lrr 2019 LONG RIVER REVIEW 2019 UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT Long River Review lrr 2019 22 nd edition A Collaborative Project Creative Writing Program Design Center Studio Counterproof Press University of Connecticut Founded in 1997, the Long River Review is an annual journal of art and literature staffed by undergraduates at the University of Connecticut. Today, Long River Review is dedicated to championing the best work from emerging writers and artists across the globe in our annual print and online journal. We want to publish work that electrifies, work that moves us, work that breaks the world and makes it feel whole. Here at the Long River Review, we want to publish new voices, voices from the mouth of the river and beyond, voices drowned out by other voices, voices that might not have otherwise been heard. We want to publish work that is bold, unique, inventive, and most importantly, in your voice. Acknowledgments Masthead For their generous support of student writing and art at UConn, we thank EDITORS-IN-CHIEF FUNDRAISING MANAGERS the Collins, Hackman, and Gill families. We also thank Brenda Brueggemann, Siobhan Dale Isabella Baldoni Aetna Chair in Writing, and The Hartford. Brianna McNish Samantha Mason For judging the creative writing contests, we thank the members of the MANAGING EDITOR POETRY AND prize committees: Gina Barreca, Brenda Brueggemann, Mary Burke, Jason Lilia Shen TRANSLATIONS PANEL EDITOR Courtmanche, Morgne Cramer, Darcie Dennigan, Hannah Dostal, Sean Betty Noe Frederick Forbes, Serkan Gorkemli, Yohei Igarashi, Douglas Kaufman, Kathy DESIGNERS Knapp, Erin Lynn, Penelope Pelizzon, Gregory Pierrot, Fran Shaw, and Caroline Amberg POETRY AND TRANSLATIONS PANEL Christine Byrne Thomas Shea. Mitch Britton Siobhan Dale Special thanks to our outside Collins judge, visiting author Shane McCrae. Katie Ouimette Lynn Tran Jonathon Hastings Kelly Rafferty ARTS LIAISON Brenna Sarantides Bailey Korynn Shea Our gratitude also to NONFICTION AND WEB MASTERS MULTIMEDIA PANEL EDITOR Hannah Desrosiers Bailey Korynn Shea Daniel Mitola Creative Writing Program Director The Aetna Chair in Writing, NONFICTION AND Kelly Rafferty Sean Frederick Forbes and Associate Professor Brenda Brueggemann MULTIMEDIA PANEL Director Ellen Litman Christine Byrne Lauren Ablondi Olivo Lori Corsini-Nelson, Claire Reynolds, BLOG EDITOR Anna Zarra Aldrich Frank Gifford and the UConn Inda Watrous, and Melanie Hepburn Anna Zarra Aldrich Hannah Desrosiers Foundation Daniel Mitola SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR Interim Dean Davita Silfen Glasberg Allison Rosaci Steve Bowden and Design Center and the College of Liberal Arts and Brenna Sarantides Studio at UConn Sciences INTERVIEWS EDITOR FICTION AND DRAMA Lauren Ablondi Olivo PANEL EDITOR Robert Smith and the UConn English Department Chair Joseph Frare Bookstore staff Robert Hasenfratz CHIEF COPYEDITOR Jonathon Hastings FICTION AND DRAMA PANEL Ryan Amato Jason Courtmanche and the All the UConn students who kindly MARKETING COORDINATOR Isabella Baldoni Connecticut Writing Project submitted their work for our Ryan Amato Esther Santiago consideration LITERARY EVENTS COORDINATOR Lilia Shen Allison Rosaci Brianna McNish Samantha Mason COMMUNITY ENGAGMENT Kate Luongo COORDINATOR Kate Luongo Contest Winners Gloriana Gill Art Award All contests are judged anonymously by committees of faculty and outside authors. Special thanks to all who submitted, and congratulations to this year’s winners. THE WALLACE STEVENS THE AETNA CREATIVE Given in memory of Gloriana Gill for photography POETRY PRIZE NONFICTION AWARD (preference given to black and white) and painting, drawing, Given by The Hartford for the Given by the Aetna Chair in or cartooning. Gloriana Gill’s life was one of toil (she was best group of poems by a Writing to support excellence in a dairy farmer’s wife in Pomfret, ct) and tragedy (she lost graduate or undergraduate. creative nonfiction one son to a hunting accident and another in a car crash). Kerry Carnahan, 1st Place Natiel Cooper, Co-winner She found a way to deal with her difficulties through art Matthew Ryan Shelton, 2nd Place Andrew Kucharski, Co-Winner and humor. She adorned her walls, windows, and even Christine Byrne, 3rd Place the interior of their barn with paintings, cartoons, and THE AETNA TRANSLATION AWARD stencils. She painted portraits of local farms, drew cartoons THE JENNIE HACKMAN Xin Xu for a Putnam newspaper, and, when their dairy herd was MEMORIAL AWARD FOR sold off, worked as an illustrator and graphic designer THE AETNA CHILDREN'S SHORT FICTION making educational films. From a gnarled piece of wood Awarded in memory of LITERATURE AWARD transformed into an elf, to scraps of cloth made into comical Jacob and Jennie Hackman Madeline Eller dwarf-sized figures, she could make almost anything into for the best work of short fiction THE LONG RIVER GRADUATE art or amusement. The Gloriana Gill Awards are intended to by an undergraduate. WRITING AWARD encourage the