Agave Review: Fall 2022

De r a ea R de

r,

This is the first issue of Agave that was completed without members from the founding team of Careless, our original name back in 2018. We stumble forwards with a stinging awareness that, whatever we’re doing, we’re onto something new.

And still, our anchor remains in the traditions of our little community. From our cozy encounters in the Hive Humanities Studio to the delightful open-mics at the Women’s Union, Agave remains a space of insistent creativity, in which Claremont comes together, if only for a moment, to invent as one.

This fall we came back to a lively and awakened campus, cleansed of the virus; but the strange afterimage of its madness still remains underneath the surface of our comforting familiarities. So it is that we have found ourselves flushed: cleansed, embarrassed, delighted, perhaps odd sensations for odd times where we are still finding our footing. Through this issue, we sought to explore the workings of this bizarre renewal. In that spirit, we invited any creative work to the issue, but especially ones that capture that pressing vertigo, the squirming feeling that our world is stirring under our feet and that we can do no more than hold on and grin.

You’ll find in these pages the works of over forty students from across the 5Cs: its poets, sculptors, painters, collagists, and essayists. It was through the careful curation of the collective Agave team that brought these pieces together; no part of this would have been possible without them. We owe special thanks to Cecelia Blum, who cared for designing and assembling the printed version you hold now in your hands, and our deepest gratitude to Golda Grais, who created this issue’s cover. Barbara and Jake took scrupulous care of our digital presence. It was, above all, Leah Rivera, Nasira Watts, and Katie Wang’s editorial leadership which brought this issue to life—if not quite to completion. Now the works await you, dear reader: may your wanderings be rewarding!

Sincerely, Emilio Esquivel (PO ‘25) On behalf of the Agave Team

Rougeoyant

Chloe Marple (PO ‘26)

masthead Editors in Chief Leah Rivera (PO ‘23) Nasira Watts (PO ‘23) Katie Wang (PZ ‘24) Editors Sage Keller (PZ ‘25) Kate Jones (PO ‘25) Eshanya Agrawal Saru Potturi (PO ‘24) Charles Becker (PO ‘23) Willa Frank (PO ‘25) Kevin Xue (PO ‘23) Isabelle Oringer (PO ‘25) Rachel Pittman (PO ‘26) Tara Mukund (PO ‘26) Web Editors Jake Chang (PO ‘26) Barbara Norton (PO ‘25) Abrar Yaser (PO ‘25) Interview Editors Hannah Frasure (PO ‘24) Ruthie Zolla (PZ ‘25) Social Media Editor Jada Shavers (SC ‘26)

Layout Designer Cecelia Blum SC ‘24 Graphics Designers Golda Grais (SC ‘25) Vanessa Ho (PO ‘25) Derek Talbott (PO ‘25) Asya Lyubavina PO ‘26 Treasurer Nhi-Ha Le PO ‘26

contents The Inhabitants; The Players Ally Stallings

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Mannequins of Ourselves Vera Caldwell

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CRUSH fia meng

9

scratches Sam Bovard

10

Hometown Obituary Jeremy Martin

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Post-Haircut, Written in Twin Cinema Katie Wang

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Self- Portrait Sophie David

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Interstate-40 Lexie DeStefano

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Moon: 14 July Willa Frank

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Exposed 1 Sage Keller

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Orbits of Space Cowboys Ruth Vesta-June Gale

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first kiss Sasha Leonard

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Synonymous with Pink Nelia Perry

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Exposed 1 Sage Keller

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Two Poets Should Never Be in Love Saru Potturi

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Musings from a seaside window Clara Meyers

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guide Gideon Ellant Reiter

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home, sick Ally Huang

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Apples and Oranges Adam Osman-Krinsky

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Laugh me to bed Alexandra du Manoir

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Prima Donna Isabelle Oringer

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Saints on the Shore R.M. Corbin

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Autopsia Nelia Perry

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A Courtier’s Lament Jem Stern

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Mate and Melancholia Derek Talbott

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Ojai Sam Bovard

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December Emily Twitchell

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Movement Waverly Wang

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Bittersweet Revolutions Ruth Vesta-June Gale

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Kristen From Wednesdays Ruthie Zolla

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Pacing Emily Twitchell

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An Odyssey of my Own Sienna Swift

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American-Born Chinese Pie Grace Zhang

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One Pound of Peeled Shrimp Julia Abate

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(RESONANCE) Hannah Downing

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Metaphysical Cacti Derek Talbott

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A Quick Pulse of Blood Alex Simard

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The Inhabitants; The Players Ally Stallings (SC ‘23)

The feathered thing wakes from its post in the rafters, and glibs slick down the walls to my feet.

It lurches on beside me in silent laughter as I make my rounds, walk the halls, check the locks, off with the switches, shut the blinds, Me and the lights, we are heaving together in time – like a family.

We pass doors, me, the lights, the feathered thing, who, when too unruly, I soothe too sweetly, murmuring: “You are my great albatross, my great winged sea-beast,” and it calms, climbs the walls, and passes for shadow weaving in and out of doorways, a visitor, as it would if it were.

Out of reverence, we keep facing only forward, the three of us regarding one another in profile, for the comfort of our tenants.

For some, my feathered thing passes uninterrupted, the inhabitant electing to stay shut-door anonymous, and nothing bleeds out but a slant of light from the floor-gap.

We let these be – they aren’t ready yet.

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Mannequins of Ourselves Vera Caldwell (PO ‘26)

I was like, I wanted to say that I swallowed, so I did, she says; the power lines have fallen down on the sidewalk, copper ends narrowing sunlight like a stare into our eyes; the heat ashes in the backs of our throats; and now you’ve said it, I say; I watch her check how her jeans fit in a car window, twisting herself like a music box doll; we need harder stuff now, she says, we need real bruises.

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CRUSH fia meng (SC ‘23) On Saturday morning I sat outside for too long, before the sky grew light enough to lift itself off my shoulders and my unfeeling toes, before the sun showed itself blushing pink. I shivered hard, violent, my body hardly my own, and I cursed the girl who arrived not too long after me who wouldn’t stop coughing and then forty minutes later I cursed the girl who had a tall male friend or boyfriend standing with her just behind me in line because he could block the wind (if it blew) and hold her close (if she was cold) and walk home with her and climb back into bed together and sleep again until it was no longer desert cold, desert cruel. Because oh I was so cold I staggered home and my body was not my mine and I climbed into bed cold and woke up a little cold, a little hot, aching, and had to take two ibuprofen six hours apart and between those two pills I felt more hot so I didn’t go to the party so I didn’t get sprayed with foam and smoke and so I didn’t get pushed and fall and so I didn’t break myself on the earth, on the concrete, on someone else. So I wasn’t in the alley when the river dammed itself up and people mistook cries for riversong and the waves climbed the banks to live and the currents ripped itself to pieces dashing onto the cobble, spilling limbs downstream damming the mouth, damning them all, so they could only cry until lungs exhaled and found they could not inhale.

Until they broke through at last, breaking ribs to save the rest, trading salt from your lips to mine so maybe someone would survive—and and and And I read about that girl with the royal legs, the wisteria thins, violet shins. Her legs are dying but she will live and I am still thinking about her now, now that it’s over.

Her day is over and mine has just begun.

