Paris/Atlantic 2018

Paris

/ Atlantic 2018

6,

rue du

Colonel Combes

75007 Paris F RANCE The American University

of

Paris

HEAD EDITOR Melissa Monique Halabe

MANAGING EDITOR Charlotte Lewis

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Siân Melangell Dafydd

PRINTED BY TANGHE PRINTING, BELGIUM PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF PARIS EDITION OF 400 COPYRIGHT © AUP STUDENT MEDIA AND INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTORS, 2018. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO REPRODUCTION, COPY OR TRANSMISSION, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, MAY BE MADE WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION. PLEASE SEND INQUIRIES TO PARISATLANTIC@AUP.EDU

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PARIS/ATLANTIC

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gently upwards body

CHAPTER 1

a gulping youth of sage green

CHAPTER 2

WRITING

SOUTENANCE............................................................GEOFFREY GILBERT THIS MOMENT...............................................JONATHAN BURKHALTER EULOGY TO HEANEY........................................L’ÉMIR OMAR CHÉHAB LOOSE JAW......................................................JONATHAN BURKHALTER SHORT THOUGHTS AND THE NIGHT FOX............ELIJAH SEVIER TODAY, EXACTLY..........................................................SARAH STURMAN THE DUNEMEN...................................................................SOPHIA PASSIN UNTITLED............................................................................IAN TILLOTSON BACK TO THE FUTURE BOAST.........................ALASDAIRE FLEITAS NOT THE SAME..........................................................ANDREW SHILLAM OF THE WORLD..............................................MAXIMILIANE DONICHT NEW YORK...................................................NATALIE STAMATOPOULOS GLAD TO - FIND WATER..................MARINA FRANÇOLIN BORGES SUNFLOWERS - AT NIGHT......................DAKOTA HELENA PARRISH THE KING, WITH LIONS, LAUGHING.......................RACHAEL CREGER A MEMORY FROM 19 RUE - ROUSSEAU.....................ELLIS CARTER THE DYNAMICS OF STILLNESS..............................ALESSIO ZANELLI THE WEEDY SPECIES........................SARAH-JANE WORTHINGTON DELIRIUM YET HAPPY................................JONATHAN BURKHALTER OUROBOROS...........................................................................ELIJAH SEVIER YOUNG ENOUGH.........................................................HANNA GRESSLER THE SKEPTICS.................................................................LETHU MSIMANG LAMENT...................................................................L’ÉMIR OMAR CHÉHAB 1-3..................................................................................ELEANOR DICKINSON VEN A COMER..................................................................DANICA CORTEZ COLD-PRESSED CARBON................................................SOPHIA PASSIN SCENTS OF A CITY....................................................HARRIET ALIDA LYE DOD I’W COED......................................................................MENNA ELFYN DOD I’W COED TRANSLATIONS.............................AMELIA HARVEY A DAY IN THE VILLAGE...................................L’ÉMIR OMAR CHÉHAB QUEEN OF THE NAKED MOLE RATS.....................JEFFREY GREENE SHORT - DICTIONARY............................SIÂN MELANGELL DAFYDD MY HEAD - GOLDEN LIGHT..................................ANDREW SHILLAM THE SUN - LEFT-HANDED...................NATALIE STAMATOPOULOS LETTER TO GOD...................................MARINA FRANÇOLIN BORGES SEEING YOU AGAIN / A LYRIC................JONATHAN BURKHALTER THE PINT GLASS..........................................................JONTÉ BOUCHARD NEVER GO BACK.......................................................................BRAD EVANS GRENETA...........................................................................SARAH STURMAN POORSONG TWO............................................................LISA ROBERTSON UNTITLED.....................................................................MANIKA WANGATA x

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ART MARINA FRANÇOLIN BORGES 8, 29 RIKI DAVIS 25, 62, 107t ELEANOR DICKINSON 82-83 JUSTINE DUHAYON 31, 95 LEANNE EBENS 36-37 JONATHAN HALABE 49, 107b VERA JÓNSDÓTTIR 112 JUSTINE DUHAYON & LOU LÉVY 96 CHARLOTTE LEWIS 20, 30t, 46, 60-61 AINSLEY LUNDEEN 3 KATERINA MCGRATH 48, 51 RALPH PETTY 16 ISABELLA RAO 15, 50, 70-71, 100-101 ALFREDO RENTERIA 30b, 72-73 ELIJAH SEVIER 78-79 JONATHAN SHIMONY 38-39, 66-67 NATALIE STAMATOPOULOS XIV, 52 SARAH STURMAN VI-VII, 14, 56-57, 94, 106 LILLIAN WAGNER 88, 98-99 SARAH-JANE WORTHINGTON 11, 114 xi

gently upwards body xiv

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Soutenance Geoffrey Gilbert A banquet is a pleasure, a circle crossed by roads. You start with two, make it move, you put the chapter in an album.

We feel the century real and not too close. Don’t cry for me, the truth is we never left the text / I made an assemblage; I enjoyed it moving on, I insist on love moving on a wave, fences waving, even lines, waving.

I like to come in my sad home.

Too many notes are crowding at the fence to let them in the house.

Open the door; they play in the yard they send vague messages, sometimes, when they stop and settle for the night.

This is enormous and new.

I wanted more index; I wanted a rubric; I think you are hot in words and sources, and ample in justice, because of your rigour. There is a hat on your mastery, not easy to wear. This is rare and pertinent. I tried to resist you (I think you are hot), but you are super bendy, you go round me.

I wanted an index, a rubric, a potlach of physical things, an irony.

If you don’t see it, say it, please enter my tradition.

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You did not ignore us, the door is open, come on in to our sad home. There can be no autobiography of pleasure; life writes itself just out of duty, pleasure floods out of the door.

Fuck you back into your box I’m hot I did not want to write to you, you will be saved by humour. Irony just gets me down, and when you start to call its absence it is always there.

So do not say its name and I will save you with my humour.

I am forced to admire this work. You saw it matters, over bridges, over shadows. I wished it was not not sex always, making things in motion. A man of ham is not one man, you flirted with enormous things, a study in imagination by the mouth.

The boy is beautiful and decorated with silver.

This is not irony. We participate. with a fullness which is drunk, gay boy, and I am irritated when the whole stops turning, and you settle face to face with different things.

I do not like your pleasure as you like your pleasure, as you settle to your pleasure. I would blend. I would mock. But the diet of capital enters my dream inside the sad house, sad couple, 4

their bodies lit together in the honeyed moon. Pleasure seeks its niches – rope for fags; scent for rum; word for body – the boy has rings and bands of silver the boy has skin and surface.

The pleasure is in the distance from joy, and nothing is another thing: the boy has teeth of silver, a band of silver on his arm, a cormorant’s ring.

The boy has a rose gold watch.

This one claims to top you, but no-one buys the strut.

He sees you have been intimate in a place he does not know, he dives at your surface, paws at it, his darker suit, his suit less good.

He tries to slip inside you in the dark, and does not recognise that he is pawing Peter Coviello. A bottom facing off against a top doesn’t mean he gets to fuck you, doesn’t mean he takes you home to the academy.

This is anti-peristasis, and that is irony, if you want it to be named.

You have your traits they are not mine, there’s something slim and precious in your style not mine. I approach you with my tools and then efface myself. There is no contradiction. Suffering is dumb.

If you could index pleasure I would find it less intense. I try to hate it, try to resist, but I wallow in your notes outside the house.

A noble bricolage is still construction.

Homes built that way are much less sad, couples much less sad.

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This Moment Jonathan Burkhalter

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Eulogy To Heaney The Poetry Of Earth Is Never Dead L’émir Omar Chéhab A couple of years, now, since the herald of the great Irish literary tradition has paid his dues to the world, put his affairs in order, perhaps issued a last ‘fare thee well’ to the muds that would ‘slap’ at the end of his ‘squat pen’, and passed on the spade he so becomingly dug with to the next generation.

A man of many words, though none too many, Seamus Heaney was a poet of his time and of a timeless homeland. He put to verse the coarse hands of his father and forefathers, their ploughing of ground as religious ceremony, their stretching down and etching back ‘twenty years away’, engraving in the course of poetic tradition the dirt, the ‘slime’, the ‘slobber[ry]’ explosions of tadpoles, the hard sounds of ‘slap and plop’ that trudge against the ear not unlike his father’s ‘hobnailed wake’ would against the ground.

What is so endearing in the thick turf, that substance that is Heaney’s sustenance? It is not so much an ecological activism opposing nihilistic violence à la Gillian Clarke’s Lament, For the cormorant in his funeral silk For vengeance, and the ashes of language. nor a crusade to beautify a ‘festering’ ‘flax’ within a ‘gauze’ of bluebottle buzz1, nor quite a metaphysical reflection of self in Nature as in Allen Curnow’s Continuum, and the moon does neither of these things, I am talking about myself nor even a patriotic statement akin to Yeats’s Easter 1916, though home was close to both their arts. ______________________ 1 Heaney, Death Of A Naturalist

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Perhaps it is an ode to the un-faded vitality of an Earth that doesn’t sink in slumber but with a toddler’s shameless naturel burps up ‘bubbles’ (albeit ‘delicately’), a life-affirming reprisal of a ‘Poetry of earth [that] is never dead’2, or to borrow from Bernstein’s understanding of the latter, a homage to an old way of life, where first in hierarchy was Nature – the undertone-based tonal system in music, and our bequeathed Earth, in human organized life, ‘for when man was put into the garden of Eden, he was put there ut operaretur eum, so that he should work it’, had said Pangloss, in Voltaire’s Candide.

