Chapbook by SEAWANHAKA PRESS

The Only Moment We Were Alone A Chapbook by Ian Smith

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I mean to rule the earth, As he the sky â&#x20AC;&#x201D; We really know our worth, The sun and I! - The Mikado

Table of Contents I. Songs for Our Fathers (Monologues) 1. Conversations With Dead People 2. How He Made His Millions

1 3

II. The Moon is Down (Dreams)

1. In the Room Where You Sleep 2. Lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a Stage

III. A Series of Sneaks (Short Stories) 1. Strangers On a Train 2. Walking Around Town (Original Ver.) 3. Have You Passed Through This Night?

7 10

13 16 20

IV. Welcome, Ghosts (Poems) 1. Beside You in Time 2. The Identity Box 3. Only in Dreams 4. A Letter to Nobody in Particular (Or Me)

24 27 28 29

V. A North Brooklyn Story

VI. Do You Trust Your Friends? (Critical Letters)

VII. Time Stops (Journal Entries)

VIII. Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever (Artistic Statement)

Songs for Our Fathers (Monologues)

Conversations With Dead People Winston Churchill: In the name of the Queen! What are you do

ing in my office?!

Myself: I’ve defied the concrete laws of physics and travelled through time. Somehow, I’ve landed in your office. Can you not tell I don’t belong here by my ostentatious ap parel and all-too-tight trousers? Winston Churchill: Logic, conjunctively with your timbre of voice and fashionable haircut, force me to believe you. What do you want? Myself: I want to know how you saved Britain during the War. Winston Churchill: By telling them there was no other choice but

victory. By making sure they understood that the spread of fascism througout Europe was as irreversible as the setting of the sun if we did nothing. By forcing them to see that not simply armies or governments were at stake, but the British way of life. Myself: But you even got the working class to rally behind you, and they hated you. Like, a lot. Bread riot levels

of of hate.You were kind of a

Songs for Our Fathers (Monologues)

douche. Winston Churchill: What is this douche you speak of? Myself: Um… a bloody git. They thought you were a bloody git. Winston Churchill: I may have been too drunk to notice. Never theless, the point wasn’t that they had to like me. I didn’t really care that they liked me. The point was that they needed to see who they enemy was before the bombs started to fall. Any later and all would have been lost. Myself: Okay, but how? Not so much the methodology, but the method itself? How did you get people to not just care, but to give a shit? Winston Churchill: I spoke to them on terms they could under stand, and I used the modern invention of the radio. I also have a wonderful speaking voice. Have you heard it? Myself: Yes. Just now. You were talking to me. One more thing: drink of choice? Winston Churchill: Gin. Myself: Good man.

Songs for Our Fathers (Monologues)

How He Made His Millions

Pop was a butcher, and from what he tells me, he was very

good at his job.

Of course, Pop wasn’t always a butcher; later in life he would

own a fifty percent stake in a carpentry company he would open with a friend. This company, Porta Door, Inc., in Seymour, Connecticut, made my grandfather very wealthy. Not luxuriously wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but enough to own a large house for his wife and three children, enough to provide for those three far after he rightfully should have had to. Enough so that he would never own anything but a Cadillac for as long as he lived.

As a kid, spending summers at my grandfather’s home (he

had a pool, you see), I remember getting into his enormous 1968 Caddie, “The Boat,” we called it, and accompanying him on his daily errands. Pop had retired when I was six or seven, so these errands almost always involved a trip to the Happy House for cigarettes and to the liquor store for 1.75 liter bottles of Popov vodka. As we flew down the Post Road, the convertible top down, wind whipping through my hair, the baked leather seats scorching my bottom, he would invariably tell me about almost every house on the route, for he had known all of their occupants at one time or another.

Pop was a very popular man in his day.

I don’t see my grandfather much anymore; having to be an

Songs for Our Fathers (Monologues)

industrious (and frugal) collegiate has left those languid summer days filled with menial labor instead of the scent of chlorine and vodka cocktails. But, on at least one day out of those four months, I make my now-ritualized trip to see him.

If I wasn’t aware of the passage of time, I would swear that

Pop hasn’t aged a day: his skin, permanently bronzed from a decade of Florida winters and Connecticut summers, rutted with wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, his head a leather bowling bowl, save for the wispy tufts of brown grey-hair that rise just above his ears. His hands are knobby and calloused, roughened by years of manual labor, and he still wears the same striped-red polo and khaki shorts, stained with paint and turpentine. A cloud of smoke rises stratus-like above him and he is enclosed by a circle of ash, as if the epicenter of a long-since erupted volcano.

We’ll chit-chat about school, the family, my health, his health,

the New York Yankees (whom he loves) and the New York Mets

Songs for Our Fathers (Monologues)

(whom he hates). Inevitably, though, because of our common love of the cooking (and more so, judging by our waste lines, the eating) of food. Pop is one hundred percent Depression-era Italian, the oldest son of immigrant parents. From what he tells me, supper was the day’s main feast.

“We didn’t have much,” he always tells me, in between drags

from his Lark, “not like we have now. My father had an alright job, delivering meat for the local butcher on Hoyt Street. Because of his job, we were lucky to have some kind of beef or pork most nights. Nothing fancy, but anything can be made good with enough gravy and garlic. When I finished high school, that’s where I went to work.”

Indeed, if there is singular bond Pop and I share, it is cooking.

My own drawers are filled with recipes that I’ve had to coax out of him throughout the years, most notably, for his gravy. It’s not the thin, watery of stuff of Manhattan Italian restaurants, nor is it the overly-chunky, bitter sauce one finds in a jar at the store, the use of which is tantamount to sacrilege at home. His blend is unique only to him, a deep, vibrant red, smooth and savory, with enough viscosity to coat a bowl of pasta but thin enough to eat without chewing.

As much as circumstances have stayed the same, though, as

I grow older, I begin to understand that the years have not been kind to this man that I hold in highest regard. He lost his wife, my grandmother, over twenty years ago, when I was only a year old, and I don’t think he ever fully recovered. My uncle has told me on that first Christmas without her, he was a wreck.

Songs for Our Fathers (Monologues)

“He didn’t even want to put up the tree. He just cried. ‘It’s not

the same without her,’ he said. You’re lucky that you don’t remember.”

When I watch him now, sucking back cocktails and smok-

ing like a chimney, I feel like I am watching him erode. I took for granted that he was built like an ox; that didn’t stop the gurgling cough that spews forth from his lungs. I took for granted that he was still on his feet, with not the slightest hint of senility in his still-bright eyes. That hasn’t stopped his liver from turning to a stone after years of drinking

He’s watching all of his friends keel over one by one, and

I’m watching his clock tick down. I’ve never even conceived of a world where he’s not there. A time without his comforting presence, his wealth of experience, is a time I don’t think I’m ready for. And my time is running out.

The Moon is Down (Dreams)

In the Room Where You Sleep

I’m running down the

stairs of my Connecticut home like a lab-rat on a never-ending treadmill. I’m sweating and breathing heavily, going full-tilt towards the bottom, but with every fleeting gain, another step appears in front of me. I am scared. I am running for dear life. I am running to my bedroom, a place of warmth and comfort and safety. I am running away from the man at the top of the stairs. He is after me.

The man is tall, at least six feet, and rail thin. Framed in the

doorway, the light of the kitchen behind him, he is wearing a crisp grey three-piece suit and tie. His hair is silver, immaculately combed, curving back to the nape of his neck in a wicked curve. I can’t see his face, only his eyes, piercing the gloom with an otherworldly fire. He stands taut and rigid like a board, never moving

The Moon is Down (Dreams)

never speaking, not even so much as a breath. He just watches as I try and make a futile escape.

The man begins to rock, back and forth, on the balls of his feet.

His movement is unnatural, as if he was attached to the swinging arm of a metronome. I can hear the bottoms of his shoes click against the hardwood floor as he arcs back and forth and back and forth. He’s gaining momentum, the taps quickening in succession. I push for the bottom even faster now, and, for a moment, I feel like I might just outpace the stairway. I can see the floor. I can smell the oil from the furnace room. I can see the boxes in storage. I am almost there.

Such is my anticipation, I am taken off-guard when the man,

at the apex of his motion, hurtles down the staircase like a human bullet. He slams into my back, and we crash to the floor with a sickening thud. I am face down on the carpet with the man on top of me. He still makes no movement, no sound, but his tremendous weight is crushing me. He is so heavy, and I can feel his silent breathing on the back of my neck. I try to claw myself out from under him, but my arms are pinned at my sides. I am trapped underneath this behemoth.

It’s getting more difficult to breathe. I feel my ribcage crack as

I am pushed onto the floor. My head is swimming. The man is like a statue of bronze, resolute, and even heavier than that. The pressure keeps building as I feel m body being crushed. Soon, I am no longer being pushed against the floor, but through it. Slowly I sink through what I know to be real and into… somewhere else. Some other place constructed of jagged edges. I try to get back, but I

The Moon is Down (Dreams)

can’t muster the force to push back through. I can only look out into my room. I see people. Not the man, but familiar faces. They are walking over to where I am.

“Help! I’m alive!” I shout, but nobody hears. I am passed by

unnoticed, with the realization that I will be left alone for eternity.

