Spires Intercollegiate Arts & Literary Magazine Spring 2018 Issue by spiresmagazinewustl

SPIRES

S P R I N G

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Beautiful Monster #1 Yuwei Pan Washington University in St. Louis, â&#x20AC;&#x2122;18 Photography

SPIRES intercollegiate arts & literary magazine

Spring 2018

Copyright 2018, Spires Magazine Volume XXIII Issue II All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from Spires and the author. Critics, however, are welcome to quote brief passages by way of criticism and review. spiresmagazine@gmail.com spires.wustl.edu facebook.com/spiresintercollegiatemagazine

Table of Contents Literature 8

Aiden Baker The Poet, on Questions of Ontology and His Transformative Craft

Hannah Richter The Surgeon’s Photograph

Hannah Richter Herpetology: Final Exam

Christina Manubag Newlyweds

Claire Ma Lang Lang Plays Chopin

Tanner Boyle Dream Logic Relapse

Aiden Baker what happened at schiller’s

Grace Kavinsky Chutzpah

Nico Tomma Weather

Noah Hagan McHeritage

Aiden Baker Forecast for Chicago

Taylor Zhang Pure Lard

Elissa Mullins Little Blue

Amy Chen La Santa Trinita

Art 12-13

Hugh Hoagland Map Overlays, Florence

Katie Erlich Grand Central Market

Yuwei Pan Alternative Spaces, No. 6

Lucy Chen Smiles

Front Cover Hugh Hoagland 4:00pm, 10/15/17, Malmö, Sweden Washington University in St. Louis, ’19 Gelatin silver print Back Cover Savannah Bustillo Dipped and Skinned Husks Washington University in St. Louis, ’18 6 Layer Screenprint

Staff Editors-in-chief Anna Deen Madeline Partner Literary Editor Peter Satterthwaite Art Editor Michelle Tan Layout Editor Madeline Partner Programming Director Molly Davis Social Media Director Elissa Mullins Treasurer Madeline Partner Staff Isabelle Celentano Amy Chen Holly Baldacci

Letter from the Editors Dear Reader, Each semester at Spires, we sit down to read through your incredible submissions of prose and poetry, fiction and non-fiction. We sort through a striking range of paintings and illustrations, photographs and sculptures. Inevitably, as our small but poignant collection of work grows and that particular seasonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s issue slowly unfolds, we find that common threads emerge. These commonalities stem from the surrounding political climates and sprout from topical cultural conversations. They reflect the tastes and interests of writers, artists, and readers on our own campus, and on campuses across the nation. In this issue, we are honored to present this remarkable collection of work from our peers. We offer you narratives that negotiate the line between heritage and identity, that search amongst cultural spaces and physical places, and that examine the minutiae within human interactions. Some provide a humorous touch, a light-hearted approach to a delicate matter; others play on the edge of the surreal, questioning what it means when the humdrum of everyday life meets the fantastical. This issue offers an incredible range of artwork as students engage with perceptions, perspectives, and associations of time and place; interrogating identity through a range of playful approaches and weighty investigations. We are privileged to present this body of work from students at both Washington University and beyond, and we hope you find this collection as poignant as we do. Sincerely,

Anna Deen and Madeline Partner Editors-in-Chief

The Poet, on Questions of Ontology and His Transformative Craft sometimes i talk to my cat, he says: pearl farming is an unethical process he kneads my stomach, i think of grandma’s neck sometimes he rolls on his back, asks me to read him marge piercy, tell him about the trung sisters. last night he purred, sat on my poem, said nobody knows why we’re here or what we’re supposed to be doing okay, i said, i’ll put that down, now please, get off my page we wrestled, sheet firm beneath his paw, paper bloodied and stained from butchered half-lines, sentiments gutted and mangled, attempts at an attempt, a grasp too tight and then a rip, a tear, a violent roar: the sheet has split, another draft dies see? that’s already a better poem. so white, so young, so full of knots. i watch him eat, licking mashed lumps, offal repurposed. what’s in his head? thoughts too expansive for me to put hands on i caught him reading lacan he asked about wombs why feline reads feminine why am i so lonely an answer crawls up my tongue, tastes bitter and bangs into my teeth—why am i afraid to say the wrong thing

with one lick, the tiger’s tongue can tear to bone. those hooks can sink and pull in one clean motion make you bare so often at the window, so often looking out does he resent walls? or who put them there? he’s smarter than me, has stopped talking to me, is emailing žižek quoting heidegger, he knows i can’t keep up, has seen me bleed and puke out poems that hardly scratch the surface i gave him the study, bring him salmon, tuna steak, cream and ice water his work is important, i know, though i can’t read the words can’t sort out the way he arranges ink into symbols or how those symbols can signify things eternal and abstract, important work but all i see are small curves and lines, rivers of ink winding down course with no mouth in sight language has stopped making sense i sit at the window, the foot of his bed sometimes he talks, reads aloud i roll and perk my ears receive a song with no message meaning just sound

Aiden Baker University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, ’18

Chutzpah The car ride passes with the silence only comfortable among mishpocheh. Overdue holiday lights smudge the glass of her window as she enjoys the last bits of snow and bitter cold, rushing through the crowded and bustling city for which I began my tenuous love so many years ago. It’s taller now, and brighter, and the few remaining signs that say “shvitz” in metal letters have rusted. When her mother points one out and explains the strangeness of the old custom, she laughs and marvels at the gap between herself and me. For a moment she smells her grandmother’s gefilte fish and hears Miriam’s tambourine, but as the old building passes she returns to her milkshake and her agnosticism. My name is Esther Szponka. I was born to Shmiel and Layeh Szponka in Sokolow Podlaski. My tender parents brought me into a shtetl of little yellow forests and railroad steam. They taught me about capitalism’s corrosive breath and the way to pick sweet summertime mushrooms. They taught me to ride the train, and so when they died I listened. I left my sister and I rode to France, where I would find my boat to America. That train ride filled my memory every night before I went to sleep; I tasted the cramped, stale air but mostly I felt the thrill of leaving. That particular motion was indescribable, the feeling of forging my future. I had some chutzpah to leave like that. Now I watch my great-granddaughter, my Chanah, board her sleepy, spacious train to college. She hugs her parents goodbye and clumsily shleps her bags to her seat. As her train pushes forward, she looks out her window with bright-eyed eagerness but without the energy and the fear. She is indifferent to the motion. She buries her head in a book, her world encouraging her to learn and to know. In my world, my reading was an act of rebellion. She’s a reader, that one, but not so much of a rebel. She refuses to present herself like a good baleboste-to-be, that’s for sure, with those schlubby pants and that tangled braid, so much like mine: a quiet and polite irreverence. But she can’t imagine her train moving in any other direction, she can’t imagine a boat, and she can’t imagine a path apart from the one her parents and her peers laid for her. I know it’s inside her, the buzz deep in her stomach that drives her imagination when she begins a poem or a play on her computer; she has the itch to measure her motion in the world and leave iconoclastic stamps. Her laptop collects fragments because she knows she can always return later, and all I want is to hand her paper and a pen. She is full of temporary calls to action and charged, partial thoughts, and her world is complicit. She grabs her phone to search a phrase or figure and then forgets. Within a week she is settled into her comfortable college life. One January weekend, just as the sun reaches her trim and polished campus, my Chanah wakes up with