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scratches Sam Bovard (PO ‘23) Once i spent a summer nestled in a red clay valley in the woods, sleeping in a cabin on stilts, closing the hatch when it got dark. sometimes the rain would rattle on the battered tin roof, and the trees would scratch the thin wooden walls my father built and he told me he hammered out the knotholes one by one because the cold builds character and so i shivered under scratchy woolen blankets. every so often you could hear the voices of people down the valley drift up, sometimes it sounded like they were close, like they were standing right under the cabin. it was warm during the day so i kept the windows open and once a hummingbird flew straight through the cabin and once a woodpecker flew in and we could not get it to leave, it was restlessly scratching at the crossbeams. some nights something large would lumber beneath me and scratch at the poles, and i’d pull my heavy trunk across the trapdoor and lie awake, praying i wouldn’t hear the creaking of the hinges and have to see the whatever eyes would be peering in at me.

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Hometown Obituary Jeremy Martin (PO ‘25) Banged the lift seats one final time, flipped ‘em all up except for one As he’d done for 60 years. A simple life of tidbits picked up at the breakfast counter, day old copies of USA Today, conversations with thousands of strangers turned friends on the long ride up the hill.

She made her home at the top of the hill.

Nestled in the purple wisteria vine, blossoming, burning through the shrapnel of an unseasonal spring snowstorm, the last moments before the cold gives way to the green of the earth; a day of transition.

An long, painful transition for the ever-cosmic traveler, found in an after-life vision, a string-tied escape.

Weekly carpools to The Temporary now boarded up. Her last name abandoned, the music silenced, the dance exhausted, the memory enduring,

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The memory enduring.

The memory of people once known and never to be met, to ride up the lift next to, to play all your songs for, to hope never to become, to become all the same.

Run as far as possible - it makes no difference when Here is where matters.

You will always be welcomed home.

In lieu of flowers or gifts, hold on to this feeling for as long as you can.

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Post-Haircut, Written in Twin Cinema* Katie Wang (PZ ’24)

my old self is returning dark roots spilling from sunburnt scalp flattening into the yellowing pink ends, split into two unrecognizable I blink and the black waits for nobody again I wish color would not fade so I didn’t have to learn these variations of the brand new

I am afraid of the past and the future of the now frail portions of somebody changed it’s time I’m beginning to look familiar I think too much to love myself me

soon enough I’ll get that goddamn haircut and maybe it will be the one that I love, this time.

*this poem can be read one column at a time, from top to bottom, or across both columns

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Self- Portrait

Sophie David (PO ‘26)

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Interstate-40 Lexie DeStefano (PZ 24) Everything I’ve known lives in Lubbock. People have a lot to say about living and dying in the same town. I had a lot to say about dying here once, I can’t remember what it was anymore. In my town, we live with our grandparents, aunts, and uncles. My daughter spends her evenings scraping her knees on gravel and I trust anyone will bandage it for her. She is six, a precarious age.

Sometimes I think she will forget my face, voice, and Clydesdale gait. She is my life source, a tether I tug on when the nights emanate a slow hum: the hum is low and consistent, it tells me to swerve off the road. Or a bridge, or into a tree. The trees in my town are Oak and Cedar, consistent through the passage of time. While the trees in Oregon lose their leaves, they are red and orange in Vermont. In Lubbock, they are like the people in this town, unchanging, steady, and open. They catch my daughter when she climbs too high, warn her to run home for dinner, and hide away her treasures. Buttons. Pennies. Bones.

The bones in Texas are plenty, especially here. Her favorites are the leg bones; she tells me they can summon fairies, and she hides them in my truck when I’m not looking. I tell her it is folklore. Secretly I know one day it will work. I know many things secretly: that my wife sleeps with her old college roommate, or that she resents my job, or the long hours she parents alone. Her anger is justified, so I let it happen. She has not left me yet, Pandora’s jar is best left closed. It’s a jar, not a box. Someone told me that when I was drunk off my ass in a Seattle bar.

I cared. It struck a nerve, I knew it was a jar: my grandfather spoke to me about greek mythology when I was little. The passage of time had just eroded that memory.

Ever since I started driving for Exxon, I’ve been angry. The nights are long and the company runs us ragged. This has been my life for the past ten years; I‘ll live and die a trucker just like I’ll live and die in Lubbock. So I stop at dive bars, or diners, at the end of the day and if it gets me drunk I’ll stay. We all do it: stop, smoke, then fight when the days are too long. Though the nights are different, things are settled. Everyone’s bullshit is snuffed out by the dark.

Tonight my fists clench at the bar in Waco: the hum has sucked me dry. It stole 15

my sleep. It does that often, now more than ever. When I was little I slept like death heavy, easy, and consistent. It bothered my mom to no end, she swore I bothered her to the end of the earth. Sleep was my only constant: the dark and the drink mingled around in my empty belly, swirling into each other as lovers do. I take my Ambien and drive to my religion.. My life force drifts over my head. The drifting happens in West Texas, West Texas grabs you and twists hard as it can. I go to church every Sunday, kneel on the pew surrounded by the holy. I pretend to pray to the lord, while I secretly move my lips for stretches of the land of my true lord, I was Seventeen when I first worshipped the ghosts.

I only saw ghosts in the sand. I knew a girl in Marfa once, she smiled a lot. She saw ghosts in Marfa too. After a year, we fucked on my daughter’s birthday. I left her the next morning. A living ghost in the wind. Now, I feel the same way.

A remnant of a different time period.

But I liked my ghost days. They happened after days of no sleep. Only In long stretches of the highway. Ghost days are elongating. I was always tall in winter.

Hands tenderly grab my skull and pull. No one has touched me with such reverence in years. I am tall tonight. I am tall across Arizona and California, while the ghosts are running beside me. I wasn’t able to ever run. I take too many smoke breaks: Parliments. My father smoked Parliaments so I smoke Parliaments. The Dr.Pepper can saturates the butts in a swirl of soda, saliva, and ash. The days have stretched on. I’ve grown far too much. I’m growing through the ceiling, soon I will never be able to leave. I haven’t been to church in months, haven’t seen my family in months. I think I see her, my daughter.

She looks so vibrant against the dust, so small among the heavy days. She is at the rest-stop running to the bathroom. I follow, fumbling, cursing the ghosts.

I reach for the door handle. She is red, soaked in red, My hands are the same color, my clothes too. I stopped growing then.

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Moon: 14 July Willa Frank (PO ‘25) Lights and engine hushed Cars passing steadily Dim yellow lights flickering on the main road I was standing with the heat of the car at my back My face tilted to the great orb of the moon Which seemed an indescribable substance Like quartz or Like some elixir, ancient Liquid and luminescent Craters crisply defined Like birthmarks on milky skin.

Then the countryside seemed not dark enough Nor quiet nor still enough For the halting majesty of the moon In whose gravity I felt myself, feminine and lighted.

She sends out not beams of sunlight But smooth, ceaseless moonlight (waves pursuing, myself pursued by the light) Which swallowed me until I was merely a soul, drenched Separated from my skin Soaking I drove home in my body.

