Analecta 43 by Analecta Literary and Arts Journal

ANALECTA Edition 43

The Literary andArts Journal of the University of Texas atAustin 2016 - 2017

Editorial Staff Editor-in-Chief Emily Varnell

Publicity Editor Sarah Noor

Managing Editor Trevor Heise

Poetry Editor Thomas Nguyen

Blog Editor Kate Richter

Poetry Board Danielle Drew Jennifer Murphy Nick Patton Taylor Trinh Valerie Valdez

Design Editor Brendan Rodriguez Design Board Abby Paschall Nicole Winship Art Editor Jacob Barnes Art Board Ashlianne Bokor Katie McClung Taylor Presley

Prose Editor Amy Ong Prose Board Kevin LaTorre Connor McCambell Samika Parab Case Potter Holly Rice

Analecta is published annually by the Analecta agency of the Senate of College Councils at the University of Texas at Austin. Please visit our website at analectajournal.com to view our web edition, contact our staff, and learn more about joining the staff, submitting work, and ordering a copy of the journal. The works in Analecta 43 were submitted and selected during the fall semester of 2016 and compiled in the spring semester of 2017. The text of Analecta 43 has been formatted with the font family of Times New Roman. The journal was produced with Adobe InDesign CS6.

Editorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Note Analecta, in its forty-three year existence, has always sought to expose talented new writers and artists that make our readers contemplate, question, converse, and momentarily forget the absurdities and tribulations of our contemporary world. To widen our scope of contributors, this year Analecta began the process of reopening submissions to graduate and undergraduate students across the country. After a period of limiting submissions to students at the University of Texas at Austin, we are now excited to reinstate Analecta back into the national circuit of literary and arts journals. We received submissions from six universities beyond the University of Texas at Austin, and we will work to increase this number in the coming years.

Thank you to Trevor; to Kate and Sarah; to Amy, Thomas, and Jacob; to Brendan;

for your incredible dedication to Analecta. Thank you to the design team and the reader boards, for your enthusiasm and discretion. The publication of Analecta 43 would not be possible without the Senate of College Councils. Thank you to Becky Carreon and Veronica Cantu, for your guidance and support. We also want to thank OneTouchPoint for providing printing services. In this digital age, we are proud to continue to offer a printed version of

Analecta to our contributors. Analecta is essentially nothing without our contributors. Thank you for taking a leap of faith and letting us review your work. Out of 271 submissions, we selected 23 that we believe reflect the diversity and talent present in todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s graduate and undergraduate students.

It has been an honor to work for Analecta for the past three years. I rest easy

knowing the journal will be very capable hands. So please, turn off the notifications on your phone, ignore the latest news update, and enjoy some much needed literature and art. Yours truly, Emily Varnell Editor-in-Chief

Table of Contents COVER

MARYAM AMJADI

Art & Photography ALIVE

KEITH PADRAIC CHEW SANDRA DEE

KATE COLEMAN A RAT’S WAKE

BROOKE JOHNSON FIGURE AND TEXTILE STUDY

BROOKE JOHNSON VENN DIAGRAM (AN ARCHIVE IN BLUE)

BROOKE JOHNSON TUPELO MS

DYLAN KOLFLAT L’CHAIM

ARMANDO MONTES III LETTER TO THE SKY

ARMANDO MONTES III MASS (1)

WIL NICHOLS ECHO CHAMBER

ELIZABETH WERTH MARIE ANTOINETTE ET DES FLEURS

ELIZABETH WERTH SUNSET IN THE CITY OF LIGHT ELIZABETH WERTH

Poetry UDAIPUR

MIRANDA ADKINS BLOOM

ALI M. DARWICHE CLEOPATRA

ALI M. DARWICHE FOCUS

JULIO C. DIAZ POESÍA

JULIO C. DIAZ STATIC

NOOSHIN GHANBARI TIME OUT

MATTHEW SPELLER WORDS AND ROOMS

JEREMY STEEN I WRITE POEMS ABOUT BOYS THAT I LOVE

NICOLE TING

Prose BOULDER

MIRANDA ADKINS LA SEÑORA

JONATHAN GONZALEZ

Artist & Author Biographies

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ART & PHOTOGRAPHY

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ALIVE

KEITH PADRAIC CHEW DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPH

Art & Photography

SANDRA DEE

KATE COLEMAN ACRYLIC ON WALL

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A RATâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S WAKE

BROOKE JOHNSON SERIGRAPHY

Art & Photography

FIGURE AND TEXTILE STUDY

BROOKE JOHNSON CHALK PASTEL AND INK

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VENN DIAGRAM:AN ARCHIVE IN BLUE

BROOKE JOHNSON MONOPRINT AND LITHOGRAPH

Art & Photography

TUPELO MS

DYLAN KOLFLAT DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPH

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Lâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;CHAIM

ARMANDO MONTES III ACRYLIC ON CANVAS

Art & Photography

LETTER TO THE SKY

ARMANDO MONTES III ACRYLIC ON CANVAS

MASS (1)

WIL NICHOLS DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPH

Art & Photography

ECHO CHAMBER

ELIZABETH WERTH FILM PHOTOGRAPH

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MARIE ANTOINETTE ET DES FLEURS

ELIZABETH WERTH DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPH

Art & Photography

SUNSET IN THE CITY OF LIGHT

ELIZABETH WERTH DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPH

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POETRY

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UDAIPUR

MIRANDA ADKINS Seven hours south-ish from the Pink City on the hem of the Thar desert There is a girl with ginger hair and vermillion churidars and a lily-white home ten thousand miles away And there is a girl with mehndi-brown skin and a saffron kurti and a stone elephant in her calloused henna hands. “How long does it take to carve one elephant?” the white girl asks. “Chaar din,” the brown girl replies. Just four days. The lake churns slowly under a soft gray sky. In one month, the ginger girl will return to her home. In one month, the brown girl will have seven new elephants.

