The Olivetree Review Issue 63

The Olivetree Review

Issue 63 Spring/Fall 2018

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The Olivetree Review

63

Issue 63 Spring/Fall 2018

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Errata Sharon Young’s bio in Issue 62 is incorrect. Her correct bio in on page 73.

Gianna Litrell was not credited as an Associate Editor in Issue 62.

© The Olivetree Review, CUNY Hunter College, 695 Park Avenue, Hunter North 115, New York, New York 10065, www.theolivetreereview.com This journal is partially funded by Hunter College’s student activity fee, partially by fundraising and donations. This journal is distributed for free.

The artwork featured on the cover is Classic by Onelia Harris. The fonts used in this book are Herculanum, Minion Pro, Times New Roman, and Times. This book was designed by Melissa Rueda and Kenny Perez.

Submissions are reviewed September through October and February through March. We consider submissions of visual art, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and scripts. All submissions are reviewed anonymously and selected by a jury of staff members. The review is entirely staffed by Hunter College undergraduate students.

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

Printed by Sunray Printing Solutions St. Cloud, MN

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The Olivetree Review ISSUE 63 Spring/Fall 2018

The Literary and Arts Magazine of Hunter College Since 1983

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Administrative & Editorial Staff Spring 2018 Editor-in-Chief

Tanisha Williams

Vice President Ariel Tsai

Treasurer

Samantha Finley

Associate Editors Ibtasam Elmaliki Kenny Eng Sydney Heidenberg Aakanksha Kuwar Gabrielle Luna Christopher Sibyl Ariel Yaeli

Secretary

Melissa Rueda

Art Editors

Kenny Perez Melissa Rueda

Drama Editor Samantha Finley

Poetry Editors Emily Fernandez Chasity Pierna

Prose Editors John McKinney Andy Lopez

Senior Publicist Sharon Young

Publicity Assistant Mouree Khan

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Table of Contents

Internet Culture c. 1998 & Technology Mirror with Sand

Art Heart

Panagiota Efstathiadis 3

Phenomenological Aspects of Time Oscar Lopez & Nino Tsiklauri

Spring

Oneilia Harris

A Dark Celebration Jonathan Charles

Classic

Oneilia Harris

NYC

Jonathan Charles

New World

Jonathan Charles

I’m Only Here for the Moment Jonathan Charles

The Beauty of London Ashley Blumlein

Phenomenological Aspects of Time Oscar Lopez & Nino Tsiklauri

From Dusk Till Dawn Carlos Khalil Guzman

Amsterdam in Purple Ashley Blumlein

Christine Stoddard

A Pink World 6

Jonathan Charles

Ashley Blumlein

50

Midterm Season 15

Panagiota Efstathiadis

52

King of the Jungle 16

Oneilia Harris

53

Gold Clay Dinosaurs in the Snow 17

Christine Stoddard

Another Man’s Treasure 19

Oneilia Harris

22

32

33

55

66

Aida

Avondale Kendja

70

Drama Flame

Katherine Luciano

23

Poetry

A Somewhat Alliteration Poem

Ashley Blumlein 4 36

Arachnaphobia Alesa Irizarry

40

Blue

Panagiota Efstathiadis

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45

Berlin Cathedral 14

42

5

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Sara Tabio 10

A Moment of Transcendence Gianna Litrell

20

I Am Rebel

Lila Amin 21

Perseverance

Sheena Rocke

31

Tribulation

Hui Min Zhuo

67

Expression

Roshni Patel

Untitled

Gianna Litrell

68

69

Prose

Sovereignty

The Boy Who Wishes He Was Shirley Bassey

Trees

The Well

Gabrielle Richards 34

Panagiota Efstathiadis

Needs for Love Juleime Cepeda

The Black Sheep Menal Elmaliki

Twenty One Again Matthew Blake

Home

Oneilia Harris

Interweb

Kinza Saleh

The Reins

Amrita Chakraborty

35

Andy Lopez

Sydney Heidenberg 7

Chickens

41

Richard Portilla

43

A Room With Nothing in It, Not Anymore

46

The Clearing in the Sky

49

49

51

1

Amaya Justiniano

Jacob Butlett

Contributions Meet the Staff History of the Olivetree Review

37

47

57 71 73

74

In a Freezing Office Building, I learn What Honeysuckle is Amrita Chakraborty

Heavenly Fruits Juleime Cepeda

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Letter from the Editor Another Hunter semester has ended and another issue is being released again thanks to readers like you and the forever amazing OTR staff.

To those who submitted, thank you for keeping the arts alive in a country where the arts are not valued as much as they should be.

To those whose pieces have been a part of our literary and arts magazine present and past, thank you for giving us content to produce to Hunter and Non Hunter students alike.

I want to give special thanks to Francoise from Shakespeare and Co. for giving us the opportunity to showcase our book in the store. Without her, our office would still be cluttered with old issues staring us in the face.

Last, but not least, thank YOU, yes YOU, reader. You picked up a copy and you are reading the most uninteresting part of this magazine. With that being said, the pieces in here are lot more interesting than this mandatory speech I have to write every semester I am Editor in Chief.

What YOU need to do now is turn the page.

May this book not collect dust and mildew on your bookshelf.

Best, Tanisha "Mauve" Williams

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The Boy Who Wishes He Was Shirley Bassey Andy Lopez PROSE

Gael held down the button on the remote control with the downward arrow. Doña had a different cable

service than the one he ha at home and he had spent the past ten minutes switching from channel to channel, unfamiliar with the names of most of the stations. He raised his upper body, slowly and amusingly peeling off his arms of matching color from the brown leather sofa he laid on, the heat seeping in through the open windows to blame. The clock he had gotten up to look at hung on the left side of the kitchen entryway, with both of its arrows pointed up. Remembering what he had seen on guide last night before Mama had him go to bed, he pushed down harder on the button of the control, hoping that Doña has the channel the program he wants to watch will be playing on. His thumb flew off the button as he read Great Female Voices. He checked to see if Doña was in the kitchen and then lowered the volume, knowing that Doña would wonder why he was not watching cartoons and have him change the channel. He rolled off the sofa and hurried to the screen. Sitting on his calves, he closed his eyes and like Mama would at church, lifted his hands at either side of his cheeks and allowed his fingers to dance to the music. Shirley Bassey’s cover of “Climb Every Mountain” began to play and he mouthed along to the words. When the final chorus came in, he lifted up, reaching toward the ceiling, allowing himself to believe that the sound was coming from him. “My Way” began to play, again, the one and only Shirley Bassey, who was one of his favorites.

The little boy heard the wooden floor in the kitchen moan and he quickly switched off the television set before Doña barged in on him.

“Gael! Quit playin’ with the TV set and go wash up for lunch,” yelled Doña, “hurry ‘fore it gets cold!”

She brushed her hand on his short soft hair, letting it tickle her palm as he made his way to the bathroom at the other end of the kitchen.

He kicked the plastic step stool to the sink and washed his hands, breathing in the strawberry scent of the soap he liked so much, so unlike the unscented he had at home. As he dried his hands on a towel, he paused as a familiar tune snuck in through the window by the tub. He stepped into the tub and tried to pull his body up to better hear the song, most likely coming from a nearby apartment. Gael loosened his grip and was thrilled to hear that it was Shirley Bassey’s voice that was being played! He began to mouth along to the words Shirley sang. He stepped out of the tub and pulled down the longer bath towel from the hook near the door 1 Issue 63.indd 10

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63 and fashioned it around his arms, holding it as he had seen Shirley do with her dress wrap. He stepped onto the stool, looked at himself in the mirror, and adjusted the faded red towel around him.

But no tears will be shed, Gael mouthed, there’ll be no one to blame.

As he looked at himself in the mirror, he picked at all the features he would change of himself if he could. He wished his short dark hair would grow to his shoulders. He wished the birthmark on his neck would move to his back. He wished his eyes would change from négro to café. He wished his ears would settle down to his head. He wished his eyebrows would thin out. He wished he could walk around all day with the towel wrapped around him, letting it slither along on the floor as he moved. He wished Mama would buy him a wrap as fancy as the one he imagined himself wearing as he commanded his invisible audience in his room when it was dark out, as he played roof-raising voices in his head of Aretha, Etta, and Gladys.

A knock on the door hit the back of his head like his father used to do when he would intrude on Gael’s daydreams. He threw the towel onto the hamper and opened the door to find Doña’s black eyes staring at him, and she continued to stare until he sat down at the table.

“Remember the book I was readin’ to you yesterday?” asked Doña as she sat at the chair across from him. “Didya like it? I was thinkin’ we keep on readin’ that one.”

Gael nodded as he crammed plantains covered in cream into his mouth. He liked it when Doña read to him. Mama had him read at home. She did not understand why her eight-year-old refused to talk and when he did, why his words would trip over each other and cascade out of his mouth in a disorganized manner. Doña made a deal with Gael that if he did not want to read, then he would have to listen. She believed he could speak, but had not found the right language to do so in, Spanish at home, English at school, Mandarin on the train, Hindi at the stores.

She went and brought back a worn out copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. Doña’s Kansas accent tickled Gael’s ears.

He wished he could talk like Doña. He wished he could sing like Shirley.

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Heart

Panagiota Efstathiadis Art

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A Somewhat Alliteration Poem Ashley Blumlein Poetry Part Alliteration Conversation Aa, Bb, Cc, you Say, speak something sensational, sinister Voice, vindicate, validate Lies, litter With wasteful, wondrous words To tangle, to trap, to tear, to terrorize Me, myself, my mind, my memory Daringly, disconsidering, dishonestly Breaking, beating bones Eating, engraving, even enthralling Chipping, convincingly consuming, cultivating, Hopelessness, hate, Sending sadness, sullying souls Done before me, will be done after me Into me, through me, out of me, First nothing, then something, then nothing Meaningless words, meaningful actions

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Arachnophobia

Alesa Irizarry poetry scorpions crawl around my heart spiders on my brain stingers lodged in my soft pink flesh webs ornament my skull venom courses through my blood spiders feed on the prey of my mind my heartbeat struggles against the weight happy thoughts wrapped up in string scorpions drink up, eat up, gorge themselves spiders siphon the blood of my thoughts, unrecognizable scorpions inside my heart spiders inside my brain oh, there’s nothing left here, huh? time to move on

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Phenomenological Aspects of Time Oscar Lopez & Nino Tsiklauri Art

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The Well

Sydney Heidenberg prose

Lucas did not want to go near the well. No, not at all. The well was dark and damp and dingy, and Lucas

wanted no part in it.

But, his father had sent him out to fetch water. There was no room for discussion, no space for Lucas to

wiggle into his father’s mind and find some way to change it.

So, he was ordered to the well.

Around the dark, cracked bricks that created the wall encircling the pit of water, the grass was decaying.

Green grass had moved past the stage of being brown and dry. The brown grass had turned grey, and it crumbled under each timid footstep Lucas took. He could hear each crunch under his weight, the usual sonorous chirps of the crickets were nowhere to be found, even though it was deep summer. And the sun was setting, allowing the surrounding trees to cascade menacing shadows over the well.

