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Esprit Fall 2008 Home
Awards
Contributors
Acknowledgements
Contents
Front Cover:
gone
Inside Front Cover:
Metropolis
Windowed World
Sincerely, Holden Caulfield
From My Wanderings
Untitled
Meeting Marge
Volume IV
Mosaic Reflection
Happiness Is a Warm Gun
Untitled
Whitman's Words
Metacliché
Stagnation
no school today
"Where's the Beef?": A (Very Close) Critical Reading
Untitled
Cranberry Sauce
Cast
Broken Muses
Majestic
Astigmatic
Inside Back Cover:
Verticalité
Back Cover:
Sprite
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Astigmatic
Matthew Mercuri
1935
Veils of incense rose from
the censer to the rafters while the sun’s reflection on the
stained glass drowned the congregation in spectral light. Gowned in a
garment of generations, an infant girl was held above a cruciform
fixture located at the entrance to the nave. She shivered in her
godmother’s hands as an old man of the cloth, in a single swift
and graceful movement, drew his palm through the font and aspersed its
blessed water upon the infant’s forehead.
After the ceremony, Alodia rested her cheek against
her father’s breast while he rocked her in the cradle of his
arms. Motes of dust floated in the bands of light which filtered
through the blinded window, and when he placed his thumb in the cup of
his daughter’s palm, he felt her fingers tighten slowly around
it. Her eyelids fluttered, her grip began to slacken, and he set her
carefully into the crib he had purchased.
Alodia’s father softly shut the door behind him and stepped
into the growing shadows of the parlor. A gentleman named Jakob stood
before the mantle, admiring a songbird that chirped inside its cage.
The man wore a small, gold star on a chain around his neck and held in
his hands a package wrapped in the daily paper. At the sight of his
friend, Jakob smiled widely and opened his arms. The two men embraced
and took seats before the fireplace in chairs upholstered in red and
white leather.
Outside the dusk shed its golden veil, snuffing out
the last trace of light from the quiet Polish city. The men sat and
smoked in the warm glow of the fire, the package still wrapped on a
table between them, and waited for their wives to join them at the
hearth. Alodia’s mother entered first, her ears and neck adorned
with small, round pearls. She wore a slim, satin dress and tread
lightly in slippers upon the carpeted floor. Jakob’s wife,
attired in a modest skirt and blouse, followed closely behind. As the
women approached, Alodia’s father reached forward and tore the
newspaper from the package, revealing inside a silver bracelet bearing
the inscription of his daughter’s name.
1943
Gunfire rattled the south of Poznan as the snow
quickened its descent, blanketing the city in deep white powder. Under
the cover of dusk, men in grey uniforms populated the streets for a
third consecutive
day. They demanded entrance at every business and residence and shot out windows when the latches failed to lift.
Inside a stone-faced house by the river, a young
girl lay on the floor, shielding her face against a soldier’s
mud-caked boot. She cried out as he reached down and tore a bracelet
from her wrist and stuffed
it quickly into his coat pocket. Choking on her sobs, she glanced up at
the brutal reddened face, allowing time for the soldier to note the
light, tousled hair strewn before two frightened blue eyes. With a
dirt-encrusted thumb, he wiped the blood from a cut upon her forehead
and hoisted her swiftly onto his shoulder.
He carried her out through the foyer of the house,
and though she glimpsed something dark in the back of parlor, his
movement was too quick and her vision too blurry for her to recognize
the shape of bodies fallen.
* * *
Alodia drifted in and of
out consciousness, her cheek pressed to the concrete cellar floor, her
hands clasped about her knees. Blood sat and hardened in a cut below
her eye where the instructor’s stick had struck her face. She had
been sitting near the back of the classroom when the instructor pointed
to a word on the board. Unable to explain how the chalked letters ran
together, she felt the warm rush of redness to her cheeks, and when the
instructor asked for her name, she answered incorrectly.
