Minetta Review Spring 2017 by Minetta Review

MINETTA REVIEW SPRING 2017

Cover featuring art by Colleen Fitzgerald. Cover designed by Stephanie Wang. Minetta Review logo created by Carol Ourivio.

CONTENTS 8

Minetta Statement

Annesha Sengutpa Emma Thomas

POETRY 15

THEY CAME IN THE NIGHT

Ytan Bravo

AMERICAN FANTASIES

Jeffrey MacLachlan

UNTITLED

Constantine Gong

AN EXERCISE IN SAYING I LOVE YOU, DIRECTED BY THE LOCH NESS MONSTER

Dannie Petrovna Giglevitch

A BLESSED SUNDAY MORNING Amanda Tejada

PLANTATION TO PENITENTIARY

Alexis Christie

IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE

Shenia Williams

A PORCUPINE’S REVENGE

Alice Hatcher

MATTER

Lucia Stacey

LULLABY FOR MY FATHER

Cosmo Halterman de Ochoa

RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR

Darrell Dela Cruz

THE THING ABOUT HOUSES OR ON BEING HOMELESS AND LAYING ON A BED THAT IS YOURS

Yaz Lancaster

PROSE 11

MONTEGO BAY, JAMAICA. JAMAICA BAY, QUEENS.

Summer Eldemire

SELF-ACTUALIZATION

Jared Gentile

ASIDE

L. Haiman

THE GREAT SPECKLED BIRD

Andrew Hogan

WOLF RIVER

Mark Cassidy

ART 22

PASSIONATE DELIRIUM

Isabela Xie

NEFELIBATA

Isabela Xie

ALIENATION

Engie Ezeldin

UNTITLED I

Engie Ezeldin

DOUBLE TAKE

Engie Ezeldin

DONâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;T FORGET ABOUT US

Engie Ezeldin

LOUMZ

Engie Ezeldin

FIGHTERS FOR LIFE

Engie Ezeldin

45-47 WAYS OF SEEING: 5. 6. 8.

Shuyi Cao

50-51 BECOMING

Colleen Fitzgerald

53-55 DAILY SHAPES/NIGHTLY BODIES: 1-5

Sebastian Lopez Calvo

THE MYSTERY OF SYMMETRY AND ALTERED CUBISM

Alexandre Nodopoka

BATTLE DOME

Robert Panachpakdee

YABOS

Hannah Baek

PIECED PIECE

Isabela Xie

61-63 GENESIS

Ken Goshen

THE ADORATION OF CHILDHOOD

Sharon Molk

EPHEMERAL LITHE

Isabela Xie

WARRIOR GIRL

Jaime Arredondo

Contributor Notes

Editorial Board & Special Thanks 7

A NOTE FROM THE EDITORS

Since our last issue, published so soon after the results of the 2016 American election, the staff at Minetta has been coming to terms with the realities of the world around us. We have, cumulatively and as individuals, experienced in varying degrees, despair, anger, fear and hope. We have wondered, along with the rest of the world, what our place is in this new world - a world where human rights are steadily rolled backwards, sexual assault is trivialized (even encouraged) and mass incarceration exacerbated. In front of you is the result of this wondering; Minettaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first ever Social Justice issue. Earlier this semester, we called for prose, poetry, and art that is socially minded and outward-facing. We could not be more pleased with the results. While not all of the works within this issue contend with social justice, many of those that do do so with grace and a biting vision. In Montego Bay, Jamaica. Jamaica Queens, two Jamaican women of different ages and financial backgrounds contemplate each other on the subway - the narrator exploring deftly what it means to be an immigrant, Jamaican, young, tired. They Came in the Night inhabits the howling afterimage of the forced deportation of undocumented immigrants, while American Fantasies envisions God as a boxing coach and the frenetic atmosphere of an American election. We are also honored to publish poems by three adolescent women currently imprisoned at Rikers Island; Amanda Tejada, Alexis Christie, and Shenia Williams. These poems were brought to us by Shiva Darshan, a Sunday tutor at the Rose M. Singer Center, the womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s jail on Rikers Island. The cover of this issue, created by Colleen Fitzgerald, represents the shattering of the self. As America and other capitalist countries brush dangerously close to fascism, measures have been put in place 8

to divide us from our friends, family, and selves. We find ourselves fragmented, terrified, and terribly, terribly tired. But just as the figure on the cover refuses to look away, so do the pieces in this issue. They stare forever forward, as all of us must do to the best of our abilities. As always, the creation of this issue would not be possible without certain individuals. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d like to thank Ahmed Sherif, David Sobalvarro, and Felix Chan (our poetry, prose, and art editors, accordingly), Shiva Darshan (for acting as our liaison with the Rikers Island tutoring program), The Incarceration to Education Coalition (for co-hosting our first ever social justice mic), and our advisor Sarah Anne McGough. And weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d like to thank you, for taking the time to read our magazine. We hope that this issue moves you as it moved us. All our love, Emma & Annesha Co-Editors-in-Chief Minetta Review Spring 2017

MONTEGO BAY, JAMAICA. JAMAICA, QUEENS. Summer Eldemire

There was a woman on the F train. If I had lost my eyes, ears and mind, I would still have known she was Jamaican from her smell. Well-seasoned and salty. Years of perspiration imprinted in her skin. Slow release. Lingering. Inescapable. Jamaica make you sweat until the sweat cyan’t never leave you. Jamaica make you sweat for more reason than the hot sun. 13 months of not seeing her family coming from her damp armpits. A little jerry curl grease. Can pride have an aroma? Can attitude have a smell? Can working 6 days a week to Western Union a likke something back to you family have a fragrance? It smells like tired. “Maxine me a go haffi call you back,” she is ventriloquising into another continent through a Nokia brick phone. “Maxine? Eh hee, di signal nuh so good.” She kisses her teeth like this is the first time there has been signal lacking in a subway station. How dare there be no signal in a subway station. I imagine that the minutes on her calling card are up. 11

