2025
The Stonesthrow Review
EDITOR’S NOTE
"Hudson Valley" by minka6
This is the 20th annual issue of the SUNY New Paltz Undergraduate Literary Journal, The Stonesthrow Review, which means that this publication has been a part of the experience of creative writing students for many years longer than I have, and hopefully it will remain a piece of the experience for many years more than I will. In my office I have a shelf of little printed copies going back to some of the earliest issues. The prose, the poems, and the scenes inside those volumes are from a distant time now, as these will someday seem to a future reader. A note from the editor in the 4th issue ever made reminds us that “Time exists on its own terms” and that every moment in life is a potential moment for the receiving of enlightenment. The artist’s job is to “stencil [these] against the surface of the mundane.”
In some ways when I look at those older pieces they feel so similar to the ones we’re presenting here. Writers then wrote about the beauty of nature, the anxieties of the moment, about sex, about drugs, about brothers and mothers, about refrigerators, about traffic, about love, about the future. The enlightenments we receive today, the mundane surfaces we stencil them onto, are not so different at all.
But we keep writing. We Make It New. When Ezra Pound, the modernist poet, adopted this phrase as the fundamental drive for what he saw as a new kind of art for a new age of humankind, it was a call to arms, to break the old rules, to reinvent, reimagine, and go into unexplored territories of language, structure, theme, and soul.
“Make It New” he commanded, even using this as the title of his anthology. And yet I read this week that Pound likely appropriated the phrase from one of several books of Confucian history and philosophy that he read and taught in the 1920s, in which King Ch’eng T’ang (Tching-thang), was described as having a bathtub with a particular inscription engraved on it:
“Renew thyself daily, utterly, make it new, and again new, make it new.”
Only it may not have said this at all, apparently. Somewhere in the translation from 10th century Chinese to French and then to English, it seems the meaning may have shifted. The washtub’s inscription’s original meaning turns out to be less like “Make it new” and more like “Do it again.”
Make it new. Do it again. We are always, in some way doing both of these things, and at the same time. “It is not enough to always tell the truth in art,” writes Charles Baxter, “The truth can get dull.”
The truth is not dramatic enough on its own, Baxter argues, but it can be “if it is forgotten first.” And so we sit down, again and again, to write in the hopes that we might remind ourselves of all the truths we have forgotten.
Time exists on its own terms. Twenty years is, on some level, a major milestone, and on another, no time at all. This 20th issue of the Stonesthrow Review sees that work begun then and says that there is more to be said. What was strange then has become, now, familiar. What was once familiar has become strange again.
And so here are 35 poems, scenes, essays, and fictions, each one is a reception of the enlightenments of today, which our students have now made new, and done again.
Table of Contents
“Quarter” Adam Daher Poetry
“Fire in the Woods” Nikki Smith Fiction
“Blue” Mandy Fetterman Poetry
“Three Apartments” Ben Chappell Graphic Narrative
“Democracy” Gavin James Murray Dramatic Writing
“With Friends Like These.” Elijah Brahmi Fiction
“Ode to Thebes” Sophia Sanikidze Poetry
“Doers” Nate Kenny Dramatic Writing
“Saint Peter Street Breakdown” Kevin See Nonfiction
“The Funeral” Lilianna Cullen Poetry
“extirpation” Adam Neville Fiction
“Wisdom Teeth” Kaitlyn Keegan Poetry
“Great Blue Heron” Carly Warner Poetry
“All I Wanted” Elisa Rosario Fiction
“Imperfect Fats” Nadia Dasi Tamayo Nonfiction
“Kathy from the Bronx” Cole Solis Jativa Poetry
“The Glass Eye” Luca Aiello Poetry
“Day at the Beach” Bailey Savatgy Poetry
“Limbo” Sarah Smith Fiction
“Paris Roofs” Leeza Pantano Dramatic Writing
“Suffocation and Jubilee” Lucas Jackson-Peterka Fiction
“A Letter to a Famous Poet” Fiona White Fiction
“The Golden Ratio” Ben Chappell Poetry
“What Is There To Do in Somers, NY…” C.T. Lark Poetry
“Thoughts on Terezin” Brionna McDonald Poetry
“From: Like Objects Waiting to Topple” Zachary Lopane Dramatic Writing
“Movement” Nate Kenny Fiction
“An Abecedarian Befouled in Tongues” C.T. Lark Poetry
“The Fear” Libby Shkreli Fiction
“The Warrior Walk” Luca Aiello Poetry
“Reverse Prayer” Maddie Dewsbury Poetry
“The Gunk” Adam Daher Poetry
“Spill” Dylan Murphy Poetry
“Practicing Positive Self-Talk in a Mirror” Lucas Jackson-Peterka Nonfiction
“Island Diaries” Mayra Puntier Poetry
Quarter
It all begins with an idea.
by Adam Daher
Jackpot
Turned to gold vapor
Volatile value
A quarter spent
A quarter gone
I sped towards paradise
Only to slam on painted brick
Each of your pieces
An artful dagger
Into my chest
Hops in the wort
I can’t leave
Your violet shadow
I gave you my all
What did you give me?
Fire in the Woods
It all begins with an idea.
by Nikki Smith
Bill Shutter forced himself to look in the mirror every morning. He’d see his raisin-like face and bald head and wonder what it was like to die. He would stand there until his knees started to buckle from being on his feet for too long—the same legs that used to carry him through the woods for miles now failed him, making him rely on a wheelchair for most of his mobility.
After his mirror standoff, he would move on to getting dressed. It took him a few minutes to put on his flannel shirt and denim jeans. He blamed it on his fingers being too big for the buttons. He never asked his nurse for help—he had to do what he could to keep his dignity. He’d then force down his first few pills of the day with a chug of water and sit in his wheelchair. Once he left his apartment, he would go left or right from his door and head down the sterile-smelling hall. His choice would take him either to the living area—which always smelled faintly of other residents’ incontinence—or the cafeteria. Most days he went to the cafeteria, then he’d try to sneak back into his apartment without his nurse seeing. Every time she found out he had spent the whole day in his apartment, he’d receive a lecture akin to a child on their first day at kindergarten.
“You can always go visit your friend Larry. You remember him, right Mr. Shutter?” she’d say. “You played cards with him last week. He lives right across the hall.”
“I’ll talk to him,” he’d say, but he never did. He wasn’t going to fall for her lies—he didn’t know anyone named Larry. He’d always been good with names.
One time, as he was wheeling himself down the hallway, he saw his wife, Sandra. She was standing in front of a walker and looking at a painting on the wall.
“Sandra?” he said.
Sandra turned around, her mouth agape. She looked back at him. Bill immediately realized she was not his Sandra. There was no life in the woman’s eyes—it was almost as if she had television static for a brain. That’s what Bill thought about most people living here: their lives had no color.
Sandra would have been so wonderful with their grandchildren. He and Sandra’s daughter, Amy, would bring all three of them nearly every Saturday to come visit. He’d take her and the kids down to the cafeteria to get some fudge pops. He’d always end up having to apologize to Amy for all the chocolate that would inevitably drip onto the kids’ shirts. They were still young enough that they didn’t truly care what he had to say, but at least they would listen to him.
Amy had once visited his apartment with her oldest child, Ellie, who quickly found the photo of him and Sandra that he’d kept on his nightstand. He let her look at it for all of two minutes.
“Sandra, put that back now,” he said.
“My name is Ellie.” She put it back on the table. “I’m not Grandma.”
“Oh, you know what I meant. I keep forgetting to take that damn memory pill.”
“I doubt those pills even do anything for you, Dad,” Amy said.
“Well, that’s good. I already take enough pills anyway.”
Amy shrugged. “Whatever you say.”
Most nights, especially after his family visited, he would have the same dream. In fact, he couldn’t remember a night where he’d dreamed something different within the past five years. He’d fall asleep and—in his dream—wake up lying on his back in a field of white orchids. The sun would shine down on him, warming his skin. The orchid field was on the top of a mountain, and in the distance he could see many more rolling hills of white. The flowers smelled sweet, just like Sandra’s perfume. Then he would wake up, her smell still in his nose, and stay in bed to lie by himself in his lonely, sterile room. He’d look at the empty side of his bed and remember she was gone, and how much he wished he could go back.
#
His memory of that day was as clear as a freshwater stream. He’d set his alarm for four o’clock to give himself enough time to check his knapsack and put on all his gear.
He sat up and climbed out of bed, lured by the scent and sound of bacon frying in a pan. He walked through the doorframe of their bedroom—they had no doors in the house aside from the entryway and bathroom—and into the kitchen. Sandra was standing in front of the woodstove, adjusting the firewood with an iron poker.
“Mornin’, Sandra,” he said.
Sandra jumped and whipped around, dropping the iron poker on the floor with a clang. Ash scattered across the tiles.
“My lord!” Sandra shouted. “You walk so quietly, Bill.”
Bill grinned. “Hunter's feet.”
“Right.” Sandra grabbed a broom from the cabinet next to the woodstove and began to sweep the ashes into a pile. “Do you want an egg with your breakfast?”
“No,” Bill said. “Need help cleaning that up?”
“I’m fine,” Sandra said. She had already started brushing the ash pile neatly into a dustpan. “Remember what Doctor Oswald said. Eggs have a lot of good vitamins. And you could use some extra energy today.”
“Fine, I’ll have just one, please. You want me to make ‘em?”
Sandra shook her head vehemently. “No. I don’t need you burning the cabin down in the middle of winter.”
Bill chuckled. “Fine, dear.”
After she finished cooking the eggs, Sandra put them on two plates along with some bacon and two slices of toast. They sat together at the little square table across from the woodstove. Bill had built the table himself—in fact, he had built the entire cabin. It was their retirement project, and they’d moved in as soon as he’d completed it fifteen years ago.
Bill ate the last of his breakfast and got up to get dressed. Sandra remained at the table, working on a crossword puzzle as she sipped a cup of coffee. Bill walked through the doorway and into their bedroom, where he kneeled down onto the hardwood floor and pulled out the bottom drawer of their dresser. There lay his camouflage jacket, pants, gloves, and a few pairs of thick wool socks. Underneath the jacket, Bill found his neon-orange hat and its matching vest. He grabbed only the hat from the set, pulled out the other clothes, and closed the drawer.
He emerged from the bedroom fully dressed in his camouflage gear, looking like a two-dimensional leafy tree. Sandra looked up from her crossword puzzle and after scanning him up and down, slowly shook her head.
Bill slouched. “What?”
“Where is your orange vest?”
“Don’t need it.” Bill pointed to his head. “I’ve already got the hat.”
“I will not have you shot on the first day of the hunting season,” Sandra said. “Or any day, for that matter. You better put that vest on, or I won’t let you out that door.”
Bill groaned and turned back around. He grabbed the vest from the bottom dresser drawer, straining his knees as he forcefully pushed himself up again. He glanced at the clock hanging above the front door from where he stood in the bedroom. The second hand continued to tick by. The longer he stared at the clock, the farther it went. The sound of it clicked in his ears: tick, tick, tick. Finally, he calculated that it was a quarter-to-five: the usual time that he liked to leave.
Bill walked once again through the doorway and past Sandra. She looked up and smiled approvingly.
“Very good, Bill.”
“I just try to keep you happy,” he said. He stood by the entryway and pulled on his boots.
“And you do,” she replied. “Good luck out there, dear.”
Bill nodded his thanks and grabbed his shotgun off the wall before walking out the door and onto their screened-in porch. He’d laid his knapsack out there last night after packing it with all his supplies, including a flashlight, a small foam cushion, his ammo, and a bottle of water. The shotgun was already fully loaded: he had to always be prepared in case there was a bear or some other kind of danger. As he reached for the straps of his knapsack, his jacket scraped against the material of his vest. He couldn’t stand that sound. Glancing at the window, he could see Sandra at the table, fully invested in her crossword puzzle. He quickly unbuckled his vest and laid it on the bench before slinging the knapsack over his shoulders.
