Objet dArt

Literary, Arts, & Culture Magazine

Fall 2013

Staff
Editor in Chief
Lisa Mathews

Editors

Editors Note
First of all, Id like to thank every single
person that submitted to us for their
consideration. Its truly a blessing that
we have writers and artists dedicated
enough to their work for us to be able to
cobble together an issue, especially on so
cramped a time period. As a
publication, we strive to present some of
the best of what Rutgers has to offer. At
the same time, we have to also recognize
the difficulties with upkeeping a print
medium on a modern college campus.
For that, I also have to thank every
single one of you reading this note for
believing, at least a little, in the power
and significance of the arts. The power
of language and image will never die as
long as there are people willing enough
to observe them with an open mind.

Nicholas Abraham
Matthew Tomasello
Lucero Calleo

Layout Editor
Lucero Calleo

Cover Art
Images by:

Amy Caprioni &

Ishita Jain

Table of Contents
Page ~ Title and Author/Artist
4 ~ Blood by Raka Chaki
5 ~ Intensity by Amy Caprioni
6 ~ Your Hands and My Mind by Alexander Velazquez
7 ~ Koto Players at Rons Spring Festival by Jose Gabriel

Alvarez-Manilla Sanchez
8 ~ Lifeless Memory by Brandon Robert
8 ~ Gabe Being Awesome by Wesley Jen
9 ~ Lightweight by Margot Rjaud
10 ~ Good Church Folk by Daniel Al-Daqa
12 ~ Untitled by Ishita Jain
14 ~ Anonymous Friend by Brandon Robert
14 ~ Nicaraguan Boy by Nisha Datt
15 ~ Reality Is Striped by Andrew Park
16 ~ momma bird blues by Michelle Moncayo
17 ~ Route 18 to Rutgers by Ronnie Mendoza
18 ~ Elizabeth, New Jersey by Michelle Moncayo
19 ~ Waterfall at Steamboat Springs by Amy Caprioni
20 ~ Shining by Arielle Bookspan
21 ~ Untitled 1 by Ted Spade
22 ~ Untitled 2 by Ted Spade
23 ~ Untitled by Scott Severa
24 ~ Give It Time by Brandon Robert
25 ~ Colorado Rockies by Amy Caprioni

~Nick Abraham

Blood

Raka Chaki

A drop of scarlet blood. Stains the white paper. And

blossoms into a million tiny flowers, each extending its petals
outward.

My pen drips on to the paper. A million tiny flowers
stain the white paper, each extending their petals outward.
The work of my blood coursing through my veins. Exposed
through pain yet existing through the joy of my heart
beating.

Ecstatic pain and glory.

Intensity

Amy Caprioni

Your hands and my mind

But I will be your hands so that you can be free to bathe.

To Bathe in the waters of my mind.

Alexander Velazquez

Your hands are enough for my comfort

And my mind for your liberation.
While you rest like a goddess bathing in a stream
I will write, I will paint, I will work, and I will speak of your
immeasurable beauty.
None will know of its truth.
For how can I do it justice?

Koto players
at RONS spring
festival
Jose Gabriel Alvarez-Manilla Sanchez

So that together,
Intertwined we will remain.
Wings caught up in the wind
Wind held captive by the wing
We are lost
But liberated in the purpose of our love.
Your hands are enough for my comfort.
And my mind for your freedom.

Wesley Jen

LIFELESS MEMORY

Brandon Robert

It was the attention that was never given,

and the failure to make the attempt.
Ambiguous emotions encapsulate the minds cacophony,
leaving the restless awake like an optimists paradox.
It was I, who was never driven;
I, who fed the hunger of my own contempt,
playing the shrills of a dissonant symphony;
my mind devoured on the edge of the docks.
It was never going to mend,
My life was a downward spiral.
The crow cawed once, for it was time to go
My last embrace with the reapers face
8

Lightweight

Margot Rjaud
Just eat this, they say
You like pineapple, dont you?
Shoo, be gone, you cloud of gray
I wont waste another second pretending to chew.
The morsels of meat
stain my brain.
I cant be beat.
They say the emptiness yields pain,
but I dont mind.
Something about the lightness
makes the emotion and the strain harder to find.
Swallow the clouds, Id do this.
Its okay, good today.
No one will be in my way.
9

