ISSUE #60 by Submissions Magazine

SUB MAG A

SUBMISSIONS MAGAZINE ISSUE SIXTY/DOUBLE ISSUE APRIL/MAY 2015

Zoe Lubin-Fosha Untitled 1 & 2

Mary McEvoy Alternate Dimensions Perfect Stranger

Adam Burns Valley Red Car Monolith

Ajani Bazile-Dutes Definition

Milai Liang Untitled Carousel

Bologna Ebner A Condensed Thought or The Hierarchy of Celestial Beings

FEATURED Francine Hendrickson Letter to the Girl in My Class Who Considers Suicide an Act of Extreme Selfishness

Jia-Lian Lin Untitled

Rachel Krohn Untitled 1 & 2

Brittny Cooper Mom

Chris Sommerfeldt The Evidence was Tampered With (Reexamining Prague)

Clara Nguyen Clara

Eric Avilla Picking Up Old Corpses Eyes

FEATURED Cassandra Valencia Police Report

FEATURED Alexander Beach Untitled

Emily Richard Disrupted Venus 1-4 Untitled

Christopher Jiles Self-Portrait

Max Bayarsky Looking Erestu Puddles of Grass

Jeremy Ruiz Chevy Chase

Danielle Leggard Untitled

Francine Hendrickson The Hatching White Bones

FEATURE Conversation: Steve Lambert

Samantha Graap Fashionable Dog Collar 1 & 2

Erica Zhang Aeon Fux Music Poster

Matthew DeCostanza The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, What They Ate

FEATURE Studious Zombies

Kelsey Sucena Red Fence East Rive Boat Lady in Red

Erica Lubman 3/10/14 or 15

FEATURED Carly Moreno Untitled 1-3

Lukas Jennings Cloudwatcher Excerpt

Rachel Salamone Untitled 1-3

Julianne Waber Legs

Sharilyn Castillo Pasta K

Jasmine Yeh PensĂŠe

Christopher Stewart Malignant Fruit

Nicholas Farrell Scope

Philip Gibson YYTEWWWW Dear Dad

FRONT Kelsey Sucena BACK

Kelsey Sucena

ZOE LUBIN-FOSHA

ALTERNATE DIMENSIONS MARY MCEVOY

What if my lungs fall off? I always thought there was a lot of space between them and my liver. Is that where I am; lying underneath my lungs? Is that why I am more pink and red than white? Do you want to be my friend? I don’t have lungs so I can’t talk, but maybe we can stare into each others eyes for exactly four minutes. I heard that’s how you fall in love with someone and not enough people are in love with me. 4

Can you self induce an aneurism? I try sometimes. I bang my head against memories until I go cross eyed with pain from events that only ever happened in my mind. What does a heart attack feel like? It’s different for women than what they show on T.V. It feels like your knees are sliding opening like zippers, your throat is sawing off your lungs by the cords and the space between your lungs gets smaller like they were trying to touch for comfort but there wasn’t enough room in the house for all the emotion so they both gave up. How do trees breathe? I think I am like a tree. I only change color in the sun but nobody thinks it’s beautiful that I’m dying.

PERFECT STRANGER MARY MCEVOY

We’ve been talking about following the sun, to see where he goes in these white times. His early departure feels like an Irish exit. We were too busy being inside to notice his leaving until it was dark. One day we’ll think less of it, going with him. Who cares who we leave behind or how long we’ll be gone? We won’t have to think about layers or putting on shoes to go outside. Skin against earth against skin.

ADAM BURNS

DEFINITION AJANI BAZILE-DUTES

“Sincerely, I do not love you, therefore I cannot give you my virtue,” I fathom while the slug between his salmon lips swipes my neck viciously, As if it were possible to lick off all of my colour. As if I were richly coated in chocolate. His snaky arm glissades down my back, into my pants. He clasps my ass as if it was justly his to own and In return, I clutch what he has hidden by denim. “More,” I beg, I cry, or mourn (in such an arid moment). Over my ideals? Desperation? Symphonies of whispers and whimpers are played by the pleasures of worship and width. His torso feels like sculpture; His grip feels like power; His skin feels like fire; His fire I feel from friction. His chest tastes like chips; His chest thuds like a sledgehammer, Banging under the epidermis. I am attached to him skin to skin, but not to this pounding within, Making each and every encounter have no possible definition and Therefore I cannot give him my virtue.

MILAI LIANG

A CONDENSED THOUGHT ON THE HIERARCHY OF CELESTIAL BEINGS BOLOGNA EBNER

The moon does not emit its own light, but requires the sun to reflect off of it in order to be recognized. For all that it represents it is so dependent on the sun for anyone to see its surface. Still, its face is its own. Whether bathed in radiation or celestial darkness its cratered facade exists with or without acknowledgment from the sun or any other star. I too exist in a similar way.

