the Anthologist
THE ANTHOLOGIST the Anthologist is a literary and arts magazine that has served in preserving and inspiring Rutgers’ creativity for nearly a century, publishing high-quality art and writing. For copyright terms and more information visit: THEANTHO.COM
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INDEX issue 81. spring 2015.
STAFF OFFICERS Editor-in-Chief Tiffany X. Lu
Associate Editor Philip S. Wythe
Designer PJ Rosa
Senior Editor
Copy Editor
Managing Editor
Copy Editor
Public Relations Director
Copy Editor
Daniel C. Anzolini
Jennifer Comerford
Matt Taylor
Grace Li
Meg Tsai Amy Ho
EDITORS
Lily Lee Alexandria Arbeitel Daniel Levin Adesuwa Igbinovia Hernan Ramos Allen Gong
ADVISOR
Belinda McKeon
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TABLE OF
CONTENTS
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H one sty is B ur i ed i n My Backyard
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seei ng spy g l a ss.
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Th e F i b
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D eep Spa c e
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D a ystr ea m
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Th e Skies of W a zir i sta n
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A L L AB OARD
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G a ndhi Pl a y s B a ss Guita r
Emily McMaster
Alexandria Arbeitel
Ryan Charles
Abby Strobel
Meg Tsai
J a w ee r y a M o h a m m a d
Chanel Koryn Mayo
Grace Li
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Sha dow s
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Thom Y or ke
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Sy a m pu
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Untitled
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B ev er ly Ka tz
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Untitled
Daniel C. Anzolini
Sweta Patel
Hernan Ramos
Krista Barone
Tiffany X. Lu
Jennifer Comerford
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Ha ir .
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The Nig ht Str ea m
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Hip Hop Ta ug ht Us
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L etter s of Sol ida r i ty
J a w ee r y a M o h a m m a d
Daniel C. Anzolini
Pizz@ & Internal Rhyme
Marcus Hughes
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF When it comes to the arts, often one will only hear praise for the classics, in between bitter sighs over the golden age gone away, the dismal future ahead of us. Of course, you, esteemed reader, and all of us here at the Anthologist know this not to be true. We ask: what of the writers and artists in a time we call our own? If everything that could be said has been said, then what is it that compels us still to share our stories—and to listen? Why do we continue the struggle of giving form to that voice within us which resists the constraints of language? The answers to these questions may be different for each of us. And so in the hands of Rutgers University’s talented authors and artists, as well as our tireless editorial staff, issue 81 of the Anthologist is a mélange of self-expressions. From the skies of Waziristan to a taxicab in Heaven, from cultural identity to the influence of Hip-Hop, our contributors draw from a world the great masters of classic literature would scarcely recognize, much less imagine. “Creation is really a sustained period of bliss—even though the subject can still be very sad,” said Alice Walker, one of our era’s greatest American writers. “Because there’s the triumph of coming through and understanding that you have, and that you did it the way only you could do it—you didn’t do it the way somebody told you to do it, you did it just the way you had to do it. And that is what makes us us.” We at the Anthologist strive to inspire and affirm this spirit of creativity in the New Brunswick community, as participants of the ongoing dialogue between life and art, and of ourselves and the stories we tell each other. We hope you enjoy this issue and are similarly inspired by the many voices that come together within it. Warm regards,
Tiffany X. Lu Editor-in-Chief
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HONESTY IS BURIED IN MY BACKYARD Emily McMaster I hide in closets and anthills Hoping some kid Would kick me open. I could be rebuilt One grain of sand at a time. I lie Not to hide my demons, The things everyone is hungry to find. I tell lies because it’s fun to have it perched against my lips singing a new song, the newest reality, until it crumbles like the ash from a cigarette burning without a mouth. I don’t look anyone in the eyes They ask why look down when there are stars and hair to run fingers through. Authors are cruel, with their darlings bleeding out in their laps I’ve killed the intangible. the honesty it lies in an unmarked grave no grass, no anthills, just dirt I’m left with nothing but a black crepe dress and the desire to forgive myself.
