LITERARY AND ART MAGAZINE
SILHOUE T TE
DEAR READERS, The overarching goal of Silhouette is to provide an opportunity for the best artists and authors in the Virginia Tech student community to showcase their talents to their peers. Over the course of the last year, Silhouette has made great strides towards achieving this goal. We recently switched to a different cover format, allowing us to add pages for additional content as well as switch from black and white to full color pages. When planning for this magazine, the staff decided to keep the design as simplistic as possible. We did this because we truly believe in our overarching goal; the only thing we want to stand out on the page is the work of the artist or author. We hope you enjoy the simple color scheme, the strategic use of white space, and the powerful font choice. However, the most important thing is, and always will be, appreciating the poetry, prose, photography, and art. Thank you very much to the entire Silhouette staff for all your hard work and dedication. Kelly, Kyleigh, and Sean – this is your magazine and I am so proud of you. Rachael – I could not ask for a better teammate. Sincerely,
KATIE HAGAN EDITOR IN CHIEF
SILHOUETTE
LITERARAY AND ART MAGAZINE V olu me 3 3 . I s s u e 2 . Spri n g 2 0 1 0 .
344 SQUIRES STUDENT CENTER B L A C K S B U R G , V A SILHOUETTE@COLLEGEMEDIA.COM WWW.SILHOUETTE.COLLEGEMEDIA.COM
TABLE OF CONTENTS PHOTOGRAPHY Blue Lights Wild Berries Jaws Editor’s Choice Orb Build a House Tide A Rainy Day Amsterdam Lightning Our Town Nantahala Power Station On the Fence
7 9 15 20 32 35 39 40 44 45 49 55
POETRY Easter Disconnect Idle This is a Metaphor for Something so Much Bigger The Outlaw Fortune Cookies 1977, Manchester, Vermont Editor’s Choice I’m Bruised but I Still... A Promise at Yorktown Cracking Chair Tonight Leviathan Siren Faith Flood Advisory Ode to Play
8 13 16 18 21 26 29 30 34 38 41 42 46 48 52
ART Lauren 1 Editorial I Can’t Wake Up Lauren II Woman’s Back Man Sitting La Ciudad de los Destellos Birdskull Editor’s Choice Daydreaming
11 12 17 27 31 43 47 51 53
PROSE A Simple Man The Wisher Editor’s Choice How To Laugh Bless Me, Father
10 22 36 54
Silhouette Volume 33, Issue 2 was produced by the Silhouette staff and printed by Inove printing. Silhouette Literary and Art magazine is a division of the Educational Media Company at Virginia Tech, Inc. (EMCVT), a nonprofit organization that fosters student media at Virginia Tech. Please send all correspondence to 344 Squires Student Center, Blacksburg, VA 24061. All Virginia Tech students who are not part of the staff are invited to submit to the magazine. All rights revert to the artist upon publication. To become a subscriber to Silhouette, send a check for $10 for a one year subscription (two magazines) to the address above, c/o Business Manager or visit EMCVT’s e-commerce Web site at www.collegemedia.com/shop. For more information, visit our Web site at www.silhouette.collegemedia.com.
BLUE LIGHTS KAYLA CLEMENTS
6
EASTER My mother made me an Easter dress the year I was eleven. Her hands as soft and white as the ears of a lamb, stitched a coronet of lilies into the hem, weaving a needle into the flesh of the dress. Those hands, two learned seamstresses, pinned and snipped, ‘til the skirt settled like a curtain brushing the temple floor and she began a second dress, much smaller, just for my beloved Molly doll. When Easter broke, I marched through the church, Molly tucked under my arm, her glasses askew, her braid sticking out – a stray, broken limb – a hat strewn with violets atop her head. The pastor raised his arms, a living crucifix and read: The stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him and then twisted together a crown of thorns but I was too busy to hear; I was watching Molly’s face with the look of someone who has held, brushed, dressed, doted on, and truly loved something else, and I was too young to see my mother watching me.
LEE ANNE COBLEY
8
WILD BERRIES KAITLYN FOHL
9
A SIMPLE MAN DANIELLE PAYNTER
One of the earliest memories of my father is in the garden at our old house—I followed behind him as he planted seeds one by one, pushing them deep into the earth with weathered hands. “Walk in my footsteps,” he would say, as I hoisted one leg up after the other in my father’s knee high boots. I made the footprints match. I was his shadow. I became older and obstinate in my teenage years and packed him away like clothes grown too small. I wasn’t his little girl anymore. I was my own person. But, there was one moment, years later, home from college—I went out on our back porch, a cool summer night, and sat next to my father. We didn’t say a word. It was beyond that. The smoke from his pipe, the rich, deep smell—a down blanket—tucked me in next to him. We watched the lightning bugs blink back responses in the trees and hang about the dewy grass, the heat lighting flash up the sky in pinks, purples, and blues, crickets hum in vibrato, almost feeling the sound pushing against us, moving in waves. Then he took in a deep breath—that of a tired farmer—and asked, “So is the weather nice…in Blacksburg?”
10
LAUREN I CHRISTINE MUNCHAK
11
EDITORIAL KAYLA CLEMENTS
12
DISCONNECT “I was so completely infatuated in the person you were.” I said nothing. I think I had checked out of who I was and that’s where the problems began. The desperate, awkward hook-ups searching for some strange, unattainable self-validation, the stashing of secrets that made me nauseous. Or- was I too infatuated in who I was to see the beautiful, warm sincerity I was ripping apart little by little, lie by lie. Weaving a self-destructive, you-destructive, happiness-destructive web of untruths we were both caught in. I, the empty, hollow-eyed mechanical spider driven by an incommunicable, inexplicable hunger, approaching your tightly bound, neatly coiled, unsuspecting body innocent of my intentions, snugly trapped in my wiry lies. I, ready for a meal.