Bill let the screen door close silently behind him and walked around to the back of the cabin. He trudged through several layers of leaves in his boots. He’d seen no need to buy a leaf blower despite Sandra’s nagging. They lived in the woods for goodness’ sake—he would have to be out there all day, every day to maintain their property’s leaves. They’d eventually settled that he would rake the dirt driveway that led to their house once a month from September to December.
He walked straight into the forest from the back of the house. It only took him about twenty minutes to get to his spot: a large boulder covered in the shade of the oak trees. The surrounding terrain was mostly flat with a few small hills.
Bill sat down on his cushion. The trees shook with the wind, and he kept hearing sharp thuds from their acorns falling onto the forest floor. Bill’s face felt like a snowball, and he was thankful that it was the only part of him exposed to the bitter cold.
As the sky turned pink with the slow rise of dawn, he began to very faintly hear birds chirping from the nearby brush. The rustle of the trees as they shook with the wind covered most of the sound. Bill continued to keep watch over his surroundings through a pair of binoculars. He may not have had the best hearing (or vision) anymore, but he wasn’t going to let a deer get by him.
Bill spotted a stocky whitetail, an eight-point buck, a few yards away from him. His heart began to pound. This is it, he thought to himself. Sandra will be ecstatic.
He put down his binoculars and grabbed his shotgun. He watched the buck—it was close enough that he could see it without his binoculars—as it stepped closer and closer to his spot. Bill raised his gun, as silent as a field mouse foraging near a cat. He placed his pointer finger on the trigger and was just about ready to shoot when the buck suddenly shot his head up, looked right at him, and bolted off in the opposite direction.
“Dammit,” Bill muttered.
Suddenly, he heard leaves rustling nearby. He lowered his gun and listened, remaining as still as possible. It was hard to hear anything with the trees shaking from the wind, but it sounded like it was coming from right behind him. It wasn’t yet too late in the season to be a bear, and it could also be a coyote. The rustles grew louder and louder in his ears. Then, a twig snapped. That was it—he couldn’t risk making his wife a widow. Bill turned around, aimed his shotgun in the direction of the sound, and fired.
He heard the creature fall into the leaves. The recoil of the shot caused the shotgun to smack him in the nose. He could feel warm blood dripping down his upper lip, a stark contrast to the bitter cold he felt on the rest of his face. He put the gun down and wiped the blood with his right hand, soaking his glove. Taking a deep breath, he opened his eyes and looked at the animal that lay on the ground.
It was Sandra. She’d fallen directly on her back. She wore her oversized black winter coat and her gray, thick-soled boots. Her face was untouched by the gunshot: her torso had taken most of the damage. Gripped tightly in her left hand was his orange vest.
Bill screamed. He stumbled towards her and grabbed her by the shoulders, shaking her gently until he couldn’t bear to look at her face anymore. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were slightly open. He took the vest from her hand and draped it over her head.
He didn’t leave her until it was fully daylight. He made his way back to the cabin, moaning and sobbing along the way. He walked through the door to see that the fire in the woodstove had reduced to just a few orange embers. As he headed towards the landline in the bedroom, he noticed that Sandra’s crossword puzzle still lay on the table. He picked it up and glanced at the first clue:
“Something to remember, or to want to forget.”
Memory.
Blue
It all begins with an idea.
by Mandy Fetterman
I dreamed
I comforted Kamala Harris
as we cried together
for the sake of our country
I felt significant
to have the honor
of hugging
the should-have-been president
Later in that same dream
my sock got stuck in an escalator
but it wasn’t a sock
it was lingerie around my foot
I was very embarrassed
to be seen in public
with torn underwear
on my foot
Democracy
"G House Recording Studio - Jamaica, Queens" by pasa47 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
by Gavin James Murray
INT. A RECORDING STUDIO IN IRELAND - EVENING
Four people sit in a dirty-looking room with padded walls and an array of musical instruments that are all not properly taken care of. Three of the people sit in chairs with their respective instruments in hand and the other sits on a stool behind a drum kit.
One guy, PATRICK in his early 20s, that closer resembles a giraffe than a human sits with a guitar in hand and starts to screw around and make the most excruciating sounds known to man. As he does this he holds the absolute stupidest fucking grin known to man that makes his face ten times more punchable than usual.
Another guy, DECLAN, who needs to be introduced to a proper meal sits across from him, the kid who is so skinny that the average person could wrap their pointer finger and thumb around both his ankles and wrists.
An argument breaks out where their heavy Irish accents get to flourish.
DECLAN
Stop. Stop. Stop. That just sounds bad just play the song
PATRICK
Well it's miles better than-
DECLAN
That was just the placeholder. It's not the ONLY option
PATRICK
Ian, what do you think?
Ian is visibly older than the rest of them but only by a couple of years. This is mainly because he has an incredibly poorly kept-beard.
IAN
I don't particularly lean one way or the other
The drummer, who is younger than the rest of them, a fifteen-year-old, weighs in. His teeth are more crooked than a blind man trying to parallel park.
DRUMMER
Well I like -
DECLAN
Shhh! The adults are talking
The drummer stays quiet.
DECLAN
Ok well, I'm making the decisions because this is MY band, and we all know that not a single great band was EVER a democracy
PATRICK
Ok - well - The Beatles - whatever - but I think we can all agree that my suggestion is at least not rubbish-
IAN
Oh my god. Let's just finish the fucking song first man, then we can figure out the effects
PATRICK
Fine I'm gonna get me pedal then.
DECLAN
The pedal you found on the side of the road?
PATRICK
Yeah. Ha-
DECLAN
We are not using your fucking off- the-road pedal, I'm sorry it sounds like shite.
PATRICK
I don't see the problem, to be honest, I found the pedal on the side of the road just like ya mum found you.
DECLAN
You think you're grand mate!
PATRICK's stupid fucking grin returns.
PATRICK
A little bit yeah
The drummer, ADAM, giggles.
DECLAN
Adam, you're only here because the last guy overdosed!
A beat.
IAN
C'mon Declan.
DECLAN
Alright fine, let's just hear Patrick out.
Patrick gets up and walks over to the analog recording machine, everyone else follows. Patrick clicks a few buttons and whatnot and the group sits back and listens.
No one says a word until DECLAN gets up and walks back into the padded room they were in before.
DECLAN
Everyone just shut up and give me a couple of minutes.
The other 3 watch him from the window while DECLAN strums his guitar and writes things down in his notebook.
After a couple of minutes, DECLAN stands up in hopelessness, kicks a trash can, and walks out.
PATRICK
Declan, where are you going?
DECLAN
(Bluntly)
I think I'm going to have a cigarette now.
DECLAN keeps mumbling to himself as he walks out. After a minute, PATRICK gets up and follows.
PATRICK
I'll go see what the man's issue is.
IAN
Is that the best idea?
PATRICK does not respond and is already out the door.
CUT TO:
EXT. OUTSIDE THE RECORDING STUDIO - SUNSET
DECLAN is seen leaning against a railing overseeing an expressway with a lush landscape in the background, smoking a cigarette, and PATRICK walks up.
PATRICK
Gimme one.
DECLAN hands him the pack.
PATRICK
Reds?
DECLAN
Mum said the blues killed me grandad so I'm only smoking the Reds.
DECLAN smiles and then PATRICK smiles.
DECLAN
I just need it to be good, everything about the band needs to be good.
DECLAN's smile fades.
DECLAN
And I can respect you as a musician but you are not remotely serious at all.
PATRICK's smile fades too. DECLAN is using his hands to accentuate every word he says.
DECLAN
I mean, did you even read the contract? The label is only covering distribution. We are pretty much paying them right now. And this is mostly me money paying for all this, and you're in there acting the maggot. We are fucked if we end up being shite. I want you to be involved, you can sing and write songs, but you have to fucking care. So when we go back in there, stop causing problems and shut up for just two seconds.
DECLAN puts his cigarette out on the railing and walks away, leaving PATRICK staring off into space in shock.
END SCENE
With Friends Like These.
by Elijah Brahmi
I dreamt last night I was completely alone; for the first time, my so-called friends were nowhere to be seen. Just me and the aching, yawning silence I had forever been dreaming of. But as soon as I fell in love with the peace of mind, the echo of the void began to tug at my shivering naked body; where I was, I was nowhere to be found. I hate how nothing can just be simple and good, not even in my dreams. But at least if I disappeared, I wouldn't have to suffer my friendship anymore; if I couldn't be content in waking nightmares, asleep, or in dreams, at least I could find something resembling peace in death. Maybe then, at last, I could be free.
I was painfully awoken by the blare of my alarm clock. I jolted up, frazzle-haired, crusty-eyed, and moaning. I kicked the parade of legs beside me and groaned as I realized all my stupid friends had decided to spend the night. As if they weren't satisfied taking up all my days; now they had to steal my nights too, and what little sleep I could squeeze in between the energy drinks, booze, and endless hedonistic excursions.
How… functional and productive. I'm truly the image of 21st-century success.
Let’s see. I have five awful roommates to split the rent and split my skull, a low-level position at a dying rag, no boyfriend, no family except my self-righteous brother, and no future prospects. Always a cough or one incident with my friends away from being fired, or homeless, as my friend Rachel always likes to remind me when she's not going on about the world ending. All my other friends dropped them, but I'm stuck; I have no choice but to deal with them. They keep me down in the dirt, always a million words behind, unshowered, confused, awkward, stupid, retraumatized, scared, paralyzed, reckless, and poor.
Like that time Rachel convinced me my ex-boyfriend gave me AIDs just because I had a bruise on my chest and was coughing up blood, which turned out to be from a beating at some mosh pit Cleo dragged me to. Or that time Conrad tried to remind me of my traumatic, fucked-up, don't ask, childhood by driving me to the scene of the crime. Or retarded Mable, who made me think someone wanted me to kiss them when they didn’t, who is always leaving me second-guessing the most basic social interactions and feeling and confused and embarrassed and just plain dumb all the fucking time. God, I hate her. Or that time Mimi made me miss all my deadlines at grad school with stupid, distracting bullshit like impulsive vacations, or what Ben Franklin said about casual sex, so I had to drop out, fucking bitch. So yeah, they say you can't choose your family, but you can choose your friends; whoever said that hasn't spent a week with mine. Not everyone has such awful friends, so not everyone can relate; they understand I stay living with them for rent, but can't understand why I'm such a doormat. To be honest, I do not know either. I've tried to tell them off. They always come right back. It's been so long now; I can't imagine a life without them, but I wish I could.
Mimi sat next to me on the bed, dressed in leg warmers, a crop top with a thousand necklaces, and a rainbow tutu, looking like she had just gotten back from preschool. She was smiling at me like the Cheshire cat, sending shivers down my spine. When I pulled out my computer to work, she grabbed my phone and started to scroll, shoving the phone in my face
“Hey, Eddie, I just created a new Kahoot quiz: who is the best gay friend group. I added characters from EastSiders, Queer as Folk, and a bunch of other shows …Wanna play?”
I put my computer down and scrolled on my phone to see the quiz. She looked giddy. I looked back at the unwritten document Trevor would surely have my ass for. I had to finish this right now, not later; I didn't have later. But it was too late. I had already forgotten about my work. Two hours later we had gone through seven quizzes, created two, read several short stories I wrote in middle school to laugh, called several old friends and exes, watched four funny videos, and that's just what I can remember.
