The Olivetree Review No. 53 Spring 2013

OTR 53

OTR

© The Olivetree Review, CUNY Hunter College, Thomas Hunter Room 212, 695 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10065. theolivetreereview.com Spring 2013, No. 53. This journal is funded by Hunter College’s student activity fees and is distributed free to the university community.

Artworks featured on the cover are “Grunge” by Marie Coneys and “Butterfly Box”

by Sandra Talbot. The inside cover features selected content from Issue 53. The fonts used are Aver, Existence, and Market Deco. Design by Theadora Hadzi.

Submissions are reviewed September through November and February through May. We consider submissions of visual art, fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and drama. The Olivetree Review is staffed by undergraduate students of Hunter College.

All submissions are reviewed anonymously by Hunter College students.

Permission to publish the content in this issue was granted to the Olivetree Review by the artists and authors. These contributors retain all original copyright ownership of works appearing in the Olivetree Review before and after its publication. Copying, reprinting, or reproducing any material in this journal is strictly prohibited.

Printed by Sun Ray Printing, St. Cloud, Minnesota.

4

THE OLIVETREE REVIEW

ISSUE 53 SPRING 2013

THE LITERARY AND ARTS JOURNAL OF HUNTER COLLEGE SINCE 1983

5

OTR

contents INTERVIEW with DONNA MASINI

Shadow Sakura 102

ART EDITOR’S PRIZE JANTSANKHOROL ERDENEBAYAR

Supermassive Black Hole DAVID CARMONA Wolves on Wall Street JACOB CINTRON Dicephalic

42 KI SUB LEE Obligation 65 106

21

NELLY GORDPOUR Supper 38

6

RACHEL ILG Reptilia 32 Consume 76 DAVID KANBERGS Untitled 78

EUGENE DANYO Agradecimento 22

THEADORA HADZI Expectations Michezo Santi

90

66

MARIE CONEYS Twins 12 Grunge 51 Linocut Lady 89

PALOMA DELL’AQUILA One

GABRIELA HERNANDEZ Un Ragazzo Vero

101

10 52 92

RABIA RANA Silent Shadows

70

RYOKO SAKAI A New Start

24

SANDRA TALBOT Butterfly Box Density

75 98

GABRIELA VOLL 3 of Series C

56

DRAMA EDITOR’S PRIZE MILES TRAHAN Auto-Erotic

80

DAVID M. DELEON Ragnarok 58 LENORE EROS Lull a Bye

39

JOHN MACDONALD The Violent Letters of Bear and Stella 14

POETRY EDITOR’S PRIZE KATE RYAN Beast Song

93

ETINOSA AGBONLAHOR Cleaning Out His Mother’s Room 36 Sunrise in Glen Spey 68

PROSE EDITOR’S PRIZE CLARE NAZARENA TASCIO Party Girl

26

JENNIFER CHENG Purple Flowers

72

LOUIS GAUDIO Danny and the Hyperbaric Chamber

94

KATE SOKOLOVSKY Eulogy 44

CONTRIBUTORS

108

AYENDY BONIFACIO A Moment Facing the Snow Fall 25 THOMAS CAUDILL Brussels to Paris Pale Blue Dot

79 100

LASZLÓ HOFFMANN Infinite Missal

54

KATE RYAN Tide Pool

11 7

OTR

Spring 2013 ADMINISTRATIVE AND EDITORIAL STAFF EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ASSOCIATE EDITORS David M. deLeon David Abreu Etinosa Agbonlahor MANAGING EDITOR Duwa Alebdy Jennifer Jade Yeung Jessica Astudillo Michael Betza ADMINISTRATIVE EDITOR David Carmona Rubana Rahman Lauren Christopher Jacob Cintron EDITORIAL ASSISTANT David M. deLeon Louis Gaudio Annie Dobbrow Angelica Enaje ART EDITOR Sean Fox Katherine Ernst Louis Guadio Sarah Gold DRAMA EDITOR Theadora Hadzi Valentyn Smith Lev Izraelit Dmitriy Kogan PROSE EDITOR Diana Kosianka Esther Ko Wes Lau Lindsay Mairanz POETRY EDITOR Hafsa Muhammad Jennifer Jade Yeung Nicole Pergue Nicole Saenz CREATIVE DIRECTOR Jason Sloan Theadora Hadzi Beth Vardy Vlad Velicu OFFICE MANAGER Chireau White Sean Fox Meghann Williams Brenda Wong PUBLICITY Leying Zhang James Guo Kevin Zych

8

Letter From The Editor DAVID M. DELEON

T

he past year has seen plenty of new things for the Olivetree Review.

We expanded our page count to include more student art and writing.

We partnered with the Undergraduate Theatre Club to start a whole new section: Drama. We gave away hundreds of dollars in prizes in our contests and hundreds of dumplings and empanadas at our Open Mics.

In response, and to our surprise, Student Activities named the OTR as “Outstanding Student Club of the Year.” They gave us a handsome plaque which is currently propped against a pencil sharpener because we’ve been too busy to find a place to put it.

But none of that would mean anything if it wasn’t for the response from students. This year we gave out nearly our entire back catalogue of issues.

I’ve been amazed and surprised by the quality of work we’ve been able to print, and this semester is no exception. We’ve published newcomers and we’ve watched old friends grow and develop.

This semester we feature an interview with award-winning poet and Hunter professor Donna Masini. Professor Masini not only went to Hunter as an undergraduate, but she was also published in Issue 2 of the Olivetree Review. It’s a treat to get her input on poetry and life for Issue 53.

It has been my pleasure to serve as Editor-in-Chief this year. It’s been exhausting, but I’m confident that the next generation of students will carry on the work that started almost thirty years ago. My time here has been an absolute privilege, and I thank you all for the opportunity.

Sincerely,

David M. deLeon

9

OTR

Editor’s prizes Art “Supermassive Black Hole” speaks on an aesthetic level as well as on the level of construction and theme. The piece, which is achieved through a careful weaving and layering of each piece of cardboard, is captivating. Every fragment is dependent on the other, and this creates a relationship which constructs a whole. The piece sets up a dialogue about the relationship of modern people to society, taking a critical stance on consumerist culture. Scale is also important. Because the piece is lifesized, it induces the feeling of being overwhelmed and imposed upon.

Supermassive Black Hole by Jantsankhorol Erdenebayar

66

Drama “Auto-Erotic” blends cinematic elements with theatricality while still being sassy and provocative. The writing is astute, the clever role reversals keep the pages turning, and the intrepid subject matter is entirely re-readable.

The darkly vintage aesthetics entwined with the table-turning climax leave the imagination lingering in the gutter.

Auto-Erotic by Miles Trahan

10

80

Poetry When I started at the OTR as an associate editor in 2010, we received about 70 poetry submissions. This spring, we received an unprecedented 194 poems and I was delighted to find myself working with dedicated, discerning editors. Reading “Beast Song” for the first time, I intuitively knew that this writer was serious about craft. The images are precise and quick and reflect the content. Kate Ryan has a wonderful ear for language, and “Beast Song” should be read aloud to experience its charge and rhythm (as should all poems).

Beast Song by Kate Ryan

93

Prose By layering vivid details in spare prose, Clare Tascio creates an inventive world that we immediately recognize. It’s the real world—just as dirty and boring as the one we inhabit every day—elevated through the lens of a girl on the brink of adolescence. The solid realism of the first half of the story bolsters the impact of the funhouse realism of its climax. We glimpse strains of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” or Roman Polanski’s Repulsion in the way we’re drawn into a seismic shift in the protagonist’s psychology. Rather than a descent into madness, however, “Party Girl” offers something more familiar and more haunting—a descent into reality.

Party Girl by Clare Nazarena Tascio

26

11

OTR

EXPECTATIONS THEADORA HADZI OIL ON CANVAS 12

Tide Pool KATE RYAN POETRY she was born in the flood season, the crops of mold lush and fertile in the basement. when her mother screamed and she rushed forth gasping in the blood, the water breached the sandbag levees, it rose to greet her and it waited beneath that hospital window on the third story, waited for the pain to stop and to hear the child howl, and at the sound it receded back to the banks like a dog, waiting, yawning and circling and settling. as she grew, she grew in mud, the red clay of summer blooming behind her ears, the winter rains heavy and dark and the greens going from bright to pine, she never feared the distance through the swamp, never failed to stomp through storms when the wind blew and god came down in sheets and bursts she felt at home, she smiled up into it as the rain washed her muddier she said hello how are you papa? mama hollering to come inside you crazy child, you’ve got no galoshes (and the water swirled in the gutters, nipped her ankles like a puppy), she said mama says hello too.

13

OTR

TWINS MARIE CONEYS DIGITAL COLLAGE 14

15

OTR

The violent Letters of bear and stella JOHN MACDONALD DRAMA STELLA (24, Intelligent, belligerent, totally confused and reactive) is traveling across the country. BEAR (23, thoughtful, exacting, totally confused and reactive) is at home in New England where Bear and Stella once lived together. These are two people who can’t live with each other but find it unbearable to be without each other.

Stella is wandering around Downstage Left and Bear is fairly stationary Downstage Right.

STELLA Dear Bear, You’re a dumb motherfucker. You are one of the dumbest motherfuckers I’ve ever met. See, I’ve been homeless in Asheville and got blackout in Denver so I’ve dealt with a lot motherfuckers who are dumb as shit, but I’ve never had to deal with as dumb a motherfucker as you. I don’t love you just because you’re dumb. You’re a dark clouded bastard and it’s messing up my eyes. Not everything is so sad all the time but you won’t ever listen or look because you’re bunched up in a little ball of crazy. It’s not a good look for you. You wear plaid. I think of you as a bridge, no, a dam, you’re a motherfucking walrus. Sorry about all this nonsense. I love you with all my heart.

Your wife, 16

Stella BEAR Dear Stella, I remember when our two lines began, and how they merged, and when they strayed. But I never had any luck all by myself.

That’s why I’m writing you back. Even though you’re batshit. Your dad came by looking for you, wondering where his little Stella might be in constellation. I told him I didn’t know, that you ran away, that he might try calling further out. I didn’t tell him how long it’s been or about the stream of unmarked letters, or that you’re not coming back or that I think you’re dead. Caught a lump in my throat for that one.

The past is somewhere between recalled and forgot. I am tortured by the in-between seasons. It’s Fall and my father just died. His name was George. Just like mine. I don’t expect you to be around anytime soon, or even get this by the time his funeral is through. I’m writing to tell you, I fucking hate you, and I wish you could hold my hand as I lay dear old dad to rest. That’s as emotional as I’m going to get. I can do stoic all by myself. I just want to tell you, I think you’re an egregious cunt.

Your faithful husband, Bear STELLA Dear Bear, I’m coming home.

Stella BEAR Dear Stella, Do you remember how to get here?

Bear STELLA Bear, I can follow constellations just fine.

Stella 17

OTR BEAR Stella, No you can’t. Use the Interstate System.

Bear STELLA Dear Bear, It’s December and I’m still not home yet can you believe it? It’s not my fault. I haven’t been sure where I’m going in weeks because its been so cloudy. I can’t find the way back even if I wanted to. Don’t tell my parents anything. I can’t believe they’re still worried. That’s nice. I guess. But I left them a long time ago. I can’t believe they wanted me to exist in the first place. If I had a choice, I wouldn’t want me to.

I do love you, Stella BEAR Dear Stella, Your thoughts make me nauseous. Everyday I go from my house, in my jeep, the same one we used to have sex in, where I still smell your scent in, to the gas station. I buy sausage and egg biscuits. It’s food for truckers, even though there are no trucks here. I like routine. Even if it does feel like the common cold. I like these old roads we traveled out upon, just to come back again. I will always travel these roads. I think they’re novel, like I did when we were kids with car keys. They’re even more novel now that you’re not on them with me. I can go wherever I want and not listen to you bitch about how shitty I drive.

