Spring 2020 by Laurel Moon Magazine

Laurel Moon Magazine SPRING 2020 Brandeis University

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. All submissions are read blind. Editors-in-Chief

Jinni Wang Mutiara Carney

Editors

Lily Darling Ivy Gao Pallavi Goel Abigael Good Caroline O Lindsey Odorizzi Alyssa Rider

Layout Editor

Andrea Lei

Laurel Moon FALL 2020

CONTENTS Poetry 6 7 9 17 20 23 24 26 27 28 29 30 31 43 45 47

THE FOOTAGE I COULDNT DELETE HANAHAKI DISEASE: MY BODY, A FLORAL SHOP BRUISE A VIOLATION OF FLESH WITCH HAZEL AND SNUFF FULL MOON SACRAMENT BEHIND THE WHEEL GENESIS BODY TO BARK KISSING IN THE CHURCH BASEMENT LOVEFOOL NIGHT BALL LETTER TO THE CITY THAT MADE ME REDEFINING ‘FAGGOT' I. UNTITLED I GET SLEEPY

NICOLAS LÉGER

KEVIN PATAROQUE MIA JONES ALEXANDRIA ROSS EDWINA JOE-KAMARA ANNA ROSE MARSHMAN TINA GAO SUNNY NAGPAUL ANDREA SMITH LIAM STRONG MAHI TABAN HANNAH MORLEY

Prose 10 34

ROUTE 66

LEANNE WOODS

MY DEAR EMMA

TRAVIS SCHUHARDT

the footage i couldn’t delete Nico Léger

i’m the protagonist of a low-budget movie my casting agent says i’m not talented enough to drop. father’s killed off in minute five & mother’s a widow with a costume of goodwill’s finest black. she downs holy water to summon a ghost that never comes but the director still foreshadows how we will forever be haunted, worries we won’t win an award for best horror. to help, i spend the funeral in the bathroom, seven & solemn, a the sixth sense copyright. viewers jack it to trauma porn but turn away when little boys cry, so on the toilet i sit & fold airplanes out of two-ply. they don’t make it off the ground. in post-production, i realize i am trying endlessly to erase my name from the credits, re-exporting the .mov file to no avail. my therapist is a film critic who reminds me i don’t have to view my life in 140p quality, but i’m too zoomed in to see brother replaying an open casket full of what he keeps behind his closed bedroom door: a spider’s web for warmth, a watch forever stuck in ’06, splinters crafted to penetrate skin, an elixir he pours over open wounds but mostly down the basin of his throat. brother

knows how to manipulate footage. bad lighting, wind, jump cuts, a shaky hand wrapped around the underside of a toilet in the movie premiere bathroom. alone, i find something salty leaking through the bottom of my popcorn. 6

hanahaki disease: my body, a floral shop Nico Léger

i fall in love & clutch the bottom of an all-white toilet bowl, throwing up flowers. it is not polite. the sower who planted the seeds hands me paper towels &amp; i want to become as invisible as the fluids on the gas station wall. it is not polite. it is bile-wet petals spat onto tile, a white warning that looks like love but tastes like the beginning of the end. i fall in love & see red stop signs on the highway & brake too fast, this disease still worse than airbags, but in three days, i will look up from a gurney to a red-hot exit sign. my wedding gown: mass-produced, loose. my ring: a paper band, DOB. identity: gone with the stems, leaves & petals tossed beside blood & needles in a medical waste coffin.

i fall in love & notice that i begin to see pink everywhere & it is beautiful. acne purifying cheeks in morning light, motel signs at night & around his eyes when i tell him i don’t want to be cured. pink where love pricks, refuse treatment, slits & transpires into a second realm of zen gardens & ambience. i fall in love & become a florist, coughing up flowers until i have something worthy to give & by then my guts are scraped, gone, left as roadkill, hanahaki’s. repurposed like the tsubakis, who are beheaded when they die. so, we drive for miles down route 9, sleeping bags & neck aches, hostess donuts & bouquets. the blossoming &the decay.

bruise Kevin Pataroque

Lilac on skin crushed purple petals beautiful under the palest amber— I was falling or the ground rose to me like a sentence spoken to end a relationship He said to me, I don’t think I’d want to continue— When I fell the ground turned skin to lilac. I’d left it behind: the broken back step, flickering street lights, the road following in shades of amber gold. I wanted you back, but we were growing apart (skin ripening to purple, beautiful petals) the last step - because I was falling, the ground opened for me until it snapped my wrist: the hoarfrost, the spider silk like snow on the dead buds of lilacs

