Encounters Magazine - 2020

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Acknowledgments Encounters Magazine would like to express our appreciation to the following individuals for bringing Baruch students' work alive each semester.

Dr. Ronald Aaron Student Development and Counseling

Emma Klainberg Graduate Activities Advisor

Xiaolu Guo Harman Writer-inResidence

Talia Gurstel Assistant Director of Student Activities

Damali Smith Director of Student Life

Jennifer Clement Spring 2020 Writerin-Residence

Barbara Harman Executive Director of the Harman Family Foundation

Traci Espinet-Marquez Technology Specialist

Prof. Bridgett Davis Faculty Advisor & Founder

To the English Department, the Journalism Department, the Fine & Performing Arts Department, Jostens, to our staff for their unwavering support and, finally, to the dear reader of our magazine, we extend our deepest thanks.

And also a big thank you to our hardworking staff at the publication: Violet Webster Editor-in-Chief Kenneth Fremer Managing Editor Vlad Chzhen Business Manager Carolina DiCarlo Marketing Director Melissa Ramirez Nunez Graphics Director

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Writers & Editors Sofia Ghasemi Emily Singh Nathalie Ramirez Hillary Setyo Karina Aslanyan Justine Galvan Arianne Gonzalez Kari Brabander Rachel Dalloo

Marketing Huyen Tran

Creators Rose Vollaro Isabelle Gross Tim Pulster

Graphic Designers Sunjana Varma Melissa Ramirez Nunez

Joel Bautista Creative Director

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Letter from the Editor Dear Reader,

No matter where you start from, we want Encounters Magazine to be a space to show off your work. Most importantly: yourself. With so much of our time spent at home with our thoughts, a place to put them down onto paper feels essential. Outside of these confines, we wanted to present a place to share and explore. To see the worlds we’ve envisioned through the pages of this book. To connect with another through the written word. This magazine has always been about escape, about taking steps forward from where we are.

Where do you want to be? In this very moment? In ten years? In your life?

Let us take you in these pages to somewhere new, somewhere unexplored.

Into the minds and hearts of these artists, the members of our community.

Sincerely, Violet Webster Editor in Chief

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Acknowledgments Letter From the Editor Table of Contents Encounters Features

002 003 004 006

Table of Art

008 009 010 010 010 010 013 015 016 019 020 023 025 026 027 028 029 032 035 037 038 040 042 043 044 047 048 050 055 056 059 061 064 066 074 076 079 080 081 082 085 087 088 090 095 096 099 100 103 106 107 109 110

Indre Goldie Gross Out of Order Alyssa Nepomuceno PHX 002 Abdul Khan PHX 004 Abdul Khan TYK 004 Abdul Khan TYK 007 Abdul Khan Unreality of the Morning Kezia Velista Fire Escape Alyssa Nepomuceno Mixtapes Sameer Sewdath Boil Diana Chen Devil’s Advocate Sameer Sewdath Rivka Goldie Gross Eunoia Michelle Teja Uncertainty Huyen Tran Tenderness Huyen Tran Oculus Tim Pulster Down the Stairs Tim Pulster Over the Mountain Tim Pulster Violent Masses 4/10 Violet Webster Nocturnal NYC M’Niyah Lynn Bauquet Geetanjali Sugrim Mother David Betancur Orchestra Geetanjali Sugrim Valentine’s Day Geetanjali Sugrim After Hours Mitchell Kim Violent Masses 8/10 Violet Webster Hi-Bye Room Charlotte Kim Landscape Goldie Gross Solitude Huyen Tran Murda Sameer Sewdath Atom Heart Mother Rachel Mirakova Cracks in the Waves David Betancur Thalassophile Goldie Gross Hi-Bye Boats Charlotte Kim Irises in Bloom Geetanjali Sugrim Violent Masses 2/10 Violet Webster Something in the Water Kenneth Fremer Aborted Bart Joel Bautista Mickay Joel Bautista Balencibalenci Joel Bautista Stains in the Summertime Violet Webster Dapper Man Ariel Sklyarevskiy Girl and her Flowers Betzayda Ponce Homework Joel Bautista Land of Dreams Manjyot Kaur Kinetic Waters Manjyot Kaur Na.ta.tion Manjyot Kaur Fragments of Intimacy Kezia Velista Kids at Play Manjyot Kaur World Joel Bautista We Die Joel Bautista The Sitting Room Emilie Sano 138 Rosie Vollaro

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Contents Writing 011 012 014 017 018 021 022 024 027 034 036 039 041 045 046 051 052 054 057 060 062 065 068 072 073 075 078 083 086 089 091 097 098 101 102 104 108

Opportunity Oblivion Kenneth Fremer Window Gabriela Torrento Street Talk Samantha White Lights Up Justine Victoria Little Cup Ayse Kelce Broken Record Alexis Wanzell Reminscing Maya Yegorova From the River to the Sea Siddrah Alhindi in quarantine Karina Aslanyan The Trumpet Man Tiffany Chen New York City Dreaming Ursula Hansberry Death Gabriela Torrento Cleaning Out My Conscience Emily Singh Placed on a Pedestal Pt. 1 Brianna M Levy State of Silence Emily Singh The Voyager and His Brute Justine Victoria The Pain in Perspective Kendra Shiloh yours never Justine Victoria mantra Karina Aslanyan Self Portrait as a Couch Hannah Lee In 3's Alexis Wanzell Vincent Van Gogh Scott Horton Delicate Dysfunction Sheik Floradewan Clouds are really good predictors of rain Sheik Floradewan Assumption Sheik Floradewan Amidst Everybody I Feel Nothing Justine Victoria Placed on a Pedestal Pt. 2 Brianna M Levy A Martyr To Color Alexis Wanzell He Knows Emanuela Gallo Roosevelt Ave Under the 7 train Julieta Cabana wash it down Karina Aslanyan Ferment to Forget Emily Singh the hamster wheel Emanuela Gallo Pan y Mantequilla Gabriela Torrento Los Angeles Kenneth Sousie Tooth Fairy Alexis Wanzell Dear [Girl's Name] Emanuela Gallo

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2020

Featured Creators Sheik Floradewan and Tim Pulster

Every semester, Encounters features students whose work demonstrates distinctive creativity and a dedication to artistic growth. In spotlighting these artists, we hope to show Baruch students that their talents can be elevated and appreciated - and that artistry can be found around every corner, at any level of experience.

