LITRUS MAGAZINE

Litrus Magazine is Citrus College's literary magazine. (Literature + Citrus= Litrus!) It is a student operated publication and is the cumulative artistic work of Citrus College students, alumni, and faculty.
Litrus is currently accepting submissions for Issue 5
Send submissions, suggestions, and hellos to [email protected]
LITRUS MAGAZINE
is pleased to announce its 1st Annual Poetry Contest for Citrus College students, faculty, and alumni
****CONTEST DEADLINE DECEMBER 5, 2007****
1st place: $ 50 Barnes and Noble gift certificate
2nd place: $30 Barnes and Noble gift certificate
3rd place: $20 Barnes and Noble gift certificate
****Other prices include: Starbucks, pizza, movie tickets and many other goodies!! ****
WINNING POEMS WILL BE FEATURED IN THE UPCOMING ISSUE OF LITRUS
Contestants may submit up to 5 pieces.
All submissions must be e-mailed to [email protected] or dropped in the Litrus Magazine mailbox at the student publications office. (TC127)
All submissions must contain contestant’s full name, age, major, and contact information.
***All submissions may be considered for publication.***
For as long as he has known how to write, Aaron has been writing, and has yet to finish a single work. Early hits include “The Time Knight”, “The Magic Cleats”, and “Mutant Force”. He has been published in illustrious anthologies, such as The White Family Christmas Card, and Ms. Druin’s 6th grade English class.
Aaron White is a Citrus College alumni. He was Litrus Magazine's editor in chief for the fall 2006 semester. He is an English major and is currently attending Brigham Young University in Utah.
The Last Moment: An Ernest Bourgeois Story
By Aaron White
Ernest Bourgeois enjoyed the cool breeze at he relaxed on the dock, in the company of his best friend, Andrew Fireguard. The sent of the ocean pleased him. He liked how universal the ocean was, how it was the same ocean beneath his feet as it was thousands of miles away off the coast of China. Andrew didn’t like the ocean, but he didn’t dislike it either. He didn’t care either way, because to him there wasn’t much point in attaching emotions to bodies of water, large or otherwise.
The two of them didn’t bother much with needless conversation. At the age of ten, the two boy geniuses felt they had already said ninety-nine percent of all that was necessary for them to say. With them, no words were wasted. Ideas were precious, so they made sure that when they spoke, it counted for something.
Ernest had already discovered a hairstyle that astronomically increased his brain power. It had to do with the alignment of electrons in hair follicles and is far to complicated for you to understand. Needless to say, he won his fourth grade science fair that year, the only other child who even came close watched mold grow on different pieces of bread.
This was of course, before the debilitating fire that rendered Ernest legally blind, and before he met one Lucitania Aldeia.
Andrew also was a wonder of a boy, but in a way much different from Ernest. Andrew was the result of a government program charged with creating the perfect spy. His heart and been surgically removed, and replaced with blood pumping nano-bots in strategic locations in his body. These pseudo hearts were powered by a distant power plant by a network of satellites. It was supposed to make it difficult for him to be interrogated. It made it so he had no heart beat. Andrew turned to Ernest. “Did you know,” he said, “that I am ten years old, and I have never swam in the ocean?”
Ernest shrugged. “We’re ten years, old, and we haven’t done a lot of things.”
Andrew smiled. “That’s the point, I guess. They never gave us much of a childhood, did they? I mean – I’m ten years old, tonight. I’ve spied on kings and queens and military dictators. I’ve been in space, and I would’ve made it too the moon if not that shuttle malfunction. I’ve done all that, but I’ve never swam in the ocean.”
Ernest looked at him disapprovingly. “Pity doesn’t become people like us.”
Andrew didn’t point out that he said, people, not kids.
They fell silent again, and as if to punctuate the silence, a meteorite fell as a bright red and yellow streak across the sky.
“Here they come,” said Andrew.
More began to fall, and after a few minutes, the sky was filled with them, a brilliant mosaic of colors and lights. Ernest turned toward his old friend Andrew again.
“Why did you have us meet here?”
Andrew gestured to the display in the sky as an answer.
“We haven’t seen each other since... China, right?” Andrew didn’t answer, he just looked up at the meteor shower, with an expression of childlike wonder on his face.
“Look... I’ve been hearing things about your project. Are they true? I know there must be some truth to it, or else they wouldn’t let you be reading books. That’s what got you in this mood right? You’ve been reading.”
Andrew looked at him, and for a moment, the light from a shooting star reflected in his eye. It seemed to Ernest that, for a moment, his eyes had lit up. But that wasn’t true. Eyes couldn’t light up.
“Yes, they have started to let me read books. I just finished Treasure Island. It’s about a boy who goes out to sea.”
“If they’ve opened up things like that, you know what it means, right?”
“I’m not stupid, Ernest.”
“I wasn’t saying tha-“
Ernest was interrupted by a small explosion. A tiny meteor hit the dock, leaving a small smoking hole. For one of the few times in his life, Ernest looked worried.
“These are coming close to us? Are we in the path of the shower?”
“Don’t worry,” said Andrew his eyes lit once again by the meteorites. “I’ve planned this all down to the last moment.”
Already on his feet, Ernest shouted that they had to go, that they had to run. More meteors were striking all around them. Andrew didn’t budge. He just sat on the edge of the dock, his legs dangling playfully above the ocean beneath them. He had to yell now, because the roar of the asteroids hitting the ground was so great.