“Wow this is so funny,” I said, lost in the 10th funny music video we were watching.
“Yeah. Oh…you reminded me, we should go see that movie that came out today, Love Sick, about a hot rich guy who’s dying of cancer, and his boyfriend and girlfriend and other boyfriend are all fighting, but also try to do his dying wish of building a home for troubled teens.”
“Yeah, we should, but don't we have, like…something to do today?” I asked. Mimi simply shrugged in vain.
“WORK! WORK! WORK! YOU’RE GOING TO BE LATE FOR WORK AND GET FIRED! AND THEN YOU'RE GOING TO BE HOMELESS AND DIE! IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT, YOU STUPID, INCOMPETENT LOSER?” Rachel screamed, bursting in. I looked at the clock—fuck, we were late— looked back at the Google Doc, and realized this whole time I hadn't written a word.
“Oh my god, fuck you, Mimi!! This is what you wanted, isn't it, to distract me again!”
“I just wanted to have fun with you Eddie,” she whined, hardly apologetic. She does this daily.
“FUN? Who has time for that?”
Later at work I stumbled in looking sick and unkempt. Trevor gave me a private talk, saying I'm on thin ice.
“We said you can keep your job if you really knock it out of the park with this week's issue. You did finish it this time…didn't you?” I sighed, giving as guilty a look as ever I could muster. Trevor stroked his beard and snapped his fingers. He always was really good at pretending to like me, so he must have convinced himself he’d feel real bad about what he was about to do.
“Listen, Eddie I don’t want to have to do this.”
“Save it, I quit.”
I walked away and out the door, flipping off Trevor. The world felt fast. Things were happening before I could think them through or even process their crash-burn, rocking, shaking aftermath.
“God, you know what, Eds, I think this was for the best. Now that you don’t have to give your talents to these hacks, you can be your best self, and you won’t be tied down by such a demanding job,” Mimi said. “Now you can have more time for yourself, for your book.”
“For your neglected romantic resume,” Cleo swooned, practically catcalling an attractive gentleman walking by. Honks, screams, the trains under our feet, pigeons getting ready to shit overhead, and the blaring sun burned. It was rush hour, and I couldn't take much more of this. I held back some tears and rubbed my hands, trying to maintain composure in public. I was going home to get some rest. Of course, they chased after me. I could feel my heartbeat increasing, full of stress and regret.
“Now that we don't have a job, how are we going to make friends? You know how hard that is for us,” Mable said, removing her beanie as if to mourn.
“Wait, Eddie, does this mean we can see the movie now?” Mimi said, noticing I was at the crosswalk by now, waiting anxiously for the light to change before they caught up to me.
“Hey, where are you going!?” Mimi cried after me as I crossed the street. “HOME!”
“Wait, what do you mean HOME!??? Eddie, you don't have a job; we're all going to die sick, homeless, and fat!”
Rachel followed me and wouldn’t let up with her catastrophizing, making me quake with nervous nausea, with fear and jittering uncertainty and the overwhelming need to act based on what I knew was paranoia. How could I let someone as pathetic as Rachel affect me so deeply?
Back home, I raced up the 5 flights of stairs, only to find an Eviction notice on my door.
“See, I told you.” Rachel said, smugly.
I unlocked the door anyway, thankfully seeing all my stuff still inside, and flopped on the bed. In anguish and helpless frustration, I put on Apple TV. It started playing my sad playlist: plenty of Fiona Apple, Hole, Nirvana, Lana Del Rey, The Cure, The Smiths, and REM. Before I could even begin crying myself to sleep, Cleo stood arms crossed in the doorway, still clad in his party clothes.
“No, you aren’t going to be such a sad sack. Cheer up bitch, we're going to the club.” I sighed, wanting to be happy, to be high so bad, I rolled with his punches. He took me to three clubs, one banging neon adventure after another. We felt like we could do anything: more drugs, more men, more music. After a while we flew too close to the sun, leaving us a long fall. Cleo’s grief was infectious. I was so sad, I forgot how we were ever so happy. As our wallowing hit its peak at a local dive bar, Conrad came along, and Cleo went home in tears. Conrad, with his black trench coat, floppy black hair, and devious smile, took me under his devil's wing to wander around Bushwick, predicting my darkest thoughts. They made so much cold, perfect sense when they slipped through his silver lips. They slithered into my mind until the night went dark. I did things I can't remember, all blended together in one tired dance. If I have friends who want me dead, at least they’re honest about it. What does it matter? The world still goes round. What does it matter when you know you wouldn’t be missed, you’ve never been loved or meaningfully kissed, you never had a happy day to call your own, you feel everything like it’s a line of code in a pre-programmed drone, aware of its own artificiality. You can’t remember a childhood, a happy life, or a peaceful mind. You can’t see a future, or a present, or a past, and the world moves too fast.
You never even get your peace in sleep, or in your words. You write suicide notes and cries for help when you long to write memoirs without being too ashamed of your own life to follow through, to write something happy and sad, real and fake, a story that makes people's days better than it would have been, but you'll never publish something with your never-ending downward spin, you'll never have your moment, you'll never win, you'll never grow beyond this painful bottom-feeding routine, never get a day where life doesn't feel like a punishment for being alive, never get a real escape, and the world spins too fast, and you can never get a minute to think. A minute to rest, or think of something better to try, to break free. I think I might need to start over. Maybe the afterlife will have a better deal for a guy like me. Maybe they will have better subways with less construction and have better friends who don't ensure your destruction.
I can hardly remember what I did, just that it was the farthest I’ve ever fallen, and Conrad was pleased, telling me over and over I deserved worse than death, and I deserved to bleed, he really liked saying that to me. I saw a rat. It smiled at me.
Somehow that made me cry.
Men on the street knew something was wrong, because men aren't supposed to cry.
Then I left, and I wish I had said goodbye to who I couldn't tell you. Well, I wish I said goodbye to that rat, he looked like he was going to miss me. I guess he’s the only one, so I didn't feel any conflicted doubts or remorse. I don't think I felt anything at all.
***
As if nothing at all had happened, I woke up. It was my brother, Ralph. He wasted no time before racing over, as he threw his arms around me.
“Eddie… I’m so glad you’re alive,” he whispered into my shoulder as I put my right arm on his back for a confused pat.
“Why did you do this to yourself, Eddie?” “Do what?” I said, genuinely confused.
“The pills, where you trying to kill yourself?” Always so to the point. I give myself a headache trying to think.
“I … I can’t remember.” I said with total honesty, but I’m sure that would soon change. “Do you … know why you’re here Eds? You overdosed on ... Ketamine,” he struggled to say the drug’s name. Later my brother talked to the doctor and decided I should stay in a psych ward for a few days. I had nowhere else to go.
I met with the first doctor after a week of boredom, forced medication, painful self reflection, and a billion different tests. He sat me down in his office on my last day in the hospital, after my brother had agreed to have me stay with him for a while upon my release. Until I'm back on my feet, whenever that happens.
“So, Eddie, do you know why you had to come here?”
“Psych wards are scams. The only reason anyone should be forced into this boring jail is if they try to kill someone else or themselves and might do it again.”
“And you do … fit the latter description.”
“I guess so.”
“But that's not quite what I meant, and you knew that, didn't you? Why overall do you think your life choices up until this point have been so unstable? Unstable enough to end up here?”
“Yeah, isn't it clear? It’s my fucking friends; they ruin everything. This time they’ve taken it too far.”
“You don't have any friends. Your brother said you never have.”
“What do you mean? Of course I do! You know, my freaking life ruining, roommates. Mimi, Conrad, Celo, Rachel, and Mabel, he didn't tell you about them? Well, they’re more like frenemies Enemies if we're being honest.”
“Your landlord said there was no one else in the apartment, Eddie, you lived alone.” “No, I-”
“Eddie, do you have any history of mental illness?” Suddenly I couldn't speak; my mind had gone blank.
“No…I don't think so, I'm just a failure. There's no extra reason for that.”
“Eddie, let's take a look at your diagnosis together, shall we? Which one do you want to see first?” I took the papers. Before reading it, I looked around, and for the first time my friends weren't there.
Once again, I was completely alone. But maybe this time, I wouldn't have to be.
Ode to Thebes
by Sophia Sanikidze
I.
Hail Thebes,
city of Truths,
Honor,
Intelligence.
Watch the pendulum swing.
The Fates weave a story
on the loom as the sun hits its peak.
Watch Oedipus come down the traveler’s road,
blood of royals,
love of family,
mind of purity.
The Sphinx opens her eyes,
stretches.
Words roll off her lioness tongue.
The tapestry has a knot,
and the fates wait for the Chosen to untangle it.
Hero or villain?
Villain or victim?
Oedipus breaks the Sphinx apart
to free the trapped city,
and the knot tightens.
More and more, the strands tangle.
Love and death flip a coin.
It lands on ignorance,
but Oedipus refuses to let the bet lie.
Hail Thebes,
the city of evil Truths,
the city where Honor is twisted,
the city where Intelligence is death.
II.
Hail Thebes,
land of Order,
Inheritance,
Piety.
Oedipus is gone, gone, gone.
The lady Antigone guides him.
She is his eyes.
Ismene prays for her family,
but the gods are unforgiving.
They are offended,
and leave the Fates to their schemes.
Creon demands what is needed,
Polynices demands what is owed,
Eteocles demands what is wanted.
The women watch as Oedipus grants none of it.
They watch as it all falls apart,
even as the story tightens at the seams.
He will never apologize.
How do you travel the road the gods pave for you,
only to be struck down?
The Gods are not happy with their own orders.
How will you take what is yours,
when none deserve it?
How will you ask forgiveness for stealing
when no one apologizes?
Hail Thebes,
land of broken rules,
land of things stolen,
land of accusation.
III.
Hail Thebes,
country of Laws,
Bonds,
of . . .
Creon reigns with an iron fist,
Antigone begs for her brother,
Ismene hides.
There is no one left in this country.
Only whispers of things unfair,
of things taken,
of things deserved.
Family drops dead one by one,
bonds of love are strained,
the loops of the Fates get tighter and tighter.
Proclamations are made,
proclamations are broken.
Love stabs Death,
and Death strangles her in turn.
This country is hollow,
the only life left the buzz of anarchy.
Creon tries to hold it all together.
The threads finally snap,
and the tragedy’s curtains close.
Death of family, death of those loved,
and the loom breaks.
Hail Thebes,
the city, the land, the country of hollowness.
The death shroud is done.
Wear it with pride.
DOERS
by Nate Kenny
CHARACTERS:
CAMILLA — she/her, 24. Born in ’99. Wearing something thrifty, light, and a little corporate.
HAROLD — he/him, 26. Born in ’61. Wearing a Giorgio Armani coat accompanied by a plaid scarf.
SERVER — any. Somewhere in their 20s. Wearing a beige apron over some button-down with a funky design.
SETTING:
A café that exists simultaneously in Manhattan during the winter of 1987 and Denver during the spring of 2023.
Note: A slash (/) in dialogue indicates an interruption.
BEGINNING OF PLAY
(Open on a café split harshly and aesthetically in half.
On stage right: the interior of a Manhattan corner store torn directly from ‘80s New York. There’s a poster advertising a Big Apple bus tour on the window, and an out-of-order ATM in the corner.
On stage left: a modern coffee shop decorated with muted colors. On its side of the window is a poster advertising yoga lesson.
HAROLD sits on stage right, at a table the two sides share. He is currently taking the top off of a Greek coffee cup to pour in creamer while he hums the theme song for H.R. Pufnstuf. After a bit, CAMILLA enters on the stage left side of the café, carrying a laptop bag and wearing a pink surgical mask. She quickly spots HAROLD, gives a small, excited wave, and moves to sit down across, on her side of the café.)
