MusesLiteraryMagazine_2015

MUSES 2015
ART & LITERARY MAGAZINE
Editor – in – Chief
Allison Lloyd
Art Editors
Avery Brunkus
Kelly Osborne
Poetry Editors
Nikki Hirschenboim
Kate O’Donoghue
Prose Editors
Christopher Baumgartel
Gabby McCullough
Layout & Design
Jack Pennington
Amanda Reich
Publicity
Julia Schneiderman
Monica Baum • JankiVansia
Secretary
Lena Schneider
Faculty Advisors
Dawn Lonsinger
Emily Orzech

Swilled Honey:A Poem For My Girl
Julia Schneiderman
Fears of a Warm Body
Emily Scharf
Head in the Clouds
David Budnick
Open, Shut Them
KatelynWinter
Split Panorama III
Deborah Carlin
Hang Gliding
Mia Becker
Untitled
Lena Schneider
Layers
Nikki Hirschenboim
My Pippin
R. Herz
Transduction
Peter Krumpe
The Hand
Daryll Heiberger
Cabbages
Jason Ullman
16
4 21
5 24
6 26
7 27
11 28
12 29
13 30
14 36
38
18
19
The Three Persephones,Vidimus
Julia Schneiderman
Unknown
Helen Laser
(Woe) Man in the Moon
Avery Brunkus
“Stranger’s Wilderness”
Elizabeth Post
Mountain Man
Anabel Diaz - Guzman
Last Night
Deborah Carlin
Tensions in Blake’s “Fallen Garden”
Kelly Osborne
Still Patient
Gabby McCullough
Route 29
Lena Schneider
Written in Stone
SaraVan Eerde
This is Just to Say
Molly Baraff
Carnevale
Amanda Reich
39
40
20 41

Choices
Avery Brunkus
The End of Playtime
Taylor Sue Leonhardt
Barbiere,Via Pietrapiana 68, Florence
Caroline Bronston
Ink
Paul Corgan
as long as i shouted i love you
LexyVecchio
Wholes
Max Keane
Riomaggiore
Amanda Reich
Death of a Snowman
Christa Maxwell
Psychiatry
R. Herz
CO2
Daniel Palevsky
Autumn Skull
Hannah Cascio
Roll 34
LexyVecchio
51
42 57
43 58
45 59
46 60
47 61
48 62
49 63
50 66
67
52
53
Polychrome Detail
Hannah Cascio
Gigi
Caroline Bronston
Dad, Man
Anabel Diaz-Guzman
untitled.
Erik Santiago
A Story About Love, Mystery, and Action
David Budnick
Levels
Avery Brunkus
flowers, vi/etna/m
Emerson Davis
Orchard Tree, I-81
Ellison Heil
and then mother mashes the turnip
Kate O’Donoghue
BeeVault
Avery Brunkus 68
54
Cover Photos:
Hannah Cascio, Jason Ullman,
David Budnick,Avery Brunkus,
and Deborah Carlin

4
For Siobhan
At the first seeping of dawn our eyes crack,
Only to sink closed again until noon.
Our eyelids heavy from liquor swilled back—
We’re sucking honey from all our old wounds.
In the night and the dark our starved tongues spun
‘Round boys with slick smiles alligator-mean—
Smiles we keep kissing, while saying we’re done.
These sticky excuses make our hearts lean
White meat, thin sheets, change our eyes into bones.
She winds up hating the constellations
Her fingers play at night; the catacombs
Rumpled into sheets from her new gyrations.
We’ll be licking at these wounds until our lips
Fall off, and the honey seeps from us in drips.
Swilled Honey:
A Poem For My Girl
Julia Schneiderman

Fears of a Warm Body
Emily Scharf, Photography

Head in the Clouds
David Budnick, Photography

7
Ian folds the quilt against his chest
before tossing it back onto the bed,where
its corners untuck and spill out again.
He can’t look at the bed anymore, can’t
stand the lipstick stain on the pillowcase
or the black sock tangled in the sheets,
so he turns to the dresser.The top three
drawers are hanging out, the bottom
three pushed in neatly. Ian shuts them,
then opens the first one.
Open shut them, open shut them…
Zoom in on a baby’s hands trying
to mimic his mother’s. Elijah’s wavered
closer together in front of his face
before clasping into a pink fist.They both
laughed, and the video camera is laid on
the floor as Ian joins Beth on the living
room carpet.
Give a little clap, clap, clap…
Her glasses are the first thing he sees.
She pulled them off, running her hands
through her hair and throwing them into
the drawer.Her screams still float around
the room, and Ian is afraid to open the
door,to let them out;let her go.He walks
to the window and cracks it. The heat
from the radiator slips into the winter air,
steam floating visibly into the violet night.
Elijah’s stroller is in the driveway
below, lying on its side. Did she hit it with
the minivan when she left? Did she do it
on purpose?
Creep them, creep them…
Beth didn’t leave in the middle of the
night,when the neighbors were asleep and
there was an obligation to do it quietly.
Coming home to lights on in every room,
his first thoughts went to Elijah, even
then. Where was he? The radio blasted
a weather report and the doors upstairs
slammed a maniacal rhythm.Why wasn’t
he crying at the noise? Ian ran upstairs
and found Beth with salty tear tracks
long ago dried on her face, chasing her
belongings down and tossing them in a
duffel bag. He tried to catch her, but she
threw his arms off her waist and howled.
Lay them on your lap, lap, lap…
In the kitchen, she has left the freezer
door open, and he closes it. He goes to
the counter, gets a notepad. Six bottles
of pills.Thomas the Tank Engine on DVD.
The left-over lo mein. The phone book
full of doctors.A sleeping bag.These are
not the things he wants back from her,
though. Elijah. Beth.Their family.
Open wide your little mouth, but do not
let them in…
They knew she was pregnant again
that December third, when Beth woke
Open, Shut Them
KatelynWinter

8
up and spent the morning hunched over
the toilet bowl, the stench of cleaning
fluid drifting up her nose and upsetting
her stomach even more. Drink a glass
of water; eat some toast, he told her,
eager to visit Elijah in the hospital.They
watched him, two years old but as fragile
as a newborn, take deep breaths that
inflated his swollen belly. Beth pulled her
hand away from Ian’s to lay it on her own
stomach. She chewed her cheek, closing
him out of the argument she was already
winning inside her head.
Shake them, shake them…
She wouldn’t have left without her
cell, but he hesitates to call. Elijah must
be in the car by now if Beth had him at a
friend’s when she left hours ago, and she
wouldn’t pick up if that was the case. Ian
picks up the house phone, punches in the
first few numbers, and waits. Maybe she’ll
call, he thinks, but if she calls first, I’m the
bad guy. He doesn’t want to be the bad
guy.He already feels stupid for thinking—
no, betrayed. He won’t call, then. Into the
laundry room where the dryer needs
emptying; if he buries his hands in the
warm towels and jeans, he can’t hold the
phone.
Shake them just like this, this, this…
When they finally brought Elijah home,
when the medicine was tough enough
and his muscles were strong enough, Ian
and Beth stood over his crib as he fell
asleep.Arms wrapped around her middle,
he whispered how perfect it all was, that
their family was all together just in time
to grow. She craned her neck to kiss him
and then slipped away to the bathroom.
Earlier today, Beth tore this memory
from Ian and twisted it angrily while he
stood, powerless in her rush to get away.
“I can’t believe you didn’t realize
then,” she said,“Even then you hated me,
but you didn’t know it yet.”
“How long?” His voice was bending
beneath the weight of hers, faint and
ready to break.
“We were living a ghost life, we
weren’t really happy. I was pretending,
and you were too oblivious—”
“How long ago?” Ian cried.“When did
you start pretending?”
“Three weeks ago.”
“Go.”
“I knew you’d hate me for it.”
“Go!”
And she left.
Roll them, roll them…
The laundry is done, and Ian can’t

