Folio Literary Magazine: 2019 Edition

folio

a literary magazine

2019

Submit art and writing to folio@skidmore.edu

folio literary magazine

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

The Staff

Editor-in-Chief... Amy Milin Assistant Editor...

Samantha Mackertich

Treasurer... Anastasia Momoh Graphic Design... Amy Milin

Faculty Advisor... April Bernard

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Special thanks to... Jeffrey Dingler Theodore Rosenthal Sophia Hagstromer Jeremy Curran

Brendan Wright

Christian Eid

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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 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.

It's never too early to submit! Get ahead by sending your work in over the summer––we're already accepting submissions for the next edition. To submit, send your work as an attachment to folio@skidmore.edu. Multiple submissions are accepted and encouraged.

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.

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Letter from the Editor

I would love to begin by telling you about Folio's long, esteemed history here at Skidmore: who founded the magazine and when, how it's changed over the years, and how integral we've been to the community. But the fact is, I don't actually know any of those things––no one ever told me. I came to all the meetings my freshman year, the editors were graduating, and so I was selected to take their place. And that was that.

I have often wished that Folio had a clearer legacy here at Skidmore. A literary magazine should be, theoretically, a vital part of the learning community at a liberal arts college.

After all, it is the only real outlet for students to share their creative work outside of the classroom, without (necessarily) any input from professors or the administration. And true, many students know about Folio, and excitedly reach out to submit their work and attend our open mics every year.

However, I'm painfully aware that there is also a significant portion of the student body that has never heard of us––or that doesn't care.

So I'm writing this to tell you why you should care.

First of all, I really do encourage you to read through as much of this magazine as you can, because the work of our peers is truly impressive. In fact, I find that the strength of our submissions is sometimes a source of despair––we are only one of many colleges, and we receive only a fraction of the creative writing that's happening on this campus. And so I worry: if our own tiny pool is this strong, how can any of us hope for real success in the highly competitive world of creative writing? How can it be fair that so many incisive, diverse insights will never see the light of day, as so many aspiring writers pack it up and sigh their way to, like, law school or something?

But I know that, in the end, I shouldn't despair. It turns 6

out that the point of our hard work, and the point of our critical and creative thought, is not that it earns us widespread recognition or acclaim. Or at least, it doesn't have to be. And I say that not because I don't think we should try, but because I know that even some of the most talented writers featured in this magazine will never try their hand at creative work again after college. And that is definitely a sad thing. But that sad thing does not have to cancel out the importance of what we're doing here, for the same reason that I would be thrilled to read even the most embarrassing, awkward poem you could send us.

This is what I believe: creative writing is transformative.

Writing it can teach you about yourself and challenge you to think critically about the world and others. Reading it can open you up to otherwise unimaginable paths of empathy, and the work of your peers can expose you to the incredible depths you had no idea they possessed. Nothing can teach us more about the world than experiencing it through someone else. Or at least that's what I think, and I have this platform to tell you that because, you know, I came to all the meetings.

So in the absence of an inherited legacy for Folio, here is the one I choose. Our creative work can contain all the things that are so difficult to express in plain language, in our everyday lives, in casual social settings. That is why this––what you are about to read––matters. As young people, as creative people, and as members of a community, this is one of the most important ways that we can talk to each other.

Read these works and know that your peers are thinking just as deeply as you are, feeling as deeply as you are, that they're actively processing the world around them and struggling to make sense of it. I hope you find that comforting––I know that I do.

- Amy Milin, Editor-in-Chief 7

Contents

Prose and Poetry After Husayn..................................Zeynep Inanoglu...............10 Shavasana......................................Katelyn Reichheld...........11 I Think You're Supposed to Laugh....August Rosenberg............12 Keep it Down.................................Harrison Winrow..............13 Exeter, NH.....................................Katelyn Reichheld............14 Can Girls Even Cum?....................Sarah Jones.......................16 Persephone....................................Delaney Russell................23 Muscle. Pink and Striated..............Harrison Winrow..............24 Adam ............................................Zeynep Inanoglu...............25 Ret. Pvt. Alex Singer.....................Oliver Little......................27 Poem for Mom...............................Ella Fishman.....................28 On My Fourth Birthday..................Delaney Russell................29 Reassembling Flowers..................Nicole Wong....................30 Sour End ........................................Katelyn Reichheld............32 An Empty Bliss.............................Zachary Troyanovsky........34 There You Are...............................August Rosenberg.............37 Our Morning Names.....................Amy Milin.........................38 North Woods Sonnet.....................Tamar Bordwin..................39 Drive.............................................Oliver Little........................40 8

Visual Art Untitled I.......................................Ben Hayes...............................26 Untitled II.....................................Ben Hayes...............................31 Generations..................................Amy Milin..............................33 Freelander.....................................Seth Westerman.......................49 Untitled III....................................Ben Hayes...............................53 Mouth...........................................Jules Evens.............................56

Cover Art Jules Evens

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After Husayn

Zeynep Inanoglu In fear of sickness I look to the blue and green of my veins, and think of the smell of toothpaste, and hot water spilling

in our summer home, where my father’s

father lay in the hours of the heat

his skins white, like the bones

they wrapped around, the apricots from the curled trees

in the rose garden.

my guilt is this: a childish fear to be held

in what was left of his arms

paling sun spots, a loss of olive

from the skin, the skin

which looked to mine, to the children of its children, of its children.

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Shavasana

Katelyn Reichheld I must let my body become an anchor sunk into the wood-paneled floor so warm with the just set sun and the humming energy of bodies neatly lined one by one, on either side of me I sense the two pairs of eyes closed, their palms up, soaking in vibrations of the earth below our chests drawing the same half circle in the air with measured breaths falling, creating an abcess that is observed then filled by our rising, round breasts; if candles could take breaths and say words they would be as haunted as the wind putting songs in trees like it does boats on seas; a room empty of things except strangers lying with an awake intensity, listening to everythings and nothings; the kinship of blood, muscle, body and mind as they align and we float up above to transcend time.

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I Think You're Supposed to Laugh August Rosenberg

The Buddha spoke in riddles.

The truth is, he was a funny motherfucker.

So laugh at his plentiful figure; laugh at his shiny, baby-bald head.

Laugh at the smelly abyss, the void he described that doesn’t wash its pits, and roll in the mud of suffering.

Roll like a naughty pig.

You see, the sky is high off its ass, with winking clouds and oblivious birds.

