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Kate Orane,
!)ear Feiitor: Would you please tell me what a one year subscription to The Yale Literary Magazine costs mailed to the Galapagos Islands? (Tor the Galapagos Subscription I,ibrary— the only English language library in a zillion square miles.) Yours Sincerely, Christen GaHard Galapagos, Ecuadore
s() scan/v, smnettmes /um-ex/sten/.
I laruani Gilicg(', mass.
11
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2
Listen! by Vladimir Mayakovsky, translation by Rachel Gabara
3
Charcoal on paper by Russell Ferguson
4
Statuary by Carrie Iverson
Photograph by Matt Kaplan
5
Rt11111111ati011 by Liz Joh
6
La Cena de un Estibador by Oscar Gonzales
Etching by Jim O'Brien Z
8
Relationships by Cathy Jacobowitz
Oil on canvas by David Yu (:
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Acrylic on canvas by Sharon Louden
9
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Petroleum Blues by Tom Richards
Symphonic de Novembre by 0. V. de L. Milosz, translation by Carrie Iverson
IIIII,... Oil on canvas by Sarah Sze
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10
Etching by Aaron Bloom
11
Winter Song by Jeremy Bendik-Keymer
12
Linocut by April Hankins
13
Antiphon to her Ambivalent by Paul Saint-Amour
14
Mezzotint by Predrag Dimitrijevic
15
Etching by Peter Bregoli
16
Fourteen Steps Up by Anthony Elgort
Garland Stove by Nik Elevitch
17
Photograph by Matt Kaplan
18
Patria: Eres El Rccuerdo Pasado de Moda by Oscar Gonzales
20
Oil on paper by Sarah Sze
21
Magic Carpet by Emily 0. Wittman
22
Ice Man Don't by Anthony Elgort
23
Oil on canvas by Natasha Bregel
24
Photograph by Eddie Hartman
25
Words of Welcome,Words of Reception by Anna Georgiopoulos
26
Rachel ' s Tears by Vladislav Khodasevich, translation by Rachel Gabara
Intaglio by Rebecca Soares
27
The Revealing by Stephen Rich
Etching by Ann Gale
28
Spent Nothing After Spending Time with You by Nik Eleyitch
Charcoal on paper by Russell Ferguson
29
Waiting to be Washed by Anna Georgiopoulos
30
Oil on paper by Fred Liang
31
Notes for a Course on Phonology by Diana Senechal
Inside covers: acrylic on vinyl by Sam Pratt
11,,
,111,111r , '
byVLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKY
Listen! translation by RACHEL GABARA
Listen! If the stars are shining— ,11111
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It means—someone needs them, doesn't it? It means—someone wants them to exist? '11
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It means—someone names these pearly drops of spit? 11
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And, straining 11
through snowstorms of midday dust, he bursts in on God, fearing he is late, cries, 1, I1
kisses the sinewy hand, begs— there must be a star!— swears— III
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be will not bear this starless torment! And afterwards ill
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walks anxiously , 31111,11,111iWyMlin
though outwardly calm. , I! I
He says to someone: "Now you don't need anything? 11 ,
You're not frightened? Right?!" Listen! If the stars are shining— II1111,
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It means—someone needs them, doesn't it? 1 111, 1 1 ;11i
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It means—it is imperative I I'
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that every evening above the roofs at least one star is burning?! 2
Charcoal on paper by RUSSELL FERGUSON
by MATT KAPLAN by CARRIE IVERSON
The past you want is not the one you have. The one you want is developing slowly like a photograph images floating to the surface, suddenly clear. You are spinning but you have no motion, only the shadow of your circling desire as you stood with the backs of your feet uplifted spinning spinning as the monumental eyes dressed in red in brown watch childhood with envy forgetting that then they, and the green around them was only larger and darker with the same desires but undefined and kaleidoscoping furiously with the trees and the grass the circling spinning upward from the belly to the clenched teeth. The child eyes looking toward that calm and placid statue wondering what great change would shrink the world and bring reason to their circling feet and sun to the dark spiraling green, and strength to a voice that could walk miles on any pavement or ask questions without the trembling inside flip when answered. And when and how would this change come? This photograph of the past you have developed has everything but these questions which you know are missing but which surely can be sliced out of the past, unnecessary fears. If only you could fall back into those non-idyllic arms of childhood. At least then you asked about that change and saw a flicker of an answer in the spiraling green a hint of comfort in the blue and the spinning constant from your belly pouring out from your quivering mouth.
R
UMIN
A
T
ION
by LIZ JOH
"Don't ask me about soul." Ask me about putting pennies in your mouth. The sinister acidic taste of metal with a history. Your tongue slides along the peaked nose, the carved curls of Lincoln's head.The ridges guide the curious muscle's blindness. On the memorial's toothpick capitals, you may stiffen with guilt, as if your mother leaned beside you, and asked if you knew where the penny had so been. You wonder, the coin's taste curling your lips. This penny, picked off the sidewalk, lying in the stale rain, the dog's urine, the putrescent garbage, and this: When are you on your own? Do you feel that old childhood urge to put things of interest inside your mouth as if you distrusted your eyes. The penny's as good as penance. Is that why people hoard their pennies in jars, in boxes, in bottles, inside?
