The Round Issue XXV

THE ROUND

MANAGING EDITORS:

Eleanor Peters

Julian Ansorge

Marlena Brown

ASSOCIATE EDITORS:

Samantha Ho

Alex Sayette

Riley Gramley

Justin Nourian

Carla Humphris

Nina Lidar

DESIGN EDITORS:

Izzy Roth-Dishy

Simon Yang

Isabel Tribe

SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER:

Francis Gonzalez

STAFF:

Noah Segal

Lucia Rose Dahn

Paul Hudes

Caroline Canty

Ayla Lucia Tosun

Ella Ludwig

Kate Rowberry

Vanya Noel

Yujin Kim

Nolan J. Lee

Julia Kandalepas

Yilin Xie

Ava Pellagrini

Elaina Bayard

Jack Cobey

Phoebe Grace Aseoche

Anna Smith

Rio Arengo

ON COVER: When I Feel Together I Turn On The Lights BETO BEVERIDGE

TO KEEP A HOLY SILENCE RAY

CORVI

Abutterfly flaps its wings somewhere under the Tropic of Capricorn and a year later a woman in the Big Apple, pregnant with quintuplets, has an abortion. To grasp the causal connection here would be to grasp the butterfly, which would be to have gold dust come off on your finger and thumb. Since today is eternal, mark your own brow. As if it were Ash Wednesday, mark, moreover, the brow of the mother-no-longer-to-be. For to forgive God is not to forgive the butterfly. Though you should know it is never “you” who suffers. It is God, obscure and dangerous, who is also everything—even inside looking out. “Blame,” from the Greek root to blaspheme, to speak evil, means blame the butterfly, blame the flower, blame the light that makes us see. But it’s blasphemous to blame God…So, whatever happens here, please, do not read this work aloud. Rather, take as much time as you need. Wait. Wait a bit longer. Move to another city. Then, when the time is right, under a meteor shower, make love to a stranger. Outdoors. Rush home disheveled. Place a mirror on your altar. Take an everlasting moment. Don’t say a prayer. Don’t say a word. Cantillate:

O dear lord

Lord of all things

With outstretched arms

Outstretched wings

ANTIGRAVITY

C. WALKER

In the cup – there you go, take a sip

Now you’re in the cup, but this cup

Loves disco – groove, baby, groove!

Foot shufflin, ear mufflin, drink sippin,

Take it all in, so close your eyes, then

Open to a world of antigravity

Space is what you make of it, and

I’m makin a cocktail called midnight

Just wait until the clock hammers

Pierced eyes with freed bliss, rhythm

Loose on the people, losing person

Gaining people, the whole world

Is in the palm of your eardrums

Thumpin, jammin melodies spill

Into your blood as you shake, shake,

Shake away from what was: thoughts

Pouring about you is the stench of

Now, you are at full bloom here,

Full moon, in the sky, ride it high

All night long; all night!

FAMILY REUNION

AMY ARUTT

Dora lights candles and recites prayers at the proper times, and the family says, Don’t cross her, she has a pipeline to God, which she needed in that shithole shtetel Smorgon with her husband, Lieb, the drunkard horse thief charmer with a woman in every town.

Dora serves honey cake and tea to her children and grandchildren from a shining copper samovar between graves in the Queens Montefiore Cemetery, where she was buried in 1926. The graveyard is immaculate in honor of the great Lubavitch Rebbe Menachem Schneerson, who sleeps nearby, but Dora hallowed the ground before him.

She wears a high-necked black dress, hot in the summer sun, and smells of vanilla and baby powder. She pours a steaming cup of tea for her grandson Itzhak, bullet gone from the back of his head, dirt on his pants from his farm, not the mass grave he dug in the Grodno countryside, Nazis screaming schnell, schnell.

Her grandson Chaim, Harry the plumber to his Bronx neighbors, is in his denim overalls, afraid to take a piece of cake, his blue eyes clouded in shame, swagger gone, because he sees Lorraine, the birdlike blind daughter he denied by the Irish prostitute he loved and left.

