Dossier Fall 2009 by CMU Dossier

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OSSIER OSSIER Carnegie Mellonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Art and Literature Magazine Fall 2009

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Mellon’s ICarnegie E R FALL

Art and Literature Magazine

2009

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Cover Image

Staff

Crowned Crane Missy Dunaway

Literary Editor Alex Baran Managing Editor Destiny Ridguard Design Editor Randi Smith

Reading Staff Chloe Perkins Nicole Rappin Katie Dickson John Cooper

CONTENTS

P L E A S E Music Man Laurie Shapiro, 18 Dominique Lucille Davis, 6 That Pinch Francesca Fenzi, 19 Claro Flag T h e C e n t e n a r i a n ’ s Haydee Naula, 7 D a u g h t e r C o u r t n e y S u t t e r , 2 0 Dewy Belly J e l l y f i s h Shannon Azzato Stephens, 8 Shadow Marilu Orbay, 23 Laurie Shapiro, 9 K i t c h e n s Phantoms Sara Maria Harenchar, 24 Red Wine

Missy Dunaway,25 In Praise of the Hard-boiled Egg You Slipped Into my How We Live Now Francesca Fenzi, 25 Hand Before You ENCOUNTER with DEATH By aRIVER Left G a b r i e l R o u t h , 2 6 Becoming an Adult Ancient History H a y d e e N a u l a , 3 1 Send Letters The Weight Resting in the Body Caroline Kessler, 12 Missy Dunaway,34 Illusion Laurie Shapiro, 13 Survival of the Fittest Jee-Hoon Choi, 14

Nicolle Nacey, 16

a r

Letter From the Editors Thank you for picking up Dossier, Carnegie Mellon’s art and literary magazine. What you hold in your hands is the product of a great deal of work, both by the authors, artists, and photographers, as well as our dedicated staff.We would like to acknowledge those who have put forth their efforts to help make this issue a success. To the talented writers and artists who submitted, thank you. Your pieces inspired us. We are in awe of what you can create and communicate and this publication will continue to showcase your effort. We hope that you will all continue to pursue your work and submit again in the future. To our dedicated editorial and reading staff, you are amazing. Thank you for attending last minute meetings and taking the time to read those tremendous lit packets. We are grateful for your valuable opinions about all of our submissions. Even though you are behind the scenes, the best credit is seeing something you were a part of put together and published.

Alex

Baran

To our accommodating printers, thank you for being flexible while we made our final drafts and minute details.To the Tartan, we greatly appreciate you sharing your space and resources with us, and hope that we can continue to work well with each other. For those newly familiar to Dossier, it has been interesting learning all about how this magazine works, and we thank you for getting involved. We changed a few of the rules, and added a couple of our own, to make a magazine that permeates all departments, majors, Laurie Shapiro and levels of our campus, reaching out to the individual within the community. We look forward to the future of our publication, and we see a lot of bright things on the horizon. There are many ways in which Dossier can continue to expand and fulfill its mission, and many of those are in the works. We have big plans, and we have a great staff to help carry them out.

Destiny

Randi

Ridguard

Smith

So take a look at this copy of Dossier and the great work of fellow members of the campus community. We encourage you to get involved somehow and contribute to the magazine in your own way, as we are always looking for new talent.We hope you enjoy this installment and look out for the next issue coming in May.

Chakana Mentore, 17 4

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Dominique Lucille Davis

Music Man 6

Claro Flag Haydee Naula

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Belly

Shannon

y Azzato

Stephens

“When you see the moon in New York City, you better make a wish. It doesn’t come around that often.” - Homeless man on 14th St. Sitting in the dewy belly of Union Square, hiding from the shadows of park rangers and drug dealers who would bother us with citations and dreams of luminescence, I wish on the whole sky.

Shadow

If I could swallow the stars, they would taste of molten glass, searing as they cooled. I would like to drink the moon, siphoning its sweet milk down with a moon-milk bong. But I would have to weave that pipe dream through the tangled crystalline branches above, between the golden window-lights and outlines of lovers drawing their curtains, around the stars that pop

Laurie Shapiro

and sparkle, and eventually draw, with great breaths, the opal light out of the moon, dimming the wishes of the wishers who still believe in wishing. Instead, we pop open our beers, fizz and sizzle escaping into the toil of traffic and bicycle bells beyond the stained-glass slivers of dashing light between the trees. The crunching boot steps of a park ranger on fallen twig branches sends us,