"Abandonado como los muelles en el alba. Solo la sombra tremula se retuerce en mis manos." Pablo Ncruda
"Abandoned like the docks in the dawn only the fragile shadow squirms in my hands." Pablo Neruda
Etching by JIM O'BRIEN
6
LA
LA CENA DE UN EST1BADOR by OSCAR GONZALES THE DINNER OF A STEVEDORE
Vuelvo y otra vez el cuchillo raspando el comal negro fractura el silencio. Es mi abuela enviando todo el chingaste a morir guindado del aire, sofocando altos y el infierno de un pueblo en llamas con la tortilla derramandose en las noches sin suenos.
I return and another time the blade scraping the black griddle fractures silence. It's my grandmother sending all the ashes to hang from death in the air, suffocating years and the inferno of a pueblo in flames with that tortilla
Llego verde-azul, tenido del silencio de los muelles y de la tinta de las cajas de guineo, partido en dos, delirando en el desvelo besado por las anchas palideces de los ultrajados.
that spills over the sleepless nights. I arrive green-blue, broken in two, tinted by the silence of the docks and by the ink of the banana boxes, kissed
Me siento a corner la tortilla desinflada—reducida cada vez mas— con los guineos verdes ajenos y los frijoles solo existentes y saboreados en la imaginaci6n —hoy el lujo de abogados y diputados— el wen° de estibadores, que solo cagamos maiz y guineos con agua en estas noches oscuras de Apocalipsis perpetua y cotidiana regaladas a la Compatila por ellos. Veo a mi abuela tocando el borde del tiempo arqueada por los rivales eternos ahogados en ropa sucia que nos alimenta "Es buena la tortilla con sal" Oigo su voz profunda—gastada por tantos siglos. Yo tambien aprendo eso y dentro del resignamiento austero oigo mi voz "Si, es buena." Tiene que serlo. Con los atios se aprende rapid° aqui. Me levanto y voy hacia los ojos hinchados de mis compatieros trabajadores lejos de mi abuela pensado en la juventud que ha matado (como lo han querido los Padres de la Patria de ayer y hoy) lavando, cocinando y pariendo
by the violent witness of the abused.
I sit to eat the deflated tortilla—reduced more every time— with green bananas and the beans only existent and tasted in the imagination, —today the luxury of lawyers and politicians— the dreams of stevedores,
we that only defecate corn and green guineas with water in these murky nights of perpetual and mundane Apocalypse wrapped by them for the Company. I see my grandmother touching the jaws of time, as she is arched by the eternal washboards drowned by the dirty clothes that feed us. "It's good...the tortilla with salt." I hear her voice eroded by too many centuries. And yes. I also learn what she has said and in austere resignment I hear my own voice: "Yes. It's good." It has to be. With the passing of time you learn fast here. I get up and go towards the swollen eyes of my compalieros away from my grandmother
Asi como yo y mis compaiieros
thinking about the youth she has killed
empequenecidos mas y mas por los bultos de frutas exquisitas aburridos de ver el plomo flotar en el agua todos los dias aturdidos por las gloriosas leyes y los protectores honorables: gobernantes que me recuerdan de que antes de regresar al atraco de los muelles debo ir a cagar maiz y guineos podridos otra vez.
(like the Fathers of the Motherland have wanted to) washing, cooking, and procreating; she's like me and my companeros: reduced more all the time by the exquisite fruits, tired of seeing the lead float in the water every day, and drugged in the glorious laws and by our protectors: honorable rulers that remind me that before returning to the theft of the docks I must go shit corn and rotten bananas again.
7
•••11111,
by CATHY JACOBOWITZ
Rules to be Followed are MonosylLabic and Do not reQuire a Pencil or Pen. Those who speak Oil on canvas by DAVID VU
English may Move to the Foreground but Strangers from Texas must Wait for a Friend. (We) Do not in-
Acrylic on canvas
Tend to re-
bySHARON LOUDEN
Tain you much Longer; auDitions are Over, the Callbacks are In. Continued...
8
bySARAH SZE
Oil on canvas
v) Cid
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• ca • cc cu It • hi 2
P. 2-
the sting of the scotch spread through his mouth like the turquoise streaks of a gasoline drop on the warm wet pavement puddles of the summer
Symphonie de Novembre -by 0.V. de L. Milosz translation by CARRIE IVERSON
All will be the same as in this life. The same room. Ce sera tout A fait comme dans cette vie. La meme chambre. / — Oui, mon enfant. la meme. Au petit lour, l'oiseau des temps dans la feuillee
Yes, the same. The bird of time in the leaves Pale comme une morte: alors les servantes se levent / Et l'on entend le bruit glace et creux des seaux / A la fontaine
pale as a dead woman's face, the servants who rise 0 terrible, terrible jeunessel Cur vide! / Ce sera tout a fait comme dans cette vie. II y aura
and move. One man stops and listens to the icy clamour Les voix pauvres, les voix d'hiver des vieux faubourgs, / Le varier avec sa chanson alternbe, / La grand-mere cassee qui sous le bonnet sale
of the bursting of the fountain, the hollow basin Crie des noms de poissons, l'homme au tablier bleu / Oui crache dans sa main usee par le brancard
echoing under the flood. Et hurle on ne salt quoi, comme l'Ange du jugernent. / Ce sera tout A fait comme dans cette vie. La meme table,
Terrible terrible youth, and the weight of the heart, La Bible, Gcethe, l'encre et son odeur de temps, / Le papier, femme blanche qui lit dans la pensee,
empty. La plume, le portrait. Mon enfant, mon enfant! / Ce sera tout a fait comme dans cette vie! —Le memo jardin,
It will all be the same as in this life; the poor Profond, profond, touffu, obscur. Et vers midi / Des gens se rejouiront d'être reunis là / Qui ne se sont lama's connus et qui no savent
voices a crown for the voice of winter Les uns des autres quo ceci. qu'il faudra s'habiller / Comme pour une fete et aller dans la nuit
in broken suburbs. Des disparus, tout seul, sans amour et sans lampe. / Ce sera tout 6 fait comme dans cette vie. La mOrne allee.
