clerestory
fall 2012
volume 47
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.
management
design
Isabella Giancarlo • Managing Editor Tabitha Yong • RISD Editor/ Web Editor Mae Cadao • Marketing & Finance
Pierie Korostoff • Editor Adriana Gallo Luna Ikuta Celine Katzman
poetry
staff
Kevin Casto • Editor Will Fesperman Kamille Johnson Greg Nissan Camille Shea Carly West
prose
Music
art
Kate Holguin • Editor Chris Anderson Jake Brodsky Beatrix Chu Chase Culler India Ennenga Piper French Lily Halpern James Janison Kamille Johnson Yongha Kim Julie Kwon Kate MacMullin Mie Morikubo Lili Rosenkranz Erin Schwartz Camille Shea Kimberly Takahata Denise Van Der Goot Carly West
Michael Danziger • Editor Tristan Rodman • Junior Editor Houston Davidson Luke Dowling Bridget Ferrill Cody Fitzgerald Sophia Elizabeth Krugman David Lee Henry MacConnel Jeff Wu Dan Zhang
Isabel Sicat • Editor Beatrix Ann Ceclie Hirschler Yongha Kim Michaela Knittel Milan Kundera Safrata Colin LoCasio Mie Marikubo Maya Mason Paige Mehrer Denise Van Der Goot
contents writing The editorial boards of Clerestory select pieces to be published through a blind democratic process over a period of several weeks each semester.
Will Fesperman • Choptank Marc Briz • Foreign Film Sylvia Tomayko-Peters • Celebration Lauren Allegrezza • Lady Jane Sarah Brandon • On Duct Tape India Ennenga • The Year of Hotels Sylvia Tomayko-Peters • Parentage Miguel Llorente • Homolinguistic Translation Elaine Hsiang • good morning Michael Goodman • Zagreb Museum of Art Eli Petzold • rood Ben Freeman • Huck Lili Rosenkranz • The Year of Love and Loss Martin Menefee • Too Well Sylvia Tomayko-Peters • Phantasm
art Kafumba Bility • Code 10 Sahana Ramakrishnan • Untitled Jaeyeon Shin • landscapes Jane Kim • The Hungry get Hungrier Priscilla Tey • Heads Jia Sung • Motherhood Elizabeth Shneyderman • the nonconformist Jade Donaldson • Moon/Sea Connor McManus • Thinking Cube #3 Dillon Froelich • Trying to convince my twin ponytailed brother Keith that kids love cubicles so he’ll invest in my “Cubicool” startup with Babies R Us.
music The Homing Bureau • To Only Have Come Back Guy Kozak • Teeth Tristan Rodman • Ashes YourBoy • Silent Spyglass Hugh Manatee • Sketches of Something Abby Gallagher • Comatose Ryan Christopher Gourley • Flashback PQ_Hwan • The Life and Death of Ms. Parker Achaziyah the Alien • Ring My Bell Playground Jerks • Itches Goodman • Figure It Out Dan Zhang • Fall to Earth Visit clerestoryjournal.com to listen to and download music from our Fall 2012 playlist
Choptank WILL FESPERMAN
I was thinking today about closeness. A boy had his head on my belly: I took off his glasses, ran a thumb through his hair, he turned his head to face me. Imagine a cat that slinks onto your desk and steps across the keyboard. She happens to type “Choptank,” you happen to be thinking of the Choptank river. Water suckling rocks, pinecones
in the grass, adults in Adirondack chairs. Broken light on the water and fishermen waving from boats. Cat flicks her tail, seems to say: I know the river, the rocks, the chairs. I know the broken light and fishermen. Does she. No. Still you say: Bless the keyboard. Bless the cat. Bless the river, the rocks, the chairs. You have no choice.You want to laugh again, don’t you.
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FOREIGN FILM MARC BRIZ
Two boys on a rickety-rick motorcycle. The boy in the back flaps his arms delicately and there’s a swollen, pomegranate sun setting in front of them. It’s a scene from a foreign film, Ghazala thinks. He sits two rows behind the mini-bus driver but can see out the window: his city’s grey-smeared buildings; made of sand and shell, licked dirty by the sea’s winds. He’s returned to Alexandria, the ancient city, his home. He sees the streams of taxis mercilessly attack with incessant honking; they flood the streets in faded yellow. Circling around them: women wearing hijabs and boys who spend their money on hair gel. Here,
there’s a citadel and a palace and Roman ruins, but not enough foreigners to see them. Ghazala plans to visit them for the first time this week. He lost weight in Connecticut. His mother yells and pokes and grabs the beans, bread and lamb to dump on his plate. His father does a bad job at hiding his jealousy; he sits in the corner smoking and drinking tea, and rubs his belly, round like the moon. His father says he probably took drugs there. Nasty American drugs. His grandma hushes the room and says he can lose some more. His mother yells, but no 10
one notices anymore. His younger sister compares him to the crazy man by the juice store whose skin is so loose and bones so sharp, people call him the Skeleton.
