Montage 2015 Journal

MONTAGE

QUINNIPIAC UNIVERSITY

Montage Volume 34 2015

Quinnipiac University Hamden CT

Staff Editor-in-Chief Editor Editor Designer Faculty advisor Assistant Director of Student Media Cover Image by Clare Michalak Production by Tyco Printing

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Editors Note “You can’t do it alone. As you navigate through the rest of your life, be open to collaboration. Other people and other people’s ideas are often better than your own. Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, and spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life.”

– Amy Poehler Montage is a tribute to the artists, friends and mentors who challenge and inspire the Quinnipiac community. This issue celebrates the space we’ve created for each other. It’s where we realize, again and again, how much we gain by opening ourselves to other people.

Thank you for sharing.

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Table of Contents THIS IS THE PLACE TO Be 12 Always William Lauren Manna

16 Ordinary Lives Anthony DiMartino

17 En Découvrant Paris Rachel Cox

19 51 Autumn Nights Andrew Landolfi

24 You Want To Share Space Rachel Corso

25 Pigs Justin Burnett

26 Out of Stance Osaama Awani

27 IPhones & College Nostalgia Jessica Pereira

30 The Angry Inch Rachel Corso

31 Glad Acres 315 Alan Johnson

38 Book Barn

Amy Brazuasky

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HERE ’S A CHAIR WITH YOUR NAME ON IT 40

Three Things That Make Me Feel Uncomfortable Jen Fremd

43

Silence Lovanda Brown

46

Acoustic Fire Shannon Durkin

47

Bar Rachel Corso

48

Revelation Justin Burnett

53

Lion Kristen Riello

54

Mango Fruit Rollups

55

Inside the Refrigerator

57

A Trip to the Grocery Store

Lauren Manna

Jessica Wharton Kaitlyn Griever

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’ PROBABLY THINKING THIS ISN’T ’ YOU’RE WHAT YOU THOUGHT IT SHOULD BE 62 Ugly Beasts Get Better Fixes Kim Fears

67 The Marauder Ryan O’Hara

68 You are the Largest Part of the Problem That Picks at Me Kira Smelser

69 X-Rays Clare Michalak

70 Hemorrhage Anthony DiMartino

72 Neurons Barron Lincoln

74 His Eyes Julia Perkins

79 I Went and It Was No Fun at All Tanner Celestin

82 The Little Things Shannon Durkin

83 To My Future Daughter Clare Michalak

86 Rigor Mortis

Tanner Celestin

88 Who We Are 91 Acknowledgments

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THIS IS THE PLACE TO BE 11

Always William

*WILDER FICTION PRIZE WINNER*

Lauren Manna

He was William. Always William. Not Will or Willy or heavens, not Bill -- that was his father -- but William. Gloria and Bill had insisted on the full from relatives and strangers alike since his infancy, and he had been taught to correct others at an early age as well. William was the name on his birth certificate, they said, and there would be no playing about with silly nicknames if they could help it. “It’s not ‘Willy’,” he recalled saying to his teacher, a young thing named Miss Hill in the first grade. “That sounds absurd. My name is William.”

He’d had glasses since he was four years old, and if the size changed as he grew the look certainly never did: horn-rimmed black, from Laser Eyes, because they still made their lenses with real glass instead of plastic and he was certainly in no danger of breaking them in some asinine activity anyway. His mother said real glass was for gentleman, and so real glass it was.

His hair came just to the middle of his forehead, so he never had to trouble with pushing it out of his eyes. He had the family cowlick; his grandfather’s, his mother always said, which required a massive amount of taming, so he always set his watch alarm ten minutes earlier in the morning. His mother said real gentlemen wore watches, and so he did: a thin silver one with a true clock face, because any stupid teenager at his school could read a digital one and William was certainly not a stupid teenager.

He had thin lips that became thinner when he pursed them in disapproval, and small eyes that became smaller when he squinted in concentration. His mother called him her littler scholar, and that the squinting was probably where his frequent headaches came from. The headaches were worth a little extra squinting, though, on the days when he needed to be told he was a scholar. They mostly happened when he came home from school and realized he hadn’t needed to say a word to a single classmate all day. His mother said it was lonely at the top, and he was.

Always William sat in the second row of every class. He would have sat in the front -- his mother said all good students sat in 12

the front row -- only Gina sat in the front row, and it was difficult to be discreet in staring if he had to turn his head to look instead of across the aisle at her back. Her back -- the pale, narrow shoulders covered with mostly straight, mostly blonde hair and sometimes a blue scarf -- was poetry. He hated thinking that way, because backs couldn’t be poetry or even look like it, but one very gray Wednesday he’d found himself quite out of sorts, totally unaware of what Mrs. Paige had been saying about gerunds, and when he looked down, blinking, saw that he had been scrawling over his notes in Precise V5 pen, the only kind he used, blue initials and a blue scarf and there, at the bottom of the page, a poem he didn’t realize he had started, a poem beginning with the line: she has a back like poetry...

Always William generally did not approve of poetry, but there it was.

And in spite of himself and despite the way it made no sense- lack of sense also being something he did not approve of -- he had liked the way it sounded.

When Gina turned her head to look at the other side of the board he could see her profile: unremarkable, maybe, to any other teenage boy -- but Always William was certainly not like any other teenage boy. Her face was long and thin, with sharp little upturns at the top of the nose and the bottom of the chin. When she concentrated she squinted, and when the boys in the back row laughed or threw paper she pressed her lips together but never turned around. Her spectacles were oval wire, purple wire, which Always William thought was a rather silly color for spectacles, but they were lovely on her. And they were made of real glass. Even Always William’s mother did not know about Gina.

They had entered a unit on epics, and even though the classroom smell of dirty linoleum tile and the overly white fluorescent lighting did not make for the best place to learn of an era of mystery and candlelight Always William enjoyed it. He approved of mythology because it seemed to him like reasonable storytelling -- there was history behind these, and culture. Reading the epics could hardly count as absurd because they were classics, which his mother approved of, only they read like fiction, of which his mother didn’t. Gina approved of them too. She always twirled her 13

hair around her pencil when she really concentrated, and by the end of class on the first week of the unit the lock directly behind her ear held a permanent curl.

In the most indulgent part of his fantasies, which he did not indulge very often, Always William imagined he would make a good epic hero because of his name. There was Odysseus and Jason and the name William would fit right there with them, too, because it was smart and sensible; not like hero Billy or hero Willy or any such nonsense like that. William, he thought, was a good name for an epic hero. He hardly allowed that thought purchase, though; because he was not an epic hero or even a hero nor even remotely remarkable -- well, aside from being a little scholar. He was William.

Always, unchangingly, frustratingly William.

On the first day of November they were given the month to write and enact their own epic: Times New Roman, half-spaced, ten pages long. Mrs. Paige assigned partners. Always William was with Gina.

A class that was usually prone to muggy, buzzing silences during lecture was filled with the sounds of scraping chairs and desks vibrating along the floors as they were pushed into twos and threes. It jerked Always William out of his disbelieving numbness, he letting out a shuddering breath that was mercifully hidden in the din of chatter. He was not quite sure how best to move the desk- he hadn’t worked in partners if he could help it since primary school. He stayed in his seat because his legs felt unsure with Gina watching him, and scooted both desk and chair over to Gina, who had neatly turned hers in a half circle to face him. She watched him scoot over, crablike, to meet her, and to her credit made a concerted effort to suppress her amused smile.

Red, sweating, Always William looked at her, and found that the trope held true; he had forgotten how to talk. Against his will another line entered his head, and poor as it was and although he despised himself for it he knew it would find its way into his notebook later: eyes like crystals; cut like glass. “So.� It startled Always William, though he had heard it before: it was crisp, businesslike; this was her Classroom Voice, not her Hallway Voice. That one was much sweeter, and it had never been 14

directed at him.“I was thinking they could be us.”

Eyes like crystals, blue framed in purple. “I…sorry?”

“The characters. Lady Gina, Sir Will. People of the Danes. I did the report on the Danish last year, if you remember. I know a lot about them, so that will be easy. I’ll lend you the books, if you like.”

“William,” Always William said. He hardly noticed it, nervous as he was; it was a habit well ingrained by now.

“My name is William.” He may have been his mother’s little scholar, but no one but his teachers here knew his grade point average. Here his name was all he had that set him apart from any other teenager. He had been reminded over and over that he was certainly not like any other teenager -- but here, now, struggling to breathe while he talked to her, Always William at last conceded to himself that he would have given almost anything to be just another teenager.

“Yes, but for the epic, though,” she was saying, her brows arching as though she didn’t understand his point.“Sir Will. It’s a warrior’s name, don’t you think? Two monosyllables. Sir. Will. Quick, and strong. Like a fighter. Just Will.” And without waiting for an answer, she wrote it down.

Always William stared at her agape, unraveling it in his head.

Sir Will. Just Will. The warrior. If William-not-Bill-not-Will-not-Willy was a little scholar, then that stood to reason that Just Will could be something different, too. Could make him different. Finally, relievingly, finally different. For Gina he would be Sir Will. From now on, here in school, he could be Will as well. Just Will. Just Will, the warrior.

Only, Just Will thought, he might not tell his mother.

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Ordinary Lives Anthony DiMartino

Always thinking forward, never backward Always improving something each day Always adapting to new problems every morning Always listening to the political debates on TV Never fully committing to anything it’s too risky Never getting better at ordinary failures Never devoting to one hobby, interest, idea it might go away Never sad or angry or disappointed just living without uniqueness Doing things normally ordinarily like the rest Doing what everyone else does because this is forever Doing the dishes after dinner chores suck Waiting for responsibilities and adult freedom Waiting for internship opportunities and underage drinking Staying away from the sea after eating for my health Staying sedentary because it’s easier that way Staying active when it’s necessary Eating carefully and always reading food labels Eating fruits and veggies and McDonald’s Dieting and drinking when fashionable but never consistently Arriving fashionably late to special occasions purposefully Arriving with friends to strange parties without a ride home Watching strangers drunkenly dance with each other Watching the TV screen while asleep just in case Watching news specials about how technology controls us Craving the low buzzing from an aluminum brick Craving constantly the light from a monitor Dreaming without nightmares if I can control it Dreaming with nightmares when I’m sad Dreaming about dreams without nightmares Sleeping in familiar bed sets before midnight When given the chance

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En Découvrant Paris Rachel Cox

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En Découvrant Paris Rachel Cox

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51 Autumn Nights Andrew Landolfi

51 years since the day. Has it been that much time? 51 fucking years. Really. Behind him, a brass alarm clock sputters ahead— perfectly rhythmic, of course—as opposed to the sporadic pulsing between his eyes. He shifts awkwardly, twisting the lower half of his torso so his knees lay sideways on the bed while his back and head remain flat on the lumpy mattress; he is paper folded over onto itself—he is actually folding into himself.

He thrusts out his hand, groping for a towel soaking in lukewarm water lying on the nightstand beside his bed. He grasps the towel, pulls it to the surface and listens to the excess water drain back into the basin—a momentary melody to accompany the incessant thumping of the damn clock. Tick. Shit. He squeezes the water out of the rag. Tock. I’m absolutely ruined. He unravels the towel.

Tick. What’s left for me? He moves the towel toward him and gently lowers the towel onto his face.

Tick. Tick. Tick. That incessant fucking ticking.