ASHLEY RHODES
13
EDITOR’S CHOICE
PHOTOGRAPHY
JAWS AUSTEN MEREDITH
15
IDLE The summer months descend in succession often catering to my vacant thoughts, merely awakened for repetition of “good-afternoons� and empty time slots. My tastes are cheap with no satisfactionweeks are volunteered to the birds at bay. How I dream to have no destination, to have wings to take me beyond these days! For the scent of the old lingers by me, and soon enough it will seep through my pores, proving my idleness to be deadly, my sanity left behind at the door.
JULIANA KO
16
I CAN’T WAKE UP KELLY PENICK
17
THIS IS A METAPHOR FOR SOMETHING SO MUCH BIGGER… i watched the distance grow as the wind picked up speed you speak in fragment sentences, holding only onto small fractions of hope. you’re based on nothing more than endings. where is your beginning, where do you begin? your hands are full of ‘maybe’s and ‘i hope so’s. where is the introduction, the explanation, the conclusion? where is the story line of the past that was once so distinct? did it fade into the sky? did it sink in to the ocean? where has your heart disappeared to? “come with me,” you whispered so i followed where are we going? how do you know? we’ve no story or map to tell. this road cannot go on forever. “nothing good can go on forever” but you wont ever let me read the book you’re always carrying. why don’t you let me see? why won’t you let me in? this secret has gone on for far too long, and i’m always tired before its time to rest. you hold that book like there is nothing else. “hold on to me, hold on to me” but i can’t see through the walls you’ve built, and they’re not easy to tear down. “but i’m trying, i’m trying” “can’t you see there’s no room for you, here in this book? the pages are all filled with nonsense, wasted ink. there might be a few blank pages left at the end, but that’s just it, they’re saved for the end. The End. The End. The End.” then one night i was crying in my sleep you rushed into my room, to find out what was the matter
18
but for months and months i’d been trying, searching in my sleep to find what was the matter you asked if it was a nightmare, i shook my head, but i didn’t know how to tell you what it was that i dreamt late that night, while sleeping in my bed. it was all so clear when it was playing in my head, like a captivating melody but it will hurt you, it will hurt you. i will hurt you. so you tried to calm me down, tears still streaming down my face. and i asked you to tell me a story, so i could fall back to sleep. then carefully, slowly, you told me, “wait, i’ll be right back” i laid my head down on the pillow, and waited for you to come back. a few minutes later, you walked back in, with a book in your hands that looked familiar, yet foreign all the same. i looked up at you, light soaked in your skin. you pulled up a chair right next to my bed, opened the hard cover of the book, and began to read. and you read, and read and read until my tears had vanished, slowly but surely. and your walls fell down, one by one. and after i could no longer resist sleep, i gave in to the sound of your voice. after a few more minutes, you closed the book, placed it on my bedside table. You left it there for me, just me. then you stood up, arranged my covers, and quietly walked out of the room. and with a sigh of relief, you gently closed the door, walked to the kitchen, sat down at the table. you closed your eyes, put your head in one of your hands, and with the other you raised your glass and asked no one in particular… “is it ever safe to say what you feel? is who you once were, still who you are? is what you once knew, what you will always know? is how you felt then, still how you feel now? and if the past is a buried, a memory, if it is undoubtedly a part of you, will it unbury itself? if feelings are truly fleeting, why do they always return?”
19
OLIVIA MOVAFAGHI
ORB
SIDNEY GARDNER
20
THE OUTLAW Creeping past the pantry, a sock footed culprit tip toes to the kitchen. Green numbers glare on the microwave-past her bedtime. The white glow of the fridge is a spotlight searching for a criminal out of bed. Her seven year old sleeps upstairs as she sidles to the sink and pops open a Diet Coke, fizzing as she swallows a secret. With every confection consumed she is consumed by guilt. No sodas allowed-Mom always said, but look at the cafeteria girls flaunting their Sprites, sharing sips of carbonated bliss. No Count Chocula-Just bland Raisin Bran; Mom never bought the sugary sweet processed treats.