LETTER TO THE GIRL IN MY CLASS WHO CONSIDERS SUICIDE AN ACT OF EXTREME SELFISHNESS FRANCINE HENDRICKSON

At fourteen, my heart is a balloon inflating at every attempt of my younger brother trying to throw himself off the balcony after school.

I assume you know nothing of this kind of love. In your family, balloons are for birthdays and spoons are used for warm bowls of oatmeal with brown sugar instead of the excavation of the wrist.

Maybe you have siblings as well, and you can’t find words for the feeling of a sleepy head leaning on your shoulder in the back of your parents’ car during a road trip, except to silently thank them for making this child. Or maybe you haven’t had moments like those and when your sibling gets on your nerves you go upstairs to your own bedroom and shut the door. Maybe your sibling wasn’t prone to tantrum at the sound of a magazine page turning. At too dry of a sock, at the pattern of peas on a plate being not right, maybe you didn’t memorize every single food your brother likes and dislikes, every noise that sets him off, the exact order of country capitals on the globe in the living room that must be read to calm him down. Kabul, Tirana, Bamako,

You’ve never lost track of the amount of times you’ve seen your brother try to kill himself. Canberra, Oslo, Bridgetown. When you’re all grown up, you won’t have to worry that he is prone to attempt again after you visit it’s the leaving that really bothers him. Maybe instead you vacation with your family in San Jose, Suva and Mexico City. Maybe you’ve never asked yourself if nine months of gestation and 12 hours of labor are equivalent to the years of beatings you took for him. At seven years old you didn’t worry about how quickly you could get your brother into the bedroom and make him swear he won’t unlock the door. Maybe you never got so used to it that you wondered what cartoons he is watching in there while the bruises form all over your legs. As a teenager, you don’t fist fight with boys for fun cause girls don’t hit hard enough. Your body is not a temple where pain lives, you don’t pick up a skate board to make chants out of busted lips and fractured ribs. So how can you understand that my brother’s self-inflicted punches to the chest are a declaration of self-love.

You can’t understand the language he is speaking. His body is a letter of rejection he is sending to our parents, and in bringing the blood we share to the surface of his skin, he is trying to get just like the girl who raised him. In my twenties the heaviness in me is a sea shell the size of a small feather screaming at the bottom of an ocean. I think about dying constantly. I start harming myself physically. I am suicidal in my sleep, I wake up from night terrors not knowing where I am, hands covered in my own blood and I think back to spring. When I felt my brother’s body missing in the weight of my feet, he attempted with my mother’s car and I am angry when she calls to tell me because I know already. The boy he came from me, has always wanted to be just like me and he is. I fly down there while he is still in the hospital and when he comes home we stare at each other and don’t say anything. I take him for chinese. I hide the stick-and-poke of his name on my ankle while he kneels down to feed ducks at the park. Do you understand, the significance of the staring? Are you concerned about how uncomfortable autistic kids are with eye contact? Do think you could look into his blue eyes for longer than a few seconds for the first time in your entire life, and keep from crying?

Do you know how hard people like you make it to talk to my brother about his selfish behavior? To admit to my own selfish behavior. To share it with him and in sharing make easier something so stigmatized by society, or have you no idea? Sometimes I wished he was gone just to stop the nightmares of his blonde head spilt open on the pavement, his brain seeping into the sewer drain. Has your brain ever been that desperate for water? Have you ever tried to stop somebody from burning while you choke on your own ashes? Or does that kind of fire not run in your family. Being suicidal is being the inside of a hollow tree set on fire and everyone around you is standing there with empty buckets. I have lived through this. I will spend the rest of my life smelling my brother’s clothes for smoke.

JIA-LIAN LIN

MAX BAYARSKY

DANIELLE LEGGARD

Conversation: Steve Lambert BY BETH RUDIG

Steve Lambert is a New Media professor here at SUNY Purchase and has been working as an artist for over a decade. His work is all largely focused on public spaces and art activism. Walking into his office in Natural Sciences on a Wednesday night, I knew I had an interesting conversation ahead of me. Interrupted a few times by professors popping their heads in to say goodnight, I can confidently say Steve Lambert is not only a wonderful faculty advisor to Submissions Magazine, but a wonderful asset to the Purchase community at large.

questions, like I would turn on the recorder and ask “Is God real?” and then, they would kind of try to answer the question and that totally connects to the Capitalism Works For Me sign where I’m asking people to evaluate capitalism. but I didn’t figure that out until maybe a few months ago. So, asking me how it’s evolved is like... I’m still figuring that out, but I have learned a ton. So I’ve gotten much smarter in figuring out ways of making work that I didn’t understand before.

B: As an artist who has been working for over 10 years, how would you say your focus or method as evolved or grown?