students of UConn similarly to discover the Courtney Haigler, 1st Place For the best piece of writing in importance of art and humor in life. Ellen Fuller, 2nd Place any genre by a graduate student Christopher Gardner, 3rd Place Sophia Buckner ISABELLA SARACENI, Illustration THE EDWARD R. AND EDWIN WAY TEALE AWARD OMAR TAWEH, Photography FRANCES SCHREIBER FOR NATURE WRITING COLLINS LITERARY PRIZE Ellen Fuller Given by David and Emily Collins for the best poem and best prose THE LONG RIVER ART AWARD work by an undergraduate. Lauren Valledor Sean Cavanaugh, Prose Veronica Schorr, Poetry Contents 11 Letter from the Editor INTERVIEWS POETRY AND TRANSLATIONS 48 A Conversation with Kerry 57 An Interview with Jodi Picoult Carnahan Lauren Ablondi Olivo and Ryan 12 I Cannot Know 36 Apocrypha Siobhan Dale Amato Ain Jeong J. Kates 20 Cempasúchil 37 Wulf and Eadwacer/Daylight Is Benjamin Radcliffe Our Evidence FICTION Kerry Carnahan 22 Border (Adapted from 32 Eucalyptus 52 What Was Carved in the Birch "Cempasúchil") Cassandra Quayson Tree Benjamin Radcliffe 62 See Change in English Alyssa Grimaldi Sophia Bruce 24 Elegy with Pine Nuts in its Mouth 65 Housefly Danielle Pieratti CONTEST WINNERS Stella Kozloski 35 Mary, the Magdalene 71 Night of the Entangled 91 Of Lambs and Wolves Mathieson Byer Sean Cavanaugh Courtney Haigler 96 82 There Will Come Hard Rains Because Even the Titanic Sunk CREATIVE NONFICTION Christopher Gardner Veronica Schorr 13 Flotsam 60 Roots 87 The Morpheus Franziska Lee Franziska Lee Ellen Fuller 16 The Lost City 64 Fragility: A Night Terror Fatima Siraj Anna Rose Strosser Contents Letter from the Editor SIOBHAN DALE BRIANNA MCNISH ARTWORK Earlier this year, twenty-one new staff members commenced work on the 22nd edition of Long River Review with a sole intent: to be more daring, 28 Psychological Spaces 68 The Trade experimental, and inventive than ever. We wanted to push ourselves to Isabella Saraceni Johnny Koekee play with language and to interrogate what works move us. And now, in 29 The Supernatural 69 Next Boyfriend its third year since accepting submissions from an international pool of Omar Taweh Johnny Koekee writers, Long River Review is caught in a strange flux between its identity as an undergraduate-affiliated journal and an international one. It begs 30 (In)Complete 78 Primal the question of what is Long River Review’s inherent “voice,” and what Lauren Valledor Omar Taweh constitutes not only our identity as an undergraduate-led literary journal 31 The Young Sufferer 79 The Old Sufferer but as a journal with a new staff entering uncharted terrain. The latest issue Johnny Koekee Johnny Koekee steeped us in uncertainty. Yet, there was a strange comfort in traversing through this liminal space of who and what we wanted to be this year. 44 Underside Watcher 80 In the end, we accepted stories from emerging and established alike, Jacob McGinnis Taylor Giorgetti ideally capturing our vision to publish electrifying prose and poetry. We 45 Drowning in a Sea of Aid 81 Lantern chose pieces that urged us to engage both their content and form. We Omar Taweh Olivia Baldwin chose pieces that demand readers to look beyond their experiences to 46 Starstruck Obsession 98 How Much Can You Take immerse themselves in a new viewpoint. Take, for example, Franziska Ka Ying (Angela) Kwok Johnny Koekee Lee’s “Flotsam,” about the trials of girlhood and growing up. She ends her personal essay with the following challenge: “Who do you want to be?” 47 Sleep 99 Mush Indeed, Lee’s expressed wish to become a “diving woman” who “want[s] to Jacob McGinnis Omar Taweh fall into something that doesn’t care” brims with the same daring question 66 Wake Up Oni 100 Recycled Art of possibility and release; it asks us, as readers, to reevaluate all the things Johnny Koekee Johnny Koekee we could be. Ultimately, we hope to champion that question — who do we want to be? 67 101 Dnt s8y th^t (in public) Look Back — by leaving these artists’ poetry and prose as an answer. The art collected Dan Criblez Olivia Baldwin in our latest issue is a testimony to the potential and depth of the human condition. As we fully acquaint ourselves with intermittent sunshine and rainy weather of the new spring season, we encourage you to hold these words close, let them talk, and make them yours. I Cannot Know Flotsam AIN JEONG FRANZISKA LEE Whose footsteps are these Picture these personal prompts like reporters, microphones to my face, asking That form the shape of paulownia leaves me, So what do you do? What do you want from life? Over here, Franziska — what Making vertical ripples through the still air as they fall silently are you passionate about? I write, Am having an all-life crisis. Will get back to you later. Backspace backspace backspace. I like nonfiction more than memoir Whose face is that because memoir makes me so uncomfortable. In English class we generate Which is seen in glances following a rainy spell sample after sample of our “developing styles.” Write about your mother’s eyes.