Roots and fibers Yet to me, Heaney’s spiritual Poet-counterpart is Whitman, for indeed, in his most intimate verses, it is Earth that ‘filter[s] and fiber[s] [his] blood3’ and Word that reflects identity. Is it not when peeling Mother Earth’s bearings, these potatoes which salved Ireland before cursing it during the famine, that Heaney joins symbiotically with his Earthly Mother – his ancestry and heritage – ‘her breath in [his]’, ‘never closer the whole rest of [their] lives4’? It follows, how does one, in such fusion with tradition and Earth, express the ‘untranslatable I’5? Whitman would ‘sound [his] barbaric YAWP over the rooftops of the world’. In fashion not dissimilar, if a tad less bestial in self-assertion, Heaney ‘sets the darkness echoing’, letting his words run down the humid cracks of a stone well into the belly of the Earth, where a wandering Echo sends them bubbling back upward, like a mirror reflecting identity unto the speaker who cannot see himself otherwise. Death of a Naturalist is in itself Heaney’s Song of Innocence and of Experience, setting the scene for his apprentissage, his coming-of-age paired with the discoveries of procreation, in those muddy marshes Heaney ‘bequeath[s] [himself ] to grow from6’ and to let grow in his verse. And when the Poet claims of his version of spade, ‘I’ll dig with it’7, it is precisely at the tip of his ‘squat pen’, ‘under [his] boot-soles8’, that he finds his inheritance. ______________________ 2 Keats, On the Grasshopper and the Cricket 3 Whitman, Leaves of Grass 4 Heaney, When All The Others Were Away At Mass 5 Whitman, Leaves of Grass 6 Whitman, Leaves of Grass 7 Heaney, Digging 8 Whitman, Leaves of Grass

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Pen, Spade, Sword In a sense, not in every sense, but in a sense nonetheless, Heaney may too have identified with the woe-begone Prince Of Denmark. Born to fathers who valued getting one’s hands dirty, Hamlet and Heaney would prefer the pen to the spade or the sword, they made a lifestyle out of the Word so often mistook for weakness, for shying away from the ruggedness that made Man. Heaney would echo his foil’s ‘the time is out of joint’ in his poetry, setting ‘time’ to the plural, partaking in a more worldly reflection on the state of things – why indeed, the ‘Times they are a-Changin’! Be that as it may, ‘Now it is my father who follows behind me, and will not go away’, concludes Heaney in Follower, as if conjuring once more from the Shakespearean tragedy the Father’s ghost that treads upon his offspring’s conscience. The tragedy ends thusly: ‘Goodnight, sweet prince, and may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest’\\ - Horatio to Hamlet

Loose Jaw Jonathan Burkhalter Two wolves are sitting in a den.

One wolf says to the other, this bite is to play, this bite is not real.

I want to let you know so that when we’ve transpired together in an arena of games you won’t think that this is an actual hunt; you won’t think that there is a prize.

Two wolves are sitting in a den.

Neither speak.

One wolf bites the other loosely; her jaws slacking over his neck in a ludic gesture, similar to but not the same as a kill.

You and I are sitting in your bed You hold my hand loosely while scanning Craigslist for a new chair.

I look at you. You smile.

Your trousseau is ______ and ( ) Your skin is a truck bed of wheat.

My fingers are beginning to bleed.

My bicycle needs a new front tire.

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Short Thoughts and the Night Fox Elijah Sevier

I. within infinite denial is the bloody paw-print of a night fox. a light-up anthem to the silent plays. the sly toy fox toys with the silent faux locks. a nursery rhyme! in practice – a show, yet when broken the fake locks must be fixed. the safety of the home depends upon it.

II. in one foul sweep, the sweets along with the hound’s share of the meat are pushed upon your plate, and you are inclined to eat with your feet. the hound begins to howl, still finding time apart from it all to celebrate.

III. white-water contrition. a wet capsize in cobaltconsummation between shipwreck and riverbed. alongside paradigms like fate and destiny, is the glass staircase of rhyme and reason. the prospect of true accountability is abandoned in near religious fashion as an impractical and functionless sweepstake of another age; the allegory of the synergetic dichotomy between earth and Olympus.

IV. history tells bloodied tales of the burnt out, of the wet flame freak and his matchstick pout. myth coaxes his fawn-like spawn to graze upon Lucifer’s unkempt lawn. Lucifer, who counts on the freak’s ambivalence, employs him to do things such as take the form of the wet head of a bum’s last match. he laps up the damp smoke of the fruitless task.

V. as a bed is for sleeping, it is also for crawling and chewing. assigned function is as much a burden on the inanimate object as it is on the individual. what fires flame ideas of heat and hot, that do not first show our skin the red of burning temperatures? in a perfect dreamstate it is words we know not. the embers of dismantled archetypes are written into history as generational gaffes to be reframed years later, under different guidance.

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Today, Exactly.

Sarah Sturman

It is exactly 12:14 p.m. at Denny’s and Teresa is fighting the very concept of change in the parking lot. Change looks like a flying baby in a blue pantsuit riding a Komodo dragon, but at the same time like a ray of light holding a book from Copenhagen in one hand and a piece of avocado-salmon sushi in another – the third hand is doing the cha-cha slide. But also the blinds are down on the windows and I don’t have a good view. I’ve had three coffees already and five ounces of pancakes. This may seem strange, but remember that I am at Denny’s and Denny’s is the Night Vale of the restaurant world. iHop, in this comparison, is Desert Bluffs. I tap the ketchup to the beat of Another-One-Bites-The-Dust and a sixth cup of coffee appears before me. Teresa comes back from fighting change in the parking lot. I know she has lost because this happens and time continues on.

Or maybe Teresa has won and the end of change just means that the universe does not alter from its trajectory at the moment of defeat.

Time wasn’t here; time had a lunch meeting, so we must operate under the assumption that change operates independent of time. If this is the case – and it is, unless change has defeated Teresa – everything that has ever, is ever, and will ever happen is happening at the same time or not at all. That means that I have consumed both infinite cups of coffee and none at all. Teresa orders waffles – always or never – and debriefs with a hologram of Nick Fury and his right-hand-man Jane Bennett.

I do not hear the results of the battle because I am too busy tapping the ketchup bottle for another cup of coffee. The Avengers come in and start a fight on our table. They do not say anything but Black Widow and the Hulk are wearing a yellow tutu – just the one, around both of them – and Hawkeye has the same tiara as me. They are each exactly five inches tall. I want to get another cup of coffee but the cast of High School Musical 2 is doing the macarena around the ketchup bottle. Everything disappears and Teresa eats her waffles in slowmotion. I can see every single hair on her face and she can see every single hair on mine. They are holding little cups of coffee hostage, Teresa says. I battle the coffee back from them with a whale bone fan from 1861, which is the same year as the Italian unification. Time joins us; time’s lunch meeting has ended. Teresa says it is my turn to battle change. She gives me 14.568 shields that I carry on my back like a red squirrel carries the Empire State Building upside-down while skating over the North Sea. It is exactly 3:18 p.m. I exit the Denny’s.

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The Dunemen Sophia Passin There’s a place where time just kinda stops. It’s the fanciest damned beach bathroom I’d ever seen, and I’ve seen my share – white marbled walls and checkered tile floors.

Sometimes when you go there a little past midnight you’ll see ‘em. They come out of the fog, twistin’ and fillin’ the space. They’ll ask you for a light. You’ll give ‘em one. Maybe you’ll see a glimpse of their eyes. Don’t look in ‘em. You can; after all it’s your decision, but I wouldn’t, personally.

I knew a guy who looked in ‘em, Sal, I don’t talk to him anymore, that crowd lost their appeal a long time ago, but I heard about him the other day. I guess he’s been surfing the ether, ridin’ the radio waves to Valhalla. That fucker looked ‘em straight in their eyes and said he saw enlightenment. I asked him what it looked like. He said it was a lady with fat tits. Sal’s always been a screw loose, but at least he’s a genuine fuck.

Don’t sound menacin’: a lady with fat tits. But that’s not what everyone sees. My buddy Jack, he looked them in their eyes. He had a dope Zippo, real rad with a little skull engraved on the side and everythin’. He’d say he’s a man of irony and would always mix in a bit of Jack Daniel’s with his lighter fluid just for shits and giggles.

Anyways, one night he was smokin’ down by the bathrooms and they asked him for a light. He gave ‘em one, but the flame was too high. Jack didn’t mean to look ‘em in the eyes; he was just tryn’a be polite. Like I said, the flame was too high and he saw the glint in their eyes. Jack never did tell anyone what he saw. One day he got up from his spot in the dunes and just walked straight out into the ocean. The only thing they found was his Zippo, must’ve fallen outta his pocket on the walk in. Hadn’t even rusted yet.

