BLACKLIST Blacklist Journal| | Volume Vol. 3 VI Blacklist Journal
Blacklist Journal blacklistjournal.com | Brandeis University
VOLUME VI
Blacklist Masthead
Managing Editor: Poetry Editor: Prose Editor: Treasurer: Assisting Editors:
Nyomi White Cassie Schifman Polina Barker Cassie Schifman Emma Lichtenstein Lindsay Shi Sasha Skarboviychuk
Cover Art: Ryan Jae
Table of Contents Inn’s Chorus
Poetry
9
Emma Wehrman
subscription to my depression: halloween edition
18
Nico Léger
homosexual shame & swimming lessons
22
Nico Léger
Swedish Exchange
27
Hannah Patient
Piece by Piece, Preservation
28
Dan Roussel
31
For the Puffer Fish Dom Fonce
Veganuary
Prose 6
Gerardo Lamadrid
living memory
11
Grace Deaton
the c(O)ns(C)ious perio(D) of the nighttime
24
Sophie Jonsson
New world Gerardo Lamadrid
33
Visual Art
Hold On Pain Ends
5
Ryan Jae
Untitled
8
Ryan Jae
thirty five thousand sunset
10
Serena Zhang
Donut Girl
15
Nick Berger
Versatile, Versatile Store
16
Keegan Barone
Connection
19
Minseok Jang
Loverboy
20
Nick Berger
Untitled
21
Ryan Jae
Regrets
23
Nick Berger
Positive Delivery
29
Minseok Jang
Bone Bard
30
Nick Berger
transcience - sentience - resilience Serena Zhang
32
Blacklist is an international, student-run journal based out of Brandeis University. blacklistjournal.com theblacklistjournal@gmail.com 415 South Street | Waltham, MA 02453
4
Hold On Pain Ends Ryan Jae
5
Veganuary
Gerardo Lamadrid
On the evening of Veganuary’s eve, a young lover born and raised and still living but not working in Barrio Obrero boarded a train in Cupey carrying a backpack off their left shoulder and a box of Hershey’s truffles from Walgreens’ month-and-a-half-early St. Valentine’s Day sale nestled tightly in their right armpit. They were on sale for buy-oneget-one-half-off. Where was the half-priced box then? He didn’t buy it. He couldn’t. As much as he wanted to, he only had enough cash for the one, plus his train ticket home. The lover grasped a handrail. They couldn’t complain about the missing chocolates. Inflation, man. Year after year; just won’t stop. But whatever—they knew their lover waiting at home for dinner delivery would share her dessert, too. A much younger girl in the burgundy flannel pinafore of her public school uniform, sitting next to her father, just a few feet from the young lover asked them for a piece of chocolate. Her father said, in English, “Riley, we don’t ask strangers for their candy. You don’t know who it’s meant for.” The lover replied, “That’s okay. She can have one if that’s alright with you. My partner will understand.” The stunned father looked down at the grinning girl looking up at him, nodded at the lover and thanked them, telling the girl to thank them as well. “Gracias,” the girl said, “and happy new year.” The lover smiled at her when they got off the train at the Sagrado Corazón station—she waved back while her father drafted work emails on his phone, not realizing it was their last stop. The lover took the escalator down, basking in the coolness of the gray train station, then climbed five steep, dark, steamy blocks to their partner’s apartment, to the tune of a single bar’s salsa-heavy jukebox and billiards echoes. “Toma,” the lover said having just reached the door right when their lover opened it to welcome them. “Lo prometido es deuda,” they added, handing her the box. “Te los tienes que acabar hoy,” they said, knowing she was about to go vegan for a whole month.
