Volume 15 issue 2 fall 2003 by Yale Literary Magazine

Volume 15 Number 2 The Yale Literary Magazine Fall 2003

Art

cover

Acrylic Grace Silvia Photograph Yali Lewis

Photograph Santiago Mostyn

Drawing Tyler Coburn

Photograph Brandon Wall

Pen and Ink Jessica Kung

Drawing Tyler Coburn

Drawing Marvin Astorga

Photograph Anya Meksin

Fall in Otis

Writing

Allie Stielau 3

Chapter One Lexy Ben aim

I keep your virginity locked in a steel box under my bed,he says Meredith Kaffel

A Narcissist's Open Window Sam Grossman

A Dictionary Contributing Authors

The Marriage of Leopold and Loeb Adam Eaker

Munal Waits for the River Sabrina Sadique

Words for Punctuation,in Yiddish: Gedzen Fislech and Halbe Levanes Adam Farbiarz

The Diary of Sebastian Groner Nick Danforth

Poem Megan Pugh

Photograph Yali Lewis

It's leaf-looking season. The summer people have all gone away. Today Lester and I pulled the last dock out, water so cold my finger-bones creaked. I could see straight down to the bottom, to the lakeweed and the leaves. You know how the water grows clearer as it grows colder this time of year. I wonder if the trees in your city turn red, if you miss the way trees get here, or how the leaves pile up,the wet smell on the shortcut to the store and the dry smell when they blow across the road. We put McKinney's dock and also the pontoon raft outside the shed by the trout pond,set them right beside the old ice box where I set you last summer. You were watching me cast and the fly kept catching in the hemlock branches. I swore and dropped the pumpkinseed that pricked me when I wrenched the hook out. Still you called me fisher-man. I pulled you towards me by your belt-loops. And afterward, you wore my shirt home, sleeves rolled up,the bottom knotted at your side. If you still have it, is it the same gray as my other shirts when they hang frosted from the line these mornings? Jimmy still won't speak to me,and like Bell says, that's not surprising. I'm sorry about that and Lou's and the bus station this July. I couldn't find the right thing to say. But I saw how the sun was falling on your collarbones. I saw that nickel-sized bruise on the right side of your knee.

Fall in Otis Allie Stielau

Chapter One Lexy Benaim

tures like the kids and their imaginary friends you read about in five-inch,two-hundred ninety-five pound, children's storybooks. They went on difficult missions that were ofhairless, black former NBA player, with ten violent and humorless. They once joined the Air Force and deEarvin Joe Hill Johnson was a seven-foot

muscles that undulated ominously like the Harlem River on Christmas day. He had

livered their sailor-mouthed captain from the demons of alcoholism, but most often, they dealt with ethnic issues. Their perpetual

little if anything to do with John Henry. enemy was a paramilitary skinhead group called 'Army of BasRather, he was a hybrid of the physiog- tards,' co-labeled by Gabriel and his older brother Daniel. 'So let me get this straight. You and Earvin Joe Hill Johnson Earvin 'Magic' Johnson and Jesse Jackson, fought a paramilitary, Nazi,skinhead group born of no parents?'

nomic attributes and personality traits of contemporary stars of the most important

'Well, yeah,'said Gabriel.

reference frames in young Juan Gabriel

Gabriel's large brown eyes dominated his face and were it not for

Benatar's life: basketball and social justice.

the wealth of baby-fat guarding its perimeter like a moat, those seemingly ever-expanding browns might well have taken over. Dan-

In addition to the beloved Los Angeles son's name was derived from a 'working-

iel noticed the way that adults' eyes responded to Gabriel's eyes as if they promised at once the imminent success and gratitude of their

class' hero of one of the folk records his

own children.

Lakers point guard, Earvin Joe Hill John-

mother played him at bedtime until he was nine. 'Where there's injustice / It's

II-

'So it doesn't really matter if they're killed cause no one really cares that much...'said Gabriel.

there you'll find Joe Hill.' Gabriel, as his

The intersecting lines on Dan's forehead made it clear that it ac-

father insisted Juan be called, and Earvin

tually caused him physical pain not to ask Gabriel interrogative

Joe Hill Johnson never went on adven-

technical questions.

'Well, if they have no parents that settles it: they're bastards: interrupted Daniel.

adroitly drew likeness after likeness of himself and Earvin Joe Hill Johnson fight-

'Like the people Mom is always yelling to while we drive?'

ing their way through perilous, morally

'Exactly.'

ambiguous situations, until the best con-

'Oh, cool: said Gabriel.'Oh and also, they don't care when they

clusion for all was achieved. He once shot

kill someone at all. Like even though these are the bad guys and we

baskets with Earvin Joe Hill Johnson for

know we have to do it, Earvin Joe Hill Johnson and I still feel bad

six hours in a row, perfecting the mechan-

and have funerals and stuff for them. Oh,and wait, one more thing.

ics of the underhanded free-throw, but

Also, they're like perfect; that's why it's so hard for me and Joe to

after twelve seconds of math, Earvin Joe

catch them all the time. Like they are so good at sports, especially

Hill Johnson urgently needed his atten-

dodgeball, which is probably why they're such good knife throwers, tion: social justice depended on this and and they are awesome at math. And they have blonde crewcuts.' 'Gabriel, one last question: how many rebounds, blocks and as-

who was Gabriel to disoblige. His teacher, Ms. Blumenthal, scolded him, calling him

sists did Earvin Joe Hill Johnson have in 1971?'

lazy and undisciplined. If Ms. Melinda

'17.1, 5.4, and ii.i. That was the season after he averaged a quadruple-double.'

Blumenthal only knew the intensity of the battle Gabriel was fighting alongside

'Wait,could you repeat that?'

Earvin Joe Hill Johnson... if she only

'17.1 rebounds,5.4 blocks, m assists,' he said shortly.'Gotta go.'

knew of the relentless moral tests Earvin

Gabriel had an easier time remembering imaginary statistics than

Joe Hill Johnson and Gabriel faced and

mastering his addition tables. He could sit there for hours,a Bic pen

how Gabriel stayed awake well through

in hand, wiggling his toes madly but purposefully while he mal-

the night wondering if he had met their

'.......==

criteria, shuttling back and forth from Detroit (where he and Earvin Joe Hill

their parents, but Gabriel understood they didn't believe in him. One day, in front of a bunch of their parents' politically-minded

Johnson lived) and New York City (where his family lived)... if Ms. Melinda Blu-

friends, his brother asked him if he and Earvin Joe Hill Johnson

menthal only knew how even Earvin Joe Hill Johnson was sympathetically telling Gabriel that he'd hate to do it, but that he might have to find a new partner if Gabriel didn't get better at math soon... if she only knew that Gabriel understood that he was worrying away his childhood in his reckless pursuit of justice against the mathematically profound 'Army of Bastards: then maybe Ms. Melinda Blumenthal would not have insisted on reading Chapter One

mom,laughed and toasted to Daniel's future as a journalist. Gabriel didn't know what facetious meant, but tried to respond in a similar tone:'Could you make it so I don't have math homework, Dan?' he said to little fanfare. He tried again:'I want Jesse Jackson to be the president of the United States of America because I saw him talking to Magic Johnson once on TV and he said that he wanted everybody to hold hands and appreciate each other like we did in Ms. Rinehorn's creative movements class at school and that was really great: 'Gabriel, you're right. Jesse Jackson should be the president. However, it is his fiscal policy that I admire most. Jackson really

What I Love (Gabriel's first poem)' back-

wants to eliminate certain socioeconomic imbalances that eat away at the values of this country,' said Dan loudly, in a remarkably as-

ward to the entire class until Gabriel wrote

sured tone for an adolescent with a voice as inconstant as New York

his e's and p's forwards. Though the kids

weather. Applause.

in Gabriel's class admired him for his abil-

Later that night, inspired by Dan's insincere appeal, Earvin Joe Hill Johnson and Gabriel decided that they would indeed try to

'Sharks, Police, Basketball and Blocks: 5

could go on a mission so that George H.W. Bush wouldn't be the president. His parents' friends, mostly Columbia professors like his

ity to name the entire roster of the Los Angeles Lakers and each player's year of birth (a result of his father's semi-Pagan worship of`Showtime'basketball, itself an indirect result of Gabriel's grandfather's devotion to Argentinean football), Gabriel always felt lonely,because not one of them knew his best friend, Earvin Joe Hill Johnson,and they all acted as if learning arith-

make it so that George H.W. Bush wouldn't be president. In fact, they did some intelligence work involving Gabriel's parents'friends, and discovered that George Bush was himself'the head of a spy organization: and that he almost went to jail in 1986 for reasons that were'hard to explain to a young kid.' Better still, could they make it so that Jesse Jackson (perhaps with instructor of creative movement Clarabell Rinehorn as vice-president?) would have Bush's job? No. One first-grade morning, Gabriel left a note on his parents

later, well into the Ritalin era, perhaps he

breakfast table announcing Earvin Joe Hill Johnson's death. He locked himself in his room,and responded to his parents' entreaties for him to eat something by stating that he was unable to come to

would have been drugged all the way to

the kitchen, because he was at a funeral in Detroit.

metic and spelling was some sort of noble endeavor. Had he been born a few years

Harvard,the school that people had accurately prophesied his brother Dan would go to since Gabriel could remember. The only people who knew about Earvin Joe Hill Johnson were Dan and

