AUR LitPut III Spring 2023 - From Now To Then
"When I found out about my father’s diagnosis, my first impulse was to light up,” Nalu Gruschkus writes in the opening line of Abnormal Whites and Excessive Blues, her striking piece about her father’s cancer and her own addiction to smoking. In A Bit of Extra Fun, Delaida Rodriguez is
having an unpleasant lunch at a restaurant with her boozy mother. Over a chicken sandwich she has barely touched, she peers into her mother’s jade eyes only to realize with dread that she is more like her than she would care to be. Sam Geida looks back in Friday Night Dinners to the glorious family get-togethers at his grandmother’s house – now it’s only a few of them around the same table, with paper plates and the flat blue and white cardboard boxes of Gino’s Pizzeria.
The stories in last year’s issue of Lit/Pub were mostly about making sense of things as we emerged from our Covid isolation. The mood is more assertive this year. Isabela Alongi’s vibrant cover design brilliantly evokes a world in movement and young people going places. It is a thread we pick up again in Josephine Dlugosz’s delicate musings (Work of Art), and in the short fiction of Scott Cameron and Raegan Peluso (A Song for Mr Solomon and Two-Faced).
The poetry section is especially strong with Gina Carlo’s compassionate trilogy about love and loss and Scott Cameron’s haunting poem about his return to the bleak post-Katrina wasteland. On the lighter side, Lit/Pub spoke to Professor Bruno Montefusco about campus fashion. In the new memoir section, D.P. gives us a tender account of a childhood road trip with her father to Arizona (Snow). And students are traveling again! Emily Chow takes us with her on her intrepid solo trip to Malta.
Rome, May 2023
"When I found out about my father’s diagnosis, my first impulse was to light up,” Nalu Gruschkus writes in the opening line of Abnormal Whites and Excessive Blues, her striking piece about her father’s cancer and her own addiction to smoking. In A Bit of Extra Fun, Delaida Rodriguez is
having an unpleasant lunch at a restaurant with her boozy mother. Over a chicken sandwich she has barely touched, she peers into her mother’s jade eyes only to realize with dread that she is more like her than she would care to be. Sam Geida looks back in Friday Night Dinners to the glorious family get-togethers at his grandmother’s house – now it’s only a few of them around the same table, with paper plates and the flat blue and white cardboard boxes of Gino’s Pizzeria.
The stories in last year’s issue of Lit/Pub were mostly about making sense of things as we emerged from our Covid isolation. The mood is more assertive this year. Isabela Alongi’s vibrant cover design brilliantly evokes a world in movement and young people going places. It is a thread we pick up again in Josephine Dlugosz’s delicate musings (Work of Art), and in the short fiction of Scott Cameron and Raegan Peluso (A Song for Mr Solomon and Two-Faced).
The poetry section is especially strong with Gina Carlo’s compassionate trilogy about love and loss and Scott Cameron’s haunting poem about his return to the bleak post-Katrina wasteland. On the lighter side, Lit/Pub spoke to Professor Bruno Montefusco about campus fashion. In the new memoir section, D.P. gives us a tender account of a childhood road trip with her father to Arizona (Snow). And students are traveling again! Emily Chow takes us with her on her intrepid solo trip to Malta.
Rome, May 2023
Prose school English teacher, the random stranger who took our order at In-N-Out. The waitress who brought us our drinks couldn’t help but comment on our resemblance. “Oh, how you two look so much alike, such beautiful girls. You’re so lucky to have such a beautiful momma.” I can’t blame strangers for comparing us. Yet as I peer down at the plate, I try hard not to see what they see. Pure blonde hair versus dyed-crimson. Jade eyes in contrast to what my grandmother calls my “miel de sol.” The same blood runs in our veins, but the sun casts different shadows upon us: her ghostly skin, my natural tan. My hands run along the mask of scars she etched into my skin. She’ll never have the same scar on top of her eyelid. She’ll never have the bald spot I can feel if I run my fingers where she pulled out my hair. Her hands will never have the same wounds mine have. She’ll always deny such things, and makeup seems to blind her to all she inflicted. Despite all the differences, the face that looks back at me from across the table is the same. The averting motion of my eyes resumes. French fries, her fourth glass, strangers strolling by, back to her eyes. Damn it. Yet as I peer into her jade green, I notice the restive movement of her own pupils. I see her. I see someone who is just as uneasy being here. Someone who will also fix her gaze on anything, even the most meaningless object. She taps her fingers against the side of the recently emptied glass, beckoning the passing waitress. Her nail chimes against the stained glass, an impatient song ringing through the still air. “Another?” she asks — a single note, laced with a slur. “With a bit of extra fun in there as well.” Her plastered smile hardly hides the fact that she’s already had one drink too many. That with this next one will come more wounding words about things she hadn’t noticed with her last glass. Her eyes scan our surroundings before going back to mine. “Why are you treating your food like a damn toy?” I break up another fry as the waitress sets down the full margarita. Focus on something else. My hands, the crumbs that were once food. Don’t stare at the plate again. A dog walks across the street, it looks like mine. 8
