towards by Minha Choi

Web Team member Minha Choi shares a poem.

In her bedroom, the four walls nestle us safely away from the space. We start by laying down the pillows on her bed next to each other, side by side. The slight chills cause goosebumps to tiptoe quietly all over me, bits of little little sensations I can feel

and there is nothing in this room except me, her and the in between

facing each other, I stammer something about her being poetry, but really what I meant to say is that her eyes are much larger than mine, approximately, maybe no more than half a centimeter wider, both horizontally and vertically, and the irises, brown and tinged, intersect the eyelid and waterline exactly at one point and nowhere else, and now that I’m closer I can notice how her eyelids fold into many layers and deepen still when they smile in the corners, like I’ve seen on thousands of others that have faced mine, sockets of her eyes sunken so that her nose stands out more in contrast, everything about her face a contrast, a skin darker than mine, a shade of brown that complements the lightness in her eyes, shade of things that I’ve seen in my life - comb patterned earthenware, earl gray milk tea with two seconds of heavy cream, wood furniture from Brewster’s Café, my tan back in 2016 a day after the beach, her smile lines form a parenthesis around her lips when she notices that I’m staring at her features, so I don’t look away when the parenthesis are joined by bigger ones shadowed into a trail, laughter lines that accentuate her softer cheeks, mirrored by the crease between her smile and her chin, all while my hands make their way to her jawline tracing up to her ear, right below a head of thick, cropped hair that fades at the edges and falls around her brows, shaped into a long arch that decorates her face solemnly and charmingly with strands of hair, that face that looks young and old, wanting and waning, casting me a look that I’ve never seen before and always hoped to see more of, a look that mirrors strangers, lovers, families, those faces that I’ve seen somewhere at the end of a space and the beginning of another, which focuses my attention back to her lips, her lips, her lips, thinking about the time when god I wished she was a boy, god I wish those lips were a boy’s so I could kiss her, wishing that I could see her no more than an inch away, instead of from a distance from across the stadium, so that I could see those eyelashes and count them, so that her features won’t be blurred worlds away, so that I could see the whites of her eyes more clearly, the way they showed in the dark like glow in the dark stickers on my childhood bedroom’s ceiling, like childhood like I’ve never experienced before, until she places her hands on my waist, and suddenly I have the urge to close my eyes but I don’t, and instead watch her half lidded and focused and wanting and searching for the hems of my shirt, her hands sliding under the rough edges of a shirt that I’ve worn for so long that I can feel the threads unraveling and undoing, static like small lightning bolts shooting down on every second of my skin that comes in contact with hers, her jaw tense, small lines marked in between her brows like focused exclamation marks, and suddenly the swelling can be felt between my legs and the questions are answered, me and her separated by a sliver of nothing but space, space in between that holds the what ifs and what abouts and what the fuck is happening right now, enclosed by a gentle push from lets say, the wind, and the rest of the effort is focused towards enclosing the endless spaces that seem to appear between her and me, two mouths tilting, an act that can be described as none other than desperate, tried in despair because everything else has failed us, the blissful embarrassment of wondering where my hands should be placed, how my legs should be parted, and despite everything we’ve been through my eyes are open, even when they’re no more than a single fraction away from her eyelids, and so when I lean towards you and you lean towards me, when we towards and towards each other and finally close into one another, is that collision love?

Hostess by Ari Kozloski

A piece from Copy Editor Ari Kozloski about work…among other things.

At the hostess stand, you have a lot of time to think about what you will do when you are not at the hostess stand.

You set reminders: “Gallery opening tomorrow @6!!” “Call dad.”

You make grocery lists: Cigarettes—a ridiculous purchase for someone who can’t inhale and has a genetic predisposition to addiction, but sometimes you crave a mouth-hit on cooler nights out with friends. Peanut butter. Bandaids.

You contemplate man’s domestication of fire. Can I have a light? That little flicker of domination. Casual. More casual than you are with customers, which is neither very casual nor appropriately professional. Your boss doesn’t notice this because what you lack in professionalism you make up for in that low-stakes deceit often called charm.

“No, Mr. Walk-in, you cannot have that four-top to yourself but, Mr. Walk-in, please understand that I’m with you. Nobody knows the frustration of curbed entitlement such as you and I, and I’m simply playing my role here. Yes, I see that the restaurant is almost hauntingly empty and you should really have your pick as far as seating. But there are things on this tablet I’m holding that you couldn’t possibly understand, and you needn’t burden yourself with such considerations anyway. I’m with you. You know that, right?”

Unless, of course, Mr. Walk-in is a regular and/or member of the cast of Friends, in which case he can sit wherever he pleases.

You think back to your first day on the job, when you were completely taken by how good the bathroom smelled. Something equally gourmand and linen-esque, with a hint of cologne.

“It’s the candle,” your manager had explained with a collusive sort of smirk. “Custom from Montauk. They’re only $24 on the website if you want.”

Because the restaurant is a zhuzhed up fish fry, you’d found both the existence and asking price of this candle absurd. You went to the website anyway and saved the tab.

