THE GALLERY
G
the
allery
Volume 35, Issue 1 Spring & Fall 2020 and Spring 2021
Editors Co-Editors-in-Chief Julia Savoca Gibson Hannah London Copy Editors Meghan Gates Art Editor Hannah London Poetry Editor Eli Gnesin Prose Editor Lauren Wilson Publicity Editors Emma Eubank
Staff Editors Colin Cochran Scott Cummings Mae Dye Soleil Garnett JR Herman
Laura Kirk Malvika Shrimali Alyssa Slovin Sarah Soltis
Cover Art
Koi Reflections
See the complete work on page 57
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Contents 1. I hate the plants but 2. I miss home on the losses of last year Am I Worth A Bounced Check on the aftermath of the wildfires Question For The Culture Couch The Lobster in the Room Sadie’s Benediction my silence will never be a virtue The Tune of Revolution For You Un día In December Face Cream Untitled no. 1 on forgetting how to cry a walk (or many) in a garden’s mind replicating magpie Breaking Dishes Who can sleep amidst all this chaos? Toes to the Wolves conversation over dinner A World of Twos So I Am Not Immune To Propaganda on not writing your name Movements Dear Scott I VISIT DICK on a gay love that heals Ants The Brook Koach Strike coward do not follow me The Mechanic is a Poet Garden plot Picking Asters On Vacation Playground Thinking Monochrome Cubana More Idols than Realities Isolation The Birth of Gargantua Construction of Myself My Life in Pieces Zioneers Coaster of Light Artist’s Tremor Cavernous Mirage Oil Sketch for Mica Basin Loop Mica Basin Loop Austria La Danse Entre Les Arbres Koi Reflections Bathroom Conversation Women Serve Men The Light at the End is You Sky-Lake Cabin The Trumpeteer Girl in Color Disco Golden
Poetry 5 5 6-8 9 9 10-11 11 12-13 13-15 15-17 17-18 20-24 24 27 27 28 30 31 32-33 36 38 39 44 45 48 49 51 53 54 55 56 58 60 62 70 71-72 74 75
Mae Dye James Barrie Soleil Garnett James Barrie Pelumi Sholagbade Wendy Klein Meghan Gates Jessie Urgo Soleil Garnett Amanda Millis JR Herman Anonymous Jenna Massey Ishaan Khandpur Malvika Shrimali James Barrie Tessa Wilkinson Jack Dean Kate Dragonetti Clara Finley Meghan Gates Anonymous Eli Gnesin Pelumi Sholagbade Meghan Gates Grace Rust Ceci Hughes Jenna Massey James Barrie Pelumi Sholagbade Ishaan Khandpur jecook Mae Dye Meghan Gates Malvika Shrimali Jessie Urgo Jack Dean Ceci Hughes
40-43 61 64-66 67-69 77-83
Abby Comey Taylor Moorman Mae Dye Taylor Moorman Catherine Green
4 19 25 26 29 34 35 37 46 47 50 52 57 59 63 73 76 84 85 86 87
Grace Payne Jarvis Hua Taylor Moorman Katherine Hagen Daniel McArthur JR Herman Taylor Moorman JR Herman Tom Plant Tom Plant Tom Plant JR Herman Brooke Braden Kate Dragonetti Kate Dragonetti Taylor Moorman JR Herman Kate Dragonetti Katherine Hagen jecook Taylor Moorman
Prose
Art
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Grace Payne
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Isolation
Acrylic
1. I hate the plants but 2. I miss home Four potted plants pestering the girl. Three girls living in the apartment Two almost semesters of chaos. One home, not just a house with people One pandemic, isolating. Two friends separated much too soon Three weeks left; they should be together. Four more semesters to find what’s lost — Mae Dye
on the losses of last year the weight of the dead bears on my bones like a press, a snare. i am stamped and trapped, shaped by the bitter value of remembered lives. my dust is mingled with theirs, and we float on the air our highways the sunlight in empty rooms. can i laugh? can i bless a festival or hold a baby again with the weight of them crushing crushing me like this? — James Barrie
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Am I Worth A Bounced Check I went out searching for peace and found myself walking in the rain they say there’s nothing more calming so I found myself strolling on the corner of Canfield and 38th minding my business and minding the people All the while the rain swims across my skin through my soul and right off my fingertips and the rain sings a song that goes drip drip drop Suddenly it’s nighttime and mama’s beckoning me back before the streetlights come on but I stop at a figure laying face down in the street I notice that he’s almost as black as the night that’s wrapped around us and so I step a little closer skipping around in my black girl joy and he peeks his bloodshot eyes up at me He tells me his name is Mike and I hold my hand out to shake he flinches back and says don’t don’t what? I say Don’t. Shoot. he chokes out And after a little chit chat I learn that he was set to go to Vatterott on monday but he got stopped over some cigarillos and was left with 6 warning shots in his chest And the rain sang drip drip drop Worried, I look up for help and when I look back down the figure turned into a taller, older man less the color of nighttime and more like the color of dusk This time he massages out the kinks in his neck that has him choked up with his cracked, overworked hands He was a kind dead man always ready to talk about God and his little girl
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in between coughs, that is, because he kept saying that he couldn’t breathe that they assumed his check bounced a crime punishable by death that they beat him and choked him and hated who he was like he was animal to turn around and say that there was no way he couldn’t breathe with a nose that big And in all the excitement I couldn’t remember his name Who did he say he was again? George? or Eric? or Philando or Sandra or Breyonna? or or or And as the rain sang drip drip drop the water that once danced so peacefully around my skin gathers around my feet and crashes about and a substance mixes in the rain drip drip drop You can pretend that it’s pink dye but we all knew it was blood when we saw it and I can’t place which body it’s coming from because there seems to be a new one everyday and the singing water taunts the flesh drip drip drop I swear I came out here for peace because they say that water is the origin of all life that water is supposed to cleanse away our sins but if the color of that life seems to match the nighttime they only use the water to wash the blood off their hands drip drip drop drip no matter how hard I try to see whenever I blink a new body appears I came out here for peace I swear and maybe that’s what Mike thought too but the only thing that’s unpeaceful is the lead stuck in his chest drip maybe George would agree how peaceful would you be with a knee digging from your neck to your soul
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drip who even says that you deserve our peace anymore when the 13th gives you our labor until you take us out one by one drip What will it be for me? walking around campus while black jaywalking while black living while black? drip how much of this gives you peace did you walk up to him on the street, drip to show him what you think of his peace, drip to beat him down, drip then go home to kiss your wife and son, drip and when she asks you about the day’s work, drip did you have the audacity to say it was peaceful, drip that the day is only over when the last body drops drip drip drip drip drip drip Am I not worth more to you than cigarillos and a bounced check?
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— Soleil Garnett
on the aftermath of the wildfires it is raining in california tonight and we are healing or something like it. we have a long way to go, honey, just to feel the shakes subside and our tongues move in our mouths like they once did. but the earth outside soaks up its due like the portion for the priests and the raindrop tempo beats on the shingled roof saying it is late and rest will make you whole. — James Barrie
Question For The Culture What are the different shades of glass? How can we justify the hurt this time? If I kiss you with blood on my mouth, was it your fault for swallowing it? Can you tell me what it means to breathe easy, as long as we’re looking for answers from one another? And if I beg red enough, elicit pity, Would you forgive me? How often? How is it that the shine that birthed me Is the oil slick that’ll kill everything else, If we let it? — Pelumi Sholagbade
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Couch I don’t feel like The person I used to be In the mirror I catch a glance of a stranger in the act Wondering where she came from Or if the old me will come back But I doubt that, because The sequence of life Is a scrambled mess And even though I’m working The fast track has left Because those days Were part of a different place That was inherently safe The world’s not like that today And I don’t know If I’ll ever feel that way This past year’s weighed on me Heavily and things happened without warning suddenly People I used to know Started to go All these businesses Started to close It was harder to breathe With the smell of bleach On everything I’ve not seen a living soul That I didn’t already know I watched people sacrifice And felt everyone’s fear just Grow and grow and justifiable so I wasn’t sure What was real anymore I used to shout in the streets Now I just stay at home Living life The only way that I know Reality’s misaligned
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Everyday feels like a broken thought or A listless dream Like I’m still sleeping and Starving inside, yearning for More connections in my life It’s hard to live It’s hard to know, that The world’s moving Really slow But from my couch I watch it go
— Wendy Klein
The Lobster in the Room As much as we’re all waiting for grandma to die, she keeps tick tick tick ing on. My grandma is a lobster: going and going til molting is just too much. I wonder how hard it must’ve been for her to outlive the dinosaurs and how it must burn to not be given credit. I wonder just how much she had to shed and rebuild to be here, and what did it cost her? I look at her and wonder if I got the lobster gene. I don’t know if I’m built to go for the sake of going, if I can handle missing my carapace as many times, if I can withstand dying in the exertion of my efforts.
— Meghan Gates
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Sadie’s Benediction I would wish you time. I would wish you here and your shoulder against mine. I’d wish you dandelion puffs and song sparrows and mist in the morning as you walk up through the fields through white lace flowers through translucent spiderwebs all dewy before sunlight. I would wish you to open yourself. I would wish you to break and be healed. I’d wish you silences and lichen sycamore trees and evening primroses songs in many-part harmony a silver ring a pair of blue eyes. I would wish you beginnings. I would wish you home. I’d wish you lightning bugs and wool socks and meteor showers at midnight, blanket-wrapped silence beneath the bright flush of the Milky Way. And even more than wishing, I would pray for you this stillness of water smokestack reflection in river the openness of sky the congregation of dark trees
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the subtle chords of wind and voice together making something of a memory a moment with you a moment of quiet within and without no longer noise or numbness but a home inside a moment inside a place that dwells within you inside the knowledge that I love you. — Jessie Urgo
my silence will never be a virtue I was born exactly 35 days after 9/11 and my mother, Bonita, loves to tell me how I almost never cried as a baby. It was a miracle, they said. I stayed silent until I was 3, and then they started testing me for every invisible birth defect possible (deaf, mute, blind, autistic). When the doctor told Bonita that nothing was wrong with me and no one knew why I wasn’t able to speak, Bonita swears that I looked that doctor in the eyes and told him “Well maybe I don’t have anything to say to you.” My famous first words with the neck roll and everything. It was a miracle, they said. I’ve always imagined that the doctor asked Bonita on who she slept with and what drugs she was taking and what diseases she had contracted because it’s a miracle if a tiny little black girl is silent by choice and because it’s only a statistic if my condition was caused because I have a black mother. But hey, how would I know? I was almost blind and deaf. Maybe I don’t have anything to say to you. I’ve always lived by that rule
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because I have the pain of a thousand hurt women and a million slaves in my blood that I have to carry along with me, wherever I go. And because I’ve always been pretty ok at being the silent kid. They say that women are the weaker sex, that blacks are even weaker, and I think that’s a load of crap because I spent all last night wiping away my tears, alone, because I cried for the gays and for the homeless and for blacks and for women and for war and for water they don’t have and water that I do have and for sex and for rape and how I have to even distinguish the two and I cried for this country and how this country doesn’t feel so free or united and I cried again for women and for stupid men and stupid women and stupid children and I cried because I don’t know if fighting with my friends before the football game hurts me more than crying because I fear for our lives everyday at school and I cried because being headstrong is sexy in a business skirt but being headstrong with my fist in the air makes me angry and how saying “that’s just my opinion” is only an excuse for racist white people and I cried 10 times over for the lover that I’m probably going to call tonight and tell him about the newest poem I wrote about him that I’m probably going to put with the rest of them and give it to him right before he gets tired of me and I cried because people always get tired of me and I cried because some people will torture you by still being with you while being tired of you. I cried last night because I am an emotional crybaby and somehow I’m supposed to know how to be feminine and weak and also black and just used to living like this. But I’ve got something to say now. And I will use the privilege I’ve been missing all this time and lift up the mountains that have been left inside of me. I am not silent, I am loud.
