the juggler—winter 2012

art, literature, design 1the juggler

literature, art, designat notre dame

winter 2012volume 75

2 thejuggler•winter2012002 thejuggler•winter2012

art, literature, design 3

Thanks to the technologies of our time, we are continuously pre-sented with outlets for self-expression. This ability to reveal thoughts,

opinions, and ideas to a larger audience is the greatest power we have as intelligent beings. At Notre Dame, The Juggler offers stu-dents an outlet for their creativity, a timeless way for the student

body to interact with each other. Your fellow students have opened their minds to be read by their peers, so thanks for picking up a copy

of this winter’s Juggler. We hope that the contents will help to cultivate your own thoughts, opinions, and ideas.

If you like what you see and want to get involved, email [email protected]. If you would like to submit art or literature for our

spring issue, please email your works to [email protected] by Tuesday, March 20. Please see our website, nd.edu/~juggler, for more details.

Thanks for reading!

Katherine Fusco

letter from the editor

jordan bai

lauren fritz

is a bo$$.

loves how music and photography give everything

in life a little more sparkle.

untitled

taylor

oil painting by Jordan Bai

front cover

photograph by Lauren Fritz

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solitudephotograph by Becky Jegier

becky jegieris just trying to keep the boat steady as she sails wherever the wind may take her.


art, literature, design 5art,literature,design005

table of contents

art selections

literature selections

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008

011

012

015

018

024

027

028

cover

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004

007

009

010

013

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025

026

029

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untitled by jordan bai

taylor by lauren fritz

solitude by becky jegier

autumn by courtenay devlin

figure in polychromy by christina shannon

untitled by laura mcginn

girl with a hoop earring by jordan bai

la puesta del sol by becky jegier

saudade IV by shelby grubbs

cows by courtenay devlin

race by lauren kalinoski

untitled by shelby grubbs

tempus edax rerums by marina kozak

willow by lauren fritz

molten by david howe

punchline by sara mcguirk

newborn mute by katherine fusco

his journey into a far country by bryce taylor

academic daydreams by britt burgeson

bodies by leah coming

and then it was silent by joshua whitaker

among thieves by kim halstead

(hollow) by sara mcguirk


molten

autumn

david howe

courtenay

poem by David Howe

photograph by Courtenay Devlin

can dance in 27 different languages.

is not a typo. Her last name is devlin.

How do the flakes from waking twilight fallAmid the deep trees black. A’floating round,Then dropping fast —the brown up wound (no sound)Grain-wrapping loose the star danced speck, the shawl. The darkling vines do hold, how clear the callNow choking coals—smooth heat caress. They’re boundBeneath pull leather weeds, yet center foundIn last pent flare, the smelt reversing all. Well did my trees know darkness—owls mid hootAnd soil untouched. But swirls of flame becameTransfigur’ed inside the furls of rootAlighting leaves and bark alike. UntameThese souls of fire, of fallen pyre—so luteAnd song may greet the dawn, Orion’s aim.


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I’m the wit in madness,The spitting image of an actress,A two-bit fraud beyond the curtains,And when it dropsYour applaud made certain,I’m the character that wantsThe flaws that wroughtA purpose The shelled vesselSought, still, butFelt worthless,It was notMerely will,But her lone wish,The sole thrill ofExistence That crave To entertain This humorless pain,In a forsaken play,Courses through veins,The force of this crazeAnd, call it deranged,The toll keeps me sane,Because up on that stage —There—My soul is laid down

My whole self is slain,My whole melts away,For the role that I play —I’m the clown— I’m a novelty,With no intrinsic quality pastThe wrath of the first laugh, —I’m a sham—A human proven numb,Nothing more thanSome moment in an album,A reminiscenceOf what you thought wasSomething more thanSordid silence,The kind that risesIn my throat once,I’ve stifled my last joke—Until it’s dying— I’m alive inThe punchline,I’m a lie with pun entwined,Flesh and blood,Breath andThe byline:Spinelessly born,Stitched to perform,I’ll bow, you’ll adornMy rewritten life Don’t get too close,There’s nothing to know belowThis soul overthrown—By the role—By the lines,

punchlinepoem by Sara McGuirk



By the lightsIn my eyes,The script full of liesIn a human puppet’s mind And it’s no wonder why Once you’ve heard every line Damn right, you’d be sick of my show.

