Tuesday Magazine Fall 2012

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Staff Katherine Xue, President Amy Robinson, President Xinrui Zhang, Managing Editor Editorial Board Lauren DiNicola, Editor-in-Chief Bridget Irvine Katya Johns Jackie Leong Tracy Liu Rebecca Maddalo Max Schulman Art Board Sarah Ngo, Director Zoe Galindo Jihyun Ro

Staff Writers Emily Marie Boggs, Director Melanie Wang, Director Christopher Alessandrini Xanni Brown Rebecca Chen Julia Haney Sakura Huang Simone Kovacs Bonnie Lei Jackie Leong Anita Lo Devi Lockwood Amy Robinson Annie Wei Katherine Xue Catherine Zuo

Business Board Max Schulman, Director Sakura Huang Nina Shevzov-Zebrun Doreen Xu Design Board Samantha Wesner, Director Jackie Leong Qing Qing Miao Sarah Ngo Xinrui Zhang With Special Thanks To: LuShuang Xu The Office for the Arts at Harvard The Undergraduate Council

Tuesday Magazine is a general interest publication that engages in and furthers Harvard’s intellectual and artistic dialogue by publishing art and writing, with an emphasis on student and non-professional work. Staff applications are accepted at the beginning of each semester, and submissions are accepted on our website throughout the year. Visit isittuesday.tumblr.com for more information.

Copyright Š 2012 by Tuesday Magazine. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.Tuesday Magazine is a publication of a Harvard College student-run organization. Harvard name and/or VERITAS shield are trademarks of the President and Fellows of Harvard College and are used by permission of Harvard University.

2 | Staff and Contributors | Tuesday Magazine

Table of Contents | Volume 10, Issue 1 4

A Letter from the Disillusioned

24 Untitled

4

Half-Blind Narrative

26 “Queered in Every Sense of the Word”

5 6 6

Simone Kovacs . Poetry

Zena Marian Mengesha . Poetry

Aibu

Taylor Reneau . Print

Poem to Medusa Talia Lavin . Poetry

Wednesday Poem Talia Lavin . Poetry

6

the moon is medal enough

7

Corporeality 2, 4

8

The Beginner’s Guide to Dressmaking

Devi Lockwood . Poetry

Oliver Luo . Canvas, staples, and graphite Emily Marie Boggs . Nonfiction Colin Teo . Photography

10 Let the Right One In Anson Clark . Poetry

11 Newspaper

Bonnie Lei . Poetry

12 The Sleeping Poet

Amy Robinson . Fiction

15 A Woman Flies in Istanbul Stella Fiorenzoli . Photography

16 Barnyard

Justin Wymer . Poetry

16 Potassium Squirrel

Stella Fiorenzoli . Photography

17 Ruth’s Perfect Cake Dilia Zwart . Fiction

18 Escape

Oliver Luo . Animation

20 Defining Blue

Jackie Leong . Screenplay

Cover image: Untitled, Ziggy Q. Kotchetkov

.

Marjorie LaCombe

William Simmons

31 Churches

Kathryn Reed

Film, text, and music

. Nonfiction

. Fiction

32 Homeless, Ideas

. Sculpture

33 Question Mark

. Sculpture

Ziggy Q. Kotchetkov Ziggy Q. Kotchetkov

34 Northwest Labs B103 - Lecture Notes Anita Lo

. Nonfiction

35 Untitled Jihyun Ro

. Acrylic and oil

36 Graffiti

My Ngoc To

.

Colored pencil and marker

36 Portrait with No Light My Ngoc To

.

Acrylic

37 world atlas

Devi Lockwood

. Poetry

38 Wanderer Above Lake Powell Daniel Yue

. Photography

38 Antelope Canyon Daniel Yue

. Photography

39 Mouse Dissection Stephanie Wang

40 Still Life

My Ngoc To

. Poetry

. Graphite

41 Fragments of the Life of an American Outlaw Rebecca Chen

42 Regresar

Bonnie Lei

. Nonfiction

. Photography Table of Contents | Tuesday Magazine | 3

A Letter from the Disillusioned POETRY | SIMONE KOVACS In response to Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” Don’t breathe so loud; don’t be my love: For all that you would prove Is factory tears and bucket rain Are manufactured by the brain.

Don’t sit up on my bed like that, Your shirt undone, your jeans too slack.

Stop smirking like an antelope, Who’s watched the cheetah kill the doe.

Don’t come around; please, just go home.

My tightrope balance is overthrown When you take my waist and closely hold My jumping heart that’s growing cold.

Darkened lights cannot deny Your hands wandering to others’ thighs, So while solo cups drink up for us, My iron smile begins to rust.

I’d rather have the blurry stars Of city nights and home-bound cars, Because I can make a path alone, Heels clicking heartbeats on red stone.

The poison of your words degrade Illusioned hopes and ideal faith, So if blonder heads will to you move, Then don’t breathe at all; don’t be my love.

— Simone Kovacs is a staff writer.

Half-Blind Narrative POETRY | ZENA MARIAM MENGESHA I make my story blindly, cautious hands, tensed lips.

Telling myself what I’ll find, who I’ll be.

A narrative, a line that can’t quite be followed defines my path-the only way to live a life so disjointed.

I trace myself back through whiffs of birthday cake, salty tears, sticky summer mornings, fragments of a forgotten melody mingling with sandpapery words and ice-covered asphalt, somehow spinning a single thread before dark.

This mind must map its course before it strikes out into the wilderness of the world.

I make my story blindly, hope that somewhere out there I’ll stub my toe on a block of truth and grope my way to a lighted path I can’t un-see.

4 | A Letter from the Disillusioned | Simone Kovacs | Half-Blind Narrative | Zena Mariam Mengesha | Tuesday Magazine

Aibu Taylor Reneau Print

Aibu | Taylor Reneau | Tuesday Magazine | 5

Poem to Medusa POETRY | TALIA LAVIN

Medusa looks over her newest stone lover and shrugs. She sighs. Picks her teeth with a talon. Even a Gorgon can’t always be alone. Even in her superb statue garden. Sometimes she gives Jacob (granite) a shoe-shine. Once she kissed Oleg (obsidian) on the head, but it left a lip-print. She paces. Ahmed (quartz) eroding at the knees, Randall (a cheap, loose shale) at the elbows. There was Eugene, forever melancholy, all in turquoise. Terrible things happen when you look your lover in the eyes, eh, boys? she says. Sometimes she eats a sandwich in Marco’s brindled lap. He took everything sitting down, even the end. Morning breaks on a garden of lovers that don’t have a hair out of place (and have nothing further to add) and slithers on towards noon (her hair appointment).

Wednesday Poem

the moon is medal enough.

POETRY | TALIA LAVIN

POETRY | DEVI LOCKWOOD

Wednesday is quiet as a blurry photo.

I gather up armfuls of soiled bedclothes.

How many bedsheets dumped in the water Does the harbor have room for?

Morning and evening greet each other like blind men; they shake hands uncertainly, and light passes through their palms.

I am limping through Wednesday, the lame knee of the week: a hunter without a map, a singer without a mouth.

once more at the lighthouse with the shutters left open I dream I am you with a fish mouth and a jar of moons to stave the night. every morning the man in the white hat frequents my shores to converse with stones, tell his wife, long gone, that though her hands are cold, her heart is warm, lozenge smooth – I see, in cursive across his arms, an etching of glory: love in keyholes.

6 | Poetry | Various authors | Tuesday Magazine

— Devi Lockwood is a staff writer.

C o rp o r ea lity 2 , 4 O live r L u o

Canvas, staples, and graphite

Corporeality 2 | Corporeality 4 | Oliver Luo | Tuesday Magazine | 7

The Beginner’s Guide to Dressmaking or How to Construct a Human Exoskeleton NONFICTION | EMILY MARIE BOGGS decadent shields armor to defend soft underbellies from the harshness of the world perhaps better described as cloaks of beauty I An arachnid’s exoskeleton is made of chitin, a complex carbohydrate that forms a rigid armor around the arachnid’s soft body. A human doesn’t need protection from physical dangers, but rather needs protection from the thoughts of the world, so a person’s exoskeleton projects an image of how the person would like to be seen. The raw material of a human exoskeleton is fabric. Choosing which material to use in a dress is tantamount to choosing what self-image to present to the world. Will your dress make you feel fun or elegant or thoughtful? Don’t let the weight of this question prevent you from enjoying the process of fabric selection. The textile section of a craft store resembles nothing so much as a candy store crossed with a library: bolts of brightly colored and patterned fabric line the aisles and walls, sorted by fabric type and color, arrayed like jars of penny candy or books on a shelf. Be sure to revel in making your choice as much as you would revel in selecting a book or a bag of treats.

I love selecting fabric for sewing projects. My favorite section of the textile aisles is the cotton section because it tends to feature the most whimsical prints. I once indulged my impulse to buy all of the fabrics that caught my fancy. I had decided to make a long patchwork skirt.

I spent hours poring over the cotton section and came away with over a dozen animal print fabrics – mice, dogs, penguins, even caterpillars. I took the fabric home, cut it into squares, and sewed it into a patchwork menagerie. Several years later, I made a matching belt from the leftover fabric and wore the skirt as a dress.

