Volume 48, Issue 1 Editor’s Note As the new year is rolling in, I have become increasingly aware of the things I want to do, of the things I have yet to do, and of the breakneck speed at which many of us are already conducting our daily lives. I hope that this issue finds you well and that it will provide a space for you away from the constant chaos of mundanity. These poems and art pieces were selected because they took us away from the everyday, or else held up a mirror and reflected it back to us in ways both familiar and new. But more importantly, they made us smile; they made us sad; they made us think. I trust they will do the same for you. Sophia Lee Editor-in-Chief
Editorial Board Editor-in-Chief Sophia Lee Design Editor Zoe Stoller Copy Editors Brianne Alphonso Daniel Finkel Public Relations Director Karis Stephen Associate Design Editors Alex Anderson Emma Ibrahim Associate Copy Editors Xinyi Chen Lea Eisenstein Christopher Medrano Andrew Park Associate Public Relations Directors Ariella Davner Jillian Karande Associate Editor Jessica Burke
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Contents Attention Colin Lodewick
Carmilla at Midnight Suzy Kim
Mango Sellers Near Bagan, Myanmar Stewart Manley Reverse (Distortion) Divya Ramesh
A Contemplative Education Michael Demyan Perfect Corey Loftus
Summer of DIY Sacraments Madeleine Wattenbarger asleep soda Scott Bonette Sleepwalk Lea Eisenstein
Perspectives Divya Ramesh
Accidental Terrill Warrenburg Disorientation Kejia Wang
Blurred [Staff] Lines Rachel Erani Merry Christmas Linda Lin
Heart Surgery Divya Ramesh
Vengeance Intercession Madeleine Wattenbarger Poem for MDF Michael Demyan
The Periodic Table of the Elements Kate Oksas Blue Earth From Above Belle Carlson Backbend Marie McFalls
A Short Poem About Death John Knapp Cover Art by Anny Zhuo
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10 11 12 13 14 16 17 18 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 28
Attention Colin Lodewick My attention leaned on your blue true dream of sky And leaned on and on and on so Enraptured, coalesced by an inky velvety moonless night and skin on skin on skin on skin
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Carmilla at Midnight Suzy Kim Pale plaster for your eyelids Dried roses for your lips Streets darken with bloody eclipse Crimson victims are left eyeless Glass for your fingernails Brass coil for your hair Creases crumble on your skin As the flames harden silk Come drink, come drink—the voice rails As her locks brush against its cheeks so fair Tempting, bulging the original sin That which banished the mother’s milk At last you bit, pleasures possess— Life in her blood, slips.
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Mango Sellers Near Bagan, Myanmar Stewart Manley Photography 7
Reverse (Distortion) Divya Ramesh Recorded on some cassette tape and played back to me an octave lower in some city’s courtroom where I’ve never held permanent address, I can disown that voice with no remorse and blame you—for I have a recorder too, and it could also be my cassette and your voice.
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A Contemplative Education Michael Demyan with my cardigan billowing open and cold air filling my alcove of books— the snow blizzards itself against lampposts while the forlorn steel of my desk sits in patience of my love—but the window filled by the grey New York City images of Patti Smith keep me away, for she is wandering the streets in her steak pocketed raincoat, and there I am on the corner Sam Shepard.
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Perfect Corey Loftus If perfect was a thing you catch you’d better keep it locked up tight in a box inside another larger locked box chained to a cement wall buried in a cell 1000ft below the earth guarded by a highly-trained security unit equipped with surveillance and watchtowers Rattling Writhing with force It would try relentlessly to escape Your every day consumed with keeping watch But You would have all the things you always wanted Praise and attention from all the people you thought mattered Tall and slender Composed, polite Confident yet humble But this mask of beauty would hide your worried wrinkled skin and fearful tired eyes, always watching your sacred box And on your last day, you would wonder who the real prisoner was all along.
