You got ta be movin.

You got the wrong intel son.

The Gem is for gems and you ain't shinin much my brotha.”

He laughed again, and it scared Alpha more than before. He felt the presence of his father’s knife as his quadriceps tightened.

He called his job back in Paris and was given no clear indicator of what had happened. He was out of sight and out of mind. Out of Paris, out of Africa, and in New York.

Alpha and alone. Finally a man at the hotel gave him some contact information on a place he might be able to stay. He wrote down the address and took the subway north.

He rented out a oneroom flat in a dilapidated building in the North Bronx,

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"

and had soon spent most of the money he had cherished back in Paris. He feared his intelligence and shaved head would not be enough to get him his million dollars in America. Because of this he became depressed. He lost his kindness that had been so much a part of his soul. He had lost most of those protruding muscles (from eating all of the processed foods that the North Bronx has become famous for).

He stopped reading books in public. He stopped reading to start conversations. He even stopped reading by himself.

Stopped with all of the books that he loved, even though he now had a card that gave

sport. Something that was a point of pride for his father who would always say, “It is meat that will keep you alive, but it is the hunt that will keep you hungry.”

His father would leave for a week or two at a time, but he would always return, with something nice for him and his mother. He would run to his father when he saw him coming from outside the front window.

He would jump up into his arms and feel the sweat of the hunt coming off of him. His father would give him a package usually of pawpaw candy and wooden soldier figures. Later

Something that was a point of pride for his father who would always say, "It is meat that will keep you alive, but it is the hunt that will keep you hungry." him access to all the books he could ever want. But worst of all, he had stopped shaving his head with the ivory and bonehandled knife from his father.

*** The Hunting trip to Namibia:

When Alpha was a young boy, his father would go on hunting trips with his childhood friends from the village. These were not hunting trips for food but rather for

on in the night he would tell stories of how he had outrun the Cheetahs on the Lopori River, or had to dodge a mêlée of rough skinned plums thrown down by the Colobus Monkeys up in the argan trees. He would laugh and allow his stories to become more and more animated based on his sons widening eyes.

Then on one hunting trip his father didn’t come back for a very long time. Months passed by. Alpha would pace the floor anxiously before and

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after school. He would ask his mother “Where do you think he could be?” What could he possibly be hunting?”

“He’s taking care my son, don’t you worry,” was all his mother would say. He questioned himself as to why she would be so calm. He began to doubt her love. Then late one night Alpha heard a tapping on the outside of his window. He sat up and looked out. He saw his father staring back at him.

His father’s eyes were mad. He was dripping wet and shaking.

In one hand he held a bottle of brown liquor, and in the other a knife. He gestured for his son to come out. Alpha complied and walked out to the man that resembled his memory of his father. He smelled sharp and sour. He was radiating a heat like a cook-fire. He bent down and took his son’s cheek in his hand. He caressed him. Then he held out a knife. It shined in the moonlight. The white handle bounced the night back at him like the sun off a river.

The blade was dripping loose stringy blood. His father wiped the red liquid off on his pant leg and handed the knife to his son.

“This is what you will have of me.” With that he squeezed his son’s shoulder and turned and walked off into the tree line.

Alpha wanted to do something.

Anything.

He wanted to shout for his mother.

He wanted to run after his father and go on an adventure.

He wanted to take his new knife and become a king. But he did nothing. He knew that was best.

***

In the Bronx his hair grew wild and dirty, and sadly it grew only around his ears.

He would look into the mirror, feeling at his smooth central scalp, and curse his father, and curse the ivory and bonehandled knife, and most of all curse New York and America.

"New York has killed my head!"

He would scream in the mirror, waving his knife.

Alpha had pretty well settled into his miserable state of affairs. He would attain bad jobs, and put forth the little effort he felt they deserved.

He cleaned toilets at NYU, all the while ruminating on the scholarship he had given up in Paris. He loaded trucks for UPS, and became angry when he lifted a heavy "book-load" on its way to Africa. He stocked shoes at a DSW, and hated handling all of the fancy Italian shoes that he couldn't afford.

At night he would wear a different pair of shoes home, watching

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OTR 59 his feet and how dignified they looked as he walked. He would take them to an old man at Grand Central Station and get them shined.

Alpha now felt not only the heat from the plate, but from the chef's face as well.

"Use a tray you stupid monkey! This isn't Africa, we

“You sure do have quite are clean in my kitchen!" the collection young man,”

Alpha was stumbling he would say, as Alpha would over how to respond.

He present him another pair. wanted to scream back at the

“It’s just money bro.” chef, "In Africa, I was the king!"

Alpha would then lean back and He wanted to throw the plate at hope for someone like Donald him and call him a French Pig. Trump or John D. Rockefeller to But he did neither of these. notice him. After the man was

"Yes. Sorry," was all he finished Alpha would thank said. With this the chef slapped but never tip. He was fired the plate from his hand, the one night walking out of the ceramic shattering on the floor, store with a new pair of black a jagged shard jumping back Hush Puppies. He felt ashamed. and nipping Alpha in his left Now he worked in a French thumb.

Restaurant on Manhattan’s "Yes. Sorry, Chef! Is Upper East Side, running all of what I think you meant. Now the food, that he wasn't allowed to eat, to the customers that get out of my kitchen!" The chef was breathing hard. Noticing couldn't care less. the blood dripping from

He disliked the Alpha's hand, the chef became restaurant immensely.

He embarrassed over his irrational thought the French chef was outburst and could no longer an asshole, which he was, but make eye contact with anyone mainly because he's a chef (a in the kitchen.

French chef). One day when Alpha bandaged his Alpha picked up a plate of food to take to a table, the chef thumb, in the dingy must-filled stopped and scolded him for locker room. A fellow employee and fellow African, Eric from holding it wrong.

Burkina Fasso (really Edu from

"Why is your thumb Liberia) entered. on top of my plate!?" The chef

"My man, what screamed. happened to you?" he asked,

"Sorry, it's hot, chef." kneeling down to inspect.

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"The chef hit me with a lion skinned coat requesting the plate bro." Alpha replied. presence of his son. He thought

"You gonna get some about his mother and how she money out of that my friend,” never knew about his meeting Eric laughed as he walked over with his father that night. He to his beaten locker, and began thought about the love that had to spinning his silver padlock. left her, and he forgave her, and he cursed his father, and he

"Oh yah? What do forgave him. He thought for you mean money bro?" Alpha a moment he was like Camus’ asked.

Meursault and he was being

"C'mon.

Worker's sentenced to decapitation. He compensation my friend." Eric, imagined himself the moment realizing Alpha's ignorance to before his execution and he the concept, continued. "It's imagined he would be at peace. when you get paid if you get He heard the chef hurt at work." yelling in the kitchen above.

Alpha lit up. "That's He squeezed his hand so the blood began to flow more freely. good bro."

His legs began to shake with

Eric just laughed again. anticipation, and he felt like he "Yah it's good, but anyway, was going to scream. He opened you have to really get hurt,” his mouth but nothing escaped. he laughed.

“You'd have to He felt his heart racing inside lose that thumb or something." his chest. He decided he would Eric finished putting his waiter die a millionaire in his life. He vestments into his locker. decided that there was such

"See you tomorrow. a thing as starting over. He And feel, better, huh." Eric decided he was his father’s son. opened the heavy metal door He thought about the and left Alpha to sit and look at story of the spider. He thought his damaged hand. He noticed about sewing the chef's eyes the slightest bit of blood, up. He thought about getting starting to soak out into the hurt at work and getting paid bandage, from where he had in America. He thought about been cut. As the blood trickled his thumb. He thought about down he pictured his father doing more with less. And he walking away into the distance thought about the ivory and of that tree line. He pictured his bone-handled knife. father sitting on a throne with a

*

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Acid

(Photography series) issue59.indd 21

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OTR 59

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Intestines

Julian Rosen

Pen on Paper 5/10/16 5:50 PM

Nights Sweep of Fate

by Abe Douek

Drama

CHARACTERS CROCK A black janitor.

LEMMY A black janitor.

SETTING A church TIME Some time in the past SCENE The sun has set. A church with high ceilings, dark brown, worn out wooden floors, beaten up benches, some of them ripped open and they lay in the upper half of the church, nearest to the elevated platform where a statue of Jesus lays. The windows of the church are each scattered with specks of dirt and nothing but a black desolate sky can be seen through them.

Lemmy, a black man in his forties, short, nice & plump, a bald shiny head, wearing glasses, clean blue jeans, an ironed collared blue shirt, and a fresh pair of black sneakers is mopping the floors between the benches of the front half of the

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OTR 59 Church. He is humming a pleasant melody, and his swift, smooth, generous mops go along with the hum.

Crock, a black man in his fifties, specks of black rough hair scattered on his head, a grim face with lines of age connected to his hard life, is clearly agitated with the world making sudden, rash mops of the wood in the back half of the Church, which is empty space of desolate wood. He is wearing ripped, rugged jeans, a black worn out to grey long sleeve shirt, and leather shoes that are as wrinkly and used up as his grunted face.

He is moaning as he mops the floor with a harsh force.

CROCK Will yuh stop wit dat hum of yers. It’s makin’ me feel sick to my stomach.

(Lemmy stops humming. Turns to Crock, but continues his peaceful mopping.)

LEMMY I don’t want to. The silence of dis place makes me woozy.

CROCK I don’t care how the silence makes yuh feel. It ain’t fittin’ for dis joint.

LEMMY Yer moans ain’t fittin neither. Dey gives me a sense dat we’re back at it like we were way back.

CROCK What makes yuh tink life’s any different. ‘Stead of liftin’ wood, we’re moppin’ it!

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LEMMY LIFTIN’ WOOD?! Dats not all we was doin’. We was doin’ much more den dat. Hell, it ain’t even what we was doin, it’s what dey was doin’ to us.

CROCK Yer real bright. Tink yuh one of dem with yer fancy language. What do dey call dat. A...a uh...a pun. Yeah, a pun. Cut dat crap. We ain’t fit for it.

Dat ain’t a pun.

LENNY (Lemmy continues swiftly mopping, making his way out of the benches towards Crock. Crock is mopping & moaning like a madman. Lemmy begins to hum again.)

CROCK Stop! Stop wit’ dem hums! Dem cowardly hums!

(Lemmy continues humming. Crock makes a real vicious mop of the floor, a moan full of pain, both more drastic than all his previous ones. He slams his mop to the floor, as its crash fills the church with a bang! Lemmy abruptly stops his hum, turns to Crock.)

LEMMY What’s it bout my hum dat makes yuh so displeasant.

CROCK “Displeasant” – sick! I said dey make me sick. Don’t know where’ yuh got displeasant from. Dat don’t fit yuh neither!

Dat hummin’, as if yuh enjoy this work. As if yer okay wit how we looked at. We ain’t men, we puppets, blacker than black puppets. More beat up den these floors. More ripped open than dem benches. Yuh hum like we in the fuckin’ skies and our skin is as white as dem dam clouds!

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OTR 59 LEMMY Yuh know what yer problem is. Yuh can’t let go. I can. I see dis is better den where we comin’ from.

And you sayin’ we still der.

CROCK We are. Still der! Our skins the same color, only more cracked and weary. When we walk on da streets, we get dem same stares. Can’t even get a bite to eat, witout bein’ stared at every bite, as if we bitin’ sumtin’ dat ain’t ours, dats out of our jurisdiction.

And dis church, da perfect place fer us, desolate, empty of life, beaten up, brown, old, ripped open.

Dem people don’t care about dis church, dey don’t care about us. Dey don’t even come in here no more.

(Lemmy makes his way towards crock, with small, careful, gentle steps, making sure to not make a peep of noise.)

CROCK We cleanin’ fer da air. At least da air ‘ppreciates it.

Yuh know what I love bout the air. It listens. It hears my moans. I can talk to it. I can talk to the air in the room. People, nah, can’t talk to ‘em. Us people, dem people, any people, we always be livin’ in the past.

Always. And people can’t get dat. The past is now, dats da bit deys missin’.

(Crock gently picks up his broom, mops in a soft slow manner, showing he’s lost all hope for anything.)

CROCK Yuh can hum, don’t matter to me.

(Lemmy, now a few feet away from Crock, steps closer and grabs the handle of Crock’s mop, stopping Crock mid-mop. A sudden crack is heard from an extra dark, extra

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beat up piece of wood that Crock was just mopping. Crock gives Lemmy a stare.)

Yuh hear dat.

CROCK

LEMMY So what, a simple crack a’ wood.

CROCK Nah, it was more‘an dat.

(Crock lets his mop loose, it hits the ground. He bends to his knees, kneeling by the ripped extra dark piece of wood. He bangs it with his fist. It gives in a bit. He bangs it again. It cracks open, showing a small hole. Crock looks at Lemmy.)

LEMMY Well, look in will yuh.

(Crock sticks his hand in, his arm fidgets around, he pulls out nothing.)

LEMMY Told yuh, just a broken piece a’ wood.

(Crock sticks his hand in again, his arm moves around more than before, with uneasiness and struggle pulls out a piece of paper.

His hand is bleeding. A yellow, crumbled, faded, piece of paper.

Crock’s blood drips on to the paper, he opens it up, his hands trembling, finding it hard to pull it open.)

What’s it say?

LEMMY

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OTR 59 CROCK I’m readin’ it. Hold on.

(Crocks face lights up as his eyes scan the paper, his face is refreshed, and he looks a new man with no hard aging.)

Gimme’ dat!

LEMMY

CROCK No! I’ll read it to yuh. Yuh’ll never believe it.

“A little black boy in a game a’ tug a’ war He’s tuggin’ n’ tuggin’, his hands full’a sore A single soul, alone in this game Ain’t nobody on his team sharin’ his pain The skies starin’ down full of demise Casting his shadows with piercin’ eyes Stuck at the anchor tuggin’ a mountain His hope is the maker of his poisonous fountain It’s a shame he goes on livin’ in the past When he can be presently restin’ below the grass But who knows the truth of his demonizin’ hope Maybe even then he’s still tuggin’ at that rope Dig. Deeper.”

LEMMY Dats morbid, poetic but morbid and I’ll hear none a’ it. I like where I am. Don’t listen to dat nonsense.

CROCK Oh, I’m listenin’. Dat’s spirits if I ever seen ‘em. First time in my life, spirits ever talk to me.

(Crock digs in the hole with his hand. Another crack is heard.

Crock’s eyes are livelier than we’ve ever seen. His face is alive. He pulls out a black revolver, dusty, stained, showing signs of long age that it’s been there for many years. He

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looks at with amazement. Lemmy jumps on him, trying to pull it out of his hands. Crock is fighting him off. Lemmy continues pulling at Crock’s body, trying to break the gun loose. Crock fights him, and gets his arm free for a second, raises the gun to his head, and pulls the trigger. An ear shattering sound, blood splatters everywhere, on to the dark brown wooden cracked floor, onto Lemmy. Lemmy cries in a deep sob, clutching Crock’s body. He rests his face on Crock’s chest, sobbing, blood leaking onto Lemmy’s face.)

LEMMY That’s my blood. Crock, that’s my blood yer spilling.

Yer the only person left dat I share my blood wit.

The revolver has subtly left Crock’s hand to the brown beaten up floors.

Lemmy grabs it. Sobbing over Crock.

LEMMY Ain’t no point. Our blood was always doomed. Crock, yuh said it. We’re livin’ in da past. Ain’t no place for us here, ‘cept the past.

(Lemmy brings the trigger to his head and pulls it. A loud bang, as he falls on to Crock’s body. Their blood combining to an expanding puddle of red on the the wooden floor, their body’s stacked on to one another.)

CURTAIN

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OTR 59

Of Acid and Alkalines

by Evan Leone

Poetry

In my stomach I have monsters crawl With cool svelte daggers And bright snake-like calls They are of character & calm collection With sensual voice and spread thick syllable They hold hands as soft like good friends would And intone in calm maxims;

“You are good,

and you deserve this.�

Slippery, tongue tipped slogans never

made too much sense anyway.

And what's good in one light makes light of you and tenser, tauter strings

which bind and tie, tie and break even

the strongest of people.

It is responsibility.

Responsibility in guises multiplicitous and dancing

in curves and shapes indiscernible

in lives that play like crosshatch, ever crossing.

It weaves like safety with the moral, kind, pure, and thoughtful Comfort is created and safe, soft, sounds bound and echo, and roll off these walls where time is spent

together.

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But so quick can recoil like tight ropes which fall loose

and limp and lose their bearings when the dagger mouthed, and cruel coolness

-like diseasespread and infect – to a discomforted procession Which we mean to hold dearly

but cut deep through our closeness

and break spines through our hands

gently on their backs.

With delicate sinews on our fingers we are subsumed by temptation and the proclivity to destroy and give harm despite everything that gives us pause and wilting blood -Rotten feelings and their womb, proximityHarms never meant, but hurts' osmosis Never meant, but still been Nonetheless, nonetheless Monsters remain, through held hands and face kisses And if I try to eat them, the sprouts grow upset And this soul glosses over in duress I wait out the tension like a buoy at sea

But this is me.

I accept this. Not unflinchingly, or without respite But carefully, so I can still venture the good fight.

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OTR 59

The 2AM Sky is a Weird Purple Blue

by Oscar Vargas

Poetry

The streets are empty for once and I can take out the garbage in peace while I work through the fact that the days have been so long since the summer started. The sky looks like the sun just set an hour ago though it's been two months since it left; it feels incredibly lonely at night, with empty streets and no one around to see me, freshly showered, scampering to throw out the leftovers and residue from the three short days that felt like an eternity.