Lorraine, with snow-white skin and thick, dark hair that brushes the collar of her secondhand dress, sits quietly on a footstone to the side of the family, studying her own scuffed shoes.

But I did love you, Harry tells her. I did the best I could with the wife and kids so angry. Do you hate me for failing you? he asks. We watch, unable to eat.

I wish you made me no promises you would not keep. Exile is not a life, Lorraine says, and Dora hands her a cup of sweetened milky tea, no longer required by Torah to banish her, the bastard child who died alone of AIDS, body sent to be a cadaver at Einstein Medical College.

Chai, you’re a schmuck, you’ve always been a schmuck, says his brother Sam, adding, I need some vodka; tea is bitter and stains the teeth. Their father, Nathan der Schicker, the drunk, passes the flask to both his grown boys—like father, like son.

You walked out on me in the height of the Depression, Sam tells Nathan, and I have never forgiven you, abandoning us in the cold-water flat with the outhouse downstairs. Your brothers told me you were a bum, and I was the son of a bum, and I would be a bum just like you. I showed them, with my law degree and the big house and the boat. The only good you ever did was to get us out of Russia.

Mind your manners, Dora says. You are an unruly bunch. You make me sad that you are mine, may God forgive us all, as she cuts a large piece of cake for Linda, the pretty one, who never ate cake to keep her figure but eats it now because calories no longer count. She was dead of cancer, poo-poo, at forty-nine. She holds the cell phone she was buried with because her sister Diane missed their half-dozen calls each day. And when no one is looking, Linda, the prankster, tries to phone Tiffany’s to order gold bracelets for her beloved sister, but the phone is out of charge, and even if it worked her voice would not be heard.

TIME TRANSFORMED

ANNABEL WILLIAMS

SANIBEL

ANNA FORREST FISCHLER

FIREFLY AND REMORA

IRVING CRUEL

Moonlight firefly and remora:

the taste of pink-flush, kiwi coral laces digits flukes sway within such sunstream, and so become the north star can you follow such light with me?

ascertain how this tide grasps feet and ankle and anchor and soul: let heaven, your smile, transfigurate into ethereal seafoam and scorched flakes of light; your voice in endless giggle blessed by endless echos carried by endless tide

quite possibly, the most beautiful and unlikely demisei would dry the ocean to find you again

SPINA BIFIDA

ANGELA CHEN

Third in line, I saw myself. Smiling maimed, holding a half-dozen packs of tuna onigiri against Her chest. It was hopeless to play my reaction off. She steps out of FamilyMart & Her isles gather water. Night-water, a deft & deep desperation. In as non-invasive of a gesture as transitive verbs allow I ask if she wants to come into my home. Her 25-year-old face is taken over by a sense, the kind belonging only to winds or dogs. She drips pure smog across my foyer. I stare down at Her reflection in the floor as She turns away from me & lifts Her shirt. Blanched islands wound down Her back. A queue of calculi made their backward pilgrimages, broke out the lake surface like rescue divers, faces the color of rain. Low mineral gasps. So much need for sky. Don’t be sorry. It could’ve been worse for you. You see. We eat convenience loot together over my marble counter. I watch Her drink fish and chew water. I understand how it is like to find yourself unsalvageable but salvage anyway. There’s a Chinese superstition around duads, that they invite you into what looks like grace only to eat you alive. Like the sea, who sees past the island back into itself. Surely as the sun rises, I will give Myself comforters and brown sugar in milk. Won’t it be a good time. Listening to Me doff this disfiguration, hold it in My hands, show the world My meaning of exposed bone.

LIMINAL MINIMAL ANIMAL

JAMES CROAL JACKSON

Mortal in our exuberance when we burst we burst in ecstasy we swoon and rise to the bellowing of fresh a beast so strong yet frail the canvas for the future a marionette taut on string until eternity dead of day you are a dog on the street seeking a dumpster to sleep drink your wine young man by the opening in the grass I have become a horse of lightning / scalded earth can you say blood diamond my broken body I am a glass of water on a hot day / floating in the sea and what can you say you take me out for coffee at 11 AM and in the night take me to bed / blow my brains out then tuck me in a blanket

LOOKING GLASS ANNABEL WILLIAMS

ETHAN CUNNINGHAM

Q:Why did you do it?