ROUTE 66 Leanne Woods You gotta understand somethin’, Pea. In your sister’s reckonin’, men ain’t nothin’ but a vehicle to motherhood. Ya hear me? She never did see them boys, not-a one of ‘em. All she seen when she looked in them big, dumb eyes was an auto-mobile with a baby inside. That’s not fair, Gran, and you know it. You think she loved them boys? (She spits a laugh between her two remaining teeth. They are yellowed with tar and move loosely in their sockets. She is the grandmother, old and knowing, occasionally harsh, but rarely unfair. She rocks in her chair, onto the heel of her foot, and back onto her toes. She keeps rocking in this way, heel-toe. Heel-toe. The old chair makes the hollow noise of wood pressed deeply into wood.) I know, I know. You think I should mind my business. I may not see the way I used to, but this old pony ain’t blind. You remember when that old Ford of hers broke down? She was just outside’a Gilbert when that rusted old box just coughed and choked and stalled on out. You remember that? She was just outside’a the rez. Stranded. Ain’t nothin’ out there, just snakeskin cooked raw. She kicked at it, she swored, she got on out of it and pushed at its bumper, and that damn thing wouldn’t budge. A dead horse got more life than that old Ford had. Gran, I don’t know what that has to do with anything. Can we please change the subject? 10

(The two chairs rock in unison, matching each other’s rhythm and pace. The sun begins to sink over the western horizon. The two women stare off into some void behind that great orange light. They squint and their eyes change from a sloping almond shape, to nearly closed. Gran pauses, as if trying to find her place again, and she continues where she left off.) So she just left it. Lit a match, held it right to that gas tank, watched it light up like the fourth of July. She’s been treatin’ men the same way ever since, like she don’t know the difference between a man and a car, as long as they bring her where she wants to go, she don’t think nothin’ of it. The second they stop workin’ for her(She gestures like she’s striking a match. She flicks her wrist downward, like she’s sending it into an imaginary gas tank). BOOM! That’s not fair, Gran. She knows the difference between men and cars. Nothing is guaranteed, and you can’t blame her everytime something happens and it doesn’t work out the way you think it should. Ha! You remember that fella? That man who picked ’er up in his shiny red mustang? You remember the one. (The petrified skin of her index finger pulls tightly over her burled knuckle. She points straight into Pea’s chest with the gnarled branch of her old, arthritic fingers. They twist to tell the truth of her story, the story of all the women she knows; the ones who came before and all the ones to come after.) Now that man, that man was supposed to drive her straight on to maternel bliss, ya know. That spit-shined, black-haired bastard with his searsucker suit and his wing-tip shoes. He talked real smooth, that one. Had too much-a nothin’ ta say, if ya ask me. Your grandaddy always did say, ‘don’t you never trust a man who ain’t got dust on his boots.’ (The depth of her brown eyes shows as she fixes her gaze on some far off point. She searches the far off mountains for answers, or memories, or a speck of insight blown along from our ancestors. The wind alights sand which scurries across the porch. The sun is nearly set, the brown land turns burnt orange, the sky a dark azure blue.) 11

Come ta think of it, I never did see such clean loafers- not a speck of dust on ‘em, not the shoes and not them pretty mustang tires... Ya know, that bastard never once got out of that car. Not-a once. Not to ring the doorbell- not even to meet your daddy. Them fancy shoes never once stepped a heel on that front porch. Not-a once, you hear me?That bastard would just sit in that damn driveway, blowin’ that horn- like he was rattlin’ his tail. It’s a-wonder it didn’t make your daddy go stark mad... (She looks tired. Deep in the lines of her sun-leathered skin all of the stories and all of the secrets of her eighty two years stay filed. The arroyos that carve her cheeks deepen in the last glow of the day, they are the long valleys carved by tears. A deep current runs at the bottom of each of each fissure. A strong river of blood connects them, like the mighty Colorado at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, the uterine artery of the west.) … You know, I seen your daddy kill a rattl’r with nothin’ more than a spade and a mean temper-It’s a-wonder he didn’t do the same to that ol’ bag-a wind. Damn girl prob’ly shoulda known. What’s the bible say? The writin’ on the wall? Yeah well, I’m guessin’ your sister never learnt ta read like that. She ain’t smart. Not like you. Smart or not, how could she have known? Huh, Gran? She was just doin’ what she was always told. She was just doin’ what you had done. What mama had done. She’s no stupider than... A new coat o’paint and a wax job don’t say a damn thing ‘bout what’s under tha hood. You remember that, Pea. You remember I told you. (She looks west-straight down route 66, the mother road of the country. She spits onto the dry land, it drinks from her mouth.) When you was away gettin’ that fancy education in the East, you was missin’ a real important lesson ‘round here. I don’t have those kinds of problems, Gran. You know that. Boys never chased me the way they chased Miriam. Besides, she’s married now. She’s doing well. Let’s leave her alone. (Gran stops rocking and looks into the face of Pea. There’s a hurt in her eyes, a hurt that’s been there a long time. Gran 12

