Paris/Atlantic 2019 - N. 40

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In honor of our new Quai d'Orsay building.

Where It All Began Elizabeth Earl

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Paris / Atlantic 2019

6, rue du Colonel Combes 75007 Paris FRANCE The American University of Paris

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HEAD EDITOR Charlotte Lewis MANAGING EDITOR Marina Françolin Borges ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Sarah Sturman 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, 2019. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO REPRODUCTION, COPY, OR TRANSMISSION, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, MAY BE MADE WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION. PARISATLANTIC@AUP.EDU @PARIS_ATLANTIC

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Ainsley Lundeen Yellow Frames 4, 128 Alessio Zanelli There 130 Alex Cohen Ladybug 5 Alexia Gioacchini 67 Alfie Rentería white 13 When I am in Love 46 orange 107 Amanda Dennis Contangere... 42 Anna St. Germain Pure Crystal 24 Anna Jones Mr. Brown 36 Celia Goodman 28, 118 Charlotte Lewis Dig 12 Bus Eye: Seventh of February 40 Cont. 45 IRememberYouMoving... 72 Collin Frey Celestial Prophecy 65 Elizabeth Earl Where It All Began ii Ellis Carter The Doctor’s Tale 7 Untitled 88 Middle 99

Emily Wills Reach 3 Millennium 125 Evan Floyd Blueberry Pancakes 90 Felix Purat Report to a Community College 75 Frédéric Attal Compositeur décomposé 49 Ian Rassari Troncos 11 Lasciva 32 A criação 56 Poeira 57 Emaranhado 84 Visão 116 Ian Tillotson The Druid 10 Shadow People 73 Imaniushindi Fanga Pitch Black Angel Wings 63 Jacob Bromberg [Down by the dirtied docks] 60 Jessica DeHart Brilliant 50 Jorge F. Sosa La Bibliotecaria Jubilada 94 João Marcelino Histórias de um pescador... 6, 23 oS ConGO fAz tREmeR 120, 121 Kathleen Sharp Manna 102 Haiku to My Last Day... 119 Haiku to Sleep 119

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C O N T R I B U T O R S

Konnor Porro Hairy Building 87 Strawberry Building 92 Blue Window 106

Sampurna Chattarji The Encyclopaedia... 112 Sarah Jane Worthington l’été 25 ciel brouillé 89 l’épine 103 our mother 132

Leo Tow Il Santuario di Stelle 30 María Susana Tamayo Nature 80 Ode to Green 86

Sarah Sturman Bria 18 Uncle John’s Piano 48 Ostuni 55 Barcelona Walls 64 Until Then, Together Again. 116

Marina Françolin Borges v, vi empty poem 54 refractions 59 up and down 79 1 second of your time 100

Serena Woolsey What We’ve Done 122

Mary Layman Ana 37

Siân Melangell Dafydd Luonnotar and the spirit... 134

Mary McColley Le Louvre 19 Dans Le Métro 58 XX 129

Sidney Kalouche Midnight 14 Cacoëthes 15 Sky Garcilaso de la Vega The Way They Make Me Feel 26 Becoming a Web...108, 111

Melissa Monique Halabe toutfeutoutefemme 127 Michaela Taylor Evolving 2 Physical Therapy 103

Sofia Blackwelder Pupukea y Premonitions 81 Sofia Ohanna Fontes Banheiro Amarelo 47

Nathalie Debroise 39 Moon on the rice fields 60 Revolution: Tahrir 66, 69 Dune 70 Beach 104

Vonn Sumner Byzantine Anonyme 74 Wall (with Betrayal) 97 Zoë Felix Swimming Lessons 38

Sam Wertz Pachacutec 20 Peru 21, 53, 62 Untitled 82 ix

evolving

Michaela Taylor the butterfly cries as its new wings dry the tree the same when her leaves fly the sun shrieks while she stretches her rays and mother moon wails as she waxes and wanes. evolving is not so shy.

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Ladybug Alex Cohen

An albino ladybug just landed on my left arm above the ladybug I have etched in my skin She had a colorless charm And for a moment, perched like a pin But not long enough for a picture.

On my way here I was wondering about signs...

If I’m looking for them Or if they’re looking for me.

I saw an albino ladybug What did she see?

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T h e D o c t o r ’ s Ta l e Ellis Carter

The Doctor grinned and spoke his answer: “It’s a lot to not have cancer Of the brain or in the gut.

My job’s to know how to make a cut To act before the eyelids shut– Despite facts my patients look up.

I remember once when a patient’s cup Had broken during sporting practice.

I sat him down to gauge the damage, And soon saw what little I could manage.

To him, I said, “I’m sorry son, There’s not much here that can be done.

We’ll have to move as quick as we can.”

So I gently explained my plan; That we would need to sew things up And remove the fragments of broken cup, And though I swore to work my best, This delicate task was quite the test; It was not given that it could be saved.

You should have seen the look he gave!

Insisting, begging, pleading to me That in my duty as authority I had a job to save all of him.

I said “It is not an integral limb, And though I hold vast knowledge within 7

My brain of procedures healing skin And organs, clots and pus, Leave it to the cost of trust, And accept that no matter what, A patient’s doubt from an untrained gut Cannot equal my years of classes.”

So I prepped and gave him gasses That lulled him into blissful sleep.

And though I’d told a promise I’d keep, I felt an all too human doubting– It seemed my thoughts were overcrowding, And in a blurry headspace burned All the facts that I had learned.

Despite this doubt from inner devils, I knew that danger could not reschedule, So I made a mathematical decision To start to make a first incision.

I tell you, the sweat that was outpouring Did not pardon my reckless goring, But despite the mental keeling, I did manage to stop the bleeding.

When he woke from black slumber, His eyes, from a dream, sought to look under The sheets to see if it was there still.

I said, “I’ll prescribe you fentanyl To ease your pain and mental burden– Though I won’t say any less

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That the job was a success.”

And after years of working my practice I still hold my checks in balance– But that is not what you wanted to hear!

My point is that my job’s to steer These abstract bodies who disappear, While those physical who are in need Fall prey to the nature of my steed.

Lord knows they all have their own!

In knowing this, I bemoan The expectations found in others, When we all know a mind that smothers, And seek external confirmation On doubts defying explanation.

So I cannot say why You expect a reply To such a vague inquiry.

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I am the Druid

Ian Tillotson

I am the keeper of the forest I control the flow of rivers and I dictate Which Oak lives and which Pine dies.

I am in the wolf ’s howl and the elk’s bray.

I am the hermit Overlooking my domain.

I am the mountains that form the bones of the earth.

I raise my hands and vines strangle The threats to my domain.

I am nourished by the decomposing Their nutrients return to fuel me.

I am the unstoppable juggernaut Gaia.

The old ways have died out But I and my followers remain.

And perhaps One day We will return with Nature’s Wrath And the foundations of the Earth will welcome back her children.

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Dig

(you–

a fog a fig

the insect within)

Charlotte Lewis 12

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CacoĂŤthes

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Sidney Kalouche

My head is heavy, and my neck is sore from trying to balance my head. I am slowing, slower… Slow. Steady my breath, my unconscious breath. When my eyes open, I am met with a burst of sound, a quartet is at its epicenter. I try, but I can’t remember the moment my eyes had closed. I am distracted, sound aims at my chest, the waves vibrate between the rungs of my ribs. The saxophone spits, the keys are pounded, bass trembles, drums boom, boom, then tss, tss. I am in a chamber, dark and warm, surrounded by everything else that exists but none of it is important. Nothing is lost in this basement. The energy: the music and the admiration for it, stays inside. It bounces off of the walls and into my heart. Then it pumps my blood. It is as if the musicians play their own limbs, rather than separate tools of non-flesh. Harmony is pushed to its limits with notes converging from so many ranges, they all feel so good on the ear.

These four musicians, these harmonizing gods, they have bloody eyes and the kind of speech that wobbles through a microphone. I am having one of those experiences. The experience where I listen purely and without the prudence of inaction, the worry that I will one day, too, need to evoke such a life from sound and push it off towards the people. The Basin Street Basement was tipped off to me earlier in the night when I was having ice cream at Laurent’s. The air outside froze onto my face, but inside, the yellow lights and the good company radiated, and the ice cream became runny. There was a journal on the bookshelf for guests to write in. And in the thick of the pages, a card: “Intimate no-frill jazz and jam sessions” 12:00 a.m. weeknights, 304 Basin Street.

As for the red tint of the jazz artists’ eyes, I don’t immediately know why they have it. They were using stimulants, maybe, to stay weightless in their minds— because a second thought, or a rational thought, would leave them behind the music, instead of at the edges of it. They are performing impulse that looks like skilled entropy. Scenarios of sound are not meticulously chosen. No. Each moment dies before it understands that it was living. I realize this, and I must spell a miraculous look on my face when I am tapped by the listener next to me. The tapper wears a noir suit over his white shirt, and he has on a striped, yellow tie resting on his chest without seriousness.

His eyes are blue and his hair black, short, untamed and curly. The blue in his eyes dimly glows next to all of the dark colors.

“It’s amazing, don’t you think?” He spoke just above the music.

“Yes, spectacular!” I shouted after I was too cautious to keep my voice from drowning.

“I love it, absolutely love it.” Then he closed his eyes.

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echoes.

