How to Build a Fence by Haven Capone

November 7, 2023 Columbia Quarto

This piece was first published in Quarto’s 2023 Spring Print Edition.

I.
How many days in a row have I eaten Reese’s Pieces for breakfast?
I can’t do my girlfriend instead of my homework because I got an A on one essay,
Good God. But there are lots of ways to bend the phrase
Taking care of yourself.

How often do people wait to kiss someone because they want
to be kissed first? I kiss in every order. So it would be
shameful to put that to waste despite that I still cry in my bed because everyone hates me
while they all stand silent at the door with more
chocolate. Under the bed I’m yanking dark caramel, who pulls burns melts but still forms again
again again to rot.

II.
How wild my best friend said my depression is cooler than hers because
I am still kind. Kind? I told her I thought she was kind. You are missing the point,
She replied. I am yet to be sure of The Point – In the hot sun I
take something for nerves then gap the holes in my day thus far once I’ve
fixed my mascara I will make sense of my life and

How come I am living it.
Picture this natural disaster of falling in love like a domino, gay this place
Would you rather debate dog show ethics or spend five minutes coaxing hot
syrup into the fat of an arm as to prevent hollowing out. My bearings never fucking
gather just free solo scary mountains who growl with their jaws ripped open, tongues wet with my
arrival.

III.
How am I already aging enough to notice that I have started to forget
What people have seen of my body? telling my sister in a Starbucks that when I overheat
I shutdown she just looks at me and says she has known me my whole life I feel ashamed
therefore I am leaving
The riches of abyss sweet recluse so that my father never has to drink alone again.

How do I stop writing a million lines about limbo? The rightness of lacquered lips and
the illness of inhabiting the world. Saltless peanut butter from the jar for supper, red
by the bottle so my head doesn’t fall of this reaching neck. Hours in a room whose
walls say what I cannot: Awake? Yes. Alive? Not particularly.

Haven Capone (she/they) is a junior at Barnard tentatively studying creative writing and Italian. She plays Mellophone in the campus ensemble Columbia Pops and loves bears. She could never pick a favorite genre to write, and will forever move between them.

Caesura by Charlie Coleman

November 4, 2023 Columbia Quarto

This piece was first published in Quarto’s 2023 Spring Print Edition.

It’s a drag on history or philosophy, maybe.
After 11 minutes the movie is discarded. Film critics weep!
The jewel of my mind is no piece of theory.

Some weeks I direct Hamlet and you rewrite the Bible,
and some weeks we fuck into the night and miss our trains.
I mean not to be crude but rather to be vulgar,

to speak in my home tongue. Mornings were silent.
Perhaps if we could dissect a human soul
like a pig fetus, we could quit our jobs, be light-dependent.

I press us towards curiosity while you struggle
through atmospheric reentry, flipping pennies,
always paying close attention to entropy and unraveling thus.

Always trending earthward, restless with superstition.
On some griping Tuesday: a line of questioning advanced.
It marches on foreign territory with champagne.

Is there love without distance or beauty without death?
Can I name you without killing you? There is pain too,
in what’s for dinner tomorrow, in domestic fantasy.

If every word is a blood money diamond,
then we are lost, thinking the same thoughts
on different frequencies, still kissing through the morning

but never letting light through the blinds. No machine
operates with complete efficiency, and every I love you
must burn some meaning off into heat.

Though, I hope, that phrase less than others.
They fight wars on every street corner, yet we
wait for the mail. Drive to the shore. We could elope even,

were we less saturated with urban sediment.
It is our fault, for believing there are still codes to crack.
We could pave roads, were we not creatures of sentiment.

Charlie Coleman (he/they) is a junior at Barnard studying English and philosophy. His work has previously been published in ANGLES, ZENIADA, and The Sandy River Review—he is also delighted to be published in Quarto again! They are passionate about new wave films, love letters, kitchen sink dramas, film photography, 60s music, and long walks around the city.

Sheffield by Phoebe Mulder

October 31, 2023 Columbia Quarto

This piece was first published in Quarto’s 2023 Spring Print Edition.

