Spring 2012 Issue - Nassau Literary Review

Transcription

the Nassau
Literary Review
The Nassau Literary Review
Spring 2012
Spring
2012
the Nassau
Literary Review
Spring 2012
The Nassau Literary Review is published semi-annually by
students of Princeton University. Reproduction of any
material in this magazine, except for purposes of review or with
the written permission of the editors, is strictly prohibited.
Copyright © 2012, The Nassau Literary Review, ISSN 0883-2374
Editors-in-Chief
Jessica Yao ’12
Stephanie Tam ’13
Managing Editor
Natasha Japanwala ’14
Prose Editor
Elizabeth Martin ’14
Poetry Editor
Maia ten Brink ’13
Assistant Prose Editors
Jonathan Lin ’13
Ben Goldman ’15
Michael Granovetter ’15
Art Editor
Cristina Flores ’12
Assistant Poetry Editors
Mirabella Mitchell ’13
Katie Horvath ’15
Submissions Manager
Natalie Degraffinried ’13
Assistant Art Editor
Erin McDonough ’14
Head Copyeditor
John Michael Colón ’15
Assistant Copyeditors
Emma Boettcher ’14
Margaret Hua ’15
Design Editor
Diana Goodman ’13
Assistant Design Editors
Erin McDonough ’14
Samuel Watters ’15
Business Manager
Dipika Sen ’13
Publicity & Events Coordinator
Elizabeth Shoenfelt ’13
Treasurer
Greer Hanshaw ’13
Webmaster
Glenn Fisher ’15
Poetry Selection Staff
Sean Paul Ashley ’13, Phway Aye ’15, Tyler Alexis Davis ’15, Ana Istrate
’13, Cameron Langford ’15, Isabelle Laurenzi ’15, Ellis Liang ’15, Helen
Yao ’15
Prose Selection Staff
Lolita De Palma ’14, Margaret Fox ’13, Jared Garland ’15, Amy Gopinathan ’14, Tyler House ’15, Elizabeth Lloyd ’13, Diane Manry ’14, Natalie
Scholl ’13, Albertine Wang ’14, Jiayan Yu ’15
To Our Readers
This year, the Nassau Literary Review celebrates the 170th anniversary
of its founding in 1842. Accordingly, in the present issue, we honor our
past while continuing to publish some of the best work being produced
by Princeton students today. More than a century and a half of history
has produced a rich archive of material, along with an illustrious list of
alumni contributors; and so our centerpiece presents the early work—now
nearly a century removed from its original publication—of three students
who would go on to enjoy distinguished literary careers beyond the
FitzRandolph Gate, outside the pages of what was then called the Nassau
Literary Magazine.
For the Spring 2012 issue, we revisit one of the most fruitful periods of Princeton’s literary history from which Edmund Wilson ’16, F.
Scott Fitzgerald ’17, and John Peale Bishop ’17 wrote—Princeton’s literary
“Golden Age” of 1912-1917. Positioned among some of the finest writing
and artwork from all four years currently at Princeton, we have sought to
create a discourse that spans across the century and straight through the
human heart. Whether observing a stranger’s grief, or walking the campus
at night, we present you with the struggle for human connection and the
ineffability of loneliness that thread our lives and stories.
To put together the issue’s centerpiece we dug into our archives, the
products of a publication process that is still alive and refined today. We
spent the last semester training new staff members and revolutionizing
our selection process. The prose and poetry selection teams worked to give
genuine feedback to each author who submitted to the magazine. This,
coupled with casual open-mic nights and other staff-bonding events, is our
effort to create the kind of discourse that good writing emerges from and
creates. It is our hope that this discourse will inspire another “Golden Age”
for the magazine, characterized not only by great writing and art, but also
the friendships that the creative process makes possible.
Yours,
Jessica Yao, Stephanie Tam & Natasha Japanwala
Spring 2012 3
Contents
Prose
To Our Readers
Ben Goldman
Tea 12
Centerpiece
Stephanie Tam
The Girl at the Well 21
Jared Garland
Summer 37
Edmund Wilson
The Sleeping College 42
Princeton—April, 1917 46
John Peale Bishop Campbell Hall 43
Four Years Were Mine at Princeton 45
F. Scott Fitzgerald The Last Day 44
Poetry
Derek Gideon
Meteor 6
Paleography 65
David Springs Cavities 8
The Tree’s Dream 63
Susannah Sharpless To Klimt’s Mada Primavesi 11
Ontogeny 39
Pallavi Mishra Nankwaa ee 18
Elizabeth Shoenfelt
Greensboro 19
Ruth Chang
Steeping 32
Ta-yoon Jeon
To Renew a Forgetfulness 33
Amy Gopinathan
For Marisol 51
Thomas Z. Horton The Problem (Beauty) of Memory 62
Ana Istrate
in the cave 66
on the beach 81
Michael Brashear My Only Complaint 77
Grace Li
Brian Lax
Traumas 56
Sarah Van Cleve
The Ponderosa Sun Club 68
Art
Olivia Rose Howard Amelia Cover
Eloise 61
Luke Cheng Self-Portrait in a Chinese Apartment 7
Girl in a Tower 20
A Young Girl with Her Eyes Closed 76
Karis Schneider La Nostalgie 10
Le Graffiti: Paris 31
Je veux y rester 80
Felicia Ng Wartime Hands 17
William Gilpin
Greta Hayes
Ben Denzer
Cedar Key 36
Hondo Canyon 67
Untitled 55
Bugs 64
Contributors & Editorial Staff
Acknowledgements
Untitled 79
4  The Nassau Literary Review
Spring 2012  5
Derek Gideon
Meteor
After she spat the first wind
After it burned cold and dry on her lips
After she whittled words on her tongue’s edge
After she named light stars After she breathed them into white hot being
one last spittle fleck’s hiss and flash
faded to ash on a stone dark sky
moon
Luke Cheng
Self-Portrait in a Chinese Apartment, DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPH
David Springs
Cavities
made specially for the body
to spite the sensing mind.
How we would welcome agony,
for its splendid sound.
How motionless it is.
There is father in a photograph.
Holding me, he is worn, gnarled.
I am his age now. Look how equally
the shot has frozen us.
A slow freeze, like aging grapes,
spoiling with time, more viciously
angry at the lives we filled,
lives that are drunk in a sitting.
We leave behind a ghost town,
emptied rounds from shotguns,
shot into a cracked oasis
that returns only a grayness.
We will be ancient as Atlantis,
mere myth to the day’s youth,
our calls losing their plangent pulse
to the contours of sloping fields.
And when our stone stubs are visited
by strangers as lost as descendants,
we will be stirred to think
how pain comes in broad daylight,
not in pangs but in deadened
and constant throbs, an infection
Spring 2012  9
La Nostalgie, DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPH
Karis Schneider
Susannah Sharpless
To Klimt’s Mada Primavesi
Resentment, like seawater at the edge
of the bed, laps at the shell of your body.
The past, which won’t ever love you back,
booms. (See also: boy who can’t sing you,
silence at noon, scar on your cheek
and moon silver-tongued.)
Yesterday happened, today will again
be breathless and filled with apologies.
These flowers are for forgetting
about. This sunset is for sleeping
through. Here, for your birthday:
one lace-covered sigh. Did you think
being pretty was enough to get by on?
You know how you are,
how little you let yourself matter,
hiding the bloom behind your back.
Compose lullabies about that silent summer,
meet the eyes across the dinner table. Tell them
you’re happy and destined to end up just fine.
Spring 2012  11
Ben Goldman
Tea
—I really can’t talk to you now, she says.
I’m not really trying to listen to this woman’s conversation, but a few minutes
later I hear her again.
—I’m really busy.
Her voice is tight, like she’s concentrating on writing something important and
someone has interrupted her thoughts.
—I can’t do this. I really can’t.
I’m trying to read my newspaper and she is trying to drink her tea, but I can
hear her pleading on the phone, like this phone is harassing her, or she can’t just
turn it off.
—For God’s sake, I really have to go. I’m swamped with work. Enough of this.
But I see that it is only this woman and her tea, and that there is no work. Her
table is empty. She hasn’t even brought a purse with her, only her phone. Maybe
next time she comes to the café she’ll leave her phone behind too.
I am not trying to listen to this conversation, so I turn to the newspaper. It
is trying to tell me that there is a war going on somewhere in the world, and that
many people are being killed, and many more people are starving. These are innocent people and I feel, for a moment, like a terrible person.
As I read the newspaper, I am trying not to think about Angela. I am trying
to think about the war. But, instead, I end up thinking about Angela. What can
be said about Angela? I don’t so much think of Angela as I think of our children,
whom I love very much.
—Why won’t you ever leave me alone? For two seconds. Just two nothing
seconds.
The woman is sipping at her tea. Perhaps it is still too hot for her, because
she barely puts her lips to the mug. She is sipping the tea very calmly, and yet she
is shouting, almost, into the phone, one of those loud whispers people use when
they don’t want to be embarrassed. I think it is a man she is talking to. She looks
around my age, so I think she is married to a man around my age, too—maybe to
a man who is more like Angela than me. I wonder, am I the same type of man as
her husband? If I were her husband, would she yell at me too? I try to imagine their
home: do they let their anger and frustration and dejection fester until the children
are asleep or away, or do they make no secret of it? When they fight, does she keep
quiet while he screams and throws things onto the floor, or does she combat him
to the death?
I am trying to think about the war again, but I end up thinking about my
home, the way it is. In the living room, the pillows and the blinds and even the
paintings on the walls match each other. In the study, there are books lined up on
the shelves and most of them are the same height. In the kitchen, which is all clean
stainless steel and tile, there are photographs on the wall from our wedding and
from the first few years of our children’s lives.
I am trying to think about my home but I can’t help thinking about Angela,
about how she keeps out of my way. She no longer asks me to take out the garbage
or mow the lawn. She takes out the garbage herself when I don’t and, although I
have always mowed the lawn whenever she asked, has hired a gardener now without consulting me, as if it is too onerous to bother with me. She says the gardener
does a better job than I do, and that he also trims the trees and the bushes. I have
offered to trim the trees and the bushes, but I am told most people who are not
gardeners are not aware of the best techniques when it comes to that. I think I can
learn, but I haven’t offered, and at this point I don’t think I will.
For a moment the woman goes up to the counter to grab a packet of sugar, so
maybe that is the problem with her tea. When she returns she is still talking on the
phone, although I notice now, between my thinking about the war and thinking
about Angela, that she has not been saying much, except to say that she doesn’t
want to talk, that it’s not the right time, that they can discuss this later.
The newspaper is trying to explain to me the causes of the war, but they are
too complex for my understanding. I do understand that there have been a lot of
aborted talks, negotiations, and flimsy peace treaties. I don’t know when or how,
but I am certain in time the violence will fizz out, and these countries will have
nothing left for their people but burnt land and some hard tree stumps, and their
people will be left poor and bitter.
Lately, before Angela comes home from work, she stops off at the bookstore
and sits in an armchair and reads for an hour or two. She claims this lets her relax
from her day at work, lets her calm down before she must enter the house. Once
she stayed for four hours, and the kids, who are old enough to understand things I
did not know they could, took it upon themselves to cook a meal for us, although
it is rare we eat together anymore.
It was not fair, I told Angela afterwards, it was not fair that you didn’t come
home and the kids felt they had to cook dinner, that they felt they had to make
that pitiful contribution. She did not say anything. She did not say anything, but
Spring 2012  13
she told me that I should try going to a bookstore or a café—that I, too, should try
to relax before I come home.
So I have come to this café to see what it will do for me, but I cannot even
make myself read this newspaper.
—Stop this, please.
For the first time the woman looks close to tears. She is putting her hands in
front of her face and her hair is flipped over as if it’s a shield, and her mug is sitting lonely and listless on the table.
—For me. Please.
In a minute I see that she has hung up the phone. Or the phone has been
hung up on her. She is holding her mug, but is not sipping from it. She is looking
inside the mug as if the tea holds some secret, as if she can read her future inside
its waters.
She looks very despondent, with her hair a little out of sorts and her eyes
downtrodden, like they’ve failed against gravity, her jowls hanging too low for her
age.
But she is not unpretty, this woman, and suddenly I feel the need or the want
or the longing—whatever it is that I feel—to kiss her. I am no longer thinking of the
war. I am no longer thinking of Angela. I am thinking of this woman’s lips and
what we could mean for each other. Maybe sadness plus sadness equals happiness.
Maybe if you put two empty jars together you find fullness. Let me just kiss her, I
am thinking, and this café will do something for me.
She is not looking at me. She is facing the window while I am facing the wall
behind her right shoulder. The sun is beginning to set now and because the café
faces west, the light is yellow and bright inside. The woman is struggling a bit
against its rays, putting her hand above her eyes, but she does not think to move
to another seat. The woman is sitting there with her lips washed in the light and I
don’t know how to go about this, but I feel that there is no choice in the matter. I
have no choice. We have no choice because we can save one another, and do you
really have a choice if the only other choice is to disappear?
The woman’s phone rings again and I wish she wouldn’t, but she answers it.
She does not say anything. I suppose she is waiting for her husband to speak first.
