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The online publication of the Woodrow Wilson High School Literary and Visual Arts Magazine.
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SLEEP
Volume 7
L.A.V.A.2013
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Volume 7
Sleep
Cover Art:UntitledIsabelle Gloss
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L.A.V.A.
Woodrow Wilson Senior High School3950 Chesapeake Street, NW
Washington D.C., 20016
Literary and visual arts
magazine
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Editor’s Note
l.a.v.a. editors
For high school students, getting a good night’s sleep can seem at times as lofty and unattainable a goal as creating a piece of art worthy of publication. This year’s edition of L.A.V.A., Woodrow Wilson High School’s Literary and Visual Arts Magazine, strives to combine the impossible by centering its collection of photography, poetry, prose, and paintings around the theme of sleep. A look inside the pages of the magazine reveals sweep-ing landscapes, strange faces, winding roads, and ambiguous endings. These building blocks of our dreams become the staples of our art.
Like sleep, creativity can come in bursts and we may feel irresistably drawn to it when it is most inconvenient. Other times, when we are desper-ate for it, we lie awake, our thoughts bouncing around and missing their targets. Yet when we succeed, at either sleep or art, we emerge more aware and invigorated than before.
While our dreams remain elusive and mysterious, our sleep habits are grounded in science. We know that our sleep patterns occur in a cir-cadian cycle, much like our creativity. This year’s magazine is divided into sections according to the various stages of sleep. We organized our pieces to increase in intensity and vividness as the magazine progressed, just as dreams do. Each new section begins with electroencephalography (EEG) lines, which record electrical activity and measure the currents of our brain-waves. EEG lines have allowed scientists to study our sleep habits and have helped define the sleep cycle.
This year we are thankful for our dedicated staff, a wonderfully tal-ented student body, and, as always, our sharp-eyed, ever-encouraging faculty advisor, Ms. Sandra Wright. Without these incredible people, this magazine would still be just a dream.
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Staff List
CO-EDITORS IN CHIEFLillie Lainoff
AnneMarie Torresen
MANAGING EDITORLena Shapiro
VISUAL ARTS EDITORSeth Tanen
STAFF
MANY THANKS TO
Mari Foret
Sandra Wright
John Wright
Principal Pete Cahall
Woodrow Wilson’s Parent Teacher Student Alliance
Anton AfonskyDerek Foret
Mattie FriebergGavrielle Jacobovitz
Abigail KarrEmma Keyes
Anita MonteroRachel PageEva Shapiro
Elana Steinlauf
FACULTY ADVISOR
LAYOUT SUPERVISOR
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Table of Contentswriting
We Walk in Darkness AnneMarie Torresen 3
Poetry
Sonnet I Seth Tanen 3
Dark Dwellers Amara Evering 5
The Raven Anton Afonsky 5
The Pond Elana Steinlauf 15
Sonnet Ali Nadeau-Rifkin 23
The Master of the Shadows Kenny Hahn 27
The Abuse of a Vermillion Ribbon Kenny Hahn 35
Popularity Lillie Lainoff 35
Marionette Strings Seth Tanen 36
Schrödinger’s Fucking Daughter Anita Montero 43
ProseManhattan and Bedford Gavrielle Jacobovitz 7
Backwards Rachel Page 12
First There Were Four Eva Shapiro 16
The Whole Jamie Died Debachle Mattie Frieberg 19
The Park Elana Steinlauf 24
Carrie-Ann’s Waffle House Abigail Karr 29
Santa Fe Lillie Lainoff 41
Dramatic scriptCocaine Aaron Klinger 38
The Last Play on Earth Lena Shapiro 46
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art
The Bridge of Sighs Anita Montero 11
Shadows Emma Keyes 27Untitled Isabelle Gloss 35
photography
Dripping Mazlyn Ortiz 3
Untitled Sasha Pfeiffer 5
Untitled Sarah Ulstrup 7
Untitled Sarah Ulstrup 6
Untitled Sasha Pfeiffer 13Untitled Rachel Reuther 14
Fish Mazlyn Ortiz 15
Mexico AnneMarie Torresen 16Untitled Sarah Ulstrup 21
Untitled Abbey 23Bloom Mazlyn Ortiz 29
Untitled Ruthie Lewis 30
Crying Eyes Sasha Pfeiffer 32
Untitled Sarah Ulstrup 38
Untitled Rachel Reuther 39
Flowerhead Mazlyn Ortiz 42
Self-Portrait With Eye-Patch Roman Moretta 44
Dream Painting Seth Tanen 45
Carnival Mazlyn Ortiz 46Wake Up Sasha Pfeiffer 48
drawing
Untitled Lily Johnson 8
Untitled Sasha Pfeiffer 33
Alone in Santa Fe Lillie Lainoff 3
painting
mixed mediaEye AnneMarie Torresen
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I
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LIGHt SLEEP 1
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Pears on trees and pears on nosesMusic spins through sticky airScent of towels and wet rosesLockers here and sofas there
Churches maybe would be greaterMonuments would be more tall
Narrow doors and framed mosaicsDecorate these rugged halls
Sofas, tables, pears, and treesLike a cat we walk in darkness
Engines whir and clocks may tickIdeas tremble in my pocket
Conversations across cornersWalking seven feet apart
Curved streets, shade, trees overhangingCats meowing in the dark
A cloud emerges from a cloudOur friends sit, we choose to stand
I start to creep up from belowInstead, the railing takes your hand.
