epitaph for saint anthony by eris sker

January 24, 2023 Columbia Quarto

This piece was originally published in Quarto’s 2022 Spring Print.

after natalie wee

I miss you like a hum thrums clean
through bone.
resounds, then remains –

a violent infusion.
a church bell calling us all forth.
& I’m no longer bargaining with fate,
only demanding
for you to hold me.
for the room to fill
with the echo of your bell song.

my mind a speeding train
forged in your language: each violent jolt
swings open into memory,

a ghost-door,
panic;

my stomach vast like a lacuna;
like leaking boat upon the lake;
like spleen

where loss splinters the daylight.
where mourning multiplies like cobwebs
sticky & sunlit.

how just like that,
we unravel into whisps
bind solidly with intermissions & spend all main acts of life
pursuing unapproachable relief.

how just like that,
you loved me & I left.
you loved me & then distance.

& a string between us which
still pulls.

eris sker (she/they) is a senior at columbia college studying comparative literature & society. they like moon jellies and peonies.

Galleria nazionale d'arte antica by Panagiota Stoltidou

January 22, 2023 Columbia Quarto

This piece was originally published in Quarto’s 2022 Spring Print.

after La Fornarina

Fond of black cats
bread loaves perfectly
circular the music of
windows flinging
open the inside
of oysters her mother’s
neck dancing her
fingers he

offers a pearl asks
may i her gaze arresting
the shape of his
palm
sì baby, certo she laughs now
cheeks exceptionally
flushed
right hand touching
her left breast,
he reaches for the brush —
wait
she snaps the
pearl winks grazie
fixes her hair folds
the veil, lips beach up
and there it is:

the myrtle bush engulfing
her figure full
flesh chiaroscuro sky
the skin of plums
pearl
in her hair, whatever she’s
looking at must be
splendid.

Panagiota Stoltidou divides her time between Thessaloniki and Berlin. At Columbia University, she is a visiting exchange student majoring in Comparative Literature and Linguistics. She enjoys translating poetry and reading Peter Bradshaw's film reviews.

Sundance by Seowon (Angela) Lee

January 17, 2023 Columbia Quarto

This piece was originally published in Quarto’s 2022 Spring Print.

What if tomorrow the cockroaches decide they like the sun? There is sheer pandemonium as the streets of New York City fill with shiny brown bodies. I see politicians hopping on desks, firefighters being called for extermination emergencies, and certain food-cart vendors feeling vindicated. Someone once described a cockroach as an eclair — crunchy on the outside, mushy on the inside. Ever since, I have not been able to eat eclairs.

After skittering over ripe bananas and fingers, the cockroaches sun themselves on rooftops. They reach their antennae up and stand still in fresh air. But after a while, they go back to a state of unending hunger. Don’t you know? All the Tantaluses of the world are born again as cockroaches.

At first, those with weak stomachs take days off work. There’s a national shortage for RaidTM. People wage war against the creatures, but they just keep coming. Then, a child on YouTube pets one in Central Park and says “pretty pretty roachie” and the nature enthusiasts and Montessori moms are won over. Entomologist Nancy Greig comes forth and informs the public that cockroaches are just misunderstood and we accept.

Now some people stomp on them with their Louboutins and others gently step over them, but the pop and crackle of breaking exoskeletons is part of the rush hour song we sing.

Seowon (Angela) Lee is a Class of 2022 graduate at Columbia University double majoring in English Literature and Creative Writing. She is envious of snails, delighted by warm winds, and currently struggling through writing her Senior Essay on Asian American detective fiction. Currently, she is interning at Grove Atlantic and looks forward to what the future will hold.

here's what i remember: by Callie Updike

January 17, 2023 Columbia Quarto

This piece was originally published in Quarto’s 2022 Spring Print.

a father teaching his son to ride a bike.
a camel with two humps.
a baseball cap atop the skull of a man
with the longest nose i’ve ever seen.

i chuckled.
it was all i could do,
gazing at the thick oak tree in the
backyard.
worn from sixteen years of memory –
souvenirs, permanent impressions,
recollections
of a fresh-faced girl
pushed on the swing chained to its
branches.
higher!
higher!
chasing herself around the gazebo
that housed vows and promises.
a twig was her wand,
her imagination was her greatest strength.

i could only laugh,
a reflection of the guilt of adolescence,
transfixed on the silhouette of autumn leaves
in the dusk.
my youth just out of reach before me,
breathing shallow as the home i once knew
fell from beneath.

i’m sorry that this is how
it has to be.
incessant apologies
met with nods & grunts
sniffles
laughter.
laughter?
grief tainting my spirit
as the last bits of my fresh-faced facade
held on for dear life.

the girl
damaged by a childhood
too short-lived to grasp,
laughing in hysterics to the ancient oak.
asking for a single second
of their blissful romance to return,
for just another year
spent daydreaming under His branches.

as the screen door pulls shut,
an echo of the fresh-faced girl manifests.
now weeping.
wailing.
an ear-piercing sound
unheard since her birth.
He bows down,
branches knelt in her honor
wise in the knowledge that
only for so long can one find solace
in the shapes of leaves.