The Moon is Down (Dreams)

Life’s a Stage

Look at him, blubbering away at the foot of her bed, his tears

streaking that shining, bulbous face of his. Look at the way he jiggles as he sobs through apology after apology.

“Yes, mother. No, mother. Yes, mother. I’m sorry, mother.”

She would keep the boy like this for hours, standing at the foot

of her bed, head down, eyes at the floor, never daring to look at her directly, lest he be subjected to more of her signature brand of torment.

“Yes, mother. No, mother. I’m sorry, mother,” he squeals. And there she is, her grey, beady eyes lancing through him like hot needles. Look at this disgusting boy of mine, she thinks, folding her hands neatly in her lap, this fat, disgusting child dripping with sweat and tears and snot.

And she knows

that after she finally lets him go, when she

The Moon is Down (Dreams)

believes he is finally sorry enough, the boy’s pudgy legs will carry him, as swiftly as is possible, to the kitchen to gorge, or, if he has any pocket money left, to the shop where he will eat himself sick with sweets.

And

she knows that when he comes home from school the next day, and asks for more money so that he may go to the theatre (alone, for she knows that such a disgusting boy could not possibly have any friends), she will lecture him on the merits of saving one’s meager allowance.

“Yes, mother. No, mother. I’m sorry, mother.”

That boy is me, but I am not that boy. Not any longer. Not ever

again.

Now I am in Hollywood. I have won awards. I have money. I

am successful. I can do as I please. I am warm and powerful.

But still they stare, those hideous, wonderful pixies. They still

stare at the fat man sauntering down the hallways. Doris sneers

The Moon is Down (Dreams)

across the set, her pearlescent teeth glimmering underneath that awful, upturned lip. Grace smiles, but looks away, embarrassed to be seen in my proximity, that my stink my rub off on her. She hides behind her namesake. Tippi spurns me time and time again. She wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t address me by name. We only communicate through intermediaries. I made her.

I love them. They hate me. I control them. I make them be-

come their characters. I torture them. I get what I want. They hate me more.

In wardrobe, there sit rows of gray suits and piles of blonde

wigs. Platinum blonde, with neat curls, not a single stray hair, just the way I like it. I am in control.

I watch the seamstress repairs the dayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s costumes. She is tired,

worn and ruddy with age, back twisted from years of sitting hunched at the Singer. Her fingertips do not remember what it is like to stroke a lock of hair, to feel the coolness of the grass, to taste the hot summer air. All they know, have known, is the numbness of a thousand needles.

What happened to that robust woman, once so full of life? Her

skin, so soft, melts before me, becoming cragged and wrinkled. Her hair, so vibrant, becomes a gray, tangled nest. Her eyelids droop. Yet, she sews on with mild indifference.

The many faces of the everyman stare back at me. We make

our own troubles, they say. We plague ourselves and each other. We are toxic. There are no happy endings.

A Series of Sneaks (Short Stories)

Strangers On a Train

“I hate him,” thought Thomas. “I don’t know why, but I hate

him.”

Opposite from Thomas, leaning against the cold, tin can door

of a downtown-bound subway car, was a man in a white shirt and tie, aimlessly thumbing through an already creased and tattered copy of The Wall Street Journal. He was a bit shorter than Thomas who, at five foot eleven, would only be considered of average height by anyone who would chance to ask the question.

From the lines

on the unknown man’s face, Thomas could see that his concentration was a

A Series of Sneaks (Short Stories)

feint, his eyes straining over the words on the page, the corners of his mouth drooping as he lapsed in and out of jilted sleep.

“I hate him,” Thomas repeated to himself, not really knowing

the cause or rationale, just that there was a burning sensation at the nape of his neck, a clenching of jaw muscles and a grinding of teeth.

When the man first entered, Thomas grimaced. When the man

then moved into the doorway opposite him, he brought his gaze to the transgressor’s eyes as if to say, “This is a thing that you don’t want to be doing. As the minutes ticked by, the subway car jerkily starting and slowing, the urge to strike this man, this man that Thomas knew next to nothing about, grew.

First it was the clothes, too big for the man’s diminutive frame,

giving the illusion of a clown without makeup and entirely unhappy. Then it was the man’s classes, thick and black with bottle cap lenses. Then it was his constitution, his slump, a lack of posture that, for Thomas, was maddening.

The man was miserable and Thomas was enraged by his mis-

ery.

It was near four o’clock when Thomas boarded the strain, tak-

ing up his standard, nonchalant lean against an empty door. His day, which mostly consisted of sitting at a desk writing advertising slogans, had been neither good nor bad. It had just been, and it was perhaps this particular feeling of nothingness, this penetrating absence of will, that brought Thomas’ current emotional state to bear.

After twenty minutes of watching this man lackadaisically go

A Series of Sneaks (Short Stories)

about his business, Thomas decided he would take action.

“The next stop, I will sock him one real good,” he plotted. “I’ll

give him a good one, right in the jaw. That’ll show him what for.” The train began to slow again, and Thomas steeled himself, raising his head and closing his fist, steadying his breathing in preparation for the act.

The brakes screeched on the rails. Thomas exhaled sharply

and angled his leg to step forward. Just one or two quick steps would bring him within reach of his target.

The train stopped. The unknown man, seeing the platform,

rose from his fog, gathered his coat and briefcase and made a hasty exit. Thomas was left alone, fuming, impotent and still without feeling.

A Series of Sneaks (Short Stories)

Walking Around Town (Original Ver.)

Bushwick is kind of like the positively lit ratâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nest of Brook-

lyn. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not quite as dangerous as Bedford-Stuyvesant (although just as dirty); there are far fewer drug dealers and gang-bangers than deep Flatbush; it is not the desolate wasteland that is Canarsie.

Okay, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s kind of a lie. Bushwick still has all of those things,

sometimes in quantity, sometimes not, depending on the day. The neighborhood is made up, primarily, of poor Hispanic families, many of them illegal, working overtime hours for under minimum wage so they can afford their rattrap apartments and put

A Series of Sneaks (Short Stories)

food on their tables. It is not a neighborhood that would naturally engender itself to middle-class white kids from the suburbs. Yet here I am, and there they are and somehow we’ve carved out this need little enclave of self-hating, scum-sucking hipster excess.

It’s really strange to live in a place where everyone, at the very

least, is mildly annoyed by your presence. At the most, they will act on their hatred via mugging. Either way, it can make peaceful coexistence somewhat difficult, which is kind of funny, considering that nobody really knows how it got to be that way in the first place. The native Bush-people resent us gentrifiers, despite the fact that we bring money into their stores and buy their drugs and try pretty hard not to make a nuisance of ourselves (unless you’re in a band, in which case no amount of money will un-fuck you). Maybe they feel it’s our fault that their shit-eating Hasid landlords (ours too, mind you), keep jacking up rents. Or maybe they just miss the cultural homogeneity; an even split of Puerto Ricans, Dominicans and Hondurans, but at least everybody spoke the same language.

No matter the case, they don’t like us and we don’t like them

because they don’t like us. Reactionism is a bitch. However, somehow, we have reached a mutual understanding that works enough to keep violence from erupting in the streets: just leave well enough alone.

Case in point. I am walking to the store on the corner of Har-

man and Wyckoff to buy cigarettes. There are many other corner stores, bodegas and similar shops in the neighborhood, many of them much closer, but this particular shop sells cigarettes for

A Series of Sneaks (Short Stories)

seven dollars a pack. This is well below even the lowest state sales price, where sin taxes have pushed the cost of a pack of Camel Lights to about $10.00. I assume that the owner of this corner store, an older Dominican or Puerto Rican man with a surly attitude, has cartons trafficked in from Long Island. The Poospatuck Indian Reservation is located in Mastic; because it is not land owned by the US government, cigarettes are sold tax-free.

I do not ask these questions because I fear that, like the person

in front of me, a white youth I (and I assume the owner) has never seen before, I will be charged the full price for a pack of smokes.

I do not want this to happen. I say nothing and let this person

pay full price. I’m not the one that’s going to blow up their hustle.

Walking back home I run into Shady, my neighbor. Shady’s

real name is Bobby, but everyone calls him Shady. Shady lives on

A Series of Sneaks (Short Stories)

the third floor of my building. He’s lived in this neighborhood all his life. Everyone knows him, which I suppose is good, since it probably makes it much easier to sell weed to people you know. During the day, he works at a glass cutting and shipping warehouse in Williamsburg. Today is Saturday, though, so he is not working. Instead, he is taking his oldest son, Justin, to Maria Hernandez Park to play some ball.

Shady is, more than anything, an island of mutual understand-

ing in a sea of racial antagonisms. Shady is half Puerto Rican, which would normally be entirely unsurprising in Bushwick. But Shady is also half white, Irish, to be exact, so he occupies this cultural strange demilitarized zone that allows racial beef to simply melt away. There is no doubt that he identifies more with his “thug” side; he wears the clothes, he has the tattoos, he talks the talk and he’s served the time. He has ingratiated himself with that community despite the color of his skin, and because of that, if you’re with Shady, everything is always a good time, no matter who you are

Regardless of appearances, Shady is both a family man and a

good friend. He looks out for everyone. He looks out for me. He is what makes it okay for me to go to the corner store and buy cheap trafficked cigarettes.

