November made hot skin and cold bones on
walks along the river where the trees undressed,
brought offhand talk of Spoon River and
a Margaret Atwood novel (we seemed to think
we could do better), and that fall we shed more
tears for fiction than fact, for what was there
to mourn? Our stories were luscious and good
like the homegrown beets on our dinner plates.
———
Annie Diamond is a first-year student and hopeful creative writing and/or comparative lit major, and
she hails from the fifth state. Other than poetry, the loves of her life include spelling bees,
Joni Mitchell's music, the Academy Awards, Ryan Gosling, and memorizing trivia. Her number-one
life ambition is to appear on Jeopardy!
The boy
considered
an oreo
on his white
round table
all its cream and
snowy
acnetops
in sprout
on a teenage
blush:
women who
sigh in the
seem of
sons who strip
at their mere
or
Eyes never
white enough
not to see
the collapse
of the hand
down the old
man’s pants
fingering
for the words
you are what
no one
meant
———
Connor Stratton is a third-year English major and philosophy minor.
He is from a suburb of Chicago and attended the same high school as the literary titans
Charles Simic, Ernest Hemingway, and Ludacris. He loves popcorn, likes pop songs, and knows
very little about poplar trees.
So maybe you’ve heard of us before, or maybe this is your first time at this rodeo. And by rodeo, we mean this blog-literary-mag hybrid-beast you’re reading right now. Possibly you’ve been brought here by the ambush advertisement in the OC mail room. Or bribery. Or genuine interest. But since you are here, let us tell you about the new and improving Panoply Press.
Panoply is The Oberlin Review’s online-only literary supplement. Our aim is to publish a piece of writing weekly: poetry, prose, or anything in between. We will publish anyone’s work: whether you’re an Oberlin College or Conservatory student, an Oberlin High School student, a faculty member, or Oberlin resident, we want to hear from you. We have absolutely no length requirements and you can submit to us as often as you like and whenever you like. We offer creative feedback on your work whether your piece is published or not, and as writing dorks we are excited to talk to you about your work whenever you’d like.
Yes, we know what you’re thinking: Oberlin already has heaping handfuls of student publications and literary mags of all shapes and sizes. Why Panoply? What are we good for, anyway? Answer: Panoply was created to both celebrate the fantastic creative writing being produced right here, right now. But we also want to foster a creative community for creative writing outside of the College’s CRWR department. There are talented and ambitious writings working outside of the Creative Writing department’s parameters and workshops. Panoply aims to be a resource, inspiration, and sounding board for writers working in Oberlin and beyond.
We’ve been on Oberlin’s campus for a year now, but this fall semester we’re picking ourselves up by our bootstraps with some game-changing ideas and full-hearted plans. Keep checking in with us throughout the semester and look out for:
- reviews of Oberlin College’s academic events and readings
- interviews with and blog posts by CRWR department faculty and students
- games and contests, oh my!
- writing resources
- prose and poetry pieces written by Oberlin writers
In the meantime, SUBMIT TO PANOPLY.
Give us your best prose, poetry, or anything else you’re writing right now. Do you have things to say about your experiences writing in Oberlin? We’re looking for nonfiction accounts (or “blog posts” as the youngsters say) from creative writers and, as always, we’d love to hear from you. Send your work to panoplypress@oberlinreview.org.
A Former Friend
I moved away this weekend and it’s strange that I can’t hear your voice through the walls of this new house. I had grown used to your late-night stumbling and your drunken phone calls to Pierre, which always ended in screaming. I miss the sounds of your blow-dryer and of your alarm in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon because you like to sleep in. Here in this new house the noises are different: air rushing out of vents, boots clomping on the stairs and the dark-snow-night outside, which is a sound only because it is so soundless, only because it reminds me so thoroughly of your loudness, and thereby your absence.
The past few weeks I haven’t seen you except in the hallway, and those times you ignored me. Our relationship existed only as it filtered through drywall and plaster—your conversations with other people-who-were-not-me and my silent, bristling edge at the sound of your voice seeping into everything, everything—my reading, my music, my sleep. For weeks I lived ghostlike. I let my silence absorb all your sound. Nullify, nullify. I learned that sound cannot be nullified. It settles into the heart, weaves itself among the ribs. It expands and contracts like a breathing creature, suffocating then ripping open. Suffocating, then ripping.
Once, I might have called you “Friend”. Before this weekend, I could have called you “Neighbor”, at least. Now there is no vocabulary. “Enemy” achieves nothing. We are not enemies. I have left you and there is peace in that, and that is all. Sound cannot be nullified, except through distance. This is another thing I have learned.
