Volume 7, Spring 2022 by The Foundationalist
The Foundationalist, 2022
{Kinsale Drake, Yale University} After Billy- Ray Belcourt, In a Connecticut winter, I walk / Thr... more {Kinsale Drake, Yale University} After Billy- Ray Belcourt, In a Connecticut winter, I walk / Through the walls of the YUAG/ And dream of exploding / Every Picasso into a snowstorm.
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The Foundationalist , 2022
{Shelby Rice, Miami University} you’re no longer catholic but your patron saint sticks around. yo... more {Shelby Rice, Miami University} you’re no longer catholic but your patron saint sticks around. you’re not sure why . she’s sort of morphed into an imaginary friend you monologue to alone in your apartment, carrying full conversations on with a goddamn spectre
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The Foundationalist, 2022
{Bailey A. Moskowitz, University of Virginia} In this paper, I will first
illuminate how Morriso... more {Bailey A. Moskowitz, University of Virginia} In this paper, I will first
illuminate how Morrison’s writing suggests artistic expression as a way for individuals
to realize their identities. I will then investigate how other authors depict Morrison’s theory of self-realization, thereby exploring how the production and dissemination of
art can serve as both healing means of expression and as forces capable of isolating the artist.
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The Foundationalist, 2022
{Kelsie Bennett, New York University} The way into a man’s pants is through his ego. Mom taught h... more {Kelsie Bennett, New York University} The way into a man’s pants is through his ego. Mom taught her that when Candy was thirteen and being bullied in middle school for the gap between her front teeth. If she were a boy or had a daddy to teach her, maybe she would have learned to fight. But Mom still armed her. No middle school boy cared about the gap between her teeth once she’d complimented his snapback, and his tongue was in her mouth
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The Foundationalist, 2022
{Clementine Williams, North Carolina State University} I don’t want to work no mo’, / and that do... more {Clementine Williams, North Carolina State University} I don’t want to work no mo’, / and that don’t make me lazy / ‘cause I done licked / the boot and pulled / up my straps for a / dolla’ seventy"five
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The Foundationalist, 2022
{Max Lee Fang, University of Chicago} Let me tell you a real story.
It was January 2018. I was o... more {Max Lee Fang, University of Chicago} Let me tell you a real story.
It was January 2018. I was on summer break—seasons in the southern
hemisphere are reversed—and my mother and I traveled back to China to visit family and friends. I was only fifteen, so my parents didn’t tell me exactly what was going on, but I’m observant, always have been, and I had some idea of why I was sent off to stay with my dad in Suzhou while my mother spent nearly all her time in Beijing. My aunt was sick.
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The Foundationalist, 2022
{Campbell Sharpe, Washington University in St. Louis} At the supermarket, I /
Buy a bruised po... more {Campbell Sharpe, Washington University in St. Louis} At the supermarket, I /
Buy a bruised pomegranate. // A cat stretches and shrinks / Along the lip of a dumpster.
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The Foundationalist, 2022
{Emma Schick, University of Colorado Boulder} Maisie comes back home, unexpected, on a Tuesday af... more {Emma Schick, University of Colorado Boulder} Maisie comes back home, unexpected, on a Tuesday afternoon. One minute, you’re about to be carsick in the back of Mom’s beat up, sour smelling minivan. The next, there’s a girl on the front porch you don’t recognize. She’s smoking a cigarette and grins around it when she sees you, putting up her hand to wave.
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The Foundationalist, 2022
{Anna Kabulakhova, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa} It’s dark. Maybe because it’s night, maybe bec... more {Anna Kabulakhova, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa} It’s dark. Maybe because it’s night, maybe because you’re standing below a behemoth mountain. It rises vertical. A wall. A fence. Teeth biting the land into two. Its sharp ridges carved by millions of years of rain and wind. Erosion. The neighborhood is quiet in the pocket of this looming giant.
Pray for stealth.
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The Foundationalist, 2022
{Dylan Richmond, Bowdoin College} the ocean, albumen, the land, yolk! / unleavened, yet to be bred.
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The Foundationalist, 2022
{Isabelle Edgar, Stanford University} Little Bird: She used to frighten people with her eyebrows.... more {Isabelle Edgar, Stanford University} Little Bird: She used to frighten people with her eyebrows. The way they flashed in arcs upwards then disappeared into horizon lines. She knew the color gray like the back of her hand and he knew the back of her hand like it was the map to leave Minsk. They dreamed of footsteps and scrubbed the corners of the windows with a sponge soaked in olive oil and crumbs.
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The Foundationalist, 2022
{Nora Sullivan Horner, Bowdoin College} I do not trust a story if I am not able to tell it myself... more {Nora Sullivan Horner, Bowdoin College} I do not trust a story if I am not able to tell it myself. The warped lens of millennia has a way of distorting the truth, sometimes cracking it in half entirely. I do not remember being born. But I remember the things that happened after that. And if I close my eyes for long enough, I am brought back to those first days in that first place. Would you like to hear something true?
