Where The Children Play Spring 2013

where the children play

spring 2013

1

mechanics library staircase san francisco : sadye sagov

until forever : sadye sagov hand : nora anderson

CONTENTS TEXT

IMAGE malleus : collage : gregory bonacci : front cover mechanics library staircase san francisco : photo : sadye sagov : 1 closing time : photo : emily huang : 3 leviathan : drawing : urann chan : 8 merrikodalith : photo : samantha stephen : 10 scheduled : mixed media : karrah beck : 12 cats : drawing : urann chan : 13 the eye : drawing : karrah beck : 16 romanian countryside : photo : nick iftimia : 17 big brother : drawing : urann chan : 19 girl : drawing : samantha stephen : 22 point zero : collage : gregory bonacci : back cover

wtcpbrandeis@gmail.com spring 2013

where the children play

memory : carla hasson : 3 graveyard by swan pond : elaine mancini : 4 caught in the slime : ryan molloy : 5 summer road trips and what is meant to be : rachel hughes : 7 fever dreams : taylor baker : 8 after : taylor baker : 9 adam and eve : angie howes : 9 green gold eyes : shreyas warrier : 11 mrs. frisby sleeps alone : sage hahn : 13 ezhou : oliver ling : 14 vices : dana trismen : 15 ramona : megan kerrigan : 17 disquiet : jamie parris : 18 sisters talking in the park : rachel hughes : 19 tributaries : elaine mancini : 20 they say those who can’t, teach : dana trismen : 21

2

Memory Sunlight drenches the trees And wind undulates in waves of Glinting emeralds and gold I see myself With black ringlets and tiny shoes Lying, smiling in the course grass but Covered in jewels; I see her and it sounds like laughter Then I see her putting that laugh away In a brown box with her other things And becoming acquainted with the grey I see myself With a new uniform in a new house Watching my skin rapidly wrinkle, I grow old Worn by the heaviness of an unfamiliar sky Hidden behind buildings threatening to fall.

- Carla Hasson

3

closing time : emily huang

Graveyard By Swan Pond The bench Says “In Loving Memory of Holly” And wrapped around her is a loving circle Of cigarette butts And shattered bone shells Discarded by the gulls The vein blue water Nestled below her sandy cliff Is reverent Of the bodies Nestled in this grainy soil.

The mummichogs darting To devour newborn mosquitos, The black oily dots of snails, The stoic egrets, Feel the tombs on the hillside Rippling through the brine marsh.

When he comes to meet me We are not ashamed to kiss above Holly With nothing beside us But the hiss of yellow grave grass And the silent scuttle of marker shadows Shifting with the hours.

“In Memory of Summer” We scratch into the dirt Beside her And stare Out over the pond And the sky Far off, pulsing Above the ocean with coral, gray, and storm .

And in the dusk A family barrels down the pavement With ice cream cones and sandy legs.

They don’t notice The light colored pillars of brick tumbling into themselves, So pale in the dark, The iron words strangled by weather With a name For a place At night I think that ghosts Must bob among the cattails Singing salt into the blue night air And scratching words into the pebbles That tumble through the murk past low-lying crabs who stay awake in the cloud gray water Scanning the shore for will-o-the-wisp.

The grave’s whispers Put the old cedar walls of the house to sleep Where sweat pools on my brother’s brow And my father brushes his teeth After making love to my mother Before I can sneak out the basement door To meet you at the end Of the blustery black night Lane And the graves Stay awake With us To see me escape, And catch the corner of my night shirt on the rusty vine fence - Elaine Mancini

4

Caught in the Slime “I don’t know,” said the slouching thirty-something. “I think I’ve always had the ability to write inside of me, but I’ve just never done it. You know?” Sid rolled his eyes.

“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” he thought. Of all the people one finds at a writing workshop, the dreamers depress him the most. Middle aged, white, arrogant males with a job in some menial sector, likely financial, they always claim to have some latent writing prowess that will one day manifest itself in a torrent of artistic ejaculation. They aren’t well read, and they have never written anything more than a few “poems” lamenting the loss of some pretty, pale-faced girl who “got away.” What infuriated Sid most about these types was that, despite lacking skill, passion and experience, these men wholeheartedly believed in themselves, quite the anomaly at Millbrook Community College. The soccer moms in it for the fun, the fossils with nothing better to do, the creative types looking to “find their voice,” the actual credit-seeking students: none of them actually believed.