Slowly, Lucas placed his hand on top of one of the moss covered bricks and looked down into the water.

The water was black and placid. The few beams of light that reached into the well stopped once they met the dark liquid. It didn’t smell nice either. In fact, the smell was suffocating. The smell reminded Lucas of the time the basement of his house had been flooded and he had to go through all of the wet clothing the family had put in boxes down there. The clothes themselves were dank, but then he found a mouse nest and a family of mice living in the clothes. The smell of their decaying bodies was much worse than the clothes, and that was what the well wreaked of.

Instinctively, Lucas took his hand that was laying on the brick and covered his nose. On his pinky finger,

Lucas was wearing a ring. It wasn’t special or anything, something he scrounged for at the bottom of a cereal box. Lucas had laid his eyes on the cover of the box and saw the ring. He wanted it, he wanted it so much he was going to risk his taste buds just to obtain the plastic ring.

“Really? You want ‘Fruity Corny Crunch?’ Why not get the usual ‘Cheerios?’” his father asked, turning

over the box in his hand.

“Just trying something new is all,” Lucas had replied, never taking his eyes off the picture of the ring.

While Lucas placed his hand on his face, a ray of light bounced off of the plastic jewel and into the dark

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63 depths. Although the ring had a red jewel with a gold band, the light looked green in the water, green and spastic as Lucas’s hand was shaking.

Taking a step back, his sneaker crushing the dead grass, Lucas slowly let his hand drop. He first glanced at

his ring, then sun, and lastly the well. Furrowing his brow, he stepped up to the decaying wall and cautiously held his hand over the water. Moving his wrist slowly in the light, he watched the dim green speck move across the expanse of the well.

Lucas was rapidly becoming mesmerized. He watched the green orb dart over the water, up the walls,

and occasionally blind him if he turned his wrist just right. The light reminded him of The Wizard of Oz when Glinda the Good Witch would come and go in her small bubble. Airy and colorful.

But then the speck hit something.

It was quick, but Lucas was sure he saw something grey in the water below. He saw his light making its

way over a grey, wrinkled substance that did not match the composition of the tranquil water below.

Abruptly, he was reminded why he was here. Lucas grabbed the pail beside him and hurriedly began to

gather the bucket and rope. He just had to get some water, then he could leave, and then he would see his dad and beg to never go out to the well again. He would do anything— anything!— just so he would never have to place another foot on the dead grass or put his hand on the rough stone wall.

Delicately, Lucas lowered the pail into the water. The deeper the bucket entered the well, the more the

rank smell wafted up and returned to Lucas’s nose. The smell was smothering. Swiftly, the smell surrounded Lucas and all air was composed out of the dankness of whatever was coming out of the well.

Oh God, Lucas thought, I can’t take much more of this. He started to hold his breath in an attempt to shut

it out, but the aroma was just too overwhelming.

Ohmygodohmygodohmygod, Lucas was internally chanting, it’s everywhere. Ohmygodohmygod. I can’t breathe ohmygodohmy GOD! His ring hit the light just right, and Lucas was blinded. He dropped the rope that was holding the bucket, and the bucket landed with a splash. The rope slapping the water as it landed a second later.

Stumbling, Lucas backtracked out of the dead grass and into the living, flourishing field. Finally, clean oxygen graced his lungs and cleared his sinuses of any trace of that nasty stench.

That was it, going to the well was over. He was only going to have to explain to his dad that the bucket was gone, 8 Issue 63.indd 17

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OTR and if he still wanted some water, well he was just going to have to fetch it himself! Lucas could not, he tried and failed. His father would have to be the man here and grab the water. No sir, Lucas was not going near that well ever again. He would never smell that stench or come near this dying section of grass even if his life depended on it! Nope, he was done and out for good.

Hastily turning on his heel, Lucas began to walk back toward his home. He had gone five paces when, “Excuse me,” A voice called.

Lucas didn’t know where it came from. Turning slowly in a circle, all he saw around him were trees. The well stood in a small, empty field behind the trees that blocked Lucas’s house from view. All he could see were trees, some grass, and more trees. There were no people in the field with Lucas, he was all alone.

“Please, I merely need some help,” the voice called again. Then something came over Lucas. His feet were moving, no they were being pulled, toward the well.

Lucas quickly became aware that one of his shoes were untied. While his feet slipped and slided on the grass, by their own command, one of the shoelaces came out of its knot. The lace snaked its way around his other foot and managed to trip him. Lucas landed on his stomach and slid forward in the grass, with his hands reached out, until his palms met the rough stone of the well.

Gasping in pain, Lucas curled into a ball on the grass. He brought his hands in front of his face and saw that they were bleeding. In his scuffed up palms, there were some pieces of brick underneath ripped up skin. Slowly, Lucas removed the little stones that he could and then pressed his palms into his pants.

Once the pain subsided, Lucas stood up and looked into the water below. And, there was nothing there.

Flustered, Lucas shook his head and started to walk away again. He wasn’t really sure what he had expected to see down there, but he had not expected nothing at all. Hadn’t he heard a voice? Hadn’t he thought he saw something in the well earlier? Hadn’t he smelled something that made him run in fear? Hadn’t he?

Remembering his shoelace, he stooped down and began knotting. Bunny ears, Bunny ears, playing by a tree, Lucas sang in his head, Criss-crossed the tree, trying to catch me. Bunny ears, bunny ears, jumped into the hole— “Popped out the other side beautiful and bold,” Lucas froze. No, he had not sung. His hands crept around his shoelace and finished the knot. He stood up and faced the well again. This time, he knew there would be something down in that water.

Lucas was scared. His heart was beating crazily, his breath was syncopated, and Lucas could feel his blood running cold in his veins. He was more than scared, but he was also a child. And this time his curiosity outweighed 9 Issue 63.indd 18

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63 his fear and he had to know what was residing in that water.

He walked forward, heel to toe, acknowledging how it felt to traverse over the living grass into the dead. Leaving behind the cushioned earth and walking onto the hard ground.

Bit by bit, he reached his hands and grabbed the wall. Leaning his weight into the barrier, Lucas tipped his head down to stare into the depths below.

And in there he saw the grey man.

The grey man seemed as if he was floating and drowning at the same time. His skin was wrinkled and pruned, the same way Lucas’s fingerpads looked when he stayed in the bath for too long. The only place there were no wrinkles on the man’s body were bubbles that protruded from his skin, creating round disgusting mounds on his frame.

One of his eyes was set far below the other, yet no other part of his face drooped. His right eye to be specific. And they were green, his eyes. They shone just like Lucas’s ring had, spastic and bright.

In his left hand was the bucket Lucas had dropped. The knuckles were gnarled and flesh was being eroded from the bone, but the hand was still firmly grasped. The lack of substance on the bones of the hand made Lucas wonder what his lower body, the portion under the water, looked like.

“I have your bucket,” the man said simply. His languished eye darted back and forth between Lucas and the pail in his hand. The more Lucas watched the grey man, the more he thought that this thing in the water couldn’t be a man. Lucas was staring at his bones for god sake! Obviously this was no man, but just a grey thing.

“Something wrong?” the grey thing asked. He was giving Lucas a slight smile and dragging the bucket back and forth through the water. Lucas’s eyes followed the pail’s movement and watched the water ripple from its movements.

“Oh,” the thing spoke, “Would you like this back?” The grey thing offered up the bucket with his almost skeletal hand. “You can come get it if you wish.”

Lucas tried, but he could not let out a sound. He wanted to say no, there was no way he was going near him.

Lucas wanted to tell the thing that the bucket was not that important to him, a bucket was not worth getting any closer to that grey thing.

“I,” Lucas began, “have to go...yea, I have to go.” And then he spun on his heels and started away from the well, for what seemed like the millionth time in his expedition.

But Lucas’s shoelaces had a different plan for him, again. With a thud, he landed on the grass, trampling the dead 10 Issue 63.indd 19

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OTR blades underneath him. There was a slight tug on the laces and before Lucas could get up, he was being pulled back to the wall of the well.

Now the fear was fully setting in. That grey thing in there had him by the shoelaces and he could not get away.

The whole situation, it could have been prevented. It really could have! Lucas’s father could have been the one to come out to the well, been the braver of the two, and known how to deal with this monster. But no, the young boy that couldn’t seem to keep his shoelaces tied was the one being tormented.

“Lucas,” the voice called.

He shook his head, no he was not getting up. Lucas was not listening to this being, it was not the same as when his father called out his name. Lucas knew he had to come when his father called, but this grey thing held no power over him.

Or so he would have liked to believe.

“Lucas,” the voice called again, but this time it sounded a little different. “You come when I call, you hear?”

Lucas groaned, he was beginning to recognize the change.

“Come here, now. I just need some help.”

And it was like his body was moving on his own. The voice had somehow taken the tone of his father’s and Lucas could not resist moving towards it. That voice had some almighty power over him, one that made him move bone by bone until Lucas was peering over the edge of the wall and into the well.

“Please, all I want is to go home.” Lucas heaved. He was beginning to feel tears form as his body was pressed harder and harder into the well. There was a pressure on his back that pushed his front harshly into the rough stones and it was really starting to hurt. With the fear and the pain, Lucas had to hold back tears.

“But you are home, aren’t you Lucas?” the grey thing asked, “Don’t you live just right through those trees?” He pointed his fingers upward and Lucas’s head turned back toward the direction of his house.

The trees that obscured his house from view seemed to bend. The trees parted ways and Lucas could see him home again! Oh, how he wished to be back in that old house with his father. He was sure once Lucas explained the situation his father would never make him go back to the well again. Yes exactly, Lucas would just talk to his father and then he would never ha— “I don’t think so, your father is very stuck in his ways. He claims sending you out here despite your protests will help you grow up, get over your fears, yadda yadda yadda.” The voice chuckled and Lucas looked back down at him. The grey thing was rolling his eyes. “Clearly, it isn’t working.”

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63 “What do you want from me?” Lucas exclaimed. He could feel the pressure on his back lessening, maybe the grey thing was letting him go.

“Only a few things,” the thing called, “simple things really. They’re all things you can give.” He smiled, showing all of his rotted teeth. He was beginning to walk toward the wall, his hands reaching the stones. “I just need your help.” The grey thing said.

And then pictures flashed through the forefront of Lucas’s mind. Him jumping into the well. The grey thing taking Lucas in his arms. Opening his mouth so wide, so utterly wide, he would be able to swallow Lucas whole.

“No!” Lucas screamed. He was not going to become this being’s next meal, he was not going to dive into the well that had scared him his entire life, only for his life to end down in those dark depths.

With a forceful thrust backward, Lucas tore away from the well. He turned, for the last time he could feel it, and began to race back home. In his frightful state, Lucas’s treasured ring fell off his pinky finger and landed in the dead grass. But he was not concerned about that in the moment for he could hear the grey thing moving in the well and the sound of bones scraping stone.