Route 66 Leanne Woods remembers when Pea left for college, the day the family crowded into her one room casita to offer their goodbyes. Miriam showed up with Tim, her small hand tucked inside of his, as if together they held onto the announcement of their intentions. Pea had loved Tim since the day he blew into her life like dried sage. She was sixteen, working at the one market in town. She could tell you exactly the day the string of metal bells that hung on the glass door announced him. She looked up and saw his hand on the doorknob, and watched the first step of his dirty boots track manure onto the white linoleum floor. She can tell you exactly the magazine she was reading, leaning over the dusty rubber of the register belt. She can tell you the stale taste of her gum, exhausting her jaw, the slow pop of the bubble against her pink lips. She could tell you exactly, the wild bramble of his auburn hair, or the blue of his deep set eyes, his weather worn jeans. She could tell you his smile, his broad and callused hands that brushed passed hers as he handed her money in exchange for farm raised eggs. She could tell you the car he drove and the diner where he ate his rye toast and ham. She could also tell you how in just four months of his moving there, her deliciously feminine and coy sister could be seen riding in the passenger’s seat of his little car, while she closed up shop, locking the door behind her to the distant ring of those haunting metal bells. Pea’s sister road in the passenger’s seat of any car she wanted in that town, a different car every night. And every once in a while when Tim came through to buy his canned coffee or his loaf of bread, her deep chestnut eyes would lock into the sea of his blue. Her finger tips would linger along the raised beds of his tired, calloused hands, slowly collecting bits of change meagerly scraped from all he had left in this world. A knowing smile would cross his face. She would blush. To her, he was the first choice. Before a four year college in the East, before any boy who came sneaking around, leaving her small gifts of hand mined turquoise or Apache 13

Tears, knocking on the dried wood of their front door, and running off, leaving the gifts on the hand woven welcome mat, a cloud of dust kicked up behind them as they would tear up the driveway, all testosterone and fear. Before a promise of a new life, a better life, a life more free and less hand-sewn, she chose him. To her sister Miriam, Tim was so much further down the list. Pea knew she lacked a certain lightness, an air of absolute femininity. She was harder to pin down, more awry. She wasn’t ugly, but she wasn’t the effortless beauty of Miriam. She wasn’t grace. She was solid, like oak. Where Miriam had a predatory nature, a nightstalking certainty of step, Pea was like a sea sponge that absorbed the good of whatever passed over her. But sea sponges don’t survive in the desert. Miriam had just been dumped hard by the rich man in the mustang when she and Tim meandered into Pea’s going away party, hand and hand. Pea had seen it coming, because not a lot escapes you when you do more watching and listening than talking. She told herself it was better. She used this as another weapon of self hatred, another place to stab herself. Pea went to college. Miriam married Tim in a quiet ceremony. I guess she’s doin’ alright now. The new fella seems nice, real dependable-like. Not much to look at, but I guess he never was. Gran, don’t say that. He’s fine. (Pea says, and behind the words she thinks, “He is more than fine. He is perfect.” Gran sees what cannot be seen, she is keen to the hurt that radiates from Pea’s furrowed brow. She is determined to coax the truth from her. The one that has settled into her being, the weights attached to her shoes, the ones that won’t let her move forward with anyone else.) Well I’m just sayin’ he’s wracked up some miles, by the looks of him. He ought to stay outta the sun. You seen him yet, since you been back? They don’t come ‘round here much no more. She says it’s too far out- guess they got some car trouble. No matter. She sounds like she’s settlin’ in alright. All in all, it seems like he’ll do. She says she’s havin’ that baby come January. Not too far to go now. I don’t think she quite knows what she’s in for. But I ain’t never been able 14

Route 66 Leanne Woods to tell that girl nothin’. Now you, you I can talk some sense to. But not her. Nope. She just gonna do it her own damn way. I just don’t understand that one. But, like I says. She got what she wanted from him. She got that damn baby. I don’t understand it myself, forevers a long time to spend with somebody you can’t hardly look at. Trust me, your granddaddy couldn’t die fast enough, you ask me. (Gran shakes her head at the past, and then she shakes her head again at the present, and then she shakes her head one more time at the future, because it all looks the same, over and over again. Miriam will have a daughter, and the daughter won’t make it too far down route 66 before she turns around heads right back. She won’t make it as far as Gilbert. She too will hop into the passenger‘s seat of her own life, like her mother before her. She too will hand over the keys to a man, and maybe that man will be as good as her daddy, but more than likely he won’t. Pea picks up the pace of her rocking. She sinks into the great sand dunes of thought. She considers the past that disappears in her rearview mirror. She looks at the wide open space of her future. For anyone who has traveled west down 66, you know that great stretch of land that lays flat in front of you. You know how easy it is to bury the pin and still feel that you’ve gotten nowhere. You know how you never catch those mountains that loom in the distance forever away. She whispers into the wind that has picked up from the east) Of course I couldn’t understand Because I never felt that way. I never once looked upon the form of the man I loved Only to see the way his spine curved like a roadHis body, a vehicle. The round calloused tread of his hands-a patch For the air that was leaking slowly-surelyFrom the cracks in my life. 15

