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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Short Fiction<br />
Two-Faced<br />
By Raegan Peluso<br />
"What the fuck do you want?” I can hear his words now, echoing through what’s left of my<br />
mind. It was bad last night. Most nights spent together end in the contemplation of our love and hate<br />
for one another. But this time felt different. Amadeo’s eyes were darkened, and in that moment I did<br />
not recognize him, this man I've tied myself to, given myself to. This time, I pushed him too far.<br />
A red mark is branded on my skin. It aches. It will soon fade away. But a part of me wishes it<br />
would stay forever. That way, I’d be forced to stare reality in its face. Rather than forgetting his rage<br />
and my emptiness at the warmth and familiarity of his skin, I wouldn’t be able to keep looking away.<br />
My shoes catch on one too many loose cobblestones. Is something buried down under there?<br />
Scratching its way out? I kneel down and touch the stones. I feel a faint pulse, but maybe I’m imagining<br />
it. I am crazy, after all. That’s how he makes me feel. That’s what he says.<br />
A mirror leans against the wall on the street. It’s scratched up, cracked at the corners. I crawl<br />
closer to it. Reflecting back at me is a strange thing - this creature with a disintegrating body and lifeless<br />
eyes. She doesn’t look like me. But then again, I often forget what I look like.<br />
“What do you want?” I ask her. It.<br />
“What do you do when you don’t know what you want?” it whispers back.<br />
What do you do when you wish to float along time, past him yelling at you, you pigheaded,<br />
entitled, selfish thing? Past loved ones’ judgment, the bite in their words, their advice you beg for but<br />
never take. Do you stay? Do you walk away?<br />
The child in me used to sing, but this girl can barely open her clenched, closed throat. <strong>To</strong> rasp<br />
a pleading, to emit a call.<br />
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