Sometimes you steal things. Not the candle, but small, disposable souvenirs. You don’t want to get fired and you never really caught the klepto bug, but you’ve always liked to feel like you’re getting away with something. And what’s the occasional grab, anyway, when every shift makes your knees feel like they did when you played soccer in highschool and your brain feel like the static channel on an old TV? So you shove a “free drink” card into your pocket and trace along its edges for the rest of your shift. You’ll quit soon, let a few years go by, and when enough time has passed that the revolving door has ushered in an entirely new staff, you’ll come back to reap the rewards of your investment. One free drink, please.

You think about your grandma, who really was more like your mother than anything else, and you realize that all this time she has been a person. Not just your grandma or even your dad’s mom but also and mostly just Carol. This thought has been inaccessible, you reason, because most of her stories took on a cinematic haze owed to their inextricable ties to things you didn't understand (eg. motherhood, being white, and/or her childhood in Sparks, Nevada circa 20-years-before-caller-ID). And you don’t know what it is about this day in particular that has illuminated this truth, but you realize all of this and write on a small notepad separate from your grocery and to-do lists: GRAM IS A PERSON. So you don’t forget.

You suck in a little and try not to play with your hair. Even though you almost never touch the food, people come here to eat, and hairplay, according to your manager, infringes upon this noble intention. Your coworkers, however, are apparently immune to this expectation. At the top of your third ever shift, Jessie approaches you with his phone out. He’s hot, but only by way of his position as bartender and your senior by twelve years.

“Can I take a picture of your hair?” he asks.

His face is, well, normal. Completely devoid of any indication of shame or even sheepishness. You must be searching for such an expression for too long, because he continues:

“It’s for my friend, she’s a curly girl, too.

Aw, come on.

Thanks!”

Whoosh: a photo of you for his curly girl. And poof: your attraction to this patchy-bearded freak. Of course, it’s not the first time someone has stopped you with overly-familiar commentary on your hair—in fact, it’s not even the first time that day. Your afro brings something out of almost everyone:

White men somewhere between father and grandfather age can’t help but either thank you for taking ’em back or offer a raised fist and a cheerful “Wooh! Angela Davis!” Bald men can hardly contain their laughter as they gesture to your hair and wink: “Can I get some of that?”

Woke millennials ask if you’ve heard of Pam Grier, and compliment you for what they seem to sincerely believe is an exact likeness. The input is so constant that you even have to remind yourself not to snap at other black women when they ask for your wash day routine.

So Jessie’s not the first. But this time he’s gone and ruined himself as your work crush and/or primary entertainment source, so your irritation is compounded.

You don’t hate all your coworkers, though; you’re even fond of some. One of the servers graduated from the university you attend and has worked at this restaurant since it opened. Actor. You like talking to him because he is personable in a clumsy, sincere way that is equally comforting and comical. You dislike talking to him because he graduated from the university you attend and has worked at this restaurant since it opened, so what does that mean for you?

You seat people, too. There’s a good bit of that. And sometimes when you seat people you are unkind, condescending, and you feel terrible about it. But, good god you’ve had the reservations plotted for hours, must every party want the corner table by the window? And yes, of course the buffalo shrimp is spicy, and what kind of idiot would need to call the restaurant to confirm that? So, yeah, people are unfathomably daft; but you feel terrible for responding accordingly because you, too, enjoy dining out and would hate to be greeted and/or seated by yourself. So you smile real big for the next customer, compliment them and shift your voice into that warm, connective cruising gear that makes them feel like the only people in the restaurant.

Sometimes this warmth is forced, but other times it’s sincere. Like when there is a small blue cake icon next to a girl’s reservation.

She arrives with her friend a few minutes before 7:30, and they look at each other in a way that says “Oh, shit, I didn’t know this would be the vibe, I should have worn a longer and/or more opaque dress.” It’s sort of an old people and/or family restaurant, and you feel a little bad for this girl who looks to be celebrating aging either into or out of your exact age, which is 19. They are best friends, they tell you, and this dinner is sort of a dual birthday celebration. You love them. You joke with them about the bathroom candle—“Super yummy, right? And only $24!” You give them the last of the four booths, an inordinately coveted honor amongst the restaurant’s regulars, and steel yourself to explain this transgression to an angry septuagenarian in the next half hour.

For the last ninety minutes of your shift, you are mostly staring into the side of your manager’s head, willing her to send you home early. It takes an oppressively slow night for her to take the hint, though, so you usually get off around 9, and the first step outside feels like leaving the movie theater. The weather has changed and, oh!, it’s dark out. You feel real again. Your phone buzzes with your reminders: Cigarettes. Peanut butter. Bandaids. It’s early enough to make it to the store before they close but…the static. Suddenly your lists, everything, can wait. The downtown 6 is coming in just a few minutes and you trudge to meet it. You don’t even call your dad.

Witching Hours by Hannah Keselman

Prose Editor Hannah Keselman shares a coming-of-age episodic narrative about the things that keep her up at night, the things that haunt her, and the things that brighten the dark.

