VOLUME XVIII | ISSUE 30 Syracuse University
Fall 2017 | 1
Perception is a free arts and literary magazine published once each semester by undergraduate students at Syracuse University. We are now accepting submissions for the Spring 2018 issue. We accept submissions from undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and staff. We ask that submitters send no more than five art and five writing pieces. Our writing page limit is now 10 pages, and we accept submissions in any language with an English translation. All submissions and correspondence can be sent to perception.syr@gmail.com. 2 | Perception
Dear Perceivers, Change is hard sometimes. It isn’t always good. The condition of sameness can be comforting. But sameness is impermanent, and change has to happen. And when change happens, we create in response to it. As artists and writers, we are reactionaries to change. Our work reflects changes in our lives, our relationships, our communities, and our societies. Our staff needs to respond to change just as much as our work does. We’ve created a logo that we feel better shows the purpose of the magazine, and our editorial board has welcomed new staff members to continue to foster growth and change at Perception. In addition, we’re representing change not only in the structure of the magazine but also in the work we publish. Some of the work we feature this semester speaks to personal changes: family dynamics, old or lost relationships, being alone. And some of the work we feature speaks to larger changes: the political environment, how we view women, class in America. These works are vital to preserve the cultural moment we are currently in and to explore the different types of change we experience. We thrive and survive because of change and our response to it. We exist to change. Stay groovy, Katherine Fletcher Editor-in-Chief
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The Insiders
Katherine Fletcher Editor-in-Chief
Bridget Slomian Chief Designer
Editors
Caryn Corliss, Bridget Gismondi, Pallas Hayes, Emily Kelly, Devon March, Danielle Schaf, Olga Shydlonok
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Elyssa Thomas Managing Editor
Julia Leyden Asst. Editor-in-Chief
Head Reviewers
Rhonda Chester, Cristina Colรณn Feliciano, Caryn Corliss, Emily Kelly, Olga Shydlonok
Jeff Nathan Asst. Editor
Sophia Pennacchio Communications Director
Thomas Beckley-Forest Head Editor
Reviewers
Zachary Blas, Danielle Bertolini, Noah Cousineau, Fern Durand, Amanda Gibbs, Lauren Hannah, Pallas Hayes, Anna Henderson, Raymundo Juarez, Cassie Leachmean, Simon Lewin, Devon March, Bethany Marsfelder, Megan Massey, Noah Mendez, Lyla Rose, Shreya Sahdev, Danielle Schaf, Josh Smith, Valery Soy, Emma Stewart, Jennifer Sweet, Vivian Whitney, Natasha Yurek
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The Contributors Writing Lindsay Patterson
9 88
little red button Amalgam
Zainab Abdali
10
a footnote from the war on terror
Brian Hamlin
14 52 90
the Cow goes Moo Memories as Porifera Revelations
Danielle Bertolini
16 87
Mother, Myosotis
Natalli Amato
18 79 85 102
Lunch Shift Has Breakfast Thoughts From My Stop At a Hometown Red Light Blue, Side B The Spectacle
Noah Mendez
19 55
Gaps Insert His Name Here.
Trevor Miller
20
Power Play
Joy Replogle
22 84
Davy Jones' Heart Locker Body Language
Adelaide Zoller
24
New Orleans
Fern Durand
26
Just Memories
Rachel Saunders
27
Chatterbox
Lyla Rose
29 40 64 77
Menthols smoke like cigarettes Talk to me through the door Star Children Beautiful Mess
Megan Massey
31 73 104
Singed Women Shells
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Nadia Suleman
33
space
Natasha Yurek
35
The Sweet Anthology
Matthew Visker
38
Machismo
Katherine Fletcher
41 81 105
West Untitled i watch a beautiful woman
Alice Chen
43
Aglaonema
Sophia Pennacchio
Untitled
Olga Shydlonok
45 47
Jessica Brady
48
Conceptions of Perfection
Elyssa Thomas
50 99
My Shoes Are Dirty What the DSM Doesn't Tell You
Josh Smith
53
A Particularly Brave Night
Cristina Colรณn Feliciano
61 94
Monday, 12:15 PM Body and Soul
Lauren Hannah
66 92 108
To Dad, Too Late Party City Tasting Voices Again
Felicia Widjaya
68
A Girl
Mary Catalfamo
74
A Terrible Smallness
Hanna Martin
75
Tainted Heaven
Tyler Crowl
82
Window Panes
Bethany Marsfelder
97
3:24
Midnight Purple Dream
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Bridget Gismondi Noah Cousineau Adham Elsharkawi Alena Sceusa Lyla Rose Colin Maguire David Hinsch & Sophia Pennacchio & Cassie Schmitt
Alexa Anastasio
Akanksha Gomes Bridget Slomian Olga Shydlonok Raymundo Juarez Pallas Hayes Kelly Veshia COVER ART Front Cover Back Cover Inside Front Inside Back
15 17 21 37 23 46 83 25 60 63 28 65 80 30 32 44
Art Red My Mother Before Me Defeat Jerry's Dog Washed Away Purple Rain Neverland Viennam Parism Berlin Untitled Star Children Untitled Untitled Untiitled Untitled
51 72 89 107 71 96 78 91 86 98 101 103 109
Lake Houses Wave Two Worlds Lucid Dreams Buddha Abstract Souls Icy January Pride Still Life The Things I Saw Inside Tunnel Vision Peace Untitled
Adham Elsharkawi - Brighter Ahead Noah Cousineau - Chairs Akanksha Gomes - Flames Olga Shydlonok - Appease the Mind
CENTER SPREAD Pallas Hayes - On the Street Alexa Anastasio - Rad Alena Sceusa - Sienam Adham Elsharkawi - Clue
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little red button Lindsay Patterson our fathers told us that when we walk alone at night we should carry our pepper sprays. so we do. we carry them like they’re going to keep us Safe. but they won’t. and we know it. the dangers of the world surpass the physical. we know that too. people kill themselves every day. and for what? for what. nobody chooses to enter this world. we are all forced. sperm and egg come together by chance dna just happens to combine correctly dictating neurogenesis of brains that somehow become ours that somehow develop the capacity to both love and hate to kill and resuscitate. to Fear. to long for Safety in any form Safety from ourselves Safety from the other Safety even in the form of a little black tube with a little red button that is rumored to make even fathers cry when you press it.
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a footnote from the war on terror Zainab Abdali Youngest of four beloved of his mother, inseparable from his twin brother fifteen minutes older. Dark eyes, long eyelashes, his mother warded off the evil eye every day, her beautiful boy. arab man, olive-skinned, arab features, menacing stare, do not approach. Fourteen years old, star of the soccer team “Best goalkeeper in the city,� his father bragged. he took the field, the grass smelt like perfume, the crowd was singing a transcendent melody, the players dancers. singular hatred of our country. wrote couplets in his head. in his notebooks. saw poetry on the field, heard verses when the ball came rushing at him. dove to stop it, composed a sonnet as he looked at her face, with those eyes, in that seat, in that stadium, on that day. do not approach. highly dangerous. his brother laughed. be brave, my champion you are a sports god, read out your verses, a holy scripture. read it out, they will listen. she will listen. read. in the name of your Lord, read. he reads. hesitating. the verses are starting. in the name of God, the most merciful – suddenly. silence.
he is reading, still reading, but there is no sound, no sound, no 10 | Perception
colors, no sound, no feeling. silence. oh god, the merciful, why is there no sound anymore and why is his father crying, his father never cries, and why is his mother beating her chest, wailing, but he cannot hear the wails, he cannot hear a thing, he cannot see, everything is red. why is his brother not moving. why is he still. he is never still. when they were children their father once said his brother was like that tiny bird they saw one day, flitting from flower to flower, unable to stay still why is he still. why does he not speak. why is there no sound. the axis of evil. barbarity. the antithesis of everything we believe in. his brother is still, so now he must never stop moving. never stay in one place. mountains, caves, an overcrowded boat, a city of tents, he cannot stop. he stops for a second and sees his brother’s broken face, sees red everywhere. starts running again. borders, boundaries, checkpoints. asylum. refuge. there is no refuge for him who carries his dead brother on his back. against our liberation efforts, against our mission to liberate that country, to set the women free, to protect the children, to destroy the terrorists. his mother is dead. of an illness that could not be treated at the city’s broken hospital, or perhaps of grief. his father buried her next to his son and his cousin and his brother and his neighbor’s son, hoping to join them soon.
