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021 2 l l a f

th lit e Cla e r a r y anremon d art t Co s l m aglege a zin s e

agave

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letter from the editor

Dear reader, This fall the Agave team, now twice in size, met sometimes on Zoom, others at our old spot in the Humanities Studio, and—before daylight savings ended— spent the occasional Friday afternoon scattered around benches in Pomona’s Estella courtyard, likely confusing the few people who were studying there. On two occasions, Nasira Watts emceed open mics at the Pomona Women’s Union with a warmth that demanded and transcended physical presence: with each poem and song proffered, the frost of our time apart began slowly to thaw. Returning to Claremont a year after campus closed has been daunting, joyful, tenuous. For all but new students, the consortium has become a past resurfaced and recast, the familiar and the novel wound up in baffling configurations. A friend described to me her experience walking around the colleges as that of a Sims character who knew which paths to take but not what quite she was doing there. We editors wanted to explore this surreal state; we asked for any creative work, but particularly that which caught the reader off guard, disarmed them of preconceived notions, demanded a reinspection of the matter at hand. What we received: a Neopet dissected, meditations on mannequins and creepy crawlies, phantoms and desires and confessions, inexplicably multiplying eggs, body contortions, AI poetics, and more. This issue contains the work of 30+ 5C students, and it would not be possible without the scrupulous efforts of the Agave team. Special thanks to Sam Bovard and Lea Wong for assembling everything so beautifully in print form, to Vanessa Ho for the fresh logo, and to Paz O’Farrell and Elease Willis for their grace and care. Thank you for taking a chance on these pieces of writing and art—we hope you find something you didn’t expect to. Becky Zhang Editor in Chief

front cover: this pot needs to be cleaned and exorcised Kat Gelsey (PO ‘22)

staff

Editor in Chief Becky Zhang (Pomona‘22)

Editors Aman Ahmed (Pitzer ‘23) Maren Arther (Scripps ‘25) Angela Chen (CMC ‘24) Layla Elqutami (Pomona ‘22) Emilio Esquivel (Pomona ‘25) Emma Grigorian (Pomona ‘24) Sunny Jeong-Eimer (Pomona ‘25) Kate Jones (Pomona ‘24) Sage Keller (Pitzer ‘25) Austin Kim (Pomona ‘23) Megan Leahy (Pitzer ‘22) Eva Molina (Pomona ‘23) Katie Nguyen (Scripps ’24) Hayley Pierpont (Scripps ‘21) Caelan Reeves (CMC ‘24) Leah Rivera (Pomona ‘23) Carolyn Tung (CMC ‘24) Nasira Watts (Pomona ‘23)

Managing Editors Paz O’Farrell (Pitzer ‘22) Elease Willis (Pomona ‘22) Web Editor Ethan Widlansky (Pomona ‘22) Social Media Editor Katie Wang (Pitzer ‘24) Natasha Vhugen (Scripps ‘22) Interviews Editor Aditya Gandhi (Pomona ‘22) Newsletter Editor Regan Rudman (Pitzer ‘24) Layout Designers Sam Bovard (Pomona ‘23) Lea Wong (Pomona ‘25) Graphics Designers Kalena DeLong (Scripps ‘25) Golda Grais (Scripps ‘25) Vanessa Ho (Pomona ‘25)

Table of Contents heliocentrism isa cayetano

Neo-cloud mesh Kat Gelsey

On the Multiplicity of Eggs Lucy Paddock

The Snake Eva Molina

Love for a Blueberry Katie Wang

Berries Jacob Zimmerman

empyrean meditation Theodora Helgason

said the child Sasha Leonard

How to Become Faye Wong Carolyn Tung

Game Piece Grace Li

The Walk Chloe Ortiz

Wandering Sage Wong-Davies

marketplace isa cayetano

Organ Failure sunny jeong-eimer

Focus Vanessa Ho

Prelude to Death Derek Talbott

Guarded Chloe Ortiz

Pinky Madison Yardumian

Food Chain Krystal Yang

Sorry, Sorry, Sorry Sounds Pretty Silly When You Say It Over and Over Again Maddie Rubin-Charlesworth

Fire Season Simone Flournoy

vivi hath risen Margaret Kraus

Anticipation Vanessa Ho

40 4

American Airlines Madison Yardumian

A Poet’s Religion Valerie Braylovskiy

Stop Lucas Cunningham

Against Homesickness - The Color Yellow Adam Osman-Krinsky

i dont like to admit it isa cayetano

In windows Anna Prewitt

No Signal Scarlett Wang

Haunt Me AJ Jolish

THINGS YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO LOOK AT Nicole Smith

Bullet Training Carolyn Tung

Untitled Maddie Rubin-Charlesworth

Dispassionate Jana Gaskin

saltwater cherry cola sunny jeong-eimer

Solange Yellow Bernal Zachary Fineberg

Tiyamike Green Bayshore Zachary Fineberg

Oyler and the Emperor Becky Zhang

Scientific Commentary On Coffee Valerie Braylovskiy

Mannequins Sam Hernandez

late bloomer Rorye Jones

People I Met in Acting Class Jeffrey Pendo

Trinketry Mehrezat Abbas

Will-Valencia Zachary Fineberg

The World is Your Oyster Grace Zhang

In The Beginning There Was a Husky Carolyn Tung

In afternoon, at Walden Willa Frank

Southwest Graveyard Elisabeth Lawton

heliocentrism isa cayetano (PO ‘24)

all coke gave me was a hangover. i prefer dissociatives to stimulants. but i imagine for most, the latter’s effect is akin to that of your gaze on my tangled, spark-burnt circuiting. though likening you to cocaine isn’t right—it doesn’t do you justice. seven or so years ago they started cutting all the heroin with fentanyl; so, if you were addicted to heroin then you were addicted to fentanyl. you can’t find pure heroin anymore. not down here. i learned this from a man in miami’s seltzer water prison—adorned in robes of paper; wrist, like mine, hidden under a white plastic branding. a birthdate and a barcode. his admission date read weeks before my own. “if you ever want to detox,” he told me “you gotta check into the hospital. they gotta monitor you. the withdrawals, they’re so painful, they could kill you.” do you remember i called you every other day that week from the cord phone on the wall? fuck me for breaking my detox—i could’ve spared myself but i didn’t care to and neither did you. from the crisis center waiting room, another man had reminisced on the bag of sunshine (his words, not mine). “heaven on the way in. hell on the way out.” it occurred to me that maybe it’d be a worthy foe for you. the only one. i’ve never done heroin--nobody ever offered me any. but i’ve known you. and nothing so far helps me forget.

do you remember telling me i deserve everything good in the world? how foolish of me to think that included you. how devastating that your disbelief in your own goodness led it right to the grave beside my own (please tell me it wasn’t you who put the shovel in my hand while i slept). what’s that saying? fool me once shame on you, fool me twice…but i’ve never denied the title of fool: i wear my shame with my jester’s hat, dancing a tightrope for your entertainment. i lived for your entertainment. you let me live for you. keep taking your pleasures. you know they’ll be cut with pain. quit pretending you don’t welcome it. there’s no such thing as pure heroin anymore.

Neo-cloud mesh Kat Gelsey (PO ‘22)

On the Multiplicity of Eggs Lucy Paddock (HM ‘22)

The first egg was found in the center of a sunken Bass Pro Shops in southern Florida by a research submarine on an unofficial scavenging expedition. The two divers, who have requested to remain unnamed, placed the egg in a sample-collection tank in the hold, continued their survey, and then piloted the submarine back to base. The remainder of the trip, by their account, was uneventful.

was just right: just like an egg should be. In the words of one of the scientists present, “I’d want to see the fish that laid those eggs. I’ve never studied fish, but I’d have changed career paths if I’d known I’d be seeing things like this. There’s just something about them…” Soon after, most of the team left the room to get dinner. Upon their return, they found four eggs in the tank. This instance of fission was less easy to explain away. With two data points available, they began to put together a pattern: eggs become more eggs. A little later another data point confirmed the theory. While the attention of everyone present had shifted to an intern who dropped a glass beaker on the floor, four eggs became eight.