A: There is a place in Spain where the old ladies of the village gather by the well to exchange local gossip. This place exists in every Spanish village in the south. It is called a marcador de posición. I made that up. I made that up because distraction is preferable to excavating a scab for the answer.

Q: Why did you do it?

A: Let me ask you this, have you ever climbed through a cave where the farther in you went the narrower it became? First, the walls at your head slope together and you duck down. Next the floor sloughs away under your feet, wet and slick so it’s hard to stay upright. When you’re far enough inside and your lamp suffocates, so do you.

Q: Why did you do it?

A: I am

carriage of calamity tessellating rattle machete nudniks an arrogant sheen of algebraic scratches upon deceptive asphalt call me belligerent glass call me chaos I tear holes in space

Q: Why did you do it?

A: As a father, the worst thing I can imagine happening to my kid is what I did to me. Does that answer your question?

Q: Why did you do it?

A: Why does anyone do it?

Q: Why did you do it?

A: In acting, one of the techniques we use is to summon some past feeling to leverage in the present moment, like dropping a fishing line and hauling to the surface that first few seconds when you learned your brother had died. I call it the “place of pain.” I call it this, because that’s where all the hurt balls up in the center of the earth beneath the crust. It’s the hidden creamy guts of an opaque chocolate truffle. So rich it will shred you.

Q: Why did you do it?

I know. I know. I’m not answering the question. I’m doing anything but answer the question. When I build my world of boxes, cardboard walls let me conveniently avoid the lantern light.

Q: Why did you do it?

Because it was my only option left. When the bridge collapses and you’re on it, that one way forward is down.

Q: Why did you do it?

Raise a rat alone and she dies.

Q: Why did you do it?

From outside the mirror, the illogicality of a rabbit’s surreal swim through time and matter falls feeblest on the senses. Inside, it clicks.

Q: Why did you do it?

No one else was going to do it for me. Next question.

UNTITLED

CHRISTOPHER VANDERPOOL

ALWAYS THE EDGE EDWARD LEE

A SILVERFISH JOHN WAGNER

Asilverfish is in my sink.

It’s not a fish, so it can’t swim

In the water spilling from the faucet

As I wash my filthy hands.

It tries to scurry up the side

Of the bowl to get up the ledge

And out. But it’s no go, the porcelain

Too slippery, and so

It hovers in the bowl, near waves

That are lapping from my soapy hands.

And it’s not silver either, more gray

Against the stark white sheen of the sink, Almost black by contrast, dirty really

When compared to the white, Bubbly soapsuds I have made.

I should wash it down the drain, Make it swim like it damn well should

With a name like that, Or make it shimmer like a quarter

Glistening in the rippling water,

Like a coin that glows in a good-luck fountain.

But of course it cannot swim, And it won’t shimmer either,

Just get sodden and bloated, and sink

Like the dirt from my hands

Now swirling down the drain.

It’s a shame what a name

Can do to an innocent insect, And to an ignorant man

Confronting life and death

In the bowl of his bathroom sink.

And so I take a piece of toilet paper, Slide it next to the silverfish

So he’ll climb on

And I can get him out, Back up on the shelf

Of the bookcase in my bedroom, Where he belongs, and he can eat, To his heart’s content, A fresh new page Of Gravity’s Rainbow.

LOVE SONG TO THE EVENING

W.B. LYON

Ihave still this fine moment while the river sleeps, holding its silent fish, and the autumn light falls slowly down the farther slopes of the wind—to watch at my open window, to watch dusk perch on the familiar dust of things around me. Too soon, I’ll see but not know, know but can’t see why this day’s given light must plunge down over the river’s edge and the wind rise so steeply up and the drowsing river waken and the circling darkness beat down to my open window—I’ll slam it shut then, and wonder if it will hold.

