Café Shapiro Anthology Café Shapiro Anthology
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Café Shapiro Anthology Café Shapiro Anthology 23rd Annual 2020 © 2020 The authors retain all copyright interests in their respective works. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without permission of the authors. Please contact [email protected] for permission information. Cover Photo and Original Artwork provided by: Erika Woo University of Michigan Junior, Major: Economics; Minor: Art & Design and Creative Writing Image is titled: “growth despite – gouache on mulberry paper” Published by Michigan Publishing Contents Anthology Introduction xv Laurie Alexander MADDIE AGNE My Women 2 Rumpelstiltskin 5 MAHMUDA AHMED It’s Called Love, Right? 10 Lovebug 12 HUSSEIN ALKADHIM Goodnight 16 ANNA BARR It Casts Odd Shadows 21 KRISTEN BOLSTER Thank You 29 SEBASTIEN BUTLER Prelude 33 Farmcat 35 At Sixteen 36 Turning Five the Summer Bush Sought A Second Term 38 PANAYIOTIS CARDASIS Listen as You Read 40 VIVIAN CHIAO to divine the province of the stars 47 HEATHER COLLEY Once On A Clear Day 58 SIERRA DANIELS Independence Day 65 Dividation 67 The Walls Were Orange 72 KELSI DAVIS Hold Down the Fort 74 Walk Like a Man! 75 Save-a-Lot 76 The Moon’s Got a Boat / Ailing 77 Fat Pink Pigs 78 I Wanna Go a Little Nuts 79 Dollar Menu 80 I Am the One Who Calls 82 Red 83 Dear Everyone 84 TYLER DITTENBIR Death after Life 86 CEREN EGE For Dear Life 92 A Breath of Gray Air 94 My Mom Used her Kohl’s Cash to Buy her Husband’s 96 Picture Frame Urn Reminders to Myself 98 OLIVIA EVANS Dandelion 100 Coyote Watch 101 Sleeping Bear 102 Late July 103 EMILIA FERRANTE Excerpt from the short story “Explode” 105 A Moment in the University of Michigan Museum of 107 Natural History A Courtyard Study 108 I, of All Places 109 Orpheus Looked Back and Ruined Everything, But When 110 He Looked Up, My Mom Sang Him a Lullaby Light We Took 112 How to Leave a Dream 113 MARIA GHALMI Fertilizer 115 Esraa Ghaleb, 21, of Bethlehem 116 La Grande Poste, Algeria, 1960 118 Untitled (for now) 119 Toys 121 MATT HARMON For Elijah 123 The airport is a liminal space 124 s m a l l a r m s 126 Smith and Baker 127 PHELAN JOHNSON Warm 129 Peace is a Conceit 131 EILEEN KELLY Flow 133 FRANKLIN LASSEN Us: The World 146 Myself 153 A love letter to the girl of my dreams 154 Two-Headed Calf 156 DELANEY LEACH Keeping Time 158 DEIRDRE LEE Lady Grey 163 LEEANN MANTTA A Trip to Funky Town 167 NINA MOLINA To his silk flower in my desk drawer 176 No name. 178 Third person self-portrait-Nina Molina 181 ABIGAIL NUTTER We’ll All Be Fine 185 MADALYN OSBOURNE What Use Is Remembering 191 Stevens Lake, off Ole White Drive 193 Blood Beat 194 An Abbreviated Family History 197 CHELSEA PADILLA Tight-lipped Smiles 200 ALEX PAN Life is Like an Unfinished Performance 204 The Romanticist 206 THERESA PHAM Language as a Barrier 210 EMILY PINKERTON ATO 221 Now the Dove and the Leopard Wrestle 223 SAM PINKUS I’m Sorry, Charlotte 226 HOLLY PRICE TRUST ME 234 SANJANA RAMESH Haku 239 JACOB REPUCCI Titans 246 HOLLY SMITH Ever Since Tuesday 251 KRISTY SRODAWA Excerpt from "My Mind’s Eye" 259 KATHRYN SULLIVAN Half-Gone Home 265 NICOLE TOOLEY Lessons on Numbers and Words 271 When it rains in 273 When DaVinci Drives my Car 274 RYLEY VERDE Sarah’s Baby 277 SUHANA VIRDEE Trellis 283 As If I Were in Love 285 She’s Too Gorgeous 286 Purple 287 Ocean 288 Enlightening 289 ANDREW WARRICK Toasted 291 KITTY WILCOX Purple Skin 296 At The New House 297 Drying the Basil From the Windowsill 298 MARIA WILLIAMS Unshakable 301 DOMINIQUE WITTEN The antagonist 314 Two Dollars and a Nickel 315 Metacognition 317 Toxicology 318 Until Death Do Us Part 319 Momma wants to know if I write letters to God: 320 ADRIAN WONG Bright’s Question 324 ERIKA WOO insecurity deposit 336 What’s wrong? 338 The perfect storm 341 I heard that a field of sunflowers burned today 342 Double-Sided Tape 344 HAYLEY YU My Hope for You 348 Anthology Introduction LAURIE ALEXANDER Welcome to the 23rd Annual Café Shapiro! This anthology is a celebration of University of Michigan student authorship. The writings will inspire you and connect you with the undergraduate student learning experience. Café Shapiro is an example of how past innovations become part of current campus traditions. When it launched over twenty years ago, Café Shapiro was a bold experiment, a student coffee break designed as part of the University’s Year of the Humanities and Arts (YoHA). YoHA set out to explore the role of the arts and humanities in civic and community life through a variety of programs. Café Shapiro now continues the tradition of featuring undergraduate student writers nominated by their faculty to perform their works, and by during so, continues to demonstrate the value of the arts and humanities. The act of reading one’s work out loud is a new experience for many of our students. Throughout several evenings in February, students gathered in the Shapiro Library lobby to share their works. They were joined and supported by friends, faculty, coaches