E s p r i t
Spring 2020
ESPRIT The University of Scranton Review of Arts and Letters Spring 2020 Editor-in-Chief Catherine Johnson Production Manager Amanda Tolvaisa Assistant Production Managers Bodo Johnson, Mary Purcell, St. John Whittaker, Brandon Zaffuto
Paralyzed by our confinement she fidgets with the dust that gathers in the corners of her face
General Editors Nick Brown Eric Dittmar Bodo Johnson Sarah Liskowicz Nia Long Mary Purcell Joshua Rudolph
Alex Sophabmixay Sarah Stec Amanda Tolvaisa Joshua Vituszynski Alexis Ward St. John Whittaker Brandon Zaffuto
Check-In Melissa Eckenrode Faculty Moderator Stephen Whittaker
Esprit, a co-curricular activity of the English department, is published twice yearly by the students of The University of Scranton. The content is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the administration or faculty. The University subscribes to the principle of responsible freedom of expression for its student editors. Copyright by The University of Scranton, Scranton, PA 18510.
Spring 2020 Awards: The Berrier Poetry Award Katelyn O’Connor “Penrose Wake”
The Berrier Prose Award Alexis Ward “Into the Willowwacks”
The Esprit Graphics Award Bodo Johnson “Fridtjof Nansen”
Spring 2020 Award Judges: Poetry: Joey Delmar graduated from The University of Scranton in 2019 with a double-major in biophysics and philosophy. He was a member of the SJLA Program and the Honors Program. While at the University, he was a staff member for Esprit and the Editor-in-Chief of Discourse. He currently lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he is pursuing a Ph.D. in physics from Temple University while staring out the window longing for an end to shelter-in-place. Prose: Scott Curran graduated from The University of Scranton in 2018 with a major in Biology. He served as the Editor-in-Chief of Esprit for the 2017-2018 academic term. He is entering the clinical phase of his education in the Masters of Physician Assistant Studies program at Marywood University. Graphics: Darlene Miller-Lanning, Ph.D., teaches at The University of Scranton and is the Director of its Hope Horn Gallery. Her BFA from Wilkes University and her MFA from Marywood University are both in painting. Her doctorate from Binghamton University is in art history. She co-authored several books on American and local art history.
With gratitude to Dr. Daniel Fraustino, for more than four decades of service to the department of English and theater. Your instruction and passion will be greatly missed.
Contents
Dear Reader,
With Campfire in Your Hair
Mary Purcell
7
Cloisters at Gloucester
Sam Marranca
8
When You Come Home
Erin Kerr
10
Ribs
Amanda Tolvaisa
11
Red Metal Mesh
St. John Whittaker
16
An Exercise in Simple Algebra
Karlie Ashcroft
18
The Center
Emily Bernard
19
Hebron, Palestine
Sofia Zingone
26
The Anatomist
Karlie Ashcroft
28
Fridtjof Nansen
Bodo Johnson
30
Penrose Wake
Katelyn O’Connor
31
Desolation
Olivia Zehel
32
Into the Willowwacks
Alexis Ward
34
Mother
Mary Purcell
39
Co Chceš
Bodo Johnson
40
Orion’s Descent
Sarah Stec
42
Lexi Darkroom 2
Tianna Trujillo
44
I Will Not Go Silently, Like A Drizzle
Erin Kerr
45
BLOCKED
Brooke Crymes
46
Suq
Bodo Johnson
48
Hands Coronavirus Lament
Tianna Trujillo Amanda Tolvaisa
Front Cover Back Cover
When I opened my phone on the morning of March 11 to read Father Pilarz’s email announcing the end of face-to-face instruction at The University of Scranton, my first thought—before questions about graduation or grief over lost goodbyes—was, “What are we going to do about Esprit?” During the following weeks of uncertainty, that general question spawned many more. “How will we handle graphic submissions?” “How should we run edits and voting?” “How can we remind people to submit?” “Can I even put a magazine together from my home computer?” While every day came with a new set of questions, not once did I or anyone on the staff ask, “Will we publish Esprit?” We knew this magazine mattered and were willing to do whatever we could to publish a Spring 2020 issue. Now, as I look at this finished magazine, I see in the poems, stories, and photographs students who are grappling with a kind of absence, a gap, a silence. Through metaphor, color, and poetic form these works explore the gaps in a constellation, the emptiness of a store closed by a pandemic, the silence of a stillborn child. I can see now why we felt the need to create it. As I struggle with the stillness that fills my own days of confinement, I find solace in the work of my fellow students who, with the tools of their chosen medium, bring to life the absence we as a university community feel. Throughout this trying semester, the bonds created by The University of Scranton have proven stronger than distance. I hope this issue of Esprit, crafted with so much love and care, provides an opportunity for us to face the absence we all feel through the communal experience of art. I am proud of this magazine, but, more importantly, I am grateful. I am grateful for the students whose hard work I have the privilege of sharing with you. I am grateful for the faculty and staff whose guidance and flexibility has made this possible. And I am most especially grateful for my editorial staff and production team for their dedication through difficult circumstances. Thank you for reading. Godbless,
Catherine Johnson
Editor-in-Chief
With Campfire in Your Hair Mary Purcell he teaches you that love smells of thick coffee laughtermelting distance you’re held by him like rib caged handle
bars
together you conduct sounds of condensated windows and youth while blades of grass preserve the time you and he wrote stories of bruised ink with summer’s end, comes the fall: regret lines your vowel shaped lips, a sign of gratitude after, he will send you lickedletters in the mail your calf: mosquito kissed the cat: clawing at the sofa warm wet eyes and an open mouth to your pillow
With Campfire in Your Hair 7
Cloisters at Gloucester Sam Marranca
When You Come Home Erin Kerr
We are together in uniform. We’ve just scored against the other team and won, and we’re sweating, dirt sticking, and you put your arms around me and we’re jumping like children on a trampoline, and you tell me you love me. I steal every minute I can take in the mornings. “Don’t worry, we’ve got time.” I don’t move. This is the only connection we have these days, dead smiles from a dead girl.
