Winter 2013

Transcription

Winter 2013

The Lyceum, as an educational institution, functioned as the locus of
the collective talent, ingenuity, and intellect of Ancient Greece.
Since 1971, Lyceum at the University of Michigan-Dearborn has
echoed this ideal tradition by serving as the showcase for the creative talents
of writers and artists within the university community. The journal features
poetry, short fiction, non-fiction, drama, photography and artwork submitted by students, alumni, faculty, and staff. Submissions, which retain their
anonymity during the rating process, are critiqued individually by the staff
and editors. Along with the publication of the journal, Lyceum exhibits local
flavors of art and poetry with various on and off-campus events and shows.
Editor-in-Chief
Publishing Editor
Marketing Editor
Events Editors
Faculty Advisor
Pamela Satchwell
Elizabeth Willis
Keysha Wall
Meriam Metoui
Valerie Mercier
Tija Spitsberg
Staff members: Thomas Kamrad, Mariam Mustafa, Marissa Petitpas, Michel
Turcas, Marc Weinschenker
Winter 2013 Volume 41, Number 2
Table of Contents
Poetry & Prose
Elizabeth Bastian
Aretha
Maryann Rafka
1
4
6
8
Kristen Dage
Neon Spectrum
9
Jassmine Parks
The Blame Game
Maniac
10
13
Nicole Jankowski
Morocco
Lions and Tigers and...Cougars
Magic
15
16
19
Marissa Petitpas
Punctuated Equilibrium
37
Rachel Tousignant
Shopping in Spain
Prologue
38
41
Nouhad Alame
A remnant of yours
42
Stephanie Knight
Titanic
The Coffee Bar
Rough Waters
The New Ozymandias
43
44
48
51
Marc Weinschenker
Envy
Pawn Stars
53
54
Rachel Olson
On Our Way to Chicago
55
Mariam Mustafa
Listen;
Little Notes
I said God Damn
58
59
76
Derek Juntunen
How to Become a Plagiarist
When Demons Shout Down the Better Angels
77
81
Jonathan Maltz
To Play Drums at a Party
Herald of the Storm
83
85
Sabrina Bolvari
Träume (eins)
Träume (zwei)
Modernity
Assumptions of the Older Ones (Part 2)
88
89
90
91
ii Lyceum
Malek Elmadari
Layal
Broken
108
110
Sarah Lewis
Man v. Self
Playing House
111
112
Jillian Lewczynski
Baby Rachel
Don’t Even Blink
114
117
120
Justin McBride
Family Ties
121
Laura Sanchez
Math for Literature Geeks
123
Meriam Metoui
It crashed in waves
124
Yvette Steggell
Passionate Inferno
125
Pamela Satchwell
126
Eman Elshaikh
128
Charles Toeppe
A CONCEPTUALLY CREATED
REALITY OF RULES AND WORDS INITIAL STATE
129
Artwork
Faysal Houtait
What Tangled Webs We Weave
Open Up to Me
Tall Drink of Water
You Spin Me Right Round
21
22
23
24
Connor Winton
Terrestrial Tots
25
Courtney Bishop
Row
Sky Fire
Seakeeping
26
27
28
Raina K. Patel
Flouresce
Noir
Florabotanica
29
30
31
William Aston
Joe’s Fist
Rack’em Up
Las Paris
32
33
34
Keysha Wall
It’s Almost Its Own Language
Fir
An Intimate Portrait of Our Insides
The Complacency of Pain
35
36
60
61
The Literary and Fine Arts Journal
iii
MiahLaNae Ward
Neighborhood River
R.I.P. Little Mariah
62
63
Amelia R. Stachowicz
Study of a Skull in Green
Ignite
64
65
Ather Musallam Tabook
Sky’s Anger
66
Michael Coppa
5 Feet From the Sun
Castle in the Sky
Cave of Flames
Lucid Dreams
Self Portrait
The Dragon and the Sea
Trance
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
Laura Nowak
Reflection
Asylum
74
75
Muna Ismail
Bird Set Free
Marilyn Monroe
Najwa Karam
92
93
94
Vivian White
Study of Poetry Figure
Study of Rubens’ Lion
95
96
Chihiro Fukai
Aqua Seafoam
97
Ian D. Tran
Night Blurs in D.C.
What an Ash!
98
99
Asia Jayne McArdell
Lonely Light
The Great Glass Elevator
100
101
Meriam Metoui
Framed
Falling Up and Growing Down
102
103
Eman Elshaikh
Prisms
Bound
Bliss
Smoke
104
105
106
107
Special Sections
Contributors
133
Acknowledgments
138
About Lyceum
139
Cover art: An Intimate Portrait of Our Insides, Keysha Wall
iv Lyceum
Letter from the Editor
Dear Readers,
Thank you for picking up this volume of the Lyceum. This particular
journal was a fantastic collaboration. So many new people submitted their
art and prose to us, and we couldn’t be more thankful to have such a growing interest from the campus.
It’s always the most interesting process to see the art that people on
this campus can produce. It’s such high quality, emotional work. Please stay
encouraged to create art and share it with us.
Lyceum has always been a place of comfort for me since I’ve come to
this campus. Through reading the journal, becoming an editor, and having
the opportunity to be editor-in-chief; Lyceum has been a constant throughout
my college experience as a source of love. I hope that the Lyceum can bring
you the same feeling of happiness and beauty that it’s brought to me through
the last few years.
This particular volume is sad for me, since it’s the last one I’ll be part
of. I think that the quality is so high in this journal, and the dedication from
the people who come into the office and work is lovely to be a part of.
Thank you for your interest. Thank you for your art. Thank you for
your words.
Yours,
Pamela Satchwell
Editor-in-Chief
v
Elizabeth Bastian
Aretha
We had been fighting.
It was that awkward time of life. Not the trials of thirteen, or
the agonies of sixteen, but the indecision and overwhelming business of
twenty-something’s. Classes, jobs, and extracurriculars. We willingly, selfdestructively, over-booked ourselves in the hopes that if we made ourselves
too busy to think, we could forget about the impending arrival of the Real
World. We could pretend it wasn’t coming, covering our ears and shouting
our protests.
We were desperately trying to avoid the awful truth that Neverland
isn’t real, and we all are doomed to become like Wendy.
Our lives were reduced to a perpetually flipping calendar in which
we simply listed our commitments without committing to each other.
Can you blame us? Can we blame each other? What can be said for
us, for two kids who had woken up one day in an adult’s body without an
instruction manual? Neither of us had any clear idea of where we were going. How could we? Were we even supposed to?
We were frightened of the future. Lost in a sea of confusion, trying to
hang on to what we had. But did we even know, did we know what we had?
Things were better than they had been. We had talked, yelled, cried, argued,
and made up. Shower/rinse/repeat. But such a dynamic is exhausting to the
soul.
We were trying; really, we were. Trying to put the pieces back together, of something we hadn’t even realized could be broken. We sat there,
using technology to hide our unattachment. Somehow, those conversations
were easier than simply looking up at one another. We had crossed the wide
and bottomless gulf, but we couldn’t stop staring down into the abyss.
We were still gathering our footing. We were still learning, you see. Learning
about the other person, and how they were. How they were with the self, my
self, your self. I am you is he is me is she is her and we are all together.
I don’t quite remember whose decision it was to listen to records that night,
but the decision was nevertheless made. The collection was browsed, an album selected. The light cardboard was pushed apart, the thin sheet of paper
slid off. The dust was blown off the ridged circle of past decades.
And then…and then…her.
The record player lid closed, the needle glided across the plastic
base, and the vinyl containing the grooves of the greatest soul of the ages
began to dance its repetitive circle. Slowly, slowly, sadly, smoothly, the vocals traveled up and over the symphony of strings and brass, filling the room
with an indescribable emotion.
1 Lyceum
Aretha.
She was sultry, she was feminine, she was strong and by God, could
she sing. Not just sing, but create. She manipulated her voice as someone
would a finely-tuned, luxury automobile. Speed it up, rein it in, more power,
a clean stop.
We made eye contact. Reflected in the dark pools of our eyes was the
same expression. We looked at each other, and saw disbelief. We saw understanding. We saw hope.
We couldn’t resist the pull. We slowly got up, gently placed our
connections to the outside world aside, and entered into her world, Aretha’s
world. It was the kind of world that asked nothing of you, that you didn’t
even know you were entering. Her crooned words wrapped us up in an empathetic cloak of wisdom and protection. Without really knowing what we
were doing, we assumed the position. One hand goes into mine, the other on
the waist. And we did something we had never done before – we danced.
We swayed. We twisted. We rocked. We spun. As the tempo
changed, so did we. We let her lyrics wash over us, renewing the selves we
thought we had and had somehow discarded. Her songs took on an entirely
new meaning as she reached something in both of us that night.
I had heard that music could touch the soul, but I never expected
Aretha to find our souls and remind us that they existed.
Every single track resonated deeply with my ever-racing thoughts.
She freed something in us that night. I’m not sure what it was that bound
us, be it chains of uncertainty or fear, inhibitions, perhaps a heavy dose of
reality. She lifted the weight of our shoulders and carried it away on a stream
of musical melodies. We glided about the small room, giggling like school
children. This was pure joy, sprung from a long-forgotten era where words
meant something and music even more so. She brought us out of a dark
place, protecting us all the while. She made us feel something we thought had
been long gone, maybe had never even been there in the first place.
Because, see, no one can sing about love ‘til they’ve been through
hell and back. And honey, let me tell you, Aretha knows about love. She
knows about that ache you get in the pit of your stomach, that melting of all
worries and cares when you are in their arms. She knows about those moments where you feel as though nothing can touch you, and those moments
where you feel as though you are forever broken. She knows about the give
and the take, the mend and the break. She knows how to hold on to yourself
when you are with someone else. She knows what is important. She knows
how to fight for what you believe in, even if you are unsure what you want.
Aretha gave us the courage we needed to continue. Her omniscient
vocals gave us a glimpse of something better out there, spelling out the
message of hard work for those you care about. She was the missing puzzle
piece. She was our saving grace.
We were no longer frightened of our emotions. We were no longer
frightened of the road ahead of us. Because we knew the secret. She told us,
2
and we knew.
I know that I will probably never be able to thank her for what she
did that night, for the lessons she taught us; that hometown funky fresh Detroit Queen of Soul, the Mistress of R&B, the Mother of new-fangled Jazz. But
in a way, I know there isn’t a need to.
She already knows.
3 Lyceum
Maryann Rafka
I think we’re all the same.
We’ve all spent hours in front of a mirror
trying to look perfect for someone.
We’ve all been ignored
by someone we want to love.
We’ve all been loved,
even if we’ve never known it.
And in the nighttime,
when it gets dark
and the quiet is so quiet
no one dares to think
to disturb the silence,
we all stay up
and look at the stars
and think of the person looking at the same star,
and imagine them to be our soulmate.
I don’t know if I believe in a soulmate.
But I do think there are people who are in our lives
for a reason,
and who are meant to stay.
I rarely smile anymore.
Instead I carved smiles on my skin
and showed you
and asked you if I was beautiful.
You cried
and asked me why I ruined perfection
and the butterfly knife living inside of me
made its way out
to scar me even more,
to fly out of its cage.
I would’ve tried for you.
I would’ve put down the blades
and cried out my sadness
and pulled out my heart
just to show you
it’s still beating.
Sometimes I like to listen to it beat
while the words scattered on pages in front of me
4
dance into letters for you.
Maybe you’ll never know all the things I want to say,
but if you ever ask
I’ll say
I’m sorry
and I wish you were here
holding me
because these nights,
they get so lonely.
I hope wherever you are today,
you think about me for just a second.
I hope you’ve wanted to call me
but couldn’t find the courage.
I hope you’re forcing yourself to not talk to me
because I’m doing the same.
Here,
you can have all your books.
You can have your photographs
and letters
and phone calls
and text messages
and kisses
and hand holdings
and everything else we’ve shared.
But I’ll keep the music mix you gave me.
I paid attention to all the lyrics.
I could love you for a thousand years as well.
Maybe if you were still here.
Maybe.
5 Lyceum
Maryann Rakfa
This is a poem for the girl sitting alone on a bus
that took her from home to Chicago
and back.
She let everyone else on before she found her seat.
She was a gentleman in a world
where ladies can be men
and can be beautiful
at the same time.
This is for the sad people
who hate waking up on Christmas morning
because they have no one
to give presents to.
This is for the boy who never once told a girl
she wasn’t enough.
This is also for the boy who never hid his feelings,
even if it meant he found himself
holding back tears in the bathroom
when he got rejected.
This is for people moving to big cities
and those who wish to leave
because they understand how alone it can be
to live in a city with millions of strangers.
This is for the razor blades I haven’t looked at
in months.
This isn’t a poem.
This is a dedication to life.
Life is filled with children crying beneath the weight
of their parents’ anger.
On every corner
there are people with broken hearts.
We all know someone
who loves someone else.
I can hear the screams coming from inside the rib cages
of everyone I meet
6
who would sit me down for hours
to tell their story
simply because no one has ever asked.
Ask.
Carve their names into your tongue
and repeat every word you heard
until everyone knows everyone
is hurting.
The person you look up to,
the one you idolize
and want to be like
and love the most
has skeletons hidden within their skin
they won’t ever show,
has a hammer they call a heart
and it beats nails into their skin
to put up pictures of
home.
Today is the day to let go of your inhibitions.
Make a friend.
Give someone a reason to smile.
Make them happy
for once
so tonight they don’t go home
and pull out their tools
to build a coffin
they will nail shut tomorrow.
Give them a reason to wake up in the morning.
They might do the same for you.
7 Lyceum
Maryann Rafka
You are 1 A.M. text messages
when I’m trying to sleep.
You’re bitter coffee
and raspberry stains on the kitchen cupboard.
You’re the poem I find in everything I see.
You’re the kisses
I never thought I wanted.
You’re the alcohol I tried to turn down.
You’re the sound of my mother’s voice
crying
when she finds out who I’ve become.
You’re a language that hasn’t been invented,
but I still want to learn;
to memorize your curves
and grammar
and how you spell certain words.
You’re stolen books.
You are forever
tapping at my bedroom window
tonight.
I’m afraid to open,
but I’m more afraid to not open.
You might never come back
8
Kristen Dage
Neon Spectrum
in an excited state
from a high voltage electric field
is this a frenzied fancy
or do i see
rose pink beside that orange red glow
and yet
with those bright colors
nothing compares
can compare
casually or compositionally
to the sublime spectrum
for me it is
serendipitous with the stars
xylophonic i think
is the word i would use
whenever i choose
to think
about the way i would run
my hands along that
tri dimensional line
running across in my mind
awesome inspiring avidly bright
avian in hue maddening light
epic bereft of dactyls
drowning delight
majestically splendiferous
each color
bursts in my mind
9 Lyceum
Jassmine Parks
The Blame Game
I BLAME YOU
Biological mother
For pimping out your children’s soul
And sucking a crack pipe’s dick: prostituting your spirit just to get a fix
One hit
After another (to fulfill a void and escape)
But where were you mother?
When I deserved to be loved and only received hate
My heart raped
And beaten like a whore
You were nowhere to be found
At age 12, I found you in a prison cell
You were locked down for 17 ½ years
Over that time span you had never wiped a single tear
And now that you’re out, my loyalty has only been matched by lies and
more abandonment
And my heart is fragile- so careful handling
But you have dropped it and let it fall into a million pieces, laughing at all
the damages
I BLAME YOU
Adoptive mother
I shudder
At the fact that you never wanted me
Never hugged me
Never kissed me
Never told me that you love me
And you’re my great aunty
All because my grandma killed my granddad (who happened to be your
brother) before I was even born
Cursed me like a child of the corn
Barely raised me, didn’t like me and now, just like you, my bitterness has
made me a woman scorned
Never understood you reasoning in getting me (outside of monetary)
Just to have me bounced around
To other people who thought that I was a burden and was not legally bound
And the further you pushed me away
The more that I pray
That one day
You will open up you heart for me
10
Instead of treating me like an aborted fetus that has miraculously survived
I just wish that you’d call and show interest in me and my daughter’s life
And I BLAME YOU
Siblings
Where the fuck were ya’ll
When I needed to be protected from all the evils in the world
When I was being mentally, physically and sexually abused as a young girl
I guess ya’ll were living your own lives
Too busy to be concerned with mine
And the reason that I cry
Too busy to show me guidance when I was lost
Clinging to a mother who steered clear of me as though I was putrid regurgitation
You guys weren’t there to talk about puberty and infatuation
Love and sex
Anything
Just left me to fend for myself
I BLAME
Boys
For playing with my emotions as though I was a toy
Testing my insecurities