S: There was a period where I would try to make as many things as possible, and, it’s really demanding, but it also meant that I made a certain kind of work that could be accomplished in a few months. So in the past few years I’ve been trying to make things that are more ambitious and have a longer timeline. So, the capitalism sign for example has existed for a few years, I started working on it four years ago. I knew it would be something I was working on for a long time but I didn’t quite realize how long. Now I’m working on this public game show for difficult topics. It’s taken over a year or more just to build, its not done, I’m trying to add more stuff to it, its not how I want it to be and it will probably be another year or two until its complete; which still feels strange. There’s a part

S: I would say for the first few years I didn’t know what it was, I was just kind of stumbling around doing what seemed to make sense. Only after a few years could I look back and recognize there were themes, or recognize that there was a method in common, but it wasn’t planned. And once I could identify those themes, I could see something I want to work with more, or something is showing up several times in a row. It became clearer and easier to work with, and it’s still happening. Just last year I realized all the radio stuff I did connected to what I do now. I did a radio show probably 10 years ago where I would interview people about impossible

B: What are some new projects that you are working on right now?

of me thats like, ‘just finish it’, but it takes a long time, and it takes amounts of money that I don’t have and that take years to get. So yeah, what I’m working on now is this game show that can go from place to place and can figure out what needs to be talked about in a certain place that’s not being talked about. Then it turns into this mix of a great college seminar course and a game show, like, The Price is Right or something, where there’s points but the points don’t matter, and makes it fun to talk about things people don’t want to talk about. I did it in Birmingham, Alabama around race and people would get excited about talking about whether or not slavery was over, and trying to answer and get points, and really the points mean nothing, they just accumulate for talking about this stuff. But in the meantime, they’re having a public conversation about race in Birmingham. Which they will do but reluctantly, if you bring a game its like a great time, you know? I did it in Birmingham as a test but I want to take it to other places, I’m also still building it; there’s a lot of electronics and technology we still have to figure out because no one makes games shows anymore, like they just put them on a screen. So I’m just trying to recreate these things that don’t exist anymore that nobody wants, except for me. B: Do you prefer to do these huge projects that take a long time? 24

S: I would love to be able to do it quickly and have the same effect. But. I think when you have a giant metal object with flashing lights that looks like a game show, people are drawn to it. That’s really important because when they are drawn in I can make people uncomfortable and they can accept it, if it didn’t have that appeal they would run away. B: Your work engages with everyday situations and people on the street, how did you get into the art world? Since all of your art seems more rooted in activism, or like, outside of the art world? S: Well, I went to art school. I dropped out of high school because there wasn’t enough art and it drove me crazy. I wanted to take film, I wanted to do photo and I couldn’t do those things at the school I was at. Then, I went to community college and I did that and then I went to art school and did that. What I learned in art school was art is whatever you want. I didn’t go to art museums, that’s not my idea of what art was. I didn’t understand it, and what I figured out was the question is not whether or not it’s art but whether or not you like it and why, and if its any good and why. So I thought, ok, I have total freedom so I can do whatever I want. Where I was living, in San Francisco, there were big issues and fights about public space at the time that I was drawn to for a lot of reasons. I was hanging around people who did murals and graffiti and then I noticed advertising. Then Brett Cook came and gave a

talk at our school about showing art in public space. He said how if you have a successful gallery show maybe 150 people come, great, maybe a few more, 300 come, it’s a great show. But you get out in a public space and 300 people walk by in 15 minutes and those people would never go in a gallery. So why would you go in a gallery? That just totally made sense to me. I wasn’t the kind of person that went to galleries, but I like showing in galleries every once in a while because people pay attention in a completely different way. People will intend to pay attention to it, while if you make work on the street it has to be read and understood while they are walking by. B: When did you start teaching, how is it different from working as an artist? S: I teach when I don’t have to, so I like it. When I was 19 I volunteered at the Stanford University radio station as a community member and I taught people how to do radio, so it goes back pretty far. I taught children in public school, and high school, not very long, but I did. So it’s always been there. What I do now outside of Purchase is with a non profit that I started with a Purchase alumni named Steve Duncombe. We go around the world and train activists on how to use creativity and artistic activism in their work. It’s basically a three or four day class, we make stuff with them, we do an action with them. So it’s a combination of standing in front of a room and leading a discussion, and working along side of them. It’s one of the most rewarding things I get to do. Working with people

accomplishments that can be built on. Imagining what success is, and what a victory would mean here, is the really creative part that everyone here is wrestling with. The path to failure is always really obvious. But to think about how things could be really great here is really complicated and takes more work. But that’s what I think is getting done. I see it happening in the administration and with the students, everyone is taking it seriously. Which is, in a way, less dramatic and maybe less satisfying than a big fire, or like, a riot. B: When you go to the hub, what do you get on your sandwich? S: I don’t get sandwiches. B: You don’t get sandwiches? Do you ever get campus food? S: Nope. I get coffee. Coffee I do not hesitate to get here. I have my own ideas about what’s healthy to eat and that does not overlap well with what’s here, so I get coffee. B: What have you been listening to lately?

