US Parallax 2018

PARALLAX No.21

PARALLAX

2018

A

MOVE ABLE

FEAST The Rabbi Joseph H. Lookstein Upper School of Ramaz Parallax Literary & Ar t Magazine 2018 | Vol. 21 60 East 78th Street | New York NY 10075

A MOVEABLE FEAST

This publication is dedicated in loving memory to Edith Schrank. For more than a decade, she taught English in a distinguished and distinctive fashion. She had the capacity to impar t to her students a sense of urgency about reading and an appreciation for the written word.

Reflecting upon his expatriate year s in 1920s Paris as a young writer, Er nest Hemingway r efer r ed to this complex city as a “ Moveable

Feast ,” a place that “if

you ar e lucky enough to have

lived in as a young man, then wher ever you go for the r est of your life, it stays with you.” Delving into his memoir, we see sever al faces of time in Paris: fir st, the

Feast , as he moves from hunger

to fulfillment, from café to café, wor king on ear ly pieces of writing, yet also indulging in skipping a meal or two. T he city then takes on a body of its own as the web in which Hemingway inter acts with contempor aries such as Ger tr ude Stein and F. Scott Fitzger ald. We look to

New York City

as our Moveable Feast, a collage of various people and neighborhoods that will stay with us for the r est of our lives. Finally, we emulate Hemingway as he synthesizes memories and r eflects on his past as a young writer, even though, as Marcel Proust said, “ Remembrance of things past is not necessarily r emembr ance of things as they wer e.” We, too, r eflect on our growth from adolescence to adulthood as we seek to find our path.

EDITORS

LITERARY EDITORS julia LEVI noa ATTIAS sarah ISSEVER natalie KAHN

DESIGN EDITOR sarah ISSEVER

FACULTY ADVISORS literary, dr. edith lazaros HONIG art & design, ms. barbara ABRAMSON art & photography, ms. rachel RABHAN photography, mr. kevin GOGGIN

TABLE of CONTENTS

FEAST

8 photograph Art Collective 10 Bubbles noa ATTIAS 11 photograph dara DOFT 12 Many Thanks to Give maya SHALOM 13 photograph sarah ISSEVER 14 photograph sasson LONNER 15 Spirit james AUERBACH 16 photograph sarah ISSEVER 17 Saltwater natalie KAHN 18 Cognates, Thank Yous and Apple Pie noa ATTIAS 19 photograph tammy KRIKHELI 20 The Taste of My Scene tammy KRIKHELI 21 photograph sarah ISSEVER 22 Honeymoon natalie KAHN photograph sarah ISSEVER 24 photograph sasson LONNER

NEW YORK : OUR PARIS 26 photograph liviah SOBEL 27 Queensboro julia LEVI 28 photograph dara DOFT 29 Amid the Harshness of Space akiva WEINBERGER 30 No Return Address sarah ISSEVER photograph sarah ISSEVER 32 painting violet ALLAHAM 33 Beginning With a Horse, original al FELSENTHAL 34 Beginning With a Horse noa ATTIAS, julia LEVI hannah SLAGER photograph dara DOFT 36 True Value loren ELMANN photograph dara DOFT 38 The Lipstick Building on 53rd Street julia LEVI photograph loren ELMANN 40 photograph noa ATTIAS 41 Cento: a Love Song for Opera natalie KAHN 42 photograph ava HORNBLASS 43 Unspoken Arrangements rebecca ARATEN

6

REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST 44 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 56 58 59 60 61 63

64

photograph Of Snakes and Men photograph photograph Skins and Strangers photograph Medusa Song of Myself photograph photograph An Artist’s Statement photograph Phobias Inevitability photograph Desert Song photograph Where It Is Most Blue

Cover Inside Cover Title Page Introduction Editors’ Page Contents

Photograph Photograph Photograph Photograph Photograph Photograph

sarah ISSEVER esti BECK marcus LERNER sarah ISSEVER loren ELMANN ava HORNBLASS maya SHALOM hannah SLAGER noa ATTIAS loren ELMANN noa ATTIAS julia LEVI akiva WEINBERGER rebecca ARATEN noa ATTIAS natalie KAHN isabel ELMANN sarah ISSEVER

sarah ISSEVER sarah ISSEVER sarah ISSEVER Art Collective Art Collective julia LEVI

Parallax is the writing club of Ramaz Upper School, as well as the name of our literary & art magazine. The club meets every Thursday after school. Parallax is a juried publication that comes out in June in time for distribution at our annual Celebration of the Arts. Parallax 2018 was printed by Allied Printing on 80 lb. bond. Copy and layout were prepared by students on an Apple iMac in InDesign CS6. 450 copies were printed. All rights belong to Ramaz Upper School, 60 E. 78th Street, New York NY 10075.

