Penn Review: Spring 2010 by Penn Review

THE PENN REVIEW SPRING 2010

K?< G<EE I<M@<N Literary and Visual Arts Magazine University of Pennsylvania Spring 2010

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<;@KFI@8C 9F8I; Malka Fleischmann ............. Editor-in-Chief John Evans ........................... Layout & Design Editor Valeria Tsygankova .............. Associate Editor Natalie Vielkind ................... Associate Editor Michelle Perlin ..................... Associate Editor Rivka Fogel........................... Associate Editor Chris Milione ....................... Associate Editor Garret McKay ....................... Associate Editor Nick Stergiopoulos .............. Treasurer Landon Reitz ....................... Literary Liaison Rachel Taube ....................... Literary Liaison Juli Van Hoeven ................... Literary Liaison

JK8== D<D9<IJ John Evans Rivka Fogel Michael Foster Lisa Harris Juli Van Hoeven Garret McKay Chris Milione Michelle Perlin

Arvind Raman Landon Reitz Jeremy Safran Nick Stergiopoulos Jessica Sutro Rachel Taube Natalie Vielkind

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What to do with all the things we don’t have a place to put but cannot throw away? Lay out the words on a picnic blanket, on grassy sharp shadows? You kept me snowing. Snowglobing, snapping lines like chop sticks. Dragging my lines through you. Couldn’t take my heart out while chiseling expanses that contain. Sentences are like daddy longlegs, multiple touches on multiple surfaces. Every day drops off beneath me--we are airplane feet leaping into air. Sometimes you brush my air. Mostly “I” wanders about trying to find “am”, tracing blood’s breath, digging fossils out of skin. Recapping, or rearranging, reoccurring, reaping, reappearing tongue a beaded door of dreamwork. You’re taking forever, probably whisper bound? Hell, I’m off to the dream market with my wicker basket. Gonna get some citronella candles to keep off the mosquitoes and a headlamp. I’m not afraid of leaving where I’m housed. Poke my damn soul already, will you? I’m holding a dollar down your throat. Dropping below the neckline now-

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Today in the weight of rain, the mountain has once again collapsed, its grey-robed choirs insensibly spilling. Perhaps tomorrow it will not turn its cheek away.

My coat sleeves are drab and patient as dogs, each one obedient to its peg, each creased with quarry dust and the skirmish of the river’s roiling.

My knife is indentured to the canvas that strains—the bowl unsustainably mortgaged to the slant of light, the throat of the unabashed figure in the corner—my wife who is my prop, my gristmill, my martyr who sits humbly for me, damning that paint for being paint and me for every lie. ) The Penn Review

North sheds light onto the pour of the teapot on the table’s hard swill, stroked by my brush gold, then impasto of long-gone sovereignty. River stones and grass, the juggernaut of honey that harbors the sting.

The three skulls in the corner sweat like mules under the lash. My heavy-lidded plaster Cupid—helplessly committed.

Dust motes sift. In the vase, a mutiny of wilting—orange blossoms, peonies, yellow tulips, open roses, mindful only of their own cut stems. Flowers! I’ve had enough.

Only my apples are loyal, and the blue carafe, which I will turn into fire— each thing must be riveted to its hide.

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Without my eyes you won’t know it’s there, slicing the dark air warmed by your breath into neat spiral shavings, winding around our tangled limbs and tangled tongues grown heavy with sleep even our fingers entwined, save my one free hand, even our hair When was it woven, this web, its soft silver strings sown with needles, their touch light as spiders’ feet, when we were still simple friends? while you rest, satisfied, I lay tracing the strands, untangle the thread with my eyes Trying to find where it starts, where it ends

+ The Penn Review

Tenyana Anue Maia ,

- The Penn Review

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Were they people or were they places/ we could listen to? In two more months/ did they get out to drown in the field or was there no field,/ but only compromise? When her tongue licked him imaginary,/ engendering gender in him, did he/ waver just under momentarily? When they found/ distorted figures outside his field of hallucination, did/ he remain there, counting brown on her arms with his fingertips,/ wired muscles feeling now so covering-and/ or-revealing. There are things/ that know more about you/ than other things. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s/ a frost that comes every two days and/ under the wall it whispers something, yes, tongue, teeth and, maybe, the boats.