Up there is the merciless god, watching Netflix and eating KFC— too tired to condemn today.

Down here is death: who just never found anyone to make love with, to create life with, and who never meant any harm.

Laugh at your high pitched cackling giggle. Laugh at the nonsensical platypus and the wisdom I think I am spewing. The Buddha spoke in riddles, and even my ingenuity doesn’t quite get it. But laugh.

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Keep it Down

Harrison Winrow they will tell you

to keep it down past nine o’clock. quiet. hours’ ends chiming

off in the grandfather beauty that is equal parts intimidation and wisdom. be silent.

son, sometimes you must remain silent.

when dinner guests are over

for goat cheese and applesauce.

when there is that one

particular rhythm knock on the door.

when papa says, quiet mouse still mouse ready, set, go. if you are in the garage, you and those medical metal instruments of yours, boy. keep it down. i will tell you. enough is enough. son.

quiet mouse

still mouse

ready, set, go.

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Exeter, NH

Katelyn Reichheld I was born like a bullet— too soon, too sharp and left mom a bloody bag torn into like trash.

Now, we journey back, backtrack as she traces on her palm, the map to the past, through the forsythia and thickets of holly berries where our bare beach legs are pricked by mosquitos’ thorns.

Somewhere in her hometown there is a plot of forest.

The path is lined in great oaks with as many rings in their trunks as a stone thrown in a lake creates.

There, twelve stones mark twelve graves, way back in those woods where no one has been to leave flowers in a hundred years.

No bells toll, but moss grows and wreathes the iron gate, broken open.

Seeing, finally, through the peach-colored glasses of memory, mom sighs. Her homecoming is not nostalgic, rather, ruthless— her way of mourning the movement of time and the way daughters burst out of bellies and set off running back defiantly to the kind of lives their mothers have only just escaped from, the kind of lives they wanted to save their daughters from knowing.

Yet I feel bounded here, safe.

But I can feel the negative potential of my feet going nowhere they haven’t already been ancestrally.

I’m just a daughter who is too impatient

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to recognize the sacrifices of her mother.

She has not come to mourn her old life but to warn me against finding sanctuary in the familiar, in a man. She wants me to find a home in a place where even hundreds of years later, my own family will come back and mourn me.

Somewhere that’s not like this, somewhere that is not here.

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Can Girls Even Cum? Sarah Jones

Their voices haunted her as she tried to fall asleep, following her long after class ended. Julie never knew how to block them out. At school, she overheard their voices as they walked by her in the hallway, hunched over in their small groups. Sometimes they whispered, especially if there were teachers nearby. But if there were other kids around, they became louder and braver. She overheard them talk about the alcohol they could get away with drinking, sneaking it out of parent’s liquor cabinets or from older siblings. She didn’t understand why. She hated the taste of alcohol. She’d only tried it one time, by accident, when she had taken too big a swig of her Dad’s whiskey. She had thought it was water but it wasn’t and he had laughed as her face twisted up in disgust.

Sometimes, the boys would complain about how tired they were because they had stayed up the night before playing some video game. She never understood why you would stay up late on a school night. Her mom always made sure her lights were off by 10 pm.

But mostly, the boys would talk about girls.

Fuck, look at Anna running. I bet she’s not wearing a bra. What cup size do you think Anna wears? Gotta be at least a C. I bet she’s a D.

Sometimes Julie liked to watch them, huddled on the bleachers at recess, as they watched the girls walk along the track. The girls wore the shortest shorts they could get away with, considering the dress code. Julie's mother wouldn’t let her get away with that.

You’re going to school wearing that skirt? Do you want people to think you’re like that? Show some respect for yourself.

Sometimes Julie listened to her. Sometimes she didn’t. She could get away most days with wearing some kind of low-cut shirt or buttoned shirt and cover up any cleavage before she left school, and then when she got to school she could always readjust. She wanted the guys to play the same games with her as they did with the other girls, like trying to flick pieces of paper down their shirts. She knew she had enough cleavage—more than the other girls, anyway. The girls talked about the boys too, leaning over to one another in math class.

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I heard Peter kissed Rachel behind the bleachers last week. Do you think John likes me? I heard he might like Katie. Do you think he’ll ask her out?

Julie wasn’t usually a part of these discussions. It wasn’t that she was ugly or didn’t have any friends. She had some friends. They just weren’t the kinds of girls that got kissed by John or got invited to Katie’s pool parties. Anyways, she wondered if the girls who wore short shorts would still like the guys if they heard everything she did.

I heard Mickey has a micropenis. He’s never gonna get laid. Can girls even cum? Not with that tiny dick of yours. You know, in Orthodox Judaism, the rabbis suck the foreskin off. No, they don’t.

Yes, they do.

She thought about Jake as she tried to go to sleep. She placed her hands under her shirt, onto her stomach. She traced the warmth and fat with her fingers, moving upwards to feel the sweat underneath her breasts. She placed one hand on each breast and tried to imagine they were Jake’s hands. Would he think they were big enough? Too lopsided? Too small? She sighed and turned over. Again she heard them.

I bet Becca’s really into giving blowjobs. She seems like a slut. I bet she’d take it in the ass. Why is anal better? It’s tighter. Do you think it feels good for them? Oh, yeah. But they don’t let on that it feels good. They don’t want you to know they like it.

She opened her eyes looked at the darkness around her, watching how it seemed to move and bend in her vision. She held her hand out in front of her and tried to identify each finger, though she could barely see them. As she closed her eyes, the lull of her white noise machine filled her head. She saw an image of Jake, dressed like he had been at school: grey sweater zipped all the way up, hood covering his shaggy black hair that always looked at least a little greasy.

And yet, when the image in her head smiled at her, she felt a tickling sensation in her stomach as she lay in bed. She knew that the boys touched themselves. Alone in their rooms, late at night, slipping their hands underneath the waistbands of their boxers. It seemed like they knew what to do.

You know why my right arm is stronger than my left arm, Julie? You know…

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Julie tried to go to sleep, but she couldn’t get Jake’s face out of her mind. The tickling sensation in her stomach began to grow, and she thought about what Jake’s lips on her lips would feel like.

The pulsing between her legs felt like electricity and heat forming inside of her. It felt like pleasure. She wanted to discover it, to see if there was a way to make it build. She knew watching Youtube videos was one way, and she had done it before. But last time her mom had found her watching and told her if she had any questions about the human body she could ask her anytime. But her mom had never even considered that she hadn’t been watching to understand the human body. Julie understood the human body. Last year she had sat through enough explanations of anatomy to last her a lifetime, but she still didn’t know what would make her feel good.

