The Literary Arts Magazine Of
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
THE LITERARY ARTS MAGAZINE OF NORTHERN ESSEX COMMUNITY COLLEGE PARNASSUS Plucking once more the AWARDS eternal strings of literature and the ethereal strums of the arts, NORTHERN ESSEX COMMUNITY COLLEGE Parnassus now returns to your energetic 100 ELLIOTT STREET, HAVERHILL, MA paws, freshly collected and collated for your ocular pleasure. 2016 was a fun year for WWW.PARNASSUSLITMAG.COM us here in lit-magville, and we are so grateful as always to all of the salubrious submissions and serene selections we received from the collective COMMUNITY COLLEGE HUMANITIES ASSOCIATION community at large of our lovely college. This would First Place: 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 be a book of blank paper without your bravery in Second Place: 2008 offering up your talents, and we send thanks to all who did so. Don’t stop doing what you do! ASSOCIATED COLLEGIATE PRESS PACEMAKER AWARDS Best in Nation, Two-year Colleges: 2011 In this issue, we offer a welcome back to an alumni of both Finalist: 2013, 2009 NECC and Parnassus, the terrifically talented Diannely Antigua, who has graciously offered to us a selection of some of COLUMBIA SCHOLASTIC PRESS ASSOCIATION her newest work, reproduced here for you all; please Gold Crown: 2011 enjoy the hearty and wholesome lyrical meal she Silver Crown: 2010 has prepared. AMERICAN SCHOLASTIC PRESS ASSOCIATION Endure this artificial assembly of First Place with Merit: 2009, 2008 alliterations no longer; instead, read on, First Place: 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010 and please enjoy the 2016 Parnassus! Best Gallery: 2008 Best Page Design: 2010 NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR MARKETING AND PUBLIC RELATIONS PARAGON AWARDS Gold: 2011 Silver: 2009 DAYS OF 1996 Diannely Antigua 6 WHAT WAS NORMAL Chad Gorham 37 THURSDAY IN BUSHWICK Diannely Antigua 7 PHOTO Adam Dorgan 38 WHILE LOOKING THROUGH PHOTO ALBUMS Diannely Antigua 7 PHOTO Jose Saul Joubert 39 METAL WOMAN Jessica Angelini 8 PHOTO Danielle Stanuchenski 40 UNEARNED SPRING Sarah Courchesne 11 THE EVERYDAY MANNEQUIN Clare Thompson-Ostrander 41 PHOTO Helen Shiepe 12 (UNTITLED) MOON Marc Mannheimer 43 UNEASINESS AT NIGHT Grant Tyler Bellino 13 LAHEY AND LAVENDER Nicholas Donnellan 44 PHOTO Emily Curran 12 A WOODS OF ONENESS Grant Tyler Bellino 46 DRAWING Kevin Stanley 14 WHERE ARE YOU, WALT WHITMAN? Rebecca Westerman 47 HOW THE COWARDLY LION GREW HIS MANE Grant Tyler Bellino 15 A MILLION WORDS Kim Whiting 48 DRAWING Adam Dorgan 16 PHOTO Noah Greenstein 49 THERE SHE SITS Crystal Willette 18 WAISTLINE Shauna Matthieu 50 MURKY AND BROWN Chad Gorham 19 WHAT IS THE AMERICAN DREAM? Yulinda Garcia 52 SCULPTURE Paige Fournier 20 THE AccIDENTAL SEANCE Jay Bellino 54 SINNERS Yerelyn Lopez Corona 21 DRAWING Jay Bellino 56 PHOTOS Kylie Duford 22 THE WORLD ENDS WITH YOU Edgar Eli Linan 57 MUMBLE Rebecca Westerman 23 PHOTO Danielle Stanuchenski 59 TIME Crystal Willette 24 PHOTO Adam Dorgan 60 TINDER Ginger Hurajt 25 VEGAS Marc Mannheimer 61 PHOTO Katherine Stone 24 TIGHTROPE OF HOPE Rebecca Westerman 62 A BARD'S QUEST Chris Wall 25 ARTWORK Jay Bellino 63 LEAVING (THE WOODS) Marc Mannheimer 34 BIOS 64 PHOTO Danielle Stanuchenski 35 PARNASSUS STAFF HOW TO CONTRIBUTE 67 I PHOTO Adam Dorgan 36 4 5 WHILE LOOKING THROUGH PHOTO ALBUMS In pictures, he is always wearing headphones over his afro, the band stretching above the sponged curls, THURSDAY IN BUSHWICK his lips gathered like a dried grape. Diannely Antigua is a Dominican-American Era hermoso, you say. poet and MFA candidate at NYU. At nine years old, There is this new thing called Super Likes They give you a free salad after 10 He was handsome like a lover should be, the kind she began writing in a journal and discovered her My roommate smelled it first of handsome that picks you up in a cab on a rainy autumn day, love of creative writing, namely poetry. During It lasts for like a second when you find him sitting in the driver’s seat, as you slide her time as an NECC Liberal Arts student, Antigua into the back, body humid and sogged. You shuffle Let’s split it down the middle through your purse to avoid his eyes in the rearview was a Parnassus staff member, contributor to the Unless you’re like into that Observer, and later the Student Speaker for the mirror. He takes you home in the green station wagon I remember when my dad got rid of Candy Land every day for a year, the smell of taxi and cologne, lingering May 2009 commencement ceremonies. She went He started sleeping in my friend’s