Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Spring 2024

The Alembic

The Alembic - Spring 2024. 143 pages including covers and advertisements.

Table of Contents

Editors’ Note, vii

Poetry

S. Yarberry

Catherine’s Poem, 3

Looking at Robert Blake, 4

The Tyger , 6

Ethan Cunningham

Woman Under Water, 7

William Heath

A Bar in Santa Cruz, 8

In Asturias, 9

Joan Barker

Hometown, 10

Ella Bloom

Loneliness, 12

The Fog/A Lighthouse, 14

Found, 16

Tom McFadden

Where the Light May End, 17

If It Were Spring, 18

Bruce McRae

Daydreamers, 20

Does Your Dog Bite?, 21

A Strained Affair, 22

Erin Bolger

19 reasons, 23

Richard Dinges

Thunder, 24

Mulberry Trees …

Observations From The Edge Of The Abyss, Peter Johnson

English Faculty Publications

A book of prose poems/fragments available to download here for no charge

Spring 2023

The Alembic

The Alembic - Spring 2023. 142 pages including covers and advertisements.

Table of Contents

Fiction and Poetry

• Bibars, Sofia, The Glittery Bits In Our Home, 11
• Christiansen, Celine, A Good Man's Grave, 23
• Clarke, Fiona, By The River Of Babylon, 38
• Dinges, Richard, Conductor, 39
• Dinges, Richard, Grim Reaper, 40
• Dinges, Richard, Raising, 41
• Ellis, Mark, A Lady Names Sorrows Bloom, 42
• Flores, Mariela, My Name, 43
• Flores, Mariela, Five Ways To Look At Hands, 45
• Flores, Mariela, Hardest Thing Is To Say Goodbye, 47
• Flores, Mariela, Trash Day, …

Disney Buyout, Kevin Clifford

Student Publications

Disney Buyout

A man listens to the radio to find out that the White House has been bought out by Disney.
*Edited/adapted for the performance by Tim Brown and Thomas Edwards

Cheater, Daniel Jameson

Student Publications

A young man comes to terms with the decisions he has made regarding his love life.

Nightmare, Maggie E. Burke

Student Publications

This poem is about the restlessness of overthinking at night and falling into a nightmarish dream state, similar to that of Alice in Wonderland, centered on frightful feelings of emptiness.

Bad Harvest, Dzvinia Orlowsky

English Faculty Publications

This powerful sixth collection of poetry is like some kind of new world Genesis singing its stories with lyric, grace, comic intuition and tragic force. The poet leads us over the remains of drought, along empty riverbeds that run parallel to failure and death, but then twists to capture a more elusive truth, pluck one last grain to hold, redeeming a bad harvest to sow hope in this soiled world. Bad Harvest burns like revelation.

Wednesday, Thomas F. Edwards

Student Publications

A man recalls the death of his surrogate father.

Quiet As A Church Rat, Joseph A. Fromer

Student Publications

Quiet as a Church Rat is about a naïve teenager who attempts to steal money from his grandma’s purse to buy a video game. This teenager wants to live dangerously like a “rat” but in the process of stealing money from his grandma, he finds out that the “rat” life isn’t for him.

The Idea Of You, Julia Zygiel

Student Publications

A woman confesses to a man but it doesn't go as planned. Although she is rejected the woman walks away pleased, and the man is left befuddled and without resolution.

Red Sheets, Maggie E. Burke

Student Publications

A poem about a painting of a dark bedroom with a large window.

Stay, Gabriella M. Sanchez

Student Publications

Stay is a liberation poem as told by a young woman recounting various memories of a tumultuous relationship that threatens to hold her back. Despite the pain of heartbreak, the woman is determined to not stay stuck, but respect her true self and independence.

Spring 2016

The Alembic

Spring 2016. Full issue, 133 pages in total including front matter & table of contents.