Taking advantage of my low self-esteem and gullibility
Stripping me of my clothes, my innocence and dignity
Laying on my back
For you because love lacked
Loving you
Because I need for you to need me, want me and ultimately love me
Not lie and thieve
Steal my heart and taint it by mischief
Feeling as though I can never win
Giving all of me to you, abandoning self in itself is a sin
And I BLAME YOU
GOD!
For creating me
To be thrown into this bullshit
I know that I must be created for a purpose
But why must I have to endure so much hurting
I can’t communicate
Stay afraid
Harbor hate
I can’t trust
Can’t love
When will be my time to rise above?
My time to soar
To heaven, can I at least reach the door?
11 Lyceum
Can’t hate being selfish because I hate being helpless
You said that you would never put anything on me that I couldn’t bear
And even though I’m still here
I’m beat down
I’m NOT JOB
Allow me to be free
Allow me to experience both joy and peace
Because I don’t want to repeat history
Where are you at?
But MOST of ALL
I BLAME
MYSELF
For being so weak
Fighting these battles that consume me
Accepting defeat
Bearing and bringing forth the most beautiful being
And you know what’s fucked up about the whole thing
I have to teach her love and patience and strength- things that I know nothing about
I must teach her out of my brokenness
And hoping it (fingers crossed)
Will work out for the best
And I’m disappointed because I feel as though I may be failing life’s test
I want to live in a fantasy world- to myself I’m lying
I want to throw in the towel because I’m tired of fighting
I need a dam to stop these waterfalls of tears because I’m tired of crying
Tired of trying
Wishing that I could run away from myself and everything else
Coming back to reality
That I have power over my life and destiny
I pray that I grow and mature in my identity while trying to stay sane
And sow myself into a love that may overcome this
BLAME GAME
12
Jassmine Parks
Maniac
He’s a maniac, maniac in my heart
And he has a tendency to control my soul
He’s a maniac, maniac and he’s crazy
So believe me when I say that he’s pyscho
Like Tony Montana said:
“Another quelude and she’ll love me in the morning”
Along with another bruise over her heart
And another one over her eye
Her lips swol’
That she barely spoke
Her nose broke
And did I fail to mention the addition of fractured bones
And she don’t trust the police because don’t work for the po’
She has NO family
NO friends
And NOWHERE to go
She refuses to go to the women’s shelter because of the overcrowding
And there they TREAT YOU LIKE ANIMALS
ANIMALS have more of a soul and rights than she do
(ANIMALS have more of a soul and rights than she do)
Cannibals eating away at each other like a cheap pack of Ramen noodles
This truth is shown in the commercials
That displays the abused dogs and cats
Refusing to display the black eyes, injuries and hospitalizations of women
and children
There is FEAR in SILENCE
There is COMPLICITY in SILENCE
SILENCE ENDORSES VIOLENCE
When will we value humanity?
Are we willing to protect all of society?
Where will we draw the line?
Saying:
It’s NOT her fault for getting her ass beat
It’s not her fault that he’s insecure and drinks
Or that he is hegemony in physical form and cheats
It’s definitely NOT her fault that it’s her heartache that he seeks
She has accepted ALL lies
Just to accept ALL love
13 Lyceum
“LOVE DON’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE”
She’s too sore
Too beaten
Too broken
Unfocused
Love’s hopes and dreams unravel like forgotten ribbons on pigtails from the
land of long ago and once upon a time
There’s no sadness
Just numb
There’s a void (a black hole) filled with nothing but empty
Empty
Emptiness
He’s a maniac, maniac and I love him
I just don’t have the courage to walk out the door
He’s a maniac, maniac and I’m broken
He holds me so tight that he won’t let me go
He’s a maniac, maniac
Someone please help me
14
Nicole Jankowski
Morocco
The train is rumbling, rumbling
and we are stumbling, stumbling
down sultry gas lit halls
fingers skimming blue cardboard walls.
It’s twenty seven drunken paces
fasten the door with your shoelaces
first class to Marrakech
two hundred miles bathe my flesh.
Kisses seasoned like a street bazaar
voices simmer from the dining car
my hand cups your mouth
Casablanca headed south.
And soon I am not your lover
not a wife or someone’s mother
I am all the land your hands can see
and the little hills you climb inside of me.
The curtains swell, blankets of ocean foam
native tongues from the hall drown my moan
the open window speaks of country left to roam,
to go with you is to always be home.
To go with you darling, is to always be home.
15 Lyceum
Nicole Jankowski
Lions and Tigers and...Cougars
I am sitting at the bar swilling my second cosmopolitan and contemplating a third when my date excuses himself to the men’s room. He puts his
fingers on the small of my back as he walks past and I have to plant my high
heels in my stool to steady myself, feeling woozy.
Was it his hand? Or the vodka? Both, I decide with conviction and
since the feeling is satisfying enough I signal the bartender.
“One more for this girl,” I say, raising my empty glass. Can I call
myself a girl? I contemplate quickly.
“Hmmm…” the bartender grumbles. Mr. Personality, he seems not. I
am suddenly conscious then, of the small lines around my mouth, my hands
and neck and breasts that say ‘I am not young, I am sleep-deprived, I’ve
nursed babies’.
“I’m here on a date. A fifth date.” I lean in over the bar conspiratorially. “I guess, I…I like him.” I half smile at him.
The bartender, who looks a bit like a werewolf in the dim restaurant
lighting, emits a half growl, half laugh and puts the new drink before me.
He watches me take a sip. He doesn’t speak, and I suddenly feel very small.
“I might be too old for this.” I whisper, hating in that moment how
vulnerable I sound.
“He likes you too.” Says Werewolf in a voice that is higher than I
imagined. I look up. “I see these things go down all the time. Dude likes
you.” I am intrigued and wish to question him further, but my date returns
from the bathroom.
“So,” I say a bit too brightly. “Our new friend here was just going
to answer a question for me.” I smile at Werewolf and then at my date, who
looks at us both quizzically. “Tell me---wait! What’s your name?”
“Jeff,” The Werewolf says, reaching over the bar to shake my hand.
“Jeff. Tell me how old is a ‘cougar’?” Both men turn and stare at me.
“A cougar, Jeff! Concentrate!” I clap my hands once. “How old does
a woman have to be before you’d call her a cougar?”
My date laughs nervously, but Jeff closes his eyes for a moment in
concentration. He looks zen-like. He is quiet for two full minutes in contemplation.
“Thirty-six.” Jeff answers in a voice that is eerily certain.
“Thirty-six?” My date repeats, incredulously. He looks at my face for
signs of trouble.
“Thirty-six.” I murmur, reflectively.
“No—that’s too young!” My date is watching me, but talking to the
bartender.
16
Jeff shakes his head sadly, as if my date is misinformed and he has
had to break the depressing news.
“Well. I-I’m not a cougar.” I try to sound more assured than I feel.
“Of course not!” My date puts his arm around me for a minute and
looks glaringly at our new friend.
“Sure.” But his face seems to say, ‘Poor Cougar doesn’t know she is
one’.
“How old are you?” Jeff asks, leaning in close to me, ready to appraise the situation. He studies my face.
“I’m thirty four.” I comprehend myself in the bar mirror and catch a
glimpse of my still blond curls, my thick lips. I am positively not old yet.
“Well…” Jeff wrinkles his brow in consideration.
“She is not a cougar!” My date is holding me tightly, as if to shield
me from the bartender’s words. “She is NOT!”
Jeff backs up and nods at me, unconvincingly. “Not a cougar…sure.
Not…yet.” He says the last part quietly.
“I don’t date young men. I am not lecherous. A cougar would date a
hot, young twenty-five year old, not a—a---” I look at my date and my voice
trails.
“Not a what?” My date turns to me. “Finish that thought.”
Jeff is closer than ever now. I’m squirming. Doesn’t he have a bar to
tend? Geesh!
“Yes, that’s true. A cougar wouldn’t go out with him.” He gestures
to my thirty-five year old date, who glowers.
Jeff is quiet. He is clearly thinking because his forehead is scrunched
up. It seems to be paining him to think so much.
My date is quiet. He is clearly irritated because he is scowling at Jeff.
I am quiet. Fuck this. I am clearly not a cougar.
I click my heels on the metal wrung of my stool. Click-clickclickclickclick, I-am-not-old-yet.
My date clears his throat and peers into his old-fashioned. Jeff wipes
down the counter and flips the channels ‘til he finds the baseball game. We
sit in silence listening to the starting lineup coming from the television.
I think about the way my date kissed me in the car when he saw me,
admired the way my ass looked in my blue jeans, and made me feel full of
youth and feverishly alive.
I put my hand on his knee and squeeze his leg. He doesn’t turn his
head, but I see the very small lines around his eyes crinkle and his mouth
turn up in a grin. He looks over at me then and leans in, presses his forehead
to mine.
“You are a young, sexy mama,” he whispers into my ear. I get goose
bumps down my neck.
Jeff watches us with his werewolf beard and rolls his eyes.
Why the hell do they call them “cougars” anyway? I wonder. Why
not Lions or Bears or...
17 Lyceum
“So,” I say, pointing to the television screen. “How about those Tigers?”
In the bar mirror, I see my date and I sitting side by side and both of
us are bright-eyed, smiling.
18
Nicole Jankowski
Magic
For five barren days there were no words, and then one morning,
suddenly, they were there.
As his old record player held her gently, with Chopin and with the
waning burn of his cigarette, she wore the fragile dress of grief. She sat at
her kitchen table and spoke about winter with the forked tree in the yard
across the street. Then she began.
But she couldn’t skate back down the icy river of November. She
couldn’t bear to see those failing wooden buildings that housed his little boy
smiles (his head tilted toward hers, bent in collusion). Nor could she bear to
let herself search the river banks for some small clue, a shiny coin or errant
glove waiting to explain the reasons why. Why wasn’t the problem anymore, anyway.
Anyway, she really was quite bad at remembering, bad at faces and
places. She couldn’t see pictures in her head at all. She had only this--- one
little magic drawn in with her first breath: the broken strains of phrases lived
in her fingertips. Everyone had a little bit of magic; the words were hers.
So it was her fingertips that spoke of him and she let them speak. They said:
He was generous.
He was kind.
He was sad.
He was gentle.
He was lonely.
He was bright.
He had promise.
He had light.
He was aimless.
He was hopeful.
He loved.
He was loved.
And when they were tired and seemed to have nothing more to say,
she let them rest.
She looked out the window for a few minutes more. She wondered
if first breaths and last breaths were the same, that magic in meant magic out.
19 Lyceum
Where did the magic come from? Where did it go?
She thought about asking the forked tree about this. But it looked so
tired. She understood about being tired.
So she sat in stillness instead and touched her fingertips to her eyes.
She waited patiently to see if more words would come.
Dedicated to my brother:
Christopher Thomas McIntyre
11/6/1982-11/22/2012.
20
Faysal Houtait
21 Lyceum
What Tangled Webs
We Weave
Photography
Faysal Houtait
Open Up to Me
Photography
22
Faysal Houtait
23 Lyceum
Tall Drink of Water
Photography
Faysal Houtait
You Spin Me Right
Round
Photography
24
Connor Winton
25 Lyceum
Terrestrial Tots
Pastel
Courtney Bishop
Row
Photography
26
courtney bishop
27 Lyceum
Sky Fire
Photography
courtney bishop
Seakeeping
Photography
28
Raina K. Patel
29 Lyceum
Flouresce
Digital Print
Raina K. Patel
Noir
Digital Print
30
Raina K. Patel
31 Lyceum
Florabotanica
Digital Print
William Aston
Joe’s Fist
Photography
32
William Aston
33 Lyceum
Rack’em Up
Photography
William Aston
Las Paris
Photography
34
Keysha Wall
35 Lyceum
It’s Almost Its Own Language
Digital
Keysha Wall
Fir
Digital
36
Marissa Petitpas
Punctuated Equilibrium
Crimson creed animal
I thought I said
You said
Claws break bonds
Like Adenine triphosphate in every cell
Of a corporeal form
Sever the ties that bide and bloom joy
Freedom comes at the cost of many melodies and murders
Where does a black heart begin to preform apoptosis?
Methods like muses
Ends like diamonds forged of extracted helixes
It’s a perversion of nature that is all too organic
Synapses pass the signals reluctantly
Truth is an acidic base
No amount of buffer can silence the black wolf’s voice
Regret loves company
The binding blooming chains are finally broken
Silence shifting scarlet scream
A predator is loose that wants nothing more than absolute freedom.
Absolute.
… the mirror on the wall
Doesn’t reflect the bite marks of the mind.
37 Lyceum
Rachel Tousignant
Shopping in Spain
Lydia rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling as she eagerly
tried to catch her breath. As the ecstasy of the love making began to wear off
she began to feel self-conscious of her naked body. She reached down and
pulled the crisp, white sheet over herself. She turned her head to glance at
her naked Latin lover who lay dazed beside her. He turned his head towards
her and smiled. He was so handsome that even his smile made her blush,
and in attempt to control it she bit her lower lip. He propped himself up on
his left arm, then reached out and brushed the escaped hair from her ponytail out of her face.
“That was amazing.” He said as he leaned in and placed his soft lips
against hers.
She blushed again and her heart suddenly began to pound so loud
that she feared he would hear it. Struggling with a witty reply, she settled
with, “I know, I hear that often.”
He threw his head back and laughed, tossing his shaggy dark hair
behind him and showcasing all of his perfectly straight, white teeth.
“You are one of a kind, Lydia.” And like the flip of a switch his
expression hardened. His dark eyes stared blankly into hers and his warm
smile turned to a frown.
He reached over and touched her face with his rugged hand, never
ceasing to break eye contact. She wondered what he was thinking, what had
changed his mood in the matter of seconds. She tried to find the answers in
his powerful eyes, but they stayed secretive. He jerked his arm away then sat
up, pulling the sheet up to his waist as he did. Her pounding heart slowly
sunk to the pits of her stomach. She lay perplexed and struggled to figure out
the reason for his sudden icy exchange.
“I can’t imagine you being in the arms of another, Lydia.” He responded to her unspoken question as he stared out the window. She too sat
up keeping the sheet close to her body.
Unsure of how to respond she refrained from saying anything. She
instead sat and stared at her beautiful Latin lover, soaking in every ounce of
his features as if she was memorizing them. His arms were strong yet lean,
indents revealing every sculpted muscle when he moved. His head was full
of wavy black hair, and his face was painted with stubble from neglecting
to shave for several days. His skin was naturally olive and dark curly hair
covered his strong chest.
He sharply turned his head, meeting her eyes once more. Her heart
leaped back up to her chest and once again rapidly began to beat. He reached
out and grabbed her hand and brought it to his lips.
38
“I feel guilty, Lydia,” he responded, as he looked deep into her eyes.
“For what? You have done nothing wrong,” she quickly said, caught
off guard by his response.
“Yes I have, I have trespassed on the property of another man’s.”
Lydia broke her gaze and stared down at her bare left hand. Where were her
wedding rings? She thought to herself. She didn’t remember taking them off,
she should have felt worried and panicked, but she felt nothing. She didn’t
even remember how the two of them got here. What had led them to this
luxurious hotel room overlooking the vibrant downtown Detroit?
When she looked up he was gazing out the window once again. She
felt drawn to him; she had to touch him so she reached out and rubbed the
back of her hand against his cheek. The stubble tickled her hand, and she giggled. He turned at the sound and smiled. He lunged towards her suddenly,
pinning her beneath him. She had no control over her beating heart against
his bare chest, although she was delighted to feel his beat in unison to hers.
He cupped her head with his hand and kissed her passionately, his tongue
invading her mouth, an invasion she welcomed as their tongues danced
around each other. Her body begged her to allow him inside her once more.
“I need you again.” She pleaded.
“I can’t.” He answered.
“Yes, yes you can.”
“No, no Lydia, it’s wrong.”
“What? No, no it’s … it’s fine … it’s.” She struggled with justification
to continue their affair but had none. He sat up then climbed out of bed. She
quickly sat up as well.
He grabbed his boxers and pulled them on.
“What are you doing?” She frantically asked.
“Leaving, I have to I can’t share you. I need you all to myself.”
“You won’t. He’s nothing, I don’t want him. I will leave him, I am
all yours.” She said as she climbed out of bed holding the sheet around her
body like a dress. She stood in front of him; he stopped and looked into her
eyes.
“Do you mean it?” He asked begging for her statement to be true.
“Yes I mean it. I am yours, from this day on it’s over with him.” He
grabbed her face and kissed her. She threw her arms around his waist dropping the sheet, exposing her naked body, but she was not concerned.
He lifted her and carried her back towards the bed.
