clerestory journal of the arts
Spring
2011 Brown & RISd
journal of the arts
art
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p ro se
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p o et r y
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m u sic
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vid eo
clerestory iss u e
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Simeon Kondev • RISD ‘14 • Sounding • 2011 • Ballpoint Pen on Paper
Kah Yangni • Brown ‘13 • Evan Friedman, the Man and the Myth • 2011 • Ink on Paper
Jennifer Marie Casey • RISD ‘12 • Untitled • 2011 • Oil on paper
David Bryant • RISD ‘12 Untitled • 2011 Honey, Asphaltum, and Sea Urchin on Board
Milan Koerner-Safrata • RISD ‘15 • Portrait of a Young Man in a Striped Tie • 2011 • Digital Collage
Elizabeth Wikstrom • RISD ‘12 • Meditative Improvisation 3 • 2012 • Gouache on Paper
Sierra Barela • RISD ‘15 • Untitled • 2012 • Oil on Canvas
Anna Muselmann • Brown ‘14 • Girls • 2011 • Oil on Canvas
Hannah Antalek • RISD ‘13 • Princess Party • 2011 • Oil, Acrylic, Glitter, and Silkscreen on Canvas
Polina Godz • Brown/RISD ‘16 • Aum • 2012 • Silver Gelatin Print
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what is clerestory? Clerestory Journal of the Arts is a biannual literary and arts magazine that draws submissions from undergraduate students at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. By offering students an opportunity for publication, Clerestory hopes to inspire young artists to continue their creative pursuits, help maintain a high bar of quality for the arts at both campuses, stimulate conversation about student work throughout each school and beyond, and foster engagement between student artists and the wider community.
Staff management
prose
Isabella Giancarlo • Managing Editor Tabitha Yong • RISD Editor/ Web Editor Kathy Do • Marketing & Finances Allan Sakaue • Marketing & Finances
Kate Holguin • Editor
design Isabella Giancarlo • Editor Pierie Korostoff • Junior Editor Beatrix Chu Adriana Gallo Katharina Windemuth
poetry Kevin Casto • Editor Vera Carothers Elaine Hsiang Rob Merritt Greg Nissan
art & video Robert Gordon-Fogelson • Editor Isabel Sicat • Junior Editor Beatrix Chu Anna Gaissert Marissa Goldman Rachel Haberstroh Celine Katzman Milan Koerner-Safrata Michaela Knittel Elisa Leser Maya Diablo Mason Paige Mehrer Sheila Sitaram
music Momo Ishiguro • Editor Michael Danziger • Junior Editor Houston Davidson Luke Dowling Simon Engler Bridget Ferrill Cody Fitzgerald
Nick Jacob Henry MacConnel Will Radin Daniel Stern Jeff Wu Dan Zhang
blog Adam Davis • Editor
special thanks Brown Undergraduate Finance Board RISD Center for Student Involvement Brown Department of Music Brown Dean of the College Brown Campus Life and Student Services RISD Illustration Department Brown Literary Arts Department Brown Visual Arts Department Brown Department of Modern Culture and Media & The Malcolm S. Forbes Center for Media and Culture Ian Gonsher & Leigh Tarentino
poetry Todd Stong • Meditation on Debussy Cody Fitzgerald • Untitled Kah Yangni • Untitled Lauren Allegrezza • CHARCOAL Reva Dhingra • In a Time of Television Nicole Hasslinger • Fille Cara Dorris • Two weeks before my seventeenth birthday Doreen St. Fèlix • Incident on Route 46
prose Michelle Meyers • The Houseboat Tori Lee • Claddagh Michelle Meyers • Bottom of the Ocean Evan Sweren • Sweet Corn Fahmina Ahmed • Screampot
Contents
art Simeon Kondev • Sounding Kah Yangni • Evan Friedman, the Man and the Myth Milan Koerner-Safrata • Portrait of a Young Man in a Striped Tie Elizabeth Wikstrom • Meditative Improvisation 3 Sierra Barela • Untitled Anna Muselmann • Girls Hannah Antalek • Princess Party Polina Godz • Aum David Bryant • Untitled Jennifer Marie Casey • Untitled
video Evan Grothjan • Your Face is Messed Up Lachlan Turczan • Alphabet Fun Time Simeon Kondev • Nashto Myasto
music 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Artist Artist Artist Artist Artist Artist Artist Artist Artist Artist Artist Artist
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Title Title Title Title Title Title Title Title Title Title Title Title
Visit clerestoryjournal.com to listen and download music from our Spring 2012 playlist and to watch this semester’s selected video art. The editorial boards of Clerestory select pieces to be published through a blind democratic process over a period of several weeks each semester.
