Spring 2019

Laurel Moon

www.laurelmoonmag.com

Spring 2019

Laurel Moon Magazine Spring 2019

Laurel Moon Magazine Laurel Moon is Brandeis University’s oldest, national literary magazine. We publish two issues each year, in the fall and in the spring. All undergraduates at US-based colleges and universities are invited to submit their creative writing of any genre. We also accept visual artwork of any kind. All submissions are read blind.

Editors-in-Chief

Sophie Fulara Jinni Wang

Editors

Ivy Gao Pallavi Goel Abigael Good Nico LĂŠger Ruoxuan (Andrea) Lei Anne Liu Caroline O Alyssa Rider Ethan Seidenberg Rachel Saunders

Reviewers

Bob Corpening Violet Fearon Jesse Qu Vanessa Yen

The cover of this issue was designed by Lindsey Li and edited by Vicente Cayuela.

Copyright 2019 by Laurel Moon Brandeis University English Department PO Box 9110 Waltham, MA 02454-9110 www.laurelmoonmag.com www.instagram.com/laurel_moon_brandeis www.facebook.com/laurelmoonbrandeis

Editor’s Note Dear readers, Luminary brings to you the metamorphosis of Laurel Moon Magazine.

Previously, Laurel Moon has featured exclusively literary works by undergraduate writers in the U.S., but in this issue, Laurel Moon is proud to shine light on young visual artists and photographers as well.

By presenting visual artwork, we hope to represent the undergraduate voice in a more holistic manner. Ceaseless and brilliant, luminary is the light we find from within ourselves and around us.

Our new logo on the cover of Luminary graciously illuminates our message for you. Laurel leaves adorn a moon in a waning gibbous phase, celebrating the tender stage in an undergraduate’s life when much confusion is to be felt and error to be made. Those who don’t know us merely see a failing light, but those who stand with us, have walked our path await the moment to our brighter becoming. As always, to our companions who feel stuck, we say, take to your pencil and paper as you will, and dazzle minds with your words.

This issue features various pieces that are threaded together through light. From “Beached Whale” and “Chinese-born American” to “Mistaken Identity,” we find we all share a shining charisma that strengthens in our reflection to insecurity, exclusion, and misrepresentation. And still, we follow this light through the screen in “Gameboy Gets Played” as it travels into a Manhattan apartment in “Mamajuana,” bursts into color in “Empty Life,” and flows into the season of refreshment in “It’s spring and I want to hold everything.”

We hope you enjoy!

Sophie Fulara Jinni Wang

Laurel Moon Spring 2019

Contents Poetry 2 3 9 10 18 20

29 48 49 51

Memo to Man in Manito Mamajuana Fortune Teller Fish Mistaken Identity Black Sheep Treatise Womanhood and other scary things OR: Motherhood and other scary things rabble-rousers Gameboy gets played Of Advice Aged in an Oak Barrel It’s spring and I want to hold everything

Seth Wade Jen Woolard Jenn Travers Jack Greenberg Warren Situ Angela Hyde

Charlotte Lang Jack Rubinstein Courtney Garvey

Prose 4 30 36 40

We Dance Unforgivable Slab Love Empty Life

Carson Markland Samuel Milligan Via Bleidner Veronica Therrien

Creative Non-Fiction 12 22

Chinese-Born American Beached Whale

Peija Anderson Natalie Mitchell

The Mystic Eye Studio NYC Reflection Heaven’s Height Soft Boiled Seeing is Hearing Self-portrait with a cigarette Lady in a rush Untitled

Lindsey Li Lauren Puglisi Jenna Lifshitz Jacy Zhang Sara Inoa Nakul Srinivas Vicente Cayuela

ART 1 8 11 17 20 35 46 47 50

Julian Eskin

the Mystic Eye Always Watching Lindsey Li

1

Memo to Man in Manito Seth Wade

Chlorine reeked from unwashed feet & you wagered, you stranger, that we could smell that dog. Lapped in curse, in danger, sounding stranger.

Can you believe I swam again? I’m drying out on lead-licked bleachers while shitty Hallmark-sounding ditties play through fuzz-felt speakers &—I’m no saner, just stranger.

I still hear cicada beats groaning, those pool gutters croaking—all in pulse with you.

Is that why sunscreen makes me vomit? We were teenagers, mere strangers.

So, tell me, stranger—how can I know anyone? Trust me, you said. Say it again now: trust. Sounds forced and endangered, like a sometimes-stranger.

Do you know they closed that pool in Manito? Now milkweeds burst & monarchs flirt where two brothers bobbed in cobweb hurt. Where mutts leaked fainter, breeding strangers.

I’m deep underwater when I smell iron. Chemicals, like time, only cloud so much.

We can say we found it like this, you said. It, you said. Remember? You stranger.

2

Mamajuana Jen Woolard

In Spring the ice still clings to the streetsides of Manhattan but in the hazel light of his apartment I watch him inhale warm smoke from a green bottle, the knit blanket around his shoulders flushed cheeks, and round frame glasses that refract the light of the kitchen match burning between his fingers.

A sink of dishes, reptilian lamplight his coat hung over a chair.

Loose sheet music, chamomile rosebuds, and mason jars which rimstain the table where he serves me tender spoonfuls of Mamajuana an aphrodisiac from the Dominican Republic.

Star-anise, basil whole clove, agave, soaked the softened bark of rosewood we savor and, sucked of its honey leave to dry on the stovetop.

3

We Dance Carson Markland

We dance the way some people pray, like we’re winging a message to heaven.

Our hands are raised to the sky, our shorts sliding off our hips. School is out for the weekend, we’ve remembered to bring home our lunchboxes, and we rove across the back porch, sealing ourselves against the future. Our feet, dusted in yellow, pick up the pollen on the floor, and the floor picks up the nuclear shadow of our footprints like we were incinerated on the spot.

These are the days when we still have time to be anything. Wearing our mother’s costume jewelry, breaking our necks with strands of fake sapphires and rubies that drip like veins down our stomachs, we’re movie stars? Everyday we fight over the one strand of real pearls, molar smooth with a golden clasp like a crab claw.

We are our mother. We have her singing voice and dilutions of her curled in the clutch of our ovaries. We have her favorite station on, and someday we’ll have her age. But now we’re young. Now we’re spinning around while the man in the radio croons about a woman he loved who left him anyways.

We dance the way some people pray, a natural side effect of living in the arrhythmic heart of the Bible Belt, with Jesus palpitating around us. We live in the promised land of paper mills and two lane roads, the cracked asphalt withering into the gravel shoulder, the gravel shoulder littered with cigarette butts and wax wrappers still clinging to pickles and smears of ketchup and cheese. We live inside of an endless burning, twisting our hands in the sun. Our back porch is a diving board into the alchemical late afternoon glare that transmutes our hair into gold and blinds the drivers heading west on the freeway below. If any of them looked up, they’d see us dancing, but none of them do. We are above their notice; we are below their line of sight.

4

What a sight, all those cars below. Glittering like beetle shells, like the ones that gather dust on our windowsills, hard and chitinous and the violet color of something you can grind between your teeth. In their passing, we can hear snatches of their radios like gulps of air, like they’re surfacing from somewhere deep. Maybe some of the drivers dance too, in that seed hull of space behind the steering wheel. We’ll never know.

Our grandfather in his rust bitten blue truck doesn’t dance. He steers with one wrist, his other arm resting on the open window. He tips his hat at strangers, and he sings with a voice so deep we want to press our hands against his throat and gather up the sound, but he doesn’t dance. We don’t hear the gravel scrape of his tires or his closing car door, but we watch him appear as he always does around the side of the house, a denim clad cowboy with a belt buckle the size of an apple. To us, he is huge, a man of epic proportions. We don’t notice the sag of his jeans or the watch sliding down his wrist. We could fill up his boots with water and go swimming. We could use his hat as a tent and set up shop in a desert somewhere, shielded from the sun.

When he lifts us onto his shoulders, we can sweep the whole world into our arms.

Look Grandpa, look, we spin for him. He turns up the music and swings us high into the air, so high that our feet tangle into clouds and we get caught on the way down, ripping through filaments of sky. We fall for years and land back in his arms, cradled there by bone and flesh. He smells of tobacco and gasoline. He smells like someone who exists. What would you say to a little road trip, he asks. Our answer is yes, yes, always yes.

We live in the Bible Belt, in the red clutch of God, and on our grandfather’s radio, sometimes, we hear about how we are evil sinners and how Hell is a very hot place. Today, though, it is another man singing about a broken heart as we fly down roads that curve like a question mark at the end of the sentence Where are we going?

Seatbelts are optional in our grandfather’s car, and so is the speed limit, and we move and shake in the backseat as our grandfather in the front cracks open a bottle and glugs down what he tells us is root beer.