Everything is where it's supposed to be at 2 AM in the morning, neatly tucked in its place and trying hard to believe it is not alone.

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American Muslims (Photography series)

Carlos Khalil Guzman

Digital Photography

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OTR 59

Across the Pasture

by Rachel DeCesario

T

ime vanished beneath her feet. Exalted by the wind whipping past her ears, the trees overhead cast moving shadows as they swayed and bent. Her bare feet began to bleed as she ran through the forest, darting beneath thistles and branches, thorns grazing her skin. Tripping over a wayward stump, Marlene’s hands pushed out instinctively to catch herself, though she fell nonetheless; hard and spinning.

She landed wonderfully in a clearing embedded with dry leaves, and she lay in their embrace as her chest rose and fell with laboring breaths. Marlene closed her eyes and stilled her movements, listening to the sound of her heart pounding in her ears, replacing the space where the wind had breathed.

She was sure that if she moved even an inch, even for a stretch of her blackened toes, her heart would erupt through her chest.

She felt convinced and selfassured that nothing had ever felt this good, nothing that she could remember.

Prose

Marlene’s father was a farmer, and as such spent most of his days outside. Her mother suffered from agoraphobia, coupled with an intense paranoia of landlines and the electric static that loitered in the outside air. “Bite your head off,” she would say. “Straight off. Clean. No bone. And then your brain melts.” She would wag her finger at Marlene, her eyes growing wide and forbearing. Her father would laugh dismissively like it was a routine, as though his wife’s fears and anxieties were mere fantasies and mischiefs of an imaginative mind, rather than one that was obviously, and depressingly, sick.

The burnt orange lines that trailed and mapped her father’s skin made her mother’s look like listless layers of opaque glass when they stood next to each other, which was not very often as her mother feared the electricity that orbited her father. He had needed to get in the habit of taking a shower outside before he decided to come in, so he built one a few

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feet from the backdoor. Marlene thought that sometimes when he said he was going out to tend the fields or feed the animals, he was really just sitting in his shower, soaking up the time.

Thus Marlene’s life, in essence, was spent perched on her windowsill, which had been barred and sealed, gazing out into the depth of the woods that lay beyond her father’s pasture.

Pressing her nose to the glass, she watched the world through grime-marbled glasses, but she couldn’t make out another home in sight, no people either.

Only the animals that bleated and neighed and shrieked and squealed and squawked and

"

and constant companion. He never minded the showers he needed to take prior to stepping inside their sterile kitchen.

His coy grin and dampened hair filled Marlene with hope and awe when he marched inside every afternoon during the week, and his presence seemed to illuminate their illlit house. He dressed in suede brown suits with blue polka-dot shirts, brogue shoes with wingtipped toes, and to Marlene he always smelled of what she imagined to be flower petals on the first day of snow. Her mother had chose David out of an intimate number of possible tutors, and based her decision on the amount of magnetism

The burnt orange lines that trailed and mapped her father’s skin made her mother’s look like listless layers of opaque glass...

screamed throughout the night.

The only other person Marlene ever knew, besides her parents, was her tutor, David. While her mother prevented her from ever stepping outside, and had quickly stilled her father’s protests, she admitted that Marlene did need an education; one that she could not adequately give her. David was hired while she was still young, and had been her only

she sensed on their skin. One woman had apparently been so encumbered with static and electrical waves (post-shower) that Mother had sensed it before she placed a finger on their door.

Mother wouldn’t even grant her the right to a towel.

But there was simply something about David that was quite right. His manner regarding Mother’s inane rituals and formalities was

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OTR 59 endearing, almost enough to make Marlene consider her absurdities as perfectly rational.

Under Mother’s watchful eye, Marlene was given careful and strict instruction on creationism, mathematics (although nothing that involved probability or statistics because “God never left things up to chance”), a diluted history of the United States, and a few literature courses on the Bible.

But, when her mother’s back was turned or she stepped out of the room and earshot, David’s patient and stoic face would fall under its weight and he would whisper frantically in her ear the missing pieces of her mother’s hand-me-down textbooks, mock the Bible for its inconsistencies and flawed judgment, and would constantly remind her of the world that lay beyond her room, her home, her pasture, her forest. He affirmed her that it could all be hers if she simply reached out and grabbed it. But as much as she learned from David, Marlene realized that he never taught her quite how to do that. He only ever gave her these rushed and hushed moments, fragmented between her mother’s eyes and his sympathetic tongue, between his sodden entrance and his withered leaving.

As Marlene grew in size

and boldness, she took to the habit of gazing out their back porch door in the sunroom, the only one with a screen window and the only room her mother refused to step foot in.

She eyed her father across the field, leading horses to and fro, laboring his back and arms into the soft and potent soil.

The searing rays that streamed through the screen trembled onto her face in a blanket of freshness and purity she never knew, unlike the sort of infertility she lived in. The warmth from the outside world was an unreachable swell that hung just beyond her fingertips; it enticed her and repulsed her at the same time. Marlene felt foul when the soft scent of thickened earth and dew and sod traveled through to reach her nostrils. It made her skin crawl and jump, and possessed her with an overwhelming urge to both run from that place and fall into it. She willed herself to step outside, but pieces of her still dreaded the world that had the ability to hurt her.

She stood in place, in front of that screen-windowed door, sizing up the realm that bore down on her, imagining herself to be the inside of a snow globe. And at one moment the entire universe dazzled and danced above her head,

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taunting her with its radiance and its secrets. In the next, it was her mother’s eyes, the skin around them that heaved and sagged when she blinked, her giant and protruding head crowding the sky that sizzled and sparked until the entire atmosphere became enveloped in flames. The terrific fear that seemed to suffocate her in that instant suddenly took hold of her body, leading her out of the door and into the world beyond.

In a seemingly miraculous moment her body took flight, and she rushed through the screen door so fast and urgently that it almost came off its hinges. Without another thought, Marlene ran across the field into the woods beyond, her mind becoming a valley of solitude, and all she could think about was the electricity scorching her skin, the warmth of the sun trickling through her hair, the soil kissing her feet, and the wave of exhaustion that left her body.

Now, she lay in the valley of leaves, pressing down into the earth as it also pressed down upon her. Her cheeks felt flushed with newfound life, and she was suddenly aware of her own body and its shape, its weight of skin and silent moments, it’s tremors of apprehension and careful

trepidation. She thought of her mother and wondered if she knew how terribly wonderful it is to be. She felt that the whole world had dissolved itself and regrew as one organic being, moving and breathing, though unaware of its own nature. She felt that she knew it somehow and yet had no right to know it, or that something about it had changed so what she once thought was there suddenly wasn’t anymore. It was like writing on a piece of paper and turning it upside down to read; suddenly it was not your own hand that wrote it, or even the same language. It was like staring at your reflection in the mirror and then flipping the image. All at once, she was not someone she knew – nothing was – and yet there still remained the familiar remnants of a life.

Marlene rolled over onto her side and stood, dead leaves sticking to her hair and her arms, where sweat began to cool and harden. The soreness that now rested in her bones felt brilliantly abrasive, and Marlene stretched her limbs towards the sky, enveloped in the canopy of trees that huddled around her in protection. She began to walk, allowing her breaths to become shallow and quiet. She soon found herself

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OTR 59 coming to a clearing; a crystalcyan cave appeared before her, and she sat in its mouth, part of her hoping that it would bite down and swallow. At the bottom of the cave was a small puddle, and she cupped a handful of water to splash onto her face before peering over at her own reflection, to see if anything had changed.

itself. It was so small, and gray, with a tuft of white on its chest, and orange circles on its cheeks.

She raised it up in her hand and felts its coldness travel through her palm and spread across her body, so that she shivered violently for a moment. Its feathers were soft and neat, but caressing it made Marlene feel as though she wasn’t supposed

She had expected in the to, that it was something least to see the tips of her hair sacred and untouchable. It felt

"

He had taught her about birds, about their miraculous ability to fly despite their weight... about their beauty, their resiliency, their unique ability to survive.

sizzled off, or missing pieces of her skin that had been ripped or torn in her flight. But all that she could see was her damp hair stuck to her forehead, her plump cheeks flushed with rose-colored dew, and her eyes that seemed to gasp and swell and dance in the ripples of the water. She realized she was crying.

As she turned away from herself, she noticed something lying at the edge of the puddle. It suddenly stuck out to her so stubbornly that she wondered why she hadn’t noticed it before. The bird laid still and solemn, its claws clutched and clenched against

incredibly fragile, yet solid and unyielding. Marlene had never come this close to something so far from life, and she looked once more into her reflection, gripping the bird lightly in her hand. The puddle suddenly seemed cloudy, and herself unrecognizable.

David came to her mind. His glowing, yet wise eyes smiled at her through a cloudy haze. He had taught her about birds, about their miraculous ability to fly despite their weight. He told her about their beauty, their resiliency, their unique ability to survive.

She remembered that they flew south for the winter; they

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trailed the sunlight and the warmth, and left behind the sickness and the cold. Marlene began to walk, slowly, staring down at the bird she still cupped in her hand. It felt heavy. She saw that its eyes were closed, its beak seemed glued shut, and its wings pressed defensively to its body, but she imagined what it had been like to fly, how its song could ring out amongst the trees in a triumph of joy and freedom.

knees, she laid the bird down at her side and began to clear away the leaves. She reached the earth and seized handfuls of cold, damp ground, heaving them up and out. Hand over hand she kneeled into the soil, the weight of longing stuck to her back, until the hole seemed deep enough to unburden herself.

She cradled the bird once more in her hand, its tail feathers lightly dancing in her palm.

This full and unconditional world was distant, and she laid

The grief that Marlene it in the ground. felt was strange and foreign in that moment, as burning, Slowly covering the bird blistering flames swallowed up with the earth, and the leaves her images of David and the blanketed on top, she made it lifeless bird. She suddenly hated seem as though nothing existed David more than she resented underneath, that the bird had her mother, more than the never flown, never sang, never disappointment she felt for her died. She pretended she didn’t father. She was disgusted with have to bury it, or mourn for herself, regretfully berating its loss, scorning the steps she her own judgment for running foolishly took to reach this outside as she had. She felt quiet dwelling. She tried to veil childish and callous. She felt her presence in the very place more alone than she ever had she had watched and listened to before. for so long, yearning across the pasture in jealous admiration.

The sky began to grow Under the torrid gaze of the dull and overcast; the setting trees, her self-awareness sun pressed its thumb in orange coursed like a tributary in her and pink-printed swirls over trembling bones. She felt like the wood. Marlene continued a trespasser caught, creeping to walk until she found the up on something she was not clearing where she had fallen, supposed to see, feeling where she could still see the outline of where her body had once been. Dropping to her

*

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OTR 59

Four Stages

by Lucia Cappuccio

Poetry

I. He never suspected I saved every single one. Placed them gently in my bag, pressed in textbooks like dried leaves.

When home, I'd open the bottom drawer, fish out a tin lunchbox from a sea of oversized shirts and plaid pajamas.

I'd exhale, sit cross-legged. Add the new note to the pile, confident all great loves were hidden. A few years later, after the boy moved away, I scoured every scrap, gulps and blushes of childhood. In one, I asked if he liked me. I was nine again, reading his blue slants, dreaming something different.

II. I wondered what she was thinking, spending her night talking to someone like him. Sweaty blonde hair, physique of a mother grizzly, perpetual wearer of a gray sweatshirt with paint smears across the imprint. He had a thick cape accent and a penchant for stopping the work van to buy energy drinks. Everyone called him Timmy, as if he were still four years old, raising hell during recess. He wanted her bad- I could tell by the way his body towered over her, protecting her from the glare of the fluorescent lights. I bet a boy I could drink more shots than him. If he lost, he had to kiss me.

The bartender brought over Jameson and counted the last seconds out loud. He lost, he lost.

Someone piled nine of us in the cargo van trunk and drove home drunk. He pulled me to the back of the shotgun house.

Told me it was his room and clicked the lock. I wondered what she was dreaming about. Would she hear us through the drywall? Lizzy, he said, and found an opening for his

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tongue in my lips. Lizzy is not my name but I greeted his tongue with mine. He felt like a wet dog wagging inside my mouth. A heavy, slobbering thing. He went to unzip his jeans.

I whispered no and sprang for the door, jiggling the lock til it popped. I heard a soft moan. I closed the door gently, as not to disturb him.

III. It wasn't his nakedness that startled me. It was the anger of his thrusts. The weight of him. The fear he was hitting it raw.

The thud of the uneven bed leg. My body as a haven.

IV. I hear love is a hummingbird, a constant whirr. A threat: this is the most complete you’ll ever be.

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OTR 59

Larissa 42 issue59.indd 42

Keka Marzagao

Digital Photography 5/10/16 5:50 PM

I Heart You Jesus

by Ahmed Hasssan

Drama

CHARACTERS CHRIS 29, a slightly feminine, muscular, nerdy type.

JESS 25, a sensual, materialistic, unstable socialite.

SETTING Bedroom of a SoHo apartment.

There is a bed faced towards the audience, two nightstands with a lamp on top on each side of the bed.

(Chris is sitting in bed reading the bible. Jess enters wearing a risqué silk nightgown) JESS (exaggerated) Happy New Year sexayyyy.

CHRIS Oh wow. Jess, that's so . . . skimpy.

JESS Skimpy? I think the naked JC on your pjs are skimpy.

CHRIS Jesus being naked doesn’t mean skimpy Jess. It means purity, vulnerability-

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OTR 59 JESS Well my nighty is supposed to make you horny!

(Jess jumps on the bed and crawls to Chris) CHRIS Jess, what do you think you're doing?

JESS Same thing we did last night, soon-to- be-Husband!

CHRIS Yesterday was a huge mistake.

JESS (Confused) W-w- what?

CHRIS We should have waited til we got married. I confessed today. Hopefully the Lord will forgive me.

(Jess rolls her eyes and sits next to Chris in bed) Fine.

JESS (Jess picks up a notebook from the nightstand)

JESS I can‘t wait for the wedding! I still haven't ordered those electric blue roses. We might have to take down a tier or two off our cake, which is messed up, why can't I have a 20 tier cake? Those gold plated invitations and seating cards are still in production, and my wedding dress is still somewhere in India.

CHRIS What? When did we agree on gold plated invitation cards?

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JESS

Oh honey!

(Laughs)

I thought I told you. I saw them at Tiffany's and I just couldn't resist. I also couldn't resist that pink pearl necklace. . .

(Jess stares into space) CHRIS Gosh darn it Jess, I can't believe you spend so much money on the material.

JESS Well, it's not yours! It's mine.

CHRIS Yes, but you should really donate money to the Church instead on things you'll never wear or use more than once.

JESS And beef up those Churches’ already beefed up wallets?

CHRIS The Church doesn’t use wallets. They use the money to spread the Lord’s word.

JESS The Lord's word can suck it and buy me pearls.

(Chris stares at her with an astonished look, his mouth open) JESS Oh. My. God. I just remembered I ordered that diamond tiara for my walk down the aisle!

(Chris is wide eyed. He looks away and takes a deep breath) Jess-

CHRIS

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OTR 59 JESS What am I going to do about that 10 foot silk veil?

I can't marry you.

CHRIS (Jess shuts up and stares at Chris with complete shock) JESS (quivers)

W-w- what?

CHRIS I'm not in love with you. I don't think I ever was.

JESS (begins crying) Why are you saying this to me?

Because. Because-

CHRIS JESS

Because why?

(Cries louder) I'm in love with Jesus.

CHRIS

(Jess looks at him bewildered) CHRIS Not like religiously, but for real. I'm in love with Jesus . . . passionately.

JESS No. No. No no no no no no!

(Jess gets out of bed and starts pacing the room)

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CHRIS

I'm sorry.

(Jess continues to cry) CHRIS When I met you, I thought I could love you and him together. I was so intrigued by your personality. You liked me too. I was a lonely man, you know, physically.

When we had sex last nightJESS Oh. My. God. I made you gay?

CHRIS Sort of. I should have told you the truth when we first met. I'm so sorry. I think Jesus is upset with meJESS

SHUT THE FUCK UP! (Jess stops pacing and stands on the right side of the room) Oh my, Jess!

CHRIS

JESS (yelling) How could you do this to me?

I never meant to-

CHRIS

JESS All this fucking time, all the fucking crap I boughtCrap?

CHRIS

JESS I spent my ENTIRE inheritance on my wedding! Which apparently will never happen!!

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OTR 59 CHRIS I really don't know what to say. Maybe you should have thought about the long termJESS You bastard! You promised! OMG! Where are all my receipts? Oh gosh what will the neighbors think? I don't think I can ever go outside again.

Chris Engagements fall through all the time.

JESS (yelling) You're fucking gay for JC. How embarrassing is that!

JESUS! Can't I find ONE man in the world to marry? I just want this fucking green card already!

CHRIS (shocked) What?

(Jess pauses for a moment. She then burrows her eyebrows) JESS Yeah, that’s right. Since you're fucking confessing, I might as well. Yes Chris, I only wanted to marry you so I could get my green card.

CHRIS Well, you could have said that!

JESS Yeah right. I know you want my money. YOU CAN'T HAVE IT! CHRIS Even if I did, I'd want it for the Church.

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JESS FUCK THE CHURCH AND ALL THAT IS HOLY! (Jess storms out of the room) Oh. My. Babe.