figure in polychromy

sara mcguirk

christina shannon

watercolor paintings by Christina Shannon

is an aspiring piñata designer with an affinity for festive violence. The vicious cycle of creation and destruction propels her merrily toward impending madness.

is a fourth-year arkie who appreciates a devoted friend, peppermint tea, a smart floor plan, and the word perspicacity.



untitledoil painting by Laura McGinn



newborn mutepoem by Katherine Fusco

What happens to what I cannot see?As a radio corpse

Hammered heartbeatThe book full of bullet holes

I took a static shock of words last weekIt punched my throat

Almost all the way down

katherine fusco

laura mcginn

believes in the luck of the whole rabbit, not just its foot.

is too short to fight the world.



his journey into a far countrypoem by Bryce Taylor

pietà: her palm pleads, Stop, now, stop — he’s dead;her fingers wrap around his neck to brusha beard unbathed fierce fingers plucked, a headthat thorns & mob-mad spit combined to flush.

stained glass: the island’s matchless scholar noosed;ten reasons scaffolded his bookish hopes;the cause of Becket, Fisher, More — reducedto corpses out of joint, discredit, ropes.

back pew: a book-encumbered young man kneels:dejected, doubtful, image-haunted, splitbetween the void his modern spirit feels& bone-deep guilt the void cannot acquit.

you tourists: turn away, or be engrossed —no glamor here, but England’s tortured ghost.

bryce tayloris a dead cat, or rather would like to be one.

girl with a hoop earringoil painting by Jordan Bai


art, literature, design 13art,literature,design013


la puesta del solphotograph by Becky Jegier



academic daydreamsprose by Brit Burgeson

brit burgesonlikes to nibble on leather letters,

dine on phonetic vibrations.

I wouldn’t tell my parents. I wouldn’t tell anyone. I’d stuff my journals, cameras, shoes, cases of

dew into the Subaru and drive through the stars. I’d traverse the Rocky Mountains, swim naked in

glacial streams; my clothes would smell like pine fires. I’d meander back roads; shop for beanie

babies at truck stops. I’d listen to the honey jar lady’s story. I’d mail myself letters and collect

library cards. I’d leave poems on diner napkins. I’d ricochet from café to café and fuel myself

on endless audiobooks. I would pole-dance for petrol. I’d get baptized in the swamps of

Mississippi. I’d stop speaking in semantic words with semantic meanings. I’d learn to like whisky.

I would drive to dehydration. Before California, I would disintegrate into cigarette night sand

sunshine ash dust freedom.



saudade IVphotograph by Shelby Grubbs



shelby grubbs’alter ego is Garth Algar.



Her sons scraped the tree branches with a bamboo stick and pecans rained on the double-wide trailer. Hitting the roof, peppering the noise of tip-tip-tump which scared the rooster from his perch in the tree. The boys wrestled a hundred pecans out of the sky.

Their mother sat inside, feeling up and down the crack in her foot and thumbing the split skin of her heel. Maddie’s thumb smushed into the crack, and she patched her heel with her thumb.

One part of herself was in another part of herself.

Maddie imagined that the crack grew so large that her fist fit inside her foot. Then the fissure would split her leg, and her arm would grope up to her stomach.

The pecans dented the roof and rolled into the wild lantana flowers. The boys fetched the pecans and banged their paper-thin shells on the butt of their palms. Pecan shell shards dug into their hands and hurt them.

Stop eating them, Maddie called from the window. Stop eating them or you’ll upset your stomach.

She slowly tore the ridge of dead skin—the hardened rind pulled off of her heel, and she put it in her pocket.

Tell your father to check that the gate is shut, she said.

He can’t, said Trevor. He’s sawing on the trees on the fence.

Maddie’s breath tensed up in her thighs—she ran outside in a barefoot fury, hobbling on unfit feet, hopping over the prickly weeds to the fenceline. Her husband was bent over the hand-saw, grinding away at the trunk of a sick baby tree.

Don’t, she said. I’ll have to buy thicker curtains for the kitchen and the bathroom and the bedroom. And that will only protect the inside! I’ll have to pin sheets to the barbed wire! I’ll do it!