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I am emotional and all-types of beautiful and that petty little doctor tried to take that away from me just like they try try to do to Bonita during every nightshift and you all just let them do it and I will take my mountains and all of my voice and shove it right in your face because I finally have something to say in this world and I’ll be damned if I don’t get to cry about that.
— Soleil Garnett
The Tune of Revolution When the Lonely awaken, fermenting defiance in the gilded goblet of their moonlit graves, Conjoined moths drown and their holy, repellant, roses choke, shrouded in infected sunlight, Falsely Sentimental, Emphatically Content with Ignorance. The culture of the indulged and the exhaustingly reassured. Most intimate, the sincerity of the breeze, blowing through, challenging the conviction of the lingering shadows, graceless and scared. Outnumbered. The wind is coming. They turn to the glasses of God, eternally dusted rose, and look to the moment of divine whisperings, shouting the story of an infinite sacrifice; it wasn’t us but we won’t fix it once and always recognized never and never noticed. The sacrificed shout back: never and never to be taken again
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As the Lonely awaken, prejudice, as tender as a young daisy’s hope continues to cackle at battered souls. Morally sick mothers confuse the blossoming for constant voices of war; sweetly sneaky, feeling only their own pain Their false sentiment Their emphatic contentment with poison. They rebuke. And turn their children to the infected sunlight. Becoming repugnant, substanceless worms trying to suck dry the heart of a gypsy who unpeels the polish of the world. But prejudice is powerless, the souls are too battered to listen. This is the profound theatre of the externally influenced, internally barren, and magnificently fragmented. The culture of the indulged and the exhaustingly reassured. The Emphatically Content with Ignorance. When the Lonely awaken: No, when the Abandoned Unite: When the Abandoned Unite, the Forgotten Remembered, Noticed, Seen, by the roses —foul and sweet— who grew violently from their soil by the moths who thought the sunlight was pure the Erased refuse to leave the Cast Down, Cast Aside, Cast as a Pestilence, Cast as Capital Rise from the graves of the moonlight into the sun
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Duality-dead. us and us A splintering. A reckoning comes. The wind is here.
— Amanda Millis
For You Tell me your story and I will listen to your grief to your pain to your worst memories. Tell me your story and don’t be ashamed of your scars, your battle wounds, the numbers on your arm, blue, like your veins the proof you have survived your war. I will hold your hand if you tremble as you take me back, back to what you saw, what you suffered, the sharp barbed wire fence, the screams, the horrifying screams of crying children dragged from crying parents, the gunshots, moldy bread, the endless marches in the biting rain, with broken shoes and frozen feet, deep pits with lifeless bodies, brown water and fear, and the friends who went in and never came out. When you close your eyes and see your demons, let your heart be lighter knowing I am there and share your burden. Even though I won’t be able to ever understand as you do, I will try. I can’t erase the pain, all I can do is listen
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and care, witness and learn and remember for you. And I will try, try to make sure people know, try to make sure no one forgets, for you. I owe it to you to try. It’s the least I and we can do.
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— JR Herman
Jarvis Hua
The Birth of Gargantua
Ink on Paper
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un día content warning: sexual and violent assault, trauma, relationship abuse everyday, i reteach myself how to breathe, and i wonder if you (plural) ever forgot. one two three four my therapist once told me that trauma is like a rubik’s cube. one day, all of the colors are in order. the next moment, inexplicably, of no fault of your own, the colors are out of sorts. a new order. because trauma can change the fundamental way you perceive the world, your values, your opinions. trauma can change everything. one two three four the first time something happened, i was a minor riding the crowded metro to work. i wanted to turn around and scream for help. to beg the bystanders to do something. but instead i felt paralyzed. by fear. by shock. at the next stop, i used the commotion to run away. i found myself locked in a bathroom, sobbing. thirty minutes late to work, my boss scolded me for timeliness and for my blazer not hiding my sweat stains. one two three four i stare at myself, naked, in the mirror i have hanging on the back of my dorm room door. my eyes focusing on my imperfections, the ones intentionally caused by others. the bone sticking out of my right shoulder that the doctor said would look normal “in five years, if you’re lucky.” the scar purposefully covered up by my tattoo, a circle, i hide underneath my shirt. a reminder, that i am whole. my fingers trace what is long since gone, but still feels so bruised. where the knife sliced my arm. where my inner legs stayed purple for what felt like weeks. where the gun pushed against the small of my back to keep me quiet. one two three four “does this feel good?” i gasp, yes i say, as i fake an orgasm. i’m sure this would feel good. i’m sure oral sex should feel good. but i feel nothing. my therapist would be mad if they knew i was engaging in hook up culture again. because i’m not in my body. i’m hooking up with this man because i want to feel like i have some sort of power over what is done to my body. my brain reminds me that i should choose to participate in hook up culture because it brings me pleasure, not this. but i should be doing a lot of things (like using my vibrator more). one two three four
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my body is my own. my body is my own. my body is my own. my body is my own. my body is my own. my body is my own. my body is my own. my body is my own. maybe if i repeat it enough, it’ll feel true. maybe. one two three four i move my finger. i don’t understand how i can control my body at all after last night. last night when i lay half naked on the beach. last night when some sort of drug concoction caused me to be limp, unable to move a single finger. last night when in the presence of many witnesses, under the shade of night, he forced himself on me. one two three four i run faster. i want my body to feel like it’s my own. i want to check if my body can still feel physical sensations. i want to know if i can get my body to react to stimulus. i run until i’m on the ground gasping for air, pumping my inhaler. a few hours later, i do it again. one two three four my friend squeezes my hand. she’s bringing me down to earth again after i had spent a few hours watching a body that looked like mine. she looks me straight in the eyes and whispers, “you are the strongest human i know.” and i know she means it. but i can’t help but wonder why i have to be so strong. what if i want to be weak and carefree? one two three four my favorite calming mechanism is moving my hands like a butterfly against my chest. the butterfly flutters its wings, and my hands thumping against my chest reverberates through my body. (an aside- whoever said that you get butterflies when you have a crush clearly never experienced trauma. a crush is calculated, has to be screened for safety. because you never know what a stranger or even a trusted friend is capable of.) thump thump thump. i continue to beat my wings. one two three four “breathe,” my ob-gyn instructs, as she begins to conduct my pap smear, sliding the cold metal inside of me. i slowly pronounce the word again, vaginismus. because, you see, normally, when someone with female sex organs is stimulated, their vagina expands, allowing them to have penetrative intercourse. due to my trauma, at any stimulation, my vagina contracts, making penetrative sex impossible. one two three four
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i repeat it again and again as i do a soothing box breath. in hold, out hold. one two three four. you can breathe. one two three four one-time i opened up to my then-significant other. i was terrified to admit how broken i was, how often i wondered if my body was mine. but he hugged me and supported me. for a fleeting moment in time, i felt whole, like i was able to breathe again. like i had gained the ability to be sexually active for the sake of my personal enjoyment. one two three four a few months later, before we fell asleep for bed one night, i opened up again. i explained the memories that visited me every night, that sometimes caused me to wake up screaming or hyperventilating or just paralyzed with fear. he blinked. his facial expression looked disturbed. so i soothed him and lied, it’s not that bad, i claimed. i reassured him that it would continue to not impact his sleep. a few days later, he announced that, among other things, monogamy is a westernized concept, so we should just be friends. i blinked, uncertain. later i texted goodbye, that i did not want to be his friend. he did not like that, and so he chose to add another layer to my complex trauma that he had already contributed to. one two three four i constructed another section of the growing wall between me and the world. the wall won’t come down next time, i tell myself. it’ll be stronger next time, i’ll be stronger next time. i watch him replace me with a new significant other. and part of me is glad that my trauma, even the parts that he inflicted, is no longer a burden in his life. and i have to remind myself that my trauma is not a burden. i should not feel guilty when i feel brave enough to open up. one two three four sometimes in the mornings, i feel empty inside. i struggle to rise, but i do, every day. later, i stare vacantly at the whiteboard in class. sas gave me a pen to record my in-person lectures so i could still learn even on my worst days. one of my professors told me that this gave me an unfair advantage over other students, and she was not comfortable allowing me to use my provided accommodations. i blinked and whispered okay. one two three four i hug my legs nervously. i feel a bunch of eyes glancing at me for approval. my neon yellow shirt provides me with some sort of authority i do not feel like i possess as i sit on the floor of commonwealth auditorium. there is stifled laughter. i can’t fully blame
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them, the making a tribe choice video purposefully uses humor to discuss issues of sexual assault and trauma. i walk to the bathroom to splash water on my face. i wonder if my constituents will notice me shaking as i lead the dialogue. i wonder why i volunteered to represent this community that i feel like so often forgets me. one two three four one day, my former significant other said hi to me. i paused, unsure what to say. i wanted to scream that the sight of him is a trigger. that even his sweet, rock-loving friends, who are ignorant of the abuse, are triggers. that his verbal and psychological abuse over all those months blended in with the memories of physical abuse that haunt me. about the further amplification of fear that makes me almost break every day. but i don’t scream, i just walk away. and, again, i promise myself, to not ever stay in an abusive relationship again. but my therapist was the only one who recognized the abuse before it broke me with him, so would i even be able to tell how unhealthy the situation is next time? would i lie again, claiming to be okay? one two three four i shift noisily on the paper covering the chair. eyes glancing nervously, taking in the doctor’s office. i am the only person under the age of seventy in the waiting room (ahh, williamsburg). slowly, my doctor speaks, we’ve been working on what combination of medicine makes me feel the best. he instructs what pill to take while i’m in the middle of a panic attack (buspirone, 5mg), what to take before bed to help me get through the night (trazodone, 50mg), what to take on a daily basis (zoloft, 75mg). i nod. these meds have worked miracles for me. they help. one two three four beyoncé’s survivor comes roaring through the speakers of the frat basement (throwback to pre-covid). all of the drunk teenagers around me, dripping in sweat, scream the lyrics at the top of their lungs. so i smile, and i contribute to the chaos of the scene. internally, i repeat every word she says. because i am a survivor and i am soft, but powerful. more than that, i am strong. i am loved. i am intelligent. i am resilient. i am empathetic. i am proud. one two three four i ask my friend to eat lunch with me. i explain that when i disassociate i can’t eat. my brain becomes so disconnected from my body that i forget that a body needs food to survive. my body is incapable of feeling hungry, my brain barely registers the gnawing hunger pains and nausea. she is quiet, unsure how best to support me. her eyes communicate that all she wants to do is hug me. but of course, she can’t get within six feet of me. i don’t know how to express that her presence, her listening to my daily
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struggles, her quiet reminders to eat are beyond enough. i express my gratitude to the extent that my words allow. but words aren’t enough to communicate how much her unwavering support means to me, how safe i feel in her presence. because her silence speaks volumes: i am heard and i am valued. one two three four i take a deep breath, and i remind myself that i still know how to breathe.