Callie (she/her) is a second-year Columbia College student studying Film and Creative Writing. She is an (overly) proud resident of Western New York and owns a big, dumb German Shepard-Husky mix. Callie wishes you nothing but love and happiness and can be found on instagram @callieee.jane.

What's the Opposite of a Chick Flick? by Reese Alexander

December 14, 2022 Columbia Quarto

Max says I collect male movies
Like shot glasses of places I stayed a single night.
I view masculinity through a smudged car window–
Like a kid clinging to the 8 mm film he found in grandma’s attic–
No sheet to project on, frantically
Holding his hand
just
so
to catch the light.
Long-dead strangers' smiles broken
By the lines of a little palm.

Reese Alexander (she/her) is a sophomore at Barnard. She is an English major, and plans to concentrate in creative writing. Reese is originally from Birmingham, Alabama, and her two favorite triple word phrases are Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Pumpkin Spice Latte.

Medusa by Sylvi Stein

December 6, 2022 Columbia Quarto

This piece was originally published in Quarto’s 2022 Spring Print.

Content warning for violence

Ten years ago, the girl you loved
stuck her head between the iron bars that loop
around the playground and she screamed
so hard she bit her tongue,
and second graders love blood
so we watched with bright eyes as the firefighters
and policemen and god and public safety
pried out her small skull.

The girl you loved used to eat Jell-o
off the damp linoleum cafeteria floor and tell you
you were her second best friend, after Rachel.
She used to kiss her elbow to prove she was a fairy
while you were left puckering into the air.
Playing Horse, she held you
by the hair and yanked like leather reins
sprouted from your scalp. Giddiup!
After the Greek unit in history,
she was always the daughter of Athena
and you were Medusa.

The girl you loved was so mean
to worms on the playground after the rain,
and this is where you drew the line:
you refused watch their pink bodies writhe,
like furious tongues cut loose. You would not
hold them down as she sliced
their smooth stomachs open
with safety pins.

Sylvi Stein (she/her) is a sophomore in Columbia College majoring in art history and creative writing. She enjoys long walks on the beach and clichés.

Song of the lately departed by Eleanor Lin

November 16, 2022 Columbia Quarto

This piece was originally published in Quarto’s 2022 Spring Print.

妹妹背這洋娃娃
走到花園來看花
娃娃哭了叫媽媽
樹上的小鳥笑哈哈
- Traditional

Little sister takes her doll away
Thought I’d be staying another day
Looked back for a moment, and then it was gone
So long, so long, so long

She goes to see the flowers in bloom
How did this chill wind rise so soon?
When there come soft rains people despair
Sighs escaping to midnight air

A baby cries for its mother and cries
Though it doesn’t know, that it is alive
Before it has felt, before it has seen
This unbearable lightness of being

Look up and see, a bird on the wing
Is laughing, but not out of mockery
And though I waited for you this day
You’ve already whispered away

Eleanor Lin is a third-year student at Columbia College studying computer science and linguistics. She can be found on Instagram as @elemlin and on Twitter as @data_eleanor. You can find her other work at linktr.ee/elealin.

Student Discount by Mikayla Benson

November 1, 2022 Columbia Quarto

the museum is the ultimate silent orgy.
blank space filled with eroticism, pent up
Muted.
mutilated by color.
one may find it confusing that we are capable of
containing ourselves
here. in our colors and monochromatic garb.

i’m surprised every time. i enter
and not a singular person rips off their clothes.
doesn’t start kissing the acrylic.
it’s almost like a game.
Challenge!
who can last the longest.
we challenge ourselves to remain sober amongst constant fumes of desire and
pretentious tension.

there lies the metropolitan prude.
daughter. and child of september.
light-headed by black boots and snobbery.

Mikayla Gold Benson (she/her) is a 2nd year at Barnard College. She currently cannot muster the strength to write anything witty about herself, as she is too busy being too different and too complex, and too fascinating.

