Volume 9 issue 2 fall 1997

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THE YALE LITERARY MAGAZINE Fall 1997

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volume 9. number 2

THE YALE LITERARY MAGAZINE Fall 1997

EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

MANAGING EDITORS

PUBLISHER ART EDITORS

PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR DESIGNER

STAFF

Dana Goodyear Chandra Speeth Kamran Javadizadeh Darby Saxbe John M.Siciliano Laura Kleger Lucy Schaeffer Sarah Kunstler Prem Krislmamurthy Jennie Chu,Saskia Comes,Laura Crescimano, Chinnie Ding, Meredith Gordon,Andrew Grusetskie, Hanna Janiszewska,Alexis Jones, Farrah ICarapetian, Holly Martin, Rebecca Onion, Gerard Passaimante,Janaki Ranpura, Eric Rosenthal, Karen Rosenberg, Sarah Rubinstein, Dominique Hara Sherman,Siddhartha Shulda, AmandaTarullo,Greg Tigani, Margaret Welles, Jessica Winter, Callie Wright

The winner of the Francis Bergen Memorial Prize for fiction is'My Brother Is the Prince of Darkness' by Helena Echlin. The contest was judged by Robert Stone.

THE YALE LITERARY MAGAZINE is a non-profit,

registered undergraduate organization atYale University.The views expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those ofthe editors or staff members.Yale University is not responsible for the contents of the magazine.

Subscriptions to THE YALE LITERARY MAGAZINE are available at a price of $15 for individuals and $35 for institutions. Please make checks payable to the YLM Publishing Fund and send to: TheYale Literary Magazine P.O. Box 209087 New Haven,CT 06520 Library ofCongress catalog number 7-19863-4

THANKS TO

Paul Mellon William Curtis Carroll Davis Francis Bergen Philip Greene TheYale College Dean's Office Harvey Goldblatt and Kathline Hartch Pierson College Robert Stone J.D. McClatchy and Susan Bianconi Jenny Ludwig Walter Hyder atYale Printing Services

cover: Tamara Sussman • C-print, 18 V" X 12 V,"

, COSMETICS

Darby Saxbe 1

2 Lila Subramanian silver-gelatin print A STATUE FAVORS RESURRECTION Matthew Boudway 3 4 Lisa Ericson drypoint etching MY BROTHER IS THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS fiction by Helena Echlin 4 7-8 Nick Frankfurt pencil drawing A CONVERSATION WITH LARRY FINK

Sarah Kunstler 10

12 Larry Fink silver-gelatin print 15-18 Jonathan Toews pencil & ink drawing, collage Andrew Grusetskie 18 • WHEN MEN ARE 20 AnthonyYoung silver-gelatin print FOR MY BROTHER, DROWNED IN THE OCEAN Darby Saxbe 21 22 Cathy Braasch pen & ink drawing BOTTOM fiction by Tara V. Bayton 22 25, 27, 29, 31 Betsy McCall silver-gelatin prints ON URBAN PLANNING

DEFERRALS

32 Scott Peterman silver-gelatin print 34,35 Dawn Ogawa drypoint etching

CARS

Nicky Beer 19

Jessica Winter 30

WHY SOME PEOPLE ARE UNSUITED FOR CERTAIN PETS VARIATIONS ON THE PHILTRUM

Dan Kellum 33

Nicky Beer 34

art • writing

TABLE OF CONTENTS

COSMETICS Darby Saxbe

_

I read in Cosmo that the environment, these days, is full of estrogen; It's in styrofoam, and plastics, and pesticides, and it's in all of our bodies.

Sperm counts dropped again this year. Male breasts are swelling, Male bellies getting soft. My father, fifty-two in August, started churchgoing last fall.

He got married again and the house smells like potpourri.

In the bathroom cabinet, next to.the shaving cream,a line oflipsticks casts pink shadows.

The sock drawer's full of pills and jewelry. His new wife hangs her underwear On the shower-curtain rod. I grew up in a house designed for men.

Now the guns are off the mantlepiece—instead, a painted sign,'No Place Like Home': A charcoal-bearded hobo bears his handkerchief-and-stick. The dead deer's head Sulks in the closet, where sweaters swath its glassy eyes.

My dad slinks to his'den' to clean his brood of pipes, eyes fixing On a photograph: my uncle holds a sturgeon high, The spiky quarry twists against its line. My stepmother's mascara wand, Left sticky on the sink, twirls like a helix, trapping dust.

Lila Subramanian • silver-gelatin print, 9?A" X 9'A"

A STATUE FAVORS RESURRECTION Matthew Boudway

A figure from the bronze age of the mind, You stare subversion at our modern creed That all that's fine about a man is freed At death: the dirty husk gets left behind, So, noble and asomatous, refined, The soul can be remembered on its own, Recovered from the common stalk and known, Not seen.Why monumentalize the rind?

We broke your mold because you broke our pride.

Your sure, enduring status kept us small.

Forever-open caskets can appall, Can loose our gnostic grip on Jacob's Ladder.

The mind's what matters;never mind the matter, We say, and look away.You say we've lied.

Lisa Ericson • drypoint etching, 8" X 7/,"

MY BROTHER IS THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS Helena Echlin

through the candle flames.

'Bet you can't throw a higher number than I can; he says. She throws a one. He flicks the die. Six. 'How did you do that?' she asks. He grins, then rolls the die twice more.

Two more sixes.

'It's my secret power.' The die is an ordinary one from a Christmas cracker.

'It's just another one of his tricks, Elizabeth,' says their mother.'Don't take any notice.'

HER BROTHER PASSES HIS FINGERS BACK AND FORTH

and crumples it up. It is Christmas day and the four of them are having lunch in their ice-blue dining room. Elizabeth takes hers off too, folding it neatly by the side of her plate. She does not like wearing it, because people wallcing by outside can see in. She thinks they must look like a puppet-show,framed by the heavy red brocade curtains, which are never drawn, but are simply for decoration.The winter afternoon is dulling into twilight. She wonders whether someone outside would think they were a happy family or not.

DUNCAN PULLS OFF HIS CROWN

'ELIZABETH, LOOK AT ME,' Duncan demands. She

'GUIDED FIST, GUIDED FIST,' says Duncan,talking in

keeps her eyes on her plate, chews.

'Elizabeth, I've got something to show you.'

'Leave her alone, Duncan,' says her father.

'Just ignore him,Ellie,' says her mother.

She knows that she will look, because she always does, driven by curiosity. He opens his mouth to show her the chewed-up food, rolling his eyes at her to see her reaction. She looks into the dark cave of his mouth. By now,age ten, she has learned not to respond. Impassiveness is her greatest weapon.

'Smelly Ellie,' he says hopefully.

'Will someone pass the potatoes, please?' she says politely.

'Ellie smelly welly...Wellington boot.I'm going to call you Wellington from now on, alright,Wellington?'

By concentrating she can make his voice go small and far away. He starts passing his fingers through the candle flames again,faster and faster.

'Duncan, you'll burn yourself,' says their mother.

But he never does.

a flat voice like a robot. He walks forward towards her with his arm struck straight out, his fist clenched. She steps aside. His fist hits the wall, then he starts towards her again, bleeping, 'Guided Fist, Guided Fist.' The game continues. He never hits her, since the rules are that he must walk slowly and cannot change direction until he bangs into something. She's thirteen now,too old to hit.The game is not a serious fight but a ritual, its moves elaborate as a minuet. here, Elizabeth.'

She goes on watching television.

'It's a present for you,Wellington. Don't you want your present?'

She ignores him.She even remained calm once when he smeared a boogey on her bare skin. He is fascinated by his own secretions, and demands that she be too. She shrank inwards, thinking,I'm not in my body. It'sjust my arm,I'm in my head.

