The Gallery Fall 2019

Spring 2019

The Gallery

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Volume 34, Issue 1 Fall 2019

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Editors Editor-in-Chief Maxwell Cloe Copy Editors Robert Metaxatos Sophie Rizzieri Art Editor Charlie Parsons Poetry Editor Noah Dowe Prose Editor Madeline Myers Publicity Editors Emma Eubank Julia Savoca Gibson Dani Greene Staff Editors Jake Beardsley Kae Eleuterio Meghan Gates Eli Gnesin Kate Hansen David Lefkowitz

Hugh Mosher Catherine Norwood Sarah Petras Alyssa Slovin Sadie Williams Lauren Wilson

Cover Art

Untitled Iris Wu

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Contents

when the hospital tv was set to the atlanta weather channel Friday Operation because you said you liked suprises Is Objectivity an Illusion?

Fernando Aubade The Nights are Longest in October The Cuyahoga on Fire Irrigation summer camp (for the met gala’s instruction) I had a bumblebee boyfriend once On Naming Oneself 3 Poems ditch knee land (for baudrillard) queer breakup Churchyard Appetency Bob Costas Won’t Host the Winter Olympics Two Hands consent?

In for four breaths, out for three eden aubade sore throat on the phone The Night I Met My Skeleton New Ghosts Travelling to Lafayette for the Funeral Gone Untitled Untitled Untitled At a railway in Williamsburg We Met at the Big Dog Bar Road to Damascus Grand Staircase-Escalante Here He Comes Downtown Palace Museum, Beijing, China Bongeunsa Temple, South Korea Yellow Light Ueno Park, Tokyo, Japan As Sick as a Parrot Train Man Chinese Academy of Art, Hangzhou, China Snail Surgery

Poetry 4

5 7 8 12 13 14 15 16 16 17 18 19 30 31 32 34-35 39 42 44 47

Prose 10 36-38 41 46-47

Art

6 9 11 20 21 22 23 24-25 26 27 28 29 33 35 40 43 45

Kelsey Vita Lauren Wilson Kelsey Vita Diana Haemer Jake Beardsley Lauren Wilson Jack Dean Catherine Green Maxwell Cloe Maxwell Cloe James Barrie Aiden Daly Maxwell Cloe Leah Dickshinski Lauren Wilson Jack Dean Katie Grotwiel Miso Park Billie VanStory Maxwell Cloe Meghan Gates Teddy Wansink Robert Metaxatos Jack Dean Michael Cairo Iris Wu Iris Wu Iris Wu Yixi Chen Rebecca Shkeyrov David Lefkowitz Madeline Salino Abbigayle Lins Madeline Salino Yixi Chen Shreyas Kumar Rebecca Shkeyrov Yixi Chen Abbigayle Lins Rebecca Shkeyrov Yixi Chen Rebecca Shkeyrov

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Fall 2019 Poetry Staff Favorite

when the hospital tv was set to the atlanta weather channel like peeling eyelids back to dig lashes from skin

she pares her pink nail polish, softly plucks herself

from halls that reek of shit, a bleary television from warrenton tries to get the weather right in hot atlanta. grandma speaks about the cake

they served her friday ‘cause she still can taste it but

can’t remember my name when she tells me, “get on that horsey, go and learn and make” between glimpses of the chinese food i brought

and i know what she means the way i know

the temperature in atlanta, so as she gurgles on, i change the channel to radio. i say she ought

to ask the nurse to help repaint her nails

and put on that show she likes where she wrote about murder

but knew how to make it all make sense — Kelsey Vita

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Friday Operation The surgeon finds lacerations this afternoon.

I’m laid out on the table and needles replace traces of caresses; teeth clack and Kit Kats melt under my tongue.

The river water twists around my veins and cleanses this battered heart.

(The romantic has been slain: I’ve returned to girlhood.)

The surgeon tells me your left incisor was cradled in my hip bone.

I tell her of how thoughts of you have been eating me from the inside out.

— Lauren Wilson

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Iris Wu

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Untitled

Photography

because you said you liked surprises if i could i would pack myself into tiny boxes and set them at your doorstep, ringing the bell before bustling swiftly around the corner of your house with the white pickets and the ivy ladders. i would bind my fingers in that tissue paper you liked (with the flowers, the smooth edges) so every part of myself that touched you would be soft, the gossamer girl you hung up on your ceiling in gloss. i would come to you in postcards with crafted polaroids tucked in-between, my arm grazing the edge of a tree, lips parted as if to blow bubbles or kisses. i would write you letters: The peppermint tea was weak this morning.

