THE PENN REVIEW LITERARY AND VISUAL ARTS JOURNAL UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA SPRING 2017
EDITOR'S NOTE Suppose, for instance, that an electric current were running through the binding of this book. Imagine the letters turning to lightning, the spine crackling away, the pages crumbling, turning red and gold at the edges. See it: a salamander ocean, full of the smell of charcoal and spearmint and burning bright ink. In this issue, we have brought together a collection of works that encapsulate the vital intensity of the power socket. They sit now, folded within the pages, prepared for spontaneous combustion: a compendium of letters and static electricity.
DANIEL FINKEL Editor-in-Chief
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EDITORIAL BOARD EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Daniel Finkel
MANAGING EDITORS Karis Stephen Victoria Xiao
DESIGN EDITORS Alex Anderson Isabel Kim
COPY EDITOR Emma Ibrahim
ASSOCIATE DESIGN EDITORS Sam Claypoole Amy Marcus
ASSOCIATE COPY EDITORS Brad Hong Thomas Myers
ASSOCIATE PR DIRECTOR Sarah Cronin
ASSOCIATE EDITORS Roshan Benefo Natalie Chao Lexi Lieberman Rebecca Lieberman Justin Melnick Allen Zhu
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TABLE OF CONTENTS Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Contributor Biographies
STAFF FAVORITES
Diminuendo Caitlin Drummond In Search of Saint Joan Cybele Jacqueline Waters The Beached Whale: Wellfleet, Massachusetts, 1840 Deborah Burnham
LITERATURE
Night Bloom Michaela Kotziers Not Scared, Frog Eleanor Tecosky-Feldman [untitled] Colin Lodewick After Noon Victoria Siu Three Curtains Kate Oksas The Doctrine of Drink Craig Kurtz The Problem with Love Poetry Craig Kurtz Poison Ivy Shade Akinmorin In Circlets of Dusky Lilac Light Anne Carson Of Ivory and Onyx Javier Peraza Wig Fernando Bonilla A Prayer from the End of Forever Ava Kikut Nothing Like Something Michaela Kotziers Unlucky Prophecy Colin Lodewick Prodigy Lisa Zou Stigma Crystal Anderson The Aquarium on 45th Street Corey Loftus Harakiri Jared Walsh Pride Month Emily Rush Period Grace Ragi A House Yi Feng The Apparition of a Bough Yi Feng Dinner Party Hüse Toussé Street Kyle Walsh vi
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9 10 12 14 16 18 19 22 23 24 27 28 30 31 32 34 36 37 39 40 42 43 45 46
Nephilim Peter Sturtevant View from Breezewood Andrew Sargus Klein November Jared Walsh Disco Fever Hanna Andrews The Circle of Thievery Craig Kurtz Descent/Retreat Nathaniel Lotze Poet and Mistress Jared Walsh To Bed Javier Peraza Speaking (1) Colin Lodewick Tulsa Queen Hanna Andrews Fight Night Hanna Andrews Fragile Sylvia Guan Live Rabbit Donation, 4PM, the Owl Hospital Eleanor Tecosky-Feldman A Stillness Arrests Me Kyle Walsh The Days Emily Hoeven Biloxi Robert Smalto-Gil
VISUAL ART
Synergy Amy Guidry Archetypes 3 Karl Lorenzen Gerard Jacob Kind Eruption 2 Karl Lorenzen Primordial 6 Karl Lorenzen Margie Grace Ringlein Long’s Park Grace Ringlein Concentration Isabel Kim Untitled 1 Freeman Schlesinger Untitled 2 Freeman Schlesinger The Roaring Girl Anni Wilson Smoke Screens Lauren Altman Girl #2 Victoria Xiao Diptych Alex Atienza Along the Wall Starr Herr-Cardillo Badlands Katie Levesque
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STAFF FAVORITES
DIMINUENDO CAITLIN DRUMMOND From The Penn Review Spring 2009
The truth is that I’ve tried and I can’t write oceans.
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IN SEARCH OF SAINT JOAN CYBELE JACQUELINE WATERS From The Penn Review Spring 1991
Saint Joan lives! she shouts. Yeah whatever, he says. Saint Joan lives, Saint Joan lives, Saint Joan lives, she says. Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, he mutters. Please understand what I’m telling you. You talk too much, he says. Here, I’ll prove it to you. And with that, she exits, slamming the door. I know Saint Joan lives, damn it. I know it, he yells at her trail of emptiness, trying to scoop up the molecules with his fingers. He goes out and gets a full length mirror to hold and stands behind it. Having blunt-cut her hair like a medieval soldier, she returns months later after much adventure. Saint Joan lives! she shouts, but he’s no longer visible as he stands holding up this full length mirror. She thinks him gone. I’ve grown taller, she thinks. The mirror in turn extends a silver sword to her. She marches out with it to seek more adventure and prove to the world that Saint Joan lives. Meanwhile, he holds this mirror and arranges the props: he makes a cup of coffee, reads the newspaper, has a smoke, gazes out the window, talks on the phone, makes his bed. In she rushes, heralding Saint Joan lives! Thrusting up the arm which holds her sword, imagining she is piercing the sky as she crashes a light bulb. He quickly presses his ear against the other side of the mirror and crouches lower, busily brushing the crumbs of an oatmeal cookie off his vest. Her body so close that her breath casts steamy mist on the glass, keeping her eyes unblinking until it hurts, checking out the color of her pupils, touching lips, sticking fingers in her ears, mouth open, peering down her throat. Legs are now thighs, hip bones sailing away from her navel, breasts rounder, waist narrower, ribs showing. The mirror presents a white brocaded tunic and a flaming shield sealed with a blue cross. Her reverie broken, she remembers her cause
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and practically runs through the door and leaps down the stairs. Her battle cry echoes through the corridors up to him. He has positioned a red, overstuffed armchair against the back of the mirror and is studying a lunar calendar, marking x’s and drawing circles with a pen. He’s had a birthday, gone skiing in the Alps, rendezvoused quite a lot, and heard Dexter Gordon perform live. Whoop! Crash, the door bursts open. Face flushed with excitement, she does not hesitate but stands straight in front of the mirror, her growing curls a sticky, sweet mass of softness. Arms longer, shoulders broader, face wider and replete with zits. Reverently, she examines her skin, straining to see pores, trying to count the hairs on her legs. She no longer recognizes her own scent and feels an imposter has perspired on her clothes. The mirror, in return for all these achievements, extends a brilliant turquoise cape, the color of pure Aegean Sea, a gold helmet topped with multicolored plumes, and a pair of black boots. Delighted and now in full regalia, she stares at this woman in the mirror with admiration. As she twirls round in her cape, the ends flick down a little framed painting on the wall. She smiles, turns, gently closes the door, and walks out, stride great. Having watched the fight, taken out the trash, watered his flower garden and tomato plants, and made another cup of coffee, he’s nodding off now, settled in his red armchair. Glancing at his watch, he gazes straight out the night window, watching sky-lights. She steps in, her boots muddied, cape ripped, tunic torn, helmet and sword dull, shield split, hair dusty, lips cracked, eyes tired, and skin damp. Bypassing the mirror, she opts for a lengthy shower. After taking off her gear, all she has
CYBELE JACQUELINE WATERS left is her white nylon slip from Grandma. This she rinses out and hopes will dry in the summer breeze. My, this bathroom could use a cleaning, she thinks as she turns on the water faucet. Submerging and emerging squeaky clean, she is thankful the economy-sized Q-tip box is still going strong as she twirls one around an ear. Taking the towel from round, raisin hair, she steps out to the mirror, putting on the old white slip she’s had since girlhood, which finally molds over her person. Stooping down, she picks up the full length mirror, using her shoulders to help heave it against the wall. Red armchair exposed, he pretends to snooze. She stands looking over him as he regards her through half-slitted eyes. A couple of years have passed since she saw him last. Approaching, she kneels down and rests cheeks on hands atop the armrest. Studying his face, she presses her lips to and then lays her right cheek on his heart, wishing to burrow a space there and stay, whispering Saint Joan lives, voice deeper. Smiling, he puts his hands on her damp hair and hugs her. I know, he laughs, I know.
