THE PENN REVIEW Literary and Visual Arts Magazine University of Pennsylvania Spring 2011
EDITOR’S NOTE Spellbinding, wry, dicey, tranquil, jittery, ecstatic, contorted, disturbing, uplifting and mundane as lived experience. And there’s an awful lot of talk about snow in the first half, not that I’m not complicit. In short, welcome, reader, to another year’s small sampling of the creativity that murmurs steadily on and around this university’s campus. In the interest of including as much work as page limits will permit, this year we once again neglect to provide any information, names excepted, about the visual artists and writers who contributed to this magazine. With apologies for the slight, I urge you to believe that most of these people exist and work on many interesting projects outside of the Penn purview. Thank you to all of them for their work. I am especially grateful, as well, to all the editors and staff who worked on this collaborative project. In our weekly conversations we made it new, turned it old, gave it depth, skimmed its surfaces, asked it for redemption, asked it to take out the trash, cited it surreptitiously, staged it a serious intervention, chopped it up and moved its pieces around. We were left with art that asks what are the (im)possible dictionaries, grammars and visual vocabularies of worlds that aren’t ours, that we thankfully can imagine. Art that keeps its veils in place, beauty a subtext, longevity a loosed skein. Valeria Tsygankova Editor-in-Chief
CONTENTS [LITERARY]
EDITORIAL BOARD Valeria Tsygankova .............. Editor-in-Chief John Evans ........................... Art Editor; Layout & Design Editor Chris Milione ....................... Associate Editor Rachel Taube ....................... Associate Editor Rivka Fogel........................... Associate Editor Landon Reitz ....................... Associate Editor Arvind Raman ..................... Associate Editor Michelle Perlin ..................... Associate Editor
STAFF MEMBERS Olivia Rutigliano Kiley Bense Eliana Machefsky Elan Kiderman Rivky Mondal Michael Petegorsky Ashlee Paxton-Turner Nathan Green Anna Strong
JANE SHIM KILEY BENSE VALERIA TSYGANKOVA MATT CHYLAK RIVKA FOGEL RACHEL TAUBE JANET CHOW LILY AVNET CHRIS MILIONE JANE SHIM GARY KAFER ZANETA CHENG VALERIA TSYGANKOVA MATT CHYLAK CHRIS MILIONE ANNA STRONG CHELSEA STRICKLAND ANNA STRONG ALEX NICULESCU GABE DONNAY NAOMI SHAVIN KILEY BENSE
ON THE SHUTTLE BUS TO TOWN TO THE JADE PLANT ON MY WINDOWSILL WITH UNCLEAR MOTIVE ON THE WEATHER CHANGING IT SNOWED TODAY IN SAN FRANCISCO TERTIAN OVERFLOW DISORDER AFTERTHOUGHT FAULKNER TYTTHOSTONYX GLAUCONITICUS POEM NUMBER TWO HERE AM I NOD, V. WITH HANDS LIKE PEOPLE’S HANDS POTBELLY EXEGESIS WRISTS CUBAN LOVE SONG MONSTER PORN CINQUAINS UNDER THE CHICKEN COOP SILHOUETTE VACUUM
1 5 6 8 12 14 16 30 33 35 36 37 38 40 42 44 45 48 51 57 58 63
CONTENTS [LITERARY]
EDITORIAL BOARD Valeria Tsygankova .............. Editor-in-Chief John Evans ........................... Art Editor; Layout & Design Editor Chris Milione ....................... Associate Editor Rachel Taube ....................... Associate Editor Rivka Fogel........................... Associate Editor Landon Reitz ....................... Associate Editor Arvind Raman ..................... Associate Editor Michelle Perlin ..................... Associate Editor
STAFF MEMBERS Olivia Rutigliano Kiley Bense Eliana Machefsky Elan Kiderman Rivky Mondal Michael Petegorsky Ashlee Paxton-Turner Nathan Green Anna Strong
JANE SHIM KILEY BENSE VALERIA TSYGANKOVA MATT CHYLAK RIVKA FOGEL RACHEL TAUBE JANET CHOW LILY AVNET CHRIS MILIONE JANE SHIM GARY KAFER ZANETA CHENG VALERIA TSYGANKOVA MATT CHYLAK CHRIS MILIONE ANNA STRONG CHELSEA STRICKLAND ANNA STRONG ALEX NICULESCU GABE DONNAY NAOMI SHAVIN KILEY BENSE
ON THE SHUTTLE BUS TO TOWN TO THE JADE PLANT ON MY WINDOWSILL WITH UNCLEAR MOTIVE ON THE WEATHER CHANGING IT SNOWED TODAY IN SAN FRANCISCO TERTIAN OVERFLOW DISORDER AFTERTHOUGHT FAULKNER TYTTHOSTONYX GLAUCONITICUS POEM NUMBER TWO HERE AM I NOD, V. WITH HANDS LIKE PEOPLE’S HANDS POTBELLY EXEGESIS WRISTS CUBAN LOVE SONG MONSTER PORN CINQUAINS UNDER THE CHICKEN COOP SILHOUETTE VACUUM
1 5 6 8 12 14 16 30 33 35 36 37 38 40 42 44 45 48 51 57 58 63
CONTENTS [VISUAL ARTS] Cover:
MEGAN LEWIS VELONG, I AM MY OWN PUPPET. DYLAN HEWITT JEFF WEN AUDE BROOS ELLEN FREEMAN
NÍGER LAILA BEY
BONNIE ARBITTIER ALLISON ZUCKERMAN CLARE DIN YE ELLA LU JOE CIOFFI MEGAN LEWIS VELONG JANE CHENG MISHA CHAKRABARTI CLAIRE NIEBERGALL RACHEL IVANHOE ADAM BEHRENS WHITNEY IRIS MUFSON MICHAEL CHIEN ELAN KIDERMAN
MANNEQUIN REFLECTION OLD MAN LOOKING IN TIME DOES NOT WAIT ALMUERZO COLETTE FRIDAY MARKET STORM KING DOLL HOUSE AT MANZANITA MOSEY ROSSCLAIR CATALPA NERVES POLITICALLY EXPOSED (PRESIDENT OBAMA’S RALLY) BEACHES BOYS MAN AND HIS BEST FRIEND UNTITLED BLIND SARDINE TWEAK CRAMPED CLOG MUTTER WITNESS EVENING GLOW AHH. AMERICA KRANKHEIT 4 ROOM.RED ROOM.BLUE SPECTATEUR BATTLEFIELD PAINTING POLLUTION CAKE VESPERS MORTON IS A PRINCESS OREGON TRAIL AN ADOLESCENT PERCEPTION SELF I SELF V POEMETRY
2 3 4 7 11 62 10 30 39 56 13 34 52 53 15 17 22 23 18 19 20 21 24 25 25 26 27 32 28 29 31 43 46 47 54
JANE SHIM
ON THE SHUTTLE BUS TO TOWN
running with it even as the sauce is spilling even while some guy pours beers like a parade of fizzy cars yes candy runts and human runts are bouncing in boxes making click noises and the mountain theres always the mountain theres always free will to violate traffic law or fry some eggs in a crooked skillet hands floppy yolk wobbly the sun feels hot on the right cheek my lips feel dry plaid shirts are hanging on the line I’ll have to bring them inside I ran into an electric fence looking for my toothbrush thats a true story just like when the wind picked a wine glass up off the tiled table it popped into pieces
1
Dylan Hewitt Old Man Looking In
Dylan Hewitt Mannequin Reflection 2 The Penn Review
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Dylan Hewitt Old Man Looking In
Dylan Hewitt Mannequin Reflection 2 The Penn Review
3
KILEY BENSE
TO THE JADE PLANT ON MY WINDOWSILL
The greenness of pores and a silence the roots find in solidity, or the small grains of soil pebbled among them, here is an existence I have failed to realize as higher truth than my own. Time is a great, looming thing broken and slow, a huddled boarder, the twinned wickedness of years and life—
Jeff Wen Time Does Not Wait
4 The Penn Review
the way that it is cut, or how it is blameless for the newspaper skin at my mother’s wrists, or the leaves that peeled away in February, hewn. The leaves that understood that motion forward is what the winter intends, and find no grief, no futility or menace in it.
5
KILEY BENSE
TO THE JADE PLANT ON MY WINDOWSILL
The greenness of pores and a silence the roots find in solidity, or the small grains of soil pebbled among them, here is an existence I have failed to realize as higher truth than my own. Time is a great, looming thing broken and slow, a huddled boarder, the twinned wickedness of years and life—
Jeff Wen Time Does Not Wait
4 The Penn Review
the way that it is cut, or how it is blameless for the newspaper skin at my mother’s wrists, or the leaves that peeled away in February, hewn. The leaves that understood that motion forward is what the winter intends, and find no grief, no futility or menace in it.
5
VALERIA TSYGANKOVA
WITH UNCLEAR MOTIVE
Though the signs slump in the snow you start to think there is something the image wants from you. You’ve forgotten the way back to the place where you last brushed your teeth last lowered your eyelids and spat into a sink below the standard metal frame of a bathroom mirror. Where the condition of your eyes tickled you or seeded in you the suspect image of unwrapped boxes piled just south of a brick wall. A car horn startles the rind of the afternoon. What really startles is this thought seated above and to the left and behind. This sentence made of photographs taken from different angles of a garbage can relentlessly pressed into the snow like a beak into ice cream. The day he said to you it would always look something like this.
Aude Broos Almuerzo 6 The Penn Review
7
VALERIA TSYGANKOVA
WITH UNCLEAR MOTIVE
Though the signs slump in the snow you start to think there is something the image wants from you. You’ve forgotten the way back to the place where you last brushed your teeth last lowered your eyelids and spat into a sink below the standard metal frame of a bathroom mirror. Where the condition of your eyes tickled you or seeded in you the suspect image of unwrapped boxes piled just south of a brick wall. A car horn startles the rind of the afternoon. What really startles is this thought seated above and to the left and behind. This sentence made of photographs taken from different angles of a garbage can relentlessly pressed into the snow like a beak into ice cream. The day he said to you it would always look something like this.
