Penn Review: Spring 2012 by Penn Review

THE PENN REVIEW SPRING 2012

THE PENN REVIEW 2012

THE PENN REVIEW Literary and Visual Arts Magazine University of Pennsylvania Spring 2012

EDITOR’S NOTE Let the corporality sink in first. Sixty-eight physical pages, that even now may rouse your brain with paper-smell—a little book, spine and all, that you can touch, flip, dog-ear, and tuck under your elbow. On these pages, equally fleshy, we are proud to offer a selection of poetry, prose, visual art, and quite a few of their delightfully bastard children. This year’s collected pieces are particularly concerned with two themes: nature (whimsical, succumbing, flourishing beneath subways, and pushing up through concrete) and women (incensed women, self-declared women, no one’s women, frail women, women beloved and loving). We have our share of madmen, musicians, and memoirs, too. We are grateful to our contributors for the questions that their linguistic and visual choices so relentlessly invite. I am equally thankful to my fellow editors, who carved time each week to pile into a room and take pleasure in the words—to analyze, explore, question, and cajole them into meaning. We argued over diction, defended periods, accused commas, and sighed over beautiful phrases; we ourselves became ink-ripe, got tangled in wrist bones, and discovered neighbors. So it is with pride that I welcome you, neighbors, to the 45th volume of the Penn Review. Cuddle into the binding, swirl around the phrasing, reach into the images, and rummage through the words. Touch each page noisily, and it will respond in kind. Rachel Taube Editor-in-Chief

CONTENTS [LITERARY]

EDITORIAL BOARD Rachel Taube ..................... Rivky Mondal .................... Christina Stewart .............. Shoshana Akabas ............. Nathan Weinbren ............. Gregory Cordina ...............

Editor-in-Chief Art Editor; Layout & Design Editor Associate Art Editor; Associate Layout & Design Editor Marketing Liasion Marketing Liasion Webmaster

ASSOCIATE EDITORS Zaneta Cheng Taylor Cook Rebecca Hobble Elan Kiderman Austin Levitt Eliana Machefsky Chris Milione Sarah Murphy Nikita Namjoshi Kenna O’Rourke Ashlee Paxton-Turner Megan Reilly Linda Wang

KEN CHANG ANONYMOUS ZANETA CHENG ALEXA BRYN SARAH ESMI,MAX ILDARI, JON REECE RACHEL TAUBE DIAMOND IRWIN ELIANA MACHEFSKY ZANETA CHENG ERICA CERVANTES LINA HASHEM GREG ROMERO MATT CHYLAK MAYA VASHEE DANE MAINELLA MAX ILDARI NICOLAS WILLSON CHRIS MILIONE EMMA BIEGACKI TAYLOR COOK DANE MAINELLA SHOSHANA AKABAS ELAN KIDERMAN PAVEL KONOV DOMINIKA BUREK JILLIAN BLACKWELL

LOVE, IF ONLY HOURS HAD THE DIGNITY TO WAVE GOODBYE FIRST MEMORY 7A VEGETABLES THE OPERAGOER THE DUSK OF DAY MAMIHLAPINATAPAI AN INFINITELY ROMANTIC NOTION MINE I AM THE WOMAN THE OTHER ROOM AMERICAN LEGION AT DUSK ON A TUESDAY LANDING SALVAGED THE GOLDEN PLATE TRIUMPH LIBYA THE UNDERGROUND A FINISHED SILENCE GOLDEN SPIRITS STILL LIFE ‘PATAHERMETICA UNTITLED ANATOMICAL LOVE BUD

1 3 4 5 6 8 14 15 16 17 19 20 24 28 30 34 38 39 43 44 49 50 54 57 58 59

CONTENTS [LITERARY]

Editor-in-Chief Art Editor; Layout & Design Editor Associate Art Editor; Associate Layout & Design Editor Marketing Liasion Marketing Liasion Webmaster

1 3 4 5 6 8 14 15 16 17 19 20 24 28 30 34 38 39 43 44 49 50 54 57 58 59

CONTENTS [VISUAL ARTS] Cover:

ALLISON ZUCKERMAN, KENNY AND THE APOCALYPSE NICOLAS WILLSON

CHRISTINA STEWART

KATE BAGGALEY ALLISON ZUCKERMAN EMMA BIEGACKI KATHERINE FRASER REBECKA ZAVALETA

CHRISTINE OTIS XIN YU

UNTITLED 1 UNTITLED 2 UNTITLED 3 UNTITLED 4 CATHERINE MIST SILHOUETTE REFLECTIONS IN NEW ZEALAND MAGDELENA CLIMAX AND FALL OF SINGULARITY MONSTER MOUNDS THE DREAM TEAM FIRE ESCAPE THE SHIPWRECKED HEART LIVE TO TELL THE LIGHTHOUSE MIS BISABUELOS SPANISH POLITICS FAVELA ROCINHA POBRE PERRITO HANNAHâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S FLIGHT BEING AND TIME EXHIBITIONISTS THE ELEMENTS

2 6 31 58 11 25 32 33 12 26 27 35 28 29 36 37 18 23 38 42 40 48 48 52

CONTENTS [VISUAL ARTS] Cover:

ALLISON ZUCKERMAN, KENNY AND THE APOCALYPSE NICOLAS WILLSON

CHRISTINA STEWART

KATE BAGGALEY ALLISON ZUCKERMAN EMMA BIEGACKI KATHERINE FRASER REBECKA ZAVALETA

CHRISTINE OTIS XIN YU

2 6 31 58 11 25 32 33 12 26 27 35 28 29 36 37 18 23 38 42 40 48 48 52

KEN CHANG LOVE, I wrote this letter for you, folded, halved, then quartered it, the way you used to fold my shirts, laid on a stamp like a moist leaf on a shingle, and sealed it up with the spit of the attic spiders. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know where you are, or even in what country. So I just put down your name, taped on a memory I saved in a jar, and passed it on to the mailman, figuring the odds were still better than a bottle at sea.

