Agave Review: Spring 2021

UTOPIAS // DYSTOPIAS

agave review

a Claremont Colleges literary magazine issue 5 • spring 2021

Front Cover: Brother’s Keeper I by Fred Zucule Back Cover: Sun Sets, Ocean Rises by Jacinda Lee A hot take on what it means to “land amongst the stars.” Working with acrylic paint gives me the luxury of transforming three little bottles of paint in the primary colors into an endless arrangement of hues and shapes, with which I hope to capture realities I wish existed.

issue 5 • spring 2021

Due to an unprecedented volume of submissions, not all pieces made it into the print version of this issue. Please visit agave-review.com to view the complete collection of spring 2021 writing and art.

letter from the editor Dear Reader, Agave Review saw a number of firsts this past spring. We had a record number of submissions from 5C students, published our first works of criticism, hosted our first themed contest, and held a staff-led creative writing workshop (over Zoom). We also ramped up our social media to spread word about Agave and find new readers, contributors, and fellow creatives. We’re grateful to anyone who has browsed our website, popped into an Instagram Live reading, free-written with Layla and Ethan, or contemplated the idea of utopia last semester. To all who submitted, we found great pleasure poring over the words and details you shared with us.

This issue, in part a UTOPIAS/DYSTOPIAS compilation, holds the thoughtful work of 37 students across the five Claremont Colleges.

We chose our first theme bearing in mind the desire to imagine and to collect amid a pandemic, frustrated by societal fallacies, and bewildered by the antonyms “utopia” and “dystopia,” which so often come to reflect the same thing.

Grace Zhang depicts a cramped suburban house confronted with its own malignancy. Andie Sheridan reimagines the body as a vital, painstaking joy. Fred Zucule finds care within precarity. Claire Sinow explores grief, love, agency, and birth. Marcus Jackson draws life from the crevices of concrete. Saru Potturi seeks a remedy. Sam Bovard contemplates what it means to remain. Alissa Martinez grapples with the affective forces of departure.

This issue wouldn’t exist without the tireless and careful work of Agave’s editors, staff, and inimitable layout designer, Charis Kim. We hope you will spend some time with these poems, stories, murals, photos, and more, and find them as fertile as we did.

Becky Zhang, Pomona ’22 Editor in Chief

about Agave Review is a Claremont Colleges literary magazine. Our objective is to foster the development of writers and artists, to promote a wider appreciation of literature and art, and to create a literary forum written and managed by undergraduate students across the 5Cs. We accept poetry, prose, and visual art on a rolling basis and compile them into a print publication once every semester.

The first-round submission deadline for our sixth print edition is September 1, 2021. Please direct submissions and inquiries to agavereview@gmail.com, and visit https://www.agave-review. com/submit to view our submission guidelines.

staff Editor-in-Chief Becky Zhang, Pomona ’22 Managing Editor Paz O’Farrell, Pitzer ’22 Web Designer Ethan Widlansky, Pomona ’22 Layout Designer Charis Kim, Pomona ’24 Financial Officer Sridha Chadalavada, Pomona ’24 Aman Ahmed, Pitzer ’23 Social Media Coordinator Megan Leahy, Pitzer ’22 Outreach Coordinator Austin Kim, Pomona ’23 Interview Coordinator Aditya Gandhi, Pomona ’22 Editors Jeethu Anantharaman, Pomona ’24 Suh Won Chang, Claremont McKenna ’21 Layla Elqutami, Pomona ’22 Aleah Hayes, Pomona ’23 Eva Molina, Pomona ’23 Katie Nguyen, Scripps ’24 Regan Rudman, Pitzer ’24 Simi Sachdeva, Scripps ’23 Carolyn Tung, Claremont McKenna ’24 Natasha Vhugen, Scripps ’22 Katie Wang, Pitzer ’24 Elease Willis, Pomona ’22

dawn MEI GE

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contents dawn

MEI GE

7

From my windowsill on Jupiter

10

Lamplights

11

Flowers 1

12

Flowers 2

13

primordial

14

Scopophilia

15

Bloomer@86.56%

16

Limbo

17

On Correcting Pronouns Over Zoom

22

On the Verge of Graduation

24

Going Out

26

Cosmos Chemos

27

One Model of Independence

28

After the Apocalypse, I Live in a Cabin in the Woods

30

Reef Reapers

32

If They Had All Practiced

33

MOKA POT, REVERSE

36

MOKA POT

37

Siena (II)

38

Bodies Like Mine in the Louvre

39

The “Witch”

40

Parfum

41

MIMI THOMPSON CYNTHIA LI

LENA PAWLEK LENA PAWLEK LAYLA ELQUTAMI JULIETTE JEFFERS FRED ZUCULE

NASIRA WATTS

KENDALL PACKMAN ALISSA MARTINEZ LINDSAY CHU

THEODORA HELGASON AJ DYKENS-HODAPP SOPHIA CHANIN LEILA WILBERG JEFFREY PENDO

LAYLA ELQUTAMI LAYLA ELQUTAMI SOPHIE FRON

ANDIE SHERIDAN LINDSAY CHU MIMI THOMPSON

Retrans My Body

43

Death and a Magazine

45

a remedy

46

Finale

48

Stillness, part 2

49

Cybersex

50

Visibility

51

Something Missing

52

beleaguered by sickness

55

Home Sweet Home

56

Bejewelled

58

Whirlwind

61

Brother’s Keeper I

62

Brother’s Keeper V

63

Untitled (Portrait of Ross in LA) felix gonzales-torres, 1991

64

Isolation

66

Ammunition Sky

67

Yi Yi: Retrospective Truths

74

The Pond

79

Starburst Mephistopheles

84

Ways to get out of here

86

From a distance

93

Blooming Through Concrete

95

ANDIE SHERIDAN

MADDIE RUBIN-CHARLESWORTH SARU POTTURI MARCUS JACKSON LILY ROSS

SAM BOVARD SEOJIN AHN

ELLA ROSENBLATT IPIFUS IPIFIO

GRACE ZHANG

LINDA HUANG ALBANY BLACKBURN FRED ZUCULE FRED ZUCULE SAM BOVARD GAGE WYRE

EVA PROVONOST ALAN KE

OWEN HOFFSTEN ARNESON BLAIR CLAIRE SINOW

NATHANIEL BRASWELL MARCUS JACKSON

From my windowsill on Jupiter MIMI THOMPSON

It rains diamonds here and still, the real estate market is barren.

A few years ago, a red tornado raged through the town, wrecking shops and schools from Europa to Callisto.

Jets whirred off to find a home, while I, from my windowsill on Jupiter, count the diamonds that pitter patter onto the porch.

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Lamplights CYNTHIA LI

Insects wear exoskeletons: the infrastructure of their bodies in the air for us all to see. Imagine what it’s like to be so fragile— to be crushed so easily.

We always bruise easier than we expect.

We are covered with softness from the inside out.

This is a haphazard approach to an ending. I crush a moth between my palms and all that remains is a dusting of silver.

Yesterday I opened my wings, flew away from your desperate hands and into the sun.

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Flowers 1 LENA PAWLEK

12 • spring 2021

Flowers 2 LENA PAWLEK

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PRIMORDIAL LAYLA ELQUTAMI

In desperation, a schoolboy plucks the wallet from a vendor’s pocket— men lower their heads in prayer beyond the wall— jacaranda branches rain purple— where floats the mind of the librarian, endlessly sorting?— a seed is digested through the intestines of a starling— paint chips into the copper cup of the beggar, empty— racehorses at full attention the moment the gun is shot— past lovers drive their cars through desert decay— blood spreading in sheets into street gutters— films of fat solids in the heated goatsmilk are cracked with a spoon— when the spell is broken, the alchemist blinks his eyes— a lie discovered takes a grandmother by surprise— two girls weave dandelion stems atop the tower— a cave becomes home for a wounded hunter— woman guesses at meaning through garden pebble distribution— the deer shatters through a lightflashed windshield— an orange tree hangs down over the southern highway— no one will be salvaged— you ask where we are headed— pocketing the fruit peel—

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Scopophilia JULIETTE JEFFERS

Tell me your dreams. I’m hardly ever bored by Nineteen fifties perversions. Rocky river beds and Hudson eerily caress my hair.

Velvety insects clamor for my attention. What do you want To hear from the screaming rare blonde all alone?

Shower curtain burning wet, high-neck sweater, pearlescent torture.

Sweetly twist your analysis. These vengeful facets, youth that fascinates you while driving.

Your girl friday conniving in a nightgown, anxious halo.

The best advice you ever gave me: live like Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly.

While they fight in proxy wars, just love what is consistent and strange.

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Bloomer@86.56% FRED ZUCULE

Limbo NASIRA WATTS

She pressed the damp towel against grandmother’s face, the wetness of the fabric blending with the clamminess of the old woman’s withered visage. If her eyes were open the granddaughter could not tell, for they were housed beneath layers upon layers of wrinkles covered in a thin film of crust. They always looked like that, the eyes of those on the brink of death. But she was breathing, and as long as she did so, the granddaughter would remain.

She was humming quietly to her when the Doctor came in.

This did not cause her humming to stop nor her focus to shift from the women before her on the white sheet. Assuming this was a sign the young girl had not heard her presence, the Doctor closed the door to the small hospital room grandmother had been staying in for the past four months. The sound of the door slamming reverberated across the expanse of the too small room and still, the granddaughter remained unmoved. The Doctor noted that despite the girl’s small stature, she looked larger than life in the miniscule room.

One final attempt to grab the attention of the young girl was made, by way of clearing throat. The Doctor elicited a guttural sound from within her neck, lips remaining pursed and stiff as a piece of chewy candy left uneaten for far too long. The Doctor, like the candy, seemed to have lost her chew, her sweetness, that much was clear as, when the granddaughter still remained unresponsive, she resorted to an abrupt and aggressive “Hello.”

Unfazed by the womaen’s typical unfamiliarity with being ignored, the granddaughter responded with a similar greeting, however hers was much calmer in comparison.

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Most family members of patients would jump to the Doctor’s feet, begging for good news to be released. After all, there were only so many reasons someone of such acclaim would enter such a space.

But not this one. She knew there was no good news to come, there never was. The only news delivered by the Doctor could revolve around grandmother’s inevitable death, or— “How much more time do you need, dear?”

