Thoroughfare Fall 2011 by Thoroughfare Magazine

THOROUGHFARE FALL 2011

capturing the beauty of fleeting moments FEATURED ARTISTS:

JIAYI WANG BRITTANY LEUNG

13 48

FEATURED SECTIONS:

LOVE LETTERS ‘TIS THE SEASON NATURE

16 42 114

THOROUGHFARE Thoroughfare is a multimedia literary arts magazine catering to the diverse creative pursuits at Johns Hopkins University. Published once a semester on CDs and online, Thoroughfare showcases the best of student fiction and poetry, as well as visual art, photography, music, film, and more.

For more information about Thoroughfare and how you can get involved, check out our website at: http://web1.johnshopkins.edu/thoroughfare or contact us at: thoroughfare.mag@gmail.com (Please submit all visual arts in the highest possible resolution under 5MB. Feel free to include additional comments and/or information about your submission.)

stock image courtesy of Laura Visser at sxc.hu

EXECUTIVE BOARD President:

Alexis von Kunes Newton

Vice President:

Lay Kodama

Secretary:

Hannah Moulden

Treasurer:

Gabrielle Barr

Publicity Chairs:

Alessandra Bautze Georgina Edionseri

Webmaster:

Rachel Louie

Interested in joining the Thoroughfare staff? Just send an email to Thoroughfare Magazine at thoroughfare.mag@gmail.com and request an application. No experience is necessary.

STAFF EDITORS Editors-in-Chief:

Alexis von Kunes Newton Lay Kodama

Poetry:

Gabrielle Barr (coeditor) Isaac Brooks (coeditor) Laura Ewen Rachel Ewen Eva Gurfein Jennifer Hui Alexa Kwiatkoski Christina Luk Jenny Mitchell Hannah Moulden Leemor Nir Kiran Parasher

Prose:

Jerusha Barton (coeditor) Vicky Plestis (coeditor) Alessandra Bautze Meaghan Bresnahan Hillary Jackson Doyen Kim Florence Noorinejad Kate Orgera Isabelle Schein Katherine Seger Sharon Sun Abby Sussman Ellen Waddell Jane Wang Katherine Quinn

Visual Arts:

Georgina Edionseri (coeditor) Ava Yap (coeditor) Ryan Bender Julia Bradshaw Andrew Vargas Delman Julia DiMauro Alexandria Kim Anna Kleinsasser Caren Lewis Anne Lin Jenny Mitchell Jose Nino Angie Pinilla Luma Samawi

Film/Music:

Curry Chern (head editor) Kunal Ajmera Eva Gurfein Andrea Massaro Michael Nakan Jose Nino

Web:

Rachel Louie (head editor) Lucy Gao Angie Pinilla Jane Wang

Layout:

Lay Kodama (head editor) Jessica Grischkan Hillary Jackson Katherine Quinn Carolyn Tsai

TABLE OF CONTENTS 08

You’re Here by Lay Kodama

Natalia by Andrew Vargas Delman

Bird by Vi Nguyen

Ex-Stepfather by Jane Reade

The Poet Prays To The Beer Garden

Father and Baby by Coral J. Fung Shek

by Serena Jeblee

Plateau Flower by Yuan Gao

Never Let Me Go by Jiyai Wang

All Is Vanity Under The Sun

ARTIST FEATURE: Jiayi Wang

by Isaac Brooks

Myokonos, Greece by Jiayi Wang

Central Park by Coral J. Fung Shek

LOVE LETTERS

‘TIS THE SEASON

Daze by Jiayi Wang

Winter In Prague by Jiayi Wang

Wish You Were Here by Jiayi Wang

Pretty In Pink by Jiayi Wang

To A Birthday Girl by Eryn Duffield

Holiday Joy by Jiayi Wang

To My Lover Long Ago In Paradise

Brightness Among The Cold

by Eryn Duffield

by Brittany Leung

Catch Me If You Can by Jiayi Wang

Promenade On The Snow by Jiayi Wang

Catnap by Jiayi Wang

ARTIST FEATURE: Brittany Leung

An Evening In Estonia by Jiayi Wang

Serene Contemplation by Brittany Leung

Four Cups Of Tea by Kate Orgera

The Atomium by Brittany Leung

Ducks In A Pond by Thanapoom Boonipat

Integral Elements by Lucas Shores

Migration by Will Chen

Who Let The Dogs Out? by Brittany Leung

Liu Bei On The Way To Meet Kong Ming

NY Fashion Week by Brittany Leung

by Thanapoom Boonipat

Look At That Amateur

A Sad Truth Of Anthropologic History

by Georgina Edionseri

by Yo Sub Ahn

That Toothless Smile by Alexa Mechanic

Our Day Is Coming, Cuba by Arlen Pita

Back To The Good Old Days

Rabbits In The Snow

by Farhad Pashakhanloo

by Thanapoom Boonipat

Noir by Samuel Cook

The Kid by Vi Nguyen

99 Waterballoon by Kathryn Alsman

End Of The Hallway by Megan Hennessy

100 Johns Hopkins Emblem by Jasper Lin

Fences by Andrew Vargas Delman

101

Epiphany by Srona Sengupta

A Letter To All The Ambitious Young

102

Softest Wood by Samuel Cook

Women With The Same Pseudosecret

103 Details by Eleni Padden

by Jane Reade

104 A Closeted City by Alexa Mechanic

New York Nighttime Silhouettes

105 Rainbow Of The Night by Lay Kodama

by Brittany Leung

106 Sunset At Inner Harbor by Jasper Lin

San Marcos by Vi Nguyen

108 Untitled by Kimia Ganjael

Aloysius’ Ark by Jennica Bouquet

110 Donut Hole by Ryan Kahn

Tragedy Of The Shark by Dongju Lee

114 NATURE: both big and small

Hendrix’s Dream by Matt Parman

115 Diesel by Vi Nguyen

Balti by Vi Nguyen

116 Things Have Changed

Adrian by Mary Berman

Fate by Joseph Shaikewitz

117 Commensalism

Emptiness by Bernadette Che

On Growing Old Together

118 American Soldier by Arlen Pita

by Alexa Mechanic

119 There’s Life On Mars by Jiyoon Kim

Visually impaired by Samuel Cook

120 Yellowstone Mornings by Divya Kernik

End Of shift by Kathryn Alsman

122 Lone Flier by Samuel Cook

Steeping by Sophi Glazycheva

124

Waterfall In Shangri-La by Yuan Gao

[Still] Untitled by Eleni Padden

126

Impression Of Lijang by Yuan Gao

Untitled by Joseph Shaikewitz

129

Quiescence by Eric Luitweiler

Clock by Coral J. Fung Shek

131 Summer 78 by Karla Hernandez Cuevas

Can I call you in? by Lucas Shores

Magnitude 8.9 by Alexa Mechanic

by Karla Hernandez Cuevas by Karla Hernandez Cuevas

YOU’RE HERE by Lay Kodama

by Serena Jeblee

THE POET PRAYS TO THE BEER GARDEN

Oh Dearest Eden, garden of friendly vice, of honeysuckle, White Russian roses, ice and Sea Breeze, be my dandelion roar in the blooming silence, heal my winter sore and make my heart rate a hundred proof, then lay me in the tulip fields of chardonnay. I know these buds will fade like marigolds when happy hour ends and night unfolds, so allow me to finish this shortly savored brew, then cleave my iris in half and let it bleed blue, and let me wander the flowerbeds before I fall, and take this final underscore of roots and wings and golden grains in jars 'til summer breaks like sweat on old guitars.

BIRD

by Vi Nguyen

NEVER LET ME GO

by Jiayi Wang

Featured Artist:

JIAYI WANG

Jiayi Wang is an undergraduate student in the class of 2013 majoring in International Studies and Psychology. She discovered her passion for photography as soon as she glanced at a panorama beneath her while hiking on a mountain in China. Since that day, photography has been a way for her to express the thoughts and emotions that she could not express in words. Whether itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shooting landscapes, spontaneous things in her surroundings, or asking her friends to model for her, she has found a way to be more carefree and in touch with herself through confining moments and instances into lasting memories. She has been shooting Nikon DSLR for a few years now and hopes to finally take a photography course in the near future to not only become more adept, but to also discover new ways in which photography can enrich her life.

Want to be featured? Include a short biography along with your submission(s), and you may be selected to be the featured artist for the next Thoroughfare issue.

MYOKONOS, GREECE

by Jiayi Wang

love letters

DAZE

by Jiayi Wang

WISH YOU WERE HERE

by Jiayi Wang

to a birthday girl Andrea, You are thirty-one today, my love. You are two years before my double lucky numbers and one year after my one. You are the courier of years and a pattern of memories and your skin carries the scent of decision. And we – we are also in the year of three. Do you remember when we met in that coffee shop? Do you remember the fleshy peel of my hips and how you were already prepared to leave home with a gypsy? It was such a dreary, lonesome sack of a cement corner. We were the most delicate shapes against the dead of I-75. But that was also the day I buried all I knew about love to the soundtrack of Michigan lakes. We know our story. We know the words exchanged and the knowing before it came and the sooty feeling of having to love in the dark. You knew my blood before I did. Back then I foamed milk for men in business suits. They would often remind me I owned breasts. Do you remember when you came to visit me at work? You made excuses to kiss me in your car. And I remember when you left me that night, I had sworn your hands were like seashells and that in them, I had heard the ocean. And I knew that whether I liked it not, you had stitched sea glass into my feet that would burn when I knew the weighty midnight of his hands touched your light. But still, I would be the delicate secret on your tongue that you would not speak. He would trade the unknown for you and I would trade the known for you and it was then we had a deal. But it was not all this way. We carved pumpkins and you made me warm wine that you would later spill on my grey sweater. I wanted to lick the sunlight off your skin as you made your way through the shadowy dust of a sky in that field, you know. I knew I loved you then. But I was confusing, I know. After we slept together I tried to go away and made you believe I didn’t “like it” - but little did you know, I remembered the way you sojourned along the vines of my body and I had a memory of your bones that I stored in the pockets of my skin. Some nights I could not breath. You were much more beautiful than I. But I think we are freer now and at last, ready to leave the swampy air where we once lost our way. I will hold you like the thick blanket of the earth’s womb and our skin will be like sea kelp, and we will plant the seeds of ourselves like a constellation of stars on the map. You are alive with night, my moon, damp with the sweat of the sea. You are the wine of me. And I hope to never learn the mechanics of love. I hope only to forever explore the wilderness of our aging bodies because I will not wait to love you. After all, I need you like the lake needs fish in its belly. Welcome to your thirty-first year, Andrea. I love you. 19

to my long ago lover in paradise Jeremy, Somehow I know actually sending you this is a mistake. Somehow I know that maybe you aren’t the one for me… that I cling onto you for dear life because I don’t know what else there is. You are my past that I attempt to live in. You are the vanguard of what I cannot reconcile – you are that. I think a lot about finding you somewhere in Mexico again. Among lazy calles in Puerto Morelos; god, how you hated it there. And I ventured on the streets so that I could go get something to eat because my body was very thin then, while you cursed in the shower and then later I kissed and pet your head to calm you down under the covers. Things were simple. Things were not tainted with reality. It was just the love we had for each other. Now it is a beautiful day outside, and somehow I find myself absolutely terrified of spring. Another year… another year of what? Where shall I go, what shall I do? My destinations seem so lifeless, so insecure without someone waiting for me when I arrive at them. My spring. My unkempt wanderlust will run rampant; I fear I will not be able to contain it, and forever be a gypsy weaving in and out of peoples hearts, mine always broken because I will never learn how to let someone love it. I am writing you because this has nothing to do with you. Yet my only way of discovering myself is through the memories that I feel are responsible for creating me most. Yet in my discovery, I delve deeper into backwardness and further distance myself from recreation, evolution, solution; oh my Mexico. I feel you. And I want to come home. Jeremy – do you think its possible to make places my lovers? That way I can leave them but they cant ever leave me. But there was a place, remember? There was Florida. There was a house, and pictures and paintings on walls and a backyard of my own with windows into other peoples yards and lives. We both wanted it so badly. But it was not where we were supposed to be. We were so silly! We knew that before we left. But I forgive you – for me leaving you, and you leaving me later on for Tahitian pearls that you would send me in the mail to make up for the German tourist that backpacked through morning markets and shed sea shells from her feet. I was beautiful too. So all these places make what we are trying to run from foggy; therefore making it that much more comfortable for both of us. I like to think of it as sort of a paradox: without those things, we could never have discovered our capacity for living inside of one another, while with them, we make it easier to distance ourselves from one another. I am not sure if I like that or not yet. But I know that’s something I have to decide in your leave. Meanwhile, I think I am going to try to discover the place that I am here. You know, sometimes when I am walking down the street, I see the sun reflecting from little icicles dangling from tree branches. And they remind me to come back to these moments in which I am absent. They remind me that maybe I am not so lost, except in these little ephemeral details of course. And I think of you, and how maybe you are thinking the same thing in an exact space somewhere. But drawing some sort of conclusion from these thoughts, I think, is unnecessary – I will always think of you. You are buried in me like little germinating seeds waiting for water. I think I will always love you, Jeremy. And maybe time will permit our revisiting what we now keep locked inside ourselves. It will push to get out. But in the event that it doesn’t, please be well. And just so I don’t have to keep reminding you in my head (it might drive me crazy!) remember to turn off the lights when you leave for late night drives for the ocean, or to remind yourself why you went so far away. Until a time in which we may never arrive, Eryn 20

CATCH ME IF YOU CAN

by Jiayi Wang

CATNAP

by Jiayi Wang

by Eryn Duffield

AN EVENING IN ESTONIA

by Jiayi Wang

by Kate Orgera

FOUR CUPS OF TEA Squinting bleary eyes at the bright bulbs Of the dingy dormitory kitchenette, I fill my mug with water, steam spiraling. I watch the bag dye the water dark, Stir in a splurt of honey, splash of milk, And sip.

