Chronicle 2016 No. 5

Ignite
Ignite (v.)-to set on fire; to spark a flame
Welcome to Ignite.
We burn with the power of literary fire
We spark imagination everywhere
TABLE
OF
CONTENTS
We set fire to your minds
We kindle your inspiration
The End by Isabel Niforatos………...page 4
WE fuel your creativity
Dreamscape by Gabriel Niforatos…...page 7
We make the pen a blazing torch
Snowflake by Isabel Niforatos……....page 8
Street Angel by Gabriel Niforatos…...page 9
So go ahead. Turn the page.
Ignite your creativity...
Narcotic Angel by Isabel Niforatos....page 10
No Rain by Isabel Niforatos………...page 11
The Valley of Shivering Leaves by
Gabriel Niforatos…………………….page 13
Candle by Gabriel Niforatos…….......page 18
Flame by Gabriel Niforatos………....page 19
Puppet by Isabel Niforatos…………..page 20
My best friend by Isabel Niforatos…..page 21
Nothing is as it seems reads by
Isabel Niforatos……………………....page 22
2
Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451
M.C. Escher
Dali The Persistence of Memory
Rene Magritte
Inception
Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Grey
Edgar Allan Poe The Raven
The Game
nothing is as it seems
Gaston Leroux The Phantom of the Opera
Shakespeare King Lear
Richard Powers Galatea 2.2
Umberto
Eco-Foucalt’s Pendulum
Red
Orhan Pamuk, My Name is
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Tom Stoppard Rosencrantz and Guilden-
stern are Dead
Charles Dickens The Law-
yer and the Ghost
Alfred Hitchcock
Christopher Nolan
The Prestige
Vladimir Kush
O. Henry
3
The End
Isabel Niforatos
I remember the cold spray paint that sliced through my impenetrable skin.
Cutting crude things onto my greyness. Symbols and signs. Unbeautiful. I don’t
remember the rain or the hail or the snow-except in passing. The humans were the
ones that touched me, the ones that painted over and laughed at me. The ones
who burned their stories and carved their initials into my perpetually bleeding
skin. The ones that stepped on me.
A high school girl, eyes like winter, fingerprints like splinters of ice digging
into my skin. She told me the truth. That I was a means to an end, arched over
the watery reflection of their tiny lives. She whispered to me, almost bruised her
fingertips with their pressure on me. Stared into the water and stared into the sky
and kicked her leg over the abyss below her.
I am forever. I am old and young. Rainy and cold and stone. Watercolors
and sharp oils and acrylics and R.S.K.s and A.O.+J.L.L.s. I don’t cry for anybody.
The snow and ice will freeze over me and girls with eyes like winter can peer over
me into the water and I will not cry. I am silent and ageless. Because if I let myself cry for one moment, then it would never stop. Because I don’t exist as a safe
way across the shimmering, deadly water.
I am the gateway to the shimmering, deadly water.
4
The winter. Icicles drip off of me. My back is arched against the
wind, praying for warmth or fire. She sits on me again, doesn’t say anything this
time. In her hand is a hospital bracelet. I wonder what it means. I don’t ask. She
doesn’t tell me. We have reached a silent agreement, me-leaving my cold curved
edges for her to lean against, dreaming and hoping. Her-serving as my company,
dreaming and hoping. Pretending she can’t see my frozen tears. Me-pretending
that I can’t see her bruises and scars from her wrists to her elbows. The hospital
bracelet, with her (maybe) name on it.
I wonder if anybody will come and save her. Last time I saw her, nobody
came. She stared and stared down and waited and waited and chewed her lip and I
could hear her thoughts, waiting for somebody to pull her back. I wanted to. I
wanted to tip and roll until she fell onto the street and then I would build my walls
so high and impregnable that nobody would fall over my edge again. But I can’t.
And this is why we’re such good company for each other. Because we are both
unhappy and we are both unable to do anything about it.
Until. She leaves again, and when she comes back, she is thinner. A ghost,
a skeleton, a creature. Her fingers are bones and her eyes are empty sockets and
she bends over the deep, deep, shallow water and her hands uncurl and her breath
falls like splintering rain drops of glass, pinging the water below. Ping. Ping.
Ping.
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Her bare feet slip over the edge, she holds me one last time, comforts me
that it isn’t my fault. That it is never my fault. That she will go and many after
her will go and I will stay, but that that is okay. But it’s not. And then she’s gone.