Your dumb husband, Bear STELLA Dear Bear, You’re as crazy as cornbread, did they stuff you with straw?

I’m sorry I’m not back yet. I’m lost, okay? Your roads are not novel at all! They’re cold, taste bitter like candy only the infirmed can stomach because it tastes like death. Those roads are all for you. Enjoy. And don’t talk about fucking me, 18

Bear. It makes me ache. You got me thinking about middle school and wanting to see what was down there, Bear, but the thought alone isn’t going to make me come back any better. Remember. When we were young. You were so embarrassed to be seen with me you said we were siblings.

Even then I thought you were dumb as shit. But boy I do love you, you fucking Bear. Thanks for having my mother call every diner in Montana to see if I was there. She called looking for a girl with a raccoon for hair. What a bitch.

Hey, it’s almost spring so the clouds are disappearing. It’s a big country, Bear. I can almost make out the North Star.

It’s brighter here then where you are and it’s getting me all confused. Can you believe I’m in Montana, Bear? I went too far north. I’m in faaaking Montana. There are many Jeeps. I think of you constantly, like the Jesus prayer.

Love you until I die die die, Stella BEAR Stella, If you said the Jesus prayer you’d be here already. You’re not coming home.

Bear STELLA Bear, You’re right. I’m not.

Stella BEAR Stella, I didn’t expect you to.

Bear STELLA Bear, Yes you did. Motherfucker.

Stella 19

OTR BEAR Dear Margaret, Try not to sneeze when you open this. Enclosed are some of the ashes of my father.

George STELLA Bear, I’ll rip your fucking eyes out.

Stella BEAR Stella, Come back and I’ll let you Bear STELLA Bear, Ok. Stella Pause.

No letter from Bear.

STELLA Bear, Do you realize how long its been? Why didn’t you write? It’s been five months since you told me I could rip your eyes out. I finally made it back. I’m eating a burrito at the gas station.

Stella BEAR Stella, I don’t believe you. I was in Starbucks today, writing this to you, and a little kid with a big backpack hit my coffee off the table. His mom tried to make him clean it up but I wouldn’t let him. He was innocent. Not like you. I thought 20

if you had done that I would have killed you right there in the store.

Love, Bear STELLA Dear Bear, I bought a peach today and threw it against the 7/11 and thought of your head as it pounded flat against the pavement and broke its insides. I picked it up to feel your little peach fucking head squish in my hand. I’m going to leave soon. Better come find me. Tag. You’re it.

Stella Star BEAR Stella, I still love you with all my heart.

Bear STELLA Dear Bear, You said you love me. Do ya mean it? Do ya really mean it? Do ya mean we can have a little baby bird blue house with a cheese grater and pasta strainer and nice narrow staircase leading up to the master bedroom where you and I will make sweet sweet satisfactory love three times a year but not on your birthday or anywhere near my ass. Where will you work? Wherever it is will they call you Mr. Bear?

I wonder. I don’t. I left. Right now I’m in the mid-Atlantic region fucking the mandolin player of an anti-folk band.

Come find me. Tag. You’re it. You moron.

Stella BEAR Dear Stella I’m not coming to find you. And you can’t torture me from so far away because even though I love you I do not care about you. Do whatever you want, I’m still here. To reiterate, my father died several months ago. I am still here picking 21

OTR

BEAR (CONT’D) up the pieces of his life. I guess you’re out on the road making pieces of yours. I hope one day you have a kid good enough to pick yours up too. Tag, you’re it.

Bear POST SCRIPT. WHAT DOES THE MANDOLIN PLAYER THINK WHEN HE’S BANGING A CHICK WITH A RING? STELLA Dear Bear, It’s a girl mandolin player. And you are not allowed to yell at me. Nobody is allowed to yell at me. That’s why you’re a true asshole. You’re not nearly as innocent as you wish I thought you were.

Stella Star BEAR Stella, Tag. You’re it.

Bear

22

ONE PALOMA DELL’AQUILA GELATIN SILVER PRINT 23

OTR

AGRADECIMENTO EUGENE DANYO AGED FILM 24

25

OTR

A NEW START RYOKO SAKAI DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY 26

A MOMENT FACING THE SNOW FALL AYENDY BONIFACIO POETRY It was dust that lifted the day White sun, lit bits, sun filtered Diamond pricks like a wave-like Cloud twice my size embracing Me; and inside, the pale street, cooled For the tenderness of powdered rain, was crossed.

Everything coated, blue and green Duckweed-esque and light over the rivers’ Sun, striped things dangling free-like; it was the ring of chiming Monk-bells from their shoulders, their helmeted cottoned heads Intricately woven, lithe linen lemon colored and sweet to the eyes that faced what was to fall.

Out of her Frosty arms, across the overcast pavement—my lower lip now alkaline A piece of salted fresh meat and this is the dust that lifts me It is flesh and art that make it true.

The smell of the Breeze that makes it real and soft and hard enough to feel.

And all the beautiful black faces, judicious coldness, warmly to one another, listless wonders in their eyes as the year’s final breath jolted the earth and everything was blue cold.

27

OTR

Party girl CLARE NAZARENA TASCIO PROSE

W

ith her eyes closed Dinah could pretend she was at a real beach. Someplace far from Meldern, NY, with its one gas station, two laundromats, and single-screen movie theater which you had to enter through TJ’s hardware store. With her eyes closed she could concentrate on the sun on her skin. Dinah’s whole body felt like it was expanding and reaching up, pounds of sunlight creating pockets of warm space inside her. She might just have turned rainbow-colored and floated up, up like an air balloon.

She could hear kids splashing, and she pretended it was the sound of small waves crashing into wet, chocolate-colored rocks.

The thing that ruined it was the smell.

“Ah gross! Dinah, he’s coming back over.”

Dinah opened her eyes and sat up on her pink-striped beach towel. An old goose with one foot and a chipped beak was eyeing their bag of chips. He had hard black eyes and muddy feathers. He honked at Dinah and her friend Krystal, bending his ugly neck toward them.

“Dammit,” said Dinah and picked 28

up a rock and aimed it at his chest. The old brute swerved and shrieked, going a few steps to the left then inclining his head toward the girls and starting forward again. Krystal grabbed the green spray bottle they’d brought to cool off and misted the goose while mumbling curses. The goose trotted away and landed, with an indignant squawk, in Meldern Lake, parting green and grey algae behind him.

Krystal sighed, threw down the bottle, and reached for another Cheez Chip. She offered the bag to Dinah, but Dinah shook her head. The smell of the lake took away her appetite. A mixture of hot mold and fermenting garbage.

The lake had been dug out of a valley years ago in the hope that it would attract tourists to the small town. All it had attracted were beer cans, old tires, broken glass, bird shit, dog shit, raccoons, and, sometimes, used refrigerators and toaster ovens. Last summer a kid had drowned in it.

Dinah reached for the sunscreen and lotioned her arms and legs which had started to pinch pink in the sun. She looked out over the lake, ignoring the ugly buoys that

PROSE PRIZE WINNER set off the swimming area from couldn’t read it at all. She laid it the rest of the lake. Just inside this on her stomach and watched the line was a dock where three boys boy with the castle. He looked very jumped up and down to make it serious. Not talking to the other shake. Dinah tried to concentrate kids, systematically choosing the only on the water beyond that and mud near enough the water to not on the pulpy white clouds in the be too wet or too dry. He wasn’t thin blue sky. One of the clouds building it tall. He was building it looked like a dress, another like around himself. A barricade. the head of a snake.

Over by the willow tree the Krystal hopped up and stretched transplanted sand turned into and, turning to Dinah with a flip of malnourished grass. Underneath her ponytail, said: “I’m gonna see the tree, a man with a big tanned what Jerry’s doing out there.” belly and white chest hair had Dinah grinned fallen asleep in his and winked. “Have Krystal screamed fold-out chair with fun,” she said. in his hand. and the sound aHisbeer “You wanna wife wore a pink come?” But Krystal slid into the air straw hat, and she was already looking like a feathery grabbed at her fourout at the dock year-old girl. where Jerry was thing, soft and “Goddammit now wrestling with Miranda, be a lady gentle.

Daniel.

Krystal for god’s sake. Stop adjusted her bikini bottom pulling the sand outta yer butt and glanced down at her chest, with yer finger, disgusting.” brushing off some sand.

Miranda screamed as her Dinah shook her head. “Nah, mother poured water from a bottle you go ahead, have fun. Don’t let over her legs to wash away the Jerry throw you in.” mud and sand.

“Ha. Whatever.” Krystal raised Dinah slipped her book into her one eyebrow, a skill she’d recently tote bag along with her sunscreen. acquired during History class and She put on her sandals and shook which was now her thing. “The out her towel, making sure it didn’t whole point is that he throws me touch sand tainted with hardened in.” Krystal jogged across the sand, goose turds. Dinah looked out to avoiding a boy building a castle the dock and waved at Krystal who out of mud, and jumped into the waved back. Dinah motioned that gold-brown water. she was leaving. Krystal blew her Dinah picked up the book she’d a dramatic kiss just before Jerry brought with her, but the sun hit pushed her over the dock. Krystal the page and turned the words screamed and the sound slid into into broken black spots. She the air like a feathery thing, soft 29

OTR and gentle.

Just outside the beach entrance there was an ice cream truck.

Dinah decided on the Rocket Popsicle. She hadn’t had one since she was little, and she used to love how her tongue would turn from red to blue, becoming a mixed purple by the end. The boy working the truck was a grade above her, a sophomore named Aaron. He had shaggy blonde hair and green eyes. When he handed her the popsicle Dinah had to reach very far up, and she felt her face get red as his eyes lingered on her bathing suit for a second too long.

“See ya round,” he said.

It was only half a mile from the lake to Dinah’s house. Hammon Drive wrapped around the lake, past a baseball field and playground, and led right up to her driveway. There were no sidewalks, but the road didn’t reach all the way to the steel railings. There was about twelve inches of gravel and dirt where a kid could walk without being in the street. Dinah ran her hand through the tall flowers behind the guardrail—long green weeds with dime-sized purple buds. Sometimes there would be daisies or Queen Anne’s lace, but Dinah didn’t pick any of these. The flowers right by the road smelled sour.

It was quiet. She heard the wind coming and going, making 30

its rounds. First in that tree, then that bush. Sometimes there was the faint echo of an angry swan or a busy lawnmower. But the road stayed empty. It was the middle of the day. Everyone was at work.

There was a bare stretch of road by the playground and the hot sun lay down white and straight and clean. Dinah felt the sun burning through her hair, kissing her eyelids, falling down her shoulders, dripping down her calves. She smelled good. The sun and sweat and sand smelled good on her. It was so much better when she was alone. Without the screaming kids, the geese, the stink of the lake. Dinah felt her chest go empty and expand out and she nearly cried happy. She wondered why she never ever felt this way in church, only outdoors, when she was alone. The road in front of her, the empty lawns to the left and right, the gleam bouncing off the new swings and slides—it hurt her heart with goodness.

The whole big world tingled in her fingertips, gently pulling her body and soul out, out to parallel the sky. Times like this Dinah felt like maybe she was a nymph, one of those Greek half-gods who had been born in a village but whose father or mother was god of earth, air, light, water. She was half her surroundings. She felt immense and light all at once.

Dinah unwrapped her Rocket Pop and laughed when it dripped onto her hand. Even the cold stickiness was good. She ate

it from the bottom to stop the for another engine behind her melting of the ice cream. She was but there was none. It felt very delighted with the sound of her important that she not run ahead flip-flops hitting the ground and or slow down behind the pickup. with the coldness of the popsicle.

