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presented by
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
I take the bus between New York City and South Western Pennsylvania a few times a year and watch the Appalachian Mountains recline into the limestone bedrock. On I-80, the mountains begin at the Delaware Water Gap, expansive and curving. They rise toward the Poconos, then fall into the Susquehanna River, then rise again at the Allegheny Plateau. I come from the last descent, the last rolling breath of the Allegheny Mountains. You can find me there, by the water. Mo Crist is a writer living in New York City who loves friendship, chocolate milk, and listening to the same five songs on repeat.
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A SILENCE, ANCESTRAL I got out of bed today At 1 in the afternoon In a pool of my own stagnant water Pointed my toes as far from here as they would go. My calves seized up I sucked air between my teeth and held it there, buzzing, until my muscles relaxed. I didn’t make a sound. Someone is always sleeping in this house With closed doors and dusty shades drawn and shelves full of cups half filled With something resembling a drowning. It only takes one drop down the wrong pipe. And I am so thirsty. I took a shower today At 4 in the afternoon Used the good conditioner in the tall bottle Arranged strands of hair into faces with too many eyes on the wet tile until they were all smiling I know, it’s going to clog the drain one day. I know how much of myself I leave behind, how much of this body I would rather wash clean There is a freckle on my left palm I have never seen before. It is the first part of me I have successfully willed to die. An absence abiding The closed door and the steamed up window and the shelf full of soap I will use to grow the absence into something resembling a space Where I can stretch out my legs I cooked dinner today. At 10 in the evening. Washed rice until cold water ran clear Let it soak Boiled until tender. Served it with a fried egg that burned the silence off the tip of my tongue To scream in this house is to give voice to a pain ancestral A sleeping something we do not rouse But when the burning becomes unbearable When the blisters pop When the fork clatters to the floor Will you hear it? And will you listen? To the way a splintered quiet thing fills a room. To the way silence deafens.
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LEECHING I sleep in green algae and leeches Sucking at the crook of my elbow My eyelashes shiver silt-stained and stuck I do not wake up. Even when their teeth unknot And we fall together into The spaces between sheets of slate If I could I would write my name in the soft stone To prove I was here To prove they did not drown me But this is a sleep ancestral A family’s curse A warm absence Quiet and lethal I sleep in the fold of a handkerchief Pressed into the back pocket of a girl With a nose running faster than she does Denim against silk Frictionless and hovering Between here and your sweaty palms If you call your hand a home Can I sleep in it? All curled fingers and chewed nails. Will you hold me there? Unconscious Wrapped in your callouses like armor I will try to wake up When I feel you slip your thumb into belt loops When I hear the ocean at high tide Receding I sleep in train stations And at the bright ends of tunnels I sleep in crawl spaces and under floor boards And tucked between the pages of newspaper obituaries I sleep with water muddying my lungs I cannot wake up Even for you I’m sorry I promised The leeches They could swallow me Holy
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WHERE I COME FROM I come from a town Where home wraps its arms around you Like your grandmother’s Christmas sweater Where highways are only a distant reminder Of a fast-paced far away world I come from small town rural America Traditional family values The caring eyes of neighbors who always remember your birthday. I come from rolling fields of corn Oak tree skyscrapers Vegetable gardens. I come from strip malls Housing developments Homogeneity. I come from Friday night football games Friday night fight clubs. Remember: don’t talk about it. I come from taking your tractor to prom I come from taking my girlfriend to prom as friends I come from waiting to feel safe in my own school In my own town In my own skin. But instead, I come from the right The far right The so far right they actually think they’re right. I come from a swing state and a swing county The smallest town with the largest republican majority Reversing Pennsylvania from blue to bloodshot. I come from the middle of nowhere The middle of no one around for miles The middle of no I am not in the wrong bathroom Please just let me wash my hands. I come from I hate you Hate your kind Hate crimes. In 2013, my best friend woke up to find a swastika Burned into his front yard His brother’s pickup truck covered in pink spray paint In 2016, his six year old sister finally calls him her brother His mother calls to say it might be best Not to bring his new gender home for Thanksgiving I come from the underside of a welcome mat I come from a small town family of silence