Previous Page / Left: Steve Lambert who are actually working on issues, and you can see how this will help them. B: Purchase has a long history of activism on campus, but I feel like not so much recently. What do you think about it, and have you ever tried to get involved with it? S: Yeah, I teach a class around it. I don’t go to PUSH meetings, and I think it’s important that I’m not there. The people who are caretakers of the club, I’ve met with them and talked with them. But how energy ebbs and flows within it, I don’t know if reading that is meaningful. I don’t know how one would measure it, but a lot of stuff has happened here in the past year. I don’t know if I would say that there’s not that much happening. If everything that happened in a semester happened in a day or a week it would seem like, ‘oh we got somewhere!’ It is a slow process, and I think only when you look back are you able to condense it in a way. So, its hard to evaluate while its happening. The other thing is that there is for the most part everyone here is in agreement. I would say the big topics here have been the big topics for the country in the last year, which be race and power. We might not all understand the details of it, we might not all agree on every aspect of how it should change or what the result should be, but, for the most part we’re headed in the same direction. So its not like you have a real visible stand off conflict between the good guys and the bad guys, that’s not whats playing out here. But there still have been great things and

S: I commute here from Beacon, which is like a 50 minute drive, and I listen to a lot of radio shows, you know, not on the radio. I listen to The Best Show, I’ve listened to it for years. Lately I’ve been trying to listen to more audiobooks. So I’ve been listening to Jon Ronson’s book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, and it’s awesome. It’s really good. That’s what I’ve been listening to... you want cool bands though? 25

B: Yeah, I guess... S: I worked at that radio station and it really distorted my taste. I listen to all kinds of weird stuff and sometimes only listen to it two times... [looks through phone, searching for name] Wade Ray. He was a fiddle player in the 50s and 60s. I used to have this bootleg tape of him performing in Reno, that the steel guitar player recorded, like it was his personal cassette and I got a copy of it from another steel guitar player, and he gave it to me because I was the only person he knew that had a CD burner in the late 90s, early 2000s. I’ve listened to that cassette for years since and then I finally found one of his albums. So I’ve been listening to that.

Steve continued to ramble about Wade Ray for a while, recounting some crazy stage banter stories he had heard involving tequila and strange showboat guest guitarists. After the interview, upon returning home that night, I looked up Wade Ray. Steve had warned me I wouldn’t find much, and he was right, but there were a few recordings on YouTube. I put them on while working on my senior project and thought about how I would rather be a steel guitar player in that moment instead of in a library cage

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ERICA ZHANG

RACHEL KROHN

BRITTNY COOPER

THE EVIDENCE WAS TAMPERED WITH (REEXAMINING PRAGUE) CHRIS SOMMERFELDT

I was never here. If that’s what they’ll ask, that is what you will tell them. 30

I was never here. Even these words, just like the blood that dripped from that uneven hand-wound we meticulously carved with serrated plastic: Sporadic, and never actually there. Yes, you are right. One teardrop at a time will fill the cup that never tips over. No, you are wrong. The fly will never leave the fly-bottle.

CLARA NGUYEN

ERIC AVILLA

POLICE REPORT CASSANDRA VALENCIA Date: 4/10/15 Time of Incident (approx.): 21:00 Location: Wakefield, the Bronx, NY 10466 Suspect: Miranda A. Greene Age: 17 Sex: F Race: Caucasian Physical Description: Petite, blonde, blue eyes, wearing a pink hoodie and ripped blue jeans at time of crime. Crime(s) committed: Assaulting a Police Officer; fleeing the scene of a crime. Booked on: 4/10/15, approx. 21:30 34

Narrative: On the night of April 10, 2015, at approximately nine PM, Officer Sean Seeley spotted Miss Miranda Greene, age 17, walking from a local pub. His intention was to check if the young woman had been drinking underage but, seeing no signs of the usual drunken/tipsy behavior, he stopped following her No less than one minute after that, according to Officer Seeley, a group of rowdy young men—of whom, at least two were drunk—began to trail Miss Greene. The young lady continued on, seemingly oblivious as she texted on her phone. Concerned for her wellbeing, Officer Seeley began to follow the boys and Greene, making certain that none of them would harm her in any way. They had been walking for nearly three city blocks when one of the boys turned and spotted the officer, alerting his friends. The group of boys quickly crossed the street, away from both Officer Seeley and Miranda Greene, who remained oblivious. In order to make sure she returned home safely, the officer continued to follow her at a discreet distance.

