Cover art by Anant Saraf
The Round
Managing Editors
Julian Ansorge
Marlena Brown
Justin Nourian
Eleanor Peters
Associate Editors
Samantha Ho
Alex Sayette
Riley Gramley
Carla Humphris
Nina Lidar
Staff
Lev Sheinfeld '25
Paul Hudes '27
Ella Ludwig '27
Carla Humphris '24
Caroline Canty RISD '27
Gianna Dyer '25.5
Bailey Ivory-Rose Bellamy '25
Phoebe Grace Aseoche '26
Emmanuel Chery '27
Pranav Gundrala '25
Nolan Lee '27
Design Editors
Izzy Roth-Dishy
Isabel Tribe
Simon Yang
Social Media Manager
Francis Gonzalez
Tróglia Decus Ilektra Bampicha-Ninou
The Mirror’s Secret Wishbone Bill Wolak
Sarca Ilektra Bampicha-Ninou
The Devil and a Horse Ryan Seeb
Tampopo Lola Simon
Ikebana B Pranav Gundrala
Ikebana for A Pranav Gundrala
Beautiful Destinations Ryan Seeb
Gloves Phil Avilov
Seven Ways to Eat Shwarma Phil Avilov
Seven Deuce at Heart Avery Guo
[It’s probably my last time in Russia] Ivan de Monbrison
"Wenn ich mir was wünschen dürfte" Lola Simon
Cleft Juliette Hagobian
Margarine Juliette Hagobian
Reconstructing Julia Kandalepas
Untitled Anant Saraf
Wrath Annie Johnson
wonder Juliet Rotondo
Untitled Anant Saraf
Bloodhound Lili Alimohammadi
Waterworks Beto Beveridge He
Untitled Julia Kandalepas
White Placentae Cameron Le
T.Rex at the Arboretum Hannah Jane Weber
Reclining figure Beto Beveridge
Surveyor Beto Beveridge
On the night we played gods J.S. Graham
Terrarium Mason Koa
Shadow Study I Elliot Stravato
Shadow Study II Elliot Stravato
Assumption Mason Koa
Untitled Anant Saraf
How to Miss it All in Belt, MT Kelsie Bennett
Untitled Elliot Stravato
Argos Skye Robinson Detaching Julia Kandalepas
Tróglia Decus
The whore said sit and the man said there’s nowhere to sit. The whore said then stand and so the man just stood there.
Strip, she said. He stripped. She pointed a long nail at the corner of the white room. The man carried his clothes and placed them on a pile of ashes. By the time he’d turned around, she was already naked – laid on the sheepskin rug.
She ran her fingers through the fur. Before you come, grab one of the matches and light the pile on fire. Her voice was soft as snow.
The man just stood there. He picked a match and scrabbed it against the side of the matchbox. A flicker jumped like a chuckle; then his clothes were burning.
Lazily, the woman lit a cigarette and tapped the blinding rug. Come here.
The naked man sat on his knees, hands on his dick. The woman took his hand and held it. She inhaled smoke.
You like my hair? she asked. The man nodded. When I lie on this rug, our hair becomes one. I melt on it like wax.
They fucked on the rug.
She said I’m a pyromaniac hypochondriac and I keep this room white so I can see blood – in case blood falls. She smiled so big the room was on fire.
Bill Wolak
“If I gave birth I would erupt, ash the ground would cover, all life, including mine, would bleed out i’ll be mold. or shell. the polar opposite of sarca”
The coffee barista poured foam on my cappuccino and frowned. She said, “that’s what she said?”
“Exactly like that, that’s exactly what she said,” I said.
She pushed the cappuccino in front of me. She tried to make a tree – or a flower, I suppose – with regular milk on top of the foam but it looked like shit. I didn’t want to tell her.
“This looks like shit,” I said.
Then, a very sad man walked in. He stood under the “Best Airport Food & Beverage” award; his eyes scanned with indolent curiosity, as there were plenty of tables to sit. His eyes landed nowhere, and with no hesitation or doubt to where he was headed, he walked to the most hidden, darkest corner. He sat on the table, removed his green scarf and placed it folded by the salt, took off his glasses and put them in a leather case, shrank on the chair and stared at the painting next to him. It was too dark for me to see the details – but I thought his chest flattered a little, so I assumed he was sobbing.