Meditation on Debussy Todd stong
Maritime so far as living room windows know, so far as three-to-four year olds and gladed slip-streams know, mid-afternoon shingle-patter and Pennsylvania, youthruminants, muses of spring, of wet-green silhouette, the front-yard forest glass-mottled. Maritime of the brook, the pool, the puddle. The dewdrop and echo; blip and ping and peace. Grass green then grey then blue. Maritime, then boys inside; then cat asleep, then piano bench. Blue light window and kitchen sink, and glasses filled of water and peaches, glasses filled of lemon juice and sugar and ice, jars of cricket chirp, of fireflies come inside for the refuge
The Houseboat michelle meyers
I told my husband it was a bad idea to buy a house on a boat but all he said was, “The world is going nautical, baby.” It’s not a houseboat. Oh no, houseboats are designed for comfort and peace. They drift down idle rivers and all that they require are copious amounts of lemonade and iced tea for lovely spring days. They are found in warm and/or tropical climates like Mississippi and Florida, places where people go to church, have lazy summers, and enjoy a sense of Southern hospitality. Houseboats allow for all of the pleasurable amenities of a small, well-made home. But my husband did
not purchase a houseboat, with its tacky but charming print paintings and middle-class luxury. Instead, he bought a house on a boat. Let me tell you a little bit about the house that exists on this boat. It is a crumbling, decrepit, split-level monstrosity that cost at least $30,000 more than it would have otherwise because they ripped it out of the ground and stuck it on a boat with several other crumbling, decrepit, split-level monstrosities to keep it company. The house frequently teeters toward the edge of the boat because it is not securely fasted to the deck,
and it does not drift down an idle river in a warm Southern climate because we are from Maine so instead we live in a house on a boat that nearly capsized off the northeast coast last winter. When water splashes over the side of the deck, a sure recipe for both seasickness and frostbite, it seeps under the bottom of the house so that our carpets are constantly bloated with saltwater. The temperature never rises above 40 degrees (due, in part, to the lack of insulation in the walls of the shithole my husband for some reason thought would be a good idea to purchase). And not only does
all of the state of Maine despise us, prying our eyesore off their shores by any means necessary, but there is a social hierarchy even on the boat itself, and somehow my husband and I are at the very bottom. The house is essentially useless—no running water, no electricity, no gas, etc.—and the previous owner was seemingly such a pornography aficionado that he had murals of B-movie porn actresses painted on all the walls of the house, paintings that are far too expensive to get rid of. So next time my husband says, “The world is going nautical, baby,” I’m going astrophysical, bitch.
Untitled cody fitzgerald
we drove in winter morning to find your home in books in pens in papered walls in notes you’d loved but once and read in small handmade boxes collecting age in age in that sweater you never in weathered sheets you’d picked up that told you they told you where to go new york from home in washington where folded clothes you’d only worn in pictures and my mother’s face I cried. I smelled you on my shirt And couldn’t say your name
prose title Claddagh author tori lee
I felt every bump, every nick, dip, small embedded piece of gravel in the soles of my beat-up brown leather oxfords. Subway floors don’t lend themselves to the light of foot. One must become heavy, anchor herself to the seabed, sink her bones beneath chewing gum reefs and tie her sinews to seaweed detritus. Her arms stretch, tentacles, adhere themselves to anything that will stand still against the current. Hands around two different poles, feet on either side of my backpack. I am a starfish.