IF ONLY HOURS HAD THE DIGNITY TO WAVE GOODBYE

ANONYMOUS

we were peacocks ice skating on gold leaves my sore trumpet throat burped alone in sound shattered air, made of tar and mortar. I watched a mother watching her kids in the park “jacket upon sweater, scarf around neck tighter” she would say with a smile but that was in the past. now, its pitch black. black you swallow (*black one could swallow) did you next expect I’d share the future? be honest there’s little I truly know I thought with a blank face (*imagine if books were to describe people that way) and there you have it, the difference between a book and a poem. I’m sorry i got so side tracked we were thinking about feathers... and experiencing the sensation stroking feathers? Untitled 1 Nicolas Willson

... the gold leaves smelled like a woman undressing herself one bone at a time it was too late at night therefore you dubbed it “inappropriate” so we stopped.

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IF ONLY HOURS HAD THE DIGNITY TO WAVE GOODBYE

ANONYMOUS

... the gold leaves smelled like a woman undressing herself one bone at a time it was too late at night therefore you dubbed it “inappropriate” so we stopped.

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FIRST MEMORY

ZANETA CHENG

I remember shuffling my feet in the narrow confines of a jungle gym limb. The purple glazed canvas that was bound to what I guess must have been metal framework providing resistance to and surely protecting many a minute skull and limb. I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really care then. To me, it was just a purpley section which led me to a pool of clattery, colored plastic balls. I remember my shuffling feet only because I disliked it so much. It felt appropriate though. Narrow tunnel led to small box of crayon-box-rainbow beads. Microscopic movement to mimic microscopic surroundings. But it didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t sit right. I hiked one foot up and slid it simultaneously lengthways and top to bottom, stretching my cocktail sausage legs through the smooth cool plastic, glad that each yielded to my curious foot with an airy lightness then submerged me into their collective mass. I buried myself, discerning a red ball, a yellow, a green in the dark. I stood up, creating a slight explosion. Looking at the colors in front of me, I wondered who else could be hidden inside.

ALEXA BRYN

Nine weeks in the yellow house in Arles left Van Gogh and Gauguin with three and a half ears between the two of them, almost a decade in our cramped apartment and all I am sure of is that our bodies are still intact. When you left, I found mice and ants, molding bread and rotting cheese irises, dying or dead and windows, long sealed shut, terrified of sunlight I discovered neighbors, memorized the sounds of their radios the rambunctious footsteps of their children the impatient jangle of their keys And wondered if they had heard us, smelled us living this way all these years, whether we had forced children to cover their ears, and ask questions their parents could only answer in lies.

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FIRST MEMORY

ZANETA CHENG

ALEXA BRYN

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VEGETABLES

SARAH ESMI, MAX ILDARI, AND JON REECE

Purple yet very blue, night ephemeral you perhaps asleep light, in darkness, forgets Untitled 2 Nicolas Willson

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VEGETABLES

SARAH ESMI, MAX ILDARI, AND JON REECE

Purple yet very blue, night ephemeral you perhaps asleep light, in darkness, forgets Untitled 2 Nicolas Willson

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THE OPERAGOER

RACHEL TAUBE

Two men stood outside a window. Above them stretched the monstrous sky, below them 15 stories of air; they were separated from the latter only by a thin wooden plank, from the former by some wire. The men dipped their brushes into their buckets of used water, and the long midnight-blue poles, sturdy painters’ tools, moved up and down, washing away the winter’s accumulated muck—the particles left over after the snow melts and the wind has carried dirty taxi air high above. The dark, glass monument reflected the sun and the clouds like a perfectly flat pond at night. On the ground, Sean felt dizzy just looking up at them. Their heads, too, must spin when they peeked towards the tip of the skyscraper. Couldn’t they look up until they started to tilt backwards? They’d extend a foot back to catch themselves and step right off the end of the wooden plank, and their stomachs would turn... When the muscles in his neck started to pinch and strain, Sean let his head fall. He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to roll the soreness out. He ran both hands through the hair at the back of his neck, up to his face, and pushed at his eyelids with the heels of his palms, feeling the soft, unsettling resistance of his eyeballs in their sockets. With a last glance skyward, white spots still dancing before his eyes, he continued along the sidewalk. He was heading generally toward the opera house, but occasionally he turned in a street too early so that his way would bring him through alleys that he hadn’t seen before. He reached the opera house early, but a crowd had already gathered before the front doors. He climbed slowly, step by step, as the people in front of him filed through the doors. A young couple rustled past him and an elderly gentleman grumbled behind, treading on Sean’s heels every other step. Finally reaching the door, Sean showed his ticket, and was ushered up a grand set of red-carpeted stairs. He entered a corridor that led up and up, where a series of staircases reached one floor, then curled up dizzily to another, and finally spat him out on the highest level of the opera house. Another usher glanced at his ticket and pointed him around the circular landing, where a third usher shined a flashlight and pointed him to the lowest level of the mezzanine. The steps down the mezzanine were steep, so that he had to hold the edges of the chairs beside him, and climb down one step at a time. He reached the lowest level, and felt his stomach lurch, as it always did, as he recognized that the railing, a bronze metal cylinder stretching the length of the mezzanine, reached no higher than his upper thigh. He had to grab the chair next to him to keep his head from spinning. Glancing again at his ticket, he asked the people at the end of the row to stand, and he looked away from the railing as he passed them, letting his fingers graze the chill 8 The Penn Review