“Anyway,” I said to the barista, “that’s the hard part about living with a poet. I have no clue what she’s saying most of the time. She could’ve said: you know, I’m not really into giving birth.”
I downed the cappuccino and realized I ordered an espresso martini plus foam (that’s what I drink when I’m upset).
“So are you going to give birth instead?” she asked, a bit concerned. “Are you pregnant?”
“I had my uterus removed when I was five because I was jealous of my cat getting neutered. The same vet did it,” I said.
I said, “I said to my parents, I said: if you don’t neuter me tomorrow, I will do it myself.”
I looked over to the man and I couldn’t be more certain. He was a veterinarian.
The barista didn’t give a flying fuck about engaging in a human conversation. As long as she hadn’t served alcohol to a fetus, all she had to do was nod.
“My poet left me,” I said.
She said, “one second” and approached the vet while he was still staring at the painting. She spoke to him but he didn’t turn to look. She took his order and came back behind the bar.
“So that’s why you’re here? Airport breakup melancholia?”
I didn’t appreciate the irony so I stood up and left. But first I stopped by the vet’s table and asked if he was a vet. He said “my business involves all types of animals but,” he turned to the painting, “I’m hardly the one who cures anyone. You know, I –”
“Damn,” I said and walked away, because he wasn’t poetic enough and he wasn’t a vet, and the milk of the foam might have been expired.
Ilektra Bampicha-Ninou
The Devil and a Horse
Ryan Seeb
Lola Simon
Tampopo
Ikebana B
an arrangement of blue petals which i would say is a deep oceanic sound
[...] when i am slicing through papaya fruits i am thinking about the flesh which holds memories the flesh of an imperfect flower which is my name in your mouth
[...] spitting out a question
Pranav Gundrala
Ikebana for A
before you there was an orchid flower that i tore the lip of it stuck me with pollen even more hidden the nectar the nectarines
Pranav Gundrala
Beautiful Destinations
Ryan Seeb
I’ve seen your dad — you’ll grow bald like him, your hands grow cold as if from within, your fingers go tap-tap-tap in rows and I hear how the hair on your cheeks grows. Then you grow tired of me and them and seers and fools and highwaymen and garden sheds and talking heads; you take your meds and go to bed. Then you wake up and grow content with how bent your shoe rack is, with the squirrel under your door that plays the lute and sings. I feel gross. You fix my collar and ask what I need most. And I say, the muddy splatter on your legs when we go running by the barns and hitching posts
Phil Avilov
Seven Ways to Eat Shwarma
Crumbs fall into the steaming ground and the robins gather, chirping. A valve in my soul has opened; it sings like a teapot. Pickled onions fly with the wind as he exits the Dublin prison. When he cited a line from Akhmatova, they gave biscuits to the visitors. Love struck like a wrench through the hippocampus, so I stuff my face in the library bathroom. The channel smells like weed, dead fish, and tulips. On the bench, a man with a mullet shares a bite with his wife like a penguin. I gag a little. Hundreds of seagulls in nighttime Boston, lit from below, wait for company. Laura carries her home in a shopping cart. "I can't wish her bad cause she has my daughter," she says and tosses the garlic-soaked napkin into the water. I'm not feeling it. A piece of chicken dangles from my mouth — o my soul! — on a string.
Phil Avilov
Avery Guo
Seven Deuce at Heart
[It's probably my last time in Russia]
it's probably my last time in Russia Valentina is planning now to move to Tbilisi with her big family three children but no real fathers to help her out in any way as none of them caring at all me I know nothing of fatherhood
being a bipolar French idiot I try to do the best I can I am not sure that it's enough but there's nothing much to lose by now at 55 one clearly sees that there is really nothing to lose and nothing to obtain for good in such a meaningless life as mine.
Ivan de Monbrison
"Wenn ich mir was wünschen dürfte”
Lola Simon
Thumbing bruises, I begin to sense the crimson of my body. The night is barging blankly.