7

FE

AST

10 10

dara doft

The first time I checked my horoscope, I did so while knowing it was a scam.

Yet, I half heartedly accepted my mother’s measly apologies— "He's a Scorpio—you know how they act" — for my younger brother, which absolved his sins like an indulgence, as though he were eating another thick slice of cake under my mother’s scornful gaze.

He giggled to my annoyance while crunching thick layers of fondant.

How many sugar packets are equivalent to a piece of cake?

And how many can you stack like the Tower of Babel where new languages were born or more correctly induced like a sugar coma?

But do you sin like they did by over indulging?

Questions pop like bubble gum.

What is the volume of a perfect bubble?

But more importantly what is the purpose of chewing gum but lopsided jaws and chewed-up tongues bleeding at the seams that match curls of red hair that spring up and down in perfect oscillation when annoying little boys tug their edges.

What is the k constant of a perfect string of curls?

Each one swallows and stifles the other hand in hand like my mother's soapy pearls in the back of her jewelry box like seafoam dictated by definite summation.

Why does sigma look like a sideways double u, clasping lines like a snapback?

Jagged, sharp edged sigmas snap like satisfied jaws on Italian biscuits.

How many spices used in ginger snaps can I find in my grandmother's pantry that smudge like charcoal or streak like blonde highlights sizzling like butter on a frying pan?

But if Marilyn was really a brunette, do blondes really have more fun?

Labels stick like half-chewed-up gum on the bottom of left-behind squeaky desks because everything always amounts to bubbles.

BUBBLES noa ATTIAS

11

Steam rises up from the heaping platter that has just been placed in front of me. Identical plates sur round it, and the hazy smoke rising from each dish mingles in the center, occasionally drifting to car ess my face.

T he tur key drips with my father’s sauce, for mulated with ingr edients that r emain a myster y even to my mother. T he rice appear s light and fluffy next to the canar y yellow ker nels of cor n whose sweetness I can alr eady feel bur sting on my tongue. T he potatoes’ crispy edges ar e slightly bur nt—just the way I like them.

My mouth water s. What ar e we waiting for? T he food is growing colder than a cor pse as we sit her e twiddling our thumbs.

I dr ag my eyes away from the untouched platter s and glance around the table. Of cour se, my nomophobic sister has yet to make an appear ance—she won’t have an appetite unless she completes the final level of whatever mind-numbing game is the latest fad.

My finger s inch towards a gleaming for k and almost sur round its handle befor e being slapped away by my mother, who insists we wait for my sister to gr ace us with her pr esence.

But I can’t wait. I gr ab the for k and spear a tur key br east to add to my plate. My eyes close as I take the fir st bite. My dad must have lear ned a thing or two since last T hanksgiving, or maybe my memor y is failing me. T his bite is quickly followed by a spoonful of rice and cor n.

T he flavor s fight for dominance in my mouth, mixing with the taste of the sauce coating the tur key.

As I pr epar e for my next mouthful, my sister flounces over to the table, her pink flamingo-cased phone in hand and dangling earbuds inter twined with the str ands of her shiny black hair. T he instant she sits down, her attention r etur ns to her phone, and she feels around for her for k like a blind man searching for his glasses.

12

sar

ah

iss

eve

r

Many Thanks to

GIVE maya SHALOM

13

sasson lonner

SPI

14

james AUERBACH

RIT To stroll in a pathway, to search what the ear th has, To bend and to gather a cluster, a grouping: T he sunflower, common, its figur e extended, T he noted petunia, exhibiting solace, And lavender lastly, concealed and minute.

For gotten is sage, with its violet hue; it’s alone in the drought wher e it thrives.

Invisible, veiled, per severing, pr eser ved.

To walk off abroad, a bouquet in your hand, Is to tr ample, to br uise, and to stifle this land.

15

SALTWATER natalie KAHN

16

Sometimes I ask myself, What is the saltwater? T he air digs its talons into the sea until r aw water bubbles over. It is the dawn that is calling my name—hollow and spinning out of focus, cleansing my body of all the har mful things inside.

I wade deeper, sand scr aping against my heels until I fumble r ecklessly about the water like a madwoman so in love with her own body that she wants to cut it up into gr ains of salt.