Good Church Folk

Daniel Al-Daqa

So this hotshot sitting across from me gets cussin. I pull my

hat down a little lower but stare at him from the shadow.
Nothings stopping him. Not even the old lady on his right
saying please. I end up having to tell him there are ladies
present and that he had best tone it down. But hotshot
doesnt take too kindly to that and comes at me quick and
since Ive never been one to back down I have to come right
back and we go on swapping skin until we get pulled off of
each other and asked what the problem was. Through it all
hes still cussin away about this and that and how he doesnt
like me or my Chevrolet shirt or a lot of things not just about
me. Just cussin away, though. I ask him if hes learned anything at all and he breaks free yelling and we kinda did it all
over again.

Been a lot of times my Daddy told me

To keep my nose out of shit (sorry maam, stuff)
that wasnt mine to deal with and those words do run deep
every time
Its just that
Thats the only advice hes given me that I cant seem to follow.
I mean,
This is the same man who told me
A job worth doing is a job worth doing right
So I suppose its my initiative to do whats right
So I suppose if you want to go ahead and pursue the life of a
sailor
Im just gonna do the same.

Now, the next day my mom sees my face

Im home for church. Mark bailed me out.
and she just shakes her head knowing darn well what happened the night before but she also knows that its because
thats how they raised me and Im proud of it.
Dont get me wrong Im the first to tell myself
It has to stop
But those roots plant me
right back in the same place
You should have seen the faces of the church folk
Only because theyre not too surprised.
Pastor Doug comes up behind me and pats me on the back
and Im sure he knows all
about these bruises butwellhe still smiles
10

11

Ishita Jain

ANONYMOUS FRIEND
Brandon Robert

Below the canopy of the trees,

a man sat stillwaiting.
Lost in thought,

he reflected, longed, and waited.
The brisk autumn breeze roared in his ears.
Clawing at his face, the chill claimed refuge.
On a rugged, sturdy bench he sat;
his mind sailed with despair.
Sneakily his friend did tell,
beware the lying trail.

Confused in love the friend does not care,
for the heart, in pain, began to swell.
The wind, an anonymous friend

deceived the heartdetaching the seams

Nisha Datt
While I was in
Nicaragua, for
about a week
or so with
Rutgers
University on a
Public Health/
Medical
Brigade,
we had an
educational
lesson for the children and adults of the community. Our topic

was dental hygiene. As I was listening to the educational

lesson, I noticed this boy listening eagerly.

14

Reality is Striped

Andrew Park
15

momma bird blues

Michelle Moncayo
when the night comes moaning all I see is my
skim
milk
bones,
skeleton tree swallowing
a waning crescent glass of milk,
waning, swaying, praying in Gsus.
hollow whale wind,
tell me how the blues sing.

Im tired of thinking
drinking moonlight out of measuring cups
measuring
the space between my ribs
i walk like a rain soaked tin can man
got a rusted spine tuned to a B minor
and a hollow in my throat
that I carved like a pumpkin
with fingers sharp like picked bird bones tell me why I feel like a momma bird
without young to feed.
oh whale wind
some folks say the blues is a woman
but the blues is but a momma bird regurgitating.

Route 18 to Rutgers

Ronnie Mendoza

17

Elizabeth, New Jersey

Michelle Moncayo

They come in swells:

flutterings of eyelashes, Ikea blue and yellow block letters,
Gauzy clouds sheathed over the sky like charcoal tulle,
factories, and factories, and factories, and smoke;
inside she steeps her fingernails in corn making humitas for the
morning crowd,
the ones who live here but not here,
who dwell in this place where smoke and fog stick to their skin
like crushed velvet,
dreaming of a place where the trees extend further than factories,
whose first generation children are raised to speak Spanish and
not speak Spanish,
to forget and to remember,
taught not to leave a trace of their past they close their eyes and begin again, and again, and again.
He works in a factory that manufactures Ecuadorian food
My grandmother swims in the community pool
carrying the Andes rivers on the spider veins of her legs
The man with the collared shirts comes in every day and sings,
table to table
picking tremolo on his guitar,
staccato notes falling sharply the way rain falls in the Amazon
remembers sitting at his fathers dirty and cracked and calloused
feet
listening to him play the malaguea;
I listen for the faint trace of the way I used to speak Spanish
when I was five;
things that barely leave a trace are hardest to find.