Gareth Glaser Oh the Dunes

I@MB8 =F><C ;@JKLI98E:< RN8IT we have folds where the city strikes us. our faces are chapped our pages are center-justified at van saun petting zoo you are too short and too old to reach above the bars here in philadelphia we. blow up city hall two times once for the world series once for the first black president the. yangtze in china is also called the golden waterway israel. is in gaza because gaza has become israel this. poem is not autobiographical i. don’t think dante’s inferno is only one of a tripartite series that ends in paradiso the new york skyline is. suddenly. empty we smell the smoke for months afterward on our hands in our hair over the passaic river we. see the hardest believers eating yellow gelato on street-corners in hoboken soon. we are in love this. is. new and we do not. like it all we know about love we. learn playing barbies or. matchcars if we. are so. inclined no we. do not like it at all the sum of the squares of the two sides equals the square of the hypotenuse in. a right triangle these. periods subvert our agenda i. am not in love. with you we catch each other staring he is four and wearing orange an orange hat and a pudgy chin unusual here philadelphia’s god grins from his position over the city he is three hundred years old and stone by now by now we do not miss the seventies we see them every night at ten pee-em eastern on fx which in new jersey is channel forty by now the zionists are taking. over the world no one cares [except if they do] a model in brazil is infected. we amputate her hands and her feet the emptiness is sad and full a man’s dog falls in love with him my first boyfriend loves death cab for cutie we. become exceptionally that is. what we do why we. don’t capitalize lefties regress to the extreme sometimes so. so too fast [we move] the. yangtze [moves] at thirty-one-thousand-nine-hundred meters cubed per second on average anything that is an escape is an object of addiction as the ever not knowing [the not knowing ever] right as the poem so okay this is the truth increasingly once upon a time there is a mirror in the sky it is satan’s mirror and it is white and glass and then it is broken and there is glass all over covering the world in trees in grass there is a boy all brown like the earth except his eyes are glass there is a boy sitting on the street-corner’s yellow double lines writing haiku he counts out the syllables on his fingers so far semicolons not. withstanding this. is what we mean when we say he tries to find out the truth is. a 2005 movie with dean cain and ari solomon a model in brazil is dead if. anyone asks we are there as ourselves all right right now you need a haircut the lights go out at eleven the passion tea is done we double-bag the garbage when it leaks we wear haircuts on bluestreaked paradise we bury our grandfathers in jerusalem / The Penn Review

city of. purple jeweled metal bracelets from urban outfitters on thirty-fourth not thirty-second where the anatomy lab is where room one. a is always history of philosophy where we. always move we only stop we go dancing on saturday night with heraclitus and parmenides our tee-shirts are black as. rain [the rain is a voyeur] the downstairs bathroom faces the outside the last week he is small in the sheets there is a hole [in the wall] the size of a silver metalled doorknob jawed as the line where we break it oh. but this is the town we meet each other at the movies we kiss on the lips bonjour bonjour we abandon our passionate identities we rush our ghosts three times dante lifts whole sections from the kingdom of the dead weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re too. two as in too bad or believe too [much] excuse me pardon me forgive me this is difficult for those of you who are younger than the death of. just as we start reading the books which we get from tourists we celebrate something happens are we. happy now back. again from. dust to city of. always running [fivesevenfive] every portrait wants to be. golden we. sing the signs you. are only creating more and more. problems you. are weakening this. is an elegy

John Evans Havelské Tržište

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John Evans Ablution Before Prayer

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He sat in chambers muddied but tight well fit between mumblings of public silence of companion-less benches and passersby toying keys as neglects of inner cities raw a protest i a plea eye u

Nate Adler The Terezin Aftermath () The Penn Review

N<E;P ;I<OC<I D8E FE 8 N@I< To mince into thinness, utterly absorbed, every microcentimeter quivering the sovereign brace and ballast of each slow muscle, each bushel of air. To inflect the slack middle, the swaying dissonance. To threshold the balancing pole like a bride across. To let no one reach him, no one catch him, not even the cops who come close: only the rake of light, the ledge his refusing, taking his time. To stay then, ecstatic like thatâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;

;<I :8E8;8 We were in a cabin, somewhere in the forest. Those stars, of magnets and moons, the return of disco. Oh and you could have swore that something had changed, that things were finally different. The telescope was aimed through the window at Jupiterâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;just the knowledge that we were living in a very large womb, at last, at last. Deep in the night, we heard the river turning over itself, and I could smell mother in front of the stove making blackberry soup.