“Well,” said Selena as she placed her hands on her heart. “I certainly hope that my little class can help you unleash your inner writer.” She acted as if she’d never heard a similar sentiment, and that obviously pleased the man. Selena Dunn, with her graying bob, irrepressible affinity for dangling earrings and vast collection of animal-printed maxi skirts, had a persistent enthusiasm that always tended to wane in conversation with Sid. With others, she was the zealous art professor, ready to dole out encouraging platitudes with a smile, but with Sid in her eyes, she defaulted to the frigid librarian, eager to point out the door.

She glanced around the rest of the room.

“Well whattya know?” she said with kindergarten twee. “I see some familiar faces.” She swung her head to face Sid, and her jade pendants swung from her earlobes. “It’s lovely to see you again, Stuart. How goes the writ5

The rest of the class went silent in anticipation, hoping that, having learned from Selena, he had risen to Nobel Laureate stature.

“Always a pleasure, Selena,” he responded, seeing her forced smile and raising her a posh, breathy tone. “It’s going well.”

“Why don’t you tell all of us, Stu: Why are you here?”

“Because I love to write.” Selena looked baffled by this response. Had he not said the same thing several semesters ago? Her smile crumpled to a familiar grave expression, and she slid her hair behind her ear.

“But why?” she asked.

“Why do I love to write?” he thought.

“Why do you enjoy condescending to someone who has more books published than you have tribal head wraps? Why did you waste your time and money on an M.F.A. to complacently teach at a third-rate junior college? Why do you dress like a lesbian ceramics teacher? Tell me that, Selena. I write because it’s who I am, and it’s how I justify my existence. How about you?”

“Um. . . I suppose I don’t know why. . . I just do,” he finally replied. Selena flashed a closelipped, latex smile and proceeded.

“Class!” Her voice rose to lecture volume. “I would like for all of you to think about this question raised by Stuart: ‘Why do you love to write?’ Are you, in fact, enamored with the art of the written word?” She spread her arms out wide and began to turn about the room like a tempered dervish. “Or are you not so struck?”

Her eyes opened wide. “Is taking my class some sort of epical excursion?” Selena paused and clenched her fists earrings still swinging. “That will be your first assignment, and I would like a minimum of two pages for next class.” Sid felt compelled to clap. He almost missed Selena’s moments of passionate upheaval. Apparently, there were more believers than he’d thought.

That night, Sid tried calling Lola, but for the second time in a row, she didn’t answer. More disheartened than he’d like to admit, he penned the title, Running in Place. This wouldn’t be the kind of story that explicitly describes his love

for writing, but Sid had learned that any legible ink slapped on a page is enough to please a creative writing professor. Bonus points for coherent sentences. Sid had also learned that all of the students, eager to prove their intelligence, will dissect his pieces like they were nesting dolls, always looking deeper, always “finding” new meaning whether it’s there or not. To them, failing to parse through these layers implied near-illiteracy.

Sid’s favorite side effect of such close scrutiny was that it allowed him objective insight into his own life. The populace of MCC may not have Bachelor’s degrees, but they all deserve honorary certificates in psychology.

They may not know James Joyce from Joyce Carol Oates, but these people had seen enough television to deconstruct the most complex of characIn passing off autobiographical accounts as fiction, Sid had found free and honest judgment, the kind that otherwise only comes in the form of pricey sessions in a chaise lounge.

Presenting his paper was opening himself to a room of shrinks. It was how he’d learned to forgive his father after the years of estrangement and how he’d decided to continue writing despite earning just enough to cover rent and several bricks of ramen; now he would write about her.

He grabbed a mass-market copy of Slime IV: The Descent and observed the cover: lustrous, violet slime encroaching upon an unsuspecting vixen, a blurb from Strange Horizons deeming it “. . . the choice slime thriller of the summer,” and the name “Sid R. Pierce” underneath, scrawled in a dripping, red font.

Sid got the twinge of pride he needed and began: She sat at the bar, slowly sipping her whiskey with Daniel in the corner of her eye.

He walked over and complimented her choice of beverage. “The name’s Lola,” she said. . .

