ScholarWorks @ SeattleU (Seattle University)

Bonow, Lila

Fragments 
Volume 63 Pivot Article 5 
2021 
Shay’s Lounge 
Lila Bonow 
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments 
Recommended Citation 
Bonow, Lila (2021) "Shay’s Lounge," Fragments: Vol. 63, Article 5. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol63/iss1/5 
This Prose is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Fragments by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. 
 
1 
 
Shay’s Lounge 
Lila Bonow 
 
 
 It’s almost four in the morning. My brother is driving us to 
the hospital. My boyfriend Dan and my sister are in the back seat. 
I’ve been waiting for a girl like you to come into my life… By some 
unspoken decree, we are listening to this Foreigner song on repeat.  
It has become our anthem. As we drive south on aurora from our 
mom’s house to the hospital, we pass “Shay’s Lounge”, its pun 
emblazoned across a shamrock.  
“Hey. If mom doesn’t have a brain tumor, can we go to Shay’s 
Lounge afterwards?” 
“Yeah.” My brother unrolls his window and lights a cigarette.  
I feel like Shay’s Lounge is our Valhalla.  I’ve been waiting for a 
girl like you, your loving will survive. We pull up to the hospital 
where my sister took our mom two mornings ago. I had been 
working a busy brunch when my sister texted me.  
“I’m at the hospital with mom. I think you need to come here.” I 
stepped out front of the restaurant and called her.  
“What’s up?” 
 Our mother, who hadn’t been to a doctor or hospital since 
she gave birth to my brother at Swedish Hospital 32 years ago, had 
let my sister take her to the doctor. That was concerning. 
Apparently, there was something bad happening in her brain. She 
was in a lot of pain, she had a fever, she couldn’t see anything to 
her left. We all convened at the hospital where my mother held 
court, deflecting any fuss or emotional display. She wore her long 
white hair in a high ponytail and complained that “Some stooge 
named Fang” was making her remove her jewelry. I had never seen 
before, my mother unadorned. The doctors told us that there was 
either a tumor or an infection in the lobe of my mother’s brain that 
concerned her vision.  
*** 
We leave the hospital the night before her biopsy around 
midnight. We need to be there at four a.m. to kiss her before 
surgery, so instead of going to our separate homes we all drive 
together to our mother’s house which is close to the hospital. We 
have never been there without her. It is not the home we were 
raised in. We march around her house, passing a bottle of Old 
Overholt between us.  
“This is mine.” My brother stands in front of a giant painting I have 
coveted my entire life, whiskey in hand. The painting has always 
been above our mother’s bed. 
“No fucking way dude.” I grab the bottle. 
“I want that painting.” I swig. “I’ll trade you for two of Jay’s and 
the one by Jacques.” 
It feels like we have overrun the castle. We open drawers, we look 
in her cupboards. We marvel at her collection of tiny napkins, her 
candles, her chopsticks. We gather in a small bathroom were 
there’s a strange hexagonal soaking tub. My brother rests inside the 
1
Bonow: Shay’s Lounge
Published by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU, 2021
 
2 
 
empty tub, whiskey bottle across his belly, long legs and arms 
hanging out. My sister keeps wiping tears from her hot, pink 
cheeks. She tries over and over again to compose her face and fails. 
Dan is in the library playing Rachmaninoff on the out of tune piano 
at my behest. It is, after all, like bombs are dropping all around us. 
“What if mom dies.” One of us finally says out loud. 
Sometimes I don’t know what I’ll find, I only know it’s a matter of 
time. 
*** 
We stagger into the hospital and find our mother as she is 
being rolled into surgery. Her tinted glasses removed, her wrists 
bare of bangles, white and fragile. Her eyes, which are shaped like 
those of a small and pale fox, look uncertain, maybe even scared. 
We kiss her head. My sister bursts into tears. The doctor tells us we 
should be hoping that the biopsy reveals a brain infection, which 
could be treated with intravenous antibiotics. If it is a tumor, her 
chance of survival is much slimmer. Dan teaches me how to say the 
thing that we don’t want about the thing that we don’t want.  
“Me-tas-ta-size.” I repeat after him. Dan is very smart.  
“We hope that it’s a brain infection.” I tell our loved ones over the 
phone.  
“Yeah…If it’s a brain tumor, then it may have…” I search for Dan 
with my eyes.  
“Me-tas-ta-sized.” He mouths with me. 
 
