Airport Road 09

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AIRPORT ROAD www.electrastreet.net/airportroad NYU Abu Dhabi 19 Washington Square North New York, NY 10003 Send inquiries to: Cyrus R. K. Patell Publisher Airport Road NYU Abu Dhabi PO Box 903 New York, NY 10276-0903 electra.nyuad@gmail.com

© 2019 Electra Street

Front Cover: Valentín Benoit, Abu Dhabi Main Bus Terminal

CO-EDITORS

Zoe Jane Patterson Jamie Uy

COPY EDITOR

Einas Alhamali

EDITORIAL BOARD

Amal Al Shamsi Neha John Alexis Mountcastle Auguste Nomeikaite Tusshara Nalakumar Srilatha Yasmeen Tajiddin

FOUNDING EDITOR

Sachi Leith

EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Deborah Lindsay Williams

PUBLISHER

Cyrus R. K. Patell

Issue 09 Spring 2019

CONTENTS Zoe Jane Patterson and Jamie Uy , Introduction......................................7 PROSE Jamie Uy, Tongues .................................................................................... 11 Ria Golovakova, Bookstores ..................................................................... 20 Evangeline Louise Gerodias, Our Song..................................................... 24 Leanne Talavera, Namesake...................................................................... 44 Jamie Uy, Brothers .................................................................................... 51 Arthur de Oliveira, Audition for a Documentary about Penguins................. 57 Jacob Chagnon, A Mind Through Time ..................................................... 63 Scout Satterfield, Below............................................................................ 70 Zoe Jane Patterson, Draining .................................................................... 77 Zoe Jane Patterson, The Collector............................................................. 83

POETRY Arthur de Oliveira, Ode to “Oh, You Don’t Look Brazilian”.......................... 14 Vamika Sinha, cartography ........................................................................ 17 Aathma Nirmala Dious, Accents................................................................ 30 Vamika Sinha, home ................................................................................. 32 Sneha Gyawali, Two Generations Apart .................................................... 36 Tan Tzy Jiun, Small.................................................................................... 50 Brandon Chin Loy, Villanelle for Jamaica ................................................... 53 Arthur de Oliveira, File Extensions are Poetry Too ..................................... 54

Zoe Jane Patterson, Marie Thérèse Walter................................................. 59 Tan Tzy Jiun, My Exotic Dutchman............................................................. 89 Arthur de Oliveira, Vacation is Fun ............................................................ 91 Zoe Jane Patterson, Heart, Star, Winky Face ............................................ 83 Nada Almosa, Sunflower............................................................................ 96 Vamika Sinha, airplane .............................................................................. 99

VISUAL Emma Kay Tocci, Bakers in Abu Dhabi ..................................................... 10 Reine Defranco, Calentura Muda............................................................... 13 Einas Alhamali, Sunlight............................................................................. 16 Anthony Chua, A Modern Pilgrimage......................................................... 19 Alia Al Jallaf, Branches of Reflection.......................................................... 23 Tom Abi Samra, Qasr Al Hosn ................................................................... 29 Aiya Akilzhanova, Kathmandu Valley.......................................................... 31 Valeriya Golovina, Durbar Square, Kathmandu .......................................... 34 Thirangie Jayatilake, Cloth ........................................................................ 35 Tom Abi Samra, Wat Phra Kaew ............................................................... 39 Notaporn Silruk, Sheds of Sky .................................................................. 40 Emma Kay Tocci, Two Men in Sharjah ....................................................... 43 Emily Broad, Moreeb ................................................................................. 49

VISUAL (continued) Maha Alqemzi, Liberality ........................................................................... 51 Nada Almosa, ‫ يا قدس‬.................................................................................. 53 Alia Al Jallaf, Elevation............................................................................... 56 Alia Al Jallaf, Hello Kitty & Street Food....................................................... 58 Adele Bea Cipste, Ugolino and His Sons .................................................. 61 Valentín Benoit, Diffraction at Sticky’s Finger Joint, NY .............................. 69 Einas Alhamali, Dome ............................................................................... 76 Emma Kay Tocci, Mighty ........................................................................... 82 Yesmine Abida, sweet oblivion .................................................................. 88 Amal Al Shamsi, Thrill of the Chase ........................................................... 90 Amal Al Shamsi, Back to Flavin ................................................................. 92 Rayna Li, A Medley of Things Past ............................................................ 98

Valeriya Golovina, Telhados Classico ...................................................... 101

INTRODUCTION In our first conversation as co-editors, we wondered aloud about the

strangeness of the very title Airport Road. An airport and a road, after

all, are very different things; a road suggests a fixed pathway through a locality, while an airport suggests soaring over a dizzying array of

localities. The written and visual pieces you’ll find in this issue grapple with these ideas of the local/global. Although they may not directly

address the Abu Dhabi experience, the fact that these pieces come

together in Abu Dhabi says as much about the city as they do about the other places they depict. When editing this issue, we asked ourselves: what does it mean to be writing in Abu Dhabi, in this city of constant

migration? We wanted to frame Airport Road 09 around ways of seeing

Abu Dhabi as a cosmopolitan space that offers windows into other places.

While working on Airport Road 09, members of the editorial board made it a point to explore downtown Abu Dhabi as much as possible. We

wandered around Electra Street and the actual Airport Road with cups of chai and shawarmas in hand. We peered through underpasses and into

parks, small cafeterias, discount stores, and groceries. When assembling our issue, we realized many of our pieces feature windows—we must

have at least ninety windows in this issue. Windows became our way of

understanding the unique mapping of ethnicities, nationalities, religions, languages, and identities here. Abu Dhabi’s windows offer glances and

flashes of meaning; they are ways of seeing, but never offer a full picture.

Perhaps the image that best captures our curatorial impulse is “Bakers

in Abu Dhabi.” Two bakers flip rotis, not looking into the photographer’s

lens. The image allows us to see into the bakery’s space, but we cannot cross into it because of the glass window between us and them. The

transparent barrier also functions as a reflection of the city that is behind the viewer and in front of the bakers. There is a wall with barbed wire in

the reflection, suggesting restriction, but we can also see more windows

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to peer into. “Bakers in Abu Dhabi” beautifully and dutifully observes the daily task of making bread in one of the many bakeries here, but also

ends up reflecting the whole city. The photograph questions who gets

to look at whom, and what restricts us from accessing certain spaces or stories. In other visual pieces, such as “Back to Flavin” or “Diffraction at

Sticky’s Finger Joint, NY,” we glimpse into other windows and think about the cities they reflect. In written pieces like “Pale Afternoon,” the sight of

the nearby mosque through a window reveals much more than you might expect.

NYU Abu Dhabi is an interesting place to think about the local/global in

writing, particularly because so many of our writers and artists come from postcolonial, diasporic backgrounds. It was very important to us that we think of Airport Road as a diverse, globally minded publication and not

strictly an “English” literary and arts publication published by an American university. When reading through submissions, we talked about problems of Eurocentrism, Anglophone literature, and Orientalism. We wanted

our issue to address these pressing concerns. In particular, the global

dominance of English weighed heavily on our minds. Publishing a literary and arts publication on a campus where more than 120 languages are

spoken—and where the typical student speaks two or more languages— made us reflect carefully on the relationship between languages and

literatures. For instance, we decided not to italicize non-English words in order to de-exoticize them and to suggest a multiplicity of global

Englishes. We also hotly debated problematic gazes in our photography

submissions: what might the camera’s angle and the composition suggest about a woman crouching in Kathmandu, for example? We tried our best to be attentive to our own prejudices and assumptions, and we wanted the work we published to situate images of the “other” in empowering rather than silencing ways.

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Besides contesting the notion of a universal Western art practice, the

writers and artists in this issue boldly explore entirely different spaces than city or nation. Aside from the literal windows that are found

throughout the issue, you’ll find dreamed-up windows into hell on earth,

the year 2288, and a mysterious store where people are transformed into

cats. These pieces may seem disconnected from issues of diaspora, race, or gender, but they are not simply an escape. They create new ways of

seeing, and thus wriggle free from constraint. In these works of fantasy,

the imagination breaks and enters, it sneaks out past curfew, and it looks into the rooms it shouldn’t. Window-making can be an act of rebellion and sometimes, the imagination is the only way out of oppression.

We decided to place these surrealist/dystopian pieces together in an

experimental bloc, following the works that grapple with identity and place.

Having a road named “Airport Road” is not a phenomenon unique to Abu Dhabi. Airport roads exist all over the world, but the one in Abu Dhabi has a particular meaning for the people who live here because we are

always moving. Most of us will have to leave for good one day. Airports

and roads might be permanent fixtures in a city, but they are not lived in,

or known. They house a kind of transience by enabling us to move along

to our next destination. Our cover image, “Abu Dhabi Main Bus Terminal,” portrays another liminal space. The turquoise arches create frames

within frames, in which people are waiting to go somewhere else. The

bus station itself is reframed as a beautiful structure, a work of art paying

homage to the architecture of the 1960s. The perfectly symmetrical pillars create a work of art rather than a simply functional space for waiting. If

we let it, a bus stop or an airport can become a cosmopolitan crossroads, where differences might dissolve long enough for dialogue to occur. We hope that Airport Road 09 reflects those conversations, and offers new frames for seeing Abu Dhabi and ourselves.

