“Writer’s Block”
Dr. Bob Jantzen
Professor of Mathematics and Statistics
Front Cover Art: “Monkey” by Madeline Scolio
Back Cover Art: “Ulterior Motives” by Dr. Bob Jantzen
President & Editor-in-Chief
Sylvia Aalund
Editing Staff
Cece Schuller
Elizabeth Nacion
Emma Burns
Erica Marciante
Frankie Frabizzio
Isabella Riitano
Jackie Molan
Julia Wolfthal
Katie Christine
Kylie Horan
Lydia McFarlane
Mackenzie Baird
McCauley Bair
Megan Rigione
Milagros Capcha
Noah Lanouette
Ronnie Glick
Sanskar Agrawal
2021-2022 Ellipsis Staff
Vice Presidents
Arielle “Lu” Nogueira
Nikki Amoachi
Director of Outreach & Administration
Taleen Postian
Director of Social Media & Marketing
Valeria Torres
Faculty Advisor
Kathryn Szumanski
English Department
Heather Hicks
Michael Malloy
Amanda Eliades
Graphic Services
John Gebhart
Joseph O’Pella
Barbara Joyce
An Editor’s Guide to Mischief
When we called for submissions for this year’s edition of Ellipsis, we asked our contributors to sneak around, to play tricks on us and delight us, to otherwise subvert and wreak havoc on what we, as university students, think we understand. The goal was to discover works that encompass everything from harmless troublemaking to large-scale disruption.
Sending out a pitch for high-brow mischief, I’ll admit, felt a little pretentious and a lot over-ambitious. I doubted, at first, our ability to put together an entire magazine on such a narrow vision. I was proven wrong, however, by the rich and varied submissions of our contributors, which not only rose our initial challenge, but expanded our definition of mischief even further. With contributions from undergraduate, graduate, staff, and faculty creators, you’ll find pieces that interpret mischief as silliness, devilry, and just about everything in-between.
We’ve organized the magazine to display how each of these meanings remain in tension with one another, contradicting and coexisting across the magazine. In four chapters, Ellipsis’ Mischief explores the playfulness, power, harm, and hope to be found within mischief.
-Sylvia
Wildflowered Amnesty
Lindsay Gallagher
On a winter eve, wrap me in down-feathered sleeves, Take my hand and make me your wildflowered amnesty. Distance is vicious but chronology is wicked; Miles can be bridged in letters and calls But we still lack a way to close gaps in time. Your warmth my morning fantasy: so out of reach. Listen to the leaping flames’ faint whistle, The ashen scent of forgotten fights we both lost. The creamy softness of your cotton henley tee Used to make casual rest a secret heaven.
This time your back to my chest on the bathroom floor, I ask you, crying, what made you a coward. Your unsteady reply: you should have fought for me.
Woodstream Drive
Ciara Coulter
It was my grandparents’ home, on my mother’s side. On the salary of an English teacher and an artist, they bought the biggest house they certainly could not afford, to fill it with children and light and love. My mother was born shortly after, but the other rooms stayed vacant and still, the painful lack of boisterous babble and scampering footsteps evident in the ghostly echoes. For eight long years, this house stood silent, with a single little girl who was more adult, more stern, than suited child’s play. Then, a baby brother. Brightness and laughter and cries, but also too much space still, too much time gone. The house had already taken up its silent knighthood, brooding and formidable like the ancient oaks are around it.
So when, my mother returned finally, grown up and roosting five children, she tittered and fretted in front of the house, unsure if it would sigh in long-awaited relief or swallow us whole, like it had her, an near-only child whose only music was the tinkling wind chime drifting through empty halls. My grandparents didn’t care for music very much. But such a horde of children cannot be so easily contained, and much as the character of the house might have strained to stay rigid as its wooded foundation, it quickly bent its will to the orders of those five little explorers. What was once conqueror submitted to conquering, and the light seemed to shift in the rimmed windows, like the house adjusting its spectacles, seeing clearly for the first time. We began going more often.