9
come up with anymore chores to clot
the dripping pain in his chest. He knows
he won’t call, in case she’s driving. He
knows he won’t go after her, too. No
point in chasing down another fight he
doesn’t want to have. He’s never been a
man of action, and maybe that’s why she
acted without him.
In Elijah’s room diapers are spilling
out of a package on the floor in front of
the closet and a teddy bear Elijah never
really liked is the only thing left in the
crib. Arms crossed tightly, he sits in the
rocking chair.There is nothing to hold,no
one to cradle or hush. Look up, see the
ceiling. Down, now, scrutinize the floor
and the changing table and the toy bin.
Anything to stop from closing his eyes
and imagining the tiny wrinkled face he
will never meet peering up from between
the cotton folds of a hospital blanket.
Until tonight, she did not yell at him.
No screaming reasons why they shouldn’t
have another baby. For her, Ian sees it
was a silent battle, a jury of one, verdict
unanimous. He shuts his eyes, but he
doesn’t see Elijah’s fists curled around his
finger or a nameless sonogram. He sees
Beth sitting on their bed,three weeks ago.
Her face, strung with sparkling tears like
strands of light,is looking up at him.In this
memory, he thinks she is crying because
Elijah isn’t doing any better, because her
child sleeps so far away. Now he re-reads
the plea behind her glassy eyes. I’m sorry,
she’s saying, I couldn’t bring another into
this world, I was afraid, and I am still
afraid. Ian grips the arms of the rocking
chair. He holds his breath, traps the tears
before they roll down his face.
Blow a little kiss.

10
bare feet in pure water
you waded ahead of me
pebbles between toes
pressing against the soft and the calloused parts of your feet
I squinted as you grew more distant
going further away from me,
your shoes
sitting next to me on the dock
until I decided enough was enough,
threw my shoes next to yours
and made my path trail yours in this stream
my feet pulsed against the same pressing pebbles as yours
but I think we experienced those pebbles in a different way;
I was aware of the world around us as we explored
and was able to get out of the water
even if I did get out
only to meet razor grass,
turning my legs into a modern art exhibit for a week and a half
while you kept right on walking
leaving me behind to lick my wounds
Pebbles
Paige Harrington

Split Panorama III
Deborah Carlin, Photography

12
I had that dream again last night –
The one where I strap fairy wings tightly to my back
and run along the burning pavement – barefoot.
And I reach for wisps of wind
to propel me into the sky.
But I can only get a few feet off the ground,
these broken wings left for recycling –
Maybe some other little girl can take a stab at it.
But now, I think, all that fairy wing training
has come in handy as I stand on the edge of this cliff
and jump.
Hang Gliding
Mia Becker

Untitled
Lena Schneider, Photography

14
I’m caged in by nothing
but skin: thin, akin to peeling
bark, a cylinder holding within
flesh. Encased in bark which bears aged marks,
through pores I breathe. Isn’t it amazing
how fragile rind is our only armor,
and yet in it—and to it—we live,
confined? Isn’t it amazing how we live
our entire lives in one trunk, no matter how scratched
armors become? Each tree ring
a year earned, a year conquered.
Armor doesn’t protect, it traps; within the trunk
hides an alternate persona.
You there, soldier, caged in bark—
there’s more to you than just skin,
I hope you know the power
that lies within.You’re judged
based on your shield
rather than the elements you wield.
You define yourself by your armor;
to others, you’re only what you show
Layers
Nikki Hirschenboim

15
off. No one can see through nor crawl inside
thick iron armor, stretch around in skin:
want it though you may, no one truly knows
from within. Others only see
the outside: the chinks and concave dents
in the armor, in the iron—
No one knows what a veteran you are—no one can
see inside your trunk of armor,
count your many tree-ring scratches.
Only you can see beneath bark,
beneath iron. Only you know
just how deep those scratches go,
and even as they fade, you still see phantom
marks on skin: the stronger bark that sprouted
to cover gashes—scar tissue, raised
skin—just another layer
to further cage you from within.

16
Life is a performance & we must break
free of our roles.
Fifteen years ago, the actor who
would come to play Pippin collapsed in
front of me: heat stroke. At the time, I
was playing my part exceptionally, exactly
as it was laid out for me.The plot of the
script dictated I fall in love with Pippin;
first, I would pick him up off the ground,
dangling him by his armpits.Then I would
place him in my bed & let him rest.
Pippin & I spent our nights practicing
lines. He was far more animated than I
was. I hated my role. I didn’t understand
why his character had the privilege of so
manyadventures:waragainsttheVisigoths,
polyamorous sex, the thrill of killing &
bringing back to life, while I remained
“Catherine,” a widowed single mother
living on a farm. Sure, my character had
her humor & brains,while all he had were
supreme gullibility & impulsivity. When
we would practice we’d often trade lines:
he hated playing Catherine, but I loved
playing Pippin.Then of course I’d mouth
his lines at rehearsals & sing his songs
in the shower. He often overheard me
& laughed. We fell in love this way; two
people playing lovers often do.
Then one morning he woke up in
my bed, disoriented, his paranoid eyes
darting around. He shook me awake &
started babbling about how he still hadn’t
found his corner of the sky: “Where is it?
Do you know where it is?” He sputtered.
I thought he was still dreaming, that he
was playing Pippin in his sleep.
Then, to calm him, I started to sing
of all the ways I could be his corner, but
he wasn’t listening. He jolted to sit,“I feel
something tugging at my shoulders,” he
shuddered.When I went to grab a glass
of water & a melatonin,I felt a similar tug.
Then I looked up.
Dangling from the rafters were none
other than the Ring Master’s feet, two
strings taut in front of them, attached to
us. She was singing softly, “Join us,” but
she was the only one up there.
I grabbed for a pair of scissors &
before she could stop me I snipped my
string. Then she tugged hard & Pippin
was wrestling the scissors from my
hands.“Pick up your script,” she said. He
grasped it in his hands.“Read your line,”
She demanded & Pippin read, “Give me
the scissors!” never picking his eyes off
the paper.
After that first incident with the
Ring Leader, I learned how to trick her;
My Pippin
R. Herz

17
for years, I pretended to be weak & still
attached. I played the role of a woman
whose sole purpose was to take care of
her chores & her son & most of all to
love Pippin without trying to cut him free.
One night,the Ring Leader told Pippin
to jump from a swing into a pit of flames.
She called it the “Grand Finale,” & all
of the circus performers were there to
watch it. That’s when I took his hand &
whispered,“Stay.” But his eyes were glued
to his script—“I can’t,” he recited.
So I held onto his hand & followed him
up the ladder. The Ring Leader tried to
control me, make me stay on the ground,
“It’s not in the script,” she pleaded,
forgetting I’d long ago cut myself free. No
longer a puppet, I could decide what to
do.As we stood on the platform,the heat
searing our bodies, clogging our noses &
blurring our vision, I kissed him so softly
& held onto his waist as tight as I could,
wrapping my legs around like a protective
shield. Then she made him jump & I fell
hard into that burning pit.
Afterwards, the script went
mysteriously blank.
I was frantic, looking for stage cues,
letters, dots, anything.