I am a daughter of erosion. Slack of syllables from my father.
These howls are ribbed. The neighborhood has its last cadence before it leaves undone on your chest. This is an opening. Scrawled across the floor, my father leaves long-legged like a monsoon. We are porous and air-borne, pallid, refracting into spillage. The cleft of suburbia. He froths, web of rage-bone.
How do I dispatch silence into fluorescence?
There is no right motion to wrangle. Let me melt this parallax. I am the ripple of progeny. I slouch until swollen. My father’s shadow dissolves a halfstep behind him, navigating the darkness. The carpet tightens. Divots of hurt. Every neighbor sags inward.
I abandon myself to unjoint what is left of these folds. Father and daughter. The greed of a final burning.
I am torn between tongue muscles. Fragmented, jilted, undoing, undoing.
Juliette Hagobian
Margarine
Sylvia Plath committed suicide at the age of 30. She turned on the gas of her oven, and laid down.
How does a clock tick toward its own death? How do I know when I have unlearned my own touch? I scratch my calluses until my bone is protesting skin. When I wanted peace, I would graze the absence of the telephone and try to mimic where the numbers would fall. In a past life, I was a chicken-straw woman with purpose. With a glue pot to support me. My life is a groan of pain stuck between throat walls. The memory of a polaroid separating in a body of water. I want that yellowed piece of my childhood again. I want to call for Otto with a fist of lightning in my mouth. Babe of the horizon. I am mistaken. I am barbaric. Crawling toward the oven dial like an undoing head of yarn. On the table, I spread a cloth of margarine and leave my fingerprints on its flesh as preservation. The hope of being found. The neighbors crowbar the mess underneath their tongues and give bitterness to the asphalt. I set a plate of teeth by the front door and inhale my final stretch of suburbia. The heat ties my throat into barbed wire and extracts me into thin strips. The room stiffens. The wind stops curling.My body thinning.A butcher jumps from my palm and hacks at the scent of the kitchen. Barrage woman counting red stars. This will be my final time slicing bread for the kids.
Juliette Hagobian
Julia Kandalepas
Anant Saraf
Wrath
The weather was strange for most of the week, alternating between bouts of warm and cold, and the wind, daresay, felt toothier than normal. All the locals knew the warning signs: a hurricane was coming, a real nasty one, with the power to bulldoze houses and chew up concrete. It became something of a pastime to watch that twisting eye of red and orange slowly spin its way across the Atlantic, a large and lazy force of destruction.
But there was something else brewing in the air, an added sense of foreboding sticking to our skins like a film: just two months prior, the World Meteorological Organization announced that they would no longer be naming hurricanes after women. “It’s a matter of public safety,” the scientists claimed in press releases, raising their hands in mock surrender. “People are less likely to flee female-named hurricanes, which leads to elevated death rates. There have been studies!”
Of course, the backlash was severe, and the policy was swiftly rescinded alongside the release of an accompanying apology statement. But the damage had already been done. There were protests, movements. Feminists rallied, declaring hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Radicals quoting Marx argued that hurricanes need not exist in the pointless and oppressive gender binary, and our attempts at sexing them were indicative of a larger need for societal change. Podcasters debated over whether hurricanes should be named at all, or perhaps, named after animals. Conservatives doubled down on the facts (“Listen to the facts!”) and poets mused that perhaps the naming of hurricanes reflected our need to identify the self in the unpredictable, and thus, served as an allegory for the human condition.
My father watched all this discourse unravel from his recliner, deeply troubled. He waved his fist at the piercing-addled protesters on his television, grumbling about their agenda as if they wouldn’t delight in his disapproval. I was only in town at the time on a visit; even weeks after I’d gone home, he texted me about it, copying comments from Facebook threads straight into my message box. I never shared my true opinions on the matter, which I think he respected. He raised me to act like a man, hunting and spitting, but never so much like a man as to actually demand what I wanted.