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Of too busy to care A town resting in shadows I come from a town who has spent 3 generations Cutting people off so they can piece together their Perfect puzzle Squeezing me into narrow frames of mind Never fitting Always ruining the picture Like I was the problem The rotten apple spoiling the bag I come from believing I am disgusting Messed up Too monstrous for their small town children “Listen, we just don’t want the kids seeing that kind of stuff. You understand, right?” I come from a town so small it has lost itself Behind two story colonials 3 car garages It’s so safe you can leave your doors unlocked Your windows open So safe you could leave your mind closed I come from a town so safe No one ever has to make room for anything new. But I come from a new reality One of suburban spite Rural rebellion Farmland fear Counting on this country to change its landscape I come from a town too far away For my fault-lines to ever bring rise to new scenery I don’t know if it’s worth it to even try. I want to believe I come from taking responsibility For the next generation of kids Who will walk into classrooms accustomed to assimilation. I want to believe I am not the monster they say I am Not something they can hide under their church pews I don’t want to be the thing they demand to fix. I used to believe I came from an American Dream That just hadn’t woken up yet. But I know now, that the town that raised me did so knowingly. They have always been awake Waiting Biding their time They will not rest until their American Nightmare has become a reality.
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BEHIND MY APPALACHIAN TEETH is a small sky Shriveled in the shadow of a mountain Covered in kudzu The untamable invasive vine Strangling the sun into a muggy cloud That sits, heaviest, in August. The first boy died and the creek bank burst Like grandpa’s jar of moonshine Like a backyard brawl Like a memory distilled Into a purer kind of childhood One of crawfish and Pizza Hut and dirt under our fingernails and heroin
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The second boy died and it was his first time Beating back the vines It was an accident How the rivers and the pharmacies dried up How the air clouded lungs How a boiling summer will take Whatever it can get its hands on Whatever will dull the burn The third boy died and I forgot for a moment How greasy my hair used to get underneath his helmet Forgot the rumble of dirt bike pedal under sneakers Forgot where I come from It’s easy to grow up in the country To be young and alive and thoughtless With algae bloom and scraped knees And neighborhood boys soft like lamb’s ears I straightened my Appalachian teeth too long ago To remember how the trees taste I filled the gaps with wire Spineless Like an old book about a city or a train station or a planet that might support a life one day far from the sunburnt blue collar tick hounds of home Behind my Appalachian teeth is smog and sewage And something shiny that keeps me from going back there. That keeps me here on fire escapes and behind skyscrapers and locked into a grid of streets and avenues with no mountains to lose my breath in and no creek beds to suck me under Back home When it rains The kudzu swallows entire houses It licks its lips Locks the door behind itself Leaves the key with a needle and a spoon We all want to leave sometimes We don’t all want to come back
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POTHOLES AND PINKIE FINGERS On the stove there is a stainless steel pot covered with a lifetime of scratches. It weighs more than I do and sits heavy handed. I watch the flames lick the sides of the pot leaving behind a fog that never lasts long enough for me to draw a tiny heart with my pinkie finger. The kind that means “My love was here.” But even if could fill the whole city with my love I know that when metal is cold to sight it is hot to touch. There is a nonstick skillet in the top cupboard in the kitchen that smells like breakfast sausage and shampoo. It is dented from our tiny fingers prying for its handle in the darkest parts of the morning when butter melts and Wonder bread tastes like fools gold. Grilled cheese sandwiches crunch between our teeth but we have to be quiet. The river outside of your window is sleeping. There is a sauce pan filled with whole milk steaming and I am trying not to lose this warm breath anymore than I have to. Lemon juice creeps between the cracks of my cuticles. Hangnails screaming for mercy. A burn not unlike the one in my chest. The milk catches it’s breath. Chokes I hang the cheesecloth from the faucet in front of the window that faces where the red birds watch us. It drips like tearduct tape around a stubborn spigot. Tonight there is a pan that doesn’t belong to me in a kitchen that isn’t worth my rent. The pasta sticks to itself. The chicken bleeds pink. The basil sighs and Bloomfield is where string beans taste like the bible And love shares a butter knife not quite sharp enough. I read aloud to her with the windows open. She drives with the windows open. She kisses me with the windows open. I am tall enough now to see inside of the stainless steel pot covered with a lifetime of scratches. Love is the loneliest thing I have ever tasted.