Upon retrieving the sample-collection tank from the hold, the divers were greeted by an unexpected addition: one egg had transformed into two. Confused at first, they tried to explain away this spontaneous generation. Perhaps in retrieving the first egg, they had accidentally picked up a second—or somehow, a second egg was already in the tank when they added the first. Nevertheless, they brought the eggs into the lab to see if anyone could identify them. Given the expedition’s unofficial nature, they did not yet involve anyone senior. Even so, the eggs won significant attention. By all accounts, something about their opalescence, their shape, their specific size, 8

Given that conventional eggs rarely do this, interest in the eggs quickly rose across the lab to the point where management became aware of them. Receiving an urgent email from the biodiversity division, the head of biological studies rushed down to observe them for himself. Though he recalled

being concerned about the implications of their growth as he walked in through the door, upon actually seeing the eggs he realized there was nothing to worry about; they were each so small and round, and gleamed with such a lovely shine in the tank they sat in. Despite the protocols in place regarding containment of lab samples, he decided to take one home with him as a gift for his wife, and encouraged others to do the same for their respective family and friends. Because, at this point, there were now thirty-two eggs—those in the room recall they divided twice, though no one seems to have witnessed the exact moment—there was plenty to go around.

a dinner party she was hosting. In between chopping vegetables for the salad and marinating the fish, her one egg had become four. As she set the table and guests began to arrive, she had to bring out an extra bowl to accommodate the sixteen eggs now sharing space on the mantelpiece. One of the guests was the owner of a popular local restaurant chain— the dinner party actually served to celebrate the opening of a new bar of the same name that the guests intended to visit after dessert. Having been treated to the tale of the eggs’ discovery by the head of biological studies, and having admired the soft, round contours of the eggs for themselves, the guests declared them “absolutely charming” by a broad consensus. Flattered, the biologist’s wife offered to let some of them go as party favors—an offer that was happily accepted by everyone present. The restaurant owner in particular took multiple, thinking of how lovely they would look in individual glasses,

The senior biologist’s wife seemed confused at her husband’s gift when he first arrived home. “An egg?” she said, before she began to appreciate the way the light filtered through its translucent membrane. She put the egg in a decorative glass fish bowl on the mantelpiece, and began to prepare for

decorating the bar. As dinner wound to a close and the guests began to wander downtown, they brought eggs with them in small glasses and mason jars, bowls and plastic bags, and all sorts of makeshift containers. Some of them went to the opening of the new bar, and arranged eggs in layers of color-coordinated shot glasses until they passed out. Some went to other bars, or home, where they met friends and family and offered them eggs to take home to their friends and family. Some met up with people who already had eggs of their own, and they pooled their collections into fish tanks of ever increasing size. One woman, who had only come into the city to visit a friend, put an egg in a mason jar in her purse and got on a bus going north. The man sitting next to her noticed the jar peeking out, and struck by the way the spheres drifted gently in the water, requested one of the eggs for himself. The woman, filled with a feeling of generosity, gave him an egg, a plastic bag to keep it in, and the story of how the eggs had been discovered and shared within that small coastal town. And together, they watched with great joy as the eggs rolled and tumbled in their respective containers, swaying to the motion of the bus, glowing with a soft and pulsing light, preparing to hatch.

The Snake

Eva Molina (PO ‘23) Written at the LA River The grasses are combing the river. I sit on the concrete slope from which nothing grows, we’ve been dropped off near the underside of trucks eternally slicing space. We have all said our years in school some hinted at secrets some said almost nothing. During lunch, I berated the present tense, mocking its defiance of time. The poet wears all black she said she was punk, the cover of her book is her at seventeen walking another concrete river. I’m a native angelino, an original angel I translate. We are meant to be walking into the poem, but the river slides so quickly sometimes it’s better to stay still. Even the dead leaves can’t rest– they know life and death are not separate joined by that and as if they’re not the tail, the head. A very different poet said we wouldn’t have learned language as early as we did were it not for the snake: sound on its quick thin tongue, the river is writhing. 11

Love for a Blueberry Katie Wang (PZ ‘24)

The girl enters the garden and promptly seeks out her closest parallel. Her cherubic compatriot floats in indigo clusters, among crinkled leaves that converse with lukewarm drafts; together they murmur a welcome, as the girl stoops to their eye-level. She examines with an almost-precocious prudence-the kind that has been freshly learned from schoolteachers and science class, and seems to beg to be shown off—marvels as the moisture that coats her fingertips (and the rest of her small sticky body, for that matter) smudges sheeny blue the fruit’s formerly lusterless skin. She relishes in its rotundities, the velvety blue ruff that marks its surface. Staring at it, she feels as though she too is being looked at. The eye at the center of the berry is soft but unblinking. Eager, or more, impatient, she splits it. Her yellowy-white crescents of fingernails are turned reddish purple, as though having been bruised, but they remain unnoticed. What takes precedent is the girl has seen the newly-revealed cross section of spring green before her, flushed slightly mauve at its round edges. She, having confirmed her theory, begins her primary objective, plucking and placing the fruits in the pencil-yellow plastic colander beside her. By the time of her departure, her hands are heavy with berries and her eyelids with the heat of the sun. In such a short time, she has already forgotten so much, thoughts of syrupy pancakes and naps curled up on the cool leather of a couch supplanting her initial revelations of the morning. She passes on the bright container of berries to the grey-haired man beside her and continues, using tight fists to wipe drowsiness from her eyes.

Berries

Jacob Zimmerman (PO ‘23)

She begins to forget this insignificant summer day. The man, however, will not make such a mistake. He thinks he will never forget this, the vines that sprawled dreamily along the cream-slatted walls of the approaching home, the grassy knoll that retreated in the pair’s now shadowy wake, the gentle weight of the sweaty palm clasped within his own wrinkled one, this little glimpse of a violet-tinted childhood, and the girl, the only one who could turn the blue of this memory sweet, for whom the details of this afternoon and the face beside her, will soon fade, are already fading, as quickly as the juice stains on her palms.

empyrean meditation Theodora Helgason (SC ‘22)

this supernal creation can be found in the belly of my breath. even pluto (you are still planet to me!) is here in abundance. pocket-sized and poplar-sized meanings: the crisp air of novembers, the sweet scent of city summer nights (free from sweat, for the ocean tucked the sun behind her ear hours ago), stepping into a subway car to find that someone else living in your book joined this reading room one-stop prior (you laugh and chat, relishing this serendipitous space) & the voluptuous curves of an ampersand, bridging your fatigued legs home after a long day of travel. all of these kismets are my own but not mine at all, they are the universe speaking through me, to me, about me. and i respond, breathing in my empyrean meditation: yes!

said the child Sasha Leonard (PO ‘25)

in awe, I stare at black silhouettes bathed in a pale, yellow haze, dust of an unfamiliar scent, stinging and brazen, & silence to follow, broad-backed and stiff, may I cry for a scene so resplendent in its chilling embrace, a shaky breath free of my lips, & lonesome mountains blurred into the palm of the ocean and sky, raw with despair, I am shattered return to my breast, I call to my heart, & as if my eyes rest burning in the brilliance of white light that makes divine these eclipsed figures, I remain coddled in this blesséd moment before my death 15

How to Become Faye Wong

Carolyn Tung (CMC ‘24) Italicized lines taken from various lyrics in Faye Wong’s discography. I. Sing & play; nap on the moon; dust on cosmic blush. Bounce around in this kitty cyberspace, this psychic femininity: BABY! I LOVE YOUR EYES BUT DON’T LOOK INTO MINE (MY GOD! HO MY GOD! OH MY GOD!) II. Know that “diva” in Chinese means Empress of Heaven. When in the mortal realm, do whatever you want. (Is it camp to shit in a squat toilet for love?) III. Dye your hair pink and flash some strangers; frolic in the fields, holding the hand of a teddy bear; press chewed gum onto Grim Reaper’s back. It’s 1993. Don’t break my heart, Mr. Deng. IV. Abandon bumpkin mainland and indigenize into cosmopolitan colony. Give in and leave the little self in the motherland. Hello, Shirley.Goodbye, Fei. V. (It is said that 1999 is the end of the world…) VI. Like a river dragon egg, bob through domino waters. Like karmic chicken dung wedged between your fingers, stretch the self—for what is a body but a thing made into still life, soaking the world’s mercurial paint—for what is bone china but the sister of broken glass kilned back together with its infinite faces. VII. (Only a little solider.) VIII. Recall your past lives: planet rings crushed like crayons & gas echoing into primordial nomad. Rainbow bubbles that have lost their compass, swimming away. Three little piggies, paddling a bamboo boat to find their new names. IX. On & on!

Game Piece

Grace Li (PO ‘23)

The Walk

Chloe Ortiz (PZ ‘22)

My sister cries every day on our walk home from school, and every day I don’t comfort her. We lean into the steep streets with no sidewalks and no words between us. Her sobbing sounds bounce off adobe walls topped with crowns of broken glass hiding what I imagine to be regal courtyards with fountains and shady palms. The Mayor lives there a girl in my class had whispered to me as we passed the sleeping guard dog outside the gate. He has a hundred dogs like that behind the wall, she said. I know my sister’s crying will wake the dog. I keep my eyes on the matted white lump of its body up the road, its shape wavering in the heat, as I bend down to pick up rocks from the gutter. Three will be enough. My sister tries to quiet her heaving chest and also picks up a rock even though we both know she will not throw it. She looks to me for direction. At this elevation the sun is always too close, and her tears are drying quickly as she blinks into the blinding sun behind me. There are no trees to scramble up or hide behind, no alleys to run down—just the smooth white walls, the sky staring down at both us and whatever is on the other side of them, and the street whose steepness we must lean into to keep our balance. The three surfaces press in on all sides of us—a one way tunnel.

Just don’t look it in the eyes, I tell her. I hold on tight—not to my little sister’s hand but to the rocks in my pocket until their hot dust turns to mud in my palm as we walk by the dog, its ears twitching. I imagine the Mayor lounging on the other side of the wall, his large white dogs roaming like a herd of carnivorous sheep. wish I had asked her what was happening at school. Someday I’ll come back here. I’ll be taller than the walls and I’ll peer over them to find patchy grass. No palace. No dogs. I’ll wish I could tell her about it. I’ll wish I had asked her what was happening at school. We’re several blocks past the dog when I look back to see it running up the hill to us, head low, silent, fast. Run I say. And she does—I hear the sound of her pink backpack bouncing over her heels up the street behind me as I look straight into the dog’s wild eyes, wait for it to come closer, cock back my practiced arm, aim for its head.

