The Comma Spring 2015 Issue 7

COURTESY OF MEREDITH SUMMERS

8

The Comma

March 26, 2015 THE OBSERVER

www.fordhamobserver.com

A Postcard to the City Where We Fell in Love

Self-Expression

By MEREDITH SUMMERS

By KERRY MCCABE

Darling, Mon doudou, You, I moved. I thought I would be easier to redefine myself in a city where I didn’t have someone else to define me.

As the locals would say, je vole de mes propres ailes. The weather is lovely. I spend all day eating baguettes and frolicking on nude beaches. Sometimes it’s almost like I don’t think of you constantly. I’m thinking of getting a poodle.

Curled up next to the furnace in the corner This apartment’s too big for just one unit The heat doesn’t circulate from the front to the back Crumpled on the couch to avoid confrontation This apartment’s too small for two whole people I read your secret journal from the front to the back “Darling, don’t take things so personally,” you say But I am a person I don’t know how else to take it

Love, Ce ne sont pas vos oignons, Me

City Stars

By ERIKA ORTIZ

It troubles a lot of people when they can’t see the stars. That’s what’s so disconcerting about cities. You can cast your eyes overhead at night, searching, but all you see are sleek metal buildings against a luminescent gray background. These pillars that embody modern living reach for a sky that can never be the inky black it is in other places, striving to find the stars they drove out of town because the city wasn’t big enough for the both of them.

It troubles a lot of people when they can’t see the stars. I think they serve to ground people, to remind them that the world is so big and yet so small at the same time. Kids wish on stars because they seem magical, as if they possess some otherworldly power.

Others look to the stars for guidance when they’re lost, physically or otherwise. The stars offer the comfort of proving that you are both incredibly important and not important at all.

I was never troubled when I couldn’t see the stars.

When I was a kid, I used to wish on them like every-

body else, but I got tired of wishing and wishing with no result. Instead of grounding me, stars only fed my existential crises. The stars tied me to a small town where I had felt too much pain to live comfortably.

Instead of the celestial bodies that embodied false hope, I longed for the shine of city lights; to me, city lights were far more appealing.

I dreamt of becoming one of them. I wanted to be a city light. I wanted to twinkle and glow with the multitude of others just like me, creating something real and beautiful and otherworldly in its own right.

These manmade stars were full of promise, but unlike the stars of my childhood, these stars promised something attainable. They were both incredible and real. I could nestle myself among them. I could actually become one of them.

It troubles a lot of people when they can’t see the stars. But maybe one day, if you’re lucky, you’ll get to be one yourself.

MARIA KOVOROS/THE OBSERVER

(w)hole

By HANNA TADEVICH

She was born into the world gasping for air and in that first inhalation gathered so much breath it expanded her heart and left it gaping, in want of being filled. Whatever she saw, whatever she touched; it seeped into her veins and became her lifeblood. Never did she collect a stamp or a coin, but she greedily stockpiled handfuls of dirt and images of faces, the mingling of voices and words that felt like hers.

One day in between collecting choir chords and nighttime sighs, she discovered she could collect friendship.

She was jealous with the desire to own it all, to gather everything that one person could share; in exchange she would give away all the creaky floor boards and rustling leaves, the bubble wrap and clingy seaweed, her mother’s paintbrush and her father’s voice. This was power; this was a treaty of trade; this meant their collections would be twice as worthy.

She and her friend profited from the pact for years. Now they each owned a great many more memories. Every puddle splash and broken heart was felt double; every chocolate tasted twice. Other, smaller treaties were made with other, less important friends; but they were still honored and valued, and sometimes brought into the collection a risky dare or exhilarating brush of lips or the splintering of a broken collarbone.

Eventually her friend broke the agreement for a new ally. She knew she’d lose everything. She had given away the voices and words, the dirt and the ocean, the paintbrush and maybe the mother. Even the shared collection – the bare feet slapping concrete and the roughness of the roof tiles on their thighs – her friend had taken it away, was giving it to someone new.

For a while, she grew very thin. New people told her she was beautiful but she didn’t have the heart to collect their voices, much less their words; so she felt uglier and uglier instead. She tried to pretend she was an island. A tree. A rock. Something that could stand alone. But it wasn’t working; the thoughts slid away from what used to be a steel trap mind.