I feel her fall. A fallen angel, a snowflake, tumbling and twirling and spinning and not impacting the water at all but slowly sliding out of sight. Water
rushing over her, in her, out of her. Hands that refuse to disappear from sight,
caught in the current. We are separate because she is now able to escape and I am
not. But as I watch the flashing lights drip over me like unwanted intruders and
as I watch the frail body retrieved from the water and as I watch her unblinking
eyes, her unbreathing lungs, her unbeating heart, I am overcome with sadness.
My frozen tears still will not fall. I can’t cry for anybody. The snow and ice will
freeze over me and girls with eyes like winter will say goodbye and fall over me
into the water and I cannot cry. But I know that she didn’t escape after all. That
before and now, we are the same. Unable to cry, unable to escape. Unable to die.
Because I will remember her. And because I have always known-it is not alright
to stay while so many others go.
“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he'll tell you the truth”
― Oscar Wilde
6
dreamscape
gabriel niforatos
five-star Marriott watches over the pillars of creation.
it’s dark, I almost thought the flickering light on the fifth floor was Sirius.
but a light bulb told me its incandescence when it sputtered out.
i think I laughed,
the truth is that the hotel hides the belt of Orion,
a pure black parking lot is the black hole that is the focus of the galaxy.
i swear, if you watch closely,
it seems like the hotel sinks in the quicksand of collapsing gravity.
first the first floor fades in a quantum ripple,
the lobby departs, a grand pull-through to glass doors and a fountain disappears.
second, third, and fourth, yawn and sink below the puddle
gone the floor with the pulsar that wasn’t true.
i see the letters of the hotel reflected in the current of the parking lot, disappeared.
dark prism of the forgotten hotel is replaced by
an ocean of uncharted constellations blurred floating in the sky.
up on the fire-escape of clouds
i see stars
i see dreams
"Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision."
— Salvador Dalí
7
snowflake
Isabel Niforatos
i am born on his hot skin
a tear dripping like his wax feathers-Icarus
falling because he dreamt
because he dared to dream
i am tossed through the steel-crystal clouds
burning into ice and symmetry
so so cold as i
tumble down the rabbit hole
of grey-white checkerboard skies
splintering with his promise to be free
breaking with the life he never meant to give me
confused because i live from his sorrow
am alive with his death
a fallen angel retreating into myself
as the wind strokes me with harsh glass fingers
making me bleed my life force and go
numb
with the sensation of my icy wings breathing in the
coldness
the pain of existence as a reflection
reflecting my companions sifted like me through a sea of air
emptiness
ashes dreaming of fire
snowflakes dreaming of impact
asphalt burning through my lungs
leaking through me seeping into me until i
end the way i began
a tear streaked from sadness into
death
and i die like my creator
wishing for more and remembering
the beautiful lonely stained-glass agony
of being alive
"One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the
world of dreams."
— Salvador Dalí
8
Street Angel
Gabriel Niforatos
I can’t tell if its tears
Or the gathering of puddles
From a light post above his head.
Is that a signpost in rotting fingers,
Or a road-sign of wet atoms and flaky cardboard?
I can’t tell if those are spiky wings on his back,
Or just a raggedy black sweatshirt
Haloed in a pool of light.
I can’t tell if he’ll fly away,
Or just freeze in motion like a half-melted icicle.
Is that his hair or a cloud that fell here,
Crashed and changed phases on his body.
Is that his body?
I almost couldn’t tell,
It looks like a streetlight
Without blinking lights.
I pass the quiet, loud, silent lights on a corner,
The corner.
Was he there at all?
I can’t tell.
“A mask tells us more than a face.”
― Oscar Wilde
9
Narcotic Angel by Isabel Niforatos
10
No rain
Isabel Niforatos
He did it to escape. The look in his son’s eyes, haunting him. The look in the doctor’s
eyes as he diagnosed him. The pity that people gave so freely, that he wanted nothing to do
with. So he had to. He had to escape. The stillness is what shocks him most, that feeling in
the bottom of his stomach, warning him how far he is from home.
He can take the loneliness, the blackness that gathers and pools in the windows like ink.
