/bree-oh, ……noun
Vivacity…, spirit… an individual energy.
The discipline of Comparative Literature is based on the assumption that the study of single texts and cultures is enriched by a knowledge of the texts and cultures surrounding them. It views literature from a broad and inclusive perspective in which philosophy, anthropology, history, language, and literary theory came together, and where the visual arts, theatre, and modern media suggest crucial comparisons. This journal aspires to embody those ideas.
Brio is a student-founded publication that combines literary criticism with fictive works and visual art. In an effort to represent the wide spectrum of discourses that serve as the foundation of comparative study, the journal accepts submissions from any source and in any language.
A note from the editors in chief
rev·e·la·tion
/ ˌ revəˈlāSH(ə)n/
noun
1. A surprising and previously unknown fact, especially one that is made known in a dramatic way
2. The divine or supernatural disclosure to humans of something related to human existence or the world
As we closed out another spring in Washington Square Park, our staff was hit with the nostalgia of realizing that our time at NYU was quickly coming to a close. Over the past four years, the things we have discovered about ourselves have been lovely, heartbreaking, exhilarating, confusing, but most of all, revelatory. As we combined our talented peers’ works into this spring edition, we were especially aware of themes of discovery as we collectively strive towards a more open, accepting, and kind world.
Yesterday I read the cover of the spring 2019 edition of Quoted Magazine. It reads, “If you’re not ready to expose your true self in New York, you won’t survive here. Love your beautiful imperfections. Be confident and accept others for who they are. Do that, and you belong to New York forever.”
Here’s to all of our imperfections, favorite memories, and reliance on art and literature to carry us through it all. To revealing ourselves to ourselves and finding a deeper meaning through it all.
Angelina Fay and Halsey Hazzard
(8) The Window of Want - Maya Mahmud
(10) American Dreams - Rebecca Karpen
(11) Osprey - Joey Solomon
(12) Paracetamol - Alain Goulbourne
(13) Courses - William Hendon
(14) Redemption - Angelina Fay
(15) Dogwoods - Kylie MacManus
(16) Vincent Mango - Henry Trinder
(17) Hamish - Christine Perry
(18) stitching things with needles - Charlotte Williams
(19) Untitled - Cindy Qiang
(20) Luxury - Samantha Giraldo
(21) Our City - Jessica Cochran
(23) Grace 2 - Claudia Azalde
(24) Wrestling with the God who Weeps - Spencer Judd
(31) Elpida - Pim-orn Supavarasuwat
(32) these are the things you have forgotten - Joey Solomon
(33) A Letter from Mother - Amna Alharmoodi
(34) Squeak - MacKenna Connor
(36) Last T-Bar to the Top - Christine Perry
(37) Passage - Kylie MacManus
(38) The Loom - translated by Sophia Barry
(42) A RACKET OF ECHOES - Joey Solomon
(42) Mom Shaking - Joey Solomon
(43) Diving for Oranges - Kasey Johnson
(44) At Both Ends - Lily Dolin
(45) Pájaros - Kylie MacManus
(46) Bowls - Brittany Abou-Suleiman
(47) No Plan - Lucas Cusick
(50) Love Heals - Maya Mahmud
(50) Für deine Mutter - Aysima Bayburt
(51) Just Bioluminescent Plankton I Think - Henry Trinder
(52) Where the real is - Joey Solomon
(53) Tropical Moon - Lucas Cusick
(55) The Unexpected Revolution : Ambiguity in Parsipur’s Women Without MenBerfin Cicek
The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom
Ralph Waldo Emerson
REVE LATI ONS
The Window of Want Maya Mahmud
Universe, are we your progenies? I hold my eyelids through a sleepless morning. What seeds have I planted within this crevice of antemeridian. Your tongue in my cheek latches on to the bells behind my earlobes, ringing for a quiet midday picnic. Feathers would disperse abound, each and everyone on the directive. We’d kiss in merriment.
Maybe. Or soon, and presently. Always. But, then there is that. That nearer wandering center mantelpiece, an hourglass. Sand having no clue of what becomes of water. I swear I won’t cry for you when the sea makes wreckage. When liquid does what it was told to do. If entitled to indulge as an accomplice, an ally, I could convince myself that glass imitates water. I envisioned you like a kaleidoscope for a time.
How do I protect a ghost from the revenge of lonesome crawling when the crime has never been? When Gravity thought it best to propel silence through a metamorphosed tunnel one could possibly call my sternum. I curse my left eye for misremembering the deal and so betraying the will to be insensitive. Therefore, annoyed by essence. But, even then, Joy kept her gaze on me, whispered her best regards from the doorway.
May detachment be so unfathomable to predict? No platform for a spectacle, no room in this landscape. Under which priority space becomes an unpainted lot where derelicts sway and sigh. To sigh a gasp, having witnessed a fortune fueled fortress and broken chains: a tasteful memory of needs, with no assessment. For the eyes, I do not meet, my lips hush. We blow kisses through smoke and mirrors.
Seeking you. I pick golden flowers. Sunrise put to bed. This night, unclearly, you must underestimate my efforts to disengage from this dis-ease. Some methods were untaught. Those people I had chosen to raise me were informed by a machine when I, their second
child, stopped breathing. I do not know for how long my lungs held me with disregard. Neither the woman nor the man, ever told me how long, or how loud an alarm resounds, but the voice of post-transmission allowed me to recreate memories out of powdered clay. Now and again I give stillness inadvertently. Maybe not advantageously, as I slip through, then away. Least of all, I know my heart is still in my body. I’ll leave it alone again.
Time carries on well enough, so it has been addressed to me on these occasions where the mist breathes a heavy scent of brine. I should perhaps begin to believe in invitations to conclusions. If we are to form from elision, an end out of many, I am reminded of free-will and choice. I have come to no argument, only a fond conscious fog to lay across scene III, act IV plot holes. What did I come here to say? To perform? What stakes supplant the frame? I don’t know. I am learning. We’d appear to motivate each other, growing in the same direction, by-and-by the same: of Nature Though I should confess I am still at this window of want, these unresolved glances. I want to accept being, in-love. I accept the continuous eruptions of unanticipated bliss. As my art brings me to you, maybe love drives creation in search of destiny. Or, maybe, words aren’t enough, and this is just an exercise.
What is your temperament for avoidance? How close am I to the center of your library in light our rooms sharing interior design? What color is the magic of gazing, clasped to a welcomed surprise?
The most beautiful uncertain honesty my eternal devotion to expanded living. I loathe saying “I miss you.” There is more contending content; as within, so without. I have all I need to thank you. Truly. Thank you.
American Dreams Rebecca Karpen
There’s a red-white In her eyes. And blue In her smile.
You can see how she lies, And where she falls, Within the spectrum Of your taste.
They fall just like leaves, These American dreams. And you can see how easily They trust, Oh, they must, It’s out of their hands. Just look how Readily they dance, How mightily they scream, How eagerly they blush.
She’s drunk, Falling back and forth Between foreign tongues and English. You say that you like the way She speaks her words, It’s not bad, It’s just different. She laughs and she twirls, Oh, these American girls. You smile and act sincere, As if you hadn’t heard.
They fall just like leaves, These American dreams.
And you can see how easily They trust, Oh, they must, It’s out of their Hands.
Just look how Readily they dance, How mightily they scream, How eagerly they blush.
She offers you her free drink, She says you can have it. She talks to a French kid,
About how he looks like someone she knows back at home with his glasses.
But there’s no link at all, So she just sort of wallows, And you look at her And she looks so Small.
They fall just like leaves, These American dreams. And you can see how easily They trust, Oh, they must, It’s out of their Hands.
Just look how Readily they dance, How mightily they scream, How eagerly they blush.
She’s dancing under the lights,
She’s ebullient, A fire in the night.
She’s drunken so much more, These chicks really have no foresight.
She asks if you can help her find the coat-check.
You say you will, But she can’t go yet.
She looks a little nervous, But she has two more shots That you pay for her. You suggest after you show her where the bathroom is, You’ll both drink a third. You walk her in the direction, Say you wanna take her home. But when you reenter the shrieking lights, She’s already Gone Gone Gone
Without a Word.
I got my handbag, went outside, And cried to the taxi cab
On the ride back home. Alone, In this strange city, I recalled How he looked at me in a way That I felt so small, As if I was too fucking dumb to have heard about the way -
They fall just like leaves, These American dreams. And you can see how easily I trust,
Oh, I must, It’s out of my Hands. Just look how Readily I dance, How mightily I scream, How eagerly I blush.
A castle, Built to be crushed.
I saw him in the morning, Made small talk.
Didn’t talk about the knot in my throat
He tried to chew off. Excused myself, Walked around the corner from where they dwelled, And then Sobbed.
Osprey, Joey Solomon
Paracetamol Alain Goulbourne
Let me tell you how I hurt: If pain isn’t apocalyptic, I’m probably feeling it wrong. Now, I don’t mean that pain is The End of The World but I do mean that pain is the end of the world because It will happen
With a bang or a whimper or a wheeze, it’s all the same. I say pain is the apocalypse because At the end of the day, at the end of the world, Pain is nothing more than a revelation: If I have to feel it, I might as well learn.
Pain is an apocalyptic underwire bra that burrows beneath my skin To fit snug in the slits between my ribs, So each bound breath tells me that I am alive I am alive and this bra is the wrong size.
Pain
Is an apocalyptic syringe driving deep into gum and muscle. When the numbness and cotton balls finally take leave of me, I know that the act of pulling teeth isn’t painful But the brutalized, bleeding void that follows is, And tears will do nothing to kill the ache.
Pain is an apocalyptic fall from a bicycle without training wheels And the scarred ankle that prophesies, “Your feet will never leave the ground.”