10 When You Come Home
Ribs Amanda Tolvaisa “My heart is going to break my ribs.” The doctor consults his clipboard. “Your heartbeat sounds regular, and your EKG came back normal, as did your stress test. There’s really no cause for concern.” “Pain is no cause for concern?” He raises his head, keeping his elbows on his knees. He looks like the baby monkey at the zoo. “There isn’t anything wrong with your heart or your lungs, nor do we have reason to suspect anything would be.You’re a healthy young woman without a family history—” “That I know of.” “—so I think you should not be worrying. That makes it feel worse than it is.” He straightens, hands clutching his knees. “Have you tried taking acid reflux medicine?” The young woman rolls her eyes. “It’s not a burning pain, but yes. I tried.” “Okay.” He checks something on his clipboard. “And you don’t recall recently lifting something that may have been too heavy?” “The heaviest thing I’ve lifted is my kitten.” “Okay.” He rises, sets the clipboard on the counter behind him. “Given that we’ve exhausted the physical options—” “Except you won’t give me an MRI or a chest X-ray,” she says, leaning forward. “—the likely physical options,” he amends, not quite meeting her eyes, “I think you should consider that it could be an anxiety-induced event. Chest pain is a completely normal reaction to stressful situations, and sometimes it comes out of nowhere, sticks around for a few hours, perhaps recurs over days or months. It could become an ongoing reaction as well, a way for your body to try and handle your anxiety around certain events or people. I recommend monitoring when your chest pain flares up. Ribs 11
Maybe you’ll find a connection between the pain and anxiety-provoking situations.” Nodding, the young woman stares at the doctor. His eyes flick to hers for a second, then to her clasped hands. He clears his throat. “If the pain persists, and you can’t discern a pattern, feel free to make another appointment.” “Of course, Dr. Keating.” She smiles, still nodding. “You will be the first person I call.” By the time she grabs her purse, Dr. Keating has hurried to his next room. As the young woman walks to the exit, a receptionist calls to her. “Ms. Delimond!” The woman turns. “Yes?” “Will you need a follow-up appointment?” the receptionist asks. “No thanks,” Ms. Delimond answers. “He’s answered my questions.” Before the receptionist can notice the flush encircling her neck like a woolen scarf, Ms. Delimond hurries out of the office. Outside, she seats herself on a bench still damp from the night’s shower. “Acid reflux my ass,” she mutters as she lights a cigarette on the second try. BZZZT. BZZZT. She jerks, fumbling with the cigarette. “You almost made me drop my cigarette,” she says when she answers her cell. “Not my fault you’ve got your ringer set so loud,” replies Marianne. “So, what’d the doctor say?” In a perfect imitation of Dr. Keating, she says, “Acid reflux or anxiety. Don’t worry about it.” Dropping the affectation, she adds, “He didn’t even ask if I smoked.” Marianne snickers. “You look too bougie for that shit, Caity. And he’s known you forever.” “Which is exactly why he should’ve noticed,” Caity insists. “I put on perfume. I never wear perfume!” “He probably thinks you’re becoming your mother.” “As if,” Caity coughs. “Medical school must not root out the oblivious idiots.” “There wouldn’t be any male doctors otherwise.” A rustling noise 12 Ribs