Zoe Jane Patterson and Jamie Uy

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Bakers in Abu Dhabi Emma Kay Tocci

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Tongues

Jamie Uy “i have only one language; it is not mine.” - jacques derrida whenever i speak there is a sea there. remember gertrude stein: there is no there there. moon hanging above me, metered orange. a pathway of pebbles in my father’s lineage beyond english. all that is left is the lack. though they tell me: your english is good. i board the boat of my greatgreat-great-grandparents whenever i speak, trying to prove i have the

necessary paperwork to be a citizen. at family reunions, the words we speak are not mother-tongue, but other-tongue. mosquitoes buzzing

in my lolo’s ears. crickets by the calamansi juice. the tuning of an old, old tv. the forgotten language of rambutans. i do not own the word ‘i’ because this is english & it is not my birthright. dismantle the ‘i’. my

geography lies elsewhere, in an accentless sky on an island in-between the americas & asia. hummingbird mouth. from the mother of english i

fell from the mango tree. i was always surprised to be asian as a child. i

gave every character in my stories a white name. i told my mother once i

was american & she asked me if americans eat bagoong. i have only one language. it is not mine. i do not trust it to get me to the other shore, this watery wreck of a spanish expedition ship, this wooden gunboat of the fujian fleet, this leaking vessel of the us naval forces. whatever i say is

said underwater, with english oxygen. i have no vernacular for the tropics, no patois for caliban’s thousand twangling instruments. this language made me non-white, made me woman like rib out of adam, ferments

my tongue like salted fish. write me a poem about mispronunciations, all the ways you fear you will never be white enough to sound like a

poet. my father dreamed of owning a library & couldn’t stop purchasing

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books, but the bookshelf had no space for me. i opened a collection of shakespeare’s sonnets & a worm fell out. you will not understand until

you cry in translation. how all this lovely art is not my art. how your stay in a literature class is determined by some extent by your visa restrictions. how the cruelty of the classroom is that you learn a canon that fires at

you. how i consumed poetry with the hunger of a dog let loose in the new york public library, desperate to prove that i, too, can eat up literature.

even now i am still writing & unwriting this poem. my tongue is a living

thing caught in the tide of english & i am diving for pearls until i can name with confidence & lightness every single way this english granulates

around me. teach me how to shift through silt. this is hard work, to try to channel an oceanic feeling with the words of empty oysters. i must believe in something, because everyday i am looking out at the sea & trying to find myself in coral or bones.

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Calentura Muda Reine Defranco

Acrylic on woodblock with tissue

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Ode to “Oh, You Don’t Look Brazilian” Arthur De Oliveira

In the Middle East: Can a Brazilian-Arab himself into a Brazilian Arab?

And Brazil himself, so that the Arab Brazilian Becomes just Arab as in:

—Arab Egyptian: when bearing short hair and groomed beard.

—Arab Syrian: when bearing short hair and no beard.

—Arab Jordanian: when bearing medium-length hair and medium beard.

And

—Arab Lebanese: when bearing medium length hair and beard.

But never Brazilian alone.

In Europe: Can a Brazilian–Spaniard himself into a Brazilian Spaniard in Italy?

When in Italy, a Brazilian can Brazilian Spaniard to Italians, But sometimes (rarely) a Brazilian can

Brazil himself into a Brazilian Italian in Italy,

—But if, and only if, his mouth is shut tight, Because a Brazilian with an open mouth

Can potentially Brazil himself into a Brazilian American.

And then Brazil the Brazilian part, so a Brazilian American Becomes just American.

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In the United States of America (more specifically: New York, New York): Can a Brazilian–American himself into a Brazilian American?

But not any American, specifically Jewish (Orthodox) Americans!

And Brazil the Brazilian Jewish (Orthodox) American,

so a Brazilian Jewish (Orthodox) American, becomes just, Jewish (Orthodox) American, to an American?

In Brasil: Can a Brazilian–Brazil into a Brazilian Brazilian— Without being “Árabe” once?

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Sunlight

Einas Alhamali

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cartography

Vamika Sinha take care—i mishear— of the light.

it is supposed to guide me home,

it chides me go, play

cosmic jazz in the afternoon sunlight weak-kneed from a punch in its warm

gut doubled over: it’s cold outside, solange sings brown

sugar, brown face and i have it all

in my cupboard: mama’s hair oil &

extra chilli flakes &

chopped ‘n’ stewed chicken in a flora tub & aamir khan films

off the head of my tongue, my

muddy beautiful english tongue &

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fish curry every thursday (for the protein!) & aloe vera juice for saharan sweat & brandy’s ‘piano man’ in the car on the way home

from school, i have dropped geography class to write

maps: letters making symbols making image; craggy hikes into memory laid flat, my oiled scalp

under mama’s hot palm

smoothing my head, my runny

yolky scrambled brain. beautiful someday afternoon, solange

sings almeda & i return to girlhood’s mall: ice-creams at riverwalk,

copying recipes from the bookshop & swallowing the bitter of adult cappuccinos, pretending to contain myself.

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A Modern Pilgrimage

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Anthony Chua

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Bookstores

Ria Golovakova

Fully Booked - Bonifacio High Street, Manila

Six floors. Infinite-story. Mural—dark haired woman with a pink cat,

painted on a wall of book jackets. Ant people looking up. Growing up

from the carpet of the Young Adult section to Classics armchairs one level above. Ding ding elevator. At the roof—glossy paper, full-color prints, art books with magnificent price tags. Tired? Grab a coffee. Frozen yoghurt around the corner. A pizza place. All in a line. Next to the biography section. Bring Michelle Obama to lunch! Pay for yourself.

Fully Booked - Rockwell, Manila

One floor. Cafe with five-layer rainbow cake. Unwrap the books that say

“DO NOT OPEN” and hide the wrapper behind the shelf. Sit on the floor, leaving your butt prints all over. Every section memorized. Home is a

five minute walk, the shelves a welcome escape. Run after class, stroll

in waiting for a movie, meet at the Science section for dates. Kiss on the cheek, book in hand. Let’s love.

Bukva - Global UA, Zhytomyr

The first mall—the first chains. McDonald’s closer than two-hour ride

east. A logo known to Kievlyans. Smile at the desk. Steve Jobs smiles back under “BESTSELLERS.” Russian shrinks. Ukrainian grows. An equilibrium. Wonder what being from here actually means. Tolstoy, Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn, Gogol, Chekhov, Kostenko,

Shevchenko, Franko, Kotlyarevsky, Mirny. Grab a soft cover—identity in

letters. Listen: they whisper why we’re one. Sneak glances at the English section. Remember to read in the original. Every summer, come back. A winter—books have turned to candles. No more knowledge for you.

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Knigarnya “E” - Old Town, Kyiv

A basement above which hangs a sign: “HELP. WE ARE BEING

EXTORTED BY A FAKE GOVERNMENT AGENCY. THEY WANT OUR

LAND. SPREAD THE WORD SO WE DON’T CLOSE DOWN.” No graffiti.

Cigarette butts disappear around the stairs. Walk in: coat off. One

language. Memories of the revolution—which one? Modern Ukrainian

Fiction. Names not taught in school. Covers with flowers. Covers with guns. Confidently, now, present them. Cashier’s hands hold them carefully, like fire.

Kinokuniya - Shinjuku, Tokyo

You’ve only mastered two alphabets. Chinese characters are still beyond

you. On the subway, feel proud over recognizing the kanji for “Entrance.”

It also means “Mouth Person.” Draw stick figures in the landscape with

your mind. Nobody talks on the train. You read, a book from Ukraine. You

wonder if anyone here even knows about it. They probably don’t. Elevator to the top floor. Open. Whoosh. A land of understanding, the foreign

language section of heaven. Curated to perfection. Buy everything—

count the bills. Walk out with 3450 yen worth of textbooks. Cradle the bag on the train home.

Kinokuniya - Dubai Mall, Dubai

Same name, different store. The trains here have women’s sections.

The bookstore doesn’t. First month here. Run around, laughing the

nervousness out of your lungs. The biggest mall. The largest aquarium.

The tallest tower. The best bookstore? Walk off with another book you didn’t need. Never forget the smell.

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Borders - Al Wahda, Abu Dhabi

What percentage of a store’s inventory must be made of books to call

it a “bookstore”? Toys, dolls, stuffed animals, robots, clay, cards, emoji

plushies, postcards, pencils, pens, books? In the corner. Abandoned, like dogs in a shelter. Buy them, before they get euthanized. Tuck them away.

Feed them with attention, one page at a time. Do not skim.

Magrudy’s - Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi

Nowhere to stand twice a year. Carts, yelling, laughing, hugging. What

class are you taking? May I have your ID? Sign here, please. Come here later. Walk between shelves, waiting for the jackets to whisper. NYUAD RECOMMENDS. Do I trust? Amorphous blob of organization identity.

