Vol. 70 Towson University Literary Magazine
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
GRUB STREET TOWSON UNIVERSITY LITERARY MAGAZINE VOL. 70 VOL. 70 GRUB STREET LITERARY AND ARTS MAGAZINE • ESTABLISHED 1952 TOWSON UNIVERSITY 8000 York Road Towson, MD 21252 www.towson.edu II III About Grub Street Editorial Mission and Submission Guidelines GRUB STREET GRUB STREET Grub Street is an annual publication funded by the Provost’s Office and the English Department at Towson To have the time, physical accommodation, social infrastructure, emotional energy, and support to write can University and is a member of the Columbia Scholastic Press Association. The staff is comprised of under- be a privilege that many people do not have. On top of that, the standards for English writing are rooted graduate Towson University students who review all submissions through a blind review process. Issues are in the study of a racist, sexist, ableist, and otherwise oppressive English literary canon that centers white, available for free on TU’s campus. They can be found in racks in the following locations: the College of cis-gender, heterosexual men. In our mission to challenge mainstream narratives, we encourage writers from Liberal Arts building (second-floor entrance, parking garage side), Cook Library (lobby), the Center for underrepresented populations to submit their creative work: Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other people Arts (main entrance), the University Union (pond entrance), and the TU Store (main entrance). If you are of color, as well as differently-abled, neurodiverse, lesbian, gay, bisexual, asexual, aromantic, agender, not on campus, please email us about receiving print editions by mail. PDFs are available for free on our intersex, trans, gender nonconforming, and gender expansive people. The staff of Grub Street is committed website: http://wp.towson.edu/grubstreetlitmag/. to supporting underrepresented identities and will work with submitters personally to help them realize To keep up with the latest Grub Street news, follow us on Instagram @GrubStreetTU, follow us on Twitter their artistic goals. @GrubStreetTU, or like us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/grubstreet.towson. Please limit your submissions to five poems, two short stories, two literary essays, and five works of To contact Grub Street’s editorial team, write to [email protected]. visual art per edition. We’re especially excited about receiving genre-defiant submissions, such as poetry Copyright 2021. Grub Street is an in-house academic publication and does not claim first serial rights to comics, prose poems, flash fiction, flash essays, lyric essays, graphic novel or memoir excerpts, and specu- submissions. However, art, poetry, and prose may not be reproduced without written permission from the lative nonfiction. (Please submit poetry comics and graphic novel or memoir excerpts as visual art.) Only contributor except for limited classroom use. Front matter and graphic design are the exclusive property of previously unpublished works, either in print or online, will be considered for publication. It is assumed that Grub Street and may not be reproduced without Grub Street’s written permission. all submissions are original creations. Please credit your sources. We evaluate submissions in a blind review process, so please remove all identifying information from Cover Art: Deandra Lee your works (title pages, headers, document file titles, etc.). Please submit one work per file. Do not submit Design: Josh Smidt, Student Designer, Towson University Creative Services group submissions. If, for example, you submit five poems, do not put all five poems into one document. Software: Adobe Photoshop, InDesign Please create five separate documents for each poem. Visual art should be at least 4x6 inches and sent Fonts: Tw Cen MT, Century Gothic, Times New Roman as a .png, .raw, or high-quality .jpeg file with at least 300dpi and a size of at least 1MB. Please include Paper: Cover Stock – Aspire Metallics 110 lb; Text Stock – Accent Opaque 80 lb. medium and dimensions in your cover letter. If you have questions or concerns about these guidelines, Print Association: Mt. Royal Printing please contact us via email at [email protected]. Visit us at grubstreet.submittable.com to submit your work. Email submissions will not be considered. We look forward to receiving your work and wish you the best of luck in your literary and artistic endeavors. IV V Grub Street, London, 18th C. Masthead DR. H. GEORGE HAHN GRUB STREET GRUB STREET Professor / Past Chair, TU Department of English Home of butchers and foreign manual laborers, Grub Street was not a fashionable London address. In his Editors-In-Chief Assistant Creative Nonfiction Editors Dictionary of 1755, Dr. Johnson noted further that it