“Enough,” the granddaughter joked without laughing, alternating to grandmother’s right cheek, showering it with as much love and gentleness as she could.

“You only have so much time left, dear—” “I am very aware; thank you doctor Celeste.”

“Now you know I hate to say this dear, but I have to because of protocol. But… your poor grandmothers’ soul will be forced to go to hell if you don’t pay to host her. And with a number like hers, who knows how long she’ll have to wait there until it’s her turn to go to heaven,” the Doctor added, making her way to the front of grandmother’s hospital bed to look over paperwork.

“I am very aware, thank you doctor Celeste,” the granddaughter grinded her teeth behind her closed lipped smile. She wondered, if you hated to say anything, why say it at all?

“No I know. I know you’re aware, I know. It’s just, there is only so much time we can give you for the soul transference. Besides, if you are struggling to find funds for the ritual alone, how do you expect to continue to pay for your grandmother’s continued stay in our facility? We can only keep her alive for so long, you need to supply proof soon that you will compensate us for our—” “I am very aware, thank you—” “Or else we will have no choice but to pull the plug,” the Doctor continued on. Still attempting, however, to maintain her role as a Doctor, she followed her comment with a “dear.” It felt like a slap in the face, so much so that, for the first time since the Doctor had entered the room, the granddaughter turned towards her.

18 • spring 2021

The granddaughter repeated what had become an infamous phrase these past few months. “I am very aware, thank you doctor Celeste,” but this time, her voice trembled. Not in sadness or fear for grandmothers’ demise, but out of frustration and anger. Her time with grandmother was already limited and the Doctor was taking it all up.

“It’s a million dollars, you know?” the Doctor added, leaning on the foot of grandmother’s hospital bed.

“I am very aware”, intentionally the granddaughter had omitted the mock pleasantry, and with equal intention, the Doctor continued.

“Maybe there is someone else who could host her for you?

Maybe a family member? I am sure they’re aware of the benefits; a boost in their own number in the line to heaven. Surely that’s enough to entice everyone, and besides, what else is family for?”

The Doctor smiled, no, not smiled, grinned. Smile implied happiness, glee, and surely there was no way to feel such emotions in a room where two communicate verbally and one through a heart monitor.

This time the Doctor did not give the granddaughter room to respond. Instead, she continued on, explaining the options the young girl was far too familiar with, for she had spent hours upon hours examining it all. But all roads lead to the same result: she was too damn broke to do anything about anything.

Even so, the Doctor continued on and on, listing what she knew the granddaughter knew over and over again in that deep voice of hers. The low pitch scratched against the girl’s ears, twisted and coiled with a consistency of black tar into her ear drums and finally, rested in the hollow space between mind and skull. It would shock none that she snapped.

Wet towel squeezed tightly in hand, the liquids previously hidden within the plushness of its making now oozing between her clamped fist, the granddaughter swiveled around quicker

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than the Doctor could register. Face to face, the young girl, so much smaller than the doctor in so many aspects, raised her one emptied hand towards the reapers’ neck. The Doctor shrieked and stumbled back onto the ground. She hadn’t even realized that the young girls’ hand couldn’t reach her throat even if she tried, hadn’t realized that the young girl was very much aware of this, hadn’t realized that was the whole point. They could talk all they want, but at the end of the day, they were always scared of folks like her, and that’s exactly why they did what they did.

The granddaughter towered over the woman’s elongated body as it sprawled across the floor. The only thing she could think of was that this scene was just so White: under the blur of her damp eyes the Doctors’ lab coat blended perfectly with the parchment colored floor, the floor with the paleness of the doctor’s skeletal hands, the hands with the stark white of eyes meeting dilated pupils, and the eyes with the bright teeth gnawing her lips. Grandmother always seemed to be taking her last breaths and yet, even on her death bed, she possessed a skill the Doctor would never have: invisibility of what lurked beneath. For her rich skin was too deep to view the blue of veins, while the pulse of life was visible through the transparency of the Doctors covering; her opaque skin doing nothing to hide the beacons of animation. The granddaughter wondered if when the Doctor was in the nude, a lover could see the beating of her heart. Wondered if she had a heart at all.

“I will have the money soon doctor Celeste. I pray you have enough kindness within you to keep my dear grandmother alive for a while longer. I will see you tomorrow, it seems my visiting hours are over.”

Who she prayed to was uncertain, for what god would allow such atrocities to be done, would allow the pure of heart to descend to fiery pits if they lacked compensation to be held within his bosom. It didn’t matter, she thought, because what other force

20 • spring 2021

could help her in this world besides the one who made it. Praying was all she could do. She kissed her grandmother on the forehead, the warmest part of the woman’s body, and walked out of the room. Nothing obstructed her throat, but still, the Doctor struggled to breathe.

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On Correcting Pronouns Over Zoom KENDALL PACKMAN

The sound cut out. what did he say? //***// will hear more about this.

NoNoNonoNononoNonoNo moment’s gone sit in disgust

there’s a delay

it passed and ended before it reached my ears light from a faraway sun

burns me

fuckfuckfuckfuck I WANTED TO SAY SOMETHING. but I sat on mute

22 • spring 2021

Someone else corrected him in the chat I want an apology I will not get one If I did, it wouldn’t fix anything I did not get one your language gives away what you think of me my instinct is to leave walk away. but I can’t do that not virtually.

the hollows of my cheeks are hot and my heart is in my ears.

I am angry your words betray you I am not who you say I am

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On the Verge of Graduation ALISSA MARTINEZ

I’m worried I broke my brain for nothing— that the hollow space will never be filled, nothing to reap in this soil I’ve long tilled.

And I’ll tell myself learning for learning’s sake is reward enough; I’ll swallow that sweet lie, wash it down with a bottle of dark rye.

I’ve never liked whiskey all that much, but there are so many things I swore off, like the smoke in my lungs, that old cough that keeps coming back up and up and up.

My better hopes and dreams haunting me every time I turn toward a mirror and see those godforsaken bags, deep and dark— reminders of every hour I didn’t sleep because I had too many deadlines to keep.

And my momma tells me it’ll be over soon, but it all being over scares me even more because I can’t remember who I was before walking through those doors, blinded and blindsided by all I couldn’t hope to know, just desperate for somewhere to go that wasn’t home but now I’m home again.

It feels like I’m sinking in the sand, losing all my time, forgetting the rhyme—

24 • spring 2021

schemes for better days going to the wayside, upside down, back and forth, tossed and turned every miserable night I knew I’d wake to the same tomorrow.

And tomorrow will I really be ready to face the facts of my own fiction— to accept I’m not as okay as I pretend to be?

As I need to be to walk away from it all?

Understand that I won’t be there next fall, that I occupied a borrowed space.

And I want to say it was all worth it.

I want to believe every bit of shit I put up with—every time I broke down in a bathroom stall between classes, drank to cope and lost my glasses— every step deeper into the pit of myself that left me hearing voices so close to mine whispering what I always knew— I want to believe it was all worth it.

But the more I say it, the more I doubt— so much of me just wants to be out.

At the end of the line I just have to cross.

Yet as much as I want this ending, and know there’s so little worth defending, I know I’m going to miss this, this, this shaky, shifting, shitty time running over with kind friends and stunning sunsets that made me feel infinite.

And at the end of my rope I can only find borrowed words another sob story signed: My best friends and enemies, I don’t want to leave you.

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Going Out LINDSAY CHU

26 • spring 2021

Cosmos Chemos THEODORA HELGASON

You invited the universe into your brownstone, the order and Harmony of these cosmos circling your garden of white marble and Greenest grass. And you took me to church even though I don’t believe In God (at least this one). Your being survives in the mind you made me: I think it was the books. I was a reader and you were a reader and Together we read by the fire, into the night. Your doll-housed pearls Of wisdom and Mansion-sized morals taught me magic. I long for the day When I finally put cosmos on your marbled stone. It is my turn to bestow Magic. Your medicine was cosmos and chemos, and words and books.

I am sorry I have not brought you your cosmos, yet. You picked your Plot and we planted you in the earth like the flowers you held in your heart.

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One Model of Independence AJ DYKENS-HODAPP

My mouth was pried open. Like I was in a perpetual state of disbelief. Somehow they had tricked me into allowing all this. A big round flood light was directed at my face, which must’ve looked pathetically frightened and in pain. More like a child than an adult.

“I know this is uncomfortable sir. Believe me, these teeth are in desperate need of work.”

I nodded and made a grunting noise.

“How often do you floss?” he asked.

I wasn’t sure how to respond. It didn’t seem like I could lie my way out of it.

“Usually we recommend flossing at least once a day, to protect against gingivitis. It can get pretty nasty. That’s why this is such a tough process right now. Your gums are like puddy.”

I remember a vaguely medieval metal hook tool, and wincing at the sound of my teeth scraping metal. He lectured me pretty much the whole time, as the iron-y taste of blood filled my mouth.

It was all really off-putting.

After it was over I was escorted back to the front desk. The waiting area smelled like disinfectant. They gave me some extra cotton balls for my gums and a gift bag with a sticker, and floss.

I reached out to grab a sucker from a small glass jar on the desk. The receptionist looked up and told me “those are for the kids.”

You‘re right, I don’t need a sucker, I am a sucker.

28 • spring 2021

“Usually we recommend patients come back every six months, but I think in your case you should be back in three. Shall we book you for then?”

“No thanks,” I said, “I don’t know if I’ll still be around here by then.”

And I was right.

On the way home I remember stopping to get a sandwich. I unwrapped it and tried to eat it but my gums bled all over the bread.

So I sat motionless in the concrete gray and hot smog of the freeway. Inside my car it smelled like coffee grounds and ash. My mouth hung open and beating, like my heart sat just behind my teeth.

The whole hour home I was mad at myself for making the dentist appointment. I had thought it was something adults did, like pay utilities, or budget, or move clothing to the dryer, or own a lawnmower.

I thought of my Dad, who would be taking his lunch break back East. I imagined him glancing at his watch. He would know exactly how many more hours of work he had left for the day. His routine was immutable in my mind. I supposed he would be happy enough to hear I had finally done something painful and boring for myself. No time spent that way could be a total waste.

Traffic periodically shifted forward, I drove with my knees. I tore off the bloody part of the sandwich. I tucked it away for later. It was an hour home so I dreamt about dental ads, and a certain kind of life that wasn’t for me.