metal so he was sure to keep his balance. He found his seat and glanced around. The couple next to him was chattering about the grand chandelier in the center of the house, glittering with crystal. Behind him, a small child asked his mother when the show would start, and she tried to distract him by pointing out the sculptures on the domed ceiling—two huge, kneeling, curly-haired Greeks bowed towards the stage, and gilded doves and olive branches graced the air behind them. The lights lowered, and the performance began. Angelotti ran on stage, panting as he searched for a place to hide in the pews, and Cavaradossi feigned adding details to his Madonna. Sean had to lean forward uncomfortably to see the stage past that bronze railing. He held his head positioned just above the railing, clutching it tightly in his hand. He let his mind be absorbed by the music, the costumes, the sniffling sacristan and the jealous eponymous mistress. By the third act, as Cavaradossi’s romanza was washing over him and minutes before Tosca, undeceived and heartbroken, would jump to her death, he let his eyes wander the opera house. His hand still rested on the banister; his face was so close to it that the sharp smell of the cold metal filled his nostrils. How easy it would be, he thought, to roll over this low, gleaming railing. He imagined leaning forward and sideways to slide his whole body over it. He would feel the chill bronze through his thin shirt and against his palms and neck. Momentum would bring him to the top of the rounded railing, legs reaching out along it, elbows drawn to his sides, muscles taut through his biceps and thighs, and the chill bronze against him. And for a brief moment, like at the top of a jump when you seem to pause before falling, everything would be clear, and alright. Then momentum would push, and he would begin to tip. Fingers would curl automatically around the metal, slipping helplessly, his elbows would be pulled in like magnets to the cold cylinder, and he would feel the chill bronze slide against his inner arms, against his bent leg and warm stomach. Then suddenly he would slide too far, he would roll from his precarious perch and tumble against the mezzanine; one outstretched arm would graze the bronze for the last time. The fall would be very quick. He would barely have a second or two to feel his stomach lurch, his arms and cheeks pulled back by the air. The chairs would fly up to meet his face—and crack his eye socket and his cheek and his ribs and his skull. He thought for a moment of the people below him. Those in the mezzanine might see him fall, but the people directly below would be watching the actors and letting the music fill their heads. These well-dressed operagoers, perhaps a woman in a ruffled periwinkle dress holding a black purse on her lap, would barely have time to 9

THE OPERAGOER

RACHEL TAUBE

look up, perhaps no time at all, if those above could even gasp or cry out. The woman in the periwinkle dress might very well be killed if he were to fall on her. Her neck might snap under his weight, and her poor husband, broadshouldered under his suit jacket, would wish he had forgotten their anniversary this year, too. Yes, it would be a shame about the periwinkle-clad woman. The real horror, though, would be if he jumped and didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t die. What if he fell, split his face open, and lived? He would have to live with a scarred jumble of a visage, or wear a mask to cover his horrendous disfigurement. Or if he fell and broke his backâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;he would be confined to a wheel chair, perhaps hooked to a machine that would breathe for him, and his co-workers would come and pity him and offer flowers. They would whisper to each other curiously, wondering what made him do it, that quiet operagoer and slow worker, and he would know they were whispering just until they opened his hospital door to visit him, and again as soon as it clicked behind them on their way out. Perhaps the husband of the dead periwinkle woman would come to see him, to yell at him and to cry or to smash in the other side of his face so even the mask would be useless. The railing in front of him, scratched in some places from wear, glittered dully. He moved his hand along the chill bronze, then let his fingers and palm rest until his body heat had warmed a small patch, and sharp metal fumes filled his head.

Catherine Christina Stewart 10 The Penn Review

Magdalena Kate Baggaley 12 The Penn Review

THE DUSK OF DAY

DIAMOND IRWIN

It began with the gradual ghosting of light The sighs of the wind The drunken flames of lightning The Day was no longer sure of Her entanglement with the Night Her trust sank down Trickling through the clouds As acid rain She believed that the Night was cavorting With all the stars in his mist With the spots of brightness That punctured his shell of darkness Almost hissing with jealousy The Day’s heart splintered Shooting out of her chest And prickling her skin

MAMIHLAPINATAPAI ELIANA MACHEFSKY I found a place today where the trees grow sideways over the water, their top-heavy branches too full. The mangled roots peek out through the concrete, pleading for burial so they might breathe again. Yet their leaves cradle the current— an endless rocking back and forth— as if to promise they’d somehow found peace. I’ll dream I take you there, and we sit where the trunk widens, making space for barely two. But by next time, the season will have changed to a sticky one. The breeze won’t ever smell the same. Still, I’ll lie against this trunk for you, and assess the rotated view. I’ll pray the wind might blow the same way— I’ll find presence in the standstill.

The Day accused The Night Of adoring the full moon’s Girlish, dimpled craters Her rosy wrath began bounding upward The Day was darkening Blood orange webs of sunlight Broke out against the blue sky Birds of paradise hid in The shelter of their nests Artificial light now reigned over All streets The Night curled away Offering her platitudes He whimpered that they were not compatible That he was not ready for a commitment That she deserved someone better Someone brighter The Day was wretched Searching for consolation In the canvas of her unmerciful mood 14 The Penn Review

THE DUSK OF DAY

DIAMOND IRWIN

AN INFINITELY ROMANTIC NOTION

ZANETA CHENG

MINE

ERICA CERVANTES

(an homage to Joan Didion) Sometimes I sit down and think of our beginning and end. I know to you there was a smudged beginning and a certain end, and yet to me there was always a smudged beginning and a trailing end. I imagine myself a cat pouncing on a ball of wool, the end of which unfurls and curls, unfurls and curls, provoking me and my manic feral determination to hold an unfurled point still. Whenever I cast my mind back to our now time-washed past, I try to look past the watery blots of optimism or confusion, vestiges of my mind’s own manifold rewind and replay, through the tangle of memories, in the hopes of getting to the points that marked a denouement, only to find splatters unclear and pathless—with only occasional glows which I associate with the good memories, the warmth of them painted over with the flatness, the dullness of the ones that still cause my throat to constrict. But sometimes still, when weather turns cold and the wind blows a little sharper on the face, I remember the flashes in the beginning, the flashes in the middle—of earnestness on your part and hopeless clumsiness on mine that I could not and felt that I ought not to reciprocate with kindness and equal earnestness until spring came and it was too late. I wonder if you remember your earnestness, and I wonder if you remember my unkindness. I wonder if you ever knew that I could hardly believe that someone would like me with the same wideeyed eagerness that I viewed the world. I wonder if you knew that I only treated you badly because I never believed that what you could feel for me was real when I was so far from home and our dorm rooms seemed like an illusion. And then I wonder even more whether the smudge of the beginning has expanded to smudge even its middle because I feel that perhaps the coming of winter, an advent calendar, a dress, a perfume, my expression, or my glance no longer recalls the same response or reaction. Is it then that, I hold the beginning and middle and you hold the end? Perhaps if I sat down and drew the dots as you saw them? Perhaps if I told you, truthfully, finally, that I know I see no end because I saw you, see you, only in the way you see the first person who ever touches you and never see anyone quite that way again. I think to myself the myriad ways I might try and massage your finality of ‘us’ realizing and un-realizing that massaging only prolongs the ending of it. Because I want to forget that you are in love with someone else, the first person who ever touched you—and who am I to expect you to love anyone else quite that way again. So how do I ask for a love that can never be reciprocated in kind because I choose to cling to a notion of love that undoes the premise of my own hope for yours? And yet, as even my own replayed images and scenarios begin to fade, the imprint of the glow, the smile, the glances, and the affection remains, sitting quietly, obstinately, so sure in the belief that the wonder of such moments, the comfort of such emotion cannot be smothered by arbitrary notions such as the end. 16 The Penn Review

