Flashbulb by Joan Tate

This piece was first published in Quarto’s 2021 Spring Print Edition. 2021 poetry winner, selected by Yolanda Wisher.

Illustration by Mita Sharma

donec virenti canities abest / morosa.
-Horace Ode 1.9

...the green is still there”
and it is the beginning of summer. there are lightbugsthat have followed me
from further south and sleep under my cuticle.
the porch smells like pine or what i think pine smells like coming from a can.
my father gets a beer for himself and, like a pastor, says he cannot wait for me to
turn 21,
i bubble

behind my eyelids and smile. i can hear a truck come by
and smell the exhaust but do not see it. only sound. i get the flashback
to a bad decision sneaking out in queer rebellion. i almost got murdered
or worse this past winter across the street in the garden
after worse happened this past winter
already. and i was back

with my feet on the grain and my father sitting
like there is a rock dangling from his collar and he sips his beer
and asks me to explain how it feels and after two hours or so,
when i have stopped counting the flicker of fireflies after a dozen or so and my
heart slows
and i can rub my fingers against the glass tablepane again. my eyes wander
to the smoothness of the knuckles on my hand and the treeline shifting

when he gets up and puts his two fingers
on my shoulder and pats again and again
to let me know there is love or at least less darkness
and concrete is not what cells are made of
but regret and power.

and some starfire peaks from behind the moon and flickers
and the screendoor clicks. i'm alone
counting again as they disappear in my clear night
just when it starts to rain.

Joan Tate (CC '22) is a trans poet studying Creative Writing Poetry and Classical Latin. After spending her childhood moving around Virginia as a 5th generation preacher’s kid and finding her roots in Appalachia, Joan has since become enamored with the living and transient quality of the New York school poets such as Alice Notley, Eileen Myles, and Frank O’Hara and attempts to find in her poetry beauty that is tied to being in your own skin. When she’s not reviewing the swings in Riverside Park or drafting questions for ghosts, she acts as a copy-editor for Ratrock and programs Experimental Music shows for WKCR-FM.

Columbarium by Thomas Mar Wee

After Henry Green

This piece was first published in Quarto’s 2021 Spring Print Edition.

Illustration by Mita Sharma

I.
noun.
From the Latin, columba
meaning “dove”
In Chinese, naguta
“a pagoda-of-bones”

this dovecote
with its | lattice-work of shelves |
pockmarked by urns
one recalls:
the dome of the Pantheon
Borges and his infinite library

in its sheltering arms
porous, permeating, perforated
like skin under a microscope
or a chestnut
its dark, brawny husk
guarding the tender flesh

there’s a word in Chinese
yiwu (遺物): “leftover"
something discarded & remaindered
which we
embalm with associations
maunder with meanings

these few, worthless things
the deceased
have forgotten
left behind:
[too worn shoes,
a dozen, burnished coins
a pair of cracked
spectacles]

if I have anything like Religion
it might be
Etymology

for I enjoy nothing more
than the opening up of words
dismantling
their little boxes

and, like a well
peering down

into them.

II.
In this
budding grove I sit
on a mossy, lover’s bench
under an aged sycamore

on some decomposing, Irish estate
amid cornflowers
my presence disrupts
a tendentious stillness

With one careless movement
I startle them
their cries echo
from so many
small places

suddenly,
a gust of wind lifts
the ground swells
a shroud of white,
rippling, brilliant
momentarily blots the sun

Thomas Mar Wee (they/them) is a writer, poet, and editor based in New York and a senior studying English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. A writer of poetry, fiction, and mixed-media work, their work seeks to explore liminality in literary forms and the ambiguities they inhabit as a mixed-race, genderqueer person. They are currently at work on a short story collection and a novel.

Andalusia, 2009 by Kaylee Jeong

This piece was first published in Quarto’s 2021 Spring Print Edition.