overtakes the speaker, then Marianne’s voice returns. “Anyway, I just got a new dress. Gonna wear it on my date tonight.” “You think he’ll notice it’s new?” “This is different,” Marianne replies amidst more rustling. “And wipe that goddamn smirk off your face,” she adds, which makes Caity grin wider. “Okay, I’m gonna go. These nails won’t paint themselves.” “See you,” says Caity. She tosses her cell in her purse and nurses the almost finished cigarette. Listlessly, she taps her right hand against the wooden slats. Then she starts to wonder about splinters, then needles, then the goddamn doctor. “Acid reflux. As if. What am I, my father?” “You certainly don’t look it,” says a high-pitched voice from behind her. This jump, she loses her cigarette. “What the hell!” she shouts as she turns. “Oh, God.You owe me, Victor.” “For that spent stub? No way.” He leans his elbows on the bench back. “Besides, I thought you were too good for smoking.” “Not too good, just too paranoid,” she replies, taking stock. His hair swoops upward at his shoulders like a Hot Wheels track, and his cheeks are rounder than her own, two plums that almost obscure his lower eyelids. When he speaks, his eyebrows hover just above his upper lids, giving the impression of lidless eyes. “You always were too nervous.” “Just ‘cause of my parents,” Caity says with a shrug. Victor grins, and his eyes disappear. “Isn’t this your doctor’s office?” She shrugs again and faces forward, saying, “My heart is beating up my ribs.” “Is that so?” “Yes, it is,” she says without noticing the hitch in her voice. “Nobody will believe me, of course. But it’s true.” Victor says, “I can believe you,” as he circles the bench. When he doesn’t sit, Caity concedes and cranes her neck to look him in the eyes, except they stay hidden. “I was the one who always believed you,” he says in the manner of waking a long dormant conversation. “Shut up, Vic. That’s ancient history.” Ribs 13
“Eight years isn’t long here.” “Eight years is long everywhere,” she replies. She feels herself tapping the bench, now with both hands. A cigarette would be helpful, she knows, but the cost seems too high. That is, until Victor notes, “Lovely little tune you’re playing.” He extends his hand. “Can I bum one?” She hands him two and the lighter, to which he chuckles. “You still know me, Caitlin.” “Don’t call me that,” she mumbles. “Nobody calls me that.” “I think I’ve earned the privilege to call you by your real name.” He inhales, a drawn out drag that tinges his cheeks purple from the effort. Caity imagines plucking his plums, no, yanking his plums right off his face. Then she would squeeze them, let the juice gush between her fingers, ooze down her arms, and pool in her elbows. Drained, she would stomp on them, grinding the skin until it was sidewalk chalk. “So, your heart?” The question breaks Caity out of her daydream. “It’s going nuts. Something about it is messed up.” Victor nods and coughs. “Go fucking figure.” His words sound pitchy, as though they had to slash through the air to be heard. Caity sighs. He crosses his arms, asking, “What’s that supposed to mean?” “Nothing.” “Bullshit, Caity.” His shoulders tense. “I didn’t mean anything by it. You just gotta assume the worst.” “It sure works when I deal with idiots like Dr. Keating,” she fumes. “You’re both idiots,” Vic says, jabbing his cigarette toward her. “He doesn’t know you smoke, right? He’s known you since high school, so of course he’s assuming you’re perfectly fine. But you’re just as dumb because you didn’t tell him, and I bet you figured he wouldn’t ask. So yeah, he can’t diagnose you or whatever, but you don’t have any right to be all high and mighty about it.” “But—” “No, no,” he interjects. “You’ve been like this since high school. You’d whine about your mom, she’s a stone cold bitch.Your dad, he’s a total moron.You never—take a drag and let me finish,” he says as she opens her mouth, “—you never consider yourself. Maybe if you gave people a 14 Ribs
chance before judging them, they wouldn’t seem so awful.” Turning aside, Caity says, “Well, if I’m such a terrible person, you can go.” “Exactly,” he says, standing. “Try not to break your ribs before you find a doctor to believe.” When she decides to move, Caity gets on the bus home. When the pain makes her want to call 911, she texts Marianne. Did he notice the dress?