A Series of Sneaks (Short Stories)

Have You Passed Through This Night?

Ivan stood at the center of the bridge; the endless city

sprawled out before him, its lights effulgent through the curtains of rain. Below, the river mirrored their hapless dance, ebbing and flowing with the rhythm of the storm. He was frigid, soaked to the bone, the weather pelting him in sheets. His matted hair caused the excess to run in rivulets down his face, streaming like veins to the tips of his ears and nose before becoming lost to the wash of the pavement. Ivan gripped the frozen railing and peered over the edge. In the shadow of the bridge, the waters seemed to forget the manic gesticulations of their surrounding brethren, instead maintaining an illusion of stillness in the glittering black. Ivan stared resolutely into the dark, deaf to the cars slicing their way across the flooded asphalt and the shrill voice of the whipping wind.

He tried to go back to the time when he first saw her, but the

memory was fragmentary, had become fuzzy with age. It was at the party of a friend-of-a-friend, the same kind of gathering that he had aimlessly found himself in hundreds of times before. The taste of cheep beer filled his mouth and the room was turgid with smoke, that much Ivan remembered, but then again, all of these soirees were always the same. With no agenda to speak of, he busied himself with idle chitchat, going here and there and nowhere in particular, save for the balcony every so often for an equally idle cigarette. It was during one of these sojourns that Ivan saw

A Series of Sneaks (Short Stories)

her and, as he would later discover, she saw him. He never spoke to her that night; Ivan was too much of a coward to even contemplate the thought, but through those same faceless friends-offriends he learned her name, and when and where he could see her again.

“You don’t love me. You just want to keep me.” Her words,

echoing behind the faded remembrances, churned within him, made him sick, brought him to his knees in the downpour. Ivan opened his eyes and gazed at the face staring back at him. For an instant he thought he saw her in that reflection, her kind eyes and thin, sloping smile. As quickly as it came, though, it was gone, and he was left staring only at himself, haggard and worn and dripping, the slight flaring of his nostrils and the pinching of his cheeks in the cold the only evidence that he was more than a corpse. A passing motorist honked his horn but did not stop, and Ivan rose to his fee, gripped the railing once again and stared into the dark underneath.

He remembered their first night together. The thick summer

air had hung heavy and oppressing and he had stripped the sheets off the bed, searching with futility for some measure of comfort. He remembered, even in that choking sauna, how the heat of her naked flesh had seemed to scorch his own when he held her. He remembered the gentle curve of her spine, arcing gracefully towards her thin neck. Her auburn hair was matted with sweat, yet she wore it with an air of beguiling carelessness.

“How lucky I am to have found you,” Ivan had whispered to

her that night. He was afraid to even say that, for the heat, heavy

A Series of Sneaks (Short Stories)

though it was, had created a measured stillness that he was reluctant to break.

“I never want to hear that word again,” she quickly shot at

him. “There is no luck about this.”

Ivan remembered so many things, so many details of their life

together. He remembered black and white movies with Bogart and Mitchum. He remembered singing to her, both of them laughing when the downstairs neighbors rapped at their ceiling with a broom handle. He remembered lazy Sunday afternoons spent naked in bed struggling to complete the New York Times crossword puzzle. He remembered mint chocolate chip ice cream. He remembered her shudders of delight when he kissed the nape of her neck. Ivan remembered so much, but nothing about his life before her. Indeed, life, so far as Ivan knew, seemed to begin with her.

The rain had let up without Ivan even knowing, transformed

into a fine mist. The lights from the oncoming cars refracted amongst the individual droplets, creating dazzling patterns of red and gold, but he took no notice, too transfixed on the river below.

Ivan had shouted at her that night. He had never done that be-

fore. He did not think he could do it at all. “You’re the only thing I love!” he had bellowed. “And this is how I do it. I just want you to be safe.”

But she would hear none of it, shoving him out of the way

as she moved toward the door. He grabbed her wrists as she passed, once so delicate now taut and wiry in his struggling grasp. Ivan pleaded with her to stay. He pulled her towards him as she yanked away. She escaped from his grip, but the release forced her

A Series of Sneaks (Short Stories)

back. She lost her balance and fell, striking her head on the corner of an oak table. Ivan rushed to her side and cradled her limp form as the blood pooled around his knees.

The rain had stopped, but Ivan felt water falling from his face.

The river lay still now, glasslike, the storm having run its course. From high above, Ivan could see the shadow of his own head, an undefined bead on the waterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s surface, surrounded by light. The bead began to grow. Ivan felt the wind in his hair, water shearing from it in strands. He felt weightless, so high above the Earth. Serenity overtook him, an inner peace reserved only for unsullied newborns and children of God. The impact snapped Ivanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s spinal cord instantly and emptied his lungs of air. The surface of the river shattered as he sank beneath it, an explosion of black and gold.

Welcome, Ghosts (Poems)

Beside You in Time Time steals your nerve – time is theft. That is the tragedy of living. But not your nerve; your impulse will not be eroded. You can start all over again, fresh as roses. Preserved in aspic, you would be a sap living in the safety of the future. But remember time has lost faith in you; there are no consequences. Just follow the instructions. One step at a time. GET OUT RIGHT NOW. Concentrate, concentrate, concentrate. KEEP IT IN MIND! JESUS, C’MON! What happened? You don’t know anything. Nobody fucking believes you and you don’t know anything at all. But I have to believe my actions have meaning. The world is still here; it doesn’t make any difference if I know about it. It won’t just go away – the feel of the world. Without the feel of time. I have to see through the bullshit… and not believe the lies.

a R

Time is an bst actio You only have one moment. -> 1,000,000 times over: this moment. This is all that will ever matter. Never-ending grief; never-ending anger.

This moment.

Welcome, Ghosts (Poems)

You’re a dead man – a vegetable. No kids No girlfriend No job A fraction of the man you were, You fucking coward. Still living in the past; your little collection. YOU KNOW I’M RIGHT. There are things you know for sure. You know who you are – you know kind of about yourself. Certainties that are taken for granted. But the present is trivia now. It feels like the first time. But maybe it’s been a week Maybe longer Anonymous Specific pockets for specific things learning the system as you go. The best way to find out what someone knows is to let them talk Finding out facts, not memories. Both are unreliable. Conditioning – learninglearninglearning throughthroughthrough repetitionrepetitionrepetition Instinct over memory. it’s how we learn certain things. Every inch of desk covered in: 1) Post-it notes 2) Legal pads 3) Psychological text books 4) Framed pictures 5) Neatly printed lists. Pieces put together and spelled out But why read something you won’t remember? It’s outside of this moment, Mr. Ten Minute Man.

Welcome, Ghosts (Poems)

They taught you in grade school, get it somewhere permanent. Now you can’t even piss without a reminder. Direction & discipline. YOUR SCHEDULE. CHECK FOR LIT ONES FIRST, STUPID. You never listen. LISTS ARE THE ONLY WAY OUT. and if you keep trying, you’ll find the next item. Vital information. Writing on yourself Body language A permanent way of keeping a note Oh, that’s right – take a look at your pictures - you’ll want to take a note - another freaky tattoo Creating a puzzle you can’t solve a romantic quest that never ends. I won’t forget what you’ve told me you’ll become my John G__ you’re not just another one not just another puzzle paradox Everybody else needs mirrors to remind themselves who they are. We’re no different. One of us lies to keep oneself happy. One of us writes to himself so I don’t forget. But we lose both. Everything just fades. But we’ll find him, and we’ll kill him. No confusing cowardice with forgiveness. We’ll remember neither. We won’t even remember to forget, so we can move forward. We look to ourselves for the answer. Each exactly the same.

Welcome, Ghosts (Poems)

The Identity Box Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve never claimed, or tried to be, anything more than what I am (a questionable statement). But somehow, others have defined me by what I do (less questionable). And it is ever so tiring. My anger is mistaken for passion. Sadness interpreted as sympathy. I am expected to be vibrant and full of life, smiling and confident. I am expected to be all knowing and all seeing, in possession of every answer. But I am none of these things, and I have few satisfying answers. So I will cover my ears, cover my eyes, cover my mouth. And do what has been asked of me. To do what is expected or to do what I want? But what do I want? Who am I? Why donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t I know who I am? This query, unanswered, is most terrifying. I run when it suits me. Running, running, always running. With no destination. Because there is nowhere to go. I was born a hot, white diamond. Now, grayed with malaise in a world washed out by silence, blindness, tasteless violence. My veins run hot with vitriol; agitated by my immediate surroundings, disgusted by the world at large. Wishing to change everything for the better, to bring order to chaos, but unable to do so. Like an island lost in a vast sea. Adrift. The only security a simple edict: It all falls down to nothing. It All Comes

Tumbling Down.

