Feeling that we didn’t have a good submission for this issue, we asked for creative submissions at the last minute — just a few days before release — and although a number of talented artists submitted, the poem DNA by Joseph Forbes (SMG ’10) in particular caught our eye. His poem contains a mix of accessible, universal metaphor and verse that is clearly deeply personal, and yet intriguing all the same. Studying abroad in New Zealand, we had a chance to ask Forbes a few questions via e-mail. He graciously shared some of the thoughts and emotions that went into this, his first submitted poem. The interview appears below. The poem appears in the second page.

Photo provided by Joseph Forbes

The Quad: How did you get into writing poetry? Do you write in any other forms?

Joseph Forbes: In high school I was a journalist, so most of what I’d file in a portfolio is inherently more direct.  Obviously we don’t write a lot of poetry in SMG, so my mind just isn’t in that mode very often.  My private journal has a certain character to it that I would frame as poetic.  The entries are fairly sparse though, usually when I’m trying to sort something out about my life or direction.  My email exchanges with close friends and girlfriends over the years constitute a body of work I now rather cherish.  They suggest a certain ‘turbulence of youth,’ though I’d be the first to admit my life hasn’t been all that dramatic.  In the past I’ve written song lyrics, and some music as well — nothing that’s likely to get me a record contract, but it’s meaningful to me and I can melt into it again in the right moment.

How often do you write? Do you practice? Do you seek out criticism to make your work better?

I don’t write all that often, and once something is on paper I rarely edit or revise it.  Especially with poetry, it’s a moment in time I’ve tried to capture; making changes is like trying to change the past.  So in that respect, my writing serves more as a documentary of my experiences.  Most often I use writing as an outlet when I’m at some extreme of the emotional spectrum.  Maybe a bad breakup or an argument with a colleague.  I write when I feel disconnected from the world.  That said, there aren’t a lot of common themes in what I’ve written.  Nor is there one style that’s characteristically mine.  Sometimes I rhyme, other times there’s a hidden structure or pace or meter that’s needed to bring the meaning out — the ‘poetry’ isn’t in the words per se.  I do use a lot of metaphor, sometimes to the extent it would go right over the casual reader’s head.  Just about anything I’ve written that I would call “great” was penned in one to two hours, shared with a few close friends, then filed away for random rediscovery.

Have you ever submitted or been published before? If so, when and where?

Outside of high school journalism, I haven’t had any writing published.  I suppose I’ve never tried, even though some friends have suggested it.  I could easily create a blog or website to feature my work.  The difficulty, as I perceive it, is the lack of common threads in style, format, content, etc.  Likewise, a lot of what I’ve written was directed at someone close to me, someone whose actions or faults don’t deserve to be made public.  In many cases that person was me.  I feel like once it’s out there on the interwebs, cached in Google, you no longer own it.  Not in the sense of copyright; rather, once it’s published, you have no control over what a reader does with it.

I actually had a girlfriend submit one of my poems as her own work — in a graduate-level course!  Plagiarism aside, she couldn’t seem to grasp why it so offended me.  I considered it a major violation of trust.  Needless to say, that relationship didn’t last much longer.  What I thought was really ironic is she didn’t even “get” the deeper metaphor of the piece — she just thought the poem had a nice ring to it, but she completely overlooked the lesson embedded in it.

Do you feel like you have a future in writing either professionally or as a hobby?

I’m not sure I would risk the uncertainty of writing professionally.  The blogoshpere is unbelievably saturated, and to be perfectly honest I don’t think I’m as talented as a lot of writers out there.  I have fits and starts, go off on rants, produce some masterful work once in a blue moon.  There are a few writers and photographers I follow on communities like tumblr, and these people are like machines.  Something new and outstanding every day, even if it’s just a story about a crazy guy on the subway.  And as talented as they are, as naturally as writing comes to them, they’re not making a living off of it.

If I were to write purposefully, I would do something in the realm of social science.  Telling people’s stories and relating them back to fundamental lessons.  That’s why I dig Malcolm Gladwell’s work — it’s often a slice of life we can all appreciate.

Where do you usually get your inspiration for your writing? What kinds of things do you like to write about?