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Summer of DIY Sacraments Madeleine Wattenbarger 1. Go down to Brighton Beach and slough this off Boardwalk borscht Slick-skinned families with leather hides and I anoint myself with sun Feet meet seafoam Kick shame around
oil
This a lonely kelp-laced baptism Immersion partial as faith Instead of doves, seagulls 2. Painted mouths, meet
body and blood
I mark the goblet with lips too red for the priest to wipe clean I thought that was kind of the point: swish of a towel between each sweaty congregant, atonement for my dried-blood maw 3. Crude rite
and aftermath
A week away from water, my body still molts shore’s residue Flaking flesh Dandruff sand I shudder off the earth, still shed minerals still sputter spit salt To dust again
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asleep soda Scott Bonette i am treading in images anything when written in context glam forth to call on anything in repetition in mashup mĂŠnage Ă trois with a brutal work taking up a window wall *and we danse on the make believe wall on the quilt by the windowsill and we find inspiration in hair-ties we engage in fifth column fisticuffs which is subversive content manipulation through embedded performance art in the normal arc of oneself *we are but a piece and then when the glass mannequins swirled on tablecloths we managed not only to look but to wonder aloud and to be wandered upon therein by causation heretic xylophone players continued to fall pale under our gaze it was the only place they could be found in the end and then we became part of it
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Sleepwalk Lea Eisenstein Black and white silver print 13
Perspectives Divya Ramesh “This morning, France blew up an island in the Pacific, to test a bomb. That must have been a whopper of a bomb or a zit of an island” — “Lake” by Brian Doyle The knife in the butcher’s hand, demise to the thrashing squab, lunch to the woman who clinks her wallet clasp on the counter. The bull’s head mounted on the wall, above a plaque in a café in Las Ventas, sunken brown beads reflect the staring blue irises of a man who just cheered from the stone seats of Plaza de Toros. For victor and victim, each his own story. From the snowy regolith of the moon, Earth is the waning crescent swallowed slowly by its shadow, and Africa is an island, shaped like a toddler’s right fist print on a gesso board painted blue. Optical illusion that bestrides generations where a grandmother’s nose becomes a daughter’s chin with a second glance, and where whispered secrets between shadows hide behind a Rubin vase when the figure ground reverses. When Monet’s water lilies magnify 14
as O’Keefe’s calla lilies, on gold leaf, on red, on pink, on grey, to find the most becoming viewpoint on which to paint a memory, like the backdrop in the photo booth that lives in light or lives in shadow, capturing friendships or infatuations, printing human faces or caricatures in Polaroid perspective.
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Accidental Terrill Warrenburg Mixed media on canvas
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Disorientation Kejia Wang You took away my songs and stars, led me through a door that could close on itself. The lasers beyond the glass pane glared brighter than my eyes. Even when skyscrapers hug and kiss the skyline I can only stand on top of the world and wonder why the chill is the same as that of the pavement. Humans will always decay faster than concrete. Why is it just so much easier — so much harder — to vertically accelerate? The Earth loves too much to allow one to stop.
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Blurred [Staff] Lines Rachel Erani There I was elbows pointing hips swaying from side to side legs shifting my body weight from one to the other the corners of my mouth curling up in a guilt-laden smirk it felt good Until they banged on the walls of my ventricles and broke down the barriers of my skull it hurt I try to resist to block them to protect myself but they penetrate me the words they penetrate my grey matter like it’s pink I try really hard not to think so as not to encourage them it really hurts
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A word to the wise: Stay away from trebles Don’t flirt with basses And be careful next time you invite the beat in
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Merry Christmas Linda Lin Photography
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Heart Surgery Divya Ramesh Tubes bend out of her heart, take her warmth places it hasn’t touched yet, (before the blood turns cold) It doesn’t look as big now as it looked then When she gave her shoes to the homeless man on 3rd Street. When she fostered two children and all the dentures clicked, at her big heart. That heart coughs now under the surgeon’s knives, stripped of its person. The homeless man from 3rd street and two foster daughters grip the sides of the hospital bed On the heart rate monitor, the line is flat but their sobbing breaths in synchrony keep her blood in those she loved.
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Vengeance Intercession Madeleine Wattenbarger O we of multiple infirmities We water in which dishes were washed Good secretary of my prayers I’ll tell you how it is I’m a poorly written first-person narrative Prophetic, mythic, full of sacred contradictions I was brave once but now I’m afraid of the woods at night I’m afraid of strange men and unkindness He wasn’t afraid of heights but he was afraid of other profundities, the ones that I saw I’ll tell you how it is: fallen angel, tainted worship Prescribe him a better baptism Just say you’ll crush his head
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Poem for MDF Michael Demyan It is hard getting to the stairs for now, with my mind it is hard pulling at my legs to mold some shape for me to stand on— I touch the sheets you’ve left, turned away from me to hear the stove making ready the day, we must return yet the ledge is bright and you stand where the sun stands. What I do now chop wood to heat this Massachusetts cabin is to hold you on a Manhattan couch when it is raining or when it isn’t.
