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
Poetry I The river’s peak and rainfall air I may have found a way to survive Just to know a certain someone’s alive Just imagine the world we plan to create Let the horrors of this world disintegrate Tainted the moment it began Still, I have a plan. To see the sky when it isn’t blue Gowns and countdowns, all with you But those memories of us Left ourselves in ash and dust I am excited and thrilled, I admit No understatement - no words may describe it I know once you were my biggest fan But my dear, I have a plan. The moment you said hello, Or didn’t even do so I had a hunch, a sort of clue What something might’ve meant to you I didn’t know that I Would have the privilege of knowing thy Weak or not, I took it on 26
Poetry I Acquaintances we were – Long gone I’d take you back to those days of magic If time could heal something so tragic I’m afraid I’ve broken you And now you know it, too Repeat after me and you’ll see I will now set you free I, myself, will not be bound by the past And love, not meant to last These are words and only words, I agree But you understand what they mean to me Your walls have been breaking The holes in your soul left aching Too much to stay sane Given that once, we were a hurricane I say I am loyal, write it in words But lacking trust, I prove myself absurd My dear old friend Our christmas is nearing, to an end I wish for your rest, dear For that, I must not be here I will return to my clan 27
- 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 and 28: Short Fiction of arm’s reach. The
- Page 29 and 30: Short Fiction For truce. Break. Sta
- Page 31: Poetry I Cannot conquer them all Bu
- 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.
Poetry I<br />
The river’s peak and rainfall air<br />
I may have found a way to survive<br />
Just to know a certain someone’s alive<br />
Just imagine the world we plan to create<br />
Let the horrors of this world disintegrate<br />
Tainted the moment it began<br />
Still, I have a plan.<br />
<strong>To</strong> see the sky when it isn’t blue<br />
Gowns and countdowns, all with you<br />
But those memories of us<br />
Left ourselves in ash and dust<br />
I am excited and thrilled, I admit<br />
No understatement - no words may describe it<br />
I know once you were my biggest fan<br />
But my dear, I have a plan.<br />
The moment you said hello,<br />
Or didn’t even do so<br />
I had a hunch, a sort of clue<br />
What something might’ve meant to you<br />
I didn’t know that I<br />
Would have the privilege of knowing thy<br />
Weak or not, I took it on<br />
26