Does she have the same phone plan my parents call me on? “Why you have an A minus and not an A plus?” Mummy can call me back on the digicel phone “What you think I send you to foreign to do you?” Mom I’m not in wifi “You saw on Facebook that...” Mummy the long distance charges “Ooooooh! of course baby, wait hold on aunty Cheryl just walked in. Hii Cheryl I’m on the phone to Sum Sums. Mhmmmmm she get 3 A’s in her subject them you know. Come say hi to her. Sums talk to you Aunty Cheryl.” MUMMY. CALL. ME. BACK. Can’t miss that smell. Would recognize it anywhere. She smells like crickets at night time. The smell of a double six domino smashing down on a wood table. 6 – Love. Fan bruck down in the kitchen and the food well oily. You know them smell there? The black grunge in the corner of old kitchen corners, in the creases of the counter, between the cracks in the fridge. No amount of bleach can remove it. No amount of bleach can change who we are. Bamboo leaves rotting in fresh river water. She smelt like home. She was massive. We wouldn’t call her fat, she was fluffy. Substance. Not no skinny mawga plyboard gyal. Not like me. Her thighs were like tree trunks bursting at the seams of her nurse outfit. Itching to be free. Rolls of belly pressing defiantly against her shirt. A discolouration across her cheek. I wonder where she got that from. It’s like – the smell of night coming down. Dew in the early morning. Sour skin after a 6 AM inna di dance. Rain on a zinc roof. Woiii, rain on a zinc roof. That smell after a fresh rain, you know them smell there? Soil releasing itself. Make you grit you teeth and want to run you fingers through it. Do you know what breeze in a palm tree smells like? Not like a freshly printed tropical post card. Like a stink sea breeze, running through a dutty, dusty palm tree. Not like vacation scented coconut sunscreen. That is a white man smell. “Ma’am, would you like my seat?” She doesn’t hear me. She is asleep standing up. 12

I remain nestled in the comforts of more than a subway seat. Cushioned. We are both Jamaican women living inna foreign, but the difference is vaster than the ocean that divides us from the land that we have loved and left. She sends money home, money is sent from home to me. My tuition. Jesus Christ my tuition. You know what that could buy for Jamaica. I am nauseous. The train jerks. “Mmf.” She kisses her teeth. She doesn’t open her eyes. You know the smell of laughter, and the oldies tunes that make you mummy and daddy and aunty start to rock and sway? Make them drink a little too much rum and laugh a little too loud? You know dem kinda smell? Lullabies. Peeking out of her crocus bag is her bible. She says her prayers every night. For what, I am not sure. Peeking out of her hairline is the netting of wig. She puts it on every morning. Good good white people hair, coloured a strange orange. That smell of wet sand. Dusty. A mango that has just turned. Beautiful but rotting. A metaphor that is too easy. Jamaica is like one big, dutty, beautiful rotting fruit. She closes her eyes. She looks exhausted. She breathes out heavily. Grunts. Smells like a cover up. Talcum powder and Blue soap. Scrubbing at epidermises and identity until they are raw. Cheap perfume, bought in Mobay market or in Flatbush? Stucci, Dolci and Gabinni. Quickly evaporating. Leaving its promises of Pomegranate Passion and A Better Life behind. Concealing but unable to eliminate the root of the problem. Jamaica is always the root of the problem. Jamaica is the root of every God. Damn. Problem. It has been a long shift I’m sure. A long life. Hospital shifts traded for transfers back home. Some for the family and some for the 5 bedroom house in the hills she’s been building for 20 years. For when she, finally, retires. The outside is fresh turquoise, inside the fat concrete walls are still showing blocks. Piece, piece, block by block. Doesn’t matter that the inside is rotting. The outside is the perfect 13

shade of pastel blue, to rape a passerby’s eyes. You cannot miss this house. She wouldn’t want you to miss this house. “Ma’am, would you like my seat?” Not a trace of twang in my heavily educated voice. Not a trace of melanin in my unpatriotic skin skin. “Ma’am..” Her eyes flutter open. “Is okay baby, I getting off at the next stop.” I sit back down. In guilt. And privilege. And silence. The train comes to a stop and we go our separate ways.

THEY CAME IN THE NIGHT Ytan Bravo

like a bad dream they came for him in the night as per custom Customs knocking on the door for his brown ass no money for crib so the baby sleeps with him all the moneys in a shoebox underneath and the boots that came with get beat up working construction 10 hrs/day but babys gonna need that house she needs textbooks for school she needs a dream the kind that donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t end at sunrise tongues in english are so fast and their uniforms so black they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even gotta use handcuffs the reaper walks him out of his own home baby wakes up starts crying maybe because she knows the shoebox will belong to her one day, but so will everything else.

AMERICAN FANTASIES Jeffrey MacLachlan

I. You got this, God says, rubbing your shoulders and splashing ice water in your face. Earth is on the other side of the ring and its oceans are purple with bruises, but otherwise looks steady. You got this, God says again. II. The gun is not a weapon it’s a marionette that salsa dances in righteous hands but with criminal scabs an unchained dog but we don’t put all dogs down we put them in shelters until they find good homes but if we don’t find a good home we put the dogs to sleep and reincarnate into marionette angels with one dark wing that bark and drool and ready to feed

III. Election Day! On Election Day, grownups walk hand in hand to their local fire hall or church to select who they want to ruin the government. Government is in Washington, D.C. where cherry blossoms grow! Sound out all the countries where we planted tulips and watched our bouquets win a ribbon. Korea, Japan, Mexico, Britain, Russia, Haiti, Bulgaria, Dominican Republic, Afghanistan, Grenada, Iran, Libya, Syria, Cuba, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, Cambodia, America, Chile, Argentina. Turn the page! IV. I’m done, world, I’m done. Don’t be surprised if I’m FUBAR when you get here or there’s electrical cobwebs shrieking all up in my shit. Get ready to deal. Another take? You’ll just censor this? OK. I’m done, world, I’m done. Don’t be surprised if I’m FUBAR when you get here or there’s electrical cobwebs shrieking all up in my shit. Get ready to deal. Fine, one more take.