I lay in bed paralyzed; On the dark road the moon had held me steadily Like the gaze from the deep brown eyes of a horse I was unable to break away Even when I turned, thinking of pillows and sleep The moon touched my back Announced its presence I slept in that moonlight and in the morning I was new, again

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Exposed 1

Sage Keller (PZ ‘25)

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Orbits of Space Cowboys Ruth Vesta-June Gale (PO ‘25) Celestial cowboys Care for their colts By feeding them Wandering wary rubble And watering them With cometary cargo Of which is Defined by an effusive whistle: Signifying spatial friction.

Bearing the brutal cosmos, Each cowboy rides Dodging asteroids And holy planetesimals With his partner In a frontier Defined And blessed By heavenly chaos.

How Blessed Are the space cowboys

Whose orbits align Such that they may ride together For an eternity

To scaffold their Cosmic Matrimony?

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Celestial cowboys Are arbiters of orbits: Solving miniscule discontinuities As gravity slingers and astral prairie marchers.

Though the resolution perpetually widens: Measly dichotomies exponentiate to become abrasive differences.

Thereafter Cowboys compromise With their complements Because they realize the gravity of their will Is moot in the context of their problem Qualms with predestination Are outward confessions Of rejections of fate.

How blessed Are the space cowboys

Who are unaware Of their gradual separation Until they are bombarded with An eternity of Isolation?

Perpetuity is improbable And poorly defined Who ought to hope for anything to last…

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first kiss Sasha Leonard (PO ‘25)

after it rains the clouds sigh a breath of relief that travels through bitter greyness— subtlety squeezed of every drop of imagined color, that of which leaves the eyes stinging with an ancient memory of Heaven— and this is the chill of mist lathered in a sweet scent of sickness leaving sticky my window that lets in the wandering draft

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somewhere in the past heavy drops struck

the pavement and I was left with tingling toes and scattered dew, thick with a tune reminiscent of a fading whisper of a previous life, with an afflicted breast weighed down by a sudden stillness,

time was whisked away

to blend into the infinite sky gloomy and feverish, a vanishing bloom, the soft graze of quietude gifting me a fleeting glimpse of eternity’s birth which looked like the floating moon in dark spring mornings

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Synonymous with Pink Nelia Perry (PO ‘24) Pink as a frill, the satin along my baby blanket, pink expectations noosing infant ankles, I could not out-crawl.

Pink: the shade of a wail, the mouth; a cave of blush.

Where there is blood, there is something pink. Blood in the toilet bowl pink upon flush, pink as a breeding ground, rosy in the guts. Girlhood is a pink marathon, fatigue coloring the cheeks, finish line looming, onlookers leering.

Where there is pink, there is shame, a rash, skin scuffed pink by doctors, toy aisles, tampons.

Girlhood: crumpling into pink, a body tagged pink; pink as a parking ticket, pink in the wrong place at the wrong time, pink as a target, pink as a miniskirt, pink as a bullseye.

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Exposed 2

Sage Keller (PZ ‘25)

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Two Poets Should Never Saru Potturi (PO ‘24)

I fell asleep with my sweater still on, under the weight of my comforter.

When I woke up I was flushed with warmth, eyes crusted over Pillow-indentations crisscrossing across my face like scars From a particularly vicious cat. Your cat’s not vicious, though.

She mostly just doesn’t care, minds her own business Slinks off by herself while you and I stand on your balcony Together, me smoking, you silently hating that I smoke.

Not that you smoke. I hate the cigarette stubs you leave On the flat metal railing, too low—for me—just right for you But we’ve both got equal chances of falling, you perched on top Like a bird of prey, legs folded, and me swaying with the wind Teetering in place, tall and thin as a waif. A lone scarecrow In a field that yields no harvest, nothing but weeds for miles I want to be understood, even just a little bit. All this to say I hate that you smoke like I hate the things that you weave.

And I hate that you weave. You know I do. You know I want To put my foot through the loom and feel it splinter my feet.

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Be in Love

I know. I’ve known. I never stop weaving, slicing my fingers on the thread But you’re a liar, you don’t hate the things I weave or even that I weave, you just hate the people—though that’s putting it kindly— Who grab at each tapestry with greedy hands, hand them out Like pamphlets, praise the printing press that shat them out While I pick at my deformed cuticles, refuse payment, wonder When I can leave and go back to wherever you are. I exist In two places—I hear you, I always hear you, I’ve been burning All kinds of things, silk and chiffon and painting after painting In the slim hope that the oil will keep you warm. You got a light?

I always do. Sitting snug at the bottom of my pocket, never for me When it’s cold enough that your round shoulders hike up We go back into the house, my house, with the wooden floors Scratched up from the cat’s unclipped claws, untrimmed nails Nails sticking out of every wall, empty of frames, just in case.

I flushed your cigarettes while you were asleep, watched them Turn round and round and disappear down the drain.

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Musings from a seaside window Clara Meyers (PO ‘25) I open the door to a pond in the living room.

Brown like the feet of the stained antique chair Whose legs it gathers around.

The washing machine had disconnected from the wall.

Water spilled from pipes onto the floor boards And sunk through the gaps to the ceiling below Where it dripped methodically to the floor, Saturated with the dust of the house’s interior.

The cats witnessed the affair, Being the only creatures home at the time, One, perched on the table Among petals dried and fallen from the dying bouquet above, The other on the back of the sofa, Nestled sleepily in a knitted blanket.

My parents, Laying bleach stained towels on the ground, Scold the cats for not shutting off the water, As any person would know to do in such a situation.

The cats, in response, sulk away.

They are not humans, And besides, they do not know where the valve is.

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I retreat upstairs to escape my father’s concerns about The state of the new house and it’s Now soggy floorboards, And lean against a window sill to watch the herons, Just left of the jetty, Standing in low tide’s pooling.

It seems they know how to exist in gathering water Faithful that a switch will flip, Halting the rising waves When the ocean has had enough.

Two couples take their place Evenly spaced along the sea wall below me.

All of us are stationed in voyeuristic worship Of the screaming birds, who, I fear, are in agony, As evidenced by their ceaseless cawing.

The couples stand in momentary, near feline stillness, In unconcerned reverence of The vast, blurry landscape.

I hear my father shuffling in the laundry room The dull sliding of the machine along the floor, The thunk of the valve to off, And The light tapping of paws That stop once they reach my feet.

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guide

Gideon Ellant Reiter (PZ ‘26)

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home, sick Ally Huang (PO ‘25)

the gentle press of a hand to your flushed forehead, i told you to wear more layers, sweet syrupy gold that coats your tongue like bitter honey, crystal sugar cubes melted into warm pear soup, extra layers of blankets, here’s a bucket next to your bed in case you throw up in the middle of the night, tucking a hot water bottle into your arms, how do you feel, flavorless congee with nothing but warmth, can you eat, can you go to school, steam rising off the ginger tea that burns your throat, hana no ko lunlun episodes, soups and capsules of foul-tasting traditional herbs, sweaty hair gets brushed out of your face, drink more water, eat more medicine, the door is closed quietly to let you sleep, waking up when the sky is dark to find a mug of hot water on your bedside table: you are safe, you are cared for, (you are loved.)

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Apples and Oranges Adam Osman-Krinsky (PO ‘25) I remember standing next to you as you lept To the third bar on the monkey bars And swung gracefully across while I stood In awe.

