THE ROUND fall 2016 : issue xv
How Many Hands Does It Take to Hold This Season’s Must Haves, Rica Maestas collage | 8” x 10”
LIT ER ARY ART 1—Ophelia Isabelle Doyle 2—On the Bright Side Will Walker 3—There Are Many Reasons to Hate Gristedes Graham Coppin 5—Yes Ma’am Marcia LeBeau 6—It’s Time Lauro Palomba 9—Spanish Moss Ann Minoff 10—Not Grapes Don Russ 11—Oman Anjali Vadhri 13—Fixer-Upper Maia Rosenfeld 18—Trees I Saw Laying Facedown On A Mattress in Iowa With My Eyes Open Pressed Into the Pillow Isabelle Doyle 21—Nameless Lake Zachary Scott Hamilton 22—Slivers Sharon Kennedy-Nolle 23—The Contortionist Emily Martland 24—Paper Mache Alison McCabe 32—The Way Things Are Biman Roy 33—Oktober Signe Swanson 34—Autovoxiphiliac A.J. Huffman
T HE R OUN D 36—Sonnet in Tantrum Sharon Kennedy-Nolle 38—Mom Anna Johnson 39—Untitled #1 Simon Perchik 41—Embrace Ann Minoff 42—Blackbird Memory Marimac McRae 49—To The Lovers of Women Sydney Lo 51—Mississippi Meaghan Andrews 52—Better Friends With Mountains, People Zachary Scott Hamilton 54—Wordout Robert Rothman 57—After You’ve Gone Sydney Lo 58—Donut Friday #2 Darren Demaree 60—Untitled #2 Simon Perchik 63—Reverie Lauro Palomba 67—The Shudder Circa 1970 Laurie Lessen Reiche 68—Lullaby Emily Martland 69—Nothing Will Come Joseph Rathgeber 70—Longing Lost Off Emerald Isle Matt Zambito
V IS UAL ART Cover—How Many Hands Does it Take to Hold
35—Domestic Bliss
This Season’s Must Haves
Rica Maestas
Rica Maestas
37—House in the Mountains
4—Our Lady of Anywhere
40—Sinking Star
Rica Maestas
Juliana Kim
8—Fallen
41—Mirror Box
Fabrice Poussin
Xinyue Tong
12—Swallowing Mirrors #4
43—Untitled
Jenna Laycraft
Jenna Laycraft
17—KSC and Corby
56—Water+feet
Juliana Kim
Brian Michael Barbeito
19—Slum Muses
63—Night Sky
Alexandra Bowman
Isabela Lovelace
20—Burbujear
66—Untitled
Isabela Lovelace
Xinyue Tong Jenna Laycraft
“There is always another story, one we haven’t necessarily bargained for.”
— Adam Phillips, On Flirtation
OPHELIA Isabelle Doyle
Dragged downriver toward a 24-hour diner in the middle of the night. Runny eggs dripping from her blue mouth, freshwater leaking in her icicle eyes. Heaven a green scrap of peppermint on her taut tongue. Heaven her swollen shoulders. Heaven her heavy dress, her hips her home. Heaven her cloak opening: roses and roses. Heaven her stone arms, heaven the heavy ghost of her, heaven the river that delivered her from this, heaven the diner at the edge of the earth, Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue playing forever on the jukebox, whole-wheat toast always buttered just right.
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ON THE BRIGHT SIDE Will Walker
Rather than brood about my epitaph, today I thank God for clean glasses–– who knew the world was so bright, and the thin grass in my yard: each perky shoot a proclamation. Shadows in the neighbors’ large, gnarly tree––no doubt an exotic import from New Zealand–– cling to the bark like a dark but loving spirit, the tangible love of light for all that grows solid enough to take up space in the world. And lest I forget: the bill collectors all salute me with a fawning attentiveness that touches my purse and prompts me to write them checks, signed with my own hand, my trail of monthly love letters to them all.
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THERE ARE MANY REASONS TO HATE GRISTEDES Graham Coppin
There are many reasons to hate Gristedes. For you maybe it’s the smell but for me it’s because I’m there picking up some things when the doctors call. My annual check-up tests are back and the nurse is telling me to come in and it’s never a good thing when they won’t say why over the phone. I go home and tell Nate and he asks me what it means and I tell him “It’s either brain cancer or you-know-what.” He says it’s probably neither and we get stoned and watch The Sopranos. We get so baked that night I’m still not sure if Tony actually killed Christopher after he drove them off a cliff. Now it’s Thursday and I’m with the doctor I will grow to hate. It’s the first time he’s hugged me when he comes to get me so I know what’s coming. He’s never seen someone take this news so well. Then I’m outside on 14th Street rescheduling my therapist and calling Nate, asking him to be home when I get home. I think I’m holding on to the granite counter in the kitchen to steady myself. He’s standing, blinking his eyes. Neither of us is hungry but perhaps we get takeout. What I remember is each of us taking one side of the L-shaped sofa. Nate flips channels. I stare out the window at the world that’s arriving.
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Our Lady of Anywhere, Rica Maestas photograph | 8” x 12”
YES MA’AM Marcia LeBeau
When I kiss my sleeping son tonight, he smells of the hot sweat for which I have no words. I can only think about him bobbing his head today in music class during his “solo,” where he’s supposed to sing Yes, ma’am! but instead cocks his head, smirks, and nods to the beat. But like LeBron and Dwight Schrute and all the bobbleheads before him, sitting on dashboards or dressers while their owners are away at college, they nod in a way unfathomable, ruled by a force greater than the spring that holds them together. The same force that will prompt him to get up tonight, raise the lid of his hamper, and pee while crying in a full-sleep standing remorse and how I’ll cocoon myself around his warm, wet frame, as if we’re spinning in a washing machine together, which somehow turns into the storm at the beginning of every Gilligan’s Island, and how I miss that show, but really just a time when things were simpler, not Ginger-and-Mary Ann simpler, but less complicated than a mom holding her son under a suburban moon as the TV trills more bad news.
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IT’S TIME Lauro Palomba
The moment is already here incubating undeclared on cue it will crack open grow till you’re pushed out proudly martyred with its bearer In a clammy August or the shivers of a March when told you’ve ticked down be cavalier in retort: ‘Expecting it since birth it’s just taken decades to live out the stages’ Of course they’ll shrug at the relevance of stages no time added play to the referee’s whistle Above all, do not shriek (to date, it’s failed to alter outcome) refrain from spicing their gossip
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TH E R OUND
Why me, you’ll want to pity desist; why not? when first did you absurdly have faith that unique would rhyme with immortal? Naturally, you’ll squeeze hope from each delusion it’s understood At last, you are alone so much to set right as you subside into sniffling Invite as many as who’ll come at the last you’re on your own the torment tailored to your self Sole departure? Going home? don’t sweat the destination they handle all the details
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Fallen, Fabrice Poussin photograph | 19” x 15.5”
SPANISH MOSS Ann Minoff
silver-gray spanish moss seemingly lifeless hangs above the children walking below touching the tops of their heads as she grabs the tree for better purchase methodically climbing along the Brazilian pepper trees laughing at her green younger kin handcuffed to the land while she breathes water from the air eats sea blown dust for dinner an unwanted relative dried and aged from years under the sun her gray beard delicately hangs from every tree
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NOT GRAPES Don Russ
think warm days will never cease -John Keats Plumped toxic with autumn suns the pokeweed’s dead-ripe fruit, not grapes, hangs black among the golden leaves – reminder, sign of things to come. And deep inside a stillness never still the dessicated whir of birds, the night-chill threading into noon: life’s iron fugue, a mindless edifice of time and space, a word-worlds’s love and dread I say again so I forget.