Don’t be stupid, he said.

I told you that I need these trees on the fence.

They’re dying. Look. The leaves are completely yellow. If what they have spreads over the hun-dred acres, we’ll lose all the trees. The nuns are not more important than every tree on our property.

Paul—you know, she said. I won’t be able to be easy in my own yard or house. Don’t cut these trees down.

But Maddie’s husband tucked his handsaw into the wound in the trunk and pulled it back and forth.

Maddie pulled her stomach up and suspended it against her ribcage.

To calm herself, she imagined that she was in a refrigerated greenhouse, floating on her stomach over a lawn of mint.

If you floated over a lawn of mint, you could close your eyes and smell it without bruising the leaves and grinding the green oil into your fingerpads. This is the safest place that Maddie could imagine—a sightless place of smell. She

bodiesshort story by Leah Coming



would have erased the greenhouse and imagined herself in a colorless universe, a negative space neither white or black, but she liked the womblike feeling of the greenhouse.

Maddie took herself to a void that smelled of mint whenever she thought about how the nuns could now see her. There were only three of them—the Young Nun, the Fat Nun, the Old Nun—and their convent house was only a snap call away from Maddie’s house.

What do we need nuns for here? Maddie asked Paul from the hammock as he gutted a fish.

I don’t know. The only nuns I knew took care of homeless people, he said. But if I was homeless I’d walk to Austin and sleep on a park bench. You’d have to be an idiot to be homeless and stay in Schulenburg.

Paul threw the bowl of the fish’s guts into the firepit, and Maddie watched them fizz and melt. And if the fish’s cold, veiny tubes were to snake under the hammock, and curl up into her, and suction onto her insides—and if the fish veins were to river siphon her blood. Maddie closed her eyes and rolled onto her back to suppress the horrible, visceral pressing of her stomach against the netted hammock. To forget the fishy guts hidden under her bellybutton.

Paul said, I sometimes see them around the dirty neighbors. That breed the dogs and don’t feed them. Maybe the nuns are taking care of the dogs.

Paul smiled, wide-mouthed with his fish mouth, as he rinsed off his hands in the bucket that the perch had been swimming in.

Having never met the nuns, Maddie judged them based on observations from over the fence. They called the house a convent, but it was only a painted wooden house under a giant fig tree—only a painted house, like one a family might live in, but Maddie was sure that there was not a kitchen or a bathroom. Kitchens and bathrooms don’t belong in convents. Not even house-convents.

The night after Paul chopped down the baby trees, she heard their singing voices through the open window in her bedroom. Maddie crouched to listen to the limping chant, in which two quiet and tuneless voices were answered by one stronger. As she listened, she rubbed the hairs on her shin. They were not tapered and soft like on her arm, but prickly and blunt from the last shave—and—she squeezed one between her thumbnail and first finger and pulled, trying to uproot the un-graceful fur on her legs.

She imagined the nuns as balls of golden sound swirling around a white light.

To be a light. To be a part of the brightest light.

Paul opened the door and she stood up, guilty. She slid the uprooted hairs into her pocket as he sat on the bed and wiggled his boots off.

Hey, Paul said. I don’t want you to worry about the nuns so much.

I don’t, Maddie said.

I think you do. And I feel like you think they are judging us or something, for being together. But of course they aren’t. They know hundreds of married people.

Maddie said, That’s not it at all. That’s not even what I’m thinking.



She got into bed under the single sheet and smothered her eyes under the pillow. Maddie fantasized that she and Paul were water in the ocean and they were sucked up towards the sun but never, never fell as rain—that they were airy water drops floating in the sky.

Paul?

Yes, he said.

I feel dirty next to them.

You’re not dirty.

I know. That I’m not dirty. It’s just something like that. I feel—I don’t know. They don’t have to look at their tree or their cow or their chicken and say, that’s my chicken.

Of course they do, said Paul. They have a lot of chickens.

They spend hours thinking. They don’t belong to chickens. I don’t know.

Maddie, he said.

And then Paul crawled under the sheet and took the pillow off of her face. He softed his dry hand on his wife’s ears and traced the outline of her eyes, her nose, her mouth, her fingertips. The more comforted she felt, the angrier Maddie

became towards herself—angry for responding to touch.

