THE WELLESLEY REVIEW Poetry | Art | Prose
THE WELLESLEY REVIEW Poetry | Art | Prose
Contents MASTHEAD Editors-in-Chief Elle Friedberg ’17 Emily Frisella ’16 Rachel Pak ’18 Poetry Editors Jay Fickes ’18 Laura Mayron ’16 Poetry Board Anna Cauthorn ’19 Katherine Madsen ’19 Mahnoor Mirza ’18
When You’re Less Real Than Your Ethnicity (which is also not real)
9
Assistant Layout Editor Sabrina Holland ’18
Jellyfish
14
Remi Kobayashi ’19
Treasurer Emma Bilbrey ’18
Clam
15
Luna Fang ’17
Founding Editor Sumitra Chakraborty ’08
Half-Out in the Extrawide
17
Megan O’Keefe ’16
Cover Design Margaret Flemings ’18
Manchester
18
Megan O’Keefe ’16
Bloodlust
19
Megan O’Keefe ’16
Dancer
20
Grace Ming ’18
Summer Loving
21
Chloe Williamson ’16
Budapest
22
Catherine Xie ’19
Hong Kong to Newark, NJ
23
Kasirha Goodman ’17
Bluish
25
Caroline Arnold ’16
Corners
26
Nadine Franklin ’18
The Last Volvo
27
Emma Page ’16
Relinquish
31
Ruby Smith ’16
Summer of 1929
32
Geneviève Rogers ’16
Untitled
40
Claire Verbeck ’16
Morse Family Portrait
41
Claire Verbeck ’16
Layout Editor Noor Pirani ’19
Prose Editors Wenbo Bai ’16 Laura Maclay ’18 Prose Board Carly Sprague ’19 Emma Bilbrey ’18 Hope Kim ’18 Izzy King ’18 Jane Vaughan ’18 Mahnoor Mirza ’18 Ruby Smith ’16 Shannon Dennehy ’19 Tiffani Ren ’19 Art Editors Rachael Hwang ’19 Emily Liao ’19 Art Board Natassja Haught ’18 Jacqueline Hom ’18 Anne Kim ’19 Stacey Kim ’19 Catherine Piner ’16
Please send submissions to thewellesleyreview@gmail.com. Art must be submitted as a high-quality photograph. Poetry, fiction, and nonfiction submissions should be sent as Word documents. All works are selected though an anonymous submission process. Submissions are open to Wellesley students, alums, and affiliates. For more info, visit www.thewellesleyreview.org
Lanie Najjab ’18
Molasses in January
42
Moira Johnston ’17
Central
45
Samantha English ’19
Train Station, Inbound to Braintree
46
C.C. Reynes ’16
My Mother’s Nail Beds
47
C.C. Reynes ’16
NECCO
48
Samantha Brown ’16
God Only Knows
49
Bailey Lee ’17
Psalm 23
51
Connie Chen ’17
This Late at Night
52
Sam Chin ’17
The First Time We Met
53
Sam Chin ’17
I Don’t Know How to Say
55
Sam Chin ’17
Untitled
57
Emily Moore ’18
Love at Night
58
Zixia Liu ’19, Claire Beyette ’19, Lydia MacKay ’19
Prey
61
Sarah White ’19
Quiet Hours
62
Ruby Smith ’16
Time Traveler
63
Ruby Smith ’16
Missed Opportunity
64
Megan Locatis ’16
A Letter to my Mother
68
Hanna Day-Tenerowicz ’16
Untitled
70
Emily Moore ’18
Bosque del Apache
71
Cecilia Nowell ’16
When You’re Less Real Than Your Ethnicity (which is also not real) Lanie Najjab ’18
[The Patriot Act] and how that means the government can just listen to anyone’s calls and they probably listen to ours. I’d suspected we weren’t White before then. But it’s so hard to tell these days.
11 Najjab
That would be surprising if you could see me. I look White. I am white. All Arabs are white (on forms). But I’m Extra White. (my mom has red hair) It’s cool if you thought I was Regular WhiteTM. I didn’t know I until 4th grade. In 4th grade, my dad told me about
Poetry
One time the FBI interviewed my parents. My dad had been campaigning to get more Arabs to vote. They asked my parents if they knew any terrorists. This happened in a Denny’s.
Why? Because we’re Palestinian. We are? Yes. What does that mean? The government thinks we’re terrorists.
Najjab
I can’t count the number of times I’ve been told I’m Not A Real Arab because I don’t speak Arabic because I’m pale. because I’m White. (on forms) (like all Arabs) because I don’t celebrate Ramadan “properly.” (fuck you, Emir) Were they wrong? (Emir was wrong.) When my Seedee (Palestinian grandfather) married my Nana (American grandmother) it was illegal (Texas was racist in the fifties and also now)
Is my sister? Her name is Aysha. (It’s not pronounced the way you think.) When my skin f e k e r c l s and burns, her skin tans a beautiful olive. While my hair w a e s, v her hair c u r l s.
Poetry
Because my Seedee was not White (on forms) (like all Arabs)(in the fifties) He was A Real Arab.
13 Najjab
Poetry 12
I spent a brief period thinking I was Hispanic. A teacher asked where my last name was from when I was in preschool. (kids don’t know where last names are from) She saw my name was Elena. And suggested Najjab was Hispanic. She asked if my dad spoke Spanish. I said yes. (my dad happens to speak Spanish) Therefore, I once spent a day being Hispanic. It was rough. The other kids accused me of not being Hispanic. Because I didn’t speak Spanish. I mean, they were right. But their reasoning was kinda shitty.
But she’s Not A Real Arab just like me!
And our kids probably won’t be Real Arabs. And their kids probably won’t be Real Arabs. And eventually no one will remember that we were ever Real.
And if my child writes a poem that mentions her [ White { European } Heritage ] no one will assume they know her stance on THE ISRAELI/PALESTINIAN CONFLICT. And if she does have a stance on THE ISRAELI/PALESTINIAN CONFLICT, she won’t feel like she has to go out of her way to remind everyone that
Poetry 14 Najjab
And nobody at my child’s high school will seek her out and say, “I heard you were And go on to argue that Never Existed to my child who didn’t mention or try to talk to this kid to begin with.
she’s not
an angry
t e r r o r i s t
Palestinian.” Palestine Palestine
And if my child wants to talk about how her White (but, you know, like actually white) family members are being oppressed, no one will tell her she’s Too Biased to talk about what is happening to her family. Because when a group is being marginalized, the voice of the marginalized is the voice you should listen to. And that’s extra true when those voices are White (but, you know, like actually white)
and she’ll be more Real than I ever was.
Poetry
15 Najjab
And then when a mom at a pool party overhears one of my children’s children mention Palestine, she won’t need to remark, “Huh, I met your parents. I thought they were Normal White Americans.” But if she does, when the kid responds, “They are.” She will actually believe it.
