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Dear Reader, In working to redesign the SLAM brand, we’ve had to put some serious thought into actually defining what we wanted SLAM to mean to you, our readers. Above all else, we valued simplicity and consistency. We wanted our readers to be able to spot our magazine on campus, and see something that was unique, yet familiar. Although this watercolor theme represents the fluidity and freedoms expressed by the very talented artists who contribute their work to lay within these pages, you’ll notice that there are familiar aspects of this issue that we plan to continue through future issues — from the simple fonts, to the graphic symbols, to the pattern pages. With that in mind, we hope you’ll come to recognize that SLAM isn’t about a wildly different theme each time. It’s about you, the readers. And of course, it’s about showcasing the beautiful talent of our students. Special thanks to all of the artists who submitted their work for this issue, and to my brilliantly creative team of staff members who were patient enough to put up with my scatter-brained and slightly OCD self. This magazine has been such an important part of me during my time here at Virginia Tech, and I have all the faith in the world that my successor, the talented Hilary Andreas, is more than ready to continue the legacy we’ve been working to craft. I hope you enjoy this magazine just as much as we enjoyed making it. Sincerely,
Sarah B. Fitzgerald Editor-in-Chief
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slam . copyright 2013 silhouette, a division of EMCVT
slam
silhouette literary & art magazine volume 36, issue 1, fall 2013
344 Squires Student Center Blacksburg, Virginia 24061 silhouette@collegemedia.com www.silhouette.collegemedia.com
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table of contents Free
Sidney Gardner .................................................................. 6 Andrew Kulak ......................................... 7
Youthful Impressions
Cowboys Roll Their Own Smokes
Winston Becker........................................ 10
Displaced In Space Owls
Tom Minogue ..................... 8
Emily Blair .................................................................... 13
Human Figures/Displaced 1
Ivan De Monbrison ................... 14
Human Figures/Displaced 3
Ivan De Monbrison ................... 15
The Painter From Unawatuna
Shelby Ward ............................ 16
Alaina Brown .......................................... 18
Not Like a Fairytale Fog
Yelena Djakovic ................................................................ 19
The Blue Sphere
Sidney Gardner ............................................. 20
How To Make a Romantic Revenge Flick Abstract Cityscape
Alex J. Froelich ......................................... 26
Notes From the Road
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A. Gheesling ........... 23
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Andrew Kulak ...................................... 27
legend poetry prose art photography
Dilapidated Truck, Pocahontas, VA
Cynthia Bertelsen ............. 28
Indecision
Daniel Monzel....................................................... 29
Ravenous
Alaina Brown .......................................................... 30
Hustle
James Harrison Wade ................................................... 32
Cell Culture Tulips Flow
Maria Cristina V. Locher .................................... 35
Ian Khalil ..................................................................... 36 Yelena Djakovic .............................................................. 37
Deterioration
Winston Becker ................................................ 38
The Rain Retreat
Shelby Ward ................................................ 39
Velo de la Novia
Maria Cristina V. Locher .............................. 40
A Vegetarian’s Confession
Emily Blair ..................................... 41
Molly with the Freckled Chest On the Outside
Ian Khalil ............................... 42
Sidney Gardner .............................................. 45
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Free
Sidney Garder
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Youthful Impressions
Excerpt from a larger work-in-progress tentatively entitled “Movement and Breath”
Andrew Kulak
We spent nights in my parents’ backyard, before our drinking and smoking became a thing that was done. We would hide underneath the eves of the cookie-cutter house and light cigarettes off of each other’s. We would drink rum straight and lukewarm, no ice, from the plastic cups for small hands that used to be mine – colored in primary hues. We would drink until someone started to throw up or until the bottle stood empty. Then we sat, unbalanced and slurring, and talked about God or some other such thing. “You used to be so dark, man,” my friend said recently of these nights since lost to us. “I didn’t know how to handle that then.” Chris is a writer now, a poet at a liberal arts school in Virginia. It isn’t well-known. He writes poems, and even the beautiful ones come from a dark place inside him, he says. I guess we learn different ways to deal with it.