CAMILLA
(taking her mask off) Harold, Harold, Harold! It’s so nice to finally meet!
(CAMILLA begins to take her laptop out of her bag.)
HAROLD
You sick? In China, maybe? Or did China come there? Everyone’s talking about China over here.
CAMILLA
(placing her laptop down) I don’t… Oh! The mask!
HAROLD
I always knew they’d swallow up the Russians. While they had their backs turned, I bet— (making a masturbatory motion) too busy pointing their Red Rockets at us. Never underestimate a country that’s been high on opium for the last five hundred years.
CAMILLA
A lot of things have / …
HAROLD
/ You should see the junkies we have. They could take the Pentagon.
CAMILLA
A lot’s different since your time, Harold. It’s definitely still America over here.
HAROLD
Oh, well, that’s comforting.
(HAROLD grins, as CAMILLA’s confidence begins to dim. The SERVER comes up beside CAMILLA on her side of the café. HAROLD doesn’t seem to notice them.)
HAROLD
You know, Camilla, I do have a feeling / about why…
SERVER
/ What can I get you?
CAMILLA
Oh, um, what’s your house blend?
SERVER
We have a mix of Kenyan beans, for a hit of ginger at the top, for the high note, and Arabica beans from Colombia to fill out the middle palate.
CAMILLA
Sounds… yeah, sounds great. I’ll do that in whatever your small size is. Two cream two sugar, too.
(The SERVER nods and exits.)
HAROLD
Someone just take your order?
CAMILLA
(opening her laptop) Yeah.
HAROLD
Hand and foot over there, huh?
CAMILLA
I wouldn’t really say / that.
HAROLD
/ Where are you?
(A beat.)
CAMILLA
It’s a new place that opened a / bit ago…
HAROLD
/ No, I mean, where? Area code?
CAMILLA
I’m in Denver.
HAROLD
Denver! Wow. Figures, I guess. Nukes would’ve hit the coasts, so Denver has become the new metropolis, ruled by cattle barons who herd you through the streets with branding irons.
CAMILLA
Well, I grew up in New York.
HAROLD
Oh, I’m sure you did, honey. We’ll save that for later.
(A beat.)
CAMILLA
What?
HAROLD
Nah, I want to get to know you first. I’m just surprised any of the women I slept with would move to Colorado.
CAMILLA
You don’t / …
HAROLD
/ Talk about you wanted to talk about—what you wanted to start with. I don’t want to ruin your big finish. I’ll feign surprise enough for you to be satisfied, when you get to it.
CAMILLA
I want to write a book about you, Harold. There isn’t any / ulterior…
HAROLD
/ I’ll be patiently waiting at the finish line.
(HAROLD waves at CAMILLA to start talking. CAMILLA sighs.)
CAMILLA
Where do you work?
HAROLD
Goldman Sachs. Which is a good name for it. Sacks of gold, man.
CAMILLA
What do you do there?
HAROLD
I don’t know.
CAMILLA
I’d bet it’s important, at least.
HAROLD
No, no. That’s my job. I don’t know. I do—I do things—but I don’t know. Knowing’s for librarians.
(CAMILLA looks confused. HAROLD leans forward to explain.)
HAROLD (CONT’D)
Goldman Sachs, a couple years back, underwrote the public offering of an REIT for Rockefeller Center. I helped. And I’ve never been. I don’t ever plan to, either. Ice skates make my feet swell and I stopped watching television when I was 14. So, I do things, but it is not in my job description to know them. Every lick of work I did for that thing has been secreted from my memory like the shit you have after a meal. And yet… (taking out his thick, leather wallet, displaying it, and placing it on the table) my body retains the energy.
CAMILLA
So you aren’t invested in what you do?
HAROLD
I can assure, you, Camilla, I am quite invested.
CAMILLA
You just do what you’re told? A yes man? A yuppie?
HAROLD
I think you’re using that word wrong.
CAMILLA
I don’t…
HAROLD
Oh! (laughing) You think it means “yup.” Like we’re just going around saying “yup” to our bosses. “Young urban professional,” Camilla. “Professional.” Not exactly the slur the papers make it out to be. We are the men they say “yes” to. And, well, women now, I guess. Because I do mean “we.”
CAMILLA
I am not that.
HAROLD
Wrong-o, Miss Denver. I was born in Spokane. My father owned—you should be writing this down—my father owned a lumber mill. He made damn-fuckin’-good money. He also was of the generation that expected a sort of immediate-onset rugged individualism from their children as soon as they hit 18. So, when his freshly-graduated son told him he wanted to go to New York of all places, post-fiscal crisis New York, where you could turn a corner and find up to six muggers arguing about who gets next dibs on whoever walks by, he smiled at me like I was Christopher Columbus and he was the King of Spain. He filled my coffers with gold and sent me to plant our family crest upon foreign shores. I ended up getting a place in Flatiron for a bag of tricks and a song, enrolled at NYU, and by 1978 had snorted blow off Liza Minnelli’s coke nail twice. That’s also where I met my now-boss. What I’m trying to get at here, Camilla, is poor people don’t move somewhere else. At least, poor people born in New York don’t move to Denver to write a book. Do you have a job besides that?
CAMILLA
Yes, actually.
HAROLD
Wow! Fantastic! Do you do, or do you know?
CAMILLA
I… I do both.
HAROLD
Multitasker!
CAMILLA
I write copy for a very important company that / …
HAROLD
/ You write copy? To sell things.
CAMILLA
Yes. When I’m not working on this / book…
HAROLD
/ On your book, yeah. Tell me about the last product you wrote copy for. Not what you’re working on now. The last thing.
CAMILLA
(blanking) I… We had a... a subscription… that… there was a, uh…
HAROLD
Camilla, you’re young, you’re urban, and you’re a professional. And ever since Reagan won his second term, professionals don’t have to know jack shit. I’d bet good money that that’s still the case over there. You’re a doer. You do.
(The SERVER arrives and puts CAMILLA’s coffee in front of her.)
SERVER
Here you go.
(The SERVER leaves. CAMILLA stares at the coffee.)
HAROLD
Why, it looks like your body retains the energy quite well, too. Did I hear those were Kenyan beans?
(A beat. Then, CAMILLA starts to open something on her laptop.)
CAMILLA
I’m going to read you something.
HAROLD
Is this it? The big reveal?
CAMILLA
(reading from her laptop) “Harold James Nader, the famed Midtown financier, died alone.”
HAROLD
Oh, this is / rich.
CAMILLA
/ “He kicked the bucket with an empty bottle of Laphroaig in his lap. He was 40, and the night before, the only woman he had ever truly loved had told him she didn’t want to be with him anymore.”
(HAROLD tries to interject but can’t find the words. CAMILLA eyes him, and then keeps reading.)
CAMILLA(CONT’D)
“‘Harold, I can’t bear this,’ she had said. It was like someone had cast a line into his mouth and pulled his two-sizes-too-small heart out by way of his throat, dangling now on a little barbed hook. But, he went to work the next day, took meetings, and then went home, where he added an addendum to his will. It would all go to her. The money, the investments, the cars, the apartments. Her, and their two-year-old daughter.”
(CAMILLA looks up at HAROLD knowingly. She waits for an interruption, but HAROLD doesn’t butt in. CAMILLA keeps reading.)
CAMILLA (CONT’D)
“Harold uncorked the Laphroaig alone, he swallowed the sleeping pills alone, he sat in his chair alone, he started dying alone, and he finished dying alone. They didn’t find him for a week, when a client sent an assistant to his apartment to double-check a cash flow statement.”
(CAMILLA leans back in her chair. She grabs her coffee, and takes a sip, staring at HAROLD. A beat.)
HAROLD
What’s… what’s her name? Your mother?
CAMILLA
You haven’t met her yet.
HAROLD
But… (with nervous laughter) I’m just a memory, aren’t I? A bunch of stories she told you, hobbling about in a trench coat? It couldn’t hurt.
CAMILLA
You’d like to know, then?
HAROLD
Alright. I see what’s going on here.
CAMILLA
You are a real doer, Harold. You skipped the months of depression and got right down to the nitty gritty. Expedited the process.
HAROLD
So you’re in Denver now? With my money?
CAMILLA
I am.
(CAMILLA gets up and starts putting away her laptop.)
CAMILLA (CONT’D)
You see, my mother’s of the generation that expects a sort of immediate-onset rugged individualism from their children as soon as they, in my case, graduate college.
HAROLD
Are you leaving?
CAMILLA
I think it’s going to be a good book, Harold. Even if I never decide to put it out in the world, it’s going to be good.
HAROLD
And what? Whose house are you living in? Who got evicted so you could graft yourself onto the block?
CAMILLA
I’m forging my own path, Harold.
(CAMILLA puts her mask back on and turns to leave.)
HAROLD
(yelling) You can’t paint over me, you twerp! I’m your past! Look at your side, that beige wasteland, those smoothed edges! How many cops are on your street? I’m John Wayne! I’m on the frontier, collecting scalps, and all for you!
(CAMILLA is gone. HAROLD just sits there. A beat.
Then, lights go out on the café. CAMILLA enters from stage left, crossing to end up at stage right.)
CAMILLA
(on the phone) Mhm. Yeah. I can finish that by the weekend, Janie. Then we can celebrate. Another launch in the books! It should be fun. (a beat) Yup. Uh-huh. I can— Oop. Hold on, Janie. I have another call coming in. I think we should be all set. You just do your part and I’ll do mine. Yeah. Sounds good. Bye. (picking up next call) Is this Kenneth? Oh, hi, yes! Thank you so much for calling! Does this mean… Yes! Yes, yes, yes! And still at the… the starting price? Oh, my God! I can… (checking watch) I can come over right now, and sign whatever I need to sign. Does that work? (a beat) Thank you so much, Kenneth. I am… I am giddy right now. I’ll see you soon. Alright. Bye.
(CAMILLA can’t keep the grin off her face. She dials someone else. They pick up after a few rings.)
CAMILLA (CONT’D)
(ecstatic) Mom! Mom, I got it! I got the property! I got it! I’m gonna go sign the forms now! You’ll still help, right? Okay! Yes, yes! (squealing) I’m so excited! It’s such a nice spot, and it has such a nice scene around it, and it costs hardly… Yup! Yeah! I’m gonna fix it up, I’ll send you, like, a plan, and hopefully find a tenant by the end of the year. (a beat) I love you too, Mom. Thank you so much. I miss you too. Thank you so so much.
(The call ends. CAMILLA exits stage right.)
END OF PLAY
Saint Peter Street Breakdown
by Kevin See
As I turned down Bourbon Street for the first time, it was clear every idea I had about New Orleans was right. Trash and tourists tumbled aimlessly down a reeking street, weighed down by the hot, wet air that turned the whole city into a steam room. It was just like what I told my mom when she told us where we were headed on that year’s seldom-taken spring break trip. It was a city full of drunk college students, dripping in plastic beads and sweat and gaudy ghost stories.
It turns out I didn’t know something. Bourbon Street is a quarantine zone. All of its debauchery exists so the rest of the French Quarter doesn’t get thrown to the Tigers. Turn left onto Bienville Street, and the real French Quarter reveals itself: block after block of wrought iron terraces, quiet, slow-paced streets, and unbelievable food. My first bite of crawfish étouffée was enough to make me apologize for being so stuck up.
By the second day, we’d figured it out: steer clear of the bars advertising that they’d invented whatever drink and served 1 liter quantities, the True and Authentic Vampire and Voodoo New Orleans Ghost Tours (“led by a crypt keeper!”), and the delis offering 10-inch high muffaletta sandwiches, and we’d be okay. With my faith in the city and Mom’s planning restored, I found myself buzzing—just a little—at the promise of that night’s activity: a trip to Historic Preservation Hall to hear a real New Orleans Jazz Band.