a familiar brightness in her eye and shpilkes that drive her out of bed. While she packs her bag her mind is elsewhere, and I see her in her clean and comfortable room imagining a less structured life. She has too much stuff, sweaters and blankets and boxes. She can’t know what it’s like to need to reimagine her home. But she swallows a teaspoon or so of that joy when she runs to the train, the lightness in her feet that pushing back against the world brings. On one hand, it amounts to bupkes, this march. She holds her quippy sign against a sea of pink and passion, cheering and mourning and hoping, but she risks nothing. She’ll return to her stuff and her conventional life; she’ll sit on her tuches with some television and let thoughts slip by unnoticed. Still, I like to see her with that fire, declaring her space in the world and asking for things my mother could not dream of for me and I could barely dream of for my Lilly. I like to see her shout. I follow her through the warm, lilting air, so unfamiliar on a January morning, to a sandwich shop where she casually exchanges five dollars for a meatless burger. A strange, tiny rebellion with those black beans, perhaps. But the ease with which she purchases the mediocre lunch, handing over crisp bills like it’s nothing, strikes me. I think back to arriving in New York with three warm coins pressed against my palm and imagine paying someone extra for avocado. No wonder she sits so comfortably, keeping her heart tucked away and contenting herself with only a moment of rebellion. When she gets back to her school, she knocks softly on the door of her bashert. She greets him with a smile and tells him all about her day as they walk together towards the park, animated by the soothing and unsettling feeling of winter warmth. It is too elegant, this winter’s day, to move through without hesitation. They pause at a bench and linger in silence. Students lounging outdoors litter the campus, sunlight soft and tempting against skin—comfortable, vulnerable, and static. A fleeting bit of an old blessing passes through her skeptical mind. And then there it is again, the gefilte. She doesn’t need to run. She doesn’t need to run from the fear and power that my sister Necke did, a power that threatened her existence and doubted her humanity. She doesn’t need to run from the boat that kept her cramped and small in order to release her somewhere broader. She doesn’t need to run from a life that expected her to stay quietly domestic and illiterate; she doesn’t need to return to her homeland to write plays and find new lovers and have new children. She needs just this one life. Maybe someday she will run like me, and find bliss in that rootless motion, or maybe she won’t need to. They stand, and with a smile and a little chutzpah, she makes her plan. Grace Kavinsky Washington University in St. Louis, ’20

Map Overlays, Florence 12

Hugh Hoagland Washington University in St. Louis, â&#x20AC;&#x2122;19 Gelatin silver prints, triptych

Weather Is there a moment in waking that you realize the new day, that particular day, holds an irrevocable shift? That maybe that single day among all the days on earth will alter the very existence, the being and stiches of a world—a permanent turning? In the morning of May once in my life I was drifting in and out of a dream as the sun rose higher and higher in the sky. The morning was muggy, a mugginess more attuned to August, when fireflies blink and sweat hugs the skin. May is supposed to be clear skies, cherry blossoms on blue, cumulus glow. Maybe I woke up to a deceptively familiar world, or maybe it was just Freak Weather. Either way, it’s easy to tell now that in this morning I woke up to an inhaled breath, a shiver in the skin, a turning corner with heaven just around the bend. The day begins with a threadbare yellow rising faintly above the horizon and seeping into glass, a haze that tastes dry in the mouth and creeps its way through the cracks between teeth, the nostrils, cavern of an ear against linen. Downstairs the clamor of porcelain as Edith prepares for the day. I dimly notice a peel of wallpaper above my bedside table curling up along the wall, exposing a layer of mousey grey, close my eyes and drift back to darkness, falling from darkness to yellow, a darkness to yellow. Edith tells me to wake up please. There’s people to see and places to be. Edith is old, white-haired, wears emerald earrings that dangle from her long ear lobes, mutters under her breath. A café, where I work only because Edith got the job for me. “What’s a girl her age looking to get a job here for?” Judy asked as I listened over the phone one night, “You know she hasn’t got any friends, and she’s not fit to go to college. It’s the best that will do for a while, do me the favor?” The women at the café are old grandmothers like Edith, cheerful and gossipy, wear lipstick on weekends and lots of gold jewelry. For the most part they leave me alone to do the dishes and make coffee, though sometimes I hear them whispering. “Won’t she get some new clothes? Has she ever had a boyfriend?” Judy’s usually sweet to me but it’s only because she’s friends with my grandmother. It’s a blue morning, windows melting into the sky which is widely gaping its mouth. “How was the party?” “How are you?” “How has the new job been?” “Will she be alright?” Coffee, steam rising in tunnels. I wipe off the counters with a rag under my hands. “How’s the coffee?” “How’s your mother?” Judy brushes past me coldly. Outside a handsome couple walks together, linking arms. The woman, wearing a red coat, briefly stands on tip toes to kiss the man. “You’re sweet,” the man says. Or was it “You’re meat”? The café is loud, begins to sound like a bee hive. I watch the couple growing smaller as they walk away. What did he say to her?

I’m washing the dishes when Wolfe sits down at a booth near the front window, outside the muggy morning has turned into a gruelingly hot muggy afternoon, one of the women takes his order. A Flirt. Wolfe wants a black coffee, no sugar no milk, a croissant with jam on the side. A cloud as white as a fossil crosses the hard blue of the sky. I bring the order on a tray. Wolfe is middle aged but has a ravaged face. He reads a newspaper. He looks at me emptily as I put the coffee on the table. He thinks for a moment, then asks me for a pen. “I like to do crossword puzzles,” he says. I give him a pen from my pocket and he looks at me for a beat longer than normal. “You look like someone.” Something soft settles inside my chest. “I’ll leave it here when I’m done,” he says. I nod. Outside the cloud is gone. Where did it go? During my break I stand in the bathroom in front of the mirror and purse my lips. I take a pen out of my apron and pretend it’s a cigarette, jutting out my chin with my lips on the ink, puff up my shoulders. “Do you have a pen?” I ask myself under fluorescent lights in the mirror. I lean into the glass. “Do you have a pen?” I am suddenly filled with a new certainty that the universe is on my side. He begins to visit every day, always with newspaper in his hand; he doesn’t say a word to me, doesn’t even look at me much. Judy or one of the other grandmothers takes his order and then I count to 72 and bring him his coffee. He comes in at 9 in the morning and leaves at 10. “I come here after I drop off my daughter at school,” I overhear him tell Judy. I watch him as I wash the dishes, as I brew the coffee and wipe the counters clean. The handsome couple passes again, but this time they are walking in the other direction. “Delicious,” the man says, in a very handsome way to the woman. The woman is wearing a red coat. Does she not have any other coats? Is red her favorite color? Does she like it because it is the color of meat? Wolfe doesn’t look at me much, maybe not at all. I think that he is nervous, which is alright with me. I watch him think of all the possible letters that could fit a four-letter word meaning “a malicious look.” He screws up his eyes and purses his lips as he counts off the alphabet in his head; the coffee cup slips from my hand and porcelain shatters against the tile floor. “Really, Judy!” one of the ladies hisses under her breath, glaring at me as I fall to my knees to pick up the shards. I look up to see if Wolfe’s noticed, but he gazes out the window instead. There’s nothing out there now, only the shadows of the couple disappearing around a corner. At my break I go into the bathroom and stand in front of the mirror, which is leering. I push my hair up at the nape of my neck and with my other hand hold my pen out in

front of me. “A malicious look?” I go through all the letters in the alphabet for a fourlettered word. I decide I can’t figure it out, and drop the pen on the floor. “Excuse me?” I ask the corner of the bathroom, waving my hand a bit with pursed lips. “Do you have a pen?” “I like to do crossword puzzles,” I say, explaining to the girl in the corner, who is wearing an apron and has a pen, and something soft glowing in her chest, “I come here after I drop off my daughter at school,” I explain. She is nodding, and looks beautiful walking towards me from her corner of the bathroom, offering me a pen with ease. She probably has never fallen down in her life before. “What’s your daughter’s name?” she is asking me, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear in a ravishing way, “It’s Lillian,” I say. “What a ravishing name!” she says in a soft exclamation that isn’t obnoxious the way you might think someone saying “ravishing” would sound. Somebody knocks on the door and I jump, dropping my hair from my hand. “One second!” I say, and am surprised at my voice which is lingering, high, breaking the hours of my silence in my ears. I turn on the faucet and rinse my hands underneath the water to make as if I’m using the bathroom. I quickly brush my hands on my apron and open the door. One of the grandmothers is standing there sternly, I think her name is Simone. “Sorry,” I say in the same horrible high voice. “Isn’t your break almost over?” she says looking at me suspiciously. “Yes, sorry,” I say, even though I still have ten minutes. “Well get to it then,” she glares at me. I walk towards the counter. While I’m walking towards the counter I realize I’ve left my pen on the floor. “Stupid!” I can’t go pick it up again. I’d get found out. “Why can’t she use the towel to dry her hands instead of wiping them all over apron like that, look Judy,” one of the ladies says. My face flushes as I start washing the dishes. I begin to have recurring dreams in the morning between the light in the cracks and Edith’s voice telling me to Wake up, please. There are things to do and people to see. In the dream I am falling into a glittering lilac sea, the water swallowing my body, the lights above clinging and fading as I sink deeper and deeper into the depths of a darkness. It’s silk caressing my skin, the air kissing me as I dive into an abyss that lovingly invites me into nothing, being split in two, tasting the last words of a stranger on my lips. I begin to follow him home during my break. Not in a malicious sort of way, just out of curiosity. His apartment is on the ground level of a brick building a couple blocks away from work. Sometimes he goes home after his coffee, or he goes to an office farther up. I don’t have enough time to see where that is, but maybe I can pretend to be sick one day. I begin visiting the house after I get off from work, in the blue evenings at dusk. I walk past the apartment and peer into the lights flooding from the dining

