hello friends,

first off, we want to begin with a huge thanks to all the folks who submitted their work to this zine: many of our contributors took time to process their experiences while still abroad, others willingly went back in time long after they had left that headspace -- in both cases, we know it isn’t always easy to share honest reflections, and we appreciate the effort and time spent that made this publication possible. as many of our contributors would probably echo, we also feel very thankful for all the people whom we learned, shared, bore witness, and discovered with while living abroad. there were a lot of people who fed us, and we feel so full. we wanted to create this zine as a way to keep in touch with friends far away and scattered across the globe while also tapping into a creative element we felt we were missing in our new environment. we wanted a space where we and others could share stories about the beauty and richness and difficulties of living somewhere new; wanted to create something tangible in order to explain what often felt so inexplicable and decadent. the night/day theme is our way of starting a conversation about time and all the things we try to do with it: making it last (and watching it go); traveling through and with it; spending and taking it; sharing and stopping it; reckoning with its differences. the layout reflects our reverence for cycles and the ceaseless consistency of dawn + dusk, sunset + moonrise. it both acknowledges how deeply grounded we are by this process and gives a nod to to the old cliché of people across all geographies gazing at the same moon.

we hope you enjoy reading and sharing the following stories. görüşürüz!kaela + barb

Cover art: Pernilla Persson, 2014

night : day zinespring/summer 2014

initially inspired by and created in istanbul, turkeyand finished in portland, maine and hastings, new york

Table of ContentsK . C . E U L E R N I C K S T E V E R S O N S HA NA WA L L A C EB A R B A R A VA N D E R B U R G HK . C . E U L E RJ AY E HA R D E NA N O N Y M O U S C AT E B AT T E YJ A M E S O N J O N E SE L I Z A K A P L A N J U L IA N N E H O P K I N SG R A C E P E Z Z E L L AK A E L A S A N B O R N - H U MNA O M I H O R N S T E I NB A R B A R A VA N D E R B U R G HK . C . E U L E RG R A C E P E Z Z E L L AE M I LY P O L S T E I NK . C E U L E RA S H L E E N O ’ B R I E NJ A M E S O N J O N E SG R A C E G L A S S O N

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NIGHT

K.C. EULER

3

NICK STEVERSON

4 5

It’s been a long day and I don’t know if I’m ready to let it go yet. I brought my computer out to my bal-cony because my room was hot and full of my stuff and outside is clear and dark and smooth and calm, even for facing such a busy street. I’m scraping fingernails under ratty t-shirts and pressing fingertips into sore shoulders, looking for a place onto which I can hold. Every time I crack my toes I feel the pressure release and grab onto joints and sockets and the streetlight on the street up the mountain from my house just flickered on. It is 12:59, the taxi trufis are home for the day and I wish it was raining and I had some cigarettes, but maybe not at the same time. I feel comfortable with your hand between my legs. I want to scrape the graffiti off the wall in front of my front door because if the rest of this street or city knew how hard my mom worked to get here, this house would be made of diamonds. I’m going to miss your arms and your sleep and the space of air between our mouths. I no longer want to hug street dogs. I have no time left here and the thought of this and that and leaving them and leaving you and the shivering of the tree in front of me confuse my body to a state almost like relaxation. When I reread this in the morning, I will not delete it.

SHANA WALLACE

Pockets

6

BARBARA VANDERBURGH

7K.C. EULER

I have travelled so longthat I have forgotten the way

home feels restingon the tip of the tongue;

already forgettingthe loneliness of living alone,

being torn, umbilical scar,the pain of becoming

without any witnesses.

