silhouette LITERARY & ART MAGAZINE volume 37, issue 2, Spring 2015
volume thirty seven • issue two
1
letter from the editor Dear Reader, Virginia Tech’s Silhouette serves as a platform for students to showcase their creativity and talent. It has been my pleasure to work with such gifted artists, and I am exceptionally grateful for the work they have contributed to this particular issue. A special thank you to my dedicated staff who works to make this magazine what it is. I hope you enjoy this magazine just as much as we enjoyed making it. Sincerely,
Brigid McCormick Editor-in-Chief
2
silhouette • copyright 2015 silhouette, a division of EMCVT
silhouette
silhouette literary & art magazine volume 37, issue 2, spring 2015
364 Squires Student Center Blacksburg, Virginia 24061 silhouette@collegemedia.com www.silhouette.collegemedia.com
volume thirty seven • issue two
3
table of contents ART Yellow Cup • Laura Skinner ................................................................................22 Pueblo Pot • Laura Skinner .................................................................................23 Into Submission • Emily Niehoff ........................................................................45 Untitled • Carson Arnold* ....................................................................................33 Nike in the Sky • Deia Green ...............................................................................27 Underwater Ballet • Carson Arnold ..................................................................29
PHOTOGRAPHY Wrong Side Right Side • Akshay Rawat ..........................................................24 Waiting • Rebecca Carle........................................................................................31 My Memory is Empty • Dikchhan Tamang*...................................................19 Mangalore Raj Mahal • Akshay Rawat .............................................................35 Hands • Christina Park ............................................................................................ 7 Figures • Emily Savoca ..........................................................................................37 Dry Bones • Christina Park ..................................................................................47 Collage of Color • Sidney Gardner ...................................................................21 Untilted • Anonymous .........................................................................................14 Ascend • Emily Savoca .........................................................................................38 Untitled • Austin Ledzian ....................................................................................17
4
silhouette • spring twenty fifteen
POETRY Urbanites • Alyssa Lentz* ....................................................................................43 Arthritic • Claire Wiklund ....................................................................................... 6 Bygones are Never Gone • Ling Guo ...............................................................36 British Ketchup • Victoria Childress .................................................................12 Fall of Summer • David Anderegg ...................................................................28 Hoarfrost Upon Remembrance • Devan Andrews .....................................34 My Grandfather’s Table • Nicholas Allen ........................................................16 With a Second Glance • Ling Guo ....................................................................15 The Chosen • David Anderegg ..........................................................................30 The Kiss • James Eck ................................................................................................ 8 Regents for Disaster • Victoria Childress ........................................................39 A Portrait of a Young Artist • Alyssa Lentz......................................................20 The Architecture Building• Alveena Kamran ..............................................25 M- • Miranda Marques ..........................................................................................26 Relational Relapse • Jack Eck .............................................................................46
PROSE Five* • Victoria Childress ......................................................................................11 Letter to a Stranger • Grace Hemmingson ...................................................40
*Editor’s Choice
volume thirty seven • issue two
5
Arthritic Claire Wiklund
My father, hands hewn rough from elds and lakes and the steady beat of shingle to roof [found] My mother, palms callused, knuckles soft like leather worn well from the motions of caring [and intertwined] They produce a set of ngers that ache for a little more soil as they clasp to pen and ink.
6
silhouette • spring twenty fifteen
Hands
Christina Park
volume thirty seven • issue two
7
The Kiss James Steck
I’ve had my fair share of bad kisses: The black hole The ood The leftover dinner The piranha The too much to drink The let’s see if I can t my nose in as well. I’d rather not recall them all, for the sake of suppressing rough memories. From middle school to college, I’ve realized a kiss is like a ngerprint. Each is unique, for better or for worse in the case of swapping saliva. It’s really such a strange action. I heard on a science channel that kissing arose from early human ancestors chewing up food for their children and putting it inside their babies’ mouths! Awesome, right?! Just what you thought also! So maybe that’s why I felt so close to the one girl whose breath smelled like her abnormally garlicky dinner. Just kidding.