CASSIDY GRUBBS
21
THE WISHER CAITLIN WILLIAMSON
EDITOR’S CHOICE
PROSE
Once, there was a small village just outside of the Ebro River in Zaragoza. This village was neither wealthy nor poor, but maintained a rich flow of tourists eager to visit the wishing well in the village square. Both kings and peasants alike traveled to the village to kneel beside the honey-colored stone and peer into its depths, casting their tokens into the water like silent prayers. Each token hit the water with a whispery splash, and the person went on their way, feeling light and buoyant. And so it was for hundreds of years in the little village by the Ebro. One day a man came to the village, his clothes tattered and worn from miles of hard travel. His face was neither handsome nor ugly, but instead had an openness about it that suggested honesty. He came by the main road, the matte, yellowed cobblestones laid before him straight to the center of the village and the wishing well. Villagers crossed his path many times, blind to the man, in their hurry to complete errands. He trudged along, his cracked feet caked with a thick layer of dust and grime. Finally he reached the end of the line for the well, stopping behind a young boy with hair the color of straw. The straw-haired boy was distracted, tossing a blue stone into the air while he spun around, faster and faster, a blur of color. The stone fell through his outstretched hands and landed by the man’s feet. The straw-haired boy turned, his bright eyes taking in the holes in the man’s clothes. “Hello, mister,” said the boy. “Why are your clothes torn?” The man bent to pick up the smooth stone and smiled, revealing teeth as cracked and dirty as his sore feet. “I’ve not changed them, son. Do you think I should?” The straw-haired boy smiled too, amused by the man’s filthiness as any seven year old boy might be. He glanced around, looking for someone who was clearly not there. Then, he turned back to the man, beckoning him to lean down. “My mother never lets me play in the mud like the other boys,” the straw-haired boy whispered. “I’m going to wish for a mother like yours, who will let me be dirty like you.” The man barked with laughter, the sound rough and reverberating from his bones. He stood upright, patting the little boy’s head. “My mother was like that, too, sonny. If she were still alive, I expect she’d never have let me get so dirty.” The man handed the boy his stone, covering his little hand in the man’s large one. The straw-haired boy frowned, clearly upset that his preferred kind of mother did not exist. He stomped away, his little feet kicking up clouds of dust as he went. The ragged man watched as they were caught by a breeze, dancing and winking in the sun before settling back down. He took the little boy’s place in line, standing behind a tall young woman with a babe in her arms. The woman looked over her shoulder at the sound of the man’s footsteps and was shocked at his appearance. The man saw her eyes, the color of the June sky, widen as she looked from his blackened, grimy hands to his scruffy beard. He sighed and looked ahead, noticing how the wishers all leaned toward the well like metal to a magnet. He shuffled his feet, enjoying the feeling of his blisters and bruises. They were souvenirs of his travels, he liked to say. The young mother cleared her throat while the man looked at his feet. “Where are you from, stranger?” “Oh, many, many places, little mother. Places of joy and sadness. From places of warmth and sun, to places where the cold is thick in the bones. I’m from places everywhere,” said the man with his open, honest face. The woman shifted her babe from one side to the other, holding him so that the man could see the soft peach fuzz on his head.
23
“Everywhere is a large place to be from, I expect. How did you come to be in my village, stranger?” she asked, all the while running her hand over her child, her fingers fluttering over his cheeks and forehead. “I’ve come to make a wish. And you?” asked the man. “I’m here to wish for a healthy life for my son. He’s a very sick baby. I don’t know if he’ll live much longer, or so the doctor tells me,” she said, and the sky in her eyes was clouded with rain. The man reached out his hand, touching the woman’s clean white sleeve with his dirty fingers. “Your baby will live, little mother. Don’t wish for his health, but instead take him down to the river and let him smell the water. His little lungs will grow strong with the salty air, and he’ll be a strong seaman someday.” The young woman stared at the strange man, her heart becoming strangely buoyant. She swallowed her tears. Something about the filthy stranger’s face made her ache to do as he suggested, so she left the line, went to the water’s edge with her babe in her arms, and they breathed in the smell of the water. And many years later, the seaman famed for his uncanny strength would take his dozen children down to that same water’s edge to watch as their grandmother’s casket set sail. The man took the woman’s place in line and noticed the old priest before him. The old priest had hair as white and soft as the cotton in the Spanish fields, so long that it tucked into the waistband of his robes. He held a book in his snarled hands, stroking the binding again and again. The leather was worn smooth with his strokes, and the man smiled to think how the old priest must love his book, as the man loved his worn feet. “Hello, Father,” the man said softly. The old priest turned, his hair behind him like a pallid shadow. His white eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. “Did you say something, my son?” the old priest said, his voice unnaturally loud. The man answered in another whisper, the breath barely leaving his dry lips. “I said hello, Father.” The old priest clutched his book to his chest, his hands stilled in their loving strokes. He reached out to the worn looking man, his wrinkled palm settling on the man’s ragged shoulder. “Why, I can hear you! I haven’t been able to hear someone speak for nearly twenty years, ever since God saw fit to stop up my ears. Your voice is the first I’ve heard since then…” “How peculiar,” said the man, touching the old priest’s shoulder so that they mirrored one another. The old priest stared into the man’s dirty face, searching as the little strawhaired boy had. “Who are you, my son?” asked the priest. The man clapped his hands, making the old priest jump at the sharp sound. “I am only a wisher, like you, Father,” he laughed. “I wish for many things, but I must choose what is the most important.” The old priest nodded, knowing the feeling. He looked at his book, the dark binding gleaming in the waning sunlight. “Yes, I was going to wish for my hearing back…it’s been so long since I’ve heard a spoken prayer,” sighed the old priest. The tattered man shook his head, his matted hair moving like a bush in the wind. He motioned to the church that loomed over the village square, its windows winking at the villagers, inviting them in. “I think the best prayers are silent, Father,” whispered the man, his lips barely moving. “No wish can make them fall on deaf ears.”