8

tonight i decided to memorize you

*

i dreamed a wolf ate youskull opened like a hinged boxinside it was clean and whiteno blood no poems no gardensi hardly knew it was you

*

i dreamed my teeth fell outcrumbling avalanching out of my mouthlately, there has been blood too

*

you must be careful with me

*

I dreamed of black cat guardiansof butterflies’ huge jewel wings, scatteredon desert ground--like that dreamElizabeth had that spring, the cicadaswith jewel-eyes embeddedin exoskeleton sockets--i started to pick up thewings. I like collecting beautiful thingsand I especially like collecting win

9

but then the cats came outof the nightswarming quietly. i put the wing-jewels back in the dust, understanding.

*

maybe everything starts in the body

*

i dreamed i found a butterflydead and pale, the lightest purpleblue, almost white, too delicate. ipicked it up. i was carrying it around butthere was wind and people jostlingand the butterflywhich kept turning into a flowerwas coming apart, wing-petals falling offi was worried only the bodywould be left

JAYE HARDEN

10

Nighttime Thoughts.

I want to be loved. More-so, I want to be in love.Why?I’m mostly curious.Will all the songs, books, television shows, and movies depicting love live up to the hype?As a girl who was born eternally skepictal, my thirst for the unknown seeks to be quenched.

I want to find out what type of lover I’d be.Will I be the insecure girl who patrols her boyfriend’s every move?Will I openly share my relationship on social media?Will I pretend to be OK even when I feel like a hot mess?Will I be honest about how I feel or hide behind a façade of cool detachment?

What kind of lover will I be?Kind, forgiving, compassionate?Cruel, mean-hearted, vitriolic?Questions that constantly swirl through my mind leaving behind trails of multi-coloured dust.

I long for the obscene passion associated with love. The giddiness, the eagerness.The touch of a hand, a cheek. A brush on the thigh.The subtle movement of body-parts that come to mean so much more.

I want to know what heartbreak feels like. To yell, “I don’t need you!” and stomp off with gusto.To dodge phone-calls and text messages.To have my heart broken into a tiny million pieces that can only be put together through my love and devotion to God.

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Who do I want to love?A boy becoming a man, just as I am a girl becoming a woman.Someone who appreciates my voracious interest in the world that was and the world that currently is.

Someone who can lose themselves in television, and music, and movies. Someone who will hold my hand, gently touch my neck, get lost in the curve of my hip, the undersides of my thighs.

Someone who loves to laugh, whose eyes crinkle as they smile as if their entire body is putting effort into that universal expression of pure joy. Someone who radiates positivity.

Someone who has a deep love for God that comes before their love for me.Someone who strives to be good. To treat others with fairness and compassion. Someone, someone, someone.

Is there a guy out there for me?Time leaves imprints of doubt and anxiety on my mind.Social expectations.Age limits.Questions filled with condescension.Questions filled with pity.What’s a girl to do?

ANONYMOUS

12

I Never Made It Past Pre-Calc, But The Way I See It*, It’s Like

IT =

Then, you know, you

P E M D A S.

So, put simply, it’s like

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IT =

If it had numbers (real ones, not imagined) (but imagine they are real), it would be a fraction. With lots of repeating digits.

But, you know, Perhaps Equating Moments Doesn’t Always Simplify (them).

Because every *experience is relative. Infinitely (∞).

PerhapsI should have studied Physics.

CATE BATTEY

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I.

I’m in the campoI’m in the campoI’m in the campowhereI lie suspended inhammock—or quasicocoon—like somefat grub plucked by pájaro.

Beethoven’s fifth sifts through,coagulating 6:30 laughter,then melting 6:45 ice,with fervent prayers to the

drip

drip

drip

of metronomic faucet.

II.

In sky like luna llena,o luna llena, which bearsdown through trees and roofright up to faceand through my blood with that

Muchacho

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bigboldquestion:

WHOAREYOU

the one asked by princess eyesor those of a six year oldhomestay sister in her pink disney gown,a little like disney’s carroll’s caterpillar,a little like carroll’s fat grub likehow I am in my hammock,like how I am the yinto carroll’s caterpillar’s yang.

III.

Come meet me where I am twenty,in the mountains of Nicaragua,in a small flat circle of fresh maza,where I’m pounded rhythmically into a diamond.