She had touched herself before, but she didn’t know much beyond that. None of the girls ever talked about it. She wondered if she was the only girl who thought about it and watched the videos and touched herself.

She wondered if that made her a slut. Would Jake think she was a slut? But Jake probably did it too. Didn’t all the boys? She thought about Jake touching himself, and again she felt the throbbing inside her that made her reach down to where her skin parted. She went slowly, with her right hand, reaching with her middle finger to touch what she could.

Her mom would think she was a slut.

You should wait.

She shook the thought away and focused on the feeling that was building. She asked her body questions with her fingers, tried to find the secrets hidden in her skin. Sometimes she would hit upon a spot that felt better than the others and linger. Sometimes she went slower, sometimes faster, but always she grew bored. It felt good, but never good enough. She knew she needed something to watch, something to distract her mind. Otherwise, with just her fingers, her mind would drift off to other things: homework and the next test and what her parents would think if they knew she was doing this. She knew where to go looking on her phone, and so she searched until she found a video that she thought might be good.

Hot blonde swallows cum after getting fucked doggystyle She wondered how the girl had gotten there, on her knees. With a 18

penis so deep into her mouth, Julie didn’t see any way that it could be comfortable. Did the girl even like it? She was probably a slut if she wanted to do this for the rest of her life. Julie decided that whenever she gave a guy a blowjob, she wouldn’t let him touch her hair or force her head in any way.

Julie tried to focus on the video. As she tried to imagine herself replacing the girl in the video, she felt something. She saw herself as the girl, and then she thought of Jake as the guy, and then it was just the two of them moving together, only her and Jake. She tried to imagine the pressure of it, of Jake, and as she did, she began to move her finger in circles.

Can girls even cum?

She went around and around and around, focusing on the video and the sounds and the movement until she felt like she wasn’t there anymore. She wasn’t a girl or herself or anybody but a body.

All she knew was what she needed, and she asked her body for it, until there was nothing but want and the feeling between her thighs growing stronger every second. She begged it to release her. She begged the ceiling and the floor and the walls, mouth open, eyes closed, heart pounding. And just as suddenly as it had happened, it drifted away until it was gone and she dropped back down to earth, panting.

…

The next day at school, things felt different. Julie sat with her knees pressed together underneath her desk and her arms close to her chest, snapping the hairband on her wrist.

“...last night?” Julie’s friend Anna was talking to her.

A feeling of panic started to spread through her chest. “Sorry, what?”

“Did you do the homework last night?”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry, do you want my answers?” Julie started to pull her homework out of her bag.

“No, no, it’s fine. I won't copy unless I'm desperate. I don’t do it all the time…right?" Anna’s eyes were wide and concerned. "I don't do it all the time."

“No, yeah. You’re good. No worries.”

“Okay everyone, pay attention. Get off your phones. I mean it, Wiley.” Ms. Turner, Julie’s teacher, was at the head of the classroom, 19

writing on the whiteboard. Julie didn’t notice what equations she was drawing, nor did she care. Her focus kept drifting away to the night before, and suddenly she saw Jake again, and he was the one touching her, and she felt herself drifting away into what felt more real than the classroom.

Julie walked to her next class, still in a daze. She didn’t remember much of geometry, because she had spent the entire time daydreaming about Jake and her together. When she saw him in his usual seat, right next to hers, she felt the heat rise to her cheeks. She felt like all of her thoughts were written on her face, that Jake would know she had been thinking about him just by looking at her.

“Hey, Julie, uhh, how was your weekend?”

“It was good, how was yours?”

“Pretty good.” Jake looked down at the pencil he was holding, rubbing it between his fingers. “Well anyways, did you hear about Sophia’s pool party this weekend?”

Julie blinked. “Uh, yeah."

“You should come.”

“Oh.” Julie realized that this wasn’t the proper response. “I mean, yeah, I think I might.”

“Cool.”

“Cool.”

The rest of class was indistinguishable to Julie––she couldn’t help but drift off into a thousand different scenarios involving her and Jake at the pool party, perhaps alone in a room, maybe in the pool when everyone else had gone back inside.

After class it was time to go outside to the track for recess and sit on the bleachers with Claire until the 30 minutes were up. But before she could catch up to Claire, Jake had come up next to her.

“What’s up, Julia? I hope I see you this weekend.”

“We’ll see.”

“Yeah, I don’t know for sure yet either. Hey, but if you go, do you think you’ll wear a bikini? You should.”

Jake was smiling teasingly at her, and she realized now that there had been many other times when she had seen his eyes dart down to her chest like that, but she had never thought he was looking to see her cleavage. Maybe she had some, but not as much as Anna or Katie.

“Yeah, you know, you have a pretty nice body, you should show it off more.”

Julie felt the need to pull her shirt up but also couldn’t help but smile at the compliment. It felt good. He saw her. “Thanks.”

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“Actually, you wanna continue this conversation behind the brick wall?”

“Uh, yeah, sure.”

Behind the brick wall was where all the couples went to kiss.

Some people even smoked behind there.

Soon it was just the two of them, and Julie leaned up against the wall. “So, what did you want to talk about?”

“We don’t have to talk.” Jake smirked at her. He placed his hand on her thigh, by the end of her skirt. Her breath hitched. She didn’t know how to tell him to stop or even if she wanted him to stop, because maybe it was fine. Maybe it was good to get these first experiences out of the way so she would know what to do next time, when it was with someone she liked.

He started to move his hand back and forth, rubbing her thigh. He leaned in so close she could feel his breath on her neck, and her skin tingled. Suddenly, she felt something wet on her collarbone––was he kissing her? Or licking her? She didn’t know.

It didn’t feel pleasant, but she also didn’t feel any need to tell him to stop. It wasn’t so bad. She felt his hand move slowly up her thigh and underneath her skirt. She started to think that maybe she should have started shaving down there, and that he wouldn’t like it. He was rubbing his thumb so, so close to where the throbbing had started up again, and she was getting impatient.

But before she could even think about what was happening, his finger was inside her underwear, pushing into her. This wasn’t what she had done the night before. The only other thing that had ever been inside of her was a tampon. And this was nothing like a tampon. This was less rough, but the unexpectedness of it had caught her off guard and it definitely didn’t feel good. But, just like the feeling of his mouth on her neck, it didn’t feel unpleasant.

