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O R P H E U S A R T & L I T E R A R Y M A G A Z I N E F A L L 2 0 1 3

REGRET Jed Helmers

AIRPORT STREAMS Ethan Klosterman

S IT, STAY Mara Kalonski

2012 ELECT ION PANELS Lauryn London

CAROL INE Jed Helmers

A MOMENT IN MISOGYNIST BULLSHIT Sam Hamilton

BLUE Adrienne Lowry

I THINK YOU GOT ALL THAT YOU CAME FOR Niky Motekallem

THE HILLTOP AT THE END OF THE WORLD Sarah Yedlick

STACKS OF T IME Adrienne Lowry

DOOR Jed Helmers

BLUE FUSE Stephen Brown

PERSONAL LOGO & BRANDING ELEMENT Rachel Kapicak

SPACE BETWEEN Josh Chamberlain

CANOE FOR TWO Jill Pajka

DES IGN SCIENCE: THE EVOLUT ION OF L I FE IN THE PALEOZOIC ERA Madeline Herbert

Contents

—OLOGY, —PHOBIA Mara Kalinoski

R IGHTS.R ITES .WRITES Rachel Kapicak, Jenny Watercutter, Sam Bidwell, Matt Weiler

HI Ann Marie Cardilino

SCUM FOR D INNER, SECONDS Joy Hamilton

P ICK UP L INES Stephen Brown

BREEZES Kelsey Mills

EDGE Lauren Glass

THE OTHER S IDE Sam Hamilton

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CHECK OUT ORPHEUS—UD’S ART AND L I TERARY MAGAZINE ON FACEBOOK FOR UPDATES AND MORE.

Orpheus is the University of Dayton’s student-written and student produced art and literary magazine, published once a semester. Works may be reprinted or reproduced only with permission of the author/artist. We accept poetry, short stories, photography, fine art, and design.

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Regret JED HELMERS • F INE ARTS • SENIOR

Q

A

Favorite television show?

Doctor Who.

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Airport Streams ETHAN KLOSTERMAN • MARKET ING & LEADERSHIP • F IFTH YEAR

Q

A

Three biggest fears?

Shooting in jpeg. Electromagnetic pulse weapons. Spelling my name wrong.

Sit, Stay MARA KALONSKI • ENGL ISH • FRESHMAN

I lean forward with my elbows on the table and fix my eyes on the ruby light pooled from the lamp. There are many textures in it, and I find myself drawn into them as if they are warm water and I want to submerge my whole self. I scratch my beard and adjust my glasses and my pupils dilate slightly to focus. I am looking at the red lamplight, but still I can feel the creases drawn through my skin, the leathered sensation of its being. Concentrate, I think, concentration. The red borrows added luminance from the glossiness of the table, and draws a ring around itself.

Library time is the best time of the day, with the books stacked eons high on the

shelves. They stand with spines convex, worn and warming, held up by the mere proximity of their cousins. I run my fingers across the pages of the one in front of me, feeling that dry, clean drag of paper beneath my weathered hand. It is my twenty-seventh year here. I try not to tally the days in my mind, but when I blink, I just see the fast-flipping pages of the calendar, disinterested in my watching them. It swarms me.

12 times 7 is 84. Mute swans mate at age 3 and stay with their mate for life. Ernest Hemingway was born in Illinois. Chromosomes, ribosomes, lysosomes. Happiness is a thing that circles you closely but never finds its way inside.

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No, I admonish myself. Happiness is in and of itself. You may have happiness. You may think yourself inside the circle. I watch the circle of red light on the table. It has a moving quality, though it stays quiet and still, glowing. That red, two shades off from the colour of our car. The exact color of the flash, I’m sure, that neurons scrambled to send through their brains in a moment of unjustifiable pain. I love the red. It is aching and lovely at the same time, entirely sure of itself. It is just pigment, after all. Tornadoes exist between the earth and cumulonimbus clouds. The only way you can be killed by a stingray is if it stings you directly in the heart. 3000 people commit suicide every day.Happiness. Happiness.

The time we went to the beach. Burning sand, glazed water too bright to look at directly. Blue sky, blue water, blue swimsuits. I hold their hands, one soft, one tiny, in my strong palms. She smiles

up at me from under some ridiculous hat that swallows her up. Tendrils of hair sweep out from the floppy brim and her browned fingers press against mine. She smiles. Perfectly. Jack tugs at my other hand, his high little voice stumbling over his anxious feet as he runs toward the water. I can feel tears in my eyes in the library, but there is only sunlight at the beach. Only sand dipping into craters beneath our feet.