Wandering

Sage Wong-Davies (SC ‘25)

marketplace isa cayetano (PO ‘24)

bone fragments shards of glass sea but stained red, it’s the third rarest color of sea glass in the world last in my body in my body the tide produces shrapnel of itself only in shades of strawberry and chipped polish on bitten down nails there must be a market for these bits though who could be blamed if not

Organ Failure

clumsily careening off the beaten path of controlled, bodily function? It was always unclear.

sunny jeong-eimer (PO ‘25)

July and tinted visors doing their best against triple-digit sun. My eyesight is already starting to blur from too many nights spent furrowing my eyes into unsophisticated YA novels, or perhaps, it’s the first flag of an incoming family inheritance passed down from my great grandmother and her “bad” eye. Bad genes, bad luck. When I squint into the sun, my halmoni cautions that my face will lose its youth and distort into constellations of wrinkles and spots. That night we sit cross-legged and cup mismatched bowls of kimchi stew to our mouths, sweating all the while from the compounded heat of spice, dusk, and steam. As soon as the bowls are scraped clean, she wordlessly whisks me away from kitchen counter to vanity. We sit on two mats before a mirror that is gradually being eaten alive by 4x6 shots of various kids and grandkids smiling into flashes, each flash drawing the shutters on candid moments of youth going bad. Her wavering hands paint and pat a careful succession of anti-aging creams, fragrant moisturizing gels, and serums onto my face first, then hers. It is a tender series of gestures but I sense a slow-burning frenzy in between each application as if she is racing against time: its fuming breath and hooked teeth, its jaws closing in on us, our

Like most kids, I was never a big fan of bugs. I still can’t articulate exactly why insect bodies repulse me. Maybe my fear originates from the time I spent visiting my mother’s family in Korea the summer before I entered second grade. A summer of tongue-tied Konglish stuttered out in ebbing back-and-sometimes-forth conversational flow. A perpetually humming fan cornered by the tail of an exercise bike that hasn’t been pedaled in years. Pedaling nowhere, pedaling in place. Halaboji’s knees are “bad”—we say bad like a man’s knees can wear a dunce’s cap because knees, as with every other body part butchered from the whole, are not immune to accusation. That summer, I was witness to knees standing alone on trial: condemned at the stand for losing their grip on a man’s now-expired pipe dream of youthful immortality. Still, every other evening, he mustered up the strength to grunt and sigh his “gone-bad” body uphill, extending one hand to me, the other to my brother. It was always unclear who was holding who. A four year old with unsteady gait, a nine year old tumbling over excess glee—were our bodies also bad for tripping over stones, scraping blood into concrete, 22

vanity, every other expired frame of By the time I met my limit with the past. mosquitos, we found our bodies and things dropped at Incheon airport Sweat, blood, tears. The calendar security again. This time, it was my over the vanity is now flipped to eyes, not my skin that failed me. I August, that month which marks the watched my mother’s chest collapse beginning of a season’s death when into guttural sobs as she shrunk into light and heat seemingly evaporate just my halmoni’s delicate, hunched frame. under your nose. Summer is forever, No matter how perfect, Konglish until it isn’t. August is also the month would not have sufficed to capture the when Korean mosquitoes abandon scene, anyway. Instead, goosebumps mercy and let their mean streak loose. multiplied across the already uneven, Indeed, it was that August when splotchy terrain of my body. I sat next mosquitos viciously devoured nearly to my brother on a bench, holding every square inch of my limbs from with white knuckles the two rolls head to toe. “Your blood is too sweet.” of kimbap my halaboji had sealed in Who knew drawing blood could be aluminum that morning. Seated there sweet, painless even? Again and again, under an impossibly high glass ceiling, the organ called my skin was glossed we turned into a family of wingless in miniscule quantities of localized ants blinded by too much light, too anesthetic and soundlessly extracted much space. from with surgical precision. A few seconds of innocent blood withdrawal The sites where those anonymous inflamed into two mosquito Korean mosquitoes drew sweet blood lifespans’ worth of agonizing, made for a sea of bittersweet memory. ruthless temptation; giving into the Engraved for the time being, the agony forbidden act of itching for immediate of their lingering presence demanded catharsis only amounted to further my attention through the end of condemnation. By day, I wore my August to my first week of school swollen epidermal cape of fiery welts when I would learn in a Scholastic with shame; by night, in the recluse Kids magazine that only female of disembodied unconsciousness, I mosquitoes, scavenging for blood to dreamt of possessing a body made feed their young, bite humans. of steel—to be stoic and opaque, impenetrable and indifferent to the And I wonder now whether there laundry list of primitive hazards is something more to my repulsion of which inevitably intrude and haunt insects—mosquitoes, in particular. I every mortal’s nasty, brutish and short cannot sympathize but I can at least existence. appreciate their stubborn insistence 23

that their maternal act of survival against the brutality of time be remembered on the human body. Can appreciate how it is that an act of care, painless in the moment, can still agonize one more than anything in its afterlife. I am repulsed because I have come to learn that the aftermath of a being’s presence outliving the being itself is, above all, a human phenomenon. Our bodies testify to the aftermath of each other, even after we have ceased to be physically present in each others’ day-to-day lives. So it goes with blood too sweet, time too bitter.

Focus

Vanessa Ho (PO ‘25)

Prelude to Death Derek Talbott (PO ‘25)

Drunk with melancholy and the smoke of oblivion, I sit against the bed to watch your face emerge in the mirror broken, tainted, sick of you. The shades that still pervade this room have still not dared to break the silence, your silence, cold and stubborn, like the silver knife stabbing through my liver, relinquishing blood that is not blood into a pond of black and putrid bile struck by the light beams of a rocking lamp pretending to map the words of a dreamt and half remembered poem I whispered to your ear while caressing your cheek one of those times when life seemed so curled and cuddled under silk, so moaning and yawning, yet still so painless, so endless like everytime your lips would kiss and cure my gaping wounds, which now my nails attempt to soothe to sound the emptiness within and turn the flesh inside out against the cruelty of your visage that holiday, in that river, floating, naked, flaccid, pallid, mute. 26

Guarded

Chloe Ortiz (PZ ‘22)

Pinky

Madison Yardumian (SC ‘21)

Words drizzle over the palm trees like a smile Pinky orange trickling onto treetops I hear the boom of sunset Dusty purple oozes peach and I wonder if time will bring out more of me or less A green twinge bites my sky so the trees become forsaken fingers I feel them melt into an outline huddled together like shaky hands

I know this is the end That this moment will seep to ash

I watch an airplane pretend to be a star

Food Chain Krystal Yang (PO ‘23)

I didn’t know you had a flames. Thought a moment, before hummingbird in your throat until I typing a sentence on your phone. kissed you in the library the day before Turned it around to show me. graduation. (Now this, this you still It’s fine. make fun of me for it, even after all these years.) It took you a while to figure out I screamed and pushed you what was in me. And don’t take this through a bookshelf, because I felt the the wrong way, but yours was pretty bird hammering against your lips and easy to guess. And no, I’m not saying everything turned into electricity— that because you can’t speak up to say what else could I have done? otherwise (you can, however, sprinkle Back then, I definitely thought salt in my coffee and leave me sarcastic it was a little weird. Like you had post-it notes inside my books). Really, swallowed a radio, or a miniature I loved you more for your honesty chainsaw, because that dangly thing than for that thing inside you. in the back of your throat was vibrating like crazy, and your voice I think you realized while we was this whirring sound that bounced were flying back home after spending from your body to mine, the sound Christmas with your family. You were equivalent of seeing yourself in two looking at animal pictures from the reflecting mirrors. When we held airplane magazine. I was sleeping, each other, I touched your burning but you woke me up with tap on throat with my hands, and it was like shoulder. Pointed to a photograph of massaging a beehive, a warmth that an owl, brought your ring finger to buzzed right through my fingertips. your bottom lip, and touched it to my “Does it hurt?” I asked you once, forehead. while we were watching a movie in “How did you know?” your room. You hoot in your sleep & spit You paused the movie, right pellets into the toilet??? You scribbled before Iron Man’s girlfriend burst into your response on the back of a napkin, 30

ignoring the bag of pretzels that came with it. I guess I couldn’t hide that sort of stuff forever What does it feel like? “Honestly, I can’t really feel it. It sleeps during the day, so it usually doesn’t bother me.” What about at night? “Not sure. I do dream an awful lot about flying. And mice.” Your brain? It’s okay?

