Ubiquitous Literary & Arts Magazine

Events: Senior Reading!

2010-04-13T19:46:00.000-07:00

This Thursday, April 15th, at 4:30pm, eleven senior Writing Majors will read from their senior thesis' in the Rose Garden behind the Pratt Library, weather permitting (the Alumni Reading Room is the back-up
location in case of rain). Please stop by to listen and show them support!

Fiction:

Cat Metayer
Colleen Morrison
Maryrose Mullen
Katie Przbylski
Julie Schott

Poetry:

Caitlyn Cathcart
Sharon Clark
Adah Gorton
Emily-Nicole Johns
Meghan Johnson

Event: Book Swap!

2010-03-14T10:09:00.000-07:00

Ubiquitous Presents: The Handmade Book Swap!

~Tuesday, March 23rd @ Student Lounge from 12:30pm-2:00pm~

Ubiquitous invites you to come and trade your handmade books with other students!

Bring copies of your zines, chapbooks, comics, artist books, journals, whatever! As long as you made it & consider it a book, bring it to swap for other books!

There is no limit to how many books you bring, but we do ask that you bring at least one book to swap. Refreshments will be served!

~The editors~

Deadline EXTENDED & Exhibition News

2010-02-25T20:34:00.000-08:00

The deadline is now March 4th for submissions!

The 75th edition Whitney Biennial is now on view at the museum, and Pratt students get in for free!

Whitney Biennial

The exhibit it running until May 30th so don't miss out.

Also, the Tim Burton Exhibition at the MoMa is still going on until April. Pratt students also have free admission into the MoMa.

Call For Submissions: Ubiquitous Spring 2010 Issue

2010-02-08T16:54:00.000-08:00

Ubiquitous is pleased to announce that we are now accepting submissions for the Spring 2010 issue!

We had a great response last semester and were able to publish an amazing book. We've got big plans for this Spring issue, so don't miss the chance to be a part of it!

You can submit to Ubiquitous by emailing your submission to:
ubiquitous.submissions@gmail.com

Images need to be high quality! You can also leave submissions in our mailbox in Chapel Hall.

The deadline is Thursday February 25th! Submit now! We can't wait to see what you send us!

---

The Editors

Event: 60 Writers/60 Places

2009-12-10T21:35:00.000-08:00

60 Writers/60 Places, a film by Luca Dipierro and Michael Kimball
will be screened as part of Pratt's Writer's Forum at 12 PM., Friday,
December 11, in the Engineering Building, Room 371, on Pratt's Brooklyn
Campus. The film is free and open to the public.

Produced by Little Burn Films, 60 Writers/60 Places is 60 different writers
reading their work for 60 seconds each in 60 different places. 60
Writers/60 Places is about writers and their writing occupying
untraditional spaces, everyday life, everywhere. There is Blake Butler
reading on the subway, Deb Olin Unferth in a laundromat, Jamie
Gaughran-Perez in a beauty salon, Tita Chico in a dressing room, Giancarlo
DiTrapano in front of a church, Tao Lin next to a hot dog cart, Adam
Robison in an artist's studio, and Adam Robinson in a dumpster.

60 Writers/60 Places begins with the idea of the tableaux vivant, a living
picture where the camera never moves. But instead of silently holding their
poses, the writers read a short excerpt of their work-another kind of
framing that linguistically echoes the frame of the tableaux vivant. The
film uses ideas from painting, stage performance, early photography,
contemporary photo compositing, other documentaries (e.g., Jorgen Leth's 66
Scenes from America), and old postcards.

There is an interaction between each writer, their writing, and the place
in which they read. Besides the internal structure of each shot, there is
an external architecture that accumulates among the 60 places. The writer
and the writing go on no matter what is going on around them.

Several of the writers featured in the film will be present at the
screening. For more information on the film, visit
http://www.littleburnfilms.com/60Writers60Places.html.

Friday Forum is curated by co-directors Nelly Reifler and Gina Zucker,
and is sponsored by the Pratt Writing Program. For more information on
Pratt's Writer's Forum, visit http://mysite.pratt.edu/~fforum/.

And Good Luck on Finals, everyone!

News & Events: Way of The Word!

2009-11-07T14:16:00.000-08:00

The Fall 2009 issue is currently in production, thanks to everyone who submitted artwork and writing. Be sure to stay in touch for updates and events! Take some time from school work to check out this reading, featuring past Ubiquitous staff and contributors:

Republic Worldwide Presents WAY OF THE WORD

There is a misconception that poetry, as a conceptual art form, speaks only to a select audience. In truth poetry has kept up a great pace with popular culture and has continually been reinterpreted through each successive generation broadening its breadth and definition. It is in the spirit of language arts that REPUBLIC presents the first installment of its recurring “Way of the Word” program at Bar On A.

“Way of the Word” opens Wednesday, November 11, 2009 to a unique evening of art, poetry, performance and music by emerging artists in the New York poetry world. Artists and poets include: Artists: Edward Hopely, Brian VanRemmen and more, slam poets: Khephran Riddick and Aldrin Valdez and traditional poets: Davey Vacek, Katie Przybylski, Marissa Forbes, Peter Ford, and three founding members of a Brooklyn based poetry group called The Corresponding Society—Lonely Christopher, Robert Snyderman, and Jason Tallon.

Doors open at 7pm with a visual and interactive gallery hour for the artists, poets, and guests before the poetry readings begin at 8pm. Drink specials are provided by Bar On A from 7 to 9pm. Bar On A is located at 170 Avenue A, between 10th and 11th Streets.

A short event anthology, featuring poets from the show and around the nation will be available for purchase online and at the door for $15. Portions of the proceeds will be donated to *Reading Excellence and Discovery* (READ.), a foundation that promotes literacy by pairing qualified high school tutors with elementary students who demonstrate below grade level reading skills.

For more information about “*Way of the Word*,” READ or REPUBLIC please contact republicbrooklyn@gmail.com or call (443) 528-6761 or (917) 273-2712

NaNoWriMo 2009!

2009-10-12T20:24:00.000-07:00

Ahoy to writers everywhere,

NaNoWriMo is coming soon! It begins on November 1st! Just giving you a heads up so that people can prepare.

For those that have no idea what NaNo is- it's National Novel Writing Month and it's a 50,000 word deadline to get writers of every kind to write their brains out without worrying about editing before November ends. There's no cash prizes or anything, but it'll keep people productive and it's self- rewarding. :D You get a crafty little certificate if you win.

Here's the event site: NaNoWriMo.org

Free Museum Entry!

2009-09-26T08:27:00.000-07:00

Hiya guys,

Just a reminder that all Pratt students get into the following museums (with your valid Pratt ID) for FREE:

Brooklyn Museum of Art

Whitney Museum of American Art

Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum

For free admission to The Frick Collection, you can pick up passes at Student Activities (Main Building, lower level).

Admission to The Metropolitan Museum of Art is "recommended". This means you can pay whatever you like and the museum will grant you admission.

Have fun!

NY Art Book Fair!

2009-09-25T21:33:00.000-07:00

The NY Art Book Fair is coming up next weekend!

Oct. 3rd & 4th of 2009 and it's free/open to the public!

NyArtBookFair.com

It's being held at PS1!

www.ps1.org

And if you don't get a chance to stop by the fair, be sure to stop by PS1 in your free time. It's a great unique space, and is free for Pratt students!

Enjoy!

Ubiquitous is Up and Running!

2009-09-15T20:39:00.000-07:00

Hello fellow Pratt students,

Ubiquitous is back and eagerly awaiting submissions for Fall 2009!

Please remember that the magazine accepts different forms of writing (e.g. poetry, fiction, plays, essays, hybrid works, etc.) and art work (drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, models, jewelery, etc.)

Image submissions need to be 300 dpi or greater and in BLACK AND WHITE.

Send all submissions to ubiquitous.submissions@gmail.com

We can't wait to see what everyone has for us! :D

Promotion Reading!

2009-04-20T13:06:00.000-07:00

In order to promote the upcoming Spring 2009 issue, the magazine will be hosting a reading. We are asking those who have submitted in the past and those who will be published in the upcoming issue to read from their work.

If you are interested, please contact us by email (ubiquitous.submissions@gmail.com) with your name, email & phone number, and the piece(s) you are interested in reading.

What Day? Tuesday, April 28th
What Time? 7:00 PM
And Where? Engineering Bld. 371

Hope to see you there!

Poetry: Sojourner

2009-04-06T21:58:00.000-07:00

Sojourner

Backward foam is offered up by Venus
and a blacksmith, fallen to the sea,
only to return
it there, finding in its deepest black
the spreading -- continents spreading from Africa.
Burdened an searching, Isis

straps on her sandals, brave Isis
is searching in the night. Pale Venus
light guides her out of Africa,
through the delta to the sea.
It waits in fish black
for her return.

A return
of the leg, Isis
finds it, of the black,
coarse hair, she finds it. Fish have swallowed Venus,
fat, decapitated, out of sea,
into an Austrian tomb, a Slovakian tomb, across Africa

to a tomb, not Africa --
off cliff face, into water and foam, a return
to the sea.
In trees and under sand, limbs gathered; Isis
places them like pineapple in a basket, but Venus
rests belly deep in black,

in fish guts, a black
pearl first: Rodinia first, Godwana second, Pangaea third, Africa
fourth. First, Venus,
second, phallus, then Osiris erected upon his return,
the old leaf phallus cast by Isis,
the flesh lost out to the sea.

Into the foam, Isis went, into the sea
to find Venus, rescue from the black.
God will have to satisfy Africa, the flesh won’t return

~ By Robert Balkovich ~

Poetry: Collada

2009-04-06T21:57:00.000-07:00

Collada

El niño with his little hands is playing in the kitchen
with a miniature bindle stick made from ball lightning fragments
and shards of eddy. Balancing it against the eye wall,
el niño hitches the neap tide and claps his little hands together.

Tomorrow el niño meets the nexrad:

Above a nocturnal thunderstorm, by the jet stream,
the thick albedo quakes the atmosphere.
El niño, tired from riding the mountain waves,
curls up inside an ice jam. His muggy little hands

are awake and stay curious:

Do battle with the isopleth! The North
Pacific high approaches. Azores high and Bermuda
high, el niño stands at the nadir and contemplates
the lotus. Beneath the omega block he cultivates a lotus.