According to my mom’s guidebook, Preservation Hall is the place to see authentic jazz. We’d had to get tickets months in advance. It was one of the few things I’d been excited about throughout the planning process. I knew I loved jazz. I’d played the saxophone since fourth grade; my playlists were full of Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, and John Coltrane. Real, authentic, countercultural Jazz. Now that I’d seen the real New Orleans, I was sure I’d find real jazz in Prez Hall.
The night of the show, I was the first one out of the hotel room. By the time I turned onto Saint Peter Street I was half a step from sprinting, until I was promptly stopped by a crowd of people gathered around a sandwich board:
New Orleans Vampire and Ghost Tour
Huh. But I had seen these tours meet all over the city; their presence here didn’t actually mean a lot. I kept going towards the address on my phone, but the crowds got denser as I pushed further down the street. Neon bar signs popped up more and more often. Whatever. Jazz began as club music– it made sense there’d be a few bars around. I was finally close to the Hall. In fact, I was right next door.
Pat O’Brien’s Bar: Creators of the Hurricane
Only then did I see the massive line oozing out of a dingy building with a brand new sign hanging off the front.
Historic Preservation Hall!: Authentic New Orleans Jazz Since 1961!!
There was my jazz hall. Mine and at least 75 baseball-capped, giant-drink-toting, sweaty, raucous tourists. We were shuttled past a table of T-shirts, hats, and stickers emblazoned with the same logo as the sign out front and pushed into a room that was much more Box than Hall, only to discover there were, in fact, no seats in order to cram as many people in as possible.
This, I thought, is Jazz Disneyland.
I was about to share my new discovery with my mom when the band walked in. A lanky young man ducked his head under the door and shuffled his way to the piano like an accountant settling down to file tax returns. A guy who could’ve been standing in the audience got behind the drums. His stained graphic tee gathered around his beer belly as he sat down.
Here it comes, I thought as the people around me clapped like seals. Tired guys who couldn’t make it for real trotted out for us who don’t know any better.
Then, the weirdest trio ever walked in with their instruments. A trombonist as wide as his smile and as loud as his Hawaiian shirt entered and immediately began yelling at the crowd to clap louder. The only white guy on the bandstand sauntered in behind him, worn down button-up on, porkpie hat with a peacock feather in the brim perched on his head, tenor sax in hand. They sat on stools and looked on in reverence as the oldest man I’d ever seen took what must have been a full minute to hobble to a chair center stage. He and his chair creaked as he sat down, pulled out his own tenor saxophone, wheezed out a thank you to the audience, and slowly turned to his band.
“What do y’all wanna play?”
What? There’s no set list? No sheet music? Nothing? I’d gotten all excited to sit in on some freaks’ jam session? Halfway through my fit of rage, the band came to a consensus. Some song I’d never heard of that all of them seemed intimately familiar with. I was busy glaring at the trombone player for smiling at me when the old man center stage croaked out a count.
Two days later I’d touch back down in New York. As we taxied, John Coltrane wailed in my headphones, an accompanying quartet scrambling to follow his blistering solo. But in Preservation Hall, five John Coltranes took off each playing their own direction of the same song, like they were all remembering a different recording.
It should’ve been a trainwreck, but somehow in all the chaos everyone could see exactly where the other one was going without compromising their own idea. The trombone player swung his body around as he played, nearly hitting the first row with an extended slide. The piano player sat halfway off the bench while each hand moved at lightspeed, head bobbing like he was falling asleep. Both tenor sax players’ fingers flew, eyes closed as they leaned into their horns.
Then, spurred on by some mysterious cue, the old man stood up, took his saxophone out of his mouth, and started to sing. All at once, the band shifted from their internal competition and harmonized around the quiet, raspy voice now at the center of the tune. He sounded awful. His voice was breathy and thin, barely audible over the accompaniment around him. He was the center of the universe.
I barely noticed when the song ended. A Preservation Hall baseball cap found its way into my hands ($30, cash only). We poured back out into the street, where the noise of the bars and the crowd of the tours had only grown. But above it all, or maybe through it all, was a corner musician. A trumpet player. I couldn’t see him, but a few clean, clear notes accompanied the whole walk home.
The Funeral
by Lilianna Cullen
The woman in the gloves jabs me one last
time and it feels eerily reminiscent
of you—
jarring, sheer, unforgiving.
Just like you—invasive.
The pain mirrors your wandering hands,
your sharp presence that only knew how to bite
to be felt. The woman meant no harm, but I felt you
suddenly in her place, in that same place
you ate away at for sport, a pissing ground
for you to fester and grow.
I was reminded that my body had become a graveyard.
She peered inside, opening me with the ice-cold
speculum. I expected her to note that we needed
to remove more of you, to put the vacuum
of death inside me again to make myself clean.
I instinctively wanted to clamp closed—
not wanting any remaining part of you to see
the light of day. You hid behind my tightening, dysfunctional muscles, lurking within that dark cavern that hid you—my lingering shame.
She poked around in that place— comfortably, intentionally.
She knew the shame coiled itself
to rest here in the dark where I, too, had been banished.
The woman looked at me, smiling—
It’s all gone.
Nothing? I asked, skeptical.
Nothing.
extirpation
by Adam Neville
maws, new york. college town. soulless, as far as i know. aside from myself. littered with stucco and cement and asphalt and brick buildings now alive with crawling mold. nestled next to luscious mountains, their curves nurturing cool zephyrs and ghost-pale deer and flame red foxes as quick as a whisper. these children of the land, free now to paw closer and closer to the asphalt even during dawn.
it was always beautiful here. but i think in the wake of it all, it’s become nothing short of mesmerizing. i don’t care to name what ‘it’ is. the impulse to name and control has faded. i don’t have to make sense of everything anymore.
when i dangle my feet over the edge of the arts building, i am accompanied by a murder of crows eager to flaunt their newest treasures.
when i stand in the center of the parking lot and close my eyes and take many deep breaths, i inhale and exhale with the same heaving rhythm of the moonlit stag.
when i stalk the hollows of the town beyond the campus, the foxes do not skitter away from their looting as though they were guilty. they nip at my cloak and scold me for slacking. today, i say. today, i will finish it. i never do.
i have been slacking for about three months now. it is far too easy in this place to find a lake, clear and still, and lose a morning to its admiration. occasionally, a fish will leap from the water with all the urgency of a student pitifully late to a test, only to be swiftly devoured by a bird of prey. sometimes i root for the prey. sometimes i root for the predator. but in the end, i know it’s meaningless. they’re exactly where they’re supposed to be. their lives and deaths are normal.
when the night falls, i begin my routine. i make my bed. i tidy up my dorm room. i swipe the crumbs and other detritus from my desk. i scrub the desk with pink, grapefruit-scented cleaning spray. i scavenged the cleaner from the on-campus convenience store. i didn’t pay. i drizzle honey over a stale granola bar before i eat it. honey doesn’t expire. i decide that tonight will be different. i have enjoyed a beautiful day. a sweet last meal. i put on makeup and the best clean outfit i have, determined to look beautiful in my last moments of life. i make my way to the street previously known as ‘academic row.’
by the time i arrive, i am usually so tear-stained that i can justify abandoning my mission. everyone is so beautiful in their gold platings; i am sure they would forgive my refusal to be immortalized with runny black mascara. but lately, when i stare into the shining eyes of my former peers and professors, their faces frozen in expressions of joy and consternation and horror, my eyes are dry. if they are a stranger, i try to imagine what they were thinking just before they froze. i try to imagine who they were.
this one was named mari. she was a professor. i guessed her cardigan and sweater were white and cream before they were turned to metal. the calves underneath her skirt were strong—she used to lift, maybe. mid thirties. based on her indisputable hotness, i would guess black studies or geology department. her students would have been head over heels for her, but the etched tablet in front of her makes no mention of infidelity. her sins and her fate read:
EXTRACTION
PREJUDICE
COMPLACENCY
ALL SHALL BE FORGIVEN
ALL SHALL KNOW PEACE
sometimes, when i’m in a particularly dark mood, i walk up and down the row and observe each and every statue’s sins. thus far, i haven’t encountered anyone whose tablet ends with anything other than those last two lines. all shall be forgiven, all shall know peace. i’m almost bored; i have almost no reason to believe mine would be any different. almost. reading my friends’ sins was interesting for a brief moment before i realized they were gone, and i was alone.
i don’t know why i am here. i don’t know why i keep on waking up. everyone is gone now, and i am here wondering how i could possibly catch up with them. how do i manage to enjoy this sumptuous earth? surviving on the carrion of grocery stores and the ambrosia of gas station wine? i’ve tried everything. i talk to them, i try knocking them over, i even tried to take the pants off one. they are all perfect and cold. and here i am. vital and bleeding and pissing and masturbating and living and living and living.
i spent a day in bed reliving every second i could remember about my life. in the wake of my impending doom, i tried to focus on the good parts. times with my mom: playing card games, going to work with her, eating daifuku mochi. she said she was proud of me for performing in my third grade play. she later said it was because she has raised me to be without the shame all of her friends felt as children. times with my aunt: watching television, a birthday cake shaped like a bumblebee she made when i turned eight. i lost my gameboy like three times, and every time she would replace it. i don’t know how she did it with such a tight budget. high school. protest after protest, skipped class after skipped class. bonds of solidarity with comrades who by now have gone to university and turned to gold. friends who i stopped talking to. failed relationships, failed attempts at relationships. failed attempts on my own life. failed exams. missed assignment after missed assignment, missed test after missed test. so much aborted potential. therapy session after therapy session to get me willing to be willing to live. now i am here. willing to be golden. i tried to focus on the good parts. i tried hard not to think about what the tablet would say. about me.
a cervid approached me yesterday in the parking lot. i was screaming, as i have become increasingly inclined to do. his footsteps echoed in the emptiness. massive, with a set of antlers twice as wide as my arm’s length. with each step he took towards me, i felt my screaming get louder and louder. i begged him to still my heart and silence my thoughts. when he got close enough to take the shot, i hung my head and knelt. i realized how indulgent it is to beg.
____________________________________________________________________________
Before it all, the days went by like the rushing of a creek.
Wake up at 11:00AM, exactly at the time my first class starts. Welp. Look at my alarm clock. A larm clock looks back. Unplug the alarm clock from its outlet, close my eyes, and nestle back into sleep. Why worry about Introduction to Global Change Biology? Too cozy. Get the notes later. Maybe get the notes from a friend. Lie to myself; mentally commit to meeting with my professor. Have ominous nightmares about some sort of apocalypse or a fight with a friend or being in middle school again. Forget ‘em.
Rise to eat the leftovers from last night’s dinner with the homies. Chug the equivalent of a cup of coffee from the massive bottle on my desk. Journal a bit. Daily gratitude exercise. Prayer for my mother, ‘cause she’s been sick. Declare my intention of doing homework later. Pack my bag. Spend at least an hour picking out an outfit, just enough time to miss my second class in the day. Dress in all black, accentuated with some gold studs on my ears that my grandma gave me. Half the day is practically gone.
Get on my bike. My speaker hangs off a cord around my neck like a chain, booms “Friday I’m In Love.” The melody sparkles, the warm spring sun blankets me, and the weekend awaits.
Rush to my 2:00pm literature class. Bike past acquaintances on the way, smile and wave and almost disembark to catch up. A beautiful stranger smiles when they hear the chorus drop from my speaker.
