The Nassau Literary Review The NASSAU LITERARY REVIEW

WINTER 2021 “From the Crucible” Dear Readers,

As our staff came together to finalize this issue, situated as it is in our current time of hardships, we were struck by what the issue has inevitably come to represent: a year of artmaking spent apart. It was not only a year of collective isolation, but also one of shared fury and grief at the lives that were lost through the pandemic, unconscionable acts of racism and violence, devastating wildfires, hurricanes so numerous we ran out of names to give them, and the selfish and ignorant acts of governments across the globe, particularly the U.S. government.

In short, we have lived in, and our art has emerged from, a crucible. This is not to say that our art was somehow refined by these fires, or that suffering is requisite for the production of art, but simply to say that we have existed in these fires and that our art has been indelibly shaped by our experiences. The fingerprints of our recent history are pressed into every inch of the works we have produced this past semester, and such common threads and themes seemed to bring together the works we received into a tapestry—a greater whole.

Many of the pieces rang with echoes of frustrated introspection and a yearning for human connection that carried through works of art such as the piece by Drew Pugliese which features a figure seemingly lost in thought while framed in a sea of twisted faces. This theme also appears in stories such as Cassandra James’ “Delgado at the Window,” in which the eponymous character finds himself trapped in a swirling eddy of his own thoughts, memories, and insecurities, staring out into the world without the confidence that he will be able to join it.

Into our growing tapestry came glowing threads of memory: of sweetness, shame, and home in Sheherzad Jamal’s “Lahore” and of unspoken grief in Ethan Luk’s “Nativity.” Other artists depicted a reality encroached upon by elements of fantasy that, rather than lighten the burden of heavy realism, crystallized and amplified the violence that had always been rippling under the surface. This impulse is captured in Sandy Yang’s “Suspended,” with its black-finned goldfish floating impossibly in rising tears—and in the stories “Three Twenty-Eight” and “The Knight at the Cheese Castle,” which I cannot bear to spoil the experience of reading uninitiated. The Nassau Literary Review is published semi-annually by students of Princeton University. Reproduction of any material in this magazine, And, as it is often the case with painful, troubling experiences, out of our crucible also came except for purposes of review or with the written permission of the hope. Hope shone through the warmth of intimacy and honeyed understanding in Hannah editors, is strictly prohibited. Wang’s “what to say during the instrumental opening to whitney houston’s ‘i wanna dance with somebody’”; through deftly sliced cubes of sour mango, eaten always with the sense of a Copyright © 2021, The Nassau Literary Review, mother’s love and resilience, in Jeremy Pulmano’s “Mango”; through the dissent that makes us ISSN 0883-2374 all braver in Juliette Carbonnier’s “Protest”; and through a surprising new companion to our writing explored by Ben Guzovsky in his essay, “Bot Poetry: Generating Randomness.” Cover art “Untitled” by Drew Pugliese (above). Through this time of extraordinary hardship, we still have had the gift of art and the responsibility to choose what to center. This year, inspired by the vulnerability, resilience, and courage we have witnessed in the world around us, we strove to present from within the crucible a picture of empathy, grief, and a hope that emboldens us. It is our hope that the following works will help you find meaning within your own fires and the spark of determination to build a better world. We are honored and grateful that you are here.

Mina Yu Editor-in-Chief The Nassau Literary Review Prose Readers Nancy Diallo ’22 Resident Artists Sydney Peng ’22 staff Kate Kaplan ’22 Sandra Yang ’22 Megan Pan ’22 Juliette Batya Stein ’22 Carbonnier ’24 members AnneMarie Natali Kim ’24 Caballero ’23 Kathleen Li ’24 Cameron Dames ’23 Briony Zhao ’24 Conner Kim ’23 Mariana Bravo ’24 Staff Writers Simone Wallk ’21 Aditi Desai ’24 Lila Harmar ’22 Rui-Yang Peng ’24 Megan Pan ’22 Bryan Wang ’24 Batya Stein ’22 Kelsey Wang ’24 Lindsey Hudson ’23 Editor-in-Chief Mina Yu ’22 Eva Vesely ’24 Saareen Junaid ’23 Andrew Matos ’23 Noel Peng ’22 Managing Editor Poetry Readers Sydney Peng ’22 Meera Sastry ’23 Ashira Shirali ’23 Emily Weiss ’22 Caroline Subbiah ’23 Assistant Managing Editor Andrew Matos ’23 Aditi Desai ’24 Editors-in-Chief Emiriti Shira Moolten ’21 Abigail McRea ’23 Ben Guzovksy ’24 Julia Walton ’21 Meera Sastry ’23 Rui-Yang Peng ’24 Caroline Subbiah ’23 Katie Rohrbaugh ’24 Prose Editor Nancy Kim ’21 Ivy Wang ’23 Eva Vesely ’24 Beatrix Bondor ’22 Akhila Bandlora ’24 Poetry Editor Ben Guzovsky ’24 Director of Cassy James ’23 Art Editor Emma McMahon ’21 Sabrina Kim ’24 Social Media & Uma Menon ’24 Nass Lit Online Assistant Prose Editor Benjy Jude ’23 Liv Ragan ’24 Historian Benjy Jude ’23 Silvana Parra Assistant Poetry Editor Chloe Satenberg ’24 Rodriguez ’24 Community Emily Perez ’23 Assistant Art Editor Alison Hirsch ’23 Katie Rohrbaugh ’24 Engagement Mollika Jai Singh ’24 Director Essay Editor Cammie Lee ’22 Art Team Sydney Peng ’22 Webmaster Cathy Teng ’22 Longform Editor Emerita Anna Yang ’21 Sandra Yang ’22 Fizzah Arshad ’24 Design Editor Riya Singh ’23 Shortform Editor Emerita Katie Tam ’21 Natali Kim ’24 Assistant Design Kathleen Li ’24 Abigail McRea ’23 Kathleen Li ’24 Copyeditors Editor Uma Menon ’24 Briony Zhao ’24 table of contents

Poetry 10 Sheherzad Jamal Lahore Art 11 Emma Mohrmann Readiness is All 12 Emily Willford dream after falling asleep while 13 Nancy Lu Kouros Reclining my father watches a war movie 17 Juliette Carbonnier Coat on the Train 19 Henry Wright An Ear to the Ground 20 JpRochart In all honesty, where does 21 Ned Furlong Country Edict time go? 29 Will Hartman biking no-handed through a 22 Emma Mohrmann Not Waving herd of bison in the rain 30 Juliette Carbonnier Protest 31 Beatrix Bondor Autopsy 32 Sandra Yang Suspended 45 Ethan Luk 離開是為了回來 - a Cantonese love song 44 Abby de Riel Blue Haze Drew Pugliese Untitled 55 Ethan Luk Nativity 48 Sandra Yang Fertile 74 Hannah Wang what to say during the 54 instrumental opening to 59 Juliette Carbonnier Stargazing whitney houston’s “i wanna dance with somebody” 75 Drew Pugliese Untitled

78 Jeremy Pulmano Mango What 18 Sabrina Kim Joyas Voladoras We’re Sierra Stern Three Twenty-Eight Julia Walton Prose 14 Loving 46 The Fire Next Time 23 Lila Harmar Man in a Moleskine 76 Megan Pan I lost my body 33 Cassandra James Delgado at the Window Essays 56 Ben Guzovsky Bot Poetry: Engineering 49 Lara Katz Joseph the Silent Poet Randomness 60 Sophia Marusic The Knight at the Cheese Castle SHEHERZAD JAMAL Lahore

In the sticky heat of Lahore before monsoon, you cut me a slice of fresh mango, its flesh was sweet though a little warm; it melted into my neck that August noon. When you threw the soft peel away, I wiped my hands on the beige seat cover of our old FX and licked my fingers slowly, swallowing the juice and spit thickly. Did you know, I found that car a shameful thing, it trudged past school, while I folded into myself. The air conditioner never did work; sweat was always a river in your dried streams. Perhaps, the rain will wash it away, while we all say—‘It was time anyway.’

EMMA MOHRMANN Readiness is All

10 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 11 EMILY WILLFORD NANCY LU dream after falling asleep while Kouros Reclining my father watches a war movie

modern children dressed in scarlet and black file to me— child-ruler who should-not-be-but-is, who is lounging on a mattress without ceremony— approach me through the muck-eyed grown ups, present me with a red and empty birdcage, to say: they will not help us when the floods come.

12 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 13 3:05. “I think we should—” mumbled Elda as Gus asked, “What if you turned Elda turned the music down. She me?” Elda looked at Gus’s phone. SIERRA STERN couldn’t turn down the wind, which was They were closing in on a minute actually most of the problem. “Gus?” He and a half, and Elda didn’t know how swerved recklessly into the right lane. they were supposed to have either Three Twenty-Eight No—he was just changing lanes. They conversation—the splitting up one slid onto the offramp, and rolled off the or the “Gus-you-must-be-out-of- freeway. At the stoplight, Gus said, “I’m your-fucking-mind” one in less than a “Last song,” said Elda, nodding at the lonely like always—but the Countdown gonna park.” Elda nodded, and realized hundred seconds. Elda saw the entire horizon, where the new sun, red as playlist was random. Elda didn’t know that Gus must have known what was exchange play out like a premonition. plasma, was poisoning the purple sky. most of the songs, and even Gus, with coming. Maybe he wanted to break it She was determined to skip the She retrieved a pair of catlike glasses his seemingly omniscient music taste, off even more than she did—maybe he filler, like the part where they played from the seat divider, and Gus handed was eluded by a few. Hardly a second wanted to break it offfirst . ‘chicken’ with their facial expressions her the umbrella from the backseat. into 3:28, Gus giggled. (Gus’s cool and sure, Elda’s absolutely He parked in a practically empty lot that mortified) until one of them flinched. Gus’s phone was in the cupholder, “You know this one?” asked Elda. shared space with a fast food restaurant. She would have to cut the “we can and Elda reached for it primly. The The M-shaped sign gave off a marigold always be friends” stuff for time. fingertips of her gloves, opera-length, “Kanye,” said Gus. “Classic.” glow. Elda noticed that Gus had parked had been snipped off so her hands could under a tree with sagging foliage, one Elda’s neck itched. The rising sun navigate the device while wrapped in “Classic,” repeated Elda. Sometimes she that would blanket them in shade when was at her back, and she latched the ivory polyester-satin. “Badass Audrey could feel the blue convertible moving the sun finally rose. By day, Gus was a parasol over her shoulder. It was white, Hepburn,” Gus had said the day she’d forward while her own body stood still, and manuscript editor. Elda would miss his emblazoned with gold basketballs and done it, and the next evening he’d everything felt exactly as fast as it was. Half attention to detail. She’d miss reading Lakers a dozen times in violet. Behind gifted her the glasses. of Elda’s picks were just Gus’s from a few over his shoulder and saying, in a sing- Gus’s head, the sky was just taking on nights before. The other half were Dolly song voice, “That’s not accurate,” when the dusty hue of dawn. “What do you think?” she said, Parton, who was lonely and folksy too, a werewolf bayed its respects to the full tapping the playlist labelled but her high, witchy voice felt familiar to moon or a mermaid tucked shells into Elda blinked. “Gus, you must be out Countdown, whose icon was that fuzzy Elda, like something ancient and intrinsic a jewel-colored updo. “Werewolves of your mind.” monocle-wearing puppet whose repurposed into something new. hate the moon,” she’d tell him. “Shining appearance made Elda laugh every alabaster in flashy pink hair? Sounds like “We’ve got a minute twenty-eight, time. “Who’s this again?” she asked. These past few nights Gus’s driving, shark food to me.” Elda. You’ve got to be more productive which was usually expert (and maybe the with your words than that.” “The Count,” said Gus, smiling. “Do best thing about him), was losing its edge. 2:02. . My actual guess is , but I’m He went slower now, and sometimes he 3:28 3:23 “Exactly. You couldn’t have brought giving you some wiggle room since would dip briefly into the neighboring This was a bad break up song. It this up sooner? Like, hours ago?” you’re a slow clicker.” lanes, which bothered Elda even though didn’t play. It thumped. Also, Elda there was no one else on the road. kind of liked it. “You’re breaking up with me on my “It only seems like I’m a slow clicker birthday. Who’s got bad timing?” because you give me so much wiggle 3:10. 1:55. room.” Gus tilted his head. “Chicken “I’m not turning you. This isn’t and the egg.” Was that long enough? Long enough Elda folded her glasses, clipping them to Twilight,” Elda insisted. for an “it’s not you, it’s me,” followed the front of her dress. Her eyes stung, The song switched. It’d been Gus’s by a “we can always be friends,” all tied but she could at least save time trying to “You’re right. I’m way more attractive pick before—something folksy and up with a bittersweet goodbye? explain herself if her face said it all. than Robert Pattinson.”

14 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 15 “This is you being productive with sunstroke? ‘Immortal’s not invincible, your words?” Gus.’ You said that, Elda.”

Elda looked wearily at Gus. His “It was a typo. In a manuscript.” under eyes were discolored from lack of sleep, and she could probably “You still said it,” he insisted. “I gave up manage a pretty decent echo from Italian food for you, Elds. If you wanna JULIETTE CARBONNIER shouting into the sunken hollows break up with me, do it because I suck, of his face. Elda didn’t know when not because I’m human.” he slept. Sometimes she feigned an Coat on the Train engagement just so he’d have his Elda picked at her glove with her free evenings free to rest. Still, his eyes hand. “You don’t suck,” she said. were filled with mirth. “You do,” Gus joked, tapping his Finally Elda got the joke. “You don’t incisors. It was his turn to check the really want me to turn you.” She music. “We’ve got ten seconds. You consulted the phone. One minute on better tell me quick.” the dot, and she wouldn’t have been surprised if they really had less. “Tell you what?”