18
Your back porch on a Monday morning
I gazed into a Pennsylvania sky.
Your mom was at work.
We had grapes and cheese.
Out of that blue sky I saw a glimmer
Which slid through the film on my eyes
And tunneled into the back of my skull,
Spreading itself out across an operating table.
This glimmer in the sky,
This predator drone,
This ballistic missile from North Korea,
This doomed space shuttle careening towards earth
Descending from the heavens as it burst into flame
Turned out to be a string of spider silk,
Strung between a tree and a rooftop,
Roused by a slight breeze.
Somewhere far away, a thunderstorm sends ripples across a pond.
I breathe and the world stops, reorganizes, revolves, resolves, commences, hides, thrives, and abides.
A cycle of concentric circles coalesce into a vivid and well-defined fabric, like a quilt.
I am staring down time’s spiral.
I move off the porch and onto the lawn where you sit cross legged.
I rest my head by your lap, examining a moth not two inches from my nose.
There is a tiny green egg sack under its wing.
I adjust my gaze to your face
And am blinded by the mid-morning sunlight resonating off of your curls.
Transduction
Peter Krumpe

The Hand
Daryll Heiberger, Painting

Cabbages
Jason Ulman, Etching with Silk Screen

21
Three Persephones,Vidimus
Julia Schneiderman
Vidimus: [Latin: we see you]
The small model made for the patron to approve of a stained glass window design
before paying for it.
I.
I sit in the hallway:
trying to have been better friends with him,
trying to find this heavy sort of sadness in myself.
A girl with a grief defined only by old faces:
I mourn him by listing off the others I have lost.
By remembering the Ave Maria in full cathedral.
Grey stone, beveled pillars.
Sun striking the too bright window behind.
I try to miss him like they do,
To feel his absence like their loud grieving.
But I still dream of smoke and fire.
II.
I’m dead. I mean,
I’m already dead.This
is the Afterlife.
The girl leans over her beer
in the seedy air and tells us
we are just figments of her imagination.
Or maybe we are dead too.
She isn’t sure.
I take a sip of my gin and tonic.

22
Now she is Dead dead.
In the winter we drive back from the high school,
where he teaches,
and we say sad so sad.
It’s so very sad.
The poor girl already thought she was dead though.
Remembered going into a hospital,
but not going back out.
We called her crazy.
I bet him she’d try to sleep with him,
while I was gone.
And now, we say sad so sad.
It’s so very sad.
We didn’t know she had such sick lungs.
She didn’t tell any of us.
I feel my tongue heavy in my mouth,
for the mis-sayings.
Past and present.
III.
A heroin overdose.
Seems cinematic.
Veins and needles and fiction
and a color of desire I’ve never seen
in someone’s cheeks.
They called it “the undertow of heroin.”

23
I remember her younger sister,
eating a cicada at our fifth grade graduation.
Hot white cement under our bare feet.
The buzzing of the cicadas loud that year.
It’s translucent window wings,
a cathedral climax, without the saturation.
Shining black and green exoskeleton slipping
through her lips and across her tongue.
Teeth : bared.
Her sister’s hands must have shook,
teeth rattled together,
cicada-wing eyelids quivered.

24
A plane has been missing for weeks now.
Somehow,
when it glazes over a TV screen in front of me,
I’m imagining a 747 being whipped around the sky by a tempest
as mothers hold their sons away from vapor dripping windows,
And couples lit by silent blinking lights become tangles of shoulders and arms—
prickling asleep under each other’s backs.
Some pair of brother and sister make tents out of now-ironic safety brochures,
And sleep under drawings of oddly serene victims of calamity.
Flight attendant smoke drifts into the pilot’s quarters
Where a hat with flat plastic wings stares out into the ether—
Waiting for the ghost of Amelia Earhart to lay a hand on his shoulder,
And welcome him in.

On the ground some people lie in bed at night with words like “detections” “ra-
dar” and “pings.”
People pray to God on high hoping their plea can penetrate the ozone
And reach Him
in these Turbulent times
with a special Morse code they’ve typed out in gulps, tears, and tortured breaths.
I type “it’s okay” with fingertips
into the leg of a friend who cries
Unknown
Helen Laser

25
over a boy who sees everything from a bird’s eye view.
Everyone is a point on a map below.
But she is a small town in Indiana
Which doesn’t have a tarmac for 50 miles no matter which way.
She’s hoping he’ll crash into some sunflower field,
And he’ll tell her in a pile of dirty petals that he likes being on the ground better
anyway.
The boy who’s been on my mouth’s radar lately comes in with a smile to see me,
So I take off from tears
to follow him into the dark hallway.
In the next room there are tiny gently glowing Christmas lights and phone
screens like cities you’ve seen in your dreams.
Far away laughter that sounds like it’s miles below
Makes me think about that plane and wonder if:
Maybe it was just following something tall
and impossible to anchor to the ground.

(Woe) Man in the Moon
Avery Brunkus, Mixed Media

27
Once we were a pair of eyes;
Swam through the darkness
Above the pipes like tangled aortas
And below the high-rise windows’ tears.
We followed the scent of burnt rubber
And the taste of bad insight
To a place where the cardboard boxes
And the sinews of bicycles
Sounded something like sadness.
We counted alley cats
And padlock blues,
And howled with the Bench Men
With breath like sewer steam.
When you grew weary,
I grew crushed velvet palms
That opened wide enough to catch
Copper cab fare rain.
In the back seat lullaby,
Your head found my shoulder
Like a boat finds its harbor.
I lingered
On the weight of your breath
As all the shifting dust specks
Settled in the hollow of your collarbone.
The neon lights seared into me
And left ink stamps on my retinas.
I saw the universe
Swirl like paint
Behind my eyelids.
I swear I did.
“Stranger’s Wilderness”
Elizabeth Post

28
Nana||he barges through my door||nana you dont love me nana he says||oh no
i thought||he smells like the alcohol i realized||suddenly he starts to cry||staring
into my face||he’s a little taller than me||a face with rotten long teeth||yellow and
dark holes in his teeth from smoking||you dont love me he says to me again||he
starts wailing||theres mucus and spit||mucus and spit and yellow teeth with holes in
them||aah! ahh!||thats how he wails some more||aah! ahh!||hes clearly drunk again i
stare at him||you dont love me||clearly i do more than anything i think but to myself||i
didnt know how to tell him back then||i try to tell tell him approach him||he throws
himself on the floor||aah! aah!||rolling around||we feel the same black pit in our
stomach||but hes drunk this is dramatic||im going back||he says through the mucus
and tears||going back to what i ask ||do you know what a monastery is he asks||he
stands gets in my face||im going back to the mountains you dont love me anymore
he shouts||he cries some more rolls around some more||suddenly stops composes
himself||gets himself together||leaves house||im left thinking no! come back!||
calls me hours later||m’ hija he says||im done nana||i ask what do you mean||nana
im done||tell her im done||im going to kill myself thats it he says||no no no dad no
i say||yea thats it im done im going to kill myself he says||he hangs up||i run to my
mom||mom mom dad says he will kill himself||shes scared||i call again to see how he
is||i cant reach him till the next day||papa i say||hola nana he says||are you okay i ask
him||yea im okay||i thought you were going to kill yourself dont do that again||he
laughs but right then i found out he had been in a frenzy in a frenzy like a stupid
weak man||like a stupid weak man||an uncivilized man||
last time i ever believed a drunk|| maybe he should have stayed in the mountains after all.
Mountain Man
Anabel Diaz-Guzman