— anonymous
IN DECEMBER It was winter for as far as the eye could see, and I grew rimy and rudderless, wandering acres of muffled white hills in search of a divine sense of direction. My thoughts were scarce and wild, my feet heavy and numb, and I knew for certain only this: that I wanted to pitch myself from the mountains and fall headfirst into belonging, wanted to hurtle path the blossoms and the budding and the growth – into all things fully formed and green – into the summer of my understanding of this life
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— Jenna Massey
Taylor Moorman
Construction of Myself
Oil on Canvas
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Katherine Hagen
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My Life in Pieces
Oil on Canvas
Face Cream Instructions for use, ‘Apply on face every morning’ She applied a liberal portion of happiness, It was her last hope. — Ishaan Khandpur
on the losses of last year dazzling sun creates a discoball of your tears clear skies, pierced by the heavy cloud above your head deep blue but not bluer than you children’s singing quiets down at the sound of your sobs mama’s cooking bland, grey, soaked in drear lovers’ kissing papercuts sting with a pretty knife now the stars are out a secret to those with the best intentions, (the end is nigh) a gift to those with the worst come out and play you were made a fool it’s summertime and you’re so alone it’s summertime you want to go home — Malvika Shrimali
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on forgetting how to cry i would trade any riches i possessed for a teardrop clenched in my fist. alchemy seems easier learned than the slow conversion of ache into weeping. i store my sorrows instead in the desert (no water to be found here) buried deep in spiteful vials. the coyotes still know how to cry, even the cacti sob agave onto the ground. i sit alone weary impassive as the moon until the earth gape up and swallow me too. — James Barrie
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Daniel McArthur
Zioneers
Photography
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a walk (or many) in a garden’s mind i once went to a garden that builds its own paths, personalized, or maybe an algorithm’s whimsy. the panopticon form of the spirit within oozes petals as it shifts to each entrant’s needs, meadowy head tilting left and right, working to the beat of a soundless rhythm. vines contort in snake-like manners as leaves flutter about, gliding up and down in patterns that would rival the most energetic butterfly. sun and moon vie for attention, jumping and leaping in front of each other like newborn puppies trying to cling to their mother. it will lift you up and drag you down, fling you forward and spin you around; show you to waterfalls and sleeping trolls, or simply take you for a stroll. i assume all those who enter leave all the more contented, that is, of course, unless you, i, and whoever else that tried are still inside. — Tessa Wilkinson
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replicating magpie in the summer heat the couple at a nearby table chats about their litter of cane corsos over lattes and congee. a set of brindled twins, but one was born blind and must be drowned. how can they tell which is which? you wonder. and you imagine magpie splitting like a river, one half following you home with knock kneed legs like baba yaga, crooked and spilling out of the south’s sighing lungs. far from home’s hot pavement, throat filling with oat milk. labored breathing in thin northern air. — Jack Dean
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breaking dishes something was off; it started when the brooms stood standing. something about gravity and magnetic forces. something was off this week when my frontal lobe flatlined in art class. I stood in a charcoal trance: unmoving by perspective. my brain is a muscle and these days, I imagine it’s more like mush. it’s not getting enough exercise on Autopilot. something was off when I disintegrated beneath the 20 pounds of my blanket, like the density of my matter reached its vanishing point. I get up on autopilot. bike to class. bike home. cut my hair because it looks lopsided. more. because something was off! more. drive to Richmond, on 64. something was off when it felt like someone else, someone tiny, was in my head with a joystick driving for me. something was off when the woman in Casey Subaru told me they’re killing time so we’re killing time we are all just killing time who is so tiny in my head and killing my time?! I’m on autopilot,
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when I see a Soccer Dad sticker on a Honda and I catch eyes with the driver, through my window through their window and over the moving space between us, I look at the passing lines as they grow wide behind me and converge in front. d i z z y i n g, like the teacup ride or discrete mathematics. I don’t think about the speed, because my cruise is controlled. something was off when the Soccer Dad looked back at the road instantaneously, like he did something Wrong. did he? I continue without constant manual control by a human operator. we pass roadkill and I’m afraid of nothing but four-legged guts all over the road. and Fathers. something was off: when I leaned into the wind to balance my bike, when the rain drenched my thighs, my cheeks, and I laughed Hysterically, horrifically, at myself, in this mother of monsoons, my art portfolio flip flap flapping, a spirt of water drenching my asscrack. I laughed loud, it was swift and startling, like breaking dishes. — Kate Dragonetti
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JR Herman
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Coaster of light
Photography
Taylor Moorman
Artist’s Tremor
Ink on paper
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Who can sleep amidst all this chaos? Who can sleep amidst all this chaos Who opts out of having a silent conversation in the night There is so much that demands addressing Where is the expansive space and when might we reach it On what vessels do we get there And will we have to return? These thoughts fill you you become their very being From your core to the ridges of your fingers How did it feel to have an unattached mind You had seen but you had not imagined No one images the chaos within and yet It is there you breathe in it you move in it you forgive it you know It is an untenable thing And rest is but an interval Darkness is a waiting game Where there were bones there now are stones You feel it in the night you are alone but you are not You do not know which is more frightening That without or that within
— Clara Finley
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JR Herman
Cavernous Mirage
Photography
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Toe to the Wolves I don’t know how to like anything without jumping headfirst, like driving without a map, like no floaties, like no headlights: all in. Only ever all in. When you say take it slow or see where it goes: we are going. I am no toe dipper, just cannonballs and big splashes, and it hurts that you don’t want to devour me, too. What is the point of a new love if not all-consuming? What you really mean to say is that you’re not sure of me, that we aren’t the stars aligning. Which, frankly, is bullshit because I have skinned knees, no helmets, and rocks at the bottom for you again and again. Spare me your excuses; spare me your empty apologies; spare me the trouble and the crash. I have only ever been upfront. This is on you. — Meghan Gates
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2020-2021 Poetry Staff Favorite
conversation over dinner tell the truth shame the devil what are the facts young man tell me what are the facts shit ma i dont know i guess i found myself in that gorge naked by accident strange coincidence to find the mayor there too tell the truth shame the devil i guess i just dont know — Anonymous
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2020-2021 Prose Staff Favorite
On Vacation by Abby Comey
My family was on vacation the first time my dreams killed someone. I’d noticed the phenomenon one other time—the night before the first day of sixth grade, I’d dreamt of a burning forest and woken up to the white orchid on my window sill charred to a crisp—but no one had gotten hurt. I didn’t tell my parents about the orchid. I just swept its black petals into the pot and tucked it under my bed. When my mom asked what had happened to the orchid, I told her I thought it was ugly, that I’d thrown the whole thing in the trash. She got upset and doubled my chores. I had to do the dishes and fold everyone’s laundry. I was grateful because it gave me something to do in the middle of the night. Careful not to wake anyone, I stood in front of the muted TV and turned on the subtitles. When I finished scrubbing and folding, I kept watch-reading until the sun came up. Then, I snuck into my room and started the day like I’d been sleeping the whole time. Like I’d been dreaming without destroying. I did this every night for a week. And, then we went on vacation. Emerald Isle, North Carolina is a beach destination for rich white people. People like my family. People like me, I guess. The first night, we went out to a seafood place with white table cloths and steel anchors mounted on the walls. The theme was refined nautical, the hostess told us on the way to our table. There were waves stitched onto my napkin. The centerpiece was a ship in a bottle. When I reached to pick it up, my sister kicked me under the table. She was older. She knew better how one should behave in a refined nautical restaurant. The shore was different. From the balcony off my bedroom, I could almost pretend there was no one else on this island. The beach stretched for miles in both directions. As far as I was concerned, the sea stretched forever. Both of them—sand and sea—were timeless and indestructible. That year, a hurricane had swallowed a few of the biggest houses on the street along the shore. They were working on rebuilding the pier. Our waiter at the restaurant told us that the flood had swept someone’s dog away—an old couple’s. All their kids had moved away, so they’d retired to the Isle. Then, the ocean ate their dog. Despite this, the sand and the sea remained. That night, I stood on my balcony until all the lights along the shore flicked off, and the flashlights wandered back to the pavement where they belonged. There was only the moon and the fishing boats creeping along the horizon. I had no chores to do, so I just stood there staring, pretending. Eventually, I sat down and stuck my legs beneath the railing. The wind massaged the soles of my feet. The waves shushed me. But, I didn’t say anything, I thought. I didn’t tell anyone. But the waves shushed me still. Shhh. Shhh. Shhh. I fell asleep with my forehead pressed to the railing, my feet still dangling, and my dreams still deadly. After days of deprivation, it was the best sleep of my
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life. I woke up to a whack. I didn’t open my eyes right away. I figured it must be my sister, beating the sand off her sneakers. She’d gone for a morning run, I thought. She was better than I was. My head hurt from the pressure against the railing. I rubbed my forehead. There would be a red mark there all day. But, it wasn’t my sister. Beside me lay a white seagull, its beak slightly parted, its black eyes hidden. I reached out to touch it. My kindergarten teacher’s voice nagged in my head. I’d brought a feather in from recess, and she’d snatched it away. Never touch a bird’s feathers. They’re diseased. I touched this bird’s feathers anyway. They were cold and stiff. The bird was dead. I remembered my dream then. I’m standing on top of a hill. My mom, dad, and sister are there, too. Below us, in the bowl of the valley, sits a town—just a cluster of houses, a few smokestacks and silos, a field full of cows, a lake. I see people, too, chatting on street corners, rocking on their front porches. A cloud of dust, wide as the hill on which we stand, rolls through the valley. No one in the town seems to notice its approach, even as a shadow cuts across the cattle fields and blackens the silver silos. In silence, on top of our hill, the four of us watch as the dust envelops the town and then spits it back out again, everything now covered in grime. The dust cloud clings to the bottom of the valley as it rolls past the hill where my family stands. From our vantage point, we see everything. The people look fine at first. They brush off their clothes and go about their business. But, then they start coughing. Some of them collapse on the sidewalk. Others convulse against street sign poles. Cows drop in the field. I watch a man in a rocking chair slow his rhythm until he’s just sitting there, motionless. Dead. Another whack. Another seagull sprawled on the balcony. It was still early. The sun was just peeking over the horizon. The beach was empty. The waves hushed me, but I ignored them this time. I got up and went inside. Downstairs, my dad was watching the news. There was an easy chair he loved to sink into when we rented this house, and he wasn’t sitting in it. He was standing with his arms folded, shoulders hunched. A mysterious virus is sweeping across the globe. It appears to have arisen overnight. Scientists are scrambling to make sense of its origin and nature. As of this morning, thousands are dead. It is extremely contagious and deadly to both animals and humans. Unless you are an essential worker, stay inside your home. The virus is— I coughed, more to get my dad’s attention than to clear my throat. His head snapped around. He rushed over and grabbed me by the shoulders. “Have you been outside?” I shook my head. “Good,” he said. “That’s good.” My sister jogged downstairs in her sneakers and headphones. She was going for a run. She was better than I was.