“Ernest, I may not have a heart, but I’ve learned that there’s more to life than the scientific. We need things that feed our souls, Ernest. Like swimming in the ocean, or running barefoot through the grass." Ernest stared at him, immobilized.
“They’re closing the project Ernest. I’m not a boy, just an experiment that’s reached it’s end. I hope you learn what I did before it’s too late for you too!” And at that moment, thousands of miles away, a switch was turned into the off position, and a low, throbbing hum died down. Slowly, one by one, an extensive network of satellites stopped transmitting the life sustaining power that had been passing through them. Maybe he pushed himself off, or maybe it was the force of the meteor striking next to him, but Andrew was flung into the cold water beneath him.
Ernest couldn’t tell. He didn’t know if he should run or not, but he knew that it was too late to do anything to save his friend. His fate had been decided by men in a distant land.
He stayed, and watched as the meteor shower slowly came to an end. What had seemed distant and beautiful in the sky was hellish and disturbing up close. Ernest stayed a while longer, and watched the ocean. He enjoyed the return of the cool breeze.
He watched the ocean and appreciated its unity, how it was the same here as it was thousands of miles away.
With about six years experience in the graphic design field along with two years as design editor for small independent newspapers, Ben works as a day laborer and part time gigolo for the arts. His only wish is to contribute something useful to the art world or build a house out of cheese. What ever comes first.
Ben Horak is a Citrus College student and Litrus Magazine's "Master of the Web."
BAD DREAMS
NATURE OF THE MEDIUM
*This article was first published in the Clarion newspaper.
Martin Espada
Credit: Paul Shoul
POET ACTIVIST GIVES READING, INSPIRES STUDENTS
By
Katrina Lising
Poet, essayist, social activist and professor Martîn Espada graced Citrus College students and staff with a dramatic reading on Oct. 12 in the Campus Center.
“Alabanza. When the war began, from Manhattan and Kabul
Two constellations of smoke rose and drifted to each other,
Mingling in icy air, and one said with an Afghan tongue:
Teach me to dance. We have no music here.
And the other said with a Spanish tongue:
I will teach you. Music is all we have.”
This excerpt from Espada’s poem “Alabanza,” meaning “praise” in Spanish was written to commemorate those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, particularly the immigrant food service workers who died in the World Trade Center that day.
“They were invisible in life and even more invisible in death,” Espada said. “One of the things I think a poet should do is make the invisible, visible.”
“Alabanza” is the most difficult poem he has ever written, Espada said. For six months after Sept. 11, he wrote many pieces in an effort to encompass that day but ended up throwing them all away. The poem finally poured out of him one day during a train ride to Vermont, he said.
“I was trying to make sense of something that was huge obviously, huge historically and huge emotionally,” Espada said. “I was trying to find some small part that could stand for the whole, and it took awhile to figure out what that was going to be.”
Espada was born in Brooklyn in 1957. In high school he was a terrible student. He failed English, typing and even gym class.
“And now I’m a professor of English. That shows you something about the way your life can go,” he said.
When he was 15 years old, his English teacher Mr. Valeca encouraged him and a group of other students to create a magazine, Espada said.
“This is the ‘New Yorker’ magazine,” said Espada imitating his teacher’s Italian accent. “I want you young thugs to create your own ‘New Yorker’ magazine.”
In the back of their student magazine, they were expected to write a poem. Espada was not pleased to be stuck with this task, but he did not want to fail English again. He ended up writing a poem about rain.
“I went to sit by the window. It was raining that day,” Espada said. “I don’t even remember the poem except for one line: ‘tiny silver hammers pounding the earth.’ I had just created my first metaphor at age 15. I didn’t even know what a metaphor was.”
That was the day he discovered his love for words, he said. From that day forth he had something to say.
“With those same words I started to write poems about the same subjects I still write about today: everything to do with justice, and everything to do with community,” he said.
“Forty years ago I bled in this hallway.
Half-light dimmed the brick, like the angel of public housing.
That night I called and listened at every door. In 1966, there was a war on television.”
This is an excerpt from a poem Espada read called “Return” from his latest book “The Republic of Poetry.” Espada has published eight books of poetry. He has also been published in “The New Yorker,” “The New York Times Book Review,” “Harper’s” and many other magazines. His poetry screams social justice, and his love for his Puerto Rican and Latino heritage permeates his writing.
“Don’t let anyone tell you poetry can’t do anything,” Espada said. “Never underestimate what a poem can do.”
Espada has won many awards including the American Book Award, the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement and the Robert Creeley Award. He teaches creative writing and Latino poetry at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
“He’s a very honest man. If I have any questions about my poetry, he gives me constructive feedback and he doesn’t hold back,” said Luivette Resto-Ometeotl, an English professor at Citrus College. She studied under Espada at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and considers him to be her mentor.
Three Citrus College students also read their own poems at this event. Kristin Baker, Allan Foley, and Sophia Duran opened for Espada with dramatic readings of their pieces.
“I was so nervous. I was so glad I was standing behind the podium because my legs were shaking,” said Duran in a podcast interview with Clarion photo technician Aaron Castrejon.
To listen to this interview, click here.
“When we (poets) start out to write we’re not trying to accomplish something so much as we’re trying to express ourselves, just trying to get something said,” Espada said. “I hope that when my work goes out into the world that people respond to it, that they feel something, that they are moved and take action in order to make the world around them a better place.”