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THE BEACHED WHALE: WELLFLEET, MASSACHUSETTS, 1840 DEBORAH BURNHAM From The Penn Review Spring 1982
The beast lunged into the bay, Foamed like a sick dog, raised A narrow storm-trench of waves While the pest or fever in her brain Drove her to the sand. In her huge wake, A boat splintered, a man was lost. His wife dragged off the mast, tossed Up with his body, burned the crossed Sticks in her stove. Sea moss Clung to the whale’s flukes; frost Bleached her to a fat ghost while axes Stripped the cold meat, hacked The carcass clean, filled sacks And wagons with the rich fat Whose reek burned at the black Winter. On the bones, a cat lies, Groans, and a single kitten dries, Mewing, in the weak sun. A boy piles Shells and pebbles in the smooth eye Sockets; sliding on the ribs, he finds A button from the dead man’s coat Stuck to a stone. His mother sews It to his shirt; the sea-washed bone Will keep him safe. The shirtless ghost Will keep him from the sea and close
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DEBORAH BURNHAM
To his home where every night He dreams of chasing whales. Bright Flukes toss the water white And deadly, tell him to stay on high Ground while the bland sea lies Into his ear: “You’ll never be alone With water. Take sail, come home, come home.”
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SPRING 2017
NIGHT BLOOM MICHAELA KOTZIERS
Streetlights dip the moon in silver iodide, the sky a negative wash weaving across walls of a new room. Your voice settles like a moth in my sheets, gray-peppered wings dusting limp smiles of telephone wires that run north to south. In August, you swore those wires would pull me back. But under every dream-held moon, their copper frays in pools of suspended air, they sink into muggy cotton fields as seeds fill my throat. I wake up dry-mouthed. You bloom with the thought of heat.
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NOT SCARED, FROG ELEANOR TECOSKY-FELDMAN 4 AM. There were things to fear, so I feared them. Sound in the water pipes, shadow near the coat rack, blackbird outside my window. Pipe-creak like a frog growling. Little sound. Little frog. Little shadow, little bird. Little girl. Little. Not scared, frog, I tell him. Little——I make myself little. Four years old, girl balanced on the bulb of the nightlight, flickering, an atomic creature, a cautionary tale. I call upon God, the Sun, my Father. ***
Only one of the three answered. He brought me a shiny black jar of magic: caviar. The lesson was that your fears are gelatinous. They will melt in your mouth on the kitchen steps.
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ELEANOR TECOSKY-FELDMAN
It doesn't matter if your fear isn't yet amphibious, or more ambitious, coming up dripping and ambiguous from the lagoon—— my father and I ate caviar in the dark. Together, we were not afraid of the frog, And my spoon was always silver. Always being taught in soft tones. Cuddled and kissed. Taken so gently by the hand. How nice it was then, fearing those things.
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[UNTITLED] COLIN LODEWICK
I want to take him home in the eveningtime, when the light is right and I’ve forgotten my name.
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SYNERGY AMY GUIDRY Acrylic on canvas
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AFTER NOON VICTORIA SIU
At 13, I was feather, scales and crashed down a rocky bicycle path no control and emotions like gravel embedded into skin, shed and slammed into dark closets in old bedrooms hide and go seek no one can find me ? I was 13 dropped a scalding shower head, oops I said to the screaming tiles and laughed at my hot pink self
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VICTORIA SIU
Before 13, aunt called me down from the balcony with green, peeling plaster and an unrequited tabby cat downstairs the rickety stairs that wound down to cement for a bicycle ride.
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THREE CURTAINS KATE OKSAS
She wandered when the car broke down To the seam between asphalt and meadow And found popcorn flowers bobbing and rising Billowing and retreating Waiting and sweet. She plucked them, stripped their heads Plumbed their insides, sighed and swallowed and Fever swelled Like an unopened daylily Orange on the inside and tender Tensing her jaw and her Damp curled limbs It shrank and it curdled and finally subsided But left imprints, footprints, fissures, dents Worry marring innocence and Poison staining sweet. She stumbled when he died. She stiffened when the future narrowed She felt the weight of loves and wonders, old and trailing heavy like a fishing net She felt her breath fickle Her breath sprouting towards the center of earth Rooting her and fixing her in choices She didn’t mean to make.
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ARCHETYPES 3 KARL LORENZEN
Watercolor on paper
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THE DOCTRINE OF DRINK CRAIG KURTZ A Droll from The Scowrers
Every puppy, nowadays, sets up a drunkard and assays to wow all London with his name but settles for shallow acclaim; there are more qualities, old boy, to be a drunk than a viceroy or plenipotentiary; there’s more rites than observed by vicars; you’ll find more generals randomly than a principled debauchee; there’s more brilliant ambassadors than high-minded drunks on all fours; great men, pshaw, they come in packs, but rare, brave dipsomaniacs!
;1
The decent sort of drunkard vows by drink’s doctrine as it allows: always seek out fellowship, and never short barmaids their tip; be not ungraceful, keep clothes neat, hold easy council, be discreet; use pleasing speech, shoot not from hips, but have a quiver full of quips; brawl only with peers, not merchants; if flirting, conceal impotence; keep your sword sheathed, and temper boasts; keep your pants on for the King’s toasts;1 above all, sport, to stay renowned, make sure that you buy the next round!
