West 10th 2010-2011 by West 10th

2010â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2011

new york university college of arts and science

2010 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2011

Contents

Editorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Note

An Interview with Zadie Smith

A Poem by Henri Cole, Guest Contributor

Contributorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Notes

Poetry Vanessa Victoria Volpe

Naming Ceremony

Malarie Gokey

And I Hold On 10

Julia Catalano

Departure

Eric Kim

Abilene 14

Husayn Carnegie

Why I place pictures of myself everywhere I go

Maya Lowy

Will you droop your spine to hear me speak, like I am a new sun?

Amanda Levendowski

The heat did things to us both

Nathaniel Cabral

The Passing of Winter

Cate Mahoney

Vincent washes his brushes under water

Andrew Colarusso

Ensifera; p. 36

Cynthia Allum

Mounting

Alice Jerman

Wintering Over

Cassidy Havens

Paedophobia

CONTENTS

9 11

Galina Arnaut

You and I

Joe Bussiere

Excerpt from “[Lightning]” 69

Sam Selinger

Unreliable Narrations of Three Ansel Adams

Photographs

Variations on a Window, Late November 72

Mimi Amado

Playgrounds 74

Josh Cabrido

forever lov(n)eliness 76

Brooke Wade Murphy

Summer Haircut 87

Prose Jonah Greenstein

The Morbidly Obese Sheep

Ben Miller

Eight Movements

Carol Cho

To Be Taken WIth a Grain of Salt

Conor Burnett

Philatelist

CONTENTS 3

Art Michael George

Untitled Photograph 5

Nina Culotta

Truck Rio Grande 12

Ken Volk

Untitled Photograph 13

Nina Culotta

Dakota 23

Sarah Schneider

TV 26

Jenna Spitz

Modena 28

Drew Mckenzie

Untitled Photograph 32

Ken Volk

Untitled Photograph 33

Katrina Pallop

Timberly 40

Michael George

Taylor 46

Michael George

Addison 47

Ken Volk

Untitled Photograph 52

Mallika Vora

Danny 53

Jackie Russo

Untitled Photograph 56

Dylan Sites

Untitled Photograph 67

Michael George

Untitled Photograph 68

Sarah Schneider

Lil Man 70

Ken Volk

Untitled Photograph 78

Dylan Sites

Untitled Photograph 79

Sarah Schneider

Deer 85

Jenna Spitz

Untitled Photograph 86

Charlotte Hornsby

Best is yet to come 93

Sarah Schneider

Ghost 94

Sarah Schneider

Soldier

CONTENTS

(cover art)

MICHAEL GEORGE, UNTITLED

GEORGE: UNTITLED

Editorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Note West 10th is one voice, composed of the voices of many. We represent New York City, we represent the places and the people we come from, we represent each other and also the distinct life that each of us leads. Above all, however, we are a generation structurally akin to a collage; defining moments, both tragic and to be celebrated, have seemingly arrived from every angle. Every street corner or avenue offers a separate affirmation, a separate indictment, of us young folks. While we stand at the center of our lives, who we are comes rushing at us from the entire perimeter. Often we are overwhelmed, we hunch and drag our feet, a muddled amalgamation of things we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t quite know. West 10th is a humble undergraduate literary journal, but it is also a space in which the trembling, beautiful monster of our generation may rear its shaggy head to sing its song. Now in our fourth year, West 10th continues to build itself, opening this space further and further. We are indebted to those who came before us, into whose labors we have stepped. Others will come after us, as well. Writers and artists will continue to be born, to interrogate ourselves and others, and to form communities, in which we may speak honestly to each other, may see each other clearly. We are young, and we honor our youth. Thank you to Dean Matthew S. Santirocco, Deborah Landau, Jessica Flynn, Scott Statland, Matthew Rohrer and Darin Strauss, my wonderful Managing Editor Liora Connor, to Henri Cole for his poem, to Zadie Smith for answering our questions, to Laura Stephenson for her tireless work and invaluable help, and to the entire editorial board for their hard work. Finally, thank you to everyone who submitted to West 10th, published or not, for your courage and your generosity. Soren Stockman

EDITORâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S NOTE

Naming Ceremony Vanessa Victoria Volpe I will die at seaon the boat I found in grandfather’s yard its little strips of paint bending backwards like marigolds to the sun. He said “I’m much too old to sail,” elevated its rusty neck, propped it up on cedar blacks. It was like lying down. I said, “today I saw the heart of an elephant in a big glass box” he rubbed his hands and died and I carried the boat to the water.

VOLPE: NAMING CEREMONY

And I hold on Malarie Gokey The lions in front of the New York Library are trying so hard to remain dignified with pigeons on their heads. I am trying to avoid smiling at the group of fencers gathering outside. They are strapping on straight jackets and putting on masks. Concealment is elegance, an art I am trying to learn. My teeth are naked and white as invitations. Strange men write their names inside me so I cannot forget them when they leave. He reaches for my hand and I let go. And I let go. He lets me go. And I hold on. And I hold on.

G O K E Y: A N D I H O L D O N

Departure Julia Catalano I listen to the chime of jars shattering against the windows of a freight train to Barcelona carrying weathervanes and â&#x20AC;&#x201C; scallion, it will make you beautiful, she said.

CATALANO: DEPARTURE

NINA CULOTTA , TRUCK RIO GRANDE

CULOTTA: TRUCK RIO GRANDE

KEN VOLK, UNTITLED

VOLK: UNTITLED

Abilene Eric Kim High-strung, lanky from an aversion to red meat, Joe Abilene barely passed grade school. Dys lexic. Come junior high, hardly ever unbuttoned his burnt umber eyes from the ground, threw up from anxiety when confronted. But kicked through biology with ease, liked chickens a whole lot. Loved to fish. On a dry day, he and his father could hike out to the small forest in their backyard, catch a few browns in the lake, fry them up for dinner and call it a night. Saved Bertie the trouble. A meager kitchen they had built together with hickory cabinets and a cramped oven, barely a home. If the air was right, crisp, the ground incubated the carrots in their garden until they were the size of horse knobs. Harvested well, popped up like sweet daisies. On a dry day, Bertie could shred them and pop them into cakes, throw them into brown bags for Joe before the school bus arrived. If the air was wrong and wet, cream cheese spoiled, sediment washed away and unblanketed the carrots, left them to turn bitter.

KIM: ABILENE

Such was the case with Bertieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s second child: left the oven before it was done, four months too soon, for months to rot in the ground somewhere before melting into soil.

The Morbidly Obese Sheep Jonah Greenstein “Everyone here is collectively over-excited about things that aren’t exciting at all.” The morbidly obese sheep was standing with the small sheep near the pasture fence. Around forty other sheep stood in the grass at the other end of the pasture. Sheep bleated in an unenthusiastic manner. “Do you think we will ever do anything besides stand in the grass?” bleated the morbidly obese sheep. “I do other things,” bleated the small sheep. The morbidly obese sheep turned its head to the side. Across the pasture the tall sheep chased the skinny sheep. “It seems like we’ve just stood in the grass every day since I got back. We don’t even stand in other parts of the grass.” The small sheep looked at the morbidly obese sheep’s eyes with an earnest expression. “I stand in other parts of the grass. Everyone stands in all the parts of the grass. You just don’t because you eat crabgrass and crabgrass only grows right here. No one else eats crabgrass.” The morbidly obese sheep ate some crabgrass. “Why does no one else eat crabgrass? I didn’t know you stood in other parts of the grass.” “I go stand with everyone else at night. All you do is sleep all night. No one else eats crabgrass because it is highly addictive and most sheep don’t enjoy the taste.” “I enjoy the taste.” The morbidly obese sheep made a confused gesture with his tongue. “You are probably morbidly obese because you eat so much crabgrass,” bleated the small sheep. The morbidly obese sheep looked at crabgrass growing under his hooves. The morbidly obese sheep looked at the sky.

GREENSTEIN: THE MORBIDLY OBESE SHEEP

“I feel like the other sheep watch me with condescending faces when I eat crabgrass.” “That’s because the other sheep do watch you.” The morbidly obese sheep turned his head slightly in the direction of the other sheep and then stopped as though afraid. “I tried to stop eating crabgrass but I keep eating it because it is highly addictive. Why don’t you go stand in the other parts of the grass while I’m awake. I would go with you. I feel lonely.” “You told me you felt angry when you looked at the other sheep. You bleated at me. You bleated, ‘All of the other sheep are either boring or prohibitively strange.’ You told me you didn’t want to have to hear them bleat anymore. You said they sounded stupid and you didn’t want to remember how stupid you also sound when you bleat. You said you didn’t want to sound like the other sheep do when they bleat. You said you didn’t want anyone to hear you.” “I feel lonely. You are my best friend. If I didn’t spend every day in the same pasture as the other sheep I wouldn’t care as much that they stare at me.” “You told me they looked like they were thinking, ‘Why are we standing so close to each other?’” “If other sheep saw me outside of this pasture they wouldn’t mind that I eat crabgrass. They wouldn’t have a herd of normal sheep to stand close to instead.” “The grass is always greener on the other side,” the small sheep bleated in a sarcastic manner. The morbidly obese sheep bleated, “That’s not funny. Let’s escape together. Tomorrow morning,” and the small sheep bleated, “Okay.” “At sunrise,” bleated the morbidly obese sheep. The next morning the morbidly obese sheep woke at noon to the sound of a team of construction robots building a fence for a new, adjacent pasture. The morbidly obese sheep viewed the mechanical activity with a high

