Tag: ’24

To You

LELAND CULVER
I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know how long it will be before you read this. The company that ran this facility—that runs this whole moon, really—they’re powerful, and a lot of smart people work for them, but they’re certainly not safe, and they don’t tell the truth….Continue Reading To You

Lamplight

image of a purple eagle

LELAND CULVER
Your face I thought your face I wished your face would long have left me, gone away, above. / Unharmed, although below I go, except for silent wishing, occasionally fishing for unhurried hypothetic love. / But glinting in the dark, your eyes espy my every dreaming thought like burning violet embers I remember once were blue….Continue Reading Lamplight

Smudged

outline of two people: a "dripping" woman and a pointing man

ARI DENGLER
Liza is awake, lying in bed, listening to the intent scratching of pencil across paper. Lukas hasn’t slept for more than three hours a single night this week. Instead, he’s spent all day and night hunched over his desk, lamp basking him in light as he scribbles down his new book. …Continue Reading Smudged

6:43 PM

JACKELINE FERNANDES
6:38 p.m. She finds herself on the platform dialing the number at about the same time she began to think about pulling out her phone from the front pocket of her jeans. In fact, he has already declined her call. She’s probably thinking he won’t show, he thinks, as she rolls her eyes and angrily shoves her phone back into her pocket, thinking he won’t show….Continue Reading 6:43 PM

Archival Time

photo of a pedestrian crossing the street at night

JACKELINE FERNANDES
Sauntering along these wooden planks, sputtering words into the studded dusk, syllables falling, slipping onto the chiaroscuro of the busy walkway under my feet, that’s why I’m here, that’s why I’m calling, to remember to record and to record to remember. My lips, dry like forgotten flowers, unwatered but dotted with evaporating droplets of spittle, every expulsion of air condensed into trailing, fleeting streams of water vapor that dip with the weight of all the syllables tumbling tangibly from my tongue, descending into the intangible in this art of presence and absence. Do we belong to history, or is it ours?…Continue Reading Archival Time

An Elegy for my North Star

drawing of someone biking down hill

SOFIA RODRIGO
My grandmother was a woman in the boldest sense of the word. She was fiery and strong, but also caring and selfless. She was Britney Spears CD’s playing in a little red car so old I didn’t think it would make it out of the driveway, but I liked to think it ran on her magic alone. She was breakfast in bed and Saturday morning cartoons I wasn’t allowed to watch at home. She was my North Star, promising me I could always find her by looking up at the sky. She was tough love; she taught me how to climb a tree but refused to help me get back down, claiming that one day she wouldn’t be here, and I’d need to be able to do things by myself….Continue Reading An Elegy for my North Star

Passing

photo of flowers

MIKAYAH PARSONS
You came to me in seasons. / In summer, you were bright and full of life. / You climbed your way up the staircase on all fours / And dared me to do the same. / You had a nice smile, / So I listened to you. // I tripped over those stairs. / That summer was a series of awkward renditions, / With me squeamishly asking for your pat­ience / As we traversed the great unknown….Continue Reading Passing

I Saw the Edge of Death in a Dunkin Donuts

image of dunkin donuts swallowed by blue hole

LELAND CULVER
“Why are so many people getting Dunkin Donuts at 2pm on a Sunday?” / That was the question that started it all. I was driving to get groceries with Nicole and Elena—Elena was driving—and on our way out of the little strip mall parking lot, we had to navigate through the Dunkin Donuts drive-through line, which had somehow grown long enough to overflow from the space around the store….Continue Reading I Saw the Edge of Death in a Dunkin Donuts

Wild Pitch

SARA ATTIA
(Why do you love what you love / Why do you love how you love / Couldn’t you find something better to do / (No, probably not.) // Francis wasn’t much of a lover. But what he loved, he loved to the point of pain.)…Continue Reading Wild Pitch

What the Fuck is Self Care

abstract drawing of an angel/monster

ARI DENGLER
There is a wolf trapped inside of me. The wolf gnaws at the soft skin of my belly, digging sharp claws into whatever vulnerable flesh it deems suitable. It is ravished and unpleased, pacing up and down my spine, soft paws sending silent shocks throughout my body. Its howls emerge as sobs, its yaps as nervous chatter. I despise the wolf, despise its hunger for happiness, a hunger that leaves me drained, dull, deprived….Continue Reading What the Fuck is Self Care

An Alphabet of Film Studies Under Quarantine

YASMIN HAMILTON
B is for Barthes, Roland. In particular, his 1979 essay “Upon Leaving the Movie Theater,” my favorite piece of writing on the syllabus of my freshman year film studies course. Barthes explores the pre- and post-viewing condition of the movie-goer—what he calls the “cinematic condition.” He describes the condition of the viewer before seeing a movie in Freudian terms: as “pre-hypnotic,” the viewer having a “‘crepuscular reverie’” that draws them to submit themself to the “anonymous, indifferent cube of darkness” that films are (1)….Continue Reading An Alphabet of Film Studies Under Quarantine

Five Til Noon

black-and-white drawing of someone lying under tree

SAM SPRATFORD
I first ran a lap in a scarlet sunrise, magenta clouds parting. Do you remember the way my hands shook as I / tied my shoelaces in the humid mist, double-knotted? Sprinting into the wind so quickly it was suffocating? / Staring at blank, ruled lines was the same and my heart was pounding as I clutched your hand in chemistry, / learning that too much oxygen could poison you. I guess there was such a thing as being too free….Continue Reading Five Til Noon

The Art of Looking

DIEGO DUCKENFIELD-LOPEZ
I follow a mysterious woman draped in a navy-blue coat with a turquoise diamond pattern. The camera, like me, follows her steadfastly, focused on her hood, which bounces as she walks, until it falls off to reveal a messy bun of bright, blonde hair. She bolts towards the cliff, my heart matches her speed as she gets closer and closer without slowing down; I chase her desperately but the wind pushes me back…Continue Reading The Art of Looking

Cosmic Poiesis

blue outline of person dreaming of planets

JACKELINE FERNANDES
When the world crumbled last March, I hadn’t expected it to last so long that I would spin off course from my quotidian orbit around Earth, attracted by the unrelenting gravitational pull of Mars. I didn’t know it at the time, but the email correspondence with a sophomore in my Letter Writing J-term class would soon become something more, something indefinable, rooted in a mutual appreciation for the graphemic, morphological, and semantic elements of language. …Continue Reading Cosmic Poiesis