The table’s transparent plastic skin is always sticky. He eats at the college’s cafeteria with his friends who ask him about American girls. He smirks. His friends bite their lips and exhale a light chuckle. He tells them he spoke to more girls then he ever had in his life. But did you sleep with them? No, he says. I’m a Muslim, he tells them. The lines on his arms assert themselves. Ghazala doesn’t tell them that for one night during a party at a classmate’s house, while sitting on floral bedsheets with shades of purple and pink, he touched the face, neck, hair, arms, waist, breasts of a girl who led him there, who
A black speck comes out of the sink’s drain. It flys to the right, over his hand, it rises and falls, unable to maintain a straight trajectory, until it finally exerts: a neat path is made into the bright and burning blue light. A quick zap releases a wisp of smoke. Ghazala looks back at the sink and finishes to wash his hands before prayer. 11
how to move down its streets. She watches the scene in front of her.
kissed him and almost convinced him there was nothing wrong. Why aren’t you registered for classes? Why haven’t you finished unpacking? Did you know Aunt Hind is having another baby girl? Have you heard? Esmie is engaged with a boy from Cairo–an engineer. And your cousin Adil got an 88 in his chemistry exam this week. Why don’t you play cards with us tonight? Since when do you run so much? In the soccer field at night and along the beach all the time. Are you sick? Did you play in soccer in America? Did you forget something? He tells them he won a scholarship. Ghazala tells his friends and his parents he’s going back to America in less than a month. A finely dressed older woman gets in the mini-bus after a protracted discussion with the driver; her face is long with unexpected stress. A girl and an older boy, wearing karate uniforms, follow her in. They all sit tightly together with the driver in the first row. Ghazala suspects she’s never had to ride a mini-bus alone. She’s in her city, but doesn’t know 12
celebration SYLVIA TOMAYKO-PETERS
She was not a morbid girl, but ritually wrote her obituary each spring, beginning at the age of eleven.
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LADY JANE LAUREN ALLEGREZZA an afternoon reading about Lady Jane Grey, beheaded contemplating seven days in my favorite cotton-voile dress preening little blackbird in floral playing common chords for rock songs after a cheap bus ride to Brooklyn to sit in your slender arched window smelling the metallic grime of concrete at seventy degrees and the tobacco of girls with luminous pale wolf-eyes sitting on the cracked slate stoop
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and I can’t stop seeing the smoke curl around their necks my sinister New Yorker cartoon I pin her portrait up above my bed and dream-hope she conquered Greenland instead 1 you tell me I’m pale as dandelion wisps under the harsh bleaching sunlight, translucent as the dove-white paint on the clapboards.
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and I smile slowly and my teeth show for a moment, a bit feline, luring the lark close enough to grab white-knuckled.
On Duct Tape SARAH BRANDON
I knew this kid in high school; his friends duct taped him to a pole. Once. Maybe that seems obvious, but when you think about it, they could have easily done it again. Strapping someone to a concrete column covered with pink and sea green pebbles that could graze holes in the back of your hands is not a quick thing. It takes finesse— the right amount of weedpusher’s calm and practice— to pull it off. Everyone was laughing like the duct tape, tearing the air as it was pulled apart like a cat being unwound from
its nap by the tail. This all-purpose, shrieking noise, speaking of rusted hinges, that’s the kind of laughing everyone was doing when they made this boy with the five o’clock shadow at 10 AM into a mast-head. He was still grinning when he jerked his metallic-bitten wrist and called to me from across the quad. So they really could have duct taped him there as many times as they liked.
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The Year of Hotels INDIA ENNENGA
It started as a joke. Lying around in the hotel bed with the shades pulled down. Lying out of the sun, with our heads on the edge. You cupped your hands around my breasts and curled your legs under mine. We lay like that, listening to leaves fall outside the window and faint cheers from a school soccer field, until the hallway light sifted in under the door. We lay like that until the streetlamps came on and the cheering had stopped and it was time for me to go home.