I don’t think they mean no harm. They just tell people what they see, just ‘cause you can’t handle it, don’t make ‘em bad. They do their thing, I do mine. Sometimes I pass ‘em by, nod at ‘em, y’know?

Just cause you’re scared of somethin’ don’t mean you should be a dick.

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Some kids tried to mess with ‘em awhile back. Lit the whole place up with fireworks and the like. Can’t blame the kids for being stupid, really. You gotta do some stupid shit in your life to have a story to tell. The kids sure did give ‘em a light, but those Dunemen didn’t appreciate the snark.

They waited for the kids to get buzzed enough. There’s always gotta be a couple’a broken bottles before you can really reason with any group of fuckers who’s balls haven’t quite dropped yet. Eventually, they ran out of sparklers and were just layin’ around shootin’ the shit, when the fog rolled in. The kids didn’t notice at first until one of their buddy’s shoulder went numb. At first, he just thought it was the air comin’ up from the sea, but no brine is that cold. He shrugged it off – that lick’a whiskey was wearin’ off fast though. Soon the cold spread across his chest and he found himself breathin’ in ice instead of sweet, sweet oxygen. The kids all looked up to see ‘em all starin’ down at the lot of ‘em, eyes blazin’. I’d never seen ‘em so miffed.

The kids nearly shit themselves.

I didn’t stick around to watch the rest. I’m not so much a fan of dramatics these days. The N was pullin’ in as I was walkin’ up Judah.

That’s when the yellin’ started. I wouldn’t have been able to see the scene even I wanted to. I heard the kids were found safe in their beds the next mornin’. I also heard they moved outta the city pretty quick after, probably to Oakland or some shit.

People always like to mess with shit they don’t understand.

Curiosity killed the cat, satisfaction brought him back. I’m on my ninth life and I ain’t got too much curiosity left in me. I don’t try to toe the line with ‘em, and they don’t toe the line with me. Gotta respect the shit you don’t understand.

But I mean, if you don’t believe me, go on ahead and wait around the beach long enough. You’ll get a glimpse of him, flippin’ around his Zippo, doin’ his tricks. Saw him hangin’ down with ‘em the other night. You’ll start to see a lot of this town down by the bathrooms.

Don’t look in their eyes. You could join ‘em. All it is, is a short walk into that swirlin’ sea.

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Untitled

It, the walker It looked at the purple sky Between dead oak branches And walks its endless route.

It doesn’t have a name A face, a sense of self All it knows is it must walk.

Ian Tillotson

It walks past a brown stain where a squirrel Hit by a car rotted for months The smell of rot never left.

It walks by a bus station A woman died here years ago The dried blood all that’s left.

It walks past an out of place palm tree Displaced like the rest Brown leaves telling all.

It walks among the small mountains The last refuges of nature Among skittish deer and howling coyotes.

It walks over the choking stream The bridge a refuge for the forsaken Hiding from unforgiving nights.

It walks past a graveyard and playground Never knowing who put the two side by side It thinks nobody does.

It walks down an empty boulevard.

Where stray dogs nipped at its heels And shadows without owners stood watching It walks past an idling car The bones rattling down the street, stopping suddenly It quickens its pace It reaches its destination And rests its weary bones Knowing full well it will start again Tomorrow.

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Not The Same Andrew Shillam Not the same, though the wind hurrying in Across the ocean whips the flags the same Without you, through the pine trees howling thin,

Pushing leaves the same and raising the tin On rooves down streets that still bear the same name, Not the same, though the wind hurrying in

Insists. On King Street, when the bells begin I retrace the old footsteps without shame Without you, through the pine trees howling thin,

To the foreshore, and, the wind on my skin, Only new faces – those who have no claim, Not the same, though the wind, hurrying in

Gusts now, cries loud and the old faces spin, And I walk the streets the same way we came, Not the same, though the wind hurrying in Without you through the pine trees howling thin.

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Back to the Future Boast Alasdaire Fleitas I, Marty McFly, have travelled the scene that no man can achieve, I am seen by his attackers who make us both plutonian-thieves.

I flee to the DeLorean to no avail seek a strange realm.

No estranged heavens had been such a curious qualm.

Alas, I am neighbored by a gene-companion, Whose wife recalls my anima as the key-keeper of her complexion.

Should I be the one to erase my very own exemplary existence?

Seems as though I have inferred with fate and the concerning creation of coincidence.

The Doc, a fate-overthrower, is with whom I seek conference, Together, we approach the course of George and Lorraine hence, Had we showed prudence in 1955 as I am accosted by my mother’s blundered beloved.

There, my impatience bursts into a monumental ditty on the guitar, As I witness a reconvening scene of woe between a match that fate may irritably irregular, I return to back to the present which aims fully, At last those children be ready for Johnny B. Goode.

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Of the World Maximiliane Donicht calm kiln filled by oceans of roasted sea bronze mirror in an earthen cup molded to hand and spirit in the gentle hue of leaves before days grow short and red or the moss at the bottom of a lake lying dark and unmoved at the foot of a silver temple or even the clouded emerald on the back of a great fish gliding through the same mossy water by the foot of the same temple its scales glistening through the murky gold in my fingers like a segment of hope or a forest of clover or green or the way its vague invitation induces me to remember what I found in no place I have been

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new york Natalie Stamatopoulos 1. you care now too much or much more than before you see more legs in new york more breasts more hopeless coolness brooklyn at night evokes canyons of choking un-forgiveness and scents weed beaten senseless meat lures vegan carnivores to chained fences such fragile liquored-up appeal like heatstroke on the subway we choose our own agony pick it fresh at the farmers market fat and ripe each Saturday 2. you see your reflection in your fork in distorted detail a collection of eyes and skin you keep your chapstick in your pocket reapply religiously on your way to the subway station and again in the subway once more at your destination under the guise of moisture you are much less aggressive

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3. at the bar you are bare-knuckled and cold biology in excess you doubt timelessness place knuckles under chin replace prayer with poetry from memory it’s all guts and chaos now 4. you find moths by the mailboxes in your apartment building you ask them how their day has been but they ignore you probably asleep you imagine yourself hatching into a new canvas of light levitating without culture only structure perhaps bilingual in bug sounds absurdity is only relative 5. in paris you would steal chopsticks from restaurants to wear in your hair when you pull up your hair with chopsticks you make the shape of a helix with your fingers take whatever strands you can get in paris weather was like a mirror on the metro you would no longer remember dancing in the heat or by the sea 27

in paris buildings touch but nothing else does

6. all of the graffiti in new york touches new york is a long sentence of pictures and bad words bad words made good in the holy rust of spray paint it pools milky at your feet and if it spills into the east river, how many right turns until it reaches the sea? how many more until it reaches the seine?

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From a series of drawings by Marina Françolin Borges titled ‘Things Said of Me’

Glad to, still, find water Marina Françolin Borges Suddenly my eyes aren’t faded anymore, I cried and the water cleared my sight.

I became different, once my love went away. I was many more than one, and I forgot who had come first of my many selves. I was suffocated by my own love that, now homeless, attached itself to my neck. I asked different hands to try and take it off – a mistake, and one for which I was blamed. My love told me, afterwards, that there was repenting to be done. I was alone, and time went away too for a while.

Suddenly, then, I wasn’t in sleep. I saw the world, well and bright; the blue was back into the sky and I could read a book without the sadness of wishing to write one, to better say what I believed to be better things to say. I felt time around me again.

Without my love, I remembered my deepest loyalty, even truer than the one I held the closest, for it had come first and remained: a dream, of green hills, where the breeze is cold, and neighbouring cows that listen to the man in the dream playing guitar, and a house somewhere near an ocean. If my love had stayed around, or anywhere near, my dream would need to adapt, because he cannot play the guitar. Even now, I can see him, walking amongst the cows. He would breathe in the breeze, but still doubt the beauty of it and question the air inside his lungs, and I would, still, have admired him, if only because his fear of breath made his attention to life greater, in his own way.

In my dream, I wore a white dress and I am never sure, not even now, if there were children running in the garden or not. They were there hazily, appropriately, dreamily. What was certainly there was a couch, in which I sat, constantly, infinitely, waiting for the man’s steps to reach our house in the hills. The dream ends before he arrives, because as he is not here, I cannot picture his face, not without suffering or wishing. My dream has an empty space, a hole I decided to keep open for a while, through which all my love breezes through 32

while I wait for him, but he walks so slowly I’m not even sure he knows in which direction he is walking. Anyway, I do not wish or dream anymore, because my love has asked me to stop suffering.

And now, after the sin, condemnation and act of contrition, all performed by me, I can write words without forgetting what is real and what is haze. I can still see the hills and the sky, but now I remember the messages I tell myself that make me feel constant, like “time passes if you let it” and I started to remember that the same things as always make me feel the same as always, so after crying in despair, I cry in beauty, in the bathtub, the only real place when nothing else is, where everything that isn’t goes down the drain, like my mother taught me; I am alive, I exist within myself, and I send the sadness to another day, when my love is mine again. I live, alone. I look at the water, the one part of both reality and dream, the one that crosses the path between one and the other, and while I watch it, it seems to watch me too, and it reminds me that it has watched me for years and in front of it I am, as I always was, still.