Or for her husband to stop speaking. She shouldn’t have answered. I could have
spoken to her. I could have told her I think she is pretty, if she cares for that stuff,
and that she doesn’t have to answer the phone. She doesn’t even have to go home.
She and I could just spend our hours or days or lives in this café, if that’s what we
wanted to do.
—Stop. No. Stop. No.
I want to kiss this woman very badly. I see her mouth open when she speaks
and I want to be a part of that mouth. And then I hear this woman say something
new.
—Why? Why? Why?
I am jolted by this. For it is not a word of departure or of trying to depart. It is
a word of attempted understanding. Of the attempt to join another in the mind. If
she came to me and said ‘why,’ I think I would just grab her and kiss her, but she is
saying this word to someone else.
I think of the war. There is nothing you can do if you are in a war but hope
you do not die. Or fight and risk dying. Or fight to die. Or fight to live, heedless
that you might die.
I think of Angela and that we had once loved one another. And I know that if
we fight, it is only to die.
—Why? Why?
Then this woman hangs up and she is sipping her tea again and I don’t know
what to expect. I think maybe this is my last chance. If I don’t stand now and
kiss her . . . but I can already feel her lips kissing mine, her teeth biting my lips,
drawing blood. And I will draw blood from her, too, because sometimes you need
violence to fix yourself inside, and drawing blood from one another’s lips does not
have to be a destructive or helpless or foolish violence, but it can be a rejuvenating
violence if you remind yourself in this way that you are indeed alive.
I wait a minute. And then a minute more. I am tense. I am shivering. The café
is orange from the sun. The woman is sipping her tea, putting her mouth to the
mug, and when she puts the mug down I see a smudge of lipstick joined to the
ceramic.
I am about to leap up from my chair, to reach for her. The newspaper will
probably leap up with me and float to the floor. I am trying not to think about
Angela, but I am thinking about her, and I am thinking of lips and war and blood
drawn from lips and blood drawn in war.
Then a man rushes into the café—he bangs the door open and looks madly
around—and I know, somehow, it is all over.
—Lina!
And now I know this is the name of the woman who is sitting sipping her
tea, and the man that has uttered her name is the man Lina was speaking to on
the phone. I know this by the fear and joy and hatred and love that takes hold of
Lina’s face, and she looks so pretty like that, in that state of internal chaos, and I
think if you just let me kiss your vermilion lips I will go on my way and you can
forget I had ever done that to you.
She is intoning:
—You always do this, you always do this, you always do this.
And the man who has come into the café grabs Lina’s arm and pulls her up
from her seat and she is quiet. But the mug rattles because she has hit the table
and a splattering of tea leaps out of the cup and splatters all over the wood.
The man who has just come in speaks:
Spring 2012  15
Felicia Ng
Wartime Hands, PASTEL
—And why are you always here, why do you do this, why do you do this, why?
They are saying this, unashamed, and then they kiss, and I feel that it is wrong
to be so plainly kissing in a café when I am sitting only one table away. They kiss
for a long time and then, when they are done, I see tears gleaming on Lina’s face
before they turn out the café door and depart together into the red sunset. I can
see them through the glass hugging each other as they walk, and their entwined
shadows pass briefly over my face. Then they turn the corner and I cannot see
them anymore.
Now I am sitting alone with my newspaper and I imagine Lina is telling that
man she forgives him, and that that man is telling Lina that he forgives her, too.
It is so wrong, to kiss in public like that in a lousy café in the middle of the only
afternoon in which I had sought to get away.
I am sitting alone with my newspaper that tells me a war has been going on
and I see that this man and woman haven’t even cleaned up the spill they have
together made. It trails to the corner of the table and begins to drip.
Pallavi Mishra
Nankwaa ee
Lover, I knew you in a distant land. We lived
on hot breezes and rainwater, breathed the dust,
found it sweet, we slept together on cold cement floors.
I worked with you till nightfall, threw my strength
alongside yours into the earth
for the right to watch the sunlight move
on your skin, into your body. You
made me your home.
Do you say you don’t
remember, have you travelled without me too far?
A storm gathers in the song of our faraway home:
the sky is growing dark;
he will surely come.
Song of a land where dark clouds
bring good fortune! Let me sit outside
and sing it once to a northern sky:
the rainclouds darken as I wait:
he will surely come.
My lover, I hear. There are loves
that cannot survive the cold. In this place,
the days grow short; a storm gathers
in the palm-wine song; a dry wind
brings only sorrow. This time, I hear.
Elizabeth Shoenfelt
Greensboro
My father wears a blue-collared shirt,
short-sleeved, without a nametag:
he carefully cut out the stitches
around the white oval where
“Stuart” was written in blue-thread cursive;
I imagine he only responds to “Daddy.”
We eat thickly breaded chicken strips
at a blue fiberboard booth
at our same favorite lunch place each day.
He sometimes comes home needing stitches
but brings me round, colored drum-labeling stickers
that smell like chemicals
on the days that he doesn’t.
Spring 2012  19
Girl in a Tower, DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPH
Luke Cheng
Stephanie Tam
The Girl at the Well
The girl had been watching Maysun for a week since her arrival in the village.
She looked to be about thirteen or fourteen, her chest barely formed. Her eyes
were a vague gray, the pupils large and shadowy, and her hair was sleek and black,
twisted in a long, dripping braid down her back. Maysun’s own hair had been
cropped short since the Cultural Revolution. She had always been one to value
practicality over fashion, though, as it turned out, the bob looked quite fetching
against her smooth, creamy complexion. She was twenty, and confident in her
independence. When Maysun walked to the well in the heat of the noon sun, she
would feel a cool prickle along her spine and know the girl was watching. There, at
the edge of the house. A movement in the periphery of her vision. It went like this
for several days, before the girl grew bolder. Then, when Maysun went to the well,
the girl would slip into her room, and she would find her pacing back and forth
by the bed. But when she saw Maysun had returned, her cheeks would darken and
she would flee past her, leaving little wet footprints down the stairs. Still, the girl
never spoke to her, never even approached her.
Finally, Maysun spoke to her. There, by the well. “You walk around here often,
don’t you? Why don’t you come talk to me?” She waited patiently for the girl to
respond, but the girl just ducked her head. Maysun added, kindly, “I would like to
talk with you.” When the girl disappeared around the corner of the house, Maysun
didn’t bother to follow her. She knew she had heard her.
That night, she woke up to the cool touch of a hand lacing around hers. When
she sat up, the girl was at the foot of her bed. She stood by the window, the moonlight pouring through her. And she kept talking, her voice coming to Maysun not
so much from across the room as from the recesses of her memory. “Yes, I walk
around because I do not know where else to go. I cannot find the way. And this
is my home. If you do not want me to walk around, you must find someone good,
someone who can carry me to the temple that will be my new home, outside of
this village.” She added, her eyes dilated and sincere in the moonlight, “I did not
talk to you because I did not want to scare you.”
Spring 2012  21
Maysun shivered in spite of herself, and she pulled on her covers, though it
was a warm night. “Would you like to move to the temple?”
The girl fidgeted. “I have never been there. This was my home; my father was
the landlord. But they’re all gone, there’s nothing left for me here.”
The next day, Maysun asked around the village. “Have you seen a young girl
around the house I’ve just moved into? Mostly, she just keeps to herself. She’s very
shy. And she’s very wet. I think she was in an accident, she must have drowned.”
Recognition flickered in their eyes. Oh, you’ve seen her too? No, no. Not
drowned, well, not really. She drowned herself in the well. No accident. She tried
twice—the first time, she hanged herself in her room, but the rafters broke and
she came tumbling down. Her family had all died. Well, so we’d heard, anyway.
Murdered by the Japanese? Well, couldn’t say. It might have been starvation. It
could have been anything. How should we know how? Well, yes, we know about
the girl, but that’s because she’s still around, isn’t she?
She asked about the temple, too. “She seemed to be talking about a specific
one. Do you know which one she means? And where it might be?”
Oh yes, yes. That one. It’s a ways outside of Canton, in Xiguan. That’s where
the wealthy people lived, so of course she must want to be buried there. That’s
where she belongs, eh? The girl’s father must have been a big landlord indeed.
Guess their fate would have been the same, even if they were still alive today, ha ha!
“Very well.” Maysun was irritable. She did not think she would like to stay
in this village for very long. The girl must have known they wouldn’t care, that
Maysun was her only chance of getting out of there, if they had known all that and
done nothing. “Well, do you know anyone I might speak to who would be good for
moving her?”
They looked down, muttered, laughed. Who has time to take care of the dead
around here? The living hardly even get taken care of nowadays. A landlord’s
daughter must have been taken care of her whole life. Seems somewhat fair that
she gets neglected a bit in the afterlife, eh?
Maysun added, “I am willing to pay someone to help me help her.”
They smiled, smirked. Well, there you go. Good girl, respecting the deceased,
taking care of the living. Now that you mention it, there’s probably an auntie
or two who’s skilled in that kind of witchcraft. You should try the old grandma
who lives at the other end of the village, by the forking roads. Ha ha, don’t let the
Communists get wind of the kind of superstitious mumbo-jumbo that you’re getting involved in, though!
It gave her pause for thought. But the girl’s youth and reed-like girlishness
pulled at her heartstrings, at some memory that felt at once familiar and foreign.
She walked all the way home, anger welling in her heart. The girl was waiting
for her by the well, sitting on it with her legs swinging. Her long braid glistened as
though the sun shone directly above her, though in fact the setting sun was shining
through her side, infusing her fingertips with a rosy glow as they braced her slight,
adolescent figure against the edge of the well.
“Well?” she said. She smiled, faintly. She seemed to have been emboldened by
their last conversation, and her vague eyes were sleepy with pleasure.
Maysun looked at her hard. “I’m working on it. We’ll get you home.”
The girl laughed, a sound that reverberated in Maysun’s mind like a distant
memory: a kitchen space, with light pooling by the floor on a red mat. “I don’t
need to go home. I just want to get out of this place.”
“You and me both,” said Maysun.
Early the next morning, Maysun went to find the old grandma. She walked
to the edge of the village, which was after all not terribly far. Yet as she passed by
street after street, she had the strange impression that she was not getting anywhere—that she was treading space. She stopped. On either side of her, the buildings were about two to three stories high, whitewashed and peeling to reveal their
gray-bricked walls. Though they were by no means identical or even regular—some
houses whiter, some grayer, some of the roofs flat, others slanted . . . certain ones
even distinguished by scrawny fire escapes with overhanging plants—they carried
a continuous and flaking spirit. When she looked back at the long row of them,
they reminded her of the cliffs she had once seen on a family vacation in northern Guangdong. Its gray, block-like face streaked with white from the salt and the
weather and the swallows that bred there annually.
The sky had been similarly washed out for the past several days, a light fog
that drifted blandly into the silhouette of the buildings and pavement, which was
composed of similar shades of gray stone. On an impulse, she glanced down at her
hands and arms with their usual, creamy pink to reassure herself that there was still
color in the world. When she turned onto the next street, she saw the end of the
houses. The road continued unaccompanied by its graying guards from then on,
until it tapered off at a two-story, whitewashed house not particularly distinguished
from the other village structures. Perhaps a little more peeling, a little more weathering. The decay a more genteel, picturesque shade of gray.
“But I don’t see the fork in the road,” she mused aloud. When she came closer,
she saw that the first floor was a little restaurant with a placard on its wooden front
door, prominently featuring a steaming bowl of noodles.
“We don’t actually use forks here, though,” explained a voice from the shadows.
The voice crackled with age like a merry fire, and Maysun saw that it belonged to
a middle-aged woman perched on a stool in the fire escape above. She had furrows
bunching her forehead up above two beady eyes. Her wide, pasty lips did little to
conceal the rotting teeth, several of them punched out with only their yellow stubs
remaining in her mouth.
Spring 2012  23
“Greetings, Auntie,” said Maysun, polite.
“Grandma, please,” said the woman. “I’m older than I look.”
“Are you the one who can help me settle the spirits of the deceased? I’m looking for a woman who lives at the edge of the village, by the forking roads. But I
don’t see any fork in the road here; I would call this ‘by the roadside.’”
The grandma chuckled. “That’s because you can’t see the other road.”
Maysun blinked.
“The road to the underworld.” The grandma brightened. “But never you mind.
What’s wrong with your friend? Is she bothering you?”
“No, no. Not at all,” said Maysun, quite honestly. “But she shouldn’t be staying
here; she should be with the rest of her family. Other people have been moved into
her house, and it’s time for her to move on. So I need to get her to the temple in
Xiguan.”
“Xiguan! Your girl is rich, is she?” The grandma smiled, but her question
seemed more rhetorical than probing. “Well, that’s neither here nor there. The
real question is, are you rich?”
Maysun flushed. “I wouldn’t say that.”
“You wouldn’t. But I might,” said the grandma. “Your father was a landlord
himself, with his five concubines, wasn’t he? Now if that isn’t what I would call
rich, I don’t know what is.”
Maysun’s lips tightened. “I have no father,” she said. “But the man you’re talking about sounds like a bastard.”
The grandma looked grave. “Of course. Well, don’t you worry. I wasn’t accusing you of anything. The Communists already did that, didn’t they? But you don’t
disown blood that easily, even if your words and wishes were right in line with the
commies. Anyway, that’s all in the past. I only mentioned it to tease you. And to
gain your trust. Now you know I know things. Doesn’t that make you glad? You’ve
found the right person to help you.”