8
silhouette • spring twenty fifteen
volume thirty seven • issue two
9
editor’s choice “This drabble was inspired by a similar story I heard from my grandmother: when my dad was little, he listened to a radio program about counterfeiters, found a dollar outside, and became very concerned. My grandma’s story ended with the punchline: “Is it counterfeit?” But I wondered what would have happened if, instead of simply answering the question, she had played along with her son’s imagination. When we look for adventure, even simple incidents have the power to become magical.”
10
silhouette • spring twenty fifteen
Five
Victoria Childress She had spent the long summer morning watching TV. Halfway through a program on the Denver Mint, her mother bustled her outside to play. There she found a ďƒžve-dollar bill. Convinced it was counterfeit, she picked it up tentatively by the corners. She inspected it with a magnifying glass and tagged it with a yellow highlighter. She documented the crime scene in crayon. Disguised with dark glasses and a fedora, she hid and waited for the crooks to return. Years later, the evidence is still carefully stashed in an aluminum pencil box. She knows it was legal tender and well spent.
volume thirty seven • issue two
11
British Ketchup
Victoria Childress
At least it never claims to be Heinz. It simply squats on your table, the “red sauce” in its unmarked plastic bottle with the nozzle top. You’re at Wimpy Burger with your friend Lisa. It’s the end of your semester abroad in Scotland, and you’ve just nished your last exam: Organic Chemistry. So, to celebrate, Lisa nally agrees to check out a local restaurant. You would suggest a pub, but Lisa is an evangelical health nut who doesn’t drink. Her idea of a really wild time is taking ten minutes to ogle the gummy candy at Tesco. Then she exhales: “Ugh, so bad,” and buys an apple. Now she skims the prices on the menu — “Seven pounds? That’s fourteen dollars!” she exclaims, as always. And, as always, you want to retort, “Thanks, Lisa, I’d forgotten how to multiply by two,” but somehow you swallow it — and the picture window reects your own face back to you, because it’s 5:30 and the sky has been black for over an hour, not that you’re craving another sight of St. Andrews with Rain and Streetlights. You’ve seen nothing else all semester — you never had time to visit Castle Doune or Glasgow or Yorkshire. The waitress brings your burgers.
12
silhouette • spring twenty fifteen
You squeeze and a loose dark pile forms on your patty. It’s the wrong shade of red, plush and purplish, the texture dull and clotted with air bubbles. No intoxicating scent rises. You dip an exploratory chip. The sauce doesn’t stick. You screw the bun onto the burger. The sauce squelches, too soft and lubricious to hold anything together. You tighten your grip and take a bite, and wait for the acidic tang of ketchup, the way ketchup leaps away from your tongue, but it never comes. Instead, the red sauce settles into the pockets of your mouth – not heavy, but you can’t throw it off, just like when you wake at 2:59 in the morning, nding that nights in Scotland are not as chill and cozy as you had expected, and the sweaty underside of your duvet clings to your esh — and the taste is dark and empty. No sweet and sour of real tomatoes, no bitterness of malt vinegar or salt of barbecue, just llers, just xanthan gum and carmine, oozing from palate to gullet.
volume thirty seven • issue two
13
Untitled Anonymous
14
silhouette • spring twenty fifteen
With a Second Glance Ling Guo
My coffee colored watchers blinking since ’94 I owe them to my grandma now a world away whose shade I mirror My soft-sloped sniffer matching the rest of my petite lines and curves perhaps a legacy replicated generations over My pink-pursed utterer carrying a voice impressed upon by many, my own streams struggling to solidify and ow to the surface
volume thirty seven • issue two
15
My Grandfather’s Table Nicholas Allen
When I heard the word today it struck me like a dump truck t-bone that this was part of my past — I was with my brother at my grandfather’s table when Aunt Mel called him and said through gasping sobs “miscarriage.” I heard every mufed word through the old phone’s black earpiece, but eleven-year-olds don’t know a damned thing know about a mother’s love or maternity’s patient expectation or long words like “miscarriage.” My brother and I moved on to the next funny joke and my grandfather’s eyes hollowed out and he slumped over like a half-stuffed scarecrow and wept while my grandmother’s head bowed turned back to cooking greens.