Elda noticed Gus thumbing through “If we just broke up to Gold Digger.” his hairline in the flip-out mirror. More and more frequently, he was mistaking 0:00. sun-stripped brown for grey. Elda felt her skin tighten. She flexed her “God, I’m old,” he said. “Thirty.” hands as a familiar stiffening overcame Something ferocious and fleeting her joints. “No,” she said, in that entered his face. “Thirty. That’s like a constricted way that hopefully looked Los Angeles fifty.” more painful than it was. Gus knew to turn away, and faced the glowing “That’s not old,” Elda snapped, with yellow M and watched as probably- two hundred and something years’ night became definitely-morning. worth of indignance. Meanwhile, Elda shriveled and shrunk into a leathery brown bat. Gus caught “Then stop looking at me like I’ve the umbrella just before it could topple got an expiration date printed on the out of the car. bottom of my shoe. I spend almost every night, dusk ’til dawn, with “Same time tomorrow night,” he someone who’s allergic to sunlight, declared, and Elda fluttered into the silver, and fire—hell!—garlic. If I taped shade-giving tree, the backs of her together two Outshine popsicle sticks wings tender against the dawn breeze. into a holy cross, I could burn you to ash in two seconds flat. Don’t you She’d have to ask Gus for a darker umbrella. realize that right now you are one Lakers umbrella away from a fatal

16 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 17 what we're loving: new staff edition

SABRINA KIM HENRY WRIGHT Joyas Voladoras An Ear to the Ground

Because I am a person of obsessions, and because I impose my obsessions upon those who come near me, I have read Brian Doyle’s “Joyas Voladoras” aloud many times—to friends, students I tutored over the summer, and my mother this morning in the kitchen. Every silence seems to have something to say. Why thrust more of myself toward The small silence of the bedside lamp sitting alone in the dark, others when I can share Doyle’s words, The half-chewed dog bone under the couch, which effortlessly articulate how I And the vase of flowers on the kitchen table. aspire to interact with the world? And so, the essay has become a sort of The shyer silence of the cat slipping away through the porch door, adopted manifesto. The empty booth in the diner, Courtesy of americamagazine.org And the cellist’s thumb lying still on its neck. “Joyas Voladoras” is succinct and dynamic, universal and intimate. The The deeper silence of the deckchair at the end on the dock, essay begins with the hummingbird, I think literature should be a lunge The suitcases gathering dust in the attic, celebrating its dexterity, color, and toward the truth. Perhaps the truest And the sculpture without its head. ferocious energy for life. With humility form of experiencing Doyle’s essay and childlike fascination, Doyle moves came this past summer, in the dim And the widest silence of the boats bobbing in the harbour, from the hummingbird to the blue middle-of-the-night stillness of an The pitcher’s mound under floodlights, whale, eventually broadening his Airbnb. A friend and I sank into And the train disappearing around the tracks. scope to all living things. He examines the living room sofa, close enough the heart—its solitude, desire, and to hear each other’s pulse. It was a tenacity—and how it holds our human fragile, emotional moment, and I was tendencies. The final sentence, an careful to half-speak, half-whisper elegiac list of sensory images like “a Doyle’s words. The way my voice, child’s apple breath” and “the words aware of itself, walked between ‘I have something to tell you,’” throbs smallness and fullness felt true to the with longing and nostalgia. “Joyas essay: “So much held in a heart in a Voladoras” invites us to consider how lifetime. So much held in a heart in a we interact with the living world, and day, an hour, a moment.” It’s a divine at the heart of that, how we interact thing, for prose and life to mirror one with other humans. How wondrous it another, to look each other in the eye. is to be able to remember—and to have As if to say, I see you, I’m with you, and a language for remembrance. I’ll be here in the morning.

18 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 19 NED FURLONG Country Edict JPROCHART I step out In all honesty, of the nineteenth century farmhouse where does time go? Step careful over loose survey lines

Step before the sun— which, bowed late in the day,

asks no bow— only the time it takes to set and a face.

Before the brilliant sky I listen to light in piles and rows,

shouting with a preacher’s flame:

Quiet is the most versatile color

but I hang on close— I know

there was nothing but quiet when I got here.

20 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 21 EMMA MOHRMANN LILA HARMAR Not Waving Man in a Moleskine

1999 * * * He dies at the end. Eli finds peace in observation. He watches people and not only sees Eli repeats the words Hannah snarled them, but feels them, feels what they to him the morning he started reading do, more acutely than he ever wishes Harry Potter. Well, the morning he to. He hates when, after inevitably purloined The Philosopher’s Stone from losing an argument to either of their his sister’s room in order to fill his attorney parents, Hannah retreats to unquenchable desire for fantasy. Eli, her room. He detests the walls which relying upon simple logic nonetheless cut them apart. He lies on the floor advanced for a first grader, knew that of his room, staring at the ceiling, Harry couldn’t die yet. He had seen tormented by the thought that his another book on her shelf, had heard sister should suffer alone. her planning to stake out the bookstore for a third. He knew that they couldn’t Books get him through most days, keep calling the series Harry Potter letting his mind run to far distant lands if he died, and Eli doubted that J. K. in which wand-adorned wizards duel, Rowling would be so morbid as to pen mice conquer vast kingdoms, dragons the death of an eleven-year-old. and their keepers battle to the death over the futures of empires. He fills There is still a touch of doubt in his mind, the walls of his stuffy attic room with though, because Eli trusts Hannah. He is novels, histories, anthologies, and, closer with her than he is with his brother, while his youth precludes him from Abraham. Hannah had pulled him down leaving Northampton except for the the narrow streets to Hebrew school occasional family vacation, he attempts every week, always peering over both mental escapes daily through whatever shoulders before crossing the street the form of fantasy he can acquire. way their mom showed her, taught him everything she had memorized about Eli has one friend, Ben. Roaming local Massachusetts snake populations, through the damp New England first introduced him to perusing paper- streets, he and Ben superimpose bound ink. That morning, with warmth mythical landscapes onto the old spreading through her usual pallor and houses, faded roads, and sparse fists clenched at her sides, he knew that forests. They call their creation Zoon, anger pushed the words from her small and they escape into it. Ben draws the mouth, that for at least three volumes, pictures, illustrates the maps, and Eli Harry would be safe. tells the stories, forms the adventures.

22 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 23 They create a world for themselves countless men to the ground, seen the Empty. —a world in which nobody spits at heartbreak of a girl reaching her hand "They follow him into them, throws soda cans, calls them out of habit to an absent lover. Like his life, surrounding Hannah returned once. She came dirty Jews. In Zoon they are apart, any good man, Eli sets his mind to back for the funeral, one day after her and they are safe. the unattainable—to committing this him in a cloud of fiction apartment burned, when the only place humanity to paper. The more he feels more real than any for her to go was home. She walked Years slip by, though, and Eli requires from life, the more he needs to find a by the room, paused, and could not more: he needs more than a distraction fictional path through it—the more he story he has ever told." bring herself to enter. She stood in the —more than ink trying to express things tries to extract comfort from words doorway, watched, waited. which can only truly come through which, as mere representations of what life lived. Ben drifts away; with the he seeks, cannot possibly placate him. Their eyes never stray to the bedside dissolution of his friendship comes the After tiring of the attempts of other shelf, the small one with the unexplained, dissipation of Zoon. The only safety Eli authors, Eli begins to forge words unquestioned assortment of books and was able to build for himself disappears: himself—to encapsulate, rather than He imagines a world darker than the uncased CDs. The one by which I sit, he is stranded in reality. Family history experience, the world. Early attempts witchcraft-laden backstreets of Boston obscured by the wider books protruding and new friends begin to catch Eli in leave him shaky and disappointed he writes about—a place devoid of beyond my feeble spine. I am classic, their hold. Depression grows, deepening with the clunkiness of how his written heroic journeys, expectations, and three-by-five, black, grid-dotted, hidden. a chasm within him—but alcohol, weed, emotions compare to others’, of the fear. He dreams of a place where there and acid offer him a hot air balloon, an people he creates who remind him of is finally rest—a place which will I have words. Small words, scratched altitude from which he can peer down at coloring-book pages—mere unfilled accept his apathy as an attribute, not in pen, almost always black. The the triviality of it all. outlines of clichéd characters. an issue. Death is a way out, above, handwriting varies, not based on person— beyond the paranoia and the anger. only one has ever opened me and graced Up there—up where he takes his mind Progress, however, comes quickly. He And, for this reason, he chases it. my pages with his thoughts—but based when the earthless earth can no longer begins to go through notebooks with a on the mental state of that person—that support his feet—is where he is most truly voraciousness rivaled only by his appetite * * * artist, I should say. He was a writer. alone. Yet the hallucinations never leave for reading. Filling the spaces between 2016 him alone. They follow him into his life, light blue lines fills his days, nights, I have lain here close to nineteen What coursed in his veins determined surrounding him in a cloud of fiction summers. He hones a short, curt style months. Nobody looks at me. To be what he chose to record, the strength and more real than any story he has ever for himself. He crafts sentences which fair, barely anyone enters this room rapidity with which he penned it, the told. When he turns and sees no one, he end abruptly. From summers spent safe anymore. Sometimes John, deep in shape of his letters, sentences, thoughts. knows that the people who have been from the heat of the Virginia sun within the night, after hours in his attic office, I’m not referencing fear or courage as trailing him have merely slipped behind a manicured, enclosed campus, he learns wanders in. Always before the sun fairy tale authors so often do. I mean the bushes. He knows that they have to give readers just enough to piece comes up. He kneels in the middle of the benzos, legally obtained, sometimes always been stalking him; he knows that, together a character, to entice them the floor, on the carpet he laid down washed down with whiskey, sometimes one day, they will get him. The people, with a touch of knowledge, then stop. the week his son graduated from his alone; the countless joints, the ash of the flashing bursts, and the whispers To sprinkle in only a hint of conclusion. crib and moved into his own room. which lingers between some of my pages; pervade his every waking moment on John kneels, and he weeps. Sometimes the mystery ones his friends popped both the days he gets through and the Eli knows now that the world is not full Dorothy enters, pretending to dust a alongside him, as well as the unmistakable days he cannot raise himself to face. of chosen ones predestined to destroy bit when nobody is home. She comes ones they watched him inject. evil. He knows that his sister did not lie, in, lifts the duster, drops the duster, Eli knows of the things which cannot that in the end Harry does die. But he and drops onto the bed. The worst When he wasn’t writing on substances, be captured in pen and ink. He has seen also comes back. Now, though Eli has part is, she doesn’t even cry. She just he was writing about them. About their love fly between strangers’ fleeting seen the world; he knows that there are sits there, half-up on the pillows, and hold over him. About how easy it was to glances, seen world-weariness bend certain places from which no one returns. stares at the wall. get his therapist to increase his dosage,

24 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 25 about how he wished it hadn’t been I have made big decision They approach the house, and Maya that one day he took too much. Plain that easy. About how he thought he had I’m gonna try to nullify my life takes a shaky breath. The nerves kick and simple. A mistake. maybe loved Anna, how he was torn ’Cause when the blood begins to flow in. Well, they always do with new apart when she packed up and out of their When it shoots up the dropper’s neck people. Even though their faces will apartment, how he knew how to numb When I’m closing in on death look vaguely like her mom’s, they will "But he loved the torment for at least a little while. You can’t help me now, you guys have the same strongly voiced liberal And all you sweet girls with all your sweet talk intellectual ideas, the same wine- and words—he could not Distance. You can all go take a walk granola-stocked pantry, and the same And I guess I just don’t know newspapers lying on their tables, and pretend to me." Separation. And I guess that I just don’t know she will be nervous because, to her, they are unknown. They have felt a They were all he wanted. First from She and her mom are journeying grief that she has never known, that she Maya is dumbfounded. John and life, but after cycling through meds North. Maya wants to tour Amherst, has only imagined lying awake in bed, Dorothy spent their lives practicing and strictly non-medicinal substances, and her mom wants to reconnect with wondering where her brother could law, and Maya has been raised to he began to chase removal only from cousin Johnny. Neither of them knew have gone for so long. respect that kind of dedication, that them. He had always considered himself anything had happened until one education. But she knows better than a loner by choice—all he wanted was to day her mom looked at one of their They are kind, but their seriousness this. There are no dabblers. If they do not depend on anybody. And he didn’t. yearly cards and noticed an “in loving is startling. They welcome Maya and exist, in some mythical world, in some He depended only on things contained memory,” with a date which she had her mom inside, offer them bread, parallel universe, they are certainly in bottles, vials, needles. missed the first four times she read it. show them up to their cozily-carpeted not the ones who end up lying on the A phone call followed, tears were shed, third-floor rooms. They are kind; but, floors of Brooklyn apartments alone, Through it all, though, I give him and a trip was planned. instantly, Maya sees the hurt. Now metallic blood stagnant within their credit. He wrote me the truth. He lied it’s Johnny Cash looping through her punctured veins. to many, lied to their faces. Hannah. Maya hadn’t even known him. She mind as she focuses on Dorothy, whose Dorothy. John. Abraham. Anna. He never met him. Her only memories eyes reveal nothing, but whose mouth She will not pry, though, she has too had decided love was not it, love was come from the Happy Chanukah cards turns down at the corners, whose voice much tact to ask more about him, to an act, and he acted it well. John and Dorothy sent out every year. flattens at the end of every sentence. force them to fill the silence that lies All she knows is that she had resented heavy with their memories. When no But he loved words—he could not him. That while she sat around— What have I become one fills it, they decide to go out for pretend to me. He gave me his thoughts, lazed, really—her cousin-something- My sweetest friend? ice cream. A little break. Some fresh and I readily absorbed his ink, the black removed was a creative writer. He Everyone I know air. The guise of cheerfulness. blood running from his mind. was an author. He was published. Goes away in the end His slightly bearded face smiled up at * * * * * * her from the double-sided, picture- She cannot help but feel some odd form Confusion runs through her mind 2018 encrusted cardstock, proclaiming that of survivor’s guilt when, after dinner, as Maya climbs the stairs, her steps Maya cannot help but think of the he was handsome and successful and they sit around the living room, and dampened by the high pile. There Velvet Underground song. She knows that his family was sending only the talk finally turns to their two-year-long are too many emotions; too much that it glorifies exactly what brought so best “Season’s Greetings.” grief. To their youngest son. To death. welled-up, hidden and controlled; too much pain to this family, what stole the much practiced smiling and polite energy from their once-full home, but They say that he did them recreationally, conversation. All she wants is solitude. she cannot help but play it over in her that he was not one of the ones like her head on the drive up toward Amherst. "He decided love was brother, an addict. They say that he Good thing the room they offered not it, love was an act, dabbled with his friends, that he was her is small, book-lined, far-removed. Din din din din din din din din din din one of the rare ones who could take She pauses for a moment, noticing Dee din din din din din din din and he acted it well." something for fun and only for fun, the finger painting of a snake traced