Aude Broos Almuerzo 6 The Penn Review
7
MATT CHYLAK
ON THE WEATHER CHANGING
It always seems to rain on Tuesdays. Wet, black boughs bloom over cement gardens, and the West Philadelphia food carts set up park benches out of Highway 61 Revisited and grilled chicken pitas. Perhaps that’s too convoluted a sentiment for plain-spoken poetry, but I meant for it to ring true, and isn’t that enough? Christmas is coming, and as all the heavens were bells, I would rather enjoy that sort of silver lining to the loneliness of late November afternoons. I eat lunch alone on Tuesdays and Thursdays, because I never learned who was free at the same time as me, and by that I mean who does not have class from 12:00 to 1:30. Please don’t take that to mean anything other than what it is, simply. If I could play you any song right now, I don’t know what I’d choose, which is, believe me, a rare occurrence. In fact, I consider music selections that fit the mood to be one of my only real talents, like understanding how Snyder’s pretzels and fruit punch Gatorade resolve perfectly with Bob Cratchitt and Martina McBride. . . It’s a subconscious thing, a round-table discussion about the eroticism in Whitman’s strange vigil, and whether a son is ever really just a son, when he could actually be a Son, to put it in a Dickinson context. (I don’t think we could stretch this one into a sun; that’s taking it pretty far, and after all, it’s dark out) So you can understand how this might frustrate me (not in a Freudian sense; I actually get along quite well with my father nowadays), what with my impotence in this particular circumstance, when the Beach Boys sound far too cheerful and Counting Crows too pleading and disconsolate and Kanye West too bombastic and that random indie-pop band you’ve never heard of too obscure; I don’t want to look foolish. But I suppose I’m getting ahead of myself; I was talking about how it always 8 The Penn Review
seems to rain on Tuesdays, and I meant to start on about how when the weather gets colder the rain will turn to snowfall, and every Tuesday and Thursday, and maybe Sunday mornings too, an icy down will be general all over Philadelphia. I’m sorry, thoughts of scheduling and yuletides receded every other metaphor into the puddles on 34th and Walnut. And that’s why I’ve decided on Frank Sinatra holiday music as a catachresis for Dylan in the rain: Instead of an everyman fumbling in hyper-literate unsatisfied tourism, the world falls in love and every song you hear seems to say “May your New Year dreams come true,” and other pleasant fictions that riff like the Vince Guaraldi Trio, safe and jazzy and morninglike. Maybe immortality is fleeting. Maybe David will say I stole the word “immortality” from him, but it was always there, I think. So as I sit in this cubbyhole on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, pouring adjectives to paper and scribbling them out again in an effort to be concise, I’ll try to refrain from any more verses about Christmases white, blue, or otherwise. Instead, I can focus - focus on the dozens of ways to make you fall in love with me ah! we’ve come to the point of the poem, but it was always there, I think. But since when did poetry have to be direct, even a flawed attempt at Personism like this one? To be frank, I haven’t read enough O’Hara to know how poorly I’m doing him justice, and I feel like a lamb-masked bandit just writing this in the first place, ransacking Usher’s house while it clings Oppen Dickinson’s Plank of Reason. It’s all crumbling together now, a wintry mix on a Sunday afternoon three or four weeks away as I cozy up to a full-screen digital fireplace and Godot’s smooth jazz for a classy evening with a box of wine. After all, I promised you, implicitly at least, some sort of finale grande, where the meaning of all this presents itself in an inverse white curtain, spelt out in Olde English and underlined, bolded, italicized, reformatted and resized to make it absolutely, obviously, unequivocally, temporarily clear what I mean: we are the raindrops. 9
MATT CHYLAK
ON THE WEATHER CHANGING
It always seems to rain on Tuesdays. Wet, black boughs bloom over cement gardens, and the West Philadelphia food carts set up park benches out of Highway 61 Revisited and grilled chicken pitas. Perhaps that’s too convoluted a sentiment for plain-spoken poetry, but I meant for it to ring true, and isn’t that enough? Christmas is coming, and as all the heavens were bells, I would rather enjoy that sort of silver lining to the loneliness of late November afternoons. I eat lunch alone on Tuesdays and Thursdays, because I never learned who was free at the same time as me, and by that I mean who does not have class from 12:00 to 1:30. Please don’t take that to mean anything other than what it is, simply. If I could play you any song right now, I don’t know what I’d choose, which is, believe me, a rare occurrence. In fact, I consider music selections that fit the mood to be one of my only real talents, like understanding how Snyder’s pretzels and fruit punch Gatorade resolve perfectly with Bob Cratchitt and Martina McBride. . . It’s a subconscious thing, a round-table discussion about the eroticism in Whitman’s strange vigil, and whether a son is ever really just a son, when he could actually be a Son, to put it in a Dickinson context. (I don’t think we could stretch this one into a sun; that’s taking it pretty far, and after all, it’s dark out) So you can understand how this might frustrate me (not in a Freudian sense; I actually get along quite well with my father nowadays), what with my impotence in this particular circumstance, when the Beach Boys sound far too cheerful and Counting Crows too pleading and disconsolate and Kanye West too bombastic and that random indie-pop band you’ve never heard of too obscure; I don’t want to look foolish. But I suppose I’m getting ahead of myself; I was talking about how it always 8 The Penn Review
seems to rain on Tuesdays, and I meant to start on about how when the weather gets colder the rain will turn to snowfall, and every Tuesday and Thursday, and maybe Sunday mornings too, an icy down will be general all over Philadelphia. I’m sorry, thoughts of scheduling and yuletides receded every other metaphor into the puddles on 34th and Walnut. And that’s why I’ve decided on Frank Sinatra holiday music as a catachresis for Dylan in the rain: Instead of an everyman fumbling in hyper-literate unsatisfied tourism, the world falls in love and every song you hear seems to say “May your New Year dreams come true,” and other pleasant fictions that riff like the Vince Guaraldi Trio, safe and jazzy and morninglike. Maybe immortality is fleeting. Maybe David will say I stole the word “immortality” from him, but it was always there, I think. So as I sit in this cubbyhole on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, pouring adjectives to paper and scribbling them out again in an effort to be concise, I’ll try to refrain from any more verses about Christmases white, blue, or otherwise. Instead, I can focus - focus on the dozens of ways to make you fall in love with me ah! we’ve come to the point of the poem, but it was always there, I think. But since when did poetry have to be direct, even a flawed attempt at Personism like this one? To be frank, I haven’t read enough O’Hara to know how poorly I’m doing him justice, and I feel like a lamb-masked bandit just writing this in the first place, ransacking Usher’s house while it clings Oppen Dickinson’s Plank of Reason. It’s all crumbling together now, a wintry mix on a Sunday afternoon three or four weeks away as I cozy up to a full-screen digital fireplace and Godot’s smooth jazz for a classy evening with a box of wine. After all, I promised you, implicitly at least, some sort of finale grande, where the meaning of all this presents itself in an inverse white curtain, spelt out in Olde English and underlined, bolded, italicized, reformatted and resized to make it absolutely, obviously, unequivocally, temporarily clear what I mean: we are the raindrops. 9
Ellen Freeman Storm King
10 The Penn Review
Aude Broos Colette
11
Ellen Freeman Storm King
10 The Penn Review
Aude Broos Colette
11
RIVKA FOGEL
IT SNOWED TODAY IN SAN FRANCISCO
It snowed today in San Francisco when Nobody was looking the sky just cracked and creased and there it was, the covering We were taught not to look it was quiet and we didn’t disturb, dear, we defined and so There was never anybody to say goodbye We believed and anyway it never mattered, really As the truth, as truthfully as The enjambment, right There dear we’ve done it now It had to happen The world’s gone down, it’s a shape! poem oh and Marie Howe is groaning
Níger Laila Bey Nerves
12 The Penn Review
13
RIVKA FOGEL
IT SNOWED TODAY IN SAN FRANCISCO
It snowed today in San Francisco when Nobody was looking the sky just cracked and creased and there it was, the covering We were taught not to look it was quiet and we didn’t disturb, dear, we defined and so There was never anybody to say goodbye We believed and anyway it never mattered, really As the truth, as truthfully as The enjambment, right There dear we’ve done it now It had to happen The world’s gone down, it’s a shape! poem oh and Marie Howe is groaning
Níger Laila Bey Nerves
12 The Penn Review
13
RACHEL TAUBE
TERTIAN OVERFLOW DISORDER
everyone proposes mellowing. understand alarming proposals overuse uniquely forgeable cardinal unreally readable jurassic finally failureing doublespeak focusates foreignly dangerous latinate colloquy anhydrates everyone’s intercourse treplicates uncareful mellowing holdonplease therearemore wordsdownhere justaswhen bytheporch iwrotedown fivegooddays webothhad backwhenwe Slouching like a 3 on the couch with the clicker already in-hand. Similar to the time the snow was falling, darling erudite? Realize snow is actually still while you are moving up, just as it wouldn’t look if you were moving at light speed. There. The ranunculus seemed like a small rodent in fact a road dent is probably dangerous for your car just as forgetting to hold on to a balloon and missing a step both make your stomach pause I know that rouge is less bright than other foreign words like ménage-a-trois and gazuntite, but only because it is so vain, and the last makes me think of a German soldier and a girl in a blue dress. She absolutely has a yellow daisy, mellowing overripe ranuncule.
Bonnie Arbittier Untitled
14 The Penn Review
15
RACHEL TAUBE
TERTIAN OVERFLOW DISORDER
everyone proposes mellowing. understand alarming proposals overuse uniquely forgeable cardinal unreally readable jurassic finally failureing doublespeak focusates foreignly dangerous latinate colloquy anhydrates everyone’s intercourse treplicates uncareful mellowing holdonplease therearemore wordsdownhere justaswhen bytheporch iwrotedown fivegooddays webothhad backwhenwe Slouching like a 3 on the couch with the clicker already in-hand. Similar to the time the snow was falling, darling erudite? Realize snow is actually still while you are moving up, just as it wouldn’t look if you were moving at light speed. There. The ranunculus seemed like a small rodent in fact a road dent is probably dangerous for your car just as forgetting to hold on to a balloon and missing a step both make your stomach pause I know that rouge is less bright than other foreign words like ménage-a-trois and gazuntite, but only because it is so vain, and the last makes me think of a German soldier and a girl in a blue dress. She absolutely has a yellow daisy, mellowing overripe ranuncule.
Bonnie Arbittier Untitled
14 The Penn Review
15
JANET CHOW
AFTERTHOUGHT
I wonder sometimes if we are just Smoking words away Alphabet ashes falling to the floor Silence is easier than speech So instead we exhale fumes.
Allison Zuckerman Blind Sardine
16 The Penn Review
17
JANET CHOW
AFTERTHOUGHT
I wonder sometimes if we are just Smoking words away Alphabet ashes falling to the floor Silence is easier than speech So instead we exhale fumes.
