FORTNIGHT
LITERARY PRESS
VII.ii
CONTENTS 2 3 4 8 9
Lang DeLancey Alexis Springer Evan Klinkoski Vivian Jiang
10 12 13 20 22 24 Cover Image
Lang DeLancey
Editors
Julia Byers Eliza Cadoux Natalie Steers Alexis Springer Samantha Spraker
“I am become death” For Lucy Ersatz Ermine PLEAS I DO THESE THINGS AND I DON’T KNOW WHY he bad Morning Poem Say Goodbye, Say Hello Clipped Wing 2 pieces of advice: This is Apparently the Life I Lead Copse
Jenny Wang, Christopher Ransburg
Layout Editor
Giuliana Eggleston
Editorial Staff
Sarah Dougherty, Danielle Elizabeth Colburn, Sarrah Hakim, Mia Licciardi, Michelle Hoban, Natalie Steers, Myra Visser.
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“I am become death” Lang DeLancey i’ll have cornbread and tea every night until my body rises up in revolt and holds me for ransom i’ll bloat up real big so big that my insides bloom. they’ll spell out love notes to yesterday’s tragedies and today’s breakfast in a gastrointestinal jackson pollock i’ll be rich enough to pay for my raging addiction to caffeine and cornmeal. i’ll be a regular factory churning out masterpieces and apologies. everything, in the same two tone colors tannic brown & corn. there’s gold in that lovely beige that litters my table, and dorm room walls “out out vile jelly”
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For Lucy Alexis Springer When the men hoot and holler It’s not because you’ve done something. Flowers do nothing to be picked Except be there and beautiful. Grow where you will And bury your roots deep Like a spiked weed. Don’t wish you looked like one. It’s not because you’ve done something. Living shouldn’t be this hard.
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Ersatz Ermine Evan Klinkoski Yes, yes, I know, Shermin, That you pronounce it ‘Erm-inn.’ We argue this point every time! Now would you quit belching ‘ho-hum’? For the winds of poetic free-dumb Are whispering ‘ermine is fine.’ Just let me tell the damn story! The Ersatz Ermine Here is a tiny little ersatz ermine Lying supine, entwined in the crags Of an alpine tor, notched and scored. Stuffed with kitsch, so unadored, Coldly ignored by the hoary storm. And there is a seeker of pretty pieces, Fancy fragments, and special species. This alpine storm is not his norm, Cruel and cold and ice-wind shorn, But, Lo! This find! So fitting a form!
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And so he snatches the little stuffed something, Just the thing for which he was hunting, Whips coins at the Sherpas with care, Not many, citing Tibetan cab fare, Then down the slope he tears, quick as a hare. Now we can’t see him, locked up in his workshop, Toiling and sweating, working without stop To kill any doubt of his skill. Surely he plans some great thrill. With sound surreal the workshop is filled. So here it lies, product of all his spent time, A tiny little ersatz ermine. A supine spectacle Resting atop a fluted pedestal; In a word, simply impeccable. He invites all the thinkers, the fancy blinkers, Intellectual master tinkers Who despise all things candid As if nothing is blander, Who revel in the art of slander. Oh, Shermin, you pillish bloat, Interrupting my story of stoat, To tell me that I am mistaken? Yes, yes, so tinkers aren’t masters. In fact, that’s the joke, you fat bastard, Now hush ‘fore my demons are awakened!
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No one cares for your input. Anyway, such ‘Lord’s and ‘Wow’s and stuttered ‘How’s Spill forth from out their gaping mouths! Such a pithy and perfect treat As the seeker’s splendid feat Could never ‘fore now their monocles unseat! They stand with widened eyes, Deeply, utterly surprised by the tiny, White, Stuffed, Ermine. The humble seeker can’t refrain from beaming As these thinkers debate deeper meanings And such strange and abstract dreamings As to frame their instigator In a heavenly light of fame. A genius! A God! Let all know his name! And know it they did, for word waxed world wide, All the way to the Sherpas who reside On their cold, distant mountainside, Word of a new world wonder. So to this wonder, in haste, they hied. Yes, I know, Shermin. That’s the joke!