GREENSTEIN: THE MORBIDLY OBESE SHEEP

level of comprehension. The morbidly obese sheep and the small sheep stood by the fence and watched the robots work. The other sheep were bleating. The tall sheep was chasing the skinny sheep still but the skinny sheep wasn’t there, leaving the tall sheep in a state of disorientation and unrecognizable depression. The tall sheep seemed incapable of blinking its wide eyes. It kept running in circles. The other sheep were running too, and bleating loudly. “Remember that time humans discovered that our intelligence was equivalent to theirs and a bunch of important sounding people wrote a bunch of articles about it and talked about it in televised meetings in expensive hotels,” bleated the morbidly obese sheep. “And then they stopped caring and started cutting off our fur again and everyone came back to the pastures,” the small sheep bleated. “Yeah. That was funny.” “I think history is boring.” The morbidly obese sheep ate some crabgrass. “You shouldn’t eat so much crabgrass,” bleated the small sheep. “Why are you telling me not to do the only thing that makes me feel happy? Telling me not to eat crabgrass is like specifically telling me to live every day fearing eye contact, and to become disengaged with everything that other sheep have always told me is worthwhile. Crabgrass fixes my problems.” “You didn’t talk like this before you ate crabgrass. Did you even have problems before you started eating crabgrass?” “I don’t remember.” The morbidly obese sheep couldn’t remember a lot of things. He had been taken to the city to participate in a contemporary art exhibition featuring social commentary on the “intelligent sheep issue.” It had mostly consisted of sheep standing in dirt on an art museum floor instead of standing in grass in a pasture. Since leaving the pasture, everything felt like a blur, like he hadn’t even been there. He hadn’t been there when his mother had visited him in the city. He hadn’t been there when she left, either. He

GREENSTEIN: THE MORBIDLY OBESE SHEEP

had stood on the street corner with a million things he wanted to bleat, but instead stood there silently. He could not bleat. He had started to cry the minute she turned and walked away, and as much as he wanted her to notice, he had concealed his sorrow. She had been assigned to a new pasture and they would not see each other for a long time. He could remember not wanting his mother ever to leave, but could hardly remember the moments when she had been there with him, and all of this made him want to be a lamb again. The morbidly obese sheep wanted to be a lamb again. “You never ate crabgrass before you went to the city,” the small sheep bleated. “What happened to you there?” “I loved it,” bleated the morbidly obese sheep. “The city isn’t slow and inconsequential like the pasture. Glowing concrete towers above you and each day it is blatantly clear that you are alone in this world, and – as if to prove a point – you could be killed at any moment. You are constantly forced to reckon with the fact that you’re either the best or you’re nobody, and even if you are the best, people will eventually forget about you.” The small sheep looked at the morbidly obese sheep. “Is that what the art museum was like?” “Everyone just stared at me. And the other sheep. On the day that admission was free, a homeless person came in and everyone stared at him, too. I got bored a lot. One day I made hoof prints in the dirt a lot of times, I was so bored. Someone saw it and thought it was ‘brilliant.’ They said the repetition ‘dissolved the individual significance’ and then allowed the piece to ‘transcend to a more universal importance.’ I bleated, ‘What piece. I am just really bored and this is dirt,’ and then he wrote an article about it or something and eventually they sent me back to the pasture.” “When we escape we should go to the city,” the small sheep bleated. “I don’t know why we would go anywhere else. We will escape tomorrow.” The next morning the morbidly obese sheep and the small sheep stood and watched the continued construction of the adjacent pasture. “Do you think they are bringing more sheep for the new pasture, or are

GREENSTEIN: THE MORBIDLY OBESE SHEEP

they going to split us up?” bleated the morbidly obese sheep. “I don’t know. Probably both.” “I have an idea for an art exhibit once we get to the city.” “Are sheep allowed to create art?” “I don’t think so. That’s part of the appeal.” “What is the idea?” “The staff of the venue continually set up for a performance and play sound checks through speakers and test the lights but there is no performer. Everyone just sits there and stares and nothing happens and it’s their own fault.” “How come you don’t roll in the dirt anymore?” The morbidly obese sheep lowered his head. “It seems pointless,” the morbidly obese sheep bleated. “You used to enjoy it a lot.” “I used to do it a lot but I also used to be clueless. I was happiest when I was clueless.” “The tall sheep still rolls in the dirt.” “Everyone loves the tall sheep and everyone watches him and smiles when he rolls in the dirt. Nobody watches me. It doesn’t make a difference if I roll in the dirt or not,” the morbidly obese sheep bleated, looking slowly – without moving his head – at the dirt area of the pasture. “Do you think they are going to divide the sheep in this pasture?” “Maybe.” “How do you think they will decide which sheep go where?” “I don’t know.” “I have another idea for an art exhibit. The staff of the venue set up chairs for an audience on both sides of a curtain. Both audiences think they are looking at a stage, but when the curtain is drawn, they’re staring at each other.” The morbidly obese sheep woke earlier than he could ever remember waking. Dew on the grass hadn’t evaporated yet. The morbidly obese sheep looked at the crabgrass. It seemed very wet. The morbidly obese sheep

GREENSTEIN: THE MORBIDLY OBESE SHEEP

didn’t see the small sheep, and observed the true solitude of his existence without his best friend. The morbidly obese sheep thought about bleating as a means of locating the small sheep. The morbidly obese sheep took several minuscule steps within the familiar part of the grass. The other sheep seemed distracted to some degree. The morbidly obese sheep laid back down with firmly shut eyelids, but could not sleep. The morbidly obese sheep heard sheep bleating from a new direction. He looked into the new pasture and saw new sheep along with some sheep he recognized. The small sheep was with the new sheep. The sheep bleated at each other from each side of the fence. The morbidly obese sheep bleated, “I knew this was going to happen. We need to escape this pasture. These pastures.” The small sheep bleated, “The new sheep say the humans use adjacent pastures when they are going to slaughter sheep for eating. They are going to help our side escape tomorrow morning. Come escape with us. No crabgrass today, we leave at sunrise.” That night the morbidly obese sheep did not sleep. Eventually the sun rose again. The morbidly obese sheep knew he had failed. It didn’t matter how late he stayed up, the new day started without him. The morbidly obese sheep understood he was not physically well-proportioned enough to escape. The small sheep bleated from the other side of the fence. “We are leaving now. Climb the fence. Dig under the fence. Escape with us.” “I can’t do it.” “Crabgrass.” “I couldn’t help it.” The morbidly obese sheep had a million things to bleat but did not bleat. The small sheep slowly backed away from the fence. The morbidly obese sheep bleated. “Once, back when humans used roads, a couple walked by the pasture and stopped to lean on our fence. The girl said, ‘Aren’t you glad we don’t live inside fences like this.’ Right in front of me. I couldn’t believe it. I bleated, ‘This is someone’s home. I don’t see you leaving the planet very

GREENSTEIN: THE MORBIDLY OBESE SHEEP

often.’ They didn’t listen. Later he broke up with her right there and I had to listen to them for like an hour. I kept bleating, ‘Stop,’ and, ‘This is someone’s home,’ but they didn’t listen. I bleated a lot. I just think you should only have to be around people you like, and you should get to be around them when you want.” “Why did you tell me that story?” bleated the small sheep before walking away for the last time, leaving the morbidly obese sheep abandoned for the rest of his life. The morbidly obese sheep said, “Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa,” and rolled in the dirt alone. u

NINA CULOTTA , DAKOTA

CULOTTA: DAKOTA

Why I place pictures of myself everywhere I go Husayn Carnegie On Tuesdays, my father sharpens knives. One of many oddities delaying our american assimilation. The neighbors, whose bathroom overlooks our kitchen have had many uneasy stools eyeing Charles decrease the friction coefficient between thirteen points of steel and cubes of curried goat. Jimmy Cliff plays as he whets each blade, but how are they to know itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not just bass or probably voodoo thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shaking all the windows and making our house jive, and no Reagan-loving house would jive, so one day they call the cops. and I, twelve years old awake at gunpoint

CARNEGIE: WHY I PLACE PICTURES...

to who are you or more like WHO ARE YOU! and all my Jack London books thrown to the ground. I asked who they were not out of insolence just honest, squinty confusion only this did not go over well and I had to keep saying I’m the one in the pictures the kid from all the pictures. all the while thinking Thank God this isn’t Tuesday, Thank God there are no knives Tara Bedi. “Timeless.” College of Arts and Science (2010).

SARAH SCHNEIDER, TV

SCHNEIDER: TV

Will you droop your spine to hear me speak, like I am a new sun? Maya Lowy I am untangling my feather boas, orange like persimmons, wrapped around my head. And I am stumbling because I’ll notice anything but potholes in sidewalks. I can’t point north ‘til your shadow shows how the light goes. I can always point at things I like that flap through avenues: a shopping list, a chicken bone, a couch, a jack of clubs. At red-palm crosswalks my palms go red too, and you dig in your pockets. Look: I’ve got a blue lighter that sparks.

L OW Y: W I L L Y O U D R O O P Y O U R S P I N E

JENNA SPITZ, MODENA

SPITZ: MODENA

The heat did things to us both Amanda Levendowski Five years later, I remember everything about Marco Rodarte, and the times I combed my fingers through the wiry thicket of his beard and found two rosaries, chips of terracotta tiles, dried saguaro spines, the pebbly skin of an avocado, strings of carne asada, a slender statuette of Our Holy Mother of Guadelupe, who sometimes whispered advice in my ear when Marco and I laid down to kiss in the back seat of my Toyota Camry, and other times stayed silent.