Jack runs splashing into the ocean, his plump little legs stomping as fast as they can upon the smooth pebbled floor. Freez-ing cold water washes over his ankles and he screams delightedly, laughing. She squeezes my hand and smiles so radiantly it seems to draw light from directly over-head. I feel such a love flooding through me that it’s hard to breathe. My thoughts are swirling.

Beautiful woman, beautiful son, beautiful day, beautiful crash, beautiful screams,

beautiful red. I am halved. Eyes blink-ing, and then no longer blinking. Green trees arching delicately into the clouds. The sound of shearing metal. Dirt, wood, black, ocean, ash. I am cleaved back together, with parts missing and sides asymmetrical. I take a deep breath and swallow, which is difficult. Tears reabsorb themselves into my eyes, soft. Happiness, I think. Happiness. The sun is in the sky. The world is turning. I am alive. The six white bars of light from the window slant across the wooden table. I hear soft foot-steps approaching and I close my eyes, the red light disappearing behind the thin membrane of my eyelids.

“Mr. Powell?” says the woman to my left, with gentle syllables. “It’s time for bed.” I take my pill from the white hand and swallow for the 9850th time.

I stand and it takes me longer than it used to. I feel my joints preparing them-selves to move, like soldiers in formation.

My bones make an effort to strengthen, I can almost sense the osteoblasts working desperately to reproduce and furnish me. Happy thoughts, I remind myself, auto-matically. You are not as old as you feel.

37 times 14 is 518. 5329 is a perfect square. 18 minus 9 is 9 again. I will see them if I walk down the hall, and we will be at the beach, and that will be beautiful.

Q Favorite word?

A Visceral. It sounds so nice when spoken, and I love it’s meaning.

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Global Warming & On the Road 2012 Election Panels LAURYN LONDON • GRAPHIC DES IGN • SENIOR

Q

A

Life advice?

The grass is greener where you water it.

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I smell like those things I’m not allowed:The wasteful stench of an overexposed mouth. The tang of rusted parts. It lingers in my hair and festers in the sulci of my brain.I reek of what’s wrong with this order;Of pants and piercings and stale smokeCollecting in the bottom of a womb shaped bottleOn the neck of modesty—Hypocrisy in shades of pink and yellow

Supporting selective causes while they Crucify for the sake of the future.I am told we bleed unheroically;No man is dead for our sake or at our hand,No phallic war in the name of compensation or ego,No medal of honor for the life we bring in theBattle with our body.

Caroline JED HELMERS • F INE ARTS • SENIOR

Q

A

Life advice?

Never trust a big butt and a smile... seriously.

A Moment in Misogynist Bullshit SAM HAMILTON • ENGL ISH • SENIOR

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Blue ADRIENNE LOWRY • PHOTOGRAPHY • SENIOR

Q

A

Pet peeve?

When people don’t change the toilet paper roll after it’s empty...

Still, we are not fingerprints. The rest of us reeking of A brooding concoction of shame and will,The tender smell of sweat and emptiness that bitesThe inside of pointed nostrils with the bitterUndertone of defiance and strength.

But we swallowPrescriptionsFistsHysteria Like soap, bleaching our insides of the worldly grime,Sanding our calloused hands and tourniquet ribsSo they can fit into a size two Coffin made of doilies and casserole pans.

“Oh, but the stink of sweat and love becomes us,”An artificial mantra we were taught to repeat. We are expected to wear our feminine fragrance The way a man wears a woman around his waist.We should smell like His. We should smell like delicacy.

We are their monster as much as our own. We remind them of their odor, exposeTheir restlessness.We mock their men and their fences.

But we smell like all the things we’re not allowed:A truthful and pitiful reminder of what is wrong with this order.

Q

A

Favorite television show?

The Big Bang Theory—BAZINGA.

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I Think You Got All That You Came For NIKY MOTEKALLEM • F INE ARTS • F IFTH YEAR

Q

A

If you could learn one random skill, what would it be?

Taxidermy.

“You think Jeb’ll show up?”

I glanced down the hill at my hometown, smoking in ruins, charred black remnants of homes and buildings scraping the sky like a dirty fingernail. Thick smoke was hanging in the air like a disease, wrap-ping around Marsha and I as we sat there, watching the devastation. It had all started out so small; whisperings of strange happenstances on the news and people dying of a mysterious new disease in Malaysia, until it finally escalated to reports of lights in the sky and constellations rearranging themselves. The religious zeal-ots started ranting about the end of the world. Preachings like “repent, the end is nigh” and “the apocalypse is upon us,” became commonplace. And then one

The Hilltop at the End of the World SARAH YEDL ICK • ENGL ISH, POL IT ICAL SC IENCE, SPANISH • SENIOR

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Stacks of Time ADRIENNE LOWRY • PHOTOGRAPHY • SENIOR

Q

A

Life advice?

