Folio Literary Magazine: 2020 Edition

folio

a literary magazine

2020

folio literary magazine

§

§

˙

A collection of art and letters Skidmore College, 2019-2020

The Staff 2019-2020 Editor-in-Chief... Amy Milin Assistant Editors...

Seth Westerman Felix Freeland Treasurer... Anastasia Momoh Graphic Design... Amy Milin Felix Freeland

2020-2021 Editors-in-Chief...

Seth Westerman Felix Freeland Assistant Editors... Aaron Slonaker Samantha Mackertich Treasurer... Samantha Allman

Additional thanks to

Faculty Advisor... April Bernard Other contributors... Jamie Eason Luke Deuterman Aylish Flahaven Zachary Troyanovsky

4

About Folio Folio is Skidmore’s only student-run literary magazine, and the most prestigious student publication on campus. We accept all forms of printable creative work, including but not limited to poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, illustration, painting, digital art, photography, and photos of 3-D art.

Submissions are reviewed anonymously at our weekly board meetings, which are open to anyone who'd like to contribute to making the magazine. Like our Facebook page, join us on Skidsync, and check out our Club Fair table at the beginning of next semester to stay in the loop.

We are already accepting submissions for our next edition! To submit, send your work as an attachment to folio@skidmore.edu.

Multiple submissions are both accepted and encouraged.

Post-pandemic, look out for our monthly Speakeasy, a creative writing open mic usually hosted in Falstaff's, the Chapel, or an on-campus apartment.

To learn more about Folio and how to get involved, message us on Facebook or email us at folio@skidmore.edu.

5

Letter from the Editor

In the three years I have spent as Editor-in-Chief of Folio, I have persistently wondered what it is that draws people—or fails to draw people—to our club. After all, the atmosphere is awfully similar to that of an English class. Though there are enough dorks at this school that this feature might have some appeal, is it enough to get folks to carve an hour out of their week—even during midterms—to work with us? Is it fun to kick back with some peaceful, lightly structured literary discussion? Why did I come every week, as a freshman member?

Well, I graduated with five more English courses under my belt than were needed to fulfill my major, so that's a hint. I also came to college interested in creative writing, and I was excited to become part of an artistic community. My first few Folio meetings and open mics made me sort of emotional: I felt a sense of place and purpose, reading and hearing the writing of my peers. I also felt a kind of need to feel that way, like I had to be monumentally moved by every single creative word—to prove that I got it. I don't think I did, however. I was sometimes too preoccupied with my facial expressions to actually hear the creative work people shared at open mics, wanting my eyes to widen and glisten just right to convey emotion and interest.

But not all of our regular members—not even all of our freshmen—are overeager aspiring literary types. Not all of them are interested in doing their own creative writing at all. Meanwhile, only a few present themselves as stereotypically literary or bohemian. There's almost a studious aspect to the Folio disposition. We have our share of indie types, of course, but we also have mousy demeanors, nondescript aesthetics, and even computer geeks.

Perhaps more substantially, we have a wide range of backgrounds, knowledge levels for literature and art, and degrees of intro/extroversion. So what brings these people, with their varying interests, to Folio?

6

I'm pretty sure, after four years immersed in this small creative writing community, that the folks who come to Folio meetings are the kind who find it easy to care about other people.

It doesn't totally make sense to come to that hour every week, to sit in a classroom and read amateur poetry, and spend ten or twenty minutes talking about two stanzas. But for the people who come to Folio and keep coming, it's simply a pleasure. They are interested in the work of our peers, finding joy in the exploration of someone else's craft and perspective on the world. It is pleasurable to treat a written thing like it really matters, even if it's someone's first attempt, even if we're the only ones who read it, even if we publish it and only a few hundred people read it.

And it has certainly been a pleasure for me, year after year, to sit in that classroom and observe the intimacy that blooms among people who have decided to earnestly, openly care. It is hard to say goodbye to Folio after three years as Editor-in-Chief, biggest fan, beleaguered guardian, and helicopter mom, but I am happy with the hands I'm leaving it in. I am incredibly proud of the new Board and the hard work they've done for this edition.

Say hello to our new Editors-in-Chief: Felix, whose humility amplifies his already obvious intelligence, humor, and generosity; and Swesty, who cares the least, but also the most, about everything.

And please greet the Assistant Editors: Sam Mackertich, a veritable old soul; Samantha Allman, whose tranquil demeanor and wry smiles make her an essential presence; and Aaron Slonaker, whose happy-to-be-here vibes make everyone else happier to be here.

Thank you all for your effort, energy, and insights; I hope that this project treats you well.

Sincerely, Amy Milin Former Editor-in-Chief

7

Contents Prose and Poetry zoomed out............................Aaron Slonaker.............................................10 LIVERPOOL GAMES................Katelyn Reichheld...................................12 A Few Impending Dooms................Amy Milin..........................................15 Red Light..........................................Sonia Kramer.....................................16 Death of an Insomniac..........................Tamar Bordwin..............................20 APA..........................................................Zachary Troyanovsky.................21 To a Winter Come and Gone Too Soon........Tamar Bordwin..........................23 Dad Fixes the Car..............................................Aylish Flahaven.................24 The Fence Between Us....................................Grace Sowyrda....................26 RILKE.........................................................Katelyn Reichheld...................29 Samo........................................................Justin Frasier...............................30 Untitled.............................................Harrison Winrow................................33 poem on a baby elephant..................Zeynep Inanoglu.................................34 Standing Here is Going Yonder...............Bella Finkel...................................36 Splutter and Swim.......................................Tamar Bordwin........................37 WORRY STONES.........................................Katelyn Reichheld.................38 Wilmarth 106..........................................Zachary Troyanovsky...................40 El Rancho de Colores............................Aylish Flahaven...............................43 Breakthrough on Ice...................................Grace Sowyrda..........................44 COYOTE..............................................................Katelyn Reichheld...........46 Photograph from Ras al-Ayn, Northeastern Syria..........Zeynep Inanoglu.......47 I Am Reaching.............................................................Ella Fishman.............49 Strange Dream..........................................................Amy Milin..................51 Untitled.............................................................Harrison Winrow.................53 A Good Reason...............................................Sarah Jones...........................54 At the Cody Rodeo.....................................Tamar Bordwin..........................61 COMMANDS........................................Katelyn Reichheld.........................62 They Sometimes Call Me Crazy..................Justin Frasier.............................63 Haze..............................................................Aylish Flahaven......................65 Kathy the Beluga (Monologue).......................Zachary Troyanovsky...........66 Break-up Poem (The Smart Thing)........................Amy Milin.....................70 Ulysses.............................................................Seth Westerman...................72