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“You can’t leave,” said my dad. “None of us can. People are dropping dead.” Bleary-eyed, my mom wandered into the kitchen still in her robe. She was reaching for the coffeemaker when my dad grabbed her, as he’d grabbed me. “There’s a deadly—” She held up a finger to stop him. “Coffee,” she said. “Just tell me after I have my coffee.” We all sat around the kitchen table while she sipped. This was a ritual of hers. She liked to watch the waves every morning while she drank her coffee. It made her happy. She was on vacation. My sister took off her sneakers and padded to the fridge in her socks. She came back with yogurt. She licked the foil and, when she was done, ran her finger along the inside of the cup until it was clean. It took my dad longer to unwind himself. My mom went back for a second mug and brought one for him. It was just how he liked it—a light beige, mostly milk. He closed his eyes while he took the first sip. His face softened when he put down the mug. He got up and muted the TV, then came back. I watched the news anchor lean toward the camera, her brow furrowed. She was trying to tell us something urgent, but we didn’t hear. We just saw her lips moving. On the other side of the sliding glass doors that lined the kitchen, there was a dead crab on the pool deck, its claws open and unmoving, its white belly exposed to the sun. My family didn’t seem to notice. Maybe they were too busy with breakfast. Or, maybe they saw everything and chose to look away. We had leftover seafood for lunch and cereal for dinner. No one talked about it. We acted like this was normal, like we always stayed inside all day at the beach. My mom started a jigsaw puzzle. My sister did yoga on the living room rug, her mat facing the ocean. My dad never turned the volume up on the TV, but he sat in front of it all day in his easy chair, watching the headlines change, the numbers rise. He only got up once, to fill the bathtubs with water. He announced this task like it was something he did everyday. He mentioned, too, in passing, that we had enough food to last us, comfortably, for at least a week. We all nodded. It was always nice to have a lot of food. We wouldn’t have to go to the grocery store. We could spend more time relaxing. We were on vacation. All day, I floated from room to room. From the opposite side of the house, I could see the street. There were dead bodies outside—human ones—a man slumped over in a riding lawn mower, a dog walker sprawled at the center of a wheel. I didn’t look to the end of her leashes. Somehow, that would’ve been worse. My mom called to me from the other room, “We’re gonna start a
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movie.”
Pressing my nose to the window, I pretended not to hear her. It could’ve been a smudge in the glass, but I thought I saw the dog walker’s chest rise and fall, just once. Though she went motionless again, I still wondered. I reached for the doorknob. It was cold. We hadn’t touched it all day. It squeaked as it turned. Then, I heard my sister’s voice. “I don’t want to watch a cheesy action movie. Those are like junk food for your brain.” “Come on,” my mom said. “We’re on vacation.” She called my name. I let go of the knob. I wiped the window pane beside the door with my sleeve. There, I told myself. Now, the smudge is gone. Now, I won’t mistake the dead for the living again. I turned away and walked back to the living room. My mom was making popcorn on the stove. The movie was about a white man who saves the world with a gun and his martial arts skills. He’s very muscular. There’s a beautiful woman who follows him around. I fell asleep during the climax. I didn’t even try to stop myself. We’re at the kitchen table. My mom and dad are drinking their morning coffee while they look out at the ocean. My sister is licking yogurt off the foil. A woman on the TV is talking without making any sound. A crab is sunbathing on the pool deck. We’re on vacation. When I woke up, it was true. G
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A World of Twos I live in a world of everything in twos, all I know. I know two desks in a room facing each other, like two armies squared for battle. Two beds Scratch that, one bed (two levels, of course, only two levels) two levels because everything was, as it always was, in twos. I lived from 4 cabinets, two for each, you’d think but not, it’s four for all, it must be because a world with two of everything is a world with too much for me. I come from a world of running around in twos, games with real friends, invisible was just that, we didn’t need invisible when real friends were just there. I live in a world where things get done together, where “alone time” is a misnomer because even alone time is time for two. And I go back to my room, One room, A room of twos, Two blankets, two pillows, two desks Two cabinets for photo albums Two lives everything is in twos, everything has always been in twos, and that’s just how it was always meant to be — Eli Gnesin
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So I Am Not Immune To Propaganda Because I sat there in my mother’s house in my mother’s chair wanting so desperately to believe that things might change that the skin of the peach of the world might peel back and reveal something worth saving and worth savoring And I am a long way from the land that birthed me and yet I felt like I might have a say here too, safe, too, like my sister might, too Sometimes you tear across an ocean for a land worth sowing and find nothing but ruins’ ruins but I sit here in a stranger’s house, in my mother’s chair, and understand how to dig into the scorch — Pelumi Sholagbade
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Tom Plant
Oil Sketch for Mica Basin Loop
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Oil on Canvas
Tom Plant
Mica Basin Loop
Oil on Canvas
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I. on not writing your name When I take notes for class, I consider writing your name with hearts in the spirit of schoolgirl crushes. I think about how good it would look to see you in my penmanship. Instead, I keep taking notes. I’m too afraid of what seeing you in my handiwork might cement in my heart.
II. on writing your name Today, I allow myself to write you all over in pencil on college ruled, complete with hearts and Dear’s. You look good in my handwriting though you feel more foreign in the execution than I expected. You’re farther away now than you were yesterday— now, it’s safe to see you in my hand. Heart bruised, maybe, but not set. — Meghan Gates
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Movements Her movements were godful Spilt coffee was a promise Crooked glasses were love She spun and wove Crafting and pleading to come closer A loom, a life, none could refuse Sidewalks were wider The sun encroachingly brighter All to fit us My movements were godless A lost midterm was an accident Sprained ankles were a nuisance Endearment gone and love followed Replaced with shocking solitude And soon after, bitterness The sidewalk suddenly split God met us in the middle And went with her — Grace Rust
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Tom Plant
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Austria
Moasic
Dear Scott We used to shower in champagne And swim in the fountain at Union Square. Do you remember When they kicked us out Of the Biltmore Hotel? Or when we glided across the dance floor, Our feet floating on clouds, At the Montgomery Country Club? I remember the fireflies And the smothering summer air As you walked me home to the Judge. Are you listening to me? Remember when I kissed Jozan On the French Riviera, Or how Ernest stifled my voice And stole my spot in bed By soiling my name? Were you ever listening to me? Or were you just ripping sheet after sheet Of my secrets To spread throughout the world As your words? I know you didn’t hear me When I said I wanted to take All those sleeping pills, Just like the doctor didn’t hear me When he said “you’re schizophrenic” While I shouted “I’m all alone, so alone.” Where is your Daisy now? I was never a beautiful little fool Or a green light on the edge of the dock. While you saw the muse of the Jazz Age, The “first American flapper,” I felt my lungs collapsing And my throat closing. I screamed out our story And you scratched out each line. So I hope you hear this, I hope you hear my final cries for help As the fire climbs up the dumbwaiter And under the crack of my locked door. — Ceci Hughes
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JR Herman
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La Danse Entre Les Arbres
Photography
I VISIT DICK I visit Dick around ten o’clock. Dick’s this big guy, 6’5 or 6’6 or something, broad chested, huge beard. He lives with his son and their new dog, Maggie, and when I get to his house Maggie is wearing a diaper. “She’s on her doggy period,” Dick’s son says as we walk into the living room. “She bled all over my blue rug.” Dick tells the kid to play upstairs and let the grownups talk. He proceeds to tell me that he crashed his bike the other night. Dick rides his motorcycle everywhere; sticks the kid on the back and tells him to hold on tight. They have matching helmets and goggles. “Jesus, Dick, was it bad?” I ask him. His face gets real cloudy. He seems too big for his chair. “I smashed into a bush, see?” He shows me a bunch of fine scratches lining his arms and neck. “Wasn’t too bad.” I nod, relieved. “Is the bike okay?” Dick opens and closes his mouth a few times. “There was this nest of birds. I killed them when I hit the bush - every last little baby in the nest.” He looks at the floor for a long time. I hear his son singing upstairs. Maggie scratches at her doggy diaper. I tell him: “I’m sorry.” What else could I say? “I’ve never killed anything before,” he whispers. “I know, Dick.” What else could I say? He touches his neck. “Do you think you’ll ever have kids?” I look to the mantle where Dick’s wife rests in an orange and white urn. I look at Dick. “I don’t think so.” He offers me a sad smile. He says: “That’s okay.” We sit in his living room for a long time. We are very quiet. Sometimes he reaches down and give Maggie a squeeze. He calls me “honey” when I leave in the afternoon. — Jenna Massey
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on a gay love that heals when you come home in the evening you drench the walls in wash-out yellows blues that have seen better days click of the door behind you, click of the back teeth and everything sets with the sun. i’m on the couch-- bill evans is playing from where i forgot to turn him off before falling asleep. i’ve learned a new twist in your absence, back and face tightly intertwined with slumber but you know beyond a doubt i was waiting darling i was waiting, and thinking of you. twilight haze-heavy you slot yourself in next to me nose to neck. i was listening for you and now you are listening to me breathe in time with bill. — James Barrie
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Ants I guess I won’t get anywhere pretending to be what I’m not instead that which is ants climbing up the shower wall, unsightly, scrabbling up the evolutionary ladder, inconvenient in the way all things born to die are in the way all this skin of mine is, no matter how many times I stand under the head of the beast begging to be put out or maybe for a love so pure it annihilates like the sun, like Raid, like God. — Pelumi Sholagbade
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The Brook Babbling brook bickers, The silent lake is asleep, Judge depth not by voice. — Ishaan Khandpur
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Brooke Braden
Koi Reflections
Silk, tulle, cotton thread, plastic beads, and faux leaves in a bamboo hoop
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Koach Tonguing a cigarette-One of those things you say you’ll quit. But hey, rather than fighting panic you fret While keeping your lungs filled and that cancer lit. One of those things you say you’ll quit-You need time and space and to deal With keeping your lungs filled and that cancer lit. It’ll take even more time alone before you can figure out how you feel. You need time and space to deal With that New York-grown self-loathing; It’ll take even more time alone before you can figure out how you feel In regard to me--hell, anyone--especially “us” as a co-“thing”. With that New York-grown self-loathing, You’ve got this new, political, D.C.-partner, lover, despite all you said In regard to me--hell, anyone--especially “us” as a co-“thing”. Drunk and high and veins popped with nicotine--on it all when you both fall to bed. So you’ve got this new, political, D.C.-partner, lover, despite all you said-But hey, rather than fighting panic, you fret While drunk and high and veins popped with nicotine--on it all when you both fall to bed, Tonguing, a cigarette. — jecook
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Kate Dragonetti
Bathroom Conversation
Oil on Canvas
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Strike I was a pile of sand sifting through a life day by day, Until you hit me by force, golden lightning strike, Reflecting my color back at me, me a pile of listless sand. Your smile, your laugh, your light: building me into glass, with one quick strike through me, me a pile of listless sand, golden lightning strike, Something, because of you. — Mae Dye
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Playground Thinking by Anonymous