Do what makes you happy. The world is your oyster.

day, I woke up and found my apartment complex on fire.

“Nah,” I murmured. “You really think he made it out of that mess? We barely did. I don’t even know if he heard me yelling at him to meet us up here.”

“Yeah, but you still never know. Jeb was so damn lucky, remember when his brother won the lotto and gave him all that cash to buy a new car? Jeez. If anybody were to make it out of there alive I’d put my money on him first.”

“What, not on us?” I downed the rest of my Jack Daniels and threw the empty bottle down the hill. “That’s alright. I wouldn’t have been my first choice either.”

“At least we got it better than Mrs. Hickey. She went back inside for her pet bunny, you see that? Then by the time she got out her husband was already gone. Burnt to a crisp in the driveway.” Marsha laughed, but it was hollow.

Empty. “Just her and the bunny now. Poor substitute for a husband if you ask me, even if he was the world’s biggest prick.”

“Yeah, worst comes to worst though, she could probably eat him.”

“True. Might be nice to cuddle with a little bit at night, too, when it gets all cold out. Little old lady like that’s bound to get lonely at night, especially now.”

She hiccupped, and I turned to look at her. Tears scavenged dirty paths down her cheeks, and I could smell her perfume mixed with the scent of charred flesh on the wind. Cotton candy and baby-back ribs.

“Jeb’s really not coming, is he?”

Crimson light doused the sky, and the ground shook slightly as another hunk of debris collided into the Earth.

“I don’t think anyone is.”

Q

A

Pet peeve?

Mouth-Breathers

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Door JED HELMERS • F INE ARTS • SENIOR

Favorite word?

Tangential.

Q

A

Blue-white light catches The air burnsThe lights blowDarknessComplete, filling up the spaces in my mouthLeaving glistening teeth,A Cheshire smileIt’s quiet here, time stopped with the lightsLike that boy cursed with immortal beauty,I wait for the darkness to consume meWhisper to me the answersDirect meBut it doesn’t, it can’t The fuse just blew.

Blue Fuse STEPHEN BROWN • ENGL ISH, ANTHROPOLOGY • SENIOR

From where do you draw inspiration?

Bad dramatic TV series, music, friends’ stories, books, and anything from metros to the open sea.

Q

A

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Personal Logo & Branding Element RACHEL KAP ICAK • GRAPHIC DES IGN • SENIOR

Space Between JOSH CHAMBERLAIN • ENGL ISH, AMERICAN STUDIES • SENIOR

Q

A

Three biggest fears?

Being kidnapped. Tarantulas. Not making a difference in the world.

There are Christmas songs on the radio, but the snow lining the median is a sick grey color. We’re ghosts and we glide down the highway, lit only by the over-head streetlights and our nostalgia. It’s late and neither of us feels like sleep-ing. We drive instead.

“Midnight Mass was stupid this year,” she says from the passenger seat while scanning the radio for something that isn’t bullshit.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Just was.”

I don’t say anything as she looks out the window.

“Christmas feels different now,” she says.

“How would you know? It started…two and a half hours ago.”

“You know what I mean. Everything about it. Maybe because we haven’t been home this whole time.”

“Being eighteen sucks, doesn’t it?” I make a face at her.

“Really, with the sarcasm?”

“You’ll get used to it. After three years, I’m pretty well adjusted.”

“What? To not being at home or to being eighteen?” She makes a face back at me.

“What do you think, dipshit?”

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, the Christ-mas festival at school was really neat and everything, but it was just so strange. I think I got homesickest— That’s a word, right?”

“Go with ‘most homesick,’” I say.

“…most homesick right after Thanksgiv-ing. I mean, I’d just been home, but I felt like I was missing everything.”

“Something tells me you didn’t really. Mom and Dad don’t really have much going on without us.”

“Eh, well they’ve got…” She pauses.“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Is that sad?”

“Who knows?”

“Maybe it’s because Santa’s dead,” she says after a moment.

“What?”

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“Why we feel like this. ‘Cause Santa died.”

“You know Mom would sling that whole ‘The magic of Christmas is in your heart’ speech at you right now, right?”

“You think there’s anything to that?”