She lifts the brim of the sun hat Out of her eyes, Tips the plastic tea pot, And asks Tina Dollsworth, â&#x20AC;&#x153;How many sugars?â&#x20AC;?

The sun beats down on green lawns. A bat and ball lie in the trimmed grass. Children with shimmering foreheads Sit on the stoop and slurp iced tea.

Water flows Into a small kettle. Blue flames Glow under a metal grid. Ground-up leaves Unfurl their flavor. Air pressure Releases in a low whistle Four elements: One teacup. 25

DUCKS IN A POND

by Thanapoom Boonipat Additional Information: Chinese painting on rice paper

MIGRATION

by Will Chen

it came suddenly then as dots in a hearse in a sky full of flak and marrow. the avenues were racked with fire, everywhere the cups of boiling vodka and spilled vacuums, lonely wrens dragnetting a horseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wire mane, the gunfire sundownâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s manifold queen, a tall shadow grossly forested. forearm of leaves, a hundred madnesses. beneath the turbid unflowing meridian, the policing summers it started, small as a seed at first or a fist of poison, a transit for all the colorless turpentine, the utterly miscellaneous.

LIU BEI ON THE WAY TO MEET KONG MING by Thanapoom Boonipat

A SAD TRUTH OF ANTHROPOLOGIC HISTORY A boy wants to be a man. A man wants to be a rich man. A rich man wants to be a king. A king wants to be a god. A boy wants to feel dominant over other boys. A man wants wealth that will bring immediate satisfaction. A rich man wants power to secure his wealth. A king wants to defy nature and indulge in his everlasting power. Therefore, A boy bullies others and becomes a man. A man deceives others and becomes a rich man. A rich man robs others of their fruits and toils, and becomes a king. A king cuts off the limbs, blindfolds the eyes, whispers sweet lies to the ears and become, A god. A sad truth of anthropologic history. by Yo Sub Ahn

OUR DAY IS COMING, CUBA by Arlen PIta They sit and wait On a tattered rocking chair out on the dusty porch. It’s not a white house with blue shutters Or a picket fence to keep the chickens inside. There aren’t kids running round through the sprinklers, Or old women sipping tea. That would be another story. But still they sit, Waving a piece of cardboard to fan off The flies that rest on their noses. Their faces shine under the glow Of the oil lamp, damp with sweat and Creased from years of worry. And still they wait, As they have for fifty years. Their eyes now weary from watching Their brothers go off into the sea, With homemade rafts and sticks for oars. It has to be over someday, nothing Lasts forever. I wait too – That I will see my people once again, And share with them the suffering That was once mine. I have no guilt and no regret, But a decade later, there’s still much longing And undying hope.

RABBITS IN THE SNOW

by Thanapoom Boonipat

NATALIA by Andrew Vargas Delman

by Jane Reade

EX-STEPFATHER Before you came, we ate salsa on pasta every night of the week and my little brother and I took the trash out ourselves, all the way down the long, dark driveway where the raccoons hunched like nightmares. The basement was always flooded, we were late to school, and the neighborhood kids stole my drum set right out of the garage. In the winter we used to slip our fingers beneath the top layer of ice on the pond and peel back the biggest shards we could. We threw them at geese. It was no use trying to rescue Mama from her crying jags, so we ran out into the woods instead. You saved us from all of that. All of a sudden, when Mama fell in love with you, it was sunbricks and fireworks, raspberries, the aurora borealis, and candlewicks. Winter was safe for geese. Of course we loved you. For a while, life was so fat that you never would have guessed there were bones beneath. Remember the afternoon we stole Mama’s lip liner and you laughed when I drew a six-pack on my belly? Remember when you taught me how to add real cheese into the macaroni mix? In my memory, it’s all polaroid laughter and the smell of star jasmine. The end was inevitable; systems fall to the lowest energy state, and none of us except you ever had what it took to sustain that kind of dumb happiness. Sometimes I wish Mama hadn’t opened that drawer, or that you hadn’t been hiding anything inside. Is she worth it, the milky-eyed sweetheart whore in the photo? I understand Mama’s difficult—even the parts of me that came from her are difficult—but isn’t that what vows and adulthood and novels are for? But you and your cheap waxy chocolate love, you don’t even understand there’s more. Sometimes, I can forgive you for that. But what about my little brother? I’ve been trying to become a lady, so I feel a little impolite telling you—you’re a deluded fucking coward if you think I’ll ever forgive you for betraying him. By now, the air is full of grass and dog smells swarming madly around the apples budding from the branches I used to climb. I never really liked you, but there is complex magic firing my miswired lines; I miss you, or someone else, a family, a boat, or barbecue season. I sit on the roof and let myself be swallowed by the summer sky, smug to feel so lightheaded sober. The light reflected off that one window across the lake flashes like a wink back to the day you let us take the boat without telling Mama, so I meditate momentarily on all your shortcomings and squint back meanly. To remind you, it’s the month your father visited and said he’d buy me black lace just to see me wear it, when I stopped sleeping and you and Mama started fighting. I couldn’t fix that, and as punishment I didn’t shave my toe hair and hoped someone would notice. I’m not a cutter; this was a good alternative. Soon autumn will come, and I’ll read books to teach myself physics and biology while the bees hunt for rotting apple corpses. On nights like these, the moon is so bright it’s easy to forget that it moves a few millimeters farther from the earth each night. Soon it will be its own planet, which probably we’ll just refuse to acknowledge—after all, it used to be ours.

FATHER AND BABY

by Coral J. Fung Shek

PLATEAU FLOWER

by Yuan Gao

ALL IS VANITY UNDER THE SUN by Isaac Brooks

One hundred years, and twenty years, and seven years more it has been since you met me on the streets of New York City. One hundred years, and twenty years, and seven more since I fell in love. One hundred years, and twenty years, and seven more since you killed me. You wore a bowler hat and an open coat, and under that a black waistcoat with a visible watch chain leading from a buttonhole to a hole at your heart. You carried a newspaper under your arm, and spoke to me with the biting whistle of a fierce wind trained to be a gentleman, but never tamed. "Nice evening, miss," you said. "It's too cold," I said. I believe my memory that I really was cold then, though now I can barely such a feeling. It is as absurd to me as the notion that my blood was once warm. You offered me your coat and I accepted. You fumbled as you removed it, a helpless child; you got your arm stuck in the salve, and then the watch chain tangled. I giggled, and you looked up at me and I smiled. A week later I was dead. You probably remember that part better than I do. I was overcome by the thick ropes of your hair, by the rasps of your words, by the invisible scars across your face that made your silk skin rough. I was faint from the heat of my blood. Then you swept through me and I emerged from my ecstasy a corpse. It is only once the blood is cold that you can truly see the world. Once the fingers are numb, only then you can touch the shape of every object, from the black strength of the metal bar of a cage to the baritone sharpness of a wooden stake. Only once you feel no pain can you appreciate the subtleties of texture. "I've loved you from the moment I first saw you," you said, "long before we met. When I heard your step, I heard a drum-like accompaniment, then turned and saw you dancing in tune with the music down the sidewalk. My veins breathed new life into my head each time I saw, and I floated through dreams as though I could sleep, and I felt without touch the nearness I needed, and I longed. I longed as I'd not done for de-

cades of existence in this form. And I know you felt the same, and so I brought you to eternal life with me." Back then, I didn't hear the irony in the word "life." Seventy years have passed and another four besides, since you first wavered, since the coldness in your heart first broke out. It happened in those days when we were starving on the streets, with barely a meal a week, living on sewage mice and insects. That one night I tripped from exhaustion and hunger, and fell face-down on the concrete, whimpering that I couldn't go on. "Dammit, of course you can!" you said. "I'm too weak," I replied. I lifted my trembling hand to him, pale white from the cold, from the lack of blood. "We can't survive together, there isn't enough food for both of us." You said it in a monotone, your decision already made. You were thinking about your next meal, about your survival. The words echoed through the hour I lay there. The wind howled with your face and I lay on the ground open-eyes, unable to form a tear for lack of salt, or lack of water, or lack of living eyes. But I never swore vengeance, and I never funneled hate, and I only prayed to whomever we pray that you, at least, would survive, and that I would be remembered in your heart. And then you came back an hour later, with a man who had frozen to death on the street, and you told me we would live. And by then I knew we wouldn't, because we're not alive, but I didn't care. It was more than eighteen years ago that you stopped loving me. It was less than twenty-three, I think, but I can never know with certainty. I first noticed it while we were walking back home from a movie. I think we were holding hands, though yours are so cold, and mine so numb, that I'm never sure. Let me feel your hand now, feel the coldness that radiates from your chest to all extremities. It's like holding ice in my palm; can't you feel it? Even with my numbness I can feel it. There's no life in there; nothing flows, nothing beats, not even the broken pocket watch you carry around with you. Time stopped long ago, and you no longer love me. It was just a glance of yours, that night, to some woman in red, then your distant gaze as we lay in our bed. You were not inside me, not in your thoughts; you were in her. I was alone in the howling wind of winter, and you were an unplugged electric quilt, pretending to clothe me but bringing me no warmth. It was three years ago that I woke up without you. Where were you by then? On a train, I suppose: I know how much you hate ships and planes. A bus wouldn't get you away from me fast enough. I glanced around the apartment, and I saw the open drawers, your missing clothes, the boards in the windows pulled out. And I still suspected nothing. Then I lifted my arm and I felt the rope holding me to our bed. There were no clocks in the room; your broken pocket-watch had always been the only time I cared about. But the black and blue night was diluted with a brightening view that signaled the sun's approach. I danced against the ropes, twisting my wrists through the rough texture, burning invisible scars onto my

hands. The ropes reminded me of my original blood first blood as I struggled to save my death, as I let the fire of the ropes supersede the fire of the sun. It didn't matter; I was too numb to feel any of it. Somehow, soon I was free. We're only two of a kind in the world, so how could you expect to stay away from me forever? Don't you know I've nothing else to do, nowhere else to be for the next thousand years? I don't share your bloodlust, and I've no desire for another treacherous man. You should have known that I would hunt you down. Eight months ago I first caught sight of you. She was already dead, your new mistress. You looked at each other with the cold passion it took us a century to dissolve. She stroked your hair. You called her "kitten," and spoke to her of the beauty of the Swiss Alps, a beauty I showed you. "Let's go there," she said. "One day," you responded. "There's no hurry. We have an eternity to live out our life." She laughed at the word 'life,' and she kissed your lips, and I watched from my hiding. I followed you both. I was behind you every time you killed a person, drinking up the leftovers, tainted though they were by your adulterous spit and hers. I heard every time you described your love to her, every line you recycled from me, every line you stole from my addled passion for you. I watched every swoon of hers, every fall, every rise, every pretension to the heat of passion, when I know how much she must shiver from your presence. This night I entered your house. She lay above you, yelling with the force of a waterfall peaking, but soon to run dry. You gazed at her as you gazed through me at the woman in red, and I watched until she finished, and lay down beside you, and kissed your lips that once were red and once belonged to me. Two hours ago, once you both slept I walked up and shoved my wooden stake through her chest. The blood that flowed forth was cold, even for me. It was a strange feeling, to feel something so cold; for a moment I forgot where I was, forgot what I was. I thought I felt some warmth in myself. But that ended long ago: your fangs took my blood, and your lips sucked the rest of my heat away. My hand is still shivering from her blood, I don't know why. I've grabbed ice with my bare hands and felt nothing. I've slept in the snow and felt nothing. I've touched your chest and felt nothing. But the chilled blood of her unmoving corpse makes me shiver more than I have in a century. But she is irrelevant. An hour ago, before you woke up, I dragged you to this roof and chained you to this bar. My heart felt like it was beating faster than it had in my life. Nothing courses through my veins, but it started doing so with fury. I imagine I began to sweat, but this is nonsense. I know what I've come here to do. No tricks, no excitement, nothing will dissuade me. I know what time it is now: it is long after your death, and then mine, and then the death of our love. It is the moment of our separation. Two hours from now will be sunrise. 39

