Promethean Volume 43, Spring 2015 Issue

Spring 2015

PROMETHEAN The Official Literary Journal of The City College of New York

PROMETHEAN Spring 2015

Volume 43

PROMETHEAN

The Official Literary Journal of The City College of New York Philip F. Clark, Graduate Editor Michele Karas, Graduate Editor Chrisinda Lynch, Undergraduate Editor Stephen Erickson, Undergraduate Editor Daniel Vazquez, Editorial Assistant Crystal Yeung, Editorial Assistant Doris Barkin, Faculty Advisor PROMETHEAN is published by The City College of New York 160 Convent Ave, New York, NY 10031 Volume 43, Spring 2015 All rights reserved by the authors and artists.

Front Cover: Jenna Newton “Untitled (R)” Oil and acrylic on canvas 64" x 64" 2014 Back Cover: Jenna Newton “Circle Game” Acrylic on canvas 64" x 64" 2014

From the Editors: With every issue of Promethean, there is a palpable sense of both excitement and renewal—the chance for new voices and visions to be heard and seen, and the constant metamorphosis of words and images into new forms.

With every year, we find unique iterations of experience and vision in which universal experiences are seen through a prism of individual and very personal art. Themes such as the constancy of family and relationships, distant travel and home fires, love and its immutability—all these things appear in fresh guises each year that we publish. These stories, poems, plays, and artwork reflect a diversity that is a strength of the journal, and this continual alchemy is completely dynamic. It is always a special thrill when we publish new voices for the very first time. In this issue, that very construct of the foreign made familiar again succeeds with the writing and art here that is wonderfully imaginative, richly encompassing of genuine experience, and resounding with acclamation of craft. We welcome such verbal and visual energy and beauty to the long history of Promethean’s great writers and artists. —PFC A majority of the work in this latest issue of Promethean embodies a strong sense of place: pieces in which the setting is crucial to character, narrative, mood, and language. Many of these storytellers and poets set their scenes in spaces that might include cityscapes, country roads, and farming villages.

They are often nostalgic and cross-cultural in their choice of topics. Frequently, they explore “a larger void,” a yearning for human connection in a world where “strong undercurrents tug us in many directions” and “people cross bridges to nowhere.” Interestingly, many of these pieces are populated by literary apparitions: Joe Tirella conjures the ghost of Larry McMurtry; in another poem by Pamela L. Laskin, we encounter Pushkin, Chekhov, and Dostoyevsky. Some explore philosophies big enough to incorporate multiple points of view, small enough to include “tapioca petals frail and dry as moth wings.” In her moving Ars Poetica and homage to CCNY, Helen Dano perhaps summarizes this issue best by illuminating the way that words connect us: “And just now, in this same place, a sentience is felt of the darkness and the rain... and for stories that came before, and for those yet to be born.”

I hope you enjoy. —MK

A few months ago, I came across a quote from writer Marilynne Robinson that she shares with her workshop students: “The failings of your fiction are often the deformities of your soul.” The flip side of that grim prophecy, I would argue, is this: “The triumphs of your fiction (your poetry, your play, your artwork) are often the beauties of your soul.” A song for the touch of a hand: “a cold spark showered, jumped from spine to heart.” A memory of balloons and the ties that tether us to earth. A lightness found in fields of “blue shacks and yellow haystacks.” Here is an issue full of talented City College writers and artists. The one thing these contributors have in common: a unique perspective that we feel privileged to share with you. —CL As a first-time editor on Promethean, I was astounded by the sheer number of distinct voices and artistic styles within the CCNY community.

Promethean’s long history of distinguished literary and artistic quality no doubt can be attributed to its desire to embrace and illuminate this cross-cultural diversity that invigorates our school community and introduces crisp discourse to our lives. The contributors continue this impressive tradition in this issue, providing impactful artwork, poetry, and plays, and making leaps in genres of fiction from realism to fairytale fantasy. Lisa Simon’s whimsical lines seem fitting: “The change was not sudden for trees grow slowly.” This issue is yet another opportunity for Promethean to further develop its long-standing traditions and for our artists and writers to extend their roots and impart their fiercely original craft. —SE Many thanks to the Dean of Humanities and Arts, Eric D. Weitz; the Chair of the English Department, Renata Miller; the Lippman family; the Simon H. Rifkind Center for the Humanities and Arts; and the English Department faculty and staff. We would also like to thank our editorial assistants, Daniel Vazquez and Crystal Yeung, for their hard work and keen eyes. We are especially grateful to our faculty advisor, Doris Barkin, for her continued guidance and support.

The Editors, Promethean

Cover Artist’s Statement Jenna Newton In my work, I create nonrepresentational narratives, told through a complex vocabulary of personal symbols, marks, lines, patterns, and gestures. It is about the process of visual creativity, and exploring how that manifests specifically in painting and drawing. I emphasize contradictions and play with the desire for and fear of losing control, and what that means pictorially. In the pieces, I strive for balance between freedom and control.

I am interested in the relationship between mark-making and personal symbolism. I use my own system of symbolism to create indeterminate narratives. Although my intention is to create something primarily nonobjective, even I cannot deny a desire to hint at natural forms, personified shapes, and humanistic attributes. This is an evident contradiction in my work—I go against my own rule of nonrepresentation and include potentially recognizable shapes that imply something knowable or known. In my paintings, I employ the movement, cadence, and physicality from my background in dance and drumming. I am investigating repetition and the relationship between mark-making, and my role as the mark-maker.

Working flat on the floor and experimenting with various tools— rollers, squeegees—I find that the canvas easily accepts drips, pours, rolls, splatters, sprays, and globs. The 64" square format relates to my body—my height—and encourages the physical nature of my process.

Each drip, line, dot, cross, hash mark, shading, stripe, color, band, blotch, pattern, shape, form, dash, texture, brushstroke, gesture, and design stems from an aspect of my particular history. I approach each painting and drawing as a chance for a completely fresh start, a moment unbounded by the works that came before, and not necessarily indicative of what will come next. I will often begin with an image in my mind, cultivated during times of meditation and reflection. This takes the place of studies or sketches. I prefer to work out my visual ideas intuitively and directly. My process is about decisions, the progression of choosing, the resulting limitations, and the real or perceived danger of failure.

With each mark, stroke, drip, or color applied, the possibilities for the

painting decrease, as it further becomes what it will finally be. I have complete jurisdiction over this space—nothing goes into it that I do not consider and place there; it is the only place where I can have that kind of autonomy. In this sense, I am creating a painted world full of references to my experiences, yet in a veiled fashion—I never intend to represent anything.

Contents Paul Oppenheimer / one Lynn Dion / three Michelle Valladares / seven Margaret Laidley / nine Carly Rubin / fifteen Lisa Simon / seventeen Jermaine Brown / twenty-one Henry Bunch / twenty-three Seamus Scalon / twenty-six Dan Altano / twenty-nine Gisella Dionio / thirty Joseph Tirella / thirty-one Carly Trunkwalter / thirty-five Luis Camejo / forty-eight Christopher Torres / fifty-three Amynah Diop / sixty-three Charles Vassallo / sixty-seven Nicholas Magliato / sixty-eight Artist’s Statements / eighty Lee Jacob Hilado / eighty-five Natalia Donofrio / eighty-six Jonathan Riordan / eighty-eight Anna Voisard / ninety Sari Weisenberg / ninety-two Wahaj Saleem / ninety-four Alina Shevorykin / ninety-five

Pamela L. Laskin / ninety-seven Nnenna Kalu / hundred Diami Virgilio / hundred-one Karen Hubbard / hundred-nine

Kiki Black / hundred-twelve Nikeeyia Howell / hundred-fourteen Helen Dano / hundred-sixteen Jonathan Crocca / hundred-twenty Laura Callahan / hundred-twenty-one Laura Bowman / hundred-twenty-two

2014 Award Winners Robert Balun / hundred-twenty-eight Lori Balaban / hundred-thirty-eight Lily M. Gelfars / hundred-fifty Conor McGlone / hundred-fifty-eight Crystal Vagnier / hundred-sixty-two Jasmin Waisburd / hundred-seventy-four

Promethean Gold / hundred-seventy-six Biographies / hundred-eighty-six

In the Minotaur’s Eye Paul Oppenheimer About these choices the great gray hand— do not ask what it is—knows all and says little.

I have heard that hand speak midnights and gossamer dawns—so do not tell me that it cannot speak.

I have heard it riddle the moon.

Once I even heard the sun’s riddle expire on its palm.

There followed a hiss, a modest splutter.

With all my experience I do not wish to hear that there is no way out, or just rays of darkness.

My Uncle Vesuvius knew better, more extravagantly better, and so flatly that his wife, Aunt Etna, agreed.

You do not want to witness their manner of agreement or come anywhere near its surging cordiality.

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Hunting Song Paul Oppenheimer Time to jostle against the edge of meaning where in the succulent moment as the spade turns up black loess before turning it over for purposes on purpose a dance appears without a single dancer hooves composed of air clatter fibrillations someone says, “Look at the unicorn,� before the snorted cough and supine roar of lions dumping a creature in mid-prowl.

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Petei Ka’i Lynn Dion

A

ll her life, Beatriz had traveled with her family out of town to the farming villages huddled close under the eaves of the rain forest, when the various fruits were in season, to bring back fresh produce for the grocery. The kids were fond of gnarly, dark Nandesy, one of the old woman growers they bought from; she was gruff and impatient and pretended to hate children, but after the gathering and haggling and loading of the fresh bananas, or mangoes, or the black-purple, grapelike jabuticaba fruit that grew straight from the trunk and branches of the tree—beloved of birds, monkeys, human children, and all other sweet-loving creatures—she would light her pipe and sit among them, telling stories half in Portuguese and half in her throaty Tupi-Guarani dialect. When their mother was not present, the stories could get quite ripe; the boys would roll on the ground laughing at the ones about Kurupi, the spirit of fruit trees and animal fertility, who carried his manhood coiled around his waist, or flung it as a lasso to catch girls who went to the forest alone, releasing them only after they were both pregnant and insane.

One time, when Beatriz was eleven or twelve, she had ridden with her mother and two of her little brothers into the farm village for a load of fruit.

Beatriz’s mother was beginning to pack their old truck with bananas and mangoes when the boys came running out of the edge of the forest shouting. One of them carried a furry little body that hung limp from his hands and looked dead. They brought the beast to Nandesy, who scowled and spat tobacco juice in their general direction. “Akkhhh . . .” she croaked in disgust, “petei ka’i!” A monkey. Beatriz knew that word; she kept it in a little box in her brain, along with words for trees, fruits, the wind and rain, and the thing that Kurupi used to tie up the girls and drive them mad. It was a very new-looking woolly spider monkey, and except for its black wrinkled face, huge terrified eyes, and long-fingered tiny hands and feet, it was completely covered, like a rich child’s teddy bear, in dense yellowish-gray fur. The creatures were destructive and a noisy nuisance almost from birth, in the fruit groves, and had Nandesy been alone and discovered it herself, Beatriz knew, she would probably have drowned it; or if there had been more than one to make a decent mouthful, perhaps she would have stewed them with manioc for her supper.

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But the excited boys evidently expected her to save it, or at least feed it before throwing it back into the brush for a hunting raptor or jaguar to take.

Grumbling, she waved for them to bring it close, while they chattered about finding it on the ground, frozen with fear and all alone, in a pile of leaf litter.

She caught it in one deft motion from behind, sliding her big thumbs under both tiny armpits and catching the black paw on each side of the fluttering chest between her first and second fingers, and sat down with it on a heavy wooden box. The long bushy tail hung twitching over her knees. She turned the monkey’s paws palm up and bid the older of the two boys to bring one of the bruised bananas lying rejected near the pile of fruit their mother was carefully packing between layers of straw, and peel it. He did so, and thrust one end of the fragrant pulp into the creature’s face. It jerked back with a little cry and again sat motionless.

“Not like that!” barked Nandesy. “Take the brown mushy end and rub it on its hands.” The monkey flinched and squawked as the boy ran a quick streak of banana slime over the tiny palm. “Jesus and His blessed Mother,” swore the old woman, “give me another hand so I can smack this stupid boy...

Here! Put some goddamned banana on these paws!” He grinned ruefully and rubbed a thick layer of the sweet brown mush into both of the monkey’s quivering palms, bending close to watch what it would do.

Nandesy lifted the animal away from him, flipped it over in mid-air and looked quickly between its hind legs. She grunted again in mock disgust: “Trouble, trouble. A little bastard of Kurupi.” Then she dropped it gently into a woven fruit-gathering basket from which it was too small and weak to escape.

“Look away from him,” she hissed. “Pay no attention to him at all, or he won’t do anything but die.”

They all busied themselves picking up the rejected fruit, peeling it and throwing the pulp into a big clay bowl to mix with meal for Nandesy’s cakes, and carrying the skins to a heap in the middle of the garden; but they watched the basket slyly out of the corners of their eyes. It was evident that the little monkey was not happy with the sticky mess all over his hands, and he shook them feebly, one after the other, like a cat. Finally in resignation he began to lick them clean, moaning softly the whole time.

When he had finished, Nandesy held him again from behind, and the boy rubbed more banana pulp on his hands. He went to work cleaning himself as before, looking a little brighter and also a little less fearful.

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When the second feeding was finished and the monkey’s hands were licked clean, Nandesy took him up securely a third time, stroked her hand several times over his back and belly and scratched gently with her fingers deep under his fur. Then she set him on a low garden table in the open and turned away to pick up another basket. The boys cried, “Aren’t you going to keep him?”

“Keep him?” she demanded. “I’m not putting him in a cage, if that’s what you mean.” She bent over the animal; he leaned away from her, but did not attempt to crawl or run away. “Got no mother, ka’i-ka’i—flew away and dropped you and didn’t come back.” She threw her head back and cackled at her own joke.

Beatriz watched as the monkey lifted one paw and looked at it, licked it, then chittered and reached tentatively toward the old woman’s long skirt before pulling back. His wrinkled infant face was losing the near-human look of misery it had worn when the boys first ran out with him from the brush; now his glittering eyes were peering up at the great height of the woman with wary interest. His wide nostrils flaring, he tilted his head back and sniffed, up toward the lap of her skirt where he had sat, licked his hands again, and appeared to make up his mind. The girl held her breath and said nothing.

Nandesy’s head was turned now toward Beatriz’s brother. She had the boy fixed in her black-eyed glare and was too busy scolding to notice what the little animal was doing. “I don’t keep him,” she snapped. “If he’s smart, he’ll stay around.” She pointed to the low brush at the edge of the field that rose rapidly into a dense canopy of trees and vines. “If he’s stupid, he’ll run away in there and some big snake will be gagging on his fur before the day is over.”

She looked down suddenly, startled. The monkey was clutching the coarse cloth of her skirt near the knee. “Eh!” she said sharply, and once again lifted him from behind, this time with one hand. The hem of the skirt rose after him, and she broke his hold with some difficulty, one finger at a time. The old woman held him firmly and inspected his paws, spitting once or twice on her crooked brown forefinger and rubbing the remaining stickiness from his narrow palms and digits. To the children’s surprise, she swung him up onto one shoulder, then let him go to find his own grip, as if she had forgotten all about him. One furry arm reached around her neck, and the bony fingers attached themselves to the woman’s graying rope of coarse braided hair, too thick for his paw to circle, as the skinny black toes curled into the faded cot5

ton fabric of her blouse. Nandesy told Beatriz and her brothers again to get about their work and not to stare.

“If he’s smart, he’ll hold on,” she said, and moved to help Beatriz’s mother lift a waist-high basket of green mangoes into the bed of the truck.

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Crow Ballad Michelle Valladares The children and babies cross the Rio Grande.

Who will pick our strawberries and tomatoes?

The government calls for a firm stand.

They bus tables, pick weeds, watched by black crows.

They come from the South crossing ancient lands.

Who will pick our strawberries and tomatoes?

Ancestral spirits of the Anasazi howl Diego, Maria y Lourdes. Fly black crows.

Some die on the journey tracked by coyotes.

Who will pick our strawberries and tomatoes?

Deportation, illegal immigration fill the news.

Rain, heat, dust and storms. The crows return.

Who will pick our strawberries and tomatoes?

The Incas and Mayans once ruled the Americas.

The fields are empty, our names covered in dust, All that remains are corn husks and black crows.

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Dharma Villanelle Michelle Valladares for Alex I read Ocean of Nectar on the flight to see my mother, a summer trip.

Across the Mexican American border 900 children flee.

State troopers, babies, coyotes — connected by dependent relationship.

Sit on a cushion, watch my mind; wisdom fills the sails of my ship.

The children leave violence of poor villages, risk the perilous journey.

I read Ocean of Nectar on the flight to Phoenix, a summer trip.

Yesterday, our friend died in Brooklyn, peaceful, free of cancer’s grip.

If we purify our mind, we purify our world. Buddha’s teachings are key.

Daughter, mother, friends — connected by dependent relationship.

108 degrees by noon. In my dream I am running, giving someone the slip.

We sit on the veranda, watch the mountains, sip hot, milky tea.

I read Ocean of Nectar, in the evenings with my mother, a summer trip.

A tourist dies on Camelback Mountain. I keep fear at bay with a stiff upper lip.

I swim on my back, miss my father, stare at a lone palm tree.

Strangers, husband, enemies — connected by dependent relationship.

The summer’s news breaks our hearts, unless we remember – we’re a chip off the glacier melting into the sea of emptiness, our ultimate reality.

I read Ocean of Nectar and spend time with my mother on this summer’s trip.

Chandrakirti shows how we truly exist — interconnected by dependent relationship.

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Small Garden, Bitter Weed Margaret Laidley You and I can turn and look at the silent river and wait. We know the current is there, hidden...

—William Stafford

M

eadowbrook is a sleepy little farming district situated in the parish of Portland at the northeastern tip of picturesque Jamaica; it is tucked away in a valley in the shadow of the brooding Ancomma Hills. Entry and exit to the community is via its one pothole-strewn main road which parallels the Back River. Most houses, their front yard gardens overflowing in riotous displays of colors, are on the right side of the street except where the river turns farther inland (which allows for building spaces on the left starting just below the town square). The river is shaded in places by spreading branches of mango, rose apple, and star apple trees, rooted along its embankment like sentinels. Like the river, Meadowbrook’s seeming tranquility masks strong undercurrents at play among the adults―undercurrents that might not be discernible to the casual watcher.

Depending on the caprice of the weather in these parts, the river can fluctuate between a chortling meander and a frightening roar as it heads to its rendezvous with the sea some four miles away; depending on who you ask, perspectives on Meadowbrook are bound to be different: It is not unusual for disenchanted residents to utter the aphorism, “Small garden, bitter weed,” to which the reassuring rejoinder is often, “There’s nothing wrong with the place... it’s the people that’s in it!” But the daily dynamics of life continue from dusk to dawn.

Nights are cool and intoxicating with the heady scent of basil, eucalyptus and rose apple pervading the air. The urgent celebratory cock-a-doodledoos of neighborhood roosters welcome the arrival of daybreak―for those who customarily mark the time in accordance with this alert, they say the cock has “dropped his drawers”―and the community slowly awakens to an admixture of sounds and scents: braying asses, bleating goats, and barking dogs. In the distance, the muffled horn of Kong’s Leyland bus tells potential commuters to get ready for the first pick-up at 5:00 a.m. While it is still dark, the clanging of pots and pans, the scent of wood smoke, fried johnnycakes, 9

codfish, and chocolate tea can motivate even the most reluctant to get out of bed. Most mornings Meadowbrook is shrouded in fog, but the sun rises swiftly over the hills and spreads its hungry rays across the valley, devouring the fog and the morning dew that glistens like shards of crystal on the grass.

Soon, shop shutters are raised to admit the first customers.

The quaint community square was home to two grocery stores facing off against each other like mighty gladiators. The proprietors, Estella King (Ms. Essie) on the right and Rita Masters on the left were the antagonists.

From behind their respective counters, they had a clear view of the street, but Ms. Essie had the advantage; she could watch overtly from her front porch or covertly from her house windows that overlooked the street―Rita’s living quarters were located at the rear of her premises. Both women kept a wary eye on each other and on which customer was shopping where; they traded insults and accusations, oftentimes through third parties, about who was luring the customers away.

The wily customers helped to fuel the animosity between the two shopkeepers in the hopes of ingratiating themselves into the good graces of either―or both―women, so as to gain favor and credit wherever possible.

Credit is an important commodity to a farming community whose livelihood depends on a good harvest. So there was no guilt in pitting one shopkeeper against the other if it redounded to the benefit of the tattler. In fact, it had been suggested to Estella that Rita referred to her as “dat coolie gal,” a pejorative for an Indian woman. Estella dealt in kind by labelling Rita a “nigger Chinese.” According to rumor, Rita “came into” her business after Hector Hung, the previous owner, suddenly returned to Hong Kong and was never seen or heard from again. Rita, the former clerk, was left to run the business. Speculation heightened when, a few months after Mas’ Hector disappeared, and seemingly without any change to her anatomy, Rita gave birth to a daughter whom she named Angel Masters. The child’s very fair complexion and “pretty” hair confirmed suspicions: “Rita ‘tricked’ Mas’ Hecky.” But life went on, post–Hector Hung.

The more well-to-do customers continued to patronize Ms. Essie’s “cash-on-delivery” establishment, while Ms. Rita’s clientele included those who mostly shopped on credit, or “trust,” as the locals liked to say. Ms. Essie reminded customers, in a not-so-subtle manner, that she did not extend credit; a sign in large red letters prominently displayed behind the counter

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screamed: “Mr. Credit is dead! Cause of death: poverty.” Despite the warning, some felt that Essie had her favorites to whom she secretly extended credit; the sign was just to warn off the “undesirables.” However, from time to time, Rita’s customers had to take their patronage to her rival.

Occasionally, Rita’s inventory was depleted. Whenever this happened, her patrons had the choice of either waiting for replenishment or making what seemed like a long trek across the street to acquire the much needed item(s) from that other enterprise. Like a good tactician, Ms. Essie was always prepared for this eventuality. In fact, she savored the moments: “Sorry,” she’d say, smugly, “I only have enough for my customers.” It was a game that played out more than once and they both knew how it would end. For Essie would move deliberately about her shop, pretending to be busy rearranging cans on the shelves or poring over stacks of paperwork, all the while humming to herself.

Finally, she would deign to return her attention to the patiently waiting client and feign surprise: “Wait... you still there?” Then, reluctantly, “A’right... but I don’t sell it by itself. It married.” This meant that a much needed package of rice, for example, could be matched with an unlikely item, such as a toothbrush. If Ms. Essie should feel especially mean-spirited, the item might be paired with Stayfree or some other brand of feminine napkin; it mattered not whether the customer was male or female. And the challenge was always the same, delivered with an unwavering deadpan expression: “They go together; take it or leave it. After all, I’m only trying to help you out here.” Invariably, they “take it.” The practice of marrying items was deemed illegal, but no one dared to report Ms. Essie’s transgressions to the government inspectors, who vigorously discourage such practices. Yet, despite her ornery attitude, Ms. Essie seemed to be very religious; she never missed the Sunday services. Neither did Ms. Rita.

The simultaneous shuttering of both stores at approximately 9:00 p.m. on Saturdays signaled a temporary halt to hostilities, a kind of détente. The antagonists would put aside their mean-spiritedness, put on their Sunday bests, and sashay to the nearby Meadowbrook Pentecostal Church of God, where they both worshiped. Those were the only times one can recall seeing, or hearing them, being cordial to each other: “Praise the Lord, Sister Masters, how you doing?”

“Praise the Lord, Sister King; I can’t complain. God is good.”

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They both would sit in the front pew, side by side; the Pastor would have it no other way―such upstanding citizens of the community, role models for everyone to imitate.

Meanwhile, the congregation was led by the middle-aged Pastor Alfred Roache. He was a rather dour man with a balding and sweaty pate, which he habitually mopped with a crisply starched sky-blue handkerchief. He also appeared to have a nervous condition which caused him to blink rapidly.

Pastor Roache was resented by many in the community, particularly young adults. He imagined them to be the root of all evil and frequently called upon God to punish them severely, unless they repented. As a consequence, the church had a paucity of membership from among this demographic.

The church was perched atop an elevation overlooking Bamboo, a popular diving hole on the Back River. Most Sundays, it seemed that all the young people gather at this spot, where their excited voices, in a deafening cacophony of shrieks, hoots, and giggles, threatened to overwhelm the hallelujahs, amens, and the pastor’s booming oratorical sermons and exhortations. Unmindful of the solemn business transpiring a short distance away, the young and adventurous dared each other with their exploits, diving from boulders at street level, to the depths of the blue-green waters below, splashing and frolicking about in unabashed pubescence. Never mind that they would be visible to anyone who ventured from the church to the outdoor latrine, which overlooked the river. The miracle was that none met their demise during this thrilling rite of passage, for one could have easily smashed his or her head against a stone during descent.

As for the children, unconcerned with the quirkiness of their elders, the tug of the River was powerful and life was idyllic. Carefree days were spent rafting, or overturning stones to capture elusive shrimp or trapping mullets, crayfish, and slippery eels in bamboo fish pots. But there was an even more spine-tingling activity in which they indulged: During torrential showers, the placid waters often become a roiling cauldron, teeming with coconuts and other debris; as the river rose and threatened to crest, teams of youngsters armed with long poles (to which they attach sharpened spikes) mustered alongside the embankment and attempted to snare the coconuts bobbing up and down in the muddy, roiled, and turbulent waters. They were fearless in the face of imminent danger, yet they could have been sucked in by the velocity of the current and swept away by the swiftly moving waters.

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In its more subdued state, the river served a solemn purpose: a shallow area downstream from the diving hole was used as a baptismal font.

The pastor had the honor of conducting the solemnities, ably assisted by two unflappable deacons who doubled as lifeguards. Many a candidate had been known to “catch the spirit” during immersion and a few had come close to drowning whilst in an entranced state. But Pastor Roache often restored order by applying no more than two slaps to the rear end of the believer, much to the amusement of church members and curious bystanders.

Pastor Roache was a bachelor, and had probably taken a vow of chastity. He lived in a modest two-room house on the church’s premises. Baba and Jill Lecky, along with their very attractive twenty-five-year-old daughter, Lilah, lived immediately across the street from the manse. Lilah was extremely proud of her voluptuous body and her waist-length curtain of dark hair. Her father enjoyed telling stories about the “white” side of his family, from which he claimed Lilah had inherited her good looks. In a small community such as Meadowbrook, which had little in the way of entertainment, Lilah’s activities afforded much pleasure to almost everyone; it was no secret to anyone that she liked to swim in the river, in the nude, early in the mornings. That was also the time of day that Pastor Roache liked to take his walks. “Nothing like an early morning walk,” he told anyone he met during his rounds. “Very invigorating . . . prepares the body for fasting.”

On one such morning, when the sun was not quite up and the fog still hung over the neighborhood, Pastor Roache went for his usual walk. Those who encountered him that morning recalled that he was whistling the tune “Immortal Invisible God Only Wise,” when he momentarily paused at the spot from which the divers hurl themselves to the depths of the waters below.

It was not known if he had already whistled the line, “In light inaccessible hid from our eyes.” But, for certain, his rapidly blinking eyes were involuntarily drawn to Lilah, who, mermaid-like, was sitting on a huge rock, slowly untangling her long hair, not a care in the world, and not a stitch of clothing on her enchanting body; with every pull on her hair, her breasts celebrated their freedom with a naughty little dance.

There was no fog over the warm waters of the river, so Pastor Roache was able to clearly discern the vision presented to him. Naturally, they said, he must have had the same experience many a young man had had when he encountered the naked Lilah. But the man of God was not about to just stand

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there, muted. He fought back. He called upon his God. Indeed, he was heard yelling, repeatedly, “Kill it, Lord! Kill it!” and “I rebuke you! In the name of the Lord, I rebuke you!” He made a hasty retreat to the sanctuary, where he fell to his knees in prayer and fasting. He remained there, in plaintive supplication, until well into the evening, when members began to file in for the 7:00 p.m. prayer meeting. Pastor Roache subsequently gave up his early morning strolls and steadfastly avoided the river, except on the occasions when he conducted baptismal rites; this ceremony was moved to a new location well above the area where he had seen the siren, and his fortitude had been severely tested.

One could say that, in many ways, Back River was reflective of the positive and negative aspects of existence within Meadowbrook, the many moods and quaint impulses of the adults, the capriciousness of youth. With their strong undercurrents tugging in many directions, the river and the community were one. These days, Back River is dried up in many places and Bamboo, the diving hole, is little more than a shallow pond; gone, also, is the baptismal font, and Pastor Roache has long been called to higher service.

One wonders now about the soul of the community and the soul of the residents, whether the devil is loose in the place. Edenic Meadowbrook was most quintessential of the human condition.

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Amnesty

written by MarĂ­a Eugenia Ramos translated by Carly Rubin

This park is beautiful, but the leaves on the trees die like the words and the kisses of the past.

The castles of fairy tales are like this: labyrinths of room after room where you’re afraid to go at night.

Those responsible for the cold forged glass panes out of hatred and now lie in their graves.

Only we will never rest in peace.

15

Elegy

written by María Eugenia Ramos translated by Carly Rubin

No mueras,

te amo tanto.