CHRIS

END OF PLAY

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OTR 59

The Sketchpad

by Diana Kosianka Prose - Contest

T

he rain kept smacking against my windbreaker as I rushed alongside the shores of Bowling Green, freshly freed from the Whitehall Ferry Terminal. Even as a sophomore student at the time, it was nothing new for me. As a seasoned student constantly shuffling between Staten Island and Manhattan, I was used to getting caught in brutal snowstorms catching me like a madman with a hangman’s noose, or thunderstorms coming on top of my shoulders like a one hundred ton weight one would see in Looney Tune cartoons. The skies typically resembled an ink-washed painting, with blots of diluted ink forming clouds filled with rain and snow and other things no one hoped to encounter in an expensive suit demanding a session at the drycleaner’s. The streets often became as shiny as the Paris streets Caillebotte loved so much in his works, or as murky as the dirt roads Courbet painted in an attempt to capture the true side of France. Typically, I was under

Winner

Courbet’s mindset when it came to this weather, especially when I carried precious cargo in my pockets. It was something that no one could replicate. Nobody could take away what I had, or even what I gained from these ritual excursions to Hunter College.

I was used to a whole slew of things as one of the daughters of the Forgotten Borough. I had gotten used to being sandwiched between unhappy passengers on the 4 or 5 trains during rush hour. I had gotten used to cursing myself for coming back to Dongan Hills in the wee hours of night or leaving my home at a quicker pace than a morning bird leaves its nest at roughly seven in the morning. I was also used to the brutal stories I heard of men and women getting shoved onto the train tracks to meet their impending doom. Usually, these unfortunate men and women either lost their limbs or their lives, or, if they were especially lucky, both at once.

Death and mutilation used to mortify me when I was in the

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train stations; I often stayed as far away as possible from the yellow lines they placed on the platforms – as if a yellow line could stop an epileptic man from falling into the tracks in the middle of a seizure. These days, they appeared so much in newspapers that they became the background noise within my subconscious mind. The mantra that always repeated as I swiped my metrocard to get into the station was as follows: a yellow line is a poor replacement for a glass wall.

"

a credit card, which could be canceled and quickly replaced before some selfish, careless man would use it to buy some expensive watch on my family’s time. This was not a student ID, which could easily be replaced by the OneCard office for the hefty sum of ten dollars. It was annoying, but there was typically no damage to be had from that.

At roughly ten after nine in the morning, it was not surprising for me to see a crowd of dampened men and women.

It was if I were a hot mess in New York City – the last kind of thing anyone would ever want to be while traveling.

My steps tapped alongside the stairwells as I clutched the railing tightly. It had already happened quite a few times where one of my heels slipped on one of the stairs and I end up hitting part of my spine. It wasn’t the fall which hurt, but the looks of pity the other passengers would give me. It was if I were a hot mess in New York City – the last kind of thing anyone would ever want to be while traveling. My hands often found themselves in my pockets, protecting my prized possession. This was not

Some were students like I was with their sweaters and their sneakers, while others were businessmen in their fancy suits and their worn-out expressions.

I was surrounded by a colorful crowd of people, and so, like I would on any other day with a place that wouldn’t allow me to play my music through Pandora or Spotify, I took out my prized possession.

This prized possession in my hands allowed me to draw down the features of anyone I saw, and hopefully to replicate them for any future stories or

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OTR 59 novels or comics. As a freshly minted member of the college’s comic club, faces became important to me. I knew, deep down, that I could only rely on my brain for so long before it ran out of faces and bodies for me to use without becoming stale.

Around those damp September days, I had already filled out at least two sketchpads filled with these faces and bodies and plotted to use them for a comic about Steampunk pirates, or a story of two kids with superpowers in a psychiatric institution, or even a tale of a man encountering a civilization filled with the undead who are seemingly led by a witch with ulterior motives. Every single face was unique. No matter what anyone would tell me, I could never just simply ‘draw’ these faces all over again. The human brain could only take in so many faces before it could start to misremember certain features, like the length of the nose, or the color of the eyes, or even the splotches of someone’s hands.

The Uptown 5 train dinged its bell in a subtle ‘dingdong’ as it closed its doors. As it sped through the appropriate train stations, I took down the face of a businessman, as well as the face of a worn-out teenager who may or may not

have overslept this morning and was struggling to keep awake on the long commute to school. I was surrounded by browns and blues and navies, with the occasional splotch of color. Such was the life of traveling through a subway car.

One could easily lose a sense of identity in such a spot, or more importantly, a sense of sanity.

The subway car rumbled to the next crossing point of my travels.

“This is the Bronxbound 5 Train. The next stop is 59th street.” The sign for Grand Central loomed in front of me.

I jumped off of the entrance to the 5 train onto the platform, which held a smaller crowd than the previous one on Bowling Green. In the corner of my eye I spotted a woman with a purple kerchief and red hair.

She had seemed so unique, so perfect for a character design, that I had sketched her in my collection of faces and bodies to use for the future. In my yellow sketchpad was a history of all of the men and women I had ever found interesting in my life. It was also a testament to the way I exercised my memory and my hands as I awaited the 6 train, the train which would take me to college. I had never once enjoyed being stuck between a crowd of unhappy

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people, especially when we were all headed for the same destination. A New Yorker should expect many things to happen, but at the same time, the expected always manages to take us completely off-guard.

I shoved my right hand into my pocket as the 6 train rolled into the station, accompanied by screeching metal wheels against the tracks.

My ears often screamed from the pain as well. The doors rumbled open as I quickly stepped inside, hoping to get to my Geology class on time.

“This is the Bronx-bound 6 local train. The next stop is 51st street,” the announcer said over the speakers in a typical robotic monotone. I kept my hands in my pockets, surrounded by even more people than before.

Sardines were less packed than my subway car. I stood where I was as we passed the 51st and 59th street stations, unaware of any impending doom that would come my way. Above me, the rain still spattered against the streets.

beats. I moved my hands in my pockets. My mind stalled. My brain froze, as if it were pricked with needles. I rummaged through them as I looked through my windbreaker.

Perhaps somebody had stolen my prized possession? Who would steal my sketchpad?

Why would someone steal a sketchpad? I swiped my student ID, the thoughts still ringing in my head.

As I took the elevator to the seventh floor of the west building, my thoughts continued to scream as if they were being tortured by Cenobites – and not even the ‘angelic’ ones. Did my sketchpad jump out from my pocket? I struggled not to scream in fear and stress. On the outside, I was fine to the rest of my fellow students, but on the inside, I felt as if the entire world exploded. My lexicon of faces went missing, and no one seemed to care.

*

When the 68th street station eventually came into view, I rushed outside of the doors, with my hands still in my pockets. My feet quickly trudged through the stairwell and the steps with reverberating metal

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OTR 59

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Friend

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Julian Rosen

Film Photography 5/10/16 5:50 PM

OTR 59

The Bird-Watch

by Hans Freiwald

T

he watch’s metallic case will often go unnoticed depending on which angle I'm sitting or lying on the couch (or where my preoccupations lie that day). The case sits baking in the light through the window, warping with the seasons, surrounded by various books, notes, knick- knacks, and other various sorts of shelfworthy essentials (the ashtray from New Mexico, the deck of Civil War playing cards with the opposing faces of Lincoln and Lee, the black and gold coasters from Jamaica that we never use, and the unauthorized biography of Nancy Reagan by Kitty Kelley that I'll never read). But in the midst of all this chaos sits that case collecting dust.

Prose

winding down, time stands still, punching the clock, a time to remember, better luck next time, down-time, hardtime, helluva time, time to make the donuts, and it's time to shoveoff. Time is something that cannot truly be grasped; it’s an abstract notion - an epic struggle between holding on and letting go. To which, one can do neither. Time has no master. The "keeper," a fairy tale even too grim for the Grimms.

My most recent rediscovery of the case was on a mission to find the Garcia Marquez memoir my mother gave me for my birthday nine years ago. I grab the case and inspecting it, see the imprint in the dust from the last time I grabbed it. I open it. I touch

Time is curious thing. the watch inside.

A bit over-analyzed I suppose.

The watch is a curious A bit broad. It doesn't take thing. In fact it's becoming much of a stretch to see in it something of a curiosity. One a metaphor for death. There's day it'll be on display in a jar any number of clichés; the next to the world’s longest final countdown, the clock is fingernails at Ripley’s Believe

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it or Not. Essentially obsolete thanks to the cellular phone, the watch is now solely a status symbol. The young wear them to show their irony, the old wear them to show their stubbornness to change, the poor wear them to seem rich, and the rich wear them to, well, seem more rich.

It seems to me no coincidence that the watch not only embodies time, but also embodies, our bodies: It has two hands, a face, a series of inner workings which most of us don't understand (but we trust that there's probably some joints, valves, and circuitry somewhere in there), a back, and a band—Which is either, like us, metallic cold and constantly pinching, or tanned, weathered and falling apart. I suppose when we get a little closer to figuring stuff out, we'll be in that jar at Ripley’s too.

The watch stands still at three hours, thirtyone minutes, and twenty-two seconds. Its hand underneath its scuffed glass are bright and new; taking for granted all the tarnish they've been able to avoid, which we've gotten the privilege to endure. The cheap metal encasing the glass and

guts has begun to erode. A steady build up of gunk seems to glue its dials in place. And the birds at twelve, three, six, and nine are staring back at me in silence.

In retrospect I'm not sure if my grandfather was really a bird lover or just needed something to do and talk about with relatives. I know he had a stack of books on various species, but I never saw him open them. There was a bird-feeder in his backyard, and every Christmas I'd give him a twenty-pound bag of bird-seed (well I should say I signed the small card taped to the ribbon around the bag - To: grandpa / From: love, Hans), but I never saw him use it. There must have been mountains of seed down in that basement.

He had a membership card to the Audubon Society, but what does “membership” really mean anyway (I've been a proud member of the National Geographic Society for years now)? And finally he had this watch. The National Audubon Society Singing Bird Watch™ (trademarked of course). It was another Christmas or Birthday gift, and it would s i n g- c ro a k-s qu aw k- c h i r p every third hour, for the rest of his life. His face would

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OTR 59 grimace every time it went off. It wouldn't take a microexpressionist to interpret how he felt. I wonder if he only wore it when we would visit as not to offend. He would do something similar as his body was being overrun by the cancer that would kill him.

Holding in the pain as not to offend. As not to frighten. He wouldn't dare put his bother of death on his family. It's a Midwestern thing I suppose.

"

The watchband is in tatters now. It's notches too torn and worn to hold the clasp around my wrist. To move it is to see little slivers

to brand-new! I went out and got a shiny new band, tan and sturdy and made of real leather this time. And I found out exactly what batteries it needed, forty-eight by twopoint-fifteen millimeter, number three-forty-eight at twelve-milli-Ampere-hour (I got a two pack even).

My grandfather was dead in less than month after his diagnosis. He smoked two packs of unfiltered Pall Malls a day since the depression, and I guess that kind of accumulated like the slow winding of a Jack in Box. Then Surprise! Blam!

Life's Joke! I was there when

He would do something similar as his body was being overrun by the cancer that would kill him. Holding in the pain as not to offend. As not to frighten. of synthetic leather flake off and settle into the bottom of that metallic case. I inspect all of the shavings that have accumulated over the years.

It's a fine display of the decay that has been going on out of sight, for years. I go to open up the back and remember that I've opened it before.

I've been through all of this before. I was going to restore this beautiful-baby back! Back

the Lutheran pastor came to say his final prayers over him: my grandfather lay with a more exaggerated grimace than his Christmas gift grimace. Gritting his teeth while his tears trickled down his exhausted face, and soaked deep into his pillow. Puffs of muffled defiance were all he could muster in the end.

I found his bird-watch as I was cleaning out his

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drawers at the assisted living facility he died in. It was in with his socks and underwear marked with his initials - RH. My mother saw it in my hand and said, "Oh, he would have wanted you to have that."

That’s something people say to be polite. So I reciprocated the gesture and took it home.

I'm looking for the new batteries and band that are now nowhere to be found.

Did I even buy them? Was it all just a grand-plan-memory?

I stop looking after a while and return to my grandfather’s watch. I rub its face. I fold its band back. I place it in its cheap metallic case and return its lid. I place it back in its point-of-view place on its dusty chaotic shelf.

Knowing full well that the hands still stand still at three hours, thirty-one minutes, and twenty-two seconds, and the birds still won’t sing.

*

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OTR 59

The Girl Who Carries Her Mattress

by Victoria Lau

Poetry

She gets on her mattress, he gets in with her and starts kissing her, It's okay, he's a friend.

He unbuttons her blouse, running his hands against her bare flesh. “Take it slow.

Slower, please.�

But his grasps only grew tighter, pinning her down and invades her.

His burning hands around her neck, he shoves her cries back down her throat with every choke.

Broken vessels merge into storms of blues, greens and purples, pressed up against her transparent skin, ravaging her naked body with knuckled-shaped blotches.

Since that night, the mattress she once slept on, is now the heavy load she carries on her everyday.

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And when she comes out to tell her story, The public eye looks down on her for: her sexual history, the number of partners she had, the way she dressed, the way she flirted with him, the way she led him on.

The Court of Justice tucks her voice under the cover and sweeps her story under her bed allowing her Boogieman to walk free.

Sweet dreams, America.

Tomorrow, 1 in 5 of your daughters will carry their mattress, too.

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OTR 59

Heater

Chang Jung Lu

Film Photography

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Hanging by a Light

by Avery Philipps

Drama - Contest Winner

CHARACTERS

DANNY Wants to help but fears failure.

Terrified of heights.

TAYLOR Technical director Frustrated and exhausted.

JASON Arrogant and ill-tempered.

KAREN Technically savvy and cool headed. Great mediator TIME Present day.

SETTING A college theater.

(Several students are standing about a theater with two ladders center stage.

Several lights remain on the floor along with tools and other random theatrical equipment. The students are interacting with one another but not working. The technical director can be heard as he enters and moves to center stage.)

TAYLOR Alright. Alright. I see lots of people standing around and

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OTR 59 lots of people not working. Let’s go. I want two people on each ladder and two people footing it.

JASON We’ve been here for almost ten hours!

TAYLOR And I’ve been here for fifteen, that doesn’t mean we still don’t have work to do.

(They all groggily return to work.)

Come on, we only have to take care of these last two lights then we can all go home.

(Jason motions towards the ladder but Taylor stops him.)

No, you’ve been up there already. I want someone who hasn’t gone up yet. Calls out. Who hasn’t had a chance to hang a light yet?

(Some shake their heads, other’s shrug, most don’t pay attention. Taylor then points to Danny, a quite boy holding the bottom of the opposite ladder.)

Alright, Danny. Come on. You’re going up.

(Danny stares petrified. Taylor stands back at him. Danny finally points to himself questioningly. Taylor gives an impatient yet exaggerated nod. Danny points to Taylor. Taylor points up the ladder. Pause. Danny points at himself again. Taylor marches over to Danny, grabs his arm, and drags him over to the desired ladder like a toy.)

Jessie, take Danny’s place please. Alright, now come on.

(Taylor grabs a light off of the floor and starts to climb. Danny grabs the bottom of the ladder and stops. Taylor climbs back down a few steps.)

You go up, do one light, come back down, and I’ll never ask you to get on a ladder again, alright?

(Pause.)

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You go up or I drag you up. Your call.

(Danny stares up the ladder and finally climbs. Taylor sets the light on the top of the ladder.)

Alright, now go ahead just like I showed you.

(Danny takes the light at places it on the grid above him. Taylor looks at a light just out of his reach.)

Hey guys, I told you this one needed to be pointed downstage, remember?

JASON (Arrogantly) Sorry.

TAYLOR It’s alright, just wheel yourselves over here and straighten it out.

(Jason pushes the other ladder over towards the light. He does so forcefully and loses control causing it to bang into the one Taylor and Danny are on.

Everyone turns.)

Sorry! Sorry!

JASON

TAYLOR (Panicked, aggressive) Everyone alright? Jason, go sit down. I don’t want you working if you can’t keep things under control.

I didn’t mean to-

JASON

TAYLOR Cut the shit and go chill. You don’t get second chances when you fuck with peoples safety.

(Taylor finally turns back to Danny who

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OTR 59 is mortally petrified and clinging to the ladder like a mother to its child.)

You alright? Come on. Lets get it done with.

No. Danny.

No.

DANNY TAYLOR DANNY

TAYLOR Don’t fuck with me. I’m trying to teach you something.

All you gotta do is just tighten the blot and that’s it. Now you got your wrench. Grab the light.

With my hands?!

DANNY

Taylor again gives an over exaggerated nod. Danny hesitantly takes one hand off of the ladder and places it on the light.

TAYLOR Now put your other hand on the grid for balance.

(Danny looks back and forth between the grid and his hand that remains on the ladder.)

With my-

DANNY TAYLOR (Impatiently)

Yes, with your hand!

(Danny finally puts his other hand on the light.)

Now tighten the bolt.

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KAREN Hey Taylor, I think this light is dead.

You try another socket?

TAYLOR

KAREN Yeah. Should I take it down.

TAYLOR No. These things are just old and shitty. Let me have a look at it.

(Taylor begins to climb down the ladder.

Danny becomes scarred.)

You’re leaving me?

DANNY

TAYLOR Yeah, sorry. I just think we should see other people. It’s not me, it’s definitely you.

But I can’t-

DANNY

TAYLOR Just finish tightening the damn bolt and then you’re done and you can come down! God, how can you be so fucking useless. Karen, can you go grab me a battery for the flashlights.

