Bullet Quarterly BOOKLET of twenty one non-fiction works, two sketches, and ten black-and-white photographs from students of the College of William & Mary.
VOLUME III SUMMER Wednesday, May 1, 2012
The College of William & Mary Williamsburg, Virginia
Contents
BULLET QUARTERLY
Foreword, Opposite Rendezvous Au Matin/Morning Meeting, 4-5 Egyptian Blue, 6 Murderous Fragments, 7 My too sense, 9 Peculiar but all too familiar, 12-15 The Causeways, 17 Linguistology, 18 A Half-Truth, 19 The birds, 20 Solace, 21 Two Bars 22-25 Legos, 26 The Girl With The Red Rose, 28-29 Early, 32 Metalepsis, 33 Flowers for Dagmawie, 34 Screwed. 35 For You, 36 That One Time I Went to a ZZ Top Concert, 39 Waking Up, 40-41 A Letter for Imaginary Cousins, 43 Sketches: 8, 37 Photographs: 10-11, 16-17, 20-21, 24, 27, 30-31, 32-33, 38, 41, 42
Panel Naomi Slack EDITOR-IN-CHIEF LAYOUT Rebecca Moses PRESIDENT of the Untitled Society Rebecca Starr Timothy Eklund Matthew Carpenter STANDARDS Ryan Styer SUBMISSIONS Daniel Lantz SECRETARY Jesse Gumz PUBLIC RELATIONS Jacob McCollum WEBMASTER EDITORIAL BOARD: Elizabeth Carman Chris Engebretson Claire Gillespie Adam Jack Eric Molly Micah Luedtke Dana McKelvey Nickolas Reck Natalie Sheffield Gabby Steinfeld
Foreword
WEDNESDAY, MAY 1, 2013
I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is. —Vladimir Nabokov, to Peter Duvall Smith in a BBC interview, Summer 1962 I’ve been in love with Bullet Quarterly since the day I was introduced to it over coffee at the Daily Grind. I heard the story of an anonymous campus diary, and how it came to be. I saw a beautiful opportunity for students to share private experiences without fear of shame or judgment. The last piece in this issue represents what Bullet was founded for, and it powerfully illustrates what I have wished I could write since 2005. A Letter for Imaginary Cousins encapsulates the estrangement and disconnected emotions that still define my postKatrina life. It’s the hundreds of books washed into the middle of a library, soaked in mold and stinking sludge. These are not my books anymore. It’s bleaching the front windows of that house every time I went back, to un-brown and un-black the shadows inside. This is not my house anymore. This is not my New Orleans. I did not grow up here. Imaginary Cousins is the letter I can’t write, but and I am thankful someone else did. Bullet is a vehicle for connection between writer and reader; it is a way to read what I cannot write with words that are good enough. The dialogue here means someone else feels what I feel, and it will become something different for every person who reads it. It presents each of our memories—the ones we cannot talk to our closest friends or strangers about. As we cobble together this issue of Bullet, I am floored by the trust that our writers have in us. They not only trust us to keep their identity secret, but also to treat their stories with respect. When I think of Bullet, I think of stories like this—the ones that humble you—and I hope that, somewhere in this issue, you find a story of love or pain or curiosity that resonates within you too. Sincerely, Naomi Slack
BULLET QUARTERLY
Morning Meeting And so, On what I thought would be, My final cigarette, She arrived on time, Desiring her coffee, With eyes like silhouettes, Red- and without looking at me, But knowing, my eyes, Like men from the bay, Who with evil have known her, And hold her not at heart, And flee by night, From unknown tears.
