Contents of Table
A Real Man, For Sure by Anonymous
Just a Woman by Maya Singhal
. Leila Pagel 10-11
I Choose by Saeed Samra 12-13 .
Blake Ber tero 14-15 .
. Out of Sync by (No) Pressure Creatives
16-17 . . . . . The Case of Nostalgia by Sylvia Johns on 18-19 .
20-21 .
. Writer ’s Block by Shania Murdock
. . Beach Seeds by Brendan Carroll 22-23 .
24-25 .
. Don’t Bite the Hand* by Ella Wakiaga
. . . Dying in My Parents’ Bathroom* by Nicole Weber 26 .
This Moment by Maya Singhal 27 .
. . Star ving* by Paloma Gomez
28-29 . . . . . A Wilted Flower by Various Ar tists
30-31 . .
. The My thic Siren by Natalie Shaw
32 -33 . . . . . Relief * by Sophie Levitt
34-35 . . . . . God, I’m in Love by Riya Batta
36-37 . . . . . Bold by Ki'shia Gilber t
38-39 . . . . . A Mess age by Anonymous
40-41 . . . . . A Mess age on Accountabilit y by Ayesha Mur taza
42-43 . . . . . Strawberr y Tigers by Ki'shia Gilber t 44-45 . . . . . Cherr y by Various Ar tists
46-47 . . . . . Change Antedates Memor y by Isabella Pamias
48-49 . . . . . Inner Music by Bella Carlucci
50-51 . . . . . The Center of Our World by Kami Stef fenauer
52-53 . . . . . The Luckiest Girl in the World by Isabela Gomez
54-55 . . . . . Becoming by Sydney Hudson
56-57 . . . . . But My Mom Loved Pregnancy by Nicole Weber
58-59 . . . . . Kaavya Vipul
60 . . . . . . . . Looking in the Mirror* by Sophie Levitt
61 . . . . . . . . Home by Riya Batta
62-63 . . . . . Where the Cardinal Re sts by Ella Farahnakian
64 . . . . . . . . Mariam Okunola
BACK . .
Lily Deng
Resident Creators
Blake Ber tero
Isabela Gomez
Sydney Hudson
Shania Murdock
Ayesha Mur taza
Leila Pagel
Isabella Pamias
Natalie Shaw
Kaavya Vipul
Editors
Daniella Amokeodo
Brynna Paige Biehle
Angelena Bougiamas
Allie Gibson
Callie Mitchell
Shania Murdock
Alexandra Nathan
Marketing
Julia Chen
It zel Solis
Layout
Blake Ber tero
Gemma Bucci
Cameron Capel
Lily Deng
Ceyla Karabulut
Eva Misso
Ariana Ng
Chloe Pascoe
Katherine Shin
Melody Xu
Jingwen Yuan
Ang Zhao
Executive Board
Chloe Pascoe
Isabella Pamias
Ayesha Mur taza
Natalie Shaw
Paloma Gomez
Isabela Gomez
Ti-Ti Nguyen
Blake Ber tero
Leila Pagel
Max Larock
Digital Platform
Riya Batta
Hannah Chu
Joellaine “Jojo” Duku
Alexandra Nathan
Hilary Lara Pantoja
Outreach & Events
Maya Singhal
Charis Suh
Emily Urueta
Writers
Paige Benish
Ula Ekmecic
Ella Farahnakian
Annabella Gao
Hayden Githuku
Sylvia Johnson
Sophie Levitt
Meredith Monnich
Lauren Santoro
Ella Wakiaga
2, 3, 4, 5
20, 21, 26, 27
36, 37, 38, 39, 42,43
10, 62, 63
7, 34, 35
22, 23, 56, 57
16,17
48, 49
28, 29, 44, 45 24, 25, 33
50, 51, 60,61
6, 32
Creative Director
Executive Editor
IDEA Director
tri b u t o r s
Digital Platform; Mini-Zine Director
Marketing Director
Outreach & Events Director
Managing Editor
Layout Director
Ar t Director
Treasurer
A Real Man, For Sure
Anonymous
I am a man in the sense that I am a featherless biped; Slap him ‘cross the face with the plucked thing, See how he likes it. I’m no animal; I bark like a man would, my blood smells warm, and I’m sure I’d taste something like you do.