“Like, I don’t get it,” said the blonde first-year student. “What’s Daniel’s deal? She obviously wants nothing to do with him.”

chewed her gum in noisy satisfaction.

“But Jessica, why do you think that,” questioned Selena, tone as encouraging as ever.

“And, more importantly, how do you think this expresses a love for our craft?” Jessica stopped her chewing, and Selena turned to Sid. Nobody in the class spoke. To Sid’s dismayed satisfaction, they had reached a general consensus that Daniel was wasting his time, but no one said more. “Do you know what I think, Stu?” “What?” said Sid, gagging on the anticipation. More advice from the master.

“I think you’ve really found yourself as a writer.

And within the first week of class, how spectacular!” Sid fought to prevent his smile from escalating to laughter as Selena proceeded to gallivant about the room. “The allegory of the pen as a flighty lover, the intimate detail, Daniel’s ambivalence towards it all: I. Love. It. You’ve displayed a rawness that I’d wrongfully doubted you could display.”

“Thank you Selena.” Sid felt he owed her a greater token, but that was all he could muster. Several others read their pieces, but there wasn’t much of a point to that. The remainder of the semester would now be an exercise in dethroning Sid from his place as top writer. When the final cliché was uttered and the class ended, Selena held Sid behind, a smug grin sprawled across her face. “What’s up,” said Sid. “Am I being submitted to the campus journal?” Her face grew tighter; she slid her hair behind her ears and placed her hands on Sid’s desk. In her sweetly patronizing tone, she said: “I truly hope things work out with Lola,” and she departed with an uncharacteristic strut.

Sid stayed in the desk and waited for her Birkenstock footsteps to fall out of earshot; then he called Lola.

- Ryan Molloy

6

summer road trips and what is meant to be this seeping, scratching, scrawling wanderlust like crushed violet velvet blanketing is all I can see. bleach, tan and I-don’t-care-why because there’s always another rest stop DQG ZH FDQ ÀQG D SKRQH WKHUH this lovely, pitched and watery will to run is like a peach-tinted polaroid that didn’t quite develop but the splotch in the corner is alright because it looks like the stars did the night I found it – milky clouded and dear. the kind of man I want smells like mint and stretches in the morning, racking bounding bones. he is rough and soft and every perfect shade of blue and green and I pray for his heart.

I can’t help but thinking that I wasn’t meant to be alone and the twin soul I lost somewhere in clouds and pools is well and spritely and searching and having sweet desert diner adventures that someday we will share.

DQG ZKHQ ZH ÀQG HDFK RWKHU ,¡OO realize why no one else ever made violet feel so happy and bursting.

-Rachel Hughes

7

Fever Dreams Walk everyday to your love and to the grocery store.

Wait for the “use by” date to be more than a week away.

Look for men who dress well and never look at you.

Buy ice cream because it tastes good and that’s what you were meant to do.

Take the elevator so you never have to breathe in front of men.

Drink milk and eat cookies like \RX VWLOO KDYH DQ H[FXVH WR EH VHOÀVK -Taylor Baker

leviathan : urann chan

8

After Alone, I look for grace. , ÀUVW ORRN LQ WKH FUHDVHV and folds of my body, but no light has shown there.

I stretch out at night and hope to open.

You and all your heavenly realms like mist, like arrow-showers.

-Taylor Baker

Adam and Eve I should’ve known when I met you in the garden I should’ve known by the fallen petals on your shoulder paper-thin teardrops on a white canvas shirt that beauty always begets ruin I should’ve heard the serpent’s hiss in your six string serenades tasted the apple’s forbidden crunch in your delicious conversation a chocolate bar will always melt when left out in the sun for long we were sunbaked burnt bread day in and day out oblivious to our own intoxication we gorged ourselves on 12-bar blues and Pop Secret our stomachs full with surreptitious kernels popping popping but now I’m full of memories and empty of laughter and the snakebite on my ankle hurts like heaven a can of soup a warm blanket a pair of slippers nothing could keep out the cold touch of knowledge \RXU EORRG\ ÀQJHUSULQW RQ WKH KRRG RI P\ FDU ORRNV ORQHO\ WKH Stones can’t whisper my name quite like you I should’ve known when I met you in the garden that apples fall petals fall but we fall hardest of all -Angie Howes

9

merrikodalith : samantha stephen

10

music and room : sadye sagov

Green Gold Eyes He couldn’t forget the smell of summer trees at midnight. His black Subaru glimmered faintly in the moonlight, and the trees stood tall and bright in the grove around them.

