Dovetail 2020

DOVETAIL Art & Literary Magazine

SPINE TEXT

Dovetail

Art & Literary Magazine 2020

Dovetail is the annual art & literary magazine of the NYU School

of Professional Studies, Division of Applied Undergraduate Studies. We are devoted to publishing and honoring the voice, originality, and craft of our emerging writers and artists. Š2020

Rheanna Hauman running late

MASTHEAD Faculty Advisor Simona Blat Editors Melanie Bownoth Devlin Cooper Jason Ferguson Ashley Herzig Ashley Jacques Joseph Maxwell Emily Nadal Pradnya Napate Joseph Rousell Susan White Design Jason Ferguson Cover Art Ashley Jacques Abstraction 4:44

EDITORS’ LETTER We started this issue in one world and we’re putting it out in another.

Many of our creators have been displaced or have traveled back home during these trying times, but still chose to contribute to Dovetail… we’re New Yorkers after all, and what is New York City if not a determined conglomeration of people from all parts of the world and all walks of life. The stories and artwork captured here reveal the diversity of the city and portray ideals and experiences that are universal. The pieces we chose still feel brave, relevant, and vibrant. We had open minds, learned new technologies, adapted to our circumstances, and figured out a way to move forward.

Dovetail has been a source of connection and solace in uncertain times. It’s important to maintain a platform for creatives to express and share their works of art and written pieces. At first there was some confusion, but in the end we did even more than expected.

We created a digital format for the first time, incorporating audio recordings, and debuting the first edition of Dovetail Diaries, where artists and writers respond to topical issues.

We were able to use our time in quarantine as a chance to reimagine Dovetail and we’re taking that lesson with us as we reimagine the city around us also. Thank you Simona for your guidance and endless patience. Thank you NYU and SPS for your unwavering support as we drew new maps and fixed our engines midair. Finally, we would like to express immense gratitude to all of the first responders and essential workers who continue to help get us through our lives every day. We dedicate this issue to you.

CONTENTS

visuals Rheanna Hauman | Running Late

002

Susan White | Corwith Field

008

Samea Shanori | Keyan

018

Rheanna Hauman | Eve

020

Rheanna Hauman | Dollar Slice

021

Ashley Jacques | Fluid Reflection

024

Ashley Herzig | West

029

David Reames | Abigail

035

Susan White | Jetstream Sky

039

Susan White | Perspective

042

Susan White | Furry

043

David Reames | Freddie

049

David Reames | Dancer

052

David Reames | Study of Jeremy Mann’s Figure #4

053

Devlin Cooper | Above Alma

060

Devlin Cooper | Skeleton Forest

061

David Reames | Gears

066

Eric Chen | Light in my Dream

071

Aggie Dent| Lighthouse Over Lake Geneva

075

Devlin Cooper | Red

082

Devlin Cooper | Tall Tree Grove

083

Samea Shanori | The Dancing Girl

086

Susan White | Maggie’s Rose

090

words The Back Nine | David Reames

019

Wanderlust | Susan White

022

I Have Been Thinking About Summer | Judy Chin

028

Before the Divorce | Julia Nimchuk

030

Fat | Oyindamola Shoola

032

Café Negro | Rairis M. Morrobel Reyes

034

I Am Grey | Rairis M. Morrobel Reyes

036

The Smoker’s Dilemma | Joseph Maxwell

040

Hinsdale, IL | Charlie Fox

041

Crumbs | Janet Levinson

044

The Caduceus | David Reames

050

Atheist | Devlin Cooper

051

Who You Are, Whose You Are | Joseph Rousell

054

Nurse Jane | Ashley Herzig

058

Lonely Fire | Francisco Attié

062

Mama’s Journal | Charlie Fox

064

This is How | Oyindamola Shoola

067

Landing | Charlie Fox

072

A City Confronts Its Past | Emily Nadal

076

Glenn Just Then | Timothy P. Fenn

084

Patchwork Grief | Shabelle Paulino

087

Preoccupado | Devlin Cooper

088

Rebuilding | Janet Levinson

091

Ruminating | Julia Nimchuk

CONTENTS

009

8 ART

Susan White corwith field

the back nine David Reames

FICTION

9

N

ow that the crops had been harvested and the fields laid barren, Peachtree Estates stood like some kind of lunatic lunar outpost. The mobile home community lay alongside Dixie—a two-lane stretch of highway that sliced through sorghum or alfalfa fields for dozens of miles around. The only signs of civilization were Peachtree, where I lived, and The Royal Meadows, a private golf resort that lay a couple miles west. And of course the Circle K gas station at the entrance to Peachtree, which was where Big Scott was supposed to pick me up.

The rusted screen door banged shut behind me and the twilight air was just coming onto me, putting her warm hands up my thighs and down my back as my Chucks rapped off of the asphalt along the cracked, pocked street past the sagging, dingy boxes that comprised the hinterlands I called home.

You pronounce that, “trailer park trash.”

Big Scott and I both worked at the Meadow. Once the greens closed for the night, employees usually squeezed in a free half-round. It was pretty much the only entertainment to be had around here.

I closed my eyes and inhaled the light breeze coming in from the fields—honeysuckle and phlox. Across the highway was an overgrown, abandoned lot. There was a copse of ancient, twisted trees in that lot. Those bent, old trees had always jagged with the lush green of the fields beyond—just wrong, somehow.

Those old trees had always looked like secrets to me.

I sat down on the curb alongside the convenience store.

I lit a smoke and pushed a jet of blue smoke out of my lungs into the departing day. The thick cloud hung in the air like a ghost. I hugged my knees and waited.

10 FICTION

I was halfway through my smoke when I noticed this dude across the highway just standing there with one foot in the untended and riotous grass of the abandoned lot and the other on the shoulder of Dixie. I could’ve sworn the guy hadn’t been there a moment ago.

He was dressed real nice. Tan chinos with a crisp, deadlylooking crease down the front and a white button-down that was blinding even in the early dusk. He must’ve been drunk or stoned, because he was gawping at the coming twilight like the village idiot.

This guy definitely looked like a member of the Meadow, especially acting all drunk like that.

You pronounce that, “one-percenter.”

He was staring at me.

I flashed a sardonic smile and waved. I was in too good a mood. Nothing could bring me down tonight.

Just then a golf cart squealed into the Circle K’s parking lot at breakneck speed. Big Scott was behind the wheel and really making that cart walk and talk. He slammed on the brakes right in front of me.

“Goddamn,” I exclaimed, “you almost killed me, you mong.”

“If you loan me five bucks, I’ll buy you a pack of smokes,” he answered.

I jumped into the cart.

“No need,” I said.

“We’re not coming back, my dude. I mean, I’m going to get fired for sure for A, nicking a cart and Two: driving said cart on the highway. This is not a street legal mode of transport, Chico,” he said. “’Nicking?’ You’ve been watching Downton Abbey, again.”

“It makes me sound like a gentleman.”

“It makes you sound like an asshole,” I said, and passed him a cigarette.

“Don’t be negative, Chico,” he said.

“You do see that ‘don’t be negative’ is inherently negative language?”

A quarter of an hour later we were rolling through the front nine holes of The Meadow Golf resort. The shadows were just starting to form and the hydromorphone was starting to take its hold of me. I couldn’t stop smiling.

I fired up a blunt and passed it to Big Scott who dragged on it and coughed.

“Fucking Mexican dirt weed,” he said between hacks.

I ignored this. I felt good. You can’t help but just feel really good on days like that, with the evening coming on and the air clean, carrying rumors of autumn, but only rumors. Anything could happen.

“Soon as I get on my uncle’s crew, I’ll be making the big bucks and it’ll be no more bunk weed for us, Chico,” he said.

“You’ve been saying that for two years now,” I said.

“He was supposed to retire two years ago. You know how it works. He has to retire, then there’s an opening for me at the

FICTION 11

“So nothing from the K, then?”

“You should just say, ‘be positive.’”

“I am now driving away from the inconvenience store, Chico.”

“I have provisions,” I said, and produced a tiny Sucrets tin, empty but for two small white pills I had liberated from my Nana’s medicine cabinet when I visited her last week. I passed one to Big Scott.

“Chico! Is this what I think it is?”

“One for you and one for me.”

We popped the pills and swallowed them with bourbon.

“Now, that’s what I call a Hillbilly Dilly,” he said.

You pronounce that, “Dilaudid, 8 milligrams.”

“Oh, stick by me Chico. I’ll stick by you,” Big Scott sang, butchering the old reggae tune by Holt like he always did.

“I’ll stick by you, mon,” I sang back like I always did.

Big Scott stomped on the accelerator and we zoomed around in a wide arch, headed for the Meadow. I looked over my shoulder. The abandoned lot was empty, the stranger was gone.

12 FICTION

bottom. Like dominoes—it’s a chain reaction. The dude is old as grit. Any day now.”

“Here’s to ‘any day now,’” I said, taking a belt of bourbon.

“Fucking boomers,” he said, as he drank from the bottle.

“I read online that they’re the healthiest generation so far. Less diabetes, less incipient heart disease. Statistics, dude. You know what that means—they hang onto the real plush jobs years after they should’ve retired. Y’know, by the time he was our age, he already owned a house and a boat. I just want a little slice of that sweet American Dream,” he said and exhaled a plume of smoke through his nose to punctuate his sarcasm.

“The American Dream?” I scoffed, “look, show me a boomer and I’ll show you a dude who had it better than his parents and his kids. Hell, even the millennials are middle-aged, now.”

“And we’re behind the millennials. Where does that leave us, Chico?” he asked.

I took a hit.

“Generation Z,” I said, “We’re post-millennial.”

“Post-bullshit, if you ask me.”

You pronounce that, “Zoomer.”

“Oh, stick by me, Chico, I’ll stick by you,” he sang, and took a heroic hit off the blunt.

“I’ll stick by you,” I sang back.

We passed the now closed concession cabana—the de facto divider of the first nine holes from the back nine—pulled up on the green and de-carted. I stretched, took a deep breath and exhaled, grabbed my driver, and as I stepped up to the ball, Big Scott asked if I wanted to make it interesting, say twenty bucks. I was a good golfer, but Big Scott used to play for real in high school. Might even have had a chance to go pro before his girlfriend got knocked up. By some other guy. Kind of took the piss out of Big Scott just long enough to miss his window I guess. But the evening was heavy. It was like, gravid, in some ineffable way.

“Sounds like a plan,” I said. Maybe I would have some heat

FICTION 13

tonight and could always use the extra Jackson.

“Can I get some of that action?” came a voice from behind us.

We both turned and damned if it wasn’t that geek that had been standing off Dixie and the abandoned lot. Only now he didn’t look cracktastic at all. Now he looked completely sane with his expensive bag slung over his shoulder, charcoal-black hair neatly combed with a pencil-straight part and a broad smile stretched over his shaved chin. He looked exactly like any other dipshit member of this club—rich with money, destitute of time, and utterly convinced that a brand new S Class in the club parking lot was proof that they were indeed masters of the links as certainly as they were titans of industry.

Despite this, my mind returned to the image of this same guy standing with one foot on the road and one on a forgotten patch of land gawping at the coming night, looking absolutely mad. I did not want to play a round of low-stakes golf with him.

In fact, I wasn’t sure why, but I wanted to drop my club and run.

“It’s nine hole and twenty bucks gets you in,” said Big Scott.

I could see the resentment in his eyes. I had always known that where I regarded guys like this with some species of genuine pity, Big Scott had a secret envy of them in his heart, and his envy tended toward bitterness.

I differed with him on this point. Fundamentally, I consoled myself with the notion that, wage slave though I was, I valued my minutes in this world more than grinding them away for shiny cars and huge mortgages.

You pronounce that, “philosophy major.”

“Done,” replied the stranger, smiling. He produced a crisp twenty-dollar bill.

“Alright, light is a-wastin’,” said Big Scott.

I could hear the animus in his tone. He really wanted to ram it to this bougie douchebag. Scott wanted to show him that, Mercedes or no, he was master of this particular back nine. His face was impassive, but I could feel the intensity come off him in waves. The stranger, still smiling, folded the twenty and made it disappear, aping a street magician’s flourish. Neat trick. Again, I

14 FICTION

had the impulse to put my heels to the wind and not look back.

Instead, I took a swallow of bourbon and set up my shot.

The stroke was solid and my ball landed neatly in the green not far from the hole. Big Scott’s ball landed closer and the stranger’s even closer. The game was on.

As we walked down to the flag, I noticed that the stranger smelled. I mean, he stank something awful. It was not B.O. and it wasn’t dog shit on his shoe. It was a low, corrupt stench. A nonsensical but persistent thought played like a tattoo through my head: pestilence. That is what pestilence smells like.

Big Scott and I were both downwind and I knew that if I smelled the guy, Big Scott could, too. But his face revealed nothing.

We played golf and I did indeed have heat. Heat like I had never had before. I was, in fact, playing the game of my life. But as well as I was playing, Big Scott was playing even better. And the stranger was keeping up, shot for shot.