Submit art and writing to folio@skidmore.edu 8

Visual Art Cowboy Alien....................Claudia Mak.....................................................11 Untitled................................Mahtab Hasnath.............................................13 Untitled.......................................Claudia Mak.............................................14 Sevenfold........................................Jennifer Freedman..............................22 Shop Owner Counts Change..............Lauren Michelle...............................25 Halcyon..................................................Jennifer Freedman.........................28 Flummoxed.......................................Jennifer Freedman.............................32 Peace Now.....................................Jennifer Freedman................................35 Tension.....................................Allaura Barett.............................................39 Untitled................................Mahtab Hasnath...............................................42 Blue..........................................Allaura Barrett.............................................45 Ares & Athena...............................Kira Shepard.........................................48 Fusion.................................................Jennifer Freedman...........................50 Buried.............................................Allaura Barrett.....................................52 Snow Dancers............................Claudia Mak..............................................60 Dean Street......................................Lauren Michelle...................................64 I Tell Him Stories of the Mountains......Claudia Mak..................................68 Untitled...................................................Mahtab Hasnath...........................71

Cover Art Kira Shepard

Submit art and writing to folio@skidmore.edu 9

zoomed out

Aaron Slonaker Higgledy piggledy Students in quarantine finish their exodus, summoned to learn; Schools rediscover that— videoconferencing— even the brightest young minds soon adjourn.

10

Cowboy Alien Claudia Mak

11

LIVERPOOL GAMES Katelyn Reichheld

I tap SOS in Morse code (the only message I know) and to punctuate, I trace a heart shape on his inner thigh. The light on his blue jeans blinks back on the train to the getaway spot.

We wait, longing on the platform.

He transcribes pizza and lover in finger pencil on my palm; I am his interpreter.

***

Drunk in the station again, waiting.

The Lime Street speaker bellows like its faded, blue jean wanderers—stag parties—cussing out cover bands. I lie on his lap and he reads a PDF of James and the Giant Peach.

We name the neighborhood stray cat Stevie and before bed I tell her our secret: this isn’t our neighborhood.

I tap SOS on Stevie’s forehead until she falls asleep, purring.

12

Untitled

Mahtab Hasnath

13

Untitled

Claudia Mak

14

A Few Impending Dooms Amy Milin

You tell me about the solar flare the planet's overdue for, as if there's not enough to worry about.

Yet again without intention, you've called my bluff in claiming I'm done and tired with existence. I'm a coward and an animal, and I need to go on living.

With the entitlement characteristic of my species, I am angry that our reign of terror could end like that, senseless, and not even as the drastic consequence of our various forms of hubris.

I know the end of you and I makes a little more sense than that–– that it has a bit more narrative weight to it.

But I'm trying to see and cannot see; I smell a burning near my head; my hair is smoke, my skin still shrieks.

15

Red Light

Sonia Kramer

My body functions like a traffic light. As the youngest child in my family, I never worried about where we were going or how we would get there. My body was always green. After I was raped, my traffic light turned red. Constantly hypervigilant, my muscles were tense as a rock, my chest concave, my hands loaded into fists. My bed was the only soft part of me, and I spent most of my time there to prevent myself from hardening completely. If I left my dorm and ventured around the campus of Oberlin College, I knew I would place myself in the same vicinity as men. When I started going to classes again, I braced the reality of walking past them.

When I saw a man, my brain turned into a computer-engineered system. In one second, I configured all the ways I could stay away: I could cross the street; I could walk around the building until I found another entrance, but then I might happen upon another man. I could go back to my bed. In one second, I configured all the ways the man could still assault me. They say the more revealing your clothes, the more you asked for it. But some studies say the bigger, the looser your clothes, the easier it is for someone to take them off you. No matter what I wear, my body is always open. Even with a red stop light, my body is always green.

In a constant state of hypervigilance, there are few moments where I feel at peace. Safety wraps around me when I step into nature. My mind and body are at one when I lay on the grass, and when I close my eyes, the sun wraps around me like my mom’s hugs. My body seeps into the ground, and if I stay there forever, maybe I can grow. When I was little, I stepped out of myself and found beauty in everything. Now I find safety in colors— both in nature and art. I crave art that can wrap around me. I crave art that I can surrender to.

Since transferring to Skidmore College, I have gone to the Tang Museum a few times. The Tang Museum was born a year after me. Since 2000, this museum located on Skidmore’s campus has housed twelve contemporary art exhibitions each year. Currently, the Tang is showing a glitter-based exhibit called “Serious Sparkle.” It took several visits for me to discover it.

Whenever I walk into a room, the computer in my head starts 16

up the algorithms. I figure out where to stand to have a view of the most people. It’s best when no one can go behind me. At the Tang, the walls are covered in art. There are no walls for me to press my back against. At the Tang, you must walk up to the art to really see it. At the Tang, you must forget about your surroundings to get lost in the art.

I went to the Tang with three friends. I thought their proximity might offer protection. When we entered the museum, there was a large group of adults. They were gathered around the first exhibit, to the left of the entrance. My red light blinked vigorously, but my friends didn’t see it. They walked right into the crowd. I knew that if I followed my friends, I would have to place my body near adult men. If I left my friends and went to my right, I would be alone, and the group of adults might come to me. I ran toward my friends and landed on a piece the adults were not looking at. Soon, though, a few of them got bored, or maybe they were intrigued by another painting, and they started splitting off from their group.

They walked closer to me, and I knew that if I turned around to watch them, I wouldn’t be looking at the art. And looking at them raised the chances of them looking directly at me. Looking a man in the eyes might be asking for it. If I stared at the painting, then men could walk toward me—behind me—and I wouldn’t know they were there until it was too late to fight back. The men stepped closer. I kept my feet facing the painting and turned my head to the right as they approached. Before they exited my vision, I snapped my head to the left to make sure they would keep walking past me.

By the time each man had made it to the other side, my red light was glowing so bright all the artworks reflected at me in harsh crimson.

The adults were unaware of their red skin. In a room lit up by my stop light, I was the only one who could see.

Even after the group left, I was never truly alone with the art. There were guards posted in each room. And they were watching us. I mean really watching us. I mean walking closer to me when I walked closer to a piece. When I left the museum, I couldn’t picture any of the art. I could only recall my heart running so fast it was knocking against my chest and I could only remember the plans 17

I had made to defend myself.

The next time I visited the Tang, I went during an uncrowded period, and I went alone. I wore my “Dyke Sone” outfit and gripped my phone in my hand in case I had only one second to call 911. Even in a masculine outfit, I could not feel my clothes on my skin. I felt completely naked. I immediately went to a section that no one was looking at. It was a glitter-based exhibit called “Serious Sparkle.” The child in me jumped, longing to roll around in the paintings.