Poetry

BLOOM

ALI M. DARWICHE we fall between blades of grass. mesh with its shag like leaves. or sticks. the point is we are between thin lines where only three have mouths: the ants, the sky, the god. we are between them like glue between paper between time. i rhyme. the sky is content, but the ants are pacing. they crawl up our legs now. they do not bite. footsteps are all they need. where is god in this? is he happy there? at night, our eyes see colors deeper than blue, so i hold you.

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CLEOPATRA

ALI M. DARWICHE Your eyes rebound off my tongue with the reprise of my sighs to the tempo of skin to taut rock. Saliva rivers down my throat to my damn Aswan lungs. I cough. Trout comes out. “Wrong pipe,” I say, and the hydroelectrics burn on. The tip of my tongue is 50 licks of an envelope dry and grades down the wood you shove in my mouth till the center splits baby-smooth. My gag reflex died when the Moon found me at five, up passed my bedtime and begged: “Please sleep, child. The real world will be here soon.” “Its okay,” I say. I watch the Moon be skinned alive as the sound of cereal bowls crawl over the hill with the Sun.

Poetry

FOCUS

JULIO C. DIAZ Take them off, Notice the blurs life has to offer, As shapes de-evolve, And colours reinvent. Everything becomes a guessing games, With no right answers. Lost in our silhouettes, Seeing our rough edges, And the bindings between us, On lookStreams of colours as glimpses, Pouring out to take out our sight. Un-see the natural vision, Rewarded to you After sleepless nights And dreamless days Being closer to being than to seemingblind. Caress their wrinkles Memorize the brows of their eyes, So that one day, You can look without needing sight.

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POESÍA

JULIO C. DIAZ How is it that poetry sounds so similar to police? You- don’t believe me? Listen, Poesía – Policía. Is it that we are defenders of something? And by weI – mean us – poets. The humble personification of Poesía. And I know, Policía is touchy subject, In Ingles or Spanish, But we both have purpose, Or- at least we used to. La Policía, symbol of order, and heroes of society. La Poesía, painter of imagery, analyst of metaphors, designer of paradoxical personification of anaphoric euphemisms, Or hate of similes. But I guess the better question isWhat happened to us? And- by us- I mean we, The collective Poetas and Policontes, Who used to live side by side,- together Uno holding the peace, el otro writing the piece. What happened?

Poetry

Injusticia everywhere, Los Poetas corrupting Poesía con charla de hate, Los Polis corrupting La Policía with decisiones y acciones of odio, Where does it stop? “Poetry” Or better yetComo es que Poesía no suena como Policía? ¿No me crees? Solo Escucha. Poetry – Police. Is now, that we turn against each other? Leaving whatever similarities we had, behind? Both wanting peace or a piece. Diverging in the yellow woods to two different paths. We are not without fault, but neither is force. When will you learn that it’s not the officer that freaks, While the civilians keeps calm or dies. When did it become that we as the weaponless, Became the threats? While you, the armor carrying ones, Become the fear-stricken children? Por que is que Poesía and poetry, and Policía y police are connected?

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STATIC

NOOSHIN GHANBARI in the silence after you speak in the silence after I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t answer static hisses over the line silver and black bridging an eight hundred mile difference listen can you hear it? cutting through the church yard on my way home I see a firefly / two / ten I remember how you described them on your porch that night:

tiny spots of static electricity in flight alone in the bedroom between empty sheets that spark in the dry texas air I look out the door at the vast expanse of cloudy muted grey rain crackles onto the balcony like static listen right there

Poetry

TIME OUT

MATTHEW SPELLER Do you ever feel like time is dwindling away, like the soft grains of sand that once clung to your palms and polished your edges are now eloping from your fingers, like the soft sheet that was meant to protect you from hardened reality is being stripped string by string to reveal the truth: that you could never bring enough of the beach home with you, that the sand is becoming dirt underfoot and that closing your fists to slow the erosion wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t save you ? All you need to do is remember, the ocean always swirls and churns, just at the edge of your hearing, and the sand is always there squishing beneath your feet and between your toes, and the beach is always there with you, the salty air and the swirling breeze and the sun set softly overhead, in that place between places, in that moment between moments, where the problems of the present seem more like a secondary fiction, a home of the soul and a beacon for storytellers and elaborate fantasies, and the washing of the ocean and the stickiness of the sand and the glowing sun are beautiful and never fleeting.

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WORDS AND ROOMS

JEREMY STEEN

Imagine a word is a room and all the people that know what the word means are in the room All the people that are in the room share what it is to understand this word Imagine the word is a song all the people that hear the song get to be in the room They all sing along, they all get to make up their own words and there is less room Imagine these words are a room. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re the only person who has ever read them so the room is quiet and small The room is empty but this room is ours