Welcome, Ghosts (Poems)

Only in Dreams I hold a note clutched, in my hand, a message from my father Hand it to the bluebottle, “Let him be free no longer.” Made to stand, so resolute, a statue by her bed, Reciting her name, my mother’s shame, I only wished her dead. To command the stage, I would decry, is to listen to my word But those platinum blondes in cool grey suits, they could not be

deterred

“Watch the fat man roll on by,” they would snidely jeer But as they do, so I will too, strip away their veneer. For most, their lives were decent enough, unfair but also true But with every reel and every cut I gave another point of view The films and actors that I made helped create my myth That every choice we’ve ever made comes from the terrors we all

live with

Welcome, Ghosts (Poems)

A Letter to No One in Particular (Or Me) Dear Me/Myself/I, I hope that you’ve finally learned to forgive yourself for every

thing

(Everything might be nothing, or something, but I hope you learn

to forgive yourself regardless)

I hope you you’ve finally realized that love is something not just

reserved for the beautiful

(Or that you are, in fact, beautiful) I hope that you’ve finally found something worth devoting your

self to

(Or, at a minimum, something that doesn’t make you miserable)

I hope that you still like Sleater-Kinney

(Or that they’ve gotten back together and you got to see them) I hope that you’ve finally quelled your demons

(Of which there are many)

I hope that you’ve embraced your life as your own

(Or dedicated it to someone worth your effort)

I hope you remember yourself as a time of day

(Not night or dusk, but noon, bright and shining) Love always, Me/Myself/I

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(This work of non-fiction has been submitted for presentation at the National Collegiate Undergraduate Research (NCUR) conference.) I - Getting In

Moving to New York City had always been a hazy pipe dream of mine. I was raised in the suburbs, one of those quaint, white picket fence towns filled with â&#x20AC;&#x153;new money,â&#x20AC;? well-to-do families with multiple SUVs, and a lot of penny-pinching old folk who would rather slash the education budget than pay a cent more in taxes. It was the American dream come true if you were uppermiddle class, wealthy and white.

As can be imagined, it was terribly boring.

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I was tired of where I grew up even before I was aware of or

capable of articulating why it tired me so. Faced with the prospect of a real college education, I made every effort to escape the Connecticut doldrums—UCLA, UC Berkeley, the University of Chicago, Boston University and, the Mecca, New York University. Not just these universities, but the cities in which they were housed, epitomized culture and diversity, played home to all different peoples and ideologies, embodied the step and the walk of urban life. They weren’t just opportunity; they were a different way of being.

Of course, with all my lofty aspirations, it was money that

confined me to the University of Connecticut, a far cry from the crowded streets and dense populace I craved. I spent two years there, settling for an existence defined by how many cows we could count on Horsebarn Hill and how many shots we could do at Friday’s bender (or was it Saturday’s… or Sunday’s… or Monday’s; nobody knew).

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This was what being

stuck felt like, and every time I would go to visit my friend’s Flatbush Gardens apartment, I was more acutely aware of my own immovability.

Then I met a girl, and I

thought she was amazing. She was at Sarah Lawrence student on the cusp of graduation, and having lived in Bronxville for four years, had every intention of moving to “the city” when she got her degree.

“Come with me,” she said.

“I don’t know,” I held back, apprehensive, unsure of what I

was getting myself into, or, indeed, if I could get myself into it at all. This was big, maybe too big, and if I was going to take these reins, I couldn’t leave anything to chance.

“We’ll find an apartment somewhere. You’ll find a job, finish

school. I’ve already got freelance work coming in. We’ll get a place and there will be art and music and good food and real life. This is what you said you wanted.”

She was half-right; vintage bohemia was part of the package.

I thought about it. It all seemed vaguely reminiscent of a plan.

She asked me again a day later.

I said yes.

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That plan never worked out. That girl ended up being bat-

shit crazy. I did not live with her. There was not going to be any apartment or art or music or life, at least, not with her. Despite this setback, the “plan” relegated to the wayside, I left. A door had opened, and I would have been a fool not to step through. II - White Bread “This place is a shithole,” I said to Ben as we carried all of my worldly possessions into my new home, a dingy basement apartment on South 3rd St. in Williamsburg.

“Everyone’s first apartment should be a shithole,” he said, dropping a section of my bed frame to the floor and lighting a cigarette. That evening Ben would lead me to his favorite bar—favorite by virtue of the fact that we could walk in without being carded. Later, I would brown bag my first Budweiser super-tallboy on the J train coming back from Delancey St.

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Freedom tasted distinctly of hops.

Of course, I spent my weekly hours commuting to and from

school, going to class, studying, and working part time at the university, but these were just the motions. It was during the weekends, when I was free to roam about, that I truly felt alive.

I remember the first time I walked down to the waterfront,

squeezing through a hole in the chain-link fence somewhere along Kent Ave. I had been slinking around with some friends once before, though not legally trespassing, and some cops showed up and warned us that indigents sometimes hid beneath the old buildings and docks, waiting to rob people.

That never happened, and I soon discovered the joy of sit-

ting on the rotting pier at sunrise, watching the sun come up over Manhattan. I would (illegally) meander across all the waterfront construction sites, examining the graffiti left by those before. After a long night of urban exploration, I would usually head to Oslo for a morning cup of coffee before heading to bed.

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That never happened, and I soon discovered the joy of sit-

It wasn’t until I had been living in the borough for a few

months that I started to realize where, exactly, I lived. Before I moved into Brooklyn, I knew very little about where I was going to be living, save for the fact that it was a “hip” neighborhood, populated by a number of people who wore ridiculous clothing, partied all night and did too much cocaine.

In Williamsburg, this actually proved to be mostly true.

I remember one Sunday when I was walking along Bedford

Ave. I remember it was a Sunday because all the sidewalk dealers were out, peddling clothes, used books and old records. The people who owned these booths were predominantly older blacks or Latinos, while the people purchasing their wares were trendy, young and white.

At the time, I recognized the disparity, the gap between rich

and poor, black and white, haves and have-nots, but was not cognizant of its meaning. Even with my recent plunge into the pool of “diversity,” I was still a naïve kid from a predominantly Anglo suburb. I never bothered to ask why I didn’t see families of other ethnicities on my block, why the only time I heard Spanish music was in the corner store at the end of the street, or why every building from here to the L train seemed to be populated by seemingly wealthy students with cash to burn.

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III - Culture Shock

I moved to Bushwick in January 2008; our lease was up at

our old place and another friend of ours needed to solve his own housing situation, so we decided to uproot. We found an economically priced three-bedroom apartment on Irving Ave., two blocks from the L and M trains. We considered ourselves lucky; with both my roommates and I attending universitiesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;they in Manhattan and I in Brooklynâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;we could not have asked for a better location.

Bushwick, however, was no Williamsburg. Gone was the

privileged bloc of young students, the skinny-jeaned fashionista hipsters and the numerous independent record shops. The cultural edifices of that neighborhood had been usurped, replaced with low-income, working-class Hispanic families, jerseywearing boriquas, corner-slinging crack dealers and a host of family-owned business and restaurants. Bushwick, it seemed, was diametrically opposed to where I had been living a week prior.

In my first month

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I saw two drug dealers nabbed on the corners by undercover

officers. I heard many a screaming match from the apartment building adjacent to ours, and what sounded like the smashing of drinking glasses or dishware. The apartment across the street was most definitely a crack-house; someone was standing guard all day, every day.

I stopped wearing my headphones when I walked on the

street and always made sure to listen for the sound of footsteps on the pavement bounding toward my person. I was in a permanent mode of suspicion, constantly alert and cautious. The frequent sightings of squad cars rolling down my block, the supposed servants of law and order, provided little comfort.

I think the residents of this neighborhood could feel that as

well, could see the apprehension written across my face in big, bold letters. More than once I caught glares from people who had

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who had been living there far longer than I, from the man who owned the deli across the street to the auto-mechanics on the corner and the guys who spent their time restoring old-school Schwinn bicycles.

I was the outsider. I was the enemy.

IV â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Acclimation

As time passed, Bushwick started to feel less like the place I

lived and more like home. I got to know the owners of the deli across the street, a kindly old couple whose son, daughter and granddaughter also worked there part-time, helping with the daily business. I made friends with my neighbors above me and in the next building over (but not with the person who I still think is an

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abusive spouse). I started to remember bits of Spanish I picked

up in high school, stock phrases like “hola” and “gracias” and “¿Como estas?” and I used them often. I shopped at the neighborhood shops. I ate at the neighborhood restaurants. I got to know their world, which was fast becoming my world.

Then Bushwick started gaining a reputation as Brooklyn’s next

“up-and-coming” neighborhood, perfectly ripe for development and investment. It was going to be the new Williamsburg, said the hipsters and the bloggers and the real-estate developers. We were definitely not the first group of students to move into the neighborhood looking for cheap rent, but at the time of our arrival, we were few and far between. As such, we tended to gravitate to the few other white people in the neighborhood and established a small collective. We’d drink and cook and play music together.

But the others we met like us, students cast further down the L

line, people like Steph and Mike and Cos, encased themselves in a bubble. They lived in white people fortresses, those tall,

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block-long studio apartment buildings with grated windows and electronic keypad entrances. Some of the buildings had names; Steph and Mike lived in one called “The Tea Shoppe,” a doublemisnomer as it neither sold tea nor was a shop. They took the L train into Manhattan so they could shop at Whole Foods, rather than going to the numerous neighborhood grocers only a block or two away. They went to Ikea for their furniture and house wares, avoiding the lower-priced but probably just as good Shopper’s World. They bought shoes at the 14th St. Footlocker. There were at least two Footlockers in Bushwick within three blocks.

