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 Two-Faced By Raegan Peluso "What the fuck do you want?” I can hear his words now, echoing through what’s left of my mind. It was bad last night. Most nights spent together end in the contemplation of our love and hate for one another. But this time felt different. Amadeo’s eyes were darkened, and in that moment I did not recognize him, this man I've tied myself to, given myself to. This time, I pushed him too far. A red mark is branded on my skin. It aches. It will soon fade away. But a part of me wishes it would stay forever. That way, I’d be forced to stare reality in its face. Rather than forgetting his rage and my emptiness at the warmth and familiarity of his skin, I wouldn’t be able to keep looking away. My shoes catch on one too many loose cobblestones. Is something buried down under there? Scratching its way out? I kneel down and touch the stones. I feel a faint pulse, but maybe I’m imagining it. I am crazy, after all. That’s how he makes me feel. That’s what he says. A mirror leans against the wall on the street. It’s scratched up, cracked at the corners. I crawl closer to it. Reflecting back at me is a strange thing - this creature with a disintegrating body and lifeless eyes. She doesn’t look like me. But then again, I often forget what I look like. “What do you want?” I ask her. It. “What do you do when you don’t know what you want?” it whispers back. What do you do when you wish to float along time, past him yelling at you, you pigheaded, entitled, selfish thing? Past loved ones’ judgment, the bite in their words, their advice you beg for but never take. Do you stay? Do you walk away? The child in me used to sing, but this girl can barely open her clenched, closed throat. To rasp a pleading, to emit a call. 22
Short Fiction For truce. Break. Start again? Never again. I watch my lips move and recognize the pattern. They’ve danced on my tongue, my mind before. To think I had come so far on this long, treacherous creation of self. I thought I was standing on solid ground. But in the mirror, I take in my stumbling feet. I see that I’m two steps behind. “Che diavolo stai facendo?” I freeze. Amadeo, approaching me from behind, repeats, “What the hell are you doing?” I’m in the middle of the road, miles away from my apartment. He must’ve followed me here somehow. “Nothing,” I blurt. Deflect. Avoid. Get out. I try to walk away, but I can’t move. He’s got me, my wrist, the entirety of my being. Ignorant. An echo from last night’s fight. Selfish. It’s all about what you want. A grip of my wrist and his low rumble. Stop. Walking. Away. He doesn’t say these things to me in this moment, but his words perpetually get trapped inside my head. I’m a dweller, as Amadeo often tells me. Debilitating, hurtful words were said, but I am the one who triggered them, and I need to move on. Walk away from how he hurts you, but don’t walk away from him. “I don’t want to walk away,” I gasp. Amadeo’s eyes are wide in confusion and pain. Screw you for screwing this, I scream in my mind, for screwing me, for making me want to walk away. “But maybe it is you,” the creature in the mirror hisses. “The one who’s screwed him. Who’s screwed yourself.” Amadeo steps closer and envelopes me in his arms. At first, I push him away, but then I lean in. I melt into oblivion. I melt into the cobblestone. I could walk away from this, from us, but he’s got my hand, and tomorrow will be the same day. Tomorrow, he’ll make me take back what I’m about to say. So, before I forget what I’ve seen in the mirror, before he makes me take it back, to myself and to the street, I crawl out from the ancient stone that’s buried me. I whisper what I want. 23
- 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 and 26: Short Fiction A Song for Mr. Solomo
- Page 27: Short Fiction of arm’s reach. The
- 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 />
For truce.<br />
Break.<br />
Start again?<br />
Never again.<br />
I watch my lips move and recognize the pattern. They’ve danced on my tongue, my mind<br />
before. <strong>To</strong> think I had come so far on this long, treacherous creation of self. I thought I was standing<br />
on solid ground. But in the mirror, I take in my stumbling feet. I see that I’m two steps behind.<br />
“Che diavolo stai facendo?”<br />
I freeze.<br />
Amadeo, approaching me from behind, repeats, “What the hell are you doing?” I’m in the<br />
middle of the road, miles away from my apartment. He must’ve followed me here somehow.<br />
“Nothing,” I blurt. Deflect. Avoid. Get out.<br />
I try to walk away, but I can’t move. He’s got me, my wrist, the entirety of my being. Ignorant.<br />
An echo from last night’s fight. Selfish. It’s all about what you want. A grip of my wrist and his<br />
low rumble. Stop. Walking. Away. He doesn’t say these things to me in this moment, but his words<br />
perpetually get trapped inside my head. I’m a dweller, as Amadeo often tells me. Debilitating, hurtful<br />
words were said, but I am the one who triggered them, and I need to move on. Walk away from how<br />
he hurts you, but don’t walk away from him.<br />
“I don’t want to walk away,” I gasp. Amadeo’s eyes are wide in confusion and pain. Screw you<br />
for screwing this, I scream in my mind, for screwing me, for making me want to walk away.<br />
“But maybe it is you,” the creature in the mirror hisses. “The one who’s screwed him. Who’s<br />
screwed yourself.”<br />
Amadeo steps closer and envelopes me in his arms. At first, I push him away, but then I lean<br />
in. I melt into oblivion. I melt into the cobblestone. I could walk away from this, from us, but he’s got<br />
my hand, and tomorrow will be the same day. <strong>To</strong>morrow, he’ll make me take back what I’m about to<br />
say. So, before I forget what I’ve seen in the mirror, before he makes me take it back, to myself and to<br />
the street, I crawl out from the ancient stone that’s buried me. I whisper what I want.<br />
23
Change language