Ribs 15
Red Metal Mesh St. John Whittaker
An Exercise in Simple Algebra Karlie Ashcroft
250 started as 200 but at 2:50 in the morning I can’t think of anything other than the razors in the desk lamp illuminated by about a fourth of 250 watts because three eggs cost just as much as two and a half things from the dollar store that I can’t afford to spend 2 hours and 50 minutes running away from the shrapnel that courses through the F4 tornado ravaging my sulci dislodges a little over three handfuls of goldfish that spill onto my pillow with the rains of prolactin
The Center Emily Bernard AT RISE: MELINDA, 50s, blonde, well dressed, wearing an infinity scarf. GENE, a 23-year-old man in a black wool cap, grey pullover sweatshirt that says “Thrasher”, converse, and slim-fitting sweatpants. JOSEPHINE, African American, mid 30s. CHRIS, stocky, late 30s, wearing trucker hat, patchy facial hair. LISA, 34, purse over her shoulder, striped sweater, jeans. JUDE, 60s, serious businessman, suit, tie and trench coat, grey hair, slender. The MAN, 40s, a paperboy cap, thin black cane, whispy handlebar mustache and black turtleneck. A circle shaped table is center stage with a low hanging and dimly lit light. Stage right is a rickety old door. The bottom left of the door reads, “No Access”. THE MAN (Surprised) Oh! You all showed! Bold bunch. Let’s get started. He pulls out a brown chair from the dark and flips it toward him. He sits on it backward and faces forward. MELINDA Oh, you know what? (Pointing to the empty chair.) I think we are missing one person. THE MAN (Reassuringly) She’ll be here soon. Write the “problem” you wish to throw in the “problem-lottery” (He thinks) “Prob-lottery?” And, well, here’s hopin’! LISA walks in fast and is out of breath. LISA Sorry, my car just decided—not to work, of course—and then I hit every red light and—
18 An Exercise in Simple Algebra
The Center 19
THE MAN nods reassuringly and puts his hand out to the empty chair. She sits and smiles at CHRIS. THE MAN When you are done, fold them up, push them to the center. If you select yours, just pick a new one. LISA hurriedly writes hers.They follow his instructions.The MAN puts the paper in his hat and shuffles. He dumps the papers in the center. He puts his hat back on and motions to GENE, who opens his paper. GENE “I think my boyfriend is cheating on me.” (Beat.) Obviously, this isn’t mine. CHRIS darts his eyes around and then leans over and grabs a paper. CHRIS (Reading) “My mother is getting older and I can’t face it.” JOSEPHINE (Reading) “I don’t have a relationship with my brother anymore.” LISA unfolds her hands and plays with her bracelet. She grabs a piece of paper. LISA “I hate my job.” JUDE (Putting his coffee down.) “My car is a lemon.” LISA (Sarcastically) …wonder who wrote that one. She smiles to herself and looks down. JUDE cracks a smile.The MAN twirls his cane in his figure while resting on the chair. MELINDA (Reading) “My dad wants me to go to medical school, but I want to become an actor.” 20 The Center
THE MAN …Well? There is a pause. JUDE (Mockingly) “Well?” (Beat.) That’s it? (Beat.) Are you serious? The MAN remains calm and stands from his chair. MELINDA Well—I—I for one never had a desire to go to med school, or become an actor, so I can’t relate to this. GENE Yeah, how does this work? CHRIS adjusts his cap and bites a cookie. JOSEPHINE I don’t have a brother. My problem doesn’t make sense. It won’t translate into my— THE MAN But you have a sister. JOSEPHINE (Taken aback) Well, yes— THE MAN And now (Beat.) You two will not be close. JOSEPHINE Excuse me? But she’s my best friend. I was her maid of honor— THE MAN You knew what you were getting into when you came here! (Beat.) Next, how about you in the beanie? The Center 21
GENE (Sitting up in his chair.) Yeah, so it says I have a boyfriend and that I think he’s cheating on me, but— THE MAN What about Rebecca? GENE How do you—well, what about her? She’s my friend. THE MAN …That you like. GENE blushes and looks down. GENE Well, yeah, I mean—she’s cool. We’ve been talking for a while— MELINDA Now is that “code” for dating? My youngest son has been “talking” to this girl at his job, but—I don’t know if that is just millennial slang. JUDE My niece has been talking to this guy for six years and he just proposed, so yeah, it’s code. THE MAN (Clears his throat) Okay. We’ve gotten a little off center it seems. Gene—the girl you’re dating—talking to—is talking to Paul. GENE What? Paul HAGGERTY? She is NOT. LISA (Impatient) Mine is, “I hate my job.” (Beat.) I don’t see how you will pull this off. I love my job. 22 The Center
THE MAN Oh, I know you do. (Beat.) The one you are in. LISA What do you mean by that? THE MAN You love the one you’re in now. BUT—on Monday, you will be fired. LISA WHAT!? THE MAN Theft. LISA Theft? I’ve never stolen anything before in my life. The MAN squints.Then laughs. THE MAN I’m just kidding. (Beat.) They are relocating your job to India. So—to make ends meet—you are forced to be a cashier at Wal-Mart, and well, need I say more? LISA leans back in her chair in disbelief. THE MAN Three down! Three to go! CHRIS! CHRIS opens his but THE MAN speaks before he can read it. Your aunt is getting older.You know what older people tend to do? CHRIS …die? THE MAN Accurate, but incorrect. They like Florida. A lot. The Center 23
Your Aunt Trudy is getting older and thus—moving to Florida. JOSEPHINE Wait—what happens between me and my sister? THE MAN I like your follow through. She and Justin (to group)—her husband—move to New Jersey and have a kid, and, well, life. CHRIS I thought people just moved out of New Jersey.