Yesterday we wandered through the cemetery
it wasn’t a metaphor it was just something to do.
It's not purgatory if the train passed through
though we stand in Northern windows
and we wonder. To ourselves, of course.
Well you wanted out of here (I had watched
this movie before, and heard the songs, for
that matter). So you wrote essays on the old
observatory and I offered flimsy lines about
history. When you kicked gravel I imagined
a thousand tiny spines scattering and when birds
cooed at our cereal silt sometimes I sang along.
If only to make my mom grin. If only to sound
more like her. If I stayed I would teach the
thrushes how to read. And I would be a waitress
with homemade earrings and I would learn
to laugh without a tongue. Yesterday we fought
over my driving – I’m awful with stoplights
and I want you to promise to come back. I dug
fingers in my grandma’s compost and screamed
when the worms wanted more than apple
cores. They’re coming for your heart, you said.
Later you bent on bedspread and your body
was a comma and you blew smoke towards
the window crack and I tucked birthday cards
from Cici in my underwear drawer. If I stayed
I would write books about bird feeders and
islands and find myself in the footnotes.

Phoebe Mulder (she/they) is a sophomore at Barnard studying History with a minor in Education. She enjoys ginger pigeons, coffee mugs with sentimental value, and over-analyzing lyrics on Genius. You can often find her hanging trash on her wall, insisting it’s a collage.

Gatekeeper by Jennifer Guizar Bello

October 29, 2023 Columbia Quarto

Written in 2021 age 19*

Intellectual
Poverty - An open letter to Columbia/ Barnard

The white girl at my historically white college mocks me
Her words jumping off her tongue flawlessly
Like pigeons flocking at the sounds of footsteps
Ironic that we live in new york
Don’t you know? Even the upper west side has sewer rats.

She’s used to always being right
Her tongue is the made up of the same
Christopher Columbus rock hard stone
Her tone is made up of the same
Red
White
And blue
like the flag.

My tongue
Quivers
My lips sealed
My body is an earthquake
Like the ones that displace people,
Only this time it's displacing me
Only this time it’s your words picking at me
And not your drill

She mocks me for not knowing her stupid cultural references.
I’m not sorry for not knowing who Cyndi Lauper is
Or Molly Ringwald.
I’m not sorry I didn’t read the yellow wallpaper
Or the Great Gatsby.
Mocks me for being a product for her disruption

A product of her ancestors disruption
You’re right you're not the culprit
But you’re responsible for upholding the same
Destructive force

Kept poor brown and black kids captive

There's poor brown and black kids dancing the schoolyard with chipped paint
Lead overflows their water fountains

They are told not to drink water.

Kids whose first meal of the day was stale rice krispy cereal
Kids whose only moments of serenity were only present during nap time.
Kids who couldn’t afford more than a pen and paper
And a soul.

My first beautiful memory was reading the
Magic Tree house
On the sunny steps of my underfunded schoolyard.

How I yearned to be like those little white children
Roaming on forgein land
Touching the stars with their bare fingertips

Meanwhile I burn my hands while playing with fire

At my elitist historically white college

The chandelier glows with every lightbulb
Staring at the golden rim I see myself.
I’ve never been fit for glitter or glamour
In my reflection I see my mother, the cleaner
Cutting her fingertips with sharp pieces of glass
I’m the worker at the front desk,
The cook at the grill
The janitor cleaning up your spill.
White faces pass me with entitlement and disgust.
I tell the worker,
To have a good day.
I tell the cook to give me whatever he can,
To relax his shoulders,
He doesn’t have to pretend.
I know he’s had a long day.
I tell the janitor,
I know how to clean after myself.

I see his tired bones shaking under the sun-like glow.
If the light fell differently, I could've been him

Wine bottles of my ancestors blood
feed you from their fingertips
My father was a farmer, constructor, labor worker So you Could be the next jeff bezos
So you Could ignore the houseless man on the street corner
So you Could act like “you worked for everything you have.”

Everytime I look at a white man I want to throw up.

I’m not sorry my school plays were made up of recycled and donated parts
I’m sorry that children at my school play with a broken dream and a future that was not made for them.
I’m sorry that I let you break me, just so you could have fun
Tearing me apart
Choosing parts of my identity just to validate and invalidate

“You’re smart for a girl who grew up in the hood”
Public housing was my best friend
The sirens on my street were lullabies
At the age of 5, I realized not all loud noises were fireworks.