Ultimately, we decided to feature Tim Pulster, a photographer, and Sheik Floradewan, a poet, from a pool of hundreds of submissions. Throughout this issue, you'll be able to learn about their respective approaches to art in a pair of feature spreads. In showcasing their artistic development and thoughts on the fundamental role creativity plays in their lives, we hope to better your understanding of how the arts can impact your journey.

As you flip through these pages we want you to feel inspired and confident in the essential nature of the arts, whether you're a virtuoso, novice, or distant observer. You can find our profiles of Tim and Sheik on pages 30 and 71.

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Indre Goldie Gross 8

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Out of Order Alyssa Nepomuceno 9

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PHX 002 PHX 004 TYK 004 TYK 007 Abdul Khan

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Opportunity Oblivion

By Kenny Fremer I try to say what I mean, so usually I don't say shit.

I keep everything contained, figures splayed on note pages.

I should be grateful, and hit ignore.

I should dismiss skepticism as an act of war.

I should deprive my body so that it might become yours.

I have to submit my thirty-eighth job application

by January 4th.

You feel guilt fade to shame, transfigurating.

Your picture framing is poised to kill me.

I should be respectful, and defer to rewrite lore.

I shouldn't worry so much about people I don't know.

I should be thankful to thrive during economies of war.

I forgot to set up TMZ news alerts on my phone.

Opportunity oblivion, I can see why you wouldn't want to change anything.

And doesn't it feel nice?

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Window

by Gabriela Torrento

You are transparent — a constant reminder of the life outside these plastered walls.

Autumn leaves whisper on the sidewalk as you show me tiny scavengers searching for treats.

When the snow falls, you become translucent with frost — the white coat of Winter turns my room sterile.

Spring showers water the hydrangeas as rain drops race down your surface.

Daylight stretches over Summer — your glass barely containing hues of pink and purple.

I remember you are fragile when a rogue baseball cracks your hard surface.

You scatter everywhere — pieces of you in the grass, on my floor, crunching beneath my steps.

My fingers can no longer glide down your smooth surface as you are jagged in self-defense.

Perhaps you are quite human, after all.

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Unreality of the Morning Kezia Velista 13

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Street Talk

by Samantha White

I step out of my scratched wooden door.

Reluctantly--I leave the comfort of home.

The cold is as blue as my shoes.

A dark tree-lined street hisses at me.

The wind pushes the litter along the sidewalk.

The stretch of road in front of me is a lie; it looks like it goes on forever, but it ends right where speed begins.

It’s a scene of broken taillights and shattered lives.

The green sign, “Highway” fools them every time.

The squirrels are out on a mission.

They scurry from tree to tree.

Their fluffy brown bodies shake the branches, littering the ground with reddish brown leaves.

They leave a mess for the old folks to sweep.

Just ahead I see a fuzzy moving thing --larger than a cat, scarier than a possum.

The eyes reflect a warning-- “go the other way!”

I turn to escape the threat of the creeping thing.

A tiny sparrow hops alongside me.

The sidewalk is covered with the spoils of spring: tree bark, branches, dried leaves and crushed berries.

The red hotrod is a picture of filth.

White spots, thick dust, and tree trash dim the brightness of its paint.

The attached houses are uniformly peaceful.

The lights are off-- no sounds, no movement.

The furnished porches host no conversations.

No cars go in or out of the white garage doors.

Street-light-hours are for the curious and the crazy.

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Fire Escapes Alyssa Nepomuceno 15

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Mixtapes Sameer Sewdath

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Lights Up

By Justine Victoria

I lie there, high Almost naked Waiting for god To scream in my ears And out comes a beast From my imagination, Holding my wrists Against my own mattress Soft enough to drown me, Take me, and fuck me Into a song Of silence.

I come, crying.

Mary in my mirror, Clean and screaming Blood, Here.

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Little Cup

by Ayse Kelce

I could put everything I own in that little cup: grandma’s rings, mama’s photo, and my old keys. with all I have, it still wouldn’t fill.

We are both foreigners, the cup and I, travelled from far.

The trees and grass painted on the cup remind me of home.

I too lived in a house bricks painted in pink, color gone dirty over time. the one I live now is gray, and I hadn’t gotten a window over four months.

But the cup, it can stay I might have to go if they tell me to.

I’ve been asked, my purpose of visit and I’ve been told I can be a burden.

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Boil Diana Chen 19

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Devil’s Advocate Sameer Sewdath

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Broken Record

by Alexis Wanzell

Bare skin and a record spinning on a Sunday, You can't tell which is making you dizzy, All you know is you can’t see straight You take a hit and blow it towards her, It almost looks like a veil, Both take your breath away She lies on the couch, You notice the skin on her forehead contorts.

You know she's thinking beautiful things, And that you have in common, Because you’re thinking, Of her, Of her, Of her It trips on your tongue, Like it has two left feet, You never had a stutter until you met, An excuse to keep her in your mouth for longer Her silhouette faces a window, Looking out at the willow tree you planted for her.

It reminds her of her grandfather As she traces your face, She tells you of all the times she laid under her grandfather's willow tree as a girl, Letting branches break rays of the sun into pockets of light that would shower her face And as you lay in her lap, Her hair draping down toward your curious eyes, You feel like she did under that willow tree, Realizing everything comes full circle, Like that stutter, Back to her, Back to her, Back to her 21

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Reminiscing

by Maya Yegorova

In this village, my days begin with turquoise. The turquoise blanket that envelops me from the 57-degree weather in August. An air-conditioner is a stranger. Slumber is interrupted at 6 a.m. when I hear a noise. I move the turquoise blanket away from me, moving at a delayed pace as my sister’s breathing rises and falls next to me, and push the turquoise curtains aside. Fishermen on a boat are leaving the dock, beginning a laborious day. I step out into the wooden balcony with my bare feet, looking at the nameplate on the boat. Lucky Catch.