Obituary: Earvin Joe Hill Johnson (1950 â&#x20AC;&#x201D;1983) Juan Gabriel Benatar met Earvin Joe Hill Johnson the night he overheard his father, Carlos Shalom Benatar, explaining to his mother, Suzy Manocherian Benatar, why he must be called Gabriel

instead of Juan.'The horrendous injustice, prejudice, and general ignorance that exists even in this most liberal of cities, coupled with the misbehavior of hundreds of thousands of hot-blooded Puerto Ricans, forces me to call my son not by the name of my mother's father, but rather by the Americanized name of a novelist you claim to adore but do not read in his own language: Juan Gabriel Benatar had been unable to sleep due to a dream in which he, dressed as the number nine, was chased and almost 'ate: to quote Gabriel, by an animate, saber-toothed number seven. Fears of his parents getting divorced over his name, Ms. Blumenthal making him read aloud, and not being able to fix whatever his father was speaking about kept him awake until he could see orange clouds resting on the tree tops of Morningside Park outside his window. It was at 5:30 AM that very morning when Juan Gabriel Benatar met Earvin Joe Hill Johnson, who was looking for a partner with whom he might fight the war against social injustice. When Juan Gabriel Benatar asked Melinda Blumenthal about injustice in the world the next day it was the first he learned of Jesse Jackson, Adolf Hitler, Peron ('Who your dad probably knows a thing or two about'), Nelson Mandela, and 'the tyranny of an educational system in which a master of social science is forced to teach snot-nosed brats.' That night, behind the locked door of Juan Gabriel Benatar's room, Earvin Joe Hill Johnson and Juan Gabriel Benatar clashed with, and dutifully slew, a coalition of Afrikaaners and confederate soldiers without parents, who were Nazis organized by the Argentinean government of the 197os. They still felt guilty, though. Additionally, no blood was shed, as according to Gabriel,if people are guilty,`no blood comes out.' Earvin Joe Hill Johnson was a brave fighter of injustice and an outstanding basketball player in addition to a close friend, teammate, and collaborator with soon-to-be second-grader Juan Gabriel Benatar. Earvin Joe Hill Johnson's health began declining rapidly after Michael Dukakis beat Jesse Jackson in the 1988 Democratic primary, and he died the day George H.W. Bush was elected. As dictated to Daniel Yaco Benatar by Juan Gabriel Benatar under the condition that Daniel Yaco Benatar be allowed to show this obituary to hisfriends. Additional editing was done by Daniel Yaco Benatar. Thank you.

Photograph Santiago Mostyn

I keep your virginity locked in a steel box under my bed, he says and I wonder if he keeps Ginny's there,too, or if they are stored in separate locked paddocks with separate scrawls noting our names. Hoarded together, would they get along? I bet he takes no chances, only prisoners, I bet he keeps their cages apart,side by side. They must rattle against their metal walls some nights, he must think it is windowpanes clattering, he must dream of ghostly bones.

Never will he know that the root of his nightmares rests beneath his own down-swaddled head, that sometimes the lithe stems of our cherries I keep your snake out from under the silver lids. Dreaming, snarled in sheets, he sweats at the creeping urgency with which the stems meet,touch knotted tips.

virginity locked in a steel box under my bed,

They probe each other for clues and recognize

he says

ruptured bellies, pale exposed pits. Then,shuddering,

Meredith Kaffel

they twine together, restless to strangle.

An upside-down Frisbee floats beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. It is not a duck. I imagine it being tossed into the Atlantic by a child with curls and a sailor-suit whose mother would not play or assign it a gender, flying from pirate ships to aircraft-carriers, blown by an unfocused wind's laughter at its resemblance to a duck. My first word was'duck.' My parents and I live by the 9

A Narcissist's Open Window Sam Grossman

Drawing Tyler Coburn

East River. It is not a river.

A DICTIONARY

It sounds like nyet, which means no in Russian. But 'And-yet' is never so

and-yet an(d)yet â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Pronounced as one word, not two,as in an eighth-note followed by a quarter-note, followed by a whole note of silence. I find myself writing this word a lot these days. Always as a sentence alone. Example: I thought it was impossible. And-yet. Other example: I was prepared to leave. And-yet. To say'Andyet,' can be to say: There was a small, dissenting part of me, and despite its smallness it intervened, and that's why I kept on when I wanted to give up. Or I might write:They told me I would grow up to be handsome. And-yet. Meaning, I know the truth, of course I do,even

decisive or emphatic. It's simply there to challenge, or at least hold a light up to, whatever came before,like a grammatical philosopher. Although always followed by a period, its tone and effect is similar to a question mark. In two syllables it can sum up the existential doubt that's tied like a stone to each of us. It is also Jewish. Da-da, da-da, daDAâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and THAT

if I can't say it.'And-yet' can be a reminder of all that will go unsaid. Of a chance someone is holding out for. A door left

is why on Passover we

always lean. And-yet. As in, let me answer your question with a question. As

open. A DICTIONARY

Contributing Authors

in, I've just spent half an hour explaining it to you like this, but I could have just as easily argued it like that. As in, there are fifty ways to interpret this, if we can't agree on anything else, at least we can agree on that (and if we can't even agree on that, at least we can argue). 'And-yet' guards against simple conclusions. 'And-yet' says: Don't get so comfortable no matter how much you have to eat today you might be hungry tomorrow and by the way there's no such thing as black and white take it from me you should learn to sleep with one eye open. 'And-yet' can sometimes be funny. 11

It's almost always bittersweet. But it's never tragic; by the time there is time to say 'And-yet,' the tragedy is already past. Which is to say,'And-yet,' is almost always reflective.'It was terrible. And-yet.' As in, I'm still standing, there's light in the morning,the smell

like objects. What creature could justly claim to resemble a goose and not yield to the delight of being,in the last analysis, a goose? Hence, Anserine Webbing: not 'a webbing like a goose,'but'a webbing like the webbing of a goose'(see Levels of Generality). H. Stern has published on Morike, Rilke, Morgenstern, Benjamin, Celan, Concrete Poetry, music theory, Russian and Yiddish literature, original poetry and translations of German poetryfrom Goethe and Schiller to Morgenstern. His special interests include wine tasting, recitation and performance, and low technology teaching. He teaches German and Literature at Yale University. harmony is the moment reached when resistance and surrender shake hands. Harmony is the silence heard when truth is told and lies retreat. Harmony is the day my brother recognized the red adriamycin his nurse was slowly pushing into his veins through a syringe as nectar not poison. Harmony is the wood thrush singing between intervals of thunder. Harmony is the daughter of Chaos who dares to dream of Peace.

of breakfast, what can I tell you, I suppose the world continues to turn. Nicole Krauss has published in Esquire, The Paris Review, and Best American Short Stories (2003). Her novel Man

Terry Tempest Williams is the author of Refuge; Leap; and Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert.The Open Space of Democracy will be published this summer. Williams is a recepient ofa Guggenheim Fellowship and a Lannan Literary Fellowship in creative nonfiction. She lives in Castle Valley, Utah.

Walks Into a Room,published last year, was a Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle best book of the year, and afinalistfor the Los Angeles Times Book Award.She lives in Brooklyn. anserine (entry for a poetic lexicon) â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Gooselike'; rare but elegant, especially prized for the clear paucity of goose-

open As an adjective. Unguarded. Untrammeled. No habitation. No people. No fences.This open ground,this open range. Distant horizons,low sandhills blue as plums lying ten miles away past a foreground of sagebrush and soapweed. Maybe some cattle. Blackbaldies. Maybe a red Quarter Horse mare and her colt. A sand blow-out on a rise, which if there were men about,they would cover it with black automobile tires to

stop the blowing which they themselves had started. Above,

more than a dozen languages. He lives

the unclouded sky, blue as a bowl from China. This unnamed

in central Minnesota with his wife Rob-

place, west on the high plains. This open place. Where every

in and their two sons.

day above ground is a good day. Kent Haruf is the author of the novel Plainsong and lives with

terco (Spanish) adj. 1. stubborn

his wife Cathy in Colorado.