To keep her walking pace. She Then something faded in from almost stumbled—her flip-flop the background. It was low and catching on a small stone. Dinah far away at first, then louder, then felt her armpits itch as new sweat steady. It took Dinah a minute to pulsed from her skin. notice the pickup truck pulling “Hey baby, you like to party? up alongside her. It coasted, its Why don’t you come party with us? tires moving so slow she could Okay baby?” hear them crunching gravel. It Dinah tried to remember how to blocked the view move like a normal of the playground. person. Each step Dinah was aware of He looked from took calculation. how close she was She felt her chest the popsicle in thicken, to the guardrail, and lungs Dinah’s hand, how dark the houses pumping, heart looked, how loud the filling up with thick to her face, pickup’s engine was. blood. Her tote bag down to her “Mhm, that’s what felt very heavy on I like to see.” uncovered legs. her right shoulder.

Dinah looked at She wanted to switch the truck. It had it to her left shoulder, once been red but now, covered in but Dinah was frozen—her tongue rust and dirt, looked brown. Two felt heavy as lead, her nostrils men—older, not too old though— could barely move to breathe, and watched her, smiling. The one in when a lock of hair fell into her the passenger seat wore a blue ball face she couldn’t shake her head cap. He had a bad sunburn and to get it out of the way. Dinah a short blonde beard. He looked felt dense again, small again, the from the popsicle in Dinah’s hand, sky was not opening up to her. All to her face, down to her uncovered there was was the red pickup truck legs. His eyes were dark pinpricks to her left, the guardrail to her in his face. right, and all around them, empty “You enjoyin’ that pop?” he said. houses with no one home.

The driver, shrouded in shadow, The two men laughed. Then the laughed roughly. driver gunned the engine and the “Yeah, that’s what I like to see,” pickup sped up ahead of Dinah. the blue ball cap said.

Dinah watched it drive away, Dinah looked up ahead. No and she walked as slow as possible cars were coming. She listened until she saw it disappear around 31

OTR the next bend on Hammon Drive. bedroom closing and locking She dropped her Rocket Pop and every window, then pulling down her tote bag, took off her sandals the blinds and making sure all the so she could hold them, and ran to lights were off. Dinah walked up the baseball field just up ahead. By to the converted attic space, which the ball field there were lots of trees, had become her mother’s library, and the gravel and dirt were very and rolled down the skylight. cold. The sunshine disappeared Dinah had no idea there were so and Dinah knew she should be many windows in her own house. watching out for broken glass She bolted the back door. but she didn’t care. She wouldn’t She sat down in the dark dining have felt it if a four-inch nail went room on the white tiled floor. The through her foot. Her skin was floor was cold and hard. It was the numb, only her heart and lungs most center room of the house, were alive, and they far away from any told her, told her to entrance, but with Dinah had no windows run. The rest was that had idea there cold: arms, legs, feet, a good view of the hands. She didn’t were so many road if she needed care about them. to see who was Only the speed of windows in her knocking on the her heartbeat, only door. own house. going as fast as Dinah lay down possible through the trees, across and closed her eyes, trying to the ball field—stay away from catch her breath. Her hands were Hammon Drive, stay away from trembling, her feet felt dirty, a the road—across the parking lot piece of grass stuck between her of the New Life Church, through toes, and her skinned knee burned. more trees, scrambling over the She tried to forget—to let her chest rock wall, skinning her knee on a go empty again—but then she’d stone, then up her driveway. She hear a bird somewhere far away, a looked over her shoulder just once dog barking, a car door slamming— before pulling open her front door and she’d feel it. A pressure from and then slamming it shut. the outside that echoed in her gut, Dinah locked and bolted the threatening to break through. In front door. She went through the her bathing suit on the dining mudroom and bolted and locked the room floor, Dinah shivered. The door leading from the mudroom to feeling of her exposed skin the rest of the house. It was humid tightening in the cool air made her and there was no air conditioning, want to cry. but she walked through the living A wave of nausea, and Dinah room, the kitchen, the dining room, turned over to throw up purple her bedroom, and her parents’ sugary liquid, her stomach and her 32

eyes burning. She looked down at her knee. Tiny beads of red blood mixed with dirt from the rock wall.

Dinah looked at her thin vomit on the floor and tried to see a shape— like you would in a cloud—tried to give it a shape, but she couldn’t read it at all. ✳

33

OTR

REPTILIA RACHEL ILG DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY 34

35

OTR

36

37

OTR

CLEANING OUT HIS MOTHER’S ROOM ETINOSA AGBONLAHOR POETRY I. After the funeral, his therapist said to let his self spill out as an overturned kettle, taste each emotion over and over until familiarity made them stale, made his pain an overwhelmed contender falling back, exhausted. So he wrote poems II. and I cooked for him just as she had. She who wore a single strand of cream pearls that hugged her gnarly neck, who smelled of lilacs and privilege, and made him lunch everyday always with a side of crisp red peppers sliced into rounds.

She’d call my name sometimes, squeezing it through thin filed teeth, dragging its essence up stairs of wonder and disdain, until it was battered, reduced, until it no longer meant anything.

She’d say my name then peer past me…

III. Every earring and lilac scented sweater has been boxed, stacked, labeled, and his voice like a rolling tide, hiding each vowel, unfurling every consonant, reads aloud a lithe poem as I roast red peppers, steam them in a sealed bag, shed their skins slow as his hands gliding round my waist mid-sleep and dice, knife slicing 38

through flesh, matching his rhythm, thump for word, over and again until brunch is ready. And we in our concentrated little world can sit together on deflated cushions, eat smoked peppers with queso fresco, drink cold coffee, and breathe.

39

OTR

SUPPER NELLY GORDPOUR DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY 40

Lull a Bye LENORE EROS DRAMA A dimly-lit city street, night. Gray tones of ash and the filth of grim urban dwellings. Up Right Center: a ground floor window covered in vine-like cross hatching. Light occasionally flashes from within. Up Right is a dark alley with a fire escape atop the corner of a local bar whose name, “The Black Lagoona,” is inscribed in an Old English font on the awning above the arched doorway. An eye-catching neon sign flickers on the side of the small building. There appears to be a low lying mist at the wings at all times.

Down Right is a streetlamp and an unoccupied bench.

At Rise: A far off jazz piano improv of The Lambada echoes from the club.

It triggers a cacophony of shouts from within. The noise fluctuates then softens. It is quiet for a good moment until a man, HARVEY FALLON, fedora, trench coat, stumbles out. FALLON stumbles his way to the curb to lean on and eventually lay atop the hood of a parked car. He pulls out a cigarette only to register he has no light. Above, the residents of an apartment are heard arguing. A window suddenly opens to eject a suitcase and vintage lamp. The lamp is heard crashing. Underclothes flutter onto the street.

41

OTR HARVEY passively goes over to the fallen suitcase, searches through it, and finds a lighter. He heads Down Center, crossing the street, paying no mind to the possibility of cars.

He stops under the street lamp to light up and pockets the lighter. He becomes shrouded in smoke.

Behind him, a WOMAN in highclicking stilettos enters. She slowly walks over and takes a seat on the bench. Seeming to be in no rush, she crosses one leg over the other and waits.

Without turning around FALLON senses her presence.

He takes a final pull and tosses the cigarette aside.

FALLON

(Sarcastic and slightly intoxicated) Guess fate’s got a real twisted sense of humor. (Laughs bitterly.) Truth be told, that was one cruel trick… played me like a fucking fiddle. And now that the likes of you shows up in town at this ungodly hour… It just feels like a stroll down memory fucking lane.

(Beat) ‘Member the downpour? Torrential… Bartender said it must have been the angels drowning in tequila. And it poured over the wicked. The whole lot of ‘em stood with their mouths wide open. I would know, I was one of them. Except then I blacked out. When I came to, a funny thing happened.

I woke at my desk. Course the office was stifling. My head pounding like a jackhammer. But it wasn’t that that got to me. See, it was the fan’s ceaseless fucking motion. That’s what was maddening. So, I go stand by the window. And there the moon was. (He motions.) Up, in all its glory.

Ring around it like a halo. All I could do was gaze. Heat’s relentless. I undress but stop. Peering into the abyss…

42

Sensed something below… Just figured another dope fiend in the backstreet alley. Had I only known. Yet, there I was.

Those moth-eaten curtains, the endless rows of brick…

This living nightmare confined to a frame. It sickened me. I needed a drink.

(Beat) Sleepless nights tend to blend. The rain left that foul musk on me. Yet, I failed to notice the utter scent of Death lurking at my doorstep. The trickling sweat beads all seemed suspended in time. Where was their sympathy? Better yet, it registered that I was drenched in piss. Or was it blood?

Either way, the sheets clung as I rolled off the couch’s fold out. My body was limp by then. The “real” blurred. This is nothing new. It always does that. Suddenly, I missed my childhood. I called for my mother. But the voice that left me wasn’t my own. It was swallowed by darkness. I slunk real low, sprawled on the floorboards. I would die in this godforsaken office. The fan crept on. I shed a crooked smile. Tears were cascading down from the audience in my head. Time for the One Man Show’s Final Act! Garden of Eden or bloody hell hounds: Thy kingdom come! Gambler that I am, I’d take it.

(Beat) But, I wasn’t alone. (Sobering) I watched its cloak trail. A creature enveloped in the foliage of shadow. (Slowly his hands sweep the air to create an hourglass shape.) Soon as I’d seen the tendrils fall, I knew. Cursed form of a woman coiled aglow. Talk about a fucking nightcap. My entire life waited for this moment. Everything slipped away. I desired nothing more. This was it. I met my match. As my fire went out an icy exhale slithered into those pillow lips. Wrists pinned by the slits, last I heard were the words, “I’m here to claim your soul.”

(Beat) About fucking time.

(Maneuvers a new cigarette) It was the night I was supposed to die.

(Lights it)

(Finally faces her) Well sister, don’t be a stranger. Finish what you started.

43

OTR

WOLVES ON WALL STREET DAVID CARMONA PENCIL & DIGITAL COLOR 44

45

OTR

Eulogy KATE SOKOLOVSKY PROSE I laughed at Mrs. Glinn’s memorial service.

I’m sixteen now and there are a couple of things about writing that I’ve learned in school which have stuck in my head. The first one is that you have to begin with a hook, something interesting to grab your reader’s attention and hold it. “Grab your reader by the throat!” Mr. Marshall would shout, hooking a stubby-fingered hand around his own throat right up in front of the blackboard. The second one is that you’re supposed to show, not tell, the facts of your characters’ lives. This means that instead of saying, Marcy has always been my best friend, you give examples and scenes with as much detail as possible. This is difficult for me because I see the world in sharp, solid facts instead of images. Say cat to a classroom, and the students will think of cats. Big cats, little cats, striped cats, black cats, stray cats, their own cats, cats in the media, the Cat in the Hat, dogs, chasing mice, anything at all. Most of them 46

will create little pictures in their minds: here’s a cat playing with a ball of yarn, here’s a cat sitting on my keyboard and refusing to move, here’s a kitten sitting in my lap. Unless I’m asked to think of a picture, I’ll just think of cat, the word alone. Back before May 2013, I would have told you Marcy and I have Asperger’s Syndrome; now, I’m obliged to say Marcy and I have Autism Spectrum Disorder.

See, already I’m telling and not showing.

Marcy has always been my best friend.

My friend Marcy’s mom used to make sandwiches whenever I came over to visit. “Got to fatten you up, Muriel!” she would chirp, passing me a big square plate.

