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fall 2023
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VOLUME XLII | ISSUE 42 Syracuse University
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 2024 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 three pages for poetry and 1100 words for prose, and we accept submissions in any language with an English translation. Any questions and comments can be sent to perceptionmagsu@gmail.com Want to stay connected? Follow us on Instagram @perception_su The opinions expressed herein are not those of Syracuse University, the Office of Student Activities, the Student Association, and the Student Body. Many thanks to: Sarah Harwell Alicia Kavon JoAnn Rhoads Student Association Cover Art Front/Back Cover
Maddie Sloyer – A Dry Altercation (digital)
Inside Front Cover
Freddy Toglia – Jeanne D'Arc (pen,Copic Marker, colored pencil)
Inside Back Cover
Freddy Toglia, Rachel Offir– Words by Rachel (ballpoint pen, gouache)
Center Spreads Center Spread 1
Mara DuBay– Main Squeeze (colored pencil)
Center Spread 2
Freddy Toglia– Bec and Rhoda on a Thursday Afternoon (pen, water, touched up in Procreate)
Center Spread 3
Vanessa Marcos– From my window, I have two lives (photography)
Center Spread 4
River Taylor– La Mirada (digital illustration) River Taylor– Flor de Muerto (digital illustration)
Dear Perceivers, Anticipation has always been my favorite part of the editing process– the electrifying buzz of snooping through incoming titles on the day of the submission deadline, the sense of possibility from deliberating over writing, the satisfaction of watching stanzas and illustrations snap together into the intricate puzzle that is our magazine. I wasn’t sure how well our magazine was going to piece together this semester; there was a distinct contrast between our heated, impassioned writing submissions and the more whimsical, delightful art. While the writing took on a bit of a raw edge, the art embraced the full spectrum of human experience by highlighting the lighter, more fantastical moments. Altogether, this issue represented the inherent contradictions of life, and the need to embrace this complexity while navigating them. Every semester, I am so endlessly inspired by the creativity and vulnerability displayed by all of those who submit pieces. This publication would not be possible without our talented writers and artists, and I am so honored to have been entrusted with your work. I also want to take a moment to express my appreciation of the exceptional members of our editorial board. These individuals are the very heart and soul of our publication, shaping it into the vibrant entity it has become. Thank you so much to Maya Fuller for being my partner in crime, Brenna Phelan for her ability to brighten any room, Katherine Nikolau for her incredible insight, Kaitlin LaRosa for always making me laugh at the most unexpected moments, Kate Eisinger for entertaining my design whims, and Charlie Gebbia for his brilliant creativity and the joy it brings. I am so excited to present our 42nd issue of Perception Magazine, and I hope you all find moments of laughter and introspection within its pages. Until next time, Yours truly,
Noor Zamamiri Editor-in-Chief
Th
e Ey e s an
ar E d
Managers
Noor Zamamiri Editor In Chief Maya Fuller Managing Editor Brenna Phalen Assistant Editor In Chief Katherine Nikolau Assistant Managing Editor
Editors
Kaitlin LaRosa Head Editor Hannah Murphy Assistant Editor Yasmin Nayrouz Assistant Editor Gianna Voce Assistant Editor Jackie Arbogast Assistant Editor
Designers
Kate Eisinger Head Designer Charlie Gebbia Assistant Head Designer Lindsey Wilson Assistant Designer Sara Oppenheime Assistant Designer
s
Reviewers & Copy Editors Head Reviewers Ross Sammons F. Morris Gelbart Eva Aurnhammer Jnana Breck-Arndt James Harman Haiden Nourse Vanessa Walker
Reviewers
Emily Lemberger Oona Obaditch Flynn Ledoux Hayden Celentano Sarah Dias James Harman F. Morris Gelbart Maya Lewis Annika Meyers Kaileigh Strong Vanessa Walker Evangeline Berg Claire McConnell Jaiyah Pierce Julia Pryor Jnana Breck-Arndt Jackie Arbogast Eva Aurnhammer
Copy Editors
Mantripat Dhami Irene Lekakis Julia Prestipino Jnana Breck-Arndt Vanessa Walker Shrishti Saha
A rt La Muñeca Extraterrestre Malana Rain Giustina Phoenix Wings Hannah Landon Her Tree Flynn Ledoux At The Long-Term Cliff Edge Of The World Hayden Celentano Sleep Apnea Hayden Celentano Scene From a New Orleans Cafe Lindsey Wilson Family Dinner Rory Livingston Serendipity Mara DuBay Squeeze Hayden Celentano Training Wings S. Oppenheimer House Below the Mountain Mervin McDougall I Scream Ice Cream Pippa Berry Social Isolation Mara Dubay Post Win Claire McConnell Burn It Annika Meyers Me & Myself Bella Andrade Soulmate Nora Benko Grim Reaper Mara DuBay “I’ll just dip my toes in.” Vivian Baltzer Sally Smoking Hannah Landon Mending Olin Mares Seaing Annika Meyers Sunkissed Kate Eisinger Enlightened Nora Benkol An Unexpected Meal Sophia Maldonado The Matriarchy Ana Burwell
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Scar Me, I Beg. It Will Save My Life. Hayden Celentan Citrus S. Oppenheimer Shadows Of A Personality Valentina de Andrada Kiss Nora Benko Fabricated Allison Schwartz Self Portrait 5 S. Oppenheimer "This Country Was Not Built By Men In Suits" Claire McConnell Manray's Muse Hannah Landon The Surrealist Freddy Toglia Love Thy Throne Meredith Tokac Don Quixote Ballerina Hannah Landon Ways of Water Lindsey Wilson Family Mara Dubay The Perception of The Self Lance Watson Seneca River At Dawn Mervin McDougal Real Life Isn’t Your Thing! Maddie Sloyer Shiver and Shake Hayden Celentano Harvest Sophia Maldonado i <3 G-D and G-D luvs me !! F. Morris Gelbart I Saw It Ana Burwell Running From The Daylight Nora Benko Still Alive Life Lindsey Wilson Koi Pond Noor Zamamiri Inferno Kate Eisinger
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g n i Wr i t Ladybug Killer Kaitlin LaRosa Deer's Horn Renata Lee bottle rocket Jack Springmann On Quiet Nights I Can Hear You Eva Balistreri Panting, in Similar Manner to a Dog Hannah Schenk Gift S. Oppenheimer Wishes Evelina Torres 6•7•23 Freddy Toglia Sunflowers Eva Balistreri A Poem to Green Days and Blue Nights Freddy Toglia And It's Just Another Tuesday Maya Fuller A Child Again Jnana Breck-Arndt Always One Without The Other Lily Tcath The Cult is Doing Numbers Eva Greene bonnie and clyde Lilac Zhang Walking Kye Robles Where Dreams Go to Die Sonja Ivanova Black Rock Vanessa Walker Ionian Gianna Voce Mary, Mother of Gods Kaitlin LaRosa Pangaea Katherine "Katya" Nikolau Buttermilk for breakfast, nectar of the Gods for lunch. Eva Greene If Today Was Our First Date Sonja Ivanova Clockwork Freddy Toglia Phlizz Vanessa Marcos
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The Trans Mind Poe Porter Fallen Woman Vanessa Walker An Island Heritage Charles Gebbia Tuscon Sunsets Jnana Breck-Arndt Can You Hear Me From Afar Ruyin La Sirena Malana Rain Giustina Psalm of Your Skin and the Sunrise Lance Watson I Am Not Thinking of Tomorrow Alaina Triantafilledes Moose Roslyn Lydick best friend obituary d.h. lane we kept dancing. Katherine "Katya" Nikolau Puzzle Pieces Malana Rain Giustina Mapping our way through Charles Gebbia Mathematic Attraction Freddy Toglia Fluttering Away Ruyin FEAST Moriah Brown The Void Victor Yip Trusty Steeds Eva Greene Antennas and Aliens Kaitlin LaRosa February Alexandra Milchovich Morningside Heights Gianna Voce Redhead Allison Schwartz Mr. Elchoness Sonja Ivanova a fated stroll Katherine "Katya" Nikolau
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Vain
Katherine "Katya" Nikolau
the ground birthed flowers and i knelt down to meet them. they were small and pretty and attached to their mother only by strings of green. that summer my heart grew rapidly and filled me with a sick kind of anger. the hurt zigzagged through my body like a stuck fish-bone, scraping my insides clean. i sifted through a soul made of sand, putting aside whole things. i was vain, but it was a most fragile kind of vanity, like something small and pretty, so easy to rip right out.