Postmarked by Caelan Bailey

October 26, 2022 Columbia Quarto

My great-grandma Lee used to send me letters on stationery that looked like the paper incarnation of an antique china cabinet. Our penpalship began when I responded to a happy-tenth-birthday card with a thank-you note. A few days later a thank-you-for-your-thank-you note sat in the mailbox. Birds enwreathed in gold foil flitted alongside an elaborate cursive that could not be much younger than the 83 years between us. It was so illegible that I asked my dad to decipher it for me. But the more thank-you-for-your-thank-you-for-your-thank-you notes, the more the foreign flourishes faded into the ephemera. I could read her letters any day. Even when the handwriting became shakier and the mail scarcer. Even when they stopped coming.

Caelan Bailey is a junior studying English and History from Charleston, SC. While in New York, she enjoys making biscuits and thinking through what it means to be from the South.

Samson and Delilah, 2021 by C. G. Coleman

October 12, 2022 Columbia Quarto

This piece was originally published in Quarto’s 2022 Spring Print.

I
I receive letters in spades, slipping through
buttons and backstreets. The feathered air
settles bluntly, a vegetable knife upon
the city, there is nothing to do. Scholarly attendant
I pluck out afternoons from downtown
cinemas, golden-hair women weeping out
cottages or dangling orifices, foreign rivers,
domestic rivers. There is walking to be done,
emptiness to be washed and discarded, smoke
to rise and trains to catch. I wouldn’t dwell
but life gets awfully narrow and even quiet comes
inside the smooth pearl of a sound, a street
shout skipping up through the windows.

II
An ill Sunday morning. Somewhere deep below
the libidinal nonsense, broken glass train
platforms, and omniscient scar tissue is a
bleeding organ. Something purpling.
A shanty house propped up with museums
only to be toppled by verse. Lying martyred
at 3pm the same searing light of heaven that
must have appeared to Joan as she sighed and
sparked shows glinting on my windowpane.
It has very little to say to me, except perhaps
that I should be talking coffee rather than
crucifixion. Glory is rarely prudent and
rarer still brief, so honored I rose and let
my uneasy concert play and brew and play.

III
You’ve made me translucent, and everyone
on the subway can read through my skin
like some cheap paperback. I suppose you’re
also responsible for the messages, the lamplight
rain in the evenings, the architect of this autumn
romantic. I will wrap my favorite bench,
intersection, in wax paper and send it off express
for when my name begins to dissolve on
the tongue. A paperweight to anchor your nights.
Forgive me. I think I’m a corner newsstand
philosopher slipping around on skates when
I talk to you this way, but you’ve left me
with no other language than the low drones of summer.
Horribly improper, but perhaps something could be
corrected if you slipped a finger underneath my collar…

IV
A woman asked me, as I crossed to the park,
how to get to Charles Street, and worst of all
I knew and didn’t have the words to say.
A kitchen sink apocalypse was forming on
the horizon, all rocky beaches and Freud
and ink under fingernails. Dreams play out
coyly, fair-weather test subjects, while some of
us rot in underground contemplation. Maybe
the strain is in the attempt, or I am merely
poisoned by a world folded in on itself.
I’ll be a greeting card lover—it seems so
much easier. It’s all breathless pennies now,
vending machines, bruising dawns, and it
all comes much too late. If I haven’t evaporated
by Friday, come see me. Bring luck and wit.

C. G. Coleman (they/them) is a sophomore at Barnard studying English and Philosophy. They are from the DC area and passionate about new wave films, love letters, kitchen sink dramas, film photography, 60s music, and long walks around the city. Find them on Instagram at @beingoflight03.

Some Requests by Trey Purves

October 7, 2022 Columbia Quarto

This piece was originally published in Quarto’s 2022 Spring Print.

I want a bar that I’ll always go to afterwards
and a dog that isn’t mine
but doesn’t bark when I pass by.
I want what minors call comfort
and adults call hypnosis.
I want everything out of reach
sitting in the palm of my hand.
I want to know what to order and not
have to ask for something fruity and strong.
I want a list of every name I’ve ever been called
and a voice to sing the blues.
I want money that has never been touched
and a fire that has never been lit.
I want to feel the sting of the wasp
and not watch its wings land on my flightless body.
I want a tootsie roll and a rubber duck
and a solid amount of shower pressure.
I want time but not too much.
And I want everyone to look me
in the eyes.