We Walk in Darkness
AnneMarie Torresen
DrippingMazlyn Ortiz
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Sonnet I
Seth Tanen
My love is like that of spyglass to skySo vast, sinister, and deceptiveSuch that it always sets my ships awry;with weather, that leaves radios unreceptive
My love is a racing car on slick groundSliding about, unable to hold its courseNo seat belt able to hold me safe and soundGone with the pull of great driving force
No matter the lunacy of my loveThis, I suppose, is universalIt is to confusion, what hand is to gloveIt is to thrill, what foot is to throttle
This, to me, is just a template to beMy love can be any needle on a fur tree
Alone in Santa FeLillie Lainoff
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Dark DwellersAmara Evering
We never saw the sunand never kissed the lightWe only swayed as homely dustand chased the morning’s light The dwellers of the darkIn chase of morning’s lights,they stay completely fineIn the darkness of the night We never found our wayWe saw beauty without sightWe tried to find the magicIn the coming of the night If we ever kiss the sunand if we dwell upon the brightwake me when we get thereUpon these endless nights.
The Raven
Anton Afonsky
The raven is deadBut the raven is death So how so, did death claim itselfUpon the raven; did it fall Silently, and all Cawing through the darkness could be heard As death took itself upon the birdSo the ravens last flying breath Upon it brought its own death
UntitledSasha Pfeiffer
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Portrait of a WomanSarah Ulstrup
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Manhattan and Bedford
Gavrielle Jacobovitz
The moon’s light caresses the aged oak carefully, its fingers trail down the rugged bark leisurely until it reaches the firm dirt. The tree becomes nothing but a shadow in the night.
A raindrop floats to the ground like a leaf from the tree.
He pulls out of the vacant lot in a chipped blue volkswagen. One sweating hand on the wheel. The other is suspended outside the window, grasping a crumpling cigarette, nearly too short to enjoy. As he rides, it leaves a perpetual trail of smoke that dis-solves into the wind.
Crisp water drips down the city signs.
She chases a taxi cab down the Avenue, her bare feet grazing cement. Her pale fingers wrap around the heel of her red stilettos, peeling at the toe. She tucks her hair down her dress as she runs and calls out. Her
makeup trickles down her face, carried by tears. The rain puddles reflect a distorted moon.The traffic light changes to green.
When he was younger, he would go fish-ing with his father, the type of man who thought he was smarter than he was. This applied to sailing as well. And they would get lost. So sometimes he felt it was just him, in the middle of a sea of blue silence. Like a message cork bottle. He was in a cork bottle. The horizon, just a wavering line between imagination and reality. He spent many nights extracting crystals of sand out of his ears and hair.
And a few times, she went with him, as he got older. But she didn’t like fishing very much. Just as she didn’t like water very much. Hydrophobia, she called it. So, to his bewilderment, she would begin to sing a crooked melody in the minor key as she gently shut her eyes and rocked back
MirrorsSarah Ulstrup
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and forth. And she didn’t stop until they reached the shore.
She liked to end their sails by saying, “I’m drowning.” He would laugh.He honks the horn to an uneven rhythm, matching that of the grainy song playing on the radio. The road becomes brighter, a blinding contrast as he veers off of the highway, and into the city.
She is sitting on the curb of a lonely in-tersection, Manhattan and Bedford, still barefoot, still in her most beautiful dress and draped in pearls. Her head lays inside her folded arms, and hair cascades down all sides around it. She is engulfed by rain but does not care. She has closed out the world for the people within it.
The day is Saturday. Saturday morning exposed a benevolent sun that appeared despite weather reports calling for rain. Saturday morning was the type of morning that for her meant waking up even earlier than normal. Saturday afternoon became grayer though, as the weathermen sighed with relief.
She was eleven when she first met the ice cream man-- Sal was his name. He was a benign man, with a scratchy red beard and a torso too large for the rest of his body. Both she and her brother knew that she was given the free ice cream out of guilt, as an attempt to compensate for her tears. Her tears didn’t come out much. They became drier as she grew. She ran away with sticky fingers.
Rain falls like knives and he sees her to his left. He rolls down the window mechani-cally and turns.“Are you okay?” he asks.“I’m drowning.”
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II
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Light Sleep 2
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The Bridge of SighsAnita Montero
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Backwards
Rachel Page
And then it was time for dessert. Ap-ple crumb cake. The waiter smiled through his cigarette as he laid it down in front of them on the chipped porcelain plates. “No,” she said. He ran his finger over the smooth rim of the spoon, his reflection upside-down and distorted in its curved surface. From this angle it looked almost as if he were falling into it. “But it didn’t work, did it?” he said. There was a brief silence. She lifted her glass to take a sip of water. It clinked against her fork as she set it down. The waiter had never taken it away. “I thought that maybe if I pretended it was okay, it would be,” he said. He was star-ing at his napkin. His voice sounded so small. With all of the food gone the table seemed so much quieter. She let her eyes focus on the painting of a green vase behind his chair, the pattern on the tablecloth, the elderly couple sitting in the corner opposite them. Anywhere but his face. “You could have just told me.” The waiter came back to take away their dinner plates. There was a dark stain on his collar near the seam that she had not no-ticed before. She shook her head no when he asked if she wanted the rest to go. Better to keep the memories at this table. She had the sudden image of the left-over chicken rotting in her refrigerator, the smell of rancid meat and the smoke of the waiter’s cigarette. “It’s good,” she said, and forced her-self to take another bite. The carcass of the chicken lay open on her plate, hollow and empty, surrounded by chunks of meat drowning in the thick sludge of sauce. “How is it?” he asked. She looked down at her napkin. “And you didn’t tell me until the next day.” She stopped. It made me so mad, she wanted to
say. That you wouldn’t just say something. That you didn’t have the guts to come out and tell me. But this wasn’t supposed to be that kind of dinner. Not tonight. She took the corners of her napkin, folded it in two until they matched up perfectly, seamlessly, like the triangular hat of a baby doll. “I remember.” He took another bite of his salad. There was a small piece of spinach on his left tooth, dark and square like some odd cavity. She opened her mouth to tell him, then closed it again. “At that burger place down the street from your old house. You ordered us a double cheeseburger to share and I couldn’t bring myself to tell you.” He laughed, but cautiously, his eyes flickering over to hers for approval. “You didn’t understand why all I would eat was the fries.” She scraped some of the sauce off of the chicken. “Remember our first date?” she said. “When you didn’t tell me you were a vegetarian?” The chicken was drier than she had expected, the sauce already congealing around it. She picked the limp strand of parsley off the top and pushed it to the side of her plate. On the other side of the table, he was pouring the dressing onto his salad. The spinach leaves were brown at the ends, as if someone had left them out in the kitch-en overnight. He speared a less offensive slice of tomato with his fork, slid it into his mouth. “Delicious,” he announced. He did not answer. In the silence that followed the waiter brought their plates. “It’s hot,” he said over his cigarette as he put the chicken in front of her. It was lit now, and the smoke made little clouds in the dim light as he breathed out. She noticed suddenly that he was wearing jeans. The plate was a strange off-white color and there was a chip like a little frown on the rim.