SELF-ACTUALIZATION Jared Gentile

1. You are walking to the store and trip. Take a sledgehammer to the sidewalk to even the score. 2. Waiting at the bus stop, a homeless man smells of urine. Slap on some gloves, find the nearest puddle, and drown him in it. 3. While performing ritual sacrifice to the gods of hellfire, you stub your toe. Dust off the bone saw and toss the little guy onto the pentagram with the rest of the offerings: show him who’s the appendage. 4. At the grocery market Alice cuts in front of you. She’s in a rush. We’re all in a rush, Alice. Chop her into tiny pieces with your trusty bone saw and serve her to your health friends with a side of quinoa. 19

5. Your mother calls and asks if you need any help. Lie to her. 6. Your job offer is revoked because you are “too hard to work with.” They’re hiring Janice instead. Sob silently in your car while wearing that nice pantsuit Mom bought you. 7. There is no fucking way Janice is getting this job over you. Call her up on the phone and invite her over for dinner, saying it’s to celebrate her new prospect. You’re not jealous, no. You feel good for her. When she arrives, slip two Rohypnol tablets into her wine and keep offering her sedative-laced alcohol. Really, have some more Janice, you deserve it. Once she’s blackout drunk, lock her in your basement dungeon until she’s missed the first day on the job and continually feed her sedatives and Rohypnol. Then lug her unconscious body up from the dungeon and dump it by the river. Plant beer bottles and vodka nearby and clumsily smear makeup onto her face. 8. On the way to work in your new car, you see Janice on the street corner. She’s drinking out of a brown paper bag. It’s ten in the morning. Give her a half-smile and a wave as you pass by. 9. You’re at Todd’s Christmas party. Everyone has been talking about what a mess Janice has made of her life recently and you’ve been telling all the best jokes. Now you’re telling Todd about how well your youngest is doing at private school. When Janice walks over and tries to enter the conversation, subtly ask how AA is going. What step is she on? Twice a week, huh? Keep asking her questions until she decides to leave the party early.

10. You’re having trouble sleeping, because you’re so excited that tomorrow is another day you get to experience that’s all about you. To pass the time, make a list of all your goals and plan out how you’re going to achieve each one.

UNTITLED Constantine Gong

Sent to Mars at at a young age The newspaper says, But never saw action. The war is never going well So if youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re blue-bodied, Soap-hearted, glad and careful; You know that the 4:30 Newspaper shadow on Some fellowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s knees as the Train rumbles past Bowery Might be the only time Your name appears in print.

AN EXERCISE IN SAYING I LOVE YOU, DIRECTED BY THE LOCH NESS MONSTER Dannie Giglevitch

the loch ness monster is trying to say something, through low-tech sonar readings and botched attempts at photographic exposés. the loch ness monster is not algae or a huddled mass of zooplankton. the loch ness monster is not a greenland shark that ate too much and grew up too fast, or a plesiosaur that didn’t get the memo. she is not a hoax or just a legend, or the product of the misidentification of mundane objects. not to be confused with bigfoot, or the jersey devil, or any other unproven myth—she’s real. she’s real and thirty feet long and has breath control that can hold up for weeks. the loch ness monster is a lakemonster and all she wants is to be found. loch ness is too big and too filled with only fish that speak only fish, and not monstertalk. nessie is looking for another lakemonster— loch ness has room for two.

or maybe nessie is looking for a cryptozoology enthusiast who will sit on the shore of lochend at dawn (when there are not many people around) and throw her pieces of bread from a paper bag and tell her stories about what it’s like on land. he will tell her what it’s like to run a marathon, and how it feels to have a rock stuck in your shoe, and how it feels to cross the street just as the crosswalk signal begs you to stop. in return, nessie will tell him everything there is to know about being a lake monster: about every species of fish in the lake and which ones make for the noisiest neighbors, and about every nook and crevicethat she likes to hide her land-treasures in for safekeeping— sturgeons have sticky fingers. maybe she’ll even tell him about why she’s so afraid of lighthouses and about all the things she would want to do if she were a landmonster instead of a lakemonster. and if the time is right, she will tell him the lakemonster secrets that not even google street view knows, which she has been keeping for a very (very) long time.

The following three poems were written by three young poets as part of a Sunday tutoring program for sixteen to twenty-one year-olds at the Rose M. Singer Center, the womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s jail on Rikers Island. The poets developed their writing skills and edited their work with tutors David Beal and Shiva Darshan before selecting one piece to submit to Minetta. A special thanks to Ms. Tamia Brown, Ms. Duwanda Young, Officer Boyd, Warden Moses, Deputy Warden for Programs Turnbull, NYC Department of Correction Youthful Offender Division and the Petey Greene Program for making this opportunity possible.

A BLESSED SUNDAY MORNING Amanda Tejada

A blessed Sunday morning with a hot cup of green tea Thin white sheets Cold brick walls Fuzzy pink socks on my feet Thinking itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just another day, eyeing the clock, just a different time Imagining what it would feel like waking up to a hard ground Hard cold floor No tea, just dirty water by the stream Wooden cracked walls freezing cold Tossing and turning Grass, cardboard boxes as sheets Barefeet Same day lost thoughts No clocks, sun rises Rain falling Tears drowning Half moon, half man Cold zone Warzone

PLANTATION TO PENITENTIARY Alexis Christie

Louisiana state on the waters 18,000 acres off the ground â&#x20AC;&#x153;Im staying in town momma New York City You know what Im talking boutâ&#x20AC;? All the grits and the greens Feed the ole thangs And the feens Im scarred and Im mean Like Leadbelly mixed on whiskey Number 7 man in the number 1 gang Prison songs lived in veins With mosquitos, bedbugs And their fangs I cracked a bottle on his brain Im covered in cotton And someones blood mama Do you think Ive become insane?

IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE Shenia Williams

I love a man in uniform...football, Tattoos...on a man with brown skin, Flowers in a flowerbed. Somebody came and smacked me in the head, A box TV...dinosaur, Got the eye of the tiger... Roar, Roar, Roar, Puppy, puppy... on the floor, Give me, give me, give me some more food, Looking out the window I want some air, Put a picture on the wall, use the nair Sitting on a chair with my feet up I drew a picture of my twin brother Beautiful creature, Beautiful creatures... it’s nice to meet ya, Pack me a bag full of books Hang it up, Hang it up...use those hooks, I’m like side show Bob, give him a job. I waste toilet paper Let’s go on a caper Not like Casper the friendly ghost I should’ve deleted that post...Instagram Now I got ya man...your man *wink wink* I took the crown, so bag back or get...beat down Birthday card and green tea...poop LaCienega Boulevardez...my mans... 29

Single on Valentines Day...no plans 21st birthday, gaaaaaahhh damn. Jump in the pool, 8 feet deep Ride around those hills, in a jeep Pass me the chocolate chip cookies... What you say Blood? Pass me the bhobolate bhip bookies... But I ain’t Blood Flying into space...spaceship Drowning in the sand...Where’s the land? Glasses on my face cause I’m blind Headphones in my ear, but I’m deaf Sniff your eye and lick your elbows Grow a tail and share your head Burn the sun and cool the earth’s core Open a shark to see if it barks Close a door, make sure it doesn’t fart Brush the ceiling and comb the floor Nothing in life makes sense, so lotion your cheese.

