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 />
“You are so lucky to have the food you have, yet here you are wasting it. You can’t be that<br />
fucking picky. Wasting an entire meal, what makes you think you can do that? Especially not here, it’s<br />
too expensive.”<br />
She doesn’t try to hide her scolding from the world anymore.<br />
Listen, there’s a song blaring from that car’s window. Play the melody in the corners of your<br />
mind. Let the lyrics muffle her voice. Pick up another fry. Shit, I really want a drink. I really want her<br />
margarita. One with some of the extra fun inside. Perhaps a bit more than extra.<br />
Her voice amplifies as the car drives away, embracing me again in the cruelty of her words.<br />
“He recommended it for you too. I can’t imagine what your brother was thinking telling me<br />
to pass the message along to you, or what reasoning he would have to associate you with therapy<br />
in the first place. I mean, seriously, there’s nothing in your life that calls for therapy. You have your<br />
phases, but come on, that’s being dramatic now. Suck it up, whatever emotions you think you’re going<br />
through, and stop being so lazy, maybe then…”<br />
On and on she goes, her voice a wind that beats harder with each passing second.<br />
“Are you listening to me?”<br />
Her words grate against my ears and peel back the walls I have built to protect myself from<br />
her. Anyone who’s ever said that damn sticks and stones line has never had lunch with my mother.<br />
“You’re so fucking disrespectful. You answer someone when they are talking to you. Look at<br />
you, you can’t even look into my eyes when I’m speaking.”<br />
Stop. Please, make everything stop. Take a break. Just make everything…<br />
“Stop!” My hands beat down onto the table so hard they make it shake.<br />
The white glass plate crashes to the ground near my feet. The crumbs of fries and bread are<br />
now spread all over the table and concrete floor, the leftovers of the deconstructed sandwich are scattered<br />
near my mother’s spilled margarita.<br />
My knuckles press into the grain of the wood so hard that my fingernails pierce my skin and<br />
blood rushes into my palms.<br />
Take a breath.<br />
9
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