It started as a joke, you know, in the fall, when you pointed to the house on the corner and said, I like that. I could see the gnats rising out of the ground and you splayed your fingers in front of your face. It was a Rorschach sky. It was just a joke I thought and sat listening to you turn the newspaper inside out. I pretended to be reading, but I was only looking at the words. This whole thing is just a joke, I thought, a “fling� as 17
girls had said at school, talking about summers on the beach. In a few months, we will go our separate ways and no one will ever know, I thought, just a joke.
see each other every day. It was a joke still, the thought of marriage.We will not live in hotel rooms and we will not live with our parents either. By summer, I will be old enough to get married.
Just a joke, when I said, when we get married I want you to buy that house. Which one? That one there on the corner, the one that looks like a killer just moved out. You were always smiling when I found you in the hotel lobby. Looking a little out of place, but always smiling.
When we get married, it was safe to say that, we would not live in hotel rooms. Because then it was still sarcastic. Because then we still inhabited those hotel rooms, slipped them on like socks in the nights that faded towards winter and wandered their florescent halls without our shoes. We inhabited those rooms, playing punk and soul and then nothing at all.We drank vodka and whiskey, but never anything cheap.Your eyes were whiskey-colored in the light and your hair was whiskey-colored and the moon was losing it’s whiskey-color, turning white on the white snow.
When we get married, I want to buy a hotel. I want to live in that house and own a hotel. When we get married, we will drink whiskey every night. We will laugh whenever we like and we won’t have to lock the door and we won’t have to sleep on a cheap bed with our heads on the edge and I won’t have to go home. You cupped your hand around my shoulder and pulled me down the street.
In the winter it was a dare. It was a dare to see if we were joking.You put your hand on my stomach and said, when we get married, I will buy you that house on the corner. And then you said, will you marry me? And I laughed and said yes, because
In the beginning, when we talked about it, we never thought about what we said. When we get married, we will see each other every day. We will 18
otherwise you might have thought I was afraid.
went to the Salvation Army store. We went to the pawnshop. We went to the thrift store. We went to your father’s cabinet. We went to the toy stores and junk stores and even the expensive stores and then we went to a hotel. There were no rings for twenty dollars. That’s okay, I said, the girl isn’t supposed to see the ring until the guy asks her. And you said no, that’s not right, that’s something else.
It was a dare when I said, where’s the ring? And you said, I’ll have to buy one. It was just a dare when you pulled me across the street one day, hat held tight in my hands, a winter sweat on your arms, and pointed inside a jeweler’s window at a case of them. Which one you asked? And I looked at the gold circles and thought “ouroboros,” but said, which ever is the most expensive.
But it didn’t matter, because next time you surprised me. And you closed the room’s door and turned off the lights and got down on the carpet and said will you marry me? And you had a plastic ring and I laughed and said no, we’re too young to get married. And you said, you’re too young to get married. And slipped the ring on my finger as a joke. But later I took it off and put it back in your pocket.
And when we started planning, it was just to see how far the other one would go. We’ll get married in the summer, I said. This is who we’ll invite. This is who we will tell and this is who we won’t. This is what I’ll say and this is what you’ll wear. When we started planning things like this, I said to you, you have to propose. And you said, I know.
That spring we drank rum and you said I love you with your mouth still warm from the alcohol and a hum in your throat. I showed you my hands, palm up, and said you too.You draped your arms around my shoulders and pulled me over to dance with
And when you took me to the big streets downtown with their reflective glass instead of a hotel, I had to go along. We went shopping for a ring. We 19
you in the tiny space between the bed and the hotel window so that we mostly just shuffled our feet.
Walking back towards my neighborhood we passed through the warehouse district and you said, I want to get away from here. And I said, here? And you said no, and gestured at the whole city. Here. I want to move somewhere new this summer and we can rent a cheap place and live together and no one will have to know. We can dress up and change our names and no one will have to know. And I said I wonder what it would be like to live with you, wouldn’t you get bored of me? And you looked at the run-down apartments on the street and pointed to one on the corner and said, I like that one.
It was a dare to say I love you, to look up and see you staring at me with whiskey eyes, daring me to say it. And sometimes, in the dark with our heads on the edge, we both felt it, but we lay there silently not wanting to be the one to breathe it first. We stayed at The Sunshine Inn and The Old Corner and the motel on Eighth and Ferriday that spring. Until we were broke and tired and our backs ached from the different beds. And leaving The Old Corner you splayed your fingers out against the sun and said I love you, will you marry me? And since it was a joke I said, Yes, but we’ll have to kill our parents first. And you said, what if we were married and divorced and they never found out. And I didn’t have anything to say so I laughed and kissed your hand and said how will we file our taxes. And you said, separately. And I said, when we get married, I want to live together.