CENTRAL PARK

by Coral J. Fung Shek

WINTER IN PRAGUE

by Jiayi Wang

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Tis the Season

PRETTY IN PINK

by Jiayi Wang

HOLIDAY JOY

by Jiayi Wang

BRIGHTNESS AMONG THE COLD

by Brittany Leung

PROMENADE ON THE SNOW

by Jiayi Wang

Featured Artist:

BRITTANY LEUNG

Brittany Leung, an Anthropology Major and English & Music Minor of the Class of 2013, pursues her interests in the visual arts through photography and the reflection of it within ethnography. Although she has taken a strong interest in photography since middle school, she has gained greater inspiration from it during high school and college. From capturing the daily life to documenting her travels from New York City to Europe, Brittanyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s photography is inspired by the characteristics of the natural environment, the city, or the coexistence of the two. She enjoys shooting city buildings as the backdrop to the ocean water and likes to place people among scenic landscapes. As another hobby, she loves blogging about fashion in her free time. One of her goals is to be able to combine her academic interests in Anthropology and English with her art interests in fashion, music, and photography. Although many believe such interests to be mutually exclusive, Brittany rather wishes to present them as being a part of a world in which the visual and aural, pervasive aspects of daily life are what we come to analyze critically. As a North Carolinian interested in the versatility and diversity of the world beyond her Raleigh hometown, photography is one of her outlets to create, explore, and experiment further within an unlimited imagination.

SERENE CONTEMPLATION

by Brittany Leung

THE ATOMIUM

by Brittany Leung

INTEGRAL ELEMENTS by Lucas Shores How can you differentiate the curve of a life gone wrong? I find the discontinuities of my own existence to be infinite at certain points. When the slope rises to a threshold Where it is beyond my ability to sustain the continuous upward trend and the asymptote is the only thing that saves me from oblivion. Help me integrate my life From separate points and find some net value in the sum of my experiences. I live along the line tangential to your existence, we meet once and instantaneously we understand the direction that we must head. We will never meet again, and when it seems there is no value to our connection, you will realize; it was the peak of your life.

WHO LET THE DOGS OUT?

by Brittany Leung

NY FASHION WEEK

by Brittany Leung

LOOK AT THAT AMATEUR

by Georgina Edionseri

“Only a couple minutes, Kamora. Grandma’s gotta work.” But Kamora already seizes the greasy black doorknob in her small fist, and the hum of the stainless steel kitchen appliances drones out her mother’s voice. Smells of oily French fries and moist Big Macs instantly cling to Kamora’s soft skin, and she locks her dark auburn eyes on her grandma. She skips along the white and baby blue tiled floor – her sequined shoes sliding on the grease – and her face lights up when her grandma sees her. “It’s my baby, say it ain’t so!” Grandma chuckles, adjusting her hairnet. It’s never very crowded at two in the afternoon – only a

young couple sits at a round, metal table in the corner closest to the ketchup and utensils. They share a milkshake. “Gramma! Guess what? I got all E’s on my report card, and Momma says she gonna buy me a piece of candy from the store.” Kamora’s forehead just barely reaches the surface of the McDonald’s counter, and the pink plastic beads strung on the ends of her tight braids rattle as she dances around happily. “Oh baby, that’s just the best news I heard all day long. All those ‘Excellents,’ you got all them smarts from me, you know. You might just be the smartest

girl in the whole kindergarten.” Grandma’s red apron has a dark stain over the bright yellow “M” at the center of her chest. She moseys over to the soft-serve ice cream machine with a small cup in her hand and holds down the lever for chocolate and vanilla swirl. Drizzling the ice cream with chocolate sprinkles, she hands the sample to Kamora and offers her a tender smile. “It’s so hot out there, I can’t let my little girl go without takin’ some ice cream first.” “Can you eat it with me Gramma? Just for a couple minutes?” “Now angel, you know I gotta

THAT TOOTHLESS SMILE by Alexa Mechanc

work. There’s cleaning to do when there ain’t no one buying food. The grease pan is fillin’ up. If I don’t clean it, it’s gonna overflow. Look, see through the window, Momma’s waitin’ for you. Go eat it with her, she’d just love that.” Kamora’s round face contorts, and she crosses her short arms over the flowery print of her dress. “Okay. Bye Gramma, see ya later,” Kamora replies in her shrill little girl voice. She struggles to drag a chair over to the counter so that she can kiss Grandma goodbye, then dashes out onto North Howard Street. Grandma watches vigilantly as her granddaughter prances down the sidewalk. Ka-

mora climbs onto the bench next to her stiff mother. “What’s this bench say, Momma?” “It says ‘Baltimore, The Greatest City In America.’ If you ever lost, you can tell some nice lookin’ people you live in Baltimore off’a North Howard so they can get ya home.” Kamora nods and stares blankly ahead at the cars honking incessantly, like agitated flocks of geese. Mother and Kamora’s backs cover the white letters painted on the bench, and Kamora licks the sprinkles off of her ice cream. “I wanna see Gramma work all the time! Can I get outta Greenmount early every day?”

“No, Kamora, you gotta go to that program so you can get your homework done and play around a bit before I get outta work. I ain’t done til six, and besides, you like the kids and supper there. Today’s just different cause I got an appointment with the doctor.” Kamora pouts and wraps her pink tongue around the dripping trails of ice cream meandering down the cup. “I got a ten minute break, baby!” Grandma appears at the bench, and Kamora’s ice cream covered face brightens. Grandma wipes the chocolate off of Kamora’s nose with the inside of her thumb.

“Gramma, did ya know I can tell you what this bench says?” “Go ahead, tell me.” Kamora recites her mother’s words, and Gramma’s smile loosens a bit. A cloud momentarily shields the strong sun, and then passes. “I told ya, my baby’s a smart one.” A giant, gleaming grin spreads across Kamora’s face - she already lost her front two teeth. “And another thing’s for sure,” Grandma adds, “you got the cutest lil’ toothless smile I’ve ever seen.” Kamora giggles and pokes her tongue between the gaps, sticking out her clammy hands for Grandma to pull her onto her lap. Kamora’s mother slides sunglasses over her nose and looks away at the distant skyline of the inner harbor. *** Kamora’s silhouette is still on the kitchen windowsill as a cloud of smoke shoots out of her mouth, out the window, and into the city air. Her jeans cling to her body like a second skin, and her embroidered t-shirt hardly covers her belly button. She’s smoking her father’s cigarettes – she can buy her own in two more years, when she’s eighteen. Her mother swings the kitchen door open, her face ablaze with anger. “Kamora, what the hell did I tell you about smoking inside? Get that outta here and don’t touch your father’s smokes again, you hear?” Kamora looks up

slowly, her eyes outlined with thick black lines, and a smirk surfaces on her face. She blows a ring of smoke into the room instead of out the window. “You can’t tell me what to do, ‘specially if you still don’t got no job,” Kamora blurts out, waving her pointer finger at her mother through the hazy air. “Havin’ a job ain’t got nothin’ to do with you respectin’ and listenin’ to your mother. Now get that disgusting thing outta this house this instant.” With that, Kamora swings her legs over the windowsill and jumps down a few feet to the property’s small patch of lawn. Her six brothers and one sister play together on the stoop in front of their home. A noisy mash of childish giggling and yelling penetrates the peace of an oncoming dusk. Kamora smokes her cigarette until the butt burns her fingers, then tosses it to the ground and stomps it into the soil. She shakes her head as she hears her mother call all the kids inside for dinner: probably a couple of spoonfuls of rice and a small serving of beans. Nothing satisfying. *** The first bell rings, and there’s gum twisted in a saliva-induced knot around the lock on Kamora’s locker. Kamora doesn’t see the wet and sticky mess until it’s too late, and she retracts her hand in disgust. Scowling, she looks down

the hallway for the culprit. Nobody looks suspicious, so Kamora pulls the wad off of the lock lividly, with a deep frown etched on her face. Kamora saunters into homeroom and picks the creaky wooden desk in the back corner. She’s late. Tasha, one of the popular students, turns around in her seat as the teacher monotonously reads the daily announcements; she snickers and raises her eyebrows at Kamora. After class is over, Kamora finds Tasha in the hall. “Hey, what was that look for back there in class? You got a problem with me or somethin’?” Kamora stands tall, and Tasha laughs and nudges her friend. “Say Tracy, ya here that? This girl wants to know if I got a problem with her. Maybe I do, so what ya gonna do about it?” Tasha confidently crosses her arms, shifts her hips out to the side, and points her chin in the air. “I’ll mess you up, that’s what I’m gonna do about it, especially if you put that gum on my locker,” Kamora retorts, taking slow steps toward Tasha. A teacher walks by and separates the girls, and Kamora glares backward at Tasha as monitors escort them down opposite rundown hallways. *** Kamora goes to the Greenmount Recreation Center every day after school until six o’clock.

She has had the same routine since she was six years old, and she now resents the after school program. Today is no different from any other day. “Hello, Kamora, how are you doin’ today?” Mr. D, the head of the program, inquires. “I’m fine,” Kamora responds tersely. She rushes past him, past her siblings who are scattered about the dilapidated building, and past some of her peers. In the back of the homework room, Kamora sits down, slumps against the wall, and blasts the rowdiest rap songs on her iPod. Mr. D looks at her through the glass window separating the hall and the room. He sighs. “Hi, ‘Mora. Watcha doin?” Kaya, the youngest of the family, does not understand why Kamora refuses to play with her. “Nothing. Go away, I’m tryin’ to listen to my music.” Kamora does not even look up at her little sister. Kaya’s thin lips twist into a frown, and she scurries away to play basketball with the older boys. Kamora reaches into her backpack for her English assignment. Write a four-page response answering the following: describe yourself in two words, and explain why you chose these words. In runny black ink, Kamora scribbles her name at the top of a blank sheet of loose-leaf. Hesitating, she taps the pen inquisitively against

her forehead, and then scratches the word “unlucky” in the center of the heading. She cannot think of another word, so she starts writing. Mr. D takes another glance at Kamora and falls into a daze. He recalls Kamora a decade ago, a little girl soaring through clear skies, full of passion – alive. “How you doin’ today, Darren?” Grandma startles him. Mr. D jumps, then warmly stands up and swings his large arm over Grandma’s shoulder. “I’m doin’ all right, and yo’self?” “Just got done with work. I came to see Kamora, she here?” “Yes, she’s over there in that corner, writing up some kinda report.” Mr. D and Grandma stand in silence looking at Kamora. Mr. D tightens his grip on Grandma’s shoulder. “She’ll come ‘round, I know she will. Remember what a great kid she was, Marni?” “Best of the best. She cared ‘bout everyone like they were her own kin, she’d go outta her way to make everyone happy. And now, now my baby’s lost.” Tears creep out the edges of Grandma’s crinkled eyes, and the two sit down at the wobbly table in the main hallway. “I remember one day about ten years ago, Kamora ran into the gym in her pink sundress,” Mr. D recalls. “It hadda be a hundred degrees that day, and humid too. Ev-