“Thank you, Mrs. Glinn,” I’d say, and I would take the plate and put on a big wide smile until she went back downstairs. White bread, peanut butter and jelly, two sandwiches cut into four big triangles. Triangle food. When she was out of sight, my smile would crack at the edges. “Are you

hungry, Marcy?” I’d ask, hopeful. the screen door, which I hadn’t Then she’d eat mine for me. opened to speak to her. “There, The thing is, it would have there, let it all out.” I wasn’t crying been so easy: “Mrs. Glinn, I really about Mrs. Glinn; I was crying appreciate you taking the time to because Marcy wasn’t sick and make me lunch every time I come wasn’t in the hospital and wasn’t over. I was wondering if you could avoiding me. cut the bread into rectangles She was Marcy’s Aunt Helen, not instead of triangles next time, mine, of course, but she made it please?” That would have been all clear from the beginning that she it took. I never asked. wanted me to call her Aunt Helen We met when we were seven, but as well. “You’re like sisters, the two I think we were best friends even of you,” she crooned, patting the before we ever knew each other. screen door. “I think you should There was a little call me Aunt Helen.”

Marcy­shaped hole We met when we We weren’t like with me wherever sisters.

I went, just waiting were seven, but I could never for her to move in I think we were have invented Aunt and fill it. When my best friends even Helen if I had tried. parents moved me She was colorblind, from my crib to my before we ever but didn’t believe own bed, they put knew each other. in colorblindness, a plastic guard rail and any attempts to on the one open side of the bed. tell her how jarring her clothing I had to sleep as close to the wall looked were simply and rapidly as possible, away from the guard dismissed, often in French. “Ce rail, which I never touched. There n’est pas important, petit sourire,” was an empty stretch of space in and she beamed, trying to pat my my bed. Maybe I was saving it for head. I skittered away, hunching Marcy. my shoulders before her hand could make contact. Aunt Helen wasn’t French, had never been to France, and had no particular reason for speaking the language, Marcy had been absent but she did anyway. She called me from school for a week and not petit sourire, which she said meant responding to my texts when Aunt little mouse, but I knew sourire Helen showed up on my doorstep to was ‘smile’ and ‘mouse’ was souris. invite me to Mrs. Glinn’s memorial Telling Aunt Helen she was wrong service. I was so relieved that I was as effective as trying to drink began to cry. “There, there,” Aunt the entire ocean with a single Helen said from the other side of straw. No matter how much you 47

OTR did, there was always more, and the ocean never cared anyway.

The biggest difference between Aunt Helen and a force of nature was that I soon knew exactly when Aunt Helen would leave. June 27th, 2015.

I knew because she was taking Marcy back to California with her.

I the short one or the tall one?

How many details are necessary for a person to feel comfortable using their imagination to fill in the rest? I could, for example, give you a list of colors associated with Marcy, and you could try to match them with a list of categories. Blue, peach, yellow, magenta. Skin, hair, eyes, clothing.

There’s still a scene happening.

The letters are being organized into attending and not attending.

Maybe it’s time to give you a “Why are so many people proper scene. Readers want their coming?” Marcy Glinn asks. She content in scenes, I’m told. Here it taps her fingers on the surface of is. It starts with a short girl and a the desk, one­t wo­one­t wo. tall girl in a bedroom full of fake “Because they liked your mom.” flowers because the tall girl is Muriel Brown places another card fascinated by plants but lives in an in attending. “She worked with a apartment building with no garden. lot of kids. Your aunt invited as The short girl is sitting on the pink many people as she could.” bedspread, opening envelopes “I don’t want to go.” with a pair of plastic “You have to.” safety scissors “Why?” Blue, peach, and organizing “She’s your mom. the letters into two yellow, magenta. You can’t not go piles. The tall girl is Skin, hair, eyes, to your mom’s seated on her desk, funeral.” The short clothing. legs crossed, doing girl says this like nothing. she’s repeating facts I’m told that readers like to without understanding why. know what characters look like, “Memorial,” Marcy cuts in, her but this means nothing to me. forehead crinkling up. “It’s a The short girl has her hair in two memorial. There won’t be a coffin. long, thin, ratty braids. The tall We’re just going to sit in a room girl has fluffy blonde hair which and talk about her.” looks more like scrambled eggs “Oh. Should I go too, then?” than anything else. Is that what “If I’m there,” and here Marcy’s you want to know? Her eyes are finger tapping speeds up, onetwo reddish because she’s been crying; onetwo onetwo onetwo, “you’d my eyes are reddish because my better be there.” allergies act up in the spring. Am

48

It never takes much to ruin my day. Anything can do it, really; I have no control over it.

There’s a saying: woke up on the wrong side of bed. That doesn’t even come close to encompassing the extent to which my day may be ruined. I always wake up on the correct side—by the wall.

Sometimes, in between seven A.M. sharp and the end of the day, something goes wrong.

For example: a toothpaste ring on the top of the bathroom sink, left by the cap of the toothpaste tube. Wrong.

For example: the door to the basement left slightly ajar. Wrong.

For example: anything on the floor to the left side of my bedroom door, instead of the right side. Wrong.

Just clean it up, Muriel! Just close it, Muriel! Just move it over, Muriel!

“I can’t. I can’t touch it.” My breathing accelerates. My hands are sweaty.

“Why not?”

“It’s wrong. It’s not right. I can’t.”

“It’s just toothpaste, see?” My dad dampens a washcloth in the bathroom sink and scrubs at the spot of toothpaste on the sink.

“What are you going to do when you live alone? You’re a big girl.

Will you call me to come over to your house and clean toothpaste off the sink for you? What if there’s a cockroach? What will you do?”

I look at my dad in undiluted horror. Closing my eyes, I begin to rock back and forth on my heels.

When I have found an answer, I stop. “Marcy can kill it for me.

She’s not afraid of bugs.”

My dad has left the bathroom a while ago.

Marcy is leaving in June to go to California and live with Aunt Helen. It’s not a solution after all.

I didn’t think Mrs. Glinn was an important character, so I didn’t describe her much, but maybe I was wrong. Everybody at the memorial certainly thought she was important.

Marcy’s parents got divorced when Marcy was six. Mr. Glinn was engaged again before Mrs. Sophia Glinn and Marcy had finished moving out of the house. Marcy had always found this hilarious.

“We couldn’t get out of there fast enough,” she’d say, as if she had been old enough to understand completely at six.

Then they came here. Mrs. Sophia Glinn, who was still receiving money from her husband, became an English tutor.

She worked with a lot of young children. I knew all of this already, but Aunt Helen repeated most of it at the memorial, coated over by a socially acceptable level of resentment towards Mr. Glinn.

The room was gigantic and yet suffocating. Aunt Helen had rented 49

OTR a hall at a restaurant; it felt like a lot when she was working but she place meant for prom dinners and talked so much behind your backs.” graduations. It was packed full of Nervous laughter. mothers and children—or, in some “Sometimes she’d be proud of instances, babysitters and children. you guys though. ‘Lucy got an A I got to sit at the family table with on her paper!’ Which one of you Aunt Helen and Marcy and an older is Lucy?” Marcy balled her hands woman who I had never met but into fists and braced them on the who had been Mrs. Glinn’s boss table, scanning the crowd. “Is and best friend. My impression of there a Lucy Johnson here?” her was overshadowed by the fact There was a moment of silence, that she was crying when she came punctuated by the loud honk of in, crying when she left, and cried Mrs. Glinn’s boss blowing her nose, through most of the middle too. before—to my great surprise—a Marcy’s speech made me smile hand went up at one of the back though. tables.

After Aunt Helen finished Marcy was delighted. She rambling and sat, picked up her Marcy got up. She “My mom loved napkin, waving it looked around at her kids though. above her head like the room full of a flag, and cheered. strangers, blinking She called you “Lucy!

Congrats, slowly. guys that. Her Lucy!” The hand “Wow, I’ve never went down again. seen anybody else kids. Even though Marcy began to clap, here. Are you sure I’m her only real napkin still in hand. you all knew my I joined in. The wave kid.” mom?” of applause started Laughter. Marcy picked up her slowly and then picked up speed cloth napkin and spread it out on and volume as it crashed through the table, over her plate. I tipped the room like books falling from my chair onto the back two legs, a shelf. “Good job, Lucy! You fighting to keep the grin off my go, girl!” Her enthusiasm was face. unnerving but infectious. I began “Uh, yeah, so. Mom was great. She to laugh. Somebody else let out an did talk about her work, actually. approving whistle.

She’d just be making dinner and Slowly, the applause died down, suddenly she’d stop and yell and Marcy went on. “My mom loved something out of nowhere. ‘How her kids though. She called you has a fifth ­grader never written a guys that. Her kids. Even though thesis before?’ Then she’d just go I’m her only real kid.” I cringed on these rants, you know, because on Marcy’s behalf, aware as an she had to be nice and sweet to you outsider of how that might sound.

50

The audience had gone quiet again.

Marcy folded her napkin into a triangle, and then into a smaller triangle. Nobody spoke. Finally, she looked around, seeming to become aware that she was still standing. “Oh,” she said. “Um. I guess that’s it now.”

Marcy can end her speeches that way, but that’s because she’s Marcy. You can’t end a story that way; it’s not a satisfying ending.

You need a conclusion, even if it’s open-ended. I don’t want this story to end at all.

I wonder what being taught English by Mrs. Glinn would have been like. I’ve had Mr. Marshall for the past two years, and he’s good enough, even if he raises his voice a lot. He’s losing his hearing, and he likes to hear himself talk. These two factors combined result in long periods of shouting. Whenever a student asks a question, he repeats it at three times the volume before he answers it. My voice is soft and squeaky in his class. He calls me Miss Mouse.

If I told Mr. Marshall that I was writing a love story about my friend’s mother’s funeral, I’m not sure what he would say. Maybe he would try to argue with me about the label love story.

As a critical reader, I might be wondering why the author isn’t talking about Marcy’s feelings about her mother’s death, or how

Marcy feels about going to live with her aunt. I haven’t even explained how her mother died because I thought it wasn’t important.

Maybe everything is important.

I wasn’t there, and I can’t imagine the car or the sounds it must have made or the look on the driver’s face. I never saw the body. Did she go flying or did she go crunch? I don’t watch television and I don’t watch movies; I have no pictures of car accidents in my mind to try and compare to this one.

Now we’re in a car, but nobody’s going to crash. Aunt Helen sits up front, eyes fixed on the road.

Marcy is falling asleep holding my hand. My pinky finger is going numb.

The problem is that my mind never turns off. I am constantly aware of everything that I feel.

Imagine wearing an itchy sweater all day. Another person might forget, as they go about their daily life and get distracted by other things, that their sweater itches. I wouldn’t; not for a single second.

Sitting in the car, I can feel, see, smell, and hear so much that the idea of picking out specific details is almost impossible. I am wearing clothes and I can always, always feel them.

“Muriel,” Marcy mumbles, tugging at my hand sleepily. I pass her the water bottle by my feet and she drinks almost a quarter of it in one breath. “Thanks.”

“Welcome.”

She passes the water bottle back. “Love you.”

51

OTR “Mm­hm.” I look out the window, trying to process data into images: building, billboard for storage rooms, car, car. “Maybe you should start waking up. I think we’re almost there.”

“Okay.”

My eyes flick to the front mirror.

Aunt Helen is watching the road.

I look sideways, next. Marcy is watching me.

In school, we learned about the pyramid: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution. Mr. Marshall told us, dashing a piece of chalk through his diagram, “You can’t break the rules until after you know them!”

It’s easier to break the rules than it is to follow them.

This is a love story in which two girls go to a memorial service.

