The End.

OLIVIA LUCAS

ISSUE NO. 3•GOOD-BYE TO ALL THAT

I don’t know what else to say but this. It is the end of four years and it will inevitably be the end of knowing many people and remembering small details about college.  But the people you will know after the end matter. And they always will. You’ll throw away the MoMA receipts you thought you’d always keep, but you will remember seeing Starry Night for the first time.

And by the end what’s left but

empty dollar pizza fund jars

MET and MoMA receipts

annotated copies of Dreaming in Cuban

pens without caps

old pill bottles filled with tacks

rubber bands turned bracelets

journals with no entries

remember the time we_____

stubbed our toes and cried in Dumbo

got naked and played love

washed our hair in silver sinks

walked up and down the UWS

to figure out chemistry and broken bonds.

And by the end we know we stumbled

into the strangers we needed to

during half priced tequila shot nights,

one or both required sciences,

in crowded elevators and vacant stairs

or maybe not.

Fake death and fake smiles

find shelter where you can.

It feels like the end

or maybe not.

3 out of 53

OLIVIA LUCAS

ISSUE NO. 2 • Are we there yet?

All I can think about or talk to other people about is hating where I currently live and wanting to move to another area of the city. What neighborhood do you live in? I find myself asking strangers. Help me please!-- I’m trying to find my place.

“Are you staying in the city after graduation?” They always say.

You shrug and don’t say, “I feel suffocated and cry a lot. Can I get back to you?”

What you do say is, “If I can get a job.”

They don’t ask about your feelings regarding the Impending Doom. May 18th has become the 2012 of 2019.

On the subway, you are grateful to be stuck on the track in between stations. Perhaps the train will never move and you’ll be forced to stay in the subway car forever. You’ll have to choose a mate from the thirty other people and negotiate which seats will be your living quarters and the bedroom. You and the thirty other people will create some sort of democracy and hopefully not become so hungry you’ll have to eat each other. You avoid considering the long-term effects. You just want a few more minutes before you have to go to your internship.

You wish you lived in Queens and had a longer commute so you could have time to think.  When they ask you where you want to live you start to say “Astoria,” but then backtrack and say “I really don’t know. Maybe Brooklyn or Scotland or anywhere I don’t have to have blackout curtains and sleep with ear plugs.”

According to the New York Daily News, Manhattan has 53 neighborhoods. You’ve lived in three over the course of four years. This is not typical. People usually move at least once a year if not more frequently in the city. You are about to move again. You are counting down the days.

At 22, you pretend you want permanence, but really you have severe unrest. You think you can always have better and so a year lease seems like an eternity and you just want the security and freedom of childhood back. You think about paying Con-Ed and it makes you want to vomit. You think about how much cable is and phone bills and you realize living the life you have now is pretty fucking impossible on the entry level job you are hoping to get. You know your parents can’t support you and you say you don’t want them to. But the truth is you are so scared of what it means to be on your own, truly on your own, in New York that you start to have fantasies about moving to the middle of nowhere. You decide Maine or Vermont or Northern California would do. You think about how sexy it would be to only see other people when you get into your car and drive twenty minutes to the nearest store. You think you might start getting into botany and how you could walk around naked and no one would see you because the closest neighbor is a mile away. You crave land. You crave space.

The train moves. You have one stop until you have to get off. You consider missing your stop accidentally on purpose and taking the train to the last stop in both directions.  They would probably notice that you didn’t show up at your internship because it’s not like you. You daydream about a world where no one checks up on you.

But you get off at 23rd street because you are already three minutes late and it’s embarrassing to be late when your commute is only eight minutes including walk time.

In and Out of Love

Olivia Lucas

ISSUE NO. 1 • To Have a heart

I chose to attend Fordham LC because of the location. I always wanted to live in New York City. I wondered how long you needed to live in the city to be a real New Yorker. I realized that when you start to hate New York as much as you love it that you are probably close. When New York is killing you, but you know you can’t live anywhere else, you begin to feel as though you belong. I wrote In and Out of Love based on these feelings. Being a college student in NYC is very different from being a student anywhere else. The city plays a larger role in your education than college itself.

We pop melatonin like penny candy,

plug our ears with toilet paper,

cover our eyes with a stretched out sock.

The radiator is broken so we lay awake

with sharp screeching until we forget

why we moved to New York.

We force ourselves to pretend

our carpet doesn’t smell like rat piss,

the tub isn’t growing mold.

Running down subway stairs

is our only rush anymore,

the only reminder we still feel

when we can’t find ourselves

in empty storefront reflections.

We play memory games

of drunk stories past, times

we walked up Broadway at 3 am,

got Big Macs, and kissed on every corner.

We loved like we love New York,

unrelenting and harrowing,

an exhausting love of ceaseless yearning.

We don’t mind neighborhood smells

because we’re too grateful to have one,

a place where we can perform permanence

in our etch-a-sketch city.

We memorize lyrics and subway routes

in hopes of understanding a way home.