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OMAN Anjali Vadhri
Amma used to spin tales about sultans, crushing her stories of lust, greed, and deceit under the roof of my mouth, where I could save them for when I felt homesick for her gooseberry pickle and gulab jamuns. Last year, I bought a burgundy ceramic teapot for her from a bazaar vendor whose clacking teeth looked like decayed pearls and who promised me the world in exchange for a few rials. Too busy admiring the teapot, I absentmindedly watched it slip from my hennaed fingers and break into infinitesimal remnants. I didn’t cry as I dug a shard out of my heel, thinking of Qantab Beach, where I would spend hours watching the fishermen laugh to themselves as they brought in their emerald boats. I still paid the vendor, who cackled at my misfortune, but I kept a fragment with me, smooth as a skipping stone, hoping for luck as sweet as Amma’s smile.
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Swalloing Mirrors #4, Jenna Laycraft oil on linen | 20” x 16”
FIXER-UPPER Maia Rosenfeld
The basement was strangled with mold, the roof was caving in, and the contractor had said that the house’s wooden frame was probably rotting, but Sophia’s mother still refused to move. “Anything can be fixed with a hammer, some duct tape, and a little bit of determination,” she’d once told her daughter while standing on a ladder and trying to nail fallen shingles back onto the roof. Sophia had just looked at her with a mix of awe and disgust. The kitchen was Sophia’s least favorite part of the house. She always brought friends through the side door and straight up the stairs so they wouldn’t see the shelves of flea market knick-knacks, the used coffee filters rinsed and spread across the water spout to dry so her mother could reuse them. Some people hung their children’s artwork, family photos, and newspaper clippings on their refrigerators—for Sophia’s mother, the kitchen walls were her refrigerator. The room was plastered with embarrassing memorabilia, and its cupboards were full of semiusable dishes: plates with chipped rims that cut your fingers if you weren’t careful, mugs with their handles broken off so you had to wrap your hands around them and risk burning your palms. Sophia’s mother kept them anyway, ignoring the IKEA catalogues her husband sometimes left out on the counter, open to the kitchenware page. Every evening after dinner, Sophia’s mother wandered about the house with a list down to her ankles, full of scribbles denoting things that were broken. She worked slowly and doggedly, fixing and crossing off items. Meanwhile, her husband sat in the large leather armchair that faced the crooked mantelpiece, searching newspapers and scrolling through 13
Fixer-Upper / Maia Rosenfeld
websites for inexpensive apartments nearby. At night Sophia listened to her parents’ silence through the thin bedroom walls, their mute argument echoing in her gut. She imagined her mother listing the things she’d fixed that day, her father responding with the listing he’d seen for a small condo on Thatcher Street, the emptiness growing as they stood next to each other and brushed their teeth so they didn’t have to talk. She imagined the darkness before they turned out the light, how they mistook apathy for love. + The stairs to the attic were coming loose. Sophia knew this from the creaking and cursing she heard as her father descended, carrying a large bin of papers and random objects. She knew how it would go—he would put the memorabilia out on the curb with the trash, her mother would see it when she came home from work, bring it back inside and tell him he couldn’t possibly think she was going to let the garbage men take away her daughter’s elementary school artwork, the textbook from her favorite class in college, a squirrel figurine given to her by an old neighbor. It happened just as Sophia had expected—her mother brought the bin into the kitchen, set it down on the counter, and turned to her husband with a look of indignation. “I can’t believe you were going to get rid of these things,” she said. She held up a keychain in the shape of the Statue of Liberty. “Souvenirs from our trip to New York?” She rifled through the bin and pulled out a bundle of pamphlets. “Sophia’s middle school playbills?” Sophia’s father shook his head and sighed.
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TH E R OUND
“You’re ridiculous, Charlotte,” he said. “Why don’t you just take this roll of paper towels and stick it in the bin, too? I’m sure you can find some value to attach to it.” He tossed the roll at her and added: “And good luck getting that back up to the attic—the stairs are gonna break any day now, and the ceiling is caving in so low, the whole room is a concussion hazard.” “The stairs are an easy fix,” she replied, reaching for her toolbox in its usual place on the windowsill. “And the ceiling—” “When are you going to realize that it’s time to find a new place? This house is falling apart faster than you can fix it.” “You don’t give up on something just because it needs a little repair.” She turned and marched up the stairs with the bin and the toolbox. “And the house isn’t the only thing that’s falling apart,” he muttered, but she was already halfway to the attic. + That evening at dinner, Sophia told her parents about her day at school (but not really). That was how it always went. She told them about her classes (but not really), about her friends and her almost friends (but not really), about her soccer practice and how everything had gone well that day (but not really). They ate sweet potatoes baked in aluminum foil that had been used to wrap Sophia’s sandwich that day. Her mother always asked her to bring home her plastic bags and foil from lunch, so she could wash and reuse them until they were more hole than material. They took large bites even though the food wasn’t that good. Chewing was always easier than
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Fixer-Upper / Maia Rosenfeld
talking, and they filled the quiet with “Pass the salt,” and “My day was pretty good.” Then the light bulb went out above them for the third time that week. Sophia’s mother examined the outline of her husband in the dark. His eyes traced her silhouette against the small window behind her. Their silence shook the house.
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KSC and Corby, Juliana Kim alkyd paint | 8” x 12”
TREES I SAW LAYING FACEDOWN ON A MATTRESS IN IOWA WITH MY EYES OPEN PRESSED INTO THE PILLOW Isabelle Doyle
Gummy saplings, sticky pines sticking up from the sidewalks, sprouts in the streets, skinny trees. Dress whipping round my scrawny knees, red cheeks chewed in my white teeth. City floor composed of asbestos, meat markets on wheels, basil bodies, fierce-fleshed brie cheese, each surface a mirror or a palimpsest, feathers pounds of gold across my stone shoulders, my legs spinning: spinster wheels, strange trees hissing from the black street. My eyes open, tongue slow, mouth red, spiders sticking along the sides of trees, beatles creaking inside the bed, your sticky voice inside my sticky head.