Born in Kenya, Wangechi Mutu creates art in the tradition of Afrofuturism. Her work comments on Western consumerism and the ways it has influenced African culture. She explores issues of race, gender, and objectification. The Tang currently displays Mutu's 2006 series Histology of the Different Classes of the Uterine Tumors. She uses glitter, packing tape, fur, and magazine cut-outs in a collage style. The images are a mix of glittery and shiny feminine features glued atop the female reproductive organ. Working in conjunction, the pieces symbolize the objectification of women’s physical form for men’s pleasure.

In her piece “Indurated Ulcers of the Cervix,” the woman’s body is deconstructed. It contains black glitter and cut-outs of an upside-down mouth, a woman’s breasts and stomach, legs with arched feet, an open mouth, two eyes, and two ears. The features are glued onto a piece of worn out paper. On this paper is a diagram of a vagina—repeated twice—spread open by a clamp. When I look at these body parts I do not wonder where the torso or the nose is. I know it’s a woman. In my worldview, when a man looks at a woman’s body, he sees lips, legs, boobs, eyes, and a vagina glued onto a canvas. The artwork takes the features a man sees on a woman and glues them onto paper. There’s not much color other than the red mouth.

The paper is yellowing, and the black ink of the vagina is almost faded to a gray. Part of the vagina is a faded pink—once red, its stop light must have grown tired. There are no clothes to cover the vagina; there are only boobs, shiny legs, and an open mouth. There is nothing to hide behind.

As I stared at the collage of “Indurated Ulcers of the Cervix,” my anxiety grew so large, it sprayed onto the canvas. A mess of black ink surrounded the vagina diagram. For an instant, the vagina hid under the black and the dark reality washed over the paper. As a man walked into the room, I stepped backwards so he could not walk behind me. As I walked 18

As a man walked into the room, I stepped backwards so he could not walk behind me. As I walked away from the art, I noticed a shimmer in the ink. After the man successfully passed in front of me, I took a step forward and the glitter jumped out at me. In this moment, my vulnerability was objectified. My vulnerability was covered in glitter.

“Indurated Ulcers of the Cervix” was created in 2006 by an artist who was born in 1972. However, I see this work spanning the history of all time. Men have always objectified women.

Is it fucked up to find comfort in the fact that all women have been subjected to objectification? Is there a universal tie that binds us? Does my PTSD influence my instinct to protect other women, or was this instinct passed down through generational trauma? I yearn for the day I walk around with a green light that isn’t challenged to turn red. I yearn for a society of green women.

I walk outside the Tang and sneeze at my first sight of the sun. I step onto the grass and stop. I turn in a circle to check my surroundings. Only girls are in sight. For a moment, my computer calculates the negative outcomes of standing outside and closing my eyes. My computer goes to sleep. My stop light turns to green. I open my arms and lift my face to the sun.

19

Death of an Insomniac Tamar Bordwin

I will not stop for gas until all the men who drive pick-up trucks are asleep or dead. They make me weary. I don’t want to be.

I can’t remember when I stopped wearing my glasses. How terrifyingly beautiful the coming of night is from behind my softened eyes...

My tank is almost empty and I remember now the blood-bellied river that eats itself as it rolls along.

I think I know how to get there from here: pull off the highway, follow the absence of light onto the road that chews gravelly at my tires.

I am numb. I am swerving around potholes.

I exist only in the patch of yellow headlight that spills up the trunks of young roadside trees.

Stop the car. Here.

Kill the engine. Stretch barefoot, road-sore.

I’ve arrived.

The water hums dimly in the sand tonight.

I think I have never seen the river this dark.

I think I have never lived more than one week at a time.

I think I’d like a swim...

20

APA

Zachary Troyanovsky Introduction I don’t know if I’d fuck Jesus But I’d fuck guys that look like Jesus Method

I used to look at the bumps on the ceiling and say they looked like stars

Now they just look like a heat rash Materials

Is this a warship or something?

Do you worship or something?

Is this a prairie or something?

Do you pray for me or something?

Is this a Thanksgiving high school reunion or something?

Do you like taking weekly communion or something?

Discussion There are no more crazies in Spain There are no more crazies No one in Spain takes the train anymore Everyone isn’t sane anymore There are no crazies in Spain We are what we are for no reason, In vain Results I am happy and I feel heavy I am happy and I know I’m petty I am happy and it’s harder to breathe now I am happy and it’s impossible to leave now I am happy and everything is worse now

21

Sevenfold

Jennifer Freedman

22

To a Winter Come and Gone Too Soon Tamar Bordwin

My mother’s new tree came down at first snow that year; it was only September and its leaves were fat, purply hearts hung ripe and dripping from dark fingers but the snow came wet and fast and the leaves tried to hold it and buckled under the wet.

Wine on the carpet.

You taught me this cavalier rage. You taught me how to arrive like a wet snow and then run down the streets, eyes flashing in the February sun.

It is March and I am home.

I sit outside in a tree with my shirt off and I throw stones across the slushy face of the reservoir and the stones leave big pock-holes.

Cup runneth under.

I want to be a fifty-dollar bill beneath the snow.

I want to freeze and melt and freeze until road-salt tears run down my chin and then I want to grow warm and brittle in the sun.

23

Dad Fixes the Car Aylish Flahaven

Sprawled on my back on the grease stained square of cardboard Dad laboring on the back right tire Me watching wispy clouds shrink away I close my left eye and make a telescope out of my hand Watch a plane out of sight Flicking ants off my inner thighs Snapping twigs staring at my father lately under a microscope Sometimes I have to look away when I think of men I’ve laid under The white eggs stink up the kitchen You know, you live side by side for so many years but never make any progress Catatonic children morphing into canonized humanoids dream psyche Sucking on a grape ice pop driving in a black tired mommy-bought car You’d never grow up and if you did, stalemate.

24

Shop Owner Counts Change Lauren Michelle

25

The Fence Between Us Grace Sowyrda

Nights like these: Sunflower moon And lilac horizon.

You wander out For orange skies And empty roads Of black pavement And glittering city lights That you wish your lens Could grasp Before the night Inhales, Breathes in all of this Until tomorrow.

I come out for the cow, The one who is leaning over The stranger’s fence.

The one I ran away from as she approached As I was told to do because “We are not made to be friends.”

But now all I want is to gain back her trust So I reach out my hand out And wait.

It takes 15 minutes For her to smell me And 15 more 'Til I feel the fur on the top of her head.

I wonder if she smells the chemicals That linger on my fingers.

Can she smell the fear— The swings and the jungle gyms, The wind and the dirt and the rain; All the nights I cry when I think of you?

Can she taste the tear stains that I left on my pillow?

26

Or maybe I am nothing but a girl Leaning on a fence Wanting so desperately to love What has long been locked up, Wanting to understand the pain Before it's all over.