Outside, the sun sends twisted light across an empty autumn sky; some unfortunate light dribbles through the old man’s window and spills helplessly across the floor—what an unlucky way for orangetinted light to spend the evening. On the sidewalk, a blank piece of paper tumbles over itself down the road. The wind subsides momentarily, and the paper lurches to a halt—the world stops too.

The autumn air is crisp and thin like the blood pulsing back and forth between the old man’s heart and his withering extremities. A bird screams out. Then, as if to carry the heartbroken cry, the leaves rustle back to life and the wind grabs hold of the helpless appeal and sends it onward—it is a child trapped in rapids.

The wind clutches the paper again, spinning the crumpled mass wildly down the road.

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Inside the twilight colored bedroom, light continues across the room; sliding, floating, crawling—a creature dragging itself away from an imminent death—a death impossible to avoid, but a death that fails to arrive punctually, too. Light spreads across the old man’s face, hits his retina and refracts into brilliant diamond threads. In his lifeless hand he clutches a bottle of Ambien; the warm rag still lingers upon his wrinkled face. And all this time he continues to think one thing: 51 years. 51 fucking years. What have I done?

* * *

“Hey John, do you promise you will love me forever?”

“Of course I will, why do you even need to ask?”

He rubs his right hand lightly across her cheek and looks—not into her eyes but through her eyes—at the girl he often said I love you to.

He thinks about words, and how every utterance and syllable and phrase is meaningless; just sounds that will inevitably tumble into the bottomless void to be forgotten—maybe all things are better left unsaid.

“I love you, John.” Tears begin to stream down her face, puddle on her chin and then plummet toward the ground—the same force that drew them together is the same force that pulls her tears from her eyes and to the Earth. She looks disgusting when she cries.

Her tears fall like liquid crystal, and as they fall, her tears catch the fleeting rays of evening light, capture them, fracture them and then hurl them outward in a thousand different directions. He notices the snot pooling on the delicate hairs above her upper lip.

“I love you.” His left hand lifts her chin, and tilts it towards his lips.

A smile creeps across her face, timidly, while mucus slides toward the dip in her smile. Her tears stop flowing and her damp cheeks, smeared mascara, and empty look are the only remnants of her recent tears.

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He moves her lips towards his; he shudders with the anticipation of her lips—the imminent euphoria of a first kiss. Her hands edge around his waist and begin pulling him toward her, pulling until his hips press firmly against hers—pulling until two became one.

Their lips lock and, then, linger. He feels the warmth, the safety, the addiction of new loves first kiss; he remarks at the feeling because he never deserved love, because he had never been loved, because he thought he would never love—but here he is shaken by loves first embrace.

A car horn rings out in the distance. A tire squeals. A metal crunch rips the air apart.

He kisses her again. He tastes her salty tears.

* * *

His brother Joseph is breaking. He is a Faberge Egg hurdling toward a marble floor—beautiful and priceless, he is the ideal aesthetic. He glistens until the last instant, showing brilliantly in my mind’s eye.

The paramedics say when the steel framed 61’ Chevy smashed into his vintage white and red Schwin bicycle—the one Mom and Dad gave him for his 13th birthday—that he died on impact; they say he felt no pain.

He imagines death hurts more than anything else, but he wouldn’t know—some experiences can never be elaborated upon; habitually, dead men tell no tales.

On impact his body shot parallel to his handlebars, and flew into a thicket of thorns and ferns and prairie grass; nature assertively reclaiming what it owns. The paramedics tell me his face hung loosely to his skull when they found him convulsing on the side of the road. His baby-smooth skin—torn by the force of his body sliding like an ice skate on slick ice across the hardened autumn Earth— turned the color of charred oak.

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They tell me the collision was gruesome, so I imagine this instead: The Faberge Egg smashes upon the white marble and scatters like water on a hot skittle across the floor. Priceless pieces of crystal scurry outward and onward without losing momentum, and before long, the floor is empty again, and the only evidence remaining— aside from complete silence hanging solemnly in the room—is the knowledge something beautiful has been destroyed long before it should have been.

Time rewards some and obliterates others. Hitler died at 56. Joseph died at 14.

My parents choose to have a closed casket; they think he is too purple to be seen by the children—I imagine Joe doesn’t mind.

Neither do I, though. I never cared for the color purple—I haven’t cared about much since.

* * * He breaks up with her the following day. He loves her—he says he never loved anything more—but rather than turning to the ones who care, he turns away—a dying patient denying medical treatment.

He often says he loves fried eggs and bacon, too; maybe she is like bacon and eggs to him: he digests her love and then shits it out.

He turns inward until he sees nothing other than himself: he notices the internal cracks and prays they will kill him.

Two years later, she marries. The wedding—a quaint ceremony held on the fertile hips of the Mississippi—takes place two weeks before he decides to leave home. He attends the wedding; a deed done out of principle, not desire. She makes a big deal out of him attending; her high-pitched squeal, her pseudo smile, her outrageous hand movements—all an act to create the desired effect: look at me, she says, I am still friends with the emotional hand grenade.

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The ceremony proceeds beautifully: her husband is quite a handsome devil. He returns home and begins packing his bags; maybe a change in scenery will fix his heart. Maybe nothing will.

Nothing.

* * *

The Ambien rattles intermittently in his hands from the first tremors of developing arthritis. He looks like a sick child struggling with an ailment; rattle in hand, awaiting the relaxing touch of a young mother. Instead, he lay writhing in the depths of pain fermented in a half century’s time; pain that grows increasingly acidic with each slam of the second hand—pain that lingers like wind, eternally.

Tick. It’s over. The pain smashes between his eyes. Tock. It’s so simple. He opens the Ambien. Tick. Just do it. He dumps the contents of the bottle into his sweaty palms. Tock. Where does the time go?

Tick. Tick. Tick.

He swallows hard. Orange light fills the room until a voice catches him before he drowns.

“I love you.”

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You Want to Share Space Rachel Corso

but I feel like cotton swabs sardined in the hull of my esophagus.

I feel like the feet of a barstool without the felt. I almost feel like ponies. I feel slightly off put, like little hooves slipping on loose dirt. I feel like empty coat hangers lining a wooden rack. I feel like not driving over mountains. I feel like refusing to board an airplane back to Bali with you. I feel like something even New York would spit out. I feel like what is a finger looped through a mug.

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Pigs

Justin Burnett

Pigs Pig’s feet pounding plump and pink And piggylike, whiskers on piggy-bikes “No,” she says, Grenades pop Like roped pork with DESTRUCTIVE FORCE! Hobo-jargon. I am a plant, One that grows hither in the sky, And I wear my hat When it rains.

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Out of Stance Osaama Awani 26

Iphones & College Nostalgia Jessica Pereira

Dear Jessica, Congratulations on your acceptance to Quinnipiac University of Hamden, Connecticut. You’re invited to start your university experience by joining us for this year’s transfer orientation program. The transfer orientation program will give you a head start on getting to know your new classmates, academic advisors, the campus and the myriad of resources available to you as a Quinnipiac student.

With my head down, I face the wind tunnel known as West Street. I move past the church steps, where an older man in tattered clothing smokes a cigarette. He sits with another man with unruly facial hair, and an overweight woman bundled up in dirty blankets.

They all smell of booze. I skip past them, ignoring their cup for spare change.

The Boston Common: A beautiful park located in one of the richest neighborhoods in America, Beacon Hill. Property surrounding the park is extremely pricey, unless you’re a student at Suffolk University.

Look how beautiful this place is. Camera, Capture, Capture, Capture, Share, Contacts: Mom, Dad, Sissy, Mark, Send. Too bad there’s no one to enjoy it with.

At the top of the park, I make my way to the perpetually crowded Dunkin Donuts. I grab a spot in line behind a group of construction workers, cursing through thick Southie accents. I wish my dad were here with me. I wonder what his experience was like getting coffee today, as I order two donuts, half out of habit, and half out of wishful thinking. I continue my morning walk with my two closest companions, my iPhone and my coffee. Thankfully, I am now too far away from the residence halls to give up on today and retreat to my bed.

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Professor Richard Chambers ARCHER 220: Chamber’s office is small, but with Bostonian charm. There’s a bookshelf on all four walls, each of them stuffed fully with literature. The theater department is busy outside of his office, thumping around furniture set pieces, and reciting lines.

“Jessica, missing home is like playing footsie with an empty shoe. Things will change. Places will change. No matter where you are, being happy is your own responsibility.”

Call, Contacts: Mom, Send. “Maybe it’s not worth it to be so far from home.”

Quinnipiac University: A beautiful private university located in Hamden, Connecticut. It’s extremely pricey to live on this campus.

Quinnipiac’s quad really reminds me of the Boston Common. It’s the way the large, well-kept lawn is broken up by little paths. It is so strange how everyone on the quad belongs to Quinnipiac. I have become so accustomed to the surprises that come with being amongst a diverse public on my way to class.

The Common has much wider, asphalt pathways. There are many more delicate trees scattered throughout the grass. When walking to Suffolk’s Archer building, one faces the regal state house, brick with several tall white marble pillars surrounded by Beacon Hill, with its aged brick and intricate ivy. The middle of the park holds the romantic, Brewer Fountain, three-tiers depicting Neptune and Amphitrite on the bottom, and then young Angels, all in bronze. If the weather is good, one can have lunch or read at one of the patio tables surrounding the fountain. Sometimes a food truck parks right on the sidewalk, and emits the smell of fresh French fries. Framing the back of the Common is Boston’s Downtown area, with modern glass skyscrapers, young people in stylishboots and coats who pour in and out of Park Street T stop, and men and women dressed in expensive suits who walk with an aura of importance. Busy streets, pungent with exhaust fumes from taxicabs. At nighttime, the park lights up with several lanterns along the pathways. On exceptionally good nights, a violin or saxophone player might set up by the fountain for tips.

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Photo Library, Select, Share, Instagram: #tbt to when I lived in the city. 74 likes. Ding Ding DingDing Ding Ding DingDing, tolls from Quinnipiac’s Arnold Bernard Library. Every hour. The sound is almost peaceful, but then continues for an uncomfortable extra 45 seconds.

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The Angry Inch Rachel Corso

30

Glad Acres 315 Alan Johnson

“Russell just posted a photo of himself kissing the Blarney Stone,” said Logan.

I looked up the photo on my phone. Russell was smiling as Das and Will lowered him down to the bottom of the Blarney Stone. They were tickling him, causing him to thrash around, which made the photo blurry. It had 97 likes. It was a good photo.

“You know, the locals pee on that same stone. He’s kissing dried piss,” I said.

We were supposed to be on that trip, kissing urine soaked rocks and racking up the Facebook likes from distant acquaintances. After all, that’s what everybody from Greenhill, our prep school, did in the summer before college. Drink some legal beers, take some photos, and go to a prestigious college in the fall.

“It looks like fun,” said Logan, taking the weed out of the baggie and placing it in the grinder.

It did look like fun, but it wasn’t for us. Despite being accepted to numerous institutes of higher education, we told our parents that we weren’t going to college. Our parents said, “No, you guys are going to college,” which, understandably, bummed us out. After threatening to live in an Amsterdam hostel for the rest of our lives, they cancelled our European backpacking trip and made us a deal: If we could find careers in the three months before classes started, we didn’t have to go to college. If we failed, we get a degree and never bring this up again. It was a sweet deal.