2. dogged

remuda The horse-culture noun remuda hasn't much purchase in the wider language despite being beautiful to pro-

3. bullheaded 4. my father

nounce (phonetically, except among certain southwestern

Terco is an 89-year-old man working

cowboys who say remoother) and heavy with history Dialect

in his yard and enduring the heat of

notes in the Oxford English Dictionary start simply with 'a

the South Texas sun, because this is

"bunch" of horses, about a score,' but a remuda is actually a

the way he was taught that men are

cowboy's collection of extra mounts â&#x20AC;&#x201D; his spares,'ten horses

supposed to work. Terco is denying he

to the man,' according to memoirist Andy Adams. The

OED

is old now, and the strength he once

quotes the practical Adams then lobs in a little poetry from

had he never will again.Terco is refus-

novelist Stewart White:'In a moment the first of the remuda

ing to use a cane. Terco is cursing any-

came into view, trotting forward with the free grace of the

one, including his wife, who reminds

A DICTIONARY

unburdened horse.' For a Midwesterner afflicted by romance, him not to leave the house without his free grace defines the remuda,reaching even to its synonyms, cane.Terco is how difficult he becomes the rhythmic saddle band and the remarkable caballado, a

in these moments,enraged at his limi-

noun so potently Spanish it should only be spoken by lovely

tations, at his immobility and at his

black-haired women beneath the full moon. No plain slave, futility, so much so that his wife oftenthe remuda horse remembers wildness. You may ride it, but

times escapes to the backyard so she

first you have to catch it. The prettiest scene in the movie

can cry and ask God for patience with

'Open Range' has Kevin Costner approaching a horse in the

this man she married sixty-five years

early mistsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;he holds out his hat to the animal who stretches

earlier, before she knew the true ex-

tentatively toward it as though there might be oats inside, tent of his stubbornness, which she and in that moment Costner gently slips the bridle on. It's not

was able to tolerate all these years

a trick but a conversation so tranquil and stunning you want

only because he was always away

to look away. I have no remuda, but my twelve-year-old boy

from the house, always working, al-

has a roan mare grazing in the pasture south of the barn. Ev-

ways being a man. Terco is every

ery morning he is outside with apple and currycomb before

morning and every evening counting

the rest of us wake. She is to foal in the spring. Romance wins

the pills he needs for his heart condi-

again.

tion, his blood pressure, his thyroid

Leif Enger's first novel, Peace Like a River, won the 2002 Booksense Book of the Year award and has been translated into

gland, his weak leg, his everything. Terco is getting on a treadmill every

afternoon —firmly holding onto the rails, because otherwise he would

Oscar Casares is the author ofBrownsville,a collection ofstories set along the U.S.-Mexico border. His writing has appeared in

surely fall off— and believing that, The New York Times, The Threepenny Review, Northwest Rewith time,this will revive the strength view, Colorado Review, and The Iowa Review, In 2002, he was in his leg. Terco is the old man lying prone on a matted table, waiting to

awarded the James A. Michener Fellowshipfrom the Copernicus

receive an acupuncture treatment he hopes will also improve the condition

Texas Institute of Letters and the University of Texas. He lives in

of his leg. Terco is not fully accepting that, at best, all this therapy will be temporary. Terco is how at night he dreams of being a younger man,of riding his horse along the Rio Grande, of

his hometown of Brownsville, Texas. uxorious adj.—agitated state achieved by normally docile husbands when they learn the real meaning of this word. I first stumbled across this word when I was writing Keeping Faith, and had one character ask another what was the

fully after his hard day of work.Terco is

most beautiful word in the English language. In an odd twist of life imitating art, however, my husband recently asked me

waking up before the sun does. Terco

the very same question across a dinner table.'You go first,' I

is walking around the garage later the

said.

same day, looking for something use-

He thought, and then offered onomatopoeia, simply because of the way it rolls like a marble off the tongue.Then he

sweating in the sun,of sleeping peace-

Society of America and the Dobie-Paisano Fellowshipfrom the

ful to do. Terco is convincing himself that the tiny cobwebs dangling from the ceiling need to be removed and now is as good a time as any. Terco is falling off a ladder,tearing his delicate skin, bruising his tender side, but somehow not killing himself. Terco is barely having the patience to remain still while his wounds heal.Terco is the old man grudgingly accepting the Goddamn cane. Terco is how, even with his cane and bad leg,he insists on getting down on his hands and knees in order to trim the edge of the side-

turned to me. 'Uxorious,' I said immediately. 'Excessively fond of one's wife.' He blinked at me,and then asked,'Why do you know that?' 'Wishful thinking?' 'Well, what's the word that means'excessively fond of one's husband'? There has to be one,'he insisted. 'Why?' 'Because. It's a yin and yang thing.' I folded my napkin neatly and set it on the table. 'I'm going home, and I'm going to read the dictionary,' he said.'Now.' 'You know, I was sort of hoping for dessert.' He gave me a look.'You're making it awfully hard to be uxo-

walk, bending and stretching as much as his old, tired body will allow, be-

rious,you know.'

cause the truth is, he will tell you,that if you want a job done correctly, you

Granted, I never turn down anything edible and chocolate, but the reason I was stalling was, honestly,for his own good. I

need to do it yourself.

didn't have the heart to tell him that I'd already searched

Webster's, cover to cover, when I first found the word years

your tongue; no scent of lilacs or apple

ago. And that,in spite of the logical argument, I never found a

blossoms on a spring morn;no wind to

counterpart to the word uxorious, one that suggests a state

rustle the willow leaves; no strolling

where a wife is excessively fond of her husband.

barefoot on a stream bank; no wild hawk,soaring on the swells; no spiral-

Go figure. Jodi Picoult is the New York Times bestselling author often novels, including Second Glance. She is the winner ofthe 2003 New England Bookseller Awardfor Fiction. She lives in Hanover, New Hampshire, with her husband and three children. womder An inspired sensibility or emotion; part mystery, part magic, part hope amidst mortal sorrow. The word is indefinable, inexplicable, and unmeasurable. However, a few more

ing song of the meadowlark; no newborn babe in your arms. ORIGINS: Merging

of One, as in the one

spirit that connects all living creatures; and Dur, as in enduring qualities,lasting memories. From wundurra, derived from the Old Tongue of Avalon and Fincayra, meaning both mystery and inspiration.

conventional attempts at definition follow: NOUNS: 1. miracle, as in: Such

a wonder, the butterfly's transfor-

mation! 2. marvel, as in: the wonder of a dawn's rays on the redwood. 3. something worthy of awe,as in: It's a wonder that even the youngest child carries cosmic dustfrom the oldest star 4. surprise,as in: She embraced me,the wonder ofit all. VERBS: 1. to speculate, as in: /

wonder how large is the universe.

2. to feel awe,as in: How,she wonders,could that accomplished adult have once been just a child in my womb? 3. to doubt, as in: / wonder whether such a great tree really sproutedfrom so small a seed. RELATED USES:

sense of wonder: Present in the completeness of now; awareness of miracles; passion for life, brief though it is; appreciation for all that cannot be bought,sold or reproduced. spirit of wonder: A child watches a butterfly emerge, wetwinged, into the light. (See the Greek mythological name Psyche, meaning both butterfly and soul.) Or:an elder appreciates the long journey of migrating salmon,swimming across vast stretches of open ocean. absence of wonder: Imagine a world of entirely artificial materials; no stars visible on high and no phases of the moon; no tides upon the tattered shore; no taste of snowflakes on

TA. Barron is the author of novels (such as The Ancient One and The Lost Years A DICTIONARY

of Merlin), nature books, and children's books. He lives in Colorado with his wife, Currie, and five children, who have a boundless sense of wonder.

The groom and groom are murderers. Blood stains their touching hands,a schoolboy's blood, Who lies now in a culvert stowed,his shattered Glasses set upon a rock. No more than boys Themselves,they're war-marked now,and cuffs strain at The hands they aim to lock. The crowd is hushed, The rabbi's voice intones dry passages To marry these young souls. A universe Is gathered for their fall, a trampoline Of newsmen,cops,and guards. The temple's darkened, And the noise resounds —the wine glass crushed beneath their feet. My bubbeleh, my darling boy,the aunties Cry and pinch their cheeks. The uncles puff Cigars and press dank billfolds in their hands. A judge could prophesy what lies ahead — Our Diclde with his gullet cut,the payment The Marriage of Leopold and Loeb Adam Eaker WINNER OF THE BERGEN MEMORIAL PRIZE FOR POETRY

For some jailbird cossack's kiss. And Nathan sinking deep in jungle lands, His love remembered in a memoir's scrawl. But now the party's reached its peak. The mobsters kiss The cops and slide their hands into blue pants. The aunties scream and toss the chairs, the bathtub gin Spills on the floor. The pair see just themselves. Entranced by dark Wise eyes, they have the scent of an eternal Crime about their clothes—they hear his cries And'cannot kiss away their fate, but savor still The rush,the impetus as legal hands Seize their young flesh and stuff them in a car That speeds away.The honeymoon begins, The long dark courthouse serenade. And in that parkland culvert lying stowed, The schoolboy strains a shattered, deadened hand To write in bloody measures his new shout, A hymn in hidden verses for those men, For these, our lovebirds on the down and out.

Munal crouches in unlit corners, behind bookshelves, curtains, and

cover her gaping mouth as she shrieked,

Munal Waits for

between legs of the living room coffee table. Nobody remembers

`Ma, shame! Hide!' and Shonali quickly

the River

exactly when she stopped talking or when her voice secretly sank

tucked her red chiffon sari under the pet-

Sabrina Sadique

into a hole of noiseless heartbeats. Her shadow tiptoes into the hid-

ticoat and wrapped it around the black

WINNER OF THE

ing places; she melts into them. Now a piece of fluid furniture, now

low-neck blouse.

BERGEN MEMORIAL

a shadow,now a seven-year-old. She morphs into shapes and silence as effortlessly as she makes bubbles in Coke with a straw. Nobody notices Munal even when she is standing in the middle of the living

'Rum Bua!' Shonali calls the maid, still dangling in the dream. 'Madam.

Munal Baby is deep in

room in her bright red overalls. They look right past her to the

sleep,' she answers (between multiple

quacking duck declaring the hour in the clock. If Munal were a

yawns before Shonali can question her)

punctuation mark,she would not have been a comma,semicolon,a

for she knows what the question would be.

colon, let alone a period: no one stops to her presence. She is only a

'Did you check her neck? Is she too

string of ellipses,dots through which she slips and vanishes as others

hot? Take the covers off and turn on the

emerge and sin.

if she is. And if not, slow down the

Shonali wakes up in trembling sweat,breath suspended in throat, fan.' hands around her neck, coughing hard and deep to let the stale air

Meanwhile, Shonali, now fully awake,

out. Tanweer in his sleep rubs his wife's back and turns over to the

wonders, 'What will be her first words

other side, grinding his tea-stained teeth.

when she will speak again to me?'

