I'm Dancing Through and Languid

Illustration by Bella Aldrete

I’ve swept the apartment and
scrubbed the sink. I curl up in a
sunspot on my rug like a cat and
breathe. I want to tell everyone
how great I’m doing. I want to go
back and say, Look! I couldn’t be
more pleased! And heave my
mangoes and poetry at them. In
my sunspot I decide that it’s only
for me– mangoes, poetry–
city abandon. A sweaty Summer
morning in a lover’s shadowed
Claremont apartment. My father’s
face pinned up against my peeling
wall, the glow of a passing siren
sending red against his laugh,
champagne spilling from the
bottle in his hands. High school
girls on the front steps of a
brownstone on the Northside of
Washington Square Park, knees
spread wide, paper plate pizza
grease painting their lips. Holy
whispers of precants as I wait
in the back of St. Paul’s nave, the
family of birds that flit among the
columns. A shared cigarette
behind the Natural History
Museum, on a Riverside bench, a
rock in Sheep Meadow. A
midnight: whimsical, breezy love.
And at 6: sunrise, seeped into my
sheets, into my naked body.
I keep it all for me as I wake.

Anika Agustin Malhotra (BC ‘24, she/her) is a Computer Science major; she listens to jazz; she is from the South.

Sundown on 108th, Breakdown by Anika Malhotra

Illustration by Watson Frank

It's not fair. That you're not beginning to cry in the
stairwell of your apartment, too. Isn't it dreadful.
In the laundry room, in the Duane Reade, on the
steps of Manhattan School of Music. In the East
Asian Library. This city reaches down my mouth
until I surrender everything I Our Fathered
down. Subway smoke won't leave me alone. Never
ending pot. In a room of Filipinos I feel dark
and clumsy. So nervous I stop thinking. On the way
home I want my mom. I keep dreaming about
her at the piano. Young and bony. These days
she'll get off the phone with Nanay and aks me,
How could I miss it there? It's true. And my dad tries
to teach me words in Hindi and my tongue is stiff.
I am brown and Catholic and it's so wrong, isn't
it, so I stay quiet with the others, I stay so silent.
And Jesus Christ, I don't care about it, St. Paul's
is just another place to cry, anyways. So that when
she asks if I went to mass, I don't lie, I hate lying.
Confession: I am earnest. I am a lesbian. I don't
want to think about marriage. I keep my scapular
on during sex so I'll still go to heaven.
Confession: I know I'm a bad person, and I don't
care. I'll chase after what I want and get rejected,
I let it get to me every time. I self harm and I never
touch myself. And I touch myself more often these
days, often on the bathroom floor, knees spread
wide and head thrown back, holy. And everything
is minor chords and melodrama. Falling back and
waiting for texts. Convinced I'm not safe. I hate
lying. I know I'm a bad person. I don't care. Don't care.

Anika Agustin Malhotra (BC ‘24, she/her) is a Computer Science major; she listens to jazz; she is from the South.

Prayer Movement by Anika Malhotra

Illustration by Mel Wang

Christ. I’ve cried in all the Catholic
Churches on the Upper West Side.
I lit too many candles and never paid.
I kept my hands folded and genuflected
before sitting. Kneeling. I kept my hands
folded and asked you to save my mother’s soul
when she dies. To take my mother’s soul
out from under the Little Caesers 40 miles
from Atlanta. That she may be saved from
endless highways and Home Goods and
the grief-stricken walls of her quiet home.
When I tell you to do these things I feel
as though I am screaming at myself. Dear
God. I am praying for my mother, not
myself. I am praying for myself. Dear God
I’m praying to you I’m keeping my
hands folded I tore the skin off my thumbs
despite the fact that my nails are dull and
unpainted. Shut up about that one. And
holy shit, I’m not guilty. I came to you.
And I’m talking about my mother, not
myself.

Anika Agustin Malhotra (BC ‘24, she/her) is a Computer Science major; she listens to jazz; she is from the South.

The Apartment by Giselle Silla

Illustration by Watson Frank

My roommate cooks ground beef in a pan

and suddenly I am homesick

for the first time since the dogwoods

in April when Sara said springtime

happens here in slow motion.

On La Salle someone leaves behind

a silhouette of perfume for me to encounter

in the elevator and I thereby come to know

what it is to rest in the crook of their arm. I recall

how on Albemarle the afternoon laundry scent of strangers

collects in invisible clouds in the street, betraying

what it is to sleep in that stranger’s bed at night.