contact, Seeley claims that Miss Greene froze, placed her cell phone calmly into her pocket, and turned around, rearing back her arm, hand balled into a fist, and punched the officer in the throat. Seeley is not aware of what happened in the next several moments for he was winded and bent over at the waist, but he recalls hearing a sharp gasp, a resounding four-letter word, and quick footsteps leading away from the scene. After several moments, Officer Seeley composed himself and stood, glancing all around for Miss Greene. When he found no sight of her, the officer immediately called for backup. Miranda Ashley Greene, of Wakefield, was apprehended at her apartment, at about 9:20 PM EST, about a block down. The door was answered by her mother, Mrs. Esther Greene, who claimed that her daughter was asleep in her room. Miss Miranda was not sleeping, but rather hiding in her closet. Officer Seeley read her Miranda Rights and another officer, McNally, cuffed her and led her out to the waiting cruiser. The following has been submitted into evidence: iMessage Received at 8:47 PM Hey Andi r u still @ Barney’s? Ya but I’m bout 2 leave It’s gettin late Fuck I wuz about 2 meet u Srry Skool nite I hav a curfew Maybe Friday? Def O God, Lisa Wut? There’s a buncha guyz followin me R any of them cute? Not the point They’re fuckin loud tho

Miss Greene, as always, remained oblivious. As they approached what appeared to be Miss Greene’s apartment building—which was later proven false—Officer Seeley reached out to place his hand on her shoulder. At the

course they r theyre boyz

boyz r loud makes them feel tuff

I sorta Kinda Punched him in the throat

lol tru WTF?!?! MIRANDA

iMessage Sent at 8:55 They jus crossed the street Cept 1

I DIDN’T KNOW I WAS SCARED IT WAS DARK ITS NOT MY FAULT

Does he look creepy? Cnt tell I dnt wanna look at him Jus wanna get home Walk faster

Ur gonna get arrested Fuck off Lol

Im walkin as fast as I can Almost fuckin SPRINTING

When confronted, the accused had only this to say:

R there any nearby buildings? Nothin is open Nearest res is a block away

“Aw, f***, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry. Please don’t arrest me! Aw f***!” Miss Greene has pleaded Guilty to the charges brought against her. Sentencing will take place a week from Monday.

Jus relax dude Run to the building As fast as you can Ok ttyl iMessage received at 9:15 r u home yet? Ya Good so ur safe Sorta… Wat happened?!?!? Well the guy The one following me? He was a cop Ok….? And uh I didn’t knooooo tht So wen he reached out and placed his hand on my shoulder I…. Wat? Wat did u do?

END EVIDENCE

Report submitted by: Sgt. Gerald Hanson

Sargent Gerald Hanson

ALEXANDER BEACH

EMILY RICHARD

CHRISTOPHER JILES

JEREMY RUIZ

THE HATCHING FRANCINE HENDRICKSON

When there is too much heat in a hatchlingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shell, some instinct starts chirping. They break out. A small peck, the shell falls in pieces. The crumbled wings stretch like leaves. A sheet of light bathes blind eyes. This is how baby birds are born. This is how I left him.

WHITE BONES FRANCINE HENDRICKSON

I never understood why lovers carve each other’s names on trees. The same people trying to love me put the venom behind my teeth. I’d rather spit my name into a river, and watch it carve through walls of stone.

SAMANTHA GRAAP

THE TRAGEDY OF HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK, WHAT THEY ATE MATTHEW DECOSTANZA

Hamlet had a macaroni salad and a watermelon lemonade. Claudius had crab rangoon with a tangy dip based in Worcester sauce and sour cream. Gertrude had an Italian wedding soup in a water-based broth. It was full of chick peas, cannellini beans, celery, and crushed tomato. Ophelia enjoyed a bag of baby carrots dipped in peanut butter. She ate some chocolate-covered pretzels afterwards. 48

Polonius drunk a tall glass of water and then went straight into a casesar salad sandwich. Rosencrantz was busy working on a theology paper, so Guildenstern went out and got cheesy breadsticks. Horatio wasn’t very hungry but he ate a slice of veggie pizza anyhow. Laertes had a blue rare steak. The Ghost of King Hamlet had trail mix with M&Ms and craisins. The First Gravedigger had a “sunny side up burger”, which is a burger with a fried egg under the bun. Osric had some altoids. Fortinbras didn’t feel like cooking so he ordered sweet and sour pork and an unsweetened ice tea.

Studious Zombies BY KT MCMANUS & BETH RUDIG

On Thursday April 23rd, Beth and I interviewed Professor Shaka McGlotten. Shaka graduated in from the University of Texas at Austin with a Ph.D. in social anthropology and is currently a professor of Media, Society, & the Arts at Purchase.