26 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 27 long ago on the window. Plopping His parents were wrong, as parents down on the floor, she begins an often are. He was no dabbler. She holds exploration of the shelves, searching the proof, the truth which he only for something thoroughly unrelated divulged to paper and pen. to reality, something light, something where people smile, but out of She holds his last story—this one happiness, not obligation. unpublished and unedited. True in a way that his completed ones can only mock. As usually happens when seeking a literary cure to reality, nothing seems This one is completed, though, in WILL HARTMAN satisfactory. Expanding her search its own way. Completed, but not to more random items, she knocks concluded, she thinks, as she slides Eli’s biking no-handed through a over two loose CDs and pulls out a journal back, behind the other books. small black volume. It is promisingly herd of bison in the rain scuffed: it appears actually used. But after reading countless Nancy Drew stories as a child and being ‘like burning’ we said when consistently let down by life’s lack of they slipped their skin-tongues around codes, secrets, and hidden stories, she horned words like anvil skies like steel palms has learned to stifle any excitement. words ‘how did you like it’ and a head- She reads the name embossed on its tilt discarding a circlet watering front: Moleskine. Interesting spelling. grass with gold they said ‘how did you like it when you rode the blue mist’ we said ‘it Opening to a section in the middle, smelled like sulfur’ like fox-bitten sun- she begins. Though it resembles her brewed quail eggs ‘very nice’ they said and shed own, the handwriting feels male. The their fur gouged it from each other with thoughts seem male. horns with fangs with horns ‘and how did you like it when you stole the raindrops with Morbid curiosity glues her body to the speed and turned it upside-down all moon-knuckle floor, her hands to this tiny Moleskine. and quick and gray’ they wailed and then She never met him, but now she peers well then we gathered up counts ‘one into his head. Into what was in his head. two three’ and passed them by and The head which now lies somewhere, that was when we said ‘like burning’ and then disintegrating, beneath a pristine lawn. "As usually the rain clapped that rare awe-fire against our mouths and we started to grin and then to shriek. ’Cause when the smack begins to flow happens when And I really don’t care anymore Ah, when that heroin is in my blood seeking a literary And that blood is in my head Then thank God that I’m as good as dead cure to reality, And thank your God that I’m not aware And thank God that I just don’t care nothing seems And I guess I just don’t know Oh, and I guess I just don’t know satisfactory."

28 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 29 JULIETTE CARBONNIER BEATRIX BONDOR Protest Autopsy

A lock of Lincoln’s hair sold for eighty-one thousand. What will they want next? My treasures: toenails, toothbrush, pen, vocal chords, book spines, clock faces, cups, calves, marrows, cells spread and pinned and borne before posterity.

This house, divided can be yours in pieces. Claim one, quickly, so that even when I perish from the earth, somebody will possess me, press me near and whisper “mine.”

30 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 31 CASSANDRA JAMES Delgado at the Window

Esteban Delgado sips his wine and offer anything else on which to base turns on his lamp. He is waiting for judgement. Without much effort, one his father to die. Night falls with a might observe him to be a man with Christ-like patience, and he sinks back too little interest in women, too great into his chair and the passing of the an interest in wine, and a complete hours, feeling the wine wash against disappointment in the world and with his teeth, an earthy sweetness, like himself, which he occasionally expresses dried blood. Delgado keeps his back through the profoundest of sighs. His to the hallway and his eyes on the beady, farsighted eyes demand that he window, the window he has never wear glasses at all times; otherwise, his opened, not once in his life. Since the dress is spartan, layered in shades of age of fifteen, Delgado has left the brown and gray. Most of his time is house on only two occasions: the first, spent at his desk in front of the window, an incident involving the family dog, looking out on the world, weighing it he does not remember; the second, carefully. Delgado doesn’t think—he which occurred only half an hour wanders in his internal garden, slowly, ago, he does not wish to remember, leisurely exploring its recesses, pausing either. Here, at his desk, in front of occasionally to rest. his window, he warms himself in the golden glow of the lamplight It can’t be long now. His father will and watches the city below. There is die before the night is out. It occurs to the indignant bleat of a car horn, a Delgado that they will have to hold a distant shout, and the metallic growl funeral. The lawyer can arrange it all— of engines leaping to life on a green isn’t that what lawyers are for? People light. Young girls, linked together will gossip, of course. People always in a chain of arms and elbows, laugh gossip. They will whisper about the together on the corner with lipsticked strange, fat son who never leaves the lips. And there, a balding man drags house, who most likely drove his father a tiny white dog behind him as he to death. A few might even come to walks, yelling into the phone pinned the overzealous conclusion that the son to his ear by his shoulder. It is the most killed his father outright, in cold blood. perfect of love affairs: Delgado enjoys And in the end, the rumors will eclipse the city freely, with abandon, and yet the dead man in his coffin. Delgado SANDRA YANG it cannot touch him. cringes inwardly at the thought. Suspended Delgado is quiet and fat, and that Reaching for his glass, he whisks might be all that can be said of him, the wine into a swirl. The lamplight since he speaks too infrequently to warms the liquid’s color; it is a rich and

32 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 33 soothing burgundy. This particular When new doves are born, he ties blue children’s charities. What more could a suspects, for every used book shop he bottle is an Italian Brunello, specially ribbons around their necks to mark man ask from this world, or give to it? visited—there is a book on the shelf. shipped. Too much money, Delgado them as his, and he christens them with He will be mourned by many, Delgado They range in subject from philosophy knows—but what is money for, if not to a spoonful of tap water. He treats his knows, when he is dead—a man too to poetry, science to law. Very few buy a moment of pleasure in a lifetime son with the same kindness, if not the large for life, let alone death. of them are written in English, of unhappiness? Or perhaps not un- same attentiveness. Most of Delgado’s demanding that Delgado be able to happiness, Delgado muses to himself, memories are lopsided, heavy with his And I, says Delgado to himself, looking read at least ten languages, which, of but the absence of happiness. And with mother and empty of his father. His down at his prodigious stomach, I am course, he can. His father never told that, his eyebrows scrunch down over father was always away, visiting the too large for life, and too small for death him expressly, but he knows the reason his nose and he drinks, crossing one leg family construction sites, hounded by to notice. Delgado, who has never for the books nevertheless: his father over the other as he leans back into his immigrant guilt—he was perpetually worked a day in his life, who can’t even had, quite literally, attempted to give chair once more. afraid of failure, of the American go out to get the mail. He notices that him the world. A world unaware of Dream being snatched from under his his wine glass is half empty. So he grips Delgado’s feeble existence. A world feet like a rug. He was always holding the bottle standing to the right of the Delgado would never see. onto the Dream with his toes. lamp with his large, meaty fingers, and fills the glass again. The sound of the Falling back into his chair, he takes up "What more could a There was always the drinking and liquid calms him, like a mother’s gentle his wine and book. He opens at random man ask from this women, too. Delgado’s father was whisper. With glass in hand, he looks at to a short poem about a man’s travels not an angry drunk—he was a singer. the phone on his desk, eyes narrowed, on a river, where the river, Delgado world, or give to it?" He belted American pop songs into as if it is a predator prepared to pounce. proudly deciphers, is a physical the sky with his deep, warbling voice The doctors had promised they would manifestation of the journey of life. and laughed himself to sleep, while call him when it was over. He doesn’t From his boat, the man in the poem Delgado’s mother rolled her eyes and know if he wants the call to come, or if looks back and realizes the shore is The clock in the hallway chimes clicked her tongue against her teeth. he wishes it never would. All he knows gone—that there is only the fog behind eight o’clock. This has no significant And his poor mother—he can see is that he needs the waiting to end: his him, and the river ahead. And Delgado meaning for Delgado, besides that he is her now, tall and dark-eyed, smiling hands are beginning to shake, and a cold is standing in a boat on a Japanese river: one hour closer to nine o’clock, which thinly at the latest young girl to scuttle sweat beads on his sloped forehead. he is looking behind, looking ahead, does, in fact, bear significant meaning. away from their house at dawn—his and the world is swathed in gray. Then Shadows rise like the tide, stretching poor mother endured it all. If she ever He must distract himself—the waiting his boat begins to sink; the water tickles the walls higher, thinner, and lending complained, Delgado never heard her. will kill him. He stands to face the his knees. He doesn’t try to swim. The the ceiling a cathedral’s weight. With From the way his father sobbed when bookshelf on his right, perusing the current closes over his head, and he is the disappearance of the sun, the lamp she died, large shoulders heaving like titles with brows furrowed. The books wrapped in a coolness like silk ribbon. is the sole source of light in the room, a failing organ, he knew she’d been are sorted by country: Russia, China, Slowly, his heartbeat dips to a murmur. and it is less comforting, less than nothing short of a martyr. his family’s native Colombia, Italy, The river creeps into his ears, up harmless now; its glow is like that of Egypt and so on. Tonight, he thinks he through his nose, several gentle hands an angel of judgement. Delgado finds And yet in spite of—or perhaps because will visit Japan. There is nothing like feeling the inside of his skull. He stops himself fiddling with the lampshade, a of—his shortcomings, Delgado’s father Japanese poetry to soothe his thoughts breathing with all the naturalness of the nervous habit. He drinks again. was a man of purpose. The fire in and whisk him away from the city’s sun setting on the horizon. his blood burned for movement, for breakneck whirl—and it is a small Delgado’s father is a kind old man. progress. In his seventy-eight years tribute to his father, who fell in love Delgado’s stomach turns and squeezes. He keeps a hatch of doves on the of life, he’d amassed a small fortune, with Japan after visiting several decades It must be the wine—1982 was not the apartment roof, and cares for them as bejeweled his wife with her every desire, ago. It is his father who collected the best year, anyway. He closes the book if they are his children. He names them gifted his son an expensive education, books, one by one. For every country with a snap, and returns to looking after the saints: Peter, Agnes, Aquinas. and donated the leftovers to various his father traveled to—and, Delgado out his window.

34 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 35 With no other children and his wife Well, there had been Christie. If he her tongue; she might kiss his forehead long dead, his father must leave hadn’t been in love with her, he had "And then she'd as if he were dying, and he would be him the money, the house, and the at least been interested in her. It would stepped out into the instantly crippled by guilt. But his guilt business. Delgado’s certainty of this have been difficult not to be—Christie would be self-inflicted, as always. fact is not rooted in pride, but in an Eaves was wildly intelligent, wildly night, disappearing all-consuming dread. His father has stubborn, and, to his delight, wildly as outrageously as He dreams of his mother at least once attempted to convince Delgado to liberal. She was the niece of one of his a night. With few exceptions, she take over the business too many times father’s clients and so had escaped his she'd come." takes one of two forms: in the first, she to count. And every time, he has mother’s thorough vetting process. weeps beneath a veil over an unmarked failed. Delgado’s lips twist wryly at Thus, she made it to the Delgado dinner grave and refuses to lift her eyes to him, the thought. His father would fly to table without anyone knowing that though he calls and calls her name. the moon, if he could, using nothing she was an unapologetic anarchist— When she does look up, she mouths a but his arms. His agoraphobic son is until, of course, she mentioned firing Delgado kissed his mother’s head. “You word he can’t hear, and then a ball of merely another moon, another Everest. a missile into the White House and his are the best woman I know,” he told her. light explodes in his face, transforming Now his mother, she understood— mother nearly spit her wine across the into a hundred brightly colored wings, she understood the impossibility of room. His mother had fabricated some She waved him off. “Just wait until and the dream is over. In the second, she improvement, and rather than nagging excuse to send her home involving a you’re married,” she’d said. stands on the roof of their apartment her son to achieve the impossible, repairman for the air conditioner, and with a flaming sword in hand and burns she worked to make his existence as Christie, unperturbed, had thanked For whatever reason, he never told his the building to the ground with grim, comfortable and unchallenging as she her for dinner and stood to go. mother about Christie’s kiss—the only unforgiving eyes, like an angel of Death. could. Her one error was to assume he Delgado followed her into the foyer, kiss he’d ever had. It was a thing he kept He begs her for mercy, but she doesn’t needed a wife. not wanting to miss a moment of this in the corner of his internal garden, like hear him. The city burns around her as woman’s presence in the house; he a marble statue or a rose, to be enjoyed she rises into the night toward heaven. From the moment he turned twenty- assumed she wouldn’t notice him, since in the solace of memory. At the end of both dreams, he wakes one, she invited women to the house, she hadn’t seemed to notice him once with tears in his eyes and a terrible guilt each with their own personal epithet: since she’d arrived. But before she left There are some things, Delgado muses balled in his stomach, so that it takes Rebecca-I-met-at-church, Lydia- the house, Christie Eaves took his face to himself, which are too precious to be him an hour before he can even think of whose-mother-I’m-friends-with, or between her hands and kissed him. shared, and others too precious not to be. sleeping again. his personal favorite, Francesca-who- And she’d winked—winked! bags-my-groceries-while-she-tells- He fiddles with the lampshade; he His hands are trembling. For a second me-she-is-single-and-lonely. Pretenses “You looked like you needed it,” she swallows his wine; he rests his free time, he refills his wine glass. The for invitations grew thinner as the years said, by way of explanation. arm on his stomach. Whether from lipsticked girls on the corner have dripped by, dissolving from, “She’s my the wine or the dull, distant sting of moved on, likely to the movie theater friend Patricia’s daughter, she’s such a And then she’d stepped out into the Christie’s kiss, his nerves have calmed a few blocks down. Across the street, nice, smart girl, you know,” to, “If you night, disappearing as outrageously as a little. He could handle it, now, if a homeless man settles at the bus stop don’t find someone soon, mijo, who she’d come. Only after he’d stood there the doctors called. He would answer for the night. The stoplight changes, will put up with you when I’m dead?” for a full ten minutes, trembling from calmly: yes, I realize that my father is and a car horn blares when a woman And his mother’s sanity hadn’t been the head to foot, did he begin to cry. His dead. No, I can’t come to the hospital busy texting doesn’t drive quick only casualty—the women must have bloated cheeks were flushed and tear- at this time. My father’s lawyer will be enough to satisfy those behind her. been ecstatic, he knows, to discover stained when his mother found him, with you shortly. A cruel world, where Office lights blink off, and apartment the truth: that the only son of a filthy- clicking her tongue against her teeth. sons send lawyers to visit their fathers’ lights blink on. Delgado wonders rich Colombian construction mogul corpses. His mother wouldn’t blame if his father is immortal—if they was fat, and quiet, and thoroughly “Sometimes I could kill your father,” him—at least, he doesn’t think so. She aren’t waiting for his death, but the uninterested in them. was all she said. might smile at him, sadly, and click beginning of his second life.