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The Foundationalist, 2022
{Meghan Farbridge, McGill University} Through their radical poetics, Moore and H.D. stretch, revi... more {Meghan Farbridge, McGill University} Through their radical poetics, Moore and H.D. stretch, revision, and redefine subjectivity , both within and beyond the material self. Here, I read their representations of the body by way of posthumanist thought. Moore and H.D.’s poetry demonstrates a generative move towards a new imagination of embodiment ! one wherein all beings assume equal ontological status.
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The Foundationalist, 2022
{Esther Eunsuh Park, Bowdoin College} The House catches on fire / and the people
ash-blind, smok... more {Esther Eunsuh Park, Bowdoin College} The House catches on fire / and the people
ash-blind, smoke-dazed, / point at a girl, barely woman
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The Foundationalist, 2022
{Hanna-Sophie Klasing, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin} I am made up entirely of almosts; / I am a... more {Hanna-Sophie Klasing, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin} I am made up entirely of almosts; / I am almost a vegetarian, / Almost a lesbian, / Almost a woman, /Almost grown-up.
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The Foundationalist, 2022
{Sammy Aiko, University of Chicago} We're in your apartment. / There are clothes and books and pi... more {Sammy Aiko, University of Chicago} We're in your apartment. / There are clothes and books and pill bottles everywhere / Acetaminophen, fluoxetine, dextroamphetamine. / Sorry about the mess, you say. / I shrug and drop my coat on the floor.
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The Foundationalist, 2022
{Lily Weber, Northeastern University} We were in a playground when we took the acid. Not one I wa... more {Lily Weber, Northeastern University} We were in a playground when we took the acid. Not one I was familiar with. That was my first mistake. Anyone who knows anything about psychedelic drugs will tell you that it’s best to be in a place you know. Where you feel safe. That same rule applies to the people you’re with. If you’d asked me at the time whether I felt safe with the two men I was with, I would have answered in the affirmative. No question. One of them was my boyfriend Liam.
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The Foundationalist, 2022
{Surya Hendry, Stanford University} When the sun does not rise, the earthworm does. Tiptoeing toe... more {Surya Hendry, Stanford University} When the sun does not rise, the earthworm does. Tiptoeing toelessly through root and loam to lick the air, the drops of rain. In all her life //
this will be her most glorious experience: fresh water caressing her all"tongue body .
She asks not the source of her pleasure. She has no word for sky .
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The Foundationalist, 2022
{Elise Nass, New York University} In the rotting ribcage of a village long since burned to ash is... more {Elise Nass, New York University} In the rotting ribcage of a village long since burned to ash is a half-house, slowly becoming a part of the rolling green hills. Thorns and roses grow over stone. Through the frosted window a child sits, atop a wooden stool, poking at her pancakes and honey. Even favorite foods lose flavor when eaten too often, she discovers, and it’s been pancakes or carrots for days, taking flour from the burlap sack in the cellar that will run out one day. Then she’ll be left with what she can fry over the small fire in the center room of the house. Mushrooms wait in jars. They taste strange on her tongue, but eventually, hunger will drive her to eat them anyway. Once, they had dried meat hanging from the rafters, but now deer are scarce. Spooning the last of the pancakes into her mouth, she pads over dirt floors toward the fire now, mindful that she must never, ever, let it go out. Finch will be very angry if he comes back to a cold house.
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The Foundationalist, 2022
{Shade Ayeni, University of Virginia} Father, if you forgave my parents for infecting me with Hat... more {Shade Ayeni, University of Virginia} Father, if you forgave my parents for infecting me with Hatred / during my conception, / extend such forgiveness to my soul / before I see you !
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Volume 7, Spring 2022 by The Foundationalist
illuminate how Morrison’s writing suggests artistic expression as a way for individuals
to realize their identities. I will then investigate how other authors depict Morrison’s theory of self-realization, thereby exploring how the production and dissemination of
art can serve as both healing means of expression and as forces capable of isolating the artist.
It was January 2018. I was on summer break—seasons in the southern
hemisphere are reversed—and my mother and I traveled back to China to visit family and friends. I was only fifteen, so my parents didn’t tell me exactly what was going on, but I’m observant, always have been, and I had some idea of why I was sent off to stay with my dad in Suzhou while my mother spent nearly all her time in Beijing. My aunt was sick.
Buy a bruised pomegranate. // A cat stretches and shrinks / Along the lip of a dumpster.
Pray for stealth.
ash-blind, smoke-dazed, / point at a girl, barely woman
this will be her most glorious experience: fresh water caressing her all"tongue body .
She asks not the source of her pleasure. She has no word for sky .
illuminate how Morrison’s writing suggests artistic expression as a way for individuals
to realize their identities. I will then investigate how other authors depict Morrison’s theory of self-realization, thereby exploring how the production and dissemination of
art can serve as both healing means of expression and as forces capable of isolating the artist.
It was January 2018. I was on summer break—seasons in the southern
hemisphere are reversed—and my mother and I traveled back to China to visit family and friends. I was only fifteen, so my parents didn’t tell me exactly what was going on, but I’m observant, always have been, and I had some idea of why I was sent off to stay with my dad in Suzhou while my mother spent nearly all her time in Beijing. My aunt was sick.