bed in his underwear and he doesn’t remember in your blouse, when you undress alone. You fell on to receive her BA in English from the University I think he likes you in love with the back of his head of Massachusetts Lowell, where she had the pleasure 5 dollars? first, the crown of hair escaping from the top of working with such writers as Andre Dubus He wants to have sex with me but it’s complicated of the seat, tiny frays like fingers, brown hands to dissolve into. III and Maggie Dietz. She is currently working DAYS OF 1996 It’s really a very simple game You tell me about the dancing and the parties, how they would last on her manuscript that focuses on love and the Like mostly liberal thinking well into the night, the needle He was the son of those I’d never met, complexities involved. It explores the historical, scratching merengue from the record and into the crowded but I imagined they had his blonde hair and green It just doesn’t grow anymore living room, when cerveza glazed the parental, and the personal, locating the reader eyes. He’d wear Niagara Falls sweatshirts I send selfies to my mom his tongue, sour with yeast. to such places as the island, her mother’s kitchen, marled grey, cuffs brown from rubbing And I finally shaved my legs today He danced around the room, his legs slipping against the paper during math class. His fingers and New York City. Her work appears or is forthcoming She’s not my friend, she’s my co-worker across the wooden floor, teetering to the rhythm of the music, were the same width as the cubes he’d count in BOAAT Press, Rust + Moth, Potluck Mag, Big Bell, What Mario is to Nintendo a balance in his swaying as he bellowed— in units, tens, and hundreds, then gather and Tinderbox Poetry Journal. In May 2016, she in a bowl as if he never touched them. Tell her Nick says hi Marchate! will be the keynote speaker for the NECC Peace Marchate! He liked my Barbies, even the one I couldn’t figure out the issue Poetry Contest and Reading. Aside from writing, with the chopped hair. He’d take off her clothes The first season is open He would grab your arm with a strange tenderness and pull Antigua is passionate about higher education and only to change her into something prettier, Your big ass mushrooms floating in the soup you close, weave his fingers into yours like it meant something, works as an academic advisor in the College of a silver dress, some red heels. Everything seemed overdone your ear against the wiry black hairs of his chest. Arts and Sciences at NYU. Her favorite flavor of We’d play house, I was the mother and he was I worked one day since I’ve been back I imagine you smiling, your red-lipped I Love Lucy mouth, Picked up my dogs, went to the funeral Ben and Jerry’s ice cream is Chubby Hubby. She the baby. He’d lie down in the nook white teeth, waiting for the Babaloo. of the empty fireplace, belly flopping forward lives in Brooklyn with three poet roommates. You say he liked to sing love songs in the bedroom. to his chest, a glimpse of godly flesh paler You were just a drum. than mine, how I wanted him to be the father A good beat. as I’d lean in to say goodnight, kiss his lips and taste the strawberry jam from lunch. 6 7 left only to the few embers that may or may not remain in their hearts, METAL WOMAN left to rekindle their flame and re-forge their metal if they can. —Jessica Angelini (And if they can’t … it’s survival of the fittest, right? One less in the competition.) Women are made from metal. “The Competition” Sometimes we are bent by the world, Forcing a divide, folded like the metal to create a sword; pitting women against each other bent, but strengthened. Forcing them to believe there is something wrong Making ourselves into a more uniform lattice material, Something wrong with being feminine the fire in our hearts - or not feminine enough the fire of passion, the fire of anger, the fire of spite - always something wrong allowing us to bend and remold ourselves. To bend, to fold, to strengthen. We’re told by the world how to avoid the male gaze, Sometimes we are beaten, and flattened, and thinned, how to prevent our own rape, how to be strong. the abuse of the world making us brittle or deformed – But where does our prevention really lead? something unrecognizable from where we began. It may not be us, You see the strong ones and say; But that means it will be the next girl. “What a woman,” The one who was broken by the world, But when you see one who is broken, the one who did not have the same you utter; resources “What a woman,” support voice dripping with disdain or strength.