Recommends Shakespeare. Sneak away paperbacks at 10 dirhams a piece. Collect dust under your bed. One day, all will be read.

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Branches of Reflection

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Alia Al Jallaf

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Our Song Evangeline Louise Gerodias

I remember some nights when, mindful of the landlady and her family who lived on the other side of our room’s wall, mama, my sister, and I would talk to each other in hushed tones while huddled on a midnight blue spotted mattress, which was supposedly as old as my sister, until sleep would finally take over our systems. On one of those nights, somebody—I forgot if it was me or Ate Ingrid—asked mama what her favorite song was.

Her voice gave away the hint of a smile as she said Selena’s “Dreaming of You.” Her young listeners knew neither the singer nor the song, so she narrated the story of how a twenty-three-year old pop superstar was fatally shot in the back by a longtime friend. It took me about a decade to realize that mama’s narration was based on the 1997 American biographical film Selena, which starred Jennifer Lopez as the titular role.

But it did not matter. Ate Ingrid and I found mama’s story so intriguing that we craved to hear the last song that Selena recorded before she died.

Satisfying such craving, however, was difficult then because we did not have the technology to listen to specific songs whenever and wherever we wanted, which I now think was fortunate because I otherwise would not have heard mama’s rendition of the song.

I’ll be dreaming of you tonight ‘til tomorrow, I’ll be holding you tight And there’s nowhere in the world I’d rather be Than here in my room dreaming about you and me.

Even though we shared almost 16 years of our lives together—there were seven days left—I cannot remember the sound of mama’s voice anymore.

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I am inclined to say that it was loud and deep only because a booming voice seems to be part of our family’s genetics, at least on mama’s side.

But I hear nothing when I imagine her speaking to me. I know I have a digital recording of her nagging voice saved in my old Samsung Galaxy Y, but I also cannot remember its whereabouts. What I do remember, however, is the fact that the night before she left without hearing me say goodbye, in her hospital room, she looked for me. Yet I, despite knowing well that there was nowhere else in the world I should have been, chose to postpone my visit to the next day.

One night in 2014, a year after mama left, lying on our designated half of the red family-sized bunk bed, with no landlady and her family to consider, Ate Ingrid and I talked in a not-so-hushed tone about things that I have since forgotten. In the background, songs were playing on the radio. It was a habit we got from mama, listening to the radio. At some point, without preamble, like most of what we had experienced so far, the DJ played “Dreaming of You.” The DJ’s choice only made sense to me now that I remember the number of Filipino singers who recorded their own version of the song. Its popularity even after more than a decade since its official release landed it a spot on many Filipino radio stations and music channels. That night, a quiet haze settled in our room as Selena, with her creamy, soothing voice, sang about her longing “to hold [her lover] close” and hoped that “somewhere [he might be] thinking of [her] too.” Despite the obviousness of the song’s romantic nature, especially considering its music video, I cannot hear it without thinking of mama. “Dreaming of You” became a part of the mental tapestry of important people and things in my life. I can say the same about Ate Ingrid, who, at a certain part of Selena’s recorded performance—it might have been before the first chorus—commented that, “This was mama’s favorite song.”

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Over time my attachment to “Dreaming of You” has extended beyond its status as mama’s favorite song to a wish occasionally fulfilled. In a rare moment of solitude, a freedom from social obligations to talk to people who came to mama’s wake, I looked down at the open coffin and saw a hazy face that was once so happy and alive. The brightness of the sun that afternoon, for I remember that the sky was clear, cast a dark shadow on parts of the funeral home. But even the sun’s cloak could not come close to the blackness that swept over my entire being and caused everything in me to weigh heavier than it normally would. In that moment, on a futile attempt to hear the words mama wanted to say when she looked for me one night, or her thoughts at the last minute of her waking hours, I bent down and whispered: “Talk to me, Ma. Please visit me in my dreams.”

The first visit happened a couple weeks after I said my wish. It was the dream that saved Ate Ingrid. In that dream, mama knew that she was already dead, but instead of stepping into a life beyond, she invited me to go to a mall. I agreed. She wanted my sister to join us too, but she understood more than anyone else that her eldest daughter, a university student, had a hectic schedule. Right before I woke up, dream mama asked me to tell my sister that she did not blame her for what happened, that she should forgive herself. Ate Ingrid, although she never said a word about her fight with mama a month before she left, perhaps because she thought that she needed to act strong as the first born, cultivated a different darkness in her heart—guilt. She believed that their fight, which was resolved with unspoken apologies during hospital visits, was the biggest stressor that affected mama’s heart condition. So as soon as I opened my eyes, I woke Ate Ingrid up and recounted what happened in my dream. Her tears did not fall in drops; they fell all at once with the

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forcefulness of water bursting forth from a broken dam. Her trembling hands gripped mine. Maybe she was scared that the torrent of her tears would carry her away, but it did not. The torrent cleansed her invisible wound and carried her forward to healing. “Thank you,” was all she said, and in my head, I heard myself say the same.

I dreamt of mama more than once since her first visit. I wrote every fragment I could remember in my journal or on my phone. In the most recent one, which happened two weeks ago, on a weekend, I saw myself in the same hospital room where mama died. The dream was a different retelling of mama’s death where she spent her final moment beside Ate Ingrid. Even in my dream I was not able to say goodbye. When I reached the hospital, my sister approached me to say that mama’s last words for me were: “Take care. Don’t forget me.” I was moved that even until her death, dream mama never thought of anyone else but her daughters. I do not think she was any different in reality.

I have since learned to stop beating myself up for forgetting mama’s voice. Sometimes I cannot help but think that things are better the way they are now, for my heart. I just try to savor what memories I have left of her, which are plenty. I see pieces of her in random places like the folded red floral sun dress in my and Ate Ingrid’s shared wardrobe (my mother wore it at home almost every day), the sinigang na baboy (pork ribs sour soup) served in many Filipino restaurants and cooked for me by a dear friend in Abu Dhabi (mama’s version is still the best), the boxes of powdered milk lined up on supermarket shelves (mama loved Anchor™️), and in the radio or the YouTube channel that plays Selena’s “Dreaming of You.” Like the girl in the song, some late nights I would “stay up and think of [mama].” I still get emotional whenever I hear the song, for I

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do not think I can ever fill the void left by mama’s permanent absence, but the pain does not last long, not anymore. I do not listen to Selena’s “Dreaming of You” as often as my favorite songs, but when I do, it is because I miss mama and it comforts me to know that through Selena we found our song.

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Qasr Al Hosn

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Tom Abi Samra

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Accents

Aathma Nirmala Dious You tell me

My english is accented

Disapproval accenting your tone how to tell you

You dragged away my madrebasha Threw her over the edge Left her hanging

Fingers curled around the barbed wires Of your letters

Till you forced me to give her a final push madrebasha fell

The accent you speak of are bruises

mothertongue’s fingers left behind on your letters to make a tombstone of my tongue

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Kathmandu Valley

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Aiya Akilzhanova

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home

Vamika Sinha don’t worry, i already know i don’t have a home-home

like my friend from kathmandu or my friend from cebu know that, is the color of return: brown

earth and all, from where things bloom and bodies build up

to wilt in each other’s arms.

this will not be your diaspora poem: we have enough

milk & honey at the grocery store

and golden nubian gap-toothed queens who long for their mother

africa, chewing on the meat of leftover languages enough.

my poem is

a bad rap and abandoned my poem is

a lost toothbrush and suicidal my poem is

gentrification and in love with the wrong parts my poem is

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buildings erupting

across cityscapes of body, self, me a row of teeth

browned from smoke— the pollution the age

the growth my poem is

a slew of planes— i flew

to spit my self out like a hard landing

into womanhood my poem is my poem is my poem is not for you.

