The Gallery Fall 2013

THE

GALLERY Fall 2O13

G

the

allery

Volume 28, Issue 1 Fall 2013

Editors Editor-in-Chief Jenny Lee Managing Editor Dana Wood Copy Editor Dana Wood Art Editor Ashley Brykman Poetry Editor Connor Smith Staff Scott O’Neil Chris Wolfe Samantha Farkas Lydia Clites Stuart Mapes Blair Stuhlmuller Paige Stuhlmuller Henry Hines Margaret Fink Cover Art

Desert Road

Blair Stuhlmuller, Oil on Canvas See the complete work on page 21

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Poetry

Table of Contents

I Brought This Back Dish Pan Annie Eula’s Garden Traffic in the Tunnel Sucks I. the 511 Creek II. Wankopin III. Goose Creek Asunder Archives Dragon Sidney Transistor The River Sea Geist im Wald How the City Hurts Westbound Narcissus asura mantra

Natasha King Mary-Grace Rusnak Morgan Hensley Connor Smith Morgan Hensley Morgan Hensley Morgan Hensley Elizabeth Clark Emily Lowman Elizabeth Clark Morgan Hensley Natasha King Matt Schroeder Jamie Palumbo Emily Lowman Morgan Hensley Connor Smith

4 6 7 9 12 13 14 16 18 19 32 33 36 39 41 42 44

Dead Skin Hands Temporis Spatio The House in the Hills They

Carly Shooster Brandon Trainor Joshua Eiden-Wagner Dana Lotito

10 34 40 46

Gagandeep Jathoul Priya Brito Sarah Henry Gagandeep Jathoul Amirio Freeman Blair Stuhlmuller Allison Shomaker Priya Brito Paige Stuhlmuller Sarah Henry Ashley Sweigart Gagandeep Jathoul Priya Brito Allison Shomaker Ashley Sweigart Gagandeep Jathoul Priya Brito Kieran Cleary

5 8 11 15 20 21 22 23 24 26 27 28 29 30 31 38 43 45

Prose

Art

After Weston Outside, In Growth and Expansion Through the Looking Glass The Beauty Mythos Desert Road Sunrise Sunset Askew A Dog’s Life Freshly Picked I keep my secrets to myself Lost at Sea Looking In childish Remnants of Childhood On Top of the World Tea Time Signs Melodrama

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I Brought

This Back i brought back

a fish from Holland

a rare herb

from the far recesses of the Gobi dead polyps out of the great reefs of the Pacific

and a blue-eyed moneychanger from Singapore

all for you, my love. i brought you

jade from the twinkling East turquoise

from the legend-laced Southwest bone needles from a

barrow, and the

pricelessly rusted ceremonial blade of a long-dead Egyptian tyrant. i brought

sand from the Amazon

that had come from the Sahara

a French barista

who had been born

in South Africa. and for you, love,

i brought back the rubber bundle found

in the belly of a Mississippi catfish the punctured shell of a jaguar-caught turtle

fourteen finch’s beaks, all different a Civil War saber, long-treasured and a photograph of myself, before the twirls

of St. Basil’s chromatic cathedral

snapped by a child who was blind.

—Natasha King

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After Weston

Gagandeep Jathoul, Manipulated Photography

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Dish Pan Annie Eccentric sculptor-welder, wearies of replacing smoldering shoes; works barefoot.

Burns both his feet.

Blue-collar flavored monuments built to beauty, bitterness, fantasy, folly. Flint scratch, whuff, choosh, slag sizzles, splatters.

Stainless steel kitchen sink denotes her sexy torso.

Haute couture hubcap hat frames her almost friendly face.

Audacious necklace made of chain, matching garish earrings. Pleasingly plump fiscal fashionista.

A past-prime bejeweled beach bum.

Woodstove burner covers adorn her buxom breasts.

Handles hint at something more.

Freud would have a field day.

Muffler pipe appendages akimbo atop propane-tank perch.

Arm whimsically waving to neighbors or her nemesis.

Stanley Papio from Key Largo collects rejects: pipes, pans, auto parts, tasty morsels of time.