He grew up here as we are growing up here, another mammoth caught in the bog of this place, another life perfectly preserved so that the next generation can fish them out and find that nothing’s changed. We are our grandfather’s future, but also his past, just as our past is his, and our future the same. We don’t have time for these breathless calculations, though; we’re already breathless from dancing. As we move to the music, our necklaces tangle into tight fists that beat against our chests like they’re trying to resuscitate us. This is our daily ablution, anointing us with sweat.

5

We are each other’s sacrament, the words to the song wafers on our lips.

He parks and leads us to a brick building that looks like one of the houses we drive by sometimes after church and imagine ourselves inside of, eating ice cream for every meal. But no one lives here, or if they do, it’s not for long, because inside, there are only empty boxes in the shapes of rounded rectangles, like the fender of a car.

Some are wooden, some are metal. We rap our fists against them to hear the hollow sound they make. They’re so big you could lay down inside of them, and maybe you’re meant to because they’re cracked open like peanuts and cushioned inside with little pillows. Red velvet, white fleece. We run our hands along the lining, along the wood so glossy and smooth you could skate across it in your socks.

Our grandfather wants to know which one he should get and we want to know what for. To sleep in, he explains. Here, here, we pull at his hands, leading him to one that’s the same burnished brown of his belt with a deep tongue of blue on the inside, like crawling into the inky bottom of the sea. We try it out for him, nestled side by side with our eyes closed. He tells us to wait outside while he talks to the man running the store. Outside, there is no music, no sound at all but the white noise of here, the electric hum of our own blood running through the vessels of our ears.

This place is a part of us—the stands of pine trees as thin as our wrists, the red clay worn into the treads of our sneakers, the air brushing over our skin as we dance in the parking lot. It feathers out from us in black cables, like the knobs of the oak roots that ripple our driveway, that we go thumping over on metal scooters with foam hand grips. It’s there when we fall asleep, in the cicada hum and night breeze that quivers through the cracked open window, slipping into our dreams, making our hair smell like leaves. It’s there in the way we speak, dropping our R’s like children off at school, burnishing our words into a smooth lick of sound, like the curl of a smile or the black coil of a rat snake in the grass. It’s there in the water, in the things we don’t say and the ones we do, a virus we will never shake.

It’s a part of us, and it’s a part of our grandfather, too, coming back to us with a face we’ve never seen before, turning on the radio through the open window of the car, lifting us up and letting us twirl across the ballroom of the truck bed. We dance and dance and dance, our feet drumming against the floor as we spin the roulette wheel on happiness. The furthest we’ve been from here, and ever will be, is in these moments, wandering away from ourselves. Call now for the truth! A billboard by the highway shouts in letters a thousand feet high; but we’ve already found ours, twisting around in a helix of movement.

Our grandfather watches us, an equal part of our inheritance. On the highway, 6

We Dance - Carson Markland

the cars fly by, rushing eagerly into the yawning horizon, hurtling over the edge of the world, sunlight sparkling off of their metal hides like gunshots. In the bed of the truck, we shake and sway, born anew, baptized in the dust to which we will return.

Somewhere in the sky, God goes about his business. All of us are oblivious to each other’s existence.

We are not old enough to understand why our grandfather won’t dance with us, why he just wants to watch for song after song, as the air cools without getting cold and the sun sets without going away. We are not old enough to understand much of anything, but we will be someday. Until then, we dance the way some people pray, bodies taut with the wish of forgiveness.

We don’t know how much longer we have, or at what precise moment the song will screech to an end, or how the next breath will feel as it’s drawn through our lungs, but still we dance, having only, at this moment, begun.

7

Studio Lauren Puglisi

8

Fortune Teller Fish Jenn Travers

I asked the fish if you loved me The flimsy plastic stuck Its sheer, red body to my white palm As my internal voice demanded answers My tongue could not His head and tail fluttered Until the flat fish coiled into a ball Passionate I asked the fish if I loved you The cellophane jerked at my inquiry And his head peaked in interest His tail flapped and snapped As if suddenly seeking water, deep In Love

9

Mistaken Identity Jack Greenberg

No distinguishable features or religious symbols adorned nothing but skin color and shame he has no culture even if I never felt it before I have what other people hold onto the sound of turmoil as men in some room sit and redraw Eastern European cities, homes, identities of people I come from I have tasted salt in the air when boats dragged themselves through the mud of the sea to get my grandfather’s grandfather away from Russian chains to Canadian veil separating known from new

Held dirt beneath my feet pride and pain that went into forming moss that sits on stones that make up walls of Irish glass castles still lingering in its bones The difference between history and culture isn’t something worn doesn’t live on your skin or get buried with the past it’s words walking off tongues churning pots of stories that touch on the feeling of memories and find a home in you

10

NYC Reflection Jenna Lifshitz

11

Chinese-Born American Peija Anderson

She pushes the camera in my direction again and raises her eyebrows as if saying, “Why don’t you understand?” And again I say, 抱歉，我不会讲中文。 I’m sorry, I don’t speak Chinese.

The woman steps back and quietly murmurs, 你是外国人。 You’re not actually one of us.

She turns her back to me, rejoining a group of four Chinese girls no older than sixteen posing in front of a lookout point. Hailuogou glacier in the Garze Tibetan region. The girls wear long-sleeves and tights down to their ankles. Each holds a pastel umbrella.

I pant as I look out at this landscape. One I never believed could be located in a country I’d only associated with gunsmoke and smog.

My friends and I continue up the trail until we arrive at a visitor information booth. Greer, one of my traveling partners, has her wallet in hand, shuffling between bills with Andrew Jackson and Mao’s portraits. She towers over the man behind the booth, her standing six-foot, and holds out several Yuan. He looks through her silently until he notices me in the distance. I watch his mouth turn to a grin.

Although to his disappointment, I am the one who falls silent as he tries to speak to my fifteen year old self clad in a University of Syracuse t-shirt.

I end the interaction with the only words in his language I know, learned three days before. 抱歉，我不会讲中文。 I’m sorry, I don’t speak Chinese.

12

But, he doesn’t give up just yet. 你是华裔 Ahh, you’re an ABC? My head tilts in the universal sign for, “say again”. 你是在美国出生的中国人 You’re an ABC. An American-born Chinese.

No, I respond. After thinking about the weight of the words, I say in English, knowing he won’t be able to understand me anyway, “I’m a CBA. Chinese-born American.”

Then, the SFO terminal for international arrivals. Long tubes of fluorescent lights flicker above me. Barely awake, just like I am after the twelve-hour flight. My parents stand at the end of the hallway and recognize me instantly. Shoulder-length black hair with sweaty baby hairs stuck to the nape of my neck.

“Mom! Dad!” I ran for their open arms and felt my dad kiss the top of my head. Smudge’s tail shakes so violently his whole abdomen writhes from side-to-side.

My backpack drops to the carpeted linoleum and I kneel, eye-level with my dog, a mutt, green-eyed and overweight.

“Is there still that statue of Mao in Chengdu?” my dad asks. “Yeah, there was.”

“How did it feel to be there? Was there any connection, did you feel anything?” my mom follows. “I think so.” I look up at her and smile, earnestly. Hoping this is what she wants to hear, that this is the right answer.

The sound of girls whispering behind closed doors fills the dormitory hallway.

My backpack is heavy with French textbooks and journals filled with half-finished poems. I pass the motivational posters that read, “You have as many hours in a day as Beyoncé!” and am so exhausted with my first taste of college-level exams, I forget to roll my eyes. I arrive at my door, and find my roommate, Naomi, collapsed, blocking any entry, crying into open palms.

“Nay, what’s wrong? What happened?” My earbuds fall as I plop down and sit across from a girl I’d met just two and a half months ago from Irvine, California. The roommate who had supplied my many midnight cravings with authentic Chinese and Korean snacks she brought from home.

“My grandfather is dying.” “I’m so sorry.” Pause. “Do you want to talk about it?” I awkwardly place my hand on her knee.

“No it’s okay. He just has lung cancer. I grew up with him, I mean, he and my grandma were the ones that raised me. My mom and dad were so broke they 13

couldn’t afford their own house so we lived with them. But, now I’m the only relative that speaks to him. Last summer, I drove to his house every day to remove his bandages and wash his wounds from an accident he had when he fell. I’m debating on going home this weekend. I’d miss a lot of class but it might be the last time I have to say goodbye, you know?”

I didn’t know. I had one living grandparent left and she lived in Illinois.

There is a one in three chance someone will respond, “But, do you like them?” after I tell them I’m adopted. One wild card of a high school friend even followed with, “My best friend was totally adopted, too. She hates her family. That must be so hard for you. Have you ever thought about finding your real parents?”

I love the voices inflection that never fails to transform that word “real” into an entire shape-shift of the face. A slight pause--too brief to notice if you’re not paying attention --the chin dips and eyebrows raise as if saying, “I mean real.” A bodily emphasis. Like: “I’m really lactose-intolerant”. That extra emphasis, like sharing a secret. A secret that you have known your whole life without question.

