Pittsfield, MA Journal of Literary and Visual Arts
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2019 Zine Berkshire Community College | Pittsfield, MA Journal of literary and visual arts Faculty Advisor: Julianna Spallholz Contributing Editors: Allison Armata Mike Marchetti Designer: James Grady www.JamesGradyDesign.com Zine would like to thank the Office of Student Life and the Berkshire Community College Foundation for their generous support of this ongoing project. Special thanks to the Berkshire Record newspaper. 4 Contents Short Fiction 7 Alison Drozd: Red Vinyl Irene Namer: One More Walk of Freedom Creative Non-Fiction 17 Jahaira DeAlto: Larynx Lamentations Liza Citron: What is Chronic Pain Like? Alison Drozd: Life in the Rear-View Mirror Poetry 23 Christian deManbey: Mythos MacKenzie Soto: The Red Garden Hunter Fox: But Every Night When the Curtain Falls, Truth Comes in With Darkness Samm Lescarbeau: For Women / I’m Just Like You, Gramma June Lyrics 31 Tyra Nurmi: Black Bodies Swinging (A Tribute to Lady Day) Visual Art 35 Matilda Root: Untitled 1 / Untitled 2 / Untitled 3 Amy Gates: Inspired by Afghan Literature Scholarship 41 Colleen Moran: How Literature Gives Women of Color a Voice in Feminism Tom Gwinnel: On Anita, A Documentary by Freida L. Mock 5 6 pt 1. Short Fiction pt 2. Creative Non-Fiction pt 3. Poetry pt 4. Lyrics pt 5. Visual Art pt 6. Scholarship 7 Red Vinyl by Alison Drozd “ efill?” are in bed at night. “Junior won’t touch drugs as Ellie, lost in her past, hadn’t no- long as when he is five we take him to the zoo, and ticed the waitress walk over, steaming natural history museums at age eight. Little Jilly pot of coffee perched precariously on won’t be a teen mom if we take her to ballet classes a tray. She glanced down. The once and gymnastics and don’t forget the art walk every scaldingR mug before her sat untouched, a refill fall. The right preschool leads to the right grammar seemed unnecessary. school, leads to the Ivy League. Get it right and the “I’m set, thanks.” kids will be fine.” The waitress smiled and headed back behind (Sorry guys, that’s not how it works.) the counter, stealing a glance at the small note- Outside the window she watches the weekend book that sat next to the untouched coffee and warriors with their trucks piled high, off to another barely eaten muffin. Ellie slipped her hand over the battle in the never-ending war with their homes. words scrawled out on it. Her fingers instinctively Weapons supplied by Home Depot or the local searching for the ends of her long sleeves, tugging hardware store, their inner fuel provided by Star- them down ever so slightly. bucks or Dunkin’ Donuts. America Runs on Dunkin’, after all. Keep that grass green. The yard neat. Or- Angel Rose Alvarez El Rose Alvarez E. Rose ganized. Shipshape. Gotta have that curb appeal. Alvarez Ellie R. Alvarez? Don’t forget the Jones’, they aren’t going to keep up with themselves. Ellie. (Way to keep the HOA happy guys!) Ellie had always been fascinated with other Anything but Angel. people’s lives, ones that seemed better than hers (Who looks at a tiny newborn and decides Angel at least. She often wondered if other people faked is a fitting name?) happiness, joy, as much as she suspected. Were Ellie was still getting used to this name, her happy families really happy? hands often practiced it, an attempt to convince herself it was who she was now, or who at least she ... would become. Picked the day she decided to call the birth mother that she didn’t know existed for Her mother had died when she was just three the first twenty- three years of her life. The mother years old. She has no memories of her mother, she sat waiting to meet, exactly one year from the wondering at times if she ever existed. There is a day she found the birth certificate with her name picture of this person and a scarlet haired little girl on it. standing next to her kept high on the mantel in the She was early and had sat for nearly an hour parlor, but it triggers nothing for Angel. As a young watching the vehicles and pedestrians pass by girl she would sit and stare at this picture, at the outside the large window. She hoped the time tak- various pictures hidden of her mother, and try to ing in the atmosphere would steel her nerves and feel love. It never worked. She felt no sadness ei- ready her for what was to come. ther. Anger. Anger was what she felt. Was the mon- The last remnants of winter could be seen in ster born that day or had it been there all along, dirty melting piles that dotted the edge of the