Spectrum: Northeastern University's Literary Arts Magazine: 2014-2015 Calendar

northeastern university’s literary arts magazine

spectrum 2014-15 calendar

Editor

Aislyn Fredsall

Layout and Design

Rowan Walrath

Advertising Manager

234 Curry Student Center

Email

spectrum.magazine@gmail.com

Mailbox

434 Curry Student Center

Website

www.spectrum.neu.edu

Contact

Spectrum Staff

Office

Lauren Smith

Secretary

Julia Renner

Treasurer

William Jackson

Cover art adapted from “L.K.” by Leah Corbett

Copyright © Spectrum Literary Arts Magazine and respective authors.

All rights reserved.

Poetry and Prose

Save your writing as a word (.doc) or text (.txt) file, one piece per document Name your submission file “Author-Title” Include name, contact info, and title of work in top left corner of page Indicate special layout/tabulation specification (if applicable) Limit submissions to five double-spaced pages at 12 pt font

Submission Guidelines

Save images in JPEG format, 300 dpi resolution Art and Photography Name your submission file “Artist-Title” Include name, contact info, and any editing restrictions

To Submit

Email all submissions with your name and the title of your work in the subject line You may also leave a hard copy of your work in our mailbox or submit it at a meeting While you may submit as often as you wish, please send us only your best six submissions at a time

No part of this publication may be reproduced without the permission of Spectrum Literary Arts Magazine and/ or respective authors. Spectrum Literary Arts Magazine reserves the right to edit submissions for layout, grammar, spelling, and punctuation unless otherwise indicated by the author. Any references to people living or dead are purely coincidental except in the case of a public figure. The views and opinions represented in this media do not necessarily reflect those of Northeastern University or the staff of Spectrum Literary Arts Magazine.

small confessions, monday morning at nine

Amalfi Coast Leah Molofsky

Amy Leigh Hood i’ve been trying to say that i love you for the last week now: you’d turn over, my white bedsheet caught in all your corners, sleep still lying thickly on your lashes, one soft hand on my hip, and the words would bubble from somewhere deep and warm in my stomach like some tar like some honey like a dark molasses, caught in the gums, and it’s not as if i even know what that means. perhaps love is a scent, something spicy, faintly familiar, like leftover smell of cloves or ginger after someone’s cleaned the kitchen; or perhaps love is watching you get out of the shower, brushing your teeth with the half-used Colgate toothpaste-tube suspended on my soapdish, an absent hand grabbing the corner of my purple bath-towel; perhaps love is something deep blue, still, like the dark pools that sit and wait, patient, in the canals that cut veins up and down through this city. you turn over, it’s far too early. there’s a weak sort of sun coming in through the windows, a film of ice caught in its corners, some gold light slipping through, those sweet, round words caught in between my molars, resting warmly beneath my tongue, in the corners of my mouth, full, expectant, waiting, a soft weight.

September Sunday

Monday

Tuesday Wednesday Thursday

Friday

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Labor Day

First day of fall classes

and blew the fire out from you like Lion’s breath and under that moonlight you were just the right shade of evening the circle filled like a golden fish bowl and then all your ember-tipped words spilled out and broke us back until my teeth were shining and the moon swallowed me whole

swallowed

the Mist

and as you spilled yourself into the circle over our heads I was distracted by the applause of wind trees the uneven wave-crash of leaf against leaf and the wind rush across the grass

Abbie Doane-Simon

the sky the color of blue fog and grey ocean backlit by the ideas of stars

Victoria Butler Enter

you stood softly against the sky out of the circle of fire almost silhouetted

October Sunday

Monday

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Columbus Day No classes

Celebratory Dumplings Andrea Hampel

When I was a child my father told me that God made the grass green as a kindness to our eyes because any other color would hurt.

My eyes, my father’s eyes, hazel.

But I want green, the grass.

Hazel is a reminder.

In the mirror assaulted by reflection.

Mom and brother are brown. The same team.

Russet hair offsets their carefree eyes My father and me, linked by a bond that I wish away.

The apple never falls far from the tree Haunted by these words

Hope Henry

Because the tree is rotting and the fragile apples drop onto unyielding earth.

Seeds are vulnerable, shielded by malleable exterior.

Once cut, exposed, green apples corrode to brown and seeds endure by their own merit.

Acceptance

November Sunday

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Friday

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Veterans Day No classes

Thanksgiving Break begins

Untitled

Julia Boudreau

My morning: sleeping an hour past the chime of my alarm; gulping down cheap, lukewarm coffee with too much sugar; borrowing my roommate’s makeup to cover up the purple hickey on my neck, because I have a job interview today and I should probably look professional.

The contents of my mind: lyrics mismatched with rambling melodies; an exclamation-pointed text from my best friend; stray lines from the scene I performed last week; the warmth of his hands on my bare shoulders; the pressure of his lips; nagging thoughts about my unfinished homework; a dim reminder to call my mother tomorrow.

Quotidian

The contents of my stomach: a cinnamon raisin bagel, burnt and slathered with artificial butter; two cups of said cheap coffee; a pumpkin spice latte with whipped cream, my splurge for the day; a glazed donut; a handful of Cheez-its.

I think this is the happiest I’ve ever been.

Laurel Whelan

December Sunday

Monday

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Classes resume

Winter Break begins

Last day of fall classes

Reading day

First day of final exams for fall classes

Last day of final exams for fall classes

Final exam makeup day for fall classes if needed

2:43 am

fingers intertwined resting on the sweater you left behind.

Dwarf Sahar Salari

Alexandra Forzato

January Sunday

Monday

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First day of spring classes

MLK Day No classes

Some Certainties

Each poem is supposed to be the last one.