I look down at my feet and see the two perfect bows mommy tied for me this morning as I sloshed a bowl of cereal down my throat I only like the kind with raisins in it I told her but now my feet are hot and gross and sweaty and I just hate when that happens but then my best friend comes over and I tell her how don’t you just hate when it gets hot and she says yes and we laugh and shuffle around the mulch at our feet and I kinda start to forget about how sweaty my feet are what with it being so hot and all and then I decide how great it would be to kick some mulch at my best friend so I do only she gets mad and doesn’t talk to me the rest of the day and the next day at recess I see a boy playing with his other friend that is a boy obviously because boys have cooties and I can’t be friends with a boy and I guess the one boy had a great idea like I did about kicking that mulch at my best friend only I don’t see what his great idea is because I am too busy looking at the clouds which is very important for me to do but then I get bored so I turn back around and I see those two stupid boys shoving each other but then they stopped because I guess they saw a teacher or maybe they aren’t that stupid but I kept thinking how when my best friend got mad at me she wouldn’t talk to me and how when his best friend got mad they just started shoving each other and I was thinking really hard I know because my lips were pinched together real tight and I always do that when I’m thinking real hard and I was thinking that if I had brothers instead of sisters mommy might not tie his shoes like mine and how he might not like the same cereal as me and how maybe if he would get into a fight with his best friend maybe he would shove him and mommy and daddy would get mad at him and make a rule and say no fighting other boys but then I was still thinking and I thought maybe I wouldn’t have that rule seeing as I don’t fight people and everything and then I was kinda of thinking that That’s. Not. Fair. If I had a brother I would want mommy and daddy to treat me and him the same and if they didn’t that would make me mad and my eyebrows would get all twisty and I would say That’s. Not. Right. Why would mommies and daddies do that and why do boys have to have cooties and why can’t I be friends with them and that all got me thinking real hard. G
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coward lost little lying boy who doesn’t want to be here: how do you spell coward? i spell it with your name, the protection a blue screen offers, selective amnesia, holding out for one last blow, finished with the world of smoke screens you’ve invented for yourself. little boy, make good on one promise: go home. you don’t find spines in other people.
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— Meghan Gates
Kate Dragonetti
Women Serve Men
Oil on Canvas
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Monochrome by Mae Dye
Growing up in a house with six other people meant constant turmoil. Our house was a two-story brick building that might have once been a factory or a clothes store with an apartment above it. Regardless of its original purpose, the top floor had been renovated to hold a kitchen, bathroom, and expansive living room with floor to ceiling windows that made a person feel as though they were basking in the sun of an untrodden meadow. The outside of the house was uncomplicated; strangers would assume from the empty parking lot and crumbling brick that it was deserted. But inside: fires swallowed up innocent bystanders, monsters crashed through walls, floods washed away favorite mementos, things broke, people yelled, and I curled myself up in the sun of those floor to ceiling windows and watched. When I was first brought to the house at the age of six, it already contained four people, two pairs, two girls and two boys. A year later my adoptive parent brought in another pair, one boy and girl. When I was ten, I danced my way into my adoptive father’s study in the basement of our house. Back then I danced my way everywhere; it was the safest way to travel in my young mind. His eyes glanced above his glasses but quickly found their way back to the book he was reading. I placed both hands on his desk in the same manner I had watched my older brother employ when he wanted to ask our father for something important. At that age, my eyes were perfectly level with the desk, but I knew he could hear me when I spoke. “Why was I the only one adopted alone?” This innocent question was enough for him to place his book gently on the desk, bookmark neatly hugged between two pages, slid to the side so he could look down at me. It was the first and last time he ever scrutinized me as he answered one of my questions. “You see the world differently, Flavia, so we have to find someone to help you see what others see.” “Elaborate,” I urged. He chuckled softly at my use of a word he would often throw at me when I was so stressed, I could only repeat the same unclear thought. “Have you ever heard of all-or-nothing thinking?” I shook my head, gripping the edges of his desk to position myself at eye-level with his book. “It’s when a person always views things as good or bad. Yes or no. There is no inbetween. It can also be called black-and-white thinking.” “What does that have to do with me,” I said, glaring at the book as though it held the answers. “This is how you view the world. It’s your greatest strength and greatest weakness.” I shuffled out of his office with more questions than answers. Answers it only took me two more years to discover. My siblings kept mentioning “colors.”
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Items were supposed to have variations in the way they looked, my older brother explained. Different shades for different things. The sky was blue. My hair was blonde. Grass was a shade of green. I saw my world in black and white. My siblings continued to swarm around the house, building lives for themselves. Tristan’s books fell off the fridge, placed there absentmindedly when she was cooking, while Ben exploded beakers in his bedroom. Lily found creative ways to climb the kitchen shelves in search of things she couldn’t reach. James excelled at basketball, whether because he was tall enough to reach the rim or because of actual skill, I could never tell. Emma calmly wandered the house organizing things in her way, with Liam destroying everything behind her like the wind abruptly disrupting a peaceful day. I watched from my window as they moved past me, their images light or dark, nothing in between. At age 17, a girl walked in behind my father. Loudly. I couldn’t see color, but this girl seemed to exude it in the same sharp way the smell of sugar would hit my nose when I entered a candy store. She immediately slid onto the floor next to me, introducing herself, talking about anything that came to mind. I looked dubiously back at my father, but he just nodded his head and walked back out. So, here was a girl named Rose, meant to show me how others saw the world. The first night she arrived, she waltzed into my room, pouncing onto the bed next to me. “Let’s go for a walk!” she exclaimed. “No,” I responded, “it’s safe in here and unsafe out there.” “It’s only unsafe out there if you don’t pay attention. Don’t be so anxious. C’mon, let’s go.” She grabbed my hand, pulling me along with her. “What about father?” I questioned as she tugged me out the door. “This isn’t right.” “It’s okay to break the rules if you are doing something important.” I didn’t agree. Rules were there for a reason. There was right, and there was wrong, not a line blurring between. But Rose yanked harder, so I followed. We shuffled along the brick path that led from our house into town. It was a quiet place at night, with iron tables covered by umbrellas meant to shade visitors during the day. Multiple shops lined the sidewalks with the smell of chocolate fudge wafting from them. In the distance, the sound of a trumpet drifted through the air to my ears with the smooth feeling of a knife shifting through butter. “ Tonight, you are going to see color,” Rose stated as we stopped at a grassy clearing with a bridge spanning across a small stream. “That’s not possible,” I answered. “Close your eyes,” she commanded. I acquiesced, closing my eyes as she grabbed both of my hands. “Green and gold. Tonight, we learn green and gold. Do you hear that
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trumpet? The blaring, loud, brassy sound. That’s gold. Do you hear it?” I nodded as she spun my head in the direction of the sound. The melody bounced through my ears. It was soft jazz. In my mind, I was in the arms of a man, gliding across a floor too sparkly to feel comfortable walking on. There wasn’t a worry of wrong or right in my mind, everything was nuanced and balanced. And for a few short moments, I could imagine Rose’s gold: glossy and metallic. I nodded my head again in understanding. For the first time, I could imagine what my hair looked like. “Green,” she began again, “the smell of freshly cut grass. The wind whipping through your hair as you run. The tickly feeling as the grass slides between your toes.” I nodded again, opening my eyes. Rose’s eyes twinkled, seeing the understanding in mine. “Now, we experience green. Take your shoes off.” I followed orders quietly, trying to ignore the fact that this meant my feet would be dirty rather than clean. We left our shoes in a pile on the sidewalk. She dragged me behind her as we picked up speed, running through the field. The grass slid between my feet, as though I was running across a rubber rug, just soft enough to stifle the sound of our pounding feet. For a few short moments, I saw green; I saw red; I saw gold, purple, blue. I understood Rose’s loudness, why she surrounded herself in these colors. Then she stumbled, and I stumbled with her, an ungraceful tangle of limbs similar to fingers stuck in a knot of hair. We landed on our knees, and a squeak sounded from my throat, a giggle from hers. Breathless for only a second, Rose was back on her feet, bounding back to where she had tripped. I pulled myself up and danced over to her, the grass squishing under me. Her face had drained of color, and her eyes remained on the ground as though scared to look away. My eyes fell upon the folded creature in the grass. It was lifeless and white as snow, even my eyes could see that. A baby bunny. Maybe I could see color. The balance between wrong and right. Good and bad. Safe and unsafe. But Rose’s colorful world was too loud for me to stay permanently. Anxiety crept back in. G
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Cubana
by Anonymous 5:00 AM July 25, 1958, Santiago de Cuba Victoriano Garzónho I feel my mother’s hand shaking my shoulder frantically. Martica! Martica! I shoot up out of bed. Something turned my mother’s soft, loving voice into a coarse and frightened whisper. Levántate. Tenemos que ir a la parte de atrás de la casa, es más seguro allí. As my eyes start to adjust to the dim light in my room, I also become aware of the noises just outside my window. I hear men shouting and boots stomping on the ground. Then, gunshots ring out, which causes my mother to grab me by the arm and sprint down the hallway to the maid’s bedroom at the back of the house. We pass by our kitchen, and I catch a glimpse of the fading glow of embers in the stove fire, the stove our maid always shoveled ashes out of. My head whips away from the dying light and is back to reality. My bare feet slap against the tile floor as we race into the bedroom. We sit holding on tight to each other as our panting breath slows then becomes shaky. Even though I am almost old enough to be an adult, I hold fast and tight to my mother. Thoughts are racing through my mind. The Revolución, Fidel, and his army. We do not know who is winning the fight for El Cuartel Moncada, only that it is not safe to go outside. With my mother’s comforting arm around my waist, we sit looking through the window as the fight unfolds before our eyes. There are men from the rebel army who are finding shelter on our porch. My chest fills with a mix of emotions— something that is not pride, hope, vengeance, anger, or patriotism, but a combination of all of these things. Batista, he will be gone, and I am helping to do that. Young men fighting and dying on my street; behind is the backdrop of the burning sunrise. The clamor outside is fading away, and the screams cease to pierce the air. And, although the bloodshed is gone, a sickening feeling still lingers in my stomach. I know the fate of rebel soldiers caught by Batista’s army, el paredon. 2:00 AM October 6, 1958, Santiago de Cuba I see soldiers lined against el paredon, neatly, like the dolls I lay so preciously on my bed every day. Bang! Bang! Bang! The shots ring out quickly in a row, succinct, persuasive. Their message is clear. The rebels crumple down to the ground like ragdolls. The image is gone, and another one replaces it: young men, with bruises and bloodstains. I see the face of the man that tortures them, General Manuel Bartolome. They are coming faster. My brain is struggling to keep up. My mother’s face. Her frantic whispers. Hiding in the dark. Men shouting. Boots stomping. Fidel. The Revolution. The overload of images causes my eyes to fly open. I panic for a moment, thrashing and turning against my tangled bedsheets, but then I realize I am okay. I lie still and wait for the peace or terror of sleep. Even as I close my eyes, the images stay burning behind my eyelids like a rising sun.