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The Periodic Table of the Elements Kate Oksas The Periodic Table of the Elements and the shell casing with the flowers Trading beliefs on a corner in the city in the cold And you are not my sunshine, But you are my one request I sleep wrapped around your name With your words held to my chest You are doubtless, Mess and music Sunset swells and storms burnt out Dreams that play without permission Hurricanes and aftershocks And mild mornings unraveling, gray on gold. I will never be able to know what you are. Of casting out and holding on, I don’t know which means losing more. You’re far from home— I’m farther. Done exchanging, feet are freezing, wind picks up.
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Blue Earth From Above Belle Carlson Photography 25
Backbend Marie McFalls He cradles his hand behind me cut he’s pushing my front back until my neck unhinges letting loose lips gape open and pressing wristed veins dangerously close from whence they came. I don’t look like the alpha, I’m just the omega, don’t get it twisted — I’m just curving piece by piece in the same unfathomable increment. This is it This is it This is the smell of the ground and the feeling of rocks on your heel and blood vibrating past your knuckles and dust clinging to your lungs. And I’m the infinite alabaster curve punctuated only by a navel (a slip of the hammer) and a crescendo of free-flowing gold. And in my contortion, in this state that you see fit 26
to mingle my gold with the dust, know that these are the birth pangs of death. Know that this is the awful fulfillment, This is how the end bit the beginning’s bosom This is how agony seduced ecstasy This is the child conceived on a deathbed This is how you came still and I’ll leave shaking. I’m just the omega, and I’ll end you if it’s the last thing I do.
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A Short Poem About Death John Knapp Sometimes I think in the car in the bedroom in earnest that I’m going to die and the only thing that makes this bearable is the image of myself: happy as Old Friend Death —my longtime companion— enters, slow and grim, slaps my back and yells “Ah, you old poet bastard!” to which I yield and fade in the odd light of smile—
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Author & Artist Biographies Scott Bonette, 27, is a senior studying English and cinema. Belle Carlson is a California artist whose passion for photography bloomed from an intuitive desire to pursue, capture, and create beauty. Michael Demyan drives a pick-up truck, builds scenery, climbs mountains, co-edits DenimSkin magazine, and is currently based in NYC. Lea Eisenstein is a 19-year-old who likes to make and look at visual art when she isn’t doing other things. Rachel Erani is a junior studying English with a concentration in Creative Writing and is interested in writing about music as a potential career path. Suzy Kim is a senior from Korea studying Victorian literature in the College of Arts and Sciences. John Knapp is a poet and artist living in the Pocono Mountains. Linda Lin is a sophomore majoring in Art History and minoring in Fine Arts. Colin Lodewick is a freshman in the College considering majoring in Environmental Studies and English. Corey Loftus is a sophomore in the College studying Art History, is Online Editor for IMPACT blog, volunteers with the Urban Nutrition Initiative, and loves to spend her time reading and doing yoga.
Stewart Manley is a Visiting Lecturer in the Faculty of Law, University of Malaya, Malaysia. Marie McFalls was raised in Philadelphia and is currently deeply undecided about her major but spends her time listening to rap, drinking chai tea, and dancing while she figures it out. Kate Oksas is a College sophomore interested in neuroscience, writing, and everything in between. She is studying Biological Basis of Behavior with a minor in Creative Writing. Divya Ramesh writes; there’s not much else a person can do with a Ticonderoga pencil collection. Kejia Wang is a senior in Bioengineering who stuffs her poems into empty coffee bottles before setting them adrift at sea. Terrill Warrenburg is an artist and designer focusing on natural elements and spontaneity with a strong drawing hand. Madeleine Wattenbarger is neither a nun, nor a barber, nor a college graduate, yet. Anny Zhuo is a freshman in the School of Nursing and a pug fanatic pondering the meaning of life.
This issue of The Penn Review was made possible through the generosity of SAC and the Kelly Writers House. For more information about The Penn Review, please contact us at pennreview@gmail.com or visit our website pennreviewlitmag.wordpress.com.