Get there a few minutes late. Professor M is brilliant and easily distracted. He’s also adorable, with his blazer and belt and chipped tooth. We are the perfect match as teacher and student. We riff about Ishmael for nearly twenty uninterrupted minutes. We talk like we are in a book club, like we are nursing gin and tonics. The conversation dances between bawdy and bourgeois. We pretend like my grade is not sagging from uncompleted essays.
Linger when the class ends. Wait for the crowd of students circling his desk to thin out. And when it is just the two of us, he begins.
“Noah! Glad you stuck around. What do you need?” Professor M asked.
“Just wanted to apologize for not showing up last week. Been busy. Behind in a couple classes. But today’s reading was brilliant. All my late work is coming soon!”
Professor M dusted off the chalkboard and turned to me.
“Listen, don’t worry about the essay. As long as they’re in before the grading period, it will be fine. Get them to me as soon as you can, obviously. But you should prioritize being here. Here, in class, is where the learning really happens. We all see different things in the text. You have brilliant insights, but there’s a cumulative element you’re missing. You have to show up here, with all of us, steadily over time to capture the full meaning.”
“Right… you’re right. Next week. Promise.”
“Promise?”
“Promise. See you Monday, Professor M.”
Leave the class. Kick “Boys Don’t Cry,” up on my speaker. Walk through the hallway, open the double doors, and take in the sunshine. Just across the quad, where the first flowers of the season have begun to bloom, my friends are already plotting on the evening’s activities.
____________________________________________________________________________
i went to class the week after, and professor m wasn’t there.
whatever divine force turned my peers and professors into gold missed me. missed me is actually wishful thinking. there is always the possibility it chose me uniquely to suffer this isolation.
another act of wishful thinking: that i can kill myself. i do not have the nerve to end my own life. it appears nobody—man or beast or god—is going to do it for me. i don’t know what that beast was. two years of studying at suny maws doesn’t make me an expert. i have never been the best student. it is reasonable to doubt my judgment. everyone on this campus has also turned into a statue, so reasoning itself is doubtful. maybe i was asleep when my archeology professor explained about the kind of moose who grow eight feet tall at the shoulder with fur as black as midnight. the kind of moose with antlers so magnificently large and silver they resembled a chalice. dripping liquid gold.
in spite of this flood of absurdity, i am narcissistic enough to imagine a plan. i learned something when i tried to get the beast to end me.
its breath was hot against my curls as i knelt, even from a yards distance. the stench burned like the rum i purchased for a dorm bacchanalia just months ago. each boom of its hooves against the asphalt was accompanied by a dripping sound, so soft it could be the sound of my own teardrops. after a long anticlimax full of sobs, i was incredulous enough to look up.
it paused and stared down at me, gaze imperious. its eyes did not reflect the parking lot or my tearful visage. they were abyssal.
“why is this happening to me? why is everybody gone? why haven’t you fucking killed me yet? why aren’t i a statue? what if i’m the last one on this planet? what if i’m already dead? what if i never get to talk to anyone ever again? what happened to my family? why me? why? what the fuck is going on? what are you?” i asked it one question, and the rest burst from me like a geyser. i didn’t stop for a long while. it was silent as i spoke.
it snorted once. twice. laughing at me, maybe. swiped a hoof against the ground, and bowed its head almost imperceptibly, a bow of neither supplication nor preparation to charge.
it was a pittance.
a gush descended from its antlers, sizzling like champagne and smoking on impact. i recoiled, but i was not fast enough to spare myself from a droplet reaching my left eyebrow, seeping into my left eye. scalding. the pain seared down, i felt it in my teeth. i covered my eye with my left hand. shouted a quick “fuck!” and peered out through my right eye. it took another step towards me, and i found myself clenching my fist and rising. my body wants to fight. my body wants to live.
but the beast was satisfied with its work. it turned around, slowly at first, and then bolted away into the horizon of the southern woods. i wanted to force answers out if it, even if it killed me. i started towards it, and stopped when i noticed the ground bubbling before me.
the splash from its antlers formed two puddles. the left puddle evaporated into a rough spiral, curling and coiling around itself endlessly. the right puddle formed, as though it were alive, into a rough arrow pointing south.
i have decided to judge this as a prophecy. i can wait here forever, and maybe i will be lucky enough to die. but i wager it will be more of the same. more aborted attempts, more rumination on the most familiar unknowns. maybe i won’t find others. maybe i am alone. maybe my family is gone. maybe i am already dead. maybe the cervid was a hallucination, and there is nothing of value south of Maws.
or
I could go south into the uncertainty. I don’t know if my family is dead. They could be waiting for me. There might be medical supplies in the health center I could use to nurse my eye. There might still be a good book or two in the library, tucked away in the networks of glittering fungi. They would be good company for a journey south. And before I go, I might leave an offering at the statues of all my friends and professors. There are so many people in Maws who I am mourning, who I was so lucky to know. I’ll have to leave them behind for now. I won’t let this place slowly digest me.
Maybe there are no answers. Regardless, I will figure out how to live.
Wisdom Teeth
"wisdom teeth" by nonrev
by Kaitlyn Keegan
You held my face in your hand
Like a glass jar of marbles, this time
Last year—a rubber mannequin.
My body was a stiff, rickety wooden barn.
You held this, too, with careful firmness
As I slept for hours.
I remember the Otis Redding record warbling,
“I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” with the drill
In dissonance as they pried my head. I sucked
In the sweet air and thought about laying
On your chest while I counted seconds.
Teeth.
Tools.
Questions.
The steady hum and the euphoric float.
I felt my heartbeat slow down to almost nothing and my eyes flew wide open
And shut again.
I thought the common laughing gas
Thought about how little I cared
And how strange it was
When you wiped the blood off my fake rubber chin
And my hands still buzzed with cold static.
I fell deep and dark into your eyes, almost black
Like the warm, numb night
With no heartbeat—
Your sweet, neutral face
In my bed like a given,
Like the answer to a question that I didn’t ask,
An answer in an exhale like a year gone by.
I touch my face where you touched it
And I can feel the blood now
Drooling warm down my neck and chest.
Great Blue Heron
by Carly Warner
Where had you gone?
Your wingspan swallowed the sky
And I mistook you for a red herring
In pond or pool
What other names for blue
The sheen in your neck
To the feather’s edge
Fluttered above a witch's chimney
Arms as long as I am tall
First birdwatch of childhood
Why have you returned?
All I Wanted (or a Tribute to Kate Chopin’s The Storm)
"storm clouds" by Jo Naylor
by Elisa Rosario
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
We had all these rules. We made promises that were supposed to be permanent as the ink they were written in. But one thing that I never promised was that I would fall in love. With my husband’s best friend of all people!
The root of these troubles can be traced to the first week of summer. Bibi just got out of school, and Bobinôt disappeared to the emporium. Like every other morning, I made breakfast, kissed my husband goodbye and then off with the chores. I beat the rug until dust flew away and pinned our soaked garments onto the clothesline after a thorough washing. Fortunately, I wasn’t alone. My cousin Sylvie, who lives on the other side, often visits and assists me in domestic duties or watches Bibi while I’m otherwise occupied. She was reading to him in the parlor when I came back from tending to the chickens. He looked so jubilant as he sat listening that I joined him.
Suddenly, I remembered something. In an instant, I asked Sylvie if she could stay put while I ran to the general store to gather a few things for Bobinôt’s soiree with his business partners. As always, Sylvie obliged, though not without reminding me that I ought to hire a maid. I quipped back good-naturedly that I can do the work of a thousand maids with my hands tied.
Heat simmered off the ground as I finally reached Main Street, thick as a cloud of mist. By then, I was a huffing, squinting, damp mess. Even the grass itself sweltered, or maybe it’s leftover residue from yesterday’s thunderstorm. Lord knows we’ve been getting more of those lately.
I’d been sidetracked by the dress shop’s window display when I bumped into somebody. In an apologetic fret, I looked up, and I’ll be damned if it wasn’t Josephine Lainer!
She’s my bon ami since we were schoolgirls. She was a brazen spirit next to my shrinking violet, with raven black hair and deep, dark eyes that hypnotize any man who bores into them. No one was shocked when at just seventeen, against her mother’s wishes, she fled to New York after graduation instead of looking for an eligible suitor. Her letters are filled with adventures of studying under prestigious writers, mingling at parties, living with traveling artists–even posing nude for one of them!
Last time I heard, she mentioned moving into her uncle and aunt’s plantation and taking a secretary job, which, according to Josephine, she dropped quite recently. Now, she’s a columnist for New Orleans’ local newspaper.
She didn’t mind me continuing my errands as she talked. She relished in being on the scene with her own voice, no pen name required, and, to her delight, she wasn’t the only colored woman in the office. Though Josephine added that the society people she covered judged everyone, whether they moved or even breathed wrong. She never received such treatment over at Oneida.
“Who’re they?” I asked.
This was how I learned that she spent her late teens in a group located in Oneida, a hamlet in New York, where members shared far more than clothing and food. Each other’s bodies, to be exact.
“You’ve been intimate?”
She nodded. “Does it bother you?” I blinked twice. “No.”
Josephine proceeded to reassure me there was no sin if you’re all bonded together in a divine connection. “Of course,” she added with a slight smirk, “Our Holy Father might not appreciate the knowledge of how many positions I’ve–”
“I think I understand the big picture now,” I cut her off, unwilling to visualize such a scenario.
She chuckled before turning to me with a sobering look. “No, but seriously, that community provided me with so much. For once, nobody dismissed me, nor made suggestions on conduct and propriety. I had free will to choose, to choose only for myself, and to choose the one I love without hesitation. Don’t you miss that feeling?”
“I wish I did,” I murmured, twisting my wedding ring.
*****
I won’t tell you what it took for Bobinôt to agree to this arrangement. Just be happy he didn’t ship me off to a convent.
The first “Free Love” party was at a townhouse in the French Quarter. Josephine had written down the address on a napkin and slipped it into my purse with careful discretion. Bobinôt and I got up early enough to enlist Sylvie to stay at our place overnight to keep Bibi company, and we caught the afternoon train to New Orleans right when it was about to depart. We spent what little time we had strolling the vibrant streets and listening to ragtime musicians play on the balcony. At least I hadn’t lied to Sylvie when I said we were going to see a concerto.
As soon as the sun rested, we found the house. It stood tall in rust-colored stucco with iron fences and Spanish roof tiles. The second floor had light blue curtains so thin you could make out human-like shadows flitting about. We went up the stairs to an empty hallway. A woman, Antonia, who Josephine mentioned as being an old acquaintance of hers, answered the door in nothing but a long chemise, and I thought we came at an inappropriate moment before she pulled us in. Turns out, all of the guests were in various states of dress and lack thereof. Blush rose to my already rouged cheeks as I witnessed a couple on the couch in a deep kiss with, along with other images that I can’t illustrate in this letter. Bobinôt and I nodded at one another and split up to proceed with our exploration. As I moved slowly through the crowd, one figure stuck out clear as day: Alcée Laballiére.
I spotted him across the drawing room. A strange, warm sensation tugged at my heart, and suddenly, I was transported back to my wedding day. Sitting at the dinner table, riddled with nervous excitement, trying to make an impression on the in-laws when Alcée arrived with Bobinôt by his side. Like any good groomsman, he entertained everyone with his wit and charm, even got the perpetually disgruntled belle-mère to crack a smile. As for me, I was beaming as if he were the sun clearing all the dark, dreary clouds. That very same thought reappeared as I watched him engage in lively discussion with some frisky lady whose laughter was a little too frequent. You’ll be scandalized that I made the first move! I marched right over and politely asked for his attention. Just keep in mind, Bobinôt was preoccupied. He didn’t even know Alcée was there until I revealed it to him the day after.