She lay, a still body.

Maddie woke up when the cows and chickens did, but lay in bed while Paul opened the gates and watered the new burr oaks by the pond. She heard Trevor and Danny clunk about the house and then slam the back door.

This morning, Maddie imagined that a hundred flutes were fluttering on two notes that made a chord—and this fluttery chord was a wave that carried her into a pocket of cool air. But she must have slept crooked because there was a crick in her neck. Maddie could not forget her body.

And then, she heard the boys shrieking and giggling from far away. Maddie propped herself up on her elbows to check the window, and saw the boys on the other side of the fence, running behind the convent.

She sprung out of bed and ran down the metal steps leading out of the double-wide in her nightdress, holding her breasts still with a crossed forearm as she ran into the nuns’ yard.

cowsphotograph by Courtenay Devlin



Trevor! she hissed, as her older son came around the other side of the convent. Where’s Danny? Get over here. I want you to go inside and cover yourself.

But as she grabbed his little wrist with her free hand, Danny ran into sight behind a stream of water. The Old Nun was hauling a limegreen hose and catching the boy in the stream as she watered the azalea bushes and the fig tree.

Danny hopped over to his mom, water streams glittering on his little boy body.

Hello, the Old Nun said in a springy voice. I’m Sister Cecilia. I’m so glad to finally meet you.

The Old Nun walked towards Maddie with the snaky hose in tow, wearing green plastic gardening shoes under her black dress. She smiled and held out her hand to shake.

Maddie’s toes curled as she lowered her right arm from her chest—she felt her breasts swing out under the cotton nightdress as she shook Sister Cecilia’s hand. She held her lungs against her throat. Shame of shames. Her breath sat in the shame of shames.

The Sister said, the figs will be ripe to pick in a couple days. We’ll pick and can most of them to

distribute around the diocese. I hope you’ll let your two strong men come and help us out. We can’t reach the top ones. But I know these two are some good climbers. You boys can eat as many figs as you can fit in your stomachs, of course.

Sure, sure thing, said Maddie. Of course. Just call for them.

And she excused herself to walk back to the house, every muscle seized and flexed in self- conscious shame. She leaned her head into the corner of the bedroom, sitting on her haunches, and pulled hairs out of the back of her head. When she thought to look, she found a mat of hair sitting in the pool of the crease of her sleeping gown.

Maddie prepared herself for a duel to redeem her honor and dignity before the Old Nun. She stood in front of the mirror and scraped and scraped the dead skin on the ridge of her nose, but every scrape flaked off some skin but raised more. She rubbed her nose with a cloth and cold water to enervate the scaly flesh, but it always dried out after a few minutes.

Then, she picked a book and jumped on the hammock, sitting as sternly upright as she


leah comingis still thinking about it.


could in the floppy net. The book was chosen for a specially impressive effect, as she couldn’t pronounce the author’s last name. It had been Paul’s uncle’s favorite book, and Paul said it was about a man who writes angry philosophy underground and hates himself.

Maddie imagined that she was sitting in a white room with the nuns, and they were all on their knees with their eyes closed. But, not closed, for each of them would be peeking through slitted eyes! She would be the only one who could keep her lids nearly shut without fluttering and revealing her spying—she would be the only one who did not tremble on tense calves, did not adjust her weight on her knees! Maddie would be still and beautiful, like she was really talking to God, and the nuns would have their eyes open to see it.

Unfortunately, the nuns didn’t spy her from their chapel; they didn’t enter the garden to wit-ness Maddie in her triumphant hammock, postured with a book. They were not in the convent. Maddie wondered where they could be. They belonged in their house.

No, the duel landed on the trip to the butcher’s. Maddie had driven into Schulenburg proper to buy sausages at the tiny meathouse where some of her own beef was sold after being slaughtered and processed in town. She opened the jingly door to approach the counter, when—she saw the Fat Nun, and swallowed a gulp of air.

With all she could muster, Maddie positioned herself behind the Fat Nun in line and lifted her eyebrows with aristocratic indifference. The nun’s black habit was stretched out and ridged on her back, and spread taut over her backside.