Clam
Lu Fang ’17
Kobayashi
Jellyfish Remi Kobayashi ’19 Ink Pen
17 Fang
Art 16
Growing up in southeast China, I was used to the continuous rainy seasons. Flooding rains submerged me in excessive sentimentality. I shed tears for fallen petals, for separation of couples in fictions, and for sufferings of people in war thousands of miles away. As I grew up, I became resentful of my water-like self. I felt guilty for being too sensitive, awkward for having too much love, and depressed for being too vulnerable. I ceased to write poignant diaries, and I no longer permitted myself to cry in front of others. “I am made of Fe (iron),” I declared to myself, after my first chemistry class in middle school. Never had the iron girl imagined that one day, she would rediscover herself, in the most barren area in China, devoid of either water or ore. On ninth-grade winter break, I visited Mogao Caves on a field trip. When I first stepped out of the train, the dry and windy weather almost killed me. However, as soon as I entered the caves, everything was worth it. Delicate limbs and flying sleeves of the Buddhist Apsara, with splendid hues, elegantly lifted on the wall, just as the wind touched over dunes, just as the soul of Buddhism danced over hundreds of years. Diving into a kaleidoscope of the extensive collection of Buddhist art, I wondered: who are they? Who made these breathtaking wonders? Who accumulated their years and years of life in such dry and remote caves? Right amidst my mindful inquiries, a group of people came— among them was a girl half my age. Out of the silence and suddenly, sounded her recitation of the Heart Sutra. “These pilgrims,” my teacher whispered to me, “they walked here across the deserts.” I was astounded. Standing in the cave, I imagined their humble silhouettes in the biting wind, their emotions, from passionate to calm, from sensational to tranquil, until even life was transcended. Along with the recitation, an unyielding spirit presented in front of me; it was the same spirit of those who had paid their lives to protect the sutra
Prose
Girls are made of water. –Dreams of the Red Chamber
Half-Out in the Extrawide
Fang
To replace a volume of lack of trope, of ache with an equal volume of disinfectant; to dip a capped head into the abstract and breathe there, bobbing among yellow sunk torpedoes, and to cough above it into chemical mist; to osmose to expulsion, to part the wet wreckage of us and to self-drown for the sake of recreation; to ask finally of the body’s slick white, its tiny antigravity hairs, what are you about: this is writing, and this is the forfeiture of the bounds that the self (not knowing better) occupies.
Poetry
Megan O’Keefe ’16
19 O’Keefe
Prose 18
and create the murals. I came to understand at that moment that vulnerability could be the ultimate strength. In the voice of this enervated girl, I heard the grandest essence of Buddhism. She exposed her physical being to ruthless nature; she opened her heart to love, to believe, and to be hurt. Without a religious identity myself, I was too ignorant to appreciate on a deeper level this different reality experienced by her. Yet through her penetrating voice, I felt connected, even as a blank slate, to a culture far away from my origin; I felt empowered, over the vicissitudes of history, to touch the softest yet bravest part of being a human: loving without a guard, getting touched easily, giving birth to new lives, and devoting oneself wholeheartedly. At the last sight of the caves, I was in tears. Lush grasses have become deserted, yet the prosperity rooted there remains; crafting hands are covered in dust, yet the colors they created have lived on. In the mist of history, one may be the humblest, yet one can still empower both oneself and others, with love and faith, vulnerably and powerfully at the same time. With the little girl’s voice lingering in my head, I cherish my vulnerability as a power, one that can empower more people. No longer am I a water-girl or an iron-girl. I am a clam-woman. Soft at heart and steadfast in actions, I’m ready to take the ocean currents.
Bloodlust
Manchester
Megan O’Keefe ’16
Megan O’Keefe ’16
O’Keefe
A pair of eyes at my back. I turn: a girl stands bare-legged on the lookout; black dress, lanky, unmoving. I stand and wonder why she is alone, why she hurts enough to freeze, why the dogs duck merrily into the surge.
A novelty anger-lust, a single-too-long-lust, a pit in my abdomen that thrums on a reel with you and drunk and in black and you touching the fabricky top of my right shoulder— I wonder how hard you looked I wonder if you see me the way I see on your hip the detached dark thread and the light coming off your teeth in the red gloom I sleep in the hot exhaust of you
Poetry
For the reflective curtain of hair and your bird bones spindling with mine between buildings
21 O’Keefe
Poetry 20
Too unlike the flat Delaware shores where with rapture we toed the inconstant scald and cool; too dry and too saltless, but this is a beach all the same: white, parabolic, the orderly buffer horseshoeing an ocean made miniature, a water-hill turned ninety degrees which the enormous white polar dogs climb and crest casting fat shadows, sniffing at the half-frozen kelp piled like clothes out of the wash, leashless flipboards of running—
Summer Loving
Ming
Dancer Grace Ming ’18 Aluminum Foil & Acrylic Paint
23 Williamson
Art 22
It is the summer of catching the last train out of the city every night, running for it, panicking, collapsing on thin plasticized seats, sweaty and out of breath. It is the summer of finishing all of your friend’s wine bottles when they aren’t looking—endless mason jars, tea mugs, and plastic cups. It is the summer of learning to drink gin with a straight face, even the cheap kind that comes out of a wide plastic bottle. Every night, after the last train arrives, finally, you stumble a mile home in heels that have already worn blisters into the thin skin of your ankles—you think of Achilles. You and the wine inside you move slow and careful down the sidewalk, watching for cracks. It is colder than you accounted for, and your collarbones ache with the unsatisfied desire to shiver. You fall into bed still drunk, somewhere between drowsiness and melancholy. Your friends in the city are having sex now, under the dirty ceilings of their cheap sublets. The bed gets larger the more you think of them. You resolve to drink more at the next dinner party—consider it a couples’ tax. You decide that the next time you visit you will look away when they kiss. You wake up with the hot felted headache that wine always leaves, and you go to work and sit in a chair in a body that does not actually feel like yours. You cannot see any windows from where you work so you check the weather application on your phone for a glimpse of the sky. At lunch you leave but never make it to the restaurant because sweat starts to drip down the indent of your spine and between your breasts so you find a park and sit under a tree instead until it is time to go back. Somewhere along the line you begin to imagine the train as a dangerous lover, and with your tendency for self-destruction every time it arrives you are afraid you will step in front of it. When you tell your friends about this you use the word fall. You start to imagine your funeral the way you are told some women fantasize about their weddings —abstractly and then in increasingly small and finite details. You know enough to be frightened by this morbid streak, but not enough to do anything about it. You keep catching the train, in and out. You keep breathing. When the subway car arrives you lean back instead of forward.
Prose
Chloe Williamson ’16
Xie
Kasirha Goodman ’17
Goodman
Poetry
I cannot hear them, nor they me, over the white noise of devouring. Devouring. I cannot hear myself. I have never felt so alone as sitting here, staring through that gap to the nothing beyond. Where is that piece of sky that a monstrous bullet struck down? In the sea?
We chase the night in this cavernous grumbling belly of the beast. All of us—strangers—packed and folded into closeness. We are together as constellations from below, yet remote as those component stars in three-dimensional space.
We chase the moon—that pinhole to heaven in the dark curtain of sky, clouds, sea. There are no stars. Ghostly gods pass by that porthole uncaring, while I peep at them from my tiny window in a tiny plane in a tiny world.
Hong Kong to Newark, NJ
Budapest Catherine Xie ’19 Digital Photography
Art
24 25
Blueish
It’s a question of blue,
The images you open and close without pause, the water of memory, or the memory of water, the pulse of the sky above the sea, blueish in the white and gray of colors that do not stand on their own but fall, inside of one another. You are shades mixed into shades of light and fog and something soft enough to wrap yourself around; The melancholy you hold is close enough to breathe.
Poetry
or the shades of color that lie behind the retina.
27 Arnold
We chase the moon until she peers down wondering what dares evade the dawn. Her gaze conveys the thousand humid evenings I forsake, the thousand crystal midnights I approach. It carries what cannot fit in my suitcase, no matter how much space I leave.
Goodman
We chase the night until we falter, wake, fall. Here, even the moon has changed. It is blurred and yellow, no longer a crisp wafer of ice for me to grasp and melt on my tongue.