—César Vallejo Though it’s always the same and we’d like to say to somebody “brother, I love you so much” when he can’t hear us anymore; though the powerlessness turns us into barren trees as if struck by lightning, who knows how much time we’ll keep looking, watering corners as if we hoped that seeds might sprout, until one day the certainty overwhelms us that they’re the living and we are the dead.

16

The Girl Whose Mother Turned into a Tree Lisa Simon

O

nce there was a girl whose mother turned into a tree. The change was not sudden for trees grow slowly, and when the girl realized what had happened, it was too late.

The girl and her mother lived in a small house with a large yard where flora grew tall and wild. Before she became a tree, the mother spent her days and much of each evening in this garden. Under her watch, seeds sent roots deep into the ground, raspberries grew like weeds, filling and sweetening, and snakes and mice moved underneath delicate leaves.

Behind the small house was a stone wall, and behind that wall lived the three Old Ones. Through gaps in the dividing wall, the three ancients observed the girl and her mother. The Oldest Old One watched in the morning, noticing the garden’s lack of order or cultivation. The Youngest Old One watched in the evening as the girl gathered berries and beans, leaves and roots for their dinner. And the Third One watched in the broadest part of the day, noticing that the mother stayed longer and longer in the garden until one day she grew unable to leave it at all.

That day, when the girl looked for her mother in the garden, she found a small but sturdy apple tree in the place where her mother usually sat. The girl put her ear to the tree’s trunk and heard what sounded like a heart beating.

When she rested her head against the tree, listening to the pulsing, she could feel the same warmth she always felt from her mother’s skin.

“Mother?” she asked and heard her mother’s whisper, “Do not leave me.” And the girl promised her mother that she would not leave.

For a long while, the girl carried on as before, waiting for her mother to return. She tended to the garden and made her meals from what grew within it, just as she had with her mother. She cared for the tree and the tree, watched over by her daughter, flourished, spreading leaves to gather in the sun’s light and turn it into food for herself.

But what can become of a girl whose mother is a tree and who has no one else?

“The weeds are the cause of this!” declared the Oldest Old One, and she took care to sweep errant seeds out of their yard and to bend low to pull out tiny sprouts that had the power to turn, in a blink, into ineradicable weeds. But she paused to watch the girl searching for food in the garden.

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“It is her decision to ask for nothing,” observed the Youngest Old One. “But that is also the problem. Until it is named, it cannot be changed.”

“Without the weeds, there is no food,” the Third Old One reminded the eldest. And to the Youngest she said, “Naming is needed, but it cannot be rushed.” And in this way the Old Ones continued on, watching without interference, waiting.

As time passed, the days grew shorter and in that shortening, the weeds and berries shriveled into husks. The garden became bare and the girl had too little to eat.

Hungry, she came and sat beside the tree, leaning her head against her mother to listen to her heartbeat. She was hungry and lonely and uncertain of what she could do to help herself. But before she could speak of this, she heard her mother’s voice whisper from inside the tree, “Do not leave me,” and so when the girl did speak, it was to promise that she would not leave.

She fell asleep curled against the curve of the tree’s trunk.

When she awoke, three apples hung from the tree where before there had only been leaves. Stretching, the girl was just able to touch the apple on the lowest branch. As her fingers brushed against it, the branch bent and the apple rested against her cheek as lightly as a teardrop. As she held it, cool and smooth against her skin, the apple came free into her hand.

The Old Ones watched it all. Although in their long lives they had seen many things, they marveled that the mother tree had been able to produce three apples overnight. As they watched the girl eat the apple, the Oldest Old One noticed that the apple’s seeds were nuggets of pure gold. The Youngest Old One noticed how carefully the girl ate the fruit and how, when she found the golden seeds, she seemed not to know at first what they meant. But only the Third Old One noticed how with each bite, the girl drew closer to the tree. Only the Third Old One noticed that the girl was coming to resemble her tree mother.

With the golden seeds from the apple, the girl was able to buy the food her garden no longer provided and for seven days she had enough to eat. In that time she tended the dormant garden, watering the tree and gathering dead leaves and fallen branches to use for heat. In the evening, she sat with her mother and sang to her. And the Old Ones watched and waited.

After seven days, when all her food was gone, the girl came again to her tree mother. Two apples remained. The girl stretched to touch the lowest hanging apple. Again the branch bent and this time the apple came to rest 18

against her mouth. For a moment, the girl held the apple to her lips, remembering her life before her mother became a tree. “Why is my mother a tree?” she asked aloud.

“It is the weeds,” the Oldest Old One whispered. Although she knew the answer was more complicated than that, she did not know how to explain it to the girl.

“It is an opportunity,” the Youngest Old One sang softly, “though it may not seem to be.”

“It is a choice you must make and then remake,” the Third One said.

The girl, hearing soft voices, turned towards the tall stone wall covered in ivy. What was behind it? she wondered and took a step towards the wall, the second apple in her hand. But as she did, she heard her mother’s voice, “You have promised,” and she knew that she could not go farther. And so she turned her back on the Old Ones and came back to the tree.

The girl ate the second apple. Then she took the handful of golden seeds out into the neighborhood to trade them for food. As before, she had enough food for seven days and was able to care for the sleeping garden, to gather wood for fuel, and to sing to her mother. But she did not forget the stone wall and each day, as she did her chores, she moved closer to it wondering what was behind it.

In this way, seven days passed and at the end of this second week, all of her food was again gone. She came to the tree and looked up at the last apple.

“What will I do when there are none?” she asked. But silence was the only answer. Her hunger was so strong she felt she would collapse under its force.

She reached up towards the last apple even though it was too high above her.

And as she reached, it bent towards her low enough to touch the crown of her head. Its touch released something and the girl fell to her knees, taken over by memories of her mother before she became a tree. The last apple fell and rolled to a stop beside her. She picked it up.

The Oldest Old One brought the ladder and leaned it against their side of the wall. “It is time,” the Youngest Old One agreed and held the ladder as the Third One climbed it to reach over the wall. When she reached the top, the three Old Ones sang out to the girl in a single note of possibility.

The girl stood. In one hand, she held the apple, uneaten. With the other, she steadied herself on the tree, its heartbeat pulsing against her palm. The Old One’s song filled the yard.

The girl looked to the wall and for the first time saw the wizened, wrin19

kled face of the Third Old One. “Come,” this Old One said to her and held out her hand.

But how could she? The wall towered above her and there was no ladder on her side of it.

“Come,” sang the Old Ones, all three ancient faces peering over the wall. And their voices wove together in the possibility of what could be. But beneath their song she heard her mother whisper, “Your promise.”

The girl turned away from the wall. “It is too high,” she said. Standing alone with only the apple in her hand, she felt hunger and despair overwhelm her. “It is too hard,” she said.

“Come,” the Old Ones sang to the girl and in this word there was something new, a warning perhaps, something that broke the tree’s heart in two.

The girl felt the tree’s heart stop. Dropping the apple, she wrapped her arms around the trunk, but it was too late. Its heart gone, the tree crumbled into dust. Within moments the girl was holding nothing. Within moments the lightest of winds swept up the dust and sent what was left of her mother dancing out into the world.

The Old Ones had watched it all. “We have tried,” the Oldest Old One said. “And she has refused,” the Youngest Old One agreed. “It is a decision she will have to make and then remake,” the Third One said as a second breath of wind swept through the yard.

And with this breeze everything was gone—the house, the garden, the wall that had separated her from the Old Ones. And the Old Ones were gone too. Only their fading voices were left behind until in a whisper they were gone too.

There was only silence.

The apple rested against the girl’s feet. She picked it up and held it to her cheek feeling its cool skin against her own. Her mother was gone, but her voiced promise lingered. She held the apple to her heart and felt an echo of the Old One’s song hum beneath her feet. She held the apple in her hands and felt its heft. And then she began her walk out into the world.

20

Hydrangea Jermaine Brown They grew wild around Grandma’s slung-way-down-a-dirt-road two-room shack in Perry, Georgia.

Snipped or pulled at the root, she’d let them dry in the sun.

Did she splay them in the lapel of a threadbare blouse to head to town, or tuck them in the dog-eared brim of her good Sunday-service hat— the skin on her hands like the tapioca petals frail and dry as moth wings.

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To My Nephew, Who Is One Jermaine Brown Boundless and indefatigable, you persevere.

Each wobbly step, a victory.

Coffee table corners and chair legs, your buttress, doorknobs, your guide.

But when you’re spent from triumph, only the top of the cat’s head will do.

Man and beast survey the living room.

Kitty, resigned to his fate, supports the plump hand, if only for a moment, then flits off to more urgent matters and you plop with a thumb.

No matter, you’re a speckless version of life— you approach obstacles with giddy expectation.

You latch to a shelf, hoist yourself up, giggle and squeal— the electricity of possibility tingles you from inside out.

One step, two steps.

Soon you’re walking; no, running, into the void of the unknown.

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Nymphaeaceae Henry Bunch My boys and I will walk down that dirt road I wandered as a child, and pick wild berries like my brothers and I used to. Toads may harp on darkness as a mallard buries beak and neck down to the hilt in green pond, cricket frogs might squat on water lilies, then the geese will fly down from beyond in late September, bringing winter willies, setting down unsettling ideas about shoveling and buying tires as we sit and eat in pizzerias, calculating, building pygmy fires in our psyches, while our children drift and stare, immersed in snowscapes: pure, and fresh, and there.

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Hedgehog’s Song Henry Bunch It felt strange to feel your nimble hand touch mine. I thought it was an accident at first when—as I passed you papers—you had pressed your fingers over mine. So when you pressed again each time you startled me— a cold spark showered, jumped from spine to heart, struck up the burnt-out chanters of my heart, and half that night I thought of your warm hand and felt it turn a key and open me, set drafts adrift as if by accident, like papers flying off the sill when guests leave windows open and just leave you by yourself, your living room a mess. When you walked into class next week my iron heart glowed hot enough to bend, and later when we all passed out our poems and your hand touched mine again I saw no accident in how you bravely reached and fathomed me.

Through that act you tried to recreate me in your image, just as I had shaped you in my reveries, those accidental flights that shine with gusto on the heart.

My mind flew up the stratosphere, a hand of red clay, yet a hand of God, and when class ended I came out confused. When mystery has caught and stricken me I let it wash me off my way, my hands and body spread against its waters. You kept redirecting all my thoughts, my heart a cloud of sighs. Why start this accident 24

with me? How serious an accident do you propose? I then remembered when my ex and I had parted ways, how heart and soul shut down, how all things blurred in my eyes. I asked myself if I could see you clearly now, if I could grasp your hand, our hands together, crushed in happy accident, if you were a mirage, if I could bear it when you left me, if my heart could bear it all.

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Play Excerpt: The Long Wet Grass Seamus Scanlon

Role of WOMAN won Best Actress for Anna Nugent at The 1st Irish Theatre Festival, September 2014

WOMAN I didn’t mean it at all. It was a momentary lapse. It was minor. That poor boy Brit soldier was dying. His eyes were eating me up. I could not look away. He was crying for his mother. (Beat) He crawled in from the hard concrete to the garden to be lying on something softer. Something living. Something permeable. Something closer to nature. Closer to the earth. Closer to heaven. There was black red blood flowing out of him. There was so much. It was black as the night is here. I was thinking of his mother. The poor woman. And him.

And him dying far far far from home in a West Belfast street. All he could see were the Hills of Belfast, and the towers of Divis and my face. It was only a drink of water. I held his shaking hand so he could hold it. He had boy hands only. He was trying to tell me something. I bent down close so I could hear what he said. (Beat) He said, “I am so afraid.” Bright black blood was flowing out of his mouth. It was seeping through narrow gaps in his teeth. It was pooling under his tongue. His teeth were so white. I remembered that. It is funny the things you remember. He said...

VICTOR (very agitated) I know—I know!! Jesus! (Beat) I know all that. I was there sure. You should have just left him. I was the one that shot him from the top of Divis. It was raining hard and there was a strong crosswind at the top of the flats. The vector cotangents of the trajectory got distorted by the wind and rain. The first shot got him in the neck. The second bullet went askew. I think it hit a cat.

When you fire the first bullet, the film of water on the barrel evaporates and clouds the sight. The bullet that hit him careened down through his torso and hit his lungs, his pancreas, his liver and his spleen. That is why the blood was so black. That Brit should have been dead straight off if the bullet went true and hit him in the head. Then none of this would have happened.

WOMAN So you are fucken blaming the Irish weather, is it?

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VICTOR No. It was bad timing is all. I saw him crawl away. I knew he had it. I had to leave. There was a Brit helicopter hovering. I only heard about the water disaster thing later on.

WOMAN Is it so bad?

VICTOR (bothered) No. Not so bad. (Beat) But it’s in the rules.

WOMAN (frustrated) Fuck the rules. (Beat) Victor, please.

VICTOR It can’t be undone—the needle is in too deep.

WOMAN What fucking needle? What are you talking about?

VICTOR You know yourself.

WOMAN No—I don’t know—this is not Top of the Fucken Pops. Victor, for me. For old times? Look at me, Victor.

(VICTOR looks at her.)

VICTOR There are no old times anymore—there is only Callow Lake and the dark and the swaying black shadows. And the rain soon coming off the bare black mountain.

WOMAN There is us, Victor.

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VICTOR There is no us.

WOMAN There was. You just didn’t know it.

VICTOR There is no us.

WOMAN Well, at least there is me. There is life here and in me and in the wind and in the deep lake where black eels swam before me and away from me and there is life in those trees that are bent crooked by the wind coming down off the mountains that I loved. And that loved me back. (Cries quietly) And I was a girl here once. I watched out for you walking the road. And the river fields.

And you never looked over.

VICTOR (hesitant) I never knew.

WOMAN You never knew anything. You still don’t. You’re a disease, Victor, I fucken caught. You are pure stupid.

VICTOR Jesus—I am supposed to be Mensa material!

28

The Pillar in the Tempest Dan Altano In youth each breath bestowed a luxury, what Hell to find this life too bland to taste.

When you regret do so constructively, why dwell inside the nights you can’t replace?

A toast to self-inflicted misery, let’s drink to the imperfect day that’s done.

Our souls know well the cryptic history, when synced our secret burdens weigh as one.

Expose the scars disguised in cloaks of mirth, setting free the killer from the sentence.

Then show your darkest skies and soak the earth, let me be the pillar in your tempest.

Unmovable through all that took to flight.

How beautiful your flaws do look tonight.

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the most natural thing Gisella Dionio we met little less than a week before the moon at a distance reaching quietly through the window so that everything i saw was either shadow or heavy breath and i couldn’t help but stare at the ripples it formed thinking his chest was like the ocean or dunes of sand or little hills carved from marble just waves crashing into me into my shore where i so wholly surrendered to his power “isn’t it just the most natural thing?” i can still hear each word in echoes across uncharted land smell his skin beneath the roots of my hair— one time at a restaurant the waiter wore his cologne and later that night i dreamt i was drowning

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The Names of Things Joseph Tirella You want to learn the names of things; birds, trees, rocks, shrubs, etc.

You want to know more than just roses and tulips, water lilies or mums, the flowers that sit on your mother’s table in their waterlogged sarcophagi.

You want to learn about the texture of a thistle its contours and edges how the light reflects its sharp shades of purple.

You want to know your alba from your alpina argenta from asurea.

(And those are just some of the A’s).

So much to learn, so much to learn.

An hour each day devoted to the things of this world.

Animals and flowers, cloud and their endless formations. Stars and their Latinized constellations and this way sic itur ad astra.

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Not people, though. You have had enough of people.

There are too many people, too many words, too many Babels. It never ends.

With each year, with each added tree ring stamped on your back and feet the less you desire things made of metal and plastic and fiberglass. (The truth is: nothing should ever be made of fiberglass.)

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Eleven Ways for a New York Native to Look at Texas Joseph Tirella I. Blue lightning, gray spring sky.

North Texas morning.

II. Blinking red light over the crossroads, no cars in sight.

III. The morning dew on the window is all that keeps me from the blue jay.

IV. Milky lights pepper the southern sky, smiling Big Dipper.

V. A whiptail sails overhead, noon heat rising late spring on the plains.

VI. The water tower stands tall and defiant against the heat of the sunrise.

VII. Smoke wafts through the deep crevices of her face when she laughs.

VIII. The sparrow and the finch dart along Route 79, trucks at a red light.

IX. The famous writer’s house stands empty 33

as Old Lady Taylor walks in its halls.

X. The purple buds of the wheat stalks stay still in the prairie wind.

XI. The Zen cowboy spoke, and I listened.

Not a word wasted.

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Chapter One Carly Trunkwalter

I

picked up and left, believing I could leave everything I knew about myself behind. The people in my hometown weren’t going anywhere. At night, clusters of us—some went to the community college and others worked in construction or restaurants—would park cars in front of the dim lights of convenience stores and make plans. Breathing cigarette smoke into each other’s faces, leaning against car doors, we’d ask each other, “Where should we go?” Guys were always looking for a fix. Girls just wanted to go somewhere for the sake of leaving.

We’d all agree the plan was to buy drugs.

Or fireworks.

Every one of us wanted something explosive to happen in our lives.

Groups, equal amounts girls and guys, situated themselves into the backseats of the coolest cars, the girls atop the laps of their counterparts, and we’d drive. Never in any particular direction, either to a neighboring town where one guy knew another holding pot or to Philly, where we’d cross the sparkling Ben Franklin just to take a quick turn leading to the city’s outskirts. The car would crawl up forgotten alley streets, all of us peering out the window at flickering lamps illuminating desolate intersections all different shades of brick and broken-down. Undefined sidewalks sunk into the roads. These drives made me nervous. Either cops were going to turn the corner and handcuff us, or worse, a gun would replace the voice of a concerned officer, and some addict would shoot, hoping for the contents within the rusting Firebird, Sebring, or station wagon coasting by. None of us had money.

The people we went to meet, I never clearly saw their faces. We were never invited inside their homes. Pickup was always on a street corner. One of the guys sitting on the passenger side would roll down his window, take a bag from a thin, pale hand, and replace the bag with cash. The faces were all so similar. Thin young kids, pale with sporadic tan whiskery hairs spread across their chin and lips. Their eyes never met the girl eyes that stared from inside the car. There was no passion, just need. The window would roll back up, the car would set into gear, and we would smoothly leave the forgotten neighborhood as if nothing had ever happened.

Everyone, for one reason or another, wanted to get high, one way or another. It was usually the same way. In the bedroom of a guy whose parents 35

didn’t care or weren’t home, seven of us crammed onto his bed, spilling over the floor to smoke pot. We’d pass two blunts around. Some kids swallowed blue pills and forgot to listen anymore. They stopped being funny. There was the occasional flask of whiskey, which everyone liked to squint at as they took sips. There were always cigarettes. A cold nitrous tank and dirty mushrooms were brought out occasionally at the apartments of older guys who lived around the corner from their mothers.

I tried most of it but always remembered that I liked myself more when I wasn’t trying to numb the day. I would get high and feel melancholy for my friends as they sat with me, their eyes contently fading after the burst of enthusiasm regarding the high was over.

••••• I didn’t come to New York right away. My feeling of being trapped in New Jersey had me escaping to different places. I had been in love with horses all of my life, and those animals both saved and mobilized me. I moved to the Berkshires with a thoroughbred named Red. I like to think I grew up in those Massachusetts mountains. I spent a lot of time alone up there, looking into the deep sky at stars that felt so close to my face when I lied on the grass staring upward. No one expected me to be anything more than a girl with a horse.

I chose to reinvent myself there. It was a good feeling not to have a history.

I had left everything behind for the first time. My boyfriend, who was never sober. My parents, whose love suffocated my decision-making, my best friend, who made me promise never to go anywhere without her. It felt good to be selfish and leave them all. I became accustomed to the new work, the long days outside with over a dozen horses to look after, and my strict boss, Mark, who ordered me, in a German accent, to tack up horses every hour. I tried hard to prove myself to my new housemate, Dana, a girl from Chicago whom I shared a little barn house with. I woke to a six o’clock alarm every morning. To a uniform of tan breeches and snug leather boots. Dana and I would walk down the hill to a sleeping barn full of horses. We’d slide the oversized door open to the sound of throaty animal bellows, of horses waiting for their buckets to be filled with sweet molasses-covered oats. I’d circulate soft flakes of hay throughout the barn while Dana walked buckets of grain over the herringbone brick floor to impatient sets of brown eyes.

I had no one warning me to be careful, so I took great risks in my rid36

ing. Mark instructed me to be fearless. He pushed Red and me toward my competition goals. He drilled us to perform to new high standards. Red was obstinate and fought the work; only eventually did he give in, rounding his head into a crown, lifting his steps and carrying his own weight with deliberate motions and grace. We trained all summer and into the fall on the farm carved out of the mountains. At the first frost of winter, we packed up all the horses, already downed with thick winter coats, and drove to North Carolina.

••••• It was warm that December, the only winter of my life when I dodged the cold of the north. Pecan trees lined the winding drive of the farm where we stayed. They didn’t produce any fruit the year I was there. Southern Pines was flat, and the grass was bright yellow-green from the warm winter sun.

The air was slightly thick.

Dana and I took up a new set of daily chores. We clipped off all the horses’ thick fur coats; their hair fell to the concrete in tidy clumps, like the tops to hundreds of calico powder brushes. We raked pine straw off the weak shoots of winter grass and burnt it, leaving a choking black fog hanging in the air. Dana was excited for the winter down south. We were “finally gonna have some fun,” she said. There was an army base that bordered Southern Pines with plenty of nightlife.

The first weekend in the South, we got dressed in real women’s clothing and drove forty minutes on lonely backroads surrounded by pines. Dana had the country radio station screaming as we cut the truck through the dark.

I could see the starry shoulders of the Orion constellation through her open sunroof, bright against the black sky. We emerged from the dark onto a strip with oversized bars and neon signs. I looked in the passenger-side mirror at my lipstick. Dana twisted and fluffed her hair. “Ready for a good time?” We had arrived at Fort Bragg.

Every bar had a mechanical bull, and men outnumbered women five times over. It felt good to have a place for finding trouble after a summer in the mountains. One bar after the next, we surveyed the crowds. Hungry eyes met ours, and we smiled. We drank vodka and danced with each other, meeting more men. It was fun. Dana asked if I was having a good time, she met someone she really thought was good-looking and pointed him out. I agreed he looked good. Many of them had blonde hair cut short and brown or blue 37

eyes that were sweet but dull. Only one thing was on their minds. My conversation was dying rapidly with one who asked me what I did. When I told him over loud music that I worked with horses, he just said, “Cool.” His eyes indicating that I could ride him anytime. I smiled and walked off the dance floor, explaining that I needed another drink.

I waited at the bar, watching Dana dance. There were lots of guys bullshitting around me, all here for the same reason. To wade slowly through Bush’s war. I heard laughter. There was a pool table in the corner, occupied with two pairs. A tall pale-blue-eyed kid stood at the table, laughing with his friends. He immediately caught my attention, looking more real to me than anyone else there. He wasn’t out hunting for women; he had a permanent smile, his body language was loose. I watched him put an arm over his friend’s shoulder and playfully wrestle him around. He was strong but gentle and had everyone around him laughing too.

“We have to get out of here.” Dana suddenly pulled at my arm.

“What? What’s wrong?” I said.

“I just puked in the bathroom. I want to go home.”

I looked at her, red-eyed, limp hair around her face.

“All right. I can drive. Don’t worry.”

“You are not driving my truck,” she paused. “No. I can drive. I just want to go. Now.” I placed my drink at the bar, took a last look in his direction, at the paleblue-eyed boy, and wished I had met him.

The next morning, Dana and I went to work. She disregarded her hangover completely. We trotted a few pairs of horses in the park across from the farm, talking about the night before.

“I can’t believe you didn’t like anybody,” said Dana.

“I did, right before you wanted to leave.”

“We could have stayed. Who was he? Did I meet him?”

“He had black hair and blue eyes. You didn’t meet him. I didn’t even get to meet him.”

“Well, we are going back this weekend. The same guys hang out at that Big Apple Bar all the time.”

We trotted the last pair of horses around the park.

I thought about him all week. His tight black T-shirt. The way he seemed so casual with himself. The sleeve tattoo on his arm. I hoped he would be at the bar on Saturday night.

38

We drove through the pines back to the strip. He wasn’t there when we arrived at the bar this time and my eyes stopped searching. He wasn’t going to meet me. Dana and I danced, and I made myself lost in the music. I didn’t care who was putting their hands on me, I just danced. I had the horses, and I was going on a gallop the next day, which excited me more than the guys did here. I was enjoying the vodka and being out, knowing there was no one to impress. I took a break from the floor after a short wide man put his hands on my breasts. I sat at the bar trying to forget it. I looked at the pool table, at a group of young men that resembled those from last weekend. I searched for him.

Nowhere.

“You want to play with us?” the voice startled me. It was him. Up close, his face was soft and shaven, with a hard look. His eyes were so pale yet strangely calming. He stared at me squarely, then smiled.

“Yes.” I said.

“You want another drink?” he asked.

“Okay. Yes.” He raised his arm and grabbed the attention of the bartender, who smiled at us with a friendly face. This guy was smooth.

We played without exchanging names. Then we sat and talked. He was from Detroit; he and his twin brother were both serving because it was either that or jail time. He looked like such a kid, such a sweetheart I couldn’t imagine how he could have done anything wrong. He told me he had stolen a car for a joy ride, on more than one occasion.

“Grand theft auto,” he smiled like it was cool.

It’s not like I thought it was sexy, but it didn’t make him less desirable to me. I only thought he was wild. It also meant that he wasn’t here fighting by choice, which I liked about him. He had been overseas twice, he was a trained sniper, and he had killed people.

He ran a single finger down my arm and took hold of my wrists with both his hands and called me beautiful as if he had just confessed to me all his secrets.

••••• Maybe he liked me because I was casual compared to his world of regiments and ridicule. He had a habit of calling me promptly at eleven o’clock as I lay 39

in bed, smelling faintly of horse, having just completed my final night-check around the stables and patting Red good night. We talked about his mother back in Detroit and how he didn’t come from a good neighborhood. I told him about all the excitement the year has been with the horses, traveling here, and meeting him. I told him about the deviant friends I had back home and how I used to get in trouble too where I came from.

“I want you to be safe. You’re too wild,” he said “I was. Not any more though.”

“You’re a wild child. I could see it the way you could shoot pool, you know.”

I laughed and rolled in bed, touching myself and wanting to see him.

“I want to see you again,” he said.

“I want to see you again too.”

••••• We would go to dinner. He would talk about his training. He was prepping for isolated training, and in a few days, he would leave for two weeks without any way for me to get in touch with him. We spent the night before he left together. He held me beneath him. He kissed me like he wanted to make me understand something. Like he was saying he didn’t want to leave me. In the morning, he woke us up early.

“You can stay awhile longer. My friend can take you home when you want to leave.”

I was looking out his kitchen window when he said this. He came from behind me and held me. In front of me a curve of tan, white, and sand-colored houses wrapped around the Fort Bragg housing development, all too perfect and similar. Identical hollow boxes to call home. I couldn’t place where we were on the map. A small winding city of lifeless squares, all hanging about, waiting to be emptied and repossessed. He was not like the other guys, I thought. The walls here were too clean for Jack’s pale eyes. Little flints of white were falling into view.

“It’s snowing.” I said. I couldn’t believe there were actual snowflakes accumulating on the ground.

“It’ll be gone in a hour,” he said.

He kissed my cheek and told me softly that what he had experienced with me last night was the best he ever felt.

40

“I want you to have this,” he said as he opened my fingers. He placed a felt bag in my hand. “Open it.”

I pulled at the drawstring and pulled a bracelet out.

“Wear it while I’m gone.”

It was sterling silver with his name engraved into in.

“Are you sure you want me to have this?” I asked as I slid it over my hand. It was loose and I thought it might fall off. “I’ll never take it off.”

I felt damp and cold. It was such a contrast to the heat and sweat of the night. The weather had changed so drastically, and I didn’t have warm clothes. I shivered. In the daylight, his house felt bare and cold.

“Jack,” I said, turning around in his arms. “I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll be back in two weeks.”

“Where are you going exactly?”

“They don’t tell me that,” he said. He lifted himself away from me. “All right. I got to go.” His things were all in order at the door. He had on those tan graphic camouflage pants that made him look like someone else.

“Here’s the number of my friend.” He had written it out on a receipt from the Big Apple Bar and laid it out on the counter.

“Take a shower if you’d like, and take one of my T-shirts from the closet. Take whatever you want.”

We held each other one last time at the door, then parted.

“I’ll think of you the whole time.”

“I’ll think of you too,” I said.

In those two weeks, I concentrated on my horse. Red and I were becoming a pair. I learned the extended trot, and Mark was pleased with my commitment to the sport and my straight yet supple posture in the saddle.

I was taking his criticisms well. Dana had signed into the first event of the season, to take place in February, and Mark finally given me the permission to sign into competition as well. I was learning new things about Red too.

I’d take a round bristle brush to the white star on his forehead during night check, and he’d close his eyes with content as I massaged his temples. I kept Jack’s bracelet on my nightstand to remind me of our fun together.