36 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 37 For the first time that night it occurs The guilt that follows is too thick to be the container and spears the first bite of But that is not what happens to him that after his father’s death, he swallowed. He washes it down with wine. orange chicken, plopping it onto her tonight. Tonight, she looks at him, will be alone. tongue, her eyes fluttering shut. The Delgado—she stares straight into his The clock chimes nine, and Delgado woman never cooks, a fact he finds eyes. He struggles not to let his jaw The phone rings. sits straight. He sets down his glass, endlessly amusing. fall in shock. He blinks and holds a so abruptly that the wine sloshes onto hand to his chest, as if to say, Me? Delgado sets down his wine glass. He his coat, and reaches for his pencil He plays a little game, imagining what The woman only watches him. The stares. The phone goes on ringing, and paper, focusing his attention kind of work she does—she’d make expression in her eyes is unreadable. and he thinks the sound might go out the window again. All apathy is a wonderful lawyer, and it would Is she curious? Angry? Frightened? on forever, shrieking into eternity. instantly leeched from his body, so explain the late hours. Or a surgeon, for He is all of these things at once, and But it doesn’t—it ends abruptly, and that he might be a young man again, brains or hearts, delicate work. No!—a his skin pulses with unbearable heat. Delgado realizes that opportunity has strung-tight for battle; his dark eyes chemist, measuring things to the line. He is suddenly possessed by the desire missed him, has passed him by like glitter with anticipation; he is almost Of course, his guessing is absurd. Her to be swallowed whole. But as usual, wind in the dark. With quivering handsome. In the building across from apartment is a glorified closet: paint his desire goes un-granted. fingers, he picks up the receiver to his, in the apartment level with his curls off the walls, the furniture is check for a voicemail. own, a light turns on. Delgado glances ripped and faded, and the pale-green For the last twelve years, from the over his shoulder at the clock—9:05, fluorescent lights flicker threateningly, day she moved into her apartment, Hi there, this is Jeff Cruz, calling from to the minute. How he admires this on-off, on-off. Delgado has watched the same twenty the site on 39th, we got a steel shipment creature of routine. minutes of this woman’s life. He today that’s not right, and Mr. Delgado He slides the sketch into his desk knows her routine, her mannerisms, wasn’t picking up his phone…I’ve The woman appears at the window and drawer with all the others as the her singular tics, as well as he knows been trying for a couple hours now… he is lost all over again, just as he is each time turns to 9:15, and the woman’s his own. And yet—and this is where so, uh, if someone could let him know night at 9:05, although he doesn’t— husband walks into her apartment. he loses himself—he can never know that’d be great. Thanks. and never will—know her name. He her. It comes down to her face—the memorizes every detail as if it is the He has never actually been able to face he has never sketched. Yes, the Jeff Cruz—Delgado recognizes the last time, because every time might determine if they are married, but he woman is beautiful—but that is besides name, but can attach no meaning be the last. His pencil moves furiously supposes it doesn’t really matter—it is the point. The point, Delgado insists, to it. He makes a note to remind his against the paper, scratching out quick, enough that the woman isn’t alone. is the smile. The smile that occurs father about the steel shipment, then precise lines to match the quick, precise The man is tall, so tall that he has to every night at 9:19, when the woman flushes at his mistake. With careful woman they are meant to capture: the bend his head to avoid hitting the glances up into the starless dark—the fingers, he takes off his glasses to wipe solidity of her chin, the firmness of her doorframe, and his clothes hang long smile that slices through glass, across them against his shirt. His cleaning shoulders, the proud tilt of her neck. and loose, lending him a wraith- air, through glass again and buries is methodical and almost loving. He As always, he leaves the face blank. She like quality which might have been itself between his ribs, like a fractured slides the glasses back onto his nose moves with such clarity, shrugging the frightening if his smile was not like bullet. And he will never attempt to and blinks; he takes up his wine coat off of her body and onto a hook, the curve of a crescent moon. Delgado draw it—it would be an exercise in again. It might be hours, even days removing and organizing the contents looks away at exactly 9:16, when futility—a waste of pen and paper. before his father dies. Should he go of her purse, pulling her honey-brown they embrace in the living room, and That smile that perches like a bird on to bed? It might be better, if he sleeps hair into a clip. She slides her shoes looks back up at 9:18, just to be safe. the edge of her mouth, in the corners while he can. But what if the phone from her feet and stretches her spine, This is the point where the woman of her eyes—he doesn’t—he can’t— rings—what if it rings, and he isn’t hands pressed to her hips. Then she usually walks to the living room understand it. They have looked out there to answer? walks into the next room, a small galley window, looks out on the world— on the same world, she and him. And kitchen, where she pulls a Chinese tilting her head to the sky, and then he has never, not once, smiled at it. “That, too, might be better,” he takeout container from the fridge and down again, smiling to herself—and And so he loves her, because she is murmurs to himself. a plastic fork from a drawer. She opens pulls the curtains shut. capable of what he is not.

38 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 39 Despite his poor mother’s doubts, it has the woman knows him. He curls and trying to save the family dog from a bus. the driver climbs out into the street, never been that Delgado doesn’t want uncurls his fist—the hand she touched At least, that’s what his mother told him, yelling and waving his hands, and the to love a woman: it is that he’s incapable. just hours ago. He lifts it to his face. after the fact. His mother had answered woman stammers, shaking her head. To love someone is to touch them, body Could it still smell like her? Did she the door for a delivery, and the dog Whatever she tells him isn’t enough, and soul—he has read enough poetry to leave a scar? No, he’s dreaming again. had slipped between her legs and out because he towers over her, then strikes know that, at least. And Delgado can’t He’s always dreaming. But tonight— towards the street, chasing after a bike. like a snake to grip her by the wrist; and step out of his own body, let alone into tonight, he is awake! Delgado hadn’t had time to think—he’d the woman, breathing rapidly, reaches another—his fingers are as unpracticed scrambled past his mother and out in into her bag with her other hand, with touch as his soul. He must love He’s on his feet; he’s pacing the floor, front of an oncoming bus, snatching the wrapping her trembling fingers around through a window. He must adore muttering to himself, and not in dog before tumbling to the sidewalk. a small, red-capped can—pepper spray. through glass. A half-love it might be— English. Delgado rubs a hand over the Then, with the backs of his arms raw but is love not the best that we can offer back of his neck, then stops, because and bleeding, he’d passed out from Delgado leans against the window of ourselves, no more, no less? that is what his father would do—and his subsequent panic attack. Delgado until his nose is pressed to the he remembers his father, and that his himself didn’t remember anything glass. Heart pounding, he searches So his love for the woman was father is dying, that he could be dead beyond the smell: burning rubber, and for someone—anyone—who might constructed over a distance, like a bridge any minute. But suddenly he isn’t the cloying sweetness of gasoline. intervene. But no one is watching. stretched over a chasm. And now, with thinking about living alone in his dead The lipsticked girls chatter away; a single look, the woman has shattered parents’ house, or about calling the But now there is tonight. There is an old woman lowers her eyes and it. It is as if she has reached across the lawyer. The clock winds backward: he the woman, and the warm calluses quickens her pace; a bald man across void and slapped him across the face. He is standing outside. He is holding the of her hands. the street is too absorbed in a phone burns to run, to hide. But he’s stuck to woman’s hand. call to notice. his chair, gaping like a fish, praying for In the garden of his mind, it is 7:30pm the woman to move and praying that again, and Delgado is still watching the Delgado rakes his hands through his she never moves again. lip-sticked girls and the taxis, sipping hair. He can’t—there are a hundred his first glass of wine and waiting for reasons, a thousand—and he can’t, and She recognizes him. He is sure of it. the phone to ring. And that’s when that’s all. His mother’s voice comes "A half-love it he sees her. It’s the woman, striding to him, warm, soothing: it’s alright. Then she waves at him. It isn’t much—the up the street in a long blue coat. He’d It’s alright. He can’t, and people will faintest lift of her hand—but he would’ve might be— recognize her anywhere in the world. understand why he can’t. Best not collapsed had he not been sitting. And she He knows she’ll stop at the pharmacy to worry—best to move on. Closing smiles. That smile! For him—from her! but is love not before going home, because it’s a his eyes, he leans into her phantom He can’t move—his limbs—this paralysis. Tuesday. When she crosses the street, touch. Then his eyes fly open again, Thank you, she mouths—she moves her the best we can she doesn’t look up; she keeps her and he moans pitifully. Why, why, is lips in exaggerated Os. Thank you!—for offer of ourselves, eyes on her feet, and she’s talking to he condemned to watch? Why can’t what? And why? Then the curtains are someone on the phone. Maybe that’s he be capable, like other men? He pulled shut, the woman is gone, and no more, no less?" why she misses it—because she’s talking doesn’t wish to be silver-tongued, or Delgado is left alone with his glass of on the phone, looking down. strong, or powerful—only capable! wine and the pounding of his heart. And instead he must watch. He must Bursting from the twilit haze, a car watch, like a helpless, hapless child. She knew him. barrels toward her. Delgado leaps to his feet; his wine sloshes. The car stops Outside, the driver tugs the woman He doesn’t know if the thrill that fires Until a few hours ago, he hadn’t left the inches from the woman’s legs, and she toward him and spreads his legs wide. up his spine is hope or pure terror. It’s house since he was fifteen years old and turns toward it in shock, blinking, the The woman cries out; the pepper spray impossible—it can’t be. And yet it is— acne-covered, when he’d almost died phone tumbling from her hand. Then slips from her hand to the pavement.

40 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 41 If Delgado does nothing, he will be When he wakes, the woman has an is elsewhere, lost in the maze of what forced to live with whatever happens arm looped behind his shoulders, and he might’ve done differently. He "And so there is to the woman in the next five minutes. two of her fingers are pressed to the could have walked the woman back to a restlessness, a And that, as he is continually reminded side of his throat. She’s asking him if her apartment; he could have asked for with every three or so glasses of wine, she should call an ambulance, if she can her name; he could have grabbed hold burning to the silence that is what Delgado dreads—that is use his phone, because hers is broken. of his consciousness until she’d left that seeps through what looms over his shoulder, tapping He shakes his head; he’s fine; he lives him, and avoided the embarrassment it and sneering: not living alone, but just down the street; he’ll walk himself of collapsing in her arms. He groans at Delgado's skin, pulses living with himself. home. Well, if he’s sure—the woman his own weakness, kneading his nose stands reluctantly, worrying her lip. His between two fingers. in his veins." And so Delgado is fifteen all over again— ears are ringing, but he thinks she says he doesn’t think. He abandons his desk something about not knowing whether But he’d been in her arms. She’d held and his wine, and races for the door. he’s a hero or damsel in distress. Then him. She’d touched his hand, and she’d Delgado dabs at his eyes with his shirt she smiles, a brilliant, yellow smile that smiled, and she hadn’t forgotten him. collar. He cleans his misted glasses, adjusts The rest is a blur. There is shouting, and curves her face into a small and perfect He sighs, leaning back in his chair, them on his nose. But perhaps he hasn’t tremendous color. Delgado sways on his sun. And he might pass out again, if he rubbing his neck. It is enough. If he cleaned them well enough, because the feet as he runs; he is half-drunk on the doesn’t move. must relive what he might’ve done city lights are smeared, like paint, into world. He doesn’t know what he says to for the rest of his days, so be it; but in fantastic loops and swirls—the stars are make the driver disappear, but in the next He stands, shaking. He reassures her exchange, he will keep the calluses on falling, dying spectacular deaths—and moment the man is gone, and Delgado is that he can walk, that he’s alright—he her palms; he will bask in the glow of Delgado can see the wind tearing through alone with the woman in the street. The craves and detests her touch. She thanks her sun-yellow smile. And it is enough, the streets, a herd of wild-maned horses. woman is gasping, holding back tears, him again, still smiling, and he leaves, Delgado muses, to keep a golden Standing, he fits his hands beneath the leaning down to pick up her shattered the glow of that smile branded onto the memory, to carry it like a lantern window. He grunts, lifts—it opens with phone and pepper spray. Then she thanks backs of his eyes. He stumbles up the through a lifetime of shadow. He will the pop of cracking wood. And the cold him, squeezing his hand, while Delgado steps of his cold, dark house. He shuts plant it in his internal garden—he will blasts the air from his chest; the tears freeze fights for breath, shaking his head, a the door. He collapses, pressing his face care for it, and gaze at it, and he will in his eyes. Delgado smiles. thousand stars exploding in front of his between his knees. He wonders what remember that for an instant, at least, eyes. He can only think that the world he’s ever done to deserve a day like this. he was capable of love. The phone rings. is painful, and painfully white—that her hand is surprisingly warm for such a cold And now, it is 10 o’clock. Delgado day—and that her skin is callused, with looks out his window. In the brown- the texture of something worn, lived-in. black night, the city is a child pretending to sleep, eyes squinted “No, no.” He pushes her away. “Anyone almost-closed, fidgeting under the would’ve done it. Anyone, anyone.” sheets. It will wait until its parent, the darkness, is gone, and then it The look on her face is strange—like will spring awake in self-satisfied she’s about to laugh and cry in the triumph. And so there is a restlessness, same moment. a burning to the silence that seeps through Delgado’s skin, pulses in his “Yes, anyone could have,” she says. veins. Without his noticing, his leg “But no one did.” has begun to bounce, drumming a lopsided beat beneath his desk. He’s That’s when Delgado passes out cold. forgotten to refill his wine. His mind

42 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 43 ABBY DE RIEL ETHAN LUK Blue Haze 離開是為了回來 - a Cantonese love song

The house is on fire, And I’m not leaving yet.