Art by Troy White
It allowed us in, but not without challenge. It possessed this fearsome, fathomless quality, like the uncharted cave that both calls and rebukes the adventurer. Crawl spaces that only a child could wriggle through, hidden passageways, creaking stairs, dancing shadows. By far the most perilous feat braved there by adolescent grit was the cave itself: the basement, or rather, basements. They expanded from the bowels of the house to such a span that nearly dwarfed the rest of the house, stretching cement tendrils so far into the roots of nearby trees that you could smell the woody rot, a raw animal scent. The basements were alive, writhing and pulsing in the dirt, a sore tooth pressed against the gum of the earth.
“Growing Up”
Noah Lanouette
Art by Emma Burns
Art by Isabel Langas
Storm Clouds
Cece Schuller
Dull clouds roll out across the summer’s sky, And roiling sea green waves are topped with foam. A tiny, white-sailed boat goes skimming by, So bold and daring, but too far from home.
Cold raindrops patter on the Sunfish deck, And tacking with wet lines burns sailor’s hands, But she must race the gale—or risk a wreck— If capsized too far out from rocky sands.
No lightning yet, or thunder, as she peers
Through pelting rain in search of flags from port Where teaching days drip by and stretch to years, ‘til Zulu calls an end to each day’s sport.
But one day off a week is hers to seize, And she will risk it on the inland seas.
Art by Mary Fleming
To Watch the Artist Deep in Craft
Carrie Sweeney
Lit aglow by Christmas lights
She sits and paints, just out of sight
A tarp below, the world above, A palette calls her into love
Casting wellness where she strides
The work stays with her, tears the tides
Streaky brushstrokes, measured breaths
A hundred thousand little deaths
The careful lines that birth anew
To witness means to glimpse into, To lift the lover out of gloom
To cradle life in canvased womb
To watch the artist well in craft
And crack the door for Heaven’s draft.
“Loise Portrait”
Madeline Scolio
of
“survived finals week (?)”
Emma Burns
“The trouble with spaghetti”
Dr. Bob Jantzen Professor
Mathematics and Statistics
Outstretched
Lily Switka
Outstretched
When you sleep, I trace The tips of my fingers.
Along your twitching arms I remember how they looked In your mom’s Christmas sweater, And how they felt As one bravely rested On my nervous shoulder For the first time.
The same one that carried My suitcase to the airport, And nestled a bouquet Of Peonies behind your back
Is the one that now knows Every curve of my body, And draws me closer: Loved, but still free.
A stretch mark, a freckle, And a scar on your knuckle— The traces remain from a life Before me and my poems.
I know these arms well And can’t wait to return to them When they greet me, Outstretched.
Art by Lily Switka
The Studio Boat
Madeline Scolio
Under the blanket of leaves and twigs and sky
A single slice of hope and solitude sails
Projecting images and wishes onto the page and into the swaying water
Temporary, immediately false
Specters that never pretended to tell the truth
That never told us they knew reality
But we still expected to cram the world into our eyes. “The
Nikki Amoachi
Studio Boat”
“Peepocalypse: A New Hope”
Mary Ann Robinson Professor of Law
Previous page:
“The Ring of Zoom”
Taleen Postian
“Greek, not Latin”
Dr. Bob Jantzen Professor of Mathematics and Statistics
A Complimentary Crime
Clare Sceski
“Good God!” She cried. “Is that what they’re saying?”
Mr. Benjamin turned the page in his newspaper and, maintaining all prior absence of facial expression, replied, “Indeed.”
“Well! How incredibly amusing!”
“You are not perturbed?”
Miss Amelia removed her hat and began stroking its bright red feathers (they matched perfectly with her cherry-blossom print). “I’ll concede it was not the kindest remark a person can make among acquaintances, let alone publish in the weekly.”
“Admittedly--it was an accusation of the gravest sort.”
“But! It was also the highest of compliments.”
Mr. Benjamin, against all desire to stay removed from the conversation, raised his eyes and looked over his newspaper wall. “I assume that was meant to ascertain whether you had my attention or not?”
“Not at all. I’ve had it completely from the start.”
“And yet, such a bombastic comment can serve no other purpose.”
“Except perhaps conveying that I do genuinely believe the accusation to be a compliment.”
“Ludicrous.”
“Not at all, and I’ll explain why; it’s a compliment because not everyone is capable of murder.”
The newspaper lowered. “You are deranged.”