And I’m sure I’d love like a man would too, Which is kind of like a cuckoo would, but Not the adult ones—the baby ones; Thinking mama wants them, Thinking they belong, But we all give in to nature sometime, yeah, That’s how a man would do it, I told you I’m no animal.
I’ve got this place with a roof and everything, and I keep all the nice shameful things in there, yeah, Men love that kind of shit, And I’ve got this bed I made all by myself With straw and twigs and guts I got from the backyard; Everything smells like scabs and rotting milk. Well hey now, I said I’m no damn animal alright, I look just like you do With your hunched shoulders and your prey eyes and I could walk like you if I tried and I just need a bit more time to get the talking thing down And there you go, Bob’s your uncle, You’ve got yourself a man, a real good one too, Who builds a house out of rotting scrap and Finds their heart in someone else’s nest and Can’t see shit that’s right in front of them and Can always tell when the milk’s gone bad.
Photograph by Ki’shia Gilbert
Leila Pagel
The case of Nostalgia by
Sylvia Johnson
I’ve inherited my mothers bad memory; I can’t remember what I ate yesterday let alone important milestones of my past. To try to preserve what I consider formative moments of my life, I write down memories endlessly. I take out my journal, and scribble a fleeting thought as they come to me.
“Looking down at the Tweety bird floor mats in Eric’s jeep as he taps drum rhythms on the steering wheel” My uncle, a past drummer who has worked for some forgettable tech company in the basement of his house as long as I’ve known him, was in a band in high school, I think he would be happiest as a drummer. “Jonathan gave me Johnny Walker Blue at age 12 and insisted that it was good as I hated the taste” My neighbor, friends with my parents, me with their kids. He liked drinking, maybe too much.
I think it’s because my parents moved out of state when I left high school. So many family members, friends who I would see every week, they used to be a 50 foot walk away or a 20 minute drive, now I see them once a year if I’m lucky. And it’s not the same, it’s just catching up and not the fun directionless conversations that somehow last 4 hours. Even though they’re a phone call away, I know those relationships will never be what they once were.
On my last night studying abroad, my friends and I went out for a ceremonial last night at our go-to pub (Witherspoons, a notorious chain pub in the UK if anyone is fortunate enough to know). The terrible British food, drunk, obnoxious and loud British guys, cheap casino carpeting, I would come to miss (Not, though, the drunk, obnoxious and loud British guys). One of my friends said, “This is the last time all of us will ever be here together” What a sad, monumental realization. We will never have an experience exactly like this, again.
Or does it work against me, I remember saying to my friend back home “don’t let me romanticize London when I’m back.” I hated the weather and not seeing the sun for three months. But now, I only remember the good moments. Looking back, I never appreciate those moments as I should have. 16
While these things may seem trivial or purely situational, they now seem so important to me because those small moments made me who I am; I remember being different in these memories. I feel like such a different person than I was four years, even one year ago. Maybe I’m mourning past versions of myself, or grappling with the inevitable change we all experience. I’m so happy now, so why do I miss it so much? I remember learning in my Philosophy class the metaphysical debate of personhood. What makes someone the same person over time? We’re constantly changing, every second: physically and psychologically. One belief is that what makes someone the same “person” overtime is connected to the concept of the transitive property: Although you can’t remember your 18th Birthday, your 20 year old self can remember your 18th, and so on.
But it’s not just about worrying I wont remember, it’s worrying that I can never go back to the past; I’m nostalgic for a life and version of myself that no longer exists. I can call my uncle but I never do, I could visit my hometown on breaks but I never chose to. There are so many people from my life I will never talk to again.
At first, my community was, for the most part, decided for me neighbors, friends at school. Now I can decide for myself, and I love the choices I’ve made, but I still miss the life that was given to me. I’ll probably never live in the midwest again which makes me a little sad, but then again, when I was there I couldn’t wait to move away.
Although bittersweet, nostalgia points to how great life can be, our fondest memories show the inevitability of more to come, the people I will love that I’m yet to meet. Now, I have more agency deciding what my life after school will look like, it’s my responsibility. Witherspoons flowers from London
My mom and I rose early
The summer sun gently tapped our windows
Bringing us back to life
Following the path our feet impressed through ritual return
We walked together to the beach
Set back ever-so invitingly from the waves ’ reach
Hugged by sand, still night-cold,
We planted our seeds
Our garden of the future
Three salvages of the rotting apple I’d left on mom ’ s countertop,
Two watermelon remnants,
One black, one white,
From the bowl on the deck, left overnight
Beach Seeds
And mom ’ s nursery Lily seeds
They’d never grow here
We were leaving buried treasure
For the waves to discover
And gift back to distant shores
So that, someday,
When she won, and we left to see the world
We’d still find home in an apple tree or a lily brush
Photography
by
Elle Geller
The alarm jolted me Beating the Sun to the chase. Today, it hides Today, it leaves me to rise Alone.