But so, My beauty, With skin one never knows, Like the song of the north, Let me, Take you, Up-stairs, Only to have you leave yet again‌
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WEDNESDAY, MAY 1, 2013
Rendezvous au Matin Et alors, Sur ce que j’ai pensé serait, Ma dernière cigarette, Elle est arrivée à l’heure, Désirant son café, Ses yeux comme silhouettes, Rouge- et sans me regarder, Mais sachant, mes yeux, Comme les messieurs par la baie Avec le malheur l’ont connue Qui ne la tiennent à coeur, Et qui s’enfuient par la nuit, Des larmes inconnues. Mais alors, Ma belle ! De peau on sait jamais telle, Comme la chanson du nord, Laissez-moi Te prendre, La-haut, Seulement pour t’en aller encore…
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Egyptian Blue
BULLET QUARTERLY
It’s fourth grade recess, I’m standing behind white chalk lines drawn onto the asphalt, watching other kids win. Some nameless ten-year-old with curly red hair and shiny black shoes is telling me about blood— if it never touches the air it is blue as the ocean. I’ve never seen an ocean and I believe him anyway. Years pass and I’m still standing behind someone else’s chalk lines. I’ve long since passed biology and graduated from fairy tales though sometimes late at night I still imagine blue blood pumping in my arms, curling lazily under my fingertips. I’ve seen the ocean now and I know better than to believe anything.
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It’s years later and I’m drawing my own chalk lines across the mirror over the sink, staring into myself. I know better, I do, but I imagine that my blue eyes are filled up with blue blood. If I cry hard enough I will stain my cheeks cobalt the chalk will crumble against my face, leaving stars burnt out and lost in the sea of blue. And the whole world will know that I’ve seen the ocean, the whole world will understand that I bled myself dry.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 1, 2013
Murderous Fragments
huddled so empty i can see through a chink in your bricked-up windows a fragment of the changeling sky you and she are so mind-numbingly besotted that i think it might be a mercy to make an arrow from an iceberg and help you both to die. oh sky whether you are wintry, or august mid-morn blue, i must admit that you are at least fair game. whereas, for all their color those two are far more completely enraptured than any two human beings have a right to be. so help me, i'll strangle her, i will, wrap a ringworm round her throat, and go in for the kill. sky, of scudded clouds and rain-lashed lips, what do you know of anything except lightning and thunder drunken worshippers and hulking warships rent asunder. 7
BULLET QUARTERLY
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my too sense
WEDNESDAY, MAY 1, 2013
Honeysuckle honey sexual places I don’t want to remember things I don’t care to care about people I’d really rather wish wouldn’t bother. Pathways parched with prenatal feelings bound to the unacceptable love which I think I’ve never really deserved and never really will. Landmen lament, learning the notes of the soul, music of the mouth, harpstrings of the lips that curl back in ecstasy or anger, I don’t remember. Learn, live and lie leniently but don’t lie lively. Learn to control your passions and subdue horrors of this beating drum. Memories can serve you well and wells are deep, well, only if you look down and well-being is well-wrought on the side of caution when no one, well, wants you, or so you think. Memorize and idealize, mollify and organize, burn the edges of your carotid retrospectively.
arterial views say the most,
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BULLET QUARTERLY
Peculiar but all too familiar Advice arrives on puny parchments, sometimes incomplete: “Now go to it! Its ready to be pick!” sometimes unexpectedly deceptive, like “Oops…wrong cookie”. One never knows what to expect from funkier CEO soot. The high-strung paper is now traded for low brass. Once the silver slide has been oiled and sprayed, the music making may begin … and carry on …and on… note after note… until… Rudely interrupted by a troublesome trash can, beckoning to keep up appearances for appearance’s sake. The scowling brow compliments the paste-pursed lips, and though stone-faced silence lances the sight a secretly swelling storm shouts and spews, soaking cerebral sensibility. Shoes slipped-on, Jacket adjusted, and out into the cold, damp night to drag those rubbish receptacles. Just in time to see Señor spectacles back from work, six-o-seven. Chore endured, a generous helping of tune-time follows followed by dinner. Set the table for three, and then free to study. Make that free to spend valuable time. The Cyrillic alphabet can take a rain check.
El eón es en el email, y el tiempo se a l a r g a. Black-blanc-beur reconquers French attention, but a pair of these Carly Rae and Usher parodies takes everything tonight and may be called half an hour at best, maybe.