I dared him, “Singe me; branch out.” I seduced a tree. They called him Fate. I called him Mine. He grew with seeds I sowed and reaped in time to squander autumn’s roots. That exile burned like forest fire. Each stump remained, the ash, the fossil corpse I lit for him, for us. You see, he promised little mortal kinds of blossoms, kinds that he could not return. Because the Fate is marrow etched: once lit cannot be sated. Such thirst is Mine.

AN INFINITELY ROMANTIC NOTION

ZANETA CHENG

MINE

ERICA CERVANTES

LINA HASHEM I AM THE WOMAN Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll remember on your sickbed, The one who knits fall leaves to winter trees, Draws her hand on a sheet of paper, Colors it in red paint so you Wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t forget that yours Are made of blood. I am the woman who lives In cracked eggshells because I know we are all made To be broken, because I know that I Can put pieces together, Hatch again. I am the woman who will remember To carry the moon on her shoulders Till you reach the last sky Crawling, who digs her own grave With every step, plants it with sunflowers And Ivy, so that she will feel cherished Even under footsteps. I am the woman Who will shield you with her fingertips When you scarred her with yours, who will rise for you Even when you have your blinds down, feed you With distilled tears when your heart beats to cunning Laughter. I am the woman who will impregnate the Dark with a sun belly that shines every mourning, the one Who will cry to quench your thirst for winning.

Mis bisabuelos Rebecka Zavaleta 18 The Penn Review

THE OTHER ROOM

GREG ROMERO

I awake but can’t open my eyes. And I wonder how long I’ve been trying. I go to pry them open with my hands, but my hands are tied behind my back. I feel the strain on my shoulder as I try to break free. Little knives dance down my arm as it wakes up from its own slumber. I try to stay still and listen to what’s surrounding me, try to make sense of what is going on. I can hear the traffic sounds…cars passing on a nearby street. I don’t hear any people, so I wonder if I’m outside the city. From what I can tell, I am in a room (I am definitely inside) with an open window…or maybe an open door. I can almost feel a breeze. The cars continue passing, but they don’t notice me. They are the only sound, lonely as a single vibrating violin string, humming forever across an empty continent. And I wonder if I’ll ever be able to play again. Should I scream for help? I am too scared of calling the attention of whoever might be holding me captive, so I remain silent. And then the stench hits me. Urine. And shit. I have been bound in this chair (I assume it’s a chair…a wooden one?) for so long that I have emptied my bowels all over myself. I adjust my body enough to feel the wet sand I am sitting in, confirming that I am full of waste. How long have I been here? Hours? Days? Is there any way of knowing? I try to stand up, but my entire body is bound and I am filthy and helpless. I try to piece my memory together, but nothing stirs in my mind. No clues reveal themselves. Blank and soiled, I sit and continue to listen to the cars pass on the road, and a few of them begin to sound like the ocean. I feel myself drifting, but I cannot allow myself to dream…I must find a way out. I scream for help—maybe my voice is urgent enough to reach into a distant passerby’s ear. The air fills my lungs and I cry out, but my voice is stopped by something in my mouth…a rag? A towel? A gag? The texture pushed against my tongue is rough; perhaps an entire bathrobe is shoved in my face. I keep screaming and can feel my voice filling my own ears, and I continue, desperately, until the screams press upon my temples and blanket my brain. None of the sounds can get out and I begin to taste the blood from the back of my throat. Why am I here? I rock my chair side to side, trying to tip myself over onto the ground. 20 The Penn Review

The wood creaks under my weight, and I am sickened by the excrement mushing under my body as I shift myself from one side of the chair to the other. Finally, I fall over to the ground, landing hard and loud onto the floor. The side of my face tells me I’m on hardwood flooring, perhaps…pine? No, maple. I hear a door slide open…glass doors? I hear footsteps walk towards me from the other room, their sound echoes through the vibrations I feel pass against my face pressed onto the floor. The footsteps walk closer, until I know they are right next to me. Who is standing over me? A voice above me says, “Walter?” It is a man, and he knows my name. And, of course, I cannot answer. He presses the heel of his shoe against my face, taunting me. Slowly, he shifts his weight until my cheek feels the entire burden of his body. And, of course, I cannot scream. I can only wait and hope for him to stop. Something in my face pops, I don’t know what it is, but it is a bigger knife and it is stabbing me just underneath my left eye. He finally removes his foot from my ruined face and I can smell the fresh blood, feel its warmth as it slides down my cheek, an adagio of pain. I want to ask him who he is, why he’s put me here, but I can’t, and it hurts too much anyway. “Can you hear me?” I know of no way to answer him but to squirm my body on the ground, enough for him to assume I’m still barely alive and listening. He takes this as a yes. “Do you recognize my voice?” I don’t quite. The voice is sonorous, younger than mine, but somehow timeless. “Do you remember me?” I wish I could. The voice is still unplaced but not unfamiliar. It is a voice that comes on the end of a comet’s tail if it were swimming through a river. I can’t make sense of the next few sounds—I know the man steps away from me and I hear three individual snaps. A creaking—a case of some kind opens. What is in there? A gun? A sword? I hear the footsteps walk more about the room—his steps are direct. Is he looking for something? I hear an object dragging on the floor towards me…a chair? Yes…he drags the chair next to me, still lying bound on the floor. I can feel one of the chair’s cold, metal legs pressed against my forehead. I am sure 21