Last Night
Deborah Carlin, Photography

30
Blake’s “The Garden of Love” is by
some readings a tale of a failed navigation
from innocence to experience. Its position
in Blake’s Songs of Experience immediately
places it in opposition to the Songs of
Innocence, alerting the reader to the post-
lapsarian contexts of the word-image
relationship. The fallen world cannot be
ignored within the context of this poem,
from the dogmatic decree of “Thous Shalt
Not” (line 6) written over the door of
the chapel (a symbol of corrupted and
institutionalized religion) to the bleak
and desolate images of perverted and
constricted nature in the image.While the
evocations of lost innocence and forfeiture
of Eden lend a helpful framework for
reading this poem, too often the Songs of
Innocence and of Experience are treated
as an inextricably bound unit instead of
two works created five years apart (1789
and 1794 respectively), each with its own
ideological frameworks and contexts. In
the case of the Songs of Experience, a lens
that is often overlooked in criticism is the
relationship the poems have to Blake’s
prophetic works, most notably The Book
of Urizen.
Also created in 1794, Urizen is Blake’s
prophetic exegesis condemning the world
to a corporeal post-fall state after his
protagonist, Urizen, separates from the
“Eternals” and creates the world. For
Blake, the Fall did not occur when humans
first committed sin, but rather when the
Earth was created. Urizen’s creation of
the world cast humans into a realm apart
from Eternity, damning them to a fallen
state. “The Garden of Love” tells of this
post-lapsarian universe in which Urizen’s
dogmatic “One Law” reigns and the “joys
and desires” of the narrator are bound
and suffocated by the briars of religion.
But the narrator has the knowledge and
memory of what the previous pre-lapsarian
universe was. He has seen and been a part
of Eternity but when vegetable nature was
bound by Urizen, nature ceased to be an
Edenic paradise.This paradise gave way to
a fallen nature, ceasing to resemble nature
at all.“The Garden of Love” explores this
post-innocence state and the narrator’s
inability to cope.The prophetic work with
which the poem is conversant lends a new
context for how one can understand the
poem through word and image.
The available criticism addressing “The
Garden of Love” focuses primarily on
the narrative as being one of prohibition,
confinement, and failed adaptation. Critics
place emphasis on the institutionalization
of religion and establish the binary of the
Garden in its pre- and postlapsarian states.
One critic cites “The Garden of Love”
as one of Blake’s “more straightforward
poems,” (Essick 119) echoing many critics
Pre and Postlapsarian Tensions in Blake’s Fallen Garden
Kelly Osborne

31
in their sentiments that the poem’s meaning
is readily discernable by the reader without
much interpretation.While themes of the
poem are made clear by the narrator and
the accompanying illustrations (critics
frequently cite the “dark vegetation which
admits no light” [Lincoln 191] and the
replacement of flowers with tombstones),
the poem’s full scope of meaning is
deceptively narrow. One critic, Elaine
Kauvar, touches briefly on the relationship
between “The Garden of Love” and Blake’s
prophetic Book of Urizen in her article
“Landscape of the Mind: Blake’s Garden
Symbolism.” As Kauvar states,“The garden
in Experience does not thrive and blossom
abundantly; instead, it sanctions priests and
replaces flowers with tombstones. The
vegetation in Experience is dead or dying
because the briars of Urizenic, abstract,
moral law have withered the primal vigor of
Innocence” (Kauvar 60). Kauvar’s explicit
mention of Urizen acknowledges the
prophetic context of the work, in addition
to aligning Urizen with this post-Edenic
space. In Eden and in the Garden of Love’s
innocent state Urizen had not yet imposed
his laws of morality upon humanity—
indeed, the world has not yet fallen. But
even Kauvar’s essay does not go further in
assessing how the prophetic work can be
used as a persuasive lens for the poem.
In Blake’s ideology, the Fall of Man
occurred when man was created in earthly
and bodily form, separated from Eternity.
For Blake, the Creation of the world isThe
Fall, for the creation of the world caused
humans to be “bound down/To earth by
their narrowing perceptions” (Blake pl.
25). The universe Urizen created is the
world we see in “The Garden of Love”
whereas in the narrator’s memory the
garden is depicted as a place in the Songs
of Innocence—children are lambs that
play on the green, innocence abounds and
they are allowed to exist in a recreated
Eden because they have not yet sinned or
fallen into experience. In the postlapsarian
Garden of Love, however, Nature has
become a controlled object transformed
by religion. This is evidenced not only by
the erection of the chapel on the ground
which the Garden occupied previously, but
in the image at the top of the plate where
vegetation has fused with the façade of
the church (see fig. 2).A tree is just barely
visible behind the three figures at the top
of the plate, but the tree is not healthy or
vibrant—its trunk is colored black, nearly
blending in with the chapel wall behind it.
This illustrates a visual convergence;
the church has appropriated and absorbed
a natural object. The three bowed figures
in the top image, a priest and two
accompanying children are rendered in
a similar dull gray color. The children are

32
visual echoes of the narrator himself in
his days of playing on the green, but now
(like the tree) have been repurposed as
symbols of dogmatic religion. The priest,
holding a Bible and leading the children in
prayer, stands in for Urizen in enforcing his
“One command, one joy, one desire,/One
curse, one weight, one measure,/One King,
one God, one Law” (Blake 4) Now even
children must forfeit their innocence in the
face of religion. In the Blakean cosmology,
the entrance into adulthood is a forceful
eviction from innocence; man is shrouded
in the corporeal body, a mantle of jealousy
and narrow perception.
With this Urizenic reading in mind, we
can observe at the bottom of the frame
what appears to be a large mound of earth
or mass of twisted vines (see fig.3). Its
position at the very bottom of the plate
implies burial.This reading is also aided by
the open maw of a grave situated directly
over the text and the bottom image.This
binding is not only representative of the
briars that the priests used to “bind the
joys & desires” of the narrator, but the
“Net of Religion” that in The Book of
Urizen is cast over the sons and daughters
of Urizen. It is woven from the “sorrows
of Urizen’s soul” (Blake 4) and is yet
another aspect of human life that limits
perception and causes those beneath it
to “shrink together… for the ears of the
inhabitants/were wither’d, & deafen’d, &
cold, /and their eyes could not discern/
their brethren of other cities” (Blake 27).
The Net of Religion binds and buries the
inhabitants, making the object engraved at
the bottom of the plate curiously evocative
of this Net.The figure is so heavily bound
that it is impossible to tell if there is really
a body underneath the tangled web, for
“None could break the Web, no wings of
fire,/So twisted the cords,& so knotted the
meshes, twisted like to the human brain”
(Blake 25). The Net of Religion is made
tangible in the print; the briars with which
the priests bound the narrator’s joys and
desires with become the Net of Religion in
this Urizenic context.
While the narrator’s inability to
reconcile his loss of innocence with this new
experienced world shows his psychological
stasis, Blake’s decision to have the narrator
perish as a result of this lack of acceptance
speaks to Blake’s belief that the Urizenic-
formed earthly life is to be rejected in
favor of the afterlife. One critic argues
that Blake’s critique of priestly prohibitions
against the pursuit of earthly “joys &
desires” suggests that “the conventional
privileging of spirit over body functions
to control the body’s pleasure-seeking
impulses by demonizing sensual expression
and the physical world in which such
expression occurs” (Hutchings 196).While