They were parked off the road in one of those parking lots you found in small wooded towns that showed off special sites. Bright silvery glass shone, bent underneath the wheels of WKH FDU DV KH WRRN RII KLV KDW DQG UDQ KLV ÀQgers through his hair, legs snaking out in every direction across the hood of his car. Jess sat in front of him, right near the edge, legs dangling gently a few inches above the ground, her slender arms supporting her arching back as KHU KDLU à RDWHG JHQWO\ EDFN HYHU PRYLQJ HYHU IUDPLQJ KHU FXUYLQJ FKHHNERQHV DQG VWDU ÀOOHG eyes in a raven halo. The black cami she wore clung to her form, highlighting her slender waist and running up her back with the slightest hint of a stretch of fabric. His gaze glanced GRZQ KHU ZDLVW DQG à LFNHUHG WR KHU ZULVW where the thin gold bracelet he had given her two months before clung gently, shimmering in the soft light.

From behind them the soft rolling riffs of a guitar peeled out, interweaving with the cadence of the forest and the soft murmured ripples of water spreading on the lake surface below them. Swinging her heels twice, Jessie jumped off the hood of the car, turning her head slightly to gaze at him out of the corner of her eye. He could tell the side of her mouth was curving up and she said teasingly, “Race ya WR WKH HGJH Âľ ,Q RQH Ă XLG PRYHPHQW WKH FDPL was peeled off and she was running, silver bra glimmering in the light of the moon, raven hair streaming out behind her as she danced away across the grass, each step sending her bouncing higher and higher into the air. A chuckle burst from the back of his throat as he swung off the hood, pulling his shirt off as 11

as he did so, and ran to catch her. Wind rushed by his body – he could feel it swing under his arms and around him, meander through the valleys of his hair and torrent in eddies around his legs. He caught up to her just as she reached the edge, and didn’t slow, sliding one muscled arm around her waist and SXOOLQJ KHU ZLWK KLP DV KH à HZ SDVW +H KDG always loved the speed. It excited him, gave him a rush. The next thing he felt was the EXR\DQF\ RI WKH DLU DV WKH\ à RDWHG GRZQ WR the lake ten feet below, hitting the water with a startled laugh and a contented smile.

Gasping he rose up to the surface, feeling the water in his mouth slide tranquilly down the back of his throat. In a short spray of bubbles Jessie rose up in front of him, trying to hold a stern face as a smile kept cracking through her green gold eyes. “I said to the edge asshole,� she murmured, her voice melding with the notes of the summer night.

Treading water, he sent a jet of it gleaming across the surface towards her with a smile and she pushed away from it, kicking luxuriously as the warm water licked around both of them. “Why stop when you’ve got a taste for danger?�

They splashed and horsed around in WKH ODNH GLVUXSWLQJ WKH UHà HFWLRQV RI WKH VWDUV and sending the tree trunk rippling into a PLOOLRQ GLIIHUHQW IUDJPHQWV DQG ÀQDOO\ SXOOHG themselves up on the far bank, from whence they walked slowly back to the car. He held RXW WKH SHUIHFWO\ UROOHG MRLQW DQG OLW WKH ÀQ DW WKH WLS ULJKW QH[W WR KHU QRVH 7KH ÀUH à LFNHUHG DQG à DVKHG GRZQ WKH OHQJWK RI SDSHU œWLO it ignited at the end in a brilliant poof, blazing brightly for an instant like a star fallen to the ground. She pulled gently, leaning up against his arm as they looked up at the sky, and let out a small cloud of pure white smoke. They ZDWFKHG LW GULIW IRUZDUG VORZO\ WHQGULOV à LFNing off to the sides until it no longer existed.

She held the tiny paper rocket to her lips once more, and closed those green gold eyes, breathing deeply. Leaning forward, she let out another cloud, sucking it in quickly before he could inhale any of it. With a playful murmur she blew it gently back into his face, just inches from her own. He smiled and pulled away the joint, sending rings through rings for her amusement, leaning back on his windshield staring up at the night sky, content. Pushing his hands back, he arched his back with a sigh of relief, closing his eyes, stretching, panther-like.