THE OTHER ROOM

GREG ROMERO

Spanish Politics Rebecka Zavaleta

I feel the chair bear the weight of the man as he sits down in it. What will happen next? He clears his throat. And then I hear it. The bow glides over the violin strings and out come the first two unmistakable, haunting notes. And inside the perfect vibrato of his second note, I know he is playing “Clair de lune.” He continues playing, elegant and masterful, and I am no longer on the floor, bound to a chair, soaking in my own shit. I am with the angels. I am drifting above the sea with the other lonely and delicate, night-time souls, the moonlight illuminating the water in its wonderful half-light. The violin sounds naked, even more vulnerable and magical without the piano accompanying, and it sends my soul even higher. This stranger, my tormentor—or is he my angel?—continues gliding through the music, richly, perfectly, his notes perfectly placed, elegant and longing; his phrasing is graceful and mournful, and I feel he must be certain that this is my favorite piece of music, the most perfect piece of music, and also the only piece I have failed to master. Dozens of years of attempting, but I still don’t have the skill to play. I’ve always known I couldn’t play it because I loved it too much. I know he is nearing the end of the music and I never want him to stop. I would lie on this floor, bleeding and broken, if I could continue to listen to him play forever. He reaches Debussy’s final note, capturing and holding it perfectly for as long as possible, though it will never be long enough for me. I hear him finally un-tuck the violin from his neck. The piece is over, but the final sounds continue passing through my mind. I am distracted from mentally replaying the music only when I feel the violin bow puncture my neck and pass all the way through my throat. I lie on the ground, completely ripped open and spilling onto the floor. The man stands, and I hear his footsteps leave the room. All is silent now, except for the cars that continue to pass, unchanged, outside the window. I still can make no sense of these last few moments. Of course, at this point, it doesn’t matter. I know my time is done. All I have left is the music, which I continue to listen to in my mind as it slowly, painfully fades away, and everything is completely gone.

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Spanish Politics Rebecka Zavaleta

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AMERICAN LEGION AT DUSK ON A TUESDAY

MATT CHYLAK

It clouds the eye-teeth, dusky against the bar neon. It sinks in and it wears down the billiard table, and it transcends all places. It drains down the sink with lukewarm ice when the lights are subterranean and it finds the avenue through the bathroom’s window dinge when the lights are on. It spins a web for me and

Mist Christina Stewart

turns on its head, reminding me of redemption songs, all I’ll ever have if the jukebox can soothsay, threatening to uncover an old man in new skin, whose elbow-patched tweed, imbruing refry and VFW beret continually retorts: “I know a lot about yesterday.” Never promising, always reaffirming.

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AMERICAN LEGION AT DUSK ON A TUESDAY

MATT CHYLAK

Mist Christina Stewart

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monster mounds Allison Zuckerman

climax and fall of singularity Allison Zuckerman 26 The Penn Review

monster mounds Allison Zuckerman

climax and fall of singularity Allison Zuckerman 26 The Penn Review

LANDING MAYA VASHEE I had never seen other planes in the sky Below me like small fish. L.A. glittered with cars Harsh, concrete, shiny Roadways swirling cochlear Deep into the ear of the city; The under chaos flowed on Oblivious, removed From the tiny liquor bottles Washed down with recirculated air.

The Shipwrecked Heart Katherine Fraser

Fire Escape Emma Biegacki 28 The Penn Review

The Shipwrecked Heart Katherine Fraser

Fire Escape Emma Biegacki 28 The Penn Review

SALVAGED

DANE MAINELLA

Glass reflects a lucky random culmination of cells and mitochondrial engines pumping the mystical juice of energy into the dynamo of my creation I once was an assortment of pieces, atomic slices, all across the universe Perhaps my arm was a piece of Andromeda, or my tongue the haunch of some ancient lion who stalked in the dry goldenness of the Serengeti my heart a rock that fell from an ocean bluff my hands a bird’s song my eyes a soldier’s soul rising like smoke from a little fire two people dance around, make love around on the coast of Normandy my nails hornets from the Amazon my legs a Father’s frustration my feet some wanderer’s abandoned rucksack

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Untitled 3 Nicolas Willson

SALVAGED

DANE MAINELLA

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Untitled 3 Nicolas Willson

Reflections in New Zealand Christina Stewart

Silhouette Christina Stewart 32 The Penn Review

Reflections in New Zealand Christina Stewart

Silhouette Christina Stewart 32 The Penn Review

THE GOLDEN PLATE

MAX ILDARI

When I stare at the warm golden plate A lake blurs my perception and savvy And before I look too closely too greedily I bathe in black shade, conjuring And then my eyes concave And take on a new philosophy Cement floors with wide open doors Fickle infrastructure And a roof of capricious boards. And my mind is full and sinks And there is a stain on the rear view mirror And I turn and face the wall Now a luminous silver screen And when I am not looking deathâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s brother visits me, Tomorrow tonight will be.

The Dream Team Allison Zuckerman

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THE GOLDEN PLATE

MAX ILDARI

The Dream Team Allison Zuckerman

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Live to Tell Katherine Fraser

The Lighthouse Katherine Fraser

36 The Penn Review

Live to Tell Katherine Fraser

The Lighthouse Katherine Fraser

36 The Penn Review

TRIUMPH

NICOLAS WILLSON

LIBYA

CHRIS MILIONE

(for will alexander) We used to have an old Triumph bike. At 16, my oldest brother was the first to ride it: a family event. We flocked to the field to observe. At 600cc, this was no kidsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; bike. Pa explained the clutch, brake, and gears in agonizing detail. My brother was cruising, a steady pace, and dead straight towards the end of the field. Having expected him to turn around and become visible again, we began to jog to the bottom. There he was, in the hedge, the bike on top of him. My father had forgotten to explain how to turn.