But most of all, Pain is an apocalyptic, all-eclipsing wheeze my mother makes When she coughs up angry, unseen colors, When her spasming lungs plead to know air, When her aching hands reach for amber bottles, When I realize that time finds cruel and unusual ways to take her body from her, And there is nothing I can do because this pain is The End of The World Because that is what pain is, Because pain is And pain is And pain hurts.
Courses William Hendon
Scarcely in the fading aspen I remember you there All for me. You took it upon yourself to conduct In what appeared to be – that is, to say what I saw Myself I saw you dark against my skin.
Wondered how it all turned out, me being a seppo and you a seppo chink And I’m not sure what happened upon the dark gravies of it but Some say there it sits truer than any gilded carafe. For once myself again to say just me I think that such a thing exists. Of course I do it’s written all over your Chinese eyebrows.
Dimly gray I saw you sexing me in all the right places just Right with me. I eat a lot and often want seconds.
Straddled I fancy myself something more but come up busted For lacking. You are a paradigm shift arcing swiftly upwards or Some shit. With you more completeness to the near-sum me. I would say and again this is just me but I would say that you Are the more-than-one that set a fire to me more than any whiskey-fire You are my firsts so I never want seconds and my just desserts and my Zion.
Redemption
Angelina Fay
Now if I hear the genuine in me, and if you hear the sound of the genuine in you, it is possible for me to go down in me and come up in you. So that when I look at myself through your eyes, how we made that pilgrimage, I see in me what you see in me, and the wall that separates and divides will disappear, and we will become one, because the sound of the genuine makes the same music. – Howard Thurman
Why do you feel comfortable saying all this to me? Because somewhere in the deep forest, In a jungle dark as night I bury a part of my soul to keep me alive, Blooming like a moon flower, fine with the silence And thinking about nothing at all.
The last time my hands were steady I was In a kitchen made entirely of wood, like it’s Part of some fever dream and I sweat in my sleep even Though I am far away, trying hard to remember My own face, failing in favor of an anonymous hologram That makes the smallest of sounds when I Stab her through.
Tell me why I feel it in my fingertips, in my hair, That you are always just almost standing there, Inches from the doorway, from a thin white veil, When all the streetlamps would fizzle and fail, I would dance to the tone of the clocks on the wall As they dripped and I thought about you.
In my nightmares I am only just slightly askew, Late for a meeting or just casually overwhelmed, And my heart skips only one beat before it slows, my Daydreams are far more obscurely painted in oil, And it’s dripping down my leg and slicking to the shore, I’ll pack for the summer with nothing more than
I am
Lying on the lines of the highway with my hands above my head Because if I’m perfectly still it’ll be like Hans Zimmern And my dad and I speak the same language It’s wordless and he feeds the birds out in the yard While they flock above him and watch his every move and there Will never be a single consequence for my shortcomings If I have that car yelling songs of my youth singing crying windows out And I forget for a second that I’ve lived at all like the morning just birthed me like I am
Finally pink
If the clock radio goes off tomorrow morning I’ll know then That there is nothing left to feel, and when I ask For a white towel I will sit in the sand And wait for it all to give in.
Dogwoods, Kylie MacManus
Vincent Mango Henry Trinder
Do you know how to cut a mango no do you not really maybe straight down the middle no that’s too easy maybe you don’t have to cut it what makes you so sure who said I was sure I thought you did I didn’t and I’m not I see. Well I’m thinking of throwing a dinner party don’t do that why not who will you throw it at I haven’t decided yet having a dinner party is safer than throwing one I suppose that’s true, but wait a minute what maybe you can peel it like a banana a banana?
Yes, a banana it’s a perfect day for bananas it is, isn’t it hey what have you ever had a near death experience no alright well I love bananas me too not as much as me what makes you so sure who said I was sure I thought you did well I didn’t and I’m not I wish you were so do I, so do I, so do I.
Hamish
is a Toddler who Loves Purple as Much as Any Catholic Bishop Christine Perry
Hamish lays making angels in beds of aster and feels God coursing through his body. But he doesn’t know yet how to describe this feeling, so instead he giggles and you take a photo of him for your insta because your son is so god damned cute.
Hamish stands trapped in the violet light of a Taco Bell ad at the bus stop and speaks murmured words to apparitions he sees who are stuck in some earth-bound purgatory between heaven and hell waiting for the B-38 to their homes in Bed-Stuy that no longer exist, and you laugh at your small child and his imaginary friends.
Hamish trips on the playground and stares down at the bruise forming on his arm. He doesn’t know yet that he is actually being blesse by the strength of the Holy Spirit itself as it teaches him how to absorb this pain so that in the future he may transform it into strength to overcome the challenges he will be forced to face. You seemingly do not know this either, as you rush to his side in a panic at the idea that your sweet little one may be hurt.
Hamish snacks on blackberries at the kitchen-island and is unknowingly consuming the literal body of Christ in its entirety –flesh, juices, and sentience. It appears those Sunday school classes you walk him to each week have taught him nothing that could actually be relevant to him at all.
stitching
things with needles Charlotte Williams
i miss the morning rise lights come up at 4am jaws chattering music thumping inside the 5am kebab stop
we make friends with Mo like it’s the first time
we’ve seen his eyes the third time this week he says he’ll pray for us girls who are too smart to be doing such things but he and Allah love us anyway
stumble along the beach to get the pill cause the loos aren’t monitored not one bit fuck
I miss this i fear four bodies four bags
because you thought it was just for shits and giggs
i’m gonna wanna slap you like I did when Soph smoked that pipe when I told her to never touch that shit again
I’m gonna wanna hold you like I did when Ros told me that she was left at the clinic by a boy in the clothing of a man
i wanna ask Mo if Allah is real if Megs will overdo it again and if Marf’s gonna be able to stick fingers down her throat when I’m not there if anyone will ever learn their lesson but I still feel strange when the lights don’t come up at mourning
Untitled, Cindy Qiang
luxury Samantha Giraldo
I don’t know how it got to that place of cement pouring after seams as I choked
I saw your eyes in yellow a sculpture of starvation where an iris kissed death
The you released my neck and sighed like it painted our being
I can’t sleep at night for my mind reminds me that I’m not alone I’m surrounded by men and they want to kill me
Our City Jessica Cochran
The apocalypse comes at night and kills 7.53 billion people in fifteen months. It leaves behind at least two living souls.
The city reeks of rust and dead families. Broadway billboards peel and vines creep up skyscraper doors. The Bergdorf Goodman windows are shattered and their mannequins are face down on unforgiving cement. Tiffany’s doors swing open on broken hinges and every store in the city offers up bare shelves. Dollar pizza boxes rot in grimy tile floors. Taxis and cars and buses lay on their sides or smashed against alleys to make way for tanks that now sit guarding the flourishing parks. Biohazard tape is strewn across the cracked streets and sanitary masks blow through hotel lobbies.
We make our way hand in hand through ruined buildings and rotting corpses. We hoard beautiful notebooks and sketchbooks, colorful pens, designer clothes, boxes of chocolate and wine. After he and I lug it all to our new penthouse on the Upper East Side, he sketches our breathtaking view of dead Central Park. The stairs are a bit of a pain at first, but soon 59 flights are nothing and my legs have never been so toned. The view really is unbeatable.
Of course we fall in love. For me it was easy, pre-apocalypse shenanigans that distracted me during finals week and spawned many a daydream. For him, I don’t know, maybe he liked me before but now there was no other choice. One night we hold hands over Times Square.
“Would you have loved me before?” I ask.
He looks bewildered for a second before cupping my face. “Of course. Of course.” His eyes are looking somewhere else. I remember every time I would watch him, memorize how he laughed and wanted his eyes to meet mine.
“How do you know?”
He laughs and we begin to walk home. “I liked you even then, before. Maybe the universe got tired of me waiting around.” I wonder if he lies to make it easier. Or if he thinks I will ignore that “like” means he liked me as a friend, no matter how he tries to phrase it.
“I guess,” I respond wearily, staring out of the window down at the dead and colorful billboards. “But you never saw me singing in the car, wind blowing my hair. I always hoped that’s how someone would fall in love with me.”
He rolls his eyes. “I know you did. Because I know you. I know the world before. And I love every version of you.” Of course he knows this, of course he is sure of this, what else is there to be sure of?
“It would have been fun if we were together back then too.” His eyes are bluer than the old sky and I stare hard as I say this. They are clouded with distant memories of illuminated skyscrapers and bustling metro stations and his sorrow swirls through grimy sidewalks.
“Sure, I know. It’s quite a thing to fall in love in this city,” he says. “Was.”
“No, is.” I give a wry smile and he matches my grin but it doesn’t reach his blue, blue eyes.
At night he sits at the edge of the bed. The moon comes out to caress his body and I put my hand on his shoulder blade. It is a question, my hand. And also a plea not to let the past devour him, to stay with me in the now. A query of whether or not someone else’s skin keeps him awake when he cannot think about his dead family’s cries any longer.
Some nights he takes longer to answer my touch, but he always comes back down to me. -
In college we would debate over profoundly philosophical thoughts and which Captain America movie was the best. He would laugh and appreciate my enthusiasm at Christmas time and sometimes at night we’d split a bottle of chardonnay from the supermarket while we finished our essays. One night he fell asleep and his arm rested against mine and I didn’t move for an hour. He would buy coffee and surprise me with hot chocolate. He laughed with his arms crossed and introduced me to a plethora of knowledge and entertainment in the forms of stand-up comedians and antique books. He was the wisest teenager-slash-young adult I had ever met and I listened to his voice weave tales of his escapades, mesmerized. I wondered if he ever looked that excited when he talks about me. If he talks about me.
He reminds me again at dinner in a former grand hall that it is statistically impossible for us to be the only remaining humans left and I gesture to the city around us as rebuttal. I tell him it’s already statistically impossible that we survived every strain and mutation of the viruses that killed billions of other people. He thinks I’m silly, I know, and he says so and tickles my ribs until I can’t breathe and my giggles echo up around us. He pulls out my favorite chocolate, Hershey’s Cookies ‘n Cream, from his pocket and throws it to me, acting indifferent, then winking at my rush of delight.