MELINDA What? No, she’s in her second year. Straight A’s. She’s doing great. THE MAN But she’s miserable. (Beat.) She wants to be an actor. The bulb dims a bit, spastically. Everyone looks up. How’s your perspective now? The light brightens. If you still feel the way you did when you came in…there will be another session. Blackout
JUDE I got, “My car is a lemon.” THE MAN (to GENE, condescendingly) That means her car is bad. JUDE But, I just bought this car a month ago. I drove it to Boston. That’s five hours both ways. THE MAN All I can say is, it won’t start anymore. (Beat.) The amount of money it will take to fix it will clear out your Italy fund. (Beat.) Melinda! Something with med school? MELINDA Yes, it reads—oh my eyes are so bad. That’s not what it says, I just can’t see all too well. (Adjusting the paper.) “My dad wants me to go to med school, but I want to become an actor.” That’s so funny because my daughter is in med school. Pediatric oncology. Dark stuff. I could never. THE MAN Neither can she. 24 The Center
The Center 25
Hebron, Palestine Sofia Zingone
The Anatomist Karlie Ashcroft
In earlier renditions of this life, her hand rested compulsively in Pledge of Allegiance fashion, keeping time with her internal metronome that she feared would one day stop.
She knows how it all works, and how sometimes the mind makes the body do things it shouldn’t, but textbooks don’t always suffice, and sometimes they just hang up their lab coat, toss aside their goggles, and place their latex-free gloves in the trash.
They learned about the inner workings of what they feared the most: the way cartilage transitions into the calcified cage around the heart; how muscles contract, every-other, to pump life through seemingly too-fragile vasculature. She held people’s lives in her hands, split perfectly into gray and white (but how she hates gray areas); the synapses silent, electrical firings extinguished by time or illness or thoughts. They taught those who came after them how to respect the chilled wax figures (how many people would be at their funeral?), how to drape dampened fabric over areas not needed to be seen, how to bend frozen limbs into postures of life.
28 The Anatomist
The Anatomist 29
Penrose Wake Katelyn O’Connor
A uniform, twice gray, black ice in a sloping slip. Penny for penny, and thought again in the sunset, crumpled edges in shine orange. A match of you and me, forever ago, intertwined as useless, sunken into desperate— clutching at straws, reason enough to stay. Next: red feather flash in snow pecking sunflower, called the Pope for His trinkets are gutter trash. Hand rash / wash, cracked, soap and water cycle winter. Up and down scales rip in G sharp, time— 3/8, 11/4, 13/26. Time? Week and change. Can we?
Fridtjof Nansen Bodo Johnson
Penrose Wake 31
Desolation Olivia Zehel
Into the Willowwacks Alexis Ward The city is the essence of all life; it rules man’s being. - my mother’s journal, 1976 In the spring of your freshman year at The Cooper Union, Manhattan, C.W. Truesdale encourages your class to keep a journal. You do it because it’s homework.You’re already thinking ahead of this gen-ed English assignment to the next three years of a chemical engineering degree: physics tests you’ll fail, infrastructure reports on the Philippines you won’t, part-time jobs at department stores that will be out of business within the next decade. This summer, you’ll plan a trip to Krakow, Poland and take it again in the new millennium with a daughter who hasn’t been born. But right now, you’re trying to decide what shape your life will take, jotting down the pros and cons for the benefit of a professor who will die in 2001. The city is the essence of all life. New York, ’76. A bicentennial fever has swept the city like COVID-19. Jimmy Carter’s won the caucus.You scribble an account of the excitement of the city; you detest the boredom and limitations of country living, you say, and thrive in the Big Apple’s bustling beat, but you won’t remember that. What you’ll recount at Christmas with your siblings is the way you stomped the floor to scatter the roaches, how you skirted suspicious sex shops on the corner of your Brooklyn neighborhood, how you held on to the slick poles of the subway cars with your sleeves so as not to touch the accumulated grime of millions of grubby hands. Should I allow a rural area to limit my existence to a series of insignificant incidents? A series of insignificant incidents:You graduate in ’79.You take a job at a plant in Pennsylvania and get your driver’s license a month before you move. One day, you’re driving in your blue, new-to-you 1972 Bel Air 34 Into the Willowwacks
when you see it, so striking that forty years from now you’ll still remember the thrill. In the city, concrete behemoths and four rows of traffic eat up the rearview real estate, the sky a divider between high-rise Manhattan offices. But out here in the sticks, there it is. A canopy of leaves opening up in your rearview mirror like a bud. Back in 1976, you stop the entry in the middle and scrawl a note at the bottom of the page: Do not believe everything I write. Some of my writing grows fictitious or exaggerated as it progresses. You don’t know what you were thinking, you’ll tell your daughter in forty years. But she has a guess. Perhaps you had a sense, even then, of the direction in which your life would grow. ... In so many ways lately I have been realizing that background and environment are very important parts of the process of “the making” of a person. - my mother’s journal, 1976 In all those years, you only move as far as the next county over. The last time you do, it’s to a 1970s hunting cabin in the middle of the woods—a horse farm refigured as a lodge with a barn in the back, a pavilion, and a fishing pond, all set sixty feet from the rumbling dirt road called Grove School on sixteen acres of land. Half of it’s forest, more than you’ve ever had in one plot. It reminds you of your father’s quarter-acre property in Birchwood Lakes, the whole family piling into the car and taking off to a vacation cottage your mother found advertised in the Diocese of Brooklyn’s paper. The family follows you to Penn’s woods, samaras whirling on the same wind. First your brother and his wife, who grow a pear paradise in their backyard in Ransom where your daughter rides her scooter through the reaching arms of overgrown shrubs.Your parents take three trips to move fifty years of accumulated junk from the Greenpoint apartment to a house in 1998. In twenty years, the ash wood forest will start to die of emerald ash borers and lose its limbs in their half-acre yard. Only your sister stays in Brooklyn, the Mother Superior of a monastery. She makes up for her distance with a gift to your daughter—a book your sister writes herself, a fable about an evergreen accepting her differences with her deInto the Willowwacks 35
