Editors Annelise Furnald arfurnald@loyola.edu
WARNINGS Loyola’s Literary and Art Journal Vol. 8 Issue 2 May 2013
Anthony Medina ajmedina@loyola.edu Design By: Annelise Furnald Anthony Medina Editorial Staff Madelyn Fagan Sarah Karpovich Theodore Darvin Antonia Gasparis Amanda Ghysel Wesley Peters 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 that are either kept on file for the annual writing contest, are available on warningslitmag.tumblr.com, or are discarded. For more information, email warnings@loyola.edu. If works 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°F. Thanks to those who helped make this magazine possible: Education For Life, Doug Evans, Crystal Staley, Ned Balbo, Dan Schlapbach, The Writing, Fine Arts, English, and Communication Departments, SGA, The Greyhound Collective Poetry Revival, Loyola University Maryland, and all those who support the arts and creative thought. 2 | Warnings
Dear Readers, We know we’ve kept you on your toes, but the moment you’ve all been waiting for has arrived, kicking and screaming! We now present to you the much anticipated Spring 2013 issue of Warnings. This issue is sure to keep you on edge with words and images from some of Loyola’s most talented artists and writers. As we have been awaiting the end of the semester (we’re sure you have been, too) we have also been eager to share this exciting work with you. That’s it from us until fall, when you’ll hear from rising senior editors Maddie Fagan and Rebecca Heemann for another actionpacked year with Warnings. Enjoy. Your loving editors, Anthony Medina and Annelise Furnald front cover image by Emily Turner, “Sky’s The Limit” back cover image by Marty Corcoran, “God Bless Jack White and De Stijl”
WAITING FOR ORANGE by Christina Patron
She waited and waited for her seed to peek up from the dense soil. The rain gently came down from the grey sky, later pricking her skin as large droplets. The temperature was dropping quickly, but she couldn’t leave. She was cold, her fingertips blue and numb and smeared with wet dirt. Not yet. The sun rose up over the hill, slowly as it warmed and dried the soil on her hands. The amber heat from the rays chased the shiver out of her bones. She continued to wait. The clouds whipped by overhead and she wasn’t sure why everything was in such a hurry. The sun sank, the moon soared, the stars peppered the night, until the sun rose again. She did other things to keep her occupied while waiting. She sang tunes her grandmother used to sing to her. She prayed, often. She read myths, the legends, the old stories and tales, over and over again. She seemed to know them by heart. The seventh day came. She lay on her back, slowly falling asleep underneath the billowless sky. She woke up once to find a monarch butterfly on the bridge of her nose. She noticed the stained glass wings, luminous with refracted sunlight, finally drowsing off again after he left her. Sun, moon, stars, rain, heat: she waited through them all. The once planted seed woke up from beneath the soil. Revealed was a pursuing green loop, looking for a new world, like a broken child searching for an honest family. She sat on it and waited some more: days, months, years, decades even. A young boy eventually walked by. He saw the old lady and asked her why and how she had climbed to the top of this tree. “I didn’t,” she said, as she reached into her pocket. She gathered her hands in the boy’s. He stretched his palm—in it was a fire-orange leaf from her tree, with two shriveled seeds sitting at its stem.
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ANIMAL, TWICE REMOVED by LEAH ROSENZWEIG The hedgehog is a real fortress: exteriority. But, she is a deceptively indolent thing of simple refinement: interiority. Throughout the days’ peregrinations, I think that I too am a spiny, deceptive little Erinaceomorpha, a turgid yet torpid thing. I am interior and exterior, a mind and some legs with straggly calves, an expansive spirit with wiry hair, split-open-almond eyes, a glance that frightens and wins, and sex appeal that’s incongruous to what’s prototypical of my generation. I am not like the moon rats, who are coarse, yet elusive: see-through-able. I am a Cartesian dualistic Chordata, Animalia I am not hair, I am not removable, I am exterior, a real fortress: rods, pipes, branches. They say the elegant are wanderers: in nature, in foreign lands, and backyards—green grasses. But what they don’t know is we are also secret-keepers; that’s why we have sprouted spines, flanks and impervious quills. We keep our honesty in our backbones. We are two animals-the animal exterior and the animal soul, fortress-like, with a ravenous, stimulated soul. I am a fortress of unyielding spires. Exteriorly I am an inscrutable species of animal, eyes shaded with pricks and dip-died rods, a hider and a seeker, a little animal with a large umbra. But inside: Elegance is abound, surging from nerve-to-nerve. I am lit with breath and genius, an indelible craft, knowledge, an unsatisfied right brain. Penetrable, but not breakable: the hedgehog.