The old priest turned from the man and the well and went into his church, his snowy hair trailing behind him. The man watched him go before moving to take the priest’s place in line. Only one person remained between the man and the well. It was a young girl who had lived in the village all her life. Her name was Avalon, and she was neither pretty, nor witty, nor clever. Every day, in the hour when the afternoon became the twilight, Avalon went to the wishing well. She would sit by the mound of honey-colored stone and stare into the murky depths, her gaze never leaving the invisible bottom of the well. At first, the villagers would stop beside her slumped form. “Are you alright? Why do you sit beside the well? Are you wishing?” they would ask. And young Avalon would reply, “I sit until my wish comes true.” Now this same girl was between the man and the wishing well. The man stepped toward her, crouching down until he sat beside her. She did not seem to notice his ragged clothes or tangled hair or grimy face. Instead, her eyes never left the bottom of the well. The man looked into its depths. “Why do you sit by this well?” he asked softly, a gentle invitation. Avalon did not look up but continued to gaze. “I sit until my wish comes true,” she answered, her voice as calm and smooth as the Ebro. The man nodded in acknowledgment, his eyes twinkling with the reflection of the water. He could see what Avalon could not; her wish winked at him from the very bottom of the well. It had been there a long time, held down by the weight of the crystalline water. The man glanced around him. The villagers no longer bustled about the square; their errands were done. They were now at home, preparing food for their children, as the straw-haired boy’s mother was doing. Or they were beside the river, enjoying the peacefulness of the water’s flow, as the young mother and her babe were doing. Or maybe they were in the church, listening to the old priest tell, in his unnaturally loud voice, how God’s ears are never deaf to our prayers. But here sat Avalon, her heart hoping for a wish that had long since disappeared into the depths of the well, just as her parents had disappeared in the Ebro years ago. The man held still for a moment, savoring the waning light on his weathered cheek, the smell of the brackish river close by, the feel of those wonderful, sweet blisters on his feet. So much pleasure and pain in this world. For the wisher, there was no one to share either with. It was why he had traveled for so long, always in search of what he wished for. He’d gone over all the rounded corners of the earth, finally arriving at the little village with its fabled wishing well. The man groaned as he stooped closer to Avalon. Her brittle back rested against the stone; it didn’t look hard at all, as he’d expected, but rather soft and giving. Her thin body molded around the well, making a seamless connection between stone and flesh. She was the well’s protector, the one who clung to all it offered as one might cling to the last flower in spring. For Avalon, the well was hope, the well was love, and the well was home. The man reached out to Avalon, knowing that she would never leave the well until her wish came true. He touched her shoulder, just once, his dirty fingers leaving no stain on her clothes. Ah, there is was. How warm, how melodic it sounded as it hummed in his fingertips! There was that fabled spark, that little bit of soft magic that happens when one kindred soul finds another. The man smiled and said, in an open, honest way, “I wish for many things, but I must choose what is most important.” And so the wisher sat beside Avalon and waited for her wish to come true.
FORTUNE COOKIES Amidst the reign of Tso and Schezuan, the real treasures remain trapped in cellophane bubbles. Husks of sugared cardboard, curled in fists, encase the scripts of the future. The small slips are clasped within – brevity obscures their decisive power. A faint spicy aroma hangs languidly over the cryptic desserts. A heavy moment – diners hesitate, wondering which cookie holds their destiny. Each foray into the realm of paper fortunes alights wistful longing for mystical guidance. And each revealing moment dampens hopes with a vague well-wishing rather than the shattering insights we await. Yet their might remains as long as they hide in plastic shadows.
KATY REINSEL
26
LAUREN II CHRISTINE MUNCHAK
27
POETR Y
EDITOR’S CHOICE
1977, MANCHESTER, VERMONT ALLISON DONOHUE The October breeze welcomed the girl as she slowly climbed the porch steps weighted down by her purple backpack. Through the window, she spied her mother in the kitchen. A red hibiscus-flowered apron tied high on her waist, she glided between counter and pantry as though a dancer pirouetting between each slice of apple. French music filled the room, bits escaping onto the back porch: foreign words and calm cadences of softly plucked guitar strings warming the air as her mother––swaying and twirling–– hummed and la-la-ed to the lines, bare feet on the tile, bare hands messy with flour. And the October breeze kicked up again as the girl pliéd upon the wooden deck, sprang open the unlatched door, and twirled through, like a premature clap, onto the tiled stage. To the final drum-hum of the melody the girl giggled into a curtsy, skirt spread wide before her mother who almost bent her own knees and bowed her head–– but retrieved the purple backpack from the floor, slipping on her shoes instead.
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I’M BRUISED BUT I STILL believe in fiction since according to Vonnegut, I shouldn’t miss you because time is fluid, a motley collection of pain and joy. It’s the moments we decide to
when I swore on a bottle of wine and then sold my soul to the whiskey devil,
remember
that hour
that determine the overall flavor of our existence, so instead of recalling
when the hum of cicadas filled the space between us as together we struggled against the sudden empty space in our mouths, the enormous void of what cannot be said,
that morning you watched me board the plane, I should instead remember the way you split my sternum open with your eyes. I should remember that you loved me once, may love me still. I should remember
that minute I wished you would beg me to stay, now that I am finally sewn up and fit for society, the invisible stitches running up my spine and on the undersides of my kneecaps,
that day when the Texas dust rimmed your knuckles and fingernails with secrets from the playa,
that second our lungs trembled together and I realized that you are too good to ask such a thing of me, too good for me at all, and
that night
I let you go.
GRACE HAYES
30
WOMAN’S BACK CHRISTINE MUNCHAK
31
BUILD A HOUSE
KELLY PENICK
A PROMISE AT YORKTOWN You grab a hoodie and what’s left of the vodka on your way out the house. The screen door slams behind you and I drown out the cries from your mother with the cheap roar of a 13 year old four cylinder. It’s 8:30. I grab your hand and squeeze white knuckle tight as the trees disappear behind us. On the radio, Credence Clearwater Revival protests a 40 year old war we’re too young to understand. It’s ok. We understand it now at 80 mph to Yorktown. There’s a smell of our swamp town seeping through the open windows and a slow repetition of white house brown house to either side and three missed calls from the factory to fire me and it all makes sense, I just have to get there faster. 90mph to Yorktown to fight the British Naval Fleet, armed only with a bottle of vodka and a few golf clubs in the trunk. The sun setting behind us, shadows gaining. Hushed cries from the lonely muddled in the turbulence of two kids reckless and true, heart beat steady and sunshine on mind, who aligned depression
with solitude and the British Empire and checked “none of the above.” We made the sun shine down forever - never idle, never sober, always crashing over the guard rails of the mind into those beautiful ravines we see but never touch. 9:30 and Yorktown is covered with gunpowder smoke - the air thick and black and cold. We huddle on the beach, vibrations of the National Anthem riding the surf. The night impaled us, but not before 10 shots plus a promise - that if we died tonight at Yorktown our skeletons would be found smiling in defiance.