When, one morning, I finally wake up alone, it is almost not a surprise. Almost. My frantic search wakes up the sluggish wildlife that still clings to life, rats scurrying back into the shadows and a doe listlessly watching as I rush past. He cannot leave me alone, he is not supposed to because humans,
humans, we are not solitary creatures. I will die without him and I dreamt every night that he thought the same about me.
I run down the avenues and I scream at the top of my lungs because he is the only one who has ever heard me, even before we kissed. He cannot take that away from me, he cannot. I run until blisters form and burst and bleed and until the sun has enough of my screaming. He told me he loved me and I believed him even when I didn’t. I had to. Even at the end of the world those words mean more than life. Even at the end of the world and there are only two humans left, lying is the prevailing survival tactic.
That night I had a million questions and the moon never came. I held his soft shirts in my trembling hands. I was not angry, I always knew, I always knew, I think. Even when he touched my cheek and told me I was beautiful at the top of the Empire State Building, even when he whispered my name across Battery Park to make me smile. He is built for things more than me. He is built for the world, not for me, not for anyone, and there is too little of the world left for him to stay.
His body lay at the base of their favorite cafe, newspaper and debris blowing across the cold skin. She never finds him, instead venturing out beyond the city with all she has left of her sanity. The animal bite on his arm eventually stop bleeding, and the disease that ravages his body in under an hour leaves no trace except blackened veins. Crinkled in his pocket, the note he finished will remain unread: “...and I know I’m so distant sometimes. Just know it’s not you, you are what keeps me going. I don’t know what I’d do without you. Probably die. I love you. Wake up soon and let’s go explore that store we never got around to. Love, the only other person alive.”
Grace 2, Claudia Azalde
Wrestling with the God Who Weeps : Fyodor Dostoevsky and the Philosophy of Joseph Smith Spencer Judd
“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide” (Camus 1). With this statement Albert Camus famously begins The Myth of Sisyphus, awaking the reader to an essential, yet frightening question of the soul: Is life worth living? In this lies an ultimate inquiry of existentialism upon which the problem of evil is founded, and upon which theodicy, if it is to have any substance, must answer.
Theodicy is bred upon a lamentable tendency we have as humans to use more time theorizing the reasons behind suffering than actually alleviating it. Be that as it may, the paradoxical proposal of the dual existence of both a loving God and genuine evil is one that is a psychological burden of cognitive dissonance for billions, a burden likewise in need of alleviation and thus explanation. In addition to evil’s attack to our happiness, there is no greater threat to belief in a personal, loving God than in the problem of evil Philosopher Truman Madsen has accurately articulated the existential problem that we are faced with in his book Eternal Man:
“Let us walk into a hospital: Here. This newborn infant with the lovely face. She could not have worthier parents. But she was born in total paralysis and is blind. The doctors do not know if she will survive. And if she does . . . This bed is empty. Its occupant, a quivering psychotic with a wild stare, is upstairs undergoing shock treatment. He collapsed when his wife and two children were maimed in a fire, one beyond recognition. Over here is a surgeon who had a rare brain disease and asked his closest friend to operate. The operation failed; and he has been, for nearly three years, a human vegetable. His friend has since committed suicide. Somewhere tonight the families of these souls are crying themselves to sleep. Now, if your arm will hold out, write as many zeros after a “1” as will portray similar reenactments of these scenes that are, or have been, or may be, on this planet. And that will be one thread in the tapestry of human misery” (Madsen 39).
The diversity and intensity of suffering on this planet is staggering: genocide, homelessness, war, mental illness or insanity, natural disasters, divided families, selves divided, injustice, torture, disease, inequality, poverty, loneliness…these are but a few on the endless list. The logical dilemma of suffering was concisely summarized by the philosopher Epicurus when he asked, “Is God willing to prevent evil, but is not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both willing and able? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither willing nor able? Then why call him God?” (Lactantius 494).
But our dilemma is more than just an academic toy but, as Madsen points out, is in fact a real-world problem we all grapple with. Any mention of Auschwitz, Sandy Hook, or 9/11 brings immediate reverence as we ponder over this most devastating problem that has probed more adults to ask ‘Why?’ than their two-year-old kids. Why, indeed? Some examine all this and conclude that
there is no inherent purpose behind it all, behind any of it. Mankind is simply coercively thrust into a short existence of meaninglessness and chaos in godless geometric space, where evil reigns with blood and horror, all before disappearing into oblivion with the vast death of the solar system into an abyss of nothingness. Solving the problem of evil (logical or existential) is a most relevant quest then, as it is inextricably tied to the terrifying questions surrounding the ultimate signification of, what is for some, the burden of existence. Any “solution”, though, to be sufficient, should strive for Rabbi Irving Greenberg’s high standard for theodicy made to those attempting rationalizations for the horrors at Auschwitz: “No statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of burning children.” Diverse approaches have been taken over the last two millennia, from Plato to Augustine, to Buddha and Leibniz, but especially through monumental explorations in human thought in the 19th century, such as from Joseph Smith and Fyodor Dostoevsky.
One of the greatest books in literature that touches on the paradox of suffering in the world is The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, published in 1880. In an epic dialogue between two brothers, Ivan (a hard skeptic) and Alyosha (a monk), Ivan goes on a sophisticated diatribe with detailed stories of the torture of children and a cost/benefit analysis of salvation and allegiance to God. Ivan, representing the unspoken doubters of his generation, was bold enough to confront and reject the God of his contemporaries.
Ivan isn’t simply torn over the question of the logical possibility of the existence of an omnipotent God with a universe filled with evil, but rather is concerned why anyone would seriously believe this being is one worthy of our love. What really sears his soul is the “notion that an all-powerful, perfect, and self-sufficient deity, that required no world and no other being beside Himself, would create a world full of sinners whose fate would be temporal suffering here and eternal suffering hereafter (McLachlan). His basis for doubt in God, not as he notes in His existence, but in His goodness, is based in this challenge: “Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions?” (Dostoevsky 308).
The ethical dilemma Ivan sees God facing, is whether His great plan would be worth the necessity of allowing the torture of at least one unfortunate child in the scope of mankind’s history for the happiness and eventual salvation of all others. “Surely [even] I haven't suffered simply that I, my crimes and my sufferings, may manure the soil of the future harmony for somebody else” (307). Why create a universe that necessitates that our happiness in Heaven only comes at the expense of others inevitably suffering in Hell, (on earth and in the afterlife)?
Ivan giving the account of a boy who was punished to be eaten alive by a pack of dogs after accidently hurting a powerful general’s famous dog, with the
mother forced to watch, Ivan elaborates, “I want to see with my own eyes the hind lie down with the lion and the victim rise up and embrace his murderer. I want to be there when everyone suddenly understands what it has all been for. All the religions of the world are built on this longing, and I am a believer. But then there are the children, and what am I to do about them?(306). Ivan’s critique of Christianity’s cosmic salvation climaxes in ultimate confusion over the atonement of innocent suffering (rather than sin) and with open rebellion against God:
“I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the universe it will be when the mother embraces the fiend who threw her child to the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears, 'Thou art just, O Lord!' then, of course, the crown of knowledge will be reached and all will be made clear. But what pulls me up here is that I can't accept that harmony. I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It's not worth the tears of that one tortured child who beat itself on the breast with its little fist and prayed in its stinking outhouse, with its unexpiated tears to 'dear, kind God'! It's not worth it, because those tears are unatoned for. They must be atoned for, or there can be no harmony. But how? How are you going to atone for them? Is it possible? By their being avenged? But what do I care for avenging them? What do I care for a hell for oppressors? What good can hell do, since those children have already been tortured? And what becomes of harmony, if there is hell? I want to forgive. I want to embrace. I don't want more suffering. And if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price. I don't want the mother to embrace the oppressor who threw her son to the dogs! She dare not forgive him! Let her forgive him for herself, if she will, let her forgive the torturer for the immeasurable suffering of her mother's heart. But the sufferings of her tortured child she has no right to forgive; she dare not forgive the torturer, even if the child were to forgive him! And if that is so, if they dare not forgive, what becomes of harmony? Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive? I don't want harmony. From love for humanity I don't want it. I would rather be left with the unavenged suffering. I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if I were wrong. Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony” (307).
For the absolute contradiction of God’s supposed absolute goodness with an allowance of such atrocious suffering to undeserving innocent children, Ivan tells Alyosha, “In all humility, I cannot understand why the world is arranged as it is. It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket” (308). Torn over the absurdity of the unjust, lop-sided reality God created, he returns his ticket to heaven rather than adore and bow to an unjust God. Ivan concludes that “the world stands on absurdities”, that the devil is an anthropomorphic projection created in the image of humanity, and that if God does exist, He is as equally void of goodness (304).
A contemporary thinker of the 19th century who indirectly proposed new ideas on the problem of evil was Joseph Smith, a religious iconoclast termed by literary critic Harold Bloom as “a religious genius” for his audacious and provocative ideas (Bloom 95). Smith swiftly cut several Gordian knots to the troubles of past theodicies by introducing revolutionary views of God, mankind, and their relationship, through multiple books and discourses he claimed to be inspired revelations from God rather than simply theological speculations. These works include the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, and the King Follet Discourse, all of which Smith delivered before being murdered at 38. Smith, with Ivan, likewise rejected the dominant depiction of God in their time, but instead of returning the ticket or resorting to atheism, Smith introduced new approaches to many of the paradoxes that had surrounded God for centuries, including the philosophical problem of evil.