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After the Apocalypse, I Live in a Cabin in the Woods SOPHIA CHANIN

One In the cold morning dark I split wood with the axe you taught me to use.

I will use it to light a fire, cook my oats, seal in the holy energy. Lacking the bustle of human company I have become reclusive, quiet as a mouse, that’s how my mother used to describe me. I speak only when praying, my legs open and straddling the river, nature goddess that I am. I find remnants of your voice in smoky leaves dangling from spiderwebs on the path I traverse every day to fetch water. I find spiders fat as open palms.

Two When we were small and winter storms dismantled the power grid, crash crash, Mother instructed us to fetch water from the stream. Hansel and Gretel, she called us, her two baby munchkins.

Once I saw a frog on the bank, but he slipped into the water before I could kiss him. White suburbia, a dreamland, an evil hallucination. How unprepared we were.

30 • spring 2021

Three If someone visits me, I will have to kill them, either with poisonous nettles I’ve collected for this purpose (a gentle approach) or my axe (for the determined ones). I am not afraid of the deed, only of the prospect that bears will detect the rotting carcass and come visit me, too. That, I wouldn’t mind. I could use a tall friend these days. Or a shawl.

Four It was a simple transition to the forest. All I needed was my body.

Lucky me, I still had one. (Others had elected the brain-in-jar experiment. Theoretical folly. We did not understand the mind.) Technology was never my favorite, I preferred mountain lions and moss. Sometimes I imagine your remains, all of you shattered on the laboratory floor, pink tissue bleeding into formaldehyde, grass reclaiming it all. Poor child, I say, though you were not a child.

Six As I fall asleep I remember how I felt before, in life’s speech and constant death. Then I consider how I am now, silent, amongst purple stars, breathing without oxygen, without the need for words. I’m glad it happened.

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Reef Reapers LEILA WILBERG

Medium: Photoshop The reef reapers loom over a utopian coral reef, representing its incoming death by pollution.

If They Had All Practiced JEFFREY PENDO

“And what does the power of hope mean to you?”

Cassie looked around. The porte cochère reached off the side of the Wrigley mansion–home to the Tournament of Roses–like a stray limb, the old Italian architecture giving way to an addition that looked like a bunker. Behind her, dozens of girls lined up beneath the arbor in the rose garden, and she wondered if they had all practiced their smile in the mirror. Each rose had a label beneath it. Sweet Surrender, Sexy Rexy, Gold Marie, Crowd Pleaser, Miss All-American Beauty. She imagined pruning the roses, clipping them down to the roots and watching them bloom again. It was like a Monet piece she’d seen at the Norton Simon. Birds of paradise and sundresses, floating in a sea of floribunda. She wondered if all those seventeen-year-olds thought they would be the Rose Queen, parading through Pasadena on New Year’s Day. Maybe some of them were aiming to be a princess, or some just wanted a ticket to the dance. Cassie just wanted the scholarship. She looked at Sydney next to the KTLA van parked on the grass, entertaining a reporter, before returning her gaze to the panel of adults in front of her.

“I think hope is about, um, always believing in the–” “That’s time. Next!” *** Every morning and every afternoon since they were eight, Cassie and Ray walked across the Colorado Street Bridge between their homes and school. They knew it as the suicide bridge. New barriers framed the sweeping structure, stopping those who wished to take one final flight into the dry Arroyo. They hadn’t gotten rain last season, so the concrete river carried nothing but lizards and trash. They

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walked and looked out at the Rose Bowl Stadium in the valley and the San Gabriel mountains above. Cassie imagined how beautiful it must have looked before the 134 highway blocked their view, before the trails below became a smoke spot her mom told her to avoid. A dry and powerful September Santa Ana wind kissed their skin.

“So how’d the court thing go?” Ray asked.

Cassie looked at her sneakers. “I didn’t make it.”

“Every year it’s always some rich girl who studied rocket science in Japan or something.”

“Well, I still get a ticket to the Rose Ball. And a plus one.” They reached the end of the bridge. “You wanna come?”

“Yeah. I guess.” *** “I’m going Airitarian for the week.”

Cassie stopped chewing and looked up at Sydney. They had been friends since preschool. Sydney lived on the other side of Pasadena, in one of the mansions near San Marino.

“It’s like a diet where you only eat air. I mean obviously I’m still gonna eat. I’m not anorexic or anything. I’m just gonna cut back a little.” Sydney took a bite of her salad and smiled. “I have my second interview tomorrow!”

Cassie lost her appetite. She told Ray about it on the way home.

“Are you surprised? I mean, Sydney was bred for this stuff.

First, she’ll get on the court, then she’ll go to USC, and then she’ll marry some dude with a fancy last name and move back. It’s kinda sad if you ask me.”

“I don’t know. I think it might be nice to have your whole life all mapped out. She seems happy.”

A truck honked on the 134. *** The bridge looked different from the Uber.

“You know we don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

“I put on a tie. We’re going.”

It was loud inside the hall, and Cassie felt the bass of the music

34 • spring 2021

in her bones. Frantic adults were checking people’s bags, and wrist bands and confetti littered the floor. Someone handed her a light-up ring. To one corner, kids were taking pictures in white thrones. In the other sat a rounded coach.

Ray laughed. “Come on, Cass, we have to take a picture in the carriage.”

So she sat with him in the white coach, squinting through cordate filigree and LED lights. Red roses and vines covered the door like a wedding arch.

“Smile!”

They went to the dance floor. Confetti was falling from the sky like a desert snow, landing in a landscape of fog machines and strobe lights. Cassie’s gaze made its way up the 40-foot walls. They were projecting photos of all the girls still eligible for the court. Each held a bouquet of flowers, but they looked more like brides than pageant queens. The slide switched to Sydney right as she walked up to them.

“I told them that was my bad side!” Sydney said.

“You look great, your highness.” Ray bowed before giving her a hug. “People are saying you’ll be queen.”

The three of them danced for a few minutes before Sydney peeled off. Cassie didn’t resent Sydney. She just wished her life were that easy, that she wouldn’t have to do a year at Pasadena City College if she wanted to go to USC. She wished that she could drive to school instead of walking over ghosts twice a day. Ray went to get their bags. *** They walked down Colorado Boulevard in silence. When they got to the bridge, there were no cars, and one of the streetlights was out. She didn’t remember when it happened, but she found her fingers intertwined with Ray’s. A cold wind picked a petal off her Miss All-American Beauty corsage, and they watched as it floated up over the fence and down, until all they saw was a speck of dust, disappearing into the concrete river below.

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MOKA POT, REVERSE LAYLA ELQUTAMI

She considered their love, until the coffee boiled over, finished. An espresso shot is always only for one. Forever. How one could consume and think and feel and then, still, give afterward.

Singular in its interpretation. This was a careful act. Like poetry.

Literature was a thing of the world and thus of the two of them.

She went through novels, quickly, ate them and poured them back out to him. Biographies, essays. Stacks and stacks of them, collected. These texts back and forth continued. In past months, he had taken issue with how their correspondence was just her fervent summaries of books he would never read. Why send her this?

Something so bitter. Small and contained. Even if there is espresso.

There comes a point at which reality cannot sustain one point in time, stretched out. I am not built for this. No, she would counter.

I’m sure you did. She imagined him, over the phone: Did you like it? Waiting, she daydreamed. With a twist, the skeletal chamber became a steaming thing atop the stove. Attached the hexagonal base. She had packed coffee in the metal filter, trying to understand.

The gift was what most gifts are, how underneath someone is trying to tell you something. So she had. Uncovered in green packing foam. Shining aluminum. The device itself. But he, not figuratively, had entreated her to try it, sent over the right grounds in European cans. Nothing was worth all these minutes. She stayed there watching for a long time.

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MOKA POT LAYLA ELQUTAMI

She stayed there watching for a long time. Nothing was worth all these minutes. But he, not figuratively, had entreated her to try it, had sent over the right grounds in European cans. The device itself. Shining aluminum. Uncovered in green packing foam. So she had. The gift was what most gifts are, how underneath someone is trying to tell you something. She had packed coffee in the metal filter, trying to understand. Attached the hexagonal base. With a twist, the skeletal chamber became a steaming thing atop the stove.

Waiting, she daydreamed. She imagined him over the phone: Did you like it? I’m sure you did. No, she would counter. I am not built for this. There comes a point at which reality cannot sustain one point in time, stretched out. Even if there is espresso. Small and contained. Something so bitter. Why send her this? In past months, he had taken issue with how their correspondence was just her fervent summaries of books he would never read. These texts back and forth continued. Stacks and stacks of them, collected. Biographies, essays. She went through novels, quickly, ate them and poured them back out to him. Books were a thing of the world and thus of the two of them. Like poetry. This was a careful act. Singular in its interpretation. How one could consume and think and feel and then, still, give afterward. Forever. An espresso shot is always only for one. She considered their love, until the coffee boiled over, finished.

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Siena (II) SOPHIE FRON

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Bodies Like Mine in the Louvre ANDIE SHERIDAN

There are ways to be sown but I do not know them My chest and I are obsessed with compression For once I am seeing double with my glasses still on and there is nothing more dire than being my old body’s assassin Hire my mother for her inability to approve or remember I’m hoping that one day there will be bodies like mine in the Louvre It is the only way I keep moving towards next December

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The “Witch” LINDSAY CHU

When conceptualizing this photo, I recalled my obsession with historical aesthetics, beauty, the supernatural and the uncanny. Perched on a deer and wielding a broom, an elegant woman stares, challenging us to enter her space.

Taken in Pasadena, CA, this photo captures the eerie beauty of both the subject and the manicured world she inhabits.

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Parfum MIMI THOMPSON

Fumigators were the 16th-century version of salespeople on Valentine’s Day. The role came from the Latin fumus, to smoke, and pleasant-smelling smokes were classified as perfume, thus, dooming the pesticide paramours to a perfectly pleasant position peddling scents of love.

The Greek mistress of seduction royally cloaked herself in this molten sex, but perfume today is more than just a means to seduce and destroy.

Marc, Calvin, and Tiffany conspired around the cauldron to destroy our noses on a fresh summer day.

Had us truffle hunting for crisp and fruity, flirty and spicy Sex sprays to spritz high above factories of smog and smoke, their solution to billow love into the atmosphere and swathe the globe in the Perfume House Effect. It is predicted that when sea levels rise (even more), so will the Perfume Potentates. As their cursive decrees, we must destroy all knock-off neon tubes of Infinity, Peace, and Love, and install a floral filter into our drinking water so that each day we may serve our toast with a glass of Eau de Orange and a packet of smokes, just like the French do after sex.