I purchase a yellowing book from the Strand

whose insides smell like soy sauce

having absorbed the byproducts of cooking, of human living

into its fibers, into its spine, and I recall

how my notebook pages stick together in summer,

grow plump and damp with humidity

so that ink runs like street lights in the rain,

and too-firm pencils might tear the crumbling paper.

Here, a wandering whiff of cigarette.

Now, an applause of June thunder.

Somewhere, a G chord in a window.

Somewhere, a toilet flush at midnight.

Giselle Silla (she/her) is a sophomore at Barnard College majoring in Urban Studies and minoring in German.

Another Failed Attempt at a Sestina by Giselle Silla

Illustration by Mel Wang

I walk down to the river
and think about drawing
the clouds,
think about mixing watercolor paints,
purple and pink like the outsides and insides of plums, dragging my brush along every
cloud’s bruising underbelly as daylight dissolves into gauzy evening

sun. I wonder how Abby can be in Ireland and draw
everything but the clouds.
She seems to draw every
cow she lays eyes on, paints
self-portraits after De Kooning and green evening
shadows along far-away rivers,

but never clouds.
She’s stopped texting me every
night. Or maybe I’ve stopped texting her? Difficult when she’s busy painting
in Ireland, where evening
for me is midnight for her, and she keeps such a good sleep schedule, like a river
and its tides drawing

in, drawing out every
night, Dublin out of rhythm with New York. Shouldn’t a painter
keep odd hours? Ready to create whenever struck with inspiration, evening
or morning, noon or night? Shouldn’t creativity be a river
that cannot be dammed? A sun against which the shades cannot be drawn?
A window which the breath of sleep only clouds?

But then again what do I know about being a painter?
What do I know about green evening
shadows along rivers,
about Ireland and plums and the drawings
of De Kooning? What do I know about clouds?
All I know is that every

evening
I walk down to the river
to let the last drops of day pass me by, and I think about Abby drawing
in her wooden room in Ireland, a fingernail moon behind a cloud,
the charcoal on her wrists and forearms threatening to cover everything
as she blends the shadow of a face in a painting,

while here the evening sun paints the river in a thin film of rippling gold,
and every cloud blushes like the bashful subject of a drawing.

Giselle Silla (she/her) is a sophomore at Barnard College majoring in Urban Studies and minoring in German.

Breakfast of the Birds by Giselle Silla

Illustration by Bella Aldrete

After “Breakfast of the Birds” by Gabriele Münter, oil on canvas, 1934

“Idk this painting made me think of you,”
Maddie texts me on a Saturday morning
during this eye-blink of a summer
when we’re closest we’ve ever been,
our minds and hearts and arms curling
together like vines up a pole.

One day I will be the brunette in the painting,
breakfasting before a branchful of birds
with tea, sugar, a dark loaf, some apricot jelly
keeping my hair short to my collar
with a kitchen of my own and a view
(though I could do without the scarlet drapes),

and I will think of her,
see her somehow in the snow sliding down the elbow of the tree;
and who knows what we’ll be to each other then,
vines up a pole or planets among disparate stars,
but over tea and snow and birds and apricot jelly I will text her something like:
“Idk this moment made me think of you.”

Giselle Silla (she/her) is a sophomore at Barnard College majoring in Urban Studies and minoring in German.

Maiden Name by Anika Malhotra

Illustration by Bella Aldrete

I’m sure you can imagine it: my mother
in the kitchen dancing to Burt Bacharach,

my mother, my mother.
My mother had the face of a child even though

she had never known childhood.
There was no mistaking that face of hers.

She wore it in the shopping malls
and the school districts. My mother at the stove.

In the driver’s seat. Within a guava tree.
Small hands on bark, soiled nails, russet, raw.

Sugar cane in her hands. Chewed at night
to ease the sting. In the water of her home.

Hip-deep in the flood. Sunset, on Vesey Street.
6pm, just one drink. Ossining, New York,

March 19, 1996. You must not draw on
your eyebrows or color your hair again. You

must read me this story. Mother, Mother,
I’m waiting for you in these grief-stricken pages.

Anika Agustin Malhotra (BC ‘24, she/her) is a Computer Science major; she listens to jazz; she is from the South.

Ode To Girlhood Gaia by Giselle Silla

Illustration by Ashley Yung

Someplace where life is old
I sat with twenty girls in a field.
When we sang “Taps” at dusk
our voices echoed against
the graying Virginia mountains,
and that was power
enough to last me till next July.

We walked down to the ravine
after dark, humming John Denver,
getting gravel in our shoes, and I imagined
my mountain mama all around me: the hills
that ebbed and flowed, rose and dipped their way
across the horizon were her head,
her breast, her stomach.