UNTITLED GINA LEDOR

UNTITLED GINA LEDOR

MANATEE S. ROGERS ELLIS

The new machine was lonely

It wanted to feel what it was like To float inside of something warm

The machine dreamed manatee dreams And woke up inside her first manatee

Later, the machine learned what it was like to be A feast for sandflies

Floating through our own limited range

Metaphors for humanity

What does this animal need An antidepressant, I think

I would like to say a prayer For the new machine

May you not know the suffering Of a single blade of grass

Enjoy the buoyancy

The sunshine and the good snuffling

With all these greens

May you never be hungry

May you not train for your own contingency

And an infinity of accumulative deaths

May you not fall into your new body

With a love of all things dark and descending

THIN SHOWER CURTAINS HENRY MCDONALD

Naked bodies terrify me, the contour shadows of skin, hollow like if I kissed every inch, The echo would hit me harder than pick up football.

Stone bodies, heart heavy, in the stomach, cough it up. I’ve been hit many times. In the face. Glasses. Big nerd. And when she hit me, I felt her skin more than

My own. I don’t know what I want more, the lack of or the bounty of, and when the chest

Makes its plant, I dive after it, legs splayed, big bus, big hit.

My Dad brags about the hits. I’ve never kissed him. Duh. Big hits. He says his jaw ain’t been the same. He Can’t run with me anymore. I’m too fast. Fucker grabs my

Jeans. They rip. I’m gone. Split the box in two, make it last four, or five, when it arrives, he laugh, game’s on Outside, electrician laugh from roommate, he hits my back.

I wish my skin was like clay. Mold it. I forget things. I’d like to know everyone I’ve ever met, and if she hit me

Right now, I’d crawl back to her like the first memory of my

Dad, when he beat the snare, the bass, the hi-hat, a ghost note, rattling like he’s alive, rattling like he’s here, like he Wasn’t alive when I was alive. She was crawling toward me, Sticky floor. She done this before. I’m five. Four or five. He’s up there slamming. Wildly. Rapturously. I see a drop Fall from his face. The cowbell sounds. And then it’s over, His shaggy hair flinging upwards, he me, the claps come, she gone, the walls bend like rulers. He hits the bass Once more; it talks a bit, it echoes.

THIRD WHEEL

VENKATSAI BELLALA

VIVISECTION

AFTER PHILLISTINES(1982), JEAN-MICHAL BASQUIAT ELLA VERMUT

ii°6

The weight, the heft of a dead man’s waltz as the city-tomb bleeds out in four shades of autumn how skeletal to be unladylike here with your halo and no crown with your eyelashes like sunrays your percussive vertebrae

V7

where’s your pupils, rib cage? how rain must fall on and through you as the labyrinth of sound acts a shield for comprehension his teeth red his second row of teeth red glistening like halogen streetlights off a brand-new car parked outside the neighbor’s syncopated slaughterhouse

i

the eyeless ones must desire fellow escapees of this canvas cacophony saying let’s blow this popsicle stand and hit the masquerade, the melismatic masquerade where thunderstorms swarm in 3D surround-sound ecstasy we who bargained for more than geometric harmony

SLEEPING BEAUTY GIVES A SPEECH

This one, she says, is for the duvet lovers. For anyone still using the flat sheet that’s meant to go on top of the fitted one. For those who prefer blankets over comforters! Down pillows over foam.

Her smile, when she smiles it, is perfect. Her speech, as she gives it, flows each word into the next as if practiced a thousand times into the gem-encrusted mirror at home. Pristine, she outshines the very trophy held aloft.

She’s sweating gently under the stage lights, our Aurora, still all prettied up in pink. A jumpsuit for the occasion, tiara crooked in her hair. One of those engineered messes. No one really believes she’s just run out of the house for this.

I’d like to have seen her lipstick smudged, mascara all over her cheeks. Tiara askew not artfully but as if in real danger of traveling into the audience via ricochet. As if this award she won in sleep has truly come to her

at the moment of awakening, as if she came here out of breath with adrenaline still shot all through her veins. Hey, she’d say, sweaty hands slipping all over the mic. Pardon my improv, will ya? I just woke up.

