1815
An Editors’ Note
“Who shall let this world be beautiful?”
W. E. B. Du Bois posed this question in his address at the 1926 NAACP Conference, and it anchors the Spring 2024 issue of The Columbia Review. By invoking this question, we are reminded that the world’s beauty is not a passive inheritance, but an active, collective endeavor—a responsibility we are called to shape and sustain.
Literature is not produced in a vacuum: this issue was produced from within an institution that doubled down on its role as a profiteering arm of violence rather than a place of learning and open discourse. Instead of divesting from genocide, the university escalated its use of violent, repressive tactics against its own students. As a result, what would have been a routine semester was instead marked by a collective commitment to stand against these actions. And, on April 18th, when our weekly meeting in Kent 405 was disrupted by the threat of an imminent police raid of the South Lawn, we immediately left and committed to defending the space— including one of our own inside.
At this time, our community sought beauty in the small acts of resistance and care: in study, in shared meals as the dining halls were closed, in teaching and learning with each other in spite of a university that abandons beauty for profit. In the face of censorship, the purpose of artistic expression is clearer than ever: to disrupt, to challenge, to bear witness and to hold ground when other forms of speech are threatened. We publish this Editor’s Note in a tradition that understands beauty as inseparable from the politics which necessitate it, and as resistance against a university eager to erase the memory of last semester. This note stands as a testament to the hope and solidarity cultivated then, to letting the memory echo through every corner of this campus until the demand for divestment is answered.
These pieces first belonged to their authors, and then the editorial board, and now they belong to all of us. What this means is that this issue has to do with you. What this means is that this issue is political. We ask you to hold Du Bois’ question with you in this issue and beyond, to seek out how these words—and their writers—are forever devoted to a better world. With this issue, we ask what we owe to ourselves, to one another, and to the people of Palestine.
— Ashling Lee, Gabrielle Pereira Baer, Ari 雅莉 (Ya-Li) X
Derek Otsuji
Derek Otsuji
Nicholas Alti
Ele Gonzales
Ele Gonzales
Mayra Kalaora
Cindy King
Zeke Shomler
Claretta Holsey
Gabriella Lindsay
Nora Raleigh
Haven Capone
Jenny Maaketo
Anna Molenaar
Madeline Clark
Carlin Mackie-Stephenson
WITNESSES
Derek Otsuji
The bird dropped from above the canopy into the channel and headed straight towards me!
They have the look of the touched—faces lit with a delirium of joy, memory crazed by an encounter whose description eludes them as they recall the creature, presumed a ghost, who flushed from the hardwood swamp, swung into view before vanishing again into legend–and thus keep alive an ardency of hope that defeats skeptics and their sullen ilk hankering for more definitive proof than a jaw gone slack, mouth agape, as the brain, bemused by brute beauty—red crest, ivory bill, white trailing edge of the underwing—fumbles for a word— declares proof outright—“Lord, God! What a bird!”
ELEPAIO! A RONDEAU
Derek Otsuji
Elepaio, swift on the wing, Come from the branches where you sing And mark the log for our canoe And tell us if the wood is true Or ferret out each crawling thing.
“Fish is delicious,”—the glad ring Of witty tidings that you bring, A note from which we take our cue.
Elepaio,
Guardian of the sea-faring, Now with your blessing
On our brave vessel and its crew
We’ll cut the waves and watery blue And fly the seas as on a wing,
Elepaio!
ALL HALLOW
Nicholas Alti
Loss now a peace I wear like no thank you I have already taken what you came to offer though a kind gesture, a hooked finger inside pried open lips, yes a kind gesture could last forever somewhere like here.
Come on baby let me take off your skin face so I can remonstrate your brain so I can leave the room so I can ruin meditation for everyone so I can go away so I can strangle my own spirit
Often when I’m my own wet deadly choke I cough into a gourd and hope when it molds it’ll turn into an air balloon out of here over any recorded altitude and as soon as nobody can see me I’ll ignite the reserve gas, tricky as any other wishing star.
Be a decent boy and twinkle for me twinkle so as you don’t go right to hell so as you don’t got to get right so as you can smile while lying so as you don’t get broke down so as you don’t get broken now
Going deeper into the epiglottis then into night the fleet-footed-cloven-hooved-split-tongued entity dredged so deeply within me it must have emerged from me, my fault indeed, once more I’ve let slip away the thief.
Slip out them wet socks and Benedictine my monk so I can navigate this mortal coil so I can indulge collateral so I can illustrate carnivorous vigor so I can breathe quick and cry so I can get drunk on your high
Ice freezes under mud and I’m beside myself slap happy for a flash flood of graves to form where the sea settles into a foam of sludge, bomb-blinded mucous eyes try to find a slice of sunset to witness, a pleasure in forgoing each iota before any sum whole.
Spread your wings and look away from me so as you can slip seeds between floorboards so as you can tell EMTs what you took so as you don’t lock yourself in this room so as you can hunt a smaller animal so as you can encourage reincarnation
Bring me to walnut groves and the bone pit composed of cattle femurs you once hoped were dinosaur bones before seeing a bloated heifer decaying there, brown seepage leaked upon a perforated bed of bleached calcium, pragmatic lack of mythical levity.
I know you want a nip of my damp lobotomy so I can close your cold eyelids so I can hone my foul sorcery so I can find some Narcan so I can walk the old family dog
so I can mend any hexes broken
Sick with incandescent plasma with patience await zomboid cross-contamination although it’d feel nice to get out again, swallow helium pregame for the end of the inhabitable Earth where ruling class germs can radiate tenderly in recurring diluvial residue.