Poetry

I WRITE POEMS ABOUT BOYS THAT I LOVE

NICOLE TING

I wrote poems about boys that I loved. I wrote poems about boys that I wrote poems about boys that I loved. I wrote poems about boys that touched my skin and suddenly, I was a burning house with a wide-eyed heart that forgot how to say hello. I wrote poems about boys that were hurricanes and left the taste of salt and broken inside my mouth, my mouth like an open wound that never knew what it meant to be whole. I wrote poems about boys that made the blood thick on my skin look like soft roses and I talked about boys that made me almost forget that love causes wars and I dreamed about a boy that told me he loved me even though I was a soldier with eyes squeezed shut and trembling hands that traced war stories into his side of the bed at night. I dreamed about you. 000000000000000000000000000000000000 I dreamed about you. But I never wrote about you. I couldn’t write about you. I didn’t But I never wrote about you. I couldn’t write about you. I didn’t know how because the riptide of your smile made me terrified that I would get you all wrong, that you wouldn’t stay if I wrote the wrong poem. I didn’t know how because you deserved better than my poems, better than the way I made these storms and fires and gunshots in the dark look like wildflower fields at sunrise. You deserved better than the way I made everything seem beautiful just because I wanted them to be beautiful. You deserved the truth, and I didn’t know how to write the truth because I didn’t know what the truth was. Or maybe I didn’t want to know the truth, the truth that I was ruined glass on the floor – that you were good and I wasn’t. I think I always knew you were too good for me, just like I always knew the morning sun was behind the curtains, but I didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to see the sun because the summer rain of your voice made me believe that I could have this love, that I could have you anyways. I didn’t want to write whatever this is because I didn’t want you to I didn’t want to write whatever this is because I didn’t want you to know the truth, too. I didn’t want you to realize that ruined glass on the floor wasn’t your thing; I didn’t want it to be night, didn’t want you to leave. But you did. You left. You’re not here anymore, and – And you are the reason why my poems don’t make sense anymore.

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PROSE

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BOULDER

MIRANDA ADKINS Tuesday nights at Elkbridge Oaks Apartments are so eerie quiet, I heard the cab pull into the gravel lot a full two minutes before Helen knocked on the door. It took me another full minute to answer the door. It’d been a long shift kind of day and I would’ve loved to pretend I wasn’t home. But I didn’t know it was Helen, or I would’ve gotten up faster, probably. I hadn’t seen her in several weeks at that point. Her hair was a matted disaster and her eyes looked clear and raw, like she’d been crying but stopped a few hours ago. “Hey,” I said, breaking into a yawn. “What are you doing here?” Our parents’ house, where Helen had been staying for the past - what was it, almost two months? Holy hell - was more than a half hour away across creeks and down country roads. It was after midnight, and she’d never even been to my apartment before. “I need your help,” she said, her voice bleeding like an open wound. “I’m pregnant. Can I come in?” I stepped aside and Helen entered warily. I saw her glance at the stacks of dirty dishes scattered around the den. Any other time and I’d probably consider being embarrassed by the mess. That night I’m sure neither of us really cared. “Is it Birdy’s?” I asked, wary. Helen perched on the edge of the couch, like she was anxious to fly away, or explode. “Yeah,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “Helen, what are you gonna do?” Helen paused for a moment, and then took a deep breath like she’d forgotten to breathe. “I need you to take me to Boulder.” Her cheeks went slightly pink, as if she was shocked and offended to hear the words from her own mouth. Kids like us from central Wyoming went to Boulder for one of three reasons: college, weed, and abortions. It was an infamous eight-hour drive of shame.

Prose

I noticed a dull buzzing in my ears. “Can’t one of your friends take you? Maddy, maybe?” “She has work tomorrow.” “So do I.” “Pax,” Helen said, eyes suddenly pink and shining. “You’re my brother. This is a family emergency, I’m sure your boss would understand. Please.” I realized I wasn’t even looking at her. My eyes traced constellations between the stains on the carpet. “Who else knows?” “Nobody,” she replied, “but Mom will figure it out if we aren’t quick about this.” “Okay, I’ll take you in the morning.” I was still staring at the ground, but I jumped a little when I felt Helen’s arms wrap around me. “Thanks, Pax,” she said. “I’m really sorry about all this.” “Yeah,” I said. “So am I.” I grabbed some blankets from the closet and put some leftovers in the microwave for Helen. She ate quietly, still perched precariously on the corner of the couch. I folded the blankets on top of each other on the bedroom floor. “You can have the bed,” I told her. “We’ll get up early and head out. It’s a long drive.” I didn’t sleep much the rest of that night, but when I did I dreamed of Birdy. His face was blurry but I knew it was him. We were twelve years old, playing in his mom’s house back on the ranch, and he kept running from room to room and yelling at me to catch him. Every time I entered a room, he had disappeared, and I heard his voice calling again from the other side of the house. At one point, I saw him standing outside, beckoning for me to come downstairs. But when I burst through the back door, he was gone. The sky was green and stormy, and in Birdy’s place lay the body of the dead dog we’d found in the backwoods ten years ago. Its jaw jutted open and its eyes were gone, replaced with pulsing colonies of maggots. I

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woke up in cold sweat at four and didn’t sleep any more after that. Helen woke up quietly at seven. As she quietly made the bed and quietly brushed her teeth, I thought about how quietly she’d fallen in love with Birdy. This year would’ve been their fifth anniversary, and their second since the wedding. Other people said they’d totally seen it coming, them getting together, but who could’ve blamed me for being surprised. Elkbridge Oaks is technically “in town,” but it’s isolated on either side and dangles at the edge of the interstate, across from a cattle ranch that rolls away from town for maybe a hundred miles, I don’t even know. The sign down the way calls it Harris Ranch. I don’t know the Harris family but I’ve heard their name around and I figure they’re probably pretty important. Their kids didn’t go to the county school like me and Helen. I wonder how many of their daughters they’ve had to send off quietly to Boulder. Elkbrook isn’t as conservative a town as it could be, but the people here are prideful. Can’t get caught on the road to Boulder, but you can’t be caught knocked up and alone, either. At least Helen was technically married. That little gold band she picked out with Birdy was still snug around her finger. We stopped at the McDonald’s drive-thru for breakfast before leaving town. I got one of those egg sausage sandwiches. Helen just wanted coffee. Said she wasn’t feeling well. The sun should have risen, but the shadows were still dim and fuzzy. Maybe it would rain. It was raining on the day I met Birdy. Seems weird to remember, but they had almost cancelled the first day of second grade because of inclement weather, which was abnormal for central Wyoming. Wasn’t I lucky that they kept the school buses running and that I ended up sitting next to the new kid from Utah. The teacher called his name on the roll as Evan Rogers, but he told us all that his name was Birdy and it always had been. Sometimes I thought that the Rogers family had been