(Taylor gets off the ladder and fiddles with his flashlight as Karen exits. Danny continues to tighten the bolt. As Taylor gets off his ladder, Jason can be seen about to climb up the other one. Taylor stops him.)

What do you think you’re doing?

JASON Gonna take a look at the light.

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OTR 59 TAYLOR No you’re not. You don’t want to be here then don’t be here. You can’t be having tantrums and flinging ladders then wanting to go fix stuff. I can trust you on the ground, you think I can up there where you can drop a light or something on someone.

JASON I was just pissed off is all. I’m fine now.

TAYLOR Well you can’t be just pissed off. You need to keep your shit together. You can’t act like a child.

JASON Well stop fucking treating me like I’m one.

(Jason doesn’t look where he’s going and hits into the ladder that Danny is on slightly offsetting it. Danny is now panicked and stretched awkwardly out to the side with both of his hands holding onto the ceiling for dear life. He can somewhat easily fix himself but is too afraid to.)

TAYLOR That’s exactly the shit I’m talking about! You alright, Danny?

(Danny does not answer but can be seen hyperventilating. Karen starts to move the ladder back but Danny freaks out.

Taylor stops her.)

Don’t, you’ll freak him out. (Somewhat calmly.) Alright Danny, why don’t you come on down.

DANNY (Poorly attempting to be content) Nah. I think I’ll stay here.

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TAYLOR Just wiggle your way over to the ladder and climb on down.

(Danny looks down at them, then between his hands and the ladder multiple times before turning back to them.)

With my hands?!

DANNY

(Taylor slams his palm into his forehead and shakes his head exhaustedly. Taylor begins to gently climb up the other side of the ladder. Karen enters with a pastry box and a package of batteries.)

What’s going on?

KAREN

JASON Cry baby got stuck in a tree.

Awe! Poor thing.

What’s the box?

KAREN JASON

KAREN It’s a surprise present for Taylor, for staying so long all the time to work with us. It’s a cake with nothing on the top and I got us a thing of frosting to sign our names with.

JASON Staying late doesn’t matter if he’s going to treat me like shit and tell me I can’t work.

KAREN Maybe he’s just upset cause he’s worried you’re going to get hurt.

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OTR 59 JASON Well he doesn’t seem like it.

KAREN Well you don’t really seem like you want to be here either, but he’s still here trying to help you.

(Pause. Jason looks upset with himself.

Karen opens the box and hands it out to him) Sign the cake?

(Jason takes the frosting tube and begins to write in the box. Taylor is at the top of the ladder with Danny. His arm is around his waist to keep him from falling.)

Just relax.

TAYLOR

I am relaxed!

DANNY

TAYLOR Ok. Ok. Just- everything’s alright.

DANNY No it’s not. You’re right. I’m useless.

TAYLOR No I’m not. You’re not useless.

How is this not useless?

DANNY

TAYLOR Danny, despite everything you still got climbed up here and tried, no matter how scared you were. No one who tries is useless. Not to me. I’m sorry I lost it for a second but I don’t think you’re useless.

(Pause.)

Look, I got you. Just back towards the ladder. I won’t let you fall.

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DANNY No. I came up here. I need to fix the light.

TAYLOR Danny, I need you to be safe.

DANNY No. I got this, I can do it. I have to.

(Danny squints against a light that is shinning in his face.)

TAYLOR Karen. Can you kill that light?

(Karen puts the pastry box down and exits. A moment later the light goes off.)

DANNY I’m not gonna fall. I’m not useless. I’m not useless.

(Danny brings his wrench up to the light and begins to work on it. They all watch him.)

I can do this. I’m not gonna fall. I’m not useless. I’m not.

(Excitedly.)

I got it. I got it!

(The light suddenly falls on top of the pastry box with a loud bang and breaks apart. Everyone jumps except Danny who remains completely frozen in motion.)

My god…

My light…

JASON TAYLOR

KAREN My cake…your cake…

(Taylor and Danny look at her.)

We got you a cake, for helping us…with everything

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OTR 59 (Danny droops over the top of the ladder.

Taylor pulls out the destroyed cake box, examines it and gives a faint smile. He then looks up the ladder.)

Danny. You ok?

I’m useless…

TAYLOR DANNY

TAYLOR No you’re not. Guys, you’re not here to work for me, you’re here for me to teach you. I want you guys to learn and enjoy what you’re doing. I would like you to be safe and not destroy thousands of dollars of equipment, but I’m not here to judge you by your faults. I’m here to help you.

Maybe you can’t do it, but you tried, you want to help and dedication is worth more then any amount of knowledge to me.

(Pause.)

You can come down now, Danny. You did a good job.

KAREN What should we do about the light?

TAYLOR Leave it. It’s an old piece of crap anyway. We’ll take care of it tomorrow. It’s been a long day, lets get out of here.

CURTAIN

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Strange

Julian Rosen

Pen on Paper 73

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OTR 59

acidic laughter

by Jelane DaSilva

Poetry

She dripped droplets of bitter juice into the back of my throat the oxygen dropped we swam under stones and picked decaying sweetness from under our fingernails my needy sister and her cohort went to the end of the bottomless sea I learned to crawl against gravity with acidic laughter ringing in my ears up to the satin surface where my naked leg could only determine the new material freshly cleaned and soft as ever refreshed I bit into a clementine

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Acid

(Photography series) issue59.indd 75

Jelane DaSilva

Film Photography

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OTR 59

The Party

by Julia Papell

Prose

I

t was a very small car. The hot, damp skin of Sylvie's shoulder chafed against mine. Her friend Clarisse was sitting on her other side. Anton and his younger brother, Sylvie's neighbors, were in the front.

The bulbs of the headlights were dim, but Anton drove with one hand, speeding along the dark, narrow road. I looked forward out the windshield and imagined a car approaching from the opposite direction.

There was no shoulder, and twenty yards away, the road bent like a twisted cord. I gripped the stiff shoulder strap of my seatbelt with both hands.

The speedometer was too dark to read. The sharp bend sent us sliding to the right, pinning me between Sylvie and the door.

I turned my face to the window, lifting my nose to inhale through the half-inch gap at the top. I punched the button, but the glass wouldn't budge. It was August, but the thin stream of air felt cool, seeming to smell of several wonderful but incongruent elements. It was at once lavender, and lemons, and

onions grilling on a barbeque.

I rested my cheek against the cold glass. At the edge of the road bloomed uncertain shapes, trembling from the surge of speed. Straight tree trunks became tall corn plants that chased the car, bending their dark faces down towards my window, before the row suddenly ended. As we sped away, they were sucked down the road behind us.

A techno song was blasting out of the radio, the tempo increasing. The voices in the car pitched higher. A shrill tumble of laughter came from the other side of the backseat, and I realized that I was being spoken about. I turned away from the window and met both Sylvie and Clarisse's eyes. Sylvie smiled at me as though I were a puppy who kept mixing up its tricks. I wondered what about me was so unfailingly funny— what made me so unfit for the bedroom ritual of girls getting ready for a party, of sharing lipstick and swapping clothes?

Their smiles curled around the words they would say next—the

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secret about me they believed they understood, something I never would. I stared back at them.

Sylvie was fair and freckled, her face as slender as the rest of her body. Her hair, like cornsilk, fell just below her shoulders, framing her thin lips and pointed chin and nose.

Below each light brown eye, she wore a line of shimmery purple makeup. Her features were demure, youthful; if you caught her staring absently out a window or at the page of a book, she didn't look sixteen years old. Her blue veins were visible beneath the skin on her hands, almost translucent. Even

"

the airport in Toulouse at 6 AM on a Tuesday. I had taken a red-eye assuming that I would sleep through the night. On the plane, the middle-aged woman beside me watched Monsters Inc. as the flight attendants served little plastic bottles of Tropicana. And yet it was eerie to be in the sky with strangers. I peered pointlessly out the small window, imagining the surface of the ocean far below the plane, the black waves tossing in the dark.

When we got to the car, Sylvie sat with me in the back.

Behind the wheel, Camille said my name, continuing in rapid French. Her voice turned up

She placed her hand on my forearm and leaned closer. "Corinne, ne t'inquiète pas—don't worry.

For you, I will find un garçon."

her fingernails were thin and questioningly, and she blinked always breaking. at me in the large, round eyes,

She placed her hand magnified by a pair of thick on my forearm and leaned glasses. Her huge eyes hung closer. "Corinne, ne t'inquiète unnervingly in the rearview pas—don't worry. For you, I mirror as she repeated herself, will find un garçon." I tried to more slowly this time: "Ma speak, but my voice dissipated fille Sylvie va s'occuper de toi immediately and was lost, a pendant ton séjour, d'accord?" I drop of water on a hot stovetop. looked at Sylvie. She was silent, staring out the window.

Camille had said that

Sylvie and her mother, Camille, had picked me up at Sylvie was going to look after

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OTR 59 me during my stay. However, it became apparent very quickly that Sylvie had little interest in this task. The third night after I arrived, I was sitting crosslegged on the sofa reading Brave New World for my summer English assignment, when I heard high heels clacking down the stairs. I looked up to see Camille coming out of the kitchen as Sylvie appeared at the foot of the steps, fully madeup. She had gone through great pains to kink her naturally straight hair, applying so much hair spray that when she turned her head it barely moved, like a peculiar hat. The sight of her mother seemed to fill her instantly with resentment.

Although Sylvie hadn't told me she had plans to go out, Camille seemed to blame me for not also being dressed in heels and a mini-skirt, and began insisting that I go with Sylvie. Camille eyed my book disdainfully. "Tu ne parles jamais, et tu lis des livres anglais toujours!" She complained that I never spoke, and that I was always reading books in English. In France, we have fun, Camille told me.

The sound of Sylvie's heel clacking impatiently against the floor echoed up the stairwell as I dressed hurriedly in my room. I changed out of my pajamas quickly, knowing

that I didn't have the time to obsess miserably over the construction of a sexy outfit.

As soon as Sylvie saw me at the top of the steps, she turned away towards the front door, without a word. A grating reproach of some kind chased Sylvie outside, but as I paused to wish Camille goodnight, her face reconfigured instantly, as though the roll of a wave had momentarily overwhelmed her irritation, leaving only an amused smile. The unnatural speed and ease of the transition was startling, and I found myself averting my gaze from her face. Nonetheless, Camille seemed delighted by the sight of me, as though I were a little girl dressed for the Easter service.

She stepped towards me, eyes swelling behind her thick lenses, and patted my cheek.

Anton made a turn onto a gravel road. The wheels absorbed the gritty crunch as the car tunneled forward through a dark wood. We came up suddenly upon a large house facing out over a ridge that sloped down steeply.

"Sylvie," I said, touching her arm so she would face me.

Anton drove across the grassy side lawn, slowing to a crawl as people crossed in front of the car.

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"Anton nous conduira chez toi plus tard?" I asked her. I was wondering how we would get home later. Before I left in June, my mother had made me promise to never get in a car with a driver who'd been drinking. But I discovered quickly that this was an implausible principle to maintain. All summer I'd been getting in the backseat of cars driven by people who'd had three or four glasses of wine. I had begun to see it as necessary assimilation.

my seatbelt and felt along the door for the handle.

The night was warm and cloudless. The old threestory house stood poised, austere beneath the cold, white glare of the moon, a hole punch in the sky. The open shutters of the tall, unscreened windows sat below a mansard roof of steep sides and a flat top. Dark moss crept up walls made of field stones and cracked mortar, and groups of people were silhouetted in the light coming from the windows and front door. As we neared the front door, I turned to look out over the ridge. Below, the land smoothed out into a quaint countryside of village homes beside fields of corn, wild grass, or sunflowers.

Thin roads stretched between, connecting tiny, glowing islands of window-light.

Clarisse flicked her bangs out of her eyes, making an impatient noise. "Stupide américaine." Flecks of spit fell onto her breasts, rising out of her low-cut tank top, as she spoke. My face didn't change; feigning incomprehension was easy. People always assumed I

I walked a half-step did not understand. behind Sylvie and Clarisse,

As Anton parked who were arm-in-arm. Anton between two cars and shut the and his brother had already engine, Sylvie smiled absently disappeared. In the moonlight, and patted the side of my head. Sylvie's hair looked almost "Corrine, think less! Now I will green, but the pink and purple find a boy so you have fun! C'est lights strobing from inside une fête!" the house bounced against the exposed skin of her neck.

"Sylvie, non–" She quivered with excitement.

She laughed over her Several feet away from the shoulder. "Bebe Corinne," she crowd gathering in the doorway, cooed, sliding out of the car on I stopped. Sylvie disappeared in Clarisse's side. I hastily released the throng of people.

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OTR 59

"

I stared at the doorway, tucking my hair behind my ears, and reaching behind me for the hem of my loose jean shorts, to make sure they hadn't ridden up. I stood there for a few minutes. Several people knocked into me, swerving to avoid clusters of people or couples lying together on the sloping grass. I muttered pardon, but they looked at me strangely,

stepped forward and up the two concrete steps.

An American song came on as I entered the foyer.

Nearly everyone seemed to be singing along, but I didn't know the words. I turned towards the largest room. I couldn't see the speakers from where I stood, pressed tightly against the wall beside the arched entryway. I felt the heat flushing my arms

In the motion of a whirlpool, the crowd seemed to be compressing, drawing in towards a magnetic center. Rather than individual people, it was made of body parts. as though I had offended them somehow. It seemed like how a little girl, maybe six years old, had stared at me last summer at the local playground. The sun was about to set, and she was the only child nearby. She edged closer until she was hanging onto the pole of the swing set, staring at me accusingly as I swung serenely back and forth, trying to ignore her. After a few minutes, it started to annoy me. There were plenty of other swings–why couldn't she just choose one? Finally, I dug my heels in the sand to stop. I left the park to walk home.

and face with color, the pink and purple lights ricocheting against every surface. In the motion of a whirlpool, the crowd seemed to be compressing, drawing in towards a magnetic center.

Rather than individual people, it was made of body parts. Arms, legs, and torsos convulsed in an indiscriminate mass; face-less heads bounced like beach balls.

Cigarette smoke hung in the air like an ethereal cloud, hued by the flashing strobes. Coughing, I drew away into the foyer.

The other parties hadn't been like this. Three times we went to raves, but they were

There was a sudden lull held at the village center, and in the stream of people passing the entire community attended. through the doorway. I finally The adults purchased the liquor

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on their way over and fixed drinks, tequila or whiskey for their fifteen-year-olds. One of these nights, I slipped outside to sit in the small town square.

It was a dewy twilight, and as I walked away from the building I noticed a structure in the center of the square, a white stone three-tiered fountain with a wide, thick-walled base.

As soon as the water emerged from the spouts, it blossomed into large soap bubbles, which were forced by the constant stream to spill out over the sides and onto the stone terrace.

Several children were playing here, chasing the bubbles as they were lifted up by the wind, where they floated serenely for a few precious moments.

One boy was standing inside, grinning as the mass of bubbles rose past his waist. I thought I heard footsteps behind me, but when I turned, there was no one there. I looked back at the fountain. Would they entertain themselves this way all night as their parents and older siblings drank and danced? At what age would they grow bored of watching each soap bubble drift up into the sky and out of view, wondering how high it would go, and secretly cherishing the impossibility of a bubble that never popped?

I wandered into the

kitchen on the opposite side of the foyer. Two kegs were perched on the table, surrounded by stacks of plastic blue cups. A third keg, apparently empty, had been disposed of in a corner. I thought about filling a cup, but I didn't see the point.

When I was fourteen, I had had a dream about getting drunk. It ended with me throwing up all over my room. The smell was so intense, it was like the vomit never left my mouth. As long as I was smelling it, I was still throwing up, forever.

I looked up to the sound of my name. Sylvie was hurrying across the room towards me, leading someone aggressively by the hand. In her free hand was a lit cigarette with only an inch left. I felt along the hem of my shorts.

Sylvie stuck the cigarette in her mouth and took a drag that must have reached her toes. She positioned a boy right in front of me and grabbed my hand, putting it in his. His hand was sticky. She smiled wide around the cigarette, took a final drag, and spit the butt out onto the floor, crushing it with her heel. She looked at me energetically. "C'est bon?"

"Salut, Corinne," said. "Je m'appelle Julien."

he

I pulled my hand free as she began to turn away. "Sylvie,

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OTR 59 wait—" I led her over to the wall.

Her face was impassive, but her fingers fidgeted awkwardly without the cigarette.

"Can't I stay with you instead?" I asked. "Please?"

She looked puzzled for a moment, but then seemed to understand, and immediately began shaking her head with a note of parental finality. "Non, non...écoute, Corinne—Julien, he is nice. He is a nice boy."

"Yes, yes, I understand..."

infrequently, and his blue eyes seemed to swell larger during each prolonged interval. As he smiled at me sheepishly, the corners of his thin lips turning up almost apologetically, I began to relax a little. There was something rueful about him, maybe the way he stood with his shoulders pointed slightly inward, or the constant, nervous rubbing of the outer edge of his shoe against the floor. He waited for me to step towards him.

During this interim, Julien had not moved away.

He was merely politely facing away from our conversation, an awareness which only increased my distress. The nicer he seemed, the worse it was.

"If you want, we speak in English. I speak English a little," Julien told me.