eryone was sitting down sweatin’ their buns off, but Kamora came in, put her rollerblades on, and started skating ‘round the gym by herself. I just stood there watchin’ her, amazed at how happy she looked in that group of hot and tired kids.” Grandma smiles at this anecdote, imagining Kamora skating in circles on the gym floor, glowing like an angel. “I know, Darren, I know. Smart, too. She used to be real smart, getting all ‘Excellents’ on her report cards and stuff. She still got it in her, cause smarts don’t leave a person. She’d come runnin’ over to me, wavin’ her finished homework around and wantin’ me to check it for her. Now she don’t tell no one what she’s up to, always by herself like that,” Grandma nods her head toward the image of Kamora through the glass window. “And she used ‘ta love visiting me at McDonalds,” Grandma continues, “now she only comes when she gotta help me get home. She doesn’t even say much.” Clearing his throat, Mr. D comforts her. “Look there, toward the ceiling, above Kamora’s head. See that drawing?” Grandma looks, spotting a weathered picture on the wall colored by someone too young to stay in the lines. “She drew that when she was six, one of the first days she ever came to Greenmount. It’s her, your daughter, her father, your

other grandkids, and you. And you’re all smilin’ like there’s nothin’ bad in the world,” Mr. D says lightly. Grandma’s eyes leave the drawing and fall a few feet down to the sticky, splintery table where Kamora sits scribbling angrily, her neck bent rigidly over the paper. “Lord, how things change. She drew that before she figured out she not from the suburbs or the nice countryside, and she not from a little family of four livin’ off their family’s money. But there’s other lil’ girls just like her who are perfectly happy with the way they livin’.” Grandma’s gaze again collides with the drawing of the smiling family, and she feels her frail heart split down the middle, the halves folding over one another. *** “Kamora, get up, it’s time fo’ school.” Mother shakes her until she groggily moans and flips onto her stomach. “I’m not goin’, they gonna be mean to me again and take my pencils when I ain’t lookin’. I don’t learn nothin’ anyway, the teacher just stands there and yells.” Kamora sinks deeper into her bed and wraps her fleece blanket, frayed around the edges, tighter around her body. She despises going to school – her fellow fourth graders pick on her because the teachers love her. “Well, you can’t stay here, Mora, I gotta go to work. Now get up and get some oatmeal then get to school.” Mother opens the blinds, letting the sunlight crawl quickly into the room and onto Kamora’s bed. When Kamora hears a car door slam, she sighs and rolls out of bed. She makes herself a bowl of oatmeal (using a stepstool to reach the microwave), then walks to school in solitude. A few of her brothers scramble after her, forming a broken line: a parade of children who lead disconnected lives under a single roof. As the morning

sun permeates the Baltimore sky with a yellow glaze, neighbors wave to them from rocking chairs on the stoops of their houses. They pass a few swaggering men, massive and manic, and proceed to walk just a few paces faster. “Hey, Kamora!” Kamora halts on hearing her name. “Yeah, that’s right, I’m talking to you.” A young girl, no older than Kamora, pops out from behind a half-bloomed cherry blossom that looms over the school’s entrance. “I’m gonna be late, what you want?” Kamora asks hesitantly; she reaches for the straps of her backpack and fingers the loose threads. Without answering, the girl opens a bottle of water and tosses it roughly at Kamora. It hits her waist, and her light blue jeans turn navy around the zipper and down the left pant leg. Dumbfounded, Kamora stands motionless under the tree, her wet jeans sticking to her clammy leg. “She peed! Everyone look, she peed! Hahahaha, go home and change yo’ diaper, baby,” the girl shrieks, her wild, open mouth spilling out laughter. A few others join in, forming a semi-circle around Kamora, pointing and cackling. Kamora’s caramel cheeks assume a scarlet tint. She turns, throwing her hand over the wet leg, and – without thinking – begins to sprint home. She passes one of her brothers on his way to school, and they awkwardly meet eyes for a split second

BACK TO THE GOOD OLD DAYS

by Farhad Pashakhanloo

before continuing on in opposite directions. Kamora enters her house – the door is never locked – and falls onto the couch like a heavy weight. The house’s consistent creaking puts her to sleep – it’s the first of many days Kamora will skip school. *** Kamora hates suppertime. Her father’s spot at the round table is always empty – he’s either working late or out drinking like a belligerent teenager trapped in a beer-bellied man’s body. Mother simply pushes in his chair and sits at the head of the table, ignoring the empty seat. The eight children sit, and the meal becomes a freefor-all. Sixteen hands swarm the center of the table, all grabbing for the single steaming dish. They hit each other out of the way, food goes flying onto the deep-green tablecloth, spoons rattle onto the floor, and the screaming ensues. Tonight it’s a roast chicken, and Mother sits back – her mouth stretched in a taut line across her perspiring face – as her offspring shred the prepared meal to pieces. “That was my piece, Randy. Get off!” Kamora fiercely elbows her brother in the side. “Shut up, Kamora, it’s on my plate now so get outta my face.” Kamora grabs the last piece of chicken – the smallest piece.

Resentfully, she scoops it onto her plate – her brothers might be bigger than her now, but they are still younger. The kids eat with their fingers, and the oily sauce runs down their hands. The only sound in the uncomfortably small room is a unified gnawing of fleshy meat with intermittent crunches of bone. Mother picks at the remnants on the children’s plates. They clear their own dishes, pile them in the sink, and head to their rooms. Kamora shares with her younger sister, and the six boys are split between two spaces not much larger than the average walk-in closet. Mother goes to sleep early – often without saying goodnight – so the kids tuck themselves in. Kamora turns out the light – Kaya is already asleep. Ten minutes later, Kamora hears the rowdy calls start on the street corner outside of her house. Stealthily, she creeps out of bed and over to the window. He’s here. Kamora tiptoes down the stairs in her plaid pajamas, cringing at every creak, and opens the front door. “Oh hello Miss Kamora, how are you on this fine night?” Jim stands in the center of a circle of bearded boys, wearing a cutoff tank top and a black bandana over his dark hair and forehead. Jim approaches Kamora slowly –

with confident steps – his toned shoulders bouncing up and down, his white Nikes glowing in the threshold of pale moonlight and yellow streetlight. He slides his arm low around her waist and cups her hips firmly. Her face is indifferent, but she does not resist his embrace. “You got the stuff?” Kamora mumbles, her eyes meeting his. She looks around the empty street. The only person around is a homeless man slumped over on a bench on the next block. “Right here.” Jim pats the pocket of his jeans. “Let’s blaze.” He pulls out a joint, and a friend grabs a lighter. Kamora goes first and inhales. Her problems start to drift into a series of images in her mind, but she feels like she’s seeing herself from an outsider’s perspective. Everyone gets high on the sidewalk, right outside Kamora’s house. Stringy veins weave red spider webs over the whites of their eyes, and the drug takes them out of reality. A cop car passes by, but the group is unnoticed. The man sleeping on the bench is unnoticed. Kamora’s empty bed is unnoticed. The city is unnoticed. *** “Just pretend the cameras ain’t here, kids. Just go on, do your coloring and act like no one’s

watchin’.” Mr. D reassures the kids who sit around a table – dried out markers in hand – with blank stares. Students from the local college are there, playing with the kids for two hours as they do every week – this week, though, they brought a cameraman to show the positive interactions between the kids and the mentors. The scene is staged – it is very rare that the kids come together and color collaboratively. Kamora turned thirteen yesterday, and she sits at the table fondling her new beaded bracelet. Tasha sits across from her and glares at the drawing on Kamora’s paper. “What you call that, a sick dog or somethin’? Sure looks like one,” Tasha comments nastily, raising her eyebrows and scrunching her forehead. “It’s a baby tryin’ ta crawl for the first time, but nice try,” Kamora retorts. She takes a look at the drawing and realizes it kind of does look like a sick dog; clenching the paper in her fist, she crumples it and hits it off the table. “That’s what you get for drawin’ a sick dog, now you gotta start all over again,” Tasha smirks smugly as she continues to work on her own drawing of a princess. “You don’t gotta be so mean, Tasha, your picture ain’t so pretty either.” Kamora surprises herself

as the defensive words flow out of her mouth as though they have been ousted by a prolonged buildup of emotion inside of her. “Oh really, mean? I ain’t mean, I just speak the truth. Your picture looks like a sick dog so that’s what I told ya. If ya can’t draw nothin’ right, maybe you shouldn’t draw at all.” As one of the college students attempts to mediate the situation, the cameraman subtly swivels away from the quarrel to focus on the other side of the table. He zooms in on a young girl, probably around the age of five, who colors quietly in big, bold lines of color. She’s drawing a blooming flower. “I hate you, I hate coloring, and I hate this damn place,” Kamora cries. She stands up hastily, sinks her drawing into the bottom of the trashcan, and storms out of the room. Tasha laughs victoriously. The cameraman blushes awkwardly, and points the camera toward the ground. He looks at Mr. D, unaware of what to do, and finally turns the camera off. When peace is restored to the room, the cameraman pushes the red button and turns the camera back on. He returns to the young girl who still works intently on drawing a flower. “Hey, sweetie,” he calls to her,

“would you mind holding up this sign and smiling a huge smile for the camera?” The little girl looks up audaciously, and the corners of her full lips turn upward. She drops the red marker onto the table, forgetting to put the cap on. The drawing is almost complete – the flower just needs a stem, now. “Okay.” She grabs the white cardboard sign out of the man’s hands and glimpses over the fat black letters, not knowing what they say. The girl wraps her hands over the top of the sign and smiles, showing all of her teeth; the cameraman hits record. “Perfect, thank you so much.” He takes the sign back from her and places it on the dust-speckled floor, next to the camera case. It reads, “Changing The World.” *** Kamora sits in a corner of the gym at the recreation center. Her back is to the hard wall, and her legs stick out straight. The dust on the floor dances toward her jeans, and a nearly translucent centipede crawls on the ground next to her. She stares blankly ahead, looking across the gym at a broken boom box resting unsteadily on a lonely table. The other kids are upstairs or in the musty room with two old computers. Kamora is alone. Mr.

D peeks through the rectangular hole in the gym door that used to be a glass window. He hesitates, and then opens the door. “Kamora, why you in here by yourself? Come on, let’s go upstairs or somethin’.” “I just wanna be alone, if that’s good with you.” Kamora looks up, imploring him to let her be. Mr. D does not give up on her. “It ain’t healthy, sittin’ here all lonely. I know you got some beef with Tasha and them, but there’s other people to hang with. Your brothers are askin’ bout you.” “I ain’t lonely. I like my own space cause I don’t got any of it at home. It’s nice in here.” Mr. D sur-

veys the gym. It smells like urine and dirt. The floor is lined with dust and coated with dried saliva. The walls are barren: no flags, no banners boasting of championship wins, no bleachers, no posters. “Suit yourself, then.” Mr. D leaves the gym, swinging the door shut quickly behind him. He ambles back down the hall to the homework room. All the kids are done with their work by now, so the room is empty. Mr. D pulls out a rusted, metal foldout chair, and its legs screech against the cool tiled floor. On the floor, he spots a crumpled piece of paper; he picks it up and smooths out the wrinkles. Adrenaline suddenly flows

through his veins, pumping his heart faster, as he reads the name, assignment, and response. “Kamora Jones – English. Write a four-page response answering the following: describe yourself in two words, and explain why you chose these words. Unlucky. Sometimes I wonder why. Why I was born into this country, this state, this city, this family. Of all the places I could have come from, of all the people I could have been, I’m me and I’m here. And I’m unlucky. I’ve got too many siblings to count, and we can’t stop fighting cause we’re hungry and frustrated. Our Momma cooks us dinner then goes to sleep. Our Dad