6
“Le falta uno,” she said, and the lover explained how they’d given one to a gringa girl on the Tren Urbano, but she’d never seen them give a stranger anything, and she knew how much they loved cordials, and there was a cordial missing, so she could not believe them, and she told them so. The lover, too tired to argue after working a double-shift at a rundown pizzeria and doing not one but two good deeds for the day said, well, they can’t make you believe them—you believe whatever you wanna believe. There was a girl, and her dad looked like a banker which was weird cuz they were taking a shitty train no one takes, not even the locals, and the little girl even said happy new year, in English, after saying thank you in Spanish, and they got on at Piñero, so they might’ve spent the afternoon at the Parque Luis Muñoz Marín, and they stayed on the train tho everyone else was getting off, and if she still won’t believe them after they provided so much detail and brought her fucking chocolates, then whatever, it doesn’t matter and there’s really nothing they can do about it. She still didn’t believe them, but she offered them the truffles she didn’t want, and they shared a beer the lover grabbed from her freezer, then they undressed, then they made love with Hershey’s milk chocolate and Heineken on their breaths, then they napped for an hour and a half, woke up and cooked dinner together—lasagna with all the cheese she had left in her fridge—damn near burning it, but they scarfed it down on her bed and complimented themselves but not each other, then they drank Heinekens and Bacardí with tamarind juice till midnight, watched the ball drop in Times Square, went to bed together without cuddling, woke up energized and sweating two hours apart, the lover first, their lover second, but both woke up knowing the same new thing, that a profound divide had sprung up between them overnight, something they’d seen coming, and they shared a wide mug of black coffee, and they each cooked their own breakfasts and spent the rest of the day knowing there was something they needed to talk about but wouldn’t talk about, no, not for another month or two, or till the semester was over and one of them finally decided to leave Puerto Rico over the summer and never call their ex lover ever again. For the first time, they each came up with their own new year’s resolutions instead of a shared one, but neither brought theirs up, either.
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Untitled
Ryan Jae
8
Inn’s Chorus
Emma Wehrman
Chords of thunderous Laughter shove left shoulders Burst from tables scrabble up Stone to tickle tapestries Rustle chuckles in response ale’s Floating froth pops gulped Away by belchers in boots who slam Empty glass on wood tables for echoic Percussive effect calling for Ialne to bring more beer and fresh Bread she serves them with Sly wit and a smoking laugh strolls Back to the bar trusty mutt trailing Behind her while bare hands Break fresh bread wood slaps stone Yelps a chair fell and took a bread-breaking Belcher with it but he stands Back up in boots snortles with The rest turns the chair upright to Gulp away more pops floating froth crackles And snarls of fire die down to Grumbles and grimaces boots stomp Up steps ghost down creaky hall above And Ialne sits by grumpy fire mutt Beside her fingers thrushing Through coarse fur humming lulls Shrinking down with fire Until ashy cindering toil
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thirty five thousand sunset Serena Zhang
10
living memory Grace Deaton
My name is Ida Elizabeth and I am an only child. The kids in my class make fun of my name. They call me a grandma and ask how many times I had flunked to be a grandma who hadn’t graduated fifth grade. I don’t know what to say to them. My mom tells me to ignore them because my name is special and they will never understand, no one will ever understand. My mom and dad work a lot. They work even more than I go to school. I get lonely when they aren’t around, but that means I get to watch a lot of TV. Sometimes I wish I had someone to watch with, but then I imagine a little brother yelling at me to change the channel like dad does to mom, and I decide I’m happy on my own. Today I decide to be bad. Mommy always tells me that I can’t have a TV in my room because watching TV in bed will turn me into a zombie, eating other people’s brains instead of using my own. She and Daddy have always had a TV in their room which I think means they are already zombies. According to my science class, if two zombies have a baby then that baby has to be a zombie, that’s how genes work. I climb up onto Mommy and Daddy’s bed. The duvet swallows me whole like the time I swallowed an entire grape without chewing and Mommy cried and cried and cried while I coughed it up and told her everything was fine. But she didn’t stop crying. I reach for the nightstand on my mom’s side of the bed where the remote always lives, but it’s not there. I crawl over to Daddy’s side, thinking he finally stole the remote away from Mommy. But he didn’t. It’s not on the bed, nowhere on the floor. I can’t find it in the bathroom, nor in any of the dresser drawers. The digital clock on the nightstand blinks 3:26pm. Four minutes until my show starts, an hour until my mom gets home. I am losing time. I swing open the double closet doors. I’d never been in my mom’s closet before. It’s big. I didn’t know she owned this many clothes. I run my hand along the dresses, imagining their soft fabric brushing my own legs. I take a pair of tall heels and slip my tiny feet into them. My ankles wobble as I try to step and I fall to my knees.