16
silhouette • spring twenty fifteen
Untitled Austin Ledzian
volume thirty seven • issue two
17
editor’s choice “This image was inspired by the ideas of technology being augmented to humans. I decided to go for a more surreal and simpler sense and chose to augement the individual as a lamp. The fact that it takes the place of their head was to convey the idea of losing one’s self in the idea of augmenting. Therefore the brain/memory is missing and inplace is the technology (the lamp).”
18
silhouette • spring twenty fifteen
My Memory is Empty Dikchhan Tamang
volume thirty seven • issue two 19
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman Alyssa Lentz
As a child, her parents wasted their money on art lessons. She would never paint inside the lines. Now her face is the canvas upon which she experiments. Her brushes never quite lose the smell like baby shampoo, and her coming-of-age story is browsing the cosmetics aisle with her mother, lling the basket for the rst time at 14. “You know you don’t need it, honey.” Thank you Daddy, but that isn’t the point. She spends $80 on a controlled scar that punctuates her ankle—drawing on the walls of her body to remind herself who it belongs to. It is her fort, her conversation starter, her inside joke. She glues on Malecent nails, or stains them neon orange, depending on her mood. She styles her hair every which way: boho braids, ballet buns, curls with enough hairspray to put another hole in the ozone layer. Her eyelids are sunsets. Her lips are galaxies. Her bedroom closet is a shrine to Alexa Chung. The most business-casual she gets is funkyofsh. For her 21st birthday, she bestows upon herself Versace, for the low low price of $110!, because it is the best scent she ever smelled and it belongs on her skin. She is Frida Kahlo with an iPhone. She is an ever-morphing masterpiece. She lives in a world that is ready to tell girls, “Don’t be afraid to cherish yourself, dear,” but doesn’t quite know what to do with this one who never knew to consider any other option.
20
silhouette • spring twenty fifteen
Collage of Color Sidney Gardner
volume thirty seven • issue two 21
Yellow Cup Laura Skinner
22
silhouette • spring twenty fifteen
Pueblo Pot Laura Skinner
volume thirty seven • issue two 23
Wrong Side Right Side Akshay Rawat
24
silhouette • spring twenty fifteen
The Architecture Building Alveena Kamran
I was told creativity is a bird, with wings that can span across my imagination. I suppose I forgot to read the ne print, because apparently my imagination has to t within the prescribed dimensions. It must abide by all the laws for zoning and t neatly and trimmed within building code. The wings will be clipped despite your groaning, so train your bird to live in its humble abode. It’s called Burchard: a hole inside in the earth, where students go to be buried in work. There they exchange light feathers of their mirth for heavy metal beams and go berserk. Closer to hell by a full thirty feet, minds full of structure and a bit perplexed they ap, utter, and writhe within their seats. Prepared to y from one cage to the next.
volume thirty seven • issue two 25
M-
Miranda Marques Although i did really like the little hairs connecting her eyebrows together (i found them endearing//truthful//condent), I didn’t like how long her ngernails were because i really just don’t like ngernails. i wish i followed my instincts, or my mother’s advice, when she told me never to date a smoker after being one herself for twenty years. maybe one day i’ll listen to myself and never again trust someone who uses books piled up on top of each other as shelves (they’re all real liars and good talkers). m did teach me that you don’t always have to take care of yourself, because sometimes someone else is there to put a trash can under your face and feed you cheerios and call you mija and sometimes that’s ok. i wish her inherent loveliness was enough to make me fall in love. life in the after-love’s a tough one
26
silhouette • spring twenty fifteen
Nike in the Sky Deia Green
volume thirty seven • issue two 27
Fall of Summer David Anderegg
A child looks at his hands — are they crying? There are drops owing from each scrape. They cause pain and the feeling of loss like real tears, but they are crimson and darker than any tear he has seen before. A look of confusion dawns on the child’s face, and then, it suddenly vanishes as he realizes what to do. If they aren’t real tears, then he should make some.
28
silhouette • spring twenty fifteen
Underwater Ballet Carson Arnold
volume thirty seven • issue two 29
The Chosen David Anderegg
A leaf hovers in the air neither moving up nor down only left and right, and left, and right — like a pendulum of a grandfather clock. Why was it chosen from among the fallen to not be trod upon but held high above the ground admired for colors they each hold? Why was it chosen by the eight-legged God? Was it because when He was working, it was right there?