and family. Each reading demonstrated of the power of speaking and performing one’s own work. The performed works are published in this anthology and discoverable through Deep Blue, the University’s institutional repository. Through this process, students learned about copyright and related steps to publishing their scholarship. Please join me in thanking the library community for making Café Shapiro possible. Events such this make visible our commitment to learning. We are enthusiastic partners with faculty and students, looking to enable the exploration of new ideas while capturing passions and self-expressions. xv | Anthology Introduction We hope you enjoy reading the works of these talented undergraduate writers. Laurie Alexander Associate University Librarian for Learning and Teaching U-M Library Anthology Introduction | xvi MADDIE AGNE Freshman Major: Creative Writing and Literature Reading: Poetry Maddie Agne is a poet and writer from Chattanooga, Tennessee, and she is excited to be growing roots in arctic Michigan. She is also a musician with a passion for theater, television, and literature, but has been writing short stories and novels since second grade. She hopes to pursue all of these avenues while at Michigan, and aspires to maybe actually finish writing a book one day. Her poetry is usually either about love, blasphemy, or family, so let this serve as a warning for what you are about to hear. Nominated by: Laura Kasischke 1 | MADDIE AGNE My Women These days I am realizing more and more How similar I am to my heroes to my women Éowyn Ahsoka Tano Yennefer Hermione Granger Morgana, Guinevere Clara Oswald Lucy Pevensie They were the ones who dove headfirst into dark waters And snarled in the face of death and fear For me Lonely and intrinsically sad all of them I grew up with them I played with them as children They stayed with me as women Confident, passionate my mother calls me Loyal to a fault my father calls me My Women | 2 I try to tell myself that those only mean brave courageous clever But when my brother call me angry I know When Sitting in a movie theater Jo March announces she is lonely My best friend and I point at me We laugh I wish we hadn’t I wish we cried I wish we cried because we are lonely I wish I cried to thank my women To tell them that it’s all okay That I am Just afraid to love Just afraid of commitment Just afraid to be loved So I wrote because I needed them more than they needed me And because woman is such a fierce word on the tongue 3 | My Women and on the page It will raze cities and raise children So I must look to my women because they raised me and dried my tears and told me I could be strong and beautiful and harsh and gentle and irrational and logical and caring and reckless like them Without sacrificing Me So here I am a byproduct of their love and their lessons just desperately and fiercely Independent and desperately and fiercely lonely My Women | 4 Rumpelstiltskin Rumpelstiltskin works in deals he always has he always will He spins lies into life opportunity into wastelands Always in exchange always for a price which we cannot conceive to pay nor to kill The creature steals her necklace her ring her love and her firstborn He has no interest in riches or the sublime or the fire of nerve endings He rather requests and forces from her a child a baby And one day I have to wonder why do villains always want children? 5 | Rumpelstiltskin Rumpelstiltskin Mother Gothel Hades they make exchanges Promises for firstborns because children, I suppose are promises But no villain has ever raised a child not properly anyways Don’t they know? children, they are so easily molded and formed They are changed with a word a gesture a command They are gentle inherently docile creatures designed for love They are quick to cry quick to forgive and they don’t know any better because they are just children They are so new and so strangely perfect that I wonder what planet they come from Rumpelstiltskin | 6 certainly not earth not these horrible hemispheres where Hades and Hermes hover over hovels and heretics and hail hell on them for harboring hatred No, not earth children don’t know hate they don’t know pain and suffering like Rumpelstiltskin did Not earth where they will be changed with a word an action Not on earth where they will be broken and told to put it back together Not an earth where they will cry when they are lost and you and I are not there Not on earth where villains will take them for their own and heroes are long gone And there are no more revolutions and no more gods and no more saviors and no more mothers They don’t know the anger 7 | Rumpelstiltskin that so quietly intertwines with their blood it feels natural They won’t know hate or anger or pain until it is taught And one day I think I know why villains always want children Rumpelstiltskin | 8 MAHMUDA AHMED Senior Major: English Reading: Flash Fiction Mahmuda is a senior at the University of Michigan, majoring in English with a Sub-Concentration in Creative Writing.