Now when we drink, we drink microbrews in opaque bottles from places we haven’t been and some I have. We don’t talk anymore, or not about God. We talk about sports and our card games and who’s fucking whom. He still smokes Marlboro Lights, only now we can’t call them that. I go outside and sit with him while he smokes, and we wave at the dog-walkers and drunks stumbling home from Tuesday’s, the old dive bar down the street. He hides his spent cigarettes under the porch, though he probably doesn’t need to now.
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Cowboys Roll Their Own Smokes Tom Minogue
The newspaper factory collapses and the rivers of America run black with ink. I toe diligences of uncertainty, like carving an eggshell with a chainsaw, suck in brick red dust, the color of my mother’s knuckles except dust doesn’t turn white when it cuts down timber. She was a giant-killer but I owe my life to the union workers who stained their hands to save us from sin one woodchip at a time. Rupert Murdoch’s name didn’t mean shit against mine– I bled Randolph Hearst for every vein he was worth and still had pulp to spare. When the president taxed tobacco I used The New York Post as a tourniquet and rolling paper, evergreen needles with some nutmeg and gunpowder, the torched headlines will tattoo your mind for days.
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I wait in the belly of the Enola Gay to fall on a wooden city, to welcome the insistence there’s something new to say when we have nothing to say cradled in my open, radiating arms.
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Displaced In Space Winston Becker
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Asking where someone comes from is standard small talk, and yet it is never as simple as we make it seem. Home is southern Appalachia to me, and while I do not hunt, it is part of the fabric of my hometown, with men and women rising before dawn to hunt deer and turkey for meat. Home can be a place, a person, or an idea, and I hope that Owls was able to speak to the pieces of home everyone carries withcolor them, EC that Page (Poetry) - full whether they realize it or not.
editor’s choice
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Owls
Emily Blair
They kept asking where home was, as if my long vowels weren’t address enough. Living as we do, I had to say— Home is where the mattress rests on a wood floor that is cold to our bare feet when he rises to hunt, and only the owls look on as I kiss him good luck.
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Human Figures/Displaced 1 Ivan De Monbrison
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Human Figures/Displaced 3 Ivan De Monbrison
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The Painter From Unawatuna Shelby Ward
Tempest and I get lost trying to find the hotel, after a day on the beach. My shoulders are pink and Arrack punk still on my lips. They hadn’t charged us for the chairs, just the drinks (not since the Tsunami, they said). Down a path that leads to boulders and an accented English voice, “you got a bit lost.” He says he is a painter, he had done the wall at the temple, “the monk there, he knows me.” “Looking doesn’t cost,” he replies when we say we can’t afford a painting, just students. With our embarrassed, sand-coated bare feet, he shows us an unknown, green goddess he is working on. I can’t decide which is more impressive, the unreal colors, or the geometry of circled patterns that surrounded her like a natural, expanding crown.
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They were the aerobatic foundation for the lotus flowers and petal jungle, already taking seed, flourishing around, growing contained and lush. He shows us his wife, sitting outside and carving something too small to see. Her hair is dark and long, her skin, deep and rich, an exotic woman. Then the painter’s blue eyes strike me, sky piercing, the same color as his one stone earring. I placed the adjective on the wrong person. “I moved here when I was 15 from Germany.” While walking, he hands us leaves from his garden for us to try, “curry” he says. “Nature is my religion, Buddhism is my philosophy.” He says they brought the boulders in to extend the shoreline. “This place is going to be big, I don’t want it to.” Tempest grabs my hand and we try to say goodbye, but he keeps going on. A person with too many stories to tell, and not enough people to hear them. “There used to be peacocks here before the rocks.” We tell him they’ll come back. He answers but we do not hear, already down the road, we leave with dust unsettled behind us. There used to be peacocks.
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Not Like a Fairytale Alaina Brown
Everywhere we go we drop little crumbs of bread by our spot at the river in front of the Hanover Street town homes at the coffee shop we never went into behind the bank with the long lines next to our favorite bookstore by our parents’ graves under the stoplight at our least favorite intersection in the backyard of our childhood homes we drop our tears with our crumbs because we know they’re not for finding ways back but rather to say we were here, goodbye
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Fog
Yelena Djakovic
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The Blue Sphere Sidney Gardner
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“If it is honest, it is good.” I tend to try and follow this basic principle of Hemmingway’s; write one sentence that is honest, that is vulnerable, and hopefully the creative EC letter instinct will take over from there.