I examine bald spots. It’s a good pasttime for when you’re splayed on the 5 train from Fulton to 86th, a starfish on the banks, above the seated barnacles and clams. Some men have craters, big gaping underwater maws that shine with sweat, hair only loosely attached to the rim. Some men attempt the comb-over; those men I want to hug. Those men who fight the Atlantic current in dinghies, armed with broken comb-oars through which the water just glides and continues on, not even pausing to notice the valiant fight of a lone
forty-something sailor. It was one of these men that sat beneath me today. He wasn’t the worst of the lot; there were still some hairs to comb, at least. His forehead disappeared and rose, disappeared and rose, a buoy bobbing in the sway. Eyes of milky seawater collected in buckets by muddy children with shovels like swords. What distinctions once existed in his face had been long eroded by the tide. He was anyone. I studied the patterns in his hair. Unlike those left in the sand by the various tugs of seafoam each time a wave breaks, these patterns did not vanish easily beneath colorless saltwater. Rather, I thought, it must take a severe scrubbing to remove the hair gel that clung to the strands like a boy’s hands to the top of the slide in the playground, afraid to let go, nothing will make him let go and plummet. His eyes again, the opaque stare unique to riders of the New York City subway, locked but not seeing, fleeting but seeing everything. His eyes, the buckets, the sand was collecting at the bottom and the blue was beginning to clear when I saw it.
The pearl. Brash gold in the fluorescent light made me blink, offended. It was thicker than mine, his claddagh ring, clearly a man’s. He wore it on his right ring finger, two hands cupped around a well-worn heart, two sides of an oyster shell proudly displaying its sole treasure. It was turned slightly, comfortable on his finger, the way you wake up in your own bed in the morning in a different position than you were in when you fell asleep last night. My thumb went automatically to the crease in my right hand where ring finger meets palm. I felt every furl, every give, lump, loose thread in the tan carpet as I followed him up the stairs, his hand trailing behind him. Around the banister, the door to his room was open. His comforter was deep navy like the ocean. He reached for a bag on his chair, handed it to me. “Happy anniversary.” A smile. A ring. He’d remembered, bought it from a jewelry table at a fair near his school, bought a little book explaining all the symbolism, he’d remembered how I had always wanted one. I slipped it on, heart facing in, I love you. A kiss. So he’s married, this gelled and bucket-eyed man. He
must be Irish. I wonder how long he’s had it, how long he’s worn his promise in metal on his hand for the world to understand. Love, loyalty, and friendship; the three strands effortlessly weave themselves into a flawless pleat. The man wears a jacket, but no tie. He has no briefcase with him; a light day at the office, perhaps. Probably got on at Wall Street, gets off... somewhere uptown? Or he could commute from outside the city. Maybe from a two-story house with a square front lawn and a rectangle backyard, cerulean shutters, a door knocker, a mailbox with a red flag. Maybe his kids are the lucky ones who have a wooden jungle gym and a basketball hoop nailed above the garage door. When they were little, he held them while they faked the monkey bars, just going through the motions, swinging their arms and laughter. In the winter, padding them with marshmallow parkas to wobble around in snow piles (to them, towering mountains) and acquire glowing red cheeks. Maybe they have bucket eyes too, slowly filling with seawater as the years stream by. Maybe he has no children. I felt every valve, every pump, beat, swoosh as the blood flowed in and out of my heart the same way
it had for the last eighteen years, seven months, one week, and a day. Can something so sudden change your blood, can words? Of course not. Bright red ebb and flow. My fingers pulled the ring off my hand; the current, it paused, waiting. My whole body was the sea, all the fluids mingling; water, bile, salt, blood, tears, all swirl and gnash in their eddy. The ring, bold in its betrayal. “What am I supposed to do with this?” My cheeks caked with salt, eyes wet, lips dry. His hand. I couldn’t brush it away, not yet. “I don’t know.” I put it in my pocket. My finger looked naked and new. Grand Central. The man stood; his gelled hair ignored the fact that it should have shifted with the sudden motion. We both let go of our poles. Our rings and hearts floated freely past each other, his turned in, mine out. He exited the train. I took his seat. My hands relaxed, fell open, two sides of a clam shell, and revealed my pearl.