It's as if Duncan wants her to be entirely covered with his slime.

'I'VE GOT A NICE BOOGEY

THE CAKE IS NEARLY FINISHED, decorated with frosted grapes and chocolate rose leaves. She made these by painting melted chocolate onto rose leaves from the garden,letting it dry, then peeling it off. It was fiddly work, but she is good at tasks which require patient labor. She is sticking chocolate drops in the icing. The final message reads'EAT ME:It will be sold at her school's summer fair.

'Duncan, have you seen Ellie's cake? Doesn't it look wonderful?' asks her mother. Duncan grunts, opens the fridge. He bangs open the bread drawer, then closes it.

'Why don't you ever buy anything nice to eat?'

HE'LL DO ANYTHING to get her attention. He buys flick-knives and throws them at her feet. She feels he demands.

'You're always stirring,' her mother says, like a knife-thrower's girl in a sequined bikini, 'always trying to start an argument.Why can't you waiting for his knives to hiss through the air ever say anything nice for a change?' around her body, never quite touching her flesh.

He spits on the cake.

She accepts their mild, continual argument as part offamily life, but on holiday there are other ELIZABETH WANDERS INTO HIS ROOM when he's not families, smiling and placid. there. But if she does anything he finds out about 'Look at those children,' says her mother.

Why can't she will only incur a worse retaliation, until their screaming their heads off.

'They're not battle spirals out of control.These secret visits to you two be like them?' his room are the only indulgence she can allow DUNCAN LIGHTS MATCHES one after another and smuggles bangers home from holidays in France, hidden in Elizabeth's violin case. He collects lighters, and his greatest treasure is a blue pelican whose yellow beak is the lid, snapping open to display a tongue offlame.The door bursts open when Elizabeth is doing her homework.

'Help, help, my hand's on fire!' he screams, his hand held stiffly before him in a glove offlame.

Elizabeth screams too. Then he blows it out. His hand is unharmed. Like Superman,she thinks.

Fire seems to obey him magically.

herself. She loves to poke into forbidden corners anyway, and she's hungry for knowledge of his life. Revenge, curiosity and love are mixed in equal parts. with a sour-smelling amber liquid, which she knows better than to taste. If he could, he would bottle and preserve every precious drop of his bodily fluids. She lights the pelican lighter and puts her nose close to it afterwards to catch a whiffof gunpowder.She picks up the Coffin Bank and rattles it. When you put a coin on a button and press down,a skeleton sits up, extends its hand,and draws the coin into the coffin. Elizabeth wants to give the skeleton a coin to see it sit up but she is scared that Duncan knows how much is inside and she wouldn't be able to get her coin out again. She is always careful not to disturb anything, like a detective at the scene ofa crime.

A COKE BOTTLE IS FILLED

HE IS BELLOWING FOR HER.There are large drops of blood on the kitchen floor—rich,large drops.

Her brother has cut his bare foot on broken glass, and is standing on one leg. He's stopped bellowing now,and the cat is licking up his blood while he looks on in fascination. Elizabeth hops between the drops with a bandage. Blood is spattered up and down the stairs where he ran about wildly, trying to find a plaster, leaving his trail all over the house like an animal marking its territory.

Just after he's gone out the air in the bathroom is warm and tangy.

'HE'S GOT AN UNTAMED LOOK, hasn't he?'says her

new friend Melissa, who is a year older, nearly sixteen.'Like Heathcliff.' Melissa has dyedblonde hair and wears colored skirts with little mirrors sewn into them, and tassels around the hems. Her eyelids are powdered silver and blue lines extend from under her eyes. She takes Elizabeth to a market where all the clothes have absorbed the smell ofincense and cooking kebabs.Thumbing through racks ofclothes, she seizes a backless skin-tight top of black velvet, a purple skirt with two layers of tassels. Elizabeth tries the clothes on in a changing-room where the curtains don't pull properly. Through the gap in the curtains she catches the eye ofa strange man looking through the secondhand jeans, but bravely ignores him.The new clothes make her look like somebody else. She may not look beautiful, but she looks old and brash. Melissa takes her out drinking and dancing, and no one asks her to prove her age any more.

ONE WINTER NIGHT they get home late, after dancing for hours and growing so hot that they ask for ice at the bar and drop the cubes down the backs of their dresses. Duncan is in the kitchen, eating Frosted Flakes. He's away at university most of the time now,and when he comes home on holidays he is different, gruff but more polite.

They've stopped playing their old games, mostly.

SHE WONDERS WHAT DUNCAN DOES up in his room.

'I don't feel like going to bed yet,' says Melissa.

From outside, the windows of his attic are 'It's still early. Let's do something.' opaque. Elizabeth does not know the names of his 'I don't know, we might wake my parents up.' friends or where he goes with them.The answer 'Don't be so boring, Elizabeth,' says Duncan. to'Where are you going?'is always'Out.' He 'Why don't we play a game?' lives in the same house, yet leads a hidden life.

They sit around the kitchen table, playing cards.

Like a spy, she thinks. He's grown tall, with thick Duncan opens their parents' Finnish vodka and dark hair which these days is often slicked back pours them each a glass, straight. Melissa is with grease. Elizabeth found the tub of pink wax flushed and takes deep gulps. Elizabeth's throat is in his bathroom.Also a bottle of Oriental burning, her insides are on fire. They decide to go aftershave, which she sniffs for the strangeness of outside, because it's too hot and anyway they are its prickly lemon scent. His top lip curls up less likely to wake up'the olds,' as Melissa calls slightly at one corner. He used to lift his lip like them.They are sitting in the grass at the bottom this intentionally, as a sign of derision, but now of the garden. It is December and no one has a his mouth seems set in a permanent slight snarl. coat, but they don't feel cold.

'This is so weird,' says Melissa, slowly.'Who

would have thought that tonight I'd be lying in the garden with Elizabeth's brother?'

'This is a weird, weird night,' agrees Duncan, lying on his back.

Elizabeth can never remember how it happened. But suddenly Melissa is straddling Duncan and kissing him.She really is kissing him, and Elizabeth is being sick, over and over, in the grass. She can't stop shivering, even when they take her inside to the bathroom.Then they disappeir. Elizabeth will never forgive Melissa for that night.

AFTERWARDS SHE WONDERS ifsomehow she urged

Melissa on,telling her to drink up,suggesting that the three ofthem lie side by side on the grass to look at the night sky. Maybe she wanted to push them together, thinking she'd get closer to Duncan if his girlfriend were Melissa. But now she feels that Duncan needs to be protected. She refuses to give Duncan Melissa's phone number, but when she's out he sneaks into her room and steals her address book. Then the whole thing is out ofcontrol.When Melissa phones now,it's Duncan she wants to speak to. Elizabeth lies and says he's out, but late at night she opens her bedroom door a crack and sees Melissa and Duncan going up the stairs. Melissa is wearing black stockings and denim cut-offs so short you can see her suspenders. In the morning Elizabeth trips over a pair of bright red high heels at the foot of the stairs, placed carefully side by side.

MAYBE SHE SHOULD WAIT. All her life she has been patient. In the future she will astound everyone, perhaps with her beauty, perhaps with her musical talent, perhaps in some other way. She plays scales on her violin, in the ice-blue dining room, because she likes to look out into the street while she plays. Magnified by echoes in the huge room,the music fills the whole house.

MELISSA IS COMING UP THE FRONT PATH With her brother. The dye used to make her hair as dry as straw, but she seems to have gotten the knack ofit finally, because her hair is gold and thick, piled up on the top of her head in a knot, a new adult style Elizabeth has not seen before. She is wearing a white jumper which shows the shape of her breasts. Elizabeth plays harder. The fingers of her left hand press down on the strings so much that when she stops each one is scored with a red groove. Holding the violin too tightly has given her a sore on her neck,like a love-bite.