JAMESON JONES

16

I.

In Habana,rain falls in droves.

Your hands, slicing downpour.My hands, Havana Club.

And then that man,the one with eyes,who gestures with hands.

“Dreenkeen,” he says,limbs signaling a swig,and I shout in response“¡Sí! ¡Tengo ron! ¡Tengo ron!¡Y voy a tomarlo!”

II.

Two blocks in from the Malecón,no one talking to me.

III.

I am lord of this rain,one with the downpour.

I ONLY DRINK RAIN OR HAVANA CLUB; ANYTHING ELSE WOULD BE UNACCEPTABLE (DREENKEEN)

JAMESON JONES

17

I want to sing or scream or roar,but before I can do so,before that initial tremor,that first seismic movementthat starts in my vocal cordsand rises up over catedral,up over capitolio,up over the nightly cannon blast-off,I melt under pummeling rain:50 parts cement,40 parts rain,3 parts blood,3 parts sweat,3 parts piss,1 part me.

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When poet, lecturer, and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson was asked what peo-ple would do if the stars came out only once every thousand years, he replied,

“If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years, how man would marvel and stare.”

Building on Emerson’s response, author Paul Hawkins, in a commencement speech to the Portland University Class of 2009, said,

“If the stars only came out once every thousand years, no one would sleep that night, of course. The world would cre-

ate new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious… “Instead,” Hawkins lamented, “the stars come out every night

and we watch television.”

ELIZA KAPLAN

19

I’m sitting in the hostel bar at the Isle of Skye, watching the man dancing by himself. He is at least in his late seventies, dancing enthusiastically to the solo guitarist by the back of the bar. I’m sitting at a table with a group of people I met yesterday. They’re friendly and enthusiastic, but have been talking about the World Cup for the past twenty minutes, of which I know precisely nothing, except that when they say “football” they’re talking about the round one with the black and white pentagons. The girl across from me is drinking a gin and tonic, the other three are drinking some sort of over-priced local beer. These three are playing a drinking game that only two of them know is happening.

The hostel is called “Saucy Mary’s,” and there’s a painting of Mary Queen of Scots flashing her breasts at anyone who walks through the door. The ocean is just across the street, and tomorrow morning I’ll walk down to the water with a Dutch girl and she’ll crouch down and look for shells. Every time she finds one she’ll get excited and hand it to me. Then she’ll find another one and get excited again, each one more spectacular than the last. Later, it will snow. The Spaniards and Australians will be very enthused, and I’ll rub my hands together and wish I’d thought to bring gloves.

There is no one else dancing but this man. It is possible he is drunk. Or that he passed the point of giving a fuck years ago. Or both. He’s a very energetic dancer. The music now an even-tempo afterthought, his arms and legs and hands flaying around of their own accord. Many people in the bar have noticed this man, they’re smiling and pointing and I suddenly wonder if he’s done this before. I wonder if he lives here or if he’s just passing through, I wonder if anyone else is wondering the same. He is at once uncomfort-able and admiral to behold. I pick up my glass and notice a ring of condensation settling on the table. The man suddenly spins wildly as I sop up the moisture with a napkin, trying not to leave an impression.

JULIANNE HOPKINS

20

Growing Pains (or, Liminality, pt. 4)

When it rains in Bangkok cockroaches skitter through the streets in drovesbut I stay in bed,watching the cool light from thewindow of my brokedown hotel room clean the dirt of two long monthsfrom what I thought I knew about a place.

I left Asia the way I came,feeling loved, too full of light and heart to stay still any longer,but more tired, more weary,same same but very different.

I fell in easy-wonderfulto the rhythm of our own languageand to go without endingfeels like cutting off a fingerwithout realizing there’ll be blood.I find myself again in this familiar pattern of leaving sparks and shadowsin places I can’t get back to,the liminal spaces whereanywhere can be homebut not really.