Show me how to enter your dwelling undetected so as you may assure paranoia so as you live in constant danger so as you have the time to worry so as you pass your last limit so as you can lean on never again
Loneliness is less when I’m off by myself like an ornery crab in the claw machine tank but I try to quell the tide and see your faces though grief is a thing that takes away reflections and leaves shadows in the air, forms with lost function in an effort to hang on.
so as I am grub on concrete after heavy rain so you are heat waves which arrange decay
AFTER THIS BROADCAST, A BROADCAST
Ele Gonzales
a pulse beating long after the music has ended is not a pulse, not an ending, and aberrations of the human form, it’s gas station ice, teeth benumbed that it was a nice walk to the edge of the pond, the rattling everything we said was true truth, and everything left undone left undone left forever, a dead pulse is yet a desire to be back itself beating out stretched winds, so that undead is non-ending, not unended but a night, it was nice to see you again as a grave music, as when a body sacs itself like grabbing ice, and melting conforms to no more form, as no more body, as drop or undead, as ended, so good to see you again, momentum, it was a beautiful thing we said about you, and afterwards i went to the store and brought your no body back, cold cold, wracked with but the children could see it, an empty but the dogs could see it, the priests claimed to see it, they waved music in the cold air, they the priests together a body of breaking music, the children had seen it before in the movies, those creatures that move against people like water, openmouthed, apprehensive or afraid, unbelieving, trying the doors and then the windows, so much you wanted to be here with us still,
Ele Gonzales GUTTER
It was clear that we were a temporary fixture. When the new house stepped forward, we had the guts to call it luck; luck! When the scraps of paper we found tucked beneath the floorboards surfaced, we found here, a letter, here a diary entry, here, here, a red ribbon, a float of chipped paint and at last, the source of the flood, a worn pencil, and the lynchpin of that instrument, a ghost. Or what we assumed to be; so much, so many things might have been hunting us down. But we chose to call the house haunted. Why throw hands on the dark of this new promise. Why question anything. When spring came, we set flowers on the table every day, I cut the stems into angles, you played the piano, high and then low, and then high, and higher, and higher, the heat rising to the ceiling, excorsising the little bits and pieces, the strands of someone else’s hair, under the floorboards, the broken nails, the empty pill bottles, glorious, breathed above! Some time. Passed quietly. On quick feet. The sink breaks, you buy new bedding. Radio erupts and then sizzles out in the evenings, winter comes again, breaking in the second year. A gift horse. Was the mail from a new friend or an old one. Will you please remember to make the bed. Don’t throw my sweaters in the dryer anymore, now they barely cover half of a person; and so we divided to make do. The spring called summer, which, when it came, one of us had saved a seat for. Called forth rushing to the table. In autumn I fell out of my body, no anchors, I tried to tie
my hair in the ribbons, yes, believe the timeline! Winter. Relic sounds. When they came I lost my mind. When, when. We were impatient as snow. When would cross forth, wishing, then falling down, and gone in the middle of the night. Light as cold. A just thought, if justice was trying to be nice about it.
ME AND BRITISH CHARLIE
Mayra Kalaora
My boyfriend is very suspicious of British Charlie. I think it is because whenever British Charlie sees me he mistakes me for Rosie, whom my boyfriend and I have agreed is more beautiful than me. I try to tell my boyfriend that I can never be with British Charlie because he ties his sweaters around his neck, which, according to my father, is the hallmark of the Kind of Guy I Should Stay Away From. My father also advises against the Guy That I Shouldn’t Even Try With, which is any man with an affinity for white chocolate, because surely that means he’s gay. So don’t you worry, I say to my boyfriend, because over Christmas break, I am certain that British Charlie ate all the white chocolate peppermint bark that someone had left in our dorm. Actually we were quite upset with him after that.
British Charlie graduated from the school that Winston Churchill went to but his friends who graduated from the school that Prince William and Harry went to privately tell me that I will be devastated to find out that British Charlie is actually a Nouveau Riche. He goes to private cigar lounges to smoke with other Losers, one of whom offered him the kind of job that has you look down on all of Manhattan as you sweat in a nice suit in a not-so-nice office. His friends jerk their heads around to scan their surroundings before they lean into my ear and whisper: The Harvard Club is where it’s at. I nod dutifully to signal that I understand that the Harvard Club is indeed where it’s at and it is shameful to live off of anything that isn’t from Daddy. Or maybe it’s Papa — emphasis on the latter half of the word. I think about how every time British Charlie sees me he invites me to go to the cigar lounge with him but these people have never brought me along to Where It’s At.
They say British Charlie roams the dining halls to find someone who will make eye contact with him so that he can sit with them. I should have known, because once, British Charlie sat down on our table while I was in the middle of telling a very secret story.
Who are you talking about, British Charlie said, I want to know too. Everyone had their eyes on me. It was my fault that he was here and they knew it.
I cleared my throat and looked British Charlie dead in the eyes, mine narrow and his wide. British Charlie, I said, can’t you see that we’re having a private conversation here? British Charlie buffered for a second before he stood up. He was still looking down at his hands when he said, I understand. I’m sorry, Rosie. I’ll go now. He tightened the sweater around his neck, picked up his plate, and moved to the empty table behind ours.
British Charlie has begun to lose his accent and we are all concerned. Like, sometimes he will say Fag and we cannot tell if he is referring to a cigarette or a homosexual. But what is even worse is that the other day British Charlie told us that from now on he would be just Charlie. It was really bad. British Ed slammed his fist on the table and British Lily yelled the word Traitor at him. My boyfriend and I had a big fight because he still kept calling him British Charlie and I told him it was not very nice to deadname Charlie, which made my boyfriend get jealous again because why did I care about this person so much? Go be his Rosie then, he said.
Now Charlie doesn’t have any friends. One of his ex-friends tells me that he realized if Charlie wasn’t British then that would mean he was just Annoying. I decide not to tell this to Charlie because it would be like telling a recovering alcoholic that they were more fun when they were drunk. Instead, I go up to his room and knock on his door.
Bri- um, Charlie? Can I come in?
Charlie yanks the door open immediately as if he’s been behind it the whole time.
Rosie?
It’s me, I say. I hand him a box of white chocolate peppermint bark and take a deep breath.
Charlie?
Yes?
Do you want to smoke a cigar with me?
MOTHERLOAD
Cindy King
Everyone down here gets to feeling lonely— it’s not just widows and rock stars, astronauts on mock missions to Mars. Some want to forget the weight of a human head. For me, it’s a long time to go without one, eyes closed, resting in my lap. Here, we draw portraits with protractors although there are no tender angles, no soft geometry, even this far down.
What feels like a blow to your chest may be peonies Wait another decade just to be sure. When clouds settle on the dawn, wearing the dawn’s pink pajamas, you may believe you’ll never need people again. From now on you won’t care what you look like, but only because you won’t really see yourself, the self that’s vanishing, the one replaced with a motherboard.