DUNCAN IS AS SECRETIVE AS EVER, but Melissa is

not.When she went to spend the weekend with Duncan at university he took her to a party and she wore a red dress, the red shoes, and no underwear. They had sex in the back of his car, in the woods. Elizabeth learns this through other girls, not from Melissa, who has a way of pouting when she passes Elizabeth in the corridors at school, as if she can't make up her mind whether to look sexy or scornful. Elizabeth calls it'the glout'in her head, and thinks of Melissa as'the Cockroach.'She is jealous of Melissa's name. Why did she get stuck with 'Elizabeth'? Her name is traditional but a little yielding,like a stiff-backed brocade armchair. How can you be a temptress if you are an Elizabeth?

Nick Frankfurt • pencil drawing, 62" X 28"

••1110 C

going up the stairs, right up to the top ofthe house, his door closing. She has lived in this house so long she knows every sound it makes.It is an old house, and seems to vibrate at every touch.Walls thrum, banisters shake.

Rooms echo and sound carries easily. So she cannot avoid hearing Melissa's cries, tearing open the afternoon. They are so loud they seem to be coming from Elizabeth's own mouth.It sounds exactly like sex in a film. Melissa's voice is practiced, theatrical. The sounds go on and on.

SHE CAN HEAR THEM

WHEN UNIVERSITY FINISHES, Duncan does not know what to do. He juggles flaming brands in the garden and tells their parents he might want to be a circus juggler. Or a pilot, or better still, a racecar driver. His hero has always been Evil Kneevil, who races his motorbike over cars and through flaming hoops. But Duncan does not pursue any ofthese ambitions. He rarely goes out, but sleeps until four in the afternoon instead, then loafs about the house in his dressing-gown, which he

wears with a kind ofswagger,like a penniless lord in a debtor's prison.Why can't he leave home? He always said he'd leave the day of his sixteenth birthday.After opening his presents, ofcourse.

He's twenty-one. Elizabeth is four years younger, but she has always felt more grown-up than he.

Soon she will be ready to go to university herself.

She visits his room at night, the only time he goes out. On the floor is a pizza box containing a few crusts.There is the fusty smell of dirty washing, beer cans and old coffee-mugs, half-full of scummy grey liquid. The smell ofa room where nothing ever changes.

THEN ONE MORNING AT SCHOOL she learns that he

and Melissa have broken up. Melissa is standing by her locker, puffy-eyed, her friends clustering round her respectfully. That evening Duncan can't find the Marmite and sweeps everything off the shelves with clumsy swipes while looking for it. It is frightening to hear him shout in his man's voice. For a moment Elizabeth assumes he is upset

cries, as if they're coming from someone else.

Then she's running downstairs, and her father rushes upstairs, losing his temper for the first time in years. There's the sound of breaking glass.

ONE DAY ELIZABETH OPENS A BOX in Duncan's 'If I leave now,I'll never speak to any of you ever wardrobe and finds a cache ofletters, crammed again,' yells Duncan. Silence, then the slam of the together.They are from Melissa, written to front door.The sound of his car starting vibrates Duncan at university. She holds one in her hand a in the house.In the night he returns to collect his moment and pauses, but her desire for knowledge forces her to read it. Darling Duncan, things, then vanishes. For a long time afterwards her body retains the memory of his violence, a howl wantyou, my Beast and no other girl's, tingling shame. becauseVyoufucked someone elseyou know I'd me how I want you tofuck killyou. My Beast HE DOES NOT VANISH FOREVER. He calls two weeks again.We'vefucked in so many places—doyou later, having found a bedsit and a job. A dull remember that time in the woods? I'm making a sensible job in computers.When the family meets list ofall the places we'vefucked though naturellement that willjust make mefeel worse.... again everyone is polite, soft-spoken, handling each other carefully. No one mentions the Elizabeth rifles through the letters. There are incident of the letters. Duncan goes out with the pages and pages like this. She's burning. Beast, secretaries from his work.In his bedsit he makes Beast, my lovely Beast. The beat of the words toasted cheese sandwiches and watches satellite accompanies everything she does that day. She television. He is different, Elizabeth thinks, duller. had always thought Melissa so artificial, with her whirl of blonde hair, incapable of true feeling, but BLACK SCUM HAS FORMED in the vodka bottle. Her the letters are full of twisted passion, alternately mother takes one sniff, then pours it down the whining and affecting sophistication. Elizabeth is drain, saying'Ugh,smells like pondwater.' They thorough as ever, and knows now she has begun she must read every one, though her heart sinks at had topped it up with water each time they drank from it. Over the years it has been almost the task. It's as though Melissa's hand is gripping completely diluted, but once it tasted like lighter hers,forcing her to run it over every inch of her fuel, like the pure essence offire. brother's body.

about Melissa, but this anger has always been there in him, ever since she can remember.

that the reason his hand never burned was that it was doused in kissed someone else at a party and Duncan drove cliffs.

He lighter fuel.When she was younger, she almost his car wildly through the night to the believed that his tricks were real magic. She held Melissa over the edge until she swore never remembers a time when she was ten, hearing his to do it again, screaming and begging. She is familiar command from the attic above: contrite, even servile. Elizabeth finds her 'Elizabeth, Elizabeth, come up here for a compliance only slightly less repellent than minute.' By his mysterious tone she could tell he Duncan's violence. I've been doing nothing but had another stunt ready. He was standing above thinking ofyou. How I wish you were here to knock me into shape ha ha.I wish things could go her at the top of the stairs leading up to his room.

He bent down for a minute, there was the tiny back to how they were, when you and me scratch of a lighter, then he was surrounded in a discovered we wereTrueTwins, when we were like ring offlame. A delicious shiver ran down her two children together. spine. My brother is the Prince ofDarkness, she IT ALL HAPPENS SO FAST she only pieces it together, thought. They stood there with the line offire between them until it flickered and went out. o in her mind much later. Duncan grabs her shoulders, wrenches her up; her forehead bangs against the table. She's screaming, his hands wrapped in her hair. Inside herself, she hears her GRADUALLY THE LETTERS BECOME UNHAPPIER. Melissa

ONE DAY IT OCCURS TO HER

A CONVERSATION WITH LARRY FINK Sarah Kunstler

Larry Fink: Hello?

Sarah Kunstler: HI.

Sorry for the wait.

No problem.

I had to get my coffee, I just woke up.

I hope your brain is working.

My brain is always working,even when I'm sleeping.

So tell me why you take pictures.

I like to.That's the main reason: I like to take pictures. But there are other things. It's my job, it's my work,it's howl make money. But even if it wasn't all those things, I'd still take pictures. I like to. I like doing it. When I started taking pictures it was all about truth. I thought I was revealing the way things really worked. Now I know differently. I still think pictures are truth but they're their own version ofit. There are a lot of truths, a lot of passions.

I take pictures to capture the irregularities and the passions of human life.

I remember when we used to have Thanksgiving you used to scare me.

I did?

You didn't really talk that much, you were just kind of lurking around.

It was almost like you weren't even there.

Oh I was there. But you know,that's a funny crowd,full of a lot of talk about things that I'm not accustomed to.

I was just wondering if that was part of the way you make pictures.

You kind of seemed like a kamikaze....

A kamikaze? A suicide bomber?

No, I guess that's not what I mean.

More like a covert operator. Like you were stalking everybody....

Oh yeah. ... and I was wondering if that was the way you made pictures in other situations, or if it was just particular to Thanksgiving.

Well,in a situation such as that, with my family, they have an understanding, a contract with me from early on.So I've had a kind of delightful social position. I'm the picture-taker. I take pictures. That's what's expected of me.