To me, he no more resembled the gravel that could begin to fill in the empty spaces Of that vast and hollow and desolate roadThan he did the tourmaline blue of sky-vast and unreachable Just beyond the black horizon Or his skin-the sandstone and amber desertWhere some highway was built for travel. I never once looked upon him and saw fertile soilOr the tiny germinations of everything I’d dreamed.) Of course she didn’t understand. Gran, (Pea says out loud. And this is the moment Gran has been waiting for. This is the labor and the birthing of the truth that has hung heavy at the waist of this family since the day Tim got down on his knee, those crystalline blue eyes filled with hope and love, only to be met with the cool dark stone of Miriam’s eyes. The granite color, hard and untouchable, of a woman who wants a ride out of her uninspired life, and who wants someone to blame when it all breaks down a couple of years down the line.) Gran, (Pea starts again, and there’s a quake in her breath as she inhales deeply. She has to say it, and it has to come out all at once because if she stops, she won’t get it going again. And so she points her voice straight down the highway and she floors it, the gas pedal to the floorboard, and this is what comes out:) I only ever saw him-blue eyed and fleshy. He moved like wind across the main street of that small town. We were ghosts in the dead of winter, on a Sunday morning, alone in the desert cold. I watched him cross the street, a bramble or a desert sage. In his large hand, perfectly balanced in the crook of his arm, was a borrowed glass coffee pot. I watched as he held it with such care-his steps were slow and calculated-practicing for the baby that was to come in Januaryholding it with that same gentleness that he held all of our breakable things. He disappeared into the church, the place where he and she married. And I stood, kicking dust on the toe of my dirtied bootswaiting for a taxi or a stagecoach or a mustang to get me out of here. This is their town; the town that he and she had broken down in-the place where nothing grows. 16

A Violation of Flesh Mia Jones the light is i look out at the faces

fluorescent

dark emotional coils burn my throat’s red aisle as my hollow gaze lands upon his face i say, “unkiss my wrists free me with the breath of your confession dull the sharp edge of my memory with the seaglass of your tongue” the judge halts my pleas directing me to speak my testimony but the man’s eyes call me undeniable prey “lillian” she says “sorry ma’am” 17

i begin, “that cold june day thunder spit something like rain over my body there was nowhere to go i went nowhere his hands ran a charred ink line over the planes of my body his wrist’s pale skin lingered in my eye-line as he squeezed tighter and tighter his body approached from the bottom then above on top inside skin to skin i could perceive the end of me my name caught in his throat as he finished the memory of that sound violates my mind 18

there was no magic in the clumsy brutality of his skin did you know blood leaves the body in ruins? i set fire to the cloth stained with my terror and his pleasure that cold june day he took a piece of me my own name now a violation” rising from the stand my rapist’s greedy eyes graze my form and i again am a phantom-corpse i say to myself, “my skin is my own my skin is my own” 19

witch hazel and snuff Mia Jones

momma smelled eternally of witch hazel and snuff when i was just a bairn she would whisper tales of the earth wooden spoon slick with tomato soup and dripping she would say “lydia darlin’ do not venture into the horizon forest for it keeps all things and ponders them in its heart there, every hate swells to an epic kind of wind you would become foreign a stranger to this world nothing more than atoms of a forgotten life” 20

sitting there the warmth of an unseen fire against my skin i listened to momma’s stories our wickory home seemed to be only a backdrop for eternity and i could sense something greater at night tucked tightly underinto the quilts i dreamt of words spoken into infinite space but each sunrise the dust of a new day devoured the memories i felt a waking absence the mysteries of the stars kept locked away in my soul when the storms came momma held me close it seemed to me that she could always smell the rain before it fell now that momma is gone when the storms come i tell myself “i am not afraid of storms the thunder ignites me” 21

i think now momma is the absence in my soul she once housed the wildest of rivers the water was afraid to touch her now

like the stars she is ash and dust and i shall keep her mysteries in my heart

Full Moon Sacrament Alexandria Ross

the air hums, lying in wait. bare soles meet dirt and twigs, beating the earth in a deep ancestral lullaby a rhythm untouched by any haste. Falling from the sky and flowing in its course shaping and scoring the earth. she steps in without need of a priest and sinks herself into Holy River. She surfaces- once-and submerges again. She rises, fists full of mud. Precious earth, in a smooth motion of absolution, makes herself a truer face; raw, feral, and-

Behind the wheel Alexandria Ross

camel brown leather seats that aim to pinch my thighs. driving to drive between dunes of sand, a collage of beige. the sight caused the taste of bile to tickle my tongue, but was the only thing that felt like home. 11:30 p.m. windows rolled down, in a parks parking lot. Misty croons as cigar smoke vanishes through my teeth, and to the sky.

the sun is setting over curved horizon. My last voyage of indulgence. tears taunt me, but never overcome the ridges of my brown canyons that remain fixed on the flat earth. i howl out the window so this Place won’t forget about me. speeding down I-290 the windows down always fighting off the suffocation crawling up my throat. I tighten my jaw and trap it inside.