33
the body/soul binary is a complicated one
in Blakean ideology, the critic neglects to
acknowledge the concept of man’s“Eternal
Form”, one which guides an understanding
of Blake’s attitude towards the soul.
Blake held the belief that the body
and soul are not separate but one within
the body and “that call’d Body is a portion
of Soul discern’d by the five Senses, the
chief inlets of Soul in this age” (Blake 4).
In his work The Marriage of Heaven and
Hell, the five senses are lenses through
which humans perceive the world around
them but to their detriment; the five
senses restrict Energy and, as voiced by
the narrator,“Energy is the only life and is
from the Body and Reason is the bound or
outward circumference of Energy” (Blake
4). Energy, synonymous with the Eternal
Form of man, is restricted by the “outward
circumference” of the body in a fallen
universe. In “The Garden of Love” the
narrator is able to liberate this energy and
free his Eternal form, no longer confined
by Reason (which takes the form of the
Church) and the Body (represented by the
bound burial mass at the bottom of the
plate). In the context of “The Garden of
Love”, the body is positioned as a negative
creation, something that the narrator
escapes in death because it is able to be
bound and gagged by the priests’ briars. If
in the image the narrator is bound at the
bottom of the plate,then it follows that the
narrative voice is coming from beyond the
grave—implying that the soul is freed while
the earthly form remains constricted by
Urizen’s chains.
The visual designs of “The Garden
of Love” expand upon where the text
leaves off, developing and complicating the
language of the poem which at times can
be read too straightforwardly. The image
complicates the lack of hope that the text
implies.The oppressed joys and desires of
the narrator remain bound and gagged in
the text, but in the image take the form
of the burial mound which implies hope
for liberation and freedom of energy. As
a fallen man, Blake acknowledges that his
art form itself is a fallen object, a mere
vegetable form existing apart from Eternity.
This self-consciousness is evident in his
attempt to marry the verbal and visual
on his copper plates; in the case of “The
Garden of Love” he remedies this anxiety
with the liberation of the narrator through
death.The narrator indeed perishes at the
end of the poem, but to interpret this as
being a morose occurrence would be to
argue against Blake’s own anxieties about
the Fallen world. The Book of Urizen
concludes with the lines:2
“So Fuzon call’d all together
The remaining children of Urizen:

34
And they left the pendulous earth:
They called it Egypt, & left it.
And the salt ocean rolled englob’d”
(Blake 27)
This final stanza positions Fuzon (one
of Urizen’s four children) as a Moses
figure leading the Jews out of Egypt. In this
instance, the Egypt they are leaving is the
world itself, the salt ocean evoked in the
last line becomes the Red Sea which is no
longer parted.The last stanza is hopeful in a
poem that otherwise condemns humanity
to a fallen world, much like the image of
“The Garden of Love” lends hope that the
narrator has also escaped the “pendulous
earth” in favor of rejoining Eternity. By
freeing the narrator visually and implying
that the language of the poem comes from
beyond the grave, Blake frees his narrator
from the chains of jealousy and the five
senses, allowing his soul to once more be
unburdened by the narrow perception of a
Urizenic fate.
Works Cited & Consulted
Blake,William. Songs of Innocence and Of Experience,
“The Garden of Love” copy E, pl. 42. TheWilliam Blake
Archive. Ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph
Viscomi. 11 October 2014 <http://www.blakearchive.
org/>.
- - -. Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Ed. Robert
N. Essick. San Marino: Huntington Library, 2008. Print.
- - - .The Book of Urizen. Mineola: Dover, 1997. Print.
- - -.The Garden of Love. 1794. Relief and white-line
etching with color printing and hand coloring.William
Blake Archive, San Marino.
- - -.The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Mineola: Dover,
1994. Print.
- - -. Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Ed.
Geoffrey Keynes, Sir. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1967. Print.
- - -. Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Ed.
Andrew Lincoln and David Bindman. Princeton:
Princeton UP, 1991. Print.Vol. 2 of The Illuminated
Books.
Hutchings, Kevin.“Nature, Ideology, and the
Prohibition of Pleasure in Blake’s ‘The Garden of
Love’.” Romanticism and Pleasure. Ed.Thomas
H. Schmid, Michelle Faubert. NewYork: Palgrave
MacMillan, 2001. 187-207. Print.
Kauvar, Elaine.“Landscape of the Mind: Blake’s Garden
Symbolism.” Blake Studies 9: 57-73. Print.
Image: Huntington Library, San Marino, California,
Plate 42 from William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of
Experience, 1974, Call No. 54039.

36
My arms slowly started to regain function as
I peeled myself off of the dusty, decrepit teddy
bear that guarded the corridor like a plush troll.
I did my best to wipe my slowly congealing drool
off of its fading brown arm, eventually conceding
to the fact that my saliva was probably not the
worst thing that’s happened to this bear. The
obnoxiously grinning suns and rainbows that
plastered the hallway caused more offense.
As my mind reluctantly reinvested in my
body, I became re-aware of the pungent odor of
antiseptics that tried to mask the overwhelming
scent of Death. But She was still everywhere.
She dwelled boldly, mocking the attempts by the
nurses and hospital staff to ward Her off with
tacky wallpaper. She ran the length of every crack
in the paling blue linoleum floors.
“Hello, Death.” I whispered, as I slowly
reacquainted my feet with Her floor.
With a deep breath, I danced a squeaky
shuffle to your door. I closed my eyes, swaying
in Death’s breeze, and prayed that She would
heed my baseless threats and stay the hell out of
your room. My hands traced the doorway, willing
a transparent boundary into place. Finally, they
settled on the handle.
Your tiny finger was tucked inside of a
comically large contraption that translated your
heartbeat into a symphony on the monitor beside
you, pulsing in rhythmic beats. My eyes traced
their way from the IVs imbedded in your pale,
scrawny arm, over the roadways of your rumpled
blue gown.
Following the snaking oxygen tube, I charted
the shape of your big ears over and over again,
begging my mind to make imprints and reprints
and portraits and sculptures and epitaphs… I
tucked the tube back behind your ear with an
earthquake hand and a foggy sigh. Your hair was
already starting to grow back: thick, dirty blond
weeds refusing extermination by the invasive
pesticide.
Even in the dark, I could see the three freckles
that had morphed together along the edge of
your nose, forming what you swore to me was
a magic giraffe. He’ll protect me! you proclaimed
with childish indignation before rocketing yourself
down the makeshift backyard slip-and-slide.Water
jets shot from your sides as your laugh collided
with the grass in front of you. Springing up from
the trampoline ground, you turned and smiled at
me, grass and dirt hanging from your grin, gloating
glistening in your brown eyes. Told you.
Three days later, you were seizing against the
hard tiles of our kitchen as the summer light
poured mockingly over your contorted face. Spit
dripped from your lips as your eyes screeched the
pleas that your mouth could not utter. Nobody
answered my frenzied cries as I did my best
to keep you attached to your body. She was
perched and waiting and majestic: dark billowing
robes whispered around Her ankles, transparent
Gabby McCullough
Still Patient

37
darkness lapping Her moon-white flesh. Her face
was surprisingly peaceful, but her softer features
were hardened by jagged jawline and cutlass
cheekbones. Her eyes swirled with concern,
transfixed with twisted pain on your writhing
form; She hated seeing you that way. Somewhere
between funneling sobs into the ear of the 911
operator and the arrival of the ambulance fifteen
minutes later, I told you that it was okay if you
wanted to leave with Her.
But the paramedics came, tucked you into the
gurney, pardoned me with a nonchalant Fine work,
miss. and evaporated in a flashing chaos of sound
and light. I stood there dumbfounded, trying
to coax my legs into stillness and my mind into
function and my heart into feigned patchwork
wholeness.
Invested in you, She sat in the leather seat
beside mom and me, listening intently as the
doctor presented the diagnosis in a hermetically
sealed box; nothing could change the core. There
was no Thank God we caught it early! Just the
somber resonance of the truth: glioneuronal
tumor, aggressive, advanced. Our nightmares
were haunted by music box visions as we glimpsed
premonitions of Her eternal pirouettes, spins in
time with an unheard tune.
“He looks so peaceful,” mom lied, startling me
back into the dimly lit room.
“Sorry,I didn’t realize that I’d— ” she stoppered
my apology with a hand on my shoulder, pulling
me into her neck, her untamable curls tickling my
ears. Pulling away from me, she stitched her arms
around herself, trying to fashion a permanent hug.
“I hate this place,” she choked out. I knew that
she wasn’t talking about the hospital.
“Six months we’ve been…” I collected her
unsaid words and placed them carefully in a jar
with the rest of the half-completed phrases.
We weren’t given hope, but somehow it had
still managed to seep in, a baseless and nagging
whisper of what if more potent and toxic than the
god-awful aroma of rubbing alcohol.
As tears streamed into strands of hair, I
glanced up and met Her eyes. Her shadow stood
stark against the fluorescent lights outside the
room, and She sang a somber melody in a tongue
that I couldn’t understand,Her voice the sound of
sweet wailings and flickering candlelight prayers.
One week later, the scent of Death was
overwhelming, the subtle undertones of exposed
earth and rapidly wilting roses no match for Her
profound perfume. We wore her like a cloak
now, more shadow than human, as we nodded
robotically at the priest who prattled on about
Heaven and The Mercy of Christ and Eternal Peace.
My ears were otherwise enraptured, as Death
sung to our broken souls, Her arms a comforting
shawl nestled tightly around our shoulders. I
reached for Her hand, grasping it tightly.