The pinpricks of whiteness, so far and so dim, though they burn his eyes sometimes. He can’t
remember how he came here, so far from earth. Come to think of it, he can’t remember much
of anything from before. Only photograph flashes of his disappointed son, the paper with that
word, marking him as unwanted, diseased, ashamed.
That day, he walked home. Didn’t drive. The doctor told him he couldn’t drive anymore. So he walked, the sidewalk cold and unforgiving under his shoes. Or feet. He can’t remember what he was wearing that day. And then he escaped. Somehow. Somewhere. Into
the dark comfort of the cold room, drifting like a star through the blackness of the unknown.
He brought the letter with him, but he can’t find it now. Maybe he got rid of it. He should
have gotten rid of it. Now he isn’t sure of what it said.
He closes his eyes, remembering the beauty of the lurking asteroids, stars, galaxies outside of
his window. And the swirl of blue and white in a sphere that represents something like home.
Like a children’s game, with the marbles that clink against each other. He smiles, remembering the satisfying clink. Clink clink. Clink. Yes, he loved that sound. Clink clink. Maybe it’s
the rocket. Malfunctioning. The sound resonates in his head, tormenting him. What is it?
What is that sound? Clink clink clink rain. Hail. Tumbling on the tin roof of the rocket,
11
except there is no rain is space. He taps his fingers on his knees, imitating the rhythm.
Clink? Like a question…?
He slowly walks to the window, presses his fingers against the glass. Cold emanating
from it in electromagnetic chills. Something burns his eyes, something foreign. Its name…The
opposite of darkness-fire on the other side of the translucent material that his hand is suddenly
on though he can’t remember how why clink clink like rain tumbling but there is no rain he did
it to escape the look in his son’s-----------
The cerulean and silver swirls resembling representing something like home. Surrounded and cradled by the blackness of the unknown.
He does not find it beautiful anymore.
“Memory is an illusion, nothing more. It is a fire that needs constant tending.”
― Ray Bradbury, A Pleasure to Burn: Fahrenheit 451 Stories
12
The Valley of Shivering Leaves
Gabriel Niforatos
The Valley of Shivering Leaves is a dreamy place. Creeks froth and bubble over smooth
stones. The gray bark of the aspens huddle close together from the perpetual autumn of the valley. Each morning, a thin fog rests like a wedding veil on soft, damp earth.
But the true nature and mystique of the valley lies in its leaves. The blowing, flying, red
and purple leaves that will not commit to winter’s death, but have reluctantly passed through
spring’s freshness. The valley is filled with these leaves, which sigh and turn on the gales.
There are tales from the villagers of the valley that speak of the strange eulogy sung by
the leaves. A mourning moan that does not sound unlike the mahogany notes of the violin.
There are also tales of villagers who wander into the depths of the forest by night. They
are never found again, disappeared into the reddish haze of dreams created by the leaves.
I am an old man now. I have witnessed the coming and passing of many seasons; I, myself, have passed into the winter of our brief lives. I have seen and heard many legends and
myths, so I was not surprised at the host of these when I arrived at the Valley of Shivering
Leaves.
I am an honest and simple man, I came to cut timber and to pass the rest of my days in a
tranquil place. Even though I cut down trees, I revere nature and its wonders to behold. I am
living in a sweet scented wood cabin between two wooded hills, and a blanket of stars may be
witnessed each night if one has the courage to turn their eyes heavenward.
13
It is a feast to the eyes, but I confess that a great weight rests on my soul. A burden
more than a full load of wood presses down on my shoulders.
The trees, the brooks, the hills. Everything is waiting. I sense that the entire valley is
holding its breath. Is it waiting for the cold of winter? Does it wish it could be young and green
again, rejoicing in the arms of spring?
I have lived in the valley a short while, but I am uneasy in my dreams. I dream of the
gloom of forest paths and running feet. Darkness is ahead, all around, surrounding me. A lantern that burnt out many paces ago is cast aside, the glass smashed. Feet drag through rivulets
and creeks, leaving a trail of damp wetness through the wooded slopes.
And everywhere, the swirling, rushing, whipping, floating, the dancing yet sighing,
leaves. And then I wake up. My fire is cold, the timbers look the snow-colored gray of a dying
fire. I think there is something than myth happening in this rustic, hazy, and time-forgotten valley of trees.