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But alas, all wondrous claims are dashed aside. In lieu of Colossus, there is an ermine. Their wind-battered eyes can discern no meaning And so they leave, disturbed by the seeming That such resplendent and sonorous style hides a mild Colorless, Useless, Void.
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PLEAS Vivian Jiang holy alone, you wake inside the snowbank again. it is a good time to keep secrets, this brightest day, this bitter night, this wind that cleaves its way into your softer sides. mother is on the other half of the world and tomorrow she will lose the battle, her sword in the belly of the city garden as rain falls inside her house and bruises down the floors you walk on. there is a certain kind of pain that can travel, you see: out her heavy cheek, down dirty snow, to the strange burn of fluorescent light that lines the walls of your glasswork brain.
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I DO THESE THINGS AND I DON’T UNDERSTAND Vivian Jiang i run against the sea i exhale a little warmer, shaking i watch a boy laugh from across the room i squeeze the juice out of clementine skins i tell my friend i hate her in my head i buy a boxcutter from the pharmacy i walk around the museum to feel a little more beautiful i rip my mother’s expensive dress i apologize to my stuffed animals i stand in a stairwell and press my face against the heater i eat a pork bun and cry i clean a wine stain from my shirt i tell my friend i am scared of her in my head i delete my ‘i’s in a new document i run to the sea and let the salt lick me everywhere i swallow velvet and go to sleep and sink in my mother’s expensive dress
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he bad Lang DeLancey he bad he big he white he hatred he talk money he bellow dollars he money money money he don’t love no one he hatred he don’t love i he eye he fist he big white ass he holy he ugly he bad he piss metal he iron he steel
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he wait for i lose it he take he dig he own he sell he bad he laugh he watch you scream rooftops he wait for i lose it he hollow he full he bad he big white metal he half wages he don’t love no one he dead he never born he always here he bad he bad he bad
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Morning Poem Lang DeLancey we’ll wake up and have breakfast everyday you can tell me your dreams. phantasms of childbirth and great horned buddhas yawning through connecticut how it will mean that you’re safe in your skin all of this while I sip tea silent about having been woken up
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Say Goodbye, Say Hello Julia Byers I want to remember what a beautiful pain New York is. I want to remembering hating tourists who ask for directions, but holding back a grin when I know how to answer them. I want to remember getting lost in Central Park and burning my tongue on fresh shaved ice on the High Line and falling asleep while reading The Great Gatsby for the millionth time on the 7-train home. I want to remember all of it. Feet dangling over the edge of the balcony. The air hot on my cheeks. The sun so bright, reflecting off the billions of mirror-like windows, that I could swear it had swallowed me whole. The worst part of leaving is that you don’t know which memories will stick to you and which will peel away—the rickety bed, or the too-cold office, or the soup place where you religiously ate at least once a week, even during July—because the moment you lose sight of that certain location or object, you might lose the memory as well. I’ve lived in enough cities now to know you always forget. Which I guess explains why my stomach has twisted itself into the shape of one of those too-salty food truck pretzels since I plucked the first box from the stack in the corner—the stack I’ve been very purposefully ignoring the past two weeks—and set it in the center of the room. It takes up almost all of my available floor space, if that says anything about the salary of the job I’m leaving. One of a million assistant publicists at a local advertising firm. And I guess leaving is the best word for it, because I don’t like quitting. I’m not giving up; I’m moving on. Bettering myself. Growing up. That’s how I’ve been phrasing it to everyone. I’m going to grad school. I didn’t even apply to any of the programs in New York, even though both NYU and Columbia have good business schools. I knew I wanted to go somewhere new. There’s still so much world to see; so many lives to lead. I’d stopped moving forward at the advertising firm I’ve