Emotion.  Just sheer emotion.  Usually more negative emotions, though I think poetry is a constructive way of dealing with them rather than letting them fester.  I have a handful of work that’s hopeful or celebratory, some that’s sexual, some that’s just Joe on his soapbox.  Virtually everything I write has some lesson, a grain of optimism, a light at the end of the tunnel.  That’s why I can always revisit it and still feel proud of it — it’s about overcoming the challenges our lives and emotions present us with.

Inspiration comes most often from music.  I have a soft spot for deep, meaningful lyrics.  And believe it or not, I derive a lot of inspiration from other people’s photography, especially portraits.  There’s poetry in the lines and shapes of people’s faces, something common we all understand at a fundamental level.

Has your writing changed being abroad? How has that affected your writing?

Part of my intent for studying in New Zealand was to ‘find myself.’  Not exactly an identity crisis — more a matter of “getting away from the noise” and figuring out what was important to me.  Sorting out my life’s priorities by removing myself from it, looking back on it, projecting forward to what could be.  I think I’ve had some success with that.  But it will be a few more months before I can write about it.

Over Spring Break I took this long hike around a lake, deep in the forest away from everything.  Complete silence.  No email or iPod or texting for several days.  Virtually no human contact.  I think it pays to be alone like that sometimes, nothing pulling on you.  It takes time for the lessons to sink in though.  I suspect I’ll write about it sometime when I’m upset, caught up in the madness of Boston, reflecting back on how much simpler life can be.

What was your inspiration for D.N.A.?

This is something I wrote in literally an hour, in between classes one day.  Most people don’t keep in touch with all their friends and family as well as they’d like.  I was tired of making excuses for that.  We’re always so busy, so distracted, so caught up in the moment.  The next deadline, the next exam, the next social engagement.  And then we flick on the TV or PlayStation.  Six months goes by and we realize we’ve been neglecting someone truly close to us.  And we justify or rationalize it away.  It’s something I catch myself doing all too often.  And if the people in our lives are what make it worth living, then why is it so damn hard to pick up the phone and tell them what they mean to us?

I think an old friend of mine had announced her wedding, and it just hit me really hard that we had lost touch over the years.  I hadn’t even met her fiancé.  I felt terrible that our friendship had withered so much over the years.  So DNA grew from that, and as it evolved it came to represent a number of relationships I’d come to neglect.

What is D.N.A. about? Walk us through it briefly.

There’s obviously a lot of metaphor behind it.  There are also a number of “inside jokes” you’d have to know me to fully appreciate.  For example, the “genetically late” is kind of a self-depracating joke I’ve shared with close friends for many years.  I was literally born “one month premature,” and the joke is that I’ve been making up for it ever since.  A few minutes late here and there, and soon enough I’ll have made up that extra month.

Again, only my close friends would really “get” this, and I think that’s part of the charm.  One of the things that makes friendships strong is those shared experiences, those inside jokes you’d never be able to explain to an outsider.  And yet, as I’m writing this, I know you understand the sentiment because you have the same dynamic with your own friends.

Fundamentally DNA is an apology for neglecting my friendships.  It’s saying “I don’t want to make excuses anymore, because you’re more valuable to me than these other responsibilities I hide behind.”

See Joseph Forbes’ poem DNA on the following page.

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Photo by Isabel Slepoy

Adam Cesare, CAS/COM ’10, started writing fiction before his freshman year of college. A fan of horror literature and movies, he turned to writing darker stories. Since then, Adam’s work has been featured in numerous publications, including a short story in Shroud Magazine, which hits stores this month. You can learn more about Adam on his website, brain-tremors.com. The story he submitted, Flies in the Brain, appears after this short interview.

When did you start writing?

A little before college. I’d always been doing screenplays, but I’d never really finished anything. I feel like it was once I really sat down and was like, ‘okay, now I’m going to put on my writer’s hat.’ I count when I actually finish stuff, and that was a little before freshman year. So I’m a latecomer to the game as far as writers go.

Did you start out writing horror?

I wanted to start out doing something I enjoyed. My main interest, since I was a little kid, has always been film. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a family where we weren’t allowed to watch T.V. 24 hours a day, so I read. I read a lot, and I had a very free-minded family, so I was allowed to pick up whatever I wanted, and I gravitated towards a lot of the darker stuff. But I always try to diversify. My favorite author is probably Cormac McCarthy, who’s not a horror writer, per se.

How have you worked on improving?

