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Café Shapiro Anthology 2018 ©2018 The authors retain all copyright interests in their respective works. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without permission of the authors. Please contact [email protected] for permission information. Original Artwork provided by: Tarik Dobbs University of Michigan Junior, Major: General Studies and Art & Design ANTHOLOGY INTRODUCTION ANTHOLOGY INTRODUCTION Welcome to the 21st Annual Café Shapiro! I am excited to introduce the 21st Annual Café Shapiro Anthology and invite you to read the following inspiring and thoughtful University of Michigan student authored poems and short stories. These works will draw you into the creative process, welcome you to think and rethink your assumptions, and connect you with the students through their individual expression. You will find a unique window into the Michigan learning experience. When Café Shapiro fi rst launched over twenty years ago, it was a bold experiment, a student coffee break designed as part of the University’s Year of the Humanities and Arts (YoHA). Café Shapiro is an example of how past innovations become a part of current campus traditions. YoHA set out to explore the role of the arts and humanities in civic and community life through a variety of programs. Café Shapiro continues its tradition of featuring undergraduate student writers nominated by their Professors to perform their works and through doing so continues to demonstrate the value of the arts and humanities. The act of reading one’s work out loud is a new experience for many of our students. Throughout several evenings in February, students will gather in the Bert's Study Lounge in the Shapiro Library and share their works. They will be joined by friends, faculty, coaches, and family, as they demonstrate the power of speaking and performing. They will participate in an authentic act of creation, speaking possibility, expressing beliefs, and imagining the future. Café Shapiro has become much more than a coffee break. It has become an annual event featuring undergraduate student writers as they think creatively and critically, reason, ask questions, and develop the skills that help them understand and participate in our world. We also publish this anthology of their work, making it available in print and through Deep Blue, the University’s institutional repository. Through this process, students have the opportunity to learn about copyright and related steps to publishing their scholarship. We thank the many librarians and library staff for making this event possible. Events such as Café Shapiro make visible the Library’s commitment to learning. We provide a neutral and engaged space for students to practice, learn and grow their scholar-ship and advance their learning journey. We are enthusiastic partners with faculty and students, looking to enable the exploration of new ideas while capturing passions and self-expressions. We hope you enjoy reading the work of these talented undergraduate writers. Laurie Alexander Associate University Librarian for Learning and Teaching, University Library Since 2010, the Café Shapiro event has been held in the Bert's Café and Lounge, a real café named in honor of Bertram J. Askwith (LSA '31), who gave this gift to the U-M Library to celebrate his centennial year. 3 Café Shapiro Anthology 2018 CONTENTS ANTHOLOGY INTRODUCTION Welcome to the 21st Annual Café Shapiro! 3 PAULINA ADAMS sincerity 10 saltwater scarlet 11 i keep my anger in a stranglehold 12 the rest is silence 13 CHLOE ALBERTA Ode to Tinder 15 In Defense of Dandelions 16 useful 19 Coming Home 20 Ask me again 21 SYDNEY BENTLEY When in Rome 23 HANNAH BRAUER Sun-Dried Lemons 38 SEBASTIEN BUTLER Evening’s Empire 41 Days of Heaven 42 Ruminations on Anthologies 43 KATE CAMMELL To the Sky 45 DAPHNE CANTUBA Lemonade 48 Bubble Tea 49 Expired Milk 50 Vodka 51 Water 52 4 CONTENTS HEATHER COLLEY 10:34 54 CROSSON Title? 68 CONNER DARLING Tadpoles 72 CLAIRE DENSON False, or Forgotten 76 Large Coffee 77 Genesis 78 The Wife of The Night Shift Worker 78 Leaving Again 79 Ghosts of Rejections Past 79 Your Friend First 80 i felt something so 80 Black Hole Wrapped In Curls And A Bow 81 Oral Fixation 81 Bear Inside 83 TARIK DOBBS A Diaspora Poem 84 LAURA DZUBAY Griefers 87 RAVEN EADDY a helpful stranger 100 Trauma 101 BiPolarcoaster 1 101 Pocket Change 102 Gold Digging 103 Hand Sweat 103 Breakfast in bed 103 Is This Just Writer’s Block? 103 Suicide Pact 104 BiPolarcoaster 2 104 5 Café Shapiro Anthology 2018 GIULIANA EGGLESTON Sometimes You Are Followed But Usually You Aren’t 106 ARIEL EVERITT No Way to Skin a Cat 109 HANNAH FRENCH Word Zoo 112 KATYANNA GUTHRIE The Lake of Memories 118 JEAN HENG line 134 BELLA ISAACS-THOMAS On Anxiety and Environment 136 SAMUEL KARNOFSKY Brawlers 140 ANNE KOZAK Aretha, Long Lost 147 GREER LAFONTANT I Haven’t Used Century Gothic in Years But It Was My Favorite Font As a Kid 154 Thoughtful Productivity is Courier/ Sorry 157 YUANYUAN LIU Part 1: An Excerption From My Short Fiction Salt Water. 