And then he started to move inside her, thrusting with his finger. That hurt. She winced in pain, but it didn’t hurt enough to say anything. The more he did it, the less it hurt–she was getting used to the sensation. But it didn’t start to feel good. She wondered when this would be over.

He placed her hand on his crotch, and she could feel warmth and hardness there, bigger than she expected. Suddenly she was afraid they were going to do it right there. That’s what they did in porn, right? Right out in public? Fucking her against the brick wall? She became very aware of the cold roughness on her back, the movement of his finger inside her, the wetness on her neck. She opened her eyes and stared at the wall across from her, coated in 21

awful, sticky gum. Every year the school cleaned it up, and every year it became covered again in blue and purple and pink and white.

She was surprised to notice a yellow spot too, and wondered what kind of gum ended up that color.

She hoped nobody saw her here. Thinking about it, she felt a disgust deep inside her body––for what she was doing, for what was being done to her. She whispered to Jake, “What if someone sees us?”

He removed his mouth from her neck to answer, “Don’t worry, they won’t.” Then he paused. “Maybe you’re right.” He pulled his finger out of her. “Hey. I’ll see you on Saturday, huh?”

She found herself blushing, and could only answer, “Yeah.”

“Great. See ya.”

As he walked away from her to rejoin his friends, she let out a sigh of relief.

She looked at the chewed-up pieces of gum, flavorless, waiting to be scraped away.

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Persephone

Delaney Russell In case you’ve forgotten, I’m still here, making annual trips Between Earth and underworld And yes, Hell is hot as ever.

During my months of sacrifice, Cerberus suffices as my companion, And in times of boredom, I take to grooming his knotty tufts of fur.

At night, I sweat through terrors, In which I’m coughing up The wet, bloody seeds, Glinting like my hellhounds’ eyes, Over and over,

Never out for good.

Yet, forgiveness, The point of contact between One circle closing And the birth of the next,

The end

And the beginning overlapping, Is my forte.

Spring is

As inevitable as suffering, The rise is

As inevitable as the fall, And time passes like clockwork,

Deftly, like my descent Each summer’s end.

Still, I stand for the survivor, Ascending anew, trying again.

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muscle. Pink and Striated.

Harrison Winrow

To be a Man, march.

On your hands if you can.

We prefer to see them on their hands. some fall.

Yes, some fall. they roll.

Yes, they roll for baffling distances here.

baffling!

Down hills. Then from valleys, scaling bluffs, Roll up to iced summits. At the Mountain’s Peak, the Men will uncurl and stand.

some stay in the fetal position.

Most.

But the Men stand.

And a hairy-chested few will return To their hands. Reciprocal Men.

i like these ones These ones.

The Men that invert their worlds.

Reflection realities welcoming those very few Handstand Men. Earth contorted truth.

the himalayas hanging upside down.

The Himalayas hanging upside down. like bats.

Like bats.

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Adam

Zeynep Inanoglu I want to be The ugly men, that women love To dance with, and cook for.

When my great aunt died, her husband Sat in the house, dumbfounded For he could not make tea, or iron his clothes, or prepare the things he liked The way he liked them.

Like the bear who picks the sweetest fruit from the tree I want to be the father, like a charm Who sweat all day, smoked his cigar, and labored for nothing.

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Untitled I Ben Hayes

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Ret. Pvt. Alex Singer Oliver Little

There’s a metallic taste in my mouth.

Shifting his weight, Alex rolled over for the fourth time since he’d given up on counting sheep. He’d been having strange, difficult dreams lately. He always knew when they were going to come; the metallic taste was a dead-giveaway. No matter how many times he brushed his teeth, it wouldn’t leave the back of his throat.

The old mattress whined with each wheezing breath, so Alex had to concentrate if he wanted to hold still enough and fall asleep. It took three more roll-overs before he finally found rest.

The background rattling of the AC unit rose to a steady crescendo before transcending into machine gun fire. Chaos thrashed Alex from every angle. Throwing the covers from the bed and swinging his legs, Alex planted his feet in the harsh soil. Taking a glance to his left, he darted away from the German trenches gunning at his head. Diving into an empty scoop of earth, Alex commandeered a helmet from one of his fallen comrades. He needed to get a better sense of where he was in the no-man’s land, so he dropped onto his stomach and began a tempered crawl over the throng of bodies.

Bodies. Gunshots. Craters. The cadence of soft thumps in the distance. Ringing. Metallic.

Suddenly a Boche jumped into the pit with Alex. Immediate death match. The German at Alex’s throat. Alex threw all his weight on the German. The two exchanged slugs back and forth, hit for hit.

“He’s out on the lawn again.”

“What? Who?” “The Singer kid. He’s on the front lawn.”

“Christ almighty Marge, come on already. It’s getting late.”

“I’m telling you, he’s on drugs. This is the third time this week.”

“The third time this week what? Get in bed, it’s 11pm.”

“Looks like he’s wrestling with himself again,” Marge scoffed, “damned drugs."

27

Poem for Mom Ella Fishman

I can breathe easily On those days when the windows are shut against the storm, But the door is open So we can smell the fog and watch the rain as it slides off the overhang.

The things I remember are evenings when something is cooking Or we have just eaten And there is music playing and everyone is dancing And no one is doing the dishes.

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On My Fourth Birthday Delaney Russell

Chocolate-glazed hands grip the ribbon of a taut, blue balloon, As the sticky sheen of summer plasters fly-away hairs to my forehead.

My inattentive hand relaxes— the balloon slips upwards, out of reach.

My lungs fold, my eyes go dry, A first in my small life.

An audible heartbeat Bangs in my head, slams in my chest Plugs my throat Threatens to never soften Or slow.

The balloon will suffocate a seagull in Wildwood, or Get tangled in the rainforests of Brazil, Or land in my cousin’s plastic, above ground pool, Miles and miles away.

Bereft, walking home, I see the balloon rising.

Eating dinner, I still see the balloon rising, Going to bed, the balloon still rises, And I rise with it, forever, Terribly, up.

29

On Reassembling Flowers and Other Impossibilities Nicole Wong

A pressed flower carries the fragrance of days long gone. As with memories, the flower grows more fragile with time, its stem dries, its colors fade. Indigo petals fade to muted violet, strewn across yellowed pages. If the flower—now laid bare, stripped of beauty, stripped of life—could blush as it used to do under summer rain, it would. It would weep and pretend its tears were morning dew. It would graze my fingertips and pretend my warmth was sunlight, would wish the creases on my palms were patterns drawn in soft earth. I measure the length from stem to petal, press the flower’s translucent skin against clear adhesive. In an hour, I have laid each fallen petal into place; a halo of lavender against a dying sun. The flower’s soft fragrance kisses the tip of my nose as I seal the flower with a final strip of tape; I cannot return its breath of life, but I can grant it immortality.