———
Ariel Lewis is a third year creative writing major and english/rhetcomp
minor. She hails from Vacaville, California, which is nowhere near LA and
somewhere between San Francisco and Sacramento. Her favorite things in
the world include: jello, pembroke welsh corgis, playing tennis, and sparkle
parties.
Sweetheart
Sweetheart found it difficult to cook. It wasn’t because she didn’t know how – she was sure she did, she had seen many television shows on the subject.
It wasn’t that her kitchen was too cramped and small to move – though it was small, nearly too small for one small person to navigate. The house itself was small, too, a white vinyl-sided cottage among crops of other white vinyl-sided cottages that emerged rootlessly as toadstools from the wide tract of land that separated the city from the suburbs.
Sweetheart found it difficult to cook because all of Baby’s food was already prepared – rows and rows of little glass jars arranged according to type and color lined the white shelves of Sweetheart’s kitchen. Beef minestrone, steamed squash and creamed sweet potatoes, chicken and wild rice. Complicated dishes, probably, but not made with love, and certainly not made by Sweetheart. Since Baby had developed the ability to eat semi-solid food and she had accordingly began to buy the little glass jars at the convenience store two blocks down the street, she felt something was missing. Feeding Baby directly from a small spoon shaped like a bunny rabbit felt unnatural. Snacks were even stranger. While Baby could eat raisins and Cheerios now, the small amounts of uniformly shaped pieces made her feel like she was feeding a pet. She wondered how old her daughter would be when she finally felt like a real mother.
At breakfast and dinner Sweetheart would sit Baby into a high chair and go to the shelf and stare. Staring at the choices and taking the time to deliberate over her choice made her feel more involved. It made her feel that she wasn’t forgetting anything important in the process of feeding a baby. Breastfeeding hadn’t required much preparation, either, other than feeding herself (which sometimes did prove difficult to remember), but at least she felt more involved. It was very personal, almost parasitic really, to have a small thing nourishing itself from your own body.
Baby didn’t mind much when her mother spent long minutes staring into the shelves. Baby didn’t mind much of anything. She had been born a December ago, so white and watchful that she looked cold for months, no matter how close Sweetheart held her. Baby eyed her mother with wise old man eyes when she was fed and changed; she kept her small hands in fists. She had come from a night Sweetheart had spent with a boy named Todd Johnson, who had very little neck and even less of a personality, a few weeks after high school graduation. Todd’s bushy red sideburns had crawled down his face like poisonous caterpillars. Sweetheart hadn’t seen him since.
She was very content that Baby was still, in fact, a baby, and thankfully not old enough to talk. Sweetheart did not like talking very much; she wasn’t very good at it. As long as Baby didn’t talk, Sweetheart didn’t need to talk to her very much. She read her child storybooks, things about rabbits and industrious mice, mostly, but without a script to read from Sweetheart didn’t do very well.
impression :
the poets climb down in
the woods like a painting colorless
a dog a monkey and a
rabbit were great friends
dorm key where is the sun
a human you and me
you take your heavy shoes watercolor
in the middle of the night
because the branches are without a parasol
thick and sharp and last
time cut your toe suddenly
a rowboat
a sketch
while stirring all night towards the shimmer
letters in the the poem willows on the shore
leaves tree away
tied with thread
and floss and a summer evening a shifting sight
string
the warmth
what is it that you feel
inside the hollow a sheltered
hood hearing
willow leaves that slender
later, tiny scars that still the shade risen
lie stinging on the wrists, wave
cuts and red-dot lines that a thermos passing
remember climbing trees back and forth between us
a rowing in the summer
lake
a willow by the lakeside a crying
sharp blue sharp blue
huddled
looking in the leaves green shimmer
where is the moon underneath the tree, a
poem water
asking why and why
the man and laughing sadly color
in the moon the less
rabbit in the
moon laughing, why
we were so happy, not
knowing any of those
things
———
. Alex Tamaki a senior. He studies Creative Writing and History, and lots of other things. He grew up in Santa Monica and Venice, CA, but he doesn't go to the beach unless it's raining, or, preferably, night.
conversion
here we are still tearing
maps out of guidebooks
pressing
palm to stone
sole to river
reeds what
is the soul but a
regurgitation of
the body&
how
to be devoured?
learn a
new language
for this
skin these
hands he
says: to un-
tremble remember your
bones secure in
sockets & how
lovely your
hair looks
tonight
———
Jennifer Wong is a third-year Creative Writing major from New York, NY. She enjoys naps in public places, banjo interludes, and medical encyclopedias. She hates wet socks, accidental eye contact, and people who say "word" too much.