Untitled kah yangni
Today, she is a red lipped harpy, scattered and wind sogged, moist at the heart of the cardamom cunt, skeins offlesh taut tomorrow she is a tarpaulin dancer, she is a star spangled, she is a tit dropped for the suckling. she is, was, a movement in c.
Bottom prose title of the Ocean author
michelle meyers
A woman wanting peace and quiet took one step into the ocean, then another and another, until her torso was submerged, her breasts, her neck, and the tips of her hair. Her husband put up posters on telephone poles all throughout the neighborhood. Finally a stranger responded. She’s at the bottom of the sea. So her husband packed up all the dirty dishes into a canvas bag (good for the environment), all the laundry, all the bills, all the cleaning supplies, and of course the baby, who smiled as she licked at the chocolate cake residue crusted on the silverware, and
the husband drove the mile and a half to the beach, and he too took a step, and then another, until he and the baby could see nothing but black water when they craned their heads upwards and opened their eyes. As the current tugged and pulled and the husband shivered under the icy waves, the canvas bag came unzipped. A white dress shirt fell through the opening, a pair of boxer shorts, the electric bill, a bottle of Windex, a plate with a ducky on it, more clothes, more dishes, sinking away from the husband and the baby, who he held clutched in his arms.
When the husband finally found the woman, dozing, nestled in among a bed of seaweed, the canvas bag was empty except for the baby’s pacifier. The husband placed his hand on the woman’s shoulder. The woman awoke. She embraced her husband and her baby as a soft smile spread across her face. To think of how he had treated her before, the rules, the chores, the endless demands. But now everything was different. Now she knew that he loved her enough to search for her at the bottom of the Atlantic, just to see her face again.
Charcoal lauren allegrezza
In the half-dark, when the sun has just started to bleed but has not yet burnt off the veil settled over the houses a shroud thicker than smoke fingers around your eyes squeezing them to blindness as you make your way past the beach-roses tripping through the ash that obscures up to the second-floor windows and you can only see silvered shingles and something the color of a dirty seabird and a door with a mossy knocker to the other side of the gloom.
In a Time of Television reva dhingra
to laugh, chatter, piston the sofa back and forth up the porch steps, to make lines in the carpet from friction, paint the walls eggshellwhite and crimson, tangle limbs momentarily; to lie sated and spread-angeled on the living room floor—
to experience a change in motion: commence to move in concentric circles about the coffee table, to heat dinner in plastic cartons, round out gradually like lopsided satellites bathed in electric light, draw linen blinds tight across windows, to feed each other cold ravioli between the creases of the couch. contemplate a tear in the carpet and become increasingly nervous; to fixate on a freckle, lump, mole in the folds of each other’s skin and turn away in disgust, to lapse steadily into melancholy, cast solitary glances at the clock, the refrigerator, the television screen; to follow the scrolling numbers to hypnosis, put the radio on and hear nothing but news; to feel the threat of silence and turn the volume up.
Sweet Corn Evan sweren
There were two boys in a car. One said to the other “I’m freezing close the window.” He laughed and looked at his brother and said “I’m a fly” and jumped out. There were two boys in a car. There was stock and nothing a whole lot more. In this one town they saw dust and it was playing games like children and a child in the road with a stick and a dog. “Don’t slow down you dumb fuck.” “I won’t jackass” and he honked like a beggar and they walked deaf. Now he says “do you remember that time” and I say “yea” and laugh. And he says “and the goat?”