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Ancient History

Phantoms

after Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s “Spices” Smoke When you find a man who smells of clove and cinnamon, you should know enough to run. Once, these spices were recipe for miracles but here in the city of bridges and lost objects, they are FDA-stamped poison. They’ll cling to your hair and eyelashes when he kisses you, sweeter than the tendrils of black from your neglected kitchen. Dye

me sprawled in your bed this morning. In Praise of the Too hot from the stove, it teeters between my fingertips. Shell, flecked Hard-boiled Egg brown: hairline cracks emerge when I tap You Slipped Into my the hard exterior against the bedpost. These ceramic crescents, like a baby’s fingernails, Hand Before You drop onto your pillow. The first taste: whiteness Left tinged with the window’s blue sunlight— smooth yolk slides easily out of its white other half. When I bite: a small, sucking sound and everything clings to the roof of my mouth with its newness. It smells like the rainwater pooling in the windowsill, tastes like your hands: faint soap and dewy earth. Usually I won’t, but this time I eat the whole thing because I trust the quiet crack of its exterior, the yolk’s roundness, and the way you let me rest here, breathing in your smell— 10

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I love the color of beets. Cleopatra used them to stain her lips that succulent red her lovers knew so well. Empires were built and devastated on whim of the vulgar root, made to look so sweet by the lips of a mischievous queen. My mother used to persuade me to eat them by sweeping one over her mouth carefully, letting magenta trickle into her smile.

Sweat In the beginning, Souix men men lived apart from Souix women. But the Wiseman was unsatisfied, and went to the Wisewoman for a solution. He arrived and was astounded by her hips, the brown-sugar of her skin. So he proposed what had yet to be tried. “Yes,” agreed the Wisepeople, face up at the desert sky. And thus pronounced sentence on the remainder of mankind.

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The Weight Resting in the Body Waking with a blood orange balanced on my hip, your mouth dipping down— * Yes, use your teeth, peel skin until everything is tinged with our color. Caroline Kessler

* Darkness backs away— new morning illuminates hairline veins in the

Illusion Laurie Shapiro

orange, the inside of your wrist. I lick the juice, rivulets of sweat. * All day, we drift through consciousness, grabbing hold of sheets, fruit, our hands.

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Survival of the Fittest

Jee-Hoon Choi 14

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I remember the first time I saw the blues. She wore autumn in her hair. Beautiful and narrow, the smile on her face almost an afterthought, as she cradled her hands like paper stars in a puddle. But her smile was not in her eyes; it wept at the edges, drooping onto her chest, past the shades of purple that crown her cheek. The fragile borders of her mouth upright like dams against the imperceptible sadness. She stepped lightly on the balls of her feet as if the weight of her troubles might snap the delicate ankles that carried her. Frail and flagrant, she swept past me on that street, where she existed in buoyant flight, lonely in her own catastrophe like lily pads swept up in the rocks.

B 16

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And I did. I watched that sadly-smiling girl with the paper stars fade into the context; a season in the wind, a tickle in the throat, petals swollen and torn against the riverbank. I remember the first time I saw the Blues …she broke my heart.

Chakana Mentore

I am a chiseled charade, a butterfly in ice. Plaster of Paris potential, please. Please fold me, and watch me crack. Touch me, and watch me bruise. Love me or love me, watch me go.

Her

Nicolle Nacey

A shiver cracked the precarious borders of her smile for a moment, a hidden crease forming at the corner of her eye; a lover’s angle; miserably invisible to most, but revealed to me as if in a twilight confession that said…

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She smells like cigarettes and salt. From her corner she pushes the air away with her silence, the fingers of her right hand bent into harsh syllables that cradle a murky syringe. At her feet her clothing form a moat of dully colored fabric and stains, while empty aspirin bottles roll across the floor, left there to remind her that she’s out of options. She looks so beautiful there, sitting on her heels as she runs the metal point through her fingers, her eyes seeming so eager to read the secrets written with that needle, punctuated with a pinch. Stories she reads every night before she goes to bed.

Laurie 18

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Shapiro

I can see it on her skin; the sweat in her eyes; the cracked lips like broken chapel bells, that ring out with, I’m sorrys; the pressure in her veins forming tributaries in her skin, red and green like Christmas. Now she readies her loaded pen, bites the frayed end of her torn bedsheet, binds her bicep in a sweaty knot, restricting the blood till it bulges against her flesh. I watch the pulse in her neck kicking, as she pushes the needle to her skin. The room around us expands, until she seems miles away, and all I can see are her teeth biting at her lip, as another story writes itself in her blood.

A good girl saying her prayers at the foot of her bed while tearing strips out of her bed sheets to fashion for herself makeshift tourniquets.