She floated, tripped through the air with nothing tying her to the earth or the sky; until finally she smacked into an old oak tree. He took one look at her and said, “Your soul is beautiful but your body has shrunken so that the heart grows smaller every day. Here, let me show you what food the earth has when you plant yourself here.” A branch reached tenderly for the withered girl’s hand, and too tired to resist, she let him pull her feet to the ground.

“Take off your shoes,” said the oak tree. She did. “Now grab some dirt with your toes,” said the oak tree. She did. And suddenly her breath was caught in her throat as handfuls of dirt and images of faces came flooding back to her body. She closed her eyes and held the oak tree’s hand tightly, letting his voice be the one that reminded her of others. The voices crept up from her toes to her ankles and calves, sending a shivering up her thighs and into her pelvis. They turned to words and suddenly letters and whispers and even whole chapters came pushing their way into her heart.

She opened her eyes. “Did you find your friend’s voice yet?” asked the oak tree. “Did you find the puddle splashes and broken hearts? The calluses from the concrete or the sunburned thighs?” The girl shook her head. “No,” she whispered hoarsely, “those ones didn’t come back.” The oak tree hummed lowly, “Mmmm they will though. Go find the whipping winds and the searing sun, the gaze of new eyes and brush of new lips. Soon you’ll have learned that the faces, the voices, the sounds, and the senses… they are yours forever. Your heart is a house built on love and it’s got rubber walls.”

The girl stayed with the oak tree for months, confused by his words but collecting them anyway, allowing her roots to feed her emaciated frame until it was strong and bold once again. Then she set out in the new house she had built for herself: it was a heart house full of all the people who gave her home, even the ones who had left long ago… she stored their ghosts there in hope that she would meet their spirits in someone new.

The 13th Mourner at a Funeral

By PATRICK J. SKEA

Nibbling dry bread Loves a woman who is dead Springs through a trapdoor Points a long accusing finger [Bloom meeting his maker; maybe] Notorious fireraiser; dog Of a Christian Shoot him! So much for Walking the lonely canyon What self-involved enigma, not Comprehending…

Yes, I saw him Where has he disappeared to?

Not a sign; Silly superstition about thirteen…

Passed swiftly and unscathed Prize tidbit story Death; Poor Paddy Where’d he disappear to?

Thank you.

How grand are we this morning!

COURTESY OF MEREDITH SUMMERS

www.fordhamobserver.com

THE OBSERVER March 26, 2015

“Where are we?” she said. She was standing in line for the bathroom. She spoke no French. She prayed nobody would speak to her in the toilets.

By SAMANTHA NORMAN

New York you look murky with chill but you’re tense, dense, and humid Disease isn’t stupid Though those emerald city’s rose-tinted lenses the sun doesn’t shine and the clouds stitch the corners of a blanket to each end of the horizon and the tent is a dull carnal hunter green, a green that’s itching, wishing to rot New York, now, you’re slacking They told you that you’re visited invaded and entered to be loved but it doesn’t feel

New York your street signs are spelled sideways but everything’s rising and not without your leaky heaving sigh and a puffed-up self-impression that floats like a plastic ghost between the tires and the traffic lines You and I we take turns holding tongues and we stagger our silences New York, you woke up next to me and I was too polite to kiss your shoulder through the scaffolding but your contorted spine cried for caress like an aching bloom stretches for sunlight New York my mouth can’t form the words to tell you that I’m angry New York I want to love you back New York, cry harder.

Empty, New York, empty Autumn is blushing across the Hudson

We were at a college party, or a school dance, we couldn’t tell. We were far from our château. We were further from home.

The metro was closed and a taxi would cost €20. We had spent what we had on three bottles of wine and baguettes for dinner.

“It is the best party in Paris tonight,” a man said on the train car earlier that night. We didn’t mean to speak to him.

He was looking at us because we were “foreign” and we were looking at him because he was “foreign.” We took the address from him but continued on the train. We told him we’d be there later. We got off and wandered to the American bar where we downed Amstel Lights. We danced with older ladies there; their arms jiggled as they did their two-step to “Single Ladies.” One lady’s bifocals fell off her face and to the floor.