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How To Make a Romantic Revenge Flick Alexander Gheesling
First of all, don’t accept the limitations of one genre. Start the movie with something edgy and unpredictable, like showing some of the end scenes and rewinding them in slow motion. Cue shot of man with a bloodied face walking with a flamethrower; rewind the scene so that the flames get sucked back into the metal. Confuse your audience by radically shifting tone. Tell the story from the beginning: a girl and boy meet at a bar. Have the boy be somewhat shy and awkward, and the girl vivacious and outgoing. Have them bond over shots of whiskey quickly followed by gulps of beer. Your audience should have forgotten the violence of the opening; they are now watching a love story. Cue first date. Man has on sweater and freshly starched shirt, suggests going somewhere nice. Woman is wearing tight jeans and low-cut shirt, suggests taking her to the cheapest, nastiest place he knows. Man is perplexed but amused, quickly recommends the perfect place a couple of states over. Write your female character so that she’s the type of person to go on a road
trip on a moment’s notice, with a guy she just met the night before at a bar. Cue road trip. On road trip include classic bonding moments, like man standing up for woman’s honor after unwanted sexual advances. Have them lay at night in each other’s arms, her hand slowly making circles on his large forearms. “This is nice, this is really nice,” he says, “I think you might be my girlfriend someday.” Have her reply: “You wouldn’t want me to be your girlfriend, I’ll hurt you.” Disguise this blatant element of foreshadowing with tender smiles and cute laughs. Act two, shift tone accordingly. We see the two have happy-couple scenes that race by: a day at the beach here, a drive through a field there. Pepper in some music that radiates good vibes. Pair these tunes with lots of big smiles, and laughs that cause their bodies to shake and so obviously show that they are in love. Or at least he is. “I love you,” he says as he lingers by the door, about to leave her for the weekend. Have her scoff, like she can’t fathom how those words just came out of his mouth. Have her emanate
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loud and clear “I’m going to cheat on you because I’m insecure and can’t handle the vulnerability of the fact that I’m so sad that you’re leaving for only a few days” vibes. At this point it’s not even a surprise to your audience when he comes trudging back early, pausing at the door to hear muffled moans and to fi x a suitably stoic glare upon his face. Have him open the door softly rather than violently, and have him stand there in the doorway, watching, as she has seizure-like sex in an elaborate position. Cue scurrying, shouting, and shoving. Have him storm out, brokenhearted but still badass, and have him climb aggressively onto his Mad Max style motorcycle. A violent flinging of the helmet into the street is optional, but recommended for added emphasis. Have him drive away fast, so fast that we don’t see the Ford 51 truck come roaring out of the right side of the picture until the last second. Have it blindside your hero and lift him off the ground, before crushing him beneath the steel pipes of his bike. Act three. Our male protagonist for the rest of the film will sport a nicely bloodied and battered left side of his face. Your more intelligent audience members might know this as “symbolism.” Now, have your jilted male lover pile all of his former sunshine’s stuff into one box—call it “Milly’s shit,” or something suitable for those stray pieces of jewelry you often discover later, winking at you from beneath the bed. Remember that flamethrower you so craftily
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wove into the opening act? It’s time to bring that bad boy back. Cue man and his best bud practicing shooting flames at cacti in the arid Californian desert. You’ll want to give the appearance of scorched earth: red rocks and yellow sand give way to orange dust as the flames give it all proper lighting. Remember the opening scene that was played in reverse? It’s time to play it forward. Flames now spit out of this steam punk style, garage-built flamethrower as our protagonist walks with a heavy step down a suburban wasteland. Cinematography here is key; you’ll want to cover your camera lenses with some sort of hazy orange film, so the audience can get a visual sense of the apocalyptic world that only broken lovers can walk through. Have him walk up to said ex’s house and throw the box into the front yard, scattering the assorted “shit” (mostly clothes) across the grass. Have him pause. Quickly shift the camera to the viewpoint of Milly, peeking out apprehensively from behind the blinds on her window. Cue fire—lots and lots of fire. You’ll want the fire to seem almost majestic, a beautiful expression of rage and sorrow in all its petulant fury. At this point in the movie, you’ll almost have accomplished your goal of completely throwing your audience for a loop. The sweet song of newfound love sung in the first act should now seem like a badly remembered dream. But now you’ll want to take it a step further, to destroy all last vestiges of hope