When he opened them again, Jessie’s face hung suspended just inches above his own, a lock of hair snaking idly down to tickle his chin. “Bridge,â€? she whispered, each letter enunciated quietly, a subtle promise. He held the joint up to his lips and inhaled again, letting the smoke Ă€OO XS KLV OXQJV 3XOOLQJ WKH EXUQW SDSHU DZD\ and stubbing it out on the hood of the car, he Ă LFNHG KLV ZULVW WRVVLQJ LW LQWR REOLYLRQ DV KH let out a stream of smoke that passed straight into her mouth, forming between them a tanJLEOH OLQN RI Ă RZLQJ VPRNH :LWK KHU H[KDOH she was somehow closer, and then he could feel her lips brushing against his.

“I told you you’d kiss me tonight,� he said, laughing.

Her joyous laughter swung up into the night sky, lilting and melodious, a peal that split the dark sky open and set the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. “Yeah I really lost this bet.� “Told you it would work,� he smiled. “Come back here Jess.�

She came back and kissed him again, and the forest disappeared and his lips felt OLNH WKH\ ZHUH Ă \LQJ 3XOOLQJ DZD\ DIWHU ZKDW seemed like hours, she held his hand and kissed it, wrinkling her nose happily as the frayed ends of the friendship bracelet she had given him rustled against it. “I like that you still wear this.â€? “I’m not gonna take it off sunshine,â€? he said. “I promise.â€?

Her mouth curved up and she scrunched up her shoulders, giving him that special little smile she gave to no one else. A strand of hair blacker than the night sky fell across her eye and she leaned over, kissed his neck and tucked her face away into the hollow at its base. He hoped it would never end.

- Shreyas Warrier

scheluled : karrah beck

12

serenity : emily huang

Mrs. Frisby Sleeps Alone I watched my cat teach her son how to kill a mouse. She caught it in her teeth like a child of hers and passed it to him like a shot of whiskey over a long Western bar.

He pawed it. Broke a kneecap, maybe.

And let it go.

You paw at beautiful girls so I can watch. I am slit open like the mouse my cat left on top of my mattress because I had been gone too long, a week.

I am just blood when I think of them – beautiful girls. Pink tails. White fur. Blue blood.

I am broken kneecaps and sly offerings at your feet. Take LW P\ ÀOHW heart.

Come back, come back.

cats: urann chan

- Sage Hahn

13

dollhouse prague : sadye sagov

Ezhou My father walks into his old house. I trail behind my brother, as if we are lost dogs outside our home. We keep our mouths closed like drawers, our words held like folded t-shirts behind our teeth.

Nai-nai hugs us all. Smells strong like yolks and pork meat. She is barefoot and in a night gown even though noon has passed. How do we reciprocate the love of those who love us for no reason? My heart is still fresh, my brother’s the same.

She leads us to her bedroom. It is half the size of mine, with WLOH ÁRRUV DQG D VPDOO WHOHYLVLRQ ZLWK DQWHQQDH $W WKH FRUQHU sits Ye-Ye, eyes in space, hands dangling between his thighs.

Xinsheng is here. Your son. Nai-nai says.

He looks up from space and stares at my father’s tender eyes. I cannot discern his impression. He coughs, gazes longer, more like a child than an old man. He coughs my father’s name, as if someone splashed water on his head.

My father embraces him lightly as if the heart could break him.

- Oliver Ling

14

Vices The doorbell rings, so she pauses in putting on her socks. Its obnoxious chime reverberates through her ribcage. Her mother gets the door.

“Sebastian, what a surprise!”

From the floor she cannot see her cousin’s boyish smile, how he remains charming despite his stubble and his unwashed hair. Sebastian reminds her of a cowboy, lean, secretly muscular and able, like he could just as easily round up cattle as take the SATs. “I was in the neighborhood, figured I’d pick up Leslie and take her to school so she won’t have to take the bus.”

She wonders if her mother can tell that Sebastian is high; Sebastian is always high on something.

“Well that’s very thoughtful of you.

She’s around here somewhere. How’s college going?”

“I dropped out, last semester.”

“Dropped out? Uncle Teddy didn’t tell me!”

“Yeah, it just wasn’t the place for me, you know?”

She gets up slowly, picking up her backpack. Putting it on she stands like a solider, checking for the gap between her thighs.