I. Beginning

When I was in second grade, we had a writing open house. Parents were invited to celebrate their child’s personal narrative, the culmination of a year’s worth of lessons in penmanship and prose. A precocious reader and natural teacher’s pet, I had taken to the art of writing almost immediately. So I was exceptionally excited for the open house, as I saw it as an opportunity to showcase both my academic prowess and my new-found love. 

Other classmates had written about their family’s trip to Disney World or that Christmas they got a puppy. Perhaps a small part of me was resentful that I didn’t have a new puppy to write about. Or perhaps I truly needed catharsis. Instead of a joyous memory, bubbling and golden, I wrote about the time my father locked me in our basement. It was an accident, of course, one that was followed with profuse apologies, including a guilt-induced ice cream trip. But that memory was so potent in my mind, so personal. It was one of the first times I was consciously aware that I was afraid. In Magic Marker, I had written about the darkness that shrouded me, the spidery shadows that danced around my feet, dangled down the walls from spindly webs. It was quite a dark way to describe how the basement looked in the middle of that crisp September day. There was only one window down there, but it had flooded the concrete walls and floor with light. 

I watched the blood drain from my father’s face as he reached the climatic page, the one where I was alone in the basement, crying for someone to come save me: “I almost lost all hope.” Even then, I had a flair for dramatics. 

But despite my parents’ embarrassment, and perhaps my dad’s genuine fear that my teacher would report him as some sort of negligent father, they were impressed with my writing. I think all three of us knew, even back then, that words were going to be my weapon of choice against the monsters that would be. 

II. Body

One Halloween, I wanted to dress up as a black cat. I wore black leggings and a long-sleeved shirt, fuzzy cat ears, and a tail. My mother painted a pink nose and whiskers on me with lipstick and eyeliner. Her soft touch tickled me, causing me to crinkle my face and send my whiskers askew. 

It was a particularly cold New England October night, so my father wrapped me in my brother’s fleece jacket. Despite being a year younger, I was as tall as him, so it did not swallow me the way I worried it might. The three of us then left to go trick-or-treating, while my mom stayed at home to hand out sweets to the small witches and ghosts and pumpkins that would soon fill the night. 

Under a bulbous moon, we walked around the neighborhood. I avoided the nutty candies at each house, looking at my brother each time so he was sure what a good sister I was, accommodating his allergy like that. In truth, I had no taste for peanuts, but playing my selections as sacrifices gave me leverage in our trading later on. 

There was one house we went to, large and looming, lavishly decorated with gravestones and flashing string lights. We knocked on the door. A sickly green face leered at us. It was all hollow dark eyes and dripping lips, and so I screamed. Loudly. 

When we arrived home, my mother scooped me up. “Hey, kitten! How was the night?” she asked me. I immediately launched into a retelling, complete with detailed descriptions of the zombie that answered the door. 

“That must have been really scary, baby girl. I’m proud of you for being brave. Are you proud of you?”

I didn’t have an answer to that, so I hopped off her lap and ran off to compare loot with my brother. The corpse man was forgotten until the next morning when I recounted the tale for any classmate who would listen. 

III. Break

My mother liked to blame the full moon for things. “It messes with people, you know,” she said. 

I snapped back at her. “I’m not a werewolf.” Although there was a small part of me that hoped that I was—it would explain the not-sleeping. I became unwillingly nocturnal. My eyes remained open, yet I thought of nothing but nightmares. I’d turn on every light in my room—once, twice, three times—so no shadows could leap out of the cotton candy walls or bubblegum carpet. Night was the only time I appreciated the design choices my six-year-old self had made. It was harder to imagine sinister things living inside walls painted the color of unicorn excrement, although my mind did its best to think of grim things anyway. I weighed my body down with blankets and stuffed animals. The plush fabrics became soaked with my sweat. 

At a certain point, I just stopped trying. While the rest of the house slumbered, I took out pen and paper with shaking hands. I would write for hours, most of it nonsense, until my hand cramped, and I’d collapse from exhaustion.

IV. Breath

After my mother picked me up from yet another session, I told her I was tired of exorcists. They looked at me with too much pity, not enough empathy. They spoke to me like a child and thought of me like a project. They had given me medicine that had killed one ghost but birthed another. I was sleeping again, although fitfully. But sleeping had become the only thing I wanted to do. Just a few days before, I had remained in bed for the entire day. I just stared at the ceiling and refused to eat the food my parents left on my nightstand. As I stared out the car window, legs pulled to my chest, I reminded her of the depressed stupor I had been in after one exorcist’s advice. 

“You just haven’t given them enough time,” my mother responded. “You just have to keep talking so they can help you.” 

“That’s just it, Mom. I’m tired of talking.” I had been speaking of my hauntings for months now, saying the same things again and again. This was my purgatory. So as we drove home, I broke down crying, a mix of the soft sobs of exhaustion and the hot tears of anxiety. 

For a while after that, my mother stopped taking me to see the exorcists. But a few weeks later, she told me she had found one last someone for me to see. I agreed because as hard as my hauntings had been on me, I knew they had been just as hard on her.  

I sat down in her office, the room dimly lit by warm lamps and winter sunsets. I waited for the usual questions, the prodding, the poking, the pushing at my ghosts. Instead, she offered me a notebook and a pen. 

“Write,” she said. 

