Spoke the Thunder: Volume 2, Issue 1

Spoke the thunderStony Brook University’s Undergraduate Literary Magazine

Volume 2, Issue 1April 9, 2012

The Statesman’s Literary Magazine

2 | Spoke the Thunder Monday, April 9, 2012

Spoke the thunderStony Brook University’s Undergraduate Literary Magazine

Editor-in-ChiefMichael Seminara

SecretarySteven Licardi

Production ManagerWanda Chen

Managing EditorRachel Jaffe

Public Editor Nicole Siciliano

R.J. HunekeAndrea DeRenzis

Lizzy YooAlison SundermeirAndrea Giannini

Aquib JavedPaul Longo

Devin DiRenzo

Daniella FrangioneLiz CorsaroPeter Tuths

David JohnsonAhmad InshanRebecca WeberSeth Hoffman

Anna Li

Staff

It’s been a rough year for Spoke the Thunder. We have faced a few setbacks in our produc-tion schedule but we have been working to ensure that the magazine stays in print. We’ve made it through our first year of production and we will be here for many more, provid-ing Stony Brook University with a feature-rich literary magazine. Although it took some time to produce, the long awaited second volume of Spoke the Thunder is now here.

We’d like to apologize for the delay of this issue, but Spoke the Thunder is still the literary magazine for Stony Brook University under-grads. This issue marks a new chapter in pro-duction of Spoke. We’ve now teamed up with The Statesman in order to make the magazine more available to the student public. Stony Brook’s large and diverse student population is needed in order to produce this magazine and we’re always accepting submissions so contin-ue to send us your poetry, prose and art.

Editor-in-Chief Michael Seminara

Front Cover by Rebecca WeberBack Cover by Michael Seminara

Visit Spokethethunder.com and submit all short stories, poetry and art work to

[email protected]! Find us on Facebook to check our current meeting time and place!

Michelle Felipe

Spoke the Thunder | 3 Monday, April 9, 2012

with teeth shone whiteand I will masturbate to distract myselffrom fears you will not know,to pour my coffee in the morning.A few swift thrusts of the thumbs,in conjunction with its siblings,to take note of this seething anxietythat presently persuades.“I’m fine,” you say,“Don’t worry”and yet I will.I will.

Stimming by Steven T. Licardi

A swift thrust of the thumbAnd you return to the hot liquid – Misleadingly hot,Stinging warmth –That fans your bursting laughter. “I’m fine,” you sayand I will worry,but swallow my doubts.With a swift thrust of the thumb set aside your reassuranceto debate with my apprehensions.You have done this beforeand will wake up tomorrow of sound mind,while I wait up several more hours,though still awaken earlier,downtrodden.“I’m fine,” you say,“Don’t worry”and yet I will.I will. I will mull over convictionsand heartfelt opinions,while you betray them.I will meditate upon the questionof whether or not I should mention thisand you will remain obliviousin your pleasure.A swift thrust of the thumb,a sticking click,that segregatesand leaves me to my groggystomach churning.You will return to your entertainment

Photo Credit: Chris Setter


SLOW

Slowly

We remind ourselves

Or don’t let ourselves fo

rget

That we all come fro

m ash

Are held together by a single thread

It pulls u

s together yet fu

rther apart

And where does time fit?

There is no space for creation

or things lin

ear.

I think slo

wly

and slower.

-Liz

Corsaro

Mari Elba Wright-Schmidt


Your ivory riverbank hips seem to never endWhen I run my hands along the surface of those sacred waters

A Jordan of marble curving, perfectly symmetrical on each sideI look at them and wish only to rest my headAgainst those holy banks where my every trouble ceases.

Those holy banks where I can wash away my every spotThose holy banks where I can heal my open wounds

It’s a strange feeling being completely captivatedConsciously and willfully controlled by their every bend,Sway, and turn. The thundering of my lusting heartDeafens me more and more with each pound

I can’t seem to fight the pull and swim to shoreI’d rather let your current take me under and cleanse me

Will you shield me and douse my embers,Or will you instead strike me against the rocks?You don’t need to answer, just wash over meMy heart beats are too deafening.

I want to bury my hands into the white sands of those holy banksAnd feel the lightning of each particle passing along my palmsAnd there I’ll forever stay; never wander, never stray.