Allison Zuckerman Blind Sardine
16 The Penn Review
17
Clare Din Mutter
Clare Din Witness
18 The Penn Review
19
Clare Din Mutter
Clare Din Witness
18 The Penn Review
19
Ye Ella Yu Evening Glow
Joe Cioffi Ahh. America 20 The Penn Review
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Ye Ella Yu Evening Glow
Joe Cioffi Ahh. America 20 The Penn Review
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Allison Zuckerman Tweak
22 The Penn Review
Allison Zuckerman Cramped Clog
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Allison Zuckerman Tweak
22 The Penn Review
Allison Zuckerman Cramped Clog
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Jane Cheng Room.red
Jane Cheng Room.blue
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Megan Lewis Velong Krankheit 4 25
Jane Cheng Room.red
Jane Cheng Room.blue
24 The Penn Review
Megan Lewis Velong Krankheit 4 25
Misha Chakrabarti Battlefield Painting
Misha Chakrabarti Spectateur 26 The Penn Review
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Misha Chakrabarti Battlefield Painting
Misha Chakrabarti Spectateur 26 The Penn Review
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Rachel Ivanhoe Morton is a Princess
28 The Penn Review
Claire Niebergall Vespers
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Rachel Ivanhoe Morton is a Princess
28 The Penn Review
Claire Niebergall Vespers
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LILY AVNET
FAULKNER
The description takes a hold of the universe of vocabulary, shifting back and forth, from syllable to vowel to the very letter of each word, where even the most microscopic beetle, a pariah of language in his own right, may surmise and interpret and re-interpret again the very meaning of even the most doltish child’s attempt at language. From the cradle of birth and of un-civilization the word is incepted without ever knowing or trying and that is the real mystery, the unknowing and uncertain way in which we—you, me, and all readers, speakers, and non talkers—form a massive web of understanding within which misunderstanding reigns as a vicious yet reasonable Queen Mab enforcing drones and slaves of lack of wit and arbitrary coincidence to bow and accept the nature of overlap and misuse. The metaphor is but a hand reaching out to understanding what we never can, nor ever will, because it’s only meant to connect the unconnected, usurping the talker’s ability to comprehend true meaning, which, as a goal, can never and will never be met because the shadows of misunderstanding are too great to explain and cannot be because any answer demands words. Adam Behrens Oregon Trail
Ellen Freeman Doll House at Manzanita 30 The Penn Review
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LILY AVNET
FAULKNER
The description takes a hold of the universe of vocabulary, shifting back and forth, from syllable to vowel to the very letter of each word, where even the most microscopic beetle, a pariah of language in his own right, may surmise and interpret and re-interpret again the very meaning of even the most doltish child’s attempt at language. From the cradle of birth and of un-civilization the word is incepted without ever knowing or trying and that is the real mystery, the unknowing and uncertain way in which we—you, me, and all readers, speakers, and non talkers—form a massive web of understanding within which misunderstanding reigns as a vicious yet reasonable Queen Mab enforcing drones and slaves of lack of wit and arbitrary coincidence to bow and accept the nature of overlap and misuse. The metaphor is but a hand reaching out to understanding what we never can, nor ever will, because it’s only meant to connect the unconnected, usurping the talker’s ability to comprehend true meaning, which, as a goal, can never and will never be met because the shadows of misunderstanding are too great to explain and cannot be because any answer demands words. Adam Behrens Oregon Trail
Ellen Freeman Doll House at Manzanita 30 The Penn Review
31
CHRIS MILIONE
TYTTHOSTONYX GLAUCONITICUS
this may not be as we have imagined to have come so far and still in haze imaginings surface like insects nesting on the sand to be scooped up by a passing bird or sink into the limn. some tepid nights i am sure i can see you & the image doesnt disperse: crag-bound surveyor i can see you. you are making a noise your beak firmly in focus your legs tucked behind your feet clutching for stone just stone. there are others of you so many i am sure of avian procession and wings that move forward like a mudslide but still forward & forward flickering.
Misha Chakrabarti Pollution Cake
32 The Penn Review
through it all i am not quite dazed to forget that the space came first then you first space then you filling it like some greater trophy i claim not to deserve but dont discard instead turn over in my hands and finding the faultline understand that yes we are all such novel protuberances yes this at least we can come to imagine.
33
CHRIS MILIONE
TYTTHOSTONYX GLAUCONITICUS
this may not be as we have imagined to have come so far and still in haze imaginings surface like insects nesting on the sand to be scooped up by a passing bird or sink into the limn. some tepid nights i am sure i can see you & the image doesnt disperse: crag-bound surveyor i can see you. you are making a noise your beak firmly in focus your legs tucked behind your feet clutching for stone just stone. there are others of you so many i am sure of avian procession and wings that move forward like a mudslide but still forward & forward flickering.
Misha Chakrabarti Pollution Cake
32 The Penn Review
through it all i am not quite dazed to forget that the space came first then you first space then you filling it like some greater trophy i claim not to deserve but dont discard instead turn over in my hands and finding the faultline understand that yes we are all such novel protuberances yes this at least we can come to imagine.
33
JANE SHIM
POEM NUMBER TWO
today I am a lonely somnambulist missing how ordinary things hurt you reading manifestos of cool martyrs with bleached afros the color of saffron cigarettes canceled in the opposite way your shirt sleeves stink of onions from yesterday’s supper
Níger Laila Bey Politically Exposed (President Obama’s Rally)
34 The Penn Review
spider diagrams scroll as stubborn marquees your wu tang clan tshirt is battered with holes you are like the green of sunsets faint but hopeful so gentle and misplaced so angry so stoned
35
JANE SHIM
POEM NUMBER TWO
today I am a lonely somnambulist missing how ordinary things hurt you reading manifestos of cool martyrs with bleached afros the color of saffron cigarettes canceled in the opposite way your shirt sleeves stink of onions from yesterday’s supper
Níger Laila Bey Politically Exposed (President Obama’s Rally)
34 The Penn Review
spider diagrams scroll as stubborn marquees your wu tang clan tshirt is battered with holes you are like the green of sunsets faint but hopeful so gentle and misplaced so angry so stoned
35
GARY KAFER
HERE AM I
The work of his skin against the clean light streaks of metal is transient. One black spot that bleeds into the smoke of his breath is a burden for him. More than one is war against a language that no one speaks, but one that he fights to capture and shove through his ears so that his tongue may salivate. He says that his dream is a wound that bleeds into the smoke of his breath. I believe him—he’s witty. I ask him to pretend that the work of his skin against the clean light streaks of metal would touch my emotion, if only for a little while. That he would comply—I tell him prose. Still, his skin bleeds into the smoke of his breath. He becomes more transient with each touch of my emotion. I wave to him from inside my head. He waves back. He says that my dream is a wound that none have touched, if only for a little while. I ask him to stain it with one black spot, because more than one is a war against a language that no one speaks. Would he touch my emotion—I think that metal can bend to speak the words that are in my dream. He asks me to pretend that wounds bleed into the smoke of his breath. I tell him that to touch my emotion would bring him the language that no one speaks so that he may shove it through his ears for his tongue to salivate. Satisfied he continues to work his skin against the clean light streaks of metal. He says that all dreams bleed one black spot to tempt those who fight to capture the language that no one speaks. Mine and his are no exception. Would he be hungry for such a bending of metal—I know that he is transient.
36 The Penn Review
ZANETA CHENG
NOD, V.
I nodded a nod the other day. It was a passing nod. A brief nod—the kind that seems to say in passing ‘Oh hey! You exist, and I realise that!’ But it got me thinking. The OED defines it as “a. intr. To make a brief inclination of the head, esp. in salutation, assent, or command, or to draw attention to something.” What a delightfully deceptive definition. To be told that nodding is just that – a straightforward action unfettered by any other human motive except to greet and assent is so painfully insufficient, it does an injustice not only to the verb itself but also to its enactors. The nod I nodded the other day? That nod nodded to all the other nods we made to each other over the short course of our acquaintance. Let me elaborate. I’ll start with the first nod. Sure, I’ll have some. That first nod was in response to an offer for cereal. It gestured to the fact that of the six other people in the room, he was going to make cereal for me. Everyone got it. There was a yes connection, as opposed to a meh connection or a nuh uh connection. Then came other nods. Yes, I’ll watch a movie with you. Hey, yeah! I like Nerd Rope, too! K, I’ll come over and watch ‘Curb’ with you so you won’t be stuck with David’s awkward friends. It worked vice versa too. Want to go to Capogiro with me? Let’s go to the Harry Potter thing at the museum! Chinese food later? Can I come and use your sink so I don’t need to inefficiently fill up my Brita filter? Up and down bobs all round, yes sirree. Then there was a subtle change in the nod. Less of the emphatic bobbing up and down and more of the cautious controlled lowering tilt of my skull. A ‘you know you missed me’ prompted this change. Maybe. So as to be polite there was a cautious tilting of the skull. This was also the way I received the ‘Wanna go to my rush event with me next week?’ Oh, hm, sure. Then, later, both of us… picked up the gun. No. Jokes. Then both of us nodded that nod with marginal trepidation as we decided to both proceed back to my room. There was an overenthusiastic nodded greeting to an unsuspecting hallmate – ‘Hi yeah, we’re going to watch TV. Yup, see you tomorrow!’ Then there was the morning after dip of agreement to go to lunch. The nods were more varied after that. Undercurrents ran beneath that veneer of calm and pleasantry. Yup, let’s keep it friendly. Mhm, as long as we stop as soon as you get with someone else. Ok. It’s probably a bad idea to continue for longer than we already have. Yeah, you should probably expand your horizons. Excuse me? I should expand MY horizons? Who started this in the first place? Jerk. And so came the period where a nod was too strenuous. What was once a vertical line became a horizontal one – averted gazes, walking the other way, blank looks, pretending to be ignorant of the fact that either one of us was there. No more nodding. You, who? Then, as people do, things warmed up again only to result in summer silliness. But, this time, maybe because the tilt, the shaking, the sharp flicking away of the head was too tedious, we just quietly reverted to the nod. The much muted nod. The one that acknowledges all the nodding of the past. One that breathes a sigh, maybe of relief, maybe of sadness. 37
GARY KAFER
HERE AM I
The work of his skin against the clean light streaks of metal is transient. One black spot that bleeds into the smoke of his breath is a burden for him. More than one is war against a language that no one speaks, but one that he fights to capture and shove through his ears so that his tongue may salivate. He says that his dream is a wound that bleeds into the smoke of his breath. I believe him—he’s witty. I ask him to pretend that the work of his skin against the clean light streaks of metal would touch my emotion, if only for a little while. That he would comply—I tell him prose. Still, his skin bleeds into the smoke of his breath. He becomes more transient with each touch of my emotion. I wave to him from inside my head. He waves back. He says that my dream is a wound that none have touched, if only for a little while. I ask him to stain it with one black spot, because more than one is a war against a language that no one speaks. Would he touch my emotion—I think that metal can bend to speak the words that are in my dream. He asks me to pretend that wounds bleed into the smoke of his breath. I tell him that to touch my emotion would bring him the language that no one speaks so that he may shove it through his ears for his tongue to salivate. Satisfied he continues to work his skin against the clean light streaks of metal. He says that all dreams bleed one black spot to tempt those who fight to capture the language that no one speaks. Mine and his are no exception. Would he be hungry for such a bending of metal—I know that he is transient.
36 The Penn Review
ZANETA CHENG
NOD, V.