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Suddenly I don’t care about my show anymore. With my head now close to the floor, I see something that from any other vantage point would have been obscured by long skirts. A box. Me and the box are at eye level. In big sharpie letters across the brown box is my name. Ida. I poke my head out the door. Red numbers flash 3:38pm. I still have time. I pull the box into the light, feeling slightly guilty but overwhelmingly invigorated. The flaps are torn. I pull out the contents one by one. First is a baby onesie covered in little pink flowers. I pressed it to my nose, expecting the sweet scent of a baby, but instead it just smelled dusty. Mommy showed me a photo of me wearing this one time. I told her it was pretty and she smiled but she didn’t look happy. It made me feel weird. I look on the inside where the tag should’ve been but instead of a tag, Ida was embroidered along the back collar. I frown. My name is Ida Elizabeth. I don’t like it when people leave the Elizabeth part out. My parents never left the Elizabeth part out. I set the onesie down. Next is a picture. It’s of Mommy and Daddy standing on a front porch holding me between them. It’s not our front porch. I wonder where we were. Mommy looks young, pretty, less tired. The wispy hair on my tiny baby head is almost blonde. I pull a piece of my hair in front of my face and see a deep caramel brown curl. I wish my hair was still that blonde color, then maybe I would grow up to be pretty like Mommy used to be. I pull out a framed document next. Curly letters spell out the words Birth Certificate. It says my name, Ida Elizabeth Ingles. I crinkle my eyebrows. My birth certificate has been hanging above my bed for my whole life. I saw it there when I woke up this morning. I mean, right? I drop the frame and scramble to my room. Sure enough, there it is hanging on my pale yellow wall. Can people have more than one birth certificate? Maybe the one in the closet is a replacement, just in case something bad happens to the first one. I walk slowly back to the closet and sit back down. I scan the backup
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birth certificate over and over. And then I see it.
October 1st, 2004. That’s not my birthday. My birthday is in February. It’s always been in February. I am nine years old. I count backwards on my fingers to make sure. I land on 2011. This piece of paper is seven years too early. Or am I seven years too late? I tear through the box. I find another picture. My mom and dad are in a field, my dad in a suit and my mom in a black dress. They’re standing in front of something. A box. Not like the box in my lap. But maybe everything like the box in my lap. Their faces are long. These are the faces I know, nothing like the faces on that foreign front porch. They are standing in front of a coffin. “Ida Elizabeth, what are you doing?” When I turn around, Mommy’s face is white as a ghost. She’s home early. She marches into the closet in a daze and snatches the photo from my hands. Before she can stop me I dig my hands into the box and pull out the first thing my hands touch. A newspaper article with that same coffin picture.
Tragic Accident Befalls Local Family- Six Year Old Daughter Found Dead.
“What is this?” I hold up the flimsy paper. It trembles in my hands. Mommy is crying uncontrollably now. I feel my heart beating in my chest, in my stomach, in my ears. 13
“I don’t have a sister,” I say, but lacking confidence. “Neither did Ida!” She yells back, voice hoarse. But I’m Ida. My name is Ida Elizabeth and I am an only child and my mom just said my name but she isn’t talking about me. More loud crying wracked her body. “We just wanted a second chance,” she said, dropping to the floor like me. I gently placed the newspaper back in the box, then pushed the box as far away from my body as I could reach. “What’s wrong with that?” She looked at the ceiling like she was asking God. Maybe I’m forgetting things. Maybe we moved when I was a baby so I never knew that porch. Maybe I’m not in fifth grade. Maybe my birthday is in October. Maybe I’m a zombie who rose from the dead and climbed out of my coffin on February 18th, 2011. No. None of those things are true. I start crying with her, but we don’t cry together. I don’t crawl over to her. I don’t reach out for her comforting arms. I cry alone on the scratchy carpet on the floor of a closet I wish I’d never opened. The Mommy in front of me isn’t the Mommy I know, but even less is she the Mommy in the picture in front of the porch with baby Ida who isn’t me. But I think I am supposed to be her.