Prose “You are so lucky to have the food you have, yet here you are wasting it. You can’t be that fucking picky. Wasting an entire meal, what makes you think you can do that? Especially not here, it’s too expensive.” She doesn’t try to hide her scolding from the world anymore. Listen, there’s a song blaring from that car’s window. Play the melody in the corners of your mind. Let the lyrics muffle her voice. Pick up another fry. Shit, I really want a drink. I really want her margarita. One with some of the extra fun inside. Perhaps a bit more than extra. Her voice amplifies as the car drives away, embracing me again in the cruelty of her words. “He recommended it for you too. I can’t imagine what your brother was thinking telling me to pass the message along to you, or what reasoning he would have to associate you with therapy in the first place. I mean, seriously, there’s nothing in your life that calls for therapy. You have your phases, but come on, that’s being dramatic now. Suck it up, whatever emotions you think you’re going through, and stop being so lazy, maybe then…” On and on she goes, her voice a wind that beats harder with each passing second. “Are you listening to me?” Her words grate against my ears and peel back the walls I have built to protect myself from her. Anyone who’s ever said that damn sticks and stones line has never had lunch with my mother. “You’re so fucking disrespectful. You answer someone when they are talking to you. Look at you, you can’t even look into my eyes when I’m speaking.” Stop. Please, make everything stop. Take a break. Just make everything… “Stop!” My hands beat down onto the table so hard they make it shake. The white glass plate crashes to the ground near my feet. The crumbs of fries and bread are now spread all over the table and concrete floor, the leftovers of the deconstructed sandwich are scattered near my mother’s spilled margarita. My knuckles press into the grain of the wood so hard that my fingernails pierce my skin and blood rushes into my palms. Take a breath. 9
- Page 3 and 4: Table of Contents Editors' Note iii
- Page 5 and 6: Editors' Note "When I found out abo
- Page 7 and 8: Prose Abnormal Whites and Excessive
- Page 9 and 10: Prose strangling me and that all to
- Page 11 and 12: Prose to thrive and live in your mo
- Page 13: Prose How is it possible for one to
- Page 17 and 18: Prose With one last sigh for relief
- Page 19 and 20: Prose Grandma Jo Ann. Apart from th
- Page 21 and 22: Prose painful unraveling as the tab
- Page 23 and 24: Prose into someone you know — an
- Page 25 and 26: Short Fiction A Song for Mr. Solomo
- Page 27 and 28: Short Fiction of arm’s reach. The
- Page 29 and 30: Short Fiction For truce. Break. Sta
- Page 31 and 32: Poetry I Cannot conquer them all Bu
- Page 33 and 34: Poetry I Acquaintances we were - Lo
- Page 35 and 36: Poetry I Man’s honour. We were mo
- Page 37 and 38: THE LIT/PUB INTERVIEW King Bruno Pr
- Page 39 and 40: THE LIT/PUB INTERVIEW perception of
- Page 41 and 42: Poetry II We turn left out of the d
- Page 43 and 44: Poetry II signaling Christmas Morni
- Page 45 and 46: Memoir Tampa to Pensacola, where we
- Page 47 and 48: Memoir lived in a residential neigh
- Page 49 and 50: Travel Solo Trip By Emily Chao I’
- Page 51 and 52: Travel of the tours I’ve been on.
Prose<br />
“You are so lucky to have the food you have, yet here you are wasting it. You can’t be that<br />
fucking picky. Wasting an entire meal, what makes you think you can do that? Especially not here, it’s<br />
too expensive.”<br />
She doesn’t try to hide her scolding from the world anymore.<br />
Listen, there’s a song blaring from that car’s window. Play the melody in the corners of your<br />
mind. Let the lyrics muffle her voice. Pick up another fry. Shit, I really want a drink. I really want her<br />
margarita. One with some of the extra fun inside. Perhaps a bit more than extra.<br />
Her voice amplifies as the car drives away, embracing me again in the cruelty of her words.<br />
“He recommended it for you too. I can’t imagine what your brother was thinking telling me<br />
to pass the message along to you, or what reasoning he would have to associate you with therapy<br />
in the first place. I mean, seriously, there’s nothing in your life that calls for therapy. You have your<br />
phases, but come on, that’s being dramatic now. Suck it up, whatever emotions you think you’re going<br />
through, and stop being so lazy, maybe then…”<br />
On and on she goes, her voice a wind that beats harder with each passing second.<br />
“Are you listening to me?”<br />
Her words grate against my ears and peel back the walls I have built to protect myself from<br />
her. Anyone who’s ever said that damn sticks and stones line has never had lunch with my mother.<br />
“You’re so fucking disrespectful. You answer someone when they are talking to you. Look at<br />
you, you can’t even look into my eyes when I’m speaking.”<br />
Stop. Please, make everything stop. Take a break. Just make everything…<br />
“Stop!” My hands beat down onto the table so hard they make it shake.<br />
The white glass plate crashes to the ground near my feet. The crumbs of fries and bread are<br />
now spread all over the table and concrete floor, the leftovers of the deconstructed sandwich are scattered<br />
near my mother’s spilled margarita.<br />
My knuckles press into the grain of the wood so hard that my fingernails pierce my skin and<br />
blood rushes into my palms.<br />
Take a breath.<br />
9
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