It’s a hymn to exploration, then,because if we’d never stumbled through Hanoi in the mist,danced across those rice fields by moonlight, washed up on the only pristine patchof shore a manufactured island heldlike a secret,then leaving you,leaving this minute of my life,would be a welcome return

21

to the warm embrace of twenty.

But here I am in transitheaded east towards everything I love, except those nights on the dock, skinny dipping in the Kampang, counting shooting stars by the handful,I love those too, and they got left behind.

You’ll find your mountains,and I’ll retrace the paths of mine, and it’s a great and beautiful grace that there is so much love to scatter across the roof of the world,along every dirty river,down each alley and back again and instead of shattered,I feel boundless.

It’s a strange thing, knowingnothing so precious can keep,or else it wouldnt be worth clawing for.But weighed against the curve of the earth, stuck as I am in perpetual middayon the wrong side of my beloved home, The happiness I went east to find mattered, and it was a pleasure to grow with you.

GRACE PEZZELLA

22

may thirteenth

we sat, knees grasping at one anothercold fingers tightly laced in your lap.our bodies submitted to the licks and bites of a late spring wind from the blues of the bosphorous.

she rose above us giving birth to duskclouds hanging low,she followedthe arc of a predestined path.we, trapped by our own imaginings, could only minutely understand the full spatial, galaxy gloryof her rounded curves, a bright geometryreminding us of our impermanence.

we rode the backof this white metal whale body,big and unwieldy, benign in nature,bumping gently between kadiköy and kabataşagain and again.

to the west,orange washed a day skya mosaic of blue, white and tangerinehailing to the east.a greeting and a goodbye.

23

we rode this white whalesitting on the tail,waves and foam following our path acrossa watery night.

I laughed and laughedincredulous, bursting, unknowinglyworshippingat the great sight of her watching us cross from one side to the other,wrapped in each others bodies hoping never to descend fromthis sea creature secret.

As kadiköy became more distant,she only grew brighter,unwavering in her soft yellow stareand for awhile we became suspended in the depths of sea and skywith only the seagulls,flocking and squalling,as witness to our becoming.

KAELA SANBORN-HUM

24 25

DAY

NAOMI HORNSTEIN

26 27

IN APRIL I WROTE A POEM EVERY DAY ABT THE SAME GODDAMN THING

İstanbul streetglow. My neighbors bangon pans w wooden spoons in solidarity with the menand women on the streets below, clad in water bottle teargas masks + VISION.

Lady Bosporus glinting, Mediterranean coastshimmering – Yaz says, “sea glitter’s got me weak.”

Patlıcan welts crawl up my neck day after day,all new and fresh, until i wake up + finally decidei’m going to have to become a ‘scarf person.’

TIME AS CURRENCYthe metro shuts down at MIDNIGHT.i sprint past a trail of blood, dried,on the escalator—11:48 PM. ONLY ONE STOP,AT LEAST, between Osmanbey and Mecidiyeköy.

JAN TO JUNETHREE TO FIVE FULL MOONS HAVE RISEN:a fresco’s halo lifted up to flashlight,

she standing in the foreground just enufto deify the flowers we picked together,

iris glint green and goldand green again (not dangerous)a lighthouse (not safe)a garden (just as it shld be)

NIGHT AS GENTLE DAYDAY TRULY the blanketand night: possibility

the confident Deep Voice of Night-Timeexplains (from the Whirlwind): you will not stop, you will not SEE you will not SMELL these roses. You will not lock, seal, fuck, feed, sedate (w ill- formed expectations) these roses.This is GOOD.

Appus says February dragged, and Aprilescaped even as we clung to it, wrapped our hearts around and swallowed it.

Bulgarian milkweed would not stay in-frame for me, but still I devouredeach feather whole.

28 29

She turned for her camera as we passed a singlefield of yellow wildflowers, unable to steadyhand in time. This is GOOD.

