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
Short Fiction “Um, yeah. Yes. This is Jacob Solomon.” “Sir,” the stranger sighed, then sputtered unintelligibles before gathering himself under another deep breath. “Sir, I have some news regarding your father.” Jake began to critique the man’s introduction but opted to hold his tongue. “Your aunt came on over to check on him. The shower was running an’...” “Thank you, sir. I’m sorry: you are...?” The man continued to maw on his words as though half his face had fallen slack to shoulder. It annoyed Jake. You see, he had this theory about people with such an extravagant drawl – some strange unreasonable manipulation. He just needed to find the proof. “That’s fine, sir. Thank you. I’m sorry, but again, what’s your name? Who are you exactly?” Like a worn-out spigot in an unknown neighboring apartment, he dribbled on without any possibility of cessation. “I spoke with Mr. Solomon, er...hmm. I spoke with your brother, Timothy? Nearly an hour...” Jake composed himself and interrupted again. “Sir. Who are you? Why are you on my father’s phone?” “Right. Sorry, Sir. I’m Jeremy Mevins. EMT with Mecklin EMS out in Charlotte... They send us sometimes, on account of Shelby being so small an’ all...” “And...? Jesus man. Please...get to it.” Jake pressed. The EMT finally ejected what had been lodged somewhere between his brain and vocal cords. Jake initially thought to ask how exactly Mevins found himself digging through his father’s phone, and why he (or anyone) chose cliché, nonsensical phrases like ‘...father was found...,” “...sorry to say...,” and “...get right to it...,” when no one was lost, one is anything but ‘sorry’ if one takes the time to say it, and he had clearly done anything but Get. Right. To. It. Instead, Jake felt the more pressing need for a seat, then went straight down to the freshly cleaned floor, and eventually lay himself flat. Over the years, as the calls were coming through, Jake would imagine what his father’s responses were going to be. Mr. Solomon was predictably excited for his son, even when the news was bad. “No thank you, Mr. Mevins,” he said, before pushing the cell phone across the floor, just out 20
Short Fiction of arm’s reach. The cicadas were still singing. To tell you the truth, once they surfaced, they never really stopped. “Singing” may be too delicate a term for some. For some, they scream – a chattering shriek that shakes the wish from the bone. As Jake lay on the polished floor of his apartment, listening to the incessant exoskeletal clicking, he thought of fortune, of a beckoning towards summer in symphony, of an Immortal Cycle through an ever-present Cog, for which each tree was a tooth digging in and spinning towards some...Constant. A rebirth? Or maybe it was just time to dust off the rain boots. The roar accumulated in the leaves, rolled across the landscape in the breeze, resounded off buildings as it gained momentum, and then stuck, vibrating, an overwhelming mass in the stagnant morning air of Shelby. Mr. Solomon seemed to have picked the perfect moment in swapping places with the swarm. 21
- 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 and 22: Prose painful unraveling as the tab
- Page 23 and 24: Prose into someone you know — an
- Page 25: Short Fiction A Song for Mr. Solomo
- 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.
Short Fiction<br />
of arm’s reach.<br />
The cicadas were still singing. <strong>To</strong> tell you the truth, once they surfaced, they never<br />
really stopped. “Singing” may be too delicate a term for some. For some, they scream – a chattering<br />
shriek that shakes the wish from the bone. As Jake lay on the polished floor of his apartment, listening<br />
to the incessant exoskeletal clicking, he thought of fortune, of a beckoning towards summer in symphony,<br />
of an Immortal Cycle through an ever-present Cog, for which each tree was a tooth digging<br />
in and spinning towards some...Constant. A rebirth? Or maybe it was just time to dust off the rain<br />
boots.<br />
The roar accumulated in the leaves, rolled across the landscape in the breeze, resounded off<br />
buildings as it gained momentum, and then stuck, vibrating, an overwhelming mass in the stagnant<br />
morning air of Shelby. Mr. Solomon seemed to have picked the perfect moment in swapping places<br />
with the swarm.<br />
21
Change language