“Don’t you like trying new things?” The thing called from the well.

However that was behind Lucas now, he was running and that was all that mattered. He was running and running, the sounds becoming more and more distant.

Yet the trees were not getting any closer.

“I don’t know where you think you’re going Lucas.”

And suddenly it became very clear to him, Lucas had no idea where he thought he was going either. The trees were not getting any closer, when he turned around the well was not any farther away, and he was simply running in place.

“Please,” Lucas sobbed, “I just want to go home.” He stopped running and crumpled to the ground. His knees snapped the dead grass beneath him.

“But you are home, aren’t you?” the voice was closer this time. The sound of water dripping onto stone echoed throughout the field behind him.

Lucas looked up, the trees were bending again. There was his home, unveiled by the trees. And there was his father, chopping wood in the backyard.

“Dad,” Lucas let out. His voice was near a whisper, the only prominent sounds exiting his body were his sobs.

“It’s okay,” the voice said, “you’re home, remember?”

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OTR Lucas shook his head as the sound of bone scraped the stone for one last time. Dead grass quietly disintegrated as the grey thing approached Lucas.

“You’re home. The well. The well is your home.” And then the grey thing opened his mouth so wide, he could have swallowed Lucas whole.

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Spring

Onelia Harris Art

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A Dark Celebration Jonathan Charles Art

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Classic

Onelia Harris Art

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Blue

Panagiota Efstathiadis Poetry In a world of black and white, my thoughts would make it blue.

NYC

Jonathan Charles Art

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Honeypot

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Sara Tabio Poetry They tell me I am made of more than my body: of moonlight, of black pepper and thunder, of January wind and pencil shavings. I used to cry when my hair got sucked down the shower drain; I pulled at it with my hands, clawing at it like a stray cat.

Back then, I could make the water run backwards. Some nights I sat at my window and watched puddles of rain fly back up into the sky, just to be swallowed up again by the once bleachwhite clouds, growing heavier with each breath. They were made of more, too: snowmelt forgotten by the mountains, empty bladders of dogs too wild to tame, the molted skin of forest snakes with jaws like mousetraps, bloodshed from skidded knees and crime scenes, beehives cracked open as if they were nothing more than honeypots.

There was a time when eternity felt like a threat, I remember as I count the years on my fingers. I’ve forgotten the taste of blood, but the bathroom floor cannot. Everything is in waiting.

When it rains, I can feel the fissures in my bones fill up like dirty reservoirs.

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New World

Jonathan Charles Art

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A Moment of Transcendence Gianna Litrell Poetry

Do you know that feeling, when the sun hits your face and it seems you’re compelled to close your eyes for just a second…

For some reason, at that moment you feel truly alive; though all you can see is that blood orange color of light kissing your eyelids, it as if you can see all things and anything Then you hear a bird chirp, or the wind whispering its hymns or laughing deeply with pleasure, because the universe finally has someone to talk with Suddenly you can imagine yourself anywhere in the world, as if reliving memories of places you’ve visited before, and a smile creeps on your face And what’s that, tears are welling in your eye, because you know, deep down and simply- this is freedom in the purity of its essence; even with your eyes closed you’ve never seen so clearly Eventually a car horn beeps or someone’s yelling on the phone, and your soul is harnessed back into your body; but it’s okay because that moment of eternity somehow has brought you peace, and your soul hugs your heart quickly to remind you that you too, are capable of all things and anything.

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I Am Rebel

Lila Amin Poetry

To escape from the cultural lies of The inferior female, Who should Cry her tears back into her eyes and Smile as his fingers dance on her skin.

No, his fingers do not Dance, waltz, nor tango.

His fingers make mockery of her blood, Painting clouds of black and blue.

But it was just the desk, he says, That was in the way, While she was putting the dishes away.

Not him, Of course, not Him. The lies whisper, The younger the better.

The more fertile, the more children.

But silent prayer is whispered As she is numb and She digs her nails into Life lines of palms, And bites her lip to feel the sharp pain Because at least that is a Feeling.

I will not cry my tears into my eyes, I let them flow like the runoff when The soil cannot soak any more.

My body being soil, not being able to Soak anyMore.

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63 I will not let his fingers dance on my skin, I will scream, my feet will dance on him, My scream will tingle the drum in his ears, and Extinguish the flaming fire on his lips.

My fragile body will fill with anger as my eyes quiver, I will kick the walls instead of the Deserving dancer.

This is not what I remember.

I remember my mother telling me, I’m an untouched flower, so pure, But instead, in my eyes, I’m a rebel, no cure.

I’m Only Here for the Moment Jonathan Charles Art

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OTR

Flame

Katherine Luciano Drama ACT I Scene 1 Dennis scavenges the apartment. He frantically tosses papers and moves around the many labeled boxes. Sweating through his navy-blue corduroy suit and pacing around the small living room, he sits on the sofa. He pushes aside a frame on the coffee table.

DENNIS: It was there on the table, I put it right on top of my presentation! I swear if sheAngela calls out from the bedroom.

If she? If she what Dennis?

ANGELA:

Angela gently walks into the living room, tying the last curly strands of her hair into a complete messy up-do. She leans her slim body against the arch of the bedroom door, pulling up her pink knee socks that keep slipping down.Dennis opens his mouth and turns to Angela. Instead of speaking, he sighs.

DENNIS: (Mumbling) Not today, Angela.

Dennis shuffles toward the bedroom past Angela. Angela looks back after a moment, then walks over to the coffee table and slowly sits upright on the couch. She stands the frame back up. The frame is of them at their first concert together.Angela stares at the frame blankly, then looks toward the bedroom once again.

It’s never the day for you, Dennis.

ANGELA:

Dennis struts into the living room with a suitcase and duffel bag and places them aggressively in front of the couch. Angela jumps a bit, Dennis ignores it.

DENNIS: I have everything ready for tomorrow: presentation, contract, pitch...but conveniently for you still no ticket.

Conveniently?

ANGELA:

DENNIS: I mean, what would you know about big opportunities like this.

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63

I’m happy where I am.

ANGELA:

Dennis chuckles. Dennis walks up to the left of center stage and begins to speak to the audience.

DENNIS: Dancing around in some worn-out stage arena where the only checks you get are from guys who check you out in a flimsy leotard four nights a week is what you call happy? If anything that’s called a waste of time.

Angela walks up to the right of center stage and begins to speak to the audience.

ANGELA: Four nights of irreplaceable momentum, being able to sweep away and tell stories people can understand.

Things people can’t understand. Being able to- to turn and lift and extend all of this (Angela motions towards her body) to create something. I create four nights of anything but a waste of time.

Both Dennis and Angela walk back to the couch, sitting farther apart from each other.

You have a hobby.

DENNIS:

Angela keeps her head tilted away from Dennis, looking off to the side.

ANGELA: I guess you really did forget what dancing means to me.

Dennis lets out a small sigh.

I just want to find my ticket.

DENNIS:

Dennis stands up abruptly toward the the back of the living room and begins to shuffle more boxes, aggressively.

Angela brings her knees up to her chest, letting her knee sock fall. She folds her arms around her knees and stares at the frame.

I never understood why you gave up.

ANGELA: (Quietly)

DENNIS: What I gave u- left behind were some stupid fantasies like every other kid has.

ANGELA You had passion, Dennis! It was this infinitely magical thing you craved more than anything.

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OTR Angela looks over her shoulder at Dennis, his back turned to her.

ANGELA: You expect me to believe it was just some small dream you had? Because that’s not what I saw. It’s not what I knew.

I grew up and-

DENNIS:

ANGELA: You’re 24 for fuck’s sake! You outgrow one of your favorite pair of shoes. You outgrow the tattered jeans you would wear to the playground. But you don’t outgrow the fire in your heart.

DENNIS: (raising his voice) And that fire you have with dancing really got you far, huh? You’re really living it up in fancy dancing studios and partnering with Swayze.

Angela looks away from Dennis. She stands up and faces the audience. Dennis turns around and places his hands firmly on his hips.

DENNIS: I know what I want for myself. Don’t make this something that it’s not. Just help me find my ticket and we can be out of each other’s hair.

The lights in the apartment shut off.

Great, what now?

DENNIS:

Angela walks over to the living room light switch and gives it a few flickers.

Well?

DENNIS:

ANGELA: Well it’s still dark obviously. I’ll go get some flashlights.

Angela leaves to the kitchen. Dennis begins to feel in the inner thighs of the couch. he bumps into the coffee table and the frame drops onto the floor, cracking. He feels his hands on the floor for the frame. He picks it up and puffs as he speaks to the audience.

DENNIS: It was just a concert, everyone’s into music it’s not unique in any way. I mean I had great taste duh, Radiohead and Simple Plan stitched up some rough patches for me. Seeing them live was insanely unreal. What else was I gonna do with it? Waste years of my life competing with the other thousands of people 25 Issue 63.indd 34

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63 who wanted the same? Chance wasn’t gonna convince me.

Angela’s footsteps are faint from the kitchen. Dennis quickly puts the frame to the side and fixes his posture. Angela walks in with a candle and reaches for some matches in her pocket. She tries to light the candle with the first match but nothing.

Fuck are we going to do with a candle?

DENNIS:

After a second match she lights it. She places it on the coffee table. They both stare at the glow.

ANGELA: I didn’t find any flashlights. This was the next best thing I guess.

Angela sits a few inches away from Dennis, but still relatively distant. Dennis pulls out his flip phone and gets up to shuffle through the papers and boxes. The phone shuts off after a few seconds.

Perfect.

DENNIS:

Dennis looks around and then immediately reaches for the candle. Angela puts out her hand to stop him.

What are you doing?

ANGELA:

DENNIS: Still have to find my ticket, so I need the candle.

ANGELA: I’m not staying here alone in the dark, the power has to turn on sometime soon.

DENNIS: Yeah let’s just wait around. I know how comfortable you are with that. I’m gonna go ask the superintendant and see what’s going on.

Dennis exits.

The candle is still here...

ANGELA: (Softly)

Angela gently picks up the frame again and walks over to a shelf with a sculpture out of entirely music albums.She moves around the room, which is now encircled in music and dance related sculptures (installation art for director’s note) ANGELA: No way was this a small dream. It was a yearning. A call for him that he neglected. I could never abandon my fire, even if it ends up leaving me only at the front steps of this apartment.

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OTR ANGELA:

Angela weaves around the sculptures in admiration.

ANGELA: And that’s what drew me to him. He was an art and a feeling I could never justify. I wish he could just come back.

Angela makes her way back to the couch and places the candle in the center of the coffee table.

ANGELA We were such a balance you and I. It’s not even that I miss the old you. What scares me is that you don’t miss the old you. That you think this new you is what you really want.

Angela looks out to the audience.

Well, is this what you really want?

ANGELA:

Dennis walks back in.

DENNIS: Apparently this shit is serious. It’s a city-wide power outage.

Angela doesn’t respond. She continues to look at the glow of the candle.