That response always reminds me of the famous PSA from the ‘80’s: “Do you know where your children are?” Sometimes I laugh at that. But usually I swallow their ignorance with indifference and move on. It’s not a surprise said high-school friend and I aren’t “totally best friends” to this day.

I don’t expect every person I introduce myself to to know I was adopted in Chengdu when I was seven months old by two white people from the Midwest.

And that the only reason I resent my birthplace is because I’ll never know what astrological moon sign my birthday is in. I’m kidding, only partly.

My first name is the only relic I have that ties me to a parallel universe where I grew up Chinese. Authentically Chinese. Pei Ja. But that’s not even -- for lack of a better word -- my real name. Legally my Chinese birth certificate reads, Pei Jia Zhou.

In its native tongue my name is spoken like a knife on a chopping block. Pei JIA. But the way I prefer it to be pronounced is with a soft “j” sound, i.e. “Asia” with a “P” in front. This is the mnemonic I use in every meet-and-greet situation. Nowadays, I’ve even played around with Peija. My CBA-name, if you will. Formatted to the everyday conventions of Western society. A word that fits nicely below, “Hello, my name is,” and which Facebook recognizes instead of cutting my first name in half. I’ve never met a “Pei” before. Because I grew up in Marin County, north of San Francisco, north of the Asian-American communities I have never been welcome to, part of, or known existed before college.

14

Chinese-Born American - Peija Anderson

I led my high school’s Asian Student Organization club, which, looking back, I was not at all qualified to run. In the process of applying to ethnicity-based clubs, I asked a teacher if I could lead Mixed-Ethnicities. “Well, do you identify with being half-Asian, half-Caucasian?” she asked. If I could go back I would say, “You’re right, I don’t identify with that. Or Asian-American. Or Chinese. Or white.” Despite living in a place where Asian-adoptees were commonplace, logistically out of sheer wealth, I didn’t grow up with friends who shared my multiracial family experience.

Just writing that word is far too technical and sterile that I will never resonate with it. The language to express my particular situation is few and far between. I’ve been called a banana before: white on the inside, yellow on the outside. But that doesn’t work either (for a number of reasons).

After screaming matches with my parents in high school, I would go on runs through the neighborhood. When I’d climbed that stubborn little hill that always winded me, I saw her fstanding in the private lookout point on my favorite trail.

A sheath of thick, black hair--true black--hung behind her. It swayed easily to the afternoon wind and only started fraying at the small of her back. She was taller than I was, her posture was stiff, upright, but I immediately envied the way she held herself: with care, fragility, grace. A creamy silk robe pooled below her, each shadow in the bunched fabric purposeful. Panting and sweating, I watched her fingers, the longest I’d ever seen, comb through her hair. I wiped sweat from my hairline and then she was gone.

This is the way I used to imagine my birth mother. An ancient Chinese archetype. This was my answer to the questions of who was real or not, what family I belonged to. I wrote down what I saw in my notebook that night. In the middle of it, I stopped and realized if this was true, if this woman of my fetishized ideal of Chinese culture even was based in reality, even if she did finally turn around and showed me her face, I would stand there, absolutely speechless. She would have tried to talk to me and I wouldn’t be able to respond. My birth mother would speak to me in the language my physical appearance dictated me to know, the one I was foreign to when I toured my native country, the one I hear around me in the clusters of “FOB’s” on my UC campus, the one my white roommate minoring in Chinese can speak better than I’ll ever be able to.

We wouldn’t have even spoken the same language. It hits me again. Harder.

Tears spill out, as I imagine what the one opportunity with my birth mother 15

Chinese-Born American - Peija Anderson

might sound like. 我不敢相信,是你。 你长这么大了, 我一直想见你。 告诉我你所有的事。 你有什么理想跟梦想? 我想知道你所有的事。 I can’t believe it’s you. You’ve grown so much. I’ve waited so long to see you, tell me everything. What kind of person have you grown up to be? What are your aspirations? I want to know everything.

She would open her arms. 来坐在我旁边。 别害羞。 我们有19年的总总事要说。说吧。 Sit by me and share, don’t be shy. We have nineteen years to catch up on. Go ahead.

With my head bowed down, out of embarrassment, out of shock, out of the years of unrealistic dreaming of finally getting to meet this woman, of failing, I’d whisper. 抱歉，我不会说中文。 I’m sorry, I don’t speak Chinese.

16

Heaven’s Height For what is the measure of your steadfast love?

Jacy Zhang 17

black sheep treatise Warren Situ

My mother is a preserver descended from survivors who ruminate too much— always overly concerned with the notion of safety She hoards dusty jars of sundried dreams— the crusted knuckles and gnarled fingers of jaundiced ginseng roots which point the way to attaining a long life Old cookie tins mislead us kids There are no butter-cookies Instead we find old, powdery fruits— prunes of peace and prosperity When (if) I grow older I don’t want to inherit the dowry of dead wives or the odor which comes from years of bearing sundried dreams Some fruits don’t belong under covers of cookie tins Some fruits taste better fresh picked from the bending branch 18

I’m a coward but also a raving revolutionary Undefined by what a family name carries Let me run on pure ecstasy in my fresh, white Nikes With no desire to return home let’s stay here and roam in these lands outside— free to be forever youthful

19

Soft Boiled Sara Inoa

20

Womanhood and other scary things OR: Motherhood and other scary things Angela Hyde

Two days ago my sister called me mamma at the dinner table and my stomach did flips, not in the gooey way as though I was being kissed with passion, but like I was going to throw-up my organs, but not food, since I hadn’t had any food, since I didn’t want cold mac-n-cheese or plastic cups of children-sized fruit, those leftover cans of boyardee, boy oh gee says the youngest of six, but that red sauce looks like blood nowadays and they gobble it like breastmilk Two days ago you’re my mommy said like it was true and my eyes got salty, not from the sea whom I love like a father, but not my father with sharp hands no, the one with waves oh so gentle but sister sister, she laughed out this statement not knowing it held a graveyard behind it, held a great lake of drowned anxiety, shoved down and fallen deep with great rocks tied to their tootsie toes this little piggy love is scary and so is the idea of being so close to hate

21

Beached Whale Natalie Mitchell

I stepped carefully onto Nathan’s jet ski. It wobbled as my weight entirely resided on one side of the small aquatic vehicle before throwing my leg over it like I had just watched him do. I shifted so that I sat more balanced in the center, wrapping my arms around him from behind.

“Have you ever ridden one of these before?” he asked me.

I thought for a moment. “I think I rode this one with you, but it was a long time ago, before we were dating.”

He laughed, suddenly remembering. “Oh yeah! We tried to fit three people on this when we came up here with all of our friends, but it had too much weight on it, so you had to wait for the next turn.”

I laughed uncomfortably, remembering the embarrassment of being the person who made the jet ski too heavy to go. “Yeah.” I tried to hide the fact that I was now replaying that unpleasant moment in my mind with a sturdy voice. “Back then.”

He laughed a little, kissed me on the cheek, and told me to hang on to him tight. Soon the wind whipping in our faces almost made me forget that it was a sweltering hot day in the dead of summer.

I had been coming up to Nathan’s family’s lake house for years before he asked me to be his girlfriend half way through our final year of high school. Our families had been neighbors and close friends since he and I were in preschool, so we were often invited to spend our day on the shore of Lake Otis. His father was the city’s most frequented orthodontist, leaving his family with enough disposable income to have the second home, as well as the many luxuries that went along with property on a lake: the boat, paddle boards, canoes, and two intimidatingly powerful jet skis. I spent a lot of time there with him and his family in the summer before our first year 22

Beached Whale - Natalie Mitchell

of college, living up what felt like our last summer of youth together before college would bring about the change of increased workloads, stress, and summers busy with internships. The submersion of myself in their world of excessively nice things made me feel out of place in the beginning of our relationship, but at this point, the overwhelming privilege of their lifestyles was no longer so shocking.

We rode around the lake whizzing by with the loud motor announcing our presence to anyone who was outside. We sped by families with young children, men drinking beers on their docks, young people fishing, anyone who thought the day was too nice to be spent inside. As Nathan accelerated, he looked over his shoulder to me, laughing. “Look,” he said over the rumbling motor, motioning to his left with his head. “Beached whale!”

My smile slid off my face as my eyes followed his direction to a woman, clearly overweight, lying and enjoying her day in the sun on her property’s dock.

She was minding her own business, completely unaware that my boyfriend, a stranger to her, was making fun of her for her weight. He made these comments careless of his girlfriend with an eating disorder behind him.

I began to cycle through the thoughts of trying to be rational with a mental illness that thrived of irrationality. This comment wasn’t made at me, I thought. Her size and mine were very different. He didn’t mean that comment to hurt or belittle me at all. None of this logic I tried to focus on stopped my mind from racing. If he said those comments about this woman’s body, what was stopping him from making them about mine? What was stopping anyone from making them about mine?