Maysun squinted up at the grandma. She couldn’t be sure she wasn’t still
being mocked—or teased, as the woman put it. “Can’t you come down here, so
we’re at the same level? I hate craning my neck like this.”
“We’re not at the same level. How much will you pay me? I’ll let you stay rich,
help you for 50 RMB.”
“That’s fine, Grandma.”
“Okay, I’ll be down in a minute.”
The grandma retreated into the house, and in precisely a minute, the sign with
the bowl of noodles rattled and the wooden-slatted door creaked open. Up close,
the grandma’s hair appeared uncharacteristically wiry for Asian hair, its thickness
bunching up around her shoulders before being wound up in a knot at her back.
Unsurprisingly, it blended right into her gray garments and the rest of the village.
Her eyes, however, were bright and black and glittering with life under their heavy
lids.
“Well?” said the grandma. “Let’s go meet your girl.”
The girl was sitting on the steps, looking forlorn and wet. But she brightened
when she saw Maysun approaching with the grandma. “You’re back! And you really
brought someone!” she exclaimed, and the image of Maysun’s mother flashed
before her eyes, her beautiful, snowy head jerking up at the sound of a bike in the
driveway. Her mother’s eyes were childlike with trust. “You’re home!” echoed her
mother happily.
Maysun shook her head to clear it of the memory. “Don’t make so much noise
about it!” she snapped, suddenly irritable. “Leave it alone, I didn’t do anything yet.”
The girl looked taken aback, hurt. She seemed one moment away from disappearing off to the well, when the grandma coughed. “I don’t believe we’ve officially
met. I wasn’t around, when you were.”
The girl turned to the grandma. “No, you weren’t. But you weren’t around
when I wasn’t, either.” She frowned. “Where were you?”
“In hiding,” the grandma conceded, unashamed. “I’m not a fan of the commies, either. Well, actually, I’m quite peaceable. They’re really the ones who aren’t
a fan of me.”
“Yes, I can see why they wouldn’t be. But you’re all right now?”
“Sure,” said the grandma. “Mostly, I keep to myself. I run a little noodle business, too.”
“That sounds nice,” said the girl. “I like noodles. I also like keeping to myself.”
Maysun restrained herself from making an unkind comment.
“Can you really help me?” the girl asked.
“Can anyone really help you?” the grandma chuckled.
The girl’s face fell, her smile vanishing, and then her mouth altogether. The
skin below her nose simply seamless.
“I’m just teasing,” the grandma said. “Sure.”
In the following nights, the girl was exuberant. She sat on the edge of
Maysun’s bed, telling her about her family, her mother, her father, her brother, her
sisters, her other brother, her cat, her fish. How the cat ate the fish. She couldn’t
stop talking. Maysun thought she might get an aneurysm.
“Please,” she said. “Don’t you need to rest? Or pack?”
“No!” she crowed. “I don’t have a single possession to my name. Not even this
house. The commies took everything. Well—if you can call what they did legitimate
ownership. All I have are memories. And I’m giving all of them to you, because
that’s what friends do. They share things. But I don’t need to even share anything;
I just want to give it all away. To be empty. That’s what I wanted from the first. To
be as empty as this house, after they were gone. But I couldn’t—there was too much
Spring 2012  25
inside me. That’s why the rafters broke; they weren’t strong enough to support all
that. Neither was I. So instead, I threw myself into the well. I—”
“Please!” Maysun cried. “Stop. Just stop. I need a break.”
But the girl was relentless. . . . Even then, I didn’t see them. I don’t know
where they went. I don’t know why I’m still here, and they’re not. It’s like they
went on vacation and left me behind. Why would they do that? Why didn’t they
take me with them? Was it because I forgot that time to close the gate, and the
chickens were eaten by that fox? Did my father find out that I stole the fish in his
pond? I know, I know. They didn’t want to go. The Communists made them. They
forced us to the ground and put signs around our necks. Mine too. ‘Exploiter of
the Peoples.’ ‘Traitor to China.’ And my father confessed to all sorts of horrible
crimes.
“I don’t think he did them, but I don’t know, I don’t know. Gao said he did,
that he did a lot of things I never knew about. And Gao lived with us since he
was a boy, so maybe it’s true. But I couldn’t believe that Gao never told me, never
told me what my father did to him. We were such good friends, even if I did most
of the talking. No, I don’t believe my father did that, or any of those other things.
Gao. It means beautiful, you know? And he was beautiful; he had the sweetest,
flower-petal lips and ruddy cheeks even though he was darker-skinned, and a
wonderful shape to his jaw. But it was his eyes, their intelligent expression, that
were the most beautiful of all. That’s why my mother renamed him Gao. It was a
lie, my parents were good to him—my father, too. They took him in, after he was
orphaned in the Japanese war.”
The girl smiled, gazing into the eyes of the past.
“I used to catch fish for him in the pond by our summerhouse in Xiguan.
When he was still working for my family as a laborer. He was just two years older
than me when he first came into our household. He was nine, I was seven. I liked
him, he was always kind to me, though so quiet. But my father would never let
him eat with us, or eat any of the fish in his pond. When I learned how to swim, I
would catch them for him, once a week. I was a good swimmer, and I liked the way
he looked at me, his face so happy and grateful, when I presented them to him. I
was ten, then. My father would have been furious if he found out, but he never
did. I was always very discreet. And he did things for me, too. He always picked
the best fruit for me, these ripe little plums. And when he went into the market to
get groceries, he would use the pocket money my parents sometimes gave him to
buy me little cakes. Moon cakes were my favorite, their dough soft and flaky. Can
you believe that? As though I were the orphan in need—an orphan who feasted on
moon cakes! I told him then that he should save up his money so that he could
be free, go wherever he liked, but he just looked at me, and laughed, but not in
a happy way, because he said he would never be free. Anyway, he told me that he
didn’t want to leave, that he loved too much, my family. That is, he loved it here.
And he would always be dependent on us, one way or another, so there was no
point.”
She sighed, and Maysun wondered if spirit hearts could still flutter and beat.
Whether they pulsed with anything other than memories, whether they too could
falter and stop.
“But he was the first to get drafted from our family, when the GMD came
sweeping through on their retreat to Taiwan. My brothers were exempt because
we had enough money to give them. But they kept demanding more, so my father
made Gao go in his stead. And he was so willing, always willing. I didn’t think I’d
ever see him again.”
“But you did?” Maysun pressed her, in spite of herself.
“Yes, and I almost wish I hadn’t, though I loved him.” The girl’s eyes welled
with tears, and her voice trembled. Unbidden, Maysun saw her mother lay rocking on the floor, her hair gnarled on the straw mat. “He came back with the rest
of them two years later, the Communists, when they began the land reform. I
couldn’t believe how he had changed. He was so much taller—I guess he must have
been sixteen, by then, and he looked . . .” The girl struggled with words, the tangle
of emotions visible as a halo around her. “He looked like a real man, like my eldest
brother. Only, he had never really been family, had he? But he had lost all of the
softness in his face, and developed angles to his nose and jaws and cheeks. Except
his lips; they still looked as soft as flower petals.” Her cheeks darkened—not quite
with color, but emotion. Then she straightened. “But he wasn’t our Gao any more.
He was someone else. Comrade Gao, they called him. And he tortured my family.
It was under his orders, when they beat and bloodied and humiliated my family,
until my father was unconscious. I didn’t know his part at first, because he was
away at cadre meetings for the first few days. They opened the gates to our house
and let the villagers pillage it. Those who had least came first, but everyone got
a turn. And they took and took until there was nothing left. They were so angry.
Why were they so angry? What had we done to them? I had never even talked to
most of them in my life, but they spat and cursed me. And then they dragged my
father out of the courtyard to I don’t know where, along with my mother and
sisters and brothers, and they would have taken me too, only that’s when Gao
showed up.
“‘Not her,’ he yelled, but only I heard him. He had never had a very loud voice,
and even after the war, it seemed some things hadn’t changed. I thought I was
dreaming. I was being dragged by my arms and hair, and there were people and
hands touching me, tugging me, everywhere. But then Gao was pulling them off of
me. They resisted at first, until he screamed, ‘I’m Comrade Gao! I’m your friend.’
Then they realized who he was. That really scared them. They started blubbering
apologies, but he just told them to go pick on the other brats.
“I couldn’t believe it was him, I kept touching his face to make sure he was
Spring 2012  27
real. And he seemed to feel the same way, because he sat there cradling me tightly
and stroking my hair, and saying, ‘It’s okay, it’s okay.’ I was so happy to see him,
because I didn’t know what he had done; I thought he must be here to help us,
and even though I was so happy, so relieved he was safe, I couldn’t stop crying.
‘Gao, Gao. You’ve got to stop them. You don’t know what they’ve done. They’ve
taken everything, Father, too.’ And his face hardened, but I thought it must have
been because of what they’d done to Father—that he was angry about their treatment of us, too. It comforted me, knowing how he cared about my family, and I
relaxed into his chest—that was newly angular, too, I had never noticed his collarbones before. I said, ‘I’m glad you’re back. Everything will be okay now.’ And when
I looked up, the anger was gone from his face; he was looking at me strangely,
almost pityingly.”
The girl was looking straight through Maysun, at someone beyond her, as
though Maysun were the ghost. The girl had forgotten all about her, and she had
the uncomfortable feeling that she was spying on someone’s private life. She wasn’t
sure she wanted to hear any more, a tight knot of grief welling in the back of her
own throat.
“My father died the next day. I don’t know if they killed him, or if he just bled
to death. I guess they killed him either way. I don’t know what happened to the
rest of my family. Gao told me they had been sent off to be reformed, and that they
were going to become good citizens. He talked to me a lot about what good citizenship meant. About brotherhood. It made me feel sick, to hear him talking about
brother this and brother that, when I had lost my own brothers. He really believed
that Mao was going to change the world. I told him I didn’t like the way he was
changing the world, if it involved orphaning children and separating families and
leaving the survivors with nothing.
“He was silent for a little while, and I thought he would leave it, but then he
said, ‘Ming, can’t you see, I was an orphan in the old system. Everything I had
was taken from me, and I didn’t have much to begin with. Sure, your family fed
and clothed me. But when the next round came, I was disposable again. I lost my
family twice, first by the Japanese, then by the GMD. But at least my birth parents
didn’t give me up without a struggle. I would never have become anything more
than a foot soldier with the GMD. Just like I would never have become anything
other than your father’s servant in the old system. But things are different, with
the Communists. Under Mao, I can become a general if I fight hard enough, if I
serve well enough, even though I am nothing—worse than nothing, an orphan, a
GMD defection.’
“I said, ‘You were never nothing to me.’
“And he looked just as he did in the old days, when I presented him with a
fish. That happy, grateful brightening in his eyes. It occurred to me that I had
never been able to see them as clearly as I did then; he had never held my gaze for
more than a few seconds, his eyes always flickering away. Now, I was swimming in
them—held, caught, falling. My mouth felt disconnected from my brain—no, that’s
not quite right: I felt disconnected, suspended. All I knew was that I loved my
reflection in his eyes, the fine, miniature silhouette of my face in his pupils and
the crystal clear bloom of brown around them. And I couldn’t believe it, but he
actually took my face in his hands and kissed me. Kissed me! His lips were as soft
as they looked, and he was so gentle.”
The girl sucked in a breath, her hand flying to her trembling mouth. To the
phantom lips playing on hers. For a moment, Maysun saw him. The handsome
cadre, his angles sharp as need blunted against the girl’s young body, against her
barely formed consciousness. Two beautiful orphans. Tremulous and desperate to
disappear into the eyes of the other.
“But then I remembered my father, and my family. That I alone had been
saved, and for what? Why? And there I was—kissing my father’s murderer! This
final humiliation of my family. That he should trample us to the dust, even eat
our hearts. Because he had left me no one else. I knew in that moment that he
had lied, that my mother and siblings were all dead. He should never have kissed
me. He must have kissed many girls during his trek through China, or he would
never have been so bold. When he lived with us, he had never even looked me in
the eye without blushing. But he was so confident and sure. It made me furious
and sad and bitter. So I pulled away and slapped him. And then he got angry, and
he cursed me—he said, oh, I don’t even want to repeat what he said.” She stopped
to wipe her eyes. Her mouth was a melancholy, expressive curve. “He was gone in
the morning. He left a few men behind to regulate the redistribution of property
among the rest of the villagers. And to make sure I was safe, that the villagers
didn’t harass me.” Her voice broke. She curled into a ball, hugging her knees
tightly, her slender frame wracked with sobs.
Maysun reached out to comfort her, but to her horror, her hand slipped right
through the girl, her anguish untouchable. The girl didn’t seem to notice. She
simply wept and wept, and Maysun was surprised to see that her blankets grew
truly wet until they were soaked through and dripped on the floor, and her room
began to fill with the girl’s tears, a soft, shimmering sheen coating her floor. It was
as though the girl had swallowed the entire well when she had drowned, and it
was now that it began pouring out, and like her words, the water would not stop
coming. Fine ripples disturbed the surface of the contained sea, blown in on a
breeze from another time. Maysun tasted salt. The little wavelets lapped against the
wooden posts until Maysun’s bed was adrift in the moonlight, and the two girls
were rocked to sleep on the shine of memories.