Today, I plant my mom at our beach. I don’t grimace at the damp sand, Wet from the Sun’s tears, Or beckon the retreating waves. I leave her content
Brendan Carroll
Photography by Ella
Knowing that now, she’s won. I pray for her safe passage To shores I may never know Where she’ll bless
Noticing eyes and open hands With her fruits and flowers. Someday, I’ll go see the world.
Maybe all I’ll have to greet me Are apple trees and lilies. Or maybe My mom will wait
Among our garden of the past To rest Together
Ella Wakiaga
“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”
The idiom can be traced back to the poet Sappho’s depiction of a dog biting its master ’s hand, but was first coined in its modern form by the British anticolonialist writer Edmund Burke. Ironically, it was a lesson forcibly beaten into British colonialists by prostitute communities across the colonies.
The women of Kolkata held enough power to fund the city’s roads and transform it into the capital. Watembezi prostitutes in Nairobi escaped the wage labor systems, which forced Kenyans to toil their own land for whites or else starve, and planted the roots of a feminist movement with their income. In their insatiable hunger for control, British officials found this system to be too freeing for their liking. Along came the Contagious Diseases Act, which allowed British officials to probe innocent bodies for signs of disease, or even worse, transgenderism. The British were entitled to more than just the act of sex, they wanted to be able to seize and interrogate the bodies of its female performers as well.
Sex workers were only tolerated inasmuch as they allowed colonizers to impose their sexual will onto women.
The sexual will of a British man expanded far outside of himself; it concerned itself with the women of his life, and the women not yet in his life, presumably because of the interference of colonized men. British men cast themselves as the saviors of brown women in their sadistic play of Christianized sexuality; British engagement with Indian and African prostitutes became an act of missionary. If an African dared to seek out British prostitutes, a group which was also attempting to find its feminist footing, he became nothing more than a deranged barbarian. Unsurprisingly, the British opted to merge the racial hierarchies which plagued colonial societies and economies into the legal code of prostitution. The British Empire had an obsessive relation with the caste system; they took pleasure in distinguishing the exceptional filth of an Indian dancer from the acceptable harlotry of a Christian prostitute. British colonialism was fueled by consumption, and any consumption of brown bodies was classified under the widening umbrella of prostitution. This included highly educated Hindu courtroom dancers, Malaya home cooks, and maids in Nairobi. Any physical exertion of a female will outside of the purview of the British was quickly criminalized, severely taxed, or segregated to the point of unprofitability.
In today’s society, women across the diaspora continue the legacy of these 19th century revolutionaries with each movement of their bodies. Through Bhangra, Maasai jumping, Zapin, breakdance, we dance over the bounds of colonialism.
23
All
we
have in the World is this Moment
Maya Singhal
This Moment
All we have in the world is this moment
So, can we please just live in the now
I'm sorry, little girl, but your worries must wait a while
Those wings, you must spread them out today
Just drop your chrysalis when you get the chance
Start to fly in the world’s expanse
Lay your shoulder on me and cry if you must
An angel sent its blessings in the form of a hug
I have letters wrapped in the red string of fate
Stamped with your name and today’s date
For all I love and all I see
PhotographybyEvaMisso
Is all just here in front of me
Darling, the truth lies in you
For all we have in this world is this moment
by Ella Farahnakian
Photography by: Ella Farahnakian
THE MYTHIC SIREN
Art by Soren Wu
by Blake Bertero
Sophie Levitt
Deep breaths. It will be over soon, I promise My chest and quickly, but I kneel on the bed as they ask.
We start out easy, nice and I see the smirk on their face, thinking my shallow breaths mean I’m enjoying myself.
“You’re shaking,” they say, and I can almost see the cocky look on their face.
I look down at my hands and see them trembling.
“Uh-huh.” I close my eyes. I count in my head one two three four... It will be over soon.
“Open your eyes. I want to see you.” I do as I’m told, my jaw as I keep the pace, just as I was taught. “Better,” they say.