I raised my head unwillingly to look at Julien. He had thick, dark hair and a bit of stubble on his chin. He blinked

He moved away to the table behind me, and I lifted my eyes. In the other room, the speakers thundered. The noise

"D'accord," I agreed, contradicting myself.

His brow furrowed in confusion.

Without my consent, my gaze

Sylvie shook her head slipped, dropping to the floor at in dismay. "Corinne, bebe, I do my feet. I was frozen for a few not know how to do with you." moments, my mind busy with the consideration of whether to

Shame swam up in bend down and pick it up. me. Suddenly, I felt sorry for Julien spoke again. inconveniencing her. It took "You would like a drink?" me a moment to unloosen the muscles of my face until I could Peripherally, I could tell he was motioning towards the keg. I smile. "C'est bon," I promised. nodded automatically, lifting

She grinned. "Parfait." my eyes to the level of his chest, Her hair whipped by and she but not quite getting up to his was gone. face.

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seemed to be coming from my own body, as though every cell were throbbing electronically, a trillion speakers each contributing their tiny screams to a flood of sound. I could see out the front door from where I stood, and I suddenly considered sweeping through the groups of people and out into the front yard. Julien would find another girl to give the cup to. I imagined cutting into the woods alongside the long, gravel drive. From there, the noise would be split a thousand times as it wriggled between the tall, close trees, eventually reduced to a hollow hum. I wanted to lay down in the crackling leaves and hold onto the bases of the trees, the coarse bark, with the

"

blocking the kitchen door and walked out into the side yard.

I walked a half-step behind Julien several paces away from the house, towards a gnarly tree growing right at the edge of the ridge. Unlike the straight trunks in the densely-packed woods, it was a field-grown maple, and had sprawled out asymmetrically.

Its branches reached out above the steeply sloping land, but its knotted, partially exposed roots were forced to grow landward, clinging onto the solid mass of earth.

We sat down beneath the tree and I pressed my palm against the damp, plush grass. I wanted to pick a blade of grass

Julien drank deeply from his cup, and I looked down into the dark, frothy liquid of my own. I took a sip, fumbling the cup.

softest part of my inner palms.

"Corinne?" I turned quickly to face Julien, who was holding a plastic blue cup in each hand. As I took mine, he motioned his cup towards the largest room, asking me if I wanted to dance. I shook my head emphatically. He turned instead, and I followed him as he wound through the people

and chew it to suck out the juice. Julien drank deeply from his cup, and I looked down into the dark, frothy liquid of my own. I took a sip, fumbling the cup. He was sitting about two feet away.

He cleared his throat.

"So, why do you wanted to visit France?"

A group of four people

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OTR 59 sat down a few paces from us, closer to the house. Their presence and rowdy laughter calmed me, and I met Julien's eyes.

When I applied to live with a host family for the summer, I envisioned being placed with a little old lady living in one of villages outside of Paris, perhaps near Giverny, where Monet grew his garden and painted his masterpieces.

Without realizing it, I expected her to have wispy blue hair and a fuzzy magenta cardigan, or a large, quilted handbag that she would clutch absently with chilly, bony hands. I imagined her serving me black coffee in a little clear glass after I arrived in a taxi from the airport.

She wouldn't speak a word of English, and my French would progress effortlessly as we passed the days sitting on the patio by the lavender bushes, the heavy, warm air tinged with a sort of historical mysticism as she elaborately recalled the war days.

switch into English. Instead, he changed the subject. "Sylvie, she is a friend?"

"Elle est ma soeur hôte," I said. "My host sister."

Julien nodded. I sipped my beer again as he took a very small, zip-lock plastic bag and a few slips of thin white paper from the pocket of his jeans.

He dipped his fingers into the bag and pinched, very careful to drop it in the center of the gently bent paper. I watched him nimbly roll it up. He lit it and took a drag, offering it to me.

"Tu fumes, oui?"

Ironically, he motioned by holding two fingers to his mouth, though the lit joint was smoking in his other hand.

My hand rose stiffly to take it from him. I wanted to place it between my lips casually, but the harder I tried, the more my arm trembled. I drew in. It burned the back of my throat, but on my tongue the taste was hot, smoky, thick.

I loved it. I handed it back to Julien, my lips still closed.

Finally I exhaled, watching the smoke disappear.

But I didn't know how to explain this to Julien. So instead, I said, "I want to learn the language. And I love French culture."

I looked up, realizing that Julien had edged across

Julien grinned. "Alors, j'espère que—" He paused and the space between us. Now, he struggled for a moment to was inches away. It was okay.

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He handed it back; I inhaled the way Sylvie did. I could smell him for the first time; he smelled a little musty, but clean.

Like a dried out bar of soap from the back of a bathroom cabinet. He ran his hand along the hair falling in front of my eyes. His fingertips brushed my forehead; they were rough, callused. It was okay. I exhaled until I was empty, weightless.

Then, as Julien was handing me the joint, he placed his hand on my lower back. The sweat from his palm permeated the thin cotton, and I dropped my hand as the ropes of my body ran taut. I stood up, knocking over my cup beside me. The beer hurried in a waterfall down over the ridge.

room and out to the front yard.

All of a sudden, I heard a sound I knew. I spun around to face the house and scanned the groups of people, listening to Clarisse's hysterical giggle.

"I have to go," I said. "I need–I have to find Sylvie." I was speaking so quickly, I could tell he didn't understand anything.

His eyes were wide with surprise, but his lips tightened.

I turned and cut across the lawn towards the kitchen door.

The wild giggle slowly dissipated. She lifted her head and blinked at me.

I rushed through the rooms of the house, weaving between couples and beneath extended arms. I stood in the largest room against the back wall, my eyes searching through the smoke and blinding cuts of light. Every girl looked exactly the same–none of them were Sylvie. I swept out of the

I tried again. "Sil te plaît, je ne veux pas--"

"Sylvie! Sylvie!" The girls surrounding her, their mouths dripping gruesomely with blood-red lipstick, parted in surprise. I grasped her by the shoulders and twisted her around. Her white blouse was stained and gritty with dirt, as though she had fallen.

One of the girls said something to Sylvie; she bent forward, convulsing in a sudden fit of frenzied laughter. Her hair slid against my forearms. I said her name again.

"Can Please?"

we

go

now?

Sylvie smiled sweetly.

"Not drunk. Just happy."

"Shhh, ne t'inquiète pas, don't worry, don't worry."

Her friends were calling; her name sounding deranged as it passed through their lips. I dropped my arms to my sides as she lifted her hands

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OTR 59 to my face, fingers pawing my cheeks. They smelled of cigarette smoke and cherry tequila.

"

"Corinne," Sylvie purred. She lifted her dirty hands to my face. Her eyelids fluttered closed. She leaned forward and kissed my mouth,

Her eyelids fluttered. caressing my cheeks with soft, I felt her weight shift onto my wet fingers. body, and my hands shot up to her arms to support her.

Jolted, I dropped my Suddenly, she twisted to the side hands from her body. She and pitched towards the ground. slumped immediately, and as I tried to hold her up with my her lips parted from mine, I arm across her stomach; I could heard a low whine, the sound

Her strong hands held me and held me until I tasted the vomit all through my body, lips warm and sticky against mine. feel the convulsions. She held tightly onto my arm with one hand; her other palm was flat on the ground, the tips of her fingers curling downward. Her weight pulled me down to my knees beside her as she became violently sick. Frantically, I tried to gather all of her hair with my free hand, but it was too fine and thin, and kept slipping through my fingers. I couldn't see the ground below her, but I felt my knees and arm get splashed, and the smell rose up. Finally, her body seemed to relax, and she coughed, wiping her mouth. She muttered for water, so I tried to ease her to her feet. She was spent, her thin body swaying in my arms.

of an dog crying in a kennel. I seized her again, holding her up. Her strong hands held me and held me until I tasted the vomit all through my body, lips warm and sticky against mine.

She drew back slowly, keeping her right hand, the one she smoked with, on my cheek.

I started crying. "I want to go home."

"Shhh," Sylvie soothed me. She pulled me down beside her, supporting herself on my shoulder. I drew my knees in to my chest and locked my arms around them. She grabbed hold of my sleeve, her hair slipping inside the neck of my t-shirt.

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A few minutes passed before I realized she had fallen asleep. Her breath had slowed and deepened, hot on my neck.

Despite the slight shuddering of my chest, her breath was steady. Her head began sliding off my shoulder, and she stirred slightly, eyes still closed. I didn't move as she settled her head on my lap. Her hair had fallen back, exposing the side of her face.

I felt confined by her dead weight against me, planting me to the ground. I thought about getting up from under her. I imagined myself walking away, leaving her lying there in the grass. But I knew the girl I envisioned wasn't really me. I knew I could never be her.

I looked down at Sylvie as she yawned, her mouth curving open angelically. Flecks of vomit still stuck to her chin.

Her blouse had shifted to expose her bra, and I adjusted it to cover her.

*

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OTR 59

Easter Confessions on 4/1

by Oscar Vargas

Poetry - Contest Winner

I could confess, Father, that I wondered why the old lady who went before me took fifteen minutes, did she fuck or kill a man, rob a bank, what could she have possibly done while hobbling along at a mile per hour, both fast and furious.

Or I could confess that, sometimes, I think about jumping in front of an oncoming train, not out of some suicidal urge but because I truly believe if I meet its charge with a punch, I'll stop it dead in its tracks, maybe confess that I find lust purer than love because, when the body is tangled, consuming, digging into another one, it can't possibly lie but, in the end, I'll just tell you that I lie sometimes and that utmost contempt for who forced me to come here and swear just and steamy

I my

have

the mother

I’ll say that sometimes I use words or god’s name in vain so you can absolve me then I can go through these Bushwick streets singing:

I'm not a sinner, I'm not a sinner.

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Aneurisma

by Meriam Pacheco Salazar Días de encierro, de pensar demasiado, de sentir que en este cuerpo no hay espacio para más dolor, de desmentirme y afrontar en el espejo a otra persona: de pelo castaño y mirada triste, con los poros abiertos y las manos cerradas.

Días sin luna, sin su tierna mirada ¿Adónde te has ido, madre? ¿Será que me has abandonado?

Se acaba la tinta se acaba la tinta y no te puedo decir lo que te quiero decir.

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OTR 59

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Projected

(Photography series)

Keka Marzagao

Digital Photography 91

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OTR 59

Johnny's Kitchenette (Excerpt from the play "Symphonic")

by Sadé Bobb

Drama

CHARACTERS KAREN Mother in her early 40s.

SYMPHONY Daughter, around 9 years old.

SCENE Symphony’s bedroom and kitchen in an apartment.

TIME The Present ACT I: SCENE III SETTING Darkened blinds in Symphony’s room block out mornings light.

Twin size bed in Symphony’s closet size bedroom. The white walls, cracked and blistered with mold and water stains. Symphony enters the kitchen, curtains block out the light of day. Widow side table with two chairs and a bottle of Johnny Walker under the table, on the floor.

(LIGHTS UP)

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(Banging of dishes and pans jolts Symphony awake from yet another virtually sleepless night. Darkened blinds keep her leveled as she attempted to get out of bed. Rising with stiffness, in her closet size bedroom. Symphony stares out at the white walls, cracked and blistered with mold and water stains, for a moment then gets up and to face her maker. As she enters the kitchen her mother takes her in, smiles, a smile that doesn’t quite show in her eyes or even her stance. Hand on hip and wearing irritation like a brand new dress.)

KAREN Good morning honey, slept well? …Symphony…

SYMPHONY

Morning.

KAREN Open the curtains, it's so lovely outside.

SYMPHONY

Fine.

(She reached and opened the curtains with tugs of frustration.)

KAREN How do you want your eggs.

SYMPHONY You're cooking? Anyway, I'm not hungry.

KAREN Hey! I cook…sometimes.

No you don't, I do.

SYMPHONY

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OTR 59 KAREN Mhmm. Dante is coming over for dinner tonight.

Oh...

SYMPHONY

KAREN Yea, so make sure to tidy yourself up.

But..but...

But what?

SYMPHONY KAREN

SYMPHONY I was going to sleep over at Ruby’s.

KAREN You'll sleep over next week.

(Symphony sighs loudly.)

SYMPHONY Does he have to come over?

Symphony...

KAREN

SYMPHONY We can have dinner, just us mom.

KAREN Do you want the lights to stay on? Because I do.

We have candles.

He's coming.

SYMPHONY KAREN

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Oh my goshhhhh.

SYMPHONY

KAREN Could you pass me a plate (Symphony gives the plate to her mother.)

Here.

SYMPHONY

KAREN I just want us to have a nice family dinner.

He’s not family.

SYMPHONY

KAREN You're like a daughter to him, sweetie.

SYMPHONY Even after what happened? …I was scared.

KAREN Scared of what? Dante cares for you.

And I needed you.

SYMPHONY

KAREN Do you want some orange juice.

SYMPHONY No, my stomach has been feeling funny .

Drink some pepto.

I took some…nothing.

KAREN SYMPHONY

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OTR 59 KAREN You really should be eating.

Ugh.

SYMPHONY

KAREN You're starting to look way too thin. Hmm, ever since Dante’s been taking you to the theatre. You really need to be focusing on your studies.

SYMPHONY I just wanna watch movies by ruby’s.

KAREN Yea, yea. Hand me the Johnny. This orange juice is missing something.

(Symphony looks at her mother, her mother looks back, impatiently.)

SYMPHONY You promised to take me to the mall today.

KAREN Dante can drive you tomorrow after he takes me to my doctors appointment.

SYMPHONY Never mind, I don't have to go.

KAREN Uhuh…didn't I say hand me the Johnny!

(Reaching for the bottle laid up on its side under the table symphony grabs it and hands it to her mother.)

KAREN Damnit, I thought I had more. I'll tell Dante to pick up a couple bottles (Karen pours the last of the Johnny Walker into the orange juice, the two thirds left in the bottle.)

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SYMPHONY Mommy, do you have a pad, I think I need one KAREN Why would you need one? You're not even... how do you even know about that?

SYMPHONY

Dante told me

(Karen pauses to look at Symphony for a moment then looks out the window.)

KAREN I have some in my underwear draw SYMPHONY

Okay

KAREN You sure you're not hungry?

SYMPHONY

No

KAREN

Alright

(After rustling in the bedroom.

Symphony comes back to the kitchen.) “You found them?

SYMPHONY Yea, bye, see you after school.

KAREN Bye Hun. Oh and take the stairs, elevator isn't working (Symphony walks out the door, locking it on her way out.)

CURTAIN

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Untitled

Keka Marzagao

Digital Photography 5/10/16 5:50 PM

I Am Not a Poet

by Julia Papell

Poetry

I am not a poet but I think there might be poems that live in that space that shouldn't exist, somewhere between my lungs and stomach, pressed back against my spine.

I know they are there because sometimes I feel them at night before I fall asleep I am not a poet but I think I there might be poems that try and try to convince me not to be scared of them. they are little seeds with a bit of water, they will sprout grow and climb, the delicate leaves and young blossoms reaching up through the smooth bars of my rib cage, gracefully adjusting to my lungs as they inflate and deflate weaving up to my shoulder to make a sharp turn and at this point, I think I can almost feel a sort of tickle but perhaps it is my imagination, and stealthily the little plants slide down the muscles of my arms splitting into ten vines, one for each finger. just below each fingernail hangs a tiny cerulean flower, like a bead of water pulsing to drip

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OTR 59

I pick up my pen but, I am not a poet because I come from the suburbs and I eat sliced bread because I don’t drink black coffee or wear cool hats because I have to work hard to be clever and yet, the poem moves faster, with urgency now shooting up straight between my lungs, the petals curling and uncurling with anticipation, up through my esophagus it goes until I have a mouthful of poem. for a moment, I taste it. then I open my mouth to release.

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Julian Rosen

Madonna and Child Pen on Paper 101 issue59.indd 101

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OTR 59

Tree Pose

by Julia Papell

Prose

M

y first visit to Times Square, I saw Obama.

On the largest screen was an image of him modeling an olive green Patagonia raincoat. They had him just so—his face in profile, gazing pensively out across a marshy landscape. This was long before he went grey. To his right, on an Aerie billboard, some models wore bras and panties.

Not the Victoria sex goddesses, but rosy-cheeked, bushy-haired, open-mouthed smiling young females who looked wholesome enough to still have sleepovers.

Times Square always reminded me of a children's popup book. Like a pop-up book, it was exhilarating, terrifying, and seemed fragile. The paper cut-outs, inevitably and unwittingly torn by eager little fingers, had a very short life span. The invasive structures of Times Square, rising up out of their proper dimension, seemed prone to catastrophe.

Mostly, it was the screens.

I stared above, wondering how much they weighed. I imagined

them swaying slightly, as though suspended. They were brand new, but they glinted mythically like ancient jewels.

The wind whipped around, funneled by the glittering walls, tempting the cables. The fevered displays swinging like pendulums, monstrous, metallic creaks echoing through the Square.

It was probably irresponsible to expose small children to such an aggressive environment.

All those megapixels—the excitement might stop their little hearts.

Children are sensitive. They imagine things. The glow of a night light reveals creatures in bedroom furniture. And it's not only their imaginations.

They are physiologically fragile beings, with all the parts so new, unaccustomed to a world so bright and noisy. Babies don't have calluses. The soft bare bodies are always swathed in something, a second membrane.