LEVENDOWSKI: THE HEAD DID THINGS TO US BOTH

The Passing of Winter Nathaniel Cabral the surface area of a human measured in tablespoons skin sprinkled with flour, snow fallen and frozen cells a chill felt from the toes a vision of slaughtered chickens still chicks covered in white sawdust

CABRAL: THE PASSING OF WINTER

Vincent washes his brushes under water Cate Mahoney I’m very eager to arrange Large yellow sunflowers Although there is no hurry. I’m going to paint my own bed. I no longer feel any hesitation about night. It is a place where one can commit a crime. It is a caricature of the mouth in bloom. Luck is everywhere and everywhere. It absorbs me and then the sunflowers. I am always full of another world. Poetry is more terrible than youth, they say— It gets on one’s nerves badly. But what compensation when there is a day without wind.

M A H O N E Y: V I N C E N T WA S H E S H I S B R U S H E S

DREW MCKENZIE, UNTITLED

MCKENZIE: UNTITLED

KEN VOLK: UNTITLED

VOLK: UNTITLED

An Interview with Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith is a much beloved and internationally acclaimed writer. Her novels include White Teeth (2000), The Autograph Man (2002), and On Beauty (2005). She has contributed many short stories and essays to such journals as The Guardian and The New Yorker. She published a book of essays entitled Changing My Mind (2009) and edited an anthology of short stories entitled The Book of Other People (2007). She is the recipient of numerous awards including The Whitbread First Novel Award, The Guardian First Book Award, The James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, The Commonwealth Writersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; First Book Award, The Orange Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. We are lucky to have Zadie Smith as a senior faculty member of the NYU Creative Writing Department where her students appreciate her for all her care, wit, and knowledge.

INTERVIEW: ZADIE SMITH

West 10th: What kind of setting is most conducive for you to come up with ideas and write? For instance, do you enjoy isolation or public space? I’ve never written in a public space. But I don’t need any fancy private place either. I’m not interested in being in a beautiful room or having a view or any of that. I like to face a wall. West 10th: Which authors are you currently reading or have you recently read? All my reading is work these days. I just read some stories of Javier Marias, some essays of Thomas Bernhard, a book about Harlem, and a book about the Duchess of Devonshire – all because I’m reviewing them. The last book I picked up casually was Richard Yates by Tao Lin because I was curious about what my students were reading. West 10th: What were some of your early or unexpected literary influences? I remember the random things on my mother’s shelves. CS Lewis’ Narnia books. Our Bodies Ourselves. The illustrated children’s bible. Social work texts about autism – because she was trying to become a social worker at the time. A book called The Breast, that I thought highly erotic, but was probably a medical textbook of some kind. Grimm fairy tales. Kiss Kiss by Roald Dahl. All of Roald Dahl, really. Tiger Eyes. And a true life photo-story from the 70’s called “Crash in the Jungle” – about a teenage girl who was the only survivor of an air crash. I read it when I was ten and thought I was the only person in the world who had read that book: years later I was gratified to discover Werner Herzog made a documentary about it. Better than that: he was meant to be on that plane!

INTERVIEW: ZADIE SMITH

West 10th: What was your favorite childhood fictional character? Probably Edmund, in Narnia. I empathized. He was a poisonous little liar – and so was I. West 10th: What piece of advice do you wish you’d gotten earlier as a writer? Read against your own grain. West 10th: How hard is it to walk the fine line between advising a student through criticism and restraining yourself to allow them their own choices? Not hard. I don’t find it to be a ‘fine line’, because I don’t recognize anything but sentences. I’m not criticizing somebody’s ‘choices’ because of a difference in taste. If I criticize it’s because the sentence is a) ungrammatical b) nonsensical c) pointless. All of which are relatively objective matters. In my experience, dealing with those three simple things takes up most of your time. Whether or not it is the right ‘choice’ for the father to disown the daughter or move to Atlanta and start an ostrich farm are, to me, ‘extraliterary’ questions. I get very bored by endless discussions of possible plots in class. Those matters are for each writer’s individual conscience. My job is to ensure that the sentences themselves are good. West 10th: What are your ideas of the best and worst possible writing workshops or classes? If you were to invent a new way to teach a writing workshop, what would it be like? Are there any unconventional methods you might use, or have used, in teaching? I never know if my ideas are conventional or not because I have no experience of writing workshops outside of my own. I use an old fashioned projector and put the stories up on a screen overhead. Then I edit them by hand, just as I’d edit my own work, line by line. Is that conventional?

INTERVIEW: ZADIE SMITH

West 10th: Has teaching writing affected your own writing process? If so, how? The writing workshop makes you a lot more self-conscious, a little more depressed. But perhaps also more honest about your own failures. The class in which I’m teaching other people’s novels – this is extremely useful to me. Re-reading is always useful, and re-reading intensely with twelve bright students (who are reading for the first time) is always a sort of personal transformation. I find new ways to do what I do. Of course, I hope the students find new ways to approach their own work, too. West 10th: Do you see a difference in the way literature is read or taught in the academic world as opposed to the world of creative writers? If so, how do you feel about the differences? I think we all know the differences. They’re obvious and too dull to trot out here – people bang on about them enough, don’t they? All I have to add to that debate is that the perfect compromise seems to me to always have an English department and a Creative writing department existing together in a state of exquisite tension – never one without the other. Either one alone gives a very lopsided view of the ‘Literature’. But together they give you the thing in the round: intellectual game and personal experience, historical phenomena and current excitement, cultural activity and individual obsession. West 10th: How would you sum up your own experience as a writer in college? When I was in college? Non-existent. I didn’t have any identity as a ‘creative writer’. I was an English student and proud to be one. I wrote a bit of fiction, but it was basically a private matter. You wrote, you tried to send it to the (very few) college outlets that took the stuff, but no one ever spoke to you about it and you never met anyone else who was doing it. I only came across the idea of a “community of writers” in America. u

A Poem By Guest Contributor Henri Cole

Henri Cole was born in Fukuoka, Japan, in 1956 and raised in Virginia. His volumes of poetry include: Blackbird and Wolf (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007), the 2008 recipient of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; Middle Earth (2003), which received the 2004 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; The Visible Man (1998); The Look of Things (1995); The Zoo Wheel of Knowledge (1989); and The Marble Queen (1986). Coleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s awards and honors include the Berlin Prize of the American Academy in Berlin, the Rome Prize in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has also published collections in Spanish, French, and Italian. A new book, Touch, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

GUEST CONTRIBUTOR: HENRI COLE

Hairy Spider Henri Cole There’s nothing like a big long-legged spider to embody the mind’s life-giving power, especially when her babies run up and stroke her face (if she has a face). Soon it will storm and all of them will drown. Still, I love to watch their web changing, like this year’s words for this year’s language, not didactic, but affective, while absorbing the secret vibrations from the world, and I love it when she climbs across clear water and drags some horsefly back, like Beelzebub, to her silk coffer. There’s something unsettling happening, I know, but it tests the connections between everything. Can she see if I am climbing, I wonder, or kneeling down here on the dock, day after day, when it’s time for reading and writing again, and a hairy spider – ingenious, bashful, insolent, laborious, patient – observes a man no different than a lily, a worm, a clod of clay?

GUEST CONTRIBUTOR: HENRI COLE

KATRINA PALLOP, TIMBERLY

PALLOP: TIMBERLY

Eight Movements Ben Miller Preface: Valses Nobles Et Sentimentales is a work for piano by French composer Maurice Ravel, written in 1911 and premiered in 1913. The work is in eight movements, and comprises a series of ‘noble’ and ‘sentimental’ waltzes. It signaled the beginning of a shift away from romanticism and impressionism in French music, towards a more abstracted and dissonant Modern style. I: Prologue: Modèrè An exuberant, clashing, quick-witted introduction. Parisian lights dim on velvet-seated, velvet-skinned Bugatti-driving Frenchmen, it’s the age of ragtime, of Mucha and nouveau, of distant-thundered war-drums echoing, still-dampened, from the east. Tuxedoed, the pianist plays new music by a composer left unnamed on dim-lit programs, the organizers decided lets make the critics guess. As the piece opens with its cluster-chord inverted open to a jazz-influenced thirteenth all at once velvety skin bristles wildly on audience faces, mustache-topped lips revoke previous smiles, withdraw them into pinched lemonsucking looks. They think it must be German music, not Ravel, not our Ravel; but then before they can think any further it surprises them by ending before it begins. II: Assez Lent A slow, strange, and sadly funny melody, that repeats. It’s over, she thinks, as she turns the light on above her seat. A mournful waltz plays on her iPod as she shoves her bag in the space overhead, pulls off her fleece, sits sharply down on the train. She’s heading back home after two months at music school at Yale, she’s heading back to Jersey. Away from Adam, who left her for Alex, who’s a guy, because he went gay after dating her, which is basically the worst

MILLER: EIGHT MOVEMENTS

insult ever. Only home for a weekend, though – as this thought comes to her head, she pulls her lips sideways over her teeth into a semblance of a smile. Her mother, not a musician, is lonely in the house alone. While she got her undergraduate degree she’d lived at home to keep her mother company after her father left. Now, she’s away, and there are no more children to keep her mother occupied. She was an only. It was a miracle that she happened at all. Her father had been a pianist, always happy with his work, less happy with his life. He’d had a career – played with some of the bigger symphonies, recorded the Ravel and Poulenc concerti with Philadelphia, which was a big deal. And then he ran off with a man named Alex, a violist. Leaving his wife sad, annoyed, lonely; and her daughter to clean up the mess. III: Modèrè A short and quick sentimental dance. The old woman decides to get the flowers herself. As she walks slowly but steadily to her car on the April morning in question she contemplates her cousin, Florence, in the nursing home, to whom she’s bringing them. Florence had always been the smart one, when women weren’t supposed to be. The old woman marvels at what she sees now: opportunities, futures, whole lives able to be lived, independently. Her cousin in the nursing home had always been a spinster, but a happy one. She’d had music, still did, for there was a piano in the nursing home and Florence would entertain the others with dance hall songs from their youth, and, once in a while, with a bit of Ravel. IV: Assez Animè A mischievous collection of runs up and down the keys. Her husband and children having left the house for the day, she takes the Mrs. off the beginning of her last name and reinserts her first name where it belongs. Before fetching the milk and produce she needs at the store, the woman, newly christened, can afford a few minutes of gossip.