Stinger melting metal, revealing private thoughts or public statements.

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Dish Pan Annie, bricolage babe.

Rubbish reincarnate.

— Mary-Grace Rusnak

Eula's Garden (after a theme by William Carlos Williams’ “Between Walls”)

the trellised wisteria over the empty well where she used to hide handdyed Easter eggs for great grandchildren shades the garden of dandelions that grow like mold on fresh fruit through the saline soilsalt of the earth.

— Morgan Hensley

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Outside, In Priya Brito, Charcoal

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Traffic in the Tunnel Sucks The tunnel is a vortex, Midtown gridlock spills around the funnel:

poured in porous Manhattan bedrock puddles, rearranged in mudpacked veins, below rain sprung from springs, hurried down from the Adirondacks’

faulted throat cut:

blood gushing blue floods the sharp isle, so they dug through: cut-throat, car-bound hullaballoo.

— Connor Smith

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Dead

Skin

by Carly Shooster

C

lean thyself.

Steam attaches itself to three tile walls. A curtain falls heavily from a traversed metal rod. Hot water. Your body is cleansed, head to foot. Your hair stamps itself against your neck and face and ears. Your hands run up and down, making sure all the pores are tidy, filled with a solution that was used first on measly rats and pigs. Potential chemical energy is kinetic as your insides digest a meal. Your skin is gleaming.

You look down to see a bird’s-eye-view of a human that is young, supple, and elsewhere. Do the same adjectives go for thoughts? Feelings?

End thy cleanse.

Cold air rushes in as the curtain floats leftward. Metal rings clatter against each other, folds are like radioactive light waves, squished together and cramped.

Collect your things, let someone else in.

Let anyone in. But before this, dry off.

A towel is cascading down your body now, collecting each water droplet and holding it tightly in its many-fingered grasp. Head down, shake your hair out.

How short it is now. Remember when you cut it for the sick people? What a feeling that was. All set.

Look at thyself in the Mirror.

Inspection. Make sure as much water is rung out of your hair as possible.

Check on the blemishes. Squeeze out as many as you can. Look at your body now, ensconced in a towel, hunter green

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Hands

and reminds you of Artemis. Other people are coming in, move along now.

To thy room.

Underwear. Shirt, no bra, it’s night time. Boxers. Flip flops. Wrap your hair in the towel. For what feels like the first time, you open your hands. Each crevice aches and stings. Your skin is grazed and uplifted. It’s as if the insides of your hands are a terrain all their own. You observe the cracked terraces and canyons of rocky mountains. You imagine a mini SUV roughing its way through the valleys. Geysers bubbling with dry, dead skin characterize the worst places.

“It’s because you always keep your hands closed, Carly. You have to give them some air to breathe,” your mother has told you countless times.

“Pretty gross, if you ask me,” your father says with a grin, trying to get a rise out of you.

Someone gestures for a high five. But you hesitate, remember? You have to complete the Six. You have to let the final finger rest on the inside of your palm so that your thoughts can be at ease. So that the skin can fester. It’s as if your lips are always chapped, which coincidentally they are, and you refuse to wear chap stick. Or lip gloss. No, instead you lick them incessantly. Relief! But now they are more chapped.

Your fingertips leave no scars on the inside of your palms. No, instead you have deserts spanning from hand

to shining hand. What a cold, dank environment, always keeping your hands in the dark. Each shower brings a new

characterization, a different landscape.

But it’s all the same premise.

Open up thy goddamn hands. G

Growth and Expansion

Sarah Henry, Plaster Cast and Carving

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I. The 511 Creek I used to swim in the creek but I outgrew it.

Weeping willows lined both sides with their rotted boughs and mossy leaved vines. A swinging rope hung Rapunzelesque amidst the wispy moss.

The water flowed from a steel pipe that ran under the ivied columns at the end of the magnolia-leaf strewn gravel driveway.

The crawfish’s- or as I used to say, “crawled fishes”muddy wigwams spotted the areas between the sticky weed that I would tie in knots and drop off the quartz bridge that was only secure on one side.

When I learned to ride a bike I would peddle down the hill on rainy days with one eye closed and grip my brakes as I approached the river and always fishtail and make a mess of the bank.