Wondering if it has to end here.

But it is too dark now And the mosquitoes Come at night And I am not as resilient as the cow So I must take cover And say goodbye Though she has long crept away from the Barrier And now I am just alone With the stars As I usually find myself At this time of night.

You say you’ve seen my pictures–– I tell you some things are not light Enough for you to see.

27

Halcyon

Jennifer Freedman

28

RILKE

Katelyn Reichheld Before you, all symbols were melted to their objects the way the soul had melted into the body and forgotten how to flee in death.

You could distinguish each thought from the fluid, and tell me, deeply, what a thing could mean if it were held gently.

You knew that the world was bent on making a mother out of me like the others who could bleed, and would make alphabet soup from my interiority. You said, seek solitude to protect your own legacy, knowing eternity would be my only enemy, and intimacy the knife I’d pull on myself.

29

SAMO

Justin Frasier This piece follows the final days of Jean-Michel Basquiat, a major contemporary artist who rose to fame in the 1980s. Basquiat was famously friends with Andy Warhol, who died about a year before Basquiat himself.

After years battling heroin addiction, Basquiat died of overdose in 1988 at the age of 27.

I felt alone for the first time in my life. Despite the fact that I was the most successful that I had ever been, I felt like I couldn’t trust anyone anymore. Part of this I attributed to his death, which came as a shock and utterly rocked my world. The news outlets were once again saying that he used me for fame and that I was an upand-coming wild child dressed up in a suit. I was starting to believe them. I couldn’t tell what was true and what wasn’t. My world was shattering from the ground up. I felt like I had no one I could lean on for help.

I woke up and went to look into the mirror. The face that I had seen my whole life was different today. It was noticeably older and uglier. The heroin had clearly taken its toll, marring what was once considered a handsome face. Blotchy dark patches littered my skin, and my hair was a mess. It didn’t matter—­I was done taking care of myself. I had an aching feeling that my life was going to end soon. And this was partly the reason why I felt lackluster when it came to my upkeep.

I had recently come back from Hawaii. I had needed to take a break from the bustle of New York, and I had listened to the concerns of my friends over my drug use and decided to stop. But I secretly knew that it was only temporary. The voice of heroin called my name, even in Hawaii, where I was far away from any stash.

So now that I was back in the city, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to resist the urge to consume that poisonous nectar. I wouldn’t tell my friends that, though. I wanted them to have hope that I could get better.

I saw my mother for the last time today. I didn’t know it was the last time that I would see her and I wish I had because I would’ve cherished the moment more. She was the same as she had 30

always been, the shell of a woman who used to be. I was high on weed when I went to see her, and I was sick of seeing her this way.

But there was nothing I could do. As my life progressed of late, I was getting the feeling that less and less of it was in my control.

That decisions I'd made a long time ago had put me in a position where only one end was possible. Now, I had been reduced to a figure, living my life and waiting for my inevitable death to occur.

I decided to translate my sense of impending death into the only thing I had become good at: my art. Its background color was a strange brown that neither comforted nor discomfited; it was simply different. I painted a brown figure, riding atop some being that didn’t have a body. I titled it Riding with Death. It would be my last piece to ever be showcased, and I had the feeling that all of my friends would have a sense of what I was feeling. But then, what friends? They had all become distant. I now realized that all of them seemed to use me when I was famous for my money and recognition.

His death comes as a surprise. It is quiet, peaceful. It all starts when he takes a large quantity of heroin while his girlfriend is out. She comes into the loft and sees him lying on the bed, barely awake. She brushes it off and continues with her errands. He dozes off for the last time, vomiting before his eyes close. He goes painlessly, fading into the nothingness, never to be seen again. His departure is marked by the pool of blood that surfaces on his lips. His girlfriend comes into the room and is startled by the scene before her.

31

Flummoxed

Jennifer Freedman

32

Untitled

Harrison Winrow We keep the toboggan in the garage.

I plunk away on

very very loud.

so excited for winter

Electric Keyboard. very very bad

Dad bought Mousetraps Dad bought Mousetraps

Mousetraps

Mousetraps I had to hide them in the dark corners and might have cried a little bit but I don’t tell my dad.

Because I don’t want to.

The mice are not Picky Eaters and the Cheese was stinky !

We Killed a

Few. Accumulated Victories. pssssstt… one night, I tasted a piece of the cheese.

Don’t Tell My Dad.

33

poem on a baby elephant Zeynep Inanoglu

wrinkled and open, ears like rolls of satin sitting on either side of her face, little and long something like a dinosaur with her long nose and tough skin wet like clay, she leaves small tracks in the mud her eyelashes white like the tusks of her mother, pupils a deep bubbly black her trunk curling as she holds a piece of the earth for the first time, long pieces of African grass or a breast of friendly milk to pull closer to her mouth under a Marula tree she sleeps, dreams of being tall enough to shake the branches until their round and yellow fruits drop into her belly, drunk on their absolute sweetness.

34

Peace Now

Jennifer Freedman

35

Standing Here is Going Yonder Bella Finkel

The dog barks at the doorbell on the TV, I hold your hand after you’ve fallen asleep.

Work every problem backwards, just ask you who know the answers Your lenience elucidating But I learned more from the bitterness of undone dishes Your screams in my mouth reverberate to silence We danced that summer to the hum of the highway Now I see that black back of your head through the whites of your eyes It stings when I want you and burns when I don’t (Desire is sharp and violation lingers) Every time I have you you float through my fingers (To know is to own and doing nothing is letting go) I held you like a baby the night that you left me Went to bed with the lights on, Kept you illuminated Swaddled myself in the soft warmth of drunk hatred Plastered the bones of verbal choke holds with sweet meat (Defeat; not abdication) Mama don’t say my name just call me Miseducation If encasement is kismet why’d I think you were heaven-sent?

I take out the trash before I crawl back to bed again.

36

Splutter and Swim Tamar Bordwin Look: you and me a froth of limbs suspended just beneath the surface, carried down the snowmelt river as it winds, drunken in its infancy, through the trees.

Listen, please, and shake the icewater out of your ears; neither of us can swim with your hands around my ankles.

Your bare legs shudder and knot with the effort of keeping my head above the surface, but still my eyes burn with green rivermuck and I choke on great, sweet gobs of it.

37

WORRY STONES Katelyn Reichheld

“To these white stones from the wet sky” - Charlotte Mew Fog nestles in milkweed where a monarch caterpillar sleeps. It permeates the bog’s cattail fence through which, I swear, a frog’s face peeks.

My corduroy pocket is heavy.

It’s split-seamed with your tide-like promises; you are the smoothed orbs with no edges that rattle into infinity, in constant conversation with the moon and pausing only to drink sea foam in the half-remembered afternoons.