After the grandma left with the girl, the house felt unbearably empty. Maysun
went to the well three times a day, though she had more water than she could ever
Spring 2012  29
Karis Schneider
Le Graffiti: Paris, DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPH
possibly need, or even use. But there was never anything there. She made tea in the
mornings. Drank it without tasting it. She boiled everything. Dried oysters, with
seaweed and rice. Countless soups. But everything tasted flavorless.
She paced her bedroom, and found a trail of fine, white granules along the
edges of the room and her bed. She brushed some up with her finger, and tasted
it. Salt. Her meals had flavor for the next few days, but then there was no more salt,
and she was again empty within and without.
“How come you wanted to feel empty?” she said, to no one in particular. “This
feels horrible. I hate it.” But there was no reply.
The next day, she packed her bags. Enough was enough. She had only one
farewell to make. The grandma was napping on the fire escape, a large straw hat
dipping over nose.
“I’m leaving,” she told the grandma.
“Okay,” said the grandma. “Bye.”
“She did something to me,” Maysun said.
“Who?” the grandma asked, innocently. Maysun just looked at her. “Okay,
you’re right. What did she do?”
“I don’t know,” Maysun said. She felt helpless, disembodied. “I feel sad all the
time.”
“You used to feel angry all the time,” the grandma pointed out. “That’s not
much better.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Maysun said, a shadow of annoyance bringing her back to life. She glared at the grandma, who had not shifted her
hat, who was not even looking at her, who may have been talking in her sleep, for
all she knew.
The grandma shrugged. “Neither do you,” she said. “Who does?”
Maysun looked away, beyond the grandma and the noodle placard and the
house, staring without seeing the fork in the road. “I don’t feel like I know anything anymore.”
The grandma chuckled, the straw hat dipping against her lips. “Yes, and that’s
a pretty good start.”
Ruth Chang
Steeping
In the evening, I stir my cup of tea,
loosely, loose leaves of jasmine
spin free my thoughts in the silence.
By the ear a fervent whisper,
the cool of the spoon breaks the water,
a slip of the hand, off balance, skips,
a frozen moment, then a mountain ridge of steam.
The raised ripple cascades,
drowning tea leaves at the rim.
The moment before the climax, the eye of storm,
the fingertip at the Plymouth,
the stifled heat before the boil,
the steam in the cup, the cup of the face,
the face at the lip of the mouth.
Ta-yoon Jeon
To Renew a Forgetfulness
Intake
The pallor of our new flesh mottled
with the blood
that had loped through every inner
curvature of her body,
we surfaced.
Before, our spines had leant
slightly toward the other,
concave,
the precision of the ridges countering the swollen
ache of her womb.
Her agony shielded the fragility of our hands—
mired them together within the embalmed warmth—riveted
tendon to bone,
slotted limb to slitted limb.
In that solitude where unknowingly we
shared each
sound, the peals echoing
equally undiminished
within our fluid, unformed senses,
perhaps we yet altered the other—
adorning our selves with those like cadences
not in life
but before—
before the point of tender, anxious
breaking
Spring 2012  33
when, unheralded, mightily did first your cry
and then mine delineate our separation.
Exhale
Each ochre piece I hid between
my blemished lips. The dewy
seeds I drank through the
ruptured peel, resenting
the bitterness that mellowed
only years after the first
harvest.
Autumnal
The women dress to shower.
There are no stalls, rather a communal space.
Open, not lax. Solemn, not unforgiving.
The water cascades down to splay against arched necks,
airy white blossoming starkly against their graying hair.
Even the thickness of their waists is graceful.
Unabashedly they smooth out their stolid outlines.
Glimmers of soap bubbles clasp pliant contours.
The world is bereaved of their bareness.
The lulling surety of their motions melds intimately.
The steam rises to embrace each subdued golden hue.
Clarity
Expressively, the living fade
slowly from the luminous realm.
The fluidity of their lives, stoppered,
overflows into medicine cabinets,
drenches the operating tables,
reaches beneath scars
and sutured wounds to prolong
the fading.
It nestles into the cavities
of the body, making pools of liquid arch narrowly
past parched throats.
First Offering
Each pear half is but an overturned circle,
a tan silhouette balanced to reveal
off-white flesh.
In the inner hollow rests
oval seeds. Her paring knife crafts waves
of sandy, spiraled fruit.
The divisions are precise, hewing
each moon into coarse white petals,
shed relentlessly.
They will wilt upon the rigidity
of the plate. Each slender tip
will be stunningly translucent
where the broad hilt seared
the skin, rupturing it from
the desiccated sphere.
Spring 2012  35
Cedar Key, DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPH
William Gilpin
Jared Garland
Summer
We kept our parents alive that summer by sitting on top of their headstones,
my sister and I, bickering to each other in our Mom and Dad voices.
“What do you mean you don’t believe in looking at foliage?” Steph said, elongating her vowels in that New York way Mom did.
“I just don’t see the point. Look out the window—you’ve seen one tree; you’ve
seen ’em all,” I said.
“You wouldn’t say that if you stopped and opened your eyes for once.”
“I’ve seen fifty-four autumns; literally, fifty-four autumns.” I spoke in staccato
the way Dad would when he was vexed or couldn’t find the logic in something.
“But have you looked through my orange-tinted glasses?” Steph said. And then,
without thought, the Dad in me picked up:
“You and your orange-tinted glasses!” I screamed, even throwing my arms like
him. “You’re not even looking at the trees how they are—you’re changing them!—
you might as well look at a painting of trees!”
“You have to spoil everything, don’t you, Greg!”
“I’m just simply pointing out that you’re looking at things how you want them
to be, not how they are.”
“So what if I am?”
“I said I was simply pointing out—”
“Gregory, you’re impossible,” Steph said, and that was it. It was just so Mom
we started laughing so hard our faces fell into our laps. She was always telling Dad
he was impossible. I couldn’t respond; I couldn’t even breathe, I was laughing so
hard.
Steph went on: “So, tell me one thing you would like to do?” I straightened my
back and forced my mouth out of its smile.
“I don’t know: something. Watch a Twilight Zone.”
“But you’ve already seen all the Twilight Zones!” Steph yelled.
“Tamara, you’re being—”
“I’m not being anything. I’m being tired. I’m going to bed,” she said, and I
Spring 2012  37
could so perfectly place Mom when she said that—milling around the kitchen in
her purple velvet pajamas—and I knew we were both seeing the same Mom right
then, Steph and me. We turned and looked at each other, and the sight of each
other made us lose it all over again. I swear we could even feel the ground quiver
from Mom and Dad’s laughter, too. And all of a sudden it was the four of us again,
together, so when my sister reached into her pocket and handed me one of those
sugar-free butterscotch candies—the kind Mom used to keep in her purse—I said to
her, “Thanks, Mom,” and we both started crying before the taste could even hit
our tongues.
Susannah Sharpless
Ontogeny
Tell yourself a narrative about the night,
starting with “it loves me.” Leave your parents
the car keys
but no note.
Refuse bedtime. Keep alive:
again you are alone
and electric.
The night is pierced through with gold
lights strung up and
helpless in winter.
Incandescent,
pulsing embryo like the world began.
You are fish spawn and alligator egg.
Your mother won’t eat you in your nest of straw
and you still don’t believe in your father.
Child, recapitulate your phylogeny.
Cry and be liquid and slither.
Get out of your bed.
Refuse your body.
Oh child, oh infant,
it has been eighteen years coming.
Get up and pull the wind through your fingers.
Fashion yourself a coat. It’s a long walk
but god knows
the spirits are glowing.
Spring 2012  39
ABOUT
THE CENTERPIECE

For this issue’s centerpiece, in celebration
of our 170th anniversary, the Nassau Literary Review presents a retrospective on our
history—specifically, on the “Golden Age”
the magazine enjoyed nearly a hundred
years previously. From 1912 to 1917,
the then-Nassau Literary Magazine had the
privilege of publishing the works of three
friends, who would go on to become (and
remain) some of our most distinguished
alumni authors: Edmund Wilson, F. Scott
Fitzgerald, and John Peale Bishop. As
we looked back through our archives, we
found that each of these three had penned
pieces about Princeton, whether the school
had been explicitly named or else thinly
veiled as a setting or a theme; and so we
felt that these poems would form a fitting
tribute, as we reflect on our 170 rich years
as a campus publication. Almost a century
has passed since these pieces were first
published, but the Princeton they describe
is still recognizably our own. In the same
way, the Review takes pride in preserving
continuity with the tradition—here made,
literally, a part of today’s issue.
Spring 2012  41
Edmund Wilson
The Sleeping College
She sleeps like some old town with guarded gate.
Was ever footfall quick or shouting shrill?
Her lazy laughter drowses; it is late;
The windows darken and the streets are still.
Outside, the frozen air which no bells break
Of nasal clangor or of fragile chime,—
Only, to speed the Winter, faint clocks wake,
Lest we may fear his finger upon Time.
But, now the sounds of mirth and music cease,
Have we no ears for anything but mirth?
How should we hope for quietude or peace,
Where learning lives and human souls find birth?
Our town is dark with struggle and our streets
Are red with bloodstains hidden from our eyes,
Below the calm a muffled throbbing beats,
And all the quiet night is dumb with cries.
John Peale Bishop
Campbell Hall
Night over Princeton is all drenched through with blue,
Over the blue slate and black massed shadows blue,
And through it all, out of the thin light,
Weaving a golden web for golden flies,
The tragic spider of the skies,
The moon. Over Princeton. space and blue night.
It is there, it is there,
So keenly that it gives us pain!
We that are so young that it gives us pain
Feel still a cold wind moving through our hair.
You there under the eaves,
Your light
Ruffling with yellow the wet leaves,
You lover of Shelley, shut away form light
Say, did you think
Because we do not wear
The bare white throat, the disordered hair,
The fine romantic dress,
And pale luxury of despair
That space torments us less?
Oh, we are tired of waiting by a chink
That never widens to a light!
Now it is a necromancer’s robe of blue
With gold worked through,
With pentagons of the color of gold and points of light.
Spring 2012  43
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Last Day
The last light wanes and drifts across the land,
The low, long land, the sunny land of spires.
The ghosts of evening tune again their lyres
And wander singing, in a plaintive band
Down the long corridors of trees. Pale fires
Echo the night from tower top to tower.
Oh sleep that dreams and dream that never tires,
Press from the petals of the lotus-flower
Something of this to keep, the essence of an hour!
No more to wait the twilight of the moon
In this sequestrated vale of star and spire;
For one, eternal morning of desire
Passes to time and earthy afternoon.
Here, Heracletus, did you build of fire
And changing stuffs your prophecy far hurled
Down the dead years; this midnight I aspire
To see, mirrored among the embers, curled
In flame, the splendor and the sadness of the world.
John Peale Bishop
Four Years Were Mine at Princeton
Four years were mine at Princeton,
And the friends I had were four;
Though a man be wise as I am not
And rich as I am poor,
And all his years be good to him
He shall not find him more.
There was one had joy of colors,
And one whose heart was wrung
By all the ancient beautiful things
Which dead men have sung,
But all were filled with the fullness of life,
For all were young.
One held with the great world gone,
And one with the world we see,
One believed in the goodness of God,
And one that no gods be;
But all had faith in the wisdom of youth,
The men who were young with me.
There are better men among the dead,
And better men will start
Out of the years which are not yet
To match them part for part,
But these I wear as a signet set,
As a seal upon my heart.
Spring 2012  45
Edmund Wilson
Princeton—April, 1917
There runs the high grey line of tower and tree,
Which like a sharp-drawn shadow now appears,
Screened by the mist that comes so quietly,
As if Spring’s merry rain were turned to tears.
There flies a flag no larger than a midge;
Below my train, the placid lake is dun,
Where no bare oarsmen pierce beneath the bridge
And no white-hatted paddlers take the sun.
Ah, might I come to Princeton now as then,
A year ago, on some clear April day!
(Now April makes the meadows green again,
Before the trees have felt the touch of May)—
And smell the little courtyard dashed with bloom;
And, winning sight to know my brothers blind,
Wear out the night with Plato in my room
To meet the morning with a chrystal mind;
Surely the moon was set to light our spire!
Surely the stars were shut in Holder Court!
Ah, Princeton, is your purpose all forgot?
Is all your mirth and learning left behind?
I listen for your voice and hear it not;
I search the streets for things I cannot find.
Ay, even should you see me still more sad,—
Empty and lonely, passionless and dumb,—
And should the men come back to Princeton clad
In grimmer garb, or should they never come,
Because my dreams are still the valid ones,—
The very dreams of empire not so large,—
Because my bells are clearer than the guns,
Because my books are braver than the charge,
When all the hate and foolishness of men
Is spent, the stars that seem to pass so high
Will never stray from Holder Court again,
Nor can the broken music ever die;
And men who have not known the cloud shall come
And waken laughter through the soundless street,
Where now you stand a stranger in your home,
Unwelcomed by the men you never meet.
