PJAS Summer 2024
Cover art by Lucy Caddel
ABOUT
PJAS, established in 2024, is an arts magazine founded by students at the University of Pennsylvania. Recognized for its unique fusion of creative and scholarly works, PJAS offers a blend of print and digital content that celebrates diverse artistic expressions from Penn and beyond. Our digital home, pjasmag.org, is where we publish an eclectic mix of visual art, poetry, creative writing, and thought-provoking articles year-round. Additionally, PJAS releases four print issues annually, each showcasing a curated selection of works that reflect the vibrant creativity of our contributors.
How to Let Go
"Piscine de Rees" b Erin Kirk
Integer auctor convallis neque s Maecenas massa sapien, tempu condimentum mauris. Sed posu
Integer auctor convallis neque s Maecenas massa sapien, tempu condimentum mauris. Sed posu
Let yourself be carried away by the current
by Luciano Ca ianello
'We often let ourselves be carried away by events out of fear, out of hesitation and many other emotions, and in this forced oblivion the same actions are replicated with a predictable cadence, almost like a repetitive and reiterated programming. Thus, hope is expressed as a presumed certainty, as a truth addressed to a perimeter of presumed security without understanding that instead there is only the certainty that nothing is certain—including that sense of protection and safety in letting oneself be carried away.'
8 "Letting Go" b Peter Mendelson
Lost Days
by Rowan Katzbaer
Lost days— Lost days!
That I could trace what the wind erased, mountain worn to its base. Precious— the stones to a heart blow open. Into the gust— Into the gale! Sheltering nowhere— Oh— the storm!
Might I remember tonight— only you.
"Untitled" b Maria LaMont
16 "Untitled" b Andre Elsten
18 "Light from the Past" b Shanti Ranjan Sanal
diminution
by Frank William Finney
Sunset streaks the old guy’s eyes. The boneyard beckons night.
The youngbloods with their maladies haunt all his daughter’s waking hours: She stays up late to hear them prate while he who trod the mountain tops shrinks shadows down the hill.
"Old Man Portrait"
"Beteen
26 "Face to Wind" b Ernesto Beckford
"J}ic" b Jenni Belotserkosk
Growing Love
b Chapman Hood Fra¦ier
Pruned in love
April blossoms urge forth pear and apple blooms delicate as lace on a bridal gown.
All desire ripens in time drops hard fruit in soft autumn grass something we’ll bring inside for winter
place in the window to sweeten till its fragrance fills the morning kitchen with wanting.
WHAT
I THOUGHT
by Laine Derr and Carolina Torres
Mi corazón está con el tuyo. En el otro seré joven otra vez. Ve a tu corazón hay fuerza –de luz, de belleza. Aprovecha eso ama mi amor.
SHE SAID
My Heart is with yours. In the other I will be young again. Go to your heart there is strength –of light, of beauty. Tap into that love my love.
"The Footsteps He Left" b Damien Hellm}th
"Cujo" by Georgia Hinaris
"Drowning in Zeds" by Georgia Hinaris
Love and a Promise b Elli
Sam}els
When he asked her for a divorce she held her stomach in until she could breathe again as if some involuntary wish could bring softness back like nothing ever happened. No fast forward or reverse could cancel the pause. Was love even love? That was all she knew about divorce.
Left Behind
by Soha Azeen Budhani
The rain pours on but here it pours in. You smile and make snow angels, I shiver in the cold. Sun’s rays tan you yet I hope for relief.
Your seasons are not mine A leaking roof Frigid air Collapsing heat. It begins again each spring Renewal they say I fear I may die in another man’s land. Let go, let go, let go I can’t be the only one left behind.
48 "Make Art to Forget Abo}t War" b Anna Rabko
"Twin Flame" by Handowin
56 "Sacred Relationships" and "Loe Heals" b Shafina Jaffer
Reposession
by Anne Mikusinski
The window opens
Its soft hiss ushering in Unseasonable air
And Fitzgerald's dark night
A companion to my Restless lack of sleep.
Outside the street is quiet
Inside my thoughts are active
Crowded and awake
An interior monologue Of loud uncertainty.
To drown it out I listen
To someone else's story
Told in a threadbare velvet voice
Its timber, rising and falling, Soothes me back to sleep.