Poetry 26
Caroline Arnold ’16
The Last Volvo
Franklin
Corners Nadine Franklin ’18 Acrylic, Watercolor, & Charcoal
29 Page
Art 28
They all go the same way, more or less. First it’s the little things—a taillight here and a relay there, the A/C if you were lucky enough to have it in the first place, a warning light which blinks on one day, never to blink off again. Then it’s the winter cough, that distinctive hesitation on cold, damp December mornings. You learn to point her uphill, to ease her into the idea of another long commute. But she starts every day, even after the gas gauge freezes at just over half empty and the heat cuts out, leaving you driving with the windows down in the pouring rain and topping up the tank every 30 miles just to be safe. She starts every day, even if she can’t sit in traffic for more than 10 minutes without catastrophically overheating. She starts every day, and every day you slide into that worn-out bucket seat, listening to the creek-and-slam of the door and the deep rumble of her massive engine as she ferries you safely across the city and back. She starts every day, until she doesn’t. It will be many years after you first joked that she was on her way to the junkyard, many years after the first time you idly scrolled Craigslist for a replacement. One day it’ll be the gearbox, or the steering column. Or maybe her cough has gotten so bad that now she stalls out half the time when you turn the key. It’s that day when you go to the mechanic and he says, well, we can do it, but it’ll be $500 or $800 or $1000, and you know she’s been totaled and her bluebook is only $250, and you look the person who shares your bank account in the eye and they say, Emma, be reasonable. It’s just a fucking Volvo. I don’t know a lot about cars, but I will tell you this: The Volvo 240 was the best car they ever made. Reliable? Yeah they’re reliable. Reliably full of personality, at least. Powerful? Yeah. Not fast, exactly, and acceleration isn’t their strong point. But a good one cruises so happily at 80mph you wouldn’t dream of pushing it past that. Beautiful? Well, if you ask me that boxy, spacious body is the most beautiful thing ever designed in Sweden. My father has been driving them since before I was born. My parents owned five over the course of my lifetime, and since graduating from college I’ve bought three more. Each one, I knew, would go someday. It’s like owning a dog. Love them for 6 years or 20, you’ll still spend
Prose
Emma Page ’16
Page
Prose
On the Island I make a quick loop: there’s only one thing to see. The gold and maroon sign which my father painted in our garage has been spruced up a bit since he sold the store ten years ago, but the letters still read ISLAND BOOKS ETC just as clearly as they ever did. The OPEN sign glows in the tiny front window. I don’t stop. That piece of nostalgia is for another time. Today, it’s just a starting line. Puttering back across 1-90 I spare a glance south. The Mountain, as they say, isn’t out, but I’ll take the rain over Rainier for this occasion. Back on the mainland I take the 4th avenue exit and grind to a halt in that typical, inexplicable 2pm-on-a-Tuesday traffic. Downtown doesn’t look so different, if I squint. Pioneer Square looks a little cleaner. Westlake a little pricier. The car coughs. I take a left at the Space Needle and cruise down Denny, on autopilot now. The stretch of road between downtown and Ballard known as Elliott used to be the secret northwest arterial, a road you only took if you lived in the boonies of Ballard and Magnolia. In 2015 Amazon bought up the land on either side and built “The River,” billed as a “revolutionary urban waterfront innovation environment.” It’s beautiful, I will admit. Frank Gehry buildings and lots of glass which glitters silver in the rain and heart-stopping blue in summer sunshine. Traffic sits at a standstill while the dedicated employee trollies ferry Amazonians to and fro. I turn up the radio and try to list the old occupants of each block. The Taco Time drivethru which was always advertising for a new manager. The warehouse which boasted of “Frank’s Live Girl Show” in peeling paint. The dog kennel. The industrial uniform wholesaler. The hippy garden statuary. I drive 5 miles in 30 minutes. The Ballard bridge is down. It isn’t up often anymore, except during Seafair, but I’m glad anyways. I don’t think she would make it if we had to idle for 15 minutes while a sailboat cruised leisurely by. Ballard, more like Ballardland. My old neighborhood is full of condo complexes named “The Oslo” and the “The Nord” next to bars where you can drink a $15 “Bloody Trawler” beneath a Genuine Replica Alaskan Fisherman’s Net. I shake off the bitterness. We still have our movie theater, the majestic Majestic Bay. We still have the second-best beach in Pacific Northwest. The high school kids still tag the freight trains headed north from Mexico to Canada as they rumble along the tracks over the water. A right at the Ballard Locks, she huffs and puffs up 32nd street to-
31 Page
Prose 30
a terrible day at the vet putting them out of their misery. But I wasn’t quite ready for the Last Volvo. The first sinking feeling came when I flicked through Craigslist a year ago, but I put my fear aside. Last month, when she stalled out on the freeway and my mechanic gave me the bad news, I looked in earnest. Nothing. In the greater Seattle area there were just two 240’s for sale. One, a mint-condition black 1992 hatchback with 150,000 miles, was going for $10,000. The other, a battered-looking 1987 sedan, had more than the usual laundry list of issues and idiosyncrasies. “Needs a lot of love,” read the ad. This was the end of the line. There were no more Volvos in Seattle. At least it’s raining. Sometimes even the rain feels like a set piece these days, just another wink at a time when Seattle was where people came for coffee and airplane parts instead of the Next Hot Startup and Amazon.com. I don’t begrudge the city its success. I’m only 33, but even I can hear how crotchety and sanctimonious I sound when I go on about the Way Things Were. Today though, I’m indulging myself. She starts up on the third try, and after a couple of laps around the block I’m confident she can make it the 40 miles or so I need her to go. Like all the Volvos before her, she feels the gravity of the moment and rises splendidly to the occasion. I’ve lived south since I came back, on the fat spit of land known as West Seattle. Even Jeff Bezos couldn’t make this area look like an appealing commuter location, with its single, two-lane bridge as the only point of access other than an overpriced and overbooked ferry which skims across Elliott Bay to downtown 6 times a day. So this is where we hide, a certain kind of Seattleite who remembers when they took our Sonics away, when the queer kids stopped hanging out on Capitol Hill, when a studio apartment in Ballard went for less than 2.5k a month. But I’m not here to be bitter. Not today. Today I’m driving the old loop, the one I’ve been driving since I was in the back seat of my father’s beige 1980 Volvo 240. Even now, not many people I know go to Mercer Island. It’s still the land of Jewish grandmas and preppy lacrosse-playing 16-year-olds who don’t seem to belong in the same state, let alone the same city as their pot-smoking, Ultimate Frisbee-addicted counterparts across Lake Washington. But that’s where this journey begins. It’s been 35 years since the floating I-90 bridge sank, but I imagine that it might pick today to spring another leak, taking me and the Volvo down with it. In my fantasy I escape, but the car doesn’t. I’m not suicidal, I just think it would be a fitting end for her.
Relinquish I cleaned all day on the day that you came, nudged this frame into place as your train pulled in arranged the drapes so the sun would shine through— wreckage in the attic, so we’ll have a garden party. I have jurisdiction enough over things I can touch the drapes I arrange and the frames that I nudge spilling my guts out but holding my tongue (just promise me you won’t look under the rug) and if you happen to notice the way I notice the way I mouth what I say to make sure it’s okay— don’t mind, it’s for your good as much as mine and hey, if you should count all my grays—five at one temple and one at the other— know I’d make it three and three if I could
Poetry
Ruby Smith ’16
33
Page
Smith
Prose 32
wards the house I grew up in. My parents sold it around when I moved back, having decided that a quiet, blustery home on the Washington coast was more their speed. Growing up, my father used to irritate the neighbors with his herd of Volvos, which took up between two and five of the precious curbside parking spots on the south side of 62nd St. The street is lined with Priuses now. I spot one 2025 Volvo, its swoopy exterior the antithesis of my car’s square profile. We don’t stop. It’s almost time now. We loop around the block, up towards 65th and 32nd. My beloved video store is gone but the mural remains. “Never A Rainy Day!” grins a pinup girl, basking in the glow of an oversized 50’s TV. We float back down Leary way, under the bridge, where the last great Volvo mechanic waits. I’m selling her for parts. $500 cash, and the promise that she may help that “needs love” 240 live another day. Feeling ridiculous, I bite back tears as the old-timer behind the counter hands me my money. “They were great cars,” he says, shaking his head. “20 years ago everybody had one around here. These days they’re a bit of a treasure.” I nod. “Well if you see another good one, you have my number,” I say. I walk out the door. It’s been a long time since I took the bus in this city, but there’s a stop right around the corner. I figure I might as well give it a shot, see if anything’s changed.