I didn’t receive a call at the end of the second week when Jack said he’d be back. I didn’t know if he had even gotten back. I didn’t try to call him.

Our time together felt so distant that I began to think he’d forgotten about me. I didn’t want to hurt myself by asking. Toward the end of the third week, my phone rang. My nerves went numb. It was him; he had been delayed 41

because his uncle had died in Detroit. After his training, he went straight to the funeral. I told him how sorry I was. I was unsure of his voice. What used to be energetic seemed quiet. I hoped he hadn’t changed since he went away.

“When can I see you?” he asked.

“I wish it were sooner, but this Saturday,” I said.

“I want to see you tonight. Can I come to you?”

As a general rule, we were not to have strangers over, but I couldn’t say no to him. His voice was too urgent. Dana had broken the rule before, so I gave in.

“But you are going to have to leave by midnight,” I said.

“Where do you live? Some sort of convent?” he asked with a laugh.

It made me laugh too, at the absurdity of two adults living under such restrictions. The tension in our voices broke.

“Yeah. It’s kinda like that,” I said.

Quickly things resumed and escalated from where we had left off. We embraced and He held onto me as if I were in danger of disappearing from his world. We both knew what we had wasn’t going to last. I’d meet up with him every time Dana and I came to the strip. We watched Dana dance with different men each week, always looking for someone new.

“I’m glad you don’t do that,” said Jack “What?”

“Flirt with different guys all the time.” He held me tightly. “It’d make me have to punch something.”

“No.” I looked at him. “I don’t have a reason to. I’m not attracted to anyone else.”

“Me neither.”

I hadn’t noticed before just how vulnerable he was.

••••• The two of us were drinking beer in the driveway of Jack’s good friend’s army home, on a warm February afternoon. Spring was trying hard to solidify its place early. It was after my first competition. I had placed eighth and was on a real high from it.

The house was one of the tan-colored ones and Jack’s friend owned it; this lifestyle wasn’t temporary for him. He called himself a sniper. It seemed like the cool title to have for this war. He was handsome with a strong square 42

jaw, not clean-shaven. His wife was beautiful. She wore a bohemian blue dress the day I was there and had a broad smile. Their son stood beside her, and she smoothed his hair and put her hand on his back. She wasn’t much older than me. She was thin almost fragile, and it was hard to imagine her having a baby. She talked to me as if I were an old friend and also married.

“Isn’t it lonely when they go away?” she asked.

“Yeah. It is,” I told her. I looked down at the boy and smiled. The truth was, it was lonely, but I didn’t move here for Jack, so I didn’t really know what it was like waiting for your kid’s father to come home alive. I didn’t have a clue what it would be like living in that house alone out here and didn’t want to.

Some of the guys were headed overseas soon, and it was one of the last times they’d all be together. Jack and I enjoyed the sun. His friend was grilling burgers, and I watched him as Jack and he talked.

“Yeah,” he said. “You ready to blow the place up?”

“Oh. I’m ready,” Jack said with all his natural confidence.

I looked at Jack suddenly. The two of them held their beers out and clinked the glass, nodding and guzzling it down. Jack was going on this trip too? I kept quiet, waiting to hear it from him. The night moved forward without any more mentions of the war; it got dark outside. The few people that were left said their goodbyes.

Jack, his friend, and I made our way inside. The wife and child were already inside playing a card game on the living room carpet.

“Jamie,” he said to his son, “go get your guitar.”

The kid lit up and ran out of the room.

“I got some mushrooms the other day. There’s enough for the four of us,” the friend told us. “You ready to trip?”

“Ask her.” Jack smiled at me. “She’s the wild one.”

“No,” I said. “No, I’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

“She trains horses,” Jack said.

“Well, you don’t have a problem if we all trip without you? Do you?”

“Not at all,” I said.

The kid ran back into the room then. He carried a miniature amplifier and plugged it into the wall. He resembled a caricature of an adult. Jack and I were sitting on a love seat and listened. He was good, that kid. He strummed with delicate fingers as, one by one, his parents and Jack took trips into the bathroom to eat their doses of mushrooms. The wife lay on the couch with 43

her husband and relaxed into his body then. They fit each other. He pet her head as she massaged his. It looked like a peaceful partnership those two created, something to envy or hope for. Jack and I rested on one another too. The kid retired from playing music and demonstrated a new game to us, building a block tower. We all laughed and his mother praised him. “He’s really the best form of entertainment,” she smiled.

There was a light, mellow high across the room. The four of us moved around the place as Jack’s friend took us for a tour of the house. He had a drum set upstairs, and we all took turns ripping into it. We were having a good time. We were existing moment to moment. Jack and I returned to the love seat. The couple called their boy to bed. He gave us both a kiss before his father scooped him into his arms; he was a really cute kid.

Jack and I were left alone then. We touched each other lightly, then kissed. He pulled me into him, and I closed my eyes tight, holding back tears. The tops of my cheeks were wet. Noticing, he pulled away and held my shoulders, looking into my eyes.

“Hey,” he whispered.

I looked down. My lips were tight.

“Hey,” he said again and shook me. “What’s the matter?”

Still looking down, I told him, “You’re leaving too.”

“I am.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“I was going to.”

“When?”

“Tonight,” he said. “Please don’t cry.”

I cried then. Hard. He squeezed me and made all my tears come out.

When I gained my composure, I asked, “For how long?”

“I’m not sure. It could be a month. Or it could be three or six months.”

“I’m leaving North Carolina the middle of March.” I said. “I won’t see you?”

“We have two more weeks to see each other. Come on. I don’t want to spend the little time we have being upset. Let’s have a good time. Please. It’s what I want.”

“It’s what I want too.”

“We can still write to each other after I go. I’ll have e-mail.”

“All right,” I said. “All right.”

44

••••• The day he left, I was depressed. Everything felt very far away. It hurt me to think about his pale eyes surveying the sand of Iraq, in the face of a war so much of our country was unsure of. My head was cloudy as I saddled Red for a hard gallop. I felt liquid in my motions, like I wasn’t alive on earth. I was beside myself with angst. In the field, I gouged at Red’s sides with spurs, kicking him hard and smacking him with a whip over and over, beating him to release my confused emotions. He didn’t understand, his body flinched, and he took off. He moved powerfully beneath my shaky legs. I could see his threadlike veins rise under the thin skin on his neck and I kicked him again.

We both breathed hard. He was covering ground. His stride was a steady rocking and felt as smooth as flying. I looked in the sky and focused on a plane and imagined Jack was on that plane.

Red tripped then. Suddenly and hard and his front end went down. With a crashing force, I came out of the tack, my hands grabbed at the air, searching the empty space where Red’s neck should be. The back of my head hit the ground. I remember seeing Red lift his body up heavily, his whole right side covered with sand. He stood, looking at me, heaving out of his wide nostrils.

His chest lifted and fell heavy from the run. His muzzle was scraped and bleeding red. I got up and stumbled in the deep sand and he flinched.

“Hey,” I whispered. “Hey, Red. It’s okay.” I put my hand out and inched toward him. My body ached in a real, harsh way. I put my arms around Red and cried into him.

“Forgive me,” I sobbed. “Please. I’m sorry.” I adjusted the saddle, patted out some of the sand on Red’s coat, and hoisted myself back into the tack.

••••• March was over quickly, and I was back in the Berkshires without seeing Jack again. I was ready to leave the South and looked forward to returning to the familiar place where I had little history. The horses looked good on the hills. Red seemed to forget about our accident as he grazed on the new grass, bright green in April. Dana and I competed our horses through the summer, and I rarely thought about Jack. I put the bracelet out of sight. He and I had exchanged a short batch of e-mails after he first left, but by June, neither of us wrote. I was too far away to explain myself to him, and I could not begin 45

to understand where he was or what he did there. I didn’t want to think about all of that. August was coming, and August marked a full year working on the farm and my departure back to New Jersey. The days became repetitive, and I got an urge to start college.

••••• I got a job assisting a trainer at her farm back in Jersey. I enrolled at the community college. I competed Red a handful of times that fall and won. I was deemed the equestrian who had gone away and came back with an education.

Young girls watched with high regard as Red and I glided across the arena. It felt good, the attention, having eyes look in awe, hoping to become what Red and I had become: a winning pair.

I was far from secure. I was living at my parents and the year I spent away felt like a distant dream, disconnected from the life I returned to. And now it seemed I was back where I started. Dana was a memory. Jack had been a lifelike dream. His pale eyes only came into view after I pulled sheets over my body at night.

I was leaving the Jersey farm late one October when I got a call. Dana.

I hesitated answering, feeling like such a stranger.

“Dana.”

“Ann.” “How are you?” I said.

“Ann.” “What?”

“Jack is dead.”

“Jack died?” My body felt heavy. I looked into the sky. “What happened?”

“He was in a helicopter that got shot down. Last week.”

“God.” All I could see was the smoke of burning pine straw and Dana burning piles of it in the South. I remembered the burnt pinecone smell. A smokey, burning helicopter glazed into view.

••••• That night, I removed the box from under my bed that contained the things I refused to look at but held onto, to remind me where I’d been. The box, 46

filled with prom pictures, four-leaf clovers dried behind yellowed squares of Scotch tape, and high school love letters. Jack’s bracelet was in its black felt pouch. I put it to my nose and breathed in. I held the fabric tight in my hands and prayed for him. I had chosen to forget about us when I left. I convinced myself we had only been a casual encounter. The memories came rushing back.

I loosened the drawstring and slid the bracelet out and over my hand again.

47

Meals Luis Camejo

Inspired by “Ragtime” by Kevin Young

Mangú on Saturday mornings salami, queso, huevo frito; los tres golpes and the glass of morír soñando to wash it all down The Thanksgiving pernil glowing as your thighs do I fill myself on you finding you lying like habichuela con dulce and am famished all over again

48

Nourished on Newports Luis Camejo Nourished on Newports bathed in the sounds of coños and cállates little papis, those fresh-off-the-boat kids Sweet boys, chase sunshine girls, each a glass of morír soñando lovely peloteros and bachateros in training Bred uptown, of solo mamis and fitted-cap dads, the kind of kids who had kids while kids whom the block adores from third floor windows their mothers live between the puffs of cigarettes and the squawk of Univision Tigueritos, street hoods like their dads racing up the block lifting skirts on speedy bikes spending summers in La Capital falls watching Jeter knock them out the park growing warm in the Heights claiming Inwood and Fordham, like they’ll grow up to claim the Lolas Genesises and Destinys of every spring in between

49

Eternity Luis Camejo nobody left to remember Ernest Hemingway Mona Lisa’s falling apart paint chipping, day by day sun’s going red dwarf, supernova point being it’s going to go What’s left will be scattered spread among a sleepy blue tablecloth lost among stars and dark spilled over, like milk on a cosmic kitchen table that will eventually reach an edge

50

On stripping Luis Camejo You should strip the coaxial At an angle; the blade always away from you bolded, as if I didn’t already know that you’d cut your fingers off I try for an angle and it twists me becoming the reason things are in bold How do you do it?

Armed with scissors, not a wire stripper battling aluminum thread, rubber and tetanus we have to worry about tetanus with rust but what about copper?

I’m not made for this, the steps warn me not to nick How would I know to measure one?

The hook shape the wire’s taken laughs at me, This was a bad idea but I breathe, it reads: It may take 6, 10 or more attempts before It can be done, especially if never done before

51

Consider the internet: Luis Camejo Consider the internet: waves permeating the air, Connections beep-beep-beeping from here to Jackson Hole, Past Shanghai, Tokyo bringing messages of breakups, linkups, dial-up is over no need for hang-ups, thinking now, “the world is ours� what should we do this collective millennial generation brought closer, but instead of uniting, I scroll between screens of cats and porn honoring progress with constant masturbation A tragedy of lols and wtfs A drama written in Wi-Fi framed in screen nine inches by fourteen

52

There You Go Christopher Torres ACT I Scene 1 SETTING: Nighttime. A large grassy hill on Shelter Island.

AT RISE: BECKY and ALEX are seated on the hill. They are lying on their backs, next to each other, looking at the stars.

BECKY So then they take me out to the backyard and start tying all the balloons around my waist and I panic.

(ALEX laughs.)

ALEX

Sorry, but it’s just really— BECKY No, it’s okay. It’s funny. I mean, at the time I was scared, sure, but then again I was five or six years old.

ALEX Well, did you think it was really gonna work?

BECKY I don’t know about them but… I remember holding onto my brother’s sleeve for dear life. I thought if I let him go, I would float away. And my sisters were just laughing it up while tying up the rest of the balloons.

ALEX Jeez…

53

BECKY When my brother started walking away, I couldn’t let go. I remember crying and crying.

ALEX Oh, wow… I’m sorry.

BECKY They took me back inside and my mom was so pissed! She tried to calm me down, but I was sure they would let me float up into space or something... so I just kept crying. They said it was my idea to begin with.

ALEX Sounds like something my brothers and sisters would’ve done.

BECKY You were the youngest, too, right?

ALEX The youngest of seven, maybe eight.

BECKY Maybe eight? Now how does that work?

ALEX My dad... he’s a charming mess.

BECKY Sounds familiar.

(ALEX playfully pushes BECKY.) ALEX Shush. I mean, he’s a good guy… like really good. It’s just… he has a lot of kids all over the place. Different moms, that kind of thing. I think he just likes to set up franchises across countries, you know?

54

BECKY My dad would say it was because he loved to love.

ALEX Did he really? I thought that was just a Latin-dad thing.

BECKY I think it’s just a dad thing.

(ALEX and BECKY laugh. A moment.)

ALEX

Dads kind of suck.

BECKY Don’t they?

(A moment.)

ALEX Anyway, family rumor is that there’s another kid out there in Colombia… or was it Ecuador? It’s… it’s a story.

BECKY Tell it to me. You’re a storyteller. So tell.

ALEX We don’t have the time.

BECKY I love your stories though.

(BECKY and ALEX turn to each other.)

ALEX That’s like the worst thing to say to me… okay, fine, so back in—

55

BECKY Stay down!

(BECKY turns face-first into the grass and pulls at ALEX to do the same. The sound of a passing car is heard and a pair of headlights shines across them. The light passes by and the car can be heard mov- ing further along the road. A moment.)

ALEX

It’s all right. They’re gone.

(Pause) You know, we can’t keep doing this…

BECKY Remember our rules, Alex.

ALEX I know but still. I’m not gonna make this into a thing. Not now, but… I can’t… I can’t keep being… this.

BECKY Tell me a story.

ALEX Becky…

BECKY We don’t have a lot of time.

(Beat)

ALEX Do you ever wonder if it was a false memory? The thing with you and the balloons, I mean? Like… there are things I did when I was a kid that my family tells me about and I start to remember it, but… I think I make it up in my head.

56

BECKY Nope. True story.

ALEX You were so young, though. Maybe you’re remembering what they told you.

Piecing together other people’s accounts. How could you really remember that, you know?

BECKY ’Cause it’s there. It’s in my head. It’s in parts, sure, but they’re mine. Nobody else’s.

ALEX Just ’cause you say something confidently doesn’t make it true.

BECKY Of course it does. But really, what does it matter where it comes from?

ALEX Because then it’s not really yours. How is it at all reliable then?

BECKY I like what I remember.

ALEX Well… I wish I could say the same.

(ALEX looks down at the grass and pulls at its blades. BECKY gently gives him a poke on his forehead.)

BECKY

Hey… come back.

ALEX Hmm? Oh… yeah… sorry. I’m… I’m here.

57

(BECKY reaches into her pocket. She takes out a wallet and pulls out a small tattered photo and hands it over to ALEX.)

ALEX You still carry a photo? Who still carries…

(ALEX looks at the photo) Oh my God…is that you? You’re so freaking cute! You look like a Disney character or something. Your eyes are so damn big.

BECKY I eventually grew into them, I guess.

ALEX And those are a lot of balloons. You’ve got almost every color there... why do you think you went along with it?

BECKY I went along with most of their plans. I think I was just happy to be in the thick of it.

ALEX I used to think the same thing. It didn’t matter what we were doing or if they told me to go to the corner and see if it was raining or something dumb like that… I wanted to be included.

BECKY It’s easy to get lost in the shuffle, right? So many kids… I think I really did wanna fly off. With all the bullshit that was happening in that house, I think even as a little kid I knew I had to get out of there. But right when I thought I was about to take off, looking at them playing with me…the center of all their laughter and attention, who knows maybe… maybe I didn’t have to leave after all.

ALEX For a six-year-old, that’s a pretty poignant thing to think about.

58

BECKY I’m guessing! Who knows. Maybe I had to go to the bathroom or something.

ALEX It reminds me of… wait… what’s that character… crap. I forget the name of the book. There’s a girl, and she floats away… it’s all about this one family.

What’s the book…?

BECKY Oh! Oh! I think I know what you’re talking about! It’s called… um… I… I can’t remember the title.

ALEX Anyway, there’s a girl in that book and she suddenly floats away. You… with the balloons… it reminds me of that.

BECKY I remember that girl. She’s gorgeous but kind of an idiot… or naïve? Something’s wrong with her?

ALEX (in a serious tone) Sounds familiar.

BECKY What’s that supposed to mean?

ALEX I’m just saying. I mean you and her seem— BECKY Her and I nothing.

(They look off as if into the distance.)

ALEX The ferry is pretty empty tonight…

59

BECKY It rained earlier.

ALEX The hotel was completely empty today. I was so bored. I ended up reading most of the day. I thought the summers here were supposed to be busy.

BECKY Wait…why does she float away?

ALEX Who? BECKY The girl in that book…

ALEX I don’t think they really say why but… just in case… maybe you should hold onto me.

BECKY Oh, wow. That was really, really…

(BECKY moves closer to ALEX and leans in close to his face) …bad. But… you’d like that, wouldn’t you?

ALEX Don’t ask me that. I mean… isn’t that what this is all about?

(BECKY moves back) BECKY

That’s not fair.

ALEX At this point, what’s fair? I mean… seriously… what is this?

60

BECKY Alex… I… I just don’t have it anymore… with him. I did… I really did… but I don’t know what happened. It just sort of… went away… and I just wish— ALEX Have what, Becky?

(BECKY motions her hand in the space between her and ALEX)

BECKY This.

(Beat. ALEX leans in towards BECKY’S face but she slowly moves

her head away) The rules… we have to follow the...

ALEX I know… and I haven’t broken them.

BECKY I wish I could say the same.

(BECKY kisses ALEX. He pulls away.)

ALEX

…wow…

BECKY Shut up already.

ALEX Kiss me again.

(They kiss.)

BECKY

You’re such a girl…

61

(BECKY moves closer to him and rests her head on his chest. They are both looking up at the sky.)

ALEX You know… why a ferry? Why not build a bridge?

BECKY Well if more than a couple hundred families lived here, then maybe they would. Besides, I’ve always liked the ferry.

ALEX Right. Of course you would… but I’d be able to get here quicker and not wait for that boat or even worry about catching the last— BECKY Well, maybe we don’t want all those cars here. Did you ever think about that?

The traffic, the noise… do you know what the car fumes would do to the preserves? You city people— ALEX You’re lecturing again.

BECKY I’m just trying to give you a different perspective is all.

ALEX Well, I have to admit, I don’t have this back—

(Music from a car radio is heard moving down the road. It gets louder.)

Shouldn’t we get down?

(The volume of the music is at its peak and the headlights move across

them. ALEX turns face-first into the grass. BECKY does not move as

she looks up at the headlights. Lights fade.)

END SCENE

62

Pebbles Amynah Diop

T

here was a long dirt road that ran into the village of Akua. It was the only road into the village, and the only road out of the village. To the right of the road was the jungle, filled with tall trees and a darkness that was present even during the daylight, to the left laid clusters of small corn and rice fields, and along the road were dirt and pebbles.

Akua was a small village, and the people lived peacefully away from the city, except on days when they were forced to travel the long road into town to sell their homemade goods or to buy things they couldn’t make themselves. Their children were forced to walk the road three times a week for school, three miles into the village and three miles out.

In the summer, when the evening approached, the clouds sharpened and lowered, the sun hid, and the villagers who walked along the road quickened their pace towards Akua before darkness erased their sight. In the daylight the sun was unbearable and the only time for travel back to Akua from the city was at sunset when the road was safe. Once, after dark, a man was stolen by a large animal on the road, and since he had not lived to tell his tale, it was believed that he had been swallowed by a large snake. That, or a lion.

Since then, no one dared travel the road alone or after dark.

Some men were carrying baskets of fish, some women were carrying large pots filled with chattering beads, and their infants were nestled on their backs, strapped tightly with long fabrics. With her younger sister, Oni, lagging behind, Ivory struggled to keep up with her fellow Akuans as they marched together in silence, with only the sound of their sandals crushing the pebbles into the dirt.

“Stop that, Oni,” said Ivory, annoyed. “Your bag will be heavy and you will ask me to carry it.”

Ignoring her sister, Oni grabbed a pebble from the ground and tossed it into her bag, then, after spotting another one, she grabbed it too, and added it to the collection.

“I will hit you,” said Ivory. “You know I will.”

“Leave me,” said Oni, from the ground, behind her. “I need them.”

“Why? Why do you need silly pebbles,” said Ivory as she continued walking, her posture stiff. Looking back, she saw Oni a few steps behind.

“Keep up!”

63

“I saw a snake. It was a Mamba. Mama said to throw pebbles at them,” said Oni. Ivory clenched her fists, stopped walking, and turned to Oni. “You liar.

You did not see a Mamba.”

“I saw it. Mama saw it too.”

“Liar,” said Ivory sharply, shaking her finger at her.

“I am not. Ask Mama. It was in the village.”

“I will. And if you are lying, I will hurt you.”

“Mama said they are evil like death.”

“They are,” said Ivory, she looked back to make sure the group wasn’t too far ahead. “The last time a mamba visited Akua, Mama lost another child.

Every time, a mamba, a dead child. If you are lying to me, you will be next.”

Ivory grabbed Oni’s arm and walked quickly towards the group after a woman with a strong voice yelled for them to keep up.

When they reached the village, Ivory and Oni were met by their cousin, who told them that their mother was in labor, and together they ran towards their hut. As the shadows of evening crept over the village, men prepared heaps of fire, and the women chased the village dog away and called for their children. The huts were large, with straw roofs, and the doors were made of wood. Akua was surrounded by lofty moss trees, which cradled the village, and it seemed as if the moon’s home was directly over the village in the black sky.

Outside their hut, Ivory thanked her cousin ceremoniously, bowing to him with gratitude. He walked away, and Oni ran towards the door of the hut, but Ivory caught her arm.

“Do not go in,” said Ivory, in a whisper. “You are not ready to see it.”

Oni stared, trying to understand. “But you are going in.”

“Yes, but I have seen it before. You are seven—too young,” said Ivory.

“You are only three years older. I am going inside,” said Oni. She struggled to get around her sister.

“No. You are not,” Ivory whispered to Oni, stopping her.

“It is dark,” said Oni, her voice growing louder. “I want to go in.”

Ivory grabbed Oni’s arm and pulled her towards the hut.

“Quiet. Sit here, outside. Do not leave. And do not come in,” said Ivory, as she positioned Oni’s back against the hut, near the door. “Sit. If you come in papa will beat you.”

Just then, the village dog, Dodi, waddled sluggishly over to Oni and lay 64

its head near her foot, wagged its tail, and stared up at her with pleading eyes as he always did when he wanted some scraps of food.

“There. Play with Dodi,” said Ivory, as she opened the door of the hut and walked in.

A light was lit inside the one-room hut. It was the kitchen, the living room, and the bedroom. The smell of dirt and blood, mixed with traces of palm oil, riddled the air, along with the stench of sweat. Wool blankets covered the hut’s dirt floor, and more blankets were folded into a pallet that supported Ivory’s mother, who was sprawled on the floor, legs open, with two women sitting near her. One woman was holding a bowl of clean water, and the other woman was holding a white cloth, ready to receive the baby.

Ivory’s mother was breathing loudly and it seemed as if she was holding in her screams. An old woman sat in the corner of the hut, chanting, and Ivory’s father stood with folded arms, silent. He was muscular with a long neck and an expressionless face.

The woman holding the bowl of water turned to Ivory and assured her that her mother was going to be fine. Ivory nodded her head, unconvinced, but she was respectful. Quickly, Ivory went to the cupboard and grabbed things to make tea; she knew better than to look idle, or she would risk a harsh scolding from her father. She took a pail of water and put it on the fire, and then she added some mint leaves and sugar. And when the tea was finished, Ivory glanced over at her mother on the floor and saw blood flowing between her legs, and she was afraid.

“Ivory, tea!” said her father, with a loud voice.

Ivory jumped. Then she poured her father a cup of tea and handed it to him, and poured another, and tried to give it to the old woman in the corner, but the old woman refused and continued chanting. Ivory went to the door and put her head out to see if Oni was still there. She was. So Ivory closed the door again and went over to her mother and crouched a little, and held her hands. They were trembling and cold and lifeless. Soon, the baby slid out, a woman cut the cord, and the baby was wrapped in cloths and handed over to her father.

Ivory’s mother lifted her strong, tired face and looked curiously at her husband. Her eyes were bloodshot beneath her long, silky eyelashes. Then she pleaded for him to look at her, but he looked away. She saw deep dips in his brows as he stared at the swaddled baby with dimmed, callous eyes. The baby was silent. The only noise heard was the faint murmuring of the old 65

woman in the corner, chanting. The two women tended to Ivory’s mother as she screamed for her husband to look at her. The baby was still silent. Ivory wanted to leave the hut, but her mother’s hand gripped her tightly. Ivory thought she heard the dog bark outside, but the sound of the old woman’s chanting grew louder, so she was unsure.

A few minutes later, out of the silence, the baby cried, and his little voice was strong and piercing. Ivory’s mother released her grip and the old woman in the corner stopped chanting; Ivory’s father said aloud that it was a boy, nodding to himself. Ivory called for Oni, but she did not answer. After stopping to take a peek at her little brother, Ivory gave the door, which was heavy, a push with her knee. She realized that Oni was lying in front of it, so she pushed harder and squeezed through the gap.

“Wake up, Oni,” said Ivory as she shook her. “We have a little brother.”

Oni remained still, her body slumped over. Ivory looked at Dodi, who was also lying on the ground with his eyes closed and his tongue out of his mouth. She pushed the dog with her foot, but he did not move. Ivory knelt down and shook Oni until a handful of pebbles fell from her sister’s lifeless hand.

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Yellow Ties Charles Vassallo They passed a newborn to me—I leapt back in shock as if from a lighted matchstick.

His skin as dark as deep bronze cherry wood.

His shape not half the size of a suckling pig. He opened his eyes—green as peas.

His face—smooth and serene as the Christ child’s— glib and milky in the over bright moon.

I heard a soft wet hum, a high flutelike mew; mouth moving, eyes closed. A small milky bubble of snot came and went in one nostril as it tasted the summer air.

Some months later he laughed; chubby legs of dough kick off sodden, steamy diapers.

Bouqet of powder, founts of pee, sweetly.

Thin geyser and my tie would be bulky on my neck and would dribble and we would both grin; toothless he and somber, sleepy me at the yellow tie. He is thirty now and so are those ties on hung on hangers, as they thump loud against my wardrobe door when the sluggish air of remembrance gusts through the darkened sky.

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This is how you learn to make a Caesar salad Nicholas Magliato

T

his is what life is like in 2014. Men wear ironic T-shirts with opentoed sandals. Women wear shirts that reveal their belly buttons and frayed jean shorts that barely cover their behinds. They blast music through headphones the size of dimes. They post photos of their food on the Internet for their friends to see. A friend is a relative term. Sometimes, we never actually meet the people we call friends. This is difficult to understand.

It wasn’t always like this, you think. People worry about what foods to eat.

Some foods are banned in your city because of their high fat and sugar content. People worry about what drinks to give their children. You drank soda as a kid and you turned out okay. People worry about eating gluten. You’re convinced gluten didn’t exist until last year. Your father ate gluten as a kid and, from what people tell you, he’s an all right guy. But, you wouldn’t know.

You’ve never lived with your father. Over the years, you’ve pieced together stories about him through the lives of others. You are certain, however, that your father never took a photo of his food to show his friends. Your father is born in 1958. You are born in 1986.

In 1986, a man named Ronald Reagan is President. Men wear white blazers and roll the cuffs of their sleeves. Women wear pastel tops and scrunchies in their hair. People don’t have cell phones, so they call their friends and loved ones at home. They look up phone numbers in a big yellow book. You use this book as a seat when you eat your food at home. Your home is in New York. You live with your mother and sister in a split-level ranch in a town named Pleasantville. Your mother is an honest, hardworking woman.

She works long, odd hours as a nurse in the emergency room to support you and your sister. Still, she has a home-cooked meal on the table at 5:00 p.m. every day without fail. While your mother can afford to dine out, she chooses not to because she understands the importance of a family dinner. It becomes a ritual. She sets the table for three every night. In 1992, you learn to set the table for four.