Around seven a.m. my brother and I are sitting in the 
waiting room. Dan and my sister have gone off to the cafeteria to 
bring us little juice cups. Little yogurts. Maybe a banana. The 
doctor comes in. 
“Your mother is recovering, there were no complications.” We wait 
for it. 
“We’ve discovered a lesion caused by a brain infection.” We fall 
out. We are elated. We embrace. Fists puncture the delicate air 
around us.  
“Brain infection!” We repeat to each other. 
When my sister returns, looking tired and jilted, unaware of the 
newfound confidence we have; we try to hold it in.  
“Did the doctor come out yet?” 
“No.” We say. 
“NOPE.” We titter. We cannot contain ourselves. 
“IT’S A BRAIN INFECTION!!!” We laugh, we cry. She punches 
our arms.  
 
We walk into Shay’s Lounge like a group of hard-bodied 
warriors, back from winning The Kingdom or something.  
“Hello, we will take four Bloody Mary’s please.” 
We have Denver omelets the size of children.  
 
(I’ve been waiting for a girl like you, I’ve been waiting) won’t you 
come into my life? 
2
Fragments, Vol. 63 [2021], Art. 5
https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol63/iss1/5


English

Shay’s Lounge

Dickinson, Deborah

Fragments 
Volume 63 Pivot Article 15 
2021 
[ under construction ] 
Deborah Dickinson 
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments 
Recommended Citation 
Dickinson, Deborah (2021) "[ under construction ]," Fragments: Vol. 63, Article 15. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol63/iss1/15 
This Poetry is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Fragments by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. 
 
[ under construction ] 
Deborah Dickinson 
 
 
 
Don’t you see [question mark] Of course [comma] I am 
aware that I ponder too deeply [comma] that I look too closely 
[comma] that I add and extract meaning altogether too freely 
[period] I know [comma] I dissect myself and others [comma] 
our thoughts [comma] our experiences [comma] our emotions 
[em dash] drilling everything down to rubble [em dash] until I 
am surrounded by indistinguishable [comma] unrecognizable 
[comma] pieces of a whole that I cannot [open parenthesis] and 
[comma] frankly [comma] do not know how to [close 
parenthesis] put back together again [period] Often [comma] I 
wonder [comma] what my affinity for destruction and 
[forward slash] or dismantling [comma] as well as my inability 
to [open parenthesis] re [hyphen] [close parenthesis] build 
[comma] says about me [em dash] my character [comma] my 
relationships [comma] my destiny [period] But I know no other 
way [period] I cannot sit back and let things [quote] be 
[comma] [unquote] because I am too concerned with what 
[quote] being [unquote] means [period] 
1
Dickinson: [ under construction ]
Published by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU, 2021


[ under construction ]

Bhattacharya, Oishi

Calypsos Café :An Open Mic

Murphy, Fiona

Fragments 
Volume 63 Pivot Article 38 
2021 
Ferry Ride 
Fiona Murphy 
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments 
Recommended Citation 
Murphy, Fiona (2021) "Ferry Ride," Fragments: Vol. 63, Article 38. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol63/iss1/38 
This Visual Art is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Fragments by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. 
 
Fiona Murphy 
 
Exploring Carcreek 
 
 
  
1
Murphy: Ferry Ride
Published by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU, 2021
Ferry Ride 
 
2
Fragments, Vol. 63 [2021], Art. 38
https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol63/iss1/38
 
 
skaters 
 
 
3
Murphy: Ferry Ride
Published by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU, 2021


Ferry Ride

Fragments 
Volume 63 Pivot Article 37 
2021 
Exploring Carcreek 
Fiona Murphy 
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments 
Recommended Citation 
Murphy, Fiona (2021) "Exploring Carcreek," Fragments: Vol. 63, Article 37. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol63/iss1/37 
This Visual Art is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Fragments by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. 
 
Fiona Murphy 
 
Exploring Carcreek 
 
 
  
1
Murphy: Exploring Carcreek
Published by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU, 2021
Ferry Ride 
 
2
Fragments, Vol. 63 [2021], Art. 37
https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol63/iss1/37
 
 
skaters 
 
 
3
Murphy: Exploring Carcreek
Published by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU, 2021


Exploring Carcreek

Manuel, Tamar

Fragments 
Volume 63 Pivot Article 47 
2021 
Movement: Hands 
Tamar Manuel 
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments 
Recommended Citation 
Manuel, Tamar (2021) "Movement: Hands," Fragments: Vol. 63, Article 47. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol63/iss1/47 
This Visual Art is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Fragments by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. 
 