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She picks up the phone, dials, and hears this in reply to her ‘hello’: Clarissa, darling? Did you hear what Mary’s oldest daughter did? She needed money for alcohol so she allowed someone to pay her to watch her and her boyfriend, that Russian one, have sex! Have you ever heard anything like it? Isn’t it awful? Satisfied, she responds with her own bit of gossip, says her goodbyes, hangs up the phone, laughs. It’s the beginning of a long day. V: Presque Lent A slower, but still happy-in-mood, section. Languid. She wakes up, as she hoped to, in his arms. They are both students, they are both freshmen, they are both from San Francisco, they had to fly across the country to meet each other. She is a painter, he is a composer, they both headed for in New York, for the same school, for the same college, the same art department, and, in fact, for the same dorm; for meeting by chance through a friend of a friend, for flirting, for seeing each other across the room at a party, for kissing, for exchanging numbers, for having dinner the next night, and going home from dinner, and then for waking up the next morning in the same bed, in the same mood, with the same smile, and the same love. VI: Assez Vif Happy, quick, light. He plays: for she said yes, yes to him, to him alone, alone to yes, him to alone, yes to alone to him to alone to forever to yes, to waltz to him together to yes to forever, to him she said yes. VII: Moins Vif Begins very slowly, and then rises to an exuberant, loud, intense crescendo. Waiting for someone you love is a test of your love for them. Nervously, the woman waits by the fountain in Washington Square Park, scanning the legions of long-haired, faded-dress-wearing women for hers, for the one

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that is hers, the one that she loves and that loves her back. Is it that one? There, the blonde, who flips her hair and looks at the rollout piano band wistfully. No, she’s heading to the other side of the fountain. Not the one, never will be. They are meeting for dinner, the reservations are in a half-hour or so, and she’s late, but there she is! isn’t that her? in the pink? and the woman’s heart begins to beat faster, and the sky seems to clear, and the yellow haze spit down from the angry-seeming streetlamps near her becomes a golden halo, and all is clear for a moment, and then the woman blinks and realizes that no, the one she waits for doesn’t have hair quite that long, or quite that curly; shit, shit, shit. Maybe today is the day she won’t come, the woman thinks. Irrationality is a part of love in this way. They have been together for a month, they have made plans, why wouldn’t she come, but there she is! isn’t that her? in the pink? and the woman’s heart begins to beat faster, and the sky seems to clear, and the yellow haze spit down from the angry-seeming streetlamps near her becomes a golden halo, and all is clear for a moment. VIII: Epilogue: Lent Languid, moody, music; amongst ambiguous chords, echoes of what preceded. In his apartment overlooking the Jersey-lit skyline, the callused-hand pianist approaches his glossed-black instrument, sets a small coaster down on its top, takes a slow sip of Campari, sits on the bench, places the glass on the coaster again; reflected in it, the Jersey-lit skyline. What music comes to his hands? Slow chords, Debussy-like, liquid spirals recessed in otherworldly portals, wood-spirit echoes; dragged lightly out of ancient-seeming, unnatural-seeming wood; years of music played fast and forte compressed into the surface of the piano – this, the lightfingered touch of the pianist strokes out with the intensity of a painter’s brush.

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The pianist perceives that the gloss of the piano is built up of years of enameled music that have settled on its surface. He plays a run, then a high, ancient waltz. Anna, his wife, waits in the bedroom for him. He waits in the music for her. Occasionally (as the years go on, more and more occasionally), he finds her in the bedroom. She has never once come to the music, she has never once found him. All he wants is to be met halfway. He fantasizes: they could live their lives, enact their marriage rites, in the hallway between the living room (music room really, with the piano taking up half of it, she always says) and the bedroom, which, with its sham pillows and duster, is indisputably her territory. He remembers, fingers drawing out low, hushed tones of Ravel; when he first met her, staring at her across the Berkeley quad – they’d been there in the sixties, when they were poor and young and beautiful and things were young and beautiful and flexible and everything seemed to glint with the fresh just-cleaned glow of sunlit joy. And now, the ambiguous night challenges him. It says what are you, his fingers reply with a rising chain of sixths fading into tinges of the waltz that he’d always played for her to cheer her up in bad moods. The pink-light-topped hotel over the river into Jersey seems to point into his core. He’s in a dreamland now, and as he sits at the piano contemplating the dulcet-toned ruins of his life (but at least I can play and have always been able to he thinks), he returns to the beginning of his reverie, and, as always, sounds echoing back one hundred years, ends just before he begins. The music is pregnant with possibility. u

MICHAEL GEORGE, TAYLOR

GEORGE: TAYLOR

MICHAEL GEORGE, ADDISON

GEORGE: ADDISON

Ensifera; P. 36 Andrew Colarusso the laws like currents-

carry along along smaller

and smaller folds- pried

dread skins open

she remembers how he spoke

the blind his soft

songs to the dead worn

in their silence wood

these kids lose so many things

they never told me

if he chained it up a bike rack

there was you know

not far and he didn t seem to care when he asked me to find it leaving things aroundeverything-

C O L A R U S S O : E N S I F E R A ; P. 3 6

-leaving these kids

C O L A R U S S O : E N S I F E R A ; P. 3 6

his eyes on the quick

fixed on a point leave of asylum

screeching to a haltof electricity-

-bold blue flash -he speaks into

things eyes whitened- from consonant darkness-lamenting

these childrenwaking up always

he finds himself waking down

Mounting Cynthia Allum I climb my pedestal, get up onto my high horse, slump my carcass over the hull, keep my head low. My scalp scrapes the sky. Remember at camp when you snuck into my lumber cabin, climbed up my bunk bed, onto my limber mattress, we laid two feet beneath the chalky ceiling, supine, side-by-side as though we were on a papyrus boat drifting down the Nile. You were asleep when I reached for yours. You sprung up, your head hit the white limit. And I stayed silent, my eyes closed, curled up in feral position.

ALLUM: MOUNTING

Wintering Over Alice Jerman You told me you loved me as you stripped the Oil drum in the yard – it was empty and Now it’s November. Can’t let it rot in the snow. I love you – You said it all as I held those rusted stays. My fingers cold and gritty from the weather. The barn cat died last winter, we found her later, Greyed and soggy; (sobbing into the March air so this is Spring.) These cold nights I pull out the orange Brown quilts the fabric pilled and pulled, and they Smell like the paint job you did last autumn. Dripping mats. Clumps of mud and the roof needs redoing you said you felt like A settler. Working for the land the earth. With his woman. I just Pray for the darkness of night so I can lie awake staring. Outside, a barn owl, maybe, something meant to be there.

JERMAN: WINTERING OVER

KEN VOLK, UNTITLED

VOLK: UNTITLED

MALLIKA VORA , DANNY

VORA: DANNY

Paedophobia Cassidy Havens I tried to imagine abortion, but I could only see a fetus in a fighter jet, zooming across the sky. The fetus was shot down and ejected from the uterus-shaped fighter jet. Imagine this: thousands upon thousands of fetuses floating down in parachutes under the cover of darkness to sneak into your houses and slit the throats of your grandparents. Just to have their food and diapers.

H AV E N S: PA E D O P H O B I A

You and I Galina Arnaut sit stringing popped corn to red thread, careful not to break another piece

A R N AU T: Y O U A N D I

JACKIE RUSSO, UNTITLED

RUSSO: UNTITLED

To Be Taken With a Grain of Salt Carol Cho For three days, it’s all I think about. It buzzes around, around my head, the most when I want to be alone. I throw books at it at first, but when I can’t sleep, I make a large flyswatter using cardboard and a curtain rod. Late at night, I slap the walls, my desk, the bed, only to give up sweaty and sorry in the morning. But today, I wake up with an idea. I borrow my neighbor’s vacuum cleaner, sneak up from behind, and suck it in. On Sunday afternoon, Phil calls to invite me over for a beer. “Any special reason?” I ask, not expecting much of an answer. He says he just wants to catch up, that it’s been a while. I try to get out of it, reminding him that Sundays are my only day off. “Come on,” he says. Eventually I say, “Fine,” and hang up the phone with a sigh. I put on my pants and slippers, walk up a flight of stairs, and knock on his door. Phil’s apartment has the bare essentials for a home: a couch, a television, a picture on the wall, and word magnets on the fridge. A fan of minimalism, he is without ambition in the traditional sense, and content with small things. “I work for myself,” he likes to say, as a freelance web-designer, getting by on commissions from friends of our parents, making just enough to call it a full-time job, filling the rest of his time with more enjoyable things. I watch him walk toward me with a sandwich in his mouth, beers in his hands, and for a moment, for no good reason, a feeling of envy comes and goes. We sit arm-to-arm on the couch, holding a bottle of beer in opposite hands, looking at each other through the reflection on the blank television screen. To start off our conversation, he tells me that his girlfriend wants to have a baby. I show my surprise and ask him how he feels about it. He shrugs and says he doesn’t have a choice in the matter. Clara, his girlfriend, wants a baby and Phil, my brother, needs Clara.