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10:00 PM January 1, 1959, Santiago de Cuba The night breeze from the open window of my bed feels like a soft, comforting hand brushing against my cheek. I am back home in Santiago, on Christmas break from school in the United States. We are nearing the end of break, but there were no celebrations at my house this past week. Just yesterday, I sat on my bedroom floor, the radio pressed up by my ear. Crackly voices faded in and out, telling me what I already knew: change was here. Everyone in Santiago is wondering what will happen next. With Batista gone, there is a chance for something better with Castro. He is young and charismatic and, most importantly, not Batista. That is what is happening. I believe that all the fighting must be for some reason. That the bleeding man I remember on my porch did not die in vain. Lying in my bed, with the night pressing against my skin and the radio pressing against my ear, I become aware of my heartbeat. It is beating strong and fast. My heart, it is feeling something I have not felt in so long— hope. Hope is swelling in my heart and in my home. It rushes out onto the streets, weaving in and out like streamers of freedom. Cubans, all of us, we are getting caught up in the glory of the dancers on stage, waving their glimmering streamers. We do not see what is behind the stage curtain, what lurks, following behind the hope as it streams its way, winding and twisting through the streets of Cuba, winding and twisting around our hearts. 3:00 PM March 3, 1959, Santiago de Cuba I am sitting in my bed, as I often did to think about things. I always got in my head about things, overthinking the smallest insignificant things. Now, though, these things that are happening are not small, and sometimes it is even too hard to think about them. We are trapped. While Cuba watched the show, streamers wound themselves around everyone and everything. Now, we realize something. They were never really streamers of freedom, just chains of oppression. Fidel lies and betrays, and now he turned Cuba communist. He took my grandfather’s, and so many others’, land away. We did not realize what he was doing until it was too late. Now, I do not even have the freedom to say what I want, too. We all know that if you speak out against the regime, they will be the last words you ever say. There is no money for food or medicine, not that there is any available. Fidel created a new kind of money. The old money is worthless now. The government froze my family’s bank account. So much happened, and all of it obliterated any hope that we ever had. The last shreds of hope, the tattered scraps of bright and glimmering streamers, they had just vanished before our eyes. 8:00 AM June 20, 1959 I do not know why this is so hard. Out of all of the things I have to leave behind in Cuba, this is becoming one of the hardest. My dolls. Every Christmas, my
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mother and father would gift me one of these dolls. When I was a little girl, I would lay them on my bed in neat rows whenever I wasn’t playing with them. I played make-believe doctor and teacher with them. Even as I got older, my parents would still do it as a tradition. When resources started getting scarce in Cuba, and my parents could not find or afford a new doll, they would fix up an old one. They would maybe change their outfit or fill in chipped paint. Now, I stand over a box full of my dolls. Earlier, I arranged them inside, perfectly snug and safe. I did not want to damage their delicate dresses and perfectly coiffed hair. When I am gone, my mother will give them away to little girls in our town. I gaze down at las muñecas, their perfect smiles that never falter, not in the face of fear or doubt. The pastel colors of their skirts, bright eyes, and strawberry stained cheeks and lips make my heart aches with an intensity that shocks me. I really like them, I realize. I love them, I really do. My eyes glass over with tears until they shine, like the glass eyes of the dolls perched on my bed. One of my tears drips on to a doll’s cheek and slides down as if it were her own tear. It is sad and strange but somewhat comforting, like a final goodbye. 1:00 PM June, 20 1959 Havana Cuba I wait outside the door of the airport, hesitating. The midday sun beating down on my back. It weighs me down, adding to everything else I am hauling with me to America— metaphorically, that is. In reality, I am unable to take little else other than the clothes on my back, no money and no family. Although, I find some reassurance in the fact that I will be able to claim my parents once I reach America. The regime does not like that Cubans are fleeing the country. Fidel wants to maintain this facade of success and prosperity for Cuba. When in reality, my country is falling apart. These past few weeks, reality was ever present. It was the opposite of feeling like I was in a movie. Everything felt all too real: the names Castro supporters call us, gusanos, worms. We are afraid of being caught, but know this: the saying freedom comes with a price rings so loud and so true for us, for me, at this moment. I step through the doors into the airport, believing I will be okay. Somehow before this moment, my heart gathered some tattered streamers from the drifting wind and sewed them into a new kind of hope. A patchwork quilt that comforts all of us heading to America. We know that Fidel will not stay in power. We know Cuba will become prosperous. We know the country will see peace and freedom again. We will return soon. Friday, June 1, 2018 Cubans had sewn tirelessly. We frantically searched for tattered scraps of streamers. They were false comforts given to us by a quilt of our own making, made to mislead our own selves. I knew these things; I thought I knew. I did not know that standing in that airport would be the last time I ever set foot in my home country. G
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do not follow me wax drips like lime green honey down your frozen hands, scorching away your infidelity. burned into your flesh is a cursed painting of what i used to mean to you. my name dissolves in sweet smoke and sticks to the insides of your lungs so you breathe me in when you can’t sleep at night. watch me as i melt down the candlewick in a fight for your mind. i want to pull you down with me. — Malvika Shrimali
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THE MECHANIC IS A POET I. The mechanic is a poet, a man with grease in his hair, on his hands, under his fingernails, a man who takes apart and puts back together, who sees what others don’t, hears what they can’t, or won’t— the misfire, the pattern broken by a piston out of beat, each engine’s particular way of speaking— and his lexicon is the lexicon of a listener, a lover of words few people know or care to know like engine oil and antifreeze, brake fluid and fuel pump, caliper, muffler, six speed transmission— and hope, so much hope. II. He passed by a junkyard near Fairfield three days ago and stopped to look, to find an idea, a possibility, a wonderful thing— a 1968 Chevy short bed with a 293 ci six cylinder three speed transmission and two wheel drive—
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then went back home to the barn, to the Spitfire with the bent frame. And there, by himself, attempting slowly to remake what had been lost, what had been torn apart, he became accidentally a poet. — Jessie Urgo
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Taylor Moorman
The Light at the End is You
Photography
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Garden plot Tarragon seedling Slantways Giant marconis Face the sun How can I show you!? Plant Sage in your palm Sing “Man gave names to all the animals” In the kitchen There is rhubarb Bubbling in the oven Come See Let something new And agrestal Grow in the garden The barrow Chicory blue is A simple machine I am Learning
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— Jack Dean
Picking Asters We used to pick asters that we thought were daisies In our backyard, in the stink of slinking onion grass, And we’d braid each other chains of dandelions, lazy Loops which quickly fragmented, fragile built stems of glass. In our backyard, in the stink of slinking onion grass, We’d whisper words about unseen fairies, our knees in Loops which quickly fragmented, fragile built stems of glass, Waiting, watching for silent sprites, made of porcelain and tin. We’d whisper words about unseen fairies, our knees in A row, two pairs of thin twigs in our twin beds at night. Waiting, watching for silent sprites, made of porcelain and tin, While the sun paled, triggering our night light. A row, two pairs of thin twigs in our twin beds at night, Our closets used to seem so tall. While the sun paled, triggering our night light, Our posters clung to the highest corners of our walls. Our closets used to seem so tall. But now, my head scrapes the doorframe where Our posters clung to the highest corners of our walls. I used to reach for the ceiling as I crawled up each stair, But now my head scrapes the doorframe where The steps meet our childhood bedroom. I remember I used to reach for the ceiling as I crawled up each stair Back on the blooming first day of September. The steps meet our childhood bedroom. I remember When we’d braid each other chains of dandelions, lazy Back on the blooming first day of September. It was winter for as far as the eye could see, and I grew rimy and rudderless, wandering acres of muffled white hills in search of a divine sense of direction. My thoughts were scarce and wild, my feet heavy and numb, and I knew for certain only this: that I wanted to pitch myself from the mountains and fall headfirst into belonging, wanted to hurtle path the blossoms and the budding and the growth – into all things fully formed and green – into the summer of my understanding of this life — Ceci Hughes
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2020-2021 Art Staff Favorite
JR Herman
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Sky-Lake Cabin
Photography
More Idols Than Realities by Catherine Green
Prologue: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars Summer, and my CRV lost AC. I drive, still new to it but already fiercely attached to a car that’s not quite mine. My windows are down, always, and my music is loud, usually. Heat pulses off the car’s midnight paint job, and I can smell the exhaust. Open windows craft interesting limbos, collapsing what usually divides me from the other drivers. My music and I blur out onto the road. I’m the final link in the chain of siblings this car has known. It was never Teresa’s. It was new when it was Lori’s. When this car was John’s, the end of an Aux cord snapped off in the narrow input. We tried toothpicks with super glue, and we tried breaking another cord identically, but it’s too small a problem to fix. When this car was Joseph’s, he burned a hundred CDs, and now both the car and the music are mine. Joseph is leaving for college soon. We spent three years in this car together, thirty minutes at a time, speeding as one down 395 to get to school. His collection of music is impressive, and when he’s gone, I’ll inherit it and pretend he’s listening with me. Tin cans with strings stretching from Arlington to Boston. I pull into the driveway, and Joseph is inside, but he hears through open windows that I am celebrating summer with Ziggy Stardust. He gives me a funny smile when I walk in. “You were listening to David Bowie?” I return that smile with my own. “Yeah. It’s a good album.” A pointless thing to say to him, someone to whom David Bowie means so much. Six months later when David Bowie dies, I feel it like shrapnel. I want to call Joseph all day. I don’t. I listen to Ziggy Stardust on my way to and from school.