I won’t press my worries into you the way others would.

I wouldn’t waste your liquid flight or indent my humanness on this, your cheek.

I must return home but the woods are not full yet and want something to eat.

Your strength is malleable and meant to be shared and I will absorb all of the patience inside you that you can spare.

38

Tension

Allaura Barrett 39

Wilmarth 106

Zachary Troyanovsky There are three hours until the horrible amalgamation of feminist film theory and cheaply scripted pop culture appeal called Intro to Media Studies begins.

He observed the tender beauty who was regarding the young vagabond petting their dog with one hand while injecting heroin with the other and he thought he was like Nabokov. He wasn’t.

He couldn’t build up the courage to jump on the train while it slowed down near the yard so instead he slept in a porta-potty next to the golf course. With his legs curled up over the piss-covered rim of a toilet, used exclusively by old white men with bladder issues, he couldn’t help but liken himself to a 21st century Thoreau.

There are two hours until class.

He woke up sprawled across the handicapped seating on a New York City subway car, eyes locked on the masturbating homeless man sitting across from him. The man’s eyes locked on the dimly lit insurance ad above him. The man’s hand was shrouded by a puke-green overcoat, but the twitching of his jaw and succinct way he drew his breaths were enough. A girl in high school had once told him she’d rather fuck the Geico Gecko. He had always been more interested in cereal mascots. Whatever, sexuality is fluid.

There is one hour until class.

His black jeans slowly wrinkled as he sat shirtless in the rain on a bench on 72nd and Central Park West. The tarnished silver plaque indicated that this bench was dedicated to the memory of Rex, “the best dog ever.” He'd come out to his best friend on a bench. He also got arrested for possession on a bench. Rex had never done any of those things. The sound of his imagined lover’s suede Birkenstocks hobbling through the puddles rang for hours. He knew he should have prepared a speech.

40

There are thirty minutes until class.

His bare legs stretched across the metallic surface of the table and a thin white sheet covered his face; the other bodies had no such sheet. He sat up to discover lacerations near his lower ribs. Some degenerate had probably taken his kidneys. He smirked as it dawned on him that years of consuming so much processed bologna would now lower the market value of his kidneys. He considered that a win. The man on his left was missing both eyeballs and had two iPhone 3Gs stuffed into his sockets. He thought this was quite funny. The woman on the left was wearing suede Birkenstocks; they weren’t the same ones, though.

There are fifteen minutes until class.

He was alone. The room had four walls, as per us'. A ceiling too, if that’s important to you. A blue couch with grease stains, one that people had probably made love on. There was a MacBook with a few people on an active Skype call, but no one was really speaking all that much. His friend Theo looked the same as he had all those years ago, sitting in the playroom shuffling a deck of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. It had been 5 years. His grandmother was in the top right knitting something. She never really knit, it had just been awhile, so he must have forgotten what she actually did with her time. It had been 10 years. The bottom right was just two bare feet, swing dancing. He’d forgotten she could do that. Whenever she was drunk he would sit and watch while she adapted the Lindy Hop to her solo status. She never really looked beautiful, just present.

There is one minute until class.

His surroundings were irrelevant. The sound of her swinging feet grew louder. The splashing of the puddles as her shoes became tainted grew too. The noise she made whenever she drew smoke from one of her Camel Turkish Royals echoed through his mind. What a weird cigarette for a teenager. While his mind superimposed familiar sound upon sound it devolved into static. It was funny. That static sounded like her voice.

His alarm goes off.

He blinks now and shakes himself awake. He has rejoined society.

41

Untitled

Mahtab Hasnath

42

El Rancho de Colores Aylish Flahaven

El Rancho De Colores rests on thirty wheat acres in the slow sub-state of Seguin, Texas.

We play hide and seek with armadillo skulls; And catfish learned to walk on land after the drought drank the pond and spit out its backwash.

What it holds is father What I learned was retrospect (Weesatch gripped babies legs) while the cattle gloat and carry Embryo we ignore.

(This is a corner of his life) There are good things on earth only found through circumambulating so We drive slow through an even slower town, trading places on the boiling hood to try to find the good eventually the Blue bush calls, we run eyes closed mouths open filling with the wasps now Homing the nests because that’s what we always leave with Geodes and arrowheads felt like they were placed there for a scavenger hunt But the bushes and brush remind us of the raw loam we wonder About how tiny this ecosystem has been forced to be There’s gun pellets left by uncle and cousin and a dead snake rotted Too sensitive for this world we will never know but he never found the good Girls learning genealogy and ancestry next to Harleys and between yellowed trees Like who father loved before hating mother and why His girls like cigarettes or The origin of his emulation well There are good things on this earth

43

Breakthrough on Ice Grace Sowyrda

We are fragile; How we choose to suspend Ourselves Above water.

The cold envelops the lake And underneath Everything is intact And alive.

Winter does not kill Just makes us still, Reach the depth, Hide and emerge.

And I sit On the top of a rock, Overlooking the young couple as they Fall For the first time On ice.

44

Blue

Allaura Barrett

45

COYOTE

Katelyn Reichheld The sun-dried husks; paper corpses of autumn.

In the field, the farmer mourns the second harvest taken by maggots and chalk moths. Mice seek sanctuary from crows among the stalks but the soil is unkind.

It will freeze in a week.

After supper, the farmer goes to the window to place his cup on the sill and look to where the pines poke at the stars.

Like a phantom limb, a spade hangs from his arm and he wants to sit there in the conquered crop as frost does on the corn stalk bones.

A grey coyote—lean and uncombed— stops close by the house.

She, too, seems to probe the sky with her muzzle. The resolute animal and her amber eyes looking now towards the lit window make the farmer long for fatherhood.

46

Photograph from Ras al-Ayn, Northeastern Syria Zeynep Inanoglu

My people drop bombs like inflamed bellies; bodies of phosphorus white and hungry falling upon the earth to birth war : particles of death become air, a smell of fire, the holiness of the human flesh : melting smoke rising, holding the sky like a scream.

A gap in a boy’s torso blossoms, a red cavern where a breathing chest used to be Baby with her leg missing her black hair curled and knotted by blood How quickly we made mothers childless, and children limbless how easily we wielded Our red crescent into A scythe, how easily We came to love evil, and grew from ourselves this sick, deformed thing.

47

Ares & Athena Kira Shepard

48

I Am Reaching Ella Fishman

I am reaching out above the trees which stretch, limitless, to some blue and foggy height against the strip of mountains, which attach themselves to skies that fade from peach to white.

Pink hydrangeas wilt inside their vase sweating out some final bit of summer.

Looking out the window, I see my face.

Above the red and gold my shadow hovers.

I would throw myself in with the fate of the wild geese who preach a song of endings without pain.