Thoughts of how insecure I suddenly felt, clad in only my bathing suit and a life jacket, swirled around me the same way the water did beneath the jet ski. I suddenly felt like I could feel every ounce of fat on my body—the rolls over my stomach, my thighs jiggling against my will as the jet ski shook us. He eventually asked if I wanted to drive it for a while. “I trust you,” he assured me, while making room for me to sit in front of him. In that moment, I didn’t trust him. I didn’t trust him not to judge my imperfections the way he had just so casually joked about another woman’s.

He quickly taught me how to start the motor, and suddenly we were zooming off. My body was there, but my mind was far off. I was unable to stop thinking about how casually crass he just was. I squeezed the gas lever attached to the handle hard, lurching our bodies forward with its acceleration.

23

This is why I have to keep doing this to myself, I thought. This is why I can’t eat dinner every day. People like him will always judge.

I squeezed harder.

If I become like her, people will be cruel to me. They’ll make comments that belittle me and make fun of me behind my back. I’ll become everyone’s punchline. If I don’t keep trying to be thinner at any costs, I’ll become her.

I squeezed harder.

Nathan laughed behind me. “Geez, babe,” he said into my ear, “you’re not holding back! Look how fast you’re going!”

I glanced down, seeing I was breaking fifty miles an hour. I began to release my grip slowly, feeling every pound of me jerk forward as I brought us back to a more reasonable speed. I could feel the confusedly-placed resentment I held swell in my shoulders. I didn’t know who to be mad at. Should I have been mad at him for making fun of strangers just because they looked different than he did, or should my anger be placed inward, knowing that at some level, I must have agreed with Nathan in his pointed judgement. If I didn’t agree that the world had a right to judge and mock this woman because of her weight, then why was I so disgusted with the fat on my own body that I frequently put my physical health at risk to lessen it?

We passed the woman again on our way back to his house. I couldn’t look at her.

“That was fun, wasn’t it?” Nathan said to me as we hung up our life vests and returned to lie on the navy-blue lawn and blinding white lawn chairs. I nodded, trying to adjust my bikini to make sure it was covering as much skin as the petite garment would.

Feeling deeply uncomfortable in my skin was a natural discomfort for me. It had been nearly four years of dabbling with almost every common eating disorder symptom, like I was simply switching hobbies. Binging, purging, restricting, obsessive calorie counting, running six miles on an empty stomach, I partook in it all. I shrunk and grew back and shrunk and grew more throughout high school. I felt like the vanishing girl in a magic trick, except my problem was I kept reappearing.

Though Nathan had been my friend since childhood, he wasn’t around to actively watch my shrinking act. His parents sent him to an expensive private school to get a better education, so for the majority of our high school career, we only saw each other on occasions. It wasn’t until our senior year that we reconnected and 24

Beached Whale - Natalie Mitchell

began dating. He was everything a typical high school girl could want in a boyfriend: he was a generally nice boy, he had great hair, and he was friends with all of my friends. I was everything a typical high school boy would want in a girlfriend: I knew how to apply makeup in a way that made me look prettier without making me look like a whore, and I never argued with him.

A few months into our relationship I confessed to him about the unhealthy relationship between food and my body, but during that particular summer, I was riding the weight yo-yo back up. I was eating relatively frequently, and I was putting on weight instead of losing it. I told him I was sick, but it wasn’t something that was visible in the moment. He meant well, but his sheltered upbringing left his level of understanding of issues that did not affect his life to be slim.

“You good?” He asked me as we laid out to tan in the afternoon sun.

“Yeah, of course!” I inserted artificial positivity into my voice. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Oh, you were just being a little quiet,” he mentioned.

“Just enjoying the sunshine.”

“You sure?” He pressed one more time.

It was a trick question. If I told him what was bothering me, I was the oversensitive stick-in-the-mud who couldn’t hear a joke that wasn’t even about me without getting my little feelings hurt. If I lied and kept insisting nothing was wrong, then that meant I was the kind of spineless person who would rather not mention to my boyfriend that his comment was harsh, and it bothered me that he made it. I would lose either way.

“I’m fine,” I said again, immediately feeling pathetic that I didn’t speak up about how his stupid joke was bothering me, and pathetic that this was even bothering me at all.

His two younger brothers, two and four years his junior, raced up to our chairs, effectively ending the interrogation into my emotional wellbeing. “Nathan,” the youngest, Luke, called, waving a few bucks in the air. “Mom said we could get ice cream at Kate’s Corner Store, but only if you drive.”

He looked at me in a way that asked if I wanted to go. I smiled in a way that didn’t reach my eyes in response.

The four of us loaded into Nathan’s car. I had known Nathan’s brothers for so long that I basically treated them as if they were my own brothers, so the three 25

of them joked around as if I wasn’t even there. The small ice cream and hot dog shop was only a couple of miles down the road. I tried to stop thinking about the previously memorized number of calories in my head, a score board trying to justify some sort of bargain that would allow for me to have some ice cream and not want to throw it up. I discretely googled how many calories were spent while paddle boarding. We had already done that this morning, but I was already thinking of ways to convince him to go out again.

When we arrived, the small place was rather busy with families and their small children. We got in line and pondered our orders.

“Do you want to split something?” I asked Nathan.

“Well, I was planning on just getting something small,” he warned.

“That’s perfect, I’m still full from lunch,” I lied. “I don’t need a lot of ice cream.”

“Yeah, not everyone needs a lot if ice cream,” Luke leaned in to mumble under his breath to us. He nodded towards the man in line just ahead of us, who was, again, noticeably obese.

My cheeks flushed red as if it was me the comment was directed at. “Luke!”

Nathan quietly scolded in an oldest-brother kind of way, but still laughed through the reprimand. The middle brother, Adam, tried to stifle his giggles as to not draw the attention of the man in front of us, who was blissfully unaware that three young boys were all laughing at his expense. The three of them seemed to think Luke’s comment was the funniest thing they had heard all day, giggling over and over when they saw that one of them was still laughing. The large man still didn’t turn around.

I began to wonder if he somehow heard but was too embarrassed to turn around. Or maybe he didn’t hear. Maybe those were the kinds of comments people made about me, but I just didn’t hear, I thought.

We got our ice cream and sat at the rundown picnic tables outside the establishment. I stared blankly ahead, letting Nathan eat more than half of the ice cream. I felt sick to my stomach for not saying anything again. Nathan didn’t make the rude comment the second time, but he laughed right along. He showed his fourteen and sixteen-year-old brothers that it was okay to make fun of strangers that way just because they’re fat, that the extra space they took up meant that there was less room for human decency. Never before had Nathan done anything that had gotten under my skin so easily. I felt like every comment was directed at me because that was the kind of ugliness I knew people would show me if I were ever to allow myself to be like that. Everyone was so nice to me when I was a thin, pretty little thing, but what if I ever stopped doing all the unhealthy things I was doing to keep 26

Beached Whale - Natalie Mitchell

myself that way? What would happen if I quit trying to perfect my vanishing act and just allowed myself to take up as much space as necessary?

Strangers would treat me the way the man I said I loved treated others. Nathan said he loved me unconditionally, but I realized that wasn’t true. The condition was a weight limit.

I was silent as he drove me home that night. Nathan made multiple attempts to breathe life into a conversation, but I kept murdering it with curt, one-word answers.

I was mad at him for saying those things, mad at myself for being mad about him saying those things, and also mad about how much I could see my body jiggle every time he drove over a bump in the road.

“Alright, what’s up,” Nathan said at last. “You’ve been weird all afternoon.”

“I have not been weird,” I defended.

“You have too. Tell me what’s up.”

I sighed. Maybe he was right. Maybe I would feel better if I just told him.

“Well…”

“See, I knew it.”

“It’s just that…” I paused, grappling with how to tell him what he did was wrong in a way that didn’t make him feel like he did any wrong, how to make the smallest waves from rocking the boat ever so slightly. “I don’t know. You were a little… harsh on that woman earlier today.”

“What woman?” He had already forgotten about her.

“The one we passed on the jet ski,” I reminded him. “The beached whale.”

“Oh, yeah, her.”

“Well, I mean, I’m probably just being oversensitive and everything, but it just seemed a little rough, probably because I’m me, and…you know…”

“You’re nothing like her,” he attempted to make me feel better. “You two have very different bodies.”

“She didn’t come out of the womb looking like that,” I tried to joke to lighten the mood of this confrontation. “She could have looked like me a long time ago.”

“Yeah, a long time ago.”

“And then, again, when you were laughing with your brothers when we went to get ice cream.” I nervously played with my hair. “I don’t know, I guess it made me uncomfortable.”

He noticed my nervous energy and made another attempt at soothing me. He 27

Beached Whale - Natalie Mitchell

took one hand off the steering wheel, searching for mine to hold. He squeezed my hand with his rough, strong grip. He glanced over and gave me a sincere, warm look.

For a moment, I thought maybe he actually understood. Maybe he realized why it was bothering me so much. Maybe it was a good idea to bring this up after all, and it helped us achieve a higher level of mutual understanding.