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LEAP OF FAITH
by GREG STOKINGER
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RETURN
by CAROL CHANIK Creaking doors open, floorboards whine under my feet mimicking the cajoling voices in my head. Leave now. Jittery and unsure, this feels like a first meeting, instead of what it is: an attempt at reconnection. I enter as a poor stranger lost in a Sunday open house. I choose a pew in the back, next to a whispering old man. My presence goes unnoticed; I think I see him cry. The house smells of incense, old age, and dusty guilt. A sign reads: All are welcome, cell phones off. This used to be easy, recite 5 lines and go to Heaven. The stained-glass light pours onto me, signaling my turn to speak. My hair stands on ends with the ringing sound of silence. White lilies hang their heads, as black shoes tread an everlasting path. Please, concentrate on this next line: “Are you listening?�
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by Catherine SmĂŠ
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Illuminated
by KYLE JONES
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leap
A YEAR IN REVIEW by SARAH KARPOVICH “I had a good day,” Michelle says to me on the phone. “For once.” It’s always the little things: the funny guy at the coffee shop, the warm bagel, getting to the bus stop on time. I wonder briefly, stupidly, how long the stages of grief typically last. What was this, acceptance? What comes before that? A year before this, she called unexpectedly. We spent the first minute not speaking; we couldn’t. When she finally choked out a few words, I misheard her. Didn’t I? I had to have misheard her. She cried some more. I cried. We hung up. Did I dream this? I couldn’t go downstairs and relay the message because it wasn’t true and wouldn’t that be just an awful story to make up? What did she say, then? The day before the funeral we sat together at her kitchen table. The doorbell kept ringing; family and friends kept arriving, kept sobbing, kept smiling. She smiled gently, offered them food, gave them drinks. She washed dishes. I crawled under the stairs to cry on the phone while she put her mom to bed. In the cafe at Walmart she told me very matter-of-factly that her dad was the one who had pushed, who had motivated her, who had believed in her, as if he were the only one. She didn’t know where to go from here, and I didn’t know what to tell her. I just held her hand. Sometimes, on days when I don’t even talk to her, I’ll get a flash of something and feel the familiar sting at the corners of my eyes. Someone will speak with his accent or say, “Sorry about the mess,” and it’ll set off a silent montage. The navy hat he used to wear, that sly little smile, his silly Halloween pranks, the way he apologized to me every single day for the clutter on the dining room table that we both knew
wasn’t going anywhere. Once he recorded his catch phrases for our friend Julia. “Be cool,” he said. “Stay in school!” I wonder if she still has that old phone, if maybe we could hear his voice today. Then I wonder if we’d want to. Would it send Michelle back to square one? Would it be bitterly beautiful? Would it help? She and her sisters have called me their own since day one, and it’s always been true, but when I go home for holidays I still get to hear my dad laughing in the next room. I get that warm, safe hug. He checks the tires on my car. He makes pancakes and tells the same jokes he’s been telling me my whole life. So we’re sisters until we remember that we’re not, that we don’t have to suffer the same fate. We’re sisters until some chasm opens up and separates us. I can’t cross over, can’t be in her place, can’t bear that pain for her. What can I do, then? I’ve tried all I can think of. I wrote poems, wrote letters, sent flowers, flew to Atlanta, drove to DC, drank and ate and sang. I came to visit when she was alone. I came to celebrate when all her sisters were together. I asked how her mom was doing. Last spring I would have skipped the entire first week of class if it would have helped. Missing two days wasn’t a sacrifice. Ten hours on a bus was nothing. Holding her hand at the cemetery didn’t seem like enough. I wanted so badly to fix it. I wanted so badly to make her better. But if there’s anything that can accomplish that task it isn’t me. It’s just time. I’ve been waiting for today’s call for eleven and a half months. I’ve been waiting to hear her smile. When we’d hang up after a discussion of alternate realities, or a movie about a dead four-year-old, when I’d curl up under my blankets and feel so small and far away, I was always waiting for this. The next call had to be the one. The next day had to be good.