he still writes. soccer is poison to him now, the field is too much like a battlefield, too much like war, and he has had enough war to Fall 2017 | 11
last several lifetimes. he writes. his only solace. he writes his brother’s face into his words, he does not read them out loud because he cannot hear his own voice anymore, drowned out by his brother’s last scream, but he still writes. One day there will be peace. My country will be free. Flowers will grow on my brother’s grave. The guns will turn into pens, the bombs… the bombs will disappear because there will be no more bombs here, there will be only poetry and music. his cousin blew himself up, killed an American soldier, he hears the news, does not hear it, does not comprehend. Ali? he yelled his brother’s name before he did it, “this is for my cousin you bastards. you dropped a bomb on him.” ali? he should have yelled his verses, should have yelled until ali heard them. the world is red again, his brother is dead, ali is dead, an american soldier is dead, he might as well be dead. they told him he was not yet a citizen and his cousin had killed an american, and how did he feel about that? he should have showed them his notebooks, his verses, his brother’s face, no one could suspect him once they saw his brother’s face, surely, they would understand. that he could barely look at roses anymore without smelling blood and flesh that if he had talked to ali in the past two years he would have told him that, that the smell never leaves you. brainwashed indoctrinated irrational hatred of us, of our freedom, of our way of life but he is not a citizen. and his writing is inflammatory. rights are for the citizen, and for the white, and for men who do not have arab features and long eyelashes. he has run all his life, and he starts running again. he runs fast but he knows he cannot run forever he sees his brother’s face. he can hear him now. read, brother, read. read your verses. 12 | Perception
One day, there will be peace again. My country will be free. There will be flowers on my brother’s grave. I will be free. These guards will see me as human. they will not be guards anymore because there will be no more prisons. my prison cell will be a classroom. they will not beat us but instead will see us as human and i will tell them about my brother and they will tell me about theirs. one day there will be peace again and my country will be free and red will only be the color of roses, not of the streets or of rivers or of my dreams and these guards will see me as human. one day there will be peace again and – prisoner number 4256, undisclosed name, expired on classified date. cause of death classified. his connection to the killing of an american soldier is still unclear but this is war. suspicious circumstances require us to investigate, for the sake of national security. he was far from innocent. this is a time of war and he was the enemy. cell reassigned. prisoner number 4257, south asian man, 21, suspected to have been radicalized during his time in Pakistan, possible connections to case 873, interrogation ongoing. Epilogue. They say martyrs are the birds of paradise, green birds. His brother must be one of them, surely, he died telling him to read, to read, speaking the words of God Himself, quoting the Holy Book. He must be one of those green birds, in paradise as he was on earth. He isn’t sure where the poets or the soccer players go, but if he can only know that his brother is a bird, free, that will be enough for him. That will be peace.
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the Cow goes Moo Brian Hamlin there they go, the herd muddling through the turnstiles. it’s a miserable motion to shuffle through. when it shifts, quick, some are stolid, seated. the rest of us need anchorage. with our paper hands we reach for slabs of steel. our solidarity can be found in the stick of shoe to the new layer of muck that stuck to the rubber on the floor. if you can, look down through the cloud of claustrophobia. you will find our feet in pigeon peck. down here, you will be again an animal, shown that you are a freckled speck beneath the pressurized stamp of cold numbers and perforated leather.
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Red Bridget Gismondi Fall 2017 | 15
Mother, Danielle Bertolini You are the womb and the world the ancient theology, the life-giver, the sacred and the mundane My mother is not a flower she is the crying, cleaning, screaming center of the earth all lava and fire-beauty my tectonic predestiny Mother, you do not blossom, you burn and you struggle and you synthesize You are the compression and explosion you are life elemental, the inaugural law of nature, the physics that govern my body and being, the born gravity of my soul I am the hollow counterpart to your fruit, the satellite to your center-life, the secular to your sacred Mother, I am of you— a derivative You, you are the womb and the world
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My Mother Before Me Bridget Gismondi Fall 2017 | 17
Lunch Shift Has Breakfast Natalli Amato even when he let them burn or left in a piece of shell my favorite breakfast was scrambled eggs before lunch shift radio on pan hissing he’d yell fuck it let’s take the boat out where the world is blue blue blue someone else can bus the tables for a day someone else can bring the big shots their burgers his thoughts dazzled and distracted pulled him this way and that and every so often they would pull at me too yet always I looked for our aprons saying the boat will have to wait because the tired bones in my working-girl feet told me not to trust comfort such an unusual sensation because one day I would clock in without the morning eggs first
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Gaps Noah Mendez There are gaps to fall into and gaps to forget and sometimes both and gaps in trains where you trip and the doors close and you cry or where your shoe falls off and the electricity arcs and somewhere a rat screams. Gaps in teeth when you grow up even though you don’t want to and you gargle salt water and it all comes out red and all you want is for Mom to kiss it better but kissing on the lips is for lovers and you don’t know how to love someone like that. Gaps in time like where was I last Friday and who did I see and when is a dream actually a memory and I keep leaving knives in the fridge to cool down and eat later if I tasted metal in my throat maybe for once it wouldn’t be blood.
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Power Play Trevor Miller Trigger Warning: poem contains content regarding sexual assault You said you were voting for Trump and bawled a clump of my hair in your fist. I need to learn to say the word “no,” more. No, when you kissed me with your teeth instead of your lips. No, when you shoved me against the wall and I hit my head. No, when you wrapped your leg around me and told me to calm down. No, when I asked you to leave and you leaped on top of me. Don’t call me baby, you just met meyou don’t even know me. I said I’m tired, please go home. I shouldn’t have to say pleasejust go. Get your hand off my dickthat hurts. Don’t kiss me to shut me up. Don’t kiss me. You won’t shut me up. Get off of me, stop. I’m uncomfortable, stop. Quit kissing me, stop. Stop touching me, stop. I can’t say it enough. I said stop. STOP. STOP. STOP. Is this what girls feel like when they speak the four letter word and privileged men roll their eyes? Because, apparently, injustice doesn’t exist between your thighs. 20 | Perception
Defeat Noah Cousineau
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Davy Jones' Heart Locker Joy Replogle Oh, after the rain I saw the rainbows, behind your tragically stormy gray eyes, and I thought that your lips held the cosmos. However, I was weary to capsize in the wake of your small infinity; with which you took many unwilling souls. Still I thought that your kiss could set me free, until my heart turned numb and filled with holes. Then it sank into your sea of sorrows, and it rained even harder from my eyes, and I longed for the brand new tomorrows. Sail away into the words of the wise: If you want to live and avoid slaughter keep your heart and head above the water.
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Washed Away Adham Elsharkawi
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New Orleans Adelaide Zoller Somewhere between the Renaissance and Louis Armstrong a city was born with a heartbeat different from any other; it feels like another era Drinking in the street and dancing with the devil in the city with no rules or regulations I found my soul within its depths of the vieux carre surrounded by rhythm and blues where gold lines the cast iron balconies and the voodoo queens line the streets Something about the magic and the music gets under your skin Just ask Faulkner or Bukowski, they’ll tell you how the girls, the art, the music, the drinks The crescent city will bring you to your knees
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Viennam Alena Sceusa Fall 2017 | 25
Just Memories Fern Durand Tis’ you I want to sit underneath a bridge with In Shanghai City, China at two in morning. Smoking our cigarettes. Drinking milk tea. Tracing the lines on the palm of your hands. Falling asleep, and waking up to the sound Of strangers. Strangers that throw pennies. We laugh as we collect them. Back in the hotel, we shower together. We have sex. We lay down for a while, Then finally make our way to your favorite Restaurant for breakfast. I watch you as you eat, and that’s enough. To make you happy, is my joy. We leave the pennies behind in the tip jar.