You pronounce that, “dead heat.”

I should have been thrilled at the taut, heated game afoot and the inspired playing on all parts but I was not. I was terrified.

Because the stranger was changing.

With each hole we knocked down, with the fading light, the guy was transforming. And his stink was so strong I actually gagged, bitter alcohol burping into my mouth. I swallowed it back down.

By the third hole, he had removed his shirt, revealing an extremely hairy chest. I mean he was covered in it, like a coat.

And his hands seemed to be too long, the fingers lengthening and tapering into points. Big Scott was scarcely looking at the stranger at all; seemed not to notice. He was engrossed in his game. He was going to beat this asshole, by God. By the fourth hole, I noticed the guy’s teeth had drawn down into evil little points and that his eyes had grown. They were like swamp lamps in the failing sun.

By the fifth hole, still tied shot for shot, he had kicked off his cost-the-same-as-a-month’s-rent golf brogues and his feet were... well, they were hooves.

FICTION 15

By the sixth hole he had removed his pants, disclosing an enormous swinging penis. It was flopping down between his knees. The pendulous member had a bulbous, forked tip.

At the seventh hole Big Scott broke the tie with an amazing shot. Scott pumped his fist into the air with rapture.

“Yes! Did you see that fuckin’ shit, bro?” Big Scott was hoarsely shouting. I barely noticed because the stranger, whose legs were now bent the wrong way at the knees and covered in thick hair, was dancing from cloven hoof to cloven hoof. He seemed to be dancing in an ecstasy of rage. He held up one of his Woods in both hands and bit it in half, his wicked jaws flexing.

At the eighth hole, I lit a cigarette with trembling hands and gagged on the smoke. The warm hug of the Dilaudid I had taken was long, long gone, yet I managed to tie up with Big Scott again. His eyes were narrowed with determination.

The stranger now had huge horns curling from his brow down around his ears, like ram’s horns. The stranger took his shot and it was clean. It was a dead heat again. That was when we saw another Meadow’s employee way down at the foot of the hill. He was resetting a sprinkler or something. In an instant, the stranger bolted, charging down the hill straight for the unwitting employee, galloping on his two goat legs so fast it hurt my mind to witness it. I opened my mouth to call out a warning, to scream, anything. But the sound locked in my throat. The stranger tore the employee to pieces with manic enthusiasm.

I turned to Big Scott, who seemed not to have noticed at all and was setting his shot for the final hole.

“Scotty, my man...”

He looked up at that. I never called him “Scotty.”

I glanced at the grim scene below, “About that guy...”

At those words, the stranger jerked his head in my direction.

His large, crocodile eyes flashed despite the gloom. He had heard me.

I glanced back at Scott, whose eyebrows were raised, waiting for me to finish.

16 FICTION

I closed my mouth and shook my head, but I had looked into Big Scott’s eyes and saw something there.

I saw it plain as day, in his eyes.

“Oh, stick by me,” he sang and his voice cracked.

“I’ll stick by you,” I sang back, like I always did.

What I had seen in his eyes was this: my childhood friend had gone quite insane.

The stranger galloped back to us, his hooves tearing a line of deep divots in the shadow-blue grass behind him. He took his shot. One confident stroke and the ball landed not four feet from the ninth flag. It was a shot that set up an easy coup de grâce for even the lousiest putter, and the stranger was not lousy.

Not at all.

I was covered in sweat and shivering with cold. Scott was nearly vibrating with intensity. He took his shot and I could see from here, even in the flagging light that it was brilliant. It was flying in a grand, true arch. Despite the horrors about us, that shot was a beautiful thing to behold.

Then the god damnedest thing…

It… It hit a bird in flight.

There was a puff of white feathers and a warm bird corpse fell from the sky as Big Scott’s ball went into the rough.

I shit you not; swear to God; If I’m lying I’m dying.

Scott stared down the gloomy fairway in silent disbelief. His shoulders sagged. He looked sick. He looked defeated.

You pronounce that, “damned.”

The stranger was dancing and capering around from foot to foot, again.

No. Hoof to hoof. Hoof to hoof.

This time with a glee that made my blood run cold.

“I guess that’s some kind of birdie! Birdie! Birdie!” he giggled, spinning in circles, arms straight out at his sides, like Julie-fucking-Andrews in the fucking Sound-of-fucking-Music.

The stranger abruptly ceased his jig and looked at me with his huge, flinty, jaundiced eyes.

Much later, on the long, long walk home along the shoulder of Dixie—utterly, completely, despairingly sober, and the oily, hopeless smell of the highway—I would find that twenty folded neatly inside my Sucrets tin. I would not remember putting it there. And when I’d finally passed under the nicotine-yellow cast of the streetlamps in front of that abandoned lot across

FICTION 17

“Take your shot now.” His voice was low and eager. His breath was rancid.

Head down and with the dreadful resignation of a condemned man for the gallows, I walked over, teed up, and addressed my ball. The stranger was still giggling except the giggles sounded like puppies being drowned in a garbage bag.

I swung a golf club for the last time in my life. I did not even feel the club connect with the ball as I hit my first and last hole-in-one, ever.

The stranger howled in disappointment.

Big Scott suddenly broke into his own mad, laughing jig.

“That’s right, you fuck. You owe my bro here twenty. Pay up. Twenty bucks, bitch. And maybe next time you’ll remember you are not the master of these greens! Let it be a lesson! Let it be a lesson!” Big Scott was striding in a circle around the stranger and raving.

You pronounce that, “broken.”

The stranger’s huge hand darted out, catching Big Scott’s face. There followed Big Scott’s muffled scream and then a wet tearing sound as the stranger tore the meat from Scott’s head.

A flick of his wrist and Scott’s face flopped onto the green like a rubber Halloween mask.

“Mine. It’s mine,” the stranger said to me. Not sure if he meant these greens or Scott’s face or my immortal soul.

Absurdly, the stranger repeated his earlier back-alley magic, but in reverse because this time he conjured a crisp twenty-dollar bill seemingly out of thin air. He dropped the bill at my feet, took up Big Scott’s corpse, and galloped off into the trees. Scott’s face still lay on the grass that now looked black in the new night.

from the entrance of Peachtree Estates, I’d try not to look at the old trees that always looked like secrets to me. I’d try not to see movement in the deep shadows among those gnarled branches.

And I’d will myself not to hear the small voice in the shadows.

“Mine, mine.”

18 ART

Samea Shanori keyan

wanderlust

She embraced her life the day she let go from the steel and the concrete to the water below.

Her last sight the glint of a bright shining sun.

Her last thought to ask, “what have I done?�

To have given so blithely into a whim as her two broken arms tried too late to swim.

POETRY 19

Susan White

20 ART

eve

ART 21

dollar slice

Photographs by Rheanna Hauman

i have been thinking about summer Judy Chin

1. I often find myself thinking about commercial ads like those for Expedia. The ads seem fantastical because they fail to mention the crowded airlines, customs, and the kid who keeps kicking your chair. I haven’t traveled anywhere so it doesn’t bother me.

I’m ok with being home. Just me and my Yorkie, Ted.

22 NON-FICTION

2. Things I need to do:

Go to 404 tomorrow

Send Tiffany the updated version of the District Planning Bid form

Prepare for meeting on Tuesday

Bathe Ted

Start on the critical introduction section

Register for Fall 2019

Swing by Whole Foods

Wash the second load of laundry that has been sitting

on chair

Meet girlfriends for drinks

Meditate 3. I like the heat, but it’s annoying to constantly remind myself to shave my legs and armpits. I have to shave when the hair becomes noticeable, even if it’s prickly, otherwise it wouldn’t look “wholesome.” That’s what I like about winter. I could go three to four months without shaving and no one would know.

Sometimes I forget, then become increasingly paranoid when I lift my arms and think, “Oh shit, when was the last time I shaved?”

4. I’m sitting on the 6 Train coming from 28th street. The train is empty except for a lady pretending to sleep, a young couple cuddling, and me. I scroll through my phone, ignoring the fact that the girl’s hand is down the boy’s pants.

5. Two heavy set men stumbled out of the bar, knocking my purse off the table. They swayed side to side, shattered their beer bottles, and started swinging at each other. A passerby wandered down the street, spat whatever he was drinking and screamed, “Your ale tastes like piss!” It was time to go home.

7. It was a green light, but we ran anyway. I had to piss, but didn’t want to risk getting caught so we sprinted six blocks to a dive bar. I made a beeline to the bathroom, but it was locked. Fuck! I heard giggling. I banged on the door, “Time’s up, motherfuckers!” A couple came out and glared at me. Afterwards, the girl greeted me with two shots and a cheeky grin. I downed them and sat on a sticky bar stool. Shaggy came on and she started to dance. I don’t dance. She urged me to, so I put my hands on her hips.

She ran her hands up my thighs, wrapped both arms around my neck, and rested her chin on my shoulder. I whispered in her ear, “when can we go back to your place?”

8. I learned how to play chess again. Last time I played, Hurricane Sandy wiped out Lower Manhattan’s electricity. We went to Chess Forum, where we were greeted by the friendly owner who quoted T.S. Eliot: “You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.”

9. It was reported that a twenty-four year old mentally unstable man, Randy Rodriguez Santos, went on a rampant murder spree, blundegoning homeless men in Chinatown. Santos was

NON-FICTION 23

6. I read somewhere that there is a similar chemical reaction in the brain between the withdrawal from a lover and the withdrawal from cocaine.

found holding a metal bar with remnants of hair and blood.

One victim was an elderly man known as “Mr. Kwok” who was described as an endearing and timid person who never asked for money. All of his victims were killed when they were asleep. Santos was last seen exiting NYPD’s 5th precinct and will undergo evaluation at Bellevue hospital. His court date has yet to be released.

10. I’m terrible at pool. I don’t even know why I try. I always scratch. And sometimes I push too hard and the cue ball rolls off the table. Other times I don’t push hard enough and it barely touches my aim. I accidentally jabbed someone’s butt once with my pool stick. That was embarrassing.

24 ART

Ashley Jacques fluid reflection

12. The other day I was in a Thai restaurant enjoying my Pad See Ew and Thai iced-tea. I eavesdropped on the neighboring table, where a guy was distraught over his girlfriend. He said, “Yeah, she was banging her ex the whole month of June. We agreed to meet up and talk about it.” His friend responded with, “I’m sorry to hear that, man.” It’s always interesting to hear the kinds of conversations people have in public spaces.

13. My alarm should ring soon, but I can’t get to sleep. Even when my body asks for it. So I pick at my fingernails and see that there are some line ridges on them. I “WebMD’d” and found that ‘beau lines’ could be a sign of diabetes or iron deficiency. I hope it’s the latter.

14. Cheap Words: I want to be more than friends. I don’t like labels, but I like “hanging” with you. You so fine. I’d slap dat ass.

I want you so badly. I’ve missed you. I promise I won’t hurt you.

I would never do that to you.

15. Standing on the pier, I watch the pretty white lights glow with the same reverence as they have for the past 151 years. The pier is full of strangers with kids, strangers with dogs, coupled strangers, and lonely strangers. The flags on the sailboat flutter

NON-FICTION 25

11. I’m driving down the Myrtle Beach coast with my windows rolled down. White, red, and blue lights twinkle at the horizon while the SkyWheel spins adjacent to the boardwalk littered with BPA party cups and deflated balloons. I keep driving as I pass a string of palm trees, red neon-lit “No Vacancy” signs, and souvenir shops with clever entrance designs, like the one where you enter through a shark’s mouth. I am amazed at the revenue this place gets. A hefty pick up truck with a confederate flag disrupts my gaze and cuts me off out of nowhere. My car swerves, eliciting blaring horns from the car on the left lane. The pickup driver salutes me with the good ol’ middle finger. I roll up my windows and bring my attention back to the road.

from the night winds while silver-black currents beat against the dock. Kids with milk mustaches run amok in the forest of light as parents hold their ice-cream cones. I watch as tiny cars pass across the bridge and all he’s doing is yapping away about Sonny Rollins while I try to take a mental snapshot of this moment.

16. We get back to the lobby close to one am and I make sure to close the door quietly. The lights are off and he doesn’t waste a second. Before I know it, he’s slobbering me like a dog. He wants to fuck me against the wall. I say I’m too tired and tell him goodnight.

26 NON-FICTION

17. Eight am rings, pick up usual at Canal’s Starbucks, greet the man who hands out cell phone fliers, clock in for the shift at the Chinatown kiosk, people watch for the next two hours, pick up lunch at May Wah, survey the rest of Baxter, clock out at 5, take one more cell phone flier, go home, sleep.

18. When they turn off the music, when they turn off the lights , when they stop serving alcohol, when they reach for their coats , when their Uber drivers pick them up on the streets, when they go home with somebody, when they go home alone, when they hug their friends goodbye, when unmade beds welcome them, when they struggle to fall asleep, when nausea hits, when the silence weighs on them, when you have to face tomorrow. And the party’s over.