I’m not going to save the cat lying next to the split starfruit. Or the two origami cranes on the bannister.

I’m not going to save you, either. For you look most untouchable Asleep: body embalmed in the crocheted blanket.

Outside, your flannel is left to dry On the begonia tree.

It’s a quiet night for burning. And I think: This is how I leave, and this is how I will return.

I crave to touch what survives of you. Like the passing of tongues, Two Achaean runners handing a lit torch to each other.

44 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 45 what we're centering: creators of color

JULIA WALTON The Fire Next Time

Many people have wondered what Particularly important to me is James But Baldwin is also unforgiving about might make this historical moment Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time (1963), white Americans’ culpability in ways different from the events of past years the model for Coates’ Between the that ring just as true today. “[A]nd (especially 2014–2015). In many World and Me (2015). A collection this is the crime of which I accuse disheartening ways, this past summer of just two essays, it is extremely my country and my countrymen,” he felt like deja vu: a police officer murders digestible, but Baldwin’s personal, writes, “that they have destroyed and a Black person, protestors organize, and literary prose makes it powerful. are destroying hundreds of thousands those in power make marginal changes And though the first of the essays is of lives and do not know it and do not to policing, while the structural racial directed to his nephew, the collection want to know it.” It is not only that inequalities of American society speaks urgently to white people. For too many white Americans remain remain. Rinse and repeat. me, his most powerful claim is that uneducated about our histories of white people are “trapped in a history slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, and on As a brief look at recent anti-racist they do not understand”—that white and on. If this country is to change, reading lists will show, this feeling people, as a collective people, in order white Americans must want to know. has created an appetite, alongside to achieve political and emotional contemporary voices on race (Ibram maturity, must be freed from their That the cycle of protests continues, and X. Kendi, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Roxane own racism. “We [Black people] works like Baldwin’s continue to offer Gay), for classic works by canonical cannot be free until they [white wisdom, demonstrates how much social authors. I, too, have been returning people] are free.” It is a powerful change in this country continues to be to works on race that have inspired reversal of the typical discourse on painstakingly incremental. We must me throughout my education. It is race: while many white Americans constantly fight for justice in institutions shocking how much purchase they still feel racial justice to be an attack on and systems. Perhaps reckoning with have. But, now, we have a renewed their identity, Baldwin emphasizes important insights such as these can help opportunity to glean wisdom from what they stand to gain, not lose. us move our conversations forward. them appropriate to our moment. Courtesy of amazon.in

46 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 47 LARA KATZ Joseph the Silent Poet

Joseph was nearing the senior Joseph had every single strand of hair citizenry, but he had only just hit he’d had since he was a young man. his mid-life crisis. His older brother He knew for sure. When he was in his had always liked to make fun of him twenties, he’d signed up for a science for doing everything right but at the experiment concerning hair loss in wrong time. Brushing his teeth in the men. It paid well. The researchers bathroom at school. Spring cleaning had rubbed some kind of hair product over the Christmas holiday. Hitting his into his scalp every day for a month. growth spurt at nineteen, but growing It hadn’t worked, supposedly. Every a mustache at twelve, and chest hair other participant had lost his hair at the at thirteen. He had looked like a troll ordinary time, except Joseph. He hadn’t throughout his teenage years. lost a single one. One of the scientists still kept in contact with him, counting Now he was sixty years old, and he his hairs every month. The experiment wanted a new car. was long over now, Joseph’s case had been marked as a statistical anomaly, and He didn’t need a new car. In fact, the product never went to market. But he had a perfectly good car already. that one researcher was fascinated by It was three years old, and it purred Joseph’s case, and Joseph didn’t mind. like a greased cat. He also wanted to They went out for drinks each time buy a greased cat. That is, a hairless before they went to the lab, and Joseph cat—one with oily, hypoallergenic could always do with a whiskey or three skin. He had stopped at the local if someone else was paying for it. library on the way home from work on Tuesday to perform what he had So, hairy as he was, he was thick in the thought would be a fruitless exercise middle of his mid-life crisis. but nonetheless greatly desired to do, DREW PUGLIESE like (he compared himself in his head, Eventually he bought the new car— pityingly) a pregnant woman craving selling his old one for a good ten a vegan burger. Cats without hair? thousand less than his purchase price, Untitled Burgers without meat? He shook his because now it was “used”—and head at the ridiculousness to himself as pulled his sparkling new Giulia into he walked. His hair shook too. his one-car garage. It cost just about

48 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 49 the amount of his yearly salary, before a man easily bored. All he did, really, her, he decided. He had to—and while Joseph decided to take a somewhat less taxes, but he was unconcerned by was occasionally tell off a squirming they spoke, he would silently recite a direct approach. Instead of marching the prospect of paying it off for the child for making too many noises, or poem he had created about her, and see if across the gallery, he sidled up to the next decade or so. He didn’t plan on scold some pseudo-art connoisseur for she understood. man, and handed him the question on retiring, and apart from his mid-life standing close enough to a work that, if a piece of paper. This, he was certain, crisis, he was an exceptionally frugal sneezing should occur, would cost the “Hello,” he said, striding up to her one was a far more silent and poetic way person. His savings were stellar, museum thousands of dollars. day. “I need to talk to you.” of going about the whole matter. possibly because he’d begun them at the age of seven. By trade, Joseph considered himself She turned to face him. The man looked up, and, in a low voice a poet. He liked to read poetry in the that stank of wisdom and stale beer, he But the cat, he decided, would be too evenings, and while at work, he created “Yes?” said only three words: “No, no, no.” expensive. He needed a companion, his own little poems in his head by or a friend of some kind, but money staring at the art. He would work on a There was a long pause before Joseph And then he walked away. wouldn’t get him that, he was sure. poem all day, never once transcribing spoke again, because he was busy a word, restating it over and over Joseph was so grief-stricken he almost * * * silently reciting the first couplet of again in his head until there it glued his poem. skipped going to the bar that night— itself, oozing freshly, until the next it was the time of the month he had day, when another concoction would “Why do you frequent this museum— drinks with the scientist. But, in the replace it. Some of the poems were so, so frequently?” Internally, Joseph end, he went anyway. The scientist "In fact, he felt it was very short—only a couple of words, cursed himself, even though that wasn’t had bad news. a secret—what he just enough for him to nurse from nine part of the poem. It had been so long to five, but not so many words that on since he’d talked to anyone other than “I was looking over the samples of that did, that is, and how a more wearying day he’d find he’d his scientist friend, his doctor, and the hair product—you know, for old times’ lost his whole poem just by pausing to cashier at Trader Joe’s. sake, and I noticed something rather wonderful it was." strategize his bathroom breaks. odd. I don’t know how else to say “Excuse me?” this—but it appears that it contained a A poet for a companion was who he kind of poison.” desired, a poet like himself—but not “Why—why do you freque—” any old poet. He wanted one just like Joseph stared. himself. He wanted to befriend another “I heard you the first time. That’s none silent poet, and those, he knew, were of your business.” not common. Joseph was a museum guard and had The woman turned and stalked sharply * * * been since even before he graduated away, and Joseph forgot his poem in an college at the age of thirty, having taken He began keeping watch for candidates instant. He hadn’t lost a poem like that ten years to complete college—partly everyday. Every patron who walked alone in years. He was furious with himself. because he was working as a museum was a potential silent poet. One young She couldn’t have possibly been a silent "Every patron guard full-time throughout, and partly woman seemed viable. She walked alone, poet. She was much too loud, and now because he kept failing Psych 101. He and returned to the gallery every day for his day was ruined. who walked liked his job. In fact, he felt it was a a week. Although it was still early fall, she secret—what he did, that is, and how dressed in a long double-breasted coat and A week later, he tried again. alone was a wonderful it was. All day he stood in a thin red scarf. That, Joseph thought to a large, square, heavily air-conditioned himself, was the attire of a poet. She was This time it was an old, old man. He potential room and looked at art. Yes, it was quiet, too, roving among the paintings looked like Gandalf, if Gandalf played the same art each day, but he was not like a ghost on wheels. He would talk to golf and drank Stella Artois. silent poet."

50 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 51 “Odd, don’t you think? And it turns Joseph stumbled into his bedroom, silent poet. He recited it as loudly as out—all the other participants passed clutching his abdomen. Maybe he he could, in his head. away from it four years ago. You’re the should call 911. But he knew it was too last one living.” late. He knew it was no good. To his utter yet jubilant surprise, he saw the same familiar concentration Joseph felt instantly faint. The bar He sat down heavily at the end of his passing across this man’s face. Those stool wobbled. Four years had passed— bed and looked into his mirror. A man eyes, set, staring at nothing anyone he must be late to the poison, but stared back at him. Full-haired, fresh else could see; those fingers, knobbed, this seemed wildly late. He couldn’t skin, bright eyes—but all aged. All tired. clasped in his lap, twitching without possibly last another day, could he? “I sound; that nose, hard, nostrils flared have to go,” he said. Joseph frowned. Was this the man single-mindedly—all the hallmarks of a he had seen in the museum earlier? silent poet. They were all there. “Hey, old man, I know this is tough "Poets always have Gandalf? But there was no beard—no, news, but—” this was a different man. The communication was silent, but troubled lives, he assured. A smile cracked across Joseph’s “I think I’m going to head home,” Could this man be the silent poet lips, and so too did one across the mouth Joseph interrupted. reminded himself. companion he was looking for? of the man who shared his burden.

* * * His, it seemed, Joseph began to recite a poem he had He knew he was not alone, no matter Joseph drove his Giulia back to his had been destined thought he had forgotten about. He’d how silent his poetry. house. It was late already. He felt written it years ago, when he had strangely weak, and when he caught first thought of the term for himself, He closed his eyes and lay back on the bed. sight of his reflection in the car window, for loneliness." he looked paler than his newest pair of Fruit of the Looms.

He staggered into his kitchen. The formica countertops looked like they were crawling with ants. He lived in a somewhat secluded neighborhood, and everything was silent. He couldn’t even hear the cicadas. He supposed it was too cold for them outside. Where do they go in the winter? he wondered, and suddenly it troubled lives, he reminded himself. occurred to him that the silence around His, it seemed, had been destined for him might be, in fact, from the poison, loneliness. The only “friend” he’d not the weather. Maybe the poison was ever had had been that hair scientist, making him go deaf. and now even he had been revealed a traitor. A murderer. The cause of Joseph felt close to tears. Here he was, Joseph’s premature demise—or maybe dying alone at sixty, too early to die it was fate that was killing him now, yet too late to turn his life around. He giving him his rightly poetic death— would never meet another silent poet. swift, and excruciatingly painful—but This seemed certain. Poets always have decades too soon.

52 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 53 SANDRA YANG ETHAN LUK Fertile Nativity

There was an autopsy at dinner last night. The patient: steamed grouper. We separated the meat from bone with chopsticks. I licked the plate of its flesh clean.

Remember when you were dissected too, ma? Anesthesia laughed its way into your spine when I cried my way out of your abdomen. Your feet pressed milk out of the cold linoleum floor three days after the stitches swam across your stomach. I was the only body in the room who could not help you.

When I was five, I visited another hospital room where you rested. Ba told me you had a stomachache. What I didn’t realize was that a sibling had failed to come into the world. The next week, we sat at the dinner table and buried his name under the plump belly of the steamed flounder— its eyes staring back at us.

54 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 55 BEN GUZOVSKY Bot Poetry: Engineering Randomness

from a dictionary or from published generated poetry in 17 syllables or less. moment — writing, that strategy seems to work— First, a quick refresher on the modern everything swimming leisurely computers are getting better and better English language haiku: there are a leafless world at fooling people into believing their no rules. The 5–7–5 form has been writing is human-made. discarded as a relic of bad translation. I couldn’t resist tweaking a couple of In Japanese, that flow of syllables is the haikus that were almost evocative, There’s a growing movement in the much more natural. Haikus don’t but had one word out of place. In the literary world to embrace what is even have to be three lines anymore. following composition, I changed only computer generated as genuine art. For example, examine Francine a single word: Just a month ago, Lillian-Yvonne Banwarth’s poem, a recent winner Bertram’s Travesty Generator, a poetry of the Haiku Society of America’s one snow — collection that utilized Python and Java Museum of Haiku Literature award: through the window to write certain lines, was longlisted for a withered plum tree the National Book Award. It’s one of off to on I disappear into the visible many examples where humans have I’ve saved the best for last. The true collaborated with machines to create Using around 300 of the most brilliance of the program is not its something they couldn’t have alone. commonly used words in published ability to create haikus, but the way it With collaboration comes questions haikus, I created a random haiku randomly puts words together. Here of authorship—questions we can only generator. The program wrote each are some phrases it invented: explore with a better understanding of line of the haiku using a “mold”—a how these machines work. predetermined order of words, like a stars’ gathering Computer Generated Art by Jakub Cech “noun, verb, adverb” or “conjugation Machine learning poetry programs are article, noun, verb.” Each mold was withered rage How do you teach art to a machine? complicated and, more importantly, drawn from published haikus as well. Great writers have the ability to find proprietary. We can only guess how Then, I generated ten thousand haikus. world-moons the “right words” and to use those they work. To try it out, I did some words to put together an evocative coding on my own—not with the hopes Of the couple hundred I read, 30% Here, the benefits of collaborating and meaningful phrase. At first glance, of winning a National Book Award, but were logical and grammatically correct, with a machine start to become visible. this skill is very hard to automate. to see what this trend was all about. 10% could pass for human-made, and Whereas the goal of a computer Computer scientists have been taking a handful had literary merit. Here are scientist is to fool people into thinking a surprisingly effective approach for I started with haikus. Fewer words two of my favorites: these haikus are human-made, the goal decades: randomness. After building a mean less complexity for a COS 126 of a poet is to write the best poetry. grammatical base for a machine to work student to deal with, and they’re just as stone blossoms between hills Since creating the program, I’ve used all with, they use some element of random instructive as longer writing. You can cloudy river disappears of these phrases, these little computer- word generation. Whether drawing illustrate all the principles of computer- blue daydreams generated ideas, in my own writing.