“We need to find jobs tomorrow. If we get nothing else done, we at least need to find jobs,” I said.

Our parents set us up with an expensive apartment in Glad Acres, the nicest apartment building in downtown Dallas, paying for facilities and furniture except for a second bed. My parents gave me money to buy a bed, but we decided to put it towards buying this expensive medicinal marijuana from California, from this guy Logan knew. We agreed to sleep in the same bed, head to feet, for the greater good.

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“I, for one, would like to abuse my lungs,” said Logan, lighting the joint. He took a deep drag before offering it to me.

“Tomorrow, we’re getting jobs,” I said, grabbing the joint.

The next day, we didn’t get jobs. We didn’t leave the apartment.

Logan found a bunch of old Jeopardy episodes online and we marveled at Alex Trebek’s mustache for a few hours. We both decided that watching Jeopardy would become a regular occurrence in our household. It was going to be our education. This was a college episode, with contestants from Auburn, Wisconsin, and Georgetown.

“He was the first president to be born a citizen of the United States and not a British subject,” asked Trebek.

“James Madison,” said Logan.

“Who is Martin Van Buren?” answered Mr. Georgetown.

“Right,” said Trebek.

“That was my second guess,” muttered Logan.

I didn’t feel bad about not going job hunting. It was a Tuesday.

Nothing happened on a Tuesday. Rome wasn’t built in a day and, if it were, it wouldn’t have been on a Tuesday. Besides, Logan brought his weenie dog, Earl, to the apartment and Earl was a certifiable chiller. After Logan begged them for weeks, his parents decided to let Earl stay with us for the summer.

“Yo, Earl dawg, come on over,” I said, while grabbing the already rolled joint. Present me loved past me’s forethought. Once he saw the joint, Earl came running over, almost falling over his little legs, which made me laugh pretty hard.

“Doggy want a little weed smoke?” I barely got the words out, before Earl jumped on top of me and began licking my face. I pushed Earl off, lit the joint, and took three big hits, blowing it all in Earl’s face. Earl slowly walked away and rested on his side.

“Earl is the biggest goddamn lightweight,” I said to Logan. He stopped watching Jeopardy.

“Do you think he likes getting high?” asked Logan.

“Dude, he jumped all over me to get that joint. Earl is a veritable pothead.”

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“Yeah, but then he just passes out. He might just be really stupid and forgets that he hates it.”

This was beginning to bum me out.

“We need to get jobs,” I said.

“Yeah, jobs.”

A few weeks later, I got a job at Dominos, slinging pizzas for minimum wage and tips. A far cry from Europe, but it had a perk or two. I hung out in my 2012 Mercedes all day, listening to my three CDs: Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion, Chance The Rapper’s Acid Rap, and a mixtape I curated of the best hip-hop beats on YouTube. I hate to admit it, but I listened to that last CD the most. I’d pop it in when I had a delivery and start free styling over it.

I mostly rapped about how big my penis was and, conversely, how small other penises were, but sometimes I’d rap about real stuff.

I’d rap about my parents. About Greenhill. About every girl I’ve ever loved. But, yeah, mostly about my penis. Besides that, there wasn’t much glamour in the minimum wage lifestyle.

After work, Logan and I would sit on our bed, share a joint, and split a case of Keystone Light, the official beer of the underemployed. We talked a lot about becoming commercial fisherman, but that meant moving closer to the Gulf and we didn’t know anything about over there. Plus, we didn’t know much about fishing, but we thought we could pick it up, if need be. We talked a lot about doing different jobs.

“We could become directors, man,” Logan said, after taking a hit of the joint.

“Directors? Like movies?” I said.

“Yeah! I could totally direct movies! I could be a genius at directing movies.” Logan got off the bed and started pacing around.

“I don’t know, man.”

“Think about it. If you take the average person with the average sensibility and compare it my shit, I’m way more interesting and better. I could be the next Kubrick! Or at lease the next Spielberg.”

I was silent.

“What do you think?” Logan asked.

“I don’t know, man,” I said.

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“What don’t you know?”

I took a deep breath.

“I don’t know, because I don’t know anything about becoming a director. Do you know anything? Have you ever made a movie? I haven’t, and I don’t know anything about it. Maybe, you could do it, but I just don’t know. Now, pass the joint.”

Logan gave me the joint.

“I could totally make movies, man.”

For the Fourth of July, Logan went to Cape Cod with his family, so I went to a friend’s lake house. I say friend, but really we were just both in town, which seemed to be the most important aspect in friendship these days. The whole party was full of kids who knew each other from one class or used to play baseball together in 5th grade, but we all had one thing in common: We were the dregs of private school Dallas.

That’s why I was surprised to see Nicole Daniels there. She used to be my next-door neighbor and we always carpooled to school. She was the type of girl that people would call nice and kind or kind and nice but I always dug spending time with her. She was an NYU girl and NYU girls usually had better places to be than here.

“Hey Nicole.”

“Nick! How are you?” We hugged.

“I’m good, I’m good. You want to chill for a bit?”

“Yeah, sure. What do you want to do?”

“Uh…wanna smoke?”

We smoked in my car. College had been good to Nicole.

She had a different aura to her, like she was more mature, more mysterious. We shot the shit for a while.

“You seeing any dudes in that big city?” I asked. Nicole smiled at me.

“Actually…yeah, I’m seeing this one guy.”

“That’s awesome! How is that going?”

“It’s good! You actually might know him.”

“I doubt it. I don’t really know anyone from New York.”

Nicole smiled once again.

“Well…he’s Gabe Day-Lewis. Like the son of Daniel.”

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“Like the dude who played Lincoln?”

“Yeah!”

“What the fuck? How did you meet?”

“Well…he was visiting a friend at NYU and we were doing coke and one thing kind of led to another.”

I paused for a moment.

“You do cocaine?”

I got back from the party and started thinking about Earl. He hadn’t been enjoying our living arrangement. I was beginning to think blowing weed smoke in his face everyday wasn’t the proper way to treat a dog. We didn’t treat Earl well at all. We forgot to feed him all the time, never took him out for walks, and never played with him. All he did all day was stare out the window. This was bullshit.

“Earl, my dawg, my friend. Want to get out of here?” Earl’s ears perked up at the attention. I opened the front door.

“Then get out of here.” Earl walked out and I closed the door.

He was in a better place.

The next day, Logan came home, Earl in tow. “Dude, how did Earl get out of the apartment? They had him at the front desk, waiting for someone to claim him. They found him in our hallway, shitting everywhere. We have to pay for the fucking cleaning bill,” he said.

“I let him out,” I said.

“On purpose? What the fuck, man? He could have run away.”

“That was the idea.”

“The fuck is wrong with you? I go to Cape Cod for the weekend and you let my dog go?”

“Nicole is dating Daniel Day-Lewis’ son,” I blurted out.

“What? Nicole Daniels?”

“Yeah, and I want do that too and I don’t think I can do it here.”

There was silence for a moment.

“You want to date Daniel Day-Lewis’ son?”

“No, no, no, but you know what I mean. I want to do stuff like that.”

Logan started laughing.“I mean, I don’t know Meryl Streep but we can see if her daughter would be interested.”

35

“Fuck off, Logan.” I went over to the bedroom and sat on the bed. We still only had one bed. One bed, but great weed. Logan started watching Jeopardy again.

“His ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue,’ is considered by many to be the world’s first detective story.”

“Arthur Conan Doyle,” said Logan.

“Who is Edgar Allen Poe?” “Right.”

I looked at Earl. He was back at the window, staring at the blue sky. He wanted to go home.I wanted to go home, too.

The next day I quit my Dominos job. I thought I’d have to put it in my two weeks or something, but no, they were accustomed to people quitting pretty regularly. I guessed it had something to do with the lack of benefits, upward mobility, and the abundance of fake mozzarella cheese.

On my way home, I started a dope freestyle. “Former boy wonder like Wikipedia Brown/But I’m still in charge cuz I’m wearing the crown.” It was a pretty good couplet. I didn’t know if it was the medicinal weed or all the Dominos pizza I had been eating, but I was hitting a creative peak. And that’s when it hit me.

I rushed home to find Logan sitting on the couch.

“Yo, you didn’t find a job yet, did you?”

“Uh…well…nah,” replied Logan.

“Good, because we’re going to need as much time as we can get,” I said.

“For what?”

“For our rap album.”

We decided on Glad Acres 315 as the title of the album. It was the name of our building and the number of our room, but it also sounded like it could be somewhere dangerous and would give us much needed street cred in this oversaturated market. We also picked rap names. I was White Plague, a play on the pandemic and my ethnicity, while Logan was Yung Raspberry, for self-explanatory reasons.

To buy all of the recording equipment, we told our parents that we needed money to buy suits for job interviews, even though there 36

were none of those on the docket for the rest of the summer. Neither one of us had made beats, so we culled the depths of YouTube every day, finding beats that were both “ill” and “fresh” to rap over.

Eventually, we found twelve beats that fit our criteria and we just started rapping.

We rapped for hours at a time, only stopping to smoke and sometimes not even stopping for that. We even let Earl get a couple of barks on a few tracks. He appreciated the attention and the opportunity we gave him to drop some of his knowledge. I learned a lot about Logan that I didn’t know. For one, he apparently had a large penis. But also, he wasn’t really digging our living situation either. “I wish I could just go back to prom/I really miss you mom/I miss you dad/This whole thing was just a dumb fad.” It wasn’t going to make the album, because it was a pretty terrible construction of words, but it was very revealing. I kind of thought Logan was still pretty happy.

On the last day of our lease, we finished the album. We had both put our deposits down for college and were leaving in a few days, not giving us enough time to devise a marketing strategy for a release, so we just made copies for each other. It was pretty good for two guys with minimal flow and life experience. We reflected on our success over a joint.

“You’re a pretty good rapper, man,” said Logan.

“Hey, you’re not so bad yourself,” I said, exhaling the smoke.

“So, I guess this is it, huh?”

We sat in silence for a few moments, just passing the joint.

“Yeah, I suppose so,” I said.

I packed my bags and loaded them into the trunk of my car. We said our goodbyes and I drove home. On the highway, I rolled down my windows, put on Glad Acres 315, and turned the volume as high as it could go. I started rapping along, even barking during Earl’s verses. I got a lot of looks, but I didn’t care. It was a good album.

37

Book Barn

Amy Brazausky

38

HERES A CHAIR WITH YOUR NAME ON IT 39

Three Thoughts That Make Me Uncomfortable Jen Fremd

(For full percussive effect, please read this poem out loud)

First, thinking about life.

I once tried to figure out the equation to socialization and if you can’t tell from this explanation I couldn’t.

Small talk is my jam but I feel like I cram studied for that final exam called a conversation and I failed due to that lack of proper preparation.

Flowing words are an intimidation leaving my frontal lobe in stagnation and the only incantation I can summon is “Hey, how are you doing?”

The issue is, how can I add depth to a conversation when there is no depth to me?

I’m so far gone in my mind my thoughts can’t help but be empty.

I hide behind this paper mask, this temple, this shrine, these voices, this landmine.

I find I cannot seem to bind myself to the things around me So one day these binds will unwind and I’ll just blow.

I’m here.

I’m not here.

I don’t really feel so how can I feel real?

These thoughts as old as Earth’s ancestry Yet words cannot explain a sense of nothing properly.