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Sunflowers Only Grow at Night Dakota Helena Parrish In the dream I am sitting at some middle-American breakfast joint, drinking a hot chocolate with whipped cream out of a beige mug while I wait at a weathered pleather booth. This would be the type of place I would meet my father. Country music is playing over the loud speaker and fresh blackberry and banana cream pies rest in the glass counter by the register. Kids scribble on paper menus with four-pack Crayola crayons and the waitress calls me ‘honey’ as she refills the water. These are simple fragments of childhood memories that I have with my father creeping back under the disguise of this dream state – hey are rearranged to fit the imagined scenario that has replayed in my mind over and over again behind closed lashes.

My psychology degree has fooled me. I believed that if I became educated about the mind and the madness that can encumber it, then I would be able to anticipate my shortcomings and triumph past them. About two years into my studies I realized that this behavior is called intellectualization, a defense mechanism where reasoning is used to prevent confrontation with unconscious conflict associated with emotional stress. Which leads me to this dream, the one I can’t escape – I intellectualized it too. It has visited me since my adolescent years, creeping into my slumber after the Homecoming dance and invading my drunken peace on a warm Parisian night.

Dreams are the most delicate yet pervasive of experiences generated by the human mind. When you drift off to sleep your brain relaxes as it descends from the waking state of consciousness into the subconscious. This intermediary space is less inhibited than our waking state, but it consists of personally or socially acceptable representations of buried desires, fears, and ingrained experiences that lie locked away in the deeper unconscious. For some people, dreams are a wonderful occurrence that unleash creative potential.

For me, dreams are what happen when I am rendered vulnerable – when my superficial strength goes to sleep along with the life I have created for myself.

My father planted bad seeds in my developing brain and I have felt them grow into poisoned sunflowers over the passing years.

When the dream comes I see sunflowers everywhere, in full bloom, at the coffee counter where men are reading the newspaper, on the pin of the friendly waitress’ uniform, even in my hair. Sunflowers are my 34

subconscious representation of the abuse. Sunflowers only grow at night. Or so the saying goes. Their roots lie in my unconscious – they have become bottomless as they managed to wrap around my thoughts. Like a virus they have sickened my perception of reality, of people, of love, and of trust. Ten years later I still get caught in the same dream, but now I have the unfortunate pleasure of knowing what the dream means: I am longing, deep down, to see him again after all these years. I know it’s a bad idea, but the little girl inside of me screams every time I put on my eyeliner because I see his eyes where mine are supposed to be. I cannot escape him, not even on the other side of the world, not even with a psychology degree.

In my dream we meet at a rickety San Clemente café. I see his shadow cross the room, a six-foot-seven force to be reckoned with marches in my direction wearing washed-out Levis and a golf shirt. I am sitting there, elbows on the table and fingers interlaced, dressed well like my mother just to spite him. He examines my face and realizes that my eyes match his, that I have the same sinister glare and dull teeth. Our tongues are different; he speaks with hot sticky southern tones but it no longer sounds enforcing. Then I stand up to face him and rise taller than his other sons and daughters; he is taken back by the height he has given me. I am powerful in this moment. I mouth muted words in his direction – words that I have yet to figure out – and he starts to get loud in his usual way. I am no longer afraid of him as he bangs his fists on the table. I look at the man who created me and visibly pity him. I have become a woman without him. His threats mean nothing to me now. He was only scary when I looked at him with eight-year-old eyes, yet I recognize his anger like the smell of chocolate chip cookies. I rise with composure, say nothing, and hand him a bouquet of sunflowers. He throws them to the ground the same way he used to pound my little brother against the wall and the petals scatter across the diner floor. I walk away but pause to step on the yellow spots that have fallen near the pie counter onto the carpet and rub them in to make sure they leave a stain. As I exit, I hear the dangling strand of bells clash as the café door opens into the morning light. I am jolted back to life with wide eyes and the knowledge that this lovely nightmare will never happen. It will never be as it is in the dream. It is my ultimate idealization. If I were really as strong as I appear in the dream then I would have no use for this final battle in my mind. I am infatuated with the imagined victory. I am addicted to this dream – it has power over me and I seek it out often, if only to make sense of it all.

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The King, with lions, Laughing Rachael Creger Sweet love, renew thy force! spurned desire is hatred set on fire I am the scorched body of love a ghost inside your head let us compare mythologies in other words fuck you fuck daylight and fuck cotton the draperies of your eyelashes fine like the embroidery of the matron’s mourning veil singing to me like the cat’s cries in the morning eyes green and filled with starving ready to be fed just as your body is ready to be loved you taste like sodium and your pubis like our unborn babies unripe as your intellection since the day you last grazed my meadows

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Your cry to the world was “save me” believe me I tried my best he who wishes to fuck his mother neuter is the envy which graces the skin of your knuckles ready to be fed rosied are the ripples of skin ‘round my nipples browned and ready to be loved I learned the word «foncé» when I was describing your coat to the police Am I like a sister to you am I like a father to you am I like a mother or a brother to you will you treateth me like a spaniel am I worthy of crusading in the name of God and country and France and foutre do you hate me like I hate you will you fuck me when the savoir-faire en faisant amour is stabbed to death and the vita amoris embittered I loved you like the wolf loves the moon at which he cries in ecstasy of his Nature made manifest I loved you like the yet extinguished star loves its light before crashing and choking on eternal darkness I loved you like today loves tomorrow when the tears will surely have dried how could they not when the wells have grown thirsty and the grass round their craggy stones has browned and died Love wills death as vengeance wills vigor I am your wife and you cannot kill me now 41

A Memory from 19 Rue E l l i s Two hours of come up and I’m sitting inside a tunnel of twisting legs and not realizing I’m sitting I’m tripping people as they pass me and I can’t form the words to say I’m sorry but they don’t give a shit about me no one’s looked at my face since I came here and now I can’t leave here because I can’t find the tunnel exits and the world is spinning with all the parallax of moving legs and blurring into each other they send me somewhere and I have to start talking to them and I see an eye in stone on the other side as the sea parts and it crashes back on me and I must gasp and now they look at me and the legs are no longer moving and my eyes are widening and my mouth dilating at these black-eyed blurs of phantom voices and colors that hold me invade me and possess frighten senseless and touchless through the wall and like the shoe shop beside I’m stuck to the stands of the sidewalk motionless mourning at my numbness and impossible confusion but the field is warping and I can no longer say I’m in the same place seeing new figures and ulterior contact of unidentified beings vague enough to be impossible and visible enough to be wise and I see their eyes and sightlessness as they look in one direction to a reflection of a hallway in a mirror and incrementally my sanity shrinks with each minimal zoom-in the mirror deepens and widens to a horizon of blank and starless infinity and in me I feel nothing my body belonging to nowhere and mindless formless deepening in the well of transparent blinking I submit to grander thinking but retain nothing answered in a stream of omniscient understanding and recognition universally transcribing the infinite verses of reality onto a giant scroll then fed to a shredder and released to the nameless black and back into the realm more knowledgeable more acknowledged no less infinite and with no absorption the dimensions split my vision and crack my ears so that my remaining senses duplicate like cells and reconvene on the same spot in the form of an introspective sphere looking from all angles at me my sight strips me and reorganizes my body into pieces and crumples my morsels into dust suspends it in patches around 42

J e a n - J a c q u e s R o u ss e a u Carter the sphere and lights begin to flicker and solidify in specks inside the depths of the solid ocean they rotate and influence each other and explode in their own gravitas and I see a new universe from all angles that looks the same as my own and I know it to be me and my being is at all coordinates I am the witness of chaos and resubmission dying infinitely and reconvening in random quantum bursts that last immeasurable increments and I see me at last in the tunnel I was lost in and I look frightened and I want to help but I am formless without influence to corrupt my linear path I try shouting but only appear elsewhere and I am frustrated and destroy in supernovae whole spiral arm-lengths of neighboring galaxies and release oceans of water into cosmic clouds and I see it all freeze from touching the dust and clusters of rocks volcanic I hurl them to planets with foreign life and end them only to whisper a name into an inanimate stone on another to have it peel off and constrict itself into strands of DNA as they slink into the waters and possess small bubbles and elsewhere viral cones are giant in space containing material to destroy all they touch so I lance and pierce the bodies into the crust of another life-mother and they invade and eat the molten flesh of its metal core and the heat releases from its shell and the surface freezes over collapsing into itself inward exploring newer densities and resembling tiny neutron stars surfing the membrane of their elliptical orbits and I forget my place in a place where I am everywhere and I am again purposeless as the supposed god of a presupposed place where I weep comets and embody constellations in an endless observation of an omnipresent cage so I suspend and recede motion and let do and let go and see things like colors and streaks that just happen and I feel like I don’t understand again but it’s okay now I can do this so I grow my garden with plants that shine for the space of an eternity in self-fertilization and I don’t articulate but I see the secrets they show me and I am happy lying on the ground splaying my fingers into trailing webs in front of my face in a place where everyone is worried about me 43

The Dynamics Of Stillness Alessio Zanelli Space. Wanting.