ANDY LEEMING
34
TIDE
LESLEY STOWE
HOW TO LAUGH ADRIENNE RUSH Tell him that no one will ever love him like you did. Do? Did. Consider throwing your drink in his face. Decide against it; you already feel too cliché, sitting here: the betrayed woman. A blond waitress makes her way to your table with the basket of bread he asked for, navigating white tablecloths that look like drifting ice caps. She sees your leaky eyes and his face closed tight like a door and veers off to the left. She can see the wreckage—doesn’t want to go near in case there’s another land mine about to go off or shrapnel still flying. You get some small sense of satisfaction from this: the fucker won’t get his bread. Look, he says. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t do it on purpose—I didn’t want to hurt you. You are shocked at his lack of creativity. You think you know the very movie from which he has stolen his script. You want to laugh. Go ahead, laugh. If that isn’t an appropriate reaction to all this, what is? You were supposed to be married, had picked out a flower arrangement. Lilies. Instantly you know you can no longer be here among the frozen ice cap tables and gleaming butter knives. Stand and walk out of the restaurant. You forget your purse; don’t worry, you can go back and get it later. When he is gone. Go home and gather every piece of him that is scattered around the apartment. Books, socks, razor. Inexplicable collection of road atlases (neither of you own a car). Leonard Cohen albums. Miles Davis poster. The tie covered in music notes that he insists can fit every occasion. Tennis racquet with busted strings that you’ve had fixed for him twice. Three boxes of Triscuits, all at various degrees of fullness. You hate Triscuits. Throw everything in a black, plastic garbage bag and drag it carelessly down the stairs to the cans in the basement. No. You will be The Bigger Person. Carry the bag back upstairs and pack everything neatly into the cardboard box that his new 52 inch television came in last week. Place it right next to the front door so he won’t even have to come inside. A neat exchange: here’s your life back, take care. Try watching TV but become frustrated when you can’t figure out how to use the new remote. So many buttons you think one could probably turn the dishwasher on. You feel old. Forget about being The Bigger Person. Dump his things back into the garbage bag; paw through them and think about what you should keep, what he deserves to get back. Squirt a bit of his Barbasol shaving cream onto your arm and smell it, then take his razor and shave off a neat little patch of hair. You want him here suddenly to touch your square of skin, smooth as a pebble. To trace it with his tongue. Make yourself sick by gorging on Triscuits. Finish all three boxes; you feel close to vomiting and proud. Think about going out and buying every box of Triscuits from every supermarket in a ten-mile radius. Instead wander into the kitchen and look for something to wash down the gobs of cracker crumbs stuck like sawdust behind your back teeth. Experiment with stirring whiskey into a mug of peach iced tea. Think about calling your mother, but know that anything she’ll say will have that insidious hint of I-told-you-so, and then you’ll feel like you’re ten years old again and want to say things like “Oh yeah?” or “He’s such a buttface,” and maybe you’ll throw the phone at his new TV and you just don’t have the money for a new phone or a new TV or a new fiancé. Curl up on the couch under his Chicago Bears fleece blanket; you realize that you forgot to add it to the Break-up Bag. Decide to keep it—his father is the real Bears fan anyway. Think about mailing it to him, out to the little blue house on the edge of Lake Michigan. The house you imagined would host Christmas dinners and maybe grand kids in the summers. You try to cry, but your eyes are like two pieces of desiccated fruit, shriveled up and wrinkly. Determine that you’re dehydrated—you need fluids. Go to the kitchen and get more
whiskey. Not until 11:30 PM do you think of her for the first time. If she knew, or if he was lying to her, too. If she’s smarter than you. If she has red hair (you know he’s always had a thing for redheads, despite his declarations that your mane of dark curls is his favorite feature of yours). As soon as you decide not to think about her body, your mind fills itself with long-legged redheads with alabaster skin and breasts that literally glow with magnificence doing elaborate Busby Berkeley choreography from a 1930s musical. Drink more whiskey, until your tongue grows thick and fuzzy and standing becomes a demanding task. Back to the couch. The next hour is spent in somnambulant research on your laptop—determined comparisons of various shades of red hair dye. Decide that you could pull off Fox Red or Strawberry Blond 72 and fall asleep while choosing between the two. At 1:00 AM you’re woken by a gentle drumming of rain at the kitchen window. This is appropriate, you think. The world should mourn in empathy—it owes you that much for allowing your fiancé to be seduced by a six-foot tall redhead with holy breasts. The rhythmic thrum of rain pulls you back toward sleep, but then you detect a syncopated beat; someone is at the door. Slippered feet that seem much too large to be your own find their way to the floor, and on them you glide across the living room to the front door. Now you hear it clearly, fingers tapping against the wood as if playing a piano with broken strings. Open the door. The hair on his forehead and temples is slick with rain, and a single drop of wetness hangs from the tip of his nose like a tiny stalactite. Reach out and catch it with your forefinger. The cracked, laminate floor of the hallway suddenly pitches under your feet, and you fall forward into the soft, leather coat-chest that smells of wood-shavings and maple syrup. You’ve never understood the origin of this scent; he’s not what one would call handy, and he’s never liked breakfast food. His dark beard is damp like moss and you bury your nose in it, sniffing for dirt or wet leaves. You grip his front pocket for stability, but your feet have suddenly had enough, one sliding back toward the couch and the other inching out to the kitchen. His hands catch you under the arms and hold you upright, a ribbon-y underwater plant bobbing and twisting in the murky hallway glow. Think: this is wrong. It’s not supposed to be like this. He’s the one that did it, tore everything into pieces as if your life together was a math problem gone wrong. So why are you the one reduced