Prose

washed into town by that first-day rainstorm. Birdy’s mom was tall, loud, and widowed, and her seven children bickered like cats and dogs. They didn’t have money but they had ties to the Church back in Utah, and always went to temple with their grandparents a couple hours north on the Interstate. Birdy was the youngest, with six older sisters, but his loud red hair and wiseass mouth made sure he was never taken for granted. From second grade on, he was always the smartest kid in every class. I never left his side and made sure he never left mine. We went up through school doing everything together. During our sophomore year of high school, the district finally scraped up the funds to start a football team, and Birdy and I were two hours early to the tryouts for fear of getting passed over. We’d spent the entire summer running the backroads and lifting heavy things in the Rogers barn. Birdy was always calling me during commercial breaks while he watched ESPN, reading through lists of detailed notes he had taken. “Bird, you know that we don’t have to make up our own plays, right?” “Come on, Pax, we gotta be prepared. We’re only sophomores so we gotta make sure Coach takes us seriously. Besides, what if I wanna be captain someday?” Coach did take us seriously, and Birdy did become captain the next year. He wasn’t big and he was a lot weaker and slower than some of the other guys, but he was smart and he practiced harder than anyone else, even me. I tried to keep up but Coach never liked me as much as Birdy. Nobody did. Not that anyone ever really hated me, but Birdy was something else. Pax Grier could be your friend, but at Haven County High, Birdy Rogers was a god. The first few hours were slow-going. We had to stop every few miles for Helen to vomit in a gas station bathroom. Eventually I just got her a Big Gulp cup to throw up in and told her to chuck it out the window when she was done.

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bad.”

“Sorry,” she said. “The morning sickness hasn’t been this

“Maybe it’s nerves,” I offered. “Yeah, maybe,” she replied. She clutched the Big Gulp cup close to her face, so that her voice took on a hollow plastic echo. By nine or so she seemed to be doing a lot better. People had always thought Helen was younger than me, even though we were twins and in the same year of school. She was small and fair, which I think made people treat her extra gently. She never did learn to drive, because of her seizures. And she’d always had that eager, wide-eyed gaze, especially around Birdy. By junior year, I’d stopped bringing him around anymore and eventually Helen started dating that senior on the basketball team, Kip Hughes. His height and scruffy face only made her look younger standing next to him. Helen wasn’t the only girl who was head over heels for Birdy. Even girls with boyfriends came up to me when he wasn’t around and asked if he was seeing anyone. “No,” I always replied, trying not to be smug. Birdy never showed any of those girls much interest. Somehow he managed to be adored by everyone, even though I was his only real friend. At least that’s what he told me that one night, as we walked home down the backroads from a football pasture party on Don Teague’s parents’ land. We were stumbling around and our hands brushed each other a few times but we didn’t need to be embarrassed. It was dark and nobody was around, but I wouldn’t have cared if they were. “I don’t care that I’ve only got one friend,” he’d said that night. “You’re the only one I’d ever care to have.” We didn’t kiss that night. It took us a couple more months. We were drunk again, this time in the loft of the Rogers barn. It was mid-afternoon and the sunshine was filtering sleepily through the little window we’d left cracked. Birdy had stayed home from temple that weekend due to a pretty nasty football fracture a few days be-

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fore. His mom had insisted that he stay home and rest. It had taken a good ten minutes of laughing and grunting to get him up the rickety barn ladder with the liquor I’d snuck from home. It was warm and breezy and our heads were swimmy and light. Birdy told me again, “You’re the only one I’d ever care to have.” His lips were dry but they tasted like heaven. Elkbrook isn’t as conservative a town as it could be, but the only gay people I’d ever seen were on TV. I wasn’t about to tell anyone what had happened, even after we kissed again in the barn, and in my truck, and even a couple times in the locker room when we were early for practice. We gave each other our virginities at Christmas that year. We never mentioned anything about love. We didn’t have to. Helen and I stopped at a Denny’s for lunch. I ordered a burger. Helen got chicken noodle soup. A gaggle of little kids were crowded around the jukebox, smashing the buttons for every song and shrieking at each other for shoving or blocking the view. Their moms sat in a corner booth, surrounded by picked-over kids meals that were going cold. They looked exhausted. Helen wouldn’t look at them. We’d been on the road for five hours or so, and the state line had to be close. Helen called a couple hotels to try to get a room for the night. At one point our dad called, and she assured him that she was spending the day with Maddy. “Great,” I think he said. “A nice change of scenery’ll do you good.” “Dad’s been worried about me,” she said later. “Has he called you at all?” “No,” I said, eyes on the road. “You doing okay Pax?” “Yeah, I’m fine.” “He was your friend too.” “Not really.”

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The summer before senior year was when things started to sour. It started when Birdy’s youngest older sister, Ruthie, found my football sweatshirt in Birdy’s laundry. “I guess he just left it over here, I don’t know,” he’d explained. I told him it was nothing, but Birdy was distraught. “They’re gonna find out, Pax,” he said. “They’ll kick me out, you know that. I don’t have anywhere else to go. They can’t find out.” “They won’t,” I said. “Anyone can lose a sweatshirt. I’ll be more careful.” I offered a reassuring kiss, but his lips were stiff. Our neighbors down the way, the Thomases, invited us all for a Fourth of July barbecue. Their son was a star sophomore running back and, more importantly, they had an above-ground pool. Helen had just broken up with Kip before he left for college in California. I tried to convince myself that she and Birdy weren’t talking to each other any more than usual. Birdy and I fought more than we fucked that July. Pretty soon, all we did was fight. He was convinced that his mother was suspicious. He swore that Ruthie knew the truth. On August 14th he called me at home. “We can’t do this anymore, Pax,” he sobbed. “Birdy, come on, it’s gonna be okay.” “It’s too dangerous. I’m scared.” “You’re being crazy.” “Shut the fuck up, don’t tell me I’m crazy!” “Birdy, I love you.” I listened to him choke and sob for what must have been a year. “We can’t do this anymore.” The line was dead. The very next month, he asked Helen to homecoming with a box of sugar cookies and a massive cloud of white balloons. I’d never seen my sister smile so wide. We arrived at the clinic in Boulder mid-afternoon. They gave Helen a clipboard which barely managed to pinch together a massive stack of paperwork. The waiting room smelled like a mix