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Slum Muses, Alexandra Bowman
colored pencil, graphite, alcohol market, acrylic paint | 18� x 24�
Burbujear, Isabela Lovelace colored pencil | 8� x 10�
NAMELESS LAKE (C. 1412) Zachary Scott Hamilton
Nail polish dream catcher and willow signal Ice cream green sunlight Hanging in nowhere, I pause my eyes for a beer -Even farther away My brain is cider; rum, and jewelry -- attics, bracelets, music, speakers, beds, And & couches, comfort, teeth are fixed, vagina water ~ light headed, black with mist in cylinder phone call & tooth is cunning - so motorcycle course is Back for three wins, and four jackpots
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SLIVERS Sharon Kennedy-Nolle
Home from rehab for just three hours, and we gather together to celebrate an almost Odyssean return. Grandma asks you how you like your homecoming dinner. You say you don’t, at all, slurring enough to let me know something else is amiss. (We later found the stolen vanilla extract bottles, enough to make three thousand cakes.) You deny everything as you climb on the dining room table, stepping right through the lasagna, flattening the salad, belt in hand, you slash at us brandishing against the chandelier’s teardrops (I dimly hear the Waterford shatter in tinkling intervals, a glass shower) like a little King Kong, as we keep begging with you to please get down. You eventually do, with the chandelier, from which you just tried to hang yourself. Six months later, you’re in a place where they don’t allow even zippers; no handles on the sinks, and everything you now own has been donated. The dining room has been restored, but there’s so much still missing. Not remembering, you shrug it off the way a dog shakes off a dip, but we keep getting cut. Crystal splinters under our nails, like a dry bone cracking up life. 22
THE CONTORTIONIST Emily Martland
This is what I can control – half myself and yet less than me, outside of me. This confusion of bone and skin and sinew. This is what I can sell – the parts of myself I’ve distorted and shaped, the skeleton I’ve pulled to air. The impossibilities I repeat and repeat. This is what I can prove – worth in a body subdued, goals set and passed. A form in the mirror I know I’ve defeated. Say what you like, but tell me – can you escape your own footprints?
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PAPER MACHE Alison McCabe
The mummy lay on a walnut slab table in the foyer. More than one person asked if it was real. At first the guests tiptoed about, with talk of work and the recent hurricane that had hit down the shore. Everyone had a friend whose home was swept up by the ocean, or a cousin with a neighbor whose food truck got pulled under, or a memory of riding the whirl-o-wheel, or petting the world’s smallest horse, and so conversation, though quiet at first, was pleasant enough. Kayla had invited fifteen friends and the co-workers Wade could stand. Halloween parties were her favorite. She served Czech absinthe in keeping with the theme, and it didn’t take long before the party was full—people making jokes and exciting claims about which everyone agreed. “I didn’t think you’d top last year’s witch hunt,” book club Renee said. “But a mummy unwrapping party is fucking brilliant.” So it was, Kayla thought, though not for nothing. It took twelve hours to conceive the design, twice as long to construct. A balloon for the head. Modeling clay to build up cheekbones so the eye sockets would look sunken. Small trash bags filled with crumpled newspaper for the rib cage, stomach, and limbs. Then, after the paper mache dried, Kayla sliced along the sides, one section at a time, lifted the top like a lid, popped the balloon, tore the bags, and emptied out the stuffing. She used gray tissue paper for a final coat once every item was properly inside, lid closed, edges sealed.
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TH E R OUND Kayla worked for days, weeks even, and didn’t rush the process. It was an amusing challenge, trying to assemble the dead. Kayla explained her inspiration to Renee and others who soon joined them. The trend started in the mid-nineteenth century when Egyptian mummies dug their way to Europe, into aristocratic circles. Anyone could purchase a mummy so long as they could pay the price, and unwrapping parties became a testament to, if not high culture, high class. Guests picked at the remains to uncover trinkets stashed inside--jewels, medallions: they were party favors. “And get this,” Kayla said. “They sprinkled bandage dust in their tea.” The best part was uncovering the nether-regions. Victorian women feigned embarrassment. Men loved it as well. Kayla explained to Renee that she had planted something special there too. The two women laughed, loudly, as if their laughter had a lot to prove. * The night before the party, by the time Wade returned home, back from the airport, back from business, almost every part of the mummy was done. All but the right hand which Kayla thought would be far easier to shape around his than her own. “Help me, could you,” she said, pointing to a bowl of paper mache on the kitchen table. Where Wade had flown in from, specifically, Kayla couldn’t remember, some place with dusty streets and a lot of sun. He walked over to Kayla and kissed the top of her head. He was tired, he said. The hand could wait. “But not too tired for something.” They opted for the master bedroom. Now, after Kayla and Wade had
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Paper Mache / Alison McCabe
been married almost three years, after they were drained by the master bedroom and started having sex only in other rooms of the house, after they covered all uncovered ground and grew tired of that too—the laundry room floor, the guest pullout sofa, the whirlpool bathtub, the downstairs bathtub, propped up on the soapstone countertop—Kayla and Wade went for the master again. Wade scratched her back. In the middle of sex, he stroked his thumb across her eyebrow and told her how beautiful she was. “I mean it,” he said. After, Kayla held him for a few long seconds; his shoulders were wet and smelled like salted cashews. She kicked a leg out from under the covers and complained of a headache. Right between the eyes. Earlier that night, Kayla had overheard Wade on his cell, not twenty minutes after he’d returned home and pulled off his socks. At the time he must have thought Kayla was downstairs, slicing an apple for snack, shutting windows, watching the news. “It’s insane,” he’d breathed quietly into the phone, “how much I already miss you.” Then the sex, to see if it felt any different from all the sex that came before. Less comfortable. More distant. Admittedly, it did not. Before they went to sleep, Wade asked Kayla if she’d like some tea to help with her head. She nodded, reached under the covers, pulled out the remote, turned on the plasma. A movie she’d already seen, about a haunted beach house and growing too old. Wade returned a few minutes later holding a mug that read “#1 Dad.” Kayla had given it to him on Father’s Day last year; they’d just bought a hanging spider plant for their new living room and decided that, between the two of them, they ought to be able to keep it alive. The plant hung
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TH E R OUND there still, with baby offshoots that drooped down. Kayla took the mug and held it to her mouth, testing the tea’s temperature—too hot. Wade joined her in bed. Kayla could mention the phone call, and part of her wanted to, but there was the party the next day. Wade was gone more than he was around and, at least this way, it was like they’d already decided, like they’d already had the divorce. It would be easier to stay put. If she chose to leave him, or him her, Kayla would need to make adjustments, give reasons, admit failure; her friends would pry. She could feel herself waning. She could feel her fertility drying up. She could feel her lower back, her knees, ache from the inside. “Did you remember to turn off the stove?” Kayla asked. Wade rarely did. “I might have.” “You could burn this place down.” Wade laughed. “Do you smell smoke? Are there flames?” * At the party, Kayla made her way from one guest to another. She looked around for Wade, but he wasn’t in the living room. For a moment, Kayla wondered where he might be. For a moment, this kept her quiet, and then Maddie, Wade’s favorite office assistant, pushed through a pocket of spin class women to say hello. Maddie smelled strongly of cinnamon and a flower shop and held a mini quiche between powder blue nails. “That mummy is rad,” she said, opening her mouth and rubbing her finger along the corners to clear them
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Paper Mache / Alison McCabe