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Durbar Square, Kathmandu

Valeriya Golovina

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Cloth

Thirangie Jayatilake

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Two Generations Apart Sneha Gyawali

Hailstones beat against the tin roof of the garage outside Grandmother sits crossed-legged on her bed knitting a sweater for an unborn grandchild

Girl watches her craft, tries to mimic the intricate movements quickly flustered by her own lack of womanly skills

Mana I don’t like these threads Tell me your stories instead—

A black and white picture inside a red envelope, went around

the room scanned and scrutinized by elder eyes before me

that was the first time I saw his face A marriage entrusted in superstitious hands I cannot imagine such faith

but your bravery speaks loud

clear in the way you embraced what was

handed and made a wonderful life out of it

I met him two weeks before the knot was tied

this man is not ugly I thought

his eyes were soft but his posture spoke

of pride and assertion I had come

to expect that from every man I knew

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Perhaps it is easier when the choice is made for you when you simply grow into love instead of going out there to find it

I sometimes wonder if I’m looking for a lover or just a writing prompt

At the age of nineteen I was ready for that life

able to wrap a saree and braid a fishtail

when I left my childhood I carried the weight of my imagined future, worked under

the demands of patience and faith

I don’t know how to sacrifice, to put a stranger on a pedestal how to give without receiving

but you poured him every ounce of your being and the kindest thing he ever did was love you back occasionally

Love was never a bullet point in the handbook

not an expectation, but often hidden beneath a smile after his favorite meal

gentle hands on my shoulders in trying times

breathing comfortably in the silence between us

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I long to understand the kind of compromise that helped you build and thrive

A cornfield grew where this house

now stands a wooden labyrinth held together

by cement and the fragile cords of your spine

You don’t have to learn to be a wife

with freedom of choice and movement build a nest or simply fly away

love your life before you pour your love

into a vessel that may not quench your thirst

The old cassettes release mantras

that permeate the thin walls of her home rhythmic with the hailstones outside

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Wat Phra Kaew Tom Abi Samra

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Shreds of Sky

Notaporn Silruk

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Brothers

Jamie Uy brother is in the army & his favorite word now is damn shag. means: more tiring than a woman can understand. means: field camp is fucking evil.

the fumes from a grenade blow over & you wheeze until your eyes water

& in the haze are all the dreams you have handed over to the government for two years. my brother learns how to swear at sergeants without them knowing, how to march with blistered feet & a military-grade field pack

on his shoulders until the heart is just another muscle to exhaust. when dad made the decision to naturalize our family, we were too young, & i was a girl. later, in the unbearable singapore summer, sweating with

adolescence, my brother yelled over the ministry of defense’s recruitment slips: so you sacrificed me. my mother washed all his singlets by hand. i shaved his head & apologized. mosquitoes swarm my brother as he dreams of getting on with the rest of his goddamn life. he tells me: i

know you women have unimaginable problems & all but damn this is the one time i wish i was born with a vagina. i was guilty enough to google: volunteer corps. my brother loves me & he tells me so before he enters bmt & it makes it hard to swallow across seas & seas. the head-line of

the straits times floats before me: “nsf death, he died in training incident

on his sister’s birthday.” mom tells me: he is different now. sleeps without the aircon on & always volunteers to carry the groceries & misses you. when he puts on the uniform it unnerves me because we have never

been singaporean singaporean before. bite back your surprise when he is a good soldier. means: want of water in a 24 km trek, forgetting your own face under the camouflage. means: we ration out our histories on

aluminium pans. means: from our mother’s womb we fell into the state. there is a border between me & my brother now. i am afraid to ask how he is doing. he says over the phone: i am a marksman, 32/36 on live

firing. this is about the right of soil & the crunch of combat boots all over

41

the country. language acquired from pulau tekong & platoon mates, from memorizing how to dismantle an sar 21 rifle in the dark & fire the gun

of belonging. i want to ask: can you stow your sister in your integrated load bearing vest, with your multipurpose folding knife & whistle? the

weapon polishing cloth is identical to the bath towel they issue you. the

body is a weapon, too. i am on the outskirts of the camp, trying to shine

an led flashlight through barbed wire. means: to have a brother is to have a country. your brother is the only country you have ever known. you

are afraid he has left you for new brothers. wave at him in the parade & remove his helmet & hold him close.

42

Two Men in Sharjah

`

Emma Kay Tocci

43

Namesake

Leanne Talavera Dedicated to the uncle I never met Sabina woke up along Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, an ache latched to the back of her neck. She stared

for a silent moment into the royal blue of Manila’s dawn,

and waited until the blood returned to her legs, and the pain

along her spine ebbed away. Swallowing, she eventually stood up, wiped away whatever was left of the night

from her skirt, and proceeded north, her silhouette gliding across the deserted highway. Only once

did Sabina consider food, a few minutes into her journey

as she passed by an empty cafeteria. But she had to hurry, she wanted to be there before her husband woke up.

She didn’t want him to reach for an empty space in their bed, and gift their family another dead man. …

Sabina’s nightmares began only days after the incident, and they always started and ended the same way.

They began with nothing but a veil of sheer black,

until the moment the lights turned on, and she found herself dicing onions on the kitchen table. A few steps away,

a pot of broth on the boil, and behind her, a wide-open door.

Exposing the semi-darkness of a towering dusk. She would sit with the quiet knowledge that somewhere, roaming

the streets of Manila, there were her children, coins bustling in their pockets.

44

But it was always Caesar—always—who walked through

the open door. With a smile on his face that he never showed in pictures. With his faux leather shoes shuffling against

the floor. And Sabina always heard him, but would not look up, she held her hand up gently, ready to bless Caesar,

her youngest son. And afterwards she watched him from

the corner of her eye, as he danced from one room to another in their little one-storey house, hangers dangling

over his shoulders simply because it was his turn to do the laundry that day. After some time he would resurface from one of their two bedrooms as

a new man, freed from his high school uniform and

wearing the same polo he only ever wore to parties, because it was the only one their family could afford when he

turned sixteen. Even though he wouldn’t turn around, Sabina could still hear the last words he said before he walked out the door, taking a final moment at the threshold to wipe the sweat off his face. He announced

that he was leaving. He would tell her he loved her. Then he would disappear into the looming Manila evening.

And that’s where Sabina’s nightmares always ended. …

That night always came to Sabina

in surreal vividness. Almost as if it was too detailed to be real.

That night, she awoke to a voice that

45

reached the bedroom from beyond the gate, barely

escaping the loudness of her husband’s snores. Hesitantly, she left his side and opened the door to a stranger’s

silhouette, hands clutched at the bars of their gate like

a prisoner in his cell. Before she approached him she reached for their kitchen knife, for in the neighborhoods of Manila it was not uncommon for

the poor to rob the poor. She called out to him through

the thickness of the late night darkness that enveloped them, and asked him who he was. When he didn’t answer, she cautioned towards him and yielded her knife, and threatened him that she would

wake up her husband. “Your son,” was all he said in response.

Sabina stopped. “Your son,” he said

again. A moment of silence later and Sabina dropped

the knife, yelling for her husband to wake up. The neighbors’ dogs began barking, and the stranger no longer stood at their gate. …

At the police station, Sabina couldn’t help herself.

She saw Caesar’s girlfriend rocking faintly in the corner, grasping the handkerchief in her hand like a thin

lifeline, and pulled her off the floor. A slap resonated through the station, followed by her husband’s voice calling her name. The girl tried to explain. Through tears Sabina

could hear her apologies. Could hear the girl’s voice shaking as she tried to convince Sabina how much she loved him. How, if only, she could turn

back time. For minutes, both women stood in silence.

46

The clicking of typewriters flooded in the space

between them, along with the howls of others who blamed; who complained; who

grieved. It happened in Malabon, she heard

the officer tell her husband. A commotion broke

out at his girlfriend’s birthday party. Witnesses say he tried to stop them. Those in the fight thought

he was simply getting himself involved. Thought

he was getting ready to retaliate for the other party.

Caesar’s girlfriend slowly collapsed on

the floor, hugging her knees to her chest. Her sobs

turned into defeated wailing, and all Sabina could do

was look at her, feeling her own knees about to buckle under the extra weight that now found itself sitting on her shoulders. Death was almost

instantaneous, the officer concluded. Death, by multiple stab wounds. …

The guard refused to let Sabina in, with

no ID and no name to drop. She was simply left

to stand outside, wedged between the cars parked

in front of the studio’s main entrance. By now the sun

was hanging above Metro Manila, peering from a corner of the sky behind a marching parade of clouds.

Epifanio de los Santos Avenue flooded with its buses

and its jeeps and its cars. Its people and their faces rushed past in one swift, collective blur. Sabina waited, despite

the guard telling her not to. “Whoever you’re looking for,

47

Nanay, he’s not here,” he told her. And he would continue to do so, for the next couple minutes or so.

But then he did show up. And he did see her. And as a budding young journalist, he gave her the best

smile his lips could form despite the very early morning his job forced him to take. And Sabina leaped

from where she stood and hugged him, wrapping her arms around his tensed shoulders. But though he was teetering at the heels, taken aback by the sudden force

of maternal love, the young Ceasar Soriano didn’t

push the strange lady away, but simply let her hug him.

Let her inhale the smell of his morning coffee, and the cologne personally given to him

by Manila’s morning commutes.

“I had a son,” Sabina Soriano told him.

Her fingers dug into the young man’s denim jacket.

“He had your name.”

His name was Caesar Soriano, too.

48

Moreeb

`

Emily Broad

49

Small

Tan Tzy Jiun There are as little thoughts left

As there are chickens by the huts

My mother said it is a pity for children

To grow up having never slaughtered one And as cameras breed like rabbits in a snakeless farm I am comforted like the first hug at the airport Remembering that I usually go unnoticed Even by most full-length mirrors

50

Liberality

`

Maha Alqemzi

51

Villanelle for Jamaica Brandon Chin Loy

I watch from the hill,

As the angels of death rise, To stay away from the kill.

Their presence exudes a chill,

A shower of gunshots and a man dies, I watch from the hill.

The echo of death makes me ill, After which I pray to the skies, To stay away from the kill.

My country proceeds to go downhill, And though I witness the demise, I watch from the hill.

How much blood has to spill,

Until I refrain from closing my eyes, To stay away from the kill.