the evolutionary history of the living things on Earth— they deserve to know what’s going on with their bodies, the superintendent told us over her horn- rimmed eyebrows—I told my kids the story, the one with the dead animals and the dead humans that died because of the dead animals. I told the class the ending too, because they were kids. “Luckily, the remaining animals and humans adapted. Of course, it I became a teacher after college— didn’t happen all at once. It took and you, a writer. We didn’t make another set of billions and billions much money. We borrowed from of years. You guys know this. First a rich aunt of yours, bless her soul there was the Amphibication—does and her wallet, to move into our anyone want to tell me what happened apartment. We slept with the windows during the Amphibication? Yes, that’s open—for me—and started growing when we started growing webbed things in little planters along the toes and dunking our heads into our windowsill—for you. kitchen sinks. Then there was the I taught high school for a few Anthropodification, followed by the years. I had this one boy who wouldn’t Reptilification and Mammalification. stop twitching in his chair because he And of course, ending up with—say it had a porcupine living in his ankle, with me—Homosapification! Ho-moand there was also that one girl who say-pee-fuh-cay-shun.” was forced to drop out because she You asked me about that last word had praying mantises in her hair and once. I was just about to fall asleep another kid had caterpillars in his when you rolled over and scribbled fingers. How wholly unfair. the question into the palm of my hand You liked to listen to me practice with a pen. my lectures at home. I don’t know Why? why. I sounded awful in front of you, “Why what?” always tripping over my words, my Why us? voice pitching higher and higher as the I scratched my head. Not because owl in my brain shook itself awake. I was thinking—I was always thinking. I always blamed the owl, but maybe Because my owl was awake, hungry, it was the hummingbird, or maybe it and I wanted to thrust my head out was just me, or just you. the window for fresh air. “You know, When the school told us to cover a lot of mythology says that humans 31

are a kind of ‘final destination.’ Like we were meant to bring death and destruction, but we were also meant to bring life and creation.” And the bird? “Huh. Well, there’s a lot of theories about why we stopped receiving animalistic traits, and animals started just living inside us instead. Some people say that, uh, rather than fusing themselves with humans—and suffering from an imbalance in homeostasis—maybe burying themselves inside us was somehow... Advantageous to their survival.” What happened to us? “I mean, our ancestors were able to survive because of that. So I guess we learned how to share our position at the top of the food chain.” You nodded slowly. The moon came out and we covered ourselves with each other. I stared at the writing on my hand. Why? Why us? And the bird? What happened to us?

head rearing out from your epiglottis so that the beating of its wings scratched the back of your throat. Its beak cut my upper lip. We pulled away, eyes watering, as the audience showered us in floral leis. You slipped a note to me as we left the venue in a vintage limo—the one your mom rented to us for free in place of a wedding shower gift. That was so embarrassing. “Don’t worry about it, love. Nobody noticed.” I did. “Did it hurt? Are you okay?” The limo swerved around a corner and the paper fell from your hands. I watched as guest trampled over it, rushing to line the streets and throw confetti at the groom with the hummingbird in his mouth and the bride with the owl in her brain. Do you think you’ll ever name your owl? “Not really, I don’t think so.” Why? “I mean, I guess it would be kind We got married in Haiwaii, on of weird. Like, naming your thumb, a spot west of Waikiki Beach. It or something.” was strangely cloudy that day, and I think I’m going to name my your suit stuck to your back with bird. But I don’t know what its name the humidity of it all, but I still ran should be. How do I know if it’s a boy my fingers against it just to feel the or a girl? smooth silk against my hands. My owl “Just name it after yourself, or hooted appreciatively and the sound something.” bounced around in my brain like the I feel like it doesn’t work like that crash of cymbals in a bad high-school way. marching band. When we kissed, you nearly We never enjoyed sex that much, choked on your hummingbird, its never enjoyed the process. I got tired 32

and sweaty too quickly and you always grew bored after I took off my clothes, so the two of us would go outside instead. Our neighborhood was full of strangers—men with alligators in their heart and women with pandas in their breasts. “We got lucky,” I would tell you as we walked to the grocery store. I could hear your bird. The drumming of its wings—53 beats per second, you told me once. I could hear my owl too, cooing somewhere behind my skull. Sometimes it pumping its wings, causing the occasional gush of air, making my ears to pop. In the dark, I imagined that you turned to look at me, hands hovering midway to your neck. In the dark, I couldn’t see what you had to say at all. We walked into the store. Found the whole-wheat bread and strawberry jam and plant feed for the roses we were trying to grow on our windowsill. Tasty, you told me once, winking. The cashier was a teenager with a cockroach in his left cheek, so his face bulged out on one side. He spoke with a lisp. We stood in line and laughed at the extensive display of exotic condoms lining the checkout aisle—you raised an eyebrow while pointing at one that glowed in the dark—because we never had a use for the regular ones anyways.

your articles—about the election of the lizard president in Serbia—was featured on the news. So I guess we were celebrating that and ignoring the other things. We were four wine glasses in when you pulled a post-it out of your pocket and handed it to me. Do you think I could survive without that thing inside me? I reached over the dinner table to touch your hand. Curled my fingers until I brushed your knuckles with the pads of my fingers. “Are you okay?” Your eyes shifted to stare at a spot behind me. I was reminded of when I caught a kid putting his entire mouth on spout at the water fountain (he had beta fish in his tongue). You ducked your head down. I flipped the post-it over. I’m going to call the doctor tomorrow.

We had our consultation with the hospital. The doctors told us that there was no way to remove it safely. It’ll die, they said, without a proper way to return to homeostasis. I glanced at you. You were scratching your neck, the space between your collarbones that was slowly turning green from the cheap jewelry you wore to work. “What will happen to the bird?” The doctors shrugged. “We don’t The day you made the decision know. This type of amputation’s was the day we ate at that fancy Italian never been done before, but we’ll treat restaurant around the block. One of it like any another type of extraction 33

surgery.” You turned to me. You looked like a woman from one of my fever dreams, your eyes glittering like lightning bugs.

sinking back into its socket. The entire thing was the size of my pinky finger. Its head was turned upwards, so I imagined what it must have been like to sleep with that thing in you, its beak resting against your windpipe. It was a muddy brown color, but the area under its beak was a soft orange-red, and I wanted to tell you that it reminded me of those photos in the airplane magazine you were reading all those years ago. The surgeon stitched your neck back together. You swallowed in your sleep, your Adam’s apple bopping up and down, exploring its newfound freedom. I wondered if it felt like removing your braces in elementary school—like your mouth was too big for your jaw and your tongue could flop around and taste all the newlysmoothened surfaces inside your body. I looked back at the bird. It didn’t move. The surgeon took off your mask. Popped the IV out of your arm. I waited for you to open your eyes, sweat dripping from the back of my neck, fingernails pressed against my forehead temples, twitching uncontrollably. The owl in my mind was aching to fly.

The procedure took less than ten minutes. The surgeon found a working vein, and he let me pull your skin taught as the IV went in. The tube was attached to a bag that hung above you. It swayed lightly under the air conditioning, and I knew what you would ask in this situation. If I squeezed my muscles hard enough, would the bag pop like a balloon? As you went out, I traced my fingernail against the back of your hand, worried the space where the flesh on your wrist gave into the needle. The plastic face mask came next, to pump you full of air in case you stopped breathing. I hoped it made everything hurt less, because when the scalpel left a hole in your neck, the gaping shape reminded me of one of my coworker’s pupils—Mrs. Duong, who had a cat in her right eye—wide in the middle and skinny at the ends. The surgeon went in with a pair of tweezers, and your throat pulled tight—once, twice. The bird slid out beak-first, nice and easy, like it was meant for this. I watched as the surgeon placed the thing in a tray, put a plastic lid over it in case it tried to fly away. It didn’t. It just laid there, on its side. The one eye that was exposed looked like it was 34

Sorry, sorry, sorry sounds pretty silly when you say it over and over again Maddie Rubin-Charlesworth (PO ‘22)

Fire Season

Simone Flournoy (CMC ‘22)

I am burned and built And burned again An orbit of fires The venerated touch of a flame to foliage Undisturbed Adorned with the dust of dreams and placid existence History is not here yet Smoke always overstays its welcome The uninvited ash asleep on the couch Scorched landscape eerily silent in anticipation Awaiting permission To emerge in all its trappings and furs A reminder that this earth was not always so Martian It never belonged to the embers; it was simply on loan from the oaks

vivi hath risen Margaret Kraus (SC ‘22)

Anticipation Vanessa Ho (PO ‘25)

American Airlines Madison Yardumian (SC ‘21)

Buildings exist independent of end I breathe in a skyline of squares while California breaks Jutting against edges fast enough to stop thinking fast enough to let/go/of— I exhale In southern peaks the land ripples little droplets chisel necklaces into sallow chests Red eyes watch states etched in sand become burden of border

Everything (my whole world) flown over You a dry river bed me, highway in desert we carve out space for ourselves etching stories into each other’s palms A maze of all I promised and I’m nowhere (can you feel the gold forgetting?) Tripping over airplanes in unexpected sky We engine in a calm We dark regressive lie

A Poet’s Religion Valerie Braylovskiy (PO ‘25)

Every time I start a poem, I have an anxiety attack. Because what if God decides he is tired of funding my poetic pilgrimage and cuts me off. “You can never write again” I cry, my fingers paralyzed on a raw Californian morning, snow bleeds from my chalky lips. Stained slush seeps onto the blank page. I am not religious, but I am afraid of God. My predetermined fantasy of writing depends on superfluous superstitions: facing south I write, facing north I edit, two gulps of earl grey after one stanza, maybe a latte if I ever finish. One day when I’m old enough to forget my youth– jumping off cliffs and screaming Dreams by Fleetwood Mac to the rhythm of heartbreak and contemplating what could be because I had nothing but stale receipts and frozen liquor, all I will be is a writer who sleeps with two cats (I hate cats.) in place of dead lovers. And I will sit down to write about the burnt-toast smelling ooze that leaks into our water pipes, or the sea levels that swallow our grandchildren, but I’ll die instead. 42