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Chatterbox Rachel Saunders She spews false truths With no speed limit or stop signs To restrain her Ever Quaking Mouth But though sound may flow from behind her lips Do not mistake this for a river of honesties For she hides behind her words Waiting. For something Someone To dare swim in her ocean of fears And rescue her from the island of insecurity she has stranded herself on But Even the bravest divers are too timid To venture into the depths of her mind Leaving little miss chatterbox To chat alone
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Untitled Lyla Rose
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Menthols smoke like toothpaste Lyla Rose Menthols smoke like toothpaste But I don’t think you minded Because you smoked her all summer Even though she didn’t hurt your throat Or give you something to remember Cigarettes like air And sex like laundry Needed but not desired but also No disappointment But you don’t like the girl with the chewed up hands Or the 99 cigarettes she keeps on her nightstand Life isn’t that scary for a big man like you And the cigarettes you’re smoking don’t taste like I do
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Untitled Colin Maguire
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Singed Megan Massey I crave touch. I greet in embraces and cry on shoulders. I yearn for the closeness of another; a mix of warmth and limbs. Slight touches prick at my nerves. My senses heighten and my body stiffens. A brush, a graze, a skim eat away at my cells. I imagine I am a feather held above a flame. I start to singe along my edges. Although I remain simmering in the smallest of places, I fear my delicate being will crumble to ash. I am ablaze. I would rather be swallowed by the light than left itching my burn. There is something comforting about the fire. I want to jump in, to be enveloped completely. To ignite all at once. Still, I remain floating just above the danger. I attempt to dip in but the sensation pulls me back. I choose to linger longer; to torture myself further. Instead, I will watch the flame flicker from above. I will watch the light reflect on myself as my desires grow stronger. The image of a feather will disappear and I will be left with the remains.
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Untitled Colin Maguire 32 | Perception
s p a c e Nadia Suleman lost in billions of shimmers and glimmers that resemble dew drops grazing the grass at dawn or dazzling diamonds shattering over the summer sand distance seemingly close by but the remoteness says otherwise if only Big Blue was as alluring blaming the gravitational pull for our encounter you are the eerie essence i was warned of dark matter, darker aura bright as a black hole on a moonless night orbiting the remnants of my long departed soul unable to see the haze before you your motto is good vibes only positive energy transferring onto into me but i didn't want you coming onto me months later compass pointed me to a falling star i followed Fall 2017 | 33
fate led me back to you stars and spirits have aligned mercury in retrograde but now you want s
p
a
c
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e
The Sweet Anthology Natasha Yurek Rotten – The Sweet Anthology, pt. I The Gods, Goddesses of the golden guild Survey and rule from atop the hill. Their bones be-frilled with Mother of Pearl, And drinking the goblet’s fill. Their stories set on clouds and stars, Their words are holy writ. They play the bait, the bloody steak, Sat begging to be bit. And thus, the feast of insatiable beasts, Left full yet craving more, Are thrown the fats, the scraps, the treats, And further addiction bore. The suckling bees of nectar sweet, Make honey so soon rotten. If save the hive, the buzz, the fly, The Gods best be forgotten. Sticky - The Sweet Anthology pt. II Let’s die tonight, my darling bee Sting fast and end me good. Let me taste your flicker and ash, Crack like burning wood. Suck my fingers like syrup, little bee, And lie in our warm grave with me. Come end to heavy and bursting death, As heat hopscotches on our breath. Buzz your blues, you silly bee, And let me not go quick. To my dismay, there is bouquet. Let my ivy be your pick.
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Blue - The Sweet Anthology pt. III The elderberries gave me blue honey, Gave me darkened navy seas. So I may sail, from where I hail, And make currents with my breeze. The elderberries gave me blue honey, Gave me skies tickled by trees. So my wings can hum, unstuck from gum, And float with fellow bees. The elderberries gave me blue honey, Gave me bruises on my knees. So I won’t fall the next time I run, And tip-toe time’s trapeze. The elderberries gave me blue honey, A hue new from the old. Though my view is blue and sunny, I’ll forever miss my gold.
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Noah Cousineau
Jerry's Dog
Machismo Matthew Visker Your wooden cross sits there, surrounded by so many just like yours but you are not there. Where have you all gone, who did this to you, is anyone looking, why did this happen? You just recently had your quinceañera, you are a woman now and so beautiful. I could have loved you had I met you first, with flowing black curls and the sweetest smile. Your honest brown eyes always dreaming of the future, I wish I could’ve made it come true. After work one night you were walking alone, why weren’t you safe? I feel safe when I walk. Was it the cops, or the cartel who did this, but does it even matter since they won’t look for you. If I had seen you would 38 | Perception
I have tried to stop them, in my streets, yes, but in yours, I don’t think so. I am from El Paso, you were from Juarez, two worlds on one earth divided by the Rio.
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Talk to me through the door Lyla Rose cracks of light you’re good at keeping your voice down just low enough that I can hear it even with all of the world out there and all of my thoughts in here your voice is the only music I remember each note slips under the cracks of the door sometimes, if I close my eyes long enough the notes feel like skin Brushing up my body, twisting like a scarf around my neck, even stroking my hand and the music begins to feel like honey I let it linger there, on the hairs of my pale arm, until it glistens and dances and starts to fade. your voice is getting quieter. I can hear loud shoes coming down the hall “Wait,” I whisper. But the music wasn’t there anymore.
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West Katherine Fletcher “Do you want me to take you west?” You tilt your head toward me at the sound of my voice, and my heart stutters. The trees shake in protest. North, they grumble, you said north. “You said north,” I repeat. Words dead on my tongue, dead on arrival. I catch glimpses of myself as a stranger, hat in hands. Knocking on your door telling you that everything I wanted to say was killed oceans away from you. “And by the way, everything we could have been died in a ten-car pileup.” “What the hell are you talking about?” You’re staring now, mouth in a tight line, no humor in your eyes. Not anymore. “I hadn’t realized I was talking.” “You were. Well, sort of. It was mostly nonsense, but you were talking about – are you even listening? You were talking about – ” “No. Do you want me to take you west?” “Yeah, that. What’s west?” “Us.” I have better answers in my throat, real answers like Alaska and The Mountains and A Future. I pull a pack of cigarettes from my pocket and light one carefully. One deep drag, exhale. Another deep drag, exhale. I pass it to you. You take it gratefully. We needed something to do with our hands. You needed me to do something with my hands before I put another hole in your wall. “It’s so obvious that you don’t have a plan. You know that, right?” You’re not looking at me. You haven’t brought the cigarette to your mouth yet. “I can’t rely on you, you – ” “Have before.” I trip over the words and shake my head. Christ. “You have before.” You laugh and I wince and for once you don’t apologize. Good, I think. Good. “Things are different now.” “Why?” I should’ve just left without telling you. Without telling anyone. Smash my phone on the highway in the middle of nowhere or something dramatic like that. I could throw it into a ravine, send you a postcard from a gas station, write until my hands bleed and I forget who I am. Hell, I’ll throw myself into a ravine. Good riddance. A Fall 2017 | 41
knot forms in my stomach. This is getting too emotional. I’m getting too emotional. It’s dead weight, it’s tether. “Tether,” I say out loud. You stop talking suddenly, which is when I realize you had been talking. “For God’s sake. I mean, Jesus Christ. You show up here in the middle of the night, looking like a crazy person, scaring the neighbors, talking to yourself. If you’re not going to listen to me, I’m going to bed. Jesus Christ.” “No, wait.” I breathe. You pass me the cigarette. “Come west.” “It’s not that simple.” “I know.” Deep drag, exhale. I press the butt into my arm and you wince. “Sorry. Christ. I’m fucking sorry, you know that.” I can almost hear the west calling. Singing like church bells. The singing gets louder and I grip the porch railing. My head is spinning. “Our Father,” I whisper. You don’t hear me. Who art in heaven. Do you hear the singing? Hallowed be Thy name. “Look. Maybe in a few months. Or another lifetime. I don’t know.” You shrug, cough once. I can tell you’re tearing up. Do you hear the goddamn church bells? Thy kingdom come. “God, just the fact that you would show up here, of all places, and think that – ” Those goddamn beautiful church bells. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. “ – but I’m fucking terrified and I – ” Those goddamn beautiful mountains. Give us this day our daily bread. “ – that you’ll be there, that you won’t disappear.” That goddamn beautiful west. And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. I look at you, because you’ve stopped talking. Waiting for me to reassure you exactly like I should. I should be telling you that I won’t disappear. I want to, but I look down and my fingertips are already starting to fade. “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” I respond. “Amen.” “You’re unbelievable.” You’re laughing now and I am too. I can’t remember if you’re drunk or not. I pull out another cigarette and light it, laughing trails of smoke into the stars. 42 | Perception
Aglaonema Alice Chen I’m sorry that you’ve been reduced to a common office plant. With your colorful leaves and short stature, yet you’re low maintenance, you’ve graced the desks of office secretaries instead of where you belong. You wish you were like that oak tree outside, swaying gently to the breeze while you have to entertain yourself to the air conditioning that’s always on because the boss has a chronic sweat problem and everyone else is wearing down jackets. You wish you were like that orchid, constantly a showcase on everyone’s Instagram feed and carefully watered and maintained because “it would be such a shame if it wilted.” You wish you were like the pointy succulent squad in the front corner of the desk, next to the zen garden and faux waterfall. A little jungle over there. A little sense of peace, instead of the office vibe that the pencil skirts, striped ties and stale coffee give off. You inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, straighten up a little and try to live it up a little while swaying to the imaginary breeze, facing the window where dreams once were.