“Aw, Babe,” he said. “It was just a joke.”

In that moment, we had nothing in the world in common. “Right, yeah, just a joke,” I conceded.

I thought about the woman on the dock again. I wondered about her life as I let my head rest against the car window. Did she accomplish anything great in her life? Was there something she had done that she was really proud of? Maybe she was a cancer survivor, or a veteran, or was just a mom to a few children who she felt that she really raised right. Did she have any great skills to offer the world, like a melodious singing voice, or the ability to create websites that saved people time? Was she the best wife to her husband? Did she do anything at all to matter in this world?

Despite anything she might have done in her life, to him, and to the world, she was just a joke.

28

rabble-rousers Charlotte Lang

occasionally it is necessary to walk with a pebble in your shoe my morning informants are rabble-rousers in boots and granite on verruca reminding me that we are consumers of smoke like i spike my bronchiole with marijuana to enlighten a cure for my millennial affliction why incriminate my path to lessen the blisters on my brain and cheapen the therapy bills by making my neurons tingle from a light and a plant buying bics late at night a pebble in my shoe and a greek fire in my hand i don’t mind a piece of gaia along for the ride it is the least i can do for her offerings to me a little rock burn hurts nobody

29

Unforgivable Samuel Milligan

It seems there is grass forever, sprouting and stretching its roots and bending towards the Other Coast, bending over the lands where Anything Can Happen For Anyone, which is good overall we’re led to believe but really goes poorly for the people whose Anything doesn’t line up with the Anything of the people who get to decide what Anything actually means. The grass is dark and it is night. The wind washes over the grasses, and there is a sound like the Earth itself breathing and then the nighttime chill of spring reveals the condensed of one men, two men, who are sitting in a stand of tall and skinny trees opposite one another. There is a man in pajamas and a man in a prominent leather vest and leather pants that maybe have that fringe stuff on them, but only a little, not like Marty McFly levels of fringe but a perfectly time-appropriate amount of fringe, or at least an amount of fringe that you see and think is time-appropriate and not too over-the-top.

“Are you going to kill me?” says the man in pajamas. The pajamas used to be red but they are pink from overwashing and brown from the spring mud that splashes up above the black leather boots he wears. In firelight glow he would look like a spent matchstick. He affectionately calls his pajamas his “jammies” in private moments. He is a rustler, which means he is morally compromised, but he has a wife we’ll never really meet and who won’t get a name, she’s just “the wife,” and maybe a daughter who has pigtails who runs and hugs him around his knees in a cheesecloth flashback, so we are to feel sympathy for him. Even though his whole income is rustling, the lowest of professions, or maybe he’s an alcoholic or yells at “the wife” or tells Pigtails, his fifth child, that he wasn’t ready to be a father when she was born or he has a history of murdering people who are significantly tanner than him because 30

Unforgivable - Samuel Milligan

they are “trespassing” on “his” land or again because he is a rustler, the lowest of professions. We still are to feel sympathy for him. And, in this case, he is not in danger because of his position as a rustler, but rather because he is the only surviving witness of a bank robbery by the Tarbuckle and Hoofspit Boys, who have dispatched their most brooding and ominous assassin as a tracker. The rustler is boldly trying to walk all hundred miles to the sheriff in Pilot Mound, Minnesota so that he can collect the reward on the Tarbuckle and Hoofspit Boys and finally get himself and his family out of the rustlin’ business for good. The moon is hidden. There are probably unstolen cows nearby, unstolen cows being one of the two possible types of cows. It is that sort of country, the kind you can drown in, just a sea of grass and cattle-stamped copses, and the rustler has taken every precaution not to be found, shivering himself to sleep without a fire and eating cold beans.

But the rustler is found by the other man, the brooding and ominous assassin from the Tarbuckle and Hoofspit Boys. He has a facial scar or missing teeth or a wrinkly forehead or a claw-hand that’s still second-fastest this side of the Mississippi and can be beaten only by his other hand or a pencil mustache and beady eyes or a bushy mustache and wild eyes or a scar ‘round his neck from where he almost was hung until being dead that he hides with a beard or eyebrows that never really line up the way they should so he looks like he’s plotting something all the time or a heavy Irish brogue to show he’s an outsider or a British accent and a hat that no one else would wear to show that he’s devious or is Mexican or used to be a Confederate soldier and never gave up the fight or used to be a Union soldier and somehow that is seen as bad for some reason. However you want to picture him, he stands over the pajama-clad rustler and wakes him up by cocking back the hammers on his doublebarrel, which he is named Betsy.

“Are you going to kill me?” asks the rustler.

“Not yet,” growls the brooding and ominous assassin, and he steps backwards so that the moon just now peeking from the clouds, ironically gives him a halo, though also that visual makes you wonder if he has some sort of redemptive moment coming later on. He most likely doesn’t, unless he is, like, Clint Eastwood or Jeff Bridges or maybe Alden Whatever who was such a convincing fake cowboy that They made him a space cowboy that everyone wanted to love and he did a very okay but very disappointing job of it.

The brooding and ominous assassin steps back, keeping Betsy pointed right 31

at the middle of the rustler’s chest, and reaches behind himself with one hand and brings out a shovel, which he has apparently carried this whole time because it is unclear whether he has a horse or not. It would be silly and unrealistic if he didn’t have a horse when you consider the logistics of the vast distances and broad vistas, but that detail isn’t all that important. He throws the shovel, and the rustler catches it and makes a face like he’s never seen a shovel before. The brooding and ominous assassin sits down with Betsy across his lap, and silently rolls and lights a cigarette.

This takes far less time than it would in real life.

“Get to digging,” growls the brooding and ominous assassin.

“Are you going to kill me?” says the rustler again.

“Make it deep enough so the coyotes don’t get at you,” says the brooding and ominous assassin. He pronounces coyotes as “kai-yotes,” because he is very much from around here. “I seen graves digged that weren’t deep enough…they’ll start at your face, first, of course, then your neck, and your nipples, and work their way real slow down to your hips, and—” “No thanks,” says the rustler.

“What do you mean, no thanks?”

“I’m really not interested.”

“In what?”

“Digging.” The rustler nods to himself. “I have a nice list of things I’d like to be doing when I die, and digging is pretty low. I won’t lie. It doesn’t even appear on the list.” He pats the ground next to him, almost lovingly, like he’s the type of person who kisses the ground when he returns home from a long journey, the historical precursor to people who clap when air-planes land. The ground is post-thaw but still hard and the rustler grows even more against digging, because it really would be a lot of work, and in that moment he sees that maybe the bad guys aren’t so different from him but the epiphany fades.

“You don’t have much of a choice,” says the brooding and ominous assassin, and he shifts Betsy in his lap so that the barrel is once more pointed directly at the rustler. The shift makes an inexplicably loud sound like the gritting of teeth.

“I mean—” The rustler pauses. He watches a night-bird of some sort, circling in the air above. If it was daytime, it would be a vulture, as a foreshadowing thing.

But it is night, and so it is perhaps an owl. It doesn’t matter, probably. It just looks like a bird of some sort, and maybe it is a vulture, because who knows what they do at night. They might fly, for all you know.

“What could possibly happen? You’ll kill me more?” says the rustler.

32

Unforgivable - Samuel Milligan

The brooding and ominous assassin leans forward. “I’ll make it slow,” he says, hissing through the last word like a snake. He licks his lips. “I’ll start at your toes.

Then your calves, and your thighs, and—” “That sounds like a lot of extra work,” says the rustler. “And let me tell you what, I know I’m a screamer. So it’ll be a lot more time and stress and hell, you don’t even want to dig. So, yeah, I’m good without the digging.” The rustler is resolute and nods his head and smiles at the brooding and ominous assassin in an unexpected way, like he is rejecting an invite to supper but wants to be polite about it.

“Would you just dig the fucking grave?” snaps the brooding and ominous assassin. His voice is so much less full of gravel than it was before. He is annoyed and a little bit pouty in the way that usually only fourteen-year-old boys given chores or unavoidable responsibilities or the slightest amount of idea that all women are not their fantasy play-things are annoyed and a little bit pouty. “This is hard work. I don’t get to rest. I don’t get days off from being a Tarbuckle and Hoofspit Boy.” The brooding and ominous assassin shifts Betsy back crossways in his lap and runs a dirty and frustrated hand through his hair, which is greasy enough to say that he’s been on the trail but also a little sexy in a way that makes you uncomfortable, because he is allegedly a brooding and ominous assassin. He furrows his brow and leans forward. “And do you know how much ego massaging has to happen to keep those two genial? Hoofspit hasn’t gotten over the fact that the newspapers always put Tarbuckle’s name first. And then there’s the whole thing where Tarbuckle has been planting rumors about him having a big johnson, which why that’s newsworthy I’ll never know but it is in the papers nonetheless, and Hoofspit seems to think that by planting those stories only about himself Tarbuckle is implying somehow that Hoofspit has a small johnson, even though that isn’t really the implication. Though you have to wonder, if he is so sensitive about the subject, could it be the case? I don’t know. I don’t even really think it matters all that much, whether your name gets to go first or what the implied size of your johnson in the News Media is. You know, tonight I had to settle an argument about how we’re going to monogram the matching boots we’re all getting—real nice, buttery leather, but they can’t decide on a logo that is satisfactory to everyone. And then I just had to ride all night to find you.”