DENNIS:

Angela?

Angela turns toward him.

I’ll help you look for your ticket.

ANGELA:

Dennis hesitates, then brings his duffel bag and dumps everything on the sofa. He digs his hands through the pile. Angela notices a Pink Floyd t-shirt.

ANGELA: Nice to know at least this still means something.

Dennis tries to grab the shirt but Angela moves away.

ANGELA: Woah, slow down! You do remember who got this for you right?

She waves it near him mockingly.

DENNIS: Yeah haha so funny, now give the shit back.

Angela sits on the arm of the sofa and holds the shirt tight to her chest.

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63 One line.

Huh? Just one line from the track.

No way, the ticket-

ANGELA:

DENNIS: ANGELA: DENNIS:

ANGELA: One and I won’t talk anymore until we find your ticket.

Dennis hesitates. Angela lets put a sly smirk and pulls the shirt even closer to her chest.

Into the distance, a ribbon of black.

ANGELA: (Mumbling)

Angela grins.

ANGELA: Stretched to the point, of no turning back.

Dennis smiles faintly.

A flight of fancy, on a windswept field Standing aloneMy senses reeled.

DENNIS: ANGELA: DENNIS:

Dennis plays an air guitar and Angela laughs. Dennis pulls her up and holds his hand to her mouth imitating a microphone.

ANGELA: Tongue-tied twisted just an earth bound misfit!

DENNIS: You cannot just skip to the chorus like that! you have to appreciate all the lyrics.

God you were always like that.

ANGELA:

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OTR Angela smiles wide.

Just like that.

ANGELA: (to herself)

DENNIS: Tounge-tied twisted just an earth bound misfit!

Angela spins and laughs while she dances. Dennis loosens his tie and stares at Angela prancing around the room, extending her legs this way and that. He grabs her hands and dances with her in front of the coffee table. He dips her gently and they remain still. He brings her back up and gives her a twirl.

DENNIS:

I’d say they had better songs.

ANGELA: Nothing like a classic, though. I’m gonna get some water. Want?

Dennis shakes his head. Angela walks to the kitchen.

This candle. It’s still here?

DENNIS:

Dennis sits on the sofa and smiles at the candle. He looks closer and notices the corner of his ticket sticking under a magazine. He takes it out and holds it in his hands.

Dennis hears Angela’s footsteps and quickly puts the ticket in the back of his pocket.

Everything alright?

Yeah.

ANGELA: DENNIS:

Dennis shakes his head. He sits on the couch. Angela sits beside him.

No flashlights, but a candle. Weird, right?

DENNIS: I’m surprised it hasn’t even melted the wax away by now. I mean, it’s a small ass candle.

ANGELA: Yeah, but it never left. It’s still there, just like I knew it would be.

The power comes back on. They both look around and then at each other. Dennis chuckle How convenient.

DENNIS:

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63 Angela stares at Dennis with a small smile.

ANGELA: Yeah, now that the lights are on we can find your ticket.

Angela gets up, but Dennis grabs her hand and looks up at her. He then jolts up and gently grabs Angela’s face and pulls her in for a kiss.

The lights definitely helped though.

DENNIS:

END SCENE

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OTR

Perseverance

Sheena Rocke Poetry On the days where the keyboard steadily ticks, we can do no wrong.

These are the days we are kissed by Erato and Calliope themselves, Oh! How our angels of inspiration have blessed us.

Every sentence is a work of art, every metaphora connects to a theory you learned in Philosophy.

Every character is human.

These are the days that we live for.

On the days that the rythmic clicking stills our heart beats slow, Our muses have shunned us.

The blank canvas apparently must stay pure.

You begin to accept that.

There is beauty in purity, Right?

You start to write a story about a virgin who never wanted love and falls in love with a sailor.

Backspace On the dark days everything is wrong.

You find yourself using the word stupid a lot and backspace becomes your confidant, only you and it knows the mistakes you’ve made.

The lighting hurts your eyes, the atmosphere isn’t right, the seat is too soft, the ground is too hard, you lost your train of thought because your stupid, cute dog did something cute, stupid dog, the story is going cold, and there is just so much white.

Backspace These are the days that torture us.

We swear off the craft, maybe it just wasn’t for us.

We decide we’ll just stick to reading the Julia Hobans, the Maya Angelous, and Rudy Franciscos because we believe we’ll never become one of them.

Break This is the hardest part about writing, You don’t look at yourself as a“writer” For some reason yours will never be as good as Julia Hoban, Maya Angelou, or Rudy Francisco.

You think no one will ever publish you, Do you even know if you want to be published?

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63 Persevere.

You need to know that you are a writer in every sense of the word.

Writer’s block is but a bump in the road.

Days, Weeks, Months, Of nothing, isn’t the end But you swearing off writing that’s the end of the dream.

Enter.

The Beauty of London Ashley Blumlein Art

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OTR

Phenomenological Aspects of Time

Oscar Lopez & Nino Tsiklauri Art

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63

Sovereignty

Gabrielle Richards Poetry Even though the drinks have dripped dry and only tobacco touches your lips I still feel the urge to hide

In every smile, I am wary of smelling rum on your breath Witnessing you dance with the Devil I am. No longer your God angel Dipping a wing in blue and black lust Long rides to long island just to press myself into divinity Craving raw, Sweet and dirty folktales Arching my sins Elevated ego I am whole Pussy muscles doing push ups one two three weak in heat one two three Crying ovaries Baby fever Runaway wildfire To prevent the walls from closing in on me Sin, a curiosity Perfection is faulty I can no longer fake it Removing long veils trying out beats and following rhythms ‘ cool cream, and butter Slick oils, melting wax figures Drenched in sweat pools The angels sigh.

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OTR

Trees

Panagiota Efstathiadis Poetry

I am up in the trees.

The wind tunnels through the hole in my heart.

I have nothing to pray to, Only lights in the dark.

I am up in the trees.

My tears drop to the earth.

I hope my water will feed, All the flowers that birth.

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63

From Dusk Till Dawn Carlos Khalil Guzman Art

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OTR

Chickens

Richard Portilla Prose

Claudia sat underneath the parched zinc roof hiding from the Sun’s harsh caresses. The Shade consoled her body with a soft lullaby and her head started to nod off slowly into dreams of a torrential winter giving her moribund sugarcane crop reasons to live and reach up towards the sky with their sheaths and razor sharp leaves in open rebellion towards the Sun. Her body slumped over the crate she sat on and rested on top of her old 77’ baby blue Chevrolet Isuzu and the sounds of the ground corn kernels she held in her hand called for the chickens she raised since she came back to her old country.

Normally the sound of kernels falling to the ground would’ve made any of the chickens that were nearby scurry over at a fast pace for the kernels, but none except for one, were in the mood to challenge the Sun at high noon.

That one rooster in particular quickly trotted over the mess of kernels and pecked at the pieces it found fit to put into it’s crop. After selecting it’s preferred bits and pieces it looked up and noticed Claudia sleeping. She had on the worn down shoes she wore to her sugarcane crop. She never wore them completely, rather, she kept the back of the shoes pressed in between her heel so that her feet could breath and would not smell as much from the mud and sweat that would otherwise be stuck in there churning in the heat and movement of her soles while stepping in between the parched irrigation canals made for the rains that never came. The rooster saw the Shade lulling her to sleep and so he moved over to her side and scratched the ground with it’s long spurs and claws until a ditch large enough for it to sit down in was made. The rooster had a particular way of laying down into the ground and so when it did, it stretched out one leg and roosted with the other. He ruffled his feathers as it bathed in the loosened dirt, disturbing the Shade’s lullaby but slowly he, too, was charmed by the Shade’s lullaby.

Claudia knew she was in a dream because although she recognized the rain she saw with her eyes and the feel it had on her skin, she could also feel and taste the beads of sweat rolling off the bridge of her ancestral nose and into her open, snoring mouth. Another giveaway of her belonging to her dreams was that her eyes begged to be open so that they, too, could take in the rain, but she knew that her eyes would be covered in rheum because she felt it amassing outside of her dream, in between her eyelids, slowly accumulating as it always did when the Sun did it’s best to caress her skin. Realizing that the rain was all an illusion of desires that would never come, she woke up in a silent fury, eyes covered in rheum and sweat dripping off her brows.

The taste of salt that ran into her mouth was more than enough to make her curse the Sun and curse the drought it brought down on to her and her crops, but then Claudia saw the rooster sleeping with it’s leg stretched out and the other tucked underneath it. For some reason, whether it was the Shade softly reminding her that the sun will only be there for a while longer, and that soon the world will be cool again, or because the salt in her mouth reminded her of the stories of people who had turned into pillars of salt in the bible, she just calmed down and picked up the rooster.

“Hello, handsome! What are you doing here?!,” She said when she noticed that her hands had dropped all the ground kernels into her lap and onto the ground. Her hands were covered in fine maize dust and she didn’t mind at all. She was so happy to see the rooster by her side. She remembered how small he was when she first bought him and his sisters from the market.

Claudia, being ostracized from her family due to her seeking her share of family inheritance, was left with no one to talk to. She would go around in the center markets bargaining the price of mote, potatoes and garlic to cook at home when one day she saw a young girl selling chicks. There were three left and for once in her life she did not bargain for the final sale price of the chicks, she paid what the girl asked of her and took them home in the cardboard box they came in. Every day after coming back from weeding out the plants that would strangle her crops and doom them to fail, she would come back and cook her potatoes and mote with a bit of garlic and salt.

She started cooking a little bit more than usual and took the leftovers of her plate from the kitchen table where she would eat in solitude, to the roof of her house where she left the chicks in order for the rats to not harass or eat them.

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63 “Hey, there babies! Hey there, my loves! Want to eat?”

For some reason, these chicks were meek and approached her and pecked the food right out her hand. Claudia talked to them and told them all about her day. She told them about the canes that whispered into her ear and about the Sun that wouldn’t leave her alone. She told them about the Shade that would let her doze off underneath her mango trees. Sometimes she would sing holy hymns and the chicks would just sit there chirping away because they wouldn’t know what to do. As they got older, they started falling into her lap and so instead of Claudia sitting up on the roof, she made a hammock and started swinging in it with her chickens opening up about how lonely she felt and how betrayed she felt that her family had left her out in the open with nothing from the inheritance. She told them all about her family back in the new country. She told them about her sick daughter, her unappreciative son, the son that worked and paid the rent, and her oldest son who had his roots in her old country but never came to visit or take her anywhere. The only entities that knew how deep her sadness was were the chickens, the Shade, the Sun, and her sugarcane. Other than that, one can only really guess if it ever affected her at all.

One day, after hiring some workers to help her with the field work, she came back home and found out that the person renting a space on her land had paid a worker instead of her. The person renting the space had thought that they were in some way related, completely oblivious to the fact that her real family in the old country would rather her to not come back at all-the closet to death the better. So he paid the worker the month’s rent and as hard as the field worker tried to hold on to the money for the weekend, he spent it on beer, liquor and women.