Favela Rocinha Rebecka Zavaleta 38 The Penn Review

these men and women are moving with lunar gravity, elliptically encircling such grand illusions as progress and purpose, tectonically unbound mechanical retributors who construct wry sinusoids with their bodies shimmering in the acridity and sand like scabrous zombies, ionized synapses firing with protean vehemence, protolinguistic poststructuralist condemnations, graven faces too rough for a posteriori assertions having given themselves wholly to zionist wanderings nostrils lacking scent of odyssean provenance cyborg enjambments and technoconsumerist appeasements failing in the tropic zone of will the substratum of cerebral bathetic jabbering made indivisible by anamorphotic gleam of sunbaked mirage beyond treacheryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s virago the inward presentiment finding outward construction pulse of nerves to match climatized gyrations pedals and proboscis touching nativity always navum unbound and extending relativistically inching slowly with obsidian bivalve tenacity infrequent utterances consummate under god hysterical anxieties the face of unsignifiable language the shattered graveyard lacks comfort too delirious effluvium cannot be paraphrased or sequestered in cells blistering unmarked by eulogy or encomium bones bleached dry with crystalline calcate unrequitals atmospheric perturbations conjuring pantheistic fantasy of vatican love stories and dim hagiography one nation baptized by sacramental welter the squalls of manifest edenic superstructure scaffolding undone perhaps made uncertain still in the name of the sun too bright in radiant coronal hostility these are the articles of office scepter and chair and saintly rock crinkling under animistic delusions anaphylactic destructions surging one backwards from dilapidation into the paralytic nexus of the future 39

TRIUMPH

NICOLAS WILLSON

LIBYA

CHRIS MILIONE

Favela Rocinha Rebecka Zavaleta 38 The Penn Review

Hannah’s Flight Color Christine Otis

Hannah’s Flight Black & White Christine Otis

40 The Penn Review

Hannah’s Flight Color Christine Otis

Hannah’s Flight Black & White Christine Otis

40 The Penn Review

THE UNDERGROUND

EMMA BIEGACKI

Here, a hush, let down from the mossed ceilings and languishing on silted walls, marks the edge of the sidewalk. The former corner of Third Street and Walnut slopes into the murk. The long untended grass of the Mall stretches up towards shafts of light filtering down from grating above. It waves and sways to the rumble of the subway. A train passes, sends crumbly showers of dust plunking into the depths, ricocheting off old trolley tires and water fountains before coming to rest on a stony bed. The feeding streams are far off, too far to hear the rushing and hissing of water through crevices and bicycle spokes and over slippery stone. They pitch out and across, like hairs from the head of the Schuylkill, sloshing and whirling, eroding the footpaths and highways of what was previous, collecting in pools around and above the buildings and bridges, sheltering fishes and snails and skipping stones. Here, farther inward, the waters are still, serene. The train has gone away and the footfalls and voices from the new place, above, are only a murmur. Below, a fin brushes a russet, peeling clapper, and sends a muffled clang trembling to the concrete shore.

Pobre perrito Rebecka Zavaleta 42 The Penn Review

THE UNDERGROUND

EMMA BIEGACKI

Pobre perrito Rebecka Zavaleta 42 The Penn Review

A FINISHED SILENCE

TAYLOR COOK

The dark of the stars drops into the sea sometimes when I’m not looking. If I don’t pay attention, I lose it all. I have to keep a close eye on it, hold it fiercely, or else it slips away. It’s not something I can time or prepare or understand. I see it the way I do, and then sometimes I don’t. When I’m sitting in the study, I’ll look out of the window, and quite suddenly it will all have disappeared, slid sideways and away, and I can’t find it. I lose it all in the dark corners of the room, in the spaces of Eva’s silences, her sitting alone down the hall. I don’t tell her when this happens. It makes her nervous. When I’m in the study she thinks I’m working. She thinks I’m pressing away at the book, my fingers leaping over long sentences, strings and threads I am meant to tug and assemble from nothing and nowhere. Where am I supposed to find these thoughts? I used to have them. Back and before I used to have them. Now it’s as if I can see them through a window, through fine glass. They exist. But they fall away when I try to touch them. Just drop out of the air and fall fast like the stars into the deep darkness of the sea. Eva’s sewing machine clicks as she fishes fabric through it. It speaks when she does not, always chattering away, faster or slower depending on its mood. Sometimes it growls and stalls, and then I hear Eva’s voice muttering and cursing at the machine as her fine fingers pry at its insides and outsides until it consents and sets again about its work. I walk past her to find water, find food, and her eyes follow me. The machine speaks. Sometimes I speak back, but I cannot understand it when it answers me. The book is going to be the third one. There are two published already, one a volume of poetry, another of short stories. This is meant to be a novel, but the parts are confusing. The length and breadth of long-form work eludes me. It takes hours to write a paragraph, weeks to cobble together a chapter. They do not read right even after they come together at long, at very long last. I feel like I am filling up space and time. My publisher bought a book from me, back when I could think straight, back when I wasn’t worried I was losing the stars. Sometimes when I lie on the hardwood of the study with my skin straining and the leather of my belt cracking in my hand, I decide I will submit two hundred pages of two sentences each. I could only ever work in minutiae. Why would I offer to write a novel? In what way would I ever have been able to do that? That was a year ago. I feel cut off from who I was then, and cannot get into my own mind. The mind of the man who made that choice is closed to me. Eva tells me that all the time. Evangeline, star in the sky, sewing in the kitchen, she tells me that all the time. 44 The Penn Review

The wood grain in the floor of the study is dark and fine. I press my cheek to it and lie still, and everything is quiet in those first few moments after the snap and crack of my match on the back of the chair. I ran out of the matchbooks I took from bars and have recently started using the long ones meant for the fireplace. The spoon is from one of the restaurants we used to go to, the cheap ones down by the water. We would bring bottles of white wine and watch the waiters slide through the narrow aisles with big plates of messy food, and we would sneak away the silverware to see if they’d notice. I slid spoons up my sleeves, and Eva laughed, closing her eyes, bright peals of laughter that I could nearly touch. I ran out of the matchbooks because I haven’t gone out to a bar in some time. Eva goes out in the mornings to her job, to the real job that makes the real money that pays for me to write my fake book. She goes out at night, too, when the weather is nice or the wind is high, when a friend phones or she hears me striking a match in the study, a long match off the back of a chair that fizzles and burns brightly, briefly. She screws other men. I smell it on her sometimes, after she comes back and I am in bed. She crawls in on the far side, and I turn over and smell it. She thinks if she can inspire enough envy in me, I will come back to her. Evangeline, star in the sky, siren in the sea, the light you hold is far too dim for me to see. The book begat the silence, and that’s something to believe; that is the truth. I could not write the book and, because I could not write the book but had signed the contract to write the book—had taken the advance check that promised I would write the book—I needed to help myself. A friend, an artist, told me he was inspired when he was high. I came to his studio one night and he tied my arm and he struck a match and I saw stars, saw them bright in the sky outside his window. I saw beautiful things, spent beautiful time with them, and when I came home I wrote a page. It was enough to convince me. The second time I did not write afterwards, but lay on the beach and watched the water with my eyes wide open, laughing the whole time even though I was completely alone, Eva having gone to her parents’ for the weekend. Her machine is clicking out its code down the hall, running over the stitches of a pale blue dress. The fabric is satiny-fine and I ripped it with one smooth stretch the last time Eva wore it, tore it without any effort at all. Eva goes out and sometimes she does not come home for a day, for two days, for three days, and I always think that this is the last of it. I tell myself that when she does not come back, when she finally does not return, then I will give it up, and then I will write the book, and then I will bring her home. But she comes back when she shouldn’t, and I strike another match because I know I can. It’s a compulsion and it’s a rebellion, the leather cracking against my chapped palm, the cold buckle biting into my skin in the 45