El niño meditates:

The lotus has five white little fingers. It grows
in the aphelion. It sips hoarfrost from the tip of
each white little finger. It blossoms at red tide
and dies at mare’s tail. Stands in a field of moist adiabat;

tomorrow el niño meets the nexrad:

~ By Benjamin Korman ~

Poetry: The Unnatural Scale

2009-04-06T21:51:00.000-07:00

the unnatural scale

but where

did we float on this sea of sound?

jetsammy davis jr. might hold

the truth of evolution, but he

can’t even be seen anymore. ironic

for a man who couldn’t really see well

in the first place. we one-eye-balled

into devolution. lost track of the devil.

then daniel johnson. what i mean to say is

i agree, sir. heard word there’s a circle

where we follow back down laddered language

‘til cavemen mock our grunts and simplicity. i agree

jimi put clapton in his place, but you know townshend

won’t back down ‘til underground and why not

mention paler fingers plucking? holcomb’s banjo led

long fingers to short and all they see are

breasts and plastic surgery but

Shhhhh!

bet with eyes closed dolly could quote roscoe.

one up him, even. (dylan wouldn’t cite her, though.

hop the train to another town to tell them

you carried bound bandana on a stick

when first class was the way.

the difference doesn’t figure out

(and here’s to every song you twirled to

to make the record skip ‘n’ scratch.)

shake again like little.

two sugars,

no milk,

made irish,

but you know

then

the color

don’t change.

~ By Adah Gorton ~

Poetry: A Translucent Dream

2009-04-06T21:48:00.000-07:00

A Translucent Dream

He read the classics, Huck Finn twice,

And took coffee black with sugar.

When I was a girl, I took sugar and cream,

And wrote poem after poem

And wrote dream after dream

Of the houses and the people in this town.

Remember when I went to your town?

You kissed good, and how I missed your sugar!

Under your sheets, we made love twice.

My skin was dark, against yours, (a fair cream)

And I showed you that poem

And dreamed the sweetest dream.

It was night and the snow fell like sugar

When we were driving into town.

You stopped for a coffee; I took mine with cream.

That winter, I read her book of poems twice,

And dreamed less real dreams

So I just drank the poems.

Remember sleeping in church, twice?

Once in the morning, and you woke from a dream.

Next at midnight– we were the only kids in town.

Looking up at the ceiling, painted cream,

I recited to you one of The Small Poems:

We sat at the table with nothing but sugar.

On your birthday, I thought the salt was sugar

So I made your cake twice,

Then bought vanilla ice cream.

Your friends came from out of town

And I found my old poem

About the wildest horses, and the wildest dreams.

After the end I wrote you a poem.

She said, a love affair merits a poem twice:

When it is stale and when it has sugar.

We met in my saddest dreams.

You were a ghost in my town,

A shimmering translucent cream.

Night sky is a poem, and the moon is cream

Dashed with sugar for stars in my town,

Twice baked, but only in that dream.

~ By Rachael Taylor ~

Poetry: Inside

2009-03-27T20:07:00.000-07:00

Inside

inside

two voices
one is Southern
the other is mine

Southern says speak, act as if, & play
mine feels radiowaves signal across a haywire field of fucker-uppers
but instead says okay

Southern presses record
mine suggests the gray slab of building has cupped thoughts in an alley
by the Metro where the maple leaves have scattered thunder

mine shows a poem in the backpocket, directs words for Southern
my arm’s a pillow & my foot’s a saint

Southern intimates a question with pursed lips
mine deliberates that the world has blown up and asks finally
about the tape recorder
mine jumps the void, clinging to the window frame

~ By Aldrin Valdez ~

AldrinValdez

Fiction: Serenity

2009-03-27T20:05:00.000-07:00

Serenity

Richard cried in slumber. His wife, moving closer, pressed her body into his from behind. She woke him gently and said, “Richard, let’s recite the Serenity Prayer.” She clutched his hand. Richard groaned, turning. He didn’t want to recite. He wanted to go back, fear-wrought by dreams. “What are we going to do, Sal?” he said. He couldn’t tell through the dark if she was looking at him. He wanted her to pull his head to her breasts, to stroke his hair, to say, “We’re in this together. Everything’s going to be fine. If all else fails, we can pack up our things and move the kids to Arizona. I hear it’s cheaper out there.” That is all; he thought about paying a whore to say it, nothing seedy just his cheek held to that warm skin below her neck. Instead his wife said, “Richard, let’s talk about the Eighth Step.”

~ By Adrian Shirk ~

Fiction: Routine

2009-03-27T19:59:00.000-07:00

Routine

Every morning, the old man’s routine was the same. Alone in his maintained but careworn house, he’d be awakened by the sun spilling over his windowsill; decades ago his wife had insisted on a bedroom facing east, and since her passing, also decades ago, he hadn’t had the heart to change rooms, or even to replace the threadbare curtains she’d picked out.

He would open his eyes slowly, blinking the sleep from them and the dreams from his mind, and pull himself upright in bed; slowly he would swing his two feet onto the hardwood floor, letting them fall there like weights coming to rest on the ocean floor. Here he would pause and run his hand up through his thin hair and then down over his face, over the tired eyes, with their full murder of crow’s feet, the bony nose, the drooping lips surrounded by five days’ unshaven beard.
Outside the window would be stillness. A few birds would call to each other, not especially pretty or ugly songs, but simply the noises one would expect to hear from dull, familiar sparrows. Sometimes a sleepy car would drive past, barely bothering to announce its presence, or the muffled footsteps of some neighbor walking a dog could be heard.

Neighbors, however, were infrequent; while the road was only twenty feet from the unsteady front porch, even closer with the broken sidewalk, the area contained only a handful of other houses. In the property to the south was a family of three that kept to themselves, and the lot to the north was empty, home only to some overgrown rubble and empty cans that boys used to shoot at with slingshots. Across the street was a collage of forgotten chain link and telephone poles and a few other tired houses.
After several moments, the old man would rise from bed and walk to the bathroom, where he would use the toilet, brush his teeth, and take the few pills he kept behind the mirror, with the automated motions of someone forgotten not only by the world, but by himself. Eventually, he would find his way downstairs.

Today was no exception. After a cold breakfast of oatmeal and milk, the man pushed back his chair, stood, and put his feet into the slippers he kept at the edge of the living room. He was about to perform the most sacred rite of the morning rituals: getting the newspaper. Reading it was one of the few things that produced a spark of life in him anymore; he held few opinions on current affairs, but relished the news itself, the knowledge that the world outside his Rust Belt suburb was still continuing on. He kept up to date on a few sports teams even though he had no television and hadn’t been to a game in years, and read the comics section despite most of his old favorites having been replaced. He was especially looking forward to today’s paper, hoping the hostage crisis in a Tennessee Wal-Mart had been resolved.
He shuffled towards the door, opened it after two feeble shoves, and stepped onto the porch; a creak sounded as the door swung shut, although it could just as easily have been his old bones. Across the street several boys were sprinting, and were almost instantly out of sight around the corner. The day was sunny, but a film seemed to hang over the entire place, giving the area a graininess that contributed no warmth to the already run-down scenery.

Seven paces away from the mailbox, the old man’s world exploded with light and sound. The roar of forgotten battleships colliding in foreign seas, the hammers and anvils of childhood thunderstorms, penetrated his head and embedded themselves in the space behind his eyes, reverberating; he felt the earth slip away underneath him.
Dimly he became aware of a tickling sensation on his skin, and knew he would die: it was radiation poisoning, or nerve gas. Several seconds passed, his breathing slowed, and he gradually realized the tiny pricks were caused by grass touching his bare arms and his neck, and that he was on the ground, with his eyes shut tighter than the vaults of a fallout shelter. The pain of the noise was replaced with a lesser throb above his right eye, which he opened slowly and reached his hand to; he’d gotten a small cut when he’d fallen. Around him lay scattered black shrapnel, twisted pieces of metal no bigger than playing cards, and a thousand bits of paper.
The mailbox had been blown to pieces by the neighborhood boys’ crude bomb, undoubtedly more powerful than they had intended; the wooden post atop which the mailbox had sat now ended in splinters and a few bent nails. The old man got shakily to his feet, coughed, and started towards the house. There would be no mail today. He crossed the porch, stepped inside, and shut the door quietly behind him.

~ By Mike Cook ~
mcook6@pratt.edu

Theme Submission: Fingers

2009-03-27T19:55:00.000-07:00

Theme #1: The Body

Fingers

Lead chopsticks open their maws
Polygraph scratch
Across naked flesh of cotton canvas
Fingertips letter pressing keyboard keys
A blur of motion, and a speed so rapid
The rapping reminiscent
To the subdued salvo of a machine gun
Wrists becoming the faucet
Rusted pipes directly pouring
The gum in my head
The bread stuffed between my ears
The meat behind my pupils
The potion in my beaker
Type
Rhyme
Type
Rhyme
My words knitting stockinet
And my fingers commit the crime

~By Rachel Vasquez~
Rubixchick.com

Inspiration: Gurney Journey

2009-03-10T14:59:00.000-07:00

A new link has been added to the links list on the right. I'd recommend all artists take a look at his posts.

Description:"This daily weblog by James Gurney is for illustrators, comic artists, plein-air painters, sketchers, animators, art students, and writers. You'll find practical studio tips, insights into the making of the Dinotopia books, and first-hand reports from art schools and museums. Plus, for you lateral thinkers and pop-culture trekkers, a few bizarre rabbit trails."

Theme #2: Spring/Rebirth

2009-03-10T14:51:00.000-07:00

This month's theme is Spring/Rebirth. We will be accepting submissions for the blog all month long. Remember to title the subject of your submissions specifically as "Blog Submissions" when you send us emails. This makes for easier organizing and quicker posts.

Posts on last month's theme, "The Body" will be posted soon. Stay tuned.

Open Drawing

2009-02-18T08:13:00.000-08:00

For those interested in Open Drawing sessions on Campus, they're now being held in the engineering building, room 4D.

6-9 PM on Tues. & Wed.

1-4 PM on Saturdays

It's $3.00 with your school ID and $5.00 without.

Inspiration for the Theme (The Body)

2009-02-04T15:58:00.000-08:00

I know some people might need a little muse to get those brain gears turning for the theme on the blog: The Body. And so, I found a website that tackled the same theme as we are now. The examples may help to inspire you. Enjoy.

Poetry examples of "The Body":

Preview: All my pinky ever hits is "Shift"
And I think it's getting tired of that
What with soreness, stiffness, and a rift
'Twixt it and the missing wedding band.

And remember, the body can be as literal or abstract as you like, and can even focus on a particular element of the body.

A link or two for our artists:

Body & Soul

Ear

Announcement: Site Fixes

2009-01-29T15:47:00.000-08:00

I'd like to make a quick note to users that this site is now accessible for comments by everyone- meaning even if you do not have a gmail account or are a member of Blogger, you can leave comments on the posts. This is to encourage Pratt students and others to interact with each others work and leave construction criticism.

Another quick fix, posts will now be marked with labels for all your easy searching needs. :-) Here are the labels that you will find posts marked under:

Announcement
Art
Events
Fiction
Inspiration
Poetry
Theme

Announcement: Call for Submissions/Blog Theme #1

2009-01-29T15:27:00.000-08:00

The deadline for submissions for the Ubiquitous Magazine is on February 24th. Please be sure to submit your work before that date.