Back when I used to have crushes In secret, back when i used to tell you Secrets with my mouth half-full of Sandwiches with the crusts cut off, back When I used to wish I was the older sibling.

Now, the orange slices have left peeled Memories in my cuticles and sweetness On my lips that kiss your name onto The jungle gym that calloused hands hugged.

And each night, as the waves Came rolling in, a boat sails on The horizons of your eyes, but to me It looks like a honeycrisp Cut into slices with the seetds cut out.

Someone shouting at the wind, you locking Eyes and moving with everything, nothing, me Staring at you in awe Stagnant, awe keeping me still.

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Laugh me to bed Alexandra du Manoir (SC‘26) I once whispered a secret to my friend while we were hiding under my bed in second grade. There was a ball in my throat, hair in my teeth, and spiders on my skin, so I couldn’t get the words out just right. I still tried. I mumbled, biting my tongue, “I think my mom is possessed.” Sweat trickled down my palms, and dancers were engaging in trapeze routines in my organs. My friend laughed, “That’s not real.” My whole body convulsed, and my tears built up behind my pupil dams, “That’s why we have to hide. She’s coming back soon, and at night, she gets possessed.” I was met with a blank stare. My friend had deep, grey eyes that reminded me of scraping my knee when I was younger. “I don’t believe you,” she shrugged. Smoke seethed through my pores and I screamed, “You wouldn’t know! Your mom never sips from the spirit’s bottle! My mom, she laughs but this horrible, muffled sound comes out and I don’t know- she could be crying. And she tumbles around our house like a clumsy giant!”

Somewhere in the void of my home, a door swung open and sent a shiver down our walls. A deep, guttural laugh leaked up through the floor, and I heard a bottle shatter into a thousand little nursery rhymes.

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Prima Donna Isabelle Oringer (SC ‘25) No one could remember exactly when Prima Donna arrived. She came and went as she pleased, reappearing at odd hours of the night. When she was home, Prima Donna clung to us like a parasite, drinking our money and trampling our patience. Sometimes she disappeared into the attic and refused to come down for days at a time.

She stumbled in on a crisp fall Sunday morning, golden leaves tangled in her dirty blond hair. I watched from the living room, as she slithered into the kitchen, shakily pouring herself a cup of cold coffee. She curled up on the beige sofa next to me, resting her head on her bony bruised knees. She looked up slowly with her electric eyes, smiling at me weakly. I extended my hand out to her, and she gently laid her dark claws on my small, icy palm.

She was an absolute mess during family dinners, shouting about her day, laughing inappropriately. She told us stories that didn’t make any sense, her mouth full of roasted carrots as she spoke. The dates never lined up. Characters seemed to morph into one another. She was incredibly truthful, she was never one to lie. But everything she told us was scattered like dandelion seeds in the wind.

“I was with Lucy on Saturday” quickly turned into “What, I haven’t seen Lucy in weeks.”

When Mother and Father told her she was being too loud, she would become eerily quiet. She became so still I could have mistaken her for a statue. It was as though they had unplugged her brain. The electricity shut off in her eyes. Her face would cease its excited twitching and solidify like grey cement. She terrified me when she was unplugged.

“Prima Donna,” I told her once, in the bathroom while she was doing her makeup, “you’re scary when you’re unplugged.”

“I’m sorry,” she responded. She sighed and set down the tube of mascara she had been applying. Her eyelashes looked like crows. “I fear that I am scary in all forms. But don’t worry about me, you’re very good at controlling yourself.”

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Sometimes I could hear her from the attic. I heard fiery, dark music, muffled by the insulation in the walls. I heard her screams, her sobs, her laughter.

Sometimes she sang.

Sometimes random boys and girls would appear at the front door of our house, informing us Prima Donna had invited them over. Mother and Father were not too fond of this at all.

“She has issues,” they’d assure me. “She just wants attention, that’s why she’s so slutty. It’s best to ignore her.”

“It’s so good that we have you,” they’d tell me, squeezing me so hard that their bones scraped against mine. “One good daughter cancels out that witch.”

I often found her and Father arguing in the kitchen when I returned from school. It always began with something small, like him telling her that she needed to get her shit together if she ever wanted a chance at finding a job. She would start sobbing, the crows above her eyes melting, and pouring down her hollow cheeks.

“I’m just talking to you,” Father screamed at her, one time. “I’m just trying to help you. God, you’re so fucking dramatic, Prima Donna.”

“Stop yelling at me! Fuck off!” she screamed back at her, the fire erupting from her lips.

“You’re telling me to fuck off?! I just don’t want to find you on PornHub a few years down the line, sucking some old man’s dick. God, you’re hysterical.

The only thing that matters to you is your fucking appearance. When you’re all old and saggy, what will you have left?”

She picked up a chair and hurled it in his direction, letting out a long, sharp wail as it left her hands.

“So this is how it’s gonna be,” Father shouted at her. Terrified to see how this would end, I raced up the stairs to my room and hid under my bed. ******* continued on next page

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We hadn’t seen her in weeks. Mother and Father argued angrily in the kitchen while I cried quietly under my bed. Streams of tears poured from my eyes.

My body shook uncontrollably. ner.

One morning, while walking to school, I found her lying on a street cor-

“Prima Donna! Prima Donna!” I exclaimed, barreling towards her. No response.

“Prima Donna? Prima? It’s me, are you ok?” She didn’t move. Her ghostly face looked up at me from the sidewalk. Her cyan lips were parted, almost seeming to mouth the word “HELP”. However, the most terrifying part of her face was her blank, gray eyes encircled by lifeless crows. They seemed to look everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

I tapped her shoulder. No response. Fuck. I didn’t know what to do. I picked up her hand. It felt frigid, like taking a microwave dinner out of the freezer. Alarmed, I let go of her hand, and it flopped to the ground.

I tried to scream, but I couldn’t get any sounds to come out. I gagged and vomited. She had been permanently unplugged. Her wires had been snipped, she short-circuited, her screen had gone dark, she was out. Dead. DEAD.

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Saints on the Shore R.M. Corbin (CGU ‘24) a soft orange mold has grown round the center of things. it’s the color of tang, like too-wet sand – gives way at a paper towel stroke and holds fast at a fist. iron wrapped in the good kitchen towels, placed and draped and hanging down my shoulders. my gut an insolent seceding thing. where and when is that high shining sound? the little white stars, growing and shrinking and growing and growing and shrinking again – the constant must of “Do It Again.” the center holds: this is a fact of the matter. but it does get occluded, hidden, filthy with the growing of unrooted things. the center sits on the shore. has it always? who am i to know – to ask – my stomach up thru my throat.

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Autopsia Nelia Perry (PO ‘24) You silently watch your feet pitter pattering against the edge of the sofa hovering slightly above the scratchy carpeted floors and you count the strands of dark thread wound up in the lighter stained yarn. You hear the lady in the big chair say something but your mind is lost in imagining the itch of the floor against your small body.

You wish you could take off your shoes and rub your toes against it but the lady asks you again about your temper in school.

You feel prodded and pricked at, her dissecting eyes on you, her mouth cutting deep, looking for answers you don’t want to share.

You’re never mad at school except when you are pulled from class early to come here and you don’t know what to tell your friends on Wednesday afternoons at two. You bring your eyes up from the carpet-counting to meet the lady in the big chair.