When Claudia came to claim the money, all he could come up with was an excuse that he had bought a bunch of chickens with it and had paid off loans with it as well. So in exchange for the month’s rent that was paid to him, he gave her his wife’s 11 chickens, 10 hens and one fine rooster.

These new chickens didn’t take to the the chicks at all. They pecked them away and soon started to injure the original baby chicks. So she picked up her babies and took them to the roof where they wouldn’t be bothered and cursed the worker who had given her such nasty creatures who excluded her babies instead of embracing them.

She then began buying maize for the chickens instead of overcooking the amount of food. This in turn made her much more active and took her mind of the loneliness of the countryside. Her Favorite chick had grown accustomed to being held and when she would come to the roof with the ground maize, it would peck at her earrings and snuggle into her hair. They would both lull themselves to sleep and wake up in the afternoon due to both of them being hungry and so Claudia would cook a portion of food for her and for her original baby chicks.

With time, Claudia started to see that her favorite chick was in fact a male and his comb started growing larger and larger. Still, no matter how large he got, he would always hop onto her chest and peck on her earrings. The rooster and his sisters became such a large part of her day. She would feed them when she woke up, and couldn’t wait to come back home to them. When distant cousins from the old country would invite her to come to a trip with them, she would make an excuse saying that her chickens needed to be fed and taken care of. With such a seemingly silly excuse her distant cousins labelled her an anti-social, workaholic and never invited her anywhere ever again. But the truth was that her chickens were always on her mind. She would go into the market for her mote, potatoes and garlic and come back with nylon sacks full with herbs that were going to be thrown out because they were not fit for sale anymore, but were still good enough for her chickens. While Claudia would lug those sacks around, her immediate family would laugh and call her poor. They would make fun of her shoes caked with dried mud and started to joke that without her inheritance she has resorted to digging into trash to sustain herself. The fact of the matter is that Claudia had money, she just never really had anywhere to spend it, nor would she have a reason to spend it. Claudia knew that these things were being said about her but shrugged it off and went on to feed her chickens.

The drought had came in when Claudia was expecting it to rain. Claudia had heard about the “Nina” effect that was going on in the world from the field workers and the man that rented a space on her land and fell into a small depression. Her crops that she worked so hard to weed and the irrigation canals that were so expensive to dig up were all going to be done in vain if no rain came down. After hearing the bad news she wanted nothing to do with the world and headed to her backyard. Her original babies were now big enough to defend themselves 38 Issue 63.indd 47

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OTR and joined the rest of the chickens out back as well. As soon as Claudia opened up her massive iron gates the chickens would run to her expecting the food for the day, but that day was so hot and humid that they all stayed in their shade and continued to pant keep themselves cool“Hello, handsome! What’re you doing here?! It’s so hot and you’re here sleeping with me! My baby! You’re so sweet! I love you so much!,” she said while holding the rooster up and kissing it’s beak. The rooster clucked happily and clucked even more when she her lips smacked together to make the smooching sound that reminded him of the early sounds Claudia would make when bringing him and his sisters food. The smooching sounds then woke up the rest of her original chickens and they came and pecked at the rest of the kernels that were at her feet.

“Oh! Hey there, precious ones! It’s so hot, right?!”, Claudia said when suddenly a thought came to her.

She sat down and rested on her Chevy, the old truck she had bought before she made her way to the new country years ago. The old truck had taught everyone in her immediate family how to drive stick shift. She had bought it for a bargain price off of a man desperate to get rid of it due to some thugs harassing him over seller’s remorse.

The man, having made upgrades to the truck-installing new tires, a new cabin, a sound system and radio- was reluctant to sell it for the price he had bought it for and being the weak and cowardly man that he was sold it to Claudia hoping that the sale would be temporary and not permanent. Hoping that the thugs would bully her instead of him, but the thugs never bothered her at all and so Claudia found good fortune within the weak man’s loss. That weak and cowardly man would later end up marrying Claudia’s sister and he would soon be her brother-in-law. Before heading out to the new country, Claudia had given her sister charge of the truck. Little did Claudia know that the brand new truck upgraded to the finest conditions would be left broken, in disrepair, and stuck in her backyard to serve as a seat in the Shade with her chickens and trying to get away from the heat of the Sun. Her thoughts had drifted towards time and how time puts everything in disrepair. Her family, which she supported, had fallen apart with time. Her truck, which was in the greatest condition, had been stripped of the tapestry, radio, and wheels, no longer recognizable because of time. But suddenly her thoughts came to her cherished chickens and it was the fact that death would come for them with time, rather, it was the fact that one day, she too will have to leave to go back to her new country and time will separate her and the only living things that she cared about in this country.

As she picked up the rooster while he happily clucked, tears began to roll down into her cheeks and into the rooster’s mouth. The taste frightened him so he began to ask the Shade to try and consul her and so the Shade tried to consul her, but that too didn’t stop the tears. And so the Shade told the wind, and the wind told the sugarcane, but they were on the verge of death, so with their last leaves filled with chlorophyll of life they asked the clouds to make Shade so that Claudia could take a break from the Sun and they agreed. Slowly the sky started to muster up whatever they could and they saw Claudia crying somberly over her hands and they, too, couldn’t take her pain because they, too, had seen her work in the fields, unsuccessfully ask for her piece of her inheritance, play with her beloved chickens, carry her expiring herbs, watched her get laughed at, and finally leave her old country for a new one, so they began crying, too.

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63

Amsterdam in Purple Ashley Blumlein Art

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OTR

Need for Love

Juleime Cepeda Poetry

Intersecting lanes with no stop signs and we’re going full speed.

No yellow lights to slow us down, accelerating with no brakes.

We didn’t fear crashing, the ride was a high and we wanted it to last.

Tires burning up, steering wheel heating up.

We rode like we were drunk.

Not worrying about others along the road, we never let them cut us off.

No matter how many exits we would approach, we managed to stay on our road.

Maybe we knew that one day we would reach a dead end or run out of gas.

Instead we crashed.

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63

Christine Stoddard Art

Internet Culture c. 1998

Technology Mirror with Sand

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OTR

The Black Sheep

Menal Elmaliki Poetry Trapped behind the wall Kept locked away Don’t be you And don’t be me they say You can be you they say on some days But behind the curtains they whisper They whisper she is not anyone She is nothing They whisper he is me He is not like anything we see They come from behind and smile with bright eyes But the creases are dark The eyes are hooded Casting a shadow far beyond what can be seenFor the shadow stretches to their soul It cloaks them like a cheap thrill For it only lasts awhile before their souls blacken and eventually disappear Slacken eyes once brightly lit becomes swallowed and naught Create themselves to be nothingfor they were once something But the eyes hold so much envy And the heart shown no mercy 43 Issue 63.indd 52

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63 Ensuingly they ripen to foul and wax the woes What is once human has become a depraved human who by the end Becomes a monster that cages No mind to think No heart to feel No soul to live All is lost, forever gone

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OTR

A Pink World

Jonathan Charles Art

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63

Twenty-One Again Matthew Blake Poetry

A Night in New York I’ll never be this twenty-one again Not one day older or younger I’ll never be as free to roam aimlessly Through the city I call a home A stranger The highest peak radiates rainbows A calling That I’m safe here All the while drunk girls practice walking out of the bar With one another One step following the other I’m thankful for that For the decayed church where the poets Spill their hearts on stage While God is Watching She gives the most silent applause I think of all the others that Elapsed the day I am now Wondering what my mother did on the night When she was 21 and 330 days old Did she do the same drunk catwalk with all her friends?

I bet it’s universal really The way we keep retracing our habits Learning to walk at two And again tonight And one-day ages from now This street will no longer be a home I’ll see some other twenty-one-year-old Aimlessly walking Listening to that one song Learning how to love again Thinking I made it here, I’ll never be this twenty-one again.

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OTR

A Room With Nothing in it, Not

Anymore

Amaya Justiniano Prose

A room in the milliseconds of silence that follow a struggle–frantic shuffling, a creak or two, and

then it subsides. Everything is too still, like the furniture was capable of moving but did not want to be seen doing so. The sun is coming down through a slit in the curtains. Only a strip of orange light can penetrate the place.

It is filthy here. If not empty plates or Tupperware half full of food there are empty cigarette boxes,

an overflowing ashtray, crushed cans of 3-dollar alcohol: cheap and effective. Old how-to books, needles and yarn, novels, notebooks, a worn tennis racket and age-old gaming consoles collect dust in a general area of the room that is off to the side. These things have not been touched for a long time. Clothes overflow the dressers opposite the door. One long sleeve pokes out and hangs down the front of the drawer, reaching out, once yearning to be worn and now has given up entirely.

The bed is the happiest, has the most warmth coming off it, has been used to its fullest potential.

The comforter is wrinkled and sprawls out chaotically—the pillow has an old, fading indent courtesy of memory foam. The sheets are a soft tan color, no pattern, and look inviting. It is all out of place in the silence. Also out of place is the note tacked onto the headboard. It is clear, has neat handwriting. Though it is brief it must have been written with care. It is probably the second thing in this room to catch the eye.

On the nightstand is a small table with an alarm clock. The pen that was used to write the note sits

there too. There are a few framed pictures of a family, a happy child. They have not been moved so that the images are face down, out of sight out of mind, but they have certainly been angled away from the bed, away from the note.

If the note is the second thing to catch the eye, in the center of the room lies the first. There a stool

has fallen on its side. A shadow from something on the ceiling, held up by a rope, creates a shadow on the ground, partly shrouding the legs of the stool below it.

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It will be a week before someone walks in, before they see what has happened here. Until then it

will stay silent. The alarm clock will move from 3:00 am to 7:00 am and the sounds of dripping fluids will be absorbed by the dirty carpet. The drippings are not heavy and the clear, smelly liquid will come after long intermissions. They can be smelled much more than seen or heard, and as the clock moves from 7:00 am to 6:00 am a smell more insulting and pervasive than could already be felt fills the room.

The filth is now overwhelming, and the flies have started to gather.

They swarm, eating up the thing hanging from the ceiling and all the little bits they can find from

the floor. Living amongst them are larvae, pale and fat as they gorge. This is the most activity the room will see for a week and still the overwhelming heaviness in the air, more from the mood than anything else, makes it so that the flies are hardly audible. Perhaps it is the fact that there is only ever one slip of light shining in the din, but the room swelters with negative energy. Death is the only way to describe the tone. And as the alarm clock counts down the hours, never making a sound of its own, the room becomes more and more uninhabitable.

This was a room that hardly ever found itself empty, though it never hosted a crowd. Now the fur-

niture droops with the loss and loneliness. It was a room in mourning, and the object of grief hangs still by the rope at the ceiling, dripping red foam and fluids that went from clear to brown.

Once the gestation period of a week passed, the filth that had grown is exposed to the elements and the door is cracked open. Finally, there is a sound, one that serves as a memento mori. At last, the silence breaks with a shrill, female shriek—a banshee’s scream.