19. Sitting on Macdougal, the streets are damp as I sip my coffee that has turned cold. I sketch a stranger reading a newspaper while students whisk by and live music pours out of venues. I think about the night underneath the Manhattan Bridge on East Broadway. When the café closed after it started to rain that Saturday evening. Or the time we weren’t allowed in because I wore Chucks. And how it took a boy a whole season to realize that he wasn’t into it anymore. I am reminded of the bitterness of my coffee remains.

20. I get along without you very well.

22. I keep having this recurring dream of a school that I’ve never been to. It may be an amalgamation of my elementary, middle, and high school, but the walls are much dingier than what I remember and I’ve never seen these students in my life.

In my dream, I keep drowning in the gym’s pool. I am then transported to the middle of the ocean where I see strangers drowning, yet I stay afloat. I watch as they gasp for air and cry for help, but I can’t help them. I just watch until they go under.

23. It’s crazy what you can see now, that you couldn’t see then.

24. School starts on September 3rd, but the buildings are empty. There aren’t any students running around like headless chickens yet. Just a few tourists, skateboarders, and chess players in Washington Square Park. I sit and take it in. In two weeks, it’s all going to change.

25. Caffe Reggio, carrot cake, cannoli, and cannabis. I pour cold milk into the Darjeeling, observing puffy clouds invade the tea like smoke in air. Mesmerizing, but ephemeral.

26. Summertime, The kids were young and pretty.

NON-FICTION 27

21. Jeremy’s, Johnny’s, Gin, Verlaine, Village Vanguard, Oculus, Otto’s Tacos, Fat Cat, Pier 17, Washington, Whiskey Tavern, photo booth, flashing lights, bookmark, Solas, Lalito, Bowery, BND, Bassanova, McSorley’s, Mezzrow, McNally’s, Mamoun’s, Mulberry Street Bar, Mott St., 11th Street Café , Shake Shack, Standard, Smalls, Starbs, Stella by Starlight, Peck Slip Arcade, Dean & Deluca, Café Roma, home.

before the divorce Julia Nimchuk

28 FICTION

The only television was in my parents’ bedroom. I loved getting close to its convex screen, approaching slowly with my fingertips, waiting for the exact moment the static would hit. There was something intriguing about that quiet tactile resistance, as if the screen and I were magnets, but it was trying to repel me.

It felt like how it did when my father would laugh at me with his grey-blue eyes, when those same eyes never laughed at my mother. It felt like how it did when my father would hold me upside down by my legs and spin me around, when those same hands pushed my mother to the ground. It felt like how it did when my father would blow raspberries on my belly, when that same mouth called my mother a bitch.

I heard him say that on the phone one day as he told her he was coming back that night. She didn’t say much and hung up.

Then I heard him say it and I hung up too. But I still waited for him. I fought sleep and watched the Oscars from his side of the bed to keep it warm for him. I was bored by the speeches but enchanted by the fanfare. My mother was under the covers and fast asleep. I crawled to the foot of the bed to reach out to the screen, but I didn’t get there. Instead I saw my father’s face as he entered the room, watched his hard gaze immediately soften as he became aware of me.

ART 29

Ashley Herzig west

fat Oyindamola Shoola

It weighs heavy in my mouth like the additional slices of crackers with gently laid cream cheese and jam I swallow at 2:03am, after promising that the previous and the previous would be my last piece.

Fat.

30 NON-FICTION

Every time I look at the mirror, grab my fat belly admirably and unapologetically say that I love it, it feels like I am offending someone else.

Why do I have to say fat “unapologetically?”

I want to tell my friends to stop correcting my words as a way of proving support or empathy every time I say, “I look fat.”

“Oh, stop kidding! You are not fat. I am fat.” They say, as though there is an Olympics of fat acknowledgment they must win.

I do not understand when my co-worker rants to me that she “feels fat?” How is being fat a feeling? Well, I ask that in my head but do not say anything. I am guilty of saying that too. #FeelingFat I convince myself that it is muscle I am gaining, especially when I go to the gym just to feel better about having a little fat.

There are days when I want to say “I want to be fat” without having to add “just a little bit” like a period concluding such sentences and I want it to sound complete and acceptable,

tantalizing people’s ears in the same way as the phrase “I want to be thin.”

Fat. It amuses me how people like to be selectively fat. You tell someone they have a fat belly and it sounds like an insult, but you tell them they have a fat ass and that may be the best compliment they’ll receive for a while.

Fat. It sounds better when I say that “I am thick,” doesn’t it?

Like the police of fat appropriation will punish you for calling things as they are. Same way you’ll like “chubby babies” over fat ones.

It curls underneath the carpet of my tongue every time I see another social media post or magazine or mall section with “plussized models.” I wonder if it never occurs to these marketers to say “subtracted-sized models” or “skinny models” when they introduce the “normalized body-type species.”

Is it sheer ignorance that the fashion industry doesn’t say much about male “plus-sized models” or is the passion for fat confidence exclusive to female models?

Fat–on social media, I see many write about it like it’s a foreign language you need to translate to cute convenience–Phat.

Now, I want to be the type of fat I was when I was skinny but thought that I was fat. I know that I will wish this again sometime in the future.

I think I am submitting to loving my fat because I am becoming more unwilling to change it and give up what comes with unloving it.

Fat. This word swallows my tongue, and to acknowledge it as some form of bravery… I think the fuck not.

NON-FICTION 31

Word-cuffing-fat!

café negro Rairis M. Morrobel Reyes

Si te podria describir en una cosa seria un café amargo, no te asustes Una porque el café amargo es un major amigo para mi, en mis peores dias Pero basta sobre mi El café amargo no le gusta a todo el mundo porque es muy intenso Porque casi nadie lo toma es unico a pesar de su amargura de sabor es puro…

Se atreve a ser…

Se atreve a ser el sin miedo a ser juzgado, porque sabe…

32 POETRY

Que es necesario para hacer un café con leche El café amargo es una mujer segura de si misma con los pies en la tierra, dejando huellas en el Corazon de los que la conocen Dejando ese fuerte sabor depues de que te lo tomas El café amargo estimula mejoria en distintas personas les mejora el dia y Tambien es addictivo Asi es que ojo amiga mia!

Ojo a quien le des de tu café porque lo puedes Volver adicto al hombre que se le café, de tu café…

Amiga mia el que se haya tomado su café y lo ha dejado fue porque estaba muy fuerte no todo el mundo aguanta un café negro.

translated from Spanish

If I could ever describe you with one thing that would be: a bitter, black coffee.

Do not be afraid of the bluntness in my words, a bitter black coffee has been a friend in my worst days.

But enough about me

Its bitterness and pure taste It’s a dare to just be Dares to be without the fear of being judged, because a bitter black coffee knows it’s essential and vital in comparison to A bland cappuccino.

Bitter black coffee is a confident woman with her feet in the ground, grounding footsteps in the hearts of those who get to know her Leaving that strong feeling after you drink it.

Bitter black coffee is a stimulant in distinctive ways; it’s addictive.

So, watch out, my friend!

Watch who you give your bitter black coffee to. You can become addicted.

Whoever had the honor of having your bitter black coffee and left, it’s because not just anybody can handle a bitter, black coffee.

POETRY 33

Bitter black coffee is not everyone’s cup of tea, it is too intense.

This is the sole reason why nobody enjoys it; this makes it unique.

i am grey Rairis M. Morrobel Reyes

I am grey because I am the mixture of black and white I either sleep too much or don’t sleep at all I am grey because it is not yes or no I never know, I could never tell I am grey because I fell in love with music first, and forgot all about myself Could always get lost in a note I am grey because I like transparency not clarity I enjoy my own company instead of the company of empty souls 34 POETRY

I am grey because rainy days are fuel to me and sunny days drain me Money is not the motivation, respect is the greatest compensation I am grey because I enjoy every trip, even the ones which lead to failure I am grey because I visited every other color, but grey feels like home

ART 35

David Reames abigail

the smoker’s dilemma Joseph Maxwell

C

36 FICTION

orporal McLaughlin walks into a makeshift infirmary, which in actuality is just a tent with some cots and bandages.

“You asked for me, Staff Sergeant?” he says, addressing a man with bloodied gauze wrapped around his ribcage. Staff Sergeant Briggs is in command of 4th Platoon. He sustained a heavy shrapnel blast in a firefight that took place just hours ago.

“Yes. I need you and Lance Corporal Lain to go to the central command post six miles North of here, and alert Colonel Gowers that we have taken over this stronghold but our radio is down and we’ve sustained nine casualties. We need an emergency evac and some reinforcements ASAP.” “Aye aye, Staff Sergeant.”

“Lay low and try to beat the storm. We can’t afford to lose any time. If it gets too heavy, though, seek shelter. If you two don’t make it, it’s unlikely any of us will.”

McLaughlin informs Lain, and they begin their trek to central command. The men get nearly three miles out when the wind begins to pick up and the rain starts to feel like razors slicing across their faces.

“Dude this shit fucking hurts,” Lain says, holding his arm up to shield his face.

“I know. I can barely tell where we’re going. I’ve run off the path like three times.”

“Same here. There’s a thicket up ahead. Me and Debble stopped there when we were surveying the area a few days back.

Let’s break for a second.”

“We don’t have time to fuck off. We’ve still got at least three miles,” McClaughlin says, struggling to breathe.

“So catch your breath real fast and we’ll make better time.

FICTION 37

Strong bursts like this usually don’t last for more than fifteen minutes. Maybe we can wait it out.”

“That’s true. But we need to keep moving so we’re a harder target for any Charlie out on patrol.”

“You honestly think anyone is patrolling this late in the middle of a storm? Everyone’s bunkered down for the night. Besides, unless those chink eyes come equipped with night vision we’ve got nothing to worry about. I can’t make out a damn thing more than three feet in front of me.”

“Alright. We’ll take a breather. But ten minutes, then we don’t stop until we reach the command post. Lead the way.”

The two men take shelter from the storm under a thicket of trees. Lance Corporal Lain pulls out a pack of cigarettes.

“You want one?”

“Nah. I can barely breathe as it is. Besides, those things’ll kill you.” Lain struggles to strike a match.

“Waterproof my ass. I might as well be out here rubbing sticks together. Let me get your box. Maybe they’ll work better.”

McLaughlin hands Lain a damp box of matches.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Lain strikes one up and lights his cigarette, “but there’s plenty of things out here more dangerous than cigarettes. If I don’t make it back from ‘Nam, I don’t think it’ll be because of my smoking habit. Besides, we all gotta go some way. Might as well go out doing something you like.”

“Yeah... that’s the age old smoker’s dilemma, huh? Everyone dies eventually, so what’s it matter how.”

“More like the quitter’s dilemma.” Lain laughs at his own joke. He removes his blouse and leans back against a tree as he takes a drag. McLaughlin removes his blouse as well and rings it out. They both enjoy a brief moment of reprieve. After ten minutes or so the wind begins to die down and the rain lets up a bit.

“Put on your blouse and let’s get going,” McLaughlin instructs.

“Let me smoke one more real quick. It’ll open up my lungs.”

“That doesn’t even make sense. We need to get a move on while the storm is down. It could start back up any second.”

38 FICTION

Lain lights up another smoke. “Just a few quick draws.”

“We don’t have time. Put it out.”

“Alright, last hit.” Lain takes an extra long drag and the cherry lights up bright red. A loud thunder strike rings out from the distance.

“That’s funny. I heard thunder, but I didn’t see any lightning.

Did you?”

Lain doesn’t respond. McLaughlin turns around and sees Lain leaned up against the tree, but his cigarette, still burning, has dropped to the ground.

“Lain!” McLaughlin hits Lain on the shoulder and he topples over, lying motionlessly where he landed.

“Lain! Stop playing!”

McLaughlin fumbles around on the ground, feeling for the box of matches he lent Lain. He strikes one up, and falls backwards in shock, dropping the lit match on Lain’s stomach.

Blood is running down Lain’s chin and the contents of his left eye socket are missing. Another thunderstrike rings out and Lain’s body jerks slightly. Blood begins to run down his chest, a few inches above where the match was burning.

ART 39

Susan White jetstream sky

hinsdale, il Charlie Fox

A night full of shadows, we approached Mellin Park to the left of the cul de sac; I always thought it was melon.

40 POETRY

After she died, a storm inhaled us, boys twirling curiously into men beneath the blanket of clouds overhead like werewolves under a full moon. We dared the clouds to change us. Stood on monkey bars.

Remembered the days when we thought the jungle gym was made of candy and the grass field reached the end of the earth.

After she died, that sweet melon in my mind became a rine—juiceless, rotten.

Clouds strike overhead like how men’s heads look for something on the ground and how white hands reach into cavities and crannies feeling for feelings. New men saying nothing and everything at once with arms hung from the green monkey bars and way too heavy footsteps on the mulch, brown platforms.