When they announced the name of the incoming hurricane, Hurricane Mandy, I knew Dad was as good as dead. Mandy was the name of my mother, and also his least favorite sitcom character. I rushed down south to try and talk him into fleeing, but all of my attempts were futile.
“Women are physically weaker than men are,” he insisted, rattling his half-full can of Coors in my face. “That’s just a fact! Listen to the facts!”
In the end, I had to leave him there, just days before the hurricane was projected to hit. It was not a sentimental goodbye; I did not weep or embrace him. I just walked out the door, and didn’t look back. The whole affair reminded me of when my mother and I left him for the first time. Dad had smashed the good china and I guess that was Mom’s final straw, because she coaxed me out of my closet and told me to pack a bag. On our way out the door she shouted a colorful series of expletives over her shoulder, but Dad didn’t react. He just sat on the couch, pretending to watch the news and refusing to pay us a glance.
For two years, that was the only image I had of him. Whenever my mother would go on one of her drunken tirades about “that person," who she never referred to by name, I just saw his silent silhouette, hunched over, insistent in his gaze that whatever was happening on screen was more important than his wife and daughter walking out the door. He was in a yellowing Bruce Springstein tee. He had no socks or shoes on. He didn’t answer when I said goodbye.
When Hurricane Mandy finally hit, I did as I was told: hunker down, create an escape plan, stay away from windows. In my area, the whole thing came and went with little fanfare. But our hometown was a different story. Countless neighborhoods were completely destroyed, and Dad was but one of dozens who refused to flee. When they notified me, weeks later, that the body-sniffing dogs found no trace of him, I was overtaken by relief. It just felt right for him to be buried there in his armchair, permanently pinned into the fabric, human-particles crushed into the threads. I couldn’t think of a more fitting way for him to go.
I bet, if he were still around, it would really make him feel like a man. Maybe his ghost is still out there somewhere, flexing his stubbornness, his firmness, his rationality, his unfeeling. Maybe, since I’m the last one he spoke to, his ghost is somehow tethered to me. Haunting and continuing to haunt the sickness in my body, telling me to ball my fists up, telling me not to cry.
Annie Johnson
Juliet Rotondo wonder
Anant Saraf
This summer I’ve learned how to be the worst version of myself & how to hold it by its scruff. Learned through dreams & their aftermaths with bug-bitten legs tangled under weighty layers, unconscious’ images of bare breasts mounted by matted she-wolf heads & the way a phallus feels in the hand. How easy it is to turn a nightmare into a wet dream. How easy it is when it will always be my own hand. Learned through fake lime flavor & grass stains on white bobby socks from when I raced you & the shiny things you bring me like a crow & the dead things
I bring you like a cat & how long I can keep a good thing going without it coming up for air that there are far few ways to say my love & far more ways
To fornicate than I ever imagined before. We watched a fox follow a doe & I was scared of how well you knew me & we watched a coyote follow a coyote & I knew you better than myself for a week or two. I still don’t know who chases who. I love all my friends as kin. If death is sex too every night we spend will be something like our last.
Lili Alimohammadi
Beto Beveridge Waterworks
He got away
I(n view down a rifle scope sat a bleeding deer , it’s neck askew against boulders, tail limp, knee bent, an antler propped sideways ,as a calcified weed upon a clif)f
Patrick Cuff
bodily inventory
we found our pieces in sandstone, ravens and waterworks beneath bedspring, alongside carpet stripped bare by the yearning sheets crumpled by love’s pressure.
and in finding, in rediscovering, releasing, recording, re membering tapestry knit by dreams as much as recollection a write wrist decked little beads, openings found by calloused, crafting romance like a gift for the cracked Sheep Mountain heart and for the roaring Ousel Falls soul.
a hairy neck, slender, decked little silver chain Teddy bear limp in love trinkets, smiling papers, handwriting doused in white plastic still, a polaroid of autumn in Thornton, another in Franconia preserve intimacy in time-spheres untarnished by newfound anguish.
a purple minithing in spindly fist fingers drips lavender, drowned Pacific homebound wildflowers lead her to Axolotl, Sphinx calls into the unknown it’s some magic that presses two souls together, linked manic wanderings filling love’s great vacuum soothed with schizophrenic Butlers.