From this point onward, the blog will also be accepting submissions as a separate zone from the magazine.

The blog will run its own events and submission deadlines all year round, and will be a different entity for people to interact with. The blog will start being more active by introducing Theme Writing. Occasionally, the blog will post a theme, and the goal is for artists and writers to produce work from that theme. Of course, non-theme-related submissions are just as welcome.

Here is theme #1: The Body

Relay all submissions for the blog at ubiquitous.submissions@gmail.com and specify that your entry is for the blog. The deadline for these submissions is on February 28th. Have fun and feel free to interpret the theme in any way you like.

What can you do to keep this blog active? Have any recommendations- art, poetry, literature that you've found really interesting? Know of any events that people might want to hear about? Have any submissions? Send 'em all at the Ubiquitous email!

NaNoFiMo

2008-12-10T12:22:00.000-08:00

Now that NaNoWriMo has ended, some of you may have an unfinished project on your hands and no idea what to do with it. Well, the events aren't over. December is the month for NaNoFiMo, an affiliate of NaNoWriMo to encourage writers to edit and finish their pieces.

Don't have time this month because of all your finals and projects? Visit their "I Wrote a Novel, Now What?" page for a heads up on upcoming events.

Poetry: Purple Merkin

2008-12-10T12:20:00.000-08:00

Purple Merkin

A clump of pubic hair pasted on his chin crawls up in curly patches,
up his cheeks and down his jowls, down this neck
in bushy ringlets connected to his pubic mustache connected to his
pubic sideburns connected to the long pubic hair hanging over his pubic ears
with two blue balls hiding behind pubic eyebrows,
one positioned on either side of his nose sprouting pubic hair of its own,
vibrating above a tiny pink

hole in her stocking below the hem of her dress—a shirt
she calls a dress that ends just under the curve of her ass. A black belt
wrapped around her waist keeps the fabric from moving
when she stands, but when she walks, she reveals

Everything is ruined forever, said the elephant.
You can trust me,
for I am plaid and purple and perfect in every way.
But the world is not perfect or plaid or even purple people
don’t understand the meaning of peace poor people poor
people feel responsible.

~By Colleen Morrison~

NaNoWriMo Novel Writing Competition

2008-10-28T22:47:00.000-07:00

Has that plot bunny in your head been sitting idly, never taking the time to be written onto paper (or a computer screen, whatever your preference)?

Maybe you should take interest in NaNoWriMo's National Writing Month (which would be November) where the goal is to write 50,000 words starting from November 1st to November 30th of 2008. Winners will have their words counted and win a nice little certificate (sorry guys, no cash) along with the satisfaction of writing mercilessly without worrying about spelling errors.

It's all about quantity, not quality, so make mistakes and just keep writing!

Please visit this link for more information. No entry fee. Just fun!

NaNoWriMo Novel Writing Competition

_{NaNoWriMo also deletes all entries after the competition is over so you will not have to worry about your frantically written novel appearing somewhere.}

Art: "Print" & "If I could paint this"

2008-10-28T11:17:00.000-07:00

If I could Paint this in
Oil on Canvas
60x72

Untitled
Aquatint Print

~By Jacob Gossett~

Fiction/Poetry: "Lions", "Proof", and "Smallness"

2008-10-28T10:49:00.000-07:00

Lions with Curls

How is it that a bird sits centered in memory, but the cage and the living room and the color of a mother's robes have faded to sepia? Remember on the shelf a mug that said Trafalgar Square in red. For nine months it was the bus stop. Now no lions can impress.

I found missing letters for green envelopes; found english polaroids. Statues blur at high speeds--a caption reads is this the only time they move? Don't send me anything more ce sera le dernier. Hear that heartbeat underwater. Through pipes I can feel the ocean just two-hundred feet away. I press my ear to the waves that are born between this island and yours and there must be millions.

An ocean between like this: I sit on the phone as the sun rises and wait as the transatlantic static collects like Creeping Buttercups in the alley, like Hare's Foot Clover in my Soho, in your Soho.

Proof

It is in a candid cheek kiss, subjects still overcoated, blocking the entrance to the party. The lady wears a hat (now ladies never wear hats) and the man's white neck tie is only visible in the shadows. Ascots and feathers and molding trimmed ceilings; pearl earrings, Jacquard skirts peeking from beneath swing coats.

She asked if it was real, as her mother sat brushing the soft curls into her hair. She asked about Father and dinner parties before there were record players. Now, now.

Left going in, again (always, forever, amen), when the boy with freckles held down the shutter and lit up the room with a light unlike the soft yellow overhead. Shoved in deepest pockets, no peeks promised, a hidden message developing in the dark.

Found in the corner, in his scrawl--proof, a one-line drawing by fingernail. White as the Monday morning they met when he told her of the waves he bore into, of the spices bought on coasts with no maps.

Some Smallness

Was it rain or dew this morning
turning things too wet for touch,
for holding? I saw the yarn yellow

and fence snared--all flagging
in the wind--untethered over
night, embodying an absence.

The rabbit cage had a hole
and one bunny too few. The
fence had been dug under

and in the grass on the other
side she rested slick, lacking
dignity. When I held her in

my hands I could feel
the skull halved, held together
only by skin and fur (so soft).

Her breaths still came out
labored and she blinked
twice in my lap as I stroked

her bunny ears,
now reared (always to be reared).

Autumn rolled back
over. There was a
tree bare branched. There

was a tree relieved of
leaves. Weight shifting
in the wind, it did not

bemoan those fallen,
but rather it whistled.

~By Caroline Gormley~

Poetry: An Automated Harvest

2008-09-02T19:16:00.000-07:00

An Automated Harvest

The machine that spins wire also spins rope and in nature is more akin to a twisted umbilical cord than an arachnid's spinnerets. We must tie every fetus down to a womb. We hold babies in plenitude, but the mother-end of the strand is largely unclaimed. We receive a call for intimacy, but the caller must leave a message or hang up. We don't know how long the cassette tape will run. Already there are spools stored in a warehouse. Hundreds of feet of magnetic tape. Play it to hear a whisper.

“I know you are still afraid of the dark. I was there when you dreamed of the blood soaking your legs only to wake in a puddle of your own urine, I know that you hit her. I know your shame...”

“I know that you woke with his screams and his fists, and wondered why, until you changed the sheets. I know that you've forgotten what it's like to be kissed...”

“I know that you want your grandfather to die. I know that you are already afraid of being useless...”

“I am afraid of being forgotten. I am afraid for my children. I am afraid that you do not love me the way I love you. I am...”

The first length of tape is a WORD hanging in the air by a single strand.

(The machines will finish the harvest, because there aren't enough men and women to clip and carry every sheaf of wheat.)

~By Zachary Garver~

Poetry: Inches to Miles

2008-09-02T19:14:00.000-07:00

Inches to Miles

We push past knees and hide our smiles
I watch the smoke curl its back into the night
the sky shouldn’t be moving like this.
Wait, whispered as the door closes.
I count the fractures and disconnects
tiny mistakes printed on bodies
sunbursts watermarks footprints.
Later, we draw a map.

~By Chenice Greenberg~

Art: Leos

2008-08-28T19:05:00.001-07:00

Angry Leo

Leopihpany

Leo

~By Thomas Mullarney~
18x24 Charcoal

Poetry: Half Dark & Untitled

2008-08-28T18:59:00.000-07:00

Half-Dark

How many half-darks I have seen? I could probably
calculate a number. Couldn’t we?
Darkness has little chance of half-existence with
full-breasted mountains in the distance. Sure, light comes over the top of them occasionally.
Sure
the snow is a source of some sort

Don’t go out there she tells me
then remembers her mother
then becomes quiet and shares my triumph,
when I have one

If I stopped watching, stopped calculating
stopped altogether
spoke a language no one knew
got my finger stuck between the keys?

The clock wastes time: a comet going on for miles past the time in which
we have spotted it and named it a comet. It knows not letters it soars it travels speedily through space
perhaps forever. Perhaps forever it doesn’t rest and that is what we should remember about it

A gypsy sleepless night an understatement.
Where have you walked? And slept and fought
Hair dried to the wood
The fungi the decomposers the invisibles
Remove me now

Untitled

Mom knitted
Dad
a sweater
years ago.
It wouldn’t fit him now
if it came out of the hope chest

She has since never knitted
never sewed
decorated
or arranged,
couldn’t be bothered,
I love her for it

Dad brings in the wood
She sweeps the woodchips,
loads domestic machines

She says “he got pissed off” “she got pissed off”
I got pissed off

But hardly ever
fuck

she left me a message
after work
“one of the residents died today”

she left me a message
“I decided I’m going to start knitting again”

~By Erin Heath~

Poetry: Coney Island & Untitled

2008-08-28T18:56:00.000-07:00

Coney Island:

The lights from the
boardwalk
Leave
orange stains
on black water
It's
quiet now
The crowds have
all
gone home
except for
us.
We remain
With our toes
in the sand
pointing out
to sea,
our faces turned
to look
back
at the
ghosts
of other people's
dreams.

Untitled:

Were you but a jewel
held up
against the
sun
to bare the lights
and shadows
of your
soul
And show to me
what fire,
if any,
can be found
there.

~By Sophia Johnson~
Freshman COMD (Illustration)

Poetry: Pratt's Poetry Club

2008-08-28T18:50:00.001-07:00

~By Pratt's Poetry Club~

Fiction: Raining in the Sheets

2008-08-28T18:48:00.000-07:00

I can feel my ears pressed between my knees as I slide back across this knotted wood. I open and close my dizzied eyes, inches away from the grass-stained mud that, hours earlier, I was afraid to stick my boots into. That was before the night’s beer, cheap and stale out of plastic cups, and that was before we traded our cash for tear-away tickets, then traded three for the ride. The glass plastic shield was scarred with obscenity and your back brushed against mine. I couldn’t see your face; just hear your smiling screams from the top as it pulled us down in full swing. I saw your hair blowing out over the water. My eyes point down towards the ground but yours are out towards Matt and Andrew, swinging out from their seats, knocking the light with each spin, strobing the flash into your unflinching sight. You tell me you’re alright but your stare is glossed over and your hand lies across your side lightly. The colors and lights are covered in small town traveling dirt, carried from state to state with the carnival. It’s brushed off here, where we grew up. I’m back after leaving. You are still here.

The fairground music comes from yells, whistles, bells and yelps, the screech from rusted rides and laughing children. They culminate in song muffled through my jeans as I try to hold my shaking head still. I look up towards the night sky, open and circling slowly around our dome. Stars, so many they connect as bars of the playground's jungle gym with the slide nowhere near us. I can't look towards our sky 'til a greased, gone man leans his sledge across my side and tells me to win you a prize. When I look up I see past his ear to the sky behind and the mirror of water. I am too weak, I tell him and I am as I crumble back into my shell. You drop your head too and all is quiet until he speaks up again. I look up through blurred eyes and point out. "There is your man. He'll win her prizes," as Matt walks into view followed by Andrew, shadowing us from the lights. He turns his attention towards them as I turn towards you - smiles, soft eyes and a wave as they stumble off behind them. After a stretch of my legs, a stretch of my shoulders and neck, I sit up staring at you with your palms on the bench. You lean forward and I almost forget that we watched the rain sheet your yard from your porch late in yesterday's afternoon.