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It’s too late now, though the dream has just begun for one, Ben Kristoff, 10, of Manhasset, NY. He will become an accountant like his dad. For him, the dream died somewhere between his crush on Beth Kingsley and never asking his parents for a telescope until the stars became faint from disuse. He spent nights fading them in front of TV screens until he walked outside to his car at sixteen with beers and didn’t notice them gone. It is at this party that he will see Beth Kingsley walk past with a subtle glow that makes her too beautiful to forego anymore. He has the night’s sky to blame for her.

A<JJ@:8 I@MF D8B< DP ;8P To make: good time, love, love in good time, love as a good time. I had a good time in love. To make using one’s fingers. To make out. She made out okay. Outmodeled: No longer made. Lemon, to aid one’s making. To make by not. To make to take. To track and chart. You cannot go to a store that sells different ways to make a day. Days are not like lego sets. You cannot lay days like eggs, but try this for lunch: Boxed poetry • sandwich baggie of cigarettes (who needs carrots?) • Tinfoil wrapped metaphor • my (paper) heart between two slices of bread • juicebox of irony Don’t I see? The day is always in motion whether you like it or not. Festering topography of the face, the making of mouth shapes. Motion is needed to make, unless you are making stillness. And who wants stillness; you can’t lick a pot with nothing in it. When I go to the night, I look away from the making that is always. Day-tour, detour. Things make themselves inside me, without permission: earwax, urine, lust, memory. Babies. Dopamine. Saliva, bile. Dead skin sells well just not (these) days. Self- help books take your time and sell it to you. Making: Fastening thoughts to thoughts, hanging the edges on hooks (hooking up takes too much time so you hook down), his eyebrows are hooks you ride like a seesaw getting made out of your body. Unconscious karate, Matches Made in Heaven Since 1947.

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Allison Zuckerman Please, oh Please, Stop Throwing Those Uppercuts

Jessie Hornung Stories From Laos

Gareth Glaser Curious Child (/ The Penn Review

Li-Hsing Chen Plan

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Sara Lim Color Study #1

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Allison Zuckerman Russell the Muscle

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Allison Zuckerman I Seant It!...And It Ainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Natural

Jessie Hornung Stories From Vietnam

Julie Charbonnier I Can Almost See You )+ The Penn Review

Olivia Coffey Greg and Jen “Committed”

Olivia Coffey Junie and Ivy “Committed”

Olivia Coffey Evelyn and Thomas “Committed”

)- The Penn Review

Olivia Coffey Tiffany and Morgan “Committed”

Jessie Hornung Tahitian Skies

Sara Lim Chaos in Perth City

Nate Adler Murderous Row )/ The Penn Review

Nate Adler Prokopova

Noah Breslau Fountain *' The Penn Review

Nate Adler A Hungarian Chess Match

Allison Zuckerman Copper-Toned and Bloated: Straight from the Suburbs of Massachusetts

*) The Penn Review

B8K@< B8I8J ?FK GL;>< =L;;@E> Dancing like our bodies meant something. We are raw and sprouting joy. Indoctrinate me in the ways of being.

D8CB8 =C<@J:?D8EE 8E8G?PC8O@J It got to the point, down to the point, of one finger at the other chest. And that, we knew, was a lie. Because when two people are incompatible, there is no place for blame. And it got to the point, bees swarming around my chest Bâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s starting the bu-bum, bu-bum, bu-bum that I felt, that I had to stop, my heart, before it stopped beating.