In 1992, a man named George H. W. Bush is President. Men wear flannel shirts with blue jeans and women wear button-down denim shirts with leggings. Cell phones are clunky and expensive. So, people use landlines to call their friends at home. Your home is in rural Massachusetts. A man named Bruce asks for your mother’s hand in marriage. She asks you to be 68

the ring bearer. You thought she said ring bear. You like the idea of being a bear carrying a ring, so you happily agree. There aren’t any bears. In the spring, Bruce teaches you how to throw a baseball, much to your father’s chagrin. At home, your mother teaches you that the fork goes on the left side of the plate, on top of the napkin. The knife and spoon go on the right side of the plate, with the knife closest to the plate. You learn that before you can eat, everything must be in its right place, or she will have something to say about it. There are rules in this house. Wash your hands first. No elbows on the table. No hats at the table. Eat your vegetables. Ask permission before leaving the table. This rule is important. Always excuse yourself. Then, place your dish in the dishwasher. Make sure you rinse it first under the faucet to get all the little bits of food off. She doesn’t like when you forget this. Now, do your homework. Remember, you have to be in bed by eight, lights out at eight-thirty. There is no negotiation here.

In 1992, you sometimes spend the weekend at your father’s house. He drives 113 miles northeast to pick you up. Then, he turns his Cadillac around and drives southwest 113 miles to New York. Everything is different here.

No bedtime. No hand washing. No phonebooks as seats. And, you eat dinner out at a restaurant—his. Your father has made a name for himself in the food industry, working his way up from busboy to waiter, from bartender to manager, and then from maître d' to owner. He has little formal education; he barely managed to finish high school. That doesn’t seem to matter in New York City.

Your father is a good-looking, knock-around guy who charms the hell out of people as they step through his doors. His restaurant is called the Halloran House and it is in midtown Manhattan on Forty-Ninth Street and Lexington Avenue. People flood into his restaurant, greeting him by his first name—Nicky. They shake his hand and lean in to kiss both of his cheeks.

You think this is how you introduce yourself to people. In 1993, when you are enrolled in first grade, you are the first to arrive on the first day of class.

Your teacher, Mrs. Griffin, greets you with a warm, welcoming hello—the same way your father greets his guests. So, you lean in and kiss her on both cheeks. It is at this moment you realize this is only acceptable when you’re with people like your father. Still, there aren’t many people like your father.

He’s a blue-collar-born Bronx boy who carries himself like a billionaire playboy. He’s a Janus-faced chameleon—a hustler, weaseling his way through life to get by. And no one seems to notice. When he needs to be, he 69

can be an absolute gentleman. He drops his thick accent in the swing of a sentence as he greets his Upper East Side clientele. Suddenly, he talks and is no longer tawkin’. He is strategic with his words, knowing when to use each dialect to maximize his gains. Then, in the wink of an eye, his Bronx accent and attitude kicks back in as he chews out a waiter who just lost a check. At the restaurant, he does everything. Your father greets people as the maître d', then steps behind the bar to mix up a dry gin martini. Sometimes, he even prepares Caesar salad tableside for guests. This is 1992.

In 1924, an Italian immigrant named Caesar Cardini opens a restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico. One day, his restaurant is filled with hungry people. He runs low on ingredients. So, in a pinch and with very little to work with, he makes an impromptu salad. He names it after himself. In 2014, you still eat this salad. People in ironic T-shirts and frayed jean shorts eat this salad.

Some of these people like it with grilled chicken; others like it with shrimp.

You learn to love it they way your father makes it—just like Cardini. There is gluten and fat in this dish. Some people don’t eat it because of this. Even fewer people know how to make it like Cardini intended it to be made. His salad has become so bastardized that it is hardly recognizable to the salad he creates in 1924. This is how you learn to make Caesar’s salad in 1992.

In 1992, people don’t use cell phones to take pictures of their dinner.

So, they sit and talk with each other. Businessmen in double-breasted suits talk to women in shoulder pads over dinner. You sit and talk with your sister at a wooden table with a white linen tablecloth that drapes to the floor. Your feet don’t reach the ground. You can barely reach your silverware. You wish you had that big yellow book so you could break the rules and put your elbows on the table. You spot your father across the room. While he appears to be checking a spoon for cleanliness, he actually checks his reflection in the curvature of the spoon for any hairs that may have run astray.

Amid the chaos of a bustling restaurant, your father remains calm and collected, while you are lost, like a seed in sand. This is his world and only he understands it. You are a visitor with an expiration date. At the table, you take notice of how nicely it is set. Your mother would surely approve. A Mexican waiter comes to your table with a large rolling cart. Before he can speak to you, your father interrupts the boy and says Gracias, yo la tengo. And, just like that, the Mexican boy is gone. In 2014, you still remember his face, but don’t know his name. He wore a tuxedo, one size too big.

Your father grabs two forks in his left hand. In his right hand, he re70

moves the skin from two cloves of garlic as though he were unwrapping a stick of gum. He tosses the naked cloves into a large metal mixing bowl held in place on the wooden cart. Then, he adds salt. One teaspoon. He uses the salt to help break down the garlic as he begins mashing it with the two forks in his left hand. As the garlic becomes a paste, he adds four anchovies cured in salt. Now, the paste becomes brown and clumpy and smells of fish. This is the first time you smell an anchovy. When you smell an anchovy in 2014, you remember 1992. You remember businessmen in suits talking to women in shoulder pads. You remember your middle-aged father, fixing his perfectly quaffed black hair in a tailored tuxedo. You remember the Yankees finishing with a losing record. They haven’t finished with a losing record since then.

Your father grabs a dark brown bottle wrapped in a beige paper label.

The label reads Worcestershire. You can’t pronounce this word. Your father turns the bottle upside down begins to pump out the brown liquid in abbreviated yet exact dashes. He knows just when to stop. One teaspoon. Then, he uses the fork to whisk the garlic and anchovy paste with the Worcestershire sauce. His hand hums in a circle like a mini propeller; his body remains still. He stops. He asks you how many eggs you want in it. One or two? You have no idea what he’s asking you. Before you can answer, he answers for you. Yous always gonna wan’ two, Nicky boy. He says this in 1992, but you remember it in 2008 when you meet Victoria and make her this dish. You fall in love with Victoria when you move to Los Angeles. Everything about her.

Her smile. Her smell. Her tiny hands. The way she crinkles her nose when she laughs. The way she moves her hair from her forehead so it doesn’t block her eyes. You even love the way she sighs ahh with every sip of her morning coffee. Normally, you’d find this annoying, but with her, it is wonderfully charming. You are happy. You are in love. Victoria leaves you in 2009. She tells you that while she loves you, she is no longer in love with you. Your heart winces its last breath, held together in time like a frozen explosion. You now know what it’s like to lose somebody you truly love. You pack up your life into your small sedan, and drive east until you reach New York City.

1992. Your father cracks each egg in his right hand, drops it whole into the bowl, and then discards the shells like magic. Then he grabs a small yellow fruit in the palm of his hand and tosses it up in the air like a baseball. Lemon, he says. He puts the baseball fruit right under your nose. The smell is strange yet intoxicating. On a Sunday in 1994, you remember this smell. You’re driving through unfamiliar back roads in your father’s Cadil71

lac. Hanging from the rearview mirror is a car freshener in the shape of a yellow tree. Its sweet, artificial scent fills the air. Your father slouches back in his leather seat, with one arm dangling out the window like a worm out on a line. With the other arm, he adjusts his hair in the mirror. He steers with his right knee. He makes slow turns as you roll through the morning fog together. A sliver of the moon still hangs in the buttermilk sky. Sports radio hums in the background. He has a one-sided conversation with the announcers. Then, he pulls into an empty gas station. A sleepy attendant rests on an upside-down bucket.

I gotta make a quick stop, your father says. He puts the car in park.

Walking into the garage, he stops you. Listen, buddy boy, mileage adds up, ya know? Your vacant eyes suggest that you don’t know. So, he explains how the 113-mile drives back and forth exceed his lease’s mileage limit. That’s why he comes here to have the odometer on his car set back. He shrugs his shoulders and opens his palms to you as if to show you that his hands are clean. Though slight, it’s his admission of guilt. He carries on. Listen to me, Nicky. Keep dis between us, capeesh? Don’t go tellin’ ya mudder. He says words and sounds you’ve never heard before, but somehow you know just what he means. You understand his language, despite not speaking it. So, you keep his word and don’t tell your mother. In 2014, she still doesn’t know.

In the garage, a short, stoutly man in a blue jumpsuit walks toward you. You immediately notice his hands. They are covered in black grease.

The tip off his right index finger is missing, just above the first knuckle. You can’t help but to stare. In that same hand, he holds a lit cigarette between his thumb and middle finger. You follow his cigarette as he draws it to his mouth. He takes a long drag, deep into his lungs. Then, he looks blankly at you with his beady eyes. As he exhales a plume of smoke, he asks, Dis ya kid, Nicky? His voice sounds like honey slathered over shards of glass. Smooth, yet gravelly. The man speaks your father’s language. Ya, dat’s ma boy, Nicky Joonyah. Good kid. Your father turns to you, signaling that you ought to say hello to the man. All you can think about is his missing fingertip. You can’t find your words. Sawry, he don’t talk too much, your father explains. It’s true; you don’t. You don’t speak their language, so you just listen. The man puts the cigarette back to his lips to free up his greasy hand. With the cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth, he gives you a noogie with his four and a half greasy fingers. Ya, good kid he is, like his ol’ man. Your father cracks a

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smile and reaches into his pocket for his wad of cash to pay the man. A purple rubber band keeps the bills in place.

Your father doesn’t care for banks. They’s all a buncha crooks, he reminds you. Keep ya money where yous can see it. So, he keeps his hidden throughout his house. Italian leather loafers act as primary storage for the wads of cash. Sometimes when you open a cupboard drawer looking for a snack, a bundle of hundreds falls to your feet. You put it back where it belongs. Mother doesn’t approve of stealing. As for rubber bands, your father prefers the purple ones from supermarkets that hold together broccoli. When one snaps, he makes a quick pit stop at a market to steal a new one from a bunch. Then, he carries along with his day. One afternoon in 1994, he brings you along. He tells you to steal one for him. You’re hesitant at first, but you know he won’t tell your mother. So, you give in. Act natural, kid. He tells you this as he nudges you out of the car. He waits in the parking lot while you walk in alone. You look over your shoulder back at him as you walk away, nearing the market. He waves you on. You pass lonely shopping carts as you cautiously enter the market.

Act natural. His words linger on. Your palms moisten with fear. So, you put them in your pockets so no one notices. Your gait quickens as you wander aimlessly throughout the market. You’re in dairy. Milk. Butter. Eggs.

You keep walking through the aisle past the cheeses till you reach the end.

You look left. You see greenery across the way. Produce. You remove your sweaty palms from your pockets and let them dry in the cool air of frozen foods. Your pace eases. As you near the vegetables, you see broccoli. You see purple. You pause momentarily. You want to whisper a Hail Mary just in case, but decide not to. Thieves don’t pray, you think. You approach the broccoli at eye level. You reach for the heartiest of bunches and undress its purple garb. You tuck the rubber band tightly in your palm and shove both hands into your pockets. You look around. No one saw a thing. Perfect. You walk out calmly, with a grin from ear to ear. In the parking lot, your father is leaning against his Cadillac, waiting. Once you’re close enough, you take your hand holding the rubber band out of your pocket. You lower your hand toward your knee, slowly open your palm, and slyly reveal the purple rubber band to him. In one motion, he jumps and pumps his fist in the air, then falls gracefully onto one knee, while still holding a clenched fist. He is genuinely proud of you.

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In 2004, when you tell him you are accepted into college, this is the reaction you hope for. Instead, he squeezes your cheek with his hand. Gonna get yaself booksmart, huh, college boy? He releases your cheek and lightly slaps it. Before you can respond, a phone call interrupts. It’s da restaurant. I gotta take dis. He flips open his cell phone and walks out of the room. 1994.

Once you’re back at the car, he playfully puts you in a headlock with his arm and gives you a noogie, just like the blue-suited man. Yous a natural, kid.

You love the thrill.

1992. Halloran House. You want to lick the lemon, but resist. Your mother would surely disapprove of such behavior. Dja’ evah seen one of dees? He asks you. You move your chin from shoulder to shoulder to signal that you’ve never seen one. He squeezes it gently to test its resilience.

He seems slightly disappointed with this one, but proceeds anyway. As if to give the fruit some coaxing, he places it on the surface of the cart and firmly presses the heel of his hand into the lemon. The lemon gives in. He begins to roll it back and forth under the palm of his hand to loosen it. Then, he grabs the paring knife and cuts the lemon in half along the bias. The citrusy essence of the lemon fills the air. It tickles your nose in 1992. It tickles your nose in 2011 when you cut a lemon in half to make this salad for Carolina. She is from Paris living in New York on a visa. She is a visitor with an expiration date. You fall in love with her anyway. Her hair. Her smell. Her pink lips. The way English words transform as they roll off of her French tongue. Outfit becomes outfeet. How the phrase my little cabbage suddenly takes on new meaning through a French filter. Je t’aime, mon petit chou, she whispers in your ear each morning. Sometimes, she gets angry with you and can’t find the words in English, so she defaults to her mother tongue. Merde! You let her heavy words hit you right between the eyes. The angrier she grows, the harder her words land. Va te faire enculer! Each foreign syllable blows your hair back as it slips past your ears. You love her language, even when she is upset. Finally, she stops. Your hair settles back into place. You smile. She reciprocates. You gently brush her hair from her forehead so you can look her square in her eyes when you kiss her and tell her you love her. You are happy. You are in love.

Then, one winter night that year, the ringing of your phone wakes you in the small hours of the morning. Victoria. She calls to tell you that she is still in love with you. You’re confused. You don’t know what to say. You’ve learned to forget her name. Her hair. Her smell. Her tiny hands. Love never 74

asks, you think. It just walks in where it left you last. So, you tell her the truth. You’re in love with someone else. Still, you and Victoria are in love with each other. Just never at the same time. In 2012, Carolina’s visa expires.

She leaves New York City for Paris. You two try and make it work across the Atlantic. Your friends say it’ll never last. They were right.

1992. Your father picks up each half of the lemon and squeezes the juice into the bowl. He discards the empty halves as mysteriously as he did the missing eggshells. His propeller hand begins to hum again. The eggs lose their original form and turn the once brown paste into a bubbly, yellowish liquid. Now, he picks up a clear glass bottle with a metal pour spout. Inside, there is a velvety green liquid. Olive oyil, extra voygin, your father says. Yous always gonna wan’ extra voygin olive oyil, he reminds you. He turns the bottle upside and lets the oil flow out of the spout in a perfect stream. You look past the stream of oil into the sea of waiters wearing black tuxedos with white shirts and black bowties. They scatter across the dining room floor and bring Italian food to the men in double-breasted suits and the women wearing shoulder pads. Your eyes follow one waiter as he brings food to a blonde woman at the bar. She sits there alone, but watches your father. You will meet this woman in 1993. She marries your father on a cold Saturday in February. He asks you to carry the ring down the aisle as ring bearer. This time you know there won’t be any bears. In 1996, your mother tells you that your father left her for this blonde woman. She tells you that in 1986, instead of coming home to see you, he goes to the blonde woman’s house. Your heart sinks into your shoes. It stays there. This is the last time you speak to your father until you graduate from high school in 2004. Eight years is a long time. A man named Bill Clinton is President. Twice. In 1996, you mark your height in pencil on the back of your bedroom door: four feet, eight inches. In 2004, you mark your height again: six feet, one inch. Seventeen inches. Your father never sees you when you’re five feet tall in 1998. You never see your father in 2001 when his hair begins to recede while it fades from black into a peppered gray.

1992. As your father slowly pours the extra-virgin olive oil in the bowl with his right hand, he continues to whisk the dressing with the two forks in his left hand. You watch both hands—one is perfectly still, while the other makes tiny circles in the air. Then, he stops pouring the oil. Two cups and boom! He pours the dressing over cool, crisp pieces of romaine lettuce, adds croutons, and then mixes it with the two forks. Now he uses the forks like 75

serving tongs and places the dressed lettuce on each of your plates. Finally, he puts the forks down and grabs a hunk of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese and places it against a grate. He saws away at the hunk. Tiny strands of cheese fall lightly like snow. From da old country…It’ly, he tells you. You don’t know where Italy is. Sometime in 1994 you learn where it is on a map. You learn that your great-grandparents came from there, but left at the turn of the century for New York City. They give birth to a boy and name him Nicholas.

He meets a woman named Irene. They are both born in 1936. They marry each other in 1956.

In 1956, a man named Dwight D. Eisenhower is President. Men wear high-waist slacks held up by suspenders and fedoras that cover their heads.

Women wear dresses past their knees and satin gloves to cover their hands.

Eisenhower creates the Interstate Highway System, connecting major cities and smaller towns by common roads he calls routes. On weekends, people drive their Cadillacs on the roads that Eisenhower creates to a place called Niagara Falls. In 1956, this is how you show someone you love them. On a Saturday, Nick and Irene drive their Cadillac from the Bronx to Niagara Falls to get married. They drink champagne in flutes and manhattans in coupes. In 2014, getting married at Niagara Falls is kitschy. Someday, when you meet the right woman, you will drive on Eisenhower’s roads to marry her in the misty greatness that is Niagara Falls. You’ll let the water hit you right between the eyes and you’ll smile. You wonder what people will wear. Surely, your friends will take pictures and post them to the Internet. In 1958, Nick and Irene give birth to a boy in the Bronx. He is given the same name as his father.

That very same year, in the very same geographical location, your mother is born. Her parents name her Bettina. She hates that name, but you learn to love it. In 1992, you call her name out in the middle of the night and she comes rushing to your side. In 1977, she meets your father in the Bronx.

That summer, electrical blackouts roll over New York City, leaving the city dark once the sun goes down. Meanwhile, a man named David Berkowitz kills young brunette girls in New York City in the dark hours of the night.

Your mother is young and brunette. She fears for her life, until she meets your father. They wear bell-bottomed jeans with T-shirts. His wavy hair drops past his shoulders. Hers falls gently down her back, kept in place with a single braid that runs behind her neck from ear to ear. They watch baseball

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at Yankee Stadium. They worry about nothing except for each other. They are happily in love.

After the game, he makes her Caesar salad. They drink Italian red wine. They listen to Billy Joel’s The Stranger on vinyl. In 2008, when you buy a record player, your mother gives you her dusty record collection. You find this album and open it up like a book. In the liner notes, you see a heart drawn in faded black ink around two names: Nicky and Bettina. In 1977, she signs it always and forever. On September 22, 1979, she marries your father in New York City. Across the country in San Francisco, an openly gay man named Harvey Milk is shot and killed for advocating marriage equality for gays. In 1979, it isn’t acceptable to be gay.

In 2014, many of your friends are openly gay and they’re still alive. A man named Barack Obama is President. Gay people can get married in thirtytwo states. Your home state was first to allow so. Now, you live in New York City. You eat gluten and drink soda, despite the mayor’s warnings. You and your father watch the Yankees on television, but not together. He sits on a couch at home with his blonde wife. He wears black sweatpants with a white V-neck T-shirt—his at-home tuxedo. His hair is thin and gray with fleeting memories of black. You sit on a wooden stool in a bar with friends who take pictures of their food and post them to the Internet.

It’s 2014 and you are twenty-eight years old. You’re the same age as your father when he had his first and only son. You are single and still figuring out what to do with your life. Your closest friends are getting married and having kids while you’re deciding which city to move to next. Every so often, you make Caesar salad for your friends. They wear ironic T-shirts with open-toed sandals and frayed jean shorts while listening to loud music through dime-sized headphones. One day, you too decide to take a photo of your food. You pause momentarily, but continue anyway. You snap a photo of the salad and send it to your father. He probably doesn’t remember, but he taught you how to make a Caesar salad. He taught you how to love. He taught you heartbreak. He taught you to steal. He taught you to give. He taught you forgiveness. He taught you how to forget.

Sometimes, he texts you when Derek Jeter hits a homerun. You remember when Derek Jeter began his career as a Yankee in 1996. You remember not speaking to your father that week. That week became a year. That year became eight. Still, you ate Caesar salad. You remember the smell of ancho-

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vies and garlic in 1992. You remember businessmen in double-breasted suits with blonde women drinking gin martinis. You remember your grandparents in 1956 wearing fedoras and satin gloves while kissing each other through the mist. You remember the thrill of stealing purple rubber bands. You hear Victoria in 2008 sighing as she sips her morning coffee. You feel your 1996 heart sink into your shoes. You hear French in 2011 as Carolina calls you her little cabbage. You remember your parents in 1979. You’ve never seen them kiss before, but you remember them doing so in bell-bottoms and T-shirts. In 1986, they have a son. They name him after his father.

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Artist’s Statements

“Hungarian Rhapsody” and “9th Scherzo” Natalia Donofrio (pg. 86–7) I have always been fascinated by the idea of perception, especially how it differs from person to person. In my current work, I explore synesthesia, a neurological phenomenon in which an external stimulus causes a simultaneous sensory reaction in two or more senses. Based on this blending of the senses, I work with sound-color synesthesia to translate music into visual art.

Music has always been a significant part of my life, and in my experience, sound and color have always been closely related.

My paintings, drawings, and photographic works employ color, markmaking, and form to express the timbre of musical instruments and the pitch, notes, and tempo of musical composition. These two-dimensional works are abstract and expressive, capturing my own perception of the different melodies I depict. My work is also influenced by research in perception, color theory, music theory, and the works of artists and filmmakers like Wassily Kandinsky, Oskar Fischinger, and John Cage. I approach each work as an experiment of translation between the rich vocabularies of visual art and music.

“Chasing Time” Lee Jacob Hilado (pg. 85) My art is a part of me. My heart and soul are embedded in all my works because this is the only way to show that I exist in this world. I want them preserved, knowing that they have purpose and value. I create intricate drawings to express my emotions, and fill them with love and care. For me, anything and everything can be art. When I see a white wooden cabinet shelf in a pile of garbage, abandoned and uncared for, I take it, knowing that I could turn it into something beautiful and priceless.

As an artist, I believe in love at first sight—that first look that gives you goose bumps and unexplainable feelings. This is what I want to achieve with my art: to see people fall in love with art, to wonder and be curious about it, to feel both happiness and loneliness, and to eventually realize that art is actually an artist’s feeling, caught and frozen for the world to see.

“Chasing Time” is about a mystical, elegant girl who is always chasing time. She is alone in a world of weirdness and chaos, trying to escape 81

the cycle of disordered life. I use pearlescent acrylic in my artwork; I was inspired by Gustav Klimt, who also used shiny multicolored paint.

“1.0” and “1.1” Jonathan Riordan (pg. 88–9) As an artist, I focus on exploring paint as a sculpting material. I investigate the dimensional, plastic, and inherent qualities of paint itself. Starting with Kandinsky’s liberation of paint from the contrived image and building on the work of Leslie Wayne and Mark Pack, I use paint as my medium and my subject.

My recent body of work has focused on a process I call palette painting.

Through this process, layers of colors are built up on palettes. Once dried, the mass is removed and cut into shapes revealing the layers and the process that created them. Viewers may be inclined to visualize images in these paintings; however, I am most interested in the natural phenomenon of the paint and the layering—quite similar to what happens in nature with sedimentary rock.

This interest has led me to a second body of work, different in process but still keenly focused on paint as the subject. In these large, quickly painted, less-controlled, wet-on-wet paintings, I use various oil-, acrylic-, and latex-based paints in sizeable quantities and move the paint in careful directions, then allow the various paints to react to each other and this minor manipulation. While the second method is less controlled, I am searching for the connection between the more controlled and less controlled. Since much of my process centers on natural forces—such as uneven drying times and the interaction of different chemicals—these paintings seem to allude to aerial photography, topography, and sedimentary layers of the earth. In this respect, this body of work is directly connected to the palette paintings.

“Denial to Reality” Wahaj Saleem (pg. 94) What forces me to do artwork is inspiration driven by nature. Nature definitely affects our behavior in many aspects. For this artwork, I had to imagine a person whom I felt was living in a world of denial—a denial in which everything was perfect despite the presence of so many troubles. To some extent, it seems fine, but since excess of everything is bad, this leads to trouble at 82

the end. In the beginning, I was planning to depict a person running from red color (which I viewed as imperfections) leading away from the darkness, but later I decided to represent the subject as a tree, signifying the importance of standing firmly and strongly against the imperfections or troubles. I tried to make it look like the person is still running from his or her troubles, but at the same time, I wanted to focus on the importance of being strong enough to face those problems. The color combination I used illustrates the intensity of those troubles.

“The First Snow in Russia” Alina Shevorykin (pg. 95) “The First Snow in Russia” is a watercolor painting. This piece was inspired by the memories of the first snow. That feeling of excitement and calm weather is depicted in the painting.

“Motel Lot“ and “Broken 1“ Anna Voisard (pg. 90–1) I hope my photos bring the ordinary close and reveal something intimate.

While my work is documentary in style, I tend to capture images that hide some heavy narrative potential. What might have happened here? What still may? I love photographers like Martin Parr and Diane Arbus. The real. The absurd. And the place where they intersect.

“Jail” and “Cans” Sari Weisenberg (pg. 92–3) “Jail” and “Cans” are both part of a series of silver-gelatin prints for a photography course. In the series, I explored three different areas of Manhattan through their external environments, mostly through their differing signs and graffiti. I explored Harlem because it’s where I live and learn, Chelsea, and the Lower East Side, where both of these photographs were taken. The Lower East Side is the perfect visual median between Chelsea and Harlem because it simultaneously possesses both strong emotion and beautiful art. I took these pictures in my first semester at City College and they instilled something in me that I still carry: a sense of exploration. I went around searching 83

for interesting things, and it helped me realize that there are honestly more interesting things littering the street than inside. I still go on spontaneous long walks, documenting my trips with both a camera and a sketchbook. This city never really gets old, and there’s always an opportunity to learn from everything we see.

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Master Chef Pamela L. Laskin

for Guil and Silvestre, thesis students

My cake is never right, no matter if I buy whole-wheat flour and saturate with melted butter as the recipe calls for; I’m better off without cookbooks relying on these platters I call hands, even then smooth chocolate sinks like an aged man.

Yet with your dessert I see an absence of salt (are you afraid of bitterness?) nothing to fear revel in it; follow anger’s instructions.

Let flour sift into folds like it’s dancing down the runway of a giant pan; I know you can do it well— sweet, smiling sugar like cream thickens and lingers,

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and when it’s done it will be light as infant’s skin floating off the body’s page everyone will say delicious, while I stand back admire, watch the crowd eat every last morsel, begging you to bake again.

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Memories: A Found Poem from the New York Times, 2014 Pamela L. Laskin Isaiah Berlin lost his anchor in 1945 in Leningrad when Akhmatova the poet silenced by the Soviets shared stories: of her husband’s execution her son’s imprisonment her love of Byron’s “Don Juan.”

Afterwards the lustful language of literature: Puskhin Chekhov Turgenev Dostoyevsky, and when he left she was accused of cavorting with a spy.

(In the book’s margins her voice told another story: watch the words bleed volumes.)

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Who’s Next?

Nnenna Kalu “Joe’s gone.”

The news entered his ears and rested.

It made a chair of his heart: The weight broke it.

Grandpa refused to eat.

He held back the urge to cry.

If only he could trade his years for Joe’s, all 95 of them.

His time was up in New York.

Georgia awaited his arrival.

He got there within two days, his health went South.

His oxygen ran scarce.

Fluid flooded his lungs.

The phone rang.

“Grandpa followed.”

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Day Game Diami Virgilio

T

he outside of the park was wet from a storm two days past. Lyla didn’t like to step in puddles because she was scared they might be urine. People did that in this part of town. She shouldn’t worry, Fred told her. Most folks came in from out of town.

He hadn’t seen her in nearly ten years. The details of her life were as vague to him as his memories of himself at that age. She had grown in the pictures he had tucked away in the old cigar box beneath his nightstand. He told anyone who’d listen what a pretty gal she’d become. A looker, he called her, but when they asked who she really was or what she was about, he just said oh, you know, girl things. He and her grandmother had split two years after she was born, so there wasn’t much chance for him to be around.

His daughter had taken her mother’s side and that was no surprise.

Consequently, being a grandfather was just something he’d heard about. He sent presents for her birthday and Christmas, but he had no idea whether she really liked them. The replies came in the form of cards her mother had probably bought by the pack, with things like Season’s Greetings or Sincere Thanks on the inside and her name scrawled at the bottom. Most times there was a picture. They talked on the phone once or twice when she was small, but now here she was tall and a looker, just like her mother. In fact, they looked so alike he felt like he was staring through time. He took her to a baseball game because it meant something to him. His daughter had loved it when she was a girl. Still, it couldn’t help but feel like an audition.

The line of families and season-ticket holders formed in front of the stadium about noon and folks were chattering about who was doing the anthem.

Lyla knew who the lady was. Some person kids her age knew. Fred asked her if she owned any of the lady’s records and she said something about having her on the computer. He smiled because he had just gotten an email address.

He thought about telling her, but didn’t. They gave their tickets to the girl running the turnstile and took their complimentary cups. It had the years the team had won the championship on it and a picture of the ballpark. Could be a collector’s item, he told her. She smiled. They found the restrooms and he went, but didn’t feel relieved. She was waiting for him when he came out, her sunglasses resting on her head.