Don't mind him, that's just Larry, being himself....

Right. He doesn't talk.Whereas in other situations, I have to talk my ass off to take a picture. Because I don't like being on the outside of things. I've been on the basketball courts [photographing for Adidas] for the past couple of days, and rather than sit on the side with a telephoto lens like a sports photographer,I got right in the middle ofthe game with my wide-angle, dancing around,I got a ball in my nose, and I took good pictures. But I also got an understanding in my body of what it's like to play ball, to run up and down a court for six hours a day every day.

What about not being nice to people?

What about not being nice to people? That's a good question.What do you want to know?

Well, sometimes you're not very nice to the people in your pictures.

Well,sometimes people are not very nice to themselves. I can be intentionally unsympathetic because I see things that way. Diane Arbus didn't run around New York taking pictures of aberrations because she wanted to affect a certain style, although I'm sure that's part ofit. But that was the way she saw things.There are unflattering, ungenerous ways of seeing the world. But for me it was more about politics. I had leftist politics, so a lot ofthe unflattering pictures were part ofa construct I used to prove a point. I was not above them,I was ofthem and I wanted to show what I was seeing, how I felt about it.

You're talking about your society pictures. How did you get involved in doing that In the first place?

It started when Joanie [Schneider] was getting famous as a painter and she didn't want to go to any ofthe parties, so she would send me.She liked the fame but she did not like to show up at these fancy balls. So I would go and take pictures and see what was going on,and after awhile I thought: My God,this is sort oflike class work, political work.They were like the landed gentry, the nobility. So I started to go to debutante balls, black tie affairs, started hanging out at clubs, all with the very, very secret notion that I was doing research on bourgeois society.

But you didn't tell them that was what you were doing....

Larry Fink • silver-gelatin print, 9 1A" X 9'A"

Of course not. No no no. But when I started working on Social Graces, the work began with political motivation, and in the goings ofit over the years it transformed in many, many different ways.I started to think about it: why do I do this? Is it about the politics? Is it about the portraiture? Could it be that I was using the pictures to explore some dark parts of myself, watching these people with their cocktails? So I gave myself permission to make bad pictures.

'Bad' meaning unkind?

Yeah. I do believe that I am the embodiment ... of all things. (laughs) That's pretty good, huh? I AM THE EMBODIMENT OF ALL THINGS, SARAH.As I sit here at my kitchen table.

Wow. I didn't quite realize who I was interviewing.

Me neither.

So what did you tell them you were doing? What did you tell the people you were photographing?

Oh,I told them that I was working on this wonderful project on the Archives of Gaiety. And they would say,'Oh how absolutely divine! The Archives of Gaiety! There's plenty of that here,come along.' And people would say to me,'Well aren't you exploitive, aren't you a liar.' And I would say,'No, no, that's not the case at all. I'm working.' I believe in what I do.

So what kinds of pictures do you like?

I like a lot of pictures.

Well, what do you like about the pictures you like?

Basically the pictures I like are the pictures with some kind of transcendental energy that flows through them. It doesn't have a hell of a lot to do with anything else. In my own pictures, I strive first for accessibility so even the lowest of morons can understand them, and second for unbelievable complexity so that the highest can appreciate them. (laughs) So you're playing both sides?

Absolutely.

It's possible that you could be playing more sides than that.

Well, I'm always taking pictures. I'm always working.

Do you always carry your camera?

No. So then you're not always working.

I keep my camera in a bag, and I carry the bag on me,but I very rarely take it out to snap a few pictures here and there.When I was younger I did that.

When you say 'working,' does that mean working for yourself or working commercially?

Working is working.There's no difference.Well,I can't really say that. If I work for Nike or Adidas, I have to consider that the client is spending a lot of money,so I have to supply a lot of product.And I give them that.

Unfortunately, the methodology behind that kind of work values quantity over quality. But even when I'm working for them,I'm also working for me.

The same effort goes into the pictures, with added considerations. The advertiser wants to see the shoe in the picture, for example. It's not so terribly hard.

So what do you think of Cartier-Bresson?

Henri? Well, he's one of my heroes.

The reason I brought him up is that a lot of what you're saying reminds me of him.

He always seemed to resist aligning himself with any one group.

Let me tell you something about him.People were recently speculating on the price ofsome of his vintage prints. And he wrote this letter in response where he said, 'Listen, I don't photograph to make beautiful prints. I photograph because I'm curious about what goes on in life. I never got into the darkroom,never was a slave to the darkroom, except maybe in the early days for a brief period.' These prints that everyone's talking about, these are prints from his early days with Magnum,and they've got Magnum stamped on them and they are about to disintegrate. So Henri says,'A picture is not an object, it's just a picture.'

He doesn't limit his prints anyway. You can buy new prints of his old work for something like

1200

dollars. This is

precisely the kind of situation he was trying to avoid.

Yeah, well, he comes from a very wealthy family, so he didn't have to sell the prints to support himself. But essentially, that's the idea. A print's a print. (pause) I'm so tired.When I spoke to you last night I forgot that I had to stay up and watch the fight last night. Evander Holyfield's first sincelyson bit his ear off.

Any biting?

No,no. It was a clean fight, a very clean fight.

How'd it look? The ear, I mean?

He's fine. He's a beautiful looking man.I just wish he'd shut up about that Jesus stuff. He such an evangelist.

Evangelistic Evanclar.

Really, man.'Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord Jesus for helping me!' Oh my God! Well, nobody's paying him to talk.

Right, right. But he's a nice guy.

So talk to me about photographing boxing.

Does it stem from an Interest in the sport?

No.It stems from an interest in human brutality. Boxing is so corrupt, so brutal. These men beat the shit out of each other.The thing about boxing is that it's very cold and hot all at the same time.

So how do you fit into it?

I have a book out on the subject. Some people see me as an apologist for boxing.

Do you like watching boxing?

Unfortunately I do. It's so exciting.

This has gone very well. I've got an entire tape full of stuff I can't use.

I have to edit the really obnoxious stuff out.

Alright, Sarah. co

,

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pencil & ink drawing, collage, 19" X 7" • JonathanToews

ON URBAN PLANNING Andrew Grusetskie

11111111

One wonders at the construction ofan ever-increasing number of new, post-rustic skyscrapers— timber peeking through plaster, glass patchwork and bubbled,kept casual and comfortable by the patter of an emcee with a particularly pleasing mic-side manner. Meticulously careless, he welcomes visitors (predators and inquisitors) to a representative edifice with a practiced chatter: 'Sprung from seeds which miraculously self-graft their essential possibility to the cement stiffness of sidewalks, these colossi share old-growth lumber with microprocessors.

On the mezzanine floor we have the sharecropper, Paolo; he's under Mergers, where—you'll hear if you listen closely—thunder's planning on acquiring wonder.' Etc. He winks,The guests (mostly tourists) spray applause and jabber, merrily. Marvelous, this wood-grained microwave among toasters.They proceed onward, but one younger listener lingers at a reverberant corridor. Later, he will swear he heard, beneath the whir of the freshly-conditioned air, the growl of a lurking grizzly, a raw, pervasive grrrrr.

Everything goes green at the intersection, and your slow noon stride stalls as they skulk through.

Six boxy shadows cloud the white cross-hatched landbridge.

Diamonds slough off the hardtops.

Everyone owns this home movie: a brazen shoulder, pitted with rust barely misses kissing you off the coil, Or mouths into some unsuspecting herd offlesh and grey, or flattens some dog.

WHEN MEN ARE CARS Nicky Beer

Watch the beasts cruise through a killing, lofty hulks barely shrugging when a body shatters in their guts.

With a snort, one clutches the corner, swinging into the station's hot island to be serviced by joes with chrome hookahs.

The sidewalk cranes its neck in muffled awe as the casual machine passes.