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Donut Girl
Nick Berger
15
Versatile
Keegan Barone 16
Versatile Store 17
subscription to my depression: halloween editon Nico Léger
every month my depression, like a dead beat with a court mandate, mails me pages from my childhood tiger beat magazines. cheaply, withholds posters of celebrity teens and stickers better left never used. last month, only pasted in scraps of newspaper obituaries, people i never met now haunting my doorstep, where the post is habitually neglected. this month, i decide to get the mail before the trick-or-treaters come. find, not a quiz for which my chemical romance member i should date based on eyeliner aesthetic, but a recipe on coping this october. ingredients: a hyperfixation like glow in the dark slime. never to be exposed in daylight, all ooze and thick to hide my body when my mind becomes nothing but a cemetery for to-do lists, and zombie face paint is a new skincare routine. these days, i feel like i’m the only one. this is not an outbreak. a cheap pumpkin carving kit that comes with a knife so dull it gets caught in pumpkin skin until the fruit rots. my therapist, who is grateful the knife is in its safety guard. who says i should accept candy from strangers because there’s more to life than my tongue falling victim to razor blades and shards of glass. that chocolate would taste delicious if only i were to put it in my mouth. the memory of how mom bled to sew a cheerleading outfit. how M was already a football player and there could be no duplicates, my brother and i, not the grady daughters -- the shining’s mistaken twins. wonder at what point during the night the pom-poms became cylinder blocks chained to my wrists.
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a mirror that i avoided for years, panicked i might expose myself and call bloody mary by her name. an apparition i’d rather bury. my favorite holidays: the anniversary of when victor stitched my body together, the parts that i could never wash the slime off of under the knife, stuffed with pumpkin guts and bandaged with papier-mâché magazine clippings. and halloween, which are both nostalgic of my past costumes. editor’s note: some of these ingredients never go out of season.
Connection
Minseok Jang 19
Lover Boy
Nick Berger
20
Untitled
Ryan Jae 21
homosexual shame & swimming lessons Nico Léger
a wave pool of floating bodies & bandaids but the chlorine is 12% alcohol. a world of lifeguards without whistles, our throats bearing to the high ceilings & gushing in an overflow. the joke about intentionally drowning so the hot lifeguard will kiss you: some nights, i will drown so that anyone will kiss me. some nights, i will float on my back and pray for sparks of lightning just to find home. i can’t keep up with eight feet of water if i am only 60%, the rest all smooth skin & slender bone & a gaze that wishes to overlook molding bodies if it means they float between us like a buoy. last night, J & i sat at the edge with only our feet in the water. like cats, too scared of drastic temperatures and the way our hair will look drenched in fear. i told him that i am tired of staying above the surface & what if tonight i go under? J said he’d kiss a boy if my life depended on it.
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Regrets
Nick Berger
23
the c(O)n(C)ious perio(D) of the nighttime Sophie Jonsson
If I don’t do this right something will happen. What I am doing and describing. K is the only one who knows about this. She suggested I write everything down so I can notice alll of the things that I am doing. Sort of like how really fit people keep records of everything they eat to say healthy. I need to stay healthy. I need to get healthy. If someone hears me something willl happen. I thought about handwriting this, but decided that would take too long. If I did that I would have to meticulously draw out every letter, making sure no lines were disconnected, and that everything was in a line. I do like the idea of controlling the size of what I say though. If it is small enough, maybe she will not be able to read it, or care enough to do it. I know she will though, at least she’s getting paid to. I’ll just make things small here. To share something is to risk losing it. And K was going to be reading it. I just have to make sure I lose the right thing. Nighttime started with turning off the television. We had a little square television, only about 10x10 inches. It was so old, it crackled when you turned it on and off. I would try to leave it alone. But then the feeling happens. The feeling that something has to be done. If I leave the television with remnants of crackle, the crackle will explode. I quickly press my hand to the screen and let the static connect my hand to the surface. I run my finger around the outline four times, hitting every corner to make sure all of the crackle is gone. I put my hand in the center and then run my fingers around the edges all the way around four times every night. K says I should try three times. And then two. And then one. And then I won’t do it anymore. I think I just won’t turn on the television anymore. I know I am irrational. People think things on the television are relatable. Relatability makes everything more interesting and worthwhile. I do not know if this is interesting or worthwhile. I suppose the things I do are not interesting or worthwhile. I know this. So I shouldn’t do them. I want to be relatable.