a knit navy stripe woven black square patronage ‘braced by part time romanticists cranberry Charlotte, welcomed Alexandrian pleasantries, pastries, pocket goods a year’s strumming patterns, a month’s shattered solemn swears, a day’s lawn bliss pressurize these things, forge diamonds in the bluff.
an evergreen thigh, fit fabric masochism for one of us, golden throats for the other a heavy pour on the rocks, a bit of yellow in the middle, ski shoes by the lampost just outside of Showdown, Edith’s leather still calls our names, plastic cups in sacred ceremony, down aisle six and via Lane twenty three.
these fingernails dawn pink and brittle wood, dawn black and white keys crooked lines i take in your name, little dreams i cauterize, (love is a four petal word) Manchaug may press and knead us together if malleability were possible Woodstock, she interjects with a 450 milligram dose of non-nostalgic reality.
sayles hill road cries trails of joy and absolutes in times old roman we buy gold, silver, and musty believers, cash only eddie dowling highway rejects scenery, black leaves pitter patter its edges the kinchangers protest, profoundly: see you next ‘eason. may you endureth.
Mason Scurry
Julia Kandalepas
White Placentae
Rebirth came to my door at night, asking after you in ribless whispers. I had a migraine. Couldn’t speak. I could only glance upward at the sky, finding it mutilated by tones of low, black static; a mass of stars, swelling in its canopy.
I wondered if something was at your door, too.
That night I came down with visions. How outside my spine there was this river of skin, folding over itself in dark bends. How your intercostal spaces, like moonlit inlets, led inward to a black atrium whose contents I have forgotten. The terrain of a hairless body spreads like a burnt meadow. My only sensation is a lonely one—hot coals, doused by the saltwater of some Pacific hurl.
I think by morning I will forget many things. Whether we are rising to a surface, or sinking down to the neon. If we will still hear each other in our silent ways, in the wake of a new day. If memory or dream will be the first to march into the woods. And if we will still know of beauty, when we are reborn without these old, glassy eyes.
Cameron Le
T. Rex at the Arboretum
slumbering prehistoric suggestion with your spikes all up in my hiking boots
yeah, you
I know your face is somewhere below animated
your teeth heavy with the plaque of half a dozen unlucky triceratops
your eyelids flicker and an oak whispers you are dreaming of traffic the Mesozoic version of it as time polishes your bones
your claws twitch and starlings flee the oak you drift into another dream a dream of women with defenseless arms and robust snouts a mist of blood surrounding the reverie like perfume
you let out a little melee-infused moan the bellow slowly climbs 65 million years of sloughed earth flesh and hurls a leaf against the sky
hey now look at all this lusty clamor you’ve let loose my face is hot with the enormous creep of your ardor
I can hardly look at the mum as it receives the bee’s rummaging legs I cannot even acknowledge the wind as it lifts the hair from my neck
you are a living death rising from the mulch of a suburban sanctuary with little regard to the centuries sandwiched between your heathen slumber and the molecules that rule me
you yawn and the spittle wets your massive, weathered lips a creek appears and I leap across it with a flourish that fills the sky briefly
when I touch the other side of now you jolt awake and blink the sleep from your wary eyes
Hannah Jane Weber
Reclining figure
Surveyor
Beto Beveridge
On the night we played gods
Intrepid Gary had consumed the Dust-Off and was refighting the Battle of Austerlitz with paperclips and identification cards. In a coup worthy of Brumaire, the clever general waited until no one was looking and conscripted the kitchen table—deftly fashioning the Pratzen Heights from cigarette ashes and heaps of mail before delineating the perimeter of Goldbach valley with a fluorescent array of playing cards.
The fulsome air conditioner, breathing through its teeth at 64 degrees, asked us if we’d save the world. A reasonable request, given the time and place. “No, air conditioner,” we replied, “sometimes you have to save yourself.”