I dare not question God’s will, Thus I go on with my lies: I watch from the hill,

To stay away from the kill.

52

‫يا قدس‬

Nada Almosa Mixed media

53

File Extensions are Poetry Too. Arthur De Oliveira

There is much literature attributed to the relationship between the fast

linear journey (with curves in some cases) of point A and point B. Just as

the division of a product is in part a continuation of itself, the struggle is to turn this literature into a file extension that is playable across all platforms. an attempt would be:

division_point_a_and_b_progression_.LIT.POEM.xml

the

Yet,

reality

the senses.

in

of

Subjects

moving within this

linearity

anything linear

are but

they are

the

shapelessness of the

progression motion.

of

So an extension

of this literature can be

metaphored as:

54

If cut below the belly of a swine There is fat, And If cut below the pavement There is time well then,

there will just be more of something else Beneath more of something else.

extension_of_translation_is_sensory_time.xml

55

Elevation

Alia Al Jallaf

56

I Tried to Audition as a Narrator for a Documentary about Penguins Arthur De Oliveira True Story1 In the tenth grade, my professor decided to perform the mathematical concept of division so my classmates and I could see infinity. He put

his feet together, and stood tall and still on top of the grid-like floor of

the classroom. His hand in wave-like form began to crash into different shapes, which, along with his sentences that were partly in Arabic and partly in English, signaled infinity would appear before us. He pointed to an imaginary spot on the floor five feet away from his position, and

traveled half the distance of that. He then traveled half the distance of that, and then half of that, and so on. He continued to talk and never

reached his destination. He just continued to produce point A’s and point B’s.1

1

The text below was written with the intention to impress potential employers within the film

industry, more specifically, documentary filmmakers in need of a voice-over for an upcoming feature documentary. My potential employers recently shot in Antarctica where they studied the behavior of penguins during harsh polar winters. According to them, their footage looks nothing like The March of the Penguins, I never watched the film so it was not my place to argue. I politely asked my interviewers how enriching the experience of isolation within Antarctica was to start conversation, and give them an impression of my charming personality, but their answer challenged my overall interest in the project. I shifted my focus to my interviewers’ mono-brows so it still seemed as if I was looking at their faces by the fifth minute of their long soliloquy of pain, cold, snow, and somewhat emotional white bareness that was similar to the footage they screened for me at the end of their discourse. I smiled and nodded all the way through keeping my composed interviewee performance consistent. Sadly, by that point I had realized that the text I wrote was centered around my experience as a student, not anything spectacular like flightless birds. Below is what I ended up dictating excluding the stutters of nervousness and a small hand jerk directed towards a supposed fly in the room.

57

Hello Kitty & Street Food

Alia Al Jallaf

58

Marie Thérèse Walter Zoe Jane Patterson She stepped out of Galeries Lafayette

That soft and supple girl Only sixteen

Sweet and unassuming.

Did her heart clench

When he caught her wrist Did she hear the snap?

The clang?

The thud of a club

Hitting the soft bone of a seal pup?

Or did she think it was love?

Sixteen and so Temptingly Deliciously Off

limits.

A young blonde girl For sculpting.

“Love” even with her eyes pulled out And re-stuck

So that she was looking at him Even while facing away.

“Love” as he

Undressed her in the street.

He kissed her throat Her fingertips.

And his wife called her “whore”

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So he called his wife “monster” Over and over

While he made love to Marie Down the beach

From where his son was playing.

Did Marie’s small cries

Tumble out onto the sand

And stagger, weak-kneed to the sea?

Did delight shudder through her Like Leda

From the god turned man turned animal?

And when his indifferent beak Let her drop

Did she still call it love, This art-making?

60

Ugolino and His Sons

`

Adele Bea Cipste Pencil on paper

61

A Mind Through Time Jacob Chagnon

2288: Buzz knelt helplessly on the floor of his sunny apartment, his face

twisted in a silent grimace. Tears welled up in his eyes, but none ran down his cheeks. He sat there, frozen. A full ten minutes passed before he

managed an anguished whimper. The old man slowly opened his mouth, and his tongue greeted the end of an apathetic, metallic barrel.

“Oh fuck. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck!” he muttered to the empty room. “I

can’t, I– I– I …” He stopped short, his heart pounding deafeningly in his ears. I what? he thought. What does that even fucking mean anymore, “I”? I am Buzz? But I am nobody. I am a ghost. I am dead. I … don’t

understand. His mental musings were useless; he’d been through this

internal dialogue already. For the past eighty-three days straight, in fact.

His finger fiddled with the safety. Click. Off. Click. On. Click. Off. How

did I get here? Good question, Buzz. Just last week you were happy as a clam, giving animated interviews about your long life filled with love and success. Or was it last year? Ten years ago? Never? He couldn’t remember.

***

Welcome, ladies and gentleman, to this lesson on the human timeline! I’ll be your narrator today, and I hope you enjoyed that little teaser. Today’s main course is a peek at when we thought living forever was a fabulous

idea—I know, ridiculous right? And being born left-handed is a sin—ha! In all seriousness, I invite you to cringe or cackle, whatever feels natural, as we follow a true historical martyr, Buzz Heffer. Thanks to our proprietary DNA-reader, we can mine the details of Buzz’s life for our learning and enjoyment. Sit tight, and enjoy the ride. Now, where were we?

62

Right—it’d been exactly two hundred years after the start of the initiative, and the whole planet had embraced it. The Global Governance Group

subsidized the whole process. It was easy really, a bi-annual afternoon pitstop, and it didn’t hurt one bit. As simple as a vaccine, if you even

remember what those were. Basically everybody did it; and why wouldn’t you, after all? A life free from anatomical disease and worry, free from the ailments of the elderly, because honestly, who willfully develops arthritis, or Alzheimer’s, or osteoporosis?

People still died, of course, but it was a matter of choice more than

inevitability. When people were ready to let go, they let go, as it suited

them. Eventually most people had had enough time playing. Death was

not encouraged nor discouraged: it was simply a downhill river for which we had built a dam.

Going gray was a sign of style, or a token of the adventurous. The body’s development was not reversed: its progression was merely halted. Some people simply wanted to see how far they could push it. Nonetheless,

most were content to feel young and pain-free forever ... however long that may be.

Weren’t there rules to it, you ask? Well obviously there were rules and

technicalities; procedural quirks and exceptions; yes yes yes but they’re really not important right now. I’ll let you know that most people settled somewhere around twenty-four. Old enough, but on all accounts still

very young, not to mention at the age of peak brain performance. As it happens, twenty-seven is the age that old Buzz Heffer settled on.

63

Yep, that same Buzz with the taste of titanium fresh on his tongue. Come on now, don’t be too upset, it was bound to happen at some point! We

could even have predicted it, had we connected the dots. Perhaps Buzz

could have too, if only time had not robbed him of his clarity. To hell with

it! Let’s take an adventure backwards through time, where we can peek at the inklings of his unraveling, eavesdrop on his unrest—let’s bring you up to speed!

***

2088: As a 1997 Will Smith would put it, Buzz was selected from “the best of the best of the best.” If that reference was lost on you, make sure to

check our cultural archive after the tour for a “film” called Men in Black.

Anyways—an inspired young neuroscientist turned author and internet

star, the young Buzz was a national icon in what was then known as the United States; after making groundbreaking advances in the study of

consciousness, he shot to fame for his “renaissance man” qualities, not to mention his charisma, conscientiousness, and good looks.

A small government division recruited him, along with fifty others, to

pilot what they called Operation Shangri-La, an initially secret operation into the anti-aging uses of microscopic nanorobots. It was an honor to have Buzz on board, and having been vetted for his mental rigor and adventurous spirit, he was the perfect candidate. Buzz wasn’t even

his real name. In a small nod to history, the then James Heffer legally

changed his name to Buzz. After all, the would-be explorer into time was no less bold than the explorer of space.

Shockingly, the project seemed successful, and there was no indication of physical or psychological hitches—none more than reasonable. For his efforts and his continued participation in the program, Buzz was

guaranteed the equivalent of $100,000 plus benefits per year for the

rest of his life, however long he chose for that to be. Buzz didn’t plan on

64

stopping anytime soon either; as a child he dreamed of doing everything, and now he had his chance. At this point, there was no way he could have understood his future crumblings, how time alone can bring devastation to the mind.

2142: Here he is again, on a typical day, fifty-four years later—we caught him just after his morning shower!

Bringing his hands to his cheeks, Buzz blinked twice and stared intently into the mirror. Am I imagining things? It was so small a moment, he almost thought it didn’t really happen. But it did.

The incident aside, it was an average day for our unfortunate protagonist.

He was trying his hand in politics at this point, having retained the charm of a twenty-seven-year-old young man, but the wisdom of a gentleman well into his golden years. Obviously, the public ate that shit up. Since Operation Shangri-La was still exclusive, albeit gaining much traction,

Buzz was still a national icon and an emerging historical figure, and he settled into the new Global Congress quite easily.