NOIR

by Samuel Cook

doesn’t even come home on most days. Nobody knows that I like to write, cause nobody cares. Nobody knows that I used to be happy, cause nobody understands. People are mean, and I don’t know why. What do they got that makes them better? What do I got that makes them jealous? I can’t think of anything. And my other word is sad. I’m sad cause I never got a chance to be great. I got gum on my locker for getting good grades, but never a pat on the back or a congratulations. So I’m unlucky and sad, but no one will ever get that. And even if someone does get it, I doubt the person would care–” The paper cuts off here. Mr. D holds it in his trembling hands and stares at the drawing of Kamora’s family still hanging on the wall. Without moving his gaze, he stuffs the paper into his pocket – it would be safe there, a desperate plea trapped between tightly stitched twill. *** The familiar smell of gooey cheeseburgers and thick milkshakes surrounds Kamora as she opens the McDonald’s door. It’s dinnertime, and the line weaves around like a slithering snake encroaching on its next meal. She sees Grandma hobbling around hastily behind the counter, taking orders and tossing toys into Happy Meals and counting change. Grandma’s face is oily, like the thin layer of grease spread over French

fries. Kamora walks over to the counter – hands tucked in her pockets – and waits for Grandma’s shift to end. She helps Grandma get home on Fridays. Grandma briefly looks up at her granddaughter and transforms the grimace on her face into a slight grin. Kamora gives a slight grin back, but looks anxious to leave – just the thought of McDonalds makes her nauseous after all of these years. “That your grandma back there? I didn’t know she qualified for the job.” Kamora turns red as ketchup and springs around to face the source of the voice – she already knows it’s Tasha. “Yeah, that’s my grandma, and she’s more qualified for this job than you’ll ever be.” Kamora is heated and feels her entire body pulsing. “At the rate she’s goin’, she gonna die in McDonalds. Just look at her.” Grandma’s face droops over the deep fryer, her cheeks stained with sweat. Tasha laughs and high-fives her friend. Suddenly, Kamora hurdles through the air and – with two outstretched arms – tackles Tasha to the greasy floor. She straddles Tasha, raises her fist, and punches her directly in the nose. Steaming blood flows down her brown cheeks and forms puddles on the tiles. The line of people swerves to avoid the fight, and the man who breaks the line to separate the

girls is too late. Tasha grunts and grabs Kamora’s arms, flipping her onto her back and sitting on her. With terrified eyes, Kamora looks up from her pinned position at the rough knuckles rising over Tasha’s head. And then the knuckles drop, like a cart flying down the first hill of a roller coaster – headed straight for the ground – and smash into Kamora’s mouth. Kamora vomits blood and teeth and loose skin onto the floor, where Tasha’s blood has now spread evenly. Horrified patrons scatter out the door, onto the street, past the benches that read “Baltimore, The Greatest City In America.” Only four customers remain, including the man who broke out of the line to help. He holds a napkin under Tasha’s nose as she falls into a metal chair off to the side. “Kamora!” Grandma cries from the depths of her diaphragm, and scurries out from behind the counter. Grandma kneels at Kamora’s side, over the whimpering girl. Kamora’s mouth is mangled and bloody. Skin hangs limply from her red lips. Still lying on the ground next to the amalgamation of blood and vomit, she opens her mouth meticulously to reveal two missing front teeth. Grandma takes Kamora’s limp, bloodstained hand and caresses it, seeking a simple responsive squeeze; but the hand is limp as the hamburger in the white carton on the counter, meat killed and cooked, awaiting a fated consumption.

THE KID by Vi Nguyen

END OF THE HALLWAY by Megan Hennessy

I can hear her bracelets, so loudly clanging with each assured step, and I am not surprised that she is late. I turn around, as I always do, to watch her make her way down the hall. I want to pity her, the almost grown child, navigating her way through this place, but her youthful face is defiant. She looks at me, but doesn’t see me. To her, I know, I am just another nurse in pasty scrubs. She is looking at the white walls, and I wonder if she is comparing them to the bright orange and green of the downstairs children’s wing. I wonder if the white makes her sad, and I wonder, conversely, if I should suggest, to the custodial department, that we have the walls painted. I search her face as she passes me, looking for… I’m not sure what. Fear? Anger? I don’t see either. I see only defiance, firmly etched through her features, as if it has become a permanent fixture there.

She is walking under the doorframe now -the one that reads ONCOLOGY, in bright red and black letters. But she isn’t looking at those words. She is looking through a door to her right, where a young man from a car wreck used to lie. He passed on only a couple of hours ago, his things are still in the room. I wish she hadn’t seen that, but I know she’s seen all the rooms in this place. She’s seen all the places where people move on. She understands, more than most, that there are a lot of exits from this hallway. She’s reached her door now, far down the hallway. I can barely see her face, but I know what she must look like. I see her hand pause on the door handle. She doesn’t want to go in. Who would? But she is opening the door anyway. She knows there are many exits, And this is hers. So she goes, and the door shuts, and I just stand here. And it’s the damndest thing but all I can think is that we really ought to have these walls painted sometime.

FENCES

by Andrew Vargas Delman

A LETTER TO ALL THE AMBITIOUS YOUNG WOMEN WITH THE SAME PSEUDOSECRET: by Jane Reade

You will come to understand the necessity of keeping your ribs fastened tight around your heart. There will be a natural compulsion to rip yourself open and shove the pulsing mass upon the table in response to any small inviting kindness. Don’t do that; it’s rude. They cannot help you anyway. Your emotions have no place here; do not become the hysteric. Adopt a certain reserve. Maintain distance always, not just from him, but everyone, at all costs. 68

You should not have had to grow up this way. Understand I am being compassionate when I tell you, however, that should does not matter. If you are smart, you will work hard. Render yourself untouchable and don’t act victimized. We are all complex: insecurity, chauvinism, brilliance, and dedication need not segregate. In light of this, sexual harassment sounds silly.

NEW YORK NIGHTTIME SILHOUETTES by Brittany Leung

Learn deflection, feigned obliviousness, and the timbre of a healthy laugh as if these were musical techniques or athletic maneuvers. It is neither betrayal nor manipulation—do not be so green. Spin yourself into a stronger creature, as fast as you can. Steady yourself by holding onto the thin filaments of sanity: these things did happen. This is more difficult than it sounds; the truth begins to slip away when you disown parts of it. Don’t let it. Whisper to yourself so you won’t forget: closed doors,

emails, moon-shaped nailbeds. Stop fantasizing about more severe acts of inappropriateness, ones that might actually matter to someone else. Lastly, please try not to wonder who you might have been. Do not ever think, easier, happier, or better. These are the unquantifiable variables of the young and the stupid. With Much Sincerity, JPR

SAN MARCOS by Vi Nguyen

ALOYSIUS’ ARK

by Jennica Bouquet

TRAGEDY OF

THE SHARK

by Dongju Lee

Sad shark. Now youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re no more than a slice Of canned pineapple, Perpetually suspended In a cube of jello, In that overlooked flavor Nobody ever wants to eat. Dropped in, as if by accident. As if you were plucked out of the sea By some all-powerful hand, And thrown into your gelatin cage. You give the barest hint of movement, Of being frozen mid-action. Like at any moment You could snap your jaws shut Effectively putting an end To a curious passerby's stares. You used to be at the top of your world. Others lived in fear of you, For good reason. You breathed, you swam, you hunted, you attacked; You were a part of the web of life, Which ensnares and links us all. Now you've become one of Life's oddities. Not living and not dead, Exuding the rarest glimmer of life (a mere illusion). For your flesh, though not rotted, Is preserved by formaldehyde. Your bones retain their form and weight, But are powerless To carry out any will of your own. Your once intimidating jaws Can inflict no harm. Locked in a liquid prison, Do you think? Do you feel? Do you ponder upon the tragedy Of your curious in-between state? Do you dream? 73

HENDRIX’S DREAM

by Matt Parman Visual Art: Scratchboard Artist’s Comments: The piece was done on a scratchboard using a scratchboard utensil. It is similar in technique to a pointilist ink drawing, but instead of laying black ink down on a white surface, I “scratch” away a black surface to reveal the white substrate beneath. I started off just wanting to do a drawing of Hendrix in an “otherworldly” state. After I finished drawing his face, I decided to further develop the idea of the peice. I wanted it to reflect what Hendrix might have seen or experienced and how that might have influenced his music.

BALTI by Vi Nguyen

by Mary Berman Finally Henry Swenson remembered when he had first met Laurence. For six months they had been in the same first-grade class, until Henry’s father died and his mother decided to move back to her hometown in New Jersey. The whole affair had not been particularly traumatic. Henry, recalling this, also recalled that he had not actually liked Laurence all that much. Still, on Henry’s last day of class, Laurence shyly handed him a sloppy sketch of the playground where they had met. “I’m sorry about your dad,” Laurence said, trying not to cry. Henry thanked him -- he was not bratty, not like that -- and threw the picture away. He had never been sentimental. Now he tried to remember the sketch, its particular lines and nuances of color, to see in it the potential that had eventually been realized in Laurence Valencio. He had no luck. It had been nothing more than a child’s drawing. Little Laurence had been genuinely distraught at the death of Henry’s father. Henry hadn’t been

that distraught. Tragedy did not affect Henry the way it affected Laurence; Henry’s soul was not designed to spiral into despair. He encountered Laurence’s first professional piece when he was thirty years old. He was in an art museum, accompanied by a blonde woman seven years his junior. She was wearing a garish shade of red and rambling, and he was trying to find a coffee kiosk. “There has to be a vending machine around here at least,” he said. “I just can’t believe you haven’t heard of him! He’s so groundbreaking!” “Uh-huh,” Henry mumbled, trying to ignore her. “You know, I didn’t think you were, like, really into art.” Up until recently he hadn’t thought that she was into anything other than sex. He was not thrilled about the discovery. “Oh, I don’t like, like, Picasso or van Gaugin or anything like that. Old art is super boring. But this

guy’s, like, way better. I’ve seen his stuff on the Internet. Can you read this map? I can’t find the gallery.” She pronounced it Gaw-ginn. “No.” Actually Henry had heard of Laurence Valencio. The name popped up occasionally in Yahoo! News headlines and Facebook ads. But the thumbnails of his paintings hadn’t captured Henry’s interest, and when Henry and the blonde woman finally wended their way to Laurence’s exhibition, the life-sized paintings didn’t capture Henry’s interest either. But they captured the interest of the rest of the country, and the rest of the country was Henry’s business. When Henry turned thirty-one he was hired by the publicity department of a major celebrity talk show, and his first job was to lock down Laurence Valencio for an interview. It was shockingly easy, considering Valencio’s success. Somehow he had become an international phenomenon by (Henry was never quite able to wrap his head around this) painting. He showed up in a slender black suit and answered questions in a detached, almost arrogant way, just, as the lighting guy commented, as an artist should. “What makes you such an expert?” Henry sniffed. Meanwhile the talk show host was asking Valencio, “How does it feel to be internationally recognized for your painting?” And, calmly, Valencio answered, “At the risk of sounding conceited, I think I rather saw it coming.” The talk show host harrumphed. “Look, Larry, we live in what many have dubbed ‘the electronic age.’ You know, smart phones, TV, talk shows. Yet, in this world of fast-paced distraction, you’ve managed to capture the whole nation’s interest and keep it. What do you think of that?” Valencio shrugged. “Frankly I think it’s a ringing endorsement of the American people. No one trusts Americans to drag themselves away from the TV

anymore. But all it took was a couple of pictures, and suddenly everyone’s turning off the TV” -- or getting out of bed, thought Henry, a little regretfully -- “and heading to art galleries.” “Yeah?” the talk show host said. “You think it just took one great artist to get the country back on track?” “Oh, I’m not an artist,” Valencio said. “What?” “I’m not an artist,” Valencio repeated, “I’m a painter.” “What’s the difference?” Everybody laughed, but Valencio was deadly serious -- far too serious to be on a talk show that regularly featured the Kardashians, Henry thought. Uncomfortably he prayed that the talk show host, who was an intolerable asshole but at least good at his job, was thinking it too. His voice easy but his eyes hard, Valencio told the talk show host, “I’m no artist. At best I would say I’m a craftsman. But a craftsman’s gift is that he produces a product that people want to buy. I have no talent for true art: I don’t have a tortured spirit like Picasso or van Gogh or Lautrec. I’m not particularly avant-garde. I don’t have an artistic mentality.” Valencio paused and took a deep breath. “Nothing... has ever happened to me.” “You’re a very good painter,” the talk show host persisted. “Yes.” “...But you’re not an artist.” “No, Mickey. I’m not.” “Would... Would you like to be?” Valencio seemed surprised to have been asked. “More than anything.” Henry glanced from Valencio to the talk show host and back. The question had been uncharacteristic, and the talk show host seemed surprised, too. The years ticked by. Henry did not see Laurence Valencio again for a long time, but he kept a begrudgingly curious eye on major events in the painter’s life: his marriage to a minor supermodel;