I. The Man Who Sold the World through Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) I am going to tell you a hard thing. There are several ways to tell a story and endless ways to start. So far, my life has been kind enough to give me discrete chapters, demarcated August through May. The summer of 2018 was like this: An airplane is funny because you cannot control even one thing when you are inside it. I have nothing to do with it, but this one takes me safely home. I am equally far from the beginning of college as from its predicted end, and I am coming home, carrying Russian souvenirs and an eight hour time difference. I go to sleep and then I keep sleeping. I lie in bed for two weeks and eat nothing but rice. I imagine myself bearing a tumor, shut tight and waiting patiently behind the wall of my gut before it unfurls and flowers. I stare at my body in the mirror and see the
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hip bones that were always there. Atrophy has done nothing but reveal them. Several highways carry me alone to Pennsylvania and New Jersey and Arlington and Williamsburg. My windows are shut, and I am scared like a broken fuse at every moment that my hands will unwittingly falter, and I, encased in this iron thing, will soar off the highway. I have no co-pilot, and it’s hard to trust only me. I drive through these places and listen to David Bowie, album after album. I was always going to fall in love with this music; the question was only when it would happen. I should tell Joseph. After hours on the road, I land in Williamsburg. It is good to be back at this school where I have friends who live and breathe outside a screen or a page. Home is lonelier than this place. I spend Sunday and Monday and Tuesday seeing friends I haven’t in months. We eat and laugh. My red thermos, shiny a month ago and already dull, is never quite clean because as soon as I finish one cup of coffee, I fill it up again. The background noise to these days is a crisis of faith and a heavy rotation of the albums David Bowie produced in the 1970s, shut in the sounddeadening walls of a recording studio. Will God speak to me, I wonder, will he teach me to rein in this unruly mind, I think, will he speak to me through David Bowie, I dream, I should listen just in case. I do: constantly. I listen to nothing else. Two nights after I fill the same room I lived in last year, put sheets on the same bed in the same corner, my roommate and best friend moves in. Her parents are eager to buy me dinner, but I am scared of something unnamable. I tell her I can’t go. They want to say hello when they help her carry baskets and boxes into our room, but I flee. I sit in the courtyard, mosquitoes and David Bowie keeping me company. I watch an interview he gave before I was born, and he says: “I think if he is in isolation, instead of receiving the whole world as his home, he tends to create a micro-world inside himself.” II. Station to Station Of recording this album, David Bowie said, “I know it was in LA because I’ve read it was.” A diet of milk and cocaine erased its production from his memory. I don’t know this yet. I listen to it for the first time on the August night before new classes will seep into my daily life. I am sitting tired on the bed, typing answers to crossword clues. I don’t know yet that these songs were written with desolation and drugs. But track three spins to track four, and I know something else with the certainty of the ironclads. I cannot understand these words I need to understand. I need to listen closely. I sit very, very still, and then I try to leave behind the static between my ears, and I go to the water fountain. Something about bare feet on linoleum horrifies me. Pajama clad and yawning black
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phone in hand, I fear and I leave. It is eleven. What do you need to tell me, what is it, please tell me, I’m listening, I’m trying. He’s screaming somewhere, kick drums a repetitive, desperate plea, he’s talking to me, to me, to me. God is not speaking to me, and there is no God, but David Bowie in 1975 is writing this song for me only. There is no meaning in oh my TVC15, oh oh, TVC15 sung over and over and over, but I see a sorrow in his eyes at my lack of conclusions. My left thumb impaled by a nail, my bare feet impaled by still hot brick, my chest impaled by keratin claws, my eyes impaled by an offensively bright t-shirt on some phone call freshman. I start towards the lake and turn back in terror because someone could be there, and it is dark and trees hang too low. Black street, blue night. I cry because I can’t grasp what David Bowie is trying to tell me, and I know it is important, and I cry because surely this is a sign of my genetically foretold collapse. I call a friend, and she sits with me until I call my brother. I’m not sure what I want from Joseph, but he answers, and I am still crying. I ask him if he worries about losing his mind or about going crazy. He turns the question back to me. I think this must be new for him. I am not one to air my tears in public; I am far likelier to wail in my car or wander the woods. He stays on the phone with me until I am safe, until the last three hours catch me, and I am drained and nothing is left but exhaustion. III. Low This is what I will remember about that fall and little else. I take a course in statistics. It meets at nine in the morning three times a week, the first class six hours after I finally fall asleep that deluded August night. I often skip this class for coffee and scones, and I don’t do homework once. When I attend, I sit in my self-assigned seat in the middle of a row in the middle of the room. Something inside me slams against the walls of skin and muscle that confine it. Often, my breathing is leaden by the time the professor dismisses us, and Low is waiting on my phone. The album cover, burnt orange profile and empty eyes, is a sedative for my heart. I know the opening track, lyricless though it is, well enough to sing every part. A drum beat takes me another step and the next another. When I see people I know, my lips approximate a smile, and I increase the volume. I pass fifty people on the brick path, but I can enforce isolation against all rules of reality if I try hard enough. I run from classes and crowds and kitchens. I’m fast, but speed hides panic. Every time I move, I listen to the tight orchestration and minimal effect of Low. How many tears can a person shed? How many classes can a
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student skip? How many bars of white chocolate can a girl consume? And how well can she hide it all? I have the answers now. Enough to burn her eyes, enough to force a withdrawal from History 301, enough to sicken off the stuff even as she buys more, and pretty damn well. With someone’s help. Though my August delusion has long since faded, there is still something about the opening notes of Be My Wife that evaporates tension. My shoulders drop from where I hold them near my ears. But I spend a weekend in Boston, a burst of life and escape. When I arrive, I navigate the train by myself and find the library. What’s holier than a building full of books? The cool air fills my lungs, a contrast to still-hot October Williamsburg, and I feel alive. I look at the blue sky and smile. When Joseph greets me, it is good to see him, to eat falafel and meet his friends. I sleep on his couch and feel light every morning despite the grime and rowdy roommate. I sit on the T, and it takes me to the end of the Green line, rushing as I idle. I explore the city alone when he has class, and I feel free. I listen to very little David Bowie that weekend. Musicless Interlude Sinfonicron, ten days to make fifty costumes, nine hours to make a day, all in a basement, basement inviting mania, normalizing chaos. More hours with brand new friends than with people I met two years ago. A pair of pants: I need to make them. I can’t sit at the machine for more than thirty seconds at a time. OK: find something else to do. Shake myself. Return to the pants. Stand. Eventually, I am lying on the ground laughing or crying, and someone tells me to take a break. A phone call to a friend: grounding. A phone call to a brother: words coming faster than I’m thinking them. There are ten days, but they are one day. I run the perimeter of Campus Center barefoot in the January cold. Giddy. I pick threads from someone’s socks. I drive but pull over: hey can you drive, I’m not safe, I will crash this car. Sit in circles, and tell each other the magic we see in one another. I glow, lunar one day, neon the next, solar one day, phosphorescent the next. I am dangerous, desirous, impressive, impervious. IV. Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) 1980 began a new decade and ended David Bowie’s Berlin years. With Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps), he looks backwards and forwards and wonders about his place in a world he’s made his own. He wails and seethes and screams about teenage millionaires and washed up astronauts and doomed lovers, all over distorted chords and restless basslines. There are small things
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crawling in all the folds of my brain, destined by birth and experience to be there, and the sound of this album crowds them out. I itch everywhere I go. Teenage Wildlife gets me where it needs to with its eight-minute expanse. I listen to the last twenty seconds of It’s No Game (pt. 1) because twice David Bowie scalds his throat screaming Shut up to a bewildered guitar loop, and that is what I need to hear. I go to Maryland in February because my surrogate grandfather is dying. I stand just outside his hospital room while John and my mother sit with him. I cry, but for the wrong reasons, and I don’t deserve the tissue the nurse gives me. Eventually I too enter the room. John holds an old hand and my mother holds the other one, and he breathes loudly and quickly. I think about baby birds, and I feel wretched. The next day, I return to Williamsburg, and I have a missed call from Lori. I call her back, and I know what she’s going to say. “He died.” I try to say the right things and strike the right tone as I sit in my car, but this news doesn’t pierce through. I will never understand me. I give myself time to cry, and I don’t. Upstairs in my room, my roommate is gone somewhere. Feeling as though my skin is going to flay itself from my body, feeling as though my muscles are growing and ripping and sneering, I yank on running clothes. I might go deaf someday from how loudly I play Scary Monsters. I run for all of five minutes before stopping because I feel no better and because my body is weak. Back in my room once more, now showered, I slam myself against cinderblock walls because I don’t know what I am. Shut up, David Bowie screams in my ear. Twice. I go backwards in time on this phone, and he says it again. I don’t know why there is no feeling in a single one of my cells. Nothing hurts, and yet I can still feel my nail dug into my thumb from that August night. I look at myself in the mirror, legs shooting out of shorts, and I touch my hair. It’s just grown long enough to twist into a knot on top of my head. I turn and find paper scissors and I walk calm to the bathroom. Again, I stare at myself and slowly take a strand of hair between my fingers. Is this how Lori felt six years ago when she did the same thing in a Paris mirror? The scissors are too dull, but they get the task done. When I’m finished, the trashcan is full of dead bits of me, and my face is fundamentally altered with this change in its surroundings. In the public library at home during Spring break, I open my laptop, and I write: David Bowie is not my therapist, or my friend, or my god. It’s important to remind myself. I figure out what exactly Scary Monsters gives me: emoting, crooning, or wailing, beneath the histrionics, this album is fundamentally flat. Desperately reaching for emotional truth and not quite able to
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grasp it: this is all that I feel this winter, and he screams it into my bones. V. Hunky Dory And then, when I can breathe in and feel the sun in my nose and the trees green on my skin, I smile more. I stroll with my sandals in my hands because it is good to feel the ground. Hunky Dory was my first exposure to David Bowie. Nine years old and Lori played Life on Mars, and something about it echoed for years. Most likely the fact that my very cool teenage sister shared it with me. Ten years later, I take long inhales and the acoustic guitars and unprocessed voice of David Bowie in 1971 illuminate the spring. The lyrics are sometimes impenetrable, sometimes dark, sometimes goofy. I can’t drag myself to my third class of the day sometime in March, and I give myself permission to walk through Colonial Williamsburg listening to this album. Again, I cry. The sheep give me pointed looks, and I laugh with them at how ridiculous I am. With spring I can return to the woods, and the woods reassure me: We’re still here. We’ll be here. Come to us crying or running or singing. Alone or with others or with him. I decide I will write the world and the world will listen. Every night for two weeks I sit up, dragging a story from my throat onto the page. It hurts like peroxide on a cut to be so honest. I fill up a journal faster than any I’ve written in before, because now I carry it with me in place of the crucifix I used to wear. Words and trees: the world has good to offer yet. One night, I’m sitting with friends, and I realize that I’m awake. I love these people again, and I’m talking and thinking, and I’m having ideas, ideas all my own, ideas I can put into excited energetic words. Life is less dreary. Now, I think, I will be okay: it is springtime and my mind doesn’t sputter and spit but rather revs into gear. People are not terrifying; words do not hide from me; my legs can walk and my tongue can taste. Things that happened in the past only happened in your mind, he sings to me, Just forget your mind, and you’ll be free. I listen. It helps to have friends, new ones and ones returning. I sit on the floor in a practice room, the walls killing any echo, with three friends. One of them begins playing Life on Mars on the piano, and I, smiling, sing. The four of us in that room are silly with each other’s company. We sing and talk and record ourselves performing a round, and with my eyes closed and their voices in my ears, I am content. With other friends, I try to catch the sunset after a birthday dinner, and though we’re too late, I’m laughing and running, and the trees are mine again. I smile at them and smile at myself and perhaps I can be okay.