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Untitled David Hinsch & Sophia Pennacchio & Cassie Schmitt
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Untitled Sophia Pennacchio AmeriKKKa is melting Not like a melting pot If we were a melting pot Maybe we’d be more accepting Accepting of each other’s differences Differences like color Colors that make the world beautiful Beautiful people with beautiful hearts Hearts that ache at the cries of gunshots Gunshots that tear up cities Cities that thrive off of the masses Masses that contain the voices Voices that remain silent on the field in protest In protest of the differences like color
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Purple Rain Adham Elsharkawi 46 | Perception
Midnight Purple Dream Olga Shydlonok The winter fell and made my branches laden, crisp and white the world was made a certain heaven. The front-door spilled a honeyed light on frozen ground, a small outline barely blocked the highlight of the light. The creak of hinges followed by muffled boots on snow brought her to me, her face awash by the crimson sunset glow. She climbed up high, perched on the third branch silent waiting for the night to fall into the sky above us. A dandelion, wished upon by a winter’s breeze, she flew away, across the midnight where stars appeared.
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Conceptions of Perfection Jessica Brady Part I What is the price of perfection? I ask As I am surrounded by those with beaten down faces and broken down smiles, With bloody fingernails and bleeding hearts, Searching for the perfect piece of affirmation in the letter “A,” That can only come on a sheet of paper in bright red ink, With late night lessons and sleepless slumbers, Where the goal is to pass the class Without failing ourselves in the process, With days that last longer than our minds can, Leaving us with hollowed eyes that cannot focus, And hollowed hearts that cannot love, With shifting glances and the nervous tap-tap-tapping Of our fingers as we sneak a peek of a piece of paper That has answers to a test we haven’t even taken yet, With “honesty” and “honor” in our code of conduct but not on our conscience. The plus that we seek leaves us weak to retreat, Where all this madness leads to sadness, and a temporary escape leads to drugs that don’t satiate us. Part II How does one person’s acceptance make us one step closer to the image we strive for? How do we find time to be ourselves when we are too busy convincing others of our own originality, setting up an idea of us that is our own fatality. How can we see ourselves as perfect if it is not a shared view, how do we adore ourselves if it only comes in videos that are named “How-To.” Because to know a stranger all you need to see is their feed,
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and the photos they put up or the image that is perceived. When has perfection been measured in likes and attention? And why has it become more important than our ascension. A picture is worth a thousand words, or perhaps a thousand likes if you’re lucky. Nothing makes us feel better than seeing those two digits turn to three, it’s all just part of this big show, though, where the projection of perfection is equal to a filter or a photo. Part III What is perfection? Can it be reached? It leads us to a road that never ends, because perfection is a goal that only exists in a mindset. An idea conceived in the minds of millions, who would we be without ideals to reach? An abstract idea that holds us back. We must find the key to ourselves in the mind that we lost, where our souls are perfect because they are pure, where perfection is not measured in the flawlessness of a complexion or the way we let others define who we are. How have we consummated an ideal we cannot reach, how have we made something so translucent so holy. Why do we follow only what is accepted? Never leaving the confinements of expectation. If we were given everything we think we needed to achieve, would we be satisfied, Or is perfection an idea sold to the millions, with no refunds or instructions included, It holds the soul to find an answer to an unsolvable question: What exactly is the price of perfection?
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My Shoes Are Dirty Elyssa Thomas My shoes are dirty. The first two stains were drops of liquid courage, the few to follow from mud (when falling down). I met up with a boy and he told me they looked clean. He couldn’t imagine the germs beneath my heals, he didn’t wonder about the bright red of my cause. He told me they were white when he handed them over with my shirt. Pure. As if to say, never been touched. As if to say, remembers everyone she’s slept with. As if to say, take them back off and stay awhile on my bed. Take off your “white shoes." Next night, same boy, dumb question. “What are you up to?” I’m cleaning my shoes. I’m busy scrubbing the slut etched onto the sole. I’m not easy, I’m lonely, there’s a difference. I’m not lonely; I’m left, thanks to the bursting closet where I kept my keds. The insides are coming to the outsides. The scratches are beginning to tear. There’s a new boy, Oh, here we go again. But he doesn’t want white shoes, shining shoes. He doesn’t see grime, but passionate crimes. It’s not the end of the world; it’s the end of the party. We can always play checkers tomorrow. There’s something kind of wonderful about sleeping with the one you want to, not sleeping with the one that’s easy to, not sleeping with the one you’re lying to, About your white shoes. 50 | Perception
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Alexa Anastasio
Lake Houses
Memories as Porifera Brian Hamlin Wring a yellow sponge above an empty cup of lemonade and you'll find only semblances of summer in the trickle hope the pulpy narrative you squeeze from your noggin after an adventure is enough to fill a shot glass to cheers yourself in hind sight . What's left within your knuckles , in the damp, exhausted pores , could be called retention Or better yet , Experience . Try and dry . the sponge, as much as it regurgitates its excess and spews in saturation, will keep close and retrace its deepest dowses and cleanest showers, no matter how subliminal, subconscious, or self centered. Just beneath the surface and too close to change too real, now, to talk about, and instead beyond , above , and without , the ceaseless squirms and judgements of other sponges.