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After the immature detour, thoughts turn towards tomorrow’s talent show. Truly baffling how three or four worn tennis balls can eat up an hour served with nothing but love for the acrobatics of up up
WEDNESDAY, MAY 1, 2013
catch cycled ad infinitum, or until the cacophony of concentration crashes the cranium’s computer circuit for circles, as it so happened that evening. Head joggled and jiggled and juddered and spinning as chaotically as those bright bouncing balls, a repose was slipped into the schedule. Dizzy sucks, yes. Or so states Stalin and procrastination. Too hot. Who thought that such sweat would seep in and out of transitivity? Time to sit down and cool off with a cara cara. Note to self - What the heck is a cara cara? Fall flavored gourd muffin and gold fish (hold the figs) top the tummy off while news soothes the whirling mind with brutal Bash-All Assad bloodbaths, New Delhi sour crowds and scorned beef with the law, all acquaintances by now. But wait! Between pages 3> and <0> a popular Pakistani personage pops into prominence with a scaly ditty worth approximately 1.62 dollars, given the current exchange rate. Seems like he deserves more than an ounce of respect for his tons of Youtube views, so he is duly reserved a spot on the nights winding road map. Two hours ‘til Thursday, which means it’s time to take the mutt for the moonlight stroll. Time to wrap up like King Tut, but, striped pj’s and boots are the attire. Fortunately the afternoon’s swamp has dissipated, and Queen Riva won’t have any more Nile rivers to traverse. 13
BULLET QUARTERLY
Routine rolls by: head through the loop, loop through the legs, the satisfactory click, then the night of the frozen nose and frigid toes, part two. The two tiny black bulbs are again consumed by the fleshy orifices, returning the foreign tongue to the ears. Tonight’s selection includes conversing with cadavers, before the life-warming llama del tombo. Far tug, ow! Fur to wag, turf, go aw. War of tug. Then the night’s poetry, Ponge perhaps, selected precisely for this one individual day of the year and none other, just like the other 364 pages. Before leaving, an unexpected stuffed-fruit epiphany: “I had never seen a more a-peel-ing banana in my life” Back in for the night: Let’s try it out. First, rip apart the adhesive package closed hours earlier. Next, remove tape from purple parcel. Grab matches, ignore instructions, and GO FOR IT! Crimson droplets tumble upon the pristine paper, pooling with the charred coal-dark ash. Quickly! Bring the brass B down upon the warm wax and press like life depended on it. Slide off and Voilà, not too bad for a first try. I feel like real genteel royalty before which you kneel, o surreal seal. Only an hour remains, the day’s grip slipping from its hold, but was not Justin just in his “You can do a lot in a day”? To the keyboard!
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First trêve, a truce on Christmas day then scanning our jours fériés next gutting the top one pound fish with swag galore, a hipster’s wish,
WEDNESDAY, MAY 1, 2013
trailed by Mr. Blobby himself. His Master’s Voice took all the pelf from Mr. Nipper. “How’d you spring famous without doing a thing?” Replies he: “Its all cut and dry, Paint your likeness after you die.” Cunning as a jaguar, a silent yawn slinks its way up and pounces on the unsuspecting night-owl. Past midnight already? With early morn again looming ahead, It’s time once more to set the shrill alarm, nudging it back those few necessary minutes for sanity’s sake. 7:10. Funny, a week ago it read 6:00. If this continues, the wake-up call might very well arrive at 1:20pm on Groundhog Day. But still 7:10 if I became Bill Murray. Oh, how the concentration jitterbugs. “Don’t stay up too late,” echoes the paternal guidance, as it echoes every night without meaning, the same five single syllable words falling dead upon closed ears night after stale night Date’s now the time
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WEDNESDAY, MAY 1, 2013
The Causeways
the causeways are clotted love, with you and your blood runs streaming through the canals and flumes the flutter of your hair is in the waving city pennant and the flash i used to love about your savage eye is present in the twinkle of the sun on the bricked rooftops. the causeways are clotted with the scent of you and the dawn only comes once i can peel your ghostly arms from my neck. i see you everywhere traced in the mist rising off the river outlined in the grey dust that passerby sweep blindly up i hear your voice in the street vendorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; cries taste your breath in the star-streaked night wind and the first kiss of the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s morning light is a kiss from you. the causeways are clotted love, with you i feel your bones beneath my feet your fingers, rotted, tangle in my hair the causeways are clotted with the humming memory of your voice and every smile i catch and bow to in this city, love, is your smile also. 17
Linguistology
BULLET QUARTERLY
Strings of epinephrine Swing their way into my blood As my fractured whites Find time to heal. This is not normal. You squeezed me by the nape of my neck and wrung out my eardrums. sliding me off the floor until my oral cavity oozed out the sweetest pity for you and I gasped through the charcoal fog that I understand you as nothing more than just normal. I pierced you by your tongue, paralyzed and â&#x20AC;&#x153;quite franklyâ&#x20AC;?, useless, and you stood there with an aphasia of the spirit. But to me, it was normal.