The window-mender sings an occasional staccato Et (dans l'apres-midi d'automne), au detour de ranee,/ LO oir le beau chemin descend peureusement, comme la femme
song. Oui va cueillir les fleurs de la convalescence — ecoute, mon enfant, — / Nous nous rencontrerons, comme jadis ici;
The old woman under a dirty bonnet shouts out her Et tu as oublie, toi, la couleur d'alors de ta robe; / Mais moi, je n'ai connu quo peu d'instants heureux.
catalog of fish, the man who wears a blue coat Tu seras vetu de violet pale, beau chagrin! /
les fleurs de ton chapeau seront tristes et petites
and spits on his cracked hands Et je ne saurai pas leur nom: care
connu dans la vie / Quo le nom dune seule fleur petite et triste, le myosotis,
bellows like an angel Vieux dormeur des ravins all r)ays Cache-Cache, flour / Orpheline. Oui, oui, cur profondl comme dans cette vie.
of judgement. Et le sentier obscur sera la, tout humide / D'un echo de cascades. Et je to parlerai
It will all be the same. The same table, the Bible, De la cite sur l'eau et du Rabbi de Bacharach / Et des Nuits de Florence. II y aura aussi
Goethe, the ink with its temporal odor, the paper— Le mur croulant et bas od somnolait l'odeur / Des vieilles, vieilles pluies, et une herbe lepreuse,
white as the woman who reads thoughts Froide et grasse secouera là ses fleurs creuses / Dans le ruisseau muet,
white minded—the pen, the portrait, the same. My child! The same garden with its secret density, darkish and full. At midday these people are content with being together, having only their distance from one another in common, having the joy of knowing no one. And then they must dress up and go into the night towards an end that is missing all alone without love, without a lamp. 9
mar
Winter Song .EREMY BENDIK - KEYMER
Our home is a house of reflections. See the cloudbank in the table, the translucency of glass. Windows cross through objections, and daybreak scatters space on blank walls winding, willing in the sock soft hush of shadow. See at the brink of the back door: my father with his full beard. (Hear around on oblique angle: the cat's feet cuffing on carpet.) Elsewhere, the winter swindles images of lavender-white escarolls of plastic: Talk of a tractor broken by a gut bare trailer box. It shelters light from frost stripped fields swirling in the given sun. In late evening, orange runs over its face, kindles its loss, and once, the fire bare twilit hearth in the sifted heart of nightfall played stillness for the hour both cold and warm, running through everything, all like motion... As we circle past fenceposts and branches, the shoulder of your roof crosses my roof, one limit above our second story light. Now hear the purple airing rushed with night Inside the shower, love dries off her arms, shivered half a century for her song to talk. 11
Continued...
(I) Have no disLike for the Come-as-youAre type but Your spontanEity Just leaves me
Linocut by APRIL HANKINS
Cold. (With-) Out simiLarities Founded on Study our Budding conJunction will Quickly grow Old. (I'm) Not as deManding as Some of my Peer group; I Ask for no Tables or Charts of your Ride. (I) Only reQuest that you
Stay within Earshot and Never forGet that I Owe you my Pride.
12
Don't think I count myselfimmune,Love,to your Morbid influenza of the spheres; It's just when I incline my head nightwards I can't shrug out the memory oftouch, Or ofour gargoyle contours stooping On the drafty heights of sanctuary. I keep vigil over days in which you held Yourself open as a temple to me, Since now even your mouth to kiss is caulked With a film of reticence, and I'm beguiled By grottoes that lead nowhere,or only Leave me shouting for my secretaries.
Antiphon to her Ambivalent by PAUL SAINT-AMOUR
(Sometimes,sibylline, I dream a woman Moving moon-sober through sterile halls of tile, The haunts of men who dub her Heretic and Onus of Archbishops; I watch her chariot assailed by Tonight the brain's basilica is blistering with light and titters from the galleries. In Saturn's house Ophiuchus dispels the heritable ills; the sickled cell, the pyx and thurible, all bloods gone rhesus-sour are handed down the scullery stars, where with surgeon-steady hands Hypatia sutures up the backbone of the night.