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“You used to call me every day at lunch, just to talk.” She twisted the napkin ring around and around the bundled fabric, remembering. “When did you stop doing that?” He closed his eyes as if praying. “You haven’t talked about it for a while.” “Fine. It was fine,” she said, too fast. I’m sorry, she thought in the seconds after the words left her lips. I know you’re trying to make it better and I don’t know why I’m angry and I’m sorry. But the time was al-ready gone and she had never been good at apologies. He pulled at the end of his tie, a ner-vous habit she remembered from the one business dinner she had attended with him. “How was work today?” Her eyes slipped from his face to the couple seated in the corner behind him- an old man and a woman with wispy hair like a tangle of white threads that strained to cover her head. In the dim light she could almost see their mouths moving, their words drowned out by sharp bursts of laughter from other tables. The man leaned closer to the woman to say something and she cupped her hand over his as if to keep it safe. Brown spots like ink stains scat-tered across their skin; the woman’s arm so papery and so fragile. Suddenly it felt like trespassing, and she looked away. “I thought we could talk,” she said. He cleared his throat. It looked like he had shaved. Something was different, anyways. He seemed fresher. Cleaner. “I’m glad you came,” he said. The waiter came to take their orders, a middle-aged man dressed in dark clothes. There was a cigarette tucked behind his ear, unlit. She ordered chicken marsala and he asked for salad, avocado and tomato, dress-ing on the side. He had been a vegetarian since the fifth grade and she was used to eating more than him at dinner. “The ser-vice is fast here,” he said as they put away their menus. She nodded, tried to smile. “It’s beautiful,” he agreed, shrug-ging off his jacket. The chair made a loud screeching sound on the floor as he scooted
UntitledSasha Pfeiffer
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it in, and she winced. There was a brief silence in which they both reached for the same menu on the table, their hands bumping awkwardly, then jerking away. “You first,” he said, and she flipped it open without looking at him, flus-tered. She took the chair opposite him. The table was covered in a checkerboard cloth, squares of black against squares of white. “It’s such a nice day,” she said, then immediately felt stupid. They had known each other for three years; surely she could find something more interesting to talk about than the weath-er. It all seemed different now, though. Some-how. For an awkward second she was unsure of what to do: hug him, shake his hand, wave, say nothing. Finally she nodded a hello, and he looked up, gave a half-smile. She stopped
at the doorway, waiting for someone to come and show them to their table. There was a waiter in the far left corner carrying a plate; she could not see anyone else that seemed to work here. He walked a few steps then turned back, looking embarrassed. “We’ll have to seat ourselves,” he said. He was waiting by the door to the res-taurant, just where he had told her he would. The sign above his head read CAFE AMERI-CANA. From the outside it seemed like the kind of place he would pick for a date, the kind of place he had always picked. The red paint on the sign was peeling slightly, curling itself away from the splintered wood like the pages of an old notebook. But hopeful, some-how. As if all it would take was a fresh coat of paint to fill in the empty gaps, to fix it and make it better.
UntitledRachel Reuther
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Elana Steinlauf
The Pond
Her father sits with a flowered mug, chipped and steaming with anguish.Her mother stands with a questioning spine, icing yellowed tattoos.She is told to wait in the garden; they will be out to get her for supper.
Small feet caked with dirt pad through flowerbeds while the winter sun is a reminder of the waning year that held no surprises.Peers pass by in the putrid alleys wherein lie the promise of grimy hands roaming shamelessly over minors.
A pond sleeps in the corner, whose bottomless pit is a mirror.In the mirror she sits; a friend by her side.They sit and sing and slowly search for the sun rising above the soft clouds. The cool water gives her its hand, and helps her out of the pit that sucks up dreams and reinforces the reality of resentment.
A different hand rests on her shoulder.One of spider veins that has seen too much of its own blood. She looks up at her mother who leads her back inside, past a man sitting and clutching the fragments of a beloved friend, whose contents have replaced the songs that once lulled her to sleep.
FishMazlyn Ortiz
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First There Were Four
Eva Shapiro
First there were four
Four girls sitting around a table. Four chil-dren, a board game, a bag of candy. The sun sparkles through the window, bouncing off the game into the girls’ eyes. Squinting, they move the pieces. Blue, purple, yellow, red. Stop to write on the paper, pass it around. Roll the dice, move the markers. Round and round the game went. Round and round the seasons went. Round and round the years went.
And then there were three
The girls knelt around the coffee table, talk-ing. Nothing important. It was one of those lazy afternoons, the kind where there seems nothing better to do than to sit and enjoy the company. They didn’t mention the empty space at the table, or the game on the shelf that was meant for four. They tried to forget how their long legs had to curl so that they could sit where they had once been comfort-able. They talked, and smiled, and laughed,
and didn’t for one second forget the missing voice, the one that should be there, the one that could always make them talk and smile and laugh a little bit more.