ASIDE L. Haiman

At this point in the conversation you’ve chosen to go with the zipper– much more likely given the fine undulations of the blue crotch, not to mention far easier to undo. You can’t help but wonder whether he’s caught on to your button/zipper dilemma and if he finds it amusing instead of intrusively offensive. Might even consider bringing it up in a near-distant future after your unclad bodies will have begun to familiarize themselves with each other, to which he’d smile and say, I know, thought it was hot, or you might not. You bite your lip, or think you have, and reach for your quarter full drink, grazing his knuckles with the side of your forearm–a happenstance you’d happily freeze frame if given the chance. Ice cubes rattle against the glass–their clink deafened by the plump bass tumbling out of the speakers, but it’s like your palm has grown an ear– their sound travels up your hand all the way to your mouth. You take a sip of the watered down whiskey and give what looks like a funny retort, although you fail to assess if his reaction is honest or merely 32

flirtatious because you get sidetracked by this beguiling crease on the corner of his mouth you think you have summoned. You see yourself giving it a pet name in the form of a noun, of Latin descent most likely. Something that sounds both serious and playful. Like Pulchritude. Pulchry for short. That’s much later, after you’ve had the opportunity to appraise said crease via fingertips and lips; for now you’re content to just make a note of it on the he-list you’ve been drafting since before you’ve met in person – cheek idiosyncrasy, check. Do you want to dance, he asks and you nod shyly, a corrosive shield you’ve been building since your teens, one that holds back this ravenous raven on the lookout for offerings of fleshed out intimacy. Your upper body swings independent from your legs that seem rooted in the dark green carpet of a texture much less fine than moss. This is me dancing, you ask yourself as you catch a glimpse of your face in the booze rack mirror behind the bar, only to realize there is no resemblance whatsoever and you are in fact looking at the girl behind you. Her face bursting with excitement, she laughs like she’s got nothing to lose. Or maybe she’s collecting her gains. You miss that. Laughing. Let’s go to the dance floor, he says, this time taking your shoulder in the cup of his palm the way one gently lifts an egg from a basketful. Your spine tingles at how the fit feels, warm and comforting as if there is no difference in weight between you and an egg. He knows, you tell yourself without knowing what it is that he actually knows – could be anything from your body parts fitting to your bodies’ shared temperature to how you think you want to be touched – any- and-all, he’s got to be in some sort of know. You take his hand and steal a sniff of his wrist for a brief enough moment it might as well be imagined then walk over to the dance floor where the two of you are the only couple there – without really being one – and begin to dance. His moves are questionable despite a 33

sense of rhythm that outdoes your own, and the more you watch him the more he makes sense. You take note of your arms’ twirling dialogue as they test the limits of the space between you while your mind ventures on dangerous and untrodden pathways. You close your eyes only to see the same image from outside of yourself: you’re dancing with a man you think you like, two bodies in conversation, beaming out their former selves that blushed and bloomed and ripped through the fabric of cells only to bring you here – together this very moment. You open your eyes. Do you even like the music? Not sure whether you would have chosen this particular song to dance to tonight or any other night, but somehow it seems just right. Momentarily perfect. Heard this music before, you wonder, maybe with your ears, but definitely not with the muscles in your thighs that now arch and unwind as if yearning to cut loose from your bones. Must be the combo between the melody and the contour of his face and perhaps his scent which now comes and goes in short bouts barely enough for you to get a taste of, not nearly long enough to permanently grasp. You try to see yourself dancing alongside him thirty years from now in a run-down beach house in a dusty forgotten town on the Adriatic barefoot on the sanded floor whose creaks add a percussive layer to the record player, but you have trouble picturing his feet. The light in the room has one of those seemingly oneiric, undoubtedly celluloid qualities that percolate your memory of a future past as if the two of you have not stopped dancing since this very night. Here we are, you picture yourself saying as you come out of the club hanging on his arm like a scarf that revels in the flattering remarks of a subtle wind. The rain might have stopped altogether or trimmed down its punctuation from exclamation marks to full stops that drop at nifty calculated intervals. A raindrop might roll on the side of your nose and crash into your upper lip, visible enough for him to walk his thumb over it, spreading out the moist evenly, your eyes cuddled up in a letting-go stare. 34

Does the moment make the person? Back on the dance floor the distance between you has evaporated. His hand rests on your hip in a not-quite-so-sure-yet-begins-to-get-usedto manner and you have trouble deciding if you like it. His ribcage kisses your chest: breaths out of sync. You push yourself upwards and put your left arm around his neck clumsily followed by the right, an adjustment akin to one trying on something new. You close your mindâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eye, tell your thoughts to quiet down and pass the reins to your body, even if only for a brief moment so you can finally feel what he feels like.

1. Alienation

2.Untitled I

3. Double Take

4. Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Forget About Us

5. LOUMZ

6. Fighters for Life

ENGIE EZELDIN Mixed Media 37

WAYS of

SEEING:

5. 6. 8. SHUYI CAO Photo Collage 44

BECOMING COLLEEN FITZGERALD Mixed Media, Pigment Print

Daily Shapes/ Nightly Bodies:

1-5

SEBASTIAN CALVO Photography

THE MYSTERY OF SYMMETRY AND ALTERED CUBISM ALEXANDRE NODOPOKA Photo Graphics and Software Graphics 56

BATTLE DOME ROBERT PANACHPAKDEE 57

YABOS HANNAH BAEK Lithography

PIECED ISABELLA PIECE XIE

Graphite, Watercolor Pencil, Colored Pencil 59

GENESIS

1. Relativity

2. In His Own Image

3. By the Sweat of Your Brow

4. Third Day

5. Let There Be

KEN GOSHEN Oil on Canvas 60

SHARON MOLK THE ADORAT 64

ION of CHILDHOOD 65

Collage

A PORCUPINE’S REVENGE Alice Hatcher

We swerved to avoid the mess – crushed bones and ragged pink tissue – cursed in terror and fell silent, relieved and then awed by the breathtaking sprawl – the magnificence of a mangled porcupine lying on the highway. At the next mile marker, past rubber streaks and the ragged curls of shredded treads, We saw the truck driver standing on the shoulder, kicking a naked tire rim, once for every bloody quill lying upon the road – each an unlikely instrument of a porcupine’s posthumous revenge. We noted his silver mud-flap girls, his Confederate-flag decals, and the fluorescent warning sign – suddenly so ironic – disclaiming responsibility for unsecured items and blowing gravel – for damage to windshields and so much else.

