Silhouette
Silhouette literary & art magazine volume 37, issue 1, fall 2014
364 Squires Student Center Blacksburg, Virginia 24061 silhouette@collegemedia.com www.silhouette.collegemedia.com
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table of contents New Cities Katherine Fairbanks ..............................................................6 Moscow Kirsten Jersild...........................................................................8 God Box Alaina Brown .......................................................................... 11 Painting Over Already-Painted Walls Czander Tan .................................13 Antietam Emily Goodrich.......................................................................14 11:15 Vince Marcantonio .......................................................................16 The Flood Katherine Olson ....................................................................19 Flow Johnathan Kim .............................................................................20 Lazy Eye Johnathan Kim.......................................................................21 Potter’s Hands Edward Coe ..................................................................22 Mocking Sarah Qureshi ........................................................................23 Structure Study Robert H. Redfearn ......................................................24 Untitled Corey Crist ...............................................................................25 Graffiti Sarah Woynicz ..........................................................................26 Mount Mary Lee Carter.........................................................................27
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Sanctuary Katy Shepard .......................................................................28 Untitled Corey Crist ...............................................................................29 The Tour Corrie Purvis ..........................................................................30 The Beaker People Kathleen Martin ......................................................33 Humming Bird in Pencil Mary Lee Carter ...............................................34 Life is Made Up of Moments Czander Tan .............................................35 Birds on a Wire Mary Lee Carter ...........................................................37 Alien Victoria Childress .........................................................................38 S Courtney Scaggs ...............................................................................40 Philadelphia, I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down Alaina Brown ....41 A Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing Joel Graham................................................42 Knocking Cameron Vaile .......................................................................44
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New Cities Katherine Fairbanks Things are supposed to happen to risk takers. Important things. Especially in new cities. I knew when I left that I’d probably come back but it’s been a few months and maybe I won’t, or maybe I’ll come back as someone new that’s had adventures that the person who left never would have had or have thought to have. I’ve only been eating two meals a day, sometimes just one, and it’s draining me but I’m a few hundred dollars in the red in my bank account and I know that means stop eating. Sometimes I’ll steal a handful of Cheerios from my roommate while he’s at his girlfriend’s house. Or three or five. He doesn’t say anything, if he even notices. I keep waiting. Or, I keep leaving. driving off a few miles past the city limits or pacing a few steps out of the way wandering away wondering if something will be different. I’ll have some great epiphany or just have a really great conversation. Maybe I’ll get electrocuted and suddenly have some kind of superpower. Clairvoyance, maybe. Or maybe be kind to a stranger who soon reveals himself to be a a philanthropic millionaire. or maybe I’ll just fall in love with an old tree wrap my arms around its trunk and look up at the daubs of light streaming through the leaves.
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Or pass out after having just one beer at the bar, watch as everyone crowds around me concerned lines deepening, puckering their faces. Or maybe they’ll just lick the salt from the rims of their martini glasses and watch from their barstools as I struggle to stand but some invisible hand will pull me down by my gut and I’ll black out again. This morning was a struggle but I’m fine now. Fourteen hours a day, six days out of seven. I can’t wait for Saturday so I can finally just sleep. The neighbors upstairs are always too loud or too quiet. My couch is comfortable. The bed isn’t. The shower is warm enough most of the time. The people I come back to every year disappearing little by little moving forward while I just try to keep moving anywhere. The city always changes, but I don’t. I guess that’s my superpower. I probably should have wished for one that would have made my life something more than it is. I guess that one’s on me.
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Moscow Kirsten Jersild
There is gray in the sky, the ground, the people There is gray on the train In the clothing, in the cold puffs of air that rise out of the mouths Of the departed crowds Color is gone, absent There is beauty in the gray The snow, a rainbow of brown and filth Litters the buildings, the paintings, the everything Откуда эти слëзы (Otkuda eti slyozi) Melancholia lives here, and thrives Passing between each commuter underground Resting at the paws of the disregarded mutts It settles, deeply into the snow, into the grime When darkness takes over, the people come alive Their faces shine eerily in a glimpse of green light The music is too clamorous, Perfume is too much My senses overwhelmed, I feel removed They have reawakened, and hide under this mask Each night, until bleak gray daylight returns
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I often use poetry to grapple with anything that strikes me as strange or complicated. For me, God and religion fall under this broad category. Of course, in writing this poem at all, I too have put God in a box... and the vicious cycle carries on.
EDITOR’S CHOICE
God Box Alaina Brown yo i said to god he didn’t like that i said sir more to his taste sir i am 20 today why didn’t you say so? i just did. he gives me a present a box weirdly wildly shaped bulky made of steel sand stone and shells it has bumps bulges holes and twists. i get closer and the box smells of coconut salt wind browning books summer sweat clean laundry christmas eve all at once. the box is dark green and black with cranberry reds pumpkin oranges mustard yellows and sprinkles of cream-white.