I watched a sea turtle swim to shore today. It reminded me of you.

Does the sun rise in Georgetown? i would not send them. i would pack them into tiny boxes and lay them on your doorstep, so when you came home to the sleek, muted hair, the wasp-waisted voice, the jackie you always wanted you would study them and remember how you asked only what i could do for you. —Kelsey Vita

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Is objectivity an illusion?

No respectable scientist Or honest public servant can Nimbly erase their opinions from a Situation, and yet Everyone files their emotions away Nicely in a crisis, achieving precisely Some level of Empirical power.

— Diana Haemer

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Iris Wu

Untitled

Photography

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Fall 2019 Prose Staff Favorite

The Night I Met My Skeleton

by Teddy Wansink

I was sitting naked on the upstairs toilet when I felt my ribs for the first time. I don’t remember what I expected to feel. My hands pressed into loose skin like unkneaded dough, digging around until I reached something harder than the blubber I had come to expect from the past 18 years of my life. Curious, my index finger traced the outline of each alien bone, as if filing through folders in a cabinet.

I finally felt the infrastructure of my body, and I was proud.

After a lifetime of special ordering 3XL T-shirts and taking up two bus seats, that evening was my first sign of my weight loss: a project that would culminate in my losing 150 pounds in less than two years.

These numbers explain how my body shrunk, but not how my life changed.

The confidence of singing on stage again. Lingering in the fitting room not out of fear, but in celebration of my body. From my posture to my gait, every aspect of my interactions with the world has changed, serving as a tangible reminder of my ability to believe in change, and then accomplish it.

But there’s also the part I’m not supposed to talk about: that which remains after the fat has gone. Checking the scale twice a day. Bingeing on instant oatmeal at home, chips at work, and anything else within arm’s reach. The guilt that follows.

I receive frequent iterations of “You’re so courageous!” and “You look great!” alongside a bittersweet cocktail of pride and insecurity. Do you think more of me now that I’ve learned how to contort my body? Does my fasting mean I’m no longer an eye sore? Given one ex-girlfriend’s suggestion that she wouldn’t have dated me if we had met two years prior, these thoughts continue to eat at me.

What I am left with is more than just the loose skin that drapes over my chest—my new body is also a chance to cultivate a new me. I haven’t achieved nirvana or unlocked the key to optimizing my health, as some weight-loss programs like to suggest, but I finally feel capable enough to convert my fears into challenges.

Eyes forward and ribs firm in my chest (trust me, I checked), I’m starting to understand how to live in this body, and how to continue using it to overcome what I used to think insurmountable. G

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Iris Wu

Untitled

Photography

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Fernando Aubade Implausibly, Fernando lying in the bed next to me, dreaming.

The tarot deck you read to me never predicted this.

Dark loving us, dusk breaking, all night kissing and waking.

I have not remembered you better than this.

Monstrative and garrulous, the hates that do imperil us nightly arise with the day.

Set out this cot where I have not slept; lock the doors, and whisper when no one is sleeping.

(Even now sleeping he holds my hands; in the day he shoves his fists into his pockets.)

I’ll take the mantle up with God, but this is no aubade: I wish the day were twice as long to see you, brown eyes beautiful waking, endless streets mistaking, shadows gone; I don’t regret the dawn.

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— Jake Beardsley

The Nights are Longest in October These knuckles are bruised from clenching dreamings too close to my chest.

Rubber band burns and aluminum sailboats remind me the last time I kissed you was on a Wednesday.

The unspokens are rattling in my throat.

The birch leaves drift on the bated breaths that come with secondhand kisses.

Kneeling on these tiles, I hold my own hair back.

— Lauren Wilson

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The Cuyahoga on Fire The water doesn’t flow anymore.

It oozes out into Lake Erie, Carrying belly-up fish and oil slicks with it.

The river is heavy with donated flotsam.

The river aches to be born in reverse, To pile back onto the Piedmont’s snowy head.

Workmen at the docks know Anything dropped in the Cuyahoga is lost forever, Just more gifts for the lazy river.

If you’re dumb enough to fall in, they say You’ll grow a third ear or rotten fingers, maybe gills on the neck.

And if you dive deep You’ll resurface tar-soaked and stinking.

Sparks from a passing train fall through the trestles Onto a hunk of trash Bobbing like a buoy, And the river is on fire.