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been working at since I was an intern, so grad school was the obvious answer. Now was the obvious time. But choosing to leave doesn’t make the actual act of getting on a plane and watching the city fade behind me any easier. I stare at the box, toes dug deep in the mangy shag rug that came with the apartment and fingers squeezed around my hips. Purple-orange sunset filters through the warped glass of the window that’s probably older than my landlord. My upstairs neighbor watches a romantic comedy too loud while my downstairs neighbor watches a horror movie, and my walls echo with the sounds of beginnings and endings. The moment I place something in this box, it is the beginning of the end. What part of my life do I pack first? What part of New York do I fold into this box? What do I choose to remember? I stare at the smooth, stiff cardboard. Curl my toes so the shag strands tickle my feet. Inhale a deep breath that exhales like a sob. Movement is good. I know this. Stay too long in one city and you’ll either outgrow it or stop noticing all the little wonders that make it a place worth living in. Stay too long in one city and it’s easy to grow content, and contentment is the enemy of progress. And progress is good, of course. I know this. I grab my keys and turn my back on the box. I’m out the door. I’ve lived in Queens for three years, Sunnyside, and although it’s nice, it’s never been home. No, home is Manhattan with its glistening towers that hold up the sky and the way you can always find something to do, always, even when it’s three o’clock in the morning on a weeknight and you really need someone to pull you out of your thoughts. So I take the stairs to the elevated train tracks two at a time and dig my MetroCard from my pocket. It’s funny how you just go about your life—wake up, go to work, run errands and maybe grab dinner with a friend, head home—then one day you realize you’ve grown so inextricably enmeshed with a place that you no longer can breathe without it. There’s just something about the air. It’s become more important than oxygen. Manhattan grew on me surprisingly slowly. Probably because I had preconceived notions about it—everyone does about New York—and the city had to knock down and tear
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apart every previous thought I had had about it before I had any chance of knowing it for what it truly was. Then one day I was taking the bus out to Ocean City for a weekend away with friends, and I saw Manhattan from the Jersey side of the Hudson, and I realized that at some point someone had sucked out my blood and replaced it with coffee from that food truck on the corner of Broadway and 22nd and peanut butter milkshakes from the Shake Shack in Madison Square Park, and for half a second I thought I might suffocate the moment I lost sight of the Empire State Building before I remembered that that was stupid. Except also it kind of wasn’t. Because it was New York. My New York. No one else on the train takes notice of the skyline all aglow like a city made of Christmas lights, slowly drawing closer towards us, but it is my last night, so I watch it like it’s my first. Funny how someone saying goodbye and someone saying hello often look so similar. I sit backwards on the slick plastic seat, fingers pressed to the glass, Converse tucked up beneath me. It’s just enough warmer inside than it is outside for condensation to fog the windows and with my finger I pick out the Chrysler Building and Freedom Tower—which made me cry when I visited, even though my only memory of the Twin Towers was seeing them collapse on the news when I was eight—and, of course, the Empire State Building. My Empire State Building. Then the tracks turn and the city disappears behind buildings. I wipe the finger streaks clean. I’ve been picking up and leaving, again and again and again, for as long as I can remember. My parents were practically nomadic, with Dad in the Airforce and Mom a journalist. Texas, Colorado, and even a stint in England. Back and forth between bases and schools. Then I moved again for college—Chicago—and spent semesters in France and Costa Rica. And from there I ended up here. I hate leaving. I hate staying. Even three years in one city has left me itchy for something new and uncomfortable. Maybe I have a commitment problem. The 7-train trundles down into the tunnel, wobbling its way towards Times Square. I’m not sure where I mean to go, just that I mean to go somewhere boxes won’t stare. Somewhere I’ll remember loving this city without remembering leaving.