Walking back towards your neighborhood, it was less of a joke. We should tell our parents, you said. And I watched the cars roll by, thinking, who’s in there, and I said, we can’t tell our parents. And you said, when we are married, we might have to tell our parents. And I said, that would ruin the fun. The Sunshine Inn had white sheets for the summer and The Old Corner had blue and the motel had yellow or white that just looked yellow, it was hard 20
to tell. We drank gin and lime and you looked at me, sitting naked on the bed, and cupped your hand on my knee and said, I’ve never felt this way. And I said, neither have I, but I guess that doesn’t mean as much. And you said why? And I said, because I’ve only been with two boys before and you nodded. The room was hot and when you kissed me, I didn’t close my eyes. Instead I watched a drop of sweat on your forehead and then, behind you, the tiny dust motes floating near the window.
cold. And I said, its freezing in here, I have bad circulation. And you curled around me as if to protect me from the fake air and the rain that slotted across the blinds and said I love you. And when I didn’t respond you asked me why and I said, it feels hollow to say it second. If you say, ‘I love you too’ it sounds like you’re only doing it by compulsion, its not spontaneous. And you said, I guess you’re right. And I said, I love you, but it’s late and I have to go home. The summer was already pressing its ribs against the ground when I went out onto the porch and opened my door to you. My mother was baking berries in the kitchen and I could smell it all the way out on the porch. Hi, I said when I saw how you looked. I pushed you down a step, out of the line of the window. I talked fast to you saying something like ‘I had a dream about you the other night, I was waiting for you in a room at a hotel, it felt like The Sunshine Inn, but the room was too big for that and you kept calling and telling me you would come, but you didn’t. And I had this big tub full of urine that I had to carry around for a science experi-
Lying around in the hotel bed with the shades pulled down, I could hear the cars on the street. This time you whispered it in my ear. Hey, you said, will you marry me? And though your voice was laughing I could tell it was not a joke at all. I could tell that you only wanted it to sound that way. And so I said, Is that a dare? And tickled your stomach until you roared so loud that you couldn’t answer. In the motel the air conditioning was on. I pulled the sheets around my legs and you said wait, and climbed under them with me and said, you’re so 21
and into the street and the gnats and the summer night. And you smiled, even though you knew I wouldn’t come.
ment and I kept calling you. And,’ you looked at me a bit wild and pressed your thumb into the top of my hand then. Will you marry me? You asked. The streetlamps were humming on behind you and gnats appeared in the whiskey light. I looked at the white painted boards of my front porch. I could hear my mother slam the oven door and it made me nervous to think how close she was. You shouldn’t have come here, I said. You made a small noise with your mouth and stepped up onto the porch. I love you, you said, and kissed me. I get out early tomorrow, you said, I’ll meet you at the motel on Eighth street at four thirty. Your hands went into your pockets and your chin dropped a bit. Come when you can get away, you said, I’ll be waiting. And you stepped off the porch 22
Parentage SYLVIA TOMAYKO-PETERS
On the ferry home, Nathaniel met a young woman traveling with her parents. Though after an hour of chatting he found her pretty but quiet dull, he agreed to meet her the next day. He had fallen desperately for her parents.
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homolinguistic translation MIGUEL LLORENTE
OUTSIDE OF A SMALL CIRCLE OF FRIENDS by Phil Ochs Riding down the highway, yes, my back is getting stiff Thirteen cars are piled up, they’re hanging on a cliff. Maybe we should pull them back with our towing chain But we gotta move and we might get sued And it looks like it’s gonna rain And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest Anybody outside of a small circle of friends.
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Set of rules: to use Microsoft Word’s Synonym tool to change each separate word and achieve a new meaning in Ochs’ stanza. The subscripts next to the words indicate the number of times the word has been changed for a synonym.
UNSEEN ENEMIES Spree3 [the length of]2 the artery2, [all right]2 My patron5 is [being paid]2 uncompromisingly6. Thirteen chiefs6 are inflamed3 alert4, they’re killing1 on a void4. Perhaps2 we should expose4 them, support2 with our dragging1 Order2. But we gotta progress1 and we force1, attain2 responsibility4. And it glowers2 like it’s gonna [blow up]11 Then3 I’m convinced1 it wouldn’t discover7 anyone2 external1 of a thin5 aura3 of innocence13.