It was loud silence between us while the drums and piano chords made sharp

“Do you play?” He asked.

I yell into his ear, “Of course, yes! Piano!”

The saxophonist begins her solo, the room holds its breath. Holds its breath.

“And you? What’s your instrument?”

“Bass!” He held his hand out. “I’m Nicholas.”

We listen then.

The saxophone finishes and the room erupts in claps, the bass begins to pulse, pulse, pulse. I wanted him to become my friend, I remember thinking. I trembled as we could only say so many things; how quickly one thing would move into something else out of enthusiasm.

“Who are your favorite musicians?” I had a good feeling who they would be—like the quartet who was playing: heavy piano, then bass and drums, but softer on the saxophone.

He told me. Yes. I was right.

I lay on the ground in the studio. My arms spring up, my fingers stick to the keys on the piano above my head. And they ache my fingers ache, so I try to stretch them and pull down on the keys of the piano, and it screams that I must stop and it cringes, ugly. Adrenaline spins in the middle of me. My eyes squeeze tight and my face rubs the floor. The fluids in my head are pulled in different directions. I have disdain of my own heartbeat when I rest my hand on my chest and feel the quick and small thumps. It is cruel and violent. How could I be this way, how could I leave my friend for a hazy promise of success. This is mistaken success. I hear the echo of a door further away, brutally catching the wall. Someone with boots moves closer, and their weight is miscommunicated with each step. I know who is coming, I know it for reasons other than the sound of boots. Nicholas. I will never see him happy again.

As the quartet finishes, I try not to sweat. Wine has made the air dense and more buoyant; I move my head easily. Nicholas has the same euphoria. He hums and nods. Yes, I am here content; yet… I can feel myself losing structure without something to halt the change. A bright light that is so quickly dimmed and overwhelmed that it is forgotten. My thoughts become corrupt, fixated with fame. I think about Dave Brubeck and Bob Allen. Brubeck is famous, Allen not as much so. And Allen is maybe 16

the greatest jazz pianist of all time. Bob Allen versus Brubeck? Both are empyrean.

Does someone who is famous have to fixate on becoming famous? Does it consume them? Does it become an obsession? Or can they rise into it while they focus on their music? Someone else brings them to fame while they stick to the music, they become one of the greats that way?

Nicholas bursts into the room, he adds a dent to the battered door. A moment lasts between the air entering my lungs and the air leaving my lungs. I remain in this moment and wish that my breath could last one year. Then I wouldn’t have to face the consequence of choosing.

He yells, it brings me to his world, the world.

“What did you do?!” The tendons rise in his neck, his face red.

“Do you understand the kind of people you are with?! This isn’t—I warned you. I warned you! They’re gonna take you and they’re gonna squeeze you dry ‘till you are empty, depleted, shriveled. These are sharks, Jude. They won’t leave a carcass behind!”

We were quiet. He waited for me to speak. Would he have done the same? I try to consider.

We agreed before, we would do what is best for ourselves, even if it didn’t help each other. We agreed to be selfish—that this business takes a selfishness, and we agreed to this.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He spoke softly now.

In reality, my breath is replaced quickly without love, or love is there but it is harsh. Soon the body and a single breath don’t need each other. The oxygen is used quickly, harvested and injected. Then the air must leave, to make room for more. We live in this state too, just as any other. We can live for a moment without air in our lungs.

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LE LOUVRE 11/2018 Mary McColley

Notes: make it blue make animals with long ears and legs fantastic writing is art make things when you don’t have to

Leçon: I am learning anatomy at the Louvre: empty eyes, those broad Greek chests, hardness and roundness between the oval thighs. I watch the statues.

They always seem to hold themselves, even those without arms.

Legs lean together, shoulders slope, collars cradle little hollows beneath the pointed chins.

Ringlet hair trails proprietary down necks and pelvises. I am learning how delicately fingers can hold fruit for centuries, how loosely bodies can wear flesh.

I stare at their broken noses, parted lips, I rub the marble skin of my neck; think: human beings cannot last this long.

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Pachacutec Sam Wertz

I sit in the back with Argentina to my side and Venezuela to my other.

The windows screen the Andes. As I watch what seems to be heaven I meet the eyes of the Peruvian Bus driver. He carries Paris, Berlin, Los Angeles, Rio and Seoul in his belly over the mountains, into the canyons and to his mother, the Amazon. I see the face of Joseph in him. He is the Apache warrior, pulling my blonde hair from my scalp. He is Vishnu, the God of Death, destroyer of worlds. He is the reflection of European reality. He is nothing more than a tire teetering on the edge of the cliff, yet he is everything to me. He is the shaman of modernity. There is no voyage he has not made. Incan eyes pierce silver and dotted in gold know only the value of coca. And Marseille is sick. Los Angeles cries for attention but she is deafened by the Mother’s steps. Venezuela sleeps.

And I cry for mother to forgive me after I stole from her purse. I gave it back. I need my dinner.

And Indiana Jones has cirrhosis. And Lawrence of Arabia has syphilis. The Apache is sniffing paint and Vishnu works I.T. The Incas crawled in the Amazon and killed themselves and out came The Virgin Mary as a dominatrix. Mother knows the value of 1.143 grams of 950 and coca provides calcium in Miami not Machu Picchu. And the sun is dripping from the robes of God. And when the sun returns it will be upon the face of the Peruvian Bus driver. And he shall be Apollo in his flaming chariot of glory docking in Olympia. And Cusco will rejoice and I will praise him. And when the sun hits the sleeping will stir. And when the sun hits I will not know his name but the tire will be there on the line and he will wear a mask of gold because he doesn’t know the value. And when the sun hits we will feast on bananas and oranges and meats and coca. And when the sun hits he will be home.

And he will embark again.

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Today I long for the crisp simplicity of a paper airplane.

Every year, every strange place, I expect to shed my self for something vast & grand, & every time I emerge from my chrysalis still unchanged.

Today I am grateful for the throb of Patti Smith.

Last week I walked on snow so thick it cushioned my steps to near-silence & I wanted one more inch, absolute serenity.

Today I am thinking of my mother’s promise that I would end up where I am meant to be, & I imagine reading this twenty years from now and calling her a liar.

Will she say, keep waiting?

No one tells you the strength in sitting & working & silence.

(You see, I am always imitating the woman I’d like to be & I am always amazed when people fall for the trick.)

Did you know there is scholarship devoted to Titian’s blue sleeve, every fold and dimple in the silk accounted for?

The master’s eye seeing more, the master’s hand transcribing truth.

My old teacher would point to the text & say, moments of pure crystal.

Pure Crystal Anna St. Germain

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The way they make me feel.

I love sunflowers Because of the way they make me feel But mostly ‘cuz they’re yellow And yellow is my favorite color I worry about my weight But not enough to stop eating donuts I love donuts The chocolate kind And I’ll try to be a lady Actually Fuck that Watch me get icing all over my lips Too busy to grab a napkin Feed me and tell me I’m pretty Sometimes it’s all I want to hear All my ears want to eat Eat your words like tasty donuts with extra chocolate frosting Yellow sunflowers Because of the way they make me feel Sometimes I don’t like to make sense But my mind makes sense to me because it doesn’t make sense at all I like to ramble But don’t tell me I’m rambling because I’ll get offended I’ll laugh, say it’s ok And then never talk to you again I’ve had my heart broken It is broken And I’ve learned they don’t sell tape or staples or glue to fix that shit Well At least not for cheap And I am cheap Because I’d rather spend my money on manicures and clothes and donuts And sunflowers Because of the way they make me feel 26

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Sky Garcilaso de la Vega

Sometimes I get lost In my head In my verse In the bus on my way home I lied to my mom about getting a ride home because she didn’t want me “bussing it” I lied I’ve lied Lies that hurt me Lies that make the tape and the staples and the glue they don’t sell run out Lies that make me feel I am not worthy of the Sunflowers Because of the way they make me feel I cry myself to sleep sometimes because my mind doesn’t know how to deal with what it knows Sometimes it doesn’t even know what it knows And that’s just how it goes I deal with it most days I like the idea of a storm I cannot weather because it makes my helplessness feel a little less helpless I’m alone on the bus now I forget the difference between loneliness and independence I’m codependent on people Other people Because I feel I’m not good enough So I stare at my phone Feed after feed after feed Feed me lies and tell me I’m pretty I won’t believe you but tell me anyway When I’ve run out of words to say I like to look at pictures Pictures of you And puppies And sunflowers Because of the way they make me feel.

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Il Santuario di Stelle Leo Tow

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Kirai knew the angels would come, oh how he knew they would be there. But he wondered if he was ready to see them again. He had prepared everything.

His children already had families of their own and even their children had children. His wife had passed exactly thirty years ago, and he was no longer a young man, even by his own standards. He thought he had lived a good life, a truly beautiful life, full of excitement, pain, and eventually peace as any good life should be. He knew he had not been the best man he could be, but at least he could meet the angels and tell them he had become a better man since they last met. Unfortunately, he couldn’t tell them he had no regrets, but fortunately, he couldn’t remember what many of them were. Long ago, he had devised a system, wherein any time he made a decision he would come to regret, he wrote it down. Just six days ago, he had burned his book of regrets, allowing the ashes to disappear into the wind.