This reveals he does have a horse, apparently, though it is unclear where that horse could be since the rustler was in the only copse you saw from the wide shot of the plains and the moon and all that. So maybe the horse is tied in the rustler’s 33

copse too, but that would be pretty bold to ride up to a man you know is morally compromised with the intent to hurt him and then to take the time and noise to tie your horse to a tree, or wherever you tie a horse when there aren’t those post things that always sit in front of saloons or hotels or combinations of the two, when there aren’t any of those immediately available. The brooding and ominous assassin pauses for a moment, having talked too much at once until his mouth is full of saliva and he needs a second to swallow and set his feet. He continues.

“And you could have been a real fucking doofus about it, too. You could have just set a fire, or stayed in any of the saloons or hotels or combination hotel-saloons or general stores or stables or combination hotel-saloon-general store-stables around here. Instead you made my job real tough tonight, and then you’re going to be obstinate about the grave? Come on, man. Come fucking on, man. Is this how it’s going to be? Really?” yelps the brooding and ominous assassin.

The rustler shrugs. “I guess this is how it has to be,” he says, and he sets his jaw like the way you would if you were about to get into a cold bathtub with an open wound. Then we’re floating, away from the copse, panning over the prairie and the moon and the grass waving real slow in the wind, sort of like how you watch that feather at the beginning and end of that Very Overrated Film where Tom Hanks affects history in so many ways. Far away, a railroad reaches like a thin metal finger across the plain and the night-bird, which was in fact an owl, with its big yellow eyes that remind us of the moon, is sitting on a railroad tie, which represents civilization and animals meeting. And then we hear the faint echo of what might be a single gunshot, the owl flies away and we see nothing but feathers and then darkness, and you wonder exactly what it’s supposed to mean. But that’s on you, that’s on us, to make meaning or to reject things without it. Because if its all just stitched up from the trimmings of what comes before, then there’s nothing new, and there’s no point at all to saying what you’ve heard before back into the wind. That’s nothing special.

That’s just noise.

34

Seeing is Hearing Ahh! Nakul Srinivas

35

th

Slab Love Via Bleidner

At six in the morning, Gibbs got out of bed, brushed his teeth, stretched, and ate breakfast. Here is what he ate: -One waffle with maple syrup, butter, and brown sugar, -Three pieces of bacon, -Cornflakes with almond milk in a sunny yellow bowl, and -two vitamins, plus -Dahlia Slate’s right big toe, sautéed with some Old Bay Seasoning, as well as -a granola bar. From Rite Aid. He’d bought it three days prior. Peanut butter with raisins and yogurt chips. It was the last one of its flavor. Gibbs could either have picked peanut butter with raisins and yogurt chips or maple brown sugar with cashew and white chocolate. And he figured he should take the peanut butter, since he usually already has maple syrup on his waffle (see: No. 1 on list).

After he finished eating breakfast, he wiped his mouth with a napkin and read an article about a bamboo flooring company in Key West that had actually been secretly installing plastic laminate instead in elderly people’s homes. Floridian retirees might have collectively been cheated out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. When Gibbs finished reading, he went huh, put on his work clothes, and left the house.

At the office, in the break room. Gibbs ate a bag of baked Lays and said hi to Mary.

Hey stranger, Mary said back. Did you hear about Dahlia Slate on the news?

The anonymous buyer?

Yes, I sure did, he said, mumbling through a mouthful of chips.

Whoever got her is very lucky. I’m sure she must be delicious.

Oh, absolutely, Gibbs said. Whoever got her is very lucky.

36

Goes without saying, Mary said.

Goes without saying.

Well, see you around, Mary said, and pivoted over to her cubicle. She had dimples on her elbows, Gibbs noticed. And he liked the way she said hey, stranger.

Dahlia Slate’s body had arrived at Gibbs’ doorstep pre-butchered.

When a customer first orders a CELEBRITY MEAT SLAB, they’re given a drop-down menu of butchery options. Some people choose to have their SLAB chopped all into even pieces. Others opt to separate each organ, each bone, each muscle. Some like it all in one piece. And then of course, there’s the most affordable option, sponsored by Vitamix.

Gibbs kept Dahlia in a giant Yeti cooler in the basement. Her body was organized like a kindergartener’s anatomy lesson: head, shoulders, knees and toes. A cartoon collage. A large blue Ziploc baggie held her guts. Her hair, tied in a matron’s bun, had bits of ice crystals in it. He could make a stink about that in the reviews, technically.

The left hand, tight and spidered with rigor mortis, was drizzled with resin and formaldehyde. This part wasn’t for eating. It was a souvenir, to be kept on a mantelpiece. There was a note woven between the fingers, in Dahlia’s own handwriting: To Gibbs. Thank you for your generous donation to my charity of choice, The Boys & Girls Clubs of America. Have a lovely holiday season. Xoxo, Dahlia Slate.

Gibbs read the note six times over. He focused on the way her Ls had little loops.

He wanted to eat her right elbow next. He wanted to put it in the oven at 350, maybe with sesame seeds and a honey glaze, a side of asparagus and couscous, a mug of lemonade, a glass of wine. He’d light wax candles and play some Otis Redding and read a book and marvel at the way the meat fell off of the bone, the way she just melted in his mouth just like a sugar cube. Maybe her elbow would taste like home. Like a block party in Westchester, like a Thursday evening in August when the Moretto family from next door would come over for wine and a bite, like mortadella after Sunday mass or spicy olives from the pantry or an accidental mouthful of community pool water. Maybe he’d eat this elbow and it would remind him of his family’s restaurant. Maybe he’d eat this elbow, andIt would be nice to share it with someone.

Gibbs took some speed and called Mary up on the phone. I’m in love with you, he said. I’m in love with you and I just can’t hold it in anymore. I feel like I’m going 37

to explode.

Gibbs? Are you drunk?

Not drunk, said Gibbs. In love. He listened very closely to the phone, trying to catch any slips of breath that might give her away.

What, Mary said after a while. Statement. Not a question. Her voice sounded like the scramble over a heat mirage.

Gibbs coughed quietly. He didn’t know what to say, so he just said: Uh. I have to go, she said.

Wait. I’m sorry, said Gibbs. If I said something wrong. I didn’t mean it. Don’t go.

There was a click and Gibbs pressed his head to the kitchen counter. Jesus Christ, that was a shitshow, he said to himself. I didn’t think anyone could fuck things up so bad as I just did.

He thought of Mary at home right now, in her crummy little apartment on Sapling, ticking her sensible heels on her sensible shag floor, watching QVC and eating microwave cinnamon buns straight out of the box, or maybe almonds right out of the can. Maybe—and here was where Gibbs really got his feelings hurt— maybe she was with someone already. Maybe right after she hung up the phone, she pulled the covers up over their heads and they kissed everywhere. And maybe they even made jokes about Gibbs from work and his Post-It collection and that one time last October when he tripped on the recycling bin and didn’t quite fall all the way down but still looked totally ridiculous.

He dialed again. I have Dahlia Slate’s body, he said, before Mary could even say hello. I have her in a Yeti cooler in my basement.

Are you being serious?

One-hundred-percent, Gibbs said.

I’ve listened to her last album a hundred times. I went to her tour in middle school, Mary said. I can’t believe you have her.

Gibbs didn’t say so, but he knew all this already. He remembered it from last year’s work holiday party, when Mary had drunk too much wine and tottered on and on about Dahlia Slate to a group of unsuspecting coworkers. This is my SHIT, she’d announced, when the 2020 techno dance-pop hit “Heart of Gold” began straining out of the speakers, an EDM glob splattered with Slate’s pitched-up squirrely vocals.

And Gibbs had kept all of this in mind when Dahlia had been diagnosed with the illness. He’d thought about Mary when the star announced at a press conference that she’d be following in the footsteps of J-Lo and Mick Jagger and Harry Styles 38

Slab Love - Via Bleidner

and would be submitting herself onto the CMS online inventory. He thought about Mary when the charity auction went live last week, when he’d placed a bid worth his entire savings, when he’d won, when he watched his family’s nest egg transform into a pop star’s edible body—forty years of the restaurant business flipped into pinkywhite skin, a kind of transubstantiation.

It would be worth it, if Mary came over.

Come over and have some, he said. No. He begged.

Mary did come over. She sat at the kitchen table while Gibbs cooked the elbow and when it was ready they ate the entire arm in one night. But nothing about the taste reminded Gibbs of home. In fact, when he finished eating, his brain was so full of Dahlia Slate that he couldn’t remember anything at all. He tried to make conversation with Mary but the only thing he could think of was some flooring company in Texas that had secretly been installing fake wood floors in orphanages or something. How interesting, she’d said. Dully.