Soon there were two
They wonder where the sunny days went, and they feel the other’s absence more acutely than they ever have before. But there are still two, and they sit next to each other, heads resting on each other’s shoulders, reading. And they talk about their books, and they read aloud funny lines and they smile.
Until only one was left
And I am left here wondering, how did I let this pass me by? And so I sit alone, with nothing to fill the empty space but the thought that I, too, will soon follow them out of this house and away from this table to other houses and other tables for all of us to share.
MexicoAnneMarie Torresen
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III
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Deep Sleep 1
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The Whole Jamie Died Debacle
Mattie Frieberg
The problem with your boyfriend dy-ing when you’re only sixteen years old is that it’s difficult to know how to respond. Or at least it was for me. There are so many emo-tions out there to choose from and really none of those thousands of adjectives could quite capture the specific way my insides twisted around when I heard the news. There’s a part of me that wanted to cry and scream and go through those phases of grief or whatever, the way you’re supposed to; you know, start with denial and all that. However what I ended up doing was analyz-ing whether I really was in love and truly did need to grieve or if that was just societal pressure making me feel like I should act that way. Can sixteen year olds really feel true love? Is death really such a terrible event any-way? Maybe I just needed a few days to curl up in a ball and have an existential crisis. Af-ter a few days of thinking about life I would wake up, saying I needed to live for the day. That statement would most likely end in a re-grettable tattoo and illegal substances. Then I could find my way home and go back to the way I was before this whole ‘Jamie just died debacle”. Maybe the fact that I couldn’t decide how I felt about Jamie dying is an indicator that I’m a sociopath, or a psychopath. I’m not actually sure what the difference is. Nevertheless I went the societal pres-sure route and cried like a baby while every-one comforted me and told me how great Jamie was, but that “He’s in a better place now”. I had to fight the urge to laugh and then punch them. Here’s the thing. The day we met he saved my life. Not in the “pulled me out from in front of a bus” kind of way but in the “I was genuinely contemplating suicide but then I saw you” kind of way. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not really the suicidal type and I
probably wouldn’t have gone through with it, but my life had kind of been a disaster so far so I’d be lying if I said the thought didn’t pop into my head now and again. I’m very practical you see. I like to think about my options and well, opting out of life is always on the list. It’s like if life is a multiple choice quiz and “death” is the de-fault answer for E. I haven’t chosen it so far, but then again, everything could get worse. Jamie, well, he definitely didn’t see life like a multiple choice quiz, that’s for damn sure. I think that’s why we got along so well right off the bat. When we met it was pouring down rain. I didn’t have an umbrella. I was run-ning home after school. That’s when I saw him. And it’s funny because to this day when-ever I picture Jamie I see him the way he was then. Drenched to the bone, standing on a street corner, smiling like he’d won the lot-tery. I was grimacing as I waited for the light to change, trying to ignore the rivulets of water running down my back. He was standing across the street, staring at the sky and wearing that stupid old grin of his. I’m not going to lie to make this anymore cliché then it already is by saying his smile knocked me off my feet or anything. What I mostly no-ticed was his umbrella. He was holding one all wrapped up in his hand, not even using it. What kind of a world is this when some of us can’t find a single working umbrella while others have one and don’t use it? It was good that I felt that way though because it made me angry. That’s the thing about me. The more angry I got the more alive I felt and the more alive I felt the less likely I was to choose de-fault option E. The light turned green and I headed across the street, fuming as I passed him and his stupid un-used umbrella. He looked
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at me as I stormed on past and I heard him snicker. Now that, that really ticked me off. I remember the split second when I almost kept walking. If I’d gone home who knows what I might have done. I didn’t go home, though. I whirled around, splashing up water as I did, making him laugh harder, and I proceeded to throw a small bitch fit. That’s how we got to talking. Me yelling and him laughing. Our relationship was brief but intense. Perhaps that’s why his death didn’t affect me the way it should have. Everything was about the moment with him. His life wasn’t a long progression of days; it was a col-lection of laughter and moments. He told me once “Alex, everything is funny; you just have to find the joke.”
I would just smile and nod. Happiness is some-thing that comes easily to some, with effort to oth-ers, and hardly at all for me. I’m lying when I say his death didn’t affect me. Mostly though it made me angry. At the fu-neral everyone kept saying, “What a waste.”His life was not a waste. By saying that they were erasing everything he ever did, everything that was Jamie. The angrier I got about it the more alive I was. He saved me more than once. Jamie didn’t deserve to die, but then again, most people don’t. So I analyze what happened. I think about the fact that his heart stopped pumping blood, his organs failed, and his brain activity ceased. And maybe one day I’ll find the joke in all that. But not today.