The old man still missed his wife; she had been 107 when she died, but it still felt like she had gone too soon. His sons and daughters had spent as much time with him as they could, but truly, it was not being alone that he minded, not anymore. What pained him was the company of others without her energy and love to help him through. While he still loved to be with his children or his grandchildren or his great-grandchildren or even his great-great-grandchildren—by god, how the time flies, he thought to himself—he avoided almost any other interaction these days.

After all, what would he need? He lived on his farm in Italy now having given his apartment in New York, as well as the ones in Melbourne, Paris, and London to his children. Even the cottage in Norway he had given to Rory, since, at this point, he doubted he would be getting up there to use it. His farm provided him with food, the solar and wind farms gave him more electricity than he would ever use. The excess, he sold. He had his workshop on the side of the house, the glass study at the top, and the root cellar in the basement. He could make just about anything in his

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kitchen, having no need to travel into town anymore.

He looked up at the tall, wonderful house he had built so many years ago. At one time or another five generations of his family had been in this house. He placed his hand on the front door over the handprint of his wife, still embedded in the varnish. The two of them had placed their hands here after the house was finished to commemorate the best project they thought they would ever accomplish together, even better than the circus, which had originally been his project but had quickly become theirs after he inevitably told her about it. Not long after the house was finished they turned their energy toward a few new projects that would grow to be even more amazing. Eventually, he turned away from his house carrying only his walking stick, notebook and pen. The notebook was black on the back, but on the front, it was emblazoned with his tree, the one that was now on all of his notebooks.

He walked out into his fields now empty after the final harvest.

This year, he had decided not to plant the winter crops leaving that task to the next caretaker. After an hour or so, he reached their spot, a massive rock overlooking the river where they used to sit together and tell stories to the forest. Just across the river was the mountain. He wrote down all that he saw, as he had done for years, and then moved on. The mountain was small, and he managed the climb easily enough. He reached the peak just as the last stars began to appear in the sky. He wrote down the details by the light of the moon: the beauty of the autumn colors in the trees, the glistening river winding its way toward the ocean, and in the distance, his study, sparkling under the stars. He remembered when their youngest child called their home a sanctuary for the stars. Ever since, the land stretching out before him had been known as Il Santuario di Stelle. For most of his life, this name had embodied the thousands of plantings and harvests, the holidays, the children who grew up here and to this day it lived inside him as his family’s symbol of hope. He had seen some of the

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most amazing places the world had to offer, but this was still his favorite. He continued writing after ensuring he had enough space left for the sunrise.

Eventually, the first rays of dawn began to splash over his pages and he stood, marked the time and date, and simply waited, listening to the sounds of the world coming to life. As the sun peaked over the horizon looking to see if the Earth was ready for a new day, they came.

The first was beautiful, tall, with flowing red hair and brown eyes that made him feel as though he was looking into galaxies. She looked exactly the same as he remembered, but he always loved the way she looked at dawn. Then, the second, blue eyes with flecks of some color he had never been able to describe, wild blonde hair, with long limbs and long slender hands. Her mouth curled into a smile as he dropped his notebook and pen, a look of complete astonishment on his face. Oh that smile, he would never be able to forget that smile even after a thousand lifetimes.

He approached her, his hand outstretched as if he thought she might disappear if he came too close. She moved forward until, lovingly, he placed his hand on her cheek. Her smile, which had disappeared briefly, now returned as his face lit up; his eyes filled with tears, and he stepped forward into her arms. The first angel waited patiently, knowing how important this was to both of them. At long last, l’amoreaux broke apart and the man walked to the first angel wrapping her in a tight embrace.

After releasing her, he stepped back and looked from one to the other, with the silly little half smile he had been giving these two women since they had all been 17 years old, never leaving his face. He looked out over his home, happy to be able to spend a few minutes with his angels after so long without them. He had seen the first angel many times throughout his life while the second had been his lifelong companion, but in all that time he had never realized she was his angel. He had called her his morning angel as long as either of them could remember, but when the angels had

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first come to him she had not let him see who she truly was, for he was not meant to know until now. He looked back at his lover and his friend, then bent down and retrieved his notebook, writing on the last page “Oh, how the river sings Oh, how the sun dances They found me here My angels so bright Whispering to me It is finally time To surrender To Infinity�

The man closed the notebook as he realized that his hands were no longer wrinkled, his eyes no longer heavy. He was a young man again, just as his angels had become young women since he last saw them in their mortal lives. The second angel reached out and took his hand, while the first placed her arm around his shoulder as the three of them disappeared into the infinite.

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M r. B r ow n Anna Jones

I wonder what you looked like, Mr. Brown.

Your wife died young, no one will ever know her as old and wrinkled.

She’ll be remembered as beautiful forever!

But you, Mr. Brown, have hairs growing out of your ears and your skin hates your bones so much, it’s trying to slip off your face!

Your nose is almost as red as your eyes, which by the way, have lost all their color and shine.

Maybe it’s not so bad that they’ve sunken deep into your skull.

Oh Mr. Brown, where’d you go?!

Not far at that pace!

I found an old picture of you, from your days in the navy, and you didn’t have a single liver spot!

Your skin was taught with a clear, tan complexion and your eyes glistened through the squint of that charming smile.

Where have you been, Mr. Brown, that made time so cruel to you?

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Swimming Lessons ZoĂŤ Felix

As the rice fell from your hand and into the pot of water the grains spread out on the surface a mandala of swimmers oating in a public pool I asked you where they learned to swim and you told me in the basins of the ďŹ elds where they were harvested watching the water skippers each morning toes tapering the surface and making the mirrors bend You told me they learned to swim watching the geridae legs With the help of the sun to highlight the sheen glass that hides under most pieces of water, they learned to balance on the waves we step through I asked you to show me the glass so I could learn to walk on waves like rice but you told me very few things are like rice and water skippers

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Contangere: Dance Theater with Clarice Lispector Amanda Dennis

Quarantine when form fails. Forty days in the desert. The liveliest, deadliest moments call for choreography.

The problem with you writing like that is that I think I know you. I think we’ve touched because you’ve gotten inside—you with your idiocy over the naming of flower parts. Night Jessamine doesn’t interest me, but you’ve come under my nails like soft dirt with your talk of jungle animals and your wildness.

You’ve broken the rules.

Choreography should be proportional to intensity of contact. Call it chorea, the un- graphed convulsions—a tarantella without music to which we spin until we break.

So touch—its possibility—demands choreography: dance (χορεία)writing (γραϕια). To touch another, contangere, is contagion, contamination: contingency touches the edges of regular realness. Etymology is a way of dancing, a pretext, rule-bound. Touch spreads so quickly that we lose our balance, start contorting (in the heat of it), laughing, dying.

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So we put on high-heeled shoes. And wrote (poetry) never-not in meter.

So lyric wouldn’t be set loose in the world. These are rules of contact: May I touch you? Fit you (fainting) into form? Men and women walk to German tango by Juan Llossas. Confine contact. Careful. Then you come with your I-want-the-experience-of-a-lack- of-construction—you with your breath that heats passing syllables. You’ve burned down the court.

Today I went to the theater. I was there with a man but thought only of you. Did I imply it was a play? It was a ritual. It was a dance that made fun of dancing, of loving and of losing (balance). Oh, you would have loved the bodies flinging themselves into space, the dancer-bodies that walked on the edges of their feet (in high-heeled shoes).

Those who knew you say you were good at rules in life, that you kept furnished rooms for living and empty halls through which you could roam, giving words body. You pull up the cork that keeps the source in the earth, let it bubble gently over our eyes, which adore you for having broken all our rules.

Quarantine. Without containment we would infect each other intimately. You touch me and you do not ask permission. I assume too much familiarity. I address a voice I think I know because it vibrates at the frequency of my desire. You’ve infected me with your soul because we did not square off against each other’s minds. I would have left you in your jungle rain, but you didn’t ask, you never knocked, and I found you in my closet, using my lipstick and trying on my shoes.

Words bear, you say, a bodily meaning. I taste you in my words, your humid intimacy. We think we trade these things, hard as pumice stones.

But they slide through the skin.

Come, let’s clothe you—buy you curtains for your rooms too bright with moonlight. We’ll consort in the shadows, cover your quivering nerves 43

or spin them—thread- like—into dresses (silk!) one might have worn in Wuppertal in the seventies. Come, you need the shell of an oyster, the carapace of a tortoise. If we dress you—a chord, a voice—you’ll stop ringing infinitely, deafeningly in the desert.

Undressed, un-skinned, you’re dangerous to others and yourself. You’re pale, you say, from feeling totally what others are.

Come, you story-less creature, whose song strips me of dullness. I think of you in the night, you and your deep way of touching. Infectious, you must not be allowed to be so free. Contact with you, with the source that whispers through you, blocks all return, denatures possibility of home.

Discomfort to breathe you, like the humidity of city summer nights, a stifling heat refusing to break. Oh, let’s leave you to spin on in your mad world, turning and turning yourself into energy.

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Cont.

Charlotte Lewis Knock it off. The cigarettes are gone. The magnolia no longer overlooks the neighbor’s yard. Dad makes the garlic bread. Dad’s dad in the Navy with animal heads. Black licorice. He didn’t have a good feeling about it.

Obsidian. I’m covered in dog hair when he tells me, “Don’t mourn the fig tree.” Love like you’ve never shown me has touched here before. Two to infinity. The truth is the truth was inconvenient. Relentless. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Okay, shift. See? Sprinting.