Route 29
Lena Schneider, Photography

39
I wish I could lucid dream inside her memories
Flow through them like honey until I reach the sunflower field
The one where the dark keeps barking.
The one she sat in, softly holding onto a smooth little stone.
The one that she dropped.
An inconsequential thud in the earth.
This is where I’ll pause,
I’ll turn the sunflowers into those purple tulips, and place the stone back into the
palm that gave it a heart beat.
Because that thud?
It resonated every place, every space that she’ll have to live in for the next while.
I watch as she watches the house from far away lose its color.
Some one begins to mow the lawn.
“Why so late?” She thinks.The dog barks.
Oh, the stories that could be told. Stories of escape. Stories of love gone cold.
Or maybe just grass.
And watching her unknowing eyes - she couldn’t have known.
What would have happened with that stone.
In my dream, I imagine I’d feel like a mother the morning she found out about a
family death, watching her child sleep with eyes that don’t yet know that her life
has turned upside down. I would hesitate to wake her up.
And I do, I feel that way.
She dropped the stone again.
And the dog keeps barking.
Written in Stone
SaraVan Eerde

40
I won’t be home for dinner
I’ll be at the carousel until nine
I’ve been saving up my money
each ride costs a dime.
I’ll mount the cream colored pony
with roses on its side
It’s on the inner circle
and gallops in its stride.
I’ll jump for the glimmering gold ring
each time it circles by
and listen to the music box
as it twinkles like the sky.
This is just to say
the carousel is where you’ll find me
I clearly know my way.
The carousel is where you’ll find me
smiling my heart away.
This Is Just to Say
Molly Baraff

Carnevale
Amanda Reich, Photography

Choices
Avery Brunkus, Photography

43
1
I never watched television as a kid.
Instead my sister and I would wake up, trudge
downstairs, and play with our Barbie dolls until
it was time to go to school. In our playroom,
we created a magical world that no one but
us knew about.The relationships between our
dolls were more complex than the stereotypical
this is Mommy and this is Daddy. Mommy and
Daddy had issues behind the scenes that only
we, the narrators, knew about. Looking back,
I think this is why I felt so connected with
the dolls. I felt their emotions, their struggles,
and their successes. It was amazing being able
to transport to a new world in the safety of
our basement, shielded away from the violent
television screen.

2
I’ve been in a tornado and they’re nothing
like the perfect suction cups they show in
science fiction movies.You don’t see a tornado;
you experience one.You’re woken out of your
bed at four in the morning, and you’re groggy,
and you hear people running around upstairs,
and you’re not sure who woke you or what’s
going on and you think someone said that
there’s a tornado warning only that can’t be
true because these things don’t happen to you.
And you stumble out of the bedroom into the
basement where there’s a TV smack in the
middle of the room and you’re surrounded by
a clutter of stuff from water to baby wipes and
on the TV is the weather channel. Then you
see the black tornado symbol on the map and
you realize this is real. It’s actually happening
and it seizes up your insides.And you’re staring
out the sliding glass doors, which the strange
lady whose house you were staying at decided
to open because she’s paranoid that she’ll get
trapped, and the only thing you’re thinking
about is that the tornado is going to come
right into the house. I wished we had chosen a
new place to vacation.

3
I lived in Pennsylvania my entire life.There
are no earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados,
volcanoes, forest fires, or tsunamis. My house
was made of brick so no fires could touch
it. There was a flood,but only once.I remember
it had rained so much that the river spilled its
muddy brown water into the city. The water
was so high that bridges were floating on
the river’s surface. Other than a few spoiled
basements and a lost bike path, the damage
was minimal.The damage was always minimal.

4
My uncle smoked. He’d smoke and he’d
drink while he smoked. He went outside with
a cigarette in his fingers and a beer in his hand,
and I followed him. I was just about to squeeze
out the door when he turned around and
placed his palm in my face and shook his head
no.I couldn’t understand why he’d never let me
hang out with him on the patio.
The End of Playtime
Taylor Sue Leonhardt

44
The smoke was killing him and he knew it.
He’d quit when I was a baby to protect me
from its poison. When I became a toddler,
the nicotine reclaimed its grip on him, and he
smoked again. In school they warned us that
smoking was bad for you, and I thought of my
uncle. I realized his prized toy was destroying
him. I had nightmares about my uncle slipping
away in a cloud of smoke, and then the smoke
choked me and my lungs turned into the tar-
ridden sacks that they showed in the pictures. I
woke up gasping and vowed I would never let a
cigarette touch my lips.

5
My mother is a dancer. Her feet are
instruments that create music by moving
across a stage. Without her body, she could
not work.When she was in her twenties, she
came into a rehearsal snacking on a doughnut.
Her manager handed her a book called Kick
the Sugar Habit.
“Read it,” he said.“It will change your life.”
My mother gobbled up every word of that
book. She traded pastries for fruit, processed
food for vegetables, and white bread for whole
grains. Her skin became clearer, she had more
energy, and she never got a cold. She passed
down her new diet to my sister and me. We
were nested in a world without illness.

6
I’m in gym class when I learn about Alex.
My legs are bent and my hands grip the ball.
My eyes focus on the square in the middle of
the backboard. I visualize the ball dunking into
the hoop. I’m just about to let go, when Kelly
comes up behind me.
“I have to tell you something about Alex,”
she says.
“Go for it,” I say, still focused on the hoop.
She takes a deep breath.
“Alex, she, well, last night, she...” Kelly says.
Out of the corner my eye,I see her bite her lip.
She takes another deep breath.
“She tried to kill herself,” she says. I drop
the ball.It slams into the floor. I hear it bounce
away but I don’t go after it. I turn to Kelly. She
looks like she’s about to cry.
“Is she okay? What happened? Where is
she?” I say. I cannot believe this is real. Alex
seemed so happy.
“I think she’s okay. She might be in the
hospital,” she says. I see Alex, unconscious. In
her hand is a note she’s written to her mom. I
hear sirens and see a stretcher being rushed to
an ambulance. I see Alex with an oxygen mask
over her nose, and I hear her mom crying.
When I get home, I plop down on my bed. I
feel stunned. I don’t understand it. I can’t
understand it. I can’t even imagine such pain
exists. I think about my uncle, smoking on the
patio. I think about the tornado, and I start to
cry. I see fear and pain and I want to curl up in
a blanket.I want to return to the basement and
play Barbies. But the Barbie days are over.