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This Short Story is Too Short by WESLEY PETERS
I met him the day I moved in. His room was down the hall. It still is, though he isn’t there anymore. His story was too short. He stuck out. He had a big grin on his face, which was tanned and sun-worn. His eyes were blue. Somehow he seemed to know me the minute he saw me. I can’t explain how; my story is too short for that. He was loud and always laughing. He was the kind of guy who’d joke about you the day he met you, but he was always laughing with you somehow. Never at you. We all fell in nicely together for a couple of college kids, our floor. We were some kind of community, they said. We still are, though he’s not a part of it anymore. His story was too short. He was different somehow. He didn’t work or study much, and he was always laughing and joking around. Some of us would study at night on Wednesdays and hear him come home ravenously drunk with a blonde girl on his arm. Somehow he’d pick me out of the crowd though, and joke with me as if it was all just a hoax, or some elaborate scam. As if all the work and studying for midterms was just a big joke that he was trying to let me in on. As if bringing home the best looking girl from the bar was just part of the big joke, and it all didn’t matter anyway. I can’t explain the Big Joke; this story is too short for that. We’d eat in the teacher’s buffet during the week. He and I and a few of our friends ate as much as we could, even though we weren’t supposed to eat there. He’d make a joke at somebody’s expense, and we’d all laugh. I don’t know why we laughed so hard. I can’t explain the Big Joke; this story is too short for that. He was funny. He’d tell stories of his high school baseball glory days, stories that were outrageous and ridiculous that he must have made up. As the narrator he never seemed to care much about what was going
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on, even when the game was on the line and he was at bat. It was all a big joke to him. It was always a big joke to him. This was his best quality. I can’t explain it further. This story is too short for that. I’d nearly written him off a few times; he’d go running off with his drinking buddies from the rugby team and blow us all off. He had a way of picking you out of the crowd though. When you talked, he listened, but his eyes said more. They seemed to say, “Tell me more, your whole story- not the abridged version, not the short story. Let me hear the whole thing.” I never got to tell him my story though; his story was too short and I never got the chance. It all went south during finals week. The school called him in, told him they knew he’d cheated and failed him. I remember his last night there, sitting in his room while the Big Joke unraveled around him like laughter falling from the sky. We didn’t talk much, just watched TV. The others weren’t there; they’d all passed their judgment on him. They’d written him off as some kind of big joke. They couldn’t understand– his story was too short to show them. I got up to go to bed and opened the door. When I turned I saw him sitting on his bed, silent. There was no laughing now, just a quiet stare. I said: “You’re a good guy, Joe.” He nodded and said: “Thanks. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a good guy too.” We could have said more, but there was no use. There was no point to it. I left the room, and didn’t see him again. I still eat lunch at the teacher’s buffet during the week. Sometimes I’ll be eating with a few friends, and somebody will crack a joke. We’ll laugh for a few seconds, and then it’ll get quiet. I don’t know what the others are thinking. Then we’ll keep eating, trying not to think too hard about it all. Life’s too short for that.
survival
by annelise furnald Deep breath, hold… diving under.
goose pagoda
treading treading treading barely gripping, hands slipping, they’re watching you. your step your breath your tears– you’re trembling. pressure, pressure, push you deeper, deeper, falling. wings? letting go letting go what will lead me through? sink or sail, win or fail, too late to quit; this is it.