On the tennis courts at midday I imagined
I was resting in the valley of her palm
and how it would be when her hair
turned red, fell out in October
while I was too far away to see it.
I fell asleep in a soccer field once and woke disoriented
because the stars had moved across the sky

and maybe that’s why, when nine summers over
I turn down comedy night in Brooklyn
to lie beneath a tree, I gaze at its tender underside
and get the feeling that this is not unlike viewing a belly button
or the fragile seam of skin where an armpit
meets a shoulder, a secret crease of body
its owner rather not reveal.

Giselle Silla (she/her) is a sophomore at Barnard College majoring in Urban Studies and minoring in German.

hecatomb by Julia Tolda

Illustration by Watson Frank

TW: blood, death

i didn’t want to watch
it die
but i did
it fell off
the
window
pretty pink puddle
of guts
it lay twitching
on the pavement
for
a moment too long
and i
shoveled its remains
its white fur
into
a nylon school bag once
carried to
a third-grade classroom
then
my hands were sticky
(not with blood)
an improvised grave
twisted rabbit’s foot
lurking
somewhere in the dirt.

Julia Tolda (she/her) is a junior, pursuing a double major in Comparative Literature and psychology at Barnard College. Her favorite flowers are peonies, and if she could give you the moon, she would.

Sappho by Eleanor Lin

Illustration by Watson Frank

My thoughts weigh now
like the sky on the stars

and like heaven too
my worries are wheeling
through these lonely
dreaming hours

if only for
a moment I could
unhitch the axis of the universe
all would come
to rest

Why this morning?
Why this mourning?

Tears move so many stones
no more than the wind

but if you think this unjust
consider how much more
love moves than stones

I say there is beauty
even in the dying
of the well-loved day

Eleanor Lin (she/her/hers) is a second-year student in Columbia College studying computer science and linguistics. She can be found on Instagram as @elemlin, on Facebook as @eleamlin, and on Twitter as @data_eleanor. You can find her other work at linktr.ee/elealin.

Transcendence by Eleanor Lin

Illustration by Mel Wang

In the language of light
in murmurs of shadow
the leaves and the grasses are talking

as summer rays lance
through a green-glowing apse

the meaning beamed brightly
between twig and blade

yet the breezes of June
blow coldly today

to lighten the wings
of a bird startled skyward
by my lumbering oncoming tread

Eleanor Lin (she/her/hers) is a second-year student in Columbia College studying computer science and linguistics. She can be found on Instagram as @elemlin and on FaceBook as @eleamlin. You can find her other work at linktr.ee/elealin.

year of signs by Morgan Levine

Quarto 2021 Chapbook Contest Runner Up

Click on the image below to read a PDF version of Morgan’s Chapbook.

Illustration by Bella Aldrete

Artist’s Statement:

Year of Signs is a chapbook about looking from the outside in. Each poem takes its title from a store awning either in New York or Houston, and they investigate experiences of grief, wandering, and serendipity: surprises of love and feeling in a time of loss. The poems lean heavily on other poets for company (Mayer, Merwin, Doty, Baudelaire), in addition to the everyday language of shopfronts, overheard speech, and physical gestures.

Author Bio:

Morgan Levine is a multimedia poet from Houston, Texas, studying English and Creative Writing at Columbia University. Their work has been featured in Quarto, 4×4, The Blue & White, Gigantic Sequins and elsewhere. Morgan currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of The Columbia Review.

may-fly by Eris Sker

Illustration by Bella Aldrete and Watson Frank

trigger warning: brief mentions of violence

this poem speaks of vessels
meaning i count ships on the sea by their absence
and enumerate bee flight.
there are errors, of course, and i annotate recklessly -
my first mistake will be assuming this is a poem, not a memory.
count the rest.

say: i feel like a stranger here. i want my own words. i want the street to turn into loneliness which is a
flood which is the maxim that wild horses will not speak to you / say: i fought a river and married your
urn; say: lace curtains swaying, roof-bound. the bed creaks under our weight / say: i am in love and
therefore mistranslated / say: my little darling, entrust your pleasures to the winds.

this poem speaks of knives
which are self-portraits of wounds, waxing crane claws.
and i am not the mainspring of its narrative, nor a soft goodbye
convincing you this is holy ground. i do not disseminate hagiography,
except if you’re the saint
and i salvation.
my second mistake is claiming the poem loves me back
which it cannot while i am in it.
count the number of times i am in it.