You want to ask her why you’re here but know it’s because you yell at home and you think your mom loves your sister more than you. Sometimes you just want to count carpet yarn and feel it rub on your feet and sometimes you just want to scream because it feels good in your chest.

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The words you say are too old and you’ve grown up too quickly and you never counted sheep and you hate that your mom hurts when you say she loves your sister more and here youare sitting on the couch with the lady in the big chair watching you with her surgical features knowing they are scanning your every move and she pitter patters her pen on the paper and you don’t know what she is writing down. You’re supposed to discuss feelings but are told to feel differently.

You don’t and you don’t know why and you feel indulged to yell from your belly through your chest because you love your mom and you love your scream but you hate feeling small on the couch where your feet can’t touch the rough carpet and rub away your anger.

You sit there silently counting the carpet strands listening to pitter patters. You wait for the lady in the big chair to ask you again about your temper in her high pitch supposedly-comforting-to-a-child voice as she cuts away at you little by little knowing she won’t find what she is looking for. When you return home you’ll feel beckoned to scream but told to drown it out in a pillow pressed to your exhausted, misunderstood face imprinted from all the times you’ve done it before and nobody even realized.

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A Courtier’s Lament Jem Stern (PO ‘23)

Tidal-eyed the hidey squire woke and sighed and through the ferrous ferrocyanide (replacing azurite) crawled from the powder in the permafrost of his throat to the still sleeping second squire who found his pleasure in a dream of ancient works, oxide emanations, vibrations of a silent song that tripped and fell as snow in the sensation of lines, sonatas, strings of light light to touch; almost nothing, these symbols.

Exhausted by his upward outward climb our squire on his stomach lay in the doubled shadow of a grafted tree and dressed as second Lippi’s longing Magdalene wrapped up in ancient-matted tresses inky deep and animal-scented rusty blue he cried, I never felt more like an ocean than when Autumn and your chords compared my syntax to fluorescent lights— What I mean to say is I am longing on account of the ferns and melting ice.

Why do the tomatoes weigh down still October vines when you are wrapped in wool?

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Mate and Melancholia Derek Talbott (PO ‘25) 40

Ojai Sam Bovard (PO ‘23) bougainvillea blossoms glide to our feet, with sweet orange juice on our lips, fresh sunshine and cool air on our skin. when the sun sets, the hills erupt with pink and the lights blink on like friendly ghosts, echoes of lives you will never know. nothing turns out like how you wanted it to but we can find meaning in the character of the loss. sometime writing a poem feels like performing in a play where you feel like you’re going to forget the lines but then you are on stage and they come without thinking; like you’ve not written these lines, you are just their performer. i’m sorry about the bougainvillea and i’m sorry about the joke that cut more than I meant it to and i’m sorry that i only know how to write love poems and they don’t work for every occasion and i’m sorry for starting the crossword without you.

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December Emily Twitchell (SC ‘26) Across the wilting leaves the shadows lay silent.

From whispers of lost sunlight peeking through the drying pine, the shadows tangle.

As twisting spines, they melt into the pale fading needles.

And in front of my snow-winded eyes, wisps of dark hair storm through my icy skin, mimicking the tangled figures of the arching shadows all until, with the presence of a graying cloud and a fading breath of sunlight, the shadows vanish, lost skeletons in the grass.

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little friend Sage Keller (PZ ‘25)

awakened by the morning whispers you are but an infinitesimal insect, unyielding nonetheless being of earth chirrup-willed come home with me! sip from my glass with me do as i do i seek a companion to bear witness to my foolishness

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insectual revolution in alphabetical order Micah Buchman (PZ ‘26) apartments in new york city r never empty six legged corpses burst from veiny walls and we bury them under tissue gravestones. like goodbye engraved into clustered cluster figs – a wasp’s dirty graveyard but WASPs sting don’t trust them but don’t ever DEET them bc they say you run the markets but they have the deets building factories where perspiring immigrants cryogenic cockroaches into giant lollipops mothers feed their children writhing beetles that make homes in the esophagus where do they go?? WHY r there so many legs inching thru my stomach lining WHY don’t bugs understand they r just doomed to b in some human or fig or apartment’s throat killing each other as if they r looking at their buggy neighbors as some segmented mirrors & saying EW. lemme get rid of that part of myself real quick tossed into the nether like every other disgusting thing. better than into the bedroom i guess, the landlord’s sick of complaints pigs only like slop they can roll around in, after all not smth nutritious, not nest of quail or clover just mud pie like grandma bakes slathered in grubhub grub blood. the recipe was stolen from the internet & devoured by stinking silverfish haunting rotted crevices in the attic terrifying beetles in the walls with oooOoo u r nothing u r the scum of this rotten earth until mayb they will finally have a heart attack! praise the silverfish, i suppose valentining with their neighbors not shitting on their food until they waste away i think they r just phonies xenial sneezing like the humans they pretend 2 b symbiotic w at least they pay rent on time you can’t expect that from the WASPs. they smell of jonah and their wings r so small. ama zing they haven’t been devoured yet i think they r some fountain of youth. let’s find out

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Movement

Waverly Wang (HMC ‘23) 45

Bittersweet Revolutions Ruth Vesta-June Gale (PO ‘25) Written for my late grandmother, _____________, who passed away from stage four lung cancer and pneumonia on October 6th, 2019.

She sits on the fourth level- smoking a cigarette.

Two score sober, but the war is not over Vacillating between the realms with each cough.

I shall lay by her side until I hear her last heave Because bitter revolutions don’t build democracies, And sweet ones don’t cultivate wheat.

Bittersweet revolutions cut the wounds that bleed syrup and suckle on the pain.

Eventually, Her liquor and leather bled together intoxicatingly pulling at her nimble lace.

The lace, her intertwined web, plead for its acquittal It was already torn.

Really, Bitter in realization, sweet in retirement, and afflicted in liberation…

No longer vacillating- no cough either.

The sweet sustenance of pain eludes us.

For how can we taste the sweet…

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Kristen From Wednesdays Ruthie Zolla (PZ ‘25) Kristen from Wednesdays messages me on Facebook, “Hi sorry if this is weird but I’d love to send you a candle if you’re up for sharing a shipping address -Kristen from Wednesdays”. I hardly ever check Facebook, so I see this message almost two entire months later. A lot can happen in the span of two months, and yet, I could still really use a candle from Kristen from Wednesdays.

Kristen from Wednesdays is a witch, or so she told me. Her grandmother was a witch, and most of the women in her family are witches too. She says this against the smoky purple haze of her bedroom LED lights, and because of this I always believe what she tells me. One time she told me about a meditation she made up, for when her body feels on the verge of breaking into a million pieces and nothing is a warm blanket, only a cold hard pinched nerve. “I close my eyes”, she said, “and imagine a magical orb of sunshine, beginning at my brain, reheating its chilly sections, then traveling down my body into the tips of my fingers and then through my toes, finally settling into the ground, in between the Earth’s core and its other layers. The orb is always there, for me to harness whenever I need it, and an invisible string connects the orb to me, so that even when I am walking and talking and happy, it is there, in case I sometimes can’t walk or talk or be happy.” She described it a lot more eloquently than my paraphrased version, but I think about the magical orb of sunshine a lot these days.