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good morning ELAINE HSIANG
there are no signs in this hospital. running men unlock emergency exits that always lead to the OR instead of sunlight. i have never felt so much the desire to build new worlds, with good news and good people. we will keep these tobacco fields a secret, we will operate on lungs to scrub out the smoke and tar and cancer, what is cancer? i’m not an addict. coffee rings blot out diagnoses, like
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sometimes i sleep on my side (carve out space for the body that isn’t there, use my tears to kiss the wet kisses that i am not). i miss the missing.
ink stamps over paper cutouts of queen mary and king george. three cents and forever. i used to lick the backs of forever, grooming the side profiles that we don’t see.
but you know, i woke up this morning to realize my breaths were fresh. cigarette ashes threaded themselves into the white towels i hung out to dry last night, but this air was smokeless.
the doctor stuck a gun up the seventy-year-old man’s ass and pulled the trigger. that, we don’t see.
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Zagreb Museum of Art MICHAEL GOODMAN
The concierge at the hotel told me that the Croatian Museum of Naïve Art was Zagreb’s pearl, and honestly, I could not care less. My reasons for being in Zagreb were so inscrutable in the first place that to frequent its museum would be an open-eyed tongue kiss of sorts, a spurious promise of intimacy betrayed by a dispassionate yen to keep moving. But the fact was, I wasn’t moving. No planes were moving. What was a layover was now a hangover from the uproarious reception of my second cousin’s wedding in Estonia. I had hours to dispose of and I figured I’d scope it out. The museum itself smelled vaguely of sawdust and citrus and the half-life decomposition of
sallow paper and compost. This is mainly what I took from the museum. There was a large latticed impasto polyptych of a hushing woman, castigating some churl of maybe ten, shuffling him off on his way. The kid’s face was mortified. There were fleshtones and whatnot, I don’t know, some phthalo blue, some van dyke brown swathes, okay. I don’t know how to speak about art. But I can impart that there were fleshtones. I’m ninety-eight percent sure the color scheme involved fleshtones. I assumed it was some sort of droll folk appropriation from some Croat 28
allegory, some fabulist pablum that I’d dismiss, and at that very musing I noticed a whimpering, a nasal exhalation, and the woman standing anterior to me was bawling at this portrait of sorts. Tears. Literal tears, smacking the hardwood. Absurd, I thought.
“In Croatia you can touch the paint.” “In America you can’t.” I’ve never heard that in Croatia you can touch the paint, and I believed it was a lie. But why would anyone lie about a custom? Why would anyone go to such lengths as to bawl in order to hornswoggle someone into believing a bogus custom? What would anyone have to gain from that? Furthermore, I had never heard anything in Croatia save for the concierge doling out the advice that the “Croatian Museum of Naïve Art is Zagreb’s pearl”. So, I took it at face value. In Croatia, you can touch the paint. Then sinewy dude with a righteous spongiform coiffure and a naval uniform walked up behind us. He kissed her nape, winced at me, and the two exchanged tongues. Back at her. Eyes back at me. All unintelligible. He turns to me. “Hey, I didn’t know she was your girl-“ I rehearsed in my head. He snapped at me. “Why you didn’t touch the paint?” I had no response. I didn’t touch the paint because I did not know it was permissible for me to touch the paint, and even if it were permissible for me to touch
“Tissue?” I withdrew a Kleenex I reserve for wiping doorknobs. This one was unused, though. “No,” she replied. “That would be too easy.” “You sure?” “Yes.You are thanked by me.” At this, I figured I’d inquire as to what so moved her about a painting I’d boiled down to a rakish street scene. Was I looking at it cockeyed? No. I wasn’t. “So, what’s going on in this painting?” “What’s going on? What’s going on?” “Yeah. What’s happening with it? What’s the crisis?” “You can’t see? I shouldn’t tell.” “I mean, I just don’t know. It looks—are you alright?” “I am right. I am right. I just… did you feel the paint?” “I don’t think that’s allowed.” “Where are you from?” “America.” 29
the paint, I didn’t have any desire to touch the paint. I didn’t have any desire to touch or be touched by anything. The two walked into the next room, arm in arm. With solitude on my side, I capitulated. I put my finger to the gesso. Still nothing.