room, where Wolfe and his daughter eat spaghetti, meatloaf, sometimes grilled cheese sandwiches. Is their favorite color red? At first I’m nervous and walk quickly past the windows, but the two are so wrapped up in their conversations that they don’t even bother to look outside—I stand in the middle of the sidewalk and stare. “What’s your favorite color?” Wolfe is asking Lillian. “Red.” “Do you mind?” somebody says cruelly, a hurried glance, a gleam in the eye, a flickering feeling particular inside of my chest that Wolfe isn’t my friend, the stranger isn’t my friend. I walk home quickly, staring at the pavement that rushes below my feet. Edith asks me if I am alright. “Are you alright?” she says, leaning into brush the cupid’s bow above my lips, “Don’t purse your lips like that. You’ll get wrinkles.” She asks me what I want for dinner. Spaghetti I say. “You’ve never liked spaghetti!” she says in a surprised sort of way. Well I do, I tell her. I tell myself that something must be done. The universe gave me a piece of cake and now I want my fair share. I’ll tell him, I think to myself, I’ll tell him how I feel. I’ll remind him of the first day when he fell in love with me. I’ll just say hello. I’ll make him look at me. I’ll look beautiful and just say hello. So Edith tries to make me beautiful. She paints my eyes with a pale blue dust, powders my face, brushes rouge on my cheeks lightly. In the mornings I begin waking up with an unbearable disquiet in my stomach. The dreams are getting darker blue, “You look like someone,” Wolfe is always saying in the back of my mind. Edith gives me a pair of pearl earrings that hang above my shoulders. “Look how wonderful you’re becoming,” Edith says to me, smiling behind me as I look at myself in the mirror of the foyer. “Waking up every day, reading the newspaper, going to work, wearing makeup. Soon enough you’ll find some new friends and we could even have a party!” I purse my lips as she hands me a slice of toast. Nobody ever calls me honey, including Edith even though she is my grandmother and they are supposed to say nice things like that. The word sounds unfamiliar, deceitful, a dirty lie coming from Edith’s throat. I look at her harshly with a dangle of the earrings. Inside the mirror I look like a clown. I step outside into the light and walk to the train station. I throw the toast away in a trashcan at the platform. “What a waste, look at that!” somebody says. I look at my shoes. “She really could’ve been someone.” Wolfe sits in a spot of sunlight reading about a plane crash in Bremen, 47 dead, families of teens at suicide risk, and a thunderstorm due next week. I’ve read it all before work this morning. He takes a drag of his cigarette and gazes out the window to watch a pigeon on a bench. He thinks about 47 people now dead, the teenagers who will very

soon be dead, a thunderstorm that will make the world slightly moodier for a while. Wolfe purses his lips and asks for a coffee. I raise my fingers up to my eyelid and touch the blue dust above my lashes, the pearl that hangs above my shoulder. “Do you have a pen?” I ask myself. Wolfe thinks about the bright sunniness flooding the café and is reminded of a summer from his childhood, a field of clovers and a river running blue in the back of his mind. Judy gives me the order on a slip for a coffee and a cherry strudel. It’s a clear sign from the world itself I suddenly think as I look down at Cherry strudel, 1 scrawled across a pink slip. My mother used to make cherry strudel every Saturday. And also, cherries are red. I suddenly am overcome with the understanding that Wolfe is practically begging for me to come speak to him, my eyes are dusted in blue and Wolfe is begging me to come speak to him. My hands shake as I pour the coffee, the cherry strudel is warm and dusted with powdered sugar, practically smiling at me from its porcelain plate. I stare at it. Around the café there are people reading their books. Behind the counter, the telephone rings. It takes me twenty-one steps across the café to Wolfe’s world, illuminated in sunlight and a warm haze of cigarette smoke. I haven’t thought of what to say. I place the coffee in front of him, the cherry strudel. “Thank you,” Wolfe mutters as usual, not bothering to look up from his newspaper. I stand and stare. The cherry strudel continues to smile at me from its porcelain plate. I think for a moment, my stomach is nauseous. In the window the dust hangs suspended sparkling in the morning haze, warm and encouraging. “I love cherry strudel,” I say, and the moment the words slip from my lips I realize I’ve made a grave mistake, my mouth has betrayed me, I’ve been utterly deceived by the world. Wolfe looks up at me with a surprised look. My face burns an unbearably deep crimson and I suddenly feel like a clown standing there, the burning heat of the sunlight mocking me through the window. Wolfe shrugs. I pick up a plate from the table and turn away, stumbling over my feet and dropping the tray. “Really, Judy!” one of the ladies says behind the counter. “And could she be any less subtle with that eyeshadow?” A girl at the counter snickers into her hot chocolate with her mother. I look outside, and the woman in the red coat is whispering something into the man’s ear. At first I think she is saying something sweet, but then I see them both looking at me from the corners of their eyes. The blue of the sky draws a thin line against my faint reflection in the window, an exposing light settling across the counter and all the gleaming tabletops. “Did you drop this the other day?” Simone says,

appearing in front of me. She pulls out my pen from the pocket of her apron, extending her arm to hold it in front of her. The pen at the tip of my nose, like an accusing finger. “Yes,” I whisper, and say thank you. I put the pen in my pocket. She narrows her eyes. As she walks past me she mutters under her breath in a singsong voice: “You look like someone.” She knows. I go to see his daughter’s elementary school. “I’m here to see Lillian.” “Who?” The secretary asks, smiling with perfectly white teeth like mirrors. “Wolfe’s daughter?” I say. “Oh, yes. Samantha.” I tell the main office that I’m an aunt dropping by to say goodbye before my flight leaves town. They tell me to wait in the main hallway where the elementary students’ cubbies line the halls. “Samantha Radkins” one of the cubbies says. The empty hallway is long and dim in the hush of the afternoon. The nervousness of my chest sinks into my stomach as I let my fingers dip into the open pink backpack, rifling through a flutter of composition notebooks and text books. The paper lunch sack has a half-eaten apple and a note that says Have a GREAT day! with a lopsided happy smile. I pocket the note in exchange for my pen. I slip out of the dim hall into the glittering white light of pavement and sun. I walk to the train station. I throw away the lunch Edith has made me. “Bitch.” I let myself sit on the bench which I usually don’t do. I am too tired today. Inside my chest I feel the sinking feeling still. The man next to me makes a show of not looking at me. He does it for a while. I stare into the tracks watching the rats. I finger the note inside of my pocket. The man lets himself look at me once. An unnerving feeling begins to crawl across my skin. I stand up quickly and drop my bag, spilling Edith’s lipstick, a wallet, my colored index cards across the floor. The sight of it spooks me, like my insides have fallen out. I drop to my knees and begin picking up all my things. My face flushes warm and I watch my hands shaking as I struggle to peel pink and blue paper off concrete. The cap on Edith’s lipstick has come off and rolls under the bench, the man stands up and walks by, crushing Lady Rose Red under his shoe. “Hey!” I yell after him, but he doesn’t turn around. Each step he takes leaves a trail of bloody smudges on the ground. I look up in a panic, and see somebody watching me from across the platform. He’s watching me. I’m overcome by a galloping sensation in my chest that I’ve been found out. My palms are sweaty. The rush of the train reverberates against concrete, scattering pastel blue and pink across the platform, the strangers turn cruelly to give me a dirty look, an eye in the wall gives me a dirty look. “Stand clear of the closing doors please” Stand clear of the closing doors please. Stand clear of the closing doors, stand clear!

