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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Travel<br />
Solo Trip<br />
By Emily Chao<br />
I’m late. I text a quick apology as I weave through tourists milling around Tritons’ Fountain.<br />
He responds a minute later:<br />
i'm running a bit late too! lecture went long but i’m on my way<br />
I wonder if “on my way” means thirty minutes or five as I sit under a tree near the fountain.<br />
The wind carries arcs of water past the stone mermen and kids screech as they splash through the puddles.<br />
It’s colder in Malta than I had expected, but the air has a salty, humid quality that holds onto the<br />
sunshine. Everything about this feels surreal.<br />
My neighbor Sofie and I had booked flights to Malta a few weeks ago when we saw roundtrip<br />
tickets for $30. White sand and turquoise water for less than the cost of dinner: we were sold. The day<br />
before our 6am flight was my roommate's birthday and she begged us to go out. Sofie and I grudgingly<br />
agreed but made a pact not to drink. At the second bar though, Sophie ran into friends who offered<br />
her free shots.<br />
“See you at 3:30 in the lobby!” I reminded her as we parted ways.<br />
But she wasn’t in the lobby at 3:30. I tried calling her and she didn’t pick up. I wondered<br />
where she was, if she was ok, and desperately wished we had not split up. At 4:15am I couldn’t wait<br />
any longer and I ordered a taxi to Fumicino. Malta seemed like a great place for a solo trip.<br />
The next hours were a blur. Halfway to Fiumicino, I realized my flight actually left from CIA<br />
and it crossed my mind that maybe the universe was telling me not to go to Malta, but I tapped the<br />
taxi driver's shoulder and explained my mistake. He laughed, pulled the sedan in a hairpin u-turn, and<br />
sped down the empty roads. Ciampino was practically empty and I waited at my gate trying to keep<br />
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