Fall 2015 by Laurel Moon Magazine

Laurel Moon

-niobeFall 2015

Dear you, Thank you for picking up the Fall 2015 edition of Laurel Moon! Since we revived this magazine, we’ve had more and more authors sending us their work, and this semester is no exception. As members of the editorial staff, we are grateful for the privilege of reading so many great pieces of creative writing. We’re proud of how hard our staff worked to make this magazine happen. We’d like to extend our thanks to our wonderful editorial staff for their dedication and time throughout this process, as your voices are invaluable to us. We would also like to thank every person who shared their writing with us––without all of you, this magazine literally could not exist. We hope that you enjoy reading this magazine as much as we loved making it happen! ~ Sam + Angela + Greg, the 2015 Laurel Moon E-Board Laurel Moon is Brandeis’ oldest student-run publication. Every piece you are about to read is written by a Brandeis undergraduate student and was selected with care by the editorial staff. Laurel Moon also holds weekly meetings. We invite you to stop by whenever you can. We’d love to have you! Meetings are held in the BMC on a weekly basis. If you are interested in receiving information about any upcoming workshops, meetings, or events, please sign up for the listserv or look us up on Facebook (facebook.com/moonlaurels/) or Wordpress (laurelmoonbrandeis.wordpress.com). Copyright 2015 by Laurel Moon English Department Brandeis University PO Box 9110 Waltham, MA 02454-9110 If you have any questions regarding the publication, feel free to e-mail laurelmoonbrandeis@gmail.com.

fall 2015

Laurel Moon -niobe-

Linda Ferrer Aletheia 6 Sam Daniels friday is quiet 7 Ashley Simmons Missing You Is When 8 Clayre Benzadon String Instrument Rain Song 9 Maya J. Dworsky Dragon Slayer 10 Naomi Soman The Little Princess 14 Sophia Muhlmann Conversations With Lincoln 15 Arielle Gordon Food Chain 16 M.J. Stone Babbling Prediction for a Psych Major 19 Gregory Bonacci napus [TW: Sexual Assault] 20 Sonja Unica Reclaimed 21 Anne Kat Alexander what the seaglass told me 22 Clayre Benzadon Horchata Moonshine 23 Lauren Puglisi My Boy is a Bridge 24 Pichya Nimit (2) 24 Linda Ferrer Seeing You 25 Rachel Mae Dillon Van Goghâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Glasses 26 Michael Perlow Infinitesimal Space 27 Jess Linde The Red Reel 28 RN Ask for Directions 30 Eve Litvak Lego 30 Sam Daniels may 5 31 Gwenyth Fraser How to Kill a Cat 32 Sophia Warren Etta James 36 Anne Kat Alexander Seasonal Precautions 37 Editorial Staff Editorial Staff Bios 38 Grossbardt and Dafna Awards 42

Aletheia Linda Ferrer

alpha-beta universe boils beauty before it dies. slowly simmering at the perfect temperature long enough to melt the letters. Dropped my own eye in the mixture for clarity and heart. add a taste of my own being to understand what it is i’m eating. Manna from heaven. All of nature in a bowl. penciled in the weather to make sure you come home. Sweet fragrance lingers like a ghost that’s always there. Awaken that hunger, for synchronized truth. Love like air, when you don’t have enough to breathe but are satisfied with the smell. Sitting at the table, you out at war, a candle on the left and a candle on the right. we eat our creation to end our starvation. a romantic dinner of hope and pain. Tears in our cups to sprinkle as salt for all the wisdom we’ve gained. Welcome, Aletheia. devour our brood. I drink her wine till my cup is cleansed again. That will be the day we make something new again. 6

friday is quiet Sam Daniels

it tastes like cherry lifesavers and confusion on the tip of my tongue people are coming and going i wish more would stay his body was warm in just the right way i cannot bring myself to write a paper so instead i will write a poem: every three minutes someone is diagnosed with a blood cancer minutes meant nothing until they had to sometimes before i leave in the morning i think about the cells in his body that do not belong they could kill him but they won’t i am not afraid for him just a little sad i like kissing boys that don’t matter until the next morning when smudged eyeliner marks my pillow and i stare at my phone waiting for a text to which i will attribute undue importance when people ask how i am doing i don’t know what to say i am ok just boys and cancer boys and cancer sometimes homework when you are raised by warriors but cannot battle your own demons when your father has cancer and you think about kissing boys it’s no wonder that friday is quiet and tastes like cherry lifesavers and confusion 7

Missing You Is When Ashley Simmons

I came to see you on $45 of Hope, wrapped up in a Pink suitcase awaiting October chills. We were $12 of tarnished, fake gold and $15 of aphrodisiacs, you slipped inside when I wasn’t looking and I didn’t mind. hand-in-hand We were $3 affirmations, winter was coming but We had finally arrived warm warm so Warm. the other $15, We scattered here and there, imaginary kisses only made real by four eyes We bought Freedom with $45, three days, and a promise now you bare your teeth to me, yet, still tell lies through that innocent ivory white: we wouldn’t have enough money I turn away. we wouldn’t have enough time

String Instrument Rain Song Clayre Benzadon

It’s Saturday and I’m outside, covered in the soil of what you’ve dug up: Sunday rain, hidden behind the corners of your mouth. I kiss you until I’m soaked in nakedness. Sundays were never meant to be waterproof. Your torso is a trench coat drenched in the sweat of my hands as I excavate the linings of your muscles, your pale knuckles curled up as I move my palms against your ribs to play a bright xylophonic solemnity. Honest notes come out of your mouth even while the downpour fills up your body cavity. Before this, the song was a hollow tone of an unstrung guitar. You told me your body is an open gash that never heals, a gravesite filled with crevices of numb emotion. I sew the spot up with licks of mandolin tenderness, plant amaranthus on your chest to replace your wounds with love-lies-bleeding. It’s Saturday and still pouring outside. My clothes are sopping in the rain—today was never meant to be waterproof anyway. I stand under your burial ground until your love lies, bleeding.