AnneMarie TorresenEye
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29The DreamerSarah Ulstrup
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What once blossomed is now aphoticSmoke plumes asphyxiating without breakAll lies beneath the earth- persephonicTo set in by a mere shudder or quake
Lie stripped on the unforgiving earthDark monotomy rips apart the soulThe moon never turns to give a new birthWithout that change one can never be whole
Then you came pulling the fiery sunMelting ice as you tore into the skyFoliage burst into bloom leaving noneEmerald sprawl to mend the broken tie
Only mid-sky did darkness we suspendBecause I know all good must come an end
Sonnet
UntitledAbbey Pechman
Ali Nadeau-Rifkin
31
The slow hum of the park worked its lazy magic on one hundred and twenty seven of the one hundred and twenty eight inhabitants. Uniform rows of white-boxed trailers were broken up every few feet by a stray crate, or boot, or abandoned baby doll. The constant static electrical buzz was interrupted by a pit bull’s manic yelps from three doors down. Below the low ceiling she lay, when the wind sauntered over to the eastern outer wall, asking for entrance. Her eyelids shot open revealing deep, chocolate brown eyes guarded by purple bags. The eyes roamed the cramped, wood-paneled cabin and rested on the broken sunglasses, whose remains lay scat-tered on her gray-speckled plastic chair with the molding pillow. He had come three and one quarter hours previously without invitation. “Just once more.” He said. “No.” She said. “Yes.” Those black, plastic ruins were one of two victims of his furious, explosive as-sertion of dominance. The springs of her cot squealed as she rolled onto the floor, landing on the worst of her bruises. As she extended her aching knees and rose to her feet, her back cracked with the ferocity of a gunshot. Her chin lifted to peer out of the narrow win-dow, through which the moon caressed her flushed cheeks. In a swift flurry of movement, she jerked a gray pullover sweatshirt from a pile on the floor next to the chair and yanked it over her wavy, caramel-hazelnut hair. Her yellowed running shoes sat pa-tiently by the front steps and met her
muffled footsteps as she crept down the hall. As she stepped into the midnight air, her breathing became shallower, and no time was spent tasting autumn. She ran. She ran beyond the camp, past the field in the northwest, and up the peak that stretched its weary arm to meet the moon’s kiss. The path was familiar, and she reached the overlook in one hour and twenty-three minutes. The world was blanketed in mist, hiding its face. The stationary binoculars stood expectantly to her right, and she shoved her hand into the front pocket of her sweatshirt. From it she drew two leftover nickels from last week’s trip up a separate path in a differ-ent world. She shoved the coins into the open slot and jammed her face against the cold metal. Black. Nothing. She stepped back and took off her shoes. The mountain’s rich earth grabbed hungrily at the soles of her feet. The rock to her left jutted out over the edge. It was an eighty-foot fall. She left her muddy footprints in her wake. She didn’t make a sound. She, too, wanted to hide her face. A pit bull screamed far off in the distance and the slow hum of the park worked its lazy magic on one hundred and twenty seven of the one hundred and twenty seven inhabitants.
The Park
Elana Steinlauf
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IV
33
Deep Sleep 2
34
There is a little white house with a little green garden, and therein lives the Master of the Shadows.Every day He sits and He sees and He listensEvery day, He comes to know the people who call the house homeHe was there when the parties were hosted when the tea was served when the hugs and kisses were given and received.He was there when little Suzie had friends over to play Barbieswhen little Johnny practiced sports in the backyardHe was thereHe was there when games were playedAnd movies were watchedHe was always thereHe was there when Mommy Jane, with her long hair and bright eyes, invited the stranger into her home, into her arms, into her bed, into her legs.Little Johnny never did look like Daddy Mike.He was there when Daddy Mike turned to liquor to ease his aching mind.He was there when the liquor made Daddy Mike hit Mommy Jane right in front of little Johnny.He was there when petite Suzie stuck her fingers down her throat in the name of beautyHe was there when she shrunk so small she could hardly stand upHe was there when not-so-little Johnny started kissing TommyHe was there when Daddy Mike caught them and slapped his son and called him a fag.Yes, He was there.He is always there.He is the bearer of their secrets and the bystander to their crimes.And to them He is a strangerBut He alone can truly know the lodgers of the houseAnd He alone does.
The Master of the Shadows
Kennny Hahn
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UntitledLily Johnson
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Before: The diner is warm, lit with honey-colored rays of rising sun. Everything within is golden. Thick maple syrup reflects the sun as it is drizzled generously over fluffy, greasy, golden waffles sitting in a pool on a yellow plate with a white design. The waitress frying bacon in a large skillet behind the counter wears a daffodil colored dress with a white apron; her dyed blond hair is tucked under a colorful rag tied over her forehead, like a picture of a housewife from the fifties. She hums an old song to herself, swaying lightly to notes she knows by heart. They sit at a booth under a large window, facing the empty road and the decrepit gas sta-tion. They are the only customers this early in the morning, side by side enjoying a stack of home-style waffles and deep cups of hot complementary coffee with plenty of milk. The waitress was once as young and stupid as them, and has taken pity on them, she doesn’t ask what a couple of kids are doing way out here at this time of the morning, she just pours them another cup, and offers them another helping.
After: If he opens his eyes he has to see it. And hearing it is bad enough.
Before: “Can I get y’all anything else? Maybe ‘nother cup of coffee? I got some freshly cooked bacon here.” The waitress’ voice carries a soft, faint, lilting southern accent, the kind you hear old movies. She smiles a slight and tired smile of someone who has seen it all, the lines around her eyes betraying her age. “Another cup of coffee would be excellent, thank you,” the young woman says, leaning back into the booth so that her face is cast in shadow instead of the amber and pink of the new sun.
After: The sound of metal against metal still echoes in his head. He can hear her laughter, the sound of a staticky acoustic song on the radio, and
Carrie-Ann’s Waffle HouseAbigail Karr
BloomMazlyn Ortiz
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the sound of metal. Her laugh, light and flitter-ing, like a song bird. The radio, with strains of a twangy country song breaking through the hiss and crackle. A sound like nails on a chalk board mixed with the scream of a child.
Before:They sip their hot coffee and reflect together on the empty landscape before them, on the long road they’ve come up, and the long road that lies ahead. Their hands touch on the table. His eyes are only for her, her eyes search the distance, and follow the two lane back road north into the for-est and farmland. She wonders. She wonders about what she’s left, about where she’s going. She remem-bers the color of the house she first lived in when she was young, the single story aqua blue-green ranch-style house, with the circle drive, and the blue mailbox that her mother ordered special from a catalog because she hated having a house that was like all the neighbors; she hated the monotony. And her dad had a slick blue Cadillac, a fancy vintage car that her mother loved to be driven around in. She remembers that her moth-er always wanted to feel beautiful and classy. She wonders if she’ll end up like her mother, trapped in an ordinary life when she belongs somewhere grand and extraordinary, or maybe the opposite, she wonders if she wants the grandeur her moth-er craved, or if she’d rather be the plain daughter of her father, a hunter, fisher, and solider.