We head to Port Clyde and board the Laura B, a vessel that carried supplies in the Pacific during World War II and has withstood 18-foot waves. The Laura B navigates through the waters for over 40 miles. My right hand clutches the railing, inhaling the scent of salt and exhaling hopefulness. The stronger the wind shrieks, the more my hair gets so wonderfully matted. This is bliss, suspended in time.

The next day, I am on the R.L. Gott, a lobster boat. Over the loudspeaker, the captain announces we’re in Zone B, the state’s busiest lobster zone. Fishing continues to be the second most dangerous job in the United States. My thoughts travel back to Lucky Catch. In this village, faith is a mindset.

It is a foggy morning when we go to hike the 38 floors of South Bubble Mountain. Trudging through the Jordan Pond trail before the summit is exchanged for climbing the cliffs. I grip the rails in the boulder and plant my foot on the small crevice.

As I look up, my eyes widen and my diaphragm swells. My right hand extends toward the next available railing, the veins on my hand protruding. When the cliff gets steeper and I have to readjust my position, I allow myself to surrender to the euphoria of not knowing what’s to come.

At the summit, I breathe like a swimmer who just resurfaced from underwater after a lap, feeling released. My hands are covered in soot-like marks and my pants are blotched. I gaze where the mist nudges the cliffs. On this oasis, I feel infinite and 22

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Rivka Goldie Gross

unbeatable. I feel an instant love for this life, as the mist continues to glaze over the cliffs and Acadia whirls into an unconceivable energizer for me. I have the impulse to do something inspiring. This is a feeling I’ll never get worn out from. How addicting it is to feel this deranged elation, a symptom of being alive. This place has stirred such resolve inside me, I want to make a fulfilling life for myself that isn’t confined to just school and work.

In this village, my days begin with turquoise. But one Wednesday, my day comes to an end with orange. Bass Harbor is a place where enchantment is a sunset paired with a glass of wine on the outdoor terrace. As the sun slips behind the mountains, the orange streaks are replaced with a sky bathed in pink, cobalt, and yellow. I can’t remember the last time I felt this calm. Mindless and unpleasant thoughts dwindle away. This state is responsible for so many lively experiences and all of my previous time outside of this state seems like a trance.

As the car drives away on State Route 3, homebound for New York, I look at the coast disappearing in the mirror. I think how loving this stimulant is like breathing, it’s essential. My spirit wakens and allies itself with one haven. Maine.

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From the River to the Sea

by Siddrah Alhindi

Nine years ago A country was in peace Yet the people below They wanted to speak and fight for their right Yet he silenced their voices with weapons and plight Their beautiful city Once thriving with life Now lies in ruins and strife A father weeps over his mother His son His impassive wife A girl rises from under the debris A miracle that survived this barbaric decree Something to broadcast Document and view If only the media unraveled all the truth If only someone helped save this innocent youth She strives through rubble Skin cracking under buried trouble Tears flood her eyes Yet the explosion hadn't been a surprise Her survival is evidence to the murder and crime All she has left to hold onto are the stones of her past home Existing within destruction all alone Shivering in the wind Cold to the bone With only the memory of her pitiful childhood to keep her warm This life she was given no child should ever bare The things she has seen The blood on the ground The chemicals in the air Despite all her struggles and her calls for help No one seems to hear or even care This world forgot her and this system abused her How unfair

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Her family awaits her up in the sky She can't wait to grow her wings and finally fly Away from the ashes of her scorched world Away from this fight for peace Away from the massacre and falsehood Now she sings songs to the lingering souls A voice of pure sadness deprived of joy and glee Yet she is still hopeful for a lively future in this graveyard she calls her home Even when she was able to leave it behind and flea This girl is just another symbol for all to open their eyes and see That one day to their homeland they will return To the soils they ache for The familiar air their lungs demand to breathe To the grounds where their heart still beats The future children of the scattered refugees Will rebuild it piece by piece Never forgetting all of the deceased From the river to the sea Syria shall one day be free

Eunoia Michelle Teja

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Uncertainty Huyen Tran 26

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in quarantine

by Karina Aslanyan i find myself not doing much, yet the exhaustion curling its way through my body disagrees. the exhaustion curling its way through my body, right under the first layer of skin, in the throbbing of my toes and in the numbness of my hands, in the scratch of my throat and in the blur of my eyes, as a yawn eerily makes her way to me, poised to pounce. she tries to be discreet, yet she ends up artless – she stumbles, loud and destructive. the exhaustion curling its way through my body, its heavyweight resting in my feet, its unspoken yawn tapping away at the tip of my tongue – i am numb, i am swollen, i am too warm, i am itchy. i shall sleep now, that swollen face of mine pressed against the unwashed pillowcases, i shall sleep and dream of central air conditioning and dream of things to do.

Tenderness Huyen Tran 27

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Oculus Tim Pulster 28

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Down the Stairs Tim Pulster 29

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“I’d feel like I was missing out on the world, even though it was right in front of my face,” says featured photographer Tim Pulster, whose work has helped keep him grounded while growing up with OCD. “Somehow, seeing it through a lens indirectly helped me process things better and take stock of the world properly.” As a kid, he would take his camera everywhere that he could – whenever he went on a family trip, he’d take pictures to help remember places outside of thoughts that would otherwise take him out of the moment. “If I had a camera in my hand, I could really ground myself and figure it out.”

