WARNINGS
Simplicity
“Every time I write, every time I open my eyes I’m cutting out a part of myself to give to you. So Shake the Dust, and take me with you when you do...”
WARNINGS
Editors
Loyola’s Art and Literary Journal April ‘12 Vol. 7 Issue 2
Samantha Smith scsmith@loyola.edu Annelise Furnald arfurnald@loyola.edu Design By Samantha Smith Annelise Furnald Editorial Staff Madelyn Fagan Rebecca Heemann Marisa Massaro Kathleen McGowan Petra Nanney Sarah Karpovich Christopher Sweeney Warnings is published periodically. All rights reserved. All content, unless otherwise noted, is the property of the author(s). Warnings welcomes and considers unsolicited manuscripts and electronic submissions are either kept on file for the annual writing contest, are available on warningslitmag.tumblr.com, or are discarded. For more information, e-mail warnings@loyola.edu. If works contained herein denoted as fiction or poetry bear any resemblance to actual events, locations, or persons, living or dead, it is entirely coincidental. Store in a cool, dry place not to exceed 72 degrees F.
Thanks to those who helped make this magazine possible: Education for Life, Doug Evans, Crystal Staley, Lia Purpura, Dan Schlapbach, The Writing, Fine Arts, English, and Communications Departments, SGA, The Greyhound Collective Poetry Revival, Anis Mojgani, Loyola University Maryland, and all those who support the arts and creative thinking.
Dear readers, The end is near! As all of those things that we seemed to have so much time for loom at us faster than Leo can shout “iceberg” (Titanic reference? yeah, we went there), we can’t help but anticipate the end of another glorious year at Baltimore’s finest Jesuit institute of higher learning. Whether this means you’re looking forward to a summer of straight chillin’ or a soul crushing search for internships and employment, there’s no doubt that the end of one chapter leads us straight to another. But before things get too crazy, take a second to get back to the basics with us. No unnecessary confusion, no extra complications, and no added preservatives: only the good stuff. Our reflective contributors break things down for us with a collection of poetry, prose, art, and photography. Staff writers also help us simplify with K McGowan channelling childhood, Rebecca Heeman travelling into a future of the darker side of “simplificity” and Chris Sweeney capturing a snapshot of one man’s life. So as the weather warms, take it easy, kick off your shoes and read on! And we know that if anyone could use a dose of simplicity, it’s our graduating seniors. Congrats and good luck to senior staffers K, Marisa and Sam as you move forward from Loyola! Don’t get too stressed out! Your devoted editors, Sam Smith and Annelise Furnald front cover: Alex Metter back cover: Samantha Pessognelli
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by Kate Marshall
Simplicity by K McGowan
If I were older, everything would be easy. I would be in school like my big brother and I would be making friends and learning to like the new place we just moved to. If I was older, my body would be bigger and I’d be able to pump my legs on two wheels instead of four. I’d be able to make it up even the steepest part of the hill, and, if I were older, I wouldn’t be the least bit afraid to ride back down. If I were older, I could do everything myself. I could walk up the street to get ice cream everyday, and no one would have
to hold my hand or pull me out of traffic. I could write my very own letter to Santa, instead of having my mom write it for me, and I could tell him that what I really wanted was to move back to New York, besides just a razor scooter. If I were older, I would tell my brother that I detest his pedantic and insensitive manner…instead of hitting him with my weak little fist and crying to mom and dad. But if I was older, my punches would actually hurt. If I were older, I wouldn’t cry to my parents because I’d be able to tell them I was depressed,
lonely, anxious or scared. And if I were older I’d be able to thank them for everything I’ve been give because I would know that every kid doesn’t get to grow up like I do. If I were older, I wouldn’t be afraid of the dark. I would sleep with my closet door open, I’d go down to the basement by myself, I’d swim out until I can’t touch, and I’d ride the biggest rollercoaster in the park. If I were older I wouldn’t have a hundred fears anymore because I’d only have one like my mom and dad: old age. 3 | Warnings
Growing Pains by Kate Tafelski
Growing up is getting motion sickness on a swing set. It’s when play-doh smells bad, and the idea of eating glue is nonsensical. It’s the day when swimming does not equal bathing. When you are a grown up, you don’t pick a book just because the main character has your name, and your morality code is not the lesson that day from Arthur the Aardvark. Growing up is drinking coffee, shaving legs and plucking eyebrows. Making time to exercise and worrying about food groups. When halloween costumes become slutty, instead of innocent. When baby talk becomes annoying, instead of cute. And when picking your nose, and throwing fits and crying in public become unacceptable. Growing up is realizing that cooties aren’t the worst disease one can catch, and that people don’t live forever. While children envy the old, the wise, the skilled, the professional, It is really us grown ups who are jealous of the children and the time they have left. We longingly stare at a baby pool, a dress-up gown with matching tiny high heels, a miniature motorized monster truck, Wishing we still fit into its youthful size. Wishing we still fit in our Parent’s arms. Wishing it would all go back to when the world was a great, wondrous, adventure, waiting to be discovered. Instead of the big, daunting, terrifying mountain life becomes, too high to be climbed, with crevices that twist your ankle and slippery rocks that cause you to tumble. Wishing we could still Make Believe everything is okay. 4 | Warnings
How Many Licks by Rory Nachbar
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by Kelly Gieron 6 | Warnings
The Big Bang by Tony Levero
The days narrow, And the hoarfrost settles, White and crunchy on dead grass. Trees cut a naked swath against a dim horizon, Above which the Sun begins its slow, Cold, Reluctant, Winter climb. The Earth tilts on its axis, Away from the Sun’s warmth. They say the Big Bang just shot out star-stuff, Every which way. I guess enough particles of it, Paused and interacted with each other just long enough, And in just such a way, That I’m standing here, A buzzing cacophony of star-stuff. Soon they’ll bore of their association with one another, And continue pinging their separate ways, As the universe expands. So what then is love or hate? But arbitrary electrical firings of synapses in the brain. Far be it from me to impose my hopes and dreams, On those poor particles. Carry on your way star-stuff. Speed on in your casual chaos.
