Founded in the fall of 1991, Laurel Moon is Brandeis' oldest, national literary publication. Each issue we publish features original work from undergraduate students.
After Cassie Pruyn, Andrea Gibson, and a handful of misguided educators.
Would you rather be an auditor or a musician?
When I was five, I spent rainy afternoons locked in my bedroom making crayon 1040 forms. I remember the frozen fear on every stuffed animal’s face as I combed for fraud.
Would you rather be a painter or politician?
Patience has always been my best virtue. When delicately balancing life and cash, I’ve always leaned towards the heavy-pocketed side of the scale. My curves pour so naturally into a pantsuit, and I’ve already gotten consent to fondle Lady Liberty’s ass.
Secretary or electrician?
I have never been afraid of anything, especially getting struck by lightning. I could run a kill-fire current through my hands all day and never even consider the possibility of it coming back to bite me.
Are you pragmatic or free-spirited?
I ran away from home once to catch a two-for-one sale on toolkits at Costco. I’d ridden my trike about a third of a mile before my dad came up behind me in his big red truck and took me back home. I spent the rest of the week sulking over the loose hinges and crooked floorboards I could do nothing to fix.
How have you prepared to adapt to a shifting professional environment?
All the hours I spent training to think like a machine, reeling my rainbow ribbons back into zeroes and ones. I’ve gotten so good that I can no longer tell which images contain traffic lights and which don’t.
What can you offer that the others can’t?
I am a restaurant with a menu that has everything on it. Order the kitchen sink, and I’ll tear it off the wall and roast it with herbs. Order, and I’ll scrape the flakes from my skin to garnish your plate.
What can you give that you haven’t already?
Though I’ve previously been reluctant, I’ll open my diary and project it on screen I submit to testing and experiments, do all your analytics on me. Please, come test your new skin cream birth control TV program apartment building.
What do you have yet to apologize to me for?
I’m sorry for all the crayons I took to the walls and all the poems I wrote that didn’t make it onto the bookshelves at Target. I’m sorry for scream-crying at night when I was a kid and afraid of the dark.