St. Cyril's thugs —yet they could no more ravage You, Hypatia, than you could vivissect Athena. Some nights, though, I start awake from scenes Of homespun flayed to bits with abalone shells And bones blanched and shriven of their flesh, The library in flames. Who then will write "She knew the stars and chambers of the heart by name?") In the cicada buzz of those arc lights
You're sulking in your orreries again, Hypatia,so vexed I called you "wife" And not "astronomer" or "laureate" That you've become a drab, and I a cuckold
You trade your April blushes for a waxy Morbidezza —your word, Carissime, Or won't you claim it? You confound all fathoming; You cobble words and me up to the brink of sense.
To those constellations swivelling Like tadpoles through your brain. Are you plying Your crucibles tonight? And will you slip A philtre in my porridge to transform Husband into Dowager? Too late: I already attend a spectral mate. She's upstairs tweezing nodes from animalcules Or scrutinizing plasms in her spectral Laboratories. You've never flinched, Hypatia, From squinting down an eyepiece at some cosm, So you won't mind Homunculus marauding Through your diaries. For if, my Love, In the cinema morgue of your mind You stitched up a brood of horrorshow men,then I am your mutinous Frankenstein. I've your hiddenmost book like a lizard by the spine, Pinned with forcep-fingers to a tin plate. You know Yourself how curiosity afflicts the violent: I find I split the vellum of its belly 'til it heaves a bloody bisque Out with the secrets of its viscera.
The man down in the kitchen says the world is flat as a desktop, though the bishopric depicts it dangling like a watch from Yahweh's waistcoat. I think the high-priests haven't savoured Zoroaster, pressed their backs against the meadows to coax heaven down,or spent twelve years novitiate to the night: sorry, Ptolemy;sorry, Aristarchus. Better this new earth, with Alexandria and its damned diocese, were just an 0 enspittled in a wreath of zeroes, rolling off its asymptotic cusp. Still, with lids pursed in a perfect circle, my astral eye tonight could almost wink the moon down from its socket, a pearl-crusted egg couched between parentheses of quiet. In its ellipse it cradles the meniscus of the sky, bellies up like cellophane above the Pleiades, over archipelagoes, the boneyards ofthe sea. I wonder do the novae nod like clover There among barnacled hulls, or do they Crouch like kidneys in the gloom of me, Intent as ova on their quickening?
Awash in the albedo of her handmaid moon, My Lady ofthe Astrolabe lays by her sextant for the veil. In the language of her sciences she wooed and wed herself, and watched her mantis lover cringe in bridesmaid obsequy. Now with seamstress-steady hands she bastes her gown with all the bijouterie she knows to name: the heart's four valves, the quadrants ofthe skull, all the wayfaring orbs, the three slim bones that tremble in the ear's interior. Stella Mater, never wean me;in the ether, Stella Mans,the stars are ajitter like solute, and all our totems shivered into stars. Unsay my nuptials, then, and nude me to the molten core until I'm burnt and curled like a cashew to the rind of you. And say when dizzied by the yaw of planetoids you'll still not rouse the dawn;for Dawn enamels all into a new alloy.
This house you quit, Hypatia,for your orrery, Has fallen mausoleum quiet. Mildewing Like Lazarus, humdrum among his household dead, I'm sloughing off that fretful self once mollified By your same milky limbs which now hoard hearts In pickling jars. You left your study in a state This morning, and in your haste misheard my Scullery Stairs as "stars" and banged the trapdoor as you fled. Yet last among the whispers issued from your galleries There dawns a thought to the domes of Alexandria, engulfed Now in deepest crepuscule. It is a belfrey-swallow, A votive smouldering against the stucco. It thinks If unafraid again we turn to naming (this the lesser Light and this the Great), we might obliterate the eyes Ofour brains' basilisks and say they are just nebulae Or knotholes in the wainscoting. When unafraid, I will Confess I hate your stars and words and hate the more your need To publish these alone, and never me, upon your brain; But though your scorn sustains the trespass of my Eye, your words leak into me like seed.
13
Mezzotint by PREDRAG DIMITRIJEVIC
Fourteen Steps Up by Anthony Elgort
Lycra Spandex walked into her house in Bermuda yelling " Agway, oh Agway, what have you done?" The cat didn't know. Vittorio unfurled the awning of the salumeria and wondered who Agway was. The radio was on very softly. From outside he would never have been able to hear the roar of the Rhode Island cows applying themselves fully to the task at hand. "She was on that highway one day. I was too. Was it the same day?" Was it Agway thinking?
Tea time in Paraguay. The general does not wish to be disappointed.
Garland Sto by NIK ELEVITCH
I woke, my lashes stitched, bi I put on a robe and went to t, and original Escher prints cv( my beagle was motionless tn with various Ginsu cutlery st The large pine branch in the weight ofsnow. As I walked I thought I could hear you cr your neck a frayed piece ofji from the dried bunches of Ill In this moment we plant cauliflower, and are defined by the exhaust of our words. The exhaust was there. The people were. The exhaust is what touches them, blue. It is the blue exhaust of undigestible thought. The thought is of an Italian town that doesn't exist. The skies are of a lighter blue than perfect. The houses have pointed roofs. A bus drives through town slowly filled with relatives. The cathedral of Saint Ann is square and enormous, made of straw and stone. The empty spaces in the parking lot say they are reserved. 16
NVldnIllVIN Aq
•ove
1, but I still noticed my watch was gone. to the living room. My t.v. s were missing. On the table s tn a pool of blood, its mouth gagged, ry sticking in its rib cage. the kitchen window collapsed under the 'zed barefoot on the cold wooden floorboards u crossing the state line. You wore around ofjuniper as a charm that you stole f herbs hanging above my Garland stove.