“I can’t see without them,” she said.

Their husbands looked on. We couldn’t tell if they were angry that we were dancing with their wives or pleased that they didn’t have to do it themselves. We left, though.

We were there. We were there, but we had lost some of our crew along the way, to sleepiness, to drunkenness, to boredom, to the allure of a night alone in Paris or to a night accompanied in Paris. We had lost some members.

The room smelt of sweat and movement. It could’ve been trapped in the spongy material of the bench presses. It probably wasn’t.

Bodies slammed together, drawn magnetically, on the dance floor, swelling with the beat of the decidedly-not French music. Americana, in the worst sense, pervaded the gymnasium. It had a quick pace and sounded as if Pan were giggling. ¬Was it imperialism echoing through the tall ceilings or was it love?

A man ripped off his shirt. Several followed. They danced together. They danced away from me.

I left. I left and I took my dignity with me. Or I left my dignity there. But I took my Heineken with me. The next morning, over tea and bread, a friend listed the many notable and important people who had attended that school in the past.

After Midnight in Paris

New York I’m angry, because you got quiet, too and I am not silent and my friends back home they know that but it sits, this island state, in a muted sea They know my quiet isn’t diagnosed by passionlessness but a line of elmer’s glue asphyxiates a heart that thickens thought and keeps the roots from warming until its trunk, its arteries get big New York we’re bloated

like love it feels like necrophilic doting with your object as a mirror but you still yes you still want to prove it’s possible to fall in love New York, you’re beautiful when you smile.

Your traffic light eyes kill me twice through the fog

9

Three holes marked the wall next to where I stood standing, waiting for her.

I could see pipes and concrete and the strobe light shined in the darkest parts of the holes. Gym equipment had been cleared out of the basketball court and pushed against the wall. In their place were the carcasses of consumed champagne bottles. I counted fifty-three corks before me. I couldn’t count the kegs.

By IAN MCKENNA

The New Yorker

New York you woke up in a film Covered in cellophane and ash like an untouched scratch-off lotto ticket, pillowcasing crimson gold and a prize you’re too afraid to win

The Comma

I sipped my tea and nodded. He was never quiet and I needed quiet.

I wondered if Sartre had ever seen a man, topless and grinding, in the gym.

I wondered if it had shaken him. I wondered if he had recovered. I wondered if that’s why he wrote “Nausea.”

COURTESY OF IAN MCKENNA

hip s n o i n a Comp L

By KAY

GELO A D’AN

It wasn’t that James had never heard of therapy dogs for PTSD. It was just that he didn’t want one. He didn’t need a guard dog. His therapist liked to talk about how recovering from PTSD is a process, and how a dog could help him through that process as well as the medication he refused to take or the group therapy sessions run by Veteran’s Affairs that he refused to go to. James had been adamantly against getting a therapy dog, but he could admit he had always wanted a dog growing up. And his therapist said he needed companionship. He’d argued that Steve was companionship, but she’d only countered that hiding in his apartment with his boyfriend wasn’t healthy. A dog would give him a reason to go outside, which considering the fact that he’d been forced to admit the only time he left the apartment was for his therapy sessions, was something sorely needed. And she wasn’t exactly wrong about him hiding in his apartment with his boyfriend, so they’d compromised— this weekend, James and Steve were going to the nearest shelter to adopt a dog for their apartment. Steve really wanted a Golden Retriever. James didn’t know what he wanted, as long as it didn’t bark like a Pomeranian.

He vaguely remembers that their landlady at their old apartment used to have a Pomeranian, and he never wants to hear that annoying yipping sound ever again.

He expects the shelter to be loud. It doesn’t make it easier to walk in, even linked arm-in-arm with Steve. It’s not exactly the wrong sort of loud of construction sites or busy streets where the sudden noises echo like gunshots, but he can’t quite shake the buzzing in his ears when he hears the cacophony of barks. Steve squeezes his wrist to reassure him, and James tries to remember to take slow, deep breaths, the way his therapist taught him.

Breathe in four, hold it four, breathe out four, breathe normally four.

Repeat.