I never asked them about it, but I didn’t think I had to. Like

me, they were apprehensive. Unlike me, they never let their guard down. I was that way, too, and I got over it. Why couldn’t they?

As I watched the continuing influx of former Williamsburg-

dwellers filter their way deeper and deeper into Bushwick, I wondered if they would all be like this. I wondered if they even knew what they were perpetuating.

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V â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Shady

I was walking to the store on the corner of Harman and Wyck-

off to buy cigarettes. There are many other corner stores, bodegas and similar shops in the neighborhood, many of them much closer, but this particular shop sells cigarettes for six dollars a pacl, well below even the lowest state sales price, where sin taxes have pushed the cost of a pack of Camel Lights to about $8.50. I assume that the owner of this corner store, an older Dominican or Puerto Rican man with a surly attitude, has cartons trafficked in from Long Island. The Poospatuck Indian Reservation is located in Mastic; because it is not land owned by the US government, cigarettes there are sold tax free.

I make a point of not asking questions about the storeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s suppli-

er because I fear that, like the person in front of me, a white youth I (and I assume the owner) have never seen before, I will be

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charged the full price for a pack of smokes.

I do not want this to happen. I say nothing and let this person

pay full price. I’m not the one that’s going to blow up their hustle.

Walking back home, I run into Shady, my neighbor. Shady’s real

name is Bobby, but everyone calls him Shady. Shady lives on the third floor of my building. He’s lived in this neighborhood all his life. Everyone knows him, which I suppose is good, since it probably makes it much easier to sell weed to people you know. During the day, he works at a glass-cutting and shipping warehouse in Williamsburg.

Today is Saturday, though, so he is not working. Instead, he is

taking his oldest son Justin to Maria Hernandez Park to play some ball. Despite appearances, Shady is both a family man and a good friend. He looks out for everyone. He looks out for me. He is what makes it okay for me to go to the corner store and buy cheap trafficked cigarettes.

Later on tonight, af-

ter his kids have been put to bed, Shady comes over with a six-pack of Coors Light to hang out. He does this in some capacity almost five out of seven nights per week.

“Hey dudes,” he says,

grinning, in a voice that

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mocks the accent-less Connecticut vernacular of my roommates

and me. Shady is white, too, but he’s lived here for a long time. He likes to tell us stories about the old neighborhood.

“Yo, son, I grew up on ‘dis block. Back in the day, I lived on

the other corner near Himrod. I moved into here with my moms. That building’s a crack house now; you know what I’m saying? One of my boys used to live in ‘dis apartment, before it was all redone and shit. It looks way better now, I’ll tell you that.”

Shady loves hip hop, evidenced by his penchant for free-

styling over whatever beat happens to be playing in our residence. Ben has a love of hip hop, too, an aspect of his personality that a lot of people consider strange considering what he looks like and where he’s from (that being, a short, pudgy. white kid with a cleftlip and a goofy haircut from a Connecticut suburb). Despite their obvious difference in upbringing and education, Shady and Ben are able to connect over this one cultural edifice.

After nearly two hours of lightning-fast rhymes, cracks and

beats, Shady leaves, apparently satisfied and definitely buzzed.

Ben and I both agree that Shady is a great guy, that we’d

have his back in any situation. What Ben has trouble tolerating is Shady’s constant attempt at “re-educating” him about aspects of hip hop culture.

“I swear to God, if he makes a fucking speech about Biggie one

more time, I’m gonna…” at which point he pounds his fist into his palm.

Message received, loud and clear.

“I mean, I do actually know things about rap and hip hop. I

know how good Biggie and Tupac were. But that’s the thing, man;

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know things about rap and hip hop. I know how good Biggie and Tupac were. But that’s the thing, man; I’ve moved on to other stuff. That’s the problem. Shady never graduated high school, never went to college. He can’t expand his knowledge base like we can, doesn’t know how to discover anything new. It sucks.”

It does.

VI – Bad Sentiments

It was one of those balmy summer nights in mid-July, and there

was no place we would have rather been than an industrial airconditioned space. This is why Ben and I had just spend the last 5 hours at the Union Square AMC theater seeing a buy-one get-one double feature (by which I mean, we buy one ticket and then sneak into a second movie for free).

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We arrived back in Brooklyn around 2 a.m., trudging, half-heat

stroked, out of the subway station. The day had been hot, and the cool air of the L train had been a desperately sought, if temporary, respite. To our surprise, though, the air outside was cooler and we were more animated because of it.

Bushwick at two in the morning is very similar to Downtown

Brooklyn at two in the morning—deserted, all the people who would be around in the day time having already shut themselves in their homes. Generally speaking, if you see someone walking down a Bushwick sidewalk that late at night, its best to keep your head low and mind your business.

But we were jubilant, awakened by the fresh air and excited

by the fact that I had almost accidentally socked a celebrity in the face. Our fervor made us loud, and that, in turn, made us targets. We heard the quickened footsteps behind us, the rapid thumpthump-thumping of rubber soles on asphalt, and before we knew what was really happening, they were on us, four Hispanic teenagers, none older than 18, pinning us against the plywood barrier separating the street from a housing development site.

“Yo man, what’chu got in your pockets?” one of them whis-

pered in the dark as he thrust his fingertips into the front pockets of my jeans.

“Nothing for you,” I said, not realizing the gravity of my

predicament. I shoved him away. That earned me an open-handed strike to the side of the head.

A flash of pain, a wince, a rush of adrenaline followed in suc-

cession. The next minute was swirl of yells, fists and blood.

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“You wanna get cut, man?” the boy said, still reaching for a

wallet, an iPod, loose cash, whatever he could grab.

“I said fuck off,” I yelled, and pushed him off of me again. An-

other strike, this to the flesh of my neck, this one a closed fist.

“Why you tryin’ to hit my brother?” another yelled, an ironic

question considering they had hit me first. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see another one of them in front of Ben, rapidly lifting his shirt, but it was to dark to see whether he had a gun or blade tucked into his shorts.

Generally speaking, I am a non-confrontational person. I like

to solve conflicts as quickly and easily as possible. I do not like to fight.

There is a certain satisfaction, though, that comes from break-

ing the nose of a person who would do you harm otherwise. The fine mist of blood being ejected from the nasal cavity, in particular,

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As Ben and I reflected on the night’s events over glasses of

Jameson in the relative safety of our home, him lamenting over the cell phone that had been snatched out of his hand and me nursing a set of bruised knuckles, we pondered why that played out the way it did. A lack of vigilance, we concluded, was the root; we had not been observant, not been aware enough of our surroundings. We should have heard them coming.

The next day, with calmer heads and cooler nerves, we were

able to laugh about it. They probably didn’t have a weapon. They were probably more scared then we were—they were kids.

“They did have the right idea though,” Ben said over break-

fast, “robbing white people.”

VII – (Never) Getting Out

It’s the middle of November, and I’m sitting on the roof of my

apartment building. The air, once fragrant with the scent of damp, decaying leaves has transformed into a harsh wind, whipping around the buildings and biting at my exposed skin. I’m bundled in a scarf, two sweaters and a jacket, but am nonetheless chilled to the bone. The winds in North Brooklyn are always much stronger than those in other parts of the borough, except maybe Bay Ridge and Coney Island. Proximity to the East River means that the wind is coming off the water colder and stronger, capable of blasting sand and salt into your eyes.

Crawling to the sloped edge of my roof, I peer over, looking

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down three stories at the street below. Its mid-afternoon and the children at Public School 86 are streaming out of the building’s doors, the traffic cop waving them across the street and stopping any rogue vehicles that might try to jump the light. Most of those kids, wrapped in puffy winter coats, are heading home with their parents or siblings, to the warmth of their homes, aging radiators clicking with the “tick tick” of gas in the valves. The smell of burning heating oil is ashy, acrid. It stings the nostrils, induces a cough.

I know this because they know this, just as I know that the

neighborhood rooster is never wrong about sunrise and that the best coffee in this part of town is made two blocks away at a corner Spanish bakery. I know that the “danger” of Bushwick after midnight is largely untrue. I know that arroz con pollo is the most satisfying sub-$3.00 meal on the planet. I know that the cultural barriers, which seemed so imposing at the outset, were little more than self-created boundaries I could level as soon as I decided to do so.

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I know these things because I’ve heard and smelled and

talked and listened and learned about a place I never thought I find myself. And, indeed, among the blocks of squat brownstones and towering, guarded keeps, I have found myself. That nagging voice, constantly, nervously whispering worries about school, work, money, my future—I don’t hear him anymore. As I look around this neighborhood, perched high above it, I know that many of the people here are not nearly as fortunate as I. Nor do they have the privileged education and upbringing I took for granted.

These people are doing just fine, and I am happy to be doing

just fine among them too.

I spy Ben coming down the street, his signature “Shaq Was

Here” baseball cap covering the mass of hair on his head. “Hey!” I shout down, hoping to catch his attention before he walks through the front door.