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WEDNESDAY, MAY 1, 2013
A Half-Truth
We ran in the rain once while falling in love. You wore my clothes, screaming and laughing, And I was terrified the bricks would trip you up. I know one thing for certain: I should have learned to dance with you for Valentine’s Day. As soon as love ends it becomes something else. I think it’s because we sometimes think of love as lofty, ethereal. And as our personal landscapes change, the atmosphere shifts, too. Sometimes love pours down on us in buckets, but most times it lives quietly in the cracks beneath our feet. It seems that closure often comes at the cost of oversimplification: a necessary but halftrue reconstruction of strength and resolve. For love that ends softly—what can be said? You want to scream! to love! to hate! What debriefing could there be for us? One that does not take us back to the bricks and the rain? Or one that does not carve a wedge of the space between us? I wonder if we can stand to be quiet.
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The birds
BULLET QUARTERLY
After Emily Dickinsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Hope is the thing with feathers The birds are different now from home, when they were scoffs and snide remarks, frivolous commentary on the grid pattern neighborhoods and orthogonal picket fences. The birds are different now; they are whispers of the earth, they are thoughts out loud, wings folded in contemplation, eyes darting at me and then away, heads tilted with the curiosity of a planet. They have always been strange, like any soothsayer would be; burdened with natureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tiny truth, prophets of the flowering.
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Solace
WEDNESDAY, MAY 1, 2013
One moment On a red bench, on a cold day In whispers Where we were right as The little creek and its rocks And strong as The nails in the fence around us And we were alone in a snowglobe. I closed my eyes, because I could forget the time and just feel your fingers on my head, through my hair. Just glimpse the love we had when you trace your hand over mine. All I could hear was you breathing, The grass shivering, Above the screams in my mind, Where I’m on my knees. And there I can say aloud “Just kiss me, kiss me.”