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The line was too long for hot dogs and Coke so he told her let’s sit down and we’ll get them when the guy comes around. They headed up to their row in the tier just outside the left-field foul line. It took a while’s worth of pardons and excuse mes to get to their seats, but by the time they did, the girl had come to the mound and was about to give it her best. He liked the tone of her voice, but didn’t get why she kept warbling around instead of settling on a note. It seemed nobody just did anything anymore. It wasn’t very pleasant by the time she got to the rocket’s red glare, so he turned to talk to his unfamiliar granddaughter, but she was into it so he let her alone.

The divorce wasn’t finalized until around when Lyla’s first tooth fell out, but it was certainly coming long before that. By the time she could say grandpa his kids were calling him Fred most of the time, which felt like a kick in the shin whenever he heard it. Lyla was his oldest girl Jenny’s only.

Jenny had stayed loyal to Fred after the two times in the motel with Edith and even the business trips to Cincinnati with Celeste, but she was firmly in her mother’s camp after it came out about the five years off and on with Leah.

A couple of the kids blamed their mom, a couple blamed themselves, but eventually they all settled their anger on him. By the time Lyla was coming up everyone was too tired of it to pretend to be civil, so he slunk away and settled for Christmas cards.

The game started with Lando on the mound. He’d played middle relief since coming up from the minors, but he’d finally been pegged to start thanks to fan outcry. They’d seen enough of him in the sixth and seventh to think he might be better at the top of the rotation since the rest of bullpen looked so soft this year. They’d dropped eight of their last twelve and it looked like the playoffs were going to have to wait until next year. It hadn’t been so long since ticker tape had filled the ballpark, but the papers said they might be shopping for a new manager come end of the season. Lando might’ve been the difference maker and he paced the mound like he knew it.

Morales was .348 for the year and had bragged to the TV folks that Lando was all hype. His team was playoff bound no matter how you looked at it and had a good shot at maybe taking the whole thing. There was talk they might be a little tired from having played a makeup game earlier in the week against Baltimore, but Morales shrugged it off. “We’re not too worried about these guys,” he’d said, which was of course plastered on the back of every paper in town. Lando shook his head at the catcher and spit in the dirt.

It’s so gross when they do that.

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What’s that?

When they spit in the dirt like that. Why do they do that?

Tobacco. Your mouth can only hold it so long.

But why have it at all? Isn’t that, like, unhealthy?

Well, I guess so, but it helps. Gives you sort of a buzz.

Why would you wanna be buzzed?

Good to be relaxed out there.

There was a crack and Morales was trucking toward first before the bat could thud down on the dusty turf. Lando watched the ball sail overhead and he put his hand in his glove almost like he was trying to pray it foul. At the last second, the wind caught it and hooked it right toward the deck opposite Fred and Lyla.

Boy, if he’d pulled it the other way that might’ve been ours, huh?

Yeah, I guess.

They sat in silence as Morales trotted back to home plate, looking smug but annoyed. Lando fiddled with his cap as the umpire pulled a fresh ball.

His next three pitches were down and out as he tried to bait Morales into chasing something. He had just decided on a changeup when Morales called for time and stepped out of the batter’s box. The crowd booed, but Lando just fanned his glove in front of his face and waited. The second Morales was back in the box, Lando drilled a risky fastball up and in that forced a check swing the umpire didn’t like. The count was full.

Pretty exciting, huh?

Yeah, I guess.

Whattaya mean you guess? This is good stuff here!

I don’t know. I mean, that guy, the pitcher, he just—I mean, he kinda sucks.

Hey, now come on. What? Why would you say a thing like that?

I mean look at him. He just missed three times in a row. I thought he was supposed to be good or whatever.

He didn’t miss. He was— The ball struck the catcher’s mitt and the crowd exploded as Morales headed for the dugout. Fred couldn’t believe he’d missed Lando’s first strikeout as a starter. He glared at Lyla. He wanted to explain to her what she was too stupid to see, but he could feel his cheeks warming up and he didn’t want the day to go like that so he kept quiet.

The look Lyla gave him back was Jenny’s look. That shrug in the eye103

brows you gave to someone you felt sorry for. He’d always liked it better when Jenny was angry because at least it lent her face some character. The past few times he’d seen her, she looked at him like he was a bum and he knew he wasn’t the best of men, but at least he’d held down a job. He paid his bills. He played red light, green light with the kids and he loved them as well as he knew how. He may not have been as smart as she was or made as much money as her husband, but he did his best for his family. Until he didn’t. Until Edith came along and laughed at him like he’d said the funniest thing in the world. Until he and Celeste got drunk and spent the hour before her husband came to get her desperately groping at each other like teenagers.

Until Leah told him she loved him and meant it. He glanced from the seat in front of him to Lyla, still feeling the warmth in his cheeks.

Sucks what?

Huh? Before you said Lando sucked. Sucked what?

Sucked... nothing. I mean, he just looked like he sucked.

That’s some language to hear out of a young lady’s mouth is all.

Sorry, I mean everybody says that. It’s not, like, perverted or anything.

Well, it sure sounds like it.

But it’s not. It just means that someone is stupid or something. I don’t know.

Stupid? What would a stupid person suck?

I don’t know.

An egg is what we’d have said in my day. Only I know you young people don’t mean that these days, do you?

Lyla pulled her sunglasses down over her face and looked toward the field or at nothing at all. There was a sudden fugue of hot dogs and peanuts from either side of them. He reached in his back pocket and pulled out his worn black leather wallet and asked her what she wanted. She hesitated for a long moment then said she wasn’t hungry quietly. He flagged down a vendor anyway and told her to get ready because sometimes they gave you the high heat. She didn’t answer, but jumped when a bag of nuts coasted past her and into Fred’s chest, which made him chuckle.

The sun was climbing and the players were starting to wriggle on the field a bit to shake off their discomfort. While Fred and Lyla’s attention was diverted, Lando had let a man on first and caught Gibson’s pop fly right at the mound. He was two-two in the count on Frazier, a lefty who used to play for 104

the home team before a fallout with the skipper had led him into free agency two winters ago. Fred always liked Frazier, but lost respect for him after he talked out of school about the club following his move. He turned to tell Lyla some of this history, but he saw from her folded arms that she didn’t want to hear any lectures on loyalty or any other subject from him.

Hey, Frazier, you stink! he shouted.

He turned to her and smiled.

Nothing wrong with talking about how a man smells. It’s decent talk at least.

Lyla stared at the field, saying nothing.

Frazier grounded to the shortstop, who stepped on second base to end the top of the inning. Lando had made it through the first inning of his first start relatively unscathed and the radios sprinkled through the crowd were buzzing as the press started to wonder if the kid could be Cy Young material by next year. Already the man in the seat behind Fred and Lyla was talking loudly about playoff math and who’d have to lose for them to get in if they won eight of their last ten, which was possible if you pitched the kid every three games and got those bats working.

Why don’t you ever talk to my mom?

Fred didn’t say anything for awhile. He watched Meyer Jankowski swing carefully at the air as he stepped up to the plate.

I don’t know what they told you, but your grandmother and I— No, I know about you and grandma. You cheated. You two weren’t happy, but my mom... I mean, my mom was old, but still, you just stopped talking to her.

Well, your mother and I, y’know, we just—we have our way.

I don’t understand it. I mean, I kinda know what it’s like. Mom and I get into it sometimes and we don’t talk. She pisses me off or I do something and it’s like, silent treatment. But we talk eventually.

That sounds nice.

She raised her sunglasses and gave him that sad look again. He stared down at the field.

The home team went three up, three down just like that and Lando was making his way back to the mound. The guy behind them was going on about waking those damn bats up. Lando dug in and threw a couple practice throws to first base.

Your grandmother’s always been better at this stuff.

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What stuff?

You know. Talking about these kinds of things. I mean, that’s why I didn’t bother with it much afterwards ’cause they always talked to her about things I guess.

She smirked like she knew something he didn’t. He could feel a bead of sweat running down the sagging skin on his ribcage, passing his spare tire and settling on the waistband of his boxer shorts.

Well, I wouldn’t say that. I mean, most of the time it’s her giving her opinion before anybody can even ask for it, y’know?

He knew.

Well, she’s a smart woman.

Yeah, I guess, but she’s also kind of a bitch.

Hey, now— A series of waves passed through the crowd and jostled them in their seats. In the middle of the order was Bobby Lovato, a two-time all-star center fielder who had twenty home runs for the season. Last time they’d met, it was the seventh inning and Lando had pitched around him, but today it was a different story. How Lando would deal with legitimate bombers had gotten a lot of ink in the papers since he was usually forced to walk them in pressure situations. The catcher called for a pitch and there was no disagreement.

Lando put a slider in the dirt for ball one just to see how Lovato was reading them, but he didn’t even flinch. The guy in the next row inched forward so his knees were touching the back of Fred’s seat.

Listen, don’t talk about your grandmother like that, okay?

Lyla rolled her eyes and muttered something before pulling her sunglasses back down over her face. Fred shifted in his seat and stared up at the digitized zeroes on the scoreboard.

Lovato let another pitch sail inside to jump ahead in the count.

I know she’s difficult, but she’s a great woman, your grandmother. I was young then. I mean, I wasn’t really, but, Jesus, looking back...

He turned to look at Lyla, but she was on her phone now, tapping away at the screen as its brightness reflected off her dark lenses.

Lando tried a curveball, but it drifted so far outside the catcher had to jump up to grab it. It was a hitter’s count.

Look, I need to get outta this heat for a minute. You need to use the bathroom or anything?

Lyla laughed at something on her phone then turned to face Fred pre106

tending not to have heard him. He stood up, slower than he meant to, and squeezed past her to leave the aisle. Lyla shook her head and got up to follow him.

Lando and the catcher were conferring on the mound as Fred and Lyla squeezed past a gaggle of fans whose stomachs were knotted tight, afraid their last great hope might turn out to be as worthless as the rest of the rotation.

When they were inside the pavilion, Fred leaned on the wall to steady himself, feeling old. He didn’t like having a girl he’d held as a baby looking at him like an invalid. She started to ask him if he was okay, but he stood tall and looked at her seriously before she could speak. He was sure his cheeks were crimson by now, but he didn’t care.

Y’know, I carry your picture. Always have. Every year, take out the old one, put in the new one. I sent you things. Did you get the things I sent?

Yes. Okay, so you don’t have to sit there and just act like I’m the big jerk, y’know? You don’t have to do that. We don’t have to play pretend, but you don’t have to do that either.

She took off her sunglasses.

I mean, I’m sure it’s popular. Is that how it goes? “Oh, old dad, he’s a piece of garbage and mom’s a pain in the ass. They’re a couple of old jokes.”

Is that how they talk about us? Those kids were taken care of, but now that’s the story? I mean, sure, I’m the big deserter. Man overboard! Never gave anyone anything, right? Never did nothing for anyone all those years I was there.

Fred huffed, trying to catch his breath as that brow crept upward into its familiar arch. She was all Jenny, head to toe. It was so hot that he couldn’t be sure anymore of the time or the place. It was a ball game, like they used to come to all the time. She hated it, but he dragged her along every season.

The catcher departed the mound, leaving Lando alone out there to squint at an expressionless Bobby Lovato. He pulled his hat off and on a few times. The third base coach scratched his left ear, signaling the outfielders to go deep. Lando nodded at the catcher’s first idea and sent a splitter across the edge of the plate. Lovato clipped it with the top of his bat sending it up and over the backstop. Lando took a breath and wiped his forehead with his sleeve.

Look, I know your mother wasn’t easy. God, I know she wasn’t easy.

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I dealt with her. We all dealt with her. And sure I did what I did, which by the way was for no reason having to do with you guys. I just did it because I wanted what I wanted and didn’t give enough of a damn not to go after it.

Then afterwards when you found out, I just, well, I just didn’t want to deal with the hassle.

You didn’t want to deal with the hassle? That’s it? That’s your explanation? You didn’t want the hassle?

Ah, I know that doesn’t sound good. I’d love to dress it up for you, but I just couldn’t deal with being the bad guy anymore. I was your hero, remember? You don’t remember. You were old enough, but, I mean, you hated my guts and for what? You told me to my face you hated my guts. My firstborn says that to me. I’m standing here listening to this goddamn grown woman cussing my name and all I see is you with your little barrettes and that Wonder Woman lunchbox. I couldn’t believe my little Jenny said that to me.

Fred was so hot he mistook the salty fluid running into the corners of his mouth for sweat until he noticed the girl wouldn’t look at him. She walked over to the beer stand and came back with a handful of napkins. She looked around the pavilion at everything but the old man blowing his nose into the wad of black stationery. Her eyes caught one of the overhead television screens just as Bobby Lovato sent Lando’s fifth pitch the opposite way and off over the bleachers. A bustle was heard inside the stadium followed by a chorus of boos. Lando tilted his cap down over his eyes to screen out the sun and the park and everyone in it. Fred stared up at the screen and let out a deep sigh. He looked back at her, looking for all the world like Jenny, but not Jenny.

Grandpa, are you okay? she said.

It’s all right, he said. You don’t have to call me that.

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With Chihuly in Montreal Karen Hubbard i never expected that my visit with you would set me in sail on a river of glass incessant floating boats filled with dancing spheres illuminated within by colored lights translucent on the sea mirrors landing with you stepping into gardens of glass yellow and red bulbs bursting, grass leaves shooting into the air i held my breath afraid to stand still and not move deeper

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Siesta on Marco Island Karen Hubbard

on listening to Ella Fitzgerald

1 white diaphanous clouds keep gray ones at bay i see a dragonfly hovering though it’s a sleepy day the wind plays with the lazy lizard near my feet 2 the sun sets on the gulf blood orange against the blue white coral glints with crushed shells 3 Ella still lingers chords residing tissues deep but there are no words each time a single note pierces 4 a lone snowy egret bobs for morsels along the shore i want to be that painter raw but delicate

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On a Night Like This Karen Hubbard when the wind savagely rips through leaves rain pours without restraint, i remember a hard rainy night in the 7th Arrondissement in the small crowded café where oysters and Pouilly-Fuissé slipped across my tongue along with red spiced shrimp crispy French bread that I had just now buttered soaked

“We rarely see Americans here,” said one of the silvery-haired women in the next table she lived in New York and wondered in tattered English what we thought of fine French wine while she pulled at her silk navy-blue scarf my Haitian friend, leaned closer to hear their whispered French and said to me “Do not answer, she is only stirring the pot.” but in that night of Chardonnay and silken pearls i look into the rain smile

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Still Gretchen Kiki Black

W

e reunite at our alma mater in Greenfield, Massachusetts, lifetimes after saying good-bye to that girls’ boarding school we loved, hated, or something in between. We came because of curiosity, to gossip, a need for a change, or catharsis. We’re mainly divorcees and widows—gray, bonier, or heftier. Some sixty-year-olds look better minus the hair band and chipmunk cheeks. Maybe it’s the fierce independence, the hard-earned complaisance, or simply the animation. We know nothing is handed to you—especially fun; you have to work on it, and we’re here to do that.

At Friday cocktails, we hug and squeal, talk to the few alums older than us. Four members of the eight-member singing group, the Octet, are included among our group. When they sing, we feel the lyrics we didn’t comprehend as sheltered teens: When autumn leaves begin to fall / Long ago and far away / Love is a many-splendored thing.

At dinner, we grandmother each another: We grab a seat when someone vacates it so we can circulate. We take photos with fourteen cameras and exchange fourteen cards. We walk around the table, pausing behind a classmate, putting our hands on her shoulders while we catch up after four and a half decades.

The next day another classmate, Gretchen Stewart, joins us before lunch. A ringleader, she gathers a few of our group around her. President of everything, a possible Hillary, she settled for domesticity. Her genteel rapaciousness, long repressed, its double row of razor teeth ground to points by decades-long jaw clenching, has awakened. It finds itself in familiar waters, eager to slam shut on former prey. We begin to talk about pushing a smelly classmate into a shower. I mention I regretted it.

“Becky just said that,” Gretchen snaps, with that unmistakable soft laugh. “We were mean,” she adds pensively.

Gretchen-isms begin to circle our collective consciousness. They break through the tranquility, raise clique barriers. We’d felt something new and fresh this reunion, said how silly some classmates were who didn’t come to the almost-milestone forty-fifth reunion because of the clique pettiness at the well-attended twenty-fifth reunion.

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“Some of us are more so than others.” Among many Gretchen-isms, this comment bubbles to the surface, green and noxious. It had been delivered freshman year in that Scarsdale-savvy voice of hers in response to someone’s offhand remark, “We’re all girls,” at our communal sinks. We were applying our Noxzema and soaking our earrings in rubbing alcohol bottle caps, when a robe, unbeknownst to the wearer, revealed a tiny breast. Maybe the comment was made when we were standing before a mirror in Mensendieck posture class, some of us in upholstered bras next to others who were the real thing.

Another zinger was after Farber and I were caught smoking freshman Mountain Day. Class President Gretchen stood up at a meeting and — flanked by Housemother Florence (Brontosaurus) Potter’s and rat fink Tinka Lunt’s icy stares—watched us wither as she haughtily intoned, “I told you not to smoke. I want to say I’m very surprised and disappointed. I told you not to do it.”

Then the coup d'état, when, alluding to the smoking scandal and a few other infractions, she asked me—me, her supposed future sophomore roommate—“Are you really coming back next year after all that’s happened?”

At this until-now euphoric forty-fifth reunion, we’re dragged down by the déjà vu, the hackneyed, the too familiar. Women, who minutes before had been happy to reacquaint themselves as grown-ups—a mutual rejuvenation society—sneak looks at each other over Gretchen and her audience. Laughs and chatter stop. Faces sag. Bodies deflate. Some of us begin to bend forward slightly; others list.

We file into the dining room.

“Hope we don’t have to sit with the creeps,” Gretchen whispers to a buddy.

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Chik’n Soup Nikeeyia Howell As a rule of thumb, one shouldn’t write poems when their stomach is empty and their heart is numb Cold poetry doesn’t satisfy the palette the way a warm, home-cooked one can Cold poetry doesn’t invite the soul to stay over and chat Instead, it pulls the soul into the vestibule then slams the door behind it, watching the shiver.

The point of cold poetry is to get the reader sick with the same germs that caused the author to sneeze out that poem Cold poetry has no purpose but to restore the author’s health It’s, invariably, a means to an end.

So many times, I find myself writing to save my life, writing to get to that end.

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And more often than not, I’ll write a cold poem because I’m too lazy to fill my stomach, too cowardly to let my heart feel, and too drunk on the sun’s light to create any warmth of my own.

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Waipahu Helen Dano

(translation: wai = fresh water; pahu = explosive)

from 'AINA

(translation: land; that which feeds)

“Maybe I’m just asking you to pay attention to the land.”

—Maya Lin, Boundaries On this land, this 'aina,

of this place, Waipahu, If we wait on late afternoons,

when the winds take up the red dust,

we come to know the dryness of this place,

we are seized by its heat, held by its ire. We want for rain.

We do not see its wai, waters underfoot or

sense the subterranean sleep of a spring once

bounding, escaping its geology,

confessing to the outside earth

of its aqueous zeal that dared deafen the Ancients’ booming pahu, drums, making them envious of its bold roar before man bridled its strong song.

Not breathing the language that birthed its gods,

we did not seek its history;

others could not teach us of one.

We say its name, Waipahu, but its worth has been long lost to us.

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E Wai’anae Helen Dano

(translation: E = to call out; wai = fresh water; anae = the mullet fish)

“...from then on, I was always on my way back...”

—Georgia O’Keefe I was born in Hawai’i.

My youth had sights set on the urban canyons Broadway, Madison, and Fifth Avenues. I romanticized this New York City, wished to be in it long enough to take it for granted: to be part of its lights past midnight, drink in its early morning “regular” coffee ritual, dance in its dusks’ jive, stroll its miles and its museums until I was intimate with them all, be part of its music, kiss in those man-made chasms and on its skyscrapered rooftops, be educated by its passions until its familiarity burnished my being. In my Hawaiian adolescence, I fantasized that I would breathe one day in the same space where my idols had, the likes of: Whitman, Hughes, White, Wharton, James, Steinbeck, Capote . . . These dreams came true. But I hadn’t meant to stay as long as I have. Two college years, at best. Now, with more than four decades and a five-thousand mile distance from the last time I lived in Hawai’i, my mind, in longing for home, easily conjures up images of the mountain range Wai‘anae and its ridges that fronted my childhood and the rising sun. My youth took them for granted: never bothered to learn their names as I had of the NYC boroughs. Old now, waking from light sleep, I invoke them. Pu’u Hapapa, Kanehoa, Kaua, Palikea, Palehua, Manawahua, Piliokahe, Ka‘ala. I call out to them . . .

Why do you bother my dreams? Poultice the maile.

Wait for me. For you, I cry a moan so deep, it metamorphoses into a whisper.

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On this night in the Aaron Davis Hall at City College, as Walter Mosley reads from his work-in-progress Helen Dano

“Writing is never passive.”

—Rae Armantrout Tonight, I am here as a “poetry person” (as defined by my graduate studies, seeking an English Master’s), listening to Walter Mosley, writer of forty novels, alumnus from this same program, this year’s recipient of the Langston Hughes Award given by this college. He is reading fiction: a scene between the young-boy protagonist and his mother. Dialogue, but mostly a child’s unspoken thoughts of this parent he does not see regularly. Walter’s words are saying more than what we in the audience hear. And being a sentimentalist, I am crying, because synchronously, like counterpoint, there is another story sensed, its energies in this room, just having finished reading it the night before, written by an alumnus in the same English program, awaiting its turn to be published. The main character, Aris, is standing at the start of a chapter, introducing his uncle. There is more to this story, too: a derivation of its nature; a similitude with the other.

The back of the plush seat before me is bracing my head while I am caught by the cadence of Walter’s words. I’m thinking that if we could not discern the words, just making out their sounds (like hearing neighbors’ muffled conversations through apartment walls), we could hear a child loving his imperfect, disappointing mother, giving to her a reverence and even delighting in her despite her failings. And, too, I heard Aris rendering to his soul that which he had yet to find. Intently I listened, my ruminations immersed in their voices.

I thought about those nights after class when I was given installments of Aris’ 90,000-word story in exchange for reading my poetry thesis. Not able to wait until I got home to read them, I’d stop in the McDonald’s near my apartment, and there I would read, at the edge of my plastic seat, not able to put the pages down until I had come to the end of what was given to me for the week. Often, I was the last one left at the tables.

I cried several times through these installments, and thought it was just only because of the telling of this particular tale. But, here, listening now to Wal118

ter in this hall, on this campus where Hughes, Rich, Rukeyser, Barthelme, Brooks, Paley, Vonnegut, Hacker, Cortez, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Sontag, Creeley, Kinnell, Sanchez, Collins (he lecturing to a City College audience: you hear different voices when you read others’ or even one’s own poetry), Corn, Baraka, Eady, Strand, Hijuelos, Seshadri, and others had come with their own stories and their thousands of words; here, where in the telling of a tragedy, totally unanticipated, a void would need language to give voice to it; here, where Aris with his fierce tenderness would define what he esteemed for himself; here, where I am listening, at the edge of my auditorium seat, rapt by the sound of Walter’s language, listening to the rise and fall of narrative, perceiving a concurrency of beginnings and evolutions, awashed by words swirling in a communal, invisible dance, their songs faint in the air that wends through these City College halls; here, swaddled in an etherealness of expression: there is a mindfulness of a continuum of voices. And just now, in this same place, a sentience is felt of the darkness and the rain, of the cold and the light of a Salt awaiting acknowledgment, and for stories that came before, and for those yet to be born. And I am finding myself, poet, with tears, as Walter reads from his newest work.

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ethereality Jonathan Crocca Days, hours, minutes, moments.

Time ticks away the beat of hearty laughter.

It heals and keels and reels you in— Out again, through between, up and down to depths unseen.

High as our heavenly celestial ceilings, Itchy, like wallpapery peelings, Bruises, oozes, scrapes and paints Pictures of our lives.

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Crescendo Laura Callahan The moon is burning and tears come easily from fatigue.

New ideas vie briefly for my attention, then disappear like sirens around the corner.

So, I stop answering the telephone— there are only solicitors and wrong numbers.

The mailbox spills over with circulars for carpet cleaners and half-priced gin.

No one comes to my door but lost pizza deliverers and cable TV repairmen.

The days merge into one flat line of boredom.

Tension fades—and tranquility comes from the texture of a horse’s mane and sea lions quarreling offshore.

Vague notions still germinate unperceived: rumbling like bass notes from passing cars.

Twilight traffic encircles my legs with gaseous exhalations White lines shine up suddenly in Morse code beneath my feet.

I ride the train all summer and see no familiar faces.

In August cold stares give way to voiceless smiles; unrelated concepts unite to form grand schemes.

Individual notes create eccentric harmonies, filling abandoned rooms with apprehension.

Twelve-foot ceilings echo my uncertainties.

But the music is irresistible, and glorious in its crescendo.

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27 Blocks Laura Bowman Gil Scott-Heron prophesized “The Revolution would not be televised” But it sure didn’t march before my eyes...

Clustered away in East Harlem The majesty of my blackness Was hidden from me All its tragedy and its glory Was bricked away in a 5th floor tenement On East 98th Street While unknown to me 27 blocks away on almost any day People of dark hue Gathered on 125th Street Around a milk crate On Lenox Avenue Where Malcolm Our adopted head of state Would stand and pontificate Lord the shame that rises up in my memory When I recall the lack of knowledge Of my own people’s history Lives of little children like me Stumbling and crumbling every day And there was I safely cloistered away ’Cause even though bigotry was around and in the air The subtleness of its silky smooth Northern wrappings muted, its faint tapping Besides, me and my childhood crew Formed a model UN Cathy, Barbara, Lucy, and Laura One brown-haired Slavic chick 122

One strawberry-blond Irish lass One curly-locked Puerto Rican miss And one wholly-haired, chubby-cheeked “sistah” Truth be told, in those days The only time I felt the racist blues Is when I turned on the nightly news The pain it brought I could have done without Oh but the loss of the history Growing up all around me Only 27 blocks away Is something I lament to this very day It took years before I found out About Kanya and “The Tree of Life” The bookstore where undocumented scholars Met to discuss the issues of the day Behind its door, knowledge pollinated every where And fell from the mouths of the elders Into the willing ears of the youth Respectful enough to gather the seeds of wisdom I missed the whispers about Zulu Warriors Hannibal’s Climb The black hands that built the Pyramids Egypt’s ancient library in Alexandria Where Greek Scholars studied In Egyptians temples at the feet of Africans No one told me about Imhotep, the Father of Medicine Or about cataract operations performed In the blazing heat of the African sun Centuries before the surgical triumph of modern man I missed so much I missed so many years of the Brothers on the corner selling 123

The Iceman Inheritance Before the Mayflower The Souls of Black Folks Ellison’s the Invisible Man So much knowledge only 27 blocks away Yes Gil Scott-Heron prophesized “The Revolution would not be televised” But it sure didn’t march before my eyes Oh God to have grown up With the truth of who I am Who our people truly are To have been able to sing James Brown’s “Say it Loud, I am black and I am proud” And to have truly known the depth of those words How much more would I have done?

Who would I have become?

The answer is known only to God

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Selected English Award Winners Spring 2014

Robert Balun Winner of The Jerome Lowell Dejur Prize in Creative Writing (Poetry)

First say it’s morning and it’s morning and if you could please take these strands of early light hand them back to me all assembled I’ll wait for the tidy conclusions to all of my problems to ripple through this little map of a dream say it’s morning but then today gets messy another day of news the texture I’ll get filled with and anxious like a cigarette the first step of the commute the turn at the end of the block another branching idea in time the memory I get folded up in if you could please sing a song spin it into breath and send it out into the day

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say it’s morning then ask what do you want to fill your head with I’ll press empty buttons look at my marks in the ledger say it’s morning and again the weather collapses we’ll look for our inheritance the map is a fractal I think I’ll have enough for the rent this month the rest can be sacred I’ll look for the clouds you scattered from the window zion tagged across the ledges of the buildings you know all that talk is bad for you a head full of time you should be leaving but the door is a door that might be a door but is really just filled with landscape flowerbeds vivid in persistent lighting on and on into access

130

Echo inside this you is the past and tomorrow morning is perfect handcuffed to a cartoon searching a bed for wishes I know you want me to tell you that I know you want me to tell you it’s fine to slip by and lie down suspended in the subatomic static electron cloud ecosystem of return to light

131

The Flat Side of the Knife

after Samara Golden

tell me about the sixth dimension the past the present the future roil and unfurl an existence imagine and remember array of possibility tell me a story tell me the physical is ephemeral atmosphere eternal imperative psychic I wake up in the middle of a [

]

call it time falling through to the next足足 a coin bounces against the dark jangled clatter a glass a mirror 132

can you sing me another sing me every song you have ever heard whorling in your head some impossible arrangement breaking and peaking in each perfect moment like a wave please offer me another precise digression stuck in the dream we get bad wisdom a coin hits the ground rolls to its stop like an echo can you tell me another story say we’ll cut a river through the country line it with trees and build fancy houses at the end of the line we’ll excavate the deepest lake and cast our problems away­­ we’ll look through the wilderness we’ll look for the morning

133

Life Machine

after Christoph Schlingensief

in a room full of glowing antique lamps you pulse you pluck a spectrum

scatter it across me

like skin or a net

cant an altar of cumulus

beneath time’s patterned motion—

its inextricable form the organism you call yourself trying to collect your life as it spills from your prism

intrinsic memory

the evolution of each

iteration

of before— we pray for fresh rain our cups a cistern

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we’ll need a brass band and a truck full of flowers the radio playing crickets

135

Poem for Distance

you happened like time

some ancient memory

coded across

the dream—

we dig

put dust in our teeth

before we mote away

in the last rituals of colony collapse I will keep these nights on their own your instance of light colliding cut from the ether and set like a prismatic stone

136

Lori Balaban Excerpt from Code of Honor, Winner of The Jerome Lowell Dejur Prize in Creative Writing (Fiction)

1 ---------------------------------------------------

1

hon·or noun\ˈä-nəәr\ : respect that is given to someone who is admired: good reputation: good quality or character as judged by other people: high moral standards of behavior Origin: Middle English, from Anglo-French onur, honur, from Latin honos, honor. First known use: 13th century

S

and. That was the thing about it. Sand was everywhere. The desert sun beat down, reaching out to scorch any exposed flesh with its rays.

