Marginalia Vol 1 No 1

MARGINALIA

Volume I, No. 1 / Fall 2015

Cornell’s Undergraduate Poetry Review

Marginalia Fall 2015

Volume 1, No. 1

Staff List J. Gabriel Gonzalez Editor in Chief

Alejandra Alvarez Editor in Chief

Sarah Lazarich Managing Editor

Mary Jarvis Treasurer

Emily Foster Secretary

Siobhan Brandman Communications Director

Ishion Hutchinson Faculty Advisor Cover Art Calvin Somang Kim Hitherto, 2015, oil, charcoal, and acrylic on canvas, 35.75� x 60.25� i

Table of Contents Letter from the Editor................................................................................... iv J. Gabriel Gonzalez ‘17 Rise.................................................................................................................... 1 Alexandra Burton ’17 An Old Saying pantun berkait..................................................................................................... 2 Andy Kim ‘16 Thunderstorm.................................................................................................. 3 Spiritus Sancti................................................................................................... 4 Ian Goldsmith ‘19 What We Do With Teenage Dreams............................................................ 5 Mary Jarvis ‘16 Seventy-Two Hours in the Big Easy............................................................. 6 Madeleine Galvin ‘18 To The Bottle of Champagne I Just Threw Across the Room............... 8 Andres Vaamonde ‘18 iv. Office Hours............................................................................................... 10 Julian Caplan Dandelion Night................................................................................................................. 11 Claire Dingle ‘17 Communications with a Soldier.................................................................... 12 Ariella Reidenberg ‘16 Season v. (1) to relearn body (2) to forget................................................... 13 Prerana Chatty ‘16 ii

Circuit Break.................................................................................................... 14 Rachel Whalen ‘19 Budding Bike Ride.......................................................................................... 16 Siobhan Brandman ‘17 In Your Mouth (Like Offerings).................................................................. 17 Anran Yu ‘17 Quiet and Tactless.......................................................................................... 18 Sarah Lazarich ‘16 Money Grows on Maple Trees..................................................................... 19 Brianna Zaino ‘18 When the Sun Has Set................................................................................... 20 Tina He ‘19 At Week’s End................................................................................................. 21 Alejandra Alvarez ‘17 Chainsmoker.................................................................................................... 22 Kristen Lovely ‘18 Symbole............................................................................................................ 23 Brian Young ‘17 Golden State of Mindlessness...................................................................... 24 J. Gabriel Gonzalez ‘17 When you sleep over...................................................................................... 25 Lauren Stuzin ‘16 Cyclic................................................................................................................ 26 Alexandra Burton ‘17 Acknowledgments.......................................................................................... 28 iii

Letter from the Editor Dearest Readers: Marginalia was conceived as an idea this past summer, after I finally read Roberto Bolaño’s stunning novel, The Savage Detectives. While the setting of the novel traverses the globe, the plot is ostensibly centered on a small group of young Mexican poets and their obsession with finding a copy of a poetry magazine that had been deemed lost by all but a few. The power that Bolaño’s characters attribute to this small publication– seemingly insignificant in this quasi-historical account of Mexican poetry– stuck with me for far longer than a good book will normally linger after you close the back cover in bittersweet triumph.

Specifically, I was taken by the importance Bolaño placed on drawing your identity from a poetic community, on knowing who your poetic friends are, for better or worse. I thought then, of Cornell, of people who I knew wrote poetry, but more than that, of people who identified as poets, as writers. In my mental search I turned up a few names; almost all of them are represented in the preceding pages.

Marginalia, then, aims to fix that problem, or at the very least mitigate it.

In planning the magazine with my wonderful and talented co-editor-in-chief Alejandra, we decided that we wanted this review to be a dynamic publication– more of a periodic recap than a suspenseful grand unveiling. Marginalia is a way to see who your friends are, to see what they’re working on, and to connect your work with theirs. If just one of you sees a piece you love in these pages and reaches out to its creator, if only in passing, to comment or praise or reflect, this review will have succeeded.