“I hadn’t heard. Do you have new schools in mind?”

“Not really, not right now. Where’s Leslie?”

Shyly, she enters the foyer.

“Hey Ace,” Sebastian says easily. “Wanna ride to school?”

She nods mutely, her cracked lips with those little flecks of skin hanging off like a sore nail, skin patches that turn to dust so evident she cannot open her mouth.

“You had breakfast, right Leslie?” her mother calls.

She slips past Sebastian to the outdoors, a narrow escape.

Sebastian lights a cigarette as soon as they get in the car, impatient when the lighter flickers, refusing to catch.

“So what’s up Ace?” he asks as they pull out of the driveway, his long fingers holding 15

“So what’s up Ace?” he asks as they pull out of the driveway, his long fingers holding his cigarette eloquently out the window.

“Nothing much. Why’d you decide to drive me to school today?” she says, buoyed by this beat up car, the familiar road: she begins to fiddle with the radio.

“Figured you hated the bus. I always did. Always a bunch of little fuckups, trying to smoke their weed in the back of the bus, you’d think they’d figure out how to do it in school,” he slyly grins at her, running a hand through his too thin hair.

She laughs. “You’d think they’d learn,” she jokes with him, loving how his hand leaves the steering wheel for seconds at a time, the car veering to the left. “You’ve got it all down, now you’ve figured out how to not even go to school.”

She says this to be cool, to show him she deserves to be in on his jests. But this time she’s offended him, his hands clamp around the wheel as his jaw tightens.

“Shut up, Ace.” Now everything is wrong and this isn’t what she wanted, she’s stranded in her baggy pants and untied sneakers, watching Sebastian quickly light another cigarette. She’s forced to focus on Sebastian’s gauntness, how his t-shirt barely covers his exposed rib cage; skin stretched tight over bones. Sebastian can accomplish what she starves for; Sebastian’s got it all.

“I’m sorry,” she says, desperate, she’s now analyzing how she sits, how her stomach falls over her jeans, the slight bulge on her sides.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says as they pull up to the school.

He suddenly stops her from exiting the car.

“Hey. Skip school today. Come with me,” he says urgently. She clamors back in the car.

They pull up to a diner with only two other cars in the parking lot.

“Pick a booth, Ace,” Sebastian encourages, and she feels again like the child she longs to be. Spinning on her heels happily, she drags him to one in the back.

He orders a hamburger; she gets brunch,

pancakes and bacon. Her friends commend her on how long she can go without eating, applaud her counting calories, but here Sebastian and her are children, and children eat pancakes with slopes of butter, children rely on their metabolisms and playground time and older cousins.

The end of the meal goes terribly wrong. Their waitress, a dumpy women with a long blond ponytail leaves the check, they owe twelve dollars and five cents.

“I’m going outside to smoke,” Sebastian says, he is antsy with his eyes hard and flashing.

When he returns she has scrunched up napkins into piles, her face drawn and tight.

They stare at each other like two stick figures with their limbs like toothpicks. Briskly but angrily he leans over to whisper in her ear.

“Leslie, I don’t have the money to pay for this. I forgot, I have to pick up tonight, I’m out, I need to pick up tonight. I can’t front this.”

At this she is wide eyed, she has no money on her; the girl who hates food and clothes does not need to pay for much.

“I…I don’t have any money.”

Sebastian grinds his teeth, his handsomeness fading like the blood from his

knuckles.

“I guess we will have to dine and ditch,” he growls. Grabbing her roughly by the upper arm, he drags her out of the restaurant. He jumps in the car while she stumbles in slowly, her legs numb and her shoulders hunched.

They ride in silence as he furiously smokes.

She contemplates the cellulite on her thighs; Sebastian offers no protection.

“Sebastian…that didn’t…that waiter was nice…I…” He refuses to look at her, instead pinching the bridge of his nose like she could never possibly be expected to understand.

He drops her at the front of the school.

“Sebastian,” she says, it is one word but it is a plea.

He unlocks the door for her wordlessly.

She slowly steps out and grabs her backpack, hoping for his smile but he speeds off as soon as her feet hit cement.

She stares bleakly at the front of the school; this landscape of her life. She wants to cry, to let Sebastian fix her, but Sebastian cannot be the solution to her vices if he cannot survive his own.