Desire turns all cogs, from joints to ganglia, deep down to the inconsistency that matter is made of.

Vacuum.

Will is all that is, recoiling into every possible shape.

It becomes cog itself, each one before as each one after.

From the primordial fusion, along the eons, by the mutual slosh of universes struggling for existence, to be finally observed, afloat in the pitch and roll of the sole gravitational swarm.

Scattered among pure thought, bounced off an object toward the next, cool-energy-compelled.

So I’ll wait for my brain to shoot out of the singularity, I’ll look forward to my soul flaring from the surface of its blue giant companion.

All I was, am, will be – frozen through the event horizon.

My ancestors, dad, mom, my never-issuing offspring, my selves and would-be selves.

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My strangled screams and rambling stare.

Over the immaculate silence of the absence of time, the all here and now, like a photon in the infinite wave of waves.

All within all and all around all.

One intangible embrace, and the dazing dazzle of endless darkness.

On, and on, and on.

Even though from the outside of it nothing ever seems to move.  

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The Weedy Species Sarah-Jane Worthington Are born innocent Are bred into awareness Are breaking ground as we grow Our daffodils in the sun, And dandelions in the patios brick crevices.

Dirty hands and feet.

Scraped knees and bruised shins.

Sweating like the beads on a plant’s broken branch.

A gulping youth of sage green.

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a gulping youth of sage green 52

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Delirium Yet Happy Jonathan Burkhalter i am time i am an embodi ment of light this much o f a body

what is another another body a nother body of ligh t is time to o much often worse for my g ood time all fractured sleeping on pave ment l ight slick grin a moment opened up

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54

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Ouroboros Elijah Sevier IT WAS PARADISE AFTERALL. IN A THING LIKE BURNT RUBBER. I SINK INTO A FAMILIAR THOUGHT IN WHICH I DO JUST AS I AM TOLD. AS I HAVE BEGGED TO BE SCOLDED FOR WHAT I DO WELL, IT IS ALL FINE TO THROW SOFT FISTS OR PLAY AROUND AFTER. IN SECRET AND AS SUSPECT, AS THE SNAKE WHO SWALLOWS HER OWN TAIL AND SPITS IT BACK UP; NO TASTE FOR INFINITY. THE ALCHEMISTS SPOKE OF A SERPENT OF LIGHT RESIDING IN THE HEAVENS. WHAT KIND OF TERROR IS “ETERNAL RETURN”? I GRIN WITH THE FEAR OF IT. FURTHER DOWN INTO THE MATTRESS SPRINGS WHERE THE FISH SWIM, DARKER PREDATORS SCOWL. ABOVE MYSELF, I IMAGINE NOTHING FLOATS, BUT ONLY STANDS WITH HEELS THAT DIG AS IF INTO DIRT – MY ANKLES SING AND SPLIT WITH SPIDERY CRACKS GOING ON TO WEAVE AND MEND A BROKEN CONDITION THAT IS INVISIBLE AND SOMETIMES WRETCHED. IT IS PRACTIALLY DRIPPING OVER. QUICK MORNINGS OF FRESH AND FLAT. FOREVER THE FOOL WITH COOL SKIN. 55

Young Enough Hanna Gressler Bedroom. Not yours. But hers – your best friend’s. Her skin and your skin beneath the bedsheets. Eyes open in the darkness. Summer sweat slipping down your spines.

A pounding bass booms through the walls, accompanied by a fit of laughter every now and then. Your sister and her sister getting drunk in the other room. Your sister getting drunk for the first time.

Her sister not getting drunk for the first time. Her sister getting drunk with your sister, who is getting drunk for the first time.

They are only fifteen, but You and Her are even younger.

They are older, so they can do what You and Her cannot.

But You and Her do everything together. Like your sister and her sister getting drunk together.

And You and Her are curious. Curious to see what children of your age are not supposed to see.

The darkness is enough for You and Her to communicate.

She knows that you know and you know that she knows that you know that you want to see your sister and her sister drunk.

So the bedsheets rustle and your feet hit carpet, waiting a few seconds for hers to do the same. You grab hands and rush through the bedroom bathed in black light until you make it to the door. One creak and it’s open.

Two steps and You and Her are already at her sister’s bedroom. Ears pressed below the doorknob. Trying to make words out of the murmurs of mingled voices.

Suddenly, she knocks on the door. You gasp in fear. Of what?

Trouble. Being in it. A child in trouble. Who should’ve known better.

She shows you how not to be afraid.

Her sister opens the door. In the bedroom, circles of different colors rotate around the walls and the music rings even louder in your ears. She knows why the two of you are here. And she knows she’s here to keep your sister safe.

Safe. That means drunk and away from you.

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You. Too young to see your sister slouched in a corner of piled pillows.

But your sister doesn’t know. Drunk, your sister doesn’t know. Her eyes gleam when she catches sight of you through the doorway. She stretches her arms toward you and pleads for you to come to her.

You are unfamiliar with this expression of love. But this is what you and your best friend wanted – to see your sisters drunk, to know what it is to not be too young.

You walk across the bedroom into your sister’s arms. She begins to sob the moment your bodies collide.

She confesses, she loves you.

You don’t know what to do so you stay there.

She confesses, she heard the news about Omi while eavesdropping one December night on Papi who was on the phone with Mami who was in Heidelberg next to Omi’s dead body.

Her snot trickles into your hair.

She confesses, the first person she went to that night was your brother.

Her body becomes too heavy for you to hold.

She confesses, Papi and Mami and your brother and she wanted to wait to tell you.

She professes, you are too young to know.

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The Skeptics Lethu Msimang I met a gracious old man who spoke of wild boars and spirited men his hands shaking with sincerity and laughter brewing in his belly and all the humorous men who knew him never question his gestures nor interrupted his speech convinced the fair heart-ed had right speak But the skeptics were cautious troubled by the trembling of his voice and the weight of his intentions To them no man could speak truthfully about the setting of the sun or modesty of nature They were sure he was pretending They cannot believe how marvelous you are

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Lament L’émir Omar Chéhab There ain’t enou’ balm in Gilead, whole, To quiet my anguish, buried deep in my soul U’hum hum, O Lord, when the blues’s turnin’ black My limbs a’fallin’ low and I knows (well, well) I ain’t got no voice. Lo I ain’t got No – voice – To say that prayer once more.

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1-3

Eleanor Dickinson

1.

Sleepy drunk.

All the blood has pooled at the bottom of my body, stuck swelling my legs.

There and the back of my hands. Old lady.

Thick pungent veins.

Plump. Tubes. Ugh. Always with the tubes.

I want his smart tube on my cunt tube.

Youth stinks.

Fresh, Taught, Tight, Whole.

Lap at the tiny holes nearest to my heart.

Contract expand beatbox my blistering blundering bothersome being.

General ache.

Motivate.

Masturbate. Asphyxiate. Not too late.

But not here, never here.

Nature!

This fading borderline; hanging on one finger, one thread; one monkey, one bread.

Social interdependency on me.

Weighing, hanging, stretching, praying.

It seems fake, your fingers don’t press the keys.

You hover fairy elven swan.

What sorta egg did you crack forth from.

Tip tap click clack pad pad pad, barely a pouf I’m lalalala losing it.

Suicide mission Kamikaze!

Butchery, Amputation, 63

Tattoo your eyeballs, seeing red.

Pick, pulse, pop, Erect Sit seeing red.

Pick, pulse, pop, Erect Sit Comme ça Don’t sit Smile, both sets How’s your anus.

2. your eyes sear at the white orbs on my chest under which my heart beats and quivers. you can see the vein on my neck protrude as my tendons tense tenderize under your gaze.

I blink to hide my eyes which you see straining upwards tears and spit weeping down my face, your knuckles stroking my hair into a fist. my tension turns you on as though I could read your mind, which only fuels the fantasy. like a needle piercing my arm, with the intention of draining me. you wish to be the same, you leech. your fangs suck while we gag and sputter and cry cry cry. like children so you feel big. sit up stand up smile spit up take my drink take my dinner take my dick take my petty small weaknesses take my palm or fist. your desperate want to put my tender pink bud between your lips and suck. you fucking vampires.

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3. there are times the hunger is too great. fingers twitch. blood moves. my heart beats with desire for you. like I want to swallow you whole or melt together into a puddle of fertile mud. my singularity pains me at times icy atoms clawing at my flesh but yours always looks so golden warm. luminescent pink. as though you were filled with roses, overflowing, seeping from your pores, petals fall from your lips when you laugh. the soft folds of your neck and shoulder a bouquet of senses, ethereal and warm. your body hums like a garden. quiet, but alive. at times it’s as though your presence revives those around you let them dig their toes into your lush grass, heated by the sun, if I were to follow my instinct and lock the gate and keep them out that would be of the greatest crime and it would turn gray and dank and full of rotting resentment. but that desire remains, to be the only one to breathe you in. selfish though it is.

65

Ven a Comer Danica Cortez Family is compulsory in my household, it eats us at dinner.