Men shouted. A radio crackled to life. Wind gently cooled. His knuckles grew white from clutching the machine gun. He wasn’t supposed to be here. Opening his eyes, he blinked to clear the sting of thick smoke. Nick Anderson’s tanned nineteen-year-old body felt heavy as concrete beneath his singed skin. Nick turned his shaven head, peering out from sweaty lashes as the sky lit up like it was burning oil. Nick couldn’t remember his location, but he could remember the blast. And her face. Those accusing eyes seeing right through him. For miles and miles, all that existed was that familiar wall of brown. He coaxed open his mouth to speak, his lips cracking. Nothing came out, his mind was numb, and he surrendered into a pool of exhaustion.

Nick woke up again, in a sea of blackness. His knuckles were still white, but from grasping pain. The air tasted different, stale. The room was sterile white, with a few aged prints encased in dull metal frames. A heart monitor cast an eerie yellow glow on Nick’s face. When he looked around, a lineup of machines surrounded him, blinking, clicking, measuring, announcing. Peering down, he discovered he was strapped to a hospital bed.

To his left, another boy was restrained, eyes closed, beeping, clicking, scanning. To his right, digital numbers cycled. Scanned images of his twohundred-and-six bones evolved, a third of those bones were broken.

The hum of the room pierced his ears, raw from the blast, although Nick had no idea how he got here or how much time had passed. Sarah, not yet known to Nick as the day nurse, whisked into the room in a puff of dyed red hair and lavender perfume.

“How are my two favorite boys today?” She filled Nick’s plastic water cup, and lifted it to his lips. He drank thirstily, staring at her long purple nails, water dribbling down his unshaven chin, staining his light-blue gown.

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“I see we’re getting some mojo back.” She checked the supply of IV fluids, bags bouncing off each other as she adjusted the flow slightly higher.

“You’re looking good.”

Nick’s eyes followed her curvy shape from a mountain of pillows.

The florescent lights gave her an ethereal outline. “Looking real good.” He thought she might be an angel. An angel sent especially for him, even though he didn’t deserve it. Her voice, and his consciousness faded away. That night he dreamt of the fire that drove him to sign his name. The fire, and the girl he couldn’t face. They merged until Nick could no longer tell where she ended and the fire began. Then he dreamed of that fateful day. The lights had blazed overhead in the office while Nick, unsure about his decision, had dug the pen into the paper and willed it to move. Sign. Just move the pen. Am I doing the right thing? Did any of it matter? He had found his way there, across from the buff man in army fatigues breathing heavily a few inches away, so there was that. Probably because that same morning, his father had told him to make a move or move out. It had seemed rational. With high school finished, he had no ties to his hometown. His sister, Penny, had lurked in the kitchen, smirked even, that Nick was on the spot. He had eaten his eggs, saying nothing. It’s Dad’s way. Yes, Nick knew what he was doing that day. He had taken a deep breath and signed his name, Nicholas M. Anderson, the sound of the pen scratching across the paper echoing in his ears. Signing his life away to his country. He then put the pen down, took a deep breath, and shook the man’s thick hand.

“Welcome to the army, son.”

“It’s an honor to be here, sir.”

••••• A year or so ago, an eighteen-year-old Nick sprawled on a worn plaid sheet from the garage; it was their self-designated senior-only stretch of beach on the Jersey Shore. They were surrounded by foreign vacationers and city dwellers, and Nick’s nose was buried in a tattered hard copy of The Sun Also Rises. His friends chose this spot because the beach was nice despite the beer cans and snack wrappers, and there was a boardwalk with bars and restaurants. Nick’s buddy Ben’s sister also bartended at the Waves Bar across the street, and sometimes, when she was feeling generous, slipped rum in their Cokes when her boss was off arguing with his wife.

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The group of seniors boasting soccer jerseys from Emerson County stormed up the pebbly sand, tossing a ball between their feet. Ben lopped Nick a sweaty beer, followed by the ball, and snatched the novel.

“What’s this fossil?”

“Careful. I stole it from Dad. Some collector’s prize.” Nick spread sun block on the tops of his feet. “First edition. It’s worth like five grand or something. Can you imagine? Wasting five grand on a book.”

“Well, your dad does appear smarter framed by old dusty books.” Ben slapped him on the back with the book. “You don’t, sadly.” Ben’s attention was swayed by a group of girls wearing tiny triangles resembling bathing suits.

“I love this town; the chicks wear less and less!” Ben waved to them as they breezed past in a whirl of sea air and giggles, waving back at Ben, smiles peeking out behind oversized sunglasses.

Nick nabbed the book back and chucked it in the sand, popped open his beer, dripping foam onto the aged cover.

“How many more fucking years am I stuck in this desert of opportunity? Why do people vacation here?” Nick lay down, nose in the thinning towel his mother designated for beach use.

“Once a Jersey boy, always a Jersey boy,” Ben said. He couldn’t help himself, he laughed. “Speaking of, let’s hit the Waves before all the birds pass out. Sun lowers their tolerance... and Danielle is only workin’ til eight.”

Nick dusted sand off his sunburned feet. He threw his wet towel, the book, and tube of sunblock into his soccer bag.

“Same old hags,” said Nick. The group headed to the boardwalk, dodging an overly tan sagging man with a snow-cone cart.

“So hit on a fat one. Takes less effort,” Ben said. Nick thought this over. He wanted a rum and coke, but the thought of small talk and the bullshit that went along with it prompted him to decline; he had family time to endure, known as dinner in his house.

Theirs was a red two-story brick middle-class house, and their lifestyle was that of a typical middle-class family. Part of the routine for as long as Nick could remember was the four of them sat together and ate their evening meal. The formal dining room table was always set with a salad and a dinner fork, place mats, and tall white candles against a backdrop of television banter. His mother and father gulped down their food on one side, and across from them, he sat next to his annoying younger fifteen-year-old sister, Penny.

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His parents had run out of small talk Nick’s freshman year, and Penny was at that stage when she thought she was no longer a girl, and couldn’t be bothered with anyone related. The table may have been three feet wide but there was a globe span of indifference. Tonight Penny was nagging about another thing she had been deprived of.

“Leena has a poodle. They’re very intelligent.” Penny forced down undercooked meatloaf. Their mother had never had much interest in the kitchen beyond what she thought was duty, yet the table was scattered with too much food for four people. Mrs. Anderson always wanted a family. To her, a women’s highest honor was to be a mother. So the table boasted her husband’s favorite potatoes. Nick’s favorite biscuits. Penny’s spinach salad. Pasta salad.

Buttery peas. Something for everyone.

“We’re not getting anything living,” said Nick’s dad, punctuated by a large mouthful of potatoes. “I’ve got enough to worry about.” His failure to play pro-football managed to carry an undercurrent of resentment throughout his life.

“Like you are gonna walk a dog,” said Nick to Penny.

“We have a backyard.”

“You can’t get guys to like you, why would a dog?”

“Nick, can’t you just speak nicely to your sister?” His mother itched her thinning scalp; she had been an only child, and frequently didn’t understand sibling dynamics.

“Tom asked me to Sam’s party Saturday,” said Penny.

“He’s just trying to get Leena there.”

“What do you know? Leena’s with Derrick. How about a rabbit? Dad? Rabbits stay in a crate.”

“It’s a cage,” Nick said.

“Whatever.” She shot Nick her latest incarnation of a shut-up look.

“Enough, Penny. I said I didn’t want to discuss it. I’ve got my hands full right now with my boss on vacation and the economy in the crapper.

Nick, have you given what we discussed any thought? School isn’t so cheap anymore and I’ve got two of you. Since you won’t have football to fall back on, your choices are limited.”

Nick stared at his meat. His mother rubbed at her forehead. “Did anyone notice my hair? I just got it cut.” Penny tried hard to see any difference.

“Yeah, they did a good job.” Penny said, staring at her plate.

“Hello. Am I talking to myself here?” Mr. Anderson said. Nick recognized the tone, which was usually followed by a long, repetitive lecture.

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“I’ll get a soccer scholarship.”

“Oh, really? Where?”

“You know, Mom, you should get some highlights.” Penny smoothed her own wild blonde curls. “I think I might need a haircut too. Maybe some bangs. Change my look.”

“Colleges don’t care about soccer.”

“I’m looking into things.”

“No, he isn’t.” Penny flicked him off. “Tweeting all day and playing Gears of War 2 all night. Thinks he’s a badass,” said Penny.

“Shut up. Who flunks gym?” Nick gulped down a huge helping of buttery snap peas. Being southern, his mom rendered all nutritious foods helpless with oil and butter.

“I’ll get you an appointment on Saturday if you want.”

“He dumped Ali for no reason,” said Penny. “Always thinking he can do better.”

“You don’t know shit. Why don’t you quit sweating me?”

They continued to eat, the television droning on about the latest electronic wonder needed to survive.

“Yeah. Saturday’s good. Not with Silas though. He never listens. Get me Inna. Those Russian girls are perfectionists.” Penny waited for her Mom to protest, as Silas was the lower-priced stylist, but she nodded. Nick’s dad put his fork down.

“Any more potatoes? I like the burnt ones. You know, with crusty stuff on top.” Nick’s mother heaped potatoes on his plate. “That’s too much. I’m trying to lose a little.”

He pinched his belly fat.

“You know you’re going to have another helping. Now, Nick, you didn’t eat much. Have some potatoes too.”

“Yeah, sure, Mom.” Nick served himself the rest of the crunchy-top potatoes.

“Hey, maybe I wanted some,” said Penny. Their mother rolled her eyes and plopped some of their dad’s potatoes on Penny’s plate.

“You know, when we were dating, your father always took me to the same movie theater every Saturday night, because he knew how to get there.

It didn’t matter what was playing.”

“And you still married him?” Penny smirked.

“I guess I did, didn’t I.” Their mom picked a bit of meat off their dad’s plate and ate it.

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“They had good movies there; what’s the problem with knowing where you’re going?” Nick’s dad grumbled into his food. His mother put her arm around him, giving him a fond squeeze.

“Clearly it wasn’t a problem. Until they played that Spanish movie without subtitles. Then we had a problem. But I knew his heart was in the right place.” She gave his shoulder a little squeeze. Nick’s dad let a smile slip.

Nick scraped the last bits of meatloaf onto his fork, and popped it all into his mouth. He stood up, still chewing.

“Team’s meeting at Joe’s. I gotta go.”

“Clear your plate. Your mother is not a maid.” His mom started pulling on her bangs again.

••••• Nick and Ben always met behind the abandoned canning factory. The parking lot was empty minus a rusted-out VW bus that year after year, the students developed theories on its abandonment. One security spotlight still worked, casting a glow on the south wall of the building. Sloppy graffiti and scratched slander piled up over the years. Trash littered the parking lot from whatever alcohol neighborhood teens could score over the weekend. Nick and Ben passed a fat joint between them, compliments of Ben’s other sister, Ellen. If Ellen hadn’t been a major jock and four inches taller than both of them, Nick might’ve had a crush on her. Ben always joked that Ellen had been adopted.

“My dad’s such a prick. Soccer’s badass. Europe’s crazy for it. It’s not my damn fault he’s a paper pusher,” said Nick.

“I feel you,” said Ben, blowing out smoke. “You’re just not where you are meant to be. Destined for betterness.” He coughed out his words.

“It’s destined for greatness, you pothead,” said Nick, giggling. A fire engine passed, sirens tearing through the silence. Nick covered his ears.

When the truck was gone, he kicked a mangled can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. It nicked the side of the building.

“Dude. That’s so loud. This ain’t soccer practice.” Ben continued to cough. “You got any beer on you?”

“Got any? You should read more; you sound like a hick,” said Nick, nudging him with a can from his coat pocket. His voice trailed off. “Get yourself a vocabulary.”

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He opened a foaming beer from the other pocket.

“Yeah, words will make me a man.”

“A man of honor.” He saluted Ben before cracking up into the dry grass.

“A girlfriend will make me a man of honor.”

“Not sure about that either,” Nick said. “What’s a high school senior got to do to get a cheerleader to blow him for damn’s sake?”

“I hear the mascot’s available.” Ben could barely get the words out.

“She already blew everyone—except you. She’s gotta draw the line somewhere.” Nick exhaled smoke.

“How can your dad be a book snob and drink this redneck crap? How’s that for a vocabulary?” said Ben. Nick rolled on his side, he was laughing so hard.

••••• Now, Nick found himself on his side again, but with a long needle disappearing into his spine. Surrounded by blinding white, he grasped the cold rails of the hospital bed, his face contorting. A line of doctors hovered, studying his statistics, fluids, bowel movements. What went in, what came out. Then came the scans. More tests. Scribbling in charts. Words. Numbers. Stacks of paper that gave away nothing, definitive black lines scratched into the blank canvas of stark white. In the gray, he saw Ali Goldberg. Straight dark hair, even darker eyes. She wasn’t the prettiest girl around, more interesting features than attractive. She was from one of the wealthier families in town, and her parents, some kind of scientists, inventors even, were always on the road.

Each member of her family was different in character, but the whole family had those eyes. Those eyes that saw through you. It was genetic. He’d never met anyone else with those eyes, until the Iraqi girl. The Iraqi girl haunted his dreams too. He met her while stationed in Iraq. She also had long dark hair.

They could’ve been sisters. Sometimes she’d take Ali’s hand and they’d walk away, slowly, only stopping to turn and slice through him with a look. Then they’d walk right into the fire, the fire in Ali’s house, the accident he knew was his fault. The flames grew several stories tall, and reached for all three of them, enclosing them in its blazing embrace, until he couldn’t see either girl anymore, and he was left sitting in the skeleton that was the Goldberg’s home. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

He’d only met Ali’s parents a handful of times, but he felt their skepti145

cism burn a hole in his side. It was true what Penny said; he had dumped her to do better; how much better, he wasn’t sure, but he was young and wanted to find something he didn’t know about yet. Because of this reasoning, Nick felt, with every cell of his being, that he caused Ali’s brother’s accident. He couldn’t forget it, the way Ali’s face looked in the shadow of those very real flames, coming from her house in the background, the knowledge spiraling down his body, that her anger had set that fire. He always knew Ali had a real problem. He witnessed the way fire excited her. Nick didn’t talk to her about it, but his theory was she spent too much time alone.

She didn’t have many friends because she didn’t want them. Then, they had geometry together last year. A few weeks in, after cheating off his paper, she led him behind the bleachers. She kissed him ferociously, and he had hoped he was getting to third base. Her eyes were blazing. He was shocked when she struck a match without taking a breath, lit a cigarette, and tossed the match into the nearest trashcan. The flames crackled, and they made a run for it, watching the chaos from his car. Sirens blared, people evacuated, teachers gasped, and she had set off that chain of events. The fire eventually burned itself out. It was there, and not the gym, that he finally got a hand up her tight black skirt. He was no longer just attracted to Ali; he was intrigued by her ability to change the course of things. They’d been together ever since, despite his nagging feeling that it was a mistake to get that involved with such a reckless person.

••••• The doctors were hoping for a miracle. A shiver of awareness ran down his back, and it wasn’t the glistening metal of the machines that dominated the room. He’d never seen such complex equipment, but he knew it couldn’t save him. He knew from their faces the prognosis wasn’t good. The truth leaked from his body. He wanted to be somewhere else, so he remembered— the clear sky, the posters, tan cinder-block walls, dim lighting, promises of a life of purpose. How he had stood patiently in the line of boys and men. Surfers, Techies, Landscapers, Musicians, Fathers, Dreamers, Adrenaline Junkies. They waited. Waited for what was next. For life to start. The good things that come to those who wait. The men all had their own reasons. To run away.

To be a hero. To feel again. To kill. To serve. To die.

All parents had big dreams for their children. Some parents wanted a 146

military man. Nick’s father wanted an athlete. Mr. Anderson couldn’t forget football dreams that were bashed before Nick was born. So Nick lived with the burden, always wanting his father’s acceptance, his anger, his attention.

To wipe that underlying grudge out of his words. Nick made the decision against his father’s wishes. A haircut, a uniform, a rifle, and he became a soldier. The coarseness of the army-issued fabric reassured him he stood for something. Introductions, Basic Training, and shipped to the Middle East. He would get that look from someone, anyone, his father. That look meant approval. Make Dad proud. Maybe someone else’s dad, maybe his, maybe his commanding officer; Nick couldn’t really know. He was in a unit of twelve men, sharing cigarettes, insults, and stories of loved ones, but nothing resembling reality. Accepting where they were was to accept they were searching.

His bunk turned out to be between Smith from Weehawken, New Jersey and Locke from Stamford, Connecticut. It was Smith’s bitching about the food, the blankets, the water pressure Nick fell asleep to each night, and awoke to each morning. Locke’s disapproval of random patrolling. The Iraqi people’s disapproval. Nick felt the weight of someone’s disappointment everywhere; his burden followed him no matter where the mirror was geographically located.

Now, wires and tubes came and went from his skin, transporting fluids in and anger out. He wasn’t old enough to drink but he had sacrificed his mobility, and possibly his future. The future his father wanted for him. Nick fed his anger with his experience that people of the same flesh and blood could be so indifferent to one another. Like a family passes down traditions of stories and recipes, Nick took his heritage, and morphed it into excuses. He despised not giving a shit about the girls he had slept with, but didn’t bother to overcome it. Nick hated himself for having no drive. He lived outside of himself, and now, to be stuck in his skin made him squirm. He was on his way to building a permanent grudge of his own.

“Want it?” A magazine poked out from his roommate’s sheet. Nick took it. Maxim. He tossed it back.

“No, thanks.”

“C’mon, man, look at the quality goods on that cover. You’re still alive aren’t you?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Oh no, you’re not a sad sack, are you? No one has worse luck than me.

I’m Leo. Short for Leonard. Who the heck are you?”

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“Nick. Short for Nicholas.”

“Where were you stationed?”

“Iraq,” Nick said. “You?” “Afghanistan. Second time,” Leo said. “Bomb?”

“Yeah, you?”

“Machine gun. Lost my foot, blew out my knee. Broken bones, coma, the works. Made me a fake foot.” Leo stuck his fake limb out from under the covers. “Looks like they knocked your legs out from under you, huh?”

“Whatever. Maybe. They don’t know.” Pretty actresses and models were taped to the wall where get-well cards should’ve been.

“Army hospitals usually suck, but this one’s pretty cool. They’ve got experimental shit if you want it.”

“Yeah, cool.”

“Either way, better make sure the wood’s still stiff. Flag still saluting.

You know. Still a man.” Leo held up a two-page spread. “Let’s see you kick up that sheet.” Nick stared at Leo. Stared at the sheet. Back to Leo. Back to his wall of girls.

“Are you serious?”

“Dude. We’re talking war casualties. Serious as a funeral.”

“I’m not into redheads.” Nick pushed himself over. Leo pulled out another magazine.

“You like chocolate? Let’s see if she does it.” Leo tossed over an ethnic centerfold.

“I’m good, man,” said Nick. The doctor interrupted.

“How are we today?” Nick picked up the magazine, and buried it in his mash of blankets.

“Nick’s freaking ’cause he can’t get the sails up.”

“What? You—” said Nick.

“Son, do you have questions about paralysis and erections? I can have the nurse bring you some pamphlets.”

“I don’t need any damn pamphlets.”

“Hey, don’t get all testy. No pun intended.” Leo laughed into his magazine. “Man, I crack myself up. Don’t worry doc, he’ll come around to his situation. Another pun! Damn, I’m good.”

“All right, let’s not get too excited.” The doctor blushed at his choice of word. Leo laughed so hard tears came to his eyes. Nick couldn’t help but to crack a smile.

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“You ready to start PT, Leo?” “Start? Hello, round four. No, it’s five? Could it be six?” Nick watched as they wheeled Leo off, his voice trailing.

The days dragged on, and Nick did his best to avoid his parents’ requests to visit. He didn’t need his dad’s guilt right now, and Nick told them on the phone he slept most of the time, which was true. He asked for another week. So Nick dreamt of sand. The way he teetered when he walked across it.

How sand trickled from god knows where on the pillow as Nick slept. How sand crept in his nooks and crannies, in between his toes and in his eyes.

Other nights, he had the reoccurring dream where Ali went up in flames.

Burning like the village ruins his unit always left behind. In between he saw the Iraqi girl. The one Smith was secretly sleeping with. His mind replayed that moment when Nick became evil, too—it was on her face—the realization that Nick had a choice and he wouldn’t stop Smith. It wasn’t because Smith was bigger than Nick. It wasn’t fear. It was a split second that he had to make a decision, and he chose wrong—again. The decision. A split second.

Life or death happened in a split second. He shouldn’t have been in Iraq to begin with. He wasn’t honorable. That’s all he could think about when his parents finally showed up. It was worse than Nick could’ve imagined. His dad yelled at the doctors, as if the sheer force of anger could fix his son. His mother pleaded, always trying to smooth things over. Penny just stood and stared, speechless for once. Nick pretended he was too drugged to function that day, and after a few awkward moments involving kind words and hugs, they finally left, his father leaving a wake of resentful doctors and nurses. No, Nick wasn’t ready to face his family.

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Lily M. Gelfars Excerpt from Parliament, Light, Winner of The Stark Award in Drama

Cast of Characters THEA: Woman, mid-twenties JOHNNY: Man, mid-twenties Time: Present Location: Right outside New York City

ACT I Scene One SETTING: A bed in a motel room. White wall in the back with a generic motel painting hanging above it. Side table with a lamp next to the bed.

AT RISE: THEA and JOHNNY are in bed. She has on a bra, he has on a wifebeater. She’s on top of him and they’re finishing having sex.

THEA (breathless) Oh! JOHNNY Fuck!

(She collapses on top of him, rolls over so they’re lying next to each other.)

THEA

That— JOHNNY Yeah.

THEA Wow.

(Pause. Both getting breath back.)

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JOHNNY Man, I needed that.

THEA Yeah.

(Pause. Thinking.)

Wait. Whaddya mean you “needed that”?

JOHNNY You know. It’s been a rough week. We’ve been getting so fuckin’ slammed at work ever since these graduation parties started, I mean, the money’s great, I can barely close my wallet, but it’s nice to get the stress out for a change, know what I mean?

(Leans over, pulls out a cigarette from a pack in his jeans pocket. Lights it. Pause.)

THEA You really know how to ruin a moment, you know that?

JOHNNY What happened?

THEA Oh, I don’t know. I had this deranged moment where the tequila shots and the Coronas resurged back through my bloodstream to my brain and I got re-drunk and thought for a split second that maybe you were sweating and breathing and smiling because you actually enjoyed sharing an intimate moment with me, Thea, and weren’t just using my vagina as a stress ball for your goddamn dick.

JOHNNY What are you talking about?

THEA (irritated) Nada. Whatever. Forget it. You know how those post-orgasm undulations make me say weird shit sometimes.

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(Beat. Takes his cigarette and smokes it.)

Which motel are we in again?

JOHNNY The Apple Motor Inn. THEA Ugh. This one has the worst vending machines.

JOHNNY Yeah, but it’s the cheapest.

THEA (sarcastic) Like that five bucks really makes a difference to a baller like you.

JOHNNY Hey, a nickel bag’s a nickel bag.

THEA Do you ever think about anything but drugs?

JOHNNY You know, you can be a real bitch sometimes. You think that just because you went to college and read a couple fuckin books every once in a while you can smoke snort and swallow whatever you want and that everyone else is a crackhead. I’m in school, you know. Yeah, I think about things besides drugs.

THEA Sports are drugs.

JOHNNY No way. Sports are the opposite of drugs.

THEA Yeah, if you play them. Not if you just watch them while you’re drinking and make bets on the games with your boys.

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JOHNNY I like sports. I like watching sports. I like smoking weed. I like fucking you.

THEA Oh, thanks. That’s the most romantic thing I’ve heard in years.

JOHNNY Sorry I’m not a goddamn poet. You know what I mean.

THEA No, I was actually being serious for once, which is a sad commentary on the tragic state of affairs to which I have sunk. The most romantic thing that’s happened to me since graduating college is that a coworker who I’ve been hooking up with on and off for about a year told me he liked fucking me in an eighty-eight-dollar-a-night motel room in the suburbs.

JOHNNY Mhm.

(Playing with his phone, distracted.)

THEA Jesus.

(Pause.)

JOHNNY Yo, Thea... I gotta go. I totally forgot I was supposed to meet Raul on New Main in Yonkers for something.

THEA Are you kidding me?

JOHNNY No.

(He gets out of bed, starts getting dressed.)

Stay here. We’ve got the room till 11:00 a.m.

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THEA Yeah, and we have to be at work at ten-thirty. I’m not fucking sitting in this dank-ass Ardsley hellhole with a creepy picture of a sailboat that could snap off the wall and crack my skull at any minute hanging above my head while you go to some titty bar in the hood to blow lines and smell each other’s fingers and laugh about how much cash you made for doing jack in the kitchen while I busted my ass smiling at suburban shitheads.

JOHNNY Come on, don’t be like that. I mean, I can come back later if you want.

THEA The last time you said that I got stuck with a dead cell phone and no cash at that in the middle of a Bronx hovel in a thunderstorm while you went on a joyride.

JOHNNY That was almost a year ago. And it wasn’t a joyride! I needed cigarettes.

THEA And I don’t want you to come back because I want you to; I want you to want to come back.

JOHNNY I don’t understand why you always make a fucking episode about everything.

I told my friend I’d do something and I have to do it.

THEA Well, then I guess you’re a real Sancho Panza. Ironic, given I can see your ribs through your shirt, another drop-dead gorgeous side effect of your favorite extracurricular activity.

JOHNNY You know what? Fuck you. My favorite activity? The whole fucking reason we ever hooked up in the first place was because you wanted to buy a bag of blow. You wouldn’t have even looked twice at me otherwise. Yes, I know.

It was four in the morning and you had a double the next day and you were 155

about to vomit, and you needed something to level it out. Coke is coke. And Raul lets me stay with him when my parents kick me out; he’s a good guy.

THEA Great, you’re noble, I’m a bitch. What else is new?

JOHNNY I’ve told you a hundred times. I’m not trying to get into anything right now.

THEA But we are in something. We’ve been specifically not in something for a goddamn year.

JOHNNY If you hate it so much why do you keep hanging out with me? I like you, Thea. I really do. I’m just...

THEA I know. Not in the right place. Not trying to date anyone.

JOHNNY I haven’t had sex with anyone else, which is more than you can say.

THEA Whatever. I’ll call a cab.

JOHNNY The cabs aren’t running. Lemme drive you back home.

THEA The Dominican company runs all night. No way I’m getting in a car with you. You’re fucked up.

JOHNNY You had no problem getting in a car with me to come here.

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THEA Yeah, but I was drunk and horny. Now I’m sobered up and smarter.

(Starts angrily getting dressed.)

JOHNNY Okay.

(Puts coat on.)

I’m gonna go.

THEA See you at work.

(JOHNNY leaves.)

THEA Hi, can I get a cab at the lobby of the Apple Motor Inn in Ardsley going to Hastings? (Pause.) No. Fenwick Road... yeah, private residence. Well, it’s a house, anyway. If you’re me, there’s nothing private about it because my parents and younger sister are there... never mind. Thanks. See you in ten.

I’ll be the girl in the lobby holding a cigarette and her wasted youth. (Beat.)

Never mind. Bye. END SCENE

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Conor McGlone Honorable Mention for The Goodman Fund Poetry Award

Nail

I have no paper I have no pen I’ ve only skin and the tip of a nail

.

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Servicing the Muse

I spit; I crank my neck; I plunge a finger as if into earth to coax the seedling, come, and with an ugly shudder birth a wild vision of infinity— She thrashes at the naked sheet; I wring the hold I’ve wrapped to pin the seizing haunches’ rage; I gasp and, with a final lunge, collapse: her music spilling on my page

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Crystal Vagnier Winner of The David Dortort Prize in Creative Writing (Nonfiction) and The Henry Roth Memorial Scholarship

MINE: A Bosnian Memory about Strangers ••••• (Present)

O

nce again, nobody in the world knew where I was. My hand rested on the ancient bricks that formed Srebrenik Fortress as I sat with Ervin, a Bosnian man in his early thirties. I had only met him a few hours earlier at the Tuzla bus station where he came to pick me up to help guide me on my tour of a Bosnian village. Tarik, a Saudi Arabian man I had met in Sarajevo the week before, told me that if I ever found myself up north in Tuzla to call his friend, Ervin, for a tour of secret Bosnian castles.