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La Muñeca Extraterrestre
Malana Rain Giustina | Mixed Media
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Phoenix Wings
Hannah Landon | Acrylic and Digital 14 | Perception
Ladybug Killer
Kaitlin LaRosa
Ladybug Killer – packed action thriller, jazzed by the roaring waves of reform and revolution in the air Got a tire to spare and a car that doesn’t lock, keys kept in a heart-shaped box, sealed more airtight than Pandora’s vault. Like music from a ballerina’s dark past, lives that didn’t last long enough to mask tricks as sweet treats and by chance, a family full of Riverdance and Irish goodbyes With a headstone that reads: Here lies a graveyard for ladybugs — Grant eternal rest to the souls of a modern-day black widow brigade.
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Her Tree
Flynn Ledoux | Digital Painting 16 | Perception
Deer's Horn
Renata Lee
I return to the ledge thinking now is the time, to finally confront the waves of my mind. Bits of shell and broken glass brought in with the tide All whisper the same, that art is a burden. With their words on my mind I decide to take the dive to discover the difference between the words “I’m fine” and I’m fine. Out of the swirls and hills Out of the lines and ridges, I trace my fingerprints like the history of tree rings. Only then do I see after choices curated The horns of a deer must be shed once a year. Is it the fate of an artist to uncover the line Between the echoes of genius and madness? I tiptoe over the ledge And tumble forwards in silence.
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bottle rocket Jack Springmann [for Garrett] —filled with a stray dandelion, cool glamour, a defunct forerunner, and who the fuck is Mick Jagger?— he deals in plastic forks, blackeyes, and lovingly gifts a budweiser shirt two sizes too large (it’s adorned with the frayed sting of a fishhook on the back-right shoulder). he chases angels from their alcoves as he races furiously through midnight highways, weaving frantic, golden spirals with the kitsch elegance of a lonely garden spider. dreams fizzle with a right turn, and a queasy exit bursts his newly woven utopia – loose threads lose their ephemeral sizzle as they return to frozen Earth – time to go home. but every sunrise, a gray farm cat – inherited from his grandmother – gently paws at his chest, trying its best to melt a heart filled with icy splinters.
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At The Long-Term Cliff Edge Of The World Hayden Celentano | Photoshop
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On Quiet Nights I Can Hear You
Eva Balistreri
I can’t feel the paper below my wrist My eyes are shut and you aren’t here But why? Won’t you run to me like I wish Won’t you give me the things I long for Won’t you worship me I have never wished for love Because I believe it will not come if I do But it does not seem to be coming Either way So now I wish, I wish for love and I wish to be loved I am not begging For a warm body by my side I do not write for physical intimacy I write for unconditional understanding For a beating heart to deliver back to me the patience I have shown the world Every second you are not here There are more words left clinging to the tip of my tongue Finger tips clenched Waiting for your voice One mutter from your lips and I would let go Every night before I shut my eyes I imagine you here with me I imagine you speak to me with patience And on quiet nights When even my floors fall silent And my walls go hollow I can hear your words From beyond the garden you call to me I am coming, you say I am on my way 20 | Perception
Sleep Apnea
Hayden Celentano | Photoshop Fall 2023 | 21
Panting, in Similar Manner to a Dog Hannah Schenk
I want to take you to the park that is down the street from my childhood home And when we’re there I’ll tell you about how there used to be a rope swing but it’s gone now I think everyone had a rope swing that existed and then when you turned 12 it disappeared Now in this park stands nothing and I’ll tell you how for the longest time I really just thought it was someone’s backyard and whoever lived there let all the neighborhood kids play in it whenever they wanted I think it’s nicer that way. Like looking at a construction zone through a kaleidoscope Maybe I will show you the creek that everyone swam in but I wasn’t allowed because my mom was scared it would give me sepsis I actually just looked up what sepsis is before writing that line of the poem Anyways I decide I don’t want to show you the creek anymore and I especially don’t want to tell you about sepsis Because telling someone about your generational fear of sepsis is like Reciting vows within the confines of the prison industrial complex And I don’t want to do that to you It’s cool to write love poems that are addressed to everyone who reads it I also always think that the most amount of love you can have is for your mother She was the one who took me to the park that I thought was a backyard She has seen me be rotten She has seen my real poetry, which is never written, but rather lived upon Like wearing fake glasses Or having a righteous indignation in the middle of an abandoned shopping mall parking lot I want to take you to the park down the street from my childhood home And leave you there I want to leave you there while the seasons change and I want you to freeze in that creek that is brimming with sepsis and then when you’re unfrozen and the weather gets hot again, I want you to boil in said creek But I want you to discover the creek on your own 22 | Perception
I’m choosing not to tell you where it is in this backyard-sized park I want to watch you search forever And in return for you finding the creek, I won’t bring up sepsis anymore All I’m trying to say is that I love until I hate And I’m not sure I know what the difference is
Scene From a New Orleans Cafe Lindsey Wilson | Acrylic
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Gift
S. Oppenheimer
My grandfather had hands like the sun- radiant As he molded the ground ham into croquetas like God with Adam’s rib, saying “Nieta, pásame la sal.” Reaching out with those sun stained fingertips Golden with freckles and spots on fingernails I handed the shaker to him The creation of man referenced in the way we briefly brushed hands I took the pellets like water in my hands careful not to squeeze their precious ovular bodies as I rolled them In whisked eggs and Panko breading from Winn Dixie My grandfather said they used to use the crumbs from that morning’s toast Nothing ever going to waste on the island He said the Panko is a blessing“Nieta, Mira todo la comida que tenemos” I tasted the twinge of the day old bread on the tip of my tongue His last pieces of the old country, recipes and photos haphazardly set together Lay strewn about in a three-prong binder from CVS His sun-blessed hands flipped to the page we need More ritual than lapse of memory I poured the vegetable oil into the pan, watched it bubble. We sat for grace in front of our golden brown reminders of homeNow rubble in the unforgivable march of time. I thought about where I came from, where I am supposed to be, where I am not Lush open forests and rolling hills 24 | Perception
Sitting under a mango tree, my hands sticky and smile wide Playing soccer in the streets My grandfather promises me this is a blessing “Gracias Dios por nuestras oportunidades y nuestras vidas” The panko tastes like dust in my mouth But I will swallow the only thing that keeps our memories Like Saturn with his god children I will protect And be grateful “Gracias Abuelo por nuestras oportunidades y nuestras vidas”
Family Dinner
Rory Livingston | Watercolor Pencil
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2023 | 27 FallFall 2023 | 27
Wishes
Evelina Torres I used to dream of placing marigolds on his grave, Dropping a few down the highway, For miles and miles, Leading them back to the front door, Following to the kitchen. I would build a feast of dreams: Letters and games and college acceptances, Conversations and a boom box. Forget an explanation! I couldn’t care less about missing years. Now I just care about a stone Pitted in the muddy dirt, With his name scratched on. But he can’t even have that (I can’t even have that)
28 | Perception
Serendipity
Mara DuBay | Acrylic Paint
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Squeeze
Hayden Celentano | Photoshop 30 | Perception
6•7•23
Freddy Toglia This hum it tastes of linoleum hallways, rolling ankles, pine needle pricks of anxiety. of panting.. sweat.. God. it feels like cold snow between the palms of vulgar Children (home grown) It tastes of night air flowing through begging fingers.. Liquid. goosebumps on your lover’s cheek it is the flesh-ridden sound of remembering. Bless this womb. that you may feel that same caress of nostalgic sighing (you know the one, you told me of it). riddled with delusions of grandeur and promises of homely Love (fulfilled promises hurt most) Bless this womb. bless each moment you will neglect to cherish. I clutch this crumbling rosary I Beg that you sin. I beg that you sink (at least once) into Being. into Seeing the moon in her blood-soaked shawl. (please, think of me then) you have experienced the bounty of Heaven, sip it like bourbon it burns the same going down
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Sunflowers Eva Balistreri
I am afraid Of never becoming the woman My mother wanted me to be Her womanhood is sharp Like the walls of my lungs Flesh oozing from my gut Blood flooding from my thighs When I emerged from her veins Created from the air she fought for Fighting for the air I will create I swear to return her to the garden And lay at her side amongst the Sunflowers peering down from above Sending small whispers Welcome home my sweet girl My blood will dry soon And my flesh will smooth over And I will at some point Remain the same But not her She is fluid like a dove Sending soft songs through Kentucky Right down to Alabama Warm winters whispering Sunflowers still yellow in December My tears become oceans At the touch of her hand And my heartbreak becomes whole At the sound of her dove’s song And I arrive in her arms With Old Dominion at our feet 32 | Perception
And fields of Sunflowers As far as we may see
Training Wings S. Oppenheimer | Digital
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House Below the Mountain Mervin McDougall | Digital Photography 34 | Perception
A Poem to Green Days and Blue Nights Freddy Toglia
We exist in footholds of folded green Licked letters of summer camps We exist along each other’s legs (in scarred mosquito bites) Laughter Dents Rotted wood (especially) Still water (even more) Cheek kisses and accidental footsie Sharp turns that leave tire marks Burned shoulders We exist in the smell of drying hay and the colors of fresh flowers Warm leaf litter under bare feet Quiet yard work Groves of crab apples We are the garden, home is the seed
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And It's Just Another Tuesday Maya Fuller
Oh hey! Sorry, I didn’t see you there. I was too distracted by the weight of coming undone. My skin is spinning off into the air like skeins of yarn and I can feel the weight of everything I’ve ever known collapsing in on itself, with me at the center. My chest is opening up and my insides are escaping, flying out like birds. Look at that! One just flew past your ear. My bones are disintegrating, turning to sand and drifting away on the wind. You should probably cover your face, that can’t be healthy to breathe in. Can you pass me that water please? I’d hate to die thirsty.