When they finished eating, Mary politely said thank you and went home. This wasn’t a date, she said before leaving. See you at work tomorrow.

When he was alone again, Gibbs opened his laptop and visited CELEBRITYMEATSLAB.ORG. He clicked on the little button that read TESTAMONIAL. Typed in his verification number.

Arrived on time. Decent packaging. Customer service was p good. Meat was kind of tough in some parts. There was ice in the hair, though, so there must’ve been temperature inconsistencies during shipment. But the worst part, he wrote in his online review, was that she just tasted like chicken.

He closed his laptop.

39

Empty Life Veronica Therrien

Before a shed of light, a trace of dust, or flume of gas existed in the vast, infinite hole of the universe, the Creator knew the exact detail of how everything would come to be. He knew how many stars would decorate every galaxy, how many galaxies would fill up the cosmos, there would be nothing in existence He wouldn’t comprehend. Without hesitation, every thought He had in mind was brought forth into reality. His imagination colored the universe with stars forming, nebulas bursting, and galaxies spinning in unison. After a majority of his work was finished, He focused on a region in one particular galaxy, the Milky Way, bringing forth a golden star that would be the beginning of a project He had in store.

The Creator had eight children; eight unique gods and goddesses who all shared their father’s passion for creativity. Around the golden star, He formed eight separate, but equal spherical bodies of rock, placing them at different distances around the star. He spoke to his children, “I want you to be a part of my creation.

I have chosen a planet for each of you to bring your imagination to life. You may create your world however you wish. As long as you take care of it responsibly, I will reward you.”

He gave the closest planet near the star to his first daughter, Mercury. He provided the second planet to his second child, Venus. The third to Earth, fourth to Mars, fifth to Jupiter, sixth to Saturn, seventh to Uranus, and the last planet to Neptune. “Remember, use your power wisely,” He advised with caution to his excited children. “Your minds are boundless, but if you don’t watch what you’re doing, you can lose control.”

With the newborn planets at the tip of their fingers, the siblings eagerly began 40

to work. Mercury realized her’s was the smallest among all of them, but she was the closest to the star. Every time she gazed at it, it reminded her of her father.

Gratefulness ran through her as she embraced her relationship not only to the illuminate ball of light, but with Him. Through her silent breath, she breathed out fields of grass over the once dull, black planet, enlightening it in a vibrant green shade. In order to protect herself from burning up, she orbited around the star with immense speed, constantly moving throughout space. Though she was amazed at what her planet was capable of, she grew self-conscious of her size, hoping her sisters wouldn’t notice.

Venus got easily jealous of her siblings. She stared at her barren planet with an empty look, having no idea on what to create. Though she knows it was hers and hers alone, she couldn’t help but peek at what her brother and sisters were doing with their own projects. Earth and Mars flooded their bodies with a fascinating blue liquid, engulfing themselves entirely in a shade that seemed to radiate a breathtaking sight. This beauty grew her jealousy, so she amped up her game and formed her planet exactly as her neighbor sister, Earth. Except Venus added a blanket of white to her atmosphere, making her work more beautiful than those of her siblings.

Once his planet was within his grasp, Mars didn’t want to stop performing his magic. Besides the ever-flowing element that created the whimsical water world, where he watched the tiniest of currents roll across the newborn surface, he held a passion for another that he wanted to bring to life. He brought forth rising volcanoes that emerged underneath the currents and made them bleed a luminescent light that collided with the conflicting temperatures of the ocean, creating solid plates that thickened within seconds. Without growing weary, his hands and fingers constantly danced around the growing sphere as the planet brightened more and more with his magic.

Out of all of the Creator’s children, Jupiter was the most haughty. She thought she was her father’s favorite. This belief of hers grew when she realized she was given the biggest planet among the siblings. Wanting to prove her dominance in front of them, she decorated her sphere with abundant amounts of shades.. Instead of coloring her world as a vibrant blue like Venus, Earth, and Mars, she spread her hand over the sphere and between her fingers came out unique colors of brown, orange, and red. She separated each shade into different lines to make her piece even more mind blowing. She filled her atmosphere with diverse gasses, causing tremendous storms, including the Great Red Spot, to bombard Jupiter’s air. Though she noticed the unbelievable amount of power she had breathed onto her gift, she believed her 41

hard work would grab her father’s attention.

Saturn was similar to Jupiter, but she was more obsessed with her own beauty rather than her status with her father. Growing up, she was the only goddess who had suitors, who practically kissed her hands anywhere she went. Whether she walked through a galaxy or soared in a nebula, a young, male god recognized her and smothered her with lovely jewels. This fueled her sisters’ jealousy, especially Venus and Jupiter. As she looked down and gazed at the rings that were placed on her fingers from these gods, she decided to make a good use out of them. With every one she threw at her planet came an explosion of vivid splendor, forming a much enormous ring that surrounded her entire being. The more rings she threw down at the sphere, the stronger the magnetic pull grew, grabbing her attention as she became blinded by her arrogant beauty.

Uranus was the only god who got bullied by his siblings. Jupiter and Saturn tormented him due to the name he was given at birth. Every word they flung at him lowered his self-esteem, scarring him to the point where his heart turned ice cold. As he gazed back at his sisters who worked actively on their projects, he wanted to prove he could just be as breathtaking as they were, without having a ridiculous joke representing who he truly was. From his hands he sent an enormous wind of cold gasses onto the planet that covered the surface until they soared upward into the air. The more he stared at Jupiter and Saturn’s intimidating sizes, the colder his heart grew. Every beat his heart pumped sent a thickened layer around himself. He felt his fingertips burn cold as he buried his sphere more and more deep into an infinite world of ice.

Neptune was the last of them to receive a planet. Though he was blessed to have the same opportunity to create something miraculous, grief overcame his few minutes of joy. During his childhood, none of his siblings interacted with him. Venus, Mars, and Earth always stuck together, Mercury was a Daddy’s Girl, Jupiter and Saturn argued with each other on who was the prettiest, and Uranus grew so cold he isolated himself from everyone. Neptune felt as if nobody wanted him around. Even on days where he reached out to his father, He was either busy on His creation, or his siblings distracted Him, not giving Neptune a chance to speak a word. With sadness being the only thing that kept him company for eons, he released his hand onto his planet and allowed his true emotions take control of his creation. Gasses escaped his palm and suffocated the growing atmosphere in choking ice, the same feeling that grasped his throat whenever he couldn’t talk to anybody without being ignored. He flooded the sphere with so much ice, methane, and hydrogen, he didn’t realize how depressed he had been until he vibrated a deep, iridescent blue that bore a shade unlike any of his siblings had created.

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Empty Life - Veronica Therrien

As each of them sent their last traces of magic across their final masterpieces, a tempting thought sparked in Jupiter’s mind. If she could somehow get her siblings to attack each other, then her father would see her as the most mature one among all of the gods and goddesses and she would become his favorite. A wicked grin suddenly grew on her face as the idea festered her mind and reinforced her ego. Spotting a belt of asteroids that separated herself from Mars, she took advantage of her enormous figure, used her resilient gravity to pull back the rocks, and flung them all the way to Venus.

Venus was gazing onto her turquoise world when out of nowhere, dozens of meteors slammed into her body like mini bombs, bringing up puffs of vaporized smoke, smashing the watery mirror she worked so hard on. “Who did this!” She yelled.

“Venus! You would not believe what I saw! There’s an asteroid belt far out here and I spotted Mars grab some asteroids and hurled them at you!” Jupiter proclaimed.

“I did not do that at all! You are a liar!” Mars exclaimed, his inner fire rose intensively.

“It’s true. I saw it with my own eyes,” Jupiter defended herself.

“I can’t believe you, you filthy brat!” Mars yelled. Without realizing it, his anger took control and he threw some asteroids from the belt right back at Jupiter, which sliced through her thick skin.

“Why you….” Jupiter growled.

“Stop it! Why are you arguing?” Mercury shouted as she cut herself in.

“Jupiter claimed I hurt Venus, which is an absolute lie,” Mars stated.

“Whoever did this, why me? Why not Mercury? I mean, look at her! You could easily destroy her planet with just one of those things.”

“Excuse me?” Mercury asked, appalled.

“Oh, come on, Mercury. You may be Father’s favorite, but you still got the smallest size,” Venus explained.

“At least I’m the closest to the sun,” Mercury fired back.

Hearing his brothers and sisters argue from a far, Neptune thought he should stay out of it as always, but something inside encouraged him that this was an opportunity to finally speak up. “Guys, I think this arguing is getting out of hand,” the sound of his voice echoed in space, leaving the prison it was trapped in for millennia.

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“You’re not a part of this, Neptune. You hardly are with anything,” Jupiter spat at him.