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A Particularly Brave Night Josh Smith My diet can be summed up with two words: Bad. Cholesterol. My Sweetness could tell you that. There’s something about waitresses that always brings me back to the table. I’ve shared the company of the world’s most beautiful women—each night a new town, a new diner, a new face. In South Bend, I met Lacy, a redheaded woman. She was putting in extra shifts to go to Spring Break in Daytona. In Nashville, I met Haley—a blonde woman working her way through med school. She wants to become the kind of doctor who could have saved her father’s life. A different night, a different woman, all across the country— but when I’m home, there’s just one. Her name is Stephanie, and she works at the corner dive. I call her Sweetness, she calls me Mr. Roberts, until I tell her not to. “So Mr. Roberts, will it be the usual, or something decent for a change?” “You know me, Sweetness. Live fast, die young, leave a bloated corpse. I’ll have the usual.” I always go when it isn’t busy, that way she can join me in my booth. She knows things about me that my own brother doesn’t. I know where her three hidden tattoos are. We talk with each other like we’re solving the world’s problems. On a particularly brave night, I took Sweetness by the hand. I looked her in her eyes. I said, “You ought to know by now, that I don’t come in here for the greasy food, the dim lighting, or to sit under the framed picture of the 1962 Elks’ Lodge bowling champion. Stephanie, let’s get out of here. We can do so much better than curly fries and diet sodas.” She kept my gaze, but withdrew her hand. She said, “Don’t use my real name like that. None of this is real. Not the butter, not the eggs, and not this. When you exit those doors, you cease to exist. Whatever it is that you’re feeling, whatever it is that you think I’m feeling: it’s not love. It’s Stockholm Syndrome.” She gave me a half-smile that suggested that she had gone—to that place in her head that allows her to survive this environment. Stephanie stood up, fetched the pad from my table, withdrew a Fall 2017 | 53
pen from behind her twice-pierced ear and asked, “So Mr. Roberts, will it be the usual, or something decent for a change?� I stood up and walked to the door. Something real.
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Insert His Name Here. Noah Mendez so here’s how this works: I forget you finally in exchange for good sleep or I remember you but not like you want me to I keep dreaming about you being in love with me and I wake up retching the truth that you don’t think of me is almost worse how can the weapon see the victim as a stranger not a defining person I look nothing like the someone you used to toy with but I bet I still smell weak These lips don’t miss you this body has built itself around you in my head where you hurt me is a crater but in the world it’s still a normal park funny how the beauty goes on not just around me but in me so this is how this really works: you no longer define me and I am still someone without you Fall 2017 | 55
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Parism Alena Sceusa 60 | Perception
Monday, 12:15 PM Cristina Colón Feliciano She searched for the wallet in her purse. She knew it wasn’t there, but the cashier was looking at her pressingly and she felt obligated to at least pretend. Miss, do you have no cash on you? She made a sound and shook her head. Maybe you could come back? She looked down at her small, empty cross-body. Are you okay, miss? The customer behind her asked. She nodded. You know what, ring us up. Are you sure, sir? Yes. Sitting down at a table in the small cafeteria, she stared at the chocolate cupcake in front of her. The man who had paid for it sat a couple of tables down from her. He was staring at his BLT sandwich and his phone. She whispered to herself and pushed the cupcake a few inches away. The girl with the chocolate cupcake took out her phone from her pocket and looked through her voicemails. She clicked on one and raised the phone to her right ear. Sweetheart, your mom is going to sleep. Good night! I love you! God bless you and sweet dreams, alright? Until tomorrow, baby. I love you, sweet dreams. Bye! 26 seconds. She put the phone down. The frosting on the chocolate cake had small purple stars sprinkled on top. They reminded her of nothing in particular. Love, dear. If you hear this message quickly, call me back. I went out on an errand and I need to ask you something. Bye! 18 seconds. Hi, baby. Please, when you wake up, call your mother at the office. Bye! 10 seconds. She scrolled through the others, some longer, but never long enough. She sat for a while at that table while people came in and left with their orders. They ordered turkey clubs, no mayo; meatball subs, light sauce; Italian wedding soup in a bread bowl, with salad on the side, please. The man had eaten his BLT sandwich and left. He passed her and smiled reassuringly. No need to pay me back, dear. The owner’s little boy was playing with a small yo-yo next to the register. He kept skipping around the line in between customers. Every single one smiled and looked at each other to make sure they Fall 2017 | 61
unanimously agreed: adorable. Look at how wonderful life is! It’s truly the small things in life, isn’t it? The joy! Not a care in the world! Nothing to worry about! No mortgage! No sandwich to pay for! Must protect the children! The little boy kept on playing and skipping around the cafeteria. He couldn’t make the yo-yo bounce back no matter how hard he tried. He went around and around the cafeteria and in between the tables, noticing mainly his toy. He stopped once he saw the chocolate cupcake with the purple stars. “I have stars on my ceiling and they glow when my mom turns the light off,” he said to her. “Do you have stars in your room?” She smiled and shook her head. “Maybe you can have some of mine! I have a lot, really! The whole ceiling is covered.” She smiled again. “Can you talk? You only ever smile.” She nodded and made a sound close to the whimper of a small mutt being run over by a big truck. “It’s okay if you can’t. Don’t cry about it,” he put his yo-yo on the table and moved it closer to where her hands were placed. “This will make you feel better,” he said proudly. Through foggy glasses, she picked up the toy and placed it back into the boy’s hands along with her cupcake. As the boy skipped away smiling, stars sprinkled the floor.
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Alena Sceusa
Berlin
Star Children Lyla Rose And what will happen to us? The star children with two heavy feet planted in morals and crazy beliefs, like the idea our skin shades shouldn’t define us that our energies, like toddlers, work best when they’re blindly dancing and panting with one million colors for my dear friend Cassie, a sunburnt orange you’ll find she traps light and reflects it in darkness and also for papa, with a bright green so honest i can still hear his voice in a cold dark forest so how can we possibly trap people in words? squish them and define them in our own broad terms black, white, yellow, brown – but what about Trevor on the playground? didn’t he smile at you through two-loose front teeth and offer you some of his ham sandwich to eat? and didn’t that sandwich taste just like heaven the last thing I was thinking was what skin he was wearing
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Lyla Rose
Star Children
To Dad, Too Late Lauren Hannah I've never been to Moscow or Osaka or Dresden, but I know you have, and it must have felt like gold was dripping from the tips of your fingers, platinum precipitated from your eyes, but then you realized - your hair has gone grey and the world has changed while you were alone in your office rolling all your coins so carefully into stacks and mumbling into the phone. The thing I've learned about traveling is everything glitters with newness through your insular lens and you might envision yourself there in another man’s clothes but you come back and your aging mind forgets about it. You must be afraid. And you want to escape to Santiago and never come back, because maybe if you do you won’t be edging on sixty anymore; an impossible thing could only happen in an impossible place. If you spend enough time bathing in a pool of other people's echoing ideas within the white walls of your cyberspace anything can be real to you. Our minds are the silly putty that I would play with as a child and stick to the newspaper, peeling it off and reading the backwards ink stains. If you keep on reading and reading backwards things, losing track of the hours anybody's paranoid can become your holy text. Where is the glory in suburban life? I know. The old colonial floors creak and there are no street lights and all you can hear are trains in the distance carrying passengers to somewhere better, and it's always so cold, and insomnia creeps up and you can hear her incessant breathing and you start to tap your pen Tap tap tap tap tap Should I leave should I stay should I leave? 66 | Perception
You start to drop glass marbles, glass memories One, two, three, forty, fifty, fifty-five... You start hiding upstairs in the evenings, crouching in the shadows of your fears, listening to the childish demons in the closet, gradually, silently becoming illBut there are no demons in Singapore! Hahaha I know why it feels that way. I know it seems like heaven is empty and the dead mean of our family are here suffocating you, but I promise this storm cloud would follow you. Believe me because my mind is sick too. It feels like standing in a mine field with heaven on the horizon but that feeling would chase you to any country because it is your own. Please open your eyes. The woman you're seeing doesn't love you. The money you've been hiding is money you don't have. Your mother only wants the best for you. Your house is not your oppressor, your wife is not a witch, and even if the grass is greener on the other side, the other side has no room for you.