Suddenly Lydia began to hear a faint beeping sound in the background that was slowly becoming louder.
“Do you hear that?” She asked.
The sound was constant.
“What is that?” She asked again, frightened.
“Lydia. Lydia wake up. Wake up, baby.” She sat up violently. Her
eyes darted around the room in confusion. Then she looked at her husband
39 Lyceum
who had just stepped back from shaking her awake. She squinted from the
sunlight peering in through the window as her drab, messy room began to
become familiar to her. She looked down at herself to find that she was fully
clothed in flannel pajamas.
“Jeez, your alarm has been going off for 10 minutes,” her husband
said.
“Then maybe you should have fucking turned it off,” she snapped.
“Wow someone is a little crabby this morning. I figured you might
want to get up for work.” He answered in defense.
That thought made her smile and blush at the same time, as she remembered her dream. Her Latin lover by night was her coworker by day.
“Jeez, that must have of been some dream. I watched you for a few
minutes and you were tossing and turning. You were laughing too, which
was pretty creepy actually.”
“It’s pretty creepy that you watch me sleep.” She responded dryly.
“Okay, grump. Well, I got to get going. Love you.” He bent down and
kissed her forehead.
“Love you too.” She responded, lacking any enthusiasm.
He turned around and began to walk away, but as he reached the
door he quickly turned to face her again.
“What were you dreaming about anyway? Shoe shopping or something? You seemed happier than I’ve seen you awake in a long time.” He
asked.
She forced out a laugh to his suggestion and suddenly feared hurting
his feelings. “Yeah babe, just dreaming about shopping.” She was a hopeless
liar and he knew this.
He frowned and stared into her eyes, desperately searching for an
ounce of truth in her response.
“Was I there?” He asked. His question took her by surprise and she
felt panicked to find an answer to spare his feelings once more.
“Yes baby of course, we were cruising the streets of Spain.” She became aware that he was holding his breath as he exhaled loudly.
“Spain, huh? Maybe we’ll go sometime.” He suggested.
“Yeah, maybe.” He then turned around and walked out the door.
When she heard the door shut she threw herself back in her bed. She lay
there staring at the ceiling, thinking about “Spain”.
40
Rachel Tousignant
Prologue
The end
but where do I begin?
I can’t go back to before.
Looking for love,
Where it doesn’t exist.
With a rum and coke,
and a one night stand.
Waking up ashamed,
and hung over.
Vomiting my dignity,
What little I had left.
I have evolved,
From that life and this.
This is the start,
of my prologue.
41 Lyceum
Nouhad Alame
A remnant of yours
Your hands intelligently molded me
Into a structure only your fingers knew
With every stroke, yes, a sculpture you made
A sculpture you named after me.
Your tactics however clear
Lost the battle between logic and I
With every word, yes, a sculpture you made
A sculpture you named the apple of your eye.
Your tools although quite sharp
Cleverly molded the smooth lines behind my laughs
With every stroke, yes, a sculpture you made
A sculpture you named The Past.
42
Stephanie Knight
Titanic
Man’s arrogance sank it;
Not some command from distant providence.
Arrogance passed down from generation to generation like fine china.
But even china has cracks in it if one looks closely.
All the wealth in the world could not persuade the cold hand of ice
to turn aside.
The Ocean does not care for pearls, obeying only the laws of nature; rhythms
set in motion long ago when the universe first flicked its finger into the rows
of dominos.
It dwelled there in the north waters, long before the ill-fated vessel was born
and hurled beneath the waves, an outcast.
Crunching, screaming, bending, breaking, grinding.
The hull retches from the pressure and snaps like the dreams of those who
built it.
Lights go out, and glass shatters.
A violent ripple in the night, erect—like the Colossus.
An eye blink. Nothing.
Doomed in darkness there to dwell, Neptune claims another trophy.
Suppressed beneath the arms of the depths, ravished by the ages, and creatures of the deep.
Only rust remains, only dust.
Ashes to ashes rust to dust, the fate we all await, and she, made by the hand
of man, shall join us.
A plaque placed upon her stern, by those who dared to dive.
When the cruel ocean has satisfied its lust, and only this hunk of marble
remains, will the creatures of the deep remember that tomb?
Illiterate beasts play about the site; but they do not possess the curiosity of a linguist.
43 Lyceum
Stephanie Knight
The Coffee Bar
“The rain looks like it’s let up a bit.” The brunette glanced out the
glass door, sipped her hot chocolate.
“Hey, stay focused.” The blonde turned a newspaper page. “What
about this one?”
The brunette inclined her head.
“Five hundred a month, water included. That’s doable. Two-fifty a
piece, plus utilities. We won’t need heat in a month or so. You can take long
showers like you like.”
“What about pets?”
The blonde scanned the article. “Yep. Small animals welcome.”
“Okay. And what about the location?”
The blonde frowned. “It’s not exactly close to the river.”
The brunette took a long swallow of her hot chocolate. She looked
out the glass doors again. The wet sidewalk reflected the red neon “Open”
sign. A group of giggling high-school girls trotted by.
“If it’s affordable…I’d rather have that than be close to the river.”
“But Christine, you always wanted an apartment by the water.”
Christine crossed her arms, leaned on the marble counter, watched
the swirls of whipped cream dissolving. “I think I could live anywhere. I just
have to get out of that house.”
“Were they fighting again?”
Christine nodded.
“What was it this time?”
Christine guffawed. “Who knows?” She looked at her friend, her
eyes teary. “I’m not letting them drag me into that mess. I’m not going to rot
from the inside out the rest of my life.”
The barista came by with a pitcher and refilled their drinks. The hot
almond milk steamed the air.
“I’ll call about this one.” The blonde retrieved her cell phone, held it
to her ear as the line rang.
Christine looked up from her drink. “Emily, I’ve got a good feeling
about this one.”
“Well, girls, here it is.” The landlord turned the knob, stepping aside
for them to see. The studio apartment was even smaller than they’d imagined and it showed on their faces.
“Look, I told yous it was small,” said the landlord. He was obviously
from Jersey. “Why do you think I have so much trouble renting it out?”
44
Emily’s shoulders sagged under the suitcases she carried, and other things.
Christine’s eyes, however, darted about the room like an art expert discovering a new Van Gogh.
“We’ll take it.” Christine set her bags on the wooded floor, opened
her wallet, and slapped a wad of bills in the landlord’s surprised hand.
“That’s the first two month’s rent.”
The landlord counted it slowly. “Fine. But this doesn’t cover the
security deposit.”
Christine smiled.
“The security deposit, girly. You know, to cover damage yous do to
the place.”
“Damage. Like that cracked caulking all around the window?”
Christine pointed.
“Hey, I didn’t say yous girls had to pay for that.”
“You also didn’t mention it in the description of this place. It’s gonna
be pretty cold at night. Lucky for us, I know how to fix it. Heat’s not included
in the rent and it’d be pricey to call a guy in.”
“What are you tryin’ to pull?”
“I fix the cracks and you wave our security deposit.”
“Hey, hey, hey, I don’t think—“
“I’m sure there’s a line of people outside just waiting to get this shoebox.”
The landlord tongued his cheek.
Christine waited.
“Fine, fine.” The landlord walked to the door and seeing the cat carrier called from the hall, “If I have any complaints about a smell, that furball’s outta here!”
Christine smiled. “Thanks, Mr. Grasso.”
“Look what I found at Meijer’s!” Emily held a tension rod set in one
hand, a shower curtain in the other. “I figured we could use it to divide the
place when we need privacy.” She winked.
Christine sat up in bed and set down her Cosmo magazine. “Geez,
Emily. We’ve only been here a week. You do work fast.”
Emily stuck out her tongue. “That’s what happens when you’re a
cute girl working at a sports bar. You meet guys. And then you go on dates.
And then you bring them home. You know what that means, Christine? It’s
when you sleep with---”
“Oh, shut up.” Christine tossed a cat toy at her friend.
“Prude.”
“Slut.”
“Nun.”
“Whore.”
“Puritan.”
45 Lyceum
“Harlot.”
“Virgin.”
“Ouch!” Christine clutched at her heart. “That one hurt.”
A few hours later, the place smelling of new fabric, there was a
knock at the door. Emily emerged from behind her portion of the studio and
answered the door.
“Hey there, Brent.” She kissed him full on the lips, all the while leading him backwards into her “room.”
“Ew, gross!” Christine sing-songed.
“Oh, yeah. Almost forgot. Brent, this is my roommate Christine and
she was just leaving.”
Christine sighed, tossing the magazine onto the nightstand. “Let me
get my hoodie and shoes.”
Brent sat on Emily’s bed. Emily stood at the door, waiting to shut it
after Christine left. As Christine slid on her hoodie, she whispered, “Floosie.”
“Goodie-goodie.”
“Have fun.”
“Love you.” Emily giggled and shut the door.
The walk to the riverfront park was nearly twenty minutes. Emily had been right about their place not being close to the water. No matter.
Christine’s shoulders felt unusually light. She’d left her purse at home. When
was the last time she’d taken a walk? Months ago, surely. Her brother was
still alive then. She sighed. Benjamin was the only salve she’d had; the only
thing keeping her sane in that house.
The riverfront park was dotted with people on blankets enjoying
a picnic, walking hand in hand along the pier, sitting together on benches,
gathered around a singer-guitar duo, and barbequing, though it was a bit
early in the season for that, Christine thought. She chose a bench near the
cluster of admirers clapping for the musicians.
The singer, a girl in her late teens, addressed the crowd, “This next
one is a traditional folk song, and we invite you to sing the last verse with
us.”
She nodded at the guitarist, and he began to strum. Christine instantly recognized the tune, and part of her greatly wanted to run from that place.
But another part of her wanted to stay, and these two bickered. When the
opening lines ended and verse one began, the part that wanted to stay won
out.
The singer began, “If you miss the train I’m on, you will know that I
am gone. You can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles.”
Christine closed her eyes. Benjamin was once again alive, and they
were brother and sister at play again, kicking their soccer ball around the
back yard, careful not to disturb the flower beds. Everything smelled like
fresh cut grass and fabric softener from the dryer vent. Their father was
working, then. They could afford to play soccer with the city. Then her
46
brother was lying in the hospital bed, the heart machine beeping his last moments of life away as she held his hand. The place smelled like antiseptic and
plastic. She’d have opened the windows if they were able to open; to get the
smell of life into the place. And then the god-awful noise as the line went flat
and doctor’s unplugged the equipment. Ben didn’t need them anymore.
Christine opened her eyes. The singer came to the last verse and
raised her arms, inviting the crowd to join her. Christine started to sing, the
tears falling down her cheeks.
If you miss the train I’m on,
You will know that I am gone,
You can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles.
A hundred miles, a hundred miles,
A hundred miles, a hundred miles,
You can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles.
The guitarist and singer locked eyes, and he nodded to indicate the
end of the song. The crowd erupted into applause, and Christine was glad
she was not the only set of dry eyes in the group. She checked her watch.
Shit! It was nearly nine o’clock. Her father would be pissed and start a fight.
She shot up from the bench suddenly, causing several people to look at her.
Then she realized she’d gone from that life. She didn’t have anyone to answer to. Except maybe Emily. And the cat. The cat would never let her forget
to feed him.
“Are you okay, Miss?” A young man from the crowd spoke. “You
stood up so quick, I thought you were upset or something.”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Christine replied, and realized that for the first time
in a long time, she wasn’t just saying that. She nodded. “I’m perfectly okay.”
47 Lyceum
Stephanie Knight
Rough Waters
“Your ride’s here, grab your stuff.”
I watch my oldest friend sling his army duffle bag over his shoulder. His
arms seem bigger after all those pushups he’d been doing to prepare. He follows me out of the house onto the Astroturf porch. His aunt has already said
her goodbyes; she waits inside.
I think to myself, well, this is it. We turn and face each other, and experience something all writers are supposed to avoid: a cliché. The Awkward
Silence. But it truly is an awkward silence. How could it be that two people
who had known each other as long as we did, who had actually been banned
from using the telephone because we racked up the bills, had nothing to say?
The lady sent to take him to wherever it is they ship soldiers off from waits
patiently in a maroon Honda. I remember the bundle I’m supposed to give
him.
“Here,” I say, “there are about fifty of them. I wrote my address on
them, and stamped them. All you have to do is put down the return address.”
“Thanks,” he says, taking the envelopes, smiling. He adjusts the
duffle bag, the ugly green duffle bag, and suddenly leans in and hugs me.
It’s the first hug we’ve ever had, I realize. We’ve been friends six years. I hug
him back tentatively.
He breaks away after a moment, and I swear there’s a tear in his eye.
“I’ll write you every day, I promise. It’s only a five year enlistment.”
“Ok, try not to do anything stupid, Mike.”
“Haha, ok.” He walks down the steps, his dog, Buddy, barks at him
from the kitchen window. I doubt he’ll miss that spazzy animal.
The trunk of the car pops open like the Cave of Wonders in Aladdin.
He puts his stuff inside, and walks around the far side of the car. I watch
them drive away, and suddenly, it feels like someone’s punched me in the
stomach, worse than any menstrual cramp. There’s a lump in my throat like
when you try to eat a big wad of peanut butter.
The “It” I realized earlier comes back, and I figure out exactly what
is gnawing at me: Since that day at the pool, all those years ago, we’ve never
been apart for more than a week; the week he went to summer camp. I can
see the days ahead stretching out before me like the distance between the
Honda and the end of the block. The blinker goes, the car turns, and he’s
gone.
It’s silent on the porch, just another peaceful July day. A calm breeze,
and the smell of a storm coming waft in the air. His aunt comes out on the
porch, and hands me a Mountain Dew. I take a sip, and laugh a little. I’d
48
forgotten how much that drink meant to us.
I started taking swimming lessons at the YMCA in Wyandotte when
I was in kindergarten. The once a week swimming lessons were the greatest joy in my life, and I remember that the days in between were always
unbearably long, like waiting for Christmas once a week. I always begged
my mother to leave as early from the house as we could so I could spend
as much time in the pool as possible. Swimming was my drug and I was a
proud addict.
When I reached fourth grade, I became the happiest kid at the Y. The
Y decided that after my Friday night class, there would be open swim for
three hours. Three. Blessed. Hours. The lifeguards liked me, so they let me
stay after the class for the open swim, free of charge. I never was so much
myself as I was there. I was purely myself; unrefined, without bits of me
chipped away by society, like a raw diamond. Sometimes, I was dangerously
myself. When worries on the surface seemed like they would drowned me,
I could dive to the depths of my pool and escape them. The water to me was
the freest freedom. Astronauts train in swimming pools because it’s the closest replica of being in zero gravity. Most people don’t know that.
It was another one of my Fridays, and I was happily minding my
own business in the deep end. Today, I was a marine archaeologist, looking
for the ruins of Atlantis. As I maintained a depth of four feet, I made note of
several sharks off in the shallows and swimming beneath me. It was time to
surface; I was running out of oxygen.
Ouch!
My foot scraped something. I looked down. One of the sharks had
got me! I kicked at his face, but he wouldn’t let go. I started to panic; I really
needed to take a breath. I started flaying my arms and legs and then my foot
made contact with his goggles, and they ripped off his face. I surfaced gasping and pissed; this expedition was ruined. I jumped out of the water and
stomped over to my mother. She was engrossed in a book and had no idea
what just happened.
“That stupid kid just tried to drown me!” I bark, pointing at the
blond haired menace across the pool. He was rubbing his eyes and his face
was red with irritation.
“Sweetie, boys are dumb, just ignore him,” said my mother, her
brown eyes never left her book.
“I want to go home!” I tried not to cry.
The next week, that same kid was there again. I didn’t stick around for open
swim; I told my mom I wasn’t feeling well. As we left the locker room, I
paused to adjust the towel around my hair, and my mom went upstairs
ahead of me. The boy came running down the hall.
“Go away!” I shouted, this time tears did fall down my cheeks.
“Hey, I wanted to say I’m sorry about last week.” He looks at me
49 Lyceum