Prelude to Death Author’s Name (XX ‘00)

Stop

Lucas Cunningham (PO ‘23)

Against Homesickness - The Color Yellow Adam Osman-Krinsky (PO ‘25)

I know there was a wildfire today. I didn’t see it because, It wasn’t mine to see. But it told me it was there because, It knew I missed clouds. Clouds That conceal my homelike cement Jungle aren’t mine when they travel 3,000 miles to remind me they exist. They’ve aged on their flight to me. Like old parchment, like the details In a Fuentes novelita, like the oppressive sun. They arrive yellow. Burnt. Yellow like my notebooks, like My backpack (that lets people know I’m me), Like the banana peels in my garbage can, Like my favorite t-shirt of the local pizza place Where the New York water makes the crust taste better. But those things. Those yellow things are mine. These clouds belong to too many people. Too many people that I can’t figure out how to love, People I don’t know. There’s blue on the horizon. I don’t know that color But they say it’ll get better. Why shouldn’t I believe them? 44

i don’t like to admit it isa cayetano (PO ‘24)

but i can only breathe if it burns. abuela can’t sleep with the fan on and every ten minutes she yells over the bookshelves you feel hot? yes you crazy. it’s ninety degrees and humid tonight feels like 104 feels like God’s wrath. sometimes i think that everything bad in my life is punishment for the time my brother and i terrorized a lizard for no reason at ages four and seven, respectively. maybe it doomed me to a liminal existence maybe i’ve never even been a person, just unbearable. maybe my skin is scorched beyond recognition.

In windows Anna Prewitt (PO ‘24)

At night, the incomprehensible pathos of stranger’s headlights Maybe they trace the outline of your face, light the outside of stranger’s lives and maybe they light the boundaries of your own In the gathered, gathering darkness each window filled with warm yellow light is another casual mystery What if you were within and not without, looking up, up at the flash of a silk dress being folded the imagined glint of viscous light on glasses behind a diaphanous curtain and the shadow of a stretching cat beside a Tiffany lamp that could’ve been your grandmother’s, but isn’t How much would you have had to be otherwise in order not to be you? How much of life would have had to be different for that lamp to have really been your grandmother’s, for you to have danced in that silk dress last night for this moment, here not to exist? You practice drawing in the glassy fog of the car window with the tip of your finger In the emptiness, before it mists over, the giddiness of relative motion the soundless enchantment of fragments of highway In windows there is more than glass between the light and the darkness

No Signal

Scarlett Wang (PO ‘22) 47

Haunt Me AJ Jolish (SC ‘25)

I hope you don’t mind that I submitted the poem I wrote about your death to a literary magazine. I hope you don’t mind that I’ll do it again, because I’m doing it again, and I wouldn’t even listen to you now because why would I care what some high school kid thinks. I hope you know that if you’re trying to haunt me you’re doing a bad job. You knew how good I was at ignoring, at ignorance, at the time, but you also should have expected that when I want things I write them, so I pry your memory from your cold dead hands and make it my death, my your death, my one-sided long-distance pen palace. This is the truth: I don’t know how you died, but if I wanted to know, I probably would have found out by now. I assume you’re leaving me clues—claw marks on the windowsill, birds trailing me as I watch past, mugs upturning themselves in locked cabinets. But I’ve got too much on my plate to deal with every ghost I’ve ever written about, so I’m going to assume you like my poems.

THINGS YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO LOOK AT Nicole Smith (SC ‘25)

A solar eclipse. A once-in-a-lifetime event. Your mother’s yearbook photo. The mirror in a haunted house. That envelope. Your own face unreversed, undistorted. Whatever shit they’ll one day find in the Mariana Trench. The neck of a friend. A friend and her soft neck and how it yields to the careful ridge of her collarbones. What could either be lasagna or squirrel on the gravel shoulder of I-70. Your father while he cries. The hungry throat of an empty hallway behind you after you turn out the light. Your camera roll from before August 24th, 12:02am. The GOD BLESS cardboard sign hitching in the cold. Or the person attached to it. The cat in the box. The Doomsday Clock.

Bullet Training Carolyn Tung (CMC ‘24)

There is a scar on my neck from shaving an elevated mole That looks like a hickey. I want to hide it in the mouth Like Cupid as a vulture, Drawing back the arrow on what’s done And letting it decay into earth’s rings. Creative destruction, I’ve learned, Is healthy. But of the self, More. I want to be remade with chitin. A talisman of crab. To feel a happiness when Eaten. I am working on taking up space In this plastic wrap. Maybe if it was by the Scruff I’d let you, but then again, Rawness is not so easily scraped As black fungus of flesh. I know this much. Whaling: the act of being a whale, Or the killing of one. Bottling the ego Is the marriage of the two. Ba’s guide to survival: Meat must be salted to preserve. I’m glad I kept the bigger bunny On the Shanghai bullet train. I’m working on Undoing myself in your eyes. I’ve been unmaking your love to Scrape a new one. Audre Lord says Let’s Unleash Our Erotic Potential. I’m trying to get rid of my Exotic Potential. At the very least Why’d you look at that photo of my mother Stretching her leg in the air like that. Is there holiness in Anger? Not the tsundere kind. Maybe your mother was right. This body is not even blown glass. Just a barefoot neck. Just larval stuff. 50

Untitled

Maddie Rubin-Charlesworth (PO ‘23)

Dispassionate

in question. “Like, you’ve screwed up so thoroughly that it’s not even worth going back and trying to work things out?” The woman studied the countertop. “Cause that-hic-that right there, is exactly how I feel,” he continued, fingers jabbing the air. “You see, there’s this-there’s this girl. And she’s so perfect, and amazing and beautiful and kind and you know what? Somehow, for some crazy reason, I was lucky enough that she decided to be my friend.” His neighbor asked the bartender for her bill. He reached toward her clumsily, protesting “No, no, no wait! You can’t leave yet! The best part of the story is next.” A harsh laugh escaped as he let his head of tangled red curls collapse into his hands. “See, I wasn’t satisfied by friendship. I-I fell in love with her. And even worse...I told her I loved her.” The bartender and the woman looked up sharply at his words, shock and disgust etched on their features. The woman whispered, “I knew he was one of the Marred. He’s not wearing the yellow badge, but the way he’s walking, it looks like one leg was crippled recently.” The bartender’s lip curled as he replied, “It must have happened when he told that girl he loved her. I can’t believe there are people half-witted enough to do that.”

Jana Gaskin (SC ‘25)

Screech! The metal door scraped open as a man stumbled into the almost-empty bar. This converted warehouse wasn’t his usual spot, with its mixed clientele and rough edges, but it wasn’t safe to frequent a more elegant venue right now. Though sober, his steps had the unsteady quality of an infant as he made his way over to a barstool. The woman sitting adjacent looked up from her drink, startled by the tension in his broad shoulders and the way his lips gripped each other in a tight line. When she saw his crippled leg, understanding and disgust flickered over the woman’s face and she scooted away. The newcomer’s eyes shuttered at her contempt. He tonelessly ordered an obscene number of shots and drank them in quick, reckless succession over the next quarter of an hour. As he drained the last glass, he swiveled around to lean against the bar, waiting for the liquor to produce the numbness he craved. His lean frame began to relax, and the sharp pain filling his amber eyes slowly dulled to a steady, throbbing ache. He leaned towards the woman next to him and slurred, “Hey, d-do you ever feel like you’ve messed things up so, so badly?” His head lolled to one side 52

“Oh, I know what you’re whispering about over there, don’t think you can fool me! Yes, I was one of the Pristines, I used to look perfect and now...” He picked up his shot glass and shattered it against the wall. “I don’t! There! Are you fucking satisfied?” He stumbled out of the bar, chased by contempt-edged silence.

Everything had been fine and now it was completely, almost perfectly fucked up. Maybe it’s easier to start with questions. Council knows I don’t have any good answers, she thought. Her pen began to scratch across the paper: Do you ever feel as if you’ve wrecked a relationship so thoroughly that it’s not even worth going back and trying to make things right? That even if you were to pick up the broken shards you would only re-open your wounds, layering new blood over the old? I am trapped in slow motion, watching as it fractures, fragments, falls apart, this one and only anchor of mine. I am caught between the arranged pairings that I know to be right for us and what he swears to be our right: affection, companionship, even love. Her steely blue eyes paused on the last word, captured by its illicit allure. How could he have expected her to give up everything, everything just to be with him? “Sergeant!” A voice rich with authority called out from the other side of the door. The cold of panic kissed her cheeks and hands as she stumbled to her feet. “Yes, sir!” Cursing herself for creating any physical evidence, she began to rip apart her writing and shove it into her mouth. “You are ordered to report to

*** The closet door shut behind her, a comforting weight against her back as she slid down to sit on the floor. She couldn’t breathe, hadn’t been able to all day. Every time she inhaled, it felt like her chest was wrapped in iron bands that kept pulling tighter and tighter. She tugged her thick black hair out of its tight bun and let her head meet her knees, staring at the silver detailing on her uniform. How had everything fallen apart so quickly? Write. I need to write, she decided, clenching her fists in affirmation. She pulled her navy-blue soldier’s notebook and pen out of her pack. The silver Council insignias stamped on both of them winked in the light, mocking her with the absolute obedience they represented. Staring at the smooth white surface of the paper, she tried to find a starting point. Her mind felt battered by the constant replay of the radiant hope in his smile, followed by the hurt and anger in his eyes. 53

Division III, Sector 5A by 1400,” barked the officer as he waited for her to follow his commands. A pause followed, punctuated by the sergeant’s barely audible swallow. Her secrets travelled down her throat, settled in her stomach and lay in wait to make her sick. “Yes, sir!” The sergeant exited the closet, dark blue uniform spotless, face dispassionately blank, and walked briskly towards her assignment.