T he water tastes of disintegr ating cor pses, the gr ave of boats whose fr esh skeletons ador n the floor and moan through the night in str ange ballads.

I feel my finger s wizen, and suddenly I’ ve grown old, my pupils dilated r ed and tear y until I am empty and rise anew.

I sing a song of myself to the tune of the waves and wonder why they taste of salt and not honey, or why they lose their color by the shor e and tur n to foam and paint the ear th to look like the night sky.

sarah issever

17

COGNATES, THANK YOUS AND

APPLE PIE noa ATTIAS

“It’s not a tar t; it’s a pie!” she bellowed, over tly offended by my Fr ench mother’s compliment as though she could not even fathom the idea of bringing a wanton, open topped desser t to such a for mal gathering.

It was clear that she had no idea that tar te in Fr ench also means pie, but even if she had, it seemed like it wouldn’t have made a differ ence.

We wer e six at the table, sitting on mismatched chair s and using differ ent silverwar e and placemats. Susan had bur st out of her kitchen delicately holding a stor e-bought pie on the tips of her finger s with the same car e as the baker who had actually made it. As she held the now cold pie, I couldn’t help but wish it wer e my gr andmother’s tar te tatin , whose delicate, light, butter y cr ust I could pierce with my for k to r each the soft, car amelized pillows of gr anny smith apples within—instead of the dr y pie cr ust with its soggy, immatur e apples pr esented to me.

At dinner par ties I had r eached the awkward age of an “in-betweener” tr aveling between the “adult” and the “kids” table depending on the household. I was old enough to know and under stand what was going on in the wor ld, but not old enough to be acknowledged by some of those having said knowledge. Meanwhile, my par ents had r aised me eating at their dinner table, which meant I was as well ver sed in dinner table manner s as I was in Ver laine and Proust. But her e none of that matter ed. It was black-and-white. Either you wer e mar ried or you wer e not.

I stifled a laugh at my mother’s embar r assment from across both tables, arching my eyebrow in a way that said, if I sat next to you I would have war ned you about the danger s of cognates, the etymological kr yptonite for for eigner s itching for bilingual status. I slumped in my foldable chair at a table inundated with a huge selection of soda, r anging from Seven Up, to Fanta, Dr. Pepper, Coke, and the “healthy” alter native, Diet Pepsi. However, the opaque ar tificial gr een, or ange, and mahogany color ed bottles shielded me from the view of my neighbor across. I was left with the company of two lanky teenager s with wir y builds to make Giacometti jealous. T he taller one (I don’t know his name) looked at me in a way I didn’t want to be looked at, with big eyes and fluttering eyelashes as he played incessantly with my br acelets, and I r emained stiff and uncomfor table—too polite to yank my ar m out of his gr asp—counting the minutes until my depar tur e.

T he boy on my left stacked the soda caps like the Tower of Pisa while asking me after the placement of ever y cap if I liked the tower better now.

T he pie was my savior. T hey would finally leave me alone. I imagined what would happen to my gr andmother’s tar te if it wer e placed at the center of this T hanksgiving table. It would have probably r emained untouched, sitting alone feeling completely misunder stood as the Marilyn to the “Jackie” puritanical apple pie. My r everies ended abr uptly when Susan’s outstr etched hand holding a slice of pie came too close to my nose. I closed my eyes and accepted the pr ecut slice I knew I would then shovel into my mouth simply out of cour tesy. I then thanked Susan as I left the T hird Avenue co-op, r elieved and over joyed by the ending of the evening.

tammy krikheli

19

I began to limp after a few hour s of walking, but the ocean beside the boardwalk saved me from the unbear able heat of the midday sun. Ar riving at a shor eside cafe, I sat down with my mother, the cushioned chair bur ning my thighs. T he shor ts I was wearing did me no favor s.

T he waitr ess came, her skin kissed passionately by the sun, making her white blouse stand out. I heard my mother giving her my order, although I never told her what I wanted.

I looked down at the table: the wear and the cr acks seemingly painted by unknown ar tists cover ed by scr atched water glasses. In the distance, I could hear the wind as it orchestr ated the sea.

T he smell of the food brought me back from my daze, and I only now saw what my mother had order ed: scr ambled eggs and an ar r angement of salads. Why, I asked her laughing, would she order something she knew I didn’t like? I took a bite, looking at the water, which allowed a new sensation to flow into my mouth. I found myself savoring ever y bite of a food I despised, and I’ ve never tasted something so good.