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rood ELI PETZOLD
t d m sapling old oak procession the man clothed in camel skin 1 t and sapling to be read by the same person d, old oak and 1 to be read by the same person
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i. it’s getting to be too much now wearing heavier shoes so that i don’t fly away i just can’t take it anymore.
we both kind of smile but mostly continue wherever we were before. only now i just can’t it’s getting to be too. yesterday i was down in the woodshop. for a long time now i’ve wanted to make sandals or clogs with wood and string not to wear outside but just for around the house. i can’t remember the last time i sawed something. i couldn’t remember how to saw the wood. i came at it from above, i came at it from the side neither axis gave me anything but scratches in the wood and i tried dull saw after dull saw blaming the ancient tools for their inability to accomplish my goal. i was not sweating and i was near giving up playing carpenter when by accident the saw found the secret angle neither up-down, nor side-side but both directions at the same time.
i said hi to 2 ladies today one was walking her dog and i was walking down the street and i do the thing where i look at the dog because it gives me an excuse to avoid making eye contact with the passerby and sometimes i even say “hey doggy” “mister dog man” et cetera only not today 7:10 a.m. it’s too early for jokes i haven’t laughed yet today and i don’t imagine i have a laugh scheduled til after 10. so i look at the dog and then i get closer and i just can’t take it anymore it’s getting to be too much of course i look her in the eye and say “morning” and
i raise my hand forty-five degrees from the ground, forty-five degrees from the invisible line between my head and the sky. 32
have i talked about my ex-axis? my why axis?
on the brink of sometimes it seems like he just might i don’t even know.
i read somewhere some literature somewhere rubbish blown into the street then run over by cars gluing it firmly into the intersection of two major roads at the crosswalk: “through golf all things are possible” “through golf all things are possible.” how rood, i thought.
iii. While Phil and Stan are dropping away from the active work of the Bodhi Tree and have closed the store, a buyer for the business has emerged who has the resources, youth, and vision to move it forward. All the bookcases, showcases, furniture, pictures, exterior signs and the computer system have been put into storage. Lucia, the store cat, has gone to live with Neisha, the long-time office manager. The new store is planned to be a bit larger with expanded features and to include a café as well as an enhanced web site. They are currently looking for a building somewhere in the West Hollywood/Hollywood area. The new store is currently planned for the Spring of 2013.
ii. t: i called home yesterday d: dad is working on a novel. m: mom he said is in sacramento and stressed because she has a lot of projects but overall after all it’s all a good thing because it’s good business. d: i really can’t do organized religion anymore really just can’t…it’s getting to be too. sometimes i sit down and chant sacred names god krishna buddha. if your brother becomes a rabbi though, you know, if he’s doing something new with it, then…
iv. i can see people but they look like trees, walking [the forest of old oaks with one sapling in its midst a sacred procession passes through]
t: i worry about my dad. more and more he seems 33
song: vexilla regis prodeunt, fulget crucis mysterium, quo carne carnis conditor suspensus est patibulo.
the sapling: i was following the contours of an old oak’s roots twisting overlapping wrapping and found my own roots twisting overlapping wrapping and planting me here
the sapling:
old oak: i’m working on a novel. it’s set in missouri, hawaii and new jersey
time for me to wake up wake up it’s getting to be too i just i can’t i need to go along old oak: the euphrates stepped forth from the old.… sang the ancient king. a statesman spotted six readers at sea. they told me eyes’d get better with age
another old oak: went to the doctor for my physical the nurse told me i am five one and a half huh??? where did the other inch go? when did i lose it? does this mean that i am fatter than i thought i was? [the sacred procession passes through] song: confixa clavis viscera tendens manus, vestigia, redemptionis gratia hic immolata est hostia. 34
the sapling: get up get out and leave the wood because i am stuck here stuck here in the wilderness waiting for the voice of one crying out. into my hands i’ll drop the me.
t: did i wake you up? 1: no. t: what about the first time? 1: yes but i turned over and fell back asleep. vi. i got a really big splinter in my foot on saturday. like half an inch long. i couldn’t get it out by myself. my neighbor helped me pull it out. the puncture hurt for a couple days after, but a delicious sort of hurt - the pain of the absence of something invasive; pain of a healing wound. so i went to the woodshop to make a sandal to protect my feet. and i sawed at a slope, sweating. and then the hammer.
v. mark my words. [two are standing up to their waists in water. one is the man clothed in camel skin; the other is in prayer] 1: i love you. we’ll talk in the morning. i’m sorry i got so angry. i love you. [he dunks his head underwater] the man clothed in camel skin: the one to come after me. to untie the thong of his sandals…it’s getting to be too-, i just can’t[the procession arrives with t at the front. he enters the water] t: into my hands i drop the me 1: you are my beloved son t: i pocket-dialed you twice this morning and i am so sorry about that. 1: it’s okay. good to hear that you are up and around.
rood was i, a-raised; a-heaved i the mighty 35
viii. i am not atlas but i hold the universe and i struggle to balance it on my outstretched shoulders but it’s getting to be too much now i just can’t take it anymore
king, heofona Hlaford; vii. on the hill. the sapling:
can’t take what (?)