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“We’ve been living together for a year now and she’s about to turn thirty,” he says. “It was bound to happen, right?” In the months I’ve known Clara, we’ve never had a full conversation. She’s quiet, attractive, and always wears her hair tightly wound in a bun behind her head. I can’t say I know her too well but she always struck me as the cold, unsentimental type; the type that wouldn’t want to start a family. This was part of the reason why I thought she stayed with Phil and I think about telling him this but lose the opportunity as he continues. “She has this fantasy,” he says. “She’ll start out talking about her day, you know, her job, the weather, something along those lines. Then she’ll mention a baby she saw in a park or near a school.” He lowers his voice, “Then she’ll get closer to me and put her hand on my chest and whisper in my ear about how when we have a baby, we’re going to get the girl across the street to baby-sit so we can go on a date to the Spanish restaurant and order the roasted lamb with a nice bottle of wine. Then, she’ll start rubbing my stomach, like I’m the one that wants to get pregnant.” I imagine Clara tracing circles with her hand on Phil’s gut. “She does this every night,” he says. “I think it turns her on.” “Yikes.” I open another beer and hand it to him. “Where is Clara anyway?” “She’s visiting her mom. She’ll be back next Saturday.” “That’s nice. You’ll have time to think about it.” “Yeah,” he says. “Well, what’s new with you? You seeing anybody?” “No, I’ve been busy.” With nothing more to say, we turn on the TV and he relaxes further into the cushions. I could tell that if I didn’t leave now, I’d be sucked into an idle daze until Monday so I leave. The next morning, I leaf through the lesson notes for the day, drinking a cup of coffee. For the world history class, I planned to show a documentary about a tribe in Australia. The movie opens with a man in a suit with his thumbs to his chest, narrating, “To us, pointing to our chest is an indication of the self. But to a Guugu Yimithirr speaker, the thumbs point through his body, to something beyond him, as if he were made of air and his own exis-

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tence was irrelevant.” Between teaching social studies in the daytime and taking business classes at night, the week passes quickly. The amount of papers to be graded takes up more time than usual so I don’t get to respond to Phil’s requests for dinner until Friday. “Sorry,” he tells me over the phone. “I’ve already made a reservation for tonight.” “With someone I know?” “I’m going by myself,” he says. “How about tomorrow,” I ask, wondering if he really was going alone. “I promised Clara we’d have dinner together.” He adds quickly, “But come by tomorrow before six.” I agree to come by and hang up, disappointed to have to change my plans for the evening. I think about calling June but decide against it after I’m reminded of our last encounter. We had been introduced by Clara and encouraged by my brother but we weren’t exactly a great match. On our first and last date, June mentioned something about Phil, something only Clara could have told her, and a silent panic struck. I sat in front of her, unable to react because I had become too conscious of the fact that anything I said and did could reach Clara. So instead of June, I think about calling John or Erik, but eventually choose neither. I spend the rest of the night eating cereal, doing the laundry, watching a movie I later forget. The next day, Phil and I take our usual places on the couch, face-toface via the television screen and from the beginning; he is in an unusually cheerful mood. “I take it you had a good time?” I ask. He giggles and says, “Last night, I hired a babysitter.” “Phil.” “No, no, it’s nothing like that,” he says. “Clara put the idea in my head about how nice it would be to hire a babysitter and eat a nice meal out, so last night, I lived the dream.” “But wasn’t the point to do it together?”

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“Anyway, I was at the grocery store and I saw one of those paper ads taped to a message board near the exit. MATURE HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT, EXPERIENCED BABYSITTER, CALL THIS NUMBER, that sort of thing. I came up with the idea as soon as I saw it. I called her up when I got home, and asked her to come in at 7pm on Friday to watch my baby for a few hours.” “Phil.” I lean forward and give him a look. “Listen, just listen,” he says, nudging me back on the couch, trying to contain his laughter. “So she gets to my house, a typical 16-year-old: jeans, t-shirt, dyed hair, you know, a little ditzy. I’m in a suit, with my new shoes on and I tell her that the baby is in my room. Like a worried new dad, I tell her I don’t want to leave the baby but I’m having dinner with my boss. I tell her that the baby has been up all day so just let her sleep while I’m gone. She says alright and I go to the Spanish restaurant, sit at a table for two, order grilled calamari to start, and a bottle of Malbec with the lamb for dinner. I finished it off with a molten chocolate cake with caramel drizzled on top. I ate it all, really savoring every single bite,” he says, patting his stomach as if he’d just eaten it. “It might have been the best meal of my life.” “What about the babysitter?” I butt in, impatient. “She wasn’t worried about the ‘baby’ when you got home?” “When I got home, the girl was on the couch, sleeping through a re-run of Seinfeld. The one about a coffee table book of coffee tables that stands like a coffee table.” I watch his face intently through the reflection on the television screen. His lips curl into an almost smile every time he finishes a sentence. “I opened the door to my bedroom, turned on the light, and shook her awake. I yelled at her, ‘Where’s my baby? Where’s my daughter?’ and she looks at the empty room, then back at me, and starts crying, really crying. She’s not making any sense, pointing to the TV, trying to say she doesn’t know, again and again. I push her out the door and tell her to go home, that there’s nothing she can do, that I’m going to call the police. I stuff two twenties in her jacket pocket and close the door before she can say anything. As soon as I was alone, I laughed so hard and for so long, I nearly fell

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over.” He chuckles a little and turns to look at me. “Phil,” I say. “What’s wrong with you?” After a short silence, he leans into the couch and says, “It was funnier last night.” The words are still hanging between us when Clara opens the door. “Hey guys,” she says, lugging her duffel bag inside. As she walks to put her bag away in her room, I watch her, her hair bundled at the top of her neck, and wish I could let it down. Suddenly I feel Phil’s gaze on me so I pretend to be looking past Clara, to the view outside the window. She comes back to the living room, looks at me, then at Phil, back at me, and asks, “Are you staying for dinner?” “No,” I say getting up. “I was about to go.” Before I leave, I whisper to Phil, “You should be ashamed of what you’ve done,” like a mother to a mischievous child. From Phil’s, I go to a Japanese restaurant a few minutes away. The food is all right, but the reason I go is because I can sit at the sushi bar alone, unbothered. The chefs slice and place the food artfully and as soon as it’s done, the waitresses reach over and around me to deliver the plates to their rightful tables. I sit at the bar, watching the dishes come together, feeling strange about Phil’s prank, and wonder if the girl is thinking about the missing baby. Phil has a habit of doing these things. The earliest one I can remember happened when I was six and he was ten. I went to the bathroom and found my brother lying in the shower, completely nude, seemingly unconscious, his limp arm draped over the side of the bathtub. I yelled his name and as soon as I touched him, he burst out laughing. The last time he pulled a joke like that, we didn’t speak for days. Though I can’t recall exactly what it was, I do remember his absurd, ridiculous acting, overlooked by the surprise of being shaken awake, and that sudden, sinking feeling of being (falsely) made aware of something awful. After dinner, I head back home. From the bottom of the stairs, I see

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Clara pacing in front of my door. Her hair is down and it grazes the curve of her chest as she paces. She is visibly distraught, and maybe it’s her hair, but tonight she seems younger. Slowly, I climb closer, walking as softly as I can, to go unnoticed until I reach the top of the floor. When she sees me, she stops. “Was Phil with you?” “No,” I say as I open my door. “Did you have a fight?” She doesn’t answer. We go inside and she sits at the dining table, resting her flushed cheek heavily against her palm. I bring her a glass of water and wait to hear what happened. “We were having a great time, cooking and talking, joking around. I ended up drinking a little more than usual. I got this idea that I thought would make him laugh. I stuck out my stomach, like this,” she arches her back and pushes her stomach out. “And said, Phil! We did it! I’m pregnant!” I laugh; I’ve never seen her act this way before. “It’s funny right? Obviously a joke, right?” “Of course,” I say. “Don’t tell me Phil took it seriously.” “He freaked out.” She stops smiling. “He started mumbling to himself, switching the places of plates, gulping his wine…” “Oh man.” “He wouldn’t look me in the eye, and left saying that he needed time to think, about the baby, about us, about him. He put his sweater on backwards and left, all within a minute I think.” “Did you tell him you were joking?” “I thought he was joking, too. It happened so quickly.” “He’s probably waiting somewhere for you to come find him.” “Maybe, but that’s not what I’m really upset about,” she says bitterly. “About ten minutes after he left, a girl showed up at the door.” “A girl?” “She was young, really young.” She sighs. “She looked so worried that I thought she had gotten the wrong door, but she asked for Phil, which was a surprise. I told her that she’d just missed him. I could just tell she wanted to ask me something else but she didn’t and left. Thinking back on it, she

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was so nervous talking to me,” she says. “I don’t know what to think.” I contemplate telling her about Phil’s joke but decide to let him say it instead. “You’re thinking about something and that makes you forget to talk,” she says with her arms crossed. “I don’t like it when you do that.” “Sorry,” I say. “Where do you think he went?” “I don’t know. If he’s not with you, he’s probably walking around somewhere.” She looks at me and I can see she’s going to ask me about the girl. “Do you--” I get up and ask her if she wants anything else to drink. She opens her mouth, closes it, and responds, “I have a little wine left upstairs, actually.” “Leave it, let’s open a new one.” While I look around for the bottle of wine, she asks me how my brother and I got to live above and below each other. “Didn’t Phil ever tell you?” “I never asked.” “My mom lived in this apartment and my dad lived in Phil’s. That’s how they met. My father would drop flowers and letters on that,” I point to the balcony. “My mom told me that after a particularly big fight, he tied a rope around his cat and lowered it to the window to get her to open her door.” I find the wine and bring it to the table. “When they married, they kept the apartments as storage space and moved to a bigger place in the neighborhood.” I pour two glasses. “They separated when I went to college. They sold the family house, my mom moved uptown, my dad moved further down, and they gave us their apartments.” I hand her a glass, and clink it before taking a sip. “It’s funny,” she says quietly. The way she says funny is not funny at all. “What is?” “Phil’s so strange,” she smiles. “I can’t believe you’re related.” “That thought has crossed my mind before.” I laugh a little. “What do you think it is?” She asks, with genuine curiosity in her voice.