1 Reference to playwright Charles Sedley, who, according to Samuel Pepys’ Diary [1663], publically toasted Charles II after dipping his penis in his cup. 18 THE PENN REVIEW
THE PROBLEM WITH LOVE POETRY CRAIG KURTZ
The problem with love poetry is, should your efforts amuse me, you’d be inspired to write more, and that’s not what husbands are for. I want a man to work a trade, so I can have goods ready-made; a poet never has a dime, and that’s a drag for a lifetime. I need a man who wants children and makes a home to raise them in; a poet’s always off somewhere, obsessed with publishers unfair. I’d like a man to pleasure me and help with chores occasion’ly; a poet’s up late scribbling, and worse, come day, he’s sleeping in. The problem with a love sonnet is, should I say that I like it, you’d write enough to fill a shelf, and that’s making love to yourself.
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GERARD JACOB KIND Photography
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JACOB KIND
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POISON IVY SHADE AKINMORIN
i The cycle has begun. Water trickles into the abandoned Cracks on the wall. The lifeless wall mothers life. The sun nourishes the outcast, A foreigner in its own world. Born to thrive in any season; Born to thrive in its ragged, Rough dwelling.
iii Life thriving on the un-living, Rather than on the soil of the living. Life thriving on the Ivy. Goldfinch and Cardinal Build nests on threadlike vines. Occasionally ravished By Muskrat and Cottontail, Its berries of birth Become doomed to death.
ii Climbing plant, a commoner in this region, Ternate leaves, just leaflets of three. Flowers displaying emerald, celadon, and chartreuse. Upon closer magnification, spotted by white berries—— Berries that carry the sac of life. Glistening and garnished in oil, Only to cause irritation on impact. Armies marching across the wall With roots of purpose reaching for the sky.
iv Creeping endlessly with Regenerative roots. On edges of habitats Under trees, on fence rows, On vines of trees And around buildings, You will find it. Its omnipresence is not a presence, For it is overlooked.
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IN CIRCLETS OF DUSKY LILAC LIGHT ANNE CARSON
Cape Lilac: Melia azedarach
The Cape Lilacs have come into bloom, exhaling scent into the night air. They breathe for us——take in poison, give back perfume, spicing suburbia with the fragrance of Persia, though we’re half a world away. You’re still here, though we feared you wouldn’t last past the time when berries were bare on the branch, polished hard like wooden beads, secular rosaries for a modern world. That was the stark part of the cycle, when there was only acquiescence. Not without loveliness—— the tree’s silhouette cut a fine figure against dusk in a Maxfield Parrish way——shape made elegant by lighting. Under the shadow of uncertainty, you cleave to courage, faith you will be cared for to the end. You have a tree’s equanimity, branches bending without breaking in high wind, mahogany’s fine-grained, durable beauty. Cape Lilacs burst first into bud, then leaf. Now they’re in the flush of a full complement——leaves, blossom-clusters of pale purple stars, some renegades still clutching their chinaberries. The flowers halo the trees in circlets of dusky lilac light——ordinary, everyday immanence made tangible. And you, still with us.
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OF IVORY AND ONYX JAVIER PERAZA I am painted ivory and snow and cornsilk And like the whites of crashed waves, I am new And like the nosy, pecking gulls, I am meddling And like the fair-footed lady, her seafoam-entwined locks, her morrow strides to the well where she basks in waxen suns, collecting the water with her palms outstretched and opened, I am willing I am painted eggshell and linen and cream And I have not met your portrait. I am painted cerulean and cobalt and midnight And like the glossy robin egg’s blue, I am grand And like berries on the steppes, I am rich And like an old man in sailor’s boots, his eyes pallid to young girls, his rain jacket stuck tightly to his smothered, battered skin, strings of spittle and sky touching or waning his lost lips, I am enamored I am painted indigo and iris and royal And I have seen your portrait. I am painted moss and olive and sea And like the clear chrysalis of green, I am reborn And like the beaded dew upon grass, I am lively And like the sodden leather backs, their wills against the current, their love-making and sires fresh in the grits of sand, the aches and perils only like flies in a breeze, I am devoted I am painted ivy and mint and spring And I have loved your portrait. 24 THE PENN REVIEW
JAVIER PERAZA
I am painted gold and mustard and straw And like a yellowed juice in my fissures, I am marred And like shriveled maples on glass’s surface, I am doleful And like those rotten sunflowers, their sickly buds and sex organs molded over, droopy stems and their petals wilted, screaming for a chance to regrow once again into something beautiful, I am putrid I am painted beige and apricot and amber And I have lost your portrait. I am painted onyx and jade and pitch And like the blacks of coiled scales, I am masked And like the heavy storm clouds falling, I am Gasping And like the wintry widow, her eyes glazed over like opals, her widowy watch set to sea as her little boy goes down, torrent rain comes and battles her seafoam-entwined locks, I am nostalgia I am painted noir and phthalo and ebon And I have longed for your portrait. I am painted ash and slate and platinum And I am dust on the shelf And I am painting grey And I am living without your portrait.
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ERUPTION 2 KARL LORENZEN Watercolor on paper
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WIG FERNANDO BONILLA The sun shimmers, gleaming ceramic clouds arranged about its face Bright and full and dazzling, beaming alone in blue wonder And bristling with envy Time’s flow is viscous when we walk Our heels ring like four-inch trumpets, busied in fanfare A chiming bell on concrete, a novel note of ego Others spin, lurching eyes reeling our way Crystalline spotlights, trained on me Don’t deny the euphoria Indelibly draped in glittering skin, deftly shrouded in beauty A flower bleeding red among flat whites, swaying in a single breeze, crawling roots intertwined But a bursting red brushes its neighbor’s white tip and It is everything Remember, a tepid pace roving aisles And then pause, a silent deliberation But when you rose me up, and judgement passed I held you Erratic, it was soothe me, dunk me Submerged, it was burn me alive But we are something more than beautiful A breeze, and I erupt, a wild flutter, where every strand hangs free in air Amidst widening skies, deepening stares, colliding flowers We are all flesh and hair Sometimes, I remember amber waves, honeyed brilliance among coated replicas And I hang on all the tighter THE PENN REVIEW 27
A PRAYER FROM THE END OF FOREVER AVA KIKUT
The Earth never ceases to turn. And so moves the ground from under our feet. We can try to keep our soles glued to their tracks as our bodies jolt. We can risk falling, Or we can jump to a new plane, hoping Something will catch and carry us home. Somewhere between jumping and falling, I lost sight of familiar ground. That paved path I had walked for so long turned out to be a dead end, And I found my nose Inches away from a cold wall, wondering Why I hadn’t noticed it before. And then I was in a noisy café scooping yogurt into my mouth, Staring at the bottom of the plastic container While licking the spoon, My eyes locked and frozen, thinking of tears. Not crying. Just thinking about it. Loneliness has this habit of making me want to be alone. So I threw out the empty container, Walked, jacket unzipped, Into the crisp February night And listened for that voice they call “God.” But He knows I never hear Him. So I spoke first.