Prose 34 Rogers
I could see the whole sky framed around Don’s big stupid head. It was red and sweaty. His head was red and sweaty, but the sky around it was sweet and cool. “Shove off, you can’t fit a rifle between your hand and my head.” “It’s not a rifle, it’s a pistol.” “They didn’t use pistols!” “They did too!” I was a good enough puncher, but Don was taller than me so he always won these fights. He’d finally get a hold around my stomach and behind my back and lift me right up. Then he’d drop me and sit on my chest and call me the Scum. And then we’d fight about how he killed me. We did it again and again and I always lost and I always started again. Sometimes we’d argue a whole lot longer, but we were already pretty beat. So we just sat for a while in the sun not saying anything. It was a pretty cool Sunday morning that we were wasting because we didn’t have to go to church. There was still dew on the grass and I could feel my shirt getting wet. The bugs were well awake so we listened to them, or at least I did. Well, we did go to church that morning, but we couldn’t get in. Pastor Weld locked everyone out and hid in his house. Looking back, it wasn’t so surprising but I was so young then that much of what he did made no sense to me. Just accept it when you don’t know better. Weld was a new pastor from Pennsylvania in the east, and church was very differently over there. Most of the families in our town didn’t go to church too often and that got Pastor Weld. He stood up on that pulpit every week yelling about God and hell and he believed it. We all believed it some, but Pastor Weld really believed it. If nobody can be bothered to come more than two weeks in a row, it is bound to get to you. You begin to understand a man like Pastor Weld. So about two weeks before the Sunday I was talking about in the sun, Pastor Weld gave his “Doomsday Sermon.” I was home asleep when it happened, but Don was there. Pastor Weld got really loud, started waving his arms, and kind of frothing at the mouth. Then he stormed out, without even breaking the bread. I think Don exaggerated the last
Prose
Geneviève Rogers ’16
part, but I got the picture. It was odd, but most people wrote it off as an emphatic ending. Something to drive home the message. My family wasn’t one of those in the church that Sunday, and we weren’t there the next week either when people stood in front of the locked church doors for a while until they realized that Pastor Weld wasn’t coming that week. It didn’t bother them too much, the man deserved a day of rest too. I was there on the third week, though. It is one thing for a pastor to miss service on one Sunday, especially when half the congregation is going to miss it anyway. But for him to miss two weeks, and for it to be Pastor Weld of all the devoted pastors, then people figured something was wrong. So they sent Don and me to knock on Pastor Weld’s door. He lived right next door. Don knocked hard on the door and I cupped my face close to the kitchen window. “Pastor Weld!” We figured he was just sleeping in late and hoped our noise would wake him up, but nothing in the house moved. “Rob, what if he choked before last week and no one was here to save him?” “Don’t be stupid. Do you think God lets pastors choke? Also look, there’s no milk or paper on his steps, so he must’ve brought it in yesterday.” Don knocked on the door again. “Pastor Weld—it’s time for service!” I turned my face to the window again and jumped back. The shadow of Pastor Weld’s body was framed in the kitchen door. I could see his eyes shining, locked on mine, and I couldn’t say a word. He moved then, and fast, up to the window and hit his hands hard on the glass. He told us to make them leave. His voice grew louder and he avowed that he would not come to the church or even unlock it this week, or any of the weeks this summer. His fists rattled the glass and his spit was flying everywhere. The people, he yelled, needed to understand the “depth of God’s absence” in their lives. I ran back around to the church with Don fast behind me. The two of us told them the entire story. “He flew at the glass.” “He said no one prays anymore.” “He won’t open the church until we need it.” “His spit went all over the window.” “Yeah, he’s really mad.” Don’s father and my father went to the cottage with a few other peo-
35 Rogers
Summer of 1929
Rogers
I didn’t go to Don’s house for dinner. He said they ate the duck, but I don’t believe him because when I asked his little brother, Windsor, about it, he said their ma made them take it outside. He did say they really cut it up to see what the insides looked like. I wasn’t jealous, though, I didn’t want to see that either. I didn’t want to talk to Don much right after that, but school was over and he lived the closest. By the time it was Wednesday, I was at his house and it was like every summer before and by that I mean that were were getting to building. All of the things at my house and Don’s house that broke throughout the year, or needed painting over, or greasing up were saved until we were out of school. Then we spent all summer fixing and painting and greasing in Don’s back yard. Winds liked to sit and watch us. Well, actually he always wanted to
Prose
Prose 36
The next Sunday started out pretty great. My whole family slept in and none of us felt bad about not going to church because it was locked anyway. My ma was the only one who woke up early; she said she couldn’t help it. She made us a big hot breakfast that my sister and I got to right away. My dad was the last one in the kitchen and as soon as he came in my ma started talking to him about Pastor Weld and if we should make something for him. My dad said that if Pastor Weld didn’t like how we did things in Nebraska then he should’ve well stayed east. Ma didn’t say anything after that, but she was still thinking about it, staring across the room. Don and I spent the afternoon by the river, trying to stab the bigger fish with spears we’d made out of some oak branches. The spring was just starting to get summer-hot so it was a good day for it. We put our shirts in the reeds and lay belly down on the dead willow trunk that had sunk low and sideways during a flood two falls back. The water was still cold from the snow that melted not long ago and the trees were getting as green as they ever get. We lay so still that a family of mallards swam right below us. The dad came first, then five little ones, and the mama came last. The water was so clear that day that I could see their little webbed feet flickering back and forth. They were the first ducks I’d seen that year so I got pretty excited. “Look Don!” I said before I remembered how loud my voice can get. Their necks all craned around in a panic, but not before Don thrust his spear down. He threw it so hard he toppled over into the water causing a whole commotion. The dad duck flapped his wings and rushed at Don as he thrashed around righting himself. The mama pushed one
of the little ducklings to the right but I couldn’t see any of the others. Don found his footing and laughed while fighting off the dad duck with the little spear. I had half a mind to jump in too to scare the dad away from Don, but I thought of all the baby ducks swirling in the mudded water and didn’t want to sink them even deeper. “Hey! Hey!” I yelled, “You’re drowning them, stop moving!” He didn’t stop, though, and with a final rush he pierced the dad duck in the middle of where I think his rib cage was and raised him writhing above his head. Don waded as fast as he could, then, toward the bank and I watched him climb out with one hand still holding the speared dad duck above his head. The mama was hysterical, chasing each baby duck that bobbed back to the surface quacking and spluttering. She’d rush to one, make sure it was upright and then rush to another, until all five were accounted for and in an anxious line behind her. She turned to the bank and stared at Don. “What is wrong with you?” “Shut up, they’re just ducks. I want to cook this one for dinner.” “Are you crazy? You can’t eat mallard.” “You don’t know that. My dad can cook anything with meat. He learned so in the Great War. Come for dinner, you’ll see.” The current was pulling the mama duck and the babies away. She didn’t swim against it, but she kept staring at Don all the way around the bend.