Arching flames leap along the canal Rising to meet the shipyard factories.

All the freighters steering through are doused in ash and smoke and a column of fire.

Throughout the city people hear the river’s screams blend with the clang and chatter of workmen.

Just another day on the river.

This is all relayed in newspapers, Sharing space with the moon landing And the woman drowned in Chappaquiddick.

The Cuyahoga is swiftly extinguished, The oil skimmed from its surface.

The river longs to swallow the city whole, To turn it all black and new— An offering of forgiveness.

—Jack Dean

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Irrigation You in your orchard of memory, lazy reaching, barely stretching, there’s the apple, easy fetching.

Maybe too shiny and maybe Wormholed but There.

You in your orchard of memory, Feed me third grade, scowl about your mother.

What sits in your stomach. and Who prepared it.

Speak as you so often do of king ludwig luxuriating.

There the apple, ballast or burden.

Gorge on detail. give it me like birds do young.

I scratched my life into bark unburned.

Now I sift shards of charred birch and they crack and keel If I’m not careful. Pyre, pompeii, petrol.

I am a digger with a brush. I knew this land Before termites and time I knew this: You in your orchard of memory, Me in the basement bobbing for apples.

The water stings but less Than the blindfold and less than the zipties.

A summary drowning and then it’s there: my apple. The skin is gone the flesh Is gone, a scabbed core shedding seeds.

And every tooth made of bone Has been wrenched from its home.

Fish don’t get things that breathe. I leave The apple behind and I’m shot through with air.

You in your orchard of memory, plant me a tree.

I’ll be late and I can’t say words with f or th But plant me a tree. I dredged up my teeth and By my will they’ll work for me.

Plant me a tree and I’ll scar it with words before they can run.

—Catherine Green

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summer camp (for the met gala’s instruction) technicolor wingback sing babble from the saltslicked wax lips melting sliply in beat to the disco feet [oooh the disco feet/ stomp your disco feet/beat the disco sleep] listen here boy you be the wax lips and i’ll be the eyeshadow cut crease grouse feether booa every color of the grainbow until we can steel the peecocks for plucking ooh how good we’ll look ooh how sweet we’ll dance —Maxwell Cloe

I had a bumblebee boyfriend once I learned his language he couldn’t learn mine When we broke up I danced my goodbye And his wings clapped despite the tears in his eyes

—Sam White

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On Naming Oneself you hoard names like sea pearls for you have found there is no dish quite so rare or exquisite like the action of naming oneself. it is not painless, no, like a fishmonger you suffer the cuts and blood dutifully dig inside to find the salty sweet prize. which is you, you think. who is to say whether it is right but it coats your tongue with honey nonetheless. names for a hard person, a soft one, angel names, earthly names, names that speak to a bolder you (Name-Finder, you think, must have been your name in another time) you love them all. by the end of your life, you think, you shall have such a collection that people will come from miles around pay a nickel a head to see such appellations. maybe, you think if they strain hard enough to take them all in, they’ll see you, as well —James Barrie

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3 Poems There once was a selection committee That wanted to publish something pretty But the joke was on them, When they got to the end And this limerick did make them feel silly There once was a literature critic Who found a poem quite parasitic Imagine their chagrin, When it happened again Because someone submitted two limericks All poems are just groups of words With meanings assigned afterwards Into poetry delve, But get over yourselves – Publish these limericks you cowards

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— Aiden Daly

ditch knee land (for baudrillard) o sick rasper: wrickly scratching scritch scritch a flippant chapter of pretty lies writ unabashed to flit out the last bit of actuality that your asphalt fiction is quick crashing withinto im on to you passing brashly the cackles i ask “yo ricky rat where the fast passes for mickeys dick smasher” and with a lick asply ricky sits and passes fist by fist the bricks cross the back of the kitsch statue depicting crassly the stached fascist [past hitler] till at last a crack slashes blasting me into a pitch blackness except the prickling laughter of trashed exhibits once beloved scritching scratch scratch the chipping skin along their masks i pick no magic but sad tricks of capital richly hidden and i am sick to witness you raspers hatching beneath our cities — Maxwell Cloe

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Fall 2019 Art Staff Favorite