It will not dawdle for your wonder.

_

AnthonyYoung • silver-gelatin print, 13/" X 8"/"

FOR MY BROTHER, DROWNED IN THE OCEAN Darby Saxbe

My brother found a marble, once, at school, Stuck in a patch of mud behind the jungle gym.

He was six and I was nine. Our parents were allergic; We craved a dog or cat.We called the marble Lizard.

A pus-filled eye, its iris warped, We rolled it down a stretch of wooden floor From my fingertip to his, and then again.

When he was four my brother almost drowned In Grandma's pool.At night fluorescent lights Shone through the water, drawing moths.

Swimming open-eyed, I saw his outline sink and wobble, His silhouette descend. I pulled him out.

I would have pulled him out again.We clutched at slimy tile, Slipped and breathed, my nails dug at his arm.

The year our parents got divorced My brother had a nosebleed every day.

We kept Lizard in a jar with slippery sides.

That summer we caught fireflies and punched holes in the lid.

Before you went to bed they glowed pure white— In the morning, wan, hung-over, drowsy when you let them go.

Lizard's poreless eye drank light, drew heat.

Lizard roll, Lizard stay, Lizard play our fort-da game.

Form a tooth to slide my tongue around, Ice another heart into my chest.

Lizard bring my brother back, Lizard bring him back.

I'll fill the sink with water, shine a flashlight, Find the twist of glass that clouds your eye and fish it out.

BOTTOM Tara V. Bayton

Cathy Braasch â&#x20AC;˘ pen & ink drawing, 12<" diameter

FIVE YEARS HAD PASSED since her husband's death, and still Bonnie Stokes and her two girls ate sad dinners in breathy silence after work, and grew heavy together. They lived on the third floor of a four-story house in Philadelphia, on the tattered, blackened fringes of Germantown.The landlord, a wordless man with asphalt skin, rented the apartment to them for three-seventy-five a month.Above him,on the second floor,lived his grown daughter and young grandson.An unmarried couple fought above them at quaking intervals on the fourth. Except for a week in winter once when the water heater broke and Bonnie and her girls washed their upper bodies over the bathroom sink from pots of hot water heated on the stove, there were no complaints about the landlordâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;or about the apartment,for that matter. It was somewhere, it was better than nothing, Bonnie said, and her daughters agreed.

They had lived nowhere once; they knew what nothing was.

Ofcourse, as their mother often observed, there were no Vanillas anywhere in sight, at least not where they lived. The three were perhaps most painfully aware of this on Saturday afternoons when they dragged their laundry bags in single file down Wister Street past the shadows of men on the corner who could not bear to stay within their houses. Not one Vanilla to be seen, their mother would murmur,in the safety of the laundromat. She was white, though she sometimes forgot it. Her two daughters, however, Amber,eleven, and Ashley, five, never forgot what she was.Their mother was the only One in sight, the only One there to be seen.The One who got stared at on the long walks (they were short walks really, but stares made them long) to the laundromat, and on the long walks back.

Sometimes,on the bus or in the supermarket, they would see another One—a minty old white lady maybe,or a strawberry-yogurt baby and his milky mother—and the sight would reassure them. It breathed a sense of respectability into the places they shared. It made them feel as if they weren't at the lowest place after all. There were still lower places, they thought, where white people never went.

On weekday mornings before work,Bonnie woke at five-thirty, tiptoed past the bunk-beds where her girls slept, and shut herselfin the narrow bathroom that adjoined their bedroom.

She was thirty-four years old and had not gotten her hair trimmed in five years; it was her mourning train. She slept with the whole brown length of it out, the way she had done as a girl.

When she tried to comb it in the morning,it took half an hour in front of the mirror to untangle the snarled ends, another half hour as she washed it in the hair-clogged sink, and more than an hour to dry. She would bathe in the tub with the glycerine soap she had bought in twelve-packs at the local Dollar Land, and then she would wake the girls at six-thirty. The tub was very old, with four curling legs that lifted its white porcelain paunch an inch-and-a-half above the tiles. How Bonnie loved the tub! It was a classic, an antique, she said, a rarity to be treasured.After much coercion, the girls would trudge in for their baths: first Ashley, under the careful supervision of her older sister, and then Amber by herself, who hated the tub with all of her skin. Its surface slickened her with stain and grime,and sometimes visible on its underside was an inexplicable, black matter that smelled and got stuck under her fingernails.

Many small, unappreciated pains had been taken with the furnishing of the apartment.

Bonnie hung flawed landscape paintings that she'd purchased from the Salvation Army on the walls. She draped glass beads between the living room and the kitchen. She filled in the empty space by the wall with crates of books and old records. She bought a chipped kitchen table and four wooden chairs at a yard sale, and glued squares of carpet to their feet so that they wouldn't scrape the linoleum floor when pushed back from the table.(Bonnie loved this

innovation; she had never thought ofanything so ingenious.She found delights in life the same way a child discovers that there are feathers in a down coat: plucking out the small wonders,in wonder.)

She had a peep-hole drilled into the door oftheir apartment so that the girls could see who it was before opening the door.And with the grudging assistance of her brother, she bought the bunkbed for the girls' bedroom and the blue sofa bed in the living room for herself.

Some were led to believe, at the sight ofsunbaked Bonnie Stokes and her two brown, woollyhaired girls trekking up Wister Street under the burden oftheir groceries, that Bonnie's family had disowned her. But Bonnie's family had not disowned her. She had disowned them, rather, seventeen years before,fleeing to NewYork,and then to Philadelphia, where she worked as a waitress and met part-time actor Bradley Stokes.

Even after her husband's death, when she had one hungry mouth to feed, another one inside her, and no place to live, she refused to reclaim her parents, explaining to no one—not even to them—why she had left. when Bonnie's girls first began to notice a change in their mother. Day camp at the YMCA had let out the previous week.The Stokes sisters spent their hours inside the apartment, drawing at the kitchen table with broken crayons, watching the second-hand TV that had only three channels.

One morning their mother prepared boiled eggs for them before taking the bus out to the dentist's office in Flourtown where she worked as a receptionist, wearing—and this is what the girls had noticed—red heels, a new floral skirt, and a thicker layer of make-up than usual.

They were given three eggs apiece, more than was necessary, especially for five-year-old Ashley.

But Bonnie had vowed to evict hunger forever from their apartment. They ate heavy dinners in the evenings: old poultry mostly, seasoned poorly by their mother, but plentiful.(Always, though, the fourth chair was empty,and they chewed slowly, talked little, their tongues deadened by absence.) All of their bodies had become subtly and comfortingly dimpled.

She smelled particularly good that morning,

THE SUMMER WAS NOT YET THREE MONTHS OLD

their mother, a slur ofsweet wind as she flitted around the kitchen table: 'You smell good, mommy.'

'Thank you, dear.'

'How come you aren't eating your breakfast?'

'Because I'm not hungry,'she said.

Thai was the other thing they noticed: their mother was not eating. She kissed them quickly, and left for work.

AT THREE O'CLOCK they watched General Hospital, at four they watched Oprah.They sat transfixed in their chairs for the entire two hours, unblinking and uncomprehending, wordless, with opened mouths.Some winged observer hovering outside their window might momentarily have mistaken their faces for the frozen gapes ofAmish children.

At six-thirty-five, with nothing but the incessant drone ofthe News to chew on,Ashley's rear end began to itch.

'Stop scratching it,' Amber said.

'I can't,' she said,'Why isn't She here?' It was this new nameless worry that had rekindled fiveyear-old Ashley's diaper rash. The thought that She had left them.The thought that She was not coming back. It can hardly be fathomed why suspicions ofcourtship or traffic problems,of overtime or grocery shopping, never entered their minds, but it must have had something to do with the way they had been taught early in life to resign themselves to the worst offates.