Dragon Slayer Maya J. Dworsky

I used to hate going to Jerusalem until I realized that my great-aunt was a dragon. The things I hated about Jerusalem were: the way the air smelled of dust and donkey poop, and how people shouted almost all the time, and how everything was uphill. I hated that we always had a long walk from the train station in the heat, and when I was little I used to get scared by the Hassidic men with their billowing coats and beards, and their sweaty faces and tiny little eyes. I’m not scared of them anymore, because, you know, when you think about it? They kind of look like giant penguins… but you can’t call them penguins because it’s super rude. Mom said it was hateful but I don’t hate them, it just used to help me be less scared. Not that giant, angry penguins aren’t a little bit scary in themselves, but you know what I mean. There are some things I like about Jerusalem… no, let me try that again: there are some things I like about going to Jerusalem. I like seeing the butt of the train when we’re going around the mountain, and I like buying chocolate milk from the trolley. I like that Mom sometimes tells me stories about when she was a little girl living in Jerusalem and how she would get into trouble. I sit across from her and listen, watching the mountain and the little rivers go by and thinking I would have done things better and funnier if I was her. I first noticed that something was happening to my great-aunt when she started growing claws and scales and wings, but when I asked Mom about it she said we don’t talk about these things, and I should pretend I don’t see it. Apparently this had been going on for a while, but I hadn’t picked up on it until way late in the game. It freaked me out 10

a little before I figured out how it all worked. My great-aunt lives in an apartment building on King George St.. The entire apartment building. Apparently Everyone used to live there and she bought all the apartments when they left or died—by Everyone I mean uncles and aunts and my grandparents and just… you know, Everyone. She bought all the apartments and kept them just as they were, with people’s stuff in them, and then she added more stuff and more stuff until the whole building was full, and now she lives just in the top apartment all by herself and the rest of the building is just full of stuff. What stuff, you may ask? Dead people’s stuff. People who’ve been dead for a long time or even just a little while – great-uncles and great-great-aunts and great-grandfathers and everyone who was related to us who died ever. She has their books and their clothes and their toys and the little stupid things people have that are of no use to anyone else – like old used up pens or lipsticks or hearing aids. She has a big giant box that says spectacles on it, and it’s just full of dead people’s glasses. Hundreds of them. There’s another one full of walking sticks, and another one full of hats and another one full of purses, and one of handkerchiefs, and so on... She even has one of those old-fashioned metal lunchboxes that’s full of dead people’s false teeth. She knows what belonged to whom, too; nothing is labeled, she just knows. When I tell my friends about this (especially the false teeth bit, mostly for the gross factor) the first thing they ask is if there are, like, a million ghosts floating around the place, and I say No. There’s so much stuff, there’s no room even for ghosts. My Mom used to leave me at my greataunt’s place for hours and hours while she went out to the markets or someplace, and what I’d usually do was hang out in the garden and read books (ooh, the garden is a

whole other story, but I’ll get to that in a bit, I promise); I figured out that my great-aunt was turning into a dragon when I was about nine and a half, because I was reading The Hobbit. It came to me when I realized that Smaug, the dragon in that book, collects gold and jewels and stuff but it’s not like he does anything with them. What does a dragon need gold for, right? The same thing my great-aunt needs my great-great-great-uncle’s suspenders for, that’s what. I didn’t get the guts to come out and ask her about it till I’d been ten for a while, but I did it even though Mom had told me a bunch of times that it was really, really rude, and that it would probably hurt her feelings. Sometimes I wish that life was like an American TV show—where everyone’s always being rude to everyone else, but no one ever gets their feelings hurt, and it’s actually even supposed to be funny. Sometimes I feel like no matter what I do I’m always hurting someone’s feelings. So anyway, the day I finally worked up the nerve to ask my great-aunt about being a dragon, I was in the garden, which I promised I’d tell you about. The garden, like everything else, is on a hill, so that you don’t really walk through the garden – it’s more like you walk down the garden. Also, you can’t see any bit of the sky that’s bigger than your fist, because it’s all so overgrown and shady; it’s like a bunch of dark and leafy tunnels. And pretty much exactly like you’d expect, you find some weird stuff down some of these tunnels. Like the foot tree. My great-aunt’s mom (who I guess was my great-grandmother) used to be a ceramics teacher and she would teach in the garden, probably at a time before it became so tunnely. She would have her students all practice making the same thing, I guess, like

hands, or heads, or feet or whatever, and then they’d just leave their practice sculptures right there in the garden. Or maybe they gave them to her or something, who knows. Anyway, there’s one bare patch of ground that is just covered in hands. Just hands, sticking out of the ground like a bunch of ceramic zombies are about to rise. Only the hands are too close together, so it looks more like it’s only three or four ceramic zombies rising, but they each have about five or six arms. And if you turn a corner suddenly, there’s usually a head or two just sitting there, sometimes with and sometimes without a face, mounted on an old wicker chair or a branch, just sitting there being freaky. But the freakiest thing by far is the foot tree. The foot tree is what makes you think maybe some of the freakiness is deliberate. I don’t know if it was my great-grandmother or her students, or even my great-aunt, but someone took a whole bunch of ceramic feet and tied them to, or carefully placed them on, the branches of this one tree, so that it looks like they all just grew there. Or that there’s a bunch of people sitting in the tree who are invisible only down to their ankles. Basically the place looks like the aftermath of a horrible battle between two golem armies. The day I decided to ask my great-aunt about being a dragon, she was sleeping in the garden, coiled around the roots of the foot tree, her long scaly body weaving in between the ceramic zombie hands, and a pair of her clawed feet clutching one of the faceless golem heads like it was a teddy bear or something. She’d had to stop taking naps in her bed because she snores, and little flames shoot out of her nostrils when she does. Most of the plants in the garden are too 11

wet to burn even in the summer, because of all the shade, and because she waters them way more than you’re supposed to. I crouched down and gently tapped her nose in between the little bursts of flame, then moved out of the way quickly as she coughed these deep yucky-sounding coughs, the way she always does when she wakes up. She opened her big, glassy yellow eyes and reached for the packet of cigarettes that rested among the roots. She smokes these really awful brown cigarettes that are always crooked and smell like what I imagine burning shampoo would smell like. She lit one with a little puff of her nose, and then blew a smoke ring, which, while stinky, is still pretty cool. “What is it, bubbaleh?” she asked. When she talks now it’s really distracting, because of all the rows of shiny teeth. I asked her if she liked being a dragon, because it was the first thing that came to mind. She stared at me for a while, blinking her big, shiny eyes and smoking. After a while she said, “You know, you always such a luftsmensh I think you do not notice.” Her long, glinting body was slowly starting to untangle itself from various parts of the garden as we spoke; her clawed feet spreading and contracting like a cat’s, and her wings rearranging themselves in a way that made a big leathery sound, interspersed with the popping of joints. I asked her why this had happened to her. She gave a coughing, smoky laugh and started to move up towards the apartments; I straightened up and followed her. “I show you, motek,” she said, “you see some treasure.” Her horns scraped against the two notches in the doorframe of the porch door, and there’s this shiny rounded bit on the floor where her belly-scales have worn the wood away. I followed her into the dark and dusty