ciduous neighbors. You know even then that your daughter will write, too. She’s two when you move. She makes plastic-bag ghosts stuffed with last year’s pine stubble. Her jungle gyms are piles of manure that fertilize the dying garden—you’ve never had a green thumb, but you get good pumpkins that year. She draws birds’ nests and tapes them to the woodstove chimney, eats clover out of the yard and maple leaves off the branch. You can’t get her to stop until one day she chomps on a potted daffodil in the window and spends the rest of the afternoon throwing up electric green spew into a bowl. You don’t know the names of most of the plants—the nettles sprouting unremarked in the backyard, the pines unnamed.You can’t teach your daughter that. But it’s enough for her to be around them, to live in them. To love them, too. ... I began to see that I was in an ideal position for one of my favorite pastimes - spying. - my mother’s journal, 1976 When do you become a crusader? It starts with fracking in 2008 and continues through to 2012.Your daughter remembers the old Chevy stalled out in dead-stop traffic backed up a mile over the Towanda bridge in the beating hot sun. The grove of trees vanishes on Grove School in a landing strip for the pipelines. You drive thirty-five miles to speak at hearings.Your father said you would have made a killer lawyer. He died in 2002, but you make your case for the woodlands, your words preserved forever in the records as you speak out on a high school stage: The use of long-range peak to peak HDD crossing at selected sites, at whatever expense, would save thousands of trees, prevent erosion, maintain water quality, retain viewscape, and preserve continuous forest lands. Thank you, ma’am, says the proctor. When she’s thirteen years old, after the purge of the Grove School groves, your daughter writes an essay in high school Language Arts about the gas industry. She’ll still have it on her laptop ten years later and can tell you what it says: I remember a time when that grass waved gently in the breeze as 36 Into the Willowwacks
I waded through that grass, my friend close behind. I remember running, brushing through the rough yet gentle arms of the pines, finally emerging from the shade with briars and brambles clinging to our clothing. Your daughter reads it to you in the Burger King parking lot after school, and she’s so surprised when you start to cry. No, not fracking. It starts with the trees. The ones hanging over the power lines on Craftmaster, where your mother has lived since your daughter was born. Instead of cutting the boughs, Claverack chops them down to the stumps, all of them, snapping them like toothpicks and digging an ugly ditch where they stood. That day, you go to see what’s left. Your daughter, seven or eight at the time, waits in the car and doesn’t understand why you’re grieving. She thinks there are plenty. She thinks they’ll grow back. In the summer of 2019, Energy Rail Transports, LLC. puts in a request to transport LNG, or liquified natural gas, through the county by rail tank car.You write tens of comments on the Regulations.gov docket, then ask your adult daughter a question that’s stewed in your mind since your crusades started. It didn’t ruin your life, did it? No, says your daughter. Then: I was kind of in my own head. I wasn’t really paying attention. ... Experience can limit your thinking to such a degree that you can’t imagine a certain thing being done differently from the way you have experienced it. - my mother’s journal, 1976 In the autumn of your life, your daughter trots in from the woods with the beagle at her heels. She spent the last hour in the snowfall, snapping photos, a pinecone stuffed in her jacket pocket she picked up from the road. The drifts blew down from the pines on the way back up in a sudden snow shower, and she and the beagle are matching shades of white. Over tea, you talk about your latest project. They’re building a plant across the river from the historic schoolhouse, the same street as the high school. It’ll back up the traffic over the bridge, you say. I’d buy the schoolhouse if I had the time, fix it up, and invite all the NewYorkers in to protest.The Into the Willowwacks 37
plant would love that. New York, 1976. 1,500 cars disrupt traffic entering JFK to protest supersonic transport jets, complaining of the pollution and noise. Boston had a Tea Party, JFK has an SST Party, proclaims a sign. Pennsylvania, 2020. The city-slickers fight for the environment, you say. You always get them running the protests and fundraisers and petitions, but the environmental angle never convinces these companies. People around here aren’t educated; they look at me like I’m crazy.They don’t understand why I do it. The dilemma of the working poor: money doesn’t grow on trees. Your argument reduced to a clickbait headline, the buzzword fractivism. It’s hard to play ball when there’s always someone that cries foul, writes a journalist. But it’s not playing ball, is it? It’s clearing the rearview mirror. ... What does bother me is the fact that something in me keeps wondering,“Will others understand?” That is the worst thing in the world, to be insecure in talking about your background. - my mother’s journal, 1976 What kind of tree is that, asks your daughter this spring. It stands over the dilapidated chicken coop like it has every day for nineteen years, but today, fuzzy buds burst from its reddish branches. You don’t know.Your daughter tramps across the yard, picks a fallen leaf from the ground, and sequesters herself in her room while she looks up the PA DCNR field guide to local trees. For the first time in her life, she notices the heart shape of its leaf, its ridged grooves, its lifelines. Finally, she emerges, the leaf in her hand, and says, It’s aspen.