“Write what?” I asked. It felt like a trick. 

“Anything you want.” 

So I wrote about the stars and a sky dressed in unsuspicious blue. And that night, for the first time in months, I slept. And I had no dreams. 

V. Blood

I started writing letters, never sent, when I was fifteen or sixteen. I messily penned rhapsodies, odes to people who hardly cared that I existed. I loved the idea of being in love, yet I hated the feel of it. I confined my feelings to these letters, keeping their contents entirely to myself. It was not an easy feat. They begged to be sung to the world, to be screamed from rooftops and out of windows.

Around this time, I made friends with vampires, beautiful but deadly. They would often take out forks and knives, ask for my heart to be served to them on a platter so that they could discuss and dissect and dine on it. 

“Just give us a taste,” they begged, licking their lips. They hungered for more, always more, of the blood, the boys, the buzz. I was terrified that if I gave them a bite, they would find that the taste was not what they had been craving. They would drain me, and it still would not be enough. So I never invited them into my home, my letters. I was lonely. I was miserable. But I was safe, and so were my writings, buried at the bottom of my sock drawer. 

Even after the flames I carried burned out, one by one, I did still wonder what would have happened if I had let someone’s eyes on my confessions of love. Perhaps they would have sung the words along with me. 

VI. Bitch

It is frighteningly easy for men to become monsters. I watched it happen countless times. The first symptom is a lashing tongue, venomous spit. The first time I encountered such an occurrence, I was thirteen. I was walking back from school when they appeared, smiling and sneering and snarling. They grabbed my backpack, tugged on my hair. I kicked the ringleader, then ran the last few blocks home. The next day, I made eye contact with them in the hall. I stared at them, refusing to be the first to look away. They didn’t bother me on my walks anymore, but their message was clear all the same. I was not untouchable. 

Two years later, a boy in my literature class told me that if I had been alive during the Salem Witch Trials, I would have been burned at the stake. A second boy in my physics class claimed that he didn’t trust my calculations. I then caught him trying to cheat off me during our midterm exam. In my art class, a third boy thought he was being helpful when he loudly explained to me that my opinions made me unattractive to all men. I laughed and said it was a good thing he wasn’t one. He then called me something worse than “witch.”

At sixteen, I started a feminist newspaper with a band of other girls who had been told to burn. The first article I wrote was about sexism in the classroom, how smart women are the most dangerous creatures to men, the most harrowing threat. I was told, by several comments on the website post, that my article was just proof that women were overly dramatic and hysterical. I wrote my next article about female rage and the fragility of men’s emotions based upon hormonal science. The comments increased, but so did our numbers. More witches joined my team. We were writers and artists and dreamers, and all the other things that teenage girls could be. 

VII. Bone

I had this dream about driving. As I would approach a red light, I’d slam on the brakes, but nothing would happen. The car kept barrelling forward, right through the intersection. Some nights, and these were the good nights, the intersection was clear. The road was empty. Other times, it was my mother who stood in the middle of the street, staring at me with wide eyes, begging me to stop. It was my best friend, pleading with me to brake. It was my brother, screaming at me to slow down. And sometimes, it was me out there on the pavement. I could never stop the car soon enough. I’d see the spray of blood cover the windows, feel the squelch of viscera under the tires. I’d wake up after this excruciating moment of impact. 

If I couldn’t fall back to sleep, I’d get out of bed and stand in front of my mirror. I’d peel off my skin slowly, watching my reflection do the same. I’d rip apart tendons and sinew, tossing them aside. Then I’d reach into my chest and pull out my lungs, my heart. They too would join the pile of flesh. When I was little more than bones, I would retreat into my closet for the night. In the morning, I’d hang my body back over my skeleton. I would stretch my fingers, crack my knuckles. Tell myself it was just a dream. There weren’t really monsters in my closet, or under my bed. No, it was just me there inside my head, inside my room. 

These words offered me a little comfort, if only for a moment.

“AW.” by Jessie Sun

Web & Event Team member Jessie Sun shares a poem written in Florence last summer.

I got tulips from the market on my way back 

Bright orange

Surrounded by the little yellow on the edge 

I washed the beer bottle we left in

the garbage can last night

and put the tulips in 

“AW.” perfectly fit 

-

I should learn how to walk instead of getting in so many accidents every time

i am on the street

“AW.”

I hurt my knee

and my jaw 

I had some wine and went back home 

for some first- aid spray

World spinned

Am I drunk

“AW.” 

Oh, I fell

- 

Walked into a coffee shop

Espresso

Iced americano

Latte with oat

I’m not creative

That’s all I would get

“Have a good one!”

“AW. Thanks, u 2”

I always wonder if people really 

wish me a good day

Or they’re just saying  

It’s not my culture

I don’t fucking know

-

“AW.” I always just take it

Power in the Blood of the Lamb by Phoenix Frank

Prose Editor Phoenix Frank shares an excerpt from a larger piece: It's the late 1970s when a surely not-cult named The Flock rolls into the small southern town of Willow Brook. Its two primary members, Father John and "Little Miss Suzie," take a liking to Mrs. Merriam Anderson, a once promising woman turned burnout.