That Pinch

Francesca Fenzi DOSSIER ∙ SPRING 2009

T h e

C e n t e n a r i a n ’ s

! 20

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D a u g h t e r C o u r t n e y S u t t e r

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{ 22

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l y f i Marilu Orbay

} DOSSIER ∙ SPRING 2009

t c h e n Sara Maria Harenchar

My aunt holds the picture of her mother and my grandmother, her sister, recalls that when their father died they did not cry. The children planted strawberries that year and they tasted sweet, like a new summer, after they were rinsed in the kitchen sink.

I can see my great-grandmother, waiting in her tiny kitchen for his return, that man whose name is barely spoken now in the kitchens his daughters call their own. At the end of his day in the coal mine, he stumbled home, drunk, looking for his meal but bad habits make dinner disappear. As the children hid on the grassy hill, he struck his own demons and thrust words deep into my great-grandmother, in her kitchen, where his wrath dirtied the fresh white walls. * One day he wandered home drunk and hungry, but in her kitchen there was no more food. She was chopping weeds in her green garden. He came to her, and taking the sickle, he swung it through the air, slashing her skin. Warm blood pulsed from her leg into the dirt as her children watched from behind the weeds. She washed the blood clean in the kitchen sink as he slept in the bed she had made him.

Red Wine Missy Dunaway

There is more to a kitchen than cooking. The pieces of our lives are in this room and the walls hide a woman’s waiting dreams. * My mother’s blue-green eyes fix on pictures of female matriarchs who built this family, who stayed in the kitchens where children died. Hearts like iron, hands that planted green gardens, fingers that buried worries in the dough and made masterpieces in the kitchen, to pass to the next woman’s waiting hands.

My mother’s hands are older, so are mine, stories on the counter show a woman who once lived in the shelter of this house, who cried everything out at this table in her mother’s kitchen, holding two hands that worked to make a woman like herself, yet somehow changed, braver, who kept the words of her mother deep in her growing soul. * My kitchen will someday hold these stories; it will whisper them in my daughter’s ear. For now, I will keep sanctuary here in the kitchens of my family, and learn how to make a masterpiece of my own.

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Three stories up from a deli-meat vendor, we hide our dreams in our sock drawers forming vain hopes that a burglar won’t find them. We fasten our windows against wailing car horns and complaints from the neighbors, praying to God that the violinist downstairs would play just a bit softer. We make pets of the ants in the living room rug though I know they still harbor resentments. The Rid-X was your idea, but the guilt remains mine. Some far-off day we’ll escape from this city, leave the bridges and smokestacks and windowless rooms. I’ll buy a farmhouse, a golden retriever, and padlock our riches in a safe How by the stairs. You’ll cook us breakfast (fresh eggs, homemade waffles) while my ancient typewriter keeps the tempo of lives. We’ll forget about bikelocks and quarters and meters and street parking till sunrise and the couple next door. We’ll forget that you can hear them past midnight, rattling the walls and confirming our fears. We’ll forget about payments due sometime last August, and charge cards and curtain rods and Kosher sliced meat. We’ll grin when we spot an ant under the table, and I’ll think nothing of it when you slam down your feet.

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Live

Now

Francesca Fenzi

ENCOUNTER with DEATH By a

and spied her from the window, and upon seeing her he was taken with her, declaring her the most beautiful girl in his entire kingdom. So he paid her father the dowry of a hundred princesses, which was still far less than she was worth but all even the Emperor could afford, and she went to live with him in his palace and be his queen. But there were many wars to fight, and as the Emperor was a good ruler and a brave man he would not allow his subjects to risk their lives for a lord that would not fight alongside them, so he was often away at the front. Thus he had to leave Ilyssa alone in the palace save for their servants and the many nobles, most of whom were enamored of her. So Ilyssa spent the years waiting for the Emperor to return, rebuffing the advances of many powerful and vain men. With each refusal she found herself wondering more and more if this was all that men were, if this was what the Emperor was like. She grew to doubt the Emperor, both his love for her and hers for him. Then came a cold day in Autumn, three years after the Emperor picked her out in the city marketplace. A messenger arrived with tidings for the Queen: snow had fallen early at the front, trapping the Emperor’s forces in their positions. The

RIVER G a b r i e l

R o u t h

There was once a young woman. Her father and mother called her Ilyssa. She was as beautiful as the moon; not the craggy, barren orb that hangs in the night sky, but the real moon, the goddess Luna. She had hair so blonde it was almost white, and skin so soft it was almost silk, and eyes so green they made all other green things look dull by comparison. All these things are true. At first Ilyssa was merely the most beautiful girl in her village, but when she grew old enough to accompany her father to the city on market day, it became apparent that she was the most beautiful girl there as well. Then one day the Emperor, in his golden chariot, was passing through the city 26