40

So alone in my silence I sit wondering how can I be a member of society when I’m only a visitor to reality?

Second, Thinking about Heredity and the trends of Family.

I’ve never tickled my wrist with a razor but I’ve used one to tickle my fancy.

I’ve turned the scars in my heart into art on my body with a meaningful touch of permanency that burns with regret and indecency as they’re healing.

If I’ve moved on from my past, why do I feel the need to write out my history on every part of me others can’t see?

I’ve moved out of town, I’ve made it to a fancy private school, but inside I’m still the trailer trash fool that almost failed second grade.

I’m made from my mother’s legacy, and my mother’s legacy is made of rubble, but once that rubble made castles.

Because I am the heir to Ozymandias, and his kingdom of scattered sand and shattered stone is where I was left to create my throne, to delude myself in hopes of forgetting how fast I, too, could turn to ruin.

My roots run deep and it’s all I can do to keep myself off of that steep decline into poverty and mediocrity that comes so easily to the genes I have inside of me.

Third, thinking about lives. because there are so many lives.

Wasted lives, Long lives, short lives, real lives, wasted lives, fake lives 41

wasted lives, fulfilled lives, calm lives, wasted lives, fast lives, wasted lives, wasted lives, wasted lives, my life.

I said thinking about lives.

Correction, take two.

Third, thinking about my life.

Because there are so many lives, and I can’t help but worry only one will apply to me.

I want to do something big, I want to be somebody but my infinity is passing by so quickly I can barely keep myself from stagnating and realizing I am between average and mediocrity.

My ego is on the brink of seeing that I’m not as important as I like to think, but for the sake of maintaining my steam, I like to imagine things aren’t what they seem, and I’ll just bloom late.

Accepting it or not though, every special little snowflake melts away.

I like to think about things that make me uncomfortable.

I want to invoke those thoughts that make me crawl in hopes that if I face them I’ll no longer withdraw when they come to mind.

Hidden under my skin they only become a din I try to hide and stifle within, leading only to uncertainty, fear, and my depression.

Spoken in my head I can ponder them until their power is dead and come to terms with what was, what will be, and what has been.

42

Silence

Lovanda Brown

Outside, distant sirens and screeching tires darted down the road. The loud demand filled the silence for a few moments, and its whirring refrain lingered in their ears for some time. Finally, the ringing dissolved and it appeared the silence was back. The cream-smeared walls held up the wooden clock, and its glass face grimaced with a crooked smile. The smile read 8:15, and its thin, overlooked hand was ready to perform again. The hand danced rhythmically tick, tock, tick, tock, disrupting the silence once more.

Occasionally they would look up from the long dinner table that extended between them and listen carefully to ambulance alerts and kinked engines. The table was empty now with the exception of the pair, but still they sat. The children had gone off to bed and the tension had rushed the wise grandmother off to bed just the same. Just an hour before, thunderous sounds of clicking and clinking filled the air. Forks to plate, glasses to table and of course the occasional phlegm loosening “ahem” were among the topics of conversation. Now, the two sat in a heavy, unspoken quarrel--a silent dispute all too real.

Connor Blake sat and contemplated the ennui his life had become and it seemed almost every disagreement he had with Grace stemmed from that. As he sat slouched in his chair, he watched the perspiring cup before him. The ice was melting and he knew he would need another pour. His long lanky legs sprawled out underneath the table, and his circular frames rested on the place setting right next to the half-eaten meal his wife prepared just hours before. Small spheres of Brussel sprouts and well-done steak remained on his plate, opposite of him were the remains of Grace’s dinner and the scents gathered to meet the thick tension.

He couldn’t help but remember the many silent conversations held between his parents. He’d stand in the shadows of the night and watch them stare at each other from across the family table.

His father usually held a hard expression; his mother was usually flustered. He couldn’t understand how they could sit like that for 43

hours, wake up the next morning and diligently tend to their routines.

The thought was broken.

“Why can’t we--” “Please, just don’t say anything right now,” he said interrupting her.

“But I just thought we should talk about this.”

“And we will. Just please, stop talking. I can’t hear myself think.”

Grace remembers just last night he told her they would “discuss it in the morning.” The sun rose and so did the children. Along with his morning coffee and worn briefcase, he carried half the discussion with him to work while she waited at home. Now they sat together in the home they built together, and she couldn’t shake the fact that she missed him. He was sitting right before her and she missed him deeply.

She couldn’t help but remember when communication was all they had.

She missed the conversations about nothing and the passionate fights about everything. She sat both pale and flustered, a look he had grown accustomed to. Even her brown curls that he once loved were bereft of color. Her once plum cheeks had thinned noticeably and hugged the bones her face carried underneath. Her sullen eyes watched him.

With even lips pursed together in a flat line, she watched his body communicate all the things his voice couldn’t seem to utter.

He buried his face in hands and let out a loud sigh. She tousled her brown hair from one side to the next with one palm and crossed both arms before her chest. Still nothing was said. The clock held a consistent conversation with itself.

“Tick” “Tock” “Tick” “Tock” As did the leaky faucet, but still you had two people, who couldn’t even muster the same monosyllabic conversation as one held by an inanimate clock. They used to be in love.

“Why won’t he talk to her?” said a thought emerging from the night to join the crowded silence.

He was just ten years old, but he knew what happiness looked like. His thin fingers wrapped around the outline of the family room’s entrance, and his body held place behind the masking wall. He was 44

tall and lanky for his age. He removed his circular glasses from its resting place above his nose and gently caressed each lens with his shirt. He placed them back on and let one eye meet the silent scene. They used to be happy. He remembered that. It displayed all over the house. The wedding photos and Christmas portraits were once ignored by the young boy. Now, he would give anything just to see them smile like that again. He couldn’t understand how they could sit for hours like that at night, and still manage to get him ready for school in the morning. He couldn’t understand why they just couldn’t talk.

Was it a game? No, of course not. That’s the same expression his mother had when she was called to meet with his principal. The disappointed demeanor was harsher than the punishment.

The stern gaze never lifted from his father’s blue eyes, but his mother’s pained stare broke his heart. She was hurt and he knew it.

“Listen, you said you wanted to talk about this,” Grace said.

“I know that’s what I said, but--” he stopped right there. He wanted to tell her everything-- that he was tired of his mediocre life, that the disdain for it was quite frankly abysmal and he wasn’t sure how to fix that.

But the words would only stain the silence. No more silent conversations and tending to routines to avoid these feelings.

Words would only pierce the practice of seeming happy. He wasn’t sure they could bounce back from that. Some things were just better left unsaid, he supposed. They’d get back to where they were.

He needed time to figure out all he would say, but mostly, all he wouldn’t.

Looking down the hole of the now empty glass, he couldn’t bring himself to stain the silence so he embraced it awhile longer.

And somehow, understanding just what he meant, his wife leaned back, sipped from her glass and resolved to share the moment with him.

45

Acoustic Fire Shannon Durkin

46

Bar

Rachel Corso

Hair slicked back mauve black—shark fins gelled cool with severed comb lines. The silver pin stripes down your pleated suit.

My tongue burning with bourbon, the yeast we’re both drinking.

Eyes melting the ice around the outside of my glass. Your look scolding my flesh. July strawberries halved, rashes across my collar. Speckled seeds beneath a knit sweater.

My cheeks coated like my mother’s homemade sherbet—sweet Rhubarb.

Translucent sweat secreting rings onto wafer-thin napkins.

But the body smooth to feel, wet, even to the slightest touch, until stuck. Left to mull over empty cups. Grinding base into bar, hand-heels into you–take me back to my aPartment on Audubon Street— just to sleep, just sleep.

47

Revelation Justin Burnett

I was looking for her, and saw her through the crowd through a window, standing outside on the porch. I saw her breath in the air, with smoke from the joint she somehow kept lit in the wind. In winter there’s cold wind by the harbor. The lighthouse across the black water was still lit up rainbow for Christmas.

Inside it was hot, humid even. It was New Year’s, 1999. I made my way to the door through the noise and hot damp of beer and bodies, and a group tending to Jon Pagar, puking on the walls. When I opened the door it was like letting the sun into a vacuum, heat, noise flooding out to the porch. When I shut the door it was quiet, just bass and people’s voices. Still smoking, she wore that same grey flannel over the white sweatshirt. Her hair blended with the water behind her, and the mark on her cheek, normally pale blue, was dark. It was windy, but the weed and rolling paper between her lips burned on from red to ash.

I asked if she would come in, and she said she would, soon.

I asked her if she was ok and she said she was. She kissed me. I had a flask full of Grand Marnier and offered her a drink, but she said no. I had a swig. We looked out for some time on the harbor, the lighted windows of old houses, dark crags by the water. Then my friend Tony came out and yelled “For the Boston Bruins, fuckin, Billy dude, numbah thirty five, shots, fuckin shots kehd, two hours and fifty minutes.” He pulled me back inside.

That night we were about to have sex. We’d found some room at whosever house it was, where it was all dark except for light from the window, Christmas lights on the lighthouse. It stripped color on her body; where it didn’t was just black, the rest of the room. She was really into it and so was I. But when I reached for the condom she stopped my hand.

“No Bill, it’s fine, just do it.”

“Taylor,” I said, “we should really be careful.” She kept hold of my wrist, felt me with the other hand, and looked at me as if to speak. I saw her eyes, colorless in the dark.

48

She bore her head into my chest, and I felt it wobble. I rubbed her head, and the shirt I still had on got wet under her eyes. Inside her head, I thought, was a ship, a ship in a bottle that was on fire. But then I remembered you couldn’t have fire in a vacuum.

As we lay there I couldn’t really think straight. I mostly just looked out the window. Fog gathered on each pane, behind it the muffled color of rainbow, and now a pulsing brightness above it. The beacon must have been spinning. I felt nauseous. I think Taylor fell asleep after a while.

Early the following Tuesday I woke up in the cold and drove down to Providence for tryouts. I was trying out for the Providence Bruins, Boston’s minor league team.They were looking to sign a goalie and brought us in from all over. I shook hands and introduced myself to the guys in the locker room. On the ice I ended up playing well. It felt good to be in a rink, hear skates, to be in the crease.

When the puck went up the ice I’d lean back against the crossbar.

When it came back I’d make a nice stop and some Canuck would say, “Nice save, eh,” when he skated by.

They wanted me and a couple others to stay for practice the next day. They put us in a hotel nearby. Some of the guys watched the game from the hotel bar so I watched with them.

I had four beers and talked mostly to the bartender, whose name was Lee. Lee was a Vietnam vet and a straight-laced dude, but a good dude. He taught us how to do a stranglehold. He told me he’d seen a lot in the war, things that should never happen. He didn’t go into detail.

But he said, “But you know what the worst thing is: the worst thing I seen wasn’t in Nam. It was right back here, back home.”

“What was it?”

He came in close and whispered, “Our own people, killin their own babies.” When I got back to the room later, I took some nips from the mini fridge and brought them over to the desk and started to write. I thought about writing Taylor a letter, but a poem came out eventually. I didn’t think I was a good poet, but it helped me get my thoughts out. The last time I could recall her happy was Thanksgiving. We were at the Ripper after the football game, and she ate and 49

talked with everyone, laughed. We’d go up on the roof and smoke weed because she couldn’t drink, she was only nineteen, and even though she never drank she’d sneak swigs of my beer and kiss me when she thought people weren’t looking. I couldn’t believe we were in the 2000s. I fell asleep eventually.