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Two Bars
BULLET QUARTERLY
Trigger Warning: This piece could be a trigger for those who have experienced sexual assault, either personally or through secondary trauma. There were two bars in town with the same name. I was to meet my friends for dinner and drinks, but I went to the wrong bar. As my eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, I stood in the doorway, taking my jacket off, revealing a date-night dress and long slender legs in heels. After scanning the bar for my friends without success, I assumed they were late as usual. On a second scan, I noticed a friendly face staring at me. My neighbor was chatting with the chief of police, and both were nearly old enough to be my father. My neighbor was a familiar fixture, part of the unchanging scenery, always on his front stoop, watching, always watching. Nearly every morning, when I left for school at 6 AM, he was smoking a cigarette and holding a steaming mug of coffee. After classes, I went to work at a nearby store. When I arrived home at 9:30 PM, my neighbor was there on his stoop, smoking a cigarette and sometimes sipping hard liquor. Not wanting to be impolite, I got in the habit of waving, and he'd wave back. It felt a little creepy being watched, but I assumed inhabitants of small towns were just more curious about their neighbors than people from large cities. Then one morning before school, he helped me change a flat tire. After that, some of the creepiness eased, and I began to view him as a trusted fatherly figure. Thinking I was safe with my neighbor and the chief of police, I approached their table and told them that I was meeting friends who hadn't arrived yet. They offered me a seat and I took it. Then they offered me a drink and I said yes to be sociable. The alcohol hit me quickly on an empty stomach. When I expressed concern for my friends, my neighbor assured me they'd be along soon, and he ordered another round. I thought he was probably right, and his expression made me feel like it would be impolite to refuse the drink or their company. So I stayed and watched the door, while making awkward conversation with two older men that I barely knew. Meanwhile, the additional alcohol added to my already impaired judgment. Later that night, I was sitting on the floor of the ladies room, praying to the porcelain goddess, when an employee came in to check on me at my neighbor's request. She brought me a wet paper towel. Not long afterward, and despite my protests, my neighbor 22
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and the chief of police carried me from the bathroom to my neighbor's car for the long ride through the woods to what I thought was my house. As soon as the chief of police left, the creepiness returned, but I was numbed by alcohol to the point of being nearly unable to move. I believe I passed out. I don't remember my neighbor's daughter undressing me and putting my clothes in the washer. I do remember waking up to find my neighbor having sex with me. At first, I couldn't move. Nor could I speak. I felt terror and revulsion and a betrayal of trust, as his thrusts pounded my limp body into his pale yellow sheets. Even after I gained the ability to move and speak, I chose not to. What can one say when the damage has already been done? My focus shifted to survival. The Unknown terrified me as images of Jack the Ripper invaded my head. Frozen in time and space, I fervently hoped this man would let me go after he took what he wanted. In the meantime, the stress of it all was too much. My mind left my body and watched from the side of the bed. It collected details as if they were answers to a crossword puzzle. 31 down: a four-letter word for an unwanted sexual act. 12 across: a four-letter word for the sensation of too large a penis stretching too small a vagina. 22 down: a five-letter word for a parent who rapes a woman with his daughter asleep in the next room. She wasn't much younger than I was. After he ejaculated, I asked him to take me to my car. (I lived across the street, but I needed to seek shelter with a friend in town, rather than face the harsh judgment that waited for me at home.) My neighbor protested, wanting me to stay, probably for another round. I coaxed and reasoned, pointing out that his reputation would suffer if I was seen walking home from his house in the morning, just as other neighbors were starting to leave for work. He relented and retrieved my clothes from the dryer. That's when he told me of his daughter's kindness. I wondered later about the psychological effect this event might have had on her, and whether her father asked her to undress other drunk young women on a regular basis. I hoped not. The aftermath of that night was horrible, much like being emotionally raped again and again. I developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Like a combat vet, my eyes instinctively learned to scan my surroundings, evaluate threats, and secure my personal space. 23