Much of historical Christian conception of God can be derived, not to the Bible, but to 4th century man-made creeds, unbiblical in content, extra-biblical in derivation, that attempted to reinvent the God of the Bible to fit their modern-day philosophies. This official depiction of the Christian God came about not by revelation from God himself, but by majority vote by the bishops of the 4th century.1 What arose from the creeds of various councils and church theologians is what has been called the God of the Philosophers, a God who was platonized by Augustine and aristotlized by Thomas Aquinas.2 Philosopher William James put it best about this absolutization of God: “Odd evolution from the God of David’s psalms!” (James 410).3 The problematic Hellenizing of original Christianity, the unfortunate marriage of Jewish religion with Greek metaphysics, established new assumptions about God in absolutistic terms, such as absolute power, absolute goodness, absolute foreknowledge, and absolute creation, or creation from nothing. It wasn’t until the 19th century that Smith, at only 14 years old, pointed out, “The emperor has no clothes”, or in other words, “The emperor is drenched in Greek clothes!” (Madsen).
Smith’s theodic solutions came in part by stripping away these premises and assumptions that had led to centuries of philosophical entanglement, thus getting out of many classical problems by never having to go into them. This accomplishment came by viewing God’s capacities in terms of maximal potentiality rather than the neo-platonic concept of absolutism. Instead of creation ex nihilo, creation was done by organizing and refining raw selfexistent eternal matter, fashioning order into the chaos of an eternal cosmos. This view saw creation as comparable to building a ship from simpler pre-
1 The Nicene Creed was “made formal and given weight by majority vote and supported after much struggle by later assemblies, notably at Chalcedon (AD 451) –likewise by majority vote. Such was the determining process. Thus agreement was arrived at, and became dogma widely accepted down to our day” (MacMullen, 7). - “Voting about God in the Early Church Councils.”
2 See articles by Nels F.S. Ferre, Norbert Samuelson, Robin Atfield, Karl Rahner, James Barr, John Barton, Lee McDonald, James Sanders, and James VanderKam. See Judah Halvie, Pascal, and Martin Buber for further references.
3 “I can hardly conceive of anything more different from the absolute, than the God, say, of David or Isaiah” (James 54).
existant materials in scientific harmony, rather than forcing an object into existence from nothingness into being by divine fiat. Matter, time, and law, then, being eternal, are all uncreated, uncreatable, and indestructible. They have no beginning, they just are.
Smith saw God neither as a product nor producer of the universe or all of its laws, but rather as a being eternally co-existent with the totality of reality (McMurrin). Because God is conditioned by an environment of eternal laws that are out of his power to break, God’s activity isn’t only incidentally compatible with logic and physics, it is necessarily compatible. Thus, there is no magic wand in creation or miracles. From this naturalistic God’s point of view, there are no miracles (McMurrin). God’s maximal power entails that He can only bring about all state of affairs that are consistent with the natures of eternal existences. Not even God has the power to make a four-sided triangle, a circular square, or to organize an atom of oxygen and two atoms of hydrogen without the properties of water emerging. Ostler and Paulsen summarize how this new view of God’s relationship with materiality and cosmos affect issues of theodicy with natural evils:
“Smith maintained that matter has inherent tendencies that are eternal. In other words, God could not create matter out of nothing, he could not create matter that is not already extant in space-time, and he could not create the laws that define how matter acts once it is organized. Rather, the natural tendencies of organized matter are based on eternal principles. For example, not even God could organize an atom of oxygen and two atoms of hydrogen without the properties of water emerging from this organization. If God organizes oxygen and hydrogen into a water molecule, it has a natural tendency to freeze at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Because these natural tendencies of organized matter exist independently of God’s creative fiat, the possibility of indiscriminate natural evils is endemic to any creation God could bring about. Indeed, if God creates water, the possibility that persons may drown is also present” (Ostler and Paulsen).
Perhaps more radical and revolutionary than Smith’s new conceptions of God, was his revolutionary understanding of Mankind. These ideas radicalize Mankind’s origin, nature, freedom, identity, and potential. It had been a presumption for centuries that our souls were created ex nihilo by God upon being born in the world. Smith went against this concept and instead introduced the mind shattering idea that, “Man was also in the beginning with God” (Doctrine and Covenants, 93:29). This idea stated that each person lived pre-mortally, or before their birth on earth, with God in heaven as a conscious individual before the world was even created.
But Smith went a step farther. “Spirits have no beginning; they existed before, they shall have no end, they shall exist after, they are eternal” (Abraham 3:18). Most are comfortable with the idea of a forever forward, but have you ever considered a forever backwards? What are the implications of a symmetrical eternity, instead of the dominantly depicted, lop-sided aeternitas a parte post? The infinite regress of both mind and self. Each individual is eternally self-existent, with a beginningless beginning. Mind has no birthday and memory no first. In
one of the most optimistic and ennobling perspectives, Smith saw Mankind as eternally existent in time, inherently innocent and embryonically divine in nature, inherently free in capacity, and infinitely perfectible in potential.
This eternalization of matter, freedom, law, and intelligence or selfhood, has many implications for theodicy upon the premise that selfhood existed premortally or eternally. One problem theodicy has struggled to answer is the dilemma that we are “conceived without consent, wrenched whimpering into an alien universe”, subject to predicaments we are not responsible for creating, yet instantly inherit and must suffer with upon birth (Maxwell 1). However, if we conceive of each individual pre-existing before mortal life, having consciously chosen to enter into such an experience, then there is no coercion involved and God is not to blame. Our dilemma then is not that we have been conceived without consent, but that we are forced to be free. Upon this premise of pre-mortality, the correct response to the frustrated query “God, why did you get me into this?”, would be, “Why did you get you into this?”.
Man and woman then, like God, are neither products nor producers of the universe, but self-derived, self-determined, co-eternal beings whose intelligence and infinitude is unoriginated and indestructible. Smith believed God’s role to be as a guide to Mankind’s progress to maximal happiness through the eternities, even to the extent He Himself possessed. Within this context of cosmic christogenesis, Smith saw the purpose of mortal life as a school and gymnasium of soul-stretching whereby humans grew experientially in a world of necessary oppositions of joy and suffering, where they would learn to choose and choose to learn. Smith’s cosmology of post-mortal life, called Eternal Progression, was no small and cramped eternity. In this afterlife, “there are no angelic choirs passively basking in the glory of their God, but Faustian strivers endlessly seeking to shape themselves into progressively better beings, eternally working to impose order and form on an infinitely malleable cosmos (Givens, Rainbows over the Rain, 4). This paradise of progression was predicated, however, upon the necessary university of mortality with its essential encounters with evil.
Smith’s theodicy proposed an instrumentalist view of necessary suffering in this process of salvation. A perfectly (or maximally) good God is not perfectly good just for seeking to eliminate all unnecessary evil, but also for maximizing all potential happiness so far as is within His power. God’s work isn’t solely to protect people from any exposure to suffering, but to accomplish these dual desires. But Smith’s God is powerless to get individuals to the greater good of total fulfillment except through the operation of mortality, which entails suffering and freedom. To assume that God could avoid such conditions by simply forcing self-realization upon an undeveloped, self-existent, and free agent is just as logically inconsistent as to say God could create a 4-sided triangle. Both contradict rules of logic. The latter is to misunderstand geometry as the former is to misunderstand fulfillment and freedom. Smith’s view that some suffering is necessary and unavoidable, yet instrumental to achieve certain greater goods, is comparable to paying the essential, but beneficial price of working out at a gym to maintain or promote health. There simply isn’t a way to buy muscles off Amazon and have them shipped to you. Nor can virtue be developed by simply reading about it in a library. Some
things can only be developed experientially. Any type of growth, physically, intellectually, or spiritually, is never achieved without approaching and then stretching the current limits of our capacities, which entails suffering. Suffering then is not necessarily purposeless or trivial, it is meaningful if it can reap growth and transform us positively. The only way for physical growth in our muscles is through stress, pain, and sacrifice. Similarly in God’s sanctifying process for Smith, there is no other way. The only way for soul-stretching and the kind of development that leads to being fully Christlike is upon this same principle of experiencing dynamic tension with genuine distress and opposition. Madsen notes that:
“It isn’t sufficient to ask, ‘Could God have prevented the blindness that afflicts that newborn child?’ ‘Could God have healed such and such a person who was born without a spine?’ ‘Could God reverse the ravages of disease in those who are suffering from all these forms of terminal cancer?’ Of course, He has the power to do those things! Then, why doesn’t He? Ah, because we don’t ask the right question, which is, ‘Can He do compossible things? Can He achieve the purposes of mortality in our lives and at the same time eradicate all suffering and evil? And the answer is, ‘No, He cannot”.
Smith’s God is thus justified in allowing evil to exist for Himself to (1) remain consistent with eternal individuals’ free will, (2) to remain consistent with eternal laws, and (3) to not prevent us from greater possession of joy in quantity and quality. Though possessing a formal education equivalent to that of a third grader, the uneducated and untrained Joseph Smith proposed a unique philosophy that has been recognized as a valid solution to the logical, evidential, moral, natural, and existential problems of evil, one of history’s most profound paradoxes. In so doing, Smith revealed a God who answered to Ivan’s criticisms rationally, morally, and aesthetically.
This is an excerpt. The full essay can be read by scanning this code:
Elpida, Pim-orn Supavarasuwa t
these are the things you have forgotten Joey Solomon
one) how to stand up straight for one hour for the sake of medical reasons for the sake of transportation for the sake of sanity your pride bent like drowned silk you get paid to sit in a swivel chair.
two) how to consume cracking wood the sound of a burning bowl of something twig like but it’s a fucking tree trunk it has splintered your family members, and will continue to puncture infect and kill the various selves living within you.
three) how to take dick a man isn’t a man if he can’t take a man you climax on the ideals of a thick armed dark browed man who speaks dryly who calls you papi and says he can pound you rough but you don’t meet him irl.
four) how to fall asleep somebody who smells familiar sitting next to you you fall asleep intermittently head nodding in sunlight the plane ebbs and you sink landing together by the ocean.