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Home

Onelia Harris Poetry This pilgrimage is overdue I should have been An island girl - I am, in some ways But I am made of concrete and a hawk eyed stare Not the razor sharp tongues and coconut jelly smiles of my cousins Who would I be If my summers were spent on sunbaked sand instead of lion-guarded fortresses?

How do I feel at home in a place I’ve never known?

Interweb

Kinza Saleh Poetry

deep and down with the spider we go little flies, we are caught because no one knows it’s a waning gibbous as we’re waning in the web

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Berlin Cathedral Ashley Blumlein Art

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The Reins

Amrita Chakraborty Poetry when it was all dark, no sullen gleam upon the rim of the fountain i took my body to the neon spray watched it go down again, remade into something less fetching. the beast’s skin cinched close around me like armor. were you mad to have touched me like that were you so carnivorous before your dearest friends. the devil held his hand out, though he did not once look at me weeping. he held his crimson hand out, placed it very gently on my shoulder. he rasped, sati, this will burn you until you are better and i leaned my forehead against his tiredly. said okay, honey, if that’s what it’ll take if that’s what the numbness needs to keep from killing me. sometimes my mouth reinvents itself, laughs the raucous way you did when you screwed some girl over again. angad. the sweet wrecks you left behind. angad, how many winters did it take before you tore your own heart out by its filthy ligaments and ate it. angad, when every boy-god you knew was instructing you in the art of ruin of course you couldn’t say no. of course you had to answer their carrion call, ripping blades of lightning from the sky just to crack them into warm earth, over and over and over. and of course you had to fell me, too.

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Midterm Season

Panagiota Efstathiadis Art

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King of the Jungle Oneilia Harris Art

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In a freezing office building, I learn what honeysuckle is

Amrita Chakraborty Poetry

In a freezing office building, I learn what honeysuckle is & other breeds of flowers, the fragrant kind, blue-veined hands shaping their way around imaginary petals (delicate, delicate) & it’s all so foreign to this clinical space, I smile at the clashing imagery. also at the tendril of hair snaking its way over the receptionist’s shoulder & the umbrella pattern on her notepad. last summer was when they taught me to be human again & it was so hard to shake the dust of disuse off my lips. still I startle at the sound of subway cars crashing into the platform in a way I never did before. apologizing when someone so much as looks at me, I used to thinking these three years of bleeding turned me polite. making up for all the other failings by prostrating myself, ceaselessly. but the last day of summer, I tire of coffee & conversations with people I can’t afford to really care about. sorry to all my good-hearted mother figures– at least you know you tried to make me into something nice. that day, as always, the young man stood by me at the bus stop, but I turned my whole body away, let him see my tightened fists. that was nothing to him, I’m sure but I was desperate to keep from relinquishing it. slash of sunlight burning the blacktop, that’s me I said to myself. I was wearing fake pearls and a grey ruffled dress. when the bus came, I imagined the breeze set my hair ablaze. then I tremored up the stairs & fed my ticket in, smiling at the driver.

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Gold Clay Dinosaurs in the Snow Christine Stoddard Art

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Heavenly Fruits

Juleime Cepeda Poetry What is this salvation we all so crave?

Life may be grueling, but is it truly purgatory?

As I stare into the horizon I feel blessed to be in a world where such beauty exists.

Life is what you make it, we ache for a conception living towards a perception.

Afterlife, a paradise for the forgiven.

While sinners dance in the radiant fields of the living.

What if right now is all that’s absolute?

You didn’t praise what your eyes offered, instead worshiped an idol.

Let nature fulfill your spiritual needs, admire the plants, flowers and trees.

Clench your thirst with the flowing fresh waters cherish all that is living.

Life is brief, enjoy your existence.

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The Clearing in the Sky Jacob Butlett Prose

Toby watches the sunset from the open living room window. He smells the violet geraniums on the

flowerbox outside, reminding him of early-summer, when his mother plants tawny chrysanthemums around the cabin, miles from the city to the east, farther yet from the snow-capped mountains to the north. For the last several weeks, he’s been waiting for tonight, when he and his mom will visit the monsters in the sky.

Toby suspects his father knows nothing about the monsters because his father never mentions them.

Once, when he asked his mother why he wasn’t allowed to tell his father about the monsters and about the secret walk, she kissed his cheek and corrected him: they’re creatures, not monsters. He asked her what the difference was, since she once said that they have monstrously large mouths, large eyes, large scales. But she said he’d notice the difference soon enough.

He hears his mother and turns around.

“Ready, honey?” she asks. Wearing a black overcoat and yellow boots, and brandishing a collapsed umbrella, big enough for two people, she says, “Tonight’s the night. I can feel it.”

He stands up excitedly. “How do you know?”

She gives him a sideward glance. He knows she won’t reply and he’s right: she taps him playfully on the nose and heads to the front door. He follows.

“I have a flashlight in my coat pocket,” she says. “It’ll get dark soon.”

“And Dad?” “Sound asleep.”

“And your hair?”

“My hair?”

“Might get wet. Want to leave it behind?”

“No way!” She opens the front door and they step out. “I’m not going bald. I don’t want to embarrass myself. They might mistake me for your father.”

“No, they won’t. You still have more hair than he does.”

As they laugh, he hears the layers of gray clouds rumble and crash closer to the cabin. *** 57 Issue 63.indd 66

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63 Before Toby’s mother lost her hair, she and his father told him that sometimes adults get sick, really sick, and though life can be cruel, you must stay positive or else life will seem dark, not worth living. At the hospital, the boy cried, unable to make sense of it—his mother’s illness, whose long name he can barely pronounce. The prognosis isn’t good, the doctors said. So they gave her three months. They gave her three months over a year ago.

She and the boy enter a thicket of elms. A cold mist snakes around their feet while the trilling of locusts and the whooshing of the wind and the drumming of the rainclouds sound off like fanfare. Then a pause, a silent refrain. Afraid, he squeezes her hand and feels the loose texture of her skin, a sheet of fine ice. He glances at his mother’s rosary. Since he could remember, the rosary—a necklace decorated with transparent beads and an ivory cross—has never left her neck.

As far as he knows, she prays with the rosary at least twice a day. Before breakfast and before bedtime.

In her prayers, he overhears her thank God for the joy He brings, for the days she still has left. Toby has considered telling her how he feels about her praying, about the questions he doesn’t dare to ask her: Why would God punish her—and why with an incurable illness? Why does she deserve this? Does she deserve this?

No, the boy thinks. She doesn’t deserve this. She doesn’t deserve the illness. And God doesn’t deserve her.

Praying with her rosary, however, provides her comfort, and whatever makes her happy makes the boy grateful that she’s still alive, that she’s well enough to spend time with him, like now in the undergrowth.

The thicket of trees is like a cavern, dark and wet, reeking of rotten leaves. More trilling, more rumbling, sticks snapping underfoot, windblown branches lurching overhead. While the boy, frightful and excited, trembles against his mother, she reaches into her pocket and hands him the flashlight. Its beam parts the darkness.

They cut across several bushes, almost tangling themselves in the bushes’ thorns. Then up a hill, bathed in the early shimmer of the moon, just a crescent of light, lonely in the starless sky. He focuses the beam on the hill—on the boulders, thorny bushes, switchgrass tall enough to conceal rats, foxes, raccoons, wolves.

The boy trembles again and looks into her eyes, but finds an eagerness, a passion to keep moving up the hill, toward a large thatch of pampas grass. He imagines a pack of wolves hidden within the tallgrass, so as he grips her hand tighter, she shoulders the plants away and guides him in and through.

On the other side of the hill, he spots no animal, not even a fruit bat in the moonlight. He sees a stream and a bridge several yards from the base of the hill, and beyond that, an abandoned farmhouse against another steep hill, which he momentarily mistakes for a large hand reaching toward the sky.

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OTR They head down. Several deer drink from the stream, then trot into the neighboring thicket of cedars lining the farmhouse’s empty driveway. A thunderclap echoes, sharp and guttural like a wet gasp. Surprised and relieved to be in a better lighted area, the boy refuses to let go of his mother’s hand. He feels childish but safe.

It begins to downpour. His mother opens the umbrella and he watches beads of heavy rain fall off the broad canopy. His mother spins the umbrella and they both gaze at the beads spiraling to the ground. They laugh. He grasps her hand even tighter, for a moment forgetting how delicate she is, how fragile she’s become.

Lightning and thunder frighten the boy, then amaze him. He considers running into the rain and splashing in the puddles. He doesn’t care if the cold and rain make him sick, so he looks at his mother, who eyes him.

“Don’t even think about,” she says.

“But—” She shakes her head and maintains her grasp on his hand. He grumbles to himself, feeling let down.

She pauses midstride and coughs violently. Her wig tilts sideways on her head, but she moves on without readjusting it. The boy watches her carefully. When she gets into a coughing fit, sometimes she loses her balance and falls. A symptom of her illness, he remembers.

They reach the bridge. The downpour gradually ends. While they walk, the bridge’s wet, wooden foundation creaks and squeaks under their boots. She lets go of the boy’s hand and coughs into her free hand. They stop half-way on the bridge, where she coughs one more time, a violent hacking, wet and wheezing.

“Want to head back?” he asks.

She wipes her hand on her coat and clears her throat.

“I’m fine.”

He points the flashlight near her face and notices her reddened cheeks and strained, teary eyes.

“You sure?”

“Positive,” she says. “I’m fine.”

“Yeah?”

She taps him playfully on the nose and they smile.

“We can head back,” he says.

“No. Tonight’s the only night we can see the creatures, I can feel it.” She wraps an arm around the boy’s shoulder. “Come. We’re almost there.”

“Where?”

“You’ll see. When we get there, I’ll tell you everything.”

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63 “About the monsters?”

“Creatures,” she corrects. “And yes. About the creatures.”

He nods with apprehension and helps her cross the rickety bridge. ***

Since the diagnosis, the boy’s mother made it a habit to attend church every Sunday, but not for Mass.

They go when most of the churchgoers leave, when she and the boy can think alone. The boy sits by her as she kneels in humble prayer. He doesn’t pray. Instead, he watches her caress her rosary. Every Sunday, the sun passes through the church’s stained glass windows and floods the room in prismatic light, and some days, when the sun seems to come in at a strange slant, light passes through a clear window next to the boy and his mother—they sit in the same pew every Sunday—and glistens off her rosary beads. The shimmer across her face mesmerizes the boy so much, he sometimes forgets she’s dying.

At the other end of the bridge, he notices the moon in the stream, its reflection like a large lily pad rippling in the breeze. They walk past the decrepit farmhouse against the hill. No sounds, except the house’s front door banging in the wind, the buzzing of beetles in the treetops, the trilling of cicadas in the underbrush. His mother recovers her stride, moving faster on her own, now only a few steps ahead of him. He quickens after her down a grassy path lined with sycamores and spruces, lightning bugs and box elders streaming across the beam of the flashlight like meteors.