38 Into the Willowwacks
Mother Mary Purcell
In Nebraska, fluorescent lit walls and his light weight coffin. when He took him (why isn’t he crying?) from her arms collapsing converting faith her face numbing on cold tile. she vomited “because!” her palms pressed together fingers pressed into beads and beads and beads and never enough beads to silence the
Mother 39
Co ChceĹĄ Bodo Johnson
Orion’s Descent Sarah Stec “It wasn’t your fault.” The dark morning air seeps in through the car window where his hand is draped across the sill. A lackadaisical cigarette hangs between two ruddy fingers, and my eyes follow the smoke. The rising bands encircle his fingers, tightening with each inhale, set loose into black air as he exhales.
The morning sun begins to seep between his fingers; they look raw in the light. As the knuckles crack, the chapped fingers begin to bleed. The sun returns to spite the darkness, my eyes search the sky for where Orion had burned, and I breathe deeply of the stale air, as my mind repeats the words.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
My mind drifts to the night air of the summer before, my feet bare against the earth as I stood waiting. My eyes watched the sky as my brother’s fingers traced the constellation’s outline, anchoring the stars to the deep vastness in a bond unbreakable against the universe. “Tess.” “What did you say?” My thoughts rise out of darkness. His raspy voice repeats, “It wasn’t your fault.” The car had driven us through the night, and the birds now begin their shrill morning song. I look up into his bloodshot eyes. It must have been my fault. I watched as my brother crumbled before me. Wailing voices joined his from the stark white hallway, flooding the unguarded places in my mind. It was too much to look at him.The tall, proud-shouldered boy was unrecognizable, hunched into the lap of our mother. I could see all the places where he had gone wrong. His steady posture morphed into a tense, convulsing frame, clear eyes had gone hazy and searched in frenzied displacements, deliberate lips now moved in whispers, words pouring out as unconsidered as breath. I explained to unwilling ears that he was broken; I directed a murky eye to where fault had fallen. I tried to connect the pieces for them, the amalgamation of shattered glass. But they continued to see only gaps between stars and they turned away, blind to the constellations.
“They didn’t understand, Tess.”
42 Orion’s Descent
Orion’s Descent 43
I Will Not Go Silently, Like a Drizzle Erin Kerr
I was the kind of person who would leak down through the ceiling and fall into bed with you, rolled over, flat, collecting like a liquid does in some ambiguously shaped puddle that looks slightly like Texas from a certain angle. You made a mess of me. I started to change from a fresh translucent glass, to the muddied brown thickness of March with every kick of your aging boots. I stained the carpet when I spilt too much, which only made you angrier, stomping on me like saying goodbye to your enemy’s grave 6 feet under. I splashed up against your legs and held on, my color seeping into the threads of your dark grey moto jeans.
Lexi Darkroom 2 Tianna Trujillo
44
I Will Not Go Silently, Like a Drizzle 45
BLOCKED Brooke Crymes
Choke for pure oxygen from the boulder lodged in your being. a i r narrowly navigates the spots around theknotnestledinyourthroat, your voice dulled to a whisper. the body functions under the weight of anger and frustration. your organs operate in strain, a collective suffering with your stomach an ever-moving maze. your heart desperate to keep this body beating, this person being. all the while, your brain be come s this incompletethoughtor rainbow of feeling maybe some thing you cannot discern. Withyour heavyhead life t r u d g e s forward nothing makes s ense in this mirrored-hall and words become us e l e s s to describe the battle y o u face your perception of your personaldemise: theworldaroundyouis the s h a d o w in the d a r k e s t night the chatter of life seems so quiet now comparedtothebabble e c h oing in your brain ofyour dreadedagonies along with your f ears and still, the incessant noise of absolutely nothing but anxieties about the miniscule details of every single interaction you’ve ever had amplifies your porcelain headspace. but if your spine were to crumble under the crippling weight of the burden of breathing, i will wager what i own to bet that you will n e v e r find the right words to describe any of your misfortuneS.
46 BLOCKED
BLOCKED 47
Suq
Bodo Johnson
Contributors
Acknowledgments
Karlie Ashcroft is a senior occupational therapy major.
Esprit appreciates the kind support of:
Emily Bernard is a junior history major.