lurking, waiting? Would the stairs have thrown her sidewalk. Trees turned their branches upward to heart-rate into turmoil her whole childhood if her the warmth, the emerging new life sparkling in the mother had never died? Questions unanswerable sun. She was long removed from the age of count- haunted Angel, slithered along time and continued ing cars or playing license plate bingo to pass the to dig deep into Ellie’s core. time. Instead her mind wandered as it had done so To the outside eye she had a privileged child- often in her life. hood, as long as you only looked on the surface. She watched as minivans filled with families She never went without a meal, was never cold spending quality time together rushed by. Moms and always had the best clothing. Art museums and dads filling every daylight hour of each week- and cultural fairs dotted the landscape of her end with fun and memory making adventures for youth. Her education was top notch, one her ei- their small progeny, hoping to make up for all the detic memory made good use of. By fourteen she hours during the week they aren’t around. She had finished prep school, years ahead of her peers. imagines their hushed conversations after the kids Before her eighteenth birthday she had a college 8 degree, her ability to remember everything she that held her hostage. Those scars never fully fad- had ever read made school easy, at least the aca- ed, hidden under the long sleeves she still wears demic parts. Her peers had Quinceaneras, Bar and daily. Shame filled every crevice of her life; leaving Bat Mitzvahs and Sweet Sixteen parties that rivaled a path of destruction in its wake. the red carpets of Hollywood. Her Long Island up- bringing was seemingly idyllic, yet the marks under Her eighteenth birthday and Angel had been her sleeves would tell a different story, if allowed. warned beforehand, act up and you are cut off. The only threat that worked up to this point, removing Eight years old, her mother dead for nearly five the money that kept her a functioning addict. The years. Angel, because she was still trying to be house was filled with her father’s friends and col- Angel, spent her time outside of school becom- leagues. At the very edge of the room she lingers, ing small. Staying out of the way. Hidden. Bad hoping to go unseen until she could satisfy her things happened when you were spotted. Quiet obligation of behaving just long enough. She spot- infiltrated every pore. On weekends she would al- ted her father, the tramp of the week on his arm, most forget what her own this one not much older voice sounded like. There than herself. She turns was a small room off the To the outside eye she her head away from him, kitchen, filled with books self-preservation. Blood she claimed from school, had a privileged childhood, pooling inside her mouth, the library, the bookstore as long as you only looked biting her tongue to keep downtown. Some legally the words she wanted to hers, others awaiting on the surface. say from spilling out. their return dates, a few The foyer resembled were stolen keepsakes a middle school dance. from play-dates gone wrong, all offering her an Bankers and stock traders talking shop on one escape. When books were not at the ready, she side, wives huddle in cliques on the other. The would watch the world around her, wondering if mean girls, young and pretty, drinking their glass- they watched her. Stories played out in her mind, es of white wine spritzers and talking about how lives built for each person walking by her. Moth- amazing their equally young husbands are at their ers, fathers, doting grandparents, loving families jobs. The new houses they can afford and which traversed her periphery. Silently she would wish preschools their infants have been accepted to. someone, anyone, would spot her. Somehow see Not far from them are the Botox Bunch, frozen the pain, scoop her up and take her off into the faces void of emotions. They were the ones that sunset. Her own happily ever after. A hero in a cape could almost taste the day that their husbands that would take one look and know she needed would retire, and they would no longer have to saving. Heroes that never came. come to these types of events. They stay huddled She grew up in a picturesque American home. together, watching no one, barely speaking to each Stone walls and large windows greeted as you other. In between were her favorite group of wives. drove up the long driveway. Gardeners kept the No longer young, but not yet close to the age of grass an almost unnatural green.