A lemon tree lit w thunder—I curledsick w nightmare and love on the AegeanCoast, she not snoring (but not unsnoringeither). Single slides of uselessroses pass in fever dream night visions.

Motionless, brilliant roses—

languid and uncaring in theirpotent wildness. These months we’ve shared we all brilliantly shared.

Hands wrinkled and chapped from my time with and inside ofand slowly rocking open the sea. Laboring with instead of for.

TIME AS PERFORMANCEa BOUQUET of reds hurled at my feet on-stagea lady Bos strait sea of red white yellow pink

these brilliant months we’ve all shared pluckedfrom its crawl up the neighbor’s doorframe

plucked quick and still alive,

growing, even now, out from my hole-riddled shoes growing, climbing up my throbbing, greenhouse heart

into hamamsoft open hands, into our shared last meal of nine, into the last hesap and görüşürüz into finally mother night— the blanket charcoal womb of peace herself.

BARBARA VANDERBURGH

30 31

Rainy Ride 4

K.C. EULER

Flying Lessons (or, Liminality, pt. 2)

It’s one a.m. where you areAnd I’m sitting on the otherside of the world thinking abouthow you look in a baseball cap. I guess I didn’t realize you could love someone without knowing, that if you traded their driveway fora foreign Tarmac andwashed the traces of their fingertipsfrom your delicate wrists, You’d feel like someone stole your shadow. I miss your laugh like a slammedscreen door on a stagnant July afternoon, your voice as familiar as the crackle on dear, sweet vinylwhen we’d drink late night beers by the kitchen sink.I miss your fucked up teethand your freckled armsand the way you knowexactly why the right cup of teacan break my heart.

But here I am, earning my callouses, living in shades of saffron, feeling for only the second time in my aimless, rootless lifethat where I am

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is just where I should be.It would be so easy here, of all places, where the dark hills buzz withthe promise of the beautiful unknown,to curl up into my missing you, to crawl back into the memoryof that breathless night by the lake, to close my fingers around the taste of your cooking.

And yet. It’s never been within my bounds to do what is easy.

So here I am, tanned, tired, tessellating between every phase of growing up, and happy like the last day of August when the wind blows forone minute and suddenly, there is fall, thinking about what you look likein a ball capand hoping you stretch out with the dawn,drink in the calm of morning, and miss me like your breath.

33

GRACE PEZZELLA EMILY POLSTEIN

34 35

Retrouvailles

the joy of a return, of meeting again after a long time apart. I like to wake up to the smell of banana pancakes, take long walks without a destination, photograph things no one else noticed. I drink coffee, read a newspaper, read a book, write a poem, write a letter, just write, and think of you. I travel for so long I forget what home is; return home, remember everything I forgot to miss, and write down all the words.

K.C. EULER

Driving past the place I used to live, a part of me aches for that youthfulness, that time before my hope grew arthritic. But mostly, I miss being too young and smiling too easily. I have become a nomad, chang-ing my cities like skin. There is a man on the train next to me, holding his daughter against his heart, whispering the names of things as they disappear in a blur. He knows the names of the flowers and clouds and seeing that youthful bloom of her cheeks grow golden with the sleeping sun, I ache with nostalgia. I wonder if years from now I will pass her in the street when she will be too different for me to recognize. It is miserably cold, yet I feel nothing of this weather. I wonder if you feel numbness or if you simply be-come it. The morning fogs the window and the girl rubs her hand insistently across the glass, fingerprint-ing a looking-glass to the outside world.

K.C. EULER

36 37

ASHLEEN O’BRIEN

Untitled (How Does it Feel?)

I was alone in a buildingin Managua, in the bathroom,on the toilet if you must know,when a 6.4 quake rumbled through.

Álvaro, meanwhile, was20 days old, in 1972, whenhis mother raced him outof their collapsing house.

Or Mamita, perhaps, whowas at Mercado Orientalwhen the earth opened in ‘72and she saw the Somozan inferno.