II An arachnid’s exoskeleton consists of stiff plates called sclerites. A dress is similarly composed of multiple pieces of cloth cut into particular shapes. Cutting pieces is the most difficult part of making a dress: you must overcome the sensation of working backwards. An arachnid’s exoskeleton grows in sclerites, but you come home from the craft store with a large piece of beautifully whole cloth and then must cut it apart following a certain pattern. Approach this daunting task with both caution and confidence: measure twice and cut once, but know that cutting is part of a creative, not a destructive process.

The first dress I made was a floor length dusty rose evening gown. I had already sewn pajamas and tote bags, but this dress was the first sewing project for which the finished fit would be important. I had deliberately chosen a simple pattern: only three pieces plus straps. I chose a thick iridescent fabric to match the pattern.

I was also working with Rhonda for the first time. Rhonda lives in my neighborhood and has a passion for cooking, sewing, organizing Bible studies, and running marathons. She would have been an excellent home ec teacher if West Virginia public schools still offered home ec. They don’t, but Rhonda does give private lessons.

Rhonda helped me with the dress from start to finish, taking particular care with the beginning steps of dressmaking. I had never cut pieces conscientiously for my previous projects, so Rhonda taught me how to lay out the templates and to measure their positions. This proved far more

8 | The Beginner’s Guide to Dressmaking | Emily Marie Boggs | Tuesday Magazine

difficult than I had anticipated. The shimmery fabric was slippery and the large but feather light templates caught the slightest draft and shifted every time that I moved.

Rhonda and I spent an hour crawling around her basement floor to pin, measure and cut fabric. Afterwards, we took a break and enjoyed her homemade scones and English style tea.

III The sclerites of an arachnid’s exoskeleton are held together by flexible joints.

A dress is held together by seams that keep the pieces in the proper arrangement but allow them to move when the dress is worn. Sewing these seams is the magical step of dress-making through which oddly-shaped, flat pieces of cloth become a dress. It is also the most fulfilling step because of the vast creative power that it gives you – the power to make something resplendent, practical, and personal that will bring you joy whenever you wear it.

When I was in high school, I nearly purchased a floor length white ball gown with black and silver polka dots for my junior prom. At the last minute, I opted to save money and borrowed a sleek red dress from one of my friends. I revisited the ball gown silhouette four years later when I was invited to a Valentine’s Day formal and I decided that I wanted to wear a fairy-princess-ballerina dress.

(Who says that a themed formal isn’t a good excuse to indulge in some little girl dress-up?) I selected a dress pattern with a puffy crinoline skirt and pale pink fabric.

A week later, I was at Rhonda’s house doing my best to wrangle seven yards of crinoline into a skirt. I had gathered one

edge of the gauzy fabric so that it was the same length as my waist, but I still had to attach it to the silk lining that would prevent the skirt from being a transparent tutu. Rhonda expertly pinned the layers together and I slowly fed them into the sewing machine. When I folded the fabric to complete the French seam, the layer was nearly too thick to sew. I was reminded of the times in primary school when my friends and I had attempted to disprove the old wives’ tale that it is impossible to fold a sheet of paper more than seven times. I cannot recall whether or not we succeeded, but I did manage to capture the puffy crinoline in a neat French seam after another round of slow and careful stitching.

IV An arachnid’s exoskeleton is delicately contoured around the features of its body and face. The embellishments of a dress are also carefully detailed and allow you to add a stamp of individuality to the dress.

Even if you are following a pre-made pattern, you can design your own trimmings to give your dress whatever niceties you

I

can imagine. In this way, the embellishments provide a level of artistic freedom that isn’t present in the rest of the dressmaking process. They can be practical, like pockets, or aesthetic, like embroidery. Think of your newly sewn dress as a canvas upon which you can paint your dreams.

I made a dress during spring break one year. Most of my friends were at home or travelling so the campus was hushed and I had my entire suite to myself. With summer imminent, I decided to sew a long, breezy sundress. I cut out the pieces, laid them out to check that everything fit, and realized that the dress wanted a little extra pizazz. There was a chevron shaped piece that would join the bodice to the skirt; it would be the perfect place for some embroidery.

That afternoon, I jogged to a bargain craft store and purchased several bags of tiny “seed” beads in colors that matched the fabric. When I got back, I turned on my nineties pop Pandora station and stitched beads onto the entire chevron.

By 5 AM I was exhausted and my futon was covered with a mess of tiny beads and

II

loose threads. The chevron was completely embroidered and I had rediscovered my love for N’Sync’s song Bye Bye Bye. It was my favorite all-nighter to date.

V An arachnid sheds its outgrown exoskeleton to reveal a new, partially hardened one underneath. As a dressmaker, you will have the extraordinary experience of donning your creation for the first time. Put on your new dress. Twirl in front of a mirror. Prance a bit. Find the perfect shoes to match. Go out somewhere, anywhere. Wear your dress and luxuriate in your creative zeal.

It was the first, blustery, gray day of a typical Boston autumn, almost rainy but not quite. My umbrella wasn’t doing much good against the fine mist as I trudged to German class. I usually deplore any temperature drop below sixtyfive degrees Fahrenheit, but for once I was grateful for the chill. A few months earlier, I had made a long-sleeved dress out of a thick, knit fabric and I had been looking forward to having a day cool enough to wear it. Wearing a dress that I had made for the first time was more than enough to lift my spirits on a murky day.

— Emily Marie Boggs is a staff writer.

V

III

a beating heart a fragile soul stitched inside (beauty) with joy and love

Photography by Colin Teo

IV

The Beginner’s Guide to Dressmaking | Emily Marie Boggs | Tuesday Magazine | 9

Let the Right One In POETRY | ANSON CLARK

The city grey and ashen dead - greenery alive mainly in history books. We all wear gasmasks now.

I had to queue for days to elope here, a place of simple, understated pleasure.

The setting is framed by trees, And there are flowers.

Splinters of light come from the sky, not from rotting wood.

The way the grass caresses! Mother Nature alive And breathing. Words of green overwhelm, While the new words of Man Loom like awkward tombstones.

I had to queue for days to elope here, the place.

Where a caged bird can still sing freely with some sense of purpose: A geist, a feeling, a hallowed dream. A life—my life!— Spent in the shadow of industrial progress. But how Is time well spent amid amaranthine cement?

The contrast between the shards of grey and this green Warmth depresses when considered for even a moment.

Then again some say it is not the quantity Of something that indicates worth, but the fact that Something exists, separate from the muddled Chaos.

Is that a butterfly I see? Vines, ignorant of the Strangling steel, waiflike in this settled serenity.

I could sit here for years, decades.

It is comforting to think that my ancestors in the days Of instant entertainment could enjoy such peace at any moment, if they really wanted.

10 | Let the Right One In | Anson Clark | Tuesday Magazine

The bell rings - time to leave. Outside this haven A never-ending queue of matchstick men, Subservient to the glass, steel and torture.

It is so expensive to visit here. The wait is long.

Still, I put on my gasmask and begin the doleful return to the Deathless city. I am sure that I will save up enough money To visit here once more. Only decades now, Which is nothing to those blades of blessed grass, blowing In some Celestial wind.

Anyone can be Adam and Eve, if only for an hour.

Just before the Man opened the door back to grey reality, He stole one last glance of green from the past.

“Probably implants,” he thought, And decided that, upon returning to his cubicle, He would write a poem.

Let the right one in.

Instead of waiting in line and paying, one should have to Earn the right through good deeds to visit this treasured place This paradise.

But if they did that Would the right to breathe in God’s Free air have to one day be earned as well?

Newspaper POETRY | BONNIE LEI

Gong gong and I We are alike, Connected By the printed page.

(across the azul expanse flies the tiny sliver of white, finding its destination)

Our fingers itch to be Blackened and sullied Our eyes prepare to tear For words too small to read We don’t care.

It comes to me As I sip my OJ I unfold the delicate leaf Translate the transatlantic message While Gong Gong Breathes the aroma of tea Smiles the smile of ages, and Knows that we Distanced by space and time Reside side by side on the page.

(ring ring comes the boy our hermes, a valored envoy, bearing with each careless toss a world for us.)

Gong gong and I We stalk the beat Clinging to proofs amid the tweets.

(the pungent odor of fresh ink the paper thin and flimsy the headlines silently screaming)

Grandfather and I We are more than readers We recognize that sound That early morning thump Audible only to sharp hounds And us who run To get it first then with His tea and my juice Foreign affairs are ours and Private lives more public now Discovering together the latest health discoveries Surely a disease-free future for me…but for him?

My eyes skim His fingers clip Out the pieces Tongue licks the envelope Closed

— Bonnie Lei is a staff writer.

Newspaper | Bonnie Lei | Tuesday Magazine | 11

The Sleeping Poet an excerpt FICTION | AMY ROBINSON

It’s not the convention to do it in a hotel. The colorful wires snaking up the light oak bedframe and traversing the floral bedspread looked like a science fiction invasion of an old lady’s home.