den of the ground-floor apartment, which smelled like mold and wet-sweater-smell. She turned on one of the musty old lamps by tugging on a beaded chain, and I watched her giant pupils contract in the light, “I am maven of pitchifke’es, bubbaleh, I protect treasures of the dead.” In the hazy light of the lamp I could see old couches and old desks and old chairs and old pictures on the wall. Big boxes, cardboard and plastic, covered every surface, right up to the ceiling. My great-aunt opened one of the many drawers in the many desks and pulled out one of the many little tin boxes that I think used to have sweets in them. She used one claw to gently slide it open and then held it under my nose. It smelled kind of like a cat had done its business there, and it was full of buttons. All different kinds, all different colors, all different shapes. She speared one, a small normal looking black one, on the tip of her claw and showed it to me, “This from my zeide’s coat. My grandfather, he steal this coat from a dead Russian soldier, the gonif,” she chuckled, “he still was wear it on, nu, how you say, on boat to here.” She put the buttons away and reached instead for a grubby little wooden figure of a bird that rested high on one of the shelves. “This was tchotchka, a toy of his little sister who die in Vitebsk, in the shtetl, before the war.” She went on like this for a while, picking up random bits of crap and talking about how the person who owned it had died in this camp, or from this disease, and the thing was… I’d heard it all before. I already told you about all the dead people’s stuff, right? That’s because she told me all about it almost every time I went over there. I asked her—well, first I interrupted her because I’m rude, but then I asked her how all this turned her into a dragon. She laughed and coughed, “Ay ay ay, this is narrishkeit to young ears, gey gezu-

nterheyt… you tell me, bubbaleh, why you think I become this monster?” I thought about this for a while, carefully rolling the little wooden bird in my hands. It was so old it didn’t feel like it was made of wood anymore and it was almost completely black—it felt gummy, like a million hands had left little traces of dirt on it that became this dark and heavy layer of yuck. I put the little bird down, and told my great-aunt that I think she became a dragon because there was too much human everywhere else. I told her that I think the dead people used up all the people-ness there was, including hers. My great-aunt didn’t laugh. She closed her big eyes and leaned forward, so I could feel the heat and smell the smoke from her nostrils, and I could see myself reflected in the scales on her forehead. She gently rested her snout on my shoulder and rubbed her cold scaly cheek against mine, “Oy, sheyne bubbaleh, you are sweet like honey.” I tried not to shiver at the feeling of her cold and a-little-bit-slimy skin on mine, and asked her again if she liked being a dragon. My great-aunt drew back slowly, one of her sharp fangs catching on the edge of my tee-shirt just for a moment, and gave a big smoky sigh, “Is not simple. You are clever, you decide.” And that was when I decided to become a dragon slayer. Some people, like Bard from The Hobbit, or Harry Potter or St. George or King Arthur or whoever, some people slay dragons using swords or magic and stuff. Not me. I decided to become a dragon slayer by first becoming a gonif—a thief. I started with the little wooden bird. I didn’t put it back on the shelf where it belonged, or give it back to my great-aunt so she could put it away. Instead, I slipped it into the pocket of my shorts, and when Mom

came to pick me up, and we walked back to the train station, I pretended to stop and restrap my sandal, and left the little bird sitting on the sidewalk. Since then, every time my Mom took me to Jerusalem to see my great-aunt I’d find a way to slip something, even something small, into my pocket or my backpack and sneak it out of that horrible building. I knew when I started that it was going to take years, and that it was probably not as cool as the way King Arthur or St. George would go about it, but, you know, I think Bilbo would have done pretty much the same thing. And, you know, sometimes I think I can already see a little bit of a difference… like, the other day? I could have sworn I saw a little patch of pink and wrinkly old-lady skin where there used to be shiny black scales.

The Little Princess Naomi Soman

Someday, I’ll build for you a castle made with the golden thread of a hundred thousand sunflowers woven together on the wings of dandelion wishes that were never meant to take root in the first place I can sew for you a tower with scraps of fallen starlight That no one could catch That I put in my pocket to save for When you didn’t have any waterfalls to chase For someday, I’ll build it in a kingdom furnished with your dreams And overgrown with distant cityscapes Where you can’t hear me, but I’m never very far away And I’ll paint for you walls with harmonies sculpted out of summertime herself, so if you ever need to find me all you have to do is sing with all the colours of the wind if they don’t first wash away with the tide but I promise you that if they do I’ll still hear you in all the melted rainbows you leave behind. Dripping off the edges of the skyway

Conversations With Lincoln Sophia Muhlmann

Four score and seven years ago, what will they think if i donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t do my homework Our fathers brought forth to this continent, a new nation, or if i donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t show up at all Conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal i am not equal i am not equal i am not equal Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, can long endure what am i if i am what i am and what i am is div ided, like a peach pit blistered into peach pit pieces left at the turn of the century for some unkind farmer to kick with his tired foot into an 1863 sunset that may or may not ever spread, like peach jam over crisped and toasted and buttered bread into an 1864 tomorrow We are met i am met, with my Maker, separated into uneven parts, uneven pieces that have scattered onto a field of rye, On a great battlefield of that war they will not notice if i do not show, We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place or if i do not show, will i finally rest, find some other clingy skin to step into, find some other bread to sing to? The brave men, living and dead who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract maybe this is not a game of numbers maybe being in a million pieces, like unmagnetized dust in a field of peach pits is okay maybe, The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here. 15

Food Chain Arielle Gordon

My mother dreams of being a king. She sits on a pillow in the living room and makes a kingdom with her words. The pillow is red like rubies or mutilated pomegranates. You have to imagine somehow that crowns are not gold, they are rubies or wishbones studded with rubies and you are my scepter and together we make the rules. I laugh. Mommy you are silly talking like a princess when you smile like a skeleton. * Once, we stripped all the muscle from the spines of the mice living under the sofa and ate it for lunch. There was a mommy and her babies and they were the guards of the underworld. They bowed to us when we peeled them away. 16

First, we trapped them in a prism made of steel: their new kingdom; our silver empire. Cold shines like a factory, eyes white like loyal subjects pleading to us for mercy or maybe wisdom before we forked their brains. The world they saw before they died: a metal box and Jesus. We ate the babies first and made the mommy watch: when the emperor entertains, she likes to put on a good show like a good Roman who values tradition. The royal, pornographic ritual is peel a living thing like stringcheese. Kings love to eat flesh when it looks like ribbons. We stored the leftovers under the pillows. Now we sit on a kingdom of bones. * My mother dreams of being a fish. I want to float her to the sea or flush her down the toilet. She wants to learn to breathe inside the belly of a shark but she does not know to swim through razors in a mouth.

I wonder if she will learn or if she will die. * Fish know how to die the best. They are not fooled into believing there is new life inside the ground. They do not sing around the bones of their mothers or bury themselves in coins to pay their way across the river. They do not know about metal or caskets. They never learned what mourning is. When they are not swimming they are dying inside bellies. When their mothers die they swim faster or they join their mothers.