My friend and I would crumple up technicolor balls of construction paper and drop them at one end and run to the other side to see whose won.

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— Morgan Hensley

II. Wankopin We straddled the rocks like sawhorses.

My left foot on the same rock as her right foot and my right foot on the damp sand that somehow found its way into my Wellies.

We panned through the silty microcosms like fortyniners. Finding small winged-things and aqueous worms.

I picked one up and showed it to the girl I like-liked.

Later that week she asked me to dance at Cotillion--I said yes and gave her a sweaty-palmed foxtrot. — Morgan Hensley

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III. Goose Creek I quit mowing for my neighbor early that day- when the June sun was still at its coolest.

Her green Subaru drove up his driveway and scattered gravel everywhereshe’d just learned how to drive.

On the way to the inlet we rolled slowly by my house to see if my parents were home but they were not.

She drove as I folded bandanas and put on my trunks.

We got to the hole.

She took her top off and was wearing a blue bandeaupremeditated. I pushed her in and she grabbed my arm and I fell in too and faked drowning until she rescued me and I spurted water on her like a cherub fountain.

She looked at me in coquettish disbelief and laughed and pushed my longhaired head under until I tapped out.

I dried her off and she me and got back into the car and then stayed at my house for a while. — Morgan Hensley

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Through the Looking Glass

Gagandeep Jathoul, Manipulated Photography

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r e d Asun

Archives

The rocking chair swayed with her; she added it to her list.

She could remember rocking here before, the walls freshly painted.

She saw a drop that’d dried as it reached for the floor—even the walls had tears.

The gentle movement cradled her, giving a shred of calm.

The chair was begged to continue to rock by her lower limb.

Sunrise grinned behind the trees, its smile a brilliant orange.

The hue fished up a memory of all those cruel words in orange.

The highlighter color had seemed unequal to the weight of the list.

She felt her knee begin to shake—the fluid swaying disrupted by the nervous limb.

She couldn’t escape the word across her mind, painted: Divorce. Her lips whispered on their own, depriving of any mustered calm.

Somewhere an already ripped hope began to tear.

As hard as she fought, her resistance manifested in angry tears.

She knew him so well; he loved baseball and hated wheat bread and oranges.

When he fidgeted, he was excited, and his dimple winked most often when he was a contented calm.

He loved black and white movies; heights caused the tall man, ironically, to list.

He had a scar on his forearm she loved to watch change color when he painted.

He once broke his left arm falling from a maple limb.

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But she never knew the capacity to break her heart would come from that reconstructed limb in the form of a paper in his gentle hand. When had their vows begun to tear?

Perhaps it was when he hated the color she’d painted their bedroom without asking; she’d rather liked the watercolor orange.

Maybe he’d taken back his “I do” when she’d forgotten to get his half of the grocery list.

When? It must’ve been some time ago; his eyes had been so calm.

He’d gracefully handed her that envelope—she’d always remember his calm.

The only noise had been the begging to come in from the cold on the window by a tree limb.

He’d asked her what she wanted to keep—he said she should make a list.

— Elizabeth Clark

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DRAGON scarlet scales scatter starlight entering the den tentative in pools of open argent on a glowing golden hoard.

Clinking coins trip careless feet curses break the silence

a candle flutters beneath the earth, an amber eye opens spies some mice cornered, captured a creature rumbles brief heat, then peace

a candle gutters

— Emily Lowman

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S idney Azalea bushes and sour weeds Reach for the Carolina sun, Just as I did Whenever school lost its grip.

Wildflowers disrupt green canvas, Giving the run of my thoughts pause.

The black top races the fields, Both rolling and rising with the hills.

Nostalgia piles on itself, Resembling the hay bales so familiar.

But the hay will feed much more Than the nostalgia I hold will nurture.

Somehow your voice docks my age, And I am young when it’s in my ears.

Which is fine with me, As long as you don’t grow quiet.