I played shitty that second day. When the pucks came at me I just lost some of them and got pissed off. When some guy crashed the net hard I shoved him off and told him to fuck himself. They said they’d let us know soon.

On the way back to Marblehead, I wasn’t proud of it, but I killed some brandy. When I got home I felt drunk but was still cold. There was a note at the apartment from Taylor telling me to come to this house on Washington Street. I walked there and rang the bell. This other girl let me in.

“Hey, you’re Bill, right?” She was blonde, near my height. She had a big smile and was dressed nicely with makeup. At the edges of her smile were these deep lines.

“Yeah.”

We went in, Taylor was there, sitting on the couch. She said hey as I came in, and the other girl sat down next to her. I sat on a chair across from them. The room was stuffy. I took my jacket off.

We took shots and talked. The other girl’s name was Shayla.

She asked a lot about hockey, and even though I was pissed I talked about it. She looked at me as I spoke, the lines below her cheeks.

Both the girls’ eyes were the same shade of blue.

Taylor was quiet but then she got more talkative. She talked about random things, like when the parking ban was going to end and if it would get colder. Bill, I hate gin. Did you know my dad fought two guys one time and kicked their asses? And then she said, “Let’s have sex.”

When she said that I was looking down at my empty shot glass, and didn’t look up right away. When I did she was looking at me. How much did she drink? Maybe not much at all. The thought scared me.

“Come on Bill. Live a little.”

Shayla looked at her, then at me, back at her and back at me 50

again. To me she said,“Yeah?” Taylor was unbuttoning her flannel.

But when she came to the last button, her hands fell to her sides.

I stared at Taylor. My hands itched. I wrung them out. Live a little.

“Dude, what is going on?”

She looked empty.

I said nothing to Shayla and pulled Taylor up, buttoned up her shirt. I put her jacket on, took the booze and we left. Outside I shivered and I drew Taylor in close and started to say something but stopped. A car passed leaving smoke.

“Do you want to go to McDonald’s?” I asked her finally.

After a moment, I felt her nod.

I had more of whatever the shots were on the drive. Taylor said nothing. She laid the seatback flat, laid back and shut her eyes.

I asked for apple pies but they didn’t have any. I just got a large fry, two double cheeseburgers, and some water to sober up. Taylor didn’t want any water, but when we got back on the road she took the food. She put the seat back up, lit a joint and smoked as she ate.

“I’m sorry,” she said eventually.

“Taylor, I know you don’t have to say anything to me. I don’t expect you to, or anything. But if you wanted to you can talk to me about anything. If you let me in, you know, maybe I can help. I love you and just want to know what’s going on.”I kept turning my head from the road back to her face. She just nodded. I thought about heading to the lighthouse. Maybe she’d talk to me there. But before we got into Marblehead she asked me if I could take her home.

“To your dad’s?”

“Yeah.”

When we came to a red light I looked at her. Okay. “Okay.” I drove her there and saw her in from the car, and drove away when I saw a light go on in the house.

In the morning there was another note for me. She told me to meet her at a bar called Gulu Gulu in Salem that night.

When I got there she was sitting at a table in the corner. The place was busy and looked modern. An acoustic show played on a stage: 51

“She asked me to stay and she told me to sit anywhere.

So I looked around and I noticed there wasn’t a chair.”

I came to her table and there was an envelope before the empty chair. I sat and looked at her. She didn’t say anything. Neither did I. She wore makeup, had a nice black shirt on with earrings; she’d done up her dark hair. Her birthmark was faint behind makeup. I opened the envelope and there was a note and twenty dollars.

Dear Bill, I’m sorry for being so out of it lately. I’m not myself. Or, I am myself. But I’m hurting myself. I don’t talk about it because I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to bring it into what we have together. I just want to talk about good things with you.

I looked up at her. Taylor was looking at me. Her mouth was open slightly. I watched the band before I read again. What song was this? Here’s twenty dollars as an apology. You should buy the World Wide Stout, my dad told me it’s great and its 18% alcohol.

Love, Taylor I put the note back in the envelope, and the envelope in my pocket. A girl needed to pass so I had to slide my chair up to let her by.

“Excuse me,” she said. I slid the chair back out. I looked to the stage, only a foot off the ground. The band played on: “She told me she worked in the morning and started to laugh.

I told her I didn’t and crawled up to sleep in the bath.”

The song was The Beatles. “Norwegian Wood.”

52

Lion

Kristen Riello

53

Mango Fruit Roll-Ups Lauren Manna

I have calloused fingers: From prying open Venus on a bad night From wiping the white off hot coffeepots on a coldish summer morning when my eyes are pressing tired.

My teeth are not quite perfect and not quite ruined because I can’t finish what I start.

I am afraid I am a mass of contradictions, and, like anyone sane, becoming my father.

I race the clock to (not) get enough calories by exactly midnight, and once I burst into tears in a Wakefield pizza shop.

I am only competitive when you say you are the most tired person in the room.

But I love getting goosebumps over the human condition, (well-earned paper cuts) And when light hits; when it diffuses dark orange-red to crisp paper shadows; And shutting my laptop when my contacts have been in for three days.

I am looking for a word a tad more solid than agnosticism.

A feeling that will sit heavier and longer in my chest than bloating or steel (I am missing you)— And I am waiting to feel the light come back into my eyes.

54

Inside The Refrigerator

*DONALD HALL POETRY PRIZE WINNER*

Jessica Wharton

They used to tell me the bogeyman lived here, In the room with dirt walls at the back of the cellar, Once a refrigerator for everything but the honeycombs That didn’t need one. I’d walk downstairs with my grandmother, Clutching her thigh, afraid. It’s cleaner now, but once the dust Settled thick on that single light bulb I couldn’t reach when I was young.

Outside that far window (when I stood on my toes) I could see the young Dogwood tree with pink flowers that couldn’t have been here While my dad was growing up. His handprints were still pressed in the dust On the glass panes in the door that led to the room at the back of the cellar.

The printed glass was cracked from the outside, and as my grandmother And I swept up the decades-old shards, she told me, Watch your fingers, honey.

That darkest wall next to the back room was lined with honeycombs In mason jars stacked floor to ceiling on a bookshelf. Before my younger Sister had any teeth she would suck the honey off my grandmother’s Finger; after she grew teeth, she was able to come with me down here.

The first time she examined the honeycombs, with their individual cells, her Eyes widened and she dropped the jar to the floor in a cloud of dust.

It shattered, and all the syrup and all the lint and glass dust Congealed together into a slow, sticky shape, the chunk of honeycomb A centered island in the golden lake in my grandmother’s cellar.

That’s a beehive, she said, disgusted, pointing an imaginative young Finger at the spill. Grammy fed me bees. If you look closely, here, You can still see the dark stain from the honey that my grandmother Was never able to get rid of. We could try again now, sure, but Grandma Scrubbed at it for years. I don’t know why the stain bothered her but the dust Never did. It doesn’t look so dusty now, but if you were to come down here When she was alive, you’d see different. Last week they took down the honeycomb

55

Shelves and they all had to wear surgical masks because Mr. Young Could hardly breathe with all the dust in the air in this cellar.

He and the rest of my uncle’s friends went through all the stuff in the cellar.

They picked apart the workbench, and called dibs on my grandfather’s Canvas paintings of old ships that he had tried to sell when he was young.

One of them wrote a racist joke with his finger in the dust On top of the freezer that was full of Grandma’s small honey-cakes, Of which he took three or four home with him. It’s different here, Now, than it was when I was young. The men are kicking up the same dust I did when I played in this wine-dark cellar with my grandmother Between the honeycomb shelves, way back when the bogeyman still lived here.

56

A Trip to the Grocery Store Kaitlyn Griever

You have so much to do today that you scalded your tongue on your morning coffee because there simply was no time to wait for it to cool. There is a grocery list running through your mind—the eggs, the milk, the cheese, and maybe a chocolate bar because you’ve had a long day. Impatiently, you get in your car and slide across the worn leather seat. You slip the key into the ignition and wait as the engine turns over once, twice, three times before sputtering and choking to life. With one hand on the wheel of your beat-up Toyota Camry, you reach out to fiddle with the radio. You smile smugly to yourself as you flick to the classical station and think about how your best friend only lets you listen to the top 40 countdown. But today it is just you. There is something authentic and peaceful about the slow roll of violin strings cracking over the old sound system in your car.

You navigate the meandering roads of your town effortlessly and thoughtlessly. You could make this jaunt in your sleep. Right, then left, straight for two miles and a sharp left. Your mind begins to wander to the left over Chinese from last night that you really hope that you put in the fridge, and how you have been telling yourself for three days straight that you really need to call your grandmother.

Today you are in no mood for the traffic backup in the center of town or the screaming kids that pile up at the cross-walk by the school.

You roll down your window in time with your rolling eyes and fling an arm out into the crisp October air. Your fingers tap out the steady rhythm of the symphony on the metal of the car and you roll forward in peaceful silence.

As you slowly pass the middle school, still mentally planning your excursion to Stop and Shop, you are interrupted by the sound of metal crunching metal. At first the only sign that something is wrong is that suddenly the crescendo of instruments harmonizing over the radio system is not the loudest thing in the car. And then your senses are assaulted all at once. Visions of a red minivan coming out of nowhere and sandwiching a small four-door car against a light post stream before you, before your eyes become trained on the patch of 57

white cloud in the otherwise clear sky. The smell of burning rubber and smoke from a deployed airbag permeates the air, leaking in through the open window on your driver’s side. Your foot slams down on the brake so fast that you nearly spin out as your own car comes to a screeching halt. Your chest comes into contact with the tough nylon of the seatbelt, and while you ought to be seeking out those involved in the accident your first instinct is to reach for the base of your throat and rub soothing fingers across the angry red skin of your neck and think about the mark that it will leave. Finally, you pull your car safely up to the curb and stagger out of the door. Your fingers reach for your cell phone automatically, dialing the 9-1-1 that you have practically practiced since birth and never needed to use.

And it has been a total of fifteen seconds. But you know what they say about accidents—blink and you’ll miss it.

The dispatcher’s voice crackles through the phone line, but you don’t hear the tired woman on the other end because you have discarded your phone on the lush grass by the library in the center of town. For a second you marvel at how green the lawn is for an unusually cold fall when you are brought back to the task at hand by a shrieking woman planted next to what used to be the library sign. The sign used to be proud and erect, framed by daffodils in the spring and bright like a white picket fence, but it has been plowed over, now lost between two parallel tire tracks and some scrap metal. A woman in the distance wails, a horrifying groan that resonates deep within your soul, and you are distracted. But you are also unprepared.

When you think of fatal accidents, you think of carnage. You think of trauma and ambulances everywhere and chaos. No one tells you that sometimes when people die on impact, you don’t even see them bleed. You had no idea that sometimes the people who have it the worst are the ones that look absolutely fine. A woman in a long white sweater streaked in blood is bent over the body of the driver. She was the one who was crying, you realize as she looks you in the eye and tells you that the body on the ground has lost its pulse. And you hear what she is saying, and you understand the awful truth of it, but you are also captivated by how bright green her 58

eyes look set in between her blonde gossamer eyelashes and how, even though you are sure that she was a passenger in one car or another, her hair still looks perfectly coifed. The only sound that can be heard now is the whimper of the woman over the body. An old man, about seventy, to your right looks at you with understanding eyes as he nods you in the direction of the police. You were the first witness. But you do not even know what you just saw.