Genesis Edwina Joe-Kamara

We were guardians of the underbrush, our veins of the pine, our swords of the fern, molded in moss and mulch, adorned by nature’s syrupy scent. But we left the foliage to bristle with fire. The Mother’s lungs roared in pain, and our toes squelched in the mud her tears manifested. Our noses turned to the foggy stratosphere to keep from dripping remorse and responsibility. (His searing tongue will lick all of our chins)

Body to Bark Anna Rose Marshman

A corporal longing In deep of blood The body calls out, To be dissolved The melding into The soils thick A greater being Amongst the many Unmoved by their own, solid wills So that the movements the passing winds That pulls us together Body to bark Hair to leaf Captured whole In branches of The open mind Where any flesh grows into air Past our confines Dense bones fade Eyes touch the sun The breath of the soul is the hands of the wind That pushes us along 27

Kissing in the Church Basement Tina Gao

I didn’t believe in Sundays, dress shoes, or choir, but I did in you.

Two Poems Sunny Nagpaul

LOVE FOOL I crouch to the floor to scratch dried mud off the metal clasp on my shoe while passing cars toss light upon the silver. I count the cars like the glowing sea rocks we found when you told me they remind you of my voice but now, with my hand on the black strap of my shoes and the black strap of my dress caught on this young man’s apron, I think of nothing but his hand on my shoulder. The edges of his hair drawn down, sweat— spring rolls in the fryer, oily, metallic humidity— and waved by the open night windows remind me of how deep eleven years stand between us, cold like Crater Lake, but now the stars outside and our closed lips and two pounds of shredded carrots and boiling milk on the stove top the cardamom, ginger, charred cashews, remind me of more solitary nights. My roommate strums the side of his kitchen radio with his left arm raised and poised to spin me to the walls, to the swing of his old songs about peering into living room windows at night and watching—the family t.v., the dog licking silver spoons, the girls dancing alone in their mirrors, the fathers looking hopelessly back out at him—mouthing the words, Lovefool. Lovefool. When did we become such buffoons.

Sunny Nagpaul

NIGHT BALL Through the window, berry shades fill my bedroom while my father loafs in the hall. Heavy steps crescendo as he comes around the bed. His body’s watery reflection in the window, flecked by the pale blue garden lights, roosts on top of the pane. His silhouette shrinks into the dark summer sky. His nose casts a long shadow like a pillar barring my body from his. He sits on my shins and his leaden cheeks turn my legs to pulp. Let me tell you about my mother, he garbles and my eyes roll like marbles, smashing against my eggshell skull. Pinball. His blurry mouth, strung with black hairs, is an open hole waiting for my marble. I pull the covers high around my neck and peer down at my chest; two hazy white hills glow bold in the dog night sky. The valley between them is a path to his stomach. A swollen balloon pours over his blue silk pajama pants. I blink and my marble eye shoots through the valley pam! bah! Into his belly button. The burst balloon, purple like cherries, soaks the sheets. I bare my teeth while the remaining rattling marble bangs violently against my skull. I gaze up at the profile of my dad. His eyes, although it’s only nine thirty, are already two watering holes of hot sea, threatening to burst if he does not tell me about my mother so I: aim my left eye, a pearl polished steadily all it’s life, at his bottom lip. Flung; his pink lips split and blooming flares splatter like sparklers. His beard ignites; each wiry hair, black like burnt wicks, frays and sprawls in wild directions while he tips over like a cow. His mouth still ajar tell..... Mother..... but his speech breaks off as black marbles fill his throat. His cheeks puff the size of walnuts, then plums. Dried by flames his legs curl underneath him on my bedroom floor, useless and thrown, like my black sheepskin robe. 30

Letter to the City that Made Me Andrea Smith

“Cambridge, MA: The only place in the world where Harvard and MIT professors live next door to immigrant families on food stamps, who in turn live next door to high-profile lawyers, who live next door to Wobblies, who live next door to old-New England money grandparents, who live next door to Harvard frat boys” - Urban Dictionary Dear Holworthy Street, I’ll take the 71 or 73 bus, from Harvard to meet you. I have trudged on your concrete canvas spat gum into sewers created a sanctuary of Smirnoff handles at the bottom of the Charles River. From here, I can see Mt. Auburn Hospital where i was born and JFK Park where I was born again 31

When I see you, I’ll bring a bouquet of cement-seed syringes a Central Square specialty where sullen souls shiver like the rumble of the Red Line below. And when I see you, I miss the old echo of Italian music in late August sultry sound & spaghetti sauce sift through the air smells like Mimi’s meatballs and tastes like the leftover morsels of the material past. The chapel has since become a cathedral of condos. Cambridge, you have become a stranger The visionaries of the future have embedded their roots into your core. And like a misguided matriarch, have left your very children to fend for themselves while you make the world a better place with pillars in need of repair.

At times we felt, Like thousands of arching sunflowers expected to be satisfied by a sloppy scientific splash of sun and springtime sidewalk salt. I miss you,

But the greyhound growls at Mass’ billboards looming like mountains beyond mountains, tracing the granite shoulders of New Hampshire, to where Vermont sky glows like sun-kissed grass.

Here, I belong. See you at Thanksgiving, and like an obsolete relative, honor how I have grown since.