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AVA KIKUT
I understand now why people turn to you. They say you have answers. I’ve exhausted all Other options. Found no manual for The disillusioned. Maybe humans And love are not enough to believe in. The young are mortal too and Each day the future Becomes yet another whole day shorter. When sturdy hands holding backs upright Start to quiver and The voices that always have answers Don’t.
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NOTHING LIKE SOMETHING MICHAELA KOTZIERS From Atlanta to Cambridge, there was one coffee spilled, one baggage tag torn, one take-off delayed, but the only one I remember is you, standing at Parkside——the last stop for a campus past lawns so green they’d erase the summer. You must have known that a handshake would give way, that I’d see it mirrored in your stride after the pubs closed. We found a new quiet, there on tight, cobbled roads as you mused about the future—— the future and the girl waiting at home. Was she someone you’d want me to know? Memory, too, stutters with time, and yet you were there, falling into a town of moon-pressed steeples that by morning would be only a postcard. Your voice came from somewhere I’d hoped to live once, at some time, maybe when I was four. But we both know you’ve never been there before. 30 THE PENN REVIEW
UNLUCKY PROPHECY COLIN LODEWICK I will place my hands together, palm against palm and each finger together, collapsed in time until I petrify, turn to stone, turn to suspended dust, and then turn to stone again. I’ll assume a magnetic field, fix jagged debris around myself, never move again. I’ve learned the consequences of movement. I do not ask myself what is pleasing——what makes me feel at home anymore. I’ve taught myself the word for gone in every language, allowed the words to replace other things that I now cannot remember. I keep to myself now, try to count the bones I can feel through my skin. I’ve learned to be more comfortable this way. I listened to what the fissures said, the billowing mists, the oracle in its cavernous shrine. I taught myself baptism and fasting. Wash away what you cannot see. Do not eat red fruit, save yourself from fish and meat. Contort and acquiesce. Do not know what it means to want.
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PRODIGY LISA ZOU Of course, he meant nothing to me alive. Why would he, a boy in the neighborhood I’d only ever glimpse slumped on the black bench or hunched over the circle of fifths. The only thing that passed between us was a look——when I asked him for music theory workbooks——with his faint scrawls in D minor, and oh, how the trophies decorated the wallpaper. He handed them to me as if I weren’t there. The day before he died, I drove back to Dallas and saw his shadow on the concrete for the first time, cigarette anchored to his pearly teeth. Yes, I remember the teacher’s incessant praise, the way all mothers prayed for genius sons like David. And in the rearview mirror, the golden line from the sun pierced through his hair, as if he had already become an angel or a madman. Days stretched by, and I stumbled over a stack of theory books, my quarter notes on top of his erased rests. God, I could almost hear him singing Caruso. The night he swam in the moth-infested river and became oxygen-free, he must have heard the music or the years I spent aching to be a prodigy, still wondering how we forgive ourselves for all the better lives we were only almost good enough for.
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PRIMORDIAL 6 KARL LORENZEN
Watercolor on paper
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STIGMA CRYSTAL ANDERSON
These physicians with their textbooks know me better than I do, say I have nothing when there is not enough air and I’m so swollen inside? Definition is as skin colour / social class you can’t scrape off like dish grease, all hardened on even after a hot soak.
Their eyes seem lost. Earnest eyebrows raise, grip on pen stiffens because it’s baking cookies outside, and they have to convince me it hasn’t snowed. The shavings disappeared from the sidewalks, dissolved by the rains that make people here forget all of the stars.
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CRYSTAL ANDERSON
Perhaps the patient remains a skeptic, unheard, ignored like livestock—— once grown, bleats and bays blend into the notion of the pastoral. An identification number raddled into my side, singing the brain coordinates of misfires and catastrophes. Biography solves my present before I am in line. Next, they will tag my ears. Less encumbered when I faced my only opponent, just the other shapeless, breaking like seaweed out of water. When only I knew it was there, secret filaments guiding my hands and eyes. I was at my most free when I could privately choose to die.
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THE AQUARIUM OF 45TH STREET COREY LOFTUS
Lost in the rumble of laundry Spins until it stops Before it starts round again Golden arms speed-date with gold ticks 15 minutes have passed Passed on to where and what and how I could maybe draw it with my ruler Water turns turtlenecks into fish
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HARAKIRI JARED WALSH How many miles from here to harakiri I wonder and do pills pock the map between cliffs and sneezing you know death can seem a misled hiccough in time sometimes put a pin in the ice pick for me I think it’s so romantic albeit someone else would have to do it hiring one’s own killer is tedious tough to incentivize him or her with promises of repeat business but some people like one-off deals my cousin for example which reminds me cocaine should sit somewhere north of heartbreak but south of shame exhaustion lives in the same country as exposure and abortion and fratricide by means of tainted wine or something crowded place the neighborhood of asphyxia too it has so many relatives when we fail to breathe I once took in too much air and couldn’t let it out for centuries purgatory is full of ordure and booze dysentery of the spirit has choked all the highways and byways with deflated bodies drowned ones too ironic that death spirits them upward not the only ironic thing just I would expect to sink will we ever see or feel the bottom of the ocean I wonder my dear how many miles lay between us and harakiri THE PENN REVIEW 37
MARGIE GRACE RINGLEIN Watercolor on paper
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PRIDE MONTH EMILY RUSH today, the air floats slow and hot. we find a low-swinging hammock and stay for a while. she is swallowed whole in a scratchy, blue cocoon. tomorrow, we’ll go to my coffee shop. we’ll sink into soft, ancient chairs and sip bitter, steaming tea like grownups. or, I’ll pay for breakfast at a sticky diner full of old women, and we’ll listen to their sticky gossip. soon, we’ll splurge on the art museum. I’ll shiver in the marble halls and she won’t hand me her sweater. we’ll hold hands and walk to that hazy green pond, the one where she learned to swim. i think we’ll keep walking for a while. we’ll stretch our legs and take up space and cover ground. but today, we sit and stay. that’s all.
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PERIOD GRACE RAGI Dare you to pierce these pages, feeble and fresh, pointed tip? There is more—— to say no, to begin, a mouth poised in your likeness and one dark circle to punctuate a face. Dare you to wedge that immutable blot between all that was and will be? Between the folded halves of me? No, no more. You are but a pinprick, mere matter, though dense to infinity—— the universe explodes, and your matter envelops me. Still, it is you, deigning to force my story closed—— blank pages thereafter, or so you suppose. Blank sheets become white flags, submit their silent deference to each ineffable act.
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GRACE RAGI
But dare you to portend a muted end? To loom, mistakenly, like a new moon, promising in your darkness to efface the pages stained, that new leaves might turn, to herald my fervent script? You bore into me, O sharpest of tips! But if the sword is a pen, well, God help you then. There is no sword like mine...