pleadingly, his hair and trunks dripping wet onto the carpeted hall.
“Why did you try to drown me? What did I ever do to you? I just
wanted to be left alone!” I wiped my eyes roughly, angry at myself for crying. The salty tears were harsh on my chlorinated skin.
“I wasn’t trying to drown you, I just wanted to play. Why did you
want to be left alone anyway?” I tried to answer, but more tears came.
“Why are you crying so much? I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Despite myself, I said, “Kids bully me at school. I don’t need it here, too.”
He looked at me hard, and then looked down, ashamed of himself, and quietly said, “Oh. My name is Mike.”
I told him mine.
“I’m done swimming, do you want to play?”
I considered. “Ok.”
A few minutes later, he emerged toweled off and changed from the
boys’ locker room. I sat on the plastic red bucket chair, and watched him sort
a handful of coins.
“Do you like Mountain Dew?” he asked.
“I don’t know, I’ve never had it,” I said, a little embarrassed.
“What? Why not?”
“My mom doesn’t like me to have pop.”
“Where’s she now?”
“Waiting for me in the car.”
“Drink it here, she won’t know.”
“Ok!” I said, excited to be part of a secret plan.
He bought us both a Mountain Dew, and laughed when I took my
first sip.
“That’s so good!” I said surprised.
“I told you! See what you’re missing?”
That’s how nearly every Friday thereafter ended: Open swim, and
a Mountain Dew. When they tore the pool down, we played games at his
house. Nothing compared to those early days at the pool.
I stare into the depths of the green liquid, back on this hot July porch.
God, how many years has it been since that first Dew? I take a large gulp
of our drink, and think of how often we’d gone swimming that past June,
before he left, and how badly he teased me when I got sunburned. It wasn’t
our pool, though, but it reminded us of the good old days of mischief. I think
of him, my oldest and dearest friend, and our pool. The salty tear stings my
sunburned cheeks. Five years is a long time.
50
Stephanie Knight
The New Ozymandias
The plane soars overhead,
Like the wind in the trees
You can’t see it,
But you can hear it.
Long ago, Prometheus
Angered the gods.
He took their sacred knowledge:
Fire.
What punishment will they inflict on aviators?
Or have they decided not to care?
The plane, a silver bullet,
As tiny as an ant,
Creeps across the sky,
Breaking the maternal bond of Earth.
Over the Atlantic Ocean,
Over the lavender fields of Provence,
Over the sands of the Sahara,
Over the crumbling pyramids.
They sit, those pyramids, like veterans of war,
Skeletons aching
But their stories alive with enthusiasm.
Immobile monuments peer enviously at the plane.
They pass their glory to it,
But with a wise smirk.
They know it’s only a matter of time.
Time, ticking away like the slow decay of the pyramids themselves,
Until the silver bullets will feel the weight of advancement,
The weight, pulling them down to earth,
When their children will spring forth from the airstrips.
The pyramids know this dance well.
But the bullets are young,
They heed not the whispers of ancient tombs.
“We shall die, yes; we shall die,
But not today! Not this day!
For all the mighty works of pharaoh,
Here we sit in the sky,
Are we not mightier than he?
Are we not closer to the gods?
Closer than even Babel could have dreamed?
51 Lyceum
Our wings not of wax and feathers,
Yet here we soar, here we soar!”
The tired sphinx stretches his shadow
Over the land like a yawn.
“All men must die
and so too the things made by their hands.
Fly, little bullet, as fast as you can.
You can’t escape the call of Osiris.”
The sphinx’s words dissipate in the air,
Like the vapor trail of the plane.
The trail; the battle scars of the sky
Lead back to the land beyond the hills,
Back to the lavender fields.
The sphinx reflects sadly; he will never see those flowers.
52
Marc Weinschenker
Envy
The babies lay nestled,
Waiting for their Mother’s return—
She arrived,
Cries of joy
Wake those nearby—
A passerby looked up to the celebration
Only to be flooded with envy.
53 Lyceum
Marc Weinschenker
Pawn Stars
I sat in the usual spot;
the city smelled of piss, sweat
and cigarettes, but still I sat—
Waiting
for that moment of rawness,
that moment of vulnerability-that moment of honesty which
many aspire to capture.
These moments are rare, but
remain I shall in this spot,
observing with a keen eye
the pawns—
in my grand scheme.
54
Rachel Olson
On Our Way to Chicago
Sitting in her car that isn’t quite old enough for all of its problems, I
can’t help dwelling on how she always takes forever. Honestly, the slowest
person I’ve ever met. And the windows in this piece of crap are electric, and
don’t roll down. It’s not hot out, but the sun has turned this vehicle into an
oven, baking me hotter and hotter until I’m sure I’ll be unrecognizable by the
time she’s finished changing the laundry over. At least, that’s what she said
she was going to do when she ran inside after pulling us up into the driveway, but when she comes out she’s the unrecognizable one. Her sandy hair
in a long, low braid on the side of her neck, soft facial features made prominent with the help of cosmetics and a pale brown dress hugging her rounded
curves instead of the denim shorts and sweatshirt she had been wearing
what seems like years ago. Waiting in the heat slows down time. I tell her
sarcastically that she looks like she did a great job changing the laundry. She
rolls with it, explaining that she changed the laundry that was on her body,
not in the machine, and thanks me. Whatever, I say, because there’s no point
in arguing with her. She knows her way around the technicalities of simple
statements and I’ll just end up saying the magic words, “You’re right,” and
she’ll win. Again.
We back out of the driveway and pull onto the street. She didn’t
check her mirrors or blind spots, but I don’t say anything. She’ll probably say
she did and I can’t prove she didn’t because it’s not like anything bad happened as a result. You have to have proof to support your argument if you’re
going to disagree with her. She thinks she’s always right, but she’s just
better with verbal self-defense than most people. I guess she’s clever, but on
paper she doesn’t have much to show for it. She jumps jobs and friends, and
everything else that requires some sort of commitment. Kind of like a cycle.
She finds some shiny new thing, then the honeymoon phase, the questioning phase, rationalization, quitting, and finally the grace period when she
seems happy and goes on and on about how she can breathe and is excited
for a change. Rinse, repeat. She could do anything really, but she thinks she
deserves the best and after she’s made up her mind on something, she questions the existence of something better and drops whatever life goal she’s set
on, moving to the next.
We’re driving to her dad’s house in Chicago for Memorial Day
weekend. Since I haven’t planned what to say, I’m silent for a few minutes
while she mumbles the lyrics to an eerily appropriate song on the radio. This
may sound bad but don’t take it the wrong way. I love you, however, you hold me
down. Her voice is pretty and she knows it, but my heart pounds in my throat
as she sings another line. How will I break the news to you? If she has any idea
55 Lyceum
I’m about to end our relationship, she doesn’t show it. My respiratory system seems confused because I’m taking each breath like I’m about to start the
conversation I’d love to not have. I keep chickening out and changing the
opening line in my head. I can’t tell her we need to talk, that’s too cliché and
when I was on the receiving end of that one as my last girlfriend began to tell
me why we shouldn’t be together, I felt patronized for the entire dialogue
that followed. I don’t want to leave her with the bricks of insecurity to build
a wall with.
“Listen,” I say, turning to look at her instead of the window that
seems to be boasting with a view of the places I’d rather be right now. “I
don’t think this is a good idea, you and me.” She looks at me long enough for
me to reconsider the fairness of dumping someone while they’re driving 70
mph on the interstate. She asks what I mean, so I restate my objective more
clearly, “I don’t want to be with you anymore.” When we first met, I wanted
to be with her in every way. Now though, I don’t want to be with her in
any way and maybe it’s her fault. Maybe it’s nobody’s fault. I realize the
impact of my statement and attempt to soften my approach by suggesting
a friendship. I don’t want that though, I can’t stand her. She’s pretentious
and unhappy and I feel sorry for her. I’m wondering if she’s ever been in a
relationship that she hasn’t ended willingly when she veers down the nearest
exit ramp.
“Really, Matt?” She says it more like a statement rather than a
question. “Break up with me on the way to meet my family. On the freeway.
Because telling me yesterday would have been too considerate.”
I want to tell her how I debated the timing. When I decided to leave
her, my first intention was to do so before the trip, of course. I imagined her
driving and arriving there alone, initiating the visit with an explanation of
my absence, and whatever relief I felt at the idea of a life without her was replaced with anxiety for what her parents would think of her. She’s a terrible
friend and girlfriend, but I don’t want my absence to confirm what I’m sure
they already suspect.
“I was going to let you pretend we were still together until we got
back,” I explain. This doesn’t seem to come out right, and I know it even
before the complexion at her jaw and under her ears starts to flush. I’m
thinking, I didn’t mean it like that. I just don’t want your parents to pity you this
weekend instead of enjoying your company. I don’t say anything else, though. I
watch something like determination take over her face.
She pulls into a Marathon gas station and shifts the car into park
with an uncharacteristic calmness. I’m intimidated as apologies and bargains
and pleas for understanding move through my mind like the wrong puzzle
pieces on a conveyor belt; none of them seem fitting so I still haven’t said
anything when she asks me to get out of the car. I’m thinking I don’t want to
be with you because you’re a bitch. That’s the truth, but there’s more to it than
that. I zone out for a minute remembering the time she interrogated my
father for an explanation of his political opinions.
56
“The Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional,” she had blurted
when my father mentioned that he favored any legislation that prevented
same-sex couples from marrying. He hadn’t said it to anyone in particular,
his statement seemed directed to the news anchor on the television. When
he turned toward the kitchen to look at his opponent, she continued, “Any
argument opposing same-sex marriage that is supported with an individual’s
religious beliefs is invalid. Our nation has established the separation of Church and
State; you’re ignorant if you think DOMA is anything but discriminatory.” My
father looked thoughtful for a moment before turning back, without offering
a rebuttal, to the news program. I shared her opinion on the matter, but felt
embarrassed that she had so blatantly disrespected my father after he had
merely been expressing his thoughts in the privacy of his own home.
I’m thinking, I don’t want to be with you because you’re offensively
pretentious and it embarrasses me. Still true, but she might think it’s her impression on others that I’m ashamed of. She’s got a body to worship, eyes that
stop lies before they can leave your mouth, and she can make you laugh like
no one else ever will. I’ve never been ashamed of what anyone has thought
of us together. On the contrary, I can confidently assume I never looked less
than smug arriving anywhere with her. No, what shamed me was the way
she proudly declared to anyone who would listen that she had no plans of
attending college. I hated the look on my brother’s face when he had been
doing Algebra homework in the den and she swooped down on him like a
predatory bird, pointing out a mistake in his formula. “The rise is y2 – y1, not
y1-y2. The way you’re doing it doesn’t even make sense,” she said, exasperated,
“at all.”
I’m thinking, I don’t want to be with you because you should do something
more with your life besides passing judgment on what everyone else is doing. I don’t
have time to tell her what I think she should do, because she reaches into the
backseat and grabs my duffle bag. Forcing it into my lap, she tells me again
to get out. I look at the bag for a minute, and then search her features for
anything but the impenetrable wall of pride. I’m still trying to find my voice
when she thrusts her palm into my shoulder and says, “I’m serious. Get
out.”
I push open the door and heave myself out of the car. Turning to
look at her again, she’s not staring at the windshield but through it. I inhale
through my mouth and I can’t form anything sufficient to say. I watch her
shift the car into drive before I can close the door. It slams shut with the
acceleration and I’m standing alone at a gas pump with my throat full of an
explanation she’ll never hear.
The thing about being smart is you can get through most of life
without ever having to do any of the work. For six months, I’ve watched her
deny her own potential. As I watch her car shrink with distance, I’m thinking, I don’t want to be with you because you’re too “good” for your own good and I
resent you for it.
57 Lyceum
Mariam Mustafa
Listen;
the permanent lilts in your voice, i
have memorized.
pressing buttons;
save, resave, resave,
next message, all by heart.
and this is what i want when i think of
where to end up, you
without the pretense of phones
rather, you in the context of
inches, pillows,
the lilts in your voice;
permanent.
58
Mariam Mustafa
Little Notes
i fell in love
with your handwriting.
there’s something about the word ‘penis’
on a napkin
that makes me think of forever.
59 Lyceum
Keysha Wall
An Intimate Portrait
of Our Insides
Watercolor
60
Keysha Wall
61 Lyceum
The Complacency of
Pain
Digital
MiahLaNae Ward
Neighborhood River
Photography
62
MiahLaNae Ward
63 Lyceum
R.I.P. Little Mariah
Photography
Study of a Skull
Oil Pastels
64
65 Lyceum
Ignite
Oil Pastels
Ather Musallam Tabook
Sky’s Anger
Photography
66
Michael Coppa
67 Lyceum
5 Feet From the Sun
Acrylic on Canvas
Michael Coppa
Castle in the Sky
Digital
68
Michael Coppa
69 Lyceum
Cave of Flames
Acrylic on Canvas
Michael Coppa
Lucid Dreams
Acrylic on Canvas
70
Michael Coppa
71 Lyceum
Self Portrait
Digital
Michael Coppa
The Dragon and the
Sea
Acrylic on Canvas
72
Michael Coppa
73 Lyceum
Trance
Digital
Laura Nowak
Reflection
Photography
74
Laura Nowak
75 Lyceum
Asylum
Photography
Mariam Mustafa
I said God Damn;
i want to
hear you call me honey again; i want
to leave post-it notes on the inside
of your belt,
buckle up. i want
to have dinner
with your family;
extended. i want
to be outside
on our patio
during a thunderstorm,
dancing like lightning.
moreover, however,
more than any of those wants
i want
to quote Pulp Fiction when we fuck.
76
Derek Juntunen
How to Become a Plagiarist
Believe your parents and teachers when they say anybody can grow
up to be president, and then tack on the conditional coda, “even you.” Your
mom always tells the family at Christmas and Easter about your good grades
and what potential you have. You don’t see it yet, but she’s priming you for
great things. It’s a good thing. You glad-hand all her friends who know your
history better than you do. Your dad likes that you play catch with him every
now and then instead of staying cooped up in your room watching CNN all
day. Accept his tutelage on how to overcome your difficulty at catching a
fastball on your glove-side; it’ll prevent you from being made fun of by the
jocks in gym class. Get plastic trophies, multi-colored ribbons, and faux-gold
medallions from Little League.
Play sports and study. Become good friends with every clique and
person in it, but never be great friends with them. Make sure they never forget you and that you can have a solid 5-minute superficial conversation with
them. It’s all you need. Secretly hate your teachers. Get A’s without trying,
but still complain about homework with your buddies at recess. Fall in with
the wrong crowd for all the right reasons.
High school starts with a bang. No one has been Class President as a
freshman in twelve years. You strive for it. Shoot the breeze with the upperclassmen in hopes they’ll vote for you. Show them all your Lord of the Rings
impressions. They like your Gimli one the best. You’re short like him, so they
call you Gimli. Gimli will never become Class President.
Quit the baseball team after your sophomore year. “I lost the love of the game,” you tell everyone. “I had more fun
cracking jokes on the bench than playing 3rd base.”
Translation: The sport became a job that you realize you had been
forced to do since you were in seventh grade. This is your first rebellion.
As a stipulation for giving up baseball, your parents push you into
the labor force. You get a job at a nationwide pizza chain doing the same
thing over and over for minimum wage. You’re the only white person in a
store full of black people. This is the kind of thing that colleges love to hear
about on transcripts. The whole diversity angle is very “in.” You don’t show
your co-workers your impressions. You’re quiet, but you always say the
perfect things when the opportunity presents itself. They call you the “cute
white guy.” You feel like you’ve solved racial relations.
You get accepted to a world-renown university. It costs a Camaro
a year to go there. So, instead, you go to one of its satellite campuses in a
culturally-rich city. You’ve never had a girlfriend when college begins. Inadequacy builds and self-confidence begins to shed away. You isolate yourself