“Yea” “How about Rojas?” “Yea” “And Taylor?” “With the fuck me boots.” “Yea” “Yea” And he laughs because he means it. Jack rabbits can’t fly. There were two boys in a car driving like the truth. There were old stumps for houses and people or prairie dogs in them. There were prairie dogs in the fields and the sun was a carousel. What’s got four legs in the
morning, two in the evening, three at night? A foal with its legs cut off and one glued back on. A hawk swooped at the ground and swooped back up. The powerlines raced. “Wackamole bitch.” There were two boys in a car. They passed a girl with dirty nails. The girl opened the bag and plopped it in. They lay on the top of the car and ate corn like gods. “Gimme a bite” he said. He looked down at it and looked up. He looked down at it and took a bite and looked down at it again and the corn was gold. “I don’t eat angels” he said.
Fille nicole hasslinger
Lungs like a dryer filter, Palms like the old pigskin—there I was. All my ladylike features dulled by autonomy and misguided will. It felt improper, so I dutifully gnawed off my hands, smiled, waved. They giggled in return, While their own stumps bled out in their pockets.
Two weeks before my seventeenth birthday cara dorris
my father and I sit in McDonald’s. There are ferns in the wastebasket, whole plants, ripped with their roots, sucked from soil or sand. Miserable at ninety-seven pounds, I had been slow in the cross-country race even though my father had driven fifteen miles to the nearest Modell’s to buy me arm warmers for the cold. He almost got a speeding ticket while trying to reach the starting line in time so maybe I can forgive him for asking me do you know he only wants you for one thing?
It is to be noted that biologists have held the persistent scientific fact that ferns have never and will never bloom. You can find that on the Internet. And in Russia there’s a whole holiday dedicated to finding this thing. Ivan Kupala Day. The unmarried village folks roam the forests in search of it. So I cut off a fern flower in my dream. Rolled it between my fingers like a Slavic myth. Handed it to my father, who enraged, hid it away. But how can a fern go without being wanted? Once I thought once I thought the size and color of its loneliness matched mine. Once I thought that staying young forever would be easier than the sudden power of something bloomed. But by then I knew do you know he only wants you for one thing was really him saying
how fast and raw and unfair sex is at first and if you could just raise your weight to one fifteen he wouldn’t want you any less and I’ve kept every one of your baby teeth in an Altoids box inside my left bottom drawer. In McDonald’s my father cups the roots, cradles these plants back to our car. My feet curl and uncurl in hope of rain, a moth fondles a fern with no luck, my father’s hands grip the steering wheel, bookends of a dream. For my birthday I’ll ask for a place I can hide, a forest canopy of weeds.
prose title Screampot author ahmed fahmina
She would romanticize this image in a few years, but for now, she just took a deep hit, held it in, and blew it across the landscape. The smell of motor oil and rotting fish, the sight of the Con Edison plant hurling black clouds, and blood-orange cargo ships tugging through dead water, all these things made her want to fill her lungs too with smoke. She didn’t like it here, but here was a good place to be, she supposed. She had climbed over the divider to
sit on her favorite rock. Years of trespassing teenagers had carved a neat plateau into the rock bed; millennia of salty waves had carved deep groves into its surfaces below her. She took another deep breath, this one free of tobacco, and that stomach turning punch told her she was home again. Her parents had called her home, and for once, she listened. Death does that, especially the death of a parent.
Just the week before, she had been fucking. It was the kind of sex without pretense. She closed her eyes and faced away from him. She dug her nails into his back and told him to go harder. She didn’t care about his name or who he was. She focused on the feeling of his cock hitting her cervix, harder, harder, harder until she screamed and opened her eyes wide. And then, she wanted it to be over, she wanted to roll into his warmth and fall asleep. A few days later, she got a call from her father; It’s your mother he said, and instantly she knew what had happened. Her facial muscles tensed, her hand put down the phone, and habit dictated that she make peppermint tea.
her mother’s legs on either side of her. Her mother would part her hair into thirds and force a comb through each section. She would bite her lip and stifle her noises, but when her mother reached the nape of her neck she would scream You’re hurting me and her mother would emit a gentle Shush before she continued to comb. But her hands were burning hot now and the pot was screaming, and cloying, and yelling at her senses and all she could do was turn off the heat and pour the boiling liquid into a cup. She drank it, not caring about the burning on her tongue, and proceeded to look online for a bus ticket home.