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Her question catches me off guard and I say the first thing that comes into my head. “I think the main difference is that Phil acts moment by moment, as if anything he does doesn’t affect much else, even though he knows it does.” “No, that’s not it,” she shakes her head and says, “You’re just quieter.” She begins to play with the bottle, peeling the corners of the label. I rub my eyes and check the time on different clocks that are visible without getting up: the electric clock over the stove, the metal clock in the living room, the tiny hands on my wristwatch. Just as I’m getting used to the silence, I hear a faint buzzing from the living room. “It can’t be,” I say to myself. “What?” Clara stops mid-sip. I don’t bother answering and walk toward the noise. There it was. It had somehow climbed from the belly of the vacuum, crawled through the hose, back into my life. I point to the fly and declare my desire to kill it. “I want to help,” Clara says sternly. “Bring a chair,” I tell her as I grab a dustbuster from the closet. She finishes off her wine, picks up a chair and scuttles it over to my side. We scope out the pest in the corner above my sofa. She puts the chair straight below the fly and fixes her hands on the back to support my weight. I climb on top of it without a word, my eyes glued to the dark smudge against my white ceiling. I put my finger on the power button and slowly lift it toward the fly. It doesn’t move. I can feel Clara’s hands slightly shaking in anticipation. I shift my weight onto my toes to get an extra two inches. As“Daddy.” I’m about press the(2012). button, I begin to wobble and freeze in Jordan Teicher. College ofto Arts and Science position. When the fall is inevitable, I aim for the sofa. Instead, my elbow hits Clara in the face, she cries out in surprise, and we end on the floor. Clara giggles a muffled, gurgly laugh; I look over and see that her nose is bleeding. “Oh god,” I say. She’s on her back, the chair clumsily obscuring her bottom half. I roll over and take the sleeve of my shirt to the blood running down her left cheek. Holding her nose shut with my fingers through my shirt-sleeve, I notice the faint trail of pink from the nose matches her wine-

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stained lips. Forgetting to think, I lean over and kiss them. I sink back on my back so that we’re on the floor, in silence once again. She turns over onto her stomach to face me, and begins to talk as if nothing had happened. “On my tenth birthday, I slipped on juice and fell on my face. I bit straight through my lip,” she says, rolling her tongue inside her mouth, under her bottom lip, showing me her scar. “I capped two teeth and got four stitches and so every day, I’m reminded of my birthday,” she pauses, “just a little bit.” She says, “Today is always a strange day for me because today, everyone else is supposed to be reminded that it’s my birthday too.” “I’m sorry I didn’t know.” “That’s okay,” she laughs. “You couldn’t have known. I just felt like saying it, that’s all.” She smiles shyly and the scar, hidden before tonight, stretches and smiles too. “To be honest,” she says. “Birthdays have always been bittersweet for me.” “Why?” I ask, even though I think I know the answer. “They make me think that I should have kept up with the things I liked doing when I was younger.” “Like what?” “Oh I don’t know,” she says. “Like the violin. Or drawing. Writing, even. Maybe I’d be good at it by now if I’d done it regularly.” “You can start again,” I say. She smiles. “Thanks but it’s unlikely. Also, my problem with writing was that I could only write endings,” she says. “That’s about as useful as having bookends with no books in between.” “Do you still write them?” “One-liners occasionally.” She breathes out ruefully. “I just wish I’d forced myself to write a story after I’d written an end.” “How many endings do you have?” “A lot.” She looks into her empty glass. “In fact, I just thought of one right now.”

CHO: T O BE TAKEN WITH A GRAIN OF SALT

“Let’s hear it.” “No,” she says. “Maybe later.” I try to get it out of her, but she doesn’t budge. “I promise,” she says, putting her soft fingers on my arm. “I’ll write it down and let you read it later. I just don’t feel like sharing it now.” I look at her hand; the thin, smooth skin paling slightly over her knuckles and in my mind, I imagine one thing leading to another. My thoughts are interrupted by footsteps stomping up to the next floor. Indistinctly, a door creaks and slams shut. Clara takes her fingers off and walks to the balcony. She slides the glass open, leans her head out and says, “The light just went on.” “Are you sure?” “I’m going back,” she says, coiling her hair back into place. I hear myself say, “Happy birthday,” as I watch her leave. Once alone, slightly drunk, I find it necessary to fill the room with noise to replace the humming in my ears. I turn on the radio and finish my drink on the bed. As I lay there, a peculiar thought enters my head: Is it possible to feel guilt and joy at the same time? I think about it for a while, taking one side, then the other, and settle on the answer to be no. I decide that the weighty feeling of guilt and the tickling sensation of joy could never be together, at least not for me. And from that thought, I tune in and out to a vague, familiar voice until I fall asleep. The next morning, I open my eyes to a flittering shadow on the wall. I walk to the window and find a note hanging on a string, tied to the balcony above. He walked through the park, listening to the quivering of leaves, shaking off the memory of a bad dream, and went on with his life, laughing from time to time, dying very slowly. On the back of the note, it reads, “an end.” u

DYLAN SITES, UNTITLED

SITES: UNTITLED

MICHAEL GEORGE, UNTITLED

GEORGE: UNTITLED

St. Patrick’s Excerpt fromDay “[Lightning]” Andrew James Weatherhead Joe Bussiere Manual fixation I like your words isn’t really a thing self medication sounds so serious, like procreation but I have it I think I wonder what it will be like, and I always this poem would be better say, ok, here it is I sat near the street

written in crayon

it was sosomething noisy and sloppy There’s so momentous, so much stuff around yes I like it

in the way

you present yourself

in the way

your little sister

got shiny and fat.

BUSSIERE: “[LIGHTNING]”

SARAH SCHNEIDER, LIL MAN

SCHNEIDER: LIL MAN

Unreliable Narrations of Three Ansel Adams Photographs Sam Selinger A jeffery pine bends like a splintered lute. The shadow is a hundred empty hands. ---A white house and adobe church. Hills lift into distance. The room of the sky parades flashlights and geishas. ---The waterfall is process, a woman lowering her endless dress.

SELINGER: UNRELIABE NARRATIONS...

Variations on a Window, Late November Sam Selinger I The windowpane made four rooms of the street. Umbrellas passed like black jellyfish. I put on some Debussy. The droplets on the glass whisper if and if.

A man stood, drunk, by a drizzling window. He was mostly his body, its clench of temples, unsound legs. On the glass, the yellows of leaves seeped out of their shapes.

S E L I N G E R : V A R I A T I O N S O N A W I N D O W. . .

III

The widow walked to the window. My longing, where has my longing gone? Someone had painted the last leaves pink and vermillion. She felt nothing.

In two dimensions: carlights move like ugly birds through branches. Flat men and women in black parkas hug, which is, of course, impossible.

Playgrounds Mimi Amado Rumor around daycare was that the new kid burned down his house and everything inside. Probably because he wore the same eight pocket shorts each day, and spat on the sidewalk next to the tire swing. We were the last people to get picked up each night, a dollar for every minute our mothers were late, and thank god. He kicked woodchips into the garden marked with the grave of a beloved rabbit until his mom walked up the playground steps, no car, and the two of them slid into the night. I made my own drive to Kmart after work, two meetings, and no lunch break she reminded me the whole way there. We walked out with a twelve dollar Wilson, and when I presented it to him, a sphere of reindeer wrapping paper, he looked me in the eye and kicked it into my stomach. Kicked

AMADO: PLAYGROUNDS

it so hard that I went to the other side of the playground and slid down the blue tunnel slide until spring. It was a kick that should have begun my path along the dead grass of knowing that people aren’t rippling ponds. And yet I’m still buying soccer balls. I tried to change Collin, and then he tried to change me, and I think we’ll remain on this old seesaw forever.

Max Lakner and Leah Hennessey. “Untitled (Viktor and EJ).” Tisch School of the Arts (2012).

Forever Lov(n)eliness Josh Cabrido smartphone, u r a misnomer. u constantly misunderstand me. and all the smartest people i know know understanding is the basis of a healthy relationship. smartphone, i tell u one thing, u say another. did my thumb slip? smartphone, my refusal to capitalize is intentional. smartphone, my way of saying the world, though flawed, is the sum the totality the accumulation of my everything. a tongue that rose from the ashes of immigrant accents and was shaped by the secret codes of friendship.

CABRIDO: FOREVER LOV(N)ELINESS

so, quite frankly, smartphone, i find ur suggestions condescending. remember when i left u silent on the table and u kept calling out to me beeping for a charge? admit it smartphone: u need me more than i need u. but just so u know just as long as we r stuck together just as long as u r my map my memory my connection to everything i want u to know when i started this poem on the subway eyes downcast blind to the world when i started this poem â&#x20AC;&#x153;lonelinessâ&#x20AC;? i appreciate ur sentiment.