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A HOUSE YI FENG
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THE APPARITION OF A BOUGH YI FENG
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LONG'S PARK GRACE RINGLEIN Acrylic
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DINNER PARTY HÜSE TOUSSÉ Howdy, Clarissa! Good evening, Esther! Nicole has already sat down at the table——seeing things as usual—— And Edna has just reluctantly taken the hors d’oeuvres out of the oven. Tonight for you we have a lovely selection Of fine beverages and delightful company. May I offer you some sparkling water? I’m afraid we don’t have champagne tonight; That would only aggravate some of our guests’ tempers. They let Darl out of Jackson for this special evening, To come converse with Henry about The dichotomy of personality. The doctor tells a worrisome tale, While the Southerner spins a grandiose and nonsensical story, Speaking of the sight and knowing. He knows, he knows, he knows, And yet nobody seems to understand. Let me introduce you to Hester and Holden. The first, a bit finicky, only seems to eat the cheese sandwiches; The other is only concerned with the way that people look at her. Nobody here cares if you’re an adulteress or a dropout—— Not among this crowd. Please, feel free to mingle with some of the other guests—— Even Heathcliff left the Heights to meet Offred After her escape from Gilead. Around the corner in the kitchen you’ll find—— Ah! Seems like Ms. Ratched has just rung the bell. Enjoy.
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STREET KYLE WALSH
In a corridor of light and wind, leafshadows angle and blur onto walkways, trickle nameless over dedications and memorials…
‘The city is sliding into the sea’ a voice engraved,
——but its motion is a ritual of forgetting: you search the faintest dissembled smiles, wrought always just beyond, and beyond, and always behind a partition you search the tunnels of each face to falterings of skeptic feet…
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‘the city is sliding into the sea’
——wisp of light, turnstile of leaves, lift me into a tattered dinghy of air.
NEPHILIM PETER STURTEVANT we used to be taller, heads frosted by clouds, nipped by ominous birds
military medals pinned in framed boxes against broad splays of neckless ribbon
we bled into smaller folks that made too much of god——made her a small thing
garden rows under glass, to be held in the eye like diagrams, like dew
we sheltered the offspring beneath our knees, refrained from straddling lakes to view our faces like the moon’s reflection
perfect shrapnel, the repose of violence to be remembered, nameless yet fully adorned, constant angles of sunlight
over time they assume our coos became family walls reluctant language for hanging objects in the past, we could point at what we meant, when we could see far enough to be speechless
could I imagine whose chest once wore those medals? would you, sir, have my eyebrows?
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VIEW FROM BREEZWOOD ANDREW SARGUS KLEIN Overlap: bad TV reception; heat; ghosts; exhaust. You drop down here from a curve so sharp, semis move slower than birds. Three gray trajectories, Route 30 and Interstates 70 and 76, conjoined in a prism of somewhere. Something spreading or retreading, the space conveys; cars pulling bodies create heat under the sun—— They shout because they’re winning They shout because they’re winning They shout because they’re winning ——who stops or goes through unannounced? The ghost of Thurman Munson, overhead in the ghost of a flaming Cessna, follows the lights of the PA Turnpike. The ghost of Zachariah Walker follows the trail of headlights on the ghosted skin of the earth.
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ANDREW SARGUS KLEIN
The scene is tired, forgets itself and the gauge. What is speaking through the radio, the tinny connection to everywhere. How small is experience inside a car inside an atmosphere. How the grid becomes a net becomes the last thing holding the earth to its promise to keep moving. Overlap: gum; asphalt; breath and ash; the hills of Southern Pennsylvania. There is an unbroken ribbon of gray between here and almost anywhere else. There is a very broken ribbon of bodies between here and almost anywhere else. Their blood regroups, heavier, with fireworks and the memory of exit wounds, of flesh turning into exhaust.
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CONCENTRATION ISABEL KIM Ink, watercolor, and pencil
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NOVEMBER JARED WALSH
I do not remember how I reached this tower that gives on what a mad and blind philosopher once called the people but seems to the trained eye a virgin with no suitors visited by the lone shimmer of Venus playing with her own light when I first climbed these steps I fashioned myself a soldier of fortune gilded hilt dangling at my side carrion birds poised in the sky to scour the bones of my prey hoots of battle cries filled the air what was there to kill or save I do not remember kill or save me November
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JARED WALSH
You fell out of the night materialized from the ash of radio static and raised me up on velvet smoke of piano pieces steeped in wine watercolors and walks along the fortress walls in snow that anointed our recitations of suicidal and banished poets become our private classics the glow of their nights streetlamps and apothecaries warmed our wet dovetailed palms their sailboats rigged with despair and keeling over on the quicksand of the sea and shattering shoals still show white for me when I sleep and I can taste the laughter on the air from beyond the horizon’s last ember escaped from your lips November
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UNTITLED 1 FREEMAN SCHLESINGER Acrylic on canvas
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UNTITLED 2 FREEMAN SCHLESINGER Acrylic on canvas
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DISCO FEVER HANNA ANDREWS I. I felt you slip out from the bar stool, barely bitter, a new shade of gangrene. a toss of the hair before assuming the floor, shoulders glinting reptilian. a new shade of penance on the backs of my lids, throbbing opulence gone dumb behind the heat of my sockets, feet dragging across sticky epoxy at your whim. parading around in my mini skirt with my gut bulged, softened by a moat of tonic, tepid to the touch. adjacent to me you transpose, with your night-flesh on, speaking easy, batting nictitating membranes like a crocodile, sweat swelling with surface tension at the tips of your scales. II. I am no longer under the supervision of the disco ball, made my pilgrimage and did my dance, hands strung up to the rafters, Southern gospel style, armpits crosshatched, crop-top tugging belly-button ring, as you watch on the floor, in the air, beads crumbling like raspberry carpels as you linger like aftershave at the afterparty, witnessing my soggy march with heels in hand, my sure dissolution from the soles up for a sliver of sherbet spotlight, shoddy millionaire, I got money in the bank, shawty, what you think ’bout that? III. in moments after, our bodies blunder towards weekdays. ankles heavier than house arrest, humming loud enough now to loosen the grout between the subway tiles. nights like these, I would like to retreat to the amniotic atmosphere I came from, sipping a rum-and-coke from my infantile gills, growing red and puckered ’round the rosy in my embryonic glory, my empty innards sloshing with cold blood and spirits. when I empty myself, it will not ruin the carpet or slither below the linoleum. I will twist cherry stems with a forked tongue, growing septic in my sickness, my cytoplasm bobbing with the heads of my victims. when I resurrect next, they will not know me by my holiness and will neglect my sober sobriquet. Bloody Mary, full of grace, gallivanting off into the night with Missy still stained on my lips, and the bodies I led into the dawn swinging behind me. 56 THE PENN REVIEW
THE CIRCLE OF THIEVERY CRAIG KURTZ A Droll From The City Wit
I’ll tell you true, men must believe, and due to that, men, too, will thieve; advisers chouse the royal state, so sovereigns tax a higher rate; the churches make more poor the poor, so they can have things to pray for; orators cheat the commoners, so the hordes can loot at uproars; the constable makes more controls, so criminals can find loopholes; physicians scam their clientele, so lawyers can malpractice well; the merchant invents new swindles, so there’s employment for scoundrels; the gents get gouged by usurers, so gents then chisel their daughters; the mistress fleeces the husband, so the beau can empty her hand; and on it goes until Satan gets embezzled by a minion; the water robs the earth at times, while earth heists water in some climes; the fire oft makes the air burn, then air consumes fire in turn; since elements rob themselves blind, why should it surprise in mankind?