Illustration by Mita Sharma

A documentary about Spain on the TV, my mother is dreaming of a life to end her own, and though she has never said so, for the last seven years it has all been my fault. I got my money’s worth with you, she said, staring at pink and red hills. I believed for the longest time that in Spain the sun was always in the middle of setting. I believed for even longer that all TV was about Spain. Except for the ads, which I liked, but made my mother cross, saying We use blood, hair, saliva samples to determine your body’s own most efficient methods of loss. We got him seven hundred thousand dollars--I’ll tell you how, right after this. But there was never a right after this, only more Spain, more laxative tea, more Spain. My mother’s perfect life on commercial break forever, my perfect life standing next to it, too afraid of starting a fight on accident. But it’s thinking of science programs. It’s thinking of Mars. It’s thinking of being next-door neighbors with the planetarium, spending all day looking up, only going home for three square meals. Someday I will write no journals, only grocery lists. I wiIl live on that hill everyone keeps dying on. My mother has loved Spain as long as I have been holding my breath. It has been so long and so long.

Orange by Leif Wood

Illustration by Dora O’Neill

Gather all your tears up and place them on your fridge with a magnet.
Humanness is captured in shrines

As too the lines
Near my eyes or my belly.

I become urns
And scorn the libraries burnt

By the chrysanthemums outside
That grow up their sides.

Icarus flowers whose design’s
Are too mouthy and unknown to

Ever be worth it.
The mirror lacks flowers, just lines dismissed,

Or perhaps kissed!
Or perhaps the mirror is ocean; sky.

Leif Wood is a sophomore at Columbia College studying English and Philosophy. He is a big fan of words and trees.

To The Woman Who Sat at Table 21 by Leif Wood

Illustration by Zain Murdock

I

she ordered scallops
and said:
“This is what
the lower class

is trying to
tell us, there
is dignity and
satisfaction in work,

I took my
own garbage out
the other day,
and I was like

wow.”

II

I am a paper mâché smile
Glued to unnamed hands that
Curl out from the holes in a polo.

But this is how I appear in my dreams:
Wearing everything with sequins,
Preaching the gospel to traffic lights.

I would have called this poem Stardust
If it was about me or a pigeon,
Which is self-explanatory.

And I will always count the blemishes
On my face to immortalize them.
I am Hecate out back under the stars

Listening to the bottles breaking
In the trash bag hurled onto the gravel.
How alone I can be and how joyful.

Leif Wood (he/him) is a sophomore at Columbia College studying English and Philosophy. He is a big fan of words and trees. You can find him on Instagram @leif_wood.

Reaching Detention Camp #59 by Lida

Illustration by Zain Murdock

Dear Soraya,

Love, are you okay? Do they you? I’m so worried you know. There’s lightning
across the sky all night, lighting up our by the . But no rain. Anyways,
you know at the store, they brought already. I pitted sour all
day, the tablecloth gave us went with their juice. Promise I’ll save you jars
of preserves for your return. some figs too. You know I haven’t
opened a since they you.
Till then, please eat well. By the way. The neighbors got an apology and
a few thousand dollars. They calculate based on and
and age. The worth of a ,of a human . hands shook as she
opened . She took it out front and ripped it. Had to calm her
before she went back in. Sorry. Didn’t mean to you. I hope I don’t
make you me....Why did you me to remarry? I told
and he couldn’t stomach it. I would never you know. I read some Gellhorn
like you recommended. The Ground. The wife sends letters to her
like I do. You know honestly I don’t read now. I’ve the books. All of
them. Can’t stomach their . All those
spines lined up on my shelf. How you would stand there, smelling the pages. them.
They all say the same story. None tell ours. Anyways, I couldn’t , so I’m
sitting by the window watching it streak. Gets sometimes, so I write you letters
I don’t send. I don’t mean to cause alarm. I only want the ones you open to
like a hill of poppies. God... I’m thinking I must look like something lit up
like this! Wish you could see it. Singing that you loved, remember, the line that
went “ ”? I’m holding the just for you.

Yours,

Lida (BC'23 she/her/hers) is a Psychology and Education major from Houston, Texas. Writing poetry is a way for her to connect with Iranian culture and explore new creative boundaries. This piece is inspired by Arab prison writing.