I would comb my hair with that line of evergreens who view trees which lose their leaves with dark disdain.

I hold onto what makes me breathe, for I could never leave this world with such a spectacle—just free and cool relief.

49

Fusion

Jennifer Freedman

50

Strange Dream Amy Milin

A feeling that could only be dreamt–– like seeing a new color.

All through the day it kept my eyes crinkling, and clenching, and seeing:

the psychologist crying in the door jamb, the trembling yolks of her eyes that loomed–– growing before me, growing my horror while her shoulders shuddered and wise old bones clattered inside her nice, sweet sweater and the desperate apology

that all day I kept in the furrow of my brow, that lingered like the inscrutable sounds of a love or a guilt confessed in foreign language.

51

Buried

Allaura Barrett

52

Untitled

Harrison Winrow Locked up and walking with Muscles clenched so so tight.

Mine is a body

That makes no sound.

Anger

—says wind through buildings—

Makes me HOT HOT HOT

And oooh la la

Can you feel my breath behind your ear?

The office is an eyeball Too efficient to blink.

My cubicle was caught in the

Iris Suburbs with flakes of fool’s gold

And Hope too too long ago.

I can wave my special paper paycheck in the faces of all my Pets.

Fuck you, Lizard

Heyyy Kitty-Cat, read much?

My pride is flame retardant And tastes like potato skins

—no fix-ins. I work for my dreams—

—never to achieve them. maybe never wanting to— To think is enough.

To peek just my eyes over the wall.

To blink.

53

A Good Reason Sarah Jones

In the middle of the night, I felt an absence. The body that had lain next to mine for so many nights––sometimes holding me, sometimes facing away––had taken its heat elsewhere. I sat up and wondered if he had gone to the bathroom. I looked around in the dark, listening for a sign of his return: a flush of the toilet, his footsteps on the carpet. The only sound was the faint whirring of the fan in the corner.

My mind raced through every possibility of where he could be. The silence of the house was no reason to assume he wasn’t in the bathroom, just a wall away from me. But a memory from earlier in the night made me worry. As we were getting into bed, he’d spoken of an unease that made sleep seem unbearable to him. Though he always had some difficulty sleeping, this dramatic confession was unusual. I asked him if he was afraid of the same dark thoughts that usually haunted him, but he quickly retreated, telling me that he was probably just anxious about work the next day. He told me not to worry, that he would try not to keep me up. He said he would stay in bed, look at his phone, and hope for sleep to take hold. I believed him.

Yet the empty space next to me informed me that he had not succeeded in finding sleep. I got out of bed and walked to the bathroom to ease my nerves, but no light shone from under the closed door. I thought to myself that he must be downstairs. It had happened before: I would wake up in a panic only to find him playing Mario Kart in the main room. Sometimes I’d catch him asleep on the couch, as though it were easier, there, to escape whatever came to him when he lay in bed next to me. But as I listened for any sign of his presence, I was met by the same silence as before, the same barely-there hum of the fan in our room. The fear began to rise within me as it had all those years ago. I walked slowly down the stairs, hoping with each step that I would turn the corner to find him safely asleep.

If he wasn’t downstairs, where could he be? Outside? Would he have been stupid enough to walk all the way to 7/11 for cigarettes? He couldn’t have. It was the dead of winter, the kind of cold that idn’t leave you until long after you had been inside. Sometimes I even felt it long

54

after winter ended. It could be a perfect spring day, sunny and sixty or so degrees, and Matt and I could be at one of those outside bars with Zach and the others, talking about all of the TV shows from when we were growing up, and then, suddenly, I would feel it. The cold would spread from my chest to my limbs, and my body would go numb. I could never explain that feeling, not even to Matt. It was like I was watching myself smile, watching myself talk to everyone, and yet I wasn’t really there at all, trapped instead in a winter inside my body.

I turned the corner of the stairs, and I could see part of the kitchen and part of the couch. No signs of him. He wasn’t there. My hands started to shake and my breathing became shallow. I took the last step onto the floor, and now I could see fully. He was not downstairs. In my head, he found every possible way to die. I saw him frozen to death in the middle of a forest, his body glowing blue as pretty snowflakes landed slowly on his still form. I saw him lifeless on the side of the road, like roadkill, with parts of his body flattened down, parts of his body sticking out at wrong angles, his neck almost perpendicular to the rest of him.

Or he was somewhere in the woods, bleeding out on the ground from a bullet to the head, barely breathing, the rest of his body shuddering as it struggled to stay alive, his eyes searching through the trees above him and seeing nothing. I ran upstairs to my room, found my phone and called him.

“Hi, this is Matt, I couldn’t get to the—” I hung up before he could finish. I texted him, “Where are you?” but my phone told me the message wasn’t received. My breaths became quick and jagged. I felt myself becoming lightheaded. I tried to remind myself that he does this all the time. He never charges his phone, and so it always runs out of battery, and he never feels that he has to charge his phone immediately. He never once thinks of me, even though he knows how I get when I can’t get a hold of him. I thought of calling his friends in case he had gone over to talk to one of them, upset but not wanting to wake me. But I didn’t want to bother them. After all, I knew I was probably being irrational, and I didn’t want them to think I was crazy. I knew some of them already did, anyway. So I resolved to check every room instead, running around, looking in closets and under beds, as if he were a child or a dog that had slipped out of my grasp.

There were no signs of him in the house and no signs that he had left. It was like he had disappeared into nothingness. I had to call 55

one of his friends; I didn’t know what else to do.

Zach picked up on the last ring. “Yes?” he said, sounding confused. His voice was barely discernible, raspy from sleep.

“Is Matt with you?”

“It’s four in the morning, why would Matt be with me? He’s not with you?”

“No–I don’t know, he’s not here. He went to sleep here but I–I don’t know where else he could be.”

Zach paused for a moment, then asked, “You checked the bathroom?”

“Of course I did.”

“Are you sure he’s not outside smoking?”

I didn’t respond.

“Listen, Katie, I’m tired. I’m sure he’s there somewhere. Just find him, and text me when you do, okay?”

I hung up. He didn’t understand. None of them did. But maybe he was right about Matt being outside. I ran to the door on the side of the house where he usually smoked. Barefoot, coatless, I opened the door to the freezing night and felt the snow beneath my feet. I looked around for silhouettes in the darkness. No Matt. Fuck Zach. But I lingered outside in the cold. It felt like the air could freeze my thoughts, take away my anxiety, and I would still see the images of Matt lying dead in a ditch–– his stomach open to the world, hungry bugs crawling inside of him. I focused on the numbness taking over my bare feet, my mind empty. The sky held a faint glow, reminding me that the morning was coming soon.