In a literary world oftentimes dominated by the novel and the short story, the legions chasing after the legacies of Hemingway and Faulkner, García Márquez and Vargas Llosa, Woolf and Angelou, Marginalia is a space for us, the disciples of Collins, and Plath, of Hughes and Neruda, of Bukowski and Stevens. This is our self-affirmation; this is our enclave. This is our legacy, scribbled in the margins of a multitude of notebooks. In that vein, I leave you with the words of the patron saint of Marginalia, of the novelist who always figured himself a poet first, Roberto Bolaño: “Only poetry isn’t shit.”

My love and thanks, J. Gabriel Gonzalez iv

Rise Alexandra Burton ‘17

let us take over empires here and make the people believe that today and tomorrow and yesterday are all the same so they paint the streets with every color and life is every moment won by one

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An Old Saying Andy Kim ‘16

“Look at that,” she said, pointing to a bike on the side of the road. “People can leave them there now without worrying about thieves.” A field mouse about the size of a tangerine skittered between its wheels. “Look how rich we’ve become.” I shrugged at my bags.

That day, we walked back to her hanok home.

pantun berkait Andy Kim ‘16

“It’s raining,” I hear, whispered over light smoke, snow lit hills, and tinted windows pasted with headlines: overhead lies made real by pounding glass against furnace wrought lights. Smoke and snow lit those hills, shattering windows, black, against eggshell white. Listen: just lead, lead on, pounding glass against a furnace. Write lines around necks tightly, kept in line by black on eggshell white. Listen: Just lead, lead on those nimble fingers, cut two days from printed lines around necks, tightly kept in line by paper flags and black bow ties. That hour, a sweat beaded those nimble fingers, cut two days from printed, “don’t cross that redline.” Overthought truths made real by plastic bags and neon skies. For hours, a sweat beaded whispering, “Here I am.” I hear, but I forget that it was raining.

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Thunderstorm Ian Goldsmith ‘19

The air bogs down the underbelly of the sky bringing it closer to the earth making barometers cry “i’m feeling low” but barometers are dead and the sense of percolation ruins the living “come on” and it comes on no 10% chance gonna save you now you hear it in the distance on the porch sitting in that peeling white wood rocking chair of slats probably picked up in hopes of idyllic lifestyles but then the rain moves like a block of sandstone pushed by Jews over slippery sand dunes little plops starting on one side of the street and then they encompass the street and then the whole thing is taken over and the world is pelted with H20 and some other dissolved molecules, the road is the river, Zeus is like “fuck this shit” and summons charge from the ground to fly to the sky and the world goes CRRRRRRBOOOOOM and then 10 minutes pass and the sky calms down but still is low and this happens everyday the sky has some weird seasonal affective disorder stuff going on does it need medication or just a sacrifice lets keep shitting in it and see what happens

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Spiritus Sancti Ian Goldsmith ‘19

Outside on an above ground electrical box some unknown body stenciled Jesus or more accurately around Jesus my dad called it “negative space” with His absence we make the image and use it to defile our temples a tree grows strong and green

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What We Do With Teenage Dreams Mary Jarvis ‘16

Gaze on old holograms, lit up corners elbows deep in boxes trademarked and lethal with those dangerous books and those dirty magazines beneath the mattress stuffed and starched ready in brimstone bedrooms where wallpaper, hiding halogen lamps, whispers secrets righteous and feeble.

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Seventy-Two Hours in the Big Easy Madeleine Galvin ‘18

My filthy errors reek from the dreadlocks Weaved in my hair from boozey dirt of city Bars where I imbibed while flocks of tourists play, Seeking luck on Bourbon Street. Plastic beads Swing from the body of a woman, naked.

Each night I’m heated by the fire of regret With thoughts of childhood, family, Mom’s regret If I told her the story of my dreadlocks.

Morning, a frat pool party, half-naked, I begin to chug; no pause for the City Of Dead, or Tulane kids, on whose brow sweat beads.

Without a Hurricane they cannot play.

Five o’clock crashes in and it’s time to play.

At the Boot I throw back shots of No Regret, While my cousin dances amongst strings of beads Gold and green; the boy looks as he unlocks The car and we zoom past the city Billboards marked “WOMEN,” then smaller, “naked.”