For the child of an immigrant like me there is no
Teenage dream
I spent years looking inside those closed gates.
Silver and steel
Metal bars
Only this time you are praised if you can get in.

How can you explain
Metal detectors at school
More police than counselors
“50% drop out rate”
How can you explain
Life as a literal test you were never prepared for
Keeping the poor, poor and the rich, rich
Millions of dollars in debt
Just to have the bare minimum to survive
A vicious cycle of exploitation
They always tell the poor kid
“If you work hard enough you’ll get somewhere”
They never said we’d die getting there

I guess that happens when you are born into a world that simply wasn’t made for you.
I hate waking up and going to school
When people are being murdered
by the same system that made education another system of oppression
I hate waking up and going to a school that is directly responsible for that oppression.

So I stop telling myself I’m not enough
I stop telling myself that this world wasn't built for a girl like me

There’s a version of this poem where i drown in silence
Bite my lip
Hold my tongue
But not this one.

Jennifer Guizar Bello is a student at Columbia University.

The Beach by Chiamaka Kanu

October 27, 2023 Columbia Quarto

They say the eyes are the window to the soul but I think you can learn the most about a person
by looking at their hands. My mother says I have long nail beds. I always thought they were
short. Compared to hers, they are long. Did you notice that, in the car, I put lotion on my hands?
Preparing them to embrace you in the softest way I could. Did you try for me, love? I think of this
when I yearn for the soft sting of your touch.

Chiamaka (she/her) is a second-year at Barnard College studying Neuroscience & Behavior and English. She has been writing for as long as she can remember, starting with short stories, and recently found a home in poetry. She likes trying new things. You can find her on instagram @chichi.kanu.

Lupine by Ana Carpenter

October 25, 2023 Columbia Quarto

Content warning: implied suicide

Wake up and touch your face. Feel for fur, nestled behind ears, beneath your chin. Don’t panic—you knew this was coming. Don’t worry about your sister coming up the stairs, she’s not awake yet, not this early. You can feel the hum of the fluorescent lights tickling the hairs on the back of your neck. They’re innocent hairs for now, soft and downy. You are a bird waiting for the monster to emerge. If you tumble out of your bathroom nest of razors and toothpaste, will your limbs crack open? Will the fur, the fangs, the claws wrestle out of you? Step outside. Practice howling at the sky. How will you do it, when the time comes? Imagine the tilt of your neck, the snarl of your teeth. Lips curl back, blackened gums. Shriveled wolf girl howls are useless. You aim to terrify. Narrow your eyes and look through the trees. Out there, past the creek of lazy sweltering summer fame, past hawks cloaking their young with feathery wings, past the teeny-tiny doll that slipped from your jacket pocket on a family hike, you weren’t allowed to search for her, you couldn’t save her—past everything there is a lake. Don’t swim to the bottom. Don’t hover at the edge of the slick oily water and stare into the endless dark. There is nothing down there for you, nothing for wolf girls with claws and canine teeth. It’s okay to be sad. Soon no one will recognize you and you will not recognize the sadness. Somewhere there is a little bird girl at the bottom of a lake and she is not sad. Little bird girls shrivel away in bedrooms. Little bird girls crawl up the stairs at five a.m. and tell you they want to die. You rip her apart because you don’t know what else to do. Her brittle squawks mean nothing. Accept that the transformation is coming. Accept that your sister is not coming up the stairs. Snarl at the forest because this is your fault. If you run through the trees, eyes narrowed, you will find a teeny-tiny doll in a pile of gray-brown leaves. In the second-floor bathroom you will find yourself in a mirror. White toothpaste stains on the counter. When you howl into the bottom of the sink it will sound like wings.

Ana Carpenter (she/her) is a sophomore studying English at Columbia College. Originally from Chicago, she enjoys long walks and watching TV. You can find her on instagram @ana_carpenterr.