56 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 57 JULIETTE CARBONNIER With a completely customizable input These authorial choices, the slight for this program, there is limitless changes that make computer- Stargazing room for exploration. By changing generated poetry palatable, take agency the word bank and the molds, the away from the machine. There are few program will generate prose or other real questions of authorship to answer forms of writing as well. Computer- here. It doesn’t matter who writes the aided writing is the future. Make this poetry—or, better yet, what machines modern thesaurus your own. help the writer—if the poetry is beautiful. The author is just a name on I have a sense that this is cheating. a page, accompanying art. The “author” isn’t technically the one writing. The chess world has a similar If an artist writes their own program, problem, as computers are close to all is well. When another artist uses that solving the game but human players program for their own art, even with continue to compete for millions in slight modifications and a completely prize money every year. Machines new, randomly generated output, is that break chess because unlike humans, ethically acceptable? Writing has always they have no preconceived notions been a cumulative process, with one of how one should play a position, author building off of another’s ideas. no years of habit and teaching that But these aren’t implied connotations they are afraid to deviate from. Chess and allusions, or even structural choices. engines see an idea, and then players Anyone can write a sonnet without have to struggle to figure out why citing Shakespeare. Computer programs such a strange move is the best one. are someone else’s tools. Anyone can use tools like a thesaurus to aid with writing, Writing isn’t a competition. When but as more and more resources become a computer puts words together, it available to authors, where will we draw doesn’t know if they sound good to a the line? human reader. It is up to the author to decide if the computer-generated We already have humans to write phrase is worth using, if it needs to be poetry; let’s write something that changed slightly, or if it doesn’t work humans can’t. As nice as that idea sounds, at all. Unlike chess, where there is even that phrase suggests an element of always a right move, writing maintains plagiarism, of taking something from enough ambiguity for computers to a machine. Computer-aided writing is be useful, but not dominant. full of as much possibility as it is pitfalls.

58 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 59 center of Illinois, the center of America, When I tell the Katies that I am and possibly the center of the known working at the Saturn Cheese Castle, universe. This kind of comment is also they are predictably overjoyed for me. SOPHIA MARUSIC likely a reference to the fact that I didn’t We have a weekly FaceTime where we talk until I was six years old, and then drink pink wine and talk about how The Knight at the Cheese Castle again was silent for eleven months after our lives have changed even though my mother died of cervical cancer when nothing is ever a surprise; we follow I was fourteen. People don’t forget that the same kind of pencil sketch arc of sort of thing, so I’ve never mentioned it teenish girl development contained in When I have to admit to people that I the unhealthy food, but rather that the at school. any young adult novel you can buy work at the Saturn Cheese Castle, I always foods that employees eat free at the at the airport. The three of them have add that the worst part is the cheese. Saturn Cheese Castle are the orders consulting internships in New York and forgotten by road-tripping patrons, “I’ve been silent for more than a third California. I am slightly embarrassed “That makes sense,” they say, “all that food sent back by gooey-thighed of my life!” I often imagine myself about the fact I don’t have a summer cheesy goodness. What a temptation.” mothers and their egg-allergic babies. saying this over a black coffee with internship, but I am also in the process The fried cheese conglomerations are a waifish girl that I will meet in one of designing my own major that I call Then, because I have practically invited cold by the time they are offered up, of my lectures on Japanese Bioethics. “the agriscience of natural disaster folk them to, they make a point of scanning greasy and breaded and indecent with “Don’t worry though. Only a year of art,” which doesn’t immediately lend my body, which is thin, but lumpy and ranch dressing. I eat it because it’s it was because I was sad. The other itself to many job prospects. un-athletic. They say, “Oh, you’re a free and also because I don’t want my time was because I had nothing to skinny thing. You don’t have anything coworkers to eat it, to get some added say.” Even I know that’s not a trait you “I don’t like the job,” I admit. “It’s a to worry about,” and then they are done benefit from this terrible and thankless spring on people that you are meeting bunch of people that I didn’t talk to in talking about the cheese and the work. job. Each bite of cold cheese curds is for coffee for the first time. high school. And it’s gross. Have you The conversation moves on to topics as greasy and rubbery as gnawing the guys ever even seen a cheese curd?” like the high school basketball pre- pink eraser off of the end of a pencil, At school, I have three roommates that season or the buzz of potentially getting so chewy that it makes a squeaking are named variations of Katie who love “I don’t eat dairy,” two of the Katies say, a Baskin-Robbins in town. To let you noise against enamel. With every curd me endlessly. One is from California, but because of the lag in connection, it know where they stand on the divisive I eat, I find myself apologizing to the one is from New York, and the third isn’t readily obvious which two said it. county matter, they say something millions of years of evolution that have was born in California and went to The three of them all look like anemic like: “If a man needs to sample thirty- gone into shaping my teeth into hybrid boarding school in New York. When valkyries, so it’s hard to distinguish one flavors in his ice cream, then how killing, grinding machines. they say where they were from, they all them regardless. many flavors of woman does it take can say “I’m from just outside,” a phrase to keep him entertained, if you know People find this part of my tirade that I covet endlessly. I’m forced to say what I mean.” And then we both look against the curd very off-putting and that I’m from a smallish town in Illinois “Please don’t talk about cheesy things knowingly at each other and chuckle, too long to be appropriate for casual and then people are confused and say to me, I’m on a cleanse,” Caity says. since there is no subtlety or possibility conversation. They usually laugh a little “Really?” because I inherited half of my of misunderstanding them. bit and then say something like, “That mother’s brownness, but only an eighth “Mina’s scared of her job because school up north has made you quite the of her beauty. I want to tell them that the cool kids from high school work Truthfully, I wouldn’t mind a Baskin- talker.” And then they ask about my dad, there are brownish people everywhere, there,” Kat snickers, the screen freezing Robbins in town. I quite like rainbow or finally bring up the Baskin-Robbins. even in the burning core of America, her face into a cackle. sherbet in a chocolate cake cone. I find this funny, because the university and someday soon everyone will be where I spend most of the year is brownish, but there is never an occasion “No, no,” I say, changing the angle of my If the conversation doesn’t move on really not any farther north than my to announce this because people are phone so that my eyebrows look more that quickly, I make a point of telling hometown, just farther east. At home, typically too polite to ask you what they angular and my face looks slimmer. “It’s them that it is not the temptation of we strongly consider ourselves the really want to ask you. not the cool kids. The cool kids all work

60 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 61 at the trampoline park. The other people last eleven months hadn’t happened. At the Cheese Castle, I get paid a little at work are weirder than me. Like the "After I finish my He just said that we couldn’t have over eight dollars an hour to say the band nerds, but worse. Like the clarinet borrowed tale of pizza because he had already bought a mandatory greeting, so it is very easy playing horse girls, but now they know rotisserie chicken at the grocery store. to put a monetary value on every word where to get drugs.” aliens and heroic Eating that disappointing chicken was that comes out of my mouth. I fill out deeds and romance, the most loving act that I have ever another purple slip: “I’m sure they’re not that bad,” Kate experienced. When he says this new Lynn says definitively, as if she knows it is fully dark." thing about me being amazing, I smile If we said “Welcome, please let me know better. “Okay, can we talk about the at him and grind the crushed up cicada if there’s anything I can do to make your fact that I think I got drunk and made bodies into the top of my thigh and they Saturn Cheese Castle visit more enjoyable" out with my cousin?” Not that there are many people that stick to the thin layer of perspiration it would mean the same thing and save look like my mom. To my dad and I’s that covers my entire body. time and money. This is the sort of thing I We talk about it. dismay, I have his face almost exactly. could teach my intern. He is fairly handsome, but that is not the * * * After we hang up, my room is quiet point. We have spent entire afternoons “Hi, welcome to the Saturn Cheese This slip, too, is unaddressed until Leon and heavy with blush purple dusk, holding up old photos of my mom and Castle, please let me know if there’s puts up a memo in the break room that the way overripe blackberries droop searching my features for hers. Other anything I can do to make your visit the purple slips are intended to be used off the vine. I go downstairs to find people often don’t understand this; I more enjoyable” is all I am supposed to for time-off requests, shift changes, and my dad making corn and breaded am a brownish girl and, therefore, will say while I am at work. I stand at the sexual harassment claims. As I had told chicken on the stove that we eat on always look like my mom before my entrance to the behemoth grocery store the Katies, I went to high school with the floor in front of the television dad, but we have put in the hours and and announce this like a town crier many of my coworkers. The ones that while watching Michael Keaton’s the love and the self-hatred and the while handing out little stickers that say work my shift with me are Betsy Beth, Batman movies. I wipe my hands scientific distance and unfortunately MORE CHEESE MORE FUN. I am Ramona, and Caroline. The three of on the carpet because it is dark in concluded otherwise. technically the junior greeter, but the them all worked together at the Pottery color and my dad isn’t going to stop senior greeter, an older woman named Nook before a kiln fire reduced it to me. When I pick up my fork again, It is still light out when we are done Mary Jean whose face looks like a kitschy ashes. They have no interest in there is a long blonde hair threaded eating, so we go to the porch and frowning glazed cruller, is dealing with being my friend, which is likely because between my fingers. Not mine. watch the fireflies. I pick the swelling a flareup of Lyme Disease. This means they remember me as the girl who did cicada skins off of the deck rails. My dad that I am the sole representative of the not speak for the entire freshman year My dad works as the regional smokes a cigarette. It is always hot and Saturn Cheese Castle, the only voice of high school. Betsy Beth has lots of representative for a nationally hated we are always sweating. My dad asks welcoming these sad, milk-bag human red hair and very pink eczema on her bioscience company that I don’t need to me to tell him a story and, as usual, I beings through the drawbridge. I do neck. She is engaged to a guy who was name, supplying genetically modified steal one from a book I have read. After not take this responsibility lightly and our substitute science teacher and she crops and pesticides to our town and I finish my borrowed tale of aliens and recently filed a request with Leon, the spends most of the day being rude to the the nearby farming communities. He heroic deeds and romance, it is fully day manager, for an intern. customers that I have so warmly greeted. has a girlfriend named Denise that he dark. My dad says something like “The doesn’t love, but he doesn’t hate her, imagination on you, kid. Crazy. You’re When the Greyhound buses make a stop Ramona barely comes up to my and at a certain age, people compromise going to do something amazing.” here, I’m completely swamped. And the shoulder and looks like a little girl; for that. I think she is fine, and like that stickers stick together so while I’m trying she has a flat face that is the color of she gives me a lot of space, the way you When I spontaneously ended my to unstick them from each other, people are soy milk and bright orange braces. would an animal that you are forced to eleventh month of silence, my dad had walking through unstickered and ungreeted. I once heard her telling Betsy Beth feed and keep but have no intention of just come home from work and I said, I wrote this on the purple sheet of paper that her mom couldn’t afford to taming, and I also like that she looked “Can we have pizza tonight?” My dad that is reserved for employee requests. have the orthodontist take them off, nothing like how my mom looked. didn’t react—he simply acted like the Leon ignored it. so she was saving all of her money

62 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 63 she made because they had already woods, I looked for Augie’s young I tell him that I am working on making Instead, I concentrate on standing been on for two months longer than face and found it hidden in camouflage my greeting as efficient as possible, and perfectly straight with my shoulders they were supposed to be and she among the bushes, no weapon, just that I hope to have an intern by the end back. If Augie approaches from behind, was afraid that all of her teeth were blending into the soil. of the week. Augie laughs and says that he will see my mediocre ass, but more going to fall out soon. he would like to be my intern. It is lucky importantly, the nearly perfect symmetry Every four days, Augie picks up the then that the fattest family I have ever of my shoulders, bisected with my Caroline is one of the most beautiful spoiled food and unsold products at seen arrives to the gates of the Cheese very careful braid. It’s deep in human girls I had ever seen, but she is Korean, the Cheese Castle and delivers them to Castle to be stickered and greeted, programming to have an affinity for so people here don’t treat her that farms in the area for pig food. Every because I am at a loss for words and natural symmetry; if you show enough way. As far as I can tell, she is also time he shows up, I welcome him in it is very possible that my now basin- people a fully formed pinecone, about boring. She always has her earbuds in my carefully practiced manner and shaped heart will force me into one of sixty percent of them will report building and perches behind the cash register, he says hello back and then I watch my famous medically induced silences. sexual arousal that they can’t ignore. cyclically painting her nails with a rust him load his truck. It is hard for me colored polish that she makes at home to tell if he is good looking or ugly; As I greet this family and their leashed But Augie doesn’t approach from and then chipping it off. I find this habit he is slightly taller than I am, but has children that look like they are made behind; he must have gone out the back particularly disgusting for a reason the stubby fingers of a very short man. of microwaved marshmallows, Augie exit because I see him and Leon cross that I cannot place, I feel ill when He has brown eyes and straight brown disappears into the store to talk to Leon. the parking lot with two dollies piled I think of her pressing buttons and hair the exact same color of his eyes I consider what the Katies said when I with expired ravioli. Augie is allowed making change with her perpetually that hangs down around his ears and had told them about Augie. to pull onto the sidewalk in front of wet and chewed up fingers. It makes lots of brown freckles that are also the store for loading ease, but has a bad me want to not have fingernails, just the same color of his brown eyes and “Tell him you’ll mouth-F him in habit of parking too close to the doors. smooth nubs like a rubber baby doll. brown hair. This color brown is closest that cheese freezer,” Caity had said, As they load the expired pasta into the Sometimes she whispers something to the color of chocolate labradors. completely serious. Everyone agreed truck, the sliding doors are sporadically to Betsy Beth or Ramona, but for the I concluded my investigation by with her. Women were allowed to triggered like a horrible blinking eye. most part, she seems to keep to herself. deciding that he is interesting to own their sexuality these days, it was I stand there in the center of the doors look at, which is better than being important to be direct and be clear about with my symmetrical posture like a The only interesting person that good looking or ugly. At this point, what you wanted. I wasn’t sure that I too-long pupil. works at the Cheese Castle is Augie I have watched him very closely for a wanted to mouth-F Augie Spear in the Spear, and he doesn’t even work here, running total of three hours, so I have cheese freezer, but I hadn’t ruled it out. When they are done with the ravioli, really. We are the same age, but he effectively fallen in love with him. Leon says, “I have ten cases of stale was homeschooled on and off because Kringles for you somewhere. Lemme his dad is the formerly famous hunter When he arrives today, I say, “Welcome, ask Ramona where she put them.” Jackson Spear. Jackson Spear pulled all please let me know if there’s anything Leon shuffles painfully slowly between of his kids out of school to tape a wildly I can do to make your Saturn Cheese the lids of the eye. I am fairly certain unpopular reality television show that Castle visit more enjoyable.” that he has a prosthetic foot, but I’m aired on Catch&Kill Network. After "At this point, I have unable to prove it. I learned of Augie and I’s mutual Augie smiles and says, “Hi, Mina.” connection to the Cheese Castle, I His smile doesn’t show any teeth and watched him closely “Welcome, please let me—” I start, went on YouTube and found an old barely turns up at the edges. It is more for a running total of out of habit. episode. It was nineteen minutes long like he makes his mouth as wide and without commercials and seemed to thin as possible, like some kind of river three hours, so I have “Shut it.” be about raising a good, Christian fish. Then he says, “That’s different effectively fallen in family in a culture of blood and animal than what you usually say,” and my Augie adjusts a few boxes of ravioli in slaughter. As they descended on the heart concaves. love with him." the back of the pick up and then trails