Alabaster Oasis

-David Johnson

Rachelle Jepsky


Honor by Peter Tuths

“Rudimentary!” he exclaimed,Brandishing his steely pint,“I’ve solved the great ole’ mystery,”Yelled he into the night.“Huzzah! Huzzahs all around,”Then, without a sound, letHe his mug tumble down,To the soggy walk below.“Fair June, my mistress,My fey Titania! I amYour Indian child!I’ve solved the questionnaireDown the way, I’ve seenWhat might the census say!”With rosy cheeks he loadedBear, the wagon chassis,And brushed the hair ofHis great bushy beard,“I’ve solved it!” hisSweat seemed to agree,“This great phantasm mystery,Touchstone had no drolly glee,Falstaff was no jester!”If tears or specksOf amber juice, he bellowedAcross the evenings noose,As dusk peeked out itsFinal head, he said,“I’ve solved it,”And fell there dead.

Chris Setter


The sun had not hit the window yet. The rays that came right before streaked the sky in veins of electric blue, giving the world only a sense of its shapes. In a few more minutes first impression’s sketch would be cast back into definite lines as the sun broke over the horizon. There would be the small café where she sat now, a bit removed from the town that some years earlier had been called a city. The café would be securely tethered to the manufac-turing plant by a straight cement road. Her eyes moved along the snow banks to where the factory sat, a fortress made with metal building blocks.

Someone opened the door, and she shivered. The wind swept into all of the little places. This really was the least sensible café she had ever seen. The wooden door made sure the cold air got in, and everything from the tile to the pale light to the metal chairs seemed bent on keeping people out.

Her eyes lifted as Jack came back from the counter. He had taken to wearing a hat. It didn’t look good, covered up too much of his face. He placed a steaming Styrofoam cup in front of her.

“Thank you baby,” she murmured. She let the warmth from the cup soak into her fingertips. Gingerly she brought the cup to her lips and took a sip. “The coffee tastes funny today. Like licorice.”

He shrugged. “It always tastes bitter.”

“I didn’t say bitter. I said like licorice.”

“Fine, it tastes like licorice. Want me to get you some-thing else?”

“No, it’s fine. We should be going to work soon anyways.” She looked out as the building in front of them, clearly waiting through the window, turned black against the creeping dawn. “We should go soon, right? It wouldn’t look good to show up late, not today.”

“We got plenty of time. You’re just worried. You’ll do—”

“Fine? Don’t say it, please don’t. Don’t say it’s going to be better than it will be.”

“You didn’t have to do this you know.”

“What would you rather I do? Sit at home for four years until I can take the test again? Don’t you know the motto? ‘Whoever works, eats. Whoever sleeps, pays.’”

Her voice was cheerful on the first half, and then deep-ened to a growl. She got the tone perfect, just like the television commercial.

AlongDawn’s Edge

Anna Li

By Rachel Jaffe


“Your parents would’ve paid.”

“That makes it worse. They would’ve emptied their retirement funds so that I could have the chance to fail again.” She stared at the backs of the other workers in the lightening gloom. She whispered to the floorboards, and the windows, and the still shadowed faces, “I tried to do something great. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

“Not when you’re counting on a hundred point scale.”

“Yes,” she drawled, “you can now count the things that count. How convenient.”

“You really thought you could do it?” He tried to sound lackadaisical, but his eyes betrayed him with their brightness.

“Yes, I almost did too.”“Without Adamerin? Or Ritalpherate?”“Without any helper pills.”“I don’t think I’ve ever studied without help from any-thing since grade school.”“I just wanted to prove a person could. I think we’ve forgotten that.”

“They would’ve said you had found a way to cheat. It wouldn’t look good for them if a simple creature of evo-lution started beating a billion dollar medical corpora-tion.”

“I wish I had gotten the chance to let them.” Her voice was hard, her gaze black, as if she could still defy them.

“But no one else would’ve believed you if the testing committee had disqualified your score.”

Her lips twitched. “It sure would’ve felt really nice to cheat them out of one person though.”

He scoffed, “Even though now they’ve cheated you out of everything you might have been? You know if you had taken Adamerin, your scores would have been off the charts? You would’ve been given a house anywhere in the country, and your pick of a dozen different jobs doing whatever you wanted?”

Her back stiffened. “It wouldn’t have been my mind tak-ing the test.”

“Standards change.”

Her mouth twisted. She fell silent, sipped again at her coffee.

She could feel him looking at her. His eyes slid along her cheekbone, her chest, her neck. A blue vein was visible, throbbing away under her translucent skin. When their eyes met, he blushed. He was caught window shopping at her soul.