37 Rogers
ple to see if they could talk to Pastor Weld, but they found the house as black and quiet as if no one had lived there at all. When they knocked, he didn’t come. When they yelled out, not a single thing in the whole house moved. They saw the paper and milk had been taken in and the spit on the glass so they knew we weren’t lying. I think that maybe they thought we were exaggerating. All of this was going through my mind while I felt the dew come through my shirt. I just had the black silhouette pressed there in front of my eyes. It was all I could see. I think it was in Don’s head too. We almost shared minds when we were little. This time I was sure we were thinking the same thing, because then he said, “Well he’s a pretty scary guy, Pastor Weld.”
Rogers
The worst part of the summer came at the very end of it. It was so bad that it is hard to remember. Don and I were working on the engine of my dad’s lawnmower and Winds was hammering nails into the block. I don’t know how, but Winds hit one hard into his leg. He was crying a storm when we brought him into the house, but their ma was pretty quick to take the nail out and bandage up his leg so he quieted down. That wasn’t the bad part about it because he seemed pretty okay that day and the next half-week or so. But then one afternoon Winds started acting funny, and we wondered if he was coming down with a summer fever. We took away his hammer and nails and lay Winds down in the shade. Don and I were still working on that mower. Then one minute Winds comes running over making a sound like a boiling water kettle. His face was covered in tears and snot and he was making this terrible animal sound clutching his face. Don was getting really worked up scared that Winds wouldn’t say what was wrong, and then we realized that he couldn’t say anything because he couldn’t move his jaw at all. It was closed up really tight and Winds was howling through it. That sound he made—like a boiling water kettle.
Prose
on eggshells. In all of this, Pastor Weld just could not be found. He didn’t leave his house once, even though every Sunday more and more people came down looking for him. What Don and I couldn’t figure out was what he ate, because no one saw him in town. Winds said his ma was on the phone another time when he heard that Pastor Weld was having his neighbor, Mrs. Ward, deliver all the groceries to him. Mrs. Ward came to see Don’s ma one day, so Winds, Don, and I ran in to ask. We tried to be polite about it, but then Winds came right out and blurted it: “We just want to know how Pastor Weld is eating and are you brining him food?” Their ma got right mad at us about that because it was certainly none of our business how Pastor Weld got his groceries. Mrs. Ward was nice, though, and before we went back out again, she cut in and told us not to worry about Pastor Weld. She brought him his groceries and left them on his porch. She never saw him herself, except late at night when he would come out to get them. Always in his cloak, looking darker than any of the shadows. “A funny man,” she’d said, “in his cloak lookin’ darker than the shadows.”
39 Rogers
Prose 38
help but he was too little. So we gave him little blocks of wood and old nails and a hammer so that he could make whatever he wanted out of that. I didn’t mind Winds watching us. I figured he was better than my sister and he mainly just sang to himself. Don minded more, and he minded more and more as the summer went on. I think all the hammering and the singing under the hot sun really got to him and sometimes he’d just tell him off. Later on in the summer Don would get so mad that he would really just yell and yell and lay in on Winds until Winds would cry and run inside where their ma made him stay until the next day when it would happen all over again. Don wasn’t the only one who was acting strange. Either Pastor Weld had gotten something right after all or it was the heat. There is hot and then there is Nebraska hot. I hadn’t ever left Nebraska, but that’s the thing about Nebraska heat. It’s so damn hot and humid that you don’t need to even leave to know it’s hotter and more humid than any other place on earth. That year, I swear on my life, it was hotter than any other. Don and I still had to go out and fix things, but when it was too hot for anyone to care what we were doing, we’d sit under the big burr oak tree and just watch the leaves move. That’s something about the heat that I don’t mind so much. When it gets so hot, you feel ok just sitting still and being and watching the ways the colors shift when the leaves move. Most of the time the wind was stopped but whenever a breeze came they moved and made a sound like a room full of chuckling people and Don and I felt so good having that wind dry our faces a little bit that we couldn’t help but laugh along with it. But like I said, people were starting to act strange. Everyone’s tempers were really short. Winds came out one time and told us their ma had been on the phone with someone else’s ma and had been talking about how Mr. Eason, the quietest man in town that no one had even seen get mad, had started yelling at his wife so much that she had to move out and stay with her brother for awhile. Then, before his ma was even done telling the story, she started to argue with the ma on the other end. All that arguing was why Winds came back outside again. We could hear her even outside. Part of the problem was that the corn just wasn’t growing the way it should’ve. It wasn’t until the end of July that it even came up to our knees. It sure stressed out our dads and by August, the whole town was
Prose
I stopped walking then and looked at Don square in the eye, “Aren’t you tired of all the stupid things people are saying?” We were squinting at each other and through that hot sun and the blue sky stretching over his dad’s and my dad’s fields. He grabbed my head in his elbow then and brought me to the ground, rubbing my scalp like we hadn’t done in a really long time. We tussled like that until Don broke away and sat at the edge of the cornfield with the corn that was too short and he started to weep. I just sat next to him and waited until he was done. We didn’t go home until much later, because we went back to the river instead. We hadn’t been since the time Don killed the duck because I didn’t want to see it and I think after awhile Don started to feel bad about what he’d done and he didn’t want to see it either. We sat on the bank and no mallards came by, but the water was clear enough to see the fish and we watched them flit about until the sun went down. More bad things were coming, I could feel it and Don could feel it. We were right after all. But even after the things that came the next years, I always thought of Don and Winds and sitting by the water and under the burr oak tree as being as sad as I would ever be. Winds, Winds, Winds. Don, Don, Don. Just like that—again and again.
41
Rogers
Rogers
Prose 40
We brought him in again and their ma flew all into a panic. We were sent outside when the doctor came and we were under the burr oak tree listening all afternoon to the commotion inside the house. All that afternoon we looked at those leaves turning from green to purple-brown to black as the sun went down. Then we could see the stars peek in and out whenever a breeze came. We didn’t say a single thing the whole time, but just watched leaves and listened to the people inside and the bugs. I didn’t go home until awhile after dark when my dad came out back to get me. The very worst part of that summer and maybe of my life, was that in the few days Winds was convulsing on his bed and making that God awful sound, Pastor Weld wouldn’t come and say a prayer over him. I don’t know in what exact moment we knew Winds wasn’t going to get better, but at some point we knew and Pastor Weld was sent for. People in town didn’t go to church every week, but everybody who had the time while dying had a prayer said over him so that everyone else could know he would rest in peace. I think every man in the town went down to knock on his door, but Pastor Weld never answered or even appeared. Eventually they broke the door of the cottage to see if Pastor Weld was even still alive himself and it turns out he had gone back to Pennsylvania the day after Winds got sick. He just took a late night train with two suitcases and left behind the rest of his things, our “forsaken souls,” and a note that said just that. So they had to call a pastor from two counties over for the funeral and we had to have the whole ceremony behind the locked church under that crazy hot sun. Don and I walked home after, even though we were in our nice clothes. I don’t think anyone was paying any attention to what we did. Or that’s how I felt at least, because when we got to the long stretch of road that cut between my family’s cornfields and Don’s family’s cornfields Don started to talk about everyone talking to and looking at him. “I dunno what to say, it’s like everyone is talking to me all at once. They never really looked at me before, but now they are. I feel their eyes on me. I hear them saying all of these things about life and Winds and I guess I don’t really get it. It’s not getting through to me. I can barely hear it.” I looked down and watched the dust cake my shoes and the ankle of my black pants while he talked. All the clay that year was turning to dust. “Well, won’t you say something?”