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Obsessively, I rehearsed defensive moves, just in case. I learned to walk with my shoulders squared, giving an air of physical competence that only I knew wasn't as awesome as it appeared to others. Inside emotional walls of steel, I was tormented by the details of what had happened. All those letters to words kept repeatedly filling in the same crossword puzzle. Gradually, new words were added as my understanding increased. This man was a predator, not a kind neighbor. However, evidence shows that he probably imagined himself as a friendly hero, changing my tire, taking me home from the bar, and washing my clothes. It was likely that he chose to believe that my neighborly waves were flirty invitations to a single dad, who was still in reasonably good shape despite approaching middle-age. Moreover, he probably grew up with society looking the other way, excusing bad behavior because boys will be boys, and encouraging the objectification of women in visual media because sex sells. Still, his decisions that night were his own, and what he did was wrong on so many levels. As he pounded away at my limp form, he had whispered, "I'd love to see you get excited." I know it sounds odd, but I will always be grateful to him for expressing his emotions so honestly. These words eventually made me realize that he may have taken my body, my innocence, my dignity, my good reputation, and my self-respect, but he was unable to steal the one thing that was, and still is, even more valuable to me: my real emotions. As time passed, I felt my power return when I realized that I still had the ability and probably even the obligation to determine what lasting effect this night would have on me. Men rape women to feel powerful. Knowing that a woman relives this memory and feels intense emotions for years or for a lifetime, gives a rapist residual power over his prey. I resented my neighbor for attempting to exert this power over me, so I became defiant and refused to let his actions turn me into a victim. After all, I still kept the one thing that he had most hoped to gain. I am not ashamed to admit that a rapist took my body, my innocence, my dignity, my good reputation, and my self-respect. Some of these losses heal in time. While I can't deny that I lost the initial battle, there is no doubt in my mind that I have won the war. When you strip away the things that people judge when they look at me, what's left is what I think and feel. That's the heart of who I am, not the exterior packaging. No one can take that essence of me from me, unless I willingly give it to them. 25
Legos
BULLET QUARTERLY
I kept them there, against the wall: a group Of plastic Eves and Adams. Dusty, though Sometimes removed to play a thrilling show, This motley crew, a child’s acting troupe, Was made and made to smile, not to droop. Their numbers swelled: Hermione to go with Hagrid’s Hut, a Technic 3PO, and racers keen to run the loop-de-loop, to name a few. But one excepted from the rest, was other ways adored: from harm a house (for want of bricks “under construction”) was permanently sheltered. Creaking, glum, and ugly, though it’s danger raised alarm: the only one I built without instruction.
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The Girl With the Red Rose
I The girl caressed a wilting rose, A lover of sorts. The day was gold. They said, “You have a lovely rose, Your heart must be like this flower.” She replied, “My heart is not like this rose, But the tip of an old pencil, But if you wish my heart a rose, Then what is not, what you suppose? But I for one am not so bold, To say my heart is like this rose, But rather I will say to you, It is the rose that’s like my heart.”
II The first divorce was had when man was born, And so he crawls to fables in despair, Unable to stand in the same room, Afraid to slight her mocking ears, Under spell since common era, Sloughing love unto her tomb,
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Your happiness she takes for credit, The earth’s the splendid stone you miss, Though it’s not a simple act of access, It’s just a small acknowledgment, That without hope there is no scorn, That joy is not to dodge despair. III Two geese upon a lake who swim, Are you and me in different maths, Our hearts are part and parcel of, This universal body, Integral to feed the verse, Whose beauty lies beneath the mask. The answer is found in silence, In letting be what seem,The girl, when asked of God, she said, “It’s a beautiful acknowledgment, To know I finally can stop searching, To know that I have found him.”
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Early
BULLET QUARTERLY
Summer thunderstorms are Blue grey jeans, Snapped green branches And flicker lights. Pressure-cooked rainâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; To put out lightning And blind thunder against my window In breaking glass sounds. Drops twinkle in my hair Flapping at the wind Like gauze until it hangs down. And if the sun shines through, Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bright like the flash Of my hand in his lap.
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Metalepsis
Did we both have butterflies for lunch when we hopped over boulders into the James, fresh faced and swimsuit clad? We found a crevice there, between two rocks, where the river made a river for itself; so we lay in it, talked about which one of us would get to writing this first, and with this most of you I'd seen I held my bashful tongue until, a year later, I stood on the Rio Negro muttering drunk to the Iranduba Bridge while it glowed purple with indifference. Later, when my ideas about love bellyflopped in the Vembanad I gave my last cigarette to the peddlers in the Kochi Shipyard when they all got up at once; and when I saw the spitting image of you take a picture with the Merlion, my tongue was stolen by something stray, and the Kallang River grinned behind you, and the sullen tune of the Sông Sài Gòn was one we would have danced to anyway.
