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 />
strangling me and that all too familiar salivation came around without fail.<br />
As we pulled into his driveway, I caught a glimpse of him hobbling out to greet us. One word<br />
came to my mind. Weak. This weakness was already showing in his stride. Gravel gathered in my<br />
throat. We hugged, and I felt my youthful energy transfer to him as he tightly held on to me for several<br />
seconds.<br />
His house wasn’t a home yet. It remained bare and mostly empty as he had not yet gotten the<br />
chance to fill it with his things that were still tucked away at my mother’s home in Santa Fe and in a<br />
storage unit. There was a lone chair in the so-called living room. He was a minimalist by nature, so he<br />
found comfort in bare space. My mother disagreed, but that’s beside the point. His face was flushed<br />
and lacking any vital color and he was out of breath.<br />
I desperately wanted a cigarette before cutting his hair.<br />
My younger sister wanted to be a part of his haircut. I got territorial, but I let it go, as it always<br />
is with a younger sibling. My father collapsed in the chair and wiped the sweat from his forehead.<br />
Albuquerque is always hotter than Santa Fe, and he didn’t have air conditioning.<br />
“I don’t want it all gone, just trim it as short as you can with scissors. So it’s less noticeable<br />
when it’s falling out in the shower. I’ll use the clippers myself eventually.”<br />
“Just don’t cut yourself when you decide to do that,” my mom interjected.<br />
I cut away somewhat erratically at his thin, wispy hair while we sat in silence and the gravity of<br />
the situation continued to set in. My hands were shaking slightly. My mom bought fresh haircutting<br />
scissors for the occasion, so I set my trusty, albeit dull ones aside. It was blistering outside now, and his<br />
neck and forehead became more and more drenched in sweat. His body appeared limp from sitting in<br />
the chair. He needed to lay down and rest. After I had done a pretty solid once over in length, I handed<br />
the scissors to my sister and guided her little hands to areas that she could fix up.<br />
“Don’t nick his ear.”<br />
Once we had finished, he took a look in the mirror and seemed grateful. We took a family<br />
photo on a timer against the blank white wall in his dining room. It’s a sweet picture that captures the<br />
memory of the beginning stages of our collective journey. I swept up the hair and disposed of it in the<br />
garbage can. Something felt odd about throwing it away. After I finished, he gave me a long, tight hug.<br />
3
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