A voice reflects and multiplies inside of my head, I clutch the silver pole to regain my balance. Nothing’s happened, I tell myself. Stand clear of the closing doors please, Stand clear stand clear please. Across the train car a reflection of myself, standing mirrored smiling at me. I turn away from myself and face the glass of the window, the rickety box train travels, the hideous darkness stares. Occasionally a glistening blue light rises and fades, and in these moments I begin to discern him, the figure running alongside the train. The man behind the wall, the man that tells me to stand clear, please. There’s writing on the walls of the tunnel, and then inky black. I taste dust in my mouth and my heart sinks as I turn away. Something is wrong, “Get out of my way,” somebody says when my bag brushes against them, somebody is glaring at me. Somebody across the train car is wearing my Lady Rose Red lipstick. Everyone’s necks look especially long as they curve downwards into their phones. Everyone is playing a game. A swell in the chest and a tightness in the stomach, I wake up in my bed to a silence and think that I’m dead. In the dream I’m drowning between an ocean and a sky, my feet falling from a horizontal line sinking endlessly inside of my bedroom. Gasping for air and seeing nothing but blue, the quietest color, maybe even the color of silence. Wolfe says he wants me. In the back of my mind, a still deep sea that haunts me in my sleep, remnants of water lie silent. Wolfe says he wants me, he says he wants me, to deface me, always love me, he says he wants me. “You look like someone,” he says. I can almost taste the drip of his words slipping from his lips. “You have to go to work,” Edith says, “There are people to see and places to be.” I don’t want it anymore. She tells me to wake up please. The pearl earrings lie on the bedside table. The sun beats mercilessly through the bedroom window, swelling across the furniture and lying across my skin. The sky today is a cerulean, inhales a breath and expands itself lovingly all over my skin, licking my ears, dragging itself across my ankles in seeping hues. Wake up please, says Edith again, her white hair appearing like a puff of dandelion. I close my eyes and dream of a crowd fading into a mass of faceless columns, stretching and thinning with their rows of teeth. There are dandelions growing out of the black and white tiles of my bedroom floor. “Really Judy?” somebody says in a hiss that echoes and reflects through the gleaming darkness. Edith tells me to come eat dinner. Edith tells me to come eat breakfast. Edith tells me that there’s soup for lunch, spaghetti for dinner, a cherry strudel in the oven. “I hate cherry strudel,” I say, and bury myself back under the linen sheets. Edith brings me meals on at tray which I leave untouched on the bedside table. She takes away the pearl earrings. A clock ticks on the wall in steady marks.

The thunderstorm arrives. I am suddenly overcome by the desire to restore my dignity. The cherry strudel and the sunlight of a morning once deceived me, I fumbled. But today is dark and ominous, there are no mistakes to be made. In a reincarnation of myself I rise out of bed and put on a t-shirt. “I’ll call Judy!” Edith cheerily says, and kisses me on the cheek. I take the umbrella and walk to the train. On the platform I throw away the toast and no one says anything. The train rushes in a hummingbird hum. “Look what they’ve done to me,” somebody says, “I’m about to get evicted!” somebody says, “But look what they’ve done to me sir,” somebody says, “Damn.” The note in my pocket tells me to Have a GREAT day! Wolfe is moodily staring out the window when I get to work. I bring him his coffee and he doesn’t look at me. He’s thinking of a six-letter word for “Old sayings.” I try to think of what to say. Adages, I think in my head. The pen in his left-hand hangs suspended over the newspaper, he puckers his lips and scrunches his eyebrows. I pucker my lips and scrunch my eyebrows. He suddenly looks up at me and says with a malicious sneer, “What are you doing?” I go to the bathroom and smack myself in the glass. I run the faucet and wash my face. Somebody knocks on the door, and asks, “What are you doing?” One second, I say, and my voice sounds stupidly small. “Is that you, —? It isn’t your break, is it?” One second I say again, splashing water all over the floor and soaking my apron. Somebody knocks on the door. I dry my face and hands on the towel, like they said I should. I look at myself in the mirror. “You’re ravishing!” I say in a small voice, and it doesn’t sound beautiful. “No, she isn’t.” I open the door. One of the grandmothers stares at me. She looks down at my apron with narrow eyes. I feel sick, I tell her, and she looks like she might not believe me. I have to go, I tell her. I go to the apartment forgetting my umbrella. Outside the rain falls in sheets, the faceless crowds of dark umbrellas surging against me; “Watch it!” somebody says and I feel I’m about to break. Wolfe’s apartment door is unlocked. The front door closes with a click behind me, the silence of the empty apartment blooms in my ears. The foyer is empty besides a vase of tulips that hang heavy on their stems, wide mouths of red silently sinking towards the wooden table. I run the palm of my hand along the wallpaper as I enter the bathroom. There’s a hum in the air, a glass of water on the counter, shaving cream and a razor in the sink. I turn the fluorescent lights on above, illuminating and washing out my face in the mirror. My hair is wet from the

rain and I begin to wash it in the sink with his shampoo, my elbows knocks over the glass of water and it falls to the tiles and shatters. I begin to cry and get shampoo in my eyes. I look in the mirror. As if everything on earth has disappeared and been taken some place new and foreign and far away, I suddenly feel in my chest a horrible sick feeling that I am the only one. My eyes are red and I look small, I pucker my lips and scrunch my eyes. I brush my teeth and the mirror glares, I find Wolfe’s cologne in the medicine cabinet and wear it on my shoulders. The bedroom is bare besides a bed and stacks of books and newspapers rising from the carpet. I step across the room to close the curtains and the room falls into a monotone grey, softly draping itself along the edges of my skin. I take off my shoes and lie in the bed, under the blue duvet. I fall asleep and dream of a lochness monster. Wolfe’s fingers graze his teeth and he rolls a cherry on his tongue before biting into it and letting the blood juice slip from his lips. He grins at me widely and spits the pit into my open hand. It’s really not funny, I’m trapped and I can’t get out, I tell him, You’re right it’s not funny! He says back to me with a smile under his lips. He kisses me warmly underwater and there’s a faint glow about the water. The lochness monster peers its neck over the horizon and laughs very loudly. There are people knocking at the door, peering through the cracks and listening. Somebody is knocking at the door. Wake up please, Edith says in my head, I unravel myself from the blue duvet and open the curtains. Somebody at the door is knocking. Outside it’s evening, the streets washed and gleaming after the rain, now somebody at the door is knocking. I open the windows and crawl out into the world, a heavy stillness of warm air settling after the storm.

Nico Tomma Columbia University, ’19

Forecast for Chicago The sky became quiet, blue-grey, devoid of all clouds, and the florist didn’t like that one bit. He tightened his coat, adjusted eye-glasses, and settled himself at the counter. How nice, he thought, to spend days this way, sorting, picking, surrounded by petals and stems. Wagner crackled and coughed through stereo speakers while he worked, pruning the tulips. The bell—and November rushed in, blasting plants, ruffling petals. With the air came a woman, a mother, round in the belly. She wandered among the displays. Seeing her, swelling, full in that way, disgusted the florist. “Do you have any hyacinth?” Asked the woman. “No, none of those,” he responded. “Irises, buttercups, daffodils. We have those.” “I’m looking for hyacinth,” said the woman. “Do you have anything else?” “Here, the dahlia.” The woman looked, but she didn’t want dahlia. Asked, instead, for the tulips. “Are you sure? Hydrangeas are better.” “Just tulips, please.” He didn’t want to sell to her, not this way, and her size—it made him very nervous. Tulips, November. What was she thinking? Maybe she’ll eat them. As he wrapped, he thought, that’s it. She’ll go back to her house, her hyacinth room, snack on the tulips. The woman grabbed the wrappings and made her way out, down the block, not getting far before contractions, rumbling, rippling, slowed her. Into an alley she snuck, laid down, started to breathe. From her came dozens of gold honey bees, buzzing. Glowing, warm, around the mother. She sighed and fed them some flowers.

Aiden Baker University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, ’18

The Surgeon’s Photograph You didn’t want to see the loch ness monster but then I threatened to leave you so we went. Booked the next flight to our own matrimony, vows renewed at the altar of terminal c. Consummation in the gray static of cruising altitude; the ghosting dew of arrival on our sex. We were dirty rain on slate plateaus, in a mouth of borrowed sky I’m not blaming you for the shitty weather, only for the fact that you never used the binoculars I bought you. To you it seemed stone—the air the mountains the marble face of lake. The same argument we’ve had a thousand times: I wish you would take me on a date We came all the way here— Stop talking you’ll scare off the monster I mistook skiff for dorsal fin and went hollow; hung my eyes in the shallow water. We made something greyish that wasn’t love and stole the free shampoos. Back at the loch, the dusk churning.