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When I am in love Alfie Rentería

Days tell me I’m good I’m bright days tell me I’m sweet in your hand I taste rosewood in your thighs lick apricot in your feet hic happy glass an open mouth breath when sucking thorns woosh taste me so breathe and squirm and howl and squirm and cry and squirm and I can’t keep calm and squirm can’t keep calm finch and still teeny platelets run come on make me run tiny sob mighty sob ready sob or are tears the softest blood can rough sex tight neck bump me bitch bumping phone sex sounds five hours four three some like it like the dew in the forest like the lionness hunt hunt cunting prayer like Madonna like Mary and Virginia know to handle know how to light a candle but only to grab hold of the flame stamen chokehold grab hold of this heat rely on this heat it feels atomic I said like a melody you said like a heartbeat she said would that I could recreate I said your blood I said and mine I said make them flow I said in one stream with mouth I said mounting August shared by us pleasure us please taste our metal I can taste your metal I can taste your spleen too and it tastes like cake buttercreaming my pants buttercreamsicle melts down my fist like it’s my first cry and I squeal to feel that cold drip I squish that cream beat it to buttercreation constellation baby born of us bright like us baby singing songs like us enrobing us is love like us becoming of us cello wailing loud like us canary flying stones like us honey up honey bounce honey B-side ballgown in Hammersmith in Danube honey quick come back honey quick cum back in Sofia honey honey all is gold all is good all is rhinestoned chest hairy hairy chest open breast stroke and stroke again we rest stroke my hair against your breast I change my form lets us know love and no love not conditional not based on form love not base debase smooth like conditioner like polymorphous practitioner talk with me slick ride with me slick make me sick make hair grow make smile show a lights show a slow purr you love her elemental starry eyed yolk not an egg not a beg but panting panting breath holy shit; this song is for you.

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Frédéric Attal

C o m p o s i t e u r d é c o m p o s é

Sur ma guitare désaccordée, J’ai couché notre histoire sur un vieux papier, Un grimaçant grimoire…pour exorciser.

Et sur ces accords diminués, J’ai couché sur son corps, Quitte à me damner.

Pour conjurer le sort, je dois chanter : Comme un solfège à sortilèges Une formule magique en musique Un envoûtement en arpège Abracadabra mélodique Et sur ce refrain ensorcelé, elle a joué de ses mains, Sur mon coeur-clavier, dépoussiéré enfin de son passé.

Et de nos deux cœurs désaccordés, Au diapason mineur des Amours chantés, Reste un compositeur décomposé…

Mais si je plaque mes accords augmentés, Je revois en vrac nos danses, nos baisers, Ça m’fout une claque…une claque chantée…

Mais si on t’plaque, désaccords partagés, Contre-attaque !

Dix de r’trouvées sur dix de perdues, t’es pas foutu : T’as un solfège à sortilèges Une formule magique en musique Un envoûtement en arpège Abracadabra mélodique, Shazam, sésame en musique….

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BRILLIANT Jessica deHart

A young boy sat on his favorite rock high above the ocean.

“Who am I supposed to be?” His small voice echoed around him.

He looked down to the calm water for an answer, and saw only himself reflecting back.

“I’m supposed to be me,” he thought, and he was.

Several years later, he jumped upon his favorite rock high above the ocean.

He watched a flock of seagulls fly south across the sky together.

“What path should I take in life? Where shall I go?”

His deepening voice asked.

One gull flew away, leaving the others.

“Ah, yes, I shall make my own way,” he whispered, and he did.

A few months passed.

He felt braver than ever upon his favorite rock high above the ocean.

He could see forever, and he liked that.

“Will life always be this easy?” he wondered, as he leaped off the rock.

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He missed his quick step and stumbled, almost falling to the ground, but he caught himself– just in time.

“It was only a small stumble,” he said, and it was.

Many years passed and he became taller.

He lay upon his favorite rock high above the ocean.

It was nighttime and he was amazed by the vastness around him.

“How can I help this big, beautiful world?”

He yelled up to the navy-night sky.

He watched the bright stars twinkle and shine, all on their own accord, all holding their very own light. That’s when he realized, “I’m here to be brilliant, also,” and he was.

One day, he collapsed onto his favorite rock high above the ocean.

Thunder rumbled. Lightning flashed.

“I’m afraid! I’m afraid!” He cried out to the angry sky.

The fierce wind tossed him to the ground.

He lay there, curled in a ball.

Shivering.

Then, he remembered the brilliant dreams he had for his life.

So he pushed himself up, crawled back onto his favorite rock, and held on tight, trembling.

“I’m here to be great. I must survive this storm,” and he did.

Decades came and went upon this rock.

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Then one day, the old man steadied himself there, high above the ocean.

He stayed and watched the sun go down in the evening sky.

His heart felt warm, like the blazing orange sun before him.

“How did I come to be so happy?” He marveled.

“Who was I, to live such a beautiful life?”

He could see the exact path below the sun, where it was going to set that day, where earlier, the storm clouds had been chased away.

“Right,” he said, agreeing with the mighty universe.

“My happiness came from traveling my own path and having courage through the storms.”

The sunset was brilliant, and so was he.

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empty poem

Marina Franรงolin Borges no words no words none nothing at all comes to me and still i crave to be cradled in this empty nest

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DANS LE MÉTRO Mary McColley

A man holding an open bag of chocolates sways next to a woman whose thighs lean away from each other as if they are strangers. Two women do not want to sit next to each other. They have lines like the concentric circles of thrown pebbles in water wrinkling about their mouths.

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[Down by the dirtied docks] Ja c o b B r o m b e r g for Alberto Caeiro

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Down by the dirtied docks the seagulls are struggling against the wind; not the winds of chance or the wind that cries a lover’s name, just the wind. This is a secular poem.

It’s written on the wall: No Fishing. The fishermen’s wall is deserted; the wind has blown all the fishermen away, nothing but shallows in the shallows.

What’s more than this is that this western wind shambles dead skin and waste about the barren streets, and innocently of us.

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Pitch Black Angel Wings Imaniushindi Fanga A grand symphony plays at our wedding.

Church bells ring from the darkest corners of the cathedral.

Heaven opens up for us and I’m still waiting to unveil my lover.

To hold your hand despite the stench of sulfur still soaking your skin.

I prayed for you a thousand times, yet you’re sad.

Does God have a plan I don’t know?

Dry your tears, the gates are still open but only for a moment.

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Alexia Gioacchini

A .45 in the armoire, I kind of know how to use it.

When I answer the phone I got 2 tones like my skin it’s “Yo G, what’s goin’ on?”

Or “Hey Charlie, how are your parents doing?”

I ride the color line like the bus.

I dread a gentrified state of mind.

I can get off on Cherry Hill Lane or MLK Drive.

I’m living in one world that’s translated into two.

I’m learning ebonics and French under the same roof.

It’s knowing that my school is in Paris But my friends stay in the projects outside.

It’s being conscious of who surrounds me at all times.

It’s realizing you’ll never be white Despite your bloodline, But it’s accepting you’ll never be hood No matter how hard you try.

I can’t fake who I am I can’t fake who I’m not, But there is a gray area between what’s expected of me And my personality.

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They look at me and they’re shocked, I look at them with understanding.

I get you don’t see me represented very often.

It’s not just a me thing, so many kids are lost— Are you white or black?

‘Cuz for the media it’s a coin toss.

I either know how to rap or I know ballet but if I can do both then “I’m an interesting case” And if I can quote Plato or my Euro accent is strong Then my friends gonna say “you been in a white city too long.”

I’m existentially divided. I’m personality split.

Who I am with you isn’t who I am with him.

And who I am with her differs from time to time.

Whether I’m around her family or she’s around mine.

Even with the fam there’s a gap.

My black side thinks I’m spoiled And the white side thinks I’m too black.

I wear my hair in braids and I’m “OG” I straighten it and they think Meghan Markle is who I’m trying to be.

I don’t fight anymore, as long as I can ride both sides.

I ride two waves and two opposite tides.

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alexia

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I Re m e m b e r Yo u MovingThrough Yo u r L i f e , To o Charlotte Lewis

I noticed on a Tuesday that she has hair like my grandmother’s, who apparently left her body and walked past my mother, pregnant with me, sleeping.

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Shadow People Ian Tillotson

watching from shadows as shadows the night hides form and intent as loners or small groups stumble down the haunting place as they try to avoid the gaze of their betters those of us silent watching arbiters our judgment is not for those who walk in daylight for their matters do not concern us instead we stalk that dark street vanishing from shadow to shadow chained to the dark places but in contempt of the street lights and the sun as our unseen but omnipresent eyes burn holes in souls and the souls don’t know why for only we know why and we have no reason to show mercy except to the other shadows with jagged teeth forms breaching the dark with malice and opposition to judgments therefore we go mad and we lash out under an abyss broken by light interrupting the endless darkness serves as a battlefield between arbiter and anarchist a war unseen by the scurrying rodents around us the deer the racoons the skunks the people whom we judge but understand we are reflections of so we bore our eyes into souls when we truly bore our judgments into ourselves and for that bile-filled conclusion we are forced to understand that by judging the creatures that walk our path we judge ourselves

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A Report to a Community College

Felix Purat

In memory of Franz Kafka

Greetings, my dear students!