64 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 65 into the store until he is standing too “I’m carrying three hundred fucking “Should I go in with you?” he asks. “I the process of stuffing and configuring close to me. Kringles, it’s gonna have to wait. don’t know the parents. It might be the carcasses imbued a little bit of life Augie, get over here.” good to introduce myself.” back into the eyes of the animals, so “Can I have a sticker?” he says, not instead of looking dead, they look like looking at me. I have never been so And then there is a crashing noise and I want him to go in with me. At least, they are perpetually dying, trapped in close to him before and realize now the three hundred fucking Kringles are I want him to knock on the door and a purgatory of near lifelessness. I forget that his left eye is very slightly lazy. It scattered across the floor. The moment say all the right things in the beginning about playing it cool and comment on looks like his left eye is looking at me collapses in a buttery, flaky, cinnamon so I don’t have to. I don’t tell him that, this to Augie, and then realize that I despite all of his best efforts. This is very glaze. Augie flinches and runs over to instead I roll my eyes and huff in a way have forgotten about playing it cool and endearing. I give him the sticker. I think Leon, who is sprawled on the floor that feels overly practiced, “Dad, I’m quickly try to backtrack. about telling him about the mouth with both feet still firmly attached to twenty years old. God.” F-ing opportunities that we have. his legs. “What I’m trying to say,” I stammer, “is “And you still have your dad drive you that you have a lovely home.” But instead I say, “Your freckles and I do not move to help, I am the to dates,” he says, but then he concedes. eyes and hair are exactly the same color.” gatekeeper of the Cheese Castle. “Just call me if you want me to come get Augie moves towards a moose head Three priests arrive at that moment, you. Love you Meen Bean.” He drives that dwarfs the entryway, reaches out “Is that a good thing?” Augie says. I rosacea faced and sweating, and I say, away as I start up the long driveway. a knuckle, and raps on its eye. I flinch. have to be honest with him. “Welcome, Father,” all hell behind me. Augie leaves with the pasta and the I knock on the door and Augie answers. “Ha,” he says, “you’re right. I guess “I’ve thought about it a lot and I don’t pastries. The day moves on. it’s just one of those things you just know if it’s a good thing. But I’m “Hey,” I say, playing it cool, the way get used to.” pretty sure it is a good color.” Before I leave, I go to the break room the Katies had advised me. to fill out another purple slip. This one I agree with him, humans have an Augie doesn’t say anything at first, is about having Augie come every two “Welcome, please let me know if there’s incredible capacity for routinizing the but slowly peels the sticker from its days instead of every four, so that we anything I can do to make your Spear violent and the grotesque. Augie laughs. backing and sticks it to the front of his don’t have to clean hundreds of curdled House visit more enjoyable,” Augie We walk into the kitchen and he gets shirt, right in the center of his chest. baked goods from the floor in front of says, and then he smiles that same flat me a beer from the refrigerator and the paying customers and holy men. I go river fish kind of smile. two of us drink our beers and lean onto “We should hang out sometime,” to my locker and grab my backpack the counter with our elbows like we he says. He smiles at me. He looks and a scrap of paper falls to the floor. I “The job of intern is yours,” I say, laughing. have done it a million times before. exactly as he was in the television pick it up. Augie has written his phone episode where he was painted like the number and TEXT ME. He smiles flatter and wider than ever “Uh, so we’ll have to eat dinner with still forest. before and steps aside so that I can enter. my little sisters tonight. My dad’s out of * * * town,” Augie says after a little bit of idle “Yeah. We should,” I say. It is like Augie Spear’s house is somehow on I had mentally prepared myself to see a chatter. He is blushing soft and pink every romantic movie I have ever the edge of everything. The edge of lot of taxidermy animals, but I guess I all through his face. When he lifts his seen, with golden light diced in the forest, edge of the river, edge of didn’t do a very good job because I am beer to drink, I watch the muscles of his through the now glitching sliding the farmland, edge of the town; it is instantly disgusted to the very primal throat move efficiently and effortlessly. doors of the Cheese Castle. We are the prime kind of location to observe center of my being upon entering the It is intensely hot. “Sorry,” he adds. going to kiss. through hunting scopes. My dad Spear House. Every possible inch of space drops me off at the edge of the Spear’s is occupied with something gargantuan “Okay,” I say, “That’s cool.” “The damn doors won’t stop going sprawling lawn and I feel like I am and antlered and dead and all of the again, Leon,” Betsy Beth shouts across already locked in their sights, a little red gargantuan dead antlered things have “My dad’s just pretty big on family the store floor. cross hidden somewhere on my body. these unsettling frozen eyes. It’s like dinner. Even when he’s not here.”

66 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 67 “Yeah, no, it’s cool.” “I’m Mina,” I squeak. I put out my Jackson Spear gives me a wolfish grin. glares at him and Augie blushes. Now hand in greeting despite worrying that He doesn’t look like a formerly famous he looks like undercooked chicken. “No,” Augie says, grinding his beer my entire arm will be separated from its hunter; he is clean shaven and has This is a very strange blessing, a very can into the table, not looking at me, comfortable torso home. facial skin that indicates a moisturizing strange first date. The family echoes “It’s not.” routine. I can tell he isn’t wearing an Amen. Augie’s youngest sister, Delilah, Jackson Spear laughs and crushes undershirt under his well-tailored blue serves everyone at the table. My plate “Huh?” my hand. “I like a girl with a good button down, the outline of a heavy is piled with corn and roasted chicken handshake. Jackson Spear.” silver cross necklace is pressing up and potato salad. Without asking me, I’m not really paying attention against the buttons. Delilah pours some kind of brown anymore because I’m closely studying This is a generous lie because nothing sauce over all of it. It is silent while she a taxidermy opossum family that is about my handshake is good, my hand “I don’t know about y’all, but I’m does this, the family stoically observing meandering around the breakfast lies in his like a shriveled useless tongue starving. You ready to eat?” Jackson her careful and practiced motions. nook. The mother’s jaw screams open in the toothy stuffed opossum mouth, Spear asks us, but he is already Once Jackson Spear takes a bite, eating to reveal all fifty of her fanged teeth but much sweatier. Furthermore, I’m grabbing Augie by the shoulders and commences in a flurry. I pick at my lining the fleshy inside of her mouth, not moving my arm at all. He is doing steering him outside. I follow them plate and compliment the food. terrifyingly organic. I cannot think all the active shaking and I am along like a runaway and forgotten train of a single reason why anyone would for the ride. car, through the kitchen door and out “We’ve got Gwen to thank for the want this decorating their kitchen. If onto the large wooden porch. On the cooking,” Jackson Spear says, pointing there is stuff like this in Augie’s room, “My dad wasn’t supposed to be back porch there is an outdoor dining table at the other girl who has yet to draw I definitely will be unable to perform until tomorrow,” Augie says, still where Augie’s two younger sisters any sort of attention to herself. “She’s a mouth-F to the best of my abilities. looking very unwell. “Is it okay if we are already standing behind their learning, but she’s not quite up to par There’s a noise at the entryway and go get snow cones or something and respective chairs. I wonder how long with her mom yet,” he puts down his Augie goes to answer the door. I resist then I take you home? We can get they have been out there, waiting. fork and gazes at me steadily, “Mrs. the urge to put my hand in the opossum dinner another time.” The table has enough places for all of Spear passed last year. Cancer.” maw. There are noises of surprise at the us, as if they knew that their father entry. When Augie comes back, he I start to nod, but Jackson Spear cuts would be coming home. I stand I look at Augie, who is staring at his looks like one of the gargantuan dead in, “Augustus, your girl has to stay for beside Augie and Jackson Spear takes plate, not eating. “I’m so sorry for your antlered things, with unsettled frozen dinner. Mina will stay, won’t you?” his place at the head of the table. loss. Really. My mom died when I was eyes. His mild brownness has become fourteen. Cancer, too,” I say. grey and sickly and behind him is the I continue nodding. Jackson Spear asks me if I can say grace. largest man I have ever seen in my life. Before I can tell him that I don’t know Jackson Spear nods grimly, as if he “Great,” Augie says, almost a whisper. how, Augie interrupts. expected it all along. “Well look at that. Augie brought a He is the color of newsprint. girl home,” booms the formerly famous “Dear All Powerful Lord, the Holy “Augie, I don’t know if you remember hunter Jackson Spear. Green Sword of Righteousness, the this, but after she died I didn’t Everlasting Vine of Life, we thank talk for eleven months,” I ramble, When you see people on television, You for this food that You set before uncomfortable. Augie still isn’t usually they end up being much us, we eat and remember Your name, looking at me, but I feel him press his smaller than they appear. Jackson we live as Your humble and obedient knee to my knee under the table. “I’ve Spear, who seemed rather normal- servants,” Augie spits out quickly. been silent for more than a third of sized in the YouTube video clip I had "This is a very strange The entire family has their heads my life!” I hear myself blurt out. No watched, is somehow taking all of the blessing, a very bowed and their arms raised in the one reacts to this. I put a lot of brown breathable air out of the room with his air. “Blessed be Berc...Amen.” Augie chicken in my mouth to stop myself unbelievably giant lungs. strange first date." adds, stopping himself. Jackson Spear from saying anything else.

68 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 69 “Well. I remember your mom. Really know her.” Augie puts his head down “I’m sure that’s what he told you when Horned God. Bercilak. Children?” The pretty woman, worked at the Urgent and shakes like a dog in a thunderstorm. he killed your mother,” Jackson Spear girls stand up from their chairs and start Care,” Jackson Spear says, finally. “We Something cold and uncertain settles says, his voice so soft and poisonous to unbutton the front of their dresses. sure understand what a big loss it is. deep in my stomach. that I am certain that I haven’t heard Especially for young girls.” He nods him right. “Oh, uh, whatever you’re doing, you towards his daughters, “Both cancer, too. “Yeah, but that’s not really what they don’t have to,” I say, as the family Wow.” Then, he takes a thoughtful bite do,” I reply gently. “Sorry, what?” I have started to feel continues to undress in front of me. of potato salad, swishing the mayonnaise dizzy. The tiny fires of the candle Augie stays shaking in his seat and around in his mouth. “It sure seems like “He’s the one selling that stuff to our double and split and dance, forming Jackson Spear slaps him hard across the there’s been an awful lot more cancer town,” Jackson Spear says, in the same fairy rings. I look down at my plate and face. I scream. in the town these past years.” I tell him statement rather than question manner. around at the table and see that mine is that cancer rates are continuing to rise the only one with thick brown sauce. “I’m sorry, Mina,” Augie says, his eyes throughout the country. “Dad. You said you wouldn’t. You teary and his cheek hot and blistery from promised,” Augie whispers desperately His tone changes again, upbeat and the strike. He stands up. I stand up too. “Specifically in our town, though,” with such anguish that I don’t friendly. “I asked if you ever heard of Jackson Spear says, studying the yellow understand, but want so badly to fix. the Green Knight?” “What the fuck? I’m leaving,” I say. I corn teeth on the cob, “We’ve got sway where I am standing and fall back nearly three times more cancer than Jackson Spear looks like he could bite “Like the story with Sir Gawain? I down into my seat. The air swarms what we had twenty years ago.” through Augie’s neck with his strong, think my dad told it to me,” I reply. around me and hems me in. “Augie. Take omnivorous teeth. “Augustus, if you I shake my head, I’m having trouble me home,” I grab at his arm. My breath I nod and shrug, hoping that we don’t shut up, I swear to God, I’ll...” holding onto thoughts. I feel like he starts to hitch and catch. The candlelight can switch to a different topic, so said something about my mother. grows until I am worried that the whole that I don’t have to explain why that “No, it’s okay,” I say quickly, “Really house will be engulfed in flame. isn’t actually true if you understand it’s okay.” They both seem to warily “Dad—” Augie starts. statistics. “So what do you guys think settle, as bristling wild animals do after about the Baskin-Robbins?” I offer. a near confrontation. “Augustus, be quiet,” Jackson Spear says. “Yes, Mina, that’s right. It’s an old “Your dad works for that company,” I hesitate. “Yeah, my dad sells that stuff to story, I’m glad your dad told it to you. "The cold, uncertain Jackson Spear says, a statement of fact, the town... but it’s more about improving Sir Gawain happens upon a challenge feeling in my rather than a question. He points to me crop yields and using less water and stuff. where the Green Knight says that any with the pronged end of his fork, “The one It’s not really...” I trail off when I realize man can attempt to behead him, and the stomach persists." where they put animal genes in our crops no one is listening to me. The cold, next year he gets to return the swing. and clone everything and spray chemicals uncertain feeling in my stomach persists. Gawain chops off the Green Knight’s on our food that control people’s minds.” head, and the Green Knight just picks He smiles at me, but doesn’t seem like he The sky is darkening into a cranberry up the severed head and reattaches it to “I’m so sorry, Mina,” Augie repeats. He is joking. I shift in my seat. color as the sun sets behind the black his body. Or at least that’s one variation shakes my hand off of his forearm. Then, forest. The moon protrudes from the of him. An incomplete picture, if you he slips off his t-shirt. The front of his “I’m done eating,” Augie says loudly. clouds like a pearly baby tooth. Delilah will. He shows up in myth and legend chest is covered in bumpy, brown tree “Can Mina and I be excused to go to gets up and uses a long match to all the time. He’s the life-force, the bark, like that of an elm tree. It crackles my room?” He pushed his untouched light giant pillar candles on the table. avenger, the tester of gods and men.” and seethes as he moves and seems to plate away from him. Everyone is quiet watching her do this, grow and spread over his freckly, white observing the way the flame jumps The formerly famous hunter Jackson skin. Delilah and Gwen have patches of “Settle down, Augustus. I’m just asking from the match to the wick like a Spear stands up and starts to unbutton bark like satellites on their stomachs and your girl a few questions, getting to butterfly landing on a thin, waxy stem. his shirt. “The Green Man. The collarbone, asymmetrically spreading