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I first noticed all of these things when I would play the piano and feel off balance. If I played a note with my right hand, my body would feel off balance. So I would play something with my left hand to even it out. I did not mind if my left hand did something and my right hand did not (I am left-handed), but giving the attention to my right hand made me feel as though someone had chained an anchor to the right side of me and I was heading toward the bottom of an ocean. But not everyone plays the piano (though I doubt many people could understand this at all). So here is a different example. I do the same thing with doorknobs (especially cold brass ones like the ones in my home at nighttime). I will only open them with my left or both hands. And if I can’t for some reason, something tells me to find something to match the feeling quick. Or the ball and chain will be clasped around me as the ocean surrounds. I know I am irrational. Most of the worries are for other people but this one is just for me. Does that sound selfish? Conceited? I hope not. My walk to my room is next. I step exclusively in intervals of four. I can tell you that. I still cannot tell you why. If I do, something will happen. I hope that is okay. Usually it’s eighteen steps to get there, and then I take two steps in place before shutting the door. I do this during the day sometimes, but the nighttime walk is the one I always do. Because something might happen if I don’t. I know I am irrational. Steps are boring. I know this.You probably don’t want to hear about it. But K has to hear about it. Maybe I should just write this to her. No. Writing to anyone seems easier than to someone. Thinking about someone specific makes me worrisome about what they will think. They will probably want a clear-cut plot. But trying to advance the plot gets in the way of the portraying the life and the feelings as they are. If something is to anyone, anything can be said. Perhpas normally, steps are used in a plot based story, but they are not the story. Here they are the story. I hope that is okay.
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I then walk around the outline of the room, making sure everything is in its place. If it is not, something would happen. If everything is as it should be, the conscious period of nighttime is over. I can sleep and believe I did everything to make things okay. I know K will say none of this controls anything. But it does to me. I know I am being irrational. I find that once things are repeated, they become less meaningful and genuine. I am aware that I have done that here, and that to you, I seemingly do that every night. But in my defense, I will say that there are differences between writing, speaking, thinking, and acting. I am referring to speaking in this case. If you say the same thing over and over the same way, there is no meaning to it anymore. Perhaps the thought you have is still important, but not what you are conveying. People do not understand that this is different. Every night in my head, it is as if everything I have done before has been erased and no longer works to fight against what can happen. Because no one heard it except me. So the slate is clean and I must do it again. I can convince myself of this. You can convince yourself of anything. Though I hope I have not convinced you that this is right. I know it is not. And yet I believe it.
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Swedish Exchange Hannah Patient
Kristoffer, forgive her, for when you first met she was just fifteen, acne-scarred and brimming with things she’d never felt before. She’d seen your photograph and fell in love before she even heard your name. You met her at the station and carried her suitcase. She was too shy to speak now she had met you face to face. You probably thought her strange – standing awkwardly in your kitchen, tired and on the verge of tears. A few days passed and she opened up, but not enough to let you in. She saw you in your altar-boy robes and thought a lot about sin. And she clung onto the joke you shared on that beautiful final day, when you splashed her and she shrieked aloud – overdid it, again. The tears were welling up once more when she boarded the Gothenburg train. You waved goodbye and gave her one last flash of your lovely smile – you forgot, but she did not: a final gift from you. To you she was even less than a friend but when you think of her, be kind – all she wanted from you was a slice of your world just for a little while.
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Piece by Piece, Preservation Dan Roussel
I want to pin the corners of the moment carefully—thin wire pins, blushing red skulls at the tip of the wing, then the head, the tail, the other wing stretched across the foam board of my love. This is a dream worth hunting, a dream worthy of hanging its head on the walls of the empty villa, always mountainside. Always isolated. I want it pressed into a book. I want it preserved in frost without bite, preserved in fire without ash. I want to hide it in the lightless closet, laid out in the dark, undreaming. I want to pin it under consumer-grade glass, the kind to say
look over all that I’ve had, sometimes, I think look over all that I’ve had, sometimes, I think I only know how to love what has already died. Sometimes, I think I only learn to love when I’ve swallowed the key to the lock.
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Positive Delivery Minseok Jang
29
Bone Bard
Nick Berger
30
For the Puffer Fish Dom Fonce
Males laboriously flap their fins as they
swim along the seafloor, resulting in disrupted sediment and amazing circular patterns.