Mournfully,sucking back tears, the sisters rolled the two rubber band balls that Bonnie had made for them last Christmas back and forth across the linoleum, realizing for the first time that the floor was crooked. It was not necessary to push the balls at all. They rolled to the opposite wall without a nudge.The kitchen, and possibly the whole third floor, was on a decline. No wonder whenever they tried to bake a cake it came out lopsided in the pan.

I want daddy. It was Amber,eleven, who had thought this, shifting her thumb into her mouth with a somewhat mature sigh. The next moment, however, keys rattled a greeting on the other side of the door and the two girls leapt up from the hushed gloom ofthe evening's worries.They heard their mother's voice, the crackling shift of plastic bags, and the thin, nervous chortle ofa

man.Then the lock turned with a definitive click, and the door parted from the door-frame to let their mother in.

Bonnie, breathless as she balanced a grocery bag with one hand and withdrew the keys from the lock with the other, turned back to the hallway to thank the man who stood behind her.

'Oh,no problem at all,' said the man in the hallway. The girls, who could not yet see him, knew instantly from the timbre of his voice what flavor he was.

'No, honestly,' their mother breathed,'thank you so much. If you hadn't offered me a ride like that after work,I don't know how I would have gotten home.'

'Oh,no problem, Bonnie,' the Vanilla answered, clearing his throat.'I don't know how you do it every day, without a car, I mean.And I meant what I said. Anytime you need a ride, just tell me.'

'Oh that's really awfully nice of you,' chirped their mother.'It really is. I mean, thanks. I really appreciate that. I really do.Well—"rwo measures passed in silence. A bag rustled against itself.

'Well, I better go in now,' she said.'And thanks.

Thanks again. See you tomorrow—' 'Wait,' the man rushed in,'let me help you with the rest ofthese.'

At the offer, the girls heard their mother's voice quicken,shrilling—like the pitch ofa justactivated car alarm.'Oh,no. No thank you. I can get it all, really.'

The man chortled again in good-natured uncertainty.'Are you sure? I mean, that's an awful lot to carry. Here,let me bring these three in at least, and you can get those two, all right?'

'No,really,' said Bonnie.

'It's okay, really,' said the man.

'No,really,' said Bonnie.

'It's okay, really,' said the man.'It's really okay.'

She relented at last, and he carried the groceries into her lopsided apartment,following her into the kitchen where he found two baked-brown children waiting at the table, silent with hunger.

'Just put those down over there,' Bonnie told him, her voice cold with defeat. The man, moving back slowly in understanding,lowered the bags.

An awkward pause followed in which he realized, shifting, that he was expected to leave. It was what they expected of him—the people who

lived here.And it was what they expected of him—the people who didn't. The man frowned.

But for some reason he stayed where he was, contemplating an obscure area in the corner where the wall met the kitchen floor.There were two balls resting there in shadow. Bending down for closer inspection, he smiled.

'Are these your daughters'?' he said, picking up the balls and holding them out to Bonnie who, baffled, did not respond.Then,turning to look at the girls,'Are—are these yours?' The girls stared before, his heart flinching inside of his rib cage at back at him and nodded. He was a small man the sight of her still-wet river of hair and bluewith brown pants and retreating hair, they saw.

His tranquil, pallid lips parted to reveal an array of lined eyes, that she too would see him as others had.A man who was by no means ugly, but who teeth the size of a horse's teeth. was unhandsome enough for children to look at 'Why,they're great. I've never seen anything unkindly. A man who was by no means poor, and like them.It looks like they're made entirely out yet who had the kind ofjob that suggested he'd of rubber bands—'He was interrupted by compromised,failed somewhat. Like when a Bonnie, who,thawed by his show ofinterest, female acquaintance from college, for example, inched towards him. found him shopping for ties at Kmart,and asked 'Well—no.' Her voice shook with girlish laughter, and she tucked a wayward string of hair him—her eyes momentarily bright with the behind her ear and cleared her throat.'Well—no, prospect of him—what he did for a living. Oh, she thought when he told her, not a Doctor. not entirely out ofrubber bands,' she said.'You Sometimes Booth felt as if life were just one giant construction see, I started with a ball of black ICmart and that women were the gum-chewing paper first, and then I wrapped the rubber bands cashiers who closed up for the night when it was into around that, until eventually it accumulated his turn in line. Sorry,sir, this aisle's closed. a—ball—' The new temp, however, whose name he had to She was interrupted by the fervency of his eyes. ask twice ('What is it again?"Bonnie."Bonnie, 'You—'he started,'you—made these?' he asked. that's right—that was the name of my first grade 'Well, yes,' Bonnie said.'Well, yes.' teacher, the one I had a crush on—')had looked at him as if he were handsome, had giggled as if FROM THAT DAY ONWARD, the Mari,Andrew Booth, he were funny, had shaken his hand nervously, as drove Amber and Ashley's mother back to her if he were a surgeon.When Bonnie started apartment every night after work. He was a coming in to work with perfume that he could dentist who lived in a brick colonial in upper smell and lipstick that he could see, he knew, Flourtown. He played with model rockets on the because she wanted him to know,that she had weekends: checking the gunpowder in their tiny enhanced herself specifically for him. One engines and blasting them off occasionally in the evening, they stayed too late after work,swapping Styrofoam white the losing house, his park by meaningless words with each other in the gliders in the trees, and sighing in sadness and lot—and she missed her bus—and he parking his to back walked he as wonder remembered gave her a ride—and then, passing by the house. He lived alone, for the most part.A few she remembered for no apparent Superfresh, but him, women had contemplated marrying reason that she needed to buy five bags' worth of they were the kind who deemed themselves groceries—would he mind ?—just five minutes? his worthy of worthier men.In the end,they kept Thirty minutes later there was the ride back to rings and offered their friendship, leaving him Philly—the road was blocked—they had to find a where he had started. He had feared, shaking dry detour route— hands with the new temp receptionist one week

In short, he spent over two hours alone with this woman,and he had no idea that she had children until he followed her into her apartment and found the two,one oak-toned and one copper, sitting at the table.

AMBER WAS THE LIGHTER ONE. Promises of gold

danced on the edges of her hair. She was roundbellied and large-boned and would be very tall very soon. Her younger sister Ashley—by far the prettier one, because she had her mother's features on a deeply-brewed complexion,and because she was smaller and much, much sweeter—would only reach five-foot-three.At the age ofeleven, she would for some unknown reason (as unknown as why her mother, at the age ofseventeen, woke up in her parents' house, got on a bus to NewYork,and never came back) stop eating. Not completely, ofcourse, but enough to thwart her body's eye-snaring attempts at sensuality for awhile. Later, she would blame herselffor her sickness and her shortness; but of course she was not to blame.

Ashley liked the eager dentist who drove her mother home from work every night and sometimes stayed for dinner. She liked the triangular shape of his eyelids; she liked the hair on his arms.Amber did not.The older girl resented Booth's horse-like, happy laugh, his humiliating diminutiveness—smaller around the waist than she. She hated how much he tried to get her mother and her sister to like him—and she hated how much he succeeded.Amber had been six when her father and two-hundred other passengers died due to an engine failure on a flight to Los Angeles.She didn't know what her mother knew then: that they had lost him long before he died, that he would have left them sooner or later. All she knew was that this pale, bland-lipped stranger who occupied the fourth seat of their kitchen table at dinner now was not her father.When school started again and Amber discovered sarcasm,she said nothing to Andrew Booth unless it could make her feel smart and make him feel stupid.