Barbiere,Via Pietrapiana 68, Florence
Caroline Bronston, Photography

48
maybe the trench in my chest was dug my by own trembling fingers—
i’ll fill it with salt and water
squeeze my heart harder and harder / please / gather every drop
i am afraid that no blood means no gain
stop the pull down / you are a beacon / you are a reason
stop creating wounds just so you can put your whole heart into stitching them up
with dental floss
and your teeth are rotting
get up
salt and water are already inside you
Wholes
Max Keane

Death of a Snowman
Christa Maxwell, Photography

51
They diagnosed it as a storm
The worst of the season, winter’s knockout bite
All of the backyard things lost form
They were convinced they’d come to harm
As they woke in a patina of white
Big Tree glimpsed the desperate arm
Of brown Grass Blade, no longer reaching for light
& diagnosed it as a storm
Barbeque, Swing & Fence alike, once solid & warm
Appeared white, soft powdered, & with true forms out of sight
Then wind blew—snow flurries fled the yard, a sudden swarm
Of powdery particles fluttered, fast blinking, blinding light
All the backyard things remained, in form
It was merely the white noise of a dusting, the yard’s alarm
Unnecessary, how they had screamed,“Uncover me!” with all their might
& diagnosed the dusting, hastily, as a storm
Though none of the backyard things had, truly, lost their form.
Psychiatry
R. Herz

52
How noble we looked filing out with the curtains,
bridging the agora with hashtags
The facts:This was a man of 43 and 400 pounds
and a wife and child. Poof
Reporters flocked to gather the smoke.
The Island gathered up its tattered robes
letting out a little oxygen,
refusing to breathe in.
We snaked cardboard over Times Square
sardinic planes packed belly-up
rolling up windows
A few séances were glossed at the station.
CNN drew GDP’s
And I watched from my all-white dorm
shrined in a hammock of orange leaves,
a painting of a black-wound moon,
a gridding aviator
Pantaleo applied for a submission and
he died of 400 pounds and a heart attack
Over cigarettes and an archaic hold
Leaves Boiling Leaves legs
Rocking crunching
CO2
Daniel Palevsky

Autumn Skull
Hannah Cascio, Acrylic on Canvas

54
The delicate string glistened in the
unmoving air of the attic. Autumn almost
mistook it for a spider’s web, when the
string slid across the nape of her neck, and
she jumped, bashing the crown of her head
on a rafter and dumping the trunk over.A
timeline littered the floor, concentrated
near the lid, its skull bashed in, and fanning
out all the way to the corner where the
bones of a mouse rested in a tuft of fur.
“Fuckin’ A.” Autumn said, covering her
knees from the grimy floor with her skirt.
Swirls of floorboard residue came up with
each stack of junk she thrust back into
the box, splaying into the atmosphere and
caking the inside of her nose.
Other things were strewn amid
the swath of photo negatives: oxidized
spoons, the Western Union telegram that
congratulated Nanny Rosalie on the birth of
her first son,the shards of a perfume bottle
that had exploded and scented everything
with pungent Hollywood glamour. She
picked up a small cylinder.A crack split the
orange outer shell; in smeared sharpie it
was labeled #34. Autumn leafed through
the junk as she tossed it into the box,
imagining her fingers slid across the deeds
to old properties, loose-leaf bills that
would float through the air when tossed,
or a sparkling gemstone dowry. The sun,
coming through the attic loft window,
faded and the imaginings twisted. Scattered
cutlery became the bones of a child killed
when playing his father’s shotgun – she
had seen something like that on television
once. Mostly she picked up bundles of bills,
flatware, and more photographs than she
could know what to do with.
They were the extra photographs on
the roll: miss-aimed shots of half a persons
face: washed out shadows of cheeks and
armpits: doubles of pictures hanging in the
living room. Then there was the orange
cylinder. Autumn pried it open: more
film, tightly wound around a spigot. She
pocketed it, and hoisted the trunk down
the stairs, where her mother waited with
the rest of Nanny Rosalie’s belongings, tied
and set for Goodwill.
§
“How come you get to sit in the
armchair Laur?” Autumn’s butt enveloped
Lauri’s spindly legs. She hoisted herself,
on meaty arms, into the crevice between
the chair and Lauri’s body. “How are you
coming with the projector, Mia?”
Lauri craned her neck at Mia, who
leaned on a table, legs spread and butt high
as she inspected the inner mechanism of the
projector. Mia’s chipped fingernail clicked
against the tabletop like a metronome as
Roll 34
LexyVecchio

55
she tried to turn the projector on.
“Bulb’s dead?” Lauri said, her thigh
going numb from Autumn’s weight.
“No, the bulb itself looks fine – I just
can’t get the damn thing to turn on.”
“Did you try hitting it?” Autumn asked.
Mia glared down at Autumn. She hit
the projector once, without force.Autumn
exclaimed, “Let there be light!” The bulb
suddenly burst to life, and shot Mia straight
in the eyes.She put her finger on the trigger
to start the film, double checking the door
to the AV room.
“Wait!” Lauri squealed. “We should
turn out the lights!” Both Autumn and
Mia asked why. “You can see better and
besides,” Lauri curled her arms around her
legs, shoving Mia onto the floor as Autumn
flipped the switch.
“It’s a more intimate experience.”
The first beams of light showed nothing
but a cellophane wall, crackling in white
blips. Someone was snapping it taught and
loose over and over. Mia said they should
have checked to see if the frames were
blank first. Lauri frowned.
In one corner of the screen something
appeared for, at most, 4 seconds. A single
action.The woman, devoid of color, wound
her body around the frame. Her knees
paired down towards the corner and she
was twisted so that her face dominated the
screen.Shining with exposure,the woman’s
perfect, naked body glowed; each breast
hinted at a pointed nexus, and where her
legs met grew tendrils of fine vines. The
motion was brief and dreamlike. It was
not the pulsating figure of the man behind
her, or the arm on her shoulder as he
held her in place. It was the rigidness with
which she tightened her sweating body, the
nonchalance as she pushed the man’s hand
off. It was the smile biting her lip. It was the
moment her hand blocked out her shining,
white body until only her face could be
seen, contorted and trembling.
The projector clicked as the roll
finished, but none of the girls got up.They
stared at the blank frame, each tinged with
pink.Autumn counted the tiles on the floor
as she thought it, Mia turned towards the
grinding projector as she thought it, Lauri
transfixed to the screen as she thought it.
Woman was beautiful.
§
The operating house was on Third
Street,past the liquor store that documents
said was newly opened, although the
owner, formerly The Barber, welcomed
the drunkards, sloshing and lilting, for ten
years. Rosé draped herself in her plainest
work dress.The dull granite color blended

56
with the surrounding city. Rosé walked
brusquely, letting the backs of her oxford
pumps rub through her hose; she knew
that by the time she reached the studio
they would be ruined, but thought, really
what do I need them for anyway?
Jimmy,at the front desk,read the paper,
his feet up on a stool. Rosé saw him look
her up, look her down. He chewed. Rosé
could not tell if it was tobacco or his own
cud. Her robe hung on a hook by the door.
She grabbed it and began taking the pins
out of her hair. She was supposed to look
unrefined today.
She sat in the lobby, holding an unlit
cigarette in her teeth. Her partner was
pouring himself a glass of water by the
food table and to everyone’s annoyance
he had not bothered to close his robe.
Their annoyance amused her, the way their
serious faces scrunched up. She loosened
her own robe to feel the air from the open
door.
Richard, flustering and bobbling, ran
after Martin who spent most days drinking
something very bitter out of a hip flask.
Richard waved something above their
heads. He was shouting about the ruined
roll.
“I developed it like I always did Martin!
Whole roll is a bust. Nothin’ on it but the
puss on this broad at the end and even that
is over exposed to shit.”
“We go to print on that one tomorrow,
Rich.”
“None of it’s usable, I’m telling you.”
Rosé fanned herself with the sides of
her robe knowing neither Richard nor
Martin would pay her any mind.
“Are we going to reshoot it?” Rosé
would need to reapply the lipstick they said,
and she would have to be rubbed down
with oil and the men on lights would blow
a gasket if they had to reset that design,
which had been too strong anyway, so no.
Besides, they said, no one wants to see the
faces. Best to edit around it, and just get a
shot of him ejaculating on the camera for
the climax instead.
When the men had gone and left
Jimmy sitting in his off-kilter chair behind a
newspaper, when there was no one around
to see, Rosé reached into the wastebasket
and tucked the small film roll, still wet with
developer fluids, into her purse.