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A Girl Felicia Widjaya The purpose of this essay is to illustrate Asian culture, specifically about how males and females are still differentiated, even now. Our beliefs are still grounded on traditionalistic values, and though my experience may seem strange to many Americans, millions of Asian girls all over the world can relate to my experience. The audience of this essay is American girls, who may think that my experience is shocking compared to the values they believe in. My parents’ response to my studying abroad may sound shocking and sexist, but keep in mind that this is the way of thinking we are exposed to all our lives. Dedicated to my family, my safe refuge through the stormiest of seas. Special thank you to Professor Youmie Kim, for urging me to share my “stormy seas” with you. The sun was shining; the sky was blue. The radio was playing all my favorite songs, but I couldn’t sing along. “Ha? Why do you still insist on going to America? I’d rather you go to Australia, it’s nearer. Plus you’re a girl, you have to think about finding a good Chinese-Indonesian husband for your future. I don’t think you’re going to find one in the middle of America,” my mom rambled on in Hokkien. I gazed outside the car window as my vision turned blurry. A huge lump formed in my throat. “Remember. You’re a girl. You must get married someday,” my dad added. I felt a tear race down my cheek as I quickly wiped it away. Instead of arguing back, I closed my eyes. My chest grew increasingly heavy. The sun was still shining and the sky was still blue, but a cloud was over my head. “A girl” resonated in my mind, but I stayed silent. I never thought much about what being “a girl” meant. If you asked 12-year-old Felicia what her dream was, she would give you a detailed, perfectly planned answer: “I’ll get married by twenty-four, twenty-five the latest. I should have a kid by twenty-six, then spend the rest of my life attending school conferences, celebrating my kids’ birthdays, and hosting holiday banquets. As long as I get married and stay married, I’m good.” Back then, I thought being a girl meant pretty 68 | Perception
dresses, pretty makeup, pretty everything. My mom was a housewife. My friends’ moms were all housewives. I thought it was expected of me, as a girl born in a Chinese-Indonesian family, to be a housewife. If eighteen-year-old me was still the same as twelve-year-old me, my parents and I wouldn’t be arguing that Sunday afternoon. But my perspective changed, and theirs didn’t. So I raced inside the house and stormed inside my bedroom. I let those two words, “a girl”, defeat all the months I spent studying for the SAT, the activities I organized to boost my extracurriculars, and the hours I spent googling “top communications schools in USA.” Tears kept falling, but I wasn’t sad. I was furious. Regrets started piling in my head. If I could rewind back time to when I was twelve, I would’ve told myself not to listen to my older brothers, urging me to do good in school so I could follow their footsteps. I would’ve told my brothers that I couldn’t follow their footsteps because I’m different, because I’m a girl. A girl, according to my parents, shouldn’t travel twenty thousand kilometers just to pursue an education. A girl, they implied, should be educated, but not too educated to be a housewife. A girl, they repeated, should be taking care of her husband and children at home after university, not her career. That’s what I am, a girl. I soaked my pillow, cursing everything and everyone for being so unfair. After lamenting my pathetic life for what seemed like forever, I drifted to sleep. Six days. That was how long I spent giving my parents the silent treatment. “They don’t love me,” I thought, so I rushed out and went to school without kissing them goodbye. “They don’t care about what I want,” I decided, so I hurried to my room the second I came home. Each morning and night at home was spent bingewatching Youtube videos and sneaking food into my bedroom. So far, my “Ignore Parents At All Costs” plan was working brilliantly. The next day, however, was Sunday. Sunday meant church day, and church day, unfortunately, meant that I’d be stuck in the car with my parents for forty minutes. I contemplated feigning sickness, but my stomach was growling and I knew there was no food in the house. Begrudgingly, I uttered a vow of silence before getting inside the car. The sound of the radio was loud, but the silence was deafening. Fifteen minutes passed. I kept my eyes fixed on the road as we sped down the highway. “No traffic, please,” I pleaded inwardly and crossed my fingers. Twenty minutes passed. I was pretending to be asleep when I heard someone turning down the radio. “Fel…” My mom started as I peeked through half-opened eyes. Without saying anything, she handed her phone to me. I took Fall 2017 | 69
it without making eye contact, frowning to show my anger. I glanced down and scanned through a message conversation between her and my older brother. “Here we go again, her comparing me to them.” I rolled my eyes. But I was wrong. After scanning the whole conversation, one line struck me and brought me to tears all over again. Before long, I was sobbing. I remembered his exact words: “If she can be someone, why are you holding her back?” I had never allowed myself to think that I could be “someone”. The “I’m a girl” mentality had always lingered in the back of my mind, stopping me from maximizing my potential. “Settling” became something I did best. Instead of trying to convince my parents to see my perspective, I sulked silently all week. “Oh well,” I decided, and accepted my fate just the way it was. My brothers however, saw my potential long before I had noticed it. Even when I was twelve and naive, they believed that I was capable. They did not see me as what I was, but who I was. I was ashamed. I spent that whole week hating them for giving me false hope that I could study in America, for being the ‘Golden Sons’ in my parents’ eyes. I blamed my culture, for being so conservative. I blamed my parents, for being so closed-minded. But that Sunday afternoon, I realized that there were only three people who deserved all the blame. Me, for throwing a tantrum when I didn’t get my way. Myself, for failing to understand my parents’ perspective. And lastly I, for allowing myself to believe that being “a girl” was a limitation. It wasn’t my parents’ fault. It wasn’t the Chinese-Indonesian society’s fault either. I should’ve known that culture and beliefs were not things that could be changed overnight. Those cultures and beliefs were engraved into our minds growing up, slowly morphing our perception of the world. As we grew up, however, different cultures further transformed our perspectives. We saw that our culture wasn’t perfect, but no culture would ever be perfect. My brother’s simple sentence taught me that the responsibility to become more open-minded is ours, not society’s. “Let’s pay the deposit.” My dad’s words were firm. I opened my eyes and saw that they were learning too. I am and will always be proud to be Chinese-Indonesian. I am also proud to be a girl. Most of all, I am proud to be a ChineseIndonesian girl. 18-year-old Felicia now has only one plan for the future: “I’m a girl, and I’d like to change the world.”
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Akanksha Gomes
Buddha
Wave Alexa Anastasio
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Women Megan Massey Women are strong as hell. Once a month they shed their insides, Their walls come down, their houses collapse-A cleansing flood whisks evidence away And then they rebuild. Maybe, just maybe, one day they grow life. They live and breathe for two. They carry the weight of a life within them. Women are strong as hell. Women are beautiful. Each curve and caress is different from the next. Their bodies are finely tuned, An instrument with a melody only they play. As their hearts shake and their minds soar. They are a symphony of strokes, A mirage of the mind, And a home for the lost With a soul of their own. Women are beautiful.
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A Terrible Smallness Mary Catalfamo Standing in the kitchen, I catch sight of a flying red speck. “Ugh,” I say at its grotesque smallness. It loops around now, lumbering right in front of me like an old war bombardier. I crush it in my hand. The remarkable ease of this recalls a scientific lecture I watched online about the physics of being very small—the size of, say, that fruit fly. At that level, air is the consistency of liquefied gelatin. Great amounts of water all at once won’t kill you, but the surface tension of a single raindrop will. It’s also impossible to die from a fall when you fit on the tip of a pencil. Because, yeah okay, fruit flies can fly. But—more than that—there’s this mattress of air molecules beneath tiny things at all times. Maybe a fruit fly can detect atoms, electrons, neutrons the way I detect…this saucepan. For what sort of matter, I wonder, are my cooking utensils the building blocks of? My misplaced optimism, maybe. Having contemplated the spatial properties of varying magnitudes, I finally open my hand. The corpse is a freckle on my lower palm. I wasn’t expecting it to remain there, so indecent, all dead but still totally intact. Gross. Tininess should not ever be this durable. I wipe it off on the half-completed mayo sandwich.