Shonali's dream,like all dreams,every night, was a blue flashback

It began three years ago. Aaryan, her

(in the style of the early'8os Hindi movies) of her daughter, Munal.

husband's twenty-four-year-old brother,

In this particular episode, Munal's four-year-old fingers flew to

was working on his final thesis on Violation

PRIZE FOR FICTION

ofC and CP Symmetries in his room down the hall. Shonali, with a mug of steaming

licking sugarcandy. It was a clear, physiological twist: a sharp pain

Lipton, knocked on his door. With blood-

'Why are you sorry? I am not: And she fell asleep on his chest

shot eyes, he took the mug from her hand

while he, awake, half-wished to carry her sleeping nakedness out of

somewhere where painkillers don't reach.

and his fingers brushed hers. Benignly. the room before Tanweer came back from his office and half-wished One can no longer reckon the level of be- that they would be found, naked, mostly un-sorry, tangled in arms, nignness in that ever-so-slight touch. The

legs, mind,and heart.

signals tumbled out — the high-velocity,

Tanweer was late that night. Later than his usual late. What was

somersaulting gush of electric impulses

not unusual was his desire to muffle Shonali's screams under a pil-

that left Shonali's body bewilderingly

low and carve on her skin with a razor blade. As his black Toyota

numb. Lust? No, not truly so. For what

Camry belched on the cement of the garage, Shonali knew her hus-

shot through her brain, down her neck, band was drunk and impotently so. Sideways, the world oscillated breasts, belly, thighs, and feet, though with him as he limped in, his night-blue Marks et- Spencer blazer electric, was unknown. And she knows lust in all its parameters, attributes, and repercussions. It is what she feels for her 17

husband, Tanweer, when he comes out of the shower, chest naked, towel-clad, curly hair wetted, dripping water onto the mus-

slung over the shoulders. Tie unknotted, wet shirt splotched, the stillness of his eyes told Shonali of their carnivorous desire. She knew that he, a model father, would stumble straight into Munal's room and in a slur of drunken words that perhaps only their daughter would understand,coo into her ears, kiss her forehead, and gently lay her on her side in the custom-made,single-bed-sized bamboo

tard carpet in their beige bedroom. No, crib. And so he did. That night, as he breathed in the smell of Shonali's skin under not lust. With her brother-in-law, Aaryan, it was one of those pure moments when you realize a big truth without knowing what the truth is. Shonali found herself in Aaryan's bed — naked, electrified by the thunders crushing her chest, and as peacefully at peace with herself as her then-four-yearold Munal in sleep. No sadness, no remorse, no stimulus to get up and clothe her nakedness,no fear of being caught.On her arm, Aaryan, tearful, joyful, and unchivalrous, whispered,`Sorry...' Shonali laughed that throaty laugh of hers — the same chilling yet calming laugh that twisted some vein in Aaryan's heart the first day he saw her with his brother,

him, he did not notice his brother's cologne. And when a slab of unfiltered sun shot through the window and fixed on Shonali's neck, Tanweer traced the purple-brown dental prints on it with his lips, smiling at the hardness of his brother's bite on her skin, mistaking it for his own.Shonali,tracing Tanweer's stale mouth with her fingers, caught the glint of his brown-black eyes and laughed like a child. Three years have passed since that night. Aaryan still lives down the hall and has his own consultancy firm in Gulshan. Munal is eight inches taller. Shonali's estradiol is depositing lipids in all odd nooks and crannies. Tanweer is balding. Ruma Bua has rejected her third suitor. Ashiana's roof is moss-sheathed and cracking. Shonali fears that one of these days Munal will slip on the black-green fungal rug and free-fall through the iron-railings. And that is only one of her too many fears. The might of monsoon! Rain of wrath sucks his voice in and leaves bubbles of silence in the wind.

It is a night of confessions. Their second of endless nights to-

Toposhi never had her periods. Her

gether. These hands. Hard with a childlike softness. The ache bursts.

one fear as a twelve-year-old had been to

And Aaryan's body grips Shonali's. His lips, she sucks in one deep

get her period during the Morning Prayer

breath. Nicotine leaks into her blood and throbs in her veins with

in the school assembly. And that didn't

Rachmaninoff's deft fingers in c-sharp minor on long play. Unholy

happen. By the time she was sixteen, she

joy sinks, deeper and deeper into the dark everywhere, everything

asked her stepmother if she should go to

that Shonali knows as right or certain. It dances the dervish dance

an ob-gyn to eliminate possibilities.

with her cold nipples between his minted teeth. 'Am I a better lover than Toposhi?' His breath, heavy on her neck, tells Shonali he is asleep.

'If you stopped playing football with all those boys, perhaps you would be more a girl and less of what you are;she said. And that was that.

Toposhi is waiting. Toposhi waits.

Indeed, Toposhi's friends were only boys; boys to whom her crew cut and

She wipes her face with the edges of her sari and waits. For Aaryan

pierced eyebrows were emblems of a sexy

to come home and brush her hair, harder and harder, massage her

revolutionary — a welcomed aberration

forehead hard with his pianist fingers up to the parting down to the

from the chauffeur-driven, bulimic waifs

back of her neck and deeper into the trail that leads to the waist.

who flinched at the sight ofsweat dripping

Mural Waits for

Spirals, circles, lines. From soft to adamant to noiseless.

from their hair after cricket matches. And

the River

Aaryan comes. Aaryan goes. Toposhi still rocks on her rocking

there was no boy on the cricket team who

chair in the verandah, waiting. She does not know what she is wait-

did not masturbate to dreams of Toposhi

ing for. The sun sinks behind her neighbors' algal rooftops. The

and this Toposhi knew. How could she

neighbor's niece, perched on a tool, marries off her doll. The maid

not? They had been her bona fide broth-

comes to collect the towels and bed sheets from the clothesline.

ers, lovers, her only friends. Who could

Crows squat on the pickle jars.

Toposhi have talked to about all those

Toposhi waits.

months and years of missed periods? The

Toposhi was told today that she is a man.

boys? Her father? The Zeus in the panthe-

A twenty-three-year-old potter, Toposhi was born with an xY genotype. Though her body produces ample amounts of testosterone,she lacks its receptors. Dr. Saber Huq,one of those men who speak with a mouth full of saliva, called it an Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. 'You are a woman, in perhaps every way you may think. But you aren't getting pregnant because, chromosomally, you are a man.It is in the Y. You have no internal genitalia... ummm... no structures — male or female — nothing — though externally, you are as much of a woman as a woman can be: A spray of spit landed on Toposhi's cold arm.

on of the polyvinyl chloride industry cEo's? Mr. Zakir Islam, the infamous plastic god, often fell asleep with his mouth open as they waited for the servants to lay out the dishes on the imported English Elm dining table. Sleep-deprived, he has a permanently wrinkled forehead and jet-black hemispheres under the faint red veins of his eyes. The veins, like the tributaries of Meghna, burst to web the whites of his

Photograph Brandon Wall

eyes, reddening with the deepening of the hemispheres as his union workers declare

sis. Aaryan tried hard not to cry. He breathed in nicotine to full lung capacity and the smoke pulsing its way down his windpipe stung and

strikes. Little time he had to scratch his

squeezed his chest. She said it's over;she said she is a man.She needed the safety,the rationality in solitude, to bridge her manhood with what she had

head for his un-ovulating man-woman child.

always been and known.With her breasts that Aaryan loved cupping had talked to someone. Anyone. Lover, as he fell asleep and the maleness in her blood. With the viscera and the outside. With all that mattered and all that stopped mattering. friend,father, God. For the first time, Toposhi wished she

She walked out into the blue hallway

'It doesn't make a difference to me! Can't you fucking tell that it

busy with the clink of silver healing weap-

doesn't?'

ons on white carts, smelling of sterilizing solutions, scissors, gauze,and latex gloves.

Aaryan nipped off the burning stub of Benson & Hedges with his thumb.The receiver thudded on the cradle as Shonali, with a mug of

'What did he say?' Not now... Call me.Tonight.' Aaryan pulled Toposhi by the waist and held her by the shoulders. 'Talk to me.' A nurse, her arms around an old woman vomiting blood on the mosaic of the waiting room,looked at them and looked away. And so he realized, in the faded brown of her eyes, in the stern solitude that settled in her gaze, that she was shrinking in her own compressed world where he would be dwarfed, choked, perhaps even engulfed, and spit out like debris from a phagocyte's mouth. Tonight, the telephone cord wrapped itself around Toposhi's chest. Her body

steaming Lipton, knocked on his door. With blood-shot eyes, he took the mug from her hand and his fingers brushed hers. A carnivorous desire she has. The psychoses of smells — the spilling, the trespassing into Shonali's wicked, warm thighs. The taste of ambrosia in poisoned nectar. She licks the sweat trickling down his neck. Impious summer heat that melts the pitch of the roads sticks her blouse to a breast. He unhooks with his teeth. And Shonali can tell that he does not love her. She clenches her teeth to rid herself of a pain that starts at her temple and leaks from every pore of her skin. In his sleep, he moans one word, over and over again. Toposhi. She remedies the mistake, Aaryan. I am Shonali: His hands tremble on her chest wet with his tears. His nails dig into her collarbones as he gasps for breath. Shonali tightens her grip and he sinks into a blessed, child-like sleep. Aaryan has his brother's blood. Still, there is a difference and it's in the moan. It's like the bird that Tanweer shot as it fell on the windshield, croaking. It's an animal pain, an animal lust, and an animal sadness.

curved itself into an0 — her nose pressing on her knee, her teeth sinking into her

Once,in their nakedness, Munal walked into the room — her eyes wide and frightened.In her love for Aaryan,Shonali could no longer

thigh,the blue speaker loading her pain in as electric signals and unloading to Aaryan

read her daughter's eyes. She only pulled the sheets over his back. 'Speak Munal:Shonali pleaded.'Say something.'

on the other end of the line as the silence of sound. Her breath, halfway up her throat in a hiccup, locked itself in paraly-

Munal loves poking out wax from her ears with Q-tips after Ruma Bua towels her dry. Ear-snot,she calls it though this she does not eat.