“Oh no. It’s quite logical really. In fact, I’m surprised you don’t see it. Anyone can kill another person in an obvious manner--say, hitting them over the head with a heavy object when they aren’t looking. But poison! Now that’s a crime that takes some genius to plan and execute. No average, uneducated soul could do it. Therefore, to be accused of murder by poison is not, in fact, so much an insult, as it is a sublime compliment to one’s intellect.”
“You admit to committing the murder?”
“Mr. Benjamin!” she cried, tossing down her hat, “What an absolutely awful thing to say! Murder is the most heinous, dark-hearted of all crimes!”
“And yet, you assert that it is a compliment to be called a murderer?”
“No. I asserted it is a compliment to be said to be capable of it.”
“And what of the evidence connecting you to the crime?”
“What evidence?”
“Your presence at the inn last night. You were indeed there?”
“Undoubtedly--loads of people saw me.”
“But you gave no credible reason for being present?”
“Of course not. You know as well as I that I’ve never had a credible reason for being anywhere ever.”
“That,” Mr. Benjamin said with a sigh, “is an irrefutable fact.”
“One which the rest of the town knows perfectly well, Mr. Elderson among them. And so, there is no evidence linking me to the crime at all. Which means the only logical conclusion is that by accusing me of murder in today’s headlines, Mr. Elderson did not at all intend to insinuate that I committed the murder, but rather that I am intelligent enough to murder someone if I so chose to. Therefore, it is a compliment.”
There was a long silence. The butler entered with tea, placed it on the table between Mr. Benjamin and Miss Amelia, then left and shut the door.
“You’ve the strangest way of thinking.”
“How kind of you to say.”
“It was not a compliment.”
“I think it was.”
“Then you are mistaken.”
“No, Mr. Benjamin, I do not think so. And I would be quite astounded if you did not concur, because I believe you find my way of thinking utterly engrossing.”
“I must leave you in astonishment then; I do not concur.”
She smiled, “Well, Mr. Benjamin, if that is the case, then I’ve failed to amuse you. I’m terribly sorry since that was my primary motive in coming here in the first place. And look! You’ve lost all interest in that newspaper since I’ve shown up! What a pity. It would be awfully rude of me to stay and keep you from reading local gossip, which you find far more entrancing than my company. Therefore, I won’t keep you any longer.” She stood and, returning her hat to its rightful place, said, “I do hope you enjoy your newspaper.”
“I intend to.”
“Yes, I imagine you think so.” And with that, she turned and left the room, exiting just as the butler re-entered with a tray of scones.
“Good afternoon, Jenson,” she said as she passed into the hall.
“Good afternoon, Miss Amelia.”
The door shut. Jenson set the tray on the table.
“If you don’t mind my humble opinion,” he said, glancing at the closed door, “if anyone in town were to commit a murder, it would be her.”
Mr. Benjamin took up his tea, and blowing upon it, muttered, “Indeed Jenson. Indeed.”
human?
Carolina Perez
“What are you,” he asked.
“Uhm, human?” I replied.
“I like them spicy. Just like you.”
I’m not a spicy food.
“You look exotic. Just how I like them.”
I am not an exotic fruit.
“I bet you have a really nice ass and big boobs. I love thick Latinas.”
I am more than my body. I am human.
“What are you?” he inquired again.
“I’m human?” I respond. I don’t understand the question.
“No, where are you from?”
“Stop speaking Mexican.”
Mexican isn’t a language.
“God damn Mexicans!”
I am not Mexican.
You don’t deserve someone that loves you. You fucking Mexican get the fuck out of here. No one wants you here.”
I’m not Mexican. I am deserving of love. I am human.
“I’m from Miami. What about you?” I answer.
“No, where are you actually from?”
“Miami?” I repeat, failing to comprehend his inquiry.
“Why do you guys have such weird names? You should be named like Hannah.”
My name is integral to my identity.
“I like your hair straightened better. You look less Hispanic/”
I didn’t ask for your opinion. My language is integral to my identity.
“I mean where are your parents from?”
“They were born in Miami. Why does it matter?”
“Go back to your country.”
I am from here.
“Where are your papers?”
I was born here.
“Get out of here you illegal.”
I was born here.
“You’re not white. You’re Latina. You’re not like me, you’re different.”