Once, when he was seven, his mother decided he was too old to sleep with all of his stuffed animals and ordered the maids to remove them. When he found his room desolate and empty without his beloved friends, he burst into tears and curled up on the floor. Heather had picked him up tenderly and held him close. She had whispered in his ear: “I love you.” He had whipped his head around at her words, shocked to have heard them for the first time. Heather smiled sadly at his surprise. She kept smiling even as he watched one of her hands wither with fascinated horror. He begged her to put it back, he didn’t want her to be hurt, couldn’t she fix it? She shook her head gently, and promised him it didn’t bother her. A few days later, his mother introduced him to his new nursemaid, a stony Pristine named Ysabeau. The Marred had seemed like the perfect antithesis to the Pristines, standing in beautiful opposition to the contractual arranged marriages and the stigma against articulating love for one another. But now? He wasn’t so sure that giving up all his status, all his privilege was worth it. At least not without her. He whipped his head side to side in desperate defiance of the mess he’d made. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.” His words began as a whisper and clawed up his throat into a raw,

*** He stared at his leg in the mirror, marveling at the new expanse of ruined flesh. He could still see the change happening, immediately after the words came out of his mouth: I love you. He could still see her eyes, filled with shock and repulsion as she watched him leave behind life as a Pristine forever. It was different from what he had expected, being one of the Marred. It was never supposed to be like this, alone, unloved, rejected. He spat to the side, anger and bitterness filling his mouth. For so long, he had worshipped the Marred. He’d been envious of their freedom of expression, their openness, their families rooted in love and choice. He could still remember his nursemaid Heather, the very first Marred he’d ever met. She had been so kind, so openly affectionate to everyone around her. 54

sobbing scream. “She loves me too, I know she does—she has to!” A maze of fractures erupted as his fist slammed into the mirror. His body crumpled at the impact, sobs travelling through him like earthquakes of the spirit. Shards of glass, gleaming blood, and briny tears met on his hands as he wept for the dreams that could never be.

closer. Close enough to be noticed and to cause concern. Close enough that there were long moments of charged silence. Close enough that he dared to dream. *** She pushed through the glass door of Council headquarters, body aching from training. Rolling her shoulders to ease the soreness, she began the walk home before stopping, captivated by two children playing in their front yard. “Bet you can’t catch me, Sammy!” The little Pristine girl stuck out her tongue. “Of course I can, Amy, I’m older!” “Nana-ne-nana!” She darted away from her fellow Pristine, who chased after her, yelling, “I’m so gonna win!” Laughing over her shoulder, the girl crashed into another child on the sidewalk. They tumbled to the ground in a pile of schoolgirl, limbs indistinguishable for a moment. “Ouch! That hurt pretty bad, huh? I’m sorry I ran into you, I didn’t see you.” Amy said, reaching out a hand to pull the other girl to her feet. “Amy!” Sammy’s voice rose in pitch as he rose up onto his tiptoes, urgency stretching his body tall. “Amy, stop! Don’t touch her, stop talking to her, can’t you see she’s one the youknow-whats?” Amy’s eyes widened, horror

*** They hated each other when they first met, two beautiful little children, even by Pristine standards. He was always impulsive, charming his way out of trouble with an impish grin. She detested his antics, and kept her toes pointed straight forward on the path her parents had built for her. Gradually his cheeky warmth and her steely determination gravitated towards one another, like opposite ends of polarized bodies. They grew from faithful enemies into inseparable friends, with each clash of personalities softening the sharp edges of their extremes. Even as they entered the perilous journeys of adolescence and young adulthood, they remained tightly intertwined. He, the troublemaker and class clown turned teacher. She, the self-disciplined success story turned soldier. Even as their families promised them in marriage to two irrelevant strangers, they continued to grow 55

coating her features. She snatched her hand away and ran as fast as she could back to Sammy. “I didn’t know, I swear!” She promised him. “I couldn’t see her badge, otherwise I never would have... She’s really one of the—” Amy looked around uncertainly, “—the Marred? Why is she on this street? She shouldn’t even be here. Only we live here.” The sergeant stood rooted to the sidewalk, watching the Marred girl pick herself up off the ground and walk away, arms wrapped around herself. So this is what it would be like, she thought. This would be my child’s life if I gave in. This is what he wants me to sacrifice, not just my future but my child’s too. She began walking again, as quickly as she could, trying to escape the decision that was now pressing in even closer. How could he expect me to go along with this insane idea out of nowhere? He just dumped these irrevocable words on me and looked at me with those stupid, expectant, hopeful eyes. He gave up everything for me without even stopping to ask if I wanted him to. Her steps took on an angrier rhythm against the cement. It was impossible, what he wanted, what he was asking of her, she decided. She couldn’t jeopardize everything just to satisfy his inane fantasy of love. Bolstered by her resolve, she turned the corner of her street, glad to

be almost home and done with these ridiculous emotions. Shit. There he was, standing in front of her apartment, looking like he belonged there. There he was, with the leg he had crippled for her. There he was, as endearing and exasperating as ever. There he was, the boy she loved. “Raven!” He called out and stumbled up to her as quickly as he could, eyes travelling frantically over her face. But Raven was expressionless, the tightness around her mouth and eyes the only sign of emotion. “Go home, Aspen,” she said flatly, her gaze sliding past him as if he was just another piece of sidewalk. “Raven, please, you have to hear me out—I can’t let you give up on us, on what we could have together.” He trailed after her like a lost puppy as she strode towards her apartment building, through the lobby and into the elevator, lips tightly sealed. Aspen followed a few seconds behind, his crippled leg forcing a slower pace. He shot his hand between the elevator doors just before they met, and limped his way in. “Can’t you see that I’ve given up everything, just for a chance at a life with you? We both know that we love each other, so what’s the use of trying to be happy in some frigid arranged pairing? Don’t abandon us. Not after years of friendship, of laughter, of memories. 56

Please, I can’t...I can’t even imagine living like this—” he gestured to his withered leg, “—without you.” At Aspen’s last words, Raven finally met his eyes. The steel in her gaze relented a fraction as she took in the dark circles pooling beneath his amber eyes, the disarray of his tawny curls, the way his tense shoulders and clasped hands traced lines of desperation. Raven opened her mouth as if to say something, only to be interrupted by a cheerful ding as the elevator arrived on her floor. She snapped her eyes away and began to walk quickly towards her apartment, Aspen continuing his lopsided pursuit behind her. “Raven, please say something. I’m begging you, don’t give up on us, don’t leave me alone like this.” His voice dwindled to a rasp as he spoke, grief clinging to his words. Tears slowly began to pool at the bottom of Raven’s eyes, but she didn’t break her stride, didn’t look back, didn’t say a word. Tears blurring her vision as she scanned her fingerprints, Raven stepped inside her apartment. She turned to face Aspen as he stood, waiting, just on the other side of the threshold. “Please, Raven. Can’t you see how happy we would be? All it takes is three words—three words and we can be together for the rest of our lives!” Raven shook her head, even as her mouth began to tremble and her breath grew shaky. Tears streamed

down Aspen’s face, draining the hope from his eyes as they went. “Can’t you see it? Can’t you see how beautiful our lives would be?” He breathed, his words barely audible. “Goodbye, Aspen.” Raven whispered, and she shut the door with a soft click.

saltwater cherry cola sunny jeong-eimer (PO ‘25)

1 on hot days like this, we, stock, pile into the backseat of the prius and let the faux leather scald stick slick to the insides of our knees. while dad drives us to 7-11 for big gulps. they’re cheap and cold like him. they’re plastic and sweet like summer. the first sip is cherry cola. like cough syrup but carbonated. it’s a stinging euphoria. i drink and drink until swollen cherries burst and fourth of july blood spatter down my jaw and into my lap. it’s laced with saltwater second. because when mom crossed the pacific, that liminal body of water merged with hers. limb by limb, flooded and possessed, stripped to the bone like cold turkey left to dry in the sun. harvest came and so too the crude marital procession. veil on the crown of her sun torn head, she turned juice concentration. another canned popped cherry coked up and cola’d. the bride cured her flesh by sprinkling salt in the cut. it didn’t work — god leaves no aloe in the gallows for unaccompanied women on foreign desecrated lands

2 coffee is a dehydrator. gasoline sheen liquid traitor. fallen fresh off the bone; the boat i rocked too hard (it rocked into me first), i take involuntary gulps of saltwater every drop ties and unties / tithes and untithes mother’s forked tongues. sand displaced from shore to honda odyssey floorboards. swept into the rug & lunch was mayo globs. melted into baloney and the conquest for wonder bread. mom’s wonder woman, a real wonder breadwinner, head of this house of cards, this bungalow, this kitchen counter counting every new day spent forgetting the shore, picking the sand out of our fingernails, the pet goldfish dead & flushed down the toilet bowl back to sea. see, the breakfast of champions is a capsule of bloodthinner. you’ll know it’s done its job when his eyes run milky white & frosted flake away & his limbs glaze over by the dozen. twinkie twinkie, little (you could be a) STAR