This should be enough for 20 people, with small portions, said the quiet butcher.

That’ll be plenty! The families add up to quite a many people, but there are a lot of children, said the Fat Nun.

Would you like me to carry it for you?

Ah, that is sweet of you. But don’t worry. I’ll be able to get it on out. Thank you for your help.

The butcher pushed a huge, wrapped slab of beef towards the Fat Nun, who shouldered it on her side. Maddie recognized the tag on the beef as one of her own…one of her own cows that ate her grass and shit in her field and brayed in the morning while she lay in bed. As the nun turned around, she locked her deep brown eyes into Maddie’s eyes and Maddie—

Hiccupped.

The Sister smiled cheerfully and set off along the gravel road on the two mile walk back to the convent.

The blood ran to the surface of Maddie’s skin—she was the meat, blushing red.

Burning, burning she drove, smothered in the car with the windows shut and the air off, driving barefoot under a cloud-pressed sky. Maddie pressed her palms into the steering wheel on the bruised spot where she had crushed the paper-shell pecans.

Two losses, two—indecent shamings. No grove of cool mint or wave of fluttering chords could lift this present—pressing—skin or the heat of bodyness.



Maddie drove recklessly homeward, scanning the road for the Fat Nun’s black habit under the darkening storm-ready sky. She did not know what she would do, but—she would.

And then. A mass of black, swelling larger and larger, yes, in a yard, the dirty yard of Maddie’s dirty neighbors, the black habit darting around a gated pen. Maddie braked and shifted into park and pulled the keys from the socket and opened the door and ran across the ditch into the yard where the Young Nun crouched, arms outspread.

Can you help us? Maddie’s dirty neighbor called from over her shoulder, rubbing her underarm to soak the sweat into her shirt.

Both the women were creeping towards a vine tangle in the corner of the pen, slowly dancing their weight forward until the Young Nun lunged and a screaming chicken flew to the other side of the fence. The red bird hid in a forest of high grass.

The nun and dirty neighbor stopped to breathe. Maddie could see that the fabric on the Young Nun’s armpits were sweatstained and greyer than the black fabric of her habit.

We’re trying to catch him, the Young Nun said. Would you want to come on in and take the other corner?

Maddie nestled her foot into the wooden fencerung and, trembling, lifted herself over and into the chicken’s coop, a chaotic primordial tangle of yellow grasses and apple balsam vine.

Thanks, said the Young Nun. We’re trying to get her before the rain.

The three women formed a legion to close in on the hen—they edged in, gliding bouncelessly

towards the wire fence. At the point of entrapment, the dirty neighbor lunged full-weight into the grass, but the bird escaped between Maddie’s legs.

The rifle and cage were propped on the outside of the pen.

The bird fled under the gnarled mesquite tree, a weed tree, vulnerable under its browning fans of leaves. The women crouched even lower for the assault. The Young Nun was bent at the middle and ready to spring at the calves—her dress was hiked up and gathered slightly at the waist.

Maddie felt the stretch in her back and felt the tumult in her stomach. The dark grey sky settled a cool on the baked summer dirt, and the women moved in.

The red hen shouted. The women pounced on her—both the Young Nun and Maddie lunged together and trapped her under their elbows. The dirty neighbor ran to fetch the cage, and the Nun and Maddie loosed him at its door. The chicken panicked, hit every metal wall, and then the dirty neighbor shot him with the rifle.

Young Nun retrieved her black headcover from the grass and pulled it over her hair, smiling.

Sister, I thought it’s time you’d normally be at prayer, said Maddie.

The Young Nun smiled to the gums and brushed the caked red dust from her knees with rough, downward strokes.

Let’s help strip the bird.

Maddie followed the nun, moving easily as the red earth plugged the cracks in her bare feet.