Yixi Chen

At a railway in Williamsburg

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Photography

Rebecca Shkeyrov

We Met at the Big Dog Bar

Mixed Media

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David Lefkowitz

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Road to Damascus

Photography

Madeline Salino

Grand Staircase-Escalante

Digital Photography

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Abbigayle Lins

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Here He Comes

Latex on Canvas

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Madeline Salino

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Downtown

Digital Photography

Yixi Chen

Palace Museum, Beijing, China

Photography

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Shreyas Kumar

Bongeunsa Temple, South Korea

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Photography

Rebecca Shkeyrov

Yellow Light

Linoleum Print

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queer breakup everything’s coming up orange bare back bathed bergamot moisturize in mandarin and thin in the fogged mirror

(you, antecedent to the shower head/ pollute my fantasies though I’ve forgiven you)

I swung too hard and paid for it in sour escape and antibiotic ache I’m sorry but not regretful— though the bridge burned, It was once bunted in lilac images, cider, the soft sigh of your shoulder. The wavering virgin dominating the dance floor, who saw us kiss as sugar fossilized outside the gore of the blood orange, you asked for a piece angel, Irish, who bore bloodfruit of dreams

— Leah Dickshinski

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Churchyard Appetency Headlights flicker like candles burn in the windows of young girls.

Your smiles smell like clementines, and apatite is immortalized in stained glass.

We kneel before each other and recite alchemical oaths as prayers: we turn our sins into honeyed poems.

These clasped hands bear the wax well.

The engine whirs and reconciliation slows.

I’ve discovered that there is nothing holier than when the breath knocks through your teeth to carve my name out of thin air.

— Lauren Wilson

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Bob Costas Won’t Host the Winter Olympics My left eye swollen shut and just about as red as the old Russian flag.

I can feel the infection spreading across my face, Riding across the ice bridge of my glasses

And I am bearing the mild yolk of an egg cracked on the linoleum That slipped from my hand in the dark, Feeling around for the puddle of white to sop up with paper towels Dangling ghosts of towels hang on the shower rack, And the rest of the room feels hazier every hour Like a memory I’m already forgetting Blinded on the road to Sochi, I won’t see the fresh snow upheaved by a stream of bobsledders Or the birds whispering secrets from St. Basil’s spires I won’t see the Bolshoi dancing Vaganova, A flurry of heaving chests and slender arms All these godly children carved from stones and ice Scanning the wilderness of my own body, I search for ankles and feet to slip into socks.

What if all my limbs begin to fall away?

I trace a vein up the length of my arm.

Where did the wrinkles come from?

And the joints for throwing fastballs that now catch lightning aches First the teeth then eyes then everything they say Maybe I will need a caretaker soon To guide me by the crook of my arm.

On the television a crowd is cheering for American victory And Meredith Vieira is live at the scene And I see only the outline of a body.

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—Jack Dean

Yixi Chen

Ueno Park, Tokyo, Japan

Photography

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Two Hands The night before, I could barely sleep.

I was using my new purse on that cold February day, And I was nervous to meet you alone For the first time. We ate and talked, you with your slight lisp, and you held my hand In the pizza place with colorful artwork and old film reels on the wall.

Cary Street smelled like metal from the rain.

We ran into an old classmate of mine outside in the rain.

You and I must’ve walked up and down that street Four times. By the chocolate shop, you kissed me against the wall In the alley that led to Ellwood Street. We got frozen yogurt that Saturday.

And even though it was sticky from the caramel, you still held my hand.

I liked being alone With you because I didn’t feel lonely. You felt like home.

Outside the brasserie you wiped the drops of rain From the seat so I could sit. You walked me to the car holding my hand When my dad picked me up at 3. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep That night. I’d waited four Saturdays To finally agree on a date. I didn’t decide to let down my walls For you, but you, my new king, tore down my walls Yourself with your dagger-sharp blue eyes, and I didn’t feel alone With you by my side. Eight months and three days After that it’s Halloween. Your dark street smells and shines like metal from the rain.

Baseball is on. It’s the World Series. The Royals are playing, and your dad is asleep In the next room. It’s Game 5. On my hip and my chest are your hands.

After your question come my rejection and your hands disregarding my pleas. I stare at the blue walls Behind you and the white ceiling and try to imagine I am asleep: This is just a dream, and I am alone, Warm in my bed, with the sound of a heavy rain Outside, preparing my body for the next day.