Now, spurred in part by the ongoing pandemic, Tim is shifting his lens towards subjects closer to home. Having previously focused on landscape photography, he’s taking the time to experiment with portraiture among his family, friends, and girlfriend. In the process, he’s learned a lot about his subjects. “There’s certain insecurities that a lot of people have that I didn’t know they had,” he explains. Photography, which had long allowed him to appreciate gorgeous landscapes and vistas, has now played a role in getting closer to the people in his life. “Just because I was taking those pictures, I got to learn more about them,” he adds.

Over the years Tim has been able to iterate upon his work, incorporating more human elements and abstract concepts into his clean, sweeping landscapes.

“The Oculus” captures the striking, uniform curvature of New York City’s newest transit hub punctuated by one man, nested between the structure’s columns.

Another featured image is framed by a car dashboard, supplementing the vast, chilly winter landscape with intimate comfort. These human elements channel inspirations such as William Eggleston and Joel Meyerowitz, whose compositions find beauty in the everyday.

Tim has always used his photography to gather perspectives, finding balance and symmetry in a world that can feel overwhelming. Photography helps him take stock of a scene that might be clouded by thought processes, daily stresses, or anxiety. He reframes those moments, now able to look back on them unfettered. “If I can take pictures, I can appreciate what’s happening now. And what’s happening now, isn’t what’s in your head. And so, I can see what’s going on in the world, and appreciate it.”

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Over The Mountians Tim Pulster 33

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The Trumpet Man

by Tiffany Chen I remember the sound of the night Before music swam through the air I remember how the air smelled like rain And a hint of pizza I remember how the air tasted like mint on the Tip of my tongue I remember the touch of the wind on my face Like Autumn’s caress I remember the Trumpet Man’s Song As he played an unknown tune A delightful tune despite the chill that settled In my bones As he lingered on each note pulling them To fruition As he stopped and wrapped his hands Together to keep them warm As he reached his hands out for our pennies.

Clink clink went my coins Pennies that fell and nickels that turned I emptied my pocket for the trumpet man I remember the trumpet man’s tune I remember the tune as I sat on a silent train home But I don’t remember him I can’t seem to remember whether his eyes were blue or brown Or whether he wore a scarf or a hat on that crisp night I can’t remember the colors of his shoes Or the length of his hair I can’t even remember those hands that Played my delightful tune Maybe it was a figment of my imagination A wish for some music A taste of some music Some real music to chase away the cold That burrowed itself underneath my clothes Unrelenting with its hold I remember the trumpet man and his tune 34

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Violent Masses 4/10 Violet Webster 35

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New York City Dreaming

by Ursula Hansberry Sitting at the kitchen table, Staring out onto the road.

I’ve just about emptied the bottle.

I’m in a place I didn’t want to go.

I don’t know myself anymore And I don’t know why I let you walk out the door.

I’ll get the paper in the morning, And it’ll all come rushing back to me.

But in the moment I’ll convince myself That I’ve forgotten everything.

Wish I could say I’ve changed the way I used to be.

Hell, I don’t even like my own company.

It took some time for me to see, But time will one day set me free.

Cause I was New York City dreaming About the way I thought my life should be.

It was my selfish ways That made you walk away from me.

It was bound to happen someday And now it’s time to walk away.

It was bound to happen someday, And now it’s time to walk away.

I started doing all the things That you could never get me to do In hopes that one day I’d find my way Back home to you.

Started picking up the pieces of our broken lives.

But piecing them together has me walking the line.

It took some time for me to see, But time will one day set me free.

Cause I was New York City dreaming About the way I thought my life should be.

It was my selfish ways That made you walk away from me.

It was bound to happen someday And now it’s time to walk away.

It was bound to happen someday, And now it’s time to walk away.

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Nocturnal NYC M’Niyah Lynn 37

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Bauquet Geetanjali Sugrim 38

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Death

by Gabriela Torrento A worm wiggles toward the robin’s beak, headlights illuminate a deer mid-stride.

Granite marks a bed in the earth, the greedy soil snatches life after life.

It gnaws at me, like termites feasting on a decayed house leaving emptiness; An empty dinner seat, static on the other side of the phone, a toothbrush resting on the counter, unused.

Nature gives back a budding flower above the salted earth.

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Mother David Betancur 40

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Cleaning Out My Conscience

by Emily Singh

The warmth from my socks pressed against my Chest feels like an anxiety blanket.

Laundry puts me at ease, because I can control the cleanliness of my clothes.

Folding takes my mind off deadlines.

Cleaning cleanses me, At least that is done.

Sometimes I let the clothes pile up.

It becomes baggage I cannot ignore.

Bags I cannot compartmentalize Or bury beneath my brain.

Luggage with no trip ahead.

Unopened boxes that scream to be remembered-Until the next load.

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Orchestra Geetanjali Sugrim

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Valentine’s Day Geetanjali Sugrim 43

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After Hours Mitchell Kim 44

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Placed on a Pedestal, Part 1

by Brianna M Levy

It’s 80° with partially clouded skies The weather up there where he resides I play like a god for a moment Tweaking the atmosphere to make it suitable and fair for him My most blessed creation A beautiful creature made in the image and likeness of me Yet so much better A specimen so fine that I bend the rules of creator versus created And worship it myself I crafted clouds that stared Sun rays that kissed And winds that embraced And became jealously proud of the interaction between my creation and skies The weather up there where he resides It’s 20° with torrential rain and a dark sky The weather down here where I reside I could use the umbrella in my hand to stay dry Or Being the god of this land myself I could stop the rain altogether I could join my creation on its pedestal For he is sitting high and dry where he resides But it does not seem plausible Because I made it for him And despite being the one who created it For it I am not worthy I’d rather watch him enjoy The weather up there where he resides And suffer with The weather down here where I reside Where I believe I belong Instead

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State of Silence

by Emily Singh

I am afraid of going to that dark tunnel-- a cave of isolation where I dissociated as the day escaped from me.

Out of sync on the brink of death.

Never knowing what is hope.

Hopeless yet she persisted.

She is consistent.

Her mind is omniscient.

All for discipline Consequences constantly Corrode her conscience Contingent to her condition Lack of ambition On probation for retaliation I need a fixation She turned to creation But felt deprived Because she has to revive her rebellious side All because she wants to hide I should have lied.