36 | Perception
I Scream Ice Cream Pippa Berry | Acrylic Paint on Canvas
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A Child Again Jnana Breck-Arndt
Instead of a pool in my backyard, I have a river. Past the playhouse that drips dried up pieces of sky colored paint, and through a small clearing of woods, you will find it; A narrow rush of water that rides over the Earth’s bed of cemented rocks and stops at intersections of tied twigs and furry patches of moss, made by the beavers up where the real river begins. As a child, I submerged my own tree-like body - lanky, fragile looking but internally strong - into the water that had just melted from the peaks of Mount Mansfield and Mount Abraham in April. I would rise with a new headache, pounding from the icy drops seeping their way through my hairline, and let out a childlike scream. A freeing “ahhh” into the stagnant trees around me and the red trucks and rusted Subarus I could just barely make out from the closest road. An innocent sound, one I was not yet afraid to make or to be heard from. This bathing in the first water of the year, contorting my body to dunk under its light pull downstream, become my little routine and secret. The water was Earth’s good morning call to me, reminding me that she had woken up. And the “ahhh” was my response back; Now it was my turn to as well. When I returned to Vermont from abroad, I felt like the yet-to-bloom bleeding heart flowers that line our house. I had the sudden urge to strip myself, my very existence, and reveal something begging to surface from beneath. My skin felt too tight. Maybe from the few one-night stands that left me roughly scrubbing against my stomach and legs the next morning, or from all the sweat and pollution that coated my body from the fifteen-hour day of travel back. When I felt the first wave of crisp May air greeting me at BTV airport, I had the desire to open my mouth and bite it. Crunch down hard and loud, like the first moment your mouth hits a honeycrisp apple. It was so sweet and pure, I wasn’t sure what I had been breathing in London over the past four months. This first breath was revitalizing, but I needed a deeper taste of the nature I had been lacking. 38 | Perception
The next day, with fifty-degree weather bundling me up, I tied on my red swimsuit and put on my black-holed shower shoes. The only flip-flops I could find. Disneyland towel in hand, I climbed around the scattered dead tree branches and felt the fallen leaves scratch against my exposed toes, as I made my way down the hill that leads to the stream. When I arrived at my destination, I was taken aback by how the rocks and twigs and moss had all rearranged themselves to create a new flow for the water. The part that used to be deep enough for me to wade into was now so shallow I could look straight at the small, smooth rocks glued to the floor bed. I picked one up and tossed it low into the water, hearing a single plop as it sunk. I’ve never been good at skipping rocks. I dropped my towel on a damp mossy bed on the riverside; Now it was my turn to sink. The first step is always the worst, that I recalled. However, you can never fully remember what freshly un-frozen ice feels like till it grips your ankles again. It held on tight, for the five seconds I let it make my bones chatter, till I jumped out. I repeated this routine about four times before I decided it wasn’t getting any better. This was also when I realized the shallow water was not just in my old submerging spot, but the entire area of the stream that falls on our property. Maybe it once was a real river for me, but not now. I held back my instincts, quieted my mind, and stared up at the clouds passing over the waving tree hands as I laid down on the rocky floor. Resisting the urge to pull back up again. My hair elongated downstream just as one of my shower shoes floated away. When my head broke through the surface, I felt the familiar pounding and the sound in my throat waiting to be released. I wrestled with the water back over to the bank, catching my hands and one barefoot on the muddy side, with a scream caught in my throat. For a second longer I hesitated. Unlike all those years ago, I knew the weight of my voice. I knew the extended vibrations it would create throughout the woods. I also knew it would make me seen. Even if just for the hidden beavers or circling robins above. I wrapped myself back in the soft spring air and the scratchy theme park towel and let it out anyways. I pushed every worry and the fresh exhaustion of being twenty-one, of
Fall 2023 | 39
being a fake adult, up and out through my mouth. I let the thoughts that had been circling me land on the branches above and let me go. I felt in that moment as strong as one of the rocks, staying under the water, not letting the odds rip me back up. This body, now muscled arms and scratched-up skin, is still capable of being pushed down under. Mother Earth lets us see when we are most whole: broken out of our skin by sound, as a child again.
40 | Perception
Fall 2023 | 41
Mara Dubay | Watercolor, Colored Pencils
Social Isolation
Always One Without The Other Lily Tcath
I’m sitting there at the restaurant table just you me and dad We were supposed to have a nice vacation But now I’m chewing the inside of my cheek. Perhaps I’m stopping myself from piercing back From saying something cold From questioning why a daughter’s independent opinions, goals, Hurt a mother so I wish you had stopped yourself, “You’re uneducated.” It was cold. Perhaps I just don’t have much to say about anything anymore Sitting there chewing the inside of my cheek I was brought back. Returning to my room Alone A long night out with friends. I probably drank too much, Ripping away every pull tab from the can, Collecting a whole family of them in my hand Or maybe I didn’t drink Enough. But walking down the hallway of the dorm I thought “why didn’t any guys come up to me?” As I chewed the inside of my cheek Perhaps out of anger Or perhaps it’s the easiest part of myself to rip away I wish you took me seriously. And I wish they admired me. But most of all I wish love and respect Always came as a pair 42 | Perception
Fall 2023 | 43
Claire McConnell | Acrylic
Post Win
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Fall 2023 | 45
The Cult is Doing Numbers Eva Greene
Right now, I smell like everyone else in the room And any room I enter from now on, that agglomeration, Charged and glassy, follows me. Whether wine drunk Friday paper cup Or Belt buckle bundle of bodies melding into One Great Force: The driving power, The Divine, Never have I ever had my arms so sore From orchestral conducted heat. Fueled up piss-cup, gasoline tongue, Dagger throat sharp A minor Setback to be relieved and relived (hopefully not). Our Bloodrush Olympics give me happy eyes. Was born to raise a barn, Was born to live this dry-mouthed sunrise. All the way from Florida in the wintertime My narrowed vision followed angel number highway signs, But now I know It takes a village to play a song It takes a sweaty palm It takes a sticky counter top It takes a morning bowl of cereal, a vinyl, and a clementine.
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Burn It
Annika Meyers | Colored Pencil and Acrylic Paint
Fall 2023 | 47
Me & Myself
Bella Andrade | Photoshop 48 | Perception
bonnie and clyde Lilac Zhang
akin to the tanginess of drying sweat, a beeswax sting. like a buttercup victory, it could resign the reprimand of the rain slowly drenching the dream of a sunny day. elusive foot set half into a three foot grave, forgetting the wonders of digging deeper than god once intended. perhaps the heart is in an unearthing shovel; intrepid as it beats outside of its body. jugular veins too cold to the touch, killing time by envisioning they lacerate their soles, not letting the meekness show. it’s far too gold down the notches of a shallow desperation. an over the counter manifestation of melancholy parading as a national anthem. god save the queen tonight it’s about time for a rereading, but i won’t ever doubt some of your blatant masochistic tendencies you seem to show, yet unbeknownst to a criminal being, vivid is the badness, and the sad eyes drawing waken alive and chilled to the bone like a xanax caught on fire, from left to right, yelling across the room like a siren.