77 Lyceum
in your car to do homework and everything else. You socialize at the lowestlevel. Nerds look at you in disdain over the top of their TI-81 calculators.
High school promised the world for you. It taught you how to find “x” and
why The Battle of Little Big Horn was so pivotal. It showed you what fallopian tubes look like and where Yemen is located on a map. It let you do a
graduation speech after letting you feel like a God for your senior year. Then
it abandoned you. You feel used, violated. You consider going back to visit
teachers, when the underlying psychology says that you want to return to
a place where you felt comfortable and accepted, since your current land of
learning is harsher than a Siberian winter.
The first year is the worst. You made one friend. Of course you end
up developing a crush on your friend, because the pursuit of love is a drug
for you. The revolving door of manic depression and euphoric jubilation is
phenomenal, bewildering, effervescent, and self-destructive. Blinded, you
see a bright future. The future, as you well know, but choose to hide, will actually be filled with heartbreak and Coldplay songs, but at least it’ll get you
your confidence back. It’s paradoxical in ways, but it’s true.
You join an extracurricular that has nothing to do with a future in
politics, but you do it anyway. This is your first mature, independent decision
of your life. You feel happy here, but you don’t know it’s because the choice to
join was your own. Following your heart is new to you in many respects. The
group has people of every color and background, and all of them tell crude,
hilarious jokes. It’s a tight-knit family that can all poke fun at each other’s
race; you’re all less influenced by Barack Obama than by Dave Chappelle.
Diversity seems to follow you everywhere you go, and you just fit in
like you belong. You say that to yourself in the mirror. Your life is beginning
to follow the clichéd narrative of successful people you always hear about
on cable news and Vh1. You imagine Wolf Blitzer setting up a news package
about your Presidential run by saying the words you’re thinking right now.
It’s impossible to get over your ego. You still believe you can be President.
You’re nineteen going on delusional.
In a country of roughly 300 million people, one man is President at
a time. You have a better chance of being struck by lightning with a winning
Mega Millions ticket in your wallet on February 29th of a leap year. But at
least there’s a strategy to getting to the White House. That’s the difference.
Out of requirement, you have to take an English class. Working
without the benefit of your scholarship, since it’s a summer course, you
choose Advanced Creative Writing. A bad experience with Intro to Creative
Writing the previous year left you bitter, and with a distrust so extreme toward such classes that it can only be compared to Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto
against technology’s erosion of human freedoms, minus the whole bombing
aspect, obviously. You read the Wikipedia article on Kaczynski to make sure
you nailed down the reference correctly.
Always double-check.
You consider how cool it must be for the other people who worked
78
with Kaczynski during his Ph.D.-years at the University of Michigan – Ann
Arbor.
“I knew the Unabomber, you know.”
“No! Get out! Was he as nuts back then?”
“You kidding? I was crazier than he was. Teddy was a doll.”
“You don’t say. Goes to show you never can tell.”
“Just like Chuck Berry said.”
You sit at your laptop considering your honeycomb theory of causality when you should really be working on your writing assignment. It’s procrastination of the most mentally-demanding sort. You would be working far
less brain cells by doing the homework, but you decide that considering the
ramifications of every action in a person’s life, whether it be minute or serious, and by knowing all the ramifications of the ramifications ad nauseum,
you can predict the future, or at least know the far-off implications of every
choice. You can see around the bend, in a sense. You’re no physics whiz,
theoretical or otherwise, so you instantly toss around the thought that this
idea’s been conceived already.
You wonder if you’ll ever produce anything original during your
existence.
You begin to look ahead at your own future, using an incredibly
basic formula/structure of your theory, laid out on many pieces of paper,
to try to see what’s in store for yourself. Spoilers never ruin movies for you
anyway; it just makes the journey as intriguing seeing how the characters
and plot get to the end. You begin by considering the delightful possibility
that your self-developed theorem is indeed your own, and your genius is
recognized by important people.
You’re working at the N.S.A., somebody puts a code on your desk,
something nobody else can break. You take a shot at it and you break it.
You’re real happy with yourself, because you did your job well. You find
out that that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the
Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the
rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people you never met, never had a
problem with, get killed. Now the politicians are saying, “Oh, send in the
Marines to secure the area” because they don’t care. It won’t be their kid over
there, getting shot. Just like it wasn’t them when their number got called, because they were pulling a tour in the National Guard. It’ll be some kid from
Southie taking shrapnel in the buttocks. And he comes back to find that the
plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from.
And the guy who put the shrapnel in his bottom got his old job, because he’ll
work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks.
Meanwhile, he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first
place was so our country could install a government that would sell us oil at
a good price. And, of course, the oil companies used the skirmish over there
to scare up domestic oil prices. A cute little ancillary benefit for them, but it
isn’t helping your buddy at two-fifty a gallon. And they’re taking their sweet
79 Lyceum
time bringing the oil back, of course, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and play slalom with the
icebergs, and it isn’t too long until he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the
sea life in the North Atlantic. So now your friend’s out of work and he can’t
afford to drive, so he’s got to walk to the job interviews, which is unfortunate
because the shrapnel in his rear is giving him chronic hemorrhoids. And
meanwhile he’s starving, because every time he tries to get a bite to eat, the
only blue plate special they’re serving is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker
State.
You push away the papers, scribbled with your frantic amateur
physics work.
You’ll hold out for something better.
If that’s your future, you figure, “Fuck it, while I’m at it why not just
shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices,
bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National
Guard?”
You could be elected president.
80
Derek Juntunen
When Demons Shout Down the Better Angels
The scene’s ceiling is an endless shade of blue
while on-stage a sneaking breeze gives momentum to the tumbleweeds;
visions of subtle russet shades fill out the background
as the valley’s rocky monuments surround;
the West was meant to be a fresh start free from such evil acts.
Inconsequential brutality among the beauty;
a sun-bleached bounty now tainted by
stains of blood now splashed across its ‘scape,
viscous redness in a simmering pool and splotches scattered,
the sunshine highlighting a crime
no historical record will ever know.
A life’s worth of fury pent up in his fist,
unleashing it in bursts upon a face
caving with each successive blow.
It takes four strikes to collapse the left side.
The skull leaks its inside fumes,
plumes of metallic sickness waft into the offender’s nose,
leading to welling eyes and nauseous throes.
Hardly over the acidic liquid traversing his esophagus,
his burning rage has already dramatically regressed,
and with cooler wits
he may now observe his sin.
The departed was putrid, a betrayer, scum and swine,
yet, the offender felt torsion in his intestines.
“No man deserves this fate,”
He realized in a post facto epiphany.
When hate bubbles and boils over,
demons tend to shout down the better angels.
Barehanded manslaughter unbefitting the civilized man,
better belonging to the darkest depths of jungles in undiscovered lands.
His hands now dyed in the color of cruel death,
a gruesomeness that will forever sink his guts
and damn his being till his dying breath;
doomed to a lifelong sentence of guilt and illness,
the sense memory once more arose that aroma:
fresh blood split under the sun and seeping into the soil.
81 Lyceum
A nameless corpse now lies until the end of days,
his regretful grim reaper crippled with grief beside,
reeling from his lapse in humanity.
Knelt, trembling, and appealing
hoping the All-Seeing may have blinked.
But, he knows
the whole horrorshow was on display.
Not a lash was bat.
He knows.
82
Jonathan Maltz
To Play Drums at a Party
They call it a throne
Upon which you sit
Like a lone, diffident machinist,
Preparing for the movement
Of limbs,
Of flesh,
To mesh, collect, and genuflect.
Surfaces surround you,
Scintillating shapes---rotund--Are suspended with silent expectancy--Their grooved intimacy requests
The caress of the frayed implements
In your hands--But what of heat and ire
When enlivened from within,
When pulsations accrue and reminiscence distends?--Still these shapes of symmetry
Return your fierce love
With the gift of shimmering sound,
The accented wave that pounds
Upon the writhing auditor.
“Lay down a groove, dude,” he says,
Cradling the ax,
Eager to make it moan
With hands that roam the fret board.
Those others in company assemble on the stage.
Plugged in cords snake
Out of boxed speakers;
Microphones stand erect as voice seekers;
Instruments embrace the mind, the body---gear--The toys of melody.
A motley mosaic of bobbing heads
Is the mobile sight seen in the hovering light
Beyond the stage
As you announce a count, a pace,
And with grace, conceive:
83 Lyceum
The air is aflame with the fires of rhythm;
The sonic mass, as if from nothing,
Erupts into vivid dynamism;
The passions coalesce
Into a gyrating mass of dancers
Wrought by your hands---your hands--The device before you responding with each stroke.
And as the corporeal mirth entwines
With harmony’s birth
In this hall, this venue, this sacred space,
“Surely you are king?” the thought forms, seduces, and disintegrates
84
Jonathan Maltz
The Herald of the Storm
A storm came through the mission-town where brothers and sisters
preached the word and the poor did not want. Those who survived smelled
the air and prayed that the storm be appeased. Then they dispatched the
dead carpenter’s nameless son whose skills for directions and horses were
tantamount to most riders of the plains. He was told to get help where he
could but on his ride through the desolate valley of rolling scrub brush and
vigilant vulture-shadows and up crumbling inclines where cedars pined in
the wind for the halcyon days of old, the sun saw his mind through its cloudcocoon and obscured his thoughts before descending into the bath of western
flame.
He rode through the night and entered the town mid-morning, raising hells of dust and drawing the looks of passers-by. His eyes were askew
and his mouth dripped strings of saliva that whipped as he endeavored to
calm the skittish horse. Sheriff Dale and Officers Smith and Wesson saw him
through the jailhouse window. They felt something amiss and dropped their
cards on the table and glanced briefly at the drunkard fast asleep on the cell’s
dirty cot, the man’s begrimed hand resting on a tattered bible. Then they
grabbed their effects and exited and walked across the dusty street to the
carpenter’s son, calculating the boy’s handle of the reins as the horse frothed
and whined and chewed the bit. The air had that tense ephemeral calm and
the town lay nestled in its Sunday morning indolence. A few families walked
about light of step, their sins absolved by the minister’s sermon that earlier
resounded in the clapboard church the size of two wagons.
“Mission broken, mission broken,” the carpenter’s son announced
to the approaching sheriff. The officers with clean carbines strapped across
their backs and cartridge belts concealed beneath worn jackets followed and
were uncomfortable and restless, wanting to get back to cards. They did not
much care for the boy, now seeing the brutish half-vacant disturbance in his
eyes.
“Mission broken?” the sheriff echoed and grimaced and attempted
to interpret the boy’s expression.
“Mission broken, many no more, many no more.”
“What in God’s name does that mean?” Wesson asked. He dusted
his jacket off, his habit when the air hung heavy with unknowns. The last
time he did so was at dawn when brooding clouds moved in and engulfed
the rising sun and sleep was driven away by the confined drunkard’s stench
of piss.
“I reckon nothin’,” Smith said. “Storms happen all the time and I
don’t know nothin’ about no mission.”
85 Lyceum
“The mission out yonder, I’d say a good many miles due south Fort
Mound,” the sheriff said, then to the boy: “Son, tell us what happened.”
“Storm come again, storm come again.”
“Yes, we hear that just fine. If you could dismount and tie the reins
to the post outside the office we may get some clarity in the matter.” The
sheriff turned to go but the boy fought against the horse as she danced and
foamed.
“I reckon this horse a green-broke, young-stock,” Smith said, easing
his hands into his jacket pockets. “But I’ll be damned if she ain’t pretty.”
“Come on now.” The sheriff gestured but was ignored.
“What’s your name boy?” Wesson asked and pulled out papers and
tobacco to roll a cigarette.
The boy finally steadied the horse and looked at the three men and
said with volume, “I ride far, mission---“ then he shook his head and spit
flew from his mouth.
“Doggone it,” The sheriff kicked at the dust, “What’d ya mean?
Listen, we ain’t gettin’ nothin’ done just standin’ here.”
Down the street the mayor stumbled out of the saloon and vomited
into a trough, making sure to avoid his shoes. Then he straightened and saw
the congregation around the boy and loped over. On his way he stepped in a
dust-filmed puddle and cursed and spat and continued on while townsfolk
nearby looked at him in disgust and kept moving.
Wesson finished rolling his cigarette when the mayor arrived and
lighted it with a match. “Mayor,” he nodded and pulled on the cigarette.
“My, what a nice surprise, Mr. Mayor. How’s the saloon?” Smith
asked.
“What’s going on here?” The Mayor asked, then to Smith, “The
saloon far surpassed any whore’s touch. Just acquired some mescal in case
you’re interested, a shipment from the border-peddler who wheeled in his
cart after you relieved the establishment of that discomposed man of faith.
How’s his condition by the way?”
“Don’t know, don’t care.”
“Mayor,” The sheriff turned, “This boy here says a storm’s comin’.”
“Won’t tell us his name.” Wesson said before flicking some cigarette
ash away.
“Well so what? Storms come and go and they’re not nearly as temperamental here as they are in the east from which the trains come.”
“He says it hit the mission.” The sheriff looked up at the boy who raised a
hand to wipe his panting mouth.
“Why should that be a concern? It has its own economy and order
and patron-saints to make sense of this volatile world. The residents there
are all unhinged anyway, their beliefs and protracted genuflection before
crude shrines enough to impart disbelief to everyone. And so be it if the
storm comes. I’ve seen the harbingers of destruction innumerable times. I’ve
seen wakes of disillusionment wash upon those once with resolve. And I’ve
86
seen growth, prosperity, and forbearance thereafter, encumbered with no
religious grandiosities to pry one from pleasure and amusement.”
“I’m sure glad the minister didn’t hear that.” Wesson laughed, and
finished his cigarette.
“Curse the minister!” The Mayor raised a fist. “He can go baptize
the natives for all I care.” Then he dropped his fist and brushed off his vest.
“Though I understand they take kindly to faith.”
“Alright, alright,” The Sheriff said, then turned to the boy, “Listen,
why don’t you go on and head out, maybe get back to your home and we
here will do the best we can to wait the storm out.”
“Home gone, many dead.” And he looked down at the four men
and they were as blurs colored and shaped oddly in the hazy clasp of midday, with other citizens like puppets to their prerogatives walking the street
and looking at him saddled to the horse and gripping the reins with sure
hands. He turned, and the sky had darkened; its yonder rim consumed
by menacing thunderheads. He kicked the horse apace toward the valley
whence he came and the dust plumed upward with each gallop and after a
stretch he came to a hillcrest amongst the spider-weeds.
Lightning cut the firmament and the haze of rain shone turgid as
a sheet of descending prisms. Looking back to the town in want of seeing
it miniature, but he saw only a shapeless dark. He wiped his mouth and
moved on down a slope choked with rocks and agitated snakes and thick
mosquito clouds. Then the storm held sway, rushing in to clutch him as it
would the town.
87 Lyceum
Sabrina Bolvari
Träume (eins)
Places I wake from
Only a few thoughts later
Are so often lost…
88
Sabrina Bolvari
Träume (zwei)
Alive in sweet sleep,
Reconfigured images –
Dead to memory.
89 Lyceum
Sabrina Bolvari
Modernity
What am I doing?
Sitting in front of a screen,
Waste – wasting…wasted.
90
Sabrina Bolvari
Assumptions of the Older Ones (Part 2)