I don’t know what Kristen from Wednesdays does for a living, but I know she loves baby animals, making crafts, and healing wounds, so I think she would make an amazing veterinarian. I tell her this against my dorm room wall, my Mitski poster and fairy lights and poster of mushroom butts all twinkling at her gently. She smiles, looks down at her cat, the purple LED lights obscuring her eyes. She doesn’t get out much, she tells me, and I nod vigorously and make sure she knows my ears are holding on to every word she says. Sometimes that is all we can do, both on Wednesdays and on other days too. Usually it is too scary, venturing out, she tells me, and I wonder where her magical orb of sunshine is in these moments, the body breaking ones. I bet it is there but 47

not strong enough to defeat the Bad Thing. Which is why she is Kristen from Wednesdays. Because on Wednesdays we talk to each other, from one backdrop to another, about magical orbs and other things that can protect us from the dark. I am not talking about her darkened LED light room. That is the place where Kristen from Wednesdays perhaps feels the lightest, her cat gingerly pawing at her lap, her plants and herbal remedies lining the room, as if to say “we are holding you tightly, and we won’t let you go”. I see all this, Kristen from Wednesdays, I ache to say to her, but instead I nod vigorously and ask her how her candle-making is coming. I imagine her in her bedroom on Thursdays, the LED lights are pale pink this time, and her cat is asleep on her bed as she blends melting wax with jasmine petals, vanilla oil, sage bristles, lavender cloves preserved from the New Hampshire summer, tigerlily, cinnamon, milk and honey, elderflower, rain saved from last night’s storm, and limes from the bowl in her kitchen. The wax, melting, taking on a life of its own as it encounters these trestles from nature. I imagine Kristen from Wednesdays adding a garnish on the hardened wax, a sprinkle of glitter, coffee beans, the flower from a cactus’s birth. The magical orb of sunshine pulsating lightly beneath her feet.

When I look at Kristen from Wednesdays across from me, she is beautiful but doesn’t believe it. She has long brown hair and large hazel eyes, but her face is not open. This makes me want to reach out and touch her shoulder, say “I am so sorry that this is the way things are. That you were once born as a baby untouched by evil, and now you don’t find yourself beautiful enough to be seen in the light.” Instead, when Kristen from Wednesdays says she doesn’t know how anyone could possibly love her when she is so broken, so full of nothing, I say, “I know how. You are a healer, and you care about baby animals and making things for people to enjoy smelling. How could anyone not possibly love you?” She smiles and looks down at her lap, but not in time.

Her eyes, large and hazel, twinkle like her LED lights, but not purple. Yellow, like a magical orb of sunshine. “I always look for your face on Wednesdays,” she tells me quietly, and this feels like we are holding hands through the screen. ******* continued on next page

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I haven’t been seeing Kristen from Wednesdays recently, because time and life and pain have gotten in the way. But every Wednesday at 4:00 I imagine her there, face aglow from her computer screen, Sasha the cat in the corner of her arm, the LED lights on, face a little less closed than before. I imagine her small sigh of disappointment when I am not there, and maybe that doesn’t happen, but it still feels nice to imagine. I should go back, I should go back, I should go back. This is the drumbeat that pangs my heart, this is the cat paw that nudges my shoulder in the darkness. But I am scared, and though Kristen is also scared, she wills herself into existence again every Wednesday at 4:00pm, armed with nothing but her candles and her loss. I write back that I would love a candle. Make it something sweet, I say, make it the smell of deep sleep after a long and necessary cry, the smell of newness, the smell of friends dancing at a party purple and yellow, with a little witch’s dust sprinkled on top. I add my address, click send, hope for the best.

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50

Pacing

Emily Twitchell (SC ‘26)

An Odyssey of my Own — The Ups and Downs within Athenian Architecture Siena Swift (PO ‘23)

The Athenian contraptions I’ve encountered thus far have done little to assuage my long-standing wariness of elevators. When I was five or six I had my arm (lightly) smushed in a closing elevator door after an evening at the farmer’s market. This experience wormed deeply into my young brain until every elevator excursion became a race against the clock to enter or exit without incident. I wasn’t scared of heights or the ride but rather the unpredictability of the machine itself. Sometimes — most times, everything went off without a hitch. But still, each time the button dinged, I felt a surge of panic in my body; every possible scenario rushed into my head.

Are there people who need to get off before I can get on?

Will I be expected to hold the elevator door for someone running from down the hall?

Can I make it out behind all of these ambling tourists with their suitcases and screaming children before the doors start to slide shut and I inevitably freeze in place because I’m unable to risk being smushed once again?

Anxiety is all about control — the fear of losing it or of never having it in the first place. Controlling an American elevator takes guts: to stick out your arm and prevent the elevator door from closing despite the risk of it sensing your presence too late. Being burned once on a stove as a child is more than enough to become wary of fire. But you still have to learn to cook eventually.

In the years since childhood, I have learned to ride these waves of emotions. To accept my lack of control over situations and people alike. But being in a new place can throw one slightly off balance. It was entirely unthinking, on instinct, that I relied on coping mechanisms from years past when I arrived in Athens 51

on a clear, sunny May morning.

My first host in the city had the pleasure of watching me, her face crinkled in confusion, as I dragged my suitcases up the stairs that afternoon. It took me over an hour to even get to her apartment from the airport via public transportation, but I had done it — all by myself. I read my host’s message multiple times, trying to parse the meaning and directions. But I was thrown off by the fact that Greeks don’t count the ground floor as the first floor of a building, meaning I had to haul my luggage to the fourth floor by American standards. The familiar click of motion-sensing lights illuminating the hall never occurred and I was too scattered to fumble around on the walls looking for a switch.

So there I was, in the semi-darkness, cringing at each thunk my new, stuffed to the brim, teal suitcase made on the spiral staircase as I struggled to find the correct apartment. When I finally found Eleni, she asked me in exasperated, choppy English why I didn’t use the elevator. Instead of searching for an answer that might make sense to anyone other than my own anxiety-riddled, chemically unbalanced brain, I simply greeted her with what I later learned was an overly-familiar Γεια σου and followed her inside.

A few days later I found myself inside my first Greek elevator, herded in by a staff member of my study abroad program before I realized what was going on. It was the smallest elevator I’d ever occupied — barely large enough for myself, my backpack, my suitcase, and the tote bag of baked goods that was overflowing on my shoulder. I was ten all over again, frozen in place as the machine creaked and groaned and pulled me up to the second floor (by American standards).

I’ve noticed that both the elevators and crosswalk signals in Athens expect you to move quickly. There is no time to consider, assess or pause. Maybe that’s part of living in a city, a lesson I missed because I grew up in a suburban town on an island in the Pacific Ocean and went to college in a similarly quaint suburban town in California. Regardless, my hesitation caused me to miss the brief window of time that I didn’t realize I had.

The elevator door slid open and before I could grasp why I was faced with another door, I was promptly sent screeching back down to the ground floor.

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The staff member that had sent me up pulled open the wooden door to reveal me in my stupor. For a long moment, all she did was stare at me, as baffled as Eleni had been about my apparent inability to navigate a building.