THE TASTE OF

20

sarah issev er

MY SCENE tammy KRIKHELI

21

HONEYMOON natalie

KAHN

sarah issever

I want to drink up the dar k sky ever y year and savor the drop of mur ky sweetness fallen on my tongue, the evening pr essing on my pallid cheek like a phantom finger tip until it hardens into mor ning dew.

23

NEW YORK

OUR PARIS

QUEENSBORO julia LEVI

liviah

26

sobel

Once I can see wher e the hill ends, I push my bike pedals as fast as possible—yet it feels as though the distance between me and the top r emains the same. Whoever tells you that a bridge is flat is completely mistaken. T his may seem tr ue from a far skyline, but as I ride over the Queensboro, all I can see is ascending asphalt. Once biker s and r unner s r each a cer tain distant point, they disappear as they enter the wor ld of coasting downhill.

T her e ar e only thr ee gear s on my bike, so I tr y to be sparing. A deliver y man cr uises in the opposite dir ection, gliding toward Manhattan. He isn’t even pedaling. His lips cur l into a faint smile as his finger s loosen their grip on the handle bar s. He doesn’t see me. T her e’s that sound the wheel makes when it pr actically floats on tar—I hear it for an instant and then the bicycle is beyond me and has r eached the city. I continue to pedal up what feels like a ver tical surface. T he Roosevelt Island tr am drifts beside me: a mass of people, multicolor ed shir ts, keeping my pace but without exer ting ener gy. I look up and notice a few faint ‘I love New Yor k’ t-shir ts, but most of their eyes r emain on each other or str aight ahead, not down.

My eyes fall toward the East River—its small choppy waves look extr a butter y today. Why does the East River look so delicious from cer tain far away angles? T he light is hitting it in a way that weaves golden tones throughout with gr ay and blue ridges. I squint and tr y to imagine my wheels riding against that soft surface way below me—water, not pavement, like the metal utensil I used at br eakfast this mor ning to butter my toast: a smooth scr ape. I am squinting so much that my sur roundings become blur r y: East River and the dim sky with the concr ete that separ ates them become one. T hese blues and gr ays finally bring my gaze back in front of me, and I am pedaling again—plummeting—downhill now.

27

28

dara doft

Amid

the

Harshness of

Space

akiva WEINBERGER

Amid the har shness of space we found a black planet wher e a bur ning sun r eigns over a v ast dead ocean. We wer e not welcome.

T her e was nothing for us down ther e.

Of cour se, we pr epar ed to land immediately.

29

I r ealized I was a New Yor ker while tr ailing through Runyon Canyon Par k along the easter n end of the Santa Monica Mountains.

I over looked the Hollywood Hills r emembering the teen boys just last Christmas the teen boys who leaped from fr eeway to fr eeway coast to for est headed for Malibu and back when the par ty died down.

How they wer e their own neighborhoods blue when bleeding fr eedom r ed when scr atching and searching for the things I never car ed to find.

I r ealized I was a New Yor ker while tr ailing through Runyon Canyon Par k mar king the outline of Marina Del Rey

NO RETURN ADDRESS sarah ISSEVER

tucked under Venice Boulevard r ecalling how I’d r un and play youth ember s bur ning away when my cousins those native Califor nians chased me round their summer home A r ental.

But their lives wer e made of r entals and tempor ar y time leaving what felt sentimental for whichever place they’d stay next and I swear that they’d r un

and chase it till land’s legs gr ew tir ed.

T his wor ld was their supplier.

I never chased anything because I was a New Yor ker tr ailing through Runyon Canyon Par k wondering if the wor ld was mor e still in Manhattan Beach south of El Segundo perhaps wher e I could belong just for a day but Los Angeles was made of seconds.

Maybe New Yor k, too yet the seconds wer e known and I knew then I would never be Califor nian my legs tir ed alr eady befor e r eaching the highest mar k of Runyon Canyon Par k.

So long, Los Angeles and the boys of Hollywood Hills.

So long, Los Angeles wher e your wor ld feels a tr eadmill.

So long, Los Angeles my r unaway bride.

So long, Los Angeles the place I’ ll never know.