You don’t know what I’ve
Been through in this time – friends and
Loves, wanting to die…
91 Lyceum
Muna Ismail
Bird Set Free
Pencil Drawing
92
Muna Ismail
93 Lyceum
Marilyn Monroe
Pencil Drawing
Muna Ismail
Najwa Karam
Pencil Drawing
94
Vivian White
95 Lyceum
Study of Poetry Figure
Pencil Drawing
Vivian White
Study of Rubens’ Lion
Charcoal
96
Chihiro Fukai
97 Lyceum
Aqua Seafoam
Oil on Canvas
Ian D. Tran
Night Blurs in D.C.
Photography
98
Ian D. Tran
99 Lyceum
What an Ash!
Photography
Asia Jayne McArdell
Lonely Light
Photography
100
Asia Jayne McArdell
101 Lyceum
The Great Glass
Elevator
Photography
Meriam Metoui
Framed
Photography
102
Meriam Metoui
103 Lyceum
Falling Up and
Growing Down
Photography
Eman Elshaikh
Prisms
Photography
104
Eman Elshaikh
105 Lyceum
Bound
Digital Drawing
Eman Elshaikh
Bliss
Photography
106
Eman Elshaikh
107 Lyceum
Smoke
Digital
Malek Elmadari
Layal
She is a walking sin and there is nothing religion can do about it.
Even her Abaya, which conceals her figure, also inversely accentuates the
round curve of her hips—which sink and surface from side to side like the
tolling of some silent, velvet bell ringing in in the head of anyone who sees
her flowing past like tidal waves of cold ocean water lapping gently over and
over again—taking the breath away. Her hijab, though often neutral in color,
lines the young round shape of her face; framing her easy smile, and the
glimmering pearly glow of her light-brown eyes. Even her hands. Even her
brows. Even her neck. Even the shrug of her shoulders.
To all the older men and women in the neighborhood who find
themselves muttering from their porches, there is something troubling about
her. It’s not that she had been found out, or that she’s known to disrepute
herself in any way, but there is too much sex in her for anyone to be comfortable. Most of them have daughters about her age, and though none of them
even dare to articulate what that means exactly, they understand, without
hesitation, that there is something terribly, terribly troubling about that.
When she was a young girl, before the burgeoning, playing in the
sidewalk of the street, giggling and smiling and hop-scotching amidst the
tweeting of birds, the buzzing of bees and swirling of the bright green grass
in the fresh springtime breeze, they had enjoyed the glow of her presence.
Some, glancing as they drove past, making their numb way to the factory or
the shop, felt a restored sense of innocence and youth and playfulness. But
that was before. Now, in the seconds they see her, leaving the bus, giggling
and smiling and swaying with her friends (their daughters) all the way
home, they find themselves clenching their teeth, sighing an exasperated
sigh, and clearing their throats for no real reason.
Her father is a well-respected man. He is a regular member of the
mosque, and a well to-do Ford Engineering retiree. For this reason, no one
dares reveal any indication of his or her uneasiness, and though it feels like
a common understanding throughout the neighborhood, everyone is under
the secret impression that they had, in a way, discovered its development
and so somehow feel tied to the shamefulness they feel of her.
Whenever she is over, studying with their daughters, there is a palpable tension in the house. The father constantly looks at his wife, fidgeting
and asking her what was that honey, I didn’t catch that, I’m sorry. The wife
says nothing; I didn’t say anything, and then quietly thinks to herself why he
had called her honey when he had never called her honey before. Or at least
not for a long while. The wife, she spends more time with her husband when
she would otherwise be cleaning, or cooking or tending to some frivolous
108
chore around the house. He then turns off the news or whatever he would
normally be watching and feigns delightedness by her company, silently
marking the faint specs of smeared make up lined across the nostrils of her
nose.
When the son comes home from wherever he was, it helps. His
mother notifies him of their guest in his sister’s room while the father turns
on the T.V. pretending not to listen, and by the aloof, dimly interested nod he
would give right before asking what is for dinner they are suddenly empowered. As if returning to their senses, wondering vaguely what all the fuss was
about. The mother goes back to her usual spot in the kitchen fixing a meal for
her boy, and the father raises the volume to Aljazeera, squinting and itching
his way through all the bother.
The boy goes to his room first, changes his shirt, checks his breath,
and does a handful of pushups before realizing it’s useless. As his mother
calls him down to eat, he takes one last glance at the mirror before making
his way across the hall and past the door where muffled conversation can be
heard.
He knocks on the door. His sister opens it a crack, indicating that her
guest is not wearing her scarf, a look of suspicion emanating from her face.
Oh, nothing just wanted to give you that twenty I owed you. After a thank
you, the door is shut and the boy is left wondering what else he expected to
happen. Slightly deflated, he makes his way back down.
After the boy is seated and making his methodical albeit wistful
way through his plate, the mother finds herself with nothing else to do but
go back to her husband. Not really wanting to, she asks her son if he wants
something else. He shakes his head, muttering no. What about a drink, I forgot to give you a drink she announces, ignoring him and scurrying hurriedly
to the basement pantry where a 2 liter bottle of Coke is stored, despite the
fact that there is a bottle of Coke sitting in the fridge.
The girl is downstairs suddenly. Everything she does seems sudden.
The boy stands up to meet her. His wide, skillful smile is met reflectively. On
her way down the short steps towards leaving comes the sound of a closing
door. She looks toward it and finds only a muted television in an empty living room.
She is out, and the mother comes up the stairs, eyes wide. From the
door she looks into the empty living room. She notices the standing shadow
of her son emanating from the kitchen. A moment passes before she locks it.
“Aziza,” she calls sharply in Arabic, “Aziza come down to eat!”
109 Lyceum
Malek Elmadari
Broken
A father; a son, a fallen leaf
A kiss of wind—
That I pretend
The root
Isn’t the
End
110
Sarah Lewis
Man V. Self
It’s times like these…
When nights feel like years past,
and shut doors come from shut mouths,
and these dry heaves keep blowing me deeper into a haze.
With your strong words and a loose embrace,
and I really can’t be sure if this will ever end.
Don’t do that.
Talk to someone.
Let it out.
Kneel down.
Start to heave.
Let it out all the same.
111 Lyceum
Sarah Lewis
Playing House
You said, “hey sweetness, why don’t you come over?”
to my automated voicemail machine
because I kept my phone on silent like my thoughts.
You said you liked to hear my voice,
and I said I liked to see your eyes,
so I parked my shiny car in the street
behind your black mustang with the missing radio,
and walked up the door to the house on the corner.
The front steps were crumbling into the grass,
and I was careful not to stub my painted toenails on the rocks.
I opened the door because your message told me to come in
even though you were taking a shower after a long work day.
Your dog crushed me to the knotted couch,
and I waited for you with a boxer on my lap,
and you walked out of the bathroom in a towel.
I was eighteen, you were nineteen, and we were playing house
because your parents didn’t care enough to stick around,
but the foreclosure sign out front
didn’t have a problem sticking to the window.
You called me sweetness again,
and the steam on your tan skin from the shower
melted into the sweat you and summer put on mine.
Your lips took in every single thing I had to give,
and we walked to your bedroom like we shared it,
so you could exchange your towel for some shorts.
“You’re everything I’ve ever wanted, you know?”
“I know,” and my answer dizzied me.
You ask me to play you a song
on the piano collecting dust in your closet,
but I was too scared to let you fully take me
even though we both knew you already had.
So instead you pulled me onto your bed.
You pulled down the shades, so the neighbors wouldn’t see
my pale body and your tan one moving together.
My feet were cold entangled with yours
even though the heat had taken over everything else.
I wrapped myself around you,
and you buried yourself into me.
I could hear the kids playing on the sidewalk outside,
112
and I wondered what it would be like
if we weren’t just playing house,
and I think you were thinking the same thing
because you took my hands and put them on your chest
and you said, “let’s stay here forever, just like this.”
And I nodded and kept my eyes open because I liked to look at yours,
and you told me to talk because you liked to hear my words.
I said, “What’s going to happen when this summer ends?”
And you told me not to think about the changing of seasons
because it doesn’t do well to dwell on time.
I trusted your eyes as you traced your fingers down my spine.
“I’ll be your sweetness every season of my life…”
And you said you’d fall in love just fine.
113 Lyceum
Jillian Lewczynski
Baby Rachel
She held that beautiful baby in her arms, rocking it back and forth;
her touch gentle to the point of reverence. I’d watched Jacqueline hold that
kid all day, and I still wasn’t tired of it. It was a sight you couldn’t tear your
eyes from—I mean that, really.
“Who’s a pretty baby?” she kept saying, cooing as she stroked the
infant’s cheek. “Who’s a pretty baby Rachel?”
I was watching her from the kitchen table. I was so still that I could
have been mistaken for the refrigerator, the filthy stove, or anything else that
was a common sight in that woman’s kitchen. I didn’t want to move. Watching her was like watching a car wreck, except the accident had long since
happened and I was watching the bystanders try to pull the bodies out —
everything was too far gone.
After a while, I shook my head. Summoning the most pacifying tone
I could muster, I said, “Hey, Jackie—how about I take her for a second? I
don’t think you’ve eaten all day.”
Jacqueline, so tranquil beforehand, went into a flurry. With her fat
arms she clutched her baby close to her perfumed breast and shot me a glare
that would have pinned me to my seat at any other time. Baring her teeth
like some feral animal, she snarled “No! She’s not your baby. I know how to
take care of her! You think I don’t know?”
“Calm down… Jesus.” I sighed, rubbing my temples; I could feel a
headache coming on, the third one this night. “I’m just saying. I think you
should get something to eat. You’ve had Rachel all day.”
“I’m fine,” she insisted, jerking around to shield Rachel from my
view. “I don’t need to eat. What about you, my pretty baby? C’mon, Rachel,
you want something to eat?”
She wiggled the baby’s chubby arms, but Rachel didn’t stir. “Not
hungry, eh? What a good baby you are. Good baby, pretty baby! Baby Rachel!”
Jacqueline started cooing again, baby-talking the passive Rachel. I
shifted in my seat, wanting to bolt but not having the heart to. If Jacqueline
didn’t want to talk about it, then I couldn’t force her, but she couldn’t take
comfort in some kid who couldn’t even talk back to her. I glanced at the dull
green glow of the stove’s clock: 7:08. It had been nearly eight hours since
Jacqueline had started to crumble—and I’d been there for eight damn hours!
She wouldn’t look at me. She probably hoped that I’d leave if she
gave me the silent treatment, as if we were teenagers again, but I knew that I
had to stay until someone else came to relieve me.
“I called up Daniel,” I remarked to Jacqueline, who continued to
114
rock in her chair obliviously. “He’ll be over soon. I wish you’d just put Rachel down and talk with me; if you won’t, you can have him instead…”
Jacqueline clutched Rachel close to her again, and for a moment I
had the compulsion to warn her to not hold that baby so tight, but the warning was lost in a sigh of hot air between my teeth and I leaned back in my
seat.
“Jackie…”
“Leave me alone,” she mumbled, hunched up over her baby. “I don’t
want Daniel over. I’m fine with you, aren’t I…? Baby Rachel…”
“God, Jacqueline, I swear—”
I was cut short by the slam of a door, and my heart practically leapt
out of my chest to dance across the kitchen table. The quick footsteps in the
hall announced Daniel’s arrival. Finally, I could leave. I could get out of this
Godforsaken place. I jumped up to meet him in the hallway as he threw his
coat and shoes off.
“I got off the phone with Matt’s parents,” he was saying, rushed.
“They can’t believe it, either. Well, what was I supposed to do? She—she’s
still on that damn rocking chair? She hasn’t moved since I left!”
“I know. She’s still with Rachel.”
“What?” Daniel fixed me with a glare, like it was my fault. “And you
let her?”
“What the hell am I supposed to do, Daniel?” I spat back. “She’s a
grown woman. What should I do, wrench Rachel away from her like she’s a
toy?”
“You should have done something!” He looked at me again, and
his demeanor softened instantly. “Jesus, you look terrible. You need to get
home.”
“Tell me about it. When’s Matt getting back?”
“Eight, he said…”
“Then we should probably do something about this before then. I
don’t want it to look like we made his wife worse.”
Daniel sighed and slunk over to Jacqueline, trying his best to not
seem aggressive even as his frustration was palpable. “Hey, Jackie?”
Jacqueline smiled at him obliviously, all anger towards him forgotten. “Hey, Rachel, wake up! It’s your Uncle Daniel. Aren’t you happy to see
him, pretty baby? Do you remember when he’d hold you over his head and
make those airplane noises? Whoosh…”
Daniel was trying not to look directly at her. “Jackie, this isn’t right.
You need to put Rachel down and call somebody. I talked to Mom on the
phone—you’re scaring her.”
“Well, she’s a bad Grandmummy, isn’t she?” Jacqueline only addressed Rachel. “She didn’t come to see you today! She said she would!” Her
voice lowered as she glanced back up at Daniel. “Rachel’s trying to take a
nap.”
Reluctantly he replied, “I can, uh, see that.”
115 Lyceum
“Then go away… She’s trying to sleep. Everybody’s gone in the cotton and the
corn, didn’t leave nobody but the bay-bee…”
“Jackie, c’mon!”
Her voice was hushed as she spat, “Go away!”
“It ain’t right,” Daniel repeated to me as he shuffled back to where I
stood in the hallway. He was getting a little hectic—maybe he was losing it,
too. “I told you, it ain’t right.”
“Matt’s not going to like it when he comes home and finds her like
this.”
“He’s not going to be happy one way or the other, is he?” Daniel
scratched the back of his neck. “It ain’t right…”
“You don’t have to tell me twice. But what can we do?” I paused.
“She can just have another one, can’t she?”
“You’re kidding, right? She’s too old. It’s pure luck she had Rachel,
even…”
I bit my bottom lip until it bled and looked back at Jacqueline, still
rocking Rachel in the chair. “Christ, Daniel… What’s going to happen?
She…”
“They say not to let them lie on their stomachs, right?” Daniel turned
round and round, letting out a slew of swears. “That’s how it happens. You
have to lay babies on their backs, or…”
“She probably didn’t even notice. I read up on it… I heard it happens
a lot…”
“Jesus Christ,” Daniel kept saying. “Jesus Christ.”
He started forward, a crazed glimmer in his eyes, and for just a
minute I thought that he was going to rush right in there and rip Rachel from
Jacqueline’s arms. I shoved him back and he squealed like a pig: “It ain’t
right! It ain’t right!”
From farther away, I could hear Jackie raising her voice. “Who’s a
pretty baby? Who’s my baby Rachel?”
I told Daniel to calm down—she’d get hers when Matt came back
home. He kept trying to push, but I told him to just let her alone already.
116
Jillian Lewczynski
Don’t Even Blink
A complaining, growling noise—the cough of black smoke and dust
from the gravel road. That’s how she knew that someone was coming.
She was torn between walking closer to the side of the road and
breaking off to hide in the woods. She needed a ride, but she also needed to
keep her head from getting severed off and used in a game of soccer. Picking
up hitchhikers was apparently illegal around these parts; a law that had been
yelled out to her out of the side of many a car, but she could hardly see two
feet in front of her face. She needed a driver.
She told herself to not turn around to face the headlights, but she
did. Immediately, she felt like a deer, blinking blankly and pathetically at
the harsh white light. There was a warning sign about deer a little way up
ahead—oh, well, ironic! Blinded, she turned back around, trying to regain
her bearings in case the driver stopped.
They didn’t. The truck passed her, and with a sigh, the girl resigned
herself to another unsuccessful hitchhiking venture. She wondered if putting
out her thumb or showing some leg would attract some attention—that was
the old-fashioned way. But it was so cold that she could hardly move, and
she wrapped herself up in her thin hoody and continued on.
Seconds later, she heard the screech of tires, and the heavy crunching
of truck-on-gravel stopped. Stopped! Finally, someone had stopped for her!
Tripping on the road, she unsteadily jogged up to the side of the
truck. Hope was practically glowing in her eyes, and that was apparently
enough to convince the driver, because he gave her an affable grin and said,
“I guess y’need a ride?”
“Yes, sir… Oh, thank you, sir.” Without permission, she opened the
passenger’s side door and climbed into the seat next to him. “I can’t thank
you enough, really. You can’t see anything out there…”
“I’m well aware, miss… The countryside can be unforgiving.” The
driver had a slow, almost stereotypical Southern accent. “Y’don’t sound like