30
silhouette • spring twenty fifteen
Waiting Rebecca Carle
volume thirty seven • issue two 31
editor’s choice “My main focus when I set out with this piece was on the structure of the human form. I wanted to see how much I could manipulate a figure and still have it be recognizable. However, I slowly drifted away from that concept and began focusing on the interactions that color could play with the figure. As a result I ended up creating bizarre patterns that made the drawing even more interesting than the manipulation of a form. This ultimately led me to take the risk of splattering paint against the background. To me, art is about acting on the random spontaneity of an idea and letting one’s imagination run its course.
32
silhouette • spring twenty fifteen
Untitled Carson Arnold
volume thirty seven • issue two 33
Hoarfrost upon Remembrance Devan Andrews
I imagine snow is faerie feathers, Drifting lazily to earth And melting at mortal touch. Compressed footprints are the tracks of great beasts, Stalking the barren wastes For a heated body to eat. The wind is a procession of spirits, Chilling all with their sorrow And screeching into my ear. What wakes in the winter, Besides replaces and hearths? What stirs new life As the sun freezes itself Cold? Creatures of dreams, gments of wonder, The lost days of sleds and snow angels. In my youth I thought frostbite fun, But now it recalls too much The stagnation of my life. They say if you eat the feathers of faeries, You too shall be able to y away, Like a falcon eeing winter to nd summer Eternal. I imagine snow is faerie feathers, Which is why I stick my tongue out wistfully, Like a child.
34
silhouette • spring twenty fifteen
Mangalore Raj Mahal Akshay Rawat
volume thirty seven • issue two 35
Bygones Are Never Gone Ling Guo
At the foot of the concrete stairs, he gazed up, eyebrows furrowed. His tired legs raised one after the other, pulling an invisible weight on his shoulders to the top. Beads of sweat hung on his lined forehead as he came vis-à-vis with his bygones. When did the days turn into months and months into years? His eyes focused with such intensity on something that once was. His lips in a fragile line, torn between burdensome grief and respect. His left hand with a single bullet-grazed scar traced the lost names on the memorial stone. When did he get here and why didn’t they?
36
silhouette • spring twenty fifteen
Figures Emily Savoca
volume thirty seven • issue two 37
Ascend Emily Savoca
38
silhouette • spring twenty fifteen
Reagents for Disaster
A tribute to organic chemistry, written in the style of Ogden Nash
Victoria Childress Organic makes me manic. If I’m depressed and introverted and my brain is slightly perverted, it’s because all I can think about is that SN2 is concerted and so the stereochemistry is inverted. If my eyes show signs of intoxication, blame my new knowledge that peracids cause epoxidation. If I have no time to hang out with friends, consider that, like a woman’s work, a radical reaction never ends. I tell people, “Oh, I’m ene!” but the truth is that I’m diene. While reading the textbook, every time I turn the page, I want another shot of R-OH. When I listen to the lectures, my mind gets lost in desperate conjectures, such as, “Can you get twice as drunk off diol? And if so, should I go for it now, or wait until after the exam to tryol?” Or, “Would it be noticed in all the post-exam confusion if I replaced my F with an A by substitution?” (But F’s a poor leaving group, so that hope is futile. Why can’t we be graded in tosylates on butyl?) At last I wonder, “How can I sneak into the lab tonight to synthesize some cyanide?” That longed-for curve is just a fable; and, like an enol, I’m not stable. Why did I choose to be a doctor? Why didn’t I listen to everyone I talked ter who told me, “You’ll need to learn all about ozonolysis and photohalogenation and hydroboration and bromination and E/Z, cis/trans, R/S, and all other descriptors of rotation and acids and bases and carbenes (tarnation!) and oxymercuration and even E1 if you want to be one”?