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The first stop on the 7-train, after the tunnel to Manhattan, is Grand Central Station. I’ve never been a fan of Grand Central—like most tourist attractions in the city, it’s more for them than us—but the dark subway tunnels are suffocating when there’s an entire city of lights above you, so I hop off here and take the escalators to the ground floor. I barely pause as I cross the space, echoing with giddy voices and camera shutters. I’ve seen Grand Central and it’s one of the places I don’t feel the need to see again. But my feet root to the pavement the moment the polished brass and glass door sweeps closed behind me. 42nd Street. Go one way and end up at the U. N. Go the other and end up at the New York Public Library—with the lions and sweeping white columns and books that have seen more days than any of us ever will. Bryant Park. Times Square. I practically lived in Times Square my first week here. It was the only part of New York I knew. When I did find my way to other places, it was always in relation to Times Square. Central Park is twelve blocks uptown or the Flatiron Building’s eighteen down. I worked in the Flatiron district, but for me Times Square has always been the heart of Manhattan. And although it’s crowded and smelly and inescapably touristy, my gut wrenches at the thought of not saying goodbye. So I give one last glance in the direction of the United Nations, with its sleepy streets and sprawling facilities overlooking the East River, and turn towards the noise and the lights. I’m a speck of dust between New York’s toes. I wonder if I’ll feel the same way about the streets of Los Angeles, or if skyscrapers will feel entirely different there. Chicago feels different from New York. London feels different. How can cities all be made with the same pieces but still find a way to be so their own? It’s cool out, especially for August, but my palms prickle with sweat. My fingers rap against my stomach. Every step towards Times Square says, I don’t want to leave New York. Every step says, I need to. I can’t stop moving. I can’t become stagnant. I need to keep growing. I know this. I know this. But I pass the library and Bryant Park, twinkle lights strung amongst the tree branches like something out of a fairytale. Pause at the corner to suck in a lungful of Wafels and Dinges.
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And go on, on, on, until I’m standing right in the middle of it all, in the pounding, pulsing heart of my favorite place on Earth, and I turn in a slow circle. Take it all in. The lights. So bright they could burn away all the darkness in the world, let alone the little, wriggling doubts creeping through my mind. Times Square is horrible. It’s crowded, smells somehow both of overcooked meat and horse manure, and someone’s always there to shove an elbow into your spine while you’re trying to take a picture. It’s hot. It’s loud. It’s hard to stand still in it, and hard to move. But for three years now, it’s been mine, more than it will ever belong to any of these tourists. And tomorrow, the moment those plane wheels leave the pavement, I lose it. Leaving is a small death. Life goes on without you once you’re gone. It’s something I forget, every time I decide to move, until it’s too late to go back. Just because you leave, the place and the people don’t cease to exist. They keep going. Life is exchanging one ideal of who you want to be for someone new, again and again and again until even the moment you’re living in feels like a memory. And when you leave somewhere, you become a memory to it as much as it is to yourself. I have friends in five states, four countries, but I’ve left all of them and they’ve all moved on without me. Gotten married. Gone on adventures. Had inside jokes they can come back to five years later, because they’re all still there, together. Made plans for things they’ll do with other people five and ten and fifty years down the line. And I am alone. Maybe that’s why I fall so hard for cities. Maybe that’s why I love and hate moving. I’m independent. I’m free. I am the girl who dangles her feet off balconies and gets swallowed by the sun. But I am alone. I’m not lonely. I swear. Except maybe I am. I don’t miss anyone in particular—I don’t know anyone well enough to miss, I guess, because I always get to know people with the idea that I’ll leave—but maybe it would be nice to miss someone. Maybe it would be nice to be missed. Maybe it would be nice to feel secure enough in how long I’ll stay in one place to fall
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in love with more than a city. And here, finally, is what I really came for. At home, the empty boxes wait. Tomorrow, movers will load them into a truck and a plane will carry me to California. They have a different sun there, different rain. Practically no rain at all. And I’ll be even more alone there than I am here: wandering Manhattan on my last night on the East Coast, chasing the light with no one to reassure me I’m doing the right thing but myself. Because that’s all I’ve ever needed, I swear. I don’t need other people. I don’t want to. To need is a weakness. It’s a liability. And I said goodbye to everyone I knew here this afternoon, anyway—the assistant publicists all went out for drinks, then we slowly trickled apart. So there’s no point in complicating that by asking for assurance. But maybe I want to know someone well enough for it to be worth complicating that. Maybe I want to really know someone at all. I want to know someone like I know Times Square. I shake my head. Turn to walk back towards the