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Speaking of French sex, nos mères will birth rose-tinted bébés, each ascribed a distinctive perfume that squeezes out after the placenta, but not before mama has had a balcony smoke.

Alas, the marketing campaigns will destroy Fresh Air competitors. To prepare, you should sell your shares in facemasks. In only one day, their moats will be brimming with the aromas that we love.

Young girls who concoct potions in their gardens will love an apprenticeship with the Compound Houses, that pays in sex and has them synthesizing Putrescine into strains of Vanillin during the day.

Only Queens can brave the lab’s most concentrated perfume, foretold to destroy the wrists and napes of girls, slashing through them like a red candle in the smoke.

Gabrielle Bonheur’s Honey and Tar N°5 will eventually dominate and smoke treacle across the sky, slathering our throats in this petrichor of love.

Gills in our nostrils, only O2 will destroy this lurid smell of Eternity, Harmony, and Sex that boils in a crystal beaker as our perfume.

Each spray is the same as yesterday.

To the fumigators, who smoke bouquets into our lungs, orchids and lilies mingling like sex in a bed of base notes, I’ve mastered the trade of love from your perfume.

On a fresh summer day, I aim to destroy.

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UTOPIAS // DYSTOPIAS contest winner Retrans My Body ANDIE SHERIDAN

If I were to retrain my body, I would un-fondant the hills of my stomach. (Let’s be real, a knife would be involved.) I would know what wisteria looked like and more specifically, what it looked like wrapped around my forehead. Out of each sparse eyebrow. You would help me pluck them every day: hedging at disbelief. It would look like living till thirty.

My hands would be able to be complete, sans you and yours.

I would make sure to be mistaken for a cowboy most of the time.

Even when my bed became part of my body. (Same as the depression that makes a word-shepherd out of me.)

I would retry having a healthy relationship with you. Not sure that it would work, but the effort would be there. Real-talking it over in the mirror before I made a dentist appointment over the phone. Retracting my paper-fish lips’ instinct to swallow themselves. I could bring my mouth to our blowups instead of retreating. You could try not making snide remarks at the tattoos that crop up on my arms like obstinate living.

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Daydreaming could be my fifth limb. (My life-carcass might then feel like home.)

I would buy love-sickles to shackle myself to joy. I would carry them with me everywhere I went. I would take my body everywhere to not-disappear.

Vivifying myself was the point. (The garden gloves would insist that I think about transitioning.) My heart is always afraid of going under-and-asunder. Maybe I wouldn’t have to self-assimilate to feel like myself. Wheelbarrowing away at every turn without any end in sight.

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Death and a Magazine MADDIE RUBIN-CHARLESWORTH

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a remedy SARU POTTURI

i haven’t felt too well today. it’s not my fault: it never is. don’t say i’ll shine: i’m just like clementine, falling to pieces, pieces. recess comes and smooths my creases out: i’m tonguing at my gums. i bungled it and tumbled down and they said: humpty, one more round. and all my cracks are welded up in silver: a kintsugi of its own right. it’s not my fault: it never is. and kindness lies heavy upon my spastic shoulders, smiling boulders,

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and i just grow older, older. and i keep soldering: i smolder smoke with no flame, growing colder. growing slowly ever colder. i paid my debt in loneliness and said, and said: enough, enough. it’s not my fault, but then it never is. tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace. and i’m saving face: my saving grace the clay that molded me drip-dripping i sold my fingernails off for a chance at peace. it’s pieces, pieces held in place by held in place by held in place by—

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Finale MARCUS JACKSON

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Stillness, part 2 LILY ROSS

The distance between us swims inside of itself, sighs bathwater onto the edges of my freshman year dorm room, stretches its veins so wide that all i can see is glitter floating above me, the thrashing of muffled sound before me, the smell of red ink below me.

I reach out my arms, open my palms and fill them with quietly thickening thinness, I raise my hands to my lips and sip until my eyes are the blue-green-greyyellowy footprint of my own, living stillness.

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Cybersex SAM BOVARD

The neighbor’s Ring camera Observes my body through the window.

I notice it after a shower, towel dropped, Parts exposed. A perversion, An invasion; a cyber-voyeur, Pupilless, peering in at me.

For a moment, the urge to perform Sears down my spine, to harden, Bend over, give them something to look at.

Once, when my body was less than it is And my mind was barely more than a child’s, I considered the webcam in my room, Considered the angles I would hold, The digital influence of the anonymous Men Who Tipped Well, money changed to Tokens changed to attention in the hole That I sunk into. Out somewhere in the Cloud, There are versions of me that are young And malleable, looking into the camera for The first time, responding to phantom desires Typed out in the comments section.

I close the curtains instead, Because I don’t work for free.

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Visibility SEOJIN AHN

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content warning: body image, self harm

Something Missing ELLA ROSENBLATT

WINTER The wind bit at her neck and crawled up her legs, sneaking itself into those very places she did her best to cover. She fidgeted with the keys, eager for the warmth of her house.

As she pulled off her jacket, she caught a whiff of menthol cigarettes and Victoria’s Secret perfume. Reminded of her night, she felt an aching in her chest. She was tired. She was lonely.

She wanted someone to soothe the aching, to rub Vick’s on her chest, to warm her cold body, to fill the emptiness in her.

There was Something Missing.

As she took off her makeup, she looked in the mirror, watching pinky-orange skin turn translucent, revealing red bumps and dark purple circles. She had to look away from the mirror before tears escaped her eyes.

When she looked down at the wipe, several eyelashes lay amidst the black and pink smears. She debated picking them off the wipe and making wishes but decided against it. This felt like cheating.

Her phone buzzed once, twice, three times. She read text after text about their nights, their boyfriends, their loves. She replied with purple hearts and exclamation points, feeling the cold spread through her body.

She dreamt about yellow daisies and soft rain and what was Missing, waking only to turn up the heat.

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SPRING The snow melted. But the cold in her did not leave.

As grass and flowers grew, she seemed to shrink and shrivel.

The monotony of day-to-day life was becoming unbearable. Classes dragged on slowly. Breaks were worse. People gathered outside in pairs. There was the blue boy and the girl with honey hair. There was the couple with pink cheeks, and the one with silver eyes. She made her way over to a seat in the school garden. She noticed the lilac flowers bunched in a corner. One of them was growing slightly farther from the rest. It tilted its head towards the others, longing to be nearer. She turned and watched the silver eyes as they met each other, the pink cheeks as they turned red with lust, and the blue boy as he ran his hands through the honey hair.

She returned home with these pairs on her mind. Undressing, she examined her figure. Small body. Not quite small enough. She poked at her stomach and ran her hands lightly over her breasts. She wanted to blame this body for the Something Missing. But she knew it was not so. She knew her body was, in fact, the closest thing she had to the Something Missing. It was the thing connecting her to the array of aftershaves, broad chests, and muscled arms. But of these bodies she knew, none had pink cheeks or silver eyes. None were blue. And none would really be hers.

SUMMER He bit at her neck and crawled his hands up her legs, sneaking himself into those very places she did her best to cover. This is fun, she told herself. As their bodies rocked, she dreamt of ice-cold lemonade and trips to Spain and someone to love. Afterward, he held her. His hand, warm from the heat of summer, traced her shoulder. She felt okay. Distracted. Good enough.

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FALL When the falling leaves settled, so did she. She did not think so much about the Something Missing.

She spent time with the mountains and the books. She cooked mushrooms like her grandma had taught her and took long baths in warm, soapy water. She let him touch her in the places she had tried to cover. It was not quite it, but it was close enough.

Sometimes though, in moments of quiet desperation, of inexorable loneliness, she would look up at the autumn sky, suck in her breath, and watch the clouds––the shapes reminding her of someone that she knew but that she had not yet met.

Feeling the cold pierce her heart, she would dig her nails deep into her chest trying to get rid of the ice. Only when she saw little drops of blood run down her stomach would she stop.

And then breathe. She would return. Sinking back into her routine, distracting herself with sweet, juicy plums and bright green nail polish, waiting for the next moment that the paleness of her skin, the loneliness of the lilac flower, the stillness of the night would catch her attention and remind her.

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beleaguered by sickness IPIFUS IPIFIO

/ beleaguered by sickness I resurrect for a moment if only for one moment to smell the light see the scent touch my sensibility if only for one moment / Noche d’estrellas, guíame a un destino brillante.

O! Día de nubes, desvíame a un destino nublado. / papá pásame una cerveza enséñame eso que ocultas papá te paso esta cerveza pa’nseñarte eso que oculto

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Home Sweet Home GRACE ZHANG

UTOPIAS // DYSTOPIAS contest winner Medium: Glazed Ceramic, Plastic, and Paper

“Home Sweet Home” represents the detrimental effects a brain tumor, craniopharyngioma, has on the body. The different rooms of the house and their functions represent the different organs that the pituitary gland’s hormones control... [read more online]

Bejewelled LINDA HUANG

The assortment of colors studded on her back shimmered forcing a reconfiguration of the rainbow into a story she could no longer recognize. Watching the different lights shift reminded me of the first time I flew across the country. We don’t have those anymore: airplanes. The first time I sat in one of those metal containers, I remembered looking down on the mountains and seeing how tightly they held the water. We flew from border to border with nothing more than laminated papers and an outdated photo. These airplanes would drift above highways and skyscraper lights before landing in a different city decorated in the same manner.

It’s not like that anymore.

I used to hear stories from mom about the Stable People-- a sedentary species for the most part. They often lived in the same country by the same body of water on the same land. Mom had a wild imagination. She would tell me about a time before jewels and studs.

I alway believed that perhaps it was one of her jewels that gave her the power to dream. I grew up fascinated with the idea that the words “travel”, “migration”, and “refuge” were meant to describe a difference in leisure. Now, they all mean the same.

I loved her stories. My favorite was the one about the Stable Peoples jewelled faces. From babies to adults, their ears and noses would be pierced with diamonds or shiny metals. It was one of the few piercings accepted during the Modern Era. Right before the end of the Modern Era, people would pierce any and all parts of their

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body, from knuckles to genitals to toes. They would ink their arms with images of clouds and water. Mom said they weren’t even for the Cameras or Immigration Centers. They were for beauty. They were decorations meant to tell a story only you would understand.