Five Seconds by Savanna Rust

October 23, 2023 Columbia Quarto

Smile with your eyes
and i will with mine
Crooked teeth and all
Tell me you’re hurting with no words uttered
from your lips, as swollen as they are,

I see your tea-stained pearls for teeth;
crooked smile and cracked vocal chords, bleeding
you’re bleeding and are trying to stop the blood;
these are your lyrics from a song unsung
a life unlived

Do you know the body holds so much of life’s pleasures?
a beautiful plausible purpose unknown to those with chipped teeth,
broken nails and fatigued eyelids
desiring closure every five seconds

One,
some have never known the capabilities of the human body
only the persephone

Two,
the pang of living plagues each moment
like clockwork with an empty feeling eroding the body of itself.

Three,
but if you smile with your eyes,
you cannot escape the transparency
fluidity
vulnerability the body has to offer.

Four,
that arrives when a stranger or two exchange your glance for theirs;
a momentary exhale

Five,
as no obscurities lie behind the eyes,
your pupils are brown, chestnut - even - like mine.

so smile with your eyes,
and I will mine

In black ink, I now conceptualize the divine ~

Savanna Mai Rust (she/her) is a sophomore studying Creative Writing and Film and Media Studies at Columbia College. She has been writing ever since she was little and has admired the works of Shonda Rhimes and Ava DuVernay and their contributions to Black representation on-screen or in the writers’ room. She also has interned at the NYCLU as she is passionate about the intersectionality between Black rights and the arts. She is the oldest of four and comes from a Caribbean, specifically Jamaican, background that has influenced her work and identity, as well. You can find her on Instagram @savannamaiart and @savanna_rust7.

I Am A Liar by Rahele Megosha

October 18, 2023 Columbia Quarto

I am alive and I am learning and I love my mom. Give me a moment so I can call her.
She is at church but she still stepped out to take my call. I am so lucky that when my
mom says she loves me and I say I love you too, she responds by saying I love you too
just so she can say it last. I am so lucky because I am 19 and I am alive and my sister is
my best friend who gives the greatest hugs. I am so lucky because my brother tries to
help me even when I get super stressed and take it out on him. I am so grateful I am in
school and have people that love me. People want to hear my voice. I am so proud of
myself for being alive. I am so proud of myself for living. Today is a day of reminders. I
am reminded that I have blood in my body and that I have survived. I am surviving.
I am alive.

Rahele (she/her) studies dead things and alive things and writes about both. She is constantly finding new disguises in her hairstyles, so don’t worry if you can’t find her…. Anyways, you can find her on Instagram @rahele.megosha.

The Imposition by Chiamaka Kanu

October 16, 2023 Columbia Quarto

I thought I’d never be able to break free

Why would I?

When living in the comfort of your embrace
felt so good?
Felt so right?
Felt free.

dandelion child by Rahele Megosha

October 15, 2023 Columbia Quarto

the house stood on old ground
the lawn still mud
did i grow from this ungarden? did she?
did we get mowed over every few weeks
relentless and unforgiving?
garbage bags of dandelions

but when there was nothing to resist anymore
when he left and she came back
i was as green as ever
clipped and crisp
beautiful and disgustingly uninteresting

now the soft dandelion lives inside
she is finally given care to nurture
unnatural yes
but she has transformed
and she is new

my orchid
how i miss you

Princes in the Tower (an unsent letter) by Natalie DiFusco

October 11, 2023 Columbia Quarto

Content warning: mentions of death and blood

Based on the murder of 12-year-old Prince Edward V of England and his brother, 9-year-old Prince Richard, Duke of York in the Tower of London

Dearest Mother,

I have become fossilized in a summer of stone,
a summer of waiting,
a summer of depravity

O Mother,
how I cradle his face in my hands,
for isn’t his smooth cheek that of a babe’s?

London planes beckon me with their spindly fingers
their leaves murmur, asking to brush against Richard’s golden locks
this scraping on glass, this mockery,
sends currents down my back, icy and unforgiving
a touch so unlike your own

O Mother,
show me your face once more
so that I may memorize the exact blue
that your pupil drowns in,
the blue that I am unable to carry on

My mouth is now acquainted with the tips of my thumbs
they point upwards toward a god
I release myself to him; I confess, I confess
and I dare not ask if he listens
do you listen?

