WHITE WORDS

Please pick up the IUSB Preface (BECAUSE the last, really last story of Empty Suitcase is in it).

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I will miss the deadlines...(and someone please give me new deadlines! I mean that I would not like to have deadlines by Dr.S...definitively not. I would like to say "Let me go" to him).

I just found out in Literary Magazine Reviews: New Pages

Slipstream 28 2008 Annual Review by Sima Rabinowitz This issue of Slipstream includes the work of four-dozen poets, many of whose bios (though admittedly not all) are among the quirkiest you’ll find. Jane Adam of Buffalo, NY, “is more liquid than solid and leaves behind the hyaline purity to melt under streetlamps.” Jon Boiservert of Corvallis, OR, “throws up a lot.” J. Blake Gordon of Evanston, IL, “sleeps soundly, thinks about music, prepares simple meals, and watches a little television.” Toni Thomas of Milwaukie, OR, lives with “two energetic children.” Much of the poetry (though admittedly not all) is quirky, too. Here are the opening lines of “Mathematics 101” by Neil Carpathios: “I had a one-legged lover / in college who used to remove / her prosthetic leg and massage / my crotch with her stump / like a third hand” and the beginning of Glen Armstrong’s “Curious Goths Tour the Cheese Factory”: “I compare myself / to the ch…

Fall 2009 Undergraduate Course Description booklet for the English department at IU South Bend

Empty Suitcase:
No.50, the Last Story

Naoko Fujimoto (NF) Thank you for having an interview with me.
Naoko Fujimoto (NF) My pleasure. By the way, you look familiar. Have I met you in an English class?
(NF) I don’t think so, but I know a Japanese girl whose pronunciation always switched “she” and “shi.”
(NF) Then I don’t know you. I speak perfect English. Let’s start the interview!
(NF) I wrote all the questions on these papers.
(NF) Could you pass me a shi-t of paper?
(NF) Did you say sh*t?
(NF) Do you mean toilet paper?
(NF) Whatever…you wrote 50 columns over four semesters. How did you get a columnist position?
(NF) I got the opportunity from a former editor, Eric Gingerich. He read my blog and liked my diary-like short fiction stories. He’s still reading my blog from South Korea. Current editors are looking for new columnist for the next semester. You may contact Brandi Miller or Jason Overholt.
(NF) So your stories weren’t non-fiction even though you wrote for the newspaper.
(N…

Empty Suitcase:
Tomorrow, Tomorrow, I Love ya Tomorrow!

Last week, I felt life. It was hectically speedy and with the most dramatic moment. Analecta: a journal of art and creative writing at IU South Bend was published and I was nervous as hell being the editor in chief. I believed that it was full of fantastic artists and writers, but what would the readers actually think about the magazine, photos, stories, and cover art? Analecta is a small magazine so it is not going to be criticized by academia; however, I know some writers would talk about it at least.

After the first week of publishing, I would like to thank those who picked up the magazine because Analecta is already out about 200 copies! It is not about quantity and quality should be focused on most, but it is delightful to think about 200 people reading the magazine and holding the eye-catching cover photo by Ashley Hartsough.

I met Ashley at the Analecta Art Exhibition during winter break, and I immediately fell in love with …

Two hundred copies of Analecta are already gone! I am very, very happy about the number. Thank you for picking up the magazine (I did not keep 100 for myself, just in case people are suspicious : )

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AND thank you to Nicole, Eric, and Jeff who came to the open-mic event. We had a good time (right?) reading own poems (imitating the voices of Priscilla Becker and Ashley Capps.) I liked your poems, Jeff; of course I liked Nicole's and Eric's.

Open Mic sponsored by Analecta - Join us!Bring something to read, or just come to listen.Tuesday, April 14th3:30-5:00 p.m.3001 Wiekamp (Lounge)

And Pictures!