As the teapot churned, she held her hands over the steam, and she listened to the water vapor scream. She held her hands to the pot until she felt the singe of the heat inside of her bones. She held them there and thought of her mother:
She thought of middle school bus rides spent in sleepy flirtation. The friction from the wheels turning on the concrete would create a vibration that would rock her to sleep. Carelessly, carefully, she would drift off, her head falling on a boy’s shoulder. In those moments, her mothers voice would occasionally pop into her consciousness; Be good.
Aged six, she would sit cross-legged on the floor with
That night, she called him, and they fucked. He
tugged her hair, and she bit her lip and stifled her screams. The next morning, she got on the bus to go home to her mother’s funeral.
On the bus ride home, she didn’t think of her mother. Instead, she thought of her cadaver. For four months, her class had lovingly dissected human bodies, identifying all the nerves and veins and organs and tucks and folds and sacs. Hers was the body of a woman who was 81, and she could still make out traces of pink nail polish on the woman’s fingernails. The cadaver’s hands were shriveled now, having absorbed a reckless chemical brew, but the fingernails, she noted, were remarkably unchanged. The smell of formaldehyde possessed her senses as she sliced through the body in one cut from the temple to between the cadaver’s legs. She imagined she would cut the body in one languorous stroke, but the skin was tough and she had to leverage her strength and cut the skin in back and forth motions, her arms hinging off their shoulder sockets. At the wake, she bent over and kissed her mother’s
cold forehead. Without any embalming fluid, her flesh had adopted a hardened gelatinous feel. She looked at her mothers henna stained nails and wondered if it was true that they kept growing post-mortem. She imagined them growing inside her coffin, curling and curling around her limbs until they liquefied and disintegrated, until all that was left was curled, hardened keratin. The image was too ridiculous; she reasoned then that it was a myth.
That night, her extended family gathered to hurl prayers up to the Almighty. They gathered after sundown, bodies huddled so close their goose pimples touched. The men huddled closest to the burning incense and the boys gathered at their feet. The women huddle behind, wavering like sacks in the wind. She didn’t notice much of this. She watched the tendrils of smoke crawling out of the incense; it swirled into the air and dissipated. The smoke sunk down to reach the cross-legged bodies rocking back and forth. They prayed for their dead, their bodies fanning the smoke onto the heavens. A crier called out, pleading with the Almighty to forgive the sins of her dead mother.
Each request was followed by a thunderous ‘amen’ that forced the prayers up to god along with the smoke. They cupped prayers in their hands and when rocking was not enough, they stood and threw the prayers toward the sky and up to God. Hurling prayers, like glowing balls, up to the sky, creating new hopes and new stars. The smoke was stifling her and she ran her still burnt tongue over the roof of her mouth. The smell of sandalwood and spices pressed against her bones. She thought of the steam from the teapot and the sensation of burning. Somewhere in the distance of her consciousness, she heard it scream at her. She remembered youth spent with her mother. Steep the tea until its ready, strain the leaves and then let it sit. She tried. She watched the teapot scream and when it grew too loud she grabbed the handle. Don’t burn yourself. She tried not to. She looked around, and everywhere, there were glossy-eyed people. Her father, man of the glossiest eyes, came up to her.
“How are you, baby girl?” “I’m okay.” Her eyes were dry and stiff, the incense stung them. The smoke was suffocating her now. The teapot was yelling. She had to get out.