After she died, I couldn’t help but feel unreal in my grief. Raincloud overhead: mellinsized. Theirs the size of their mother.

crumbs

Bending over, she scrapes the Dustbuster across the ceramic tile, making sure every minute cake crumb is caught. She stands up, straightening her tiny frame, and gently cleans his lap, the napkin bib, and his face. Everything must be perfect in this pastel-colored space where heat and humidity reign inside and out. It makes her feel content in a world that is now upside down.

It gives her comfort—the comfort of a routine well known.

He is motionless, complacent; his face stares blankly. What is he thinking as she moves around him, the circles of cleaning expanding ever outward? Is this really the same man she married?

Only a few months earlier she remembers him laughing at her annoying habits and telling her to stop fussing. After sixtysix years together, she knew he loved her. She had a good heart.

He makes a noise. She runs back to check—did she miss a crumb? She leans over, face-to-face, to get a closer look. He moves and his lips curve ever-so-slightly upward, forming a crooked smile as he grabs her breast. She smiles back, kissing him on the soft fluff of white cotton that covers his head. He is still in there.

FICTION 41

Janet Levinson

42 ART

perspective

ART 43

furry Photographs by Susan White

the caduceus David Reames an excerpt from an untitled novel

Detroit 2020

M 44 FICTION

y boots crunch and squelch in the slushy snow along I-94. The Cadieux overpass is less than a quarter of a mile away. Even though there is half an hour of daylight left in the day, I can’t see the trestle. It is snowing too goddamn hard.

At least my feet are dry. The boots the Capuchins had given me had come “gently used,” and I snatched them up immediately, hoping they would fit. They were a little big, but hadn’t been worn enough to be broken in. A friar holding a clipboard was inventorying several large cardboard boxes that had just arrived for the other homeless. He had given me a pair of thick socks so when I laced the boots up tightly, they almost fit perfect.

That was in November. The boots are now properly broken in.

Despite the blizzard, I move in as near a straight line as I can along the shoulder of the expressway. I don’t need to see the overpass to find it. I was head of the class in Advanced Land Navigation and Orientation back in Coronado, all those years ago.

A lifetime ago.

I know the contour lines of this terrain. I can feel it with my feet and my knees. I can get to the overpass in a full white-out. I can get home blindfolded. I’m almost there.

I see a black patch in the snow to the right of my path and squint down at it. Probably the fragment of a blown tractor tire.

But why isn’t the snow covering it?

As the sun goes down, I stop in my tracks and look down at the dark spot in the snow along my path home.

The dog lays in the dirty snow beside the road, unconscious.

Beneath him, the snow melts, becomes liquid. Around him, the wind whips and lashes the warmth from his body. The snow beneath him freezes, then melts again. As the small creature’s body temperature falls, the less the snow melts and the more ice crystals form in his fur.

His own blood has frozen in his nose and on his lips.

The little black dog lays enveloped in an unconsciousness so deep and so black that despite his broken hind legs and a concussed head, he seems to be in no pain. This eclipse of the dog’s pain deepens as his heartbeat slows and his breathing gets shallower. As his temperature is dropping.

As he is dying.

I know about this. I have seen it before.

A lifetime ago.

His stuffy guy lays in the snow next to him, tattered and bloody. It is now bloodied and frozen.

I push back my hood. I remove my gloves and put them in my coat pockets. I bend and carefully scoop the small black creature up in my large, warm hands.

The dog is very light and his legs hang at wrong angles.

Without thinking about it I also pluck up the remains of the toy laying in the snow and absently stuff it into my deep parka pocket along with my gloves.

I lift the dog’s limp body close to my face. I look and listen, then run my hands over the dog’s limbs. My hands move with the same gentle, confident, and deliberate ease they always have. I have never taken my hands for granted. I keep them clean—even under the nails.

I can quickly locate the fractures in the hind legs. I can’t be sure of anything beyond that, and anyway, isn’t that enough?

This small creature is in a world of hurt.

The dog seems very small as my large, powerful hand grips its neck. One quick motion and it will be done and it will be a mercy.

FICTION 45

***

46 FICTION

The small dog stirs and for one moment—less than a moment, really—he opens his eyes and looks directly into my eyes. He then passes out of consciousness again. In that half of a moment, even in the failing light, I see and mark his remarkable eyes—one brown and one blue as a scrubbed summer sky and both full of life—and I am uncertain.

In the end, I release my grip on the dog’s neck, unzip my parka halfway, and gently slide the dog into the warmth there.

With my head down, hugging the small creature to my chest, I turn and march on towards home.

“Ok. If you fight, I’ll fight, too. I doubt like hell you’ll even make it through the night, but I guess I’m with you now. The whole way,” I said out loud.

Approaching the trestle, I haul up a bag of old newspapers to ignite a fire.

Need heat. No rest tonight. Too much to do. Hang in there, dog. Wish I had coffee.

When was the last time I wished for some coffee?

A lifetime ago...

The Man Named Glue Korangal Valley, Afghanistan 2006 “Damn, I wish we had some coffee,” I said, “it’s fucking freezing.”

“I’d even take some of that instant shit from an MRE,” said Collins.

“See if Probey can dig something up.”

It’s my first fucking week and I am surprised at how cold it gets in Afghanistan.

The kid on the table in front of us is twenty years old.

Collins and I were on loan from the fleet to support the 10th Mountain Division while establishing operations to Firebase Phoenix. It was another joint thought up by the U.S. Naval

FICTION 47

Special Warfare Development Group to make positive headlines in the media during an unpopular war. Just a couple of corpsmen who also happened to wear the Navy Seal Budweiser insignia alongside our Caduceus.

The young man came in conscious, somehow. He had that wide-eyed shock trauma panic stamped into his features.

I administered a heroic dose of morphine and he drifted off.

He had been in a firefight and was hit in his right flank. We determined that the bullet had fractured the right kidney, the right hepatic lobe, the gallbladder, and then entered his hemithorax.

“Goddamn, that’s a big round. Kalashnikov?” Collins wondered.

“No. This is a Dragunov.”

“Fuckin’ snipers.” Collins sighed.

“How far is the airlift?” I shouted over my shoulder to the hallway.

No one answered.

“He’s bleeding like a sieve. I can’t lock on with the hemostat,” I said.

“Blood pressure is 80/40, pulse is 120,” Collins called out.

“He’s slipping.”

“I’m gonna try something,” I said, “Gimme some lavage.”

“Saline?”

“No. Water so it doesn’t cloud up on us. I need to see.”

“Here. How’s that?”

“Good enough. Gimme that gauze to clear his wound.”

“Got it.”

“Now, gimme the glue.”

“The what now?”

“The glue. The tube in the big bag.”

Collins ran and threw open the large field bag that looked like something you’d use to pack for a ski trip. “What am I looking for?”

“A small white and red tube. Looks just like Gorilla Glue.”

Collins picked up a small tube and read the label.

“Cyanoacrylate?”

“That’s it. Uncap it.”

Collins dropped the cap on the floor and handed me the tube.

“One more lavage to clear the site,” I said.

I made sure the small nozzle was in the forward, open position and I started repeatedly spritzing the entire wound. I emptied almost the entire bottle and then stepped back.

“Holy shit,” said Collins. “It worked. There’s no more blood. Holy shit. You just super glued this motherfucker back to life!”

“Maybe. It’s on this kid now. He has to hang on until the medevac gets here. We just have to keep him warm.”

Later we would learn that this twenty-year-old soldier did in fact survive. After that day, throughout the entire 1st Battalion, I was known only as Glue.

48 FICTION

Detroit 2020 “We have to keep you warm, kid,” I say to the unconscious little animal in my coat as I enter the lean-to I had built up high, where the abutment and the beams meet.

I am able to keep him in my coat nice and tight so that both my hands are free to light up one of the chafing canisters I had hidden. I can build a proper small fire in a discarded, legless charcoal grill that I found somewhere and repurposed for warmth.

The blizzard is raging over the trestle but the lean-to is solid and the fire is warm. I gently pull the dog from my coat. He stirs and whimpers.

I pool my coat on the OSB board that serves as my dining room table and gently place the dog upon it, near the fire’s heat.

“This is a fancy operation table, kid. Oriented Strand Board I found in the garbage behind a lumber yard. You know, I once watched two army engineers argue over whether OSB

ART 49

stands for Oriented Strand Board or Orinated Strand Board.

They almost started slugging each other,� I say and smile, realizing I am chattering idly as I prepare myself. I also realize that I cannot remember when I last spoke aloud. Two days ago?

A week? Has it been that long?

I begin my examination.

David Reames freddie

atheist Devlin Cooper

50 POETRY

An addict told me that the idea of God probably interferes with our spiritual fitness Five years before that a Buddhist asked me what God means to me GODISRUST Rust reminds what’s fair is fair

As beauty’s kind in disrepair God is an empty apartment God is the steele and the sawdust GODISLOVE Love thus exacted from the other could not ASK for anything;

it is pure engagement without reciprocity. Yet this love cannot exist

except in the form of a demand on the part of the lover.

God is my grandfather’s pen God is a noise in the basement God is ignoring a statement God is her womanly fragrance God is excusing your lateness God is a new monthly payment God is a bus from South Station God is The Birth Of A Nation GODISASTRANGEDREAM The importance of the act that (in spite of the fact that I and that you

had Carefully ourselves decided what this cathedral ought to look like)

it Doesn’t look at all like what you and what I(of course) carefully had Decided on(but God is my cathedral God is scrap wood leaning against a new apartment complex God is the same tree over the same stream God is sixteen years God is red God is white God is blue God is one million watts of light God is being and nothingness and untitled 195 and an unknown writer God is a mask from Halifax your grandmother sent you God is semen God is a lecture hall and one of the students is very upset God is the first drip of blow when the back straightens up God is a lack of self control God is the only thing in the way between me and spirituality

who you are, whose you are

Overcome the odds with all you’ve got.

If you know who you are, you know who you’re not.

You’re a king and a priest, a son of God. Directed by the Staff, Protected by the Rod. The old self, crucified and left behind.

The new self, changed by renewing the mind.

Father, Son, Spirit, you.

Defer to them in all you do.

Walk in faith, not by sight.

Rely on God’s endless Might.

Resist the devil, control your feelings.

The Divine shift will leave you reeling.

Adam, the first and the Last.

The Latter is greater than the past.

Reconcile your inner strife.

And so too it shall be in your life.

The Word is one; prayer is two.

The 1-2 punch will always get you through.

This is your inheritance, this is your lot.

Once you know who you are, you’ll know who you are not.

POETRY 51

Joseph Rousell

52 ART

dancer

ART 53

study of jeremy mann’s figure #4 Artwork by David Reames

nurse jane Ashley Herzig

A

54 FICTION

t exactly nine o’clock, I push open the double doors to the ICU and take a deep inhale. Ah, that smell. Disinfectant, ammonia, just a hint of an iron tang, each breath fills me with power. I put a smile on my face and a bounce in my step, waving to each patient as I cross the sea of linoleum between their rooms and the nurses’ station.

There’s Jim, lying sphinxlike on his bed while Jeopardy blares in the background. He’s such a bore—hasn’t spoken since the tracheotomy. On the right is Susan, staring at the wall as usual while her mother prays a rosary. A foul odor wafts from her room. She’s torn her colostomy bag again. I pretend not to notice as I head to visit my favorite patient, Al. There’s an unfamiliar resident in his room. Dumb cunt is fumbling the IV. I rush in and tap the bimbo on one shoulder.

“Hi there sweetheart, you must be new! I’m Jane, one of the night nurses, and I can tell we are just gonna love working together.”

“Hi I’m—” she says, but I cut her off.

“I think introductions better wait for tomorrow. Dr. Keller called a residents’ meeting in the H Wing for nine. You know how he feels about punctuality!”

She turns pale as a corpse and sprints out the door, knocking my shoulder as she goes without so much as a pardon. Wonder how long it’ll take for her to realize there’s no H Wing.

I let my voice go thick and sweet as I turn my gaze to Al. “Honey, I swear you look younger every day!”

I’m lying, of course, but in these final stages of illness he’s gained a strange and saintly beauty. His flesh seems to melt away a little more every hour, as if he’s getting a head start on

I love the night shift. The ward is quiet, no intrusive family members or crying children, just the slick mechanical whir of life support machines and the steady beep of the monitors.

Occasionally a patient moans or cries out for a nurse, but such disturbances are swiftly handled. I keep an eye on the breathing corpses in my charge as I fill out charts, getting up every now and then to distribute pills or to sponge the pus from Jim’s bedsore-ridden flab.

When it’s time for my break, I stop by Sandra’s seat at the nurses station. Her peroxide hair forms a halo of poodle-permed curls in the fluorescent light, framing her caked-on bronzer and sagging jowls. As usual, her scrubs are a size too small, showing off her swollen belly and cottage-cheese hips. She gives me a scowl, but I don’t take it personally. Sandra doesn’t like anybody.