his move from New York City to a modest mansion on the outskirts of Minneapolis; the birth of a son, a beautiful, slender, dark-haired boy with a good ear for music and a face like his father’s. Valencio’s fame grew and grew, and Valencio painted less and less, but each new picture was bigger and brighter and more expensive than the last.... Meanwhile Henry left the talk show to start his own television company. He married a moderately attractive redhead, less pretty than the blonde but much more intelligent. (Henry was surprised at how relieved he was by this.) Together they had two children, both girls; and on the triumphant July weekend that sixty-year-old Henry bought his family a big new house in Malibu, Adrian Valencio went to a party in Saint Paul and left with a BAC of approximately 0.26. A group of irrelevant teenagers had decided that night that it might be fun to try and climb the bridge. They watched Laurence Valencio’s silver BMW skid off the road and plunge into the Mississippi River, and they did not see it come back up. Henry’s first thought when word of the accident reached him was, Why aren’t they broadcasting the memorial ceremony? He was, after all, in the television industry. He called a few of his people to see if they could set something up, maybe contact Valencio in person, and wandered into the kitchen to mix a drink. While he was hunting around for the Grey Goose, curiosity about Valencio’s own career struck him. Valencio was already barely painting anymore. He hadn’t come out with a new piece in, what, a year? A year and a half? Mrs. Swenson liked his paintings very much – they had an original something or other hanging in their kitchen, a bright green-and-yellow monstrosity called Woods. It had won an award and cost Henry a fortune. Henry didn’t much care for it. But still, it would be a shame, if Valencio never painted anymore. He’d changed the world. Henry finished mixing his drink and ambled into the living room. Only after he had settled comfortably into his leather armchair did it really occur to him that someone had died. Valencio did not want to televise the memorial ceremony, but his agent did, over the course of a conversation with Henry’s representatives, betray the time and address. And, since Mrs. Swenson was such a fan of Valencio’s work and had not stopped crying since the “tragedy,” Henry relented and flew

with her up to Minnesota. The ceremony was long, and the Swensons stayed for all of it. Henry would have preferred to leave, but that felt far too conspicuous. He passed the time wondering if he could get a word with Valencio, maybe have him make an appearance on the channel. It would be nice to get a jab at Mickey, after all these years. After the ceremony was over and the tragic dead had been laid to rest -- except, of course, for the unfound corpse still drifting through quintessential American waters -- Henry found himself walking just behind Laurence and Sarah Valencio. (His own wife, overcome with emotion, had gone back to the car for tissues.) “Why won’t you show them?” Sarah was saying. “In his honor. Let them see it. You haven’t painted in years, darling, it would be so wonderful. It would lighten the mood.” “It would not.” “Adrian always loved your paintings.” “It’s not like my other paintings, Sarah.” “I don’t see why you won’t even show me. Everyone’s always loved your work, dear. No one would criticize.” “It isn’t your business.” Henry couldn’t resist. “What is it?” Sarah jumped, but Laurence Valencio just glanced at him, his eyes dull and completely uninterested in who Henry was or what he had to say. Henry took a step back. “Oh, hello,” Sarah stuttered, screening her husband from view. “I don’t believe…” Henry coughed. “Uh, Henry Swenson. I’m sorry for startling you. My wife and I came to pay our respects. We’re big fans of your husband’s work. Mr. Valencio, I was hoping I could have a word…” “I’ve seen you,” Valencio muttered. His voice was hoarse and emotionless. “You worked on the show where I did my first interview.” “Mickey’s Right,” Henry supplied helpfully. “I don’t work there anymore.” Valencio turned all the way around and stared at him. “I’m so sorry.” “Oh, uh, it’s okay. I quit.” Valencio indicated, with the black, disdainful eyes of a grieving king, that he was not sorry at all. Henry swallowed. His discomfort was palpable, and Sarah, taking pity on him despite the fact that her son was dead, chirped up, “I believe I was speaking to your wife earlier, Mr. Swenson. That lovely red-

haired woman, yes?” Henry laughed pleasantly, glad for the distraction from Valencio’s despairing glare. “Oh yes, that’s her. Did she tell you we’ve got the original Woods hanging in our kitchen? She’s awfully proud of it.” “Oh, how lovely! Larry, this is the man who bought Woods.” “He bought it for his wife,” Valencio muttered. “He hates it.” Henry reddened. “We were discussing Larry’s latest work,” Sarah said apologetically. “But he won’t show it to anybody.” Henry shifted, too embarrassed now to ask any questions. But then Valencio said, quite suddenly: “Henry. Mr. Swenson.” “Uh, yes?” “Do you remember the interview I gave on your show?” Puzzled, Henry said, “You’ve never given an interview on any of my shows. And actually, now that you mention it, I had been thinking…” “Mickey’s show.” “Oh.” Henry’s face fell. “Yes. That was a long time ago.” “I remember watching that on television,” Sarah mused. “I had quite a crush on you, darling.” Valencio’s eyes glared at Henry out of a sallow face. Sarah chattered on, and Henry wanted quite badly to join her, but Valencio’s eyes wouldn’t let him go. Then suddenly Valencio said to his wife: “I’ll show him.” Sarah broke off mid-sentence and clapped her hands. “Oh, good! Is it still in the car?” “Yes. You stay here, Sarah.” And with that Valencio marched off, leaving poor Sarah Waters stranded, her feelings visible on her face. “Uh,” Henry said. “Mr. Swenson!” Valencio barked over his shoulder. “Do you want to see it or not?” Henry did want to see it, very much, so after a few guilty glances at Sarah Valencio’s heartbroken eyes, he trotted after Valencio like a schoolboy. Valencio was already waiting at his car. He opened the trunk. The painting rested motionlessly on the dustless cloth of the car, its wooden frame wrapped in white. “Why do you have a sheet on it?” Henry asked. And then: “Why is it in the trunk?” “My wife put it there. She wanted me to show

it to our friends, but I didn’t want her to see it. That’s what the sheet is for. I didn’t want anyone to see it. She was hoping to persuade me on the ride over.” “She didn’t look under the sheet?” “My wife and I have a very honest relationship, Mr. Swenson.” “I’m just saying --” “Show a little respect,” Valencio said sharply. “My son just died.” Henry was quiet. After a few moments, solemnly, unbearably, the greatest painter of the age reached out and slid the frame out of its sheet, handing it to Henry. He wouldn’t look at it himself. Henry took it, gingerly, and looked. Valencio fixed his expression on the sky, and did not speak. After a few moments of gazing at the painting, Henry whispered, “What’s it called?” Valencio didn’t say anything. “Are... Are you an artist now, Mr. Valencio?” Henry asked timidly. He felt very young. The painting had been crafted in a lightless, sweeping gray; unforgiving charcoal streaks curved out of the canvas like a broken ribcage. Inside the ribcage curled a heart, unprotected, somehow smashed. There was no sun. Henry looked up into Valencio’s face. There was no sun outside the canvas, either. Apprehensively, Henry looked away, catching sight of Sarah Waters. She was standing by herself in the middle of the graveyard, completely white and completely still, as though she’d been turned into a pillar of salt. “It wasn’t worth it,” Valencio said.

FATE

by Joseph Shaikewitz

EMPTINESS by Bernadette Che

It seems excessively simple at first glance. It’s a hole. It’s a void. It’s the crumbs you finger at the bottom of the cookie jar, the eerie blankness of a pristine page, the slow diminishing of an echo. It’s the rejected bankcard, the growling stomach, the two A.M. train. Emptiness is flipping a penny down into the well with a fervent wish, waiting, and hearing… nothing. Soon though, after the superficial layer of containers, white space, and gas tanks has been scraped off, emptiness becomes much more difficult to explain. How is it that a human, stuffed full of neurons, muscles, and thirty feet of digestive tract, can still feel hollow and vacuous? Why are some hollow centers, unabated by fats and starches, only soothed by the whispers of a loved one? Emptiness in humans is not concrete. It is not physical. It cannot be seen by your eyes, touched by your hands, or heard by your ears. There are no units of measurement and no mathematical formulas. Yet it exists. It exists as the pain of separation; it is the hole left by the abandonment of the one you loved. It exists as the remains of a dream. It exists as the unfinished thought. Perhaps the best way to establish its existence is to provide some insight into the feeling, or lack thereof, it inspires. Emptiness is like staring into a tunnel, eyes glazed, impassively waiting for the merciful light of a train, your typically unwavering proof of life naught but a shallow thump dulled to near extinction. Emptiness is the impression of being completely alone in a crowded room, not even the crazies in your head deigning to keep you company. It is the slow but incessant evacuation of your chest at the realization of being eternally second best. It draws any residual feeling of self into a black hole surprisingly close to your heart and leaves a trail of numbness as it retreats. Where the satisfied have dreams and goals and bright yellow brick paths, the empty have a deep cavern of clammy air, heavy with tactless rejection and uninspired thoughts. The echoes of disappointed murmurs rebound off of the scarred walls of consciousness until they meld into an incessant drone, muffled white noise that obscures any passionate thought. It is there, in that miserable grotto, that the essence of

human emptiness can be found. Some rebel against the emptiness with vague endeavors to feel something more. These people try, relentlessly, to satisfy the wretched hole within them, pumping it full of alcohol, drugs, and sex. Some find a blissful, albeit transient, salve in a cool silver blade and others in an entire sickly sinful pie. Still, emptiness invariably prevails, performing an unsolicited disappearing act on any and all proposed remedies and, so as to torment the empty with their own insufficiencies, leaves its victims craving more. Emptiness in life is not having nothing. It is not poverty, for the impoverished feel the pain of needs and wants. It is not being depressed or alone or angry at the world. These all require some sort of turmoil inside that fire the emotion and force it to surface. By contrast, emptiness exists as a lack of conflict. It is a state of perpetual mediocrity where no deviation or urge to create it exists. It is being without a path or a sense of worth, and instead living as an incomplete and aimless wanderer. Emptiness is an unfulfilled purpose. The page without writing, the bankcard with no credit, the jar without cookies, all are withheld their destined duties. They are missing the crucial components that complete them and give them meaning, for truly, what is an empty cookie jar but a sad, pounded, burned ball of earth, too commonplace to matter? In people, it is no different. Many never realize the emptiness in their lives until they near the last pages of their unwritten autobiographies, searching, but finding no story, no significance. Emptiness is the act of merely existing. It is the absence of life.

ON GROWING OLD TOGETHER

by Alexa Mechanic

Slumped over one another in stiff waiting room chairs, the two elderly folk flip through TIME Magazine. It smells like latex, the air is cool like the touch of a stethoscope to the throat. “Mrs. Clarke, the doctor will see you now.” Mr. Clarke shadows her to the doorway, their legs lumpy and crooked, backs hunched, canes jabbing the tough carpet. Their love, long blossomed, is no longer a fresh fragile flower, but a dried scarlet rose flattened in the filmy plastic of a photo album. Snuggling under hand-sewn quilts on queen bed, his chest her preferred pillow, Mrs. Clarke absorbs his warmth as one lets the sun seep into an already bronzed body. His lips are closed in a tight line, a line like the deep crinkles in his forehead, but she still hears him whisper “goodnight” as they doze off together, linked lovers under linen. Hobbling a little heavier, Mr. and Mrs. Clarke exit the doctor’s door. Slim silver credit card in hand, they check out. Their profiles turn toward each other and they smile as they struggle to the sedan. Prescriptions scribbled on skeletal sheets flutter onto the floor – they find the car in the spot marked handicapped. Mr. Clarke glares into the rearview mirror and reverses.