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Abbigayle Lins

As Sick as a Parrot

Acrylic and Latex

But I am your Cassandra and you are my Ajax. I woke Monday Morning, unprepared to see you and confused about which hand To trust. I had clung to you for stability but now you’d torn me away. For me your reign Had come to a painful and wet end, and my walls were rebuilt so you could no longer rule me and never invade me again. Alone Is how I wanted to spend the next eternity. But even in my sleep And when I see my naked body, I am still haunted by your white-blonde hair and the blue walls Of your living room and permanently stained by the warmth of your hand, The thought of which used to help me fall asleep. — Katie Grotwiel

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New Ghosts

by Robert Metaxatos

It’s a bit far away, the sovereigns old now. They finished Midtown centuries ago; now we have a shining metropolis. The crystalline breezes of colonial wisps barely seep through cyborgized and etic building walls, sheer coolness and emittance of dull light. The homeless have their own quarters, high-functioning fake-towns; all objects imitations, there is no danger of impingement on the real… situated a hundred feet down more, and there they live. Wren building has been souped up for the thirtieth time or so, its protozoic brick now with permanent receptors against earthly heathenisms, windows glazed with automatic reflections, its suzerainty just eliding the peerage but retaining, yes, a quaint gentility.

St.-Tershaw has been tasked with exorcising Williamsburg’s new ectoplasm, seeping recently. Walking to the Brafferton, Tersh glances over the lucent flower domes, awesomely absorbing the mechanical sun. He’s in.

‘Hi, here to see the president.’

‘One moment.…’ some ticking at the clockwork keyboard, or, how to describe it, it’s more mental now than before, the ticking that is. ‘May I ask if you’re the ghost detective President Port-Royal sent for?’

‘Ah yes.’

‘This way, please.’

For all the hallways seen before, T is surprised at the remaining aesthetic of this one. There are not many like this anymore. Into the office,

‘Good morning, President, uh, Port-Royal.’

‘Captain St.-Tershaw, it’s quite a nice day to be acquainted.’

‘Why yes. I’m sorry to be so brief, but what can I do for you here?’

‘Naturally I understand. There has been some paranormal activity at the College. We can give you a large stipend and lodging.’

-- The first report is of a man dressed in white loitering near the college’s central garden. He’s there every night around midnight, the same bright and alabastrine cheeks calling students over. Tersh knows from whatever scant intelligence he’s received that the man has a special power to differentiate time.

Yeah, it will never quite make sense. But here we are, if anything, against the sordid colossi of Old’s fetters. We wait ‘til night.

The man in white approaches the top of the gardens, the top of sovereign steps, overseeing the fleeing grass as it pillows under students’ feet; with the force of old swords, they blunt at any contact with actual fortitude. T comes without gear––it’s the first night, might as well talk to the guy and see his vital aspirations.

Sitting with crossed legs and right hand on side of head, thumb resting in the indent of the chin, forefingers near the temple, just sitting. Comes in Tershaw, ‘Oh, hey.’

Just a ‘hmm’ in response, but then:

‘Do I seem quite ghostly to you?’

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‘Well, it depends. Are you a ghost?’ T-bone asks.

‘I miss when people actually said what they mean.’

Taking out a notebook, Tersh writes fast, with a sincere vim. The man in white could not help but ask: ‘What are you writing there?’

‘Um, that you don’t like answering questions?’

‘Hmm.’

‘So man, what exactly do you do here every night?’

‘You’re already overthinking it.’

‘By this you mean—’

‘I mean you came in with the, let’s say, incorrect timing.’

‘Ok, yes, I think I understand a bit less now.’

‘Exactly.’

‘What, now you’re gonna give me a lecture?’

From here the man in white would answer no further questions, telling St.-T to come back tomorrow. The latter really tries to pry, but every time he does, the man in white will phase into a sort of fugacious dust with the grass. There are, however, hints as to how to interact with the ghost, but the answer comes gradually.

Tersh returns for three more nights, lacking any pressure from the President. But a more personal impetus has festered. If there are so many students on this campus, they’re never quite apparent during the late nights; he stews over this problem. At least there is still coffee in this timeline.

Both kind of coalesce this time at the location. A little approval from the man in white finally. This time it is just a pen T brings. ‘Yo.’

‘Welcome again,’ the ghost goes.

‘I’m not going to say I know the Truth, but I’m more privy to your puzzle now.’

‘Yes, I can tell—oh, and you don’t have to call it a puzzle. It’s more simple than you make it out to be.’

‘That’s what I realized quite late.…’ Tersh uprights himself even more, hands ready to gesture, ‘So from what I gather, you’re talking with students every so often at this time. You’ve built up enough notoriety where they come to you. And only some can see you, according to the dissonant ‘time’ you have bouncing in your aura. Am I right so far?’

‘Don’t make your brush strokes too broad.’