Alcée and I were inseparable. If any other potential partners were available, I hardly saw them. Everything felt natural. In one swift movement, his hand brushed against my back with the softness of a dove’s feather, before gradually sliding across my waist. I couldn’t help but melt into him, my restraint fluttering out like a candle wick flooded with wax.
We dove into an empty room. He backed me against a wall and our lips crashed, his hands grasping my face with such firm tenderness. Then, they made their long descent toward….well, you know, until I shoved him off. His eyes shone with concern, and blackened as I immediately turned around. The gown was comfortable, and consisted of straps that fell to my shoulders, sans bustle pad. Pale pink, silky, with a gorgeous leaf pattern that spilled all over the floor as I slowly moved out of it. That’s when he began to unlace my corset too, peeling back a bit to kiss the skin above.
So much unraveled that night, and if I must be frank, I screamed louder than I had during my marital consummation. Twice, believe it or not!
Thank goodness for that womb veil! I know it mustn't have been easy to procure without detection, but I’m grateful that you did. I felt guilty because I obscured the actual purpose behind using it.
If you believe Alcèe and I lost contact afterwards, you’d be sorely mistaken.
*****
We met only on Saturdays. With no other commitments scheduled, Bobinôt and I were free to meet our respective partners at the best locations. Usually inns on the town outskirts, Antonia’s residence or, in my case, Alcèe’s cabin for his work travels. Being a merchant does take you everywhere, you know.
I longed for those days. Every time we made love, there was release. I would be less tense and frustrated. I stopped worrying over the tiniest thing. I even displayed less affection with Bobinôt. It was almost as if the string that tethered my being to him withered into dust. But his love never waned, and God bless him for being so wrapped up in his engagements to hardly notice any disturbance. Peace may have been restored, but that didn’t mean the loneliness went away.
During those days of dreadful solitude, I would retreat to the backyard for fresh air with Bibi tagging along. We would play hide and seek or feed the chickens at their little shack. I made it a tradition to carry a basket of sandwiches with us, and we sat by the river as we ate. In an act of indulgence, I returned to sketching with the scenery as my muse. I filled in as many pages as I could, and added watercolor to every blank space. The only witnesses to my drawings are Sylvie and Bibi. I’ve never had the courage to show them to anybody else.
In a private sense, I fantasized Alcèe being present. He’d lie down and gather me in his arms, gently smoothing down the hairs of my temple like he always does after a rather intense session, lulling me to a calm stupor. In some of these dreams, he plays with little Bibi. Alas, the source of my guilt!
Of course, Alcèe has children of his own, so what right do I have to project him onto my son whilst his father is available and devoted?
I tried adamantly to erase him from my mind, hoping this sudden adoration dies with lust sated yet, I was powerless. I can’t explain it well but …. he leaves impressions that burrow into your heart, and you feel them deeply whenever you ache. Even when you try to ignore him. Even when he drives you mad. But no other person is relentless enough to understand me better than Alcèe. That man will cling to every word you say, including the ones you don’t remember. I never had to hide behind any pretense, because he can read my true emotions etched onto my face, and doesn’t regard me with disdain once I express them aloud. It frightens me to admit this, but he might be the one to make me feel alive for the first time.
As much as I love Bobinôt, I don’t think we have that same connection anymore.
*****
Alcèe wrote to me the following day after that fateful storm. I hid the letter in an old shoebox along with several others we exchanged. “To rewrite one’s fate, your sole hand must hold the pen and act without assistance, even if you end up disappointing your loved ones,” he wrote.
I was crying from his words alone.
All my life, everything was preordained. You taught me that a woman's place co-exists with her husband’s entity, how being the angel of the house and tending to the needs of others are essential duties, as if her own aren’t worthy enough.
I feel as if I’m trapped between two paths, safety and happiness, and these forces are pulling me either way, adding a strain to my already worn soul. How could I make my own destiny despite the world refusing women a glimpse into the future once they’re out?
How will I survive like you did after Papa died?
I will say that, for every bleak outcome, there’s one silver lining. Such as when I left Bobinôt.
Honest to God, Alcèe didn’t influence my decision. It was an instant reaction.
Early in the morning, I was busying myself with sewing the rest of the new curtains when Bobinôt shouted at me to come to our room. That’s when I saw him with the shoebox, and he poured out all the letters. My stomach dropped as I stared into his glare.
“What is the meaning of this?” He fumed. “Is this what you’ve been up to in all your free time?”
I tried to come up with a rational explanation, but he stormed out. I followed him into the parlor. Thank heavens our child was asleep, or only I can imagine what he would’ve heard.
It was a dreadful argument. Plenty was said that is neither repeatable nor suitable to be put to paper.
I yelled so hard that it reverberated in painful aftershocks in my chest. He blamed me for my “wonton pleasures” and referred to me as the devil’s mistress, while forgetting he was far from innocent in this matter, especially when he brought one of his women to the house—with Bibi in the next room for God’s sake! Nevertheless, his words cut deep.
Later that day, I reported to Bobinôt that I had to go over to Sylvie’s to help, and marched out, suitcase and sleeping child in tow, without so much as a glance in his direction.
I huffed and steamed all the way until I reached the bayou, and went through.
Through a wooden bridge to the other side. I apologize. This letter really grew in length.
Before I disappear to bed, I’ll make it short: Sylvie has been more than generous in offering us shelter and lending an ear to my troubles. It’s amazing that she hasn’t banished me this minute for my desire to petition for a divorce.
There’s no money. No petty savagery and retribution. They are not what my heart longs for. All I wanted, more than anything, was freedom. For my opinions to be framed and heard on my terms instead of someone else’s, and to live as comfortably as I choose to.
All I wanted was to be a separate person again.
Alcèe would’ve been proud of me, though this isn’t about him. But if you run into him by chance, please let me know. If you could come as fast as you can, that would be appreciated. I may shortly need your help.
As someone who often describes change as the start of a catastrophic event, I’m starting to believe maybe this change will promise bright horizons ahead. Perhaps there’s nothing to be scared of anymore? We’ll see.
Imperfect Fats
by Nadia Dasi Tamayo
My father’s side of the family has an overzealous kitchen relationship with ghee. Rather than olive oil, sunflower oil, or even regular butter, ghee was rife in the preparation of all our dishes, no matter the flavor — it worked its way into the salty, spicy, sour and sweet crevices of our plates and mouths. The reason why it was such a popular type of kitchen fat was because of
its existence as a staple within the religious diet my family partook. In the way that ghee exists as the purest form of butter, my father’s side of the family was dedicated to creating an existence lived as closely as possible to the ideal of religious purity held by leaders of the cult. Unlike butter, which can spoil quickly due to the additional lactose and liquid components, ghee
withstands many environmental tribulations, lasting longer and delivering a finer taste, rich in its curated clarity. I see my father’s family religion in the same way I see this highly concentrated fat — a wild attempt at perfection without all the burdens of material attachments and ingredients.
Cooking was an integral aspect of a woman’s life in our community. I never truly cooked in the past context because I was a child, but by watching the women in my family grow and live around me, it grew clear what my role in life would have been. Within that feminized social structure, I had such a concrete path laid out in front of me, and despite being a child, it was expected I would someday traverse this path to achieve the fullness of my identity as a woman and a follower of God. Having not truly reached puberty during my experience of religion, I matured with a sense of self that lacked what I once thought I required.
There was a specific rule of kitchen etiquette within that culinary world that acknowledged another kind of persistent selflessness. The rule made it so that every woman who cooked, cooked with the aim to serve the best flavors, the most perfect concoctions, the most mouthwatering creations — to God first. The finest part of the meal, the part that absorbed the most time and heat in the sticky, slippery, salty tile walls of my family kitchen, would always make its way to God’s imperceptible, imaginary tongue before it touched the reality of my mouth. The first taste was a special gift, and not one given to the ordinary woman.
My grandmother, a ghee lover and a devout follower of her religion and her beloved God, was and still is an amazing cook. She combined culinary skill with a pious desperation, attempting to season everything in her life with an attempt at salvation. She aspired to impart the familial gift of pilgrimage to the generations after her, with the hope that we would all help one another to gain a more clarified state of life that would eventually lead us to our natural place in God’s kingdom. She could not see any other goal — such was her loyalty to the cult. My grandmother viewed non-religious people as lost to the world’s sinful trap, a dirtied form of the human species, a consequence of their rejection of God, thereby their rejection of religious purity. Her inability to break free from the ways of her spiritual diet was perhaps why she was the most affected when it came to deviating from cult rules.
My mother represents a humorous opposition to my grandmother’s habits because my mother prefers to use butter in her cooking, and when there is none, she resorts to sunflower oil. This is an abnormality, and the example stretches farther than just the ingredient itself. My mother represents a conversion, a clarification process — she is classified as an attempt. Her religious identity was formed when she married my father, the first son of prestigious members of the community. By birthright, her children would be bound to a life surrounding God. In a way, my sister and I were closer to the ideal of the religion than she was, for we were born with spoons of ghee in our mouths.
My grandmother knew this, and she made the difference known. Unlike my father, sister and I, my mother was not cult-born. She was of the outside world before she was part of my world, granting her an additional identity, a different skill. It was difficult for my mother to adjust to a religious world that did not understand her, and she suffered greatly as a newly pregnant woman in my grandmother’s household. The primary sentiment filtering her first pregnancy — with me — was that of rejection. It screened every opportunity she had with food; she could not eat if an offering had not been made at the altar first, she could not prepare meals for herself with ingredients reserved for God’s menu, she could not break a fast just because she was pregnant, and if she was too weak to eat, nobody would have time to cook for her because they were too busy preparing food for idols at the altar. Even when she found time to cook, she would be criticized by my grandmother for her poor performance in the kitchen — my mother did not know how to cook when she first married my father. Steeped in a variety of jobs to prepare for my arrival, my father was too busy to indicate his alimentary preferences and guide my mother through the habits of his maternal household. Thus, my mother starved alone.
It is odd to me how the past qualities of a pious life now simply seem like methods of deprivation. There was an immorality associated with excess, and to be fully indoctrinated with the pinnacles of religious fervor, one had to experience an initiation ritual of reduction, removal, loss.
Similarly, ghee undergoes a heating process to remove its liquid and milk components — two things that give butter a distinct flavor — and through this intense process of removal, the
ghee is then allowed a greater tolerance for heat during cooking. Because it is created through heat, it makes sense that it can withstand the same, or higher, temperatures during creation of other things, such as food. Inside this ball of heat and fat, one expects something special and rich to result, though not everyone desires the purest form of a product. My mother understood the intentionality of the initiation process, how it was designed to purify, perfect and produce a version of her relationship to religion that best fit the community requirements. But she could not parallel the attempt of purification with that of fulfillment, and this disparity confused her.
My mother cooked for comfort, for experimentation, and for her family to have the first spoonful of whatever whimsical dish she was cobbling together. Her joy lay in cooking as a form of love, not of worship. Despite my grandmother’s critiques, she was content with the variety of edible material she created, for salvation was not her goal. While she did push herself to harsh measures to fit into the mold that my father’s family had set for her, my mother knew that true spiritual connection did not have to exclude attention to one’s self and needs — as the cult did to her. Prone to experimentation rather than perfection, my mother must have known she could never distort herself to fulfill the virtuous ideal so preciously cradled by the religion that shaped our tongues.
Disregarding the selective nature of food preparation within religious confines, she attempted to shift the obligatory role that women like her — outsiders — would have to adopt if they wanted a place in the coveted land of God. Rather than orienting her portions of food, made with ghee, butter, or neither, to a figure of Godhead not fully visible to her, she delivered the servings to the plates of her husband or daughters. In rooting her proximity to the hearth to a material anchor of her immediate family — a tangible peninsula of belief surrounded by the imperceptible ravings of my grandmother’s God — my mother established a sense of belonging despite being primarily viewed as a foreign creature. This trait was what kept her sane when God finally spit us out.
