Thoroughfare
Johns Hopkins University Spring 2017
Thoroughfare Johns Hopkins University Literary Arts Magazine Spring 2017
Contents Cover Art: The Grand Bazaar Vera Xu Pantoum of him (that I wish held more of me) Sarah Crum Latinos in Charm City Elisabetta Hobbins To love her is to need her everywhere Sebastian Kettner
Elect Hannah Thorpe No one cared about the death of my fish. Lucie Smul Hot Air Balloons Vera Xu In My Mind Miro LaFlaga x Cry Baby Tracks Hannah Manley Photography Osiris Mancera A Message Samuel Sands Baby Clean Dreams of Bleach Hannah Thorpe
Pantoum of him (that I wish held more of me) by Sarah Crum
I’ve been thinking about him again. The one. The man. The first. The last. About him and his words that flowed like Whatever it was we drank that made the surrender a little easier. The one. The man. The first. The last. I’ve been thinking. No, not thinking, dreaming. Fearing Whatever it was we drank that made the surrender a little easier. He buried every part of me that would have stopped. But can he feel my rage now? I’ve been thinking. No, not thinking, dreaming. Fearing Because I don’t just see him everytime I close my eyes He buried every part of me that would have stopped. But can he feel my rage now? I’ve been thinking about him, but I bet he’s been forgetting about me. Because I don’t just see him everytime I close my eyes There’s no place left where I feel safe. I’ve been thinking about him, but I bet he’s been forgetting about me. So I’ll make damn sure everyone else remembers him too.
Latinos in Charm City: Food and Identity a photo series by Elisabetta Hobbins
Latino culture is intrinsically defined by its distinct culinary traditions. Food from one Latino nationality brings its recent immigrants and third generation children together under one common identity. Latin American food is a gift, a self-expression, and an art. It is to be shared with friends and family, but also with people of different cultures so that they, too, can taste that flavor of home-cooked love. For tourists and foodies, Latin American food is a portal into a culture and a people that may otherwise feel inaccessible due to language or cultural barriers. For Latinos in Baltimore, this food reconnects them with their childhood and perpetuates age-old family traditions. No matter who you are, you can taste in these dishes an ancestral passion for food that is beyond compare. My first experience of authentic Latin American comfort food in Baltimore was at the Tortilleria Sinaloa at 1716 Eastern Avenue in Upper Fells Point. The address is an important detail because only a few blocks down is the daughter restaurant with the same name, a commercialized and less delicious version of the homey shop that I visited. The business was previously co-owned by a Sinaloan woman before being bought out by an Indian family. The original Tortilleria Sinaloa has maintained its authenticity and is the epitome of a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, offering a mere eight bar stools and 10-item Spanish menu board. But this shop is not trying to be anything that it’s not: though beautifully decorated, its duty is to pump out corn tortillas like nobody’s business. The shop opens its doors at 7 AM to sell tortillas by the kilo and does not quit until 7 PM at night. The work is arduous, but the staff serves the surrounding Latino community and countless passers-by with zeal and devotion. The passion for preparing, devouring, and sharing good food is in their blood and you can truly taste it in every bite.
To love her is to need her everywhere by Sebastian Kettner
I am in love with art: not oils – canvas – art as in the smell of rain, or how the Tetons rise and reach to Heaven, kiss the moon and come from naught, or Dakota, her deathand-bones, her dust-and-belle, or mountain lakes in spring, or sunshine splendid puts the smile of something soft – must be heavenly sigh – in the brown of her eyes, or the sound of her laugh, and how it is the sweetest song I know. I melt a little every time I hear her.
Elect by Hannah Thorpe
we fought in a tired play of anger that split us up and spit us out that cut the craving from our eyes with the tip of a knife and left it to grow in a petri dish of hope left us to feel devout and desperate our skin unzipped opened up undone and ready for someone to climb in and with alacrity she did a candidate of calm who went high and hit home and we thought this is finally going to stop the all-life fight will stop and at the top it all will break then we hesitate hate escalates a fever dream of fatalism tells us where we’re headed and it isn’t up
it’s somewhere bare peeling teeming with uncertainty where our insides itch with deficiency and our brazen minds are taken out and away pulled by an inky tentacle that weaves unrealized into time sends it ticking backward she was poised to climb in climb out this is not a pause not a glitch it’s a finality that makes us wince why weren’t we ready for it
No one cared about the death of my fish. by Lucie Smul
The water from the tank laid bare, the coral towers were lonely, and the bacterial residue sprawled like green vines across the empty glass face. I had named her Crazy Grace. And she was magnificent. Her small fish body was painted with blue scales scattered among yellow designs like scripts of henna. When my little sister visited, she had called her “Pretty, pretty fishy.” Crazy Grace had been privy to all of the episodes of Homeland that I binged and the weekly phone calls with my mother. I’m blushing when I think about it, but I know that she watched that one time on that one Friday night when I brought that boy home, and we slept together. She disapproved-- I could tell by the way her yellow eyes flickered, listening to the notes of our breath, swimming in circles, in circles, in circles. When I found her, her sardine body lay thin on the water’s surface, swirling with the lure of the filter. I held her fish corpse in my hands and felt the cracking line between life and lifelessness. I’m struck by the absence of sound that accompanies death’s shadow. Death is the whisper of an I Miss You in the dark. It is the knowledge that, again, I am alone.