Table of Contents:

• Levy, Jeffrey, A Story to Tell, 1
• Durbin, Branan, Namesake, 2
• Durbin, Branan, Hannah, 4
• Durbin, Branan, Zoraida, 5
• Price, Devyn, The Surly Bonds of Earth, 7
• Perchik, Simon, *, 17
• Moglia, Greg, Three Steps, 18
• Moglia, Greg, Try to Get Away, 19
• Moglia, Greg, Commander, 20
• Wright, Ben, 1000 Tea & Topology, 21
• Wright, Ben, Herstein & More Caffeine, 22
• Wright, Ben, Irrational Pi, 23
• Wright, Ben, Bullet from …

Traincar Sentimentalists, Jonathan S. Coppe

Student Publications

A young man and a young woman, an architect and an actress respectively, meet on a train and discover that they are what each has been looking for. A lighthearted love scene, set in the 1950s.

Wind, Hannah C. Albright

Student Publications

A young woman confronts overwhelming tragedy.

A Chat Between Cats, Marisa K. Gonzalez

Student Publications

This scene is about what goes on during the intermission of Cats the Musical. The scene is full of little conversations between different people one would see attending a musical.

Ego, Konner Jebb

Student Publications

This is a prose poem that explores the issues of depression and body image through a horror and gothic-like perception. The speaker is haunted by a monster that lives within their own reflection.

Dollhouse, Maggie E. Burke

Student Publications

This piece is about a girl retelling a story about her mother's past relationship with an abusive boyfriend.

Spring 2015

The Alembic

2015. Full issue, 193 pages in total including frontmatter & table of contents.

Table of Contents:

FICTION

• Barefoot Princesses, Jennifer Cyr, 4
• My GPS, My Love, Walter B. Levis, 19
• Rejection, Sten Spinella, 28
• Kamaloca, Stephen Jarrett, 47
• Blinded by the Sight, Diana Vlavianos, 74
• Choice, Blake Kilgore, 102
• Four-and-a-Half Feet, Neal Mercier, 121
• The Village, Collin Anderson, 133
• Purple Petunias, Lee Varon, 159

POETRY

• Simic, Guy Thorvaldsen, 1
• Nomad, Catharine Lucas, 2
• Eileen Marú, Matt Gillick, 3
• Beams, Laurie Patton, 10
• Home is a Human Being …

Wisdom From A Lost Friend To A New Friend, Veronica Murphy

Common Reading Essay Contest Winners

Third Place

Silvertone, Dzvinia Orlowsky

English Faculty Publications

These poems both celebrate and question the psychological existence we give to the objects that define our lives: the silver spoon from which the speaker sips, during each Epiphany, the sacred Borscht which she later catches her mother, after guests have left, pouring down the drain; the acoustic guitar on which the speaker’s father strums his minor-keyed songs from Ukraine; or the granite bust of a national poet that, in the hot sun, fails to inspire. With heart and humor the speaker examines what stays, goes, and how every object, once illuminated by the past, has the ability to take …

There Is No Normal, Meghan Donohoe

Common Reading Essay Contest Winners

Honorable Mention

Dear Christopher, Abby Shelley

Common Reading Essay Contest Winners

Second Place

Convertible Night, Flurry Of Stones, Dzvinia Orlowsky

English Faculty Publications

Gertrude Stein writes: "Pink looks as pink, pink looks as pink, as pink as pink supposes, suppose." Dzvinia Orlowsky's poems in her new book are strung along the tension of a black thread stretched to near snapping as her tenacious, feisty speaker refuses for all women the typecast as another breast cancer statistic, another bumper sticker pink bow. Equal parts shepherd, punk, and auburn-wigged angel, Orlowsky, with torches in her hand, illuminates this dark passage with images of startling originality and honesty. The clear voice in this book joins those whose lives have been and continue to be altered by …

Except For One Obscene Brushstroke, Dzvinia Orlowsky

English Faculty Publications

What is moving about Orlowsky’s poetry is the manner in which she moves us through her images. Her poems progress like silent films that show the entire universe, then a galaxy, then a star, then a planet, then an organism, then an atom, then an explosion, although not necessarily in that order. There is an element of randomness, of transmitting events and thoughts as they happen, of moving from vastness to the finite; perhaps this accounts for the freshness, the beautiful brutality of Orlowsky’s poetry. – Jenny Boully, Maisonneuve At a time when so much contemporary poetry relies on either …