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SEEING SPY GLASS. Alexandria Arbeitel we are mirrors walking into ourselves replicating the detriment we swore bore into our bloodstreams linking us to the shrink-wrapped keychains hanging in the market square by the street corner we told our first grade class we were born on: these are the lies we tell to ourselves to make friends with our reflections, send emails to our dead grandmothers and smother our impulses and try not to frame ourselves for the difference between progress and processed. i’m still obsessed with finding out where you really live, what stuffed animals are hiding under your bed haunting your dreams like faint paintings peeling from the walls; i stall and crawl underneath and pretend they are married to you, arrange them in rings and place myself in the center until i’m a yawn away from remembering that i wasn’t invited to this tea party or past your front lawn fence. i’m tense and trembling watching the fragments of us walk past the proofread landmarks and the watermarked buildings, read the signs as if they aren’t memorized by
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every pair of eyes that spied us sitting in the back row whispering secrets to our enemies, and if it is us still stone-like in the overlay visible to passersby i don’t recognize these skies or the way the clouds overlap each other as if they don’t want to be seen or written into childhood shapes that make them feel bigger or smaller than the size they are comfortable being or maybe the cracks in the sidewalk are just wider and that’s why i’m tripping over my words to find a way to say hello without making a show of all the other things i meant to say the last time i pretended not to see you.
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THE FIB Ryan Charles You sit across from her, your arms crossed and a stern look on your face, unaware of the Fib that’s perched on your shoulder. Fibs are small – at least they start small – with sharp, purple claws and dark brown fur. Some people say they have wings like a bat, but those people have never seen a Fib. Fib’s only look like they can fly because of how high they can jump. You scratch at your neck, unsure of what you’re going to say. That’s the Fib, running his whiskers along your skin. It is not a sign of affection. They live off of lies – the bigger the better. Normally, a Fib will only feed on natural liars, people who will consistently feed them day after day with their pathological tendencies, but when a Fib is truly hungry, he’ll groom his next meal. Sometimes you don’t know why you lied to someone. It was a silly lie, you tell yourself. You meant nothing by it. That was the Fib. You’re reaching for your glass now. The water in the glass sloshes up against the sides as your hands shake trying to hold it. You wish it was something stronger. The Fib wishes it was too. Each lie has a flavor influenced by the situation that brought it about. The particular Fib on your shoulder loves lies that have been soaked in whiskey, mistakes made through liquor and told through a haze of uncertainty. The Fib likes to get drunk too. She’s across from you, looking away through the windows of the restaurant, off into the streets. Your Fib can see another Fib on her shoulder. Hers is larger than yours, fattened by months of delicious lies told to cover up more lies. Like chocolates, those are the kinds of lies a Fib can grow lethargic from. Most can live off of white lies. Sure, they’ll never grow to the size that some Fibs grow, but your Fib was never interested in politics anyway. Your Fib waives and hers waves back, but it does not envy hers for being more well fed. Your Fib is watching
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its weight. She says something, something about the two of you. The way her voice fluctuates excites the Fib on her shoulder and yours looks up at you expectantly. It’s hungry. It hasn’t eaten since breakfast when you told her to meet you here because you wanted to work things out. The itching is back on your neck and you scratch at it furiously. You tell yourself that you’re nervous, that you don’t know what to say. The things she’s saying to you confuse you. Upset you. The Fib wants its lunch. You open your mouth and then close it without saying a word. You put your glass back on the table and lean back in your chair. What she just said to you, about the kind of person you are, hurts deep. Your Fib feels sorry for you; it likes you. You’ve always been one to lie when it was convenient or when you had nothing better to say at all. Its only had to prod you once or twice a week, when it was very hungry. One of those lies brought you to this table. Your Fib is sorry about that. She goes on to say something else, but you’ve had enough and cut her off. You tell her the things that are on your mind, that have been on your mind for what feels like months now. You tell her all the things you hate about her, about the way she acts, about the way she acts around you. You tell her you’re sorry, but your Fib has already lapped up that lie like an appetizer for the main course it knows is coming. She’s yelling at you now, but you aren’t listening. She always yells when she’s angry and your Fib can tell by watching her Fib that when she’s angry is the best time to eat. The two of you are arguing back and forth, slowly gaining the attention of the rest of the tables around you, your food sitting in front of you getting cold, all the while your Fibs are licking the juices pouring from your lips and down your chins the way a pet drinks from the faucet. And that’s when you say it. Your Fib knows the big one is coming, the one that’s going to end things between you and your fiancé. Your Fib is sorry about that, by the way, but it hasn’t eaten a meal like this in so long. It watches greedily as the lie builds in your throat, as you slam your hands on the table and move to leave. “I never want to see you again.” You say. Your Fib feasts.