Trey Purves (he/him) is a sophomore at Columbia College studying Sustainable Development and Creative Writing. He loves to run, sip on smoothies, and wander around the forests in his North Carolina hometown.

Corner Piece by Grace Novarr

October 7, 2022 Columbia Quarto

This piece was originally published in Quarto’s 2022 Spring Print.

Saw you on the corner today, orange and blue somehow small and I missed our day in the sun in the summer and it snowed this week which didn’t make me think of you — I had in fact forgotten you until I saw you on the corner. In the time when we knew how to refract the best of ourselves, the sideways rolling-down of the mirror, the fat drops of rain in our open mouths when we threw back our necks and folded our collars over our sweaters. In the center then, open fields, wide parks. Four drinks in until we glitter, until you roll up your sleeves and there, scars. Do not answer my questions — I’m writing this story. I’m writing you onto the couch across from me. We were hand in hand in hand as always, growing more into all fields of vision, growing again.

I don’t want to be younger, I want to be older with you. I don’t want to go back, but I want you to come back.

Moving in and around like a bright spot across the cornea of my right eye, flickering in and out like water. You are still, on the corner. No cars are coming. I am walking away. I am turning back. The buildings are tall; all there is for them to do is stand. You are on the corner and in a second you will move away from me. We all always have the choice to make everything stop. I could say your name but I don’t. So you go, and so it goes.

Grace Novarr (she/her) is a junior at Barnard, studying English and other things. She is from New York City.

Sam by Sylvi Stein

August 30, 2022 Columbia Quarto

This piece was originally published in Quarto’s 2022 Spring Print.

In the summers before we grew up,
my brother and I were two halves
of the same face. Every July happened
in the library, the Walmart, or a lake.
To see the rest of the universe,
you needed to be in the car.
We loved hallways.
We especially loved red ice pops and unicorns,
and we went to so many summer camps we hated.
There was mandatory soccer
and the pools we shivered in bluely.
There was the girl with the broken doll that made him cry
and the counselor with a whistle
who made me draw a picture
of every rule I broke without knowing it
and I still see her in bad dreams.
We traded a dirty quarter back and forth
on the living room floor, scraping designs
into scratch tickets and we won a dollar
and eight cents once. We were gods.
We woke each other up in the morning
because the stairs were too tall and dark
to go down by yourself.
We played this game called Inside Sledding
until mom took the extra mattress away.
My brother and I hated the baby.
We liked spaghetti-os
and the sugar cookies from the bakery on the corner,
but only the first bite.
We took turns being mermaids in the lake
until dad said my brother was a merman only.
We trampled the flowers he planted in the garden,
all of them except the morning glories,
because those were our favorite.

Sylvi Stein (she/her) is a freshman in Columbia College. Her writing has been published by Beaver Magazine, Eunoia Review, Orotone Journal, and AYASKALA Magazine, among others. In her spare time, Sylvi can be found wandering the aisles of used book stores, even though she has more than enough to read at home.

night-time skater by Eris Sker

July 27, 2022 Columbia Quarto

This piece was originally published in Quarto’s 2022 Spring Print.

for t.s.

suppose a bloom of jellyfish spills through
the morning. wanes into the tub, sets down
beside you, stingers wiggling around your legs.

& you rattle.

suppose they’re grieving. each jelly lies in tears,
shredded on your belly like a soot tag.

& you still
think of fire before you sleep, though your sister
says that’s silly. the spiders can’t be plotting anything
new. they're dying anyway.
you acquiesce but you can feel them
crawling up your shins
each morning.

suppose the rest of the night is spent
peeling each stinger off your skin: the monumental task of
asking for forgiveness.

& still the nightmares slip in through the stings
embedded in your fingers.
your episodes continue. you shatter plates at breakfast,
and all your teeth are chipping,
every secret lost to flame.

suppose the gelatine becomes a jelly-fall; you slip,
collapse, the bathroom door spins open.
suppose the corpses turn to carpet, crunch beneath your feet.
suppose you’re wreathing on the supermarket floor,
delicate foam around your mouth, you only
want a cure –

my sea skater, treading over memory
of flashing lights: before you needed warnings.

before the jellyfish kept firing
and you requested mercy. instead,
meander through another seizure.

eris sker (she/they) is a junior at columbia college studying comparative literature & society and anthropology. they like moon jellies and peonies.

5 Haiku from 113th Street by Joan Tate

July 20, 2022 Columbia Quarto

This piece was originally published in Quarto’s 2022 Spring Print.