The Gallatin Review Spring 2021 Spring The Gallatin Review Prose Managing Editor: Poetry Managing Editor: Visual Managing Editors: PEP Managing Editor: Hannah Javens Jared Skoro Sam Erman Yejin Chang Jared Skoro Prose Editors: Poetry Editors: Visual Editors: PEP Board Members: Alexandra Bentzien Kiersten Asbill Chow Marvia Walker Emily Pardue Michelle Capone Jenna Barber Cecilia Lopez-Jordan Ally Swanson Yejin Chang Romaissa Benzizoune Moosa Waraich Brianna McLarty René Bennett Lau Guzman Namar Tarabzoni Sage Molasky Neha Hemachandra Izzy Knowles Faculty Adviser: Sara Murphy Production Editor: Corinne Butta Designer: Shaun Montero Senior Director, Gallatin Writing Program: June Foley Associate Director, Gallatin Writing Program: Cover Image: Allyson Paty Without Fear Sammy Tavassoli Special Thanks to: Dean Susanne Wofford; Associate Dean of Faculty and Academic Affairs Millery Polyné; Associate Dean of Finance and Administration Linda Wheeler Reiss; Eugene Vydrin, Faculty Chair of the Writing Program; Raechel Bosch, Associate Director of Communications, NYU Prison Education Program i ii Table of Contents Eternal Summer Slacking Prose Fish in the Sea Reflections 009 Visual Experiment with the Trivia Visual Holly Seefeldt 1 and on the Counter Poetry Emma Comrie 44 Vivian Xing 62 Nina Chabanon 20 Tangier, Morocco Visual Seats at a Mahjong Game Poetry Jack I Poetry Veronica Liow 6 The Pool Prose Laura Zhang 45 Jesse McLaughlin 63 Michelle Capone 21 Autumn in Mystic, CT Poetry In August Poetry August Rust Visual Sage Livingstone Molasky 7 Masked Poetry Sage Livingstone Molasky 48 Kaarina Sorensen-Jarrett 69 Megan Higley 27 Retrospect Visual Marx and Madonna 12 Prose Jamie Zhang 8 on disappearing Visual Have a Chat at Death & Co. Poetry Nina Chabanon 71 Sawyer Wolf 28 René Bennett 49 John Keats in Lipstick Poetry HOLD ON! STELLA! Visual René Bennett 9 Fifteen Ways of Oculus Visual Jalen Colbert 74 Looking at the Sun Poetry Nicole Lecher 50 Abuelo Poetry Cecilia Innis 29 What’s Ours Poetry Nikki Myers 12 Endonym Poetry Cassi Quayson 75 Mount Vesuvius, Nina Lane 51 New York City 10/18/20 Poetry A Ways Away Visual Narcissism Visual Spencer Garrido 13 Veronica Liow 31 Arched Visual Sammy Tavassoli 76 Emma Comrie 52 United Difference Visual It’s Beginning to Hurt Poetry An Ode to Outros Poetry Mychal Pagan 14 Kiersten Asbill Chow 33 Above and Below Prose Mychal Pagan 77 Cecilia Innis 53 Everyone Remembers Poetry My Beloved City Visual A New Frontier Visual Cecilia Innis 15 Reto Zarch 34 Body Matter: Mychal Pagan 79 Butoh and Gender Dysphoria Visual Informal Poetry Deliverer Prose Rix Chan 58 Acostarme Poetry Nina Chabanon 17 Alexis Sharp 35 Nikki Myers 80 Beneficiary Poetry Coastal Love III Visual horsemen Visual Ariana Abadian-Heifetz 59 Emma Ivy 18 Ava Morgan 42 POP CULTURE! Poetry grams Poetry O Poetry Mella LaFrance 61 Connie Li 19 Ariana Abadian-Heifetz 43 iii iv Eternal Summer Slacking of gunmetal gray, its chain links making diamond And then came Missouri. You pronounced it and pool noodles. Holly Seefeldt shadows across the concrete. Beyond this, the Misery. A good salary with Monsanto’s name on thick green grass of Rainey Park, a playground, every paycheck. Your Dad couldn’t swallow his Gray metal bullhorn speakers are bolted into the and a gazebo. And further out, a main street morals and your mother couldn’t stand the heat. cement walls, playing the pool’s radio music, Hot Happy Tuesday. It’s not important. It’s just and a university campus, assuring the small They declined, and you stayed. Until California 104.3 FM, or, if the lifeguards allow, Z-Fun 106. another long day in a deliriously long summer. metropolis the identity of a college town. And unfroze. San Louis Obispo sounded nice. You The sound is thin and tinny as it echoes across The whole year in fact has stretched out longer past all this, yellowed under the dry August sun, could feel the palm trees in your mind. Picture the pool, but it’s made up for on the other side, than any you have experienced in your ten years are fields of wheat and barley, their hillsides the picture-perfect pastel houses atop the hills where standing speakers blast the sound back at of being. rolling out into the distance. of San Francisco, peeking out from above the full volume. The constant flow of summertime hits fog, just waiting to welcome you home. A city worms its way into your ears, forever imprinting Things for the past year and a half have been The