It was July when Merriam first spoke properly to Susanne Lewis.

The girl sat on a stool beside her, wearing a baby-blue A-line skirt that some of the girls often wore to church, the ones with the puffy sleeves. They sought refuge from the sun on the balcony of the house, the air smelling of heat and the damn-near burning wood of the patio. Merriam had made some lemonade when it became obvious Susanne had no intention of soon leaving. Susanne didn’t so much as glance at the pitcher.

“You read a lot, don’t you?” Susanne asks abruptly. When she sees the confused look Merriam sends her, the girl elaborates: “I saw your bookshelves inside. They didn’t seem like nothing Mr. Anderson would read, and you don’t have kids, so… I figured they’re yours.”

Merriam hesitates. Her fingers drum on her thigh, and her breathing goes shallow. “They are.”

“You went to school, too, didn’t you? One of the nice ones. Out of state.”

“I did.”

“I bet it’s because you read a lot. That’s what everyone says, right? You get smart reading. That’s what my mama told me. I was never good at reading. Only thing I ever read was the Bible, and then I got tired of that.”

“The Bible isn’t something you tire of reading,” Merriam says.

“Yeah. Well, I did. I got bored. It’s boring.” Susanne stares at Merriam, as if daring her to object. “The only stories I liked were the love stories,” Susanne says. “But I never read them myself. My mama read them to me, instead. When I was little. The ones with the princes and grand weddings. The happy ones, though, not the sad ones. I didn’t like the sad ones.”

Merriam suspected Susanne had an exceedingly shallow understanding of the word like.

“But then you get married, and it’s never really like that, is it?” Susanne muses. She stares at nothing, eyes glazed over as she strokes her chin. “All you hear married people do is complain about the other. They always say they’re joking, but everyone knows they’re not.”

Susanne’s brows furrow, and then she’s turning on the stool she’s perched on to look at Merriam.

“Have you ever had that, Mrs. Anderson? That kind of sweet love in the stories and songs?”

“No.”

“I think it’s possible. Maybe. I mean, it has to be, right? Where else would they have gotten the inspiration to write them in the first place?”

Merriam says nothing. She taps the ash off her cigarette instead, licking at her gums. 

“The Flock has it, I think. Love,” Susanne murmurs. She traces the lines on her palm as she thinks. “I know you all don’t think we do, but we have it.” Susanne looks at Merriam. Merriam looks at Susanne. “The Flock could love you too, you know.”

“Don’t,” Merriam mutters. The last thing she needs is to join some hippie cult consisting of runaway teens and middle-aged burnouts. And even if Merriam has reached a point where she’s desperate enough to throw her life away in favor of wearing white linen religiously, it’s not to join a flock. 

Merriam doesn’t want the love of a lamb. It’s too soft. Too delicate. She craves something with teeth to devour her whole and without scrutiny. Something that makes her feel better about her own rottenness. And maybe that’s why she ended up with Winston in the first place. Maybe she’s always known better. Maybe she likes how much better of a person she’ll  always seem in-comparison with him.  

“Were you and Winston ever in love?” Susanne asks. “Any kind at all?”

Merriam doesn’t look at her when she asks that. Susanne has those wide eyes, bambi-eyes, the kind that make someone’s skin crawl at the sudden awareness that comes with being perceived by something so innocent. Merriam can’t stand that feeling, can’t stand the expectant expression that comes with it. Susanne only asks questions that she already has a desired answer for, and Merriam fails to answer correctly every time.

“No,” Merriam says, finally. She goes quiet for a moment—sucks on her lipstick-stained teeth—and then she continues. “Winston doesn’t know how to love. Just obsess. And even then, that ain’t for anything living. Craving a bottle of whiskey is the closest he’s ever come to wanting for something, and that’s just for keeping the aches away.”

Merriam doesn’t include that she liked that about him when she first married him. Liked knowing he didn’t love her. Because then, it meant she didn’t have to love him, or even pretend to. 

What she didn’t like, however, or even know about at the time, was his passion. The part of him that wasn’t detached. The part of him that asked to see his brother’s ruined face at a closed-casket funeral.

“Did you know that when you married him?” Susanne asks. “That he was like that?” Her voice comes out pinched. Tense. It makes Merriam’s spine straighten as she watches Addler’s Bakery close up for lunch across the street. 

“I did. Not everything, but I knew.” 

Hunger. That’s the best word for it. There’s a hunger in Winston. One he doesn’t know how to quell. Or maybe one he just doesn’t want to.

Merriam takes a drag from her cigarette, leaving a ring of Avon red on the filter. Her fingers pinch it like it’s something delicate, elegant, her crimson nail polish gleaming in the midday sun. Winston had his vices. She had hers. At least she could look decent while doing it.

“So why?” Susanne asks.

“Why what?”

“Why marry him? You could’ve gone anywhere. Done anything. You got out.”

Merriam snorts. She snorts, and she’s not even bothered to try and cover it up with the back of her hand or to look away demurely. Instead, her lips curl back in a self-repulsed sneer. How does she begin to explain it? How does she give an answer to Susanne that doesn’t make the girl find her repulsive? Merriam herself can’t even stare into a mirror herself without wanting to break it, and even that’s a poor replacement for what she truly wishes she could do to herself.