You’ve been told that beauty is on the inside and take that to mean that to see it you must slice yourself open. That’s right, your father was a werewolf before he died. It’s hard to say if I’m a monster. I don’t know why I didn’t love him. Occasionally a piano falls from the sky, but there’s no one up there, no one there to have pushed it, no one to have let it go.
PORTLAND, 2006
Zeke Shomler
The house was built into the ground; every night I slept beneath the surface of the earth. I whispered all my secrets to the carpet, cut off the ends of my hair just to watch the pieces flutter down. I used to bite deep holes in my lips until they’d bleed and bleed like spring water. Once, a raccoon crawled in through the window, dirt was everywhere— I remember thinking, here’s a creature that doesn’t know shame. I felt so sad for her. I wished that I could comfort her. The dirt was everywhere, it covered absolutely everything. I cleaned it up on my hands and knees. I waited and waited a long time but I never saw her again.
Claretta Holsey INFANS
after LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs
O, now now tar baby knuckle down repent how you sleep here lately? raggedy ann mangy prickly tongue ardent O, now now tar baby collect call from Haiti
quartered monument how you sleep here lately?
doe-eyed doll y handy bene benign
consent O, now now tar baby sole tore-up
achy mother, loveless spent how you sleep here lately? born of husk y cranky swaddled dusk, relent
O, now now tar baby how you sleep?
Gabriella Lindsay WATER
BODIES
i.
One day you announce your resolution to memorize all the names for bodies of water. You pore over the dictionary and thesaurus mumbling words and scribbling them down spring, deluge, ocean, rivulet, stream, harbor.
ii.
After memorizing all the obvious containers, you get philosophical. You want more bodies. What about a toy chest of water? You ask me. Water would leak out of it, I protest. You contend: Does the amount of time a container holds water determine whether or not it was at one point a body of water? I’m not sure, I say, fearfully.
iii.
I’m beginning to get jealous of all these bodies. I lay awake and imagine the ways I might be a body for you. I can stand as a reservoir to protect you during drought. But the rain comes and you’re in the mood for tea. I am a teapot, piping but not peaceful enough, so I become a brook and you stare at your reflection until you decide enough of peace, you are hankering for adventure, and I am the sea, all pirates and monsters.
You return home, heroic but thinking of death, and you enter a church. I am a baptismal font waiting to save you when you want salvation.
Nora Raleigh THE LETTERS
Your letters surround me, spread out on the living room floor because there are too many to fit on the table. I can tell you now that I understand what I did; that I didn’t want to hear about how much weight you would lose, or the number of T-cells you wouldn’t have in your beautiful body. I didn’t want to see the Kaposi’s sarcomas that would appear on your gentle face, your legs, your arms, your chest. I know I was protecting myself, but now I need a way back in.
Remember in 7th grade? Our art teacher, Mr. Ingersoll? Tall, impossibly skinny. Soft-spoken, kind. He let us do whatever we wanted at a time we both needed that. Neither of us fit in, not in middle school, not really anywhere. Both of us abandoned, by accident, or on purpose, by our mother, or by our father, through adoption, or by suicide. We found each other just in the nick of time, across the table, in art class. And this is where you fit, living among art supplies, wood block carving tools, quill calligraphy pens, origami paper, wet clay, water color paints. There was nothing you didn’t master and that’s when you started sending me letters.
Don’t worry I will always forever be here when you need me. If you ever cry at night, maybe you could hitch out this letter and read it knowing you got me and I got you. Then smile and turn off the lights before your 5 minutes are up and the gritty bugs and spooky dooks get you. Okay, good night and live your life forever the way you are now.
They always came in standard white envelopes, but that was the only thing ordinary about them. At first you simply added a flourish or two to my name and my address, the numbers became dancing twists and swirls, words bloomed into flowers or trees — some you darkened, others you thickened, some you left skinny and plain. Each word, each number, a different size, so they bounced up and
down on the paper. Then you started drawing pictures around my name, even surrounding the 10-cent stamp; shooting stars, peering eyes, arrows, flowers, birds, a sailboat on the horizon where a smiling sun was just beginning to rise.
Even after we had just spent a day in school, passing notes back and forth, our spelling atrocious, no punctuation, our sentences indistinguishable, spilling one into the other, you went home and wrote me a letter.
By 8th grade, everyone knew we were a couple, made for each other. You were the artist, I was the writer. I wanted it to last forever, Of course, it couldn’t.
Now I am listening to Blue Sky, Eat a Peach. Rather appropriate. I don’t know if it has happened to you but while I was writing to you it, all my blood, well not all of it, ran to my head, strange? There is no one on this big earth like you and there never will be. What freaks me out is what am I, that I can be right for you. I love you.
In 1973 “Angie” by The Rolling Stones was number one on the charts. Do you remember the first girl-boy party that year? We all went in knowing this was a make-out party, and still we were terrified. At first all of us congregated around the food and drinks table, cold liters of Coke and Sprite, bowls of potato chips and Fritos, dip made from Lipton’s onion mix and sour cream. A huge dish of M&Ms. Someone dimmed the lights and increased the volume on the tape deck. I don’t know who and I’m sure you don’t either, but I remember how the party slid into a frantic but furtive game of musical chairs, everyone looking for a private spot. Melody and Chris were on the floor against the far wall. I think Greg and Brenda slipped out into the hall. Whoever else went wherever else. You and I ended up on one of the wide club chairs. We held hands for a while. We whispered that none of the others here had a love like ours. And that was true. I snuggled closer. You had your arms around me. We both knew what we were supposed to do. We just didn’t do it.
That night, I spilled all my woes into my diary. Am I
unattractive? Doesn’t he love me anymore? What am I doing wrong? You didn’t want to kiss me and I blamed myself. But when I read my words now, I see them as insincere. I knew even then I wasn’t to blame. Two days later another letter from you arrived in my mail box.
You see, the other day, Saturday at night I felt really strange and I still do. Sometimes I feel like an experiment that some doctor put me under, this circumstance (my life) and I wonder. Because I feel like this might be because I’m strange but I’m not strange. I just don’t know myself.
Was I your beard? Or you mine.