I nodded a nod the other day. It was a passing nod. A brief nod—the kind that seems to say in passing ‘Oh hey! You exist, and I realise that!’ But it got me thinking. The OED defines it as “a. intr. To make a brief inclination of the head, esp. in salutation, assent, or command, or to draw attention to something.” What a delightfully deceptive definition. To be told that nodding is just that – a straightforward action unfettered by any other human motive except to greet and assent is so painfully insufficient, it does an injustice not only to the verb itself but also to its enactors. The nod I nodded the other day? That nod nodded to all the other nods we made to each other over the short course of our acquaintance. Let me elaborate. I’ll start with the first nod. Sure, I’ll have some. That first nod was in response to an offer for cereal. It gestured to the fact that of the six other people in the room, he was going to make cereal for me. Everyone got it. There was a yes connection, as opposed to a meh connection or a nuh uh connection. Then came other nods. Yes, I’ll watch a movie with you. Hey, yeah! I like Nerd Rope, too! K, I’ll come over and watch ‘Curb’ with you so you won’t be stuck with David’s awkward friends. It worked vice versa too. Want to go to Capogiro with me? Let’s go to the Harry Potter thing at the museum! Chinese food later? Can I come and use your sink so I don’t need to inefficiently fill up my Brita filter? Up and down bobs all round, yes sirree. Then there was a subtle change in the nod. Less of the emphatic bobbing up and down and more of the cautious controlled lowering tilt of my skull. A ‘you know you missed me’ prompted this change. Maybe. So as to be polite there was a cautious tilting of the skull. This was also the way I received the ‘Wanna go to my rush event with me next week?’ Oh, hm, sure. Then, later, both of us… picked up the gun. No. Jokes. Then both of us nodded that nod with marginal trepidation as we decided to both proceed back to my room. There was an overenthusiastic nodded greeting to an unsuspecting hallmate – ‘Hi yeah, we’re going to watch TV. Yup, see you tomorrow!’ Then there was the morning after dip of agreement to go to lunch. The nods were more varied after that. Undercurrents ran beneath that veneer of calm and pleasantry. Yup, let’s keep it friendly. Mhm, as long as we stop as soon as you get with someone else. Ok. It’s probably a bad idea to continue for longer than we already have. Yeah, you should probably expand your horizons. Excuse me? I should expand MY horizons? Who started this in the first place? Jerk. And so came the period where a nod was too strenuous. What was once a vertical line became a horizontal one – averted gazes, walking the other way, blank looks, pretending to be ignorant of the fact that either one of us was there. No more nodding. You, who? Then, as people do, things warmed up again only to result in summer silliness. But, this time, maybe because the tilt, the shaking, the sharp flicking away of the head was too tedious, we just quietly reverted to the nod. The much muted nod. The one that acknowledges all the nodding of the past. One that breathes a sigh, maybe of relief, maybe of sadness. 37
VALERIA TSYGANKOVA
WITH HANDS LIKE PEOPLE’S HANDS
The pond is all laced-up with thumbs. It sends you back to a word you used to hear spoken once thick like the snow shaking from the one tree. Or was it you speaking it once like the snow twice like the thick ice covered with it. You know while it keeps there’s a chance of sun or a chance of shadows like prints on the carpet running across the frozen pond. There’s a chance you should have gone after the traces but what in the name of heaven could you hope to follow. You’ll fix your eyes and watch the laced-up pond now till it moves breaks cracks picks up toward you and the tree in one rush locked-up thumbs wrapping twisting around each other hooking and holding still.
Ellen Freeman Mosey 38 The Penn Review
39
VALERIA TSYGANKOVA
WITH HANDS LIKE PEOPLE’S HANDS
The pond is all laced-up with thumbs. It sends you back to a word you used to hear spoken once thick like the snow shaking from the one tree. Or was it you speaking it once like the snow twice like the thick ice covered with it. You know while it keeps there’s a chance of sun or a chance of shadows like prints on the carpet running across the frozen pond. There’s a chance you should have gone after the traces but what in the name of heaven could you hope to follow. You’ll fix your eyes and watch the laced-up pond now till it moves breaks cracks picks up toward you and the tree in one rush locked-up thumbs wrapping twisting around each other hooking and holding still.
Ellen Freeman Mosey 38 The Penn Review
39
MATT CHYLAK
POTBELLY
I. My friend Isaac asked me to write a poem for him about what it’s like to grow up struggling in the Latino heritage. He said it’s for his class, and he really needs three different pages of verse so that he can compare it to a black man writing poetry about jaguars in the jungle. I said sure, of course. What don’t I know about what it’s like to grow up struggling in the Latino heritage? After all, I eat chicken queso burritos at Qdoba at least twice a week, and the Russian lady who works there complimented my hat the other day. II. There’s something about chipping golf balls through your living room on a Saturday night when you’ve got nowhere to be. Actually, I wanted to go to Cleopatra’s Cafe, the hookah bar a couple blocks down the street where the Turks who own the place call black people “n igger” as soon as they pay and cough out the door, smiling at us like we approve of that sort of thing, not to mention my friend Michael’s dad is black and he clearly isn’t pale-skinned. It’s the only hookah bar around though, so we put up with the racism for a chance to mix guava and mint in our lungs. It reminds me of the doctors who drink Turkish coffee and smoke outside of the Children’s Hospital. I ride past them to Tuesday and Thursday morning practice, when I curse out the security guards for doing their job and not leaving the entrance gate open. It’s just a coincidence that they’re black, though. III. Is it wrong to spell ethnic slurs in Scrabble? Because I get fourteen points for ‘chink’ and eighteen points for ‘wetback,’ plus I’d get the fifty-point bonus for using all seven letters on that one. That’s not even counting those 40 The Penn Review
special spaces where I get double-this and triple-that for any old thing. I’m bound to run into one of those! IV. When I got home tonight, my roommate Sean (who’s from Austin) was sitting in my other roommate Austin (who’s from Jersey)’s room, even though Austin went back to Jersey yesterday and Sean doesn’t leave for Austin for at least two more days. When I asked him why he was sitting in Austin’s room with the lights off, except for the glow of his laptop, he gave me an odd look and said it feels like home. Now, Sean’s from Austin, but originally his family came from Minnesota, and before that, Queensboro, and before that, some country in Europe. They even changed their name from ‘Wolynzki’ (sp) to ‘Welleck’ which I hear every time Sean drinks too many tequila shots and Cunningham from downstairs starts yelling “kike!” to get a rise out of Jeff Weinstein from upstairs. I don’t know why Cunningham lives downstairs and Jeff upstairs; that’s just how it’s been. V. The last game of Risk I played lasted only five minutes. It would have been over sooner but I let Michael and Issac give their men in Scandinavia a pep talk and it turns out they were hiding another set of cards behind their backs. I told them I won’t show mercy ever again, and I haven’t yet, even when the black and red horses line up with sanguine expectations and an extra pot to piss in. What does Gil Scott-Heron have to say to me about love? All I want is a home for my family and some food to feed them every night. Meanwhile, immigration laws keep Mexican families encased. Their dreams seep in regardless. So we build a new wall higher than Berlin, check everyone’s papers and run them outta town. 41
MATT CHYLAK
POTBELLY
I. My friend Isaac asked me to write a poem for him about what it’s like to grow up struggling in the Latino heritage. He said it’s for his class, and he really needs three different pages of verse so that he can compare it to a black man writing poetry about jaguars in the jungle. I said sure, of course. What don’t I know about what it’s like to grow up struggling in the Latino heritage? After all, I eat chicken queso burritos at Qdoba at least twice a week, and the Russian lady who works there complimented my hat the other day. II. There’s something about chipping golf balls through your living room on a Saturday night when you’ve got nowhere to be. Actually, I wanted to go to Cleopatra’s Cafe, the hookah bar a couple blocks down the street where the Turks who own the place call black people “n igger” as soon as they pay and cough out the door, smiling at us like we approve of that sort of thing, not to mention my friend Michael’s dad is black and he clearly isn’t pale-skinned. It’s the only hookah bar around though, so we put up with the racism for a chance to mix guava and mint in our lungs. It reminds me of the doctors who drink Turkish coffee and smoke outside of the Children’s Hospital. I ride past them to Tuesday and Thursday morning practice, when I curse out the security guards for doing their job and not leaving the entrance gate open. It’s just a coincidence that they’re black, though. III. Is it wrong to spell ethnic slurs in Scrabble? Because I get fourteen points for ‘chink’ and eighteen points for ‘wetback,’ plus I’d get the fifty-point bonus for using all seven letters on that one. That’s not even counting those 40 The Penn Review
special spaces where I get double-this and triple-that for any old thing. I’m bound to run into one of those! IV. When I got home tonight, my roommate Sean (who’s from Austin) was sitting in my other roommate Austin (who’s from Jersey)’s room, even though Austin went back to Jersey yesterday and Sean doesn’t leave for Austin for at least two more days. When I asked him why he was sitting in Austin’s room with the lights off, except for the glow of his laptop, he gave me an odd look and said it feels like home. Now, Sean’s from Austin, but originally his family came from Minnesota, and before that, Queensboro, and before that, some country in Europe. They even changed their name from ‘Wolynzki’ (sp) to ‘Welleck’ which I hear every time Sean drinks too many tequila shots and Cunningham from downstairs starts yelling “kike!” to get a rise out of Jeff Weinstein from upstairs. I don’t know why Cunningham lives downstairs and Jeff upstairs; that’s just how it’s been. V. The last game of Risk I played lasted only five minutes. It would have been over sooner but I let Michael and Issac give their men in Scandinavia a pep talk and it turns out they were hiding another set of cards behind their backs. I told them I won’t show mercy ever again, and I haven’t yet, even when the black and red horses line up with sanguine expectations and an extra pot to piss in. What does Gil Scott-Heron have to say to me about love? All I want is a home for my family and some food to feed them every night. Meanwhile, immigration laws keep Mexican families encased. Their dreams seep in regardless. So we build a new wall higher than Berlin, check everyone’s papers and run them outta town. 41
CHRIS MILIONE
EXEGESIS
The face of god: dim as linoleum burnt dull his hair mute orbs (diminution) his ceremonies these and those baubles mysteries it is midrashic: those infidel sighs: god the wormhole quantum god the fertile to dance welterwise across air or sea god the nameable god here: here: god the paratextual indeed god the formula of time god the transplantations: overseers mark of the divine in all things no proximity and us incommensurable to a fault the hand of god: thin as a line to point: to delineate: to cleave
42 The Penn Review
Whitney Iris Mufson An Adolescent Perception
43
CHRIS MILIONE
EXEGESIS
The face of god: dim as linoleum burnt dull his hair mute orbs (diminution) his ceremonies these and those baubles mysteries it is midrashic: those infidel sighs: god the wormhole quantum god the fertile to dance welterwise across air or sea god the nameable god here: here: god the paratextual indeed god the formula of time god the transplantations: overseers mark of the divine in all things no proximity and us incommensurable to a fault the hand of god: thin as a line to point: to delineate: to cleave
42 The Penn Review
Whitney Iris Mufson An Adolescent Perception
43
ANNA STRONG
WRISTS
My arms fell off today. I was filling the big pot with water to make spaghetti. The pot was heavy with the water sloshing around inside of it as I carried it the short distance from the sink to the stove. Except my arms didn’t make it all the way. They detached from my shoulders with a pop and dropped, falling with the pot. I stood above the mess: my two arms on the floor, the water from the tipped pot rushing out, drenching my left arm. My right arm still gripped the handle.
CHELSEA STRICKLAND
CUBAN LOVE SONG
Three sodden mango pits, Two smoldering Cuban cigars, And one empty wine bottle Mark the end of a Havana love. Although the glass house still resounds with both the tones of Celia Cruz, And the footfalls of the flowered high-heeled pumps that danced their way to a broken heart, Only one lonely heart remains Dancing through the scattered shards of shattered love
No arms, I thought. I bent down to pick them up and reattach them somehow, but I realized that it was silly of me to even try. I thought about pinching myself, to make sure I was awake, but that, of course, was also out of the question. My dog swayed into the kitchen, stepping carefully over my left arm, and started licking the water off the floor. I was sitting on the kitchen floor, thinking about how I would need to become really adept with my feet, when you walk in and ask me what happened. “They just came off,” I say. You sit down beside me and pick up my arms, holding one in each hand. “You know,” you say, “You have—or had, I guess—really nice arms.” You kiss the inside of my right wrist, the way you did one Sunday morning when you woke me up with music and taught me how to swing dance. There is a cold tingle where I think that kiss should be and I miss the feeling of wrists. “You’re going to have to finish the spaghetti,” I say, and you tell me that’s just fine.