Buy a bruised pomegranate. // A cat stretches and shrinks / Along the lip of a dumpster.
Pray for stealth.
ash-blind, smoke-dazed, / point at a girl, barely woman
this will be her most glorious experience: fresh water caressing her all"tongue body .
She asks not the source of her pleasure. She has no word for sky .
Oh secret society of husband hexing—who is next in line to the throne for the vicious, vivid dimension of the housewives with third eyes. Oh ladies of the CRV, near the brink of explosion from exploitation--you left the dirty underwear on the carpet. Next time you go scum shopping in a tin can forest, I ask you to cradle me into my next life, for I will never cry again. I will bake my own bread and befriend the couture girls.
Out of the quiet, there is a sudden rush of feathers and a crow flutters onto the windowsill outside. He violently beats his wings and steps in a circle. He raises his beak towards the sun and shrieks.
ideas of enlightenment, Gothic literature presented a backlash against the predictability and regularity of the literature of the Age of Reason. The core ideas of this literary trend were retrieved from the stories of traditional folksay and from gripping mysteries of the gloomy past.
in a phosphorescent room.// i have spent all morning staring at Jesus on the cross.// the silence was tense and awkward.//so i asked him oh my god how’ve you been??//and hey, have you heard from your dad lately?//which was cringey, i know, but in my defense// the past few years, God has been a little off the grid.
//(only darkness for the first sin repeated in living flesh //sagging breasts fail a test //we are not worthy)// Children marvel as tulle dances between our legs; we marvel as we billow, waiflike, into air// (we dream of translucent skinned// flowing limbs shifting// against substanceless skirts)
from the hand of god, and pass salt shakers/down the dinner table. it’s an/
exorcism, of sorts, a consummation: my mother...
and as much as I’d like to believe
David reckons with his alienating terror of the flesh. This terror, in Baldwin’s
words, is “really a terror of being able to be touched” (Goldstein 70). From
whence did David’s terror spring? And what are the implications, in James
Baldwin’s criticism of the “American dream of love,” of David’s succumbing to
this terror? I hope to explore these questions and also the ways in which David
wields his fear and hatred against those who love, or try to love him as
punishment for their failure to adhere to the impossible demands of his white
American masculinity and the imagined white familial construction. Against a
backdrop of postwar alienation and detritus in the streets of Paris and of his
psyche, David’s transplanted national and personal turmoil has physically and
ontologically deadly implications. But only in the stifling air and excess
romanticism of Paris can we see that it is ultimately the fleshy embodiment of his
father, women, and queer, immigrant others that condemns them to abjection
and ontological displacement. Their excess is a mere symptom of their inherent
incapacity and thus, failure, to realize the American dream of love—in David’s
eyes, the most grievous sin.
Destined to be subsumed by window curtains, the sunbeams silhouetted the patterns embedded deep within the linen—an ephemeral portrait of suspended time. The sunlight crept into the gaping crevice between the curtains, and it conspired as it had each day and every day to wake Marshall up before the screen in the otherwise bare room drowned it out. But as always, the booming sound of the speakers and the overwhelming light of the pixels would render such nature subservient to the manmade commands of urgency and immediacy.
This was odd, even for a strange, single mother in an ugly, angry little mining town with only a handful of miners to rub together. So I stubbed out my cigarette and called out to her. Her head jerked around so savagely that even at a distance I was startled. Her hair floated around her face like she was underwater, her mouth creasing into a greasy little smile.
the filthy world of you and me
they gaze upon half formed idols
that twist and meld into fear and life
we, everlastingly
unsatisfied with nature as it sits
still yap at the remnants of babylonian gardens
Men
who fed their families with crop
tilled from seed to sickle.
mornings was more hectic than an American mall on Black Friday. Personal
boundaries were disregarded as shoppers reached over one another to sink their
hands into weathered wooden containers filled with ginger. Bits of meat and bone
splattered all over bloody aprons as butchers efficiently fulfilled the requests of
shoppers fighting for spots in front of smudged glass cases.
that when she pictures me in her head, she only pictures 6th-grade me with
braces, even though we see each other in college nearly everyday. And I, for
some reason, can only see the 10th-grade version of her mixed with what she
looks like now. Pierced nose, thrift store outfits, untamed hair that she’s always
pushing back to tell you about why she hates men today.
testimony of the earth. Reduced to nothing more than a whisper of comfort,
on a bench in the snow
them in and pressed play. The scratchy, whispering silence of empty tape filled
his ears, then the descending, bass tones of Sense of Doubt took over. Coming
through the foam pads of his headphones, the sound was like a transmission
from another planet. Like there were millions of miles of light and stars, rocks
and gas it had to travel through before reaching Earth, the US, California, San
Diego, 219 Clearcreek Place.
Remember the way you felt, staring, in horror, at the glossy red laminated fruit
hanging above your teacher’s head. Remember how worried you were that you
would have to memorize every single image that matched every single letter.
How could you ever get all the way to Z? How would you even make it down
the line to U? A is for apple, B is for boy … A is for apple, B is for boy … A is
for apple, B is for boy …