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between hospital and cheap Febreze. Nobody there looked happy. After Helen was called into the back, I watched maybe a dozen episodes of some HGTV show on the waiting room television set. Helen told me later that the procedure was a lot faster than she expected, but that they had to do a lot of tests before they could get down to it. She came out a little woozy but her eyes looked twenty shades brighter. We got Mexican food down the street from our motel, then went back to the room early so Helen could rest. I found a crime show on the motel room TV, but neither of us were really watching. I found myself drifting near the edge of consciousness and realized that I’d driven all day on only a couple hours of sleep. “Pax, are you awake?” I almost didn’t answer, but I grunted faintly in affirmation. “Thank you for bringing me here.” I blinked a few times and looked over at Helen. Her hair was wet from the shower and she was wearing sweatpants, clutching her legs to her chest. “Yeah, no problem.” “You know, Birdy and I wanted kids,” she went on, not really looking at anything in particular. “I hope he wouldn’t be disappointed in me. But I couldn’t keep it, you know?” “I know.” “I still don’t know why he did it, you know? He seemed really happy. He had just gotten a new job. We were looking for a house.” “I know.” “I miss him, Pax.” I didn’t say anything. Didn’t tell her about the time I had to talk him down from swallowing a bottle of pills that summer before senior year. About our drunken kiss after his bachelor party, and the screaming match that followed. About how much it’d killed me when I heard him recite his vows at their wedding. “Helen Rogers,” he’d said, “You’re the only one I’d ever care to have.” “Yeah,” I finally said, turning off the TV. “I miss him too.”

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LA SEÑORA

JONATHAN GONZALEZ Dad always said that we needed to be nice to la señora next door ever since we were kids growing up. He never explained why and I never felt the need to ask questions, until that year. As an eleven-year-old girl, I was busy going to see my friend, Claudia, next door, where we’d listen to the radio and pretend to be singers. But that year was different. It was one of the hottest summers anyone had ever lived through in North Oakwood, including la señora. She’d been living by herself in the old house with the beige paint across the street since before I was born. We had no room to judge. I had been sharing a room and queen-sized bed with my younger twin brothers, Tómas and Tony, since I was five. We lived in a blue, two bedroom, one bathroom, wooden house. Before my dad fixed up it, the foundation looked like it had been designed by a fifth grader using popsicle sticks. We lived on the corner of Pueblo and Washington. I used to ask my father why we couldn’t live in a nice house like the ones down the street on Broadway. He would tell me, “If we could, we would, mija.” Tony once heard that la señora had been living in the house next door before North Oakwood was even around. I remember imagining her sitting in front of her house on her porch swing hanging underneath the shade with nothing but thick, overgrown bunches of grass and trees scattered around her. A blue jay would fly by and land on the porch railing. She’d smile and look at peace for a moment. It was amusing, especially when you saw her in real life. Most of the time, she looked mean, always keeping a watchful eye on anyone crazy enough to step near her hydrangeas. I didn’t blame her. They were one of the only things out here that seemed to grow. Her whole yard was well-maintained in the way that some people might groom their pets, or fix up their cars. The grass was lush and green compared to the dry, brittle straw poking up from our

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lawn. She decorated it with a small birdhouse with a walnut stain, and small statues of animals, while our lawn was decorated with my brother’s mountain bike, cheap plastic lawn furniture, and a small charcoal grill. Despite her mean mugging, I remember the hydrangeas were my favorite part of the walk to elementary school in the mornings and afternoons. I’d walked by and hold out my hand and graze past them just for a quick touch of the smooth, delicate petals. Sometimes a breeze would pass by, it almost looked like they were waving at me, waiting for me to arrive. Without fail, la señora was always out there on that swing. She’d had it in for us since the time the boys were playing catch in the street. Tomas had thrown the ball too hard. It went right by Tony’s glove and into the bushes. You would have thought that they’d taken turns pelting her shrubs with baseballs the way she came down from her porch swing. It was reflexive, almost like she’d been anticipating that day for a long time. She sprung up, which was surprising for a larger woman like herself, and power-walked over to the bush and pulled out the ball from the shrubs. I had been coloring at the table on the front lawn when I noticed all that movement. I should’ve been watching. The boys were frozen like some of those lawn ornaments in her yard and started stuttering between themselves. She yelled at them, “Have you got any sense in you?” “It was an accident.” That was all Tony and Tomas could come up with. Those words didn’t quite cut it for her, so she chose to bring the conflict to our front door. She stomped across the street, and over our lawn in retribution for the damage done to hers. Her short, white curly hair bounced up and down furiously. I sat at the table lamb-like to the passing of the big, bad, neighbor from across the street. She wrapped on our front door with three quick knocks. Her balled up fist seemed to violently expose the thick veins under her pale skin. I tried to look through the kitchen window, but the curtains were

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drawn. There was nothing I could do to fix what had happened, or warn my mother. My mother opened the door and found la señora standing at her doorstep, while I sat in the background and looked down at my colorings. “You need to teach those kids to respect people’s property,” she spouted at my mother. She moved her hands around angrily to emphasize her displeasure. My poor mother was still learning English with my father by taking afternoon classes at the high school. But she didn’t need to speak English to see that the elderly white woman in front of her was upset. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again,” she said and bowed her head in a show of respect. “Make sure it doesn’t happen again. It takes work to keep my yard clean!” la señora grumbled as she turned to walk away. She trudged off back to her yard, went for the water hose, which hung coiled around a black plastic reel on the side of her house. Then, la señora started to water her plants, the grass, and even her small ash tree that was both a necessary action and a message sent to us. After that, she trudged up the steps of her porch and went right past the swing for the front door. We didn’t see her for the rest of the day. My mother scolded us for bringing a hellstorm to her front door. “Ya no juegen asi cuando este la señora,” she commanded,“It’s bad enough that most of them don’t want us here.” I’d never seen my mother roll over for anyone, but that day she became docile in la señora’s presence. I really couldn’t believe that woman had the audacity to come to our door and tell my mother how to raise us. I understood why she was upset, but the way she spoke to my family that day left me bitter. She knew the boys couldn’t defend themselves. She knew my mother didn’t have the words to defend herself. And I sat by without uttering a peep.