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painted it myself! he is proud and says go on climb in it’s just your size and will go nicely with your eyes but be careful with the edges they’ll stick you. i put up my hands and say wait wait i’m a slow shopper i kick the tires, i price shop. he didn’t like that but said fine i’ll hold onto it-come back when you are done. i came back many years later joyful. yo! i said i have a box for you too! god smiled you shouldn’t have i offered the box outstretched in my little pink palm: it was cardboard one square inch an old earring box god shouted with glee and immediately clambered in. i shut the box put it in the pocket of my too-tight jeans, and heard his muffled exclamation from within: it’s perfect! how did you know?
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Painting Over Already-Painted Walls Czander Tan
Paint cracks on the wall pock-marked like angsty pre-teens. Paint strokes up to right, up to right like a rainbow of white. Plain white, with little stalactites. Drip, drip, drip drops of memories. How much has it seen? How much has it been through? Layers and layers of paint to cover up the stains of life. So it looks brand new while underneath the rainbow white lies cracks of gold covered up for all to never see.
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Antietam Emily Goodrich They’re staring; faces turned toward an empty sky, lying on their backs along a farm fence, on a dirt road used only by artillery carts. Guns have vanished; the dead look out of place. Buildings on the battlefield have all but been removed, yet the soldiers remain.
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You can’t see the blood from this distance, the life that ebbed from each wound and stained the grass of the poor farmer’s field. You can’t distinguish the color of their uniforms, either. Black and White hides Blue and Gray. You can see the bloat, though. The great swelling of stomachs post bullet wound, post mortem, expanded to bursting, filled with gas, bacteria, decomposers. Their limbs bent, muscles contracted at odd angles, frozen in the unfortunate positions they fell in, immortalized in macabre silhouettes. Each soldier groans, gas spilling out of their open mouths; the air is filled with the sound of death, the smell, the sight of it. These bodies are not people, simply piles of disintegrating matter. It stuck with me, frightened me. So I photographed the mounds, to pass on the horror. I develop this film in a darkroom (fitting, I suppose) regaled with the image emerging from the pyrogallic acid, of decomposing bodies in an empty field where the battle raged. I set the plate in potassium cyanide, and the photo slips into the poison so that I can preserve the petrification.
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11:15 Vince Marcantonio
No prince will come for Rapunzel, fair. The wench has gone and bobbed her hair. A rope of virtue had hung down, A vine of gold that touched the ground. Now no man will come for the rotten peach, Because her hair, it will not reach. Don’t be a bawdy Corinth lass, But listen to old Paul: “Your glory, beauty, keep it long, And please dear, keep it all.”
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The only thing I had in mind when beginning this piece was that I wanted it to include a windmill. From there I drew anything I could think of, and it all came together pretty well. I like for my art to be spontaneous, and I do not sketch much and leave a lot of it to freehand with the ink. Art for me is not so much about capturing real life, but revealing the most bizarre corners of my imagination to the rest of the world, and bringing strange things to life on paper for others to see.
EDITOR’S CHOICE
The Flood Katherine Olson
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Flow Johnathan Kim
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Lazy Eye Johnathan Kim
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Potter’s Hands Edward Coe
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Mocking Sarah Qureshi
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Structure Study Robert H. Redfearn
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Untitled Corey Crist
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Graffiti Sarah Woynicz
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Mount Mary Lee Carter
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Sanctuary Katy Shepard
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Untitled Corey Crist
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The Tour Corrie Purvis
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“The Beaker People” caught my attention right away. I love the way the three people are strongly contrasted against the grass. The distance between each person and the vastness of the scene convey a feeling of solitude. The unusual tones work well and further add to the emotion of the photograph.
EDITOR’S CHOICE
The Beaker People Kathleen Martin
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Humming Bird in Pencil Mary Lee Carter
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Life is Made Up of Moments Czander Tan Just stop and listen to silence. A drop of something waiting to happen. The anticipation of moments upon moments upon moments. For what do we have but moments now? Collect past moments. Look for next moments. So how do we live like no tomorrow when we know that today carries yesterday’s sorrows? It follows us. Look up. The cup is pouring down. But it slips through our fingers. We try to grasp it, but it just makes our hands wet. Just like moments we forget we regret to inform you to conform you into machines of flesh and blood under the guise of individualistic freedom. “Make the world a better place” for me. Or for those starving children so that you can be proud of yourself and sleep at night. Just stop and listen to who? Yourself? But you have no idea what you’re doing. Someone else? They’re trying to figure out who to listen to too.