After he goes through this cycle a few times, his legs following Steve automatically, they’ve reached the front desk and the barking has become mostly background noise. He ignores the conversation Steve has with the receptionist in favor of looking around. Before the PTSD, James was the charmer, but since its onset Steve has taken over. There are several pens set up in the front for dogs that play well with others, and they seem to be separated by size. They’re all puppies, however. He’s not sure he wants a puppy. He knows from his research that older dogs are much less likely to be adopted, and don’t they deserve a home too? But his therapist wants him to have a secure bond with the dog, which comes easier with puppies.

Not that he expects anything about this to be easy.

While he’s staring at a fluffy golden dog chewing on another one’s ear,

Steve nudges him. “C’mon, the older ones are in the back.” James’s not entirely sure he does want an older one, but he wants to at least see, so he nods and follows.

The back isn’t as open as that front room. The shelter needs to make use of what space is available as much as anyone else in New York—more, probably—and cages line the walls. Steve immediately makes friends with a German Shepherd near the front; the receptionist says his name is Duke and he walks with a limp. Steve turns around to beam at James, and while Duke does sound very sweet, James isn’t looking. He’s staring at the end of the hall where a pair of ears is sticking out from behind a stack of food bags. Steve follows his gaze and can’t hold back a giggle of all things, and the girl guiding them immediately turns around to see what they’re looking at. Her face drops.

“Anderson!” She dashes towards the ears, which retreat, but in seconds there’s a furry little creature in her arms, which she brings back to the pair. The dog is still chewing on its prize, crunching happily as though it hadn’t just been scolded. She sighed and turned it to face them. “This is Anderson Pooper. His owner dropped him off awhile ago, said he couldn’t be trained. At first we thought it was just the owner, but he’s a wily little rascal. I’ll just go put him away.”

“Can I hold him?” The words are out of James’s mouth before he realizes he’s saying them, the first words he’s spoken to anyone besides Steve or his therapist in months, but he’s too embarrassed to take them back afterwards. And he kind of really wants to hold the dog. It has stubby little legs and huge ears—Corgi, his mind supplies—and it just looks so happy despite being stuck in this dismal place, and he wants to hold the dog. It feels strange to want something so strongly after months of feeling through a fog. He can just barely see Steve raising an eyebrow at him in his peripheral vision, but he ignores it. Somehow it’s even easier to ignore the strange look the receptionist is giving him even though she’s the one standing in front of him, because she’s still handing Anderson over to him, and that’s enough. Anderson Pooper—what a name. If the owner hadn’t been the one who’d dumped him here, he’d want to meet the guy who came up with that pun.

Anderson settles into James’s arms happily, rubbing his snout against the leather jacket he was wearing, and something in his chest feels lighter than it did walking in. And even though James hadn’t known what he wanted, hadn’t even known if he really wanted a dog, the decision wells up in him the same way his words had when he asked for Anderson in the first place. He was going home with a dog that day, and that dog’s name was Anderson Pooper.

JESS LUSZCZYK/THE OBSERVER

12

The Comma

March 26, 2015 THE OBSERVER

ns o y a r C ect Imperf By

SHEW BETH ELIZA

Harper disappears the moment I ask for a toothbrush. I hear her speaking to her mother in the master bedroom, their voices muffled by the door. She sounds upset, but I didn’t know I was sleeping over; it’s not my fault that I don’t have toiletries. If Harper really didn’t want to lend me anything, the she should have told me to call my parents and get a ride home. I put on my borrowed pajamas, and then I sit on Harper’s bed while I wait for her to bring the toothbursh. Harper’s room, like the rest of her house, belongs in a magazine: pale blue walls, floaty drapes, and warm Christmas lights. I’ve always thought it too splendid to live in.

When the toothbrush arrives, it’s introduced by Harper’s mom, not harper.

“Here you are,” Mrs. Dabney says, and she hands me the box.

“I just bought this yesterday.”

I don’t know how to reply. After my discussion with Harper, every simple exchange feels like a test. Am I a good guest or a bad one? A worthy friend or a loser?

“Thanks,” I fumble, and retreat into the bathroom. I realize as I’m brushing my teeth that I forgot to make eye contact.