The other, she does. Salty, sticky, when no one's looking. But she

away the roaring clowns who follow Mu-

doesn't feel too bad. She knows all her friends take deep delight in

nal everywhere.

the gooey mix too. People think Munal cries as she drinks Coke.

Ruma Bua,she loves talking to. Shona-

They do not know that the fizz stings her eyes, eats the insides of her

li,she loves more but does not want to talk

nose,and stifles her. But she loves Coke and the suffocation too. She

to.'I am bad: Munal chides herself. As for

knows she is like her mother who loves being choked.

father and uncle, she would rather color

There are many things Munal knows and Munal hates. She hates

the sunny-side up of the egg in her draw-

her father's cranberryish breath on her forehead when she pretends

ing book than think about who she loves

to sleep. She hates how he bangs Shonali's head on the wall, naked.

and how much.

She hates the green coriander-banana juice Shonali blends every morning and forces her to drink. She hates playing with girly dolls and she hates cars. She fears they will run over her ankles. She fears her father's Gillette razor. She thinks the blade will scrape her eyeballs out in her sleep. But she loves roller coasters though she hates summer holidays with her parents when she has to sleep between them. And she hates this place called `Kat-mun-doo' where they took her. She vomited all the way on the plane and pretty ladies brought her cups of water and cookies. They stroked her hair too. She likes being stroked. And she loves her mother naked under her hairy uncle who sleeps all the time instead of going to the office like her father. And she knows that they think she knows too much.And this is what she knows. That they worry that she doesn't talk. That they think she can't. As evil doctors press down her tongue with metal tongs,they want her to say `Aaaaaa'and she knows better than that. That it's all a trick to lull her voice out. How can she tell them she does not like to talk to them,or to her friends who play with sand all the time and like swooshing up in the air on the scary red seesaws? The slides are worse. They are like the clowns that sit her down in the center and dance all around her till she gropes for Ruma Bua in her sleep. Poor Ruma Bua with tired droopy eyes and aching muscles dozes offstroking her long curly hair much before the clowns can go away. So she slides under her blue blanket and shuts her eyes to say the prayers that Shonali has taught her. Ruma Bua,she loves. Ruma Bua, she trusts. And she is the only one who listens as Munal talks to herself, perched on the toilet seat in the bathroom. Ruma Bua guards the door (as she crochets rainbow sweaters for her little sister in the village by River Jamuna)and shoos

At night, Tanweer loves Shonali without loving her. He loves her jasmine smell on his pillow, on the starched shirts in the wardrobe ironed by her, in Munal's hair that she combs, in the spicy tomato-daal she cooks. He inhales her skin â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the pale, dough-like flesh that reddens under his fingers. The blue-greenness of her veins makes his drunk eyes want to prick them with a needle and suck her soul out. Her animation, her muffled groans, her spinning laugh that hits the beige wall to be devoured by the enamel paint, everything of her that trembles, breathes, talks, and moves. All this he wants to vacuum out so that what lies beneath him is the doughlike flesh with its purple tinge and its familiar jasmine smell. But when remains of Chivas Regal force themselves out of his gut and onto the mosaic floor in the morning, his hand gropes under the blanket to find hers and squeezes it till she wakes up. He crawls to her side holding his stomach and whispers for water. And at those moments, when Shonali's smell seems like the only anchoring reality in a dizzied, dehydrated thirst, he knows that this is the only woman he would ever love

Munal Waits for the River

except his daughter, Munal. Shonali unwraps herself from his webbed hold of her

jam itself on the accelerator in a car-less road and swerve the Camry in a screech in front of his gate. This is the one place where he does

and brings him breakfast in bed. Omelets, not want to come only to end up coming every night. Shonali's neck toast, low-fat margarine, and freshly is where he wants to hide but the morning awakes with the hiding squeezed orange juice. The touch of citric place in a stench of vomit clenched between the hider's surprised, acid slakes his stale, vomit-dry mouth as he palm-pilots his schedule for the day at the bank. He looks up as the zipper is zipped open. Naked Shonali limps to the shower, her nipples scabbed, her thighs purple-blue streaked. After so many years with Shonali, everything seems periodic, categorized, and expected. He waits for the burst of tap water, the gurgle rolling down her curved tongue, the splash splashing on the sink from her face,the squeak in the turning of the temperature control knob in the shower, the spray of water hitting the tub

bloody teeth. Tanweer knows he is an animal. He is ashamed for being one. Shonali washes away the remains of his feast. Dettol's antiseptic sting darkens the purples and the blues. The scabs swell on raw flesh and the cold water, instead of piquing her nipples, crush them. The spray from the faucet pricks. No matter how deep the water seeps into the corners,Shonali feels unwashed. She fears that one night in her sleep, Tanweer will softly place the pillow on her face and push down with all his might. Her wringing arms will drift into a choked, static hush, as will her feet. Her daughter will speak enough to tell him about all that she has seen. Aaryan,in his cocaine sleep, will still call his ex-lover, Toposhi. Sometimes at night, Shonali hears her house, Ashiana, breathe. In the stillness of the black calm, the heart of the house beats. In her solitude, she hears it breathe after her.

having glided over the bends and hollows of her body. The novelty in the aesthetics

Pulse of bricks, stones, teak, glass, marble, and iron un-stills the calm only to deepen it. Those are moments when Shonali is free to has been strained out by time; the listless, be alone. Perhaps, one night, the pillow pressing down on her will insipid filtrate sinks into his senses withdrain the air from her lungs to spatter her soul onto the bricks, the out cognition. The beige room shrinks; he stones, the teak, the glass, the marble, the iron. With Ashiana's rise longs for newness. For a foreign touch on and fall of the heart, Shonali will inhale the blessed solitude and exhis skin, for a virginity that needs violahale the scabrous sins that have been tightening their hold on her, tion. He longs for a taut body that would webbing her flesh like milky stretch marks. squirm under his weight and plead for reRuma Bua knocks on the door. Munal is ready for school. The lease. Shonali's flesh has not lost its flavor: hot water tank on the roof has run out of its supply. She informs.She time has only sabotaged Tanweer's taste sighs. She waits. buds. It is like having the same daal every Let her wait. day until one no longer tastes it, until its presence on the dinner table makes the It comes to Aaryan again to foam his mouth and clamp his nostrils hand reach out for it without a longing. It is why Tanweer's steering wheel steers the Camry toward his house, Ashiana, unawares. It is what makes his numb foot

Pen and Ink Jessica Kung

shut. A baby dangling from the umbilical cord lowers itself into a tub of water. Blood and mucus drip from its testes that open into a pink vagina. The water changes color like the memorial fountain on Bijoy Shoroni Road â&#x20AC;&#x201D; yellow to orange to fluorescent green to an

explosion of salty heme. A butcher knife snaps the umbilical cord:

Toposhi comes back to Aaryan the way

the assailant is not a voice or a face â&#x20AC;&#x201D; it is only a sense of someone

he first found her: in the unstrapping of

inhabiting the same time and space of the dream and steering it through a maze. `Toposheee: he screams as the bloody bundle

her sandal strap near the Raowa Club at the Mohakhali railway junction. Purple-

splashes into the water and hits the acrylic fiberglass of the bathtub.

blue sodden pitch sticks to the soles, an

Its head smashes. He trembles as Shonali's fingers weave through his

inch on one, a little less on the other. She

hair. The baby's face melts like the osmosis of the smashed brain of limps, waving to stop an unoccupied the man he once saw,running toward a cargo train. Flies hovered on scooter for a ride to Fuller Road. Aaryan, the sugary fat of his brain that landed on the purple blue molten

sitting on the pavement by the limejuice

pitch. The face melts like the spattered remains of his body that

cart,sips his drink and watches Toposhi as

clung to the crunching wheels of a cargo train. Or like the relentless

scooters speed by her, oblivious of her

brush of an oil painter who decides to make his beloved faceless by

sandal-less plight. Pulled and pricked by

smudging it. Still in his dream,he swallows the froth of spit and asks

pitch poached by a sun perpendicularly

Shonali to leave,turn on the ceiling fan on her way out,and close the

above, her toes curl, her eyes sting. Aaryan

door behind her.

offers Toposhi a ride on his Honda and

soon finds himself weaving through ke-

tens to the words that remain incurably caught in pockets of her

bab-smoky alleys, held around the waist

throat. Words in the jagged holes between her breaths that need not

by a girl with a sandal in her hand. But

be spoken to be heard.

