This edition of The Monitor for the Spring is just some of the best work we have received in the second semester. At the end of the year we will compile a "best-of" edition where all the best poems, stories, and pictures we have received will be featured. We will also start something new during the rest of the semester. The Editors-In-Chief (Now Eric, Brad, and me, before I depart) will try to upload new photos, poems, and stories to the blog. So stay tuned, and enjoy reading. This is also my last issue as the main Editor-In-Chief. I have enjoyed working with amazing editors like Henry Bond, Tom West, and Mike Hamod, and these old editors made me a better writer and editor. The staff this year was a lot more energetic than in years' past, and I hope they stay this way under Brad and Eric's tireless leadership. I would also like to thank the faculty advisor Mr. Baird, who pulled me over as a freshman and told me to keep writing. He has made me a better writer, editor, student and person. He has helped me endlessly through all my endeavors and even through the college process. I will miss everybody involved with this magazine, ranging from the staff to the other students submitting poems and photos and I hope to keep pursuing this in college. Thanks again for a wonderful year.
-Junius Randolph
Editorial Staff:
Editors-in-Chief: Junius Randolph III, Brad Mutchnik, and Eric Friedman
Editors: Nyan Min
Sam Sunderland
Oluwarotimi Lademo
Faculty Advisor: Mr. Baird
Table of Contents:
"To The Fallen Angel" - Junius Randolph
"A Stroll" - Brad Mutchnik
"No Name" - Eric Friedman
"Leave Me" - Winston Antoine
"Russian Winds" - David Hooper
"With This Pen" - Winston Antoine
"The Resistance" - Junius Randolph
"Cracked Mirror" - Nyan Min
"Darkness Bleeds" - Sam Sunderland
"Itinerary" - Brad Mutchnik
"Rock Funeral" - Matt Moores
To The Fallen Angel
by: Junius Randolph III
All black everything
Uniform Assembly lines of depression
The relapse to a non-potent drug
My camera crew wants to capture it all
The rank smell
The perspiring pain
The essential essence
But I loathe it
One soul evolving to travel across another dimension
And people sit here bawling for him
Gloominess for his day of luminescence
They should smile
Jealousy should prevail
He took the easy way out
His tape was ejected
The film torn apart and beamed into the fireplace
Now we have Blu-Ray
How do you get rid of that?
My ass abhors God’s whore
That hooker standing tall
Glistening from somebody’s salary
Vomited into the collection basket
The devil has more promise
At least he’s a realist
He doesn’t acknowledge elaborate hallucinations
Where we think we die in peace
We die in pieces
So I will pretend I’m listening
While my ears shut
Saving themselves
From all black nothings
Photo: Garon Lizana
A Stroll
By Brad Mutchnik
*What you remember and what’s there.
Yeah, it is like a damn movie
Coming back.
And its one of those movies about suburban dysfunction
And how painful puberty is,
A shot glass in the eye
A plate of iron on your toes
Never able to move
Gilded and blind
That is what we are
Surrounded by velar blue, white, fences, doors, dogs
And family game night
Daddy cheats
The smell of sex still stains the basement
The sensation of suicide still has her mark
Beer is still good though, and she is still around
Just a memory engraved in a jumbled mind
It is here, and you do not choose to remember
Yet memory is a shark and it still hurts
When it clamps down and takes over what is there
*From Li-Young Lee’s Disrepancies, Happy and Sad
Photo: Alex Barton
No Name
by: Eric Friedman
*Glory be to G-d for coupled things,
For V’s of black crows soaring,
Into the fiery- red gates beyond the clouds.
For the silver pearls sparkling,
The dark sea of the sky above.
A yellow leaf slowly oscillates,
Decending gently onto the green carpet.
*The sound of 36 pines, side by side,
Rain relentlessly pounding on the windows.
A thick layer of marshmallow,
Coating the bony sticks outside my window,
On morbid December nights.
For the naked Christmas trees,
With the life burned from its pointy tips,
By the frigid breeze.
For the cool refreshing drops,
Stampeding from the enraged clouds.
For bright and violent flashes tearing through
emptiness.
* Excerpt taken from Gerald Manley Hopkins Pied Beauty
*Excerpt taken from Li- Young Lee’s Water
Photo: Garon Lizana
Leave Me
by: Winston Antoine
People and their traditions
Forcing others to live by their conditions
To abide by the social norm;
Culture cursing the unique to conform
Force-fitting us under one uniform
Whether I’m anywhere
The area’s code is expected to be followed
When I’m in my hood, that is, my neighborhood,
I’m the stock at which they laugh:
Ay yo white boy, go back inside,
So you can study and pass
When I’m in school,
They look at me
I’m the fool
Hey dude, stop asking questions
Tool
I refuse to assemble my actions
To societal satisfactions
This is my protest,
I’ll proclaim it forevermore
Photo: Alex Barton
Russian Winds
by: David Hooper
“I was Interpol…” he starts, but a thick cough full of mucus interrupts, “I was Interpol agent…1970. I stop 1973.” He lights another cigarette, as he clears his throat to wheeze out his next sentence, “I was a narc. There were shipments of heroin…. moving from Turkey to France. My job was to investigate.” Only two teeth remain in the stranger’s mouth, as a large gap blatantly sits between his lower canines, the result of his cigarette addiction. He pauses as the wind begins to howl, “We were narcs. We wear street clothes. My partner walk up to me in the street, he put his arm up saying, ‘You go that way. I will go this way.’ I started to turn when I heard it, pffeww.” He suddenly jams a finger against his forehead, “A sniper shot him. I was so angry I pull my gun out and shot electric box on street.”