And ride again along the dripping lane;
And feel the silver sharpness of the stars,—
When, mocking life and unannealed by pain,
We hardly heard the crash of distant wars.
All order acquiesced to our desire;
All history was acted for our sport.
Spring 2012  47
Centerpiece Authors
Edmund Wilson was born to a railroad lawyer in Red Bank, New Jersey on May
8, 1895. Wilson was a graduate of Princeton’s class of 1916, at which time he was the
editor of the Nassau Literary Magazine. Wilson initially worked as a reporter for the
New York Sun, but then suspended his writing career so that he could volunteer his
services in a French hospital during World War I. Upon returning from the war, he
became managing editor of Vanity Fair, associate editor of the New Republic, and later
became a literary critic for the New Yorker. Although Wilson wrote poetry, fiction,
and plays over the course of his career, he is best known for his remarkable literary
criticism, in which he analyzes the works of authors such as Henry James, Rudyard
Kipling, and Charles Dickens from a social perspective.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on September 24, 1896.
His early career path is surprisingly similar to that of his contemporary and friend,
Edmund Wilson. Fitzgerald too graduated from the class of 1917, and his fiction and
poetry made their first appearances in the Nassau Literary Magazine. Fitzgerald left
Princeton in 1917 to serve in the U.S. army during World War I. It was while overseas that he completed the draft of his first novel, This Side of Paradise, a story about
the experiences of a fictional Princeton student. Fitzgerald published a remarkable
160 stories over the course of his career and wrote several novels, including the classic, The Great Gatsby. Although revered by literary critics today, The Great Gatsby did
not sell well during the Great Depression and did not receive the publicity it has
today until after the author’s death at the age of 44.
John Peale Bishop was born on May 21, 1891, in Charles Town, West Virginia,
where he grew up hearing neighbors tell stories about the Civil War. These tales
inspired him from an early age to pursue the career path of a writer. Like his good
friends, Edmund Wilson and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Bishop wrote poetry for the Nassau
Literary Magazine; he graduated from the class of 1916, published his first volume
of poetry, and went on to enlist in the U.S. army during World War I. Once he
returned to the States, Bishop worked for Vanity Fair and later edited for the Nation.
He is most well known for his novel, Many Thousands Gone, in which he embellishes
the stories of the Civil War that he heard throughout his childhood. Bishop also
worked with the Library of Congress until his sudden death in 1944.


Amy Gopinathan
For Marisol
I
Drafted this after I realized I smoked everything in the apartment,
and a few things from T-bone’s yard.
You remember him,
one of them too cool for class wayward boys.
You thought he was bad news.
A boil on humanity’s heels, you said,
with his inked sleeves
and that seal of puckered skin at the corner of his left eye,
like someone took a thumbnail-sized
crescent-shaped cookie cutter
and pressed down
Hard.
And did you know that he has one of those portable chimneys?
Gray gritty air diffused through clusters of bodies,
lingering on fingers spread across parted knees,
like sprawled starfish.
Spring 2012  51
Burning wood and grass muddled our sense of
What Was
and
What Is.
And your spring resolution,
to tend something living,
(part of some ten or twelve-step program you were piloting)
was withered and wilted.
Your side of the bed still unmade at home.
Some dark dry twigs.
A depressed feather pillow.
A few papery leaves collected at a base of terra cotta clay.
Black hair trapped between bristles.
A fishing net, me, a salmon.
There was no one left to tend the fire.
II
I awoke with an aversion to the day that leaked
through a chink in the tied sheets (I still won’t call them curtains).
and,
peeling my lips apart,
I pondered the inchworm dangling over my head.
III
Remember that time you tossed all my unbreakable things
(and a particularly expensive speaker-set)
onto the curb during that hurricane watch
and I had to fight a particularly pugnacious housewife
for the batteries to my clock radio?
I, on the other hand,
do not so easily heave things over the side.
I still can’t bring myself to dust your knickknacks on the dresser.
To throw away your crumpled receipts,
Then I tried stringing words
into those popcorn garlands you drape along Christmas trees,
like the one that we had to lift from the street,
that smashed the windowsill garden.
Our wasted Eden.
It was mid-December,
our fire escape, rusted Campbell’s Soup red,
was iced, and rendered hazardous,
its ladder leading nowhere.
To pick up your laundry.
To unclog the shower drain.
IV
I stood in two inches of cloudy water today.
V
I added more baking soda to the mug
Spring 2012  53
that I keep in the back of the fridge,
the one you glazed with a kit I gave you one Christmas—
you said it was arts and crafts
for socially inept preteens
but I knew you didn’t mean it
because I wasn’t listening but watching
your face
as you used a jagged thumbnail
to peel away the plastic shrink-wrap.
But even with the half-filled mug
the odor of rotting food still pervades
—lo mein and honey spare ribs from that last night,
that last time we ordered in,
when the temperature
dropped
lower
and
lower
and
stopped.
We ran out of things to do with our hands.
You sent me on an expedition,
your red-knit scarf wound round my neck,
your wallet,
a stone in my pocket.
“Run to the store, I need a cigarette.”
And now I’ve smoked them all in the empty apartment.
VI
It still smells like you.
Untitled, PENCIL DRAWING
Greta Hayes
Brian Lax
Traumas
Paper or plastic I say from the furthest checkout line in this goddamn Whole
Foods and before the mother even answers I smooth my dirty secondhand apron
and reach for the plastic. Her eyes leave her Blackberry and she shakes her jet-black
salon hair and says No I’d rather paper if you don’t mind. If I don’t mind. Her
kid tugs at her satin blazer and asks for some Tic-Tacs, and his complainings are
a messed-up jazz riff as I move Ragu pasta shells broccoli Ranch Juicy Juice into
brown bags. What a nice, oh so nice family-of-four meal for this mother and this
child to share at the table with the father who’s on the Blackberry at home with
the daughter. I don’t miss the huge irony that I’m now the conduit from scanner
to bag to home for their forgettable meal, one of many, no ‘How-was-your-day’s but
the father yelling wrong Jeopardy answers and when the mother asks me to recheck
the cilantro (I’ve apparently scanned it twice) I stifle a sigh and say
Absolutely my Dad says through his thick-frame black glasses over his Brown Medicine
Magazine I think Brown is a fabulous undergraduate environment and it’ll fast track your
way to residency. My Dad is best defined by his office: it’s the stuff of Mad Men, all mahoganies with dark wood wainscoting and framed certificates and lit plaques. As I sit across
the desk across from my Dad I’m proud at the number of plaques—there’s at least seventeen
hanging—and there is an old map of Boston, where we live, and I think it’s apt because my
Dad is the top heart surgeon in all of this city, my Dad is the best at fixing broken hearts.
My Dad is paradoxes, formidable but temperate, quick but methodical, detached but loving,
and even though he’s been stressed recently his toothy smile and boasting to his colleagues are
still my reason for straight A+s and internships and he says Providence was the best place
for me, there’s nothing like it, I have no doubt you’ll get in if you apply seriously and there is
also this great church on Hope It’s St Josephs and I’m looking away suddenly fuming past my
Dad past his plaques past the mahogany at the tick tick ticking clock which screams
5 oclock is the time they release the admissions decisions. That’s when they
post them online, on the Brown website, and it’s 4:17 and my shift ends at 4:30
and the mother and the son have moved on homeward bound with their fancy
nuclear dinner and up walks this bold old man so wrinkly he’s a prune and I’m
thinking Why is he buying Lifestyles when he’s so clearly past AARP threshold and
then Why are his eyes going so wide and then there’s this BAM BAM BAM and
grandpa throws himself on the linoleum and I turn around thick-frames first.
If any one of you so much as twitches you’re dead, you’re gone the gun says, or
maybe it’s the man with the mask gripping the gun but it’s all happening too fast
to know. Everybody be quiet he says and they trained us for this shit, but I just told
mom last week Who’d want to rob Whole Foods How pathetic would you have to
be. People are screaming around me, that mother’s son has his Tic-Tacs but he’s
sobbing and I realize how little I’m shaking and it scares me. I’m not shaking at
all. The Whole Foods music has gone from irritating to macabre in seconds flat as
silence sets in and all I can hear is the mishmash of the intercom’s elevator jingle.
I’m scanning the store and I mostly see families huddled squatting together,
sometimes with mom and dad or maybe mom’s cooking at home or dad’s shopping at Neiman’s so it’s an abbreviated version of their family, clutching their kid
or kids like there’s no tomorrow, because in fact there isn’t a tomorrow for them
if they twitch. Blackberry mom could not be holding her kid any tighter and The
gun is bringing these families closer together That’s funny I’m thinking and then
he says I want all the cash in these bags (he picks up the half price Heftys) throws
them to the whimpering teen I think named Kathleen at the first register then he
points his gun at Tic-Tac. Blackberry screams and the man says Shut up Shut up
you bitch or you’re cleaning up his brains with the Swiffer from aisle 5.
She shuts up quick and he says Take this cart and fill it up with a nice meal.
One that you can eat without a microwave or an oven ’cause I don’t have neither
and she cries looking back and forth between Tic-Tac and gun, she can’t leave her
kid, she just can’t and it’s 4:21 and the man is getting impatient and he clicks the
safety off and Blackberry screams and there’s a BAM BAM
BAM on our countertop and there’s also this PING from my Dad’s wedding ring hitting the granite. He pulls his hands back sharp and touches his wedding ring and looks past
his glasses past my fake glasses into my eyes and says Jake It’s Christmas Eve you have to
go there’s no discussion, end of story and I’m pissed, I’m fuming and I say No Dad I can’t
I don’t want to I won’t go to that place I refuse and my mom is gripping her purse to her
stomach like a shield and she’s trembling and my Dad says Your mother and I put this roof
over your head this food on the table those clothes on your back, and don’t think for a second
that doesn’t mean we make the rules here. And I say How can you, you of all people, tell me
what to believe, you always say question question question Was that all a lie I can’t believe
you want to strangle what I believe. My Dad massaging his wedding ring walks around the
counter red faced and he starts to slice the ham and he comes at me with Why How could
Spring 2012  57
you tell me that the Lord is wrong that what I believe doesn’t exist Isn’t that the same thing.
I love him so much but he’s getting heated and he’s not thinking clear and here’s my chance
I say Dad I would never tell you or mom or anyone else what to think, I can’t do that, but
yes for a matter of fact I do think God is wrong when I’m sitting between those bigots that
say abortion is wrong and that gay people are wrong and that single mothers are wrong You
know I have gay friends, Dad How do you think they feel when they see picketers with those
banners on channel 4 How do you think they feel when they know they can only get married
here Can’t move anywhere else They’re trapped in Massachusetts I don’t want to make
this world any more full of hate and my mom stands up and leaves the room fingering her
crucifix and my Dad is shaking crying touching his wedding ring, he’s saying No no Please
Please no and he’s slicing the ham the Christmas ham harder and harder There are tears
dripping onto the ham He’s been stressed lately and suddenly he screams and the knife hits
the hardwood floor, he’s cut himself, and suddenly mixing with the ham and tears there’s
blood is rushing out of Tic-Tac’s skull and Blackberry screams and runs at the
man with the gun Her eyes are wide and wild and he has no other option there’s
another BAM BAM BAM and there’s blood coming out of Blackberry and that
body falls on top of its son and two people are lying dead shot point blank next to
the Ragu I just bagged in the Whole Foods where I work to make ends meet. Everyone is screaming, I can’t hear the speaker jingle any more but I’m calm, because
gunshot wounds are nothing new to me How funny that I can say that when I live
in a Boston townhouse How awesome I’m thinking. As the man with the gun balls
up his free hand and puts it to his head then into his mouth and as he starts to
shake all I’m thinking is that I’m a fucking paradox like my Dad working in a dirty
discount apron at Whole Foods to make fucking ends meet it’s 4:29 and my shift
is almost over and I just want to go back, to go back three months so I couldn’t
say gun shots are nothing new but suddenly I hear loud speaking behind me. I
turn around and through my glasses I see old Lifestyles on his cell phone shouting Yes yes yes It’s the Whole Foods on Westland Ave. He’s got a mask a gun and
two dead bodies and it’s a massacre. And he can’t hang up because the cell phone
cracks open like an egg when it hits the floor and his chest is red with blood and
he slumps onto my counter my conveyer belt and the body starts to come towards
my scanner.
I feel all of a sudden a gun on my temple and a sweaty hand on my arm and
I’m being pushed back behind Customer Service into the break room and nobody
says anything everybody keeps quiet keeps to themselves and when the door closes
behind us I hear people screaming their motherfucking way out of Whole Foods
leaving me the man with the gun and three dead bodies behind to bleed into the
linoleum. It’s 4:32 and there are rising sirens mixing with fading screams and the
man with the gun is pointing it at me sobbing saying How could I have done this
How could I have done this How could I have
done this to us Who does he think he is Jake I thought he loved me Jake I thought he
loved me He never loved me my mother is screaming holding the letter choking my arm with
her free hand. She is red faced and her mascara is in streaks and her hair is frizzed and not
flat ironed like usual, she’s rocking back and forth in his leather chair in his mahogany office
and she expects me to cry but I just feel an empty hole rending my stomach my heart and my
mom is shaking she’s shaking she’s
shaking his head in his free hand, he takes off his mask He’s got scruff and
sweat and I can’t believe how calm I am, we sort of match because he’s covered in
blood that isn’t his and I know what that’s like and this man with the gun is crying
tears onto the break room floor tiles.