KEN VOLK, UNTITLED

VOLK: UNTITLED

DYLAN SITES, UNTITLED

SITES: UNTITLED

Philatelist Conor Burnett Henry Tevlin is the type of person who would not like that people are reading about, and analyzing, his every thought and action. Henry Tevlin looks like someone took Gargamel, put him in a pair of slacks, combed his hair over and killed his temper. This is not to slight Henry Tevlin; it’s just the best possible way to describe him. Henry Tevlin is driving up NY Route 17 toward Geneva, NY, where he’ll pick up a C15 Graf Zeppellin stamp. He will stop at a Holiday Inn Express for the night outside of Geneva, less out of necessity and more out of a love uninterrupted sleep, uninterrupted television, uninterrupted cinnamon rolls, and other such things that bachelors take for granted. A seasoned veteran of the married life, Henry knows to enjoy the little things, and only the little things. Enjoying a big thing garners attention, and the wife could potentially ruin it. Pamela Tevlin is the passive aggressive type. Pamela Tevlin leaves the milk jug in the refrigerator, regardless of how close to empty it is. Pamela Tevlin uses Henry’s razor, despite having her own. The key is to stack up little things, and treat them as if they are the big things. Henry enjoys Kit-Kat bars more than he could enjoy a Porsche. What he likes most is closing his eyes, to relax and fall into his imagination. Not a luxury he can afford right now, driving on Route 17 to Geneva. When time permits, he is an avid driver. He loves the open road, literally and metaphorically. He loves wind, pavement, car, radio, and gasoline just as much as the freedom. Stacking up the little things like it was his job. While Henry loves what his job is supposed to be, he does not always love his job. Henry Tevlin is a philatelist. A philatelist is not just a stamp collector. In fact, you don’t even have to own any stamps in order to be a philatelist. Technically, Henry’s job was actually easier than just stamp col-

BURNETT: PHILATELIST

lecting. Unfortunately, Henry’s job was not actually easier than just stamp collecting. Henry Tevlin considers himself to be on a mini-vacation. He does not want to have to think about the stamp business. “I think the stamp business is much more lucrative than the average citizen would gather.” he tells the denizens of the Holiday Inn Express bar. Patrons of hotel bars all tend to be either businessmen or families on vacation. Henry gravitates towards a group of men who also looked like homely cartoon characters brought to life, and schools them on the stamp industry. “Do you know how much the Inverted Jenny goes for? I didn’t think so. Google it. We have had two of them.“ This is the sort of rationale that Henry uses on anyone who doubts his career choice (including himself, from time to time). In reality, six-figure stamp deals like this are few and far between, but nobody knows that. Even if you were to muster up the money to buy an Inverted Jenny or a Hawaiian Missionary, you would only be able to turn it over for at most 5% more than what you got it for. The real money is in efficient small deals, but anyone who is efficient tends not to be a philatelist. Philately is not high on most kids’ list of prospective careers. It was not high on Henry Tevlin’s either. Stamp collection turned to stamp obsession turned to philately. It all grew organically. Henry naturally evolved into a stamp man. Lately, Henry’s been plagued with the sneaking suspicion that he’s wasted his life. However, for the time being he is not thinking about the negative aspects of being a philatelist. He is in a happy place, here in this hotel bar where a motley crew of salesmen (who also resemble cartoon characters) hangs on his every word. “You know, philately is a lot more noble than I had thought.” Says Droopy Dog, being 100% genuine. “It’s youthful. It’s like a boyhood dream come to life. You get to collect stamps for a living. The ten-year-old in me is throwing a jealous fit.” Says George Jetson.

BURNETT: PHILATELIST

Droopy Dog, George Jetson, and Dick Dastardly take turns singing their praises of Henry Tevlin. “I’m going to say something and I don’t want any of you to take it the wrong way. Henry, I want to be you. You’ve got your life together perfectly. Solid job, solid family, and you’ve got insight into things I didn’t even know existed.” Says Dick Dastardly. “Boys, put your drinks up. A toast. A toast for Henry Tevlin.” He is the man of the hour. He is Norm from Cheers. He is Kramer. He is on top of the world. Three cheers later, his attention turns to beautiful woman at the end of the bar. She’s sitting straight up on the stool. Stools have no back support. She’s sitting straight up with no back support. She’s in stark contrast with Pamela, who slumps as low as possible, her back molding to the shape of whatever surface she’s plopped herself onto. This girl’s back was standing strong, and freely. The rest of her was nice too. “I bet you’d like her to give you an Inverted Jenny.” Says Jetson, noticing Henry’s wandering eyes. “I doubt that she would have an Inverted Jenny to give away, and doubt even more that she would just give it away. I’m surprised that you would focus your comment on how she might benefit you financially, and not on how beautiful she is.” Says Droopy, missing the point. All four men are married. None of them has a shot at her. Sobered and saddened by this realization, one after another, Henry’s gang leaves the bar. Dastardly pats Henry on the back one more time: “If anyone of us could get with her, it’d be you pal. See you around.” Alone at the bar with a beautiful woman to stare at: A nice little thing for Henry Tevlin. The beautiful woman catches Henry staring, and stares back. Henry has stared at enough people to know that snapping your head away is a surefire way to look suspicious. Henry looks at the woman for a second more, then turns his head to casually look at the liquor rack in front of her, then back at his beverage. A few seconds roll by. Henry pretends to check his phone to catch another glimpse at her. She is still staring. This is not the sort of

BURNETT: PHILATELIST

thing that happens to Henry Tevlin. This is the sort of thing happens in pornography. There’s no way he can rationalize her staring. Maybe she’s upset that she’s being ogled. Maybe she isn’t staring at Henry Tevlin. Maybe (and this is a strong maybe) she wants to have sexual relations with Henry Tevlin. She gets up from her seat. This little thing is growing. They are sitting approximately 11 feet apart. The average human walks at around 3 miles per hour. The walk itself cannot take more than 5 seconds. However, in these 5 seconds, Henry’s heart has beat 15 times. This is dangerously close to a heart attack, especially given Henry’s health and body type. “Sir, I do not know your name, but I would like to have sexual relations with you.” This little thing is growing. His little thing is growing. Henry Tevlin has no idea how to adequately respond. “Yes.” is what he wants to say. “Why?” is what he does say. “We’re both in this hotel for one night. Why not spend it together?” Her logic is flawed but Henry is willing to see through it. His internal debate does not take as long as it should. After a long time of giving up little things, he feels he had earned at least one big thing. As soon as they make it to her room, Henry goes to the bathroom, partly to freshen up, partly to assess the situation. She has splurged and purchased a suite. The walls are alternating stripes of Behr™ UL110-6 Edgy Red and Behr™ UL110-1 Tuscan Russet, with a floral patterned border surrounding the ceiling. He pees and washes his hands, without soap. When he gets to the door, he realizes what he is about to do with this woman, turns around and re-washes his hands, this time with soap. He opens the door. She is naked, her clothes lying on the love seat. Quicker than he thought it possible, he is too. Henry Tevlin would be embarrassed if he knew that other people were reading about his sexual exploits. In the throes of coitus, Henry catches something out of the corner of his eye. He manages to take his eyes off of the woman long enough to survey

BURNETT: PHILATELIST

his surroundings. There, slumped in the loveseat that was previously occupied by Henry’s dream girl, is one big huge thing. “Go on I’ll let you finish up. What you’re doing looks important.” She is consuming the couch. Her doughy body is slowly expanding, until it envelops the whole thing. She is an obese amoeba; this is phagocytosis. Henry Tevlin goes soft. *** Henry Tevlin’s member slips from his grip. His eyes open too quickly. His pupils don’t have enough time to dilate. His head hurts. The Tevlin’s bathroom is supposed to be white. When it was purchased it 20 years ago it was white. Maybe it was time, maybe the dying lightbulb has just made it seem like the bathroom is dirtier than it actually is. This, Henry wages, is a problem. If he buys a new lightbulb, and finds out the bathroom is actually dirtier than he anticipated, he suspects his wife will try to make his life worse. His wife has taken away another big thing. He will go on his business trip tomorrow and it will be routine. He tries to open the bathroom door, but his liberal use of lotion as a lubricant left his hands slathered. Putting his hand in the inside of his shirt, Henry is able to get a grip on the handle. There, on the bed watching Jeopardy is one big huge thing. No, Henry won’t fix up the bathroom. Things are going to stay exactly the way they are. He scrunches onto his corner of the bed, and closes his eyes. u

SARAH SCHNEIDER, DEER

SCHNEIDER: DEER

JENNA SPITZ, UNTITLED

SPITZ: UNTITLED

Summer Haircut Brooke Wade Murphy with calloused hands he unclenches the jaws of an ornery lawn chair synthetic plaid weave gives way as two ball-and-sockets settle. in vagrant grass ten mosquitoes investigate four bare ankles and black curls fall, detached through sultry dusky air she puts away the electric razor and he makes the bed, unfolding sheets fresh from the refrigerator

M U R P H Y: S U M M E R H A I R C U T

Contributors’ Notes Cynthia Allum is a junior in the College of Arts and Science. She is majoring in English and American Literature and minoring in Creative Writing. She enjoys writing inane blog posts and reading literary magazines, and currently writes for NYU Local. She is from New Jersey. Mimi Amado is a freshman at Tisch for Dramatic Writing. But before that, she attended a magical place called the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts. She continues to write because she cannot speak as well as all of these other NYU kids. She also believes that everything matters, especially the playground, which may contribute to her insomnia. Galina Arnaut is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. “You and I” is the first poem of hers to be published. She hopes to graduate this May, find a decent job, and keep writing in her spare time, of course. Conor Burnett. The Best. He reads a lot of “Highlights For Kids.” He admittedly bites his writing style from David Eggers. He admittedly bites his lifestyle from Hugh Hefner. He writes for himself, and for you as well. Everyone can enjoy Conor Burnett. Everyone does enjoy Conor Burnett. Joe Bussiere is a junior attending NYU majoring in linguistics and minoring in creative writing. He is inspired by Otis Redding, Lil Wayne, and Charlie Parker. He can be found on the internet as well as in the darkness on the edge of town, reading Stanzas In Meditation in meditation. Nathaniel Cabral is in his second year at NYU and is double majoring in English and Cinema Studies. He is from Sacramento, California, and has been writing since middle school. His favorite writers are Italo Calvino, e.e. cummings, and Emily Dickinson. He hopes to keep writing as much as his imagination will allow (if there are any limits to it, at all). 88