They step out into the open, into a prairie between rolling hills, where the earth feels looser under the boy’s boots, and the prairie smells earthy and salty, like mown grass and sea foam. They trudge onward, then stop in the middle of a clearing, muddy puddles and tufts of prairie sage at their feet.

“We’re early,” the mother says. “I can sense them coming.”

While she gazes at the thunderous sky, the boy turns off the flashlight and waits for his mother to speak.

The moon glows dimly, everything blotched in different shades of dark. The boy sighs with anticipation, with deepening agitation, then looks at his mother. “Where are they?”

She doesn’t look away from the clouds. “Almost here.”

“I want to know.”

“Patience, Toby.”

He tugs at her coat again. “I really want to know.”

He feels a cold stickiness on his hand, the one he used to pull at his mother’s coat. He turns on the flashlight to see what he touched, and when the light shines on the speckles of blood on his hand, he shudders.

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OTR He couldn’t see the blood on her coat before because of the darkness, but now he recalls that at the bridge, she coughed into her hand and wiped it on her coat. When she looks down, he shows her the blood. She does nothing but smile.

“We need to go home,” he says. “Back to the clouds.”

“Not yet. I need you to see this.”

“See what? You’re scaring me.”

“Don’t be.” She starts to caress her rosary. “They won’t hurt you.”

The air goes cold. When rain begins to drizzle, she opens the umbrella and he steps underneath it.

“You said you’d tell me everything,” he says.

“Yes.” “And?” “Promise you’ll listen.”

“Let’s go home. You can tell me there.”

“Don’t you want to know?”

“Since forever.”

“Then promise you’ll listen.”

He throws the flashlight onto the ground. She looks at him with reproach, but he doesn’t care. He wants to leave and tell his father about his mother’s monsters—imaginary creatures, for all he knows.

“Promise me,” she says.

“Why?” he exclaims.

She opens her mouth to speak, but coughs. A mild, hoarse cough. He fears she’ll cough again, this time violently, endlessly.

“The faster you tell me everything, the faster we can go home,” he says.

“I want you to believe in what I’m about to say.”

“Whatever you say, I’ll believe you.”

“Don’t lie to me, Toby. I want you to believe. Really believe.”

“I promise.”

She kneels down, as if to pray, and touches his left shoulder with her free hand, her fingers lanky, warm, and tender. He feels strangely comforted and relaxed, at last prepared to listen, really listen, to what she has to say. “Toby,” says, “do you believe in angels?”

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63 She has never spoken to him about angels. Not at church, not at home.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

She looks at him with a smile, her eyes getting wetter. The possibility that she might cry makes him want to cry with her. He forces back his tears by looking at her intently, jaw clenched, shoulders pulled back, spine erect. Beads of sweat trickle down his temples, the nape of his neck tingling, breaking out in goosebumps.

His cheeks burn with trepidation. His stomach twists cold like carved ice. Nauseated and dizzy, he listens to what she has to say. To him, she’s never looked more serious.

“I believe in angels,” she says. “I was a young girl when my mother told me about the creatures, and like you, I didn’t believe her. Then she showed me them. I wanted to tell my father what I’d seen, but my mother said people would assume I’m crazy or, worse yet, people would go after them. Hunt them. Kill them. We couldn’t allow that. So they were our secret.

“My mother passed away a week later. Since then, the creatures have lived in the back of my mind, and they became an unspoken part of my prayers. I don’t pray to them, but I can’t help wondering if they have something to do with God. Why would I think that? I don’t know. I guess it’s just a part of my faith.

“Toby, I’d like you to believe in them too. I wish I knew the answers to all the questions you must have for me, but all I know is what I believe and what I saw with my mother. I’m sorry you had to wait so long for this moment. Forgive me. When the doctors told me about my illness, I knew I had to believe in the creatures more than ever. I fear I don’t have many days left. I just want you to see the creatures for yourself before . . . before I go.”

His thoughts elude him for a long beat. Then many questions come to mind, most of them he thinks are foolish or pointless. A part of him remains doubtful and scornful of his mother. He turns away and sobs. She tells him not to cry. “You don’t have to believe if you don’t want to,” she says. “Bringing you here was careless and selfish. C’mon.” She takes his hand. “Let’s go home.”

But he yanks his hand free and stumbles into the rain. When she reaches out to take his hand again, he steps back and lets out a long, pained sob. All questions seem pointless now. Uneasiness and wrath, like glass imbedded in his skin—a constant sting, a constant stabbing of emotion—make him want to retch. He rushes forward and pushes her back. She almost trips into the mud but recovers her footing. He punches at her chest, but she blocks him with her free arm. He wonders why she doesn’t push back, why she doesn’t walk away.

“Why are you so mad?” she says.

He punches until he feels a numbness down his back and up his arms. Disoriented, he falls into the mud.

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OTR A single question presses against his skull, loud like the ringing in his ears.

He hears her walk over to him. “Are you hurt, honey?” she asks.

He sits up and shakes his head. “Don’t say that,” he mutters.

“What?” She kneels over him and wipes the mud out of his hair.

He wants to wait for the monsters to come, for anything to come so that the silence between them can linger forever. But the question in his head becomes too much for him, and he blurts out, “Don’t tell me you’re going to die soon!”

She looks stunned. “Everyone dies, honey.”

“Not you! Not soon.”

“The doctors say—” “Then what can you promise?” he cries. “Why come here and tell me about the monsters?”

“Honey, please—” He stands up. “Where are they?”

She glances at the sky.

“Show me! I want to see the angels for myself.”

She points at the sky. “Look! There! Do you see it?”

He looks up quickly. “Where?”

“There!”

The clouds fade like gray feathers scattering in the wind, which blows his mother’s umbrella out of her hand and into the sky. They watch it corkscrew in the air, then vanish into the clouds. The rain stops. He notices the moonlight in the landscape, a billion shiny raindrops resting on the grass like a field of stars.

As the rainclouds whiten in the moonlight, something emerges from the darkness. He stares at it without flinching or blinking or saying another word. At first, he thinks it’s a zeppelin, then it blinks. More fly behind whatever it is, a whole school of them, out from the darkness. Eyes the size of two-story houses, fins waving like colossal sails, green scales glistening white like his mother’s rosary beads—the main parts of the creatures captivate the boy. They swim in the sky with ease, unperturbed by the boy and his mother. Several look their way and go on across the clearing in the sky, where moonlight has whitened the clouds. *** Five minutes. It takes them five minutes to traverse the open section of sky.

The boy waits in awe. From the dark around the moon, appearing gradually but continuously, starlight 63 Issue 63.indd 72

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63 emerges. The remaining rainclouds seem to melt like gray snow in spring. The boy expects the creatures to be there, no longer shielded behind the gray clouds. But they are gone. No sign of them anywhere. No sign they ever existed—or still do.

“That’s it?” he asks. “Where’d they go?”

He picks up the flashlight from the mud and walks over to her. She coughs into her hand. Once. Then twice. Her eyes are bloodshot. Her voice is raspy.

“Home,” she says. “Take me home.”

“Mom?” “Please.” She leans against him, though he’s much smaller and weaker than she. But he props her up the best he can and slides the dirty flashlight into her coat pocket. When she coughs again, this time with a vehement trembling of the head, her wig falls and he catches it. He tries to put it back on her, but she shakes her head emphatically. “We need to go,” she says. “Now.” He helps her out of the clearing, past the prairie, the bridge, the hills, the shadowed paths, the glen. She coughs endlessly. It doesn’t take him long to notice the uncontrollable jerking of her hands, the lifeless glaze creeping across her eyes. Her bald head looks ghostly, skin as thin as leaves. The corners of her lips are speckled with blood.

When they reach the cabin, she falls before the front door. He freezes in panic.

“Get your father!” she says. “He’ll take me to the hospital.”

He runs into the house, then down the hall to the master bedroom, where his father lies asleep. He wakes him up and tells him, breathlessly the first thing that comes to his head, that he and his mother were taking a walk, a short walk, just outside, to talk about her illness, the illness with a long name, the illness that made her lose her hair, the illness that is going to kill her unless they do something about it right now, right now, because she’s outside, in the doorway, in pain, in tears, crying for help.

His father gets out of bed and, without changing out of his fleece pajamas, runs outside to lift his wife into his arms. Toby watches from the doorway, wondering if it’s too late to pray for his mother, too late to apologize for yelling at her right before the creatures came. He follows his father to the car, then hurries into the back seat. In front of him, in the passenger seat, where his father puts her, his mother groans. In the rearview mirror, he sees her falling in and out of consciousness. “Where’s Toby?” she moans. “Where’s my boy?”

“I’m here.” He reaches around her seat and touches her arm. “I’m here.”

His father turns on the car and speeds off. The headlights are barely able to break through the darkness 64 Issue 63.indd 73

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OTR of the night, but his father drives without difficulty. “Fifteen minutes,” he says. “You’re going to be okay—don’t panic—everything’s going to be okay” “Thank you, sweetheart,” she says. “But I’m not the one who’s panicking.”

She chuckles.

Minutes later, Toby hands his mother the wig.

“Put it on me,” she says. “It’s my hairy crown.”

He positions and repositions the wig until it looks straight in the rearview mirror. “Thank you,” she says.

“And Toby . . .” She looks back, clutching her rosary. He leans forward and puts his ear next to her lips so that his father doesn’t hear her. “Do you believe? Do you believe in everything I told you and showed you?”

Deep down, he doesn’t think the creatures are divine, but as the car continues to barrel down the road, he doesn’t care what the creatures are. He and his mother share a knowing look, an understanding of what must happen now—to live with a covenant of silence, like the one she and her mother made many years ago.

“Yes,” he whispers. “I believe.”

Before long, they enter the city, and sitting up against the back of the passenger seat, the boy breathes softly, his head on his mother’s left shoulder, his hand on his mother’s, the same hand holding the necklace’s ivory cross.

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Another Man’s Treasure Oneilia Harris Art

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Tribulation

Hui Min Zhuo Poetry They describe eternity with a touch of love --

as if living forever was nothing,

just nothing

-- to the likes of -to people like us.

Still those years turned to decades to centuries

crossing into millennias I spent waiting in the darkness

for something,

just anything

-- to come back -to hurry back and retrieve me.

There was never a romance worth speaking of about the courtship of you from the god of death -- who insists

-- insists

you must persist... absolutely exist.

He loved you -- so you were never taken -years added onto your life and even as you begged -watching those around you -- age, grow old, begin and end -you were never given the privilege to no longer be.

When you asked the earth why the grass no longer tickled your feet -- even though you used to feel the drops of dew after rainfalls -the earth shied away from answering you.

So you cried alone

all by yourself as death brushed past the way he always did – but he did not hold -he could not hold -he refused to hold you -- because he loved you --

because he could not accept giving you away.

Life could not touch you because they knew where you ended -- when you should have ended.

Life left you alone and death left you behind.

So there in your immortality, your heart grew paralyzed -catching up with the time that went away.