With shaking hands, you give your statement. You explain how it felt like you were watching a movie, powerless to change the outcome of the events. You think of how the person died in an instant, but how the death was not like it is in the movies. No, this was real. There was no blood spilling everywhere or unnatural angles of the limbs. Someone was dead, in an instant, and you are about to swing open the door to your car and make your way to the grocery store. How are you supposed to sit in the refrigerated section and ponder which brand of milk to buy when you have just seen something like this? Your feet feel as though they are glued to the asphalt, and even the idea of getting back in your car and continuing your trek to the grocery store makes your stomach lurch. You are about to go on with your day while someone is not even going to get to take another breath. It could have happened to anyone, and it definitely could have happened to you. In fact, in ten seconds your body would be pinned to the lamppost instead of shaking like a leaf in front of the kaleidoscopic blue and red lights of a police car.

As you shut the door to your car with a shaking hand, flick on your blinker, and ease back onto the road your mind keeps picturing the accident that was just sprawled out on the library lawn before you. You drive on, you continue your day because really, what choice do you have? But you are careful to stop the whole three seconds at every stop sign, to look both ways more than once before pulling onto the streets in front of you. You look at every red minivan in fear.

The accident is over, yes, but what you saw stays with you. You see it over and over in your mind, a constant loop of the horror and the fear that you felt. And you recall how the police on duty had asked you how you remembered so clearly what had happened after you 59

relayed your story and gave him every sight and every feeling that you had been through. And you still think about your answer. It twists your gut and wrenches your heart up into your throat, but you couldn’t look away even if you wanted to.

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You re Probably ThinKing This isn t What You Thought It Should Be 61

Ugly Beasts Get Better Fixes Kim Fears

I stood over the man’s body and held his heart in my hand.

I hadn’t gotten a great look at him in the bar. All I knew was that he was drunk, and according the Internet, he was a convicted sex offender. He had also been eyeing some girls who looked way too young to be frequenting a bar like this.

Looking down at him now, I almost felt bad about spiking his drink, dragging him out the back, and cutting out his heart. He was somewhere in his fifties, with wiry brown hair desperately clinging to his receding hairline. His eyebrows were thick and equally wiry, and his nose was just a little too big. He was scrawny too, which worked for me. Standing at a solid 5’9’’, I wasn’t eager to take on some sort of monster-sex-offender.

His heart was warm and squishy, and a bit coarser than I imagined it would be. The blood oozed in between my fingers and dripped down onto his soaked button-down shirt. I stared at the horrific Hawaiian pattern of the shirt, and my guilt lifted.

Yes, I had just murdered someone, but for good reason! Cassie needed the heart, and my job was to get whatever Cassie needed.

She fixed me after all.

I was seventeen years old and drunk out of my mind when I stumbled up into the ratty old house on Bourbon Street. I’d been an alcoholic for two years and living on the streets. No school, no family, and no one to tell me how terrible my life was going.

Sneaking out of foster care at fourteen got me mixed up with a bad crowd of guys, and got me selling every kind of drug I could get my hands on. For two years I shacked up with them in an old warehouse off of Chipwell Avenue, and the only people who knew where to find us were addicts and dealers. That is until we got raided by the cops. I was wasted when it happened, and by some miracle I slipped out the back window, fumbled my way down a ratty alleyway, and made it to Bourbon Street.

I had a bottle of Jack in my jacket, and as I stumbled down the street laid out along the outskirts of the city, I downed it. I wasn’t 62

particularly sad about seeing my group broken up, or hearing the shouting and gunshots. I was only with those guys for the security, and even that wasn’t very good. But I did feel a bit guilty about running away, and about not helping any of the others get away. So I drank until that guilt was gone. I drank until the guilt left, and then the feeling in my face left, and then my clear vision left.

When I came to again, I was lying on a hardwood floor with candles all around me. I was horrifically hungover, with a pounding headache and a dancing stomach.

I rolled onto my side, and squinted through the flickering flames to see a woman on the other side of the room, standing behind a simple folding table. She looked to be around thirty or so, with dark brown skin and long flowing braids reaching her waist. She wore a simple black tank top and a pair of jeans. Her fingers were adorned with silver and gold rings, and beaded bracelets traveled down her wrists.

But my eyes weren’t so much on the fascinating woman as they were on the boa constrictor laid out on the table in front of her.

She eyed me for a second, with strange eyes like the pines of an evergreen. She winked once, chopped off the snake’s head with a meat cleaver, and chucked it into the fireplace.

“You’re fixed now,” she said, in a thick Caribbean accent.

I didn’t know what she meant at first, and then I felt something coming over my body. The drunken haze I’d been clouded in suddenly lifted off of me, as if a vacuum had sucked it away.

I let out a groan and forced myself to sit up. The woman took the rest of the snake’s body and dropped it into a garbage bag as if it were dirty laundry.

“What’d you do to me?” I asked, rubbing the back of my neck.

She wiped her hands clean with a towel, and then wiped the blood and guts from the cleaver. “I fixed you,” she said.

I stared up at her, confused. I reached into my jacket and pulled the bottle of Jack. There was just a drop or two left, and normally I’d have downed it just because it was there. This time, I didn’t want it.

In fact, that brown liquid I once loved so much now almost looked… nasty.

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My head snapped back up, and I beamed at the woman.

“How did you…?” She only smiled.

And that was how I met Cassandra Portiere, the voodoo artist. I didn’t know it then, but she would change my life forever.

She called herself an artist because she didn’t like being called a witch or a priestess. According to Cassie, witches were evil, and priestesses could be deceptive. Artists were always honest.

“Art comes from passion,” she told me one morning, as she lifted a heart from a dead crow. “And passion comes the truth,” she added, before tossing that heart into the fireplace.

I stayed with her after that night when she killed the snake. I had nowhere else to go, and she was the first person to actually do a kind thing for me simply because she could. She also never told me I had to leave, and as the days went on, she started giving me jobs to do.

At first it was just to sit on the front porch of the house and call out to her if “clients” approached. That was interesting for a time.

Cassie’s art wasn’t widely known, but there were lots of rumors about voodoo happening on the outskirts of New Orleans. Cassie trusted her clients to keep her talents to themselves, unless they came across someone who needed her and didn’t know where to go. For most people, she was a myth – a voodoo lady by the river.

But for me, and for anyone who knew where to find her, she was very real indeed.

Everyone who came for Cassie’s help was a bit different. A pregnant woman worried about the location of her missing husband, a crippled old man wanted the strength to walk his daughter down the isle, a worried older brother didn’t want his sister dating a loser.

And Cassie helped all of them.

A rat’s tale or the tooth of an opossum thrown in the fire with the right prayer could straighten a crooked spine. A whole giant centipede could sharpen weak hearing. Snakes were good for just about anything. Cassie liked ugly animals.

“The uglier the beast, the better the fix,” she explained to me once. “Big snakes, big spiders, big worms.”

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As my first year with her went on, she sent me out to start collecting supplies for her. First it was digging for worms in the back yard, and then it was collecting spiders. And whatever dislike I felt towards picking up nasty little critters and shoving them in a box, I pushed through that for Cassie. Every time a spider crawled up my arm as I tried to catch it, I thought of the gumbo she made me on my first day with her. Whenever I pulled a wriggling night crawler from the ground and wanted to gag, I thought of her teaching me the banjo in our quiet time. And when she sent me catching snakes in the bayou, I thought of how she fixed me.

For two years I worked my way up from door boy, to bug boy, to critter boy, to snake boy, to gravedigger boy. If Cassie needed it, I got it for her. Some tasks were certainly more complicated than others, like sneaking into the graveyard to collect skulls from a man, a woman, and a male child. Lucky for me, I was pretty fast so getting caught was never a problem.

By the latter half of my second year with Cassie, we had a great system going. Clients arrived, she listened, she sent them home, and then she told me what to get. The only times she ever turned anyone down where when they broke her rules.

1. She would not cast a spell to kill.

2. She would not cast a spell to bring back the dead.

3. She would not cast a spell for a child.

I never questioned these rules. They made perfect sense to me. Killing was bad, bringing people back from the dead was complicated, and children weren’t old enough to know the consequences of their actions. Cassie never granted a spell without firmly explaining the consequences, for all magic had consequences.

“The universe never willingly gives,” she explained to me. “It only gives when it receives, and I do what I can to make the giving count.”

It didn’t necessarily make sense to me, but every now and then Cassie would say something difficult like that and ignore all of my questions. To shut me up, she’d usually just give me something to eat. I was a sucker for her fried catfish. One bite of that stuff would silence me for life if she wanted it to.

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I only ever questioned her once, and it ended with me cutting out a man’s heart. That was the day a little boy came into the shop asking for Cassie to cure his dying mother of cancer, and she turned him away.

The boy ran off crying, and Cassie watched him with a pained but pensive look from the front porch. I stepped out behind her and didn’t even get a breath out before she said, “Too young.”

The door creaked shut behind me.

“But his mom is dying,” I replied, trying to hold back my own pain. I knew what it was to lose a parent - to be alone in the world.

This kid, whoever he was, didn’t deserve that.

Cassie turned to me, her green eyes piercing into my very core, as they often did.

“I keep my rules for a reason,” she said, her voice like iron.

“They protect not only me, but the ones asking for them as well. This boy is too young to pay the cost for what he is asking.”

“Can you heal his mother?” I pressed. Cassie’s eyes narrowed.

“Cancer is not an easy sickness to heal,” she said. I raised an eyebrow.

“But you can heal her.” Cassie brushed by me and stepped into the house.

“Not for him,” she said. “Not for a child.” I chased after her.

“Do it for me then!” I shouted. She stopped in the entryway and kept her back to me. “You will make the request?” she asked, glancing at me from the corner of her eye.

I nodded. “You can’t let this woman die, Cass.”

Cassie turned and slowly crossed her dark arms across her chest. She tapped her foot on the hardwood floor, and she watched me. She challenged me.

I clenched my fists and looked deep into the eyes of the woman who fixed me.

“What do you need me to get?”

And then she told me to cut out a man’s heart.

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The Marauder Ryan O’ Hara

67

You Are The Largest Part of the Problem That Picks At Me Kira Smelser

Hands dripping black tar sweep across my chest, covering up your pecking marks – all the times you’ve had a piece of me.

Beady eyes and taloned feet scratch my brain while rank flesh dangles from your sharp beak.

You won’t leave because I don’t tell you to.

This small, clouded place envelops me and I begin to prefer it – red chapped lips drinking from a jagged glass filled with vodka. Refill.

I want to beat myself to a pulp maybe even more so than I want to beat you

68

X-ray

Clare Michalak

69

Hemorrhage

Anthony DiMartino

We need to talk.

I was on a train to Edinburgh when I received that text And that talk told me everything I didn’t want to hear about The thing I knew would happen But couldn’t accept.