O Mother,
where are you?
two months and seventeen days,
I was not yet able
to feel the gold dig into my skull
to feel the slight space between your hand and my back
before stepping into greatness

I remember our last day of true sunlight here:
in the garden,
the breeze knit itself between our fingers,
carried our light laughter,
a breeze whose absence is now noticed
the sun warmed patches of our skin,
stilled us
made us forget the cold dark damp
that awaited us

O Mother,
I promise Richard this:
whatever that may happen,
my body is his shield
whatever dagger that dare spill our blood
will spill mine first

We wait for the airy brush of black fabric
when at last, our fate is revealed
and the blackbird sings

Murder me, uncle, Lord Protector
place bones breaths boys in boxes, Lord Protector
splatter red for gain of purple, Lord Protector
tear nightgown tear innocence tear us away from a mother, Lord Protector
place us in a white dollhouse, Lord Protector
smear shit on my cheeks my chin, Lord Protector
make me do a dance make me a fool, Lord Protector
rip rave roar rage. race me, race me, Lord Protector
erase our names our bodies come August, Lord Protector
I will always be your predecessor, Lord Protector, King

Natalie (she/her) is a junior at Barnard studying English and French. She’s from Long Island and can usually be found among the trees in Riverside Park, listening to music. You can find her on Instagram @nataliedifusco.

Women in Reflection by Nina Halberstadter

October 9, 2023 Columbia Quarto

I was quite young when I saw my grandmother’s bare body for the first time.
She stood in front of the mirror and buttoned her nightshirt. I sat propped up with feathery
pillows that flattened into the wall on my side of the bed, the side where my grandfather once
slept. A breakfast tray in front of me with unfamiliar oatmeal growing cold and congealed
before my grandma learned to make it the way I liked it, with salt instead of sugar, which was
the way she’d liked it all along.

Her breasts hung low and large.
She was not embarrassed, but felt they warranted an explanation.
She told me how she was from a long line of women with bones too big, soft skin stretched too
far.
She used to stare at her own grandmother’s naked reflection, her big drooping bosom, her
stomach that cascaded down to her knees. She couldn’t imagine what a body would have to go
through to become like that.
She turned away from the mirror and gestured toward herself. And now, look at me!

The nightshirt was my grandfather’s too, the same shade of brownish red as our bedsheets and
her lipstick and the nosebleeds I sometimes got at night that left an invisible stain.

When he died, I don’t really remember. I remember telling my grandmother that I could be her
husband instead. I was in the backseat of the car while my mom drove us all over the train tracks
toward home. The sun was setting fast and I could not see the reaction on my grandma’s face as
she looked out the window of the passenger seat at the darkening sky.

My mom taught me that my grandmother’s breasts were bigger than they should be and that is
how she knew he loved her. At a steakhouse, or a poker game, or one of the select smokey
settings I could picture from their newlywed years in the 50s, my grandmother had pulled her
tight sweater away from her chest in shame. No, my grandfather had said. I like how you are.
This story passed from her to my mother to me.

I was quite young still when I cried for my own body for the first time. Aeropostale shirts my
friends wore that hugged too tightly to my tummy and pulled too long, down to my knees. I
remember girls comparing numbers on the scale in third grade and learning mine was too high,
learning my hunger was too great, learning thighs shouldn’t brush against each other when
walking and nobody else preferred their oatmeal with salt.

I wanted breasts that men would watch and tell me not to be ashamed of. But I skipped lunches
and they didn’t come. In seventh grade, I cried again because no one would love my feathery
chest that flattened into itself and refused to bloom. I cried for the black velvet dress my mother
gave me from her teenage years that couldn’t prop itself up. For the long line of big boned
women I had betrayed with my efforts to look nothing like them. When I squinted into the
mirror I saw nothing soft or familiar, only patchwork pieces to alter and mend.

My grandma died with a stomach shrunken from sickness, her appetite consumed by the cancer
that ate her from within. My mom said she’d been trying her whole life to get that thin. She
could never have imagined what her body would go through to become like that. The two of us
sat and wondered about the shapes we would take in heaven. We went through her jewelry
together and I kept her ring even though it slipped off my slender thumb and clattered to the
floor. I told myself I would grow into it.