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Walking Kye Robles
Blistered heels, set aflame by unbroken shoes. Hard, stiff leather that digs and digs and digs. Yet I keep walking. Limping and wincing, dragging the pain up and down the hill. It’s excruciating. Nothing but a cotton layer protecting eroded flesh. Til it’s peeled away, exposing the cracked geology of my feet. Yet I keep walking. I soothe and bandage, filling the sores with all my worries. Only to reopen them the day that follows. Yet, I keep walking.
Soulmate
50 | Perception
Nora Benko | Digital Art
Where Dreams Go to Die Sonja Ivanova
I go to the cemetery Hop from one foot to the other Making the blue feathers in my hair bounce I rain dance So furiously The skeletons beneath me rap on the roofs of their coffins, Yelling at me to keep it down Likewise, when I write, I have two left hands My ears are deaf to everything except reason I have resorted to grave robbing In search of inspiration I don’t swallow any hard pills Slump against Originality’s gravestone, press a pen to my forearm Inject nostalgia into my bloodstream Just to feel something, maybe Appropriate cultural customs for metaphors Clip each line’s wings Reach into my threadbare hat and produce a banal simile like a cheap magician’s trick We get it, dude, things are like other things “I love poetry” I squeak out as she leans over me, hugging me tenderly and playing with my earlobe “I love poetry” My eyes dart around the kitchen to see if she’s eavesdropping while doing the dishes “I love poetry” I say in the voice of a woman who slides the wedding ring off her finger, Places it on the porcelain rim, Then stares at it until the last bubble collapses Fall 2023 | 51
Truth is, the girl that poetry fell in love with Was made of bird flocks Walking, rhyming proof that we are indeed just Particles of vibrating energy Secretly, I envy the illness that Took everything from her Making space for everything else Leaving her Nothing with a capital letter Transforming her into an empty house No furniture to decapitate the golden rays of light coming from the windows Vacant rooms made for dancing Barren walls singing back to you four beats later The almost-woman I am Is made of the CommonApp activity list and multivitamins and obsessively-drawn-on eyeliner and a ribbon-tied tongue Compressed by the gravity of adulthood Which feels like holding up the sky It gets so crowded in this overpopulated chest of mine Traffic jam heart full of blaring horns No more birdsong. I make love to the page Mechanically Thrusting my fingers into the keys Rearranging lines Enjambing them sometimes elicits a moan Change fonts a few times, make her legs shake Until they don’t anymore Most of my poems end because I decide they should Without a climax Just because it’s 9 pm and I have school in the morning So I push the brakes and brace for the impact of the word limit That doesn’t exi
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Grim Reaper
Mara DuBay | Chalk Pastel
Fall 2023 | 53
Black Rock Vanessa Walker
I picked up a stone in the stream today. It’s cold to the touch, warming as the thin film of water retreats from the sunlight that hits its surface. As it sits in my hand my wrist bends under its aching weight. How long has it waited to come up for air? It wears dents and scratches revealing pale crystalline scars that break the darkness like comet trails blazing through space. It almost seems to wear them with pride, a canvas for the damage that gives it beauty. Perhaps it wished to be marble instead of a plain river rock. Perhaps it knew this was as close as it could get. My finger traces a crooked canyon, a deep frosty chasm stretching across its center. I stroke the wound and place the stone in my pocket, allowing it’s weight to sink into the fabric, and ease its burden on the way home with me.
54 | Perception
“I’ll just dip my toes in.” Vivian Baltzer | Ballpoint Pen
Fall 2023 | 55
Ionian
Gianna Voce our blood is the same, we are some sort of unholy covenant, I think, born of sea foam, fully formed, girls without the ugly luck I don’t know why you brought me to this outcrop, middle of nowhere, so I throw pebbles & watch as I erase years of work, I am you but without the time. my fingers are sliced open, poppies blooming on the sand, we are both sharp edges & too easy to see through, the world is not our oyster but an urchin with toxic spikes we can’t help but touch, time is spiraling & I wonder if I’ll get back the hours wasted on digging up the seashells, you grin at me, hold up a piece of ocean-blue glass, & I watch the blood bubble up from your fingertips.
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Sally Smoking
Hannah Landon | Digital
Fall 2023 | 57
Mary, Mother of Gods Kaitlin LaRosa
When Mommy says prayers, she speaks sermons like a Sunday service gone rogue. Hair haywire, red electrifier, magnifying the Big O and serving it up in a petri dish for dinner. “Yum,” she says, and when she is alone with her daughters she will add, “Girls, remember this, Joesph didn’t know fun quite like Mary did.” And true to themselves and to their duty, the girls will hopscotch and jump rope in the yard, spreading the legend like this: “Miss Mary Mags went from riches back to rags because her mouth was clean but not her house, and so, she cut her favorite blouse, and now sings as she cleans, ‘Rags are here to stay, riches led lonely souls astray.’” When Mommy watches the girls as they play she will note that there is something about womanhood, about girlhood, that never forgets to clean as you go. “Let go then,” Mommy prays, “of your grip. Slip — see if I care.” “But I think that is something we already know.”
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Mending
Olin Mares | Pastels
Fall 2023 | 59
Pangaea
Katherine "Katya" Nikolau pain moves like flowing rock. something was whole and then it slept and then it ached and then it crawled. slowly, imperceptibly. the earth was waking up, stretching, becoming. backward were my limbs on this dew, on this grass! in this dance of life my feet were just starting to blister. i walked through the backyard garden with you, showed you all the flowers, asked you if you knew what their names were. you didn’t. [that’s not a judgment on you. i didn’t know their names either. but i was curious]. the earth stretched and everything was out of place. everything was in place anew. nothing would ever be the same again, but the outlines of something still lingered. somewhere i saw a bird and knew its name was magpie. in the end, there was the forest again, and a joke only the two of us could get. i didn’t remember why it was funny. i learned a little about the world, i think, and it made me want to be good.
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Fall 2023 | 61
Annika Meyers | Oil Paint, Oil Pastel, Sharpie
Seaing
Buttermilk for breakfast, nectar of the Gods for lunch. Eva Greene
North-Eastern snow had washed away the sun, And with it came a reckless flood of night, Of sloshing liquids drowning out the fun, And liquid panic drowning out the light. Your arrow made of silver, mine of glass, A crack runs down, a river, down its side. I’ll volunteer a smile you may pass, A letter-bearing pigeon you may ride. I’ll build a fort of satin, nest of fluff, And wrap you up a ribbon-crested sin, All carved by hand and lifted from the rough, Protected by our laughing, melded skin. My vow engraved in blood until I die: To hear your whispers louder than my cries.
62 | Perception
Sunkissed
Kate Eisinger | Colored Pencil
Fall 2023 | 63
If Today Was Our First Date Sonja Ivanova
If today was our first date, I’d show up dressed to the nines beneath my winter coat. I’d watch you waddle in, tall, handsome, fit, (even if not really my type). When you sit down, I wouldn’t know that you’re hiding baby angel wings embroidered with moles into your shoulder bones beneath the fabric of your shirt. I’d be polite, maybe even pass for charming, but not dazzling, brazen, radiant, like on that night—sprawling across the backseat of your car, gushing about how hot Vi from Arcane is, feeling obscenities ripen in my mouth like pomegranates, locking eyes with you as I let them dribble, mingled with laughter, delighting in your sputtering and reddened cheeks— that never happened. I would fake-laugh at your jokes, note the way you judge passers-by, side-eye your dismissal of your sexist friend, feel my stomach turn at the fish-hook self-deprecation intended to reel in sympathy, let the way you taunt me resonate in the soft, sensitive places of my heart without padding it in denial. Take away the genuine admiration in your voice on the other end of the line, 64 | Perception
subtract the words “I believe in you” embossed into the mottled evening sky that wrapped its arms around rural New York— and all that would be left is the way you stiffen up when I tell you about my achievements. You’d think I was pretty, sure, but uptight, touchy, both insecure and conceited (somehow)— that I sound too much like your mother chastising you, and look too much like a headache-inducing cloudy day. On the drive home, there wouldn’t be philosophical conversations beneath plastic stars, cleansing confessions beneath real ones, seven-hour phone calls, roaring, whispering, pushing against the dam of awkward silence. On the drive home, I’d ask if I can play my music, T-Swift, Mother Mother, Lizzo, NF, Noah Kahan, and your groan would give me my answer. If today was our first date, I wouldn’t know that, once, in a parallel universe, you were the first out of the two of us to climb a cliffside, gallant in your orange swim trunks, that you complained about the pebbles sticking to your feet (and that I found it endearing) yet protested when I brought you the towel— that you were the first boy to call me beautiful.