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IN DEEP SPACE Abby Strobel (Photogram, 8 x 10�)
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DAYSTREAM Meg Tsai
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THE SKIES OF WAZIRISTAN Jaweerya Mohammad “Now I prefer cloudy days when the drones don’t fly. When the sky brightens and becomes blue, the drones return and so does the fear.”Zubair Rehman
Momina Bibi searches through the stretching okra plant, she stands on tippy toes, picking a few, dropping them into Nabila’s tiny opened palms. ‘See, how they are long and slender Like your mother’s fingers?’She is sixty seven and knows how to nurse life, with arms that move swiftly, swaddling crying newborns, and a voice that blooms yellow and red poppies at the foot of mountains. Two echoing clicks and a plume of clouds arose, coupled with loudness like the hills were crumbling. Heart-thrashing Nabila ran with tangled feet to be rid of the smell of singed flesh. In the destruction, Momina’s old, frail body lay in strewn pieces, beneath the same sky where, just yesterday, the children of Waziristan craned their necks to see kites paint strokes
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of peacock feathers above, and the sun spilled warmth on the backs of those who bowed during Friday noon prayer. Where the family laid out cots on the rooftop and rested their heads, huddling in woolen shawls while the speckled fireflies guarded them. Momina, did you, like my grandmother sing stories to your grandchildren of your youth? About climbing the ancient limbs of trees and wading in azure rivers as fishes kissed the soles of your feet, about a time when the falcons flew with their wings blanketing the entire village? And did Nabila ever realize she had your striking hazel eyes before the lids curtained them? Only four suited congressmen listened to your son’s loss. The translator’s voice cracked in the middle of converting his pain into English, and as the laws were debated, your family in North Waziristan tried to find refuge in pounding rains.
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ALL ABOARD Chanel Koryn Mayo Intermittent showers flickering like broken laptop screens, cracks spreading and technicolor images flashing, beaming from the reflection in the eyes of children fingers deep in the cookie jar, their spirited smiles saturate my otherwise sanguine Saturday morning. Cartoons streaming and Captain Crunch seeming out of place in the face of my future. There wasn’t a time when I felt that the world could be mine, but at least I held the distant hope, scoping out the timelines and the fine lines reaching from my lips by design, I am defined by delayed action, sluggish passion, and a significant and disturbing decline. They call it the Northeast Corridor Line, by it, I’ve found myself repeatedly sighing, crying at my reflection in rubber-lined windows on camel-colored leather seats, thumbing the red trigger of the emergency exit with the heels of my feet, I like to track my progress by my usage of train metaphors Allegorically, it makes sense to me, that I’d define segments of my history by cold metal cutting across the surface of my misery speeding significance, horn blasting into the stationary position separated from the platform by the gap between us, i thought that maybe if i gave it time, I’d get a little closer but my destination is stagnation and I’ve got a monthly pass. The past held me
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like tracks that carry trains speeding by. Buckle and bend, coating my skin in perspiration and my mind with desperation needs to know what happened to my aspirations? I thought that maybe if I gave it time, it’d come to fruition, but I lost it all in the midst of cheap booze and college tuition, in lecture halls and quiet rides across the state, this endless cycle that I hate from the core of being to the tips of my soul, this college experience’s been a gaping black hole, setting me up in my greatest role yet, something about trains and something regret. I’m not quite sure how thing’s will end will I get through or get caught in a bend, a corner too tight that catches me blind mangled and twisted by dollar signs and dotted lines, I’m going to be fine but sometimes I don’t know what that means fine, fine, but ripped at the seams, getting too fat that the folds are dropping down past my clothes, sagging jeans and the cold that stole my sunshine, I’m losing the will to rise, to lift my arms above my eyes, to reach higher and extend my body beyond my mind, I find I’m waking to anxiety creeping up and down my spine, and wondering how long until I end up curled up on the floor waiting to die, hands folded up lying on my side, but I’m trying, I’m trying to hold on to the notion that maybe I will get to the next station stop before I reach the end of my line. but i can only wait, wait, wait until that train arrives.