I walk among them now. An empty haversack for timber is tied to my back; my axe is
in my hand. I’m looking for strong full-bodied oaks to cut and load haul back to my cabin. The
thin bodies of the aspens surround me. I pick one and decide to cut it down. The iron-tipped
axe raises into the air, but then it falls.
A forest-crawling breeze sweeps toward me. A peculiar note is played in the branches
of all the leaves of the trees around me. A brief chill touches my neck with a frosty finger.
I touch the aspen. The breeze swirls faster. I raise my axe for the second time, and come down
with a hearty stroke. A strange silence fills the gaps between the trees, sits in a corner of my
heart. The tree falls, and the leaves are torn from its branches. A shrill cry of shimmering
14
leaves sounds from afar off. The forest alights. Hundreds of leaves from the fallen aspen blow around me, cover my feet, climb to my knees. The white glow of early morning has
become the bluish worry of a coming storm. The advance guard of icy drops of rain cut
through my coat. The gale is picking up force.
I quickly divide the aspen into my haversack and rush back to my cabin. The storm lasts
all day, ferocious spears of lightning light the whole valley. The rain patters on the wooden
walls of my cabin.
A dreaded cold now grips my body. I unpack my haversack and slowly place the aspen’s wood into my fireplace. I strike flint and try to ignite. Nothing happens. I try it again. A
terrible scent of decay and burning moss blows in my face. I light a small piece of wood and
place it next to the aspen. Nothing happens. I place my hand on the wood. Icy cold.
I sit back, bundled in my coat, and listen to the rain outside. My head nods and I fall
into a dreamy sleep.
Feet are tripping, slipping, falling. A storm angrily looks down, as trees whip and uproot. A chilly moan rises all around. Falling.
I start awake. The door to my cabin is open. The ancient scents of fall fill the room. I
gather myself and place my hand on the door. As I turn away, as my tired eyes turn inward, I
hear a whisper. I’m frozen. A whisper, silent yet above the force of the storm. The wind plays
mournful music in the high branches of the trees. But no, something more. My name. I hear my
name floating like a whisper on invisible wings. I’m drawn toward the forest. The haze pulses,
branches clear. My name on the wind. I pick up my gait. I’m running now. My name, always
ahead, always around, above my head. Twigs nap, the cabin disappears behind the trees.
15
I’m led toward rich brooks and beds of leaves that are dripping in the luscious
youth of middle forest grounds. The storm is forgotten, I grow tired, a thick heavy slumber on
my brow. I fall to my knees. My head lies on a pillow of leaves.
I stop, and then I realize. This is where I cut the aspen with my axe.
I jolt awake. The dent of the fallen tree, a coffin of an imprint in the dirt greets me.
A jolt of thunder! The trees are worried, they tilt and huddle from cold winds. No, not
worried. They are waiting, tense and watchful. Waiting for me.
I stand up, look with eyes wide to the branches with arms thrust to the sky. It is dark, a
night shroud made from a forest canopy. Where did I come from? The way is gloomy and hazy.
I can hear my name whispered again, screamed in torment at me down below. And I hear
shimmering, boiling cascades of leaves, roaring towards me as a waterfall of color. I run.
Darkness is ahead, all around, surrounding me. My lantern burnt out many paces ago; I
cast it aside. My feet trip and tumble, drag through burgeoning creeks choked by rainfall, leaving
a trail of damp wetness weaving through the wooded slopes.
I fall. Cruel branches rake my face, tear my coat. I land next to a boulder covered with a
beard of red and green lichen. I cannot move. Tree roots are chains that grip my arms and legs.
Moments pass, and the leaves are here. A cloud of them gather around me, form into hands and
fingers. The fingers touch me, and I feel a chill down to my heart.
I am changing. My face and limbs longer, crack like wood. Knobs and roots form, my skin turns
into a horrible gray. I can feel my arms reaching to heaven, but I am fallen. Eternal
16
autumn is upon me, and I am passed into its vices. A tree, ripped of its leaves, fallen in a
corner of forest valley.
There are tales in the valley that tell of the cries of mourning in the trees. You can hear
it, just listen. Rain kisses pools of water and ripples puddles of water like the fingers of children.
You may see a moon, rumpled, compressed, and rippling.
The rain dies after time. But ripples still caress the puddle. A wind, moaning and weeping with a burden of quavering leaves gushes in pockets of air, pushing the water and sighs, disappearing entirely into dark woods.