Our food always tastes like our father, sometimes his love serves us shattered and jagged light bulbs – jarring, knifed Pop Rocks contained in the mouth – other times it is battery acid, acrid juice taken in swigs.

When my mother attempts to knit conversation we chew slowly, waiting for our father to unravel it, tugging at our threads with a rough shake of the head, mouth full of raw meat, blood dribbling onto his chin.

“You can’t honestly believe that,” spit at my mother, tasting instead like, “I can’t stand you anymore.”

66

My mother lets herself be eaten most of the time.

Our father also believes in holistic medicine, but it is my mother that tries to cure us all with it.

Sometimes we take it in doses of two dinners a work week, other times it is all five – we can see her starting to become an addict.

We start to stage interventions.

We are young but can’t stand the broken taste of separation on our tongues, it makes us bold: “Why do you let him treat you like that?”

“You guys should talk to someone.”

“He doesn’t love you anymore.”

We ruminate on the days we were healthier, the memories of those family dinners are taken with tiptoes at midnight or snuck out at midday.

These taste like creamy buttercups and freshly cut grass and warm blacktops and soft sand and kites and car rides and laughter and like a dream interrupted by that desperate summon: Ven a Comer!

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Cold-Pressed Carbon Sophia Passin Labradorite dreams drip from the heavens They sparkle and shift your perception Barreling through that amazonite sky Demanding a poem for an ice cream Carnelian flames burst from the belly Of a misguided beast That dragon was slain By a savior with blackened dreams Burnt away into ash Pressed hard Into a diamond Crystallized carbon Unbreakable, unbendable Blood dripping from sapphire veins Dries into a garnet memorial Don’t be lost in those tourmaline dreams The selenite clouds float Crystallizing through the dimensions Clear quartz dripping smokey Don’t freeze, my fly in amber The sun will shine its citrine rays Warming the emerald earth Melting you back into honey Giving you that taste of something sweet

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Run as fast as you can Press passion into love Creating your quartz of rose petals and gentle celestite dreams Lapis lazuli blue guides you Through the Grecian sea Don’t leave me alone Join me in my violet geode Twisting, sprouting, sparkling I will break, two halves of my own whole Open to you, and you alone The most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.

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Scents of a City Harriet Alida Lye PARC DE BELLEVILLE Bread from the bakery at the top of the hill, hash from the skinny dealers slouching on concrete pillars, flowers planted and tended by the gray-haired sun-burnt gardener, and grass, both cut and wild.

Gnarled vineyards, the fresh green of the leaves, and neighborhood cats who rely on the kindness of old locals for their morning milk.

Mint, coffee, croissants. This is the place that was my most recent home – I lived next to the park for three years with my love – so it’s the hardest to write about. Too much overlap. So much living happened there; it contains the smells of everything. Bouquets of lisianthus and peonies, books stacked up to the windows, garlic and onions and roast chicken, coffee (always coffee), Jo Malone Pomegranate Noir soap when we felt rich, Savon de Marseille when we didn’t, the smells of a home and of an intimacy, two humans with their smells, and everything else, braided together.

FONDATION BARTLETT I’ve been going to Rosy Lamb’s atelier for the past seven years, first for the parties, then to be painted, now for both. At the parties there was red wine and candles and the smell of dried plaster on tiled floors, and for the paintings, thinking back on it now, the smells of lunch mixed with the smells of work: the toxic burning brightness of white spirit, turmeric and cumin, fried onions and roast potatoes, dry plaster and wet clay, all the potential of oil paints, and tea from the sweeping tilleul tree in the courtyard. Big windows – seeing and being seen. There’s a fear in both, and fear smells of parchment, of metal. But there’s a trust, too, and trust has no smell. Or maybe trust smells of Rosy, who smells of busyness: sweat and electricity.

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THE QUAIS DE SEINE BY THE GARE D’AUSTERLITZ The Seine is a working river, after all, and barges filled with coal and wood come rolling low through the heart of the city. Standing on the cobbled quais you’re right in the middle of everything, yet connected to the journey: to the start, the mouth of the river, and to the end, where it spills into the sea. The water tells the whole story – it’s everywhere at once. Does distance have a smell? If it does then it’s of cold, of tree roots.

And then there are the trains leaving from the station just behind, too, connecting the city to the South, to places I’ve never been. Orleans, Tours, Chateaudun. This is a place that smells of other places.

AVENUE JUNOT On the backside of the Butte de Montmartre, facing north, I always feel there is an ocean nearby. The smell of wind, the receding distance, the promise of something more. In the springtime, Avenue Junot, with all its gentle bends, is waterfalling with wisteria, pale purple pearls.

For this article, the only scent I Googled is this one: wisteria. I wanted to know what others thought it smelled like since for me, it’s such a specific and fleeting fragrance. I didn’t know how to pin it down. Everyone else seems to feel similarly. “It’s hard to define,” says one person, and “it smells like freesias,” another helpfully notes. But what do freesias smell like? Another says “it reminds me of my grandmother.” Subjectivity embodied. I’ve only known one of my grandmothers and she doesn’t smell of wisteria at all. For me, the flowers smell of honey on toast, of the bursting chaos of springtime, of having sex with the windows open.

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Dod I’w Coed Menna Elfyn

O, fel y câr y coed blant bychain.

Eu glasenwi wnânt; cangen yw’r ‘llong’ sy’n eu cario dros nant; ‘grisiau’ tal yn cyrraedd dec, a’r môr islaw yw dail y craf, croesdon danadl sy’n anadlu r wig.

Cymydog yw ambell frigyn, yn codi un wedi’r codwm, gwneud rhasal o eli o’r rhisgl.

Brath a briw wedyn, daw’r dyfod i oed.

Rhaid wedi’r cyfan roi coed yn eu lle: hogfaen llon a’r llif mewn llaw.

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[dod i’w coed] Put in their Place

Translated by Amelia Harvey Oh, how the little ones love the trees, nicknaming them; this branch is the ‘ship’ which carries them over the stream; the tall ‘staircase’ climbs to a deck, and the sea underneath is a bushel of leaves, across waves of nettles, breathing the woods.

Twigs are the occasional neighbor, one of them stands after a tumble, to create balm from the bark.

After the cuts and scrapes, comes coming of age.

After all, we must put the trees in their place: giddy whetstone and saw at the ready.

[dod i’w coed] Majeur Mûr

Translated by Amelia Harvey O, comment les petits aiment les arbres, Les surnommant ; Cette branche, un ‘bateau’ Qui les transporte sur le ruisseau ; Les grands ‘escaliers’ monte jusqu’au pont, Et la mer dessous est un champ d’ail, À travers des vagues d’orties, aspirant les bois.

Les brindilles font voisin de temps à l’autre, Se levant après une chute, Pour créer une pommade d’écorce.

Après les éclats et échardes, Entre la maturité.

Après tout, il faut Mettre les arbres à leur place : meule ravie Et la scie dans la main.

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77

A Day in The Village L’émir Omar Chéhab Rosy was a fairly plump woman. Mrs. D, from across the street, thought her to be ‘fairly disagreeable, dare I say it’. Mr. L, Rosy’s neighbor from next door, would often whisper to Madame K passing by every Sunday, ‘she was a delightfully reserved thing’. On one account, however, the town gossip would agree on, and that was that Rosy was one of those who ‘kept to her own business’, thank you very much.

At this time of the year, the town would gather in the small churchyard through the back gate, which usually was privy to the most dedicated of the ‘friends of the parish’, but tonight twigs were popping fireworks under all sorts of precipitated boot soles. Beer bottle clanked against ashen jug, tickled in one swipe with a dusty cloth and already fit for new service. Surely the handle was cut for a Nordic hand, for a few spillings later, the glass joined the malt that wasn’t digested and a mass flocked ‘to the barnyard!’ to spill the inhibited impropriety that held year-long till it was taken for a spin on a merry tune from Dublin: young sirahs and damses turning jocular round the other, defiant arm in defiant arm, while the older folk reminisced glories of youth whose factual basis had, it too, passed into legend. ‘I had danced with Mary Jenkins (the town’s prettiest barmaid) you know’ in response to which another mate bellowed ‘a mighty good-looking-chap-I-was, back in the day’, his proud chest puffed too far out for those who heard his spine snap swore it was the reason for his internment in the ward until next year, though the official story went otherwise. The whole town congregated in this celebration; all but Rosy, who preferred the quiet pleasures of her drawing room. It was indeed, by any measurable standard, a contained settlement, largely populated by screeching wooden furniture, slowly bitten away by the heady, moth-miffed winters; and time would seep ever so subtly, finding Rosy twisted in her uncomfortable wooden chair, at every day’s same hour.

And so it was. Rosy would eat every day the dry, tasteless beef Mr. P would bring her onc e every week, from the market. Rosy would then have her customary four o’clock walk by the gardens behind the church (need we mention: the town’s shutters were firmly 80

shut at this time). Later again, Rosy would enjoy her tea plugged with the earthy aftertaste of tea leaves that a geyser of tree trunk sap had never managed to reach, but no matter Rosy would lick her lips all the same (a habit, you see), as the cricket’s repetitious song was stifled by the thickness of wood all around her. Rosy would then slump to her library, through the left door at the front of the drawing room. It was a rectangular sanctuary, where Rosy would rock her chair to midnight, until the fire would huff its last ashes, leaving Rosy’s trembling hand to hold a novel a little longer in the darkness.