Monitors stood next to framed still lifes of tangerines. A light whirring filled the room from the various machines accompanied by the occasional beeping of trucks outside while the setting sun cast the entirety of Sheraton Room 403 in a burnt orange hue. Connor Delaney would be arriving within the hour.

Polysomnology usually occurs within the confines of a controlled hospital room where everything is adjustable.

The bed frame. The lamps. The bed pan.

Sleep’s mystery realm tends to be studied and observed in a sterile, white room. A blank canvas for roaming dreams. No, it’s not the convention to do it here, but exceptions can be made.

I curled up at the end of the bed so as not to disturb the intricate web of wires and closed my eyes. I could see the pastel pattern of floral swirls through my eyelashes, as I took in the prominent smell of bleach and stale cigarette smoke.

The covers were thin. Pilled balls of thread rubbed against my cheek. * * * * * A gentle rocking. Swerving shoulders.

Blinking sleep from my eyes to see Connor Delaney standing above me. He had a hotel key in one hand and a navy duffel bag in the other.

“I thought I was the one who was supposed to be sleeping.”

I immediately sat up and smoothed my lightly wrinkled blouse. “Oh Mr. Delaney! Excuse me. I’m Dr. Simon. I’ll be your technician for tonight.”

His almost translucent hand shook mine with one halfhearted shake. I had always wondered what his hands would feel like. They felt rough and worn out.

Not at all like how I had imagined the hands of a poet.

“Technician.” The word fell flat from his lips. It sounded bleak, heavy. “You make me sound like a damn robot.”

“Does observer sound like a better description to you?” I asked.

Connor Delaney just sighed and began unpacking his bag on the drawer.

“Will you excuse me one moment?”

I picked up my purse by the foot of the bed and walked into the bathroom.

Two sunken eyes stared back at me from the mirror. White scars speckled my cheeks and wrinkles framed my eyes.

Everything in this room looked scarred and wrinkled and ugly. The plastic countertop had branches of cracks. They looked like varicose veins. The wallpaper had lines from humidity, wrinkling the yellowed paper. No, the lines looked more like scratches. I slid down to the linoleum floor and pressed my cheek to the coldness. I began to trace the wallpaper’s crinkles. No, like a spine. The spinal cortex. I traced the spinal cortex to the elegant curve of the cerebellum to the hypothalamus to the pituitary to the cerebral hemisphere. Then put my palm over it all, all of the billions and billions neurons, synapses, and axons, electricity buzzing through my fingertips to my elbow. I traced over the papery brain stem. That. That would be where dreams breed. The middle brain, where emotions intermingle with dreams.

And then finally. The higher brain. That would be where reason comes in, and we make sense of it all. It takes the whole brain to dream.

I brushed my flyaway blonde wisps back into an orderly ponytail and walked out into the room. Connor Delaney was spread out on the bed in only white boxers that made his own complexion look gray by comparison. The pastel bedspread sucked the color from him even more.

12 | The Sleeping Poet | Amy Robinson | Tuesday Magazine

I couldn’t help but look at his widow’s peak. It was as if I could see his hair inching toward the center of his exposed scalp like a great continental drift.

Or a shoreline. His tufts of hair even lay like carefree white-peaked waves.

Not at all like his book jacket photo.

“Alright. So, I’m just going to go ask you some questions and then go over the procedure.”

Connor Delaney sat up on the side of the bed in a slumped position.

“What do you do before going to bed?

Your nightly routine?” I asked. I could see the hollow of his sternum and his exposed kneecaps knotted like petrified wood. I picked the blank clipboard from the bureau.

He replied while looking down at the navy carpet. “I answered these questions in the office.” Everything a fact. A monotonous, cold fact.

“Right, well, we’re trying to see if your answers are consistent.”

“Fine. I take off my clothes. I usually brush my teeth, but sometimes I forget.

I climb in bed and sleep. Is that what you want to hear? I already told the nurses all of this.”

“That’s all you do?” He didn’t answer.

He didn’t even nod yes. “You don’t say write something? Jot some words down to clear your mind?”

“Why? Because people say I’m a poet?”

“Well, yes.”

“Poets are a dying breed. Nobody gives a damn.”

“Then why do you write poems?”

“I don’t even know when or what I write. Words come out of the blue. If it happens to be a poem then so be it. I don’t think I should be famous for that.

I bet that chimp doesn’t know she’s been painting beautiful paintings for over a decade. I’m like that. Just a tired chimp.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Delaney. I didn’t meant to offend-”

“Listen, can I sleep now?” It was as if Connor Delaney merely exhaled his next words, just a sighed breath. “I’m too tired.”

“You’re too tired for what, Mr. Delaney?” I will never forget the moment when Connor Delaney looked at me for the first time. Sunken eyes. Clumped eye lashes. Blue irises so light they almost blended into the whites. Floating pupils that only showed pure desperation.

“I’m just too tired.”

As I stared at Connor Delaney sitting

toward the pillows. I’ve never seen a grown man crawl, let alone a practically naked grown man. I clearly saw his spine rise and fall with each lunge of his knee. It had a slight crook that made his moves look lopsided. When he reached the head, he lay on his back, arms by his side, and waited. Like a pinned frog to be dissected.

I grabbed a bouquet of colorful wires and placed one right below his papery lips.

“This one is for chin muscle movement.”

I taped two wires to the tops of his

boy with hair so blonde it was white sat in front of me. Trevor Lincoln, my first crush. He turned around and smiled a gummy smile, and the next thing I know he started writhing in pain. It started with burn marks on his legs, then scratch marks on his arms, then bruises blossomed across his face. I wanted to help him. I wanted to stop the pain. So I pushed him out of the bus window. I looked down to see his white white hair against the black black asphalt. His face blank. His skull shattered. His brain fully exposed. I woke up not in a panic but in awe.

It was the most lovely thing. I remember how colorful and lit white white up his brain appeared.

Somehow it was pain black black transformed into something lovely. No matter what happened to his outside, his brain stayed intact. That’s how I still picture brains.

Beautiful, almost translucent eyelids. “This one is shimmering orbs of light. for eye movement.” Two on his exposed chest. “Heart rate and breathing.” A tube * * * * * on his nostrils. “Air flow and oxygen saturation.” I methodically went about I sat in Room 404 watching the each body part and listed each purpose, computer screen light up an image of not for Connor Delaney but for myself. Delaney’s brain. Colorful sparkles lit up He didn’t care. I’m not even sure he was his mind’s map. I leaned against the wall listening. But I felt the satisfaction of as I sat up on the bed, knowing that he knowing that each bodily function, each was sleeping inches away on the other breath, each neuron could be observed, side of the same wall. studied, understood.

I watched his still body on the screen.

“Mr. Delaney? How does that feel?”

The easy rise and fall of his chest.

“Like I’m a goddamn fly.”

EOG showed Delaney was still in N1 I began turning on the necessary stage of sleep. switches, watching the charts and beeps I felt the urge to run my fingertips come to life. “Think of it more as a along his arm and feel the skeleton that dream catcher.” housed his mind.

“A. Goddamn. Fly.” EKG showed normal heart activity.

“Sweet dreams, Mr. Delaney.” And Could I feel where his bones had been with that, I padded out of the room, broken? Touch his lightning scars? Knee leaving with a flick of a switch. twitched. Delaney turned on his side.

Muscle activity normal. * * * * * I watched Delaney prop his head on an elbow.

I know the first dream I ever remember EOG spiking. having. I was eight. I dreamt I was sitting Delaney was fully sitting up in bed, on a school bus, waiting to go home. A eyes still closed.

“ I looked down to see his hair against the asphalt . His face blank . His skull shattered . His brain fully exposed.” at the edge of the bed, I couldn’t help but think he looked hollow too. Hollow eyes. Hollow cheeks. Hollow stomach.

Hollow words. I turned away to look at the clipboard. It didn’t say anything.

It didn’t have his information or his records. I just needed an excuse to look away from his stare. I needed to resume my role of technician.

“Okay. So just let me go over the procedure, and then I’ll let you go to sleep. There will be a total of twentytwo wire attachments.” I walked over to the tangle of wires. “This one will measure air flow. This one will measure leg movement. This one -” “I get it. I’ll be all hooked up. I’ll be a goddamn robot.”

“Don’t worry. They’re not as intimidating as they look. So, the important part is this little camera.”

I pointed to a tiny device positioned on top of the television screen. It rhythmically blinked red green red green. “I’ll be monitoring you in a room over. If anything starts to happen, I’ll come right on over.”

Connor Delaney then slowly crawled

The Sleeping Poet | Amy Robinson | Tuesday Magazine | 13

Brain waves dancing.

Connor Delaney slowly swung one leg over the bedside. * * * * * Protocol necessitates intervention when a patient starts sleepwalking to prevent the risk of injury or suffocation from the wires. I’ve never witnessed a suffocation. But I’ve heard other technicians who have. They’ve told me it’s the worst suffering they could imagine. I found that hard to believe.

My hand shook as I tried to swipe the room card. Blinking orange light. I swiped it again. Orange. It took me three fucking swipes before the green light stared back at me. I heard the release of the locks.