— Elizabeth Clark

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Amirio Freeman, Collage

The Beauty Mythos

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Blair Stuhlmuller, Oil Paint on Canvas

Desert Road

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Allison Shomaker, Photography

Sunrise Sunset

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Priya Brito, Oil Sticks

Askew

A Dog’s Life

Paige Stuhlmuller, Oil Paint on Canvas

Freshly Picked

Sarah Henrey, Colored Pencil and Watercolor

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I keep my secrets to myself

Ashley Sweigart, Mixed Media

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Lost at Sea

Gagandeep Jathoul, Manipulated Photography

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Looking In

Priya Brito, Charcoal and Pastels

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Childish

Allison Shomaker, Photography

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Ashley Sweigart, Graphite and colored pencil

Remnants of Childhood

Transistor A little girl in torn overalls, pretzel-legged in front of the bellowing cabinet.

She held on to the Southern drawl that crescendoed and hushed, always parallel with the crests and troughs of the Sunday evening story coming from the wire grated speakerbox, like a trapeze swing, or as though it were a safety rope tied around her waist so that, if need be, She might tug twice or three times, depending on her urgency, and get pulled back to her regular spot on the floor to find the rope knotted and her arm bruised from trying to remove herself from the inextricable silence of this humming land and its crashing doldrums. —Morgan Hensley

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The

River Sea

i am being followed

up one river and down the next

animals clawing for purchase on my skin. i am harried

as i make my way

down the seething Amazon

piranhas suckling at my breasts

a caiman in my hair. i am assaulted

by the scents and sights

that clot in my tear ducts

make rainbow tracks down my face. there is wonder

heat, and wet, and wonder

rolling off my fingertips

burning the lilypads. i am sung to

the world is serenading

me, despite my ignorance

wooing me, a speck of dust-i join the dance, am forced to

how can i not

when the necessity of my participation

slaps me in the face like a

drumbeat, and the song of the frogs

the otters dancing, the jaguar stalking, the

great grey eagle and its younger brethren

have swallowed me whole. i swallow also and the water rushes in

black and brown

blue and green

red and yellow welcome to the River Sea, it sings,

we’re pleased to have you.

—Natasha King

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s i r o p Tem

by Brandon Trainor

N

Spatio

othing ever happens.”

“I know but what can we do about it?”

“The only thing to do about nothing is nothing I guess.”

“So?” “So what?”

“Nothing.”

“Ok.” Nathaniel and Thomas sat blankly.

Where the couch began and their bodies ended had ceased existence long ago.

It was ages since the division. Maybe longer. Maybe days. Days are too long honestly. The ages in hours of days seem so arbitrary, just like the division between a body and a couch.

“I can’t stand this.”

“Then why don’t we do something?”

“Cause something isn’t nothing.”

“But nothing says we have to do nothing.”

“It’s a precedent. Nothing says it needs to be broken.”

Upon further consideration, time on earth, both “time” on earth and “time on earth”, seems not only arbitrary, but completely absurd. Why does blue mark an end and orange a beginning? Should it not be red and green?

“But nothing is boring.”

“Nothing can’t be boring. Nothing is nothing. It can’t be anything. If it were, it would be something.”

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“You’re going in circles.”

“So, nothing says I can’t.”

“That’s it. We need to end this.”

“You can’t end nothing.”

“Then we will do something.”

“What is this something?”

“Something is whatever you want it to be.”

In truth, something can’t be whatever you want it to be. It can only be a select group of options, from a nose bleed to a car crash, that accepts Newton’s laws of physics, the Sumerian code, and the criminal justice system of the greater Newark area. But I digress.

“So?” “So what?”

“What is our something? Our special little snowflake of an event?”

“Don’t be patronizing.”

“Don’t be naïve. Nothing good can come from it.”

A snowflake is a small droplet of water that takes the form of a crystalline solid in its frozen form. They are created from the supercooling of rain at a temperature of no more than thirtytwo degrees Fahrenheit (zero degrees Celsius). They feature complex prismic shapes, poetic beauty, and work excellently as either a regional desert treat or restroom.

“Let’s take a moment to think about something to do.”