After days in the city when we would fight it,wrap ourselves in Rembrandt radio beats andignore the car horns and curse words cropping up between songs. It crept into the walls made weak by the insults hurledby the couple next door, bouncing around the corners,bruising each other’s backs and the sides of their facesand settling with an unsettled reverberation into the plaster. The dry wall crumbling: the noise seeps in with the rats and the water damage.The pipes begin the clink and to clang and the radioa croaking disharmony laid over cold radiator rhythms. And we try to outrun it.Mom carries boxes on her hip.The suburbs seem still. But you were there, and you knew the deafening echoesof prayers murmured in the places where the music stopped.And, prayers sound like sobs through doors closed in the dark. I thought you sounded like angels singing in that drain pipe,a chorus of voices, trying so hard to sing harmonies to yourself.I knew you didn’t go home, and your home was no heaven. You let your tones flit about strong and mournful melodiesbecause your languid voice could form no words and, back then,language was a parasite feeding on bodies with no music. Your father pounds his fist against walls.You weep out of key.You cannot just spit it out. By high school, you could tear words off the bone with your teeth andravage conversations, beat topics unconscious with your tongueand, embarrassed, drag them back home into your gullet to keep. We had to shout over the crickets crescendoing brittle rattle snake shakesbuzzing and bellowing sweet love ditties scratched out in three-eighths time tothe beat of our feet in the dirt and our heartdrums quiet and out of rhythm. We took candles into the woods. Swallowing little flickering lights,we spat out fireflies and sang to them what we couldn’t say out loud.

and then, it was silentpoem by Joshua Whitaker

joshua whitakercannot confirm or deny a God

Quad cattle call or the persistence of the Southern hippie.



Our words rose like embers, went out like sparks in the air. Your hand runs up the dashboard.The engine churns.We make a cacophony of love. We noticed the shapes we rubbed into the dew on the window.We see the horizon tainted with light.We lie. And it was silent.Everything is silent.

racephotograph by Lauren Kalinoski


lauren kalinoskiwill never eat Blue Bonnet

butter again.


untitledphotograph by Shelby Grubbs



among thievespoetry by Kim Halstead

kim halsteadis a scarf and pasta enthusiast.

you say there’s honour among thievesa sort of singed camaraderie

a sort of drunken shove underwatera sort of hush below floorboards

i can’t sleep anymore, you whisperthere are patterns of the concrete in your forehead

it’s a hard life, but ithas its own rewards

which i haven’t been able to figureand you won’t tell me so

i decide to point out how the dentslook kind of like a map of the ny subway

you say there’s honour among thievesa sort of shotgun trial togethera sort of firing squad resolution

a sort of roulette between friendsbut what about the honour of

queens, saints, czars, lovers,liars, soldiers, geisha,

monsters, beggars,frycooks,

can we all be right? i askand you, honourable thief, remain silent



(hollow)poem by Sara McGuirk

Struggle between the wants and needs,The haunts of thoughts unseen,Waking worthlessly from the internal dream (Of self-conviction)

A push and pull deeper than theSlip that meets the eye,As if between fingers, In the subtle hollow no one thinks of,The space in the spreadOf a reptile’s webbed gloves Where—upon the intellect—there is nothing, but (A gap) Shaping purposeIn the shell of another self,A hollow eternally vacant,In sight yet out of mindAn emptiness un-likeThe infamous (Birthright) Of life’s emergence—Perverted—Or perchance... (Glamorized)



marina kozakmade this.

tempus edax rerumsdrawing by Marina Kozak


30 thejuggler•winter2012030 thejuggler•winter2012


willowphotograph by Lauren Fritz

The Juggler is a semiannual student art, design, and literary magazine of the Notre Dame community. It is printed at Ava Maria Press in Notre Dame, Indiana. Editorial and/or business correspondence should be addressed to: The Editor, The Juggler 315 LaFortune Student Center Notre Dame, Indiana, 46556The Juggler can also be reached via email at [email protected]. Poetry, short fiction, essays, art, and design are accepted at any time (preferably by email). The material in this publication is protected by copyright and may not be reprinted, copied, or quoted, except by specific written permission. The opinions expressed in The Juggler are not necessarily those of the University of Notre Dame or the student body.

colophon katherine fuscoeditor

sara mcguirkassistant editor

amanda carterart & design directorgraphic design

bob franken ’69advisor

robert sedlack ’89design advisor

writing selectionmolly shankaubrey buttsmaria fahsalex budzclaire kucelahayley evanserin portmankim halsteadchristian coppamarissa frobessian kresse

art selectionamanda carterkassandra randazzomia swiftlina delmastro


the juggler—winter 2012

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