It’s sort of funny because I never stay past my clock-out time but it’s 4:41 and
I’m still in Whole Foods and my Brown admissions decision comes out in 19 minutes but there’s no way I’m getting on the T in time so I’m sitting with this man
with the gun and watching him curl up like a baby like maybe even Tic-Tac, and he
needs someone to talk to, I know I know.
What’s your story I say to him and he goes BAM BAM BAM at the ceiling
Shut the fuck up Shut the hell up he says and I repeat What’s your story and the
tears start to come out a little faster.
What’s your story he says emphasis on the your with sarcasm He doesn’t really
want to know my story but I need to tell someone, I break so I find myself saying
for the first time in three months Three months ago the day after Christmas two
days after a huge argument between us my Dad committed suicide in his study in
his mahogany study with all his plaques and certificates and the man I look up to
the man I want to be The best heart surgeon in Boston committed suicide.
Why the man with the gun says, he’s still shaking but he looks up at me and
I say You want to know why. You want to know why he killed himself and why he
left my mom and me to know what’s it like to have to count quarters and shop
in discount stores even though we live in a townhouse because that’s all my mom
cares about, she’s worried that our neighbors first pitied us and now laugh at their
dinner tables because of our Wal-Mart bags and the man is looking at me, looking
past my glasses into my eyes and he says Yes, I want to know and I know that that
he’s the first person I’ll tell in three months I
know that I can’t live a lie. I can’t lie to your mother, I can’t lie to you and I don’t
know what else to do, Jake, all my life I’ve known but, son, this is my decision. My heart is
breaking for how I have to leave you; I don’t know what you’ll think of me when you find
out when you read this letter but I could never tell you face to face like a man. So many
times in my study, at dinner I wanted to just come out with it, to tell you and we’d deal with
Spring 2012  59
Olivia Rose Howard
option, he thought it was the only way and I wish more than anything more
than a Brown acceptance more than a happy life that I could burst into his mahogany study stop his pen from scribbling that letter and tell him that it’s okay, I’m
okay, he’s okay, and that life will go on and that my love my respect my admiration
for him will go on unchanged and even surge, surge because now I love my Dad
for all of my Dad, 100%, I wish I could do all that instead of being the first one to
walk into the study after the BAM BAM BAM and see my Dad dying bleeding into
his leather chair in his mahogany office in front of his plaques and certificates but
I can’t turn back the clock, I say all this to the man with the gun who is looking
at me, only me, and it’s 5:09 and decisions are out but that doesn’t matter now,
and for the first time in three months I’m crying, I’m sobbing, I’m shaking, I’m
not hiding the tears on my face. The man with the gun puts down his gun and he
walks over to me and he knows he understands He is mahogany. He puts his arms
around me, and I hug him so tight like I want to hug my Dad but can’t anymore,
and he knows I’m thinking of all the lost hugs and all I want is to tell my Dad I’m
going to church now, I’m looking for reconciliation, but now I’m just hugging
my Dad and telling him I love him and nothing, no one will ever mess that up.
I’m hugging my Dad and I’m telling him I’m so sorry and he’s my Dad My Dad
and I’m hugging my Dad until it’s 5:16 and the man leaves his gun behind in the
break room and grips my shoulders with his sweaty hands but it’s not forceful this
time and we walk out past my register and we walk out to the police cars and the
man without the gun offers his sweaty hands to cuffs and they push his head into
the leather seat. He turns. I imagine the desk between us. I see him looking at me
past his window past my glasses into my eyes as the sirens run and he pulls away,
contented, into the beyond.
Eloise, COLORED PENCIL ON BLACK PAPER
it, but I know that it can’t be dealt with, it would rend our family apart if I stayed alive and
so I won’t let that happen. I won’t let you live life knowing your father was too afraid all his
life to tell his wife and child. I won’t be going to heaven, there’s no space for me there even if
I didn’t do this, but I want you to know, Jake, that I have known all my life, all throughout
grade school, high school, medical school that I am homosexual, I’m gay, I’m trapped. I can’t
reconcile my faith and I can’t reconcile myself and this is the only way, this is the only
Thomas Z. Horton
The Problem (Beauty) of Memory
Foggy night air drifts over my windshield,
dusting the glass with mist. I can’t seem
to focus, brushing aside the pin-prick drops
with the flick of the windshield wipers.
Errant thoughts flit across my mind—
my hands had trembled as I walked to my car,
enveloped in the surreal. Amber air shrouds
the lamps illuminating the road, translucent air
clouds my vision. I don’t remember that step
I must have taken from her porch to the sidewalk,
and yet, I’m here, driving home slowly in the fog.
David Springs
The Tree’s Dream
In the hour that I absorb
the last wisdom,
when seedlings start to kneel for me—
nubs of their new
branches poking through trunks to me—
and their mothers, slender birches,
curtsy in the wind,
and I have grown fat with my rings,
the moths will spite me.
The moths will bare my organs,
feasting on sapwood—
bark falling from its base of veins,
live roots crackling in unison.
The moths, full, will flock
to await my neighbors,
leaving paper for storms to blacken.
Spring 2012  63
Derek Gideon
Paleography
Somewhere in the shimmering
ink that tendriled down
the slope of your shoulder,
traced your spine, and kept
a journal on your chest—
In the riddling flourishes;
the blot that pooled on your neck,
one could trace the precise date:
words stayed but we no longer spoke
the same language.
Bugs, MASKING TAPE
Ben Denzer
Spring 2012  65
Ana Istrate
in the cave
a stroke of liquid animal
braying from a canopy of hands,
moving from an undergrowth
of fixed shadow, petrified
without enchantment—
I have not given any of it a name
because it is, as long-haired
seamstresses will say, a myth;
I have no herbs to give to heaven
and nothing but prayer to give
to what walks out of the sea—
William Gilpin
Hondo Canyon, DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPH
Sarah Van Cleve
The Ponderosa Sun Club
In the bright sunlight, he is lounging naked at the pool. Ordinarily in these
circumstances, his eyes would be closed restfully, his arms would be lying limply
at his sides, and his body would be slack and relaxed. Today, however, his eyes are
open, determinedly squinting directly into the glare of the noonday sun, his arms
are tightly crossed over his chest, his fists clenched; every muscle in his body is
tense and alert. He has had this spot staked out since seven in the morning and
has been obstinately lying here since then. Next to his reclining pool chair sits an
enormous purple beach bag that is stuffed with sunscreen, extra towels, and two
ham and potato chip sandwiches in blue Tupperware containers. On top of all
this is a toiletries case bulging with eye shadow, mascara, blush, tweezers, and other
instruments of beautification he can’t quite identify.
Frank reaches into the bag and pulls out a pair of sunglasses that Faith Ann
has packed for him. He puts them on and glances suspiciously around the pool.
Three sides of it are absolutely packed with people. He has never seen it this crowded before. And with men. He has never seen so many men here at one time—tall
men, short men, skinny men, fat men, hairy men, bare men, old men, young men,
local men, visiting men. It is all exactly as he expected—his worst nightmare.
Frank is originally from Scotland, and how he ended up in Roselawn, Indiana
is a matter of some interest to this story. So we will leave Frank at the pool for now
and travel back two years, which requires us to take a journey across the Atlantic,
and end up in the small town of Bowriefauld. In this town, at precisely age fortyfive and thirteen days, Frank decided that he had had enough of perpetual bachelorhood. One night, in the midst of his dinner, he stood up, threw his tasteless
helping of microwaved potato and beef into the trash, got into his car, and drove
five minutes to the local library. He stumped through the glass door and made a
beeline for the nearest ancient computer. After waiting an appropriately long time
for the computer to turn on and find an internet connection—Frank all the while
shifting self-consciously in his seat and glancing around surreptitiously to make
sure that no one was watching him—he carefully pulled out a small faded note card
from his jeans pocket and typed in a website that he had written down on the card.
When he left the library thirty minutes later, he had registered himself on two
online dating sites.
For the next three weeks, Frank drove to the library every night after dinner to
check the sites. He edited his profile, (adding, after a week, that he enjoyed bowling, in an effort to boost his desirability) and made exhaustive searches through
hundreds of eligible women.
Frank, it must be noted, was not a particularly attractive man. He was short
and rather round. That is, he wasn’t obese or even fat, but he was plump around
the middle in a way that was clear by the bulge that appeared when his collared
shirt was tucked in (which it was, every day). In general, Frank looked soft. His
stomach was soft and pudgy, his comb-over brown-grey hair was soft, and his hands
were soft. Frank even spoke softly. His voice was halting and quiet, as if he was
insecure about absolutely everything he said, even things as concrete as “Hi, my
name is Frank.”
So in many ways, online dating was perfect for Frank. He had lots of time to
consider each woman, sitting quietly in his chair at the library and carefully debating whether he would like playing “Bunko” or taking up “ballroom dancing.” He
usually decided that he would not. So Frank relied on being contacted by other
women. And, surprisingly or not, other women did contact him. Perhaps it was the
bowling that interested them. Or perhaps they realized that Frank was a sweet man,
a nice man, a quiet man, a respectful man, and that though he was soft, they could
hardly do better online. So Frank had a few nice conversations with these women
on the website. Two or three of them even called him at home. He actually went
on one date, a sort of disastrous experience, with one who was from a neighboring town. They’d eaten at a pub on the road, halfway between their houses, and it
turned out that she had two kids, whom she’d brought with her. Now, Frank had
no problems with kids; he even liked them. But these kids were unhappy about
something and they screamed and cried through the whole meal and flustered
their mother and flustered Frank until he could hardly speak for nerves. Frank
didn’t even kiss the woman at the end of the meal. He shook her hand.
After that experience, Frank needed a couple days to recover. It wasn’t until
the next Thursday that he went back to the library. Of course, Frank remembers
that it was a Thursday, because this is the day that Frank met Faith Ann. He signed
onto his account and immediately noted that he had a new message. A woman
named Faith Ann had written, “Hi Frank, I just read your profile. We have a lot in
common!!!!! I especially like bowling too, wow! Check out my profile and maybe
we can chat online :-).” Frank clicked on Faith Ann’s profile. She was right. They
did have some things in common. They both liked “playing cards”; they both liked
Spring 2012  69
“eating” (though Frank had added “fine cuisines” for extra effect and Faith Ann
had added “anything”); and they both listed “going to the beach” as one of their
favorite activities. He looked at her picture. It seemed to be a close up of her face:
she looked nice, he thought, though perhaps she was a bit chubby?
Frank and Faith Ann talked online that night. She used a lot of exclamation
points and emoticons. By the end of the night, Frank found himself starting to
use them too. Only when the librarian began to turn off the lights did Frank tell
Faith Ann he had to go. “Goodnight!!” he typed. Frank practically ran out of the
library and hopped into his car. When he got home, he puttered around the house
whistling tunelessly to himself and smiling at the microwave.
The next night, Frank wolfed down his dinner without even tasting it (which
was rather lucky, since it was probably tasteless anyway), sped over to the library,
and practically ran through the door. He froze. There was somebody already sitting
at his computer. He began to walk towards the man, casually glancing at the screen
as he passed. The man was doing his taxes. Frank turned around and walked by
him again. The man did not look up. Frank walked by him once more. “Excuse
me,” he blurted out, “how long will you be using that computer?” The man looked
up at Frank. “No more than ten minutes, sir,” he said politely. “Right,” said Frank,
much more gruffly than he ordinarily would have done. He walked over to the
nearest stack, picked up a book, and pretended to read it. His eyes glared at the
back of the man’s head. He listened to the sound of the clock ticking out the passing seconds. He got up, went to the bathroom, and came back. He sat down again
and glared some more. Finally, finally when the man got up and left, Frank walked
straight to the computer and logged in.
That night, Frank talked to Faith Ann about playing in his neighborhood
as a child, his mom’s spaghetti, getting made fun of in high school for his dorky
haircut, his job as manager at the local ice cream store, and his failed attempts at
dating. He told Faith Ann things he’d never told anyone—let alone a woman. Faith
Ann talked just as much. She told him about her sister who lived next door, the
flowery curtains she’d just bought for her house, her job working as a cook at the
local high school, and her silly friends who got drunk and hit on truckers. This was
the night that Frank learned that Faith Ann lived in Roselawn, Indiana.
“Indiana?” typed Frank, “Where is that?!”
“Haha,” Faith Ann responded, “it’s the best dang part of the country! Smack
dab in the center.”
“Okay,” typed Frank, “hold on, I am going to go get an atlas.” He walked rapidly over to the geography section of the library, yanked a volume of United States
geography off the shelf, and practically ran back to the computer. He flipped it
open to a random page and found a picture of all fifty states. There it was, Indiana,
right in the middle.
He typed again, “I see Indiana. Now where do you live in it?”
“I live in the best part, in Roselawn!”
Frank looked for Roselawn in the atlas.
“I don’t see that . . .”
“Oh, you won’t find it,” she typed. “It’s way too small to be on any map. And
you certainly won’t EVER find where I live.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“Well,” she typed. There was a pause. “Where I live is sort of strange, even for
Indiana.”