Edge Of House, Dzvinia Orlowsky

English Faculty Publications

Joseph Brodsky, in one of the essays in On Grief and Reason, writes that the twentieth century is the century of the displaced person. Writers in this century more than any other—from James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway to Paul Celan and Czeslaw Milosz to Seamus Heaney and Brodsky himself—have explored the ordeal of abandoning, voluntarily or involuntarily, a home that had become culturally or socially oppressive. Ukrainian-American poet Dzvinia Orlowsky, in Edge of House and Cuban-American poet Aleida Rodriguez, in Garden of Exile, while eschewing the political concerns of many of these writers, similarly draw on the impact of displacement …

A Handful Of Bees, Dzvinia Orlowsky

English Faculty Publications

The poems of Dzvinia Orlowsky negotiate matter and spirit with a feisty dreaminess. Wavering between these two worlds, the author of A Handful of Bees inhabits that pre-dawn landscape where wakefulness emerges only to recede, like a herd of horses or an outcropping of firs, into sleep mist. This is a countryside of honest uncertainty.
– Mary Maxwell, AGNI

I’d like to point out for particular mention Orlowsky’s handling of her religious background. Raised in a Ukrainian family, she was brought up to be a practicing Catholic. This subject has been explored by numerous writers, yet few can capture the …

Volume 27, Number 3 - February 1949

The Alembic

Volume 27, Number 3 - February 1949. 78 pages including covers and advertisements.

• "Editorial"
• "Exchange"
• Daley, James T., Jr., "Miller's Reputation"
• Eagle, George L., "Embers In The Mist"
• Plummer, William H., "The Critic"
• Brott, Clifford J., "A Pastoral Meditation"
• Vayo, Harold E., "One Autumn Afternoon"
• Vayo, Harold E., "Winter Scene"
• Wooley, Charles F., "Kaleidoscope"
• Vayo, Harold E., "A Passing Thought"
• Henry, Wales B., "Meditation After Reading Dorothy Parker"
• Plummer, William H., "To A Meadowlark"
• Honnen, William, "Thirty Pieces of Silver"
• Henry, Wales B., "Unrequited Love"
• Henry, Wales B., "Idee Fixe"
• Eagle, George L., "Morning Classes"
• Vayo, Harold E., "I Wonder" …

Volume 27, Number 2 - December 1948

The Alembic

Volume 27, Number 2 - December 1948. 90 pages including covers and advertisements.

• "Editorial"

• Doherty, Robert E., "Editors Also Know Despair"

• Brott, Clifford J., "Reunion"
• Boning, Thomas H., "66th Street, East of Broadway"
• Henry, Wales B., "Timpani in Tom-Toms"
• Geffroy, Guy, "The Way A Friend Would"
• Honnen, William, "Rue De Bom Jesus"
• Wooley, Charles F., "The Concrete Jungle"
• Brott, Clifford J., "Reverie"
• Beausoleil, Norman D., "Evolution of French Literature"
• Lynch, John J., "Gross Negligence"
• Henry, Wales B., "Five and Twenty Years Ago"
• Cochran, George Hunter, "Sonnet to Beauty"
• Eagle, George L., The Felon"
• Cochran, George Hunter, "One Rose"
• Marino, L. …

Volume 27, Number 1 - October 1948

The Alembic

Volume 27, Number 1 - October 1948. 58 pages including covers and advertisements.

• Paolino, Daniel, "Not I, Lord"
• Scungio, Raymond, "Rain in Trinidad"
• Doherty, Robert, "Adventures of Blunderjohn"
• Cochran, George, "Day Coach"
• Brott, Clifford, "Short Essays"
• Cruz, Valentine, "On F.E.P.C."
• Cochran, George, "Windsong"
• Kirtland, Robert, "St. Thomas Aquinas"
• Fleck, Richard L., "Resurrection"
• Henry, Wales B., "Clouds"
• Fitz Simmons, E. P., "Simplicity"
• Henry, Wales B., "Soap"
• Doherty, Robert, "On Gertrude Stein"