ONE EVENING, AS THEY SAT AROUND THEIR DINNERS in

silence, she drawled in her driest possible voice, 'Everyone seems to be in a real talkative mood

tonight.' Her mother,looking at her watch, said nothing. But Booth, made uncomfortable by the silence that had preceded Amber's comment and by the silence that followed it, cleared his throat with an uneasy laugh.

'Actually—no, that's the problem—I wish we were—more talkative—tonight.' He shrugged his thin shoulders beneath his thin black blazer and coughed. He and Bonnie were going to see Shakespeare that evening at the Annenberg,and his tie was knotted too tightly.

Amber flipped her eyes at him.'I was being sarcastic,' she said, with the new lip-curl that she had perfected the other day in the girls' bathroom.

'Oh,I knew that,' Booth said.

For distraction, he looked at the chicken bones on the girls' plates, gnawed clean and fractured at the places where they had bitten down to get the marrow out. Even Bonnie, when eating her two meager chicken wings (that was all she ate that night,she was going to be thin again) had cracked the bones. It occurred to him that this was how people ate when they had once had nothing. Eating bones and fat and organs and skin, extracting extra calories from anything they could. He looked at Bonnie, and at her lovely youngest girl, and even briefly at the big, snide, amber-haired one—and his eyes filled. They should not be living here, he thought.They should not be eating like this.They should be living in a nice house in a nice neighborhood.

They should never have to eat again as if they won't eat tomorrow.Impassioned, he met Bonnie's eyes over the table. She smiled at him.

'I love you,' he blurted—stinkily, stupidly, he thought—and cringed inwardly. She smiled at him.

ONE EVENING AT BONNIE'S APARTMENT, while

Bonnie dressed for their dinner date at The White Crab, Booth found himself alone for the first time with her girls. Before he could attempt a conversation,Amber pushed the chair back on its carpeted feet, shoved past the curtain of beads into the living room,retrieved the new Walkman she'd gotten for her twelfth birthday from the blue sofa bed,and vanished promptly into her bedroom. He found himself then in an even

sister!' Sucking her teeth, the girl obeyed her. She worse position, left alone with only Ashley, who her clambered down from the bunk-bed and headed hair long and free like was wearing her dark straight to the chest of drawers. Shaking with mother, smiling up at him with her shy, small her rear end, her suppressed glee, she found nothing there but a teeth, and nervously scratching few shorts and socks. Turning,she curled her lip fingers in her pants. helpless look at her mother, and shrugged her thick shoulders.

'Don't do that,' he said, darting a That was when Ashley entered the room,whining to the bedroom where Bonnie was getting for her mother and utterly pantyless. Her behind, dressed.'It'll just make it worse.' bare to their eyes, was chestnut-brown and very 'But I can't,' she said,frowning.'It itches.' She small. Only Amber saw the flush ofcolor that stood there scratching. Then, to his horror, she pulled down her pants, and dug some more.

'Ashley,' he said,'Don't do that.You're making it worse.Want me to get your mother?'

'No,I want new panties. It itches.'

'Okay,' he said, jumping up from his chair.'I'll try to find you some new panties—just keep those on—please—'She pulled them down too far, as if meaning to distress him. Uttering something in despair, Booth grabbed a large . dishtowel off the kitchen table and wrapped it around her. She made no effort to keep it on. It fell to the floor at her feet. His head grew hot and he cursed,looking towards the door again. He made her step out of the pants and panties that invaded the man's face. From that day forth, she had gathered around her ankles. Made her sit vowed to find only monstrosities in Andrew down on the wooden chair to hide her rear end Booth,and to reveal them to anyone who would since she refused to cover it. Put the towel over her lap, and, sprinting to open the door, heard her listen. say,'Don't leave me,' before he left.

THEIR MOTHER HAD GOTTEN HER HAIR CUT. She had In the bedroom,Bonnie, still in her slip, drew gotten it lightened too. It was now the burnt gold back from him, alarmed by the terror in his eyes. she had been born with. Under Amber's sullen Booth collected his breath and said,'She's scrutiny, she stood in front of the mirror with her scratching herself. I think it's a rash. Do you have new hair, admired it, combed it so that it almost any panties? She needs new panties.' touched her shoulders. She was going out to 'Not again,' sighed Bonnie,rubbing her forehead.'Not again.' Her voice sagged.'She needs dinner with Andrew Booth that evening.

It was half-past October now, and they had a bath that's what she needs.' Turning to the bunkbed, she looked at her oldest daughter, who stared seen each other almost every day of every week since August—which was the equivalent of two back at her blankly from under her headphones. years, in her book. For the first time in her life, 'Ashl—I mean Amber,' Bonnie said, shaking the crinkled, sepia memory of her husband had her head.'Amber.Amber, will you come down completely panties for faded from her mind.She could jog it there please and find some clean from back into place with a litde help from the photo your sister?' album in the yellow crate next to the refrigerator, Amber replied, without 'There aren't any,' but she decided not to for some reason.Why moving.'We didn't do laundry last Saturday, mourn forever? she asked herself, as her remember?' daughter's unforgiving gaze burned the side of Bonnie glared at her. Her voice rose.'What? her face. Had she not shrouded herselfin enough What do you mean? Get down from there, you blackness already? Had she not? Now all she lazy thing, and find some clean panties for your

wanted was a wedding dress.That was all she wanted, really.

'Do you like him?'Amber asked as she watched Bonnie slide the posts of her new pearl earrings through her ears and lock them in with a twist.

'Yes, very much,' Bonnie said.

'But he's not handsome,'said Amber,shifting on her bunk-bed.'And he's short.'

'Well,' muttered Bonnie,'a woman can't be choosy when she's on the bottom.'She said this with a hair clip between her teeth. Flipping her bangs back,she took the clip out of her mouth and fastened the loose strands in place.

'But he's weird,' continued Amber, her voice rising.'And he acts creepy around Ashley.Yesterday he opened the bathroom door on her.'

'That was an accident,' said Bonnie.'And hush, don't get so loud. She's sleeping right under you, remember" Done with her hair for the moment, Bonnie bent her attention to pulling on her stockings.

'And then he lets her sit on her lap and pull really hard at the hairs on his arms. I think he likes it,' she said.

At that moment,Bonnie shrieked. A silverfish, clinging unnoticed to the inside of her stocking, had run up her shin.Trapped between the flesh and nylon, it struggled up her thigh, where it stung her viciously before its death.

'WHAT WAS YOUR HUSBAND?' he asked

her that evening at The Olive Garden,leaning close, the brunt of his breath ardent with garlic, to hear her answer.

'He was black,' Bonnie said in a deflated voice.

Distracted, she swatted a prickly hair off the back of her neck, scratched an itch on her arm,shifted her nerve-nettled legs.

Booth let out an expansive,large-toothed laugh.'Oh,no. I knew that already. I meant— what was his job?What did he do? I mean— what was he like?'

Bonnie stirred her drink and sighed.'I don't know,'she started, and her voice swerved carelessly.'He wanted to be famous,I guess. I don't know how to describe him.'

'What was your family like?' he asked her, leaning closer on eager elbows.

Bonnie bent her eyebrows, saying nothing as

she frowned at her hands.There was still a faint tan-line on her ring finger from where she had removed the old band a month ago.

'W-when you married him,I mean,' he stammered, beginning to feel foolish.'What was your family like when—' Bonnie interrupted him then, her voice set at whine pitch—'Why can't you ask me normal questions?' Booth saw her face redden, contort, as iffrom some unfathomable insult.

'I'm sorry,' he stammered again, his own face flushing.'I—I just feel like I don't know you tonight—I—I just want to know all of you Bonnie, that's all.'