“Sandy, honey, am I glad to see you—have you heard about Chief Jenkins’ new boy toy? I swear she goes through residents faster than you can shovel stale donuts down your throat.”

Sandra glares at me but leans in anyway, eager for gossip.

“I don’t know how that woman can call herself a Christian the way she carries on. I swear last week I saw her coming out of the on-call room with two X-Ray techs, all of them adjusting their clothes,” she whispers gleefully.

“Again? That woman! The surgical staff must be an absolute

FICTION 55

decomposition, revealing the elegant lines of his ribs and pelvis.

The skin of his face is pulled taut over the underlying bones, yellow and translucent like a length of ancient parchment. I tilt my head to observe the hypnotic movement of his limbs as he twitches and shivers.

“Janey you flirt. Get over here and give a dying man his medicine.”

His voice is surprisingly steady and he attempts a wink.

I lean in to kiss his balding head, close enough to count the hairs on each mole. He smells like soup and harsh hospital soap with an undercurrent of rot. I smile at him as I lift his shaking arm and plunge the needle home, fast as a butcher skins a stag.

cesspool of venereal disease!”

“Amen. I just pray their poor patients get their vaccinations updated before those knife-happy harpies stick their filthy claws in ‘em. Irene from orthopedics told me about one unfortunate woman diagnosed with hepatitis right after Jenkins closed her up.”

“No,” I gasp in affected astonishment. “I suppose it was bound to happen eventually.” Not likely. Jenkins might be let loose with some of her better-looking residents, but she was a real tight ass in the OR. Sandra’s a jealous old hag with a knack for thinking the worst of everyone. I think that’s why she’s my favorite colleague.

“I’m going downstairs for a coffee. Get you something?”

56 FICTION

Sandy wants a Venti No-Whip Skim Triple-Mocha-ChocolateChunk Frappuccino with two shots of caramel syrup and half a cake pop sprinkled on top. She’s a hateful woman.

I stalk the labyrinthine halls of St. Dymphna’s Mercy on the hunt for caffeine. The hospital acquired its current environs after the foreclosure of a state asylum in the late sixties. I like to imagine the tormented ghosts of the electro-shocked and icepick prodded lingering in the building’s dingy corners and dusty attics. Some early twentieth century architect decided that the crenellated arches and looming towers of gothic architecture would be a soothing tonic for the disordered minds of the insane. Idiot.

At this hour the floor is nearly empty, with only a short wait for the elevator. I share my ride to the lobby with a couple of bored orderlies and a twitching patient on a gurney. The orderlies dump the twitcher in a corner of the empty waiting area and follow me to our final destination, that holy temple of caffeine and capitalism—the twenty-four hour hospital Starbucks.

I order Sandra’s abomination, my black coffee, and Al’s favorite—a bulbous muffin encrusted with sugar sores and blueberries. I like the old man—as much as I like anyone. He’s funny in a mean kind of way and sinewy tough. Maybe I’ll give

I return to the ICU just as a patient on the other end of the ward begins to seize. Perfect. Sandra doesn’t so much as twitch at the fracas, flipping through an old Cosmopolitan at her desk.

I cough and ask, “Aren’t you going to help?”

“If you care so much, you do it,” she replies, bored.

I flip her off and slip a vial from an unattended cart, surreptitiously making my way to Al’s room. He’s asleep, emanating painful, arrhythmic gasps. I decide not to waste the fentanyl. Instead, I grab an extra pillow from one of the cupboards and silence his vital monitors.

Smothering a sick old man isn’t as easy as you’d think. Al struggles in my grasp, hands flailing, his skinny calves kicking frantically under the covers. I curse my decision to save the drugs as I scramble to keep his IV stand from falling over. At least he’s not a screamer. Finally he stills, his bowels emptying in a final stinking rush over the sheets. God I hope I don’t have to deal with the mess.

I’m sitting on the floor of Al’s room adding a little something special to Sandra’s drink when I remember Al’s muffin. Fuck, knew I was forgetting something. I abhor waste only slightly more than I hate blueberry muffins, so I decide to choke this one down in the old geezer’s honor. It tastes stale and mushy, sickly sweet as it travels down my gullet, weighing in my gut. Is this grief ?

FICTION 57

him another gift in addition to the muffin. A particular sort of calm takes over me, boredom falling away as I consider how I’ll do it.

lonely fire Francisco Attié

Iriqui is a very small town, in what some like to call the middle of nowhere. But that’s not exactly true, because the middle of nowhere, by definition, cannot be a known place.

Only a lost man can be nowhere, and then the moment he realizes he’s nowhere, he has found himself and must, therefore, be somewhere.

58 FICTION

Every once in a while we get visitors. It’s usually someone who’s gotten lost driving through the caatinga, and they always thank God they have found us, even though God had nothing to do with it. They ask for water and gas and we give them water but we don’t have gas because we don’t have cars, so we offer them a tour of the cemetery, which they tend to refuse.

We try to explain that this is a very important cemetery—it’s the one that inspired Odorico Paraguaçu of Sucupira. But that tends to freak them out because they thought Odorico was just a character on a soap opera.

We tell the ones who get here in the afternoon to stay the night because there are bandits on the roads and they don’t want to risk being murdered over some jewelry. So they go to sleep and we bury them before the sun comes up. It may seem dishonest, but I promise, we’re fair-minded people. We are only following our boss’s orders. The children we tend to spare because he told us that was okay. But we can’t save them all, and burying children is the worst; they wake up before we’re through, and we’re forced to smother their screams with dirt.

This morning a brown-haired girl walked into our bakery. It was very early so most of us were still asleep. She came up to the counter and asked for coffee. She was wearing a spotless white top which nicely amplified her dark skin. Out front, she had tied her horse to the building’s square column. We asked her name and she told us she’d like to see our boss.

She exchanged a silver coin for her coffee and walked out, stopping just outside the door to gaze across the land. Through the remaining slits around her silhouette, the brown-almostgrey-almost-white desert landscape glowed stark as the light began to fade. Rain came over Iriqui and we stepped outside to open our water tanks. Lightning struck deep in the flats, bursting a tree into flames. Unbothered, the girl finished her coffee and got on her horse.

“Do you think he’ll come now?”

“Honestly, ma’am, he hasn’t been here in years.”

“I’d like to be buried in your cemetery.”

“You’ll have to come back in the afternoon, ma’am. It’s not your time yet.”

She thanked us and began to ride away. We shot her in the back before she could get too far and buried her after the rain stopped.

FICTION 59

“He doesn’t come here often, ma’am.”

60 ART

above alma

ART 61

skeleton forest

Photographs by Devlin Cooper

mama’s journal Charlie Fox

62 FICTION

When I got to January 15th, I stopped. There it was. His curt name inked in dark blue on the sickly page: Bill Stone. This cutout kitchen looked all the same: same jaundice walls, same white cabinets, paint bubbling and peeling. Aw, Mama, I thought to myself with a blue sigh. Bill Stone came over today, she wrote in her journal. First date, warm. Cold outside. January 20th, Bill came over again. I like him. He brought me paper dolls with painted faces on them, and they make me smile when I’m alone. January 25th, Bill. Bill, Bill, Bill a thousand times Bill. By February 19, she said she was in love with him. By May, he’d come n’ gone. By February of the next year, my little body came out of her screamin’ like a bloodborne banshee. And every day until then read something like:

Bills:

.15 Donuts (Redwood store) .75 Camels.

3.00 Stones Or: leaves back on trees. Hot today, pipe burst. Back aches. Sally Jenkins came on over for a stone massage. Salami on rye and nucoa.

Bills, Bills, Bills, I thought, leafing through more of her journal. Boring! It seemed all she cared about were her bills. On February 15 she wrote: Gene McCarthy died at 3:30 p.m at Schroon Lake. Well, I’m glad she could remember Gene, the mailman’s head heaped dead like a mad cow on a black slab. I’m glad she paid her bills. But lookin’ at this journal, I’m a sad sack son in a cut-out kitchen, thinkin’ of that first Bill only.

FICTION 63

Was he the one? How come she remembered her petty bills day in n’ day out, but forgot to write about Bill Stone? I couldn’t shake it. I looked into a broken mirror hangin’ on the wall and saw a flabby, black-haired man. Then, a ripple of memories, like through a magic orb: her jaundice skin, reflecting daily on the walls, big Bill, a little older with a fat stomach. Her pink, chipped, nail polish and lots of ashes. She’s waiting, waiting, watching the clock, cooking chicken and burning bread. Camel blue packages looking like little ponds amidst the white walls and table. Smoke, so much smoke, bloodshot eyes, swallowed tears. That bastard, Bill. Maybe he never returned her calls. I dared my gnarly face to heal in the broken mirror; this is the cost we pay. My forearms were stiff against the key-lime painted counter. I picked up her journal and ripped it clean in two. To her, he was just another Bill, another thing to remember or forget: chump change in the wallet of a lonely life.

this is how Oyindamola Shoola Stress Warning!

The following contains material relating to domestic violence, sexual assault, harassment, rape, abortion, and trauma, which may be triggering to some.

64 NON-FICTION

This is how to walk at night when a stranger is walking slyly behind but you do not want to offend them by running | This is how you run if you are certain they will rape you | This is why you need to lose weight to be able to run fast | This is why you should be fat so you won’t be too appealing | This is why your body size won’t really matter | This is how you hold your phone tight with your finger ready to make an emergency call if they grab your body | This is how you hold a key between your ring finger and your middle finger or your middle finger and your index finger in case someone grabs you | This is why you need to always carry pepper spray | This is how to fight if there is more than one rapist | This is how to scream, yell, cry or blow a rape whistle | This is how to stay calm if no one is coming to rescue you | This is how fighting increases your survival chances | These are the other things you will need to survive | This is how a rapist looks | This is how a rapist could also look | You can’t really tell just by looking at them but you should trust your instincts | Your rapist could look like family | Your rapist could be family | This is how to dress to not get raped | This is why you should not go out alone at night | This is why you should not go out at night at all | This is how to fight if a rapist comes into your house | This is how to fight if the rapist lives in your house | “If you were already fucking them how can they rape you?” | This is how to not get hurt | This is how not to struggle so it won’t hurt that much | This is how to consent | This is how to react | This is how to talk about rape | This is how to be silent | This is who to tell | This is who to tell if it is a family member | This is why they will call a family meeting instead of calling the police | This is how to answer the question “were

NON-FICTION 65

you raped?” or “were you raped-raped?” | It can’t be rape if you are not a virgin | This is why you should only talk to God about it | “If you believe in God, why didn’t He protect you?” | This is why it could have been part of God’s plans | This is why you should forgive | This is why your silence will give your rapist another opportunity | This is how to report your rapist if they are famous | This is how much a rape case settlement costs | This is why it will seem like you are blackmailing them | This is the politically correct way to discuss your rape on social media | #metoo | #metoomovement | #saynotorape | This is when to come out about your experience | “Have you considered learning boxing or karate just in case?” | This is how to be emotional about it | This is how not to be too emotional about it | This is how to look on the bright side | This is the bright side | This is how to abort a child | This is why you shouldn’t abort a child | This is how the child can be a blessing | This is why the child is a curse | This is why you should call yourself a survivor not a victim | This is why you should say “the rapist” instead of “my rapist” | “It is time to move on!” | This is how to write rape poems | This is how to write rape jokes | This is the best comedian with rape jokes | This is how to laugh about rape jokes | This is how to not take rape jokes too seriously | This is how to support another person who has been raped | This is how to be close enough to help but not so close that their depression rubs off on you | This is how to tell your story to comfort another victim | This is when you show them your poem | This is why you shouldn’t commit suicide | This is how to love yourself after | This is how to know if your lover has been a victim survivor | This is why they won’t let you touch them like that | This is why you need empathy because it could have been your daughter, sister, mother, or you | This is what to say to comfort them | This is how to say “I understand” and mean it | This is how to tell them to “avoid being raped the next time” without hurting their feelings | This is how to divert the conversation if it makes you feel uncomfortable | This is how to believe that there is always an ending to a bad story

66 ART

David Reames gears

landing Charlie Fox

En route to LaGuardia, chaos ensues.

Bloom in a hot-pocket, me in a hot sock. Air weary, we’re airy.

Consubstantial evidence of a de-icing system malfunction (agent orange, orange alkaline).

Consubstantial evidence that a radio host is manning this airplane. Orange hair, hair orange.

“Sorry folks, these things do happen.”

Diversion to Washington Dulles, D D. C C. Forward mail forward backslash. Stow your tables and your bombs and your seat backs tonight.

Throw away your cu— Throw away your ice!

Throw away your orange.

Organic evidence of orange contamination (agent derivative 33.1, focus 1).

Consubstantial proof of interference in prime locations of Value 1: left wing. Value 2: wing right.

“Sorry, folks, these things do happen.”

Evidence of weariness. Ice weary, ear icy.

Clouds of ice are icy conditions, calvados metal careening imperceptibly through sheet of cloudrock and ice water. stow away your abilities. Oceans of water and ice Insides racketing—plumettation.