CONTRIBUTORS’ NOTES

Josh Cabrido is a 20 year-old writer of poetry and short stories from San Jose, California. He currently lives in Brooklyn. His greatest fear is that the people his poetry and short stories are about will discover his poetry and short stories are about them. His greatest hope is to one day write a poem or short story that’s a totally made up lie. Until then, he will continue to write only what he knows as truth. Husayn Carnegie Senior. CAS. Fantastic tree climber. Loves mango juice. Likes the books “Ubik and Point Counter Point.” Julia Catalano is a junior in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development majoring in Early Childhood Education & Special Education. Her favorite book is Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Andrew E. Colarusso is the Editor in Chief of the Broome Street Review. Only the planets equal his rapacity. Carol Cho is a senior at Gallatin with a concentration in cinema studies, writing, and psychology. She is currently and always re-reading the same books, please send recommendations for new reading material to read.this. its.good@gmail.com. Nina Culotta is a graduating senior at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at NYU. She concentrates in Visual Culture studies with an emphasis on photography, and hails from Houston, Texas. Michael George is a senior in the Tisch Department of Phtoography & Imaging. He is the editor in chief of ISO photography magazine. Read his blog at www.michaelgeorgephoto.com/blog! Malarie Gokey is a sophomore majoring in Journalism and Comparative Literature with a minor in Creative Writing. She enjoys writing in a variety of styles and experimenting with forms. Pierrot le Fou is one of her favorite movies. The city is her muse.

CONTRIBUTORS’ NOTES

Jonah Greenstein is currently a sophomore majoring in Film, and minoring in Math and potentially Philosophy. Prose writing interests him for its ability to simplify, imply, and move elliptically through time – functions which he is now working to bring to my screenwriting. His favorite authors include Lorrie Moore, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert A. Heinlein, and Philip K. Dick. Cassidy Havens is a junior in Steinhardt’s Department of Media, Culture, and Communication. She is from Lucedale, Mississippi and loves her cat Black Sabbath. Her biggest influences are her NYU family (C, P, and S), The people of Wal-Mart, and The Cure. Charlotte Hornsby is in her senior year at Tisch. Her high school math teacher told her she was too restless to make movies. She hopes to prove him wrong. Alice Jerman is a senior at NYU, studying English and Creative Writing, currently writing a Senior Honors Thesis in Contemporary Irish Poetry. While navigating through the foggy world of academic writing and reading (or: the life of an undergraduate) she retains an unabashed love for writing poetry, and would like to thank West 10th & NYU’s Creative Writing Dept for indulging her over the years. Eric Kim is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Science studying English. Born and raised in Georgia, he reads Steinbeck and Proulx to ground himself while in the city. Amanda Levendowsi is a senior at Gallatin studying publishing and intellectual property, and she will be attending law school in the fall. She is no longer on speaking terms with the Virgin Mary (or Marco Rodarte). Maya Lowy is a linguistics major, class of 2013. Her recent poetic inspirations include Lorca and Apollinaire. She is currently president of NYU’s experimental writing club the Headless Society, which you should all totally join. Also, she’s really good at handshakes.

CONTRIBUTORS’ NOTES

Cate Mahoney is a junior, English major, and Creative Writing minor in the College of Arts and Sciences. Her poem was inspired by Vincent van Gogh’s correspondence with his younger brother, Theo, during the late 1800s. The poem is made up entirely of words found within these letters, although Cate took the liberty of forming the lines herself. Cate also has a cat named Theodore whom she loves dearly, but this is entirely beside the point. Most remembered for his extravagant costumes and trademark candelabra placed on the lids of his flashy pianos, Drew McKenzie was loved by his audiences for his music talent and unique showmanship. He was born as Drew McKenzie on January 30, 1989 into a musical family in Wisconsin. His father, Salvatore, played the French horn and his mother, Frances Zuchowsky, played the piano. His siblings, George, Angie and Rudy, also had musical ability. McKenzie’s own extraordinary natural talent became evident when he learned to play the piano by ear at the age of four. Although Salvatore tried to discourage his son’s interest in piano, praises from Ignace Jan Paderewski, a famous Polish pianist, helped the young musician follow his musical career. Ben Miller is a freshman in the College of Arts and Science, hoping to major in International Relations, Creative Writing, and/or Journalism. Originally from the Boston area, he has been writing since he can remember and is consistently inspired by the work of Grace Paley, Truman Capote, Italo Calvino, Joyce Carol Oates, and Michael Cunningham; and by the work and inspired teaching of Jonathan Safran Foer. Brooke Wade Murphy is a sophomore, majoring in English and French. She is from Cincinnati, Ohio, and is currently studying at NYU Paris. She likes cornichons, Peggy Guggenheim, and wearing watches. She dislikes children’s choirs, making decisions, and the seams at the toes of socks.

CONTRIBUTORSâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; NOTES

Katrina Pallop is a third-year drama student, ex-barista, and amateur playwright hailing from Princeton, New Jersey. This past summer, she wrote for a little downtown dining website called bowerybum.com. The good people there gave her a digital camera. She decided to take one picture every day for one year. Some of the pictures turned out pretty nicely. Jackie Russo is a sophomore in the Tisch Department of Photography & Imaging. Sarah Schneider was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA. She is currently a senior at Gallatin where she studies a little bit of everything. After graduation, she hopes to spend most her time drawing. Sam Selinger is a senior in Gallatin, where he concentrates on Creative Writing, English and Italian literature, and trying not to think about next year. He has never written a poem while not simultaneously drinking tea. Dylan Sites is a sophomore in the Photography and Imaging department at NYU. His work is centered in photography and video, revolving around the distant relationship he has with members of his family and friends. Jenna Spitz was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1989, she is the youngest of two children. At the age of 12 she tired of television and began to read great books. At 17 she built a darkroom with the help of her dexterous father. A year later she moved to New York to acquire the skills to write a book. She will not rest until it is written. Vanessa Victoria Volpe is a senior studying Applied Psychology in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s influenced by Milan Kundera, her parents, Jeffrey Arnett, Cornelia Parker, and the missed connections section of Craigslist.

Ken Volk is a history major in NYU’s College of Arts and Sciences, as well as studio art minor in Stienhart and will be graduating in May. He started pressing photography seriously 3 years ago. He has great intreats in the photographic process, both film and digital. “I am constantly looking to cast the wold in more interesting light.” Mallika Vora is a junior in the Tisch Photography and Imaging program, focusing primarily on documentary and portraiture projects. Check her out at mallikavora.com.

CHARLOTTE HORNSBY, BEST IS YET TO COME

H O R N S B Y: H AU N T E D H O U S E

SARAH SCHNEIDER, GHOST

SCHNEIDER: GHOST

Masthead Editor in Chief Soren Stockman Managing Editor Liora Connor

Layout Editors: Soren Stockman Laura Stephenson Liora Connor

Poetry Editors Lucas Gerber Phillip Polefrone

Community Board Laura Stephenson Anushka Jasraj Whitney Johnson Bram Schumer

Assistant Poetry Editors Julia DePalma Benjamin Ha Christina Roe Laura Stephenson

proofreaders Benjamin Ha Bram Schumer

Prose Editors Abigail Dunn Rosetta Young Assistant Prose Editors Josh Katz Lauren Kuhn Zeynep Ozakat Jordan Teicher

Executive Editors Matthew Rohrer Darin Strauss Staff Advisers Jessica Flynn Scott Statland

MASTHEAD 95

West 10th is a nonprofit literary journal publishing poetry, prose and photography by New York University’s undergraduate students. It is edited and produced annually by the NYU Creative Writing Program. The ideas expressed in West 10th do not necessarily reflect those of New York University or of the Creative Writing Program. The NYU Creative Writing Program faculty includes Breyten Breytenbach, Anne Carson, E. L. Doctorow, Jonathan Safran Foer, Yusef Komunyakaa, Sharon Olds, Matthew Rohrer, Charles Simic, Zadie Smith, Darin Strauss and Chuck Wachtel. The Director is Deborah Landau. The Creative Writing Program has distinguished itself for more than two decades as a leading national center for the study of literature and writing. West 10th New York University Creative Writing Program Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House 58 West 10th Street New York, New York 10011 Copyright: All rights revert to the author upon publication. Reprints must be authorized by the author. Designed by sam potts & erin schell Cover art: Sarah Schneider Copyright  2011 West 10th The Literary Journal of New York University’s Undergraduate Creative Writing Program ISSN: 1941-4374 Printed in The United States

Poetry

Prose

Cynthia Allum Mimi Amado Galina Arnaut Joe Bussiere Nathaniel Cabral Josh Cabrido Husayn Carnegie Julia Catalano Andrew Colarusso Malarie Gokey Cassidy Havens Alice Jerman Eric Kim Amanda Levendowski Maya Lowy Cate Mahoney

Conor Burnett Carol Cho Jonah Greenstein Ben Miller

Brooke Wade Murphy Sam Selinger Vanessa Victoria Volpe

Guest Contributor Henri Cole

Interview Zadie Smith