9th grade was worse than middle school had been, fewer hidey holes to hide in. But we found one, didn’t we? The best one, the high school auditorium. The double doors to the theater were never locked, and inside was mostly dark, other than the lights that ran along the rows of seats. The velvet curtains were pulled open. There was no set, unless there was a production underway, so ladders and ropes, props stacked against the back wall, brooms, boxes, the sound equipment were all visible, the entire landscape of the theater where you and I would sing, as loud as we wanted, the songs we loved from Broadway musicals. We would perform in an empty house, to and only, for each other.
In the spring, our drama teacher posted the cast list for Threepenny Opera. When your name was there, but mine was not, you held me while I cried. You told me the director was an asshole and an idiot. He wasn’t. I was god awful, while you were a duckling turned swan. Just as you were born knowing how to draw, and paint, and sculpt, in that performance, in costume and make-up, you were someone else. You were you.
You have no idea the head rush you get when thirty people suddenly accompany you in a song that is your song. It’s the most fantastic feeling and then you have to be louder and i also get rid of cooped up anxiety.
You started taking dance lessons.
There were only two choices in town, Susan Slotnick, who taught tap, modern, and improv in a studio above a crafts store, and Fred DeMayo, who taught The Balanchine method of ballet. You weren’t the only boy in our school to take ballet. Timothy Goodson did, as well, so I didn’t think much of it. I was just so proud of you. No, I was in awe. I will forever be.
There wasn’t any specific moment in time when we decided to stop trying to be romantic partners. Nothing we talked about, anyway. At any rate, I had already started making out with boys, which sometimes occurred at the drive-in. Maybe outside in the woods. In someone’s skunky-smelling, smoke-filled bedroom. Or on the flatbed of a pick-up in the middle of a corn field. It was 1975, the Women’s Movement had ignited, but somehow taking ownership of one’s own body, and the message that a girl did not need to identify herself by the approval she could garner from a boy, had not trickled down to me. I made-out with beer-breathed boys who had no interest in who I was, nor to be honest, did I have any interest in them. Until I found a real boyfriend to lose my virginity to, someone good and kind and careful. 11th grade, I went to the prom with my boyfriend, but I never expected you would go with Julia Summers. Julia was overweight, a senior, and a theater person like you were. She had to know you didn’t really like her like her. Or worse, she didn’t. I was livid. I had a boyfriend, but that didn’t mean I wanted you to be with anyone else, and certainly not a girl. I didn’t tell you that but you knew.
Yes, I mean no, you’re not stupid to be mad at me when I talk to other girls. If you weren’t I wouldn’t love you like I do. Or what I mean is as much as I do. I love everything about you. Anyway when you get mad I know you care.
I knew you were gay. Of course, I did, but there would never be any discussion about it between us, no moment of reveal. The truth simply presented itself. It made the love we had for each other greater.
Twenty-five dollars— all my father would cough up— was what it cost to apply to four state universities. I was accepted by all four, but I chose the one for weird people, artists and outcasts, S.U.N.Y Purchase. You should have come with me the way we planned. Remember? We planned it that way. Four more years together, to reinvent ourselves; you to dance and me to write, finally to be free. But then you went and got yourself accepted into the Joffrey School of Ballet. Do you know how many times I wished, I dreamed, I imagined that I had begged you, that I could have changed your mind?
Come with me.
Come with me, please.
But I didn’t beg, and you didn’t come with me.
1:20 April 19, 1979 I’m in central park. It’s so gorgeous- azalea, cherry, daffodils, all in blossom, grass is green, sun is shining, LOVELY, wish you were here.
I got a scholarship with American Ballet Center, (Joffrey School!) for the summer season, wow..!
(got it yesterday)
Love ya, bye bye (twiddle toes)
In New York City you are openly, vibrantly, joyfully, unabashedly gay. When I visited, I took the shuttle bus from S.U.N.Y to the city, the subway down to Union Square, up the steep narrow stairs to the Joffrey Ballet School. I walked past the dancers splayed out in the hall, bandaging their toes, unwrapping the long ribbons of their pointe shoes, entirely indifferent to a civilian like me. I stepped tentatively over their long legs. There you were, like a flower that had been brought into the sunlight for the first time, open to the world, the world open to you.
I said: You look incredible. You said: So do you. Come inside.
You took my hand and led me into the studio. It was mostly empty but for a one man and two women, standing together at the ballet barre, deep in conversation, their bodies bending and stretching into lines and arches and curves.
I said: This is where you dance.
You said: It is.
You were happy, so I was happy.
You said: I’m not in the company yet, you know. But who knows?
I said: You will be.
You were standing beside me but you were also in the wall of mirrors. Your voice was the same, as were your dark eyes, olive skin and full lips, but you were different. You were shirtless and sweaty. Your ribs, your stomach muscles, the bones of your hips were magnificently on display. You were wearing shorts and black ballet slippers. Your feet and legs, which once seemed awkwardly turned out, now aligned perfectly.
I said: This is so cool.
You said: Let’s go.
You grabbed your bag from the hall, pulled a T-shirt over your head, changed into your sneakers, and took me to where you lived, a studio on Lexington. The sun set, bathing the apartment in yellow light. I felt young and silly, living in a college dorm with my records in plastic milk crates stolen from the back of Food Services. You had done it. You had gotten out and made your future.
Over the next four years, I watched you and you watched me. I majored in literature and dreamed of becoming a published author, but no one believed in me the way that you did. You danced in the corps de ballet for Joffrey. You met a boy on the M72 crosstown bus and fell in love. You had another boyfriend and fell in love again. I was doing the same. The spring before I graduated I went to see you in your new apartment. I don’t remember it as clearly as I do your first place. Mostly just the mobile you made from bamboo sticks, balanced in all different angles, that hung from the ceiling.
You said: I have the key to Robert Joffrey’s apartment this
whole week. He wants me to water his plants. Do you want to see it?