Latina/o/e is an ethnicity, not a race. We are both human.
“feed 12:01-12:38 2/10/2022”
Jackie Carroll
Art by Jaimie Murray
Poem by Jackie Carroll
Art by Jaimie Murray
“Odysseus’ Lament”
Frankie Frabizzio
WATERCOOLER CHAT ON A FRIDAY AFTERNOON OR, A CONVERSATION BETWEEN A MAN AND HIS EXECUTIONER
JESUS(?): IS THIS GOING TO TAKE LONG?
SYDNEY: NO, DEFINITELY NOT.
JESUS: ARE YOU SURE, THIS LOOKS LIKE A BIG JOB. I’D KNOW, I’M A CARPENTER BY TRADE AND THOSE NAILS LOOK TO BE THREE OR MORE INCHES, THIS JOB LOOKS LIKE IT’S A BIG ONE. ARE YOU SURE YOU DON’T NEED ANY HELP?
SYDNEY: NAH MAN, YOU’RE GOOD. [UNDER HIS BREATH] YOU’VE DONE ENOUGH.
[JESUS PRETENDS NOT TO HEAR]
JESUS: [TAKES A BREATH, CALM AND GOOD NATURED STILL.] AS LONG AS YOU’RE SURE. I ONLY WANT TO HELP.
SYDNEY: I KNOW, I KNOW. [PAUSES, CONSIDERING HIS NEXT THOUGHT, DECIDES TO CONTINUE] DO YOU EVER THINK YOU TRY TO HELP A LITTLE TOO MUCH?
JESUS: WELL, I HAVE ONLY TRIED TO BRING JOY AND AID TO OTHERS THROUGH MY WORK. I HAVE RECEIVED MANY THANKS FOR WHAT I DO—HEY!
SYDNEY: [HIS HAND HELD ALOFT, HOLDING A HAMMER] WHAT?
JESUS: SORRY, SORRY, [CHAGRINED CHUCKLING] I FORGOT WHY WE WERE HERE.
SYDNEY: NO PROBLEM MAN, PEOPLE SOMETIMES FORGET, LOSE IT A LITTLE HALFWAY THROUGH, I GET IT.
JESUS: DO THEY REALLY? YOU MUST HAVE SEEN A LOT OF CRUCIFIXIONS IN YOUR TIME.
SYDNEY: MY GOD, YOU HAVE NO IDEA. IT GETS OLD AFTER A WHILE, BUT YOU NEVER REALLY GET USED TO IT.
JESUS: [TURNING TO THE MAN BEING STRUNG UP TO THE LEFT OF HIM,] WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT ALL THIS, MY GOOD MAN?
JOSH: I DON’T KNOW MAN; I’M JUST TRYING TO GET THROUGH IT AT THIS POINT.
JESUS: I HEAR YOU; I FEEL YOU. [TURNING TO HIS RIGHT,] HOW ARE YOU HOLDING UP?
JAKE: [SHAKING HIS HEAD, WINCES DUE TO THE NAILS GORING THROUGH HIS HANDS] MY GOD, GALLOWS HUMOR? YOU’RE BETTER THAN THAT.
JESUS: FINE, FINE, FORGIVE ME. JUST TRYING TO LIGHTEN THE MOOD.
SYDNEY: [WHO HAD BEEN LOOKING BETWEEN THE MEN IN BEFUDDLEMENT AND BEGRUDGING HUMOR, SCHOOLS HIS FACE] ALRIGHT GUYS, LET’S NOT FORGET WHY WE’RE HERE. [TURNS BACK TO JESUS’ HAND, AND HAMMERS IN ANOTHER NAIL.]
JESUS: [WINCES AS EACH HIT PIERCES HIS SKIN, BUT STILL SERENE,] WHATEVER WORKS FOR YOU MAN, I’M ONLY HERE TO HELP. BY THE WAY, I THINK YOU SPLINTERED THE WOOD. [THE SKY GOES DARK]
“The description of someone being crucified as a menial task”
Taleen Postian
xv. the devil
shaking fingertips trace the shackle around my neck, wide eyes follow the chain that droops towards you. i feel my breath leaving, throat held closed, darkness creeps into the edges of my vision. bony knees hit the ground sharply as you pull the leash towards your feet. you sneer at me, eyes red, teeth sharp. the key is in your hand, and you can’t get enough.