Hannah Richter Washington University in St. Louis, ’20

Grand Central Market Katie Ehrlich Washington University in St. Louis, â&#x20AC;&#x2122;18 Digital Photography

Alternative Spaces, No.6 Yuwei Pan Washington University in St. Louis, â&#x20AC;&#x2122;18 Inkjet print

Newlyweds She leans against his freckled shoulder black hair dripping over his lithe bare arm cardboard bits and white peanuts spread across the hardwood his Jewish grandmother who lives in Maryland who has a separate kosher kitchen and had gifted him one hundred dollars for the visit had given him six Tiffany glasses that were made in Italy hand-painted stained with portraits of Frenchmen on horseback one blows a horn the other rounds a tree, waving his hand outlined in black flowers crawl up the sides which are everywhere on a cylindrical thing and morph into ochre trees and paisley designs her Chinese grandmother who had lived in New Jersey who had left her walnut cabinets full who did not know that her four corelle plates are now used to serve lox and brie are now in a rented kitchen cabinet (two blocks from the factory where she had sewn menâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s suits) small and durable and white blue painted trim microwave safe a film of cadet blue flowers that never chip and sit beneath a set of glasses

Christina Manubag New York University, â&#x20AC;&#x2122;19

McHeritage A McDonald’s strawberry milkshake contains no strawberries. The strawberry flavor of the shake comes from an ingredient called “artificial strawberry flavor,” which consists of the following: amyl acetate, amyl butyrate, amyl valerate, anethol, anisyl formate, benzyl acetate, and forty-one other chemicals. * When people ask me about my nationality, I usually say that I’m South African. I have the facts to back it up—while my dad himself was born in the neighboring country of Zimbabwe, almost all of his family was either born in or currently lives in South Africa. My grandparents speak just like Trevor Noah (although slightly less satirical) and my grandmother likes to cook bobotie, a traditional South African dish containing spiced meat, eggs, and fruit. A South African flag sticker adorns my dad’s bumper, and a full-sized flag hangs above my dorm bed. * The McWrap, which McDonald’s touts as a healthy menu choice, has 1,280 milligrams of sodium, more than half of what an adult should consume in an entire day. A McWrap contains 121 ingredients, including trans fats and chemicals on the FDA watch list. * I would be lying if I said that I considered myself to be a full-fledged South African. Most importantly, I’ve never visited the country. I’ve never even been to Africa. I can only name a handful of South African cities from memory: Stellenbosch, where my family is from, Cape Town, Pretoria, and Bloemfontein, the three capitals, and Johannesburg, the most populous city. That’s more than the average American, I’m sure, but paltry for a “true” South African. I could probably name more cities in Japan. Not that I’ve been there, either. * Countries that have banned McDonald’s include North Korea, Bolivia, Macedonia, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Iceland, Yemen, Bermuda, Montenegro and Kazakhstan. * I’ve always wanted to visit South Africa to explore my family roots. In my junior year of high school, my parents sought out a travel agent to plan a summer trip there. We would stay with my great-aunt and uncle in Stellenbosch. In addition to spending time with family, we would visit Cape Town, a seaside city encircled by the flat-topped Table Mountain, and take a safari in Kruger Park, a game reserve home to lions, elephants, leopards, and more. The one detail that the travel agent hadn’t revealed yet was the cost of the trip. *

The Land, Sea, and Air burger, one of the items on McDonald’s “secret menu,” consists of a Filet-o-Fish, a McChicken, and a Big Mac combined into a single sandwich. It costs $8.48, making it the most expensive sandwich at McDonald’s and only half a dollar short of a 40-piece Chicken McNuggets. * Gainesville Regional Airport to Cape Town International Airport. Change planes in Atlanta and Johannesburg. Trip duration: 21 hours, 50 minutes. Roundtrip ticket price after taxes and fees: $1,895 per passenger. Total price for a family of four: $7,580. Not refundable. Not affordable either. * In Japan, Ronald McDonald is known as “Donald McDonald” to make pronunciation easier for the Japanese. * Travelling halfway around the world is never a walk in the park, but my great-uncle did not make it any easier. “If you visit, you must come in late May or early June. It’s the most beautiful time of year,” he instructed my family, despite the fact that my school year lasted until mid-June. * One afternoon in my junior year of high school, halfway through the 3-hour bus ride home from a cross-country meet, my coach let us stop at McDonald’s for lunch. After getting our food, my teammate Patrick and I dragged our weary legs back to our seat, greasy delicacies in hand. As the bus pulled out of the parking lot, Patrick eagerly fished a strawberry milkshake out of his to-go bag. “I’ve been waiting for this all day,” he remarked, licking his lips. * The McRib is composed of “restructured meat product” —a mixture of tripe, heart, and scalded stomach—which is then mixed with salt and water to extract proteins from the muscle. The proteins bind the pork trimmings together so that it can be reshaped into a fake slab of ribs. * In eighth grade, my school hosted “International Day,” where we were to make a poster about and bring in food from the country of our heritage. I brought in bobotie, and my dad even made me a t-shirt to wear with the South African flag on it. One of my friends asked me what I liked most about South Africa. I didn’t know enough about the country to answer him. I felt like a fraud, a poser. A fake South African. *

Many students here at my university take great pride in their heritage—I’ve watched my friends show off their style at the African Fashion Show, pelted the same friends with brightly colored powder during the Hindu festival of Holi, and sampled the Hong Kong Student Association’s shrimp dumplings. Each time I attended one of those events, I couldn’t help but think: what part of my heritage am I contributing to the community? What do I even know about my heritage? Whenever someone asks about the flag in my room, I say that South Africa is my family’s country of origin. That being said, my mom’s side of the family has no connection to the country. Am I really from South Africa if I don’t know the name of its president? Am I misrepresenting myself ? * The moment the straw grazed Patrick’s lips, the bus hit a bump in the road. The jolt launched the milkshake into the back of the seat in front of us, off of which it rebounded before splattering on the floor, sending sugary pink slime two rows in either direction. As our coach headed to our seat in the back with an angry look on his face, someone in the row behind us asked, “Ew, why does the cherry look like it’s made of plastic?” * McDonald’s operates 225 restaurants in South Africa. Maybe someday I’ll get to see one.

Noah Hagan Washington University in St. Louis, ’20

Pure Lard For the office Valentine’s Day party, Gail brought in a cake. A coconut cream cake, to be specific, with a buttercream filling. In the past, Gail had brought in dump cookies and fudge brownies with M&Ms, goodies she usually clipped from Betty Crocker’s 1-2-3 book or made from mix, but nothing so high class as a coconut cream cake. A kick of nervousness (Missouri butterflies, her ma used to call them) fluttered in her stomach as she set down the tray in the breakroom. She peeled back the covering gently and backed off a few steps, for a better angle. A quick squint sent her in spirals. She knew the cake had been lightly bruised as she exited the highway. But for eighty percent of the drive up she had been so careful, stick straight in her driver’s seat with her head so far up and out her windshield she could feel the top of her powder blonde hair graze the flip down mirror. The friction left her static-y and twice when the back of her hand moved past her keys, a bit of electricity ran through her crêpe-thin skin. Small price to pay for perfection, she thought grimly. Her focus was short lived. Her mind wandered somewhere around the intersection of I-55 and Violet Avenue; there, crossing the bridge next to the takeout spot she and Ricky ordered from most nights, she found herself running through all sorts of little daydreams. In one, Ricky would squeeze the top of her shoulder like he used to on dates, in that way where she knew he really loved her even though he did pinch awful hard sometimes (small price to pay for love, she mused) when she came home to tell him that the whole office loved her coconut cream cake. And then she’d describe to him the moment where good ole Catie (“with a c, I know it’s so weird!”) would let her fork sink into the first layer and then pause in that polite bitchy way she did with the rest of Gail’s treats, only to bring it to her lips whereupon Miss Discounted Louis Vuitton would be lost in a cloud of sugar-coconut-buttercream heaven. And after, maybe Catie might remember to invite her to happy hour on Thursdays even though she’d of course have to DD sometimes, might even have to drive Catie to her home out in the West Suburbs because she had ordered too many white wine spritzers. Because NO, of course she wasn’t judging, because Life’s Hard Enough As It Is for any one high and mighty person to go about judging, and yes, of course she could walk her to the door and why, yes, at this point she might as well spend the night, and in the morning, over poached eggs and mimosas maybe they’d laugh about how it was just like they were fifteen and having a sleepover… The driver in the right lane was cutting her off. Gail swerved to let him in, then heard