of crumbs. With her lipstick wiped away, she looked like a geisha, like a vintage cartoon. “Wade mentioned you were crafty,” Maddie said, “but this goes beyond scrapbooking, am I right? You’ve got to have kids. Everything you’ll do with them. Think of their birthday parties, school projects, their Halloween costumes!” Kayla nodded. “Baby Kayla will be a princess; Baby Wade: a little lion.” Maddie popped the rest of the quiche in her mouth and looked around. “Where is he?” she asked between chews. Kayla said she didn’t know. Maybe out to smoke, she thought. Or upstairs in the guest bedroom with his dress-pants around his ankles, some fake redhead from work working on him, or both of them rolling around on the pullout sofa, the laundry room floor, the bathtub. Kayla took a sip of wine—red, though white’s what Kayla preferred. With a gulp, she finished her glass. Kayla turned to get another. “The hand is ready,” Wade said. He’d come up behind her. But Kayla had never made the other one. The mummy’s right arm was incomplete, ending jaggedly at the wrist. As it turned out, Wade slept late that morning and, when he’d finally been ready to help with the mold, Kayla was in no mood to be near him, much less weave strips of paper snuggly through his fingers, around his thumb, into the dip of his palm. For most of the day, she hadn’t spoken to him. Pre-party nerves, she’d said. “What hand?” Kayla asked Wade, then “excuse us,” she said to Maddie, as Wade took her arm and dragged her along. “The one I made for you.” He’d tried. Wade showed Kayla his efforts, out on the back porch, where
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TH E R OUND he’d spread a layer of Sunday circulars over the picnic table and had been working, it seemed, since just after the party began. His idea was to wrap the paper mache not around his own hand, but a dishwashing glove, so it’d be easier to remove and let dry. The design wasn’t the problem, Kayla thought. The design wasn’t actually so bad. But he’d mixed the paste wrong or, in his exuberance, he’d done a quick, sloppy job. As he stood, Wade gripped the porch banister with one hand. The strips, still damp, crossed at inefficient angles. Between the fingers were gaps where the newspaper hadn’t come together, and patches of bright yellow rubber showed through. If Wade weren’t so earnest, Kayla might have laughed. “We can’t use that,” she said. “So not true,” Wade started, but Kayla turned away. Back inside, she went over to the mummy. It had a nice ancient gray color to it in the dim light, like a sepia-toned photograph from warmer, earlier times. She gathered her friends around the table and shouted for the unwrapping to begin. They started with the torso. It didn’t come apart as easily as Kayla expected. The layers of paper mache were stiff and stuck together. Instead of peeling off in suspense-filled strips, they broke in chunks so that, after only a minute, the entire left side of the chest was exposed. The guests hooted at what they found underneath. Kayla had placed each party favor appropriately. To the left of the breastbone was a heart-shaped locket in a silver cardboard box. Gift certificates to Kayla’s favorite brunch spot lined the stomach. In each lung: a pack of cigars. The unwrapping continued as Wade walked into the room, smiling,
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Paper Mache / Alison McCabe
shirt sleeve pulled down over his fist and, sticking absurdly out from his cuff: the wet mummy hand, gripped tightly at the wrist with his own. Balanced carefully between the paper mache index and middle finger was a cigarette. Wade waved the hand in front of him, then brought it to his lips, slowly, and took a puff. Kayla gave him a disapproving glare. They didn’t smoke in the house. She made the rule when they moved in, the day the new furniture arrived and Kayla decided that it needed to stay fresh. “What is this?” Wade said. “You started without me.” He inhaled and blew a gray stream out from his nose. Kayla thought of the Egyptian embalmers who, with their iron hooks and precision, would pull long, pulpy strands of brain through the nasal canals of the dead. Internal organs were removed to slow decay. That is, all organs but one. “We only just started,” Kayla said. She turned away from her husband and toward the mummy. “Okay, who’s got the shoulders? The neck?” Another book club friend, Toni, scraped at the collarbone. She broke through the shoulder and pulled out a tiny envelope. Free fifteen-minute chair massage at the Bamboo Spa, the gold card stock inside read. “Amazing, Kay,” Toni said. The partygoers took their time with the rest of the unwrapping. They laughed hardily each time they found something new. Body spray tucked under the nose, a fifth of Cognac packed into the liver, two free Zumba passes resting on each thigh. They wasted no time with the Cognac. Someone popped it open, took a slug and passed it around. Wade was quiet in his corner. He watched. “Send the cog-nack this way,” he said.
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TH E R OUND “Cog-nack, ha.” Maddie shook her head. She passed the bottle to Wade. Wade tipped his head back and drank. With the glove-held cigarette in one hand and the bottle in the other, Wade couldn’t keep his good focus on both. When the Cognac fell to the floor, the glass didn’t break, but some liquor spilled out. Kayla clasped her hands together and bit her bottom lip. She looked down. The mess wasn’t big. There were paper towels in the kitchen, napkins stacked beside the veggie platter—she could laugh it off and clean it up no trouble at all. This is something she could do, Kayla thought. She paused and looked at him. “Let’s finish the unwrapping,” she said. Wade stared at the mummy. “It looks pretty much done to me.” He dropped his head and looked at the Cognac puddling on the hardwood floor. He kicked off a shoe and ran his foot back and forth so his sock soaked some of it up. “There,” he said, “now that’s taken care of.” He bent over to wipe up the rest with his palm, arm reaching down, the other held above his head, mummy hand still in his own. The rubber glove had relinquished its form and the hand folded over now, sad, yellow, the cigarette wedged between paper mache fingers at an uncertain angle. A spark, a red glow catching, and Kayla only watched. Then the smell of smoke, faintly rubber, of something all but burned.
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THE WAY THINGS ARE Biman Roy
The lady in black stepped out Straight from a Hopper, Left foot first, silk-sheathed and cautious On the rain-washed side street draining into Fifth Ave. The man with a green jacket, bald as a cantaloupe Ran behind and almost tipped over, Balanced himself with a faint smile and held The umbrella out, half opened. The lady, irate At the incompetence of night to protect its stars And vexed at the losing game of Broadway Asked for a taxi to go far from the piano bar. The man, sleek as a salesman, craned his neck out Into pitch-black night Stretched between East River and the Hudson And managed to bundle her out to nowhere. Once she was gone, the man took out a cigar And smoked as if nothing had really happened, Not even in a Hopper’s cityscape, Past magic, comedy clubs, bone wreak and filth.
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OKTOBER Signe Swanson
meadow down pat coral up south red peel nonsense smack shoot luster, pastor always laid out the motts deadpan by folgers in the lutheran cellar I savored to wonder how any good thing on the good lutheran earth could be any thing other than crisp
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AUTOVOXIPHILIAC A.J. Huffman
My first word was glory. Released in godly golden tones tripping from my toddler tongue. I practiced incessantly. Twisting tales for family, friends, anonymous auditory organs, walls. All relished my oratory brilliance. My throat lubed with warm honey, I verbally masturbated in my room for hours. The acoustics were astounding. Later I learned to increase my scope, sought out hollow spaces, coveted the automated re-conveyance of canyons. I linger now at their edges, a mirrorless Narcissus, thanking Echo for her grace.
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Domestic Bliss | Rica Maestas
collage | 8” x 10”
SONNET IN TANTRUM Sharon Kennedy-Nolle
The party over, our kids come tripping from a tip-top day with a clutch of colors, goody bags in tow. After backseat brawling, they’re eager to show the Haribos, Dots, Nerds; now squabbling over Laffy Taffy trades. You start scowling, peeved over this joking in spades Too much sugar—it’s always the little things that trigger your demands for surrender; no treats for bad behavior. They laugh and run, trying to transform yell to game. You give chase and catch up; wrench one wrist until all’s out of hand; undeterred, spoiled twerps, the children scream and dive for the Swedish Fish who swim in the trash you’ve dumped to stomp the sweets, jumping as if on some flaccid trampoline, you jerk till tie-dyed dust rainbows the floor in poor, runed wish.