It will be my pleasure to tell you all about the life I once led as a corporation.

I should warn you, dear students, that once I was disconnected from the corporation mainframe, and left without updates for five straight years, my memory of that bygone era became faulty. Algorithm clashed with algorithm. I started mixing profit margins with petty cash receipts, innovation strategies with employment benefits, and bank statements with burger recipes. I had to accept the inevitable: that my past would remain hazy to a degree, as I, like an alcoholic who has been drinking nonstop for ten straight years, watched as my thoughts became haphazard and unclear. I, myself, had to start drinking in order to make this unfortunate memory lapse make any sense in the context of my new life and new state of being; as you can see by glancing at the glass that sits beside my hand, that many have labeled “transhumanist,� I have developed a fondness for Japanese whiskey from Hokkaido Island, a place I know well due to countless business trips conducted on my behalf by an organ of my body I used to call the Corporate Executive Officer. But with the help of a business adviser who was once an organ of the Aladdin Corporation, an entity I once had the pleasure of calling my friend, I have been able to 75

sort out my thoughts in order to explain what you students deem to be a unique phenomenon. Yet, at great cost: because the digital engineers and technocrats never look back upon the past, it is impossible for me to go back through the automatic doors, into the mainframe, and manifest myself once again as a corporation.

Those of you preparing for careers in software engineering finance, or who perhaps are thinking of founding a startup and joining the noble rank of engineer, are no doubt acquainted with my story from an academic lens. Or perhaps, you read that article about me in The Economist.

For it was an entrepreneur, the likes of whom you aspire to emulate, who fathered me many years ago: a man named Joe who liked to make hamburgers.

I remember little of my childhood, a period of development people still refer as “family business.” I call it a childhood because of the only two things I could comprehend at that infantile stage. One was Joe’s face as he smelled the sizzling scent of a hamburger patty with melted cheese.

How miraculous was the taste of my first cheeseburger when I ceased to be a corporation: the succulence of the meat, the way the lettuce tickled the roof of my mouth and the chewiness of the bread, all unified by a slab of melted cheese. It was so profound I even forgot, but remember now, how I begrudgingly ate my first cheeseburger at a restaurant run by my former arch-enemy, Biggie’s Burgers. How I once hated Biggie; my hatred was at times so intense, it nearly sent the stock market crashing. The organs that constituted my brain—shareholders they were called—were not happy when those things occurred, though they were kind enough to sympathize with my hatred. All of that went out of my head once I realized why I had been out-competed: not only was the burger delicious, and indubitably so, but as a human, I had learned forgiveness. A depressing concept as a whole, since it lets bad people get away with stuff. Still, one less thing to waste energy on, which is good since you need to learn, dear students, that making a profit is your foremost concern. All other directives are secondary.

The second thing I remember is looking at myself in the mirror.

Every time I did, I saw my logo taking the form of a juicy burger with Joe’s name written under it in red neon. It was retro by today’s standards 76

but as charming as Joe himself.

At previous speaking engagements I often ask students like you if you remember your first day of kindergarten. When you had to part with your parents and start real school, meet new kids and so forth.

Perhaps after this speaking engagement you can tell me your memories.

When I was made into a corporation, taken from Joe’s custody and put under the tutelage of a Board of Directors and a Corporate Executive Officer, my memory became vivid. As I comprehended world geography, the pulse of the free market, the brittleness of less free markets, the rhythm of the stock market, the thoroughfares of transportation and the worldwide flow of finances and information, all of it made sense to me as water makes sense to a fish. It was riveting, as if I had been tossed out of a plane to fall through the sky, but with the knowledge that a gargantuan pillow awaited me on a field below. And that once I fell onto the pillow, I would be the smartest man in the world. I would be Paris, but a Paris who gave the golden apple to Athena instead of Aphrodite.

In the beginning, Joe was my Corporate Executive Officer. I liken him to the organ I now possess called a heart. My childish devotion to Joe was the closest thing I knew to love, but it was an innocent devotion. Nor was it one-sided: Joe’s devotion to my success was a reflection of his love of both moneymaking and serving good burgers to hungry people so as to bring joy to ordinary peoples’ lives.

One memory in particular stands out: Joe was seldom ever unhappy as he was always in his element, though he would often tire from exhaustively tending to my wellbeing. But opening his franchise in new countries always put a smile on his face. A simple man from a poor background, traveling used to be little more than a distant dream for Joe. So experiencing another country was exhilarating for him and by default for me, like a space nerd chosen to fly into space and colonize Mars. I remember us traveling to a place called Gergelistan. Half-desert and half-steppe, the people of this former communist country talked about burgers as if they were a forbidden fruit reserved for the domain of heaven alongside ambrosia and nectar. I remember the tears flowing down a woman’s face when she admitted that she didn’t have enough money for every one of her kids to have a burger. Joe gave her some extra 77

burgers—keep in mind that altruism is great for promoting your brand, especially in cultures that value generosity like the Gergels. I remember the look of gratitude on that woman’s face as she told Joe that her family was pro-America (and therefore pro-hamburger) and that her husband had been jailed as an anti-communist dissident. I did not understand the concept of patriotism and still don’t, but it must be a benevolent feeling given how moved Joe was by this encounter.

The rest you already know, I’m sure. Once, Joe was ousted from his position as CEO after being framed for corruption. My beloved creator, Joe, with his simple background, corrupt? It angers me to this very day. The quality of Joe’s burgers began to decline. Every failed attempt at innovation by the board of directors only made Biggie’s Burgers stronger, more competitive, and more popular among consumers. I began to understand what neglect felt like: it was terrible. People tell me I seem spoiled for talking about this, but please understand that after Joe’s caring upbringing, this neglect felt no different than being thrown into a torture chamber. I had no escape.

The only satisfaction I got was when we bought a small soft drinks corporation that I later learned was Biggie’s Burgers’ love interest. Alas, she was liquidated by the board of directors shortly before I stopped being a corporation. I later on bought a now-collectible can of her vanilla cola that I keep in a bank safe to remember what love and revenge feel like.

Eventually the famous lawsuit happened where it was ruled that corporations are people. I wish I could tell you more, but one day I woke up in the form of a human body. I was free. I went searching for Joe but later learned that he had drunk himself to death only six months earlier, ashamed by his downfall. It is partly why I drink now: to connect with my father, as I now call him.

Since then I published my book, which you can buy at the table in the back of the room for $15.00. I don’t really need the money, as some of the remaining assets ended up in a bank account in my name.

But this is my report, and I thank you, dear students, for listening to my tale.

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Nature

MarĂ­a Susana Tamayo Nature, how do you encompass Silence? tree-rock-green eucalyptus swaying in the wind yellow butterfly I sit alone. I am you.

Swish Swish of the Wind Rum Rum of the refrigerator I hear you.

Do you hear me?

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U n t i t l e d

Ol’ Phil C. is looking forward to it!

Phone rang. Mummy, it is.

“Wozzeck, dear, I’m going through your old room, moving out the dust. All these old books here can be gotten rid of, don’t you think?”

“My name isn’t Wozzeck, why are you calling me that?”

“Don’t be silly dear, of course it is. Name of your great grandfather. Now tell me, which of these can we donate. We haven’t got the room!”

“Don’t move those, those are my books.”

“Well honey, you’ve read them for years, now. We got to get rid of some of these, surely. Now do tell me, dear, which of these I can give to the charity down on Bebenhäuser Straße.”

“Those are MY books.

MINE. They are my booooooooks!

Don’t you understand that? MY BOOKS! You old fart, you. You touch my books and I’ll shivy you, woman I swear! Don’t you dare move My Books.”

“What do you mean they are your books?”

“They are mein books, was meinst du? Mein meint mein, Nein, Ich meine mein!”

“Alright then, sweety.

Sam Wertz

Sat at the face of the balcony glass door. Thought maybe an old dip into the china number 4 would do it. Thought it’d be too long. Had to be a knife.

Toooooooooo long. Decided it’d be the steamer. Yep, that’s it, the old click-clack, get it done get it done. Right away! Quite the mess but didn’t care, had a date missed; 82

When was the last time you had a meal? Go on and eat a sandwich now. That’ll do the trick, that’s what you need: a sandwich. Just make one, right now, and eat it up. Get that in your stomach and you’ll be alright.”

“I don’t have the things for a sandwich, takes tooooooooooooooooooo long.”

“Then head on down to that nice döner place. That’s quick and easy. Take the 1 to the 8, first wagon to change. Then take the 8 all the way there, last wagon to exit.

You’ll walk there and it be ready in just a second!”

“Okay, bye.”

Wozzeck got up from his chair and headed over to the restroom. As he urinated he stared blankly at the wall before him.

Wozzeck began to notice a blue light from the corner of the perpendicular walls. Wozzeck began to feel hungry. He leaned in and inspected the source of this blue light. Bluer than anything he’d ever seen. His stomach was pounding with hunger. Closer he leaned, so close his nose was in the corner.

Like a cold knife, digging into his stomach.

Wozzeck saw that the two walls were not completely flush to-

gether, and the amazing blooooooo light was pouring in from the sliver in-between. He stepped back and looked around his tiny room. He noticed the light everywhere. Between the tiles, beneath the lamp, the mattress and the bed frame. His stomach churned and seinem Kopf bricht Feuer aus. His hunger swelled deeper. His eyes rattled in his skull.