“I guess. I agree we probably started feeling like this back when Santa Claus got debunked, but there’s more to it than that. I mean, even after I found out, Christmas was still special because I got to pretend for you. It was like creating the magic for you kept it alive for me.”

“Maybe it gets better when we have kids and we get to create the illusion for them.”

“Let’s not talk about that yet.”

“Sorry.”

Wham! is singing “Last Christmas” on the radio and the streetlights are cast-ing shadows on the dashboard. We sit and listen and think about what to do.

“Does home still feel like home to you?” she asks.

“That’s kind of a complicated—I don’t know. Why?”

“I’ve just been thinking about it lately. And I just don’t know how to feel. Like how I’m supposed to feel.”

“You’re not supposed to feel anything.”

“No, I mean… I don’t know what I mean. It’s just been weird, coming home. You know?”

“Yeah…”

“I think the weirdest part is the smell,” she says. “It’s like it was always there, and I never really noticed it before. You know how when you used to go to a friend’s house and it had such a distinct smell to it, and you were always like ‘I wonder what my house smells like?’ It’s like that. And it’s weird. I notice it now. I’ll just walk in the house and it hits me all of a sudden.”

“Yeah, that’s how it works. What does it smell like to you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t really know how to describe it. It just makes me…nostalgic. It smells like childhood, but it doesn’t feel like home.”

I nod and smile.

“Do you know why?” she asks.

“I’ve got guesses, like everyone else, but

I don’t really have any answers.”

“I mean, no one does,” she says.

“But I think it’s a rite of passage thing. Like you’re supposed to not feel at home anywhere, at least for a while. It’s funny because we’re at that point in life where nothing’s permanent. You move from dorm, back to your parents’ house, back to dorm, back to parents’ house, to apart-ment, to parents’ house, to apartment, and so on and so forth. You’re just in a state of constant moving and it feels like you’re always packing up your shit.”

“Great. That’s just what I wanted to hear.” She puts her feet on the dashboard.

“Does it get better?”

“Some. School starts to feel like home a little bit. And coming home doesn’t feel quite so strange after a while. You just… I don’t really know how to explain it. You just get used to not being home. Or not having a home. Something like that.”

I merge, splitting the difference between the two highways, one heading north, one heading south. We’re suddenly on the tiny stretch of road that cuts the city, the buildings on either side of us scraping the stars above. The road rolls out in front of us, leading nowhere as it disap-

pears into a tunnel that leads exactly where we just came from.

“Where’re we going?” she asks.

“Nowhere.”

She nods.

“We’re not really anywhere,” I say. It makes me sad to admit, but here in the middle of everything, it’s true. She nods again.

Michael Bublé starts crooning through the speakers and she makes a noise of disgust as she changes the station. She settles on Ben Folds Five’s one song about the day after Christmas. Bobbing her head to the music, she looks out the window. I merge and we’re on the highway headed north again.

The song plays on the radio. “The world is sleeping. I am numb.”

“Let’s go home,” she says.

But we both know that it isn’t.

Q

A

From where do you draw inspiration?

Staying up too late, driving my car too fast, music that’s too loud, thinking too much, and conversations that aren’t long enough.

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Design Science: Evolution of Life in the Paleozoic Era MADEL INE HERBERT • GRAPHIC DES IGN • SENIOR

Q

A

Life advice?

Laugh every day.

Canoe for Two J I L L PAJKA • F INE ARTS, ENGL ISH • SENIOR

Q

A

Favorite television show?

South Park and Cake Boss.

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Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Article SixRACHEL KAP ICAK, SAM B IDWELL , JENNY WATERCUTTER, MATT WEILER

GRAPHIC DES IGN • SENIORS

Q

A

From where do you draw inspiration?

The beauty and power of the concept or problem.

I held a human heart in hand,And it was coldAnd mine beat faster.I traced the tiny veins and arteries, in baby blue and soft pinkAnd thought how once this made a man exist,And how some day my own heart would be plasticized and darkLike a frozen mass, nothing more, In someone’s fingers.I thought how one day I might be dust.What should have felt beautiful, interstellar,The push of life held in my palm,Instead felt nauseating.It was heavier than I expectedAnd complicated, and visceral,And deadJust a dead thing I could peel apart.One day, every life becomes this,A contrast between the fast-beating and the still and handled,A shadow, formaldehyde, and cold weight.He had thoughts, ideas, emotions, tan skin, fevers, sex, bad days, purposesAnd now he is yellow and covered and dissected and an object,A method.He is science.His muscles are shiny, his lungs greyThe heart in my hand the last tie to humanityAnd motionless,Exactly what we all become.