subway, and spot another girl standing by herself in the middle of the overcrowded square. She’s maybe a little younger than me. Fresh out of college. Dressed a little too warm for the weather, whereas I’m dressed a little too cold. She guards her purse like she thinks every person to bump past is out to get her and her shoulders are hunched like she’s trying to fold herself into the smallest space possible. She’s not a tourist, but she’s new here. After a while, you can always tell. Self-conscious and young and already so in love with everything about this place: the way her eyes are open wide, lips tilted up ever so slightly even as a hundred people jostle her as they pass. The way she gazes at the flashing screens and soaring ads. She could be me, three years ago. She could be me, tomorrow night, except exchange Times Square for the Hollywood sign—one cliché, lovely tourist attraction for another. Someday I’ll stop moving. Maybe it will be worth it, to have a life. To have a hand to clasp in the dark and a smile to confide in when I see something beautiful and a warm shoulder to
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brush against mine on a visit to Times Square. Maybe it would be worth it, to be content. I turn away from the girl, squeeze my eyes shut, then let them wander across the square one last time. “I’ll come back someday,” I whisper to Manhattan. The red TKTS steps and the folding chairs, folding tables. “I’ll come back.” To the blank night sky, lit up by all these lights, so bright not even the satellites show. It’s so bright here, you can never be lonely, even when you’re alone. I’m not lonely. But the next time I’m here—I won’t be alone. And although I don’t say it explicitly, these words are a promise, the way things can only be when shared between you and the moon and no one else. I’ll come back. I might be leaving, but I’m not moving on. Not this time. I’ll fall in love with Los Angeles too, I’m sure. But Manhattan. Manhattan is home. I’ll come back.
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Clipped Wing Eliza Cadoux Your hands around my wrists As my pink tulip dress inflated Twirling and whurring You smiled down like a benevolent god Finally giving me the gift of flight And I forgot, that I was not as tall as you Couldn’t reach you Daddy, papi, min far Bob, who lost your college girl too young to drugs And my mother too old to self absorption and lost love And your mother who sits in her chair and is creation or Destruction with her veiled Paper hands You dropped me First on grass Second on Jones Beach glass sand That day I vomited red gatorade and sea water Third on the axe you were grinding Somewhere far behind your eyes You said sorry But it didn’t feel as good As I thought it would
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Two weeks in a cabin, you and I A family horror film in flannel and denim Nice-ity until wear-down Old folk songs until dissonance over inner ear speakers I don’t know how to forgive you, or what for For the faults I remember in pixelated floating I don’t know how we start again When I started from you
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2 pieces of advice: Natalie Steers one: never get on the wrong side of a poet. for if she’s a poet, she will splatter you across words grind you into pages stomp you down to a few lines beat you rhythmless against her meter spill your guts like so much wasted ink on her hands because her pen her pen is mighty. for if she is a poet, she will immortalize you build a detailedÂevery hair in place, matching twinkle, dimple, slightly shorter little pinkymemorialÂ, construct you a pedestal to be seen by all so that everyone will know who to look for: the person foolish enough to lie to a poet.
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two: never get on the wrong side of God. for if She is God, She will side with the poet and wreak karma on your sorry ass.
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This is Apparently the Life I Lead Alexis Springer When you’re up past two there’s no hope for you. You know this. So after reading over 100 pages of Austen Melville Fuckner—Faulkner You know sleep is no easy feat for your story-filled brain and sweaty hands. So, around the time you feel it possible to stop, you dry-swallow a tiny pink oval. And then you wait. You read Fuckner while you wait. Sometimes it’s quite a long wait and after a while you decide to paint your fingernails since you may as well, while you wait.
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And while you wait for the potent smell of purple polish to register in your brain you decide to tidy up a bit—clean out your monstrosity of a closet. And while you wait for all of these people to get out of your closet you decide to bust open the tin of kettle-corn and cheese-corn. And while you’re waiting for the taste to register in your brain you decide you hate all these fucking people in your closet. They’re too loud. You decide to kick them out when you smell the potent purple nail polish and while you’re waiting until you remember what you were originally waiting for you pick up Fuckner again. Faulkner again. Mr. Tenagain. The words become real life or a dream—you haven’t decided
and you’re on the hunt to catch Tomey’s Turl with Uncle Buck and Uncle Buddy
and you forget where Fedallah went
when you were chasing the white whale
and you want to tell Fanny Dashwood to shut her fucking piehole
when your alarm goes off and your hands are changing tides purple with kettle-corn crumbs
and your clothes are strewed about the floor.
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