Solange Yellow Bernal Zachary Fineberg (PZ ‘23)

Tiyamike Green Bayshore

Zachary Fineberg (PZ ‘23)

Oyler and the Emperor

Opening Instagram to discover that Felix, who claims to be off social media, is secretly an alt-right Becky Zhang (PO ‘22) influencer, the narrator is giddy with relief, having found an excuse to finally a review of Fake Accounts by Lauren break up with him. She seems less Oyler (Catapult 2021) curious about the motives behind @ THIS_ACCOUNT_IS_BUGGED_ “I know astrology is fake [...] who than she is eager to use the revelation cares? It’s real enough to influence to her immediate benefit, to claim the how real people think.” So says the last hurrah in their more than yearlong unnamed narrator of Fake Accounts, cold war: Lauren Oyler’s debut novel about a very online woman in the era of [H]is smug zen was frustrating, Donald Trump’s inauguration. Like not something that was ever the narrator, book critic Oyler offers going to inspire feelings of safety the following theory on contemporary or long-lasting love. You could reality: life outside the internet is no only pin him down by virtue of more “real” than that within. Hence, not being able to pin him down, life can be just as fake offline. his sociability entirely calculated and his flirtatiousness equalThe story begins with a lopsided, opportunity. adeptly contemporized rendering of Dickens’s “It was the worst of times Dense, disingenuous, or actually [...] the age of foolishness [...] the depthless, Felix even punishes the epoch of incredulity [...] the season of narrator’s small acts of earnest: darkness [...] the winter of despair.” Yet the narrator feels unsubsumed by When I’d nod my head along the late-capitalist, climate-catastrophic with the music in a café or make doom that surrounds her, instead some other minor performance of wavering between a self-assuredness impromptu joy, he’d often look via her own intellect—it cannot be distraught or even ask me, glancing truly the worst of times—and an errant around, as if truly uncomfortable, state of gloom, wherein she questions to stop. the ethics of the Women’s March, her yoga class, and her skincare routine Throughout the rest of the book and indulges in baser desires such as this tension brews, wherein the perusing her boyfriend’s phone while narrator does two things: process he is asleep. her feelings towards Felix, and try 62

to one-up him in their unspoken contest of righteousness. Even while Felix is absent for much of the book, he remains a prominent figure in the narrator’s mind, one that makes little room for friends (they give trite advice), other women (they are impossible to understand), and New York, which she departs for Berlin, where she and Felix first met, following the news of Felix’s death in a bike accident. This event finally brings the narrator some respite from his challenging presence, as well as from the blogging job that she has come to despise. It then intensifies the numbness in which she lives, causing her to stay up later on social media and to begin a new life as a jaded, frivolous expat roaming dating apps as much as she does the city. Before leaving the U.S., she jokes to concerned friends, “It’s kind of like he ghosted me.”

you do not care about sharing with others [...] and the person thinks they are close with you, that they know some essential thing about your character. Fake Accounts operates via this self-restraint, retracting from deeper inquiry into the themes it alluringly introduces: the ego, (non)connection, lies, doomscrolling. Accustomed to sneering—usually from a distance, and never for long—the narrator litters provocative questions throughout the book that seem intended as discourse but lack the risk and openness such conversation requires. Her penchant for lists (“thirty-two, six foot one, straight, thin, white, Asian, atheist”; “Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, 4chan, 8chan, Meetup, GitHub, Medium, Quora, Yahoo! Answers”; “maybe pityingly, maybe exasperatedly, maybe patronizingly, maybe guiltily, maybe shamefully, maybe ruefully, maybe matter-of-factly”) seems indicative of this, as though putting something out there were the same thing as saying something.

Like many writers with a large number of Twitter followers, Oyler has fashioned an appealing voice in wry outbursts, semantic takedowns, and topical wit. Acutely aware of an audience, she speaks so as to uphold In one anecdotal “sex scene” a certain appearance, resulting in her (introduced as such by herself), the book’s own diversion from more narrator shows up uninvited to Felix’s substantive truths: apartment one night. The unease of both an unfamiliar space and Felix’s It was a strategy I often used with lukewarm welcome is gradually my mother: offer some tidbit of dissipated by their mutual sexual what most people would consider attraction, and the narrator gives him intimate information but which a blowjob despite a sudden desire, mid 63

foreplay, not to have sex. The situation is troubling and not unfamiliar, yet the narrator does not do much with its essential tension. She meanders out of the scene by intellectualizing it, musing on whether a woman can fuck rather than merely be fucked and later proposing that “[i]t was my responsibility to go down on him, not necessarily now but sometimes, and if I didn’t do it now, I would have to do it some other time.”

away the smudged mascara from under my eyes, and then I spent the night.

The next part in the chapter, which parodies the in-vogue fragment structure of some contemporary literature (Sarah Manguso, Maggie Nelson, Jenny Offill) proceeds to smother the effect of these last sentences: “Fuck! I messed up the structure. That [section] was too long.” The narrator exchanges a The narrator clarifies this tendency metafictional quasi-openness for earlier: “[i]t didn’t have to make me control (recall how “the person thinks look bad [...] so long as I spun it the they are close with you, that they right way; a laughing confidence know some essential thing about your would make anyone doubt their harsh character”), tightening the reins on judgment of my judgment.” “Ha ha,” truth each time it begins to trot. she writes, on the cusp of a feeling yet unsullied by explanation, clarification, For all her unquenched curiosity or defense—this section (and her first about Felix’s obscure soul, the few aimless days in the wake of Felix’s narrator hardly ponders his conspiracy accident) being an exception, its theorist bent. She waves away this ending slipping from pedantic analysis crucial event—the grabbiest line toward disarmed facts laid bare: in Fake Accounts’s nut graf—and instead provides a series of detached it felt like it would never end, like and simplistic explanations like “He he was withholding his orgasm to might make sense, by some elaborate demonstrate not only that he had logic, but I would not be the one to won this battle but that I had been determine how”; “BUGGED was also immature to conceive of a casual not a word true internet conspiracy evening together as a competition theorists used”; and even a more selfin the first place—that if I conscious, albeit cursory, reflection continued to do that I would lose. upon these defenses: “Maybe there The music was nice and I wanted were lingering feelings of tenderness to know the artist. When it was toward Felix I’d like in retrospect over I swallowed, as I always do, to obscure [...] I’d rather say I was and went to the bathroom to wipe strategizing than admit I was conflicted 64

about what to do.”

mission (that was evident to him), it was only the divine descent that he doubted. This, naturally, did not cause much of a stir; when the surf flings a drop of water onto the land, that does not interfere with the eternal rolling of the sea, on the contrary, it is caused by it.

The narrator’s conclusion that @ THIS_ACCOUNT_IS_BUGGED_ must be insincere feels out of line with her theory on reality; she now posits that some things are really fake (or really real, as opposed to ambiguously or superficially so) and, more crucially, that this renders them immediately dismissible. Following a brief gesture to sympathize with the more archetypical conspiracy theorist who, unlike the well-off, art-schooled Felix, might be “a wayward soul down on his luck, uneducated and left behind,” she halts any further investigation into the matter.

Unlike some of the targets of Oyler’s formidable criticism (Sally Rooney’s protagonists, hysterical criticism, “necessary” art)—hyped, inevitable products of an “unstoppably bad” world—the things which the narrator of Fake Accounts treats with contempt or impatience are hardly touched by her, continuing as they do in their own stupidity, goodness, The narrator muses that, not earnest, or truth. Her laughter is unlike herself, “maybe [Felix] did care, a product of the catastrophe itself but he didn’t want to be associated which, having created it, also cannot with an intensity of feeling to do without it. anyone he knew, so he had to project himself into an earnest online alter ego.” Conversely, however, her own resistance per total scorn and gloom to the hurtling system in which she opens the novel rests upon a habitual clever irony. But this irony is also what draws her further into its vortex, like the doubts of the man in Franz Kafka’s “The Emperor”: A man doubted that the emperor was descended from the gods; he asserted that the emperor was our rightful sovereign, he did not doubt the emperor’s divine 65

Scientific Commentary On Coffee Valerie Braylovskiy (PO ‘25)

I am writing this in a coffee shop, drinking a cup of coffee, struggling to begin my personal critique on our foolish obsession with the very object I sip. I already feel my neurons disobeying their ruler. They live in a drug cartel owned by Adenosine. Let’s pretend she is a powerful goddess who, by chance, also enforces our sleep. Neurons are her soldiers, imaginary friends who keep me alive and what do I repay them with? Coffee. That damn cup of Joe reprimands my friends, disrupts their loyalty to Adenosine. I’m the one who got you fired, I’m sorry! Today, my cup of Bali Blue Moon roast takes a subcortical road trip, stopping in the hypothalamus to pick up dopamine and serotonin. We worship neurotransmitters. 66

Sitting in a coffee shop, I interrupt my writing to experimentally prove this Theory of Worship. Figure 1: Middle-aged Nancy grips a vanilla latte in one hand, self-worth in the other! Infidelity and binge eating is washed away to the neglected ventral region of her brain. Figure 2: Young and bankrupt Doug chugs an espresso like his daily Budweiser, suddenly his cerebral entropy runs instead of walks, sprinting to finish a 10 page Ph.D. paper on “Caffeine Effects in Mice.” Now my central nervous system is at the highest speed and I can’t stop sipping. and writing. and sipping. “Can I get a refill?”