Let's Unpack That by Julia Luna

Illustration by Bella Aldrete

why i am like cling wrap.
why am i like cling wrap?
cling wrap. why?
well im sticky and not.
(all at the same time)
i hang on to things too easily.
i protect readily.
but most often
i get too caught up in myself.
myself. why?
(good question)
with nothing to cling to cling-
wrap wraps itself around itself.
(you know what i mean right)
and then really the hardest thing to get cling wrap-
to uncling to-
is
...drum roll...
itself.
(yep)
so thats why.
why i am like clingy-cling wrap
tangled up in my own
transparency or lack thereof.
...do i say it do i don’t...
...do i think that do i don’t...
why am i transparent and not?
why, i am transparent and not!
transparent and not.
(all at the same time)
at the same time. why?
cause im complex.
(oooh)
yep.
as complex as clingy-cling
wrap wrapped-up around itself.
who knew cling wrap had so many facets?
so many faces.
i see my face in the many facets of cling wrap.
why?
(good question)

Julia Luna (she/her) is a first-year at Columbia College, and she is majoring in Creative Writing and Human Rights. You can find her listening to the Beatles strolling down college walk with a black coffee in hand. Find her on Instagram @julia.n.luna.

a pine this time by Anne Overton

Illustration by Gisela Levy

on all fours, i crawl
into the forest
to shiver asleep on pine needles

when light shines me awake
i spread my hands wide:
the moss that creeps
up my fingernails
is soft on my cheeks;
my eyelids warm
under the sun
as lichen blooms on my brow

i know my wounds are still
dripping sticky with sap
here is where i come to lick them—
become a fir
maybe a pine this time

the deer do not freeze,
but step wide eyed through sunlit paths
and lay to rest, as i do.

Anne Overton (BC '23; she/her/hers) is a Psychology & English major from California and Hawaii. She enjoys the water, meditation, and her pet rabbit. You can find her on Instagram @a.nneloverton.

California Sizzled by Arianna Menzelos

Illustration by Gisela Levy

Found poem from “California sizzled with three straight months of record heat and raging fires” Los Angeles Times

I.

California shattered records in August, September, and October.

the highest in nearly a century

31 people have died in the blazes.

Martian-red skies,

layers of

a plume of

pronounced exclamation.

Gusty winds carried residue from

wildfire scars.

fleeing to

ferocious Death–

the highest on Earth in nearly a century

Spewed smoke

skyrocketed to new heights.

It is expected to become more commonplace,

the sizzling.

Certainly–

To speak in finite terms,

Some don’t know how much more they can take.

swaths of bone-dry fuel for hungry flames.

The months-long sauna

push some to rethink their future.

We are all in some form of therapy.

moving makes me very sad.

My 6-year-old needs me to hold her.

II.

a persistent ridge of

scant cloud cover

up and down the Coast

more than 1,000 miles

large enough to be seen from space

forceful enough to reach all the way to Europe.

the height of

an earlier spring

our vegetation starts to grow.

Arianna (she/her) is a senior at Columbia College. She grew up outside of Los Angeles and plans to work in climate policy after graduation. She loves orange juice and going on slow runs. You can find her on Facebook.

song of the harpy by Anne Overton

Illustration by Zain Murdock

i suck something soft
from between the bones
of a dead baby cow, i am
a woman with huge incisors
and i am alone under
the hair that sprouts from my scalp

they have a name for women
whose arms drag
on the ground when they walk
whose claws stretch
above treetops when they dream

women like me,
who are ravenous
see blood, eat blood, drip blood
who were raised by vultures and the bones
that jab into the soft under ribs

my knees are scabby and warm
in front of this fire i built—
i hear a howl across the canyon—
i gnash my teeth and smile.

Anne Overton (BC '23; she/her/hers) is a Psychology & English major from California and Hawaii. She enjoys the water, meditation, and her pet rabbit. You can find her on Instagram and Facebook.