58 "Shades of Green" b Tatana Kondrashea
"Praise
of Shadows and Trace" by Zan Wang
Nightmare City
by Ankit Raj Ojha
On my morning stroll to fetch the paper the town drunk stops me to recount one of his epic adventures where he stumbled upon an eerie realm with big-eared folk who would spread one to sleep on, draping themselves with the other.
I come home to the TV serving staple horrors, ranking tragedy as if lives could be measured on a scale of worthy to not.
At night I hunt for the drunkard’s realm in the atlas, only to discover it nowhere and everywhere, and that I, too, am a dweller in the nation of well-endowed sound sleepers.
"M}ses" b Edard Michael S}pranoic¦
"Absence:Presence" by Joseph Laurro
72 "Ghost Variations" b Ann Calandro
"Grace" by Samridhi Sharma
"The
Bea}t of Smmetr" b Gar Leschinsk
"DSC" b Etan Ben-Ami
Stars Wish Upon Me
by Laine Derr and Carolina Torres
Carrying me to the blue, Don’t shoot, she screams. Young when she had me, her first, her heart, men stood in her vision, ready to kill the light. But I am the sky, eyes that cut through flesh, I cry. I’m of an age when people speak of saintly hawks stealing dark-brown babies, but I’ve not come to lie. Gifts of gravity, she was (I was) an illusion of the fall –
Maiden, Mother, Crone
by Mindy Halleck
As a sun-kissed Maiden she clung to love Smiled at flirtatious glances
But soon learned to avoid the male gaze And to stop giving men second chances.
She loved with the slender body of youth––and birthed from her swollenness. She experienced the deep crevice between the Devil’s lies and the gospel truth in all its god-forsaken unholiness.
She tried to hold on, break the descent soften the sorrow of her own fallenness––
The agonizing plunge from a youth spent echoes with the sound of hollowness.
As a mother, she loved that child born like a pearl from her iridescent shell––birthed again and again. ––One child calm as a sunrise
The other
A wild child with curious brown eyes. ––and she somehow survived the octopus-like limbs of her children.
That slender body lost and found only to be lost again …
She was no longer what she’d once been. … And woe the betrayals of men. She learned to let go of things she once clung to To rebuff what she once allowed in Wicked things that seeded and then crawled under her skin.
As a Crone she has moved beyond her Maiden tears
Forgotten men’s lies
And has conveniently unremembered her childbearing years.
She knows that discovering a good soul is like looking for a lighthouse in the darkest of night
It’s only through the pupil in his eyes––where you see true light.
As Crone she enters a period of insightful wisdom innermost strength and spiritual renaissance. She develops an air of nonchalance.
She bears scars from the stages of her woman’s life proudly
They healed her blindness; birthed like pearls without them she couldn’t see.
The wicked things that once crawled beneath her skin
Are denied their ravening. She sheds the caterpillar husk freeing the girl for her final awakening.
Crone knows her hands are probes from the soul
Giving and searching for love––
The Maiden’s embrace––
Lover’s caress––
Mother’s touch––
Crone’s grace ...
Always seeking to give and receive love
Familiar, recognizable as the coo of a mourning dove.
Crone’s weathered hands are now those of a gardener.
Fully alive with rich soil beneath her fingertips
She heals Restores.
Aware of her life’s looming eclipse.
She plants for a tomorrow she may not see.
… casting a long shadow for those who follow
Photographs of love, fruits, veggies, a tiny house by the sea.
Long gone is the slender body of youth––
Crone embraces her wrinkles and widening hips
Afternoon tea and enthusiastically values good fish-n-chips.
She dons her crown of seashells
Each shell a treasure from her grandchildren laced together with a golden strand of love. She sits on the seawall
Dangles her bare feet
Nods to the dark-skinned Selkies who have kept her company since her one good man
The lighthouse in her darkness Died.
The Selkies bobbing, floating on gray-blue waves nod back.
Crone knows she once swam with them and soon she will again.
When her time comes, her personal apocalypse she’ll undergo the life review. She’s lived many lives Been many women … Worn the many faces of Eve. Made so many mistakes Learned to love Learned to grieve.
She’ll give herself grace saying I was once a maiden; I didn’t know what to do. Then as mother I birthed life and began again. And now as crone I see the futility of my journey and yet the beauty contained within.
I now see myself as a fat happy butterfly. Eating fish-n-chips by the sea waiting For God to remember me.
How to Let Go
Cover art by Erin Kirk