I stood there, arms crossed, shivering, staring into the snow, hoping I would hear Matt’s voice calling for me to come inside: “What are you doing out there? You’ll catch a cold. Quick, come in.” And then he would wrap me in his arms, even as my cold skin hurt for him to touch. He would shut the door, say something about the cost of heating, tell me he was sorry he had kept me up, he was sorry I hadn’t known where he was. He would tell me to come up to bed so that we could finally sleep, because he was feeling much better now. And the sound of the fan would mix with his breathing, and I would feel safe from my nightmares knowing he was next to me.

I opened my eyes and felt that my fingers were numb now, too.

But I was unable to move. What was I supposed to do now? His other 56

friends would act the same as Zach if I called, and the police would just tell me to wait, that he hadn’t been missing long enough for them to do anything. To wait was unbearable, unthinkable, yet it was all I had left.

I walked along the path of cigarettes until I was inside our empty, quiet living room, and then I realized what should have been obvious all along. I looked at the couch, the rumpled-up blanket and the pillow on top of it. It had been used recently. And the cigarettes! I had never known him to litter. He always disdained littered cigarette butts, and he never smoked more than one at a time. So who had he been smoking with? Maybe it was Rachel. He kept saying she was one of the only reasons he went to work anymore. Rachel, with her jokes and her humor, apparently she somehow made it all better.

And what if he had come downstairs to watch TV on the couch, and then decided to sleep there, and then she had texted? Or called? Of course she would call in the middle of the night, because when else would she be calling? She’d wanted him from the moment she saw him, and she’d been trying, every hour of every day, to steal him from me. And so she’d come over, and they’d talked, or maybe even held each other there, on that couch, on our couch, and then she had asked if he had any cigarettes, which is such a classic goddamn move, I mean there’s such an intimacy in sharing cigs and when he holds the lighter up to her and she inhales and their eyes lock what else are they supposed to do?

What else is he supposed to do but betray me? So he’d gone to her place, I bet, or somewhere else far away, they’d ripped off each other’s clothes in the passion that they tried to hide every day at work—the passion he tried to hide from me, as if I didn’t know something was off in the way he never talked about work anymore.

He didn’t have the guts to call things off, to tell me he had never really loved me in the first place. I looked around and realized the living room was in shambles. Everything was a mess, the couch pillows were thrown everywhere, all of the furniture was misplaced. It was almost as if there had been a struggle––she must’ve tried to kill him, I realized, and it was clear he had fought back.

I could have called the police, but what good would they have been? They would have just written me off as crazy. Then again, everyone knows from those murder mysteries that the police are never 57

the ones who actually find the murderer. It was all up to me, now.

And the clues were all in front of me, though they were scattered.

The cigarette butts, the blanket and pillow, the furniture rearranged.

But maybe these were all the wrong clues. Maybe all I needed to know was everything he had already shown me. He was the one who always stayed late at work, he was the one that didn’t notice when I got a haircut or bought a new, sexy bra, he was the one who never asked me how my day was going. And maybe that was all I needed to know.

There was that one night, about a month ago, when he had been late to dinner and he hadn’t even texted me. Then he had kept on talking about Rachel from work, and I knew they used to hook up, even though he never told me they did. I knew it was true, and he just kept talking about her or other bullshit office stuff and I just kept pretending like I cared and he didn’t ask me about anything, he didn’t ask me about my day, he didn’t apologize for being late, and all I could think about was him and Rachel fucking in his office. Maybe that’s why he had been late in the first place, maybe that’s what he had been doing, maybe that’s why he seemed so disheveled. Disgusting. And I had to eat a whole dinner with him like that, as he put the steak in his mouth, and I thought about where his mouth had been, where his hands had been. And afterward, afterward, because I never said a word about anything, about how I knew what he had done––and he always liked having sex after those expensive romantic dinners––he can’t even make it to the bedroom, he ends up bending me over the kitchen table. I imagine that I’m Rachel, and I wonder if he fucks me like he fucks her, if he pushes her face into the table like he does mine, and I find myself getting even more turned on, imagining the office around us, imagining I’m wearing that tight pencil skirt I know she wears as he fucks me, hand over my mouth to keep me from screaming, keeping us from screaming, and my body is shaking and I can’t yell for fear our coworkers will hear us. Knowing he’s with somebody makes it even better, that I’m taking him from her, that I’m better than her, that he wants me more than her. And that was better than any physical pleasure.

There were times when he would fuck me so roughly that I would feel agony from inside that made spots appear underneath my eyelids and make my body go numb and rigid because all there was was pain and nothing, nothing else, and then I didn’t know if I was screaming 58

from pain or from pleasure. Sometimes I think he liked it. Seeing me underneath him, trapped, knowing that even if I wanted to, even if I was suffering completely, I wouldn’t be able to stop him. Maybe I would like that, too. To have him underneath me, my hands clenched around his throat, as he could do nothing but choke as his eyes begged for air, begging me to give him what he wanted. Or my fingernails digging into his back, breaking the skin, drawing groans out of him, letting the blood seep from him so that the next morning the only one bleeding would be him. Not me.

I could feel the heat rise to my cheeks even though I was completely alone. I shook the thought away and looked around the messy living room, to the window facing the backyard. Snow was falling––the soft, powdery kind that lands so that you can see the tiniest intricacies of nature, created accidentally, unknowingly. I wanted to be surrounded by it, I wanted to be cold, to wash away any memories. More than anything, I wanted a smoke. I took a pack of menthols and a lighter from the table in the living room and stepped into the white outside.

With the first inhale, I felt like the house had disappeared behind me, and there was no Matt. There had never been any Matt, and I didn’t have to worry about where he had gone or if he was going to text back. I was just alone. If I looked up, there were hundreds of white snowflakes that seemed almost like they were hovering just above my head, as if they had frozen in the sky.

I wanted to drift off inside the snow, to be wrapped up in it, and allow it to make me numb forever. Maybe Matt had the same thought.

Maybe he was out there, somewhere in the dark, somewhere in the snow, letting the weight of it press down on him and send him to sleep.

If he wasn’t inside, he had to be out there. Maybe even beyond the trees, closer to the horizon. I knew I could go out and find him there, nestled in the snow. If I could find him, maybe I could forgive him, whether he had gone to betray me or to sleep. Maybe I could still love him.

Even if I didn’t find him, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to go out and be covered in the snow. It could be my blanket, and maybe I could finally go to sleep. I could look into the darkness and invite it into my dreams, stop feeling, stop thinking, and be only cold.

I walked into the snow, and the quiet followed me.

59

Snow Dancers Claudia Mak

60

At the Cody Rodeo Tamar Bordwin

The fever of the bulls behind their gates— hot breath on blue iron bars; seething in the mud, splattered and steaming; throbbing red crayon lines personified.