My grandmother could not understand my mother’s decisive nature regarding a disconnect from the cult. She could not understand our external methods for survival while being so radically opposed to the rules dictating who would be most eligible to rest at God’s feet after spending an entire lifetime gifting Him offerings of food. The gradual loss of importance surrounding our ideal of religious fervor, of religious purity, shocked my grandmother. Perhaps that is why her heart broke when my father, mother, sister and I permanently abandoned the
restrictive sphere of our community, realizing that its rules meant absolutely nothing to us as people. Those rules meant nothing to many people, particularly men, in that community, whose religious recipe for salvation was nothing more than a coverup for their lies and shameful misdeeds against women. My mother’s experience with the feminization of religious rejection surrounding provisions exemplified this type of abuse in her life. The pain in early motherhood constantly served to remind her that she was truly only a woman second to everything — worthy of food only when God had been served first. Within this hierarchical structure where only women seemed to be packed down into the lowest levels, men in the cult could, and would, access taste to a diversity of options. These options did not always pertain to food.
It was within this saturated illusion of religion that my mother understood our community to be centered around men, perpetually uplifting them and their definitions of salvation and purity. These men with their meals and their tongues were not at all catered to a refined, religious taste. Their excessive emphasis on the purification of a food in the name of God did not truly exist as a form of worship, but to my mother, existed as a specific, concentrated attempt to repress the woman’s ability to create perfection for herself.
Leaving the cult due to a blitz of truths about the nature of piety and dietary selflessness led us to believe that we had truly just been starving ourselves for nothing, throwing ourselves into the kitchen fire for unjust expectations. While my father seemed completely unable to cope with the loss of his religious identity and the heartbreak at being erased from his entire life’s journey — whose goal was promised to him from a young age had he kept to the guidelines of piety and purity — my mother understood the return to her previous existence. Outside the cult had always been inside her normal life. I suspect my mother felt, deep down, she would be placed back into the sinful, filthy world she had been rigorously trained to repel through various methods of purification. Perhaps she recognized the lack of care surrounding our abandonment of the religion when my grandmother’s only agony was that her grandchildren would no longer be devout followers and therefore would not be allowed to lay peacefully at the feet of God.
My grandmother mourned the disappearance of existential rules in our lives, because in her eyes, the loss reflected her weakness. Had she been more persistent in turning my mother into herself, she could have saved us. My grandmother’s goal, whether in the kitchen or in the spiritual broadness of her time alive, has always been to return to her purest form, her future as a figure of eternal servitude — the result of sacrificing every taste for God’s approval of the food made in His name.
Once our life began outside, it became clear my mother did not fully believe in this sacrificial form of life. Often now she will recount the pain she felt at being abandoned during times at which she simply wanted to eat — without the offering rituals or the need to ask for permission. She displays a very different reaction from my father, who is now too lost and confused to even understand what doctrine we had been blindly consuming. He has learned to lean heavily on my mother, who has become a spiritual force of her own. She perforated the screen that once prevented her from cooking and living with things deemed impure, unfit, and unholy — and has shown through many forms of quickly digestible evidence, the ecstatic possibilities of a diet swimming with plain, old butter. My mother was able to find a semblance of fulfillment in the life around her when she chose what to create.
However, reaching a point of maturity in my own womanhood outside of the cult placed me in an existential realm excluding my mother or father. As a girl in the kitchen under a swirl of busy bodies — women all churning, frying, seasoning, and stewing — I had a future role set in place. My hands were made to curate food served beyond me, a reality which my grandmother and mother probably believed in the past. With that role revoked, I am now often burdened with a sense of loss that is not the same kind associated with the clarification of butter as it transforms into ghee. What my mother had once endured as a form of reduction for a proposed higher meaning now just reflects dimly in my life as a confusing absence of character, a spoiled idea of what I could have been.
Since having grown into the age that my mother once was when she was thrust into the oven of my father’s family, absence has often been my most heavily frequented state of existence. Though the term is interpreted as the nonexistence of something, absence carries the most weight within my current memory record — pulsating in its abnormality within me. I exist in the absence of religion constantly, drowning in its lonely flavor yet still searching for a meaning behind the taste. I often ask myself, how does a process of purification become meaningless when you exist outside of the heat that causes it to occur?
When I attempt to externalize my questions to other people it falls flat. It muddies itself through the attempt of clarified exposure — for them and me — as they don’t comprehend the complete encompassing of the religious loss and ideal I speak of. The perception of what I could have been as a woman, as God’s servant, is now foreign, and the woman I have to be is unknown to me.
Now that I can acknowledge my capability to discover the many internal hollows religion’s past leaves in my own concrete memory, trapping me in an uncomfortable heated pressure to find my own personal form of salvation — I feel unsure of what is left in my life to be full. If religious fervor once managed the treasured purity of one’s diet, clothing, music consumption, hobbies, social life, education, and daily routine — all aspects of human activity that contribute to a life experience — how much valuable living quality exists when the fervor leaves? My mother dove deep into all the aspects of religious saturation necessary to being a woman fit for the community, fit for God’s kingdom when the time came.
I grew up after her rejection of this idea, pulling me in the opposite of everything religious and required to steep in its perceived benefits. The final question that percolates through my system is this one: if religion was my life then, what is my life now without it? What can life become after such a radical change?
I like imagining the shift in an explosive sense, as a volcanic eruption. With the pressures of realization comes the release of action, what to do with what you now know. It is a depiction of the kitchen counter, of a wave of ingredients splayed and halved with their hearts open to the knife. It precedes the flare of a blue flame embracing the pan and swaying to the dance of cubes of melting butter — sunflower oil, olive oil. There is a comfort in knowing that the possibilities in these actions lead to endless concoctions, but you have the freedom to figure them out.
In my mother’s volcanic shift of life, she has created the impetus for a timeline of consumption free of a watchful hand denoting a right or wrong time to eat. Rather than waiting for the promise of God’s permission, she gifts herself with the first taste. Alongside her at the table, there are no requirements of purity necessary to share a bite with her — nor do I have to dedicate my life to upholding those requirements through feeding the flame enriched by the purest, most clarified form of butter most suited to holy meals. I still do not even know how to cook.
Kathy from the Bronx
by Cole Solis Jativa
For Kathy Caraccio
The other day, packing to go home,
my apron shook the wrong way, I said
babies and Metrocard prongs!
Only Kathy would get that.
First time I met her, she wore
a diamond-studded magenta hat.
She was funny with her soft eyes
and pinned up hair. I felt she carried time
in her pocket. Wisdom as a blanket.
Bookshelves covered every visible
wall surface. There was a
Charles Brand Etching Press
smack in the middle of her box.
A pantry shelf, glass tables,
hundreds of ink cans,
flat files up the wazoo,
and her desk facing
the window, gazing at 38th Ave.
Then I got to know her and
discovered our synonymous
snack-giving love language.
Our affection for clementines
and the origin of words.
She loves being read to—
jokingly mentioning it’s one
of the reasons she's been
with Joe for over 50 years.
Gift-giving love language.
For Christmas this year,
she gave me a manual
tube squeezer.
You start to collaborate
on an artist book.
Always brined in satiation,
she proposed
three times
after I made us porchetta sandwiches.
The Glass Eye
by Luca Aiello
was made for him after an arrest or bar
fight, too heavy for my childhood mind to bear.
On Sundays after dinner, over plates of Chinese
takeout, he would call me over. I don’t remember
much about the old man—his thoughts, his passions,
the great, strange life he led—but I remember
those intimate gatherings well, where he would pluck
out his glass eye and wave it gently in front of me,
allowing me to stare and even touch its gooey
material, all the while cackling,
“I’ve got my eye on you.”
I move through these memories
of my grandfather towards more visceral
ones, not just of him but of all my grandparents:
laid out on sickbeds and stretchers, feet twitching
and mouths wheezing as my family bounced
across the metro area from hospital to hospital,
my sister and I testing out each of the cafés
for their popcorn and Pixar movies.
I felt claustrophobic, surrounded
by placid lights and medicine air, wanting
to race away from the insular world
of pale and static rooms to a brighter place
of outdoor breezes and endless games
with the other grandchildren in the backyard
of my grandparents’ homes—cozy, soothing homes
that felt like the warmest wintertime
cottage even in sun-baked seasons.
I remember those visits with my grandparents
not as kind ones filled with toys and candy but as cold,
clinical appointments, where I would stare
at their sleeping body, sometimes exchanging a smile
or looking at the tubes stuck to them, but mostly
staring at their sleeping body, when all I wanted to do
was hide under my grandmother’s gown or hold
my grandfather’s glass eye so that I could the connections
that were deep within it, even as I heard the same drivel
from my parents after entire weekends of grim silence
rolled by: “Things aren’t looking too hot for Grandma
Mary Ann, but we’re hoping she’ll push through,” “I’m
sorry to break it to you, bud, but there’s a solid chance
that Grandpa Lou may die,” “Let’s make a wish
that Grandpa Pat won’t go to heaven just yet.”
They never came true. Through glass eyes
and hospital gowns, of smoker’s lungs and failing
hearts, of promises that were lying and dying,
I pictured those funerals like a ceremony that closed
a mafia family’s saga, where distant relatives
commenced in bland suits and dresses to sob
around cathedrals in the Bronx, chamber music blaring
as caskets were drawn out. I felt as if chamber music
was blaring throughout the whole world on those days,
and after those services, when ancient Italian women kissed
my cheeks—certain, as much as a ten-year old boy could be,
that I would never die.
Day at the Beach
"Mismaloya Beach" by D-Stanley
by Bailey Savatgy
Croissant crumbs melt on my lip like fish flakes
as I watch a blonde girl climb her athletic boyfriend
like a palm tree.
She dangles from the branch of his neck and he hugs
her waist like a beachball.
Little white minerals sink into the bready pastry and more crumbs trickle into my lap.
Amidst the ocean of people, they’re the only couple I can see.
Crushing the remaining grains, I volley them into the nearest bin and resume kayaking the waves.
Limbo
by Sarah Smith
Everything was a blur, scattered thoughts and incoherent whispers from the people shuffling around, until the pain turned to peace and all the noise faded into the background.
There was a small tug, like a string had been wrapped around her wrists, her shoulders, her knees and feet, gently pulling her up and away from the weight that was the lifeless body beneath her.
For a moment there was silence, her soul detached, finding relief in the peace, yet yearning for the chaos that came with life. While she scanned her own form left behind that was barely recognizable, the people dressed in blue with masks covering their faces, carrying fluid bags and an IV line that they pushed into the arm of the body, despite her soul not feeling a thing.
Her mind was a mess, trying to find clarity within the unknown, until her gaze met a form at the opposite end of the room, both blending in and standing out at once.
Hair that fell neatly down shoulders, clad in a white dress with too much detail to take in, eyes that held so much familiarity despite the strangeness of the figure.
Time stood still for a moment, eyes locked on each other and a flash of understanding passing over the girl's expression. The presence of the figure providing a warmth, a comfort, a certainty of protectiveness that allowed the girl to breathe again, hope filling her gentle soul.
In the split of a second, the shadow of darkness that had been lingering behind the girl disappeared, along with the strings that had been wrapped around her limbs, death letting go of its cruel grasp, and the bright soul being sucked back into the still body that laid on the bed.
The figure in the corner remained, watching over with a silent promise to stay and to care. Even when unseen, it persisted, its refusal to leave a show that it was not time.
It was not her time.