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House in the Mountains, Juliana Kim watercolor | 11� x 8�
MOM Anna Johnson
When I was young, I was a framework of you Waiting to be molded into someone like you, ten degrees rotated. You and your elegance, you and your eloquent way Of speaking to strangers in the grocery store − I thought the earth must be in retrograde The first time I saw you cry with your mouth wide open. I don’t know if I am becoming, if you are unbecoming Or if I have finally found the place you go to be weak And have decided to stay for a spell, Cradled in the soft womb of your retraction. You are not indefatigable You are distractible and quick to turn off − I see you stare out the window and I know you wish you had done some things differently. Perhaps it’s true what they say: Daughter grows up to become mother’s best friend But I am sure I am not ready To hear your sighs, or even acknowledge them. If I am moving forward into the clear light of knowing you Which way are you moving? Wait for me − Don’t wait.
UNTITLED #1
Simon Perchik
They wait for this match to let them in all at once –these stars need more time smothered by how quiet the sun waits in the darkness this candle knows by heart –it’s your usual match, half wood half some mountainside breathing again and rock by rock rescued by the simple flame that looms over you as smoke broken open for rain and falling back –such is the need for a face –the ground almost asleep kept warm, expecting you.
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Sinking Star, Xinyue Tong oil on canvas | 25” x 31”
EMBRACE Ann Minoff
there is no poet nearby to count or sing, no one claiming me with lips and arms no sweaty passion or hard breathing only the lichen-covered cabbage palm listing to the left in front of my window the fat gulls pecking their way across the easy sand the gray rainclouds hanging over the south causeway as i drive to the mainland they have no critique at any step taken or decision made no cringe at fingerprints on the kitchen cabinets the oil stains on the bed sheets the slight water rings on the night table perhaps it is indifference but their embrace rolls from the unseen weave and it’s mine
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A BLACKBIRD MEMORY Marimac McRae
It begins at the bottom of the void called not feeling anything at all, and you know that you are at rock bottom only because you can’t see down anymore. You walk around feeling the jagged tears lining the loose area between your ribcage and your hips, the part of your body only held up by your sheer wits and the fine line of your spine. Here will begin to burn and glow, fire licking each of your ribs, fire rushing down your legs, fire finding circles, winding up into your neck where it stops. And the silver silence in your ears begins to shatter into broken gasps of smoke, into dangerous games, into something else entirely. But when the fire fumes fall out somehow, and the smoke gets stuck in your throat, and your stomach feels like the empty lake cracking like winter lips, you realize that this is what it feels like to be alone. And everything begins to slowly appear different. People ask you about the breakup, and you respond with phrases formulated before—phrases copied from thoughts to lips in the mirror so many times, waiting until they could run out without cracks, without static, without shattering, waiting for the words to come out without making a sound. And when you can do that, you are ready. You hear the bells in your stomach, ringing for your attention. You think about crawling onto the ground; that lying down would help if anything, that lying down would ease the bells. The hungry dizziness hits like birds flying, trying, crying for you to join them but your feathers are frozen to the ground. Uneven streaks of leaden water are lacing your fanned feathers lower into the earth, coercing you there by bounds 42
TH E R OUND waiting to thaw. And you’re too cold to melt them yourself. So you sit looking at the sky, watching the other blackbirds fly, black dots swirling your vision into storm clouds and mourning waves that crash down with white foam: the silver linings that taste bitter now and later. The black dots go away and you sink into the spinning geometric patterns that come from the sunlight that pierces your eyes through your closed eyelids, and you think about nothing—it’s the only thing that makes sense anymore. And you think about the next girl. And you think about the next guy, but all you see is him. And you think about him, and then your future, but when you jump the gap between those thoughts like leaping a train car to a train car, you scream when you see him miss the jump, and he’s not with you. You scream when his body disappears into the cross-haired railroad. And you scream when his voice cannot muffle yours anymore. Scream even though the whistling train alone hears you. Scream because you cannot at school, you cannot with them, you cannot show them the open places where you are eagerly expecting scars. Scream because you feel it falling out of you, these sounds mixing with open wounds mixing with ripping wind; you’re leaking so bad, your memories are falling out of you into the force of the wind so fast, so much so that they form a kind of flag of memories coming from inside you. Waving from the top of the train. Unraveling you. You are waiting for the day where you can stop feeling so opened. Waiting for the day you can stop feeling so empty. Waiting for the day that the screams lined up in the back of your throat like train cars go away. You realize you don’t remember the breakup; you don’t remember
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A Blackbird Memory / Marimac McRae
what he said. You realize his words were muted so your eyes could stop the bloodshed. You realize that as he spoke you were bleeding out of your shirt. You understand it all when the words hit you three days later, and you hear for the first time, “I don’t love you” in reverberation. And it hits you like a train car coming down a mountain. It hits you like the curled fist of a wave. It hits you in the dark, but it only hurts in the light, and you’re too open to stop the salt water washing in your wounds anymore, so you lie down on top of the train car and wait for the swirling coal dust to block out your vision. Wait for something to make it stop. And it does stop. It comes as solace laced in other people’s arms— solace riddled in memories. Solace evasive. Solace persuasive. Solace a needle dipped into your skin again and again, each time feeling like the first, never comprehending the last. Solace comes as pity with strings. Comes as empathy, with burns. Comes as kindness, which hurts more. Bearing the heavy baggage, the baggage that rests in your neck and weighs down your shoulders and makes your back crack from the weight you carry so silently, so painfully. The solace with the worst baggage is the solace that comes from love. You feel the weight of solace’s stitches when his mom hugs you, when she says in your ear, “I always love you.” You miss her already; it’s like you broke up with her too, like you broke off from this entire side of your life. The life you’ve lived for so many years, the life you’ve known for so long, is no longer talking to you. You feel it bad when your best friend turns him down. Even though she really wants to go, even though she’s never been before, she turns him down because she’s too close to you. When the girl you didn’t know well enough before gives you a cupcake and a card, and even though you can’t stomach any food, the nice writing 44
TH E R OUND leaves a sweet taste lingering on your lip like icing as it curves up into a smile, a smile again, a smile again. So you go to sleep. You dream you are driving on the highway away from his house in the dark. Your headlights are on; he always liked driving with the brights. It’s too dark to see the marks of your car leaving silver tracks—there is no moonlight to dapple the surface of anything with a non-ominous shimmer. You are looking into the night air: driving, black strands of wind like wires whipping into your car, making you feel like you’re breathing electricity, making you feel like falling. It’s better than flying. You think about killing yourself. It’s crazy. Why was that an impulse you let yourself have? You look back to the road, but it’s gone. The headlights are off. The lights inside the car have shut down too. The only thing you see is the night-cold, cutting wind inside the car as you keep speeding through the nothing-darkness. The wind rushing down your throat with sparks and black chords as you scream. It’s the scariest to look to the future, to see him drowning beneath you. And you realize that the person inside the water is you. * You were always scared of my dad and my dog. You are a runner, and the fire in your eyes that rushes like warm water to your cheeks and lips whenever you talk about it is the most endearing thing you do. You are the most insecure about your hands: they actually feel like sandpaper; I actually loved it. I still know the sound of your soft smile because I remember when you needed reaffirmation. You need it more than you admit. I remember how nervous you were before you kissed me. You looked up at the night before you looked at me. I can’t help but think