18

Waterfall at Steamboat Springs

Amy Caprioni

19


Shining
Arielle Bookspan

Shining armor

Untitled
Ted Spade

darkest skies.
searched for
brightest star.
obtain the world
genuine

illuminate your heart,

glow endless
gazing
stars envious

perfection
dream open.
Distance

effect of world
weightless

Oh down, the sudden traps

That catch the sodden, sorry saps.
Be they light and bright, or full of dread,
They march unmarked across the map
And trod on all troops, purple or red.
These traps, whose teeth are tighter in bed.
Down old stories, heard too oft.
Beginning like fables, with words so soft,
Of mountains climbed with will alone,
Whose summits keep the dream aloft.
Their rocks, that flay men to the bone,
Are hidden with sultry, delicate tones.
Down in graves, unmarked the number,
Where brave soldiers fell asunder.
The nearer to fantasys fickle peak,
The more deadly is the blunder
Which turns the strong into the meek,
Takes their hope and turns it bleak.
Down your weapons, bloodied brothers,
Spread the word to all the others.
End this seeking out of war,
For war does not reward its lovers.
Fall into its traps no more,
Find no peace in deeper gore.

darkest days
looking up

20

supernova

21

 Untitled

Ted Spade
That in the loss of Love, may Love be found anew.
Not of another, or of God, but of Love.
Love that lives in itself a fact,
Love that triumphs over its own demise.
In death it resurrects in knowledge and in wisdom,
In wisdom and knowledge it spreads like the wind,
Breezing without effort, moving on its own accord.
Unstoppable, unthinkable to be halted.
For it becomes a part of nature in its nature,
A truth of truth in the face of lies it leaves.
What we lose is shackles and without bondage we are freed.
Freedom in mournful reconciliation.
Saved in crucifixion.
Love for all and Love for none,
And one that no longer loves still loves
But whose Love remains a lesson in Love.
Taught not by fear or punishment,
Though it could have been by whipping as painful,
But by patience and understanding.
The forever Love is learned and tempered like steel
To cut the heartstrings of all but only one more.
A blade that cannot dull yet is too fragile to use but once,
And again in terror and trepidation is used all the same
When the time comes and the one calls.
For one for Love is many and singular.
Love defies all things and supports all things,
Love builds in destruction like no other.
No other but God yet God is spoken for here.
And while there may be no God there is Love,
Which needs not what we think except its truth,
That it is real and it is true even when it is false,
When not even God can make it lie.
22

Scott Severa

GIVE IT TIME

Brandon Robert

Just give it time

tis what they say,
the hills of green all gone astray.
Water falling, soaking in the air,
as the dew of morn hovers.
Youve got the passion and the drive.
Twas known.
Just give it timejust give it time.
These walls grew thick like the bark of the willow swaying in
the wind.
My skintwas thin: both fragile and delicate.
Among the hills a pond was built:
one of passion and mankind.
As the breeze tickled my nose, a chuckle within me surfaced.
This place was home, this place was serenity.
In due time, alas, the life would alter.
The plan would shape a new direction.
Fortitude for lifes new beginning,
like the ripple in the water.
Just like what was said, Whats next?
Heaven knows but nothing in my midst will navigate me but
me.
24

Ill write my future along this mother willow,

for she is my new guardianrefreshing my soul.
To prove my worthI shall,
in this moment of passion that puddles within.
As I look up at my secret space,
I see and envision something far greater for me.
The past woven a wrecked wrinkle, but Ive given time just as
they said.
My dues are paid through padlocked lips,
The tears have trailed beyond bittersweet bliss.
I have a future: now beginning.
There is a place Ill call my space.
I was confused, perhaps more distant twas all.
But this passionate puddle has charmed me with grace.
The scene was splendid
My feelings untouchable.
Just give it timejust give it time.
25

Colorado Rockies
Amy Caprioni

26

27

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