VISUALLY IMPAIRED

by Samuel Cook

STEEPING

by Sophi Glazycheva I plead against the door – thickly painted, heavy with privacy – and steep my shoulders into the chaste harmonica of chest-ribs that converge in purposeful piping, ripening in a biology of architecture with a flood-like hold against the shores of shivered skin. I promise to enslave and sink myself – and be your steeping depth of steely anchor and smile and thank you if you find in me foundation for your footing, respect me as your loyal root, enclosed in ink-depths, reveling in dimmed-out light, drowned-out, wind-carried word. We can be so still and see into the frightened leap of our own movement in a frantic flush of sea. So I steep against this door – how heavily it hinges – a guardian of burden. I want to see you, I forgive! I am blind! I don’t care, I am unaware.

END OF SHIFT by Kathryn Alsman

I will stroke your back, will lean my head with yours against the bowl to feel its penetrating, calming cold. I will cry kisses into the slouching shoulders, the craning neck. I’ll flush the wreck of dinner, Clorox it into cleanness, and heal you into getting older.

[STILL]

UNTITLED by Eleni Padden

stock image courtesy of Dani Simmonds at sxc.hu

Cubes are not places where human beings should have to spend eight hours a day in order to economically sustain themselves. There’s something about the general structure- four walls, enclosing the person inside neatly like a sandwich in a fourth grader’s lunchbox. We’re all sandwiches here. We sit inside boxes, typing unimportant reports about the progression of sales in relation to the age of our customers, we grow mold until someone decides they need a consult. It’s not a job I’m proud of. I never wanted to be a sandwich. This is not a test. This is my life now. Abort. Evacuate. I wanted to be a lumberjack, a mountain man, a wolf whisperer or some shit like that. All I wanted was wide-open space. Somewhere along the line, I managed to get the exact opposite.

Harold, who is a Hoagie of some sort, has no sense of personal space. Harold thinks that being lunch buddies is fun. Well, Harold, you are a sweet man with a receding hairline, and I pity you, I do. But, you are an idiot. I would not want to be your lunch buddy if we were dining at King Arthur’s round goddamn table in the middle of Antarctica where the only thing other than penguins is space. You can imagine how I feel about you sitting seven inches

away from me eating your microwaved spinach casserole and making small noises that sound like a baby walrus gasping for air. Harold, you are a nice man, and it is not really your fault, but you disgust me. Abort mission. Aside from Harold, there is something else hideous in this office: my desk chair. It is maroon, for a reason completely unknown to me. Everyone else here has black chairs-- I’ve checked. Last February I stayed late to “do some copying”, but really I was running my own personal survey of the chair colors in the office. Afterwards I just felt alone, and I wished I’d never looked. Then I could have gone on thinking that there was someone else out there with a chair just as distastefully burgundy as mine, and that maybe we could share the burden of having such disgusting objects thrust upon us. Alas.

There are three redeeming qualities about this office. One is that Mrs. Grady’s daughter Terry works at Bath and Body Works, and because of this we always have nice soap in the bathrooms. It’s quite luxurious, actually. It exfoliates superbly, every bursting micro-bead precious to me. My personal favorite

scent is the Coconut-Lime Verbena, although I’m also partial to Warm Vanilla Sugar. Sometimes I wash my hands six times in one day. I’m worried it’s becoming a compulsion but I don’t really give too much of a shit, seeing as that soap is arguably the best thing that’s happened to me in the last eight months. If Terry gets fired or quits and our soap supply is depleted, I will probably shoot Mrs. Grady in the foot with our staple gun. The other two redeeming qualities of the office are the water fountain and Sarah. The water fountain is always as cold as my neglectful mother’s sidehugs, and I am in love with Sarah. She is a Panini of a woman. We have spoken twice and she doesn’t know I love her yet, but I’ll tell her eventually, maybe. We walk by each other in the hallways sometimes, and I wish I could hear her thoughts. Other times, I just watch her. There was a certain incident on a Tuesday afternoon that I remember very specifically. Sarah was walking down the hallway, her yellow ballet flats making soft padding noises on the shining linoleum. She was on her way back from the lounge, having just heated up her lunch for the day. Her soft, brown hair fell in ringlets down her back and cascaded over her delicate shoulders. Suddenly, she stopped moving. I craned my neck around the edge of my cube to see what she was doing. She stood stock still, staring at the reheated burrito in her right hand. She looked at it with an expression that said, “Why do I have to eat you? You’re bringing me down. You are a representation of everything I do not want to be, and you encompass all of the things I hate about this world. You are reheated and flimsy and tasteless and sad and today, at least, I will not consume you.” There was a minute of silence as she gazed down upon the burrito. The hallway was completely deserted. Then, she slowly tipped her hand. It began rolling down her palm, gaining momentum, like a

seal sliding off an iceberg into the Arctic Ocean. It departed her hand and fell soundlessly to the ground, lying in a small, composed heap at her feet. She glanced around, and, upon determining that no one else was watching, walked calmly back to her desk. She didn’t see me. In that moment, I remember feeling like I’d just witnessed Halley’s Comet crossing the sky. Such a rare occurrence as another human being doing exactly what I wanted to do. Did she share my thoughts? Did she really feel that the burrito was the embodiment of the shortcomings of the world around her? Please God, say yes. I fell in love. There’s always the remotest of possibilities that she feels just as closed in and grossed out by spinach casserole and is equally as infatuated with the mountains as I am. Odds are astronomical. In fact, no. It isn’t possible. Sandwiches don’t really fall in love. Abort? Mission impossible? I think too much, but also not enough.

I hate Bruno. Bruno is my boss. He is the Cuban sandwich, the French Dip, the Artisan ham and smoked Swiss. He is an asshole. He has his own office, which is a pentagon and not a cube. It has a red felt carpet and a wooden door with a silver doorknob. More importantly, Bruno has a window in his office. A big, massive, colossal, gargantuan glass thing that stretches twenty feet from one vertex of the pentagon to the other, curving slightly with the structure of the office building. I hate Bruno because he possesses this window, and also because he is a pompous and controlling five foot tall man who wears pinstripe suits from Men’s Wearhouse and has an unlimited capacity for douchebaggery. Take this instance: “Simon, buddy, do you have those midyear sales

analyses typed up yet?” Bruno says, walking up to my cube (but not coming inside). “Yes.” “Excellent! Marvelous! Where are they?” “I’m trying to print them.” “Trying? Bud, why can’t you just pop them out and hand ‘em to me now? Jim up in corporate needs then by four today. Eh, bud?” It is eight thirty in the morning. “Well, Bruno, the printer is currently out of black ink. I think Rosie just went to the supply room to get some more.” “Ah. How sure are you that Rosie went to the supply room? Maybe you should go too, just in case. Rosie’s getting kind of old, bud. It could take her a while.” He looks like a shiny little toad. “Rosie is 43,” I say. Bruno looks at me for a moment. His small black eyes are the same color as the background of his starchy pinstripe suit. I want to punch him very badly but I have never punched anyone before and also I need my job to pay for my National Geographic subscription. I get up and go to the supply room. I have a plan. The plan is this. One day, maybe three or so years from now, probably during November (and maybe even on my birthday), I am going to escape. Abort. Jump ship. I am going to find a way to fake my own death, and then I will fake my own death. After I fake my own death, I will assume another identity, decidedly one with a very distinctive and flagrant name. When people hear my name for the first time they will look at me with either a) Respect b) Fear, or c) Sexual attraction d) Maybe.

After assuming said fresh identity, I will somehow procure a vehicle, using the money I have saved up working in the lunchbox for fourish years. I will drive it deep into the Ozark Mountains and I will find a lake, on the shore of which I will build a small log cabin using only my bare hands and a single steel hatchet. I do not yet know where I will be getting the hatchet. I will live off the land, and I will have a small garden where I shall grow potatoes, carrots, leeks, rosemary, and lavender. One day I will go to a post office and send two letters, one to Sarah telling her about my place in the Ozarks and professing my love to her, the other to Bruno telling him that he is an asshole and that he should put his fingers in the pencil sharpener. That’s my plan.

For now, however, I have urgent matters to tend to. I must fix the micro-wave, which I broke this morning while cooking a meatball and mozzarella hot pocket, before Sarah goes to heat up her tomato soup (no more burritos after that fateful day). On second thought, perhaps I shouldn’t. Then she’ll have to eat her tomato soup cold, which will remind of her of Gazpacho, which will remind her of Spain, which will remind her of travelling, which will make her want to travel, which will make her slightly more inclined to accept my eventual invitation to the Ozarks. It’s a long shot, though—I should probably just fix the microwave.

PAPER, PINS, WATERCOLOR ON COLLAGED CANVAS by Joseph Shaikewitz

CLOCK

by Coral J. Fung Shek

CAN I CALL YOU IN? by Lucas Shores

To resist my spell will Only find its match In my desire to seduce you. As I bring you closer The magnifying glass of time Illuminates your flaws, Both vast and numerous.

Brilliance. With the stroke of my pen Or the tip of a word off my tongue I will enchant you. In the storm of human emotion I am the lightning rod Calling the ire of the heavens To rain futile divine wrath Upon me. As the pied piper Plays pliantly, Persuading people To perform perilously, So will I Sing the song of sleep Sending the silent Samaritan To a realm of dreams. Doubt me at your own peril Digest these feral calls And arrest your own reality. Pin to the wall a picture Of yourself but within Those lines you will See: Everything Changes Your slowly waning desire

Your Beauty, though unquestionable, Is only skin deep. Soft Skin, gentle eyes, A mouth so round and sweet I thought it a cherry, Upon first inspection, But later found it both sweeter And more rare. But on a much more even plane You are an emotional ogre Having breakfast at Tiffany’s. While you attempted to read Socrates The only question you asked was: “why am I reading this?” While some might find redemption In your generally charitable spirit, I see through this to a child, Brought up with this task, Of helping the world, And left with nothing more than A way to spend the time. Goodbye my fair beauty, I held you in my hand, But found you no better Than an overripened fruit. So go find a fly to circle you, Because I’m gone.

“The 8.9-magnitude temblor, which was centered near the east coast of Japan, killed hundreds of people, caused the formation of 30-foot walls of water that swept across rice fields, engulfed entire towns, dragged houses onto highways, and tossed cars and boats like toys. Some waves reached six miles (10 kilometers) inland in Miyagi Prefecture on Japan's east coast.” –CNN Wire Staff, March 2011 The taxi man says, “Darling, you are blessed,” and turns up the static radio. Part of the world crumbles to pieces, and I sit in this yellow cab crossing concrete roads, staring out the greasy window at crumpled newspaper beds and shopping cart homes. I squeeze a bag of belongings to my chest; the Japanese squeeze surviving loved ones while their bags of belongings float in dirty floods, away, forever. A traffic light flashes red at the corner. Frowning faces exit rundown row houses, two police search hooded boys’ pockets. Why are they frowning when their skies are clear and their days unshaken, why are they frowning when death devastates and takes a nation from its people? You are lucky, I want to scream out, roll down the greasy window and tell them. To each self-pitying soul, to every body bathing in cold water, I want to slap and say, “Darling, we are blessed.”

MAGNITUDE 8.9 by Alexa Mechanic

WATERBALLOON

by Kathryn Alsman 99

JOHNS HOPKINS EMBLEM

by Jasper Lin

by Srona Sengupta

EPIPHANY

Your name flutters down from a corkboard in the hall. I snatch the notice and examine the grey eyes, beginnings of a beard, familiar cynical smirk. “PEPTIDE MIMICS OF LUNG SURFACTANTS,” the heading reads. I imagine you in Turner Auditorium, intentionally unshaven, wearing the solid navy tie your sister bought you from Boston. Confidently, you dive into the complicated chemistry of lung surfactants. You are steady and clear, and have just the right humor to carry the crowd. Like this, you woo the audience and the next presenter, who happens to be my hero. My hero, who is flying in from Memphis, then asks for your help to engineer cocaine-addicted states in mice. He will win the Nobel Prize in twenty years (some speculate ten) and during his Nobel Speech, he will mention you, but not by name, as the budding biochemist he met twenty years ago, who gave him the inspiration for his work. But while you are on the stage wooing your way into the annals of Nature, I know that you will wonder if I’m in the crowd, and you will think back to a time where I would have been. You will remember when we would have planned to be in the same city at the same time, just for you to hold me and tell me all the places you would kiss me, before you did kiss me. But afterwards, when my hero from Memphis asks you to present again next year, you will smile to mask glassy eyes. You will say, “Thank you,” which is what you always say when you cannot be a man. And then you will fly away across the country to bluer skies and warmer weather, and you will thank God that I was not in the crowd. Surprisingly, I will thank God for this too. I’ll realize that I prefer the not-knowing more than the knowing, and I’ll wonder at how you’ve changed my notions of certainty and absolutes. Then I’ll smile. And we will continue down parallel train tracks, waiting for --“---Excuse me,” a throaty, Southerner says. I’m wearing a stupid smile as my hero looks down at me through bifocals and says, “You’re blocking the hallway.” I hear myself give an anemic “sorry.” Thankfully his attention has turned to the paper in my hands. “You’re coming to the talk tomorrow? I’m presenting with that fellow from California,” he says, nodding at the paper. “A budding biochemist.” “Of course,” I say. “He’s a clever one.” “You know him?” he asks. “Not personally,” I reply. My hero politely exits the conversation. “Not anymore,” I add, when my hero is long gone.