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C<8EE< >8C< 8 J?8;FN LE;<I K?< FG<E JBP That cold morning, as I floated corpse-like across the leafy ground, a shadow under the open sky, I should have said something to you, something simple. But, instead, I died slowly as I walked along, back into the hungry throng. I remember the one time I did something right, it was when I was alive, but you, ashen and half-lost to the eternal Somewhereâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; and I said the right thing, knowing there was nothing right to say, and I pressed the right spot, soft under your Adam ribsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; can you forgive me for dying on you this time? and can you love me for it?

;<I FE:<# @ ;I<8DK F= 9CL< G8@EK When father cracks every joint in his back, I think of the whale calling to the dark belly of a passing ship. Things happen once, and then I am done. The seat is empty and the air is warm, sit with me, the sky is bending over the rows of angled homes, the children are hiding in their parentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; closets. I should have stolen the painting in my dream.

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ALC@< :?8I9FEE@<I :FD98K Language is the obscure path between flesh and thought, the decadent light of creatures, the soft awakening of dawn. It remains a compromise which must be compromised. A stem which stems and sows serial alternatives, it is no vehicle, it is THE sweeping opaque mist.

N<E;P ;I<OC<I 8CI<8;P K?< IFJ<J are intimate, all of them curling toward themselves.

Even the light brims through as if the whorl of a newborn’s ear.

More light—I am always wanting more— to open each untutored petal

and that still-clenched fist of your heart. I flutter. How unafraid you say you are.

Christina Stewart Untitled */ The Penn Review

M8C<I@8 KJP>8EBFM8 9FI><J GF<D When the thing coagulates is it perhaps no longer ours no longer the small spaces in the cabinet. We say we know what we like but we like limits blinking sleeping inside out to bring the snow or something crucial more cherries. I like bindings the feel of a spine in hand and spining letters open with a binderâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tool the only touch employing the entire alphabet of fingers. Someone walks a street followed by a combination of hauntings. Today is an accident of nature and the way the leaves sound is the sound of wings magnified by the bottom of the ocean. The housefronts grow tall and together and not cold so does a person holding her own body. A character in her own privacy standing on a corner inhabited by other persons and a housecat. I have tried to keep my memory from walking off with all of my things but it has left me with only a pigeon and a high place. If an actor there must be attributes and these are things too that walk off with themselves in the evening. The sun is left and with it the quiet of the solstice. I have worked on this solely to please you but would not reject an odd bottle of wine.

+' The Penn Review

9I@KK8EP PFLE> E<N <E>C8E; I plow the shriveled pipe, a dental scrape on a sappy honey stick. Astute farmers grope raspberries and gooseberries, dimpled old faces. Sandy sea-salted skins wallow on the naked shore. Pallid Yankees stare as the ocean bears beach-goers, the bikinied edition of the rise of man from the primordial depths. Cocoa-creamed children tease their mothers, abduct anchored mollusks lapping on the shore. I am beached between this mental region and your faceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; the obstinate granules caught at the nail bed. Plate tectonics pull taut the latitude, my worn smile. Fault lines repel as the rift amplifies.

A<JJ@:8 I@MF KI<CC@J F= NFI;J I. oh to contain oh in a border inside body tissue paper of coming off my surfaces. Oh come off it already. For minutes in time I will be on time for lithe thoughts lie over each other like tracing paper. Still in motion. Finish now these rattling line breaks of air and tear; tears--chrysalises of seconds twinkle in time you can’t; rocking you to sound soaring over your locked legs, hands climb out of throat swallowing the hollowed out home. Fingers wound up in a trellis of ribs while the lungs travel the spiral staircase. Later you’re willing again, with that will tangled out of shape. Wired to tear. II. The ground moving underskin, through the inside outside.

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footsteps. wait. “Where, where?” (the pen eavesdropping on what comes next) SHUSSSH! Away from this dribbled castle blooming with light-delectable, undetectable dream-work. dropped dots of flicker, thigh speech-fingertip breath on a slide— +) The Penn Review

held it up to the light so its contrast screams and landscape slips out of legs, lines loosing their endpoints against the sorry float down to site the peak ciched, pocketed, lens wiped. (On sight: See above, against, through. In.) Finished. oh to contain oh in a border inside body tissue paper

Li-Hsing Chen Lead Them Up or Down?