WE DYIN OUT HERE!

HENRY MCDONALD

We dyin’ out here!

I feel my mind bend with the flicker of foil: The feel of smoke.

It spins, a lighthouse in my bedroom.

Dad closing that drawer tight; Shaking to keep the secret.

I spent my time looking in the hazy sky, Unable to tell if the little sprites were stars or planes: Everything moves.

Blurry eyes in the bathroom stalls, urinals like ecstasy. Three empty chairs at graduation all in one year.

The others in storage.

Her face was covered bullet holes riddling it all Car crash, oxycontin.

Cotton is everywhere: Southern Snow.

We dyin’ out here.

My little sister destroyed:

Estrogen puddles, murky, heavy on her body.

Soft, fragile small hands adjourned in prayer.

Tuck the favorite artists away, posthumous rhythms thump the club

Grab her, and watch your brother lean his head back: no longer here.

While it folds in on itself like a pretentious film that that white guy will explain to you until

She reaches for your waist, and you let her, because it’s the most love you’ve gotten in months, and You’ve seen it a thousand times, and everything continues being everything

The lights burn a circle in your eyes, the ships crash on shores for it and near misses continue in the sky. And until the stars and planes turn to one and all the occupants burn and the private

The thought of flight consumes you, more so than her cold hands, and you think of the price of home Flyers make me kill myself by slipping my finger on the sticky lighter and the needle

Until the drop brings you back, and she’s upon you, feeling your stomach and your loose skin Pierces, the gentle pool relieving the stress from her back, her bones, which shatter nightly, the fever rising.

And when it’s all over, you’ll never know her, and it’s a relief and a heartbreaker.

When she thinks of death, she thinks of her father, and I think of my father, and I think About torn rotator cuffs, prescribed pills, and how he’ll always keep

To himself, until he takes me to Hartsfield-Jackson, and we watch planes: A place where the confusion floats off and I can look down that center and see

My little sister.

EMISSION UP THERE

BETO BEVERIDGE

PROOF BY SUPPOSITION II (LACK) OF BODY ANNE RHEE

Iwant to be in control of my body, the way migrating birds drive severe lines across the sky, the way two praying mantises fuck and then one dies, the inevitable sobriety of a black velvet pantsuit. Lately, I have been learning how to breathe. Against the lead weight of water swelling up from my throat. Against a cavernous cemetery of consonants I cannot release.

This happens only at night, and always before

Prayer. Once, I spent a month meditating on death. A stripping of a consciousness. Restoration of the mind. Wiping the slate clean. Punctuation, but the marks go outside the parentheses. My grandmother believes in reincarnation. In spiritual debt. When she calls me on the phone, her words bleed a prayer. She has aged twenty years in the last four, but only light streams from her. Three weeks from now, I may be reading a eulogy at my grandfather’s memorial service. The forty-ninth day marks a transfer of the soul between bodies. Body, a temporary repose before the next life. I, too, want repose. I want to walk with a stealth, not a fugitivity.

Perhaps this is where our paths diverge.

My enlightened grandfather and his soul, understanding that a body can be cracked, not into two walnut shell halves but bent, skin bottoming into a hole. Carrying confession.

Tell me your secrets, they are safe with me.

THE QUESTION IGNORED

EDWARD LEE

HOW TO BUILD A MATCH

JEFF VOLLMER

Need:

composite materials, wood for stick, dipped into oxidizing agent, perhaps potassium chloride, with sulfur and glass powder, then placed in a rectangular box side by side—

with other small soldiers in mass—

grave waiting.

Until heads are clapt with red phosphorous.