You sat on your mother's rocker as I sat on boxes, head leaning back against the white post, chipped from wine bottles, exposing pale bark that splintered at my neck. The water slanted constant along the roof, drifting through drain pipes and dripping into the yard. Just enough of a sound to muffle your voice. Just enough movement to take you out of focus. Through the blur, I looked for your wings, gone now - clipped or were they just fading? I imagine seeing a faint outline, transparent but the color a bit lighter then what surrounded them. But that is just imagination. Because, when I stood up for another drink, I pressed my hand gently against your back and I felt nothing moving from your shoulder’s blades, just the fabric from the hood, now not much thicker than a tee shirt. Thinning out from two seasons of wash. My own hands looked more scarred than your flesh, exposed, hair pulled up, soft small of your neck and I thought to ask, did you notice?, but instead reached for my glass and turned my eyes back into the drowning evening.

It is just now October, cold but not the cold of that winter night when I stumbled out of the twenty-four hour diner dialing your number on my way to the car. I shimmied in an hour earlier, scarved and smelling of liquor, laughing with Ryan and Dave 'til the breath left the top of my gut and I bit my chapped lip to be quiet. They didn't notice but she did, eyes buried deep, thin frame, soft jaw, a pot of coffee in her hand. The girl you came to me with in a junior high day at the pool. I tripped and fell over her eyes and frail body but turned you both away, fixing my sights on a girl a little further along. When we moved into freshman the two of you were noticed and carted down the halls by the crowds, her never to be seen again, only ears full of tales depicting her whereabouts. Then I tried not to see her slinging coffee as I slid deep down into the booth. I stared at the ashtray, a book of matches and wondered if she still smoked, if you did. Her face looked like it, pale and thin but still fragile, ultimately sad as I watched her look down behind the walls along the kitchen. She caught me and walked over to put her arms around my neck, still sitting in the booth. We made no conversation. She smelled my hair and said how she missed me, missed us. And as she slid her hands from around me, slow, I wished for her to stay there.

In my alphabet there are only seven letters. I would settle for three. "M-E-L." You turn and look startled. "The devil is a threat to this country." But, no, the Devil's just a threat to our souls. You say that it's true. You see him in pictures, there, just behind them, standing taller than the rest. "But how do you know it's him?" You don't answer, turn your head to stretch your legs, digging your heals into the earth. You say you want to become a doctor, or teach. "You know he wants to marry you."

Just hours before, we stood in clear open fields, stadium lights circling around us. The noise from conversation blanketed over the sound from the stage. Children sat on speakers, face painted, holding balloons. Josh and Anna stood arm in arm, back to the show, passing their flask full of whiskey. You stood to my right, uncomfortable to look at, trying to stand natural with his arms wrapped around you. I saw it in the car, the gate, and the hill. We told them we were off for beer, two of them down with a funnel cake a pair of sausages who put us where we are now. My stomach hurts but yours aches, you tried to stifle it before we hit the air, just inches away from the breath of each other, escaping through laughs and scream, pushed out before us.

The shield of plastic didn't fog like the glass in view from the seats of my Bronco. Two years ago I'd wait, with the sun going down, a single rose, white in hand singing songs and listening to talk on the radio. The time felt like nothing, must have been hours, waiting for you to skip out of rehearsal doors towards my car, apologizing. I just sat, smiling. You wouldn't get your flower 'til we came up for air. I remember sticking my eye up to the heart you colored in with your finger. The only way to see out. Who knows what my parents thought? Fifteen minutes in the evening is all you could steal before you got home. The same in the morning. My heater breathed out cold as I waited, stalled, staring out the window for you to drive up. I stole almost an hour one weekend morning before the holiday with your shoes off and your jeans. We sat quiet in the full sun, wishing for words to say, so used to scrambling them out. You rested your head on my shoulder and squinted and said it was too much.

If we drive long enough down the main road in town, drive far enough, we'll see cemeteries out to our right. At first, just the field but, with a slight curve in the steering, there are gravestones scattered in the headlight, hundreds of them spread out over miles of unkempt grass. The fence isn't more than what would circle a little league game, diamond design tangling up metal post, not much taller than our steps over. When I returned, Andrew drove with me in the passenger seat, as you laid up against Matt in the back. "I'm afraid I'm going to die abruptly. Like the kind that comes in a moment of hesitation, deciding to step off the tracks." We stare off into the grass, some grown long enough to lay shadow across each shot of granite. "The train was coming and the jump was planned. It is just waiting too long." I imagine your eyes stay open with the hit, unflinching at the impact. We barely move.

I see myself driving us back. Not because we're tired, but because those two are piling more beer and couldn't hop in the bed of Andrew's truck - you'd lean against Matt, his arm slung under yours, wrapped around your chest and me up on the ledge, foot wrapped in an old tire buried in the pine. Maybe we'll have to walk back. You'd shush them in the streets, heavy in houses as we watch them disappear between lamp posts. Dogs would bark behind their fences. Maybe we'll watch them fall asleep in flower beds and you'll wish you had come when I asked you to. You'll wish you had carved hearts in my bunk or slid from it to the floor of my dorm, next to me. And you'll will wish that you could leave now, packing up a duffel bag with skirts and dresses, holding on to my arm, when I turn they keys. You'd look forward.

~By Sebastian Olivari~

Welcome Back!

2008-08-28T18:44:00.001-07:00

Welcome back, everyone!

_{I hope that everyone had an enjoyable summer. Ubiquitous is now accepting submissions for this semester so feel free to start sending your pieces to our email. We look forward to seeing everyone's work.

This blog is still open for links and other websites that anyone is willing to recommend. We appreciate any suggestions. Thanks.}

Online classes and Inspiration

2008-06-12T15:44:00.000-07:00

Hope everyone is enjoying their summer vacation so far. :D

I have found this really great site, a group of independent designers and illustrators that have gathered together to create "Imaginism Studios". There are links on their page to helpful resources, such as online classes like digital painting, character design, story boarding and so on. Their artwork is also very imaginative and inspiring (in my opinion). And if you live in Toronto, there's a subway sketching group that meet up to draw people while riding the trains!

Please drop by and take a look. This link will also be placed on the right side of the page with the other links. Enjoy.

Imaginism Studios

Events for the Summer

2008-05-05T11:02:00.000-07:00

Ubiquitous' blog is open this summer for event postings! So, if you're in need of some entertainment and want to explore the city, stay tuned to the blog for some notices on upcoming events. If you know of an event or a nice little bookstore/museum you'd like to recommend here in New York, please feel free to offer ideas.

You know that free magazine people try to hand you on the subway that you probably pass by? Well, the L Magazine shouldn't be over looked and it is a great source for events, whether they are art exhibits, film previews, comedy nights, or poetry readings, there's something for everyone. Their website is a nice little spot to visit. To see their most recent posts on events here in good old NYC, visit the link posted on the right side of the blog.

www.TheLMagazine.com

Tillies is also having another set of Open Mics this month! The Open Mics are on the 8th and 22nd of May. Sign ups are at 8:00pm and performances begin at 8:30pm. Visit their site for more info.

www.tilliesofbrooklyn.com

Open Mic

2008-04-10T10:05:00.000-07:00

OPEN MIC ~ hosted by Nick Noir

Thursday April 10th and 24th

Musicians
Poets
Singers
Rappers
Writers

8 pm Sign up
8:30 Performance

Tillies of Brooklyn
248 Dekalb Ave.
Bklyn, NY
(718) 783- 6140

www.tilliesofbrooklyn.com

Pratt Poetry Competition!

2008-04-04T07:16:00.000-07:00

The Pratt Institute and The Academy of American Poets Present the Annual

Pratt Poetry Competition Spring 2008!

Pratt Students may submit one to three poems (any style, any subject) to:

Helen Anne Easterly
Mailbox North Hall
101

DEADLINE Wednesday, April 30th, 6 pm

Submit 3 typed copies of each poem with your name, dept., year (freshman, senior etc.) email address, and mailing address ON EACH COPY.

Winning poem will be chosen by Pratt Alumna E. Ward Herlands and Assistant Professor Helen Anne Easterly.

Cash Prize!

Write-A-Thon & Draw-A-Thon!!!

2008-04-04T07:09:00.000-07:00

So maybe you want to write instead of draw- or heck, maybe you want to attend both events.

Come to the Write-A-Thon!!!

When: Friday, April 11th
Time: 7pm -7am (all night)
Where: 5th Floor Main building (right above the Draw-A-Thon)

Writing Faculty & Special guests will be conducting workshops and readings.

Pens/typewriters/music/paper/glue/books/magazines and newspaper/(for cut up and collage/ inspiration/pizza/coffee/ all available

$10 in advance
$15 at the door

Call 718- 636-3617 to make reservations

Questions: klamm@pratt.edu

*Entry into the Draw-A-Thon is an AUTOMATIC ENTRY into the Write-A-Thon because of the Draw-A-Thon's 20th Anniversary so you don't have to pay twice to go to both!!!

Come to the Draw-A-Thon!!!

When: Friday, April 11th
Time: 7pm - 7am (all night)
Where: 4th Floor Main building

$10 in advance
$15 at the door.

Pizza, fruit,coffee, and refreshments...

Eighteen models circulate throughout the drawing studios, including one devoted to costume modeling. Specific rooms are dedicated to poses ranging from the energy and frenzy of fast action poses, to sessions of five minutes, twenty minutes, and one-hour duration. There is also the opportunity to work from extended poses of three and six hours.

Live African drum music.

Pratt will also be offering prizes that are generously donated by area art stores and will be awarded at the end of the Draw-a-thon.

Reservations call: 718-636-3617.

Photography is not permitted.

Poetry: It's Raining Here for You

2008-03-05T10:20:00.000-08:00

It’s raining here
For you
With your cigarette and black coffee mug in the same hand,
You
Who still keeps a typewriter in the closet
To pay homage to the old ways,
To those grown-up men trying to find their boyhood once again.

Breathe in the droplets,
Or they will smear the carbon copies
Falling from your trees,
Thin leaves for submission to the press.
Doesn’t anybody print unknowns anymore?
You cry,
Doesn’t anybody read?

You dye your
Second-hand clothes with the same tea
You make for me to drink,
So what am I to think
About the fairy tales of utopia you spin me now?

Let go.
Dance for the rain.
It came down for you and shimmered.
The czars and I and even you can all enjoy the ballet;
Your words,
They will wait for you to untie your wet boots.