He felt the hunger in his spine.

Wozzeck fled his house and that magnificent blue light. He had to render this hunger. He continued to the nearest food. “A good bite, that’s it! We’ll fix this up right quick and then we can get on with it.” He walked to the nearest place where he could get food the fastest.

Wozzeck knew the way.

He turned into a passage.

It is a long way, but he saw the döner at the end of it. The walls of the buildings are close on each side of the passage. This made Wozzeck feel comfortable. It is a tight passage, but long at that.

He started walking his way down.

There are people passaging the other way. He had been walking for three minutes before he noticed he wasn’t getting any closer. The people are getting closer to him but they remained the same small, distant size. Wozzeck began to panic.

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The hunger was tearing him apart like a cancer. He began to run. The hunger was making it painful, like he had swallowed acid. Wozzeck is running.

Quick!

Faster!

Go! Now Now Now! GO GO GO HE Runs And Ran And Run And Rans And RUNS AND RAN AND RUN AND RUN AND RUN AND RUN 85

Ode to Green María Susana Tamayo

To the gnomes of the Forest frost, I cry!

Bring them back!

The blond one, the old one Forest green.

Swing Into me Red-doted mushrooms Bring them back Lavender purple bees Bring them back Yellow monarch butterflies Bring them back Forest in all its glory After rain vapors Smell of pine Bring them back I will drink cigarette ashes—colillas—so they will come back I will walk on needles Wake up around 4 thirty And pray So they will come back.

Blond one, old one Lover-Father I ask and the Forest answers, “Never.”

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Blueber r y Pancakes Evan Floyd It rose slowly but the scent stayed strong; I could smell him smoking before I could see it. The cigarettes were there. Constant. Consistent.

He handed over a head rush and I took it. Easily. So easily, that thinking about not was difficult. But I wanted to prove I wasn’t their slave, that there wasn’t this invisible chain connecting me to them. I took a few drags. They were long ones. I got up. Tried to quit.

The apartment was at its cleanest that night. Everything distracted me. The dishes in the sink. The warmth of the water. The apple scent of the soap. Short strokes. Small circles. An eventual end with added effort. Counters sprayed with store bought citrus solution; worries wiped away.

Our couch was cancer and cushions. The coffee table, a reminder to read or bottles of beer. Every candle we owned was lit. Autumn Leaves. Then Citrus Breeze. Pecans & Pralines. Teakwood. Tangerines.

Incense was overkill. I burned it still.

Surrounded by smoke, I wanted to smoke.

I drank to take my mind off it. I ate fruit for familiarity; repeated hand-mouth motion.

He came in smelling like half a pack. His lips shined in plump glory. I wanted them to triumph. But there was only ash.

The shower before bed, the cleaning of the slate. I couldn’t smell like them. I couldn’t feel what they’d done but I did. Insomnia I was used to. Irritability not so much. I was angry. Angry at him for falling asleep on my arm. Angry that the window was closed keeping cool air out. Angry at the pack in full view. They couldn’t hide from my sight. I tried to just lay there in the once comfortable bed but couldn’t.

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My shirt rose silent. A few coins fell out my jeans. To me they were loud. Only I reacted to the sound. I found myself in front of the pack. I forget putting it in my hand. Maybe because it was numb. Maybe because I was numb. It was almost empty. I started to shake. My body sweat. I had a headache. I was hungover. I think there were three in the pack but now I’m not sure. One was turned upright though; the lucky. My lucky. I stared at it, the room felt quieter. The pack gradually went from being in my hand to being on the nightstand.

Half-asleep or half-alive, coffee seemed to cure all.

I opened the fridge. First for a bag of bacon, then a box of blueberries. The bacon needed to cook first. It’d take the longest. The rest was fast. Melting butter, beating eggs, adding milk to the mix. The dry ingredients: flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt were separate from this.

A splash of vanilla. The wet were whisked then they came together.

Blueberries to batter. The sweetness surprised. Prepared the plates that smoky sunrise. I put them down and put out his cigarette by bursting and burning the bittersweet blueberries. Stopping the smoke with syrup, slamming the door.

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La Bibliotecaria Jubilada Jorge F. Sosa

This piece is based on an original version written in Spanish for a library publication for the promotion of reading programs in public libraries. The author wanted to raise awareness for the need for special structures for people with reading difficulties.

The tea is very hot and I leave it aside while I wonder how I got here: at age 65, retiring from so many years as a librarian. I go to the balcony and I untie my ponytail, noticing that for my age I only have a few gray hairs.

I let my hair fall on my shoulders and I breathe, wondering how I have coped for so many years with the written word.

My earliest memory is that of my teacher giving me a painful slap in the face for not reading well, or maybe it was for having miscounted the small colored balls on the blackboard. Tears and suffering and shame; that is my earliest memory. I was seven.

I never knew until years later that as a child I had severe myopia, combined with astigmatism, for my young age. My teacher, Corina Sandoval, a thin, middle-aged woman with straight black hair and a sexy mini skirt sat me on the last bench in the classroom, because tall girls should go there. She was one of those who strongly believed in the Spanish motto “La letra con sangre entra” which translates as “reading is learned by bleeding.” That’s how it was throughout elementary and primary school in many Hispanic American countries.

I hate to read, I used to say to myself, always in a low voice, 94

because in my family and at school, hating to read was synonymous with vagrancy or lack of intelligence. Fortunately, life and friendship were not based only on reading. Life was bigger, life was broader, life felt good...

With a book, the world did not open in front of my eyes, trips to distant countries never happened, incredible romances never played in my mind, and mysteries were just transparent to me. I was stronger at creating my own dreams and fantasies.

I stepped on to the next reading stage by reading political science books during my college years... At that time, I forced myself to read more and more, but never as a pleasant activity. During college, my relationship with reading became a factor of socialization. I was starting to take off, to fly, but of course never with a book next to my bed.

The reddish sun of the late afternoon begins to touch my face and caress me with its warmth, and so it does to the facades of the buildings around me.

One of my grandmothers was born in the luxury area of barrio República in Santiago. She left her old family home every day to go to work. She never wanted to depend financially on her husband. She had a good family heritage to count on and she also had a very small local shoe factory, focusing only on women’s shoes. My grandmother offered to pay for my post-graduate studies in Canada. Like a good entrepreneur, she wanted me to take on her business when she retired. This way, she would move me away from my political philosophy major. She saw some interesting leadership capabilities in me, and after a trip to the US and Canada, she persuaded me to go for a more pragmatic career. I did not pursue my graduate studies in business, but we settled with something I chose instead: library sciences. My choice was based greatly on an experience I had during the trip I took with my grandmother. Little did she know. We visited the New York Public Library. I was inspired! That library seemed to me like a world in itself, a place where people met, worked alone or accompanied. It was a job from the community for the community. Very noble. Chile needed that too, and I was going to bring those ideas and practices back home.

In Canada, my relationship with reading changed even more. I stopped reading the classics of political philosophy in Spanish to make 95

way for the extremely pragmatic methods and approaches of the library sciences in English. We were dealing with library management, development of collections and services, learning computer programming, and children’s literature.

One of Canada’s richest academic libraries was something out of this world for the little naïve Chilean girl I was. It was the display of wealth, the display of spaces, the availability of services and people that I had never experienced before. “Nunca antes visto.” My small public libraries in Chile were far from that.

Few were the months of quiet, studious reading. One day, seated at a desk in a quiet place on the fourth floor of my library, I noticed that there was some strange commotion around, so I started looking for an explanation, and with my eyes I followed some people who were acting with caution. A big surprise! I found the place where sex took place in the library. Men and women seduced each other from their seats and then hid among the hundreds of books to kiss and devour each other, surrendering to temporary earthly passions. How can one read and concentrate in situations like these? To hell with reading! What happened to my reading skills in those days? They were paused.

When I finished my graduate studies, I married a Californian man I met at a party in Montréal. A man with Paul Newman’s eyes. We moved to San Diego. The first years were of love, but my young relationship with the Paul Newman-eyed gringo did not last. We divorced. I moved back to Santiago.

Once reinstated in my country, the energetic and dynamic librarian I was began to work at a pretty high level, for a start. That Canadian diploma had given me a significant advantage among the national professionals. I felt like the new Gabriela Mistral. But the other side of the coin was that I was hiding a secret: my anxiety and sometimes hatred toward reading.

In the main public library of Santiago, one of my new colleagues, Pamela, told me about a new workshop she was going to facilitate and she wanted my opinion about how to approach the subject. The workshop was supposed to help people with reading difficulties and more particularly, with dyslexia. It was only then that I learned about the existence of 96

dyslexia and the different degrees of it. I understood then that perhaps all that had happened to me was that I had dyslexia. I panicked and decided to leave the problem covered like crabs in a cocking pat. And I did not open the lid for a long time. How could I have gotten here? How could I have gotten so far as a professional having this palpitating problem in me?

The years continued and so did my career as a librarian, but it

came to an end with great success, as the general director of one of the most important public libraries in the region. I had moments of great recognition, some tributes, a medal, that I can see by my desk today. But dyslexia was there, with me.

Part of my personal struggle with dyslexia was to open a section 97

for people with learning disabilities in the library system of my city, that is called now Biblioteca de Santiago and in the sistema nacional de bibliotecas públicas. That was my personal revenge, my great achievement.