TASTE

JAMES CROAL JACKSON

When cooking I don’t want the end I want the KNOWLEDGE (don’t look at the bottoms of my feet, my dusty feet collecting fur) if that doesn’t whet your appetite lighten up I refuse to eat all parts of your cookie cake except the frosting

PIE EATING TROPHY

CHARLIE USADI

MALNOURISHED IN THE CHUNKY ARMS OF FRAGILE

BOBBY PARROTT

Sometimes I arrive at your house blank so you’ll try to fill me in. There are no wrong answers. Which is why when you visit

my grave I get the feeling you’re through taking me seriously. My friend takes bong hits

to appease the non-bubbling bong hits he never had a chance to take. Fallen clouds

regenerate in the trunk of my car, the funnel of each future tornado a whirling dervish I can never fully unsee. So when I try to play

“Slipping into Darkness” on my flute, I can’t set an alarm for now without failing to notice I’m still prior to my rational self. In third grade I hit the “pause” button, but missed and hit “reset,” and my teacher became the cucumber plant I always forgot to water. Now my controller’s buttons all look like angry babies so I never do that again. My teacher popsicles participles until they relent and go back to being merely verbs with funny hats. I could never make this up.

OUR PLACE (FOR ME) & PLACE (DUST AND ASHES)

CHARLIE USADI

AUBADOIR

AFTER RAYMOND CARVER RINA OLSEN

I, too, have discovered happiness in the dregs of dawn. it is not dark & God takes a 6B Staedtler to sketch the outlines of each corner of my room & the door & the nightstand & the desk & the criss-cross diamond pattern of my bedspread. to let the sun fill them in with Technicolor later. the raw taste of sleep patches my throat in a wool quilt and to

wash it down i suckle at the sky’s peach breast as a calf must do. moonlight streams down my chin as i gulp to the rhythm of the air conditioning. reborn

again, in this little pocket of the morning right before the cicadas begin to whine. newspaper boys have gone extinct now. but to let the blue light of a phone screen flare in this pocket

is sacrilege. i wipe my mouth, & breathe. with every stitch of color sewn onto the spaces between the window blinds, another dream spills out my ear onto my pillow, just a wet stain before evaporating. in this pocket, not one thing has yet happened and i can simply lie in the warm darkness, lie to myself that this will last long enough. i know i could reach over and switch on the light and read. or let my tiptoes

kiss the hallway silence when i go to relieve the dull pressure in my bladder. but i don’t. i remain a jumble of flesh & cold sweat in the damp sheets, watching some spot on the corner, staying silent, still.

PROOF BY SUPPOSITION III

(“)LANGUAGE(“) ANNE RHEE

Ihave attained cryptic, the kind of subtle language I have always longed to write in. Suppose I can swim and no longer choke on my words. Suppose I am no longer voracious, no longer running at breakneck speed. In a perfect universe, he and I would have been dating already, and in a perfect universe, I would still be a ballet dancer, or an astrophysicist hopeful, and writing wouldn’t be a spiritual exercise, just scribbles on the side. In a perfect universe, my words would lift me, not weigh me down. In a perfect universe, he would still be alive. In a perfect universe, I am not hesitant but sure, riddled with musings of solidity. In that universe, writing is not a razor that I use to scrab at my heart. In that universe, I am not clinging, or rather, I don’t need to cling. To scratch at the drift: of stars, of smiles, of fleeting goodbyes. This is a tearing, not a stitching.

CROTON

ANNA FORREST FISCHLER

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Amy Arutt has been published in Green Silk Journal, Steam Ticket, and Voices de la Luna. She teaches and is a student at The Writers Studio in New York. She has taken writing workshops with Joyce Maynard, Phillip Lopate, Vivian Gornick, and Melissa Febos. She has played viola and cello with the Symphonic Pops of Long Island. She depends upon her faithful cats for company while writing.

Venkatsai Bellala is a senior at Brown studying Biomedical Engineering. He likes to take photos with his film camera, provided the weather is somewhat habitable.

Beto Beveridge is a junior at Brown University interested in film photography and studying English and History. Beto is from Dallas, Texas, and currently focuses on non-objective photography.

Angela Chen is a Shanghai-born writer presently in Providence, studying Immunobiology and Comparative Literature (Chinese/English). She thinks often of kumquats, cartilage, and her most beloved ones in this world.