I’m still related to the monster That used to live under my bed It’s waited twenty years to resurface Two hundred forty months of patience Seven thousand and four days The hours passed like minutes But now it’s fastened to me, like a tumor Nearly passing through the corridors Of a newer neater neighborhood Noiselessly, marrying itself to prostitutes To fulfill that quick sex fix it was lacking for The years after I was born It caused trauma and despair Unnoticed by all but me It feels its way in and out of neural pathways Memories and all the moments we shared It drills at the familiar sore spots The ones it left unknowingly through the years I remember when I was born It was there with me, smiling We have pictures together I’ve collected them We used to be friendly, at a distance Nearly shaped like a grizzly bear A clumsy, rough, shameless beast An exhibit 70

For the museum of domestic life It severed the few veins we shared When the monster awoke one day Leaving a wake of scabs and Mistreated mental scars because Of its startling realization about life And the meaning of family and marriage The parasite still gnaws at my skull Every time I think of holidays and weekends And where I used to live I want it to feel sad But there’s nothing I can do about it I’m helpless like a goldfish Swimming to the surface of a leaking tank, Because I was wrong Because he’s the Frankenstein And I’m his banished creation.

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72

Neurons

Barron Lincoln

Neurons

Barron Lincoln

73

His Eyes

Julia Perkins

I heard the swish of his feet stepping on leaves and turned my head to look at him. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but our eyes met and he closed it. I faced the shadows of the trees again and searched for stars in the spaces between the branches.

There weren’t any, not yet. It was dark, but only because the sun sets faster in the woods. Cicadas buzzed all around me, sounding like the hiss of water spurting from a sprinkler. My flip flops had fallen off my feet, and I ground a pebble into the dirt with my big toe. Several mosquitos had gathered around my ankles and another two were buzzing in my ear. I made half an attempt to swat them away, but then brought my hand back down to rub the string of the hammock. It would be months until I would be here again. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the steady peep, peep, peep, peep of the crickets, and on the little dips and ridges of the hammock, trying to force my fingers to memorize how it felt to grip the taut rope. The string creaked and grew more rigid. My toes lifted off the ground for a moment as Jacob sat down next to me.

His fingers closed over my right hand and I traced the callous below his thumb, then the valleys in between his knuckles where his eczema was the worst. His hands had grown rougher and dirtier throughout the summer, but they stayed warm. I reached up with my free hand to bring my fingers through his thick hair, savoring the feel of his curls. With my eyes closed, I ran my hand down his long neck, sticky with sweat, to his shoulders. Dried dirt was caked onto the collar of his shirt. He hadn’t changed since work and still smelled like suntan lotion and sawdust. I opened my eyes so I could look at his face, his stumpy nose and thick eyebrows. I knew every part of him, but most of all I knew his eyes. I loved how they were deep and dark and knew me.

We had twelve hours, twelve hours until I would board a plane and fly across the country to Berkley. More than 3,000 miles away from where I had grown up in my hammock in my little Massachusetts town. More than 3,000 miles away from Jacob.

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Jacob moved to lie down on the hammock and he pulled me with him. I rested my head on his collarbone and he wrapped his arm around me. He lifted my shirt a little, so he could rub small circles around my lower back. I traced the letters spelling out Stone’s Construction on Jacob’s shirt. If it hadn’t been for me, Jacob wouldn’t be wearing that shirt, I thought. He and Ben would be getting ready to take on the world.

Mrs. Draper our guidance counselor had tried to convince Jacob to apply to college. She brought me into her office to meet with him. I think she thought I would change his mind, but this was in September, six months after the accident and I had nothing to say. Mrs. Draper kept dragging her hand through her hair and readjusting the position of her coffee mug on her desk, before leaning forward and repeating: You’re so smart, Jacob, so smart. But Jacob said he wanted to go into his dad’s construction business. He liked building things, he told her.

When we were little we had all liked to build things. The three of us, Ben, Jacob, and I, built worlds and stories in this little clearing in the woods behind our houses. In the summer, I was a princess and they were princes. Our palace was the hammock my father set up.

Tree branches were our swords, which we used to fight the dragons and evil sorcerers who assaulted our kingdom. In the winter we were Eskimos, building snow forts to stay warm. We stayed out in the woods, even when it rained, until my mother called us inside. And then we’d lock ourselves in my parent’s room, taking turns holding up the covers to create a tent of blankets, ignoring Jacob’s mother rapping on the door, saying he had to get home for dinner. We could last a while underneath the blankets, we told ourselves. My parents had a bathroom where we could get water to drink. Ben and I already had our toothbrushes in there and Jacob could use one of the unused ones under the sink.

We pretended Jacob was our brother, not our neighbor, that Ben and I weren’t just twins, that the three of us were triplets. Our third grade teacher Mrs. Adler thought we were related anyway. We went back to visit her every year, but she still always called Ben “Jacob” and Jacob “Ben.” She said Ben and Jacob looked more 75

alike than Ben and I. This always prompted me to point out the little differences between the two. Ben’s hair was shorter than Jacob’s, Jacob was a few inches taller, and Ben had freckles. But now I wished more than ever that the two were identical. Maybe it would make remembering my brother’s face a little easier.

Sometimes I walked down the street and for the shortest of moments I would think I heard his laugh. But then it would be gone and I couldn’t remember what it sounded like and I’d be left standing in the middle of the sidewalk, not knowing if I had imagined the whole thing. Every time I looked in the mirror I saw his eyes and the shape of his round face, but I couldn’t see all of him. And whenever I tried I just saw him slumped in my passenger seat, shattered glass glittering on his skin, all the blood, all the life dripping from his forehead onto my lap.

I called Jacob before I called 911. That’s just where my fingers went to first.

Jacob had stood next to me in the driveway when I pulled the acceptance letter out of my mailbox. It was February and our breath clouded together as we leaned over the large envelope. It’s big, he said, that’s a good thing. I didn’t answer. My fingers couldn’t open the envelope with my gloves, so Jacob tore his off and threw them in the snow. He tried to slowly break the envelope seal, but halfway through he just gave up and tore it open. His eyes glowed brighter than they had in months and he squealed my name. He picked me up and spun me until we were too dizzy. We came crashing down into the snow, my hair falling into his laughing mouth. It felt so good to smile again. Ever since the accident, any time we smiled had been out of obligation, any excitement had been mechanical and rehearsed. Still giggling, I apologized and brushed my hair away.

He whispered my name and then we were kissing in the snow and I didn’t care that slush was seeping into my coat or that my acceptance letter was lying wet on the ground because he tasted like the chocolate covered strawberries we shared for lunch.

From then on Berkley became our escape. When I noticed Jacob staring out my window, out into the woods, I mentioned Berkley.

When we got into Jacob’s truck and my hands shook as I buckled 76

my seatbelt, Jacob would smile softly at me and mention Berkley.

But as we crept into summer, I pretended not to notice that when I brought up Berkley, Jacob’s back would tighten and he would ask questions about my classes and whether I had bought everything I needed, but he didn’t listen to my answers.

I chose not to see that going to college meant Jacob would slip away from me. I needed something to look forward to. I wouldn’t have to fall asleep to my mother’s muffled sobs every night. I wouldn’t have to walk by my father standing in the hallway, eyes glazed over, mouth half open, staring at my brother’s closed bedroom door. I wouldn’t have to stare at his empty seat at the dinner table or accidentally grab his water bottle from the cabinet.

And I wouldn’t have to go near that curve in the road.

It wasn’t until this morning that I realized. Bailey’s Ice Cream was five miles from my house, but I biked or walked to work every day. I couldn’t drive anymore. Sometimes family friends or people who had been strangers 18 months ago pulled over and asked if I wanted a ride. I never took them up on their offer. Jacob, his dad, and five other tanned men were putting an extra bedroom into a house downtown. Two of the men were laughing and swearing, Jacob’s dad was singing along to a rock song on the radio that I didn’t know. The sun was in my eyes, so I had to squint to make Jacob out, and even then all the light made his figure blurry. He didn’t look like my Jacob who dreamed of fighting monsters and saving the kingdom. He looked like he had laid down his sword a while ago. He climbed slowly down from a ladder, wiped his forehead, and moved over to a work bench. He sifted through a toolbox, looked up, and our eyes met. And they were so sad. I had been so focused on all the reasons I wanted to leave, that I had forgotten I would have someone to miss and that someone would be missing me.

The crickets seemed to have gotten louder and a bullfrog had joined in. Jacob moved his hand from my back and touched my cheek. I closed my eyes and tried to turn off the sounds of the night.

All I wanted to hear was his breathing, all I wanted to feel were his hands on me, the strings of the hammock cradling my body. But 77

there was so much sound and everything was moving too fast, I was moving too fast, too fast for the curve that was coming too close, and I was slipping, slipping on ice, and my brakes were screaming, and I was screaming.

When I opened my eyes there were teardrops clinging to my eyelashes. I looked at Jacob and saw my brother’s eyes and they were full of understanding.

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I Went and It Was No Fun At All Tanner Celestin

How to pack for an experience of a lifetime! You must leave room for maps – the kind with brand new creases like a baby’s finger bent around a dad-sized pinky.

Leave your bathing suits in your childhood closet along with your piles of glitter paint.

You must like fuzzy hats, you must spit out fluff from your scarf when it gets in your mouth. Find hands for six pairs of new mittens.

Stuff them in your pockets like you don’t need to point when you ask the people where to go.

What a life! It’s an airplane after hugging your dad goodbye. Pack a phone with bad reception. You won’t hear him crying when he says he misses you already. Drag your suitcase like you know how all of this goes.

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I Went and It Was No Fun At All Tanner Celestin

My dad mails me flash drives with nine-minute videos of my dog swimming in our pool.

I keep a state flag pinned above my bed. I dream of bears and it’s the best I’ve got. I shove maps stained with highlighters into a box.

My dog doesn’t know my voice over the phone when I talk about new people.

My dad never answers the house phone. I fly six hours to live in a new house. My dad built a sandcastle but I couldn’t take it with me.

I pet the people’s dogs on the street and they look at me like what when I call them all Ben. This time I walk patterns in the snow until my lawn says HI DAD. My dad says HI back when I send him pictures in wet socks.

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I Went and It Was No Fun At All Tanner Celestin

Do you want to come with me?

The people wear black and talk in harsh accents.

I can’t understand but I feel what they mean.

If you come with me we can talk and talk nicely.

Let’s think about our ears as left shoes and our mouths as the right ones.

The people have eyes like we don’t like you and that’s okay but I’m still sad.

Come with me and press your hand between my shoulder blades and forward down their streets.

I wear earmuffs when it’s cold and it’s always cold here.

The people think I can’t hear but I feel it in their eyes like we can see you’re strange.

Please come with me so I can see my house from the way you talk about winter.

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The Little Things Shannon Durkin

82

To My Future Daughter Clare Michalak

You are going to meet people who remind you of the elements, of the smell of vanilla, of silk and you are going to meet people with eyes that resemble batwings and laughs that sound more like screams.

There will be a girl who is a lit match, burning and fading with the faint smell of charcoal and iron. Sizzling You will meet her when you are four years old and she will not scald your fingertips. She will be the white steam rising from porcelain mugs filled to the brim with jasmine tea that her mother makes in their tenth story apartment with the fire escape. But not Smoke. She will know the word sorry but it will not be abused. Not like your father. Her laugh will scorch your memories of loneliness and her warmth will be a shelter, a blanket, even when she is tossed aside into the wooden trunk under the stairs until next season. Her fingernails will always be pink too.

She will be the pink filtered sunlight through stained glass. A flame.

Do not lose her. She will reignite your fire and burn yellow streaks into your hair.. She will illuminate your days, but you must find peace in her temporary darkness, especially when she has a curfew.