A letter from Mother Amna Alharmoodi
Dear Amna,
Today is one of those good days: Where the breeze gently caresses my face, The Jasmines seem to be waving me farewell, On their last days, When the petals are delicate, The next day they might be found on soft soil. Soil that is sprinkled with sorrowful dews; The world is weeping But she tries to hide it from me.
Brimming with life, Crickets sing under the folds of Flowers that know where to look. As the clouds roll in, Flowers shelter the tender-winged violinists. Clouds cannot hide their tears And you cannot hide them from me. So gently caress my face And wave me farewell; Because this day won’t last long .
Yours until the end of this day, And the next, And the next, Your Mother.
**The Arabic translation: 1- To my beautiful daughter. (Ee-laa/ Ib-na-tee/ Al-ja mee-la) 2 - A term of endearment/ age/ lifetime. (Om-ree) 3 - And neither will I. (Wa-la/ Anaa)
Squeak
MacKenna Connor
Caroline lived in the barrel of a gun, and everything around her was a trigger. There were too many people. She felt her face flush getting feverish. Her heart panicked, pounding at her ribcage like it was in a prison escape plot. Caroline was the type of girl who hardly ever thought the right amount. She was always thinking too much or too little. On this particular afternoon she owed her overthinking to her tattered sneakers. As she walked along the street on her way to the park she had noticed that with each step the shoes had begun to make a distinct squeaking sound. She walked as carefully as she could, attempting to minimize the noise, flinching with every movement as she felt her heel rub up against the newly exposed rubber to make an increasingly audible high pitched creak. Her eyes darted around to search the faces of the strangers next to her, wondering if they heard it too. This sound is probably annoying them, they probably think I’m an idiot with gross old shoes, Caroline thought, what if they mistake the noise and think I’m tooting? Of course, they didn’t, the noise coming from her shoes sounded nothing like a toot and even if it did the sound went unnoticed by everyone but her. Still Caroline became convinced that everyone around her believed her to be farting uncontrollably and as she obsessed over this idea she began to feel nauseous. Caroline already found herself angry that she had to leave her house at all, but the exterminators she had hired for her mouse problem said she couldn’t stay, so Caroline found herself reluctantly heading toward an afternoon in the park. Maybe it would be relaxing, she thought, but there were too many people.
As she approached the center of the park Caroline decided to take a seat on one of the benches that encircled the fountain. She took deep breaths to try to combat her body’s sudden urge to rid itself of the grilled cheese she had eaten for lunch, but this only led to her becoming lightheaded from hyperventilation. Now that her shoes had stopped squeaking, her consciousness had a new vacancy which was quickly filled with an over analysis of her breathing patterns. She became engrossed with attempts to regulate her lungs back to normalcy, so much so that she hadn’t noticed the young man who had taken a seat on the opposite end of the bench.
“Want a tic tac?” he said holding a pack of the mints out in front of her. Caroline stuttered for a minute, unprepared for the human interaction.
“No thanks,” she finally managed to squeeze out.
“You sure? It’s a fresh pack.”
At that point, Caroline instantly forgot about all the thoughts that had been plaguing her before. She turned to the boy with a novel sense of disgust for someone who wasn’t herself. In an assured, authoritative tone she replied that yes, she was sure. A fresh pack? She thought, what does that even mean? How can tic tacs be fresh? It’s not like they’re organic fruits, they’re factory made mints. Even if they were fresh who cares? Did he really think the reason I didn’t want his stupid tic tacs was because I was worried they weren’t fresh? All of Caroline’s energy focused in on cultivating a hatred for the boy on the bench. As he poured a tic tac onto his
palm and popped it in his mouth, Caroline imagined the great dane walking near the fountain breaking free of its leash and lunging on the boy, sinking its teeth into his lower jaw and ripping it from its hinges. As the blood splattered all over his ugly blue jeans she imagined the tic tac dropping from his mouth as his jaw fell to the ground. But is it fresh? she thought.
As she wondered why the boy hadn’t left yet, and continued with her increasingly abhorrent thoughts about the boy meeting the fate she created for him in her head, she noticed a flock of pigeons scurrying around on the other side of the park. One particular pigeon caught her eye. It was a white pigeon with black splotches and a wing that seemed broken. The pigeon was running back and forth around the flock ramming into the other pigeons like an offensive tackle. She was quickly overwhelmed by the feeling of giggling in church. The boy sitting next to her turned to look at her as her laughter grew.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“The bird,” she managed to choke out through the hysteria that was bubbling up from her chest and gushing out of her throat as if she had just swallowed the prize-winning volcano she had made for her third grade science fair. The other pigeons were now beginning to scatter away from the little football star. Clearly the flock was looking to rid itself of the nuisance. All at once an unfamiliar new crater erupted from the volcano and the lava began to trickle down Caroline’s cheeks. The flock was just going to leave the pigeon there with its broken wing.
“Are you okay?” the boy asked, but Caroline was already on her feet. She wasn’t about to just let all those pigeons abandon one of their own like that. Before she knew what she was doing, Caroline was already halfway across the park sprinting as fast as she could toward the biggest pigeon in the flock. Caroline reached the pigeon just as it began to open its wings to take flight and leave the little fighter behind, without a thought she thrust her foot out in front of her. Had it not been for the unmistakable squeak that came from the heel of her shoe as it happened, Caroline would’ve thought she had been watching someone else kick that pigeon. She watched her sneaker approaching the pigeon’s side like a slow motion replay of a baseball bat as it swung toward the ball. As she watched her shoelaces connect with the ruffled feathers on its ribcage, she swore she heard it shriek.
Now, Caroline has seen pigeons before. She has heard their coos. She knows pigeons don’t shriek. But she’d be damned if that pigeon didn’t. There was simply no other way to describe the unprecedented noise that emanated from the pigeon that day than to say it was a blood curdling, hair raising, horror film finale kind of shriek. Caroline was now sitting on the ground. She had been brought to her senses by the shriek and was now looking around the park at all the people who were staring at her in horror. Even the sickly pigeon seemed to be looking at her like she was crazy. She looked to the boy who offered her a tic tac, but he had left his place on the bench and ran from her sight. All at once, Caroline felt as if she’d never been more alone.
Last T-Bar to the Top Christine Perry
Mud-colored snake climbing up through earth’s chapped-pale lips dove-feather-white and flaking wrapped around this slithering tongue what it tastes in the air the same as what you taste in your own mouth that gum-lining flavor cork dark sauvignon dry glass-teeth stain drying faster when gasping for air
on this winter-dressed mountain all you see is black and then blacker like lying half-asleep in bed as a child then mother turns the lights out father sat on honey-glazed-porch banjo-strumming while he told you the rules of riding the t-bar “you’re going to be cold button your coat high around your neck”
your scarf which once soared long and loose-flapping by your side now taught-and-tight, restrains like blood drops that someone tried to flick from their wrist that quick-dried to cauterize the wound
at your ear the snake whispers that the space between you and the ground is that which it wishes to synch shut to heal great doctor of our mother earth dedicated feeder of this garnet-gullet it flickers candle-fast to catch the first bubble in a stream of red now gushing from your mouth
you’ve always prescribed to solitude but the moment before oblivion is never lonely there are always two you and the soil which begs for your body’s return to sink you deep beneath like roots like ant trails like snakes carving paths from rabbit hole to rabbit hole to rabbit hole to snake den to rest twelve feet deep where all is terracotta-with-the-lights-out where your body is turned rubble in the acidic stomach of the earth
she burps
they say:
“hear that silent squelch?” “feel the earth open and shut?” and keep skiing.
Passage, Kylie MacManus
The Loom translated by Sophia Barry
Translation of an excerpt of The Loom, a segment from Dario Fo’s play Legami pure che tanto io spacco tutto lo stresso (Eng.: Chain Me Up and I’ll Still Smash Everything)
In the darkness, a table, atop it a gas burner, pots, a few plates, a wooden spoon and some mail are brought onto the scene. The rhythmic drone of a classical horn with a samba beat is heard. Counterpointed by metallic clicking. Each time squeaking like a whimper. Then, a three second pause and things pick back up beginning with a trill of a bell. A spotlight illuminates the rumorista, or noisemaker, that for the entire scene with special percussion instruments, noisemakers, trich-trach, tin cans, will interpret the gestures of the actors, embodying the objects and machines that they will mimic. Little by little, the entire scene is illuminated, we begin to make out two people who, from the beginning, seem to be dancing to a samba beat. It’s the Father and the Mother who work in unison in front of two imaginary looms in the proscenium. The proscenium makes up one of the walls of the house where the imaginary looms are positioned. In the center of the stage there is an imaginary window. After a silence the Mother says:
MOTHER
Well look at that barbarian over there... (Alluding to the character who would be in the house across the way, that is, the audience)
FATHER
MOTHER
FATHER
Why’s he a barbarian?
He’s looking directly into the house at you again...
Eh, it’s not like he’s doing it on purpose... he’s working too, the poor guy... and it’s not like it’s his fault that his loom wound up in front of the window...
MOTHER
Wound up... wound up my ass! He brought it in front of the window, that loom, to have an excuse to come spy on us...
FATHER
You’re exaggerating, spying... if anything he’s just nosing around...
MOTHER
Here we go again. You act as if he’s doing nothing but trying to attach a button.
FATHER
Come on, he just wants to say hi to us... Buon giorno, signor Luigi...
MOTHER
Great, great, respond to him then... give him an excuse...before you know it he’ll come over here to our house with his machine ...in fact, he might even try to take it into
FATHER
the bedroom.
Man, god only knows what that poor boy did to you to make you dislike him so much...
