northeastern university’s literary arts magazine
spectrum 2014-15 calendar
Editor
Aislyn Fredsall
Layout and Design
Rowan Walrath
Advertising Manager
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www.spectrum.neu.edu
Contact
Spectrum Staff
Office
Lauren Smith
Secretary
Julia Renner
Treasurer
William Jackson
Cover art adapted from “L.K.” by Leah Corbett
Copyright © Spectrum Literary Arts Magazine and respective authors. All rights reserved.
Poetry and Prose
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small confessions, monday morning at nine
Amalfi Coast Leah Molofsky
Amy Leigh Hood i’ve been trying to say that i love you for the last week now: you’d turn over, my white bedsheet caught in all your corners, sleep still lying thickly on your lashes, one soft hand on my hip, and the words would bubble from somewhere deep and warm in my stomach like some tar like some honey like a dark molasses, caught in the gums, and it’s not as if i even know what that means. perhaps love is a scent, something spicy, faintly familiar, like leftover smell of cloves or ginger after someone’s cleaned the kitchen; or perhaps love is watching you get out of the shower, brushing your teeth with the half-used Colgate toothpaste-tube suspended on my soapdish, an absent hand grabbing the corner of my purple bath-towel; perhaps love is something deep blue, still, like the dark pools that sit and wait, patient, in the canals that cut veins up and down through this city. you turn over, it’s far too early. there’s a weak sort of sun coming in through the windows, a film of ice caught in its corners, some gold light slipping through, those sweet, round words caught in between my molars, resting warmly beneath my tongue, in the corners of my mouth, full, expectant, waiting, a soft weight.
September Sunday
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Labor Day
First day of fall classes
and blew the fire out from you like Lion’s breath and under that moonlight you were just the right shade of evening the circle filled like a golden fish bowl and then all your ember-tipped words spilled out and broke us back until my teeth were shining and the moon swallowed me whole
swallowed
the Mist
and as you spilled yourself into the circle over our heads I was distracted by the applause of wind trees the uneven wave-crash of leaf against leaf and the wind rush across the grass
Abbie Doane-Simon
the sky the color of blue fog and grey ocean backlit by the ideas of stars
Victoria Butler Enter
you stood softly against the sky out of the circle of fire almost silhouetted
October Sunday
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Columbus Day No classes
Celebratory Dumplings Andrea Hampel
When I was a child my father told me that God made the grass green as a kindness to our eyes because any other color would hurt. My eyes, my father’s eyes, hazel. But I want green, the grass. Hazel is a reminder. In the mirror assaulted by reflection. Mom and brother are brown. The same team. Russet hair offsets their carefree eyes My father and me, linked by a bond that I wish away. The apple never falls far from the tree Haunted by these words
Hope Henry
Because the tree is rotting and the fragile apples drop onto unyielding earth. Seeds are vulnerable, shielded by malleable exterior. Once cut, exposed, green apples corrode to brown and seeds endure by their own merit.
Acceptance
November Sunday
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Friday
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Saturday
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Veterans Day No classes
Thanksgiving Break begins
Untitled
Julia Boudreau
My morning: sleeping an hour past the chime of my alarm; gulping down cheap, lukewarm coffee with too much sugar; borrowing my roommate’s makeup to cover up the purple hickey on my neck, because I have a job interview today and I should probably look professional.
The contents of my mind: lyrics mismatched with rambling melodies; an exclamation-pointed text from my best friend; stray lines from the scene I performed last week; the warmth of his hands on my bare shoulders; the pressure of his lips; nagging thoughts about my unfinished homework; a dim reminder to call my mother tomorrow.
Quotidian
The contents of my stomach: a cinnamon raisin bagel, burnt and slathered with artificial butter; two cups of said cheap coffee; a pumpkin spice latte with whipped cream, my splurge for the day; a glazed donut; a handful of Cheez-its.
I think this is the happiest I’ve ever been.
Laurel Whelan
December Sunday
Monday
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Classes resume
Winter Break begins
Last day of fall classes
Reading day
First day of final exams for fall classes
Last day of final exams for fall classes
Final exam makeup day for fall classes if needed
2:43 am
fingers intertwined resting on the sweater you left behind.
Dwarf Sahar Salari
Alexandra Forzato
January Sunday
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First day of spring classes
MLK Day No classes
Some Certainties
Each poem is supposed to be the last one. I pick up eyeliner at the drugstore and act like this time, I’ll finally learn to use it. I take the long way home even without the requisite cigarette between my fingers. One day, I’ll find a postcard at Disneyland and not think of you. One day, I’ll peruse the alcohol section at some duty-free and not want to bring a bottle home for you. My iTunes library probably hates me for all the songs I keep skipping. My heart says the same thing about the beats.