When I saw mothers neglect to cover their infant's ears as a train screeched to the platform, I couldn't understand. Perhaps

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because to me, the sound was visceral and painful; in a way, I was still a toddler, still young to New York.

absence of all that which was not said. And yet it seemed far worse to say nothing. At least this way, the pretense, the play of normalcy and ease, could exist. Without it, too much

I remembered this day would be said in the silence. as I rode the A across Brooklyn with Emma, my older sister.

Lots had happened She had flown in to visit me for since I last saw her, my parents several days, and it was her first had told me. She now had a time in New York. It had been serious boyfriend of almost two years since I came to the a year. I'd heard snippets of city to go to college, and I'd only information about him over the returned home once. Mostly, months. His name was Rick, this was a matter of money, but but as my mother had claimed, I also hadn't kept in touch with "not at all like a Rick". I wasn't my sister. It had been months, sure what a Rick was supposed maybe even a year, since we to be like, but Emma's Rick was had talked in any real way. I a computer technician. He was hadn't responded to her emails, apparently very eager to keep voicemails, emojis. I always sent his secure, well-paying job and the same excuses trotting out, devote himself to looking after doing them up differently each all of my sister's needs. My time. The worst part was that I parents were thrilled. She had kept lying long after I knew she been living with them since she had stopped believing me. graduated, slowing repaying her college loans.

I couldn't explain why I felt as I did when I saw her Apparently, she had name glow on the caller ID. It borrowed some money from felt as though she was a task I them as well. Two thousand could always get to later on, dollars to do a year-long yoga when I had less to do, or was in teacher training. Soon she'd be a better state of mind. Talking done, and could start giving to her became a psychological private lessons, at 125 dollars chore, and once I had avoided an hour. I'd had no idea there it long enough, it became ever was so much money in yoga. harder to do. Nothing seemed Emma had also gone vegan, and worth saying. Anything that done her first cold-pressed juice could be said was automatically cleanse last October, to shed a invalidated by the conspicuous pesky five pounds. When I was

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OTR 59 in middle school, she used to pick me up after soccer practice, and we would go to Gino's and eat baked ziti or sausage calzones.

"

I had been surprised by how startled I felt, seeing her at the airport. She did look different. Her eyes, round and wide, made her look sixteen, but she was thinner now, and had the jaw of a woman. There wasn't a single blemish on her face, and she wore a modest shade of lipstick, perfectly

me for leaving home and never calling.

Even on the crowded train, a part of me still felt startled. We were squished together on the end of the bench, and had to turn our heads nearly 90 degrees to talk to each other. Every time she breathed I felt the moisture bead up on my nose. I wanted desperately to scooch over, but there was nowhere to go. To lean away in the slightest, after all those months apart, would

Her smile was so wide, a real teethy smile, and even her eyes and her cheeks—her whole face smiling with a kind of ecstatic effort. applied. She had that fresh, splash of cold water look. She'd always been like that, always looked pretty, well put-together.

When she spotted me, I knew it was genuine. I knew she hadn't secretly seen me twenty seconds before and had continued to scan the faces, waiting to be called to first.

Her smile was so wide, a real teethy smile, and even her eyes and her cheeks—her whole face smiling with a kind of ecstatic effort. I felt surprised, but what else could I have expected? She wouldn't have flown six hours just to scowl at me, to berate

have been like spitting in her face. She didn't seem bothered by the closeness. She placed her head on my shoulder. I wasn't sure how to reciprocate the gesture, as both my arms were virtually pinned against my body. Instead, I said, "Thanks for making the trip. I'll pay for your carbon offsets."

She said thank you, that's so sweet, but she already bought them.

I stared across the train car at a young girl sitting on the bench opposite me. In her lap she held a large clear

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plastic bag, knotted at the top and filled about three-quarters with water. Inside there was one bright orange goldfish. I waited for it to move, but it did not. It bobbed at the waterline, its head and back fin pointed downward. Its soft belly curved up like the top of a tiny orange umbrella, just barely breaking the surface. It was clearly dead.

Who knows for how long.

Maybe it had died within the last few minutes, and the girl hadn't yet realized.

I decided that she looked like the sort of person not to notice a thing like that.

She had the bottom half of her hair shaved off, but had left it long on the top. It was cut to flop down over her right eye, like a flaccid wing. Maybe she knew about the fish, and carried it around just to shock people and upset little children - an accessory just like her undercut. I wondered why people bothered buying a pet that was so easy to kill. Even adults couldn't seem to manage holding the bag still, keeping it from slipping and bursting into a puddle at their feet. I'd seen it happen before, and I hated to see the glinting little fish as they flopped around hopelessly.

Poor little guys. They can't even scream as they die.

I once killed my pet too,

but I was a child, and it was an innocent mistake. It was a fuzzy green caterpillar I found in the woods behind the church. I let it crawl all over my hands and up my forearms as I walked back home. I liked the way it felt on my skin, kind of furry and sticky. It seemed quite calm.

When I got home, I found the plastic cage in the basement that the hermit crab had been in. By this point I had named the caterpillar. I filled its new home with leaves and twigs and rocks. It moved about slowly, but in my eyes, contentedly it did not occur to me that the caterpillar was not happy to have become my pet. In any case, it was not for long. I left the cage on the back deck, and that night it rained. The next morning the caterpillar was floating at the top of the water which had collected in the cage.

It was no longer green, but looked like a sodden old leaf.

I dug a tiny grave for the dead caterpillar in the back of the yard behind the swingset.

This was the spot where I always thought we would bury my dog when she died. At this point, we didn't yet have the dog, but I had been begging for one for years.

I read every single book the elementary school library had on how to groom your golden retriever or german shepherd.

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OTR 59 Finally, my parents agreed.

The dog they chose from the pound was already quite old, a medium-sized Husky and German Shepherd mix. She was timid and gentle. She was afraid of doorways, and would only walk on the left side of the road. We didn't know where she had come from or what had happened to her. She didn't bark for a year and half after we got her, and we assumed she had been de-barked. Finally one day she barked, when my parents and Emma were fighting. Everyone forgot about the argument and rushed to pet and kiss Ellie.

Ellie was so old when we got her, that she didn't live very long. Soon the four of us were standing around her, placed up on a metal table. The vet was getting everything ready, and all of our eight hands were rubbing and petting Ellie.

Emma was crying. She hadn't even wanted Ellie; at first she didn't care for her at all. The vet started talking to us in a comforting sort of voice, as though she was worried one of us might snap any second.

Then she began injecting Ellie with something, and Emma was standing there bawling away and I just hated her for it.

I stared down at Ellie, because I didn't want to miss the moment

when her slight belly stopped slowly rising and falling. The vet asked something about whether we all wanted to be present, and my mom replied, but the vet said, "I'm concerned about your daughter." The moment had to be Emma's moment, even though Ellie was the one about to die. I'm always standing there when people are saying things like "I'm concerned about your daughter" and I'm never the daughter they're talking about.

The person seated on my other side got off at the next stop, and I slid over slightly, hoping Emma hadn't noticed.

Her face didn't betray anything, besides an eyelash twitch which was probably just a blink. She had produced a list from her pocket of the places she wanted to visit, and had just finished reading it to me. First on the list was the Brooklyn Bridge. Times Square was second.

I had yet to walk the Brooklyn Bridge, but at that moment I realized this was deliberate, an avoidance. I couldn't justify it, but I had a visceral reaction to the idea, especially today, in the 95-degree heat. I suggested instead that we go to an art museum, like the Brooklyn or the Met.

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"Well, maybe tomorrow, after Times Square," Emma said, as though scheduling appointments. She was folding up her list and placing it neatly back into her pocket. "But I really want to go to the Bridge now. It'll be amazing to see the city for the first time from afar— you've walked it before, right Sam?"

sitting." She put her hand on my shoulder. "Trust me Sam, it'll be fun."

'It'll be fun' was a special phrase of Emma's. She had used it to great effect last Christmas, by imploring me to do a special favor for her. I had decided to stay in the city through the holidays. The day after I told my parents, Emma called me, and

"But you're already in for once I picked up. This was the city," I pointed out. "Besides, an act of pity; fancifully, I even

"

The vet started talking to us in a comforting sort of voice.. Then she began injecting Ellie with something, and Emma was standing there bawling.

it's Saturday afternoon. It's thought she might be tearful. going to be mobbed with

But in fact, her mood people." was opportunistic, rather than

"I don't care," Emma dejected. She asked me to take said, in a voice like she'd never photographs of the high-end worried about a thing her holiday window displays. She whole life. Something about it worked at a local boutique, and unnerved me, how carefree she was in charge of the window this seemed. How comfortable she year. At the time, the thought was around me. of going willingly to midtown Manhattan at Christmastime

"But Em, you really was almost too much to bear. I want to go there straight? You told her she could look at past have your bag and everything. windows online, but she wanted . ." I motioned vaguely towards the most current designs. the wheeled carry-on she held between her knees.

"It'll be fun, Sam. I swear." I felt shamed by my

"Sure. That doesn't expectation of Emma's reaction make a difference. And I'd love to my news, and I was still filled to go for a walk after all that

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OTR 59 with a kind of uncontrolled of eyes, the black, thick curved empathy, such that I couldn't line that reached almost to say no to any request. where their ears would be, had they any. They loomed

I went down on the freakishly over the people 6 train and got off at 59th below, who stared reverently. It street. As soon as I emerged was all terribly artistic. from underground, I regretted coming on a Saturday at noon; Later, I uploaded the crowds swarmed the sidewalks. photo to an email to send to I walked against traffic in Emma, and as it blew up on the shoulder for half a block, the screen, even I softened and then stood facing a large to the mannequins. In their window display. But it was 2-D, pixelated form, they impossible to get a good shot. seemed more like silly faeries The people shuffled by, each than anything else. Emma body attached to the next, like appreciated the photo, though the cars of a train. The window it was the only one I took. She behind them featured four said it was so beautiful, so New figures, obviously intended to York. be female. Two were suspended,

I wondered now what hovering like strange insects. she thought of New York.

Their plastic bodies seemed to A man in a wheelchair was hold a kind of tortured tension, slowly making his way down like a beetle spun on its back, its the subway car. He was bald, many legs writhing pointlessly. with a grizzled grey beard like The other figures had been a Viking, and dirt smudging his arranged on the platform. jaw and the oily sheen of his They had human-like qualities, scalp. I knew he was a veteran having been positioned mostly because each stump was upright and with four limbs, wrapped in a cloth printed with but they otherwise did not the American flag. He rattled resemble humans. Their limbs a small, dirty coffee cup like a were each twice as long as broken tambourine. their bodies, contoured into a I couldn't tell from grisly imitation of grace. Their skin was ivory white, with hair Emma's face, what she was that matched their outfits; neon thinking. She knew not to yellow, chartreuse, hot pink, stare, but her eyes kept darting and chemical blue. They had no up furtively. She'd always real eyes, just the suggestion been thin-skinned, had never outgrown the need to be

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incubated. We used to tease her about it. It had been some time since we were all together, since those almost saccharine moments eating pancakes Sunday mornings, pouring syrup and teasing Emma. We joked that she was like 'fine shrimp', quick to turn if not properly refrigerated.

Emma had been born with two of her arteries reversed, and had to undergo openheart surgery moments after birth. It wasn't clear at first that anything was wrong, but soon the screaming baby began to turn blue. Her blue blood was cycling back into her left ventricle, deprived of oxygen. The tubes were twisted, attached in the wrong places, creating two separate systems where there should have one.

It seemed fanciful to consider the effect of the operation on Emma's state of mind. The fact that she had become such a colicky baby did not mean anything necessarily.

I tended to have the most sympathy for my parents. After all, they were young, brandnew parents, and they must have known. They must have imagined the glinting tools, the snipping and twisting, the dainty stitches being pushed through the flesh. Emma was born weighing only five pounds;

what a tiny heart indeed it must have been—soft, fragile, wet, blood-red, and plush as the pillow of a doll.

While I was growing up, this ordeal was often alluded to, but I didn't receive the term for it until I was ten or eleven. My sister was now a young woman. She had a rosy glow, and long black curls; she gobbled spaghetti and ran track and field. Before, the long, pink scar along her sternum, marked by the staples that had long since been removed, had not meant very much to me.

Typing 'open-heart surgery' in Google Images was to be my first traumatic encounter on the Internet. Beforehand, I had imagined the surgery as a kind of neat switcheroo, like the fixing of a necklace put on backwards. But now, when I saw her, those macabre images flashed in my mind. I had never seen so much blood. I was sickened, and felt like crying.

But me, my heart was normal. And I had been an easy baby. I had sucked my thumb, and slept well. When I got older, I played for hours in the backyard, or seated in a little chair at a table spread with animal figurines. From the time I began reading, I was nearly always occupied. As the second child, I felt compelled

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OTR 59 to fill those spaces which she had left vacant, and so like magnets, we occupied opposite roles in the family. And yet always a part of me resented this constant competition for individuality, for parental love, and as magnets sometimes flip violently, in moments of crisis I would rush forward and cling to her. She was a kind of center, to and from which I was constantly oscillating. And I, a thermometer to her often intemperate emotions.

"

Emma had moved her hand to her pocket. I had known that a homeless veteran with no legs was exactly the sort of

"It's not terrible, its true," I said, without lowering my voice, and without looking her in the eye.

She had taken her hand out of her pocket, and seemed to know what I was thinking.

But you could never tell from her face, never know for sure whether she resented it.

"I think it gives them hope," she said quietly. "Having a stranger hand them money.

It's like having someone trust you."

"No, it's not," I said, in the mean third grade teacher voice. I wanted to spit the taste of it out of my mouth,

Emma had been looking down at her lap, but she raised her head and smiled at me, and it was a different smile than I expected. thing to set her off. Her fingers but I couldn't stop myself now. seemed to be fumbling around Our conversations were like mudslides. Afterwards, I always coins. felt dirty, and somehow guilty,

I leaned towards her as though I had pushed her slightly, still facing forward. down.

"There's no point. There's always

"It doesn't really help another one down the block." them," I said too loudly. "Nobody

She turned to me, ever thinks, why are so many her mouth a sour line. She people sleeping on the street? whispered, "Not so loud, Sam." No, they're all thinking—how She turned away. "What a do I keep them out of my park? terrible thing to say."

It's the same with the money—

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always an ego thing."

The train had stopped, and the doors sprung open.

Down at the other end of the car, someone helped the veteran maneuver his wheelchair around the incoming passengers. I had the sudden inclination to change train cars.

Emma had been looking down at her lap, but she raised her head and smiled at me, and it was a different smile than I expected. Not condescending, or pushy. I saw the supposed New Emma, the yogi. Standing one-legged in Tree pose, eyes closed lightly, hands together at the chest, holding a center of balance. Between her soft, wellmoisturized palms, a hub of the Earth's positive energy, sizzling like oil on a barbecue.

"Okay, Sam," she said, smiling.

We got off at High Street.

An older couple wearing New Balance sneakers and carrying a camera got off before us, and we followed them directly up the steps. Sweat beaded up on my neck as we came above ground. As we walked half a block behind the couple, taking several turns through a quiet neighborhood, Emma told me about her arguments with Mom and Dad. She seemed to assume that I knew the way.

Her wheeled suitcase clattered along behind us.

We came to the stairway under an overpass, leading up to the Bridge, and emerged at the top in the glare of an absolutely still and cloudless day. The shapes danced like neon colors as my eyes adjusted to the light. After months in Manhattan, it was almost startling to see the sky in all its enormity. Emma tied her jacket around her waist, and stared out with her hand over her eyes. I squinted towards the stretch of the Bridge.

The walkway was narrower than I expected, and split between pedestrians and bikes, each with two lanes. In an almost unbroken procession, bikes were advancing in both directions at about twenty miles an hour. The mobs of pedestrians moved in their respective directions, the heads of many bodies bobbing like little round buoys. People in white baseball caps, red polos; long sunburnt legs squeezed into short shorts. Every so often a runner dripping with sweat, either shirtless or in a neon sports bra, would wind between the crowds, breaking up groups walking abreast. Beyond the highest point of the Bridge lay the invisible downward curve towards Manhattan.

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OTR 59

I turned to Emma and slid the strap of my camera over her head. She lifted it to her eye at once as we began to advance forward. She hardly seemed to hold the camera steady, let alone frame the shots. Each picture was as temporary as a breath, doomed to be digitally overwhelmed in a mountain of cyber junk, forgotten in a folder in the corner of a hard drive.

She was apparently unbothered by the crowds.

She walked directly in front of several people's cameras, and didn't seem at all aware. I was worried about her getting hit by a bike; she kept wandering across the double yellow line. Her luggage skipped haphazardly behind her.

In the sunlight, her hair was bright red. She turned to me and smiled that same airport smile, as though joy hit her like a train, fell on her like a pile of bricks. She said, "Sam, just enjoy it!"

perfect round circle dropping through a hole punch.

Emma nudged me. She had stopped beside the railing and handed my camera to a middle-aged woman, who stood waiting pleasantly, holding it with two hands. The people behind us diverted themselves; the procession became singlefile along the bike lane. I stepped beside the railing.

Emma wrapped her arm around my waist, my sweaty t-shirt. I worried that I was blocking the Statute of Liberty, but she rested her head on my shoulder, and I knew she was already posing.

Always ready for the camera.

But me, I couldn't see with the glare, didn't know where to look. I smiled for the click.

*

I looked out across the Bridge, at the skyline. I supposed it was beautiful. It had a certain beauty, one of steel and concrete. I wondered how many tons the island of Manhattan weighed. You would need a unit bigger than tons.