Perched on the topmost bars of the bull cages, a row of blue-jeaned cowboy hats sit in wait, twisting now and again to look anywhere but down at the hoof-churned mud into which they spit so indifferently.

Later, when the bull riders have washed the mud from their bruised skin and the rodeo clown has gone home to beat his wife, no one will remember the itchiness of this in-between moment.

They will remember how the bodies of the bull riders fell, like skeins of wool, headlong into the mud.

But I am here now. Look: A cool drizzle descends and the cowboy hats turn upwards, laughing, pressing down hard on the black, hairy nausea that bucks wildly in their flannel-cloaked torsos.

They must make it through this moment, the one right before, one-by-one, they lower themselves onto the slick backs of the animals that bulge and flex like taffy and, with the raw Wyoming night on their faces, watch the gates swing dreadfully open.

61

COMMANDS

Katelyn Reichheld Smile, though the cup of night and need is wet and empty except for a few drops.

Let them live in your mouth’s corner.

Lie if you’d like; nothing that has belonged to men before will ever again.

Stand before the willing day and beat the dirt that has been salted and eat again the sprout that is curled in your belly— for you will not be hungry— you will self-suffice.

62

They Sometimes Call Me Crazy Justin Frasier

They sometimes call me crazy It happens when they see me put lithium in my mouth So that I can remain docile and tamed Mama loves me different since the diagnosis She walks on eggshells She no longer yells at me to take the trash out Or to clean the dishes She thinks of me as a porcelain doll in a world Full of swinging hammers Mama loves me differently ever since the diagnosis She asks if I’m okay more often.

Mama, why are you afraid of me?

I know bipolar is a scary term But I promise I won't follow in my father’s footsteps.

I won’t slam your head against the kitchen counter When I come home drunk. I won’t choke you at night.

Mama, why are you afraid of me?

63

Dean Street

Lauren Michelle

64

Haze

Aylish Flahaven Drinking dad’s diluted beer under yellow rays the Deluge of vitamin shed light to the flaxen colored strangers in the yard Under the deteriorating wood swing and beside the play-set turned chicken coop Enough of light Enough of the contrived of the Particles who makes particles?

Rows upon air upon rows of the radiation we gloat in as if this atmosphere isn’t completely ad-libbed.

65

Kathy the Beluga (Monologue) Zachary Troyanovsky

(Lights up on CYRUS laying on a therapist’s couch. The therapist is a man with sorrowful eyes. There is a bird cage with a lovebird in the corner of the office.)

CYRUS: When I was a kid (pause) I lived with my grandparents in Brighton Beach for a few years. My parents were just starting out so they couldn’t really afford an apartment big enough for a kid so it just kind of made sense. Brighton’s a fun place for a kid, too, y’know? There’s Coney Island and the beach (pause) and there’s the aquarium. I think the Brighton Beach aquarium really doesn’t get enough recognition. I mean, yeah, it’s gone a bit downhill recently, and really the whole boardwalk’s kind of gone to shit I mean all the hot dog stands are Nathan’s now but it’s, y’know, it’s still got charm. When I was a kid and my grandparents couldn’t figure out what to do with me they’d drop me at the aquarium for a few hours and I’d kind of just hang around. There was this, uh...beluga whale, there.

I guess that might be why the whole thing kind of went to shit— y’know, cause Kathy passed awa—umm, the whale (pause) Kathy the whale died in 2004, at 38. I didn’t even really know about it 'til, like, a year ago, and I hadn’t thought about her in a while. I mean I guess I never really thought about her. She died when I was 5, so I wasn’t ever really thinking about the whale when I saw her but I do remember, I remember seeing her. Y’know I read a story awhile back about a beluga whale getting transferred to Georgia which is when I first thought about it again, I guess, but then I read a little more and yeah, no, she umm—she died.

But I remember I would just stand up against the glass and loo—and, y’know beluga whales are weird because they have a lot of kind of human features, like they, umm, look like they have abs and have been sometimes known to, like, imitate human voices in the wild...uhh, not that I could ever hear it, cause there’s like a big thing of glass or whatever, but I don’t know, I remember Kathy 66

really—I’m sorry do you mind if I just call her the whale? Cause I know that she has a name but I never really knew her name so it feels anachronistic, kind of—I don’t know that’s not really the word but I think you...you understand what I’m saying, yeah?

So if it’s okay, then umm, yeah. The whale would come up to the glass and smile at me a lot (chuckles a little) but I umm, read in the article in the Times, it's from 2004 but I just read it, that umm, the whale smiled all the time. That was kind of upsetting I guess, I don’t know. It’s like you go your whole life feeling special 'cause a whale smiled at you and suddenly mainstream media just tears everything away from you, y’know? I guess I just wish I’d been more aware of what was happening. Or, or I guess I wish that either that happened or that I was less aware, y’know?

Like, if it all just stayed a dreamlike memory then at least it’d be mine. (takes a deep breath) But I have to face reality as often as I can. Kathy the beluga whale was euthanized at the Coney Island aquarium at the age of 34. She outlived her father and her son. She died alone in her undersized tank, surrounded by underpaid employees.

67

Untitled

Mahtab Hasnath

68

I Tell Him Stories of the Mountains Claudia Mak

69

Break-up Poem (The Smart Thing) Amy Milin

Hey there, soon-to-be stranger.

I wish you'd ask more questions, now.

There's a lot still left for me to say, like how you don't have to cry so much.

You can be like me: put off the feeling, stay awake until you have to sleep, enjoy the next few weeks. Enjoy snuggling limbs instead of pillows, snacking late at night to giggles, without shame, having someone to pick your teeth for you–– neglecting all the new music, with all its praise, in favor of our endless trade of soothing sounds.

You don't have to cry, not now.

Remember what I told you: we still watch TV 'til late, and sleep in the same bed, and go to Walmart, taking turns at taking far too long. We still make jokes in baby talk; I scratch your head and back; there is no need to panic, love, we still have time to spare.

We still have time, do not cry yet, give me one more week at least before I cede to tears.

70

I keep imagining the day I first see you as a stranger, pulses jumping from a distance and surrounded by our friends.

I've pictured myself squeezing you, soft smile, calling you sweetheart with tender confidence, like nothing terrible has happened.

I’ve wondered if we'll sleep together, if we'll talk a lot, or if we'll keep it safe and straight, polite.

What I know is I won't mind so much when you miss the latest headlines, forget to call your father back, and ask me the wrong questions or speak too slow, too soft to hear.

71

Ulysses

Seth Westerman James Joyce once said something like "It took me ten years to write Ulysses, it should take you ten years to read it."

What a moron.

I'm not reading this shit.

72

[folio]

A collection of art and letters Skidmore College, 2019-2020 73