a light thud in the backseat. Fuck! She screamed. Goddamn fuck shit cunt licking fuck! She started to cry, leaky sort of tears that collected the powder on her face into chalky rivulets on her chin and neck, but kept driving. Soon she was down Azalea Drive and up West Hampton Lane to the parking lot of the Philips building her company rented space from. She patted her face with extra powder, then scooped up her coconut cream cake and reassured herself that every office cake had some light bruising. But now, back upstairs, squinting at her cake, she noticed that the light bruise was a crater on the left side, enough to deform her perfect coconut cream cake into an oversized pile of pigeon shit. To keep from throwing her cake across the room, Gail grabbed the third kitchen drawer looking for a knife and a serving triangle. She stuck her left hand in blindly, grasping for something that could help her rework this catastrophe. Her hand landed on the cold metal handle of a spatula, which she flung out from the drawer and into the trash can. What office needs a spatula, Gail thought vindictively. Another dip in, and she was brandishing an old bread knife, her index finger hooked around the wooden curve, the Band-Aid on her finger smoothing on to the sanded oak. Her hand had slipped twice while shaving the coconut, and in the end she had to plaster Ricky’s niece’s Hello Kitty themed Band-Aid against the shredded flesh of her finger. With her wounded hand, she patted the cake very gently with the edge of her blade, until it reformed a more cake-like silhouette and less pigeon shit shape. She sliced the middle of the cake in a straight line, through the chiffon of icing, as the inside of the white-yellow sponge fell to the side, the color matching her own fleshy hands. At the first stroke, her first customer was in the door. 4 Ryan stepped through the doorframe in too tight jeans and a smart casual top, his blonde hair slicked back with fragrant gel. She could smell him the minute the door cracked open. “How ya doing Miss Gail? Graced us with the presence of another culinary masterpiece, huh?” He winked, his hand reaching for a cup off the shelf to pour in hot coffee. Men like Ryan used to make Gail uncomfortable when she was younger. Charm made her awkward, turned her into a red, muttering mess. This was when she entertained some possibility that they might have liked her.

“Mind if I grab the first slice? Make it a big one.” At this, Gail visibly exhaled, wordlessly sliced cake onto a leftover Superbowl print paper plate. Who cared about a little dent, when the cake tasted this good? When it was made from love? He scraped the plate from her hand and plopped his slice on the top of his mug. On his way out, without a glance back, he called out quickly, “Thanks for breakfast!” Towards lunch, Gail checked in on her cake. Half was gone—a good sign, though most of what was left looked wobbly, shaken from the day. She gave it a reassuring jiggle, then scooped up a goop of frosting, her index finger smashed up against her lips like she was brushing her teeth. The edges of her frosting had stiffened up but the inside was still creamy. As she walked out, she smoothed her hands over her hips. Her fingers got caught over the bump of her left love handle, a fold of fat and skin that had accumulated over the years. She always told Ricky that she was on a diet, promised herself over her brownies and cakes that she’d get in shape next year. She smiled dreamily. Well, she’d tell Ricky tonight that it was all worth it. She wasn’t anything special per se, no genius, but she was good at what she did. All of those hours in the kitchen, playing Elton John over her baking sheet—well, it’s just like they said, when you love something, it just works out. Maybe she could start something part-time. Nothing serious at all, just a little side business for pocket money, since Ricky’s disability check got reduced last year. She’d make oatmeal snickerdoodles and dump cookies, but the bread and butter of her business would be people clamoring for her coconut cream cake. Maybe Ricky would even help her shred the coconut in the kitchen, and then when he’d get tired he’d squeeze the tops of her shoulders and tell her that she was doing a bang up job, and she’d smile grimly and say something like well, go on! There’s still work to do, and he’d rest up on the couch and she’d plop the rest of the cakes into the oven to bake, the scent of sugar and coconut lingering in their house. That day, Gail left early, with scanned copies of the recipe stuck into her black bag, just in case anyone should ask her for it. 4 The next morning, only a fifth of the cake was left. To celebrate, she grabbed a plastic fork and a paper plate. Her knife was half in frosting when Catie walked in. “Oh God, Gail, don’t eat that store bought crap. I’m pretty sure Ryan bought it, and

he didn’t even have more than bite of it before he tossed it in the copy room’s trash. Couldn’t even make it back to the breakroom, now every time I make copies I feel like I’m on a goddamn tourist beach.” She paused for humor before continuing, “Pure lard. And the coconut is all leathery.” But Gail’s hands were working mechanically, without thought, as she finished plopping a piece of white formless goo onto her plate. Pure lard. She knew she shouldn’t have used a buttercream filling. Catie dropped her pre-made salad in the fridge, then turned to glance at Gail cursorily. “Oh and Gail? Are you working late Thursday night by chance?” Gail sputtered, bits of coconut cream landing on her pin stripe blouse. Catie looked away politely. Discretely she pushed over some brown napkins, and then picked up her discount Louis bag and stated brusquely, “Well I was just hoping since I covered your paperwork when Ricky was in the hospital that maybe you’d mind returning the favor. I’d be so grateful. I just have Happy Hour tomorrow and I know you know you could fill it out since you’re faster and all, what from having been here for ten years, hah.” She turned and held her hands palm up when she said ten, bared all of her white teeth in a plastered grin. Then, softly, “You know, Gail, I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this, but you’re really a great baker.” She paused here to look at Gail earnestly. “Really. Those fudge brownies you brought last week? The one with the little M&Ms? Ugh, I could’ve eaten five of those. Much better than this coconut crap.” Gail looked up from her plate, felt her lips twitch up in some cruel physical response. Catie beamed back, “Well, thanks for all your help, Gail-pail!” The thud of the breakroom door rang out for a full minute. Gail spit out her cake, threw the rest in the trash. On her way home, she bought five boxes of Betty Crocker Fudge Brownie Mix and two bag of M&Ms. One for her baking, and one for herself.

Taylor Zhang Washington University in St. Louis, ’19

Little Blue In another world, your hood is blue silk. You tote cheesecake and white dessert wine; a black bear tricks you into picking marigolds. He locates her house below three spruces, but is too large to fit through the door. In another, it’s brown wool, devil’s food cake, and cabernet. You are tempted by gentians; a coyote encounters her house beneath maples. He attacks, but is too small to devour; she chases him off with her cane. In yet another: Green cotton. Poundcake. Blanc de blanc. Daffodils. Sycamores. A panther takes too long stalking his prey, and misses his opportunity. But in this world— you carry red velvet cake, tucked under your red velvet cape. You carry pinot noir, and collect carnations. In this world, the wolf finds her house under the oaks, and swallows her whole.