If you read any kind of writing book, and I think everyone does when they first think they’re going to try and do this, you know that you have to read a lot and you have to write a lot, and you’ll just incrementally get better. And I hope I have. I hope the story I wrote this week is better than the story I wrote in Myles freshman year.

Talk about how you started to sell stories. What gave you the confidence to start to do that?

I completely was just BSing, thinking that I was just doing it for myself. And then, one night I was just futzing around on the internet, and I found listings for magazines, and I was like, ‘oh, I’m sure they get thousands of people sending in wanting to be in these things. Why don’t I just add my name to the pile?’ I kind of liked this one story, so I sent it in, and then about a month later I got an acceptance, and I went through the roof. I was so happy about it.

After you submitted your first story, what did you do?

It’s funny because you’re supposed to get a million rejection letters, you’re supposed to have stacks and stacks of rejection letters before you get your first acceptance. So, I got such a swelled head getting the one acceptance letter. And then when I finally started getting rejection letters, I was like, ‘why is this happening to me? Why am I suddenly getting rejection letters?’

But it’s just one of those perseverance things. You keep going. Sometimes you get form letters, sometimes you get personal rejections, which is a lot better than getting a form letter, and you just keep pushing. And now I’ve gotten a couple more [acceptances], and a few paid ones.

How did you get the idea for Flies in the Brain?

I had heard that line at the beginning that the father says to the son about ‘in medieval times, they thought that there were flies in people’s brains, and that’s what made them crazy.’ I literally don’t even know where I picked that up from. So I just took that and ran with it. But it’s a bunch of things. I like stories that take place in bars. It’s a very Ketchum thing to do. So I figured I’d set part of it in that kind of a Bukowski-esque drinking man, down on his luck reflection, so I could get some pathos into it. And then, of course, copious amounts of insects.

What do you want people to take away from this story, and your writing?

I’m very interested in highbrow meets lowbrow. I don’t like it when people in the really high-culture, artsy community pooh-pooh on the stuff I like. But then again, I really like some of the stuff that’s really held up by the art community. So I see myself as the ground floor guy on the very bottom looking up. So I write with very pulpy, very “silly,” air quotes there, material, but I always try to at least have something in it than can be some kind of artistic expression, even if it’s in the most obvious of ways.

As far as Flies in the Brain goes, it’s kind of about loss, it’s kind of about sadness. I wanted to infuse loss and themes and tones like that into a fun story.

I hope people are entertained, but they can think about it when they’re sitting in bed at night.

Think about it, or be kept awake by it?

I’ll take both. That would be perfect.

Read Adam’s story Flies in the Brain on the next page.

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Radiation

Photo by Clarissa Keen

The breath of the water creates atoms.

Molecules in the darkness

leave only the light

in an infinitesimal absorption.

The subway runs over

art flying by

in flames of water color

“I am nothing,”

“I will become nothing,”

“You have met me

at the pinnacle of my demise.”

I let myself fall from Eden

(the bridge the river)

only,

if only…

no more white He said

only black

blackguard

blackbody

radiation.

Clarissa Keen

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Natural Tendency

‘Do you know where you are’

Photo by Andrea Abi-Karam

i am nowhere

‘Do you know who you are’

i am no one

‘Do you know why you are here’

i am nowhere where i cannot see anything nothing everything awash in light but not always

‘Not during the late evening, there is a difference you know?’

it is light and it is dark but not at the same time never at the same time

‘Can you feel the clock ticking?’

sometimes when you leave me alone

i have been alone here a long while but it has not always been this way. before here there was someone with me. i suspect now he is nowhere also but they tell me he is not anywhere and that here is really someplace in washington by the river so the rushing keeps me calm the serenity of the forest hoards me trying to muffle the echo of my thoughts within the leaves’ filter. i have known him for almost as long as i have known myself but we were not together for that entirety. we first met on the playgrounds of youth spent huddled in unison against the biting chill of winter and steering our bikes along the secret trails of summer. but moving of course compromised all of that. focused  on my own trail of missed connections and intersections we did not meet again until college. on break he convinced me to meet him for breakfast at the diner whose name really is just diner. he did not even look at the menu but just immediately ordered french toast. after careful scrutiny i ordered an omlet with cheese and coffee. cradling my coffee addiction while he unforgiving of all the missed years he stared straight into me just the way they do here both looking for the truth. i cannot give it here i already gave it to him if only he was here he could tell them. if only.