And as I listened, I would touch my ears and nose pretending there were piercing for me to feel. I would have her repeat these fantasties.

She would illustrate as we walked, waiting and resting as we crossed through rivers and borders.

The first time they pierced me, they stripped, washed, and scanned me. I was seven and it was the beginning of a life on the move. Mom had given birth to me in an Immigration Center-- a word she told me to never use. It was a dirty word, a lie she said. These were Death Camps she said. She never said them loud enough for the Cameras to hear, but she never failed to drown my head with the fear of what these places were.

I entered a puedo room where the grid lock bars served as a transparent barrier. They took a set of gloves, dipped a yellow opal stone in a bowl of alcohol and injected it into my back. The perfectly circular piece of stone sat on the surface of my skin, bathing in the sun and before I could focus on the pain, I could feel it shining.

A decade ago, the State needed a new way to keep track of migration. The Wall Movement started after the Nomadic Era. Walls around every city, state, and country not already divided by the water was being built. But soon after the First Movement, they had to build and rebuild the walls because no one could predict the floods.

They tried several times before stopping a few decades ago. I laugh thinking about it now because it was a sign that even the waters and wind knew it was a disastrously hilarious idea. A large number of people were moving out of France and Italy because of a WASP- 4 outbreak and countries were afraid of being unsafe. The rise of fake identifications kept growing. So they stopped having State identification and then completed abandoned papers and passports soon after. They were too easily faked. Instead, they took the skin

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and created a map of all the lands, diseases, and climates traveled through. These gems are a passport for all the places I’ve been. It is a story of what I’ve done and a code for how much of a risk I am now. *** I turn to get my face to against the sun and walk out of the waterbank. My back winces and I am reminded of several piercings laying in valleys between muscle masses. I’ve never seen the constellation of jewels on my own back. The adoration of prized jewels is not for me.

I found a man with his entire back painted with colors I’d only heard about during the time of the Stable People. He knew the directions of an old mythical city rumored to be called the Gold Mountain.

It was the only mountain still alive on a peninsula that drowned its own land.

When I arrived, my toes hugged the grass, choking their stems until they ripped. Their breath was taken and they pleaded to stay rooted. I threw my body backwards, my head melted into the lava and I knew this is where I was meant to be planted. *** The jewels on her body melted like pieces of broken circuits.

The paint and dye cracked open exposing a faint light flashing under each color coating. No wonder they alway shined.

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Whirlwind ALBANY BLACKBURN

Last summer, you broke a man’s heart, and you broke the man too.

The skies turned a sickly green, and the clouds spiraled around your head. The wind howled out in anguish, like an infant that knows only that to scream is to survive.

You hid yourself away, tucked inside the bathtub, with your old twin-sized mattress on top. And you stayed there like that until the wee hours of morning, long after the storm had cried itself to sleep. Long after the last residual teardrops fell.

There’s a saying that floats around here: “If you wait a minute, the weather will change.”

By necessity, when you dream of love, you remember the tornado. And yet, here you are now, daring to melt into the candlelight and bubbles. Rising from the bath, coquettishly, as if pinpricks of cold air are more akin to goosebumps of anticipation than to shards of glass.

And smiling at your reflection in the mirror, even when, in the steam, it offers only a blurry suggestion of yourself.

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Brother’s Keeper I FRED ZUCULE

This is a rehearsal in a grammar of care: this time redaction.

This is Bukuru at rest, vulnerable and held.

Brother’s Keeper V FRED ZUCULE

At once these could be compromising and precarious positions to be in but the fabric and flower allow him to hold and be held softly and with a whole lot of care.

Untitled (Portrait of Ross in LA) FELIX GONZALES-TORRES, 1991 SAM BOVARD

i.

Let me remember that all I am is imagined.

175 pounds of cellophane-wrapped candies sit in a corner like the man they are meant to replace. Take a bite out of the lover— become the decimation that stole his youth, ravaged his body, taking and taking little pieces, shining like the sun, until there’s nothing left. ii.

To love someone enough to make their dying last forever…

The museum can choose to replenish the pile or leave the corner empty, save for the ghost. Is it better to die once or forever be dying? What do we leave after we go but little pieces of cellophane, crinkling in your jacket pocket, forgotten and hung back up in the closet? iii.

You have to let the light in, grass stains damp on your chest; listen to Twigs sing Cellophane and open the body unwraptured; take me into your mouth and pretend that I’m sweet, bright.

Need me. Eat me.

And let me imagine that I’ll be remembered.

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Felix Gonzales-Torres, Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) 1991, Candies individually wrapped in multicolor cellophane, endless supply, ideal weight 175 lbs. The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois

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Isolation GAGE WYRE

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Ammunition Sky EVA PROVONOST

Eddie had decided not to acknowledge the end of the world. If the bombs were coming, he might as well ignore them. People would die whether they screamed or sunbathed, he supposed, so fear would do nothing.

He looked out the window of his house. His lawn was regulation green, corners neatly edged, lawn swept. The sky was blue and orderly, a reminder that the bombs had not come yet. He walked onto the crisp patio with something like pride sitting in his chest. All was as it should be.

A neighbor’s cat screeched, and Eddie’s teeth clenched for the fifth time that day. Every sound these days sounded like an explosion.

Still, he was not the type to panic. He folded his newspaper in half and walked inside calmly, without looking back at the sky. His heart scratched against his ribs as he entered the kitchen, where his wife was working. Her name was Louise, and they had been married for nine years, and in love for seven.

Louise was the type of woman who believed in only three things: God, her family, and whoever was talking on the television.

She had sixteen dresses, all of them identical but with theoretically different flower-based patterns, and two bras. One of them was the normal one, the one she wore normally, and the other was a bullet bra, which she bought because Marilyn Monroe wore one. She was quite a fan of Marilyn Monroe, who was the height of sexiness, and even though Louise still wasn’t sure what made a woman sexy, she knew Marilyn Monroe was.

There was a creased photograph of Marilyn Monroe in Louise’s change purse, buried among doctor’s notes and medical bills, which

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Eddie had noticed six months ago and not mentioned since. He decided it was best not to ask too many questions, and his wife decided the same.

Louise was making Jell-O. She made a remarkable amount of Jell-O, of all different colors. Once, she had made a rainbow block of Jell-O, a wobbling rectangle of red and orange and yellow and green and blue and purple, which lasted as a centerpiece for eleven seconds until a visiting aunt dropped it. Eddie still wasn’t sure if it had been intentional.

Eddie stared down at the Jell-O as Louise tried to pop it out of the mold. It clung furiously to the walls, pulsing and throbbing as she shook it. This Jell-O was red, and it looked like a raw heart ripped from a body, overlaid with gristle and fat and still beating, furiously, writhing on the countertop. Louise peeled off her white gloves and shoved her hands into the sides of the Jell-O, then yanked it out. Viscous red liquid dripped down her wrists, and she smiled with pride, holding the still-beating heart in both hands. She slapped it down on the platter, then smiled up at Eddie.

“Want some, dear?” she asked. She had scarlet hangman’s hands, but her pristine gloves rested beside her.

“No, thank you.” He felt an odd lump rising up from his stomach and swallowed it down. “I’ve got to get to the office dear, but I’ll have some tonight.”

“My tests should be back by then, so we’ll know if there’s a baby,” she said. Eddie nodded, couldn’t find an answer, and ducked out the front door. He couldn’t decide how he felt about this whole baby business. Of course, he wanted children, of course he did, but it seemed so much easier to have a hollow marriage between only two people. He got into the car with his jaw still clenched.

The radio was angry that morning as he drove, growling on every wavelength. Left turn, right turn. Soviet. Left turn, right turn.

Union. He sighed and parked the car. The sky was still clear overhead.

He kept his eyes on the ground as he walked into the office, not noticing the receptionist. She was just background noise, as notable as her

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staplers and brightly colored paperclips.

Eddie climbed into the vat of paperwork, sorting through it and placing each pile into a new, slightly smaller vat. He never looked up except for when one of his friends walked by. They were friends, he had decided, the men who said something about their weekends each time he interacted with them. Even on Friday, they still talked about the previous weekend. Their only other topic of conversation was hitting a tiny ball with a long stick, and how Eddie should come with them, despite his complete lack of skill at it. Before he had married Louise, they also talked about her.

He worked late, like he usually did. He couldn’t remember a lunch break, or any sort of conversation even though he knew those things had happened. It was as impossible to disentangle one day from the others as it was to remove a single thought from his mind.

His skull throbbed as the fluorescent lights pulsed and the clocks scurried around, the bone struggling to contain the brain inside. He called Louise at five o’clock sharp, warning he’d be late for dinner, and she nodded and hummed and smiled through the phone. She whispered something about the test, and he didn’t hear it. The hours ticked by, and at seven o’clock Eddie leaned out the window to check the sky. Nothing yet. But they would come, he was certain, and soon.

At eight o’clock, he could no longer ignore the pounding in his skull. Time to go home. He would speak to his wife, he resolved.

Louise. Yes. He would tell her about his day, and she would nod and hum and smile, and then he would eat dinner and smoke his pipe until Louise decided it was time to have sex. They had to keep trying for children, she said, and he agreed with the quiet knowledge that they had no acceptable justification to stop, despite neither one really wanting to. They had to do what was done.

Eddie left the building, locked the door behind him. He was always the last to leave, despite being a decidedly mediocre employee and no one’s boss. The office felt safer than home these days, and the sound of typewriters almost stopped the buzzing in his ears. It was better to be an employee than a husband. He glanced up, checking

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that the sky was still clear overhead.

As he drove, the buzzing grew louder still, scratching and biting his ears. He could hear the planes, the Soviet bombers, inside his skull. They were approaching. Tonight was the night.

Half a mile from home, he pulled over, unable to tolerate the sound in his head. A drink, that would fix it. That always made the buzzing stop. There was that bar, the one he never went into but only glanced at, across the street. This was not a bar that respectable people – regulation citizens – went into. But he needed a drink, and he felt numbly drawn to the flashing rainbow of lights, as though he wasn’t steering his body but trapped inside it. He hurried inside, trying to keep his face paper as he ducked past the colorful figures inside. He should not be seen in a place like this.