J.S. Graham
I name him Esau and bear my teeth and stomp in circles. When I get bored, I urinate on him and we fornicate unserendipitously. I’m skeptical at first, of this creature encroaching on my territory. Did I not dominate him, vis-à-vis stabbing, relentless stabbing, at him with my third limb? (There are five limbs, counting clockwise from the arm.) Too early to say. He remains and I gnaw on him, my toothy gums suckling him where it is soft and fleshy. He gnaws back. Painful, I note, an aggressive creature. I decide to keep him. I learn it is Tuesday where he comes from. Choosdee? No, Tuesday. He is insistent. Esau, the Tuesday creature. I show Esau the hole for food, the hole for defecation, the hole with water. He is most impressed by the water. He looks into it and observes the hairy, primitive face. He gestures me toward it, and when he sees two faces next to each other, he grins a wide, toothy grin. He forces me to sit there beside him for the rest of the day. They must not have water where he comes from. When I try to escape, he grabs my arm and shoves me into the hole, producing a coarse laugh. I shriek at him and flail like I am free-falling. I am free-falling. He reaches out his hand and I scramble onto the ledge. You touch me again? I say, between gasps, I push you into water, water which is deep, you drown. Esau nods while I settle myself in the gravel. He turns away. I exhale. Scooting next to him, I decide to stay by the water for a little while longer. We fall asleep. I awake. I stand. Esau awakes. Why you leave? he asks. I’m hungry, I respond. We go together. We spend a lot of time by the water now, and we coordinate our trips to the food and defecation holes. When winter comes he is with me, and when the sun bends through the glass we bury ourselves in each other. Our bodies leave imprints in the gravel. Esau gets up to urinate. Why you leave? I ask. Esau gets a fever and every day it is Tuesday until he is four inches under the sand, until there is a hole which cannot be touched, a cavern I know which has no bottom, a gnawing, and I can see the terrarium owner through the glass, saying, It must have been the temperature, or something, his side glance stalking my ascent from the water. I am splashing.
Mason Koa
Elliot Stravato Shadow Study
Shadow Study II
Elliot Stravato
Assumption
Before the Spaniards came, all the Filipinos could fly. They lived in the clouds during monsoon season, and when the rain lifted, they came down to earth to dance in the sun. They rose off the ground without wings, sang to the beat of the river, worshiped the taro and the yam. The matriarch, Ino, would trill her primal throat, her throat made of bone and flesh and tree fiber, and all the Filipinos of the village would swing into the sky. There were men who came with flesh the color of dry sand. Apu, the sister of the matriarch, had warned her that they would come. She had warned her that they had come to steal, that they shall take, shall take until there was nothing of her to give. One of the sandy-fleshed men joined Ino, and when she looked into his eyes she saw the ocean. She dragged him into the clouds to waltz, this man with strange skin and strange eyes. She fell in love with the man, and when she bore a son who could not fly, who could not join them in their monsoon village, Ino was cast out of the sky. She gave her son new clothes, pieces with satin and silver. She taught her son how to weave with the leaves of the pineapple, how to dance with the bamboo. She taught him to speak the language of the dirt, and it was cacophonous. She prayed for reunion with her sisters, with the rain. But her family grew from the soil, and for once she loved something that she did not know and did not know could be loved. Ino was born again within him, her skin the inside of a coconut, her mangrove hair unbraided, her lips a vow of silence. The pure ones of the village saw this pact and flew, their toes resigning from the earth. They flew out toward the ocean, where they could never be tainted or defiled. Apu refused to leave until she could come to Ino, to tell her to follow her family, to remind her that she was loved. Apu grabbed Ino’s arm and sprung, but found that she could not lift her sister into the wind. Ino was thinking of her son, his tree-bark hair and pale eyes. When Ino turned from her, Apu realized that Ino was not her family, that she could never be her family, and she mourned until she had widened the sea and flew away until she could not fly, she could not fly, anymore.