Ablution/Étalée by Sophie Levy

Illustration by Rawan Hayat

Ablution  (טבילה)

What does this say about us:
that last night I dreamt of lakes that moved like rivers
and endless watered beds of dark smooth rocks
and you interviewing me about thirst and psychology
in the shower
with a notepad in your hand?

What does it mean for us:
that I am mad at your name today
because some iteration of you had the
gall to tell me hypothetically in the night
“i don’t think i can come to the city next month” ?

In the morning:
I sit in the bathroom,
looking at my feet on the tiles
achy, annoyed,
more afraid than before because
in sleep I learned what it feels like
for you to stand on them
and speak to me under hot water.

In the evening:
I’ve remembered
how short five weeks is.
Five weeks ago
is when I was last in your city, you know.
Five weeks ago I stood on the roof
of a building filled with young
women and pipes and
looked out at the white blocks of light and grime,
listened as you spoke to me about
boundaries and tractates and immersions
until I felt soaked through to my spine

And now:
Five weeks until I see you
Thirty-five sunrises,
thirty-five sleeps,
seventy prayers--
each one testing me
to dry myself off.

Étalée

Each night when I
lay to sleep my body 
unfurls on the bed like your 
wrist pushing into dough, as if 
your hand larger than life were spreading 
me like a fresh sheet outstretching my corners 
and creases so I become like the white paper wrapped 
around the hot bread you buy for dinner, crinkling as 
you open it fold by fold for its bare surface to look 
up at the ceiling and, later in the night, to stay 
exposed while you eat and while you sleep 
remaining there just in case it could get
to feel your hand coming back to 
smooth it out on the counter
for breakfast once more

Sophie Levy is a senior at Barnard majoring in Art History / Visual Arts and Jewish Studies. She is the founder of Zaman Collective, an online platform dedicated to Middle-Eastern Jewish arts and writing, and is Literary and Arts Editor at the Current, Columbia’s journal of Jewish culture and affairs. She loves pumpernickel bagels, Iranian disco music, and her dog. You can find her on Instagram, Facebook, and her personal website.

Lakeside by Marie Papazian

Illustration by Bella Aldrete

We sit on an outdoor bench. Acidic light corrodes sky chips;
Cloud slabs, hazel bulbous rain. It’s nice here. The lake-
A giant microscope - inching cerulean. Pink foliage. Grass,
Rimming glass edges, is a mixed drink salted.

Sickly, the sun sets. Our eyes, up top, swivel down
to the local horizon. Fish eyed: Past planets,
A punctured moon, treetops, trunks, and sparked weeds.
The wind, a eulogy, slips across an orbit’s edge.

In night, frogs -concealed in pallid dark- are swollen
Like soap. Below, pudgy goldfish splash, displacing
Starlit drops. Our memory of the sun
Has faded. I don’t think we have much to say. For the lake, coated
With algae, like a magnified, rotten grape, has already bruised.

Marie Papazian (she/her/hers) is a Barnard English major, creative writing concentration, and east asian studies minor. She’s passionate about poetry and songwriting. You can find her on Facebook.

Signs that I've been in your room by Katarzyna Skiba

Illustration by Bella Aldrete

I’ve left dishes in the sink
And, not only in the sink, which is filling up,
A scavenger hunt
Because I didn’t want you to get bored once I left,
I’ve left mugs all around the room for you to find
Some half-filled with coffee which went cold too fast this morning,
Separating from still-oily cream
And others with water
And others with rings of tea
Which has been brewed several times,
Each one littered with lipstick stains
Reddish, pinkish, fading chromatography experiments
A sign that I’ve been there
That way you know which ones are mine
And better yet, I left you something to do
In case you’re bored
You can read my tea leaves,
Or interpret the coffee rings I left on the table
Decode mini Rorschach tests made of lipstick
On the edge of the cups
Or find some symbol in the bubbles of dish soap
Dissipating in a soaking pan
Or find some other excuse
To ignore the fact
That I forgot to do the dishes
And I used up too many mugs