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BULLET QUARTERLY
Flowers for Dagmawie There is nothing poetic about death. There is no lessening the infinity of what must have been your final breath, of what few final pixels, in all humility, gathered to form the last photo of you. There is nothing poetic about tranquility
when the silence was just death come back to the room having forgotten to ask for his things. You got better before; you’ll get better soon. So death, after months, asked again for his things; deceptively civil, he told a last joke, got you to laugh. “But, seriously,” he said. There was nothing poetic about the drive up north with Anna to Arlington, where friends from high school met up again, and for all we were worth, made what eye contact we could bear before the funeral. And I, by dissociation or unwanted power somehow kept my composure when the whole of your family was wailing loudly; I still hear their words, though all I knew of them were Dagmawie, Daggi, Dagmawie. Later, Anna and I smoked in the parking lot waiting for the hearse with you in tow and for the procession to start. And there is nothing poetic about the time since, the days and hours before we came back, so we could buy two bright sunflowers to lay on the grave, knowing you’d do the same for ours. And when the sunflowers there have themselves decayed, maybe there will be a poem somewhere.
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Screwed
WEDNESDAY, MAY 1, 2013
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. —Oscar Wilde Man Cuban purito ash drifts, silver snow Over ruddy, bare kids on cold wolf pelt Panting. It was just sex, we are just friends. But lying stripped, on top of her, I felt Inside of her is where just friendship ends. Still, I screwed her. Sex was awesome, although— Blurring blond hair and fur, fingers and paw— Tonight, we broke nature’s first, foremost law.
Woman Christmas-light rainbows paint scratched pool table Where we screwed smuttily, on soft grey wolf Slick with colorful sweat. In Arabic, Conjugating verbs and skin felt cherubic— But I hadn’t thought him, thought queer, able Or his will would be enough to play wolf, Blurring blond hair and fur, fingers and paw— Tonight we kept nature’s first, foremost law.
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For You
BULLET QUARTERLY
When you work, you really work. You stake your arms around your paper Like goalposts or like a child Who’s trying to keep the water from running Out of a sand castle moat. You crane your head close, Surveilling and writing and Rewriting and pacing. If you’re going to speak, You lean back and your whole body pauses. You stare and fluidly Make a point. Then your arms wave Like your sandcastle is under attack. You’re defending it. You use your body as a weapon, As everything, then.
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That One Time I Went To a ZZ Top Concert I peer down at my black wristwatch There is no such thing as religion God is time- and religion is an excuse for perversion and war But it is also an excuse for happiness And I kind of like that And I kind of like picturing Jesus playing lead guitar in a ZZ Top concert Then after the show he randomly grabs me, and brings me to VIP And I kind of like his aviator glasses even though we're inside Or how he tells me that god is time He admires his wristwatch and calls me a product of time; +my entire race And I will look back on that day when I am very old With a ticket stub in my hand signed "Jesus" And after that day I will tell my kids To worship time, supernovas and stars dying on a cross To produce oxygen and the elements in your wrist And my kids will love god and ZZ Top Then I will die, and my kids will put me in the ground So god can decompose me to help feed other organic life And every year through futuristic X-Ray scanners My kids will see my body And a glimpse of a golden halo hovering above my black wristwatch
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Waking Up
BULLET QUARTERLY
I asked my father what time he gets up, Each morning to walk the dog. He calmly replied without lifting his eyes “She wakes me up ‘round 6.” Twenty one years he has risen at dawn To the sound of the whimpering mutt Day after day, with the leash makes his way Through the town on their early-bird strut. For maintaining a pooch in no time becomes An insipid Sisyphusian chore There’s never repose for the weary old mustache Who beats sunrise as he heads out the door. Weekends, Holidays, and late nights alike And neither blizzard, rainstorm, nor gale Can ever relieve him from the manly task Which his tough record maintains without fail Ten years through, finally fallen in stride, Two children now joining the modest sized home, Dear father was in for a splendid surprise When I begged for a dog of my own Eager MacBeaver, I was told, don’t forget Owning a pet requires much work and time. But I was ready, a big boy of ten, And I soon proved I could earn every dime. By fortune benign, a pup finally mine At last entered through our front door, And Responsible Me at once took my charge Of afterschool walking and feeding and more. Gaily I thought, how little it took To by myself raise a young dog.