Then they go home. ✳

52

GRUNGE MARIE CONEYS DIGITAL COLLAGE 53

OTR

MICHEZO THEADORA HADZI DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY 54

55

OTR

INFINITE MISSAL LASZLÓ HOFFMANN POETRY Over the grass-tan field Yurek the mad parasailer runs with his kite taking newlyweds and children up for panoramic sweeps.

Looking back, he grins and his goggles are two round mirrors and in their reflection I see the cold dworek, the white colonnade and crumbling asbestos and clay-tile roof. Bridegroom or tourist, his gaze or my own, fleeting or bound, this I cannot assign.

Euros paved the sand-packed road and opened arrivals, once my kinsfolk settled thickly the road bend, Horodniany boundary-days, following the horizon—or otherwise, more хорошо, days of good spiraling faster into hours and days, spinning and someday taking horoscope of what lies there, beyond the sky’s boundary.

Farther, more snug, appearing only after three days of a panting dust-cloud lethargy, welling and quenched with tea, steaming, and bored at morning watching dry the bushels of spearmint my hobbling babunia pruned and set out on the dining room table and strawberries too, canned or baked into every cake able— hazy at first, then appears the overgrown bunker.

We would pounce down to inspect the frog-flooded shade.

All our shuddering clung with the amphibian chirp, sterling—shrill, or when my brother lost at chess and sprang off for the far swamp that chirping benevolence gave him away, whining directions ku tam!

Concrete block interbellum, clenched in a handful of cherry trees, so, since our patriarch smashed the stairs to bar and bury the German keep.

56

This is where the wandering mind lands when it floats: in a high summer engine whine, sharpening bed-ridden visions through a brightening haze. But even this was a purchased place— an evening draft shivers and slams the jambs and frosted-glass doors, every hinge loosens and every shaking doorknob knocks about the century-thick walls: no dynastic burial mound, but a foster and forest.

Where mossy trails turn in wooden-set circles, the churning helix returns to search concentric: anyone can hunt berries and fungus in the mourning mush but every name even dies silent, a ghostly cancer like a crumbling madness: herein lies our matriarch, spinning devotional verse to every calendar saint, couch-bound in a curtained salon, hanging on the horizon, humming the names of her dwindling children.

57

OTR

3 OF SERIES C GABRIELA VOLL DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY 58

59

OTR

ragnarok DAVID M. DELEON DRAMA A chasm.

LOKI, center, is chained to three tall rocks, as he has been for nine hundred years. His wife SIGYN tends to him. Both SIGYN and LOKI are Jotunn, rime-giants and enemies of the Gods at Asgard. LOKI waits for Ragnarok, the end of the world, to free him from his bonds.

At Rise: There is a great rumbling. The sky darkens.

Somewhere, a cock crows.

Enter VOSIG, SIGYN’s sister, and a CHORUS of female Rime-Giants.

VOSIG It is done!

CHORUS 1 The sun did fall!

CHORUS 2

The moon is gone!

CHORUS 3 The sky aflame!

CHORUS

The giants come to war!

60

VOSIG Take sword and shield, tie down your sash, Heft spear in hand to sky!

Set helmets to your skulls and grin, We go to war to die!

CHORUS We know not what we fight nor why, We go to war to die!

VOSIG All fires smothered in their hearths Our children tossed to sea For she will bear them soft and long, More soft and long than we.

CHORUS We heft our shields to wall the sky We go to war to die!

VOSIG Courage, Sigyn, leave this husk A withered, drooping vine To hold yourself among our host And let your spear-head shine!

CHORUS Sing we to the front, and fly We go to war to die!

Earth-fall breaking with a sigh, We go to war to die!

SIGYN is swept up with the CHORUS. LOKI Odin! Have you seen such sisters?

No Valkyrie could shame them!

Those women fight for you, while these would fight for death itself.

61

OTR CHORUS To war! To war! To war! To war!

The giants march to war!

LOKI Are you prepared, you aging gods?

To face the last young wave of a world not tamed? This weight would break the stoutest dam, drown all dam-builders in their homes, their children, and their dogs!

CHORUS To war! To war! To war! To war!

LOKI Do you hear?

CHORUS

To war!

LOKI

Do you hear?

CHORUS

To war!

The giants march to war!

Exit VOSIG, CHORUS SIGYN follows but stops halfway. She looks back to Loki.

LOKI I tricked you, Odin.

You thought I was chained, no!

You were chained in your age and cares and I allowed to watch you wane 62

and count the days until this day, this day you’ve seen, and wait for too.

Grim foreknowledge bittering every dry and gamey meal for a thousand years. Your triumphs, sad glints on a dim, grey road while my every pain was purer pain, so much more pain for true.

So which of us is wiser?

Which the deceived? Answer!

You drank from the well of wisdom, I drank from the serpent’s poison.

You left an eye, mine are open, which price is best reward?

(A rumbling.)

Old man, answer!

(A rumbling.)

ODIN (VOICE)

We are deceived.

SIGYN What do you see?

LOKI

I see my death. I see yours.

A shadow appears, of a man hung upside-down from the branch of a tree.

SIGYN I see nothing.

63

OTR LOKI Go. Polish your armor. Stand with the hosts of Hrym.

Fate waits with a laughing face. We meet at one end of the spear or the other, or beyond.

SIGYN runs off. Silence.

LOKI What lies have you for me, who sees all lies through?

ODIN (VOICE) We’ve bent to lords not ourselves, blood-brother, and suffer for it.

LOKI I’ve bent to all and bowed to none and for every kneel raised backside to others. Free me, brother.

We’ll take this liege together.

ODIN (VOICE) This liege is beyond us. No, you trick like a bad rose to the eager hand that seeks to take. I’ve bled for your lies, son of Laufey. Bleed yourself.

LOKI I’ve bled enough. Yes, I deceive but not for ill. You know well how tricksters make of life a garden where would be jungle or plain?

Testing those that shirk their borders, coaxing striplings to fame?

I trick, half-blind half-mad old man, spear-holder, self-deceiver, not you this time. No, I intend to fool the world.

64

It is my heart-gift, for so long a life of blessed wickedness. You free these rocks, I trip to the glen and to the harbor and sail for home. Fool the rune-maidens, Mimir’s well, deceived. I walk in bliss to witness the ending of the world from the prow of a westward ship that sees no land no more. That is my gift.

I’ve pained too long to keen for pain for no one’s son, deserving though they be.

Asgard strained no more, and have your tree and away, if I but will be free.

(Silence.)

Hang, then! May your own roots strangle you!

I’ve seen the beast which is to eat you.

Fenris-wolf, the child of hatred— I’ve seen his gaping throat and petted the spindly fur of his world-snapping neck.

He will chew your head between his teeth till skin is shred, your burning hair in the gaps of his jaws! Your eye will be the smallest berry to him, and all the sweeter.

Take it, if you will have it! I give all I can give to see your end be a fruitful dish better than five hundred feasts in Odin-hall. I drink to you!

(He spits.)

65

OTR ODIN I give you nothing, god of lies take that to your breast as you rise from your grave, as death’s white teeth are bared and fine. We each meet fates not chosen, not denied.

(The shadow fades.)

LOKI You give me nothing? I give you nothing!

I need nothing, slave of a king. I made you in this fever, you are my creation, the product of a hateful heart!

Hate came first of all, a flame that eats itself in darkness, only then came object, that which strives to save itself from burning. Well, here ends your efforts. The Odin who walks is a shadow of this vision, born from a thousand years of throes and yells and fell oaths.

But I will murder each, man and shadow, and the sun which lit the shadow and the ground which gave it shape.

(Rumble. The sky turns to fire.)

There, the sun! Now, the ground!

The howling of a wolf.

The hiss of a snake.

The bonds snap.

The three rocks tumble.

LOKI falls to earth.

66

OBLIGATION KI SUB LEE OIL ON CANVAS 67

OTR

SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE JANTSANKHOROL ERDENEBAYAR 68

ART PRIZE WINNER

“The piece has derived from the subject of Consumerism. It is made out of pieces of cardboard from all over NYC, which each have distinct smells depending on what was in the boxes. The world today is sunk in consumerist culture and overproduction, so the piece resembles a sort of organic figure which is deep and hollow. The size of it is pretty big, which would draw people to put their head in the hole.” — Erdenebayar

CARDBOARD 69

OTR

SUNRISE IN GLEN SPEY ETINOSA AGBONLAHOR POETRY My father keeps feeding me, poached salmon, smoked capers, thick bursts of boiled potatoes.

Winter, and Lake Champion is a still blanket no duck calls, no crickets.

He places a mug between my palms, and I rub expecting warmth, but it is vodka, ice particles floating on top, a disheveled lemon rind splashed across.

You know, he whispers crouching next to me, you have to breathe, that’s all. You only ever have to breathe.

I turn the mug upside down, watch vodka mix with snow and take his hand in mine.

A lifetime splitting trees, months of abnormal cells marching through his soul, and his fingerbones have become brittle raffia brooms.

And in this moment, on a rotting log waiting for light, I want to say everything will be fine, we’ll win

70

this war like last time, but my words are a shallow dam flimsy against the inevitable. Instead I guide his hands against my cheeks and repeat, you have to live, you only ever have to live.

71

OTR

SILENT SHADOWS RABIA RANA DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY 72

73

OTR

Purple Flowers JENNIFER CHENG PROSE

T

he television flickered then went black.

For fifteen minutes I had tried to block out the yelling but now I had no choice but to meet her eyes.

I knew the bloodthirsty look. There was no escaping it today.

“I work all day for you to have a place to live and what do you do in return? Make a mess and watch TV all day?”

I lowered my eyes and said nothing. This wasn’t a trial. It was an execution, a testimony of my crimes before sentencing. No matter what I said or did, I was guilty.

“Nothing to say, eh?”

Whack.

My body buckled at the impact of her slap across my face. My vision blurred. I held my face with one hand and scooted back across the floor.

“Why.” Whack.

“Are.” Whack.

“You.” Whack.

74

“So.” Whack .

“Disobedient?”

My air came in convulsive gasps. I couldn’t breathe deep enough. My face was a swollen mess of black hair, tears, and snot.

Her hair had come undone from her bun. She wore her greased kitchen clothes and towered over me with a broomstick. She looked like a monster.

I hunched over and clenched my body. I covered my face with my hands. Through my sausagefingers I saw my little brother and sister in the corner, crying. They had a lesson to be taught too.

They were ordered to watch so that they would know the price of disobedience.

“I treat you kids too good. You don’t deserve a mother like me!

I could have left you when your father left us but I didn’t.” She hit me one last time across my right side. My stomach landed on the cold white tiles. Then everything went black.

I woke up in my bed and saw

two small round faces with brown had gone down. My fingers were eyes full of fear. another story though, swollen and “Are you ok?” painful to move. I knew I couldn’t I had to say yes. They had seen go to school like this. They’d ask enough. too many questions. I didn’t have Anne, the older of the two, answers for them. gently applied Tiger Balm to my My mother was all we had. We swollen cheek. She never knew our said nothing. When father. My mom only this wasn’t a had bad things to she finished, she pulled the blanket trial. It was an say about him, but up to my chin and I couldn’t believe execution. said, “She’s sleeping he was evil. I saw now. We have to be a picture of them quiet.” Danny looked like a little once. He had his arm slung across bobble head when he nodded. her shoulders like an old sweater.

My side stung when I turned. I could almost hear their laughter.

And so I drifted in between When she smiled, her whole face sleep and pain. I dreamt I was became luminescent but lately imprisoned in a tower, awaiting there hasn’t been anything but rescue. I dreamt of castles and a black hole. Nowadays, her shining black steeds, Rapunzel’s eyebrows were stitched with stress long black hair and my father, and her mouth tightly pursed. It handsome and shining ever after. felt like a lifetime since I’d seen her smile.