‘Well, fine. It’s not that some can see you and some can’t, it’s simpler than that. Maybe you appear to those who want, but not ‘want’ to see you.’

The man in white grins with ruddy lip-edges and cheek-tops.

St-Tershaw continues, ‘Then you talk with them. Maybe a little colloquy on time, about removing yourself from time, so they give up their time-keepers.

Because it’s the ‘post-ism’ era, the students are feeling disillusioned with academics.

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The world is different than before, something to this effect. So they renounce timekeeping. They’re no longer coming to class, according to my reports.

Maybe stuck in their dorms.’

‘I wouldn’t go as far as to say they’re stuck anywhere.’

‘Liberated?’

‘Precisely, and they’re not relegated to a place either, really.’

Their conversation is overtaken by the shadow of a profound reality, swishing dark wind around. The violence of such a small storm leaves an acerbic sting in T’s mouth, the taste of freedom. It comes, like a turnstile, not this time to the less robust procedure of travel, but to bigger worlds, those not yet settled, disembarrassed from peuplement. He feels, what the hecky, is the Pres paying me enough for my esophagus to fly out of my throat? For it to be used as another’s skein?

And in an instant it is over, not quite reverted, not even quite like a premonition: just something that happened elsewhere that did not happen here.

Capt. St.-Tershaw finally understands now.

‘Ah of course, so you’re helping the students upload their beings to the cloud. Is that what it feels like for them?’

‘Not helping, nor facilitating. It’s more so that I’m here, maybe. For who knows why I am here, but maybe for the reasons you came up with before. It’s probably simpler than I think, but I can never grasp that knowledge.’

Jesus God, enough spouting.… It seems President Port-Royal generally knew this was going on. Did it really need a ghost detective like Tersh to fix the problem? This is the next question, but, yeah, the students are now uploaded. Their bodies, mostly fixed with the wind thereafter, find their places as the lucence of morning brings the first dew to the grass, where their dull blades feel being more than before. G

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Consent?

I. Can I come over tonight?

Yes

II. Can I touch you?

No Can I kiss you?

No Can I remove your clothes?

No Is this okay?

No

III. but you never asked me the second part — Miso Park

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Rebecca Shkeyrov

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Train Man

Ink on Paper

Travelling to Lafayette for the Funeral

by Jack Dean

Fat globs of water pelt the windshield. The roof rattles so loud we strain to hear the music. We can’t pull over. We’d be late for the service.

A tropical storm in the gulf is picking up speed and will be here by tomorrow the radio informs us.

I see a line of stalled cars stretching to the horizon on the opposite side of the highway. It’s like the day we got caught in 8 hours of traffic heading to Baton Rouge. A cucumber truck exploded on the bridge out by Plaquemine. We finally passed the wreck at midnight. The truck was still smoldering, and a hazmat team was sweeping mounds of produce into Bayou Teche.

We pass empty diners and aging cattle. In the bright swatches of forest on the side of the interstate I see something move. Just like the day a young fawn bolted from the overgrowth and leapt into our van, its tender body outlined in a car dent. It bounced ten feet back into the highway median and lay motionless. We kept driving.

We are driving back home now. The sun is out, and the swollen lip of a storm is following close behind. The radio tells us there’s an escaped prisoner from Angola walking along the highway. Cops block every exit from Krotz Springs to Livonia searching for him. On the news they say they’ve uncovered two bodies in Bayou Lafourche’s churning mud.

Everything happens during years when the cicadas bubble up from the ground. They cover every inch of pavement and sing mating songs till morning. There’s so many molting skeletons on the road you can’t avoid them. G

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In for four breaths, out for three One, the morning after is often harsher Than the night before because Two, the memories refuse to come back Until they decide they’re ready.

Three, the stumbling around the house Is dizzier than the thumping headache.

Four, where the hell am I? — Billie VanStory

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Yixi Chen

Chinese Academy of Art Hangzhou, China

Photography

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eden aubade eden eden quite uneven how does your garden grow? chrysanthemum lips a humdrum ellipse a pause at the tip of your nose a small scribbled grip an unrumbled slip a kiss drawing blood like a rose eden eden [dont believe in] where did your garden go? i ask with a sigh the vipers reply with sly quiet lies in the snow “your eden she flies her clothes reek of lye” a sulf ’rous curled hair on my clothes

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— Maxwell Cloe

Rebecca Shkeyrov

Snail Surgery

Ink on Paper

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Gone

by Michael Cairo

It all started without me noticing. If it wasn’t so routine, perhaps I could’ve done something to stop it. I’m not sure how, or at what point, but perhaps I could’ve…

I don’t remember what the first thing to disappear was. It must have been something mundane; maybe a spoon or a candle? A roll of toilet paper? I remember the first thing I noticed had disappeared: a portrait of me and my children. We were posed so happily, I had them in my arms, the oldest one had a paper hat. It sat on a long table by the entrance to my apartment. I returned home and noticed my eye didn’t meet it as it did daily. First, my eyes searched around the table, then my hands. I didn’t bother asking anyone… It wasn’t worth the trouble.