31

violet allaham

BEGINNING

WITH A HORSE Complete t he poem By al FELSENTHAL

A hor se has six legs two belong to a man who might be Pluto disguised as the devil abducting a unicor n whose hor n was used to purify a spring that whetted the infinite now behind us

A horse has six legs

prized with two faces in possession of a thr ee-muzzled dog and the keys to a kingdom wher e hell and heaven meet in a field of dandelions and empty promises wher e those who roam believe in nixonomics and glorified tax cuts and the power of car r ying por t monteaux on their backs. but as the sphinx r ecounts as the sun rises it is deMANd that cr awls on four legs in the mor ning two in the after noon and thr ee in the evening with the fr ailty of an old man on br uised medicar e on a cold br usque evening. noa ATTIAS

A horse has six legs

two belong to a man who might be Pluto disguised as the devil abducting a unicor n whose hor n was used to purify a spring that whetted the infinite now behind us four belong to the animal whose hooves devour the fluor escent blades of gr ass from Proser pine’s gardens, tearing poppies from the soil, whetting a drowsier clomp, sleepy footprints shaped like oval pear ls that bring us up. julia LEVI

34

34

dara doft

two belong to a man who might be Pluto disguised as the devil

A horse has six legs

two belong to a man who might be Pluto disguised as the devil abducting a unicor n whose hor n was used to purify a spring that whetted the infinite now behind us Sometimes I feel like a hor se with six legs. I was bor n to r un in gr een fields eat dandelions at dawn and drink the crisp str eam but in the night I limp with age and trip over myself until I can’t get up anymor e.

But if a hor se has six legs T hen a hor se is not a hor se.

T her e is no I, And ther e is no you.

T he cr ystal memories of scorching experiences with clear cut scar s become hazy black-and-white dr eams.

T he invigor ating touch of June’s sunshine on one’s shoulder is an illusion.

Emotions ar e simply over used words, and tr uth is no mor e than an arbitr ar y combination of five letter s. hannah SLAGER

35

35

TRUE VALUE I don’t emer ge from a stained-glass home nor a mur al clad str eet nor a block with taste or a love for face— Value. loren ELMANN

36

37

dara doft

Bundled-up bodies pour out of my cr anber r y-marble-lined mouth, hauling themselves up the gum-cover ed stair s of the E tr ain exit. As they encounter the fir st shar p bite of frosty air, their teeth chatter along with mine. A woman mutter s to her self about the wind. She quickly checks her r eflection on my glass pink-and-brown tinted surface and frowns, putting loose str ands of hair back in her hood. T he thin line of dust on her coat matches the dir t in between my cr evices. She pur ses her lips and smacks them, continuing to look at her r eflection. T he chapped ridges of her mouth follow the same patter n as the window-concr ete-glass sequence on my circular facade.

A ring of bodies eating steaming chicken and rice out of styrofoam boxes from the str eet vendor s par ked beside me hang out around my walls. T hey sit on the palm of my soot-caked hand. Some like to lean on one of my columns for suppor t, one foot perched up, the other fir mly on the ground, as they take a call, eat their midday wor k lunch and gaze into the distance. One man lights a cigar ette, tur ning his face away from the open str eet. A little while later, he tosses it at me. I’ ll be honest—it stings, but I manage to catch it between my finger s befor e it extinguishes. I am fully awake even though the main lamps of my caver nous lobby ar e tur ned off.

38

loren

elma

nn

When the str eet dar kens and the only light comes from the neighboring post office and the gr een bulbs of TD Bank, my small, ground-floor r estaur ant begins to fill up for Stacey’s 23rd bir thday. All her office friends sit and stand around black couches and low wood tables, laughing in the dimly lit space, unawar e of the sidewalk just outside the pur ple-tinted glass windows. T he sounds ar e muffled, if not muted. T he str eet vendor closes up and someone sits on a cr ate and leans his back to my wall. A single per son car ries two bags of groceries and shifts his gaze to the r estaur ant par ty, looking right through at his own r eflection befor e heading home.

THE LIPSTICK BUILDING ON 53RD STREET julia LEVI

39

no

aa tti as

CENTO: A LOVE SONG FOR OPERA natalie KAHN

Many of the phr ases in this poem are collected from different oper atic arias and duets, compiled into one piece as a tribute to the oper atic wor ks of Verdi, Puccini, Dvor ak, Donizetti, and Bellini.

I think of you with a thousand passions shaped into abstr act love songs: One fine day I’ ll sing them for you, the chaste div a speaking to the star s.

We drink champagne to a brindisi , and you hold me in your ar ms and call me una soave fanciulla ; who can ventur e a guess of what color my dr eams ar e?

I sing so none shall sleep, caro nome , you who made my hear t palpitate the fir st time.