A FINISHED SILENCE

TAYLOR COOK

rut of a notch now familiar to my character. I met her a long time ago. I met her when I was writing poetry in a library at the college we both attended, and she was stacking books to be returned—old journals of Sylvia Plath and Anaïs Nin that she borrowed to steep darkly in and brood over while she sipped black tea and ran her fingers through her shorn-short hair, so perfect a picture of teenage angst and decay that I could not help but laugh at her. For a minute, sixty long seconds, she stared at me, consternation furrowing her brow, heavily-lined eyes considering me with what I felt was instant condemnation. But then she laughed back, bright peals of laughter, and I told her my name. It’s not that way now. It wasn’t after. She lightened her hair and freshened her face and had a Romanticism phase in which all she drank was Earl Grey with honey. Then there was a Greek mythology phase in which she pored over The Odyssey with a cup of coffee in her hand and her long hair pulled off her face in a tight bun that I liked to prod as she passed. There was a short fantasy phase that featured lots of Tolkien and Sleepytime, and an even shorter science fiction phase, and then it was all Jane Austen and the Brontës and frothy steaming lattés as we scrambled to finish our theses before we graduated, hair grown out and frazzled with no time for trims. She is fixing a dress that I tore. She came home last week near dawn and tried to think I wouldn’t know, tried to walk in like it did not matter to me. I stood off of the bed and I watched her walk into our bedroom wearing a pale blue dress and dark tights and high black heels. I grabbed her shoulder, and I asked her if she thought she could walk around me, if she thought I wouldn’t notice. How could I not notice? “Do you see anything anymore? Can you even see yourself?” she asked me. I could barely understand her words, could barely make out the syllables around all of the disgust. “I can see you,” I said. “I can see you going out looking like that and coming back at six in the morning and I can see that you’ve been with someone else. I can see that. I can see you.” She rolled her eyes and tried to brush my hand off of her, to go into the bathroom and wash the crusted makeup off her face, wash away the dark lining of her eyes and pull the pins out of her hair and crawl into my bed like she hadn’t been in someone else’s an hour ago. I didn’t release her, just grabbed the strap of her dress when she tried to walk away. “Just leave if you want to. Why do you come back? Why do you keep coming back?” I asked her. She didn’t answer me and she tried to walk away and I kept my grip tight and that was how I tore her dress. She kept trying to walk away and I kept yanking her back and the strap tore and came away in my hand. Tiredly she considered my face, the bruise-purple tracks in my arm and the swatch of satin I’d torn from her dress and now held in front of her. 46 The Penn Review

Dark circles were smudged under her eyes, rings of ashy makeup and weeks of lost sleep, months, a year of lost sleep since I’d started striking matches in my study and decided I couldn’t finish the book. “The problem is that I remember,” she said. Her voice was bare and fine, like stripped floors. “The problem is that I remember it all. I remember you before you were this way. Every time I think I won’t come back, I wake up thinking about all the little times. I remember them, and that’s the worst.” One time we went to a farmers’ market near the boardwalk and I barely knew her, we’d been on only a few dates, and I wanted to get her something. I asked her what her favorite fruit was, and she asked me to guess, said we’d discussed it at some point in the short time we’d known each other and that she would be impressed if I remembered. I did not remember. I had no idea. I guessed apples as we passed a woman selling Galas and Pink Ladies, and oranges when we saw several vendors hawking them. She smiled at me, enigmatic, and said no. Evangeline, star in the sky, so sweet in your smile, I never stood a chance. I gave up after not trying very hard at all and said I would assign her a favorite fruit, I would just pick something and that would be her favorite fruit. We walked by a stand selling fruit pies, and I bought the first one I saw, told her whatever was inside was her new favorite fruit. It was strawberry rhubarb, and she laughed long and hard, bright and brilliant, because strawberry rhubarb pie was her grandmother’s favorite, and of all the pies I could have picked it was clearly no coincidence I’d chosen one with which she already had a connection. I saw that moment in her eyes as she looked at me, saw that one and all the rest, all the hundreds of them that we stacked between us in the years and years since we’d met. She wished she could sever herself from me but those hundreds and thousands of moments connected us too well. She slid off the dress and left it on the floor, left me holding the ripped strap. She stepped over the dress in her high heels and disappeared into the bathroom, the door clicking shut behind her. I hear her phone ring now, and I hear her voice, muted by distance, as she answers it. The sewing machine cuts off in mid-sentence when her foot releases the pedal to concentrate on her conversation. I sit up halfway so I can hear better, hear if she is going out, hear if this will finally be the time she leaves and does not return. The world briefly spins, darkening, brightening, and my heart trip-hammers in my chest as I will my vision to clear. As soon as the room sorts itself out I ascertain the stars outside the window, assuring myself of their vitality. I don’t want to lose them. I have a habit of that.

GOLDEN SPIRITS

DANE MAINELLA

There are no nature smells here. It smells like vibrations and noise, Like friction and lives scraping By each other. Orange traffic cones do not taste sweet Or run down your chin and drip, drip On your shirt. We’ve taken what is wild, What is brown and pulsing, And given it a metal crutch That it doesn’t need.

Being and Time Xin Yu

There is a reason you can’t see stars In the city. We’ve brought them down to our level: put them in glass cages and forgotten about the awe of light, the insane fear of living in darkness, blind to an entire world rustling around you. I guess we tend to do that To things that shine and make us feel warm.