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GANDHI PLAYS BASS GUITAR Grace Li I’d like heaven to be a taxicab with God as your driver and he would pull up in front of you just as you realize you needed a ride. And he wouldn’t ask you where to go because heaven would be that in-between place without a real destination so he’d release the brake, start the meter, and drive. And he wouldn’t say anything to you either because there’s no small talk in heaven and you and God have come to an understanding that you two don’t really have much in common. And you start to think about other kinds of heaven and that maybe heaven is more like an airport than a taxicab and as you’re about to tell this to God, you see he’s already pulled up to the terminal so you ask him how much you owe him, and he says, “Don’t worry about it, kid.” And as you get out of the cab he turns the radio on, fiddles with the knob, and curses under his breath about the piece of shit until the dial catches a song and you realize maybe you two had more in common all along and you start to think that if heaven had a band
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Bob Marley would be the frontman, with Carl Sagan on drums, and Gandhi would play bass guitar.
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SHADOWS Daniel C. Anzolini
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THOM YORKE Sweta Patel (Graphite, 8.5 x 11�)
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SYAMPU Hernan Ramos This poem will start with: Jennifer Laude was killed in a land built on the beheading of peace This poem will start with: Jennifer Laude was killed on October 11, 2014 I am looking at her pictures I am rereading rewriting and revising— Wait, this poem will start before that: the Visiting Forces Agreement was enacted in 1999, three letters that ensured that American footsteps would not be questioned on Filipino soil Whatever the troops do here is their business they’re only here to protect us This poem will start before that: when Japan attempted to colonize us in WWII the U.S. “came to our rescue” when will it be our turn to save us? No, this poem starts before that: I guess we should be grateful that the Conquistadors let us “borrow” a few things they gave us sapatos to cover our feet, stop us from dirtying the Earth they gave us syampu to clean our tribes out of our hair I am trying to get my mother to teach me the language but I am not sure whose words I am speaking This poem will start before that: the legend goes, when an Elder attempted to bring two warring tribes to peace
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He was decapitated, called “respectful assassination” After which, they named the land “Olongapo” - the head of the elder
It is Thanksgiving, I try telling my mother and her sister about Jennifer Laude’s case Nanay says I shouldn’t depress the family with such things I look at her pictures I read about the last person to be seen with her: white American Soldier, Joseph Scott Pemberton I look at her pictures I look at my Filipina aunt’s white husband and her white kids and wonder who first spoke the words “post-colonial” I look at her pictures Uncle Tom and TJ say I look “very gay” and “a little faggy” in my pictures I wanted to say, “Why, thank you, I thought so myself” My loving grandmother, unaware of the hate that cuts up the words that leave her tongue asked me, “Are you bakla? We still love you if you are” The table shakes with their laughter and I didn’t have to heart to tell her
This poem is for you, Jennifer Laude I’ve read the newspapers and even the Filipinos don’t love you Jennifer Laude, they call you bakla because they don’t know the difference between a gay man and a trans woman they say he died they call you Jeffrey Jennifer Laude, they made you a martyr because every movement needs at least one Jennifer Laude, in Olongapo, you weren’t worth any more than the two condoms your American soldier left for you in that motel room as you rest your head on the toilet bowl
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It is February 4th, 2015 5 trans women of color have been murdered in the U.S. In the U.S. we march and we protest In the U.S. we fight for our bodies In Olongapo, there is no fight because a fight implies that we stood a chance Instead, we watch soldiers dock on our coasts we carry their bricks of silence in the courtrooms we wait as they delay their trials we watch as they take our soil for “defense assets” In Olongapo, we ask for our houses back as soldiers sit in our living rooms and search through our food with their teeth In Olongapo, the VFA says these things are “regulated” these things are “military exercises” those three stand tall three mountains with ghosts buried beneath each one the soldiers wear the VFA like bulletproof vests but we are not taking shots we are screaming pleas In Olongapo, there are no more warring tribes there is only a steel boot on our necks and it’s getting harder to ask them for air and it’s getting harder to just lay there Jennifer Laude, I am rereading and rewriting and revising but for some reason, the words never feel right no matter how hard I press these keys no matter how many times I write your name no matter how loud my voice gets when I read this the words don’t feel powerful enough to strip the hatred that lays on our land like lead blankets covered in disease Jennifer Laude, I will see you in the star on our flag that hangs above my aunt’s front porch I will see you in every rainbow flag I will see you in the color of my skin
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I will save a space for you in my heart every time I say Mahal kita to my mother Jennifer Laude, my poem will not bring you back but it’s all I have There have been no convictions yet
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UNTITLED Krista Barone I reopened a wound. found an ingrown stitch and tugged, slowly so as to feel it coming undone, just as a roguish thread of some silk seam. I reopened the wound. longed to feel it, that visceral, cerebral sensation of boiled blood aiming to settle but instead, compromising, bending to the tumult. Then, in earlier days, it had been a splinter, a lesion, a breach festering unseen in the crease of a trafficked limb until a movement, a vestigial gesture of intimacy or inadequacy beseeched it to blister and to bleed. Now, I reach within it become engulfed in its earthen mass, with limbs entangled and eager I reach within it. knowing not of a fouler vigor than that birthed as I wind ever onward between your thighs. evermore, I guide the seed of residual woe into the helm of my being. to feel you justly, methodically drilling into me the sinew of your curse and later, when it has all but sublimed, I will lie ravaged by the image in which I am burned.