Despite learning how to use a Greek ανελκυστήρας that day, I fell back on my trusty alternative — taking the stairs. I just didn’t realize that Athenian σκάλες would lead to literal falls sometimes. These smooth marble staircases wrap tightly around themselves in apartment buildings. They contract and constrict themselves to the constraints of a city that built up when it could no longer build out.

I didn’t truly understand the shape of the city until I was standing on top of Mount Lycabettus, turning slowly to take in the 360-degree view of Athens.

The off-white buildings of the Athenian metropolitan area spread to every imaginable corner. The mountains loop and curve around the city limits while the houses press valiantly into the natural barriers, extending all the way to the sea.

When I leave my apartment to walk to class, I instinctively reach for the tarnished golden railing that lines the outer edge of our building’s staircase. But belatedly I remember that the stairs narrow as they extend from the wall. The edges of these stairs protrude outwards in sharp angles; these harsh corners of white stone contrast with the smooth curves of the Ionic columns I saw earlier in the week, lifting the Parthenon into the heavens.

Hesitation might not be favorable when you’re trying to exit an elevator or cross the street in Athens, but the stairs are a different story. Stairs in modern American buildings are all wide turns, thick steps, and blunt corners. In Athens, I’ve had to learn to adapt, to hug the wall, because the steps are of a more familiar width on that side. The tight spiral of Athenian staircases can be hypnotizing at times, especially in conjunction with the rhythmic sound of my sandals on stone as I go up and down and up and down every day. I become so concentrated on the placement of each footstep that my mind narrows to this singular focal point.

In a way, it’s a break from my usual racing thoughts, I must pay attention to the stairs and not much else. I unconsciously memorize the detail and beauty of Athenian architecture that is represented in the stairs beneath my feet. And 53

any hesitation before I descend or ascend has led me to happen upon things that might have otherwise gone on unnoticed.

Each floor of my building on Agiou Spyridonos street has a rectangular window that filters in yellow-hued light through a collage of circles. When I was lingering in the hallway once, I discovered that these panels of colored glass opened like a revolving door. With a slight push, they swing open to reveal the neighboring apartment’s balconies dotted with potted plants and clothes hung up to dry. I might have never taken note of the beauty of this hallway if not for my stalling.

Athens is a juxtaposition of smooth curves and jagged edges; the staircase in my apartment is just one small slice of this contradiction. My mind is like that sometimes. Humans are blessed and cursed with the ability to perceive nuance.

The buildings here in Athens, with their staircases and elevators that demand your attention, remind me that fear doesn’t prevent things from being beautiful.

Sometimes fear even grants you a new perspective.

My sun-washed Pangrati apartment is filled with a constant hum of traffic from outside. Yet the halls are quiet and peaceful, save for the echo of my careful footsteps and the jangling of keys in my denim pocket. But I can only delay my journey downstairs for so long. The lure of a warm pastry from Kekko’s cafe and a friendly conversation with Dora, Dimitri, or Katerina eventually spurs me into action. Making it down to the lobby each day without incident is a small triumph. The stairs here are as unpredictable as the elevators I’ve been wary of for so long. But every risk has its own possibility of reward.

Maybe the endless climbing of staircases in Athens is my own personal odyssey, and by the time I return to America, I’ll have found a new balance in my steps.

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American-Born Chinese Pie Grace Zhang (SC ‘23) 55

One Pound of Peeled Shrimp Julia Abate (SC ‘24) The sky looks like a plum with a scar from a big bite, a spot of fleshy pink surrounded with deep purple.

Zachary and I cuddled on the couch. His house was in the middle of a cemetery and we couldn’t figure out what movie to watch.

We watched a show about an Asian American family. At his kitchen counter, I stick a dull spoon into a giant blueberry muffin cake. I let the blueberries pinch my cheeks. I watch a gravestone frost from a nippy plum wind.

“It’s preferable to anything on television,” I tell him.

He twists a dandelion stem between his fingers and asks, “Why?” I sneak in a breath and shovel more cake into my mouth.

“Suspends my eyes for my greater humanity.”

We leave the house in thin coats. Outside, the gravestones bob like apples to the rhythm of my swaying hips. A man with tennis rackets on his back and a woman with an emerald green halter dress walk by. He holds her pinky. A ghost who we sometimes hang out with is dancing on top of his grave.

“I wonder if the scab on my forehead will end up under somebody’s shoe?”

Zachary asks. I kiss his forehead and suck at the scab like a buttered noodle.

“More dirt to dance on,” I say.

Last night I ate at the dinner table with his mom. Zachary was massaging the moss patches on a few gravestones. Over bowls of bucatini noodles with oil and pansies and coneflowers, she whispered, “I think it’s good that you’ve been spending some time apart.”

I said, “I’m not so sure.”

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(RESONANCE) Hannah Downing (SC ‘23)

I. we become alive in cells interlopers dredged in sly membrane films hidden from hosts and reticent wombs NURSE YOUR STRENGTH FOR THE COMING SIEGE i am a cannonball projecting through your hide a pink twisted cannonball come to steal your life force DO YOU THINK YOU CAN OUTLAST MY TRAJECTORY out out out sliding kicking screaming into yet another cell swaddled in complex membranes and more miles

and miles of blue breathy bereft and blind so FUCK I’M stuck

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II. let me be as I was before this child body this bone cage interrupting my signals these acidic senses interrupting my signals . did you know I can walk in a straight line only when i close my eyes? if i crawled through time and back inside mother and if she crawled inside grandmother and if she crawled inside great grandmother and so on an on nesting eggs back before Babylon I could soak in that which i had lost take the mothers with me, become synthesized-surrendered-sludge neither kin nor doppelgänger just strange discordant mind matter with few common lines of code we can stop hating each other for being like mirrors and just be mirrors in another universe this is possible

(this exercise may be a lie i am too far and aged from singularity to even know if it was real retelling this story so many times i can’t trace

split fibers back to the seed anymore

don’t know color don’t know quality onlyits void and i, don’t know shape yearning I)

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III. otherwise, whirring like a vacuum overheating to crunch stimuli into thought pattern poems oh no! oh! no! poetry is not the language of my thoughts the translation, maybe but i am processing in something else, the shape of or in or from before when i throw

it to the atmosphere it won’t penetrate just feedback

confirmed: containment so there is no escape escape escape

the only way is in

side deeper burrowed and whittling a smaller niche into the wall of this cavity darkness sublime! and almost home? yes, almost

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Metaphysical Cacti 60

Derek Talbott (PO ‘25)

A Quick Pulse of Blood Alex Simard (PO’ 23)

I’ve avoided telling you about the funeral.

We have the time.

Fine. It was raining still. It had been raining all day. One of those thick California rains that floods the streets and gets the storm drains churning and all you can hear is the racket of the pipes and the gutters. I spent the whole day needing a piss.

Sure.

You know when you really need a piss but you go to stand in front of the urinal and you slip your dick out and nothing happens. You’re fidgeting and your dick is just staring at the porcelain. A yellow dribble might come out to appease the porcelain but that’s it.

You couldn’t piss?

Yeah. I’d been stressed.

That morning Jean cut his hand while slicing fruit. The blood fascinated him and before he applied a bandage, he let the blood drip onto the countertop. One by one, little red beads appeared on white tile. They were delicate and he watched them glisten in the soft, grey morning light.

