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
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Prose<br />
How is it possible for one to become another?<br />
On the walk from my car to the café, I once would have noticed the beauty of the trees and the<br />
flowers in bloom. <strong>Now</strong>, I wonder at the wreckage hidden behind each stranger I pass.<br />
“It’s all in your head,” rings my mother’s voice.<br />
All I can think of are her words.<br />
“It’s harder to lose weight than it is to gain. Remember that fat becomes uglier with age.<br />
Think about that before you go eating again.”<br />
<strong>Now</strong> I find myself unable to eat.<br />
She gives me her spiel about my brother’s new therapy and how it’s a waste of time and money.<br />
All I return is a smile and a nod. In the past—before I became her—I would’ve argued against her<br />
views, her hopelessness, and her criticism. But now, I don’t know how to fight her because I don’t<br />
disagree with her.<br />
I flick away the bit of fry from my fingers. I pick up another one, and repeat the process. My<br />
phone vibrates against the table, that damn photo appearing in front of me again. I flip the phone<br />
over, but the photo remains in my mind.<br />
It’s the same picture I’ve had since the day it was taken—parents’ weekend on campus two<br />
years ago. One of those festivals my university hosts, the two of us stumbling through. My first time<br />
drinking with her. There’s a smile etched on my face, I must be happy. But all I hear are her words<br />
after the photo was taken.<br />
“Love, you’re looking a bit homely in those clothes. I don’t want you posting these, they may<br />
give off the wrong impression.”<br />
Conveniently, she never mentioned the traces of alcohol down her shirt. Or her bloodshot eyes<br />
from all the drinking.<br />
I don’t know if she was right about my clothes, but I never did post that photo. Nor did I wear<br />
that outfit again.<br />
My gaze trains onto the crumb covered plate, my reflection staring back at me.<br />
I even look like her.<br />
At least according to my grandmother, my extended family, my friends, her friends, my high<br />
7
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