Babbling Prediction for a Psych Major M.J. Stone

He pulled the hat off his head and he didn’t have his usual cowlick. Instead, his hair lay completely flat like it was stuck to his scalp. In contrast, the hairs of his bushy eyebrows pointed in different directions. I noticed these things, his hair, and his eyebrows, even the freckle on his neck. I looked away. I don’t think I was staring, but I might have been. Oh crap. Having to remind myself to look away is a clear indicator of a developing crush. He took his jacket off and hung it over the back of the chair. Then, he sat across from me. “Hey,” he chimed, completely clueless. That, the thought that he had no idea, was funny to me. It wasn’t laugh out loud funny, but it made me smile. “What?” he asked. “Are you laughing at my hat hair? I know it’s bad.” I got up and quickly put my hand through his hair. It was messy, but at least it wasn’t flat anymore. “There you go. Now it’s simply voluminous,” I said with just a smidge of sass. “I’m going to go get some coffee. Want anything?” “A cappuccino would be great. Thanks.” I purposely took my time getting to the coffee kiosk in the library, shuffling my feet. I needed the time to get my head on straight and shake the bumbling girly nonsense out of my head. It was the start of a new semester, and it was going to be a grueling one. Letting my brain turn into mush over a boy wouldn’t help any. I actually get mad at myself when I start to like someone. I think it may be because I made working hard at school and towards a better future such a priority. It always came first and that’s all I know. With two hot coffees now in hand, now, I can’t help but think of the boys I turned down or drove away in high school. I paused. His back faced me and I couldn’t help noting how broad his shoulders were. I literally shook my head, practically scolding myself as I walked up to the table and set his cappuccino in front of him.

I glanced down at the textbook he had open. “Tell me again why you’re doing this to yourself. Being a psychology major will only bring you trouble, either professionally or personally. Before you know it you’ll be a sad grad with no job prospects who’s driven all his friends away because you analyzed them to death.” Dex grinned, but he didn’t say anything in response. So, I naturally continued to babble, “Or you’ll find a job dealing with unstable people who will call you at 4A.M. every day. At least it’s better than the job at the federal prison, where you deny prisoners claims of appeal based on their insanity. Or, and this would be the worst, you will end up listening to unhappy women and men moping about their unappreciative significant others and having affairs with them.” He laughed. “Why am I having affairs with them?” “Obviously, they’re being vulnerable with you and because you’re such a great listener, they throw themselves at you. You don’t really have much say in the matter. Your crummy job has left you in a desperate state and you just want to be supportive and do all you can to help them lead happier lives,” I didn’t even know what I was saying at this point. “Alright then. Thanks for the heads up. I’ll either keep a stress ball or condoms in my desk drawer depending on the career path I choose. Oh and I’ll get a dog for company because it seems like I’ll be pretty lonely when I am not entertaining clients with my extraordinary listening skills.” I opened my American Policy textbook and sipped my coffee. “As long as you’re prepared,” I said. I pulled out a notebook. “I always am,” he retorted, handing me a pen. I looked down and in my bag. I had forgotten pens, pencils, and any writing utensils really. “How did you—“ He interrupted, “You usually have one behind your ear. Now, shush. I’m busy studying for my miserable future over here.” I shut my slightly agape mouth and tucked his pen behind my right ear.

[TW: Sexual Assault]

napus

Gregory Bonacci i ache, secret parts of myself pulled taut and then a little bit further. there’s something out there, or so he tells me, you just have to go and get it. tarsals to tassels carpals to curtains my skin is splayed and my bones are milled to so much meal there’s something out there, he tells me, you just have to trust me— but i don’t. my anxiety mirrors his actions i see him as bare as i am. a menace with glassy, stinging eyes cold as cotton, sharper than moonshine there’s something out there, i tell myself through gritted teeth. you just have to cooperate. only for a little while. so i lie on my back for him and i do. there’s something out there. i am quiet. i wanted this. there’s something out there but nothing in here. 20

Reclaimed Sonja Unica

Like petals plucked they fell— Photographs, torn from the wall. Shells of beauty. They lie scattered on the floor And in them I saw a man faded to memory. A man who was once my caretaker Watering the garden of my happiness, A product of seeds he’d sown with care. I looked at the petals strewn at my feet. Ghosts of my gardener, A man who no longer existed; Not to me. The flowers he’d sown had wilted. Their petals slowly fell And the garden was bare. Until the daisies and queen anne’s lace Replaced the once perfect rows of pruned roses. New memories and loves, Which needed no tending, And no gardener. I saved the photographs; Dried rose petals in a box. Its lid remains uncracked. For who would leave her field of wildflowers For dried petals In a dusty box?

what the seaglass told me Anne Kat Alexander

a named house in North Carolina squats on short naked legs and watches the wavesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; edge. sometimes the open space floods through high tide storms and after, this is where the girl retreats, squatting with a half-filled jar of seaglass, broken by the ocean that softened the shards. the house is full of ghosts who fear her almost as much as the sea, because while the sea took them and softened them, she fixed where they rest now. they are unused to the confines of haunting. the girl sits cross-legged and picks through her bits of sea-glass and sometimes she can hear them whisper to her that the sea was kinder, but as her rough fingers brush sand from the contours of the lonely ghosts the words are lost in the skritch skritch and the waves, and the girl imagines their curses otherwise. they were only ever whispers anyhow.

Horchata Moonshine Clayre Benzadon

Horchata Moonshine spills into the village of La Aldehuela, a silver river of whitewashed buildings below the milkdrunk Ávila galaxy: La Via Láctea. My dad points to the stars, outlines them with chalky atmosphere: Captura todo lo que reluce. Capture everything that glistens: the celestial incandescence. Earthshine of the crescent moon. The lunar ray’s refraction, melted against my glass of horchata. Two days ago, in the clear, light glint of the Caballeruelos River, my body became a watercolor, exposed under the stream’s embers. Papá roared:

Yesterday, I held the cup up towards the indigo flames of the Queimada nebula and chanted along with the alcoholic blaze burning witchcraft: espíritus de las nevadas llanuras. Even spirits of the snowy plains from this town observe the cloudy residue of my childhood gradually become trapped biolumiscence. Fuerzas de aire, tierra, mar y fuego: forces of air, earth, sea and fire. I am a spark of constellation bottled up in a glass flask of fireflies. Levantaré las llamas de este infierno como fuego: I will raise the flames of this hell-like fire and combust.

Pecadora lengua de la mala mujer The sinful tongue of the bad women: don’t undress yourself in public like that, you’re not allowed to glow (grow) (go)!

My Boy is a Bridge Lauren Puglisi

He is as a proud bridge of international orange. So much golden strength for a boy who has done nothing but sojourned across seas, numbed to passing travelers and changing tides that quietly slip away like flies through his firm fingers. Nothing is permanent except the dense fog, the cool blue ocean, and the loyal passage of time.

(2)

Pichya Nimit To grow up With the weeds That overcrowd the garden. Forcing out the flowers Like unwanted tenants. The street is our home now.

Seeing You Linda Ferrer

I could hear this song a thousand times. A thousand years from now, I’ll be someone else completely. I watched you from the rooftop like the the tallest light post that just stands still. You couldn’t see me. It was dark and I was somewhere up above you. Was I god, or a sniper? My perspective reaches farther than all your daily routes. I came by like a breeze barely noticedNudity underneath one’s clothing. Things that are always there but unseen, Like time and all the fragments that pull us together and back apart again— Only to draw us into collision. I’ll be Andromeda jumping into the arms of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Van Goghâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Glasses Rachel Mae Dillon

van gogh had forgotten his glasses that starry night, so he looked up at the sky through a clouded magnifying glass and then a kaleidoscope: he saw a sky filled with soft-boiled eggs yolk stroked thick in golden streaks surrounded by schools of fish swimming swirling traffic patterns in limitless shades of silver and blue. the black trees below rose up and up competing with the bulging starlightâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; swirled smoke, furling flames burning from the stove town. the townspeople below watched the painter stare and then laugh alone atop the hill as he painted all he saw and could not see.