You said you’d been with your mother earlier.

That was the day before.

Right.

I left for the funeral at noon. I had errands to run. I needed a prescription. I needed to buy cigarettes. I had a lot to do and it was raining.

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Sure.

I got to the convenience store, and I was cold and dripping and drenched and I needed a smoke.

To warm up?

Sure. I stood out front under this bright red overhang with white lettering, next to these gaudy neon signs that flashed blue and green into the rain, and I smoked two cigarettes alone. The puddles were something.

Oh. Yeah. They were glimmering and I stared at myself in them while I smoked. I looked all distorted in the ripples. My face was so out of whack and my hair made these strange, looping patterns.

Like a fun house mirror?

Once, when Jean was a boy, he ran away. It was summer then and the grasses were dry and yellow and the streets smelled of live oak and eucalyptus and it was warm.

He arrived to a wide boulevard, made a sharp turn, slipped, and fell into a drainage ditch. His chin hit the ground hard. He looked at the sidewalk and saw a streak of blood where he had skid. The streak was delicate, and he saw how the blood feathered along the asphalt and formed a narrow crescent against the grey. A station wagon pulled up and a neighbor got out and picked him up and placed him in the rear seat. As the neighbor set out for home, Jean stared at himself in the rear-view mirror. He fingered the cut along his leg. His face looked strange now that he was all mangled. A piece of skin dangled from his bloody chin and there were strands of yellow grass in his hair.

Tell me about the funeral.

I spent the whole time staring at this stain on the carpet.

Who was the funeral for again?

The carpet in the Church. It was this deep, brooding red.

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Brooding?

Yeah, a shade lighter than maroon. It was rough and crusty and hadn’t been cleaned in a while. It bummed me out. I kept on rubbing my sneaker against it, trying to get the dirt out or something but the carpet just made a whining, whirring sound like an unlubricated engine.

The stain was an even deeper red. The color blood becomes when it dries and congeals and gets matte. It made a shape I felt I’d seen before. Maybe stains work like clouds do.

You associated with the stain?

Yeah, you know when you go cloud gazing and you’re on some lawn just staring up and these bodies are floating by and the person you’re with points up and asks you what you see.

It’s always a rabbit, isn’t it.

You’re right, but then sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s a face and sometimes it’s nothing at all but it still reminds you of something What did the stain remind you of?

Oh, I didn’t even say. The priest was wearing a toupee. Priests shouldn’t wear toupees. It’s unbecoming, vain. I don’t remember this guy’s name, but it sounded Italian and he must’ve taped the toupee to his head poorly that morning because when he kneeled in front of the tabernacle it slipped off.

Did everyone see?

Yeah, just a speckled, bald head staring back at all of us. A woman ran over like he’d been shot. One of the altar boys keeled over laughing. I felt bad.

For the priest?

No, for the dead person. The mass wasn’t the same after that. We’d lost all respect for the priest. I should’ve left then.

Who died?

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A friend of a friend. I went to high school with her. Marie something. I remember she was short and blonde and had this round, cherubic face. She fell off a balcony in Pasadena.

Closed casket?

No, open. She hit the back of her head on a concrete ledge on the way down.

It was subdural, so there must’ve been a nasty bump but nothing a mortician couldn’t cover up.

That’s just awful. Just awful.

You know, when I saw her, I didn’t recognize her. She’d dyed her hair black and lost a bunch of weight. There were white candles around her and when they flickered, her skin looked alive.

Jean’s parents cremated his brother right away. He’d been dead on the gurney for a few moments when Jean’s mother took Jean’s hand into hers and pulled him aside.

Jean saw his father speak to the nurse but heard nothing. When they stopped, the nurse nodded, took a sheet, draped it over the body, and wheeled the gurney down a long, white hallway. Days later, Jean saw the urn. It was green and made of a splotched granite.

I want to go back to the stain before it’s too late.

On second thought, the stain doesn’t matter.

I think it might.

I thought I saw a shape, but I don’t think I did. What mattered was the red, how the red melted into the redness of the carpet. I should’ve left.

You didn’t?

I wanted to stay for the final procession. You know, when the family walks down the aisle all somber, giving pained, constipated looks to everyone.

Why? That’s the most truthful part of the funeral, isn’t it?

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I don’t know.

In the fall, when the sky was thick with haze and the sun appeared only as a faint, red glimmer, Jean would walk along Ocean Beach. He liked the stillness of the beach on those days, how even the grey surf seemed to slow its pace. When the smoke came through, people stayed home, closed the windows, and hardly spoke. Jean liked the silence, he liked how the air burned his lungs, how the sand looked with no one on it. On one of these days, Jean saw a bronze body in the distance. He approached for some time with little steps and touched the smooth surface of the thing. It was large and as he caressed it, he came to know its nature. He thought its shapelessness sublime, he felt its warmth, its solidness, its mass. He knelt by it and in it and stared at the little, red sun until it set and his lungs hurt so bad and when he arrived home he coughed up phlegm and blood.

We only have a few minutes left, don’t we.

Yes, I have to lock up soon.

I don’t think I was honest today.

You usually aren’t.

We’ve established that I make your job difficult.

Oh. I left the funeral and walked down Fulton for a while ‘til I reached the Polo Field and I sat on the wet, rusted-out bleachers and stared at the green grass. Nobody was there and it was cold and getting awfully dark and the puddles on the track were clear and still. I don’t remember feeling a thing.

The funeral? Did you stay ‘til the end?

I told you. I stared at the rain, sorry, the stain the whole time. When the procession went by, I looked down at the stain. I didn’t want to meet their eyes. I didn’t want to give them any sympathy and the reds were so entrancing. I think funerals humiliate the grieving.

How so? At funerals, I get sad, even angry, but I leave warm, whole.

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You’re funny. To me, grief is silence and absence and stillness. When you’re grieving, you’re always reminding yourself you’re still alive.

Jean remembers. He holds a white candle. He walks behind a priest. The Church is hot and the flame is hot and the candle’s pale neck begins to melt. Jean watches as white beads of hot wax drip onto his skin. The crowd stares at him from the left, and then from the right and then from the rafters. When Jean sets the candle near the altar, he looks at his hands and sees they’re caked in the translucent wax. He spends the rest of the day flaking the wax off and caressing his red, angry skin.

We’re out of time. I’m sorry.

I’ll see you after the holidays.

Sure, take care of yourself. Don’t get lonely.

I won’t.

You know Jean, I think the rain’s stopped.

Oh, has it?

Jean walks out onto 16th and heads to Market to catch a bus. The sun has set. A faint light lingers in the clouds. The city is wet and glimmering all over and warm headlights refract and reflect through the damp. Neon signs flash lottery numbers and send their reds and pinks and electric blues into the crackled edges of the dusk. Jean sits at the bus stop under a searing halogen and waits for a while.

In those days, Jean would drive up the coast to Limantour Beach. He’d pack Napa wine and Anjou pears and ripe, golden apricots and sit in the sedge grasses overlooking the ocean. The hills were dense with Manzanita and he recalled a time he took a boy with him and they hiked into the denseness and made love among deep red skins.

It was winter then, or maybe fall and above the ocean the herons arced in the grey of it all.

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FLUSH issue 8 | fall 2023

Cover art by Golda Grais