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barbarians had descended upon them and done great slaughter, but the Emperor himself had covered the army’s retreat, buying the safety of many thousands of his men at the cost of his own life. His final words had been to tell Ilyssa that his sole regret was being parted from her for so long, that he had gone to the front himself to protect her first and his kingdom second, and that he wished her only happiness. It was more than Ilyssa could bear. Grief-stricken and horrified that she had ever doubted her lover’s devotion to her, she sent the messenger away and vowed to kill herself. Going to the servants’ quarters, she exchanged her queenly regalia for the simple woolen stola and linen tunic of a serf woman, took a hooded cloak to complete her disguise, and left the palace, head lowered. She walked into the forest, stepping over ground decorated in leaves the colors of Autumn. The trees swayed in the wind, and she felt they were all judging her. For a day and an hour she walked, unceasingly, until she reached the very center of the forest. There ran a river, rushing down from the mountains and going for many hundreds of leagues before reaching the ocean. Its water was so clear she could see the bottom more than a perch below, yet it ran rapidly enough that she knew she would surely be swept away once she jumped in. “You are not the first to come here and stare so into the river.”

Ilyssa started and looked about for the source of the voice, a quiet whisper that might have been mistaken for the rustle of a leaf. In a moment she found it.Beside the river, a young man rested beneath a tree. His hair was dark, his skin even paler than her own; his face was haughty, and his lips were curved into a small smile. He wore a toga picta as might a general or even the Emperor, embroidered with gold leaf, but instead of purple the garment was black. On his head he wore a laurel, but it was wilted and dead. His eyes were brown, but if Ilyssa looked at them she could see the sky behind them, and she knew this was not a man, but something else. “Do not worry,” the man continued in his quiet voice, a whisper that Ilyssa could somehow make out perfectly. He did not move from where he lay beneath the tree. “I bear you no ill will. Even if I did, there is the river; you could surely jump in before I could do you any affront.” “Please do not try to stop me,” Ilyssa said. “I have grievously wronged my love, my Emperor, whose only regret was that he had been parted from me.” “How have you done this?” the man asked.

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“I doubted him,” Ilyssa replied. “All the vain, predatory men at court desired me and made no secret of it, and I wondered if this reason alone was why the Emperor singled me out at the market three years ago and chose me to be his Queen. I grew convinced it must have been, that he was no different from the rest of them, and thereby began to doubt my own love for him as well.” By now she had begun to cry. She did not know who this creature was, or why she felt she could trust him, but she had remained silent for too long to suppress her grief any longer. “Hush,” the man said, rising to his feet and moving soundlessly to stand before her. “You bear a heavy burden, but it is one you have imposed upon yourself. Surely the Emperor would not want you to kill yourself over a misunderstanding.” “Perhaps not, but he is gone, and this is all I can do for him. Do not try to stop me. I will join him in the next life.” Ilyssa made to throw herself into the river, but the man caught her by the wrist. His hand was very cold. “Do not do this,” he said. “You have lost a true love, but I can offer you mine in its place.” “I do not want yours,” Ilyssa said. “The Emperor was a man. His time would have come no matter how good a ruler he was, and no matter how devoted a lover he was he would eventually have wavered. I am much more than a man, Ilyssa. My devotion to you will never waver and my time will never come. If you return my feelings you will stay forever at my side,

just as you are now: perfect, the desire of all the world. There is nobody else like me in all creation or beyond it.” As the man spoke, his eyes began to darken, until there remained nothing looked too closely. “What do you say to me?” “How do you know my name?” Ilyssa asked, trying to draw away from him but unable. “I can see it inscribed upon your very being, and as I see it I know you. I will protect you from every fear; you will never again hear the sound of marching feet in the hours before the dawn. I will fulfill your every desire; the passion you felt when you were with the Emperor will be magnified a hundredfold, a thousandfold, if you will lay with me.” The man’s eyes stared at her, through her. “I will lay low all the nations of the world, and make

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“ fI u

w i l l l f i l l y o u r e v e r y d e s i r e ;

t h e p a s s i o n y o u f e l t w h e n y o u w e r e w i t h t h e E m p o r e r w i l l b e m a g n i f i e d a h u n d r e d f o l d , a t h o u s a n d f o l d ,

them bow before you and kiss your feet, and you will be the Empress of it all. I will uproot the mountains and replant them if their shape displeases you; I will drain the seas to reveal the ancient cities of old so you may walk through them and marvel at their wonders. I will take the stars from the sky and string them on the breath of the earth and hang them about your neck, so they might complement your beauty. All this and more will I do for you, if you will but extend your love to me.” For a long time Ilyssa looked at the man with his terrible eyes; his haughty face was compressed into an expression of ardent longing. “If you will but give me one thing, I will extend my love to you,” she finally said. “Name it,” the man replied. “Die for me,” she said. The man released her wrist and backed away, knowing he could not give her what she asked. Ilyssa nodded and said, “I

i f y o u w i l l l a y w i t h m e .