Infinitesimal Space Michael Perlow

These hollow hallways have no length, they span together, encircling the sights, full of estranged people in a greyscale paradox. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no destination, no course, no stars, Only the pale lights which markup paneled skies, a sky one can reach out and touch mind to mind. They are alone, apart when they are close, huddled against the darkness of their sorrowful state, never to fear the sky in its endless reach. Hidden away, lies the space they cannot hear, the spaces past dreams from sights left behind, that never were, but never were not. They cannot bear to realize they live imprisoned, we cannot leave this Mobius strip, so I find freedom in my hidden self. They will find nothing, they sing their songs without a note, nothing could hear my own passing tune, the music of the spheres plays through my head. I am a probe in an empty void, I learn of our echoes, our people, our song, I travel in circles, but they too are trapped here. I can wait for my mind to outlast Forever, all things end, so must I, but not without reaching for the edge of my true sky.

The Red Reel Jess Linde

The bulb flickered as it swung back and forth, its color dimming to a dull fluorescent grey. The arc of the bulb was starting to slow, allowing a fly to come and touch it, warming itself on something no longer hot enough kill it. Green, the projectionist, stood on his chair and pressed two fingers to the bulb and pushed it so as to restart the swinging, chasing away the fly at the same time. Satisfied, Green got down from his chair and sat down behind the desk and watched the bulb swing on its thin attachment to the ceiling. He sat there. Green looked around, staring through thick and dirty lenses at the broom closet he called an office: the door to the outside world, the desk, the chair, the light, and an actual closet. The door led to the bowels of the studio building which sat on the famous boulevard, which was part of a famous city where the movies were made. Green handled almost all of the big pictures, cleaned them, prepared the films, screened them for people, watched them alone at night. Sometimes he didn’t even go home. Green smiled to himself for no reason other than he was alone, and pushed his glasses up on his nose. Suddenly a knock on the door broke the silence and Green stood and went to answer it. Jacobs, the assistant, was at the door, and he looked down at Green, ruffling his nose slightly before speaking: “We got another screening in an hour, ready the reels and make sure they’re clean before you start the show,” Jacobs said. Green nodded and held out his hands, waiting expectantly for the package. Jacobs looked at Green with a sort of strange disdain. “Be careful with this one,” he said. Jacobs handed Green the package, a large silver circle, and left Green too excited to even notice Jacobs’ exit. Green began to work. He scurried over to his desk and placed the circle on it. Without pause, he took a pair of perfectly clean

and kept white gloves from his pocket and put them on. Then, with a touch so gentle it could only be called reverent, Green opened the container and took hold of its content. Film, yards of the stuff, shone in the dim swinging light as Green turned it carefully between his fingers. He touched the reels as a child would a hidden treasure, and ran his thumb across the black-and-white, brushing dust ever so gently away. Around fifty feet into the film, Green noticed a strange shift in the color. All of a sudden there were several scenes worth of celluloid colored so deeply red it could have lived inside the Devil’s veins. It seemed to have been spliced into the rest of the film after the fact, being both preceded and followed by a different movie. Green reached a hand into his pocket, withdrawing a small eyeglass to inspect the film with, and pressed it to the red. The first frames were far too murky to be discerned, but Green kept moving the glass along the section until he started to see something. A figure, standing in a room; tall, thin, with spindly arms at its sides. Eventually, what looked like a face in profile came into view. Green stopped moving the glass and stared at the face. The face turned, and stared back from the red. Green felt a sharp pain in his eye, and jerked his head back from the film, dropping the glass on the ground, cracking it. He let out a yelp as the pain went deeper, and Green rubbed at his eyeball. For a moment, the horrible face flashed in his eyelid, but it went away. Green shook his head in confusion, and then, realizing the time he was wasting, re-rolled the film and put it back in the case before rushing out the door. Inside, the thing crawled its way through the synapses of the brain, skinless lips chattering black teeth. Clack clack clack, went the teeth. As it explored, the thing put its claws against the pink-gray flesh, plucking at nerves like the strings of a harp. Eventually, it found its destination, and paused. Clack clack clack, went the terrible teeth. The thing dug its claws

into cones and rods, and took a bite. Clack clack clack, went the terrible black teeth. When he finally reached the projection booth, Green saw that people were already sitting down in the private screening room. There was the boss, the secretary, and some of the money. Smoke billowed from the boss’ cigar. Green could hear muffled chatter about how the money was gonna be so pleased once they saw the picture. Quickly and carefully, Green loaded the reels, set the leader material, and ran the projector. Finally, his favorite part. He sat back in the booth, and watched the images dance on screen. Then the pain returned, and Green rubbed at his eye again. When Green looked up again, he was just in time to watch the red film go into the projector, and to wonder how he’d forgotten about it. The red entered the projector. The images played. The boss swore. The secretary started to scream. Jacobs burst into the booth. “Turn it off, goddammit!” Back to his wits, Green shut off the projector. From the screening room he could hear arguing, angry voices trying to make sense of what they’d seen. “Go back to your office,” Jacobs said. Green stared at him, unable to react. “Go the fuck back, and hope nobody had a heart attack!” Jacobs left the booth, and Green hurried out, running on short legs back to his tiny room. Once there, Green sat alone with his bad light and his own heavy breathing. For the first time, he considered the terror of losing his job. He would lose income, sure, but he’d also lose the privilege of watching the films. Who would care for the prints if they fired him? Who would love them and appreciate them better? Green sat with such thoughts for a long time. After an eternity, the door opened and Green saw Jacobs come in. “I somehow convinced them not to fire you,” he said. “But you better go home. The boss will probably change his mind if he sees you here.” Green began to thank Jacobs, but was dismissed. “Just leave,” Jacobs said.