and innocence the audience may be clinging to. To achieve this, you might include any or all of the following acts: rape (accompanied by guttural screams), suicide (particularly graphic suicide, maybe the girl shooting herself in the head so that her brains spray out like confetti from a piñata), consensual bloody sex (“I’ve been thinking of some sick shit all morning; you know that!” he might scream. “Just do it, I don’t care, I don’t care, I just wanted to see you!” she might reply), and possibly a brutal clubbing thrown in for good measure. Remember that uplifting, good-vibes music you were throwing around so frivolously about 45 minutes ago? Now you’ll want to drudge up the most disturbing, instrumental, synthesized track you’ve ever listened to, and pair it with one of the aforementioned scenes – something you might imagine the Zodiac killer got down to when he took strolls in the park. At some point someone might ask you where the inspiration came from, if there’s a face behind the movie. Resist the urge to tell the sad story to the countless attentive ears you’ve always wanted. Resist the temptation to indulge in selfpity. Instead, indulge in the many female fans that hover around your various movie panels. After you two are finished, and they inevitably ask, just stare silently at the ceiling like the miserable creature that you are, and cue fade to darkness.
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Abstract Cityscape Alex J. Froelich
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Notes From the Road Andrew Kulak
I saw those towns and highways and places where no one ever was but only ever are: where the outside looking in creates our “past.” Blood-red lines tracing intersections in an old atlas of the times that created who or what “starstrewn sky” meant: An inky canvas where forever touches I-40 near Death Valley. Shimmering Vegas pales before the yet-to-come. If you could see those places that were there or that youthful madness created in and for and all around me – you might discern or in a fleeting moment know. If you could smell the scrubsage and feel alone. To live a life for just a second. In the times between, to make a world. But not enough blood in my veins to paint a picture like the night is all I could ever offer.
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Dilapidated Truck, Pocahontas, VA Cynthia Bertelsen
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Indecision Daniel Monzel
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Ravenous Alaina Brown
Father is a thin man but he came home hungry from work one day. With his hairy brown hands he took the rotisserie chicken from the table center and tore through the legs the breasts the thighs Roasted skin hanging from his yellow teeth grease dribbling o his chin chicken bones snapping between his molars snack snack snack as they break. We watched as he seized the baked potatoes, popped them like peanuts into his mouth, swallowing them whole. He ate the butter stick in two big bites a white chunk of cream dropping onto his annel shirt. The milk he swigged right from the jug head tilted back white droplets drip drip dropping sliding backwards into his salt and pepper hair– gone in two godly swallows.
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The salad he took by the handful balsamic dressing oiling his palms and wrists his eyes darting to each of us as the green leaves disappeared down his throat. I watched passively as he ate my brother my stepsister then my stepmom they went bite by bite feet first, face last– they did not protest. At last, jaws bared, he seized my arm sinking his teeth into my wrist. A vein burst forth spraying his chest, neck, and cheek in a raspberry fountain. A tendon snapped and hung from my arm muscle and fat spilling over my skin and I cried out sure this was the end but he only spat out the white meat of my flesh. Sputtering, face near the floor, he wretched. “Disgusting!” he declared.
Hustle
James Harrison Wade
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Cell Culture
editor’s choice
Maria Cristina Villafranca Locher
Depending on what one wants to see when looking through a microscope, it can be a moment as extraordinary as contemplating an unexplored landcape, or one that you have only dreamed of visiting. As Robert Hook wrote, “For the limits, to which our thoughts are confined, are small in respect of the vast extent of Nature itself; some parts of it are too large to be comprehended, and some too little to be perceived.”
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Tulips
Ian Khalil
We built this house on a fault line; When we found the land, You reached your forefinger into the ground, And lifted it to your lips, saying, “For a strong foundation this won’t do; Look, there’s desert for miles.” I lied and said it looked sort of pretty, Said we could always take the water from the cacti. What did I expect? Tulips? From the moment you tasted it, Our fate was written in this sand. And when the ground opened up, It split our bed in two. I woke and told you to jump to my ledge; You slept right through it.