His silky white shirt was tight, his pants slick, his shoes shined, and

his hair soft as a feather. With a gentle smile, he turned to the mirror to fasten his tie, and happened to catch the eye of the man looking

back. Almost as if the ground dropped from under him, but returned so

quickly he wasn’t given the chance to fall, a disorientation took over him.

A momentary lapse in time, it seemed. For a brief moment, he looked

himself in the eye, and could not, for the life of him, recognize the young man staring back.

And before he knew it, it was over.

Strange, he thought.

65

2199: In, and out, and tense. Buzz’s breaths were constricted, long and

struggling and shaky. He flipped furiously through his journal, looking for one piece of information, one identifying reflection that made him make sense.

Thirty-four careers. Three different families. More homes than I can count!

Buzz’s mind was racing, as his overwhelming past bubbled up within.

He surfaced from his pocket a photo of him beside his childhood house, an emotional anchor which usually provided some comfort in times of

duress; his breath began to deepen, and his shoulders slowly relaxed.

He was at a breaking point in 2199. Not the breaking point, of course, but the first one that really mattered. Having changed his focus and priorities so many times, having had so many people come and go into his life, he was losing grip on it all; nothing seemed perfectly attributable to Buzz

Heffer anymore. There was nothing seemingly individual or unique about him.

The huge sip of freedom was starting to have an aftertaste; the last year and a half had been like this, with random bouts of panic and identity

crises lasting anywhere from one hour to two weeks at a time. If he didn’t get away now, he thought he’d go insane. For a man who was always prided on accomplishing any and everything, experiencing it all, his

breakdowns really, really hurt. Still, nothing that a clean slate couldn’t fix.

So, after decades of making a name for himself, trying new careers, loving new women, sprouting new families, living off the lushness of being Buzz Heffer, the desperate man fled to a seaside cottage in Thailand. Finally, time to get some rest.

2265: Oh, but there’s no rest for the living, and if there’s one thing that

Buzz Heffer still was, more certainly than any of his myriad experiences

66

and identities, was just that—living. I hope you haven’t forgotten where this story started.

At this point, there were reports emerging of similar cases. Six of the

original 50 were dead, with at least three being apparent suicides—or rather, an “unsanctioned end,” as it was called. Another twelve of the cohort were missing, and the majority of the rest refused to speak on

behalf of Operation Shangri-La anymore, which was no longer a small

operation, but a massive global initiative that was as commonplace these days as having a pet.

Considering the immeasurable investment into the program, the Global Governance Group actively censured or downplayed most of the

emerging reports on the original fifty—too much would be lost to shut it

down now. Plus, they didn’t need to try very hard; most of the individuals

thrust into this world were afraid to leave it naturally. With death no longer a certainty, it became harder to critique the comforts of longevity. “Some people just crack, why should I worry?” they all would say.

Buzz was spotted deranged and disheveled on a Thai beach, screaming

at a small photo held in his hand, as if terrified by its presence but unable to let go; a disoriented moth drawn to its sickening light.

When concerned residents called for emergency services, the med team found him rolling in the sand, pulling at his hair, mumbling “James..

AlBuzz. HeffBuzz … Aldrin. Buzz zz zz zz Heffski. SkitoBuzzer…” Poor guy.

2288: Five years slipped away in the best psychiatric hospital money

could buy, but without serious improvement. Eventually, they released Buzz, a functional man but bearing no resemblance to his former self;

67

suffering from extreme bouts of panic, dissociation, and a lost sense of

identity, he never again regained his wit. He floated somewhere between

his own minimal self-care and the government’s protection, aware enough to ignore his degradation, but not enough to fully address it.

This was not a glorious state, but a sufficient one. That is, until eightythree days before his final. So we find the former icon, pathetic, lost, cursed, becoming too comfortable with the taste of titanium.

“Oh fuck. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck!” Click. Off. Click. On. Click. Off. *** That’s enough, I won’t make you look any further.

But you get the point. It’s unfortunate, of course, but consider the

positives—we’re still here to tell the story! Buzz was a martyr for an ageold human curiosity. I mean, somebody had to find out. You never hear

anyone say that adage “time heals everything” anymore, huh? It seems

that when aging stops but growing old continues, time stretches the mind and not the skin.

68

Diffraction at Sticky’s Finger Joint, NY Valentín Benoit

69

Below

Scout Satterfield Hell on Earth1 is approximately 226.7 miles square, 9,453 feet at its

highest point,2 and 3.4 miles at its deepest.3 The residents are easily

distinguishable due to their perpetually sunburned skin and general lack of ambition. With a population of only 500,0004 indifferent souls, one might think there would be more good in the world.

This city, like all others in existence, holds many things known and unknown.

For example, it is widely known that there are a series of copper mines which run within the surrounding mountains and even reach under the

city in some parts. Copper mining was originally the main occupation in the city since the founding of the Stinson Mining Company in 1920, but

since, the city has been drained of its precious metal and now the main occupations are listed as “Unemployed” and “Self-employed.”5

It is also known that there are approximately 200,000 marked graves

in the city. Less known however is the fact that only 199,994 of them

actually hold the remains of the deceased. The remaining six are filled

with a total of around $30 million, the life’s work of El Paso's most renowned drug lord, Araña, a.k.a. Pablo Gutierrez of 32 Octavia St. 79914, El Paso, TX.6 Though he planned to return to his stash one day, the notorious Tucson, Arizona.

Mount Wrightson in the nearby Santa Rita Mountains.

3 The west branch of the Stinson Copper Mine, est.1920.

4 United States Census Bureau (2016), Tucson, AZ Demographic Report I. 5 “Drug Addict” and “Drug Dealer.”

6 FBI Classified Intelligence Case No. 1337.

1 2

70

Araña will be killed during an FBI raid of his home in about three days. His money will remain buried in the depths of Hell, forgotten and left to rot along with his soul, many believe.

Another, perhaps more interesting thing which has been forgotten in the city, and will remain so until the city itself is also forgotten, is a mass

grave of Apache Indians who died while trying to cross the desert during a particularly dry season in 1864. This mass grave is about .5 miles east

of the deepest point in the Stinson Copper Mine, and lies almost directly beneath the city’s small liquor store. This particular liquor store, though

no one knows, but no one would be surprised to hear, is one of the most

lucrative businesses in the city, second only to the opioid trade which has recently taken off in the area.7

Something in-between, which is known to some but unknown to most,

is that the US government owns a small plot of land located just west of

the city. The plot is about 6 ft square and the only thing which demarcates this particular spot of wasteland is a metal cage. This cage looks almost

identical to the many abandoned mine shaft entrances scattered around the city and the surrounding mountains. Rusted, with sharp edges, the

cage sits atop a deep hole, its metal frame reaching down into the dark seemingly endlessly.

7 8

Arizona Department of Health Services (2016), 2016 Arizona Opioid Report.

32°12’35.6”N 111°04’38.8”W .

71

This cage is rarely explored because of its particularly menacing and

decrepit look. Rust covers nearly every inch of the cage’s frame, and its

edges seem so sharp, one might think they had been designed to cut the hands of anyone who tried to open it.9

Many believe this cage to be the oldest of its kind, and therefore the most dangerous, its rusted floor too weak to hold up anything more than a few kilograms. However, this cage was constructed and discreetly placed here in June of 2002.10

The cage, though seemingly inactive, tends to disappear regularly

everyday for a few minutes at a time. This phenomenon goes generally unnoticed, the location being so remote, and the few who do pass

by tend to simply think something like “Wasn’t that old cage around

here somewhere?” rather than what they should be thinking, which is

something more along the lines of “where the fuck did that old cage go and why were the edges so damn sharp?”11 The sun begins to rise.

The cage descends into the depths of Hell.

It stops after traveling exactly 4 miles.

It is now somewhere beyond Hell, somewhere below it.12 They were.

It can actually hold around 1.5 tons.

11 It’s actually been scientifically proven that people’s geographic reasoning skills decrease in the desert. (Randolph, James [2012]. A Study on The Effects of Desert Landscape on Geographic Memory and Spatial Reasoning.)

12 About .6 miles below if you take it from its deepest point. (See note 3.)

9

10

72

Once the cage stops, it is at the very end of a long hallway that is wide

enough to comfortably fit two pick-up trucks side by side.13 The hallway is so long that it looks endless.14

Along the hallway, on either side, are rooms. Each room has a heavy,

airtight, steel door and a keypad beside it. The doors are identical in every way except for the large number painted in their center. These numbers start at 0 and go all the way to 150.

There are many things in these rooms, and no two are identical. Some rooms are as big as football fields, and others are as small as broom

closets. Some rooms have people in them now; others have been empty for years.

In the hall, however, none of this is apparent. Every door is evenly spaced and discreet, giving nothing away of what lies beyond.

Because the engineers of this facility took almost everything into account, including energy efficiency, the lights of the hallway are motion activated and therefore only illuminate a small section of the hall at a time.15

The man steps out of the cage and the darkness is pushed 30 feet down the hallway.

13

Two 2015 Ford F150’s to be exact.

It’s actually 1.13 miles long.

15 About 30 feet.

14

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He considers the darkness. Then he considers what’s beyond, further

down the hallway. Then he considers what’s behind the doors. Then he disregards these thoughts because such considerations are a waste of time.