Light ricochets. I look out the window and see freckles down there.

Lilac Lanes and Lily Whites.

Dickinsons, Dulleses, Safeties.

Dulles in 15. In 10 9 10 to 15 minutes.

Evidence of rejiggering in icy condiggering and yet two giant lights below and a wash of goldthread weaving through moorskin.

POETRY 67

Part One

Consubstantial with the mother, ornery onion earth. Cooking fields and raw cabbage.

Breaking down power lines and gulping oceans to make way for two more. Yogic Tantras could not remedy this shenpa; plane must fall to earth, must re-fuel and de-ice and de-ice while we refuel and fumes of sodium and southern ice makes someone think we are running on those small, crunchy, mini-pretzels.

Cracking of the plane’s wheels. Real time Wheeeeeling until gravity moors us to the moor. I like the sky. I hate the moor.

I am moor like IaGo. Unfurled unlessened unbeknownst unheavened— Dulles.

Part Two

68 POETRY

And He created the singular world, The stars are angels, capricorn pancakes.

And I am I and we are we are we.

Capricorn canopy, blood scone above stone that is above us and is beneath us.

Streetlights sprawling like amoebas below.

My eyes blink from shore—to shore—to darkshore. black water between see dark sea salt cold dunk.

And I think you’re amazing from up here.

This technology’s amazing from up here. a masterpiece that cannot once be stopped Or evaluated, unscienced, rejigged— but only is as is and is fore’er.

And earth is not a sin but singular, Mars the Götterdämmerung at Bayreuth; the damn neo-nazis could get there first, yes. and plant a crimson swastika in the dirt.

Mars, rise like Manhattan. And as we blink in a greeting ceremony no one will remember, ‘Cross the abyss that is where air is not and is becomes instantine, I cry.

As the turbulence shifts Initiate a wisp of a cloud of mist and a whisper of a sky and a sky with the multifarious, risk-taking stars and our eyes saying you, JESUS, you, child of the Universe. Be the risk, Be the remedy.

Be the oblong goodnight eterna quiete. The Spring Awakening; Laviniaque venit / litora, multum ille et terris iactatus et alto / vi superum, saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram,/ multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem; Remember romance when you reach the moon.

Orange light seeps through the clouds below age: orange one light lost like an earthly Drinking Gourd.

Are we already there?

No. “For the old man is awaiting to carry you to freedom if you follow the drinking gourd.”

Who would’ve thought that the earth is free?

Part Three Ah-Ah-Auto-correct Ah-Ah-Auto-synthesize Orange fades to dark blue.

Clouds disappear like bad friends

POETRY 69

And even in this cataclysmic urn I can hear you across waves and shores and moors.

We’re online and I yell to you, Jesus!

The Son’s name His One and Only’s name.

I am and I am and I am and I— I’m she and we are we and He is he.

Dang’rous turbulence ensues en our route.

Then Manahatta: our mars. I love you.

70 POETRY

as we de -send.

Dark oblong omniscient oblongininity tetrahedrous trini T. God shaking our plane Our plan Our income Rain streaks like tears on my window pain in my heart as air surrounds and rumbles around as we desend all my goodbye emails from heart we desend and escalate the scene and the white beyond compari-my Son beyond all reason beyond blinking and lightning the white air whitening the wisps of tears And our earthly boeing is the Song of Solomon with the lover enthroned and the wisps of a willow enthralled by fog and not the endless not the sun of light but the red of blue of and green of light and STREETlights light and I blink as night appears through a cloud and we’re shot to the ground and unsend all my goodbye emails from my heart and are we ?

There—squares upon our heaven and a highway and a moor. our rainy earth so demure lanes like lanes and no more metaphors.

That silver strip of lit up pavement is for us that green light means go fast. And just before we hit,—

ART 71

Eric Chen light in my dream

a city confronts its past Emily Nadal

W

72 NON-FICTION

hen remnants of New York City’s African Burial Ground resurfaced nearly thirty years ago, a slew of controversy and issues arose. No longer the small colonial city that once bolstered the title of the nation’s first capital, the powerful empire state had to come face to face with a shameful history once thought to be, quite literally, buried.

When the General Services Administration (GSA) first set out to begin construction on a new federal building in 1989, it was not necessarily a secret that the land had previously been used as a burial ground for New York’s enslaved African population. But that was centuries ago. The thought was that there probably wasn’t much left of it by then. The building was to be in Manhattan’s downtown neighborhood of Tribeca, which had seen its fair share of development throughout the decades. Though contractors believed they would find some sort of evidence of the burial ground, the real surprise came when they found hundreds of mostly intact human remains.

419 to be exact.

With each excavation, the fate of the federal building became more dire. What was intended to be a quiet, quick removal of the remains shifted into a showdown between the public and the federal government. Following the leak of information regarding the unearthing of the remains, a community of advocates began rallying behind the idea of preserving the space, and for the excavation to cease, so the graves would not be disturbed further. There was news of initial mishandling of bones at the excavation site—blatant disrespect for the people buried there. This sparked outrage in many all across the globe.

It raised the question: would a “European” cemetery get the same treatment?

NON-FICTION 73

Though outlawing slavery in 1827, thirty-four years before the start of the Civil War, the residents of 18th century New York were avid participants in the practice. Importing nearly as many enslaved Africans as Charleston, South Carolina, by the height of slavery, roughly twenty percent of New York’s population was of African descent. Though the British are not responsible for initially bringing enslaved Africans to the island (that was the Dutch), they did perpetuate it. And they can be held responsible for the existence of the African burial ground.

When the British seized Manhattan island from the Dutch in 1664, a new era began. In this era, enslaved Africans, or any person of color, was no longer allowed to be buried within the city limits. At that time, the northern boundary of the city was about where Wall Street is today, which confined the area of “New York” to about a one mile radius. Forced out of “New York” proper for their burial ceremonies, enslaved Africans made their way about a mile north to an undeveloped plot of land where they could lay their loved ones to rest.

Much of the information about the burial ground comes from second-hand analysis. There are no records of the burial ground, no historical designations, nor any other forms of identity of the people buried there. All we know is that by 1790, usage of the burial ground would begin to cease because the city was expanding. At this point, America was still a fairly new country, coming to terms with her independence while simultaneously holding a good portion of the population in captivity. New York grew bigger and development took place right on top of the burial ground. By then, there was estimated to be between 15,000 and 20,000 remains buried within a 6.6 acre stretch of land.

As New York continued to assert its dominance as a powerful city, it became easier to forget its history. Coming into a new identity of a city of hope for thousands of immigrants around the world, a place where opportunities are sought and dreams are made, New York became more closely aligned with freedom than with captivity. The many descendants of the people who built the city were often pushed out of their homes to make space

74 NON-FICTION

for a thriving upper class, a predominantly white population (re: Seneca Village, the largely African-American community displaced and destroyed in the mid 1800s to construct Central Park). An all too familiar story of displacement, and later, gentrification. New York never made a home for its large black population, despite relying on their ancestors to build it.

By 1993, after two years of excavation and countless negotiations with the GSA and other government agencies, removal of the remains at the site of the burial ground would halt. The 419 excavated remains were sent to Howard University in Washington D.C. to be extensively studied, which took about a decade. A compromise was also enacted—the federal building would still be erected, on the condition that one acre of land would be set aside for the placement of a memorial, as well as a reinterment site for the remains, which eventually returned in 2003. Additionally, the first floor of the building would house a visitor center. It would serve as an educational exhibition space centering the history of the burial ground and slavery in New York. Without the civic engagement of the public, the burial ground could have been reduced to a mere plaque.

On February 27, 2006, President George W. Bush declared the site a National Monument. It’s the first National Monument dedicated to Africans of early New York and Americans of African descent. This was a victory for many.

Finally, the city would be giving due credit to a population that had long been silenced. Managed by the National Park Service today, the burial ground is a stark reminder of our city roots. Though the African Burial Ground is not visited nearly as much as some other sites, such as the Statue of Liberty, its presence is an example of perseverance and a call to remember our past.

The symbol adopted by the site is a Sankofa, displayed on the face of the twenty-foot memorial outside and all throughout the visitor center. The Ghanian Sankofa’s translation is “look to the past to inform your future.” The symbol validates the necessary existence of the monument. In order to understand where we’re headed, we must come to terms with where we’ve been, even if looking back means facing uncomfortable truths.

ART 75

Aggie Dent lighthouse over lake geneva

glenn just then Timothy P. Fenn

C

76 FICTION

arolyn slowly scanned her eyes over the “body” of the mountaintop, known as the “Sleeping Giant,” and read it from left to right: the chiseled “head,” the shallow “chest,” the two mounds where the “hips” would be, and then the slow slope down from the “knee” to the “feet,” which cut an almost eerily perfect forty-five degree angle down the royal sky. Little brushstrokes of dark green wisped from “his” cliffs like mounds of body hair; “he” lay in a breathtaking autumnal bed, the trees sprayed around him in technicolored reds and golds.

It was warm then, midday, a good twelve degrees hotter than when she’d first arrived at the park from Union Station; she took off her parka, and laid it in a clump on the bench.

Glenn was supposed to meet her there an hour ago, but there was still no sign of him.

She checked her phone. Nothing from New York: not from Steve, nor from Harrison. A quick click into Instagram revealed nothing either. There was still time.

“Oh my god, Carolyn?” came a voice from behind her; it was familiar and yet filtered, as if run through a poorly constructed vocoder. It took a moment for her to realize the muffled effect was a result of her earbuds, which she swiped off and shoved into her pocket along with her phone.

Carolyn rose, spun around, and then saw him: Glenn, good old Glenn, Glenn from next door, Glenn from the senior prom, Glenn with his dorky, dumb, wispy, ginger hair and 1980s Thomas Dolby clear plastic synthpop glasses (which, unbeknownst to Glenn, were actually quite stylish at the moment), Glenn with the same hair and in the same MS-DOS-era programmer outfit coming towards her now with…

FICTION 77

“Is that a fucking baby?” Carolyn said.

Glenn stopped, and cradled his baby just a little bit, as if protecting it from a dart she’d thrown. Then he laughed. He’d always laughed at her jokes. Good old Glenn, good old alwaysthere-for-you Glenn; he’d laughed even when her joke had no punchline.

“You haven’t changed, Carolyn,” he said.

“Neither have you.”

They stared at each other for a good fifteen minutes, from opposite sides of the bench.

“Should we hug?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said.

They walked around the bench and hugged awkwardly, careful not to smother the baby; it was very short, almost a shoulder pat, really. When it was over, she felt like saying, “Good job, Glenn,” but realized if she did, he’d thank her sincerely.

Yuck.

“Well, it’s very nice to see you,” Glenn said. She tried to snag a compliment from him with her eyes, but he didn’t reciprocate.

He just looked down at his baby and did that thing people with babies do where they sorta rock it or whatever. It dawned on her that Glenn had probably brought the baby with him on purpose, to behave himself. This was not going to work at all.

“What now?” he said to the baby.

“How about a picture?” she asked. All she needed was a picture.

“Oh, okay,” he said, with that Good Old Glenn laugh, that goobery “a-hut-hut-hut.”

“Great,” Carolyn said. She picked up her phone and started to arrange it on the bench so that its camera framed them in front of the Sleeping Giant. When the timer was set, she took her place, at the cusp of the hill. Glenn sort of hopped over, cradling the baby over his belly, which, to Carolyn, made it look as if the baby was tucked into his belly, like a kangaroo.

When he finally stood next to her, he unleashed a smile so dopey she was tempted to smoke it.

78 FICTION

The baby rustled.

“Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Glenn,” she said.

“What?” His ginger eyebrows, their hue a perfect cadmium mixture of the trees’ leaves, shot up into concerned arcs.

Carolyn had to think for a second. Anyone who spied the photo would think Glenn was her cousin or something and that the baby was her nephew or whatever.

“Well, it’s just, um,” she said, looking down, and dug the right toe of her crinkly Adidas Samba into the dirt. “You know, I was taking this class, and, uh, you know that the Native Americans, they thought that if someone takes a photograph of you, that it, like, steals your soul.”

“Whoa,” he said. “Yeah, I think I read about that somewhere.”

“Yeah, so, you know, I think that maybe little Leonard there, maybe we should, you know.”

“Leave him on the bench?”

Good old Glenn. Good old always-getting-the-point Glenn.

She nodded.

“Of course,” he said, and with a quick look around to make sure there were no lurking baby snatchers, set the still-sleeping little Leonard on the bench, and then ran over to Carolyn.

“Let’s do this quick,” he said.

“Well that’s kinda your style, isn’t it, Glenn?” Carolyn said.

She couldn’t help herself. And good old Glenn didn’t disappoint.

He chuckled as they posed, arms around each other, their silly smiles inverted reflections of the Sleeping Giant’s hills behind them. She’d set the camera app so that multiple photos would go off in rapid succession, which allowed her to get just a little closer for each click, to the point where, eventually, her left foot rested atop his, his left knee cradled behind hers. He did not move.