Polychrome Detail
Hannah Cascio, Pastel on Paper

Gigi
Caroline Bronston, Photography

59
skinny man hardened dirty hands gets home late again to wife disappointment on face
usual settles down untie shoelaces gritty wrinkled and grey pull string untie browned
khaki pants held by front belt loops stiffening his breath all together everyone would
think but he was fine happy that way
loosened pull down now another pair of pants proceed take sweatpants off untie grimy
rope strings braided together wrapped around waist not inside the actual seams untie
knot pants fell to dingy longjohns and loosened smelly blackened candy corn socks
wrapping lower shins hes so used to the slavery of ‘poverty’ but he has a choice now
pulled down department store boxers seven years old red no washing he brags through
the reeking hiccups theyre a thin mesh bony knees fragile looking toenails are yellow
opaque they always rip through daughters socks
Sitting on stool rent bills six ninety five since february yes yes soon the time arrives
soon soon he nods soon six ninety five next billing cycle soon next month rent soon
soon daughters boots— winter in two seasons— soon soon for my daughter anything
last thing i ever asked him hes a Matryoshka with successive layers of burning hopes
and lies all variations of the same unoriginal and those damn shoelaces keep ripping
a p a r t o n h i s a l c o h o l i c n e r v e e n d i n g s d o n t f e e l r e m o r s e f o r m e
Dad,man
Anabel Diaz-Guzman

60
and as my demons
run
rampant through
flowers’ bloom
and
rice rain
i truly lose sight of who is
exercising
and who is
exorcising
Erik Santiago
untitled.

A Story About Love, Mystery, and Action
David Budnick, Photography

Levels

63
cyril enters.
cyril: i brought
xochi: in a needle
cyril: i couldn’t find a needle i used a
xochi: it doesn’t matter is it here
cyril: yes
xochi: good
cyril: i still can’t believe it
xochi: i’m lattered cyril
cyril: haha
xochi: when can we start
cyril: not yet
xochi: comfortable
cyril: no its
xochi: thirsty
cyril: parched
xochi: what
cyril: water
xochi: not
cyril: no
xochi: drink
cyril: thank you
xochi: how does it feel
cyril: what
xochi: how does it FEEL cyril
cyril: i dont
xochi: know
cyril: no feel it doesnt feel
xochi: a disconnect
cyril: no its there but its hiding under
everything else
xochi: is it waiting
cyril: yes
xochi: for what
cyril: for the moment to break
xochi: fascinating
cyril: money
xochi: what do you need
cyril: groceries
xochi: expensive
cyril: please
xochi: feed your family
cyril: what family
xochi: cyril
cyril: i am
xochi: when will you introduce me
cyril: its not time yet
xochi: i need to meet them i cant wait any
longer
xochi: i cant wait
cyril: its not
xochi: dont make me
cyril: please
xochi: dont
xochi: groceries
cyril: listen to me
xochi: i am trying to
cyril: what will i put it in next
xochi: next
cyril: next
xochi: i dont
cyril: wine glass
xochi: oh
cyril: eyedropper
xochi: yes
cyril: pill
xochi: yes
flowers, vi/etna/m
(from Oh Pour Heather, the Blood of America)
Emerson Davis

64
cyril: the pill was the worst
xochi: it was
cyril: i just took it and you paid me there
wasn’t any work
xochi: is this work
cyril: yes
xochi: is it
cyril: it eats
xochi: yes
cyril: i have to feed it
xochi: and that takes work
cyril: i have to feed myself
xochi: there is so much work to be done
cyril: get out of my head
xochi: groceries cyril
cyril: groceries
xochi: how does it FEEL
cyril: like nothing like an emptiness i have
to ill a hole the size of the universe illing it
just makes it larger eats away at the edges
if there are edges how far can this go how
wide can i make the hole its a challenge at
this point in the game
xochi: game
cyril: what else can it be any more if this
isnt all a stupid little game ill scream i
swear
xochi: what are you gonna tell on me
cyril: oh im
xochi: just say fuck you and leave
cyril: no
xochi: 911 hello im being paid way more
than i deserve
cyril: stop
xochi: theyll never be able to fix you and
you know that
cyril: stop
xochi: the pills make you real yet somehow
against all odds you are not i dont think
you want to be real i dont think you like it
that much
cyril: i hear whispering sometimes
xochi: groceries
cyril: and other things xochi: other things
cyril: other things information i should
know the weather sometimes answers to
what im thinking my alarm goes off theres
always a nudge always a help with any luck
ill never be alone again
xochi: with any luck
cyril: thank you
xochi: does it hurt
cyril: more than anything
xochi: good
cyril: about the dishonesty
xochi: it happens
cyril: it won’t
xochi: good
cyril: comfortable
xochi: where is it
cyril: here
xochi: interesting choice
cyril: it didnt escape did it
xochi: no
cyril: the containers
xochi: everything is made from smaller
worlds resisting each other you just need
to know where to put the faults
cyril: i got my tongue pierced
xochi: oh
cyril: he likes it
xochi: thats nice

65
cyril: i was going to sew it if he didn’t
xochi: if you leave it it will close on its
own
cyril: it takes time and i dont have any of
that
xochi: how does it FEEL
cyril: it doesn’t
xochi: eaten
cyril: gone
xochi: back where it came from
cyril: inside
xochi: waiting to come out
cyril: for the moment
xochi: when will the moment
cyril: waiting to come out
xochi: for the moment
cyril: when will the moment
xochi: waiting to come out
xochi: when will the moment
cyril: waiting to come out
xochi: for the moment
cyril: when will the moment
xochi: hit
xochi: listen to them BREATHE
cyril: waiting to come
xochi: can you wait any longer
cyril: owers
xochi: feed them to me
cyril: a gift for the queen
xochi: feed me to them
cyril: the kings head in a box
xochi: yes just like that
cyril: gnashgnashgnash
xochi: is it back
cyril: seems so
xochi: comfortable
cyril: settling its very slow eaten
xochi: will it work
cyril: yes but not well
xochi: your groceries
cyril: your grace
xochi: youre welcome
cyril: good bye
xochi: good bye

Orchard Tree, I-81
Ellison Heil, Photography

67
I have seen Death
sigh out of your body,
mouth gaping as if eager to accept
a proffered spoon, branched
from the thistles in your fields. It’s more
likely, Nana, that you were asking if
anyone else wanted
a nice strong cup of tea. If
you had preferred loose leaves,
perhaps we would have seen
this coming.
I have your hands, red
knuckles rough, rubbed against
pockets and palms; your fidgets,
an aversion
to stillness; your quiet, shifting
summer air stained
red by perpetual late night
sun.Worst of all, I have your worry,
clawing at eroding gravestones
and shorn nail files, staked in
soft green ground, returned
to the earth, wounds
reciprocated.Vulture-like, your knuckles
are mine, hinging around
wrists and cups of lukewarm tea.
and then mother mashes the turnip
Kate O’Donoghue
Death has always been
touching you. Maybe it was He
who hissed those neighborly stories
you mumbled from your stone
gray chair. Maybe it was Me
wanting to be that woman down the lane,
projecting a future where I meet you
in the shop, clutching turnips in my jaw
and whispering take my hands
i have so many maura and you
you have so few.

BeeVault

SpecialThanks:
The Art Department
The English Department
Dave Huber & Gillespie Printing, Inc.

MusesLiteraryMagazine_2015

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