Now saliva ran from the corners of her mouth. She
bit her bottom lip and clawed at the floor beneath her. What had her
mother said about the bird in its cage? She tried to remember the faces
of her playmates and the look of the schoolhouse and the smell of the
clover in the field beyond the church. She wanted to press her nose
into the dirt, to taste that earth upon her tongue. She thought of
Jakob’s bracelet and how her mother had told her not to wear down
the inscription by rubbing her fingers over it. She was standing in the
yard behind her house. The tall spires of the church were bending over
her. Father was calling, but she could not understand his words.
Her nostrils filled with the smell of something
sour. Limbs outstretched, she could feel no chair or bed from where she
lay, and as the darkness continued to press heavily upon her, she
thought of the girl with the ruddy face. The girl had lived at the camp
for over a month, and still no family had come for her. She had spoken
once about a boy who had misbehaved in class. No one saw him again, she
said. Just vanished.
* * *
Music from the
loudspeakers filled the air. She recognized the tune from class and
quickly recalled the name of its composer. She had been drawn to his
picture on the cover of a textbook. Clutching a quill and pad in his
hands, he wore a black coat with a red scarf and carried a stern
expression on his face. He had steep, dark brows and wavy hair of grey
and white. She listened intently to the rise and fall of notes, staring
at the gravel beneath her feet and running her fingertips gently over a
bruise on
her forearm.
The director called her name from across the yard
in thick, guttural tones. She squinted into the distance and began to
walk in the direction of the gate, her back held proudly upright, her
shoulders square and arms evenly at her sides. When the director
impatiently summoned her again, she closed her eyes and called back in
the loudest tone she could muster, tasting every syllable before it
left her mouth.
Dinner was held in the mess hall at four-thirty.
She ate ravenously, drawing looks from the other children who sat near
her, and retreated to her room as the final rays of daylight vanished.
There she untied the bodice of her dirndl, drew off the blouse and
stepped out deftly from the skirt. Her forehead throbbed when she
unpinned the bun which sat high upon the back of her head, and as she
swung her hair from side to side, it unraveled into long, golden
strands. She climbed onto her bed and pressed her cheek into the
pillow, repeating softly Adalheid.
* * *
She awoke to gunfire and
distant explosions. Clutching the edges of her mattress, she heard
strange voices and a stammer of boots approaching from the hall. The
room smelled of sulfur, and the high pitch
of sirens rushed through the open window. Hands were grabbing firmly at
her body, but in the darkness she could hardly see at all.
1946
The Third Avenue elevated
clattered through a sleepy high-rise district in the Bronx. Huddled
beneath her blankets, Allie awoke to the vibration and looked out at
the sky from the third-story window of the orphanage. A bank of dark
clouds held the promise of rain.
She climbed out of bed and opened her closet,
smiling wryly at the provided arrangement of colored garments. After a
moment’s hesitation, she grabbed a flannel shirt and overalls
from the rack. While holding the clothes in her hands, she looked at
the reflection in the mirror that hung upon the closet door. She
studied the subtle curve of breast beneath her top and the knotted
locks of auburn hair that dressed her neck and shoulders. Mrs. Potter
had purchased dye as soon as Allie suggested the idea.
Catching the aroma of eggs and toast, she quickly
changed her clothes and headed to the staircase that led into the
kitchen. As she set her foot on the bottom step, Mrs. Potter looked up
from the head of the table and wished her good morning. Allie smiled
back and looked hungrily upon the half-eaten trays of scrambled eggs
and toast, jellies and jams. The table was still lined with dirty
dishes and silverware, and as she sat at one of the vacant chairs, she
heard foreign words and laughter from the children who played in the
other room.
As she ate, she glanced out the window and noticed
that the sky had darkened. She rose quickly from the table, averting
her blue eyes from the curious face beside her, and grabbed her
raincoat from the rack at the front door. Once outside, she removed an
old newspaper from her pocket, set it open on the ground, and knelt at
a bed of flowers which lined the edge of the building. She first drew a
patch of weed-choked lilies from the planter and, clutching the stems
in her hand, shook the dirt from their roots. She then reached into her
overalls and produced a handful of new bulbs. She laid them each
gingerly in the divot, and as her spade glided into the rain-softened
soil, she felt the sudden patter of drops upon her head.
Knelt beside the flowerbed, Allie looked upward at
the sky and allowed for a moment the water to speckle her forehead and
the lenses on her face. |
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