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 Work of Art By Josephine Dlugosz It’s the first Sunday of the month, and museum entry is free. At La Galleria Nazionale dell’Arte Moderna, new visitors flood the entrance and old visitors loiter outside, recuperating from museum fever in the warm February sun. I am among them, but I’ve gathered up enough strength to walk home. I cross the street and notice two women in gray winter jackets sitting together at the bottom of the stairs that lead to Villa Borghese. It’s nearly one in the afternoon, but the winter sun shines directly on them as if it has just risen. They talk quietly to one another while cars honk over them and stop abruptly for pedestrians on Viale delle Belle Arti. There is a shadow cast over the bottom halves of their bodies, but their tops shine in the sun. One of the women, who exhales a mix of smoke and cold air, glows. German sociologist Georg Simmel argued, in his essay on urban life, that individuals living in cities tend to develop a sort of “protective organ.” This organ allows for shelter against the never-ending emotional and physical stimuli that are omnipresent in a city. Life becomes “matter-of-fact,” he writes; people develop a “blasé outlook” that allows for protection against sensory overload. For the first eighteen years of my life, I lived in rural America, and the closest I got to sensory overload was my school’s cafeteria. My small Connecticut town is nothing extraordinarily special. There are cows and miles of farmland, and there are old, colonial houses. There is one gas station, and there are approximately three restaurants. When you visit a grocery store, there is a 99% chance you will run 16
Prose into someone you know — an ex-partner, perhaps, or your seventh-grade science teacher. And, much like every other town in America, my town is the land of the automobile. There’s no way to get around without one, really. People begin driving the second they turn sixteen, some learn even before that. I knew a boy who learned how to drive a stick shift on his family’s farm. He was driving John Deere tractors before I’d learned the difference between the gas and the brake pedals. From the moment I turned sixteen, driving felt like the ultimate form of freedom. I got my license in the middle of the fall and would drive around with the windows down, even after the air developed a certain chill that only touched the tips of noses and ears. I craved fresh air, of any temperature; I craved everything that was shielded from me. I craved humanity, too — something that is so easily avoided back home. The idea of constantly being surrounded by humans was always alluring to me, and so the city became my dream. I craved it as much as I craved fresh air; both offered a sort of escape. Every time I’d visit a city, I’d come back, my head full of colors and inspiration. I’d write stories about people I’d seen on the subway and imagine their lives. I figured their lives were more interesting and more vibrant than mine had ever been. I figured they loved city living, too — and then I moved to one. I remember, during one of my first weeks in Rome, waking up from a nightmare, just before the sun came up. After a few minutes of restlessness, I stood up and felt the cold marble floor under my feet. I decided I’d get up, go out, and watch the sunrise. It was mid-October. The days were hot but the nights were chilly, so I bundled up, forgetting that extra layers are useless walking in a city; you just sweat right through them. I walked through Trastevere, emptier than I’d ever seen it and ridden with trash from the night before. I walked over Ponte Sisto, dodging no one for once, but squinting to block the sun that had finally risen. And eventually, I made it all the way to the Colosseum, free of humans but full of life. It was just me and the city, on foot. There was no need for a protective organ then. It was quiet, bright, and the air was fresh: I had it all to myself. Everything was charming, even the trash. Walk- 17
- 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 and 14: Prose How is it possible for one to
- Page 15 and 16: Prose “You are so lucky to have t
- Page 17 and 18: Prose With one last sigh for relief
- Page 19 and 20: Prose Grandma Jo Ann. Apart from th
- Page 21: Prose painful unraveling as the tab
- 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 />
Work of Art<br />
By Josephine Dlugosz<br />
It’s the first Sunday of the month, and museum entry is free. At La Galleria Nazionale dell’Arte<br />
Moderna, new visitors flood the entrance and old visitors loiter outside, recuperating from museum<br />
fever in the warm February sun. I am among them, but I’ve gathered up enough strength to walk<br />
home.<br />
I cross the street and notice two women in gray winter jackets sitting together at the bottom of<br />
the stairs that lead to Villa Borghese. It’s nearly one in the afternoon, but the winter sun shines directly<br />
on them as if it has just risen. They talk quietly to one another while cars honk over them and stop<br />
abruptly for pedestrians on Viale delle Belle Arti. There is a shadow cast over the bottom halves of<br />
their bodies, but their tops shine in the sun. One of the women, who exhales a mix of smoke and cold<br />
air, glows.<br />
German sociologist Georg Simmel argued, in his essay on urban life, that individuals living in cities<br />
tend to develop a sort of “protective organ.” This organ allows for shelter against the never-ending<br />
emotional and physical stimuli that are omnipresent in a city. Life becomes “matter-of-fact,” he writes;<br />
people develop a “blasé outlook” that allows for protection against sensory overload.<br />
For the first eighteen years of my life, I lived in rural America, and the closest I got to sensory overload<br />
was my school’s cafeteria. My small Connecticut town is nothing extraordinarily special. There are<br />
cows and miles of farmland, and there are old, colonial houses. There is one gas station, and there are<br />
approximately three restaurants. When you visit a grocery store, there is a 99% chance you will run<br />
16
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