Could have been avoided Now she’s exploited If I am not employed Than i have no purpose Unemployed gives satisfaction to the bitch on wheels.

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Violent Masses 8/10 Violet Webster 47

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48

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Hi-Bye Room Charlotte Kim 49

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Landscape Goldie Gross 50

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The Voyager and His Brute

by Justine Victoria

The wheels on his bicycle spin on the soles of my shoes as if I am his road, meant to bridge our worlds into one sacred space.

For a stark second, We touch like He is mine, and I, his.

We go on our own way; his shadow sings into the ocean of bodies.

I’m learning to love, naked in the streets, bathing in the sink, drinking toothpaste.

The floor illuminates with golden pools of tar.

There is light where I want to find it.

There is a man – he is a man – and for once, I am not afraid of him.

I walk with the rust He left on my feet, owning it until it is all that I own.

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The Pain in Perspective

by Kendra Shiloh

Here I lie on a Sunday afternoon, the sun peeking into my room awakening my bones from their slumber. They snap like icicles at the sound of footsteps coming down the hallway, and I’m unable to move. I never used to be like this, but the fear of confrontation built up in my lungs is making me unable to speak and so instead of trying I lie here defeated...and write.

Here I lie Reminiscing about my 10-year old self. After school activities consisted of jello and whipped cream; licking the whipped cream off my tongue while my grandparents switched theirs to a language I could understand. I didn’t start speaking spanish til the age of 17. 17 years spent people-pleasing; dumbing down my mother’s accent to blend into the blueprint that was neatly laid out for me.

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Here I lie Fingertips weak from threading the needles that my mother cannot. Her hands shake far too much--mine are following suit. My mind comprehends nothing other than the monotonous routine of school; But at least I have this blanket made of honor roll certificates I stitched together with the skills my mother taught me on the nights when the heat was low.

Here I lie Fed up with a system that incriminalizes my people. School has made me far too self aware; I want out. Building barriers only creates changes in the landscape--and I’ve always loved mountains. I loved them so much that I’ve let this mountain of guilt build up on top of my lungs; when all I have to do is roll over. I’ve decided that I’d rather lay under it.

Here I lie fed up with my own people. There’s a constant war in my mind of whether or not I’m Caribbean enough or Hispanic enough and rather than identifying with one, I feel lost in the abyss of space that exists in my mind. The divide in my community dates back to my ancestors from different regions and we are falling apart at the hands of the powers that be.

Here I lie exhausted.

Here I lie disheartened.

Here I lie fearful.

Here I stand; because I’ve come to realize that freedom doesn’t lie in laying down.

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yours never

by Justine Victoria

a parade of clouds whirs itself into a hurricane in her chimney-tight body, with ropes as scarves laced around her neck, visions of storms only told by the time that does not tell. she waits, pricking needles onto her skin to feel, to hope – forcing their sharp sounds into making melodies on oak floors where she lies, pricking, where words cut deeper than knives but your knife sliced upon her closed throat, thinking your kitchen is where she is to be. your knife danced around her breasts. your knife buried itself inside her body – Hers.

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Solitude Huyen Tran 55

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Murda Sameer Sewdath 56

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mantra

by Karina Aslanyan

He didn’t believe in deserving people, I learned. It had been an entire lifetime of filling every hollow space inside my body with the mantra of “I don’t deserve you” – stuffing it in-between my organs, pouring it into my blood vessels (so they could supply every cell in my body with it), ingesting it with every meal, injecting it into my skin through every pore, breathing it into my lungs, using it as lube during sex, and using it as lube during heartbreak. It had been a lifetime and now, for fuck’s sake, he didn’t believe in deserving people. It’s like the universe gave me a lifetime to become religious only for the love of my life to be an atheist. It’s like I grew up on a farm with flying cows, inherited a cow flying business, gave TED Talks on the proper ways to fly a cow, and the man I’m destined to be with now tells me that cows have been walking all along.

No, honestly, fuck the universe. He didn’t goddamn believe in deserving people.

He, with his bony fingers gently brushing over my cheeks, drawing patterns down from my temples to my chin, didn’t believe in deserving people. I would give him a tattoo gun and tell him to ink them into my skin. I would give him clay and tell him to mold them onto my face. I would give him my soul and tell him to bleed every pattern that he could think of into it.

“I don’t deserve you,” I repeat the mantra, rolling it off my tongue. I have enough of it stored away to let it slip out so easily; I have a warehouse filled with boxes of it. I have my bone marrow programmed to produce blood cells with the mantra ingrained into them. I have enough, so I ought to give him some of it.

“I don’t believe in deserving people,” he lets the pattern travel to my throat, and I imagine the ink twirling down from my temple to my neck; I imagine how the needle from the tattoo gun would tickle the sensitive skin.

He’s looking up at me with his sunken brown eyes from where his chin is resting over my heart, his breath ghosting over my chest. The angle is awkward, uncomfortably close, his face a bit blurry, but I would give him my heart and tell him to carve his initials into it.

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“I think people are merely people, and we are entitled to nothing and deserve no good and no bad because good and bad happens to all of us, regardless,” he whispers and taps his fingers on my sternum. I would give him drumsticks and tell him to drum any beat he can think of into my bones, “And people certainly don’t deserve people.”

“Then how do we know who we should love?” I touch his back, trace the bumps on it, feel every ray of sunshine his skin has ever absorbed seeping into my palm. “How do we know who we should be loved by?” I would give him my hands and tell him to burn his warmth into them.

“We can only love,” he turns his gaze away, pillows his cheek on my breast, his stubble scratching at me, touches his lips to my bare skin. I would give him a lipstick blood red and tell him to paint my skin with the shape of his lips. “We can only love, and hope to be loved back.”

And so, he didn’t believe in deserving people, and I had spent a lifetime watching cows fly.

I lean down, bury my nose in his hair, breathe in every droplet of rain that has ever fallen on his head.