I wasn’t planning on going north to Tuzla, but the opportunity to explore secret Bosnian castles was too enticing to pass up, so I called him. Ervin and I looked over at the long emerald-green pastures full of sporadically placed blue shacks and yellow haystacks that were molded into the shapes of oblong igloos. Each haystack was supported by four long wooden beams. It was August and we were the only ones at the fortress.

“I’ve always been fascinated by haystacks,” I said to him, breaking the silence.

“There doesn’t seem to be much about them to be fascinated by.” He looked at my purple jeans, canary-yellow shirt, and lime-green rain jacket.

“But then again, I can see how someone like you may find them interesting.

You seem like a different type of person who may like different things. For example, nobody here wears purple pants. Why do you like them? The haystacks?”

“They’re different here in Bosnia from those that I’ve seen in America.

They’re more… loose. I think that’s interesting. I’ve been thinking about this idea of beauty lately. And what aspects of beauty stay consistent from place to place. When I think of beauty, I think of walking barefoot down a long dirt road or running in a field full of haystacks. I know I romanticize things. I know it takes a lot of work to make a haystack, but…” I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know. I think they’re just lovely and I feel light when I see them.”

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••••• (Past) мина.

Without knowing how to read Serbian Cyrillic, I understood immediately that the red skull-and-bone sign stood for MINE. Occasionally a cluster of the signs would appear in the distance, far from the cemented path I was walking on, closer to the bush, the same green bush I would have taken a detour through if those signs were not posted. I had been walking for over an hour with no city center in sight. Where I was did not look like the Sarajevo I saw from the photos in the YUGOSLAVIA! guidebook. Then again, a lot had changed since Yugoslavia. I was lost amongst a city of closed-up junkyards.

On Sundays, it was rare to find any open operating business in Sarajevo. I was unaware of this little fact and that there were two bus stations in Sarajevo: the main station in the city center and another on the outskirts of town in Eastern Sarajevo in Republika Srpska, a Serbian area where everything was written in Cyrillic.

There was no station at the Istočno station where I was dropped off from my bus from Montenegro. There was an empty information kiosk, a long dusty road, and a fold-up chair by the sidewalk, with an overweight sleeping man. I tapped him gently and repeated “City Center?” with raised shoulders and a quizzical expression. He pointed straight ahead down the road and fell back asleep.

I’m usually pretty savvy and always prepared, but I found myself embarrassedly without any backup plan. I probably shouldn’t have waited till the last minute to plan my next week of traveling in a city I knew nothing about. With no banks or ATMs available or any knowledge of where I was on the map in relation to the city center, I was faced with the only option of walking. After an hour and a half, the afternoon sun made the twenty-pound weight of my backpack feel like fifty pounds. And then the road ended in front of a shoe store.

I walked inside the small shop. On display were a variety of white shoes, and there were four people inside: a family (a man, a woman, and a young boy) and a tall, thin man assisting them with a pair of white shoes.

The thin man excused himself and walked over to me. I assumed he asked, “Would you like to try on a pair of white shoes?” in either Bosnian or Ser164

bian, but I answered his question with a “City Center?” He stared at me blankly. I tried a second time with an accent: “Citi Centre?” Confused, he cocked his head. I tried again: “Citay Centree?”

Frustrated, he shook his head and walked over to the family that was still deciding between this white shoe and that white shoe. “Madloba,” the word “thank you” in Georgian, slipped out of my mouth automatically.

“Wait! I speak English,” the woman in the back shouted and ran over to me. She cleared her throat. “What is the matter?”

Ecstatic to communicate, I repeated, “I am trying to get to the City Center. I’ve been walking and walking and I can’t find it.”

“The City Center?!” Her eyes widened. “No! Far away!”

“How far is ‘far away’?”

“Too far! An hour or two? It is all the way to the left. It is maybe fifteen kilometers away. You need to take the bus. It will come in twenty minutes on that corner. It is maybe 1 KM. Cheap bus.” She pointed outside to the left.

I admitted, embarrassedly, that I had no viable currency yet and would have to walk to a bank, wherever there was one. For now my feet would be my only mode of transportation. I thanked her, but before I could leave, she took out a bronze 2 KM coin and placed it into my hand. “This will get you there. Now go.”

••••• (Present) Ervin and I hopped off the fortress wall and continued our examination of the abandoned chambers on the ground floor. There was a deep, dark hole on the right side of the wall and I crawled in to see how far it went. Ervin stayed behind.

“You are a brave woman,” he shouted.

I walked back out into the sunlight and stood in the entranceway.

“Woman? I don’t think anybody has ever called me a woman before. It sounds… weird.”

“Well, what are you then? You’re not a child.” He paused for a moment.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-five.”

Ervin rolled his eyes. “You’re a woman. It would be weird to call you a girl.”

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I reentered the cave and shouted from inside the darkness. “You’re not going to explore the dungeon?”

“I have been to this fortress over fifty times since I was a little kid and I have never walked into there. It terrifies me. You’re probably the only person who has been in that cave since the dragon that once lived there.”

“Unless the dragon liked to drink beer from the can in 1333, I suspect that theory is wrong,” I said, walking back out into the sunlight.

We crossed the wooden bridge, leaving the fortress built on a rock.

We continued our meandering on a footpath through the forest, picking wild walnuts, plums, and blackberries.

“I have been eating the blackberries on this path for thirty years. That sounds strange to say.” He laughed. “I don’t feel as old as I am. I look into the mirror and think sometimes, ‘Where did my hair go? When did that happen?’

My body has changed but my memory hasn’t. A thirty-two-year-old man should not be afraid to go into a dungeon. I know now there is no dragon, but… those tales stay with you. It sounds silly, but if I go into that dungeon, then I will no longer be a child. I don’t want to lose that.”

I picked a wild walnut off from a branch and threw it at his head. “I have to be a woman, but you can still be a kid? That’s not fair at all.”

He smiled and picked a tiny green plum. “No. You’re right. It’s not. We should be who we feel we are.”

“That’s better,” I nodded and filled my bag with fruit.

We wandered downhill on the narrow path. Above the rain clouds were fading. “Have you had Bosnian coffee yet?”

“No. Is it amazing?” I asked.

“Yes. We can go to Gradačac Castle. I know the man who makes coffee there. Unless you are tired of castles? Then we can—” “NO! That doesn’t make any sense! Who gets tired of castles?” I raised my camera and took a photo of a dried leaf on the ground. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Some people must.”

“Maybe adults. But kids, never!” I waved my arms like a child.

“True. We are not those type of adults,” he agreed.

“Certainly not!” I squeezed a blackberry in between my fingers to stain my fingertips.

“The castle is not too far from here. It is near to Croatia. There we can have coffee and pears.”

“Is coffee closer to Croatia better?”

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“No, but we need to do something while you figure out where you’re going tonight. I also want to keep talking to you. You make me think about things I haven’t thought about in a long time. Let’s go to the castle and think.”

••••• (Past) I wandered around Stari Grad, Old Town in Sarajevo late Monday afternoon in search for food. I followed signs for a free art show, hoping some free hors d’oeuvres would also be included. The exhibition, in a mosque, featured Farsi calligraphy. I took a moment to sit beside a restless cat just outside the entrance.

“Do you always chase cats?” a young Iranian man asked me in English.

I hadn’t realized I was being watched. He and a male friend sat at a table across from me with an open guest book for the exhibit. “Most times, yes.” I stood and walked over to sign my name in the book.

“Did you like what you saw?” the older Iranian asked me.

“Yes. It’s my first time at an art show in a mosque.”

He smiled. “Wonderful. Are you far from home?” He looked at my surname. “From France?”

“No, I’m actually from America.”

His eyes lit up. “Really? Oh perfect! Do you mind if I show you something?” He shook my hand. “My name is Saeed and that,” he pointed to the artwork inside the Mosque, “is my work. In December, I will bring this show to L.A. What do you think an American audience would want to see? Help me choose some pieces.”

I spent the next four days in Sarajevo wandering around art exhibits and graveyards. With Sarajevo’s bloody history and multicultural ethnic background, there was an unlimited supply of graveyards to whet my appetite for the macabre.

While I was spending an evening at Saeed’s exhibit, a couple in their mid-thirties came in to congratulate him on the success of the exhibit. The man, lanky and white, walked over to me and shook my hand. His name was Tarik. “How do you know Saeed?” he asked in an American accent.

“I actually only met him yesterday.”

He laughed. “We’ve only met him a week ago. It’s nice to know he befriends other strangers. So, what brings you to Bosnia?”

“I’m on a very long detour to Romania.”

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He looked intrigued. “What’s in Romania?”

“A graveyard I’d really like to see. It’s called the Merry Cemetery.”

“Interesting… it sounds… merry?”

“I hear it’s the happiest graveyard in the world. From the photos, it looks very colorful. I’m always interested in seeing how different cultures honor their dead.”

“Well, here in Sarajevo you won’t have any shortage of graveyards.

They’re not hidden at all. Bosnians like to leave their graveyards in public places. It’s our way of reminding ourselves of the past, so we don’t forget our dead. It doesn’t sound as colorful as your merry cemetery though.”

“Whether they are colorful or not, I’m interested in all types of graveyards. Are you Bosnian?”

“No. Saudi,” he said with a straight face.

I laughed. “Wait. Really?” With his pale complexion and comfortable, relaxed demeanor, I assumed he was a West Coast American. He didn’t strike me at first as a Middle Easterner.

“I know it’s confusing.” He took out his passport. “Born and raised in Jeddah, went to University in California, I work now as an English teacher at the University here in Sarajevo. People often think, ‘Who’s this white boy trying to fool? He can’t be Saudi.’ My grandfather was Bosnian, though, so I have some claim to this land. I’m a large mixture of things.”

Tarik insisted that instead of heading to Travnik, a town to the northwest where there would be cheese and castles, I should go to Tuzla, towards the northeast, where a coworker of his lived during the summer. “He knows where all the secret castles are. There is an American woman named Barbara in town that would probably let you sleep at her place. If you want to see real Bosnia, you have to go to Tuzla. My friend Ervin can pick you up. From there you can catch a ride to Serbia and continue to Romania.”

••••• (Present) In a small gray sedan, Ervin and I headed north towards Croatia on a straight paved highway. Green valleys situated on either side. The morning rain had finally settled. Faintly in the distance parts of a rainbow came into focus.

“I have been fluent in English for years. I am an English teacher at the

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University, but still there are phrases in English that I don’t understand. Like the word ‘heartache.’ What does that mean?”

I looked at him with wonder. “You want me to explain heartache to you?”

“It is not a nice word. I know that.”

“It’s a very sad word, yes.”

“But a heart attack is not the same as a heartache?”

I laughed. “No, a heart attack can really kill you. Heartache is more… emotional than physical. It’s an exaggeration of a feeling. It’s when…” I struggled to find a suitable way to explain this word.

“It’s when someone you love does not love you back,” Ervin commented without looking at me. “Have you been ‘in heartache’ before?”

I paused for a second. “I have been ‘in heartache.’ Yes,” I admitted.

“And you?”

“If it’s what I think it is… then yes.”

We drove closer to the rainbow. I could see where it began and ended.

The road we were on had us driving directly underneath it.

“Have you ever driven underneath a rainbow before?” I asked him.

“I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it before. No?” “I think we’re about to. Do you think something will happen to us on the other side? That is if we successfully pass underneath?”

Ervin sped up. “Let’s go find out.” ROY G BIV became clearer and brighter as the road brought us closer to the multicolored arch.

••••• (Past) Before heading to my bus for Tuzla, I stopped by the art exhibit to say goodbye to Tarik and Saeed. The mosque was empty except for a young girl with short blonde hair and thick eyeglasses. Her eyes behind her frames were large with blue irises.

“Hello,” she said. I couldn’t place her accent as either American or Bosnian. “Would you like to draw with me?”

I sat down at the table. With a green crayon, I began to draw a tree on a piece of loose-leaf paper.

After some time, she asked me, “Where are you from?”

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“America.”

She stopped coloring and looked at me with fervor. “Are there aliens and zombies where you live?”

“Sometimes,” I said, without hesitation. “Aren’t they here too?” I looked at her.

“NO! All the horror movies with aliens and zombies are in America.

Do you know what else is in America?”

“What?”

“Crop circles.”

“Crop circles? How do you know about crop circles? How old are you?”

With an offended look, she retorted, “I’m eight and three quarters.”

“So, not just eight?” I joked.

“No. Eight and three quarters. I counted. I’ve been waiting my whole life to be this age.”

“It’s a good age. I remember my eighth year.”

“But that was so long ago!”

I laughed. “Okay, calm down. It wasn’t…too long ago,” I lied.

“If you are eighteen that means—” “I wish I was still eighteen! No, I’m much older than that.”

“How old?” She whispered.

“Twenty-five,” I said under my breath.

“Twenty-five?” She shouted and let out a sigh. “You are old like my mother! But you look much younger than her.”

“Thank you? Trust me, you’ll get to this age one day.”

“Anyway, I love horror and that’s why I know what I do. I know about crop circles because I watch and read everything I can. Aliens use crop circles to communicate. That is why you have aliens and we don’t.”

“Because Bosnia doesn’t have crop circles?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“I see. But have you been everywhere in Bosnia? How do you know there aren’t crop circles here also?”

“I would know,” she said confidently. “I have studied zombies and aliens for a long time.” She opened up her fanny pack and took out an eclectic collection of items. “These are all my favorite things. A glass pyramid, some coins to buy something pretty for my mother, and this,” she handed me a clear glass button in the shape of an apple. “You should have this. You 170

will remember me and it will bring you magic.” She went back to drawing her picture of a zombie killing an alien. “Maybe there are zombies here in Bosnia. What do I know? I am just a kid,” she sighed. “Life is complicated.”

“It can be but I hope at your age it isn’t too complicated. I can tell you’re a smart girl, so I think you’ll be just fine.”

She smiled. Her eyes magnified behind her lenses. “I am not afraid of these things,” she pointed to all of her dark horror pictures on the table. “I am not afraid of many things. It’s my imagination that is scary.”

••••• (Present) The sun would be setting soon and I still could not reach Barbara, the woman I had arranged to spend the night with in Tuzla.

“You can have Ramadan dinner with my mother and grandparents in the village. There will be enough food for all of us. Trust me,” Ervin said, with his eyes on the road.

“Will it be weird bringing a stranger home to your grandparents? A single white female… I feel like that may look bad. Like you picked me up from the side of the road.”

“But I did pick you up from the side of the road.”

“Different context though! I can always catch a train or a bus to Serbia.

I’m self-sufficient. I can—” “No, that’s silly. My family will love you. We’re closer to the village now than to Tuzla. You can sleep in the separate house we have on the land.

It’s always empty and they’ll be happy to have a guest.”

At sunset, I sat at the table with Ervin and his grandfather while his grandmother and mother brought out platters of eggplant, peppers, and rice from the kitchen into the dining room. It was the third day of Ramadan and the first meal of the day for them. They were ravenous.

“She leaves for Serbia tomorrow,” Ervin announced in Bosnian.

“Serbia! But why?!” She exclaimed in her native tongue. “The Serbs are dangerous!” She handed me a piece of bread with a sad look in her eye.

“She is only going to Serbia to go to Romania,” Ervin explained.

“Romania! That’s even more dangerous! Don’t even think of going into Moldova. Promise us.”

“My family wants you to promise to not go to Moldova,” Ervin translated to me.

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I promised to not even consider the possibility of wandering into Moldova, with my fingers crossed.

After dinner, Ervin’s mother brought me into the other house on their property. It was the home where Ervin grew up in. She changed the sheets on the bed in the spare bedroom and gave me a long hug. “Dream sweetly,” she said slowly in English, leaving the house.

I walked into the room next to mine. Ervin was sitting on the bed looking at a framed black-and-white photo. “I just wanted to say thank you for everything and good night,” I told him.

“It is lovely having you. I told you my family would love you.”

“I think your family thinks I’m crazy. I think I’m starting to think I’m crazy.”

“You don’t meet many people who say they’re on their way to a graveyard,” he agreed. “Look.” He lifted the photo for me to see. I sat beside him.

“Who is it?”

“It was my father. He committed suicide a very long time ago. It’s not a thing that my family dealt with well.”

“How can you deal with suicide well?”

Ervin shrugged.

An hour passed while we sat on the bed, side by side, sifting through old photo albums, school memorabilia, and jewelry boxes. I watched as Ervin recollected moments from a time far away. It wasn’t long before he put his hand on my knee and kissed me.

“We can make love if you want.”

I paused. “I really don’t think that’s a good idea… I’m… sorry?” I felt guilty for declining. Disappointed, he continued to ask respectfully despite my nos. Eventually we sat side by side in silence. “I will lie here next to you, though, so you won’t be alone for the night,” I said as a compromise.

“Can I ask why you won’t sleep with me? Is it because I’m not attractive?”

I sighed. “No. You’re perfectly fine.”

“Is it my stomach?” He grabbed his tiny gut. “My bald head? My… age? Am I too old? Is my nose too big?”

I laughed. “You have to calm down. It’s none of those things.”

“My nose does look very large to your tiny, delicate nose.”

“It’s not your nose. And thank you,” I said, rubbing my nose, acknowledging its delicate features. “It’s… not you. It’s me?”

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“I know that phrase. My ex-girlfriend said that to me once.”

“I promised myself to not get involved with anybody. It’s… I don’t know… complicated. It’s not that you’re not important to me, but I don’t want to sleep with a bunch of men who don’t mean everything to me. Wouldn’t you want to be the one I remember as the kind stranger instead of the man I randomly slept with one night?”

He threw himself across the bed dramatically. “I have heartache over you now.”

“That’s not heartache. That’s blue balls. If I slept with you, I’d have heartache tomorrow and I wouldn’t want to hate you after having such a nice day today. Sometimes the people I’ve loved the most were the ones I never loved at all.”

He stared at me intently with wanting. “What does blue balls mean?”

The next morning I listened to the matriarchs in Ervin’s family fuss over my safety. By the afternoon, I found myself back in the car with Ervin at the Tuzla bus station where we had met the day before. We had a few more minutes to wait until my departure to Serbia. It was sunny and dry outside.

“Without a rainstorm like yesterday morning, there probably won’t be any rainbows today,” Ervin said. He sighed and changed topics. “But you should be able to find another bus in Belgrade that will take you to Romania.

It’s important you look for one right away. It will be late when you get there and if you can get a night bus—” I chuckled. “Don’t worry. I’ll be okay. I’m a smart girl. I got this far, right?”

He handed me a bag full of bread and cheese. “It’s from my mother. It’s not normal here for a girl to go traveling alone the way you do. She wants to make sure you do not get hungry.”

I smiled. “Please tell her thank you.”

We stood beside the car watching the large bus drive into the parking lot. My hand rested on the warm hood of his car and we were quiet for a moment.

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Jasmin Waisburd Winner of The James Emanuel Poetry Prize

The moon has given thee a way with light The moon has given thee a way with light, Which blends with touch and scent to soothe the soul; But now the light has gone and here the night Can shatter all defense with rhyme or prose.

The tidal washes off the drawn-up mask, Which centuries of falsehood have produced; Your aura has been ruined by the task Of coming to detest what you’ve seduced.

Your eyes, which once were filled with skilled content Are now a yellow hue which burn the core; The touch which once you treasured has been spent And mouths that once collided become sore.

But oh! My heart dost throb and in despair Comes winding up this chest for lack of air.

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Promethean Gold Contributors to Promethean (1953-2014)

For over sixty years, Promethean has printed the best of City College’s community of writers, poets, and artists. Many of these alums have gone on to national and international recognition in their fields. It is with pride that we present their names here, and salute their contributions to an ongoing and rich history of diverse and honored writing.

The Editors ­

A.K.A.

Alan Aycock

Paula Bomer

Michele Abramowitz

Shay Azoulay

Edgar Bonilla

Mark Abrams

Chisako Baba

Danielle Bonnici

Sam Abrams

Jannett Bailey

Shaila Bora

Domenick Acocella

Walter Balcerak

Laura Bowman

Jeanette Adams

Robert Balun

Laura Boylan

Malika Adams

Mike Baptiste

Tai-Danae Bradley

Deborah M. Aguayo-Delgado Thomas Barber

Joshua Brand

David Aherne

Lisa Barelli

Steven Braun

John Aigner

Ayelet Barkai

Logan Brennen

Jihad Shomari Akineyele

S. Barowsky

Paul Bresnick

Maryam Alikhani

Chiara Barzini

Jeff Brewer

Orubba Almansouri

Robert Charles Basner

Joshua Brand

Zelda Alpern

Myrtle Bates

Cherie Brock

Dan Altano

Tony Batten

Melissa Broder

Alex Lee Alvarez

Sean Bauer

Patricia Brody

Hernan Amorini

Roberta Baumann

Paul Broer

Michael Amurata

Daniel Baumbach

William Bronk

Keisha-Gaye Anderson

Ellen Baxt

Clemson Brown

Nicole Andonov

Kenneth Belferman

Gillian Philson Brown

Anastassiya Andrianova

Brian Bendlin

Julie Joslyn Brown

Zakkiyyah Seidah Ansari

Joseph Benincase

Edith Brownfield

Peter Anson

Shayne Benz

Jamie Bruce

Rachel Ansong

Kelvin Beriguete

Iris Bruel

David Antin

Bruce M. Berman

Ryan Brunette

Chris Archer

Arline Bernstein

Peter Bruno

Michael Archer

Naomi Berton

Elise Buchman

Fred Arcoleo

Natalie Bienstock

Thalet Naveed Bukhari

James Arden

Maria Billini

Darren Bulhak

Angie Argabrite

Ellen Marie Bissert

Concepcion Bulo

Gregory Thomas Argo

Kiki Black

Anthony Burgess

Elizabeth Arias

Paul Blackburn

Michael Burns

Mary Armstrong

Debrah Blaine

Robert Burr

Gavin Atkinson

Diana Bloom

Corinne Burris

Hajat Avdovic

Caroline Bock

Evan Burton

Mark Averitt

Ahalya Bodasing

Zachary C. Bush

Mabel M. Avila

Gail Boland

Naomi Bushman 177

Aidan Byrne

Robert David Cohen

Damian deMagistris

Raoul Caes

Scott Cohen

Rosaly DeMaios

Edward Cahill

Mark Robin Collins

Dennis M. Demello

Sade Calderon

Peggy Collen

Vivian Demith

Laura Callahan

Ryan Condon

Michael Denis

Marlon Calliste

C. Conlin

Kristina Derosa-Gilhooly

Lloyd G Campbell

Melissa Connelly

David Deutsch

C.A. Campos

Daniel Conte

Tom Devaney

Gabriela Canales

Helen Cooper

Nikki Devereux

Ashley Canino

James Cooper

George Di Caprio

Nelson Canton

David Corliss

David Diamond

Mary Ellen Carew

Ted Cornwell

Janice Diaz

Dale Carillo

Maurice Cory

Pierre Diaz

Liza Case

Daniel Coshnear

Deborah DiBari

Luis Castillo

Brendan Costello Jr.