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Just stop and listen. But don’t listen to your heart; life isn’t a fairytale. But life is an adventure. We don’t listen to our hearts on adventures; we go where we are led. But don’t follow your heart, because your heart is just there to remind you that you are alive with beats pumping crimson streams. The heart is there to enjoy the adventure. So we can go where the wind takes us. So we can know the breath of the wind when it breathes on the backs of our necks our hairs stand up to the call that beckons us to walk the road left, right, or wrong? Which one? But isn’t that the adventure? Isn’t that life? The mystery of deliberation, the deliberation of mystery. The anticipation of excitement, the excitement of anticipation. The moment of contemplation, the contemplation of this moment. The freedom to make mistakes. The freedom to be wrong. But also the freedom to be right. So just stop and listen. You who have ears to hear, listen. For this life, this adventure, this road, Is but a shadow of either destination.
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Birds on a Wire Mary Lee Carter
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Alien Victoria Childress Her classmates smirk, “Silly Anglo-Saxon,” when her skin blisters from walking across campus. She shouldn’t burn; she’s not white. Yet she sticks out like a snowcone with no syrup. Her Armenian ancestors endured by being dark as Turks. But those genetic bunkers hid recessive genes, traitorous double-code-talkers, now come to light in her. If she had grown up in the lee of Ararat, the village grandmothers would applaud her beauty: Cheeks like blushing tulips! Eyes like the Mediterranean! Hair like apricots! But her grandparents fled West, pleating the map over Turkey, and now her complexion is bubblegum, her eyes chlorine water, her hair banana taffy. In the United States, the great melting pot, she floats on the surface with the white fat.
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Her RA says, “Are you Jewish? You should join Hillel.” But she can’t join; she’s not Jewish. Yossarian, that hipster, arose because Heller thought a Jewish character would be too mainstream. When she was a child in L.A., she accompanied her parents to the Armenian Apostolic Church. But the copper-skinned clique, all cast from the same alloy, shied away from her, not certain if she belonged. They never recognized her at school. Now she still marks Easter on the wrong date, long after the Bible Belters have thrown out their dyed eggs and taken their pet bunnies to the pound – but she doesn’t actually celebrate; there’s no Apostolic church in this town, and, anyway, April twenty-fourth camps on the calendar between the dual Easters, laying siege. In May, brisk people behind folding tables push paper clips, in August origami cranes, in November poppies, but in April Girl Scout cookies. The brisk people say, “Take a brochure!” She doesn’t take anything; she’s not their target audience. Her hand never meets another’s over an Armenian artifact; she never gets the chance to confide I am too. But why should a school observe Remembrance when it is spurned by the country? Ninety-eight years later, no one will say genocide. Obama says, “I come from diaspora too. I condemn this Great Crime, this Mets Yeghern” – as if he is sharing the Armenians’ language, as if they would rather hear simple words in a schoolboy accent than hear him say genocide. But she can’t speak the language, she’s not. . .
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S Courtney Scaggs
The movements of the letter spelled out the story of the seducer and the seduced. The satisfying story is not just sex. Instead it is the salty sweat that drips down your spine. The way the natural curves of the letter, match that of the scantily clad girl sprawled on your bed. No, it is the strange sounds that sing from her sweet lips, that echo through the house as you slide your soft skin against hers. It is the stiff muscles that strain in reaction to your swaying hips. It is the silent connection of souls as each body is overcome with individual spasms. And finally, it is the smell of soggy sheets that shrug beneath the slump of two bodies.
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Philadelphia, I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down Alaina Brown Philly But just Illy if you’re doing something excellent. You were Illy on the fourth of July, watching fireworks on the roof of an 1892 house, our legs swinging five stories up, our cigarette tips and who knows what else falling five stories down. Illy, I want to know you I want it in the empty beer bottles on Greek row I want it swished around in the saliva of the people clinking and rolling six roofs over. I want it in the nearby police sirens, in the thrift shops on South Street, in the LOVE sign on UPenn’s campus, in the stuffed French toast at Sabrina’s. When the fireworks crawled across the Illy skyline that night it was really just colored fire that went like this: crack crack crack. Which is when intangible complicated things somewhere inside me went crack crack crack. Illy and me– we go crack crack crack. When the city of brotherly love and certain other kinds of love lit up for America there was a song playing in West (Ph)Illy called Jubel which is a word which is German or Swedish n.; jubilation, joy, exultation. And the song went like this (Illy went like this): one, two, tick, tock. Save me.