Katarzyna (she/her) is a current junior at Columbia GS, majoring in urban studies. She’s from Chicago (a fact which she cannot stop mentioning), and she enjoys writing, cooking, and watching netflix comedy specials. Once she sent an essay of hers to someone and he called her "low-key chuck palahniuk or camus" so she guesses that's something. You can find her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Spider Ring by Tristen Pasternak

Illustration by Rawan Hayat

A past, a path, a past path that I had been on has now diverged into the stream of now on which
I float on my back and watch the city at my feet decimate itself. The strings that tied this web
together have grown heavy under the drops of dew and the sun is beginning to rise the clouds
are pregnant with coming light and it is time to build again. I have woven a web but I have never
caught other spiders this way life feels very partially alone. At home there was the largest spider
I had ever seen. I stared at it under vulnerable light before I set it free. There too was a firefly. It
was contained in this space and it lit and grew an orb alone. It awoke me from my sleep and I
thought I heard it calling my name. Above my bed the spiders crawled and dropped. A jolt
before I slip away: a miraculous ariel feat. A creature with one thousand legs twirls above my
head and sounds like chipping glass. Twirling slowly and dancing. On my face. Awake. And
gone.

Tristen (she/her/hers) is a member of the Barnard class of 2022 and she is majoring in English. Tristen is from the Philadelphia area. You can find her on Instagram and Facebook.

Untitled by Skylar Wu

Illustration by Mitali Sharma

this is not smoke
not fire
it is sun, kneaded into pieces

you are not a flag
not a shadow
but i retrieve myself from your eyes

this is not any word
or any sentence
just, a scene of the moon

I imagine you looking at the moon
flying over mountains and waters
the imagination finally returns to me

Skylar (she/her/hers) is a first-year Columbia College student on track to double major in philosophy and economics. Her best habit is that she drinks at least 1 liter of water every single day and her worst habit is that she likes to bite her nails into rectangles with 90 degree internal angles. You can find her on Instagram @adnxture and @allocated.resources.

Notes from an Estranged Daughter by Crystal Foretia

Quarto 2020 Chapbook Contest Runner Up

Click on the image to read a PDF version of Crystal’s chapbook.

Illustration by Zain Murdock

My name is Crystal Foretia (she, her, hers), a sophomore in Columbia College studying Political Science and History. Born and raised just outside of DC, I am the daughter of Cameroonian immigrants. Notes of an Estranged Daughter is a collage of anecdotes and contemplations on Black history. Some poems are inspired by and directly respond to art either by Black people or centering Black figures. Other poems draw on confrontations with internalized, interpersonal, and structural racism. Overall, the piece explores the feelings of a young Black woman trying to make sense of a world made chaotic by colonialism and white supremacy.

“Madeleine, la femme noire” was published in The Unorthodocs: https://www.theunorthodocs.org/la-femme-noire. “Under the Weeping Willow” was published in Surgam, the literary magazine for The Philolexian Society: https://surgammag.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/surgam_spring20_20_final.pdf. Lastly, “what the conch said to the black child” was already published by Quarto Online on Oct. 27th.

New and Used Poems by Thomas Mar Wee

Quarto 2020 Chapbook Contest Runner Up

Click on the image below to read a PDF version of Thomas’s chapbook.

Illustration by Dora O’Neill

Thomas Wee is a writer based in New York and a senior studying English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Born and raised in Evanston Illinois, they began writing short fiction and poetry in high school. Academically, their interests include: Modernism, semiotics, translation, Asian American literature, and digital humanities.

A writer of poetry, fiction, and mixed media work, they are currently working on a short story collection and a novel. A piece of their short fiction will be featured in the upcoming Meridian Anthology of New Writing published by Drunken Boat and Asia Pacific Writers & Translators (November 2020).

The chapbook "New and Used Poems" represents poems accumulated over several years of writing, the earliest written in Summer 2018 and the most recent written in Fall of 2020. Together, they cohere loosely around themes of grief, inheritance, cultural assimilation/decay, liminality, and memory. These poems are primarily inspired by the poet's early loss of their father, and their experiences as a mixed-race, Chinese-American, queer person.