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Untitled II Ben Hayes

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Sour End

Katelyn Reichheld You lust over the beginnings; fresh notebooks, pens wet tipped with ink, dark bed of soil sprouted up with seedlings, first kiss missed and landed on the corner of my mouth, putting the car in drive and the map on the dashboard, the preparations all in palm, the afterbirth still in the bathtub and the words only just melted off your tongue.

The middle never strikes us as it takes course. The middle is only ever the now—until now becomes later, time just one big lump on the back of your head— disappearing into the fine details.

But the end—the end is loathing and regret, nostalgia and second guesses, success, the ideas down on paper, the flowers bursting and heavy, the last kiss you deny me, the car ride ended finally, the destination found but one more mile might bring sanity, so you ride one more block around, afraid to leave the same seat that has held your shape for so long.

What is it about the sour end that you want to destroy yet savor?

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Generations Amy Milin

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Everything Everywhere, an Empty Bliss Zachary Troyanovsky

(Lights up on YAKOV, wearing a messenger bag, standing on top of a milk crate with his signature drink in his right hand: tequila in a Poland springs bottle, with the label ripped off. In his left hand is a microphone, which is plugged into an XLR cable that runs about 4 feet long but is cut open at the end.)

(There are cardboard signs surrounding his “stage,” on some of which are written “The End is Here” and “God Has Judged You.” Others have stolen pieces of the big Cirque Du Soleil posters from the subway pasted on them. These signs read “A Night You’ll Never Forget!”, “A Sight to Behold!”, and “The Weirdest Show Not on Broadway!”)

YAKOV: Gather ‘round!

Everybody! (points with his whole body, nearly spilling his drink) You there, with your dick out! Please, put your genitals away and Gather Round!

Because I – (raises his drink as if he’s about to give a toast) I…I have SOMETHING to say and, and…

I WANNA GET IT OUT BEFORE I FORGET, OKAY? (A few people begin to gather around. They are all wearing paper bags with faces like this ( : I ) drawn on.)

(YAKOV pulls a pair of headphones out of his pocket.)

Who here has got music to listen to?

(A couple of people raise their hands.)

Listen to it!

(Some groans come from the audience–apparently, they don’t have headphones.)

Oh Jesus Chr–fine, I’ll do it.

(YAKOV reaches for a speaker in his messenger bag and then takes a few seconds to sync his phone to it. These are the quietest moments 34

in the play. He finally succeeds and “it’s just a burning memory” by The Caretaker begins to play. The album will continue for the rest of the play and progress from stage to stage as the play does the same.)

I’m doing this for you, don’t forget that. I’m doing this for you so that you can remember. Studies have shown that while everything else fades away, we never lose memories of music. This will last forever.

(Long pause) Last year my grandfather wandered out of his room and into this park. We searched for him for hours before I found him, pissing on a tree with his pants down all the way like a fucking preschooler. (pause) We never have to worry about my grandmother wandering 'cause she’s convinced she’s allergic to “millennial air,” so she hasn’t left the house in years.

(YAKOV drops into a squat for a second, then uses the leveraged position to launch himself into a high jump) Every 3 seconds someone loses it. By 2030, 131.5 million people will be in the process of losing it and countless others will have fucking lost it.

Beat.

So, like, what do you do? Do you write music? Do you listen to more music? Do you take pictures every fucking second of every fucking day so you don’t have to suffer through the pain of knowing any moment that yo-you you you ch-cherish you WILL lose?

(YAKOV bends down into a squat and uses his fingers to play with the dried leaves littering the ground. He picks them up one at a time and rubs their ends together until they disintegrate into dust. He does this over and over again. He seems fascinated by the disintegration but completely unfazed by the leaf itself.)

Do you su-submerge yourself in the things which modern science predicts are most likely to preserve your sanity? (long pause) Nietzche once said that “the advantage of a bad memory is that you can enjoy the same good things a few times, for the first time.” (pause) So 35

there's that. Does your imagination fill in the gaps? When an abstract artist loses his mind, what does reality become?

(Lights flicker) Can things be both beautiful and transient at the same time? Maybe things that are beautiful are inherently transient, or vice versa.

(YAKOV rises to his feet and wipes the remaining pieces of leaves off his hands. He walks upstage and holds his arms out as if he is about to bestow something of value upon the audience.)

YAKOV: (sarcastic and exhausted) Because I am certain that, in the tar pit of my inevitable deterioration, I will not be able to make this declaration to you all, I shall make it now. All what follows is true.

(As the lights slowly fade to black, YAKOV slumps back into a seated position against the wall. He puts his hands on his temples and gazes, with his eyes open wide, at the ground. Blackout.)

(The lights flicker back on to reveal YAKOV standing upstage right, watching an older man, positioned downstage left, attempting to urinate on a tree. Lights flicker. Blackout.)

(Lights flicker back on to reveal the same park bench, but YAKOV is laying across the tops of the bench’s dividers and there is a teenage girl in an oversized sweatshirt and suede birkenstocks swing dancing in front of him. Their eyes are locked. Blackout.)

(Lights flicker back on to reveal YAKOV sitting on a rock positioned upstage right, overlooking water. As the lights flicker onto this scene YAKOV begins to rise to his feet, but quickly decides not to and sits back down. Blackout.)

(Lights flicker back on to reveal YAKOV sitting center stage, surrounded by wilted flowers and dead leaves, some of which have been crumbled into pieces, and some of which remain intact. YAKOV is holding his paper bag full of alcohol from earlier. Blackout.)

(This time the lights stay out for a bit. We’re not sure if they’ll ever turn back on again.)

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There You Are

August Rosenberg My hallucinations are smokin’ hot. In the midst of silly schizzy commotion, I find calm in admitting I lost the existential game of beer pong.

I find calm in admitting, with a forceless palm, that there’s nothing I can do.

Because the mysterious monk has spanked me with a yardstick enough that I know it doesn’t hurt. The monk has laughed at my theses enough so I know they are profound. And in the clearness I see your face—otherworldly, but real, and freckled, as can be. And from where I sit, with bad posture, it’s all so pretty.