When I return, Harper is on the floor in a sleeping bag, her back to the doorway.

“You can have my bed, “ she says without preamble. I hesitate, but she doesn’t turn over, so I turn off the light and crawl into Harper’s bed. We lie there in daunting silence.

“Thanks for letting me sleep over,” I venture finally. It’s already one-thirty in the morning.

“No problem,” Harper says, but—I must be imagining it—the words sound merely civil.

“I’m glad we got to talk,” I add. Harper must feel better now, too. My mom always says that a good discussion can save a marriage, so surely a three-hour talk was enough to save a middleschool friendship?

“Yeah.”

I don’t know what to make of Harper’s reticence. Maybe she’s tired.

www.fordhamobserver.com

“Hey Miranda?” Harper asks. I turn and squint at her in the dark.

“Yeah?”

“You know how you said that Ava’s selfish?”

I sigh into Harper’s pillow, because I’m really sick of talking about Ava. I’m not her friend anymore, and that’s fine, because I never liked her that much anyways. I just don’t understand why Harper keeps bringing her up.

“Yeah, I do. Why?” “Well, remember when you and I were desk buddies in first grade?”

“Yes...?”

“There was a day when they passed out crayon boxes,” Harper says, and I really wish she’d lower her voice; it feels like a moment for whispers. “Half of your crayons were broken, but mine were all new. You said that we should switch boxes, because it was better to appreciate a broken thing than a whole thing. But—and here’s what I don’t understand—if it was better to have the broken box, then why did you try to take mine?”

I stare at Harper in the dark. My memory feels like a murky video with the audio cut out. This is the problem with “lifelong friends,” I think angrily, they remember all the things they shouldn’t.

“That was ages ago,” I say defensively. “Ava’s doing the same thing, it’s just with friends instead of crayons this time. She’s trying to keep you all to herself.”

Harper doesn’t reply. We’re back to the same place we were three hours ago, and I feel frustration lodge in my throat like some kind of hairball. I wonder if this is what it feels like when mom and dad try to sleep after an argument.

But I’ve always thought that waking up means a new start: the argument is over, the relationships remain. I close my eyes and try to envision the next morning, a morning when Harper will call Ava and confess that she only wants to be friends with me. I dream of pink whales instead, and when Harper says good-bye to me the next morning, it sounds unnervingly final.

PAULA MADERO/THE OBSERVER

The Pharaoh’s Request Nameless

By AREEG ABDELHAMID

I don’t know if I should say that you are gone, my dear or about to find an end.

And when he called, I swore that I’d leave or believe but he kept calling since he remembered you, and remembered your sin.

So next time, remind me to tell him you’re dead.

By VALERIA SHATILOVA

Sonnet

STE CEBO YU OMEZ-A G IA IL C

By CE

Take me, little death, in your sweet embrace, Tell Hypnos it’s his time to carry me From the lit plains of sunflower faces And lay me to rest under moon lilies.

Shower me with your kiss – I’ll drink it all But parched will start dreaming. Let us be shy, Your blush will meet mine, caress, we will fall As others have in life’s greatest lie – But we, we will lie otherwise, ourselves As one, in two, evermore intimate.

Under the lightless pillows we must delve, Hide me, little death, for the sun is late.

I have no memory, but still my mind, Insists on dreaming of your skin on mine.

The sun heavily rises in the sky Your painting hangs undone on the wall The portrait of an unknown woman Lost to history She sat for you Long hours filled with longing The paint is wet on her neck Her dress falling A finite love Shallow, like the creek where she belongs She gazes beyond me Unsatisfied Her eyes lack shadows Why did you love her?

The black velvet that I throw upon her It hangs heavily with sorrow She sleeps peacefully somewhere A broken soul And I sigh with defeat She sat for you, not I You chased me away into the silent night While the young Princess has it all And the young Knight wanders the world’s edge But he left her unfinished And hanging on the wall

MARIA KOVOROS/THE OBSERVER

www.fordhamobserver.com

I remembered the wind in the now-rotted trees.

I remembered the shadows cast around me like I was in some run down haunted house. I remembered the puddle of standing water that I would always manage to step in, and yet I made the same mistake again. I smiled as I walked deeper into the woods in search of the thing I still couldn’t explain: the footprint.