There will be prone cinder blocks that stand on your chest until you can barely recite your poetry. These blocks will bar your way, they will crush you under the weight of their pressed pants.

Tombstones. Collapsible catacombs. They come in many forms but they are always the same density. Broken ribs. You can only crack their hard exterior with the sweat of your brow and your own tidal waves. They will not budge, but you will overcome them. Flood them. Pursue. Pursue their pursed lips and too-fragrant aftershave.

They will threaten to collapse and swallow you into a void. They will promise their own crushing weight against your skull, the same one they have been trying to fill. They will promise oblivion. Water is stronger than stone. Wind your river around their stones. Forage on.

There will be a girl who is the underside of a worn leather shoe. At least, that it what you will think. The words that drip off of her speckled forked tongue will sound like a perverted lullaby. Her 83

scowls like the curvature of a black cave and her smiles will reveal sharpened teeth. She will be a tornado with sharpened debris, a grater and grinder that will swallow you whole, rip your clothing and fling your possessions into walls. She will spit. Her winds will break through holes in your bones and leave you riddled like the pockmarked surface of a lava-cooled stone. She will await in the depths, rearing her head in the most insecure plains of your mental realms. She is red tinted moonlight. Paranoia. She is the dread that latches on to your mind like a black spider web. She is cobwebs. If you do not dust your corners she will stay. And multiply. She is smoke. Catching her is like trying to wrangle change into a cage.

Make her step in your puddles and flood her shoes with kindness.

Especially because she’s your sister.

Some people that you will meet will be empty houses. Their walls and windows and cabinets will be well constructed. Their hallways will be brushed, smooth, and bare. However, their cabinet shelves are empty with lines of dust and their walls bone bare.

They will try to claim you as space. As a wall decoration. As an adornment. Their fingers will wrap around your wrist and leave tattoos of bruises. They will expect you to fill the space that has been vacated. They will invite you through their wooden door. Do not cross that threshold. You may decorate the world but you cannot decorate their halls. For they will hang you like a trophy under the mantelpiece or hang you by arms on a hook. If you are trapped, flood the halls.

Burst open the door and wash away the traces of your body from the walls. You are meant to be more than a white marble idol.

In your health classes they will teach you about addiction.

About needles. About pills. They will not teach you about the stubble on his cheeks or the way that he smells like rain. They will not tell you to run from your own increased heartbeats. There are no clean needles when his arms are wrapped around your waist and his lips are in your hair. They will not tell you that his laugh will feel like a high. They don’t talk about how you feel the physical absence of him when he is not by your side or about the way he has latched himself on to every third thought that crosses your mind.

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They will also never tell you about how it feels when he is ripped from your veins. When there are traces of water on your skin and that, whenever it rains, you feel the serrated edges of yourself tear like muscle fibers. They will not tell you about the blackness around the edges of your mind that hint to the void that has been ripped into your skin. They will not tell you about how his jacket will smell stale. I promise you this; wait for a thunderstorm. Watch as each drop skyrockets across your windows and watch as your void is filled with spilled lightning and the cacophony of thunder. Your serrated edges will rust and crumble smooth.

Wait for moonlight. He will not be a drug. He will be a hand. He will pull you, push you, like the tides that you are, stretching into new shapes and forms. He will propel you forward, along side you. He will show you the difference of what you want and what you need, gale force winds and a gentle breeze. He will show you how to filter, how to censor those out of your depths that do not belong there. He will encourage and coax and push you to reach the limits of your own sea.

Let him. He is your moon, not your sun. He does not smell like rain.

And you, my dear, if you couldn’t tell, are the sea. You are the white sea foam that froths at the edges. The rolling waves that hold shells and stones. Your waves are ripples and tsunamis; be careful of which you utilize. Your fears will churn in raging wave pools. The thing about wave pools is that if you keep going in circles, you will drown yourself. Control your currents. You are sapphire, untamable, though your challenge will invite many, few of which amiable. Smash them against the shore and away from your form. Do not forget that you are also the Black Sea, The Dead Sea, The Red Sea. You are ever changing, ever growing. Your salt can wear away stone. And you are also my daughter. A chaotic mess of water and salt, but mine nonetheless. You will see many things in your life, people will drown, and swim, and float in your waters. But you, you my dear, are the sea.

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Rigor Mortis Tanner Celestin

After Ben Howard

Black flies on the windowsill, a half-drunk bottle of beer stagnant in stained glass sitting on his coffee table with no ring beneath it.

My eyes are mirages shimmering above a desert tongue.

Sand sifting down my throat, blistering gusts of a dry heave wracking my chapped lips.

Haphazard sobs of a drought woman pleading for cacti hands of a man to quit concealing sweetness.

My face uptilted, eyes squinting, swaying hips in senseless prayer for rain falling from his licked lips parting, but the sky is a sharp, violent blue of endless horizon – beyond the carcass-lined windowsill of his studio apartment the grains of words I buried are whipping up in fury – sandstorm shattering glass, shrapnel

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severing flesh not yet stiffened by the rigor mortis of my flatlined screeching, my palm, a savage shove knocking the wind from his chest.

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Who We Are Osaama Awani is a Sophmore Health Science major with a Fine Arts Studio minor. He hopes to graduate and work as a Medical Illustrator. On the side, he works on commissions on comics, tattoos and anime, etc. He works under the name Awanton_Art. Amy Brazauski is an aspiring English teacher from Connecticut. Most days, she spends time getting lost in old books or in the woods, like some modern day Thoreau with an iPhone. She would like to thank her family and friends for being the force that keeps her keepin’ on.

Lovanda A. Brown is a senior and Print Journalism major at Quinnipiac University who enjoys writing creatively in her spare time. She hopes to find success in both fiction writing and print journalism within the near future.

Justin Burnett is from Marblehead.

“Don’t tell them anything else,” he says. Between you and me, though, I will say that he’s a good kid, and that he’ll spill his heart out for you.

Tanner Celestin is honored to receive this award for Writer. She’d not only like to thank the Academy but also her parents, Kim and Todd, for their unending humor and encouragement. She can’t wait to see how big the Writer trophy is going to look on her mantle next to her last award: a participation ribbon for the 2007 California Science Fair. (Editor’s note: wait…so what are you saying? There isn’t a trophy?)

Rachel Corso is a Connecticut local who enjoys the finer things in life like poetry and dusty margaritas. When she’s not stretching herself too thin in the land of academia, she’s being over worked and under paid in the real world—poems, man.

Rachel Cox is a lover of law, laughter, and languages. An avid traveler not of the world, but for the world, she seeks to be an integral part of the global community. Aside from studying the law and the French language, she listens to Christmas music a little too early, reads presidential history novels, and catches up on sleep.

Anthony DiMartino is a junior English major from Northford, Connecticut. He likes small dogs, Game of Thrones, and getting lost in foreign countries. If it weren’t for his inspiring family, friends, and high school English teachers, he probably wouldn’t be writing today.

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Shannon Durkin is from Oakland, California. She is a senior Film major and is also on the women’s rugby team.

Kimberly Fears is the sharp-witted president of the Quinnipiac Film Society.

She spends most of her time writing screenplays, novels, and nonsensical short stories based on her inspiring loved ones. When she’s not doing that, she’s watching football. Get over it.

Jen Fremd is a mechanical engineering major from Washington State with moss in her brain. Most famous for upsetting the public by wearing shorts in the winter, she hopes to one day have more hobbies than she has teeth.

She’s often seen brooding about the lack of rain in Connecticut.

Kaitlyn Griever is a sophomore nursing major from Massachusetts.

“Wicked” is her most used adverb and Cape Cod is her favorite place to be. Kaitlyn is both a middle child and a Starbucks barista. She appreciates good coffee and cat people.

Alan Johnson is a good ol’ Southern boy from Dallas, Texas. He investigates the many skeletons in Albert Schweitzer’s closet as the Co-Editor-in-Chief of The Quinnipiac Barnacle. If he’s not writing or performing comedy, he’s listening to The Smiths, which means he’s probably crying.

Andy Landolfi a Jersey boy, born and raised. His writing style–composed mostly of a dark, hopeless tone–contrasts greatly with his general upbeat and optimistic personality. His friends, and family, can credit themselves for shaping him into the man (child) he currently is; what remains known is whether or not they really want to take credit for the creation that is, well, Andy.

Lauren Manna is a junior English major from Connecticut who goes to college way too close to home. She enjoys peanut butter, lifting, and Harry Potter. In her free time Lauren can be found doing theater or arguing with someone, and by the time this journal is published she will be traveling the world via Semester at Sea. Clare Michalak is a junior English and Interactive Digital Design double major. She loves tea that is the perfect temperature and drawing doodles on important things. She can be found sleeping in the IDD lab, running frantically through Buckman theater, or in a comfy chair in the library under a pile of books. If you see her make sure she is still alive.

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Who We Are Ryan O’Hara is a Game Design major from Pennsylvania. He spends most of his time working on digital art projects, listening to music, and playing video games. He is a massive fan of the Super Smash Bros series and hopes to one day become an independent horror game developer.

Jessica Pereira is a night owl from Connecticut. She has read The Perks of Being a Wallflower upwards of five times, is obsessed with Cumberland Farms $0.99 coffee, and loves spending time with her cat, Chunie.

Julia Perkins is a junior from Hamilton, Massachusetts who is obsessed with Harry Potter. Her role models are J.K. Rowling, Ginny Weasley, and Luna Lovegood. She loves being the managing editor for The Quinnipiac Chronicle and doesn’t know what she would do without her Chronicle buddies.

Kristen Riello is a sophomore from Hamden, Connecticut majoring in Interactive Digital Design and minoring in Studio Art. In her spare time she enjoys painting and drawing, as well as using all other mediums of art.

Kira Smelser is a senior English major, Public Relations minor and Creative Writing concentration. She hopes to graduate and infiltrate the publishing industry or at least infiltrate New York City. When she is not writing or reading, she is usually trying to make new smoothie recipes that almost always fail.

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Acknowledgments As with any creative endeavor, this issue of Montage would not exist without constant collaboration and inspiration from those much more talented than I. Thank you to Ken Cormier and Lila Carney, whose guidance and support not only encourages the editors of this publication, but the work of every student they advise.

To our half-human/half-goddess designer, Clare Michalak, I need to say “thank you” so many times that the words stop sounding like words at all because “thank you” isn’t enough. Your endless enthusiasm and creativity could sustain an army of artists better than a lifetime supply of black coffee and ramen.

Thank you to the entire English department for providing a home filled with pizza, cookies and incredible mentors for those of us who love writing and reading more than financial stability. After four years together, I consider you all to be my family – family in which everyone is the lovable, quirky aunt who won’t stop talking about Shakespeare at Grandpa Joe’s barbeque.

I’d like to thank my parents, Kim and Todd Celestin, for getting me far enough in life that I now have opportunities to publish words of love and appreciation. Any success of mine is yours. Most money of mine is also yours.

Thank you to TYCO printing for keeping the dream of hardcopy literature alive and well.

Lastly, I would like to thank my fellow editors and best friends, Kira Smelser and Rachel Corso. There’s no one I’d rather spend three-hour editorial meetings with than you two. Your literary expertise and love for the art community were the lifeblood of this organization. I could fill a book full of gratitude for your friendship and brilliance, but for now you can read this journal and know that it’s all thanks to you.

Cheers,

Tanner Celestin

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