Movement: Hands 
 
Tamar Manuel 
 
 
1
Manuel: Movement: Hands
Published by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU, 2021


Movement: Hands

Editors of The Spectator

Spectator 2025-04-24

3D Printed Sculpture students Phia Lareau (Art & Visual Culture Studies), Vinh Nguyenpham (Nursing), Atticus Sweat (Theatre), and Al Unger (Photography), will be working on an art piece in progress

Seattle University

Fine Arts Spotlight: Sculpture Creation

Please stop by the exhibitions of student work, open throughout the day

Information Design Research Posters

Bunker, Leila

Seattle University 
ScholarWorks @ SeattleU 
The Spectator Online Newspapers 
5-28-2025 
2025-05-28 A Pirouetting Poet and Professor, Serena Chopra 
Leila Bunker 
Seattle University 
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/spectator-online 
Recommended Citation 
Bunker, Leila, "2025-05-28 A Pirouetting Poet and Professor, Serena Chopra" (2025). The Spectator Online. 
1459. 
https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/spectator-online/1459 
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Newspapers at ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. It has been 
accepted for inclusion in The Spectator Online by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. 
The Spectator • May 28, 2025 • https://seattlespectator.com/2025/05/28/a-pirouetting-poet-and-
professor-serena-chopra/
A Pirouetting Poet and Professor,
Serena Chopra 
Leila Bunker, News Editor
Serena Chopra, an assistant professor of creative writing at
Seattle University, is a writer, performer and multimedia
artist. A published author and recipient of Official Selection
at several national and international festivals for her film
“Dogana/Chapti,” Chopra has garnered recognition for her
innovative creative projects. Recently, she was one of 35
awardees who received a prestigious award from the
Creative Writing Fellowship by the National Endowment
for the Arts (NEA). 
But before she ever considered being a writer, she aspired
to be a ballerina. Chopra was first enrolled in dance classes
by her mother at the age of two. Throughout her childhood,
she received classical ballet training. 
By the time Chopra reached high school, she was dancing
upward of 30 hours a week and engaging in several forms
of dance—jazz, tap and lyrical. She was always in the studio. 
Her hours of dedication and time paid off. Chopra attended
the University of Colorado (CU) Boulder on a dance
scholarship. In a contemporary program that values a range
of styles, Chopra quickly found that her classical training
clashed with the modernity of the curriculum.
“I was shocked. I had never taken modern [dance] really
before, and it was sort of upsetting to roll around on the
floor. I just wanted to be a ballerina.”
Initially, Chopra resisted the idea that she needed to expand her scope of movement. After clashing with the dance faculty over
expectations, she decided to take a year off from the dance program. This led her to begin taking creative writing classes. Prior, she
had only read a little bit of poetry, sometimes jotting down her own poems in long-forgotten journals, but she had never studied it or
known anything about its history.
The first poetry class she ever took was with a graduate student named Ian. Given that Ian was teaching from a textbook, the
environment was low-stakes, allowing Chopra and her peers to be unafraid of exploring. 
Noelle Lee
Associate professor for the department of English, Dr. Chopra
“It made for a really good balance of understanding that creative writing is about joy and play and laughter, but also has this serious
critical element to it. I was drawn to it because I think, naturally, I am a playful person. It’s what I love about dance and movement.”
Ian’s class not only changed how Chopra understood language, but it also changed how she understood dance. Previously, Chopra’s
experience with dance training was characterized by a desire to perfect every pose and shape. The bounds of how she allowed
herself to move were strict, but studying modern poetry and modern dance alongside one another showed her that creativity
doesn’t always need to be confined to rigid rules. It can be elastic. 
“What I started to understand is it’s not just about perfection and getting to the step and getting to the pose. It’s about moving. It’s
about journey. It’s about play. It’s about being alive.” 
This realization led Chopra to a newfound love for ballet. Along with having Gabriel Masson, a well-renowned performer, as a
teacher who had given her the most essential piece of life advice she’d ever gotten about art—“If you only focus on the steps, you’re
going to miss the momentum”—she was no longer worried about being the best dancer in the room. 
Once she graduated from her undergraduate program in 2006, Chopra applied to CU Boulder’s Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program
to continue dancing with Masson. Immersing herself further in the study of poetry, questions regarding art and language as forms of
liberating craft began circulating in her mind. Chopra developed her ideas under the instruction of Elizabeth Robinson, Julie Carr
and Selah Saterstrom. 
Saterstrom, in particular, was a formative teacher for Chopra. With a focus on divinatory poetics, a framework that views reading
and writing as forms of embodiment, Saterstrom’s methodology inspired Chopra to become more critical of curricula that failed to