We sighed until nearly deflated, turned on the radio and left him behind, shrinking in our rearview mirror and screaming into his phone, into the roar of traffic and the howling wind – a vortex of litter and deadly emissions. We lost ourselves in the passing landscape – oxidized factory husks and ragged weeds and billboards advertising salvation – and the trumpet calls of Miles Davis, elegiac outbursts for our fat and fallen martyr – a bristled oddity finally at peace after a lifetime spent dodging trucks.

MATTER Lucia Stacey

I. I’m on the 4 going to Union Square and I’m looking at this advert for soap.com or something like that and I realize that one day my father will die. On the phone the other day he tells me, that when it happens he wants to be cremated. He says: take my ashes to the bone room under the Cathedral at St. Stephen’s in Vienna. He says: or, if that’s too much trouble, take me to the Bouquet River upstate, where I used to trout fish as a boy.

II. On the airplane back from Vienna, I will write his elegy: my father could turn water into energy, strings of numbers into little universes, toast into cinders, arguments into bigger arguments, errands into odysseys, eggs, sausage, and grits into a multi-colored mash, vinegar and lemons into mignotte sauce, my mother into a hot ball of anger, a broken washing machine into an even more broken washing machine. III. When my father dies (and it will happen) I will salt the Bouquet River with his bones, eat only oysters for a week, read only

physics textbooks, watch only stars, feel only sunlight, try to understand matter. IV. It’s funny the things that bring us close to what isn’t anymore. During my grandfather’s funeral the house was burgled and we returned to chaos: His wedding ring, his watches, his medals gone, and my mother was left with only a glass vial of his blood pressure pills which she carries around still in her purse.

But my father exists now and will then in a constellation of the everyday: cathedrals and trout fishing, oysters and lemons equations and sunlight. V. I push my way out of the crowded 4, and emerge from the belly of underground to find him again and again in the startling light.

THE GREAT SPECKLED BIRD Andrew Hogan

We’d had a bumpy take off from the 324th Bomber Squadron Base in Prestwick, Scotland. Sergeant Riley Bircher and I were relaxing in the waist turrets of our B17 flying over the churning whitecaps of the North Sea heading toward Antwerp. I flicked my wrist toward Riley and a single Lucky Strike slid halfway out of the pack. “Thanks, Kirkpatrick.” Bircher took the cigarette and lit it and then held the match out for me. Riley had been singing a country song. “What’s that song you’re singing?” I said. “It seems like I’ve heard it before.” “It’s a hymn that was playing on the radio when I left home for basic training at Camp Fanning. It was a big hit for Roy Acuff back in 1940. Ever heard of him?” I shrugged my shoulders. “Well, I thought it was awfully good luck they gave us this plane today while the Anxious Angel is being repaired. It’s named after the song; singing the song is like praying for good luck.” We approached the coast of Belgium and started our descent. 72

We’d been given a special mission to knock out the regional headquarters of the Nazi army because, according to intelligence, some high-ranking Nazi generals were visiting. We were flying much lower than normal; a squad of fighters had been sent ahead to suppress ground fire. Cruising over Brugge, we flew close to a cathedral. I opened fire with my Browning machine gun at the steeple. “What the hell’s going on back there, Kirkpatrick?” Captain Twill said over the intercom. “Jerry spotters in the steeple tower, sir.” “Stop wasting ordinance,” the captain said. “I told you last week, use that gun only against enemy aircraft. Stop shooting at buildings.” “Krauts at ten o’clock high,” the chin gunner said. Riley and I swung our Brownings around toward the front. The bombing went well; the army headquarters were severely damaged. We hoped we killed some Nazi generals, but by the time intelligence gave an answer back, we’d already be focused on our next mission. We were taking some ground fire after we dumped our load, so I took the opportunity to take out a couple more church steeples. Since this was Belgium, they were most likely Catholic. Back over the North Sea on the way home, Riley offered me a cigarette. “We’re so far away, how can you possibly see spotters in the church steeples? Don’t you think it’s bad luck to be shooting at churches?” “Just the opposite. You can be pretty sure there’s an enemy hidden there.” Back at the base, Major Thompson called me into his office. “Sergeant, I have some bad news for you. Your Mother has died in a traffic accident,” the major said. “I’m doing the paperwork now for a compassionate leave so you can attend the funeral.” “That won’t be necessary, sir. Mother wouldn’t want me to miss a combat assignment just for her.” “Are you sure?” he said. “Why don’t you talk to the chaplain and then get back to me?” 73

A week later Dad’s letter arrived in the mailbag. He was disappointed I couldn’t get leave to come home for the funeral. Mother’s car had slid off Woodward just after Eight Mile into a telephone pole on her way home from a meeting of the National Legion of Mothers of America, which should have been postponed because of an ice storm. Father Coughlin persuaded the bishop to perform a solemn high funeral mass for her at the Shrine of the Little Flower. There must have been a thousand people in attendance. In his sermon, Father Coughlin said he hoped my Mother’s shining faith would live on one day in the vocation of her son, Lenny, an ordained acolyte of the Shrine, who had been denied compassionate leave by the military and who he prayed every day would return safely from Europe. The next week following our mission to Méaulte I was demoted to corporal after I shot up two more church steeples. I was allowed to continue as a waist-gunner in spite of the demotion, because of the great accuracy of my shooting—I had two kills and damaged four enemy aircrafts in only eight missions. I was soon promoted to tail gunner, after John Quilan took a slug in the leg. Captain Twill made me carry an extra ammo belt in the turret to compensate for my steeple shooting.

RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR Darrell Dela Cruz

We circle in birthdates for luck; Our family revered as numbers. We hope to see them reincarnated on balls rolling down the plastic slope. If we win, we can take the day off for the bunyag – availability based on a willing priest accepting our payment. He’ll pour water over a child’s head. If we win, we can put on our Sunday best to attend mass. After we donate, we eat at Zippy’s and hold hands before we swallow everything like roosters before the fight. If we win, we can bury our family we left in the Philippines who stayed in storage next to the shrine of Jesus. The priest gives a proper sendoff in a language we don’t understand.