1 The day of her funeral came about, and as those matters go, a handful of little souls (bless them) marked present to attend the ritual. Mr. L and Mr. P were there, and the others... well, rituel obligé. That same evening, the town hall recorded her name in the obituary section and went about business as usual. It is said, that night after the ceremony, that the churchyard rang once more with clunks of heavy ale, while window lights hummed away like departing souls.

‘Twas a life in the village.

2

81

Queen of the Naked Mole Rats Jeffrey Greene

84

I must have seen one, the queen burrowed in the sands meant to be the horn of Africa, the Bronx Zoo before The World of Darkness was terminated, its glass partitions between us and the queen’s chambers a squirm of near naked bodies nuzzling hers, a pavilion of infrared and nocturnal creatures. I tried to think of one beautiful thing about naked mole rats, and what light might be to the blind who hardly venture out of a life that begins and ends in tunnels.

Her pallid skin can feel no pain, not insensate, a fetus in formaldehyde, but her feeling her curbed world through sparse hairs. With her incisors too large to be hidden under lip, her chromadorea-like tail, I thought she must look dreadful for a reason, her attendants groping toward her, ignited by a kind of genetic will to produce, not an army, but enough of them to survive: her warriors, workers, and lovers in the hue of many blood moons, a tuber carried in offering, and even at seven, I understood that it was not she who was hideous, but only something elevated by disgust that could do her wrong.

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Gemini and Dragon, Leader of the Wild Boars, Friend of the S c av e n g e r s , L o r d o f t h e Bad Fliers, Little White Dog Tamer, Follower of Rivers, Oyster and Word Picker, Orchard and Hope Planter, Bearer o f G o o d N e w s , G r a mm a r Chief, Life Liver, Simile Sailor, Lover of Spices a n d R at t l i n g L au g h t e r , W i s e I n st i g at o r , Poet Wrangler, and I n e x h aust i b l e F o un ta i n of Youth and its Poetry –we salute you.

- Olivia Baes & Chauncey Alan

He has that knack for teaching that draws one’s insides out.

He waters, but does not drown,

beckons, but does not push, and gently lets you know that you are safe to be yourself.

Like turning

on a tap, he unleashed a torrent of words in me.

(And thank god he did, because it was getting cramped in there.) It was only while his class that

I was in

I experienced the phenomenon of

dreaming written words:

They would whisper

themselves in my ear with a soundless voice in the moments before

I awoke... I would launch into a

scribbling frenzy as soon as happening, but seldom did

I realized what was

I snag more than a few

nonsensical phrases before they slipped through my dreamy sieve.

Nevertheless, the tap has been

running since his class; sometimes in cascades, mostly in a drip, but flowing, and the realms that

I

explored in the safety of his class are a great part of my art today.

Thank you, Jeff, for your box-

toothed grin and your warbling welcome; may your next chapter flood the sink.

-Elisabeth Mulroy

Short Translational Local Dictionary The Summer Institute 2017 – Poetic Experience Workshop

Siân Melangell Dafyyd

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Khalas [n] m/f 1 – the stone found in certain fruit such as apricots, nefle, nectarines and cherries. Also applies to the cashew although this is a seed and grows outside rather than inside the fruit.

2 – Nutritional ‘butter’ made with the inner portion of the kernel inside the above, particularly popular in southern Europe 3 – Rock band from the Isle of Mann, world famous in the 1970s, particularly for their song, Hollow Heart Wfoko [n] m A smoke that can be smelled but not seen.

Jul A state of being after taking part in euphoric singing in a large group, used in particular to refer to spiritual or religious experiences such as collective hymn singing with gusto or collective mantra singing. In the 20th and 21st Century, also used to refer to the euphoric feeling after singing in a sports stadium or pub with rugby supporters (not used for other sports).

Hamdulilah [adj.]

1. movement in a way that resembles the flight of a dragonfly, technically still a mystery to engineers. As such, this is the height of compliments. Nijinsky’s ballet performance as the Faun was famously reviewed as “the most hamdulilah sequence of movements ever seen on stage.” First used to refer to the success of the first controlled, sustained flight by airplane by the Wright brothers on December 17th, 1903. word appeared among American Italians, meaning - [2] 2. The act of staying up throughout the night with the aid of coffee, sugar or other stimulants, in order to complete work with a deadline the following day.

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Mifkad [n] f A coarse, dark, slightly nutty bread made of unbolted rye, eaten with goat’s cheese and berry jam to celebrate the Summer Solstice in northern European countries.

Tamamaq [n] 1. the act or process of crystallization, which happens to honey in the honeycomb during heather or chestnut seasons. In geographical areas where these crops are prevalent and during the season of their flowering, it becomes almost impossible to use a hand-crank for extracting honey, making a harvesting technically difficult and expensive. “This is tamamaq honey” [n] m/f 2. Also used to refer to a beekeeper of considerable experience: “he is a tamamaq” referring to his or her ability to extract such honey but also someone who has found and painted at least one of their queens.

It is advised, when inspecting a beehive, to check that the queen is alive and well, which is easier said than done with a strong colony of over 40,000 bees. To make life easier, it’s possible to mark the queen with a coloured dot on her back, using a colouring pen, paint or even a stick-on dot. There is an international colour code for bees to allow easy identification of the age of a marked queen.

Year ending: Colour 5 or 0: blue 6 or 1 white 7 or 1 yellow 8 or 3 red 9 or 4 green A beekeeper can also refer to himself or herself as a “yellow tamamaq” if they first requeened a queen in 2012, for example.

Cash [n] m/f A vein, blocked with blood.

90

Witiacoche [n] f informal 1. An outer garment with sleeves, covering at least the upper part of the body, made of the wool of a now extinct and miniature sheep from the Isle of Tiree. Worn to protect the wearer from both wind and rain in extreme conditions and traditionally worn by farm laborers. The fibers were strengthened with beeswax before weaving.

2. The natural covering such as fur, hair or wool of an animal, the bark of a tree or skin of a fruit.

3. a layer of anything that covers a surface. “A witiacoche of algae covered the lake’s surface” [v] 4. to provide shelter or cover from harsh weather for strangers Orang [adj.]

1. (of weather) characterized by strong winds and colourful skies similar the aurora borealis, but in daytime.

2. (of the sea) having waves so violent that fish are rejected 3. (of complexion) having blotchy skin or dark circles around the eyes due to emotional upset

Ataraxia [n] A medical condition when a person has heard so much of their own voice, they only hear a rattle.

91

My head filled up with golden light Andrew Shillam My head filled up with golden light, With light my head was filled until It broke and spilled and caught the night.

On the oval, somewhere out of sight, I heard a bird calling – sounding shrill.

My head filled up with golden light, Blue against the streetlight, the night bright, My footsteps slow, again I stand still: It broke and spilled and caught the night – A ripple that seemed to pass right Through the road, the houses and the hill, My head filled up with golden light, Only my footsteps now and the flight Of birds on the breeze and a slight chill, It broke and spilled and caught the night.

Fearful, as though each wave of sound might Break the spell, almost against my will, My head filled up with golden light, It broke and spilled and caught the night.

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the sun was left­-handed Natalie Stamatopoulos drawn to modesty doggedly to old signs to places to live to being married on the beach water to keep my future (in how many fires do we speak?) they spoke of gods guests of literature standing in doorways coming from nowhere falling silent to physics the lines went dead (dreaming a lot dreaming again) of pierced skin of muddy-winged birds trying somehow to circle time through the backdoor through the radio it’s not uniquely evil not sad the sun was left handed so hot, so blue

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Letter to God Marina Franรงolin Borges

I finally figured you out[again]. I’ll forget, though[again]. You’re a funny thing, you.

– You.

A segment of Justine Duhayon’s installation ‘Picking Up the Pieces of My Heart’s Errata’ (2018), photographed by Lou Lévy

Seeing You Again; a Lyric Jonathan Burkhalter

/

1

/ / 2

/

/

3

/

4

1 2 3 4

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The Pint Glass

In a small Tennessee mountain town, there is a bar called I Forgot.

This is my home. It’s a low-key, convivial place, open only at night.

During the day, there is a quiet hum in the air that relaxes me and replenishes my healing energy. I am a pint glass. I belong to a set of hand blown pint glasses, crafted with signature shapes and raised dots at our halfway points. My engraving is a nasturtium leaf. We are each gifted with unique abilities. The one with the dragonfly engraving can infuse the person holding her with pure joy. If someone is not already going through an existential crisis, they most assuredly will if they drink from the one with the intricate spiral pattern. When people drink from me, I feel their dominant emotion, whatever it may be: joy, despair, comfort, anger, relief, or inspiration. I am a therapist.