D’angelo was playing on my ipodwhen I sat like a Buddha,or a deer, vaguely confusedby 10 strong seconds of shakes.

JAMESON JONES

lost in the amazon--“adventuring, EXPERIENCING”thinking only of sitting in cafes with you.

BREEZE DRIFTIN ON BY, YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL

Wind whipping face,cheeks chapped in sun,ripples into fucking infinity.

I can see fucking infinity,said John Keats, but Ionly see ripples, likeRussian-dolled discsinto what could well benever-ending, mirror onmirror into fucking infinity.

Or perhaps just into brainor heart, echoing, neuron,

ventricle,

pulse.

To get to Orinoco,one must go by panga.I was in a pangawhen I forgot about you,body racing over water body,body racing over 2-ton blue,2-ton blue to me in years.

I’m a speck on a globeor a drop of dye in a godi bowl.

YOLO, said John Keats,and I look at the wavesas they ripple into fucking infinity.

JAMESON JONES

38 39

- Anne Carson, “Autobiography of Red”

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epilogue

“i loved and left, but it does not mean i’m gone”

at first it’s “wow, i can’t believe yr here!” and “i know me too!” then “i guess we’ve never really been friends in america...” and suddenly “i can’t believe it’s been almost two years.”

this is roe and i sitting at their kitchen table in portland seeing one another for the first time since mean-dering along utrecht canals and running through dark berlin streets and giggling in a everen and anke’s kitchen in prague and making our own halloween in krakow

there’s almost too much reminiscing it’s making me see spotsthe way your eyes would make splotches when you pushed yr fingers into your eye sockets as a kid“floaters”all the floaters that roe and i resurface together cloud my vision with a clarity:

we found something that iveta told us wasn’t real.

she said,“you will have this time together.you will love it.you will leave.”

while we’ve wavered in consistencyalmost to the point of … nonexistencywe keep ourselves afloat in other puddlesand wait for our long-lost european pals to swoop in when they can

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the friendships we were making across the worldas our parents slept or skyped with questions of classesas our homeland professors missed us without missing usas our longstanding friends had their own adventures and sleepovers and mini-keg standswere ones that felt easy and (im)permanent -we get together when we can.i pick up each moment hurriedly,devouring it and keeping it locked in the pit of my stomach before it’s even over.the closenesses are precious like the small stones mel puts in her pockets every morning before working in the fieldsfor protectionfor strengthfor calmnessfor fertility.-roe visited me too. they left notes in my bed like “you have a warm energy. you radiate sweet fabulousness.”instead of putting them in my mouth like hard candies and rolling them, clicking them, sucking them into nothing i taped them to my dresserso i see them every morning and keep that far away land close enough to kiss.-when i first came back to the states after four months traveling from western to eastern europe i grievedfor the loss of friends and distance, freedom and excitement.i plastered my small, sloped room at the top of the blue house with all of the paper memories i had collected and held tight to in order to remember it all scrupulously:maps, tickets, flyers, photographs, postcards, notes,even receipts.

i lived in a box of curling paper that only reminded me,“that changed me.i loved it.i left it.

it’s over.”

now.there’s less plaster, paper, and so less curling and grieving.i’ve replaced the urge to get back to exactly where i waswith the desire to remember my experience as full and round and satisfying,just like my belly after a plate of pierogis in kazimierzwhile two middle aged men played accordion and keyboard,singing into their scruff or their beers or the worn wood floor.

so i keep roe’s notes and i hide thirty-six prague metro tickets, my ukulele receipt from that utrecht music store, and all the maps i picked up along the way in a box under my bed.and i remember my friends as they wereand as they are.

roe and i eventually stop reminiscing and talk about our currents/futuresjobs, apartments, plans, (in)significant others.this feels right. -my mother always said“traveling together makes you grow together”it’s never been truer.

GRACE GLASSON

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cheers motherfuckers

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