Later that night, Green could not sleep, and was not sure why. It had been such a horrible day, all Green wanted was to sleep and dream, but he could not. He reached for his glasses, put them on, and got out of bed. He walked to the bathroom, and relieved himself. Green stared at himself in the mirror above the sink. The area around his eye still ached. He took off his glasses, and splashed water on his face, to no avail. Looking back in the mirror, he noticed something under his achy eye, a black spot that had not been there before. Green touched the spot with a finger, and turned on the bathroom light to get a better look. He turned his face, still playing with the spot. Taking a cotton swab from his medicine cabinet, Green depressed the area around the spot. When the swab tip slipped into the spot, Green saw that it wasn’t a spot at all. It was a hole. Green began to panic, and searched desperately for a bandage, when he froze stiff in his tracks. His body shivered, began to shake inhumanly, before falling to its knees. Green’s neck bent backwards, pointing his head at the ceiling. The hole began to stretch and expand. A small point emerged from it, then an entire claw, then a finger, then another. The thin, sharp phalanges stretched Green’s skin back, tearing at it, as the rest of a thin sharp hand emerged from the whole. Green’s mouth opened as if to scream, only for another clawed hand to reach out. Slowly surely, and in great pain, Green was ripped open and dropped to the floor in a splash of blood and gore. The terrible thing stood, bowlegged and emaciated, and looked at the shoddy hime its latest vessel had lived in. Clack clack clack, went the terrible black teeth. When Green’s neighbor came by the next day to complain of a smell, the door opened on its own, and the neighbor shrieked. By the time the police arrived, there was only a pool of deep, evil red, and a scared neighbor complaining of a sharp pain in their eye. 29

Ask for Directions RN

Hardly at the top of the mountain yet sidetracked, quite literally took a route I hadn’t taken ended up looking Southernly clouds moving swiftly bells clanging off East the church is open its 8AM on Saturday Snow topped mountains & water lining the NorthWest center of the city there’s snow at the top of this one, if I can get there quickly Back of my neck exposed, chilling The first smear of pink, there Oh, it’s beginning my ribs & lungs fail me so I’ll sit here, pages blown away watching the sunrise quietly

Lego

Eve Litvak As the disorganized mountain of chaotic colour gradually transformed into sorted piles of potential greatness produced before me: houses, castles, race cars; empty space occupied by contained space; solutions and manifested childhood dreams accumulated under the window on the floor. Until the pieces were swept away with the dust.

may 5

Sam Daniels I lay awake at 4:30 in the morning the birds outside my window are so fucking loud their shrill chirping fills the room and i am plagued by insomnia his ex doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t look at me in the library she leaves my facebook friend request pending on purpose i have a weird complex and he calls me dude i write a poem every time a guy is nice to me i carry too much to compartmentalize when i was on top of him i told him there are rapists that should be expelled and then you came along so nice that i took to the page because the truth is you seem like you could fall for a broken girl but the pieces are somewhere in my pocket.

How to Kill a Cat Gwenyth Fraser

I “Well, it’s got a collar on. Maybe we can call its owner,” Trent said. To my ears, it sounded like expert case-cracking from Sherlock Holmes himself. “You’re right,” I said. “You’re so right.” Trent Beaulieu and I had been working together as counselors at Camp K.V. for exactly twelve days now. This was also how long I’d been in love with him. “Welcome to camp,” he had said that first day- to all the new trainees, but looking directly into my own eyes. “We’re so glad to have you here.” He was handsome. Tall. Even his braces looked good. And no one could play a better game of kickball in the upper field during Free Time. Today, he was taking charge of the situation once again, like the hero I knew him to be. “Who wants to check the tag?” he asked the crowd. “See if it has a phone number on it?” I saw an obvious opportunity to get his attention. “Oh, I’ll do it!” I squealed. “I love cats!” I fixed my hair, smoothed my skort, and bent down to inspect the creature in front of us. It was cute, a tabby of some sort, with speckled fur and three different colors on the face. Unfortunately, it was also dead. The waterfront at Camp K.V. was a veritable goldmine for such finds. It had something to do with the flow of water currents in the surrounding lakes. I didn’t really understand the details, but the long and short of it was that all the debris floating in the nearby waters made its way here and was dumped in our little buoyed gulf. The kids were al32

ways finding something interesting as they swam. Sometimes it was a mere water-bottle, or an old waterlogged watch. But most days there was something more interesting just itching to be stepped on and discovered by one of our tiny swimmers. An injured crab, perhaps, or a watersnake. Once, a dead turtle without a shell had washed up on our little beach (it looked remarkably like the cat in front of us now). And then there had been The Great Floating Mystery of Camp K.V. As usual, it had started with screams from the camper adventurous enough to have the first sighting. Soon, kids were flocked around the object (except the little girl who had spotted it: she had fled to the shore and begun to cry). But it was floating outside of the buoyline, which meant the kids weren’t allowed to swim to it. The Camp Director, an overweight man with unusual hair patterns, had been called down to fetch it in. He grabbed one of those nets designed for cleaning pools, and tried to scoop the mystery object toward the docks. Unluckily, it was much heavier than he anticipated. He almost fell in on top of it before a few of the lifeguards grabbed on and stabilized him. Soon, their haul had been dumped in the sand for closer inspection. It was like a fat, hairless dog. Except different, in that its head and limbs had been cut off. What could it be? It was the talk of the camp all week. At lunch, in the lean-tos and throughout the main lodge all anyone could talk about was What was it? Where had it come from? What did it mean? That was when Trent Beaulieu had asked to make a small speech during the weekly variety show. He stood up, cleared his throat. “It’s a pig roast,” he said. “There’s a restaurant a ways upstream. I’ll bet they started preparing the pig, realized the meat

was no good, and tossed it out for the fish to eat.” The audience had roared with applause. Today’s was a similar case, except that the cat had made it all the way to the sandy beach before it was spotted. This meant it must have floated in overnight, and was discovered when camp started the next morning. We didn’t think it had drowned. It appeared to have been badly injured before it wound up in the water, as its midsection was something of a mess. “There’s no number for a home phone,” I reported back to Trent. “But there’s a phone number for the veterinary clinic it used to go to.” Trent nodded his head wisely. “That’s a lead.” Another counselor ran to the payphone and called, and before long we had an address for the place. It was agreed that Trent and I would go together, once the Camp Director had bagged up the cat’s body. He wrote out directions, handed me one of the camp cell-phones in case anything went wrong, and then gave Trent keys to the K.V. jeep since I was not yet old enough to drive. I couldn’t focus as I sat next to him in the car. My palms were sweating. Should I turn on the radio? Did this count as a date? “What kind of food do you usually eat?” I asked, finally, just to make conversation. I didn’t think it was a very difficult question but Trent looked confused. “Um. I guess just regular food, you know? Like. Whatever my mom cooks. It’s not really up to me.” I nodded. It got quiet again and I wasn’t sure whether I should ask a follow-up question, or tell a joke, maybe, but before I could think of anything clever we were turning into the parking lot at the Kennebec Valley Animal Clinic. Trent got out and started walking around the car. For a moment, I thought he might

open the door for me, but it turned out he was just grabbing the bag with the cat in it. We said hello to the woman at the counter. She looked quite alarmed when we told her that the bag contained a dead cat. Interestingly, she didn’t seem to calm down at all when we explained (quite reasonably, I thought) where it had come from and why we had brought it here. We had to fill out a bunch of paper work. On our way out, I grabbed a handful of lollipops from a dish by the door. I offered the root-beer flavored one to Trent. He declined, but I assumed this was because he needed both hands for driving. II Yesterday I killed my girlfriend’s cat. “Dinner at my place,” she had said, and I consented, forgetting in the spur of the moment that meeting her family was not part of my original plan for the prom. I wanted to dance with a good-looking girl, show her off to my modest friend circle, and maybe see some action in the back of my ’98 Ford Focus. But I agreed anyway, and found myself at her house on the night of the dance. I parked my car in front of her two-door garage, her white picket fence, her two-and-ahalf-children perfect American family. Dinner was spaghetti and a salad that her mother had prepared. It exceeded expectations: the salad had bits of some citrus fruit mixed in, and the spaghetti was homecooked. We ate off china that was decorated with a tasteful floral pattern. I had no trouble with the parent-friendly banter. Said all my thank you’s, my please’s, even complimented the room decor (“What a lovely painting, is there an artist in the family?”). And as soon as it was acceptable to do so, I excused myself from the meal and went to start the car so that my date wouldn’t freeze in her dress. 33