What was my first impression? That you had moved up in the ranks and were on your way to being a soloist? But that would have been too fast, too soon. And when the doorman of the fancy Riverside Avenue building nodded and let us walk straight to the elevator, I knew something more was going on. I sensed an older man with a lot of power was taking advantage of my best friend. I didn’t like it but I didn’t say anything. This was not my world by any stretch. I was a temporary interloper, glimpsing into the New York City gay scene of the 80s. It was exciting and frightening. We had already snorted up all our coke back at your apartment. I was buzzing like mad when you took me out on the balcony and we smoked all the pot we had between us. The pearls of light were strung across the G.W Bridge and the water of the Hudson River, still as glass.
You said: It’s late. We could just stay here tonight you know.
I said: Sure.
All the blankets and sheets and pillows we found in the linen closet, closets, we laid out on the floor in the living room. Light from the street twelve floors below crept its way into the room, and painted us in gray.
You said: A bed fit for a queen and a queen. That was the funniest thing I’d ever heard. We both doubled over in laughter, then tucked ourselves under the covers. We were face to face, two kindergarteners on our sleeping mats during rest time. Happy, content. That’s how I remember it.
You said: Do you want to have sex with me?
I can see the look on your face, crumpled, confused, and so deeply hurt when I said no. It wasn’t like me to refuse, especially when I was this high. Shit, I had slept with boys I didn’t even like.
I said: I can’t.
You said: You don’t love me.
I said: I do. I do love you. It’s just different. You don’t get it. I’m a girl. I can’t just have sex. I could get pregnant.
In fact I already had, temporarily, in high school with that kind and sweet boyfriend who I had immediately and cruelly dropped
when I got to college. Hurting that boy was only the start of all the regrets I would accumulate in my life. Too many now to count, but not sleeping with you that night is not one of them. You turned your back to me. I heard you crying but by morning it was all forgotten. Was that what you wanted? To see if you could live a “traditional” life? Yours was so much more difficult than it looked, than I understood. It was 1982. New York was scary. It was gritty and crime-ridden. Times Square was a cesspool of porn shops and peep shows. Graffiti reigned. As did the crack epidemic. Every morning a person could find a used needle or two on the street beside the curb. Harvey Milk had been assassinated in San Francisco just four years earlier. Two years earlier, homosexuality had been a crime in New York State; in most other states, it still was. By 1988, I was married, living in the suburbs with my husband and one-year-old son, and you were diagnosed with HIV.
Here are photographs of my King + Queen watercolors. The colors are more vibrant and at the same time earthy and natural—this photo allows you to see.
Please, I would like to read the short story you wrote recently. Either when I visit or if it’s possible to be sent to me. Anyway, I can’t wait to see you and your family.
I never considered that I wouldn’t want to see you, but I wasn’t sure if I should touch you. Hug you? Or what to do when you drank from one of our water glasses. This was a plague, and there was a lot of speculation, rumor, and fear about how AIDS was transmitted. Pretty much the only thing people agreed upon at that time was that it was a death sentence. I picked you up at the train station, my son sleeping in his carseat, his head flopped to the side like he was a stuffed toy. We drove to my house, my yellow house with red shutters, the front door painted colonial green, and an actual white picket fence out front. Have I blocked from my memory how we spent that day? I have snippets, lunch at my dining room table, shopping in Pier One on the Post Road in Westport, waiting for the Metro-North to take you back
to The City.
There was no shade to stop the late-afternoon sun from turning the train platform to white heat. My son had fallen asleep in his baby carrier, heavy on my shoulders. Sweat was pooling underneath it and running down my back. I didn’t want to say goodbye, but I wanted to get home. Everything felt topsy-turvy, as if I were straddling two worlds and about to fall—who I was and who I had become. Where had my life gone? I hadn’t made much of it, other than getting married, having a kid, and writing mediocre short stories that were collecting rejections. Being with you reminding me of everything I hadn’t done. How I had let you down.
Before we could hear it, the single headlight of the train was visible far down the tracks. The pitch of the whistle got higher as it sped toward us. When the doors slid open, you turned to hug me goodbye. You moved to one side. I shifted to the other and our faces met in the middle. I had the choice to turn away or let our lips touch. We kissed. Our first and last.
A year and half passes and you are no longer dancing. You are sick, barely supported by U.S. government disability checks. I am standing in my kitchen, leaning on the door to the basement, twisting and untwisting the phone cord, talking to you. You tell me that you and your boyfriend are going to Puerto Rico on vacation.
I said: To Puerto Rico?
You said: Yes, we have tickets already. Me and Roberto.”
You sounded so happy. How could you be happy when I was angry? We had never talked about your diagnosis, your prognosis. Of course, I would ask you how you were feeling, but that was the extent of it. I had a Subaru Outback and drove my son to playdates. I lived in Connecticut. You lived far away, in a world that was crumbling around you. What have you done?
And who was this Roberto? There had been so many names I couldn’t keep up.
I said: You’re going on vacation? On welfare? I felt myself lifting out of my body. Two beats of silence too
many. When I looked down I saw a train speeding toward me. All I had to do was jump out of the way. I’m so sorry. That was horrible of me. I don’t even know why I said that.
But I didn’t say that.
I said: I mean, is that what you’re supposed to be spending that money on?
You said: You think you’re better than me? All the trips you take. Your house. You’re a housewife. Your husband takes care of you. What’s the difference between you and me?
I knew that train would hit me now, and it would continue to rush forward taking everything with it, Mr. Ingersoll’s art class, our hidey hole, the high school auditorium, all your letters torn, flying, scattered up into the sky. But it could also give me a way out. All I had to do was remain quiet and let it. ***
How many weeks did I wait to call you? Don’t lie. Was it months? Don’t lie. Not to me. It was a year and half when I finally called, wasn’t it? But you didn’t pick up the phone, and there was no answering machine so I couldn’t leave my important message. I miss you so much. I was so stupid. I waited a few days and called again. You didn’t answer, so I couldn’t make plans to come into the city and see you. I miss you so so much. Please, forgive me. Please. I tried calling the next day. And the day after that. And that. Until I decided to dig out your parents’ number, because I save everything But I didn’t need to do that. I had it memorized.
“Sweetheart,” your mother said. “He died three weeks ago.” * * *
I have kept your letters, all of them, every single one, but I have been afraid to untie the leather cord, unwrap the frayed square of fabric that kept them bound together. It isn’t that I don’t think of you. It’s just that when I do, it hurts so much. My chest is cracking. The pain is great. I send it away. But when I dream about you at night, as I often do, it returns. I wake up and my pillow is wet with my tears.