70 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 71 across their sides towards their backs. bark, red-gold and wet. “Warts. This “Run, little deer,” the formerly famous throws itself into the underbrush and Jackson Spear’s entire torso and upper is the touch of the Green Knight. We hunter Jackson Spear says, “Run, or I waits to disappear. arms are covered in this bark, and I are his honored servants.” He drops my kill you right here.” see now that the silver necklace that I ruined phone and it lands on the porch * * * mistook for a cross is actually intertwined with a crunch noise. He steps on it. I start to back away, and then hobble The leaves blanketing the ground antlers covered in foliage. off the porch steps, turn around and are golden yellow and tender with “Please let me go,” I whisper, “I won’t sprint towards the tree line. I can rot. The creek where the deer brings I rub my eyes with my knuckles, but tell anyone about this.” hear the Spear family’s leisurely steps its lips to drink is blue tinged with the bark doesn’t go away. “Are these, behind me, their combined voices cold. The boy is here today and he like, warts or something?” Under the Jackson Spear shakes his head as if he rising in some kind of holy chant, their has brought sour cheesy noodles. table, I slip my phone from my pocket is truly despaired by my request. “I tree bodies growing up towards the Some days, the deer seems to know to call my dad. can’t, Mina. Your family has upset sky and taking root in the powerful him, other days, it shies away. Today, the balance of death and rebirth here green grass. I hit the forest, raked in the deer allows the boy to gently by trying to manipulate nature. It’s and swallowed by the old oak. I move put both hands on its long, sloping making the town sick. It’s killing our faster and then, impossibly, faster still. neck. The boy whispers something, land. It’s killing our loved ones.” My feet hardly strike the ground. I am and the deer’s dark eyes yawn with "The boy whispers being eaten alive by the dark woods. understanding. The forest hums and something, and Delilah walks over with an axe and My legs elongate, my feet become writhes and readjusts. High above hands it to her father. hooves, my body becomes longer them, the white oaks are thrown by the deer's dark and brown dappled white. The deer winds that neither of them can see. eyes yawn with “The Green Knight calls for unwilling sacrifice to appease him. A game of understanding. beheadings.” Augie is fully crying now and Jackson Spear pauses to The forest hums slap him again, harder. Augie yelps. and writhes and Jackson Spear’s voice drops to a readjusts." helpless whisper. “We have no choice but to serve him.” He points to the forest. “Run. And we’ll catch you if the Green Knight wills it so.”

“She’s using her phone,” Delilah says. I stand up on shaky legs like a still Her voice is like birdsong. Jackson slick colt. The night is deep purple Spear reaches over and slaps me so grey, like when I would eat those hard that light pops behind my eyes mixable yogurts as a kid and swirl like combustible fireflies. He reaches together strawberry banana and blue over Augie again and takes the phone raspberry. That’s how I feel, small and from my hands and crushes it in his vortexing. I look at Augie in pleading giant fist. I start to cry. horror, but he shakes and cries and does nothing. Jackson Spear casually When I wail, Jackson Spear laughs, swings the axe and cleaves a candle in deep and booming. Sap bubbles up two, the waxy blade lodging into the from between the cracks in his torso wood of the table.

72 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 73 HANNAH WANG what to say during the instrumental opening to whitney houston's "i wanna dance with somebody"

i wanna call somebody ’darling’ like a gerund verb, like they are actively dear to me.

so when the night falls, i wanna give the shuddering larynx of my lonely heart

to somebody. i wanna bring them into my room and realize that the walls need a new paint job. i wanna believe they will touch the peeling corners anyway.

i wanna make space, make space, for somebody who moves to me.

i wanna feel the disco stars glide across my skin with somebody. even the darkness here is sparkling. say,

don’t you wanna dance? say you wanna dance. say you see me,

burning small and mean and bright. DREW PUGLIESE i see you too. i wanna hold and be held. i wanna be a mirror ball full of constellations, or maybe Untitled

i wanna know how to be somebody.

74 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 75 what we're loving: new staff edition

MEGAN PAN I lost my body

During the summer months of Centered around a young man named 2020 César Award for Best Original title track embodies this feeling of quarantine, I embarked on a pretty Naoufel (or perhaps more accurately, Music. The animation style is simple perpetual motion perfectly, as it begins serious Netflix binge, particularly in both him and his hand), the movie yet attentive to detail, using nuances in with a repeated quarter note electronic the genres of foreign-language film leads us through two intertwined color and tone to evoke different moods refrain that gradually builds in layers and animation. One movie that popped storylines: one told in flashbacks of the throughout each scene. Coupled with of strings before it crescendos to a up on my recommended list, which orphaned Naoufel struggling to adapt Dan Levy’s powerful score—which climax. Working in skillful harmony, actually happened to tick both boxes, after the sudden death of his parents, blends traditional instrumentals with the animation and the score together was the 2019 French animated drama and the other set in the present of a contemporary synths to create rich, serve to set the rhythm of the film as fantasy J’ai perdu mon corps, known severed hand making its way through swelling melodies—the movie has a it moves swiftly onward—effectively in English as I lost my body. Directed Parisian suburbs in hopes of reuniting constant sensation of restlessness and mirroring its central subject matter of by Jérémy Clapin and animated by with its body. Through the unfolding urgency, propelling the action of forward movement and the relentless Xilam Animation, J’ai perdu mon of the dual narratives, we slowly come the piece forward. The eponymous passage of time. corps is a Cannes Nespresso Grand to learn more about Naoufel’s history, Prize-winning and Academy Award- from his happy childhood in Morocco nominated film based on the novel to his subsequent relocation to France Happy Hand by Guillaume Laurant, to live with his negligent uncle and who is also known for the screenplay cousin, as well as the circumstances of of French romantic comedy Amélie. his involuntary amputation. As both plots begin to converge, the film leaves us with an understated yet poignant commentary on the themes of tragedy, loss, and reshaping one’s fate.

In addition to its uniquely creative screenplay, J’ai perdu mon corps is distinguished by its beautiful animation and extraordinary score—the latter of which has been recognized by the Courtesy of netflix.com Courtesy of netflix.com

76 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 77 JEREMY PULMANO Mango

What was going through my head when my mother rinsing mangoes would cause sharpness and pain on my tongue? My mother, in her morning robe and twine tsinelas, humming the sun awake each morning, rinsing fruit while my Lola Violy fried chicken beside her like Jollibee. And on days my shirt curved from her gluttony my mother would hurry me to the kitchen, palm a masterpiece, though I now call it surgical. My Lola wearing her aloe face mask a mango at the sink, slice it quickly into thirds, longways. One would exhale sharply from her nose, say she used to peel mango with her fingernails hiding of the thirds she would cup in her hand, slice into a grid, and push it inside in the mountains from soldiers, dirt in her nail beds and occupation on her tongue. out into a yellow turtle shell, each cube a little bit uneven, but even then I called it My mother would tch-tch that I better eat my fruit if I wanted my skin to

stay smooth and my eyes twenty-twenty. And in my twenties I cut it this way still, look for the best angle of attack

as I eat one cube at a time. And each time I sense my mother beside me eating the other third, still whole, with a teaspoon. Lola, who grabs the seed. We eat quietly,

sour mango strands between our teeth.

78 The Nassau Literary Review Winter 2021 79 novels and fiber crafts. Between us, at least (i.e. low) rates of success and she's more than half of her personality is directly stolen from hyped to be eating Murray-Dodge cookies contributors the Alice in Wonderland franchise. again someday.

POETRY They have an enduring love of D&D, narrative ART WHAT WE'RE LOVING video games, and personal poetry. Beatrix Bondor ’22 is a rising junior (currently Artist note from JpRochart: In honor of João Sabrina Kim ’24 is a freshman from on a leave of absence) from Manhattan at Henry Wright ’23 is currently on a gap Pedro "Stades, JP" Bernardo da Rocha, the Sunnyvale, California. She is interested in Princeton University where she is studying year trying to “find himself” for the third man who, from hundreds of miles, showed jazz, child’s pose, and bagels at sunrise. literature, French language and culture, time. He is studying Economics, Cognitive the quill to be lighter than the pen. poetry, and history. Her inexhaustible Science and Creative Writing. His accent can Megan Pan ’22 is a junior from Short Hills, NJ sources of inspiration include skyscrapers, usually be found drowning in the Atlantic Juliette Carbonnier ’23 is a sophomore from concentrating in comparative literature with Linden Lane, excellent meals, wending somewhere between New York and London. New York City who hopes to study English certificates in theater, creative writing, and conversations, and unlined paper. with dashes of music, theater, art, and writing. Asian American studies. She enjoys doing She enjoys long walks in the rain, struggles to her makeup for no one to see, debating the Ned Furlong ’22 thinks you should come visit PROSE play chess, and is, sadly, allergic to onions. ethics of dating sim intimacy, and consuming Iowa some time. He is always on the lookout unreasonably large quantities of anime. User for new colors, especially the ones you can’t see. is a junior studying English, Lila Harmar ’22 is a junior concentrating Abby de Riel ’22 reviews describe her as "lovely and a delight in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and dance, and any tiny wonder of the world to be around." Will Hartman ’25 is from Boulder, Colorado and pursuing certificates in Russian Language in between. They spend a lot of time will enroll at Princeton this fall. He likes to ski, and Culture and (hopefully) Creative thinking about movement, necessary pauses, Julia M. Walton ’21 is a senior from the make music, and play soccer; he also likes alpine Writing. She discovered her love for writing synesthesia, emptiness, and how to love. Philadelphia suburbs. She is concentrating lakes and sea glass. He is currently working and in kindergarten, with a dictated story about in English with certificates in Creative travelling Europe during a gap year. a gnome in a car. She plans to continue Nancy Lu ’21 is a senior from Bridgewater, Writing, Humanistic Studies, and East Asian writing until her hand falls off, or until her NJ majoring in economics. She loves making Studies. Her creative and critical work has Sheherzad Jamal ’23 is a sophomore from inevitable demise, whichever comes first. any type of visual art, and is a plant mother to previously appeared in The Foundationalist, Islamabad, Pakistan interested in studying the over 50 succulents in her house that are COUNTERCLOCK, The Paper Shell Review, her mom's first grandchildren. history and politics. She loves living in the Cassandra James ’23 grew up in a family of Tortoise: A Journal of Writing Pedagogy, The mountains, listening to old school rock and Greeks, Italians, and Colombians, which Nassau Literary Review, Questions: Philosophy looking at very large trees. basically means she had to tell stories to survive. Emma Mohrmann ’24 is an artist from St. Louis, for Young People, and The Best Teen Writing She loves the ocean at twilight, playbills, and MO. She has enjoyed creating art that focuses of 2016. Currently, she serves as Editor-in- Ethan Luk ’24 is a freshman born and raised in avocados served with lime and salt. on projections and self perception, along with Chief Emerita of The Nassau Literary Review. Hong Kong. He loves rewatching the film Lost art that explores and questions mental states, When at home, she enjoys taking photos of time, change, and growth. One of her favorite in Translation and baking sourdough bread. Lara Katz ’24 is currently planning to major her pets wearing little hats. Her pets do not in Comparative Literature with a certificate phrases for art and life is “trust the process” and share her enthusiasm. Jeremy Pulmano ’21 is a senior from New in Creative Writing. She loves Latin, curling she tries to find beauty in everyday moments. Jersey studying computer science with a (the sport), and not following recipes. certificate in creative writing. All of his recent Drew Pugliese ’23, is a sophomore from Northern New Jersey studying art history ESSAYS poems are food-related. He can't help it. Sophia Marusic ’21 is an English major from St. and visual art. Pizza, bread, and caesar salad Louis, Missouri. She reads and writes science is a freshman and prospective are his passions. You can probably find him Ben Guzovsky ’24 Hannah Wang ’21 is a SPIA concentrator with fiction because she cannot be an astronaut. comparative literature major. He has spent hanging around Leo in Brooklyn eating certificates in French and Creative Writing. She the holiday season dressed in all green and pizza, bread, and/or caesar salad. hails from the Pacific Northwest and is actively Sierra Stern ’24 is a freshman from Los wrapped in Christmas lights, pretending to be disintegrating into seafoam as you read this. Angeles who maintains strong roots in valley a tree. He has yet to fool anyone. girl culture. She is currently undecided Sandy Yang ’22 is a junior in the English Emily Willford ’24 is a freshman from about everything except a creative writing department who loves to paint and go on Montgomery, AL currently studying psychology certificate, and is an unwavering champion hikes in her free time. She's taken up baking and considering a certificate in creative writing. of the undervalued arts, such as young adult a bit in quarantine which has had varying

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