include diverse perspectives and voices. She identified hypocrisy within the program: she was on a diversity scholarship, but was
being asked to write like the authors she was reading, who were primarily white and male.
“We are trained in a certain way to read and what to read and how to read it. Anything that falls outside of that is illegible.”
Chopra is deeply interested in writers who have the ability to make logic slippery. Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, Lyn Hejinian,
Virginia Woolf, Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) and George Oppen are but a handful who use language as a medium to undo constructs and
preconceived notions of how we think language is supposed to operate. “Orlando” by Woolf and “Helen in Egypt” by H.D. are two of
her favorite books. However, Chopra was not always a bookworm.  
“I’ll tell you a secret about me, which my mom always laughs at, is that I didn’t like to read much as a kid. I read two books on repeat.”
As a child, Chopra found the plots of most children’s books to be unamusing, except for Madeleine L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time” and
Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women,” which were Chopra’s repeat reads. The first time she read L’Engle’s novel, she was eight, and it
was then that she became conscious of time as a notion. She read it all through high school, along with Alcott’s novel, because she
loved the character Jo March, whom she described as a “feminist icon.” 
Once Chopra completed her MFA, she pursued and obtained a doctorate at the University of Denver. Shortly after graduating in
2018, she moved to Seattle upon accepting a teaching offer from Seattle U. Many of the courses she teaches are adaptations of
graduate-level classes she taught at Naropa University in Boulder while a graduate student. Her course “Queer Experiences and
Poetic Memoir” is one of them. 
A few of Chopra’s research interests include trauma writing and the problematics of neoliberal healing narratives, which involve
critiquing how we process grief within capitalistic structures. More often than not, we compartmentalize our pain and frustration,
pretending that the process of grieving is linear, but such is never the case. Chopra has struggled with this experience in academic
and personal spheres.  
Her course “Writing Grief” was born out of the recognition that people lack spaces to grieve in community, especially after an
incident on campus in February 2023 when a shelter-in-place order was issued in response to an armed carjacking in the Broadway
garage. 
Chopra recalls being in the Garrand building, teaching “The Feminist Epic,” when a text notification from Public Safety was sent to
student phones informing them to stay put or immediately take shelter. Anxieties were particularly high this afternoon as this
circumstance followed shortly after the Michigan State University shooting. 
Growing up not very far away from where the 1999 Columbine High School massacre took place and having lost people to gun
violence, Chopra went into panic as she found herself in a nightmare come to life. 
“I just kind of stood back, and the students took over. They put desks against the door. They closed the blinds. They knew exactly
what to do.”
Once campus was cleared of any threat, Seattle U sent a message informing everyone that they could return to regular activity. 
“All of us were just like, ‘I go to my next class? I guess I’ll go.’ I canceled my next class…This is no commentary of the university, but
the way we societally deal with trauma is to just pick ourselves up and to go on because the system can’t wait…It occurred to me
then that we don’t know how to grieve. We’re not given permission to grieve. We’re not given permission to grieve as a community.”
Only in its third quarter, “Writing Grief” pushes students to practice grieving together. Toward the end of the course, an exhibition is
hosted, encouraging Seattle U community members to recognize grief as a communal occurrence and that we do not have to be
isolated in the pain we experience. She hopes to deepen her research for this course with the NEA fellowship and continue
developing a book that will be a lyric exploration of loss. 
Outside of the classroom, Chopra takes ballet classes with Annie de Vuono at Dance Conservatory Seattle. She also enjoys a wide
variety of outdoor activities, such as hiking, sailing, paddleboarding, but especially writing on the porch in the sun with her cat, Clo.
An avid gardener, mainly of flowers, Chopra is currently tending to dahlias, gladiolas, irises and zinnias, along with many more. 
She is most proud of allowing herself to become both a writer and dancer instead of abandoning one or the other in pursuit of a
singular path. 
“A family member of mine once told me, ‘You need to pick a lane and focus. Are you going to be a dancer or a writer?’…I’m really
proud of my younger self that was gritty enough to know not to take that and for knowing that I didn’t have to pick a lane. That I
could make a life out of poetry and dance and filmmaking, and continue to expand that list of things, too… That’s really hard to do.
No one’s gonna legitimize you as an artist. You have to do it for yourself. And I think I’m pretty proud that my younger self just was
like, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna be an artist,’ and did it.”