Fall 2023 | 65
If today was our first date, I wouldn’t have seen you naked, putting your face under the shower stream, I wouldn’t know what you sound like when you’re crying, when you’re angry, wouldn’t remember the way your back looks turned to me in bed, moody and severe like a boulder. If today was our first date, you wouldn’t leave me with a good-bye kiss, much less an “I love you” uttered through gritted teeth. If today was our first date, we would never go on a second one.
66 | Perception
Enlightened
Nora Benko | Digital
Fall 2023 | 67
Clockwork Freddy Toglia
There is beauty seeping from the pores of the earth, I read it in the papers, slipped under the door sweat-doused salt licks of psychedelia and tender admiration lay hidden in the wineberry lined paths of Home Whisper into the cracks of stone walls and hear the choir of bounty hum back, just for you Feel its breath on your lips, blush. Lick from your fingers the honeyed devotion of this life unto you, feel how this world loves you, bite at its bruises, not an ounce of resentment passing its mind Sink beneath the water, fully, All of you this time. To be held so completely, it steals the air from your lungs and you must surface to catch it, clockwork. Rusted whirlwinds of time will continue to pass Stick out your thumb, hitchhike.
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Fall 2023 | 71
Sophia Maldonado | Mixed Media
An Unexpected Meal
Phlizz
Vanessa Marcos At 10:37am my mom throws my sneakers out on the sidewalk. I stand there paralyzed, watching the moment rubber soles merge with the concrete, A new substance created. It tries to convince me it was never a shoe, never meant for me, “ready-made” junk losing verisimilitude. My mind fragments – “Your feet are too big” “The shoes would hurt you” – a syntactical transposition of logic. Shoe as abstract noun, coherence cross-dressed as distortion. Shoe, then, becomes reminder, becomes signifier for growth. Shoe becomes a painful goodbye, a rite of passage. I stand there looking backwards, my sneakers putrefying by the second. My mom buys me bigger shoes, bigger shirts, and shorts, and a bigger bed. She burns the house down and builds a new one in place. She repaints my room following the aesthetic code of the irrational, then calls it “home”. I deny it. I eat only to feed my desire for the incongruous, my mom worries. In a second of nonsensical inspiration, I set up camp around the black 72 | Perception
mark my shoe left on the sidewalk. I close my eyes and wait. Nothing happens. I put my hands together and pray: God, I want to go where my shoes went.
The Matriarchy
Ana Burwell | Mixed Media
Fall 2023 | 73
Scar Me, I Beg. It Will Save My Life. Hayden Celentano | Photoshop 74 | Perception
The Trans Mind Poe Porter
Walking to gym from the nurse’s office Why can’t I just use the locker room I get special treatment but I don’t want it I want to be seen As one of the boys but My body doesn’t agree I look in the mirror My knuckles are white Then they turn red Glass is spread across the floor The scissors are right there on the counter I can do it and make them see me but The bump will still be there Laying in bed looking at photos Hoping I’ll look like them And maybe I will Someday I’ll move out Start my own family Never hear that name again Never see that bump again It will flat I will be flat No more hearing ladies or Ma'am I’ll hear sir and young man I’ll look in the mirror See how I feel myself being But I blinked 3 times And now I go to gym from the nurses office
Fall 2023 | 75
Fallen Woman Vanessa Walker
She came home weary and flushed with pleasure, daring to bear a bruise of carnal affection bestowed by one who barely earned the right. There was no need. It just felt right, felt good. The walls rattle with contemptuous thunder, absorbing this scene into the volumes of memory they hold as father rebuffs pleas for forgiveness from a daughter lost to lustful hunger and mother weeps as a love bite bruises deeper than a slap meant to banish her daughter’s pride. Dejected, she stumbles about, hungry for some taste of that lost, supposedly unconditional tenderness, or anything resembling it even by a fraction. The scornful leers of strangers leave no scars, none could be more piercing than those of the couple who bore her. You think her loose, wretched even, and let your compassion pass her by, but if not from you then who? Where else may an orphaned soul be embraced? Who else might relieve her of connection smeared by standards of worthiness? What else is a discarded girl to do but return fill the absence seek and be found with only herself to offer fall to shame-battered knees cry out and please at last, please 76 | Perception
Citrus
S. Oppenheimer | Digital
Fall 2023 | 77
Shadows Of A Personality Valentina de Andrada | Photography
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An Island Heritage Charles Gebbia
Today I could smell her sauce in the streets, the kind we can’t replicate, the kind she would make every Sunday. I could smell the musty old fabric warmed in the sun, wafting out of windows and hanging doors. I tasted the bread of home for the first time in this country and I realized it was more ours than I had ever thought. I know she isn't here and I know this wasn’t where she was yet, but I feel her walking beside me on the streets. I see her etched in the lines on the women’s faces, I hear her in their cadence, in their laughter, and I fear what will happen when I find her. I find myself missing family I never knew, longing for a home that was never mine, searching for heritage that had been wiped clean. I promised her I’d come, I’d see, but now she isn’t here to guide me. She can’t hear me tell her, she can’t answer my questions. I promise my father, for his parents, and their parents before them, that we will return again, we will see it all together, and she will walk us down the streets herself hand in hand and we will know and we will understand it all.
Fall 2023 | 79
Tuscon Sunsets Jnana Breck-Arndt
tonight, the sky is performing a duet with you Its hands of fog shifting through the clouds reaching for your golden hair and calloused body hardened by the curiosity of strangers you escape each grasp with swift turns as you ride the wings of Tucson sunsets expanding upon the horizon till their tips brush the peaks of Mt. Lemon and withdraw with soft smiles on one of these nights, they wrapped you in the sun’s final drops of light collecting you like the honey sticking to my spoon as they grazed over the swallowing, cracking dirt and tickled their feathers with the backs of cacti a radiant, wounded plant motionless in a net of barbed wire like when you paused in the middle of the highway consumed by the unfamiliar RV we sat in and honking horns foot on the break just hoping no car would notice us but you have always been seen that's why I know you are no longer afraid, when I watch you dance tonight your sky dripping red drops of paint that I hope land on me like the water falling off of the rooibos tea bag you pull out of your mug wrapping us in a gentle, warm hug you take a few dozen mugs full and pour them into the wind, as the clouds 80 | Perception
weave in and out of the blue crashing waves they carried only moments ago now blended into a sky full of amethysts or orchids or smashed grapes, smeared across the wings and pungent of the fresh wine to be made by the stomping talons of this sunset churning the air till Blackberry appears her whiskers and tale emerging in the clouds just like the other figures you design when the wind holds you up and you say I am not afraid of being seen
Kiss
Nora Benko | Digital Art
Fall 2023 | 81
Fabricated
Allison Schwartz | Photography 82 | Perception
Can You Hear Me From Afar
Ruyin
I found my violin on the shelf before I went to travel, It’s a tiny one, because I took violin class during primary school time, When the normal size was too big for me. Now near the beach, the sea breath is cool, You’ve gone for a year. We came here before, do you remember? We were young, could not tell the distinction between pain and grief, We thought they are short-lived And could be solved by warm food. We watched the sea in the railway station, that endless blue Spreads until the edge of world. It accepts, swallows, then forgives everything, Everything So does death. I think you are in the sea, up and down. I stand on the beach, try to play music for you. Shall I play Cannon, or your favorite Barcarolle? In fact, I forget both, and the violin has no more dulcet sounds, But I still wipe it clean, tune it up, Thinking of a long and gentle melody. Distant you, departed you, Can you hear me in the sea?