to bend me down i dared not. throughdrove they me with dark nails on me may those scars be seen.
if i hold it any longer i just might fly away under the weight of it fly away under the weight of it (?) yes this morning i said hi to 2 ladies, the second one was walking by me as i sat down to write and i saw her see me and she saw me see her and i looked down at first of course but then she crossed right in front of me looked me in the eyes and smiled and i said morning and i
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and i and i i am not in passion i am in love and i can’t help but
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Huck BEN FREEMAN
No such thing as empty air – Arched and twisted, Spinning like planets, Particles wriggling from fists Like doves from an iron cage. (A boy by a river, pants rolled, Butterfly net in his grubby grasp: Seeking it out, so it disappears, Scorched, ash-black As ants beneath a glass.)
38
the year of love and loss LILI ROSENKRANZ
It is by no means a beautiful skyline. New Haven is full of gunshots not stars. But it is like falling for the beaten shoes, the broken knob, the misshapen nose. To love an oddity, an ugly city, somehow seems moral. So I swooned over the buildings that were only a few stories and fearful of the sky. And I began to love the brick, or what I thought was brick. I could not tell, but I even fell for the falsity of each façade.
under a midnight sky, speckled in what are almost stars.The smoke grew soft and provoked lewd banter, touching. I could love the buildings that were plain with wide-hipped windows. And the balcony, I did not wish it were Shakespearean, lined with tendrils and a pale railing. I did not need to let my hair down to be scaled. I was already being saved, and was moon-struck, in love. To love an ugly city, it somehow seemed virtuous. To love the dirty train that brought me to this ugly city, it somehow seemed pure. In that moment I did not need Paris, the vine-
Perhaps, it’s because I had just kissed the boy I love from a balcony and it is easy to romanticize a city 39
yards, or the coast. Because I knew somewhere there was a place more tragic, a sadder scene. Somewhere a man was dying in a hospital room on the nineteenth floor. But I was high enough to see the city settle into shadow, far enough away to only fall in love, to be saved. And all the while it seemed moral.
traveled on a senatorial campaign to pursue politics. He told me from a phone to believe in government, that JFK was witty, and that I had beautiful eyelashes. It could have begun then, a love straddling the country, for I was counting clocks, adding and subtracting three hours, on edge anticipating calls from the Golden State.
It was my first weekend visiting Yale, my first time in his fraternity, and we sat strewn on his floor, with crossed legs and arms loosely falling to our hips. There were four of us: two girls and two boys. They were sucking on smoke, bones, and fingers hunched over boxes of chicken wings with hands redolent of dusted drug and barbeque sauce. I was eighteen and still cold from a balcony kiss. The others sat familiarly, with the knowledge of dim lighting and dirty floors, intimately practicing the rhythm of their illegality, a matter of tempo and symmetry. At the time my boyfriend was twenty-one and sat next to me, discussing speed limits, Italian roads, and taxes. There is Yale in his chin and I don’t remember when we fell in love but it could have been in August along the Pacific Coast Highway, when he
I could see the smoke make halos. The room was dark but I fell for the sensuality of obscurity. I watched my boyfriend’s chest rise and fall. All things natural swell and soften, like the illumination of the sun or a series of waves. I was attracted to that motion and how when he smiled it made me feel important, how he could have been Zephyrus with breathing so mighty it suited the Gods. So, it was easy to fall in love with the burnt breath, the blackened teeth, and the charred lung because all the while he held my hand in his. I do not know much about the presidents but perhaps he could be one. I do not know much about policy but he held the Johnnie Walker with the palms 40
He said there was romance in flight, that travel was a way to find faith in something new. I told him I am callow, inexperienced in adventure, and want an affair with Montana. That I want something western, something along a coast, and something fried. Not white with snow or fences, not the white walls of a hospital room, but scabby-kneed and freckled. I hated New York, the elevators, and the other sick men with the other sad daughters I would never know. When I started to cry about cancer and my fragility he soothed me with a lullaby, the one where Wisconsin would swallow us up and Alabama would take our voices and make them syrup-slow, worthy of waffles, side-road diners, and a Sunday breakfast table. He sang of Nebraskan coffee and street signs with peculiar names. He promised we would kiss in every state and he reminded me that my father is full of tubes but it is easy to turn around and head west. “All the settlers did it,” he said. “Picked up on a whim because they were hopeful. It’s where people go to find gold, Lil.” He could be my pioneer; we could chase the sun and never see how a day dies; I could find gold.