I don’t want a way out. I want a way in.
Now your drawings and your photographs and your
watercolors and your pen and ink illustrations, your woodcut prints, and all your letters surround me. They have fallen back down from the sky and are spread out on my living floor because there were too many to fit on the table. There is only one store-bought card. It has no date. On the cover is a black and white sketch of an old, wrinkled man, and an old, wrinkled woman, both smiling. The old man has his arm around the old woman.
I open the card and I see it now. You have given it to me, as you always have.
I love you. I was just at my tutor’s house and they live the best life. Him, his wife, their baby and an animal or two. Someday. Yup. Someday you and me will always be together.
TANGELONGEVITY
Citrus season in the palm:
Love line fallen short, Life and fate just touching.
Eight orange excess Acid the tempest.
The Bermuda Triangle.
The sun cupped in the soft belly, Mirroring the face somehow.
Sixteen clementine sitting Uncalled for but reviving
The mouse, the cat.
A face pushed up against a window that opens quite easily. The other side of it could be bubbles. Fortitude.
Twenty four grapefruits still Is not enough,
Not the way kindness pockets malice
In folds round the waistline, Helping it sweeter.
The tangelo tastes melody, profounds the harp. Sacred and sitting pretty in between.
Haven Capone
WHAT AGING MAKES OF AN EGG
Jenny Maaketo
It is as if the me of now sees the s l o w work of t i m e as a sea turtle fanning sand damp by ocean and start of days, rhythmic jags as flippers s p a n and scrape back to the center of itself, pack specks of earth with even tinier specks of life over the young egg of me, then knowing, as only faith and wild instinct can know, with heft and heat on shell, to wait for the pain to become.
OF A WIRE FOX TERRIER’S DAY
Anna Molenaar
Wake before the sun, before my uncle, wink a button-black eye, and skip out the door. Drink from a puddle and kill your conscience cricket. Chase squirrels for several hours. Dance with ants on the sidewalk. Peep through windows and steal the hearts of a thousand girls with soft spots for dogs who look like dolls. Lick a spilled ice cream cone. Sprint out of the butchers (in hot pursuit) dragging a string of sausages. Trot along the train tracks. Ponder the words “scamp” and “overeager.” Observe the sabbath. Beat a little boy at marbles. Dig up a fossil of a previously-undiscovered dinosaur and eat it before anyone notices. Plot. Maim something small and furry. Roll in something small and furry. Stowaway in a boat across the river. Stowaway in a train car back. Herd cats. Swallow fear. Digest. Rinse. Repeat. Write a symphony on the joys of rolling in dew grass. Dash back in time for breakfast, in time to cause a ruckus at home and get yourself in custody, tied to the oven door. Pull the oven from the wall and across the kitchen until my grandmother screams “Spot! No!” and you’re taken for a car ride to the candy store with my dad. Stick your nose on the vent to sniff the cold air and laugh laugh laugh at her inability to understand the meaning of rambunctious. Debate how best to make her cry when you go off to live with the two girls from Minneapolis, how to make her enter the kitchen and, seeing the scuffs where you dragged the oven, feel the absence of energy where you once strained, muscles bursting, if only to prove that nothing will ever stop a miscreant devoted to his craft.
MR. POTATO HEAD’S WIFE
Madeline Clark
At the buffet, I choose the nipples like the tip of a ballpoint pen. I keep my belly-button – it is important to keep a part of your first body. They’re harvesting my pheromones, notes of amber & jasmine, poking me with vials full of patchouli & estrogen & telling me I will piss in floral. Stick-figures charge the watering hole. Fingers reach for asses, elbows knob into fractured noses, stilettos step over confetti of ribs. Someone staples the fat on my neck to the back of my ears. What was Mrs. Potato-Head’s name? Someone arranges me into my second body: bee-stung lips, chicken neck. Put me in a plastic box, tie me in ribbon: give me to your kids, give me your kids; tear open wrapping paper, put cherries in the microwave; they’re unzipping me, vertebrae by vertebrae. My melting, molasses heart, my wanting heart. I don’t want them to touch it, but I know they will.
YOU CAN’T GIVE YOUR HEART TO A WILD THING
Carlin Mackie-Stephenson
Wild Thing stole a balloon and ran through the park with it tied to his wrist. Wild Thing jumped over every log he could see. An old man said, Slow down, Wild Thing!
Wild Thing loved his balloon. At night he would talk to it. He named it Secret Balloon. He told it secrets. Wild Thing told Mathilda about Secret Balloon but when he took her up the hidden steps to where he kept his balloons, Secret Balloon was already dead.
Mathilda asked, What was he like?
Wild Thing said, He was a regular Holly Golightly.
Wild Thing stole more balloons and named them things like Particle Balloon and Triangle Balloon and Murder Balloon. Murder Balloon is wanted in Thailand, he would tell people. Ashes Balloon is planning a run for mayor, he would say. Sometimes he would tie balloons around his neck and stand on the roof and pretend he was being carried away.
His mother kept small jars of scented oil in a drawer in her bedroom and would take them out and smell them, sometimes for hours. She liked to smell in sequence, smelling first the flowers, then the herbs, then the fruits. If you asked her about it, she would say, It’s like a story but for your nose.
Sometimes Wild Thing’s father would come down the stairs and place his hand on his son’s shoulder and look up through the ceiling and say, his voice thick like taffy, Well son, your mother’s up there, smelling again. Wild Thing could smell something like pine and lemon on his father’s breath.
The walls in their living room were dull orange, their furniture deep blue. Wild Thing would sit beneath the coffee table, patting the head of Hamster Balloon until his father made him go to
bed, and then, later, lying in bed, he would hear his father’s soft howls from the floor.
***
The park was closed at night but Wild Thing knew a way in. He brought Mathilda and they crawled under a hole in the fence and tunneled through the thick bushes and found themselves near the fountain of the woman with huge wings.
Mathilda said, Do you think that woman is dead now?
Wild Thing said, I wonder if she could fly or if she was maybe just like a penguin and couldn’t.
Mathilda said, They don’t look like penguin wings.