by petra nanney 11 | Warnings
by Catherine SmĂŠ
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Untitled
hospice center reflections by TORI OSBOURNE I, too, dislike that image: death defined by an angel descending towards congealing flesh, angled to retrieve the soul—the compact collection of him— his was, is, will be… his wholeness released from a decaying structure, from decadence, the slowing cadence of existence. I watched his final exhalation: in it was his soul contained? Did a haloed creature swoop to his hollowed frame, grasping at that exalted gas as I sat preoccupied, wiping a tear from my cheek. A tearing away. Cheek, check, still an absence of breath and lack of any shadowy being. I approach his bedside: a goodbye, final kiss, lips meet spotted scalp and I whisper thank you to that vacant cage. I start, turning from the void, still no plucking of the harp, but a slight pressure on my head, the regard of a resting hand.
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GENEALOGY OF A FAMILY by LINDSEY RENNIE Glasgow, Scotland, 1907. The billowing smoke stacks spew gray puffs that rise above the gray, gothic buildings until they disappear. Far from the cursing men shipping on the Clyde the gossiping ladies at the market, so far away from the bright lights of downtown, is a small, stone cottage. One room is home to three, Mrs., still hopeful in their youthful love and optimism boils potatoes in the metal pot over the fire, and nurses their red-cheeked newborn. She prepares a pudding and hears a single cry from Thomas. Mr. slaves over the forge out back until he returns, greets his wife after a long day of work, his black fingers enveloping her waist and his dry lips her lips. Seeing the pudding, gushing cream, dry rice, and raisins, he tells her of his decision to find something better for the family. Together they cry and question, both that night and for many weeks. But do what they know they should, For themselves and for their son. The following month sees him ship off from the Clyde, in search of the Promised Land. Alone at first, but the clan joins Mr. soon enough, as they begin the new lives of foreigners in a strange land. Glen Burnie, Maryland, 1934. On the farmer’s fruitful land in a rented shack, Thomas holds Catherine’s hand, intertwining each of his fingers with each of hers and praying together that their child arrives safely. Another son brought into the clan. Though he is no doctor, Thomas wipes Catherine’s clammy forehead, unaccustomed to seeing his wife as pale and transient as a ghost. Coaching her breathing, in and out, in and out, Thomas starts to hum his wife a song from his homeland. 14 | Warnings
You take the high road, and I’ll take the low road. He always wanted to learn an instrument, but as he sings he watches the muscles in Catherine’s face relax, putting her to ease. Hours later, he holds their son as his mother sleeps. Together they look out the window, across acres of planted fields and a setting sun that turns the crops golden. Back to work tomorrow, he thinks, And you have a life of hard work ahead of you son, William. Glasgow, Scotland, 2013. She never knew her great-grandparents but was blessed to know Thomas, her grandfather, for the first eight years of her life. Cigars and old book smells remind her of him. Twelve years after his death, she has returned to the land he left as a child, a day she has imagined since she heard stories of the cottage on her father’s knee as a girl. So many years ago, but she must try to discover more than the little she knows. Sitting down at a pub at the exact spot where the little cottage used to be, trying whisky for the first time like a true Scot. The man behind the bar is wearied, she sees in his wrinkles, but has led a happy life, she sees in his smile. “Sir, did you ever know anyone by the name Rennie, in this area? She asks with hope, and waits. “Personally, little lady, I did not. But I know my grandparents did, many years ago.” She leans forward on the bar stool, setting the whisky down. “Were they merely acquaintances or anything more? Do you know their names?” “To be honest, dear, I don’t think I ever knew their first names. The only memories I have are those of my grandparents. Mr. Rennie would go quail hunting with my grandfather and Mrs. often came into the family bakery with the little one. My mother was young then, too. One story, though, that I have heard many times, was of the day Mr. Rennie left to find his family a new life. My grandparents stood on the dock, with my mother, Mrs. Rennie, and the baby, waving goodbye and doubting they would ever see him again. And they never did.” 15 | Warnings
“Will it make me something? Will I be something? Am I something? And the answer comes, already am, always was, and I still have time to be.” –Anis Mojgani