LULLABY FOR MY FATHER Cosmo Halterman de Ochoa

How to be like him is asking To find nowhere territory Where there is Me making platanos Cutting them and frying and smashing and frying again Because in this nowhere territory I don’t feel like making them Sweet Then there’s me picking ticks off our dog in nowhere territory I’m flicking them to the tile and burning them with matches Then I’m alone and I’m topless pressing tortillas into their shapes With that smacky soft doughy sound Then still in nowhere territory I’m swinging in a hammock and eating an aguacate But we call them butter pear There’s a trick to do it nice where you cut off the tip and go one line around Two lines around to get 4 even slices It’s perfectly ripe because I’m like him so I can peel that green skin off easy And I can crush those four yellow pieces in my hands But instead I eat them In nowhere territory I’m full warm and happy Smoking a bowl even though if I were like him I could be smoking a j About to sleep until some lazy iguana falls down beside me It makes me laugh so hard the hammock starts swinging again Rocking me with the wind

WOLF RIVER Mark Cassidy

Henri Desjardins lies on his back in the snow at the mouth of the creek and listens for water running. He closes his eyes and holds his breath, imagines the stream beneath him, beneath the ice, flowing swift and clear, funneled and strong, but he can hear nothing. He opens his eyes again, blinks, and looks up through the ice crystals suspended in the air over the lake at the white winter sky. Looks like more snow coming. Behind his head, the hood of his parka, is his snowmobile, the engine still ticking, cooling under the cowling, and the sled hitched at its back which contains his tools and supplies, his lunch of ham sandwiches wrapped in foil and an apple, his rifle and his skinning knives. Though movement will prove difficult he feels like he needs the rifle in his hands. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s concerned that something in the forest will catch his scent and step out into the open, head swinging low, to investigate. And though he still feels relatively comfortable, quite warm in fact, he is aware that the day is advancing towards the chill of afternoon shadow. He also needs a handful of cloth strips from his pack to tie off his leg. 80

Obliged by law to check his traps at least every three days, Henri had set out straight off his last night shift at the Kaybob South gas processing plant to check the lines north of the Wolf. He needed to be back into town in time to collect his children from school and to help his wife Marie to get them ready for the Winter Festival at the rink, but the early going was slow, the snow in the cutlines fresh and wind feathered deep, many of the first run of traps tripped by birds or squirrels, gummed up with tiny bones, blood and feathers, which necessitated careful, time consuming cleaning. He squatted at each one, hood thrown back, his machine and the sled at his back, to reset and re-bait the traps, pin a new strip of cloth daubed with fresh scent. He also prepared a handful of new traps with whittled stakes to build the alleys and pink ribbon to hang as markers in the branches up above. Behind the gravel beds south of the Hudson’s Bay rail spur the trapline reached a creek a half kilometer from Raspberry Lake. The bank was high and steep. He climbed off the machine and unhooked the sled, allowed it to glide down to the bottom, and then eased his machine over the edge and rode it down rodeo style in an explosion of powder and ice. He scooted forward a little, rehitched the sled and then pulled slowly along the stream, easing round fallen branches, rocks and stumps protruding through the ice and snow, to where the banks of the creek opened to the frozen lake and where he had set a trap for lynx. Sure enough a cat was waiting. He rode past it onto the open ice and pulled a tight loop to face back towards the creek and the trees. The cat watched him dismount and unfold the wire noose from the sled, adjust and flex it, and then step up for a look-see. A lynx was a good catch and this one was a good size. Not a black wolf by any stretch – he’d only snagged a couple of those in the years he’d run the lines – but still, good money. The hind leg was caught. From the look of the animal, the advanced state of exhaustion and the color of the blood on the leg and round the trap, Henri guessed it had been there two days. The muzzle was crusted black with dried blood. He positioned himself at what felt like the correct distance with the end 81

of the noose wrapped tight round the leather glove on his right hand and then stepped forward to slip the noose over the wide head, the flattened, tufted ears. The key, once engaged, was to be always ready to jump back whenever the cat lunged, claws unsheathed, as it died. It was a dance. He’d done it many times. Shooting the animal was not an option since a bullet left the pelt worth almost nothing. He took a breath and then pulled back quick to brace and hold while the animal, anchored by the trap, began to thrash. He sits up but when he rolls to his left to kneel, more blood wells up through the tears in his jeans along the top and inside of his thigh. Beneath his knee the blood has melted the snow into a crimson pot down to the ice. He falls back. The dead animal at his feet stares past him, tongue protruding, along the surface of the darkening lake. The ice crystals glitter gold against the slipping sun. He takes a series of short, pain restricted breaths and then tries once more to use his feet to push himself backward through the snow alongside his machine to the sled. But again, when he flexes his knees and pushes, his heels simply slide without purchase and blood bubbles up out of the sliced meat. He’s becoming tired. A chill is growing at the small of his back and across his face. Anyway, school will be out by now and folks, his wife, will be wondering where he is. They know he’s out along the line. Stars have begun to appear over the trees along the shore. He’s just got to wait is all it is. But he needs the strips of cloth – he has nothing else with which to tie off the flow – and they’re in the bottom of the pack, in the sled.

THE THING ABOUT HOUSES OR ON BEING HOMELESS AND LAYING ON A BED THAT IS YOURS Yaz Lancaster

1. the place where this soul entered this body is not my home. the place where thissoul entered thisbody is not my home. i have never lived there. when i am dying and my life is sprawled out before me in a circle i will get to visit for the first and only time.

2. in the story i tell myself about my life i am always looking down from somewhere very high up. in a particular part of this story, i exist in three different selves all at once. i live in three houses of the same street. in the smallest one, i hardly know my father, i am missing all my front teeth and there is a vivid image of a garden snake lying in the front yard. in the biggest house we have a bee problem, i watch my blonde starving dog give birth in my room, i fall in love with a girl who i know, like all things, is only temporary from the very beginning. in the middle house, the light blue one, i die in my dreams every night until we move away.

3. ‘i want to take you home’ only i read it as make.

if i’m wrong, as i often am, and it does hurt, as it often does, i will sweep up all the glass and start over again, as i often do.