“You were married once,” Merriam says, avoiding the question entirely. Susanne blinks, and then her brows raise, and the corner of her lips twitch. 

“How’d you know?”

Merriam says nothing. Instead, her concealer-caked eyes flicker down to where Susanne compulsively rubs circles near the knuckle of her ring finger, even in its bareness. Susanne stiffens, then stops.

“Did you know?” Merriam asks. “When you married him?”

“Did I know what?” Susanne snips. Merriam’s eyes narrow as she takes another inhale from her cigarette, the smoke tickling the back of her throat before she blows it out through the nose. Susanne pouts, crossing her arms stubbornly as she looks the other way. “Smoking’s bad for you, you know.”

“Father John smokes.” Merriam shrugs, and takes another drag. That makes Susanne shut up quickly. Merriam takes the chance to enjoy the sound of the buzzing cicadas in the brief silence—the wonderful quietness that comes when Winston is away.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Susanne whispers finally.

“Mm,” Merriam hums, and that’s that. Susanne fiddles with the fraying stitching on her dress, and the ice cubes in the lemonade shift in the sweltering heat. Even the Jackson’s dogs are quiet, too miserable to bark at their own shadows.

“You know, Father John says that men are just animals,” Susanne says, staring at the beasts where they hide in their rotted-wood houses. “He says that we’re just as hungry. Just as desperate. We just pretend not to be. He says that some people know better than others, though. The ones who embrace it.”

“Yeah? And who’s that.”

“People who take what they want. Do what they want.”

Merriam’s lips press together, and then they purse, like having tasted something sour. 

“And who would that be?” Merriam repeats. “My Winston? Your husband?”

“I’m not married. But yes.”

“You were.” A pause. “So what does that make us, then?”

“It makes you a coward,” Susanne states simply. She stares at Merriam, unblinking, expressionless.

Merriam’s eyes narrow in response. 

“But we were all cowards once,” Susanne adds. “That’s why he calls us The Flock. We enter unknowing and blind. But eventually, we come to see the truth. To lead our own path. And then, we become like Father. He’s not like us, you know—not one of us. He’s our Shepherd. He shows us the way. Shows us the truth we’re too blind to see.”

Merriam lets out a breath she didn’t realize she’s been holding, and finds she’s pinching her cigarette so tightly that the filter’s crushed. She snuffs it out on the ashtray on the balcony’s railing, watching the smoke die out slowly.

“You hear yourself when you speak, don’t you?” Merriam asks. “Are you too dense to be offended?”

“Father John says only a fool becomes offended at their own reflection. I know what my nature is. I welcome it with grace. But I’m not a lamb anymore, either, you know. Father John says I’ve graduated.” Susanne pauses, head tilting like a curious pet. “I think you could, too. Become something greater.”

Something cold grips Merriam’s gut at those words. You could too. She frowns, and starts picking at the nailpolish on her finger to busy herself. Susanne takes it as an invitation to keep talking:

“You’re pathetic, sitting there, letting that man do as he wishes to you. I’ve seen it, and Father John has, too. You’re not like them. Not weak. So why do you let him treat you like you are?”

“What would you have me do?” Merriam mutters. A wry smile crawls onto her face, a hoarse chuckle sneaking past her lips. “Kill him?”

Would it be so wrong to confess she’s thought about it?

Susanne’s right eye barely twitches, and then she wipes her nose with her thumb as she sniffs. “That’s what I did,” she says. Merriam blinks. “It’s not hard,” Susanne continues. “You think about it for a little while, afterwards, but it’s really not so bad. And you don’t even have carpet flooring. That was the worst part, you know, the cleaning.”

The corner of Merriam’s lift twitches upwards. Her shoulders tremble, her chest shakes, and something akin to a grimacing grin crawls onto her face. Susanne smiles, too, but it’s not the same.

“What?” Merriam asks. A laugh escapes her, and her cheeks hurt from how much of her teeth she bares. But Susanne doesn’t laugh with her. She just keeps on going.

“Plus, you live on Main Street,” Susanne says. “Everything’s closed up when it’s dark. No one would hear you if you’re quiet enough. And even if they did, you can lie. Everyone knows what happened to William. Would it be that odd if it happened again?”

“Don’t talk about William.”

“I’m simply saying, Mrs. Anderson, no one would wonder. No one would talk. Even if the truth came out, no one would blame you.” Susanne’s eyes flicker between hers, her expression unreadable. “Aren’t you tired of pretending to cower? You’re not surviving,” Susanne says, “you’re acting.”

Merriam’s lips part, but no words come out. They get jumbled up and caught in her throat instead, keeping her from taking in a full breath. “You’re insane,” Merriam croaks. “I would never—I could never—”

“If you won’t, he will.” Susanne whispers. She hesitates then, wets her lips, and then she’s reaching out to clasp one of Merriam’s hands in her own. “Trust me, Mrs. Anderson. I know.” She squeezes Merriam’s hand, leans in closer—close enough for Merriam to count the freckles on her still baby-cheeked face. “I know.”