He didn’t remember what drank he ordered, only that he drank it, and then another of the same. The buzzing slowed, but didn’t go away, as he finished the second drink and got another. A man sat down next to him at the bar, silently drinking in parallel to Eddie.

Eddie’s innards turned to alcohol. He glanced to the side. The other man’s long fingers encircled his glass, the lemon slice discarded on the side, as he drank in silent. He had the type of long, elegant face that made Eddie remember stories he’d read as a small child. He didn’t know the plots anymore.

The man nodded at Eddie, who went stiff before nodding back.

“Evening.”

“Evening.”

“The name’s James.” His voice was low and slow and potent, like the sound of whiskey being poured into a glass.

“Edward.” Eddie had a queer impulse to correct himself, that Edward was a name that did not belong to him, but he couldn’t force the words out to say otherwise.

James continued to drink, glancing over at Eddie between sips, before speaking into his glass. “You’ve never been here before.”

“No.” He did not consider that it should have been a question; it seemed natural that the man would know.

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“So, why’d you finally come in?”

“Needed a drink.” He tried to swallow the alcohol, but his throat turned to old leather.

James made a noise that Eddie didn’t quite hear. “Anyways.

Glad you finally admitted it might be a decent idea.”

“I drive past here everyday” he said, by way of wandering over the words. “I just never…” His voice faded. “Funny.”

“I had a friend who told himself, every day of his life, that he’d come in here. Told me every time he saw me. Next time, James. Next time. I’ll be there.” He took a sip. “Never did.”

“That’s how Louise is.” James’ eyes met his, the color of an ammunition sky. “Every year, going to change things. Never does. She’s lived the same life every day since I met her.”

“And you?”

“I couldn’t live like that.” The corners of his regulation lawn burned in his mind, and he felt a sudden urge to mow every blade of grass down until it scarred the earth.

James smiled, leaning back in his chair. “Do you mind stepping outside with me for a second? I need a cigarette.”

The two of them walked out of the bar, into a crystalline sky that looked empty of bombs. The stars had turned to fireflies, swirling overhead and then darting into the grass below their feet. James caught one, and a pulsing yellow glow shone through his fingers. He handed it to Eddie.

Their hands brushed, and Eddie cupped the firefly in his palm for a second, unable to feel anything but James’ fingertips touching his. The speck of light flew away easily from his open hand. James dropped his hands to his side. “Cigarette?” he said.

Eddie thought of his pipe, of his armchair, of his fireplace, of his dinner. “Sure.” They cradled the embers between their fingers, letting smoke unfurl into the darkness between them.

One curious firefly hummed closer, circling James’ head. It landed in his hair, and Eddie reached up to brush it off. His hand lingered for a second longer than it should have, fingers in the dark

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hair, and James leaned closer. “You couldn’t live like that? The same, everyday?”

“Of course not.”

“Prove it.”

They were too close together, his fingers still lingering in the curls. The cigarettes had fallen, forgotten, and his eyes danced over the face in front of him. Eddie smelled whiskey and paint and blood, and he tried to hold the scent deep in his lungs. Another firefly flew past, illuminating those lips for an instant.

Eddie let his hand fall. “Thank you for the cigarette,” he said.

The smell was gone, just lemon cleaner and the smoke of the cigarettes. “Goodnight.”

“I- Edward?”

“Goodnight,” he said quickly, and brushed past James. His heart was pounding far too quickly, trying to escape. It reached behind him, desperately reaching out for the person who vanished into the darkness.

He climbed into the car, stifling the movements of the heart in his chest. It did not belong there. It must be calm, orderly. He drove home too fast, not signaling, and skidded into the driveway.

Louise came out of the house, nightgown starched and crisp.

She had twenty curlers perfectly arranged in her hair and red, puffy eyes. “What took so long?”

“Car trouble, dear. Is dinner ready?”

“Yes. The test...” He nodded and walked inside. She followed, holding the edge of his sleeve. “There’s soup.”

He sat at the kitchen table, ignoring the nearly empty bottle of whiskey and the crumpled photograph of Marilyn Monroe at her seat. She served him cold soup. It tasted like a cigarette, still taped to his tongue. Louise sat across from him, watching him with a quiet smile as she folded her hands together again and again. There was dried blood crusted under her perfect fingernails, and her dress was different from this morning’s.

“There’s Jell-O, too,” she said softly.

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He took her hand across the table, careful not to touch her fingernails. “Louise.”

“I’m fine,” she said, and stood up. “The doctor says I’m fine, luckily.” She handed him the plate, a wobbling slice of blood and muscle. It throbbed, pulsed before him. It wanted to pull him back.

He took a spoon, stabbed it into the center, and swallowed the piece. Cold and muscular, the tissue collapsed under the pressure of his throat. Another, another. Make it be still, be quiet. Make it forget.

He finished, handed the plate to Louise. They exchanged a muttered “Thank you, dear” and a good-night kiss on the cheek. Her skin was chalky and cold, lemon scented.

Eddie waited for her and her photograph to go to bed, then walked out into the backyard. The lawn was still perfect, everything neat. All regulation.

He ran his fingers over his own lips, whiskey and paint on his skin. Forget, be quiet, move on.

He stared down at his lawn, but a coppery sheen appeared on his vision as it turned watery. Tipping his head back up, his tears dripped out as he watched the ammunition sky.

The bombs would come soon.

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Yi Yi: Retrospective Truths ALAN KE

To my knowledge, most kids don’t spend their seventh birthdays 35,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean. If it were up to me, I’d have chosen to celebrate somewhere like Chuck E. Cheese’s, anywhere other than the 13-hour purgatory of EWR to PEK. On a whim, we packed our bags as a family, swapping the comfort of a small suburban town in New Jersey for the monolithic metropolis of Beijing.

At first, every bone in my body teamed together to reject the Chinese culture imposed onto my (so-called) American upbringing. In public, I’d assert my American-ness by speaking exclusively in English. At home, I abstained from any television besides the Chinese-dubbed runs of Lilo & Stitch. However much I tried, my acts of stubbornness proved no match to the indifferent rhythms of city life. To me, Beijing wasn’t just foreign or impersonal, it was isolating. It was a city I thought I’d never call home.

Since its premiere in 2000, Edward Yang’s Yi Yi has commonly been credited as a film about everything. Its expansive scope and thematic breadth mean that every viewer is bound to latch onto something different about the film. For me, the film stands for a poignant image of East Asian urban life almost unrecognizable today. Growing up in China for over a decade, I learned to overcome my internalized biases as well as appreciate the vibrance of life in its capital. Though it’s set in Taiwan, watching Yi Yi for the first time reminded me of the city 6,000 miles away from California that I now consider home, a place I had

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once unfairly written off. A relic of a bygone era, Yang’s final film effortlessly captures the energies of Taiwan before the shadows of modernity and westernization took over the east by storm.

The film opens with the formalities of a wedding celebration, the first of three family gatherings that loosely structure the story. We follow the Jians, a middle-class family living in Taipei City, as they make their way to the reception. NJ (whose name I can’t help but associate with my home state of New Jersey), brother of the groom and father of the Jian household, runs into Sherry, who we later learn to be his first romantic interest. Witness to the tense encounter is NJ’s eight-year-old son Yang-Yang, one of the two figures through whom the film explores childlike innocence and youth, the other being his adolescent sister Ting-Ting. Like the selectiveness of our memories, most films view childhood subjectively through the rose-colored lens of nostalgia. Yi Yi instead favors those formative moments that often go by unnoticed, whether cheerful or not.

Upon returning from the wedding, the family learns that Grandma has been hospitalized after suffering a stroke. During this scene, we get the first of Yang’s masterful long takes. NJ and his wife Min-Min rush into the hospital lobby, followed by the drunken groom and his rowdy friends. Instead of focusing directly on their clumsy antics, the sequence plays out through their reflections on the window. With city lights bleeding through the image, we’re reminded of the outside world ignorant of the family’s distress. Yang frequently employs this visual motif, focusing not on the action, but its settings. This lens of objectivity grounds the film’s emotional peaks and troughs in the urban rhythms we take for granted, from the capriciousness of traffic lights to the measured cadence of public transit. The characters in Yi Yi don’t just live in Taipei; they live with it. These synchronicities define the inextricable bond between individual and city, the invisible

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forces that dictate the overlap and congruities in the metropolitan ecosystems we inhabit.

Though the neon glow that illuminates Edward Yang’s Taipei has all but vanished for the static luminescence of LED displays, the set design makes the film all that more distinctive and pronounced. A handful of shots are shown through the watchful eyes of surveillance cameras but not in a particularly insidious manner, predating the omnipresent hold it has taken in our current lives. Vaguely impressionistic paintings decorate apartment walls, offering refuge from the bustling cities they’re housed in. A tiny New York bagel shop acts as a rendezvous point for Ting-Ting’s dates—a precursor to the wave of western coffee shops and bakeries that overtook the streets of so many cities. The sets capture every last detail, down to the innocuous placement of Dutch butter cookie tins repurposed into storage boxes I’d so often see on my own visits to my grandparents. All these minor aspects add up to evoke a near-perfect image of Taiwan at the turn of the 21st century, right at the cusp of becoming the booming metropolis that it is today.

In today’s context, it’s easy to read Yi Yi almost as a period piece, but it’s important to note its forward-thinking tendencies.

There’s an uncertainty in the film’s presentation of Taiwan. As a country whose independence has been hard fought, having undergone periods of Japanese occupation and Chinese rule, the bearings of history reverberate through the dialogue. When speaking to Sherry, NJ communicates almost exclusively in Taiwanese, a language with origins in both classical Chinese and Japanese.

There’s a poetic elegance to their exchanges, trying to rekindle their former affection with a language rooted in the past.

Taiwan’s complex history with Japan is further muddled by the introduction of Mr. Ota, a Japanese business partner whom NJ

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befriends. However, there’s an air of distrust among NJ’s colleagues, hesitant to risk the company in the hands of a Japanese video game company. Over dinner, Mr. Ota seems to ask not of NJ but Taiwan, “Why are we afraid of the first time? Every day in life is the first time. Every morning is new. We’re never afraid of getting up every morning. Why?” Much of this weight of uncertainty is placed on the shoulders of the film’s youngest character, Yang-Yang. Instead of fear, the child approaches life with curiosity. In one scene, he asks his father, “Can we only know half of the truth? We can only see what’s in front and not what’s behind.” Taking this into account, the film is seemingly at odds with itself. On one hand, this echoes Yang’s unconventional approaches to cinematography, introducing new ways of viewing familiar images. On the other hand, the frequent use of long takes means that we’re only offered one perspective, often shown the expressions of one character but not the other. This begs the question: can we ever know any truth other than our own? If so, can it be made known through film? Yi Yi is a film that asks more questions than it can ever answer. That, in part, is its brilliance.