The woman in the fountain spit water from her mouth. They could hear a dog barking behind them, in the city, and the sounds of traffic, and shaking leaves. Wild Thing held his hands over his eyes for a second and thought, I wonder if she’s still there. Mathilda couldn’t understand why he kept covering his eyes and said, Wild Thing you’re funny. She didn’t mean funny, but that was the word she used.
He said, I’m a regular Holly Golightly. The woman in the fountain spit water from her mouth.
Wild Thing knew a way through the park where they could see the pond and go over the ravine on the old wooden bridge and be back here by sunrise. Follow me, he said.
***
Wild Thing’s father looked at the bottles arranged on the counter, then, taking them up with shaking hands, began to dump each one down the drain, until they were all gone. He ran the water and flushed the liquor from the sink.
***
Mathilda kept stopping to look at flowers, getting in close so she could see them real well in the dark. Wild Thing said, What are you stopping for again now?
Mathilda tried to imagine what the sun would do to their color. She stuck her nose into the cup of a pink one and then a yellow one and then a blue one. She said things like, This one smells like Ms.
Justine and this one smells like the yard at school and this one smells like the card my grandmother gave me.
Wild Thing tried to will himself to stick his hand in a hole in the side of a tree. It was starry out for the city and things were getting quiet and Wild Thing wondered if there were watchers in the shadows and were those ghosts he could see on the bridge? ***
One time, grandmother brought down from the freezer the cookies she’d saved and she laid them out and thawed them and they had little painted faces and shirts and buttons made of little metal colored candies and she plugged in the Christmas lights and served warm eggnog and sang quietly while Wild Thing ate sitting on the floor with his legs crossed. And one time, uncle made him try sardines with the head still attached, eyes and mouth, and he tried it but cried the whole time and wouldn’t swallow until he couldn’t not swallow and his uncle laughed and said, There’s a good boy, and the wind was very cold out coming over the fields and his family sang Silent Night and It Came Upon a Midnight Clear and Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer until it was time for Wild Thing to go to bed.
***
Out on the street, with the wind picking up, they stood beneath a dim light and planned another adventure together. Mathilda said, I’ll see you then.
Wild Thing said, I’ll bring my balloons.
Mathilda popped open the cavity of her chest and offered Wild Thing her beating heart.
***
Wild Thing’s father started hammering nails all the way into the wall instead of pulling them out. In the morning, he cooked his toast until it burned then crumbled it over a bowl of honey. When asked, he told everyone who’d listen about his new project. He said he no longer liked the taste of tea and started making coffee instead. He drank his coffee black and cold. He took to writing letters to his son he would keep in a drawer for, When he gets older. He started hanging pictures to cover up the nails he hammered into the wall. In the living
room he hung a picture of melting clocks. In the kitchen he hung a picture of a man with curly hair and a red suit. In the study he hung a picture of a mountain goat. In Wild Thing’s room he hung a picture of an astronaut and a grizzly bear and also a small picture of a man with glasses which had words written on it with silver ink.
Wild Thing had a whole book of pictures. He once showed them all to Murder balloon and they imagined what it would be like to go to those places and live with those zebras. Ashes to ashes and we all fall down they sang as they ran around the room and faked running into things just to have a laugh.
Wild Thing’s mother loved the lavender oil most. She would stick her nose as close to the bottle as she could without touching. Sometimes she would touch and then she would smell it on her nose for a little while afterwards. She liked to follow lavender with apple blossom and then the saffron, which had taken her months and months to find.
Her favorite herb was thyme; her favorite fruit, persimmon. Wild Thing’s father rested his hand on his son’s shoulder and said, Look at her, a regular Holly Golightly.
Wild Thing walked up the secret steps and found that Murder Balloon had died and that Ashes Balloon was nearly dead. He picked up the wrinkled body of Murder Balloon and started patting him on the head. He said, Last night I went to the park with Mathilda but I got scared. I wished you were there.
Ashes Balloon did a kind of dance around a long silver pipe. Wild Thing laughed and then he grabbed Particle Balloon and tied the string around his neck. Expecting to fly, he walked over to the edge of the building and looked out.
Take me all the way to the tall buildings, he said, pointing out across the other rooftops to where the big buildings loomed up over the water.
Particle Balloon laughed and skipped in the wind.
His father said, Son I’ve been thinking it’s time to make some changes. Well, you’re Mother and I, we’ve been talking.
His Mother said, We’ve been talking about a lot of things and we think it’s time to make some changes.
His father said, We’ve been talking and we think some changes are in order. So, starting next week, some things are going to start changing around here.
His Mother said, It’s important that you think of these as new opportunities.
Yes, said his father, New opportunities is exactly what these changes amount to.
His Mother said, And you shouldn’t be sad about them at all. This is exciting.
His father said, Very exciting. The most exciting thing, really.
His Mother said, Very exciting changes.
His father said, Are you excited?
Wild Thing looked at this father, Triangle Balloon bopping tunelessly against his head.
Sammy put his hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. He put a cigarette in his mouth. He said, You know it doesn’t even matter in the end.
Jimmy said, We could have used the money.
Sammy said, But it’s just money, ain’t it.
The train station was dark and humid and very quiet. They were the only people on the platform. Sammy lit his cigarette. Jimmy said, Charlene’s going to be mad.
A police officer wandered onto the platform and walked all the way down in front of them, then walked off into the shadows. Jimmy took off his hat and held it to his heart. The moon shone very bright over the top of an idling engine. Sammy said, Everything’s going to be okay.
A yellow balloon floated over into the light, followed by a small boy. They watched the boy walk down towards the bench where they sat. He can’t be more than four or five, thought Sammy. The boy walked up to them and stared for a while into Sammy’s face. Then he
sat down cross legged and pulled the balloon down and held it in his lap.
Sammy said, Where you going, kid?
The boy didn’t say anything.
Sammy said, What’s your name.
Jimmy said, What am I going to do?
Sammy said, My friend over here is very sad.
The boy said, Why?
Sammy said, He lost some money.
The boy said, My balloon’s name is Triangle.
He held the balloon out and Sammy took it, held it up to the light, examined it. He scratched his chin and said, He’s a handsome fellow, huh?
Jimmy said, How am I even going to tell her?
Sammy said, So where are your parents?
The boy said, At home.