But Merriam also knows: Winston’s no killer. He’s a scavenger. The vulture that comes after the fact to slice open carcasses and eat their innards, leaving hollow-shelled-bodies behind. He’s too cowardly to be the one to make the kill himself. Always has been.

Slowly, Merriam pries herself from Sussanne’s grip. The girl’s hands are sweaty from the summer heat, a hangnail scraping Merriam’s finger as she pulls free. 

“You need to learn to keep that tongue of yours in line,” Merriam says. “Not everyone in this town will be so willing to listen to your tall tales and instigating. No one else will find these jokes of yours funny.”

“It’s not a joke.”

“I’m not going to kill my husband,” Merriam snips, seething. Susanne’s eyes widen like a child being told no for the first time, and then she’s looking away, hands wringing the fabric of her dress. The conversation ends there, quickly, like that. The bells of the Church would soon ring, and the congregation of The Flock would soon head up to the white building on the hill to hold hands and speak of things like inner peace and transformation. And while Winston would end up dead in a month’s time, Merriam really hadn’t lied.

She wasn’t the one to do it.

From our Editors: LGBT Novel Recs from Allen Fulghum

Hi all, I’m Allen, one of West 10th’s prose editors. I’m a senior in Gallatin studying modernism, homosexuality and the First World War. When I sat down to make a short list of my favorite 20th century LGBT novels to share with you all, I realized that I’d chosen at least one representative of each decade from the 1910s to the 1960s—so here are six decades of LGBT literary history, condensed. 

Six decades, six brilliant LGBT novels

Maurice - E.M. Forster (1913)Written in 1913 but only published posthumously in 1971, Maurice was well ahead of its time in its nuanced depiction of a young man discovering and coming to terms with his sexuality. While Forster carefully examines the difficulties of identity and love, Maurice is ultimately founded on the belief that same-sex relationships have the capacity to be profound, beautiful and happy—a radical thesis for a novel written when men were still routinely arrested and imprisoned for having sex with other men.   

Orlando - Virginia Woolf (1928)Subtitled “A Biography,” Orlando was written as a paean to Woolf’s friend and erstwhile lover, the aristocratic Vita Sackville-West. With typical élan, Woolf transforms Sackville-West into the novel’s eponymous protagonist, a sex-changing immortal who begins as an Elizabethan nobleman and ends as a successful female author in ‘the present day’ (that is to say, 1928). Traversing three hundred years of Orlando’s life, Woolf relentlessly questions conventional notions of history, authorship, gender and sexuality.   Nightwood - Djuna Barnes (1936)Contained in a deceptively slim volume, Nightwood is a superbly stylized portrait of a doomed lesbian relationship in the bohemian Paris of the interwar years, explicated through the head-spinning speeches of Dr. Matthew-Mighty-grain-of-salt-Dante-O'Conner (who is just as campy as his name suggests). This modernist masterpiece was lauded by T.S. Eliot as “so good a novel that only sensibilities trained on poetry can wholly appreciate it.”    Notre Dame des Fleurs/Our Lady of the Flowers - Jean Genet (1943)Similarly to Nightwood, this novel renders the Parisian underworld in prose so rich and revelatory it practically creates a new class of literature. The lives and loves of its central characters—sex workers, trans women, and teenage murderers, all bearing charming monikers like Divine and Darling Daintyfoot—are unspooled by a capricious narrator who creates the world of the novel while masturbating in his prison cell (!!!).   The Charioteer - Mary Renault (1953)Renault, having worked as nurse at a British military hospital during the Second World War and later emigrated to South Africa to live with her female partner, was uniquely equipped to write this novel, which follows a British soldier who falls in love twice over as he recovers from a combat wound. With equal measures of heartfelt psychological insight and cutting social observation, The Charioteer struggles with the tensions between idealism and reality, individualism and community, and innocence and experience.  Another Country - James Baldwin (1962)An earlier novel of Baldwin’s, Giovanni’s Room, is often hailed as a masterpiece of gay literature, but while Giovanni’s Room is a claustrophobic investigation of one man’s psychology, Another Country seems to encompass an era. The characters are gay, straight, bisexual, questioning and in denial; white and black; working-class and middle-class and destitute and wildly successful. In a rhythm reminiscent of jazz, the novel traces the cast as they move in and out of each other’s lives, coupling and splitting up and getting back together, rising and falling in fortune—but always circling around the specter of a character who commits suicide at the end of the novel’s first act.