I watch my mom in the mirror now, trying on beautiful linen dresses and saying she can’t believe
her own reflection. She claims she does not recognize the round stomach that raised me or the
cushioned chest on which I lay my head. She stares into the mirror and tells me she sees her
mother. Now, look at me!

I do look, and I see them both in the car in the darkness, reaching for each other’s hands with me
in the backseat.

Nina Halberstadter (she/her) is a senior at Columbia College studying Urban Studies and Public Health. You can find her on Instagram @nina_halbs and Facebook.

My Campaign for the Expansion of Crayola Crayons by Ashley Yung

September 19, 2023 Columbia Quarto

Crayola Crayons manufacture 120 colors,
and a child’s ability to dream is hindered here.
He or she finds themself drawn within
these bounds, their imagination detained to:

Goldenrod. There is the absence of night-time
in Fairfax, California, so when her mother does
not come home, she can pretend it’s been
one long day, where the valley never blinked.

It stared her right in the eye, Goldenrod, fitted
within the dust of its broad and trodden-down
shoulders. To tell this story is to conjure a photo,
without wind. Because of her, Crayola invented

...

Midnight Blue. In Russian, “blue” is too broad.
Their tongue insistent on the binary between “siniy”
(dark blue) and “goluboy” (light blue)¹. When we ex-
pand Crayola Crayons, we expand linguistics itself.

Midnight Blue is a color without company, it oozes
like watercolor, like watermarks on a page—the
sound of rustling in the garden behind my house,
which is different than Sky Blue: when a good thing

Happens, and we cannot trace back why it constricts
us. The opposite of tears falling freely, as the clock
strikes Midnight Blue. Crayola Crayon places
a vocabulary in our hands. Might not we shatter like

...

Antique Brass, since the Socratic Method was
designed for men². A long, long time ago, when
coloring books were regulated. When tests were
taken in black & white. Before a girl could turn in

A poem as an argumentative speech. And say here
is my campaign for the expansion of Crayola Crayons,
as a legacy. May someone have the language of forget-
me-not-red & broken-by-begonias & tearless ebony &
always yellow to express herself in such a way

Long after me.

Author’s Note: Goldenrod, Midnight Blue, Sky Blue and Antique Brass are all real Crayola Crayon colors.

¹ Winawer, J., et al. “Russian Blues Reveal Effects of Language on Color Discrimination.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 104, no. 19, 30 Apr. 2007, pp. 7780–7785, www.pnas.org/content/104/19/7780, 10.1073/pnas.0701644104. Accessed 18 Nov. 2019.

² Gersen, Jeannie. THE SOCRATIC METHOD in the AGE of TRAUMA.

Ashley (she/her) is a senior in Columbia College studying English and political science. Growing up meant realizing that she has a co-dependent relationship with summer and semi-colons. You can find her on Instagram @ashley.yung

To What Lengths Would I Go To Protect Myself? by Rahele Megosha

August 19, 2023 Columbia Quarto

i imagine not far // there is not much to protect // skin and soul alike mean little to me
// its you they serve and provide for // is it you that would gain more value by my heart
and touch? // is it you that shouldve been my shield? // can i survive without this
service // desiccation in mother cave // wilt without water // it feels dry // the air //
only for you my giver // i bloom // such is my only protection // from the silting of soul

Perfect by Sophie Askanase

August 15, 2023 Columbia Quarto

Writing in the sun n all of a sudden problems don’t exist
shadows illuminate the contour on my face n I am perfect
We are perfect
The walls between me n the world seem blurred ever since that acid trip
which maybe explains why I usually take on all problems as my own
But today,

Today, the sun is shining after weeks of decay
birds sing in the streets n I don’t wanna strangle them
first sip of my iced coffee’s the perfect temperature

Today, I’m reading someone else’s poems with pure awe n no resentment that they can cough their
phlegm on the page n the spit splatters form words in a way that makes sense
My blood is the same temperature as the wind that cradles my breast