KT: What do you think the future of the Purchase Gender Studies Department is, if it has one? Shaka: I don’t know is the short answer, but the reality has just been that institutionally there is a tremendous amount — well, among faculty and students — there is interest and support for it. But from an institutional perspective, they also have never invested in it as a program, sufficiently -- so you don’t have full-time hires in Gender Studies, you have people who teach in Sociology, or Media Society and the Arts, or Philosophy, or whatever, who can contribute courses to the Gender Board of study. So until that changes, and there’s actually real material support for a Gender Studies program, I think it will always be where it is, which is kind of — it’s something, and people can get a good experience, but it’s not actually the way you would want a program to be designed. I also think that there is — sometimes there’s an argument that you don’t need something when it happens all across the campus, so one could make the argument — I’m not sure

this is actually the case, but if it were the case — that there are so many people who regularly teach on issues related to gender and feminism, that it’s so saturated in the culture, that you wouldn’t need a Gender Studies program. I don’t actually believe that, but one could make that argument, that there isn’t enough need. I think the Gender Studies program is basically going to flounder until something happens. We were so lucky, actually, to have Rachel Simon here as long as we did. KT: About Virtual Intimacies — I like that title, and I like what it’s about, because I used AIM a lot as a child, and that’s how I made all my friends — like a lot of people I didn’t know — I just met people on the internet all the time in real life. You obviously don’t think of it as a bad thing, because it connects people, but do you see it getting better or worse in society? Shaka: Alright, so basically what I do in the book is, I say, okay, here’s this concept of virtual intimacies. What I mean by it is that, for the most part, in most of society, people…look at intimacies that are technologically mediated as virtual in the bad sense — virtual as in not real. I take a different kind of tack — my sense of the virtual is one that’s inspired by the philosopher Gilles Deleuze, and other people like that — so “the virtual” in the sense of potentiality. It’s something that hasn’t actually materialized into a concrete form, but exists

in potential. On the one hand in the book, I kind of track the ways that the culture looks at technologically mediated intimacies as failed, and thereby as queer — and there’s a kind of slippage between these kinds of things…the last chapter of the book is a coda, where I talk about how people use Grindr not just to hook up, but to do other things as well — like maybe you’re just collecting pictures of people you think are annoying — so in that sense there’s always a potential for something else to happen, but i do actually think that the kind of distractibility that computer mediated communication, and smartphones, in genderness right now, is actually not a great thing, and we should be teaching people how to focus their attention, how to use their attention in different ways…So there’s this sort of sense of culpability, this sense of responsibility, to others is kind of — I think has been degraded, somewhat. The idea that other people are there for you, or other people are there to be there for you, is a sort of form of narcissism, and the idea that you will screen all of your calls because you want other people to be available when you need them, but that you are not actually going to be available at all times yourself. It’s like a form of narcissism — that’s why I’m off Facebook, that’s why if I didn’t have to have a phone I wouldn’t have one right now — I want to cultivate these other forms of intimacy, where that feeling of connection is less fleeting. It’s not that fleeting intimacies don’t have value — they do — but I want to cultivate ones where I can actually know that if I call someone they’re going to call me back.

KT: Okay, are you Team Spike or Team Angel? Shaka: Spike, obviously. KT: Oh my god — he’s so hot, right? Beth: Obviously. KT: That’s perfect then. That’s all I need to know — that’s how you know we’re friends. Beth: Can I ask one more question? Shaka: Sure. Beth: This is like a Sub Mag tradition, that we ask everybody we interview about — when you go to The Hub, what do you get on your sandwich? Shaka: I don’t think I’ve picked up a sandwich in a long time — when I’m not vegetarian, I do a honey roasted turkey, I do mayo and honey mustard, and I do lettuce, tomatoes, cukes. When I am veggie, I don’t eat sandwiches at The Hub, or I’ll have a tuna fish — tuna and swiss… Beth: Have you ever had the breaded tofu? It’s pretty good. Shaka: No — I used to get the roasted veggies all the time, but sometimes the mushrooms are slimy, or the roasted red pepper is underdone. 51

KT: Yeah, you only want to do that if you hate yourself.

KT: Word. I feel that. You wrote about zombies — what’s the attraction? As opposed to vampires, or something? Shaka: Yeah, I write a lot about zombies — I got into zombies because my students were super into zombies, and I tried to understand why they were into zombies, and so I got into it through them — also my work on gaming was through my students — so in terms of zombies, my whole take on the zombies stuff, is trying to understand “how are zombies queer?” or “what can zombies teach us about queerness?” KT: One last question — you’ve seen Buffy, right? Shaka: Many times.