I pick up eyeliner at the drugstore and act like this time, I’ll finally learn to use it.

I take the long way home even without the requisite cigarette between my fingers.

One day, I’ll find a postcard at Disneyland and not think of you. One day, I’ll peruse the alcohol section at some duty-free and not want to bring a bottle home for you.

My iTunes library probably hates me for all the songs I keep skipping. My heart says the same thing about the beats.

YJ Lee

This Is It

Bianca Zabala

February Sunday

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Presidents’ Day No classes

takeoff

Lindsey Ashe

Untitled

There may as well be a suitcase under her foot as she bites her lip at you across the dinner table and even when you’re walking with her hand in yours down a moonlit city street she’s imagining where that plane is going the one you mistook for a star and made a futile wish on.

You can try to stay an incomplete map so you don’t become another place she’s already been but you can’t create new back alleys and monuments just so you’re worth coming back to— construction takes more time than she’ll give you, even if you bribe the workers.

You never thought it would be a bad thing to be a stable foundation.

You’ll end up stamping her passport with a kiss, but didn’t you know that?

There wasn’t ever a promise to break and instead of falling asleep with her in your arms, you’ll be wondering if the strangers in the rainforest and the desert and the tundra can love her like you would.

And even when you’re holding her now her back to you, her head on your pillow, you’re staring at the ceiling, holding the worry that you only want to love her because you know you’ll have to let her go.

Julia Boudreau

March Sunday

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Classes resume

Spring Break begins

I’ve lost

Thirsty Murat Uzer

Alexandra Rocovich

the ability to lose track of time. Instead, I learned to tell time and worship those tiny ticking hands. The mystery of phenomena I can now recognize as physics.

I learned that E = MC2. Training wheels. The electric hope I felt when I blew a dandelion into the wind.

Those fuzzies cause weeds that I now have to rip from the ground. Bed time. The privilege of ordering grilled cheese for lunch, guilt-free. One word: pimples. The magic of a secret. Now it’s called “gossip,” and has a tendency to come out from under the rug. Taking my time choosing a wish to cast on each of my eyelashes.

When mascara didn’t weigh them down and coat their wings like oil spills do to manatees. They can’t swim anymore, and my eyelashes don’t fly. Those days when I had to wait for my mom to get off the phone and internet to call for a play date on the house phone.

The term “play date,” like many other things, now just sounds inappropriate. Scribbling down my wish list for Santa in pencil. Pencils are for math, and math no longer involves numbers so I can’t do that either. I lost my diary, and I lost my purple glitter pen, and I lost the simplicity of everything scribbled inside. Now I have to read in between the lines, and I still haven’t figured that out. I’ve lost those days when I came home with a scraped knee, or when kisses made things better and not worse because we gave them sparingly and soberly.

I’ve lost those days when contacts didn’t make me tear, and when I wasn’t using this as an excuse for not understanding where all of it went, and what kind of mess has replaced it.

April Sunday

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Patriots’ Day

Last day of spring classes

Reading day

First day of final exams for spring classes

If your stubborn heels, Worn out from breaking

new ground,

Could muster the strength, you’d click Them together so hard, they’d turn ruby red.

Seeing sights, Restless nights You take her in like a (shallow) breath Of fresh air And watch her lips purse Into a Mona Lisa smirk.

She may never be yours to lose, So you give up yourself instead.

A change of place, And dreams to chase, A future you can’t yet face, And memories too hard to erase.

In your new home, The birds greet each morning With childish cries.

The planes fly so low, You can wave to the passengers inside.

Looking up, you find yourself wondering How much of you hasn’t yet arrived How much is still Up in the air.

Miranda Paquet

And it’s the first song you’ve recognized In almost two days.

Les Tams-Tams

Leah Corbett

“Get back, Get back, Get back to where you once belonged.”

Up in the Air

The man on the corner sings,

May Sunday

Monday

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Last day of final exams for spring classes

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First day of Summer I and Full Summer classes

Memorial Day No classes

Commencement

L.K. Leah Corbett

There is no Absence of color.

The picket fence Will always need A new coat And the perfect Presidential residence Would be purple.

Robin Reyes

Election Day

The gold coast Houses the redwoods And Texas borders The blue gulf.

Do not question Which color best Accents your rage.

Protect the rainbow Our country sits At the foot of.

June Sunday

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First day of final exams for Summer I classes

Last day of final exams for Summer I classes

Last day of Summer I classes

The infamous side-dish to a liver Slopped on cafeteria china And spooned with malleable cutlery That probably cost an outsourced horrorshow Pennies to build.

And I’m certain now That even that sideshow psychologist Would refuse to share your table, Because you only consume a Mayan delicacy, And leave the shell to rot.

Fava Beans

Anika Krause

But you ignore my skin, my sin, Tied to your own in red yarn map, Not understanding that you are the mouse bones That keep appearing in my soup.

Leah Corbett

Something Beautiful

But you seem to relish in them Without relish on them.

Naked, flayed, Skin slipping off flavorless meat.

July Sunday

Monday

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Independence Day No classes

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First day of Summer II classes

Grand Tetons Leah Molofsky

Oops

So instead of leaving a falsely apologetic sorry-I-won’t-be-here-when-you-wake-up, I left: my head on your collarbone and hoped for the best.

Stephanie Eng

I stubbed my toe on the drawer of that one night stand and lost my favourite necklace somewhere between the spaces of your bed and my hands.

August Sunday

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First day of final exams for Full Summer classes

First day of final exams for Summer II classes

Last day of final exams for Summer II classes

Vacation begins

Last day of Full Summer classes

Last day of final exams for Full Summer classes Last day of Summer II classes

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