I want to live in this life, in this dr eam, frolicking from joy to joy, my spirit soar s from all inconceiv able human thoughts when the moon is in heaven, come delight with me, my love.

Moon, stand still a while, tell me wher e my beloved is, don’t disappear! don’t disappear!

It makes me sad that you ar e so handsome, gone to buy the ring from Por ta Rossa while I stand, waiting by the Ar no. One fine day, you will see me cr ying out with a fur tive tear amore, amor, Amor.

41

UNSPOKEN ARRANGEMENTS

42

av a h o rn b la ss

rebecca ARATEN

You know this scenario too well. You’ r e caught in some sor t of stupor, your br ain storing, pac ka ging, and discar ding a day’s wor th of conver sations. Ne w infor mation sur r ounds you, inv ading your inter nal dialo gue like a vir us, tossing ar ound the acrid scent of bur ning r ub ber and the slight squeaking that the tr ain makes as it hur dles ar ound the bend. But this infor mation is r eally f ar fr om ne w—the vir us has been in your body for so long that it’s a par t of your DNA, and the passenger s that f low thr ough do nothing but add to the w hite noise— all exce pt for one. You hear the heavy silver door s open and c latter shut, and ther e he is. You know his name—Fr ancisco—and his a ge: 61. It’s unsettling that you’ ve seen him twice befor e. Usually they a ppear once and then disa p pear, the next set of door s s w allowing their bodies along with your guilt. But ther e’s no speculation with Fr ancisco; you know that he still makes his home on the str eets, squatting in alleyw ays beside wor n soc ks, old r eceipts fr om Duane Reade, pizza cr usts—just another one of the ar tic les that people have left behind and for gotten.

He w alks down the aisle of the tr ain, r eciting his stor y and r ustling a blac k g arba ge ba g for emphasis and in the hope that some body will fill it. Eyes that had pr e viously been staring at a fixed spot now dr op down to la ps, in a poor ly feigned gestur e of nonc halance. You’ ve been tr ained like a do g, lear ned to sit at the sight of c lenc hed fists and to ignor e any hunger for the scr a ps on the ta ble. We all have. So you sit quietly beside the other commuter s, all united by skin tinged gr een fr om Vitamin D deficienc y and your unspoken a gr eement.

43

REMEMBRANCE

OF THINGS PAST

Genesis 3:1. “Now the ser pent was the shr ewdest of all the wild beasts that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God r eally say: ‘You shall not eat of any tr ee of the garden?’”

“I don’t know how I feel about this. 5,778 year s later, and still I’m the go-to cr eatur e of evil for ever y evangelical pr eacher with a Bible and a collection box. I mean, they quoted me cor r ectly. But they have to have gone wrong somewher e because I’ ve become the villain in a stor y wher e I was r eally the only smar t one.

“Let’s face it. It was just a question. Did God actually say that to Eve? I wanted to know.

Fr ankly, two wild humans r unning around butt-naked ar e not the most r eliable witnesses for much of anything. Would you tr ust Naked Cowboy with your physics homewor k?

“Besides, Eve made that choice on her own, and how is it my fault that Adam chose to follow her? I simply pointed out the obvious: a, you might have just hallucinated all of cr eation, and b, that fr uit looks r eally delicious. Because it did. I was just helping her out, you know, and maybe ther e was a little bit of self-ser vice ther e in that I r eally benefited from getting the two of them out of my per sonal space.

A fast tr ack to Ear th, wher e they became the mother and father of an entir e species. If anything, they should be thanking me for what I did.

Sur e, blame the snake. It’s easy to assume that the cr eatur e which kinda r esembles a shoddy extension cord is r esponsible for ever ything, but I r eally think that it’s time for humans to pr actice a little introspection for once and r ealize that if one question, a fact-check r eally, was enough to get them expelled from heaven, then maybe, just maybe, the fault lies somewher e else.

“I was the fake news media befor e the fir st humans even imagined a civilization complex enough to include clothing. But now ever yone car es about making sur e that we’ ve got our stories str aight.

So maybe, while we’ r e at it, a little r espect for all the animals we’ ve demonized along the way wouldn’t hur t. Tr ust me, the legions of kapparos chickens have something to say about this, and don’t even get me star ted about those goats you stone ever y Day of Repentance. T her e’s something to be said about finding a way to elevate humans without tr eading on ever yone.”

“Humans never belonged in heaven; at some point or the other, they would have messed up anyway, so I was simply expediting the process.

“

Now the serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild beasts...