clouds are white and puffy against a blue girl at last. the summer of 1998 on your memory. strange. A sort of jagged, halting rhythm of starts sky, neither coming nor going. A year ago, you and stops. Right when you plan to accelerate, would have been at the pool with your friends You hold onto a long list of maybes and an equal The year has two great hits, starting with Iris. the brakes slam on again, and you idle, for lack and your sisters, daring each other to flirt with list of why nots and nos. California calls, and You’re embarrassed to say their name, Goo Goo of anything better to do. Sometimes it’s your the lifeguards. And you would have done it. It another no weighs down the scale. They can Dolls, but you can’t resist their song, or their lead parents’ foot that holds the pedal, sometimes a was hard enough to get noticed as the middle hire, but they can’t pay. They’ll get more funding, singer. Johnny Rzeznik. His name is as sharp foot heavier than theirs, but your foot is too light child, might as well take the chance when it is they’ll call back. Your smart cosmopolitan future and foreign as the feeling you get every time you to take control of the road. You are ten, after all. handed to you. fades into the fog. picture his square jawline and spiky hair. The song speaks to you of loneliness, and you soak You started your period eight months ago, but it This afternoon, you only have your sisters. It’s Your sisters are in the pool, the older one making it up. His voice cuts through the splashes and didn’t matter. It runs in the family. Your mother been this way all summer. Your friends moved, sure the younger one doesn’t drown. She’s screams of other swimmers, drawing you into a wasn’t home, so your sister took care of it. Your one after the other. Belleview, then Albuquerque. nine. She can swim. But your older sister is like private dream. dad bought you flowers. You’re a woman now. Now you’re left, but for how much longer is a hawk, always ready to dive in for the catch. You can have babies now. You feel a soreness anyone’s guess. The days have moved in a She’s thirteen, and her age is the only reason And I’d give up forever to touch you like you got punched with an iron fist between slow drip for a while. Each one stretches on you’re able to swim alone, no parents deciding ‘Cause I know that you feel me somehow your legs every month. You can’t flop down on forever and every week looks like it could go on when pool time is over. The responsibility weighs You’re the closest to heaven that I’ll ever be your bed belly-first anymore because your chest repeating until time finally stops. her down like the dead bolts on the lifeguard And I don’t wanna go home right now feels like sharp rocks are trying to burst out of chairs, anchoring them to the concrete deck, but your swollen buds. You look in the mirror and Your dad is unhappy. He finished school and now she’s the oldest. She’s used to it. And all I can taste is this moment will yourself to see an image of you, grown. And his work isn’t working out for him, or something And all I can breathe is your life you do. Yet ten is no closer to being an adult like that. No one has bothered to explain it to You wear two-piece swimsuits, with shorts When sooner or later it’s over than nine. you. A year and a half ago you were left at your for bottoms now. No one taught you how to I just don’t wanna miss you tonight friend’s house for three days. Your parents went shave down there, only that if you did, you’d be You learn to appreciate the days when you to Kentucky. You knew it was for a job. You knew conforming to unrealistic beauty standards. You And I don’t want the world to see me can swim. You sit on the edge of the pool, the they were looking at houses. You don’t know don’t understand the concept. The same rule ‘Cause I don’t think that they’d understand warm concrete against the backs of your thighs, why they came back without an answer. maker made a rule that you couldn’t wear nail When everything’s made to be broken without a care or a tampon string to hide. The polish. I just want you to know who I am paint revealing the depth of four feet is just wet California came next. A good opportunity. Would enough that you don’t stick. Your perch is in just you like to live in a city for a change? Never At the other end of the deck is a pool with two And you can’t fight the tears that ain’t coming the right place between the lap swimmers and mind.