Verbeck Verbeck
Art
Morse Family Portrait Claire Verbeck ’16 Film Photography
Untitled Claire Verbeck ’16 Film Photography
Art
42 43
Prose 44 Johnston
‘It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.’ The words stared her up and down, giving her the proverbial onceover. Everything was dystopian now: movies, art, literature. If people weren’t satisfied in their present lives, they scampered off to create a world in which their misery was better suited. Orwell got it right the first time. If our clocks had one more hour, or if the springs were that much colder; if just those two changes were made then maybe the complaining would stop. Maybe the day-to-day would be tolerable. She shut the book—having stopped after the first sentence—and casually flopped it on her desk. “It’s pretty psychotic, don’t you think?” She hollered, still staring at the detailed illustration of an eye that graced the front cover of her edition of 1984. Ben, preoccupied with washing last night’s dishes, stuck his head around the doorway. “What?” He yelled. “I said, the whole thing is pretty psychotic.” “Ally, I can’t hear a word you’re saying.” “Shut the water off then.” “Why don’t you get up, walk the seven steps into the kitchen, and talk to me.” “Fine.” Ally stood from her desk and begrudgingly moved to the kitchen. Ben had donned the gingham apron her mother gave her and had shoved his hands into her red rubber gloves. He stood dignified over the sink, scrubbing one small spot on a plate. Ally smiled. “Hey there, Betty Crocker,” she leaned coyly in the doorway. Ben glanced up at her. “You fill out that apron real nice,” she nodded. Ben rolled his eyes, turning to answer her. “Okay, thank you. Did you actually have a question? Or did you take a break from working just to objectify my body?” Ally smiled again. She liked his jokes. “What I was originally asking about was how psychotic it is.” Ben stopped scrubbing. “How psychotic what is?” “You know—” She trailed off.
Prose
Moira Johnston ’17
“No, I really don’t.” Ben turned off the sink and moved to drying the plate with the same piercing intensity. “You do this a lot, you know.” “Do what?” “You start a conversation or you start an argument in your head, as if you’re talking or arguing with me, then you say something out loud and expect me to pick up where you left off inside your own mind.” “I don’t do that.” Ally grew defensive. Ben put down the plate and pried off the red rubber gloves. He looked over at Ally and grinned slyly. “It’s endearing,” he reassured her. “Catch me up, then: what’s so psychotic?” Ally moved next to him at the counter and began putting away the dishes. “The whole ratio of misery to hours in a day.” Puzzled, Ben stacked plates on the shelf above his head. “Explain it to me,” he commanded. “There are only twelve hours from sunrise to sunset. There are only twelve numbers on a clock. We’re allotted ‘x’ amount of misery per hour per day. That’s a lot of sadness compressed into twelve hours. That’s not very forgiving.” Ben nodded slowly, turned his back to the shelf, and eased his body against the counter as Ally continued. “So I’m saying that’s psychotic. I’m saying that maybe George had it right.” “George?” “Orwell.” “Got it. What’d he get right?” Ally looked contemplative. Ben looked cautious. “The thirteenth hour. If we had one more, then the depression, the feeling of being stuck, that could be spread out a little more evenly. Maybe it’d be easier.” “Ally—” Ben’s voice caught on the sickly feeling rising from his stomach and he could only manage to say her name. He liked her name, he liked it a lot. He just couldn’t reinforce it with any further thought or argument. Ally noticed the sharp turn in his demeanor. She had stopped putting away the dishes and didn’t know what she could do to make time pass more quickly. “Ally if you’re miserable again, you need to tell me.” The light quiver carried from Ben’s voice across the few feet of space between them,
45 Johnston
Molasses in January
Art 47
Johnston
English
Prose 46
Central Samantha English ’19 Digital Photography
gaining enough speed until Ally felt churned into a riptide. The gingham apron wasn’t cute or funny wrapped around his waist anymore; it diminished him. “I don’t know.” She could feel herself melting, dripping into the kitchen floor. “You’ve just told me that there aren’t enough hours in a day to allow for your apparently immeasurable sadness.” “Ben, that’s not—” “But it is,” he breathed and fixed his gaze to the tiles on the floor. She wanted to tell him how right he was. She wanted to tell him how every day she found herself feeling like someone had replaced breathable air with molasses. She could disappear and he wouldn’t mind. She exhaled, “It is.”
Who are you Lingering Gaze, round, belly-first man? I stand confronted by the nakedness of my kneecaps. Is there a god of tired disoriented women watching me, too? Poetry 48
The train screeches and hiss: the smell of burned rubber.
Reynes
You disappear into a crowd of Others. The doors open. I shuffle, and they shut.
C.C. Reynes ’16
are slightly loose around the cuticle like over-glued papier-mâché. Her nails are flexible, thin, translucent fish scales. When I was young, my nails were long and strong. My mom would snap them off for me post-shower, clip, clip, clip. And once, I saved them in a box beneath my bed because they seemed to me like eagle talons. Now that I am old, I know they are not eagle talons. I cover them with bright polish and oil, and they grow weak like my mother’s. Mama! I still say Hail Marys like you taught me. I see the vein that runs across your hand on my hand, too: dark blue. A forked river.
Poetry
C.C. Reynes ’16
My Mother’s Nail Beds
49 Reynes
Train Station, Inbound to Braintree
God Only Knows
50 Brown
***
NECCO Samantha Brown ’16 Pigmented Plaster
At my wedding, we danced to “God Only Knows” by The Beach Boys under a big white tent and twinkle lights. The air was warm and sweet. Wedding guests chatted quietly across big round tables decorated with white tablecloths and flowing arrangements of lavender and white wildflower. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see my new husband smiling down at me from our table set for two. Dad and I were alone together on the wooden dance floor that covered the soft grass underneath the tent. “I can feel Mom in the air tonight,” I whispered in his ear. He held me tighter and we danced with her. Spinning, twirling, swaying even after the song had ended. I put my head on my dad’s shoulder and closed my eyes, breathing in Old Spice and, just for a moment, everything else faded away. I danced on his feet and the warmth of our tears ran together from our cheeks onto my neck. ***
51 Lee
Art
After dinner my dad would put on his favorite Beach Boys album and we would dance around the kitchen. Standing on his feet, holding on to him tight, I closed my eyes and breathed in the smell of his cashmere sweater and Old Spice deodorant. The worn wooden floorboards creaked under our feet as we swayed in circles by the crackling fire. When I tired of dancing, he would carry me down the hall to my room. He sprayed lavender onto my pillow and pulled the blankets up to my chin. “Don’t forget to check on me, Daddy,” I would say. “I won’t forget, little lamb. I promise.” Then he would turn off the light and walk back to the kitchen. His smell lingered, mixed with the scent of lavender and charred wood. The smells comforted me. I’d close my eyes and hear the familiar clink and glug of gin filling a glass. Later, the Beach Boys would continue to spin scratchily on the turntable while the sound of Dad’s crying softly drifted into my room.
Prose
Bailey Lee ’17
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Lee
Chen
Prose
Art
Dad died three and a half weeks before Annie was born. She turned five this year. Sometimes I still cry because she will grow up without ever knowing her grandfather. Annie has my mother’s eyes. I know my mother’s eyes so well that sometimes I forget I have only seen them in pictures. After dinner my husband puts on the Beach Boys and dances around the kitchen with our little daughter on his toes. Her deep brown eyes reflect the melting French Vanilla candles, still flickering on the dinner table. I put the dishes away and then we carry Annie up the stairs and tuck her in. “Don’t forget to check on me,” she croons softly as I turn off the light.