Exhibitionists Xin Yu 48 The Penn Review

GOLDEN SPIRITS

DANE MAINELLA

Being and Time Xin Yu

Exhibitionists Xin Yu 48 The Penn Review

STILL LIFE

SHOSHANA AKABAS

In the last picture taken of him, the Frisbee is inches away from his grasp; he’s looking at the camera. The clarity of his eyes is frightening: they are so honest—the color so sharp—like a piece of copper sparked under the flame of a Bunsen burner. We were eleven when we were paired up as lab partners on the first day of sixth grade. Stephen was the new kid, the one no one wanted to come into contact with. His big front teeth and freckles reminded me of Tom Sawyer, the main character of the book my father read to me before bed each night. And, despite Stephen’s distinct Brooklyn accent and the absence of a straw hat, I knew he was the boy I fell asleep thinking about. In my dreams, we were Tom and Becky, tracing tunnels in caves by the dwindling light of our flickering candles, unraveling string behind us to mark our path. “Wait here,” Stephen said, pulling the measuring tape out of his pocket. We were in Hippo Playground in Riverside Park, working on our orienteering science project. The assignment was to create a scale map of an area and provide compass bearings for our teacher so that he could follow our route and end up at a set location. “The map has to be to scale,” Stephen said, circling the monkey bars twice, compass in hand. He was murmuring numbers to himself and talking about how the metal slide was throwing off the magnetic field alignment of the compass needle. “Mr. Feldman said he should be able to read our directions, follow the map, and end up in the right place. It has to be to scale.” “But first we have to pick our ending place. Where do we want the directions to lead to?” I asked. “The bottom of the slide is too obvious,” he said dismissively, even though neither of us had suggested it. Then he skipped over to one of the stone hippopotamuses. “Stephen, we need to finish this!” I called after him, thinking he had gotten distracted again, his concentration waning, running out like the last piece of black thread on a spool, too short to sew anything of consequence. I sighed and picked up our backpacks, notebooks, slightly dulled colored pencils, and compasses and walked over to where he was crouching in the mouth of the giant hippo. “Here!” he said definitively. “What?” “They’ll take a left out of the school, walk down the stairs into the park, and end up…in the mouth of the hippo! They’ll never see it coming!” Stephen told me he could see the things people had dropped into its hollowed stomach: a magnet, a dusty spool of thread, a faded roll of film. 50 The Penn Review

Eventually, the other kids in my grade wanted in on the adventures, saw his throwing arm, and he was no longer an outcast. He could have had his choice of lab partners in seventh grade—the first year we were allowed to choose for ourselves—but he was sitting across from me at the lab table on that first day, and there was a silent request in his eyes when our teacher told us to partner up. And we did, for everything: the vital statistics unit, the model stent project, the chromatography experiment in which we watched turquoise and amber pigments bleed from the black ink and race each other up a coffee filter. Stephen and I went to different high schools, and I was sitting in a math class in the spring of my junior year when one of my friends sat down next to me. “Do you remember Stephen Glass from middle school?” he asked. Asking me if I remembered Stephen was like asking me if my hand was still attached to my body. “He died yesterday.” My memories of middle school have holes like a moth-eaten blanket. Of our lab partnership in sixth grade, nothing remains except our trip to Hippo Park. There are days where all I can remember is the quiet in his eyes and the torrent of blood through his veins as I took his pulse in biology class. But some days, I’m still waiting for him, still hoping he’ll return. Like the day I waited for him outside his house, holding fresh carnations in honor of his birthday, five days after he died.

STILL LIFE

SHOSHANA AKABAS

The Elements Xin Yu

52 The Penn Review

The Elements Xin Yu

52 The Penn Review

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;PATAHERMETICA

54 The Penn Review

ELAN KIDERMAN

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;PATAHERMETICA

54 The Penn Review

ELAN KIDERMAN

UNTITLED PAVEL KONOV Black milk of daybreak we drink it at nightfall we drink it at noon in the morning we drink it at night we drink it and drink it —Paul Celan Past noon already—the spinach is cold. Outside, minds streak silently in the rain. You must have already eaten. Glue melts in anticipation In the joints of my chair. No bother. Besides, The page is already thin With anemic words Unable to carry their own weight In air. Between you, three times a day, I’d thought about gulag. Figures streaking barracks Art rooms, retinas: our own Retinue of jittering rods. It’ll be fullness of raspberry Seeds for me. In breath-thought I’ll wait Like spinach in plates.

56 The Penn Review

ANATOMICAL LOVE DOMINIKA BUREK

BUD

I roll your name around my tongue Spooling each syllable and Tasting possibilities, Inhaling each vocal lilt and discord; Wishing only to see myself Reflected in your eyes: Curled into myself and Leaning against your iris; Tangled in your wrist bones, Ribbons of my breath Nestled between the marrow.

The morning at the window budding like cauliflower blind-white spots bloom across my vision like baby’s breath flowers. I am unable to form words in my mouth. I have never been able to like oatmeal raisin cookies. My teeth blossom blandly in my mouth pressed tulip-like against your morning mouth. I have rarely been a woman in a bathtub, islands have rarely been my knees. My skin is dry and warm and somber blushed against your stomach. Soon I will be sober with the day and sad with the night, so you and I linger in the obese morning. We are growing old. I point my toes. I yawn bitterly, like horehound candy. My sheets have brown flowers on them. You are almost ink-ripe. You will write things soon. But first in the morning, we’ll think of hometowns and weather that is different than here and always better and I will remember picking up eggplants as a grocery store cashier. My parents’ wedding rings were gold and pebbled. I have never been able to like oatmeal raisin cookies. My mother will get married again some day soon. The morning at the window, infant-yellow and needy, doesn’t want us to think about anything else. I have sunken back into the concave of you. We return to delicious, bald-faced sleep.

Untitled 4 Nicolas Willson

58 The Penn Review

JILLIAN BLACKWELL

ANATOMICAL LOVE DOMINIKA BUREK

BUD

Untitled 4 Nicolas Willson

58 The Penn Review

JILLIAN BLACKWELL

THE PENN REVIEW SPRING 2012

THE PENN REVIEW 2012