I burst into the room to find Delaney standing. Just standing. The only light came from nearby street lamps, creating an illuminated, silver silhouette. His back no longer seemed to cave forward but was straight and dignified. The majority of the electrodes had already ripped off except for a few straggling ones still hanging from his legs like tentacles.

I walked up to Connor Delaney and lightly shook his shoulder. His eyes opened but were dim and glazed over. “Mr. Delaney” I whispered. “Mr. Delaney.” I untaped the few straggling electrodes. I could hear Connor Delaney’s light breathing despite the machines angrily sounding in the background. I placed my arm around his shoulder to guide him back to his bed. He placed his arm around my waist.

We stood there, embracing.

His bare feet shuffled forward. I mirrored. Fingers found fingers, and we clasped hands. He shuffled backwards.

I followed. Forward backward forward.

We slowly danced to the music of beeping and buzzing machines. Forward backward forward. I rested my head against his naked shoulder. I could feel his collarbone swerve as he held me and guided me in his sleep. I was his dream partner, dancing away in a whimsical world. Forward backward sidestep. As I let him lead me with each step and spin, all I could think was that Connor

Delaney was strong. The more we danced the more in sync our steps became.

Delaney twirled me and dipped me and our hips touched as we swayed. I slipped off the black pumps I had been wearing.

Forward backward forward. Bare feet followed bare feet in perfect harmony.

Connor Delaney cupped my face in both his hands. I felt the roughness of his palms that had known real work. I liked the feeling of calluses against my skin. I stared up into his bold face. His eyes continued to stare forward, but I imagined them looking into mine.

Who was that man I had seen earlier?

That crumpled skeleton of a man? I only stared in astonishment at Delaney’s strong, fluid motions as we waltzed toward the bed. He lay down on top of the comforter. Even though the light was dim, I could still see the color in his face and the outline of each muscle. And then he reached over and grabbed three nearby wires. He began to put them on his nose, his earlobe, and his cheek.

“Make me better.”

I took the wires from his hand and gingerly placed them on his body. I could feel the racing of his heart as I placed a green electrode on his neck. I stared at the poet’s lips as he gripped my wrist a little too hard.

— Amy Robinson is a staff writer.

14 | The Sleeping Poet | Amy Robinson | Tuesday Magazine

A Woman Flies in Ist anbul St ella Fiorenzoli Photograph

A Woman Flies in Istanbul | Stella Fiorenzoli | Tuesday Magazine | 15

Barnyard POETRY | JUSTIN WYMER And, in the brume of it, I could have asked, What tells you a star is missing, and would have meant the slant of oil on the peonies, ant-damp, teetering inside the corridors of urinous light etching a cell from the black—placeless, threadwork— and also the reek of tares coming out to water, their coats slick marbling, chunks of it steaming as if spit from the grumble flecking the third and fourth furrow in the waddings of rough velvet overhead, resinous against the outline of jade-greys; and their leaves weal-marks, spreading susurrating lengths into the reflection of a pod like a fiery ear

P ota s s i u m Sq u irrel S te l l a F i o re n zo li Three photographs

16 | Barnyard | Justin Wymer | Potassium Squirrel | Stella Fiorenzoli | Tuesday Magazine

Ruth’s Perfect Cake FICTION | DILIA ZWART

The most beautiful cake Ruth ever made was a crepe cake.

She used a Martha Stewart recipe, assembling 32 carefully prepared crepes (whisked, chilled, flipped delicately on the pan) by layering each one with swirls of cream from her reusable-frosting piper. Then she coated the whole construction with a glaze of heated heavy cream and semisweet chocolate.

The cake only needed to be refrigerated for 20 minutes before serving, but when she brought it home from her cake baking class, her mother wrapped it in plastic and put it in the freezer.

The most beautiful cake Ruth ever made was frozen tasteless.

I came over to her house one evening for a girls-only dessert night, and there it sat, uncut and pristine and unblemished. The glaze perfectly coated the crepes in a chocolaty embrace. Candied hazelnuts sparkled like a tiara.

Whipped cream does not freeze well, Ruth told me.

She hadn’t even attempted to rescue the cake from the freezer. She had accepted it, just like she accepts all her mother’s criticisms, rules, and opinions.

Earlier that morning we had baked for hours, and now our products were skillfully lined up next to the crepe cake. It was all Ruth’s doing: the mini key lime pies cooked in muffin tins and smothered in artful whipped cream roses, a bright yellow Harvey Wallbanger cake (the only recipe I’ve ever known Ruth to prefer from a cake mix), classic chocolate chip cookies almost perfectly circular. Ruth decorated the table along with the usual accompaniments to our meals

at her house—watermelon and dates and iced water with slices of lemon.

When her mother passed through the dining room, she praised Ruth for the beautiful display.

Our giggling younger sisters had already eaten a mini key lime pie each, and several chocolate cookies with milk by the time I arrived late. I sat down next to Ruth, whom I’ve known since the elementary days when we ate our bagged lunches at the one blue picnic table in a sea of brown ones.

No one sat there anymore after you left, Ruth has said many times, with an uncharacteristic edge to her voice.

The Harvey Wallbanger was too sweet but I told Ruth it was delicious. Of course it was. Everything she makes has to be perfect. Like those pictures she drew as a kid. Her mother had us sit in the living room with the arts and crafts box, praising her daughter as she neatly copied the blonde girl out of the magazine, while our brothers were biking or sword fighting outside. Too dangerous, said her mother, shaking her head.

The little sisters and I went in for seconds, while Ruth made a plate of desserts for her mother. The sisters and I nibbled on the key lime piecrust, made with butter and graham crackers crushed in a food processor—the job Ruth gave me this morning, since it was too easy to mess up. I had started pressing the crust into the pie tin, but Ruth redid it. It had to have the right texture and layering, she told me. I shrugged; the crust would be invisible under the batter anyway.

The most beautiful cake Ruth ever made remained untouched.

I don’t know if I want to become a doctor, she responded when I asked her about her classes, holding her glass of lemon water delicately. She’s a senior and her twin brother is already applying to top medical schools. She wants to take a year off and go to culinary school, if her mother supports her.

Nutrition, she mused. Making meal plans for people. Actually, I’ll invent healthy versions of people’s favorite recipes.

I looked pointedly at the crepe cake.

There is no way to make that healthy, it’s all cream and chocolate.

I’m a perfectionist, she admitted. And I don’t like the taste of desserts. That’s how I don’t get fat. I bake them but don’t eat them.

Then how do you know they taste good?

It is consistency. Perfection. That makes the best cake.

I recalled the morning, where she had me practice making the whipped cream roses on a paper plate until I got the angle, consistency, and swirl exactly right. She always measures the weights of the ingredients in grams, even though it consumes more time, because it is more precise and yields a more consistent result. But in the end it’s all about presentation—positioning the icing bowl so that the sugar-orange juice mixture drizzles in careful patterns down the sides of the Harvey Wallbanger.

What will you do if you can’t go to culinary school next year?

She shrugged her shoulders. We shared a gooey chocolate chip cookie, Ruth taking the smaller half.

Ruth’s Perfect Cake | Dilia Zwart | Tuesday Magazine | 17

18 | Escape | Oliver Luo | Tuesday Magazine

Es c a pe Oliver Luo

Stop-motion animation 2011 Vie w from t op lef t t o bot t om r ight

Escape | Oliver Luo | Tuesday Magazine | 19

Defining Blue SCREENPLAY | JACKIE LEONG

Open upon a large expanse of nothingness. There are two white plastic chairs, of the sort one might find in an antiseptic institution.

They face each other. In one sits PRISMA, a young woman in her early twenties. Her hair is long and unruly. In producing this play the colors of PRISMA’S costume are not absolute. The articles of clothing, however, must be multiple, mismatched, and of solid coloring, preferably bright.

In the other chair sits SHIRA, a woman of similar age, who is all in white, and seems to blend into the chair. Her outfit is impeccable in form, very neat, on the fancier side of business casual.

On the wall behind the ladies, a projector screen stands. A bright white spotlight is trained in the center. Both ladies stare straight ahead while talking.

PRISMA: First, I thought we’d start with green.

The spotlight turns red.

SHIRA: Isn’t red first?

PRISMA: Green is my favorite color.

SHIRA: How very optimistic. I wish I could have had the chance to pick a favorite.

PRISMA: You still can, but only after I’m done explaining. Can we go on?

SHIRA: …Fine.

PRISMA removes an odd assortment of objects from her bag: a bottle of perfume, a small Baggie full of grass, a dryer sheet. SHIRA starts at the noise, but holds her steady gaze ahead.

SHIRA: What is all that?

PRISMA ignores her and sprays a copious amount of the perfume in the air. SHIRA’S head inclines upward. She is sniffing eagerly.

SHIRA: Is this green?

PRISMA: It’s fresh, am I right? And clean? It smells like you’re about to cross a field. The great outdoors. A whiff of adventure.

Sprightly. Can you taste the air? Can you feel the leaves?

SHIRA: …I can imagine it.

PRISMA: Hold out your hands.

SHIRA complies. PRISMA empties the bag of grass into the outstretched palms. SHIRA receives the grass like a precious object, raises her arms, elbows wide, as if giving a holy offering.