I have largely overcome the spectrum of dyslexia, thanks in large part to the help of my partner, José Luis, a great Spanish professor at the Universidad de las Américas, one of the city’s private universities. He is the one who has accompanied me with tenderness and patience. Also, partly thanks to my Paul Newman-eyed gringo and former husband, with whom I spent hours reading poems and trying to feel the written word with my heart. Thanks to my friend and colleague, Pamela, who took me by the hand to see a specialist in dyslexia in Santiago. Dyslexia is now controlled; the beast can no longer scare me!

I am no longer dyslexic, and I am no longer a librarian.

One day Ms. Dyslexia will regain strength in my tired mind.

Synapses and connections between neurons will happen at a slower pace, but today I have a thick book of mystery with me on this balcony, with my green tea.

I look ahead and the sun has already set. From my balcony, I see the park of the Cerro Santa Lucía, and on the other side I see the mountains as dark shadows with a clearer sky. Some city lights show a peaceful aspect of my city.

I close my eyes and the library of the Dutch Abbey of Rolduc comes and invades my mind. In it a monk closes a book to put it back on the shelf.

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The Middle Ellis Carter

And every day will pass the same In the anthropomorphic game, So time within its finite motion Will bring us back into the ocean; Our records made with altered hands, Nature wills what life commands, And we will wash our wonders away.

In the end, it is a play That was taught to us as child Or was inborn from the wild.

You will be told both truth and lie Until the moment that you die – It’s up to you to intuit The path that makes the logic fit.

So take it as you will, you gave the breath To this light sermon on dealing with death.

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i don’t blame men for not wanting to work around women i can’t work around them either i wouldn’t and couldn’t say any of this; it had to be written we are much more wild than this, in these bright lights there’s pressure in my words, what if i’m a sinner? i didn’t want to stay outside for that long I LIED it was cold i need to take a shower with rosemary, fennel and bold and i need you to wait outside there’s too much to think about we’re warriors, scribes, artists, no doubt no matter how lame the sound what if saints are the only ones who truly see themselves as equals? this calms my heart do you want to go to this party? if it’s only us three we won’t have to fit in how much time does it take to need none? if my electrons really do spin around you, it’s been a good spin but now i’m going out of orbit to breathe all the time it takes to develop a new me is the same time it takes for people to get used to the old one, c’est un p’tit peu decalé la vie maybe this means i’m not ready to take care of myself or maybe i should just stay home for a while and see you as much as i see everyone else 100

1 second of your time

the tall girl and the small girl collide and retract around each other at the same speed in the same manner, and the old man watches

she, the girl, took pictures of me hugging the tree it was so beautiful and he was stepping on it, and i just wanted it to know that at least one of us was on its side today everything pierces through my body and touches my soul and there’s nothing i can do about it as it tries to convince me to be something other than i am; red from the street sign when it’s blue and grey from the sky, for example, or giggle when it’s actually closed eyes and breathe

Marina Françolin Borges

Fatima asked me what are we? Mina what are we? i said saints, maybe, one day, angels... no but in the deep, she said, in the most essential way of all, and I knew, i always thought i was a drop of water a clear head means the part of me that walks walks for me, the part of me that thinks thinks for me, the part of me that sees sees for me, and i do nothing but provide the matter for dna's work tired and hungry; everything could flee my soul today because i know it would belong to nobody and i thought about winter; the house is warm, the food is warm, the blanket is warm, because even though the sun is warm, it’s nowhere to be seen my hands and feet are cold, my nails are lonely because no one pays attention to them and the comma is a low wall, a convenient pause, a coincidence there are no genuine secrets when someone sits next to you when will it be, the next time i forget all this? and who will say something next? but remember: if you want to know the truth about something, don’t talk about it 101

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physical therapy

Michaela Taylor

i put my hands on your freckled face my fingertips on your flaws breathed my patience over your pores ran acceptance down your arms pulled the sadness from your scars lifted lethargy from your legs and the bitterness from your back and after all that you just took a nap.

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B e c o m i n g a We b S u s p e n d e d From a Box Frame

Step One Open your eyes

See the world as it is Without opinion Just see It See not just the world but The Spaces In Between The spaces in between are the most important Because That’s where truths are held And lies are forgotten You don’t see w o r d s You see shapes on a page they say carry meaning You don’t see meaning You see understanding An understanding you know the world lacks Isn’t it easier this way?

Step Two Open your ears Hear the silence A low hum of S o m e t h i A silence you’ve never heard before Not because it was never there But because you Never listened 108

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A beautiful sound Of nothings

Sky Garcilaso de la Vega

That speak to you more than words ever could S s s h h h Don’t speak The silence does not speak with words Neither should you . . .

Isn’t it nicer this way?

Step Three Open your touch Become connected Identified By others Let your uniqueness melt away Stay still In a world of movement To look around you You will move them More than movement ever would To be like you Step outside Of your invisible walls Where things can be easier Where they can touch you 109

And adore you for what you are They will envy you And want what you have Become w e i g h t l e The world is hard But you are now harder Step away And become better Become more beautiful than A web suspended from a box frame Could ever be You are more beautiful because You live in a world that exists beyond the box frame Isn’t it better this way?

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excer pt from

The Encyclopaedia of Ever yday: Day 1 Sampurna Chattarji

Paris Writer in Residence Spring 2019

0730-0800 Start like a banyan tree.

Fill six minutes with the image of growing undisturbed by the shuffle of unbalanced feet around and around.

Cathedral of roots hanging from the air.

Inside this image, everything looks upwards.

There is a rhythm to the feet as they turn.

Even if I were to lose my sight my fingers would know where to go in search of the letters.

If this were indeed the first day what would I fill it with?

Knowing.

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A piano has 88 keys.

Wasps prefer chandeliers to sleep in.

The dengue mosquito keeps strict office hours, 10am to 4pm.

Balzac was obsessed with conspiracies.

A book title: Hatred in the Belly.

A website: Dalit Camera.

Nothing false or borrowed.

In the year 1979, there was a family crisis.

Refuge was sought with a teacher in Gangtok, Sikkim.

Money was lent. A delayed suspicion aroused.

Phone calls made. A lost son found, then lost again.

The teacher was a Tibetologist. Wrote on the haoma rituals of the Lepchas of Sikkim. Walked to Tibet in his youth in canvas keds. Admired my mother’s geraniums.

Was small, and sharp-faced. Came over, often, for tea.

Vanished, forever, except for that one article in the Bulletin of Tibetology, 1994, published in Gangtok, Sikkim.

Csoma de Kőrös’s kin.

Is writing like walking?

I would put in it a spoon. The sound of a spoon moving in a thick glass beer mug from which an old person is drinking her unsugared milk for the day.

The word ‘fill’ need not come with too much pressure.

I am adding 7+5+7.

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Thinking of the Snark.

The small swinging pendulum of a young man’s faith in the beauty of plots.

Implications.

The fact of government bailouts of bad bank loans does nothing to appease.

What is missing is a picture.

Find one.

2116-2146 The noise must stay.

Noise may make the picture grainier.

There goes the serial sound of the daily soap in a lather over itself.

Not one word gets through to me.

Gestalt.

My corner café is a window by a rain-tree.

This is what it would have looked like to an eye behind a camera: French press, coffee cup, spice cookies, cushions.

Welcome to the wasp that flew in and out through an invisible revolving door.

The Wasp Factory, cracked open at the spine, unfinished.

I could be a scene all unto myself in my corner café with my work spread all around me.

What from the outside world could destroy me?

Six perfectly tailored sleeveless sari-blouses, one hot-pink silk.

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Three maltas, six elaichis.

One large fish head demolished right down to its eyes.

A scene in a film where the hero grills the heroine: “So what’s your favorite flower then?” expecting “Rose” or “Lotus” and getting “Ghentu” instead.

Wayward jungli flower not fit to be listed.

Bhantshyaora. Moynakanta.

My list of impossible beauties.

Plants that grow wild in their own tongue.

The fire in the Deonar dumping ground still blazes.

All the schools are shut.

This is an important announcement.

Gershwin, meet Ravel.

This, my Corner of Chance.

Eczema, once cured by a leaf.

I will know the picture when I see it.

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Until Then,

Sarah

The man next to me wears a purple and brown turtleneck sweater– thick, knitted wool, with faint lines of tan running through the pattern.

May I put my bag here?

Yes, of course.

His mop of curly hair disappears into the purple at the nape of his neck.

The neck of the sweater grazes his chin, running parallel to his cheekbones, framing his jaw and faintly stubbled cheek.

Is that Greenland?

Yes, it is.

The arch of his eyebrow and the ridge of his nose run into each other at one hundred and thirty degrees.

His eyes are green, washed with white in the light of his screen.

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To g e t h e r Again.

Sturman

Would you like a peanut?

Yes, thank you.

He’s reading data.

I’m writing poetry, in the Wi-Fi vacuum of the plane.

Are you traveling for the holidays?

Yes, I am.

The veins in his hands run like loose threads beside his knuckles and his fingers rest at precise angles, hovering just above his keyboard.

Will you be on the Sunday flight back, too?

Yes, I will.

The sky and sea outside are dark; the only light comes from our open laptops and the screen of the passenger in front of me– Love, Actually reflected bright in their window.