I peered into the mirror more closely. She said I looked like him.

Did I have his high cheekbones?

The pungent aroma of garlic Once, she told me that I had his woke me. I heard the sizzling of smile and her eyes had this far the vegetables as they hit the hot away look in them. She didn’t tell oil. The sound of ceramic plates us much about him except that being set on the old wooden table. he was a bad man and that he left The subtle fragrance of jasmine us. I had so many questions that rice made my stomach grumble.

I wanted to ask. There was only Gingerly, I picked my body up silence. My mother is an angry and lifted my shirt. Purple flowers working god and my father is a blossomed along my torso. They ghost. What does that make me? were so tender a brush of a petal How do you solve an algebraic made me wince. equation with two variables?

I checked my face in the bathroom mirror. My left cheek was still red but the swelling 75

OTR “I HAVE TO PEEEEEEE!” through the grades, and worry I opened the door to find Danny lines etched into my mother’s face, pleading. He wore faded My Little we ate well. The main dishes were Pony pajamas that were passed surrounded by our satellite white down from me. Once fuchsia, they mounds. had now softened to a powdered When I sat down, she didn’t look pink. at me. No one looked at me. Their “Look! See! Material is good eyes were glued to the feast in front quality! So what if it of us. My hands says My Little Pony. too broken to When I sat down, were Stop crying, Danny. handle the delicate You lucky you have she didn’t look chopsticks. I used any pajamas. When at me. No one the soup spoon to I was a little girl eat. I wrapped my looked at me. swollen hand the I never had nice clothes like this. best I could around Stop. Boys do not cry. Are you a the spoon to scoop the rice. I made girl? Are you?” a mess with it, dropping it all over the old wooden table. I stared at the rice, made futile attempts to eat it. Then she plopped a piece of sea bass that she had gently deboned I made my way to the room into to my bowl. that was at once our kitchen, living room, and dining room. I ✳ could smell the food and hear the clinks of the chopsticks on the pristine blue and white enamel bowls, bought from a basement in Chinatown. I waited in the shadows, hesitant.

I looked across the table and saw that my place had been set: a bowl of rice that no longer steamed, a bowl of my mother’s famous winter melon soup, Chinese broccoli steamed to perfection and drizzled with oyster sauce, and a steamed sea bass with ginger and scallion. Even when faced with an apartment where half the wall crawled away when we flicked on the light, clothes that passed down 76

BUTTERFLY BOX SANDRA TALBOT INK ON PAPER 77

OTR

CONSUME RACHEL ILG CARDBOARD 78

79

OTR

UNTITLED DAVID KANBERGS DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY 80

BRUSSELS TO PARIS THOMAS CAUDILL POETRY trees still in the wind— break. a gloss of white paint in January. in July I saw this field: a red fox watches from a hay bale shadow. rabbits chase one another in snow drifts. dry grasses emerge to scratch the fog. crows preen and caw within the black body of the trees, phantoms, wrapped in winter cloaks. the red train courses, arterial blood through Belgium’s white flesh, windmills churn above fallow fields. I glimpse the phantom sun. black filaments in parallel: power lines, train tracks, a fence.

81

OTR

AUTO-EROTIC MILES TRAHAN DRAMA OVER BLACK, an INSTRUMENTAL SCORE from an old movie. SLAM UP: INT. MOTEL BATHROOM – NIGHT The score sounds like it’s coming from inside the room.

The only other sound is a TAP, DRIPPING periodically.

A bathtub full of soapy water. A smooth knee protrudes from the bubbly surface. A rubber ducky floats nearby.

DRIP. CLOSE ON a MALE’S EYES blinking nervously. Sweat collecting on the brow. DRIP. A YOUNG WOMAN (“SHE”, late 20s) soaks in the tub.

Peroxide hair half submerged, eyeliner smeared. DRIP. SHE You’ve never done this before.

The eyes belong to an overweight man (“HE”, mid 40s) who looms over the edge of the tub wearing nothing but a wifebeater, briefs, and a pair of soiled socks.

He cradles a vintage TUNER TELEVISION SET over his head, still plugged in and playing an old movie. Blink. Blink.

SHE (CONT’D) (sighs) It’s nothing to be embarrassed about, you know. I mean, everybody has to start somewhere.

82

DRAMA PRIZE WINNER She shrugs, shakes her head disdainfully.

SHE (CONT’D) I must say, though—I don’t like your chances.

HE Of what?

SHE Getting away with it.

HE And why the hell not?

She sits up and stares him down, all business.

SHE Well, first thing: The television.

That’s your weapon of choice, really? I don’t know, maybe you’re making some sort of commentary— very subversive—or maybe you just went into the other room and grabbed the first thing you laid eyes on.

He looks up at the TV over his head, then back down at her. Knees buckling under the pressure. It must be Number Two.

SHE (CONT’D) To be honest, it doesn’t seem like you’ve really thought this through.

HE Of course I’ve thought this through!

I’m not some fucking amateur.

SHE You know how to get rid of a body?

83

OTR

A BEAT. He sighs, props the TV set up with one hand and reaches into his waistband with the other. Pulls out a crumpled piece of paper, some sort of list scrawled on it.

HE (clears throat) Drain the fluids by opening up the femoral arteries and p-p-pumping the chest, p-p-pulverize the teeth and bones, burn off fingerprints, disfigure the face and change the clothes. Separate the body into several p-p-pieces, p-p-put each into a p-p-plastic bag with lots of bleach. Store them in a fridge for three months, then bury them no less than one mile apart.

Her finger traces the rim of the tub. She can hardly seem to contain herself.

SHE Sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it?

HE I’m an assistant manager at DairyBarn. This is nothing.

She studies him for a BEAT, hard. Then tosses her hands up, feigns resignation.

SHE Well, you’ve convinced me.

He furrows a brow.

SHE (CONT’D) I mean it. We all have to start somewhere, right? Don’t dwell on 84

the particulars. Right foot first and the left will follow.

He tucks the list back into his underwear, braces himself.

Lifts the TV over his head…

SHE (CONT’D) (beat) So go ahead, mister. Light me up.

HE Okay.... You ready?

SHE As ready as I’ll ever be.

He lifts the set higher… Freezes up.

HE (beat) Do you think you could maybe…?

SHE Do you want me to scream?

His eyes light up.

HE Yeah! Scream, struggle, beg me to stop—something more theatrical, you know? Really sell it to me.

SHE (shrugs) I’m a call girl, not an actress.

A dense BEAT. He lowers the TV set again, deflated.

Her finger pauses mid-circle.

She looks up at him with an expression bordering on pity.

85

OTR

SHE (CONT’D) There, there. No harm no foul. It’s alright if you… well…

HE …If I what?

SHE If you want to try something else?

He perks up.

SHE (CONT’D) What I mean is, you are paying for the whole night. Even if psychosexual stimulation isn’t your thing, there are hundreds of other ways to get your rocks off. (counts on fingers) Now let’s see: There’s bondage, exhibitionism, voyeurism, roleplaying, domination, coprophilia— HE Cop-p-prop-p-p-pill--?

SHE Coprophilia. Scat. Playing with shit?

He crinkles his nose. No thanks.

She sighs again, rolls her eyes, finger still circling the bath water.

SHE (CONT’D) Cross-dressing, necrophilia, sadomasochism, erotic asphyxiation—that’s quite popular these days.

86

HE Erotic...?

SHE Erotic asphyxiation. Being choked. (mimes) You apply pressure to the throat until you almost faint. Time it just right, and you’ll explode with pleasure. Never tried it?

He stares back at her, a new glint in his eyes.

CUT TO: INT. MOTEL LIVING ROOM – NIGHT A SMALL HOOK hangs from the ceiling. A fluffy pink CORD has been looped through it and pulled taut. WE PAN DOWN the cord slowly, in very tight close-up....

SHE (O.S.) How does that feel?

It’s tight.

HE (O.S.)

SHE (O.S.) That’s good. Are you getting close?

Uh-huh.

HE (O.S.)

SHE (O.S.) I’m going to start pulling a littleharder now, okay?

We’ve reached the end of the cord, where He is hanging by his neck. Already struggling for air…

SHE (O.S.) (CONT’D) Now remember what we said: If I pull too tightly or you’re 87

OTR

SHE (O.S.) (CONT’D) experiencing too much pain, just use the safe word.

HE What’s the safe word?

SHE (O.S.) Pineapple.

A look of concern flashes on his face.

HE P-P-Pine--?!?

SHE (O.S.) Here we go.

We reach the other end of the cord being pulled at this moment by She, decked out in pink, frilly lingerie. She double-wraps the cord around her fists, pulls with force.

He is lifted ever-so-slightly off his feet.

HE Oh! That’s... that’s good!

Soiled socks graze carpeting, toes twitching....

SHE Getting closer?

HE Oh, yes!

His face is turning red. He’s in ecstasy. His voice is increasingly strained as the cord tightens and the pressure intensifies.

HE (CONT’D) I’m getting really… really close!

88

SHE I can’t wait to see you explode.

HE Oohh, yes!

SHE Oohh…

HE Oooooh…

SHE Ooooohhh!

HE Oooooohhhhh!!

She pulls tighter…

SHE Ooooooooohhhhh!!!

HE O-O-Ooooohhhh!!!!

His face is turning purple. His eyes bulge.

The ceiling around the hook starts to give…

HE (CONT’D) P-P-P-P-Pine— SHE OooooOOOOoooohhhh!!!!!

He spasms violently, feet raised an inch or two off the floor.

Her grip stays tight around the cord.

Cracks widen in the ceiling. It CREAKS. 89

OTR The light in his eyes dies out.

She bites down on her lower lip, shuts her eyes tight. Face contorted in orgasmic euphoria.

His body goes limp. He GASPS his final breath.

The hook breaks free from the ceiling.

He falls to his knees, then flat onto his face. THUD! Plaster and dust rain down from above.

She slides to a sitting position against the wall behind her, huffing and puffing. The ecstasy slowly subsiding.

She looks over at the body. DRIP… DRIP… Her grin broadens. The deed is done. The goose is cooked.

CUT TO: INT. MOTEL LIVING ROOM – NIGHT As the movie on the TV reaches a cacophonous climax, She finishes pulling on her coat, picks up her purse, and starts to move for the door.

She pulls the door open, pauses. Sneaks one last glance over her shoulder.

He is tucked into the sole bed in the room, still a bit purple, staring straight up at the ceiling with a look of pure ecstasy on his face. Rigor mortis already setting in.

She smirks, exits the room.

INT. MOTEL HALLWAY - NIGHT – CONT’D As She saunters down the hall, the door SLAMS CLOSED behind her—a soiled sock over the door handle.

Do Not Disturb.