She looked good. The dress was blue, but you couldn’t call it that to her face. It was one of those pretentious garments with color names like “Sparkling Sky” or “Midnight Azure” or “The harbor of Toulon, France on the Mediterranean Sea during a sunny mid-afternoon in April.” I decided to turn the vehicle around so that I could make a clean get-away once she was ready to go. I turned down my music to a respectable volume, turned up the heat, shifted into reverse, released the brake, felt my wheels glide over a small bump. I parked the car. It was only when I was out of the vehicle and walking back toward the door to the house that I saw my fatal error, the little pile of something hairy between my front and back left tires. I muttered a string of expletives, and shuffled over for a closer look. A cat, I thought to myself, Oh, shit. I had seen enough cats in my day to recognize the horrible mess as such a creature, though their backs did not usually have such a deep, flat valley and typically all of their insides remained inside. I felt a little sick at the sight of it. And my next thought was, They’re gonna kill me. My eyes darted to the door. But she wasn’t there yet, and no one else was watching. No one had seen its demise. Quickly, I popped open the trunk to look for a blanket, or a tarp with which to scoop up the flattened feline, but there was no such luck. I grabbed my schoolbag, dumped its contents into the trunk, and replaced them with the cat. A bit of him got on my sleeve in the process. But he fit okay and he didn’t stink yet. When I got inside I placed my coat on the counter (next to a food bowl which could only have belonged to the poor flat creature in the boot of my car) and excused myself to the restroom. I washed my hands and tried not to notice the litter box beside

me, cat turds pulsating in my mind like Poe’s telltale heart. I was a guilty man. Guilty, as I opened the car door for her and she attempted to be witty with some remark about chivalry, guilty as I changed the station and she dabbed at the “spaghetti sauce” on my sleeve. Guilty, guilty, guilty as we drove home later and kissed goodnight and I waved at her parents in the window. Guilty as I drove to the boat launch near her house, and dumped the cat’s carcass into the water, where it drifted off across the lake. Guiltiest of all as I coaxed cat guts out of a rented tuxedo. I thought about telling her, maybe sending her a text explaining the situation, but I knew that it would be a while before they noticed his absence and then more time before he was officially “missing” and even more time before they started searching and drawing conclusions and making accusations. I knew I would have plenty of time to craft a messy break-up with her and avoid the dead-pet conversation altogether. When I got home I asked my mum what the citrus fruit in the salad might have been, and she guessed it was a tangerine. I liked it, whatever it was. III I know what people see when they look at my life. A crisp and white Georgian colonial accompanied by a two-car garage, with tall pines shielding us from the road and a brick chimney pouring smoke. Inside, husband and wife: one a successful attorney who always made time for her kid, and the other a supportive writer who picked up the homemaking slack when his wife was busy. To the rest of the world, we looked like the pictures on our own mantle. Smiling, proud. A beautiful daughter between us, getting older from left to right across the hearth- on the one

end, a chubby cherub baby, and on the other, the teenager who had just been crowned prom queen the night before. She was a student athlete who made great grades, had a handsome boyfriend who joined us for dinner before the dance. When people look at me they see my husband’s books, our china dishes, the fireplace turning the house into a home. They see the garden out front. They see me baking, and my husband scribbling away at his work desk, with music playing. Sunshine streaming—it must seem—out of our windows, rather than into them. They don’t see that Derek and I can’t fucking stand each other, or that last night Lindsay screamed at me when I asked why she was getting home from the prom so late. She had, in fact, called me “a menopausal bitch” who “couldn’t fucking leave her alone for one second, jeez.” I have always been taught to pretend that everything is perfect. I think it goes back several generations. I can’t remember the last time that Derek and I had a pleasant night together, but it may have been our honeymoon. After that, his career tanked (no one ever asks me, but I don’t think he’s very talented) and he blamed his career on the problems with me and now his “career” is one of our problems. I was left to win the bread, and bake it too, and feed it to our daughter. I cook, I clean, I work, and Derek writes shitty little articles that no one will ever read. Most of the time, I can’t even remember what I used to love about him. Sometimes I wish we’d had two children. Maybe if Lindsay had someone else to interact with, someone her own age, she could blow off some of the teenage-steam in a way that wouldn’t break my heart every weekend night. But then I think, if I’d had two children, maybe two people would hate me. Three, if you count my husband. I know what people see when they look

at me because they’re constantly saying things like You have such a sweet family, Or Gosh, how did you get so lucky? Or I’d give anything to have a family like yours. I hate these people almost as much as I envy them. But it’s not really their fault that my family is crumbling, or that sometimes suburbia can feel like a special circle of hell reserved for mothers and wives who have hit rock bottom. Oh, well. At least I’ve got the cat.

Etta James Sophia Warren

“The lilacs,” she said, “are lovely this year.” Adjusting her ridiculous hat with the fuchsia ribbon, She grabbed my shoulder strong like And anchored me under her arm like a warm, steel crane. “Remember when you used to cut these into a tacky mug and tell me you bought me a bouquet,” Her voice spoke more quietly, Not about to compete with the Etta James record That had just turned over Humming from just inside the door. “You’d always love the smell of them,” She laughed to herself, “But seemed to want God to have chosen different colors for them.” I wanted to ask her, but I was Warmed by the sun, she was. Her shirt held small bristles of flower and branch And I focused on the small poking into my left arm Until it felt like pain. My weight shifted. She pulled me in. “I love you more than all my flowers,” she said. “I know that,” I replied. And turned my cheek into the smell of her collarbone. The fuchsia ribbon brushing my temple.

Seasonal Precautions Anne Kat Alexander

Fall arrives again to New England, And I attempt to conceal my fear behind A smile, a kind word on the changing of the leaves, Like the last changing of the guard Before the palace is left to an encroaching forest. Fall again in New England. Again winter hovers in the crisper air, Embracing, threatening on my evening runs. Winter at nineteen struck too close for me To Sylvia’s summer at twenty, And with the cold approaching, I haul the shades up to watch the sun Rise and set and rise again over Boston. I have just turned twenty. My unexpected tears terrify me. I eye the sunset creeping earlier, earlier. Winter always sneaks up on me. I feel myself shiver and crawl shuteyed towards warmth: A duvet, or better a chest and arms, If nothing else a scalding shower, a coffee. Even anticipating, even warily waiting, Today’s early sunset catches me by surprise. I hurry home while the sky is still beautiful. Well, then, tonight I’ll keep the moon company, I tell myself, and I smile, and I boil fresh water for tea.