- Dana Trismen

the eye : karrah beck

16

Ramona1 This weather becomes strange.

April.

Nails chip in slow motion And I am thinking of your mother.

One thing you forgot to tell me Is where you put your ashes.

Your mother is a cheap wall decal Wearing a leather jacket now.

But you, You dyed my hair and sometimes Gave me sunglasses in the dark.

When your mother looks at me, she is looking for you.

1From the song Ramona by the Ramones, from the song Ramona by Guster, and the Ramona children’s book series- your favorite -Megan Kerrigan romanian countryside : nick iftimia

17

Disquiet Why are you made so disquiet by stops and rests in conversation and take such pains to plug each silence as one would a leaking pipe?

Perhaps you must truly believe the weather channel is understaffed and sometimes you will point to objects around a room like gloves or spoons or a book and say, “That’s a book is what that is.”

You choose talk about a book You have never read rather than let pauses trickle over lest you sense a shiver.

It would remind you of your spine.

I do understand why You prefer this sort of chatter.

I too make my steps faster to reach the end of dark rooms because sweating scared in bed at 3 a.m. quaking under the unkind voices Disclaiming meager self-encouragement making you big and small all at once making you wish you were neither The demons in those silences don’t pretend they quite give a damn about books you’ve never read.

-Jamie Parris

18

sisters talking in the park the curious chatter of gravel doesn’t mind my bare-bottom feet growing pink upon its back – meanwhile her hands spoke through the air a language entirely different from her words, thrown into our peach conversation washing down like milk tasting white and pink and purple on my tongue as I returned them – you need to take care of yourself is what the words were saying, thrusting, up to a mid-afternoon sun salutation and I built dams in my eyes to keep the saline love inside because I’d never heard that riff before with such marigold intonation. and she kept talking: big brother: urann chan

cook for yourself like you would cook for your friends, cooking alone is sloppy and the food never tastes good.

WKH JUDVV\ SDUN ÁRRU IHOO XQGHU P\ VWHS and I wondered why endearment was such a slippery creature but we kept walking until the robin’s egg sky put her heather coat on – she said treat yourself well cooking-for-one is no way to live.

-Rachel Hughes

19

Tributaries During sleet season Your dark eyes dance Along the ridge of our river The water sinks into itself blackly churning, your somber irides WU\ WR ÀQG D OLJKWHU In the dark car, the dark is draped, The dark is a rushing tide Against the simmering tangerine lights <RXU SURÀOH FRQÀUPV XV Functioning like a driftwood ladder Is a lesson in salt eyes and rot :KDW ZH FUDYHG WR ÀQG ZDV FXSSHG In one another’s sternum Was something simple – a hot spark of real, stained smiles, a bowl of confectioner’s sugar beside the strawberries, for once.

-Elaine Mancini

20

They say those who canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t, teach I told my father I would be a writer jotted down the way he wasted in his hospital bed clasped his hand when he was almost gone I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want him to remember.

I told my wife I would be a writer penned how she cocked one eyebrow, licked her lips proposed to her averagely in a restaurant Everyone clapped and she still said yes.

I told my son I would be a writer inscribed his meaty hands, plump cheeks read him bedtime stories by another author Only whispered my own when he was long asleep.

I teach high school to burnt-out ninth graders teach Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen to AP try to ignore the specters of my past and those piles of paper in my attic.

-Dana Trismen

21

Editors in Chief: Dana Trismen Rachel Hughes Taylor Baker

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Editorial Staff: Gregory Bonacci Sage Hahn Elaine Mancini Ryan Molloy Aly Schuman Shreyas Warrier

Where the Children Play is an art magazine created at Brandeis University. We publish original artwork, literature, and sheet music selected from the work of the student body. Student editors choose the contents. All work is published with the name of the student writer or artist.

We reserve the right to edit contents for publication. The magazine is funded through F-board and is published every semester. It is distributed to students and to members of the university community without charge. Copyright laws protect the contents of the publication.

girl : samantha stephen

Production Notes: The magazine is printed by Archer Publishing in Waltham, Massachusetts. Garamond font is used throughout the publication. All art reproductions were produced by using a scanner or digital camera, when submissions were not emailed directly by the artist. All layout was done using Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop CS, and Adobe InDesign CS.