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 />
into someone you know — an ex-partner, perhaps, or your seventh-grade science teacher.<br />
And, much like every other town in America, my town is the land of the automobile. There’s<br />
no way to get around without one, really. People begin driving the second they turn sixteen, some<br />
learn even before that. I knew a boy who learned how to drive a stick shift on his family’s farm. He was<br />
driving John Deere tractors before I’d learned the difference between the gas and the brake pedals.<br />
<strong>From</strong> the moment I turned sixteen, driving felt like the ultimate form of freedom. I got my<br />
license in the middle of the fall and would drive around with the windows down, even after the air<br />
developed a certain chill that only touched the tips of noses and ears. I craved fresh air, of any temperature;<br />
I craved everything that was shielded from me.<br />
I craved humanity, too — something that is so easily avoided back home. The idea of constantly<br />
being surrounded by humans was always alluring to me, and so the city became my dream. I craved<br />
it as much as I craved fresh air; both offered a sort of escape. Every time I’d visit a city, I’d come back,<br />
my head full of colors and inspiration. I’d write stories about people I’d seen on the subway and imagine<br />
their lives. I figured their lives were more interesting and more vibrant than mine had ever been. I<br />
figured they loved city living, too — and then I moved to one.<br />
I remember, during one of my first weeks in Rome, waking up from a nightmare, just before the<br />
sun came up. After a few minutes of restlessness, I stood up and felt the cold marble floor under my<br />
feet. I decided I’d get up, go out, and watch the sunrise.<br />
It was mid-October. The days were hot but the nights were chilly, so I bundled up, forgetting<br />
that extra layers are useless walking in a city; you just sweat right through them. I walked through<br />
Trastevere, emptier than I’d ever seen it and ridden with trash from the night before. I walked over<br />
Ponte Sisto, dodging no one for once, but squinting to block the sun that had finally risen. And eventually,<br />
I made it all the way to the Colosseum, free of humans but full of life.<br />
It was just me and the city, on foot. There was no need for a protective organ then. It was quiet,<br />
bright, and the air was fresh: I had it all to myself. Everything was charming, even the trash. Walk-<br />
17
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