Jennifer Stohlmann

Poetry: Search and Rescue

2008-02-18T10:13:00.000-08:00

My mother brings home an
owl with a broken wing and winces
when she wraps it in warm towels,

like a part of her is broken too--
maybe there is. I make the bed
like you will sleep there: no sheet.

It takes three days for your
lingering scent to stop lingering or
for my nose to adjust--

either way, it's gone.
The owl dies over night and
my mother begins planning the funeral.

Two birds build a nest on our porch.
I say ours but it was never ours,
now was it?

A ferry sinks on the evening news.
the water is warm and thick,
like breast milk,

so they decide to swim.
I remember the skin behind your ears
and loving you,

violently. I want your blood on my hands.
Dirt in carpet, shovel in sink,
and the owl is still wrapped,

swaddled, on the kitchen counter with
the cat pawing the back door and
mother in the yard,

whispering our father in heaven hallowed be your name.
I make up my mind to
swim to you but by the time I

make it to the Atlantic,
the notes in my pocket are too wet to read.
I forget if they were

love letters to begin with. So I swim home.
Dear mother, did the deer join the prayers
at the owl's funeral?

An obvious ending:
The men and women on the ferry later say
the search was better than the rescue.

The less obvious:
The owl unburied himself
and flew away.

Stephanie Willis

Poetry: The Consequences of Fearing Loneliness

2008-02-18T10:08:00.000-08:00

I fall asleep in the bathtub to be closer to the ocean.
I invite others to sleep near me. Their bodies
keep me warm like water: cold, cold, cold,
and then you adjust.

October becomes November and I can't distinguish
my breath from smoke. Think of me next time
you drink lukewarm soup or touch a girl
who can't stop shaking.

I am sorry for thinking
the wrong people are wonderful,
for thinking I am wonderful, for thinking
of he and me as we.

I’m sorry for holding his shoulder when he tried to leave.
I apologize for the kiss on the mouth. Don't remember me for that.
Remember me by all thirty knuckles and strands of hair
in your mouth and Sunday mornings.

Let me get ahead of myself now. Let me think of
sharing a grocery cart and doorman greetings by name
and waking up under flannel and down.
Don’t ask to know what I am thinking.

Or, teach me to stand still. Teach me to be quiet
and steady and comfortable in this moment alone.
Teach me to stop expecting the best for me
to be what I expected.

I apologize for lingering too long. I apologize
for kissing him when I tasted only like beer.
I woke up with his elbow in my face.
I licked his elbow. I am sorry for this.

Touch my thigh in the morning. Think of the last bed
and its inhabitant— think of her short hair and lazy mouth.
Teach me indifference. Kiss my mouth and
go home and stop answering the phone.

Go back in time to a favorite moment.
The winter at the beach—the way my feet
sunk into the sand. Choose to stay here;
claim there has been nothing worth returning to.

Consider my ribcage and wrists. Consider
coin tosses and drawings passed back and forth
and the tops of my feet in the cold.
Return to me.

Stop missing the small things: toes and teeth and eyelashes
left on the pillow. Or miss them more.
Go back with me to that beach. Breathe only fog.
Reach as far as you can reach. See if we can touch.

Stephanie Willis

Fiction: Meanwhile

2008-02-18T10:07:00.000-08:00

“Ugh,” grumbled the gatekeeper.

“What?”

“Kids. Damn kids.”

“Yeah?”

“And Money. Damn money.” He shifted in his seat. Two crows passed.

“How many?”

“How many? Two crows.”

“Kids. How many.”

“Three.” Pause. There was a creaking at the door, but no one turned his head to look. Silence. Silence. Creaking. Silence. A third crow flew by; the three convened on top of the bar across the street. Gay bar. Straight crows, though. No one bought drinks.

The air was brisk. November brisk. The air was crisp, too. Brisk November crisp. Like, if you took a step on a-not-too-city sidewalk then all you would hear is the brisk, crisp, brisk whi-crack of crisp crumpled leafs squish under boot. Floral bouquet death rattle rattle.

“You got any kids?” The gatekeeper didn’t really care; he had time to kill, and no shank.

“No.”

“You got any money?”

“A little.” It was black out. The older the years get, the less they like light. By November, two thousand five was so crotchety it locked the sun out on the porch and swallowed the key, along with some stale tapioca and cold hot tea. Ugh.

I had nothing left to say to the gatekeeper, and he had nothing left to say to me, so we kept talking. What was said was not important. There was silence. Another crow passed. Landed on the bar. Fat crow. Fat enough to be on a diet, because this crow didn’t buy a drink either. Now there were four crows on the bar, but the bar probably thought there were five, because one of the crows was so fat.

It started snowing.

“God is a bird, I think,” the gatekeeper muttered, “I think.”

“Yeah?”

“Because his shit is white.”

It stopped snowing.

Benjamin Korman

Fiction: The Magic Of Cinema

2008-02-18T10:02:00.000-08:00

The director’s chair was found six years later, folded up and broken down in a pile of trash among a roll of posters, a wobbly coffee table, and a towering wooden sculpture of the moon with a crack running down the middle. In six years, it will have been three places. The first place is a film studio, where M transformed it into a mountain on whose peak he would stand and command his minions. The second place is a stockroom, where M brushed past it every time he had to use the toilet, whose chambers could only be accessed that way. The third place is the trash pile, where M discarded the director’s chair to the wind, the rain, and the rag and bone man. If wood could wish it could weep, then in six years the chair would surely wish it couldn’t wish anymore.

M sat on the chair with so much exuberance that it stopped creaking and began to squeal. The director removed his masculine paw from the arm and raised it at his crew.

“Heave, you sons of bitches!” M hurled a violent gesture at the workers, who were in the process of utilizing a series of pulleys that they had constructed the previous day to lift a tremendous wooden model of the moon. They tried, and again they failed.

“It’s heavy,” remarked the portliest crewman with the most ill-fitting of caps.

“I know it’s heavy, it’s the moon! The moon is heavy! God put a lot of cheese in there, and I expect you vermin to respect every last morsel of it, because so help me if this thing splinters or cracks you’re all fired.” M staked his reputation on fantastic inclinations, and keeping up appearances was his favorite hobby.

“Harrumph,” harrumphed the fat man; intent on receiving a paycheck at the end of the week, he went back to work.

M did not like the workers because he was certain they were all anarchists. And he did not like anarchists because he was certain that they all had no beliefs, not even that there was cheese in the moon. The negative end of his passion that he reserved for anarchists (and unwashed hands, and unwaxed mustaches, and wobbly coffee tables) was offset by his admiration for the moon (and sharpened wits, and pretty women, and mildly pretty women), which he studied from afar like a philosopher studies immortal penumbras. The moon was big, and wise, and it could not be conquered. M’s admiration was unending. But M was not an astronomer; he would never visit the moon and peel its skin, revealing the soft mushy flesh underneath. Nor could he taste the silver cheese M was a film director, and with his current production he intended to sap the moon of all its mystery using genius, using brilliance, and using the magic of cinema (Although M didn’t believe that cinema itself was magic; to him, the magic was in the hands of the director).

The tentative title of the film was “The Great Voyager,” and it recounts the tales of a creative, adventurous young man whose hands were as clean as his moustache was waxed, born and raised in the heart of the Future. After battling and defeating the wicked-hearted “Emperor of Futureland,” the daring young scamp goes on to meet, woo, and trounce upon every pretty and mildly pretty woman in the whole of the Future. He then builds a time machine, and, with unceasing bravado, proceeds to meet, woo, and trounce upon every pretty, mildly pretty, and entirely plain woman in the entirety of history. Returning to The Future, the young man brags about his escapades and becomes a national hero. When asked what he will do next, the hero replies, “I plan to voyage to the moon!” He builds a spaceship and, taking ten of the most mildly pretty women in the land with him, he sets off for new frontiers. Upon reaching the moon (a trip lasting three years— noted by the dozens of toddlers who joyfully teeter out of the ship after landing), the brave young man battles and defeats the entire indigenous population of frog people, miraculously and unexplainably grows to the size of the Sun, gives a long soliloquy about the importance of dreams, and puts the moon in his pocket, where it stays until the end of time, which, by fantastic inclination alone, he causes. Roll credits. M wrote the script himself, and he was very proud of it.

He leaned back in his director’s chair and muttered a garbled curse at the staff. After another fifteen minutes of nihilistic bungling, the crew finally lifted the moon onto the set, and M commanded the cameraman to begin rolling. The film sped from canister to canister; he directed his actors.

“Thomas, you are playing a brilliant man! Stand like a brilliant man would stand, like a bear standing at the mouth of his cave!”

“Yes, sir.” Thomas stiffened his back and forced the air into the chasm of his chest.

“No! You look like a bullfrog! Become a bear. Rip the webbing from between your toes, walk out of the swamp, and grow some balls!”

“Yes, sir. You’re right. I’m sorry.” The actor cowered apologetically. M took a brief moment to sigh, and was suddenly overcome with rage. He swallowed his sigh and spat out an apoplectic grunt.

“Where is my tenth maiden? Where is my tenth maiden? When the hero voyages to the moon, he brings ten voluptuous maidens with him, and I count nine! Will somebody please enlighten me as to where I can find my tenth maiden?!” A delta of veins emerged from M’s forehead and started to pulse. His face turned red. An actress was missing.

M considered himself to be a person possessing all of the attributes that a woman should ever need to find desirable. Healthy, rich, intelligent, mustachioed, and, above all, not bald. For these reasons, he considered his relationships with the actresses in his films to be a sort of charity to which he was donating. Of the nine women currently standing on his stage, he had slept with six. Two of the six he had deflowered, and for that he was terribly proud. Two more, who did not wish to be deflowered, he had allowed to perform fellatio. This was another of M’s charities. The woman on the stage who had not yet experienced M surely would by, or possibly during, the film’s premiere. Four of the nine women on stage were from Kansas. Another two traveled together from Nebraska. There was another from Wisconsin. One was from Maryland, and the last one trekked from Canada, which M assumed to be a vast wasteland of scenery and pleasant living.

M was their savior because he had, in one hole or another, given them class. And without class, they were nothing but the weathered feces of the Middle West.

Furious. In an act of raging indignation that would only hinder the production further, M grabbed his chair and threw it into the stockroom, where it would remain for the next five years and eleven months.

“I’ll be back!” he bellowed, and stormed away.

The missing actress was named Catharine Pless, and she did not audition for her role. Ms. Pless made M’s acquaintance at a party, and her visage burrowed deeply into the furrows of his brain. She was not impressed by his career. Her left breast was slightly larger than her right, and it made several attempts to escape her evening gown. There were knots in her hair. She ate and spoke at the same time. M asked if he could meet Ms. Pless again, and she answered with stern indifference, a raised eyebrow and a piddling snicker.