PRISMA: Are you sniffing the grass?

SHIRA: No. I’m feeling it. Fresh. Grass is green. Is this the smell of green, the color, or green, the notion, or green, the attribute?

20 | Defining Blue | Jackie Leong | Tuesday Magazine

PRISMA: All, I guess. I suppose they come out to be the same.

SHIRA: I don’t know. I think I understand green. Maybe I can get it in contrast.

PRISMA: To the next color?

SHIRA: To the next color.

PRISMA: (A pause. Then: hopefully) Maybe.

SHIRA: (Repeating, half to herself, half to PRISMA) In contrast.

PRISMA: Yes. You can let go of the grass, now.

SHIRA does, overturning her palms so that the grass spills over her white lap, her white shoes, the white floor beneath. It simply sits there. She makes no indication of noticing it.

PRISMA: We’ll move to yellow.

SHIRA: Okay.

The spotlight turns violet. PRISMA hands SHIRA from her bag a large flashlight. She turns it on. SHIRA does not flinch.

PRISMA: Do you feel it? Light warmth, nothing too dangerous or life-threatening. A glowing sort of light, comforting. It doesn’t burn. It spreads. It radiates.

SHIRA: Sunlight. You could have just said it outright.

PRISMA: I like the hands-on approach. It’s better.

SHIRA: Doesn’t sunlight feel the same to everybody?

PRISMA: I don’t know. I couldn’t verify it. Mine is different from yours, as you know.

SHIRA: All the same, if that’s yellow, I understand.

PRISMA: Fine. Fine, if you understand, good. (She takes a deep breath, steadies herself, goes on with a falsely cheery voice.) The thing to remember is that it’s bright. It’s cheerful. It’s not a sleepy warmth. We leave that to other colors.

SHIRA: I guess. She has put her hands on her knees, rubbing them for warmth. In the process, the grass stains her white pants in streaks. PRISMA flaps the dryer sheet in SHIRA’S general direction.

PRISMA: Okay, what color’s that?

SHIRA: Yellow.

PRISMA: Are you sure?

SHIRA: (Resolutely ) Positive.

PRISMA is stuck. She stops flapping the sheet, drops her arm back to her side. The spotlight shudders, as if suffering static, and then goes white.

PRISMA: Why couldn’t it be green?

SHIRA: It’s too bright to be green. Green is crisp. That scent is more warm than crisp.

Defining Blue | Jackie Leong | Tuesday Magazine | 21

PRISMA sniffs the sheet, shakes her head.

PRISMA: Ah…no. No, it’s green. It is most definitely green.

SHIRA: How can you be sure?

PRISMA: I think it is. I’ve seen green. I would know. You wouldn’t, I’m sorry to say. That’s why you’re taking lessons from me.

(She laughs; doubt is starting to get to her.)

SHIRA: Well, I’m just using my lessons. You taught me that yellow’s a very distinct thing from green. You can’t fool me.

PRISMA: I’m not trying to fool— SHIRA: (With an air of finality) It’s yellow.

PRISMA gives up, tossing the sheet at the floor, to which it flutters like a drunken moth.

PRISMA: Fine. We’ll—we’ll move to something different. Say—violet?

SHIRA: I’ve never gotten to see, but my nose has always smelled. I know my nose. And my nose is right.

PRISMA: I’ve seen colors with my own eyes. And my eyes are more right than your nose.

SHIRA: Because you would know. (The spotlight shakes again. Throughout this short exchange, its jutters become more violent.)

PRISMA: Because I would know. (The spotlight strobes for a couple beats, slowly, like a sleepy blink.)

The spotlight is abruptly turned off. PRISMA freezes. SHIRA stands, scraping her chair along the floor conspicuously, even obnoxiously. She faces us.

SHIRA: A World With Four Senses. It’s really quite an easy life. You listen hard, perk your ears and also your nose, and you can go any place you like, I’ve found. You don’t need eyes to see. I feel. I just know. I have a nose like a hunting dog. I can go.

She leans outward, towards us, conspiringly. A wry smile appears on her lips, but it does not reach any other part of her face.

So why did I choose to pursue color? Color used to be like a myth to me. It lurked around the edges, around open doors, closed windows, sat evident in the shoes I bought and the socks I wore with them and the handbags I carried. It was like the key to some level of life I wasn’t privy to. I guess I just wanted a foothold.

I feel sorry for the seeing, or those who have seen. (Gestures to PRISMA). For her, yellow is one absolute thing. A rigid notion.

My yellow is never going to be the same as hers.

I know that I can’t smell color. I know it isn’t the same as seeing it. I knew going into these lessons that there is no substitute.

Somehow, I thought, though, there’s no harm in getting some idea. But, now. I see—well (She gives a little laugh) figuratively speaking. I realize. If my nose has led me this far… (She trails off. She is still staring into space. A few seconds pass; she pulls herself back to the present.)

For now I’d rather just float along in this white world of mine. I’m not lost. I’m never lost.

She sits down again, primly, smoothing her pants and blouse, adjusting her chair. The spotlight flickers on again; PRISMA unfreezes.

She carries on as though there has been no interruption.

PRISMA: Time for another. Are you ready?

SHIRA: Yes. (Beat.) No. 22 | Defining Blue | Jackie Leong | Tuesday Magazine

PRISMA: I was thinking of blue— SHIRA: No need. I’m finished.

PRISMA: But—why—you were doing so well— SHIRA: Spontaneous Cancellation. (Wryly) I came to all four of my senses.

PRISMA: That’s no reason to quit.

SHIRA: I see white. All white.

PRISMA: No. White is the presence of all the colors. Wavelengths. You can’t see any of them.

SHIRA shrugs. And abruptly, with all the grace of one blessed with full vision, she steps from her chair, placing her face at the level of PRISMA’S, plucking the sheet delicately from PRISMA’S hand. There is no blind groping about; she is decisive in her movements, graceful in their execution. This is a realm in which she is fully mobile.

SHIRA: Forget scents. Forget sensations. I don’t care about those. I don’t want it anymore.

PRISMA sits back, contemplating. Her bag of things, deflated, is in her lap; her other items are scattered around: remnants of lessons, fragments of descriptions and cheap easy replacements for a notion of nature impossible to spell into words.

PRISMA is silent for a moment. Then: PRISMA: There must be some way—reason— SHIRA: Colors can’t be forced. Don’t Try. The spotlight flashes red, then blue. Green. Orange. Yellow, violet: the colors click on in succession, in a dizzy loop. They change more frequently until they turn to a white light strobe. It flashes a few seconds, then snaps shut. At the final flash, both ladies raise one foot and bring it definitively down.

SHIRA: Can you?

PRISMA: What?

SHIRA: Try. The first step is to cover your eyes.

PRISMA does nothing. Then, slowly, she removes her scarf and wraps it around her head, first cautiously, then with more confidence.

Derisively, she ties a knot in the front so that the ends hang over her nose.

PRISMA: Everything’s dark.

SHIRA: Dark? Are you sure?

The spotlight is on again—deep, dark red, growing larger, spreading along the pristine set like blood.

SHIRA: What do you see?

PRISMA: Nothing.

SHIRA: Good. That means it’s everything.

Black out all.

— Jackie Leong is a staff writer.

Defining Blue | Jackie Leong | Tuesday Magazine | 23

There are times when she needs to tell herself something, something potent, something believable.

They clog her head like overturned bowls of dust

And this voice she is waiting on, what is it made of?

24 | Untitled | Marjorie LaCombe | Tuesday Magazine

It’s as though the air were made of acid and the words, floating there, are popping like cheap balloons.

spilling people, ideas, places, hopes, and disappointments,

Some people call it nostalgia,

bursts of time that have this surface to them, something tangible, something that can be made real again.

as though they always rested there, as though they were all made out of the same things.

Unt it led M arjorie LaCombe

Film, narrative text, and music http://vimeo.com/44146265

Untitled | Marjorie LaCombe | Tuesday Magazine | 25

“Queered in Every Sense of the Word”1: Sexual Multiplicity in Nicole Eisenman’s

Beer Gardens

NONFICTION | WILLIAM SIMMONS

A m a z o n s C as tratin g C a p tu red Pirat es, 1992 N i c o l e E i s en man Ink on paper 31 x 23 in Image courtesy the artist

Despair and Desire “Last year, when I painted my first beer-garden scene, I immediately wanted to keep painting them, to paint them for the rest of my life. There’s a whole genre of paintings, particularly French ones, of people eating and drinking, and the beer garden seems to be the equivalent for certain residents of twenty-first-century Brooklyn...It’s where we go to socialize, to commiserate about how the world is a fucked-up place…” 2 “I’m a dyke and I love being gay and I love women, but I was born to be an artist, not a female or lesbian artist.”3

Someone who is familiar with Nicole Eisenman’s past artistic practice, exemplified by her seminal work in ink, Castrating Amazons (Figure 1), might be surprised by the sorrow that she presents in a new series of oil-on-canvas beer gardens. On one hand, Eisenman is known for her triumphant, vociferous works that present both a foil to the perceived safeness of her contemporaries and a lesbian voice in an environment that was hostile to such a contribution.