I would give him my genes and tell him to rewrite the mantra I have spent a lifetime learning out of my DNA. I would love him and hope to be loved back.

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Atom Heart Mother Rachel Mirakova 59

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Self Portrait as a Couch

by Hannah Lee A new day, the same day; night bleeds into the morning, festering indoors, my weight melds into the cushions of the living room sofa, my body, clad in worn fake leather, cracked at the joints, moans of wear and tear. I sit against the wall, stare at a screen that lies, claiming the worst has past, the worst has yet to come, the throw pillows whisper into my arm rests against the piano that has seen plagues before. It no longer speaks; keys, black and white alike, unable to open its secrets: open chest hums of the swarm, loud, not yet visible. I lay on the couch, which is my body, closed eyes listening for a sign. Another ambulance rushes past, the piano wails in silence, echoing the pain, as I sink deeper within myself.

The cold touch of faux skin won’t allow for sleep.

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Cracks in the Waves David Betancur 61

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In 3's

by Alexis Wanzell ‘What am I like?’

I've always loved the idea of being described.

To hear others’ interpretation of my presence, Or my lack thereof.

To see if they see what I see, And if they like what they see, And what that even means I like looking at myself in those bathroom cabinet mirrors that fold in 3s.

To be my own bystander, Occupying 2 spaces at once, But filling each just as immersively.

Looking straight on just isn't realistic, Because I share this experience with no one, Blind to my own complexity.

More rational to examine myself in spaces of the unexpected, To see what I would look like from the gaze of someone I didn't know was gazing in the first place I've lived a lot of my life straight on, Staring into myself only from the simplest angle, Missing shadows I was too lazy to find.

But I started using my peripheral, Waking my pupils out of stagnance and reminding them that they can't change what they see but they can change where they look.

Around and under and behind, Discovering lonely corners I’ve forgotten my entire life, Causing me to love myself like that abandoned shelf at your mom’s place, Cloaked in dust, Acknowledged but not respected.

An outdated display of remembrance, Rusting for the sake of betrayal.

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Until I learned to bend and contort, To look at myself in 3’s, Paying homage to the lesson of the 9.

Obliterating my view forward and looking around.

For that was where most answers laid, Now when I look in the mirror, I am met with shards of glass, And I am thankful.

To acknowledge the fragments in order to nurture the whole, To love around and not straight on, To bet on the head, tail, and outer ridges and all the odds I cannot see, Crossing fingers in bets of the fragments and the entirety, For the beauty of each perspective.

To dance with both parts of the juxtaposition that compiles me, And kiss each just as deeply.

So the question at hand is tricky, ‘What am I like?’

Because it depends on the angle you choose to perceive, Whether you pick up the pieces or the whole.

Though like cells-to-flesh, I am just as whole when divided.

So, take your pick, I like to be described.

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Thalassophile Goldie Gross 64

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Vincent Van Gogh's Eyes My eyes open.

by Scott Horton

Shadows crawl down my wall, scraping off Prussian blues.

I open the broken blinds, the hinges rusted in Red ocher.

Revealing the morning sky, dancing whirlpools of Cyan blue, sunflowers waking up pierced by lances of Chrome yellow. bent backs, scattered on the field, digging trenches in the Red lake.

Wooden veins wave at me, covered in feathers of Emerald green.

The canvas stretches its wings, clouding the frame in White lead My brush dances on a sail, over a turbulent sea of Ultramarine.

The sun with my hand arcs and lays its head On a warm blanket made of Vermillion I see the cafe breathing in and out Steaming cups filled with Raw sienna Finally, home, I clean my brushes, but I can't scrape off my hands, the Prussian blue.

My eyes close. Black.

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Hi-Bye Boats Charlotte Kim 66

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Delicate Dysfunction

by Sheik Floradewan Pt. 1

I am my mother’s daughter and of her becoming one that transcends from the love of the creator to the creation.

Your womb, the first home I knew Your heartbeat, the first sound Your arms, the first warmth I felt The stories from your childhood crafted mine.

I have listened and learned about your sacrifices I have heard you cry yourself to sleep as you sang me a lullaby I want to go back and document your life so I can better understand you but the camera I have cannot capture your pain nor your love.

I cannot encompass that.

You a warzone without borders.

One that came to a country and built a home out of four walls How do I paint you in the light you shed on me?

I cannot.

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Pt. 2

Your love is profound, but it failed to recognize how I accept that love — this was not it.

We lost it somewhere in the depths of religion.

If found: return to God it cannot be restored without mercy.

Look past me through the scriptures, your judgment condemns only you.

I cannot follow you blindly if you cannot see me without that filter.

Show me the love you taught me, I must have forgotten.

It has to be buried in deep, I can feel it.

Don’t make me push it away.

Your approval is all I seek.

Rid me of this validation, and tell me I am enough, I long to hear you say it before it’s too late.

How do we make amends and bring this fire of resentment to an end?

Our love is greater than that, I know it.

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70

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Sheik Floradewan “How do I paint you in the light you shed on me?” asks Sheik Floradewan, in her featured poem “Delicate Dysfunction.” Despite facing pressure from several angles – from society at large, to her family - Sheik still wants to find common ground. Much of her writing is focused on finding the right words, painting in the gaps between interpretations of culture and religion. “It comes down to wanting to be a storyteller – wanting to tell my own story, as well as others’,” she explains.

As the Managing Editor of Brown Girl Voices, a new publication dedicated to “trying to find peace through the use of our voices,” Sheik has taken on a vital role in centering minority perspectives. “We don’t have that platform to be able to raise our own concerns, and I think that having that platform is really important,” she says. In “A Garden of Hair,” a piece published in Brown Girl Voices, Sheik examines what it means for someone to decide against altering their natural body hair. Her writing is tender and affirmative, but she still finds space to question traditional power structures. She’s firm in her rejection of Eurocentric beauty standards: “I cannot wreck this temple. I will grow a garden here.”