When M arrived at her apartment, he spent fifteen minutes boring her to death about artistry and passion and cinema magic. She spent four minutes in the bathroom, and then they went to bed together.

They proceeded to hump for eight minutes. Ms. Pless yawned audibly and asked to be excused for a moment to powder her nose. M began to get very anxious. When she returned from the bathroom, she carried in her hand an electrical appliance roughly the size and shape of a toy pistol. A rubber cone was situated at the long end of the appliance and, when it was given power, it would, presumably, vibrate. M frowned.

“You’ll need to use this, or else I’m going to go to bed.” M’s eyes gaped semi-sideways. All of the blood suddenly rushed back to his brain, and he clumsily recounted all of the encounters with women he had ever had and realized that at this moment they meant absolutely nothing. A ball of phlegm became snared in his throat, and it grew thicker each second he could not answer her. Finally, he submitted. He used the appliance and in twenty minutes she was asleep. He saw himself out. That night he lay in bed for two hours without blinking, and the next day he appeared at her apartment again and offered her a role in his film.

He snatched the handle of her dressing room door and tugged it open. Inside, she sat and read a magazine. Her jowls were wrinkled with the stains of boredom. She did not notice, or did not seem to notice M’s presence. He opened his mouth, but only a thin spray of air escaped. She turned the page of her magazine. A moment passed, and she turned another page. More time, and another page still. M slowly backed out of the room and silently closed the door. He stood against the door, empty, for three minutes, and listened to the pages rustle inside the room.

When M returned to the set, he informed his actors of his brilliant decision to include only nine maidens on the young hero’s voyage to the moon for very important kabalistic reasons that were only now occurring to him. He stood, and together they all went back to work.

Ben Korman

New Updates

2008-02-09T18:11:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone,

There's been some new updates to the blog as some of you may have already noticed. Links have been added as well as new pieces updated weekly. If you have anything to offer, events, links, related to writing or art, please feel free to offer. Send these ideas to ubiquitous.submissions@gmail.com. We'd greatly appreciate it.

To check out the newest links, scroll down looking on the right side of the homepage.

Enjoy.

Fiction: Backward

2008-02-09T18:09:00.000-08:00

Backward

So Marco and I drive to Fashion Island because American rag is having a sale and I've been eyeing these Ksubi Dee Dee Ruff Rockers ($295) for a long time and I have the absolutely most perfect pair of double Identity White Patent Leather sneakers ($195) to match with them because the jeans taper at the ankle and I think I'd wear them sagged a little bit because my American Apparel Deep V-Neck is one-size too big (on purpose, $26) and the Ksubi Block sunglasses ($198) I bought from American Rag goes well with them too.

So Marco and I park in the Fashion Island parking lot and walk out of it and on the way we pass this girl named Cherie who is one of those hippie chicks who really likes Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom and she says Hey to us and keeps walking but she doesn't even look at us because she's a dumb bitch who isn't very nice and I think she fucked Marco once at a party in Corona Del mar or something and there are some polaroids of it somewhere on MySpace or Facebook. Something inside of me resents Marco for this because Cherie might be a dumb bitch but she is pretty hot and she has nice legs and tits and I would just love to squish my face between them and smell her possibly (probably) sweet skin of Chanel perfume and then fuck her on my Tempurpedic mattress and then listen to Devendra or maybe Sufjan or some Modest Mouse. But Marco is a good guy and we get along alright so I let it pass and continue walking to American Rag.

So we're in American Rag and I go straight to the back of the store where the Denim is and I look at the Ksubi wall and there are six shelves of Ksubi jeans which is amazing because Ksubi is my favorite Denim brand and they make amazing clothes and they are really pushing the envelope in the world of up and coming fashion houses. But they don't have my size. They never have my fucking size in these Ksubi jeans. I don't why I keep coming back. Maybe because there is this girl that works here named Kati and she is super skinny and is super chill and I would just to take her out one night and get wasted with her then come back to my place and drink some beers and then fuck all night. Marco is looking at the PRPS jeans but they are a really weird company because they don't make skinny jeans and what kind of Hip fashion label doesn't make skinny jeans? So fuck PRPS and all those other companies that don't make skinny jeans because they make clothes for Bros and fuck Bros because all they wear are baggy clothes and “LRG” shit and it makes me disgusted with Orange County and everything in it. Where did the culture disappear to? This whole place is just full of True Religion wearing Bro Hos who don't know the difference between Chekhov and Dostoevsky. You'd think the least these dumb, uncultured bitches could do is read some Eggers or Bukowski or something. This county has to get some culture.

So as we're walking around the store this girl in my English class passes me and I think she has a crush on me (her name is Marcy or something) and she tries to make eye contact with me but I keep my eyes fixed on the Rag & Bone T-Shirt ($85) hanging on the rack and I think she says Hey to me but I ignore her and keep walking. She isn't very cultured either. She really likes Dickens or something along those lines that doesn't have anything to do with today's world and today's society. Fuck her too.

We finally walk out of the store empty-handed and I turn to Marco and say What now and he says lets go to Laguna to that one book store that is really chill and I say OK and we walk back to the parking lot and get in my Audi ($30,000) and start driving.

We're on PCH. The sun is starting to set over the water and I think about what I am bringing tonight and if I will get laid and how much weed I'm going to smoke and all of the hot bitches that are going to Rich's party back in Huntington and what I'm going to wear since I didn't get those Ksubi jeans but I have old pairs of Ksubi so I guess it's alright.

Somewhere on PCH on the way to Laguna Marco and I decide not to go to that book store so we turn around and head back to my place in Huntington but I kinda don't want to because my mom might be home and I don't want to run into my mom because it will delay going to my room where my clothes are and I need to pick out an outfit for Rich's tonight because Marie might be there and I might want to fuck Marie tonight, I don't know yet but I need an outfit for tonight. Marie is this girl in my art class with very nice slim legs and an ass to match that wiggles and sways perfectly as she walks and the J-Brand 10-Inch Indigo Blue jeans ($172) look so good on her because she is tall for a girl and the J-Brands show it off very well. Her lips are pouty and her make-up is perfect and every time I see her I think about her lips sucking my dick and her tongue moves up and down along it and it is pretty amazing and then I imagine fucking her from behind and she's playing with her pussy and I'm pulling her hair and she's about to cum but right now I'm driving and I'm starting to get hard so I stop imagining so I don't crash my Audi.

My mom isn't hove so Marco and I go straight to my room and I put on the rare Joy Division record I just got it's the Amsterdam show from 1980 and it's their best show ever and has most of my favorite songs on it except Warsaw which was Joy Division at their most punk. I don't know if Marco likes Joy division but he is a dumb bitch if he doesn't because they have done so much for music today like, um, well I can't think of anything right now but they just did. Marco sits on my bed with his shoes and I say What the fuck, Marco, take off your shoes I just washed and febreezed those sheets and your lame Nike Sbs ($80) are filthy you really need to take care of your shit better. Marco immediately jumps off the bed and says sorry and sits on my Black Leather Crate and Barrel couch ($2,100) leans back and pretends to drum on his knees. I sigh and pull out three pairs of jeans: a pair of Ksubi Van Winkles ($220) APC New Cures ($140) and Nudie Dry Black Organic Grim Tims ($225) and then three T-Shirts: two APC T-Shirts ($50, $120), and that American Apparel Deep V-Neck I mentioned. I stare at each outfit I've put together and I pick my Black Ksubi Van Winkles and the American Apparel Deep V-Neck because they'll go really well with my Double Identity White Patent Leather sneakers I talked about and I'll wear my Black Lucite Lightning Bolt necklace from Alex & Chloe ($56). I turn to Marco and say wait here I'm going to change and go into the bathroom and take off my clothes then I put my new outfit on and come out and ask Marco What do you think he says yeah that looks sweet I say sweet lets get to the party. Marco says okay and we leave my room and get in my Audi and start heading towards Rich's.

So Rich lives the next block over but I wanted to take my Audi because it's so much easier than walking and my ass is a little cold so I turn on the seatwarmers and Marco asks why did we drive and I tell him that my ass was cold and I just felt like taking the Audi because it's easier than walking and he says oh, alright and by this time we're at Rich's so we park and get out.

So at the party I see Rich Megan Drew Alison Cody Oliver Ryan Michael Marco and my reflection and my outfit looks really put together and it's better than everyone else's in the room. There are some other people but I don't know their names and I don't need to know their names because they don't matter and I can tell that the names I don't know belong to people who don't read and appreciate music and the arts like Rich Megan Drew Alison Cody Oliver Ryan Michael Marco and I do but even Marco really doesn't appreciate music and the arts that much but I guess he reads a little and that's why we're friends because he's smarter than your average kid. There is no sign of Marie yet. Some kids are on the ground playing twister and spilling Jack&Coke everywhere and actually it's kind of embarrassing because I think these kids are freshmen and they have no idea what they're doing at a party like this because none of the other kids are talking to them or trying to be friendly because they are freshmen and they don't even know how to handle themselves when drunk yet so I think it's going to be bad news for them tonight. Rich comes over and says Hey glad you could come and I say wouldn't miss it for the world and Marco agrees and Rich starts talking about this poem he is working on that doesn't have any verbs or conjunctions just nouns and it's slightly annoying because his massive forehead is eclipsing half of this hardbody's face and it looks like she is a solid hardbody with a tight build and a firm ass but I can't see the rest of her because Rich is in the way so I move out of the way and pretend to grab a beer because this girl is standing right next to the beer. I catch a glimpse of her and she really is a hardbody with a tight body and a firm ass and very nice slim legs and she is kind of tall so I say Hey how's it goin' and she says Not too bad and I say my name's Truman and she says I know, we've met and I say We have? And she says Yeah, don't you remember? Last time at Rich's? You called me Priscilla but my name is actually Marie? We have art together? You burped in my mouth as we started to make out? And I say Fuck you, you're not Marie and she says Yeah, I am, asshole and I say Fuck you, bitch and walk away and crack open the beer and take a long gulp and walk outside and light a cigarette.

The moon is up. There is a freshmen lying face down in the lawn, a puddle of green puke spreading out from his face. I think about helping him but I don't think I could do anything of great significance to help him. As I'm staring at this kid lying face down I realize I lit my cigarette filter and not the tobacco.

Ryan Chang

Art: "Landscape and Pattern" & "Study of Disaster"

2008-02-04T14:20:00.000-08:00

"Landscape and Pattern"
80" x 72"
acrylic, metallic paint oxidized with the artist's urine and saliva,
and dirt on canvas
2007

"Study of Disaster #7"
13" x 12"
paper, acrylic on broken maple board
2006

Edward Schexnayder

Art: Final Piece

2008-02-04T14:17:00.001-08:00

Evand Schmidt

Art: "I Unpetalled You"

2008-02-04T14:09:00.000-08:00

Aldrin Valdez
http://aldrinvaldez.blogspot.com

Art: Untitled Images

2008-01-30T21:09:00.000-08:00

Images submitted by Lauren Culbreth.