”

know who you are, Thanatos, and why you cannot do this. Furthermore, I know that if you truly cared about my happiness as did my husband, you would restore him to me, not promise me everything and anything else in exchange for my love.” A slow smile crept across the face of Death, and his eyes returned to those of a human being and he knelt before Ilyssa. “Truly, you are beyond compare,” he said. “You have proven yourself, Ilyssa. You are not perfect, but then you would not be so precious if you were.” “Does this mean you will return my husband to me?” Ilyssa asked.

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“I am but a psychopomp, one who ensures that mortals cross over to the other side,” Death said. “I cannot go there myself. That is the way of things, and any tale that would persuade you otherwise is mere fancy. But here is the truth of why I approached you. I spoke with your Emperor as he crossed over, as I speak with everyone, and he told me of his love for you and his regrets. I decided to bring you a boon, since he spoke so highly of you, but first I had to know he was not just a fool.” “And what would this boon be?” Ilyssa asked. “Advice. Your Emperor would not want you to end your own life. He would want you to go out, and seek the companionship and love of new men, and live your life without regret or undue attachment to his memory.” “That is good advice, and I thank you for it,” Ilyssa said. “It is sound, and you speak the truth. He would want only my happiness.” She raised Death up from where he knelt and kissed him on each of his cold cheeks. “That, and not any misplaced guilt, is why I do this now.” And she cast herself into the river. Death watched the river sweep her away, and a moment later he felt her pass into his realm as she dashed her head upon a rock. He saw her reflection outpace her body, racing along the surface of the river and then the ocean to meet her Emperor in the snowy hills to the south. And Death collapsed beneath the tree beside the river and wept, because

he had loved her as the Emperor had, and there was no happiness or comfort to be found on the other side. She had been the best of all humanity, of all men and women, and now she was gone. In his grief he struck the river for taking her, but the ripples from the blow were subsumed in the current, and eventually disappeared.

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Becoming an Adult H a y d e e

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N a u l a

B B

IOGRAPHIES IOGRAPHIES

Jee-Hoon Choi I am currently an undergraduate Junior Bachelor of Fine Art student. I was born in Queens, NY. My sculptures have been exhibited in front of Carnegie Mellon’s business school as well as PNC Bank in Shadyside. The genre of my work is dark and mystical often involving contemporary commentaries on disaster or violence.

Dominique Lucille Davis California bred me. Poetry fed me.

Haydee Naula Haydee Naula_ I am of a mixed background and I happen to be involved in art. My status is of a student, which I hope to maintain throughout my life. Francesca is currently a BHA student studying Fine Art and Creative Writing. She enjoys long walks on the beach, Pablo Neruda’s poetry, and is looking forward to the day that she can own a dog.

G a b r i e l

R o u t h

Gabriel Routh was born in Fresno, California, in 1989. He has no idea how he was conceived, so he likes to think it was atop Mount Everest during a fey lightning storm. He enjoys reading, writing, video games, and writing. Twice

Missy Dunaway Missy Dunaway is a senior in the Bachelors in Humanities and Arts program, concentrating in painting and art history.

Sara Maria Harenchar Sara Maria Harenchar is a first semester MAPW graduate student. She loves the Beatles, the Golden Girls, acapella, volunteering, and good coffee.

Laurie Shapiro sells her aart under the name “Sax Arba” at http:// www.fineartamerica.com/profiles/laurie-shapiro.html

Shannon

Azzato

Shannon Azzato Stephens enjoys a good bagel.

C o u r t n e y Caroline Kessler, hailing from the Old Line State, is fluent in English & sarcasm. She’s majoring in Pretentiousness, with minors in Mockery & Humility. 32

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Stephens

S u t t e r

Courtney Sutter is a senior Linguistics and Professional Writing double major with a Hispanic Studies minor. She is fascinated by sharks and sloths and is an avid tea-drinker.

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Send Letters Missy Dunaway

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Dossier Fall 2009 is a publication and creation of The Tartan, Carnegie Mellonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s student newspaper since 1906.

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