At that moment,his voice and the red urgency of his face reminded her of her father.'You need help,' she said, and rising from her seat, left the booth. He watched her squeeze through the tables, turning heads to the exit—where she exited without looking back. Sitting there, Andrew felt as he had when he'd lost one of his Styrofoam gliders in the trees. He made no effort to retrieve her. Instead he sat there, waiting for her to come back, sighing in sadness and remembered wonder,as a hot cloud ofshame and confusion gathered around his head.Then, digging in his breast pocket, he pulled out a pen and a pair ofspectacles. Quickly, to block the passage of eye-water, he put the spectacles on.

Removing the cap from the pen, he smoothed out a napkin and began to write. in her dark kitchen, contemplating her momentary psychosis in the restaurant and the contents of the refrigerator in front of her. She was standing there with a I sagging and miserable stomach, her bathrobe bathed in the fridge's yellow, fat-colored light, when the note slid with a hiss under her apartment door. Padding as fast as she could across the linoleum,she read the words fast and knew her answer. She flung the door open before he could make it to the stairs.

SHE WAS STANDING AKIMBO

into his house.Amber, still bursting with resentment, ran through the sun-squared living room and up the polished oak stairs to the bathroom. Shutting herself in, she slid to the floor and cried bitterly, until she saw A WEEK LATER, THEY MOVED

the tub. It was beautiful: a part ofthe floor that rose up to form a concave oval underneath the shower curtain.There was no place anywhere on its marble surface for mold to grow,she saw She smiled slowly, with a hiccup.

Of all of them,she was the only one who knew what she was getting into.Though she would stretch and shrink and snap at whim,somewhere deep and steady inside the core ofAmber, holding her in place, was her father. Even later, when she enhanced her hair with Sun-In with the other blondes on their tree-rimmed street and became the tallest and most respected of all ofthe whole and half-Vanilla girls, he was at her center, reminding her that there was never a time when she didn't live somewhere,never a time when she knew nothing of what something was. Out of that undying loyalty and that undying spite, she would plant the beliefin her mother's head that Andrew Booth—quite possibly the bestintentioned step-father she would ever know— had married Bonnie for her youngest daughter.

Bonnie would see a therapist, and Andrew would see several. And Ashley, trying her best not to make things worse, would sit bent over her plate at dinner and refuse to touch it. If you looked at her then, you would see her caverned eyes and her small, downturned breasts, and marvel that something so fragile could have something so hard and strong fighting away inside of her. How strangely, how miraculously, how precariously that girl managed to bend without breaking.

Dear Bonnie, IfI make any mistakes or act out of my place I do thi& it only as a child 4oes. this.would do it, not as a man would.

Marry me, please.

THAT NIGHT-WHEN ANDREW BOOTH RETURNED to Bonnie's apartment and slid his apology under her door—became a mystery to one child and a wonder to one man.The two lovers must have stood out there in the chill, silent hallway for a long time. Long enough for Amber, who had awoken at the sound ofa door thumping shut, to

look out at them through the peep-hole before her yawns overtook her. And long enough for the landlord, who had heard a noise above him on the stairs and grabbed his bat in caution, to climb up two flights ofstairs, and stop, and stare through the banister. This is what they saw—and perhaps it is no mystery, perhaps it is no wonder, to you who have seen it before: the smiling mouth of a woman above the surrendered eyes of a man,kissing all of his face as if he had the head ofa baby. o

DEFERRALS Jessica Winter

Our lunches gully their paper plates with grease as my father and I take the steps to the balcony.

The pavilion swells below,the heat from jostling bodies misting up,reaching us where we stand at the top of the stair.

Or rather (he would demand precision) only I linger, while my father walks ahead.

Troubled by the transit between motion and rest, he reads Newton's logic in this strange complaint: a body's refusal to sit.

When I call home, my mother always answers.

'He's on the floor,' she explains, 'lying flat amidst his papers.'

'We are liminal animals,' he tells me from his trench, reporting back from Homi Bhabha.In public now, I drag a stool slung high and backless from the arcadeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; he can perch like a museum piece.

'I think you really have discovered something, with this chair of yours.'

Later, the doctor plucks findings from under his cuticlesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; sciatica, he mutters, and stays his decree with tales ofinjuries from his own college years, the rising cost ofeducation.

The words seep between his teeth, a capillary flowers under cheekbone.

Years ago, when he found my sister's back had grown oblique, this man wanted to boil a knife, (they calcified, she and her spineâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; after all, they'd had a pact) but no matter: my mother prevailed, and a doughy, bearded man with large warm hands fitted my sister for an iron bracket. It tied in back, and every morning my father laced her.

At home this sullen night, he wants to translate the report, and stands over the dictionary.

Cleaved, it flops open, grown pliant with age.

We find the right page, but other entries distract: an imaginary fight with shadows, a mumbling saltwater fish.

Soon we're in the C's, inquiring after the habits of the croaker fish; of the doctor's genus, we decide, with all its grunts and doomsaying.

silver-gelatin prints, 3'A" X 4'A"each â&#x20AC;˘ Betsy McCall

Scott Peterman â&#x20AC;˘ silver-gelatin print, 10 V," X 13 /,"

WHY SOME PEOPLE ARE UNSUITED FOR CERTAIN PETS Dan Kellum

If you kept eels as pets you might understand.

Sparking belts in water the temperature ofthe air.

Your own reflection would dip onto the glass as Antarctica-shaped cheeks.

Your eyes as bored as mudflats.

All hollowly—the way migrating salmon swim.As hollow as the hats you wore to hide cowlicks, as deadbeat as the eels must seem while reeling. Staring has never been a virtue.

But you watch them spin on tabletops, the walls ofthe room becoming boundaries ofshadow and smell that they might intuit, and never know.It is a fact you won't be able to enter the bowl.You were never good at water sports (although you loved to try to waterski— scanning the clear edge over Ontario's murk).As much as they'll never be able to hold contests to see how far they can travel on their hands. In mirrors you look less grisly. Your cheeks would be pink—not like this—the color of the ocean.Your hips would seem less like scaffolding, belvederes architects build for better views. In the bowl you're a monster.

If you owned eels you would be reminded ofshock, ofexplosions that weren't meant to careen—towns,fields inexplicably split open like black-eyed Susans. Everyone wants to be skinny, as nonexistent as we could be if hipless, as unobtrusive as we would seem if our hips were as thin as arms.

The eels, nbnetheless,swim—cruel lmowers.You would watch them spin if you owned them—t-shirts in a laundromat washing machine—over and over, reminding, as if constantly reciting a creed learned by heart.

VARIATIONS ON THE PHILTRUM Nicky Beer

phirtrum:The hollow that divides the upper lip. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Oxford English Dictionary I Before birth, Gabriel told a secret To your mouth,and made the flesh around it blush.

Hushing you up, he pressed a weightless finger On those naughty lips, denting the flesh above.

II A bare, sensible valley framed by winds From two northern caverns and a pit yawning Below. No seed stays, no sound hesitates Passing through a dale of borrowed shadows.

HI What can separate the odor ofinstinct From hot expression but one concave length Ofdisplaced meat more at home in between Fingers or nestled behind distant ears?

IV In between the senses and within sense There lies a shallow grave dug out for all The things one hopes you will be wise enough To lay down,undisturbed, without a word.

drypoint etchings, 3" X 15 '/," each â&#x20AC;˘ Dawn Ogawa

COLOPHON THE YALE LITERARY MAGAZINE, volume 9,number 2

was designed using QuarkXPress 3.32 on Macintosh computers.The magazine is set in four typefaces: Joanna, designed by Eric Gill and first cut in 1930 by the Caslon Foundry; Perpetua Italic (named 'Felicity'), also designed by Eric Gill and first cut in 1926; Meta, designed by Erik Spiekermann and issued in 1991 by FontShop; and Helvetica Condensed.The cover is printed on Warren LOE Dull White 80 lb, and the text pages are printed on Finch Fine VHF 70 lb.

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