“Why’d it have to be you that went and made yourself a fucking martyr?” He said it quiet, casually, without looking at her. As if the answer did not mean much, he concentrated on aiming his cup into the trash can against the other wall. He missed. The cup laid there, the last drops of coffee spilling out to the tile floor.

“It was your words that inspired me. You said ‘The world needs a hero to show them with their own life that there can be change.’”

“The world has too many tabloids to have heroes. The world doesn’t really like heroes anymore. They like people to rise a bit above them, then they like to rip ‘em to bits. People don’t like the thought that there can truly be someone brave and just and brilliant. Makes ‘em feel like they should be better than they are. And people hate actually having to be good. They just like feeling like they’re good.”

“That’s not what you told me before.”

“Before this country raced to the bottom so fast their heads ran into their asses?”

“Perhaps that too… but I meant when you started work.”

“Before I started taking flats is what you really mean. You had no problem with me practically selling myself to work off the country’s debt. As long as I did it with some dignity it was all right.”


She shrugged. “Yes, if you must say it. I don’t much like them.”

“It’s the only way really.”

“You didn’t use them for three months. You lived with dignity.”

His eyes flashed from under his hat. Funny, she had for-gotten they were blue. “You just don’t understand. It’s not the lack of windows, or air, or the cold, but by God it gets cold in there. All the people are flat, and you go three months not able to talk to a one of them. Then the work is boring, and sometimes dangerous if they haven’t got the procedures down pat yet. What’s the worst though is then those people do the work better than you with your own self, and you’re stuck with half their pay to suf-fer all day long. I got morals, you look at me as though I’ve lost them, but making the moral decision every day just breaks a person. Then you’re curious, just a little, and you figure one day wouldn’t hurt you much…” He looked like he was waiting for an answer, but when he got enough of it in her eyes, he let out a long, low sigh. He closed his eyes, and massaged the lids with his finger-tips.

“Damn pills make my eyes hurt.”“You took them already?”“Mix them in with my morning coffee.”

“Oh.” She said, and sat silent. She shivered again, looked around the room, “I’m cold. It’s cold in here. Can’t we move to a table where the sun hits us a bit more?”

Jack looked around. “It’s all just different shades of grey. But if you want to, yes. We can move to a different table.”

She frowned. “Alright, one second, my feet feel fuzzy.”

“Did you put on socks?”“Yes.”“Two pairs?”“No.”He shrugged. “Maybe in a few minutes you’ll feel better.”“How?”“Maybe the manager has turned on the heater.”“Does he usually?”“No.”“Then why do you think I’ll feel better in a few min-utes?”“Maybe he’ll turn it on today.”

She looked down at her hand, moved her thumb along the pads of her fingers. Slowly, like they were new. “My fingers feel fuzzy. I’m cold in a different way than I was before.”

“That’s silly.”“Maybe so.” She took another sip of the coffee, grimaced. “It still tastes funny and now it’s lukewarm. Can’t we leave now?”“And stand outside?”“It’s hardly warm in here.”“You’re being silly.”

She leaned forward. She was biting her lip, fighting something back. “It’s not silly. Please don’t say it is. I feel trapped in here. I feel as if I don’t stand, move, I’ll be trapped in this café forever until I’m cold and grey.”

She grabbed his hand. Her fingers were warm against his skin. “And now I can’t feel my fingers. I know I’m just paranoid is all, but the air feels heavy, and all I want to do is sink into it, and that makes me scared.”

“Wait five minutes more.”Anna Li


“Why?”“I just want five more minutes with you.”“I’ll be with you outside as well as in here.”

“Please,” he said this word with a sense of desperation hanging on the syllable. “I just need one last memory before you’ve changed.”

She leaned across the table and put her hand on his arm, and smiled up at him. The way she soothed him was as much in her words as her voice. It was the kind of croon that made you wonder if it really was winter. But even in this moment, behind the halo of her black hair, he could see out the window to the endless expanse of white.

“I won’t change baby. Sure, it will be hard to work, but each night you’ll rub out the pain in my limbs and I’ll remind you why you loved the stars. And when you’re strong enough, I’ll help you wean yourself off of the flats. By the end of four years we’ll have made enough money to apply to have a child, and I’ll retake the test and do better. I will.”

He looked at her as if she said something funny. “I’m glad I can’t dream anymore. It seems painful to live as you do.”