Mannequins

status that enables a certain kind of objectivity. By resembling no one, it has come to resemble everyone, or, more accurately, everyone has come to resemble it. It appropriates human features and abstracts them from lived reality: a body without organs, curves without hips, a jawline without a jaw. More than that, though, the mannequin is endowed with the best version of each of these bodily components. It has not just a jawline, but a strong jawline, not just curves, but the right kind of curves that everyone wants but no one really has.

Sam Hernandez (PO ‘24)

Clothing is not designed for humans. Too imperfect, with unsightly lumps and misplaced curves, such variable humans can never provide the guarantee that fashion requires to execute its vision. As commodities, clothing sells itself not as utility but as signification: one buys clothing not because it functions as a superior shirt but because one believes that the shirt is a sign for something like their aesthetic taste, status, or wealth. Relying, then, on the value of the sign, clothing must be assured in its ability to project a potential lifestyle to the consumer — appearance supersedes the commodity itself. The consumer buys with their eyes, before they ever reach a dressing room. The moment of the initial encounter with the commodity, presented to them on a humanoid form, is the stricken match which ignites the fire of consumption. It is decisive. As a result, clothing exists for the mannequin.

The desirability of these features is no mistake. It too is part of the construction of the appearance of the commodity. It is not enough for just the item itself to evoke desirable signification, the form on which it lays must itself be desirable. The faceless face of the mannequin is inoffensive yet attractive, the limbs and hands each generic yet pleasant, the mannequin embodies desirability in the most general sense. It is enticing, evoking an image of inhabiting a more alluring form, and it directs that libidinal desire towards the consumption of the commodities draped upon it. Because the mannequin purports a certain universality, though, the consumer both sees themselves as already within the mannequin and desires to become it. This dual identification and desire is necessary for the consumer to see the commodity as a possible signifier for

The mannequin is always a deception, an illusory ideal of the everyman that becomes real through its artifice. There is no question that the mannequin is ahuman — a hunk of white plastic makes no pretensions towards flesh and blood, but in its inhumanity it thus attains an object 68

themselves — if the ideal presented is entirely distant from the consumer, it appears unattainable and no longer incentivizes consumption.

The cultivated image in a magazine spread or plastered onto a retail wall carries the same manufactured details, the same duplicity and artifice, as the mannequin, yet exaggerated to the greatest extent. In this case, a human image does lie under the makeup, posing, shot composition, photo editing, and filters, but is ultimately becomes a mannequin with a synthetic skin of a different tone. The image on the Vogue cover may not be a white plastic sculpture, but it is a two-dimensional artistic rendering of a human, a compilation of signs that plays at personhood, equally selling an aesthetic of life rather than the utility of the garments in which it is adorned.

However, the mannequin does more than embrace the desirability politics of society: it reinforces and shapes them. The mannequin is not a passive spectator to the generation of the desirable, it plays an active role in the interpellation of the individual, the consumer. In signifying what the ideal body is, the body that shows how clothing is quite literally meant to be worn, the mannequin imbues the subject with a notion of how they, and everyone, should look. This dialectic of desirability, in which the mannequin shapes desirability and is simultaneously shaped by it, constitutes a cycle of impossible allure in which the consumer remains perpetually almost-satisfied, at all times just one right purchase away from becoming that which is beautiful and wanted. It is upon this knife’s edge which the mannequin sits, straddling existing desirability models while also helping to guide their continuing evolution.

Fashion, as an industry, is therefore concerned with maintaining the appearance of the human rather than engaging with living bodies. The reproduction of culture, at least within the realm of fashion aesthetics, exists for its own sake, entirely divorced from interaction within the real as humans. It does not reference or need real people — it operates as an entirely self-referential sign system, independent and self-reliant. Its only engagement with the world external to it is through consumption, both of the signs represented by fashion commodities and of the consumer, as the consumer ingests these signs as various potential selves and in the same process is ingested by them, their own significatory potentials are

The mannequin represents the triumph of the signified over the real, and this extends even to photos of actual humans found in advertising. Although allegedly composed of flesh, muscle, tissue, and bone, the photoshop airbrush plasticizes even human skin. 69

absorbed and incorporated into the and bestowing signs on each other at new signs generated by the next round all times, and it is through this lens of of fashion. signification that all other exchange, whether interpersonal or within the When individuals who embrace a market, occur. The mannequin serves certain aesthetic find a new commodity as a testament to the supersession of to incorporate into their sub-culture, humans as central within the operation the commodity itself also consumes of capitalism, as well as evidence of the other signs already within that the mass replicability of the human aesthetic and takes them on as its image through technology. Capitalism own. This mutual consumption can no longer needs real humans to be seen in the example in the example commodify and sell the appearance of ripped jeans. Wealthy individuals, of being human — it needs only the seeking an appearance of grit, poverty, mannequin and its derivatives. and ‘realness’ began to buy ripped jeans because they believed it to signify those aesthetics (rather than because ripped jeans have some sort of aesthetic value in themselves or more utility as pants). In that same process, though, ripped jeans came to no longer signify what they used to; now, ripped jeans are disproportionately found in middle/upper class retail outlets and signify those class signs instead. When one sees a person in ripped jeans, the assumption is no longer that the jeans were ripped through use, it is presumed that they were purchased that way. Thus, the exchange of signs is never complete, it is an always-alreadyongoing process without beginning or end. This relation of signs is not unique to fashion, however; it permeates all interaction under late-stage capitalism. Individuals, groups, identities, and commodities are all taking signs from 70

late bloomer Rorye Jones (PO ‘23)

People I Met in Acting Class Jeffrey Pendo (PO ‘24)

In the depths of Hollywood, between a Gold’s gym and an experimental photography studio, I walked into a driveway filled with plastic chairs. Framed plastic panels formed a T-shape against the edge of the property, and propping them up were two recycling bins filled with stones. After being warned by a lady to always bring two copies of a scene or risk being charged 24 cents per copy, I made my way to a chair, pulling it into the shade. We started with introductions. There was Stefani, an executive at a music festival in Florida who was well-acquainted with Dr. Miami. Then there was KJ, a former Canadian Football League dancer who introduced herself as “a triple threat.” There was a bartender, a high schooler, an aspiring Bollywood actress, a woman who bragged about her Meisner and Adler training, and a Tiktok influencer. When I said I was from Pasadena, they laughed. I was told to plant my feet more and to follow my impulses. The teacher reassured me that I had good impulses, but I just needed to follow them. I thought about that as I drove home on Los Feliz to the 5 to the 2 to the 134 to San Rafael.

Trinketry

Mehrezat Abbas (CMC ‘25)

Will-Valencia Zachary Fineberg (PZ ‘23)

The World is Your Oyster Grace Zhang (SC ‘23)

In The Beginning There Was a Husky Carolyn Tung (CMC ‘24)

A boy tickled the tufts of her ears and she followed him home. She was given a human name and ate human food. In return, she listened to the echo of his conch-cave heart when he came home one day with an eye hallowed out from a white boy’s baseball, like the pit from which a radish is ravaged. What is it to be a star hole-punched into an ear, a meteor ollieing across the green bay, the cowlick of a boy. Something braver than this. What, what, what. In time the husky is tied to a tree. The boy’s lights are off, so she blinks at the fireflies tracing the East Harlem graffiti. The moon, a rabbit’s silver ventriloquizing the gradients of history. Of yet another one who must learn to see the world through glasses. This time, it’s Peter Pan & the Lost Chinamen. This time, it’s the Jade Rush-the fastest to become jaded by man wins. At dusk, the husky licks the boy’s cheek and cries with him, his scrubs a whorl of wet. In his gathered memories, there is a tattooed circle of neverminds. There is a secret. That in this bloodline empire, a pirate patch won’t eclipse the hurt. That on good boy planet, filial piety carved its last breath. Under the tree, two sleepwalkers fading their vision of this world. In time they forget the vocabularies of their births, reverse into infancy before mutation poisons the body. Before anyone can see or be seen. What the boy learns those nights: Without a body, even a mirror can learn to ward off ghosts.

In afternoon, at Walden Willa Frank (PO ‘25)

Shimmer fields fertile under the June sun give way to muted woods tall pines lead me through humid air to the water Hurriedly, I undress I step over pebbles, into the cool then eager hands plunge past the pond’s surface and I glide softly out, and out My body slows its sweating, racing self I do not think only move suspended over stones and silt, and gray green deep I am surrounded by historic woods and the holy water of transcendentalism I swim and indoctrinate myself with every stroke and kick and breath

Southwest Graveyard Elisabeth Lawton (SC ‘22)

Colophon This issue of Agave Review is typeset in EB Garamond 10 pt with titles in Avenir 14 pt. Printed on 6 x 9 inch paper.

more pieces online at agavereview.com

back cover: Between Worlds Sage Wong-Davies (SC ‘25)

Agave Review: Fall 2021