44 The Penn Review
CANCIÓN DEL AMOR CUBANO Tres pepas mojadas de mango Dos cigarros Cubanos que arden Y una botella vacío de vino Marcan el fin de un amor de Havana Aunque la casa de cristal todavía resuena con la voz de Celia Cruz Y también con los pasos de tacones floridos que bailaron hasta que llegaron a un corazón roto, Se queda sólo un corazón solitario Bailando por los fragmentos esparcidos del amor destrozado.
45
ANNA STRONG
WRISTS
My arms fell off today. I was filling the big pot with water to make spaghetti. The pot was heavy with the water sloshing around inside of it as I carried it the short distance from the sink to the stove. Except my arms didn’t make it all the way. They detached from my shoulders with a pop and dropped, falling with the pot. I stood above the mess: my two arms on the floor, the water from the tipped pot rushing out, drenching my left arm. My right arm still gripped the handle.
CHELSEA STRICKLAND
CUBAN LOVE SONG
Three sodden mango pits, Two smoldering Cuban cigars, And one empty wine bottle Mark the end of a Havana love. Although the glass house still resounds with both the tones of Celia Cruz, And the footfalls of the flowered high-heeled pumps that danced their way to a broken heart, Only one lonely heart remains Dancing through the scattered shards of shattered love
No arms, I thought. I bent down to pick them up and reattach them somehow, but I realized that it was silly of me to even try. I thought about pinching myself, to make sure I was awake, but that, of course, was also out of the question. My dog swayed into the kitchen, stepping carefully over my left arm, and started licking the water off the floor. I was sitting on the kitchen floor, thinking about how I would need to become really adept with my feet, when you walk in and ask me what happened. “They just came off,” I say. You sit down beside me and pick up my arms, holding one in each hand. “You know,” you say, “You have—or had, I guess—really nice arms.” You kiss the inside of my right wrist, the way you did one Sunday morning when you woke me up with music and taught me how to swing dance. There is a cold tingle where I think that kiss should be and I miss the feeling of wrists. “You’re going to have to finish the spaghetti,” I say, and you tell me that’s just fine.
44 The Penn Review
CANCIÓN DEL AMOR CUBANO Tres pepas mojadas de mango Dos cigarros Cubanos que arden Y una botella vacío de vino Marcan el fin de un amor de Havana Aunque la casa de cristal todavía resuena con la voz de Celia Cruz Y también con los pasos de tacones floridos que bailaron hasta que llegaron a un corazón roto, Se queda sólo un corazón solitario Bailando por los fragmentos esparcidos del amor destrozado.
45
Michael Chien Self I
46 The Penn Review
Michael Chien Self V
47
Michael Chien Self I
46 The Penn Review
Michael Chien Self V
47
ANNA STRONG
MONSTER
If I had known you were going to die in my kitchen, I wouldn’t have asked you to come over. But your mother can’t blame me, because she always understood you were fierce like that. The thing is, if I had known it was a monster we were dealing with, I might have asked you to bring your German shepherd, whose name is Rocky, because I have a cat, and her name is Chicken. If I had known one day I was going to have a monster in my kitchen, I might have named her “Zorro.” You always said power wasn’t in hair but in names. This is why you were Jack, which to you was something strong, with its tense back-of-the-throat vowel and hard consonants, if you said them loud enough. This is also why I am Mavis, which to you sounded soft and maybe a little lost, like a dandelion, or a wildflower. On the best days, Jack sounded to me like water beating against a jetty in the wake of a boat, and on the worst like the same water but in a storm. Mavis always sounded like something fraying, unwinding, like a sweater. The night before that day, when you said Mavis and I said Jack the consonants in your name cracked open like thunder. I didn’t know my voice could be so loud, only the door you slammed behind you was louder. The window next to the door broke, and so did a vase. I thought about the ringing noise inside my head, the aftershock of noise that echoes within silence and disappears only when kinder sounds come back. Chicken rubbed against my legs and smacked a piece of glass with her paw. I came downstairs that morning dizzy from the dream I’d had that night—I had dreamed from the inside of a green glass bottle somewhere in the middle stage between litter and seaglass. I awoke when a wave tossed the bottle against a battalion of sharp-toothed barnacles. Chicken had knocked over the glass on the nightstand. I didn’t notice the claw-torn cabinets until I was halfway to the coffee maker, because I nearly tripped over two of the brass knobs rolling around on the floor. They lay like fallen soldiers among the splintered dead infantry of wood, spread in a dark stain of a broken mason jar of grape jelly. I looked up and saw gaping holes in the doors, exposing the naked contents of my pantry. I caught glimpses of tin cans of tomato soup and packages of brown rice, a jar of raspberry jam and a box of spaghetti. I saw mint and marinara sauces laid bare, a capsized container of peanut butter and teetering cans of cat food and tuna. I turned on the coffee maker and leaned against the sink. There had been a monster in my kitchen, no doubt about that, the question now was what to do about it. I felt my heart shrink to something barely beating, all my energy given over to my sense of hearing—where was it, if it was still here? I tried to imagine what sort of monster it was—something with cruel teeth and claws that could tear through wood like paper. It was surely large, judging by the size of the craters it had opened in my cabinets, it must have had mammoth hands and burly shoulders, its muscles like great sacks packed with rocks. In my mind I saw something prehistoric and cartoonish, like what a child caught between a fascination with dinosaurs and su48 The Penn Review
perheroes would imagine the creature under his bed to be. The night before, the night with the thunder and the slammed door, didn’t matter. I called you and asked you to come over. “I’ve got a monster,” I said on the phone, softly. “Can you come over?” “Mavis,” you said. “Please,” I said. In the twenty minutes it took you to get here, something started pacing upstairs. I had checked the rest of the house, gingerly, and found everything else intact, minus the kitchen, which I hadn’t cleaned up so you could see the damage. The coffee maker gurgled behind me and I jumped at the sound; a domestic machine had never sounded so inhuman. My hands shook as I poured a cup of coffee, my hands imagining disaster while my mind traveled the dark corners of my house, looking for the monster there. The nook in the living room, with the dusty air vent, the hall closets with chipped, peeling paint and water stains on the ceilings, the small broom closet under the stairs. I thought about my basement. I had been there only once since I moved in—it was dark and damp and I had nothing to put there, I had barely enough furniture and other things to fill the rooms on the upper floors. I imagined the dark recesses behind the hot water heater, the stains on the cold concrete floor, the crawlspace like an open mouth, black and cavernous. You came in the door red-faced with your hands in your pockets and looked at the slain and the stains on the floor. “I thought you were kidding,” you said. “No joke,” I said, “Monster.” “I’m glad you called, I guess.” You scratched the back of your head, there was sweat beaded on the back of your neck. “Which should we check first, the attic or the basement?” “Attic,” I said, “At least it’s light up there.” As we climbed the stairs I thought about attic monsters. I imagined something avian, an undead albatross concealed in the corner behind the cobwebs and old portfolios from my first two years at school, or a mutant bat clinging to the uppermost beams in the topmost gable, or even a brigade of raised carrier pigeons flapping and squawking with mangy feathers hanging from their hollow bones. You were close enough for me to touch but too far for me to reach for your hand. We pulled the ladder to the attic down from a trapdoor in the ceiling of the second floor hallway. A dropcloth I had tossed up there after I finished painting my bedroom butter yellow whumped down and landed at our feet, sending up a great puff of dust. We both jumped back three feet and I yelped. Your eyes were as wide open as I had ever seen them, their blueness rendered simultaneously sharper and deeper by the shaft of sunlight that came down from the attic, flecked with dust both falling from the imagined sky and rising from the ground. I could have been looking at the ocean from a plane, they were so clear and blue and deep and wide. You started up the ladder, closing your eyes and shaking your head once to clear 49
ANNA STRONG
MONSTER
If I had known you were going to die in my kitchen, I wouldn’t have asked you to come over. But your mother can’t blame me, because she always understood you were fierce like that. The thing is, if I had known it was a monster we were dealing with, I might have asked you to bring your German shepherd, whose name is Rocky, because I have a cat, and her name is Chicken. If I had known one day I was going to have a monster in my kitchen, I might have named her “Zorro.” You always said power wasn’t in hair but in names. This is why you were Jack, which to you was something strong, with its tense back-of-the-throat vowel and hard consonants, if you said them loud enough. This is also why I am Mavis, which to you sounded soft and maybe a little lost, like a dandelion, or a wildflower. On the best days, Jack sounded to me like water beating against a jetty in the wake of a boat, and on the worst like the same water but in a storm. Mavis always sounded like something fraying, unwinding, like a sweater. The night before that day, when you said Mavis and I said Jack the consonants in your name cracked open like thunder. I didn’t know my voice could be so loud, only the door you slammed behind you was louder. The window next to the door broke, and so did a vase. I thought about the ringing noise inside my head, the aftershock of noise that echoes within silence and disappears only when kinder sounds come back. Chicken rubbed against my legs and smacked a piece of glass with her paw. I came downstairs that morning dizzy from the dream I’d had that night—I had dreamed from the inside of a green glass bottle somewhere in the middle stage between litter and seaglass. I awoke when a wave tossed the bottle against a battalion of sharp-toothed barnacles. Chicken had knocked over the glass on the nightstand. I didn’t notice the claw-torn cabinets until I was halfway to the coffee maker, because I nearly tripped over two of the brass knobs rolling around on the floor. They lay like fallen soldiers among the splintered dead infantry of wood, spread in a dark stain of a broken mason jar of grape jelly. I looked up and saw gaping holes in the doors, exposing the naked contents of my pantry. I caught glimpses of tin cans of tomato soup and packages of brown rice, a jar of raspberry jam and a box of spaghetti. I saw mint and marinara sauces laid bare, a capsized container of peanut butter and teetering cans of cat food and tuna. I turned on the coffee maker and leaned against the sink. There had been a monster in my kitchen, no doubt about that, the question now was what to do about it. I felt my heart shrink to something barely beating, all my energy given over to my sense of hearing—where was it, if it was still here? I tried to imagine what sort of monster it was—something with cruel teeth and claws that could tear through wood like paper. It was surely large, judging by the size of the craters it had opened in my cabinets, it must have had mammoth hands and burly shoulders, its muscles like great sacks packed with rocks. In my mind I saw something prehistoric and cartoonish, like what a child caught between a fascination with dinosaurs and su48 The Penn Review
perheroes would imagine the creature under his bed to be. The night before, the night with the thunder and the slammed door, didn’t matter. I called you and asked you to come over. “I’ve got a monster,” I said on the phone, softly. “Can you come over?” “Mavis,” you said. “Please,” I said. In the twenty minutes it took you to get here, something started pacing upstairs. I had checked the rest of the house, gingerly, and found everything else intact, minus the kitchen, which I hadn’t cleaned up so you could see the damage. The coffee maker gurgled behind me and I jumped at the sound; a domestic machine had never sounded so inhuman. My hands shook as I poured a cup of coffee, my hands imagining disaster while my mind traveled the dark corners of my house, looking for the monster there. The nook in the living room, with the dusty air vent, the hall closets with chipped, peeling paint and water stains on the ceilings, the small broom closet under the stairs. I thought about my basement. I had been there only once since I moved in—it was dark and damp and I had nothing to put there, I had barely enough furniture and other things to fill the rooms on the upper floors. I imagined the dark recesses behind the hot water heater, the stains on the cold concrete floor, the crawlspace like an open mouth, black and cavernous. You came in the door red-faced with your hands in your pockets and looked at the slain and the stains on the floor. “I thought you were kidding,” you said. “No joke,” I said, “Monster.” “I’m glad you called, I guess.” You scratched the back of your head, there was sweat beaded on the back of your neck. “Which should we check first, the attic or the basement?” “Attic,” I said, “At least it’s light up there.” As we climbed the stairs I thought about attic monsters. I imagined something avian, an undead albatross concealed in the corner behind the cobwebs and old portfolios from my first two years at school, or a mutant bat clinging to the uppermost beams in the topmost gable, or even a brigade of raised carrier pigeons flapping and squawking with mangy feathers hanging from their hollow bones. You were close enough for me to touch but too far for me to reach for your hand. We pulled the ladder to the attic down from a trapdoor in the ceiling of the second floor hallway. A dropcloth I had tossed up there after I finished painting my bedroom butter yellow whumped down and landed at our feet, sending up a great puff of dust. We both jumped back three feet and I yelped. Your eyes were as wide open as I had ever seen them, their blueness rendered simultaneously sharper and deeper by the shaft of sunlight that came down from the attic, flecked with dust both falling from the imagined sky and rising from the ground. I could have been looking at the ocean from a plane, they were so clear and blue and deep and wide. You started up the ladder, closing your eyes and shaking your head once to clear 49
the dust from your nose. Then there was a crash downstairs—I recognized the sound of my peanut butter bouncing on the floor because I’ve dropped it enough times myself, and the fragile tinkle could have been the spaghetti breaking, or the angel hair—and we looked at each other once, something approaching panic but not far from excitement stretched taut in the space between our eyes. The ladder folded itself behind us and ascended as we started back down the stairs. I don’t know what made you run forward so fast, but you did, fast enough to catch the sun in your eyes, like light through a prism. “Mavis—” you said, and that was when I remembered why I even had the peanut butter in the first place, it was for you, so I could make you a PB&J when you wanted one. It was mine but it was in my cabinet for you, and I wanted to tell you this, in the moment that remained between when you said my name and when you said, “Don’t—” and turned towards the furious noise.