He looks up, at first quizzical, but his gaze finds me and he

smirks, pointing his finger-gun at me and snapping his digits.

“Did you send out the rent today?” I ask, already knowing

what the response will be.

“No,” he sighs, “I’ll get it tomorrow.”

I look at him sternly as he shrugs his shoulders and turns his

hands upward.

Just another day.

Do You Trust Your Friends? (Critical Letters)

Hey Sam,

I’m writing this letter to you because, well, because I have

to (but that’s neither here nor there). The primary concern of this letter is your family interview monologue, appropriately titled Monologue #2: Family Interview. Let me start off by saying that, despite your own misgivings, I think this is written rather beautifully. I am going to make an educated guess that the “her” you’re speaking about is the Statue of Liberty, and that the monologue takes the point of view of one of your grandparents who immigrated to the United States through Ellis Island. If I’m right, that either means that I’m really smart or that you painted an accurate (but at the same time ambiguous) picture. If I’m wrong, that either means I’m an idiot or that the writing is still a little ambiguous, not providing enough clues as to where the monologue takes place or from who’s mind it comes from.

More than anything, I appreciate the bevy of emotions

that come through in the text; the sense of awe and wonder, the desire to be close, and bitterness at being spurned away because her love, the statue’s loves, is not meant for any one person. I appreciate the sense of longing, the stealing of a picture, just to have faded memory of that one glorious instant. I also enjoyed how you painted the statue as a deceiver, almost like a siren, drawing men with the illusions of grandeur, only for them to be false promises (it could be said that this is, in essence, the “American dream,” for some). We all want to believe that America is the land of opportunity, and that she is representative of that ideal. But, as her shiny exterior turns to green, or rots away entirely, we see what’s really

Do You Trust Your Friends (Critical Letters)

underneath, and we don’t like it.

What I would like to see more of, however, is specificity of

language and perhaps more descriptive detail. You write, “She is so welcoming and beautiful. She misleads everybody who meets her.” In this context, though, of a burning but betrayed love, those words seem almost understated because they are so common. The term “beautiful” is applied to a lot of things, but this seems like it should rise above the simple standard of beauty. I guess what I’m saying, as much as I loathe to, is get a little more poetic with it? Find similes that sound a little more forceful, urgent or grand (for instance, with regard to “beautiful:” alluring, ravishing, exquisite. The Statue of Liberty is, indeed, something exquisite, and perhaps deserves more than you give her. Besides, the greater her beauty, the more the pain is amplified upon the realization that it is all a ruse. Magnanimously Yours, Ian

Do You Trust Your Friends? (Critical Letters)

Dear Mustapha, Wow, my friend. Really. Wow. I’d be hard pressed to believe that anyone else in the class, save for maybe Prof. High, has the sheer wealthy of experience that you possess. You have been a soldier. You’ve come from a family of soldiers. Beyond that, you hail from a family that endured an astounding level of racism in America’s South, a time period that I can barely conceive of. Your stories, the ones you chose to share, at least, are endowed with such a deep sense of duty and pride; you are wise in accordance to, and most likely beyond, your years. I commend you for what you’ve shared in this piece. It is touching and powerful and altogether more real than anything I’ve read from any other student thus far. I love the way you tell Big John’s story. I enjoy the use of ellipses to connect the statements. It’s as if he’s taking painstaking effort in finding exactly the right words to tell his story. You say that he never told anyone but you, and that come across. His experiences are precious, only worth sharing with those who he deems worthy. I also like the sentiments he gives to you: outsmart the system, don’t fall into the same trap he did. What I think readers would like to know, however, is whether you took his advice or not? From knowing you, I feel like you did, but at the same time I’m almost certain your trust in these words was, at some point, tested. Yes, I realize this is an historical monologue based on Big John’s experiences, but think of this as a branching point for another piece, perhaps. I think the one thing I would like to see more of is sensory

Do You Trust Your Friends (Critical Letters)

details. For instance, you describe Big John’s hand as “swallow-

ing [yours] in a tight grip.” How did those hands feel? Were they rough and cracked, belonging to a man that worked hard every day of his life? Was his grip, though tight, somewhat frail from his old age? You describe Big John as a prideful man, proud of his heritage and unwilling to take crap from anybody. Had this physically manifested itself in any way? Does his voice boom with power or is the force of his character something subtler. I want to see you describe the sights and sounds and smells you remember as you talked to your grandfather. Don’t just tell his story, set the scene in which the story was told. Part of great storytelling, monologue or otherwise, is enveloping the reader/listener in the tale, in bringing that experience to life. Cliched as it sounds, it remains monumentally effective.

In all, though, great job. I mean that. I know, because of your

past, you have trouble sharing your own experiences. However, I encourage you to do so as much as possible. As much as we write for others, we also write for ourselves. Writing is therapeutic, in a sense. I can’t wait to see what else you have in store. Magnanimously Yours, Ian Smith

Do You Trust Your Friends? (Critical Letters)

Hey Steph, First off, I can’t believe you could stand to watch Scrubs past season four; it was all downhill from there. Secondly, you told me coming into this that you thought your dream sequence was a piece of crap. I’m going to be honest (and you’re going to find me entirely pretentious because of it, but, alas). It’s not your best work, at least, not up to the caliber I know you’re capable of. Nevertheless, there are some ideas in here that I think are worth exploring. You mention a lot of media objects in your piece: District 9 (which Peter Jackson didn’t direct, but only produced), The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Scrubs; the image of an angry Perry Cox is especially troubling. I’m no psychiatrist, but perhaps the constant references to television and film in your dream is representative of your distaste of their cultural infiltration? I mean, there is, and has always been, a place for entertainment media, but perhaps you feel like it’s all starting to be too much? I don’t really know; just pulling at straws here. What I did like very much, though, is how, in reading the description of your dream it felt, well, very dreamlike, very surreal. There’s no logical narrative to it. First we’re talking, or, rather, being yelled at by your brother (who looks conspicuously like a WETA creature) and then Elijah Wood is suddenly stepping out of his car. It doesn’t really make sense, but that’s alright, because dreams rarely do . Magnanimously Yours, Ian Smith

Do You Trust Your Friends (Critical Letters)

Dear Nik,

I don’t really know you very well and, because I will soon be

leaving this university, I will, unfortunately, probably never get the chance to. This is a shame, because the more I find out about you, the more I am completely enthralled by the person you are.

I’ll admit, I judged your book by your cover. I thought, falsely,

that the entire depth of your personality was that of “soccer player.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that; you were perfectly nice, well mannered, even jovial. But between seeing you perform your work in class, reading your Artistic Statement and our microconversations during Dennis’ film class breaks, I am nothing short of awestruck.

You posess a gift, my friend, that of complete sincerity. By that,

I mean you don’t obfuscate your depth of feeling. There are no hidden meanings in your words. There is no attempt to cover up or deny or hide. You accept and understand the person you are, and you are not afraid to present that with total honesty, both on the page and to an audience. It is a quality I greatly admire, as I often feel the exact opposite.

Inspiration is an amazing thing, Nik. It comes and goes like

a whisper on the wind, igniting a fierce mental spark that is so strong, but so fleeting. I am glad to see that your inspiration is so far-reaching, that you are able drive your creativity from so many different people and places, even one lousy trip on the subway. You are full of surprises, my friend, and I am anxious to see what else you have in store for us. Magnanimously Yours, Ian Smith

Do You Trust Your Friends? (Critical Letters)

HEY THERE EMMAKINS, The French have a special term for a certain kind of feeling: amour fou, or “crazy love.” Amour fou can be a lot of things; not just love, but passion, violence, blood and sweat and tears. You call it forbidden, and it may very well be so, in sense. It’s most certainly taboo but that doesn’t mean it should be. This is what I love about your writing, Emma; you’re not afraid to play with what is considered taboo. You, quite often, reach deep down and write about the darkest corners of your life. For me, it’s illuminating. It helps me better understand you as an individual and it helps everyone else relate to you in a way they couldn’t before. I think we’d be hard pressed to find anyone else in class that has such a wealth of experience as you do, positive or negative. I find it very difficult to critique the content or language of your poetry. It’s so raw and uninhibited, and I feel that presenting the language in any other way would muffle your voice as a writer. I think what I want to see more of, though, is you playing around with structure. Not necessarily the order of the words, that’s fine, but how they’re presented on the page. Poetry is as much visual as it is aural. Consider playing around with the formatting of your work; use different type-faces or justifications to separate disparate ideas. If the tone of the words is angry, make the text look angry. Make your words scream, not just in voice but in character as well. Magnanimously Yours, Ian

Do You Trust Your Friends (Critical Letters)

Hello Lisa,

One of the things we’ve touched upon in class, but haven’t

really delved into, I’m sad to say, is our collective preoccupation with death. What does it mean to die and, maybe more to the point, what does it mean to really live?

I don’t know how personal this poem is, but it seems to me

that these kinds of things are difficult to write about with some kind of experience. Anytime someone asks if an individual has contemplated suicide, the response is generally a resounding

“no.” But we’ve all had these thoughts before; we’ve been at our wit’s end, thinking that we can’t go on anymore. I think if you

asked the class to show their hands and be honest, you’d have a room of full pockets.