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A Blackbird Memory / Marimac McRae
about which stars were there, those lucky stars that will not watch over my speeding car hurtling through a night too deep for their light to seep. I would tell you about my flashbacks, but we can’t talk. And I can’t breathe anyways when they hit like waves, and underwater, the images come back rapid-fire, and I am helpless, breathless, and motionless to their intrigue. Your mother’s eyes when we knelt in Mass together. You sang Taylor Swift and you didn’t care how bad you sounded. It got cold and we would cuddle with a blanket. I could always smell you afterwards in a good way. You told me I was beautiful. You told me you loved me. You didn’t need to say anything; I felt happy enough slow-dancing in your arms. How slowly it went. I remember, and it feels so fast. Somebody asked me how old we are and my mind went back to when I first met you reflexively. We are much older, but there’s less of a ‘we’, now. More of a me. It’s O.K., I don’t know her either. We could get to know her together, but I don’t think you want to anymore. I don’t really want to either. She is just so alone. I can remember when you said you didn’t love me. I can remember the way you looked. I can remember the way your mouth moved around those words. I can remember those words like echoes. Like the imprints of fossils in my memory. But I can’t remember how it felt when they reached me. I haven’t fully let them do that yet. I try to forget those words every day, but somehow they come back. I fight but the closer I get to understanding what happened in the fallout between us, the closer I get to hearing those words whispering into my ear like the night I keep driving through, hitting me in flashbacks, 46
TH E R OUND immobilizing like lighting, my only silver lining. And I will do anything to keep the distance; I cannot hear you saying that, I will not hear you say that, It can’t be over because I’d lose too much of myself. Too much of me is already lost in the waves carrying my memories that crash down and splinter into a million gleaming pieces on the broken bits of sand. Too much of me is still silvering, resting in the ruts on that highway we drive back and forth to each other’s houses. Too much of me is still lost in the sound of your voice and in the soundless tone of your heartbeat, a blinding sound like a train that never stops passing by. And now some version of me who I’ve never met before is rocking back and forth somewhere between highways and railroads and seashores. During the dead of night and in the middle of the ocean of oscillating, train-track waves, I can’t figure out which girl I am anymore. I can’t figure out if I am the person submerged by memories that roll over like train shadows in the changing tides. Or, if I am still living inside my memories’ replays in the waves, watching the girl who is drowning under the saltwater twilight from the blackbird memories of the person who I still think I am.
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Mirror Box, Jenna Laycraft photograph | 9” x 7”
TO THE LOVERS OF WOMEN Sydney Lo
And I’m there in the mornings did you forget - in the streetlight speckles with my hands on my hips. I wake every day too, slip on the sunlight, the satin sheets of shallow smiles and your mother’s perfume. I’m here too when you roll over and wash your face in the bathroom sink – just thinking that maybe I’m not a girl to grow old under dinner plans and tree swings; maybe I’m just a thing that you force down the drain. I’m speaking too when you move to the bed, kiss my hands, draw them against your shoulders, your arms, arms that move when you tell me this wasn’t a morning affair. And it must be so lonely to sit and stare after I’ve gone out the door, hold the hollow frame of my figure, still pressed against yours.
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Untitled, Brian Michael Barbeito photograph | 8.5” x 31”
MISSISSIPPI Meaghan Andrews
Red seeds from rebirthing Magnolias—topping for mud pies patted together with compact hands, spoilt petals for icing—litter ground impregnated by rain that hasn’t stopped in three days. Ants advance nearby, pulling turtle flesh from a shell brought back from the coast, fatty acids and triglycerides to sustain an ever growing army. The girl watches, follows the line of ants home, tries to jab her fingers like knives into the porous pile.
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BETTER FRIENDS WITH MOUNTAINS, PEOPLE Zachary Scott Hamilton
(whistling insects in cream covers lace a wormhole, and Dublin walks by, Oak and by sand, and cocoon, (safely now) the heavens in branches) on cigarette sword, on black casing for stitch pattern squares in silver weaving Upon weaving In black velvet Inside, and Mirrors and mirrors! An extra silver pale corner, any number of prisms, and I’m in library of libraries Glowing platinum & Brain waves geometry beehive From jackpot in Epicenter Glowing in jacket I get secretly fucked up on this. Hanging a bag of money, and pixel, and crooked picture, and glass organizer
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and what purpose do sounds entangle tents in dreams, walking away coffee stains, wine stains Mapping infinity
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WORDOUT Robert Rothman
Out with it, then. The bull’s-eye and spot-on fit are gone. Your mouth opens into a hole of unknowing. You have become a cowboy of words riding after the stampeding herd and casting an unsure lasso. What is this rounded soft flesh and sharp hooves? The docile eyes and deafening bray? Before the ocean you are speechless, a sputtering, muttering, blubbering wave of syllabic wash rushing to find shore. Dementia or deliverance, think latter. As when caterpillar to chrysalis, glutinous, half-formed, and not yet winged and articulate, in shimmering flight. Thick-tongued and dumb, you are intelligible but to yourself, the cool air chock-full of salt and pine needles mixing in the blood-warm
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chamber, then stammered out in sibilant stream. Pilgrim, you are in the Primitive, the uncut forests of standings, the hovering above, the flashing through forms, the shaking and roaring, the silent season and blank, the round heat and surging hands. Gather your hot air and coiled brain and drumming heart and prancing feet fand fumbling fingers. Like hundred-year ice into the running: Make it Word.
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water+feet, Isabela Lovelace acrylic | 8” x 10”
AFTER YOU’VE GONE Sydney Lo
In the garden where grandmother pours nectar into the hummingbird feeders and watches the lake turn gold with her wedding ring, which she still wears unless she’s washing dishes, the world grows old from what it was when you were in your best suit asleep in church and everyone was weeping but you weren’t. No, you were already beside her, her alone, just staring at the wrinkled photos, picking up what she was left with, a girl again, with lots of memories that kept her tending to bouquets - but now she plants petunias, daisies, lilies, and they grow without you. “Your grandfather would…” she begins, her spade held tight in her hand, knuckles strained so her wrinkles disappear into sun-stained skin, stretched as she digs into the soil.
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DONUT FRIDAY #2 Darren Demaree
In the beginning of your childhood you missed your sister so much when she went off to school in the morning I needed a childhood that could that could trump your bird-screaming sadness. I choose sugar. Your love was for sale & I wanted it & once a week, I spend seven dollars to position us at the window at Buckeye Donut, so that we can spit 58
TH E R OUND
crumbs at the world & know the world continued anyway.