Mason Koa
Anant Saraf
Untitled
How to Miss It All in Belt, MT
Scout’s honor, I kept driving because the sun did not set until eleven pm. Split my hand through the keychains in the gas station. Titles like World’s Best Griller and God’s most common one hundred girls’ names. Mine is there. It’s spelled wrong. If brought into the sun, its solar power lights would reveal that I’ve been to Montana, exclamation mark! I fill up my tank but the sheep I came looking for have died. We lied to my grandma. Told her that her husband was still alive as we wheeled her up to his hospital bed. But the time of death was 5:02 and Dad didn’t blow the red light, so the Honda parked in the emergency lot at 5:08. She cried so hard she couldn’t tell the difference. What a pity. To miss the death but think it’s in front of you. I wasn’t there, I was in Montana. In a new house. If I died there would be no hospital for thirty-eight miles. All this stink of bodies made me forget that my dog arrives today, in his crate, in the bed of a truck of a stranger I paid. Bills arrive in the mail. They’re for me.
Kelsie Bennett
Elliot Stravato
Argos
Not right now, anyway
Do I want the house my parents have
The smooth wood evenness of it
The unmoving middle moored
Comfortably in order
In blue night white lamp evening
I am searching other lives in
The windows on their street the bookshelves
Sorted carefully, the dining tables, the upstairs lights
My hands
Are always red now
Always forming new lines beneath the sun
And the wind has rouged my ears
So that I do not hear my childhood pitches
From the same angles
I sang them from
Skye Robinson
Kandalepas
At Star Bar
At the mic, this guy Ian. The bar becomes a fist. Inches expand. Ian says “baby carrots” and people laugh. People tear at their napkins. People remember this beer. People want to play the alphabet game, but not right now, not here. We’ll play tomorrow, in our heads, the car running along a shopping center, wet over morning. Somewhere, Amtrak. Billboard. Cinnabon.
Lola Simon Race Horse
Afterword
That shaking, when it ends. When you’re driving along the grass with nothing to hear. The antelope hanging from the tree, don’t worry, it’s plastic.
Soon we’re back smiling on a three-second delay. Soon under the city’s glaze. Soon a day falls into the sky. Soon it all goes floating up.
Liv Graner
About The Contributors
Lili Alimohammadi is an Iranian-Kentuckian poet studying psychology at the University of Cincinnati, where they’re an assistant curator for the George Elliston Poetry Collection. They have received awards for both their art and writing, and their poetry and prose has been previously published in ShortVineand their collaborative zine, Eat YourHeartOut. They are the creator and editor of the anarcha-feminist zine Braids.
Phil Avilov is a first-year at RISD. His work has appeared in Narrative, the BrownPoliticalReview, and HotDishMagazine. He enjoys whale facts, whittling, and wandering around.
Since she was born in Athens in 2004, Ilektra Bampicha-Ninou decided to grow up there too. It was nice until she got sick of skewers— then she transferred to Brown University and flew to the US. She's now studying Multimedia Storytelling, which does not even exist as a degree, because she made it for herself. She believes in art. She also thinks she can write. Only by faith do you go forward. You go back in reverse.
Kelsie Bennett is an undergraduate at New York University. Their writing has been recognized by TheAdroitJournaland the National Youngarts Foundation. Short stories and poems have been featured in BarrenMagazine,Kaleidoscope:ExploringtheExperienceofDisability throughLiteratureandtheFineArts,TheFoundationalist,Spires Magazine, and elsewhere. Find them at kelsiebennett.net.
Patrick Cuff is a writer from Boston. His work has been featured as a ghost writer for Fortune 500 company newsletters and internal memos, and is best known for the various NDAs he's signed over the years. He also writes poetry, short stories, and blogs. Patrick lives with his wife Jessica, a cat named Kitty, and a dog called Charley, named after John Steinbeck's "Travels with Charley." Unlike Steinbeck's dog, Patrick's pup doesn't enjoy road trips.
J. S. Graham is an emerging poet from Yorktown, Virginia. His poetry is forthcoming in Mantis:AJournalofPoetry,Criticism&Translation (2024). He writes for the friends he’s made along the way.
Liv Graner is a senior at Brown University. They recently completed a thesis in Literary Arts. Now they are tired.
Pranav Gundrala is a rising senior at Brown University studying Literary Arts and Biology, with a focus on plant biology and evolution. His work focuses on flowers and archival data from collected plant specimens. His poems have appeared in the campus publication VISIONS.