Ray Corvi’s work was published or is forthcoming in Brushfire, Chaffin Journal, DASH Literary Journal, Evening Street Review, FRiGG Magazine, Neologism Poetry Journal, OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters, The Penmen Review, Poetry Super Highway, Sage Cigarettes Magazine, The Seattle Star, Sublunary Review, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Triggerfish Critical Review, Whimperbang, and Whistling Shade. He has worked a number of odd jobs, including driving a yellow cab in New York City. Ray has received a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy.

Irving Cruel is a Brown University first-year planning on concentrating in biology. Unfortunately, his previous publications are only to Google documents, but he has been casually writing poetry and short stories for about a year. Irving is Dominican, though you probably wouldn’t know it at first sight, and his favorite things on Earth are probably the warm sun and rain.

Ethan Cunningham’s short works appear in print, onscreen, and on the stage. Most recently, his publications can be found in Beatnik Cowboy, The Blotter, Cobra Milk, Terse, Topical Poetry, and others. While he has lived in three of the country’s four corners, for now, he resides in California.

Kenny Daici is a Brown junior studying Photojournalism and Health and Human Biology.

S. Rogers Ellis has been published in Boston Review, High Plains Literary Review, Pequod, and Midwest Quarterly. He studied with Mark Rudman. Ellis holds a master’s degree and currently works as a software engineer.

Anna “Forrest” Fischler, a junior studying Illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design, is from Fort Myers, Florida. Anna’s portfolio straddles the divide between commercial and fine art, and her visual style leans toward realism with an affinity for saturated colors and graphic shapes. She generally bases her work on real-world experiences and environments and aims to constantly evolve both her technical skill and clarity of concept.

Amanda Spalding Gray is a self-taught artist in Providence, Rhode Island. Her work draws inspiration from Balkan folk art and Expressionism, which explore non-human subject matters that evoke a sense of loss and self-isolation.

James Croal Jackson is a Filipino-American poet who works in film production. His latest chapbooks are Count Seeds With Me (Ethel Zine & Micro-Press, 2022) and Our Past Leaves (Kelsay Books, 2021). Recent poems are in Stirring,VilasAvenue,and *82Review . He edits The Mantle Poetry from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (jamescroaljackson.com)

Gina Ledor is an artist from Berkeley, California, who is studying at Brown to become a high school English teacher. Music and art are her lifeblood.

Edward Lee is an artist and writer from Ireland. His paintings and photography have been exhibited widely, while his poetry, short stories, non-fiction have been published in magazines in Ireland, England, and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen, and Smiths Knoll. His poetry collections are Playing Poohsticks On Ha’Penny Bridge, The Madness Of Qwerty, A Foetal Heart, and Bones Speaking With Hard Tongues. He also makes musical noise under the names Ayahuasca Collective, Orson Carroll, Lego Figures Fighting, and Pale Blond Boy. His blog/website can be found at https://edwardmlee.wordpress.com

W.B. Lyon’s work has appeared in The Anthology of Magazine Verse And Yearbook of American

Poetry, Amelia, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Greensboro Review, Grub Street, The Literary Review, Manhattan Review, Moving Out, Poetry Northwest, Small Pond, and The Windsor Review. Lyon attended the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Wesleyan Writers Conference and holds an MA in creative writing from the University of Windsor. She enjoys volunteering her time teaching adults and children to read.

Henry McDonald is a freshman at Brown University who is studying Environmental Science and Literary Arts. He is from Thomasville, Georgia. He enjoys reading, writing prose and poetry, hiking, and playing any sports.

Rina Olsen, a rising high school junior from Guam, is the author of Third Moon Passing (Atmosphere Press, June 2023). She is an editor for the teen literary magazines Cathartic Youth Literary Magazine, Polyphony Lit, and Blue Flame Review, and she was invited to be an instructor for Polyphony Lit’s Summer 2023 writing workshop Around the World of Poetry in 80 Days. Her writing has been awarded by Guam History Day, the Sejong Cultural Society, and the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association, and she has been published in Jellyfish Review, Okay. Donkey, Emerge Literary Journal, and elsewhere. Visit her at her website: https:// rinaolsen.com.