‘Where is he?’

who

‘Him’

‘It’s too soon’

they always ask me that early every time the sun pierces the sky and into my room and i wake with swollen hands. sometimes it gets so bad they wrap them with itchy chalk paper and still they swell with the ferocity of maggots feasting on a fresh body. i guess i am allergic to nowhere. these are not the slender fingers i used to stroke his hair with. they don’t seem to know where he is. no one does. if they never find him i still will never forget his eyes the only dark penetrating  gaze across the diner booth to match my own. the tightrope of conversation inched back and forth across the table but in the end settled nowhere. strain across the missed years left us in an aimless purgatory with faint thoughts of a future but both of us too proud to admit them. we did not see each other again for three years.

‘Do you know why we wrap your hands every morning?’

i’m allergic to nowhere

‘Do you dream at night?’

i cannot remember after dark i cannot see

‘Can you see him?’

maybe i have once

‘You screamed.’

yes yes  i think i did he was lying on the floor and he wouldn’t get up and his shirt was darker than it was supposed to be then when i woke up my hands hurt

‘You had been punching the wall. Your hands were bloody and swollen so I came over to you and you tried to scratch me. We knocked you out with a tranquilizer and wrapped your hands. It happens every week.’

Photo by Andrea Abi-Karam

This time I was living alone in the city. School’s constant consummation of time and the wild nights that somehow followed plateaued off into the solitude of research. As a rising masters student I was finally an independent with my own project. I did behavioral research sending little spotted mice into mazes in a primal hunt for food. It was a competition of course a race would the brown spotted or black speckled mouse find the cheese first. If the brown spotted found the cheese first he survived until the next task. My superior beheadead the black speckled mouse and used the remains for her own research we had to conserve resources. it was always the black speckled mouse who lost her head. she never screamed just bleed on the blade of the miniature guillotine. the survival instincts that i studied so meticulously ended in barely a moment. she’s not here.

‘Your pills’

do i have to take them you know i hate them the way they taste

‘You’ve been taking them a long time’

yes

‘when was the first time you took them?’

after i stopped at the lab

‘Why did you stop?’

i clamped shut. that was before all of this even before him that’s right he knew me after the pills

‘What happened at the lab?’

i wanted to know. i needed to know what it felt like and then and then they caught me i wasn’t supposed to

‘What weren’t you supposed to do?’

the lab was desolate save for the occasional squeaks emerging from the mouse boxes. about to begin testing on a new maze i turn on all of the lights and move my box of mice into the maze room which branches off from the main lab area. i wheel back into the main lab area to collect the cheese when i see it. it was just there. it was just gleaming there beneath the fluorescent lights reflecting all the terrible tools my superior uses on a single face of the guillotines blade. not that i hadn’t thought about erasing myself in the style of the eighteenth century to be left for someone else’s advisor to try to analyze all the survival instincts floating around my head. the problem was at that moment there were none. but the blade was too small.

‘You eyed it and wished it was made for you and then when the others came in you snapped?’

i wasn’t finished.

‘Continue’

the blade was too small for me. i wandered back into the maze room where i had left them lifted the cover and bore down into their innocent little lives. Then i found him the brown spotted mouse that had survived six mazes whose survival compromised the others. my left hand slid into the box and picked him up gingerly. he was soft. placing him carefully beneath the blade felt him shiver and then i did it and felt his survival instincts dissipate. and then they came in to watch the prize mouse drain over the counter. Before they sent me to the psychiatrist on the third floor they made me watch my career bleed over across the floor.

‘That wasn’t the first time you’ve told that’

no the nice third floor psychiatrist asked why i was there and i told her what happened to the little brown spotted mouse and then what happened to me. at the end she handed me a piece of paper on it scrawled sertraline and diazepam. she said they were for depression and anxiety and that i shouldn’t even try to overdose on them because i would just get nauseous. two sertraline and one diazepam every day. every day they paint my tongue white as my taste buds try to shrink into oblivion just to have twice as many forced onto it while my face scrunches in protest. they helped some they helped me forget the how i was when i did that to the mice and for awhile I didn’t have any more of those feelings but i’m still not sure they’re worth the horrendous taste.