160 Background: 160 Part 2: A Poem 161 Aubade 162 CHRISTINE MACKENZIE Blackbird 163 Cast Me Back 164 6 CONTENTS Her Lips 165 The Hands 165 Mind & Body 166 EMMA MCGLASHEN Elegy for the Children 167 He is that He is 168 “Yes, It’s Fine, but Have You Seen the MoMA?” 168 Further Variations 169 After Margaret Atwood 169 Origami 169 Chthonic Monarchy 170 Ann Arbor, Fall 170 PAVEL MELCHOR OLD HOMES 172 15 Minutes 176 The OTHER SIDE 178 (An Intro) 178 JULIANNA MORANO Crutch 180 Paper Butterfly 183 NADIA MOTA star birth 185 border / lands 186 Dustheads (Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1982) 186 somewhere in southeast michigan 187 the apology takes the last bus home 188 BHARAT NAIR Harder still 189 the White flower with the septum piercing 190 true absolute zero or super(maha)fluidity 191 PILAR O’HARA Sorry, what’s my name? 193 Flaca 195 7 Café Shapiro Anthology 2018 ABBY PROVENZANO A Day in the Life 198 SHASHANK RAO “The Monkey” 210 TAMARA RIGSBY Smári 213 Stagnant in Disbelief 214 Wintry Sky 214 Mutated 215 Xanadu 216 Jars of Dreams 216 Poison 217 RYAN ROSENHEIM Clown Class 218 CAROLINE ROTHROCK Seacucumbers 225 Nautilus 226 Shipwreck 226 Rome is a wilderness of tigers 227 CHRISTIAN SCILLIAN The Catskills 228 JESSIE SHER Sparring Partners 234 MATTHEW SOLWAY My Neighbor’s Rosebushes 252 Carolyn Flying Over San Francisco 255 ETHAN SZLEZINGER Holding Hands 256 GRACE TOLL [Untitled] 263 8 CONTENTS MAXIM VINOGRADOV Rabbit Eats ‘Round Six 267 CLAIRE WOOD Excerpt from Rose 272 SHERRY ZHANG Kismet 278 MATTHEW ZHAO Picking Seats 289 Beyond the Cellar Door (Laundry Day) 290 On Reaching Nirvana 290 EMILY ZUO the tragedy of cutting keratin 292 Chipmunks are not cute 293 self-defense 294 Ochre 296 9 Café Shapiro Anthology 2018 PAULINA ADAMS Junior Major: Creative Writing & Literature and Art History Minor: Playwriting Reading: Poetry I am a writer hailing from Harbor Springs, Michigan. I enjoy writing poetry, prose, and plays, and hope to continue in all three areas in the future! Re- cently I was awarded the Roy W. Cowden Memorial Fellowship for poetry, a contest which was administered by the Hopwood Board. Aside from writing, I enjoy theater and working at the Graduate Library. sincerity my chest is hollow—a drum, maintaining a double beat the skin pulled taught, the air inside awaiting some sharp hand to set the space booming, thunder within my ribcage. i feel: scraped clean. spread thin. the slow, steady drag of metal down the inside of my sternum, the soft tissues which curl away and are discarded like so much excess. how carefully the veins are pared away from animal hide to make the drum head, or parchment. all the precious fur discarded. all my kindness scoured and jettisoned. my chest is hollow—the body of a paper crane, folded around empty space. 10 PAULINA ADAMS therefore, your heartbeat is a stunning, lovely thing. i hear the rhythm and forget to breathe. the warmth is impossible. how solid you seem beneath my palm, a stronghold of sinew and bone. no one plunged their hand beneath your collarbones and pulled out gleaming fistfuls. no one carved out every separate rib. your body stayed sincere, and no one strikes you just to hear you sing. please permit me a moment to lie with my head against your heart. i wish i had a chest as full of light and blood, the molten core of some small sun. i hear the rhythm and my pulse rekindles. let me listen to the meter. let me fall in step with how you breathe. saltwater scarlet i was pure then—when i screamed, it was not in substitution of a baser emotion. i hadn’t grown yet, i didn’t know my father was a translator, i didn’t know anger stood for love and concern was a single footprint pressed deep into the sand. i never understood him when he spoke of music in a minor key that i, his daughter, could not transcribe. i didn’t know that seagulls ate sand dollars, i didn’t know that boys could climb rocks that i couldn’t, i didn’t know that if i took off running down the beach that my father would come after me, yelling, and i didn’t know that the yelling was out of terror that i would be dragged into the ocean we have a whole mythology built around blue and yet i have always found the ocean to be anything but—gray and green and black and white and when it hits the rock it turns transparent, an overwhelming shatter of salt right across the bridge of my nose and in my eyes and god, the water isn’t red but my hands were—i’ll never forget the striated scarlet lines the black rock left on my ankle—what i’m trying