ALEX NICULESCU
I stood still and watched you, you and your cracked-open broken name, you and your sweat-beaded neck, you and your blue sun-filled eyes, you with a spoon in the peanut butter jar incredulous that I had neither bread nor jelly, you turned down the stairs and I didn’t follow. The ‘don’t,’ whatever came after that awful word that you couldn’t say, spun in slow circles in the space where you left like the last notes of a wind chime.
A series of holsters On a wide leather strap A clean worker bolsters Up his weight on a pole without a map To guide him away from the clap
It was when I heard it roar that I began to wish you’d brought your dog, or that Chicken was braver, or that you hadn’t forbidden me to follow you downstairs. When I saw a kitchen chair crash through the door and splinter in the hallway, at my feet, that was when I began to wish I hadn’t called you, because at that point I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to call you again.
Cock Ring
What scared me most was that you didn’t make a sound. Or if you did, it was completely drowned in the tempest the monster raised in my kitchen—the sharp crack of split wood, the multiplicity of smashed glass—the breaking and breaking again, and then the sickly sweet smell of the jams and jellies now sticky on the floor. I saw a second chair come through the gaping hole the first chair had made. I knew you were running out of places to hide—all you would have had left at that point would have been the table, my mother’s, white oak, the first thing I had put in that kitchen, a year ago when I was starting over. It had remained the only thing for a week, while I assembled the room around it. I heard the table upturned, I heard a deep crunch and a low growl, I heard nothing. I heard heavy footfalls, things already broken breaking again, the door ripped from its hinges. I heard nothing.
PORN CINQUAINS
Poppers One tiny, round bottle and A thin yellow printed sheet Together wrapped tightly by a hand That to the nostril it will meet While in the distance, a cock gets beat Tool Belt
Innovative, that’s for sure But the ring is master Far from demure But pushing him faster Down the stream of alabaster
Your last word was “Don’t,” but in your eyes I saw ‘don’t be afraid’ to complete the ellipsis you left me with at the top of the stairs. This detail I don’t tell your mother. She wants to hear something more beautiful, like flowers, like the wind in a sail, like a white dress on a summer day, that’s what she wanted for us.
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the dust from your nose. Then there was a crash downstairs—I recognized the sound of my peanut butter bouncing on the floor because I’ve dropped it enough times myself, and the fragile tinkle could have been the spaghetti breaking, or the angel hair—and we looked at each other once, something approaching panic but not far from excitement stretched taut in the space between our eyes. The ladder folded itself behind us and ascended as we started back down the stairs. I don’t know what made you run forward so fast, but you did, fast enough to catch the sun in your eyes, like light through a prism. “Mavis—” you said, and that was when I remembered why I even had the peanut butter in the first place, it was for you, so I could make you a PB&J when you wanted one. It was mine but it was in my cabinet for you, and I wanted to tell you this, in the moment that remained between when you said my name and when you said, “Don’t—” and turned towards the furious noise.
ALEX NICULESCU
I stood still and watched you, you and your cracked-open broken name, you and your sweat-beaded neck, you and your blue sun-filled eyes, you with a spoon in the peanut butter jar incredulous that I had neither bread nor jelly, you turned down the stairs and I didn’t follow. The ‘don’t,’ whatever came after that awful word that you couldn’t say, spun in slow circles in the space where you left like the last notes of a wind chime.
A series of holsters On a wide leather strap A clean worker bolsters Up his weight on a pole without a map To guide him away from the clap
It was when I heard it roar that I began to wish you’d brought your dog, or that Chicken was braver, or that you hadn’t forbidden me to follow you downstairs. When I saw a kitchen chair crash through the door and splinter in the hallway, at my feet, that was when I began to wish I hadn’t called you, because at that point I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to call you again.
Cock Ring
What scared me most was that you didn’t make a sound. Or if you did, it was completely drowned in the tempest the monster raised in my kitchen—the sharp crack of split wood, the multiplicity of smashed glass—the breaking and breaking again, and then the sickly sweet smell of the jams and jellies now sticky on the floor. I saw a second chair come through the gaping hole the first chair had made. I knew you were running out of places to hide—all you would have had left at that point would have been the table, my mother’s, white oak, the first thing I had put in that kitchen, a year ago when I was starting over. It had remained the only thing for a week, while I assembled the room around it. I heard the table upturned, I heard a deep crunch and a low growl, I heard nothing. I heard heavy footfalls, things already broken breaking again, the door ripped from its hinges. I heard nothing.
PORN CINQUAINS
Poppers One tiny, round bottle and A thin yellow printed sheet Together wrapped tightly by a hand That to the nostril it will meet While in the distance, a cock gets beat Tool Belt
Innovative, that’s for sure But the ring is master Far from demure But pushing him faster Down the stream of alabaster
Your last word was “Don’t,” but in your eyes I saw ‘don’t be afraid’ to complete the ellipsis you left me with at the top of the stairs. This detail I don’t tell your mother. She wants to hear something more beautiful, like flowers, like the wind in a sail, like a white dress on a summer day, that’s what she wanted for us.
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Níger Laila Bey Beaches Boys
Níger Laila Bey Man and His Best Friend
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Níger Laila Bey Beaches Boys
Níger Laila Bey Man and His Best Friend
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Elan Kiderman Poemetry 54 The Penn Review
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Elan Kiderman Poemetry 54 The Penn Review
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GABE DONNAY
UNDER THE CHICKEN COOP
You told a story once that haunted me— about running through the wheat fields and hiding underneath the chicken coop. The hens shook dirt out from their bedding hay, and it settled in your hair, as you stared unblinking at the earth an inch from your nose.
Ellen Freeman Rossclair Catalpa 56 The Penn Review
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GABE DONNAY
UNDER THE CHICKEN COOP
You told a story once that haunted me— about running through the wheat fields and hiding underneath the chicken coop. The hens shook dirt out from their bedding hay, and it settled in your hair, as you stared unblinking at the earth an inch from your nose.