The next things to go were the pans in the kitchen. They went at a rate of about one per week. This wasn’t fast enough for all of them to go before the problem outgrew them. I would buy new pans to replace the ones that moved on. Sometimes, those wouldn’t last a day.

For a while, things of this magnitude would vanish. Bedding, tools, and décor among them. After I was left with a scant amount of these items, the bigger things started going. Desks at the college where I work, sidewalks, and small landmarks. Some statues here and there, occasionally a whole park.

One day I was admiring a dandelion when it suddenly popped out of existence. It was so subtle that I didn’t notice it right away. There was no sound, no sight. Just like that: gone.

Whatever was doing this had a sense of humor. I remember I turned on the car complete and arrived at my destination without a passenger’s seat. The strangest thing (and perhaps what kept me from mentioning anything) was that no one but me seemed to notice. After the passenger’s seat disappeared, my wife sat on the metal hoops and carpet of the barren car floor. “Isn’t that uncomfortable?” I asked. She replied without the slightest hint of irony, “What do you mean?” After some light probing, I could tell she noticed nothing out of place. How ridiculous! The crown of her head barely reached the window from down there.

Surely, it wasn’t only her who didn’t notice this. When traffic signals started disappearing, all the cars flowed seemingly on their own. I only knew the signals by intently following the cars around me. As if the lights and signs were still there, cars stopped all at once, and obeyed the same speeds.

So, you can imagine I wasn’t worried when the front door to my apartment disappeared. No trouble would enter, for it was if the door had never left. My wife and kids would stop in front of an empty door sill and pantomime their entries. What a sight.

Eventually, whole students disappeared; the good ones too! Their names swiped from the rosters like they never attended. That’s when the problem intensified. People and

46 The Gallery

cherished items were falling victim to this capricious trend. I wish I could’ve said bye to the friends and coworkers that didn’t make it. I realized then it wouldn’t be long before the same happened to my family.

In its ultimate cruelty, it didn’t disappear my family one at a time. I drove home to find my apartment building gone: nothing but a lot of grass left. That day, no one came home. I never saw my kids again. At that point I gave up. There was nothing to do but sleep in this lot of grass, wake up the next morning, and just accept whatever more was to come.

When I awoke most things were finally gone. I was in a large field of grass.

Endless. I walked all day looking for something. In a mocking kindness I found the first picture that disappeared cracked on the ground. I went to sleep with it in my arms.

Now there is nothing. I look down and I don’t see the ground. A few weeks ago, I stopped seeing my body. I wish I could go back. If only this desire for what was could go away like everything else.G

sore throat on the phone my throat is sore and you are not giving me support in the way i want or need or at least think i need and what you can’t tell from the other side is that i’m laughing off my tears so that people walking by don’t worry too much about me too awkwardly in that stranger-ly way and it’s good that i already told you i’m getting sick so i can play off my sniffles as my cold but right now i am more sad than sick and i’m hoping you can’t tell even though your self-titled tough love is making me sadder but i’m hoping you’re right that this is more what i need even if it’s less what i want — Meghan Gates

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Contributors’ James M. Barrie- is majoring in Religious Studies, class of 2021. He once saw a bull moose in person, and has never been the same since.

Jake Beardsley- is a junior studying philosophy and English. They really like feminist metaphysics, which lets them ask questions like “What is a boy?”

Michael Cairo- will not stroke his ego by writing an autobiography. Although he thinks he’s pretty cool, he doesn’t consider himself important enough to be celebrated with a posh introduction to his life and times. He really wishes you’d just brush over this section and get on to reading what he’s written. He recommends you start with his story “Gone.” This is a good place to start because it is his only contribution.

Yixi Chen- For At a railway in Williamsburg, it was the second day when I was in Williamsburg.