Eisenman’s art has also been seen as a pessimistic backlash to the gung-ho rallying cry of second-wave feminists, whose attempt at unity left many marginalized groups to fend for themselves on the fringe.4 However, in her more recent work, Eisenman proclaims a distinct appeal to a common human condition of sorrow. For a moment, Eisenman steps back

26 | “Queered in Every Sense of the Word” | William Simmons | Tuesday Magazine

from ideals of difference to an assertion of a universal - the oppressive conditions that bring about human misery. In this short investigation, I examine the implications of the shifts within these complex registers of emotion. This is an exploratory venture to present an evocative portrait of an artist and her relationship to paint and issues of identity.

The Beer Gardens: A New Medium, A New Sexuality “Something has got to give, so drink up people; we’re all going down together.”5 Gone are Eisenman’s triumphant female warriors, and in their place is an odd amalgamation of characters who occupy a queer space, rather than a definably lesbian one. To begin, there is a deafening otherworldliness, and Eisenman’s crowd of Amazons becomes a group in flux, captured momentarily in a state of in-between-ness: “My groups used to be more ‘mob-like.’ Now they are people having a good time, but they have reached that tipping point. It’s that moment in the night when the party is at its apex, where you are drunk but you are not going downhill yet. It’s a magical little bubble that only lasts a while before things go south…”6 Biergarten at Night (Figure 2) is marked by the central kiss between an androgynous figure and the embodiment of Death. This act mirrors Eisenman’s remarks that begin this section; Death is at once feared and embraced, terrifying and erotic. No one seems to notice His presence, as if Death is a frequent guest at the beer garden. It is the newcomer that one must scrutinize, as the waiter does to the viewer by confronting the all-seeing intruder who dares step foot in this sacred space. We see the kind of sadness that does not involve screams and tears, a sorrow that produces resignation, eternal stasis, a head slumped back in despair, and deadened eyes that stare blankly into a frothy stein. Nameless faces suffer nameless trials. Yet even in this space, eroticized by Death, there is pleasure of all kinds, such as the tender caress of feet under a table, the confirmation of another human being’s presence, as well as the beauty of a shared final moment at the edge of a precipice, right before the end of days. The use of paint is brutal and tender at the same time; it creates hyperrealism, sparing no one from the staining, at times disfiguring, painterly mark that nonetheless unifies the figures in a whirlwind of passionate despondence and play.

A shift in temporality begets Beer Garden with Ash (Figure 3), which encloses the drunken action within a fence that visually reminds us of the cold world that exists beyond this refuge. Central are the trees with party lights that divide the composition into three parts; one cannot help but think of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ strands of light bulbs that are festive, but ultimately short-lived, as is this itinerant moment that Eisenman describes in paint.7 The party will die out; everyone

will return home to their respective lives, and the beer garden will become empty. The people who occupy it constitute this sacred space, this sanctuary. Without them, without their willingness to shed the trials of the day and engage in this painterly dance, the beer garden is nothing more than a plot of land. The revelers thus bring life, even as Eisenman suggests that that this beer garden is perched on the thinnest of precipices. To this end, the artist once again presents a canvas that is certain only in its uncertainty. Immediately, the viewer encounters an emotionally indeterminate figure (or bouncer?) who guards the visual gateway, much like Manet’s waitress in A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882), a direct reference to the tradition of public revelry that Eisenman cites. With hir piercing blue eyes and sharp features, the person in the foreground is juxtaposed with the entirely featureless shadow to hir right.8 Eisenman’s refusal to situate identity confuses the onlooker who happens upon this party, but it is exactly this effacement that allows for a free, unassuming setting for camaraderie. Moreover, the formal elements of the painting contribute to the paradoxical space. Eisenman illustrates her German Expressionist influence in the “figures [that] simply dissolve into the paint,” thereby emphasizing “how abstraction and figuration can work together” in search of a sensual and transcendental experience.9 Color accordingly functions as both the delineator of distinct bodies and the twine that holds people together, epitomized by the couple to the left of the canvas that seems to become one body.

We therefore arrive at a vital shift in Eisenman’s career and painterly sensibilities. Her renewed focus on paint is certainly apparent inasmuch as paint is shown in its full capacity as an interdependent medium of representation and the destruction thereof, joy and loss, difference and sameness.

The beer gardens embody an indeterminate state: “Deindividuation loosens up normal constraints and people give themselves permission to act in ways they might not normally, or stop thinking altogether.”10 These are identities that are always silenced and emphasized, constantly moving between being lost in the crowd and finding a new sense of self within the confusion. The crowd allows for personal expression, but it is also a fearsome place where people can be swept into a senseless frenzy.

Queerness, Painting, and the Beer Gardens “It’s interesting to differentiate between paintings that have a roadmap and paintings that don’t. What happens when you try to create space without being architectural, only emotional? You get a space that’s really queer, for lack of a better word, a fucked-up kind of space.”11

Both Sillman and Eisenman use the term “queer” instead of “lesbian” to describe the effects of paint in the Beer Gardens. One would certainly not characterize the Amazons as a form of coming out, as coming out connotes a sense of trepidation and inwardness that is exposed, a defiant secret

“Queered in Every Sense of the Word” | William Simmons | Tuesday Magazine | 27

that is brought to light. What the Amazons represent is a blatant assertion of female/lesbian power, completely freed of societal conventions that necessitate the public profession of a previously safeguarded identity. Neither the Amazons, despite their violent assertions of lesbian power, nor the party-goers at the beer gardens present their “sexuality” in traditional ways.

Terminology is thus central, as queerness is an umbrella term; it does not limit the interpretation to any specific identity or form of desire. Queer defies categorization; it is itself the act of undoing of the category of not-queer, and it represents a space wherein binaries have been deconstructed and rejected on their own terms. The new use of the word queer presents a more nuanced story than the purely lesbian mythology surrounding Eisenman’s work.12

Indeed, in the discourse that surrounds it, painting has never been subject to stable binaries, thereby legitimizing the use of the term “queer.” For instance, T.J. Clark goes as far as to say that the advent of modernist painting “means [that gender is] generalized to the point of disappearing, or not being relevant.”13 Where binaries break down and uncertainty outweighs surety, what results is a queer space: “The ‘unthinkable’ [meaning queerness] is thus fully within culture, but fully excluded from dominant culture” when binaries of gender remain in place.14 Indeed, without the distinction between gendered spaces, the need for categories of homosexual and heterosexual breaks down. Judith Butler notes that the production of gender binaries at once creates multiple sexualities and makes them culturally untenable, unless, of course, they are allowed to exist independently of the chokehold of normative gender relations.15 Hidden and explicit within culture, queerness recognizes and denies the frameworks that contain it, as do the beer gardens. If painting is a place where no binaries hold, queerness, then, is at its core. When combined with Eisenman’s interest in collective fear, sorrow, and joy, paint becomes a vehicle for unity in difference and difference in unity, an allaccepting solidarity that welcomes anyone with the interest (or desperation) to step foot into the beer garden. United in their exclusion from society and consummated in paint, Eisenman’s revelers channel the sexual expression of her earlier works into a melancholic, yet still defiant, reminder of the need for refuge from society’s impulse toward happiness, that is, the monolithic vision of happiness often predicated upon masculinist norms.

Looking Forward “Yeah, I wanted to talk about painting.”16

Eisenman continues her critical practice to this day.

Even a cursory glance at her works in the 2012 Whitney Biennial could produce a wide variety of reactions, ranging from disgust to laughter to poignancy. Ever changing, ever reflecting, ever critical, Nicole Eisenman’s work has not only brought to light questions of gender and sexuality, but also the nature of paint itself. It is impossible to conclude with any satisfying answers; in her defiance of explanation, Eisenman poses questions

that are impossible to answer, yet essential to ask. What is the role of the intention of the artist, and, more importantly, the artist’s self-definition? How are historical circumstances inscribed in art, and how do varying media illustrate those circumstances? Where is identity in the medium, and should we even look for it? Is doing so reductive? In this case, these queries open up the possibility for many more, without limiting these works to any single, identity-based interpretation.

It is my hope that I have inspired discussion of Eisenman’s work beyond its “lesbian” roots, and that I have problematized any readings of art that are based purely upon identity politics. It seems that Eisenman completes this in her newest work by striving for coalitions in difference, as well as defiance in the face of perfunctory joy. In ink and in paint, one can find resistance, unity, individuality, and pain.

I would like to thank Leo Koenig, Inc. and Nicole Eisenman for granting me permission to reproduce the artwork presented herein, as well as Professor Ewa Lajer-Burcharth for her innumerable contributions to both this paper and my time in the department of the History of Art and Architecture. Additionally, I am grateful to Nicole Eisenman and Amy Sillman for their kindness and generosity.

Notes 1 Sillman, Amy. “How to Look at Nicole Eisenman.” Nicole Eisenman: Selected Works: 1994-2004. Ed. Mathieu Victor. New York City: Leo Koenig, Inc., 2006. 8.

2 Eisenman, Nicole and Brian Sholis. “Nicole Eisenman.” Artforum (6 September 2008). <http://artforum.com/words/id=21064>.