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Tainted Heaven Hanna Martin Trigger warning: poem alludes to domestic violence Why did he have to leave so soon After his daughter bloomed like His wife’s prized tulips, Groomed to be seen from a half block away And shining with her pride. Inside, flustered faces screaming Thrashing, stabbing words as Doom loomed on the horizon. Monsoon season. The rains changed and the tulip Drowned under incessant pounding. Beer cans lay littered Across the floor like the broken Dreams of his wife, As he smoked in the house to Show his token of cracked love With choking, strangled cries of His slowly crumbling family. He stumbles in at odd hours, Bumbling over the coffee table and Kicking slumbering beer cans in A grotesque, crashing orchestra, And next the gritting of teeth and Screaming at the woman who Trapped him in ’65 with her Babies and marriage and his Clenched fists sprung forward to Collide with quivering, recoiling Prey, her form crumpling like the Forgotten autumn leaves outside the window where the Fall 2017 | 75
Impending winter threatens the rich beauty of fall. His fist smashes her jaw, next her Tender breast, pale, bruised, abused flesh Whimpering in his drunken, sinister snare. That night, he would drink his liver until He shattered and sped his Motorcycle into oblivion. He would never know his sons. At his funeral, there was no sun And she cried as they lowered her husband Into the dark, damp unknown of death, And his daughter subtly sneaked a deep breath Shaking with the pain of losing her father, But the man who hit her mother Was finally dead. This was her tainted heaven.
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Beautiful Mess Lyla Rose You wear that frown beautifully the way your lips, dip into misery still looks like art to me and the back of your hair you forgot to brush makes me so desperately want to reach out and touch you But instead, I watch you through white curtains and dirty windows as you fly across pavements darting through people and I know that one sock will not match the other and I know your parted lips were not painted together But I think you are what happens when colors bleed deep turquoise and purple leaked from a dream trapped behind freckles and eyes like ice cream a beautiful mess is all I’ve ever seen.
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Icy January Bridget Slomian
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Thoughts From My Stop At a Hometown Red Light Natalli Amato
While it may be true of our final words that there was no good in goodbye, I admit there are days I’ll be driving downtown and a feral instinct keeps me watching for your 2005 Honda, white with a dent on the righthand backdoor and a crooked radio antenna (despite logically knowing these damages have been fixed by now) I must confess this often escalates into a daydream where you catch a glimpse of me, and the shock of seeing my face sends you crashing into a telephone pole. Sometimes, the bitter tenant renting out my heart leaves for an unexpected holiday. In that case the vision ends with both of us pulling over, you letting me into the passenger seat, me shoving your lacrosse bag into the back, which we’ll only have to move again later when we park out by the horizon to repossess our teenage bodies ablaze not with lust’s rampant kindling but with something else we never knew together: Forgiveness. Forgiveness so iridescent it’s painful to directly face.
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Untitled Lyla Rose
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Untitled Katherine Fletcher i open the door for mewling strays we all stay in this lonely house a found cat found an emptiness in us i was a Happy, i was good days making bad days look worse the contrast injected to find the clot doctors-photographers-cynics have affairs with negatives their sideways love grows wild in the greenhouse the sunflowers remind me of sickness sinking creeping feeling disease slinking across skin infectious invisible ink stains wings of butterfly blessings they flutter by, mimic watchful eyes clipped from magazines a collage of watching, of unforgetfulness of glue making fingertips stick to old things: resentment, ghosts, jokes without punchlines because the ghosts are the punchlines the ghosts are tangled in threadbare sheets or the double H in fishhooks caught in shark-mouths revolving around a rainbow-hued caldera created from collapse and collapse again a broken record of this-isn’t-working blues swing low, sweet and slow, honey healing broken bones making appliances malfunction like anger issues looking up all the synonyms for wrongdoing
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Window Panes Tyler Crowl Someone told me there was a forest in your eyes. I have always been a fan of exploring, but I did not expect the intricacies behind all of the winding and scenery inside. Soon I became lost and wrapped amidst the forest, but I was not scared. I wandered, I had to know why there were patches of blight, wilted ferns, and a dried up brook. I had to know what lies around each bend, who planted the flowers, who planted the trees, and why it smelled oh so sweet. This insatiable curiosity lead me to appreciate my surroundings so much so that I wanted to contribute. I began picking different weeds and attempting to plant new seeds. Seasons change, birds sing, new horizons come to light. I am still attempting to explore this vast forest that lies in your eyes.
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Neverland Adham Elsharkawi Fall 2017 | 83
Body Language Joy Replogle Listen to how her body speaks, the tongues of angels that you can hear in the way she dances, or in her hands. She could say nothing, yet be screaming… if you listen with your eyes. Heartbeats speak too, if you know how to read them: the speed, the volume, the intensity. His music - his instrument an extension of his body speaks as he does, light and bubbly, filling the room with his aura. His fingers could strum her skin, sending vibrations across the strings of her body. One can’t read or hear the past sins of her body; they aren’t engraved in her skin like vinyl or painted on her peach colored canvas. She could dance to his music, having whole conversations with each other without ever speaking - or making a human sound.
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Blue, Side B Natalli Amato She needs to choose her songs now, while she’s young. Don’t fiddle and fondle the locked door. Let her gather up her ammunition. Sooner than she’ll wish the melodies will be called in for duty, out from their vinyl reserves to defend her at the front line of her heartbreak. Let her exist amongst record sleeves and guitar strings. It’s important that she gets acquainted with the likes of Joni and Dylan. They’ll come to know her inner world in ways you never will. Remember, it is a mother’s job to prepare her.
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Still Life Olga Shydlonok
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Myosotis Danielle Bertolini On whose chest can I lay my head? I am threadbare in the morning soft only with lack of resistance surplus of restraint I am my own nucleus of lonely building absence out of substance and lingering in the shallow tide of dry bedsheets Blue flowers on the wallpaper collect and coagulate: On whose chest can I lay my head? I can fold in on myself minimize a collapse of the whole until I become a point of zero light an all-consuming absence I can stir the blue flowers send them spinning out in a disrupted galaxy I am my own keeper On whose chest can I lay my head?
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Amalgam Lindsay Patterson Squinting at dappled rain clouds, a ceiling made of thunder. Blinking away stinging raindrops that assault upturned faces blending with imperceptible tears as two watery streams become one as Human and Storm become One when cold rain seizes screaming throats when cold wind steals shuddering breath until imperceptible tears overpower Storm warming Human as Storm trickles to nothing and ceilings of thunder collapse. Previously imperceptible tears with nothing now to mask them reduce One from howling, powerful Storm goddess to weepy, unimpressive Human reality.
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Alexa Anastasio
Two Worlds
Revelations Brian Hamlin How selfish it is to think the world will end, To believe that you live in the quick time that will stop the turning, To assume the rapture belongs to you.
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Bridget Slomian
Pride
Party City Lauren Hannah I went back to old town on a rainy day And I saw they were demolishing The little hole at the end of the strip mall Where our parties used to come fromA wild growing garden of Ribbons and lights, balloons and candy And costumes my mom said were too grown-up for me, All in a space where the ceilings looked so high from my little viewIt was raining then, too. And you wore all black, just like your father The block party we lived in grew out of a crack in your broken soul Like a weed from the sidewalk, But Party City isn't the same ever since I got this car and Had a few drinks and Had my heart broken a few times and Ten years ago I was thinking I would have found myself by now. All I have left of that is blurry memories And blurry pictures enshrined in the tail end of someone's Facebook page Some pages in a water-logged diary And maybe even a scar from an airsoft gun in the night Old town, to me, was Party City Where everything seemed to bathe in Las Vegas light Where my birthday still felt like an achievement Instead of a day where a relative hands me some cash for gasoline Where Halloween was something I counted down the days for Where my life could be a cheap and glorified carnival for a few minutes And that was alright, Time has rendered that old world smaller as I grow larger. Maybe it's because I haven't seen you in a long time And I barely remember that feeling But I know that 92 | Perception
Even looking at the northern lights now isn't as enchanting as your eyes then; Many rivers run through them and beneath them. And although you are a vagabond soul I chose to leave behind as I Am very busy painting with the clouds, With my last breath I will return To Party City.