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Haiku to My Last Day on Earth Soon you will breathe dirt and be as smooth as limestone, so make all time dance.

Kathleen Sharp

Haiku to Sleep In and out and in, just like waves or a lover, my consciousness fades.

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excer pt from

W h a t We ’ v e D o n e Serena Woolsey

Jane liked killing frogs. She had found a stick in the woods and sharpened it with a stolen knife. In a coo she coaxed the frogs from the comfort of their bogs; she had a way. She stroked their slimy backs. She waited ‘til they croaked. Then she brought out her stick and thrust the sharpened point into the guiltless frog.

This was something we watched at the beginning. A small circle formed; it was a spectacle. Then it became common. The cruelty lost its luster. We had thought perhaps she did this for the attention, but she continued even when she was alone. It was not mass murder; she was careful and restrained, picking them off one by one. She played like the others.

Her stick was always near. If she felt the desire, she left the game for an instant and returned, and we knew what she had done.

One day Henry and I were sitting quietly on a cluster of large rocks on the bank of the other side of the river, where we were not supposed to go. The snow had melted in spots leaving patches of dark green.

Henry picked at the earth with a stick. I held a frog between my hands, did not look at it but felt the rhythm of its alien breathing. Nearby the roughest children played a game of tag involving pushing and mud. We heard footsteps drawing near and then the sight of a pink dress between a green checkered coat. Jane was on the hunt. The urge had visited her again.

“Where are you, froggies?” she called.

I stuck my frog up my shirt, feeling its stickiness on my stomach.

Henry told it, “Ssh, little one.” We met eyes for a moment—two fugitives before the moment of uncertain escape.

And we ran from her. Just before, she had nearly sniffed us out.

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I clutched the frog tightly against me so it would not plummet and fall victim to Jane’s hunger. She followed us, not knowing why we ran, not yet smelling the frog on me. Here she cackled like a schoolgirl, as if without murderous intent, as if in fact the innocent child she must once have been and still was when she lay in bed at night with eyes closed, dreaming of nothing, or of her former life.

It was a great game to chase us. We tore through the mud and the pale, weather-beaten grass. We ran past the game of tag which had turned violent and cut around behind the white school building. I could have run faster if not for the frog, which kept sliding down my stomach.

Of course she caught up to us, and cornered us against the school’s back wall. She was thirteen and superior. She smirked.

“So, what were you running for?”

I put my hand in my coat pocket, cupping my little friend discreetly to my stomach, but Jane’s eyes were already trained on my every move.

“What do you have there?”

“Nothing,” stammered Henry.

Foolishly, he looked at me, our solidarity a telltale sign of mischief. Jane’s smirk widened.

“Well then,” she said, eyes boring into me, “let me see both of your hands.”

For a moment my grip tightened, determined to protect this life.

I refused to meet Henry’s wild eyes which suggested we try again to make a run for it. I ignored Jane’s greedy energy, despite her shadow overtaking me. I took a deep breath.

In a moment of complete and steely clarity, I removed my hand.

Slowly the frog unpeeled itself from my stomach, then fell all at once to the ground at my feet. In that moment my body had become a catalyst for something foreign and unwanted, which had been planted there in my unconscious sometime during my life before.

Jane stooped to the ground to regard my treasure, no longer mine. I watched her cruel face carved out by the crude light of the afternoon. The fire in her eyes, the tremble on her lips, her reaching fingers… and then, all at once, she recoiled. Almost in disgust, in utter disappoint123

ment. Then, raising her eyes to me, she smirked once more.

“See you, Red,” she said. For a moment I watched the retreat of her green checkered coat.

Henry inhaled sharply, eyes to the ground at my feet. I could tell without looking at him he was pulling on his hair.

When I looked down I saw that the frog was already dead.

That day I had remembered what it was like to end something innocent.

Henry and I buried it in the earth by the creek, plucking a few wilted weeds and placing them over the grave. We closed our eyes, clasped our hands and were silent.

Together we skipped lunch and our first afternoon lesson. We treaded through the woods on the side of the river where we were not supposed to go. Henry hardly spoke, except to tell me it was not my fault.

He did not understand.

I had been a selfish child. This did not matter until Mummy’s seed pod grew and expanded inside her, and the house was alight with the expectation of new life. The baby’s room was painted with golden stars, the universe in a mobile hung above its crib. He would be a boy.

Henry said sometimes accidents happen. An accident brought him here. I’m not supposed to be here, he said. I’m not like them. I’m your friend. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t mean to.

What I had done was an act of survival. It came to me in the night when I lay awake beneath my purple princess canopy. Or had I been asleep for it all?

Mummy had cried and bled for days.

Daddy said he did not want me to go. Mummy said I was not her daughter any longer. They both cried and were red in the face.

That night over oatmeal I put my closed fist to Jane’s face until I saw red. The way a baby’s first words are, “Papa, Mama,” mine were, “Killer! Killer!” as the most robust nuns hauled me kicking from the supper table. They placed me on the porch, telling me to stay. God would have his judgement upon all of us.

Henry followed me, letting the back door clamp itself shut. The sky was a deepening blue and my heart was in pieces and my body was 124

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already in the dirt. I sunk into the leaves. The air had a chill which for a moment calmed me as it thrilled me, as it thrust through my lungs and out again. It was always Henry following me and always me needing him.

This time he sank beside me on the ground and we did not speak. It had rained in the afternoon and worms still slithered through the damp dirt which soiled our socks.

In the light of the evening he kept saying, “Who cares what we’ve done. Who cares what we’ve done.”

The setting sun cast his long shadow over my face.

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XX

Mary McColley Families are inked like tattoos in amniotic fluid and hospital bracelets the last name the doctors chalk on the certificate, the last name you will ever be called. Start what they’ve made and finish where you’ve come.

Families build like melanin in the skin, freckle dark as stacks of birthday cards, regular exposure to vitamin D stories why Uncle Joe doesn’t come to the family Christmas,

Vietnam and that little kid with the bomb o silent night

how Muriel honked the car horn, cigarette grasped in two teeth

it would kill her later burn the whole broken house down

the all-important difference between shamrocks and four-leaf clovers

and how long Maureen hid her pregnancy from the airline.

Families make your palms sweat with secrets they become particular, esoteric, at the holiday dinners

’til blue-ribbon juices stain the teeth

and chopped marriages puddle in white bowls.

Go ahead and try to wash their lipstick kisses from your cheeks all afternoon brush your hair in your great-aunt’s locked bathroom and cut the split-end stories floss away the dinners of sugar-spiral hams. Go ahead and try.

Family is the collagen tying you tight, muscle and marrow all stuck forever together.

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There Alessio Zanelli

There,

There,

There,

where goners go to stay, forgetful of the roads taken, the distance covered, and the time wasted deciding on a destination. where the excess of rain never results in a flood, and the shortage of rain never results in a drought.

I’m going to plant the scanty seeds scattered on the bottom of my bundle in the tiny plot I’ve been allotted by someone who has always known where at last I would have stopped.

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erehT illenaZ oisselA There,

There,

There,

I’m going to tend the sprouts for all the time it will take for them to grow into trees.

I’ve had enough of junctions, forks, detours, and shortcuts.

Of bends and straights.

No more up and downs.

No further mile, either sloping or level, would make a difference now.

No peaks and troughs anymore.

I’m going to care for something I had never even thought could be worth slowing down for and glimpsing at before. day and night, heat and cold, and what both sky and earth look like, I’m going to ignore.

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Luonnotar and the spirit of Nature Siân Melangell Dafydd

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This is a story told years ago, which we insist on repeating but which we don’t believe. Both these things can live together because in the end, it doesn’t make a difference.

In the end, moss will grow over our house, tree-roots into our brains and collar bones.

In the end, there will be a chase for life, a mother-witch called Ceridwen will gobble us up so she can give birth to us again.

In the end there will be no bang but an iron bed or a mangled car or something worse. Our mother will fret that nothing can be done about this from the day we are born.

The end is a date that we pass each year, like a birthday, but without feeling it scratch.

The end is something that happens to other people.

In the end, archaeologists will unearth small, voluptuous figures of our mothers and claim them to be goddesses associated with animals: a lioness, cow, hippopotamus, vulture, cobra, scorpion and cat.

In the end, Isis nursing her son will be nursing her son forever, greenbronzed, gold where her nipples and horns peak up to the sun.

In the end, there will be a new beginning. All our stories say this, in their own way.

Because in the end, our mother will come running to us, she will stride over five-mile lakes and forests of silver birches to reach us. She will stamp valleys into the soil with her heels. Pines will scratch her ankles like thistles but she won’t stop. She will know which way, and when she finds us, bleeding on the riverbank, she will gather our broken pieces with a rake, separate what is us and what is reed, rock and damselfly so not a single hair from our heads will be lost and she’ll just go ahead and knit us back together. She’ll summon a bee (the last surviving one, not suffocated by the poisons we used to grow food) and that bee will bring the right ingredients so that all our threads weave blood correctly again. Once we are whole and she is done, our mother will lay down her knitting needles on the banks of the river where she found us, sit on her raked gravel, place one fierce hand to comfort our belly and look to the sky. Artists will paint pictures of this not-really-a-Pietà and when people look up at her and her bare forearms, when people read and hear of our story, they will know that there is no ending.

– The End – 135

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