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THE ROARING GIRL ANNI WILSON Linoleum carving
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ANNI WILSON
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ANNI WILSON
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ANNI WILSON
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ANNI WILSON
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DESCENT/RETREAT NATHANIEL LOTZE descent We plummet towards the earth herself. The plains are covered in ice, and the horizon disappears into yellow haze. A whole world of geometric shapes: crop circles, right angles where arrow-straight roads meet. I used to call this home, and then I forgot my native tongue but now in the shadow of blue mountain ranges the syllables return. Halting at first, then galloping. I taste them, their edges and curves. They are bitter like gunpowder. They are sweet like wine from black cherries. retreat I stand on the footbridge over the river and watch the water-tossed sea foam grey by December wind, all the color and sharpness of granite. My chest shakes in a denim shell lined with synthetic sheep's wool, and I feel the language leaving me already, pulled downstream. Rush hour on Front Street as darkness closes: glowing headlights, bleeding taillights, a Christmas tree strapped to the roof of an Escalade like a body. Walking past the police station, I see an empty lobby and a case full of trophies from softball championships where they beat the firefighters summers ago.
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POET AND MISTRESS JARED WALSH You are far more bottomless than I In that secret way immune to measures and weights: If we stood upon our heads and died, Our worlds would not precipitate identically: Lofty-eyed Greeks would pluck at your toes, Reclining on your soles amidst The potpourri of pomegranate groves; A baronial breeze would play about your arms, Conjuring the colonnades That frame the great beyonds; And sorcerers’ bright fog would eclipse You at the knee, Rendering near weightless what The onlooker can’t see—— If I do not bid you goodbye, Will you never leave, will you never die? So asked the poet of his muse, Who just as much had feared to lose: His nightly prayer would reach her In her imaginary chamber and still Her hands to hover just over The piano keys. His word was enough To rescue her phantom music From the ears of others, who might use it To gout with peasants’ prints the fragile walls Of Art’s redoubt or to desecrate the place With murmurings and songs of despair Through every door and up the spiral stair Where stars are taught to fly——his muse, she loved Her maker’s voice, his timbre left her drugged And weak, she all but fainted on her heavenly Piano when she heard his trembling plea. With a turn of her mind she unclasped Her tongue from his——an impossible task—— And gathered skirts and dignity to go—— Apologies, she said, but I cannot say I know. 64 THE PENN REVIEW
TO BED JAVIER PERAZA
In the air, there is breath. Not of two, but single, an entity. Cool against some surrounding heat and seen as a pale cloud, living closely against the ceiling. Its tiny showers of nickels and dimes move as one and follow the sensual scene below.
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SPEAKING (1) COLIN LODEWICK
I want a new language; I try to think of one at night. I place the words, drops of sugar water, string them with devil-hands. It would sound like a humming, your favorite sounds, the feeling of a hand on your throat. I want a new language, one that can never be spoken. I overheard you say that this, too, is a species of self-discovery.
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SMOKE SCREENS LAUREN ALTMAN Photography
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TULSA QUEEN HANNA ANDREWS
she rode in and brought the whole desert with her, lips chapped, a hiccup of dorsal on the bridge of her nose, Norma Jean on wheels. perhaps embarrassed, she realizes she’s not in Kansas anymore, reaches for a Nutter Butter as Riedells squeak in thirst. the clerk retrieves my cigarettes, grunts to hail the Tulsa Queen as she sails toward the slurpees. another inlined lady follows her, set in profile, dust creeping into enamel below the gum. between the gaggle, there is talk of a low tank, lottery tickets (in this recession?), clickity-clacking tile. clerk licks his teeth, fiddles toothpick. under the cover of a baseball cap, pink matter reaching toward pretty meats dressed in fishnets like netted ham, only managing “darlin’” when they retrieve their receipt. he’s left with his counter, Budweiser breath gone stale in Mohave exhaust, and Artemis and her disciple float out the sliding doors with all the other maidens and apparitions evaporating in this drought.
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GIRL #2 VICTORIA XIAO
Digital media
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FIGHT NIGHT HANNA ANDREWS
her lips split open like the San Andreas, and my pores prickle up into impasto. head hitting mat hitting fence, chain link cookie-cutting cheek, compressing pores into pink geometry. the octagon takes none hostage. predator and prey on the ground on her feet, again. brawl in my kitchen. cookie-cutter jugular. she almost lost her mouthguard. “she’s tired, she’s tired. will she make it to the next round?” Vaseline-laden lady-in-waiting, dewdrop sheen courtesy of the Cutman. The Virgin ascends to her feet, manages equilibrium just before the rapture——Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, Amen. here is your Stouffer’s watery lasagna, a token for the defeated champ, before they cut to commercial and he changes the channel.
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FRAGILE SYLVIA GUAN
This is a small piece of her she is going to hand to you A small flower birthed between the cracks on the concrete her demons laid A flower that shouldn't have existed but continues to flourish
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LIVE RABBIT DONATION, 4PM, THE OWL HOSPITAL ELEANOR TECOSKY-FELDMAN
1. The breeders bring us the litter’s lowest caste: Rough Beasts, the ones who didn’t pass some test, their hour come round at last. I hold one close against my chest. I think about The Way Things Are. Seems like bad design. Then my fingers come to rest on the rabbit’s neck, like his body’s already mine. 2. This is the breathless room. There’s a kind of carbonation in the air, a sodapop perfume. Plug up all the holes and turn the canister on high. Pry open the bucket after. One rabbit jerks, the nerves in his cheek jumping in pairs. And many hands make light(er) work.
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ELEANOR TECOSKY-FELDMAN
3. It’s hot in this room, and I start to sweat. My lungs are a tight, palsied fist. I think I’m having a panic attack, and I’m upset at being upset. The situation resists sentimentality. Or it’s the wrong kind of sentimentality. (The right kind doesn’t exist.) Panic——just a leak in the bucket we didn’t find. ... And why should I be upset? This is for the owls, this is food, this is acceptable violence, by which I mean all violence, which we must accept. But maybe, I thought, when I grabbed a rabbit by the scruff of its neck and it pissed on me in terror, I’ve been doing grief and fear wrong. You know, “Go face the wall in your corner and cry.” There’s always a window to dive through and enter someone else’s terror, if you’re stupid enough to try.