She frowned. Pulled back from him. “At least I have chosen to live as myself. Some prides are worth the pain.”

She stood up quickly.

And crumpled at the knees. Her body fell back heavily, her weight causing the chair to teeter on its back legs. A few people in the café looked up. When her chair righted itself, they settled back down to their plates and cups and murmurs of motion.

“Wha—what’s happening to me Jack? This is real now, I know it is. I can’t feel my legs.”

“Really now?”

“You seem so calm.” Her eyes cast around the room. “Maybe there’s a doctor in here. I have hypothermia, I just know I do.” Her eyes were large and frightened. She had grown paler, or her blood was pumping faster. Ei-

ther way he could see the blue sketch of her like her skin was stained glass.

“You have all the normal symptoms.”

“Baby, I can’t feel my legs, and now my hands are numb too. No, that’s not right. They, they feel buzzy. And you’re too flat to help me.” Great whopping tears cascaded down her face.

“It’s easier if you relax into it,” Jack said gently.

“Relax into what?” Her lips were quivering.

“What am I supposed to be relaxing into?” She repeated again. She was looking at him. Then her head started shaking back and forth. “No no no no no no. Say you didn’t.”

Mari Elba Wright-Schmidt


Jack could say no such thing.

“Say you didn’t do this to me. Not this. Oh please not this.”

He looked around the room. “Don’t make a scene.”

She laughed. It was a harsh bark. “Not a single one of these people care. They’ve been flat for a long time. After a while you stop caring about anything, even when you aren’t on the pills.”

“The pills stop working after eight hours. Nowadays there ain’t a rat living outside of a laboratory. I’m sure they’ve done thousands of studies, and nowhere did they say anything about bad side effects.”

“Tell me you don’t wake up each morning needing those pills. Tell me you can work without them.”

Jack was a certain sort of silent.

“By God Jack, if you can’t look at yourself, look at the fucking people around you. Tell me they’re the same as you remember them being four years ago.”

“We’re in a transition period is all. Things are going to have to be hard for a few years. Just ‘til the country can get back on its feet again.” These were not his words, but he said them with enough surety in his tone as if they might be.

“Then why did you drug me, if things will be getting bet-ter? If we can work as ourselves once more?”

“What would I have done if you had taken the test again and made it? You would’ve worked in the higher tier, met someone as smart as you are. Don’t try saying I’m smart-er than you. If I was, I’m not now. Maybe….maybe these pills aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. But if I saved you from this, I would be left alone, and I’d be leaving you to a world that isn’t worth saving. Why give your life sav-ing the very people that put you in this dung heap? But before you can get your next chance to be a hero, there would be the four years you now have to work in the factories. And that work will break you, turn you into something ugly and cold. Figured if the world was going

to shit, at least I could have my small piece of happiness.”

“And where was my say in this?” He did not flinch at her words. After his confession he sat back in his chair. He was content to let her words hit him. She was losing him to the drug fast.

“It’s all right if you hate me you know.” He said the words with a grin.

She shook her head to try to clear it. There were wisps of fog creeping into it, creating an opaque curtain between her and the room. Not even the newborn sunlight could penetrate it.

His eyes under his hat were turning happy and round.She found herself smiling back for no reason. She pulled her mouth shut, forcing her lips into a straight line. “How much longer do I have as myself?”

“Five, maybe ten minutes.” His smile was stretching out, sloppy and big.

“I want to scream at you, but…but I’m losing the strength. I still know why I’m mad at you, but it doesn’t seem to mean much now.” She tried sitting up straighter, but found it such an effort. She was becoming so warm and relaxed.

“I had hoped you would like it.”

“My head feels like moth balls. Are you addicted the first time you take it?” The smile on her face was back.

“No. But could you really imagine never taking them again?”

“Yes, well, when I’m feeling like this, no. Maybe when I wake up I’ll feel differently.” She felt her voice change. It felt far away and empty.

“Maybe.”

“I want to have the strength to hate you. But at the same time, now I see you only wanted me happy.”

“I hope you’ll let me make you happy.”

12 | Spoke the Thunder Monday, April 9, 2012She smiled now with her face and her eyes. “I so like be-ing happy.”

His smile grew wider. “Me too.”

“What was it you thought of in your last few minutes?”

“I thought about you. Went over ever memory we ever had. Didn’t want to lose any of them.”

“Don’t say that.”“Well I did.”“I wish you hadn’t.”