Psalm 23 Connie Chen ’17 Ink Pen
Poetry 54
Sam Chin ’17
This late at night, I watch you breathe in then out. Every syllable, sigh. Every exhale, moan in this dim light.
The first time we met, I asked you what you were passionate about and you gave me a silence so long I was afraid you forgot how to speak. I thought you might have measured your life out in coffee spoons. Let me say it straight like whiskey: I thought you might be boring.
The tight then slack in your jaw, so much like peeling off clothes or the skins of clementines.
But you were good to me.
Chin
My darling, clementine sweet so easy to consume in just two bites. You are sunflower seed eater. Take the middle of something beautiful, the floral incarnation of the grandest thing you know, break it into beginning. Take it into your mouth, sucking salt off hull. Salivate then ruminate. Run your tongue around.
The first night, you said you didn’t sleep— Did I steal all the blankets? Were you too giddy? Awkward? You are a boy with nine siblings and ten toes. For someone so accustomed to sleeping with others, you seemed so uncomfortable lying in bed next to me. What is it like, always falling asleep to someone else’s breathing. Did the in-out of air brushing past lips remind you of ocean waves, or wind through trees? You could have been an advertisement for cigarettes, the way you held fire between your lips and then flicked it aside in one fluid, dismissive, motion. I could smell the nicotine in your nails and the sway and slur in your breath when you moved too close. I woke up one day and found I did not like the person in my skin. I wanted to peel off the top layer of myself like a scab, but the skin underneath was angry and orange. Not quite bloody, but not quite ready.
Poetry
Sam Chin ’17
The First Time We Met
55 Chin
This Late at Night
Poetry 56
But, I think I was wrong before. I believed salted crackers were lacking and the smoke would make me ill and dizzy. But we fall together and asleep so easy.
Chin
I think mistook the pause between your thoughts for absence. These days I try to hold the hope in your voice, gossamer threads woven between your words. These days, all my poems are love poems.
Sam Chin ’17
I don’t know how to say: I am so grateful for the privilege you give me you save me the last piece of fruit a life filled with all the things you never had Don’t know how to say: I still flinch when you move your arm too fast Can’t tell you, I don’t sit close because I am afraid of hungry fists. Speak and don’t speak like some ghost trapped between a chinese-english dictionary. Pressed flowers between yellow pages. Hunter College in 1984 when New York was violent streets and english sounded like all the people who said you won’t make it here and Shanghai was giving up and home. I try to hold that want between my fingers the kind of american dream that tastes like hungry and caged birds. Freedom is when you learn how to want instead of need. On Christmas, I can only see the empty in all the boxes you give me. I want to explain—that capitalism is the enemy— how this money is blood money how it thins and poisons until we are all hemorrhaging. We are obsessed with the things that kill us. Every day you give me the things you always wanted piano lessons, a good education, pocket money for food but I feel like some hog to be examined and prodded
Poetry
But now, you give me peace like saltine crackers, gingerly handed to me slowly from a sleeve, one by one. I am so hungry but they are the only thing I can eat these days, anything too rich and I might vomit again.
I Don’t Know How to Say
57 Chin
I thought that you could make me better, and you told me: “Change must come from within.” I reached into my throat, searching for my uvula so that I could vomit change on the floor. Self-improvement spewed, chaos ensued. This is not what you meant.
compared to all the other swine at the county fair. I don’t know how to tell you: I am trying so hard to love you but I’m trying so hard to love me and this not self care. Life begets life Trauma begets trauma.
58
59
Chin
Moore
Poetry
Art
The zodiac was right. The stars knew us before we knew ourselves a tiger mother and her prize pig.
Untitled Emily Moore ’18 Charcoal
1 On one of the many cold nights my heart again hardens and cools breathing out cold and I glanced and saw that chill, swirl up in pain
Poetry 60
2 Surrounding me are clouds and clouds of the night millions of soldiers hiding in the choking smoke everything simple is colored with complexity every step must be taken with care
Liu, Beyette, MacKay
3 I walk by the forest and hear the sound of shoes pressing leaves on the ground a pair of disappearing raccoons a strand of floating song from afar among stars, and the fires of stars 4 If you are right by my side in such a lonely night sit down beside me, will you? and listen to all I have to say 5 I beg you not to hurt me in the forest I am the disappearing raccoon where there are people, I am not. Perhaps stardust coated my eyes
7 Will you care to tell me— you are a witch from which tribe? A prince from which star? Or a fairy from which flowering bush? Cold in the dark my walls crack and crumble 8 Stepping under the infinite dome of the starry night’s sky bright above, and dark below the night has no sound but fire sparks and star-shine
Poetry
Zixia Liu ’19 Translated by Claire Beyette ’19 and Lydia MacKay ’19
6 I, in the cold night wishing to tell you all, know not of your plans: my frozen heart to shatter or to thaw
61 Liu, Beyette, MacKay
Love at Night
Prey
63 White
Poetry 62
She spent three minutes thinking she was being followed and she was wrong. If she were right, people would have listened to her story with serious expressions. She could have whispered it over the phone to her sister, and her sister would have gasped at all the right moments. She could have complained about it to her girlfriends at happy hour, and they would have toasted her bravery and bought her another drink. Instead, it turned out that the man on the street behind her was only walking home, just like she was, to the apartment building next to hers. Now she couldn’t tell the story, not properly, not without tacking a self-deprecating laugh to the end. “Turns out I was just being paranoid!” she would have to say, and she didn’t particularly want to do that. She wanted sympathy for her three minutes of fear. She wanted for people to understand how it felt: skin turning cold and numb, heart beating fast like a hummingbird’s wings in her chest, frantically trying to place the sounds of his footsteps, making note of every building they passed and wondering if anyone behind the blank walls would come running if she screamed—and if so, how quickly. Stealing a panicky glance backwards and realizing the man had turned into his apartment building hadn’t felt like freedom. It felt like a postponement of something inevitable, of the coming day where the alarm wouldn’t turn out to be false after all. She wanted an acknowledgement of this. She wanted someone to tell her, yes, yes, we understand. You were alone in the dark, and your whole world narrowed to just you and him, and you found yourself wondering if your purse was heavy enough to be a weapon. You were gathering your breath to scream and that’s hard, we know it is. But in the end, she didn’t have to scream.