While she’s used her writing as a force to challenge societal constructs, “Delicate Dysfunction” is an attempt to reconcile a familial rift formed by dissonant perspectives and her mother’s expectations of how she should behave. “It’s not that religion and culture is oppressive – but I think the way people use it is to oppress,” she explains, “it’s supposed to be liberating.” There are many aspects of her culture that she adores – the joyous celebration of Eid, the grandeur of Bollywood cinema, and the beauty of traditional Sari garments, to name a few. “It’s a journey of love and hate,” she adds.

“How do we make amends and bring this fire of resentment to an end?” Sheik pleads at the conclusion of “Delicate Dysfunction.” By painting with just the right colors, and shedding light on an intimate connection in the face of irreconcilable interpretations of a shared and sacredly held identity, she is striving towards an answer.

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Clouds are really good predictors of rain

by Sheik Floradewan

How do I know it’s true That I’m not fooling myself We have conversations I don’t remember about what Your words consume me — I devour your thoughts You enlighten me with your grace You water my soul The feeling is warm But are we too young To know if it’s true How can they say It’s not so They don’t know what we know This is what I know As my truth It’s true.

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Assumption

by Sheik Floradewan

How can you claim to know me when this is all a show?

You do not know me.

Tell me, who am I? I want to see who I am through the filter of your eyes.

But know that I owe the image you created of me in your head no apologies for being something other than what you made me to be.

I am here unapologetically myself.

I don’t need your acceptance, nor your validation.

The skin that holds me is content with herself.

She is thriving on her own.

Find yourself, don’t search for her.

You will not find her.

She is not for you to wonder.

I am for me to know and I know her.

She is beyond the box you place her in.

She is who she wills.

She is me. I am her.

And you are irrelevant in her becoming.

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Irises in Bloom Geetanjali Sugrim 74

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Amidst Everybody I Feel Nothing

by Justine Victoria Like I, myself, am nothing.

This utmost narcissism built into my innate mind has cowered beneath the power of nothingness in a room full of people who pretend they have the confidence of the best killer in town.

I shake with each slash I paint on another soulless body, questions pour out with his blood, like a river of air, onto the atmosphere of my sanity.

I question my sanity as I kill another man, not because I am killing him but if I am killing him right, while they, the people in the room, just kill.

I want to be the best killer in town but I want to stay truest to myself, so with each pull I am pushed away from my dreams all the while being replaced by an enemy who believes that having hope is pitiful.

Yet, I cling onto a thread-thin of hope, with all the pity in the blood I carry.

I kill aimlessly and dishonestly.

I kill those who I have to kill as I wish to be killed; away.

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Violent Masses 2/10 Violet Webster 77

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Placed on a Pedestal, Part 2

by Brianna M Levy

It’s 80° with a sunny sky The weather up here where I reside Some time has passed And with that The bad weather has too I play like a god for a moment Tweaking the atmosphere to make it more suitable and fair for me My lifelong companion A beautiful creature made in the image and likeness of the Heavens A beautiful truth that I somehow forgot But now I remember And with this new knowledge I crafted Sun rays that kissed Winds that embraced And flowers that sung “I love you” to me at every chance they got Even when they struggled to bloom I’m sure the weather is beautiful for my creations of the past And I wish them all the best But I no longer have access to their atmospheres And for this I am blessed For I no longer have the work of creating Clouds that stare Sun rays that kiss And winds that embrace For others Nor do I want it Because I realize that I was supposed to do these things for myself All along

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Something in the Water Kenneth Fremer 79

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Aborted Bart Joel Bautista 80

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Mickay Joel Bautista 81

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Body

Balencibalenci Joel Bautista 82

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A Martyr To Color

by Alexis Wanzell Grandpa Ron, I’m no painter, But colors have been writing to me, Calling me by my name, The one you used to call me, When I would run around your studio, You would throw paint on canvas like shooting stars, I’ve never wished so persistently in my life.

I learned about rainbows, But you redefined them.

I thought I heard the color yellow tell you she loved you once, And blue told me it would miss you when you left, It was right.

Now I hear what you heard.

I always thought you were just talking to yourself, But you were the conductor of an orchestra I couldn’t quite translate yet.

Red said it misses the way you touched her.

Your canvases spoke at your funeral and said more than I could’ve.

I listen closely now, They miss you, so.

And I’m trying my best to get a bit closer, To listen a bit more intimately.

You always had an ear for the silent, I was always loud, I’m trying to combine the two.

You always reminded me of the color green, You knew how to nourish things that were meant to die, I just wish it could return the favor.

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I know you’re still here, Speaking to me through colors, Holding my freckled face in the palm of sunsets you painted just for God, Just for me.

I know you’re behind those clouds, Singing to the color purple.

It told me to chase it, Until I reach black.

You never used that color, But I’ve been told to understand it, & I’ve learned how to.

I grew up seeing life in black or white, But you taught me what compiles each, And that they could never translate what you wanted to say, How you felt.

You found a mother in orange, And a lover in chartreuse, I’m here to prove that they felt it, too, That I felt it, too.

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Stains in the Summertime Violet Webster 85

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He Knows

by Emanuela Gallo

small, medium, large this he knows it comes out in English, but twisted with hints of the language of his home country the vowels are different here, but he does his best small, medium, large this he knows and what type would you like? he knows those, too 7up, mountain dew coke, pepsi (and diet pepsi too) sprite and root beer are the most popular they ask for those the most—this he knows the american eyes blink and choose, and off he goes presenting the drink (either small, medium, large) this he knows the ache in his legs, on his feet all day gazing out at the summer sky heat oozing through the open window, sweat dripping down his sides— this he knows the dry, tight feeling on his skin from washing dishes all day this he knows swiping the crumbs off the table with a rag soaked in soap and water gliding across the grimy surface this he knows going home to come back a couple of hours later sleepless nights, long commutes, 80 hour work weeks this he knows the hole in his heart from the loss of his home the land, the animals, the fruit, the life he knew that he gave up the day his feet left the ground for the first time in his life the exhilarating feeling of being a million miles up this he knew

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but he also knew the pain the sorrow of handkerchiefs waving parting words slipping out of lips clutching the collars of sons off to the new land, daughters clinging to the coats of fathers tears spilling from those stuck on the ground, each in vain each asking when will I see you again? this he didn’t know the next time he’d speak to his mother? this he didn’t know

Dapper Man Ariel Sklyarevskiy 87

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Girl and her Flowers Betzayda Ponce 88

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Roosevelt Ave Under the 7 Train The Metal Dragon Plunges headlong into Roosevelt Ave; I walk underneath its belly.