Imagine if the ground grew weak, and it all fell through, a

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Friend

(Photography series)

Julian Rosen

Film Photography 113

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OTR 59

A Little Black Boy

by Abe Douek

Poetry

A little black boy in a game a’ tug a’ war He’s tuggin’ n’ tuggin’, his hands full’a sore A single soul, alone in this game Ain’t nobody on his team sharin’ his pain The skies starin’ down full of demise Casting his shadows with piercin’ eyes Stuck at the anchor tuggin’ a mountain His hope is the maker of his poisonous fountain It’s a shame he goes on livin’ in the past When he can be presently restin’ below the grass But who knows the truth of his demonizin’ hope Maybe even then he’s still tuggin’ at that rope.

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Ninja Burglar

by Diana Kosianka

Prose

K

when a couple of young boys threw rocks out of malicious boredom. She never knew if the police had found them. For all that she knew, they could have been tourists with no respect for the borough’s laws, or even the laws of decency. On a typical hot summer day, the lights stood like statues in a public park like the one under the Brooklyn Bridge. An intrepid sculptor could have easily bought out the lights and manipulated them into a work critiquing the city’s infrastructure, or as a statement of a love that would eventually die an uneventful death, never to be mourned by anyone. She sighed as she closed the last of the apartment windows and locked the last of the hatches.

She was too high to be in trouble from the flames should anyone try to cook a pizza box in one of the lower floor apartments, and yet, she was too low to ever feel

Both of the street truly safe again. lights outside of her fifth-floor Two weeks ago, she Brooklyn apartment were read an AOL article about a busted. It was surprising why sinister snake of a villain. nobody had taken them down yet. The glass which normally The ninja burglar was in the protected the lights’ wires had neighborhood, or so she heard. sharp, knife-like edges from Reportedly, this ninja burglar waited for all the lights to go aren’s hands remained folded behind her back as she waited for the telephone to ring. The electric clock ticked above the apartment as she paced back and forth on the living room floor. With enough paces, she could have walked through all of New York City’s five boroughs and started another lap without any problems.

She was lucky that she was only wearing a pair of light blue wool slippers, or else the married couple upstairs with the hyper-sensitive hearing would have complained to the concierge about the noise in the room. Her black bangs fell across her eyes with every step she took. No matter what she did, they always blocked her line of vision. Even trimming them didn’t help.

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OTR 59

"

out in a single building, and once the last light went out, he would strike the back of the apartment owner’s head with a shuriken. Once the unlucky victim was left alone, passed out, and bleeding, he would take out every checkbook, every penny, every dollar, every dime, every credit card, every jewel, and anything else that seemed valuable enough to bring in more tainted money.

If the victim ever did wake up, they would find themselves financially ruined in every sense of the term, unable to ever explain to anyone what had

into her apartment like that, without a search warrant or a reason to be here. She wasn’t one of those New Yorkers who left their windows open late at night. Even when Josie, her roommate, complained about the rising humidity in July and begged her to open the door to let in the cold night air, she kept to her principles of care and safety. Even then, she hoped what she had read was only nonsense.

Josie had gone out for a movie date with Bjorn, a graduate student from Brooklyn

She always considered herself careful – she never even once dropped a glass of milk off the floor. happened without sounding like a raving lunatic. With a story like this one, one would have just expected it to be an urban legend, but for Karen, it was a real as a woman having a heart attack in the middle of a store, with none of the witnesses bothering to even take out their cell phones to dial 911 for an ambulance.

College who lived in the floor beneath them. She told her to call her back when there was nothing to worry about. Her words rang loud and clear in Karen’s head right before she departed to catch the 3 train.

“The ninja burglar is just an urban legend.” she had said as she adjusted her lip gloss at the door right before her leaving, “When you hear the phone ring and they say it’s a hoax, you’ll know it’s a fake.”

She always considered herself careful – she never even once dropped a glass of milk off the floor. This was how careful she was. There was no Still, Karen, in her way anyone would just barge worn-out pajamas, left

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every electric light running throughout her apartment – even though she desperately craved a nap from working too many late night shifts at Sweet Bits, a mainstream ice cream parlor. She sat down on the worn-out green couch, her legs worn out from the pacing as she peeled off the slippers off of each foot. Should she dare to run, she couldn’t have anything make her slip. Each and every one of those lights resembled a candle in a jack-o-lantern. If these could ward off evil spirits for so many centuries, then why not burglars?

dangling rope. She attempted to push the buttons as her hands grew wet with sweat. All that she could get out of the phone was tapping. No dial-up tone, no electronic bopping as she pushed the numbers.

A loud hiss came from the kitchen ceiling. Karen’s footsteps reverberated on the wooden floor as she ran to the source. The light flickered on and off, fading in and out for one or two minutes. The hiss rose to a shriek. The lightbulb on the ceiling exploded into a million pieces of filament and glass and leapt onto the floor like hellish hail. Every light in the apartment shut itself off in unison. The guardians of those lights may have faced a spirit so frightening, so evil, that they retreated from their posts and started writing out their last will and testament.

Perhaps Josie turned her phone off as the movie’s previews started playing.

Perhaps her phone’s battery died from all the music she listened to on the subway rides.

She knew that she didn’t leave it at home; she witnessed her put it inside her bag herself. Maybe it was just a mean prank to get back at her for all the times she wouldn’t let her open the window at night? Or perhaps, Karen thought nervously, Bjorn confiscated the phone from her and wouldn’t allow her to use it.

She blinked at that thought. He wouldn’t be capable of that. He was far too sweet of a man to do something like that to anyone, let alone a girlfriend. In the darkness, she even wondered if her situation came from reading too much internet articles. She knew there were lies, and that

Karen’s hands shook and twitched at the vision before her. The living room rug slid under her feet as she grabbed the phone’s receiver like a

“Hello?” Karen said, her voice rising higher and higher until her throat felt raw, “Hello?!

Josie, is this some sick joke of yours?! Hello?!” She slammed the phone back on the receiver.

She looked back on the phone like it had just sentenced her to a firing squad. She stood where she was. Her right eye twitched.

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OTR 59 there were truths in the things she read as well. But which was which, even?

Thwack! Karen fell to the floor like a colossus collapsing from its pedestal with a loud thud. Her forehead formed a cracked, bloodied cut upon impact with wood. She couldn’t hear a pair of black shoes as the person these feet were attached to crouched down and lifted his shuriken into his dark gloved hands.

*

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Anxiety: A Monologue

by Avery Philipps

Drama

(A man in his late twenty’s. He has a young appearance but embodies the stress of someone much older and has the expression of one in constant distress.

He stands solemnly holding a sock. He seems at this moment somewhat sad.

After a moment he finally speaks as though continuing a conversation after taking a long pause to find what he wished to say.)

GUY You know when you wear socks a lot and they get those little fuzzies on them, or sweat pants or whatever? Yeah…

I always liked that. I always liked to just feel it, it always calmed me down. Sometimes I’d pick one or two but Id try not to cause then I’d pick them all off and I’d have no more. But it always made me feel better and I still do it. I have a few socks that I just keep to the side and when I’m reading or stressed or lonely I just put it next to me or on my lap and just thumb at it. Sometimes ill even go to sleep doing that.

It’s weird, I know. Its one of those odd little ritualistic things and we all do it , we all have them but it’s just this is my thing, its my oddity and now I’m standing here telling all of you about it and its odd and embarrassing and – and – there’s nothing wrong with it, I know but its just(He stutters and finally stops continuing to rub the sock staring out as if he sees something that’s really bothering him.

Then suddenly, slightly panicked.)

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OTR 59 You know I never really wanted to be a mechanic, I just did it because I didn’t know what else to do… You know in high school they were like ‘what do you wanna do?’ and I was like ‘I don’t know what I wanna do’ and they’re like ‘well you gotta know what you wanna do’ and I’m like ‘I just turned fourteen, I don’t know what I wanna do’ and they’re like ‘well you gotta pick something’ and I was like ‘uhhhhhh…’ so I picked the auto shop because I helped my dad change a tire once so its like oh, I know something about this unlike everything else so I did that and I knew nothing about it and I hated it but I didn’t know what else to do and I became an auto mechanic and I’m twenty seven and I still hate it and I barely know what I’m doing cause they keep changing shit so its like a car last year isn’t the same as a car this year and sometimes you just have cars that you fix one thing but its actually another thing that’s broken or you fix one thing and another thing breaks… and like…I mean I’m just trying to live and I’m trying to save up a little money so I can go to a Knicks game cause I don’t do anything for myself and I always wanted to go to one but I’m scared cause its money and I need money and its not even a tangible thing and I just want to be happy but I don’t know what to do or what will make me happy…

I don’t ever remember being happy.

(He pauses, panting slightly, and stares at his sock while he rubs it and sits down and continues for a moment before continuing in a calmer, sadder tone.)

I mean… when I was little I always thought school stressed me out cause I was always being judged. Those stupid state tests and those class presentations where no one in the class paid attention to you but you were scared and your heart didn’t even beat fast, it just hurt like you pumped too much air into a tire and you stuttered and did your thing and it was over and no one cared but you panicked about it for days afterward until you got your next assignment that just refocused your panicking….

And all that time that they treat you like you’re ten but expect you to have the intellect of a thirty five year old – what the fuck do you want from me!?

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(He’s curled the sock up squeezes it shaking slightly then lets out a slight yelp, as though the beginning of the cry and take the sock in both hands and folds it orderly in two and brings it up to his chest, almost as if holding a stuffed animal and continues to rub it as he looks off toward the side as though for an escape and occasionally re-fixes his gaze on another far away spot.)

I just don’t know what to do anymore. I want to be happy but I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what that is or where it is or how to get there. I keep trying to but I just end up feeling lost and like I’m doing something wrong and scared…But I want to be happy…I am happy…

I’m just scared to be happy…because weird little things scare me…but I’m happy. I don’t mind working on cars, it’s kind of fun…I like fixing things… And my girlfriend tells me its ok if I didn’t make that great of a commission because she has some extra money to pay the bills with and she knows I work hard and she still loves me. And that guy who keeps bringing his car back isn’t mad at me because he knows his car is a heap of shit and its not my fault something new breaks every few months and its ok that I don’t have any money to go see that Knicks game because my girlfriend and a few of our friends like to play when we’re free and I mean its more fun to play then to pay money to watch isn’t it?

(He goes back to rubbing and looking at his sock again.)

So yeah…I guess it’s ok…because it has to be ok…And at the end of the day there really isn’t anything wrong. It’s just me…and there’s nothing wrong with me…because I’m ok…

(He looks up and gives a distressed but faint, slightly hopeful smile.)

I’m ok…

CURTAIN

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OTR 59

Sister Solace

David Carmona

Digital Art

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Silent Suffering

by Avery Philipps Prose

S

he should have said no.

The thought ravaged Alith’s mind as she approached the door to a three story townhouse. It wasn’t that she had traveled into the city, or rather through the city, up into the next county, it was that she was not sure she could handle this. She was not sure she could handle Jason.

to truly say, but never the less it had landed her at the front door of his home and no matter how kindly she had treated him she had truly not wanted to come.

Dealing with him was one thing, dealing with him alone frightened her.

She had wondered what his parents would be like; whether or not they were accepting of their child despite his shortcomings. Did they acknowledge it? Did they avoid it? Did they embrace his diversity or insist upon his normalcy? Did they wish to deal with him at all? Did they blame themselves? Each other?

Would she have to try to explain to them that their son was not mentally well for a twenty four year old college student?

Would they be alright with her being a trans woman; with their unstable child knowing one? She would soon find out as she heard the tumbling of the doors lock click open to reveal a tall middle-aged man starring down at her.

He was kind to her.

Despite everything he was always sweet, always said hello and goodbye, always courteous, always cared; perhaps in his own special way but still, always. Many like herself, dismissed him as considerably and fondly as possible as though a mother dealing with a child for longer then she could tolerate. Others rolled their eyes or gave less satisfactory levels of response. Some plainly ignored him. Everyone pretended not to hear him at some point; they were all guilty of it, but Alith always had an over bearing sense of guilt. Whether it was a self destructive trait or the will of an angelic soul is probably

A man stood in the beyond the ability of any human archway, no taller then herself,

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OTR 59 with a stout figure and a slowly growing mustache. Besides the likelihood of this man being Jason’s father, there was something extremely fatherly about him, something that she caught as their eyes locked for the first time. He invited her in with a monotone demeanor and closed the door behind her. There was only a narrow staircase before her that led up to the second floor. Though she felt it rude and uncomfortable to go ahead, there was no room for her to step aside and have him lead and so she continued with him close behind. The entire walk up was filled with the endless sense that this man hated her, but it was put on hold as her head rose above the floorboards and an excited Jason turned from a comic book at the kitchen table and called her name.

“Hello.” She said with her uncomfortable smile as he rushed over to greet her.

She caught eye of the clock overhanging a small archway and was saddened seeing that it was not yet long enough for her to make up an excuse to leave. A woman with hair that hung short at her shoulders in an endless tail of loops and curves, came out from the hallway and showed that there was a happy yet saddened

ping through her heart at the sight of her son embracing another human being.

“It’s good to see you.

How was your ride? I bet it took you a long time didn’t it” Jason continued on his rant while his eyes intrusively dug into her.

“Yeah it wasn’t to long.”

Her voice trailed off as she removed her coat.

“You must be Alith.”

The woman spoke as she rushed toward them and offered to take her coat. She had more to say, as did Alith wish to respond in a normal conversation with her, but Jason had interjected as though his mother were not there.

“You have to commute far. That’s really hard. Like, when I go to school its hard so when you go it has to be like…” he made several stuttering sounds but whether he was stuttering or had not yet decided on what he had wanted to say was uncertain for any to tell, “like super long.” He finally concluded.

Alith gave another forced smile but before she could rebuttal his mother spoke again.

“Jason has told us such very nice things about you.”

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Alith offered her a sincere smile as Jason began another random rambling of some small thing that they had encountered in school that had long ago lost its humor.

"

she followed Jason into the next room.

It was a fairly large room but it was a chaotic one.

Things were everywhere.

Candy wrappers, books, torn

“Would you like magazines, toys, pencils, anything Alith?” His mother clothes and comics. Endless managed to interject. piles upon piles of comics.

“No thank you miss-” Obscene amounts of comics that protruded from drawers,

“I want to show you my billowed upon the desk, the

Things were everywhere. Candy wrappers, books, torn magazines, toys, pencils, clothes and comics. Endless piles upon piles of comics. bed, the table and tapped in comics!” Jason’s voice roared a sporadic and unorganized over hers. “Mom, I’m going to manor along the wall near his go show her my comics.” bed. He began to talk about

“Jason, it’s not polite random ones and she did her to talk while other people are best to listen but while her talking.” smile froze upon her face, her

“I know, I’m sorry.” He mind began to fade out. She quickly turned back to Alith, “I was not sure how long it had want to show you my comics! been when, with a sudden rush of excitement, he jumped past Can I show her my comics?” her, practically knocking her

“I think that’s out of the way as he rammed something you need to ask-” his finger into a comic that was

“You’ll love my comics. taped upon the wall by his bed.

I want to show you. Come!”

“Oh, and here! Look at this one.

I want to show you. It

He trotted off down always makes me think of you.” the hall. His mother mouthed a quick “I’m sorry” to which Alith It was a singular smiled and shook her head as picture of an ogre like creature

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OTR 59

"

with a spiked club standing before what appeared to be a massive green blob spewing out smaller green blobs at another ogre like being. She stared at it relatively simply but with a haze of bewilderment. She was not insulted nor honored but

ones of the civil war that had raged many generations before her own. She gave a faint smile at her childhood nostalgia as she placed the figurines amongst the others of the set.

As she did his father appeared in the doorway. She gave him

She gave him an uncertain smile to which he did not return. He glanced back down the hall before stepping cautiously into the room. wondered what it was in his mind that allowed him to make such strange associations. Then suddenly his voice tore her from the page.

an uncertain smile to which he did not return. He glanced back down the hall before stepping cautiously into the room.

“Alith?”

He spoke quietly and uncertainly. She nodded in approval of his pronunciation. He nodded in return and motioned to sit

“It’s fine.” She said beside her on the bed. “You two trying not to allow the thoughts having fun?” to fully enter her brain.

“Yeah,” She lied and

“I gotta go to the bathroom. I ate a lot of meat for lunch and I gotta go get it all out if you know what I mean.”

“I’ll be back in a few felt the need to add more to minutes but you can play with the statement but could only manage another “yeah” after a the stuff.” slight pause.

With that he was gone.

“I need to talk to you She spotted the catastrophe of wax soldiers that lined the quickly. You can not tell him.” dresser and assumed that was She nodded. “Do not try to the stuff with which he meant. pretty things up for me. Jason She picked up the few that lay is my son. I know he...” He scattered on the floor and turned stopped. He did not know the them over between her fingers. words with which to continue They reminded her of similar but knew the message would

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go through. She nodded in agreement. “I know you know.

It isn’t hard to see. I can see you’re uncomfortable too…I know he doesn’t have friends, I don’t pretend to expect that to change, but yet…”

sure, but he’ll figure it out… eventually. He needs to…and I don’t know how he’ll take it.”

“I would never do anything that might hurt your son.”

“I’m not just worried

“I’m here. Why, I’m not about him.

I’m worried about so sure, but I’m here.” you.”

He nodded and thought

The countless times to himself for a moment. of Jason’s sudden emotional

“I don’t mean to offend outbursts flooded her mind you, but you’re…” He stopped and it was well known that he talking; his eyes remained fixed had dented the bathroom door upon the shadow that began with a single kick and nearly to crawl out from beneath her knocked out a bystander with a skin. rogue garbage can.