of a politician, those hands that project authority, that hold beer cans and breasts. And with a raised hand and a raised chin and drunkenly rhythmic rhetoric he declared, “The only way to keep your health is to drink what you don’t like and do what you’d rather not. Right, Lili?” I nodded and we drank to his knowledge of Mark Twain, to my first New Haven night, to his aspirations. One day there would be Boston, one day Washington, law school, and government. I had fallen for a man not a boy. I would follow and watch that boy become a man. I did not care that his lips grew sour from Whiskey; that the Scotch made him ugly. I still envisioned a podium, a speech, and a reserved smile for a woman in a crowd. That woman would be me. Brothers came and went. They smoked weed off constitutional law textbooks and mixed white drinks that smelled sweet like the hands of nursing mothers. They spoke of sport statistics and sex on washing machines, but all the while I thought about the road trip we would take because he promised it was okay to run away from pain. 41
It was 3 AM and we were alone. He was brushing his teeth while lying in bed and I was wondering what Betty Freidan would say if I told her I wanted marriage at eighteen. She would sigh, fold her hands, and propose empowerment not proposals.
••• He is lying in bed adjusting the headboard with the blue buttons. He wants to see out the window. “Isn’t it nice? Isn’t it nice calculating the algorithms of cars?” I begin to watch the way those cars collect along the FDR: frenetic, confined to a concrete vein. He takes pleasure in the precision of roads, in the fluidity of that freeway.
But I’d tell Betty Freidan that I want to learn Betty Crocker recipes, how to iron a man’s shirt, and sing a lullaby. I want a pale green kitchen island, my hair in a ballerina’s bun, and a husband who comes home at five. And I didn’t care about fraternity floors or the remnants of weed or the other boys lying around tired from sex. I did not need a ring, an aisle, or my father’s hand for that matter.
But I am sitting above the Hudson counting wheelchairs, watching broken lives and clocks. I do not care about speed limits or velocity or the lives of drivers. “I have always discerned the angles of acceleration, precosia. I love the ways in which things move.” I smile because he’s a man with a love for calculations, and I take his hand in that fragile way you take in and touch infants’ fingers. But these hands have no hope, no further trajectory. They do not move like the traffic nineteen floors below, like the cars he has been watching from a window for two months. They are wrapped in wires, constricted by cords, static with a slowed pulse.
Instead I would climb to the balcony, say I do, start a family, and dance. I was Rapunzel; I was Juliet; I was a bride with braids and my hands brushing back his hair. I did not care how ugly New Haven was full of sirens and shouts and almost stars. I was above the city’s crime, suspended over all the other students, far enough away from the sick man on the nineteenth floor. And all the while it seemed moral. 42
The nurse serves only what fits through a plastic tube and then a plastic bag. He is just a bag; his heart beat just a dying contour. But lines are supposed to go on forever and fathers are supposed to be proud fathers of brides. “I don’t remember where I put my physics books but don’t lose them.” He knows where they are: on the sixth shelf, sitting still intact with white labels that have not faded since 1968. But he knows it’s best to stay ambiguous when objects are just fleeting things, fast-moving things, far away.
what I was about to lose. I cry because the real view I live with is not the one where I am dancing for a moment under a New Haven night but rather the one where cars are indifferent and the buildings are not fearful of the sky but instead they eat away the stars, the clouds, and moon. And I cry because there is no morality when a man is dying. There is only brief finality on a nineteenth floor. All the while cars continue to accelerate.
My father is sleeping and then I see him standing in the doorframe. My boyfriend tries to come in but hesitates. He is afraid, too, and I cannot be saved. No prince, or pioneer, or president could sweep me away from the sterility, the sadness. Even if we traveled westward and ran away from pain to the Pacific Coast, I would not find gold; I would not forget. And no fraternity was far enough away and my ugly city was really an ugly escape, my balcony really a justification for isolation.Young love could not fill lost; marriage would not retrieve structure. And I cry for what I thought I had gained and for 43
too well MARTIN MENEFEE we will look again away off into a life lived too well to live up to itself O know this now: if you beckon it come it will name itself your name and ask
44
phantasm SYLVIA TOMAYKO-PETERS
From the ages of six to eight a panther lived in the darkness under my stairs. I ran and it never caught me.
I follow your back as you ride down Commercial Street, muscles slipping over the bones in shoulder blades.
No panther per say but the nape of your neck, the skin and hairs on the back of your arm - I should still be running.
I know you know I’m still watching your bike, your back 45
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