New Orleans breath blows warm on my naked Skin. I find an ID; we’re ready to play, But first, bump this snow – you’re a city Girl, right? Yes, yes, from the City of Regret, Waiting, hush hush, as the bouncer unlocks A door adorned with crystalline beads,

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Gold and green, like the sheets I’ll wake up in. Beads Of sweat from his heat, this beautiful naked Boy who forgets my name, but not my dreadlocks.

Walking barefoot, I pass men who play Mingus tunes. They unleash my flood of regret Because I’ve drowned in this easy city.

Responsibility hits in the city Airport where I sit, gripping three day old beads Gold and green; the image of regret.

For I was left in a pile of clothes, naked, Weary like porch-sitting old men who can’t play.

They’re buried in thoughts that the past unlocks.

Innocence spoiled by the city, left naked Like the women in beads who say, “come play!”

Regret burns; the memories still come in flocks.

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To The Bottle of Champagne I Just Threw Across the Room Andres Vaamonde ‘18

It shatters a thunderclap of glass crescendo crescendo the shards dance apocalyptic escaping beneath the carpet to a land too dark to notice their scarring while its sticky blood stain two diverging sound rivers down the wall, so as not to forget itself.

Wonder what white beaches in what sunny paradises that bottle once called home.

Wonder the grains of sand uprooted & reborn in welded fire howling for the feet that once imprinted memories in them. Wonder why the waves lean in to kiss the beach day after day after day only to be brushed back by the very sands they are trying to save. Hope that when the broken bottle returns to the sea as garbage as it will, as all things do, that the ocean will absolve its sins in a salty baptism.

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Wonder all this but hear nothing nothing nothing but your vacuum mind tell itself adagio adagio you weren’t trying to hurt anybody. you weren’t

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iv. Office Hours Julian Caplan

Collapsed lung muttering, tongue wet, uttering charming rhetoric jargon louder than I can think:

Decrepit Marxist:

Sputtering off to schizoanalytic sleep, his impotence grows stronger with his years and knowledge of a hundred thousand books. [shh go online silently] Awoken by a sneeze-snot mist mixing after death with dust of books and VHS, he removes his glasses, gazing through his quiet evening dust and wrinkles of forgotten names.

He teaches: we desire from presence, not lack sentio precedes cogito an emphasis on fragments and the visceral “My vices are insanity and esoterism.”

His current project is Nietzsche’s most revealing work, crucial to understanding today’s world: a daguerreotype myth embedded in a German tree, in demand of proper hermeneutic excavation.

He aims to catch the specter in a book of only epigraphs and footnotes.

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Dandelion Claire Dingle ‘17

A weed with skinny roots and a universe of fifty white arms, hanging sideways alone in the grass, your yellow shine forgotten. Rip you up straight from the dirt, fat fingers that choke your stalk and break you open, so I feel nectar. My breath an uninvited wind, you fly for an empty field and pray that the rain will come.

Night Claire Dingle ‘17

Gin tongue spits slur words that lay you down with a rough hand on a peach thigh to sleep in just your shoes.

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Communications With a Soldier Ariella Reidenberg ‘16

The media shows photographs of dead children and flags.

But all I can see is the photo album you brought to my home.

I don’t want to go into the army, you cried, I don’t want to fight.

When you reached the Gaza strip, they strapped a gun on your back and put a flower in your pocket.

Hitgaagati eleykha, you wrapped my wrist in a bracelet.

Ani mitzta’er, you wrap their wrists with hospital bands.

6,000 miles away, I prayed for your safe return.

6,000 miles away, the very people you protect curse your existence.

6,000 months ago, we were treated just the same.

60 years ago, we were nearly wiped out.

6 days ago, I received my last note from you.

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Season v. (1) to relearn body (2) to forget Prerana Chatty ‘16

My body taught me absence It carved space to hold missing syllables I filled it with unfinished leaves caught between crushed and colored – This is a different flesh than I have known what is the changing of a season but the reconfiguring of space?

The absence of a body goes unnoticed far longer than the absence of a word but it is a discoloring I no longer believe in.