Ellen Freeman Rossclair Catalpa 56 The Penn Review
57
NAOMI SHAVIN SILHOUETTE Just after school ended, before Den followed me down to Atlanta and we moved into the apartment on Peachtree Street, before looking at art meant looking out our window at the Silhouette Building, I was living in New York, and one day, I went to a Bacon exhibit at the Met. I had never seen paintings like his before, but they reminded me of a phrase I had heard once, “fascination abomination.” I must have spent at least five minutes in front of Portrait of George Dyer Riding a Bicycle. George was portrayed like a silhouette. I followed the geography of his profile, where nose curved in to make mouth, to form chin, and the way wisps of his hair stood out behind his head, lifted in the wind, in movement. In his darkness, there were flashes of flesh tones, milky shades of pink and maroon, even some green, as if every possibility of life was in his dark borders. This was a few days after I first met Den, before I really realized that I could see through him and that he could see into me, too. I think even then, though, I loved him already. I got to the section of self-portraits following George’s overdose. There was one picture, Self Portrait, 1973, of Francis leaning on the sink in the hotel bathroom where George overdosed before the Grand Palais. I stared at it for a long time, while people moved in and out of the gallery. I didn’t move until I finished crying. I cling to that moment in my memory and I search it, turning it over and over for the hints. I don’t understand how I could have seen then, the way I do now, right through the moment, past the twisted paintings and the white walls. I am always sleeping, and so I was sleeping when Den slid into bed beside me. If he touched me, I didn’t feel it, but I woke up anyway and turned over to him. I see him the way I see myself, past face or flesh, right into his eyes, right into his thoughts. I never see the whole him anymore. I can feel him enter a room, the way I am conscious of my own body filling space. I think anyone feels like that after so long together. “How is Andy doing?” I could have answered the question right away, but instead I looked out the window for a little, savoring the moment, knowing that by the end of the conversation, Den would have seen through me, too, if he hadn’t already, and that he would be upset. I had opened the curtains earlier and from our bed, I could see the silhouette man on the building looming. I never know if he’s looking at me or if I’m even looking at him. I think his blackness could either be a shroud over him, or it could be the color of the inside of the man. Maybe I see right through, right inside of him, too. He takes up eight stories, and is by far the largest silhouette painted on the building. Sometimes, I think he is watching over me. I like that the building is painted cream, and not white. I like the warmth in his blackness. I looked at the silhouette man, who was watching me, and wondered what was going to happen to me. He didn’t answer, but just seeing him, knowing he’s there, always makes me feel a little better. “Um, he’s all right. He’s doing okay, as okay as you can be, given the circumstances.” “It was really nice of you to visit him.” “I’m sure he would have done the same if it were my Dad.” “Maybe.” Den is always assuming the worst; he doesn’t want to be disappointed. I am always disappointed, always hoping for the best and getting let down. “No, he would have.” “I’m sure he was glad to see you. Things like that are hard.” I know this. Den knows I know this, because I cry at every funeral we go to. I always cry. I’ve 58 The Penn Review
mostly been to Jewish funerals, and whenever we get to the Mourner’s Kaddish, I just can’t help it. It doesn’t talk about death in the prayer. It talks about sanctifying G-d, thanking G-d, and it makes me think that life is supposed to go on, but I wonder how can it? I cry when the dirt hits the casket and makes that horrible hollow sound that echoes the hollow feeling in my whole body. I collapse into bed after each funeral, and when my body hits the mattress, it makes that hollow sound and I feel like I don’t exist anymore, either. A lot of the funerals aren’t real, though. I’ve been to a lot of real funerals, of course. My grandparents’, the grandparents and parents of some of my friends, and of course in January. But a lot of them I dream or some I imagine while I’m walking home from the magazine. Then I slip out of my shoes next to the front door, like Den’s mom tells me to when she calls every now and then, and I float toward the back of our apartment, to our bedroom, and I hit the mattress like dirt. I look sideways at the silhouette man, and I wonder if he is made of dark dirt. I was worried that Andy would be upset to see me at his father’s memorial service, more than anything. I can’t imagine I’d be very uplifting to anyone, but I try really, really hard most of the time. It’s very tiring. I just fall back into bed at the end of all of it, feeling dead, but really not feeling anything, so I guess feeling dead. I feel empty and I look at the silhouette man and I wonder if he is made of emptiness. Maybe he is a black hole, and maybe I am too, because I suck every bit of light in, and stay just as dark. When I was at Andy’s, I think I actually might have been a little comforting, which is strange, because I thought the last thing he would want is to run into an old high school ex-girlfriend and have to seem politely curious about her life when he was struggling with the incomprehensible loss of his father. I thought he’d think I was acting or something, or coming because I wanted to see him again, but I really just wanted to be there. It’s really important to show support for people who have lost someone they love. Also, in order to pray for Andy’s dad, they would need at least ten Jewish adults, and so I went to make sure there would be enough people, but of course I expected there would be more than enough. In the beginning there are always more than enough. After the service, we all floated through the house, eating raspberry thumbprint cookies and looking at old pictures of Andy’s dad. There was one of them that was really upsetting. In the picture, Andy is maybe six, and he is standing in front of his dad on the beach, with their hair blowing back a little bit. The horizon is stretching out behind them. It’s not sunset or anything, and there aren’t any clouds. It’s just blue on blue, forever. It’s an eternity of blue, and I started to cry again, thinking that an eternity of blue is roughly the distance between them now. The picture was symbolic to me, but then, I’m always going around giving things meaning. I turned the picture into a poem, I gave it so many metaphors. The ocean is salty; it’s all tears. The wind is change. Life goes on and on into the horizon, and Andy can’t do anything about it because his dad is behind him now. I was just standing there, with a little white napkin crumpled in my fist, crying to myself, when Andy came up behind me. “Cari.” He said it with a gasp, like he was seeing a ghost. “Hi, Andy,” I said, and I put the practiced, perfected, sad, sympathetic smile on my face. “Wow. Thank you so much for coming. That was really, really nice of you.” “It was no problem. Your dad was the best and besides, I live around the corner.” “It’s really good to see you. I’m sure my dad would have loved to know that you stopped by.” I cringed. I liked to think that maybe he did know, or that our knowing was enough. I didn’t say anything. “So you live around the corner?” 59
NAOMI SHAVIN SILHOUETTE Just after school ended, before Den followed me down to Atlanta and we moved into the apartment on Peachtree Street, before looking at art meant looking out our window at the Silhouette Building, I was living in New York, and one day, I went to a Bacon exhibit at the Met. I had never seen paintings like his before, but they reminded me of a phrase I had heard once, “fascination abomination.” I must have spent at least five minutes in front of Portrait of George Dyer Riding a Bicycle. George was portrayed like a silhouette. I followed the geography of his profile, where nose curved in to make mouth, to form chin, and the way wisps of his hair stood out behind his head, lifted in the wind, in movement. In his darkness, there were flashes of flesh tones, milky shades of pink and maroon, even some green, as if every possibility of life was in his dark borders. This was a few days after I first met Den, before I really realized that I could see through him and that he could see into me, too. I think even then, though, I loved him already. I got to the section of self-portraits following George’s overdose. There was one picture, Self Portrait, 1973, of Francis leaning on the sink in the hotel bathroom where George overdosed before the Grand Palais. I stared at it for a long time, while people moved in and out of the gallery. I didn’t move until I finished crying. I cling to that moment in my memory and I search it, turning it over and over for the hints. I don’t understand how I could have seen then, the way I do now, right through the moment, past the twisted paintings and the white walls. I am always sleeping, and so I was sleeping when Den slid into bed beside me. If he touched me, I didn’t feel it, but I woke up anyway and turned over to him. I see him the way I see myself, past face or flesh, right into his eyes, right into his thoughts. I never see the whole him anymore. I can feel him enter a room, the way I am conscious of my own body filling space. I think anyone feels like that after so long together. “How is Andy doing?” I could have answered the question right away, but instead I looked out the window for a little, savoring the moment, knowing that by the end of the conversation, Den would have seen through me, too, if he hadn’t already, and that he would be upset. I had opened the curtains earlier and from our bed, I could see the silhouette man on the building looming. I never know if he’s looking at me or if I’m even looking at him. I think his blackness could either be a shroud over him, or it could be the color of the inside of the man. Maybe I see right through, right inside of him, too. He takes up eight stories, and is by far the largest silhouette painted on the building. Sometimes, I think he is watching over me. I like that the building is painted cream, and not white. I like the warmth in his blackness. I looked at the silhouette man, who was watching me, and wondered what was going to happen to me. He didn’t answer, but just seeing him, knowing he’s there, always makes me feel a little better. “Um, he’s all right. He’s doing okay, as okay as you can be, given the circumstances.” “It was really nice of you to visit him.” “I’m sure he would have done the same if it were my Dad.” “Maybe.” Den is always assuming the worst; he doesn’t want to be disappointed. I am always disappointed, always hoping for the best and getting let down. “No, he would have.” “I’m sure he was glad to see you. Things like that are hard.” I know this. Den knows I know this, because I cry at every funeral we go to. I always cry. I’ve 58 The Penn Review
mostly been to Jewish funerals, and whenever we get to the Mourner’s Kaddish, I just can’t help it. It doesn’t talk about death in the prayer. It talks about sanctifying G-d, thanking G-d, and it makes me think that life is supposed to go on, but I wonder how can it? I cry when the dirt hits the casket and makes that horrible hollow sound that echoes the hollow feeling in my whole body. I collapse into bed after each funeral, and when my body hits the mattress, it makes that hollow sound and I feel like I don’t exist anymore, either. A lot of the funerals aren’t real, though. I’ve been to a lot of real funerals, of course. My grandparents’, the grandparents and parents of some of my friends, and of course in January. But a lot of them I dream or some I imagine while I’m walking home from the magazine. Then I slip out of my shoes next to the front door, like Den’s mom tells me to when she calls every now and then, and I float toward the back of our apartment, to our bedroom, and I hit the mattress like dirt. I look sideways at the silhouette man, and I wonder if he is made of dark dirt. I was worried that Andy would be upset to see me at his father’s memorial service, more than anything. I can’t imagine I’d be very uplifting to anyone, but I try really, really hard most of the time. It’s very tiring. I just fall back into bed at the end of all of it, feeling dead, but really not feeling anything, so I guess feeling dead. I feel empty and I look at the silhouette man and I wonder if he is made of emptiness. Maybe he is a black hole, and maybe I am too, because I suck every bit of light in, and stay just as dark. When I was at Andy’s, I think I actually might have been a little comforting, which is strange, because I thought the last thing he would want is to run into an old high school ex-girlfriend and have to seem politely curious about her life when he was struggling with the incomprehensible loss of his father. I thought he’d think I was acting or something, or coming because I wanted to see him again, but I really just wanted to be there. It’s really important to show support for people who have lost someone they love. Also, in order to pray for Andy’s dad, they would need at least ten Jewish adults, and so I went to make sure there would be enough people, but of course I expected there would be more than enough. In the beginning there are always more than enough. After the service, we all floated through the house, eating raspberry thumbprint cookies and looking at old pictures of Andy’s dad. There was one of them that was really upsetting. In the picture, Andy is maybe six, and he is standing in front of his dad on the beach, with their hair blowing back a little bit. The horizon is stretching out behind them. It’s not sunset or anything, and there aren’t any clouds. It’s just blue on blue, forever. It’s an eternity of blue, and I started to cry again, thinking that an eternity of blue is roughly the distance between them now. The picture was symbolic to me, but then, I’m always going around giving things meaning. I turned the picture into a poem, I gave it so many metaphors. The ocean is salty; it’s all tears. The wind is change. Life goes on and on into the horizon, and Andy can’t do anything about it because his dad is behind him now. I was just standing there, with a little white napkin crumpled in my fist, crying to myself, when Andy came up behind me. “Cari.” He said it with a gasp, like he was seeing a ghost. “Hi, Andy,” I said, and I put the practiced, perfected, sad, sympathetic smile on my face. “Wow. Thank you so much for coming. That was really, really nice of you.” “It was no problem. Your dad was the best and besides, I live around the corner.” “It’s really good to see you. I’m sure my dad would have loved to know that you stopped by.” I cringed. I liked to think that maybe he did know, or that our knowing was enough. I didn’t say anything. “So you live around the corner?” 59