After: The sky is the most stunning blue he has ever seen, there is not a cloud, not a bird, noth-ing but stark stunning blue. The tops of the pines seem to be unknowably and unfathomably high, as if they brush the floor of heaven.
Before: She watches a pair of deer walk around the side of the building and dart across the road into the trees. She shifts, and he gets up to go to the bathroom. She is worried now about whether Untitled
Ruthie Lewis
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she is her mother or her father. Is she grand, or is she simple? She worries if she will fit into the simple life they have planned, or the grand dreams that they aspire to.
After: He turns; the pavement is wet, sticky, and cold under his cheek. He is afraid to sit up, but he does. He sits up and feels the pain suddenly in his legs. The dark blue of his jeans has become a deep indigo. They do not seem to be his legs, they hurt, but it does not seem to be his pain.
Before: “We should leave.” She puts a pair of twenties on the table as he returns. She hur-ries from the golden diner. She remembers going to a diner like this with her parents. Her father infinitely pleased with the grease cov-ered coffee and the heaping stack of waffles. Her mother had been distraught that it was such a shamble of a place, not the elegant restaurant that she was hoping for when he told her to dress up. Her mother loved to dress up, loved to feel so classy and beautiful. She remembers that her mother felt angry and cheated, and was silent through the meal of a heaping sandwich that wasn’t touched. She remembers that her mother cried on the way home, riding in an ordinary pick-up truck, not the beautiful Cadillac that was sold off years ago. “Why did you marry me?” Her father had asked after a silent drive home, pulling into the circle drive, in front of the extraordinarily colored home. Her mother did not answer, and that said far more than words.
After: He reaches down to touch the legs that are not really his, and sees a hand, scratched and a bit bloody, it is not really his hand. The contact hurts, and the hand flinches away. Where is she?
Before: She remembers the unhappiness, the grand and the plain together. And she looks at him as they climb into the car. She remembers his ordinariness, how they met at a gas station, and how he took her fishing, like her father
did before he died, and how that had been her favorite thing. As they speed along the highway, she remembers that she loves him, and that is why she’s here.
After: Her laugh echoes in his head. Where is she? Despite the disembodied pain he pulls himself even further up. The scene before him is a terrifying wreck of metal. He sees her, lay-ing face down on the asphalt, her hair is red, her clothes are red. “Caroline?”
Before: He turns on the radio and she sifts through stations and various levels of static. She smiles at him and he starts to tell her a ludicrous story, because the day has awoken enough for life to begin.
After: He pulls himself over to her, his disem-bodied hand touches her, rolls her over on her side so he can see her. “Caroline.” Her face is covered in blood, her face is only blood. Her one open eye rolls to look at him, the life inside it is dimming. “Caroline.” He can still hear her laugh.
Before: Thin strands of guitar and a country voice echo under the hiss of static as she flips through the stations, past the mumbling of evangelists and public radio. She laughs loud and long, swept up in how much he loves her and how much she loves him.
After: “Caroline.” The girl before him knows she will die, and that he will live. A tear drips from the corner of her eye, starting clear and gathering red into its center as it rolls across her bloody face. The hand that is his and not his trembles as it stretches to take the pain away from the girl that is alive and not alive together at one time. He whispers to her quietly, trying to bring a smile, a tiny flutter of a laugh from her throat, but she is too far gone to smile.
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Crying EyesSasha Pfeiffer
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V
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Rapid Eye Movement
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UntitledIsabelle Gloss
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The Vermillion Ribbon was stretched as far as its seams could handle, then wrapped around the el-liptical base of the bonnet, pulled taut and strained, forced to endure almost more than it could take, then released. It was then manipulated into a more suitable shape, the ends amputated because long isn’t sexy, sexy is in, sexy is thin, I am not thin enough so they cut and chop me down to size. Maybe now, after all that, someone will want to buy me.
The Abuse of a Vermillion Ribbon
Kenny Hahn
Popularity
Lillie Lainoff
You give me the heart of a daisyTake the petals and arrange them on my cheeksround my eyesSoft cream drops forming a maskTo cover my face,Even a single gestureenough to crumble them downlooking like tears making web like patterns on my skin.You tell me to keep them safe, don’t do anything to ruin them.
They’ll wilt with me over timeboth of us turning brown and wrinkling as we age.But,What is a near lifetime of sorrowed glances for abrief, vibrant moment under those golden rays?
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Marionette Strings
Mice to the down syndrome hawksWho run through marionette string prisonsThrough the sterile passageways to a light which does not exist
How ironic that the most liberal leadersCan be so unequal to their constituentsTears and stress radiate from theseAnd to no result
Riding thermals of leather and wood veneer While the mice look upon in awe and jealousyAs they lug sacks of a far lost environment
Seth Tanen
ProtectionSarah Ulstrup
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Cocaine
Aaron Klinger
Cain is slowly unveiling his latest prize - ten kilos of cocaine smuggled over the border.
Cain: Seven, Eight, Nine, Te-
He reaches in the duffel bag, his hand coming up empty. One is missing.
The play: CocaineThe title: CocaineThe drug: Cocaine.
Cain bellows out: Sherman! Lee!Sherman and Lee walk in, unaware.Lee’s face is fucking covered in cocaine.
Cain: Where is it?Sherman: Where is what?Lee: Yeah, Where is what, boss?
Cain: My cocaine! My tenth kilo! Who is my Judas?Sherman: Calm down, boss.Lee: Boss, Calm down boss, just calm down, let’s get to the bottom of this.