SOFTEST WOOD by Samuel Cook

DETAILS

by Eleni Padden Uneven brushstrokes of violet and ochre colored the sky. Wispy remnants of clouds dissipated into the atmosphere as night fell like a black cloak over the quiet countryside. A horse neighed in a darkening pasture, her chestnut body glistening in the light of the dying sun. Somewhere deep in the black forest, a brook bubbled and gurgled, water spilling over smooth brown rocks and weaving its way through the woods. She gazed to the east, and saw bulging grey crowns of thunderheads in the distance. Tonight, the heavens would split apart, and rain would gush from the sky like blood spurting from a severed artery. Baby Sousanna would tremble underneath the patchwork quilt, her cobalt eyes wide open and glowing in the ruptured bursts of lightning. The rain would come, the winds would howl, her sister would shake. Thunder made her feel like her very essence was unraveling, in the most glorious of ways. And tomorrow, everything would be the purest and freshest of greens-- the color of her mother’s emerald ring, sparkling in the light of their evening fire. Everything would be new, reborn. vvv Grey suits and glass shards for eyes. That’s what she remembers about the men that came to her home on that green morning. They came in a charcoal colored car, rolling up the dirt road, a cloud of reddish dust swirling behind them. She was the only one awake that morning, first to rise so she could breathe in the clean scent of the air, purified by last night’s storm, as if all of life’s imperfections had been filtered from it. As

she stood by the kitchen window and looked deeply out onto the fields, she heard the rumble of the engine, the dull, continuous crunch of wheels on their rocky road. She put down the glass of milk and honey she’d poured, setting it gently, soundlessly on the wooden table. Her eyes turned towards the road. The car drew nearer. She stood, unmoving, by the kitchen window, her cotton dress sticking to the backs of her gently perspiring legs. Somewhere in the distance, a dog bayed. On the front porch, her mother’s morning glories were slowly unfurling, the vivid colors painted on the insides of their petals gradually becoming exposed to the young day. vvv Scarlet, like the rising sun. Her mother’s blood-soaked dress lay draped across her ravaged body, lace trim dripping with the vermillion byproduct of the murderous deed. Milk and honey was strewn across the floor, sticky and creamy and mingled with blood. Sousanna’s cobalt eyes were wider now than thunder and lightning had ever made them; she huddled in the corner, trembling still, as if caught in a never-ending storm. Her father, broken and weeping, sat limply in one of the kitchen chairs, his wrists pink and raw from the rope. There was laughter, and she looked up from her spot on the gory floor, up at faces of the youth who had destroyed everything beautiful, up at judges of her future. The salty water streaming from her soft, brown eyes and down her mangled cheeks lit every exposed nerve it coursed over on fire, and she prayed she would stop crying. The laughter became louder. It was not the jolly, apple cider and story telling laughter of her father, or the free, tinkling laughter of her mother as she put corn silk hair on Sousanna’s tiny dolls. Metal laughter, laughter lined with broken glass. This is what she heard now. A man in a grey uniform looked down at her. He kicked her in the mouth with a beautiful black boot, which had previously been spotless but was now covered in her blood. Her father moaned from the chair. She thought about the stars, about laying in bed under the quilt with Sousanna and looking out through the sliver of window in their room into the deep blue night and up at the shining cosmos. She named all of the stars she could see from her room. They weren’t the same shape as the copper star she wore on the chain around her neck, but they were gorgeous still. She felt Sousanna’s fragile body, delicately breathing. Looked at her own pale hands, almost translucent in the moonlight. Her blue veins looked like rivers. She fell asleep. vvv She awoke in a sea of people. Bodies pressed up against her own, everyone equally battered and hollow. She was moving; they were all moving. She knew they were on a train. She heard the rhythmic chugging below her, felt the gentle, merciful sway of the car. The screams and groans piercing the air around her mattered little; she knew everything was lost, knew instinctively the moment she regained consciousness that they were all dead. Mother, father, Sousanna. A chunk of her soul had moved away, was drifting slowly out of her body, and she let it go. It floated over the heads of her dying comrades and slipped out through the cracks in the car’s sides. She felt it soar over the cornfields, over the sun-baked rooftops, over the watermelon patches. She felt it slide down, towards her ruined home, towards her kitchen window, towards her family’s bodies. She felt it touch her sister’s inky curls, caress her mother’s soft caramel cheeks, rub her father’s hard brown palms. The train lurched. People wailed. She cried even though she wished she would not, and her cheeks burned. She knew that she was going to die. But, as her soul floated through the deep black forest, rubbed against the pine trees, bathed in the cool soil, she thanked her God that she had lived at all.

A CLOSETED CITY

Off the city street and its wood-boarded windows, through the jade door right into the recreation center, up the old stained stairs that lead to the room where the children play,

a couple of college kids go weekly, Wednesdays from three to five. Kimona, grasping my forefinger with her little hand, conducts me to the closet every visit. Behind the closet door sits a play kitchen, its plastic blemished brown, its cupboard vacant; a foosball table, its surface cracked jaggedly, its ball lost long before it could arrive; monopoly money crumpled by little brown hands, devoid of dice or board; Connect Four, lining up black circles to form strands of unified color; a chess board gridded with black and white spaces, the black kingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s trapped â&#x20AC;&#x201C; checkmate; an African doll,

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by Alexa Mechanic the whites of its eyes popping out of the sunless patch of closet where nothing ever grows. Tattered toys are taken in, tossed, tried, and fought over. To see Kimona cradle the doll in her arms amid a broken heap of hand-me-downs sinks my heart with stones; to watch her scurry down the stairs for the subsidized vegetable stew on the white styrofoam plate eats away at me. Closing the closet door, its greasy handle soils my hand and I turn to leave, turn to escape the content of the closet that I know is there, hidden, a reality shoved out of sight and stomached.

RAINBOW OF THE NIGHT

by Lay Kodama

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SUNSET AT INNER HARBOR

by Jasper Lin

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UNTITLED

by Kimia Ganjaei

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DONUT HOLE by Ryan Kahn

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stock image courtesy of Michael Lorenzo at sxc.hu

I’ve never seen a human being eat a donut that fast. He looks like a zombie biting into some lady for dinner. Like that zombie movie I saw with Erica at the theatre the other night. I hate those kinds of movies; they scare me. But it’s good to know what to do, and what not to do in case a flesh-eating epidemic comes. Down at the end of the table, past the judge’s booth, he’s not backing down. “Curly Fry” Carlos, local legend and chicken wing fiend, seems to get faster with each bite. It’s been a half hour and everyone’s bowed out of the competition; everyone but me and this garbage disposal of a man. Seriously, how many people do you know that have a permanent hot sauce stain on their tooth? The Donut Hole is filled with people cheering, news cameras everywhere, and referees watching our every move. If ever, there were a David versus Goliath story of biblical proportions in the modern era, this was it. The Donut Hole has a late 50’s, down south diner feel to it. Vinyl records drape the walls, and a jukebox sits in the corner. The wallpaper is the color of a strawberry milkshake; maybe with a hint of banana. Keep going Dick, you got this; I keep repeating to myself. I have to win this BMW. Once I heard the ad for this eating contest come on the radio after Lady Gaga couple weeks ago, I knew I had to start training. That was the day I asked Erica to Bennie’s beach house party at the end of October. It’s going to be our second date; the make or break one according to Maxim Magazine and 84% of females. My jaw is starting to get sore as I start on number 36; later than I thought. At least the jaw exercises are starting to pay off. Coming in as an amateur and a 200-pound handicap, any edge is an edge. It would kill me to drive her to the party in Punch-drunk, my green cabriolet. I need to win this car. I look up and Carlos is on 41. He looks back at me, “quit now.” I swear, the sugar all over his face must be the only sweet thing about this guy. I start to wonder what the people in my high school will call me, if I actually pull this off: The Donut Destroyer, no the People’s Champ. I just hope Erica doesn’t find out. It would be much cooler to make up a story about some rich uncle in Nantucket that sent it down for a late birthday present. Down by four, It’s go time. Right before I make my move into the inside lane, Erica walks in with my buddies from school. She could’ve seen it on the news. Or Lenny must have told her, what a dick. Oh well, I’ve got to impress her. I’ve been researching this maneuver a lot on the Internet recently. Very dangerous,

but it can be a game changer if preformed correctly. “NOO…” shouted someone from the audience, “He’s going in for the Tokyo Doublestuffer.” Woes and gasps come from the crowd. Curly Fry spits out his water like a projectile, more gasps come from the crowd. Shaking his head, he starts on 42. “Dick, Dick, Dick, Dick,” the crowd starts to chant. 37…38…39 my numbers are climbing fast. I get up to 46 as Carlos finishes 43. The crowd starts to roar; actually that’s my stomach. Keep it down, keep it down. The rulebook states the food must stay down. There are only two minutes left but Curly Fry is on my tail. I take a breather and look at Erica. Smiling, she stops clapping and waves. She’s wearing a silk scarf even though it’s hot out; she’s so cool. Focus Dick, Focus. “One minute,” shouts one of the judges, “One minute remains!” I look up at the ticker over Carlos’s head. We’re both at 48. Bite, drink, bite, drink…it’s coming down to the final seconds. Like a horse stretching its neck out for a photo finish, I stick my head to my hand and eat the final piece. 49! I look over as the buzzer goes; Carlos drops the last piece. It bounces off the plate, on to the floor; the crowd erupts. Streamers fall from the ceiling as a marching band walks through the diner playing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” Really, how much money did they put into this thing? I smile and do the first thing that comes to mind, throw a peace sign into the air. I scan the crowd for Erica; she blows me a kiss. The owner of The Donut Shop and the president of Dan Lashley BMW come on stage. The Tokyo Doublestuffer did me in; I suddenly have the urge contrary to swallowing, I feel like a ticking time bomb. The owner hands me the keys, grabs my wrist, and holds my left arm in the air: “And the winner is…” I can’t hold it any longer as I puke everywhere; I think I even got some on the news cameras. The crowd is dead silent for seconds, staring like zombies. …“Cuuuuurly Fry Carlos!” The crowd is still silent at this point. Carlos dangles the keys in font of my face, says “Nice try rookie,” and then wobbles over to the car. It takes him a little while as he squeezes through the door. As the shocks compress and the tires flatten, the car drops a good couple of inches. Poor girl. I push through the crowd to go see Erica but I can’t find her. I bump into Lenny, his hands are on his knees and he’s laughing. “Epic Dick, that was epic!” I push him out of the way, but Erica is gone. I hear the engine laugh at me as Carlos turns the keys. He drives out of the Donut Hole with his hand waving out of the window. I don’t want to watch, but can’t turn around. There she goes.

stock image courtesy of Michael Lorenzo at sxc.hu

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NATURE BOTH BIG AND SMALL

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DIESEL

by Vi Nguyen

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THINGS HAVE CHANGED

by Karla Hernandez Cuevas

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COMMENSALISM

by Karla Hernandez Cuevas

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YELLOWSTONE MORNINGS

by Divya Kernik

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LONE FLIER by Samuel Cook

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WATERFALL IN SHANGRI-LA by Yuan Gao

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IMPRESSION OF LIJANG

by Yuan Gao

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QUIESCENCE by Eric Luitweiler

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SUMMER 78

by Karla Hernandez Cuevas

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