17
""The only truth is reality" A dictator. "Republiqueta and not Republiquita窶馬ot the minute but the opprobrious, the repugnant the abhorrent what her worse sons reduced her to: an oblivious state for sale." Gregorio Selser. "La Unica verdad es la realidad." Un dictador. "Republiqueta y no republiquita; no lo diminuto sino lo oprobioso, lo repugnante, lo despreciable a que la redujeron sus peores hijos, que la hicieron olvidar y alquilarse." Gregorio Selser
In your vein gallops oblivion
En las venas te galopa el olvido your legs give way
las piernas se te vuelven a desmayar and your eyes no longer hear the colors
ytus ojos ya no escuchan los colores of the untainted barrio.
del barrio destenido. Your mouth opens
Se te abre la boca filled with the frailty of a remote wave
Ilena de la debilidad de una ola remota. as you try to paint my surface with your derailed hand
Me intentas pintar con tu mano descarriada la faz you only cough cries
pero solo tueces los Ilantos full of the clandestine pass of time.
cagados del sigiloso paso del tiempo. You've forgotten who you were
Te has olvidado de quien fuiste, and you don't even know who you are
y ya no sabes ni quien eres and now you don't even recognize me.
y ahora ni siquiera me reconoces. Our origin lies severed
Nuestro origen yace cercenado in your breathing captive of the hours
en tus respiros cautivos de las horas, gunned by the tumult of immolated faces,
ametrallado por el tumulto de caras inmoladas, inert
inerte in the precise instant
en el instante preciso in which they nail your kisses of iron to your side.
en que te clavan los besos de hierro en el costado. And you don't even know, and will never know.
Y ni te diste y ni te vas a dar cuenta. A drop falls
Cae una gota not of tears, not of blood,
no de Ilanto, ni de sangre, but of plastic
sino de plasticﾂｰ, that unhinges like the steps of pain
que se descuelga como los pasos del odio and spills from the juncture of your lips
y se te derrama desde la comisura de los labios 18
arriving
arribando igual que los culatazos, secure, intact
segura,intacta, like them,
como ellos, to fuck you.
para joderte. "IQue?
"What? What are you talking about?
zDe que me habla...? No. I don't know anything about that."
No. Yo no se nada de eso." Here there were never any dead
Aqui nunca hubo muertos nor "indians" hideputas
ni indios hideputas nor pasts, nor forgotten histories
ni pasados, ni historias olvidadas, nor the beatings they gave you some time ago.
ni existieron las pijeadas que te dieron hace ya mucho. Here happiness shines
Aqui la felicidad brilla in the smiles fulminated by hunger.
en las son risas fulminadas de hambre, In the dirt floors
sobre los pisos de tierra where they plot daily
donde a diario se confabulan the immense nakedness of the cries
las inmensas desnudeces de los Ilantos of those
de aquellos who confront the violence of the tombstones
que confrontamos la violencia de las lapidas only with a look
sOlo con una mirada 1 In 1911 there was a revolution of Honduras instigated by the United States and the banana companies; in 1934 dictator Tiburcio Carias Andino ordered the bombings of protesters and the assassination of a crowd of more than 200 demonstrators; in the 1980's General Alvarez Martinez was responsible for the disappearance of hundreds of Hondurans. Not too many can recall these happenings. 2 From the scene concerning the assassination of the "sindicalistas"(union workers for the transnational banana company)in One Hundred Years of Solitude.
withered by the weight of the dead.
cargada del peso de los muertos. I remain lost in 1911,
Permanezco perdido en 1911, In 1934 with my friend Carias,
En 1934 con mi amigo Carias, In 1983 with my friend Alvarez Martinezi
En 1983 con mi amigo Alvarez Martinez, Today in you
Hoy en ti, erased in the snow shellfire.
borrado en los carionazos de nieve. Nothing.
Nada. Nothing has happened here,
Nada ha pasado aqui "...nothing is happening and nothing will ever happen
"...ni esta pasando ni pasara nunca. This is a happy pueblo."2
Este es un pueblo feliz."
Oil on paper by SA RA H SZE
20
Magic Carpet by EMILY 0. WITTMAN
The bedroom rug was lured to flight
By spice and bells and better things—
Swept up from under ankle-chewed chairs
With hopes of more than tangled ends—
Then lured by night to a fleeting van—
Dog-stained blanket to Persian carpet!