Amazed by the glow on the rails, the beauty of symmetry, and the gradient color, I was really looking forward to my life here and wondering where this road was gonna take me.

Maxwell Cloe- wants you to know that the Met Gala was not camp but the fact that it wasn’t camp is, in fact, camp. Also he’s writing an honors thesis and will talk to you about it if you ask nicely.

Jack Dean- eats punks like you for breakfast.

Leah Dickshinski- thinks a lot about Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West.

Meghan E. Gates- has had a long semester and would like to apologize to her hall for the icing on the cupcakes sliding off. If you know of a place to live that allows cats, please let her know.

Catherine Green- is a Senior studying Russian and History.

Katie Grotwiel- is a sophomore at the College majoring in English and Gender, Sexuality and Women’s studies. Formerly an editor for College Magazine, she currently works as an intern at Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers.

48 The Gallery

Notes Diana Haemer- What if I told you my poem was an acrostic? Ahaha just kidding... unless??

Shreyas Kumar- This photo was taken at the Bongeunsa Temple, a Buddhist temple in Seoul, South Korea. I intended this piece to show the importance of self-reflection through meditation and prayer.

Abbigayle Lins- Over my last two years at W&M, my interest has shifted from creating realistic works to abstract and imaginative ones. I want my viewers to feel pulled into my pieces but also uncomfortable, as if they have no choice but to be there.

Miso Park- is a junior, psych major, and a girl who just hopes to move people with her words.

Madeline Salino- I’m a senior from Central Valley, New York. For fun I like to cook, look for toads, and make art. I took these photos while exploring the Southwest in high school.

Rebecca Shkeyrov- is a senior double majoring in studio art and psychology. More of her work can be found on Instagram @theboldstylo.

Kelsey Vita- is a senior at William & Mary who enjoys playing the piano, meeting new coffee shops, and always learning. She has only three cats.

Sam White- is an English major in the class of 2021.

Lauren Wilson- is a sophomore at the College from Birmingham, Michigan. When she isn’t writing poetry or avoiding her three-year-old novel manuscript, she is indulging in period dramas and listening to the same five songs on Spotify.

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Editors’ Note

Howdy,

Well it’s been quite the Fall semester. After a few changes in our editorial lineup, a switch in publishers, and one of the largest submissions pool of any issue so far, we’ve put together another installment of The Gallery which we are very proud of and we hope you will enjoy. As always, The Gallery would be absolutely nothing without the contributions of the dazzling creative minds on campus—whether they be painters or poets, sculptors or storytellers, photographers or journalists or limerick-craftsmen. To all the artists here at William and Mary, this magazine is yours just as much as it is ours. Thank you.

This semester is also a particularly noteworthy one for The Gallery. Exactly forty years ago, a group of creative writing students decided to form A Gallery of Writing, a magazine to showcase their creative efforts. Originally sold for a dollar apiece, this magazine was printed on cheap paper without color. As the decades progressed, the magazine received an ever increasing stream of submissions and funding—and an edgy rebrand to simply gallery in the 1990s—cementing it as a publication that was here to stay. And stay it did until 2003, when a catastrophic computer explosion (or so I’m told) obliterated any trace of the magazine. This tragedy cast a four-year darkness over the College that was finally driven back when a ragtag group of valiant students unearthed the magazine in 2007, zapping it with errant bolts of lightning until it finally reawakened as The Gallery.

We contemplated for many weekly meetings exactly how we should celebrate such a momentous anniversary. We tossed around ideas of extra long magazines, digging through the archives to find past creative gems, late night literary raves in the shell of Triangle (RIP). Our decision, then, to release a magazine without any extra frills or pyrotechnics may seem like a lazy one. Rather, by releasing the magazine that everyone expects, we honor the past struggles that made such a release impossible. Thank you for sticking with us so far.

-Maxwell Cloe

Colophon

The Gallery Volume 34 Issue 1 was produced by the student staff at the College of William & Mary and published by Carter Printing Co. in Richmond, Virginia. Submissions are accepted anonymously through a staff vote. The magazine was designed using Adobe Indesign CS5 and Adobe Photoshop CS5. The magazine’s 52, 6x9 pages are set in Garamond. The cover font and the titles of all the pieces are Derivia. The Spring 2012 issue of The Gallery was a CSPA Gold Medalist with All-Columbian honors in content.

Check out the Gallery online 50 The Gallery

www.instagram.com/thegallerywm/ www.facebook.com/wmgallery issuu.com/gallerywm

gallery @ email.wm.edu

Fall 2019