Literary Issue

April 28, 2005

The Thaw

I know you’re coming
because of late
handfuls of wholesome Catholics
appeared in crowds with ashes
slurred upon their brows.

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Two Poems

On Conception Love making ends bottoms in seats – Virgin beginning from another virgin taken, And all hands on 12-day old heart beats. Or pre-determined Dates, earmarked for ovial optimism By women of long aching maternity, are vesicles of syncopated … Read More

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The Way Things Might Have Been

In autumn (or fall, as we sometimes called it) we wore woolen sweaters, checkered corduroy, held hands tightly, snuggled for warmth against brisk north winds; We went apple-picking, fell down laughing on yellowed orange leaves, talked of favorite authors, of … Read More

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Let my last words be “good night”

Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something. -Pancho Villa, last words Let my last words be “good night” Even if I don’t have time to utter them As a Mercedes truck smushes me Under the moon … Read More

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Let Them Eat Cookie

Something’s rotten on Sesame Street. The particular putrefaction of which I write is not one borne of organic decay; rather, it arises from a constellation of things which would seem prima facie to signify otherwise: rosy-cheeked health, hygienic propriety, balanced-meals, … Read More

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Two Responses to Princeton Fashion Show Article

Last night my daughter, Lauren Lyon 06, read me excerpts from the recent Nassau Weekly article blasting the Princeton fashion show, Operation Style. Although there were many inaccuracies relative to the actual cost of the event, the school’s financial participation, and the money raised, my overall concern relates to the tone of the article and the writer’s misguided interpretation of pompous capitalists gone wild.

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Correction

Correction

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The Flaming Tongue

Belly. Head. God
in heaven.  Let me sleep tonight
for awhile.

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Black Stone on White Stone

I will die in Paris on a day of torrential rain,
a day I can somehow already recall.
I will die in Paris —I don’t flinch at the thought—
perhaps on a Thursday, like today, in the Fall.

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Extremely Uneven and Incredibly Cloying

Five months ago, I fell in love with a nine-year-old boy. His name was Oskar Schell, and he was cheeky, and he was perceptive, and he was caring, and he wrote to Steven Hawking thinking he would get a personal response, and he was a pacifist, and he was in an incredible amount of pain. I knew I loved him when he said, “Sometimes I think it would be weird if there were a skyscraper that moved up and down while its elevator stayed in place…Also, that could be extremely useful, because if you’re on the ninety-fifth floor, and a plane hits below you, the building could take you to the ground, and everyone would be safe…”

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June 15, 1936

Billy stands in the stern, chin tilted upward and twenty-gauge at his feet, dipping that pole into the night water like a gondolier and pulling us along in rhythm. My arm muscles are getting sore as I steady the sides so that the boat doesn’t tip us over into the swamp like it did last week; my legs stretch out and brace the gunwales, my feet lie in the caked mud that crumbles off Billy’s boots.

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Getting Handed a Q-Tip

Near the end of the whole ordeal, when she has become short of breath and the coughing is wet and yellow and particularly productive, my mother sits cross-legged in the crook of our brown couch, a wool blanket wrapped tight around her shoulders, searching madly for her last words.

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The Marvels of Creative Writing

A week ago, I sat down with famed Princeton creative writing instructor Gabe Hudson. Aside from being loved by his students, he is an Editor-At-Large at McSweeney’s and the author of Dear Mr. President. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, GQ, and The Village Voice, among other national publications.

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Grandmother

My grandmother was a pirate. The other was an astronaut. She would have been, anyway, had she not failed her medical exam due to large traces of cocaine in her bloodstream. She was also a drug runner across the border, much to the shame of my father and uncle.

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Marry, Murder, or Fuck?

It was when we looked over at each other and discovered that we were both checking out our split ends, that we decided it was the start of a beautiful friendship. Oh yeah, and we were sitting in our Humanities Sequence lecture, more worried about the state of our hair than we were about the state of affairs in Plato’s Republic.

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Escalator to Heaven

If you were fortunate enough to see or hear one of Mitch Hedberg’s routines, a few things automatically stick with you. First, you notice how much of a space cadet he was. Then, you might realize that his jokes are completely disjointed and that the subjects he ridicules are so far beyond obvious that he made Jerry Seinfeld look like Noam Chomsky. And finally, you see that you just can’t stop laughing.

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Your Mother

Let me tell you about your mother. For one thing, she is really quite hard to love.

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Verbatim

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Overheard on the second floor of Frist

Sophomore Theta 1:  Yeah, well, she was just too fat.  It would have been one thing if she had, you know, a really good personality to make up for it. But she didn't so we hosed her.
Hosed girl:  That's what they told me last year.  They told me I was too fat and my personality wasn't good enough.  I cried for like, five  months.
Sophomore Theta 2:  That's ridiculous. You are NOT fat.  I mean, you are like, one of my best friends, so you're obviously not fat and you obviously have a good personality.
*Hosed girl gets really red in the face and starts sniffing back tears.*
Sophomore Theta 3:  Yeah, you're like, the hottest girl in the school. You're just too good looking for Theta.
Sophomore Theta 1:  Yeah, you're definitely really hot.  It's so weird that they hosed you.

Overheard in LAT336

Preppy Classics Major: He made fun of my seersucker jacket, so I made fun of his lineage.

Overheard at the Dodgeball Tournament’s championship match between Cap and the BSU

Spectator: I don't want to be politically incorrect, but this is either one of two things: a dodgeball tournament or a race riot.