Neptune’s courage plummeted back down in the freezing core he was once stuck in.

“Leave him alone,” Uranus defended. “Just because he doesn’t talk a lot doesn’t mean he isn’t important.”

“Oh, says the god who was given the name of someone’s butt. Like what kind of name is that?” Jupiter replied.

“I told you to stop doing that. My name does not define me.”

“I think it does, because you can be an ass sometimes,” Jupiter said, rolling her eyes.

“Jupiter, you’re a horrible person. Why are you so mean to everyone?” Mars barked.

“I’m not mean. I’m pointing out how ridiculously immature you are all acting.”

“Actually, you’re the most immature,” Saturn added.

Jupiter spun around and stared at Saturn with deadly eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m going to be honest, you criticize everyone. How they look, how they act, every little detail you belittle. And you’ve done it to me the most because you’re jealous.”

“Of what?” Jupiter yelled.

“Of my beauty because I’m the most beautiful. I mean, do you see any rings encircling you from suitors? No? I don’t think so. All you got is that big, fat, red dot that looks like a horrendous pimple.”

“You know, you don’t have to keep bragging about your looks, Saturn,” Venus thundered. “You’re not the only beautiful goddess in the universe.”

“Again, do I see any rings on your hands?” She questioned.

Earth was the last to step in. She knew her siblings fought a lot, but it had never came to this extent before. “Everyone, please stop fighting. There is no point to it.”

“Yes, there is. I’m tired of Jupiter bullying everyone,” Mars said.

“I’m tired of Saturn flaunting herself all over the place,” Venus replied.

“I want to strangle them both for constantly teasing my name,” Uranus seethed.

“You all make fun of my size,” Mercury added.

“At least you all talk to each other. None of you haven’t even given me a second glance in the past millennia,” Neptune spoke up.

Earth said, “We’re family. We shouldn’t be treating each other like this. If Father didn’t love us, then why would He allow us to be a part of His creation?”

“Maybe it was a test to see who would screw up the most,” Mars threw his 44

Empty Life - Veronica Therrien

words at Jupiter.

“That’s it,” Jupiter screamed. “I’m done with all of you!” With her anger boiling, she used her gravity to pull more asteroids from the belt, and hurled every one straight at her brothers and sisters. Each piece of artwork that every god and goddess worked hard on was blitzed with space rocks, destroying the streams of color into bleeding shades of fire and lava. They charged into the fight and flung whatever they could find at each other.

Not too long later, the Creator finally put His foot down. “ENOUGH!” He boomed, causing them to freeze in silence. His eyes burned with fury. “I thought I trusted all of you to take responsibility with your creations.”

“It was Jupiter’s fault! She blamed me for something I didn’t do!” Mars pleaded.

“That is completely false,” Jupiter lied.

“But you had to choose to aim at me,” Venus muttered.

“ENOUGH I SAID!” He yelled again. “Because none of you won’t grow up, you will not receive the reward I planned to give you. Instead, you all deserve a punishment that’ll make you regret the way you acted towards each other.”

Before they could plead any more, from the sun the Father sent out a humongous solar flare that reached every single one of His childrens’ planets, their breathtaking work was either evaporated or poisoned with deadly radiation or gasses, except for one. With this particular child, He blanketed her with a powerful, magnetic shield that guarded her from His wrath, sparring her completely. This daughter was Earth. Because she followed her Father’s commands, refused to fight against her sisters, and tried bringing peace instead, He rewarded her greatly. After He punished the rest of his children, He gifted her with the one thing her siblings were not permitted to have.

Life.

Throughout the eons, Earth accepted her Father’s gift and joyfully watched over the creatures He gave her. As she radiated a wonderful blue and danced around Him, the gift she was blessed with echoed throughout the universe in song, but as she twirled, she looked back at her silent siblings, who numbly circled Him, heartbroken, regretful, and barren. Because of their unthinkable actions, Earth is the empty life that sings in a quiet universe.

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Self-portrait with a cigarette Vicente Cayuela

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Lady in a rush Vicente Cayuela

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Two Poems Jack Rubinstein

Gameboy gets played Gameboy is born in 8 bit glory, no backlight so he learns to read in the dark under his covers He slips away to a land of digital living.

Of thumbs with an “A” temporary tattooed from one too many rounds of Mario Kart.

Learns triumph from defeat Gameboy learns to see in color.

Becomes brighter than he thought he was he learns to see at night that it just took him some time to find his footing.

Learns to not only play the game but to be part of it.

He pushes all the right buttons but his princess is in another castle. He’s out of extra lives.

Gameboy is worried.

With each advancement he becomes more obsolete.

He fears that he will only be played for nostalgia.

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Of Advice Aged in an Oak Barrel “Spirituality is a good glass of scotch” –My grandfather Bitter but getting better with age I pour a finger (or two) for my mother into a green crystal cup, offsetting the oppressive air of late May with two small stones foraged from our freezer. I sip, trying to understand the draw of this bitter beverage, the brown butterscotch brew that burns on its descent, branding the back of my throat. In this moment, I struggle to see why on a summer afternoon my mother’s solution to cool down is to burn. I ask. She answers. “Spirituality is a good glass of scotch” she says calmly, echoing her father. She tells me to set myself ablaze. That controlled burning is the only way that change has ever been made. I take another sip. I am reminded of what burning feels like, and my soul becomes reignited. Funny, I think to myself, that family secrets can be found in store-bought bottles.

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Untitled Julian Eskin

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It's spring and I want to hold everything Courtney Garvey

Citrus rinds and roly polies, the limes from which you've sucked all the juice. Flowers my mother pressed in a book about the Kennedy’s, and my father's favorite baseball cap. The sunrise from when I woke up again today. Spare buttons I can’t match to any of my shirts, a new toothbrush, and one of the letters I wrote myself in seventh grade, when I wanted to be a different person.

Things I put away in November and am finding again as I dig through the holes in my dungaree pockets.

Promises tangled in lint and loose threads, the crusts of bread that didn’t break easily. Splinters from the swing set we tore down, and the kitchen tiles in my first apartment, cracked and caked with spaghetti sauce and spilt wine.

Grass stains on yellow linen; my lover’s laugh as I pull a funny face. Spills of flour from birthday cakes, from burnt pancakes we still ate anyways, and tomatoes sliced just thin enough. The wind overhead, warm and expansive and as endless as my sun-streaked yearning.

Formatted differently in Blacklist Journal 51

Executive Board Editors-in-Chief

Sophie Fulara Jinni Wang

Managing Editor

Rachel Saunders

Treasurer

Bob Corpening

Poetry Editor

Nico Léger

Prose Editor

Ethan Seidenberg

Layout Editors

Nico Léger Andrea Lei Vicente Cayuela

Publicity Chair

Ivy Gao

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Contributors Peija Anderson Via Bleidner Vicente Cayuela Julian Eskin Courtney Garvey Jack Greenberg Angela Hyde Sara Inoa Charlotte Lang Lindsey Li Jenna Lifshitz Carson Markland Samuel Milligan Natalie Mitchell Lauren Puglisi Jack Rubinstein Warren Situ Nakul Srinivas Veronica Therrien Jenn Travers Seth Wade Jen Woolard Jacy Zhang

UC Santa Barbara UC Santa Barbara Brandeis University Brandeis University Brandeis University UC Santa Barbara Wheaton College Vassar College Brandeis University Brandeis University Brandeis University Wake Forest University Bowdoin College Clark University Brandeis University Brandeis University Carleton College Brandeis University Slippery Rock University University of Vermont University of Vermont UC Santa Barbara University of Maryland

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Awards The Grossbardt Memorial Poetry Award is awarded to one poem by a Brandeis University undergraduate 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 the chapbook, The Travellers.

For the 2017-2018 academic year, Rebecca Kahn’s poem “Home” was chosen by Erin Coughlin Hollowell for the Grossbardt award. Her work can be read in the Spring 2018 issue of Laurel Moon.

Erin Coughlin Hollowell is the author of two collections of poems, Pause, Traveler and Every Atom. Hollowell teaches for the University of Alaska - Anchorage Low-Residency MFA Program, Kenai Peninsula College, and the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference. She is the executive director of Storyknife, a women writers’ residency in Homer, Alaska.

The Dafna Zamarripa-Gesundheit Fiction Award is awarded to one work of fiction by a Brandeis undergraduate published in Laurel Moon over the course of the academic year. Dafna ZamarripaGesundheit 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, honoring her spirit and memory, is awarded to a piece of extraordinary ction published in Laurel Moon.

For the 2017-2018 academic year, Otis Fuqua’s story “A Sound Like Twigs Breaking” was chosen for the Dafna Award by Christopher Castellani. His work can be read in the Fall 2017 issue of Laurel Moon.

Christopher Castellani is the author of three novels and one book on craft. He teaches at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the MFA Program at Warren Wilson College, and presently serves as the artistic director at GrubStreet.

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Laurel Moon

www.laurelmoonmag.com

Spring 2019