Fall 2023 | 83
Self Portrait 5
S. Oppenheimer | Digital 84 | Perception
La Sirena
Malana Rain Giustina The girl had been living with the ocean for years now. The body had been nurtured with the salt of her broadness, The taste of salt was a mimic of a line of lovers. Y ahora, she swims with mermaids tonight. What moves her is familia Ella necesita recordar, It’s a necessity. She set her hair in plaits and slipped her toes in salty rope sandals The pull of insistent winds wound her generational eyes into split pieces, She looks up to acres of eyes and swallows. The eyes are the windows to the soul? Can you see she ripped through the cornea? She tore open eyes and subjected them to the salty water They ran through her fingers and into hearts. Orb in empty space, prudent in obsession. Trails of family in windows of crawling space, Remembrance of moments past. Toes in the sand Tongue on dry flesh, Displaced flesh. Daydreams are knitted and tied through abandonment and necessity The ocean wets the matriarchal piece, the weight pushes a sinking feeling. The ocean mimics their tears and they fall into one another. Donde puedes ir? A las constellations? El océano? Fall 2023 | 85
She met the ocean halfway and became La Sirena. The waters space lines with generational portraits. Torrential current presses foundational past, memory and truth of the colliding pieces of her dream. The large dream. The dream which is no dream and has arisen from watery eyes in the ocean of tears. Jungla de agua y de familia. She thinks if she becomes unattainable she will be desirable. In this she swims deep as family rises past her balancing on the fragility of spherical bubbles, Don’t let the pressure implode to the slaughter of generational trauma. The eyes will still follow. Circles interlock with waves of quilted sewn faces and spread in their infinity. The waves are the mask of family. Encasement and embraces house La Sirena, She is the ocean and cradles the tears of her lost ancestors. Ghosts of tangled braids. At dawn she wakes as la abuela arises. Braids pulling together, eyes falling in. El océano se mueve afuera, La abuelita saca su corazón.
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Psalm of Your Skin and the Sunrise
Lance Watson
I’ll wrap my body around you like Living armor, To protect you from the dawn. We lay tangled in our bed and I Watch as the aureolin sunrise turns Your hair to a halo, You, the angel of our holy Peace. You’ll trade your body for a pillow in my arms – You don’t need my protection Even as you accepted my offering through the night, Small as it may have been on the altar of you. You’ll leave only to put The kettle on the stove for tea. Making mine with three sugars, And milk, and honey, and sun-rays, A melodious mélange you Know now, by Heart. I’ll get up later to water those Flowers of yours on the porch; The orchids that need melting ice cubes. I’ll take special care, that extra effort which Feels to you like your Mother’s hugs from Your childhood, back when she taught you to Tend to her favorite Blooms. I’ll wind around you in the kitchen Kissing the back of your neck, your Fall 2023 | 87
Skin tasting of vanilla, scent of your soap lingering under my tongue as you Hum along to a love song on The radio, Harmonizing with the sizzle Of eggs cooking over the Stove. Soon we’ll both dress for work, And I’ll whisper my devotions as you Cover your skin in gentle cotton and I’ll Wish that it could be my hands instead. But for now, the sun is still soft in the sky, And soft in my heart, So I’ll sway with you to the beat Of our own off-tempo metronome, And I’ll hold you in this Moment, my love, in our gentle morning Repose.
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Claire McConnell | Repurposed Denim
"This Country Was Not Built By Men In Suits"
Fall 2023 | 89
Manray's Muse
Hannah Landon | Mixed Media 90 | Perception
I Am Not Thinking of Tomorrow
Alaina Triantafilledes
I am not thinking of tomorrow. I am not thinking of the gazelle In the lion’s jaws, who has lain down to die Or the fish thrashing on wet wood Next to a beer cooler Or the ant who knew nothing, in the end, only That the sun was disappearing. I am not thinking of the cat With matted fur and green eyes glossing over Or the owner that sits next to it with a quivering lip Saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay.” I am not thinking of the climate clock Or dairy farms Or Sylvia Plath. I am not thinking of hospitals Or eulogies. Not right now. Right now, I am wearing sunglasses Half-awake, peaking at the open blue above me Making pits in the sand with my heels Listening to the breath of the waves Letting the heat bake me all the way through.
Fall 2023 | 91
Moose
Roslyn Lydick When I have packed my suitcases into the trunk of our sagging silver minivan when I have hugged my sister and my father goodbye when I have sat down on the driveway cooled and washed out by an unforgiving moon When he emerges from around the bend tail waving, dirt and leaves and mulch clinging to his coat (my little gutter monster) I let his creaky radiator of a body settle down in my lap feel the warmth in slow crackles of breath He watches something intently, another small creature perhaps which I cannot see, so I look to that dark ceiling of sky Has it gotten closer, these past months, and can he sense it? Of course I will see him in the spring. Still I keep the fur that has clung to my shirt and count the speeding years
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The Surrealist
Freddy Toglia | Ballpoint Pen
Fall 2023 | 93
Love Thy Throne
Meredith Tokac | Photography/ Concept Art 94 | Perception
best friend obituary
d.h. lane
watching you walk through that door was like losing my religion a second time i let you make me in your image when we were young. it was almost like an honor to be embedded in your routine, handed the key to wear around my neck that would unlock your inner thoughts. i haven’t had the key for quite a while, but there’s a red, angry line where the necklace used to be. phantom sensations of choking. of course i didn’t fucking want you to go. if this was a movie script, you’d know that you’d sit on my floor and say i won’t go until we fix this. it’s okay. but this isn’t a movie, and you’re not who you were when i met you. it was done cleanly— surgically. my wounds are sutured, malignant bodies thoroughly flushed out. i’ve never lost anyone i didn’t want to lose, so please be patient if i can’t pretend you’re a stranger quite yet. i falter sometimes, catching myself with my hands clasped in prayer. yes, i’m going to read over our talks like verses. it’s a fascinating tightrope to walk— was this always going to happen? when you invite people into your house, into your muscle memory do you doom yourself from the start or are falling outs purely incidental? i’m not certain of this. i do know i’d probably let you back in if you asked. then again, it’s not you. i stood by while you transformed, and i’m proud of you. of course i am. still, you’ve become a ghost and i don’t want to dig up your body you’re happier now, and what right do i have to keep you in the past? i suppose that i am your past now. that makes a ghost of myself, too. watching you walk through that door was also like losing my life because you’ve been in it long enough. i’m not sure if i lived before you but i’m going to have to live after you. i am going to haunt this house whether you move out of it completely or not.
Fall 2023 | 95
we kept dancing. Katherine "Katya" Nikolau
we kept dancing even after the music had stopped. my limbs felt heavy, like too-ripe fruits ready to come crashing down onto the waiting earth. holding their breath, like they were scared of their first thumps down on the soil. when i got home, i saw your drawing on my wall. i thought about taking it down, but didn’t. in the corner you wrote somebody please!! a fragment of a feeling and yet i knew what you meant. i thought about it. i tried not to think about it. i dragged my hands through the sand, making a pretty pile of whole things. you were gone but still there, like voices in the hallways of my childhood. always talking about big, adult things while you drift into magical dreams. gone, but comforting. quietly fading. lovingly fading. now i’m older and i talk about adult things. i talk about sad things. i talk about nothing. i pretend it’s easier. my bottle of lucky perfume runs low, prompting a consideration of futures and a serious talk with The Fates. in the month of july, i fall into rages at random. my body is angry. some time passes (as it always does) and i come back to myself. i wonder where i had been, all this time. all this time. — it ends like this—my touch shatters the breaking wheel and milk flows out from my wounds. there is no facade anymore. you finger a curl. you touch my face. you think i’m small, but really i tower over everything.
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Don Quixote Ballerina Hannah Landon | Mixed Media
Fall 2023 | 97
Puzzle Pieces Malana Rain Giustina
I know I know I know, Slow click like puzzles put together. When does the rain enter home for the spring? Drops fall through the glass, straining light. In a body of arches, extruded through temporal housing, we build the place for molding structures to hum and slide into one another. Song on the beach. Eyelashes in rain. Lining moments into a procession with joint breath, Whispering convergence. Do you see the dunes in the sheets? The bodies are creating sculptures in bed. When your feet hit the sand of my dreams you can sink into me I meet you in space over and over through a time which was never broken, only misunderstood. Slow drip like time through a sand sifter, the hourglass in my hands being rotated in horizontal root to spread out our time together. Click into the strength of my hand grown bones, swimming over sharp coral marrow that scratch through their reaching Houses of bones are intersecting the crossing of temporal memories, The motion of stepping forward, of becoming. Can you feel when home becomes home with me? Don’t try to pinpoint it, it exists through multiple moments Don’t dart to the target of a falsity through the possibility of a bare face In one of our moments I lay with you in dunes. The sleepiness of safety: a shawl I crochet through dreams and maybe…maybe…maybe…Lo 98 | Perception
Tangling my hair with your tenderness, I’m still looking for the confidence to allow my fingers to enter your sea of curls entirely City boy your ringlet curls tighter around my pinky as I slide on you, through you. I’ll enter fully into your eyes if you let me The softest brown I ever saw I touch you all day in my daydreams In the evenings I slip to times where I split realities with your guidance. Let's float Music always becomes you. You travel through sound I lay under the canopy of lyrical reliance I lay softly with you, The safest I ever felt.