Today, I don’t mind that they exist
That there’s no 9 o’clock shadow crawling up my cheek
No spider kisses for my lover
That I forget I don’t have
For the first time, I’m not trying to write a poem to be perfect
Because I know I am

I don’t mind the grass stains on my jeans
or that they’re tight from the extra 15
I don’t resent the way the sun amplifies through my glasses like they’re readying to turn ants to ash
or that I can see my reflection in my laptop screen
I don’t mind that I see my father’s nose n grandma’s eyes
but can’t see any of my Bunica
I forget I’m in the part of the country with no wild geraniums
or honeysuckles
Because when I make angels in verdant grass
dye my fingers a lush green n brown
I swear I can smell them
underneath the sultry scent of summer
(viscid rainbow icee chins
bounding for the jingle
sweltering tar n cigarette butts
salt n pepper pavement
cool in ur nose but hot on ur skin)
that I wish I could worship
because it covers up the smell of vinegar—that’s something they don’t tell you about gaining weight
I don’t think you could find me blind anymore
Do you remember
jump rope dandelion chains
wild raspberries in central park
crabapples in riverside
goats in the summer
raccoons in the winter
Are the ghosts in my closet
the same as yours?
Do you wish you’d never left
the only place where you’re too busy to forget the world is melting
Where you watch the ants march n don’t envy their simplicity
n single-mindedness?
Do you remember fishing in turtle pond
n only catching that one goldfish
again n again
Until its body rotted
n it looked more carrion than catch
Do you remember fairy watching in the rain
until our clothes were soaked through
because the pixies needed the respite more
or
Getting thrown into Lasker
until we could do the dead man’s float
without floaties

The tree’s fingers choke the sunlight n a kid scooters past n I see myself 15 years ago on my pink barbie
scooter in bright orange bike shorts
luminous, unabashed
frivolously ebullient
Skin my knee n still
I go on

Scooter skids into shadows
the very same that grip my figure so tightly
a tube of toothpaste about to erupt
turn my head n see ur teeth
know they’re forming a smile
cause u usually catch a glimpse
of my daydreams

c'mon
let’s get ice cream
watch it melt on our hands

hey
i wanna see you bite
the eyes off
the spongebob popsicle
please?

Sophie (they/them) is a Religion Major at Barnard, focusing on the intersection of Religion and Social Justice movements in America and liberation theology. They once were ranked 500th in the world at competitive Tetris and are an avid Dungeon Master. In their free time they draw, read, write, badly play guitar, collect records, take black and white photos, and make linocut prints.

Nightfall in a Motel by Ashley Yung

August 10, 2023 Columbia Quarto

In the convention of a Medieval Welsh poem.

Through valleys, thrive ghosts idly,
Jest fiddles justifiably,

Dens, logs and heated delight,
Snails grating against sunlight,

Stolen breath veils standing brave,
Now recant, clavicles newly concave,

Shudders hard—wished shadow,
Footfalls trepid, faults fill Bordeaux.

Dream Thief by Natalie DiFusco

April 19, 2023 Columbia Quarto

Content warnings: death, blood

To write down your dreams,
to translate them from mind to paper
is to steal
and I am a dream thief

I.
Fresh, drenched bodies
scattered among the living
on a long flatbed truck
extending beyond the honeyed Pennsylvanian hills

Some kind of mass drowning accident
and yet,
the silent are the dead:
an old man with a bloody nose
dims next to distant carnival rides
a young girl—blonde, hopeful—five miles from home
and I know she will never get there

You call me on my hot pink landline,
saying: I knew you’d want to hear this story
and I am the Ferris wheel
I am the hills
I am the burning, moldy lungs
and the fresh, drenched bodies will always leave a stain

II.
In late September my dead stepgrandfather but not by marriage though closer to me than my blood-related grandfather—did you know that the Merriam-Webster dictionary doesn’t have an entry for stepgrandfather?—is in front of me in a blue hospital gown in a blue hospital bed with cold, blue hands which caress my own he asks me to get him something but I'm having trouble hearing him “Sorry, what are you saying?” All smiles his touch turns coarse I smile back I’m holding on for dear life or dear death perhaps he doesn’t repeat himself again but I am more willing than someone who is willing less “Sorry, one more time?” His request slips with him he is turning to tiny grains of sand my hand is becoming dry and ashy this is ash not sand isn’t it “Do you need something still?” I’m talking to the black my grandmother moves cross-country and I remember that I forgot to say goodbye to him because I didn’t know that he was really dying but do you think he’ll forgive me for forgetting or for laughing during his wake because I didn’t know what else to do with my mouth?