He walks towards the darkness quickly, daring it to consume him, but the detectors are too fast and he never leaves the light.16 76. The man knows room 76.

In thirty-foot increments of light, the man makes his way past rooms 0–75.

He meets no one else in the hallway, he hardly ever does.

He begins to hear a faint buzzing as he approaches door 64, but it fades as he moves past it.

He has learned not to question the other doors.

The only door that matters to him is door 76.18 He stops in front of door 76 and enters the code on the small key pad beside it.19 There is a quick hiss of air as the door unlocks. The metal handle is cold against his skin.20

16

It is necessary for everyone within the facility always to be visible to the invisible cameras that constantly watch every inch of the place.

17 The only room he is allowed to know is room 76.

18 The only door that is allowed to matter to him is door 76.

19 Code: 02-12-17-48-19.

20 The facility is precisely temperature controlled. The door handle was exactly 65 °F. The man doesn’t know this.

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The door closes behind him.

The girl is in room 76.21 She has been in room 76 for as long as she has

existed,22 but of course she doesn't know this.23 She has been asleep for as long as she has existed.24

The man sits at a desk in the room and waits for her to wake up. He has

waited every day for five years for her to wake up. Someone told him that

one day she will wake up, and that when she wakes up, he was to call the number.25 But it hasn't happened yet, and he’s never called the number.

Sometimes he thinks she will never wake up.26

21

This is the only room she is allowed to be in.

11 years, 162 days, 21 hours, 36 minutes.

23 Or maybe she does.

24 See note 22.

25 +1(210)705-9633.

26 She will.

22

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Dome

Einas Alhamali

76

Draining

Zoe Jane Patterson

Cleo woke up in the night to feel the gentle shift of her husband pressed against her elbow. She had been sleeping flat on her stomach, like she

did on most nights. Her sleep was all elbows and pillow creases on her face, and a river of drool that she was still eager to hide from him. She

was not an easy person to sleep beside, she knew that. Neither was he.

God, he was warm. She moved the duvet off one of her legs to expose it to the air, then put a hand on his back and felt the cotton soaked in

sweat. He was often this hot in the night. They kept the room cold but he still burned up and she couldn’t seem to get used to his heat. It was like sleeping next to a fever. She stared into the dark.

How long had it been since she went out into the city?

She noticed how small he seemed on the bed next to her. Was it his head that looked childlike? He was shorter than her, a fact that they

both avoided talking about. Not too much shorter, just enough to see it

in pictures when they posed side by side. He’d taken to putting his arm

around her and dragging her in front of him, tilting her like a heavy human shield. In so many of their pictures she was balancing on one foot, or

standing lower than him on a slope. They never talked about it. Just like they never talked about the few times he had caught her texting other

men. It was always texting, nothing more, and it only happened before they were married. Still, it would have been nice, to talk about it.

They say that in dreams you cannot feel physical pain, but that’s not

true. In one dream, Cleo felt her ribs compressing until they snapped and splintered.

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When her husband finally woke up, he kissed her on the cheek and Cleo sprang out of bed and into the bathroom. She opened the medicine

cabinet, tipped her head back and took four big gulps of the cough syrup she found there. The bottle recommended two tablespoons.

She accidentally poured the last of the cereal into his bowl instead of hers.

“You don’t want any?” he asked.

“I’m not hungry,” she said, ripping a banana off the bunch.

He wasn’t looking at her. The cough syrup was starting to feel pleasant in her body and the room swayed a bit. She tossed the peel along with half the banana.

“I’m going for the paper,” he said, after he had finished eating.

She lifted each corner of her mouth and tried to make her eyes shine

at him, the way they used to. He looked at her and then looked away without smiling back.

Then suddenly, he shifted, or slid, or perhaps there was simply a glitch.

It doesn’t really matter how it happened, but he got smaller. Not a lot smaller, only enough that she or his mother would notice. It was like

he was a picture being reformatted on a computer. The picture wasn’t

cropped; one corner had just been dragged inwards. His bowl and spoon were closer to him now, he bumped his spoon against his chin, but otherwise he didn’t seem to notice the resizing.

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“Maybe, I mean, could I come with you? To get the paper?” she asked.

He stared. “Why? Is there something you need?”

“Can’t I go for a walk with my husband?”

Her answer made him more suspicious. Finally, she said she wanted

tampons, he was always buying the wrong kind. She said she wanted to

choose the package herself. Really, she hadn’t had her period for a while.

Another thing they didn’t talk about.

His hand looked sickly and small as he gripped the keys, slotted one into the lock and turned it with a little more difficulty than when he’d been his normal size. She had to walk slower than normal to avoid accidentally leading him. He hated being led.

The shrinking happened whenever she wasn’t looking at him, but it wasn’t all of him that shrank every time. He stepped over a sickly pigeon and all

of his head shrank except for the nose. Now the nose looked weird on his face. Cleo found a pill in her purse and dry swallowed it when he wasn’t

looking. It stayed in her throat until they reached the corner store. By the time they got there, his arms were shorter, his thighs were thinner and

his thumbs looked like they belonged to a child. The store-owner didn’t notice.

“Didn’t you want to get your, uh, stuff?” her husband said, once he was ready to pay.

A big shrink happened then. His hands zoomed into his arms, which shot backwards into his shoulders, his neck squished into his torso and his

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legs shot up into his stomach. What a small man. His nose barely reached the shop counter. She put her stuff beside his.

When they returned to their apartment he was so small that he had to

clamber up the stairs. He refused her help, and the journey took them until the late afternoon. She had to pretend the stairs were equally

challenging for her that day. He shrank to pocket-size. They sat on the

couch together, and she was careful not to shift the cushions, otherwise she might have buried him. Then she had an idea.

“I want to have sex,” she said.

He nearly choked trying to cover his surprise.

Cleo remembered one great night they’d had that started as a bad date.

It was so bad that it should have ended their relationship. They’d barely

spoken over dinner, and when they got to his apartment, he flopped onto the bed and turned on the TV without looking at her. She wondered why she was there.

After a while, one of them initiated contact. A hand touched a thigh, or teeth met a shoulder, or eyes finally met eyes and it was all over. The

quick slide of a skirt hiked, legs exposed, fabric moved to one side. The TV was muted. She made sounds to let him know that she liked this, or that. They took the rest of their clothes off in the middle of it and in the

breaths between. He moved her like a choreographer. Then he finished

and tried to turn the TV back on, but she demanded more. Maybe she bit his neck gently, or kissed it, or kissed his mouth. He said something and touched her and all of the sounds went quiet except for her sounds. He shifted her closer. Like they were close. Like they knew each other.

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Now he would be too tiny for that kind of sex. It might kill him.

“Why don’t you go get in the shower, and I’ll join you?” she asked.

She thought of the shower drain. It would be like a water slide for a man his size, or a black hole. His excitement distracted him. He got smaller as he sauntered over to the bathroom, and she heard his tiny clothes

dropping. She heard him turn on the hot water with an agile leap, and the rustling of the curtain as he finally got in.

When Cleo thought enough time had passed, she opened the door of the bathroom cautiously. She said his name and he didn’t answer. When she looked into the shower, it was empty. The water was flowing down into the drain.

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Mighty Emma Kay Tocci

82

The Collector

Zoe Jane Patterson

A cat. All white. She lounges on an ornate pillow, her tail flicking

carelessly back and forth, green eyes half open. She bats at the carpet for her own amusement and then stands and stretches.

A bell tinkled somewhere in the depths of the store as the man stepped

through the threshold. He wiped his entire face with one hand and shook water from a clogged ear, cursing quietly. The door clicked behind him before he called into the store.

“Hello!”

“Hello, welcome,” the Collector rounded a corner with a grin.

“Is this Bateen Arts? Are you the art collector?”

“I am, are you buying or selling?”

The man leaned in closer, a droplet rolled down his neck and he shivered.

“I’m here for The Lady in Blue.”

The Collector let out a low whistle and the man noticed a white cat asleep on a couch weaved with gold thread behind him.

“That piece is one of our most prized possessions. I wouldn’t show her to just any guest.”

“I have money,” the man spat.

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The Collector seemed to be amused by his irritation.

“Oh, I don’t care about how rich you are. I want to know your character.”

The man gritted his teeth.

“I’m a banker.”

The Collector’s face fell.

“I— I have a family.”

The Collector shook his head.

“A daughter! Her name is Lila, she’s in the car outside!”

The Collector grinned, “Now you’re talking.”

The man’s boots squelched in the mud outside the shop. Lila was sitting in the front seat, her eyes just visible over the dashboard waiting for her father’s return. He opened the front door and called out over the rain.

“A man inside, he wants to meet you.”

Lila looked at him dubiously, “Why?” “Dunno. But he has about a dozen cats wandering around his shop.”

Lila’s door clicked open and she hopped down straight into a puddle, her shoes and socks instantly soaked. Her left hand heaved the door

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shut behind her and her right hand held the doll that she never left home without.