Bobby Parrott’s poems appear in Tilted House, RHINO, Phantom Kangaroo, Atticus Review, The Hopper, Rabid Oak, Collidescope, Neologism, and elsewhere. This queer writer sometimes gets the impression his poems are writing him as he dreams himself out of formlessness in the chartreuse meditation capsule known as Fort Collins, Colorado.

Anne Rhee is a third-year student studying comparative literature and history at Dartmouth College. This is her first publication. She resides in Queens, New York.

Charlie Usadi (they/he) was raised in Charlotte, North Carolina. They currently live in Providence, Rhode Island, where they’re pursuing dual bachelors’ degrees in Visual Art and Architecture from Brown University. Though largely based in acrylic painting, Charlie’s portfolio includes watercolor, textile, and found-object installation, with material investigation characterizing much of their practice. Charlie has shown in Rhode Island venues including the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts in Providence and The Pawtucket Arts Collaborative. Their recent solo exhibition, “Life In The Garden” debuted at the List Art Center in Providence this Fall.

Chris Vanderpool grew up around cameras in the home, despite neither of his parents being photographers, from his mom working at the Target Photo Lab and living when many families began transitioning from film to digital and cell phone photography. Reaching for a photographic experience he grew up with was a natural process during the pandemic and forced him not just to re-evaluate how he made images but his entire photographic vision. He’s often asked what he likes to shoot, the simple answer is everything. His eye passes over a scene looking for a story or moment to capture; whether that’s on the streets of Providence, at a party, or deep in the Lewis and Livingston Mountains—there are, so many moments he’s had the honor of capturing.

Ella Vermut is a student at Brown studying English and Music. What interests her most is the act of creation and all the ways one can interact with it—analysis, synthesis, some combination of both. Through everything from story to song she hopes to continue dissecting the mundane and the surreal.

Jeff Vollmer’s work has been published in Broken Plate, Cider Press Review, El Portal, Louisiana Literature, Neologism Poetry Journal, Open Ceilings, pioneertown, Pulp Poets Press, and Voices de la Luna. He graduated with a degree in English and creative writing from Middlebury College. Jeff lives with his wife, three kids, and dog and cat in New York’s Hudson Valley. You can see more of his work on his Instagram @j_vollmer_ words.

John Wagner’s work has been published in The Lyric, Blue Collar Review, Long Island Quarterly, and Long Islander. He holds a PhD (ABD) in creative writing from University of Denver and has been a teacher at Providence College and a development director for a wide variety of organizations, including Loyola Marymount University, the Denver Symphony, and Boulder Community Health. John enjoys golf, traveling, and fundraising for a variety of nonprofit organizations.

C. Walker is a poet from Connecticut, born in Switzerland, studying at Cornell University. He enjoys Romantic, horror, philosophical, and absurdist poetry. His work appears in multiple magazines and journals, including Aphelion, The RavensPerch, and Third Wednesday. His website is www.cwalkerpoetry.com.

Annabel Williams is a Sophomore studying International and Public Affairs. She grew up in Washington, DC and Boulder, Colorado. She enjoys making art, reading, and hiking.

The Round is a literary and visual arts magazine based at Brown University.

Our name is adopted from the musical “round,” a composition in which multiple voices form an overlapping conversation. It is our mission to extend and enrich the dialogue surrounding literary and visual arts at Brown by creating a community of artists across the country and around the globe. We are excited to work on a magazine which brings together contributors with a wide variety of backgrounds, ages, and places they call home.

We welcome submissions in any genre or medium and publish both students and professionals. Send your work, comments, or questions to theroundmagazine@ gmail.com.

View submission guidelines and learn more about us by visiting http://students. brown.edu/theroundmagazine. Check out past issues at https://issuu.com/ theroundmagazine.

Sincerely,

Eleanor, Julian, and Marlena