Lindsey Wilson | Silkscreen/ Collage
Ways of Water
Shift that limb! Oh look! It’s a slow click like puzzles put together.
Fall 2023 | 99
Mapping our way through Charles Gebbia
We write our rhymes in ¾ time We scrawl scripture on subway signs and bathroom walls prophecy on bar tables and under awnings We draw portraits on used coasters soaked in drink We cross streets without hesitation in front of cars that don’t plan on stopping We dodge raindrops on our walk home with graffiti cheering us onwards and cursing us out We tap new rhythms with broken chords We dance in kitchens and living rooms to sounds unheard and unhearing to songs of decades past with parents and grandparents We drink until merry eat until full smoke into a stupor We walk among the footsteps of ancients through the monuments of their ruin We shift between worlds to blur the lines dividing them We crack our reflections so that we can clean the glass We find doors painted over and unhinged 100 | Perception
windows unaligned stairs to nowhere We carry the city in our hands and wear it along our fingers tracing patterns and paths along its roads and across its roofs
Family
Mara Dubay | Watercolor, Colored Pencils
Fall 2023 | 101
The Perception of The Self Lance Watson | Digital/ Acrylic Marker 102 | Perception
Mathematic Attraction Freddy Toglia
The world is so hot, and you, the same, within it You are magma, the nebula of a grinding, living core You are millions of years of science in motion Of molecules tuned by the fork of time to play in symphony You are proof that stagnation is a human’s most nihilistic creation, (to accept it as possible is to gouge truth from your eager eyes) sigh into vastness of whirling equation pulled from air and scripted on chalkboards For even the infinite of radiation will decay Vastness of expanses of space between pieces of yourself, if we touch what keeps us from merging into one? If we touched a thousand times a second, every minute until the universe ends, at least once we would feel our fingertips slot into one another We would simmer under the heat Melt into one.
Fall 2023 | 103
Fluttering Away Ruyin
1. The sun moves behind the trees. The sunshine shimmers on the green blanket, on the brown dirt. ——The sweet home of all creatures and of course, plants in my heart. Growing out in warmth, withering in wind, A leaf after another leaf, it’s growing It’s stretching out to the sun and dew To experience the undiscovered new. 2. An old man passes by with a water can, Staring at those green leaves, cutting down withered ones. The end of life, the end of youth, another phase of subtle growth. The leaves fall asleep, had a dream. 3. It’s shivering. Shivering, shivering, shivering, shivering, shivering…… 4. Leaves! When you are hanging on branches, Where's your mind? 5. A leaf falls. A new day has come and gone. The old man has never returned never watered any thirsty leaves. 6. On a sunny day, all leaves revive, Fly away with the wind Leave old leaves behind They fly to somewhere.
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Fall 2023 | 105
Mervin McDougal | Digital Photography
Seneca River At Dawn
Real Life Isn’t Your Thing! Maddie Sloyer | Ink
108 | Perception
FEAST
Moriah Brown She said I think it’s a girl thing not to get hungry forgetting to eat— I nodded— Why did I nod? When I feel a roar in my stomach when I have these visions of hungry women ravenous women clawing their hands into feasts of rich meat and fruit eating until they are stuffed lounging happy in each other’s care feeling the weight of each others’ bodies and smiling at their strength— Hungry women plunging into the day or night or wherever their feet compel them to walk— Women eating their dreams with a smack of their lips eating the future forming it with their breath little clouds of visions, movement shaping a new day.
Fall 2023 | 109
The Void Victor Yip
The Void as you know it is an endless empty space, where pure nothingness is bred. A place that is quintessentially the absence of something else, an oblivion that hungers, an entropic force that only desires for one thing. To annihilate. But don’t you worry your little heads for the space between spaces can never get to us for it is an impossibility. The creatures imprisoned there, that only wish to obliterate our very existence will never touch us. For the planes just don’t work in that way. The laws created by the Gods beyond have made it so. It is invisible to the naked eye and knowledge of it has been lost aside from what I know. Though there is one prisoner that worries me, one that is no native to the Void. He plots and schemes to get out. For he has nothing else to do while trapped in that unholy sanctum. It's very body ruined beyond belief, a dreg compared to what he used to be. The form he used to take could no longer be achievable, for the Void has transformed him. Now skeletal and decaying, its flesh gray and pallid with dust. The skin stretched across its bones was draped like a great fur coat on a hunter. It was agonizing to be in the shape he was, its screams hollow and without true sound. Too long obsidian claws clattered against the surface of something that felt like glass. Bone white teeth poked out through a misshapen jaw, jagged and broken in too many places like the tops of mountain peaks. A spiraling pattern implanted onto its face, charcoal and ebony. Ears gone, sockets non existent, nose vanished. The top of its head was cut like a plateau exposing its brain. Small tendrils of flesh twisted out into fractal patterns feeling the frosted breeze for something. For children, this is no ordinary creature, this was a God, no, is a God. A fallen one among its colleagues, someone who went too far in its thinking. Its domain being corrupted by our actions, until he was driven mad. He went on a childish rampage bending the very planets he visited into wrongness, ripping into them like a cell. Until the rest of the Gods manned up and captured him. They couldn’t kill one of their 110 | Perception
own so they sent him away to the Void never to be seen again. Its own name is forgotten to the world, for if spoken faith might realign itself in some twisted men. I fear for this world if he ever gets out, the amount of destruction that he could cause would be cataclysmic. The minds of men would shatter into millions of pieces, becoming slobbering fools that teeter across grounds. Oh apologies children, I don’t mean to frighten you so harshly. It’s merely my own speculations on the nature of the Void. We shall be fine as long as the very laws that bind us are never broken and it’s quite hard to bend those laws. Shall we move on to them now? ?????
Criss cross applesauce, cross criss sauce apple. My legs are bending both forward and backward, how neat is that. The sound of clinking glass is so wonderful to my brain noodles. I need something shiny and succulent to suck on. My tongue itches to feel anything, it is only a matter of time. My head can feel it, a change in the wind that ticks the clock closer to my freedom. Ohh free candy. Do you ever think to yourself how it must feel to be a worm? Crawling across your own body, contorting it every time you have to do anything. Well I know the experience very well. This place has flattened me so, every move I make ends with me on my hands. I think something is leaking out. Leaking out. Leaking out. Out. Out. Out. Let me out!!!! A crack suddenly formed where the aberration’s claws touched, a thin one but a crack nonetheless. It began to spread further and further like a viral infection. Light shimmered from underneath the surface, a bright mass extending out a limb to grasp on. It took that chance and honed its will further on those cracks, on that light. Until the whole surface tensed and broke apart like a tree ornament. The source of light appeared before it, a circular reflection, a mirror perhaps. A mirror into another world, a portal to reality. It could see it now, a temple hidden beneath a house of comedy. Where strangers lurk and deception feasts upon mortal fear. Stone pillars sprayed in paint and confetti stood to the sides of the grand villa. In front of it were dozens of robed men and women, sigils adorned their clothing, faces hidden behind cloaks. With one of them ahead of the others. A man with grander robes, more marks, more tassels. Face taken by a circular mask with a hypnotic pattern. Fall 2023 | 111
A chant was being performed, spoken in a language that the tongue shouldn’t be able to say. Names, so many names could be heard. Maddening One, Lord of Spirals, Uzumaki, Vesinaquis, Insania, The Tongue Twisted Devil, Crooked Walker, King of the Rhapsody… It put a smile on the creature’s face, a genuine smile. Lucidity washing over the God. The Void began to fade away, space collapsing in on itself leaving a hole. The light enveloped it, and then it disappeared, nothing was there any longer. The Void was quiet once again. All that was left was darkness and dust that once landed on something.
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Shiver and Shake Hayden Celentano | Photoshop
Fall 2023 | 113
Harvest
Sophia Maldonado | Colored Pencil 114 | Perception
Trusty Steeds Eva Greene
Two unsuspecting human horses, Two psycho-screaming stick and pokes, My steed is trotting through the bodies, Your steed talks, spitting as he smokes. The crowd concaves and wraps around me, I wrap myself around my horse, And pass my cowboy on the journey, Who’s timely taken the same course! My steed is friends with girls he kisses, Your steed is friends with kids with guns, My steed likes getting drunk and crying, Your steed’s an online hit and run. Your trusty steed’s a filthy poser, My little pony’s far too gone, If we had gotten any closer, We wouldn’t live to sing this song.