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Our Morning Names Amy Milin

The birds hold the colors of the morning in their mouths, releasing them in sequence: they sing a spot of yellow, now a blot of blue up to the brightening ether and down below, we speak in breaths.

In the quiet limbless morning, we still live in the clueless ecstasy of cave bodies.

The Sunday glow encircles our names to save them for our midday mouths.

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North Woods Sonnet Tamar Bordwin

When I can shroud myself in fallen trees And perch between their multitude of spines, They let me use their tongue to taste the breeze And give me eyes to see above the pines.

And as I watch, my lap grows thick with leaves And moss. I sit. I cannot close my eyes, For will the woods exist if not perceived?

I am not sure. I do not close my eyes.

Some time last night you came and sat with me.

Beneath your weight the pillowy moss swelled, But I did not yet turn my head to thee.

You dipped a bowl into your chest and held

It, dripping, to my lips, your face so blank.

I took the bowl and closed my eyes. I drank.

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Drive

Oliver Little 128 kph

The dial was straddling E before the motorway, now it had begun to descend below the petrol gauge’s threshold. The further it sank, the more pressure Marcus applied to the accelerator. If he didn’t make it back soon he’d be stuck on the motorway. Help wouldn’t arrive until daybreak. So he laid it to the asphalt, better to go out on burnt rubber than a burnt pyre…Does it only take four kilometers to make five years go away? The sooner I get there, the sooner I’ll find out. Where am I headed? I’m 4 kilometers from home, and I have no destination. Marcus thought for a minute, then turned the radio on. He toyed with the dial until it settled on 104.7 Spire FM, then lowered the volume back to zero. What made it her decision? I paid the bills at the end of every cycle, did she really think she had the authority to walk away? Always distracted with a new discount on last month’s top fashion, or too busy catching up on the telly with her soap operas. I never got a moment with her, except for when we drove someplace. Endless hours behind the wheel, it’s the only time I didn’t have to plaster a smile across my face. She’d wrinkle her nose when I turned Bob Dylan on loud and let out a short giggle whenever his voice broke into dissonance…The memory always made Marcus smile. He cast his eyes from the road to the dashboard, catching a glimpse of a song title before it scrolled off stage left: “—n the Storm, by”…Maybe she never asked to sit in the driver’s seat because I always climbed right in. Next time I’m gonna ask.

105 kph The Vig Rig ran out of steam a quarter of a mile ago, I think at this point it’s just running on pure drive. Every time I check the petrol levels the needle dips lower and lower. Nearly home, now it shouldn’t be too much longer. And what happens then? The car will roll into the driveway, where it’s going to stay until the tank is filled.

That’s okay. After heading inside, it might finally be worth figuring out the cable box. Lauren had a list of films she wanted us to watch, it should take me fifty years to get through all of them. Maybe some grandkids will get to watch a few by my side.

105 kph

Tires panted down the driveway, treading hazily over the gravel. Even after the keys left the ignition, my legs would not move.

Even willing them to, they lay indeterminately. The next time I 40

opened my eyes my body seemed to be floating, one foot at a time, toward the door. My tie slipped off from around my neck, the shirt I had on moments ago lay dead on the floor with the buttons still done.

Someone forgot to take my trainers off. Still, the underside of the pillow is the coolest part. So I flipped it around, melting beneath my covers, and laid my head to rest.

0 kph

Marcus C., 33, of Salisbury, Wilshire, passed away in a suspected traffic collision, in the early hours, Sunday of last week.

Skid marks at the scene suggest the vehicle spiraled out of control, crossing the median directly into a divider. Marcus had no living family members or loved ones. Arrangements to follow.

152 kph

I stopped checking the mirrors. In fact, come to think of it, I’m not even sure whether they’re still there or not. It’s immaterial, I haven’t seen a patrol car––or any other vehicle, for that matter––this entire trip, and neither have I on any of my prior excursions. It’s funny you know, you would think with all the countless hours I’ve driven, all the U-turns, hotboxes, and speedings I’ve pulled behind this wheel, that there would be a summons to show for it. I think I’ll sell this car tomorrow. Bring it around to every dealership in town, tomorrow morning. And if nobody wants him, then in the afternoon I can take it to the nearest landfill. I wonder if they’ll bury the Vig Rig or, like in the cinema, they’ll drop him in a large compactor and reduce him to a cold sheet.

A large metal plate will attach itself to the carriage, lifting the car high into the sky. After completing its rotation, the static fist clenched around the vehicle will release, letting it plummet into the metal compactor. And, slowly, from all sides, the car is crushed. But when the compactor reopens its jaws of life, there the Vig Rig will stand–with some light scratches and a cracked right mirror, sure, but there it will stand. The man working the machine will say, it must have been filled with too many memories.

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Night Nurse !

Harrison Winrow In sterile white everything is white and lonely and medicated. One of sixteen vestal virgins, night nurse !

I asked for wings.

I rang my bell.

I asked for wings, Night nurse !

Not soup. No liquids, tonight.

No pills. I can Use my hardened stools As chalk on the floor Outlining bodies. And on the walls Outlining standing bodies. You, Night nurse !

When you lean over my bed I think of making love to animals And harnessing their howls. For you, Night nurse.

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If Only You Could Understand August Rosenberg

He’s got no friends because he smells like ass, heading down hobo highways, with nothing but a beating brain.

But everyone watches him, wondering from the sidelines about his hidden soul.

He’s the scrawny loner, walking onward with that daze in his eyes.

He never speaks a sound so they put words in his mouth.

But really, inside that bony head, there’s only one thing he’s thinking about: the new 12V Kids Ride-On Truck Car Toy with 3 Speeds, LED Lights, Remote Control, and Auxiliary from Best Choice Products.

In his dreams he could let all his hobo hardship fade into the background, as he roams in his new whip over voluptuous sand dunes.

The crowd gazes as the scrawny loner rides at level 3 speed, into the sunset.

43

A French Press Linnea Harris

The French press was already there when I arrived in the last few hours of February, collecting dust at the corner of the two countertops. Somebody else had presumably purchased it, but there was an implicit understanding in the household that it was mine.

Brewed coffee is “American”––one of the few stereotypes I felt willing to accept without struggle. I thought I needed something to hold onto.