What captured me about your poem was the drastic juxta-

position between setting and action; a man throwing himself off a building in sunny Rio. It seems so unreal that it becomes very

real. We expect dark thoughts to be accompanied by dark settings, but you defy these expectations. Furthermore, you portray your subject as having made a mistake, and, quite pointedly, the last

one he will ever make. It seems that you yourself have relegated

suicide to the wastebin--it is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

I don’t know you very well, Lisa, but I can certainly say that I

am right there with you. I think that suicide is a cowardly and selfish act, and judging by the vacationer’s reactions, they don’t think all that much of it either.

Magnanimously Yours,

Ian Smith

Do You Trust Your Friends? (Critical Letters)

Hello Kathleen,

Isn’t it interesting how we find it so easy to write about dark-

ness and dread and despair? One would think that it would be the happy, joyful moments in our lives that would be easiest to wax poetic about. I’m finding more and more, though, that this simply isn’t true; we tend to dwell on faults and failures, on pain and suffering. Perhaps we find these easier to write about because it is difficult to speak of them. Or maybe it just makes for more compelling material: shock poetry.

I sense in this poem (“Dark Side”) a lot of unresolved conflict.

You’re unsure about your station in life, and you feel betrayed by some unknown force that has led you to this point. You want to break free, but feel entrapped by fate and so suffer for it.

I am not going to question your tone or emotive content. What

I am concerned about is the language you are using because, honestly, it feels somewhat trite and cliched. How many poets have used the motifs of windowless rooms, shattered glass and tangeled webs to express feelings of isolation and confusion? They are common tropes, and used in such a short poem such as this, they come off as overwrought.

I think you should try and develop your own motif; pick an

object or place that you are familiar with, describe it to us, and transform it to suit your needs. Ultimately, I can’t tell you what to write (and if I were you, I would probably tell me to screw off), but I do think there is real potential here, it just needs some work. Magnanimously Yours, Ian Smith

Do You Trust Your Friends (Critical Letters)

Hey Daisy,

I think you’ve become master of the art of repitition in our

class. I’ve read a couple of your poems now, and your use of repitition as a poetic tool as become unparalleled, so kudos to you.

What I really liked about “One More Time” was how you took

that great strength of yours and went somewhere a little different

with it. While most of the poem utilizes the rote “one more time,” you tend to switch it up towards the end, adopting the words to suit the rest of the text instead of trying to force-fit them. I don’t know if this was planned or if it was by necessity, but it works nonetheless.

“One more time” are words of remembrance; in this case, it is

the memory of the touch of a man, his touch, his taste, his features so burned into your conscience that you could not forget them if you tried. The small change to “one more,” however, transforms the memory into a wish for the future. No longer is the poem

about aging memory. It serves to bring the work into the present, and even imbues it with a sense of hope, if I dare to say.

What I’m trying to get at is that sometimes the smallest chang-

es in wording can be the most effective, and I urge you to explore this. You seem to be moving towards a minimalist style with

stunted verses and short, powerful lines. I would like to see you construct a poem that uses a minimum of words to provide the

maximum meaning. Chose words that are specific, but spectacular and leave no room for ambiguity. Your strength lies in your brevity. Use it!

Magnanimously Yours,

Ian Smith

Do You Trust Your Friends? (Critical Letters)

Hello Jessica,

Let me preface this by saying that I really, really hate cats.

Like, a lot. So I consider it a very special feat that your poem,

through language alone, has endeared me to Mojo so much. Also,

for the record, it is refreshing to see someone writing about happy things for once. Class has been very dreary for far too long, I’m afraid (not like I’ve been helping).

I didn’t have pets growing up, but I imagine that if I did, I

would feel about them the same way you feel about Mojo. You put up with all of his inadequacies and all of his misbehavior because, at the end of the day, he is your friend. No, friend is the wrong

word; companion is more adequate. Mojo is there for you through thick and thin, good and bad, without a waver or a doubt.

I really enjoyed the structure of your poem. It starts off rather

negatively, with all of the quibbles and less-than-nice observations about your less-than-perfect cat. The second half, though, makes apparent that none of that matters, that Mojo is your constant, a force that keeps you grounded.

I was especially effected by the final denouement, in which

you reveal that Mojo was a stray you took in as a girl. In that one line, everything you said previously is suddenly given greater

clarity. This bond is one forged since childhood, a friendship ever-

lasting, and that is what allows you to put up with all the bullshit. Your poem makes me wish that I could have experienced such an uncompromising friendship in my youth. What more can I ask for?

Magnanimously Yours,

Ian Smith

Do You Trust Your Friends (Critical Letters)

Hey Courtney,

So, this is it. My last letter of the class. How fitting that it

should be a response to the first piece I received, the poem you gave me during the first class’ postcard exercise. As an aside, apologies for being so tardy with it! I hope you won’t hold it against me.

You and I have talked throughout the semester during class

breaks and more intensely during our group presentation. In that time, I have come to appreciate your wordcraft and your poetic sensibilities. This first poem, like your others, is no exception.

Your use of sensory description is fantastic; “anaesthestic,”

“scent,” “mirage,” all of these words and their conneccted phrases paint vivid pictures in my mind. You have a talent for painting pictures with words, a skill integral to any fine poet.

What I would like to see more of in your work, though, is

focus. Your poem starts off with the line “music is my life,” but then we’re suddenly moving on to paintings and photographs and stage lights. The descriptions are apt, but I’m also being overloaded with sensations and setting. Poetry, like any other art form, requires discipline; a painter doesn’t need to use every color at his disposal. He paints in a limited palate so as to emphasize certain colors in the spectrum. So too should you limit yours; focus on one topic, whether a person, place, situation, etc. Try and transport us somewhere or construc as vivid and detailed an image as possible. You know, big things in small packages. Magnanimously Yours, Ian

Time Stops (Journal Entries)

September 14, 2009

Boy, do I hate journal entries. It seems that every semester, at

least one class requires a weekly journal response. I hate this vehemently. However, if I’m required to do it, I will at least try and do it well, so here goes.

The first poem I was immediately drawn to in Word Warriors

was Katz’s “Nothing Generation.” It talks about children of the 80s, Gen-Xers who suffered the “nothing” Reagan years and the transitionary advent of a digital society. This isn’t my time period, but I’ll be damned if Katz doesn’t sound like she’s talking about today.

My future, just as the 20-somethings of two decades ago,

seems abjectly hopeless. I’m working towards a journalism degree, a degree with no future. I write for a populace that won’t read. I’ve immersed myself in academia for five years, and feel more out of touch for it. I feel like I should be working towards something, but the Internet has left nothing to work towards. Everything is already so widely available.

Is this what future malaise feels like, “shooting dear with a

stupid computer rifle?” Because that rifle, with all of it’s pixels, might as well be the real thing, you know? I don’t have to go to war to fight. I don’t have to go to Colorado to climb mounts. Others can do it for me, and I can just watch, vicarious. How do we get out and make something of ourselves when everything has already been made?

I wasn’t built for this world.

Time Stops (Journal Entries)

September 28, 2009

Oh gosh, how I do adore Michelle Tea’s “The Beautiful;” it as

the most honest ode I’ve ever seen to our beautiful, terrible, magnificent and inarticulate motherland.

America is a conflicted nation. She reminds me of a fickle

teenager, always trying to get her way and throwing fits when

she doesn’t. She wants oil; she goes to war. She wanted fruit; she toppled some governments. She wanted a legacy; she split the atom.

How do we negotiate the great idiosyncracy that is America?

As young people, we are especially troubled. When it is our time to rule, we will inherit the problems created not only by our par-

ents, but their parents as well. We exist in a time when war seems ceaseless, when our planet has been crippled by their design and when the means of supporting ourselves have been stripped out from underneath us. The promise of higher education has been

dashed; we’re going to be college grads coming into a job market where our skills aren’t needed.

We’ve sacrificed science for dogma. We’ve curtailed freedoms

in the name of “American values.” I would like to exclude our

generation from the “we,” but really, how can you? One America or no America, right? Our parents have created their share of

problems, to be sure, but have we enacted our liberal will to solve them? Not really, and we are all guilty.

Or, perhaps that is simply the way things go, and if so, are we

supposed to accept that as the way things are? Can the status quo really ever be changed?