“That it?” he said.

“Yup,” she said, then walked over to the bench, cradled her phone, and began flipping through the photos, trying to find the perfect one to post on Instagram. Of course, it would be that last one, with their knees a-knocking.

Two hours later, they were sitting in Glenn’s brown 1990s Nissan Lamewagon, which was parked across from Union Station.

This was after they’d dropped Leonard off with some woman at Glenn’s house. Not his wife, but a housekeeper or neighbor or babysitter or someone. Someone young but local, and lamely dressed, someone ineffectual, someone easy to ignore. Glenn had run back to the car and asked her if they should go get a drink, and she’d said yes, but only if he bought them a bottle of Old Crow from the liquor store to drink in front of the station,

FICTION 79

“Hey,” Glenn said, “you’re not gonna, like, you know.”

“What?” she asked, still tapping on the phone.

“Like, post that, are you?”

“Post it to what?” she said, just in time for Leonard to start wailing. Glenn ran over topick him up, rocked him and shushed him until the wailing died down, at which point her photo had finally posted on Instagram, there for all thirty-seven of her followers to see.

“I don’t know, like, Facebook or whatever?”

“I was thinking more like Fuckbook, Glenn.”

She didn’t smile right away, didn’t give away the punchline, because she knew—she just knew—that good old Glenn’s face was gonna flush so crimson it’d look like he was sweating blood.

Which it did. But then the baby wailed again, followed by more rocking and shushing, and even more wailing, and the wailing was so shrill it flayed her eardrums to the point where she almost screamed “JESUS H. CHRISTMAS SHUT UP,” before Glenn’s baby finally calmed the F down and shut the F up.

“Glenn,” said Carolyn.

“Yeah.”

“I was kidding, Glenn. About the Fuckbook.”

“Oh,” he said, but he didn’t laugh, or chuckle. Now she felt herself go red in the face, as she realized just how lost he was in Baby Town, when he should have been home in Carolyn Town.

“Leonard needs to nap,” Glenn said. “I should take him back home.”

80 FICTION

like they used to do in high school. It was one of those big bottles and soon they were a third of the way through it.

“How ‘bout some music?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said, and took a swig of Old Crow, looking past the brick facade and the trains and into the power station, where the setting sun was dripping through the system’s rusted, gridded electrical trusses like a cracked yolk through a strainer.

As he fiddled with the stereo, she waited for something old to come on, like “their song” or something, some memory grabber.

A mixed tape, perhaps. Good old Glenn made her a lot of mixed tapes back in the day.

Instead, it was a cd. Jazz. And not the good kind, that avantgarde bebop Harrison once played as they lit a post-fuck roach in his office. This was the kind of jazz you heard on the Weather Channel, as an ELIZA computer voice announced “your fiveday forecast.”

“The fuck is this, Glenn?”

“It’s Lena’s,” he said, and motioned for the bottle. She handed it to him.

“Fits the car, I can tell you that.”

Glenn took a multi-gulp swig, so that the bottle was now half gone, and then shook his head, which flushed red again.

“Whoa,” she said. “Slow your roll, Bluto.”

“I have to ask you something,” he said.

She grabbed the bottle, took a swig, and said, “Shoot.”

Glenn did nothing; he just sat there, doing nothing. Good old Glenn, still in Connecticut, still doing nothing.

“So, what’s the deal with your wife?” Carolyn asked.

“I, um,” he said, closing his eyes, and then—dear Lord—he started to cry. It was a big one too, one of those hunched-over cries, a good old chuck-chuck-chuck into his hands; his back curved into a low arching mound, rising and falling with each chuck. Glenn’s body, in that moment, resembled the Sleeping Giant, like it had come to life and was immediately overwhelmed.

Carolyn used to be good at these types of situations, but years in New York, with a certain type of New York Man, the

FICTION 81

Steve and Harrison type, had drained her of any impetus she might have had to comfort him. In New York, she’d been Glenn a few times and in that moment she worried she might turn into Glenn just then. She listened to him chuck-chuck-chuck into himself and it was too much; she had to filter it out, so she checked her phone, tapped into Instagram, scrolled, and saw it: a photo of Steve and Harrison, out with some other designers from their firm, lapping it up in one of those dumb retro 1980s Arcade bars in Brooklyn, childish Chuck E. Cheese grins on their dumb, stoned faces. Did they even know about each other? Were they conspiring against her or were they just that fucking stupid?

“I’m sorry,” Glenn wailed. It was the very same wail as Leonard’s.

Her phone buzzed a text from Steve: Where you at?

Carolyn looked away from all of the men, to the window, caught herself in the vehicle’s side mirror, and blinked back at herself.

“Who’s that?” she heard Glenn say, but it was too late, she already had the door open, had her right foot on the curb.

“Oh, just some people I know in the city,” she said.

“Okay,” he said, and sniffled.

There was time. No way she wanted to meet Steve at the bar, with Harrison still there macking on some young wannabe model or whatever. On that street at the farthest end of the Metro North, there was still a bit of the good old Carolyn left.

She didn’t have to be Glenn just yet.

“If I comfort you, do you promise not to cry?” she said.

Glenn nodded.

Carolyn climbed back into the car and hugged him, hard; ran her right hand over his spine softly so that he felt better. He sat up, sniffled and smiled at her dangerously, which was her cue to leave. She crawled back out of the car, shut the door, and watched him blink at her through the glass. It was unseasonably humid that day, and it only took seconds for the windows to fog up and obfuscate Glenn completely, at which point she finally stepped away to catch her train back to New York.

82 ART

red

ART 83

tall tree grove

Photographs by Devlin Cooper

patchwork grief Shabelle Paulino

Words, the thin thread of suture that closed my wounds, the stitches that held me together, that stopped me from bleeding out, closed a gash that ran deep into my heart and soul, and brought me to safety.

84 POETRY

Your smile was the yarn that I wove into a blanket. The warm protection from the cold realities of the world.

It enveloped my entirety and carried me away from my troubles. It made me feel safe and at home, loved and fearless.

Your hugs were the fortified fabric of my dress. They were tender and beautiful and called to me as a siren sings to a lost sailor.

They knitted the trust that I had in you.

And then that beast of genetic disease stole you, tearing at every seam of my soul.

Maybe if I had been more cautious, maybe if I hadn’t let you sew my entire being together, maybe if I had just bled out the pain then I would know how to approach my frayed ends.

a particular song, the positioning of the moon, a picture of you, anything could trigger my eyes to widen with sadness and tears.

Instead of finding a place in your arms, I am smashed against glass, trying to hug you. The slivers of my pain stick to the scars on my skin. It has been one year since your wings were stitched, but my pain is still the same as the day you left us.

I am now the seamstress of my own life.

POETRY 85

This pain that I carry now is perpetual and it comes and goes without indication, without warning, leaving me empty, questioning when the next wave will strike.

The waves are random:

86 ART

Samea Shanori the dancing girl

preoccupado Devlin Cooper

on the way into the city the graveyards rest sardined heaving in great waves // the streets have songs written by volume alone like a stalactite //

if i were limestone above some ancient absence of stone and saw slate dripping great towers from a reserve of water trickling down the perfect formation of little tunnels would i feel the same way as i do when i look at the manhattan skyline or would i // assume my flank in the Great Pissing War and squeeze every droplet out of myself until it was either //

// a tower like those mighty spikes that dagger the abyss or perhaps a cave in defers ////////////////////////////&NOW...AFLY???////////////////////////// bite my leg one more time

fly into my hair

again

buzz in earshot by all means

carry on

but before you incorporate me into your flight pattern i urge you to look at the ground near my feet littered with bodies

of your kin i once no

i’ve many times allowed little creatures like you to bite

me

to hurt me to orbit my mind like a whistle whipping faster closer and shorter

more blindly

do do do do not hurt me//

until you land on a reservation you do

POETRY 87

// a puddle existing only by the lack of a sun to evaporate it

rebuilding Janet Levinson

88 FICTION

“Who the hell put the spoon in the slot with the cake forks?” he fumed, holding the wooden drawer in his hands.

“Me, you idiot. I am the only other person who lives in this dump.”

Did it really matter? The lopsided drawer wouldn’t close anyways, leaving the utensils mixed with leftover crumbs and dust. Everything was off in this tiny shack, on a block with other tiny shacks, all covered with blue tarps.

The water had come rushing in so fast that most people just stayed and hoped for the best. Now we stayed hoping someone would come help us rebuild. It has been two years, and millions of arguments just like the one about the spoon.

“Why do you insist on keeping your clothes on the floor? I have to step over them just to get into bed,” hissed my husband of three years.

“The rod in the closet is gone. So where should I put them?”

My teeth were clenched, holding back an avalanche of tears.

He held his breath and his words for a moment, gearing up for another onslaught, which gave me enough time to blurt out, “What about the dishes in the sink—the bathroom sink!”

But I knew the answer. Where else could he wash them when the kitchen drain pipe had snapped off in the flood?

Was it us? Was our relationship broken like this house or did this house just break us? Where was the little tug I felt when he glanced my way or when he grabbed me from behind and planted a soft kiss on my left shoulder?

As he left the kitchen, I glanced at the back of his neck, at his hair just touching his shirt, at his broad back and strong arms, skin visibly straining under his muscles, and I felt something, a slight tug in my chest.

FICTION 89

“I know I’ve been a bitch lately.”

“Lately?” He looked over his shoulder, eyebrows raised.

“I feel alone in this disaster. I’ll try, but I need you to try too.

I want to still love you.”

I was speaking to an empty doorway. I tried to steady myself on the counter, but my legs buckled under me, as if the flood waters had returned and the force of my tears pulled me down.

Exhausted, I laid there, staring at the blue tarp until I fell asleep.

I awoke just as he appeared with the drawer in his hands, neat and tidy. All the utensils in their proper spots. His lips curled on the edges of his face; he was proud of his handy work. For a moment, it was just like when we moved in and were so excited to build our first home. I reached up and drew my arms around his neck. He softly kissed my left shoulder.

“I want to love you too,” he whispered.

90 ART

Susan White maggie’s rose

ruminating Julia Nimchuk

NON-FICTION 91

W

hen I walk down the street, I’m acutely aware of the clench in my jaw, the tension in my brow, the pout of my lip. If a stray hair falls onto my face as a man with a wandering gaze approaches, I leave it. If I’d like to lick my lips I keep them dry. I wouldn’t want him to think I was adjusting myself for his benefit.

I overthink how I walk. I instinctually land on a locked knee which causes my hips, which are ideal for bearing children, to sway back and forth with a bit too much gusto. I would not like to have children. I find myself fixing my step sometimes, landing on a soft knee, and it feels like I’m charging at something, like a bull. Not because I think I am fat, which I do, but because I might be compensating for the fact that I do not know for certain where I might be going. If I do, then I’m uncertain about how to get there. I do have an idea, a thought. It depends on my mood, my clothes, my inbox, the traffic, the news.

I look down during the day and think I could have dressed myself better. I should have worn those boots, those socks, that sweater. How stupid was I to think these went together? Why didn’t I lint roll my pants before I left? How could I not have seen the cat’s fur on my jeans?

It’s because my apartment is dark. I can’t check the weather by looking outside, but I can tell you what my neighbors look like naked. I have to open my window wide enough to stick my head out and look upward and east, to the sliver of sky I get beyond the high-rise buildings on Central Park West. It’s the only way I know for sure whether or not to bring my sunglasses.

Of course, I usually pick the wrong ones.

I found my apartment after searching for a year. “I’m

92 NON-FICTION

neurotic,” I joke to anyone who will listen, “and it’s part of my charm.” (Neurotic to me sounds less damning than controlling.

I’m unsure why. Neurotic sounds like Jerry Seinfeld and controlling sounds like my mother. Maybe that’s why.) The apartment is good for many reasons. Mostly because it’s mine.

I live alone. I own it. It’s mine. It’s close to Central Park, it has a big closet, it has a dishwasher. It is also bad for many reasons.

I have little counter space. The cabinets don’t match. There is no central air. When I lean back on the toilet, it leaks for some reason. I can hear when my neighbors flush and they can hear me having sex. Is my sex life just another performance?

Then there are things I like about my apartment that maybe I shouldn’t. I like the old floors that sometimes give me splinters.

They remind me of the floors I grew up with. I like the whistling of the radiator. I like hearing water rush through the pipes, as if the building itself is alive and breathing. I like hearing the elevator ding from my living room, so I can always greet my food delivery person expeditiously. I like that my stove is bigger than it should be. I’ve never used the fifth burner, but I feel safe having it as an option. The elevator is slow, but I can take the stairs to the second floor. I feel bad for my neighbors with old knees and little patience.

My mother tells me I should fix the water damage behind my radiator, because of mold or asbestos. It’s more urgent that I acquire more bookshelves and maybe some wallpaper. My mother tells me I should get screens for my windows so bugs won’t get in. I should get screens but only so my cat won’t escape. The bugs don’t bother me. They give my cat something to do during the day. I leave the windows slightly ajar to combat the heat from my non-adjustable radiator.