“Don’t be grumpy, baby. You can still think about small things. Big things feel far away though, and fuzzy. Like dust bunnies.”

“Like stars?”“Dots mostly, sometimes fire flies. They don’t much mat-ter though.”

“That’s good. I always had such dreams about visiting them. But the space program has been cancelled since our parents were our age, hasn’t it? Silly me.”

“Yes, that is silly. Who would want to go to the place where they make snowflakes? Seems like it’s cold enough here.” He looked out the window, his expression vacant.

“Ready to go?” his words sounded so small and far away.“Yes. No. My head is still fuzzy.”“We’ll wait a moment more then.”“Yes, let’s. Just until the last thought floats away.”“All right.”“And the sun? What about the sun?”“What about the sun, silly?”

She stared at it, now resting fully over the land. The man-ufacturing plant was cast back to a cold black square, the land to a frigid white. The lines of people making their way out of the café looked like ants, but when she thought about why ants would be out in the cold she wondered why she was thinking about ants in the first place.

“Well, I don’t know,” she said, her eyes falling on the sun

again. It was now so strong she could not rightly look at it, but had to look at its edges, the way it broke the perfect blue of the sky. “I just remember I thought the sun had so many meanings. I can’t remember even one of them now. It still looks pretty though, doesn’t it?”

Jack had risen from his seat at the table and was standing next to her. His form looked golden in the morning light. He was smiling brightly. The sun reflected off his blue eyes. He would have looked like an ancient statue, but he had on that silly hat. She wanted to tell him his hat was silly, but she couldn’t quite form words any more. Her lips were buzzy.

“Yes, yes, I think so.” Jack said, his tone full with the relaxed confidence that had been missing for so long. He offered his hand to help her up, and her hand slid softly into his. She had the oddest sense of hesitance, and a sudden coldness crept up her neck. She felt something was missing, and searched around to see if she could find it.

“I—” she could not do more than open her mouth. She frowned, and bit her lip. A wave of anxiety rolled over her.

“Hu—,” she tried again, but no words could come out. Then the idea was lost, like so much smoke before the wind.

She smiled back at Jack, and in his smile she was com-forted. She pulled back from the edge of darkness, and let the sunny feeling take hold of her.


Rebecca Weber


She wrote the story in her sleep. There were beanstalks and peaches and ships that floated on magenta. She said it felt like staring out over the horizon: everything in place, illumi-nated. When she woke up and put it to paper it started to warp and bend out of shape. Smoke swallowed the silhouettes and blackness seeped into the ground. It didn’t disappear; it stayed wrapped around her lips like a wilted flower. When she opened her mouth there was only the absence of air. The stories I wrote were more orange traffic cones, yellow police tape. Myfavorite was the one about my dog. When she asked to hear my dreams and placed her hand beneath mine, I delivered weather forecasts and predictions about the stock market. Her eyes clenched tighter with every word I spoke. Once she dreamt about walls, my hands building walls, brick by brick by brick. She tried to tell me how she felt the wind at her back every time I exhaled, but I built a wall. She tried to tell me how she lost her sight for an hour and only willed it back for fear of forgetting my face. I built another wall. She tried to tell me how every step she took toward me shook the entire earth and every step she took away made her heart beat slower. Another wall. She woke to her own voice shouting, “Stop building your walls around me!” She put it in a letter and then she was gone. That night I dreamt I was sitting in a chair. My hands were tied behind my back and I was trying to count the strands of her hair but every time the wind slipped through I lost my place. She appears to me now in the strangest places. Coffee cups, perfume clouds, orange trees. If someone drops a cigarette out a car window, I see her in the embers dancing on the tar, formless and magnetic, swept beneath the tires and flickeringeven still.

BER

by Ali Sundermier

LI

N

Sibu Puthenveettil


You know why writers are so unhappy?

Because if they had such happy lives,

they wouldn’t be sitting crafting characters,

pickety-picking plots, worrying over each word.

They would be out there living.

This is why I do not plan to be a writer.

I refuse my words to be the chicken soup

for a half-lived life.

I will be a lover of tuna fish sandwiches

and sand brought back from beaches

between my toes, and the knowledge,

not of a world of heartbreak,

but of a single man.

And if this love overflows onto paper,

maybe the watermarks will smile,

like almost-words of a finished soul.

Watermarks by Rachel Jaffe

Rebecca Weber


Documents

Spoke the Thunder: Volume 2, Issue 1