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BEVERLY KATZ Tiffany X. Lu (Graphite and colored pencil in sketchbook, 5 x 8.25�) 28
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UNTITLED Jennifer Comerford
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HAIR. Jaweerya Mohammad 1. beginning from age six my cousins and I sit with legs sprawled at the foot of our mothers who drizzle coconut oil into our dry scalps, slick tresses are pulled taut and collected into braids, we are antsy and bolt as the last rubber band in fastened, and we loosen our hair when our mothers aren’t watching. 2. At thirteen I want highlights, I want to strip by black hair until there is blonde peeking through. my mother warns me it will become brittle hay, so I listen. eight years later I have learned to love too what is void of Eurocentric beauty. I want nothing but to keep it the color of the night. 3. In mid-July my aunt slathers on thick henna paste to her head, her hands are stained orange from forgetting the gloves, and she hushes her husband who complains of the strong smell. she calls me to check
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if she missed a spot, then leaves to bathe in the sun. 4. I run a comb softly through my grandma’s hairat age eighty-nine it is silver like milky moonlight, and runs until the end of her backbone, I jokingly tell her to snip it and get a perm instead, that is when she grabs the comb back and lets out a loud laugh. 5. someone from Pakistan brings home a box full of white beaded crochet scrunchies, they are intertwined with the scent of Jasmine; that year everyone who I know has hair that smells like sweet floral. 6. The women in my family wear their hair like they do love, they hold on to the dead strands of themselves until they begin to grow, and collect their pain like three-stranded plaits, weaving and crisscrossing, so that nothing falls apart.
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THE NIGHT STREAM Daniel C. Anzolini
I The night stream whispers through the rustle of the leaves and the trees carry the brands of white flame and yellow rock; these colors of hell paint me, inflaming with the bleaching moonlight; below, the stream makes the stars fly like sparks on the surface of the shoal, murmuring in the language of the departed, the mesmerizing formations, like timeless words betrothed to the beholder of these dark waters; breaking me to pieces, ruining and parting the sands, deteriorating those chilled banks, water lustered and black as blood, stroking silver currents' cords that sound the restless melodies of another time. Premonitions that befell me betrayed my heart and as I sprung into the running stream, so I fell between the incandescent stars and base greed for the shining thoughts of the dead. Moments and moon-rock pieces incinerate in time's desperation, but all that was expires and returns in the same stony paleness, that largess of discontinued affection, mementos from the skies; that collecting mirror fabric, that glassy calico cloth of night, it pulls together moments and flings them down a warbling path; parchment-white flakes flutter under the pearl carapace of the sky, reflections of an esoteric white stone called nostalgia swimming low.
II Scars of perfected loneliness, fermented with the passing of lonely afterthoughts and the curling of shadows, inwards, snug into the eyes and looks of estrangement I give the world. But the semblance remains imperfect, the passions unspoken; this Nightingale soars without the fire he knows.