Hot Air Balloons by Vera Xu
In My Mind a photo series by Miro LaFlaga x Cry Baby
Tracks by Hannah Manley
Train whistle, Howling through a sleeping city, Dancing on damp pavement. A boy in the first car is in love, The girl next to him is running away, And the old conductor counts each click of the wheels, One for each eon away from the station. Phantom engineers still shovel coal, Go home covered in soot, Wake up tasting smoke, And billow up in soft clouds Trailing slowly behind the rickety cargo.
Photography by Osiris Mancera
A Message by Samuel Sands
She picked up the chalk. Clinging to it in spirit as well as body. “Posture,” she heard her father in her head. “Your eyes, spine, and mind in line command when voices fail.” Time fell to stillness around her, and yet rippled to the pulse of her own heart. “Bang” rang out as the chalk clicked against the board. The first shot fired. With each stroke, her army advanced. Casualties fell haphazardly into the chalkboard tray, yet her army marched on. Suddenly it all stopped. The battle ended, the message writ. Neatly before her she read, “never again.” Never again.
Baby Clean Dreams of Bleach by Hannah Thorpe
Her mother told her to stop. She should have listened. She should have minded. She should have put down the sponge, the rag, the heavy-duty scouring pad. Dropped it all. But the residue of mayo and Kraft singles clung to her fingers—she could sense it. It was crevice clinging and ghastly. So she snuck the bottle of Mr. Clean and the lemon scent was glorious. Crouched down in the bathtub she rid the stick of rubber cheese with stainless steel scrubber streaks and sent small specks swirling down the drain. She ignored the pain and pretended not to notice when her mother burst through the bathroom door, dread peeling off her face. She tried to hide the red that ran in place of the chemical stream. She smiled big. She said it didn’t sting. She was the life-changing magic of tidying.
As the Sun Rose by Lucie Smul
Streaks of rain dampened the pavement underneath her sneakered feet. Watered down gray sunk into the yellow-green grass in-between roads, a lonesome oasis. She ran, isolated, through Baltimore streets; the city not yet awake. Eyelid window shades fluttered open but shut again. The wind blanketed the sounds of the city, and the clouds hung low so that she could touch them, walking her hands through them, grabbing small handfuls of cloud and popping them into her open mouth like sunflower seeds. Clouds were smooth as coffee foam blown to the top of sticky upper lips, resting soft. She looked up at the clouds, the heavens, and she wondered at the noiseless wind. The sky, intertwined palms of hands knit together, formed the curtains to heaven, casting shadows. She wondered whether the sun would rise today to dominate the skies. The wind whipped wisps of sweatstained hair from behind her ears, a frenzy of curls, and her feet wandered. She listened to the dreams that wafted between
each house. The radio of her own breath rolled in timed rhythm with the spinning of the world that contained her. She ran steady, faucet water pouring from the bathroom sink. And she ran like a toddler down a grassy hill, momentum, too, pushing her farther. She ran as the moon went down, as the misty dew of morning softened into sunshine. The sun rose, resurrecting Baltimore, blood beating through the streets, soaking the city in color. It was the beginning of another day, and she was as alive as the rising sun.
Masthead Editors-in-Chief Hannah Manley & Victoria Yeh Prose Editor Alyssa Mefford Poetry Editor & Design Manager Hannah Thorpe Art Editor Thaara Shankar Treasurer Saena Sadiq Prose Committee Saena Sadiq Gemma Simoes DeCarvalho Alexandra Houck Poetry Committee Hannah Manley Jae Hyung Woo Alexa Schwartz Art Committee Amanda Rose Kaufman Juliana Veracka Luyi Peng Victoria Yeh
Spring 2017