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Flow
Yelena Djakovic
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Deterioration Winston Becker
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The Rain Retreat Shelby Ward
Tonight, the sky opens up for us. And with open elephant hearts, we spread out our arms and dance without fear. We move through rain with the religious devotion of children. American nymphs released by the waters of a Sri Lankan rainfall. At right past twilight, I hike up my black cotton skirt so my legs will be as free to move as lizards do out from under rocks. Removed, all inhibitions. I show them how, when I was a child, I would look up at the sky, and spin, and spin, and when I fell I watched as the world kept turning without me. A child’s dizzying theory on how the world was round. My hair is wet and black, like the palm trees that now spin above me, set off by a deep sapphire sky. Chains hung down from rooftops, and we pull them apart to watch rain construct to shadows of chain metal. A single lighting bug flickers, and I don’t know the code, but I think I’ll just call him Morse anyway. Besides the ones at home are slightly green, just shrunken Gatsbys.
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Velo de la Novia
Maria Cristina Villafranca Locher
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A Vegetarian’s Confession Emily Blair
I would kill for a cheeseburger. I want to smoke for the first time so I can stand alone for twenty minutes and nobody can call me crazy. I want a drink, neat Jack, meant for sipping but I have never practiced moderation. I have been a vegetarian for seven months and sober since Saturday. I crave vices, sins of the body to keep my soul clean; my spirit roams freely while I bite my fingernails. I would kill for chicken tenders, black dark chocolate, a cold shower, a whole lemon, anything to make me cringe. I am a bad thriver, a good survivor, a body unaccustomed to comfort and stability— And I would kill for a pulled pork sandwich.
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Molly with the Freckled Chest Ian Khalil
Molly with the freckled chest, I could barely see you from here. A light moved quickly through this wood, And I caught a glimpse of your figure: Still, as if frozen in stone, yet Eyes rushing as a storm, as a river. Listen Molly, I went over to the place To find it empty as ice and it burned My fingers, probing the dark, For I know you cannot speak so I will Not listen I will feel for your figure And trace the length of history with Your bones once I find them; For they hold within them this movement. And you are all my mind wants to stay close to, I could fall into you: into waves and hair And little dots upon your chest. Little dots Molly, where did you go? Have you lifted the fabric? Have you slipped beneath? Have you seen me searching, Up all night in libraries, writing this On scraps of paper strewn about, For you.
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What captivated me about this picture was that in the middle of all this chaos, the little girl was so still. In the middle of everything and everyone around her, she managed to find solitude.
editor’s choice
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On the Outside Sidney Gardner
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index Becker, Winston .......... 10, 38 Bertelsen, Cynthia ............ 28 Blair, Emily ................. 13, 41 Brown, Alaina ............. 18, 30 De Monbrison, Ivan ......14, 15 Djakovic, Yelena ...........19, 37 Froelich, Alex J. ............... 26 Gardner, Sidney........ 6, 20, 45 Gheesling, Alexander ........ 23 Khalil, Ian .................. 36, 42 Kulak, Andrew............... 7, 27 Locher, Maria C. V. ...... 35, 40 Wade, James H. .............. 32 Ward, Shelby .............. 16, 39
Printing: Conquest Graphics Nashville, Tennessee Typefaces: Adobe Garamond Pro Trade Gothic LT Std
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staff Sarah Fitzgerald editor-in-chief
Meghan McDonald
Libby Howe
business manager
promotions director
Curtis Stanford
Christine Aker
poetry editor
photography editor
Gabriella Jacobsen
Katlyn Griffin
art editor
prose editor
Meg Selby
Hilary Andreas
assistant photo editor
assistant prose editor
Susan Nguyen
Darien Foster
assistant poetry editor
webmaster
Midori Oglesby
Erin Johnson
graphic design
special events
Janai Rau
Kayla Franco
graphic design
graphic design
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cheers to:
first place greeks vs. geeks SLAM’s ultimate battle of the bands spring 2013
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silhouette literary & art magazine volume 36, issue 1, fall 2013