The moment ofthe dive into the pool is the moment when the trumpet is touched. 2.
by ANTHONY ELGORT
I am a mobile home. A trailer. I am shaking off a cloak behind me. The cloak is the expression. No it isn't. It is the counter expression ofeverything. It is the heavy meal that prevented us from saying anything. It is a dump truck. Ants running up a dirty hill. A red hill. Whatever. We have arrived. The world isn't waiting, and why would you expect it to? We eat avocados and think oftomorrow. Tomorrow isn't questioning us. We have arrived. We have waited long enough. The forests give the word. They say we must know who we are, and when we are wrong. It sounds reasonable. Every place is filled with aqua minerale. The plans are set. As set as today. I have always wanted to go,if! am not there already. On this planet we have arrived. It is time to go. 3. Forces coincide here. The forces oflonging, idealization and gasoline. Many others we haven't heard of. I know these forces exist because if!look then they are here. Lunch at the plaza, on top ofthe world. It is where we belong, with a glimpsed local Botticelli. It is. But!suppose it still is even if it isn't exactly here, in our hands. It still is, and almost as good to us. It is a flustered bee-sting. 4. Escape from the boring speech that we could have written. Yes. As right as can be this late. Trust me. The wind is better here. Speeding across the bay unaccountable. I'm still trying to memorize it for use at the library. 5. Olives spilled all over the seat. 6. Charles Mingus on drugs, in his cafe did me a favor. 7. She wants right answers even ifthey kill her. It is only a test. He wants a Porsche. He is me. Our knees hit up against something. Something porous and fixed. It is the voice that we listen to saying "don't accept what voices say." We are listening between thoughts of our own. 8. Joe Perrier came in and said "What are you doing with that bass in the bathroom?"
22
9. That world actually exists. That cathedral you saw,so formidably grey. You could touch its heaviness now through the aftertaste. Almost now. But you could. It is there. Until the end, it is there. Those ruins, with people speaking beautiful words that you could almost eat. Those ruins pink in the evening, as the sun takes its leave. It is still existing now. The stone is serious in the rampant night. It is open to your feelings, as open as stone can be. They are starting the fires inside houses that always exist. Like you. As far as you know. Always. During every beer. Every word. Go to them.They are waiting. 10. Parma. God you should have seen it. As emphatic as today as deranged as tomorrow. A city in my dreams. U. Some days things are clear. They become clear in bursts when the ink runs off your tongue. You understand not only where you stand, that stone. But what someone is saying. That they are saying it. What it says about grapes. Jacques stood in a garden too,or a parking lot. That is what is not to be missed. 12.
I keep reminding me that I am here. 13.
He did his laundry laughing. He looked up and said "Sorry, it just won't wash." 14.
Does a lingering "why?" bother you? I hope it doesn't get in the way ofthe traffic. Or the sun too much. 15. Whatever we don't understand is only a part ofit but looms. Looming like a spilled coca cola at Yankee stadium in late August. It couldn't be so small. It looms. It is sacred. It is so unknown. It has a place for every cloud and piece of rubble. Doublemint. Every one. It clobbers us with a now,and we don't notice. The lettuce left on the sidewalk is the only trace, ifthat is there. Its sacredness absorbs us as the faintest smile absorbs. Like the current idea. The idea of balancing,of horses. The idea. What you are thinking. That is the power ofits luminosity. Beware ofthe present. It sneaks up with what we don't understand and we see acres of pimentos as in a mirage.
22.
17. A car trip between arguments. It is nice to be getting away, to be arriving. I go home to the office. I wait with a nickel-plated smile. I arrive with the night. I leave with the night. Day is another. Something is clear. The shadow and the mornings quietly trying to blur distinctions. Nice try. There is a sure definition at each end ofthe trip. The trip continues. This is the backdrop. 18. Skiing white wake fast "Trees move!" or riding with the gelatinous ocean at moo miles per hour. Unstoppable. (I'm selling it in a bottle.) 19.
There are some things I miss. Like those woodlice from another country before we had a car we don't have anymore. It is sad, but it is. I miss other things too. The lives I might have led. They vanish in another universe in the instant I realize what I cannot see. I live. It is. Also there was the woman. The woman I could never explain myself to. She didn't want me to. She ate persimmons in a flowered dress in the evenings. In my mind. Ha. (And also, like her, death. I may as well say ha, because she doesn't care.) She didn't want me to. I didn't know. It was. But then there is this hard chair against my back. The watching of many changes. A yawn from someone that I love anyway. It isn't the best. It is. A refrigerator waits at home. The world waits. It will be as familiar as my bedroom. The water will move. A movement between interesting alternatives. Chili and Vancouver. Beards and guitar strings. A cool trip. It will be.
I could have an answer. But sometimes, no answer is all right. My uncle drove the car and I fell asleep in front, mountains snowing on all four sides. He fell asleep too. It didn't matter. I heard people play instruments. That was part of my life and will be. The starfish will swim. Profundities. They are not as important as the big noise when her foot hits the garbage can. 23.
It has opened out onto the dangerous. Do not count upon the unexpected, it is running to meet you. The train is running late. You are going somewhere. Somewhere broad as the idea I swallowed. It is unattached,and you are gone. It came looking for you. Even the forgotten moments declare themselves. "I am as real as the unspoken. The artist in the bathtub." Past all annoyances and truths there is something special. Like watching Chile play Argentina all afternoon in Spanish with nowhere to go. 24.
I am coming up from the underworld. The heather is beneath my feet. It is not grey. An oil puddle is in my face but I couldn't care. Even several lives between this, even those after, make no difference. My arms are out and make no difference. The air goes by.
20.
There is a rhythm here I still keep it. When I want to. Just ask the table. I said to me "That's all there is." I said to him "This choice is all we can do. Take a walk." It's hard for me to believe I'm right, but I am.