‘You will be’

the psychiatrist said i should try to forget about the lab and maybe get a quiet job for awhile maybe in a restaurant or something and try to figure out what i can really handle doing without decapitating part of my

Photo by Andrea Abi-Karam

work. So I got a job in a café on lexington ave bussing tables and making coffee. I didn’t like talking to the customers and missed the solitude of my room in the lab. there i was alone. I didn’t like the customers until he came. I hadn’t seen him since the diner in college and then there he was in my café same dark piercing eyes body unmarred except for the jagged scar across his left cheek from a skiing accident. I went to wait on his table he told me to sit down. i sat there listening to him talk to me and all i could do was sit there staring at his left cheek and wonder how it felt when the tip of the ski sliced into his skin the sharpened blade grating against your skull like the cruelest of plastic surgeons leaving him to fall to ground corrupting the fresh powder in red. how was it for the mountain to suck you dry and use you for your sticky warmth. his silence shocked me out of it as i stumbled out of the chair into the back and collapsed on the floor against the cabinet and swallow the three pills. i hadn’t thought about how he had gotten his scar before and these were the kind of thoughts the nice psychiatrist warned me about. i just downed a glass of water and focused on breathing while i fixed him and i cappuccinos. he seemed not to notice my strange exit in the reflection of the cup i handed him. We sat there for hours it was true i had missed him. My boss didn’t seem to mind other than the occasional burning glances which i conveniently ignored. He radiated. I had missed him. We talked for hours and the entire time he couldn’t take his eyes off mine and I could not look away. he asked me out that evening and I stared him straight through the eye and responded yes and he left. hurriedly i closed the café and rushed home to change into a dark evening dress and adorned my neck with fake pearls. I hoped he wouldn’t notice. He took me out to a nice dinner and then took me home. After that I never left. I still worked at the café and occasionally stopped by my apartment for clothes but we were inseparable. He once said to me ‘You are the only person who matched my gaze.’ nothing can break that.

‘It’s broken now.’

no no it is not why wont you let me see him i need to see him. when we are together you will then see

‘You cannot see him.’

why not you cannot keep him from me where is he

‘You know where he is.’

no non o no

‘Why do you love him?’

he told me everything would be alright that one day i would work in a lab and that we would cure Alzheimer’s and that i wouldn’t have to take pills anymore and i wouldn’t have to hide from those terrible thoughts in his arms and that no matter what we would be together

‘Were you happy?’

i was ok he told me i was ok that i was fine and that if i wanted i could try to stop

‘Stop?’

yes stop the nasty chalk that turns my tongue to sand paper

‘For how long?’

a week passed and i felt no change another passed and the same i was ok until another came

‘What happened?’

i got off late from the café from the stragglers that hide in coffee shops and pretend to have important conversations with important people i had to kick them out it was ten thirty thirty minutes passed closing time. i walked back to his apartment he was out late on a work dinner and told me not to wait even though it was already eleven i did not expect him. the winds took it out of me all i could do when i arrived there was clamber into bed and hide from them. then he came in.

‘Who?’

i don’t know but it was not him he was still at a work dinner and i did not know him but he came into our bedroom and started to take off his clothes and i did not know what he would do i tried to hide still beneath the covers but then he started talking to me and i did not know what he wanted but he kept stepping closer to me and then he put his hands on me and i screamed but he did not seem to know why for some reason this was normal to him he acted as though he lived there but i knew that he did not. i slid out of his grip rolling across the bed and reached for the drawer where he keeps the revolver and snatched it up and said listen you better leave now before he comes home and he just said I am home please calm down and put the gun down I think you should take your pills but i couldn’t fathom why he should know about my pills but he took a step closer and i was afraid so i looked him dead in the eye and then i did it aimed for his left breast pocket and pulled it. for a second i was deafened and hoped the neighbors didn’t hear it but i was deafened which meant that they must have been deafened also so they definitely could not have heard it. this all happened as i held his dark gaze while he fell still giving me a pleading a look and i thought that his eyes were familiar. once he finished falling i walked over and stood over him and also wondered at the scar on his left cheek for it was very familiar too and i just hoped that i didn’t know him from the café or something besides it has been years since i have seen him from away from the play grounds of childhood what would he be doing here.

‘Do you know where you are?’

i am nowhere

‘Well I guess you are going to be nowhere for awhile.’

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