A<== 8P8IJ 8 E@>?K 8K B8=B8ËJ When I awoke Saturday morning from unsettling dreams, I found myself changed into a monstrous vermin. It was then I promised myself that seriously, without a doubt, this would be the last time I’d sacrifice a night’s rest for an “emergency sleep-over” at Franz Kafka’s apartment. To tell you the truth, it wasn’t even the nominal fact that he had crafted me into a paper-mache insect while in the midst of my slumber—I’ve dealt with this before. No, the source of my despair lay in the way he employed his superfluous collection of only the most atrocious comic strips as he impishly molded me into a pasty vermin. Alas, it was my fate to have the mind-numbing chronicles of Rex Morgan, M.D., burned into my retinas as I floundered pathetically over the side of Franz’s top bunk. Looking past the hours it took to exhume myself from the chalky pile of splintered beetle, regardless of the ensuing nightmare that was once my body, my purpose is not to criticize Franz Kafka’s boisterous antics, but rather to explain to you that such a personality even exists within him. As I read through the critiques of Kafka by my contemporaries, I find myself altogether frustrated with this popular, and let me assure you, utterly bogus, “wet blanket” reputation that Kafka has been cursed with. The most common misconception about my friend of twenty-some odd years is that his temperament is altogether depressing and anxious—for in fact he is a rather talkative and sociable fellow. I think it suffices to say that a gloomy man could never have momentarily convinced me that the birthday cake he was making me was one part batter and the other parts rainbows, giggles and fairy dust (soon thereafter, I had a suspicious presentiment seeing only a gourmet slue of eggs, salt, and backwashed whiskey). Frequently, the content of Kafka’s writing falls under intense scrutiny and analysis, which is, as I discovered, simply amusing to him. “I’m not sure where exactly I was commenting on ‘man’s anxiety in the presence of an anonymous, ubiquitous enemy,’ frankly I think I fudged the last four chapters. Perhaps next time I’ll express my misanthropic rage through the point of view of a socially-retarded house-cat. At any rate, if any of this is left around for posterity, I’m sure some kid will find himself jamming pencils through his ears trying to figure it out,” he said in a playfully hostile tone. While he may laugh at those who ascribe such potency to his every word, that isn’t to say, that Kafka is not a clever man. When dining out last Tuesday evening, Kafka looked up at me mischievously from his redundant spaghetti noodle twirling, and immediately I recognized that rascally look in his eye. “My friend, if I may, I’d like to ask a favor of you. When this whole tuberculosis thing is done ravaging my body, I’d like all my works and scribbling destroyed. Of course, you needn’t have any intention of fulfilling this ++ The Penn Review

request—in fact, see to it that you don’t. But you just have to make it appear as if you’re acting alone and defying my dying wishes. I feel sure the public will then feel an ineffable desire to revere my works forever.” He continued to aimlessly toil with his spaghetti—it seemed he hadn’t been eating since the tuberculosis had worsened. He saw me carnally eyeing the wasted cuisine. “As for the tuberculosis, it’s not so bad. Despite what the doctor says, I think I could stomach a good meal.” “So why don’t you eat then?” “Because I simply can’t find any food that I like.”

Gareth Glaser Street Life

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8EFEPDFLJ JCFN <LIFG<8E train rides. that’s how I’ve been counting time. each one is a chain of little films that look the way the word castle feels, settled, subtle. And I’m not, I’m restless like those grains of sun in my hair (how I remember standing in your window trapping them) and how when I think of you I stare out at the passing lakes & all the swans are floating together like a strange winter peony blooming itself to death

John Evans Karluv Most

Jessie Hornung Stories From Laos

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Jessie Hornung Stories From Vietnam

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I want your pharmakon! Could you solicit me something in the same vein That’s less poisonous than the last prescription? Resurrect me, shadow dancer And shine on my illicit appendages— Pinned on, awkward tales of asses at birthday parties. Last time, the high was so fucking good, We were above this world and the next And I could see, I mean, you know, really, really see None of that phony nonsense. See, C’s at it again and its making me boat-sick. Slim, you lack a Real body this time You’re bound to crumble, cookie monstrosity. Lets whirl around the world. I’m coming to dig this etherized nightmare. L: Latent Laziness Loves Lofty Literary Lapses Laundry Later? My dear, you put a red sock in with the whites And washed away the insufferable brightness. Now we’re all wearing pink. Its cute! Please prescribe me a signifier for this post-modern condition Because my hangover won’t allow Me to think straight, and it’s throbbing. Melodrama suits me Blue balling Yes, yes! Pick your words as carefully as you pick your apples It’s not autumn, though, so something isn’t matching up In the equation, and 1 to 1 doesn’t work in this place. One, toot, enough.