volume thirty seven • issue two 39
Letter to a Stranger Grace Hemmingson
Look around you. What do you see? Are there people? What are they wearing? Perhaps you are in a school. I have been there before. It’s boring as hell, isn’t it? The teacher may be quiet now, but, in a moment, she will be droning again. She may ask you what you think of this or that. Or is it a male teacher? Those are common now, I guess. Your classroom is probably small. No more than thirty people could t in there, I would think. I hope not, at least. I get claustrophobic in those kinds of situations. Maybe you are at home. Alone. The apartment around you is either clean or dirty. Bright or dim. You are up high on the balcony of a skyscraper in New York. Or you could be stuck in the suburbs. Do you smell that? Of course you do. It is the smell of a freshly mowed lawn. What else is there to do in Suburbia? You are sitting on a bench in a public park or working at an ofce. The smell of the toner from the printer is beginning to get to you. Or maybe your job is less glamorous. I work in food. Let me tell you, by the time I wipe my face of the grease at the end of my shift, I would rather never see another slice of bacon or whole chicken again. I feel like when I walk out of there and start the rest of my day everyone near me can smell the food I have been working with. They can probably see the grease in my hair, turning the brown darker, and see the sweat on my arms. I have always tried to dress nicely so that they will overlook my appearance. A red dress or a nice sweater should be sufcient to distract them, I think. Worse than my disheveled appearance, work follows me everywhere. One of the guys I work with got my cell number off Facebook and keeps texting me, though I wish he would stop. Think about it. If I had wanted him to have my number, don’t you think that I would have given it to him? Does that ever happen to you? If you are a girl, it probably has, and if you are a guy, it might have. In either case, I would advise against it. It strikes me as unforgivably creepy. Or, if it has not happened to you, I am sure that you at least have things you would rather leave at a particular place. Home is a refuge for me, but I know that’s not true for everyone. My parents are a rarity of the age: a happily married couple. Granted, they aren’t without their problems. Yours aren’t either. My siblings are annoying as hell, but I still love them. I know! Yes, I have a solution for you and me now. Think about whatever it is that is bothering you. It’s horrible isn’t it? Have you cried over yours? I have over mine. It’s all right; I won’t tell anyone. I can’t even see you. You can cry now if you’d like. I will be there for you. Now, that’s right, the solution. That’s what I promised, isn’t it? Think about this. Close
40
silhouette • spring twenty fifteen
your eyes. Or pretend to. Now, I want you to see something. You are in a box. Stay with me. The box is dark, neither warm nor cold. It smells of cardboard. You know that smell. It is saltier than paper in your nose. Don’t worry. It’s not cramped in there. In fact, it is strangely spacious. You have put yourself in the box, so you made sure that it would be big enough. It is nice in there and quiet as a churchyard. Do you like noise? I usually do, but right now I need the quiet. I don’t feel like talking to anyone. In fact, that’s the problem. So it’s nice and quiet in my box. But I don’t like it. Being quiet won’t help anything. I can still think about the problem, and I’m sure you can too. So I open the box. It is bright outside and full of noise. It sounds like one of those nature tapes that people play when they want their babies to sleep. It’s a calming kind of noise that makes everything else fade into the distance. It’s too loud for me to hear my own thoughts, and I like that about it. There are suddenly a lot of things to look at. My box was out by a dock; now it oats away from me, out into a lake. The sun glints off of the water; patterns of light shift and change as the wind makes waves form. There are no people around. Except you and me. The opposite shore of the lake is a long way off, appearing as a barely visible line of grey-green in the distance. There are no animals to go along with the sounds, but I know they are there by the sudden splash of water and the glint of ns that may or may not be sunlight. I can talk to you there, and you can talk to me. We can scream, cry, or run away, and no one will see us. Let’s go there, you and I, someday (maybe tomorrow, maybe next week). Until then, Stranger, open your box.
volume thirty seven • issue two 41
editor’s choice “Nights can make us honest, bringing out the best and worst parts of us. They can transform us into proud, self-confident people willing to take chances we wouldn’t otherwise consider, or they can leave us staring at the ceiling, second-guessing ourselves and replaying our biggest mistakes. These two extremes are really interesting to me, especially in the way that they affect our generation and how we think of ourselves.”