—article on puffer fish sand art
Yes, I’ve placed the breath of a woman on my tongue and wanted more—to shape earth with the breeze collected in my lungs—craved the attention, ballooning my chest as I walked. I understand, puffer fish, signals and symbols can be lifted, offered, and smoothed down to nothing in a blink—bodies sprawled on a bed, digging burial mounds into the sheets that evaporate in the morning light. But failure is a basket holding spurned cockles, sheddings, to flatten and paint on next. In the winter, my father blew fumes from his nose onto the frozen window—wrote love letters to my mother in spilled coffee grounds. In death, he etched chicken scratch into the ether as soul twirled through dust. And she, his woman, sat rock-heavy in his hand. She marked his patterns with her own—water seeping into deadwood—tied his thumbs to the bed and wailed on his torso, trying to blanket his ghost. And this weight is worth dancing and painting over, puffer fish. It is always worth it.
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transcience - sentience - resilience Serena Zhang
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New world
Gerardo Lamadrid
Catching sight of you and your group (making eye contact with you, actually, and immediately noticing how you’d given up on contacts – the itchiness and the having to clean them getting the better of you – and finally tried out those tortoise-shell rims I suggested), I suddenly felt like I wasn’t where I thought I was. Was I back in Caguas, I wondered. It felt like we were all back in Caguas, with its similar heat and language, the quick-shifting shade, the sporadic cobblestones. Yet there were still sándwiches called “tortas” being sold from colorful, rundown carts to people in suits talking on their phones during their lunch hours, and el Ángel de la Independencia gleaming in the midday sun of another daily traffic rush, as well as jolly, old-seeming kids in school uniforms lugging backpacks bigger than their torsos, and kid-seeming elders with wrinkles like commuters crammed in their tin trains, like corn collected on its cob, and also pink dresses – as rosa mexicano as their taxis – and flawless, dark braids like endless trains, or endless corncobs, chatting with each other across their tables littered with knickknacks and housewares. And now you were there too, another old spirit, ancient as ever tho always younger than me, with a new shoulder-grazing bob capped with blonde, a blonde the hue of genetically-modified corn. And, as always, your family was with you, yelling past each other, looming over you, taking pictures, almost tipping towards the ground, while you held them up, already tired halfway thru the day but feigning a smile, the way glistening tourists pose in a noonish glare with the Leaning Tower in Pisa as if they hadn’t asked for this chore, as if they deserved thanks for anyone else being there, as if they’d all come especially for them, as if it was their duty to keep the show running and removing them would mean having to remove the tower itself, airlifting it into a safe container, and sending everyone back home emptyhanded, sans trendy Instagram post captioned with a pizza pun, with nothing, really – not even a refund. And it was you who came over to say hi and ask me (looking me in the eyes, ignoring my parents) how I’d known you’d be there. Then you laughed and asked again. Was I stalking you? Did your mom tell me (cuz, even though you broke up with me three years ago, she still texts me)? If I wasn’t following you, then how come I looked like Bambi
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facing headlights when I caught sight of you? How could I (someone who still had so much in common with you, despite denying it most times) possibly choose to holiday (also with my family) in Ciudad de México (one of the most visited cities in the world) just like you… without having planned it, without scheming and hoping, without timing this tour (which I didn’t sign us up for – my dad did) so precisely it would guarantee us running into each other? Why? Why else would I be there? In that sinking city built on a sunken city, remodeled more than once to look more European than it ever could – to look, from bright glass to gilded bronze, as if transposed from one, very old world to this very, very new one.
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Contributor Notes Grace Deaton ’20 - Mills College
Grace Deaton is a senior at Mills College pursuing degrees in both creative writing and economics. She spends most of her time either leading the Mills College tennis team as their captain or holed up in the library writing (whether it’s for class or for fun).
Gerardo Lamadrid ’20 - Vassar College
Gerardo J. Lamadrid is a Puerto Rican writer. This is their last semester at Vassar College. They will pursue an MFA in creative writing afterwards. Their work has been featured in Blacklist more than once. Their most recent poetry books are bocados (San Juan, Ediciones del Flamboyán, 2019) and Yéndome (San Juan, Publicaciones Gaviota, 2018).