Prose
Sarah White ’19
Art 65
Smith
Smith
Art 64
Quiet Hours Ruby Smith ’16 Digital Photography
Time Traveler Ruby Smith ’16 Digital Photography
Prose 66 Locatis
Oedipus Rex walks into a bar. A jazz club, actually. And frankly, he was last person I expected to find sitting next to me at my crammed, uneven table. I almost didn’t recognize him in the dim atmosphere; the solitary candle hardly cast enough light to see by. But at a second glance I knew it was him, though he’d traded his chiton for what looked like Salvation Army castaways—some kind of stained corduroy jacket that he’d thrown over a holey tshirt. His eyes gave him away. They’d scarred over eons ago, of course, but etched there was the same horror that has echoed down through humanity since Sophocles first penned his fate. We were only seated together by chance. I’d decided on a whim to head over to the club after work since the Dave Grover trio was playing, and I’d known their drummer during my college years. None of my friends cared for the “real” jazz, as they called it. The long, unending solos left them bored and disengaged. I was no musician myself, but I’d played enough during undergrad to develop an appreciation for the subtle, exquisite language, and on occasion I managed to find time to venture out into the city to explore the local scene. They were always doomed solitary ventures, but there was something comforting in that solitude, a certain intimacy in a night filled only with music. When I first recognized the man, I was torn. Should I say something? But then my initial giddiness waned, overcome by a desire to play it cool, to be suave and unimpressed. Maybe the jazz was to blame. The band started a Latin rendition of Sonnymoon Blues—an arrangement with good intentions but poor execution. And I kept stealing furtive glances over at Oedipus with every solo break, trying to decide how to begin the conversation. After this chart, I thought to myself, I’ll slip out a casual introduction. Hey, are you that guy...? But no, I nixed that. So unoriginal, so overused. So I scrambled to reformulate my greeting as Dave finished his long and repetitive sax solo. I was distracted for a moment, because it seemed to me that he had taken twelve separate choruses in order to test out every note in the scale against the barebones piano accompaniment. The lines he was stringing together were tired and unimaginative, and the audience clearly agreed—most of them returned to chatting loudly with
Prose
Megan Locatis ’16
their companions. But I was momentarily driven by the impulse to count, and to listen carefully to the tones, and yes, it seemed he was determined to draw out the twelvebar blues until the tortured piece collapsed. I applauded when the twohundred bar chorus ended, not so much for Dave’s skill as for the relief of finally being freed from the agony. It was at that exact moment that I chose to steal another glance at Oedipus. The vehemence of his clapping and his unamused frown told me at once that he shared my sentiments on the protraction of mediocrity. And idiotically, I tried to cast him a small, conspiratorial grin to let him know that yes, I, too, condemned this particular piece as uninspired. But the eyes—how could I forget about the eyes? The only way to eke out a conversation with this living myth, then, would be to speak. But there remained the problem of what to say, which I still had not managed to work out—thanks to Dave’s butchery of a perfectly simple blues form. Kirk, the drummer I’d known from college, was about to finish his tasteful little solo, and then the trio would resume and play the melody a few more times. The piece would end, the crowd would applaud, and then there would be a golden moment of opportunity for small talk as the band shuffled around and prepared for their next piece. I could ask him if he liked the band. If he came here often. We could chat about the venue—about the small stage and the wobbly tables, and maybe the cheap drinks. I glanced over at his drink, trying to decide if it was alcoholic or not. Probably alcoholic, I decided, because after everything that he’d lived through, he’d need a stiff drink whenever he could get one. Then again, maybe in those final moments of pain and suffering he’d sworn to maintain perfect lucidity in his four remaining senses. Maybe he wouldn’t poison himself to dull the suffering. Maybe he wanted to live it out for all of eternity. Which meant it would be insensitive to make small talk about cocktails. The last notes were coming up, and I realized with dread that trivial inquiries might downplay things too much. After all, he was Oedipus. Could I even make small talk with him? And wouldn’t it be ridiculous not to acknowledge from the onset of our conversation that he was the great and tragic Oedipus? Small talk would be a waste. The set ended, and Oedipus rose as if to leave. He was nimble for a blind man; if not for the scarred eyes, you would think that he could see perfectly. He didn’t even jostle our little table as he stood.
67 Locatis
Missed Opportunity
Locatis
Prose
preparing to disappear again into the great unknown. He reached the door ahead of me, and, having run out of ideas long before then, I called out in a last ditch attempt: “Oedipus, wait!” The blind old man paused at the door, turned back toward me with a half-amused smile. “Tiresias,” he corrected me, and with that he disappeared into the night. I knew immediately it was useless to try to follow. So I returned to my seat and my whiskey and Coke, and I listened to the rest of Anthropology without really hearing it. My head was ringing still with the man’s true name. Tiresias. And here I’d spent the better part of the night formulating strategies for talking with a man who’d killed his father and slept with his mother. I should have known better. Oedipus would never sit so calmly in a little jazz club like this, listening to a saxophonist as mediocre as Dave Grover. I should have seen it sooner. And as much as I’ve tried to let it go, I can’t help but return to that night. I recreate it in vivid detail. Play by play, I relive all of my mistakes. And the hell of it is that even now, out of the urgency of the moment, I can’t imagine what I could say to bridge the gap stretched between me and mythology. But I guess only a select few are destined to fill that silence. The rest of us are left to nurse our cheap cocktails, timid, tongue-tied, speechless.
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Prose 68
I panicked. One of the greatest opportunities of my life was passing me by. But I’d never been good at seizing the moment. That was probably why I was more often in the audience than on the stage. Still, I knew I had to do something. So I grabbed his arm and blurted out, “What the hell is Oedipus doing in a jazz club?” To this day I can’t quite describe the look on the man’s face. He was blind—horribly disfigured—but I swear that there was such a look of horror and disgust in those nonexistent eyes that I dropped his arm immediately, sorry to my core that I’d ever dared cross that sacred boundary of space. “You’re mistaken,” he told me. He spoke slowly and carefully, his words accented a little harshly—though the pronunciation was otherwise perfect. I’m the kind of person who starts floundering, and then keeps floundering and generally end up making an ass of myself. So, in the moment, I only managed to stammer weakly, “No, I’m certain. You’re Oedipus. You’re the Oedipus. I can see the... the pain, and the torment—all on your face. You gouged your eyes out.” “I am blind,” he agreed, “but I am not Oedipus. Oedipus is a myth.” At this point Dave Grover started up again, wailing out the unbearably cheerful head of Parker and Gillespie’s Anthropology. Kirk followed along blithely, lifted up into some zone of ease and artistry that I’d never known. Meanwhile, down on earth, I continued to stumble and loop, unable to conceive of an exit strategy for this mess I’d concocted. “Oh,” I mumbled, and offered out my hand, as if I would be permitted to violate this man’s person a second time by touching what was, I was certain, ancient and precious skin. Because as much as he wished to deny it, there was an aura of prophecy and power about him. “I’m sorry. I thought you were Oedipus Rex.” The blind man continued to gather his things. He shrugged into a worn overcoat, covered his head with a checkered flat cap, and pushed his chair in, pausing for just a second to listen to what had to be the fourth or fifth chorus of the pianist’s solo. “Ah,” he sighed, “such a light touch.” I did not withdraw my hand. It hung there uselessly even as he began to drift away from the table. After a moment I trailed after him like a lost dog, unsure of what else to do. I felt as though I’d entered a kind of helpless stupor, driven only by the desire to touch the mystic being
A Letter to My Mother on March 1, 2016 Hanna Day-Tenerowicz ’16
cw: death, anorexia, birth
In memory of Elizabeth Grace Watson ’17
So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I can never thank you enough for loving me through the pain for being the first person I met and for being the strongest person I will ever know. In infinite love and wonder, Your daughter, alive and well.
Day-Tenerowicz
I know how easily that could have been us. What I don’t know is how you did it, how you braved through pain that I can’t even imagine. You endured 48 hours of labor, no painkillers; yet I know my illness, my pointy elbows and canvas-stretched skin, probably hurt worse. It’s been ten years and four days since our struggle began. One year, nine months, and two days since it ended. Anorexia pains and kills; there’s no painkiller for that.
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Poetry 70
I didn’t, I couldn’t, tell you about Elizabeth— about her passing, peaceful and quiet, about her mother’s gratitude to Metro Hospice Care, because she’d reached the point when she knew that this beast was going to win, going to swallow her little girl whole. She knew that it was no longer a matter of if, but of when. The slowest losses hurt the most, I think. It had been ten years.
Poetry
Mom—
Moore Nowell
Art
Bosque del Apache Cecilia Nowell ’16 Digital Photography
Untitled Emily Moore ’18 Charcoal & Ink
Art
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Acknowledgements With special thanks to Crimson Press the Wellesley College English Department & El Table