Cain: The bottom? I’ve reached to the bottom! It’s empty!Sherman: There must be some logical expla-nation.Lee: Yeah, some logical explanation.
Cain: The door’s locked. Locks require keys. We three are the only ones with keys.Sherman: That narrows down our field of suspects.Lee: You sure it wasn’t you boss? You’ve never done some sleep cocaine?
Cain: The door’s shut. The lock’s not forced. The thief had a key.Sherman: A key is required to open a lockLee: What about those skeleton keys? And lock picks? Or maybe the thief is still here.
UntitledRachel Reuther
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Cain: Thievery is a punishable crime, I am the one stolen from, I need to punish someone.Sherman: One of us is going to have to get punished.Lee: Maybe the inner guilt, built over time, will punish someone enough, so there’s really no need for punishment at all.
Lee can’t stop twitching, laughs.Sherman notices.His face is fucking covered in cocaine.
Cain: A kilo is worth money. I will pay money for this knowledge. A kilo for the knowledge.Sherman: I might have an idea.Lee: Yeah, I got an idea. Maybe Sherman was the one who sleep walked into the pile of co-caine.
Cain: You have an idea? Come over here. Tell me your idea.Sherman: Yes, I understand the need for pri-vacy.Lee: What idea? Can I be in on it too? You guys wanna buy some glocks? I know a guy.
Cain: So? Don’t keep me waiting. Speak your mind.Sherman: His face is fucking covered in co-caine.Lee: Whatcha talking about? Is it me? Is it? Is it? I bet it is. Fuck.
Cain: Oh, wow. His face is fucking covered in cocaine. Do you think this has anything to do with the missing cocaine?Sherman: I’m not sure, but it’s a good place to start.Lee is currently snorting cocaine.
Cain: Well, we might as well ask him. Maybe he misplaced it, and is too embarrassed to tell us.Sherman: Maybe, though that seems doubtfulLee: Hey, how was your talk? Good? You talk through some shit? This all done with?
Cain: We have a kilo missing, and your face is fucking covered in cocaine. Is there a connec-tion?Sherman: Did you steal the kilo of cocaine from the shed?Lee: What? No! What? This cocaine? On my face? No, I brought this from home. Yeah, this is all mine.
Cain: Sherman, Lee said he brought it from home. After all, why would he lie?Sherman: He would lie because he stole the cocaine.Lee: What? I would tell you if I stole it, and I definitely didn’t steal it. Not me.
Cain: He would tell us if he stole it, Sherman. You’re just paranoid.Sherman: Are you really not seeing this?Lee: Seeing what? What are we seeing? Sight-seeing? Safari? Petting Zoo?
Cain: Calm down, Sherman. Short fuses make for short lives.Sherman: Lee took it! Shoot him!Lee: Took what? Nobody’s shooting no one! What?
Cain whips two guns outSherman withdraws two guns.Lee takes a gun out, clumsily.
Cain: Calm down, ShermanSherman: Where is it Lee? Where is it?Lee: I didn’t take it! I didn’t take it!
Cain shootsSherman shootsLee shoots
Cain checks himself.Sherman checks himselfLee checks himself.
No one is shot.Everyone looks at each other.A kilo drops from inside Sherman’s shirt.
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Santa Fe
Lillie Lainoff
There is something different about the air in Santa Fe. The higher you go up into the mountains, the smell of white sage and burned sand grows stronger. It is stored in the cracks of the red brown mesa rocks. The sky and the clouds seem so much closer. When we were children, we wouldreach our baby fat fingers up. If we tickled the clouds we could make it rain. It isn’t just the air that is different. It is all the people who converge in the desert. When filled with all of us, it seems to shrink. Our hair, some of ours dirty blonde, others’ the deep black that changes color in fluo-rescent lights, seems the same when the sky turns dark. We arrive first. My father leads, lug-ging bottles of SPF 70 sunscreen for my stepsister’s creamy skin. She lacks the blue eyes to be a ginger but she burns just as easily. She and her mother come next, snap-ping pictures of each other posing by cacti. Posing by dry brush. Posing by patches of lavender. I bring up the rear. It is strange, the four of us. For three years I was content in my father’s silence. Now there are two more, and they are in the front, and I am in the back. We stop several times, everyone slathering on sunscreen and adjusting their sunglasses. My father’s new wife mentions how lucky I am. My native golden sun skin will never burn. I smile. “Yes, thank you, it was my mother’s.” So were my long artist’s fingers and round earlobes. Once we reach the double hills, we make a right. Pass the houses with pools and outdoor kitchens. Walk up the one road without sidewalks, the one that becomes slick with rain. It is littered with peeling white crosses and white roses. I press my fingers to my lips and touch each one, the wood splintering on my skin. My father and his family think it is strange, but they un-
derstand. Now I have a connection with each person who died on the grey cement. The house we stop at is not like the houses we have passed. It does not have outdoor lights lining the pathway or mani-cured green bushes. It is an old bunkhouse. My mother’s childhood laughter lingers in the doorframe. Her height is marked with char-coal, little black lines a symbol of her life. Its walls are cracked clay. It smells likethe clouds we touched when we were little. I start the fire in the fire pit. I throw in dry brush, lavender, and sage, so the scent will carry on the wind up to my mother, so she knows her family is coming. And then we wait. We wait until the color begins to leak into the sky. And then, only then, they arrive. “Theresa!” My sister is the first to reach me, her belly round with her third, fourth, or fifth child. “My Theresa!” And then they converge upon me. My grandmoth-er, my grandfather, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, my nieces and nephews, all at once, some of their blood latin, some native. “You are so thin! Have they not fed you at college?” “Those hiking boots do nothing for your feet. You have such pretty little feet, mi hija.” “Aunt Theresa, a ladybug landed on my shoulder yesterday! You said that was good luck. I thought I should tell you.” I smile my first real smile of the day. My family waves to my father and his family, who are sitting around the fire, sipping diet sodas. “Listen,” my sister says, pulling my face to her belly. My ear is pressed to her sweaty t-shirt for the fourth time in six years. I swal-low, inhale the heat rising from the ground, the heat falling from the sky, the heat radiat-ing from her belly, round as the sun. My sister looks down at me over her extended, wonderfully misshapen body.