OiIon canvas by NATASHA BR EGEL
DU
16. It isn't easy or is but sometimes I have to laugh and say "What paradoxes!" You know what I mean.
21.
I wonder if it is this beyond that we live in, or look for far beyond the shelves of newspapers. They hold something. It might still be forgotten. It might be a person who isn't us.
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•••••'.•.•....................... •••• • ...... ••• ••••••::•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••:::::::•:::•:::::.::::::::::::::::::::
• •• ........•••••••••••••••••••••• •••••
Photograph by EDDIE HARTMAN
••••••••••••............
•••••"•••
Death is the buzzards that bicker and squawk against black walls, on red roof tiles, death is the women who make love as easily as they peel onions. —Kostas Kariotakis, tr. Kimon Friar
I. KALOS ORISATE (WORDS OF WELCOME)
Breathe deep as you pass through the lead-painted shutter: Exhaust billows sweet in the basement room, Thick like vanilla that melts off the spoon, White gift of welcome, through silver water. Night may or may not have fallen like slaughter When you wake at eight; Penelope's loom Marked dusk better than our six cheap clocks. The tune .•:•:•:•:•:•:•:•:•:•:•:•:.
Nameless birds weep —"You're somebody's daughter"— Seems strange; you've slept through the morning. It's time For rudiments of food and dirt. Yiayia From heaven helps scrub your clothes. The barettes You wear could be traded for soap. All thyme Found is precious as coal. A lone crane calls, "Oh look, you've sliced my breasts like minarets." Has ever woman peeled onion without crying?
II. KALOS SAS VRiKAME (WORDS OF RECEPTION)
But look—you've sliced my breasts like minarets. I caress my own quick pink scars. You smirk— Milky glands spilt out like cut onion—shirk My every limit. Our same-smelling sweats Stain our shirts more than us who fly a jet On high fire you rifle me like a Turk's Bags through customs I accept your drive to America For work as nothing. The cursive bracelet My right wrist wears bears my name: Yiayia's gift. Like the bones at the foot of Zalongou Rock, The privacy of their broken English shrines. Internal riddle ridding won't bridge rifts. Women's wailing keeps influence on rock. Here I'll hang my poems and build my shrine. 25
Rachel's Tears translation by RACHEL GABARA
Cne3m Paxlinw
Th",,•,:r.:-,', 7,/<! •
by VLADISLAV KHODASEVICH I.
,
•
4 4., _
•• . s' ,.•
•-•••• •
•.100.06..... I
"•''•
Peace to the darkening and sinful land! IVImp 3emne Betiermteci 1.1 rpewHok
The puddles, the railing, the windows shine. BnewyT nyam, nepHna,cTexna
I walk slowly under the rain, noA gonwem a NAY HecnewHo, Wet shoulders and a soaked-through hat. MoKpm nnewi, a innsna npomoKna
These days we have all become homeless, Hbaitie ace A,1131CTWIN 6e3A0M1-1131,
As if we were eternal wanderers, Cnomo Bequo bpogaramm
And the indefatigable rain sings to us 14 noeT Ham /Imam,HeyemHha,i
Of Rachel's ancient tears. rip° gpeame cne3m
Let future generations write with proud love nyCTbIlOTOMKH C ropgok mo6oBblo
About the legends of their forefathers. flpo gegoa nereHgm
C/103KaT -
In our hearts each day is marked off B Hawem cepgne rpexoma!Tonic)
And lived through with sin and blood. Kmaguct AeHb oTmetieH H npoaaiT
It grieves us that by divine will Pope Ham, UTO no Bone Boaaseci
We visited this world in a terrible hour! B crrpawmact uac cefi wimp nocerninH I
On the cheeks ofa passing old woman— Ha wemax y orapyxti npoxomek Rachel's scalding tears. Poplocime cne31.1 PaxHnH
I will accept neither honor nor glory, He nplimy IN gem& H1,1
If then, last week, Ecni4 130T, Ha npownoi:i Hegene,
They sent her a bloody scrap Ed npmcnanti KnovoK Kpoaaamii°
Ofa soldier's rough overcoat. Intaglio
3acKopy3noii" congaTcKoii wmenm.
by REBECCA SOARES
Oh, under our weighty burdens Ax,nog Hawed Troaenoci Homed
However many songs we may compose— ClconbKo-6 neceH mbi He cnominkt There is only one fitting refrain: 1111Wb ogvH eCTb npHnea xopounict:
Rachel's inconsolable tears! HeyTeunible cne3bi Paxkuai I
26
The Revealing by STEPHEN RICH
In time and turning, temperament interred in thought, when yearning first exhumes the body, demands of an indehiscent hand to instill the still gesture or to unearth the wind.
ne.
A moment, like a yellow anther, while fragile words lean against sturdy faces, fades at sunrise, into the corners of white spacesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; the smooth sculpting of a room with sunlight. The other night, our memory without rest, at the turning of the page, becomes what cannot be forgetfulness.