She walked outside and tiptoed through concrete streets looking for her old smoke shop. There was another universe inside of there. The tobacco smoke swirled and soothed around. It escaped from wooden boats bobbing to the cadence of words and enlivened the men attached to them. The smoke settled into a bed where timeless, placeless, faceless men sat and played checkers. The ringleader, a man in a newspaper boy hat, wearing a three-piece suit and a brazenly gold pocket watch, sat behind the counter. She breathed in the space and instantly, habit seized onto her body. She pulled out eight dollars and thirty-seven cents from her pocket with the exactitude of a practiced ritual. She ordered an ounce of the strong stuff and some papers before handing in the cash. “Nope, that will only be 7.25”
Eyebrows were raised “Was the price dropped?” The man laughed before responding, “I’m sure the price will be raised soon enough, but for the last eight years, I have charged you 7.25. How have you been the last year? How is school?” She became aware of the cupboard behind the man shaking. It grew stronger and began to jostle the wall adjacent to the cupboard. The man walked over to it and opened its door. A small metal teapot rattled inside and she began to hear it scream. The man produced two porcelain cups from under the counter and poured the tea. “Tea?” He asked as he was already handing her a cup. She held it as it burned her fingertips. She looked down and saw ripples form on the surface of the tea as it continued to scream at her. She found herself walking through the concrete again. Her hands felt hot, she looked down and saw that she was still holding the teacup. She dropped it. She heard it moan and shatter across grey pavement.
She needed food. Scouring through unfamiliar shops, she found one that existed in her memory. She ignored all the insect people staring at the misspelled menus and ordered her usual. When it was ready, she brought it to her favorite park bench. She bit into the doughy mass and tasted the congential mix of fat and salt. She sat and looked over the fields. She thought of Sundays spent in training as her mother tried desperately to teach her to cook. You cook the onions in oil until they soften. Don’t let the garlic burn; add some of this and a little bit of that. Make sure to keep stirring until the spices settle in. She tried, but unlike her mother, she cooked with her stomach. The flavors sat in inharmonious combinations on top of each other as she prepared in anticipation of the moment where it would all be hers to eat. Her mother never thought of eating the food she cooked. She was an alchemist, casting spells until each ingredient transcended to heavenly heights. She prepared wonders that her family greedily consumed.
When she tasted food, she noticed not flavors, but rather ratios. Three parts sugar to one part butter, or six parts starch, one part fat, and a pinch of acid.
the fish’s eyes to make sure it was just right for eating. She looked at the shiny wonder and was transfixed. She couldn’t stop thinking about the shiny fish with its clear, white eyes staring at her.
Saturdays were spent at the market. She would trail behind as her mother scurried through shops. Her mother would pinch and prod each piece of produce, looking for the optimal pieces. When her mother found one, she would hand it to her daughter. See? This is how it should feel. She would take note of it, but nothing was committed to memory for long. When it was her turn to pick the best eggplant, she would squeeze each piece with her small hands. The fleshy masses nestled together like babies as she stood on her tiptoes, reaching over the market stand and blindly groped at them. When she found one that yielded to her touch just so, she would hand it to her mother. Its too soft, this one is better. Her mother pointed to an eggplant that was just out of her reach.
That night, she opened up the fridge and scooped out the fish. She got out her step stool and climbed up until she was at height with the counter top. Her clumsy fingers sliced the fish in half. She was careful to avoid the thumbs, just like her mother taught. The sight before her filled her with awe. The fish’s bones trailed out like the branches of a tree and she could make out all the capillaries. She stuck her finger under the hard fold of each gill and felt the spongy texture underneath.
One time, there was a fish. Her mother had spent twenty minutes at the market inspecting the scales and
What the hell are you doing with tomorrow’s dinner?
She was once an eggplant girl. Once her limbs grew strong enough, she remembered, she crawled out of her mothers womb. She looked out at the world for the first time and she saw the egg yolk girls, the ones you want to hold inside the palm of your hand. She
saw the diamond encrusted ones, the ones you can’t see because they keep shining back at you, the ones you can’t break because they are so hard. She looked inside of herself, and all she could feel was the vastness of space caving in her skin.