My Dear Emma Travis Schuhardt Captain’s Log — 9:54AM We have crossed the Howard Johnson Miles above civilization Snow plates the ground like plates We just passed some log cabins Wilbur is being a bitch about his log cabin Storm clouds ahead Lots of cars, no souls Captain’s Log — 2:30PM We’re across the border We ran into some other white boys at the crossing They told us about a Wendy’s they went to that had a fireplace It made their day There is a ledge under a window of a hotel in Montreal where I sit for a few hours looking at people walking. I’m trying to forget about you, so they don’t remind me of you or us or anything. The guys want to take me to a casino, or rather, the guys want to go to a casino, and I am there too. Here we are men, and we can do those things. I have on my beard. I don’t want to leave the ledge. Only a few people pass under the window — Montreal in Winter, okay — which makes each one that walks by a little more special, even if I can’t make out anyone’s features, aside from the color of their shirt. 34

Most of the shirts are red, but that might just be a Canadian thing. Some people on trips make schedules, and I usually don’t like those people. Wilbur is talking about our schedule. “If we make it to the casino by eight, we’ll have enough time to play some poker, do whatever we want, and still be back by eleven. That way we can get some sleep for tomorrow when we climb to the top of the Mont. Sound good to everyone?” I’m not sure I’ve said a word the whole trip up to this point and I don’t break the streak now. “Get off that,” Del says. “Let’s get there at eleven and go until we’re bored.” “Does the casino close?” Alex asks. None of us knows, and none of us have good internet in the room, so we shrug and decide on arriving at eleven. The guys go for coffee and leave me on the ledge. I don’t drink coffee; I don’t do much. Captain’s Log — 5:10PM Notes concerning the arrival: It appears everyone here speaks French What a find Also, Wilbur ran like six stop signs on the way in Someone should tell him what Arrêt means Someone should tell me what Arrêt means The guys get back and tell me that the coffee girl is really cute, that I should meet her. They send me down to order a cup. The shop is empty, except for the girl. She strikes me as someone much older and much younger than me. She could be in her late twenties; she could be in high school. Her hair is blonde and braided. Small mouth. Small body. “Hello,” I say. “Hi.” French accent. Montreal accent? An accent. “I would like a cup of coffee.” “What kind?” “There are different kinds?” I ask. She laughs. Oh boy. “Black 35

is fine.” I sit at one of the empty tables and think about the rest of my life. It wouldn’t work out between me and the coffee girl. Unless I stayed in Montreal. She would never ask that of me. We’d spoken once, I don’t even know her name, things don’t work that way. How nice if they did, though. The coffee cup lands in front of me. “Anything else?” She asks. Head tilted down, eyes up. Clearly experienced in the service industry. “Sit with me,” I say. It is supposed to be a question, but it doesn’t come out that way. She sits. “Name?” She asks. “My friends call me Ethan. Everyone does actually.” That one always gets a little chuckle. “And yourself?” “Emma,” she says. “But my friends call me Em.” “Pleasure to meet you.” I sip the coffee and remember why I don’t drink coffee. “So, Ethan, what do you do?” It takes me a moment to figure out, through her accent, that she’d said my name. I like the sound. “Go to school, mostly. At Syracuse, in New York.” She nods. A boring answer. “What do you do?” I ask. She gestures to the shop around us. “Oh. Right.” She laughs into her hand. Over her wrist, her sleeve is pulled up so far that it puffs up when her laugh hits it. It really is that simple, sometimes. “When do you get off work?” Captain’s Log — 12:30AM Lost 40 Canadian $ Tommy won 380$ on slots Drinks on Tommy Wilbur and Del lost at poker immediately Alex hung on as long as he could, still crumbled Cold waiting for Uber I meet Emma outside the coffee shop at one in the morning. She’s undone the braids in her hair, so it falls across her shoulders, catching light from the moon and reflecting it across the coat she 36

My Dear Emma Travis Schuhardt has over her uniform. I’m in four layers of sweaters and coats, I have no idea how she manages with just the jacket. Emma takes a minute to close up the shop. It doubles as a restaurant, she explains, which is why it’s open so late. The key jams in the lock and she apologizes for the wait as she tries to turn the key. She exhales onto the lock trying to heat it up, and I laugh, which makes her pout. “You help,” she says, and pushes my head towards the lock. Up close, it looks almost frozen over, little crystals of ice around the mechanism. I breathe onto it with her, our faces pressed together. Her cheek is cold pressed against mine. It makes me realize how warm I am. Somehow, we are both laughing. I pull the key and it slides out. “Walk you home?” I ask. “Why not your room? I want to see how the tourists live.” “I live in a small room with four other guys.” “Walk me home,” she says. As we walk, she laughs at me slipping and sliding across the frozen over sidewalk. She lets me hold onto her to balance myself. “It’s like watching a baby deer learn how to walk,” she says, right before I fall into a mound of snow, accidentally pulling her down with me, on top of me. “Pire qu’une biche,” she says, laughing in exhaled breathes against my chest. There’s a throbbing pain in my back and I pretend it stops when she kisses me. Her apartment isn’t far, and it isn’t clean. Clothes are strewn about with aged food on every table. She apologizes for the mess. She wasn’t expecting company today. “I hope it isn’t a problem,” she says. “If you wanted to come back tomorrow…” “I’m leaving tomorrow,” I say. “Touriste,” she says. “Oui,” I say. 37