say: i surprise the ocean with honesty, open mouth sinking, tongue still tangled / say: i find your name
imprinted on stinging cells of passing jellies; say: wrap around me / say: the wrath of possession which is
our truth which is forcing your spit down my throat and calling it history / say: i burn on a heart-shaped
pyre.

i am not willing to be malleable, to fill the kitchen with delight
and delicacy. i love you only through mutual laceration.
i make another mistake.
can you conceive of me?

notes:

the line 'my little darling, entrust your pleasures to the winds' is from kristina milnor's translation of CIL
4.5296, a female homoerotic love poem from ancient rome surviving scratched into the plaster wall of an
entrance hallway in pompeii's ninth region

the line 'mutual laceration' is drawn from georges bataille's work guilty

eris sker (she/they) is a junior at columbia college studying comparative literature & society and anthropology. they like moon jellies. you can find them on their personal Instagram and their poetry Instagram.

Mother Tongue by Eleanor Lin

Illustration by Richard Kam

Yesterday you asked me
where had I
hidden away your
blue dress,

the one I had
borrowed, so to speak
and you sounded so angry.

What could I answer?
We ceased to fit
long ago,

too busy were we with
the work of
erasing.

No stains now, just
the faintest whiff
of fled memory

fabric
bleached to blinding
seamless

(but for you not something
slipped on and off so
easily)

while me I yearn for
a homespun shift
of dreams;

since my tongue, too unskilled
makes a game of
coaxing back into
continuity
snapped threads

and
makes a mockery
of your toil

with its crude
attempts at
reclamation

Eleanor Lin (she/her/hers) is a second-year student in Columbia College studying computer science and linguistics. She can be found on Instagram as @elemlin and on FaceBook as @eleamlin. You can find her other work at linktr.ee/elealin.

Hunger by Stevie File

Illustration by Watson Frank

Content warning for self harm.

The stairs looked dead
Beat. Had Mama’s frame, off white
Washed over and over — I held on
Her rings like rain. I was young then.
I didn’t know where tears came from
Or scars, or bellies — but on the stairs I knew
I saw Papa’s eyes, fireflies trampled on
Too much. I was alive then. I was six, hurled
My limbs like a snowball, I hit my Papa’s face.
My Mama got red in her face. I had my first kiss
Next to the radiator, my preyed pulp
Evidence: the sheep steeped, bleeding,
Fur thawed out on the wolf’s white lips.

It is midnight. I forgot my pills.
I’m next to a man so bright, my soul burns.
I don’t want to move. I pray our words were holy.
You’re mine. You’re mine. Too much. I hurl
My limbs off like rings, slipping through our sweat —
I’m too young for this. I throw on sheep clothing,
Running. Like I was running away from home,
Beat. The stairs look me dead in the eyes.
I can’t outrun my blood. They know
I’m here to live again. They know
I’m starving for winter — Wolf! Wolf!

Stevie File (he/him/his) is a queer writer and performer from York, Pennsylvania. He is currently a first-year student at Columbia College, aspiring to double major in theatre and creative writing. You can follow him on Instagram @stevierfile.

Note to P.T. Barnum by Crystal Foretia

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

Illustration by Rawan Hayat

content warnings for strong language and death

Inspired by Beauty Examined (1993), Kerry James Marshall

Since you tore my flesh piece by piece,
Can you put me back together?
Mesh backbone to my dignity
And hands to my modesty
After you’ve stripped me bare
And opened my cunt for the whole
World to see,
After I'm already dead,
After you've already killed me,
After you picked and prodded at
My voluptuous ass, unaging skin,
Plump lips and everything else you found
Savage to your naked eyes.
Eyes that saw my village as a chess board
Carved in the shape of savannah
And treated my brethren like pawns.
You, dear white knight
Should die.

Crystal Foretia (she/her/hers) is a junior in Columbia College studying Political Science and History. Born and raised just outside of D.C., Crystal is the daughter of Cameroonian immigrants. You can find her chapbook Notes from an Estranged Daughter, a collage of anecdotes and contemplations on Black history, in Quarto Magazine. You can also find links to all her published poetry via her Linktree: https://linktr.ee/cforetia

The Summer Punisher Came Out by Skye Levine

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

Illustration by Rawan Hayat

it felt like we were always working doubles
money always felt tight but we splurged
on Saturdays at the bead store
and hotboxed my car after almost every shift.

June went by fast
and the 21st passed without acknowledgment.
Something only has power over you if you let it
and I deemed my silence a reclamation.

