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 II In the Wake By J. Scott Cameron The fog sits like a bed skirt this time of morning – grayish white pleats below a slow, pulsing illumination that hints at a place of respite. The sky is cast-iron. The sun, a pilot light prepared to propel to its crest and back again – perpetual – a Peaceful Projectile counterpoised until maybe half past six, when it erupts into presence and the fixed mist is mixed back into the heavy humidity ever present this far below sea level. Eventually, we wade through and reach for the truck’s door handles. A lottery ticket put us on this trip – a turn to inspect whatever Remains. 34
Poetry II We turn left out of the driveway, then right into a pensive, inchworm crawl. All that is left is Patience. Fifty thousand other winners for the day work their way along the stretch, bordered by blinking lights – a tarmac glittering in red-carpet delight. A runway for the hopefuls. Patriotic red-white-blue, Red-White-Blues… The occasional orange-yellow, Orange-Yellows fly by, flickering along the edges of our path, accompanied by a hum Behind, Aside, In front – Police Caravan, followed by Corps of Engineers Caravan, followed by News Station Caravan. 35
- 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 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: THE LIT/PUB INTERVIEW perception of
- 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 II<br />
We turn left out of the driveway,<br />
then right<br />
into a pensive, inchworm crawl.<br />
All that is left is<br />
Patience.<br />
Fifty thousand other winners for the day<br />
work their way<br />
along the stretch, bordered<br />
by blinking lights –<br />
a tarmac glittering in<br />
red-carpet delight.<br />
A runway for the hopefuls.<br />
Patriotic red-white-blue,<br />
Red-White-Blues…<br />
The occasional orange-yellow,<br />
Orange-Yellows<br />
fly by, flickering<br />
along the edges of our path,<br />
accompanied by a hum<br />
Behind,<br />
Aside,<br />
In front –<br />
Police Caravan,<br />
followed by<br />
Corps of Engineers Caravan,<br />
followed by<br />
News Station Caravan.<br />
35
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