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I was only seven at the time, but I could tell that woman didn’t like us. Like my mother said, it wasn’t because we were troublemakers, or disrespectful. But my mother and father seemed content with letting things slide. The twins didn’t understand our conflict yet. They still thought our pet beagle, Huck, could understood them when they talked to him. I still remember the endless repetition of “Oh, My Darling” on Saturday mornings while they watched Cartoon Network. That poor dog probably wished he could speak up and shut them up. If you paid enough attention, it wasn’t hard to miss the way la señora felt the need to close her garage door while we had cookouts, and my dad and my uncles drank beer on the lawn, or the way she looked out the blinds of her front window before she went to sit outside. And it extended to more than just my family. Once, someone had stolen her push lawnmower from the backyard while she’d been away visiting relatives for a couple of days. Whoever did it managed to hop that rickety wooden fence without anyone noticing. She got back, took inventory of her belongings, and called the cops once she noticed it missing. She insisted they go door to door to check everyone’s garage and backyards. The thing was ancient, so I don’t know why she made all that fuss, but she did. They came to us first, and my father let them in reluctantly. We had nothing to hide. “Have a good day… cabrones,” he said after they finished. But as I sat at the table in the front yard, I overheard his conversation with my mother through the open kitchen window. “I don’t understand why she’d think we stole it. Do we look like thieves? Es ridiculo,” he told her. I walked inside after that. “Why don’t you tell her something?” I asked my father. “What are you talking about?” he asked me. “Tell that mean old lady something for thinking we’re thieves.” “Hey, show some respect,” he fired back. “This isn’t our

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place to do what we want.” I respected my father’s words, and my mother’s orders to behave around our neighbor, but it was never a willing obedience. Whenever we did get the chance to play outside and she came out, we’d retreat inside to see what was on the television. We kept Huck in the back yard most of the time to avoid any complaints of his barking. But life isn’t like a 30 minute sitcom where the everything got resolved by the end, so it didn’t end there. I had gotten out of school one day and was waiting for my father. I’d just started middle school, which was way too far for me to walk to, so I rode with my dad every day. My mother still didn’t know how to drive at the time, plus we only had the one truck. Tómas and Tony were still in elementary school, so they could still walk everyday. It was a hot, and I’d gotten impatient waiting under the awning at the front entrance that did nothing to shade me from that thick, humid Southeast Texas air. While I waited for my dad to arrive, I remember seeing an aqua-blue Crown Victoria come into view. The paint on the hood of the car was slowly chipping away. My face tightened and my brows came together. It was Old Blue, the same car I’d seen sitting out across the street in the driveway my whole life. As Old Blue drew nearer, I could make out la señora with her seat pulled up to where her chest almost touched the steering wheel, and these thick black sunglasses covering up most of her face. I wondered what the old lady must’ve been doing when the car did the unexpected and turned into the school entrance. She pulled up in front of me, rolled down the window, and waved me over. I hesitated, but thought of what my mother might say later on. After I lost that imaginary argument, I stared out from under the awning in her direction, and thought about acting like I didn’t know her. That’s when she yelled out to get my attention. “Isabel! Come on, child!” she called out.

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I kept looking in her direction, but I didn’t react. There were still a few other kids at the front of the school and all their attention was on that old white woman calling out to me. “Can you not hear? You need to come with me. I’m your ride today,” she said. I stood there for a moment. It was one of the few times I really paid attention to the sound of her voice. Iit was strange the way she stretched out her vowels. Even then, she intimidated me. “I’ve got a note right here from your daddy,” she said and waved a piece of paper at me. I relelnted and walked over finally. It read: Isabel, I had to go do something important for work today. Mrs. Abbott will pick you up and take you home for today. Please, be respectful. I remember reading the note multiple times, trying to make sense of it. Those English lessons at the high school had served my father well. I didn’t even know he could write complete sentences. Mrs. Abbott, I thought. Some wires in my brain refused to connect. My father’s handwriting was clear and showed a familiarity that I never imagined between them. I heard la senora speak to me once more, “Come on, missy. You got all these people waiting. Move your butt.” I nodded my head and got inside Old Blue. We rode silently at first. But after a couple of blocks, she spoke up. “How was school today?” she asked without looking at me. She sat there gripping her steering wheel with both hands as if she’d lose control of the car at thirty miles per hour. For what I remember as the first time in my life, she turned her head and I felt her gaze fall upon me intentionally. “Speak up,” she ordered me. “It’s rude to stay quiet when someone speaks to you.” I stayed quiet this time, but out of choice. Not fear. “What did you learn?” she asked. I got tired of hearing her, so I started speaking, but faster than my brain could put together words. I said, “We, uh, learned