you’re from aroun’ here. City girl?”
“Not too city,” she admitted. “Just the next state over. Apparently
we don’t get any accents.”
“Huh.” He frowned as he began to drive again. “What are y’doin’
here, then?”
She wasn’t sure how much she wanted to tell him, so she told him
just enough. “Long story short, I threw a fit and got on a bus. As soon as I
calmed down, I realized I was in a different state and out of money.” When
he looked at her, she added quickly, “But I still have enough to repay you.
Thanks again...”
117 Lyceum
“It’s no problem, honey. Relax.” He laughed a little too long for
her to feel comfortable, and she shifted in her seat. “I guess y’didn’t end up
lucky? Backwoods inna middle’a nowhere.”
“I’ll find my way back soon, no problem…”
He hadn’t even looked at her again since she’d got in the truck, but
she nevertheless pressed herself against the passenger door. It was a survival instinct, more than anything. She wasn’t used to being dependent on
strangers, much less share a closed space with them. She told herself that she
had no reason to be worried—he didn’t even seem interested in her. But she
cleared her throat, and that brought his attention back to her.
“So what’s your name, then?”
“Marcy,” was the lie. She sniffed—something coming from the back
of the truck smelled disgusting, but she wasn’t sure what.
“Marcy, eh? I had a boss by th’name’a Marcy. Good lady. I’m Bill, by
th’way.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” was the second lie.
“Hmm, same. Where’re y’headed?”
“Just find me a place with a telephone, please… I’ll be just fine.”
“If y’say so.”
They drove on in silence for a little while, but Bill broke it. “Y’know,
y’should start actin’a little more like’a friend. It’s illegal for me t’ pick y’up.”
“I heard.” Her laughter was a little strained. “Why is that?”
“Y’want t’ know why?” Bill shot her a little conspiratorial smile. “Lot of hitchhiker deaths up in these parts. Mysterious—spooky
City people don’t know where t’ look, country people don’t care t’ look. Two
went missin’ ‘round here just a couple’a days ago. Might be dead, mutilated.
Country people know this area even in th’dark…”
She was sweating so heavily from her palms that they were soaking
the fabric of her jeans. Bill was completely calm, probably not noticing or caring about the fact that she was trembling like a wet rat, but she managed to
keep her voice even when she said, “Really?”
He paused for a moment before bursting into laughter. “Of course
not! That’s ridiculous… We’re good people ‘round here. That law’s t’protect
us drivers. A lot’a hitchhikers will mug their drivers—kill ‘em or throw ‘em
out, take the car. But y’wouldn’t do that, would y’Marcy?”
She relaxed just a fraction, and her laughter was less forced. “Oh,
yeah! You know me, going around and carjacking… Absolutely. You caught
me!”
Only when he turned a corner did that brief relief wane. The headlights of the truck illuminated a warning sign about deer, and her heart leapt
to her throat when she realized that she recognized the surrounding area
from when she’d been walking. He was taking her in circles! He’d been driving in a circle the whole time!
“Almost there,” Bill was saying, his low voice casual. “I can’t take
y’too far. It’s a little late, I’ve gotta get home… That okay?”
118
“Actually,” She burst, “just let me out here, okay? I think you’ve
driven far enough so that, um—my cell phone has service now!”
Bill shrugged and unlocked the door. “If y’say so.”
She was surprised. She thought that he would be more surprised,
more belligerent. He was placid as she clambered out and landed on the familiar gravel path, and wished her a short farewell as he started the truck up
again and began to drive away. Well—maybe he was just a lonely idiot, or
maybe he didn’t know his way around the roads. Him in a disgusting truck!
She didn’t blame him for wanting some company.
She considered walking the other way, to get some distance from
him, but she had no other choice but to keep going the same way. Wrapping
her arms around her torso, she kept walking—slowly, so that Bill could get
some distance ahead of her.
He’d said something about missing hitchhikers… But that couldn’t
be true, could it? That sounded ridiculous. Such a thing would have been on
the news, or all over the papers, right? The countryside was hardly a frightening place, and it was the 21st century! There weren’t that many dangers
awaiting helpless people on the side of the road…
Up ahead, she heard tires screech—he’d slammed on the brakes. The
headlights shut off, bringing the woods into darkness once more. She was
alone but for the sound of the slam of the door—boots sliding over gravel—
the dark, heavy sound of human breathing.
119 Lyceum
Jillian Lewczynski
if i could i wouldn’t kiss you. i want to make you mad and i want to
see you grit your teeth. i want to rip you apart from inside-out, skim my fingers over your electrons and feel your memories pulse through you. you’re
not beautiful when you’re quiet, so i want to piss you off and shake your
brain until your beautiful thoughts fall and i breathe them in. you tell me
because i’m the only one who will ask. the only one who will return your call
in the evening. the only one who will listen to your tuneless opera against
society.
i want my cigarette burns on your religion.
when i caress you i will be the autumn wind that doesn’t tussle your
hair – i will sting your eyes and make you look down. i will be the dark
breath on the other end of the line at 4 am, drunkenly confessing my love
as you want to go back to bed. you pride yourself on how put-together you
are and i want nothing more than to take you apart. you masochist, you sick
fucker, you keep going through my hell until you reach the eye of the storm.
you are the gas pedal that keeps sticking and i am on the road to nowhere.
i’ll memorize poetry for you and never tell you. i’ll embarrass you in front
of your friends and make you drag your feet when i say i’m outside your
window. i’ll call you for bail and you will hang up. when i ask you How Was
Your Day you say Fine I’m Okay. i love you so much i hate me so much i
want to hurt you. i watch you turn off your gaslights, simmer down into the
dark dark dark as i watch watch watch you go
you are Charles Bukowski and i am the pretentious introvert.
i wait up all night to make sure you don’t call. when i see you
with Someone Else i can’t get mad, why would i? i have already asked you
everything, told you what you didn’t know, pushed you until your limit
and broke you. sat with you in the empty bathtub until you pulled yourself
together again. everything you do is in preparation for your return. i have
rested in the slope of your subconscious, watched your fears for you, inflamed your impulses, kissed your frontal lobe until you were too love-dizzy
to move. there is no part of you that does not belong to me, no dark corner of
your soul that i have not brushed with my fingertips. every other mind you
try to plow into will dissatisfy you, rouse you, anger you.
i am waiting for your journey homeward bound. i have made your
bed for you and my coffee table longs for your single suitcase. did it take you
long to come back to me? i want to taste your regret, i want to feel your odyssey in the rise and fall of your chest. water under the bridge, a river under
the wind-worn stone. i am not angry: rest a while. welcome home, welcome
here.
120
Justin McBride
Family Ties
He was drunk again.
Mom had always warned us of his temper whenever he came home
drunk so many nights before. She warned my little sister and me to steer
clear of him whenever he stumbled through the front door, rambling and
raving about one thing or another.
And then, mom died. His drinking, and his temper, only got worse.
I grabbed my sister by the hand from her spot in the living room
where she was watching a music video on our big-screen TV when he came
through the door. He was tired and wavering on his feet. I could sense that
there was alcohol on his breath without ever smelling it. The most important thing now was that we stayed away from him. My sister may not have
agreed with me but that wasn’t important. Mom’s death had been hard on all
of us, and I had the bruises and scars to prove it.
I ushered her upstairs while my dad stumbled into the kitchen for
yet another drink. My sister looked back at me reproachfully. She didn’t
believe that our father was that bad. She believed he was just going through
a rough patch.
I knew better.
Once we’d reached the landing, she decided to speak up.
“You don’t have to keep pushing me out of sight every time he
comes in.” She piped up with that innocent little voice of hers.
I shushed her. We were upstairs but I didn’t want to take a chance of
the old man hearing us.
“Quiet!” I hissed. “Do you want him to come up here?”
“I don’t think avoiding him is going to help him or us, Mikhail.”
“That doesn’t matter. When he comes home drunk like this, it’s best
to leave him alone. It means he’s had a shitty day at work and the last thing
he needs is us bothering him. You know how he likes to take out his frustration on other people.”
Our father was a copyright lawyer at a local law firm, protecting
people’s ideas and intellectual properties from slick-tongued con men and
other unsavory types with laptops and torrent programs and helping bring
the Wrath of God down upon those who get caught with their proverbial
pants down or had been too stupid to hide their IP addresses.
“Maybe you’re a jaded cynic but I’m not.”
My sister Aleksandra was wise beyond her fourteen years. Book
smart, but lacking in the common sense usually referred to as street smarts.
She started to leave me, but I wouldn’t let her go. I wasn’t going to
let her go down there and get hurt by the man who’d given us life. I grabbed
121 Lyceum
her forearm and looked at her furiously. I was her big brother and she was
going to listen to me.
“Let go of me!” Aleksandra snapped, louder than I’d wanted her to.
I paused, listening for some sound from our father that would let us
know he’d heard us. I heard nothing. “Why won’t you just listen to me?!” I
said in a voice so low it was almost a whisper. “Why is it so hard for you to
believe this guy is not in the mood to be bothered?”
“Well maybe that’s just it, maybe he does want to be bothered. Maybe
he wants one of his children to actually talk to him for once.” Aleksandra
said, wrenching her arm from my grasp. “I’m going down there to talk to
him. You can either come with me or you can stay up here by yourself.”
Aleksandra walked confidently down the stairs. She was calm and
relaxed. She was going to talk to him and wasn’t worried about what he
might do to her. I followed her warily. If our dad so much as raised a hand to
her, I’d be there to stop him.
She went into the kitchen and up to our father who was, as I expected, sitting at the cherry-wood kitchen table and drowning in a glass of
cheap bourbon. She walked up behind him and placed her hand gingerly on
his shoulder. He’d jumped slightly in surprise but didn’t do anything that
seemed threatening. She sank down into the chair nearest him and started
to talk to him. For a few moments, they talked and I watched, standing just
out of earshot of what they were saying, as quietly as they were talking. And
then Aleksandra asked him something. Of course, I couldn’t tell what it was.
He looked over at her and suddenly burst into tears.
I’d never seen him like that before. He’d just fallen apart in front of
her. Aleksandra looked over at me, her eyes beckoning me to them. I walked
over, slowly and carefully. Despite the fact that Aleksandra had clearly gotten through to him, I couldn’t yet trust that he wasn’t going to lash out at me
for some reason. As I reached Aleksandra’s side, my father looked up at me
and smiled at me for the first time in quite a while.
“I miss her too, Mikhail.” He said. I stared, soundlessly, down at
him. I didn’t know how to respond. “I’m sorry, son.”
And then, the floodgates burst open and I felt a tear descend from
my eye.
122
Laura Sanchez
Math for Literature Geeks
If I add J.R. R. Tolkien plus J.K Rowling, I get two authors with
magical tendencies from England that happen to have Js in their pen names.
If I subtract vampires from Twilight, I would get a soap opera that airs at
three in the morning for the insomniacs who eat orange popcorn out of the
bag. If I multiply 1984 times Brave New World, I would get a hurricane of a
world filled with jungles of terrorism and plains of war, with a few decimal
points of rebellion that are quickly sizzled by rounding to the nearest whole
number. But ultimately, if I divide Marc Antony’s speech in Julius Caesar by a
factor of ‘honorable men’, I would get about ten concrete lines in that speech.
If I were to graph literary places on a graph, the Emerald City would
be about two miles East of Diagon Alley. It would, however, be about fifty
miles North-West-East of Narnia, just behind that wardrobe. I’d suggest
avoiding the Arena and its cornucopia. It’s way north, so steer away from it.
Oh, and if you’d like to go to the Hundred Acre Wood, it’s just down West,
about five squares on graphing paper. You can’t miss it. Neverland would be
just down South, but to get to Mount Olympus, I’d need to use the Pythagorean theorem to determine the exact distance. It’s not quite known.
To get the derivative of a book, I simply need to derive the equation
of the number of hours available to read the bible of a book that is Gone With
the Wind and the number of pages in it. Speed reading is not allowed. Nor is
eating and reading, because that would result in an anomaly that is certainly
not allowed in math.
But finally, to determine the limits of the love of literature, I have to
determine a) the number of books read, b) the number of books loved, and
c) the number of years spent reading. A visual might be better: limit love
of literature (books read) / (books loved), as x à time in years. The equation might not be perfect yet. There are mathematicians working on it as we
speak at Wayside School, on the nineteenth floor.
123 Lyceum
Meriam Metoui
It crashed in waves
In tides and waves, it crashed to shore
Reeled back and forth, I didn’t know
What was up from east, down from west
Tugged at my heart, swallowed my chest
Thoughts overcome of what you were
Gasping for breath, my lungs were bare.
A minute later, the tide released me
Its arms still open for what could be
Stole back my breath and cleared my thoughts
Solitude, for those few moments
Finally safe from a shattered organ
Wrapped up my heart, so I could go on
But the floor was faulty with its cracks
And so the waves started pulling back
124
Yvette Steggell
Passionate Inferno
I destroy,
I need oxygen to survive,
Some dry tinder will keep me burning.
Blazing hot and fast,
I can catch a forest ablaze
With the smallest spark.
Ready to purify
Everything before me.
125 Lyceum
Pamela Satchwell
I sigh staring at the spots on the ceiling where the paint is thinning.
I knew your face with your hooded eyelids, I could jar it and smell it every
morning,
And your muted hairline that I’m forgetting,
So I told stories on the bumps of your spinal column when I was still convinced that your chest could be my new apartment
Some place for me to get drunk and pass out on
Like a dirty floor, cold and forgiving,
Let me be that pocket watch
You can engrave with your teeth,
Let’s put a bench in some house
So you can hear how fucking awful it’s been to give up pretty,
My skin turned heavy the day that I realized my ink could never kiss me
back with tongue or teeth,
This is probably our breakup poem
That I’ve been putting off like everything else,
Dear,
Take me and my toxins,
And the things that I’m convinced of,
I’m pretty fucking positive that your fingers are the only hell of your body –
they’re forever stained with the scent of my hair,
I know your back is cold as rain
And my arms aren’t open like my pupils when I see shoulder blades on the
worn,
I sleep in chairs when I can’t bother to bring myself to bed
How was I supposed to write you an apology when I can’t make it to bed?
I still have the dirt under my nails when you cleaned flowers in your mother’s new bathtub, the water that I drank that got me sick,
I think your eyes gave me the flu – they were as heartbroken as week-oldsnow-by-the-edges-of-the-lawn
I think my family dog licked up the secret that you can telepathically communicate with people who feel like shit,
You’re fading, you know, from me,
And scents can’t bring it back
I’ve lost hundreds of your jokes to time
And your body – that I used to have memorized so I could paint it with the
tip of my tongue on my pillowcase – is some idea of what a memory is of
body,
I saw the world over your shoulder the first time we touched fingertips,
126
now I know I took your blood and spread it under my eyes and made
sounds at home movies and glass tables and that really fucked up painting of
the child smoking cigarettes why did your mom have that anyway
Anyway, I never catch up to myself until it’s past a deadline, I’m not sure
how you knew the way to bring the world down on a cracked knee
But I never really learned it.
When I met you was positive that true love was just the absence of store
bought lubricant
and that it was possible to completely know people if they told you their
taste in music, or if they waited for God, or if they cried when people fell
asleep on the phone,
Now.
Even now,
After years,
I come to you with some dead rat beauty
In my cat mouth, dropping the scraps of something that used to be a poem at
your feet
To please you.
127 Lyceum
Eman M. Elshaikh
1.
“you didn’t let me love you.”
but i left passages, corridors,
only a little closed,
only slightly filled with shadows,
only mostly filled with spaces you could not be.
why couldn’t you find the little pieces of light