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Body and Soul Cristina Colón Feliciano I could write poetry about your arms I could say how I felt when you Wrapped them around my body The warmth you exuded Transferring fire into my chest Lighting corridors long forgotten But I could never let them know Let them in through your veins I could write verses about your soul How it dances around the living room With a cup of orange juice in the morning How it warms the room at night when the heater breaks and it’s 30 degrees outside How it stands in front of a room and tells the audience about a typewriter, a party, and an indie film in the background As they laugh at your jokes And weep when you talk about the rest How it embraces the details of my pelvis How it touches the ends of my fingertips To see if we can count to a million together Stopping when we fall asleep at sixty-five How it proofreads my manuscript “Add a comma here and a semi-colon there” Should I drop the period at the end? How it tells me I created life out of paper, Out of music, out of bedding I could write about your back As I reach for it with my nails The smooth wave of black and gold Simultaneously synthesizing your skin 94 | Perception
And the wall full of white frames How it feels when I see you Sitting, not breathing Typing the final period on the Story you have worked on for Three years now Arranging the furniture after you Finish that book on balance. The crooked coffee table, the bookshelves Stacking your prose and my poetry Perfectly placed on their respective corners I can write about your hair, your eyes, Your hands, your thighs, your accent Could I write about you? Can I please write about you? Swimming along the line between The end of your spine and the start Of your sentence, I walk to the edge of your palm And leap.
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Abstract Souls Akanksha Gomes
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3:24 Bethany Marsfelder it’s three twenty-four in the morning you’ve resolved not to move until three twenty-five you’ve always preferred that; moving and doing and living on times that end in five and zero it’s an eccentricity, you assure yourself, as you lie looking at the white stone ceiling lit up with bright fluorescence in between paper thin walls. words thrum in your mind always; you’re asked by your therapist if your mind is racing on a scale of 1-5 you don’t know what to answer; it is always on, can never be switched off but did your brain work up the courage to run a 5k, training for months? did it stay after in middle school to learn sportsmanship and teamwork with other girls? ...are you even a girl at all? you answer a 3, the safe choice, finger hovering and hesitating between clicking 2 and 4 you don’t want to lie but the thought of going off forever is scarier than the thoughts themselves ...though these moments in between three twenty-four and three twenty-five where everything is soft and quiet and slow is the reason you’re up at all your thoughts turn into slow motion sometimes when you realize how fast they’ve been going or just how tired you really are (you’ve tried explaining this. nobody understands.) your brain doesn’t stop until the voice in your head is syrupy with soothing distortion but your body won’t move until the proper time you’re so alive in your mind; is this why you act so dead outside, you wonder? there was life there once, you promise, and you’ll move in just another moment, you swear… it’s three thirty-seven in the morning now, three thirty-eight. fuck it. you’ll wait til three forty.
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The Things I Saw Inside Raymundo Juarez
98 | Perception
What the DSM Doesn't Tell You Elyssa Thomas I don’t want to write (period) Depression is a spiral (period) It’s not the kind of spiral you look forward to Like lollipops or the festive designs on water-park rides. It’s more like what I imagined underwater tornadoes could look like Before I saw the real thing, Before I found out that depression isn’t muted by water. Depression is a tornado, not made of water, but still drowning you. Depression sucks up everything. The less important things, as in your ability to breathe And the most important things, as in your motivation to write. Depression is a landmine. Only this one is in your brain and it’s someone else’s foot hitting the trigger. Not a firework explosion either, Not a firework they pack to fall in the shape of a weeping willow. Depression is not a weeping willow. Depression is not the dignified cry associated with weeping. Weeping willow trees fall on book covers, Their sour branches are romanticized. The blackness of depression is not a romantic color. Not little black dress black, but black like space Except space isn’t right either, because depression is black like nothing. Depression is nothing. Depression takes everything. Even your tears don’t belong to you anymore. They belong to the friend stopping by so they don’t have to feel guilty about not calling back. They belong to the mother, whose throat has been clasped by the disease, Only her screams can escape. “You’re the reason I want to kill myself.” She still gets your tears. Depression is an excuse for bad behavior. Depression is on its best behavior. Fall 2017 | 99
We love our depression. Depression is knotty hair, messy clothes, and dirty dishes. Depression is a magic spell. “Say the words and I can make all of your friends disappear.” Depression is a disappearing act, One second you’re at the party and the next you’re in your bed. “Where did I go last night?” “Who is laying beside me?” Depression is dependence. Not on legal drugs like Zoloft and Lexapro used to numb the pain. Depression is a ¼ of weed to make you happy. Depression is a bottle of vodka in your freezer And you just can’t figure out who drank it all. Depression is the razor on your nightstand That you shredded your fingers to pieces on just to break. Depression is wishing you had a taller closet for your rope. Depression is the red hair dye on your shower curtain. Depression is the blood on your shower curtain. Depression is a spiral.
100 | Perception
Fall 2017 | 101
Pallas Hayes
Tunnel Vision
The Spectacle Natalli Amato The newsman said two planets would reveal themselves tonight to create a luminous, lustrous light more magnificent than the stars I already adore. The only lights I see are the orange reflectors on Mr. Tirinato’s fishing boat the blue glow of the TV in the Saborro’s living room the new lamppost the village recently voted to install. Perhaps tonight I will marvel at the ordinary at my neighbors whose existence is so near to mine at the tiny flickers of brightness we humbly present to the world. Suppose the asteroid told the shooting star who told the planets, tonight down below there would be fireflies and bonfires homebound headlights and neon rest stop signs and something peculiar possessed only by these Earth dwellers: contentment. Perhaps they are peering behind the clouds doing the marveling.
102 | Perception
Fall 2017 | 103
Pallas Hayes
Peace
Shells Megan Massey Make yourself smaller. Humans are too big for this world. They are bulky‌ a mess of body parts that are too big. The Earth looks much smaller when we take up so much space. But the world is vast. Humans make it finite. I too, am too big for this world. I attempt to fold in my edges, but am covered in spills. Contracting in my desk, I dream of a smaller life. I overlap my neighbor‌ or maybe my neighbor overlaps me? We are too big for this world. Perhaps it is because of how I grew up Thinking I took up too much space. Existing is a nuisance to a shrinking world. So I walk in a spiraled shell, one that curves into my chest. I live in this shell. It is the only place made to fit me. There is comfort present in small places Telling me to be smaller. Every breath that I steal expands my body but collapses the Earth. So I will breathe less and I will fold in. I will make myself so small, that the world will no longer reach a limit.
104 | Perception
i watch a beautiful woman Katherine Fletcher i play god by tapping condensation droplets into my coffee cup and somewhere out there in here god is playing the organ so thunderously that the cathedral windows shatter and when the fragments of glass HIT us we bleed not blood but exultation. how how how Pretty how pretty your wife your wife is how pretty your wife is she is is is beauty not grace beauty not no sir she is not your wife i am swooning look at her who wouldn’t that is would not who would not i mean to say Fall 2017 | 105
swoon LOOK at her at her at
the newspapers sometimes i even cut out cut out cut out articles from the paper you know and i hang them hang like pretty things like your pretty wife i watch a beautiful woman leave going going gone and she is outta here and she is out of love; didn’t anyone tell you she was empty? i put too much sugar in my coffee and too much trust in you and i listen to a girl talk, speaking spanish on the telephone. for a minute she sounds like poetry, disjointed; and i remember how to miss you again.
106 | Perception
Fall 2017 | 107
Alexa Anastasio
Lucid Dreams
Tasting Voices Again Lauren Hannah I’m just breathing time Breaking cars and chasing windows I’m just spinning light Walking heat and feeling limbo I just need your eyes Drinking hard and loving wine I can beat your heart When it’s listening to mine When you cry into your ocean You can swim onto my shoulder Growing us on canvas In a skin that’s painted older Can I sing your hands Laugh aloud to hold your praise Can I count for you And fall fall fall our many days
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Fall 2017 | 109
Kelly Veshia
Untitled
Many thanks to: Sarah Harwell Chris Kennedy Melanie Mahoney Stopyra JoAnn Rhoads Student Association 110 | Perception