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DIPTYCH ALEX ATIENZA Digital media
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A STILLNESS ARRESTS ME KYLE WALSH
A stillness arrests me in suns refracted through convex windows in scattered ship logs in the spout of an opal trumpet in sunroots growing across the doors and panes A stillness arrests me in the streets dotted with floating cnidarian eyes where a coral woman peers through me and speaks without speaking
your face is my face your eyes are my eyes your mouth is my mouth your hands are my hands
and the earth tilts over inflorescent with the transgressions of our shared blood
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THE DAYS EMILY HOEVEN If you sit very quiely in your room, on a brown fauxleather armchair, curled up sideways so that the side of your face is against the back of the chair, and your legs are drawn into your chest, and the heater isn’t on, if you are very silent everything around you becomes very loud. If you do this, when the fridge isn’t humming and the heater isn’t on, there is a sensation of everything around you moving and making noise and you are still and quiet and the people making noise around you don’t know that you are there. They might know, in the back of their minds, that there is a room there and you could be in it, but they don’t consciously think about it. There is a wall between you and them, a hallway, and then another wall behind which are the rooms across the hall from you. The people in the hallway are standing and moving in an empty space and behind the walls on either side of them, in box-shaped hollow carvings, other people are sitting, or going to the bathroom maybe, or making dinner, or sleeping, or crying, or smiling. Sealed off in compartments. The noise permeates from the hallway into the rooms behind both walls. The floor vibrates when the elevator goes up or down. There is a noise that accompanies the elevator as it transitions between floors. Sometimes the elevator doors open. There are walls separating the box-shaped hollow carvings as well. On the other side of the wall against which your bed is pushed is someone else’s couch. On Friday nights people sit on that couch and talk. Sometimes you wake up in the late night or early morning and hear voices and are confused. And sometimes on Sunday afternoons when you’re taking a nap someone will play orchestra music, and the light will come through the window next to your bed, and there is the creaking of the walls and the sound of the music and the sound of unintelligible whispers. There is a gap under your door and the light from the hallway always shines through. The hallway is lit
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twenty-four hours a day. When you go to the bathroom in the middle of the night you see that light, and sometimes you hear the elevator move. On Thursday nights you can watch the pattern of the shadows of differently-sized shoes walk past, through the gap under your door. It’s quiet on Saturday mornings; there aren’t any patterns. You have woken up in the night before because someone has dropped a pot on their floor, which is your ceiling, or because someone wearing high heels has chosen to cross the room. When you roll over in bed at night sometimes the light comes through the shutters at a different angle than it did before. The person who lives in the room that you can almost see into from your window has either turned their light off, or turned it on. There is the water too. People taking showers, or flushing the toilets. Washing dishes. And the smell of coffee on Tuesday afternoons, lasagna on Wednesday nights. The laughter on Thursdays. The laundry room window is always open, and sometimes the smell of laundry detergent and dryer sheets seeps into your room, your window could be closed, it doesn’t matter, it sweeps over the books on top of your heater, and it mingles with the elevator and the voices and the water and the light, and the other smells. Someone in your building plays the piano, you hear it when you are brushing your teeth and when you are pouring milk over your cereal in the morning, and when you are taking off your shoes, but you’ve never actually seen them. They keep different hours, move at different rates. There are holes in the wall, from pins of different sizes, from posters that used to be hung there, and a stain in the corner next to the fridge. Your rug doesn’t quite cover the stain. You hypothesize that the walls were once a different color.
ALONG THE WALL STARR HERR-CARDILLO Photography
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BADLANDS KATIE LEVESQUE Digital media
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BILOXI ROBERT SMALTO-GIL
It fled the house at ten and never returned. A child on a cold day walking the streets of Biloxi, The seat of Harrison County, The poor man’s Riviera. And when the child is hungry it wanders to the slop yards and Peels shrimp for nickels by the hour, Cracking slicked shells, freeing blood of its skin In this poor man’s Riviera, In this seat of Harrison County. And all below, the smell of something sour and something sweet.
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BIOGRAPHIES Shade Akinmorin is a current graduate student at Penn. Her love for writing started when she was ten years old. Fast forward to her college years, when she became Editor-in-Chief of Penn State Abington's literary magazine, all while pursuing a degree in Mammalian Physiology. Her scientific and medical studies led her to Penn, and her ongoing love for writing led her to The Penn Review. Through science, Shade hopes to improve people's physical well-being, and through writing, she hopes to improve people's emotional well-being. Lauren Altman is a first-year MFA candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. Her current mixed-media projects combine collage, monoprints, paintings, poetry, and found imagery to explore personal narrative and gender identity. Lauren holds an MA from Sotheby’s Institute of Art and a BFA from Parsons The New School for Design. She has exhibited at the Grimmuseum in Berlin, The New School in New York, and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Crystal Anderson is an American living in Northern England who received her Ph.D. from the University of Manchester. Recently published work can be found in Literary Imagination and Communion. Hanna Andrews is a student and writer based in Southern California. She is a staff editor for Inkblot Literary Magazine and enjoys cherry cough drops and long walks on the beach. Alex Atienza is a senior in the College of Arts & Sciences studying Cognitive Science and Philosophy. He has been fascinated by the limits of language since middle school, and he enjoys making digital art that engages with this idea from diverse perspectives. Fernando Bonilla is a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania. He likes to spend his time writing, listening 80 THE PENN REVIEW
to music, and with his six-year-old Chihuahua, Petunia. Deborah Burnham has worked as an advisor and teacher at Penn for many years. She also taught poetry at the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for Arts. Currently, she is the Associate Undergraduate Chair of English at Penn, teaching Creative Writing and Women’s Fiction. She also directs a writing workshop for cancer patients at the Kelly Writers House. Anne Carson is an Australian poet and essayist whose poetry has been published internationally and widely in Australia. Removing the Kimono was published in 2013, and she was shortlisted for the 2015 Ron Pretty International Poetry Prize. She serves as Arts Director on the Board of Ondru and is seeking publication for Massaging Himmler: A Poetic Biography of Dr Felix Kersten. Yi Feng is an Associate Professor at Northeastern University, China. Her academic interests are Faulkner studies, African American literature studies, and modern and contemporary American poetry. She has published academic papers on American literature both in China and in the US. She was offered the Hunt Scholarship by the William Faulkner Society in 2016. She was a visiting scholar in the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania in 2016, studying American poetry with Professor Charles Bernstein. Sylvia Guan is a junior studying English. She writes poetry as a way to declutter her disorderly mind. Amy Guidry is an artist currently residing in Lafayette, Louisiana. She comes from a family of artists, including the late painter Eleanor Norcross. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums nationwide. Her paintings are present in public and private collections throughout the United States and Europe.