4. in the story i tell myself about my life i am always looking down from somewhere very high up. in this part of the story i am split in half. me #1 is just my head and arms and part of my torso. it drags itself around a valley that is new and rich. it is sad and then miserable without its lower half, and then it is happy that it is gone. and then it is just happy. it learns new things and forgets what the cold feels like. me #2 is just my legs and feet and the other part of my torso. it is running back and forth across the country. the feet are bloody and raw. at first it is running back to find where it used to sleep at night. but then it is running. when they finally meet, they are very relieved. when they finally try to fit back together, they realize they can’t anymore.

5. the thing about houses is that they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t miss you when you leave.

while i am busy destroying and creating myself, i am unaware that i am gradually vanishing.

every seven years we are constructed entirely of new cells, something something we are all stardust. my stardust body is a mosaic. my stardust body mosaic is built and rebuilt many times and exists in multiple places all at once. i am here sleeping in my tiny new york apartment; i am here riding the tram in prague; i am here smelling carpet cleaner in virginia; i am here in the backseat of my best friendâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s car in the bay; i am here in every motel we stayed in the two weeks we lived without an address; i am here crying on the futon in long island; i am here writing in florence; i am here being created for the first of many times in texas. myself and myself are different people. myself and myself met briefly, but arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t good with names. in between every here and there is a space where part of me disappears.

7. i love here and nowhere all at once. i mean i live here and nowhere all at once.

CONTRIBUTOR NOTES JAIME ARREDONDO was born and raised in Dallas, Texas, the son of a Native American father of Mexican heritage, and a Tejana mother and identifies himself strongly with the Mexican and Tejano cultures of Texas. He graduated in 1980 with a Bachelor of Arts in Art from the University of Dallas, and began showing shortly after that. In 1987, after having painted seriously and having traveled throughout Mexico and Central America, he was accepted into the Master of Fine Arts Program in Painting at Yale University. After graduating from Yale University in 1989 with a Master of Fine Arts in Painting, Mr. Arredondo moved to New York City to participate in the highly competitive world of contemporary art. In 1998 he began teaching courses in painting and drawing at New York University, and a course on Mesoamerican art and culture at the New School. He continues to teach at both universities. HANNAH BAEK is a senior from Seattle studying at Gallatin. Her concentration, Irreality Studies, investigates the psychological underpinnings, historical consequences, and fictive experimentations surrounding our representations of reality. She works primarily in medium format black and white photography. YTAN BRAVO is a student in Tisch under the Department of Dramatic Writing, where heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s concentrating in Writing for TV, but he likes to write screenplays as well. He also does freelance writing work for the website Popdust, where he rants about rap music and photoshops stuff to go along with it. SEBASTIAN LOPEZ CALVO is a queer, trans, Latinx writer and multimedia artist, who in the fall, will begin their Master in Social Work at Columbia University. They can be found on various social media sites @sillpanchu. 89

MARK CASSIDY was born in Scotland and emigrated to Alberta, Canada, as soon as he finished school. While he considers Alberta to be home, he has spent most of the last twenty-five years working around the world. At the minute he’s living in Houston, Texas. Over the past several years, he has had several stories published in small magazines both in the UK and the US. SHUYI CAO is a visual artist based in New York City, currently working on an MFA in Fine Arts at Parsons the New School. Before moving to New York, she obtained a bachelor’s and master’s degree in public policy in Shanghai, China. In her art, she revisits pre-existing boundaries and attempts to cross them. Some are academic disciplinary and many are cultural but all are products of human construction. Her practice includes illustration, printing, mixed-media sculpture, photography, and installation work. ALEXIS CHRISTIE, 20, resides in Woodside, Queens. Full time creative thinker and part time brat. Her future and her past are not friends. Positive and motivated. She would write more, but this probably won’t find her a rich husband. DARRELL DELA CRUZ’s work has appeared in or will appear in The Ignatian, pamplemousse, Stillwater, and Soliloquies Anthology. He has a blog where he analyzes poems: retailmfa.blogspot.com. He graduated with an MFA in Poetry from San Jose State University. SUMMER ELDEMIRE is an alumna of NYU Steinhardt. She is also a painter and runs the feminist site www.rudegyals.com—for those plotting the revolution. ENGIE EZELDIN, reflecting on her identity and cultural heritage, aims to change people’s misinterpretations of the religion and bring awareness to the events taking place in the Middle East. She achieves that by incorporating everyday scenes with Islamic art and design. Working in 2D images made with a variety of mixed media, she creates 90

multi-dimensional pieces that respond to the news, social media, and her personal experiences. COLLEEN FITZGERALD is a New England-based visual artist and educator. Her practice incorporates experimental and traditional photography, video, and mixed media. She currently teaches at the University of Maryland University College, the University of New Hampshire, and is a submission reviewer for LensCulture Contemporary Photography. She has also taught at Memphis College of Art, Parsons School of Design (Assistantship), and original photography courses in Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. She was the 2016/17 Artist in Residence at the Noble and Greenough School and a 2016 resident at the Vermont Studio Center. Colleen earned a Master of Fine Arts in Photography and Related Media from Parsons School of Design and a Bachelor of Arts from Boston College. Her work has been featured by the Society for Photographic Education, Ber Education, Berlin Foto Biennale, Filter Photo Festival,, and many more. Becoming reflects the notion that the self is not a fixed entity, but rather one that exists in a perpetual state of flux. A photographic sculpture of a representation of outward identity, the portrait, is simultaneously deconstructed and reconstructed. The image, presented as a fragmented print on the surface of map tacks, morphs into continuously moving and fractured pieces. The series echoes this paradoxical notion that creation often arises from destruction. simultaneously deconstructed and reconstructed. The image, presented as a fragmented print on the surface of map tacks, morphs into continuously moving and fractured pieces. The series echoes this paradoxical notion that creation often arises from destruction. JARED GENTILE is a Freshman in Film & TV from Santa Monica, California. He is a fan of big words. DANNIE PETROVNA GIGLEVITCH is a senior at NYU Gallatin concentrating in Intertextual Dramaturgy with a minor in Creative Writing, focusing on poetry. 91