“What do you mean, strange?”
“It’s called the Ponderosa Sun Club.” There was another pause. “It’s a nudist
colony.”
Frank stared at the screen. A nudist colony? He read the words again. Did that
mean what he thought it meant? Wait a second, he thought, how could that be
possible? How could she live in a nudist colony? Wasn’t a nudist colony a place for
naked people? Could you actually live in one of those? Did that mean she walked
around naked? All the time?
“Frank? You still there?”
Frank started and stared at the screen again in disbelief. What should he type?
What should he say? He wanted to sound nonchalant. Of course, he talked to
women all the time who lived in nudist colonies. Of course, he was comfortable
with nudity. Of course, that didn’t make him nervous. No, his palms weren’t sweating profusely.
“Oh,” he typed. “That sounds interesting.”
Faith Ann responded immediately. “You’re freaked out, aren’t you? It’s ok. It’s
not that weird, I promise. My sister is the manager. I live next door to her.”
Frank hesitated. Could he write what he wanted to write? Would that be rude?
He decided to go for it. “Do you walk around naked all the time?”
Faith Ann’s words appeared on the screen: “Yeah. I mean, not at work, I wear
clothes when I leave the colony of course ;-) but at home, yeah.”
Frank contemplated this for a second. This woman—this woman with whom
he had connected with, really connected with—was a nudist. She actually walked
around naked in her home and in her neighborhood. He was shocked, but also,
strangely, relieved. It didn’t actually sound that crazy. The thought of living in
Roselawn and walking around naked with Faith Ann didn’t seem implausible. He
could envision himself there, with her, both naked.
For the sake of time, the reader will bear with us now as we fast forward
through Frank and Faith Ann’s courtship. It is enough to know that it was sufficiently romantic for Faith Ann that she told her sister all about it, and sufficiently
exciting for Frank that he ate his dinners at a record pace for the next few months
in order to rush to the library and beat the taxes man to the computer. When they
Spring 2012  71
began talking on the phone, Frank was momentarily horrified by his rising phone
bills and then uninterested. He paid them without caring, just like he went to work
without caring if the patrons were rude to him. When Faith Ann first told him
that she weighed three hundred pounds, and then sent him her picture, he was
momentarily surprised, but then relieved. He found that he didn’t much care. If he
could envision himself living at a nudist colony with a naked woman, he could certainly envision himself there with a naked woman who was slightly larger than he
had originally anticipated. After all, he weighed one hundred and eighty pounds
(he went to the local gym the next morning to check) and what was the difference
of a mere one hundred or so pounds?
So when Frank and Faith Ann began to talk about living together, Frank
wasn’t altogether shocked or against it. In fact, he found very little to tie him down
in Bowriefauld. His parents were both dead. He didn’t have any siblings. His job
wasn’t particularly stimulating. His house wasn’t all that nice. He didn’t have many
friends. And Faith Ann—Faith Ann was funny, she was silly, she was thoughtful,
she was shocking, she was different, she was interesting. Why not move to Roselawn, he thought. Why not, indeed?
So Frank quit his job at the ice cream parlor. He sold his car to his neighbor.
He packed up his little brick house into a dozen trunks and boxes and he shipped
them all to an address in Indiana. He bought a one-way plane ticket and he turned
his back on Scotland forever. He turned to face perpetual nudity in Roselawn,
Indiana.
Now, the reader may be wondering, surely Frank did not pack up and ship his
entire life from Scotland to Indiana without ever having met Faith Ann in person?
Surely he went to visit her first? Surely he assured himself that they were compatible in person?
But no, Frank did none of those things. He moved to Indiana on the sole basis
of talking to Faith Ann online and on the phone. That was all. He never met her
in person. The fact is, Frank couldn’t afford a plane ticket to visit Faith Ann and
make sure. He could only afford to go once. So once it was. And, Frank reasoned,
if he didn’t get along with Faith Ann, he could easily move somewhere else in the
United States and live there instead. That was his back-up plan.
But, having already seen Frank at the pool, two years later, we know that Frank
didn’t need his back-up plan. So we don’t have to waste any needless anxiety on
Frank’s happiness. Rest assured that he and Faith Ann are perfectly happy.
Of course, nudity did take some adjusting to. When Faith Ann came to pick
up Frank from the Chicago airport, she was wearing clothes. Large clothes. Because Faith Ann was a large person. The number three hundred didn’t really do
her justice. When Frank saw her, as he was walking off the plane, he recognized
her immediately. She was, by far, the largest person in the terminal. Seeing her
standing there, Frank’s heart filled with tenderness. She took a few steps toward
him and then buried him in an enormous bear hug. “Welcome home,” she said.
“I’m so glad you’re here, Frank.” And Frank knew he’d made the right decision.
On the drive to Roselawn, Faith Ann explained to Frank that he could continue wearing his clothes until the next morning. All new members were granted
an adjustment period. He could walk around the colony and see what it was like
before he had to strip down and bear it all. Frank nodded nervously. He was starting to get a bit apprehensive about living naked all the time. Faith Ann patted his
arm affectionately and soothed him. “You’ll get used to it right away,” she said.
“You’ll fit right in.”
An hour or so later, as they drove up to the club in the growing dark, Frank
squinted at the welcome sign. It showed the dark silhouettes of a couple walking
into the sunlight and said PONDEROSA SUN CLUB in thick block letters. He
was impressed; it was relatively discreet. No blaring warnings to BEWARE: NAKED PEOPLE. Faith Ann drove past the sign and down a long tree-lined gravel
road. At the end, she took a left turn. They drove past what Faith Ann described as
the main lodge, the pool, the volleyball courts, and the tennis courts. Frank could
see several rows of trailer homes in the distance. Faith Ann drove to the second
one. “Well,” she said. “Here we are.” Frank peered through the window at the
house. It was one story, small, neat, and rectangular, with yellow sideboards and
white trim. He could see the flowery curtains through the tiny windows. The yard
was neat and grassy, with a few spindly trees, and a small garden dotted with several
green gnomes and decorative lawn orbs in shades of blue and purple.
They got out of the car and walked up the path together to the house, Frank
lagging behind Faith Ann’s enormous figure as he lugged his old grey suitcase
with both arms. The door opened into a small living room connected to a kitchen
with a built-in table. Off of these rooms was a hallway with two bedrooms and a
bathroom. “I thought,” said Faith Ann, “that you’d sleep in the guest room, at
least for tonight. Just to let you get a chance to settle in.” Frank nodded gratefully.
Exhausted and jet-lagged, he was not sure he could deal with the emotional anxiety
of sleeping with Faith Ann tonight. Without even bothering to unpack his suitcase,
Frank tumbled into bed and fell into a deep sleep.
The next morning, Frank woke up extremely early, not yet used to the time
change. Wondering whether he ought to take off his clothes to begin his day, a
strange feeling indeed, Frank decided that he would go try to find some breakfast
first and figure out the clothes situation later. He timidly opened his bedroom
door and padded softly into the kitchen. There, standing at the stove, with her
back to him, was Faith Ann—utterly and completely naked. She was absolutely
enormous. Her body almost filled the entire kitchen—though admittedly it was a
Spring 2012  73
tiny kitchen. Frank, unsure of what to do, coughed awkwardly. Faith Ann turned
around and beamed at him. “Morning, Frank,” she said cheerfully. Her flesh cascaded down her body like a waterfall, from her enormous breasts to the rolls of fat
hanging from her stomach to her sausage-like quads to her puffy ankles. Looking
at her standing there, the broad grin on her face so absolutely joyful, Frank felt a
wave of gratitude for the Ponderosa Sun Club for allowing this woman—this incredibly fat and, in any other world, ugly woman—a sense of self-confidence so secure
that she could stand completely naked in her own kitchen in front of a man she’d
seen for the first time yesterday.
Frank said, “Good morning, Faith Ann.” And he pulled his own shirt over his
head, pulled off his pajama pants, and removed his boxers. “I’m ready for breakfast.”
That night Frank and Faith Ann slept together for the first time. The rest, as
they say, is history.
But before you run away with these happy visions of history, don’t forget that
we’ve left Frank at the pool and we must return to him to complete our story.
When we left him, recall that he was just bemoaning the presence of so many men
surrounding him. Why is it that there are so many men at the Ponderosa pool?
What are they all doing there? That is an interesting question, which requires some
explanation.
And here we must interject to inform you that Ponderosa is world-famous for
a certain event that it holds in the summer months. Now we don’t want you to
get the wrong impression of Ponderosa. Ponderosa is by all means a family-friendly
nudist colony. But it does have one particular event that parents might not want
their twelve-year-old daughters or sons to attend. Around mid-July, a dozen or so
bikini models travel to Ponderosa to perform in a show. We’ll leave it at that. It is
sufficient to know that this show is called Nudes A Poppin’. And this particular
year, this July weekend when we find Frank lying at the pool, one of the models
found that she couldn’t perform at the last minute.
The day before, Faith Ann’s sister had come rushing into the house to explain
that a model had gotten sick and there was an extra spot. She knew that Faith Ann
always joked about wanting to compete herself and she wanted to offer her little
sister the spot before she told anyone else. Frank and Faith Ann had been sitting at
the kitchen table eating their eggs and bacon. They both laughed when her sister
told her the news and Frank said jokingly, “This is your big chance, Faith Ann!”
Faith Ann got up, gave her sister a big hug, and cried, “Of course I want to do
it!”
“Okay,” said her sister. “You’re in!” The two of them kept hugging and laughing and rocking up and down on the spot. Frank, who was chewing a piece of ba74  The Nassau Literary Review
con vigorously, let his teeth slow down and come to a halt. He felt a little fluttering
in the pit of his stomach. He tried to speak but his mouth was full of bacon. He
swallowed it in a huge gulp. “Wait,” he said quickly, “you’re not serious?”
Faith Ann walked up behind him and wrapped her soft pudgy arms around his
neck, hugging him closely and rubbing his hair. “Of course I am, Frank!”
Frank took a deep breath. “Honey, are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“Well, why wouldn’t it be? I’ve always wanted to do it. It’s not like I’m expecting to win, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
That wasn’t what he was worried about actually. But Frank couldn’t say what
he was worried about. The words couldn’t quite make it past his lips. So he sat
at the table and let his eggs get cold while Faith Ann and her sister went into the
bedroom to pick out her makeup and plan for the show. He sat there and looked
down at his own naked body, resting on the kitchen chair—the wrinkles, the cellulite, the roll around his stomach. He wouldn’t want to compete in any modeling
show with this body. What made Faith Ann want to compete with hers? He felt
sick. Anger bubbled up from his stomach and into his throat. He loved Faith Ann,
for God’s sake. Loved her like he’d never loved anyone before. Was this contest
making him doubt her? Was he ashamed of her? “No,” he told himself; “no,”
he whispered aloud. He was proud of her no matter how many people saw her
perform. But if any of them so much as laughed or jeered, Frank—Frank, who had
never done anything remotely violent in his life—swore to himself that he would
make them regret it.
So, sweating in the heat of that July day, Frank watched the other women performing with his fists clenched. He felt the tension in his chest rise as he saw their
slim bodies and their enormous breasts saunter up and down the width of the pool
before taking their place on the stage. He heard, only dimly, the cheers and the
yells over the loud music.
And then, near the end of the show, Faith Ann comes out of the models’ tent.
He holds his breath. He waits for the laughter. He waits for the catcalls and jeers.
One of the men a little ways down whispers “wow” pretty softly. Another nudges
his neighbor: “Check out those tits.” Faith Ann struts up and down the width of
the pool, her fat jiggling and bouncing with every step. She has to be at least three
times bigger than any of the other women. When she reaches the platform with the
other models and takes her spot, there is a short, almost imperceptible, pause, and
then everybody claps and cheers. It maybe isn’t quite as loud as some of the other
cheers, but it is enough. Frank breathes a deep sigh of relief and feels the tension
melt out of his body. He brings his hands together, clapping vigorously. “That’s my
girl,” he shouts, “that’s my girl!”
Spring 2012  75
A Young Girl with Her Eyes Closed, DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPH
Luke Cheng
Michael Brashear
My Only Complaint
Sometimes I find the coffee here
is really quite lacking.
It’s not the potency of the brew, oh no,
that’s all right.
It’s got to do with the principle of the drink, its integrity.
The coffee is always piping hot when I get it,
and that’s what I take issue with.
The coffee was mostly hot at home
on nights soft and sinewy,
tangible air and
the black liquid sky steamed out
over the cup, the moon,
cradling stars like sugar grains spilt
on the tabular canvas,
the constellations spelling
words long forgotten in a
language I once spoke
when my mother served
sweet apple slices, fried
in butter, doused in cinnamon,
and the sky was blue
laundry-detergent blue, thick blue.
Looking back now, I see that perhaps the problem
is me, perhaps I am a coffee snob.
Spring 2012  77
However, my opinion is mine,
I won’t change it,
so don’t even ask me
to change it.
Still, it’s too hot.
The coffee back home was never
this hot, it was mostly hot
when I ate breakfast with my Father,
his wrinkles rising in chuckles
when we discussed the future.
His stern crows’ feet
when I told him I wouldn’t miss him.