46

OF SNAKES AND MEN

mar cus lern er

esti BECK

SKINS AND

STRANGERS loren

48

ELMANN

I skinned my knee So he skinned my hear t For ever yone wants a wor k of ar t.

sarah issever

49

Medusa

ava hornblass

maya SHALOM

I see this image when I wake up ever y mor ning.

It gr eets me with itchiness and shedding As I make my way from my bed to the bathroom at 6:40 AM While r ubbing the sleep from my eyes and r egaining my footing on land, As if going from horizontal to ver tical is like Exchanging sea legs for land legs.

I stumble a little as my image in the mir ror comes into focus, And I push the offense out of my eyes So I can mor e fully assess the damage, For my image in the mir ror is almost identical to that of the small painting Hanging high on the maroon wall in that galler y I visited last summer.

At least in the mor ning, Medusa and I ar e one and the same.

Who knows? Maybe one day I will lear n how to tur n men Into hard, gr ay, cold stone.

51

SONG MYSE I will write a love song.

I will write a song in Mandarin.

I will write a paper on ancient Romans or a page-long equation I only half under stand.

I will write from inside the minds of people I’ ve never met or vivid descriptions of places I’ ve never been.

I’ ll r ecord how many times the sun has shined.

I will write with obedience and sing my soul.

G OF ELF Song of Myself

noa

atti

as

hannah SLAGER

53

AN

ARTIST’S noa AT T IAS

STATEMENT

loren elmann

on and the model’s dr ess came off, so like clockwor k the ar tist began. She mixed her color s after squeezing a dollop of jade gr een temper a into a bright shade of yellow, which had alr eady br ewed with crimson and violet. Each color mor phed into another. T he light kept on changing, which meant so would she in position, color, and angle. She twir led her paintbr ush br usquely onto her palette like she was whisking egg yolks and then dunked the br ush into a can of gr ay tur pentine. It was quiet. T he model didn’t talk. T he heater hummed and the paintbr ush clanged, hitting the rim of the can. T he br ush, an extension of her finger s, cr acked its joints as it lost str ay str ands of its bristles.

She wor ked slowly, car ving for ms as she moved from lighter to dar ker shades, like a sculptor shaving pieces of clay.

Her mind wander ed to a fr equent question—“How many dimensions ar e ther e?” Sur ely ther e wer e mor e than just the standard one, two and thr ee dimensions. To her, painting was not mer ely the tr anscription of the third-dimensional wor ld, but a tr anscription of imagination, making it dimensionless. “But what wor ld does the sculptor belong in?” the painter mused, and answer ed, a wor ld of r epr esentation, stuck in between dimensions. Yet the painter’s job was harder, she thought. In principle, a painter has to tr ansfer the thr ee-dimensional wor ld into a flat, two-dimensional one, which is like stuffing too much into a pocket. T he image made her smile in amusement. T he painter smudged the newly made mar ks and continued.

She slowly painted the dr aper y and then made her way to the model’s hair, sprouting thick tufts out of a shiny scalp like a thousand soft blades of gr ass, leaving

the one small str ay str and on her face. She stopped, puzzled. If she left out the str ay hair on the model’s face, was she lying? Or if she didn’t paint it, did it even exist? She continued wor king on the negative space around the nape of the model’s neck. But she couldn’t help but think about whether this idea wor ked in the wor ld of the r eal— the third and four th dimensions. Do we live in a mind wor ld dictated by our subjective ideas or perceptions? Dipping the tip of her br ush into the water, she thought: if only she could paint with the same r apidity and intensity with which she could think.

She chuckled and swir led her br ush in a mixtur e of blues and r eds, then picked up the edge of her br ush and pierced into the canvas like a violin playing staccato. T he painter was almost done. She stopped and moved back. It was accrochable: the painting was meant to be seen by the public instead of being shoved into a small studio.

But the question was, could she leave the painting undr essed en plein air ? If she did, could the painting talk without the fr ame— without the extr a dimension—and peel itself off the wall and walk on its own? She looked again at the painting. She picked up a pencil and got r eady to sign her name to show that it was her s: both the moment she had captur ed and the moment when the painting would fir st be seen by the audience. She scr awled her name on the cor ner ; nothing else needed to be said.

She worked slowly, carving forms as she moved from lighter to darker shades...

57

ju li a le v i

58

PHOB

“Jump in!” he cried. “T he water’s fine!”

I looked at the pool. T he water shone as it r eflected the sun. Refr eshing. I touched it with my foot, tentatively, and quickly pulled away.