42
silhouette • spring twenty fifteen
Urbanites Alyssa Lentz
They nd each other in coffee shops, in clubs and bars, or in audition waiting rooms and company lobbies where they clutch their résumés tight. They are all driven by the same urgency to prove themselves and a hunger to leave their mark all over the city like grafti: subversive, eye-catching, and underappreciated. They have not yet “made it,” but decided in the meantime to swap “fake it” for “fuck it.” They are unaware of the difference between restlessness and desperation. They have just enough money to get into trouble and exactly enough youth to want to. They run together like the children they truly are: hands clasped tightly down rambling, low-lit streets at indecent hours. They practice their indulgent smiles for future paparazzi in the mirror, all anticipation, and when no one is looking, they pretend the club’s strobe lights are ashing camera bulbs. They laugh too loud to be genuine, dance to get that sex ush, pop pills and vomit in bathroom stalls, and are notorious for drunk texting just before dawn. They fall into bed together in random combinations, regardless of the way their hearts beat— “crushes” are so-named for a reason, and orgasms are a necessity. Don’t even mention the l-word. They only know how to fuck. They have never made love in their twenty-something lives.
continued... volume thirty seven • issue two 43
They self-medicate away the loneliness, try to buy off the darkness. They mistake proximity for intimacy. They call their parents when they can no longer avoid it and focus on ignoring the lumps in their throat. Slowly, they are discovering the emptiness does not disappear with time. No expensive makeup will stave off the frown that comes right before they fall asleep. No matter how they cling to each other, they are still untethered, still in free-fall. As much as they live in the moment, the future will inevitably come— whatever that means. This glamour is gilded, even if they don’t say it out loud. But didn’t you hear? Bruised hearts are this season’s hottest new accessory.
44
44
silhouette • spring twenty fifteen
Into Submission Emily Niehoff
volume thirty seven • issue two 45
Relational Relapse Jacob Eck
Pretense to pretend you might be projectile thrust, When all that she’s looking for is opinionated trust, Yet the cogs and wheels of desire will soon begin to rust, And I’m left with a pick-pocketed experience of lust.
46
silhouette • spring twenty fifteen
Dry Bones Christina Park
volume thirty seven • issue two 47
about Silhouette Silhouette, Virginia Tech’s Literary and Art Magazine, was founded in 1978 as a project of the English Department. It has since become an entity of the Educational Media Company at Virginia Tech where it works alongside the Collegiate Times, WUVT, VTTV, and the Bugle. Silhouette provides a forum for creative work, specically art, photography, prose, and poetry. Silhouette is a semiannual magazine, publishing once in the spring and once in the fall. In addition to producing a magazine, Silhouette promotes the arts in the Virginia Tech and Blacksburg community through a variety of events. To learn more about Silhouette and what we do, check out our website at www.silhouette.collegemedia.com.
Submissions If you are currently an undergraduate or graduate student at Virginia Tech, Silhouette welcomes your submissions. You can submit work in person at our ofce, 364 Squires Student Center, or visit the Submit page at www.silhouette.collegemedia.com.
contact
Twitter: @VT_Silhouette // Facebook: Silhouette Literary & Art Magazine // Web: www.silhouette.collegemedia.com
48
silhouette • spring twenty fifteen
staff Brigid McCormick editor-in-chief
Megan Gileza business manager, cover art
Megumi Ezure web designer
Melissa Thayer promotions director
Catherine Einstein prose editor
Libby Howe special events
Kathy Spicknall poetry editor
Casey Phillips photography editor
Scarlett Sims art editor
Matthew Cox assistant photography editor
interested in getting involved?
apply now at www.silhouette.collegemedia.com
volume thirty seven • issue two 49
Pre PPr reserving s Hokie Mem mories since
1 1895
www.bugleonline.com
bugle@collegemedia.com 364 Squires Student Center
Bringing you the news, sports and entertainment every Tuesday - Friday.
www.collegiatetimes.com Editorial: 365 Squires Student Center 540-231-9865
Business: 363 Squires Student Center 540-231-9860
Student Publications Photography Staff www.spps.collegemedia.com spps@vt.edu
Your campus advertising partner
361 Squires Student Center
College MediaSolutions
Virginia Tech's Student Literary-Arts Magazine
www.silhouette.collegemedia.com
364 Squires Student Center submit@collegemedia.com
channel 33 on campus
www.vttv.vt.edu 340 Squires Student Center vttv33@vt.edu
radio for everyone. 350 Squires Student Center
540-231-9880