to a wobbly mass of runaway limbs and dried-up fruit eyes? Someone should be holding him as he thrashes and moans for the loss of his one true love. Yes. He should be in pain. The clouds of whiskey part and anger floods your head, pounds red in your ears. Concentrate, stand up straight. You are surprised when your fist sinks into his chest with an audible crunch—you thought the punch would glance off him, like in the movies. Something gives way beneath your knuckles; you can’t tell if it’s his ribs or your fingers that have cracked. Both, it turns out. You stand side-by-side on the subway, the car packed tightly with tired, dripping people. There are few smells worse than wet people in a tepid, cramped space. Like stale coffee grounds and soggy spinach, shot through with wet dog. Your hand hangs limply, encased in a package of frozen peas and enough duct tape to secure a water buffalo. He stands awkwardly, bent sideways at the waist like a branch splintered by a strong wind. The passing of another train flashes staccato bursts of your reflections up onto the window. He gazes at this vision of pity, these broken people. He looks down at your vegetable sheath and laughs softly, a foolish thing to do with a broken rib: he immediately lets out a low groan and winces. Now it’s your turn to laugh. You can’t help it. You’ve never hit anyone in your life, and now here is the man you thought you’d spend your life with clutching at his chest. You went right for the heart. He tries to shush you, but you laugh harder, and now he’s laughing groaning laughing hurt laughing it’s funny and you wonder if he’ll be laughing or crying when the train stutters to a stop and the doors slide open.
CRACKING CHAIR Look at the rocking chair – built by hands who appreciate simplicity, hands who have held a boy up by his ribs. Notice the red paint The headdress of a hen, his mother’s hankerchief in her back pocket, a barn on a steely day, a bleeding calf. Feel its back – the two legs, two strips of weed take the boy back, make him catch his breath. Touch the scuff, the rough grain of wood, its elbow exposed through one coat of paint, a broken foot.
LEIGH ANNE COBLE
38
A RAINY DAY
39
SIDNEY GARDNER
AMSTERDAM
CHANTELLE FOSTER
40
TONIGHT Tonight this room is filled with sweat, and my eyes are filled with tears. Though the weight of your body weighs over me, I don’t feel you Here. Your ego is inside me tonight, and your heart is beating hollow Knowing what I have to do, I take the pill that’s hard to swallow. Again. Your scent is my inhaler yet I’m not asthmatic. Your sex is my amphetamine, I’ve become an addict. Entranced by your ecstasy, you have me ecstatic. Your affection – so lacking; but we are still at it. I once had it. You rip off my innocence, As if you are entitled to it. You ask for me to remember you, But refuse to help me through it. Your ability to convince me, This is right and we should do it But it seems, you are incapable of loving me. Come sunrise, these emotions flee Like the morning mists evanescence To keep me enlightened during the day, you simply lack the Essence. Your fluency of bullshit makes it an easy acceptance. That it is your body I desire, not your stagnant Mind. The convenience and the pleasure, they had intertwined, You were a convenient pleasure. The times were desperate, and so were the measures. We will never be together. My mind is a vacuum; an empty space My thoughts are stuck on your insensitive grace I once attempted to be your gravitational field, I wanted you to fall for me. My memory must have let it slip That you’ve always walked too tall for me and please Spare me the constant reminder of my backwards leap of faith For tonight I unlearn the geography of your face.
HELDANA TEKESTE
41
LEVIATHAN Eyes, brown glass with sun filtered through, Lamp light through the Glass of bourbon, Or the last bit of coffee In an ivory porcelain cup. Perhaps I’ll take that glass of bourbon, Embrace the bitter burn, Incinerate the violent words I say. Or you could press soft lips to mine: Feeling bruised flesh of the forbidden fruit. Sleek pale scars upon your arms, Self inflicted battle scars of survival, Your mind, heart: thrashing wings Against conventional brass thoughts– Struggling, screaming to be free. Acid green serpent Coiling down my spine; claiming. I would be Cain, Spill their blood: A darker keeper, grim reaper, To be the only forbidden Apple of your whiskey eyes. I am an abuser, You are dissociative. My hurricane waves Against the sea rock, And unstoppable force, But you remain a static object. I will beat my fists against you, Sound: roaring ocean echo In cave walls, forevermore. Full moon in black iris sky, Waning glitter of your eye. I am a Changeling child, My Glamour peels away: Sloughing skin to scales beneath, You begin to see the sin I am: The primordial creature enticing you. The more I seduce, The less you want the fruit I offer: Hard cider, sweet and tangy Warm bubbling to intoxicate, Sure to be the slow death of you. My words have become lyes, Rivulets running down you,
Hissing, spitting, dissolving your flesh. Acrid melting scent of standing strong. Maze ridged fingertips brush your scars, Vertical, horizontal diagonal. Has any of your soul gone free? Behind the bars your Father keeps you, Yet you sing your song: Fingers plucking cold metal, Vibrating sounds to shatter locks. Take the fruit I offer you, Become my bone made Adam. Listen to the serpent song I sing: “The knowledge you will learn,” I say. You will know the burning sun and churning sea, And finally from His cage be free. Come little sparrow, Adam mine, To my foaming emerald coast we’ll go; And you will be a standing stone To weather the fallen knowledge of all time. The stoic face of stone you wear I will erode and chip away With the harsh acid waves Your intoxicating eyes could not subdue. From one cage to another, I laid my lie so well: Where your cliff stands centuries long, My waves of ire and deceit crash, until all the full moon glitter of your eyes Is not but a seashell in my hand, A bit of porcelain to reflect bright coffee. Eyes I loved and led to ruin. Seashells broken upon my shore: Bone fragments left half buried, Screaming to my walking Cain. From one cage and to another. I am your reaper, your darker keeper, Forever drinking in the words you cry From beneath the sand and my boiling waves, Freed from within the stone shell you made. I broke it, broke you, could not keep you safe. But I have saved you In this sea Eden, mine, Where the broken flints of your sea glass self, Glitter green like the scales I’ve cast.