From our Editors: why Su Young Lee writes

Su Young Lee—this year’s prose editor here. Currently a sophomore who hopefully and finally narrowed it down to studying English Literature, Journalism, and Creative Writing (fun fact, I’m indecisive). Why (How) I Write   I see a man with his daughter on his lap, brushing her hair away from her small sleeping face as if they weren’t sitting in the middle of a crowded subway train. I like their intimacy and decide that maybe I’ll write about them someday. I never do. I sit in a café and eavesdrop on a job interview as the man becomes increasingly and amusingly anxious, visualizing his half-uttered sentences in the air, full of ellipses. I sit in my room on an especially bad day and decide that the imagined tragedy of how I feel will look good on paper, but all I can manage is jot down a few phrases that all sound like half-finished lines from terrible poetry—my poetry—and I throw the piece of paper away. You see, I like thinking about writing. Sometimes I convince myself I’m really a writer because all I can think about is how something will look on a page.     Then I come to my senses and decide that a writer is probably someone who actually writes. This is discouraging because writing is kind of hard. I plan characters, conversations, odd little phrases but when it comes to writing them down and filling in the gaps I find that I’m not a writer after all. Not a writer I’d like to be, or maybe I think I should be, the clichéd artist tortured by the task of translating their genius onto paper. The only thing I’m tortured by is my fear, laziness, lack of inspiration. While everything I see and hear and feel I think about writing down, it’s rare that I actually do.     This is partly why I sign up to a creative writing class. People say writing comes from the heart, the soul, from whatever other metaphorical body part, but honestly sometimes I just need someone to make me write because otherwise I never will. I have to make it inevitable because when I finally start writing I confirm what I suspected all along—that I hate writing.    This is the process of writing that I loathe: in bed. I don’t like sitting on a desk because it seems like I’m doing work, even though writing is really hard work. I put on some music before I decide that it’s distracting. I stare down at a blank piece of paper—or Word document. I tend to start with paper the first few times because I think writing by hand is romantic but I throw down my pen and hate myself finding I have more scribbles and crossed-out words than useable material. Blankness is encouraging—threatening—and maybe promising. The ugly blacked out words, however, are sad visual reminders of my failure that I’m too conceited to stand.     But if I hate it so much, why do I do it? Despite all the complaining and self-loathing, there’s something addicting about the adrenaline that comes with writing, beyond the effects of all the caffeine I consume. It’s the starting that’s hard, but once something is on the page the next words tumble after each other. I let myself ramble. When I finish the piece (the draft) it’s like finally letting out air after holding my breath. It’s at that moment when I close my laptop and go to sleep, because I conveniently write in bed, that I think I have found the reason I write. The feeling of satisfaction. There are a lot of other and often forgotten reasons too, like how I want to be eloquent but writing is the only way I can achieve it, how I like to hide behind the anonymity of words on paper, but how I also like the intimacy it provides. Sometimes I hate it because having to write something interesting is a reminder that my actual life is unexciting, but maybe I like that I can live through the pages I write. I don’t know if that’s sad. Sometimes I think being a writer means being sad—dragging up things that have happened, bad things, or things that never will.        Ultimately though, being a writer means writing. I may hate the act of writing but I love its effects, a similar relationship I have to cooking and actually eating the food. Hate the labour, if you will; devour the fruit. If I want to be a writer there’s really nothing else for me to do but write. That’s the one thing that all writers of all genres have in common—writing words, instead of just thinking about them. No matter how bad you think you are or how much you dislike the physical act of writing, writers write. So to all you aspiring writers: give yourself deadlines, make others give you deadlines, find some way to force yourself to put words on a page.

From our Editors: an Afternoon in Brooklyn with Jenny Cronin

Although art appreciation, or even collection, may seem like a daunting concept for the average college student, it is actually quite an enjoyable experience. Have you ever wanted to look at some amazing art, but found it wasn’t accessible? Galleries are not always the most welcoming environments, with snobby shop assistants or outrageous price ranges that no one younger than their mid-thirties can afford. But, the college student is in luck, because there are also places like The Cotton Candy Machine in Brooklyn—a gallery that accommodates all wallet sizes and has a wonderful staff very eager to be of service. The shop, located on 1st Street, has a very fresh and modern feel, and caters to a younger audience, so if you’re looking for something to do on a Saturday afternoon, or you just want to see some cool drawings, toys, paintings, wood carvings etc., this is the place for you. The bright blue benches outside will draw you in and the art will make you stay. They break out some crazy and innovative artists that have a lot to say even on small surfaces. In fact, the shop is well known for its quaint sized drawings and paintings.The Cotton Candy Machine (even the name sounds cool and inviting!) was co-founded by an artist herself, Tara McPherson, who makes extremely colorful, detailed paintings that can be bought for as little as $20 as a lithograph. She sells her art in many other forms, including shirts and tank tops. The shop also has featured artists hanging on the walls, a toy, sticker, and button collection by the register, and a center table dedicated to art books and magazines.Did I mention that this art gallery happens to be a convenient 15-minute walk from Smorgasburg’s Williamsburg location (open Saturdays from 11am-6pm until November 21st) where you can pick up unique foods from over 100 different local food vendors? I seriously recommend the Pineapple Black Pepper Ginger Soda (all natural) from Bolivian Llama Party, the Ramen Burger, and a Hibiscus doughnut from Dough. There are also tons of other unique places in the area that deserved to be checked out, like Artists and Fleas, a handcrafted art and vintage market. Brooklyn doesn’t just have an amazing writing atmosphere, but appreciates all forms of art, handcrafting, and individuality. I highly recommend checking out all the above-mentioned places for a great afternoon that won’t disappoint!--Jenny CroninThe credit for the  first and third photographs of this blog post goes to IG @thecottoncandymachine!