With this moment of contemplation, let us acknowledge the tired nature of narration and foresee its end. From here until eternity, it shall only return to grant you, the humble reader, information pertaining to and or including spatial references, colorful details, important background, amusing witticisms, allegorical remarks, typographical errors, lottery predictions, weather forecasts, advice columns, nutrition facts, mathematical variants, commentary on the rise of nationalistic propaganda in fascist Italy, moral policing, sexual fetishizing, Oedipal reimaginings, Freudian slips, Kubrickian symmetry, Mansonian bigotry, and Aryan proximity.

“Let’s go eat something.”

“How?” “You can drive us there. Do you have your keys?”

“They’re in my pocket.”

There is a pause. It is ever so slight a pause, but yet, it shatters the earth.

Every amount of terror felt in all the days in all the years in all the decades in all the centuries in all the millennium in all the histories in all the universes in all of days amass themselves in this single pause.

“I can’t get them.”

“What?”

“I can’t get them.”

“What does that mean?”

“They’re stuck” “How can they be stuck?”

“I don’t know. They’re just stuck in my pocket and won’t come out.”

For your information, there exists a little known dimensional rift in the seams of pants pockets. Upwards of seven-hundred-and-twenty-three cases appear yearly involving the loss of items into what is commonly referred

to as Levi’s Rift. Modern scientists fear discussing this rift within the confines of public view, worrying that it’s implications may cause humanity to tear itself apart at the seams.

“I guess we can’t do something after all.”

“How can you be so nonchalant at a time like this?”

“How can you be so nonplus?”

“Don’t you understand what this means? Without my keys, I can do nothing. I can be nothing. My entire life hung in the balance of those keys. Without them, I can never leave my home, cause if I were I would never be able to get back in again.”

“Why wouldn’t you just leave the door unlocked?”

“And leave my things open to the prospect of robbers? Never.”

“Suit yourself.”

“And even if I were to leave, I wouldn’t be able to go anywhere without my car keys.”

“What about the bus?”

“Stop acting like a lunatic. There is only one thing left I can do. At least it is something.”

Upon this final statement, Thomas left the room. Nathaniel increased the volume of his television set. He could only faintly hear the sound of a gunshot over the static. G

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Geist im

Wald

“I have to go,�

You said softly.

As we stood on Leaves by a lake, I cracked like ice.

Remembered to see you As summer slipped Into slumber.

We flew into Lourdes, And I helped you down Into holy traces.

How unreal it was Beside you that August.

I could not forget you As I fell with the leaves and You joined the hills In Nordrhein-Westfalen.

Or in Wietzendorf, As I crumbled While you grew With the old forests,

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Froze with the lakes While I melted Through cigarettes, Knowing I must go on.

Mopped myself up, Waited out the bitter cold In mulled wine mugs, Shining with Schuss.

When the flowers burst Your bones hid In a film canister.

I learned: In Mürren to be a mountain, In Holland to be a tent.

It was not until The sun stayed up late That I helped you Become an oak.

In Schneverdingen, Out in the backyard, My host mother asked, “Matt, was machst du da?”

“I am burying my father,” I replied with dirty hands.

— Matt Schroeder

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On Top Of the World Gagandeep Jathoul, Manipulated Photography

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How the

s t r u City H

It’s dirty—the Big Muddy River, like a child making mud pies at dusk with Mama Mississippi hollering for him to wash up before getting into bed. He never does.

It’s innocent—Sugar Creek, the place where grandma drenches your pancakes in syrup from sugar maples, where grandpa walks you through covered bridges.

It’s altered—the Mackinaw River; once tallgrass prairies where picnics were the rage, now patchwork farmlands where picnics are produced.

Still quiet, mostly unscathed.

It’s dangerous—the Fox River, where you get shot for wearing a hat wrong. Then you get dumped in the river, forgotten because no one cares.

It’s changed—the Skokie River, a big wet prairie replaced by concrete canyons, next to wheezing railroads that reek from the stench of the city.

It’s disgusting—the Chicago River, its blood and guts decomposing from stockyards, meatpackers, filthy slaughterers with methane gas bubbling to the surface.

This is how the city hurts.