LAUREN WHITE
42
JOHN KAYROUZ
MAN SITTING 43
PHOTOGRAPHY GALLERY AUSTEN MEREDITH
LIGHTNING
OUR TOWN
45
SIREN Words of fire Echoed over lake glass algae; Breathing, condensing warmth Around our toes. Residue of boats: Black rainbow of oil, Violet, rose, slick, Reflecting coffee cream, Copper and cigarette smoke skies. Pride, deadliest of sins; Bitter pill to swallow, Aftertaste of cough syrup. You lose things pursuing dreams I am losing patience, kindness, sanity Chasing the love I have for you. Sloshing slap of water ‘gainst the dock, Swaying us with propellers reverberations. Warm, hollow wood in your hands, Half rough finger pads shaking chords: Soft notes shattering lake’s mirror silence. Twirling notes I can envision: One of snowflakes falling, Notes swirling down, melting softly. One of magic, spells whispering through Autumn tree branches – hollow whistle. Song of Autumn and Ashes, Somber, haunting, Lingering wood smoke to my skin, Permeating consciousness To make a wild thing tame. Though I am the Selkie,
46
The creature of the sea, You are the oceanic singer, Son or Lir, calling to me, Autumn and Ashes, Metal notes to capture. Man overboard… I have been called, captured, consumes By the sweet song you weave, Beautiful vibrating net ensnares, Melodious net, pulling down, Drowning me to deepest sea, Throwing me against sea rocks Where you sit and sing to me. Foam crashes around us, Like algae licks the dock. You can sit and make songs to me And I’ll forever jump ship to you. For on this dock in twilight’s gloom, You can’t see and nor can I. The evening’s chill consumes: Dew drop stars to make us shine, Glistening, covered in ocean’s brine, Our truest skins. Of all the oceans songs to sing, Autumn and Ashes you chose for me. And I will brave the algae waves for you, To once and always hear The song you sang of me that claimed.
LAUREN WHITE
LA CIDUAD DE LOS DESTELLOS MARIA CHRISTINA VILLAFRANCA
47
FAITH FLOOD To assert that Hannah lacked guile would be a hysterical understatement. But to write her off as foolish marks an entrance into even more erroneous waters. Brown does sipped with a painful innocence into pools of white, and when together turned to look at you, all impurities played dead. Hope. Belief. Principles. Parched with thirst, I often carried These words under my arms and into hers; she would laugh Knowingly and refill them. But even if she hadn’t The journey sufficed to remind me of a desire so real. Three in the morning, drinking four-loko, Hannah said I was one of the two people who actually knew her. You trust too much, was the reply. She turned and, nudging me playfully, said with all the weight of the oceans: pain and pleasure meant nothing to someone who was Empty.
ADVISORY Groaning, I wondered how the closest thing to my anything was able to bear such pain. Then, stormy, soaking reality carried me away in its irresistible wake. Boyfriend. Family. Extra job. She often carried Them under her arms and into His; I can imagine Him laugh tenderly and renew her. First in the universe, or second to homo Habilis, I saw the Trinity and the four-armed Visnu were the Same when you trusted. Both actually knew me. Where are you, Hannah questioned, and as drunken tears tickled down my cheek, it all felt real. Watching her quickly-lined forehead worry about my rarely scrunched eyes, and simultaneously bowing on my knees to a boundless shore, rain gently washing the guile away until I became Full.
SAHIL MARYA
NANTAHALA POWER STATION AUBREY LYNCH
EDITOR’S CHOICE
ART
BIRDSKULL JOHN KAYROUZ
51
ODE TO PLAY Softly humming, she used to call to me in that discreet way only promise and guilt have learned. “What is it,” I had murmured affectionately, my ticket to this play punched to the point that it looked like a rubber band. “Still in bed?” her lips whispered teasingly, and her brown eyes crinkled with warmth each time the weekend dragged its leaden feet to my doorstep, or we were surprised with a snow day. On summer holidays I awoke early to her fingers tenderly rubbing mine. Unable to resist the sunlight streaming through the windows and the selfless performances of the birds outside, I would blink lethargy away to see her twirling. She put one pale foot in front of the other and, brushing the hair out of her face, made sure I was watching her bow. As I grew older, the bliss wore itself ragged to an urgent happiness, as if there was no more time for time. The fingers began to press down instead of comfort. I began to leap into the day, terrified that Iwas losing her enchantment. Then, high school transformed her. Appointments were the only methods of communication. She would visit me for an hour with a grimace and an itinerary. What had been lost I tried to make up for in effort. She claimed irritably that she wanted to see other people. Once college eagerly stepped forward, however, she walked in, sheepishly, wondering if I remembered her.