III.
I sip into my whisky glass filled with Diet Coke
in the bathroom of a fancy Polish restaurant
and I laugh at my ugly twin in the mirror
it’s 2007 and a tornado has just hit Enterprise, Alabama

I’m not supposed to be here
my teeth are not supposed to sink into this soft, fleshy glass,
coating my tongue with sweet shards
but I am here, lone and dry-mouthed
500 miles away, wind speeds reach 170 miles per hour

Two women enter suddenly,
clad in flamingo feathers and mollusk shells
mumbling wrkótce, wrkótce
and I notice the pulsing blue light of the walls
in the next 30 minutes, nine lives will be erased by hot air and debris

The strangers’ slender fingers reach for my mouth,
harvesting my soda-tinted splinters
to carve, silently, into their bare earlobes
but when their red begins to drip,
there is nowhere for it to fall
in two days, President George W. Bush will view the resulting debris in a Marine Corps aircraft

I wonder if tornadoes know the truth of their destructive nature,
like how I wonder if I knew the truth of mine
when I was seven and knocked out my brother’s friend’s tooth with a plastic lightsaber
when stripped, am I any different from a temperamental high-speed air column?

I am now floating, alone again
four hundred and sixty meters stretch out before me
about half a mile below my feet, sweet Southern grass sighs
and a single pink feather explores its new surroundings like a hound
I serve death and obliteration and owe the city of Enterprise, Alabama $307 million

Natalie (she/her) is a sophomore at Barnard studying English and French. She’s from Long Island and can usually be found among the trees in Riverside Park, listening to music. You can find her on Instagram @nataliedifusco.

View from Here by Hanna Dobroszycki

March 31, 2023 Columbia Quarto

Quarto 2022 Chapbook Contest Runner-Up

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

Artist’s Statement

‘VIEW FROM HERE’ is the first draft of an ongoing project. It was written between NYC and Berlin.

Artist Bio

Hanna Dobroszycki (b. 2001, NYC) is a multi-media poet/artist. They major in English with a creative writing concentration at Barnard College.

Bones by Phoebe Mulder

March 27, 2023 Columbia Quarto

Well I heard some people
were made from stars. My mother
liked the hopeful songs. She drank
the sparkly wine and spun
my body round the living room
and how was I supposed to think
of bones when we were planets, in orbit?

I still remember when I bit
the concrete, asphaltish outside
the bus stop. Bloodletting, baby knees
are bloodier, I think. Sweeter, the whole
noon smelled of cherries, but I couldn’t
see the bones. So I didn’t think of bones,
because I was fruit, spilling juice
into a Powerpuff bandaid.

By the time I was a dogbone
on a boy’s front stoop, I knew about ribs.
I chewed myself, the slobber. I looked
like a stranger's bedspread and almost
meant it when I told my best friend
it’s a funny story. Well dogbones don’t
belong on stage. His stoop was a margin,
and by then. I knew it was a slatted rib, too.

Phoebe Mulder (she/her) is a first-year at Barnard College studying English, but please don't hold her to that. She loves postcards and snow in theory.

Requiem by Lida

March 23, 2023 Columbia Quarto

someone has died
it rumbles through the train tracks
on gravel's broken side
and
the caterpillars know it
they spin into white coffins
above the march of ants
with their hoisted rice shrouds

soon they will find the brass of your tongue
the bells of lungs
where beethoven lodged his 51st
and find snippets of sonatas trapped
in intestines and pancreas
in the treble cleft of her chest

and maybe
between the toes
in the frail cap of her knees
the crust and leaves will bleed
her songs

for even swallowed
by Earth’s green lips
she rests
a larynx
to sing God
to sleep

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 her Iranian culture and explore new creative boundaries in both Persian and English.