',ove
Etching by ANN GALE
21
Charcoal on Paper by RUSSELL FERGUSON
Spent nothing after spending time with you
by NIK ELEVITCH
Spent nothing after spending time with you Fed the cat after it went to sleep on your lap Clothed the baby in its bath Unbuckled your seatbelt when you braked Hushed when you spat Turned out your light when you woke up Thawed the steak before we left on our trip Ran you out of soap You watched the stars fall with my headlights on 28
Waiting to be Washed by ANNA GEORGIOPOULOS The hamam was domed like a mosque. Warming, we waited for our bath on the round, flat slab, two boys with bad eyes who'd left their glasses outside and I, not knowing that a shriveled old man would enter the room and bare my breasts first, blow hot suds through a burlap sack, wring it on my chest and back, arrange the rough sheet around my thighs and scrub my legs with no thought of sex; that my friends would be loolahed next while I was met by a thick, young Arab who, having touched my each tight muscle, would snap the sheet and wrap it round me neat as a shroud, lead me to a stool by the curved wall and wash my hair with the same soap, rumiing cold water over me to rinse, and then Lou and then Stephano; that we would know then we would glow, our skin feel clean the full seven days of a week. But waiting, forgetting the rug merchant that drove us there in his pink '57 Chevy replica the wooden clogs, the little comb, the chambers, ante-chambers, which folk tape to buy, our concern tor the an
suddenly died,
as we slowly, lowly sang (:hristos Anesti in that high marble tomb before anyone else arrived.
2)
Oil on paper by FRED LIAN G
30
Notes for a Course on Phonology
by DIANA SENECHAL
But there are different reasons in the rising sun. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Jeff Schang Can I ignore the flagellant good-byes of flailing trees, who lose as they embrace? Can I forget the flicker on your face, the green and blue and auburn in your eyes? Or will I let it seize me by surprise, that scoundrel death, who leaves without a trace, snapping the golden thread that you have spun, that different reason in the rising sun? The dance begins with sounds. Step back, and let the feet perform for you. The vowels make their rounds. Some come into the light, knocking the rest into a different hue. The pattern blurs my sight; the artist, steeped in rage, soaking the paintbrush, draws it lone and stark across an empty page. The student is a fool who disregards the reasons in the dark to memorize the rule. The consonants in pairs come forth, some gliding stoplessly, the others taking chairs.
the reasons in the rising the guises of the seasons the rise and fall of tidings the crumbling ofour reasons the reasons for the fall the falling of the seas the risings of the tide the dying ofthe trees the scarlet in your eyes the scars the stains the sores (would I give up your glance to analyze your pores?) Two suns rise together, for different reasons, and meet. One sees an endless beginning, and therefore begins with the end: dust, ghostly with life. Time never ends in this golden light, nor does it ever begin. The other sees an end barely beginning, a trap of beginning and end, embracing you, dear dying one, dear urgent living one. My page is blank with forms, yours filled with formulae. They fall like leaves from the sun, missing each other's reasons.
Some hold the hands of ghosts, whose flesh and form can come to be a question of the company invited by the hosts. I envy linguists, chemists, the wealthy ones, the immortal ones. Peering into the gesture, breaking the leaves into their particles, they see the seasons as contiguous, and similar, and not so harsh. I can't â&#x20AC;&#x201D; I myself crumble, for I see the grace of your veins, your lonely singleness of shape, your lonely colors. I will hold you close and whole. The time for dust has not arrived, though it is near. Then I will hold the dust. A different reason in the rising sun.
31
The Yale Literary Magazine' An Undergraduate Publication Volume 3 Number 1 Spring 1991
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The Yale Literary Magazine is a non-profit, registered undergraduate organization. Entire contents copyright 1991. All rights reserved. Copyrights remain property of individual authors and artists. No portion of the contents may be reprinted without permission. Yale University is not responsible in any way for the contents of this magazine nor do they give us any money, and we wouldn't have it any other way. The opinions expressed herein are those of the creators and not necessarily those of the staff. The Lit is a bi-annual publication. Subscriptions are available on a yearly basis to people who are not Yale students at a rate of $15 individuals,$35 institutions. Checks may be made payable to YLM Publishing Fund and sent to: Publisher Box 243-A Yale Station New Haven CT 06520 Back issues are available on microfilm through: University Microfilms International 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106-1346 Editor-in-Chief: Hilary Liftin Associate Editors: Semi Chellas, Jennifer Langston Art Editor: Sarah Sze Photographer: Drew Dole Photographic Assistants: Eddie Hartman, Matt Kaplan Editors for this Issue: Anthony Elgort, Carrie Iverson, Kathryn Haines, Martin Hale, Stephen Rich, Emily 0. Wittman, Yahlin Chang, John Stewart, Monique Lim, Jeremy Bendik-Keymer, Tita Fancy, Melissa Levine Staff: Wendy Gash, Lani Wolf, Jennifer Ross, Julie Puttgen Magazine Layout and Design: Neeta Verma and Richard Burritt We would like to thank: The Sudler Fund, Pierson Master's Office, Phil Greene and Turley Publications. The magazine was printed offset and stitch bound at Turley Printers in the spring of 1991. The text paper is Mohawk BO lb text and the cover is Mohawk 80 lb cover. The typefaces used are: Stone serif, Stone sans, Univers, and Sabon. The magazine was designed on the Macintosh computer and output by the Yale University Printing Service.