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UNTITLED #2 Simon Perchik
There’s still a chance, sit so you can’t see the tunnel fanning out behind you and the sky that knows so much about it lowers this train to the ground still falling back, tormented by something overdue, the seat half firewall, half some hollow mound moving away without the others, high above the evening you are looking for though you turn your back the way your eyelids are used to the dark at home in your hands, no longer uncertain when to close and grieve –all these years reflected in the night your face gives off, clouded over with glass, holding on, sleepless
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–arrive unexpected! grown over with weeds, with the hidden mountainside around your shoulders and emptiness.
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Night Sky, Xinyue Tong
oil and sparkling dots on wood | 32” x 25”
REVERIE Lauro Palomba
Long before Sunday bells I awake for a quaff of water but drink in dawn over a hardened lake floormatting outwards from the cottage spectral trees electrified with frost tunnel-lit as for a village feast beauty dimming into extinction the clouded sun mulling its next move dusted icescape within a noose of woods over which, charmed at its hub I might retrace my crunching boots or traverse to the farthest shore such can’t be simulated by a boat riding liquid calm or sloshing waves there you cannot stand, fear a fatal tip the fin of drowning slicing round at first, I could survey all like Christ His whipping cloak on windy Galilee but hereabout no storm will rouse up no disciples to fortify with awe
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Reverie / Lauro Palomba
I count four random souls, two teens skimming with beginners’ strides like servant girls newly instructed floor-polishing with dustcloths underfoot an easeful walker trailing his emptied leash the black dog dynamo that can’t stop running, a bounding joy released into lush tracts of unobstructed space I’ve seen chameleon lakes posing as a sky odd times in their glacial black and bunched white, the contrasts of an orca, what seems seamless with what is believed just now, snow pockets stitched onto an apron along its inhabited hem dark shacks embossed as distant smudges inside which fish is spoken but mainly beer is landed so it is Bruegel’s winter scene settles on the shires of the mind the hunters labouring home, drooping hounds, a hamlet lively outside its huts
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curling, skating, hauling wood hog butchered, chimney fires his sweep imaginary but details true creation as the illusion of the real pungent hand, unromantic eye, convincing brush, Bruegel has painted me into a living dream unlike his own or I, from thirst, drawn him into mine
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Untitled, Jenna Laycraft
acrylic, glitter, spray paint on canvas | 2.6” x 2.6”
THE SHUDDER CIRCA 1970 Laurie Lessen Reiche
I shudder remembering how easy it was for you to talk about sex when we were only fifteen, with no lovers to tally before or after each ºther. I shudder remembering how we’d made love one Michigan late afternoon and I, laying under your gratified body, penis still in me, arms locked around your back that I was too young to admire because it wasn’t aesthetics that turned me on, but true love always and always and always. And behind your locked bedroom door in your parent’s house, we rested when I guess you felt my muscles that gripped your penis tight as a little girl’s hold on a roller coaster, relax and you pointed it out saying that was how I should let my body be when we did it. I can’t remember if I replied to explain my tense nerves during intercourse, but it did make me wonder and ask myself for the first time if perhaps there was something I might be afraid of. And now forty-six years later when I recall your words, I blush at best, and want to cover my ears on that echo and all the innocence of our lives and how your words woke me from some awful slumber in which I’d been floating and I knew, from that moment on I’d never be innocent again, not because I was no longer a virgin but because suddenly knowing what i was afraid of, I realized the world wasn’t kind and that no love would last, and that every time I’d make love for the rest of my life, it would be my father I’d find lying above or below me.
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LULLABY Emily Martland
I wake to fog-sewn air, a water-world of light’s reflection. Beyond where the trees scrape cloud, mountains lurk behind blankets of gray and damp. A snow-globe scene, newly drawn boundaries, a glass sky almost close enough to touch. Recycled phrases, half-empty words. Create the scene with meaningless repetitions meant for comfort. Line my tongue with invented superstition, personal rituals. Pay with blood or hunger, the cracks I avoid and the stars I imagine. Let coffee go cold on the empty table. In phone-call panic and bated breath, learn the habits of mist. I measure pain in the parts of myself I eliminate while waiting for its end. I know my body only where it bruises, know my heartbeat only in its fear-song. Muted conversation, half-whispered arguments, voices the next room over. By the time you come home, I’ll have disappeared in fog. 68
NOTHING WILL COME Joseph Rathgeber
of nothing. You need to spend money to make money. A dollar sign being two swords and a hoop snake rolling downhill, unraveling, toward the sedge: ouroboros tatted on the inner thigh flesh of the criminal poor. They get poorer. They die penalized deaths. My infancy comes back to mind like I’m swaddling myself in down comforters, and each thread is unfamiliar language: lest / o’er / doth / ere / therewith. Nothing comes back to me mind. I’m a raveled mess/mass of tubes from an IV trolley.
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LONGING LOST OFF EMERALD ISLE Matt Zambito
Let’s say the heart’s an Atlantic. Let’s call the waves hellos, let’s call the tide goodbye. For now, we’re free to ignore the sum of the parts of sand, but there’s a little kiddo in some over there building… what is it? A mushy Mona Lisa? An eclipse mooning us? A cow mid-moo? Regardless, there’s such a thing as too cute, yet let’s say there’s a panda riding a tricycle— no, it’s floating π miles over more tons of pitch than number of people, and she’s tooting a tiny tuba—or, maybe the panda is juggling koalas to wake them for a costume party! Of course, I’d rather watch you read this. Let’s say I typed this next bit of verse in a room, my room, filled, not with koala and panda poop, but with your brand of light. Let’s say, for the sake of no more argument, there’s light and just enough beach for the both of us.
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C o n t r ibutor s Meaghan Andrews is a writer situated in the Middle Georgia area. She has previously been published in The Fall Line Review and Forage, and has poems forthcoming in Belle Rêve Literary Journal and The Bitchin’ Kitsch. Brian Michael Barbeito is a Canadian writer and photographer. He is the author of Chalk Lines (Fowl Pox Press, 2013) and his recent work has been featured in Fiction International and Suisun Valley Review. Alexandra Bowman is a student artist and a junior in high school. She has illustrated a children’s book set to be published in late 2016, and was selected as illustrator by a published author and leader of the Northern Virginia Writing Project. A recent project, a Studio Art 2-D portfolio, explored the concept of the muse in classical art and literature. Graham Coppin has studied with Amy Beeder, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Jericho Brown and Ada Limón, who have provided invaluable support. He was born and raised in South Africa, received a master’s degree in mathematics, and emigrated to the United States before growing tired of work as an engineer and becoming a writer and leadership coach instead. His work has been published or is forthcoming in New Ohio Review, Burningword, and Caliban, and moreamong others. Darren C. Demaree is the author of six poetry collections, most recently Many Full Hands Applauding Inelegantly (8th House Publishing, 2016). He is the Managing Editor of Best of the Net Anthology (Sundress Publications) and Ovenbird Poetry. He currently lives in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children. Isabelle Doyle’s heart consists primarily of cardiac muscle, a singular type of muscle that contracts rhythmically of its own accord.