here is where the dream curves away from reality. The breather on his neck tightens

though he is speaking to his own image trapped in a phone cord.

the hold around the waist. Touch becomes

'I am leaving for six years. Talk to me. Please.'

a grip and Toposhi's inhale is not her ex-

Toposhi turns off her cell phone and presses hard on the

hale. Without looking back he knows the moistened cardamom breath on his neck is from Shonali's contracted chest; the end of her sari soaks cardamom from the daal and nooses around his waist. His mind riding on a Honda stops at the traffic light on Fuller Road: Toposhi in Shonali's sari thanks him for the ride, writes her number on his sweaty palm in fast-drying ball25

Aaryan starts speaking as one would to a bathroom mirror. As

point ink. Shonali stands at the door and watches his body twitch as the dream breaks. Aaryan's mouth foams with spit. Shonali, an insect, crawls toward him.

accelerator. Shonali has missed her period. She is nine days late. The vertical blue line on the square window confirms that the five-second spray of morning urine has ample amounts of human chorionic gonadotrophin. One to two, two to four, four to eight: she reads Aaryan's A level Biology text (just like she did when she was two weeks pregnant with Munal) and feels her blastocyst differentiate to latch on to her uterus. Her pulse throbs its multiplying invasion to remind her that it is half of Aaryan's chromosomes and half hers. Shonali hears peanut shells crack in the balcony adjacent to her room. Ruma Bua speaks in a hushed tone to a silent Munal. Sporadic words stream in through the window carrying with it the dusty fingers of sunlight. Village, well, train, Jamuna River, ghosts. In the

Toposhi calls again. Shonali answers the

hushed gurgle of her laughter, the nouns' loudness spits out, muffling the verbs, the prepositions. Though Shonali can sense the

phone. She hangs up. She knows it is Sho-

spirit of Ruma Bua's folkloric drowned boy rising from the swells of

nali and she is tempted to talk.

Jamuna,she wonders where the well or the train fits in.

Shonali must know about her, her deeper manhood, her irreversible sterility.

Aaryan is at the door,shoulder-drooped and head-bent. They walk to his room and close the door behind them. As the

anything that Aaryan may have told her,

door locks, words that had been swallowed and forced down the windpipe to the fragile walls of the stomach immediately gush from

she wants to dial again to say,'It's all a lie.

Munal's vocal cords:

And though she cannot say for certain of

It was a joke. Aaryan takes jokes too far...' She calls Aaryan's office. He answers. And he knows that she is breathing on the other end of the line. The same familiar

'Tell me more... So he was alive in the grave?' 'Yes. He was dead when they buried him. The mother dreamt he was alive and forced her husband to dig up the grave. They found him there, sitting, sucking his thumb. And at night, the river called him.'

oscillations in the air. The same beats. The

'Called?'

same silence. He does not say 'hello' for

'Yes. Rivers call. The spirits living in them do.'

the second time: he knows she will say

'How can you sit in a grave? How deep is it?'

nothing, or worse still, hang up. So he lis-

'Three arms deep. Deep enough.'

'Will you take me with you?'

'Why are you doing this?'

'Where to?'

'Doing what?'

'To Jamuna. Is your house by the river?'

'Living with him.'

'We don't have a house. It's a straw hut with a tin-roof. There are

`Munal..:

just two rooms.'

'That's an excuse. Bring her with you.'

'No bathroom?'

'And leave all this?'

'There are latrines by the river.'

'You are sick. You have gotten used to

'And you bathe in the same river?'

your bruises, to being beaten every night,

'Where else can we?'

to being raped. No wonder Munal doesn't

'I will go anyway:

talk to you. You think she can't hear the

'Why?'

two of you at night?'

Munal does not answer. The room shrinks from all sides. Lately,

'And you want to save me?' Shonali

the walls seem to close in on her as she crouches in unlit corners, laughs.'Funny what we get used to, no? behind bookshelves, curtains, and between legs of the living room

But how do I know you wouldn't be the

coffee table. How can she tell Ruma Bua that she wants to run away

same? Tanweer loved me and he still does.

to her village by Jamuna? To be the spirits in her stories or even the

What he does at night is my business

buried boy that the river calls. Ghosts are fine. Latrine water in bath-

and his:

ing and drinking water too. What scare her are shadows on the wall of familiar bodies rising and sinking in familiar screams. The osmosis of nicotine-mint. Rachmaninoff's Prelude in G Minor cracks the sun wide open and spills it on her sweaty back. 'Leave him. Come with me, Shonali: Aaryan pulls her by the waist as his hand snakes up her shoulders to cup her face in the crescent of his palm. A krishnochura branch with its supple vermilion blossoms bends into his window with a sigh. Southern wind grabs her sari and wraps his back. 'Leave,Aaryan. Pretend that this never happened:

'You are sick. And if you love your husband so much why are you sleeping with me? 'Did I say I love him?' Silver Nefertiti scratches his blue-green stubble again. Tanweer's Egyptian client got them for Shonali so that the bank sanctioned their seven-figure appeal for loan. It worked. 'Why can't you take these goddamn prickly things off?'

'Like the way Toposhi never happened?'

Munal packs her bag everyday. She puts in

'You can't let go of this... What's the job about?' Shonali's copper earring scratches below his left cheekbone.'It's

one more thing that she has forgotten.

a research position for particle physicists in Fermilab: 'When are you leaving?'

Today it was the pencil with the translucent eraser that spins and lights up when she writes. This, however, she could do

'In two weeks. As soon as the visa works out.'

without. It was yesterday's forgetfulness

'Have you told Tanweer?'

that was special. How could she have

'No.'

forgotten JoJo? JoJo was her hideous

'He will be happy for you.'

gingerbread beau embroidered on pink

Munal Waits for the River

terrycloth by Shonali three weeks before

that sucks saliva out of her tongue in an unforgiving slurp. Shonali's

Munal was born. With white bulging-out

screams and her blood drip into Munal's memory like the slow

eyes and a coarse triangle of a nose,frayed

drops of saline water in an iv.

at the fringes where stitches are peeling themselves off in their sorry looseness. Eight years old, it now leaks cotton stuffing out of its sides(where the pelvic bones should be) and through a spontaneous, enlarging hole in its belly. Munal loves it. For being older by three weeks and hence a perfect match for her. For being dependable even when its organs belch out the smell of cotton. Exhausted from trying to decide what to pack and what to reject, Munal sometimes sits down, leather bag in lap, face 27

cupped in hands, to cry until tears dry in the deep exhale between hiccups. She never forgets to lock her room when she packs. Every time she decides to unpack, unlock the door, and change her plans, she remembers the night that always dries up her tongue. She understands it now. There are things that happen when you are four which sink in when you are seven. Or when you are knocking on the door of eight. Though she will not understand for many more years how her mind works, how it decants some memories while sedimenting others, making the filtrate bubble to the lens of the eye as though the happened is happening in a chain reaction and that it can be touched,smelled, heard, seen, and God knows, felt, she does know that her memory is like JoJo. Dependable, constant. A sturdy reminder of the heat

Tanweer banged Shonali's head on the wall as he pushed himself into her from the back, his bare buttocks vibrating periodically. Four-year-old Munal, slipping through the unlocked door of her parent's bedroom,had just awakened from her nightmare of clowns. She squirmed back into the unlit corridor and stood there, looking in, as the lamps made more monstrous clowns out of the shadows on the wall. Face to wall, Shonali's screams gagged on the coating of synthetic beige paint. The sounds that reflected from it reminded Munal of Qurbani Eid a week ago when their cook forced the cow on its side and cut its head with a butcher knife. The priest recited the prayers in memory of Prophet Ibrahim's sacrifice â&#x20AC;&#x201D; almost the same prayers or same-sounding Arabic prayers that Shonali whispered on Munal's forehead every night as she fell asleep, her lips barely touching Munal's skin. The animal's blood spurted into the hole dug in the garden the night before and fertilized the sunflowers and the rosebush. Its legs, though tied, thrashed the ropes loose till one of the butchers sat on them to tighten the knots. It died long after the slosh of its streaming blood faded in the March wind. What has remained sharp in Munal's memory is the sound. The sound of the squirt spraying a butcher's rubber sandals,the croak of the animal as it released its intermittent breaths like the air sniffed out from a runny nose. Munal's grandmother reminded Tanweer again that God blesses the child who witnesses the repeat of Ibrahim's sacrifice by devotee parents. Shonali croaked in what seemed to be the same pain: her guttural breaths squirted out of a nose runny with blood. Tanweer took his razor blade out and softly drew on her back like icing on a cake. Munal tried to scream and she thought she did. But the only sound that ripped its way out surprisingly made no vibrations in the air. She pulls a handful of cotton from JoJo's belly and plugs her ears: the scream that she thought she had screamed that night thrashes her eardrums and scratches her throat. She knows what she saw.