It’s early evening now, and people are trickling into the bar. I am lifted gently from the cupboard, filled with crisp cider, then placed on the smooth wooden bar top. Tapping fingers meander along the contours of my base, then contemplatively trace the fluted edges of my leaf. I am raised to meet lips tinged with gloss. Oh, it’s Ginger Lee Cook! She’s a student at the local college. I feel tremors in her hands.

Ah... she’s in despair because she can’t figure out how to pay the rest of her tuition. At the same time, she feels immense gratitude that they haven’t kicked her out yet.

One of my talents is to transmit ideas. Whether people actually follow my advice is entirely their choice. Ginger Lee is trying to focus her energy on more uplifting thoughts. She’s envisioning spending next weekend in Memphis with her cousin. Hmm, that gives me a thought. As she savors her last few drops of cider, I feel her energy light up as she springs from the barstool... she will walk through the streets of Memphis, gathering loose change. She just might be surprised.

Soon after, the hefty bulk of Rob Banks fills the space around me. Thick, hearty Guinness is poured into my cylindrical form. His usual. As a criminal, Rob is not a malicious person, but he thinks that as long as he can find harmless ways to swindle people out of their money, he’ll be set up for life. I’ve channeled thoughts of private investigating for a while now, hoping that he’ll realize that this is where his true talents lie. Phil Anders joins him, ordering a grapefruit

IPA that is served in the spiral pint glass. I love the resonant sound we make when clinking together, both of us brimming with beer.

In his gravelly voice, Rob proclaims, “You know Phil, I think

Jonté Bouchard

I’d make a really great private eye.”

“Yeah,” intones Phil distractedly, lost in his current romantic crisis.

When they leave, a woman I’ve never met ambles into the bar, taking Rob’s place. As the fragrance of coffee stout wafts from me, her slender hand grasps my middle. We are like old friends who fit together perfectly. I learn that her name is Anita Cuicchi (pronounced Quickie) and that she’s a therapist specializing in relationship problems. Having just moved to town three weeks ago, she is bursting with anticipation about opening her private practice and making new friends.

She swivels her barstool to face Sherry Weinstein, who is regaling a small group with wild stories of her latest travel adventures.

Anita erupts into peals of full-bodied laughter. Startled, Sherry whirls around, colliding with Anita’s elbow. Her hand slips on the condensation wetting my surface. Suddenly, I am sailing through the air as coffee stout flows in all directions. For one second, I am poised in midair. Before I fully realize the gravity of the situation, I plummet to the hardwood floor. A musical shatter reverberates throughout the bar. My shards are different shapes and sizes. Anita Cuicchi gathers me together, gently placing me in a cloth pouch. I am comforted that all of me is here. Somehow, the nasturtium leaf is still intact. Even though I’m fragmented, all my senses have not left me. Anita orders another coffee stout served in the dragonfly glass.

From inside the soft, warm bag, I am aware of muffled voices.

When Anita finally strolls out of the bar, apprehension takes over.

What is she going to do with me? Will she throw me in a trash can?

If so, I hope that she at least has the decency to put me in a recycling bin. As we walk through this peaceful town, a sense of calm pervades me. A door opens, and Anita’s soulful voice sings out, “Hello, home!”

To my curiosity, I am poured onto a plastic tray amongst an array of little beads and seashells. I feel Anita’s hands bringing us together with some type of tree resin that feels like a soothing balm. “Yay! This will be great for my reading room.”

Several weeks have passed and I love my new home. Anita Cuicchi’s patients are intrigued by the beautiful mosaic on her desk.

When they reach out to explore it, I can still feel emotions through their hands. I fill them with a deep sense that all is well.

103

Never Go Back (A Virtual Tour) Brad Evans I touch down on to my old street Turn 90 degrees to the left Find the familiar address My old bedroom still looks the same (From the outside anyway) Front yard now showing plants That look sub-tropical – a little out of place.

Around the back, the old pool is still there With that flannel flowers’ design decorating the bottom And the spa – they’ve still got that!

(Never seemed to work when we had it.)

And is that the lemon tree – standing there!

I hope so, it looks bigger than when I last saw it.

No surprise, really!

It was that same tree where, as a teenager I’d struggled to cut down the largest lemon I’d ever seen in my life.

Right at the top, where the biggest fruit always seemed to grow.

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Attaching a knife to a long pole I cut & cut and when that lemon finally dropped I excitedly opened it and discovered one inch thick of zest!

But that was thirty years ago.

And thirty years on I still look around – there but not there A scope of various emotions bubbling away in some thick & cloudy post-adolescent stew steeped in rich nostalgia feeling around as if I could recall every single formative night and day Living there Remembering those Friday nights of school socials & disco music – Ike & Tina’s Nutbush City Limits – caught eternal on a drifting summer breeze While I, standing in the darkness of my parents’ unoccupied bedroom, Looking out through the window Incarcerated in shyness…

People have said to me Never go back But I still do.

105

Greneta Sarah Sturman I don’t see it at first, and I think I must be on the wrong street. I know it is the right street, of course, but nothing looks the same anymore. On my second time ‘round the block, I catch a glimpse of a pointy-eared gremlin and stop. I back up and stand across the street, against the wall of what used to be Gemma’s building, and the picture starts to come together. The wonderful murals of Italian feasts and ancient stages are painted over with uninspired graffiti like a bad restoration in progress.

Patches of the paint – original and nouveau – are scraped off like a sunburn. It would be artsy except that posters for a new animated movie that nobody is going to watch take up a fourth of the wall.

The gremlin is the only thing that has made it out of the out of the graffiti invasion relatively unscathed. She’s a portrait of my grandmother when she was drunk, my father used to say. She has a towel in her mouth to shut her up while I cook, my mother used to say. I asked what the lion faces studding the side of the building had done to deserve corks in their mouths. My mother said they had eaten up little girls in the night. I had believed her, I suppose because of the way the street lamp above them threw them into sharp relief at dusk. During the daytime, when I went out to play on the street in front of the restaurant, they just looked small and sad.

When Gemma moved into number twenty-three across the street, we used to hang as far out of our windows as we could, trying to throw messages across on paper airplanes. Gemma had a balcony and I had the little slope of metal roofing like a gutter.

I went out there when it was raining once, and I would have fallen off if it hadn’t been for the lions. I grabbed them like a rock climber when my feet started to slip and clutched my way back to safety. From then on their scowls seemed directed at anything and everything that could harm me. I was Lucy Pensive and they were my Aslans against the White Witch. One of them is gone now. There is a patch of caulking where it used to be. I don’t look at it after I notice this; it feels like stomping on a grave.

108

My father’s desk was right next to that window and in the morning he would watch me as I played on the street with Gemma.

Her father sat and worked in their window, and the fathers would take breaks at the same time to call to each other over our heads. Those mornings always smelled like orange cake, both mine and Gemma’s favorite breakfast. Once I asked Gemma if we were the same person, only in separate lives across the street. She hadn’t thought of that, but decided that because she was richer than I was, we couldn’t possibly be. I didn’t talk to her after that until I looked outside and saw a chalk mural spread over the entire rue Greneta: of her and I holding hands and eating orange cake. It doesn’t smell like chalk anymore, nor does it smell like orange cake. There’s the faint tang of alcohol in the alley, and piss from the gutters. My gremlin-grandmother must be drunk.

I will not stay for a drink today; it is Sunday. My father always said that Sunday was the one day one must stay home and reacquaint oneself with one’s self. He would say this as my mother unlocked the door to the restaurant at four in the afternoon to prepare for the dinner service. Sundays were profitable. Sundays were dashes of coffee in breakfast milk, drizzles of icing on orange cake, and a whole grapefruit to myself from my father. Sundays were market days at Saint-Eustache with my mother, and Gemma, if she was allowed.

Sundays were sunbeams in the staircase and reading, reading, reading, once I was old enough. I take my book out from under my arm and start back to the refurbished metro. I will come back after Sunday.

109

poorsong two Lisa Robertson People whose sex is a way of knowledge I’m afraid of poetry Its ecstatic sovereignty I am asked to think about something that no longer exists A revolving four-sided solid within a sphere Me the girl born of her mother Or form Cries the crow In winter The form of everyone’s kiss Now time is the only interesting subject Has the smallest territory in the world Whose inconvertibility’s Rocking motion Mocks suffering Joy is the value terminated by capital Joy which is the opposite of death A girl born of her mother before whom barely anything As warp and woof 110

As song and gloss If the great worthiness I still adore Is ignored, hated, spurned How can I be true To bring that name Under my shirt Never winter It calls me to disorder This I’ve felt best Because Spring is within Love Curved upwards Love can even abolish time I don’t know where I come from Beginning with a carnal material that already has a history My task is to survive Producing freedom from her breath Producing politics from her breath Producing ornament from her breath Freedom or Ornament Parity actually

111

Untitled Manika Wangata – Words Climbing out of You Her Him They I Overflowing Never stopping the flow Overwhelming Pouring out of the mountain Seeking Ears An echo Out there.

113

we find our new skin at the steps of the garden

Any piece in white or green is associated with

Professor

While

his

at his to

the

university

sincerity our

Jeffrey

presence

when

and

community

24 26-28 47 60-61 74-75 84-87 93

will

Greene. be

he

missed retires,

contributions will

endure.