Perhaps the truth Yang-Yang seeks is not one that’s offered by the perspective of another, but rather by the perspective accumulated with time. The film illustrates this concept through retrospective proximity, suggesting our memories of events aren’t dictated by our experiences so much as our distance from them.

Yi Yi intricately weaves each thread in the multigenerational Jian household into an elaborate tapestry. Seemingly inconsequential actions have repercussions that reverberate across the narrative.

NJ’s aftertaste of first love echoes the budding romance Ting-Ting experiences, which in turn expounds upon the hints of attraction felt by Yang-Yang. Individually, they’re all vignettes of endearing moments at different stages of life. Taken together, they form a

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much bigger picture. Life isn’t experienced just through memories; it’s the spaces between them that constitute our truths.

As it turns out, Yang-Yang was right. The short-sightedness of our perception can never capture the whole truth, the same way it took me so long to recognize the place I call home. For me, the film is a reminder of many things: family, city life, tradition, childhood. But Yi Yi isn’t about any of those one subjects; it’s about them all. It’s about life.

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The Pond OWEN HOFFSTEN

We walk in the brush along the side of the pond and try to feel good about ourselves. I am young out here, in the middle of the woods, where no one can see me but her. The only thing standing between me and old age is being seen—framed by a gaze that will follow me everywhere as soon as I step off the land. But for now I am alright, circling around this pond with my best friend, feeling like I could do the loop a million times if I wanted. If that’s what it took to stay here forever.

Her name is Mary and she’s been my best friend for the past 10 years. Her eyes are shaped like delicate almonds, and her mouth is rough and sincere. Every time I walk with her, I feel like the two of us drop off the face of the Earth and emerge somewhere else completely different, a place where time doesn’t move like it does normally.

So here, at the pond, where time is sweet and gentle, we walk. When I walk with Mary, the wrinkles on my face subside, if only temporarily. Temporarily is enough for me, though. I consider myself someone who doesn’t place much value in lengthy arrangements in general. I know how rare such things are, so I decide against even trying to pursue them.

“Sometimes I feel like dying,” Mary says to me.

I look up and try to feel her words in my mouth.

“Me too,” I say, even though I know I don’t.

“Why do you think that is, huh?” Mary raises her voice, clearly passionate about the subject. “Why do you think that all of us older people—that is, in our 40s, or 50s, or whatnot—feel like dying, even though we’ve only lived practically half our lives?”

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We stop walking for a second and face each other synchronously.

“Mary…” I hesitate. She waits. “Were you baptized?” I ask.

“No,” she says, a frown creeping up her lips. She shakes her head slightly.

“I don’t know why I asked you that.” The words spill out of my mouth.

“Were you?”

“Yeah, I was.” I admit this automatically, without hesitation.

“Do you ever wish you weren’t?” She asks me.

I haven’t ever thought about this before. I try not to let my words betray this—to give myself away as some unthinking machine. I take a deep breath.

“I’ve thought about if I hadn’t been baptized, what my life would be like.” I pause. “But I’ve never wished I hadn’t been. Or if I had been.”

We’re at the edge of the pond, looking out upon the small expanse of smooth water. I think about the frogs that might lie beneath its surface. It’s winter, so the water is cold and frozen over.

Mary picks up a stone and throws it into the water, watching it break the icy layer with a violent splash. Without words, we move back to the path and continue walking around the pond.

“Wait,” I let out. Mary looks over her shoulder to meet my gaze. “Why don’t we sit here for a while?”

She silently agrees. We sit down on a piece of driftwood, side by side. I pick up a rock and hold it in my hand. She picks one up, too, but it doesn’t stay in her hand for long. She tosses it into the water. Just like the last one she threw, it breaks the ice.

“Why do you walk with me, Julia?”

What? Why would she ask me something so obvious.

“I’m sorry?”

“No, seriously. I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just curious. Why do you walk with me?”

I tilt my head and try to speak truthfully.

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“We’ve been doing this for nearly a decade now,” I say.

“Yes, but… what is it that draws you to me so strongly that you feel the need to go on walks with me every week?”

“I guess… it’s not just you that I’m drawn to.” I gesture clumsily with my hands to the sky. “It’s this place, too.”

“Okay.” Mary shifts in place on the driftwood. “Why do you go on walks with me, in this place.”

I reach for my head. “You always ask so many questions.”

“You don’t have to answer. I’m just curious.”

“Sure.”

We sit in silence for a while as the sun follows its path down to the ground. Just beyond us, across the pond, is a break in the trees, where it looks like the sun’s trajectory will end. Sure enough, before long, it slips underneath this break, into the world below us.

After it gets dark, we slip away, too. Away from the edge of the pond, back to the trail that encircles the water.

“I could walk this loop a million times,” I say to Mary. It’s the first true thing I’ve said.

She turns to me. “Seriously?”

“Well. Couldn’t you?” My voice sounds timid in the dark.

“No.” Mary pauses before continuing, “No, I couldn’t.”

Darkness casts a different shadow on her voice, too. She sounds more sinister than she did in the daylight.

Through the darkness, just barely, I can make out those eyes I know so well. They’re staring at the pond.

“Mary,” I venture, “What are you looking at?”

“Nothing,” she says, her gaze unwavering. She moves forward, toward the pond again, and comes up beside a bank I’ve never seen before. I follow her at a distance.

I suddenly notice the dress Mary is wearing, and wonder how I hadn’t before. A magnificent white linen garment, it looks as delicate as the air. As she gets closer to the water, she lifts up the edges of the dress. Holding her dress up with one hand, she

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reaches the other out to break the ice. She taps the pond as if she’s knocking on a door until it finally cracks under her force. Edging along the corner of the pond, she continues to tap the ice methodically until she’s done significant damage.

“How many feet wide does that look?” Mary’s voice cuts through the air and lands on my body. I move closer to her until I can see the results of her project.

“Maybe six feet,” I say.

“Okay. I have to get home soon,” she says.

I oblige, and before long, we’re walking in a straight line, back to where we came from. I glance up at the sky. It’s overcast, so what few stars I can see are shrouded in fog. Clouds wisp back and forth, teasing us with glimpses of the moon.

Soon we’re back at the parking lot, where our cars sit like obedient animals.

“I enjoyed this,” Mary says.

“I did too,” I say, “Same time next week?”

I know I don’t even need to say the last part, though, because these walks have become so routine. Even though I can’t hear Mary say anything in response, through the darkness, I’m sure I can see her nodding.

So, we get in our respective cars and drive far away from my favorite place in the world. On the drive home, I recall a couple weeks ago, when we were taking our ritual walk, and Mary brought with her some similarly provocative statements. I’ve always been astounded by her and the way her mind works. Difficult to understand, yet such a pleasure to be around. Although we rarely see eye-to-eye, her words have always brought me comfort, though I can never place the reasons why.

It’s been six weeks since we took this last walk around the pond. Over these six weeks, I have abstained from six pond walks;

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I haven’t been able to go for a walk by myself without feeling guilty that I would be leaving Mary out. When I am able to sleep, I have simple and vivid dreams, where I find myself walking with her around the pond, and we never stop nor slow down. One of these days, I’m going to wake up from one of these dreams with the urge to go down to the pond by myself, just to retrace my and Mary’s millions of steps. I wonder what else I’ll find.

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Starburst Mephistopheles ARNESON BLAIR

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Our hero, the Light-Bearer (He-Who-Abhors-Light), emerges from a birthday photo shoot, a head shot, and a retired dance uniform. After many weeks of incubation in the Adobe Suite, he and his rudimentary wings are not finished.

He sits here, in his earthen hut, pondering his next move until eternity. To the right or to the left?

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Ways to get out of here CLAIRE SINOW

Colic infant, born under Cancer skies, I have no choice but to cry every year on my birthday. I don’t mean to, but it’s on the solstice, and I’m forced to endure the longest day. All that sunlight destroys a baby. It’s unnatural. It deforms me, and my lungs and diaphragm develop faster than my mouth can, so I’ve got a speech impediment—it locks the yearning in the pit of my stomach where it can only rot. Despite years of speech therapy, things still seem to come out wrong. My mom wants to make me happy, but I’m never particular enough. I’m turning nine and I beg her to take me to the science museum. I do not want this, but I want to want.

She tells me that this is something she can fulfill. The night before, I can’t sleep; the sun pollutes the atmosphere with the last remnants of obstinate blues which refuse to rest. When we sit in the IMAX theater, my mom reaches across the armrest and puts her hand on my forearm. It swallows me. None of my friends are in town, so it’s just us. She tells me she loves me. I wriggle away. My neck cranes toward the paper sky and the planetarium breathes.

A soft wind passes my ankles. I’m consumed by the anamorophic fisheye, my retinas burned by distortion in the corners of my field of view. Galaxies glow overhead and my sight glazes over. I lean back into my chair, close my eyes, and pray for midnight. It’s exactly what I asked for.

These theaters are special somehow. IMAX is a different format, disrupted by turning the film sideways—the strips morphing from 35mm to 70mm, giving a nine-fold increase in area.

I’m assured it’s better by all technical specs. The new shape gives

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the film higher definition, better projecting power, and wider aspect ratios. Nearly real life. By design, the projection covers the audience’s entire visual field and simulates movement. This has the funny side effect of giving about 10 percent of people motion sickness. I am in that 10 percent. I bought “2D glasses” which put 3D movies back to 2D after seeing they reduce headaches. The first time I wear them to the theater, the images still rush at me, and I exit the theater to sit in the lobby for the next hour and a half, waiting for my family to emerge. The copyright has an asterisk, not for IMAX. I go home sick.