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i <3 G-D and G-D luvs me !! F. Morris Gelbart | Acrylic
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Antennas and Aliens Kaitlin LaRosa
I fear there are bugs crawling in my ear, makes my sense of self disappear with the phantoms fear of antennas and aliens sprouting out of my head. I let if fester and then plant seeds of doubt so they spread deep into my skull. I think ET wants me dead, and I’ve just been trying to call home. Or figure out who left me here on this planet alone to do this shit on my own again. The bible and my pen couldn’t rewrite this history if I tried. So, I rewire myself to realign Every constellation in the sky to come closer down to Earth, in hopes that this leads me closer to what their patterns really mean, sewing edges into seams, having visions instead of dreams, this, my natural disaster. I resign to watch the Earth quake in ET’s wake, Wake up. We’re glad you finally join us.
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February
Alexandra Milchovich Tighten the belt around my neck Let it be my noose and Sail into my mind with The dexterity of a drunk driver, Crash into the monuments of my naked Memories and splintered bone cathedrals and shield your rubbery face when My beastly girlhood becomes too blinding. your hands weave tapestries of words to offer As a burning sacrifice. The red meat of the fabric is smoking; apologies waft in harsh gray puffs and blood drips from the wall; a squashed blackened plum thick with juice. My head up on the swinging door of your closet, Antlers grasping at your shoulders, You eagerly sew my mouth shut, Your piano fingers are talons; prick me with the needle, Whisper it’s an accident but dig it in my lip a little harder, a little deeper each time. I’m the Doe who picks and bites at the skin around her fingers till they bleed on your blankets. The bitter, flavorless taste of flesh stalks me– Chew on the worms and rot in my squirming womb, Fill my uterus with stuffing; not in my arms as you had hoped. We walk around with empty brains and insatiable stomachs, and I’ve learned to hide the hunger– I eat hearts in secret under the navy covers; Stuff my growling belly in corsets and decorate those needs with 118 | Perception
lace and bruises, I crave your blood, Your hands upon a silver platter, But instead I feed myself chunks from the girl I was that you skinned. The corpse in a fetal position on the stairs outside of your dorm. Now there’s two women when I peer in the glass: a deer in headlights, a slaughtered lamb that kneels at the side of her bed and prays. and the mutilated body that remains separate from her plastic bag soul. You shot who I was with an arrow, rusty blood staining the carpeted hallway, the pencil shavings in your nose. I carve at her sides and feast from the meat on her ribs. Tell me– What is the difference between glass eyes and wet, slimy ones? The stench of February is unwelcoming: Formaldehyde, borax, and cedar dust. I cough up cotton and wood wool, laced with arsenic. I rub my face and the thick makeup stains my hands. Is it my blood or yours under my fingernails?
I Saw It
Ana Burwell | Mixed Media
Fall 2023 | 119
Running From The Daylight Nora Benko | Digital Art 120 | Perception
Morningside Heights Gianna Voce
There is another half to this, I think, The beer starts to creep its way back into its cup And evaporate off of my sweatshirt. The girls, you said, slurring, were pretty But I was the prettiest to you. I want to ask, blurry, why your eyes ever left me. You hold me every way you like, Roughly in the night, but gently On the morning-side. We yell at night, but love on the other half, we are not Gray, to be gray is to be average, We are stark black and white, To make a point, to point at art. The dawn is blue and we can breathe Again, out your window is dustlike snow.
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Redhead Allison Schwartz
The fog lifted itself from my eyelids as I awoke from the dream. The blank white walls stared back at me as my body lay, trapped in the discomfort of my bed. The fog settled again, but this time, beneath each of my eyes in the form of dark clouds, visually speaking of my exhaustion. Pieces of the night rolled around in my hollowed head. The refraction of the streetlights swimming in the canals. The empty bottles and snuffed cigarettes lining the streets. The gangs of bicycles reaching their handlebars out to grab pieces of my clothing. The red lights illuminating the bellowing noises of rowdy crowds that were perpetually maneuvering through the narrowed streets. There was a familiarity that occupied each of the flashing thoughts. Familiarity that took the fog and sent it down my spine, pinching nerves. The blanket of night was thin and itchy as we set out alone into the city. The red lights tainted the fog that hovered lifelessly above the cobblestone. The pull of the red lights called from the other side of an arched bridge. We crossed as the fog dissipated into streams of crimson light that flooded the streets. Curtained windows transitioned to open doors each displaying scenes of either a pink vanity or a woman posing at one. The crowd of onlookers moved like cattle along the rolling stones of the cobbled path, grazing on the bodies and neon signs. Their heads bobbed like a drugged ocean of rolling waves. The current of bodies flowed through the streets ordered by the tides of the red lights. Crowd control groups in red jumpsuits flushed people down alleys to adjacent streets. The crowds poured out from these alleys against the canal into the path in front of us. There was nowhere to stop. Nowhere to loiter. Nowhere to sit. Nowhere to stay. The ocean kept rolling, bouncing between shades of purple and green amidst the persistent glow of red. Clouds of smoke from cigarettes and joints attached themselves to our clothes and 122 | Perception
entangled their fumes into our hair. The clouds and neon lights bled across every street. The same motifs of street food, smoke shops, and corner stores were shuffled, renamed, and reassembled as we turned corners. The anonymity of each street and the overwhelming volume of people in them attributed to my own feeling of anonymity. I was not a person, but a body, disassociated from any piece of my identity. Once released from the snares of the red lights, the fog returned. People began to board their bikes and motorcycles. When the gate was lowered, their trajectory would be at full speed, not stopping for an anonymous body obstructing their path. Shuffling, we found the edge and broke free before their engines erupted. I am now far away, and still, the pressure of the fog still lives in my head, but I am glad that I no longer see red.
Still Alive Life
Lindsey Wilson | Acrylic
Fall 2023 | 123
Mr. Elchoness Sonja Ivanova
he weaves his way between the desks like he’s in a courtroom stroking the twin white patches of his beard and if each movement feels like trying to run in a dream if each step feels like sleepwalking like wading through water his proud posture does not show it I can’t help it as if he were an abused dog I stiffen at the slightest guttural rumble ready to snatch back my extended hand at the first glint of yellowish-white fangs his eyes
must not have always been so sad he carries so much pain in his shoes I look for his son in his face
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find him in the downturned blue eyes they shared but not the wrinkles lipstick stains left at the corners of his lips between his brows on his forehead by eternity herself along with the good-bye letters his son’s casket contained his youth along with the rings on his fingers he wore his heartbreakingly unblemished skin he died before having smiled enough laughed enough frowned enough to have any marks to show for it between debating the death penalty and taking notes on the crime control model I think about what it must be like to rush to watch and to fail
to the hospital when your wife’s water breaks her body split down the middle like the red sea as you cut the umbilical cord and take moses from the nurse
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to hide to hold to hold to feel
to stop your hands from shaking all the plastic bags beneath the kitchen sink his little hand when crossing the street his belly and back as he thrashes his arms learning how to swim
your heart drop the moment you pry your white fingers from the seat of his bike to worry yourself sick in the waiting room after he breaks a bone for the first time to stroke his hair and wipe his tears after he breaks his heart for the first time to nag him about wearing a hat so he doesn’t catch a cold to hound him for speeding after he gets his license to dodge every curveball circumvent every pitfall smooth every sharp corner outsmart every predator check the locks thrice shield him
hide him guide him carry him out of the maternity ward and all the way through to his senior year of high school when one night he goes to bed with a sore throat and never wakes up.
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Koi Pond
Noor Zamamiri | Oil Paint
Fall 2023 | 127
a fated stroll Katherine "Katya" Nikolau
the painted lady: i thought she was beautiful when she led me through the forest. i don’t remember much about it really, except that it was light, then dark, then light again. i looked up to a sky woven with winding branches and it looked like a green kaleidoscope. i followed her with silent limbs as she took me to the hollow in the willow tree where all the things i’d forgotten lay resting, waiting. she said nothing but i heard a voice whisper, look, and then it happened. the memories washed over me so lightly, like a summer rain barely kissing the lines of my face. this surge of everything: so big and so gentle. when it subsided, i understood what an old, tired house must feel like after a fresh coat of paint. a sprig of red currant in my raised palm, i was like a child again with a wide secret smile. i looked up at the sky, at all this blue you never tire of, stretching out forever and ever. i felt strange and quiet inside. like i didn’t know what to do with all of it. with all this life inside me, suddenly awake and gasping for air.
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Inferno
Kate Eisinger | Acrylic
Fall 2023 | 129
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YOUR STUDENT FEE