Germans drink their coffee in ways I had always found vaguely pretentious and that often required extensive machinery: a milk frother for cappuccino foam, an espresso machine to leak out thimbles of black liquid into miniature teacup mugs or to pour over milk. I would eventually come to appreciate the jolt I could get from the singular ounces, but there is such comfort in the ritual inherent to a French press: the rinsing of the glass tumbler, the measuring of scoops from a can, the pouring of boiling water over the grounds and the resistance of the plunger against the palm.

My roommates and I did not find it necessary to speak to one another very often, even though we had a pair of mutual languages we could have chosen from. They left little things by way of proving their existence to me: spilled salt on the table, the soft whir and warmth rising off of the dish washer, the closing of the front door as it scraped over the bunched-up doormat. I left the glass French press filled with saturated black clumps of coffee grounds in the sink. It proved to us that I existed.

We shared certain things––spices, toilet paper, space––but not intimate details, including those along the lines of “who broke the French press.” I was still in the jet-lagged phase of adjustment when I came home to find the glass pieces scattered across the counter, the larger ones haphazardly pushed into the trash bin, and smaller particles reduced again to a thin film of dust. The first excursion I made alone–– without my newfound friends to offer company and security on mundane errands or those first awkward social engagements––was to buy a new one. Even more than the first, this one was mine.

My room was an emblem of impermanence. International students streamed in and out at six-month intervals; enough time to get acquainted, but never enough to leave much of a mark. Even the coffee apparatus was but a shadow of existence, for no one planning to stay for the long haul buys a French press. They are far cheaper than the tall, sleek percolators that inhabit the counter spaces of settled 44

homes; less cumbersome, easily replaceable; they themselves are a mark of impermanence and temporality. To purchase a real coffee maker––one with batteries and outlets and buttons––is an admission of commitment. A suspect a hefty Cuisinart drip-coffeemaker would have granted me greater authority in the house, announcing my authority as a definite occupant, but my newfound, definitive ownership of the press allowed me to inhabit a home where before I had left only traces.

The beginning of every day––the grounds, the water, the heat––was a reminder that all was temporary. Morning tasted like oatmeal, bananas, walnuts, and dark roast coffee. I take it black, like my father. The taste lingers long after it’s gone.

…

Drinking coffee in my childhood home was somehow both an act of reverence and extreme selfishness. Pots were drained and prepared at an alarming rate for a family of four––all of us artists, in our own way. We tried to tread quietly on the stairs or in the creaky hallways to minimize our presence, lest the person following realize who poured themselves the last drop and neglected to perk another pot. When friends remark on my coffee consumption, I respond with, “my parents are professors,” as if that answers everything. All of us too are nesters, and tend to quickly return to our hobbit holes after emerging for a refill, and the one personal step that follows: my mother adds half&half, my sister stirs in almond milk, my father microwaves for 30 seconds. I am the only one that makes no waves.

Now, when I return to my parent’s house––the home I’d lived all my life until I didn’t anymore––my mother makes me my own pot before she leaves for her office. The water is poured from the Brita filter into the body of the machine, and Wegman's French Roast grounds are scooped into the reusable filter, ready for me to turn on. This somehow makes me feel less at home; more estranged from the place. I am a guest who need not share in the chaos of morning rituals––in the dance of simultaneous breakfast preparations among silent family members.

…

While making a home in a new country, days passed by without consequence––there was little to lose in a place where we owned nothing, save a few inexpensive appliances and what we had been able to carry on our backs. Wonderful friendships and explosive romance arose on unstable ground that we knew would soon fall 45

away. Something about travelling and the promise of impermanence allowed us to romanticize our present; it allows me to gaze reverently upon the past.

When he started sleeping over, I started making two tumblers of coffee. I think we fit together because we shared an unwillingness to split the single-liter batch in two. I would sneak out in the morning to prepare it, and come tiptoeing back, two mugs clasped by the handles in one hand, the press in the other––a ritual one of us repeated once we had drained the first glass column. He took his black too.

More often than not, waves of liquid spilled over the sides as we jostled each other to fit on my twin-sized bed, staining the white sheets, dripping down the ceramic onto each other’s bare skin.

The months tasted like pretzels and apple strudel from the café around the corner, and the bite of generic Edeka coffee that we started bringing for each other in bulk when we realized we would run out of money if we kept buying the good stuff. We didn’t buy each other expensive things––we wouldn’t be able to carry them home––but he loved me by preparing the coffee before I woke up, and keeping the shades down while he got dressed in the dark so I could sleep.

I think of the best night of my life and going home to sleep on that miniature mattress, even though it was so hot, we had to throw open the windows and peel our sticky skin apart in the morning.

We stayed there on top of the stained sheets because we couldn’t think of a good reason to get up, drinking from our mugs, reading Pablo Neruda to each other even though German was our language.

I think of the morning following when we were so hung over we couldn’t stand, and he burned himself on steam rising from the metal stove-top espresso maker while making our beverages to go with the omelets (I stand by allegiance to French presses). I think about the scars on the back of his hands––a permanence, something beyond memory––and I feel something close to envy.

Some people have religion, or faith in something outside of themselves to prove their devotion. There are three things I have to share: coffee, language, and the intimacy inherent to sharing a twin-sized mattress, however thick the air or stained the white sheets.

My trust lies in a familial ritual, so deeply ingrained in my life and my body’s crippling caffeine addiction. It felt sacred to share it, to indoctrinate him into it.

…

On that July morning he and I left for home––in the same 46

country across the ocean, but several states and layovers apart––the light had never been so beautiful. It cast rectangles through the blinds over my empty room––my bags had already been sent back––and over his body like mountains under the sheets. We had almost nothing left to hold but each other, so we did.

I boiled water, rinsed the tumbler, measured scoops from the can, felt the pressure under my palm. Two brimming mugs by the window, two final brown rings staining the windowsill.

I had only a collection of toiletries, a few changes of clothes, and a book or two to fit in a backpack of carry-on dimensions. There was plenty of room to bring it if I choose to––I could have wrapped it in a tee-shirt, and stuffed the cylinder with underwear and travel-sized shampoo bottles. It could have followed me home.

I left the French press on the table, surrounded by my leftover groceries: my offering of gratitude to my roommates, and more than a little desperation to leave a trace of me behind. I would forgive them for shattering my first press if it meant they would remember me; that something was left to prove that I had been here.

He and I existed in limbo for a few months, but he grew tired of loving someone he could not touch. I became even more of a shadow once I faded from his life––at least from the world we lived in together, the world in which I still feel I exist, although nothing of me remains there, save a French press on the kitchen table.