C o n t r i butor s Zachary Scott Hamilton is the editor of Mannequin Haus. His work appears in The Modern Anthology of Surrealism (Salo Press, 2016). A.J. Huffman is the author of thirteen full-length poetry collections and fifteen poetry chapbooks. Degeneration (Pink Girl Ink, 2015), A Bizarre Burning of Bees (Transcendent Zero Press, 2015), and Familiar Illusions (Flutter Press, 2016) are her most recent releases and are available from their respective publishers. She is a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee and has published over 2500 poems in national and international journals. She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press. Anna Johnson grew up in Rockport, Massachusetts and is currently a junior at Brown University, where she studies Comparative Literature. She finds inspiration for her poetry in art and interpersonal relationships, and is very excited to have her poetry featured in The Round! Juliana Kim is a freshman at Brown University hoping to concentrate in Human Health and Biology. Sharon Kennedy-Nolle holds several M.F.A. degrees as well as a Ph.D. in Nineteenth-Century American Literature. Her poems have appeared in The Dickinson Review, Arsenic Lobster, Juked, and The Lindenwood Review, among others. She lives and teaches in New York. Jenna Laycraft is a Canadian graduate student of American Studies at Brown by definition, but a painter at heart. Marcia LeBeau has been published or has work forthcoming in Moon City Review, Rattle, SLANT, and others. She holds an M.F.A. in poetry from the Vermont College of Fine Arts’ cre-
C o n t r i butor s ative writing program and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Marcia lives in South Orange, New Jersey. Sydney Lo is a part of the class of 2020 at Brown University. She does not know yet what she will concentrate in, but wants to study STEM, Spanish, and English for now. Outside of academics, Sydney is a Bonner Community Fellow and enjoys writing poetry, painting, taking fitness classes, and drawing in her free time. Isabela Miñana Lovelace is a freshman at Brown University planning to concentrate in Environmental Science and Visual Arts. Her work has recently revolved around abstraction based in the realistic – hyper-realistic warped images. Rica Maestas is a postmodern New Mexican with a soft spot for inappropriately-placed religious iconography and a passion for making connections between things that don’t seem related. Emily Martland is originally from Boston, Massachusetts. She is currently a sophomore at Brown University and intends to concentrate in English and Medieval Cultures. Alison McCabe’s writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, Tin House’s The Open Bar, Shenandoah, Slice Magazine, and other journals. She is at work on a novel about a missing child and a family unexpectedly mended by loss. Alison has recently become a therapist in Tucson, Arizona. Marimac McRae is a senior in high school from Nashville, Tennessee who loves to write. She loves to explode moments on paper and to use metaphors in her writing. She feels that ordinary things can become extraordinary if given enough attention and aims in her to give these moments the attention that they deserve.
C o n t r i b u tor s Ann Minoff graduated from New York University with a degree in philosophy and received her Doctorate of Chiropractic in 1982 from the National College of Chiropractic in Illinois. She currently teaches classes on Qigong and Kabbalah. Her work has appeared in many journals, including California Quarterly, The Literary Review, and Spoon River Poetry Review. Lauro Palomba has taught English as a second language and has had stints as a freelance journalist and speechwriter. Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. His most recent collection is Almost Rain (River Otter Press, 2013). Fabrice Poussin teaches French and English at Shorter University. A novelist and poet, his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, Chimes, and more than a dozen other magazines. His photography has been published in Front Porch Review, San Pedro River Review and more than sixty other publications. Joseph Rathgeber is an author, poet, high school English teacher, and adjunct professor from New Jersey. He is a recipient of a 2016 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship and a 2014 New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship. His story collection is The Abridged Autobiography of Yousef R. and Other Stories (ELJ Publications, 2014). His work of hybrid poetry is MJ (Another New Calligraphy, 2015). Laurie Lessen Reiche was born in Detroit, Michigan and has been a writer and artist all her life. She is also an archivist of her life and has written approximately 400 journals spanning 1972 to the present. She is also a photographer and mixed-media artist as well as a blatant bibliomaniac. She lives and works in
C o n t r i butor s Marin County, California and part-time in London. Her work has been widely published and she has won numerous awards. Maia Rosenfeld is originally from Pittsburgh, PA, and is currently a freshman at Brown University. She is a 2015 YoungArts Finalist and three-time Scholastic Art and Writing Awards National Medalist. Maia’s writing has been published in various local, national, and international anthologies, including The Adroit Journal and The Best Teen Writing of 2015 (Scholastic Inc., 2015). Robert Rothman lives in Northern California, near extensive trails and open space with the Pacific Ocean over the hill. His work has appeared in over thirty literary journals, including Atlanta Review, Alembic, and Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry. Biman Roy has been writing poetry for past three decades and has been published in various literary journals in US, UK, Canada and India. He is currently working on “Walking With Sappho In New York,” a collection of poems based on his interactions/reflections/interpretations of New York City, both as a physical and mental space/entity. He is a psychiatrist by profession and serves as a consultant in a hospital in New York and lives in Ridgewood, New Jersey. Don Russ is author of Dream Driving (Kennesaw State University Press, 2007) and the chapbooks Adam’s Nap (Billy Goat Press, 2005) and World’s One Heart (The Next Review, 2015). His poem “Girl with Gerbil” was chosen for inclusion in The Best American Poetry 2012 (Scribner, 2012) after it appeared in The Cincinnati Review.
C o n t r i b u tor s Signe Swanson is a sophomore at Brown studying comparative literature and literary arts. She wants to ride a motorcycle one day. Xinyue Tong is a sophomore from Hangzhou, China. She likes painting, writing, and watching Monty Python’s Flying Circus over and over again. Anjali Vadhri is a high school senior from California. She has a temperamental pet albino rabbit named Benjamin. Her hobbies include writing, volunteering, and watching anime. Will Walker lives in San Francisco with his wife. He is a former editor of Haight Ashbury Literary Journal. His collection of poetry, Wednesday after Lunch (1st World Publishing, 2009), is available on Amazon. Matt Zambito is the author of The Fantastic Congress of Oddities (Cherry Grove Collections, 2014) and two chapbooks, Guy Talk and Checks & Balances (Finishing Line Press, 2014 and 2015). Recent poems appear in Naugatuck River Review, The Columbia College Literary Review, Kestrel, and elsewhere. He writes from Spokane, Washington.
Ed i to r i a l S ta ff
MANAGING EDITORS Sarah Cooke Sally Hosokawa Anna Hundert
ASSOCIATE EDITORS Isabelle Doyle Margaret Shea
EDITORIAL STAFF Shira Abramovich Alexander Barry Anna Johnson Rachel Foster Grace Johnson Jane Kim Abigayle Konys Emily Martland Jeremiah Prince Maia Rosenfeld
We are grateful to Brown Graphic Services and the Undergraduate Finance Board at Brown University for their help and support.
N o t e f ro m the Editor s The Round is a literary and visual arts magazine based at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Our name is adopted from the musical “round,� a composition in which multiple voices form an overlapping conversation. Like past issues, this issue of The Round brings together writing and art from across the country and around the globe. We are so excited to present Issue XV, and to open up another conversation with the stories contained in this issue. The Round welcomes submissions in all genres and media, and we publish students and professionals. Send your work, comments, or questions to: theroundmagazine@gmail.com View our submission guidelines, past issues of the magazine, and more information about us at: students.brown.edu/theroundmagazine As always, thank you for picking up The Round. We hope you enjoy the issue. Sincerely, The Editors