MOTHER
He didn’t do anything to me: it’s just that I can’t stand busybodies... they agitate me...by six in the morning when we get this damn loom up and running, he’s already there watching you, with those shortsighted glasses that look like binoculars... and he’s one of those guys who watches you quietly, leaning up against the window... as if he’s peeking out...peeping tom, he stays there for three seconds and then poof, gone... and a little while later, cuckoo, he’s there again!
FATHER
Look, maybe I’m wrong, but you’ve been a nervous wreck for days now… I mean damn it, you can’t even stand your own shadow! If this is causing you so much grief, close the window and you won’t see him anymore.
MOTHER Fantastic! Because of him I have to die of suffocation... oh, he’s closing the window...son of a... don’t make me lose my mind and say something nasty! ....
FATHER
MOTHER
FATHER
Ah, I’d love to see the day you start cursing, too.
Why’s that? It’s not like you’re going to become a Catholic conformist anytime soon.
No, but it’s a question of form... come on... I’ve never heard anyone say that the more you curse, the more of a communist you are, on the contrary, every time you yell “Madonna”, they put it on your party card like a badge of honor for being a good activist.
MOTHER
Hey hey! I already told you that when it comes to party issues you can’t tease me...
FATHER
Hey, who’s teasing? ... listen, it’s better that you let it all out here, before we have to take you to a shrink. Go, go on a stroll, go find one of your girlfriends... go to the casa del popolo... do a couple of rounds of bingo, eh?
MOTHER
Yeah, and maybe I’ll go to the movies, too... and the machine, who’s going to work it? If it’s not run for at least sixteen hours we’re screwed.
FATHER
Ugh, you’re obsessed...twenty minutes isn’t going to matter...
MOTHER
Surely, they’ll notice the twenty minutes... Have you ever done the math for twenty minutes times thirty days? And
when are we going to pay them the million and a half in loans that bled us dry for these looms? It’s useless, and if we don’t want them to take them way we have to make these machines work.... They must never stop, get it? Never!
FATHER I get it, I get it... why, what have we been doing this whole time? We’ve worked them until they’re red-hot... even on Sundays when we give them a breather… you don’t even go to pee when you have a chance to bust out of here, one of these days we’re going to hear a giant bang and find that your bladder’s burst...
MOTHER
Ha, ha, how hilarious... speaking of, what time is it?
FATHER Why?
MOTHER Because I’m bursting.
FATHER
So what you’re trying to say is...you’ve regulated your basic bodily needs with the hourly timetable and you want to check if they’re ahead of schedule?
MOTHER
Oh, can it... I was only asking because of the fact that if our daughter were arriving shortly, I’d wait... that way she can take my place at the loom, I could use a little bit of a breather!
FATHER
Ah, because if there weren’t anyone to take your place, you wouldn’t be able to take a breath?
MOTHER
You joke, but you know that if I’m not there and I don’t hear the machine running, I wouldn’t be able to do anything! It would stop me in my tracks!
FATHER
Oh yeah? ... and why don’t you just let all of this shit drop in the toilet and flush it down...at this point it’s the only option!
MOTHER
So what you’re telling me is that I’m obnoxious... I mean certainly nothing could stop you, since you’re an airhead... what do you care if today, when the buyer arrives, the work isn’t ready for delivery?... he’ll smoke a pipe and go...
FATHER
Beh, better to be an airhead than obsessed like you... by god, there are five thousand families like ours in this area, who work on looms, and I would like to see if they have stories, and moreover, lives like ours!
MOTHER
You’d like to see? ... in that case, why don’t you try to go on a little stroll... look, go there, turn the corner...there’s a woman with a newborn baby who doesn’t waste any time singing him lullabies, she installed a contraption with some canes and some
FATHER
mechanisms to attach the cradle to the loom, so that when the machine goes back and forth, the crib moves along with it. Oh, oh, oh, and there, there’s a family in front of the church, who have even put their paralyzed uncle to work, put him in a chair souped up with tiny wheels, with a little fixed-stroke motor...three meters to the left, prt prt, turn around, prt prtt, back to the right prt prt... and go left again prt prt... and he works with only one hand, this champ, with unbelievable speed... he works harder than everyone, stops only to fill up the gas tank, change the oil... and then he goes right back at it at full-speed! prt prt. We should get ourselves a paralyzed uncle!
Beh, he has the advantage of not developing varicose veins like the ones I’ve been getting by standing on my feet so much.
MOTHER
What do you care? Who is even going to see your legs? I mean maybe if you’d realized your broken dream of being a dancer, strutting at the variety show at the supercinema on Fridays?
FATHER
Of course, I could still do the moves...even with this monster truck-sized spare tire that I’ve accumulated here...
MOTHER
Beh, don’t give yourself a complex now: monster truck tire... it’s a training wheel! (Laughs). The husband gives a gesture of resentment). It’s this back and forth movement that strengthens the muscle...it’s not fat...just feel here...
A RACKET OF ECHOES
I pee into flower vases, standing one leggedThe left is leg vined in knife pain my nerves everyday pinched and chewed by some entanglement of alien flesh
Sciatic bomb mass.
Resting and cooling and cooing inside of me for two months now, stairs take hours
I’ve owned a wheelchair for four days.
My mother cries in her bed, sleeps in her face juice, calls ill from work and doesn’t hear me when I ask for water.
Joey Solomon
Mom Shaking Joey Solomon
Diving for Oranges Kasey Johnson
I woke up today with a song written about me and an ice cream cone in my hand.
I was chasing a bird but it was too fast and too high and all the turquoise on my neck was weighing me down so I took it off and threw it into the East River.
Mysterious ripples from the water shattered our reflections as the jewelry plunked down into the abyss and a violin crossed its bow in the space above our heads.
When I was nine I got rid of all the mirrors in my room, Slid them under my bed or tossed them in the swimming pool and looked at my orange face as they sank to the bottom.
As I watched them go down I took out red nail polish and covered the yellow edges of my toes.
There are few souvenirs that will be left once we leave earth
Maybe just toenail clippings, a couple of rotting oranges, and shattered mirrors.
There’s uncertainty coming from the captain who flies our ship into space There’s uncertainty in wine and work and God and orgies.
I’ll probably die before you eaten by a bird with razor talons with ice cream dripping down my arm.
I wouldn’t hate to be kissed by pink and green lips but I’m too afraid of embarrassing myself on the internet
So instead I’ll just squeeze fresh orange juice into my mouth until it leaks out the sides and no one thinks about kissing me.
There’s a plum on my neck that you got for me, it was wrapped in a tight baby blue shirt and tied with a golden ribbon that turned out to be silver in different lighting.
When I look in the mirror I see the plum and even though it’s going to rot and turn yellow one day right now it's juicy and purple and it is fine.
Last night I chased a bird but I was naked and still couldn’t catch it so instead I dove into the East River.
At the bottom, somewhere between Houston and South 3rd Street there was a mirror.
I opened my eyes and my orange face looked back at me and this time I laughed.
I killed the bird.
At Both Ends Lily Dolin
When I was seven years old I held my finger over an open flame for a minute and a half just to see how long I could manage. When I finally pulled my finger away it was raw and red and I felt invincible. In eighth grade my class took a hiking field trip through the woods in New Hampshire and at night we built a great bonfire and told ghost stories in circles until none of us were scared anymore. I remember the flames reaching up and up as high as they could go, challenging the trees to see who was taller. In the end the smoke won. It rose up past the flames and the trees and into the sky where it curled and twisted and eventually dissipated into a night sprinkled with tiny stars. Shannon Bial, who had red hair and drove all the boys mad, leaned over and whispered to me that the stars were made of fire too. And I cried because I knew I would never see their majesty for myself.
A few months after that my dog died and we had him cremated and put into a shiny metal urn that Mom placed in our living room. Sometimes I got jealous that Spot came closer to the flames than me, but then I remembered that Spot was dead. When I was twenty-two I had my heart broken for the first time by a woman named Carla who drank whiskey sours and worked at a convenience store off of I-95. We went to a cheap Italian restaurant where she told me she had met someone else, a dark-haired man who owned a Toyota car dealership, and that I shouldn’t feel bad and it was her not me. She drove off in her blue Toyota Camry and I stared down at the plastic tea light on the table and wanted to smash it for pretending to be fire when it wasn’t.
I fell in love for the last time with Gracie, an accountant with slender hips and beautiful fingers that she liked to drum on the surface of my dashboard. She had a kind heart and a photographic memory that let her to make coq a vin without ever needing a recipe book and I loved her for it. She didn’t have red hair like Shannon Bial but she had fire in her eyes and on her tongue, and like a moth I was drawn to the light. Our children have that same fire too but I saw it more when they were younger and slamming doors in our faces or complaining about curfew.
Years later, when the stony-faced doctors came to see me in the hospital, it was like all the fire inside me was suddenly doused. They pointed at charts with unapologetic black lines and tapped on monitors with blinking yellow numbers and I nodded and smiled even though I couldn’t understand a word they were saying. After they left, my daughter, who has wrinkles and a mortgage of her own now, leaned over and whispered “it’s alright, it’s alright.” I wasn’t so sure. I still felt cold.
Now I spend my days in white rooms with white walls and have nurses who feed me green jello two times a day. It’s winter now so one of the television sets in the rec room plays a continuously looping video of logs crackling in a fireplace. Sometimes I sit on the couch for a few hours and watch it. Over time the flames slowly creep up through the crevices of the wood and break down the logs completely so that new ones have to be added to keep the fire going. The video reminds me of the real days I used to spend curled up by the
fireplace with my wife and my cat and my newspaper and an endless future spilling out before me.
I hope I go the same way as Spot. That after I’m gone they’ll lay me amongst the flames and let my body and soul heat up and burn away. My personal belongings too. Ceramic bowls, socks, drapes, pictures, all of it. All remaining traces of me will become ashes blown away in the wind and smoke that will reach up even further than the smoke from my eighth grade bonfire. I like to imagine that the smoke will whoosh through the air and travel through the atmosphere and into space where the particles will break apart and make their way to nearby suns. And when Shannon Bial points at the sky and whispers to her grandkids about great balls of fire in the heavens she won’t know that I’ll be there too, miles above my old rocky home.