Captain’s Log — 4:50AM My dear Emma The streets of Montreal are pretty at night What a beautiful place this would be to die I’m not sure I’ve ever seen trees like this Trees and ice and snow — a place fairies might have lived Where nothing can hide Nothing but miles behind and miles to go I don’t tell the guys where I’ve been. We go for coffee in the morning. Emma is serving, in uniform; it looks like she didn’t even change. Captain’s Log — 9:30 AM My dear Emma My dear Emma My dear Emma She brings over a cup of black for me, and then asks everyone their orders. Captain’s Log — 9:31AM My dear Emma My dear Emma My dear Emma We are climbing to the top of the Mont Royal. It is cold, and everyone is a better climber than I am. There’s a path, but the guys don’t use it. I use it because I need it, and so I am alone. I think of places I’d rather be. The top of the Mont Royal is beautiful, but I am afraid. Everywhere in Montreal is slippery, and the cliffside is no different. “So, what’d you think of the coffee shop girl?” Wilbur asks as we head to the bathroom in the hill’s service area. “Cute, madly in love,” I say. 38

My Dear Emma Travis Schuhardt “What about ________?” he asks. I know it is a name as soon as he says it, and one that I have heard before. Then, it is your name. “What about her?” I say. Captain’s Log – 12:05PM What would you think of all this You’d say this is just like me To fall without being pushed To stumble in love To imagine it was something Because it could have been On the way down the mountain, I slip and fall, scuffing my arms and banging my head against the ice. The guys laugh, and no one helps me up. And then it’s time to go home. I have no souvenirs to bring with me. At the border, the patrolman asks if we are taking anything back with us. Everyone says no. My head hurts from the fall. I try to sleep, but the throbbing keeps me up. I have Emma’s number somewhere in my phone. It is too tempting to text. I am going to delete it when I gather the courage. I send her a picture of the bruise on my face, telling her how I slipped on the mountain. “My baby deer,” she texts back. I stare out the car window. Snow and snow and snow. What a beautiful place this would be to live. She texts, “I have to get to work.” Captain’s Log – 6:46 PM We’ve made it home There is still nothing but miles behind and miles to go It’s always moving I’m sorry I’m sorry 39

Pink Cliffs Allison Whitehead

Writing now feels like scrambling at the edge of a tall pink cliff like the ones in Utah I saw as a little girl, like the world itself is in my grasp but just barely. It feels, and I know it’s wrong to say this, it feels like when I was a little girl dangling my hiking boots over the pink cliff and thinking of jumping, not because it made sense, but because gravity promised warmer embraces. My uncle had to coax me back to earth, because I was rising up on my toes, trying to see all the way back home -- a thousand miles. Writing used to feel like what it was: scratching ink on paper, words devoid of meaning. Do you ever stare at a word for so long that it stops making sense as a word, even as a jumble of letters, and becomes something separate and useless and strange? That’s how it was for me, and not just when I wrote about dragons and talking cats as a child. Everything I wrote became another language as soon as it left my pen. No matter how tightly I grasped the words, they slipped away, like when I cup my hands in the shower just to watch water slip through my fingers. Once my uncle caught me writing on a napkin, and he took it from me to read. He wept, one hand clasped to his face, sitting on the end of the narrow motel bed. I thought he didn’t understand it -tried to explain the talking cat -- but when I pointed at the napkin all the words seemed jumbled to me. I was too young to understand. In college, the first time I wrote for other people, I abandoned the talking cat in favor of more literary themes: death, love, mortality. 40

What a stupid story. All the red marks from my professor were like cuts on my skin, and when I tried to read them, I couldn’t. All my letters were backwards. All the red was question marks. It felt like, and I know it’s wrong to say this, when I cut myself with a razor blade in the shower, then watched the blood wash down the drain and vanish. All the red meant nothing, leaving me holding a razor, a paper, illegible. My uncle fainted at the sight of blood. Once when he had me, he tried to trim my nails but cut too close, and my thumb bled. Lightheaded he fell over backwards, prompting me to get the motel’s receptionist. By the time he got back to the room, my uncle was standing up, hurrying the man away and drawing me back inside. I thought he kept turning his face away because he was embarrassed. I was too young to understand, too young to understand when half a dozen police cars came to the motel, when my mother screamed at my uncle and grasped me tightly to her breast like she would never let go of me again. Every time I try to write about that it just comes out as nonsense. I’m just confused, with red question marks everywhere I look. Confused why he would take me, why he wept at my writing, why he took me to the cliffs of Utah and let me clamber among them unchaperoned while he smoked. He saved my life when my footing slipped; caught me by the leg, prevented my collision with a chalky pink boulder. I can’t think of my uncle without thinking of those cliffs. Falling then felt like flying. I was free, disconnected, and no words attacked my mind. There are no words in the sky. Now when I go to those cliffs I shudder, my toes tingle when I look down. Falling feels like what it is. I never minded blood. It was meaningless, what I’d done, down the drain in an instant. It felt the same as crumpling up my stories and throwing them in the trash, and it was the same, for those words are part of me just like blood and bone, and with a razor blade or a pen I just want it out, out, out of me. My mother thought that was because of my uncle. She thought he put something in me, poisoned me. She told me I should try writing about him, to help me get it out. “My uncle” and the rest illegible. Diligently I constructed a clear 41