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WEDNESDAY, MAY 1, 2013
O mistake so naïve! To so firmly believe That my duties comprised full epilogue. What’s more, as I grew and to parties I flew, Returning home at hours too late, It was him, whose alarm came without a snooze, passed the night in alert paternal wait. Blind, O blind was I to your perpetual plight Of bed so boisterously body-slammed before light. How many yawns escaped woken lips? How many Sunrises spent in somnambulant state? Yet all carried out with will power’s sheer might. Because who else would? Because it was right. Tonight, before I melted ‘twixt covers blue To forget the week’s worries, I approached you, Confident, maturely, for the first time I said: “Tomorrow, I’ll walk the dog in your stead.”
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WEDNESDAY, MAY 1, 2013
A Letter for Imaginary Cousins: I go back to the old house, across from the closed bakery at the end of the street. The paint is green now and the shutters look as if they would like to peel off the sides of the building and float down the street. I stand there on the curb. I say, “This is my childhood home,” and it sounds like a lie. Then, “I used to live here.” Finally, “I don’t live here anymore.” That one’s better, truer, but it still sounds like a warning. I find a neighbor too, a little older woman with reddish hair and beautiful pearl earrings. “Do you remember a little girl who used to live here?” “No,” she says, “you know how it is with neighbors these days, no one ever stops to say hello.” I resist the urge to say hello; we talk about the weather. When she asks if I was the little girl, I lie. I don’t have a particular reason for this, but the knowing glint in her eyes irritates me. I talk about a cousin, an old acquaintance I wanted to find. “Genealogical research,” I say, “a hobby,” and I keep lying until the woman with the pearls is no longer curious, or paying attention. I do not remember what I say; these are the kind of lies that no one is ever particularly curious about after you’ve told them once. I wait a polite amount of time and then I go back to the Motel 6. The girlish, conventional corner of my mind is whispering sadly. What a shame, she says, no one here remembers you. The rest of me is a woman, vindictive and satisfied. Good, she says, and means it. If she had her way, she would burn the house to the ground like so much tinder and be done with it. A better ending than this, she says. She’s smiling; she thinks I should’ve slapped the lady with the pearls right across her ugly face, there in the middle of the street. You and me, she says, we don’t get paradise, but we’re old enough to choose our own hell.You and me, we get a choice. I light a cigarette in the small motel bathroom. It’s the first I’ve had in days and as close to paradise as anything else I know. I study myself in the ancient mirror, unfortunately positioned on the wall over the porcelain toilet. I say it out loud, testing the words, watching them weave through the smoke. “A better ending,” I say, and I try very hard to mean it. 43
BULLET QUARTERLY
Credit Plates Bullet Quarterly was founded at the College of William & Mary by Christina Trimarco, Faiz Hussain, Nick Reck, and Rebecca Moses on November 12, 2010. The Untitled Society was founded by Rebecca Moses in the Spring Semester of the 2010-2011 academic year. Following are the credits of the Spring and Summer issues of Volume III in 2013: PAMPHLET of three works Volume III SPRING Thursday, February 14, 2013
BOOKLET of thirty-three works Volume III SUMMER Wednesday, May 1, 2013
under the direction of our staff with Naomi Slack EDITOR-IN-CHIEF LAYOUT
with special gratitude to our publisher Fidelity Printing, Inc.
and with special note to our contributors Anonymous
Emma Aylor Nickolas Reck EDITORS EMERITUS
with special gratitude to our benefactors The Publications Council of the College of William and Mary Bullet Quarterly and the Untitled Society are student-run organizations at the College.Their future hinges on a wealth of submissions, the dedication and sacrifice of its members, and conditional funding from the Student Assembly. Pieces for the future issues may be submitted in the form of photographs, fine-line drawings, and non-fiction to our website, bulletquarterly.com/submit. The Untitled Society can be contacted at untitled@bulletquarterly.com. PAMPHLET Volume III FALL October 2013
BOOKLET Volume III WINTER December 2013