90

LINOCUT LADY MARIE CONEYS LINOLEUM PRINT, DIGITAL COLLAGE 91

OTR

UN RAGAZZO VERO GABRIELA HERNANDEZ DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY 92

93

OTR

SANTI THEADORA HADZI ACRYLIC ON CANVAS 94

POETRY PRIZE WINNER

Beast Song KATE RYAN POETRY stop-fiction light flashing seeks to make me wait and say it— my knees rubbed raw, sticky pitch-pine perfect, calling attention to the blood, the hunter coming faster—

the thing that i glimpse in him is gold wet fur hackling, is moving, is crouching is deceived by black branches, the freeze framed eruptions the thing that i glimpse in him is crouching, with teeth and eyes dilate to follow, with breath enough to harrow not to keep the light from shuttering drive on, drive on not to keep to train to sit or stay i sleep uneasy, no snout pressed to neck-split, no nerves calm and easy, no no nerves calm and easy, the flickers sway and blacken and the thing i glimpse in him breathes hard, now teeth to my neck, now gone drive on

95

OTR

danny and the hyperbaric chamber LOUIS GAUDIO PROSE

B

efore he failed the hyperbaric SCUBA school was to simulate a test, Danny was my Partner 180-foot dive in the hyperbaric in Crime. He’d greet me with pressure chamber, a bulky a “P-I-C!”, punctuating it with a machine the Navy uses primarily high five and donning his mirrored to treat decompression sickness. It aviators. You got the impression sits in the center of an industrial sometimes that you were on a building close to the dock and movie set and Danny was the looks like the escape pod of a only person who knew where the spaceship with pneumatic and camera was. For all his antics and hydraulic tubes running in and delusions he’d be an easy target of out, gauges with red overpressure ridicule if he wasn’t a solid six foot lines, and relief valves with bright two with a quarterback’s physique. yellow handles spaced evenly More than that, his enthusiasm along thin pipes. The entrance is a and pirate charm were contagious. single hatch that opens like a bank He made very few enemies. He had vault with a circular, three-inch four brothers back in Houston, window for viewing. It seats four, but he liked to call me “The sixth uncomfortably.

Carmona Boy.” Chief Millar told us to go in One Christmas I bought him and wait while he prepped the a leather-bound flask with his chamber. He made a circle with initials monogrammed on the his thumb and forefinger in an front. I bragged for a week that OK gesture and we returned it.

I’d gotten him the best gift ever. He went off to brief the Doc, who He said that’s impossible because would be operating the control he was King of the Gift Contest panel externally and standing by and he had already won. We in case of emergency. agreed to open them at the same “Check it out!” Danny started time. I peeled away the skull-and- playing around the second we got crossbones wrapping paper to inside. “If I lie on my back like this, find a silver flask, bound in leather, I can wrap my legs around… and… with my initials monogrammed on yup… Look! My feet are touching the front. my head.” I was nervous because Our final test in Phase One of I’d been sick for two days and my

96

sinuses were already clogged to someone addresses your dive hell. Danny, meanwhile, was as buddy they’re addressing you too. cool as condensation, lying on his You do everything together. You back looking like a rolled-up pill live together, you die together, and bug. “I’m a caterpillar,” he said. sometimes you breath oxygen “A pill bug,” I said. I’m usually outta the same tank. Hoo-yah? good at resisting the urge to Hoo-yah. obnoxiously correct people but not The Chief reviewed some basic when I’m congested and miserable. safety precautions with us and “Whatever, Mister Ettamologist.” made preparations inside, turning We were in our valves and reading The chamber training uniforms: gauges. Everything brown t-shirts and would simulate he did was deliberate tan Daisy Duke and efficient. Chief the effects of Millar had been our swim trunks. Danny grinned and slapped descending to Dive Supe for the my bare thigh, just to first three weeks of 180 feet see what I would do. I school, teaching us narrowed my eyes and exhaled like about diving disorders and getting the frustrated parent of a toddler. us in proper physical condition.

“Do you mean etymologist?” He After this test we would be ready to nodded and rolled his eyes. “I put on SCUBA gear in the twelvethought so. They study words. foot pool and ultimately move on An entomologist studies insects, to open ocean diving. The chamber dipshit.” He slapped my leg again. I would simulate the effects of smacked him once behind his knee descending to 180 feet, releasing just as Chief Millar climbed into breathable gas to increase the the chamber. He sealed the airtight internal pressure, making stops hatch behind him and knocked at 30, 60, 100, and finally at 180 twice on the circular window. feet. A few things were expected “Alright Girl Scouts, settle down. to happen during a typical simCarmona, what the heck are you dive. At around 30 or 40 feet your doin? Sit up proper, hoo-yah?” ears start to pop like you’re on an Danny climbed up slowly. airplane reaching cruise altitude.

He swung his legs over and Under ideal conditions all you knocked me in the face with need to do is perform the Valsalva his ankle, pretending it was an Maneuver: plug your nose and accident. blow. Once you successfully clear “Hoo-yah, Chief!” We both your sinus canal, the rest of the shouted out of habit. The chamber trip is painless. Another thing echoed our knee-jerk slogan like that tends to happen is an oxygen a shotgun blast. Chief Millar had high, a nitrogen buzz, or some only addressed Danny, but when combination of both. Normal 97

OTR atmospheric gas has traces of CO2, argon, carbon monoxide, helium, and so on. But compressed air is 70% pure nitrogen, 30% pure oxygen.

We reached the first controlled stop. Chief told us we were at 30 feet and pointed to the gauge, giving us an OK. Danny and I returned it and the Chief knocked on the plexiglass again. Doc brought us down to 35. I watched the gauge as I felt a pocket of air creeping up the back of my neck, lodging itself between my nose and ear canal.

40... I pinched my nose with my left hand, still holding up my OK sign with my right so the Chief would know I wasn’t squeezing, and tried to blow. It felt like a wall of mucous had formed on each side of the air bubble, and the harder I blew the more it pushed back and forth like a catcher and third baseman playing pickle to keep the runner trapped. 45... I blew harder and my eyes started to water but the air bubble wouldn’t move. 50...it felt like my entire face had been peeled off and glued back on and someone had stuck an inflatable tube between the skin and muscle and started rapidly pumping it up.

52… 53… 54… I concentrated on keeping my right hand up and broke my vigilant watch of the gauge. My vision was going blurry and it was getting harder to discern the numbers. I pinched my nose again and blew, squeezing my lids shut to protect my eyeballs from popping out. I thought of those Tex Avery cartoons where 98

a woman in a tight dress walks by and he just loses control. The air bubble started moving on its own, now in the opposite direction I wanted to push it. 55… 56… I could feel it traveling from my ear through the right side of my head, my teeth rattling from the expanding and contracting of tiny muscles as the bubble wormed its way toward the center of my skull.

57…

“Are you ok, son?” The Chief’s words echoed as though I was inside a glass bottle and he was speaking into the neck. I thought the descent was being aborted because of me; I figured Chief Millar saw the excruciating pain I was trying to mask behind my tightened face and was cutting it short. We swiftly ascended to 30 feet and my sight started clearing.

I worked on my trapped bubble as my eyes made out Danny’s body forming a ring again, his back on the chamber floor. This time he didn’t have that joker grin. His legs were sprawled high above him, his heels pounding the curved bulkhead. His arms formed triangles with his shoulders, elbows pointed up with his hands clamped desperately to his ears. We spent ten long minutes at a safety decompression stop while he clawed and kicked and screamed. I had to control the impulse to plead with the Chief, whose eyes were locked on Danny while he manipulated hissing pressure valves. There was no choice but to wait it out. Popping

the door prematurely would only damage. SCUBA school continued exacerbate the injury. We were for another three weeks without trained for this.

Danny, though his empty beer Chief Millar carefully bottles were scattered around the resurfaced, and Danny recovered room we were staying in. I threw enough to give an OK, holding them out right before a barracks it up for two seconds before his inspection one week later. wrist went limp. The Doc verified As a bureaucratic measure that the chamber had equalized the school had to send rejection to normal atmospheric pressure letters to our barracks address and cranked the at our permanent steel handle of the He was different duty station. “Due hatch. I put Danny’s to medical reasons after he got arm around me, his we regret to inform ear bleeding onto you that you are squeezed in my shoulder, and ineligible for diver the chamber. helped maneuver training at this him out through the He drank a lot time.”

My dive porthole over to a more and joked buddy and I had bench nearby. failed together. Hooa lot less.

While the Doc yah. I framed mine, examined Danny, right underneath Chief Millar asked me if I wanted the certificate they gave me at to go back down. I said no, not graduation. Passing by Danny’s without my dive buddy. Danny open bedroom door one day, I insisted. No one had noticed my noticed he had hung his rejection close call and I felt like I couldn’t letter up too. I read it and noticed back out. I had to try and tough it. I there was a minor difference. His only made it to 45 feet the second didn’t include the words “at this time. As I feared, I got completely time.” blocked and suffered a minor He was different after he got rupture in my eardrum. The Doc squeezed in the chamber. He drank declared me ineligible to continue a lot more and joked a lot less. I training until I healed up and re- talked to him about it once, and he tested in six days. Danny, however, didn’t even try to act like nothing turned out to have a rare disorder was wrong, the way people that made it impossible to clear his typically do when you confront ear canal under any circumstance. them with their baggage. He knew He spent two nights in the Naval something had changed. The way Hospital in Honolulu and was he worded it was: “You can’t put sent back to Guam the following toothpaste back in the tube.” day. He was lucky he didn’t lose his hearing or suffer permanent ✳ 99

OTR

DENSITY SANDRA TALBOT INK ON PAPER 100

101

OTR

pale blue dot THOMAS CAUDILL POETRY

i.

(after Wang Wei)

two tributaries, small things, converge on the edge of a gravel road ii. we float on a river in Burgundy counting satellites, drinking red wine. the milky way.

Carl Sagan said, look the only home we’ve ever known. iii. a cloud whitens a green mountain. and pines, alive in winter, howl with wind. I see a cloud shaped like something flying south. in winter, blueberries are red.

I imagine them blue, in June.

102

SHADOW SAKURA THEADORA HADZI INDIA INK, ACRYLIC ON WOOD 103

OTR

INTERVIEW WITH donna masini JENNIFER JADE YEUNG Professor Masini has published two books of poetry, That Kind of Danger (1994) and Turning to Fiction (2004), and the novel About Yvonne (1997). She is currently working on her second novel. She also attended Hunter as an undergrad, and had poems in the Olivetree Review issues 2 and 4.

Masini’s office is cluttered with things that make her feel “more like herself.” Images of Akhmatova, Dickinson, Gwendolyn Brooks, Hopkins, and postcards of Sienese paintings line the walls. On her desk is a mug with a draft of Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale,” and facsimiles of Elizabeth Bishop’s drafts for “The Art of Losing” and T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” hang over her desk.

What was it like attending Hunter as an undergrad?

Hunter was very different at that point. And for me it was great because I didn’t want to be on Staten Island and I had to go someplace that was free.

The students were great, the faculty was great. As you know I had James Wright, I had Audre Lorde. My Hunter experience comes in two parts. I went through, almost finished, and then stopped. And then came back to finish my one class. I came back after I met Audre Lorde—I met her at the Public Theatre. I was pouring drinks at an Adrienne Rich reading and someone said, “That’s Audre Lorde!” I went over to her immediately, stopped pouring wine, and said, “I just read this essay you wrote, it was so amazing and it was…” “Yes, yes, of course,” she said, “Come and study with me.” That was really it. I audited her class, and I audited another class, and a couple years later, she said, “Now I want you to go to graduate school.” And I said, “I can’t because I don’t have a degree.” I thought she was going to kill me! “You’ve been auditing my class and you haven’t finished your degree?” And that was when she just went, “You’re going to do this, you’re going to finish your degree, you’re going to go to graduate school, you’re going to study.”

Audre, I loved her but I never lost that sense of… even if I was calling her, or she would call me, even when she was dying… I could never really say “friend.” She was a beloved teacher. But she was a very 104

scary teacher. Sometimes with my students now I think, you think I’m being tough? Audre would take a poem and go, “What is this? I’m starting to really worry about you.” She would put notes on the poems like, “Meditate on this.” Which I would. Or she’d say, “Anyone who wears those boots knows about anger. Write the poem.” She was demanding, and she had a particular aesthetic. I don’t know if you know the essay “Poetry is not a Luxury.” With Audre you had to, as she would say, “Shoot from the hip.” Meaning something needs to be at stake in the poem. That was really helpful.