“It’s so cold! It’s nice and war m out her e.”

“Ar e you r eally gonna waste a beautiful day like this? Eighty degr ees, not a cloud in the sky, and you haven’t swum in like, a year, right?”

“Mor e than that, probably…”

“Just jump into the damn pool!”

“What if I drown?”

“You’ r e not gonna drown, it’s a pool!”

I took a deep br eath… ”You know what? Fine.” I closed my eyes and jumped in.

“It’s fr eezing,” I sputter ed, as I began to r esurface.

T he edge of the pool was gone.

“John? Wher e’d you go?” I spun around in a panic. Water, as far as the eye could see.

Miles. I looked down. No pool floor, nothing. Just blue.

A wave knocked me under. Salt water r ushed into my mouth.

IAS akiva WEINBERGER

59

T he char ged environment cannot be contained.

Clouds ar e bloated with water ed-down statements, with blossoming anxieties and broken bar ricades, and lightning is as inevitable as the 3,287 car cr ashes that will occur today.

Like a windmill, you might search for a way to har ness the shock until it suspends you.

But you will sur ely float away along with the r est of the debris that swir ls in the stor my wind, fueled by neglect and the slight scent of mistr eatment.

T he can has been left unopened for so long, the wor ms have all died.

T he king has given you a valuable pen to guard, to watch over with your life and limbs, but the task is too daunting, so you dispose of it entir ely, throwing its r emains over your shoulder like a stupid super stition.

You have let the patter ns of weather defy definition, have watched the series spir al into an infinitesimally lar ge expr ession of confusion.

And the only thing that the weather man can still pr edict is that lightning will strike twice.

Lightning always strikes twice.

Meanwhile, the sur vivor s have become fulgurite, beautiful but petrified.

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noa attias

INEVITABILITY rebecca ARATEN

61

D

R E S E

SONG

natalie KAHN

62

T R A nimble tiger prowling in the night— a quick flash of saber-teeth smile, the golden winds that autumn brings with light to gr ace the water s of the ancient Nile.

T he tear s I cr y you catch like godly r ain that floods the arid ground to make it gr een to pur ge the sand-wrought deser t of its pain and build a stonehear t temple for the queen.

Beside the r unning river pur ple hush you gently light aflame two tangled vines, two peaceful sleeper s in the twilight r ush imbibe the waves like effer vescent wines.

We watch the fier y sunset r un above together on the river bed of love.

isabel elmann

63

WHERE IT IS MOST BLUE sarah ISSEVER

Pictur e San Clemente, 1972, and we wer e the coolest things. We demanded bikinis and eventually left them soaking in the backs of our woodies. We cr eated the skateboard to surf on land. We cr eated wolf packs and don't come near us if you’re not from here . T he exclusivity made us and killed us, like Br a Boys, except we wer e Califor nian and ever ything sunshine, ever ything blue, ever ything big and r eady to be r eceived.

See, we wer e our own oceans and seas. T hough we seemed so unifor m on the outside, not one of us came the same. We came with ripples and white water. We came with the move after dad left. We came with the cuts of our own cor al r eef, the bur ns of chafed thighs, the brick-walled-minds of our elder s, don't waste your life on waves .

But we always did. Even when San Clemente seemed as flat as land, we would fill our duffle bags with a wetsuit, t shir t, board shor ts, and we would leave as though ther e was nothing left for us in that town. We left behind our Spanish style roofs, our sandstone bluffs, our gr een par ks and the Casa Romantica, which was ever ything we wer e—full of surfing, wildlife and natur e. Forgive us, but the waves in Los Angeles are better today. Forgive us but this is Souther n Califor nia in 1972, and there is only one thing that matter s in this life.

Most times we wer e not for given. Most times the hour s spent in the ocean wer e well wor th the slap of a sandal upon ar riv al back at home. Sometimes a quick spank r eminded me of how we wer e often tossed around by our brother waves. Our sister cur r ent was also unfor giving. Sometimes we wer e under water for two minutes. Sometimes I felt underwater for hour s.

And perhaps that’s the place I belonged. Would you for give me if I never took another br eath on land? Would you look at my face again if I gr ew a tail and our bodies wer e differ ent? Would you come along with me in my 1972 Woody and feel as though ther e was nothing left to say in this wor ld, except where are we going next? We’ r e going wher ever it’s blue, brother. Wherever it is most b l u e .

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Par allax n. fr. Gk par allaxis, the appar ent displacement of an obser ved object due to a change in the position of the obser ver.