narrative, a meaningful arc, and when I looked back at my page it was a foreign language. Like the cat wrote it. How stupid, to try to make all of life a skeleton of plot. Writing felt like cutting. It felt as stupid as hoping that standing on my toes would allow me to see a thousand miles. “My uncle” and the rest illegible. That’s this, isn’t it? I don’t remember. Writing feels like remembering, like remembering something dead that you can never get back. For me it’s remembering 3 my uncle’s hand around my calf, swinging me up from certain death. My mother thinks he ruined me, but he was nice to me. A week after I returned home, I asked when he would visit again. My mother and my uncle, they weep the same. Both tried to speak to me through their tears but I couldn’t understand it. I hate the scrambling. I want to fall. And I know it’s wrong to say this, but I hear things I shouldn’t, all the time, words pounding in my head over and over and over. They’re like a thousand swords hacking at my brain until I don’t feel it anymore, until none of them mean anything anymore, they’re all just separate and useless and strange. If not for my uncle my tiny nine year old skull would have cracked open on the pink cliffs, spraying spaghetti brains and made-up words everywhere, like someone opened up a dictionary and shook it out onto the chalky ground. But no one would be able to read them because of the blood, which I never minded, but which made my uncle faint. Standing on my toes feels like a pale imitation of flying. When did gravity’s embrace turn cold? No matter how much I try, I only see pink cliffs. In my imagination they take the form of blocky letters, lining up in a row to spell out a word, a message I can’t read.

redefining “faggot” Liam Strong 1 /faget/ a male homosexual a bundle of sticks or twigs bound together as fuel 2 when the mouth opens it repeats the half-pursed refrain, a sound like toilet where the syllable crunches like tortilla chips a pop at both ends 3 before you say it i want to say my name two particles of cusp lithium americium like the advent of a matchstick when someone calls me it i imagine a kiss with no cigarette and a talon of smoke reaching for me 43

4 communion of the tongue to a bludgeon i want to whittle a definition with a parcel of mountain ash, frail limbs curt in embrace i want to define this knicked name on my brow as a woodpecker might search for bugs as a name searches for a body to claim

i untitled Mahi Taban i close my eyes and i am back in the mountains of kabul and my next breath is a breath of the yasmin you have braided into your hair and the mendhi flowers inked on your hands and you are sitting on our marriage bed soaking up faiz and hafez and i remember your red kamees a wedding present from your khala in herat shakeela i had to leave for work that day my back was aching, still sore from yesterday’s harvest my hands still musky, dirt and latex and i didn’t want to go you wanted to see the seas of red to steal away dada’s camera to take pictures of your slender frame hidden between the fields shakeela – 45

we didn’t have our morning chai that day, i almost missed morning prayer, i left for the fields with the scent of rosewater, with the scent of you still lingering on my sweat shakeela – i remember calling to you, ‘allah pa’aman’ as i left but god didn’t keep you safe, that sunny afternoon our mala exploded a million fragmented pieces of life and love and existence, turning powder in the air i never came home shakeela i came back to rubble, ash and dust you, dark and red staining the walls of our house we never got to take those pictures now the only pictures i have of you are forever seared into my mind

appendix: yasmin – jasmine mendhi – henna kamees –long tunic allah pa’aman’ – goodbye, may god protect you mala – neighborhood street 46

I get sleepy Hannah Morley

I want to be rolled like a cuban cigar Into my blanket and smoked

into oblivion

CONTRIBUTORS NICO LÉGER KEVIN PATAROQUE

BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY LEANNE WOODS NORTH SHORE COMMUNITY COLLEGE MIA JONES CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY SANMARCOS ALEXANDRIA ROSS CLARK UNIVERSITY EDWINA JOE-KAMARA COLLEGE OF NEW JERSEY ANNA ROSE MARSHMAN UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MILWAUKEE TINA GAO JOHN HOPKINS UNIVERSITY SUNNY NAGPAUL UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT ANDREA SMITH NEW YORK UNIVERSITY TRAVIS SCHUHARDT MERCER UNIVERSITY ALLISON WHITEHEAD UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN SUPERIOR LIAM STRONG CLARK UNIVERSITY MAHI TABAN HANNAH MORLEY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA BARBARA