Left: Shaka McGlotten

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KELSEY SUCENA

3/10/14 OR 15 ERICA LUBMAN

I sent you a photo and said guess where I am. You guessed correctly. Then I took off my shoes and forced my toes to sink into the prickly plastic grass of the turf. I didn’t send a photo of this. …

Do you ever wanna make a sudden movement where you just jump up and run somewhere really high up and yell some over the top statement that they would probably use in a turning point scene in a film you would’ve thought you were sophisticated for watching when you were 15? Do you ever let yourself picture these magnificent scenarios where you can recite details down to your choice of socks? When I try to picture you doing this, the same way I picture myself at the top of some building, I feel silly. You would feel silly. … But the film critics would love it on you, the tragically, self-aware figure of the underdog. … Sometimes I want to tell my friends everything I’m imagining but I’m worried they’ll say I think too much. I think they’ll say I worry too much. And when that photo was taken and sent, before I tossed my socks over my shoulder, I decided I wasn’t going to do that holding back thing next time I had the chance to. … I wanted to tell you everything I was imagining on that turf every previous time I’d gone because I knew that next time I wound up there, I would no longer feel comfortable sending you pictures of my feet.

CARLY MORENO

“Nobody knows,” Beth said. “He can just look into your eyes and tell who’s worth talking to.” She sipped on her mojito, rosacea darkening with each swallow. CLOUDWATCHER EXCERPT LLUKAS JENNINGS

Unless you have a boat of your own, the only way on and off the island is the ferry. The old ship was falling apart, and instead of a true gangplank, they would plop a thick board of wood between the ship and the dock. From the day I moved here, it was always one man who lifted the plank onto the ship. His was the first face I saw on the island, mahogany and scarred like the bark of an old tree. The sagging skin on his arms hid lean muscles that could carry the weight of the plank. In most circumstances, this was the kind of person you’d forget about quickly. When he saw me, though, his seaweed-golden eyes locked on mine for a few seconds too long. In my plain t-shirt and shorts, I didn’t see what was so fascinating about me. Passing him felt like walking through a security scanner—knowing you’re doing nothing wrong but waiting to be stopped regardless.

It wasn’t long before I learned more about him. At school, I used to bartend on weekends, so I found work at the local bar at the end of the harbor’s pier. For six nights a week, I got to ride my bike down to the docks and swap my plain clothes for a tuxedo vest with a golden pin that read “Tommy.” Like all bars, this one had regulars who loved to gossip. They seemed eager to talk about the harbor man when I brought him up; he was a bit of a local celebrity. They called him Bon, as in “bon voyage.” I thought it was cheesy, but nobody seemed to know his real name, so they went with what stuck. “You saw him when you got off the ship, right?” Arthur, one of the regulars, asked me. He was a lawyer, but he was only a few years older than me. He was handsome, dark-skinned, and wore slick business suits that always had drops of whiskey staining the cuffs by the end of the night. “He stared deep into your eyes, right, like he was trying to detect something?” I told him yes. Beth, an older, ruddy woman sitting next to him, interjected. “Don’t scare the newcomer. He’s not gonna understand.” Arthur continued anyway. He said that Bon looked that way at everyone taking the ferry, and if you’re lucky, he’d stop you before you got on or off. “That doesn’t sound lucky,” I said, but Arthur said it meant Bon had a message for you and you alone. The people Bon had stopped have said that he knew more about their lives than a dock worker should. It was like fortunetelling, but involuntary, and he didn’t talk to just anyone. “How does he choose who to stop?” I asked.

“But why the harbor? Why does he tell fortunes there?” “Well that’s not a fair question,” Arthur said, pointing a lazy finger at me. “He works there. Why’d you get a job here? To ask people about a man you saw one time?” “He always seems to warn people about their trip, on or off the island,” Beth went on. “It’s like he knows what’s gonna happen to you, so if he stops you, it means it’s serious enough to tell you about.” “A real clairvoyant, Tommy,” Arthur added after throwing back the last of his drink. They told me the story of a woman who used to live in town a few years before. Bon stopped her immediately when she set foot on the island. That day, the woman moved into her new house up the road, and her old neighbors could tell you that she never answered their knocks and never stepped outside for a full month. Then, she walked out with the same bags and boxes she came with, got back on the ferry and left. Nobody knows what Bon said to her. I asked them to tell me more, but Beth seemed uncomfortable and Arthur was teetering on his stool. After closing, I went home, where Mom asked how I was enjoying the island so far. I said I didn’t expect the most fascinating thing to be an old man. During my first couple of weeks on the island, I wheedled more information about Bon from the regulars, asking casually or allowing them to bring him up so I didn’t seem too obsessed. I didn’t feel obsessed, and that made it seem okay to me. Arthur and Beth told me more stories, but I hated that they couldn’t tell me what Bon had said to the people he stopped. Either nobody knew or his messages were so personal that nobody wanted to share. I thought about the infamy of being someone Bon approached, being immortalized in an account of his feats. Despite working late nights at the bar, my body naturally woke up with the sunrise, so I started running like I did on mornings back at school. I kept to the suburbs for a while, but one morning I decided to jog downtown. It was inevitable that I’d glance over at the harbor. The ferry wasn’t running yet, but still there was a figure standing at the edge of the dock, staring westward out into the sea. Most people would face the other direction to watch the sun’s glow creep over the trees, but this person seemed more interested in the clouds that hung low above the

water, thin strokes drifting here and there like dead, floating eels. Even as a silhouette against the reddened sky, I knew it was him.