Arielle “Lu” Nogueira
“the alternate scream”
Lorin Kaygalak
Nikki Amoachi
What a very funny thing, fighting something you know will win: truth, death, or the scorpion sting.
I laugh in the face of the one who tells me to count in the dark; at twenty goes the sound—fuzzy—like a monochromatic rerun.
Ten more whispers limp out from under me, creatures meant to kill with broken wings the shadow whose icy hands hold a machine—measuring degrees.
A hand on my neck and I stir, like a chained dog hiding scars under old and ragged fur.
A bottle of ambient rattles on its own—an alarm— and some sort of jazz makes the stethoscope float. A pair of teeth shine with poisoned charm.
“Good.” I feel a wave kill the life in my toes. I couldn’t stop laughing—singing— into (unclosed, exposed)
The tainted, twisted, night?
night?
cold tiles
Arielle “Lu” Nogueira
contentwarning:Thispoemcontainsstrongthemesandimagerypertainingto disorderedeating.
cold tile floors feel sharp on bare skin it’s a familiar sensation the hair on my arms grows back faster than the hair that sheds from my head waves of dizziness when i stand i ache when i bend down to pick up my fallen bag, hairclips and tic-tacs skittering across the floor
only look in the mirror in the morning empty stomach cramping asking for more long sleeves and pants dont bother me in the summertime i’m always so cold anyways
my hunger-stunted height is 2 standard deviations below the national average i learned that from the statistics textbook that i skipped dinner last night to study
i can’t blame my family, they live vicariously through my shrinking they compliment how thin i look, the less space i take up, the better
they ask me if i’ve eaten but stare at the floor when i serve seconds tell me to run for endorphins when i lack the energy to even stay awake
i know i should seek help but i’ve grown comfortable with the emptiness i write poems with my forehead propped up on cold porcelain the icy tile floor won’t get any warmer, anyways.
The Three Shades
Jake Carr
Find comfort in my grasp
Fallen brothers of mine
We abandon our hope as one
Shades of a dying light
Fear not the darkness
But that we could never retain the light
Stand atop the gates of hell
And listen to the silence
For true suffering knows no sound
We are shades of our kind
And shades of the night
Look down upon them
But do not judge the damned
A tortured soul need not be broken
For it shattered long ago
There is no Hell
But damnation across the ground at our feet
Blood in the streets
And tears in their eyes
Fire in her forests
As hope finally dies
There is no comfort
Not anymore
You will find nothing in my grasp
Save for a memory of what could’ve been
Evening shade may forgive
Ivy Karolyi
Evening shade may forgive but leave corners too dim for real honest folk and gut - wrenching speak
I want you to look upon me in direct sunlight only no paint for the war no song for the march just bare brown me
Whose daily purpose is to give reason for magpies to marvel at the kinship between faith and revolution
My worst has been of my own doing and nothing has reflected the best of my nature more than the hand of God.
“Ms. Prynne’s Indignation”
Frankie Frabizzio
iv. the emperor reversed
Arielle “Lu” Nogueira
the armor you wear protects you not from violence or brawn, but from empathy.
you demand to be heard, presenting your wisdom of false promises.
an emperor who holds the lives of his family in his hands, juggling them in the balance,
who uses his power to remind them he is superior, almighty, that they are expendable, liabilities to his own interests,
is no emperor at all.
Art by Mary Fleming
this january
Arielle “Lu” Nogueira
this january feels like cold with no snow
like sufjan stevens in the morning and showering in the dark
finding loose hair on your pillow and crumbs in your bed
like the silence after a heavy conversation and the smell after a storm
being unprepared for winter on ¼ tank of gas
a blocked nose that never relieves itself itchy throat
like facetime with your lover and waking up alone
a run in your black tights or a pull in your favorite sweater
you can mop up the mud tracked into the house delete screenshots, burn the letters traces still remain when the sun rises again
“deficit”
Charlotte Roberts
“thoughts”
Emma Burns
Art by Mary Fleming
i’ll trade you my Wednesday mornings for your Sunday nights it’s Sunday night and I have had one glass of wine too many (we were supposed to be doing homework) it took me thirty minutes to blow out my hair today. thirty minutes, and now I’m lying on your living room floor and my once elegant curls are flower petals splashed out against the laminate. it’s quiet with your roommate gone: nothing to hear but the soothing hum of NBA announcers calling out plays and your fingers tapping at the keys as you write an economics paper, or a letter to the editor, or something. your last gummy bear stuck to my fingers, I hear myself promise to drive you to the grocery store Wednesday morning to buy more. a mutually stolen glance rests in the air, unacknowledged. our legs are almost touching (almost). you’ll walk me home, my face hugged against your sweater: a familiar goodnight.