Aaryan left today on a one-way flight to O'Hare Airport. Without noise. Just left behind his smell. Into Shonali's unbathed skin, on his

'No. I just want to know if you knew where he is.'

pillow under her with a yellowed Aaryan-shaped head. His leftover

'He left last night for America.'

grows: now a heart, now a lung, now a shape, perhaps the divisions

Toposhi stands at the door stretching

between toes, and a tightening of the placenta to lock its flesh to the awkward silence. Shonali watches her Shonales. The ache for being held, for Aaryan's hold, for warmth, mouth tremble, her eyes giving away. for Aaryan's warmth, sublimates in her chest. It pulls her ribs together to shred them but her bones, unyielding, only absorb the pressure and change it back to an ache. Tanweer carries Munal's sleeping body into their room. They need her now, an unsettling bundle wedged between his back and his wife's. Munal shivers as she dreams. She curls her arms around

She is nothing like the way she looks in Aaryan's pictures. She has him. I don't. Did he leave a number?' 'No. Nothing. I do have his address in Batavia. I will get it:

JoJo, tighter, as though Tanweer or her mother or both will rob her

Toposhi leaves as Shonali walks up-

of its warmth.Shonali pulls Munal into her arms to make up for the

stairs to bring Aaryan's address and tea.

dislodge of the umbilical cord that had hollowed her womb and her

Toposhi's car screeches near Mohakhali

daughter's belly. To her, Munal is still a child clawing at the bars of

railway junction where she first met Aary-

her crib to be let out into the world.

an. Same limejuice cart, same limejuices-

Munal Waits for

ellingman.

the River

Whipped by the wind from Bengal, the hanging lamp like the metal bob of a pendulum swings above them. Its curves and bends churn shadows on the wall that creep out and slither like mercury into the folds of their blanket. Shonali pulls Munal closer to her heart before shadows of serpentine memory can noose her daughter into its cold, hissing bulge. Three hearts beat in sync, in adagio, heaving chests to a heaving pulse in womb,as the hovering Percus-

'Madam, I haven't seen you in a long time.' 'How are you,Rahim? Business must be good for you in this heat.' 'God's mercy, Madam. Where is your Sir?'

sionist pumps the blood slower,softer,to drowse their teeth-clench-

'Make mine without sugar please:

ing memories dashing with the cells. He does not singe memories

Toposhi sits in her Suzuki with the

like corpses of moths on this electric light bulb, now dimly glowing.

windows rolled down. In the shrill of a

He only soothes their possessed spinning, ushers them back to the

speeding train, she watches the factory

clefts of forgetfulness where they belong as they, mother-daughter-

workers as they limp into portable confec-

unborn,inseparably fastened in mind and body,sink to sleep.

tionaries by the footpath for lunch. Mol-

`Ruma Bua! Where are you?'Shonali switches off the iron and opens the door before Ruma Bua can. 'Is Aaryan in?' 'No.' 'I am his... friend... Toposhi. I called the office. They said he resigned: 'Please come in.'

ten tar on their sandals, they slant. Too tall on one side, too short on the other. Her limejuice is ready. Flower girls huddle as they point toward a plane, in awe of what they will never ride. Toposhi wonders if passengers with fastened seatbelts will unbuckle and return.

"These are its goosefeet," (And these its half moons.) A speech in this near-done tongue nods to tracks in the mud, An aside eyes heaven. (Kadosh Kadosh Kadosh) A long time ago a speaker needed no names For marks and dots. (The rules came naturally.) Now he knows that each line is punctuated. But only ellipses, like three specks on Brooklyn, linger.

Words for Punctuation, in Yiddish: Gendzen Fislech and Halbe Levanes Adam Farbiarz

IMINE

Today — Finished The Great Gatsby. An excellent book, but no pi-

deaths an illusion and our identities inter-

The Diary of

rates. None of Fitzgerald's other works have included pirates, and

changable. This final claim he later denies

Sebastian Groner

I'm beginning to have doubts about This Side of Paradise. How, I

when it is time to pay the bill. I awake to

Nick Danforth

wonder,can the 'great American novel' not include a single sea bat-

discover that I was not really asleep. Ha.

tle. John Paul Jones would be outraged.

What a dreadfully clever subconscious I'm

Today — Had a dream about Hobos. Two of them, very dirty, were

cursed with.

trying to open my neighbor's head as if he were a can of beans. I

Today — Brie-related fallout at work.

dutifully called the police, but the Hobos fled aboard a passing

Kirstie tells me I must be more polite to

freight train. When I went outside I discovered the Hobos wrapped

the customers. I ask Kirstie if she realizes

in cellophane. A puzzle for my analyst if I ever seek therapy.

how much money we spend on Brie every

Today — An argument at the sandwich shop. Asshole tells me'Please don't skimp on the Brie: to which I respond'Where the hell do you think you are? Paris?' He tells me that if he'd wanted to be waited on by white trash he would have gone to Subway. Am reminded of the Tolstoy short,'How much cheese does a man really need.'

month. `400 dollars,' I tell her before she even has a chance to respond.She reminds me that for a Gourmet Food Distributor such as ours, that's not actually that much money. 'Provolone,' she went on, 'costs twice that, and don't even get me started

Today — Another dream,this time more subtle and witty: Am sitting

on the price of Mayonnaise.' I didn't, but

at a Coffee Shop with Borges, who is lecturing me interminably

instead thought about screwing her in the

about the Bogomil Heresy. Out of boredom, I begin praying for

back of the dairy freezer for the rest of the

death, only to be reminded by Borges that our lives are cyclical, our

afternoon. Drawing Tyler Coburn

4.MEMEN

Today — Wrote a poem,as follows:

pickle store, but she was behind the counter. I asked her if she ever

One nightI met a dinosaur

got lonely working in a pickle store. She said yes,so I asked her if she

While at a bar to dino-score.

wanted to have dinner sometime. I guess you can be lonely working

He was lookingfor a dino-whore,

anywhere.

Or at least a slutty Stegosaur, When down on me he dino-bore. Later my clothes he off me tore; We did it on his dino-floor, Not hard, not soft, but dino-core. He truly was a carnivore,

Today — Kirstie caught me stealing Brie from the dairy fridge. Maybe forty or fifty dollar's worth.'Now I know why the cheese budget is so high: she sobbed. I apologized and said I was just trying to prove a point. She said I was fired, so I said that if I left I was taking my cheese with me. She didn't seem to care, and I made a defiant, if awkward,exit with three wheels of Brie under my shirt.

My sensuous Tyrannosaur. He left me wanting dino-more, Though I was rather dino-sore.

Today — Attempted to rewrite the Odyssey as a limerick.'Ithaca' is a notoriously difficult island to rhyme, and I got no further than:

I also made a delicious Casserole for din- 'There once was a man from Ithaca, Whose story was truly Mythner,but it does not translate to paper quite icah: Perhaps it would be easier to translate the tale of the man from

so well.

Nantucket into Iambic Pentameter.

Today — Found love at a pickle shop

Today — Agreed to meet Claire — the girl from the pickle shop — for dinner tomorrow night. I have never dated a girl from a pickle shop, and it raises a number of questions. Where will we eat? Will she or-

downtown while preparing for a salad.She said, to no one in particular, that they really pickles. The air smelt of brine, and

der pickles? Will she talk about pickles? Will she talk about anything else? Also, how will I pay for the meal now that my job is gone? Man

the brine smelt of pickles. I smelt of a day's

cannot live on stolen Brie alone.

were really cucumbers. I said they were

worth of cauliflower, she smelt imperceptibly of lettuce. We spoke of watercress and vinegar and Lord Nelson,but never of each other. The pickles floated idly in wooden barrels, unstirred.'I love you:she said softly, but I was staring at the cucumbers,trying to catch them in their moment oftransformation.I leaned over to pluck a pickle from the brine, and as I held it up, still dripping, she kissed me. There were no longer any pickles in the pickle store — only lovers. Her name is Claire. Today — Yesterday's entry a lie. But a very nice one. Almost true. We did meet at a

Today — Another Poem /'d like to buy a Frigidaire With long and gleaming raven hair. I'd like to buy a vacuum cleaner To make me stronger,faster, leaner. I'd like to buy a Cuisinart To share my lovefor dance and art. I'd like to buy a toaster oven To satisfy my needfor lovin'. I'd like to buy a car mobile Whose cold, cold steel I could then feel. I'd like to buy a pair ofpants To aid my chancesfor romance. I'd like to have a shiny nickel Or maybe not, Jam quitefickle.

Today — Dinner was delightful. We ate at an ethnic restaurant and

lenges your faith in science.' I nodded and

the conversation hardly touched on pickles. She was one of those

asked if I needed to submit a resume.

girls who spoke a lot about her parents. One of the two was dead,but

`Nope. You're hired.' Just like that. It re-

I forget which one. I invited her back to my apartment afterwards,

ally challenged my faith in bananas.

but she said she had to work early the next morning.'Who eats pickles for breakfast?' I asked, and she laughed. Then she said that if I came by the store before 11:00 the next day she would teach me how to make a pickle omelet. I laughed, but she told me she was serious. Whoever thought a girl from a pickle store could be so complicated. Today — The pickle omelet was a joke, but Claire was serious. We will have dinner again on Friday, she says. In the meantime, I must find a job. I have, unfortunately, few talents. I do love pirates, but nobody was ever paid for loving pirates. It would be possible, I feel, to board Caribbean Cruise ships dressed in a shoddy pirate costume and make off with a few wallets and purses while everyone thought it was still a joke. They wouldn't realize it was real piracy until I sailed away with my newly plundered loot.