You collected your hourglass and watched as the sand stood still -watched as nothing moved -and realized your heart stopped beating -- but you did not

stop -- could not stop - never once stopped - the batting of your eyes.

Your eyes still took to the beauty within the world and you wanted to go blind -because death would not take you

even though you wished - you begged - you cried

even though you knew your

time was up -- you knew, you knew.

How could you have not known?

Still death just brushed past you as he always did -as he shook his head -as he denied your right to leave the world -- telling you

with an absoluteness

you could not change -- “My dear, it’s not yet time.”

OTR

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Expression

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Roshni Patel Poetry

Though she smiled as bright as the diamond on her ring Her face filled with gloom unlike the day of spring Though she could speak the word of truth in a field of lies She knew not of the harm it brought, she had to be wise Never failing to impress like the world and all of its glory Always making mistakes unable to tell her story As quiet as the night sky, as generous as a philanthropist She knew not the effect of loneliness, resorting to crapulence She danced like a solar mote around the atmosphere of her lips Truly she could never express the skills of her curvaceous hips With her voice she sang through the torture forcing life into her heart Her voice could not be heard, even when her performance was an art Screams managed to escape her, dainty mouth like the red of the roses Conforming to the belief of the society, with the norms it imposes Emulating the present remembering her past, and strolling through the future Little does she know that her expression poses consequences on her own structure

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Untitled

Gianna Litrell Poetry Freedom from This artificial world society school tests rules Judging eyes and prying hands

Freedom from Boundaries built by ignorance Regulations imposed on imagination restless minds aching hearts and wailing souls Freedom from Pain that oozes into the ground Deceit polluting the air Despair spewing from our pores and staining the films of our eyes Freedom is not Isolation And yet why does it seem that way Freedom is Peace Potential and a refreshing deep breath Or is life itself A distorted ideal Like the assurance of death

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63 But freedom is not death As we will always yearn to be Free

Aida

Avondale Kendja Art

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Contributions Lila Amin is currently a freshman studying Psychology at Hunter College. Throughout her high school and college

career, she has often relied on poetry. She writes about personal conflict when she feels like there’s a buildup of emotion, or about widespread issues currently happening in the world, like the women’s rights issues in Afghanistan. Whether it’s for a women’s empowerment event she is speaking for or an open mic, poetry always has value that is necessary for the world to hear.

Matthew Blake is a New York native and 4th year English Education student at Hunter. He has a deep-seated passion

for poetry and neurotic writers of days past. He aspires to be a teacher of secondary students and to challenge existing curriculums by teaching through an intersectional lens. He tries to live every day of his life with a sense of creative rebellion that would make a racist white man from the 1950s lividly upset.

Ashley Blumlein is an undergraduate senior majoring in Media with a minor in Art History slated to graduate in May 2018. Her medium of choice is photography, but another longstanding love she has is writing, from short stories to poetry.

Thanks to Hunter College, she has been able to hone in on her writing skills. From critical thinking to becoming inspired by the hallways, her creativity has surged since she has been here. She also has found support from likeminded individuals there. When she was a child, she saved space in her composition notebook free of elementary classwork to write just about anything, from a character doodle and to one line poems. Writing is an escape from everyday mundane routine. She makes the sensical become nonsensical stuff. With a pen to paper or typing away, she is able to explore bizarre what ifs and mesh life into words. Usually, she writes in second and third person fiction. From delicate mermaids to dim noir settings, she is always trying to explore every topic with strong attention to detail and mood.

Jacob Butlett is a former poetry editor of Catfish Creek, a national undergraduate literary journal. In 2012, he received a Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards Gold Key for literary excellence. In 2017, he received a B.A. in Creative Writing, along with the Bauerly-Roseliep Scholarship for excellence in literary studies and creative writing. His work has been published in many journals and magazines--including Street Light Press, Gone Lawn, The Limestone Review, Outrageous Fortune, Wilderness House Literary Review, Picaroon Poetry, Free Lit Magazine, Three Drops from a Cauldron, Oratoria, Varnish: A Journal of Arts and Letters, Cold Creek Review, The Shallows, and plain china.

Juleime Cepeda is a writer who isn’t afraid to write down exactly what’s on her mind. Juleime, also known as Juju, is

someone who puts herself in all her work. Someone who isn’t afraid of criticism and enjoys learning new things. Juju likes to paint a story with words and spark emotion. She’s been writing since she was in middle school, it was a way for her to escape reality when things got rough. Juju’s writing is personal and vulnerable.

Amrita Chakraborty is a Bengali-American writer and student located in New York City. Her work has previously

been published in The Rising Phoenix Review, and she has self-published a chapbook entitled “Incarnate”. She is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature, and her interests include music, social justice, and stargazing.

Jonathan Charles has been interested in photography and videography for about a year but has only been doing photography for about a two and a half months. He has never really been a creative person, but since finding photography he has been able to see the creativity in everything around him and he loves it.

Menal Elmaliki is an English major at Queens College.

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. He is about one thing: simplicity and capturing moments that will last a lifetime; always maintaining the humanity and natural beauty of his subjects.

Sydney Heidenberg is a freshman English major at Hunter College. She is from Upstate,New York and enjoys writing and listening to 80s music.

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63 Alesa Irizarry (a.k.a. Noriaki) is 18 years old, a passionate writer, and a non-binary individual born and raised in

Brookyln. They are currently attending Hunter College and intend to major in Psychology. Their love of words and writing has been ever present, from the moment they were able to read and hide away purusing a dictionary for new words, to now, juggling several writing intensive classes.

Amaya Justiniano was born and raised in New York City, and started writing via Warrior Cat roleplays on the internet when she was just 10 years old. She hasn't stopped since.

Avondale Kendja is an undergraduate working on an English major. She’s also pondering over a minor in psychology, but dreads the math she’d have to navigate. Her writing mainly consists of the rare short story and as a photographer, she’ll probably never consider herself proficient but still enjoys using up most of her film on mannequins, birds, church facades, and the sky. There isn’t enough time in the day for editing, rediting, and rediting her digital photos.

Gianna Litrell is a junior studying Philosophy and Sustainability. And no, she does not know what she is going to do with a degree in either of those.

Oscar Lopez has a special interest in the construction of self-image and individuality based on interpretations of

epistemology and ontology, that is, the origin of being and theories of the nature of knowledge. Within that scope, he is also interested in how these interpretations apply subjectively as a way to create images, both tangible and psychological.

Katherine Luciano is a 19 year-old Hispanic. She just recently transferred to Hunter College as a sophomore with a psychology major and film minor. She is an aspiring screenwriter and lover of cinema and performing arts.

Roshni Patel is a 19-year-old freshman at Hunter College and wrote her poem about expression. She wants to do something special for the world, but it is impossible when she is pressured to stay quiet.

Gabrielle Richards is a 21 year old senior at Hunter College, a Sociology major, future social worker and hopefully part-time writer. Lover of cats, tea and music.

Sheena Rocke is currently a second semester freshman who loves writing as she is sure a lot of people do. She wrote

her piece “Perseverane” to share an experience that she thought people have been through at one point or another, “writer’s block”. She is very grateful that her poetry piece was selected and she hopes that readers enjoy it.

Kinza Saleh is a junior at Hunter College, studying English and maybe Neuroscience. She has written many poems since she was little, but not many good ones.

Christine Stoddard is a former Annmarie Sculpture Garden artist-in-residence and an M.F.A. DIAP candidate at

the City College of New York (CUNY). Her work has appeared in special programs at the New York Transit Museum, the Queens Museum, the Poe Museum, the Ground Zero Hurricane Katrina Museum, and beyond. She also is the author of Water for the Cactus Woman (Spuyten Duyvil Publishing), among other titles, and the founder of Quail Bell Magazine. Born in Virginia to a Salvadoran mother and American father, Stoddard spent most of her early life in the Washington, D.C. area.

Today she lives in East Brooklyn with her husband/collaborator, David Fuchs. In the summer of 2018, Stoddard will be a visiting artist at Laberinto Projects in El Salvador and the Woodstock Art Museum in Woodstock, New York.

Sara Tabio is a New York-based student and writer. Her work often explores the complexities of girlhood, trauma, national identity, and religion. She is currently studying English Literature and Political Science at Hunter College.

Nino Tsiklauri is interested in the phenomenological aspect of time and the subjectivity of each individual exercising their own time set. In her work she explores the dialectic of spaces created in her mind, and personal spaces that she sets forth unto the canvas.

Hui Min Zhuo has been writing for almost twelve years as of now (she is currently 22). She never really had the

courage to submit anything to contests, but figured it was better late than never. She's always hoped that the pieces she's created ended up resonating with others somehow. More of her writing can be found on: www.ahavenofwords.tumblr.com

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Meet the Staff Editor-in-Chief

Tanisha Williams is a person who is still learning how to adult, wears mismatched socks, sleeps in,

calls everyone “bro” and steals junk food from from her nieces and nephews. On her free time, she goes to Hunter College where she majors in Film and minors in English.

Vice President

Ariel Tsai is a sophomore at Hunter College double majoring in English and Chinese. She is both a cat and a dog person and her passionate love for cheese boards prevents her from becoming a vegan.

Treasurer and Drama Editor

Samantha Finley or Sam for short, is a sophomore majoring in English. She is everyone’s favorite messy Pisces who you can find at your local bookstore making vlogs that nobody will see.

Secretary and Art Editor

Melissa Rueda is a Muse Scholar who loves fine art. Currently, Melissa is studying towards a minor in Japanese and a major in Studio Art. Melissa also loves cats and eating gummies.

Art Editor

Kenny Perez likes long walks on the beach.

Poetry Editor

Emily Fernandez likes socks, drugs, and rock and roll.

Poetry Editor

Chasity Pierna, 25, is a native New York City spoken word artist and a Senior at Hunter College

majoring in Media. Cleverly weaving emotions into words that resonate with the masses is one of her passions.

Prose Editor

Andy Lopez is a junior majoring in Creative Writing and minoring in Film and Theatre. Born and raised in NYC, his favorite time to read is while on the train. His greatest inspiration is Miss Vanjie.

Prose Editor

John McKinney has a diverse professional background and now finds himself in college studying

stories. He has a Havanese who’s hardly a nudge over seven pounds. And he takes brief descriptions on himself very seriously, even when tongue-in-cheek.

Senior Publicist

Sharon Young is a sophomore majoring in Political Science. You’ll probably see her on the streets of New York with a book tucked under her shoulder whilst photographing dogs.

Publicity Assistant

Mouree Khan makes an unlimited amount of corny jokes, has various sounds of laughs, and loves to cheer and put up flyers.

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History of The Olivetree Review Since 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 The Olivetree’s original staff members, Pamela Barbell, Michael Harriton, Mimi Ross DeMars, and Adam Vinueva 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 first issue. Digital painting allows for both the inclusion of full color images and extra design elements to be available for all projects. We began including photography submissons 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 have also begun accepting drama writing submissions as of Issue #52, meaning we are finally accepting and printing all forms of creative writing and art that is currently possible to.

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