Elissa Mullins Washington University in St. Louis, ’20

Herpetology: Final Exam You return home from a long day at the office and find that on this particular Tuesday, there is to be an earthquake of unimaginable scale, according to the balding news anchor on Channel 7 that looks like he owns at least one reptile. Evacuation is not an option—it’s rush hour and besides, you don’t think you can muster up enough willpower to drive back in the direction from which you just came; you feel that is an inconvenience. Do you: A) Panic—phone your parents in Iowa and apologize for missing the last three Thanksgivings and admit that you longed for the smell of the mulberry bush and the hymn of the creaky weathervane even though you had an app for that now and explain that pride is more expensive than a plane ticket and that it wasn’t that they hadn’t met your boyfriend because you were ashamed of them, it was because your boyfriend had left you a year ago with nothing but a few potted ferns into which you poured a healthy dose of Drano and you were ashamed of that too and tell them that you hoped they forgave you for what you said over the phone that time they asked you if you needed money when you definitely did and that you were really sorry for everything. Just really sorry. B) Take that acid in the bottom left dresser drawer that you’d been saving since that time in Cabo and hope it didn’t expire like yogurt or milk or something and put on that Beatles record and laugh as the earth splits open like a ceramic sarcophagus and ask aloud to the empty house, what do you think is hatching out of there, and the house would scoff and answer, it’s a crocodile of course can’t you tell? And you think to yourself that the Channel 7 news anchor has gone way too far with his whole scale fetish thing but there it is and its mouth is gaping wide open and you crawl inside like a womb. C) Sigh—of course it ends on a Tuesday. Pour yourself a glass of the expensive chardonnay you’ve been saving, update your grocery list, and put on that dress you’ve never worn. Trying not to spill your wine, climb up the fire escape and make it to the roof so that you can get a front row seat and notice the neighbors are drinking brandy atop the building next door who seem nice enough so you propose a toast across the open air and they smile and raise their glasses to the red dusk that looks like dawn. Hannah Richter Washington University in St. Louis, ’20

Smiles

Lucy Chen Washington University in St. Louis, â&#x20AC;&#x2122;21 Mixed media: printed photograph and ink pen

La Santa Trinita

Amy Chen Washington University in St. Louis, â&#x20AC;&#x2122;19 Copper etching and aquatint

Lang Lang Plays Chopin Fridays were the busiest night at the Connie’s Pizza on South Archer Avenue. This was true for several reasons, which Jiadong had slowly surmised over his two-year career as a delivery boy – well, delivery man, considering he was already 30. The biggest reason was that most parties and large events occurred on Friday nights, and Americans seemed to be particularly fond of serving pizza at those occasions. The exact motivation for this continued to allude Jiadong, whose tastes had not yet adapted to the idiosyncrasies of American cuisine. Tomato sauce, for example, was especially strange to him. In Shanghai, tomatoes were a rare luxury. Even when his wife could procure one, she only ever made tomato-and-scrambled-egg or sugared tomatoes, his favorite dessert. Moreover, Jiadong’s sensitive Eastern stomach could not yet handle cheese, and he was wracked with horrible stomach aches every time he had a slice of pizza. This was a depressing reality, considering he was surrounded by pizza from 11 A.M. to 11 P.M for most of the week. On this particular Friday night, there happened to be many American parties necessitating many American pizzas. Every time Jiadong slumped back into the Connie’s kitchen post-delivery, he hardly had time to sit down before his manager, Bryan, handed him another pie. Jiadong had been sitting in the back room for a total of nine whole minutes—a new record—before Bryan stuck his head in the door. “JD! Here’s another one for you, boss.” Jiadong took care not to seem too annoyed as he got out of his chair. Jiadong had once seen Bryan fire a guy who had worked at Connie’s for four whole years. American businessmen were truly of a different creed, Jiadong told his wife over the phone that night. No lecturing about morals or philosophy or personal honor. You’re fired. Simple as that. “Thanks,” Jiadong said simply, trying to muster a good-natured, toothy American grin. He was always careful with his replies, as his English was still quite bad. Saying too much might result in an unintentionally rude comment or embarrassing grammatically error. It was much better to speak less than to make a fool of oneself. He took the pizza bag, now heavy and smelling intensely of garlic and cheese, and lugged it outside to his car. He wasn’t a very strong man—his wife had teasingly called him “little rooster” when they were young—and the long hours of lifting pizzas would’ve strengthened his arms if it weren’t for the fact that he was perpetually hungry. His car was a green 1991 Toyota Camry that he had bought off a friend for next to nothing. The door to the driver’s side was jammed shut and required him to crawl over

the center console from the passenger side to get behind the wheel, and the brakes screamed bloody murder, among other annoyances. Regardless, it got the job done, and, besides, Jiadong felt pretty cool driving a car. Back home, he walked and biked everywhere, or else took the train when he had to. Cars were rendered impractical in Shanghai’s standstill traffic. But America was different—America was spacious! Plus, he took pride in telling his friends back in China that he had a car now, as though he were already rich. (He took care not to mention the state of his pitiful Toyota nor the two spectacularly failed driving tests that preceded his debut on the streets.) The car spluttered to life, and Jiadong squinted at the address printed on the delivery receipt. Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Avenue…Reading English was still a novel process, like stringing together the lyrics of a song. Now what could these letters mean? S-y-m-p-h-o-n-y… Ah, he got it: Symphony Center! Jiadong had been there only once since arriving here, to see Lang Lang play Liszt’s Concerto No. 1. His ten-dollar discounted tickets had gotten him the worst spot in the house, all the way in the top balcony where the seats are stacked steep enough to give you vertigo. It was an amazing night. The conductor, the world-renowned Riccardo Muti, was stupendous, even if he did look vaguely like a furiously writhing ant from Jiadong’s vantage point. Lang Lang himself was a tuxedoed ant bent over a gleaming black Steinway. Despite the distance, though, the sound of that concert was simply rapturous—probably even better than the recordings. If there was one thing Jiadong already loved about America, it was the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. One simply couldn’t find such world-class artistry back home. As Jiadong drove passed the Chinese wholesalers and slapshod Mexican insurance offices that lined Archer, he hummed the opening line of Piano Concerto No. 1. Liszt had such a talent for drama, Jiadong thought. Even the cramped-looking Chinatown apartments looked so much more glorious when set against the sound of swelling chords. Nowadays, he found himself regretting not having learned an instrument more and more. When he was a boy, his family had been too poor to afford lessons; instead, he had a piece of paper with the keys of a piano drawn out. He would tap on it and listen to the notes ring out in his head, sweeping piano concertos and tender nocturnes and nimble polonaises. It wasn’t too bad. Now, all he could do was hum along to his favorite symphonies. He passed Chinatown Square, crowded because of the dinner rush, with its mural of multiethnic children holding hands in front of the Statue of Liberty and its concrete statues of the zodiac animals guarding the square. Tourists took photos in front of

the red gate that arched over the street to Old Chinatown, upon which were painted four golden Chinese characters: “the world belongs to the commonwealth.” Here and there, black-haired men and women walked briskly about with grocery bags in both hands, while mothers shepherded their children through the crowds that milled about on the sidewalk. This part of town was his small chunk of home in an otherwise strange country, but Jiadong was much too lost in thought to take notice of the landscape, which he passed every day on his delivery routes. Why would the Symphony order pizza, he continued to wonder. This wasn’t a huge order—just one pizza, nothing for a large event. Perhaps the janitors needed dinner. Perhaps Riccardo Muti needed dinner. Perhaps whichever soloist was playing tonight needed dinner. Who was playing tonight, anyway? He thought very hard about the posters and billboards he had seen around town. Joshua Bell had been two weeks ago, and the Berlin Philharmonic was before that, but who was it now? Jiadong imagined handing a pepperoni pizza to Joshua Bell and felt a wave of anxiety. Interacting with white people was stressful enough as it was— they were always so loud and so friendly, even if they had just met you. Just thinking of Bryan’s big, white teeth made him quake in apprehension. Jiadong could hardly imagine standing in front of Joshua Bell without thoroughly making a fool of himself. Perhaps, if luck was on his side, he would meet a Chinese musician—Yo-Yo Ma or even Lang Lang. They wouldn’t judge him for delivering pizzas, or being Chinese, or any of those things. They would get it. With the left turn on State Street, the familiar glow of Chinatown receded, replaced by the cold, right angles of glassier condos and leafier sidewalks. Jiadong caught himself feeling more and more out of place as the Chinese text disappeared, replaced by the cryptic English alphabet. He remembered his wife teaching him how to read English in the weeks before he left. She was much better at languages than he was. “You better study,” she told him during his tutoring sessions. “This is going to be the hardest thing you’ve done in your life.” Ah, how badly he missed her! She was such a patient woman—a wife who was willing to wait a million miles away while her husband gave up a university degree from the best college in China to deliver pizzas on Friday nights. “One day, we’ll be rich,” he told her a few nights ago over the phone. “And we’ll have a two-story house with a long driveway in the front, and we’ll drive a Mercedes-Benz. We’ll live like the Americans do.” Jiadong took a right onto Roosevelt; then, a quick left onto Michigan Avenue, where the glittering face of the city opened up as though a pair of curtains had been drawn