The lever in my toilet tank is rusted and broken. I’ve addressed this with a hair tie fastened to the lever to keep the hook in place, though I still dip my hands in that cold water every now and again to fish for the chain. The hair tie is fine for now.

By “for now,” I mean for the past five years and likely until I move out.

NON-FICTION 93

I tell myself I should fix my microwave, which I haven’t told my mother about. It’s a liar. It lights up, the table turns, and purrs on G sharp––every indication it functions. But the food is ice cold when the timer is up.

I empathize with my microwave.

On my commute home, I think about all these things I should do, my self-imposed chores. I need to get rid of the canvas my ex painted for me that’s thrown itself off my wall not once, but twice, that now leans against my bookshelf. There are the lightbulbs in my kitchen that need to be replaced. Soon I will be cooking in the dark.

But once I walk through the door, I don’t care anymore. I collapse on my sofa, the one that cost too much, put my feet up on an ottoman, which has been destroyed with claw marks, and tune into a show I have already seen many times.

CONTRIBUTORS

CONTRIBUTORS

Aggie Dent is a junior Sports Management (School of Professional Studies) major and Studio Art (Steinhardt) minor from Alabama. Aggie has a passion for sports, art, and seeing the two overlap. Her studies focus on motorsports and European sports. She works for Formula E, an international open-wheel all-electric racing series, performing community engagement and social media activations. She is interning at FC Bayern Munich, the German professional soccer team, with a focus on partnerships and stakeholder communications at the team’s American headquarters in New York. At NYU, Aggie serves as the president of the NYU SPS Sports Business Society where she plans professional development, community service, and networking events. Her artwork has been exhibited at the NYU StudentLink Center and at other New York art exhibits.

Ashley Herzig is a reader, writer, and chocolate eater from Long Island, NY. She is currently a student at SPS studying literature and creative writing.

Her work has been published in the Same, Five:2:One, and Right Hand Pointing. During the quarantine, she is learning to bake bread and cross stitch.

Charlie Fox is a native of Chicago, Illinois and a devout Roman Catholic.

He began writing poetry at age eight and hasn’t stopped since. He is grateful to his mentors along the way: Jesus Christ, Professors Brandon Woods and David Marshall of the Latin School of Chicago, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Gerard Manley Hopkins and many others. Charlie is also grateful to NYU, Simona Blat, and the entire Dovetail team for helping edit and publish these poems. God bless you all! (visit www.charliefox.space for more info).

David Reames is a senior in the NYUSPS Creative Writing program.

He is a professional artist who lives in Manhattan with his wife and rescue dog.

Devlin Cooper is a writing student and actor based in Brooklyn, raised in Lexington, Massachusetts. He loves forests and mountains and rivers and the ocean, soccer, coffee, dinner parties, ice cold beer, family, and Funyuns. At the University of Vermont he studied under Major Jackson. In July 2019 he made his stage debut as Billy in Cigar Lounge. His work has appeared in Goodbye Horses, Peer Paper Platform, Art With Friends 001, Too Short Productions, Advo, and he’s the coauthor of All Innocuous Like, a collection of short works, along with Kay Brugmans of Print The Future and Otherwhere. While AIR at Peer’s Open Atelier in 2016, he produced the exhibition Rearranging America. At NYUSPS, he is a Creative Writing Major. Special thanks to Sofie, Jack, Max, Connor, and RJ. Hire him.

Timothy P. Fenn is a recent graduate of the NYU SPS Humanities Program, with a concentration on creative writing. He currently resides in Astoria.

Janet Levinson is a senior at NYUSPS majoring in Art History. Born and raised in New York, she built her own insurance brokerage business while raising her three children. Upon their graduation from college, Janet decided it was time to pursue her own degree hoping her studies at NYU would lead to her next career in the art or literary world. In addition to managing her insurance business and coursework, Janet carves out time to pursue her other interests which include re-designing neglected residential real estate, painting, dancing and cooking for her husband and children.

Judy Chin is a native New Yorker and a senior undergraduate at SPS majoring in Humanities with the concentration in Creative Writing. She has published in Dovetail’s 2019 edition. ‘I Have Been Thinking About Summer’ is a personal reflection on her summer experience highlighting the struggles of womanhood, romance, and working in the city. She would like to thank her professors and fellow writers at SPS’s creative writing division for inspiring her to push beyond her comfort zone in order to create this piece. Judy hopes to pursue a career at a publishing company upon graduation. Outside of writing, she also enjoys horror films, horseback riding, and chilling at home with her dogs, Teddy and Onyx.

Julia Nimchuk is a junior at SPS from New York with a concentration in Creative Writing. She is a real estate agent with Compass and has been finding people homes and investments for over six years. In her spare time, she cooks, hikes, dabbles on piano, and sings in the shower. She was swindled into adopting a cat five years ago and is now a full-blown cat lady, sans knitting needles. This is her second time being published in Dovetail.

Oyindamola Shoola is a writer, and the Co-founder of SprinNG, a non-profit dedicated to revitalizing Nigerian literature. She has published 5 books and plans to pursue a Masters in Creative Writing at Emerson College in the fall of 2020. She will be graduating with a bachelor’s degree in social sciences, concentration - Organizational Behavior and Change in May 2020. www.shoolaoyin.com

CONTRIBUTORS

Joseph Maxwell was born and raised in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

He served four years in the United States Marine Corps, where he was stationed in Okinawa, Japan and then San Diego, California. After completing his service, he stayed in San Diego to pursue a physics degree.

It was during his junior year in college that he discovered a passion for writing. Shortly after, Joseph moved to New York City to attend NYU’s School of Professional Studies, majoring in creative writing and literature.

He is currently in his senior year, and will be graduating in May of 2020.

Shabelle Paulino is a senior at NYU SPS studying Psychology. She was born and raised in Washington Heights, a primarily Dominican community. She loves both poetry and fiction and it is not a stretch to say that she loves language.

CONTRIBUTORS

Susan White has spent much of her adult life living and working in Manhattan, where she raised a son and two Norwich Terriers with her photographer husband. She was the photography director of Vanity Fair magazine for many years, under the notable editorship of Graydon Carter, until his retirement in 2017. For the past two years she has been engaged in a variety of photography projects, the most recent being the co-curation of a Vanity Fair photo exhibit at The Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles. She has been taking classes at NYU for years, mostly in Art History.

Joseph Rousell was born and raised in New York City. He attends SPS as a Creative Writing major and is currently in his Junior Year. His interest in writing began as a hobby, writing Star Wars fanfiction. He published his first book “Casey Vice: Spitfire of Vengeance” in June 2018 and the piece he published in Dovetail that same year, “The Assassin”, is the foundation for the prologue for the upcoming sequel to his book, entitled “Casey Vice: Wrath of the Black Lion.” In addition to writing, he enjoys traveling, the electric bass, improv comedy, baking, music, and movies.

Ashley Jacques, New York City native, is a mixed media artist who interprets her surroundings as a means to provoke emotions through her vision. With an eye for intricate examples of the city and suburbia, Jacques executes a fine collision of abstract images, personalities, and their energies. She is a senior at NYU with a passion for combing her love of color to evoke an appreciation for our reality and its vitality.

Xuanyi (Eric) Chen is from Shanghai, China. He is a simple junior student studying hotel and tourism management at NYU. Traveling is his biggest passion in life and one of his dreams in the future is to travel around the world with the person he loves. During each trip, he enjoys taking pictures and recording travel videos since he believes photography and video are two main methods to record his life journey. His life motto is “work hard, play hard.”

Francisco Attié. Writer. Born in São Paulo. Has been published in Lodown Magazine and Abend(b)rot in Berlin, and in The West 4th Street Review in New York. Senior in Global Liberal Studies, with a concentration in Law, Ethics, History and Religion. Digs movies and music.

Emily Nadal is a native New Yorker and senior at NYU majoring in psychology. She enjoys writing non-fiction but sometimes dabbles in the fiction world when she dreams up weird plotlines. She is fueled by lots of coffee and funny memes. In her free time, she hardcore binges on podcasts.

Rheanna Hauman, having always lived in a busy metropolitan city, aims to create compelling global street photography, revealing both the variety of culture and the characters of street elements in urban communities. Her work represents the seemingly chaotic yet beautiful streets of New York and her images are about her passions: the people, places, and moments that touch her soul. She tends to push the boundaries of color and composition that often coincides with the personal experience she has with the subjects of her photos.

Rairis M. Morrobel Reyes’ pronouns are she/her/hers. She is a Media studies major and an Afro-Latina, first generation college student of Dominican descent. At age twelve, she arrived in the United States with her mother and sister, and a suitcase full of dreams. In pursuit of opportunities and a better education, she moved from Pennsylvania to NYC. Rairis is a writer by passion, co-founder of MR Natural hair care, and an optimistic woman who believes that we if we’re all given a chance, we can achieve our goals. She would love to one day publish a book and continue to allow this world to be more inclusive through her writing and products.

Pradnya Napate is studying political science at NYU and will be graduating with honors in May 2020. She currently lives in the tiny basement of a crumbling prewar building and is basically broke, but at least she lives in New York.

CONTRIBUTORS

Samea Shanori is from Afghanistan, but has been living in New York City since 2013. She graduated from SPS-NYU in 2016 with honors. She draws and paints often. Her work was part of an exhibition “Fragmented Futures: Afghanistan 100 Year Later” organized by the Afghan American Artists and Writers Association in 2019. She is currently working with a global media management company in New York City while pursuing her graduate degree in public policy and administration at Columbia University.

acknowledgments

Dovetail is sponsored by the NYU School of Professional Studies Division of Applied Undergraduate Studies Special thanks to Stephen Hausler & Bradford Stevens, Print and Digital Design Productions, NYU School of Professional Studies.

DAUS Creative Writing Faculty (2018-2020): Simona Blat, Mitchell Jackson, Caron Levis, Julia Strayer, Caridad Svich, Sherry Mason, Amy Fusselman.

DAUS Studio Arts Faculty (2018-2019): Diane Leon-Ferdico, Karen Marshall, Lisa Zwerling, Andrew Lichtenstein.

Clif Hubby, Clinical Associate Professor of History,for his extensive efforts in supporting and celebrating the Humanities.

Billie Gastic, Divisional Dean and Clinical Associate Professor of Social Sciences.

April Krassner, Clinical Associate Professor of Writing, for her continued support.

submissions

Dovetail accepts submissions of poetry, fiction, flash fiction, nonfiction, creative non-fiction, hybrid texts, playwriting, and visual art (photography, painting, illustration, collage, mixed media, etc.)

Submissions are open from September 15 until February 15.

Submit to: Dovetail@nyu.edu

ABOUT THE NYU SCHOOL OF PROFESSIONAL STUDIES

Established in 1934, the NYU School of Professional Studies (sps. nyu.edu) is one of NYU’s several degree-granting schools and colleges, each with a unique academic profile. The reputation of the School of Professional Studies arises from its place as the NYU home for study and applied research related to key knowledgebased industries where the New York region leads globally. This is manifest in the School’s diverse graduate, undergraduate, and Professional Pathways programs in fields such as Accounting, Finance, and Law; Applied Politics; Creative Cities and Economic Development; English-Language Learning; Fundraising and Grantmaking; Global Affairs; Health Information Management; Hospitality and Tourism Management; Human Resource Management and Development; Languages and Humanities; Management and Systems; Marketing and Marketing Analytics; Professional Writing; Project Management; Public Relations and Corporate Communication; Publishing; Real Estate, Real Estate Development, and Construction Management; Social Entrepreneurship; Sports Management, Media, and Business; and Translation.

More than 100 distinguished full-time faculty members collaborate with an exceptional cadre of practitioner/adjunct faculty members and lecturers to create vibrant professional and academic networks that annually attract nearly 5,000 degree-seeking students from around the globe. In addition, the School fulfills the recurrent professional education needs of local, national, and international economies, as evidenced by nearly 38,000 Professional Pathways enrollments in Career Advancement Courses, Diploma Programs, workshops, and seminars. The School’s community is enriched by more than 30,000 degree-holding alumni worldwide, many of whom serve as mentors, guest speakers, and advisory board members. For more information about the NYU School of Professional Studies, visit sps.nyu.edu.

FICTION Francisco Attié Timothy P. Fenn Charlie Fox Ashley Herzig Janet Levinson Joseph Maxwell Julia Nimchuk David Reames NON-FICTION Judy Chin Emily Nadal Julia Nimchuk Oyindamola Shoola POETRY Devlin Cooper Charlie Fox Shabelle Paulino Rairis M. Morrobel Reyes Joseph Rousell Susan White

ART Ashley Jacques Samea Shanori David Reames PHOTO Eric Chen Devlin Cooper Aggie Dent Rheanna Hauman Ashley Herzig Susan White