was also a place “much inhabited by writers of small Gel Derossi and Gracie Jordan Anna Hovet, Sabrina Moorer, Jessica histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems, whence any mean production is called grubstreet.” Hard Thornton, Megan Phelps, Preeti Gary, living, hard drinking, half starving, Grub Streeters turned out biographies before the corpse was cold, Managing Editors and Louis McVicker-Dyer poems during the event they were watching, ghost-written speeches and sermons to order, and satires to Brendan Pappas and Becky Glasser deadline. First draft was final copy. They walked with pistols or swords to defend themselves from creditors Fiction Editor and angry satiric targets. Senior Editor Rikki Vinyard Yet however poor, low, and scorned, they were the first fully professional writers to whom “publish Katya Buresh or perish” was not a hyperbolic metaphor. Forgotten today, they nevertheless throw a long shadow over Assistant Fiction Editors us. With them the modern periodical press can be said to have been born with its interests in live events Print Designer Amanda Hewitt, Kieran Vaughan, Ann Lipsett, and lean prose. Their plagiarisms led to copyright laws, their defamations to better libel laws. Their work Josh Smidt Michael Martin, Catie Cusson, Jonathan Asprilla, encouraged a free press. Their writing to a newly but barely literate public doomed the long, aristo- Kayla Stottlemyer, and Kelsey Franklin cratic romance in the hard language of realism. Their work helped to produce a mass market of readers. Online Editor Freelancers no longer under pressure to praise patrons, they showed finally that a writer could be Anna Hovet Marketing and Publicity Directors independent. Ashley Lawton, Sabrina Moorer, and Jessica Thornton Poetry Editors Katya Buresh and Leah Bushman Towson University Creative Services Coordinator Tasha Lloyd Assistant Poetry Editors Dixie Maier, Andrew Katsu, Ally Wilkinson, and Faculty Advisor Carol Sawyer Jeannie Vanasco Creative Nonfiction Editor Taylor Hack VI VII Table of Contents GRUB STREET GRUB STREET Contents 72 • we are only what the yellow street lines 150 • They Say the Bodies Nonfiction whisper to us on full moon nights 151 • The Holes Are So Deep X • Letter from the Editors Grace Coughlan 152 • We Always Use Thread 3 • there are things that your privilege 153 • Lungs Begin to Collapse will not let you see 90 • Self-Portrait Standing in a 154 • Woman Pulled Out Her Teeth Jola Naibi Poetry Field of Text Messages, All Sent and Abigail Chabitnoy All Blooming Unanswered 22 • The Devil’s Dictionary: Climate Edition 1 • In Praise of Making Shitty Art Jacqui Germain 159 • The Woman Who Wanted to Plant Turnips Ivan Palmer Halee Kirkwood Mak Sisson 97 • Interims, excerpted from Nightshift: 70 • You Have The Right to Remain Silent 8 • Jellyfish Season A (Re)collection 171 • The Weather Athena Dixon Kristen Rouisse Natalie Jones Kendra Tanacea 85 • Cream and Sugar 11 • A FOUR-PART APOLOGY FOR MY 114 • alt real: ‘Happy Birthday, Pree’ 172 • Do You Talk To Your Plants? Esther Rose CONTINUED BEING Evan Jymaal Cutts Kendra Tanacea Abigail Chabitnoy 100 • Bullets and Books: “The Gun Is the Motive” 116 • Ghost Revival 173 • In the Shower I Feel the Welling In My Eyes Michael James Rizza 14 • A PERSISTENT DREAM OF LARGE BODIES Jacqui Germain Alexander Eikenberg OF WATER & EVERYTHING THAT 118 • Gray/Grey MIGHT BE WAITING WITHIN 123 • Reflect 179 • The Leopard Slug Deja Ryland Abigail Chabitnoy John Rodzvilla Chelsea Harlan 128 • Lukewarm 16 • A PRONG OR SHARP POINT SUCH AS 132 • No - We’re Not Hunting 186 • New Friends Wen Wen Yang THAT ON A FORK, OR ANTLER DS Maolalai Scott Laudati Abigail Chabitnoy 133 • Knuckle Tattoos 135 • A HOMELESS MAN BOUGHT A MEDIUM Danielle Chelosky 43 • canticle of metal COFFEE & A PACK OF CHOCOLATE Fiction Kristin Emanuel GRAHAM CRACKERS FROM ME & 148 • Orbs of Feelings I AM AN ASSHOLE 9 • Broken Skin Kelly Flanagan 44 • In My Nightmares I Am Calling Devin Campbell Sudha Balagopal Jeff Bezos “Daddy” 155 • Memorial Day Leah Bushman 136 • Ode to the Only Abercrombie Shirt 19 • Refill Your Cosmic Bucket List Anthony D’Aries I Ever Owned Rikki Vinyard 46 • Quichen Taybel Preyeers / Halee Kirkwood 162 • The Summer I Met My Brother Kitchen Table Prayers 42 • Live 4 The Livestream Keith Hoffman Briseyda Barrientos-Ariza 145 • RUN RABBIT RUN KKUURRTT Kristen Rouisse 59 • lost softnesses 61 • Ink Stains Kristin Emanuel 147 • A Spray of Feathers Wen Wen Yang Evan Jymaal Cutts 68 • Self-Portrait Framed in Life Between Protests 129 • The Parents Jacqui Germain Grace Reed 69 • Days of 1985 174 • Asian Me Ellen Kombiyil Deborah S. Prespare VIII IX Table of Contents cont. GRUB STREET GRUB STREET Art 52 • Introduction Graphic Narratives 53 • Astro Part III 113 • Flowers in the Snow (Gibson SG) 2 • Primary 54 • Big Fish Jack Livingston