Medical school was the tapoketta tapoketta of construction. Coming here was the simple act of swapping one rust belt city for another. The smoke screen guise of factory stacks was everywhere. Her school had bought land all over this deadbeat city and it was expanding now into the Jewelry District. It spread like an antibiotic, buying abandoned warehouses and leaving behind gleaming towers. The medical building was adding a new wing. Everyday, she passed a maze of blue scaffolding as she entered the building. Her classes went the rhythm of tapo-ketta tapo-ketta as the foundation was set. The noise overpowered the hum of the bone saw and permeated every lecture hall. It was the soundtrack of them jack hammering facts into her skull.
She reached inside her skull and felt the texture of memory; felt covered balls that stuck to each other like Velcro. She wanted to grab them and throw them across the field. They would stick to the blades of grass and root into the ground until they were ready to hatch and burst forth with the sights, smells, and colors of her past. She would watch them twist and turn around her, materializing into her world again; she would reach out and grab onto the tendrils of memory and each strain would carry her to a old time and space. Instead, she looked at the blades of grass and realized nothing was as it had been. She spotted and empty coffee cup laying in the field and rocking slightly with the wind. It hissed and spit steam. She heard it scream at her. She listened to the tapo-ketta tapo-ketta of things growing, changing, and overtaking. She looked down at her feet and saw her red Keds just as she felt the ground slip out from under her. In that moment, all she wanted was a goddamn cup of tea, one that tasted like her mother would make. But
she couldn’t remember how, besides she never learned. On the bus ride home, she thought of her mother. As a child, she would snuggle into her chest and listen to the thump thump of her heart beat; a constant, unwavering, noise. She looked up at her mother once, is this a forever noise? That night, she called him at they fucked. She didn’t tell him what had happened, she didn’t want to cover him with all her felt covered balls. She wanted him to jackhammer into her at a constant, unwavering, forever pace. She wanted him to fuck her until steam came out of her ears and she hissed like a teapot. She wanted him to fuck her until all she could hear was the tapo-ketta tapo-ketta of the mattress springs.
There was a dull ache in her face. She had started getting frown lines as her skin yielded to the subcutaneous muscles constantly tensing under it. Her cheeks were weary from smiling, nodding, and chewing; working every day to make keep her real. She wanted to stop expressing to the world. She wanted to crawl inside her own skin. She thought of going to her
anatomy lab and picking up the scalpel. She wanted to lie on the dissection table and cut through her skin. In her dreams, the scalpel would slide gracefully in a line cross her forehead. It would swoosh over her nose and cut her lips in half. It would end as it got passed the dimples in her chin. She would then trace the lines of her jaw and hairline and after a quick peel, she would be flayed, skin hanging on either side of her like a medieval triptych. She wanted to snip the nerves and get through the muscles, in the end, she wanted to hang slack jawed and free.
Incident on Route 46 Doreen st. fĂŠlix
In a poorly upholstered driving seat, middle age is approaching a quiet, coughing woman much faster than it is her husband because she is a quiet and coughing woman, and although she is turning the key vigorously, pressing the gas pedal to the floor, digging into the steering wheel, turning the key again, losing weight, growing her hair long, gaining it back, making his coffee before he even thinks he might want it, not yelling like that anymore, burning the entire town, the car does not start because it is so painfully reliable in that way. She decides to tilt her rearview mirror 30 degrees too much to the left so that when she finally notices that the safety lock is on and begins driving along the freeway, the white sun will refract, then reflect, then hit her like it did when she was not married and she will beam. The white sun hits her and she feels it and the turning car hits her and she feels it. The white sun hitting her so she could triumphantly hide her smile lines from herself and the husband, who does not immediately recognize her in this new shape, peering into the demolished car seven minutes after the accident with his coffee in his hand
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