YJ Lee
This Is It
Bianca Zabala
February Sunday
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Presidents’ Day No classes
takeoff
Lindsey Ashe
Untitled
There may as well be a suitcase under her foot as she bites her lip at you across the dinner table and even when you’re walking with her hand in yours down a moonlit city street she’s imagining where that plane is going the one you mistook for a star and made a futile wish on. You can try to stay an incomplete map so you don’t become another place she’s already been but you can’t create new back alleys and monuments just so you’re worth coming back to— construction takes more time than she’ll give you, even if you bribe the workers. You never thought it would be a bad thing to be a stable foundation. You’ll end up stamping her passport with a kiss, but didn’t you know that? There wasn’t ever a promise to break and instead of falling asleep with her in your arms, you’ll be wondering if the strangers in the rainforest and the desert and the tundra can love her like you would. And even when you’re holding her now her back to you, her head on your pillow, you’re staring at the ceiling, holding the worry that you only want to love her because you know you’ll have to let her go.
Julia Boudreau
March Sunday
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Classes resume
Spring Break begins
I’ve lost
Thirsty Murat Uzer
Alexandra Rocovich
the ability to lose track of time. Instead, I learned to tell time and worship those tiny ticking hands. The mystery of phenomena I can now recognize as physics. I learned that E = MC2. Training wheels. The electric hope I felt when I blew a dandelion into the wind. Those fuzzies cause weeds that I now have to rip from the ground. Bed time. The privilege of ordering grilled cheese for lunch, guilt-free. One word: pimples. The magic of a secret. Now it’s called “gossip,” and has a tendency to come out from under the rug. Taking my time choosing a wish to cast on each of my eyelashes. When mascara didn’t weigh them down and coat their wings like oil spills do to manatees. They can’t swim anymore, and my eyelashes don’t fly. Those days when I had to wait for my mom to get off the phone and internet to call for a play date on the house phone. The term “play date,” like many other things, now just sounds inappropriate. Scribbling down my wish list for Santa in pencil. Pencils are for math, and math no longer involves numbers so I can’t do that either. I lost my diary, and I lost my purple glitter pen, and I lost the simplicity of everything scribbled inside. Now I have to read in between the lines, and I still haven’t figured that out. I’ve lost those days when I came home with a scraped knee, or when kisses made things better and not worse because we gave them sparingly and soberly. I’ve lost those days when contacts didn’t make me tear, and when I wasn’t using this as an excuse for not understanding where all of it went, and what kind of mess has replaced it.
April Sunday
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Patriots’ Day
Last day of spring classes
Reading day
First day of final exams for spring classes
If your stubborn heels, Worn out from breaking
new ground,
Could muster the strength, you’d click Them together so hard, they’d turn ruby red. Seeing sights, Restless nights You take her in like a (shallow) breath Of fresh air And watch her lips purse Into a Mona Lisa smirk. She may never be yours to lose, So you give up yourself instead. A change of place, And dreams to chase, A future you can’t yet face, And memories too hard to erase. In your new home, The birds greet each morning With childish cries. The planes fly so low, You can wave to the passengers inside. Looking up, you find yourself wondering How much of you hasn’t yet arrived How much is still Up in the air.
Miranda Paquet
And it’s the first song you’ve recognized In almost two days.
Les Tams-Tams
Leah Corbett
“Get back, Get back, Get back to where you once belonged.”
Up in the Air
The man on the corner sings,
May Sunday
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Last day of final exams for spring classes
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First day of Summer I and Full Summer classes
Memorial Day No classes
Commencement
L.K. Leah Corbett
There is no Absence of color. The picket fence Will always need A new coat And the perfect Presidential residence Would be purple.
Robin Reyes
Election Day
The gold coast Houses the redwoods And Texas borders The blue gulf. Do not question Which color best Accents your rage. Protect the rainbow Our country sits At the foot of.
June Sunday
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First day of final exams for Summer I classes
Last day of final exams for Summer I classes
Last day of Summer I classes
The infamous side-dish to a liver Slopped on cafeteria china And spooned with malleable cutlery That probably cost an outsourced horrorshow Pennies to build.
And I’m certain now That even that sideshow psychologist Would refuse to share your table, Because you only consume a Mayan delicacy, And leave the shell to rot.
Fava Beans
Anika Krause
But you ignore my skin, my sin, Tied to your own in red yarn map, Not understanding that you are the mouse bones That keep appearing in my soup.
Leah Corbett
Something Beautiful
But you seem to relish in them Without relish on them. Naked, flayed, Skin slipping off flavorless meat.
July Sunday
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Independence Day No classes
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First day of Summer II classes
Grand Tetons Leah Molofsky
Oops
So instead of leaving a falsely apologetic sorry-I-won’t-be-here-when-you-wake-up, I left: my head on your collarbone and hoped for the best.
Stephanie Eng
I stubbed my toe on the drawer of that one night stand and lost my favourite necklace somewhere between the spaces of your bed and my hands.
August Sunday
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First day of final exams for Full Summer classes
First day of final exams for Summer II classes
Last day of final exams for Summer II classes
Vacation begins
Last day of Full Summer classes
Last day of final exams for Full Summer classes Last day of Summer II classes
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