Today — Debated whether to tell Claire about my new job. Is peeling bananas worse than being unemployed? We'll wait and see how the job goes. Maybe there will be a uniform. Today — Started work. Peeled 7,685 bananas today. That's over 65 kilos. They said I did well for a novice. I'm part of Gamma Team Beta. The whole factory is set up like the army. There are 8 teams of3 men each, and we all race to see who can peel more 'units.' Every day the winning

team gets a prize. The prize is a banana. Sebastian Groner

Today — Dinner with Claire. Conversation was dominated by a

The boss said that every peeled banana on

heated debate about whether or not pirates are 'Hardy: I said of

the whole Eastern Seaboard comes across

course, but she pointed out I may have been thinking of'Swarthy.' our floor. Proud? You bet I am. 'Pirates: she said,'had scurvy, and there is nothing Hardy about bloody gums.' I agreed, and complemented her on her nice teeth. She smiled and said it was one of the few benefits of pickle-shop work.'Cucumbers are high in vitamin C:I cannot quite articulate this woman's mystique, but I think I am in love. Today — Was offered a job peeling Bananas. Seriously.'That's monkey work: I said.'I know,' he answered,'but we pay well, and you can take home as many banana peels as you want.' How well?' I asked.16.75 an hour, plus an extra two-tenths of a cent per banana. You'd be surprised how quick it adds up.' I stared hard at the man. He was young and effeminate, with fingernails too long for working heavy citrus. I was suspicious.'How come you have to hire men to peel bananas by hand?' I asked.'Don't you have a machine? Some sort of robotic chimp?' He smiled ruefully.'Peeling a banana is one of the few remaining tasks in our increasingly mechanized society that is nearly impossible to automate: he told me.'It really chal-

The Diary of

Today — Met Claire for dinner and told her about the job.'Well, I work at a pickle store: she laughed. Need I even say how much I want this woman? Today — The two other men on Gamma Team Beta are named Morgan and Tex. Actually, the second one's named Andrew, but I call him Tex because it seems to fit. Morgan says it fits so well it's a wonder he didn't think of it first. The two of them have been working together for 19 months. Morgan wears glasses, spectacles really, very high up on his nose. So high it's almost disconcerting. Also, he never has to adjust them. It's like they're glued to his eyebrows. I keep hoping they'll fall off one

day. Tex is a good guy. Anytime anyone

Today â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Claire left early in the morning,saying that pickles wait for

walks anywhere he says, 'Careful. Don't

nobody. Apparently bananas don't either. I arrived at work two and

slip now: Sometimes the line is funny, a half hours late and was promptly fired. Morgan was angry because sometimes it isn't. He's the one man in the I ruined Gamma Team Beta's chances for the day, but Tex was sorry factory that never gets mad when we fall

to see me go.'Don't slip now he shouted as I walked out. I washed

behind schedule.

the banana slime off of my hands with a rueful awareness of my own mortality. One day, I thought, God will fire me from the great ba-

Today â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Made a list of places I would not like to die, beginning with my optometrist's office. Something about the carpeting. I would also hate to be murdered on an elevator ride. Very claustrophobic. I told Claire about my fears. She said it reminded her of the poem 'Green Eggs and Ham.' I pointed out that the poem had a happy ending, while Death didn't. She 33

Drawing Marvin Astorg a

agreed and we made love.

nana shop of life. Rather than return to my apartment I walked down the pickle shop to find Claire. 'Bert's Pickles: said the sign outside. I had never noticed the sign before.Tm looking for Bert: I said when I walked in. She laughed.`Bert's been dead for years. His grandson owns the shop now: I had come to the pickle shop to escape tragedy, not court it, so I changed the subject. I asked her how her day had been. lovely,' she said,'and yours?' I told her I was fired.'Good: she said.`I would have been embarrassed to sleep with a man who worked in a banana-peeling factory:I explained that she

still had, as I wasn't fired until the next morning:That's a moot

Crocodile, crocodile

point,'she said somewhat cryptically.

won't you stay and rest a while in my bed where now you lie all

Today — Claire left at 8:00. I slept until noon. Didn't bother to put on Pants until 3:30. People don't realize it, but Pants mark the real start of the day. For men who wear no Pants, time stands still. I

scaly and green. Why do I always personify my love as a lizard? Perhaps I will never know.

ponder the implications of this until around 5:oo, when it is time to start preparing dinner. Claire asked me to prepare something 'ele-

Today — Have considered a range of me-

gant: but I fear she might get an unheated can of beans instead. I

nial jobs lately. My dream would be to find

am a spiteful man,and do not like to be toyed with on matters cu-

work as a cigarette ashen So simple. So

linary. Claire is indeed upset.'What do you think I am, a Hobo?' rewarding. Every cigarette ashed is one she asks as I pass her the can opener. My offer of wine does little to step closer to a perfect world. I fear, howhelp the situation, even after I explain that Hobos generally drink beer. I tell Claire that any woman who did not appreciate canned beans did not appreciate me.

ever, I might have to settle for less. Today — Imagined a cake frosted with toothpaste. It would, I fear, be the best

Today — On the occasion of Claire's leaving this morning, I wrote

thing since sliced bread, especially if it too

another poem.

were also sliced.

The Diary of Sebastian Groner

Today— Idea for a story entitled 'Encoun-

world and I am out of toothpaste. Perhaps it will become clearer af-

ter with an Aubergine: but I do not know

ter I buy another tube.

what it will be about. Claire says food is my muse, but I told her it was actually what I ate, and that she was my muse. She became indignant,saying I was comparing her to an eggplant. She says I do this often and must stop, but I am rather fond of eggplants, and also of her. Today— Returned to the Sandwich Store today. Offered to return everything I stole if they gave me my job back. Kirstie, strangely, said yes. Then I remembered I'd eaten it all. Kirstie shrugged, indifferent. Feeling humiliated, I ordered an Avocado and Basil sandwich. How could such an 35

insensitive woman make such a tasty sandwich? How could God create a world that included both Death and Basil? Claire suggests that Death is a necessary ingredient —that food would have no taste without mortality. I point out that ordering a Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato and Death would be a mouthful. She says that sometimes reality is a mouthful. Now I understand why the beans were such a big deal for her, but n,ot really. Today—Assessed my life in the shower this morning and concluded that I do not, nor have I ever, known anyone by the name Herbert. It is a good start. Further reflections will come in time. Today — A beautiful day today. How can I be unhappy when the sky is so blue and the sun is so warm. And yet how can I be happy when there is so much misery in the

Today — Despite my best efforts, it is impossible to read in the shower as one would in a bath. And so I am forced to assess my life instead. I have lost work but found love. Is the truth always doomed to sound so trite? As I ponder this I notice several crêpes neatly stacked in the soap dish. A present from Claire, no doubt. They are soggy but sublime.

North Carolina, June 2003 A loop of cayenne around peaches on the counter shapes a fortress wall to frighten ants. We ought to rinse the could-be peppered skin, says C., but R. prefers to risk the singe of stubborn grains. Questions of spice — salting peas and soups, balancing spoons of halfcooked food to slip down one another's mouths, tasting advice — map everyday sanctity and trace from us a model family. But over a sketch of what must be her forty-third chair (four legs, and no enfolding arms),C.swears that she'll be leaving soon. Oregon fog seeps to pools of paint that beckon. Pacing through the rooms of our house for hours, 37

Poem Megan Pugh

R. also dreams of motion. I sit dizzy at the table while he circles, shoots a tangent to explain he wishes city parks had packs of undomesticated dogs. I laugh,thinking of pets like opossums and parrots for whom the home is the wrong habitat. Coffee grounds clump at the bottom of his French press, so I bang the glass upside-down against the rim of the kitchen trashcan. Loud thumps announce I mean to scrub it window-clean when my friends call me from the porch: Come out! A hummingbird — their first — hovers over the parched azalea bush. We can't recall how many times a second it must beat its blurry wings to stay afloat — but once our eyes intersect, I try forgetting timing and division. We stand tamed.

The editors of The Yale Literary Magazine wish to thank Phillip Greene, Francis Bergen,Laura King,Janet Henrich, Robert Reed, John Crowley, J.D. McClatchy and Susan Bianconi at The Yale Review, John Hollander, Kamran Javadizadeh, Timothy Davis and his dog, Shorty, Langdon Hammer, Leslie Brisman, Josh Foer, C. Morgan Babst, Mary Alice and Chuck

The Yale Literary Magazine is a non-profit, registered undergraduate organization at Yale University. The views expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of the editors or staff members. Yale University is not responsible for the contents of the magazine. The winner of the Francis Bergen Memorial Prize for Poetry is'The Marriage of Leopold and Loeb' by Adam Eaker. The winner of the Francis Bergen Memorial Prize for Fiction is `Munal Waits for the River' by Sabrina Sadique. The winner of the Yale Literary Magazine

Art Prize is Yali Lewis. J.D. McClatchy was the judge for poetry, and Stielau, Ruben Roman,Mary Jane Stevens, John Crowley was the judge for fiction. Robert Reed was the judge Claire's, Sandra's, Koffee?, Romeo & for art. Giuseppe's, The Harlem Shakes, The Jazz Aesthetic, Ruth Lily, Norman and Amy Subscriptions to The Yale Literary Magazine are available for $15 Gorin, and Susan Zimmermann and Paul (individuals) and $35 (institutions). Contributions to The Lit are Phillips, and the residents of 37 and 39 welcome and tax-deductible. Make checks payable to the vim Publishing Fund and mail to: Lynwood. The Yale Literary Magazine The design staff wishes to thank Joe Maynard at RIS and John Robinson at

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