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mals -”

about like how there are like different habitats where ani-

“Stop saying‘like’so much. It doesn’t sound right,” she corrected me as if I didn’t know how to tell my own story properly. “You can’t talk to me like that,” I replied sharply. “What are you talking about?” she said in a way that almost sounded sincere. “You’re always so mean to us. You must really not like us.” “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” “I don’t care what you think about me.” Pure silence followed that moment. We arrived home. She pulled into her driveway and turned off Old Blue. We sat there for a few awkward seconds. As much as I wanted to rush out of the car, I felt like it’d be rude if I made the first move as if I hadn’t crossed that line already. La señora took her keys out of the ignition and put them into her purse, which she’d had underneath her seat. She removed her glasses from her face and I saw those piercing blue eyes. During the shrub incident, I’d been at a distance, but at that moment her face was clear to me. It was a face with hard lines creased from the weight of many years and experiences. She opened up her door and I saw my cue to bounce, but she turned to me before stepping out of the car. “Tell your daddy if he ever needs me to pick you up to give me a call. And tell your mama thank you for the cake,” she said. I heard her, but said nothing in response. We went our separate ways. I didn’t turn back. I got home and walked inside still thinking about what la señora said about my parents. My mom was in the kitchen cutting carrots for a stew, and my brothers were in the living room on the couch watching cartoons. “I’m home!” I called out. “Como te fue hoy? Did la señora get you on time? Your dad had to go see a man about fixing the gutters on a house today, but he

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only had time in the afternoon.” “Yeah, she did,” I told her, not mentioning my conversation with la señora. “Were you respectful?” she asked. “Why should I be?” I asserted. “Isabel, don’t talk to me like, and you better not have talked to her like that.” I looked down at the ground and kicked at the linoleum floor. “Why don’t you ever call her by her name? Mrs. Abbott.” She looked surprised. “It’s out of respect like how you say ‘Mister’ and ‘Misses,’ right?” “But I thought you didn’t like her because how she talked to you that day the boys threw the ball at her shrubs.” My mother stopped cutting. “Why would I not like her? That was a long time ago.” “It wasn’t right.” “You can’t be like that, Isabel. You can’t hold onto things and treat people bad.” My mother scooped up the slices she’d cut and dumped them into the pot. “She’s been good to us. La señora was one of the first people we met here. She helped us become citizens, got us the English lessons, and helped put you in school. We didn’t know how to do those things.” I felt my boldness from earlier shrinking. “Why don’t you ever talk about it?” “You never asked.” she replied coolly. “You need to be thankful. That poor woman doesn’t like to go out since her husband died. It happened when you were three.” I said nothing. I walked out of the room. Not only had I found out my parents were more than just acquaintances with this woman, but she had been married. I was exhausted by so much input in such a short amount of time. I decided to call it a day.

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Weeks passed after the day la señora had picked me up without any need for the incident to be repeated. Summer arrived. We were free from school. I was free from the possibility of making direct contact with la señora. I had found out her real name, but I didn’t feel the need to make any major changes to how I approached her. Still, I had flashes that came to me when I looked across the street and saw Old Blue sitting in the driveway, the shrubs with hydrangeas moving with the wind, the shifting of the blinds across the street. I imagined my mother and father, in their twenties, moving into a neighborhood where they didn’t know a soul. Across the street, la señora would be working on her garden, and a faceless man was painting the exterior of the house. Old Blue sat in the driveway looking almost new. The couple looked across the street and waved to my parents. My parents waved back. I’d see my mother walking around with a bulge. She’d take a seat on our cheap lawn furniture with my father was grilling fajita. Music played lively in a way that my parents never allowed anymore. Again, la señora and the man were across the street, this time sitting on their porch swing while holding hands. Both sides waved to another once again. Then, I was running around in the yard as a child while my parents were bringing in groceries to the house. La señora pulled into the driveway, only she was alone this time around. My parents waited to wave, but when she got out of the car, she walked up the small path to her house without glancing over. We were outside. Old Blue was missing from the driveway across the street. It was noon and the sun was out, but it wasn’t too hot. The boys were playing with Huck, throwing a red ball across the yard for him to fetch. I watched from the lawn chair on the porch. There was nothing to do on a day like that one. Then, Old Blue appeared down the street cruising our way.

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The brakes made a slight screeching sound as the car slowed and turned into the driveway. The rear lights on Old Blue were foggy and needed to be cleaned. He was the only thing she owned that wasn’t well taken care of. Maybe her husband was the one that did all that, I thought. “Tony. Tomas. Take Huck inside the house,” I instructed them. “But we’re playing,” Tony whined. “Guys, come on. We’ll go have ice cream.” “I didn’t know there was ice cream!” Tómas yelled as he ran for the door. Tony followed. I looked behind me across the street. La señora was getting something out of her trunk big clear bags with dirt inside. She looked like she was struggling. I turned and saw the boys through the window talking to my mother in the kitchen. I wanted to head inside, but something told me to do otherwise. I couldn’t stop thinking that if this had been a few years back, there would’ve been someone helping her. I clenched my small fists and started walking across the street. La señora had managed to pile two of the bags of dirt onto one another, but there were still three more bags waiting to be moved in the trunk. Her back was turned to me. I saw her bend over and stretch back as she tried to lift the next bag, but this one must’ve been a little too much. “Excuse me, Mrs. Abbott,” I called out. She did a little jump and put her hand to her chest. “My Lord, you scared me.” “I wanted to see if you needed help.” She stared and said, “I’ll be alright.” She turned back around and managed to lift the bagin one big heave this time. I wanted to leave. But while she plodded over to the pile, I went to her trunk and went for one of the bags.They were really heavy. No wonder she was having trouble, I thought. La señora had dropped her bag onto