Valarie Clark Scott “Scooter” Curran Joseph Delmar Jody DeRitter Melissa Eckenrode Mary Engel Michael Friedman Gustav Joseph Kitcho Joe Kraus Darlene Miller-Lanning Rich Larsen Glen Pace Frank Rutkowski Stephen Whittaker Jenny Whittaker Hank Willenbrink CLP Physical Plant Staff The Other
Brooke Crymes is a senior English major. Elisabeth (Bodo) Johnson is a freshman philosophy and political science double-major in the SJLA Program. Erin Kerr is a sophomore occupational therapy major. Sam Marranca is a sophomore history major in the Honors Program. Katelyn O’Connor is a sophomore English and philosophy double-major in the SJLA Program. Mary Purcell is a junior English and philosophy double-major in the SJLA Program. Sarah Stec is a junior biology major. Amanda Tolvaisa is a junior English and philosophy double-major in the SJLA Program. Tianna Trujillo is a senior English major. Alexis Ward is a senior English, philosophy, and Asian studies triple-major in the SJLA and Honors Programs. St. John Whittaker is a senior environmental science, biochemistry, and philosophy triple-major in the SJLA Program. Olivia Zehel is a freshman biochemistry, cell, and molecular biology and philosophy double-major in the SJLA Program. Sofia Zingone is a freshman physiology and philosophy double-major in the SJLA Program.
Esprit Submission Information
Deadline for Fall 2020: Oct 30 at 11:59 p.m. Esprit, a review of arts and letters, features work by students of The University of Scranton and is published each fall and spring as a co-curricular activity of the English department. We will consider a maximum of five visual art submissions and five literary submissions (poetry and/or prose) per author/artist. Esprit does not accept resubmissions, works currently under consideration elsewhere, previously published works, or works published to social media accounts.
The body of the email must contain the following information:
Manuscripts (Electronic Submission)
Original stories, poems, essays, translations, features, sketches, humor, satire, interviews, reviews, and short plays must be typed and saved in Microsoft Word file format (.docx). All manuscripts, except poetry and short plays, must be double-spaced. Every page of the manuscript must list the title and page number in the upper right corner. It is recommended that all manuscripts be submitted in 12-point Times New Roman font. The author’s name must NOT appear at any point in the manuscript to ensure that all submissions are judged anonymously. Each submission is to be saved as a separate Word file, and all submissions are to be attached to a single email and sent to espritsubmissions@scranton.edu from the author’s University email account.
If you are submitting a work of translation, please include a copy of the original text along with your translation. Submissions received late, mislabeled, or emailed without all of the above information will NOT be considered.
Graphics (Physical Submission)
Black and white/color photographs and pen and ink drawings work best in this format, but pencil drawings, collages and paintings will be considered. Do NOT submit the original copy of physical artwork. Instead, submit a printed
Artist’s name Royal ID number Year in school and enrollment status (full-time or part-time) Major(s) and honors program(s) (Business Leadership, Honors, SJLA, or Magis) Title of each work submitted Medium of each work submitted (photography, painting, charcoal, etc.) When the work submitted is a study of, or is otherwise dependent upon, another artist’s work, please supply the other artist’s name and that work’s title. Submissions received late, mislabeled, or without all of the above information will NOT be considered.
The body of the email must contain the following information: Writer’s name Royal ID number Year in school and enrollment status (full-time or part-time) Major(s) and honors program(s) (Business Leadership, Honors, SJLA, or Magis) Genre(s) of submissions emailed (poetry or prose) Title of each work submitted in the listed genre(s)
photograph of the original copy. Photographs of all original works must be submitted in a plain manila envelope. The artist’s name must NOT appear on either the work or on the envelope. All visual art submissions must include, on the backside, the title of the piece, description of the medium, and an arrow indicating the orientation of the work. A CD-R or disposable flash drive with digital copies of the submitted works must also be included; the CD-R or flash drive must also be labeled with the name of the artist and the titles of the works contained. Please note that only physical copies of the submitted works will be reviewed by the staff during the selection process; quality of the print may thus affect the consideration of submissions.
All submissions are reviewed anonymously. All accepted submissions to Esprit that are the work of currently enrolled full-time undergraduates at The University of Scranton will be considered, according to genre, for The Berrier Prose Award ($100), The Berrier Poetry Award ($100), and The Esprit Graphics Award ($100). Please do NOT address questions regarding submission policy to espritsubmissions@scranton.edu; this email address is expressly for receiving submissions and will not be accessed until the Esprit submission deadline has passed. Questions should instead be addressed to the Editor-in-Chief for the Fall 2020 semester, Amanda Tolvaisa (amanda.tolvaisa@scranton.edu).
Not where I Zoom, but where I Esprit, I live.
Coronavirus Lament Esprit Staff Spring 2020
Oh! odious fiend, I desired a spring break Not a quarantine. With no good spirits To revive me, no fetching Friends to comfort me, I may as well cough My way to the grave. Alack! I’m too young to die.