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Epilogue: Station to Station, again Since I was fourteen, I have written in journals and essays and texts about bipolar disorder as though it were chasing me. I always imagined that if it caught up, it would tackle me to the ground, slit me up the middle, climb inside me. I always imagined I would wreak havoc as a foreign, destructive element reanimated and took control of the body that was mine. Instead, it pulsed through my arteries without me even realizing. It spread quickly enough to scare me and slowly enough to baffle me. I’d seen it before, in other members of my family, but this beast was different, unfamiliar, uniquely mine. It slid into my bones with such ease that no one outside me knew it was there. A diagnosis and pills small as ants are not immediate solutions, though I’d hoped they would work faster. Here is the truth: I am sick of needing David Bowie, but I do. I am sick of knowing exactly which album will ameliorate which ache, will calm which frenzy, will chase the buzz from between my ears. I hoped to end this story with something neat, but I’m not sure how. I can point to something cyclical, at least. I sit on the metro and stare out the window at black, flashes of light interrupting, and I decide to listen to Station to Station for the first time since that August night. I have kept it far from me because the animal memory of believing--knowing--that David Bowie was talking to me is still frightening. I know there is no black magic in these songs, no summoning power. Still, there is a kind of thrill in pressing play and wondering… I have a sudden flash of memory. I sat in a car home from school a year and a half earlier, before I loved David Bowie, and from behind the wheel a friend played Station to Station. I found it strange and unpleasant then. The night of my certainty, the night I barefoot knew he was trying to reach me, was not the first time I had heard it. Just like that, the containing walls of this story collapse. I strain to hold them up because of how much they help. The weight is heavy, but the effort is worth it, and I will fight to keep back the floodwaters. G
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Kate Dragonetti
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The Trumpeteer
Oil on Canvas
Katherine Hagen
Girl in Color
Oil on Canvas
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jecook
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Disco
Photography
Taylor Moorman
Golden
Photography
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Contributors’ Abby Comey - is a junior majoring in English and Religious Studies. When she’s not writing, she loves to sing and stargaze. Brooke Braden - is currently a sophomore in the William and Mary Joint Degree Program majoring in Classical Studies. Her modern hand embroidery, primarily inspired by her local Texan flora and fauna, has been featured in several publications including Be Creative with Workbox and Candyfloss Magazine. Ceci Hughes- is a junior at the College of William and Mary, majoring in English and minoring in Music and Creative Writing. Outside of school, Ceci likes reading, listening to records, and playing with her Golden Retriever Penny. Clara Finley- is a Junior at the college, studying English and Secondary Education. When she’s not in Tucker, she’s probably somewhere on campus dancing. Poetry is one of her favorite modes of expression, both to read and to write, and she thanks you for reading her work. Daniel McArthur - is a freshman from Stamford, Connecticut who enjoys exploring life’s mysteries whenever he’s not encumbered by them. Grace Payne- is a first-year student with plans to major in studio art & marketing. Hailing from Virginia Beach, she aspires to combine her passion in art with an interest in business. Grace Rust - is a junior at the college, majoring in philosophy and linguistics. She’s a Virginia native and loves running in the Matoaka Trails, Ann Patchett’s novels, and her home garden. Ishaan Khandpur - I am a second-year MBA student and I’m originally from India. My passion for poetry started as a way for me to better understand and cope with my surroundings. Most of what I write is inspired by the things around me and is usually connected to what is happening around me. JR Herman - ‘24 plans to double major in Classics and Ancient Near East & Africa studies. During her free time, JR enjoys writing, editing, designing graphics, taking pictures, creating art glass, and deciphering Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Jack Dean - is (at time of writing) partially vaccinated and looking forward to poppin’ grapes at the supermarket someday soon. James Barrie - is a senior from San Francisco, CA, studying Religious Studies with a minor in Judaic Studies. He is afraid of bull moose and graduation, and at any given moment is probably thinking about cowboys. Jarvis Hua- is a member of the Class 2022 and a double-major in Art & Art History and Biology. jecook - Writer, poet, and visual artist jecook is a studio art major here at William & Mary.
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Notes Often, she engages with nature and how the single person relates to nature, a rather pastoral topic that she is always rediscovering. When she isn’t writing or working on art, jecook enjoys games from tabletop to video games, and even Dungeons & Dragons. Jecook can often be spotted locally wandering through Colonial Williamsburg and staring at sheep, cows, and horses, wondering whether or not today is the day she actually jumps the fence and goes to pet livestock. If you see this happen, make sure to pull her back from the edge before it is too late. Jenna Massey - is a freshman and prospective English major at William and Mary. She would like to ask Anne Carson if she ever found a place to put everything down. Katherine Hagen - My name is Katherine Hagen (she/her) and I am a sophomore from Long Island, NY. I currently study history and government with a minor in studio art. Mae Dye - is a member of the class of 2022, majoring in Classical Studies with a concentration in Latin and English. She also spends a lot of her time in the Creative Writing department working on short stories. Meghan Gates - is especially glad she doesn’t have any superpowers related to fire during this hell semester. Don’t ask her why “Still the One” by Orleans makes her cry. Pelumi Sholagbade - is currently a freshmen at William & Mary and is planning to major in psychology. When not writing poetry, Pelumi enjoys journaling, reading tarot, and failing to fall asleep at night. Soleil Garnett - I am a freshmen from William and Mary. I want to be a poet and an education lawyer in the future, concerned with social justice matters. Taylor Moorman - I am passionate about art and writing as it is a way to share the way I see the world with others. More of my work can be seen at artandtaylor.com or on Instagram @/ artandtaylor/. Tessa Wilkinson - My name is Tessa Wilkinson and I’m finishing up my sophomore year at W&M as a Film & Media Studies major. I’m really interested in creative writing as well, and I wrote this poem for class inspired by the soundtrack of the movie /Howl’s Moving Castle/. Tom Plant - is currently pursuing his B.A. in International Relations and Hispanic Studies from the College. Although art projects tend to go on pause during the semester, he uses breaks and summers to paint, going outside to work en plein air whenever possible. Wendy Klein - is a 1st year online MBA graduate student at William & Mary. In her free time (or basically all the time) she writes poems and short stories from the Shenandoah Valley with her cat Calvin Klein.
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Editors’ Note Dear Reader, We wonder who you are. Are you reading this in the summer of 2021, with online classes and masks a recent memory if not an ongoing reality? Or are you reading this far in the future in some William & Mary archive? Can you remember when the world locked down when you were a kid, or did it happen before you were even born? Either way, this issue is for you. Isolated from one another on campus or even kept apart around the country, we put this edition of The Gallery together when every aspect of our lives was colored by the pandemic. For this reason, we sought to provide both a reflection of COVID-19 and an escape from it in these pages. Similarly, many of these works offer a response to the other crises of this past year: protests against racial injustice and ongoing human-made environmental disasters. Given the strangeness of these times, the unusual nature of this issue is fitting. Normally, each copy of The Gallery includes the poetry, prose, and art of one semester—selected in a room of chatty staff in Tucker. But this special issue compiles the expressions of three remote semesters into one. We hope that these you find connection with these writers and artists of the pandemic and that these pages speak to you no matter who, or when, you are. — Julia Savoca Gibson and Hannah London
Colophon
The Gallery Volume 35 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 CC and Adobe Photoshop CC. The magazine’s pages are set in Garamond. The cover font and the titles of all the pieces are Derivia. The Spring 2012 issue of The Galley was a CSPA Gold Medalist with All-Columbian honors in content.
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