CONSTANTINE GONG is an undergraduate senior in CAS studying English. She was born in Shanghai, China and raised in Flushing, Queens. Her poems focus on the small bizarre things that disrupt the usual synchrony and diachrony of everyday life; through them she hopes to communicate things like conversations real and imagined between objects and people. She currently resides in Brooklyn, NY. KEN GOSHEN is an NYC-based (Israeli born) artist, bringing traditional painting into the contemporary art context. Working primarily in oil, various drawing media, and printmaking techniques Born in 1988 in Jerusalem, Israel, in his teens, he studied at Charles A. Smith Jerusalem High-School for the Arts, and also spent one year enrolled in NYC in LaGuardia High School for the Arts. He started experimenting with oil painting at 17, and at 18, he joined the Israeli Defense Force for a mandatory 3-year military service. When his service was done, he wanted nothing more than to intensify his study of painting. He moved to Tel Aviv and enrolled in a 3-year traditional painting master-class, led by acclaimed Israeli painters Aram Gershuni and David Nipo. By the end of the program he wanted to once again live in NYC in order to come into direct contact with the contemporary art world and get to know what it means to make art today. Today, he is finishing his BFA at Parsons School of Design in NYC, with a major in Fine Arts and a minor in Printmaking. COSMO HALTERMAN DE OCHOA is an emerging poet from El Paso, Texas. She is in her first year at New York University. L. HAIMAN is a Bucharest-born, Edinburgh-educated, Londonliving writer whose work has appeared in Pilcrow & Dagger, decomP, The Missing Slate, and in print in the short story collections Garlic and Sapphires, Two In the Bush, and the literary magazine Anything, Anymore, Anywhere. ALICE HATCHER has placed nonfiction in Gargoyle Magazine and 92

poetry in S/tick and The Storyteller, in addition to publishing fiction in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Beloit Fiction Journal, 34th Parallel Magazine, Defenestration and Albuquerque Arts. One of her short stories received an Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train’s April/May 2016 Fiction Open. She lives in Tucson, AZ. ANDREW HOGAN was a faculty member at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, the University of Michigan and Michigan State University. He published more than five-dozen professional articles on health services research and health policy. Since retiring, he has published seventy works of short fiction. YAZ LANCASTER is a student at New York University studying violin performance & poetry. They have other work in online publications like Potluck Magazine & Dion-Y-Sus & in their first (self ) published collection ‘Big and Small and Black’ (2016). When not writing or violin-ing, they like going to art museums, being a ‘classical’ music radio show host, & eating good donuts. JEFFREY H. MACLACHLAN also has recent work in New Ohio Review, Eleven Eleven, The William & Mary Review, among others. He teaches literature at Georgia College & State University. He can be followed on Twitter @jeffmack. SHARON MOLK was born and raised in Southern New Jersey. She majored in Fine Arts at University of Pennsylvania and graduated Cum Laude. Afterwards, she attended the then-called Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Subsequently, she obtained her K-12 Teachers Certification at Monmouth University. She lives on 2.4 acres of forest with her husband and family dog and is a full time artist. ALEXANDRE NODOPAKA originated in Ukraine-Russia in 1940. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Casablanca, Morocco, and is a full time author, artist in the USA. His interests in the visual arts 93

and literature are widely multicultural. However, he considers his past irrelevant. ROBERT PANICHPAKDEE is a current New School Parsons MFA in Fine Arts and had received his BA in Art History from Cal State Long Beach. He is from California, has spent some years in France, and currently resides and works in New York. LUCIA STACEY is a twenty-six year old graduate of Davidson College, where she majored in English and won the Charles E. Lloyd Award for Excellence in the Field of Creative Nonfiction. She has had poetry and flash-fiction published in Out of Our, Columbia Journal’s Catch and Release, Ozone Park, The Atlas Review, The Bellevue Literary Review, and The Chicago Quarterly Review. She had a poem featured on Tin House’s Broadside Thirty series for poets under 30. She is a member of the Poetry Society of New York’s Poetry Brothel. Lucia works in tech and enjoys oysters, tapas, and comedy. She lives and writes in Brooklyn. AMANDA TEJADA has always enjoyed writing. She has been writing since she was 12 years old. She was born and raised in the Bronx by Dominican and Puerto Rican parents. She lived in the Dominican Republic for 5 years, where she learned to speak Spanish. She likes princesses and believes in happily-ever-afters. ISABELLA XIE is a multidisciplinary part-professional artist. She is currently a junior in high school in Newton, MA. Her art ranges from hyper-realistic artwork that studies the details and movement of objects and people to expressive free-hand, minimalist, ink drawings or paintings. SHENIA WILLIAMS, born and raised in Brooklyn, is 21 years old. She’s been writing since she was young but recently started writing poetry. Sometimes her writing doesn’t flow. Ever since her junior year in high school, she wanted to attend NYU. She went to BMCC to raise her GPA and had begun the process of applying until she unfortunately got incarcerated. 94

MINETTA REVIEW EDITORS-IN-CHIEF ART EDITOR POETRY EDITOR

Annesha Sengupta Emma Thomas Felix Ho Yuen Chan Ahmed Sherif

PROSE EDITOR

David Sobalvarro

ART ASSISTANT

Samantha Craig Chandler Austin Wald Stephanie Wang

POETRY ASSISTANTS

PROSE ASSISTANTS

TREASURER COMMUNICATIONS COORDINATOR EVENTS COORDINATOR

Richa Lagu Weston Richey Alicia Parker Sofiya Joseph Mary Hess Jaclyn Shultz Coty Novak Sarah Colvin Christine Wang

PUBLICATION STAFF

Amanda Braitman Sebastian Lopez Calvo Omolara Omotosho

PROGRAM ADVISOR

Sarah Anne McGough

Minetta Review, established in 1974, is a literary and arts publication managed by undergraduate students at New York University. Please visit our website for submissions guidelines. Book design and layout by Emma Thomas. Copy edited by David Sobalvarro, Ahmed Sherif, Weston Richey, Alicia Parker, Richa Lagu, Mary Hess, Sofiya Joseph, and Jaclyn Shultz. Proofread by Emma Thomas. Minetta Review logo created by Carol Ourivio. All rights revert to the contributor, whose authorization is required for reprints. ISSN 1065-9196 A special thank you to Sarah Anne McGough and the AllSquare Student Budget Allocation Committee at New York University, for their continued support of Minetta and its dedicated editorial board. An enormous thanks to Randy Reeves at Art Communications Systems, Inc. for printing yet another beautiful issue.

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