I’m not perfect. Sometimes I drink too much and forget to water my plants, and one time I punched Bill Brady so hard in the face that he lost one of his two front teeth. But I’m proud of the way I’ve lived my life. Raised two kids who come to visit when they can. Always held the door open for others and fixed my neighbors dishwasher for free. Loved my wife with a fire that still burns even now that she’s gone. Read two chapters from a book every night before bed and gave to local charities and picked up spare pennies on the ground. Maybe I never did as much as I could, but I’ve done enough good in my life to say I’ve had a good life. So here’s hoping that they’ll burn my stuff and maybe say a nice word or two in my name. I know I’ll hear it from way up by the sun.
Pajaros, Kylie MacManus
Bowls Brittany Abou-Suleiman
Do you ever worry that your cabinet is going to collapse? All the china bowls shattering over your counter, the loudest spine-shaking crash you never expected. A small tower gone down as you innocently piled bowls on bowls on bowls, more bowls than a large family could need to eat your cereal, slurp your soup, twirl your spaghetti, whatever it is you need a bowl to eat. It is always blazing in my mind. Standing there with scratched feet, having chosen not to wear socks that morning, brows raised so high they’ve gone aerial. Like a gunshot, or a tire popping in a pothole in the street outside the window above the sink, to the left side of the cabinet in question. So ridiculously loud that it could have been a prank. In the kitchen at lunchtime or dinner, a fat pile of shattered plates, jagged wood poking out of the dust ballooning right beneath your nose. Unlucky enough to be standing right there when it happened. The collapse wouldn’t affect the entire wooden cabinet, just the first tier. Where the coffee machine sits, steaming, steaming, slowly weakening the wood under the weight of the cereal, soup, and spaghetti bowls. In fact, you knew this would happen all along, making your coffee each morning and watching the underside of the cabinet absorb, absorb, absorb the vapor from the coffee machine. You tried to move the thing, but its cable is too short so you put it back. A sensible person could deduce, over time, the weakening of the wood and a smarter person, someone more proactive than you, would spray a protective coating of something. But not you. You just continue to watch, and wait for your bowls to come crashing down.
No Plan Lucas Cusick
A screenshot incoming.
“BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”
I dont kenwo what to do
Are u serous
Mum
What the fuck Please be safe I love you so much We’re all thinking of you
Mum dropped her phone and ran to wake up Esau and Eli
Both hungover
Esau blinked his eyes open then asked if he could take off his favorite white T shirt
So he wouldn’t get blood on it.
Mum stared at him blankly
Then threw him a pink one and dashed to the kitchen
Where Eli soaked three towels in the sink, changed his mind and found three pink drinking straws for breathing.
Let’s jump in the pool!
Mum said that’s a stupid idea the straws will melt and we’ll just drown And ran outside to call the neighborhood from their beds
Every house was made of glass and wood And no one was awake.
Finally Peggy drifted over, slowly
As if she had returned From checking the surf today.
“It’ll hit somewhere near Pearl Harbor... It’s best if we stay indoors And don’t panic... ”
Mum tried to trust her glossy eyes
She had already seen the horror unfold
December 7th, 1941
when a red-dotted plane had circled her hilltop house
Aloha U.S. Air Force written on the tin roof
Until it caught sight of a young girl
Playing outside
Clean sheets billowing on a line
The stern eyes of a mother
Following through the kitchen window
Esau asked everyone to come outside and sit with him But no one listened.
Mum logged onto Facebook and posted her last words “To all my Republican friends you happy now???” Then rounded up cans of green beans In the sky-lit hallway.
Esau strummed a peaceful tune On his guitar and waited. He had recently learned That a missile from North Korea Could reach them in less than twenty minutes.
Eli said it’s a state of anarchy now We will have to fight for our neighbors food
Mum told him he had two choices:
1 help out or 2 fuck off
Eli found his way to the roof
Booming with his chest
“IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD!” Towards the Ko’olau mountains. Mum shrieked for him to get down Then removed herself into the hallway And had a panic attack
As I sat in the highlands of Scotland Shaking on the sofa Staring at a lifeless screen
Your Mum’s a tough one, said Granny Patting my leg and pulling out her old gas mask as I saw my whole family cremated Into a childhood memory, Shadows in a flash
Ann will know what to do, won’t she, Dad? Grandpa fussing about with the remote It’s nuclear, Betty. How do I get the bloody TV on and find out if my daughter is alive or not
*
Forty minutes later
Children rose from manholes
To find an empty sky: Not a cloud in sight. Families pulled the old spirits from their walls And invited their neighbors over To head down to the shore, A crystal blue Stronger than before
We have no plan. That was too close.
We have no plan.
“Heart Attack Victim Sues State Over False Ballistic Missile Attack.”
Love Heals, Maya Mahmud
Für deine Mutter
Für die frau die nur das beste möchte
Und nur die beste veste strickte
Für die fast-frau die nun das beste möchte
Und ein ohr für konflikte
Sie hat keine wahl, sie wählt keine worte
Aysima Bayburt
Wenn sie ihr herzensleid vor deiner zukunft fernhält
Du führst sie mit deinen worten an andere orte
Wenn du über leiden hinweg eine welt erschaffst die ihr gefällt
Manchmal überschwemmen wellen ihren amm
Für den sie dir ihre letzte schwimmveste gibt
Dachtest ihr damm ist undicht als du ans ufer schwammst
Für den sie dir ihre letzte schwimmveste gab
Kennt sie die lösung, löst sie es wie salz in wasser
Sie spaltet für dich probleme, zaubert homogene gemische
Kennst du die lösung, tust du als liefst du auf wasser
Sie hingegen kennt alle, ob gasförmige, flüssige oder feste
Just Bioluminescent Plankton I Think Henry Trinder
There are men I do not know crawling around my house eating up all the crumbs. This makes me sad, since now the mice have nothing to eat except each other, and their population is dwindling. Now that I think about it, the men aren’t so much eating as they are licking the ground with their white tongues that glow in the dark, which is convenient for me since now I can read my novels without turning the lights on. And they are my novels. I wrote each and every word, and they are mostly about mundane things like reading and writing and walking around and not doing a whole lot of anything. But they are my novels and I identify with them for the most part. Unfortunately the men do make an awful lot of noise when they’re crawling around dragging their tongues over the floor. Sometimes they’ll bump into walls and doors and furniture, or crash into a table and knock over all my valuable objects. A week ago, I saw one of the men follow a trail of ashes right into a roaring fire, where he was burnt to a crisp. Yesterday another snagged their tongue on a broken nail in the floorboard, then stopped moving for a while and died from starvation. This wasn’t a huge problem though since the other men ate him right up shortly thereafter. Anyways the men don’t bother me all that much but I wonder what will happen when they run out of crumbs to eat. Someday, something will have to change. I just don’t know what.
Where the real is Joey Solomon
human: How much longer will the pain persist?
multiverse:
human: I want to run again.
multiverse: A dark, solid stone is sitting on your blood.
human: Oxycodone is where you exist, you cannot help me.
multiverse:
human: The pain lessens in heat when I think of how thin our atmosphere is, every neuron of oxygen is pulled to Earth’s land by desperate forces gaseous grabbing arms, holding onto invisible water and air - for who blue sliver of life eventually exonerated by flatulence and crushed fossil we must be here to ruin our rock an example later to be learned from.
Tropical Moon Lucas Cusick
In New York the moon
Confuses me
Tossed about the skyline
Of flashing lights and Screaming billboards
Where the real light began
The baroque spaceship moon
A hollow and distant world
We have all forgotten
*
Here the moon swells us homesick: Born from the mouth of this island
A milk drop in the night sky
We worship beneath palms
Hearts skipping in the mud
Listening quietly
I feel my mother’s head on my chest Her instincts lie there.
Everything we do is desperation: She is desperate for me to stay
“This moment is so special, To be with you here, Basking in this wonder.”
In a parking lot the giant yellow moon
Took our breath away
It looks smaller from the beach.
“What is the moon anyway?” Mum
ever teeming with curiosity whispers. She squeezes my several seasons taller body tight.
It used to be part of earth. An asteroid hit And ripped out part of earth’s early interior And what remains
Still orbits us.
Our gravity holds it close.
“Did you learn that in astronomy?”
I nod yes,
She stares out in silence,
“I had no idea. Thank you for telling me.”
The Unexpected Revolution: Ambiguity in Parsipur’s Women Without Men Berfin Çiçek
In “Iranian Women’s Literature: From Pre-Revolutionary Social Discourse to Post- Revolutionary Feminism” (1997), Kamran Talattof mentions the conflict between shah’s White Revolution and the conservatism in Iran regarding the liberation of women in the social space (534). He later mentions how the committed literature on the status of the women written by the Iranian women writers takes a form of feminist writings due to the emergence of the oppression on the women’s sexuality by the state after the revolution. Although he analyzes Women Without Men as a feminist writing in which the oppression of women’s sexuality is addressed in the post-revolutionary period, there are more things to discuss in the novel in terms of the “mode of aesthetics” and the ambiguity and rational conflict as the outcomes of the unexpectedness of the radical revolution in Iran (Talattof, 533). Parsipur’s aesthetic mode in the novel embeds the conflictive and chaotic atmosphere of the post- revolutionary society to the language of the text which distorts the sequence of time, reason and the space while narrating the “unexpected” events. In other words, the novel sheds light to the unexpectedness of the revolution and its impacts while embodying the unbelievability of this unexpectedness to the tone of the text thanks to the magical realism as a mode of its aesthetics. It is not surprising to realize the proximity between the terms “magical” and “unexpected” from this statement, which is a clear indication of novel’s dedication to the atmosphere of the ambiguity in the post-revolutionary Iranian society as an ideological issue. What is unexpected of course is both the attributions to the revolution, which implies radical political changes, and the outcomes and the sense of ambiguity that emerge as a result of these radical changes.