“Yeah, actually. Right across from the Silhouette Building.” “That’s amazing. Look at you, living across from famous architecture.” “It’s just a brick office building someone painted,” I checked to make sure my smile was still there. “Where are you these days?” “I’m living in San Francisco. I’m running a non-profit that organizes therapeutic hiking trips for kids with emotional issues.” “Wow, Andy. Your life is so,” I paused, grasping for the right word, “meaningful.” He smiled a real, genuine smile. “I love what I do, what can I say?” I hadn’t looked at his eyes in a very long time, and so when I did, my heart jumped a little. They looked like the horizon in the photograph and I wondered if Andy’s dad was somewhere in the blue of his eyes. “Cari, you look really great.” I blushed. I knew I didn’t. I’d lost a lot of weight. Food didn’t really taste right, I don’t know. I smoothed my hands over my Funeral Dress. “You, too.” “Do you want to step upstairs where we can really catch up?” He looked really earnest and so even though I didn’t want to go upstairs, I didn’t say no because I would never say no to someone whose father just died. We were standing in his room, which was strange because it looked exactly the same as back in high school. Andy was talking about his non-profit and I was looking at my hands and thinking about how my skin was cream-colored but my dress was black, sort of like the Silhouette Building, and how Andy didn’t seem hollow the way I felt, and how brave that was of him. I couldn’t have kept talking the way he did, with everything being a memory, a little ghost. He was surrounded by trinkets that his father, in one way or another, had given him. The books on the shelves, the signed baseball in the glass box, the wooden dresser, the desk under the window, the glow-in-the-dark sticky stars on his ceiling, it was all really from his dad. I thought about how pictures go from being a memory to being a tribute. They become proof that someone existed. I wondered if the wind in the photograph had died, too, or if it just kicked around the earth, visiting the same places over and over. I felt like Den’s eyes were on me, but when I looked up, they were just Andy’s. I felt like I should talk so I asked how his mom was doing. “Den,” I tried to look at him, but I could only look through him. I wanted him to understand my afternoon at Andy’s mom’s, how it didn’t change anything because nothing would. “Andy asked me to have dinner with him while he’s in town. I’m not really sure why. I don’t want to make excuses, I think he was confused and just wanted something familiar again. I don’t want to make excuses, but I said yes. I mean, I couldn’t say no to someone whose father just passed away.” Den rolled away from me. He had his back to me and to the window, to me and to the silhouette. “Den, Andy and I stayed friends for a while after we broke up. It’s not going to be a date or anything.” He didn’t react. “You’re not losing me,” I choked out. “I’m not going anywhere.” “Are you trying to hurt me? I didn’t try to hurt you. You know I didn’t mean for it to happen.” I knew what he would say next. He’s said it so many times and every single time it hits me, it goes right through me to my core. It echoes in my brain and I hear it in my sleep. It hits me, and it makes a hollow sound. “You were right. You should have driven. I should have listened. So what? You’re just going to punish me now?” “I’m not trying to hurt you. It’s been months, Den. Den, please look at me. Raiden.” He turned back over to face me, but I knew he was upset. I searched his face for forgive60 The Penn Review
ness. He wouldn’t kiss the top of my forehead like he used to, probably ever, at this point. He used to tease me because I keep the curtains open all the time. I can’t keep anything to myself. I never put up walls or try to shut him out. I never close myself off, but we were growing distant anyway. I was fighting desperately to keep him close, to keep him always, but it didn’t make a difference. Sometimes I just live in the past. I drive in my car and imagine him in the seat next to me. I see films alone and pretend he’s sitting beside me, watching in absolute silence. I listen to music in our apartment, and pray that he will burst in the door, with flowers, with a smile, with his arms open, with bright eyes and red cheeks, with glowing skin. When I look at him, he’s cold, white porcelain. Sometimes, he’s a little bit gray. The closest I ever feel to Den is when I feel the wind. I think maybe he is kicking around the earth and lingers for a moment to push my hair out of my face or run his cool fingers over my cheek. Sometimes, I look up at the Silhouette Building, and I feel him slip through my fingers. I flip through pictures of him furiously, trying to trick myself into thinking that he is moving, like he is here, but he is the same as the silhouette man. Seeing him makes me feel a bit better, like he’s watching me and loving me no matter what, but he never really tells me what is going to happen to me. I told Den I was going to go to dinner with Andy that night, and I did go. I walked the whole way, which was fine because it’s April and the evenings are beautiful and I’m still having trouble with cars. I love spring in Atlanta. The entire city becomes a garden. I felt worse about everything when it was cold out. February, I cried every day. But things are easier with all the flowers, smears of cream and pink and red all around the city, making me feel like things are alive again. We were only on our appetizers and Andy wanted to know if I wanted to go to the High Museum the next day. He was in town and didn’t know who else was. He wanted to get out of the house. He remembered that the High was my favorite place in the entire city. Besides, he heard there was a good exhibit, Francis something. “Francis Bacon, maybe?” He asked, his eyes endless. Mine snapped shut. I opened them slowly, and I shivered, cool fingers on the back of my neck. “I know I used to be a pain, but I’m much better at appreciating art now.” “It’s not that. Excuse me, just a minute.” I looked up into the mirror in the bathroom at the restaurant, my elbows on the marble sink to steady myself, my head in my hands. I once heard that in Self Portrait, 1973, Francis Bacon is wearing George Dyer’s gold watch. Den didn’t wear watches, but I looked at the engagement ring, and I thought about a phrase Bacon had used once to describe his own art, “the human cry.” I remember standing in that exhibit room, imagining what it would be like to love someone so much, to see every possibility of life in him, and then to lose him, to feel that if I’d just done one thing differently, if I’d just changed one small action, I could have changed our entire tiny corner of the universe. I think all the time about my younger self, crying over George and Francis all those years ago, without even knowing that I had met my George just days before. I couldn’t have imagined myself leaning over a marble sink, framed in a bathroom mirror, a shadow of a Francis, a silhouette, an echo, but I had mourned this back then, all the same. 61
“Yeah, actually. Right across from the Silhouette Building.” “That’s amazing. Look at you, living across from famous architecture.” “It’s just a brick office building someone painted,” I checked to make sure my smile was still there. “Where are you these days?” “I’m living in San Francisco. I’m running a non-profit that organizes therapeutic hiking trips for kids with emotional issues.” “Wow, Andy. Your life is so,” I paused, grasping for the right word, “meaningful.” He smiled a real, genuine smile. “I love what I do, what can I say?” I hadn’t looked at his eyes in a very long time, and so when I did, my heart jumped a little. They looked like the horizon in the photograph and I wondered if Andy’s dad was somewhere in the blue of his eyes. “Cari, you look really great.” I blushed. I knew I didn’t. I’d lost a lot of weight. Food didn’t really taste right, I don’t know. I smoothed my hands over my Funeral Dress. “You, too.” “Do you want to step upstairs where we can really catch up?” He looked really earnest and so even though I didn’t want to go upstairs, I didn’t say no because I would never say no to someone whose father just died. We were standing in his room, which was strange because it looked exactly the same as back in high school. Andy was talking about his non-profit and I was looking at my hands and thinking about how my skin was cream-colored but my dress was black, sort of like the Silhouette Building, and how Andy didn’t seem hollow the way I felt, and how brave that was of him. I couldn’t have kept talking the way he did, with everything being a memory, a little ghost. He was surrounded by trinkets that his father, in one way or another, had given him. The books on the shelves, the signed baseball in the glass box, the wooden dresser, the desk under the window, the glow-in-the-dark sticky stars on his ceiling, it was all really from his dad. I thought about how pictures go from being a memory to being a tribute. They become proof that someone existed. I wondered if the wind in the photograph had died, too, or if it just kicked around the earth, visiting the same places over and over. I felt like Den’s eyes were on me, but when I looked up, they were just Andy’s. I felt like I should talk so I asked how his mom was doing. “Den,” I tried to look at him, but I could only look through him. I wanted him to understand my afternoon at Andy’s mom’s, how it didn’t change anything because nothing would. “Andy asked me to have dinner with him while he’s in town. I’m not really sure why. I don’t want to make excuses, I think he was confused and just wanted something familiar again. I don’t want to make excuses, but I said yes. I mean, I couldn’t say no to someone whose father just passed away.” Den rolled away from me. He had his back to me and to the window, to me and to the silhouette. “Den, Andy and I stayed friends for a while after we broke up. It’s not going to be a date or anything.” He didn’t react. “You’re not losing me,” I choked out. “I’m not going anywhere.” “Are you trying to hurt me? I didn’t try to hurt you. You know I didn’t mean for it to happen.” I knew what he would say next. He’s said it so many times and every single time it hits me, it goes right through me to my core. It echoes in my brain and I hear it in my sleep. It hits me, and it makes a hollow sound. “You were right. You should have driven. I should have listened. So what? You’re just going to punish me now?” “I’m not trying to hurt you. It’s been months, Den. Den, please look at me. Raiden.” He turned back over to face me, but I knew he was upset. I searched his face for forgive60 The Penn Review
ness. He wouldn’t kiss the top of my forehead like he used to, probably ever, at this point. He used to tease me because I keep the curtains open all the time. I can’t keep anything to myself. I never put up walls or try to shut him out. I never close myself off, but we were growing distant anyway. I was fighting desperately to keep him close, to keep him always, but it didn’t make a difference. Sometimes I just live in the past. I drive in my car and imagine him in the seat next to me. I see films alone and pretend he’s sitting beside me, watching in absolute silence. I listen to music in our apartment, and pray that he will burst in the door, with flowers, with a smile, with his arms open, with bright eyes and red cheeks, with glowing skin. When I look at him, he’s cold, white porcelain. Sometimes, he’s a little bit gray. The closest I ever feel to Den is when I feel the wind. I think maybe he is kicking around the earth and lingers for a moment to push my hair out of my face or run his cool fingers over my cheek. Sometimes, I look up at the Silhouette Building, and I feel him slip through my fingers. I flip through pictures of him furiously, trying to trick myself into thinking that he is moving, like he is here, but he is the same as the silhouette man. Seeing him makes me feel a bit better, like he’s watching me and loving me no matter what, but he never really tells me what is going to happen to me. I told Den I was going to go to dinner with Andy that night, and I did go. I walked the whole way, which was fine because it’s April and the evenings are beautiful and I’m still having trouble with cars. I love spring in Atlanta. The entire city becomes a garden. I felt worse about everything when it was cold out. February, I cried every day. But things are easier with all the flowers, smears of cream and pink and red all around the city, making me feel like things are alive again. We were only on our appetizers and Andy wanted to know if I wanted to go to the High Museum the next day. He was in town and didn’t know who else was. He wanted to get out of the house. He remembered that the High was my favorite place in the entire city. Besides, he heard there was a good exhibit, Francis something. “Francis Bacon, maybe?” He asked, his eyes endless. Mine snapped shut. I opened them slowly, and I shivered, cool fingers on the back of my neck. “I know I used to be a pain, but I’m much better at appreciating art now.” “It’s not that. Excuse me, just a minute.” I looked up into the mirror in the bathroom at the restaurant, my elbows on the marble sink to steady myself, my head in my hands. I once heard that in Self Portrait, 1973, Francis Bacon is wearing George Dyer’s gold watch. Den didn’t wear watches, but I looked at the engagement ring, and I thought about a phrase Bacon had used once to describe his own art, “the human cry.” I remember standing in that exhibit room, imagining what it would be like to love someone so much, to see every possibility of life in him, and then to lose him, to feel that if I’d just done one thing differently, if I’d just changed one small action, I could have changed our entire tiny corner of the universe. I think all the time about my younger self, crying over George and Francis all those years ago, without even knowing that I had met my George just days before. I couldn’t have imagined myself leaning over a marble sink, framed in a bathroom mirror, a shadow of a Francis, a silhouette, an echo, but I had mourned this back then, all the same. 61
KILEY BENSE
VACUUM
I grew out of a void and became something smaller. I have no need of vastness. I have seen horizons turn into honeycombs, and I was the sailor who said to Hudson, “There is no way through.” At sea, mornings are a shelter to be chased. Nightfall is a cluttered doorjamb and the water is a saucer.
Aude Broos Friday Market
62 The Penn Review
I’ve been sailing for a time when emptiness still meant tragedy.
63
KILEY BENSE
VACUUM
I grew out of a void and became something smaller. I have no need of vastness. I have seen horizons turn into honeycombs, and I was the sailor who said to Hudson, “There is no way through.” At sea, mornings are a shelter to be chased. Nightfall is a cluttered doorjamb and the water is a saucer.
Aude Broos Friday Market
62 The Penn Review
I’ve been sailing for a time when emptiness still meant tragedy.
63
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