John Dibella

Mauricio Castillo

Jennifer Couch

George DiCaprio

Robert Castle

Elisabeth Couret

Lynn Dion

Christina Marie Castro

Candice Coy

Amynah Diop

Joan Cenedella

Gregory Crosby

Lyn DiOrio

John Cenedella

Zackery Cuevas

Jeff Dittmer

Frank Cespedes

John Curl

Arthur Dobrin

Jessie Chaffee

Chanaia Curry-Griffith

Daniel Donatacci

Edith Chevat

Christopher Curtis

Andrew Donofrio

Susan Chi

Irene Anne Czys

Brandon Alan Dorfman

Tony Chiarella

Enid Dame

Annie Douglas

Conrad Chittick

Gabrielle Danchick

Avi Dresner

Kathleen Chodor

Francis Daniel

Mike Dressel

Maria Christina

Helen Dano

Joe Dunlap

Seth Cipriano

Melanie Danza

Frank Dunseith

Raymond Clark

Stephanie Darrow

Robert Durning

Joshua Cochran

Pablo Figueroa Davia

Joe Early

Patii Cockram

Ryan Davidson

Sean Edgley

Dina Coe

Anita Davis

Jocelyn Edmonson

Paul Cofer

Fielding Dawson

Krystel Edwards

Allen Cohen

John De Bella

Nikki Edwards

Lois Cohen

Samuel Delaney

Milton Ehre

Morton N. Cohen

Anthony Della Penna

Joel Ehrenzweig

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Gilbert King Elisa

Ruth Frankel

Stephanie Elliott

Shirley L.A. Fraser-Davies Gail Gloston

Lowell Ellis

Jeff Freeman

Amrit Goberdhan

James A. Emanuel

Leslie Freeman

Janet Godman

Rebecca Emmerich

S. Martin Friedman

Norm Godwasser

Elizabeth England

Alex Friedmann

Arlene Goldberg

Lillian Engleman

Ruth FĂźglistaller

David Goldberg

Mark Engler

Judith Furedi

Jonathan Goldberg, PhD

John J. Enright

Barbara Fusger

Krystyna Golden

Elaine Equi

Samantha Gabal

Frederick Golden

Zoltan Erenyi

Cori L. Gabbard

Larry Goldes

Chea Waters Evans

Dan Gabriel

Frederick Goldin

Pat Exum

Jane Gabriels

Abraham Goldstein

J. Fagen

Coriel Gaffney

Harry Goldstein

Harris M. Falk

Lois Gallagher

Norm Goldwasser

Rosemary Farrell

Gerald Gallant

George Gombar

Kenneth Fauerbach

Zach Gallo

Anna Goodkind

Lisa Feiner

Lorraine Gamble-Lofton

Donna Goodman

Ross Feld

Laura M. Gannon

Jacob Goodman

Norman Feliks

A. Lewis Garner

Keegan Goodman

Norma Felsenthal

Peggy Garrison

Nicole Goodwin

Alex Fernandez

Emmanuel Gautreau

Jeremiah Goodwin

Pablo Figueroa

Alina Gavrila

Nicole Goodwin

Zeke Finkelstein

Andy Geller

Veronica Gorodetsky

Barbara Fischer

Jen George

Joy Gottdiener

Jefferson Fish

Kiriean Skeet George

Mara Grayson

Mark Fishbein

Paul Georgeades

Roger Green

Barbara Fisher

Norma (Felsenthal) Gerber ZenzilĂŠ Green

George Fleischer

Carla Gericke

Cory Greenspan

Nya Gregor Fleron

Robert Ghiradella

Roger Greenwald

Patrick Flynn

Joseph Gibaldi

Ted Greenwald

Ruth Fogel

Siwsan Gimprich

Alfred Greuman

David Forman

Victor Ginsberg

Paden Grey

Amanda Fournier

Maria Silvina Gioannini

Henry Grinberg

Harris Frank

Austin Givens

David Groff

Betsy Frank

Becca Shaw Glaser

Barry Gross

D.F. Frank

Mark Glazer

Thomas Grun

Richard H. Glodstone

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Ira Grushow

Helen Ho

Triston John

Paul Gullen

James Holquist

Bronx Johnson

William Hacett

Laura Holtzman

Samantha Johnston

Marilyn Hacker

Steven Hormozdi

Katharine Jones

Steve Hagler

Eugene Horowitz

Krysia Jopek

Rusha Haljuci

Juliet Howard

Blance Jordan

Isabella Halsted

Melinda Howard

Russ Josephs

Leo Hamalian

Nikeeyia Howell

Martha Jules

Martin J. Hamer

Sally Howell-Rumbert

God Kalim

Keith Hamilton

Yen-Hwa Huang

Garrett Kalleberg

Jamaica Hardwick

Karen Hubbard

Laurel Kallen

Peter Harper

C. Huffman

Elliot Kaminski

Judy Harris

Kit Hulit

Matt Kanelos

Holly Harrison

Jeremy Hull

Betty Kaplan

Allison Harvey

D. Scott Humphries

Emily Kaplan

Charles Haseloff

William Lance Hunt

Michele Karas

Sebastian Hatathlie

Farah Hussain

Athena Karoutsos

James V. Hatch

Stacy Ibbotson

Peter Katradis

Mary Hays

Muhammad Ibrar

David Katz

Carol Hebald

Yoko Inagi

Judy Katz

Nuriel Heckler

Arnold Heller Ingberman Judith Nina Katz

Jane Heil

Aysha Islam

Michael L. Keenan

Lisa Helfer

Bob Jackson

Diana Keeney

Louis G. Heller

Ivory Jackson

Richard Kel

David Henderson

Jane Jaffe

Marcia Kelly

Jerome Henkin

Kara Janeczko

Megan Kelly

Jeanne Henry

Jacklyn Janeksela

Robert Kelly

Robert Henry

James R. Janowski

Tyleen Kelly

Heather Henson

David Jarrett

Robert Ken

Beth Herstein

Mardi Jaskot

Virginia Kennedy

Tom Heymann

Yah-Hanna Jenkins

Robert Kern

Bernard Hines

Reid Jensen

Brendan Kiely

Jeff Morgan Bernard

Jon Jensen

Seung Ae Kim

Hines

Norman Jezioranski

John Kim

Laura Hinton

Mayra Jimenez

Sam Kimball

Jack Hirschman

M. Johanes

David Kirby

Andrew Ho

Javon John

Alison Klein

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Bonnie Klein

Joseph A. Leffe

Dana Makover

Roberta Klein

Barbara Lekatsas

Gerald Malanga

Bob Knight

Lester Lenoff

Diane Maldonado

Jack Knoll

Roseanne Leto

Sheila Maldonado

Lisa Ko

Denise Levertov

Irving Malin

Tom Kochman

David Levine

Arthur Mandelbaum

John Kofron

Tomar Levine

Mark Mandelbaum

Ira Konigsberg

James Heller Levinson Karoline Manko

Georgette Korda

Stephen Levy

Lory Manrique

Vaughn Koumjian

Harry Lewis

Herbert Marder

Deirdre Kovac

Reginald Lewis

Devter Marks

Kenneth Kozischek

Nge Lewis

Samuel Marles

Chet Kozlowski

Andrew Lieb

Laura Marshall

Carolyn Kraemer

Ira Liebowitz

Serenity Marshall

Gail Kramer

Douglas Light

Kenneth Keith Martin

Dan Stephen Krauss

Nancy Linde

Matthew Martin

James Kroener

Luther Link

Rammer Martinez

Jack Kroll

Chris Litman

Ines Martins

Krystina

Veronica Liu

Jonathan Everett Maseng

Krystyna

Daniel Long

Essence Mason

Naheem Adio Kujenya

Robert Losada

Alex Maurice

Jonathan Kundra

Skye Loudon

Harvey Mayes

Charles Kutcher

Mark Lovewell

Cathy McArthur

Tammie V. Lacwell

Lenny Lubitz

Mark N. McBeth

Howie Langer

Daryl Lucas

John McCaffrey

Konstantinos Lardas

Kristina Lucenko

Karen McCann

Joan Larkin

Brent Lucia

Carol McDonald

Pamela L. Laskin

Linda J. Lumley

Mary McGrail

Jovira L. Last

Ian Lundy

Katie McGrath

Sharon Lattig

Sara Lusena

Niquae McIntosh

Daniel Lauffer

Gloria Lustig

Phoebe McKay

Ann Lauterbach

Steven Lutzker

Tammy McKillip

James Lawler

Kate Lutzner

Carmel McMahon

Daniel J. Leary

John Paul Madera

Jean McMillan

Robert Leaver

Jill K. Magi

Matt Mead

Raymond Guy LeBlanc

Thomas Maher

Ronnie Meier

Claudia M. Lee

William Mak

Steve Mekler 181

D.H. Melhen

Matthew G. Nagler

Marc Palmieri

C. Rips Meltzer

Jean Nataski

Roberta Pantal

Julio Mercado

Sebastian Natera

Daniel Panzer

Eve Merriam

Stanley Nelson

Anne Paolucci

Nick Messitte

Sarita Nemerow

Silvia Parda

David Meyers

Pablo Neruda

Eileen Parisi

Olga Michelin

Fred Newman

Yooniee Park

Angelina Miller

TC Niemann

Guil Parreiras

Stephen Miller

Skyla Yuko Niitsuma

Nicholas Patrick

Tricia Milnamow

Gregory Nixon

Raymond Patterson

Rebecca Minnich

Gail North

James Patton

Mark Jay Mirsky

L. Jeffrey Norwalk

Joseph Pellegrini

Kenya Mitchell

Pat Nottingham

David Pemberton

Sam Mitnick

Arnaldo T. Nuñez

Jogn Penn

Kosuke Miyata

Julie R. Obaso

Annette Perel

Laura Modigliani

Megan O’Donnell

Mary Perez

Kamela Mohabeer

Sean O’Hanlon

Michael Perkins

Vic Moll

Joe Okonkwo

Judy Perlman

Iris Mon

Omoyele Olujobi

Iris Perry

Donald E. Monaco

Tracy O’Neill

Margaret Perry

Michael Keith Montegna

Laurence O’Neill

Alan Pesetsky

Denise Monteiro

George Oppen

Charles Peshkin

Nancy Moore

Joel Oppenheimer

D.M. Pettinella

Nayand Moore

Paul Oppenheimer

Donald Phe

Emily Moore

David Orlowski

Donald Phelps

James Moran

Ana Mercedes Ortiz

Renee Philippi

Karina Moronta

Miguel Antonio Ortiz

Louis Phillips

Jennifer Moscoso

Wanliss Ortiz

Jessica Pieragowski

Jack Moskowitz

Anne Osmer

Nicholas Piombino

Michael Mosley

Kevin O’Sullivan

Kenyatta Pious

Walter Mosley

Janette Otero

Connor Pitetti

Nowshin Sultana Moury

Vera Oulianova

David Plick

Nowshin Moushumi

Rebel Owen

Tamra Plotnick

Jon Muggleston

Stella Padnos

Raydime Polanco

Rebecca Murphy

Grace Paley

Richard Poletick

Anika Nabila

Morton Paley

Henry Pollen

Ben Nadler

Roman Palitsky

Melia Polynice

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Mark Polyocan

Susanne Richardson

George Ryan

Poppy

Shira Richman

Kelly Ann Ryan

Jennifer Sabin Poux

Joseph Riippi

Terry Ryan

George Preston

Virginia Riker

Anne Saidman

Steven Price

Ismael Rios

Martin Delano Saiman

Rosanne Priest

Liana Rivas

Thierry Saintine

Peggy Proben

Danny Rivera

Arnold Saland

Michael Ptaszek

Edward Rivera

Larry Sandberg

Fanny Pudlo

Sandra Garcia Rivera

Natalie Sandler

David Puretz

Sophie Rivera

Robert Sandler

Erin Pycior

Garri Rivkin

Karen Sanford

Jeffery Queen

Joseph Rizzuto

Kenny Santos

Shazia Quereshi

Lauri Robertson

A. Sargunar

Ernst Quinonesz

Joseph Robinson

Joel Sati

Yury Quinonez

Beth Roddy

Jim Savio

Ernesto Quinonez

Hannah P. Rodgers

Tomoko Sawada

Daniel R

Johannah Rodgers

Seamus Scanlon

Helen L. Rado

Laren Rodriguez

Jordan Schauer

Heather Ramsdell

David J. Roe

Allan Schear

Samantha Randolph

Matt Rogers

Walter Scheps

Ruben Rangel

Emmanuel Romano

Sandrale Schettini

Erik Raschkle

Monika Romare

Nathan Schiller

Carter Ratcliff

Benjamin Rose

Peter Schjeldahl

Enid Rauchway

David Rosenbaum

Christa Schneider

Rachel McGregor Rawlings Richard Rosenberg

Ed Schneider

Julie Ann Rea

Robert Rosenbloom

Jack Schnel

Conor Tomรกs Reed

Robert Rosenblum

Marcia Schonfeld

Donald Reilly

Steve Rosenstein

Howard Schor

Donna Reis

Randy Rosenthal

Elaine Schwager

Robert R. Reldan

Chris Ross

Ben Schwartz

Vittoria Repetto

Sallyann Roth

Lynn Schwartz

Florangel Reyes

William Ross

Daniel Scorr

Rosemarie Reyes

Marvin Rothman

Daniel Scott

Fred Reynolds

Earl Rouit

David Seals

Rob Reynolds

Karen Roush

Diana Segarra

Pandora Richardson

Mary Ruane

Elaine Sexton

Ron Richardson

Michael Rumaker

Bing Shao 183

Becca Shaw-Glaser

M.G. Stephans

John Torriero

Barry Sheinkopf

Jonathan Sterling

Peter Trachtenberg

Caroline Shepard

Alexis Stern

Nicole Treska

Eli Shul

Linda Stern

Rober Trinz

William Sidney

Sally Rose Stern

Kristina Tsamis

Helen Lila Silver

Jessica Stilling

Gloria Tsirlman

Eric Silvera

Fred Stockholder

Fai Tsoi

Harry Silverstein

Robert Strathopulos

Elayna Tuck

Andrea Simon

Aaron Streiter

Nelson Tuero

Sukhmani Singh

Richard Strier

Tamar Turin

Sipai

Raymond Strom

Myron M. Turner

Hasanthika Sirisena

Leo Stutzin

Genya Turovsky

Edward M. Siuda

Lauren Suchman

Frederic Tuten

Joel Sloman

Kushya Sugarman

David Twersky

Karen Slotnick

Victoria Sullivan

Cheo Taylor Tyehimba

Nikki Smith

John Sunami

Deborah Tyler

Theik Smith

Sokhunthary Svay

Masha Udensiva-Brenner

Iris Smyles

Irene Szeto

Frederick F. Ulrich

Amber Snider

Miriam Tabb

David Unger

Faye Sobkowski

Jason Tarnowski

Dominick Valenti

Layla Sola

David Tassy

Alex Van Ark

Anna Soo-Hoo

Estelle Ann Tatum

Melina Vargas

Gilbert Sorrentino

Gilbert G. Tauber

John Vartoukian

Hilary Sortor

Maggie Taurnac

Amy Veach

Vincent Sosa

Andrew Taylor

Karen de Balbian Verster

Paola Soto

Arlene Teichberg

Ulysses Vidal

Carmelo Soto

The Ten Twenty Thirty

B.C. Villalona

Tana Spand

John. C. Thirwall

Elizabeth Vogel

Jennifer Specto

Beverly Thomas

Anna Voisard

Sofia Stambolieva

Christopher Thomas

Richard Volkmann

Julia P. Stanley

Melinda Thomsen

Edmund Volpe

Todd Stansfield

Roderick Thorp

Alexandra Vozick

Paul Stapleton

Tanya Thurman

Kameron Wade

Anna Starcheski

Brent Thurston-Rogers

Michele Wallace

Bradford Stark

Carrie Anne Tocci

Barry Wallenstein

Anna Steegmann

Thomas Tolnay

Mary Walton

Kevin Steele

Joseph Michael Torres

Tyson Ward

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Lewis Warsh Steve Wasserman Rebecca Watkins Richard Furlong Weber Ann-Kathrin Wegener Jacquiline Weinberg Estha Weiner Henry Weinfield Joe Weintraub Elle Weiss Lenore Weiss Micah E. Weiss Abigail Welhouse John Wieners Andrea Wiesen J. Louise Wile Aisha M. Williams Joycelyn Williams Mary Williams Saram Williams George Wolberg Harvey Wolin David Wolinsky James Woodall Sandee Woodside Wendy Workman Robert Worth Brook Wright Katie Wright Alyssa Yankwitt Carl Yeargans Tsugio Yoshinaga Helen Yu Laura Zaino Heidi Zeigler Rose Zimbardo Jack Zucker 185

Biographies Dan Altano is a creative writing MFA student, focusing in poetry, at City College. He is also an adjunct English instructor at City and new media manager at the Center to Advance Palliative Care, a nonprofit organization supported by Mount Sinai Hospital. Dan is honored to be publishing his second piece in Promethean. His first piece, a royal crown of sonnets entitled In Bed Through Darkness, appeared in in the Spring 2013 issue.

Lori Balaban has written, produced, and directed for clients such as NBC, National Geographic, Bain & Company, Harley-Davidson, Lifetime, and Sundance. She’s a member of the PGA and WGA, and committed to the art of storytelling, having written treatments, docs, screenplays, and TV scripts.

While working towards her MFA, she worked as a development executive; directed a short film for RIPFEST, as well as branded entertainment commercials for AMC, Disney, and HGTV; and launched integrated content at AMC Network. She’s currently working on a second novel and screenplay.

Robert Balun received his MFA from City College, where he was the recipient of the Jerome Lowell DeJur Prize for Poetry and the Teacher-Writer Award. His poems have appeared in Bodega, Similar Peaks, Smoking Glue Gun, Heavy Feather Review, Word Riot, and others. His debut chapbook, Self (Ceremony), is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

Kiki Black caught the learning bug late in life. She reads her poetry, fiction, play scenes, or memoirs every chance she gets. She graduated from CCNY with a creative writing MFA in 2012 and is currently in the CCNY English literature MA program.

Laura Bowman is a playwright, storyteller, and published poet. Her book Mirrors (Reflection of a Woman’s Soul) has been made part of the Schomburg Collection. Her poetry has been aired on WLIB’s Garry Byrd’s Live at the Apollo; WBAI’s Shelf Life; WTOW, North Carolina; WNYE Radio; and has been published in several journals. In addition, several of her plays have been produced. She thanks the Godhead for having received the gift of thirteen stories/books and seventeen plays for youth, in addition to nine

186

stories/books and seven plays for adults, and scores of poetry and songs for adults and youth.

Jermaine Brown is an English major at City College, with a creative writing concentration. He grew up in New York City, but has also lived in Georgia; Washington, DC; and Virginia. He loves music, dance, anything in the arts, and taking walks along the Hudson River in Hamilton Heights where he lives.

Henry Bunch is a creative writing MFA student at City College, who specializes in poetry and Spanish translation. As a poet and a reader of poetry, he is most interested in romanticism, surrealism, the New York School, and modern/postmodern abstract/lyrical experimentation. His poetry has been published in the Alfred University Awards Booklet and Love’s Chance.

Laura Callahan is a professor of Hispanic linguistics in CCNY’s Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures and in the Graduate Center’s PhD program in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian literatures and languages. Her creative work has appeared in various literary magazines, including Promethean (2010), The Montserrat Review (2001), and The Santa Clara Review (1991).

Luis Camejo is a senior and an English major. He is a first-generation Dominican writer from the Bronx, who enjoys John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, and the lyrical styling of the great Juan Luis Guerra. Heavily influenced by the Hispanic experience in America, much of his work tries to present what the American Dream means to his people when brushed up against the American Reality. He cites Pablo Neruda, Billy Collins, and the honking of horns in New York as the sources of his poetic inspiration. Among the faculty, he would like to thank Professors Chet Kozlowski, Renata Miller, and Michelle Valladares for being great sources of wisdom, inspiration, and patience.

Philip F. Clark is a senior in the MFA creative writing program, with a concentration in poetry. His poems have been published in Assaracus, The Good Men Project, Lyrelyre, Poetry in Performance, Monologging, and the anthology Between: New Gay Poetry. His interviews

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and poetry reviews have been published in Lambda Literary and The Conversant. He is the editor and author of The Poet’s Grin, which presents the work of emerging and established poets and is a resource for the community. He has read his work at Cornelia Street Café, Over the Eight, and at Central Arkansas University. He is currently working on a first chapbook, The Carnival of Affection, and a first book of poems, titled The Occasional Adonis. A native New Yorker, he resides in the Bronx.

Jonathan Crocca is currently an MLA student at the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture who enjoys engaging in creative and artistic fields. His work is driven by a desire to gain and share a perspective that has yet to be expressed. His poem is dedicated to Shayne, for her unremitting love and support.

Helen Dano’s work has appeared in Promethean 2013 and 2014. Her MFA thesis is what she calls a modern Hawaiian chant. It tells of the mythical and, to some extent, reconstructed historical past of a place that Helen was told as a child had no history.

Lynn Dion is an adjunct instructor of both English and psychology at City College; she holds additional degrees in musicology and Yiddish studies.

“Mr. Hemphill” appeared in the Spring 2013 issue of Hektoen International: A Journal of Medical Humanities; her essays and poems have also appeared in Promethean, Poetry in Performance, and various publications of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. She has also translated selected works of the Yiddish poet, critic, and essayist Yankev Glatsteyn, and these translations will appear in forthcoming issues of Pakntreger, the publication of the National Yiddish Book Center.

Gisella Dionio is an undergraduate sophomore pursuing a degree in English at the Macaulay Honors College at City College. She also plans on minoring in cinema studies, as movies have been an equal source of inspiration for her writing. A native New Yorker, she spent most of her childhood in Jackson Heights, Queens before living in Elmhurst and more recently in Harlem. She now spends her spare time finding new places to eat, listening to Outkast, or reading Bukowski on the train.

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Amynah Diop is an undergraduate junior at City College. She lives in Harlem, writes in Harlem, and plans to stay in Harlem as long as she possibly can. She enjoys writing fiction about Africa, and is currently working on a novel that will inspire people to dream about Africa in a new way. Her father is from Senegal, and he is partly the inspiration for her stories. Her work has previously appeared in Promethean.

Natalia Donofrio is a visual artist born in New York in 1990. Working in painting, drawing, installation, animation, and photographic processes, Natalia creates a series of explorations that translate music into visual compositions. She received her BFA in visual art and media and film studies from Macaulay Honors College at Queens College in 2012, and is currently working towards her MFA in art at City College.

Stephen Erickson is an undergraduate editor at Promethean. Now a junior majoring in English at the Macaulay Honors College at City College of New York, he is pursuing concentrations in creative writing and literature, as well as participating in the Publishing Certificate Program. He is a recipient of the Julius and Elizabeth Isaacs Scholarship. He hopes to work in publishing and continue writing fiction.

Lily M. Gelfars is a New York–based writer. She graduated from the CCNY creative writing MFA program in 2014. In the program, she focused on various forms of writing, including screenwriting, playwriting, and translation.

She received the Stark Award for Drama in May 2014 for the play Parliament, Light. Lily is currently at work on a novel about life as a fine-dining waitress with a penchant for Central American travel and long-distance running. She is currently unpublished.

Lee Jacob Hilado was born and raised in the Philippines. In 2009, he moved to New York and is now studying electronic design and multimedia at City College. As a graduate of the media design program at Hostos Community College, he received an honorable mention in the design competition to beautify the scaffolding on the Church of the Incarnation in Midtown Manhattan. Other awards include the Hostos Excellence in Animation (2013), the Hostos Excellence in Art Contribution (2012), and second place in the 2013

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One Club Boot Camp Competition. His paintings were recently showcased at the Madison’s Browne Fellowship’s third-year anniversary.

Nikeeyia Howell currently works in the field of communications and marketing. She has a lot of interests, perhaps too many: she is a writer, a photographer, a crafter, an artist, and a lover of a good story. She graduated City College in May 2014 with a BA in English literature and a certificate from the Publishing Certificate Program. Her work has been featured in previous volumes of Promethean.

Karen Hubbard was born and lived her early years in the Chicago area and is currently a professor of biology at City College. She has published extensively in research areas of cancer and aging. She lives in West Orange, New Jersey. Since coming to New Jersey, she has given readings in several venues, including the Poet’s Forum, the West Orange Arts Council Art Expo, and Watchung Booksellers in Montclair, NJ. She has published poetry in Amelia, A Stone Unturned (anthology), Austin Downtown Arts Magazine, Maultrommel, Open Doors (anthology), Promethean, Shot Glass Journal, and in her chapbooks, Rain (2006) and The Day is Quieter than Night (2012).

Nnenna Kalu was born and raised in New York City. She currently attends City College as an English major with a concentration in creative writing.

Some of her interests include reading, writing, science, and community service projects. In the future, she hopes to become a well-established therapist and editor.

Michele Karas is a poet, playwright, and essayist, as well as the associate copy director of a top-five publishing house in New York City. Her poems have most recently appeared or are forthcoming in Clockhouse, THRUSH, Pea River Journal, Right Hand Pointing, and Alaska Quarterly Review. Her plays have been staged in Manhattan and regionally. Karas is the recipient of the Stark Poetry Award and the Slice Literary Conference Nonfiction Award for 2014. She is in her penultimate semester at City College in pursuit of an MFA. Find her on Twitter @small_peace.

Margaret Laidley is an undergraduate senior at City College, where she majors in English (concentration in creative writing) and intends to minor in 190

journalism. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, and is currently working on a collection of short stories. A keen observer of life, Margaret enjoys writing during her subway commute, voraciously feasting on a veritable smorgasbord of delights―it is a rich microcosm of life above ground and even the bitter is sweet to the insatiable appetite of this creative writer.

Pamela L. Laskin is a lecturer in the English Department, where she directs the Poetry Outreach Center. Poetry collections include Remembering Fireflies and Secrets of Sheets (Plain View Press), The Bonsai Curator and Van Gogh’s Ear (Cervena Barva Press), Daring Daughters/Defiant Dreams (A Gathering of Tribes), and The Plagiarist (Dos Madres Press). Several children’s books have been published, too: Visitation Rites (Diversion Press) and Homer the Little Stray Cat (Red Balloon Press), the most recent.

Chrisinda Lynch is a senior in the Macaulay Honors College at City College. She is an English major—concentration in creative writing—journalism minor, and a graduate of the Publishing Certificate Program. She hopes to work in publishing after she graduates.

Nicholas Magliato is currently a graduate student in the language and literacy program at City College. He also teaches first-year writing at City and works as a tutor at the Writing Center. Outside of academia, he plays jazz guitar. He prefers early swing, gypsy, and big band jazz.

Conor McGlone moved to New York at nineteen to play music and become a sex icon. The endeavor not as simple as his teenage mind expected, he returned to school at CCNY, at first to study math but, unenthusiastic about being wedded to an abacus, he soon turned his gaze to literature. He has been able to fake a taste for academia for some time, but, his graduation near, the persona is wearing thin. What’s next for this budding ne’er-do-well?

The jury’s out, but one might expect anything from an under-the-bridge death by knife wound to a life adored by tall women who smoke cigarettes through long black holders on penthouse verandas and regularly use the word “indeed.”

Jenna Newton is a visual artist born in Mineola, New York, now living and working in New York City. She received her BFA from the School of Visual 191

Arts and is an MFA candidate at City College. Working in painting and drawing, she is interested in the spaces between nonobjective and recognizable imagery. View more of her work at jennanewton.com.

Paul Oppenheimer, who teaches in the English Department at City College, is the author of four volumes of poetry; a novel, Blood Memoir; and biographies of Peter Paul Rubens and Machiavelli.

Jonathan Riordan is an MFA student at City College. He is originally from Birmingham, Alabama, where he received his bachelor’s of fine arts in 2006 and master’s of art education in 2013 from the University of Alabama. For sixteen years, he has created fine art and been involved in numerous national and international art shows, as well as various private large art commission projects. From 2010 to 2013, he lived and taught ESL in Beijing, China, an experience that sparked a fascination with other cultures that continues to influence his life and art to this day. He looks forward to each new horizon with great anticipation.

Carly Rubin is pursuing her MFA in creative writing at City College, with a concentration in poetry. She holds a BA in English, with a minor in Spanish, from Boston University. Though she’s spent the past few years living and studying in Boston and New York, she is originally from South Florida, where her love of Latin American literature began. Her areas of academic interest include modern to contemporary Latin American and American poetry and fiction, as well as the practice of translation.

Wahaj Saleem is an engineering student curious about the artistic approach in the world of science and arts.

Seamus Scanlon is a playwright from Galway and currently based in New York, where he is the librarian at City College’s Center for Worker Education. He is a graduate of the creative writing MFA program at City College.

His collection As Close As You’ll Ever Be was published by Cairn Press in 2012. The McGowan Trilogy (a series of interrelated one-act plays) was produced in September 2014 by the Cell Theater Company (New York). The trilogy won awards for Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Design in the

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annual 1st Irish Theatre Festival. The plays move to Galway in June and the UK in July. The book (Arlen House, 2014) is available at the Drama Book Shop, Inc., St. Mark’s Bookshop, and some other esoteric outlets.

Alina Shevorykin earned two master’s degrees from City College’s psychology department. She is currently completing a PhD in mental health counseling at Pace University. Alina has strong love for colors and is a selftaught artist.

Lisa Simon is an associate professor in the School of Education at City College, where she specializes in literacy education. Simon’s professional and personal interests demonstrate a rather narrow range: books, literature, narratives, and creativity, and how to teach these things in elementary, middle, and high school. Recently, her interests have expanded to include fairy tales as well.

Joseph Tirella is the author of The New York Times Best Seller TomorrowLand: The 1964-65 World’s Fair and the Transformation of America (Lyon’s Press), which was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection.

A veteran journalist and editor, he has written for The New York Times, Slate, Fortune Small Business, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Vibe and People. His poetry will also appear in a forthcoming issue of Newtown Literary. He is a proud alumnus of both Queens College (BA 1993) and CCNY (MFA 2014).

Christopher Torres is a Queens, New York native with Ecuadorian roots who has a penchant for storytelling, both on paper and on stage. He studied creative writing at John Jay College while pretending to study for his forensic psychology degree. He continued to study creative writing at Hunter College, where he also facilitated writing workshops as the senior prose editor for the Olivetree Review—the college’s art and literary journal. He also performs storytelling at various StorySlams in the New York City area. He’s currently an MFA candidate in City College’s creative writing program, where he’s trying to not only foster his writing but also to learn some much-needed discipline. God knows he needs it. Finally, Christopher would also like to send out a sincere thank you to Crystal Vagnier, Marc Palmieri, and Kathryn Ekblad for being so generous with their time and insightful guidance.

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Carly Trunkwalter earned her bachelor’s in English from City College in the fall of 2014. She currently works in New York City as a freelance journalist and continues to explore personal experiences through short story. After moving from her family’s horse farm in South Jersey to New York in 2009, she is proud to call Central Park her backyard and to share a tiny studio apartment with her loving boyfriend, Anthony, a caring partner who assists in making all her dreams possible.

Crystal Vagnier is a jack-of-all-trades and, if she plays her cards right, a soon-to-be master in the fine art of creative writing. She writes travel nonfiction, drama, children’s literature, and poetry. She was the recipient of the 2008 Abraham A. Bernstein Class of 1930 Award, the Jacob A. Weiser Playwriting Fund Award, and the Stark Award in Drama, as well as the 2014 David Dortort Prize in Nonfiction and the Henry Roth Memorial Scholarship.

She mentors first graders taller than her through CCNY’s Poetry Outreach Center and spends her mornings learning to throw jabs and her afternoons advising Hunter College students on how to procrastinate. Her work has appeared in Poetry in Performance, Promethean, and The Billfold. Don’t ask her where she lives. It’s a long story.

Michelle Valladares is a poet and filmmaker. She is currently a lecturer in poetry at City College. She is the author of Nortada, The North Wind (Global City Press). Her poems have been published in The Literary Review, Upstreet Journal, and in the anthologies Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia & Beyond and The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry by Indians.

Charles Vassallo graduated from college in the seventies, afterwhich he obtained a master’s degree in philosophy from the CUNY Graduate Center.

Soon after, he received an MD and went on to specialize in neuroradiology.

However, the clarion call of philosophy brought him back to the search for wisdom in the early nineties when he studied in Europe and began to write a PhD dissertation on Friedrich Nietzsche and his views on health. The dissertation sits unfinished on his desk as he pursues both fiction and poetry as an MFA student at CCNY. Charles lives with his partner in Chelsea, where he occasionally interprets imaging studies from trauma centers, but more frequently indulges in his imagination.

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Daniel Vazquez is a Queens, New York native of Dominican and Puerto Rican descent, currently residing in Harlem. An English major at the City College of New York, he is interested in contemporary Latin American, African, and American fiction, and the practice of translation. He hopes to soon combine his love of literature and passion for social justice as an editor in the publishing industry.

Diami Virgilio is a student at the City College Center for Worker Education.

He is a published comic book writer, and in 2012, self-published the original graphic novel Black & Blue. Diami has worked in print and online journalism for publications such as the Amsterdam News and the Gotham Gazette.

He is a recipient of a CUNY Labor Arts writing award and the Ada Shepard Creative Writing Award. Since 2003, he has worked in the nonprofit world telling the stories of children, youth, and families.

Anna Voisard will complete her MFA at City College in 2015. She was recently a fiction fellow at the CUNY Writers’ Institute. Her work has appeared in Newtown Literary, Red Fez, and the Weekly World News. She is at work on a novel about an over-marrying woman and a collection of short stories about a once-prosperous part of town. She lives in Queens with her husband, son, and daughter.

Jasmin Waisburd is a thriving writer who holds a BA in English literature from CCNY and is constantly finding ways to season her life experiences with a pen and paper. She has studied and enjoys almost all literary eras, but her favorites are the medieval, Victorian, and Renaissance periods; hence, her love for William Shakespeare. From a young age, she dove into books, and as she became older, she discovered that literature has rich plots and underlying themes that uncover the secrets of humanity and its ever-changing, ever-constant essence. Her favorite novel is Jane Eyre, and with all clichĂŠs aside, she loves curling up by the fireside with a steaming cup of hot chocolate and a newly uncovered book, waiting to explode its world onto her eyes.

Sari Weisenberg is a second-year art history major. She believes that studying art must inherently be about the ability to simultaneously create both visual and written literacy. That is why she is so passionate about under195

standing art holistically—being an artist is vital to her understanding of the methodologies of other artists.

Crystal Yeung is a self-conscious wordsmith with too many ideas on sticky notes and many more half-written projects. Because of this, she would rather coach others on how to perfect the craft of writing than do the writing herself.

When she’s not being schooled at City College, Crystal usually volunteers, interns, works, tutors, and spies for several institutions, including Housing Works Bookstore, the Fresh Air Fund, CCNY City Tutors, and currently PEN America. A stressed-out senior graduating in spring 2015 and an alumna of the Publishing Certificate Program, Crystal stays classy with a Tom Collins.

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