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FlowerheadMazlyn Ortiz
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“So,” she says and smiles, “do you hear anything? I think it’s going to be a boy. He’s always kicking, especially when his fa-ther is nearby.” She laughs her belly laugh, looking at her husband, who is feeding the hearts of tortillas to one of their toddlers. I press my ear closer. I think I can hear a faint pounding, like someone beating on a drum. “A healthy boy! “ I say, pulling back and smiling. “His heartbeat is very strong.” “I knew it!” She cries out, and disap-pears into the crowd. Food seems to materialize in my rela-tives’ hands: foil tins filled with whole grilled chickens, blue corn tortillas wrapped in hand-painted cloths, thermoses filled with stew made with my uncle’s annual prize-winning pumpkin. As each person walks past me, they kiss my cheek, leaving purple and crimson streaks, like war paint. Once the line dwindles, I see her. Full, orange skirts sweep across the dust rock ground, and the arms of my great-grandmother embrace me, my face pressed into her shawl, the smell of my mother sewn into the fabric. “Mi hija,” she says, cupping my face in her age-stained hands. “My Theresa. My
Theresa.” She shakes her head, crows-feet marked by dried tears. Her dark eyes reflect my own. “You are too perfect. I am happy you got rid of those glasses. Now I can see our eyes.” I do not tell her that it takes me an hour to put in contacts. I do not tell her that I never wear them, except when I am in Santa Fe. Except when I am home. She sighs, looks at the purpling sun, looks at the illuminated underside of the clouds. “Mi hija,” she whispers again, taking my hand and patting it with hers. I can feel the bands of her rings pressed against my palm. “You look so much like her,” she says, still looking at the sunset. I swallow, and glance at the horizon. “Sometimes,” my great grandmother says, “ifI look closely, I can see her face.” She ges-tures with her hand to the sun, now starting to fade behind the blue grey mountains. My heart feels as if it will beat out of my chest and up into the sky. I stare at the sun until my eyes are burning. There is something about how it floats down, something about the growing absence of orange and gold light, that makes me want to cry. That makes me want to follow my beating heart up and up and up.
UntitledSasha Pfeiffer
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I wonder, if someone walked by, walked by every year, what would they see? A huge gathering, people eating and singing out of tune, their dusty shoes pounding in time on the ground. That person walking by would never realize why we were all here. Maybe they would see my father, his wife, and his stepdaughter, sitting aside from everyone else, talking quietly to each other. That person walking by would never guess that it took my father four times of asking them to come with us. He kept on telling them that I needed this. This was not for him. This was for me. For three years we had come back to the place where my mother’s life began and ended, the place where her and my father’s lives were joined together and torn apart. He used words like “closure”. Was that what this was? This was my homecoming, my family reunion, the anniversary of my mother’s death, all wrapped up in one hike into the mountains. My father told his family that he needed to go, too. I needed the support. And maybe, just maybe, if that passerbylooked closely enough, she would see me and my grandmother, two women, one old and one young, standing at the edge of the hill. The old woman would turn to the young one and hug her tight. The young woman would clasp her hands together, trembling, as if in prayer. The scent of their tears would carry on the breeze. They would watch the world continue on while they were still.
Self-Portrait Wtih Eye-PatchRoman Moretta
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Schrödinger’s Fucking Daughter
Anita Montero
I cry my father’s tears 40 years too lateAnd his blood looks like salvation run-ning down my arm on a Tuesday night.
Somebody show me a picture of my childhood that isn’t a fucking lie.
Somebody hear my silent scream in my therapist’s office.The clinical white walls are repulsive.
Somebody pray for what’s lostIn between the folds reverence and disgust.
For my half fluid existence.I’m Schrödinger’s fucking daughter,Caught forever between the worlds of who I could have been and who I was conditioned to become.
Survival was never a skill I wanted to master.
Dream PaintingSeth Tanen
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CarnivalMazlyn Ortiz
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Inside an empty sandbox sit two teenagers, a boy, QUINN, and a girl, ANNA. QUINN is running a toy truck into ANNA’s leg repeatedly, while ANNA looks on, both amused and annoyed.
ANNASo you think the world’s gonna end today? The guy on the street said the world’s gonna end today.
QUINNCome on, Anna, guys on the street are less reliable than the tabloids.
ANNAIt’s cloudy today. You think that means something?
QUINNIt’s cloudy a lot of days.
ANNAI was just thinking, it would be nice for the last day on earth to be a sunny one.
QUINNFor Christ’s sake, Anna, the world is not ending today.
ANNAI should... do something. Finish off my bucket list.
QUINNWhat’s on your bucket list?
ANNAWell, it was, sit in a sandbox with a cute boy and let him drive trucks into my leg all day... but now I’m not really feeling this. Let’s maybe get some coffee?
QUINNSee, I could go for an end-of-the-world date. But there should at least be some dancing involved.
ANNA smiles. It’s a “this was my plan all along” type of smile.
ANNASure. Dancing is on my bucket list as well. Also skydiving. But we can skip the skydiving.
They stand up; ANNA takes QUINN’s hand and twirls into him.A very, very large drop of rain falls on her head. She looks up. A loud crash, like glass breaking, is heard offstage.END.
Lena Shapiro
The Last Play on Earth
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WakeUpSasha Pfeiffer
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