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by Alex Metter
The Aliens
by Rebecca Heeman The future seems to be entwined with ease. simpler faster! better? Recently, I, too, have been sucked into the vortex of circuitry and livewires. There is a white brick sewn to my hand, and it’s taken over my mind like a pincer parasite from some 80s sci-fi flick. The other zombies around me react to simple dings and tones as if they are indications of something of actual significance. This brick is not my lifeline! I’ve lived about a thousand lifetimes so far and I’ve seen where this one is going. We are all immortal, I’ve found. And this is our curse. 8 | Warnings
One Stop Before Union Station by Christian Rees An empty passenger train screams by hurling supersonic pings, flashes of sparks and subterranean flame, a blind tunnel worm with a reflective hide, blank panes, a hot dark gut, a hollow belly; we climb through its shattered bulk.
by Mary Holmes 9 | Warnings
by Alex Metter
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Greyhound Collective Poetry Revival Spotlight
Empty by Sarah Nielsen the way the house feels with every closed door without an open window how sometimes vacancy ultimately leads to isolation  the way a wine glass looks as it falls off a kitchen table almost in slow motion before shattering on hardwood floor  the way an eye of a hurricane must feel silently submitting to the need to destroy
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Flight Patterns by Carol Chanik In years past, I began to study the flight patterns of the common male swallow. Wings, wind, and all. For warmer weather they will fly away south, when the winter comes and ice freezes the soul. “Keep things simple” he suggested, and I said “Okay” Coastal wind touched my lips like feathers and the stars, oh the deceitful stars, made me say “Yes, let’s keep things light”. Drunk on sweetness from summer air, hadn’t I realized how heavy gravity is, pushing my skin, my organs, my very human body into the ground? North I stay while the birds leave, as did a swallow I knew. I’d fly away as easily, I thought, if my bones were hollow too.
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by Gabrielle Caponigro
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by Mary Holmes
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Living by Chris Sweeney This morning is one of those mornings when he is caught by his own reflection, locking eyes with himself in the bathroom mirror. The longer he stares, the less his eyes seem to belong to him. They become bright globes that occupy their own universe. If he kept this up long enough, he might be able to discover the source of all life. Each second that the deep, black space in his eyes engages itself brings him closer to the totality of all that exists. But he begins to feel empty inside, as if the self were disappearing. Breaking free from this illusion, he turns both the hot and cold knobs an equal rotation and plunges his face into the sink. Upon applying water to his face, his fingers find themselves behind the ears. Eyes closed, he traces the veins and bumps in this mountain range with his index fingers, rivers of warm sink water running down toward his chin. When he picks his face back up, his eyes taunt him again in the mirror, giving way to the idea that
there is something he does not know, some key to existence that he lacks but might not even be able to bear were he to obtain it. He turns off the water and heads downstairs. Quiet inside the house. The air is thin and lifeless and as he walks down the stairs, he feels no obligations, no laws governing his existence. The floor creaks in reaction to his step but it makes no promise that it will creak again on the next. His coat hangs by the door, his keys sit on a table below. The sight of them makes him wonder if he could exist anywhere else in the world. Could he be the same person in a different house, different coat, different keys. If he opened the door to find a world unfamiliar, would he still know himself, would his eyes speak to him in the same way they do now. The sounds of the cosmopolitan world seep through the edges of the door frame. He loses the hope of stepping into a different reality. But he opens the door
regardless, believing that it still may be possible. Light and sound push their way into the house like putty over a crack in the wall. He steps out the door. The porch sits a few inches lower than the threshold and as his feet dip down toward the warped wood, it feels, for a brief moment, that he has stepped off the edge of the Earth. But he survives the fall and walks carefully down to the sidewalk to find, with some disappointment, a familiar world: cars, noise, smoke, time, other people. The Earth greets him with a red sky speckled with black birds flying in no particular formation. The air outside is alive with biting wind and it paints his ears pink. As he looks at the street along which he is about to walk, he sees dozens of people walking up and down, carrying newspapers, briefcases, coffee. They make no notice of him. He walks forward, makes a right turn, and enters the flock of individuals with somewhere to go, somewhere to be.
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“...so when the world knocks at your front door clutch the know tightly and open on up, running forward into its widespread greeting arms with your hands before you, your fingertips trembling, though they may be.� - Anis Mojgani