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Circuit Break Rachel Whalen ‘19

I had an idea that maybe if I zoomed in, pinched the empty air around you I could make you life-size so I tried.

But all that fit in my hand was your eye and not even the whole thing— I had an idea that if I pushed back, scrolled down through the past down down down plummeted down down dI could hear you so I tried.

But there were only echoes of you, only pieces that cut my heart when I tried to touch them— I had this idea that if I searched for you, spelled your name out loud every letter perfect I could find you so I tried.

But many came, others came with your name and they weren’t you they just weren’t you so I stopped having ideas.

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I stared at plastic stars in a ripped night sky and tried to know what truth was.

I said truth to know what truth was: Truth truth truth truthtru thtruthtr uthtru th t ruthtru tht ru t htruthtr uthtruthtrutht ruth t rut h until I forgot what I was saying.

I had an idea that shriveled in my mouth and I couldn’t I couldn’t I just couldn’t swallow it so I spit it back out.

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Budding Bike Ride Siobhan Brandman‘17

Bikes ride through woods of uncertainty Certainly still and still figuring out The contours of this copse; its curvy Grass path and chance jutting branches cloud Sight lines and slightly sidetrack the path.

Long grass—nature’s way to distract Infant bonds through biking bliss and the wrath Of burning thighs and sweaty palms that attract Two bikes, once diverged, now ride on track turn Like milk and honey, running down the body Clutches to skin, adjusts to bumps, yearns To reach more landscape, craving the copse’s scenery.

This is nature’s way of taking root, Diverting from the rotting with blossoming fruit.

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In Your Mouth (Like Offerings) Anran Yu ‘17

I’m sorry for the debris I left in your eyes, those constellations that used to look like things we’d talk about often.

The enormous white dog. The mountains in Italy. The clean, bright apartment in a borough we never decided.

And then the things you never said the letters from my students on the fridge, my mother’s recipes, your scribbles tucked inside my coat pockets.

I’m sorry they’re just bruises now.

Watercolors fading by the day.

I’m sorry for how I didn’t know just how little I could really promise, the interest on a loan, no collateral.

I should have known what it means to love a poet. How you’d build so much with my clumsy words.

And I’m sorry I never learned how to love before you, that I’m going to take what you taught me and give it to someone else. That one day we’re going to look at each other like strangers, that I’ll remember you and feel nothing.

Not even this. Not even god, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

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Quiet and Tactless Sarah Lazarich ‘16

I imagined our bodies were two warring countries, borders writhing two armies urgently defining the cartography of my loss.

Where does it hurt?

You have never touched me here Or here Or here.

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Money Grows on Maple Trees Brianna Zaino ‘18

When my friend returned to campus from study abroad He brought with him a rich golden elixir My friend busts into my apartment shouting “You need to try this!!”

I must have looked incredulous, so he explained: He was wandering through the no so lamp-lit streets of Toronto When a man named Rob appears, “Hey kid! I got what you need! Trust me, I was the mayor.”

My friend takes his new maple leaf shaped bottle, Proceeding to the nearest diner To slather his potion on some pancakes Outside, the red and yellow foliage became green with riches He pranced around collecting his newly discovered wealth Stashing it away in a security deposit box Like all good things, it could never last When he finished the bottle, he was no more richer than when he began All he was left with was a security deposit box Filled with maple leaves

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When the Sun Has Set Tina He ‘19

When the sun has set Everything I take pride in cracks up What’s left A speck of dust, or the rustling of leaves Or the signs of stars that I have to follow When the sun has set The flesh is no longer nuder than the senses My heart is sounding a danger signal The senses are no longer nuder than the flame And so it burns, without ashes When the sun has set My freezing fingers can no longer Hold a pen, or brush a warm cheek Or cable my conflicting desires So I choose to close the door When the sun has set Icarus can no longer fly Nor can he die Yet I know many of them will reappear in my dream Many suns. Many Icaruses.

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At Week’s End Alejandra Alvarez ‘17

Listen carefully for the timbre of the crying, the way it carries across a room like boats across the sea, heading northwards.