Sammy said, And they don’t know you’re here, huh?
The boy shook his head.
Sammy handed him back the balloon. Well I’ll tell you something, kid, he said. One time when I was a little older than you this bad man broke into our house at night. And my father came down the stairs with this gun he kept in his closet. And...well maybe this ain’t such a good story for a kid.
Jimmy said, Man, leave the kid alone, he doesn’t need to hear that.
Sammy said, What did I just say?
Jimmy said, Where the fuck is this train.
Don’t curse in front of the kid, said Sammy.
Jimmy shrugged his shoulders and stood up. He began pacing along the edge of the platform. Sammy watched him for a second, then turned back to the boy. He leaned in close and talked in a soft voice. My point is, he said, for a long time I didn’t see my dad after that, and now, when I do see him, we don’t really know what to say to each other. Now isn’t that a sad story?
The boy nodded and hugged Triangle.
Sammy said, Now, maybe let’s go down to the station house and find the manager, huh?
The boy didn’t say anything. Jimmy said, Come on, leave the kid alone, we gotta’ train to catch.
Sammy closed his eyes and said, Let’s just ignore my friend here and go on down to the station house and we’ll get everything sorted out fine, okay.
The boy nodded, and Sammy picked him up and carried him down the platform and they disappeared into the shadows.
CONTRIBUTORS
Derek N. Otsuji - Born on Oahu, Derek N. Otsuji is the author of The Kitchen of Small Hours (SIU Press, 2021), selected by Brian Turner for the Crab Orchard Poetry Series and featured in Honolulu Magazine’s “Essential Hawaii Books You Should Read.” He is a 2019 Tennessee Williams Scholar and a 2023 Longleaf Fellow in Poetry. Recent work has appeared in 32 Poems, Southern Review, and The Threepenny Review.
Nicholas Alti - From rural Michigan, Nicholas Alti is a bartender in Atlanta. He has pictures of his frogs and dogs in his wallet. More of Nicholas’s poetry can be found at JMWW, Yalobusha Review, DREGINALD, Denver Quarterly, Rogue Agent , and elsewhere.
Ele Gonzales is a student at Columbia College.
Mayra Kalaora is a senior at Columbia University studying English and Neuroscience. Originally from Istanbul, Turkey, she lives in New York City, where she misses petting cats on the street.
Cindy King is the author of a book-length poetry collection, Zoonotic (2022), and two chapbooks, Easy Street (2021) and Lesser Birds of Paradise (2022). Her latest poetry manuscript won the C&R Poetry Book Award and will be published in 2024. Her chapbook, Five for Nothing , will be released by Galileo Press in 2024. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Threepenny Review, The Sun, New England Review , and elsewhere.
Cindy was born in Cleveland, Ohio and grew up swimming in the shadows of the hyperboloid cooling towers on the shores of Lake Erie. Currently she lives in Utah, where she is an associate professor of creative writing at Utah Tech University and editor of The Southern Quill and Route 7 Review . She is also an
editorial associate at TriQuarterly and Seneca Review.
Zeke Shomler is an MA/MFA candidate at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where he serves as poetry editor of Permafrost literary magazine. His work has appeared in Cordite, Sierra Nevada Review, Anodyne , and elsewhere.
Claretta Holsey has received a Jane Mead Fellowship for her poetry thesis, Good Grief , and a Global Africa Translation Fellowship from the Africa Institute in Sharjah. She holds an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa, an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a BA in English from Stetson University. Studies in Brotherly Love , a book of her ekphrastic poems—inspired by the artwork of Malcolm Corley and written in collaboration with fellow poets Jorrell Watkins, DJ Savarese, and Lateef McLeod—was published by PromptPress in November 2021. She is the Production Editor at Copper Canyon Press.
Gabriella Lindsay is a poet, artist, and librarian. Gabriella holds an MA in Information Science and is the proud co-editor of the collaborative zine, Cher, which was created by and for the queer art and writing community of Louisiana. Gabriella is a Librarian at the LSU Libraries and works on art between links expiring.
Nora Raleigh is the author of 15 novels for young adults, including Nine, Ten: A September 11 Story (S&S). Her books have won several awards, such as the 2010 American Library Association Schneider Family Book Award for Anything But Typical (S&S) and, in 2016, inclusion on the International Literacy Association “Notable Books for a Global Society List” for Ruby on the Outside (S&S). Her personal narrative essays have appeared in the Boston Globe Sunday
Magazine and Writer Magazine, and her co-authored sci-fi novel Elsewhen (Little, Brown) will be published in Spring 2025. “The Letters” is her first literary short story for adult readers.
Haven Capone (she/they) studies Creative Writing and Italian at Barnard. Everything in her life is music and poetry, done with care.
Jenny Maaketo (she/her) is a neurodivergent poet in the MFA Creative Writing program at the University of Mississippi and a senior editor for Yalobusha Review. Jenny has been shortlisted for the 2024 Tennessee Williams Festival Poetry Contest, the 2023 Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize, the 2023 Michelle Boisseau Poetry Prize, and the 2022 Patty Friedmann Writing Competition. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Atlanta Review, Crab Creek Review, The Madison Review , and elsewhere. She lives in Abbeville, Mississippi on 66 acres with her husband, son, four dogs, two cats, one chicken, and lots of love.
Anna Molenaar is a writer of poetry and prose concerned with nature, humanity, and the messes that occur when the two mix. Her work appears or will appear in the After Happy Hour Review, Common Ground Review, Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine and Imposter: A Poetry Journal . She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she received her MFA from Hamline University. She works as a preschool teacher and teaches writing courses at the Loft Literary Center.
Madeline Clark is a writer based in Portland, OR. She received her B.A. in Creative Writing from Bates College and currently works at the Just Economy Institute. She also co-runs a poetry substack, “Good Grief,” and, in 2022, co-launched a weekly poetry workshop for incarcerated women at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility through the non-profit Poetic
Justice. She is honored to have her first poetry publication in The Columbia Review.
Carlin Mackie-Stephenson ’s stories and poems have appeared in Copper Nickel, Hobart , and Midwestern Gothic , among others. Originally from the Great Plains, he currently lives in Lowell, MA, with his wife and their dog.
THE COLUMBIA REVIEW
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