—ology, —phobia MARA KAL INOSKI • ENGL ISH • FRESHMAN

Q

A

Three biggest fears?

Huge sea creatures. Failure. Being murdered.

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Looking around this room to decideAnd yes that is what’s to be done.Squeeze bile jelly from my eyesAnd spread it thickly upon blackened heartsFor purpose, purpose.Eaten without taste from this one, but for othersBut for this one potent and strongFills head with the smokeMind with the thoughtsStomach with burn.Acid’s like goodLike good when it burnsScorching tongue cheek throatThe rock-hitting bottom.Crunching like glass between teeth grinding coffeeTastes in the mouthAll the livelong dayAll the livelong lifeCrunching too like grinded beans.Hand to mouthBlinding bile from sockets puffed from tearsThat stain yellow on the floorOn the countersSpilling over like the milk not to be cried over. Acid’s good for that tooClean it up clean it upBile’s good for that tooJelly like bile Jelly like bile when it burns, yellow when it spreads. Forced down the gullet, which is blackened like hearts. Squeezing jelly from your eyes tastes like burn on charcoal insides.Swallow preaching when the heart hungers for it—Scum for dinner.

Scum For Dinner, Seconds JOY HAMILTON • ENGL ISH • SENIOR

Q

A

Favorite television show?

Parenthood, but I have to admit that nothing beats Hey Arnold, ever...

Hi ANNE MARIE CARDIL INO • PHOTOGRAPHY • JUNIOR

Pet peeve?

Don’t l ie to my face, or leave wet towels on the floor.

Q

A

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Breezes KELSEY MIL LS • GRAPHIC DES IGN • SOPHOMORE

Q

A

Favorite word?

Bubbleology. It’s the study of bubbles... how cool is that?!

Kissing, touching, strange hands Poke at corners of my heartAttemptingTrying to make me feel somethingBut, I can’t I won’tThroat seals up Legs close tight, waterproof Inside, hives claw underneath my skinFingernails dig to get inside MeThey trace a constellationMap out the contours of my cornersEach caressing scratch, leaves words that sink into skin later Whispering,But, Honey, I want to Oh, by the moving of tectonic plates and The formation of hotspots within the landscape Of my heart how I wish I could Sweetie, I want your Arms to be the ones that lock me into bed at night So I don’t worry awake and wander away Baby, I want How I dream of nothing more than old bitter hands, grasping for fingersBut Baby,Baby,Baby,I can’t feel that.I won’t feel that, maybe one day I will.

Pick Up Lines STEPHEN BROWN • ENGL ISH, ANTHROPOLOGY • SENIOR

Q

A

If you could learn one random skill, what would it be?

How to clean game after a hunt.

Edge LAUREN GLASS • JOURNAL ISM • F IFTH YEAR

The Other Side SAM HAMILTON • ENGL ISH • SENIOR

Q

A

Life advice?

Get on a bike and ride it.

She wonders if he knows He wonders if she seesa demon hides his claws and misdeeds inside the walls and underneath the floorsbetween the teeth of preachers, only seen through the eyes of a felonwhen heads are shaken and bullied into looking for the crumbs,the world where men are full of something left in this world,of smiles and faces still resembling goodness;kept in their pockets disguised, they chant nursery rhymes that remind us

There is something left to look for on the other side.Q

A

Favorite word?

“Cadywampus,” meaning crooked, wrong, or unaligned. It’s a great ice breaker for those “word-nerd only” parties, and

those times you want to be the envy of your friends.

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PATRONS

English Department Paul H. Benson Eileen Carr Michael Barnes ArtStreet Department of Music

FACULTY ADVISORS FOR L I TERATURE

Joseph Pici James Farrelly Albino Carrillo Stephen Wilhoit

FACULTY ADVISOR FOR DES IGN

John V. Clarke

ART AND DES IGN SELECT ION PANEL

John V. Clarke Judith Huacuja Julie Jones

STUDENT ACT IV IT IES D IRECTOR Amy Lopez-Matthews

EDITOR Hannah Breidinger

EDITOR IN TRAINING Grace Poppe

ASSISTANT EDITOR Daniela Porcelli

ASSISTANT EDITOR IN TRAINING Bobby Beebe

DES IGN EDITOR Kaitlin Meme

ASSISTANT DES IGN EDITOR Lori Claricotes

ACTIV IT IES D IRECTOR Olivia Ullery

ACTIV IT IES D IRECTOR IN TRAINING Veronica Colborn

Acknowledgements & Staff

Cover Imagery • Blue • Adrienne Lowry • Page 15

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