Avery Guo is currently a freshman in the dual degree program studying Applied Math at Brown and intending Illustration at RISD.
Juliette Hagobian (she/her) is a sophomore at Emerson College. She is an alumna of the 2023 Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program and the International Armenian Literary Alliance’s Poetry Mentorship. Her works can be found or is forthcoming in h-pem, Surging Tide, The Howl, The Round, and elsewhere. Find her on her bed eating sumo oranges. a
Annie Johnson is an emerging writer from the Columbus, Ohio area. She is currently pursuing a degree at Literary Arts at Brown University. Her work has appeared in TheNewYorkTimes,TheYoungArts Anthology,TheJournal, and elsewhere. Read more at www.anniejwrites. weebly.com.
Mason Koa has fiction published or forthcoming in ThePennReview, QuarterlyWest,VestalReview,Westwind,XRAY,and elsewhere. His work has been nominated for Best Microfiction 2024. His story was the runner-up for the 2023 Quarterly West Prose Contest. He is a graduate of the Stanford Pre-Collegiate Creative Writing Program. He is Filipinoand Chinese-American and writes from Northern California. He is fifteen years old.
Ivan de Monbrison is a bipolar French poet and artist living in Paris born in 1969.
Skye Robinson is a writer based out of Providence, Rhode Island and Brooklyn, New York. Skye is a junior double concentrating in Comparative Literature and International and Public Affairs, and is interested in exploring the space between community and the self in her writing. Her poems have been published most recently in Lyric Magazine,INTIRevistadeliteraturahispánicaytransatlántica,and ContemporaryVerse2.
Juliet Rotondo is a high school junior from Rye, New York. Her writing is recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and featured in her school’s literary magazine and newspaper; she is on the editorial staff of her school’s literary magazine, newspaper, and PolyphonyLit. She loves using art and writing as creative mediums to connect her lived experiences with universal ones.
Mason Scurry is a Junior at Brown studying Sociology (though if he's honest he'd rather be studying literary arts). He loves creative writing, entrepreneurship, romance and nature and explores all these themes in his writing. Visit 23purpleflowers.blog for more of his pieces!
Cameron Le is an undergraduate student at Brown University with interests in biology and film theory. His favorite word is "ephemera" and his favorite color is navy.
Ryan Seeb is an undergraduate student from Atlanta, Georgia concentrating in Astrophysics. He is passionate about physics, photography, and guitar.
Lola Simon is a senior at Brown University studying visual art and history. They love miniatures and fruit parfaits.
Noor Taresh is a first year student from Bahrain—an island in the middle east.
Hannah Jane Weber’s poetry has been published in I-70Review, ThePhoenix,Plainsongs,ThePoemingPigeon,PonderReview, Rosebud,SlipperyElm,TheSouthShoreReviewand more. She is also a recipient of the Dylan Thomas American Poet Prize. Hannah Jane is a children’s librarian and tennis enthusiast. She lives with her husband and their dogs.
Bill Wolak is a poet, collage artist, and photographer who has just published his eighteenth book of poetry entitled AlltheWind’s UnfinishedKisseswith Ekstasis Editions. His collages and photographs have appeared as cover art for such magazines as Phoebe,Harbinger Asylum,BaldhipMagazine,andBarflyPoetryMagazine.
The Round is a literary and visual arts magazine based at Brown University.
Our name is adopted from the musical "round," a composition in which multiple voices form an overlapping conversation. It is our mission ot extend and enrich the dialogue surrounding literary and visual arts at Brown by creating a community of artists across the country and around the globe. We are excited to work on a magazine which brings together contributors with a wide variety of backgrounds, ages, and places they call home.
We welcome submissions in any genre or medium and publish both students and professionals. Send your work, comments, or questions to theroundmagazine@gmail.com.
View submission guideslines and learn more about us by visiting http://students. brown.edu/theroundmagazine. Check out past issues at https://issuu.com/ theroundmagazine.
Sincerely,
Julian, Marlena, Justin, and Eleanor
Spring 2024