In his “Fecundities of the Unexpected: Magical Realism, Narrative, and History” (2006), Ato Quayson elaborates on the relationship between the reality and the magical by writing that
“This is often barely acknowledged assumption that the magical operates in a relation of hierarchical differentiation to the real, either behind, after, beneath, anterior to, or generally in a relation of secondariness to reality. In many ways this notion of the spatialized relations between reality and the magical is an effect of the language that we are obliged to use to describe something that is not easily discernable in reality” (727).
He implies that the magical is not totally separate from the real as it plays the role of reflecting the things that are staying behind the reality. It is also understood that there are things that the language emphasizes in a hierarchical manner. If we consider the reality as the image of the things that we sense, the magical, then functions to represent what is not explainable due to the limits of the language. Therefore, the language represents the revolution as the real first and represents the collective sense of unexpectedness of the revolution second because the outcomes of this sense are not that easily “discernable” and even expressible by the language. The reason for this inexpressibility is that the
impact of the unexpectedness on the individual differs for all. Nevertheless, the collectivity that everyone gets influenced is the same for all. Magical then represents this collectivity with the unbelievable parts to it which cannot be captured as a concrete image. Parsipur’s text enlarges the limits of this inexpressible collective experience by not following the linear narrative which is the reason for the incomprehensibility of the things behind the reality according to Quayson because we follow a “narrative experience” of things that follow a “sequence” (727). In order to do distort the sequence of the real, the novel indicates the collective experience with the unexpectedness of the revolution by changing the voices and not mentioning a temporality to the events that are happening to the characters. Therefore, the magical domain of the real which is the unexpectedness of the revolution becomes the ideological debate of the text that follows the consequences of the reality.
As stated before, the sequence of the reason is distorted in the novel because the novel creates an air in which the unexpected events occur. The examples of this distortion are that all characters meet in Karaj, Zarrinkolah gives birth to a lily, Mahdokht turns into a tree, and Munis revives after she is dead. What is interesting is that each character easily accepts the ambiguity of these unexpected events. When Farrokhlaga accepts Mahdokht’s becoming a tree by stating “So why are you ashamed of her? Becoming a tree is nothing shameful”, there is a sense in her words that there are other things to be ashamed of (Parsipur, 88). Mr. Ostovari seems to confirm that there are other things to be ashamed of when he states “Her poor brother used to say, even if she became a yoghurt maker, that would be something, we would not mind. Yoghurt making, that’s a work. But a tree, I really don’t know” (Parsipur, 89). It is implied by him that being a tree is shameful because it makes the person workless and unproductive. Moreover, there is a realist implication in his statement that being a yoghurt maker is also something that is unexpected and even unreasonable by Mahdokht’s family. It might be another discussion whether there are gender roles or the status of women in the Iranian family context in the debate in this part, but what is obvious is that the people suffer from the unexpected events and the unreasonable act of being forced to accept what happens around them. In the first chapters, Makdokht is presented as “a simple woman”, however, it is unexpected that she turns into the tree (Parsipur, 1). Therefore, one might even assert that Makdokht’s self-claim by becoming a tree as she always wanted is unexpected by her family.
The ambiguity in Parsipur’s novel also takes a form of timelessness or an unexpected transition to timelessness. Although there are some implications of the date in the beginning of the novel such as “At four o’clock in the afternoon on the twenty-fifth of August, 1953” the very concrete attribution to the time leaves its place to an unexpected sense in which the time turns into a matter of “waiting” for the characters because by waiting longer “everything would have fallen apart” (Parsipur, 13). As the linear time is not mentioned later in the text, the unexpectedness of the events becomes less surprising. The narrative shifts among the characters and their stories, therefore the time might change between the past and present. The novel does not narrate a specific time period from now on, rather the time flows when each character is waiting for something. For instance, Farrokhlaga waits for her exhibition and the time that the tree will give blossoms, Zarrinkolah waits for the time her baby to be born,
and Faizeh waits for the time that Amir will marry her or when Munis thinks that “She was rotten from waiting”, there is a sense of disappointment in her thoughts as she wants to experience love but cannot (Parsipur, 117). The understanding of time is almost a collective experience for each woman because what determines the time for them is the duration of waiting. The dates would not matter for their lives anymore as they are already waiting for the things that were usually unexpected by them. It is also unexpected for the reader to experience such a transition from the first chapter in which there is not any unrealistic component to the chapters in which Makdokht turns into seeds and travels the world through the water. Therefore, it is an aesthetic transition as well as the change in the usual understanding of time as linear. By changing the time into a collective experience for the characters in terms of waiting, the novel embeds the unexpectedness of the events in its narrative.
Although there are some moments in which the revolution of Iran might be assumed to be at the same time with the revolutions in these women’s lives such as Farrokhlaqa’s killing of her husband or Munis’ revival, the revolution itself is never mentioned, which is again an indication of its unexpectedness. As the narrative shifts among the characters, it can be asserted that these women were experiencing the revolutions of their lives at the same time. There is not any sequence of the time to the events that happen to these women, but it is sensed that Munis and Faizeh’s suddenly taking their way to Karaj is the beginning of an attempt to get rid of the ambiguity of the atmosphere. While the time turns into a matter of waiting for them, the place also turns into a space to arrive. At this point, where all the women meet, which is Karaj, is almost the utopic space in which this atmosphere of the ambiguity might be compensated (Talattof, 546). They are almost looking for a space in which they would “see the heads of the men, be a tree, run away from the men who control their lives, and become a tree”. This search for space is an escape from the disappointments that they had in their lives. Their sense of disappointment is a collective experience for them, so Karaj becomes their commonplace to reach. However, this place does not remain a utopic one for all of them. Munis, for example, can not compensate for the ambiguities of her life, so she leaves with a will for “becoming light”. “Seven years passed, during which she passed through seven deserts” (Parsipur, 128). This transition from Karaj to seven “deserts” represents her disappointments also because, in Karaj, she is unable to fulfill her expectations from life. When compared to the others, who get married, Munis is the only one who manages to deal with the ambiguity in her life alone. At this point, getting married can be assumed to be a way of coping with the unexpected sudden changes in the lives of those women. However, she ends up in “the city” where all the consequences of the unexpected revolution can be observed, unlike Karaj. There is a transition to a realistic view in that part from the unexpected years in the deserts. These transitions in the text embody the ambiguity of the atmosphere to the tone of the narrative.
In conclusion, the novel’s embodiment of the collective sense after the revolution and the atmosphere of the ambiguity as a result of revolution is not separate from the mode of aesthetics that the novel benefits from. The capacity of magical realism to reflect this collective atmosphere of ambiguity requires a play with the narrative sequence, temporality and even reasoning. The magical, not as a wholly separate domain from the real, scrutinizes the unexpectedness
both on an ideological level by the characters’ utterance to their freedom and expectancies, and on an individual level by focusing on the personal tensions.
References
Parsipur, Shahrnush. Women Without Men. Narrating the Middle East. Edited by Sooyong Kim, Koç University, Department of English Language and Comparative Literature, Copyland, Istanbul, 2018.
Quayson, Ato. “Fecundities of the unexpected: magical realism, narrative, and history,” in The Novel, Vol, 1: History, Geography, and Culture, Franco Moretti (ed.), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006, pp. 726-756.
Talattof, Kamran. “Iranian Women's Literature: From Pre-Revolutionary Social Discourse to Post-Revolutionary Feminism.” International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 29, no. 4, 1997, pp. 531–558. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/164401
The brio editors are grateful for the many people who made this journal possible. Thank you to Alyson Wild and the entire New York University
Comparative Literature Department. Special thanks to all of our writers and artists for sharing their gifts with us. We do not take your art lightly. We specifically thank Adrian Mikulak, whose beautiful image is featured as this issue’s cover. And in the spirit of comparative literature and our duties as artists, we encourage you to criticize, analyze, and challenge the world around you. Above all, we hope that by sharing the work of our peers and their multifaceted perspectives on the world, we can more effectively and more harmoniously inhabit this planet, opening dialogue wherever we go, and always, incessantly, persistently, searching for answers.
THE SPRING 2019 ISSUE OF THE BRIO LITERARY JOURNAL IS EDITED BY:
Angelina Fay. Angelina is a senior majoring in journalism and English. She will likely engage in conspiracy theory conversations when she’s not mobile ordering from Starbucks. She thanks her father for passing onto her the love of writing and her family for their constant support, even when she is uncaffeinated and especially now that she’s graduated.
Halsey Hazzard. Halsey is bringing her studies in comparative literature and Media, Culture, and Communications to a close this spring. Following that, she’s dead-set on diving headfirst into a long and illustrious career taking down capitalism, provided it doesn’t get her – or the earth – first.
Brittany Abou-Suleiman. Brittany is a senior majoring in comparative literature and creative writing. While she is a writer of fiction and poetry, she is beginning to realize that she’s much smoother on paper than in person.
Gabriela Velasco. Gabriela is a senior in CAS majoring in sociology and minoring in psychology. She is particularly interested in both creative and academic interpretations and investigations on love, and will continue to pursue these ideas after she graduates in May.
Natalie Behrends. Natalie is a senior history major who enjoys translating turn-of-the-century chewing gum ads from Yiddish for political reasons. After graduation, she intends to live somehow. She will begin her PhD in global history at Harvard University in September.
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON SUBMISSIONS AND EDITORIAL POSITIONS, VISIT THE NYU COMPARATIVE LITERATURE WEBSITE AT HTTP://WWW.COMPLIT.AS.NYU.EDU/OBJECT/COMPLIT.UG.BRI O. OR EMAIL US AT BRIOJOURNAL@GMAIL.COM.