You’re doing it right. They’re happy. Keep going. One, two, three, four...
“I’m almost there,” they whisper. I nod my head and close my eyes again. Almost done. You’ve got this. You’ll be fine.
I brace myself, And it’s over.
“Finally,” I whisper. The rising of my chest With a deep breath, they turn away from me as if I don’t even exist.
But they’re happy with me
Photo
Photography by: Ella Farahnakian
Collage by: Riya Batta
Changeantedates
By:
Isabella Pamias
T h e i n tiang
g m a k i n g .
e m ne .t
The Luckiest Girl in the World
by Isabela Fernanda Gomez
I asked him what he loved about me And he said all the wrong things. He blushed at the rolls in my back And smiled at my mispronunciation of the word ‘Pizza’.
He laughed at all my inappropriately timed jokes And discussed with such detail and adoration
ALL THE LITTLE THINGS
That once made me cry myself to sleep.
How lucky am I to be this loved.
But my mom loved pregnancy
Nicole Weber
I called my mom today; she told me she was afraid of the boy my brother was growing up to be I’m scared he’s a reflection of the person I am now She says he’s cold, mean, irresponsible. He’s on his phone all the time and it’s rotting his brain
At the same time, he’s an explorer. A rock-climber, fisher, boy scout. He’s the tiny kid that crawled onto my dad’s lap after dinner and sometimes fell asleep there. He’s a little winkle to him and little Liam to my mom.
I loved to be her daughter. Knowing only the her powerful love, I pitied my friends whose parents didn’t wake them up with a hug, braid their hair, make Mickey Mouse pancakes, put notes in their lunches, tuck them into ducky towels after a bath, supply them with crayons and paint and colored pencils, dress them in goofy ladybug shirts and long striped skirts and big flower headbands, or give them enough time to play through entire afternoons.
One summer she affixed a bell to the porch. When she rang it, we ran under the dusky sky to the house as our friends hopped the fence and ran home to theirs for dinner. She rings it sometimes now, sporadically, and I wonder what memories are bound to its loud chime.
But my mom loved pregnancy. was be reflection the and his an A tiny kid dad’s after love, a their paint pencils, dress them rang friends to for I wonder memories its chime.
Blake Bertero
I remember the soft and warm orange-tinted glow of life that seemed to emanate from her smiling face in sharp contrast to the dark curls I’ve always been so jealous of.
I think she loved the wonderment that accompanied new life; She seemed to chase her unbridled imagination to brighter rooms and fresher air and a child, new and unmuddled by the grime of life.
Hope fades, it always does.
She always said she wanted another baby. If there were five of us, I wonder if my siblings and I would be enough.
Or maybe leaving something unfulfilled keeps it perfect in the future and the never.
Sometimes I conjure that fifth child.
Of course, she is a daughter. And she spends her first bright years cradled by her mother’s kindness and encouraged by an endless wave of love.
Or leaving in the years wave
She is a perennial sunset in my mom’s life. I worry for her when that sun sets and I think that maybe, the fifth of us is safer in those dreams. Although, she’ll never get to know my mom–and for that, I know
I am the better off between the two of us.
Though it bothers me to admit,
There is a flame inside me, nestled in my core–
Mom, it calls to your heart as if blown in that direction, never knowing if it is seen, And there is a burning pride in me to share your middle name.
I remind myse lf of my fixed routine at the gym as if a round ass and a f lat stomach is possible.
LOOKING IN THE MIRROR
Sophie Levitt
When I get home I stare into the pantry.
Sure ly if I wait long enough something healthy that doesn’t make me nauseous wi ll appear.
I shut the cabinet and take a shower, scrubbing off dirt, trying to fee l lighter
Then I stare at myse lf in the mirror again. My stomach isn’t f latter and my ass isn’t fatter. What a shock, the TikTok videos were lying With disappointment I eat a who le box of post pasta and a pack of cookies.
I go to bed fee ling nauseous and bloated, promising myse lf I won’t do it again tomorrow.
But that’s what you said yesterday.
Photo by Ceyla Karabulut
Hi want to be dehumanized. clothes ripped, skin knived, til there’s nothing but bone.
i want to be atomized, magnified, analyzed, down to my soul.
i want our hearts to intertwine, our thoughts to combine, your soul to know mine, i just want to feel at home.
by Riya Batta
Photo by Ella Farahnakian