Salvation is only a handful of miles away, we remind ourselves, and the day unfolds.

Beneath benches along the sidewalk and up in the branches of stooped trees, we find the landmarks: the leaf with edges gently curled, the cigarette cowering from shoes long departed, the cracked skin of concrete pressing deep into the earth: this is self-portraiture.

Long after I make landfall, I’ll wait for the sighing to reach my hands, wait for the hilt of it to rest softly against my palms so that I may pierce the calm once more with its contours.

An endless procession of boats and journeys, of sighting land and blessing the sand upon which we collapse.

Yet the earth is the earth; these legs, unreliable; and the stars, resilient in their silence, in their guilty embellishment of seas beholden to the art of burial.

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Chainsmoker Kristen Lovely ‘18

The utterances from within Fester on my fingertips And erode yours to bone Sun to sun, face to face Sober silence weighs heavy Handprints on my chest Chokeholds on your neck Regrets repressed for good Yet there’s evidence in our eyes Flame to filter, feet to grass Time gets shorter I’ll linger a little longer Another cigarette to your lips Loneliness sets in

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Symbole Brian Young ‘17

Your hand moved across mine I felt the touch as she click clanked the coins into my palm and it was night and you were there but then I wasn’t when the brush bent back and her eyes were pale blue I thought your eyes were blue until I saw brown eyes in the market I felt another body and I saw the lights of Paris Je t’aime as our bodies met “Dímelo en español, en mi lengua, mi amor” he was no longer you for an instant though his name still felt like yours my lips stuttered to find something some sign that wasn’t there until I felt the skin and you were here again beside me You sat across from me drinking black coffee as you always do you talked of Paris you had the right eyes your name was yours you were you in every way but I could feel it wasn’t you so I thought of Paris that night 23

Golden State of Mindlessness J. Gabriel Gonzalez ‘17

to Julia, because she asked.

As I lick the salt from my hand and suck down another shot of oily Shop-Rite brand tequila, I dream of California.

I dream of sunny hope, of the freshly shaven hope of the young man to whom the telegraph shouted, Go West!

I dream of growing up with the country, but it’s already a 47-year-old-man, torn between the jaunty memories of his jukebox glory days and a paralyzing fear of little blue pills and creamed corn on Tuesdays.

Really, when I dream of California, I’m dreaming that the salt on my lips was judiciously and vigorously applied by a vivacious, dirty-blonde girl, fresh from the rolling Pacific with a bottle of Suaza in her hands.

America can have its candy-apple-red-Corvette– as long as I’m not the designated driver.

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When you sleep over Lauren Stuzin ‘16

I’m so kindly aqueous in this corner of my bed seeping into the crevice by the wall I am just another pillow shirtless dream on me god forbid I wake you I flutter and flip like a paper snowflake a delicate labyrinth of eyelets, perforations which is not human but is penetrable and pretty you, in your royally satisfied state organs of snores exotic contentment that I do not know and will never know with you

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Cyclic Alexandra Burton ‘17

we look at tomorrow through magnifying glasses and hope for passing days to fly but they collapse around us until we are imperceptible among them having accomplished nothing but motion and wheeling chaos of regularity but if I could know the bullet of time shoots only straight, I might wish for viscous air and thick moments so I may make my way slowly forward and still look calmly on now

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Acknowledgments Marginalia would like to extend special thanks to the following people: Professor Ishion Hutchinson, for graciously agreeing to serve as our advisor and lend his expertise.

Corrine Bruno, for allowing us to harass the English major listserv, and all she does to keep the Cornell English department up and running.

James Toomey and Frank Menz, for their friendship and support on behalf of the Cornell Literary Society.

Calvin Kim, for his phenomenal cover art and his continuing presence as a source of inspiration despite his graduation from Cornell.

All of the poets who sent us wonderful submissions, for making our selection process so damn hard.

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Marginalia is an independent publication and is not affiliated with any other publication, on or off Cornell’s campus. It is funded by the SAFC. Any and all views expressed in these poems are of the poets themselves, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board, the magazine itself, or Cornell University.

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