All that remains is the dirge of sadness from the autumn leaves that float and fly, here in
the Valley of Shivering Leaves.
"Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see, but
it is impossible. Humans hide their secrets too well...."
— René Magritte
17
Candle
Gabriel Niforatos
By the time I begin, I am already old,
Ripened and seasoned for the death of my beginning
Waxed and scented into pristine form
I am a Porcelain Tower four inches high.
I was born to burn,
Flames that lick and dance upon walls shall be my liberty.
Yes, my purpose is to burn,
Flickering flames are my story.
On a mantle or beside a bed,
I wait for cold eternity to feel the kiss of fire.
The burning sun at last yawns and is overcome by a waxy moon.
It is time to die
I see a whisper of fire approaching me,
And I am afraid.
Afraid of windy nights and darkness in star light,
Afraid of blazing cold fire overwhelming me, destroying me, defining me.
The flames embrace me, and I want to scream from the pain.
Silence
And the fire spreads like a thought, overcoming me.
I think.
I was born to burn, and fire has made me beautiful.
I dance and shift, fade and turn, an orb of light fighting the night.
Even as the flame tumbles down,
As perfect wax melts under this burden,
A clipped wick bows and chars,
I realize that fire does not define me,
I define fire.
18
I sacrifice a flawless being for the consuming lights,
The hungry, devouring, beautiful horrible creature cradled in my arms,
So hot it hurts, but illuminating my body as never before.
I burn from the inside out, and I can feel death approaching,
But I dance and dance as the fire burns quickly down.
And at last, when it is time for me to go,
And fade out gently into the air,
A sigh of smoke pointing to the heavens,
Or I am blown out by a quick breath,
I die into my beginning,
Blackened and covered in ash,
Cold but ready to feel the healing fire.
"What I give form to in daylight is only one per cent of what I have seen in darkness."
Flames
Gabriel Niforatos
— M.C. Escher
19
Isabel Niforatos
Puppet
A monster pressed to the glass like a leaf pressed between two pages. It is shadow and ghostly bone and
dark, dark blood. Its talons
c
r
a
c
k
the glass into spider webs of lines. Its mouth moves with
grotesque whispers, seeping into your being. You can’t cry. You can’t live or die or hope when it appears. It is
the ventriloquist and you are the marionette.
Your strings pull you upright when you want to crumple like burning newspaper. You twirl and dance
like a ballerina of death, your skull ripping through your skin in so many pinpricks of white blood. Your feet
cross a tight-wire rope as tears gather their salt on your numb lips. Your limbs tingle with monstrous motions, a
whirling blur of black and grey-a vintage photograph.
You speak, but you don’t know what you say or mean. The words are a violin for your trembling fingertips to swim across until they swell and bleed. Music pours through your glassy figure like blood, filling you,
seeping out of your pores. Changing you.
You bow, your tendrils of hair brushing the chessboard tiles, imitating the tentacles of the creature pulling you back now. You forgot about it. It reaches toward its home of silvered glass, and murmurs to you. The
secret that you knew but tried to forget.
You created it.
You press your hand to your bare skin, now burning with hurt, your creation tearing at you from the
inside out. Your companion for the long, lonely nights when nobody would hold you or call your name which
you forgot so long ago. The ache overwhelms your heart like alcohol, and you beg to forget.
And your master, the puppet, kindly shows mercy.
You start to dance.
.“Here too it’s masquerade, I find:
As everywhere, the dance of mind.
I grasped a lovely masked procession,
And caught things from a horror show…
I’d gladly settle for a false impression,
If it would last a little longer, though.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
20
21
Nothing is as it seems
Don’t look back/Jennifer L. Armentrout
White Space/Ilsa J. Bick
The unbecoming of Mara Dyer/Michelle Hodkin
Dangerous Lies/Becca Fitzpatrick
The Rules for Disappearing/Ashley Elston
Nearly Gone/Elle Cosimano
Conjured/Sarah Beth Durst
Blackbird/Anna Carey
Dead girls don’t lie/Jennifer Shaw Wolf
Before I fall/Lauren Oliver
Incarceron/Catherine Fisher
Black Ice/Becca Fitzpatrick
All the broken pieces/Cindi Madsen
The dead list/Jennifer L. Armentrout
Unwind
Neal Shusterman
Dope Sick/Walter Dean Myers
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