“I’m a trans woman.”

She nodded.

“Does he know?”

She paused.

“I’ve never talked to him about it.”

The thumps of Jason’s thunderous flat footedness came pounding down the hall and they both fell into silence.

A moment later he was at the doorway and looked at them with a childish laugh. “What are the two of you doing in here? You’re not con-cu-cuhcuhn-spiring against me now, are you?”

“I didn’t expect you to. I assumed you didn’t really give a shit about him. I get that.

I don’t blame you. I appreciate that you’re here, for whatever reason that may be. But you have to realize who Jason is and She studied his face, the problems that brings.” unsure if his last sentence was a question or a statement, but

“I won’t tell him.” was suddenly startled as his

“I wasn’t talking about father placed a hand upon her that. But yes, that is a problem arm as he silently rose and left. too. You’re not a…” again he Just as quickly, Jason rushed stopped, “I can see that, Betty back in and continued to berate can see that…Jason, I’m not her with the random babblings

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OTR 59 of his mind. She waited a long her feet fluttered down the steps while, as long as she could of the porch and up the street before her face began to drupe back towards the train station. and her gestures lacked their false sincerity. She spent a moment planning her story and then offered her reasoning, with apologies, that she had to be going on her way. He was not upset nor seemed to be truly that concerned and bid her a quick farewell as he went back to his comics. She retrieved her own coat as his mother entered and offered to see her out. They went down the stairs and Alith thanked her for her stay.

*

“Of course. Anytime.

You’re always welcome back.”

Then suddenly her face changed, her tone dropped, her eyes sagged, and, with the voice of a distressed mother who knew the enviable fate of her child, quietly allowed a sincere and apologetic “thank you” to escape from her lips.

She began to close the door and Alith could see the tear in her eye of the mental strain that circumstance had cursed her with. Alith knew the woman sat crouched behind the other side of that door in a quiet sob for the bleak life her child would live. It was a sob that was not heard through the ears but felt in the heart. It was a sob Alith would have been able to hear, she just chose not to and

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Nettles

by Rachel DeCesario

Poetry

Unexplainable hives broke out over my skin In the summer of twothousandandfifteen Read: urticaria ur•ti•car•i•a: ˌ/ərdəˈkerēə/ From the Latin urtica, meaning “nettle” from urere, “to burn” The year-of-twenty In media res with self-love, Forced a dysmorphic self to reemerge and Mirror images became unrecognizable.

My fingertips lightly grazed over where My body had once been Red, red, red, red, red, red, red, red, red, red, red.

I became fire Angry ridges and valleys replacing a level head Urticarial imprints left my flesh a molten battlefield I was both betrayed and a traitor Skin, skin, skin, skin, hard skin, empty, full skin, burned skin.

Overrun and violated I thought about My body as a house of worship, a covenant hot like a prayer whispered against clasped hands What is and is not mine?

Read: urticaria Urtica is a genus of flowering plants

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OTR 59

Of the family urticaceae Many species have stinging hairs Are commonly called “nettles” or “stinging nettles” There are myths: Nettles in a pocket will keep a person safe from lightning And bestow courage Nettles kept in a room will protect anyone inside What does and does not belong to me?

Identity shedding like a snake Up and over my tempered flesh The overlaps of tangibility and truth Budded on my skin and bloomed I have never been struck by lightning, nor a bolt of courage But maybe the urticaria that claimed my skin That summertwothousandandfifteen Was trying to emulate its herbal namesake Perhaps my skin was only producing the qualities it knew to define me, Nettles nestled within my flesh To keep my body like a room, safe.

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Keka Marzagao

Untitled (Fear) Digital

Photography

131

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OTR 59

Madre

by Michele Kirichanskaya

M

Prose

y abuela would be called many things in her short life.

Devil woman, sorcerer, witch.

A criminal for poisoning her child’s mind, for the venom that flew through her veins, leaked through her breasts, contaminating her baby with horrors such as this.

she clutched the corded phone in one hand, still warm, while gripping her abdomen with the other. Her parents had hung up at the first syllable she uttered.

This wasn’t the first time. They hung up before she could tell them about the baby.

She remembered the last time she spoke to them, leaning against the hard wall of her new apartment for support as she slid to the floor, her shoulders quietly shaking as

afterward, saw the clerk’s face fall when she referred to her child as her son, the look of disgust and disbelief.

A small part of her, from then on until death, would

Her baby wasn’t hold herself in that moment, welcomed by the world even freeze herself in that moment. before she announced she was She would remember pregnant; her parents certainty didn’t. What would they have this, this feeling of being of being said; a mixed child combined unwanted, unacknowledged that she even of her blood and the blood of un africano, Robert’s, the man existed. she loved. What did she think She would remember she was doing, they said, being this feeling later, with her baby. with a man like him, skin four She remembered it the first shades darker than her own. time they walked into a store She remembered the words together, and the clerk smiled clearly because those were the at them, telling her what a last words they said before her “pretty little girl” she had. She papá slammed the door on her. remembered the face he made

She knew what her parents would say if they’d

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ever met their grandchild.

They would shame her, shower confetti of broken glass and curses for the blasphemous and broken, scream at her to rewrite her “daughter’s” sins at trying to be what she wasn’t, trying to be what they didn’t want her to be, what they didn't know she was.

They would look at the life she dared to create from her flesh and blood, and make her repent for her crimes against God.

I don’t know when my abuela figured it out. Maybe she accidentally caught Mama starring at her earrings too long or looking longingly at the cute little one pieces the other girls wore to the pool while she sat on the deck chair, wrapping her arms around her tiny, exposed chest. Maybe Mama squirmed when the doctors tried to put a blue hat on her as a baby, immediately monopolizing her identity the hour she came into this world.

Right before her child was born that she knew something was wrong. Small twinges kicking the walls of her mind as surely as her child’s own minuscule feet tapped against her husband’s hand resting expectantly on the curve of her belly.

When she questioned the doctors and the midwives about her fears: was her child healthy?

Was something wrong? - They brushed it off as the panicked delusions of an expectant mother. But what did they know? What science could know better than the mother who was carrying this child?

Her baby was born a quite one. Other than the initial screaming that most babies gave to greet their mother’s ears, abuela was granted almost complete silence, a well- behaved baby. Una bendición, the nurses said to her. A blessing. In the months that proceeded the birth, abuela grew calmer, the echoes of her fears lost in the

In a small and dusty lullabies she sung lullabies in box in the attic, there is still Spanish and English to her new that blue hat. It is so small I can baby. fit one fist into that hat. When But our bodies tell I pull my hand out, it becomes another story. If babies could empty again, the husk of a tiny play melodies in the womb, life. than her child’s was a sonata

Maybe my grandmother of the curses she was carrying just knew, as mothers know. within her own body as she was

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OTR 59 carried in another’s. The offpitch key, the wrong note that screeched of the potential pain her baby tried to warn her of.

Could it have changed anything if abuela had listened harder? I don’t know.

it around himself like she did, instead of his waist like his father, as though he were almost embarrassed of his chest, ashamed.

At that time, she could enjoy the extra attention her niño showered on her, cuddling with her, unafraid to hold her hand, when other mothers complained of their own boys whose wells of affection dried up from macho ambitions and self- consciousness. She didn’t the predict that one day her son would be scared to hold her hand, and that one day soon they would never touch again.

There was no name yet for what my mom was, and no way that my grandmother could give her besides the one her husband picked out, his own name, Robert. The name he begged her to use so that they could share this one thing, so that he, the parent without the umbilical, could feel connected too. Yet maybe he was already sensing the fragile link between What could she have father and son, even if that done then? What could she feeling had no name yet. have done? All she could do

Back then I guess, all was watch her child grow up my abuela could do was love. inch by inch in a city where She appreciated how gentle her she hope for a better future for son was compared to the rough her baby, a life of education boys on the streets. Appreciated and opportunity that she was how her boy’s soft hands never provided with, a life of would not grow rough like the unconditional love that her hands of help and laborers, of own parents had failed to give mechanists and manufacturers her. like her tíos. She ignored the But despite all that, jeers from her husband‘s friends despite all the love and the hope when they saw her son wearing in the world, there it was, in the flowers in his hair, fragile white deepest part of her child’s eyes. blossoms among his beautiful, Pain. It was the same part of her dark curls, asking if she was that was destroyed when she trying to turn him into a girl, was banished from her home a faggot. She ignored the way by her parents, feeling like she her son wrapped his towel after would never belong anywhere getting out a shower, wrapping again. The same part of her that

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came from her urban village, her barrio, poverty-stricken, a feeling that came from wearing a shoe size that would never fit.

*

Luminous

Jacob Cintron

Film Photography 135

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OTR 59

The Foiled Plan of Summer 2009

by Julia Papell

Poetry

While my mother went away to Mexico to get our family's shit together, she explicitly told me that, above all else, the plants which she loved only slightly less than her mother should be alive and well when she got back in August but the newfound freedom I found in my empty house, lying on the floor thinking I was meditating on life pushed everything out of my head and onto the summer breeze that ran through the entire month she was gone the only thing that remained was a heartfelt desire for revenge against the fucking flowers I was a slave to in the humid mornings and to the mother who purposely made her return after my birthday but before my brother's thus adding to a growing list I was

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keeping of grievances against me so two weeks before her return I stopped watering the flowers intending to let the heat do its work on the increasingly shriveled shrubbery but it ended up raining that entire week.

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OTR 59

Contributors SadÉ Bobb

Erica Brunner grew up in Seattle, where she studied at the

University of Washington. More recently, she earned an MFA from the New School. Previous publications include the Monarch Review, the Portland Review, Pacifica Literary Review and the Bear Review.

She currently resides and writes in Brooklyn.

Ericab445@gmail.com

Lucia Cappuccio has a B.A. in Creative Writing from Hunter College. She is currently back at Hunter working on a Master's Degree in Urban Planning. In her free time, Lucia enjoys going to dive bars and yelling about things. She can be contacted at: lcappucc@gmail.com

David Carmona has been drawing ever since he was very young.

Some of his earliest memories are of a wall covered with a dozen of his doodles in the hallway of one of his family's past apartments. David developed an affection for representational art as he grew, enamored with the dimensions of aesthetic brilliance found in the clarity of academic artwork.

That being said, David still appreciates all art that has conviction behind its creation, and looks broadly for influences that can be carried into his own work. He believes that an artist of any medium must view the world with an open mind, or risk suffocating their potential. This philosophy provides a foundation for his art, his writing and his overall lifestyle..

Rachel DeCesario is a Macaulay Honor student at Hunter

College pursuing degrees in Anthropology and English Literature. She would consider herself more of a reader than a writer, but is hoping that one day these two identities will exist on the same wavelength. Aside from being Editor-in-Chief at The Olivetree Review, she works as an Editorial Assistant for a graphic design office and will be working as an editorial intern for The David Black Agency in the summer of 2016.

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She is therefore exceptionally grateful at (finally) being published by the same magazine she helps to run. Nonetheless, OTR remains one of her most fulfilling achievements, and one that has validated and solidified her love for art, literature, and editing. She would like to thank her wonderful staff for all of the yearlong work that they do, especially Jacob Cintron, who has been the essential backbone of the entire publication.

Jelane DeSilva is a New York-based artist studying to receive

a degree in Art History. She has always had a wide interest in photography and literature. Her work is a range of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, photography and collage. As of recently, she has been interlacing the mediums of writing and visual craft into conglomerate works of art. Jelane draws inspiration from artists like Sylvia Plath, Raymond Carver, Edward Hopper and Marcel Duchamp. Here you can find a small archive of her work: http://jelanedasilva.tumblr.com

Abe Douek is a playwright living in Brooklyn, New York.

Hans Freiwald is a Creative Writing Major at Hunter College.

He will be graduating this spring with Honors. He is a native of South Dakota and a graduate of LaGuardia Community College. He has written and produced a number of plays and reviews including "The B-Squad," and "Gypsy on the Wings of Forever”— a musical for the Minneapolis Fringe Festival. He lives in Queens with his long-time partner Megg, their rabbit Frannie, and their three Chihuahuas— Rudy, Warren and Dirt. Hans can be reached at: hfreiwald@gmail.com

Carlos Khalil Guzman is a native New Yorker who took an

interest in photography at a young age. His simple yet sophisticated style derives from the idea that our planet itself is a work of art and photography is only an instrument that enables him to capture it's beauty. He is an avid reader and when not shooting he spends his time writing poetry. Carlos is about one thing: simplicity and capturing moments that will last a lifetime; always maintaining the humanity and natural beauty of his subjects. You can check out his work at www.carloskhalilguzman.com

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OTR 59

Ahmed Hassan is a native New Yorker, who has been trying to take over the world with his Pinky, Index, Thumb, Middle, and Ring fingers. Through the Comedy, Sci-Fi, Fantasy genres, Ahmed hopes to follow The Riddler's footsteps and learn the secrets of success and wealth through his readers' minds. Watch out.

Michele Kirichanskaya is currently a VIP writer for the

writing website TeenInk and has published online articles for other websites, such as The Mighty and Babbling of the Irrational. Presently at Hunter College, she is a scholar student at Hunter College, and has taken classes in Creative Writing and Gender Studies to hopefully provide her a rich and diverse background for a position grounded in creativity and scholarship. Michele’s aim is to be authentically emotional and authentically accurate as possible, and currently exploring themes of gender, race, sexuality, disability, etc., in her work.

Diana Kosianka (Spring 2016/B.A. in History and Media Studies)

has been writing since she was in third grade; her short stories often focus on drastic, madcap events happening to the protagonist. There is usually something shocking happening at the end of these stories.

When she isn't writing or drawing, she is frequenting museums and dreaming of travels in other parts of the world. Some of her other works can also be found at: dkayproductions.tumblr.com

Victoria Lau wants her writing to move and empower people

and is working really hard to make that happen. She wishes to thank all those from high school onwards who inspired her writing. When Victoria is not writing she is dancing crazily in parties, or can be found playing soccer in the Hunter West basement, screaming and crashing into everyone.

Evan Leone is a part time writer and a full time punk rock raccoon.

He'll talk for a hours about anything at all and is regularly struck with candy-coated wistful thoughts which he refines into songs and writing at his own lackadaisical leisure.

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Chang Jung Lu (Michelle), was born in Taiwan and moved to the

U.S. when she was 5, interested in art at a young age. She is an avid doodler and very fond of drawing. However, her love of photography started when she received her first point-and-shoot camera. She primarily photographs food and scenery. Michelle is now majoring in Media Studies and plans to graduate in Spring 2017. Her food photography can be found on her Tumblr: http://letsenjoysomefood.tumblr.com/

Keka Marzagao is a Brazilian-born, Brooklyn-based

photographer working at the intersection of documentary and fiction.

In her work, she longs to capture an impression of what connects us to each other as well as a glimpse of herself. She is fascinated by the human condition and strives to pursue what Toni Morrison calls the 'human project—which is to remain human and to block the dehumanization of others.' You can find her on: Instagram : @keka_mm

Julia Papell is a graduating senior and English major at Hunter

College. Her short story "The Party" received the Bernard Cohen Short Story Prize in 2016. She is looking forward to continuing to develop her writing while working four part-time jobs. In her spare time she reads, draws, runs, and compulsively rewatches 90s TV.

Avery Phlipps is a graduating theatre major who loves writing

prose rather than plays and greatly fears coming off as pretentious. She is currently working on a socio political novel as well as several other short works critiquing social and political norms. Feel free to contact her at: averyphilipps@gmail.com

Julian Rosen is a jack of all trades. People seem to gravitate

towards calling him "Good Guy Rosen". He would like a cat. Julian has been in multiple art shows on Staten Island, and plays in a really sick band named Davey Crockett. He often posts sketches on his Instagram and is very nice and always open for commissions so feel free to contact him through Instagram: julianshmozen, or his email: mr.julianrosen@gmail.com

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OTR 59

Meriam Pacheco Salazar was born and raised in the

Dominican Republic. She started writing poetry from a very young age, and cites Gioconda Belli, Rosario FerrĂŠ, and Mario Benedetti as some of her influences. Meriam conceives writing as a space of liberty, through which we can assert our identity and become boundless. She began her studies of literature at the Universidad AutĂłnoma de Santo Domingo, but eventually relocated to the United States and resumed her studies at Hunter College, where some of her poetry has been published in La Revista de la Academia. She looks forward to continuing to have her work published, and will be pursuing a PhD in Hispanic and LusoBrazilian studies at the University of Chicago. Contact: pacheco.meriam@gmail.com

Oscar Vargas

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CON TACT U S theolivetreereview.com Thomas Hunter Room 212 olivetreereview@gmail.com GET I N VOLV ED All students are encouraged to become editors, graphic designers, publicity associates, production assistants, or senior staff members.

We are always looking for new members and staff. Attend one of our open houses, writing sessions, art trips, open mics, and lunch parties.

Or you can simply come by our office, visit our website or find us on Facebook.

S U BM I T Passionate about writing or art? Submit your visual art, fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, drama, or cross-genre pieces every semester.

See our website or email us for details on how to submit all work online.

EDI T The OTR welcomes Hunter students of all experience levels to become editors for prose, poetry, drama, and/or art. Editors together decide which pieces are accepted into the issue every semester. For more information, please visit our website, contact us, or stop by for a visit in our office.

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