Laurel Moon Executive Board Angela Acevedo - Editor-in-Chief (Treasurer) Angela Maria Acevedo Bustamante feels like if she doesn’t include all her given names, she’s not honoring her family, so here we are. She’s a senior majoring in both Neuroscience and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, mostly due to having too much pride to not finish Neuro after getting halfway into it and realizing she only wanted to be an MD because she had recently re-watched Scrubs. She is tired so often it’s a personality trait, and much like a shark, if she is always busy, she won’t die. She loves inclusive, intersectional feminism and she got to pet a dog today, making it officially the Best Day Ever.

Sam Yoo - Editor-in-Chief (Internal Affairs) Sam Yoo is a real person that exists. They are an English, Creative Writing, and Film triple major, completing their final year of undergraduate education. Their favorite color is the void. This is not in any way a complex and expensive government conspiracy that relies on a series of orchestrated sensory illusions. Sometimes Sam has a recurring dream that they are actually just a headphones-wearing ghost, crying in the vacuum of space. This is not true. They are real. They are corporeal. They have always been here. There is no cause for concern.

Gregory Bonacci - Layout Editor Gregory Bonacci is an actual Mamoswine and a senior at Brandeis double majoring in Chemistry and Biology. His main form of social interaction is showing people pictures of puppies, and his main form of nourishment is having attractive men named things like “Jeeves” or “Graves” feed him pizza rolls like one would feed a Roman emperor grapes. Sometimes, if you’re really quiet, you can hear him whispering at you through the bushes, telling you to do things like submit to the bees. His main job is crying at InDesign and making it pity him enough to spit out a quality magazine; he does the same for Wander: Brandeis Abroad. He has only gotten through the semester by grace of copious amounts of mojitos and Pokémon.

Laurel Moon Editorial Staff Anne Kat Alexander Anne Kat is a sophomore from Austin, Texas studying English and classical studies with a smattering of minors. She chooses the bees.

Tatianna Banci Destined for Japan in the spring, this lover of tea and League prepares by binge reading short fiction and poetry, and impersonating a sloth. When not being lazy, she spends her time in the psych lab coding (or at least trying to).

Clayre Benzadon Clayre Benzadon plans to be a punk-rocker in the near future, spending her life jamming out when she learns to actually practice guitar on a reguar basis and writing in the galactic world, where she will be surrounded by friends, family, coffee, books and a good amount of creative solitude.

Sarah Duffett Sarah (@Stuffittt) is a Twitter personality who dabbles in creative writing. Her top tweet, “I love how we’re the generation that finally figured out how shitty potato salad is”, received 5 faves and two retweets. She really misses her dog.

Abigail Gardener Abigail Gardener is a first-year from New Jersey. No, not the place where Jersey Shore was filmed, although she has been there many a summer. She enjoys filling her stomach with burritos and wishes she could pet all the dogs in the world.

Laurel Moon Editorial Staff Emily Glovin I’m Emily Glovin, a first-year here at Brandeis. The first few months were tough. I’ve made a lot of enemies acidentally saying “freshman” in a couple clubs around campus. I’m now hiding out in the basement of public safety because I’m scared of the mob. I hope this magazine will help make amends. Enjoy!

Linda Maleh Linda Maleh is a warm ball of nerdy mush. She can be seen yelling at anyone who will listen about medieval history. If she could date Barry Allen from the Flash TV show she would. She jumped for joy when the Gilmore Girls revival was announced and is very proud of the fact that the history department has a catapult. Beware this Brandesian human. [Editor’s Note: As a penalty for not submitting her bio on time, we are required to divulge that Linda goes to Weenie Hut General when she gets burned, which is often.]

Monique J. Menezes A lab coat, boxing gloves, and a red pen are pieces of a uniform this HSSP/Psych major has chosen for herself. This appreciator of creativity may have underestimated the toll of a busy schedule. Fortunately, she has found super powers in a gluten-free diet, an origin of focus and energy unmatched by any cup of coffee.

Laurel Moon Editorial Staff Michael Perlow Michael Perlow is currently a sophomore who likes to spend time doing something, be it studying, reading, drawing, playing videogames, or even writing. All of those things usually have something to do with science, if not space in particular. He does not enjoy talking in the 3rd person.

Lauren Puglisi Lauren Puglisi is a first year from New York City. She loves traveling, tea, teacup pigs, and guacamole. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s studying environmental science, psychology, and history because she is a hippie. She would like to paid for her work on the magazine via points since Currito exists. Or in chocolate. Praise is acceptable as well.

Danielle Rock Born at a young age, Danielle grew up to become a hot mess and an absolutely awkward, yet proud nerd. Her interests include making terrible jokes and eating food that other people bought. She is a traumatic papercut survivor and an avid supporter of messy hair and sweatpants.

Emma Russell Emma is a first-year San Antonio native who survives off of only the wonderful deliciousness of bean and cheese tacos. The Spurs are her true pride and joy in life and distract her daily from attempting a major in Biology and minor in South Asian Studies.

Laurel Moon has two yearly awards for undergraduate writers, both awarded at the end of the spring semester. The Grossbardt Memorial Poetry Prize is awarded annually to one poem published in Laurel Moon over the course of the school year. Andrew Grossbardt was a poet who passed in the fall of 1979. He studied at Brandeis University and received his Ph.D. posthumously from the University of Utah. His poetry has been published in the New Yorker and in a chapbook entitled The Travellers. In 2014-2015, Rachel Dillon’s “Two Postcards in a Shoebox, Brooklyn, NY” was chosen; her work can be read in the Spring 2015 issue of Laurel Moon. Two runners-up for this award were chosen. You can read Emily Scharf’s “A Murder of” and Zuri Gordon’s “Ms. Lopez and the Chocolate Shakes” in the Fall 2014 edition of Laurel Moon. --The Dafna Zamarripa-Gesundheit Fiction Prize is awarded to a work of fiction published in Laurel Moon over the course of the academic year. Dafna Zamarripa-Gesundheit was a student at Brandeis University, a past editor of Laurel Moon and a member of the Creative Writing track who died prematurely at the end of her junior year. The prize honors her spirit and memory, and is awarded to a piece of extraordinary fiction published in Laurel Moon. In 2014-2015, Sam Yoo’s “Dandelion Chains” was chosen; their work can be read in the Spring 2015 issue of Laurel Moon. One runner-up for this award was chosen. You can read Abbey Schultz’s “Lipstick” in the Fall 2014 edition of Laurel Moon. --The front cover photo for this edition of Laurel Moon was taken by Tzvi Miller, and the back cover photo was taken by Bidushi Adhikari.