Formally, these poems explore the relationship between language and memory, and specifically the way memory and language degrade and fail. The opening introductory triad of poems, grouped under the title "Generation Loss", deals with this theme the most explicitly through its method of composition via online translation algorithms.

The three photographs, meant to accompany this poem and the chapbook as a whole, are an image of the poet's grandfather and extended family, taken in their village in Taishan, China. This photograph was compressed and duplicated several times, with each copy degrading its quality slightly and introducing artifacts, noise, and other elements of deterioration. These photographs are meant to reinforce the chapbook's themes, and prompt thinking about the relationships between different forms of decay: cultural, material, mnemonic and digital.

what the conch said to the black child by Crystal Foretia

Illustration by Zain Murdock

we're quite different, 
you and I.

sure, you rugged on the outside 
and smooth on the inside,

maybe we can even pull
a pearl outta you too.

but you not hollow on the inside,
not whitewashed on the outside.

erosion is not your destiny,
no matter the lies society tells.

your bones don’t belong to the sea,
no matter what history yells.

unlike me,
you always existed

to be more than the market’s currency,
to be more than an exotic accessory,
to be more than a herald of tragedy.

before they plunder your pearl,
harvest your flesh from inside out, 
and play you to the beat of their symphony,

Remember: 

you are no husk left behind.

Crystal (she/her/hers) is a sophomore at Columbia University studying Political Science and History. As the daughter of Cameroonian immigrants in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., her political awakening has been one of contradiction and frustration. Being a first-generation African-American places her in a unique relationship with Blackness and forces her to center her poetry on history, both personal and political. You can find her on Facebook and Instagram.

Sex Without Fear by Tristen Pasternak

Illustration by Rawan Hayat

Craving sex like the devil but I fear it
More than God
God was so fearing
Of sex
I heard he made people out of stars
Must’ve been hot

He ripped a rib
Out of his first and only human
Just to make a point
I don't know about you but I have a few ideas
About a better way
to make a baby

That gift of God-giving life was more divine
When God found a way around it
Divine virgin let me know
God, let me know
How to have sex without fear

Tristen Pasternak (she/her/hers) is a member of Barnard class of 2022 studying English and creative writing with a minor in Spanish. Tristen is from the Philadelphia area and her favorite color is orange. She enjoys walks in Riverside Park and would like to own as many orange things as possible. Find her on Facebook and Instagram.

Mga Katutubong by Alyssa Sales

Illustration by Charlie Blodnieks

the churches drown them.

gold crosses hang from brown necks 
one Lord’s history and one God’s 
biased truths fill crusted 
mahogany colored books

their hearts shatter— 
do their people not remember? 

has their country forgotten 
their ancestors’ battle cries 
as men with pale skin and sharp teeth
rode on four-legged beasts? 

their memories of beautiful 
traditions and infinite gods erased

their country has forgotten  
the men cloaked in coal black robes who
dragged wailing children to angelic churches
and shoved the sweet body of Christ 
on pink tongues that begged for mercy

but they remember. 
they sit in the mountains, 
waiting as the goddess Tala’s 
eyes flutter open and 
her freckles appear 
as burning stars 
like candles on a midnight sky

they dance with the wind amidst 
emerald greens in cornfields, 
feeling Lakapati’s breath warm on their 
collarbones as they wish for good harvest 
following summer monsoons

the others don’t understand— 
their parents dressed them in lace
white dresses with curved edges,
ghosts of the Spanish’s hands imprinted
on pure pious beauty

but the indigenous 
remember even when 
everyone else doesn’t.

they lie on wooden rafts as the sea hums 
a soft lullaby, fingertips sliding 
along Aman Sinaya’s cerulean blue waves

they look out to 
gods and goddesses 
who gave them strength 
as they whisper prayers

naaalala namin. 
we remember.

Alyssa Sales is a Sophomore in Columbia College who lives in Palo Alto, CA but misses the busy New York City scenery. She is planning on double majoring in Neuroscience and Behavior as well as Creative Writing. Writing is a way for her to process her thoughts, reflect on herself, and memorialize the world around her.