It feels wrong to remember him through objects so fragile and impermanent, ones I’ll likely again never cradle lovingly in my hands at breakfast time––our ceramic mugs shoved into the back of a cabinet three thousand miles away, and a glass tumbler for coffee that belongs to me. It’s as unsettling to think of him drinking coffee in bed, held by another person (maybe she takes her coffee black too), as it is to think of five large glass shards, swept into the garbage bin under the sink. It’s troubling to know that the one constant of my days––a steaming up of coffee in the morning, despite everything else––will be colored with knowing we did it together.

…

Back in New York, my roommate brought a percolator to our new, clean, standardized beige and white student apartment, early in September. It is mine. It tucks away into the corner of the counter in the kitchen that we share.

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At Tick Tock Diner Delaney Russell

In a booth in the corner We swapped the roses and thorns Of opening night— Two middle school starlets With parents waiting in the car.

I flipped through the laminated menu, Inspecting pictures of greasy burgers And strawberry smoothies.

We murmured over missed lines And sloppy curtain calls.

While adjusting my gaudy, Shimmering boa, A single feather fell In my matzoh ball soup.

We wiped our mouths with Paper napkins adorned with Tiny clocks. Our forgetful fists Rubbed eyes, and Smudged bold makeup.

Unprepared for the bill We agreed to “Go Dutch”, A phrase without meaning, Then called reinforcements.

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Freelander

Seth Westerman

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Ride the Lightning (after Metallica and Despicable Me) August Rosenberg

There was once a great beast— let’s call him Joe. Joe was a dick.

He would double dip when eating salsa with the damnable minions eternally sworn to his legion.

He wouldn’t take the lint out of the dryer.

And most sinister of all was his misuse of the recycling.

After receiving coronary heart disease, Joe found refuge in stand-up comedy.

He beamed a dark edgy silliness on stage.

He met some big-time goofy villains, of the most genuine weirdos he’d encountered.

But big Joe did not abandon his ol’ minions.

He continued to torment them, as these malicious little things were into hardcore bondage.

Joe even adopted a schedule: waking up, doing yoga, writing some jokes, whipping Görgerfeld with a chain, and then trying out the new Asian Fusion place downtown.

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With beastly patience, Joe got a better time slot.

His freakish comedy became more wholesome, Yet he held onto his anger, using it for good: helping expose the inhumanity of institutional prejudices— which prevent beasts and minions from escaping vicious cycles of crime.

After coming to solace with the dickish destructiveness that was once so dangerous Joe ended up growing old, and died peacefully listening to “Ride the Lightning”

by Metallica, the absurdist poets.

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The Sun Never Sets on New York City Daniel Weiss

Light cuts the dark with blood red lips, light blue skies—pictures of skies and pink, fair flesh and dark mahogany.

The night bleeds, retreats from the rosy lips the blue skies and pink flesh.

The night is dead.

The billboards fight amongst themselves.

A beacon of garish colors falls upon the walking, working men, the women.

Opulent gold, rich scents, pleasure, fame, infamy, it all plays out on the glowing walls.

The light cuts the darkness.

The buildings tear at the sky, lifting men to the heavens.

On the corner, light falls on closed eyes and the fashion magazine glares at them demanding to be let in.

But the man denies them.

They are his eyes: he owns them and little else.

The light stabs the dark, but man denies it purchase, he holds shut the doors and throws back the pills.

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Untitled III Ben Hayes

53

Young Fellow

Katelyn Reichheld I lead my grandfather to the front porch while mum showers off two days of cigarette smell and dog, her least favorite smells.

I hold back a grin as Grampy starts into his monologue, ever the same but to him, unrehearsed, of his childhood two towns over where he was one of 7, and killed a chicken when he was 9 for his father.

He is much changed—missing teeth, misty eyes—not the father my mother remembers but the one who hardly remembers. The porch swells under the weight of the wind in the pines that fold over and point west, and then he starts again, bites into another cigarette and shakes a silence he doesn’t realize he’s only just left with his last monologue.

I feel cold smoke and pine burn my nose—nostalgic smells.

Confused as he is, he declares he smells the cologne of the man who used to call him young fellow, his Irish father.

The memory of him brings us back again to his childhood, his monologue.

Darkness becomes the only time teller, as everything else on the porch remains eerily constant, an unbroken loop with a swirling cigarette halo. The pine scent disappears as I try to hold every word of his story told over and over.

Grampy, who is no longer that young fellow, still goes over daily to his long empty barn in a futile search for horses and the familiar, but smells no dry saw shavings, so then lights a sad cigarette and thinks again of when he was a father, and before that, when he had a father, he shuffles back to the chair and to the story, back to the porch to wait on—what, or who? He doesn’t know, and so surrenders to his monologue.

My grin is now petrified as I realize the melancholy of my own monologue of myself here with him. He, who I’ve seen only three times in over 54

eight years, I suddenly hear his words with new ears, hoping we never leave this porch.

I could stand the cigarettes a bit longer if it meant I could listen and see, and smell him. He is comfort, confusion, vulnerability: my mother’s father who sings the Marine Hymn, who hugs hard and hides, on himself, his own cigarettes.

With night in full bloom, Grampy predicts rain and puts out his cigarette, seeing the scene with new eyes, as he sees every moment, but his monologue is diverted by an abstract thought, of hunting perhaps, or his father, or his attention is caught in finding the right name to call over to me, and by now we have been sitting here so long I swear I can smell his thoughts as they hatch, just clones of each other, born on the porch like a slow drip of flies born of eggs, fathered in the silence, dying over and over in dementia as they hit the cigarette smoke. They sing a buzzing monologue about old age and the smells of our night, of perpetually waiting on the porch.

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on that panel above us, lunar acrylic Harrison Winrow

the Moon tonight and Venus exchange passing proof of heaven and each almost kiss the other on the cheek. stubble crusted craters and a confusion as to be incapable of gauging its own sincerity blanket the Moon. or disfigure it. and staple it at a finger’s length away from Venus. and their heaven. and still do they each almost kiss. and still does the moon shrink and swallow and become swallowed by an uncertainty of what it is even whispering to Venus. an uncertainty of what Venus thinks of earth. and of the stretch of land between the mid-northern pacific and the mid-northern atlantic. and of gravity. and if at all of the Moon tonight.

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Mouth

Jules Evens 57

Submit art and writing to folio@skidmore.edu 58

[folio] A collection of art and literature Skidmore College 2018-2019

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