— Jamie Palumbo

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The

House in the

by Joshua Eiden-Wagner

D

eep within the isle of Britain, at the heart of its rolling hills, there stood a house that didn’t quite belong. Grass grew around it, sheep grazed about it, and the small cottage bothered neither.

In fact, it’s safe to say that if houses could feel and speak, this one would tell you that it felt at home.

There are few that would take particular notice of a single blade of grass in a field, or of a single beast in a herd, but in these foothills the house was one of one and stood out to all that gazed upon it. Like a lamp it drew in all kinds of creatures, moths looking to rest their wings, flies looking for free feasts, and spiders that sought to prey upon whatever turned up.

Days turned to weeks, weeks turned to months, months to seasons and seasons to years, and all the while there were more that took than gave, as is the nature of things, until there was little more of the cottage than a skeleton of beams and braces. Grass grew up from under it and sheep began to graze within it, and eventually the house that had once stood proud and alone became that which had always surrounded it: nothing worth noticing. ***

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Hills

Dr. Hill stared at the journal on the desk in front of him for several minutes, pretending to reread it again and again as his thoughts chased the story’s words and the words chased his very thoughts.

Finally, he raised his distracted gaze to meet the handsome eyes that had lured so many.

“Nothing worth noticing,” Hill said softly.

For the first time in his life, William Hill felt wholly useless.

“It’s just a story; I wouldn’t think anything of it,” the patient recommended.

“Just a story,” Hill repeated, his thoughts in fruitless limbo.

Silence danced its way around the room.

“I’d like to return to my cell now.”

Hill’s head slowly nodded, but his blank eyes remained still as a guard collected the journal and escorted the patient out of the psychiatric office.

The doctor failed to notice the knowing smile of an author who had left his mark, as his mind was an entire ocean away. He imagined the missing bodies buried beneath the house he’d built and abandoned thirty years before. He began to weep. G

Westbound Dusty smoke columns rising Rusted train tracks the rails It’s coming round the bend behind us Lake unsettles gleaming, sifting If sunlight were solid it would throw daggers At trespassers as we skip before an oncoming train Roaring from the past in smoke and ash Shredding Central Time to arrive presently. — Emily Lowman

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Narcissus separated by a stretch of breath, suspended beneath a watery veil, white below the light of a high effulgent sun, whose gold curls drift across an alabaster cheek? the crests of the current break, myriad and soft, against blue eyes drowning in longing.

His voice commands the ripples. the words flows downstream in silty silence — Morgan Hensley

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Tea Time

Priya Brito, Ink

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asura mantra Why do I fight?

I am born in the endless cycle of return: Laden with blessings, lacking power.

When the tar and smoke spread to the four corners consuming air like hungry ghosts When the blood and bile soak into the earth saturating Sumeru I am alone.

I live in the taut skin of the crocodile crawling with cannibal desire I live in ignorance, addiction, fury burning like a ravenous fire I am alone.

Why do I fight?

I bare my teeth and strike my chest: Meditating on war, seeking bloody Nirvana When the crimson wine runs dry When the fearsome enemy lies broken I am alone. — Connor Smith

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Signs Melodrama

Kieran Cleary , Ink Pen on Paper

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y e Th

by Dana Lotito

I

n China, when the heat throbbed, they got on the bus with the seats too small and sat together, sweating. The cars strung together like little, dirty sausages along the winding highways of Shanghai. Sometimes they got separate cabs and yelled at their drivers, pass the other cab! They beat the seats with sweaty palms and laughed.

They raced through smog, unable to see ahead. The sun slid down the skyscrapers.

They kept record of how many black people they saw and laughed when Africans spilled from the artery of a bus, their black heads bobbing. They chewed on pink Tums, afraid for their stomachs, and brushed their teeth with bottled water, thinking about the smiling man and his cart of dusty watermelons.

And there were times in Poland it snowed in the square before the walk up to Wawel castle and their socks went soppy through their boots. They gave a few coins to a man sitting in the snow and the rain, popping the soccer ball on his foot near the cathedral where a man spun fire in the dark.

They ate perogies and drank warm coke while it rained and sometimes they went to the Jewish quarter, to the good place, to get cheese bread with mushrooms, and they walked around and listened to the teenagers flirt in choppy Polish.

