By Rosanne Pagano What I love about making a syllabus – the only lovable thing about a syllabus – is the chance to type two words that say the opposite of humdrum: Field Trip. Field Trip 1: It’s a synagogue Friday and we’re lifted as one by singing in a language we don’t understand. Field Trip 2: A cartoony curtain rises on a two-act opera, thankfully funny and in English. Two words, and it’s fourth grade again in May and I’m anklet-deep in barnyard hay, cows everywhere you turn. Field trips! If you’re the teacher, you get to have them. Almost as many as you like.
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Far and Near
By Laurie Evans-Dinneen Morning fog. Iced raindrops on my car bedazzle its midnight blue hue. Winter is trying to make its presence known, but we’ve grown to like a long Fall. Deniers, all, in our light raincoats, heels or Xtratufs still flat on hard pavement. Rounding the corner to campus, fog clears to expose the robes of thick white peaks against a crisp blue dawn at mid-morn: Winter’s icy palette – as if to say, yes, yes, I am here, and I am near.
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A “New” World
By Holly McCamant I don’t think the term “ex” can fully encapsulate What we had, but has since changed The resentment we had? None of it’s left. The disapproval of my music taste? Doesn’t matter, we both like Medium Build now. It wasn’t the differences we had, but how we went about it. You’re kinder now, I’m happier to see you. Our separation of worlds has made us better people. We might have been meant to be lovers, but we’re better off as friends. But I still think my family likes you better, so it really isn’t the end.
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The Wide World
By Miles Dennis I went out into the rain, When I started to think about bullets And the blue-handled kitchen knife. I found a pair of salmon The color of blood stains on wooden floors, Crossing and recrossing each other, Dancing and decaying, Braiding themselves together past Tent walls and needles and Under graffitied bridges Towards death and life. And a little color Returned to my eyes.
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Mellifluous Memory
By Jordan Hales How lovely to be trapped in a memory. Trapped in a painting, the brush strokes outlining your shape. Your name, tied together with lyrics. A blurred snapshot preserving your smile. Your freckles and charisma linked by an ellipsis of somebody’s prose. The figment of one’s everlasting image. The blue-colored stranger in the bookstore. You’re somebody’s first “something.” A haunting memory. You are never forgotten— They will always feel your absence. You will forever live in the mind, the canvas, the pages, sheet music, and photos. The memory, forever, you will reside.
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The Rhythm of Drinking Mates
By Maria Capezio Crookes You see, a mate is like a period and a space. You take one and then you can start a new paragraph. -Julio Cortazar, Rayuela Mate (pronounced Mah-teh) is a traditional South American drink, brewed from the dried leaves of Yerba Mate (Ilex paraguariensis) in hot water, served in a dried hollow gourd, and briefly steeped. The drink is sucked from the gourd with a metal straw, which is fitted with a strainer at one end to keep leaf particles from the mouth (Encyclopedia Britannica). *** Drinking mates is ceremony. You can’t hurry it up. There is not such a thing as “let’s drink some quick…
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A Bump in the Road
By Rosanne Pagano Because Justin was small for having just turned 8 and because he had gotten good at anticipating most of the bumps on weekend drives up to the Connecticut countryside, he could readily and regularly lift up from the Pontiac’s deep backseat to peer into the front, where Nana Mary sat behind the wheel. The speedometer was green, the color of a dragon’s scales, and the needle now read 70 MPH. Justin’s lifting up worked especially well when the Pontiac had left the city streets and turn on to the Merritt Parkway, a long thoroughfare of few but very enjoyable bumps. Following a ribbon-cutting the previous summer, a…
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Why the Wind Blows: A Fade
By Rosanne Pagano In a land far from here but not beyond knowing, the east wind blows so long and so hard that every tree leans left, every bush hugs land, and every bird foolish enough to seek shelter is swept off and away to sea. “It’s peculiar, I’ll give you that,” thought the hairy man Niitis. He swung his hairy legs from under the bedclothes and landed hairy feet on the cold floor. The door of his hut stood wide open, blown open sometime in the night. Niitis sighed, long and loud. “Another day and no company but the wind,” he said. This was so: For the giant was…
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How to Conduct an Interview With Apologies to The Paris Review
By Rosanne Pagano Over the course of four drizzly weeks in March 2022, a time when both interviewer and subject were on the road, making it hard for one to catch up with the other, writer and APU faculty member Rosanne Pagano met for a scattering of conversations about the how and why of teaching her craft. Pagano, dressed in a V-neck black sweater, faded wide-legged jeans and damp Blundstones, was prompt and organized; she asked for interview questions in advance (not all were supplied) and arrived with brief, messily handwritten notes entered in pencil in the pocket-sized Rhodia notebook she carries everywhere. We met four-and-a half times at a…
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Italian Story 1 & 2
By joe The Banana Lena was a sport competitive host. It was my buddy Jim’s first visit to the house, and after a couple days he didn’t look too good. So I said , “Jim what’s up?” He said, “I can’t eat another thing. I think your mom is trying to kill me.” I handed him a banana and instructed him, wherever you go hold this banana in your hand and when my mom insists on getting you something to eat show her the banana and say, “No thanks, Mrs. Sarcone, I was just going to eat this banana.” The Biscotti Lena was on her death bed so I said,…