Can you talk about the class you didn’t finish? The yoga final?

Oh my god! It’s why I always say to students: Be careful towards the end. You get really crazy and self-destructive. I think I was very, very, very anxious. It wasn’t just the yoga final, it was the yoga final and two incompletes. I had to write a paper on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and a paper on “Ode to a Nightingale.” I guess I could have finished the papers, but… I’ve since learned that for me, getting to the end of things is really hard. But it turned out really well because I was so anxious and scared and confused and didn’t know what my life was or what I wanted. By the time I came back eight years later to Hunter, I realized it was poetry. I wanted to write.

What about James Wright?

He was amazing. But he didn’t teach much, and he didn’t teach a poetry workshop. They didn’t have them then. He taught literature. But whatever he taught I took. He was stunning as a teacher, he was funny and… We didn’t even know he was a poet. He never told us he was a poet. At that time we were all smoking in class, smoking and drinking coffee. I’d bring my coffee and cigarettes and he’d have cigarettes and coffee and we’d all be drinking and smoking. Often we were in that gothic building over there [Thomas Hunter Hall], seeing the traffic on the street, the paint peeling, falling down the ceiling, and smoke and coffee cups. And poetry.

He would call us “Ladies and gentlemen.” Hunter had a fabulous English department then. Well, now too, I think we have a great department now too.

What was it like to have poems in the Olivetree back then?

It was kind of exciting to have those things published! It was certainly a while before I really published other poems or sent poems out. I mean, people would say, “I loved your poem!” It felt amazing. In fact, I don’t even think it ever gets more amazing than the first few poems that you publish. After a while it’s like, “Oh, yeah.” But at the beginning? Like, “Wow, my poem’s in Olivetree!”

105

OTR

How do you think your teachers affected how you teach now?

I really believe in teaching. And I really believe you can actually help people affect a change inside themselves. Especially someplace like Hunter. A lot of our students don’t have a whole lot of people to turn to for encouragement, I think. I can look at somebody and say, “You can do this. You can write.” And I think sometimes teaching is a kind of giving back. Audre used to say to me, “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m talking to a part of you you don’t know yet.” [Laughter] I’m not going to say things like that in quite that way, but I do believe my teachers gave me my life in a lot of ways. I don’t always use the word “joy” with teaching, but there is a joy in it. To sit with you guys and hear you push beyond what you thought you could do in a poem. And beyond that, push past what you thought you could imagine as a person, imagine for your life. I think that we’re partly helping people imagine their futures. Keats said poetry is a “veiled soulmaking.” I don’t talk like that, [Laughter] but it is.

Do you think it’s easier or harder to be a woman writing?

Harder! You know, anything I say people are going to say it’s ridiculous.

I think it’s still harder for women to take themselves seriously. I think it’s harder to believe you have a right to write. I don’t think it’s easier for a man to write a good poem than a woman to write a good poem, but I think it’s easier to… And that’s changing, and people’s sense of self is changing, our ideas of gender and race and ethnicity and all of that. But some people grow up feeling that they are entitled to go to this school, or write this poem, or do this thing. Men and women all have varying degrees of insecurity about their work. But I still feel like even in the poetry world, especially in the poetry world, there’s… No, I don’t want to say this. I’m not going to say it. I think my answer is a personal answer.

It’s been my own struggle.

What was the hardest thing you learned about writing poetry?

Oh god. That it never gets easier. It does not get easier. For me. Everybody’s different, but that feeling of “Oh my god I’ll never write another poem.”

And I can say to myself, look, you’ve said that before and look at all the times you’ve actually written another poem, but it doesn’t get easier. It gets easier to spot the fake poems, the ones that are somewhat willed, and it’s not quite… sort of pulse-racing, or it’s not saying something that’s in some way unsayable. Going beyond what you can tell somebody on a bus. Or really making leaps, imaginative leaps, that are not willed. I think that it’s hard to wait, and I don’t mean wait by just sitting there. The 106

waiting is writing, writing, writing, until you actually hit something.

You have to always kind of force yourself to attend, to get quiet. And it takes a while for my imaginative life to be available to me again.

Especially after a semester, you’re kind of filling the well. Taking walks, looking at a painting, just drifting, doing things you wouldn’t normally do. Certainly writing every day, trying to see what comes up. That was the hardest thing to learn, that you always have to wait and it doesn’t get easier.

Why do you think poetry is important today?

I don’t know why I’m saying this, it’s the first thing that popped into my mind when you said it… but there was a young gay man who was just shot a few blocks from my house. On Friday night… I think that we live in a world of violence… You open up the paper and there’s continual violence on so many fronts. We get sort of… I don’t mean inured to it. We dissociate. I think poetry is a way of being in the world and in language. It’s hard to really pay attention, really look at a thing, and not, I think, be moved towards some kind of empathy or kinship. I think poetry helps us both have greater access to our inner lives, and our irrational lives, in a way that is not violent, in a way that… my mind keeps going back to that man, I don’t know why.

I can’t rationally tell you why I keep thinking of him when I think poetry is important. Our lives are filled with violence, and I think not only the act of writing poems but the act of reading poems too is a form of… I don’t like to use the word “prayer,” but it in some way affects our spiritual lives and imaginative lives.

You stress memorizing poems, why do you think that’s important?

If you’re an architect you don’t just look at a picture of a building, you go inside a building and feel what that particular space feels like. If I memorize a poem I can feel its structure from the inside.

You get in the body of that poem. I mean, I’m so seduced by music anyway, and I love the feeling of the language coming through me.

But it really helps me to feel what the poet is doing. The way the body changes, breathing changes. To feel the poem inside of you, to feel the way language shifts. Or maybe the way Bishop goes from one image to another image. I think “Oh! That’s how she gets there, through rhythm.” I think you need to say poems out loud. And I love to be able to just walk down the street and have poems.

107

OTR

DICEPHALIC JACOB CINTRON DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY 108

109

OTR

CONTRIBUTORS Etinosa Agbonlahor was born in Nigeria. She enjoys reading and writing poetry and looks forward to a career that involves both. She also looks forward to challenging the notion that man cannot live on bread alone as she embarks on said career.

Thomas Caudill is an aspiring poet and horticulturist and will be finishing the CUNY Baccalaureate with a degree in urban sustainability this June. See him write at placeandpoetics.com.

Jacob Cintron is an amateur photographer from the Bronx. He can often be found stalking through the night in the name of justice and delicious hamburgers. In his free time, Jacob enjoys listening to jazz, exploring the city with friends, and writing biographical material in the third person. He aspires to one day take off on a road trip and find himself, in the most clichĂŠ way possible.

Jennifer Cheng is a pastry arts graduate from ICE and a recent transfer student to Hunter college. Her favorite book is Where the Red Fern Grows.

Marie Coneys is in her second semester at Hunter College. She is part of the Muse Scholars Program and intends to earn a BFA degree in studio arts with a minor in art history. Marie can be contacted at marieconeys@ gmail.com and her work is viewable at www.society6.com/ mariestclaire.

Eugene Danyo is in his junior year studying linguistics and foreign policy through the Thomas Hunter Honors Program. He seeks to inspire transparent dialogue between silenced peoples and governments as well as among 110

everyday individuals in New York City. Contact: eugene. danyo@gmail.com

David M. deLeon has had poetry and fiction in places like Rattle, Fence, Strange Horizons, Diagram, The Cortland Review, and the anthology Only the Sea Keeps. Recently he’s been re-exploring his roots in theatre by acting and directing around Hunter. He maintains a website at davidmdeleon.com.

Paloma dell’Aquila is from Queens and has been studying different forms of art since she was a child. She is concerned with the materiality of art objects and existence and how they occupy space and time. Most recently, her work is shifting from the traditional forms of painting and film processing to sculptures with found objects and experimental photography.

Lenore Eros was born and raised in New York City where she currently lives with her artistically enthused four-year-old son, Harlow, and their pooch, Chloe the Eskie.

With a soft spot for film noir archetypes and avant-garde, she continues to write dramatic narratives while exploring theatre, film, prose, and journalism.

Louis Gaudio is a junior at Hunter majoring in both film and creative writing. He enjoys writing nonfiction and creative nonfiction about his experiences in the US Navy.

Some of his favorite authors are Vladimir Nabokov, Alice Walker, and Charles Dickens.

THEADORA HADZI is an enthusiastic designer who just can’t seem to say “no.” She’s currently shuffling multiple creative director positions, freelance digital photography, 111

OTR

painting freaky things, and reading weird abandonment short stories that make her cry. Her work can be seen at www.theadorahadzi.webs.com.

Gabriela Hernandez is a senior studying community health. Originally from Puerto Rico, she has lived in Florida, Boston, and now New York City. She hopes to continue her travels and capture all that she can while working towards a healthy society. You can find more of her work at gabrielahernandezphotography.com

LaszlO Hoffmann is a camping equipment store employee responsible for pitching and taking down display tents. He is also an amateur selenographer and student of geography at Hunter College.

Rachel Ilg is the youngest of eight kids in her family and grew up in Ohio. She moved to NYC at the age of 16 to pursue her acting career. She was accepted into the Macaulay Honors Program at Hunter and, after being accepted into the nursing program as well, decided to follow her dreams of creativity by switching to a studio art major. She couldn’t be happier with the decision. Rachel recently won best director at Hunter for her one-womanproduction short film “Spine.” This May she graduated with a bachelors in studio art and is off to LA. to keep chasing her dreams of acting, filmmaking, and art.

David Kanbergs enjoys taking photos, making music, and writing short fiction. He currently resides in Brooklyn.

Ki Sub Lee was born in 1991, and as a young boy dreamed of becoming an artist who could communicate with people through art. He is currently majoring in studio art at Hunter college. “Obligation” is a painting that he made at his client’s request.

112

John MacDonald is a founder of Tenement Street Workshop, a film, theatre, and advocacy company. His next project is “Bodega,” a TV series shooting in the fall. www. tenementstreet.org.

Rabia Rana is a creative writing major at Hunter College. Photography is breather when time gets tough or when words get too annoying and she just wants to share a story without saying a single thing.

Kate Ryan is a writer, musician, and CUNY B.A. student from Brooklyn, NY. She sells edible flowers for a living.

Kate Sokolovsky is a creative writing major who began reading at two and has never stopped since. She writes like a train: from start to finish, with minimal revision, occasionally trying to run her readers over.

Clare Nazarena Tascio is 23 years old, currently completing her junior year at Hunter College. She is majoring in creative writing, and lives in Brooklyn, NY. When she isn’t writing fiction, Ms. Tascio is writing and performing acoustic songs. You can hear her sounds at https://soundcloud.com/clare-nazarena-tascio.

Miles Trahan is an independent filmmaker living and working out of New York City. In his four years as a Film Studies major at Hunter College he has worked on almost two dozen productions, including writing, directing and producing the short films Bad Things and Emasculation.

“Auto-Erotic” will be his next film, with plans to go into production this Fall.

113

SUBMIT Passionate about writing or art? Submit your visual art, fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, drama, and cross-genre pieces every semester. See our website for details on how to submit online.

GET INVOLVED Students are encouraged to become editors, graphic designers, publicity associates, production assistants, or senior staff members. Attend our many events, such as our open houses, writing sessions, art sessions, open mics, and launch parties. Or, just come by our office. Visit our website and find us on Facebook.

EDIT The OTR welcomes Hunter undergraduates of all experience levels to become editors for art, drama, prose, or poetry. Editors decide together which pieces are accepted into the issue every semester. For more information, please visit our website.

CONTACT TheOlivetreeReview.com Thomas Hunter Room 212 olivetreereview@gmail.com

est. 1983 theolivetreereview.com