Time Stops (Journal Entries)

October 6, 2009: Dream Journal Tuesday, October 6: Little sleep tonight; too busy reading Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London. I think I drifted off a couple of times, because I distinctly remember hearing someone speaking in French. It was a woman’s voice. She sounded quite beautiful, although I can’t be sure because I don’t remember seeing anything. All I remember is her voice, speaking so softly and low, barely above a whisper. I don’t know what she said. I don’t speak French. It seems unusual to me that I would dream in a language I don’t understand. Wednesday, October 7: Terrifying stress nightmare. I’ve been having a lot of these lately. I’m in my newspaper dungeon, surrounded by stacks and stacks of newsprint. It’s claustrophobic. I’m sitting there, surrounded by newspapers, tapping feverishly away on a computer. At least, I think I am. Everything is moving so fast. Not like Benny Hill-esque tape speed increase. Think of it more like experimental montage filmmaking. Quick cuts to strange angles. Flashes rolling through my head faster than I can count. I’m sweating. I can’t keep up. So much left to do. I want to get up from my chair, but it’s like I’m chained to where I sit. I wake up very glum, breathing heavily, unable to focus my eyes. Thursday, October 8: Yesterday was a good day. Scratch that, a great day. I slept like a baby. No dreams tonight, at least, none I can recall. Friday, October 9: Anytime I’m running a high blood sugar when I’m sleeping, my dreams get really, really weird. Now would also

Time Stops (Journal Entries)

be a great time to mention that I always dream in the third person; I see myself and, more to the point, I see an idealized version of myself. Taller, thinner, better teeth, better skin. So I see this idealized version of myself walking down near Washington Square Park. I’m going into an NYU building. I’m walking into a classroom. I’m taking a class. No wait… I’m teaching a class? In retrospect, the whole idea of it seems completely absurd, but at the time (the dream time), I’m fairly certain I was comfortable. I see students file in. They’re all art hipsters! Silver spandex and wrinkles skinny jeans and garish hats are everywhere. I remember being angry and slightly mortified. I remember going to the men’s room. On the way there, I trip over a tree limb running through the hallway. That tree is really big, I think. That’s when I wake up. Saturday, October 10: Ah, blissful, uninterrupted slumbers. I blame the booze and the drugs. Stone cold sleep, for sure. Sunday, October 11: I’m on a beach after sundown. I don’t know what beach; I don’t even know why I’m on the beach, considering I hate the beach. But, alas, I am on a beach and the sun is falling beneath the horizon and the sky is lit with the most impossibly beautiful colors. There’s a small breeze that tousles my hair and spins the ash from the fire (which I just noticed). Someone comes up behind me. It’s a woman and her arms are around me. I can’t see her face. I think I know her, at least, in the dream I know her. I am comforted by her presence. One of her cool hands slips into my grasp, our fingers intertwining like so many vines. I feel her cheek press up against my own. Such a small gesture but filled with such warmth. For a second, I am warm and powerful.

Time Stops (Journal Entries)

Monday, October 12: Oh great, my least favorite recurring nightmare. It’s been years since this has come around. I wonder what brought it back. Anyway, I’m running down the stairs of the basement-bedroom in my Connecticut home. I keep running, but the stairs are extending in front of me, ensuring I will never get to the bottom. At the top of the stars, framed in the doorway to the dining room is a very, very tall man. He’s wearing a suit and die. His hair is gray and shoulder length. He’s all in shadow, except for his eyes. When I glance over my shoulder, I can always see his eyes. I am running from him but going nowhere. He begins to rock, back and forth, and the balls of his feet. It’s a very unnatural motion; his body remains completely rigid. It’s like he’s a metronome and he’s picking up speed. Rocking faster and faster, back and forth. I keep trying to run away because I know what’s coming. This man/creature at the apex of his terrifying motion hurtles himself down the stairs like a bullet, completely solid. He hurtles into me, pinning me to the floor (the stairs, of course, have stopped extending). As I struggle to get this awful, heavy man off of me, I can feel his weight crushing my ribcage. He doesn’t say anything. I can’t even hear breath. There’s just his dreadful weight upon me. Pushing me down on the floor. Into the floor. I’m being swallowed up. I’m disappearing. I’m gone. I can see out, but no one can see in. “Help! I’m alive!” I shout, but nobody hears.

Time Stops (Journal Entries)

November 16, 2009 “…Nonfiction works largely by means of logic and reasoning. Fiction tries to reproduce the emotional impact of experience. And this is a more difficult task, because unlike the images of film and drama, which directly strike the eye and the ear, words are transmitted first into the mind, where they must be translated into images.”

-Janet Burroway

Question: How do I shut off my logic and reason filter?

As a (hopefully) career journalist, the writing that I do is

fundamentally based in logic and reason; I tell stories, but I tell them in the most easily digestible way possible. What I write is, in the truest sense, just the facts. This has imbued my writing with directness and clarity, the need to find the perfect, most accurate word to describe a given situation, sensation, person or place. The consequence of this, however, is a lack of emotional resonance in my writing. Journalists don’t have the time (or page space) to instill depth of feeling; we’re too busy with our inverted pyramids and linguistic accuracy. I have come to judge my writing on its ability to communicate in a measured tone where connections are easily made through often-similar points. I look at my prose now, having been writing in the journalistic method for the better part of three years, and find it terse, cold and often unforgiving. In some of my writings, this tone is passable, perhaps even appropriate. I find, though, that when I try to communicate feelings of warmth and affection, they come off as flat and clichéd.

Time Stops (Journal Entries)

“…But it is just as true that only the human is tragic. We may describe a landscape as “tragic” because nature has been devastated by industry, but the tragedy lies in the cupidity of those who wrought the havoc, in the dreariness, poverty, or disease of those who must live there.”

- Janet Burroway

Insight: Everything that has ever been written or created in the course of human existence has been filtered through the eyes of its creator.

And that is really, really cool. It is comforting to know that

nothing is truly original, in the sense that they are new. They are original based on the interpretation of the writer, and that ensures that the possibilities are limitless. “Many poets and novelists have observed that the function of literature is to make the ordinary fresh and strange. F. Scott Fitzgerald, on the other hand, advised a young writer that reporting extreme things as if they were ordinary was the starting point of fiction.” - Janet Burroway Observation: Good writing can take a variety of forms. There is no formula, so do what feels right.

I think I want to be a modern day George Orwell. Or a better

Chuck Klosterman. I’ll take either, really.

Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die...

I will admit, I am somewhat leery about how this Artistic

Statement is going to come across, especially in the context of this course. For one, I am not, nor do I have any desire to be, a poet. In fact, I would say that, on the whole, I do not enjoy poetry very much at all. What I am is a writer (a journalist, to be specific), and a staunch believer in facts, objective truths and quality reportage. This has affected my writing in a very observable way; my pieces are very procedural, highly detail oriented, often grounded in the harshness of reality. I took this course, labeled as “Creative Writing” in the course directory, in order to return to my prosaic roots, to once again utilize language and diction to perfect my style and, maybe, exhibit some kind of authorly grace.

Unfortunately, my expectations have not been met, in part be-

cause I feel like I have been trapped in a poet’s corner. “The poetry reading offers a double connection,” write Eleveld and Smith in The Spoken Word Revolution, “one with the poet who stands up from the page and delivers, and another with the audience united by a common interest.” As I said before, though, I am not a poet. I prefer long-form narratives, with plotting and pacing and characters. I feel as though I have only been escaping by the skin of my teeth throughout this course.

Many of the assignments in this class have asked us not sim-

ply to write, but perform, “to stand up from the page,” sometimes in groups, and this has confused me greatly. I feel that worrying about how I am reading, as opposed to what I am writing, has somewhat diminished the work I have been doing. While I have been receiving weekly “critical letters” on my work, many of them

Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die...

are almost meritless: “Your story was good,” or “I liked it.” While I appreciate the kind words, it does not lessen the fact that there is no real criticism in there. There is nothing I can sink my teeth into to make myself a better writer, which was my goal in the first place.

The latter half of that quote, “the audience united by a com-

mon interest,” is also something I have difficulty relegating. While it is true that, in my news writing, I am effectively writing for other people, when I write fiction or short stories, I am mostly writing for myself. That is to say, I am writing about things that are important to me. If my listeners or readers are affected somehow, that is wonderful, but it is not my primary concern. What I write in this class I have generally written for me, when I can get away with it.

I can say with little exception that I have felt very little growth

as a writer thus far into the semester. The writing itself has been de-emphasized in favor of “sharing” and “collaborating.” I see writing as a very singular experience, however, a way to be creatively liberated when possible. The continued emphasis on performance art has only served to silence this. I came into this knowing, full well, that I was a writer, so why is my writing constantly being set aside in favor of pantomime and wooden acting? Why haven’t I been allowed complete creative freedom on my own terms? Why can’t I write the detective story that I’ve wanted since day one?

“In poetry, the payoff is mostly spiritual,” writes Terry Jacobus

in The Spoken Word Revolution, but that is only one point of view

Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die...

, one singular aspect, not just of poetry, but of writing as a whole, and it is not one that I necessarily subscribe to. Our classes our filled with expressionistic mantras and breathing exercises, but nowhere is there real criticism of the words on the page. This, right here, is probably my biggest gripe; I am not being offered advice on how to become a better writer, even when I am not content to stay as is.

If I am to write professionally, a career path that I seem to be

headed towards, then I want to be Orwellian about it: precise, descriptive and uncompromising about my observations. That is what I want to in this class, but I am only met with vagaries and often left directionless and frustrated. I want to learn and to grow and to make this class work for me, but I simply do not know how to do it.

Writing, narrative, style; these are all elements that are, in

some respects, in constant flux for a writer. However, I think that anybody who writes for a living aspires to implant in their words a certain sense of who they are as individuals. They try to develop a voice that comes through the page, no matter the context. They strive to create an identity through words. I believe that I have a voice, but it is muddled. I desire nothing more than to refine it, but instead I find it stifled.

Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die...

Artistic Statement II (Or, Reconciliation in Five Words)

I was wrong. About everything.