Our long talk
when this moment, the now
was only an illusion, a wisp,
a thin vapor of steam,
rising to fade from a coffee cup.
Grace Li
Untitled
I brought you into my bed
like I used to bring musty books from the dank library
basement.
Drowsed by the musk of their sweet fungal stains, the grape
juice fermented to wine,
as their briny canvas covers perfumed my sheets—
I wanted to wake up as happy as my mother
whose morning hair always smelled like her boyfriends,
their scents wrapping her like substitute arms.
If I were a lioness marked by her lion
I could nap in the sun,
the fleas scaling the heaving volcano of my stomach, in search
of the king beyond the mountain.
Spring 2012  79
Je veux y rester, DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPH
Karis Schneider
Ana Istrate
on the beach
doomsday is a waiting room
for many-burdened women
to sing the praise of
all their nothings
it isn’t hard to dream again
of train tracks and cliff sides
but now each morning breakfast is
a precipice
each little mouth is speechless
and all the hums are
broken through the blinds
like the hasty light
from the rising of the sun
that has never risen this way
and the imminent burial
of ignorant children
tomorrow we will find a stone
where someone hungry carved the words:
the underneaths of sighs are coming to an end
Spring 2012  81
Contributors
Michael Brashear ’15 is from Somerset, Kentucky. His interests on campus include
Outdoor Action, Whitman College Council, and the literary scene in general. He is
considering majoring in political science, English, or the Woodrow Wilson School.
He enjoys reading, writing, the outdoors, and breakfast.
Ruth Chang ’12 is a senior in the architecture department and has been writing
poetry since the fourth grade but never for anything besides class. Now she’s finding
the poetic everywhere in everything, which is lovely and wonderful.
Luke Cheng ’14 majors in operations research and financial engineering. He takes
photographs occasionally. His other work can be found at wewereblind.tumblr.com.
Ben Denzer ’15 has been creating masking tape sculptures since 2001. Ben is interested in old books, maps, art, graphic design, and architecture. You can see more of
his work at bendenzer.com.
Jared Garland ’15 is a freshman from Lexington, Massachusetts. He never had any
imaginary friends as a child. Making up people in his head is something that came
with age and maturity.
William Gilpin ’14 is a sophomore physics concentrator from Sarasota, Florida. In
addition to photography, he likes drawing, writing, sleeping, and phytoplankton.
Ben Goldman ’15 is a freshman from South Brunswick, New Jersey. He eats books
three times a day and drinks at least eight glasses of ink for a balanced diet.
Greta Hayes ’14 is a sophomore from Long Island, New York. She has been pursuing
her art studies from a very young age. In addition to drawing, she trained as a classical cellist at the Juilliard School in New York for seven years.
Thomas Zachary Horton ’15, otherwise known as TZ Horton, is a proud Texan
preparing to enter his second semester at Princeton. He began writing poetry in
his freshman year of high school, but his writing has matured dramatically since
then. Much of his work was shaped by his various international experiences. Horton
began school in London, England, at St. Mary Abbot’s School in Kensington. His
father, a long-time employee of American Airlines, has enabled him to see much
of the world. This perspective is reflected in his poetry. TZ Horton published his

Spring 2012  83
first collection of poems earlier this year in his book entitled Day Splinters. Around
campus, Horton is apt to be seen sporting the occasional bow tie or playing Lead
Didjeridu in the Princeton University Band.
Olivia Rose Howard ’15 is from Larkspur, California. She went to Marin Academy High School, where she first became very interested in visual arts. During high
school, she was awarded and exhibited by the Marin Council of the Arts and received
a Gold, Silver, and Honorable Mention Scholastic Art Award. She is a freshman at
Princeton this year and is very interested in environmental studies. While she is not
planning to major or concentrate in visual arts, she loves to draw and paint.
Stephanie Tam ’13 is a junior concentrating in English. She hails from New York,
New York. Her other hometown is Mathey, Princeton, where she serves as a peer
advisor. She is a fan of magical realism, psychology, and people, among some other
things. And of course, she likes to write.
Sarah Van Cleve ’12 is a senior English major and Gender and Sexuality Studies
certificate student from St. Louis, Missouri.
Ana Istrate ’13 is a junior from the Chicago suburbs studying molecular biology
and dabbling regularly in French and creative writing. She is always in love with
something. Today it is the ocean. Tomorrow it will probably be stuffed cabbage rolls.
Ta-yoon Jeon ’14 takes joy in early morning walks and would like to one day save the
world. Once, while trying to write about her love of science and ethics, she ended
up creating an ode to dark chocolate instead. Someday, she will learn to write poetry
meaningfully instead of as an indelibly interesting form of procrastination.
Brian Lax ’15, a freshman from Charlotte, North Carolina, was once featured on
cuteboyswithcats.net, so this is not his first brush with fame.
Grace Li ’14 named herself.
Pallavi Afia Mishra ’15 is a freshman who left her heart in Ghana.
Felicia Ng ’15 is a freshman intending to pursue a concentration in psychology and
a certificate in visual arts. Her favorite words are “fly” and “freedom,” and she wants
to inspire others through her creativity and imagination.
Karis Schneider ’13 hunts photographs regularly; most of them escape.
Susannah Sharpless ’15 is a freshman from Indianapolis, Indiana, and writing is
really the only thing she knows how to do.
Elizabeth Shoenfelt ’13 is a junior in the geosciences department. She enjoys studying limestone, finding fossils, and writing poems too.
David Springs ’15 is from Long Island.
Spring 2012  85
Editorial Staff
as an active member of Princeton Evangelical Fellowship and Kindred Spirit A
Cappella.
Sean Paul Ashley is a junior from Kingston, Jamaica. He likes Pablo Neruda, Samuel
L. Jackson, Miles Davis, long walks on the beach, long-stem roses, fast cars, slow
horses, and is a TI savage.
Jared Garland [see Contributors bio]
Phway Aye is a freshman from Palmerston North, New Zealand. She enjoys quoting
Anchorman, Pinteresting, and reading Murakami. She is currently the proud owner of
four healthy hobbits—a certain Samwise Gamgee included—each of whom will be up
for adoption in the upcoming months. Please contact the Nass Lit staff if interested.
Diana Goodman feels that to choose a favorite animal would be to live in black and
white. Not that she doesn’t have favorites—like purple, Leverage, and basil—and not
that she thinks a black and white color palette will prevent a dress from being striking, a cookie delicious, and text meaningful.
Emma Boettcher is a sophomore from Paoli, Pennsylvania. An English major, she
enjoys reading everything from Shakespeare to Jeopardy! transcripts.
Michael Granovetter is a freshman from New Jersey who plans to study chemistry,
applied math, and neuroscience. Sometimes he likes to take a break from formulas
and computations, and so he writes.
John Michael Colón is a freshman and a prospective English major who enjoys
the occasional angry conversation with an old book. His whereabouts are generally
unknown, but if pressed we can say with confidence that you can probably find him
wandering the streets in the not-so-early morning, bereft of sleep and mumbling
madly.
Tyler Davis is a freshman from Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, and a prospective
psychology major with possible certificates in teacher certification, American studies, and creative writing. She’s a musical fanatic and can sing all the songs from
about thirteen different musicals (so far). Her favorite food is funfetti cake.
Lolita De Palma is a sophomore from Pasadena, California. She is awesome.
Natalie Degraffinried is a comparative literature major from Cleveland, Ohio, who
enjoys video games, comics, and extremely large earrings. She finds shameful guilty
pleasure in reading teen/young adult fiction and talking to people in French when
they don’t necessarily speak it.
Glenn R. Fisher is a freshman from Bridgewater, New Jersey. If he’s not studying
or wreaking havoc with the Princeton University Band, you can probably find him
banging away on a drum in Woolworth.
Margaret Fox is a junior concentrating in African history and creative writing. Her
favorite pastimes include people-watching out her fourth floor window and reading
poetry she doesn’t understand. Margaret is an editor for Revisions magazine, as well
Ben Goldman [see Contributors bio]
Greer Hanshaw is a junior from Brooklyn, New York. He enjoys the internet, to
which he devotes much of his time; verbose poetry, as epitomized by Poe’s “The
Raven”; open roads; and chopped salads.
Katie Horvath is a freshman who is excessively proud of being from Colorado. She
should write more. Really, she should. While she tries to muster up enough willpower to actually do so, however, she occupies her time with rock climbing, HUM-ing,
and reading other people’s work.
Tyler House is a freshman from Duck, North Carolina, thinking about having a
major. When he’s not criticizing other people’s writing, he enjoys watching 30 Rock,
the GOP debates, and other well-written comedies with a strong female lead.
Margaret Hua is a freshman who enjoys reading, writing, listening to music, photography, yoga, and singing. (She wishes she sounded more interesting as well, but
alas . . . ) She is also an expert procrastinator and lazy butt extraordinaire.
Ana Istrate [see Contributors bio]
Natasha Japanwala is a sophomore from Karachi, Pakistan, who owns more books
than her tiny dorm room can hold. She plans to major in English with a certificate
in gender and sexuality studies.
Cameron Langford is a coffee drinker, list-maker, and window-seat connoisseur
Spring 2012  87
from the bustling metropolis of Davidson, North Carolina. As a freshman, she is
very much undecided on her major and has been perhaps a bit too liberal with her
liberal arts education. In her spare time, she binge-orders books from Amazon and
prays for the return of Arrested Development.
Dipika Sen is a junior in the economics department pursuing a certificate in sustainable energy. She is from New York City and always considers the lobster.
Isabelle Laurenzi is a freshman wandering the humanities and is therefore often lost
under a mountainous pile of books. It’s a good place to be lost.
Stephanie Tam [see Contributors bio]
Yahui “Ellis” Liang is a freshman from Edison, New Jersey, where everyone still
calls her by her legal name. She loves eating tomatoes, reading Emily Dickinson, and
listening to This American Life, though not at the same time.
Jon Lin is a junior in the East Asian studies department. He likes continental philosophy, Ultimate Frisbee, and trolling. His favorite books include The Brothers Karamazov and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Elizabeth Lloyd is a junior in the English department. When she’s not busy trying
to figure out how this knowledge base will be useful in the future, Elizabeth enjoys
(read: procrastinates via) Harry Potter fandom, playing with kids and, apparently,
refusing to grow up.
Diane Manry is a sophomore majoring in molecular biology, and a reluctantly proud
born-and-raised Texan. When not despairing over orgo she tries to nourish her creative self by reading her favorite books and blogs (and by envying English majors).
Lizzie Martin is a sophomore from North Carolina who loves sweet tea, Bollywood
music, and stories that need telling.
Elizabeth Shoenfelt [see Contributors bio]
Maia ten Brink hails from Cape Cod, Massachusetts. She loves the water, cooking,
David Byrne’s dance moves, NPR, biking, and monkeys. She studies neuroscience,
creative writing, and journalism.
Albertine Wang is a sophomore from a town near Houston, Texas, but she mentally
lives on a Scottish island and shears sheep to make tweed. She plans to major in
English.
Sam Watters is a freshman from Rome, Georgia, and is hoping to major in economics or the Woodrow Wilson School. He likes antique books, hats shaped like
animals, and owls. Despite saying the word “cat” frequently as an interjection, he
strongly prefers dogs.
Helen Yao is a freshman from Staten Island, New York. She wants to be some sort
of engineer. She enjoys reading, writing, and playing the piano.
Jessica Yao is a senior in the classics department from Needham, Massachusetts. She
has served as the co-editor-in-chief of the Review since fall 2009 and would like to
thank all the editors, staff, authors, and artists who contributed to this issue for making her last semester at the magazine the best yet. Provided she finishes her thesis on
time, she plans to pursue a Ph.D. in classics at graduate school next year.
Erin McDonough is a sophomore prospective English major. Perhaps this is why
she finds the most devilish thing about Satan to be his atrocious lack of punctuation
during his rants within Paradise Lost.
Mirabella Mitchell is a junior majoring in English who hopes to obtain a creative
writing certificate. She tries to fool people into thinking she isn’t from New Jersey by
saying she lives in “the Philadelphia area.”
Natalie Scholl is a junior in the classics department focusing on Greek culture for
the sole reason of curing her Hellenologophobia (the fear of Greek terms). She likes
peach fuzz, Les Misérables music, and being Chuck Norris in Mafia.
Spring 2012  89
The Nassau Literary Review relies on the generosity of our supporters. If you
would like to make a tax-deductible donation to the Nassau Literary Review
please send a check or money order to:
5534 Frist Campus Center
Princeton, NJ 08544
Checks should be made payable to Princeton University with “Nassau Literary
Review” in the memo line.
On behalf of the editors and writers, we thank you.
*
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The Nassau Literary Review would like to thank the following for their
support this year:
The Lewis Center for the Arts
* *
*
The Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students
*
*
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The Council of the Humanities
*
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The Center for African American Studies
*
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The Department of Comparative Literature
*
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The Department of English
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The Department of History
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The Program in the Study of Women and Gender
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The School of Electrical Engineering
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The Writing Program

Spring 2012  91
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Order back issues of the Nassau Literary Review:
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New York Chapbook Fellowship, and Professor C.K. Williams
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Spring 2012 Issue - Nassau Literary Review

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