I was doing my affirmations every morning
groundings every night
to say something out loud is to jinx it
so I jinxed my progress every day

as prescribed. I started hearing rats in the walls
in July, for the first time
in a while, scurrying through the scaffolding
squeaking so loud I couldn’t sleep.

Even though you didn’t hear them
you bought me Punisher on vinyl for the noise
and 3 grams to help me sleep.

I listened to Moon Song until the needle dulled.
You said it “hit too hard”
but you didn’t mean stop, you meant

It resonated with the part of us we can’t articulate
or won’t articulate, steadfast
in a silent reclamation
of our bodies, of our minds.

A rat died in the walls in August.
The rot was overpowering, putrid like his stomach breath
hot on my cheeks all over again, I tethered myself to my navel
and all over again, I shelled out $75 for the exterminator
who couldn’t bring herself to charge me full price
when there was nothing for her to kill.

Sometimes when I wake up I think I’m back there again—
The ghosts of his hands moving down my body
stealing myself from me
feel so real. But I remind myself:

they are my hands
they belong to me
this time around.

Skye Levine (she/her) is a second-year at Barnard, prospectively majoring in English and Sociology. She is from Austin, Texas, and is currently based in New York City. She loves hiking, live music, drawing, and drinking (too much) coffee. You can find her on Instagram (@skyelevine).

Middle Eastern Eyebrows by Lida

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

Illustration by Mita Sharma

Every time you sink in thought you pull
your thick eyebrows together and that makes a frown.

Aunt says it isn’t good for a girl to frown.
Men can do it, but girls look sour.

But you’re not sour. You’re thirteen. Happy
when alone with your daydreams.

You put adhesive tape between your brows.
Now you can think and not be sour.

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.

The Daughter Argument by Skye Levine

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

Illustration by Rawan Hayat

Content warning for eating disorders

My daughter dances behind my eyelids when I dream.
I see her hair, dark like mine. Her profile, the familiar bump in her nose.
Her footsteps bounce off the grey walls of my apartment
on the nights I catch myself alone. Like my mother

That summer she couldn’t get out of bed
I’ve let the dishes pile up around the sink.
I play piano on hard surfaces— I hear Vivaldi’s “Spring”

as vividly as my daughter’s voice. I smell her fevers—
mild like honey milk. Under my breath,
I tell the grey space about Redwood fairy rings
and pretend I’m lulling my little girl to sleep.
I haven’t felt clean since California but when I think of her I feel untouched.

I can picture myself teaching her to paint.
Her little fingers wrapped around the gold-tipped brush
my grandmother gave me in high school.
I’ll ask her to paint what she hears when she listens to Mazzy Star.

Sometimes she looks too much like me.
She has a mole on her temple that she taps when she’s scared.
I don’t want her to know my history—

I push her from my brain when she tells me she's hungry.
Her wails reverberate around my skull, demanding food I won’t give.
After mealtimes, kneeling over the toilet,
She cries as we choke on my hand.

When I can’t sleep she lays beside me.
I stroke her hair and rhyme our breaths.
Stuck to my heels like a shadow, she learns my nightly practice of self-beration
And I hear the cruelty in her voice when she joins in.

I can picture her in San Francisco, eating peaches by the bay.
The blue water and pink houses marvel her; the sweetness of the fruit lights up her
eyes.

I want her to savor it—to swallow it and keep it down, but then I see her back in
Texas,
standing small as I stood in my childhood home.
Lit up grey by the refrigerator light, she looks up at me with hollow green eyes
and asks me why her body doesn’t feel like home anymore.

Skye Levine (she/her) is a second-year at Barnard, prospectively majoring in English and Sociology. She is from Austin, Texas, and is currently based in New York City. She loves hiking, live music, drawing, and drinking (too much) coffee. You can find her on Instagram (@skyelevine)

untitled aubade by Cassidy Gabriel

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

Illustration by Mita Sharma

sit with me awhile on the sun
palm this light, pick it up between two fingers
slip this fire between your lips; now
lick this gold, distilled, in your mouth
roll it over your tongue and
crush it between your teeth
chew it in your way-back molars—

i am asking you to
swallow the sun with me.

hold it, endless, in your stomach.
pour it from there; you, a carafe of sweet and forgiving and bleeding sun. i will
take a sip
tilt back my chin,
exalt as it rises in my eyes

Cassidy Gabriel is from Flemington, New Jersey. She can usually be found outdoors. In light of her quickly-approaching graduation, she is relearning how to introduce herself without immediate mention of her class year (senior), school (Columbia College), and what she studies (Political Theory, Computer Science, and Gender Studies). And yet!