Starr Herr-Cardillo has a certificate in Heritage Conservation from the University of Arizona and is currently working toward a master’s degree in Historic Preservation at PennDesign. Born and raised in Tucson, Arizona, she was drawn to the field by a deep affinity for adobe and vernacular architecture. She has photographed extensively throughout Mexico and the Southwestern United States. Emily Hoeven is a third-year senior in the College of Arts & Sciences, studying English and French. She writes the column "Growing Pains" for The Daily Pennsylvanian and is co-founder of the website PennFaces (pennfaces. upenn.edu). She is obsessed with cats, has somehow survived college without downloading Venmo, and currently has 48 books by or about Virginia Woolf checked out from Van Pelt.
He is currently versifying Restoration plays, illustrated by Anni Wilson (details at survivingthedream.blogspot.com). Katie Levesque is currently a graduate student in Historic Preservation at PennDesign. She uses photography as a means of documentation, exploration, and, most importantly, expression. Colin Lodewick is a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences. Corey Loftus sings out of tune while she waits for the tea kettle to whistle.
Jacob Kind takes pictures of his dog.
Karl Lorenzen is a professional artist who exhibits and teaches at leading holistic learning centers. He is a faculty member of the New York Open Center and Anthroposophy NYC and a teaching Artist in Residence at the Omega Institute, NY. His artwork has been published in The Healing Muse and the 2015 issue of Paris/Atlantic. He has exhibited at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center inFUSION Gallery, the annual meeting of the Canadian Botanical Association at Thompson Rivers University, and the United Nations Headquarters in New York City.
Andrew Sargus Klein lives, works, and performs in Baltimore. He is an editor for Platypus Press (UK), and his poetry can be found or is forthcoming in The Offing, Big Lucks, Wildness, Everyday Genius, and other venues. He holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Baltimore.
Nathaniel Lotze is a writer and musician living in Harrisburg, PA. In 2014, he graduated from Kenyon College with a B.A. in English. His poems have appeared in Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Shot Glass Journal, HOOT, and others.
Michaela Kotziers is a senior studying English Literature and German at Penn.
Kate Oksas is a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences interested in neuroscience, writing, and everything in between. She is studying Biological Basis of Behavior with a minor in Creative Writing.
Ava Kikut is a senior at the University of Pennsylvania majoring in English with a Creative Writing concentration. Isabel Kim is a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences studying English and Fine Arts.
Craig Kurtz has vexed the intelligentsia since the 1981 release of The Philosophic Collage. Recent work appears in The Dalhousie Review, Red Earth Review, The Same, and Xanadu; many others would just as soon string him up.
Javier Peraza is a South Philadelphian, bioengineer, older brother, and water ice enthusiast. THE PENN REVIEW 81
Grace Ragi is a sophomore at Penn. She has served as the Editor-in-Chief of PennScience: Journal of Undergraduate Research and as Chair of Penntal Health literary magazine, a project started in conjunction with Active Minds Penn. Grace Ringlein doesn't know how exactly to characterize her art. She's inspired by little things, like the tiny little brown birds that are everywhere, the color red, finger painting, people she doesn't know well, shoes, and strawberries. Little things have unexplained feelings attached. Emily Rush started writing poems once when she was sad, and now here we are. Freeman Schlesinger is an artist from the San Francisco Bay Area. He is pursuing a dual degree in Fine Arts and Spanish at Penn and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. More of his work can be viewed online at freemanschlesinger.com. Victoria Siu is a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania majoring in Biological Basis of Behavior and minoring in Creative Writing. As a Lab Assistant in the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Siu hopes to interweave her passion in research with her passion for writing. She is VP of Design and Layout for Synapse, Penn’s undergraduate medical journal. Siu has also organized and taught a creative writing workshop at Nathan Adams Elementary in Dallas, TX. Her writing has been recognized by Creative Communications as a semifinalist in their summer edition. Siu is an avid fan of Hayao Miyazaki and loves listening to Michael Jackson. Robert Smalto-Gil is an aspiring writer from Slaughter Beach, Delaware. Peter Sturtevant is a Masters of Liberal Arts student at the University of Pennsylvania, under which he studies 82 THE PENN REVIEW
creative writing and religious literature. In his fiction and poetry, he strives for interesting forms that elaborate human relationships to the past, present, and future. Eleanor Tecosky-Feldman is a librarian living and working in Philadelphia. Her writing has been translated into Russian, and she now works with young people to publish literary magazines of their own. Hüse Toussé who's to say where Hüse Toussé comes from? Born in an imaginary part of the Netherlands, this extraordinary eunuch began as a spoken-word poet but then left for Argentina to pursue a career in chess. After traveling around South America, Toussé almost drowned in the Iguazú Falls, which led him down a path of nirvana. This spiritual journey culminated in Tibet, where he became a monk and began to write scripture. This lucid creativity has since motivated him to write poems, novels, and satirical articles, which he sends to the West to be published. Jared Walsh is a writer and attorney living in Rocky Hill, NJ. He is also a manager of Scaffolds Press, a literary publisher based in Princeton. He was educated at Penn (B.A.) and Stanford Law School (J.D.), where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Stanford Environmental Law Journal. He will publish his first novel, Interludes, this summer. Kyle Walsh lives in Oakland, California, where he writes fiction and poetry and plays drums. His poetry has previously been published in Dryland Lit. Anni Wilson is a printmaker working in linoleum. Her current project is a set of sixty linocuts illustrating Restoration comedies, versified by collaborator Craig Kurtz. Recent works have appeared in The Penn Review, The Whitefish Review, and The Tishman Review. She resides at Twin Oaks Intentional Community in Virginia.
Victoria Xiao is a human being, except for the times when she is secretly a sparkly pink zebra. Lisa Zou is a freshman at Penn. Her work has been recognized multiple times by both the National YoungArts Foundation and Johns Hopkins University. Most recently, she was shortlisted for the United Kingdom's Buxton Poetry Contest. On campus, she is involved in the Women in Leadership Series.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the full Penn Review editorial board who showed up week after week and worked late into the night, giving our artists' and authors’ works the detailed attention they deserve. I’d also like to thank Victoria Xiao, Emma Ibrahim, Isabel Kim, Alex Anderson, and Karis Stephen for their overwhelming talent and dedication. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the profound support of the Student Activities Council, the Kelly Writers House, and the Penn Publications Cooperative, and to express gratitude to Deborah Burnham, Cybele Jacqueline Waters, and Caitlin Drummond for their rich contributions to a half-century of Penn Review history.