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Like raspberry iced tea. Like Yoohoo from a paper carton. Like every night is taco night. The lazy susan making us too dizzy to see where our lips should go. Her lips move ceaselessly. And I listen. And I smile. And I’m not just waiting for my turn to talk. My plate is almost empty. My stomach is almost full. I lick my lips. Quench my thirst. Place my head in my palm and stare at the tablecloth spread out between us. Like a highway. Like the city in the summertime after they fill in the potholes. Where we come from, there are two seasons. Winter, the first, with sidewalks so salty they read like an ocean made itself at home, then got too cold, left itself behind. moved to Florida. Doesn’t visit anymore. Only calls on holidays. The second season: construction. Picking up the pieces and letting them melt together in the blinding sun. A new ocean. One of tar and limestone. Poured in like it owns the place. Like love won’t crack again come winter. Like something new and identical won’t replace it the next time the weather turns. This table is a highway and the further we drive, the easier it will be to hold all of our love together. Somewhere, there is a home with only one season. No one arrives. No one leaves. Nothing falls apart.
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PLIMPTON 7A Ask me about my carabiner Ask me about the keys dangling from it Ask me what they open Ask me what they don’t Ask me about closed doors and empty fruit baskets and what home smells like “There are my friends that I love” Is spelled out in paper letters on the wall Smacked by the door with the broken latch Home is a Plimpton breakfast bar with crumbs From an infinitely large grilled cheese sandwich Home is filing a workorder and fixing it ourselves Home is soft butch Home is Utica Club cans and frozen compost Is gin rummy and crazy eights Is a tear streaked semester already Is a hand on a forearm soft like Scrubbing Bubbles If you call your hand a home, can I sleep in it? All curled fingers and chewed nails. Does your roommate mind? That I’ve already pulled my carabiner from the belt loop of my Old Navy Jeans and bent an old key to fit the ridges of your knuckles? My last tweet was about picking the lock on my air conditioner. I claimed I was a SEAS student Applied science to engineer fresh air. Hit me up if you need a tiny screwdriver or a bobby pin or a carabiner open like my front door. Don’t bother knocking. Home is something to be broken into To be locksmithed apart like you own the place Home is something to demolish and rebuild and demolish again. There is safety in cracked plaster In the way your calloused hands hold a hammer Strong And unyielding.
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WAKING I wake up in above ground subway cars Their dusty windows catapulting the sun into a million corners Each too bright to fit between my eyelids This is a noncommittal waking A hesitant beginning To a story bleached and burnt I wake up on top of mountains In 2 person tents Curving my spine into a crooked smile Bent to fit heaving shoulders And the rock splintering my hip We hike 16 miles and dive Headfirst into lakes of ice water And leeches And vines Wrapped around my ankles Holding me Safe I wake up in christmas tree farms In March Every spruce in miniature I am too tall The tips of my toes hang off the mattress My calves sleep still Hazy and tingling and full Of stars I will wake up fully One day
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Chapbook selected and designed by QUARTO MAGAZINE staff Editors-in-Chief Samantha Caveny Alison Peebles Managing Editors Andy Haas Elizabeth Merrigan Head of Design for Publication Dora O’Neill Head of Design for PR Lily Ha Art & Design Editors Karina Blodnieks Katie Mimini Eileen Gao Cameron Lee
Video Editor Kyra Chen Website Editors Priya Pai Priyanka Mariwala Social Media Editor Philip Grayson Events Chair Emma Tueller Stone Staff Editors Neeraj Ramachandran Viviana Prado-Núñez Zhaneque Craig Jack Becker Tova Ricardo Hannah Liberman Catherine Valdez
Thank you to our advisers, Joseph Fasano and Heidi Julavits, and the Columbia Undergraduate Creative Writing Department, especially Dorla McIntosh, for continued support.
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