He glares into the distance before continuing, “Yeah…It was a French cop. They were part of the heroin deals. A couple months later they told me I know too much, I must leave. I called a girl I met in New York years before and asked if I could stay with her.” Sighing he says, “She said she would pick me up from the airport. I said I would only be in America for one year…forty three years later…I am still here.” He laughs again flashing the large gap in his teeth.
I want to ask him what happened after. I want to know how he ended up in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the country, serving food to the homeless. I want to hear more about how this rugged man came to be but our time is cut short, the kitchen is closing.
Photo: Matt Moores
With This Pen
by: Winston Antoine
With this pen in my hand
I am powerful
I can break hearts,
Crush the soul into a pile of rubble,
With this pen in my hand, I can mend hearts
Confront confrontation,
Settle unsettling situations,
And fix social relations
But, with this pen in my hand, I am weak
I expose my soul,
Build a museum,
And I create my own expo.
For the world, I put myself out on display
Photo: Garon Lizana
The Resistance
by: Junius Randolph
She knew what she was doing, letting those milky whites break through those refined lips, allowing the virus to spread.
“You know you want to,” snuck out of the microscopic hole between her perfectly aligned teeth.
“Want to what?” I could not resist anymore. I let out what I would consider a forced smirk, trying not to smile, laugh or fall victim to the smiling parasites I encounter from her everyday. My big lips pushed apart from each other, the left side of my mouth slightly protruding upward so my full smile could be revealed. She laughed, so I laughed. Peer pressure’s a bitch.
After our simultaneous laughter, we stopped concentrating on each other’s faces, remembering where we were and kept walking down the crowded city sidewalk. People were not fitting on the sidewalks, ants fighting for food from the big, rotten apple. Sweaty hands of anxious couples engulfed each other as they passed us dashing along the crowded, tar-covered sidewalk. My hand was enjoying the polluted breeze, the loner on the long side of my body. Her hand mimicked mine. Our ideal excluded us from copying and pasting the actions of every other stereotypical city dweller. As we walked, our arms quietly swung in harmony without hand contact, in turn making our swinging symphony more apparent. The arms surrounding us didn’t try to sample our music. They just continued with the tight holds, the quick squeezes, and the anxiously calculated and coordinated motions. She quickly looked at me, acknowledging the bland, so-called affection these active spectators had as they passed us by. I shook my head slightly, giving her that funny smirk to show her I was on the same page as her in thought, the same paragraph, the same sentence, the same word.
“You are something else, you know that?” she smoothly said.
“I was hoping so, I like being a circle the land of squares,” I quickly retorted, waiting for her response. The girl gave one of those looks. Yes, that look. I took a few steps back from where she stood letting my back hit the brick wall of some store behind me. She slowly strutted towards me. I wish she had heels on so I could hear the sexy “click-clicks.” Instead her sneakers were noiseless, even with our symphony playing.
She finished her soundless approach to me now, slowly putting her music makers on my shoulders, letting her soft fingers slightly pinch my tense shoulders.
“More like a piece of corn, in the field of shit,” she said, jokingly serious. I returned her looks from a minute ago.
“Smarty pants,” I teased.
“I have shorts on,” she replied.
“I wish you didn't.” Her milky whites made their grand entrance again. If I had said this a few weeks ago, she would have chuckled loudly. Now it’s all smiles.
“Me too.” My hand voluntarily softly touched her perfectly spaced out face, my thumb right under the middle of her light brown abyss-like eyes. I slightly moved my thumb across her cheek, feeling the Charmin-soft skin under them.
Her eyes closed, contagiously causing mine to do same, as our heads and bodies moved closer together. Our arms bended, expediting the connection. And as our minds synchronized, the mismatched people rapidly moving behind us finally listened to our music.
Photo: Alex Barton
Cracked Mirror
by: Nyan Min
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Heart pumping.
Mind racing.
Hands shaking.
Palms sweaty.
Goosebumps.
Eating me
Nervous.
I Look into the mirror.
Who do I see?
A shadow of myself.
But the real question.
Can I touch my potential?
My ability to change the World.
Then maybe
I will be great.
Photo: Garon Lizana
Darkness Bleeds
by: Sam Sunderland
My knuckles crack
The walls bleed
Soaking the floor
Like watering a seed
A flame is sparked
Doused with tears
The rock crushes my heart
My soul is smeared
The cuts are deep
No marks left behind
A twisted heart
A broken mind
Smoke seeps from her mouth
Choppy breaths from mine
The only light
Is when the darkness shines
Photo: Alex Barton
Itinerary
By: Brad Mutchnik
I’ll make it through today
With some help from the goose
And gin
A comedy on tragedy
A life, with black on your lips
So use needles
To prick the bubble of dreams
Miss me
Please say you will
Skins and bones, cruel jokes
Make misery a sin
Leave your hopes in the can
Of beer that we sip
Photo: Matt Moores
Rock Funeral
by: Matt Moores
I could get the shovel out,
And dig a trench in the dirt.
But that frown is changing
faded to fancy.
So instead we’ll send it out to bay
Hand-in-hand, we’ll send it out.
But again, your face is twisting,
I know you’re tentative to touch my digits.
So you will be sent downstairs,
Sheltered as you always were.
The procedure is uniform.
The deed is done.
A bolt strikes and,
I submit to the Earth.
At my funeral all you say is:
“Why wouldn’t you let me go?”
*Inspired by Starvation Camp Near Jaslo by Wislawa Szymborska
Photo: Alex Barton
Thanks for reading! Be on the lookout for more work to come!