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The ends of constellations' braids breach the little river, curling over stones and under creeks like a hundred promises lost to the forest, ghosted by glimmering echoes of the moonlight. The water's fabric never ceases its desperate utterances; will it ever halt its breathless mnemonic melody? I writhe in interstellar waters, clutching for agony of tortured times and ancient sorrows, swooning for my skin to break and ignite with the arsenic flames of star showers. These gallows from which the moon and small suns hang, entertain dispositions, invisible to the sleepless eyes of night; scaffolding of darkness, tell me what you are. Warbling water flows about the silver flutes of little lungs and flutter of fanning wings; birds set to play like nymphs anew after winter twilight has come again; these fluttering musicians are darkness, like silence is to sound; the silence of the birds, leafed and crooning, chirping the thoughts of the dead, professing the hemorrhage of stars into the hour of a carmine sky; voices of hell: burning and nostalgic for Gehenna, that incinerated our entrails with raw revenge, livening the dead with passions, invigorating us with the dreams of ghosts
III O Nightingale feeding and bathing in that old, sublime rush, vivacious and polished in wetness, coated with the laments of the stream; it lives and lies as I do, screaming: “Ghosts, give me no more visions!� lulling to time foregone and dispersed to the unworthy, observing silver streams that once were; beautiful suffering, fine and tender pain, perfect complexions; arcs and caresses of the glowing sky, crepuscular kingdoms of light; but the world only hears singing in the night. Fracture and furrow of the forest, silver scar amidst the dimmed trees, holding the quiet keening of the dark; clear sky and dark night, steeped with teardrops far from
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home; these silver constellations drained of sympathy perish as the twilit sky of doused dawn incarnadines, moons and suns will perish in the flame and flesh of dawn, the gallows of night will burn themselves during the arc of day until the sky is singed enough to return to the scaffolds of night, to quarter the prosperous sky into stars and the lulling of nightingales.
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HIP HOP TAUGHT US Pizz@ & Internal Rhyme
All I know is my experience, You livin’ it while I’m just hearin’ it The tales taught me seriously dysfunctional periods cause schools wanna teach the slave trade but not the pyramids But I didn’t need school cause hip hop taught me in a myriad of ways to take the power from the outside in gotta have that knowledge of self but they constantly dividin’ makin’ a commodity out of the art that people confide in Hip hop taught me bout tradition, payin’ homage and how when made slaves an identity is tarnished and how the CIA supply the most crack to hoods just to go back to good trustworthy Reaganomics Colonized the people then tried to force them foreign phonics But when slavery was blatant you denied them your “knowledge” and tried to use that to justify it not being abolished I used to think that the radio could never understand me But I learned that great minds transcribe what others can’t read so from 1989 to the current place in time, 26 years later still sayin’ fuck the grammys Used to only listen to Eminem, not thinkin’ bout who influenced him I never knew it was a movement but then I became it’s student learning how Tupac relates to Huey Newton makes the system translucent but now they tryna profit off the prophets But the destiny ain’t to manifest into targets Crooked corporations sellin’ million dollar footwear, but when it comes to basic human rights it seems they could care Lesser if the checks are not increasin’ with a good share They’ll lose if they invest back in the problems that the hood bare They just keep oppressin’, dishin’ out five dollar food stamps But don’t worry cause who dies is always in god’s hands which somehow have become white along with the first rock band and make sure you cut your hair since you’ll learn to hate your loc strands hip hop isn’t about hot brands but bringing awareness to issues with cop cams since nobody seems to be watching the watchmen I didn’t see blue badges with abusive mentalities Til KRS-One broke down Power Brutality Explaining officers as overseers for the ghetto Who never would reform but make conform, forget, and let go They’ll offer you boots cause you can’t get to the crown if stuck on the root Won’t teach the roots cause then we would know where they got all the loot In this beautiful planet that I inhabit But when they see land they feel they just gotta have it Not very mild mannered, the way the damage the languages
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And depict anything not English as savage When I heard Illmatic and what the New York State of mind like You either make it to the lime light or the crime life But thats all in hindsight, now we just gotta proceed to the next level like Lupe We can’t be bougie if we gonna sabotage this fiasco Amongst all the madness hip-hop taught me to have hope still, so let’s build my gratitude is endless for this platter I was served, for a culture that I learned to love, resistance that I deserved Forget about the 1 percenter labels with the nerve To strip away the fight of power, and devour up your worth we need more than the shortest month to show appreciation for a culture of love, change, and original creation
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LETTERS OF SOLIDARITY Marcus Hughes (Spray paint and deco markers on canvas, 20 x 16�) 37
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