Poetry: Relics

2008-01-30T21:00:00.000-08:00

Relics

Spine/I am shattered pieces of memory
Unwilling to part from each other
Compressing and extending in curves
Perhaps never straight

Shoulder/an endless possibility
A radius of a sphere
Everything and thus nothing
Almost insignificant

Fingers/we lock into each other
Each one of us flexes and extends
To create a knitted surface
Its dimensions always morphing

Elbow/who are you faceless creature
Who resembles something of everything else
An element too simple
Whose footsteps only exist in a single plane

Knee/whatever happens
whatever its complexity
It all comes down
To flexion and extensions

And Marrow/your invasive warmth
Crawled into my emptiness in silence and
You stood up slowly
And you became me

- Hilary H.

Poetry: The Talkies

2008-01-30T20:59:00.000-08:00

The Talkies

When I was twelve

my mom enrolled me in an acting class at the Westfield Y.

We pretended we were mirrors and starfished ourselves on the marble floor.

I sat next to Weird Meghan,

who licked the flat backs of toy gems and

pasted them to her forehead.

She smelled like spit.

Filtered into groups of four, we practiced skits

for the showcase. I was in a bit

about the talkies, waving lacy hands

and saying things like

“Marvelous!” and “Darling!”

I focused on making my words slow and breathy, like the sigh of air

as it escapes a pinpricked balloon.

Weird Meghan's voice scuttled at the bottom of her register

and her jokes didn't make sense.

Our teacher moaned “Higher,

higher!” as Weird Meghan stared

pale-face blank, plastic jewels peeling from her skin

with the sticky resistance of tape on a wall.

During breaks, Weird Meghan sat on a broken radiator in the girl's bathroom.

I listened to her guttural voice curl around her words—

phelgmy stories about Sailor Moon and vampires.

Once she wrote the name of an Egyptian pharaoh on a square

of toilet paper and made me promise not to say it out loud.

It was cursed; whoever said it would go deaf.

I imagined sound being replaced by that mute

ring my ears make when I'm underwater.

That class, I watched my teacher's coral lips shape air, words

floating like smoke signals.

I still remember the way my lines

lifted like heat off the ground.

The way my voice rose with

Where ever you turn

all you hear is sound!

- Maryrose Mullen

Poetry: Coney Island

2008-01-30T20:49:00.000-08:00

Coney Island

I smoke in the backseat and he does not mind.

She is still beautiful.

Breathe in and what kills me is she is ecstatic.

She uses language to open doors.

The sidewalks all face the wrong direction

so we use our feet to find the sand.

I first fall asleep from where they guard,

but she wakes me up and is perfect against the waves.

Perfect against the roller coaster backdrop

and I don't know how much a cyclone costs.

I don't know how to climb ladders

so she takes me to the dock after we link arms.

I pull her out to the edge

and hope that she does not jump unless I do.

On the way home we take turns falling asleep

in our metal car.

We check to see if something is left behind

and I can see she sleeps with her eyes open.

Remember on the dock she asked what perfect meant

after telling all the sky's different colors.

- Laura Radcliffe

Interview with Amanda Stern

2007-11-07T07:15:00.000-08:00

INTERVIEW WITH AMANDA STERN

Introduction by Drew Peifer. Interview by Sonia Farmer.

So, what can you do with a writing degree? Just ask Amanda Stern.

So far, she's been an actress, a playwright, a casting director, a comedian, co-host of "This is Not a Test" celebrity talk show, a novelist, a painter, and a photographer. She can often be found hanging around the Happy Ending Lounge in Manhattan where she hosts the Happy Ending Music and Reading Series, an innovative blend of musicians and authors that's featured celebrities such as Rick Moody, Jonathan Ames, and James Salter.

In Amanda's newest novel, The Long Haul, a troubled relationship plays itself out against a backdrop of addiction and bad decisions as The Alcoholic and his nameless girlfriend travel the country, playing music and ruining each other’s lives. Book reviews and interviews highlighted the distance that Amanda creates between the reader and her characters, as well as between the characters themselves. As the title suggests, The Long Haul teaches us that sometimes it’s the stories that are hard to tell and even harder to listen to (no offense) that leave the deepest impression. Amanda’s deliberately belligerent protagonist almost seems like she doesn’t want to tell us her story, but the pages keep turning and it’s all laid out: the frustration of unrealized hopes, the guilty ritual of addiction, and the futility of making promises that have already been broken.

Fans of Amanda Stern are fans of her curiously inappropriate sense of humor as well as her drug-infested tales of prolonged unpleasantness, and not many authors would have thought to curate a reading series in a converted massage parlor, complete with its original “penis showers” still intact. Take a trip to amandastern.com and you’ll find both published and unpublished writings, as well as visual art, ugly teen photos, and a forum in which visitors can add to Amanda’s modest catalog of rejection letters by submitting their own. Amanda also chronicles a hectic four week journey across America to promote her book that begins with several valiant attempts at passing her driver's license exam, holding a contest to find a volunteer driver to go cross-country on tour with her, then getting into a car crash with the winner of the contest. Along the way, we learn that it is never a good idea to shower in an Amtrak bathroom, and communicating with your publisher is key when you decide to book a tour.

Ladies and gentlemen, Amanda Stern.

You read a compelling excerpt from your new book at Friday Forum. What’s the title, again? Can you describe what it’s about and what led you to work on it?

Ah, the dreaded question is the first question! The title of my novel-in-progress is The Gurthrie Test. I can’t really say what it’s about or what led me there because I’m not done writing. Stories are shape-shifting creatures – what the book is about presently will be an altogether different beast when completed. How’s that for elusive?

Where did you grow up and how do you think that shaped you as a writer?

I grew up on MacDougal Street between Bleecker and Houston in Greenwich Village. I had a fairly unique upbringing. I was the youngest of six kids at my mom’s house on MacDougal Street and the middle of five uptown at my father’s. Life downtown was crazy, chaotic, free-spirited and undisciplined while uptown life was much more uptight. In many ways I had two simultaneously upbringings. We even dressed differently when we went uptown. But while there were two different ways we were being raised, there was one thread that ran through everything: panic. I have suffered severely from panic attacks my entire life starting at a very early age. As a child, I was terrified of separation, it felt like a physical death to part with my mother. I didn’t understand on an intrapsychic level that I would return. Yet every other weekend I had no choice but to leave my mother and so I grew up living in a state of constant dread and grief. The panic shaped who I became as an adult and informed the topics I choose and the themes I gravitate toward. In other words, it wasn’t where I was raised that shaped me as a writer, but what was growing inside me.

You have a pretty impressive resume as far as job titles go. What job did you love the most, and what did you dislike?

I think my favorite job was working for Hal Hartley in my very early 20s. The specific Hal Hartley job I’m thinking of is when I ran the rehearsals for “Amateur.” Hal is just about the loveliest man on earth and his cast was amazing and everyone treated me so well although I had just graduated college. The worst job ironically was also on “Amateur.” A bunch of the production crew was from LA. So pre-production was all Nyers and it was the best experience, but when the LA crew came and we went into production, things went really sour. I did something called “running first team,” which means I was in charge of all the “name” actors. The Assistant Directors on that job treated me really badly, very abusively. They thought I got special treatment because I had a close bond with Hal and the actors, so they were determined to make me suffer. And they did. I just hated the hell out of them. There were two in particular. I remember both their names still. They were just awful to me. The film shoot ended with both of them getting seriously ill from Craft Services.

How do you prefer to write?

I can write whenever. My schedule is set so that now I write during the day, but I’ve written at frequently and throughout the night. I’m not a morning person, but I will say, the few times I got up very early and felt delirious, my writing was pretty cool. Not good, mind you, but cool.

What led to the formation of the Happy Ending Reading Series?

My friend Oliver owns the bar and when my first novel, The Long Haul, was coming out, I asked him if I could read there. I wanted to read in bars that no one was reading in. Instead of answering, he asked me if I wanted to run my own series. I thought about it and realized I did.

Favorite books?

Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson, Light Years by James Salter, Play it as it Lays by Joan Didion.

Share something really funny about your childhood.

Nothing was funny about my childhood. Although I did go through a very strange period where I wanted hearing aids, orthopedic shoes, crutches, an eye patch, and any other badge of the seriously injured.

Any guilty pleasures?

The Hills.

What’s one thing you just can’t get enough of?

Three things: my nieces.

What are your irrational fears?

All my fears are rational.

Who’s your favorite person in the whole world?

You.

Where would you like to travel and why?

There are a kajillion places I’d like to go, but for now I would like to go to Berlin. I have friends there. It seems vibrant and cool. New York is no longer New York.

What are some of your favorite places to visit?

To visit implies I’m a regular, but I have been to several places I think often of returning: Mjlet, an island off the coast of Croatia; Barcelona; Menorca, off the coast of Barcelona; and Portland, Oregon.

What’s the best piece of advice anyone gave you that you could share with us?

If I remembered the best piece of advice anyone gave me I probably would have a steady income.

But if you really want to know, it’s “trust your own experience.”

We're Back!

2007-09-30T20:43:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone!

Bet you didn't even know Ubiquitous actually HAD a blog until you stumbled across the address, right? The blog is fairly new, but this year's staff is planning to make it as important as the published magazine. That means we need SUBMISSIONS, so send them in!

This year we're accepting any writing submissions, whether they be poetry, fiction, interviews, creative non-fiction, reviews, critical essays, or anything in between. That goes for art, too. Got an art piece with writing in it? Even better. Don't have time to scan your art pieces to send to us in jpeg format? Don't have time to take a photo of your art pieces? No problem. Just let us know you're interested, and we can take the photo or scan your art pieces in for you.

Send any submissions or questions to ubiquitous.submissions@gmail.com. You can even leave submissions on a disc in our box in Chapel Hall. Our deadline for the magazine is October 18th, but we accept writing AND art submissions year-round for the blog. Want to write something for the blog, but don't know what? Just let us know. We have a ton of ideas that need writers!

Think the blog could use a make-over? Most of us involved in Ubiquitous have little experience with computers (no, seriously--someone actually asked what a blog was during our first meeting) so if you're willing to help us out, drop us an e mail at the address above.

And now, to kick off the year right, here's a brief history of Ubiquitous from our very own academic advisor. We can't update if we have no submisions, so share some of your work with us!

-The editors

**********

Welcome to the new school year, UBIQUITOUS! As long-time faculty advisor, I’m in a good position to give a little background…

“Ubiquitous,” the name of Pratt Institute’s literary and arts magazine, means “it’s everywhere.” When I first started teaching in the English Department (I won’t mention how long ago – I’ll just say it was well before my current classes of freshmen students were born) the name was more than ironic. Student enterprises tending to wax and wane in a more or less cyclical pattern, the magazine had languished, clinging to a shadowy existence as a name-only entry on the roster of Student Activities.