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The sun shone on the best times and they walked the river and saw the swans, orange beaks and beady eyes, float under the bridge and away to the castle. They would talk about books and love and size and food and how sometimes when the moon is large, it looks like a sand dollar in the black sand of the sky.

At home, they did things like eat breakfast where French toast is served with raspberries and caramel sauce, not maple syrup. They took the mega bus to the Big City and after dinner at a restaurant with a ceiling of dangled CDs, prisms in their eyes, they ran twenty-five blocks down Ninth to wait for the bus to be late.

One time, they went to the lake and drove for an hour to find a stable and wobble on the horses’ backs through the woods. They rode the jet-ski and platoon boat, even in choppy water and under a gray sky. And they learned the timing to pull up the buoys and where to put the orange and blue life vests and how not to squirm, even if they thought fish swam against their legs.

No one is sure when “they” became “he” and “she” again, when they moseyed on down different paths, paths they did not know would never meet again. But it really was a mosey; not a run or a sprint, not an angry huffing.

Just her slight wave of a hand, his casual salute and floppy smile.

She would say that maybe time led

their paths in such different directions, her to the night at the movie theater where she worked, him to a forced public engagement where he sweat more than on the bus in China. It was just a matter of sweating and where and how much. That’s maybe what she would say.

He would maybe say that when her boss groped her again and again during a late-night showing of “Chinatown,” it stole her. She never said anything, just kept selling popcorn and Sprite to young couples, old couples, fat couples. She folded like a cloth napkin, and maybe he couldn’t even see her anymore, not who she was in China.

And maybe he would say no, his engagement was not forced, just less than he always desired, that’s all, really.

He never imagined an ambush at a 76ers game, because he hated basketball and the stupid bunny mascot with sunglasses and how everyone smelled like beer.

Less than he always desired. That was all.

He would maybe say that he should have visited her, brought the Shamrock Shake from McDonald’s she liked, and asked if she was OK. Maybe he should have talked to her about Poland and taking trips. Instead, he got

engaged on a basketball court and went honeymooning on a tacky resort in Hawaii.

She would maybe say that when she saw the proposal on television, she should have called and asked why he was at a basketball game in the first place.

She should have offered to bring over homemade curly fries. Maybe she would say that.

He and she were never in love, not real love, anyway. They shared a kiss once in Poland, after a bar night and a walk past the blue and white monastery.

But that was fake love; she said so. That is why he thought he did not need to see her. He did not owe her any of himself.

But what they did not know is that it is not about owing people or being in love. It is about being a “they” instead of a “he” and “she” because everyone needs a “they.” And they had not listened in China after they gave the old beggar woman a few yuan and the woman turned to the shoeless boy next to her and said, in the only English she knew, They are good people. And so China and Poland and all of it got lost, and they went forever down their paths as he and she, floating, alone. G

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Contributor’s Notes Priya Brito: In the majority of my work, I aim to realistically represent everyday objects in my environment, whether through an altered perspective or manipulated compositions.

Elizabeth Clark’s poem “Asunder Archives” is a sestina.

Kieran Cleary: Signs Melodrama is drawn from a photograph. The artist, in the middle, remembers a family movie night affectionately. Jokes about alien movies became a brief but almost-true panic. She believes the foil hats made the moment “too real.”

Joshua Eiden-Wagner is just happy to be here.

Amirio Freeman is a freshman from Hampton, Virginia, who divides his time between art, environmentalism, and Netflix.

Sarah Henry is a sophomore from Litttle Washington, Virginia. She is a Studio Art and Psychology double major.

Morgan Hensley: I am a senior majoring in English and minoring in Creative Writing. I have a nostalgia for the countryside that I think shows in my writing.

Gagandeep Jathoul: I have been practicing photography for about three years now and am thoroughly in love with it. It allows you to capture a moment just as it was and keep it forever.

Natasha King is a freshman from Stafford, Virginia who writes poetry in class and on breezy days. She enjoys writing, drawing, painting, and photography, and cannot handle watching any kind of horror movie. She loves chocolate, the ocean, and cats.