This is where I grew up. When I was younger, I climbed past my flimsy chain link fence and went into the woods. They were greener than I think they are now. I ran, walked, discovered, played knights and dragons. Typical childhood fare. Then I found the real dragon. I fell into a footprint of something big, massive. I remember thinking that nothing could be that big wandering around some little Appalachian suburbs’ backwoods. Trying to rationalize it when I was younger, I thought there could be no place this monster in the woods could hide, except for maybe the old factory in the clearing. It was only a few steps away, it’d be easy to check right?

With the sheet metal rusted away, the windows shattered, and where there should have been a garage door was just a gaping maw of darkness, I didn’t feel up to task at that time. The time when I was younger.

I was not young anymore, but not old as I would like. I felt the scar on the base of my neck, stepping through the fallen dead branches, I remem-

THE OBSERVER March 26, 2015

The Comma

13

us r au s o n n a r Ty

bered the new dragon now. I’m home now because of him. He’s real now.

But I had to meet this old dragon, I had to know if he was there as I was sure he was when I was younger. The footprint was gone, the cliff that housed it was strip mined for new land. There was no place I felt like was my home here anymore.

Except for that factory, and as I reached the clearing: the last part remained.

By

ION NN A M OR NN CO

One last mystery to be solved. One last game of knights and dragons. I held my breath and walked into the darkness.

I opened my eyes, and saw nothing. Then I made out the shapes of the darkness, then the shapes of the things in the darkness. Old car parts, some debris, a old scaffold that had long given out. I felt my scar again, and thought of the new dragon.

I took a picture of the old factory, the one last mystery of my life. I walked out in disappointment only to have it further compounded by my tripping on the way out.

It was a footprint and it was fresh. And as I turned back, I heard a guttural roar of either the roof of the old unsafe factory finally giving way or something else entirely. I ran free and I did not look back. I knew it.

And as I ran back through the forest in fear of the old dragon reborn, I felt alive.

COURTESY OF MEREDITH SUMMERS

Millennial Romance

By MADELINE LAMBERT

I look like such an idiot. Do not wear sunglasses in Whole Foods at night; people will either assume you are blind or trying to steal groceries. I am obviously not blind. I will confess, I did steal a tube of lipstick from CVS on two separate occasions during my time as an adolescent still clinging to the false hope that I might perhaps be a wild child. But now the thought of stealing just makes me sweaty. I also realized that two things of lipstick is basically all the lipstick you need.

Have too many colors and you’ll begin to look like a kleptomaniac. People don’t really invite you over if they think you are a compulsive thief.

I do not usually frequent Whole Foods because it is crowded, the aisles are organized in a stupid way, and the people who shop here tend to be annoying. You can be a vegan pediatrician and still be an asshole. But of course I am not the best judge of character. I used to make up my second grade journal entries. Despite what Mrs. Woods believes, my mother never birthed baby girl triplets and I never won a blue ribbon in horseback riding. In this constant disappointment that is reality, I possess only brothers and am afraid of horses.

There is solid reasoning behind my shades-inside look. First, my parents gave me an expensive pair last Christmas which I have been trying to wear more often. I am extremely fond of eyewear but have perfect vision and also dislike the sun and going outside. As a little girl I lied my way into glasses. The eye exam is perhaps the easiest of the medical tests to fake; you simply make up letters. I had a very chic pair of pink readers, which I wore low on my nose and peered over for a full year and a half before my parents were made aware of my flawless eyesight. I am nothing if not committed. I only really lie in the face of extreme boredom or any degree of uncomfortableness. This is perhaps the reason why I have declared myself a college senior named Ivy studying art history at nearly every party I have attended since age thirteen, despite having very little interest in either art or history.

But the main reason I am in this terrible, terrible store is I had to drop my friend off on her blind date.

Really my job is to walk past them pretending to be a complete stranger while judging if he is hideous or going to kidnap/murder her. Simple. Why they decided

to meet in front of a major grocery store I am uncertain. I also now realize that I have never met the man and he does not know what I look like, so the whole sunglasses thing is slightly without purpose.

