TRANSFORMATIONS

TRANSFORMATIONS

In this issue, we asked our writers to contribute to a compilation of short works attuned to transformation. All good writing seeks to move from one place to another. We hope that as you move through these pieces, you pay attention to how they evolve sonically, syntactically, or semantically through form and content.

Botany Lesson

We want matching tattoos. We feel not that we will grow old together, but that we already have. We seek the arboreal fate of Baucis and Philemon, whose intertwining branches fossilize their fondness for the life they shared. The name “Tamar” translates from its original Hebrew to “date palm,” Phoenix dactylifera, yielder of that saccharine Middle Eastern fruit. My own Tamar exudes that same sweetness, and though her forebears fled two generations prior, her roots (however literal) remain firmly in Armenia. The remnants of this past linger in the scent of rose: in the rose water her mother measures out to make paklava, in the tabletop bouquet that Tamar so neatly arranges, and in her own middle name, which blends regrettably with her first to sound like “tomorrows.” Perhaps my tattoo will be her namesake flower; perhaps hers will be mine.

LILY LUSTIG B’23 loves her therapist, who is also Tamar’s therapist.

Objects in Mirror are Closer Than They Appear

Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.

The body in the mirror is closer than it appears.

A body faces the mirror—look closer.

A body’s face in the mirror,

Somebody’s face (not mine).

The face in the mirror, eyes closed.

Appear to me again in the mirror.

Our faces, close within the mirror.

Our bodies poised like still-life

objects in the mirror as if waiting

for someone’s brushstrokes to capture

our reflection into more than just appearance.

Appearance does not define the object.

The mirror does not create an object.

A body in a mirror is not an object.

A hand appears on an object (closer).

A hand appears on a body, closing.

Am I an object in the mirror?

Objects are mirrors / bodies are mirrors /

The mirror molds the appearance

molds the object

molds the body

molds me.

Was I only an object in the mirror?

The appearance dissolves the object,

Only reflections left.

FAITH GRIFFITHS B’24 is bad at adjusting her car’s side-view mirrors.

Edge

the stupor became

you your blood became

me the dust in the kitchen

wallpaper thrashed kicked clawed bled

into plaster’s crumbled palm which

gasped for mold grasped for stone

where she sealed a processed sugar cookie in bubble wrap

to protect its rind from peeling rain

the difference between drywall and violets

heaps of unraveled paint took your fingerprint stole your

fingerprints along with your pots and pans which were rusted

shut anyway and veiled them in the faintest pantry

where my irises can’t reach

DANA HERRNSTADT B’24 made bread once, but she’s not someone who makes bread all the time or anything.

Deposition

Tropical storm Isaias moved into town as I drove to my interview. It took me twice as long to get there as it should have, the wind toppling a couple of telephone poles along the way. I turned the windshield wipers to high power and eased up on the gas.

Erosion

Tuck me into the hurricane,

cling tight to

coloring books and mashed potatoes.

I trip over

church pews

potholes

breadcrumbs,

skipping stones in the basement

when the wet vac

falls asleep.

South of worry it always rains.

TIERRA SHERLOCK B’24 hates driving in the rain.

2020

an anachronism:

a girl tells me she loves me

before I hang up.

Mullet

pretty, like pins in

disobedient hair, is

temporary guise

KOLTON ZENG B’24 doesn’t know how to end phone calls.

Rhetorical Dreams

You never think about words until they become you, but I might, but one day I will, but I’m thinking of maybe—we don’t get but and we don’t get maybe. We get will and won’t and the endless, gaping hole of never in between.

SIERRA MARTIN B’24 wishes she could be more decisive.

The Sun

He was raised on the surface of the sun. It was hot—not too hot to instill a deep disdain for childhood in him, but hot enough for the boy to wonder what life might be like on the freezing craters of the moon. They probably didn’t have to wear sunglasses! The sun was too bright to be able to sleep in past dawn. That was annoying, especially on the weekends. But being a morning person, as all people who live on the sun are, worked in his favor. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d missed breakfast— he loved breakfast. Eggs sunny side up were his favorite.

Early mornings came with the promise of a full day, which he appreciated since he enjoyed feeling productive. Most importantly, early mornings meant that he could get to school on time. More accurately, he had time to get to school on time—though sometimes he got

distracted along the way. On one occasion he thought he found a diamond on his way to school. It was so bright! He read once that diamonds formed under enormous heat and pressure, so it was plausible that one recently stopped cooking and, through some geological migratory process, had made its way to the surface right in front of him. But when he walked over, it was just sun. An extra shimmery spot of sun. The boy would call it a sun diamond; after all, he discovered it, shouldn’t he get to name it too? It’s probably rare, he thought to himself. Probably the rarest thing on the sun. The boy examined it for a while, convincing himself of the monumental importance of his finding. Needless to say, he was late for school that day.

At a separate, but not too distant, point in his life, the boy came down with a terrible sickness. There was the stuffy nose that worried his mother, the hoarse cough that frightened his father, and the terrible fever, which shocked the boy most of all. He was so hot! Heat melted his body from the inside out, and the sun melted him from the outside in. He questioned why it was he who had to feel this awful heat. Realistically, this is the only thing holding me back in life, he thought.

He suddenly had an urge to make a painting. Of course he couldn’t make it now, since he was hot, but once he got better he would make it. That is what he decided on when he was hot. And what did he think of everyone else—those people that were not hot, and not painting? Getting sick would do them a favor, he thought, just as it has done me. But the boy knew better than to curse his condition. It was by chance, a roll of the dice, that he had a fever on the sun. And it was once he understood this that he got better. And it was once he got better that he understood he didn’t want to paint anymore.

Painting is so common—there are too many painters in this universe. I want something beyond the sun. Beyond mornings and morning routines. Beyond knowledge that others have already acquired. Beyond the light and the heat. Beyond the darkness of the moon. Beyond objects which are all made of the same thing. Beyond people that I have seen before, and people I haven’t seen yet. What I want, what I live for, is to hold the rarest moment of all in the palm of my hand, paralyzed by its importance.

ALEX SCHUPAK B’26 loves green. And orange.