“thoughts”
Emma Burns
Poem by Lindsay Gallagher
“portrait in red”
Charlotte Roberts
Radical Light
Carrie Sweeney
Holding a solar system in your palm
isn’t so easy, they say Jupiter’s too gaudy
And Saturn’s too sheepish and Mars, of course, has a mind of its own dancing the unbalanced dance of this cosmos, the marrow of life taking shape, staking hold
But once in an eon at the midnight of mercy
The pupils of planets align and alive for a momentary blaze, a line of prismatic color glistening, chromatic, spherical ripeness, pius and whole and gleaming, then gone.
And the marbles are back on their well-oiled tracks spilling over and swirling through each other’s orbits, not touching but almost
Each moment a moment that taunts cosmic carnage but you steady your fingertips, fold in your palms and whisper the world into order.
Art by Mary Fleming
Feast of St. John
Bonfires blaze under half mooned night
The evening cool a welcome calm.
And songs rise up, with shouts and laughing heckles
As dancers prance the dew wet grass For Feast Night.
Hands clasp hands around the fires
In harvest celebration. They whirl
And toss long shadows out into dark fields
As all can drop their daily burdens For Feast Night.
She is otherworldly in flickering light
Her dark hair catching glinting sparks of gold
As the sky catches a crown of stars
And three dark curls bounce around her face, free For Feast Night.
My steps are unsteady over chill grass and stones
My skirt flowing daringly close to the flames, But I cannot bother to watch my steps
When no one will notice if I watch her For Feast Night.
She smiles at me across the light
As sweaty hands drop mine and shouted cheers call For a ballad next, a slower tune
A change from the flying circles the groups dance For Feast Night.
I step back, to watch which dance she will accept But she waves them off, and my heart thumps
Hot hands tangled in my skirt, when she turns
Reaching for me with a smile. Our hands fit nicely. Right. For Feast Night.
“Passing”
Anonymous
Frankie Frabizzio
Red Eye
Carrie Sweeney
A ceiling of stars
A “no smoking” sign
And gray leather seats that pretend to recline
An aerial map
On a seatback TV
In an aircraft that lingers above a vast sea
The shades are all drawn, The passengers sleep, They’ve got places to go and stories to keep
And baggage to claim, Connections to miss
So we rest, or stare into the clouded abyss
We lug hearts that we know Into lands that we don’t
We pack books to read (full knowing we won’t)
Our spot in the fog Is a wrinkle in time
As old clocks strike forward and rhythms align
So this unlikely steel bird
Glides silently on Until worlds that we once called our own are far gone
So we napkin-jot thoughts
As we search for new light
And we count down the hours (still three left in this flight)
Art by Mary Fleming
“seaweed”
Charlotte Roberts
hazy hue of orange
hazy hue of orange
Gemma Krautzel
Gemma Krautzel
and just like the sunrise you will start another day soft in hazy hues into vibrant golden beams of rebirth.
and just like the sun you will burn again with love for another soul.
and just like the sunset you will leave behind the somber and accept tranquil repose into the iridescent night.
and just like the moon you will reenter a phase of becoming whole again.
Ellipsis Thanks
word of mouth (not mouth to mouth) dog spotting
Sylvia’s aunt Gail
peer pressure rectangles
Ellipsis Does Not Thank
thesauruses everywhere
the lack of dongles in Garey Hall
Sylvia not checking the basketball schedule before scheduling meetings
Emma and Julia’s fire alarm
Ellipsis is Indifferent To thinking Odysseus is Jesus
our cruel mistress, adobe InDesign
doodle polls