“An art school without a magazine?! What sense does that make?” I kept thinking. I had worked on a number of journals (Megaphone, Birch Leaves, Artemis, Columbia, Parnassus – I’ll bet even you zine junkies have never heard of some of those) and I was determined to get Pratt back into the running. A colleague remembered a publication years previously called Snakeroot, that showcased work by faculty, students and writers in the community. For a few years I was involved with a publication in the English Department called Thought Lines (with a sub-heading by Hannah Arendt: “We humanize what is going on in the world and in ourselves only by speaking of it, and in the course of speaking of it we learn to be human”). It was an annual anthology of wonderful writing culled mostly from the Freshman English classes. But a bona fide, student-run literary magazine, that also had art, as befits an art school – well, what’s the opposite of “ubiquitous”?

Apathy on campus was rampant; Student Activities was skeptical. But I fastened my eye on an older student in one of my classes named Stanley, who had both publication experience and enthusiasm. With a small grant from the Mellon Fund through the office of the then-Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences, novelist Richard Perry, and a price break from my friendly local copy shop, a small committee of dedicated students put out a photocopied, Velo-bound 88-page edition that brought Ubiquitous back into the realm of the actual, even if it could not be said to be “everywhere.”

That was in 1992, and so this is the resurrected Ubiquitous’ 15th anniversary! It has been thrilling for me to see the magazine, like a child, grow a little bit each year in stature and sophistication, and to feel pride in my contributions in shepherding it along the way. We’ve had a pocket-sized issue, a hand-bolted rhomboidal issue, an accordion-pleated one, and one that consisted of postcards in a hand-folded box. One issue was 15 inches long by 2 inches high. (The writing and art was necessarily rather attenuated!) We’ve had black-and-white covers, color ones, glossy, matte, and one that was painstakingly brushed with a circle of vegetable oil on each copy so that the second page showed through to complete the design. We’ve had covers featuring photographs, paintings, graphic designs and hand-set antique letterpress type from Pratt’s well-kept secret studio. We even had an issue on a CD.

The editors have been from fine arts, commercial arts, graphic arts, art history, and our relatively new major in Writing for Performance, Publication and Media. It is truly a pan-Institute journal, and it is beginning at last to live up to its name: it now has two issues a year, a chapbook in collaboration with the spring poetry contest sponsored on campus by the Academy of American Poets, and various ancillary readings and events. Even the posters are impressive, as are the behind-the-scenes efforts to get them prominently into the public eye.

Recently, at the first meeting of the new school year, a dozen students crowded into the Writing Center to hear about the editors’ plans for the fall issue. The students were especially wowed by the current budget, incrementally larger each year as it has been painstakingly pitched and won in the annual Student Activities budget process. It’s a big opportunity – and responsibility – to work with a budget now more than ten times that of Stanley’s issue fifteen years ago.

So keep an eye out for it, and more to the point, contribute to it! I can’t tell you what it will look like, or what kinds of genres, both verbal and visual, you will find inside, but I can vouch for the fact that it will be something Pratt students – a pretty special lot – will be proud of, and that it will reflect them in all their astonishing diversity and talent.

Liza McAlister Williams
September 2007

Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)--Emily Thomas

2006-11-30T18:22:00.000-08:00

My shopping basket is too heavy to hold onto so I put it down by my feet. Through the big glass window, I watch a couple fight and make up. The girl wears a long black coat. The boy wears faded tan Wallabees and a tie. The boy gives the girl a long kiss on the mouth, steps off the curb, and looks both ways. Someone pokes me in the back. The line has moved. I push my basket forward with my foot. I don’t want gum. I don’t want to read the tabloids. The woman in front of me pays with food stamps.

I make it home and my pregnant mother digs into the shopping bag and grabs the carrots and the mustard. She eats this every day and in a month my sister is born. Her hair grows in curly and blonde. After her first haircut the curls go away. She tries swimming and hates it. She tries ballet. Still no curls. I drive her to second grade and we talk about our dad’s new puppy whose name is Bernie. She gets her first pair of pointe shoes and I teach her how to sew on the ribbons. She dances in the Nutcracker. When she puts up her hair, a couple of curls fall out on the sides. I drive her to sixth grade and we talk about our dad’s new apartment in a different state. We like it. It’s bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside.

For a few months all I wanted to listen to while my mother and I drove in the car was country music. If a song I didn’t like was on Continuous Country, my mother would sigh with relief, but I would switch over to The Nashville Way All Night and Day.

“Why?” my mother would ask. “Please, why?” And I would say, “Because it makes me feel good.”

On the first of February, we drove to her favorite restaurant. There had just been a blizzard, and the wind sent tree branches pirouetting into the road. Since it was her birthday, I let my mother pick the music. The station she picked was playing the song “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” by Bruce Springsteen. “What is this, mom?” I said. “Ugh.”
My mother cracked the window and threw out a piece of gum she had wrapped up earlier in a napkin.

“I wish I was listening to Tim McGraw,” I said.

“Let me tell you a story about this song,” my mother said. She brought a hand to her hair and poufed it into shape. The whole coif shifted to the side when she touched it.
“When I was a teenager, I would listen to the radio through my pillow when I was supposed to be asleep. And once I heard this song, and—“ she put her chin on the steering wheel. The car was filling with cold air.

“And what?”

“I just thought it was the best song I had ever heard.”

“Can you close the window?” I said. “That’s not even a story.”

emilymica@gmail.com

Thetis--Aldrin Valdez

2006-11-30T16:36:00.000-08:00

for Mai Maguire

I met you in a city by the sea,
just yesterday
it seems. Your prettiness was harsh
at first, unusual
because most girls then
were blonde and stout--
you were lithe and ocean-eyed,
not in color but in gaze.

I heard you sing once, too,
in a bus to the mountains.
It was winter and your nautical tune
warmed the ride through valley frosts.

And then you became a friend
years later, in the flotsam-jetsam of hurricane times.
I ended up beside you in class sifting too slowly
through millennia of art, pausing to consider
a then-faint metaphor
in the Cycladic shores of Grecian yore.

Since then, you've become too quick.
You move too fast and too much,
I can barely keep a memory still;
it ripples with a mere touch
and then I remember I cannot breathe water.

I would like one day
to grasp you completely, secure you
in the tangle of my arms,
finally tangible and exhausted of all forms
except one:

My friend
my sister.

Aldrin Valdez is a Sophomore Painting Major.
avaldez@pratt.edu

Serial Poems -- Erin Heath

2006-11-06T13:22:00.000-08:00

Dearest Mousetrap Inventor,

their coats are still white, buried beneath theories

Look; produce; compare among the scientists
before oceans before bones,
it turned out a glitch produced a gene
for reasons, not mutation.
An experiment, a mixture of circumstance builds
a complex mousetrap.
Such a system falls with evolution’s
modern jawless equivalents
of incremental changes: 9.82 meters per second per second

The tracks of scientists scratch the kin

of a bitten skeleton. The teeth remain closed,
half-blown, scattered glass on glass table.
A direct afarensis stature, the frame sized unlike

a modern two scientists, unclear, a key of
a key of evidence happened before.
uncover
the States’
wobbly foundation

Dear Fahrenheit,

The object, unnamed trumps its discovery, tagged with
only 1.5 pixels. The telescope measures the ground.
Observations of a moon circling, enabling the release

Science operates a new report, shuffling thin white rectangles.
They spin out until they look like stars whose light takes years.
A percent of light, analysis, percent of
planetary shock—

Shooting geysers transform to ice crystals, a sheen
of freshly fallen snow. Nine billion miles
liquid water

shooting geysers minus 400 degrees

an eccentric atmosphere sweating organisms:
astronomer should be regarded as
two distant objects

Outer

Crashing crafts, help scientists.
Water might lurk deep in dark craters. Help future human
early lunar hydrogen
bound for the south pole,
identified identified identified
help astronauts off-land, the first to strike.
A craft will fly, launch Earth before slamming

Dear Mathematics,

Dr.,
the date
ancient keys and locks
Dr.
find any piece
an elegant,
of course
formulate
Dr.
be considerate,
three pieces
what, Dr.?
even if this calculates
it doesn’t show much

Dear Scientist,

A plume of debris rising 30 miles before
hitting the moon. Looking 90 degrees against the darkness,
high high increase of the orbit,
aim the telescope, smash into distant bodies,
A heavy copper comet ejected from a stone

Dear Force,

Earth’s magnetic storms send large flares.
Their intricacies introduce a phenomenon called
atoms,
stripped of ultraviolet force,
these temperatures are high enough to
x-ray the loops
beyond a fuzzy dawn.
The first sign the first high x-ray
the loop the pointed the rounded
then a wave

Crossing

A pocket would be expected to glow
at high velocities, causing ions
to suddenly bash near the
edge of the loop.
The lack of such electric lines
lines
relatively converge.
The strong halt
against a mattress, a motion charged,
a big trap

Burn

In a field, a lightbulb dissipating
over the years, a flux,
such fields, parallel to the sun,
a flat sheet
working over time as a result of
the current giving rise,
the weak x-rays
a series, a sequence,
the mysterious source reaching its peak
within two minutes—such fields

Erin Heath is a Junior writing major
cityscorp@hotmail.com

REWIND -- Katie Cheek

2006-11-06T13:19:00.000-08:00

I threw up. I ate three slices of pizza. The pizza arrived and I was starving. In the car, I begged my mother to order Pizza Hut. When I was putting on my pants and shoes, my mom asked me what I was hungry for. The nurse gave me graham crackers and diet coke. My vision was blurry. I couldn't open my eyes but I could hear a little boy screaming. The nurses were gossiping. 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, I'm not going to fall asleep 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, I'm going to college in Brooklyn next year, 96, 97, 98, 99, I can move my left arm if need be, 100. The metal table was freezing. She gave me a heated blanket. I almost tripped on my IV cord. The nurse had to hang the IV bag from the bathroom door so I could use the bathroom. It was weird trying to walk attached to a pole. When I stood up, I immediately grabbed the back of my gown so as not to moon the hospital staff. My Dad came back. My mom touched my hand. My hand hurt. The nurse tried three times to put in my IV before she was successful. Laura came in and read me a book. They gave me a heated blanket. My Mom came in. The nurse sat me next to an old woman who complained very loudly. I shuffled through the hallway in my surgical socks. I locked my purse in a locker and wore the key around my left wrist. Cheek, Katie you can come back now. I watched the news on channel 13 because that's what was on. I sat in the corner of the waiting room. Dad dropped us off at the door. I sat in the back seat. I woke up at 5:30 in the morning. I didn't sleep much that night.

Katie Cheek is a Junior writing major
katiecheek@hotmail.com

2006-10-07T16:27:00.000-07:00

Douglas Haig, 24
Senior Undergraduate
Hometown: Miami

2006-04-25T21:38:00.000-07:00