* * *

Nothing eventful happened for a while. Weekends at the bar are always the same, and Mondays fill the bar with dour folk, exhausted from their first day back to work. On Wednesdays, they drink to get through the hump day; Thursday gets them tipsy with excitement for the weekend. Tuesday is the only true dead day of the week. This Tuesday promised to stay that way, with just a few people scattered around the quiet room. Just before sunset, the door swung open and I started to say “Welcome” before I choked up and turned away from the counter. Bon’s boots clicked slowly against the hardwood floor like those of a cowboy pacing through a saloon. His feet stopped as he sat at the stool directly behind me. I shifted some bottles on the shelves against the wall, but it became clear that Bon wouldn’t say anything to grab my attention; he was patient. I turned around to face him. He stared at me with the same look from my first day on the island. My voice wouldn’t start, like I was on a date and didn’t want to say something stupid. “What can I have for you?” I spat out. Bon wasn’t dismayed. “I’ll have a Manhattan,” he said, “rocks or no rocks.” I immediately began to prepare his drink. I hadn’t imagined his voice before. It was slow and hard, like sticky marbles clinking around a honey jar. As I poured the drink into a glass, an idea came to me. Bon was still watching me when I looked back at him. “Do you have ID?” I asked. I saw his eyes narrow for the first time. “It’s policy.” He drew out a worn leather wallet from his jacket pocket and slid out the plastic card from its hide and offered it to me. I held it delicately and ignored the date of birth, admiring the photograph of a younger Bon. His bark-wrinkled face was less severe, but the gold of his eyes remained striking even in black and white. I looked to the name on the card: Bayu Bhattacharya. Reading it over, I knew I wouldn’t remember its spelling, so as I handed it back, I let my grip loosen and dropped the license into his glass.

“Oh, shit, I’m so sorry,” I stuttered. “Here, I’ll clean it off for you.” I took the card to the restroom to wash it off with soap. I tore off a sheet of toilet paper and drew a pen from my pocket to write his name down, and then I quickly returned to the bar and gave back the card. “Sorry, sir,” I said again, but Bon waved a hand as he tossed down his drink. “I knew I didn’t want rocks,” he said. “Glad you knew, too.” His consonants all sounded glottal, like his throat was filled with water. He pulled a creased bill from his wallet and slid it across the counter before he, as expected, stared once more into my eyes. “Thanks for your time.” I nodded and watched as he left the bar and walked east toward town, his back to the sun once again. With only two more customers for the rest of the night, I spent the remainder of my shift polishing the glasses in the cabinet, feeling as empty as they were. Of course Bon wouldn’t have something important to tell me. After passing him the first time, he wouldn’t have waited weeks to deliver my message on a random Tuesday. Regardless, I had hoped for something more exciting from Bon than a drink order. That day could have sent me on the path I’d take for the rest of my life. I did have something over the other townsfolk, though. I knew the prophet’s true name.

RACHEL SALAMONE

JULIANNE WABER

SHARILYN CASTILLO

JASMINE YEH

MALIGNANT FRUIT CHRISTOPHER STEWART

I. The sun was soft yellow on the dark brown marble. In the kitchen, Grandma placed a paper plate under the gutted tangelo. “Cut it down the middle,” she said, revealing its juicy orange center. I thought of her heart. Rust red and smushed under her deflating bosom.

II. A cancerous fruit came to inhabit her abdomen. The old-lady pink I associated with Grandmas turned orange. The tangelos stolen from the summer became the tumors firmly rooted in her gallbladder. The cancer stemming from Grandma’s gut never stopped climbing her pulped rib cage. Skyward, I watched her seasons change from golden to steel.

SCOPE NICHOLAS FARRELL

a sky has scoliosis counting notches in the spines of the puffs finds an uncommon odd number the wind whistles & blows whole tones left in constant suspension floating through an atmosphere the same color & consistency of plumes of lavender shotgunned into the mouth of a bus crash unwillingly the tea kettles will still scream behind the branches the lake of eyes will still swell, stares again relentlessly as the moon will never murmur as it has to where a piranha nibbled on cardiac afterthoughts when the same salt cracked on my face as the salt that dried when the scope shifted to reveal who was a speck amongst scales why? the reign of the flood will come again you will find your skeletons pneumatic all the bones will float up and clump on the surface a sky and all the heavy hearts will look down from the bottom and try to describe the fucking clouds again

PHILIP GIBSON

y y t t e e ww ww

PHILIP GIBSON

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