Sophie Jonsson ’22 - Loyola Marymount University
Sophie Jonsson is an English major at Loyola Marymount University.
Dan Roussel ’21 - Merrimack College
Dan Roussel is an English and Sociology undergraduate at Merrimack College. When he isn’t working at his campus’ Writers House, he’s bouncing between radio shows, roommate conflicts, and the nearest Keurig. He also serves as the Managing Editor of The Merrimack Review. His work has previously been published in Blacklist Journal and the After A Line by Anne Bradstreet anthology, and featured at Mass Poetry Festival and the Greater Boston Undergraduate Poetry Festival.
Dom Fonce
Dom Fonce is a poet from Youngstown, Ohio. He is the author of Here, We Bury the Hearts (Finishing Line Press, 2019). He is the Editor-in-Chief of Volney Road Review. His poetry has been published in the Tishman Review, Obra/Artifact, Burning House Press, Black Rabbit Quarterly, Italian Americana, 3Elements Review, Junto Magazine, America’s Best Emerging Poets 2018: Midwest Region, and elsewhere.
Hannah Patient - Somerville College
Hannah Patient is an English finalist at Somerville College, Oxford, and the former Essex Young Poet of the Year. Her poetry has previously been included in publications such as The Purple Breakfast Review, The Oxford Review of Books, and Foxglove Journal. She likes pina coladas, but hates getting caught in the rain.
Emma Wehrman ’21 - Oberlin College
Emma Wehrman (she/her/hers) is a third-year English major and Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies minor at Oberlin College. An avid reader and writer, she is particularly interested in feminist re-uptakes of fairy tales, poetry that plays with language, sound, and syntax, and narrative as a space for healing from trauma. Her poem, “Marken in the Muirland” was published in Blacklist Volume V in 2019.
Nick Berger ’21 - Ringling College
Nick Berger is a cartoonist and dog person. Based in Florida, they tend to use a combination of digital and traditional techniques to create their art. Their sleepiness is slowly but surely becoming stronger, but that won’t stop them from drawing and watching Star Wars lore videos.
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Nico Léger ’21 - Brandeis University
Nico Léger is a Canadian-American poet who identifies as non-binary. He is studying Creative Writing, English, and East Asian Studies at Brandeis University in Boston. In his work, he seeks to understand gender identity and sexuality, as well as mental health and the complex layers of racial, national, and cultural identity in the United States. He can be found at @nico_leger_ on Instagram.
Keegan Barone
Keegan Barone is a multimedia artist creating work with a critical commentary on contemporary American issues through her own lens of athletics. Her work speaks specifically to her own experience as a woman athlete. By representing her own vulnerabilities, she creates further discussions of what has influenced her experience in relation to certain aspects of their identity. As sport is ingrained into our society, she explores how this is reflected in social and cultural norms. Through this, she is able to create artwork that speaks to issues in American society concerning gender and the body.
Minseok Jang ’23 - Ringling College
Minseok Jang is a freshman at Ringling College and currently taking up a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts where he was admitted with the Dean’s scholarship. From most of the schools he applied this year, he was admitted with the maximum academic scholarship and additional funding offered for his excellent portfolio. As a passionate young artist, he finds great joy to continuously challenge himself in various fields from installation art, performance art even to fashion design, which allows him to try unusual experiments in art making, resulting in distinctive character of his pieces. Minseok Jang wants to deeply explore unlimited possibility in art by combining various forms from different fields.
Ryan Jae ’20 - Stanford University
Ryan Jae is a Art Practice + Computer Science major in Stanford’s class of 2020, whose primary practice is photography but pursues a highly interdisciplinary approach at the intersection of printing, digital and video art, software, and hardware. Please engage with his most recent work on instagram @ryanajae, and on the website www.ryanajae.com.
Serena Zhang ’21 - Stanford University
Serena Zhang (she/her) is a junior at Stanford University majoring in International Relations and minoring in Creative Writing. Her work has appeared in The Leland Quarterly, The Heritage Review, and elsewhere. She is endlessly inspired by the women in her life and dreams of directing the next Oscar-winning film starring an allAsian American cast. She owes her love of rain and airports to the Pacific Northwest in which she grew up. Writing is her first real love. You can find more of her work at xiaosez.weebly.com.
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