Dana Lotito is a junior who enjoys writing, playing sports of all kinds, and staring at 19th century French art. She thinks Virginia Woolf is a genius and that college basketball is more exciting than the NBA. She hopes to be a writer and maybe one day meet Hermione Granger.

Emily Lowman is a junior English major who enjoys Celtic mythology marginally more than she loves The Lord of the Rings. And that’s saying something.

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Jamie Palumbo is a junior from Chicago, Illinois, and is double majoring in Mathematics and Economics.

Mary-Grace Rusnak is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree at the College of William & Mary, with a double major in Psychology and English.

She is a member of Wordshop, the Poetry Society of Virginia, and Poets of Williamsburg.

Connor Smith is a senior double majoring in anxiety and oenophilia. In his spare time, he collects mugs, exotic passport stamps, and shameful stories.

Allison Shomaker is a sophomore from Richmond, Virginia. Her interest in photography was sparked after mission trip to Cerca Carvajal, Haiti in high school where she was in charge of documenting the trip in pictures. She has taken pictures ever since as a way of remembering her life and the lives of those around her.

Carly Shooster was raised on a creative thread, as her father majored in Fine Arts and her brothers are both musicians. Since she can’t play a chord to save her life, she chose to write and draw instead. And she loves it, plain and simple.

Blair Stuhlmuller is a sophomore at the college. Her piece,“Desert Road,” represents that moment in time as the day comes to an end when the sunlight transforms the landscape into a collage of deep shadows and vivid hues of orange.

Paige Stuhmuller is a sophomore at the college. At the end of the day sometimes a game of fetch just isn’t enough. As you can see from my work I am obviously a dog lover. I hope this painting will help those who left their beloved pets at home and are just a dog-deprived as I am.

Claudia Swain is a junior Government major who transferred in this year. She writes historical non-fiction for WETA’s “Boundary Stones,” but dabbles in fiction in her spare time.

Brandon Trainor: I am a sophomore. Writing is one of my passions, and I have been doing it for many years. I prefer to write scripts, but occasionally write short stories. Hopefully you enjoy this piece or in the least are affected by it in some way.

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Editor’s Note Dear Reader, I am going to open this note with something really cliché (and, in turn, embarrass my entire staff) by saying that growing up is a fact of life. Obvious statement is obvious. And as we grow up, we find ourselves wandering back to our past and remembering past events in our life more and more. Second obvious statement is also obvious. Some memories were important, others were frivolous, and some were just so random that we wonder why we remember them in the first place. And that is what I feel this issue of The Gallery is filled with: memories. Of past travels we have taken or wish to take, of places and events that have taken a toll on our psyche, on our understanding of life — okay, maybe not that grand, but pretty close to it.

Basically, the students at William and Mary come from all over the world and this Fall Issue expresses these different parts of the world and the perspectives that come from them, whether it’s through a poem or piece of artwork. I hope you get the same feeling from this issue, since we, as a college community, are quite diverse. At least, that was the feeling I got when I first came to William and Mary as an awkward freshman who joined a literary magazine publication club and ended up becoming its Editor-in-Chief during my junior year. Pretty daunting stuff, I tell you. And I’m not even sure how casual I can be in an Editor’s Note. My apologies in advance to all the literary circles here at the College.

So as you adjust back into your college routine and brace yourself for the semesters to come, please sit back, relax, and take a trip back through your childhood. Just make sure it’s not too long of a trip.

— Jenny Lee

Colophon The Gallery Volume 28 issue 1 was produced by the student staff at the College of William and Mary and published by Western Newspaper Publishing Co. in Indianapolis, Indiana. Submissions are accepted anonymously and through a staff consensus. The magazine was designed using Adobe Indesign CS5 and Adobe Photoshop CS5. The magazine’s 52, 6x9 pages are set in Garamond. The cover font, along with the titles of all pieces, is Dominik. The Spring 2012 issue of the Gallery was a CSPA Gold Medalist with All-Columbian honors in content..

Check out the Gallery online www.wmpeople.wm.edu/site/page/gallery www.facebook.com/wmgallery @wmgallery

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