3 Nicole Eisenman quoted in Hammond, Harmony. Lesbian Art in America: A Contemporary History. New York City: Rizzoli, 2000. 140.

4 For a further discussion of the relationship between lesbians and the narrative of second wave feminism, see the following sources: Radicalesbians, “The Woman-Identified Woman.” Feminism In Our Time. Ed. Miriam Schneir. New York: Vintage, 1972 and Monique Witteg, The Straight Mind and Other Essays. First Digital Print Edition. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992.

5 Berry, Ian and Nicole Eisenman. The Way We Weren’t. Saratoga Springs, NY: The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, 2010. 17.

6 Ibid. 10 7 Rondeau, James. “Untitled (Last Light), 1993.” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies. 25:1 (1991). 84-85, 99-100.

8 My use of the gender neutral is not to impose a transsexual identity upon the figure, but rather to evoke the indeterminacy of the scene I describe.

9 Berry and Eisenman 15 10 Ibid. 9 11 Ibid. 8 12 For an example of the totalizing narrative that has been applied to Eisenman, see Harmony Hammond, Lesbian Art in America: A Contemporary History. New York City: Rizzoli, 2000. 138-9.

13 Clark, T. J. Farewell to An Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism.

New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999. 355-6.

14 Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.

Routledge Classics Edition. New York and London: Routledge, 2006. 105.

15 Ibid. 104-5 16 Berry and Eisenman 13

28 | “Queered in Every Sense of the Word” | William Simmons | Tuesday Magazine

B i e rg a rt e n at N ig h t, 20 0 7 N i c o l e Eis e n man

Oil on canvas 65 x 82 in (165 x 208.3 cm) Image courtesy the artist and Leo Koenig Inc., New York

“Queered in Every Sense of the Word” | William Simmons | Tuesday Magazine | 29

B e e r G a rd e n with A s h , 20 0 9 N i c o l e E i s e n m an

Oil on canvas 65 x 82 in (165.1 x 208.3 cm) Image courtesy the artist and Leo Koenig Inc., New York

30 | “Queered in Every Sense of the Word” | William Simmons | Tuesday Magazine

Churches NONFICTION | KATHRYN REED

We went to church a lot that summer—once a week, for a couple hours at a time. At least it was a lot for me. Your mom, you said, was the reason we did it, but I think you felt something in it, too. For you, there was some comfort in the repetition, the kneeling and standing, even though the churches weren’t the same. I think you liked the feeling of the words that you uttered, the way they were remembered and raced from your mouth. It seemed like they raced to me, like hearing a new language, like you were just trying to get them out. You probably could have said them faster—without the others mumbling along with you.

I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to receive communion. You told me, laughing, after we had sat down.

But I couldn’t not do it the next time around. So I followed up behind you, nodded my head in some form of understanding at the wafer placed on my waiting tongue. No matter how many times you taught me the sounds and the motions, my mouth didn’t seem to remember so well. The priest spoke of sin and forgiveness and I thought a whole lot about where they bought the holy wafers and holy wine. I wondered if there was a bulk discount, whether, if I wanted to, I could buy some sometime.

On your twentieth birthday, your family was going to your favorite church. The priest, you said, talked more of the Red Sox than of religion, and you had wanted me to be there

with you. But we must have fought about the trip we were meant to take to my home later that day. I needed a release from your mother, the pastel colored church walls, and Jesus on display. So we argued on your birthday, and probably the two and a half hours home. While you rushed words between kneeling, I sat in the church parking lot and read alone.

It was the last time we went to church that summer, unless you count the visit to Notre Dame (the line was too long, so we just took pictures outside). Together only in frustration; I guess a lot of things worked out that way. I can’t remember the book, or how to get to the church, really, only that we didn’t go back again.

There are usually Lutheran churches in Tanzanian villages, at least the ones that I’ve been to so far. But this summer some friends were Catholic and not looking for anything new.

The church was on an old plantation, between the sisal and the slave-quarters that, for a while at least, have not been used. The priest was Polish, read Swahili off of a sheet to a congregation that sat in desks from schools. I saw him drunk in town a week later, and he didn’t recognize Bwawani—the name of the village—before or after round two.

There was something comforting about the Polish priest in Bwawani. I think it was the knowing that I had taken myself there, and

thinking of you. And the words, in Swahili, somehow seemed more in that church—the only time we went that summer—that day. Though more what, I still couldn’t say. It might have been that I didn’t rise for communion, or that I wasn’t expected to know the words from the front of the room.

Maybe I just liked the idea that your mother would listen to the same passages, and maybe you, too. I strained to hear the line about forgiveness, had a Tanzanian friend write it for me when we were through. I know it in English and Swahili; the internalization, though, has taken years for me to do.

I’ve been wanting to go to church a lot lately, each time that I pass by. Which one, I guess I’m not specific—as long as it has worn wooden pews. I wonder if I would be going through the motions, or if I would feel something that wasn’t there before.

I stood outside one the other week, tried to feel what was coming from inside. But the congregation must have absorbed the words of the preacher because after five minutes I felt nothing and decided I should move.

And it’s in the discomfort of not going that I’ve found solace; I’m not sure what would be there if I tried.

I’ve been wanting to go to church a lot lately. I guess I’d be comforted by uneasiness, racing words, a box of misfit items—all that is left of you.

Churches | Kathryn Reed | Tuesday Magazine | 31

Homeless ( top) Ideas ( bottom ) Quest ion M ark ( r ight) Ziggy Q Kot chet kov Sculpture

32 | Homeless | Ideas | Ziggy Q. Kotchetkov | Tuesday Magazine

Question Mark | Ziggy Q. Kotchetkov | Tuesday Magazine | 33

Northwest Labs B103 - Lecture Notes NONFICTION | ANITA LO “Declaration of Alma-Ata” 1.

Demanded appropriate technology i.

Criticism of disease-oriented technology ii.

Too expensive or too irrelevant or sophisticated iii.

Many socially centered initiatives/goals rather than purely technical or scientific

2.

Concept of health and research as tools for socioeconomic development i.

Health education ii. Housing iii. Sanitation iv.

Political, social implications

3.

Row in front:

i.

D11 - Macbook Pro open on lap, but taking notes on a separate yellow legal pad.

ii.

D12 - Mac, staring into space while the cursor blinks on his blank “Notes” document.

iii.

D13 - Mac, checking Gmail and simultaneously falling asleep.

iv.

D14 - Pale green spiral-bound notebook, clicky black pen.

v.

D16 - Falling asleep, leaning forward, mouth slightly open. Not even making an effort to pretend to be awake.

4.

My row: i. ii. iii. iv. v.

5.

Is D14 a girl or a boy? Who has a better grade in the class, D16 or E13? What color shoes is D12 wearing?

6.

Does E16 like her roommate? What kind of music does D11 like to listen to, and when? And what country is E13 originally from?

7.

Is E11 a journalist, scientist, or merely an excessively engaged observer for writing this down? Did any of D11-16 or E13-16 notice E11 subtly shifting in her chair to get a better look at what kind of laptop they were using? If yes, on a scale of 1-10, how uncomfortable did they feel?

E16- Mac, typing annoyingly thorough notes and laughing heartily at professor’s jokes.

E15 - Fidgeting with hands, twisting blue ballpoint pen open and closed.

E14 - Writing copious notes on textbook in green ink pen. Clearly has little intention of trying to resell.

E13- Typing on iPad. (but typing what?)

E-11- HP Envy, writing this.

8.

Is voyeurism re: everyday activities disturbing because of the alleged feeling of “eyes boring into the back of your

head,” or is it really more uncomfortable because of the heightened awareness of your own actions?

i. i.e. When someone else is watching you, you begin to mimic that outside party by watching

yourself as well, thus becoming a voyeur to yourself, and corrosively questioning actions and judging

motivations until eventually you are unable to maintain the ability to function?

1.

(As if a three year-old has just asked “How do you spin your pencil around your fingers?”

or “How do you tie your shoes with that special knot?” and you show them the first

few steps, but as you progress you realize that your fingers are awkward and lost and your

hand is small and stubby and ugly, and that actually, trying to watch yourself tie a shoe is

like watching through the eyes of the aforementioned toddler who is watching you.)

9.

Because despite everything that has been said about self-awareness and realization that I Am Alive and Reading This, functioning feels much more manageable and comfortable if said realization is never fully elucidated. Because awareness breeds worry breeds doubt breeds thought; thought engenders discontent spawns discourse provokes wonder incites philosophical 34 | Northwest Labs B103 - Lecture Notes | Anita Lo | Tuesday Magazine

dithering. And very few people and institutions and things have time/extra brainpower for miscellaneous errant neuron collisions such as why do I feel a prickly feeling on the back of my neck or I Exist At This Moment In Time or at least one (1) other person in this world is thinking precisely the same thought that I am so carefully generating right now.

10.

And so every once in a while we have existential encounters like I could be D11 or I could be E14 or even I could be Macbook Pro. Watching them watching you is simultaneously delicious and alarming; it is at the same time a novel perspective and a criticism of essentially every aspect of yourself. But after that, after those strange fleeting out-of-body moments and tingling of fingertips that we miss because we are often rightly obligated to produce otherwise useful thoughts, we inevitably, predictably return to much more important 11.