The magazine is available at Indiana University South Bend,
English Department (DW 3rd Floor)

Contributing authors include:
Vince Bauters
Josh Bisig
Dane Blue
Susie Bower
Jenny Bucksbarg
Eric Duenez
Naoko Fujimoto
Rebecca Gibson
Jenna Gensic
Paul Guillaume
Kamika Guthrie
Ashley Hartsough
John Higgins
Amy Pfiffterling-Irons
Jake Jones
Catherine Kelly
Nicole Koroch
Adrienne Latson
Glenn Lyvers
Brandi Miller
Tyler Moore
Rebecca Pelky
Laura Pimienta
Samantha Plute
Mitchell Robinson
Ryan Smith
Jeff Tatay
Gregory Warrell
Rachelle Witter
Erica Wood
Marian Zuehlke

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IU South Bend Writing Awards
Judge: Susan Choi

Poetry

1st Place Winner Naoko Fujimoto - Shigeru
2nd Place Winner Jacob Jones - Home in a Coupon
Honorable Mention Jeff Tatay -Imperator

Fiction

1st Place Winner Eric Duenez - The Emerald Ash Borer
2nd Place Winner Glenn Lyvers - The day I became guilty
Honorable Mention Susan Bower - The Sunglasses

Non-Fiction

1st Place Winner Catherine Kelly - Black Like Me - My Biracial Journey Through Black and White America
2nd Place Winn…

"OVERSTUFFED" SUITCASE: MY INNER PONYO
Aaron K. + Naoko Fujimoto

Straight from the mind of your resident Death Metal Guy, King of Centipedes, or any other nickname I have been called minus the ones directed at me when I am driving, sleeping through lectures/sermons, or rethinking the decision to have onions before a long elevator ride.

I know you have come here for your fix from the beloved Blueberry Dope Pusher, but alas, she is unavailable; still recovering from her most recent bout of Cyanoccus Glycemic Impaction, something that occurs when you put too many blueberries into places they were not intended to go. So I took it upon myself to keep in the spirit of Empty Suitcase and tell of my latest travel experience where I picked up my most… humbling nickname to date.

Last November this long haired, liberal fan of political satires and European black metal ventured to the land of the rising sun to meet the first people that have ever intimidated him. Nevermind the DoD Acquisi…

*Cool!*

A Q & A discussion with Susan Choi:
Saturday, April 11
3:30-4:30 p.m.
1270 Wiekamp Hall classroom

Natane Tsuyu and A Battery are accepted by RUNE: the official literary and art magazine of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology!

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NATANE TSUYU

Natane Tsuyu:
an unexpected rain, perhaps sleet, on a green spring day.
It embraces me with gray clouds. Flower buds shrivel,
turn brown like my grandfather’s toe nails.
The rain: the murder.

When I think about yellowish
natane-flowers, I submerge in a glass of fizzy

lemonade like a broken heart. Gutters bubble,
puddles reflect the magnolia trees, whose white petals with ocher edges—
frost bites— are pressed on a wet gravel path.
A brownish line is cut through the white
petal even though I’m careful

careful as when I clean a pearl
blue contact lens. You sometimes
wear them instead of your dragonfly eyeglasses.

I want to fall in love with your eyes,
thin blue layers over brown irises. My cheeks will dye pink with
sky in the western horizon after natane tsuyu

stops. Between your eyes and mine—
..............................................always blue l…

Empty Suitcase: My Yesterday

“Daz, daz, daz, daz, da…z?” My silver car suddenly stopped in the middle of the street, Ironwood. I was on the way home from the Preface journalist’s meeting. I took a deep breath and recited, “Not for me, pleeese!” Sadly, my prayer disappeared into the cold, rainy afternoon. I could not turn the car on and move an inch toward the curb.

Before my car stopped, I was thinking about the Preface meeting. My column is going to end after four more stories and I felt accomplished writing “Empty Suitcase” for two years. Then, I was thinking of how I had a horrible job interview that morning. My critical thinking process was completely off; perhaps, I do not efficiently use my brain every moment of my life anyway, so I could not speak in English well. My brain, mouth, and facial muscles decided to be a Picasso painting. They just did not cooperate by moving together for a good impression on the interviewers.

With my luck of knowledge of automobiles, when my car was…