#2
fused litmag fall
cover photo by isabel garcia
EDITOR'S LETTER The fall edition of the literary magazine is about nostalgia, rebirth, and recognition. Although the school year can become monotonous, we must recognize that life is more than just going through the motions. We cannot grow if we are stifled; we must remember always to breathe. A note on nostalgia: I think we all tend to remember things best after they've happened. There is a disconnect between things occurring and things that have occurred. The fall (for me personally, at least) brings about the most nostalgia. I get caught up in my own head and romanticize the past, wishing for a return to times that didn't actually seem all that special in the moment. I am trying to let go of the ideas of past, present, and future. We exist. That is enough.
photos by isabel garcia
BRIDGE AND TUNNEL by serena fox years later, when i was at a prep school on west 72nd street, they called me the orphan, because i didn’t talk about my past and when i did i stretched it. they called me the orphan because they did not know what it was to spend nights on hotel rooftops with a pack of rough and tumble human wolves, covered in ash and smoking marlboros and washing it down with straight tequila if we are lucky, mouthwash if we are not contented and stuffed they do not know what it is to plan endless changes in yourself, sitting in the backs of classrooms conscious of every movement, trying to move up rungs coated in barbed wire and factory coal to look over the stinking river at the distant city where we had never ever been, convince ourselves that it was where we belonged, that we would float in one of the trash barges, graffiti covered and blissful, a careless float, those three miles until we get there and LIVE and we laughed, shook our heads, took a drink, and admonished ourselves. the city was full of snobs, it was not our city to conquer, so why bother?
crucifixion - isabel garcia
by isabel garcia
photo by isabel garcia
I REMEMBER I AM GROWING OLD by mary cashman Sometimes, when the days are golden and slow, and I can bear to do no more than sit in a chair and watch the sun and shadows, I know he sits on the floor, wiping his mouth on his arm after drinking off the cream. I like to think he fancies me, and I’m a girl again, putting flowers in my hair and singing in my reedy voice. Then when I brush my hair in the evenings, I remember I am growing old, and my hands have already buried soldier boys after they marched into battle in their father’s footsteps. And then the flowers in my hair sit in the little clay cup on the mantle, waiting for him to take them away. I don’t know if he knows how I think of our arrangement with the flowers, or if he knows of the secret feelings I lock in my heart. But I come to the same head, again and again, that I must stop thinking of the little fellow. I am a grown woman that has seen at least forty winters and springs come and go, and I have no time for games. I went to the harvest fair in my best dress and bonnet, and I bought a bolt of red cloth and beautiful little copper buttons. I sent a request to the cobbler for a pair of little boots, for about the size of a child. And now I have bled three perfect drops of blood on his dear little coat’s sleeve, I am afraid, for I was never handy with the needle. There’s nothing to do for it now, for I don’t have the coins to buy more fabric. I waited after I set the little coat and shoes on the stoop, with the little clay cup sitting in my palm. The hound began to bark, and the cat’s glossy fur stood on end, and the trees began to shake. I sat in my rocking chair, and as the wind came through the door, I felt like I must snatch up the fair red coat and the shoes. But then a strand of my gray hair flew across my face, and I remembered my hands were more like a grandmother’s claws than a fair girl’s hands, and my face had begun to line and sag. And I sat back, and looked at my little clay cup, squeezing it in my hand-I tried to tell myself the three drops of blood on his sleeve shall remind him of me from time to time. When I looked again, the fair red coat was gone, and the shoes had been lifted from their place. I stepped outside as the wind rushed through the trees, harder than it had before. I think the dear little fellow was angry with me, but he has left me in peace. He’s really very fair minded, you know. Now when I hear the wind through the trees, and I know he still has not come back, and the dear little cat’s glossy fur stands up, and I know she just sees a stranger in the window, and the dear little hound barks, and I know she just sees the neighbours passing by, I take the little clay cup down from the mantle. I put it out on my stoop, to remind any passing folk that I hosted a friend of theirs for many years. The little clay cup he left me had his fingerprints in it, and the chaff from the wheat harvest was pressed into its sides. It fits in the palm of my hand, and I leave it on the mantle where he can see it if he ever passes by again.
UNIVERSES by thalia halloran And did you ever think That we are traveling From one world to the next In distinct stages— Leapfrogging from a lonely world With room for one or two Into a broader womb That contains multitudes? And when does it begin? There's an unknowableness— The fetus cannot breathe But still it forms lungs, Cannot walk But still it forms legs.
And did you ever think that maybe Our umbilical cords are tethers That tie us down To our claustrophobic universes And even once we're born We have not yet been freed Until the cords are cut? Yet for so long They are our nutriment, Our sustenance, Our food, water, and blood And maybe sometimes To evolve We must cut off the thing That feeds us.
art by isabel garcia