SAHIL MARYA
52
DAYDREAMING CHRISTINE MUNCHAK
53
BLESS ME, FATHER
DANICA TAN
He checks his reflection once more before he picks up the gun, depositing it safely in his inner left breast pocket. He is only seventeen. He walks down the large, stone steps, hands pocketed, mirrored sunglasses in place. His father is waiting for him. “I’m proud of you, Vio.” He can only smile and nod as he steps into the back of the tar-black car. He doesn’t really see anything as they snake through the Roman streets— barely registers when they pull up to a stop by a familiar piazza. He nods at the driver, who wishes him luck, before dismounting. It’s sunny outside for the first time in weeks, but he walks briskly across the piazza toward the towering gray-white arches that stand silhouetted against the late morning sun. The building is unusually empty when he walks in. He makes his way to the far back right, retracing the steps that his mother showed him, and seats himself upon the worn bench. Before long, he hears a rustling to his left on the other side of the thin, wooden partition. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” he recites as he crosses himself. “It’s been five years.” “Five years? That’s quite some time.” “I haven’t been since my mother died,” he admits. “Ah, I’m sorry to hear that, son. Well, what is it then that brings you here after five years?” “I killed a man,” he states simply. There is a pregnant pause. “You killed a man?” “I killed a man.” “Why did you kill him?” He leans back into the tiny, wooden confessional and considers the question. I’m proud of you, Vio. “For a blessing, Father,” he responds, withdrawing the gun from his blazer. ‘Who did you kill?” He can practically see the priest wide-eyed and incredulous on the other side of the partition, Bible clutched in a white-knuckled grip, not quite sure how to handle the gravity of his confession. “You.” There is a sharp intake of breath from the other side of the partition, but before the priest can even stand, he has the gun right up against the screen and fires. He hears a dull thud as the priest falls from his seat onto the stone floor. The job is done. He slumps back into the confessional, squeezing his eyes shut. “O, my God,” he begins, just like his mother taught him, “I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins… because I dread the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell, but most of all because I love Thee, my God, Who art all good and deserving of all my love…” His voice fades as he tries to recall the rest of the prayer. Failing to do so, he returns the gun to its spot beneath his heart. He rises slowly from his seat and steps gingerly over the blood that is beginning to pool in front of the confessional. He does not look back as he walks away. He does not want the sight to be burned into his memories. He does not look up either, not at the statues of the Virgin Mother and St. Mark that flank the doors leading out into the narthex and seem to scream accusations. Instead he keeps his eyes trained forward to the exit of the cathedral where he knows that outside a black car like a hearse is waiting to take him back to his expectant father.
ON THE FENCE
55
HOLY CROMER
WHISTLING The sun is warm And the air is calm. The unusual silence of spring Pervades my thoughts, clears my mind. There’s a slight breeze, Like a current of satisfaction It whispers by me, kisses me on the cheek, And then floats on to kiss another or hug the flowers But did something ride the breeze? Something is there that wasn’t there moments before, Someone new, someone who came in on the wind— A homeless man, dressed in dirty beige, Carrying a tan blanket and a brown plastic grocery bag… His only belongings… And he’s whistling. What’s that happy tune? Or is it happy? Three notes and he stops, Like there’s a long rest or a caesura. But then he purses his lips and continues his happy song, And it is happy…at least I think so. His melody fills the sleepy spring silence, Riding the breeze like butterflies in the wind, The notes catch my ear the way a monarch kisses a tulip. Whistling homeless man, What’s that tune? Is it something your mother used to hum In the mornings to wake you up for school? Or is it that song that played in the background of your first kiss? Or perhaps it’s an echo of your father’s old whistle… Does it take you back? Does whistling this tune make you happy, Make you remember, give you a home? Why do you whistle so? Then the breeze blows by again,
56
Whispers of “home” beckoning my ear, And like that you’re gone. I look, but there is no more beige And the melody is but a faint echo, Drifting on the silent breeze of a spring afternoon… Did it really happen? Or was it just a warm dream? A languid connection of life and hope, reality and insanity? Then I change my course and head home, Whistling a tune I heard somewhere… I think my grandma used to sing it. The breeze blows by once more, And I’m gone.
JOSH THOMPSON
FIRST PLACE POETRY WINNER: THE WOOVE LITERARY CONTEST HTTP://WWW.WUVT.VT.EDU/WOOVE
57
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INDEX 36
ADRIENNE RUSH
29
ALLISON DONOHUE
ANDY LEEMING
34
ASHLEY RHODES
13
AUSTEN MEREDITH
JULIANA KO
15, 44 & 45 22
21
CHANTELLE FOSTER
40
CHRISTINE MUNCHAK
11, 27, 31& 42
DANIELLE PAYNTER
DANICA TAN
GRACE HAYES
10
54
9
KAYLA CLEMENTS
KELLY PENICK
42 & 46
LAUREN WHITE
LEE ANNE COBLEY
LEIGH ANNE COBLE
8 38
MARIA CHRISTINA VILLAFRANCA 47
SAHIL MARYA
41
7 & 12
17 & 32
OLIVIA MOVAFAGHI
30
HELDENA TEKESTE
16
KAITLYN FOHL
CAILTIN WILLIAMSON
CASSIDY GRUBBS
43 & 51
JOHN KAYROUZ
49
AUBREY LYNCH
55
HOLY CROMER
48 & 52
SIDNEY GARDNER
59
18
20 & 39
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