I do not know why she believed I would be able to recognize insanity with only a glance considering the only boy I’ve ever really dated turned out to be an antique doll collector. The first and only time I was in his apartment all I could do was imagine his strangled mother buried somewhere underneath the many, many fully outfitted dolls. I then proceed to date him for three additional weeks.

But I owe this friend because I threw up in her bed six days ago after going to Jamba Juice twice in under forty-five minutes. It was the color of rainbows. So I did a brief walk by, texted her confirming he was mildly attractive with no apparent murderous tendencies, and am now wandering the aisles of Whole Foods wondering why chocolate covered almonds cost six and a half dollars. Another reason I hate this store.

P.S. Her date went terribly and we’re all going to die alone.

MARIA KOVOROS/THE OBSERVER

14

The Comma

March 26, 2015 THE OBSERVER

www.fordhamobserver.com

Black is Beautiful: A Commentary on Black Fetishization

By SAVONNE ANDERSON

Growing up, I was made very aware that I was beautiful. My family never let me forget it, and despite the media’s portrayal of black women as undesirable, I’ve never felt the desire to be lighter or have white features. I am proud as hell of my brown skin, black nose, big lips, and everything else Black Girl. Although I knew that everyone didn’t think black women were perfection, it didn’t matter to me because I didn’t care about those people’s opinions.

In recent years, though, it has become clear to me that saying “black is ugly” isn’t the only way that our beauty is downplayed and saying “black is beautiful” isn’t always in support of black people. Many people think of blackness as a cool trend, a fad, something different and foreign to be exoticized or sexualized. So when some people (usually white) comment on my beauty, because many times they just have an odd fascination with things about black people. Going to a predominately white high school and university, I have been made very aware of the ways that nonblack men and women perceive certain things about my beauty, but not really me.

In the ways that women talk about my hair and my body and in the ways that men compliment me and show interest in dating me, it is obvious that they don’t view my appearance as something more than a trend or fetish.

You can compliment me without comparing me to food, as if I’m something for you to consume. A “black girl butt” isn’t achieved with squats or eating cornbread, despite the myths you’ve been fed. My naturally curly and big hair is not something that I can show you how to do, because it is who I am. I can’t teach you to be black. Being with me is not something you “try out” just to see what it’s like to be close to brown skin. People who say these types of things don’t think Black is Beautiful; they think it’s sexy and that our hair is cool.

These comments and sentiments are what inspired my submission to my school’s Black Student Alliance “I Too Am Fordham” campaign. I posted the photo onto my Tumblr a few weeks ago and am happy that it’s been reblogged and liked so much. I really hope that in addition to other black people sharing my sentiments, that this message reaches nonblack people who will educate themselves and others on how to not fetishize black beauty.

Fireflies

By CAITLIN ORLANDO

If I get too close maybe they’ll manifest Manipulate each other into fuzzy monsters floating just above itchy flimsy stalks waiting to be plucked from stark white roots I float alongside not quite planting myself ignorance never begets innocence and mature curses eventually forget their youth when they would flail about

screeching delusional dreams: “what if I had been born a blessing” Reconcile their malcontent Tiny beady bodies engulfing brethren bauble bottoms until the thick curtailing of the squid inked sky engulfed every last bright butt So menacingly ominously dark even demons decide to go home.

Loaded “nothings” shoot from my lips Aced aerialists dipping ducking and diving sneakily deciding when to dart up and out and in Waiting to brand my flesh with an electrical PULSE No safety net when the only cure is to be pierced again by a sturdy sword sharpened through osmosis Diffusion: a captive in my pentagonal room overpowering scents that dare not speak their own names Will I let slip how everything really might be just dirt or can I bleed golden beets forever Boiling over and over until my mismatched shapes haphazardly chopped are tender enough to fork into the moist cavern that holds steady and heavy breathing in my boiled blood It’s a fleeting poisonous kind of pretty that compels me to S T R E T C H out my arm then my hand then my fingers gingerly uncoiled from self-aware fists (who were shocked to realize protection is a joke) Forever trying to touch, never quite reaching the cusp Beautiful lies are formidable saviors

JESS LUSZCZYK/THE OBSERVER

COURTESY OF MEREDITH SUMMERS