i left behind
for you to find?
2.
i wanted specters.
i wanted ghosts of every abandoned direction,
phantasms of every ricochet,
of every way we did not learn to love.
3.
it is hard to breathe when
my lungs are filled with
polluted words that
i inhaled as
i pushed through the debris of plausible deniability.
4.
heartache whispers,
too expansive for silence,
too small for hearing.
128
Charles Toeppe
A CONCEPTUALLY CREATED REALITY OF RULES AND WORDS INITIAL STATE
RULES:
free will~fate: choose which words will and will not exist
chaos+order: words can gain & lose any system of positioning
space-time: any formatting can expand or collapse around and on words
growth/decay: words can gain andor lose any atomic symbols
meta zero: any rule can be created or destroyed (regardless of contradictions
or possibleness)
meta one: anything and everything is a word
meta negative one: at any moment any state of the reality is a complete and
finished reality
WORDS:
a heartbeat is felt at the center of it all
it dims in a gradient between warm and warm no other word exists to describe the in between
be my day and night cycle be my elliptical orbit be my solar flare be my perihelion be my voyager penetrating my interstellar space
do the planets have gender do the planets date do the planets have okcupid
profiles do the planets have to get a valentine’s day gift if they only went
on one date early in february do the planets call back right away or do they
wait a few days do the planets sext do the planets look at porn do the planets
have fetishes do the planets do the planets
a black hole of every word each one stretched into a novella
a reality for each permutation of the set of pokemon (original 150 only! plus
mew): that’s 86272097742332404316231886265441915448162259036877008915
64804750810154197851655157362112747789971982951943289690774984828562
60378000136017441974832858423205281633140645610261832812895085718933
33332179353990398852610054627210035200000000000000000000000000000000
00000 realities
does god have a god or at least a step-dad or at least a parental guardian or
at least a functional foster care system or at least child proof locks or at least
only g-rated video games or at least the v-chip installed or at least non-lead
based educational toys or at least a copy of angels in the outfield on vhs or at
129 Lyceum
least a poster for angels in the outfield
the point at which your mom lets you pick just one cereal the point at which
you’re at college and eat only a buffet of cereal the point at which you have
money and can buy the entire cereal aisle the point at which your doctor says
you can only eat the off-brand healthy cereal the point at which either cereal
or you no longer exist
maybe quasars are angels that lost their way but are too stubborn to ask for
directions and now it’s too late because even prayers travel at the speed of
light
an external hard drive backup of my consciousness plus some spring break
photos (cancun baby!)
i uploaded my consciousness to facebook and i tagged myself but then
applebees wouldn’t hire me because one time i saw a “free wifi” sign and
for undefinable reasons i had sexual thoughts about that so i guess i learned
not to post epiphenomenal experiences on the internet that you don’t want
future employers or parents to see but at least josh commented on it (he’s
such a hotspot)
had to get rid of my facebook account because creepers were creeping my
consciousnesses
waiting her whole existence a galaxy tries out on american idol and sings an
infinitely loud infinitely short version of the star spangled banner but she
forgets the lyrics but becomes a youtube sensation anyway which spirals into
her own reality tv show called “cygnus a: radio star” but one b’ak’tun later
and she’s in rehab for dark matter overdosing
the pepsi half-time show featuring a one man single-celled version of the
beatles performing danger music (google it) but there’s a music malfunction
and the entity creates a new genre which is heavily debated on talk shows
the next day but one day will be the genesis of a religion responsible for the
systematic shutdown of every process in the universe and in the end the
pepsi you take is equal to the pepsi you make
i laid on the dirt on a cold night on a distant planet on a lonely plane of
space-time and i looked up to the stars and i counted them and i discovered that there was a star for every tweet for every website for every google
search for every facebook for every myspace for every blog for every instance
of every mmorpg for every text message for every wikipedia page revision
for every bitcoin for every lolcat for every jpeg artifact for every tag for every
single thing on the internet
130
and i saw the fiery explosion of stars born into the universe
as one hundred sixty character seeds fertilize the twitter sphere
as a dad shares dragon ball z gifs on his geocities page titled “dragon ball
dadz”
as a man begins losing his faith he google image searches for god and as he
scrolls through the sea of images of faces & words & quotes & moments &
vows of love & vows of hatred & interpretations & contradictions & symbols
& galaxies & humans & answers & questions he feels as though he sees the
face of god not in any one image but in the complete whole
as josh liked my facebook status but i’m starting to think josh might just be
a bot created by facebook to keep members around to combat trending three
dimensional social networks chipping away at their rotting two dimensional
market share
as the myspace profile for a small town alt folk band went from thirteen to
fourteen plays for their hit single “every tree is a b-tree” and only one comment “where’s the drop?”
as a celebrity starts an anonymous blog just to find out if their success is real
or is the result of the mass media machine but anonymous hacks the blog
and discovers their true identity so now the celebrity will never know and
also has shoe on head
as a kid’s wifi connection lags during the final battle of the final raid by the
final guild before everybody grows up and stops playing video games and
goes to college and slowly they all forget about those days when all they
wanted was to level up but i guess they did level up metaphorically
as you send your mom a nasty text message because autocorrect turned
“bengal tiger” into “hentai tiger” but she just lol’s it off but you’re glad it
happened because in a weird way it brings you closer to her because you do
have a hentai tiger fetish and you’ve wanted tell someone
as wikipedia deletes the page you started about yourself because you are not
important or significant but you don’t let it get you down and instead challenge yourself to do something worthy of the existence of the wikipedia page
about you
as the dollar crashes and bitcoins are adopted as the new standard and whoever it is that owns the bitcoins (seriously who owns them?) become the new
capitalist rulers of society and it’s fun at first but money even digital money
131 Lyceum
changes everybody and fairly quickly things return to normal
as jesus returns in the form of an lolcat macro and christians crash the server
the image is hosted on but three days later the server rises (now stored in the
cloud) but the server’s system restore lost the image and we all have to wait
around again
as the latest photo of justin beiber’s new haircut is saved and re-saved by
fanbots causing exponential jpeg compression until eventually the image of
the hit young pop star is no longer recognizable resulting in justin’s infinite
youth throughout all of time and space forever releasing hit singles taking
galaxies by storm and finding new disney girls to date ultimately losing each
one to heat death or inertia or just boredom until the image is only a black
pixel and justin becomes a singularity and sings one last pop song called “the
big bang (let there be light)”
as you spend your night tagging a photo of yourself starting with #writer
#lover #funguy only to realize you need more you are more than that
#onewhofeelspains #hasbadmemory #doesntremembernamesofpeople but
this too is not enough and you go on #entitytakingupspace #anegativevoidofelectricresponses #didntasktoexistinthefirstplacesodontblameme and
then things become more abstract #shapes #numbers #spacetime until after
an eternity of tagging never feeling that you have fully summarized yourself
you find only one that truly fits #me
as every single thing on the internet comes into existence a world is created
be it the most mundane of tweets about what you are having for breakfast
to one poet’s google docs crowdsourced e-book epic which each human will
participate in connecting us all in a way never before achieved
because the new universe is more than just stars and planets and galaxies
and quasars and black holes and single celled life forms and complex multicelled life forms
because the new universe is the internet where each individual thing is a
world or a star or even its own universe and together a complex map of the
human experience is constantly grown into a membrane beyond the eleventh
dimension so not even string theory can touch it
but we can all try to understand it
we can all be in it
we can all lay in the dirt and count the stars
we can all contribute a star
we can all be a star
132
Contributors
Nouhad Alame is a senior majoring in Psychology and Microbiology.
“There are two types of people - those who come into a room and say, “Well, here I am!” and those who come in and say, “Ah, there you are.””
-Frederick L. Collins.
William Aston is a senior majoring in Engineering.
“When you’re up, it’s never as good as it seems, and when you’re down, you never think you’ll be up again, but life goes on.”
-George Jung
Elizabeth Bastian is a senior majoring in Anthropology and Urban and
Regional Studies.
“I’m the top banana of the shock department.”
-Audrey Hepburn
Courtney Bishop is a senior majoring in Communications.
“You don’t make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.”
-Ansel Adams
Sabrina Bolvari is a senior majoring in Psychology and Philosophy.
“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”
-Pablo Picasso
Michael Coppa is a senior majoring in English.
“Art and music are to my soul, as food and water are to my body. I believe that art and music are two of God’s most precious gifts to His children. As the author, and giver of creativity, through these gifts He has given us a portion of Himself. He created the very first canvas, magnificently painted it, and brought it to life.”
-Kimberly Conrad
Kristen Dage is a senior majoring in Physics.
“Since when,” he asked, “Are the first line and the last line of any poem where the poem begins and ends?”
-Seamus Heaney
Malek Elmadari is a sophomore majoring in English.
“Silence is the language of God, the rest is poor translation”
-Rumi
133 Lyceum
Eman M. Elshaikh is a collector of non sequiturs.
Chihiro Fukai is a freshman.
“Happiness can exist only in acceptance.”
-George Orwell
Faysal Houtait is a senior majoring in Economics and Political Science.
“Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.”
-Oscar Wilde
Muna Ismail is a junior majoring in English.
“Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.”
-Twyla Tharp
Nicole Jankowski is a full-time student and mom of four. She blogs about
how much fun it is to be a 34 year old college sophomore (and other things)
at Momof4istired.blogspot.com
Derek Juntunen is an alumnus.
“Haec credam a deo pio? A deo iusto? A deo scito? Cruciatus in crucem.” -Josiah Bartlet
Stephanie Knight is a senior majoring in English and French.
“There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
-Ernest Hemingway
Jillian Lewczynski is a freshman majoring in Psychology.
“She meant to say: ‘Oh, my darling, I have wanted you so much...’ She said instead: ‘I have arranged the cushions...’”
-Ford Madox Ford
Sarah Lewis is a junior majoring in Journalism.
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past,”
-The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Jonathan Maltz is senior majoring in English.
“One scans the pages as one scans life, half asleep in the dream of sequent-
iality, now and then poked awake by a flash of beauty or crackle of truth.”
-John Updike
Asia Jayne McArdell is a freshman majoring in Biology.
“The universe is not made of atoms; it’s made of tiny stories.”
134
Justin McBride is a senior majoring in English.
“The young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems
of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.”
-William Faulkner
Meriam Metoui is a sophomore majoring in English.
“I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘if this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’”
-Kurt Vonnegut
Mariam Mustafa is a sophomore majoring in English.
“The third rule of Fight Club is to have fun and always try your best.”
-Sylvia Plath
Laura Nowak is a freshman.
“Lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and... stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to “walk about” into a hithero unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?”
-Kadinsky
Rachel Olson is a sophomore majoring in English and Philosophy.
“Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be
restrained.”
-William Blake
Jassmine Parks is a junior majoring in General Studies.
“Did you hear about the rose that grew
from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature’s law is wrong it
learned to walk with out having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping it’s dreams,
it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete
when no one else ever cared.”
-Tupac Shakur
Raina K. Patel is an alumna.
“In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.”
-Deepak Chopra
Marissa Petitpas is just a student who loves writing but hates writer’s block.
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
-Eleanor Roosevelt
135 Lyceum
Maryann Rafka is a senior majoring in Political Science and English. All she
does is cry and write poetry.
Laura Sanchez is a freshman studying International Studies.
“I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited.”
-Sylvia Plath
Pamela Satchwell hunts and by God she gathers.
Amelia R. Stachowicz is a senior majoring in anthropology.
Yvette Steggell is a senior majoring in Anthropology and Art History. She
has had some inspiration for writing poetry. She is going to become an Egyptologist someday.
Ather Musallam Tabook is a freshman majoring in Microbiology.
“There will never be a next time!”
Charles Toeppe is a staff member and filmmaker.
“with the void, full powers”
-albert camus
Rachel Tousignant is a wife, student, daughter, friend, animal lover. She is
naive and skeptical at the same time, and her bucket list is over flowing with
adventures she must have in her lifetime!
Ian D. Tran is a sustainability exponent, artist, aspiring part-time superhero.
Fostering understanding and appreciation for human and natural creativity
via education, empowerment, and engagement. Inform, educate, empower;
take compassionate and considerate action. That’s your superpower too!
“Art ain’t about paint. It ain’t about canvas. It’s about ideas. Too many people died without ever getting their mind out to the world.”
-Thornton Dial, SR.
Keysha Wall is a sophomore majoring in Secondary Education and minoring
in Automatic Supersonic Hypnotic Funky Fresh.
MiahLaNae Ward is a 20 year individual that is very creative. She enjoys
various forms of self expression such as singing, writing drawing cooking,
djing, graffiti, and her favorite photography.
136
Marc Weinschenker is a senior majoring in Secondary Education with a
focus on English.
“I have grown happier with every year of life as though gradually
conquering something in myself, for certainly my miseries were not made
by others but were part of my own mind.”
Vivian White is a senior majoring in General Studies.
“Your profession is not what brings home your paycheck. Your profession is what you were put on earth to do. With such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling.”
-Vincent Van Gogh
Connor Winton is a freshman majoring in Industrial Engineering.
“It’s human nature to stretch, to go, to see, to understand. Exploration is not a choice, really; it’s an imperative.”
137 Lyceum
Acknowledgments
Stanley E. Henderson
Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs
Dr. Ann Lampkin-Williams
Interim Director of Student Activities
Amy Karaban
Assistant Director of Civic Engagement
Jonathan Larson
Coordinator for LGBTQ and Inclusion Initiatives/Student Organization
Supervisor
Tasha Williams
Program Manager, Diversity Programs
Tija Spitsberg
Faculty Advisor
Special Thanks to:
White Pine Inc.
Printer
The League of Extraordinary Poets
The Michigan Journal
Andrea Gibson
138
About Lyceum
Lyceum is an entirely student-run publication at the University of
Michigan-Dearborn. Students not only assist in the judging and
compilation of the journal, but build up a variety of professional
skills while gaining experience in team leadership and event planning. Lyceum brings students from all academic disciplines together
and encourages creativity throughout the campus.
Students, alumni, faculty, and staff are encouraged to join Lyceum at
any time during the school year; membership is always open. Meetings are held on a weekly basis in the Lyceum office, 2115 UC. To join,
send an e-mail to [email protected] expressing your interest.
139 Lyceum

Winter 2013

Transcription

Similar documents

THE LYCEUM (LGCS) News Letter 2011

M. Knoester presentation

Literary Vocab. Review.notebook

TranscenDance flyer for event!

LPU Batangas vicinity map - Lyceum of the Philippines University

Door to the Lyceum Education

Bloom`s Literary Reference Online

Wilderness House Literary Review 8/1 Liam Day Hawk Down Icing

perspectives: traditions, tensions, transitions 2016-2017

Carnicom Institute