back. Traffic was dense, and so were the crowds on the sidewalk—bodies and steel and concrete. To his right was the leafy expanses of Grant Park; to his left, a solid wall of skyscrapers, each too tall to tell where their glass exteriors ended and the sky began. (It was during times like these that Jiadong was thankful he worked for a second-rate pizza place like Connie’s. If he worked for Domino’s, with their thirty minutes or free rule, this kind of traffic would’ve given him a heart attack.) As traffic inched along, Jiadong craned his neck to see the vinyl advertisement banners hanging outside the Symphony Center. Before he could get a good look, though, he had already pulled into the Symphony Center underground parking garage. A short walk later and Jiadong was in the elegantly furnished lobby of the Symphony Center, decorated with crimson red carpet, faux-bronze siding, and plenty of velvet rope. He felt rather out of place among the elegance décor in his Connie’s Pizza t-shirt (decorated with red flames, of course) and greasy jeans. Showtime was probably not for a while, since the lobby was mostly empty aside from himself and the ushers— a crew of silver-haired old people who were employed to hand out playbills and herd audience members to their seat. “I’m here to deliver a pizza,” he told the usher standing by the door. The man looked at him weirdly, but mumbled something into his walkie-talkie. The walkie-talkie crackled in reply. While this went on, Jiadong looked at the large poster on the wall, showing today’s program. Lang Lang Plays Liszt. L-a-n-g L-a-n-g P-l-a-y-s… “Alright, follow me,” the usher said. “E-excuse me, sir. Where are we going?” “The soloist’s lounge.” Jiadong kept trying to wipe his palms on his pants while maintaining a good grip on world-renowned classical pianist Lang Lang’s large pepperoni pizzas (garlic crust, easy on the sauce). What would he be like, Jiadong wondered. Would he want to chat with a pizza man? Would it be appropriate to speak in Mandarin to him? And would he have to use the honorary ning to address him, or would he use the plain ni? Lang Lang was almost ten years younger than he was, after all. Jiadong felt dizzy. Behind it’s velvet-and-oak façade, Symphony Center looked disappointingly plain, with linoleum flooring and fluorescent lighting you could find in an office complex. Jiadong and the usher walked in silence before coming upon a wooden door near what he could only imagine to be the rear of the stage. A piece of paper taped to the door read “May 27th: Lang Lang.” “Here you are,” the usher said.

Jiadong tried to choke out a reply, but his mouth suddenly went dry. Tentatively, he pushed the door open. “Hello? Connie’s Pizza here…” The first thing he noticed about Lang Lang was how young he looked up close— practically just a kid in a suit. The second thing he noticed was that Lang Lang was currently applying makeup in front of a large vanity mirror; Jiadong had never imagined that pianists, especially male pianists, would bother with makeup before a show. “Oh, pizza’s here!” His English was almost unaccented and held the vigor of a young man. “Go ahead and put it on that table over there. Just give me a second to finish this up.” Jiadong put the pizza on the table and watched awkwardly as Lang Lang applied the last of his eyeliner. He wanted to say something, but the clumsy English words got caught on his tongue. Lang Lang finished his makeup and checked it in the mirror. “So, how much do I owe you?” he asked. Jiadong coughed. “S-seventeen dollars and twenty-five cents.” Lang Lang turned around to face Jiadong. “Oh, you’re Chinese?” he asked in Mandarin. Relief ! Jiadong was glad to be rid of English, that ugly, choppy language. “Yes, I’ve just come here two years ago from Shanghai.” “How strange! You’re the first Chinese pizza man I’ve ever seen, uncle.” “There are plenty of us working as pizza men and waitresses and the like. Jobs are hard to come by in America if you’re not a famous pianist.” Lang Lang laughed. “That’s very true. What did you do back in the mainland?” “I was an administrative clerk for the city, and before that, I was studying business at Fudan.” “Well, things must be pretty bad for a Fudan graduate to fly overseas and toil away as a pizza man.” “You have no idea. Anything looks better than staying back there.” “I’ve been on tour for two years,” Lang Lang said with a sigh. “Sometimes I forget what home is like. Di tou si gu xiang, you know? I’m homesick all the time.” “I understand,” Jiadong replied. “My wife is still waiting for me to put down roots so that she can come here, too.” “That must be very hard.” “Oh yes, it is.” “Well, let me get you your money,” Lang Lang said. “I shouldn’t be wasting your time with chit chat. How much do I owe you?” “Seventeen dollars and twenty-five cents.”

Jiadong watched as Lang Lang dug through his wallet. “Could I ask one favor of you?” “Yes, what is it?” the younger man replied. “Well, it’s just that I’m a big fan. In fact, I was at your concert several months ago, when you played Liszt’s—” “Concerto No. 1, yes? Great concert, that one. I remember it well.” “Yes, Concerto No. 1. Well, I was wondering if I could get an autograph, if it’s not too much trouble.” Lang Lang took a playbill off the coffee table. “Yes, of course. Do you have a pen?” Jiadong handed him his pizza boy pen (also decorated with the Connie’s Pizza logo and red-hot flames). Lang Lang signed the cover with a flourish, and handed it back, along with a fifty-dollar bill. “Here you go. And keep the change, too.” “I can’t possibly accept this,” Jiadong protested. “Nonsense,” Lang Lang replied good-naturedly. “It’s the least I can do to help out a fellow Chinese in America.” “I’m your elder. I’m supposed to give you the money—not the other way around.” Lang Lang patted Jiadong’s back. “Listen, uncle: it’s just a loan. You can pay me back when you get rich.” Jiadong laughed. The two men shook hands, and Jiadong wished the pianist good luck on his show. Lang Lang wrote his phone number on the playbill and offered to get Jiadong free tickets to the next show he’d play in Chicago. He jokingly warned that, the next time they saw each other, Jiadong better have enough money to pay him back. As Jiadong left the Symphony Center, he glanced at the playbill he clutched in his hand: the photo was of Lang Lang, head thrown back, eyes half-closed, hands poised above the keyboard, like a wave just about to break. In the corner, scribbled in Chinese, Lang Lang had written “Good luck, uncle. May you find home in America.” Swinging his now-empty pizza bag, Jiadong walked down Michigan Avenue with the sounds of Liszt swirling around him, wondering how he would recount this adventure to his wife. “Today, I delivered a pizza to Lang Lang…”

Claire Ma Washington University in St. Louis, ’19

Dream Logic Relapse i. deranged and disguised with the face of a dogman dottie takes her pancreas (which is dotted with spots of aleutian air sickness) and drugs me with hormones that drip off her skin ii. dream logic, dream logic why does her absence feel so caustic? in sepsis the natural response is to advance contagion and fall off the face of the earth but iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m dragged by unseen strings like the little damaged doll i am and get violently ill and fail to understand iii. wowie zowie honey thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a yowie living in our kitchen cabinets and it feasts on us at night while we sleep three feet apart iv. dottie barks with a southern drawl but Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m a dopey little damaged

babushka doll and I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t take my eyes away from that sluice of saliva I know she hides up her sleeve v. by the will of god we are lambasted by rancid llama meat which even vultures vomit profusely and which continues to taste cold-blooded despite being broiled to oblivion vi. an ornithological oracle squawked at me in yet another cryptic dream and lo and behold i am overcome the ceiling is porous and full of black mold and horseshit

Tanner Boyle Washington University in St. Louis, â&#x20AC;&#x2122;18

what happened at schiller’s

They say a sandwich started it all. Forty one million deaths, slammed between two slices of bread. What was it, then? I picture pastrami and cabbage on dark rye, real thick. Meats and greens and heirlooms all stuffed, swelling, dripping juice—tell me, Gavrilo, how did it taste? I’m sorry, maybe I’ve got this all wrong, they served you up lamb or maybe they never served you at all It’s just a story we tell, serendipitous timing at the delicatessen, dumb luck for the young Bosnian kid. Tell me, too, about summer when you were a boy, running no shoes into the river under brown water and standing, toes in the silt. What did you find? How did dusk smell when you wandered home? Did you kiss your mother goodnight? Fall asleep to sounds of Sarajevo and imagined tomorrows, tomorrows with swallows and sand and no black hands shooting into cobbled streets. When you were a boy, tucked in your bed, did you hear? The it’s nothing it’s nothing it’s nothing rattle of death

Aiden Baker University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, ’18

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Final Notes

Amy Chen Washington University in St. Louis, â&#x20AC;&#x2122;19 Monoprint with linocut