,' The Penn Review

But the sky is still blue, and the water is too Except when it rains and the pond reflects That nothing-color. Ours was a fleeting love, but we knew that from the start. Speed and Machine: botched future thrust That yellow rollercoaster to hell, We took it down the throat, laughing in surreal enjoyment That was so sincere it burned. Next time, lets try and drop that dialectical ball Because its only fun when we miss the hoop. Bounce it back to me Check it in triple duple time— One-and, two-and, three-and We’re wired up and ready for takeoff But the engine’s exploded And everyone down below Thinks its just another star blown out hard One billion light-years ago

,) The Penn Review

Jessie Hornung Dutch Land

B8K@< B8I8J :FGPI@K<J creatively common I am commonly uncreative creatively uncommon uncreatively common and all such permutations I copied her because I thought she as right right, right? right wrong copy wrong wringing hands wrung, wring creativity out of the rag that is my brain, sullied water swirling down the drain to join everything EVERY THING common common common common special common not common consumptive communality of consumption, common I want to live in a commune, commonly, with my friends, they are quite uncommon uncommonly kind wise creative and here we come back full-circle what a common phrase have I communicated common myself common to common you common? this is not creative, just common you may copy, but whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s to say whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s right

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mister hedgehog approached me yesterday, at the store i was standing near the melons he was bouncing bananas he said let’s join forces i said the silence between these lines not dedicated he pricked, said i am not silence, no am an image and what’s the use of silence to anyone other than a synaesthete (i’m an aesthete and my mum always told me steer clear of sin like taking melons over there from the icebox or quills in your foot i’m very smart i said and i do not like categories the difference between this and sex is that i do not wish to kill the stanza SEX he said oh i wish my quills could be used for subcutaneous injections (i chose that word because it has “cute” in it or also for reproduction because they are always getting dirty dear i said but where are the parentheses the literary canon pound was an imagist hd was an imagist stein had SEX with picasso oh! dear later, olson the hedgehog: belligerence is overvalued hyperrationality is too hyper and why pull myself away from the symbols to analyze them because i love things too much even the primacy of phallic symbols in this poem i jump! i sniff i have a part in everything it’s a theological point of view a conventional distinction for example, this image mister HEDGEHOG OH (this is real in space) ,+ The Penn Review

Tenyana Anue Iguana

N<E;P ;I<OC<I GI<J<EK$K<EJ< im Barclay Adams (1936-2009) At the summer house while the rest of us walk the beach, or swim, and laugh, and after many showers, make dinner, our friend is shuffling unsteadily onto the patio, watching, weightless as a paper doll. Now he comes to the table to sit among us, occupied with the small motions of eating. Tell us, someone asks, what have you loved? And he brightens, grapples to strap consonant to vowel to name the mountain he loved to ski, his voice rising, asserting, and we, grateful to be freed from our dread of vacancy and ravagement, are schussing with him now in that deep white swath.

,- The Penn Review

John Evans Weight of the World

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i make an omelet for breakfast and the tomato sauce drips the girl across the hall her name is caroline her nails are very long my shoes are very red they match the sauce on the kitchen floor at shoprite i am told that my savings are thirty five cents would i like to sign up for promotional offers itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s buy one new get one used in the book aisle where florentina is in the hands of a pirate named flavius caroline has piles of these in a carton under her bed of marguerites and scarlets and the occasional jane stuck behind the front right corner where masking tape holds the edges together as today we eat omelets they look bruised she says, caroline i mean and dear i like them with onions

,/ The Penn Review

Nate Adler The Roman

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