The rain outside delighted her. She didn’t care that her party dress or her

careful curls were getting ruined. She tipped her head back for a moment feeling the rain on her face and then stepped inside behind her father.

“You must be Lila,” the collector smiled down to her.

Lila didn’t answer, her eyes drinking in the impossible number of beautiful objects in the room. Gold and china plates, carved wooden horses, and carefully stitched fabrics.

“Lila, be polite!” her father snapped.

She stuck her hand out with a straight arm, “Pleased to meet you.”

The Collector shook it like she was a grownup and Lila liked that. He didn’t hold her hand like it was delicate.

“Why don’t you take a look around my store? That’s a pretty doll you have there.”

Lila nodded, “Thank you.”

She let her feet carry her into a room away from her father and the man

who looked like a scarecrow. She crouched beside one of the white cats and stroked it gently, scratching behind its ears.

“I can see that you’re a good man who’s raised a good child.”

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The man scratched his nose and nodded, his eyes on the floor. He hadn’t been the one to raise Lila, the child had been thrust on him when her

mother died and the two were barely getting to know each other. All they really seemed to have in common was their green eyes.

“Can I see it now?”

“I must warn you sir, once you see the Blue Lady you will want her for

yourself. You can’t be angry with me if you give up more than you can afford to get her.”

The man scoffed, “I know my price and I won’t go above it.”

The Collector smiled to himself, he led the man down a hallway full of portraits that seemed to stare, and into a small room.

When the door clicked behind the two men, Lila had just crossed the

threshold of the most beautiful room yet. She was following another of

the white cats, but was immediately taken with a huge gold mirror leaning against one of the walls. There was space at the bottom between the

back of the mirror and the wall that she thought would make the perfect hiding spot if she lived here.

Lila walked up to the mirror, her socks still wet in her shoes, and placed her doll against the wall next to it. She faced the mirror on both knees;

feet tucked under her, and touched a finger to the glass. It rippled like a

stone in a pond. Distantly she heard one of the cats crying for attention in another room, but the rippling mirror had captured her.

“Do you agree to the trade?” the Collector asked the man in the small room.

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“Yes.” Lila put her whole hand against the mirror this time. It rippled so much that she felt herself sink forward and through. She landed in the crawl space behind the mirror with a mewl.

The man carried his new piece of art to the car, carefully shielding it from the rain. It wasn’t until he got home that he realized what he’d paid for it.

A white kitten crouched behind the mirror with her tail upright and

twitching. The Collector came by and put her doll on the shelf with all the other beautiful things.

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sweet oblivion Yesmine Abida

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My Exotic Dutchman Tan Tzy Jiun

I wonder how he will come

Not wearing a plump wallet or on my chest

But packaged in organic ethical cotton on a bike, holding back a burp After a diet of vegetables with bits of salmon

For the protein, he justifies his pescetarianism with a sheepish smile Like he hasn’t seen his jawline or doesn’t know that

He has dimples that are not quite where they should be But in pairs, like his hands, they will be soft as they

Hold the hair from my face while I dry heave over the toilet There there, hands me some water

Like a politely waddling boat, he speaks often of taking me On little cruises in the canals

And does it one day when I least expect it A beer for me, and a cider for you

Wearing khaki shorts but in an ironic sort of way He will keep plants alive and let me name them

Until we lose track of what’s what and who’s who

Besides that, we will be using a shoe to open wine bottles And argue about the arbitrariness of labels The women he sees on the side They do not pout like I do or

Make poached eggs like I do or

Know postcoloniality like I do or Softly snore like I do

But only after he finishes his story about this difficult colleague Who he will cover for anyways because he is The kind to call his mom four times a week.

89

Thrill of the Chase Amal Al Shamsi

90

Vacation is Fun

Arthur De Oliveira —Everyone group in for a picture!

The phrase above is a poetic line embodied in performance.

The voice as a command is the voice beyond muscle beyond thought Beyond the capacity of action; it is the carbon footprint Into the ozone of space.

In a more concrete sense:

People can easily turn into emperor penguins And hurtle together against the hostile Winter of memory. What is left is the

Image of the hurtle that we call a picture.

To perform this action of warmth

One is to press his vision against A tactility of sight. But,

With the capacity to warm one’s self Too much, the result can be very Technological on the mind

To the point of tactility of sight Becoming tactility of number.

Yet, on vacation, what can’t

be broken down numerically?

91

Back to Flavin

Amal Al Shamsi

92

Heart, Star, Winky Face Zoe Jane Patterson

What Your Top 3 Emojis Say About You Pin them like a name-tag and WELCOME

This is the glittering, whirring room of clanging noise And trying so desperately to care that your Cuticles will bleed with the effort of it.

You might slam the keys so fast That your fingerprints slide off And slink into the corner,

No worries! We’ll make gloves of them, for Unlocking Apple products.

To your left you’ll see the American President Standing shiny-shoed on the smooth Snaky grasses of

the White House and hold me—

Are those clothespins in his hand?

Could he be?

Folks he’s hanging laundry!

Those are the peeled-off skins of

African-Americans, flapping in the gentle breeze...

And on your right there is

The lioness of Palestine roaring her guts out.

What teeth you have! What bite!

A woman—Arab—Activist?

Is it a trick of the light? Ahead you can sit tight Quickly! CLICK TO FIGHT—

But real quick, what kind of fruit tree would

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YOU be? Oh gosh, oh gee another LIKE for me?

MISSING PUPPY

Your Aunt is hollering for her

Second-cousin’s best friend’s Pure-bred golden!

Is Your iPhone Listening to Your Conversations?

(You know, the spoken ones)

And how much would that reeeeeally bother you?

Look up and you’ll see those naughty alien children shoved Into the cages of the free world.

CLICK TO BUY to take this quiz or buy or see this Indonesian earthquake victim or FILTER to show your love for

UPDATE so they can’t forget your How To

Look Young or Meet Young (your city)

Girls Seeking Mature Men. If you look through the door to your left You’ll notice that the Prime Minister of

Your Country is slyly shoving an oil-slick

Pipeline down some red-skin (racist!) throat But it’s gOod for the EconOmY soooo...

High-fives all around!

READ ABOUT IT in less than 280 characters But Justin Trudeau is so cute though

In his Ramadan socks, toes wiggling...

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SELLING

Used couches Used bodies Used bikes Used cars

She used underpaid workers To create Ivy Park ahh the

MEMORIES look this was my kid 4 3 2

Years ago

Boom! North Korea though!

Welcome to the Daily Show Over here you’ll find the

Hottest European Summer in Over a Decade And your friend is selling hand-made Tale! We should Dress to Protest

Look how well informed we CLICK— To create a persona

So you are share-able Buy-able

Spread-able Envy-able

Manage-able

FOLLOW myself skinned down to

A mushy tub of internet margarine @me

Cheap! no matter how stellar The marketing :)

95

Sunflower

Nada Almosa

Clytie wept facing the sun Apollo, lost love.

The Sunflower grew where she kneeled.

The flower always looking up to the sun Keeping a watchful eye for its mother Waiting for Apollo’s chariot to return.

Sunflower [suhn-flou-er]

1. A tall North American plant of the daisy family, with very large golden-

rayed flowers. Sunflowers were cultivated for their edible seeds, which are an important source of oil for cooking and margarine.

Example: Balanced on top of the wagon were a sunflower plant and a stack of photos.

2. Someone who is pale and has freckles but does not have red hair.

Example: She is a sunflower.

3. To insert all five fingers into the vagina and then open them up “like a sunflower.”

Example: He sunflowered her.

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Sun Deities Nyambi (Tiv)

Amun (Egypt)

Tonatiuh (Aztec) Shams (Arabic)

Saule (Baltic) Grian (Irish)

Observations: The sunflower is a holy flower, a love flower, a food flower.

Herbal Remedy Crush the sunflower petals with a mortar and pestle and mix with honey Grind the peeled seeds into a fine powder

Mix the seed powder with the petal and honey concoction Use as a face mask

Wash off after 15 minutes Repeat once a week

This remedy is used for those who have lost their sun.

Expected results: you are now your own sun, bitch.

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A Medley of Things Past Rayna Li

Mixed Media: collage, India ink, interference paint, pencil, acrylic paint, dried hydrangea petals on envelopes

98

airplane

Vamika Sinha where is it? the child

scrambles underneath her skirt

& below the skin

of the city, subway trains rattle tissue-blot faces in cells white as cold milk

such color rushes up

to the wound, healing

the place where you were split open, where two roads inched away from each other, where it leaked & the tissue tore from sudden ocean is it across that

bridge? the one she made

in kindergarten, fingers full

of paper cuts & inexperience,

the tiny stitch on widening mouth or is it up there?

where they keep telling her to go to see

to bind her arms to find Him

to soak, to harden, to call it love

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to measure the breadth of new wing & sputter into the air the child looks down

at arms tied & painted white body, caterpillar

hair on unshaved shins &

home left behind like a cracked eggshell­— she needed to find it

press down into soil skin

soft for a new country, pick into the brownness: leave.

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Telhados Classico Valeriya Golovina

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