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“I told you that I was fine,” she insisted. “It’s okay. I wanted to do it, Mrs. Abbott,” I assured her. She sighed heavily and wiped sweat from her brow. “Thank you, darling.” “You’re welcome,” I replied. I got to the pile and let the bag fall with a thud on the ground. I wiped my hands on my jeans, which I hope my mom wouldn’t scold me for later, and got ready to work. I turned around and she was still standing there. “Would you be able to help me out here a couple of hours? I’ll pay you,” she asked. I had to think about it; helping her move a bag or two was one thing, but the whole yard didn’t sound so great. Did I really want to sit there under the sun with this woman I didn’t know? Before I could think about the question, my mouth answered, “Sure.” She put me to pull weeds from the flower bed in front of the house, while she trimmed the shrubs that lined the street.“You gotta get them from the root, or they’ll grow back,” she instructed me. I turned and was about to head to the flower bed when she called out to me once more, “Here, it’s hot outside.” She tossed me a white baseball cap that she kept in the truck along with a tan sun hat with a wide brim that she put on. Then, she handed me a small hand cultivator, and told me how to use it. I went to work on the weeds. I knelt down on the grass and with the tool in my hand and raised it. I swung through hard, not knowing how hard the dirt would be to dig into. The cultivator sunk it smoothly, which surprised me. I touched the dark brown soil with my hands. It was cool and soft, small clumps broke apart easily in my hand. I’d get to some weeds, dig into dirt, and pulled on them until they surrendered. Sometimes, I had to move around the dirt to get at the weeds, but it wasn’t bad. I was focused on doing a precise job. La señora was behind me trimming the shrubs. She had on her sunglasses and her own large white sunhat. Her shadowy figure was outlined by beams of light. I couldn’t make out her face, but the

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fluid and continuous pace of her work matched the way I’d seen on my parents moved when they worked. Something I never would’ve thought they had in common. I finished the job she gave me, and she put me to do other things like watering the hydrangeas and spreading out mulch inside the bags we’d moved earlier. As I worked, I started to think about what it’d be like to start my own garden at home. I thought of planting lilies and petunias and marigold. I’d have a garden that circled the oak tree in the back and another that lined the front porch. The more I thought about it, the faster time seemed to go by. La señora brought me a glass of lemonade after the first hour of work and told me that she called my mom to tell her I was helping her. I looked across when she told me this and happened to catch my mother looking through the blinds of our house across the street. I smiled and thought about how funny things looked on the other side. We continued to work while the sun slowly sank towards the ground. She checked on me regularly to see how I was doing, and it didn’t bother me this time. “How are you doing, darling?” she asked. “Good, Mrs. Abbott,” I replied. “How are you?” “I’m still here, ain’t I?” she replied. We smiled. We laughed. We trimmed, cut, and cleared the way for a brighter future and left behind the past. When we finished, we felt a fresh breeze that had traveled from a long way pass by, and we happily welcomed it to our neighborhood.

Artist & Author Biographies Maryam Amjadi is a freelance artist/graphic designer from Houston, Texas. Likes include staying hydrated, spaghetti, and high quality markers. Dislikes include but are not limited to slow walkers, papaya, and low rise jeans. Miranda Adkins is a fourth-year linguistics and Hindi-Urdu major in LAH whose love affair with language is ever-evolving. Things that make her heart sing: mountains, giant Renaissance paintings, her three sisters, and the way the stars look on clear winter nights. Aside from writing, her other creative joy is documentary film. Keith Padraic Chew is a fourth-year LAH student majoring in Humanities (War, Security, and Intelligence), Chinese, and Government. Keith loves to travel away from the beaten path for photography, thrill, and adventure. Kate Coleman is a senior in the Plan II and English Honors Programs. She is currently writing her thesis on Randy Newman, and hangs out with her cat (and muse) in her free time. Ali M. Darwiche is a 5th year Computer Science, Business, Creative Writing, and Voice student. A third culture kid; Ali grew up in Cairo, Egypt during middle and high school. To Ali, poetry is the playground for his diverse background. It is where his many trains of thought finally collide.

Julio C. Diaz is a sophomore English major, working on his teaching certificate. He is 20 years old and has only tasted a small speckle of what life has to offer. To understand his writing, look at the blank spaces his writing has to offer, and youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll see what he hides. He is not a poet by choice but by necessity. Nooshin Ghanbari is a third-year Plan II Honors/English major, as well as the recipient of the 2016 Ellen Engler Burks Memorial Scholarship for Creative Writing and a recent finalist for the James F. Parker Prize for Poetry. Her work has previously been published in the United States, England, and Wales. Jonathan Gonzalez is from Bryan, Texas. He graduated from Texas A&M University with a BA in English, and a M.Ed in Curriculum & Instruction. He currently lives in San Marcos, Texas where he studies Journalism at Texas State University. His work has been featured in Voices de la Luna. Brooke Johnson is a student at the University of Texas at Austin pursuing a BFA in Studio Art, a BA in Art History, and a BDP certificate in Museum Studies. Currently, Brookeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s artwork primarily focuses on sculpture, video, and photography. Dylan Kolflat is a full-time student at the University of Texas at Austin completing a double-major in Psychology and Sociology. With a passion for learning, community service and the outdoors, he hopes to incorporate his love of nature with his goal of helping others by

Armando Montes III is a 4th year civil engineering major at UT currently living in Austin, Texas. He started painting as a freshman to relieve stress and has since painted everything from large scale stencil works at Hope Outdoor Gallery to smaller private commissions. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s looking forward to graduating this summer. Wil Nichols is a digital product designer, photographer, and graduating French major. Away from work and academics, he enjoys street photography and travel. Matthew Speller is a recent graduate from UT, just entering the workforce as a computer engineer. He enjoys writing poetry as a way of describing the more complicated emotions he feels and really make reason out of them. Jeremy G. Steen lives in Austin, Texas. Nicole Ting is a sophomore majoring in petroleum engineering and pursuing a certificate in creative writing. In her free time, she enjoys writing, baking, and traveling. Her life goal is to impact the world in any way she can as a writer and engineer. This is her third published poem. Elizabeth Werth is a third year English literature and creative writing student looking to find a career writing words about race cars. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s often found with a pen and notebook, a camera, coffee, or a combination of all three.