Opposition to medical elitism i.

Too much urban healthcare in rural countries. ii.

Training of laymen and community members instead. iii.

Increase midwives/shamans/healers/etc.

12.

Criticized for being too broad and idealistic

i.

Eventually reduced PHC interventions to four

1.

Growth monitoring (infants, malnutrition)

2.

Oral rehydration (control infant diarrheal diseases)

3.

Protective/psych/nutritional value of breastfeeding 4.

Immunization, vaccination â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Anita Lo is a staff writer.

Untitled Jihyun Ro

Acrylic and oil on canvas

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Jihyun Ro is a member of the art board.

Northwest Labs B103 - Lecture Notes | Anita Lo | Untitled | Jihyun Ro | Tuesday Magazine | 35

G raffiti (a b o ve ) My N g o c To

Colored Pencil and Marker on Cardboard

Po rt ra i t w i t h N o L ig h t (ri g h t) My N g o c To Acrylic

36 | Graffiti | Portrait with No Light | My Ngoc To | Tuesday Magazine

world atlas POETRY | DEVI LOCKWOOD I am worried I will never know all the places.

I will never know all the places. This worries me.

Unravel my concern. It smells of orange rinds.

These are the goings on about the town: flower petals fall on a naked child sitting feet splayed on the purple carpet of the petals.

I want you to notice what race you just made the child.

On top of the carpet is a room. In this room people chatting watching law and order projected blues and yellows onto the screen. Screen says buy tampax says shave your legs you will shine like a goddess says dangerous people come accompanied by piano trills.

Could it be this easy? A goddess is a place.

Mountains are places. Some mountains carry the names of goddesses like coiled rope on shoulders.

In the mountains there are goats and the goats know their places. I am told there are mountains in the Middle East.

I know you are

a place and to say this means you are your law and you are order. Here are my laws: I do not think when rowing I don’t permit your words to make my ears rush warm out of control. Control is my rule not my exception. You ≠ Control. I’m wondering how I might begin to talk to my mother about love I’m wondering about never knowing all your places all the places you have lived and cried and the room where your mother pushed and cried and brought you here a place a life. Was it a room at all? Was it in fear? Were there others? In the walls I can’t breathe.

If I have a daughter I want her to know the feel of grass (sacáte) and dirt before a doorframe before walls. Barefoot allways. Will you tell them to me (your places) will you whisper Texas into my spine will you draw an outline of your hometown in your fingertips or tongue or both on my back?

— Devi Lockwood is a staff writer. world atlas | Devi Lockwood | Tuesday Magazine | 37

Wa n dere r A b o v e L ak e P owell A n t e l o p e C an yo n D a n i el Yu e Two photographs

38 | Wanderer Above Lake Powell | Antelope Canyon | Daniel Yue | Tuesday Magazine

Mouse Dissection POETRY | STEPHANIE WANG

To dissect a mouse you need to pin it down spread-eagled like a leopard rug and stick needles through four pink palms into the foam below.

The fingers do not bleed nor does the mouse move having been stretched kite-fashion and suffocated.

To dissect a mouse leg you need to hook a sharp scissor under its knee joint and make an incision at the grey or white hide above it.

Again there is no blood and the muscle is pink like a babyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bottom.

To dissect a mouse quadricep you take the hide with thin tweezers and let the silver guide the fur up and over layers of fat. Your scissor blades must cut through the tendon at the knee cap but spare the bone, spare yourself the sight of splintering red marrow like the glistening of blood.

But there is no blood if you are careful and the quadricep comes free like a lumpy petal from the body.

In the end you unpin the four paws.

You wrap it in a paper towel runner and bury it inside a plastic bag. The refrigerator is a cold makeshift coffin. The way the gloves snap makes a ritual clack clack of funeral bells and the muscles sit in clear test tubes that look like urns waiting to be remembered.

Mouse Dissection | Stephanie Wang | Tuesday Magazine | 39

S t i l l L ife M y N go c To Graphite

40 | Still Life | My Ngoc To | Tuesday Magazine

Fragments of the Life of an American Outlaw ESSAY | REBECCA CHEN There are no second acts in American lives.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald In the final scene of Goldman’s iconic film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Cassidy and the Kid rush out of a dilapidated restaurant in a dusty South American town, guns blazing, to face the Bolivian military and certain death. The film, ending at the moment of their desperate charge, lingers but a moment on the last frame before fading out.

Time and distance do curious things to the facts of a person’s life. There remain likenesses— documents—the uncertain memories

of Cassidy at the Wyoming State Penitentiary shows a square-jawed young man looking off to one side. He had been arrested for horse theft. At twenty-eight years of age, face scarred, gaze cautious, he already looks old.

The only other surviving photograph of him, taken six years after his prison stint, captures a very different persona. Surrounded by four members of his Wild Bunch, Cassidy suppresses a rakish grin as he looks in amusement toward the camera, his bowler hat askew. This is the

individual and often did spontaneous philanthropic work. He claimed to have never killed a man. A few of his more astute acquaintances observed, beneath his constant, affected lightheartedness, a steady bitterness toward the “civilizing” of the West.

However, such trivia do not adequately describe an individual who was simultaneously Robert Parker, a troubled young man; George Cassidy, a charismatic outlaw; and Butch Cassidy, the Robin Hood of the American West. Although much has

Cassidy - witty , gregarious , generous, personable - whom Goldman immortalized . But is it a mask ?” “ This is the

of acquaintances—always incomplete, always contradictory. The flow of years preserves, like a single movie still, no more than a fragment of an individual.

Only a handful of cryptic clues survive from the life of the real Butch Cassidy.

There is a haunting, faded photograph taken on a ranch in Cholila, Argentina, with fellow outlaws the Sundance Kid and Ethel Place. The three had fled to South America in 1901 to make an honest living through ranching. Cassidy and the Kid, almost indistinguishable from each other in the grainy image, are sitting outside the home while Place stands between them, ghostlike in a long white dress.

There might be two dogs in the shadows near the chairs. Cassidy’s face is blurred.

Taken a decade earlier, a mug shot

Cassidy—witty, gregarious, generous, personable—whom Goldman immortalized. But is it a mask? Does the wary, cornered man still gaze out from behind that smirk?

Butch Cassidy was born Robert LeRoy Parker, the eldest son of a respectable Mormon family. After leaving home, he adopted the last name Cassidy as a tribute to the outlaw Mike Cassidy, a childhood friend and mentor. Although he preferred to style himself George Cassidy, a brief period of employment in a butcher’s shop permanently stuck him with the moniker Butch. His first robbery was an after-hours break-in at a store, where he took a pair of jeans and left an IOU; the owner nonetheless pressed charges. Despite being hated by many for his criminal activities, he was almost universally liked as an

been lost, splinters of his personality struggle to pierce the veil of time.

An individual’s character, after all, is full of complexities and inconsistencies. Goldman’s Cassidy was a man who could face death with a laugh and a dry quip. This may have indeed been one aspect of Cassidy’s personality in real life, but the historical Cassidy and Kid met an end far different from that of their celluloid counterparts.

In 1905, Cassidy, the Kid, and Ethel Place were forced to abandon their Cholila ranch, having been tracked down by Pinkerton detectives.

Place returned to America soon after for unknown reasons, thus vanishing from the pages of recorded history.

Cassidy and the Kid embarked once more on a life of crime.

According to a single eyewitness,

Fragments of the Life of an American Outlaw | Rebecca Chen | Tuesday Magazine | 41

on the evening of November 6, 1908, Cassidy and the Kid rode into San Vicente, Bolivia, after a holdup of the Aramayo mining company’s payroll.

When approached by the town’s police inspector, the mayor, and two soldiers, the Kid panicked and fired his revolver at one of the soldiers. The two outlaws sought refuge in an empty house while the mayor wired for aid. As more soldiers arrived and surrounded the house, screams and gunshots were heard from within. A captain, entering the house at dawn, found that Cassidy

had shot the Kid and then himself in a double suicide.

What does this mean? Only, perhaps, that he cannot be understood.

Consider— In 1898, a posse pursuing a band of horse and cattle thieves shot and killed an outlaw they believed to be Butch Cassidy. A funeral was held, which a delighted Cassidy, alive and well, could not resist attending. The body was exhumed soon after and properly identified. Cassidy later claimed that he had gone for a lark, to have a good

story to tell his friends. But what did the man behind the mask think, when the casket was lowered into the ground and for a few short days he was no longer hunted? Was it then that the idea came to him to leave the States and begin his life again? Whatever was going through his mind, it is said that whenever Cassidy recalled the event, his lips would twist into a smile as he commented sardonically: Oh! how the ladies wept for him.

They had done what F. Scott said you couldn’t do, be American and have a second act in life.

-William Goldman — Rebecca Chen is a staff writer.

Regresar Bonnie Lei Photograph

42 | Fragments of the Life of an American Outlaw | Rebecca Chen | Regresar | Bonnie Lei | Tuesday Magazine

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