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A Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing Joel Graham The Fatherland calls you to be a wolf. Wolves throw away sheepish ideals of peace. Wenn du wollst Frieden für den Krieg vorzubereiten. Take up your skin and wear it proudly. Bear the mark of a superior species, As all other beasts are below you. Your silhouette should stand tall and stark. Everyone should know you by the howl. Understand why we kill and who to kill, Never ask who you are killing. Sharpen your teeth and claws for the hunt to come. Give way to hunter’s instincts and reign in your soul. Terrorize your prey on silent crystal nights. Practice making every kill clean, ‘til finally it comes as easy as bleating. You will kill with no compunction. Lay waste to other creatures that try to kill you. Kill them first in grand maneuvers—Fast as lightning. Roll across the land like thunder, Leaving in your wake the carcasses of apex predators. You will slaughter the bear in his winter palace. You will clip the eagle soaring in the heavens. You will slay the lion on his throne. You will kill other sheep that have stars in their hearts. All for a greater good. When it is over and you’re unable to hunt again, Peel your skin and grind away your fangs. Go home to live life once more as a sheep. In peace and comfort. You will try to fit in, But you are still hunting. In your dreams instead of counting sheep in grassy fields, You will count the sheep you have killed. You can put away your skin, But forever you are a wolf.
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Knocking Cameron Vaile After the longest summer of your life, you finally stand alone with her tear stains on your shoulder and watch as your parents’ tail lights get smaller and smaller, almost out of sight—but not completely, because you’ve already turned around and headed back to your dorm—your dorm, your new home—where you and your roommate slash new best friend unpack quickly, but not completely, because there’s too much excitement coursing through your veins to do anything completely, save for going to dinner at a real dining hall with new hall mates and figuring out where the party is tonight (your first college party!), and you go find something somewhere with loud music and lots of people and flat keg beer, and you think, if this isn’t nice then I don’t know what is, and you continue feeling like this for the rest of your first year, and even now as an upperclassman because you love college—because let’s face it: it is great, but it’s going by so damn quickly, so quickly you start feeling old—old, old, old: your class ring is ordered, a symbol you’ll wear until your hands prune; you turn 21, and can finally order a beer at the bars; a few people from high school have gotten engaged, which you think is ridiculous—absurd, even—because it is; you go home on breaks and neighbors ask you what you’re doing after graduation, and at this point you think to yourself well, I’m pretty sure my parents are gonna take me out to lunch, but you really truly don’t know, and like a conceding towel you toss in the words “grad school,” and your neighbors nod, which makes the conversation feel important now—you feel important now—and then you involuntarily think about graduation, which makes you realize that you’re now older
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than most people in town; you stop and breathe and know all of these things, these checkpoints and stages and gut checks, mean that life is knocking on your door a little bit louder with each passing day, and there will come a day when you will have to answer it—though that day isn’t today, and that’s comforting enough for now, so you finish your slice of cold pizza, brush your teeth and say goodnight to your roommates as you close your door and walk to your computer to check your Facebook and Twitter once more before slipping into your bed; you stare sadly at the glowing monitor, mouth agape like a cow’s, and wonder if you will always be a slave to these stupid black holes, or if there will ever be a time when people are more concerned with the earth or goodness or each other rather than worrying what he said or she said or the latest thing some fucking Kardashian did yesterday—good lord, why do people give a damn—and all these things make you forget about today; until tomorrow, that is; and you lay your head down in peaceful sanctuary: another day gone without having to answer the door.
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staff Hilary Andreas editor-in-chief
Kathy Spicknall
Kristina Parman
poetry editor
business manager
Abbey Williams
Susan Nguyen
assistant poetry editor
public relations director
Catherine Einstein
Libby Howe
prose editor
promotions director
Harrison Wade photography editor
Joey Johnson Matthew Cox Richard Parks
Gabriella Jacobsen
special events
art editor/graphic design
Jonathan Roberts Brigid McCormick
webmaster
assistant art editor/graphic design General Staff
Megan Gileza graphic design
Kayla Franco graphic design
Alyssa Lentz Carolyn Hall Kevin Carney Molly Arnold Rachael Whitten Samantha Shifflett Tim Grant
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index Brown, Alaina...........................11, 41 Carter, Mary Lee................27, 34, 37 Childress, Victoria..........................38 Coe, Edward...................................22 Crist, Corey...............................25,29 Fairbanks, Katherine........................6 Goodrich, Emily...............................14 Graham, Joel..................................42 Jersild, Kirsten.................................8 Kim, Johnathan.........................20,21 Marcantonio, Vince.........................16 Martin, Kathleen............................33 Olson, Katherine.............................19 Purvis, Corrie.................................30 Qureshi, Sarah...............................23 Redfearn, Robert H........................24 Scaggs, Courtney...........................40 Shepard, Katy................................28 Tan, Czander.............................13, 35 Vaile, Cameron...............................44 Woynicz, Sarah..............................26
Historic Blacksburg photography provided by: Historical Photograph Collection, Special Collections, University Libraries, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA
Typefaces: Helvetica Neue Condesnsed Helvetica Neue Medium Helvetica Neue Medium Condensed
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silhouette literary & art magazine volume 37, issue 1, fall 2014