For my 16th birthday I get my driver’s license and Penelope gets cancer. Hodgkin’s Lymphoma is the best-case scenario from the cancer grab bag, I’m assured; 90% of people live. My mom tells me my classmate’s dad had it twice and was helping guide our family through the diagnosis. After the recurrence of his cancer, he ended up getting both of his legs chopped off. I wondered if Penelope would get her legs chopped off, too, and if she would still be her with 25% of her body gone. He also became a Jesus-fanatic, which, frankly, was an outcome for Penelope that I feared even more. I keep going to school and doing my homework and things only feel okay when I’m not at home. In my kitchen, I sit at the table and watch my mom boil blueberries on the stove—Penelope can’t eat anything raw because of her immunosuppression—and my mom wipes her tears onto her apron. I tell her to put some lemon juice in and she snaps at me to mind my business. I’m supposed to drive Penelope to Jackson Peters’s new girlfriend’s house because the chemo gives her motion sickness. When I was her passenger, we drifted over the dashed lines of the highway ramp and I grabbed the ceiling of the car, as if it would help. After that, I was fine chauffeuring. Penelope comes into the kitchen wearing her 2000-dollar, human-hair wig, and it’s the first time I’ve seen her in it all year. She’s drawn on some asymmetric eyebrows with eyeliner and they make her look surprised. My mom and I both stare at her, and in response she stomps on the ground and wails.

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She eats a single blueberry and spits it into the sink, dry heaving— we leave.

Penelope met Jackson Peters at Amherst. He is the son of the former IMAX CEO and skips the majority of his sculpture classes to prioritize his bike rides. He told her she could be hot and would consider dating her if she just lost “30-ish pounds,” inevitable on the Raw Till 4 diet. Jackson would bring a backpack filled with spinach to dinner, shoveling handfuls down his gullet one after another. She hasn’t heard from Jackson since her diagnosis—it’s been nine months. In Izzy’s backyard, Penelope and I share a couch and face the couple across from us. With the new girlfriend under his arm, he waxes philosophical, “Chemo’s all just a big-pharma money pit,” Izzy nuzzles herself deeper into his body.

He continues, “You can’t listen to the doctors, they’re all in on it too,” and Penelope’s tics shake me. “I know all the guys who run these fruit clinics in Mexico—the U.S. government doesn’t want you to know about this—guys on death’s door, stage IV, back to perfect health, all with the power of fruit.” Leaving Izzy’s house, we exit through the side gate. I have to help Penelope into the passenger seat, and she sobs as soon as the engine starts. When she begins radiation a few months, the oncologist says that the diet suggested by her last doctor is outdated with very little evidence, and that she could have been eating raw food this whole time.

Sometime in my childhood, the IMAX company switched over to digital projection for money reasons. They tripled their theater numbers by gutting production. Digital’s cheaper to make, but shot in only 2K, half the resolution of the old version.

The images are blown out, a 100-foot blur swallowing your body from all angles. Theaters chose to downsize the screens, shrinking the problem until their shortcomings slipped beneath the eye’s perception. Seven-story screens dwarfed to one-tenth the size and half the resolution. Aspect ratios shifted, cropping up to 40% of the image. The company still continued to market these showings under the name IMAX, despite hardly resembling what was there

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before. Film is an illusion anyway, 60 frames per second is just a series of still images tricking the mind into motion. The eye can only see up to 48. I don’t think I noticed things were different.

It’s midnight and I see the specter from 50 feet away. For the last few months, his existence was marked only by his car jumping from one parking spot to another. Each time it had moved I imagined him racing to Celeste’s house the night before, unable to contain his excitement to be with her—but when I see him here, his willowy body rolls up one vertebra at a time, a vessel incapable of that sort of eagerness. As I move closer, he crosses away, and for a moment we orbit each other. I cannot discern if he cannot see me, or if he simply does not want to. He drifts away, but I refuse to let him leave me again. I yell to him, “Adam!” My voice wavers so that the second half of his name is even louder, a battle cry. He turns to look and I scream as we lock eyes, “I need to talk to you!”

A moment passes and he is unmoving in the deserted street. I can still hear the echoes bouncing between the concrete buildings surrounding us, before being consumed—my ears ring from the silence. He says nothing but considers me. I take his stillness as an allowance to approach.

Standing in front of him, everything in my body is vibrating, adrenaline making each muscle violent. He steps even closer so that I must crane my neck to look up at him. When he exhales, the white of his breath obscures the tar night. His voice is much smaller than I remembered, “Oh. Hey.” Each word has meaning.

He stoops to hug me, and I hope his coat insulates from my shaking. It just starts spilling out of my mouth “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry—I didn’t mean for it to happen like this.” When he lets go of me, I can only look down at his polished black leather shoes. The corners of my mouth quiver like they’re attached to fishhooks and I can’t stop myself, “I wasn’t trying to ruin your relationship, it was none of my business, she shouldn’t have told Celeste about us, I begged her not to.” This is a lie I repeated to myself enough until I believed it. He only laughs. “Oh yeah, I thought

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you were getting revenge on me or something.” Revenge for what, “You know, because I think I was kind of awful to you.” It’s possible that he’s self-aware. I grin violently, blacking out for a second.

His face drops, “I’m not proud of it.”

I remember exactly how hard I had to press to snap those mice’s necks And how soft their fur was I remember the fingers thrust on cervix And when they wouldn’t die Choking on air Muscles violent Begging for rest I pressed harder I point at what he’s holding, a 12-pack of Miller Light. “Give me one of those.” He fumbles over the package, unable to break it open, and I just stare at his face. I forgot how wide his head was. I also forgot how handsome he was. I just sort of assumed that he must’ve been uglier than how I pictured him. He explains that usually he writes with a handle of vodka in one hand, drinking until finished, but he was out, leaving him to venture to the liquor store. Why didn’t I worry more about him? At this point things blur. I chug a beer and then another. We talk about women’s pockets and my pants and Kaiser Permanente and lithium and him seeing Bohemian Rhapsody at IMAX and his coat and the little swastikas on his coat buttons and that “aren’t you Jewish?” and “aren’t you also?” and his girlfriend got him something from Muji. He lights a cigarette. “I thought you quit smoking,” I say. He responds, “I did.” I’m visibly shaking now. He asks if I’m stressed, and I am stressed, but it’s only because it’s him.

He rifles through his coat and pulls out a tiny, circular pill case. Unscrewing it reveals a rainbow of little capsules, and he swirls them around with his pointer finger and they rattle against the metal. Picking a few out with care, he jabs at my crossed arms with a “here, come on.” I unfold my arms reluctantly and his hand lingers over mine for a moment before pulling back—two and a

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half little red pills sit in my palm. “What are these?” I ask, embarrassed by somehow not knowing his vices. “Oh!” His voice is suddenly juvenile, “They’re just Adderall. Now, I don’t deal, and I don’t just give these out, but I like you a lot.” I stutter out an “Oh I don’t need these,” but he misses my point. “No I don’t need these either, they prescribe me double what I take and so they just keep piling up.” There is a push and pull of our hands. He is intent on giving them to me. I shove them as far down into my pocket as they will go. I ask him to sit on the curb with me. “No, come on— I’ve got to go, I’ve still got that paper.” I’m a wanter, and I want him to stay, but he can’t.

When she comes to my door to say someone has died, I ask, “Was it Adam?” and she says the word “yeah” like how you would pensively agree to lunch plans the next week.

I remember those two skeletons at the Mütter Museum and how they held hands How your smoke stung harder than my own I was so mad at you when it happened But now I’m running out of ways to say come back I sealed those two and a half pills in a small envelope and wrote his name across the top—the only thing I had left of him.

My friend threw them in the trash without asking. A stranger says you must mourn for nine days, and if you cannot cry for that long, you may pay someone to cry for you. I am distraught when I can only make it to day six. His phone gets disconnected, and I’ve stopped being able to reach his voicemail. I can no longer recall what his voice sounded like.

I’ve only just learned IMAX doesn’t stand for anything. I had always thought it was an acronym. It’s just a made-up word.

The cuts covering my fingertips are filled with galaxies, humors bleeding out of me in pinpricks of starlight. I promise Penelope that if her cancer comes back that she can have my bone marrow. She seems shocked, and maybe I’ve been a bad sister.

She tells me the harvesting process would be very painful. I can

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only think of the first book that made me cry, My Sister’s Keeper.

Anna sues her family for the medical rights over her body so that she doesn’t have to donate her kidney to her leukemia-riddled sister, but she ends up dying in a car wreck anyway and they take all her organs. I had reread the last chapter every night for a week to force out tears. Eventually, when nothing came out anymore, I destroyed it, ripping out those five pages of her death to save, and threw out the rest. Penelope describes the needle they plunge into your hip bone, but I’m not listening, instead trying to focus on the highway crossover. I think about the energy transfer of crashing into the highway barrier. I say to Penelope that the pain would be a dumb reason to not do it.

Years later, at Penelope’s graduation dinner, they serve bone marrow, which I can only stare at. The fat percolates through the char and drips down the cremated bone. A single sprig of parsley, karpas, rests on top. I think of when he had cut his hand making dinner, the blood dripping down the skin of the onion and soaking into the cutting board, absolutely indistinguishable from the way an un-rested piece of meat will ooze upon incision. My uncle tells me to take a bite, as his fork sinks into the fatty flesh. When I refuse, he calls me cowardly. I do not refute his point, and it hangs over me for the rest of the night. I’ve gone vegan by now—my body on furlough.

During the first teenage fight I had with my mother, she thrust her hands at me and exclaimed, “Where did my sweet little girl go? I want her back!” I don’t think I noticed things were different. Penelope revealed to me recently that my mom had miscarried between me and my brother, which is why we are three years apart. In the theater, I tell this to Adam, about how I had protested being alive. I stare into middle space at the screen, unable to meet his gaze. “We don’t talk enough about birth trauma,” he says to me. The lights go down, and he leans in to whisper in my ear “It takes a lot to be brought into this world—I didn’t ask for it, either.”

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From a distance NATHANIEL BRASWELL

At times, staring out of a dirty window is like scorning at heaven.

Every night, I watch as low-hanging canopies of crowning amber Recognize the stars, Previewing the canvass On which darkness will paint tonight’s universe.

I sit, aggressively indifferent, and yet alive.

Screaming at least is breathing.

And outside, the sky looms over us, but is only temporary, Like a mountain that loses its magic once climbed.

You say, “I am what I make myself!”

But the mirror stares back at you with crystalline indifference.

A symposium of escape.

agave review • 93

Blooming Through Concrete MARCUS JACKSON

94 • spring 2021

agave review • 95