There is a tremor while it passes over my head.

Smell of fresh tacos, smog, and hard labor.

Foreigner men handle flavors and work, Displaying their self-made food carts, Bringing dishes from their homelands To the shadow of the metal creature.

by Julieta Cabana

The Dragon’s path is patched with stories, Memories of longed loved ones, Eyes wide open for the Men of Ice, We all walk as humans, but not all free, Under the Dragon’s tail.

Roosevelt Ave could be any street In Latin America, Philippines, India, or Ireland, It is all the places in the world, Depending on where you stop.

They become one, united by the dragon passing by.

A drunk man sleeps on a pavement bed, Voluptuous ladies offer waged pleasure.

The dreamers in a corner wait for a job, As fruit vendors hustle bananas and pineapples — Symbiotic in the heart of the metal beast.

These are the ones who keep the creature alive.

After the dragon passes by, There is no silence — Cumbia, Merengue and Reggaeton Infiltrate every corner; Feelings from the passersby Intertwine with the chaos of the music, Huddling together.

People ride the metal creature, Taking them from the poverty of the street To the luxury of the houses they clean.

Manhattan is the dream, Roosevelt is the reality — The Metal Dragon is their magical bridge.

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Homework Joel Bautista 90

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wash it down

by Karina Aslanyan

It’s sort of a habit of theirs now; it has been for quite some time. Will doesn’t really know how much time is “quite some time” exactly, but it’s gotta be at least a week, or maybe a month, or maybe a hundred years. He’s not sure. He just knows that it’s sort of a habit of theirs now.

The first time it happened, whenever that was, Will had wandered off into the kitchen after a nightmare at what was probably a time only suitable for summoning the devil and howling at the moon. The screams that had woken him up had been fresh on his tongue and he needed something, anything really, to wash them down. He needed something hot and bitter; more bitter than the taste of a nightmare and hotter than the smoldering fire in his chest, than the smoke traveling up his trachea and choking him, choking him— He needed something that would turn his brain to mush, make him dizzy, make him feel as if his organs were Tibetan Singing Bowls that were humming along, comforting him, as they rotted away from too many washed down dreams.

What he found in the kitchen, instead, was a certain Steve Bennett. His head rested in the palm of his hand, white light from the stovetop outlined his silhouette, and his face was hidden in the shadows of an hour only suitable for summoning the devil and howling at the moon.

“Can’t sleep?” Will said because saying things is what people do, even when it felt inorganic under the cloak of the night that refused to have him, that said “no” time and time again, that banished him from her quarters, unrelenting and unforgiving of whatever awful deed Will must have committed.

And Steve hummed back because humming back is what people do.

It felt as if the hum penetrated Will’s skin, vibrated through his eardrums, as if the Tibetan Bowls were singing in his belly, soothing. Huh. He looked at the cabinet above the stove: the one with all the rotten, bitter, and hot poison stored away behind dark wood and then looked back at Steve. Steve, with his frown hidden in the shadows, with the sky blue of his eyes veiled by his lids, with his hand clasping at his own hair, almost as if he was afraid that if he let go of it, his head would float away to the skies like a helium-filled balloon.

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Perhaps, Will thought, night had exiled Steve too. Perhaps, Steve had wronged her too.

Perhaps, Steve could taste his own screams on his tongue.

Will flipped the switch on the electrical tea kettle and reached for the cabinet above the sink.

“What are you making?” Steve asked.

Will looked over his shoulder and smiled a little, as much as his lips allowed him to.

He didn’t answer, just turned back around and dropped the chamomile tea bag into the mug, waiting for the kettle to switch off.

“To wash it down,” he said, placing the mug in front of Steve and sitting down across from him with his own tea held tightly in both hands, burning the tips of his fingers.

The next time it happened, Will was going to the kitchen to grab a fourth (fifth?) cup of coffee. He stopped in his tracks when he saw Steve again, his back to the doorway that Will was standing in, sitting in the same stool he sat in last time, maybe a week ago, maybe a month ago, maybe a hundred years ago.

Will didn’t say anything, just walked over slowly, touching between Steve’s shoulder blades gently, feeling the heat of his skin through the thin t-shirt, lingering for a few seconds too long. The Tibetan Singing Bowls in his belly let out a familiar hum.

“Hey,” he whispered as if that was allowed. As if it was allowed for him to put his hand between Steve’s shoulder blades gently, to linger there, as if it was allowed for him to grab a mug with a monkey drawing on it, drop a peppermint tea bag into it from the cabinet above the sink and place it in front of Steve, while he waited for the water in the kettle to boil.

“Hi,” Steve whispered back, the skies in his irises unveiling, and Will thought that it must be allowed then, sometimes: the times when they were sitting at the kitchen island with the stovetop light on and with David’s herbal tea burning their fingertips, orphaned by the night, it was allowed then.

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The third time it happened, Will had been hoping to see Steve. This time, he wasn’t looking for the cabinet above the stove, he wasn’t looking for umpteen amounts of caffeine, he wasn’t looking for anything, really, but he walked into the kitchen anyway. He softly touched Steve’s arm anyway, flipped the tea kettle switch on anyway, and dropped two bags of raspberry tea into mugs with animal drawings on them anyway.

“You know, I don’t like herbal tea,” Steve said, holding on tightly to the mug in his hand.

“I don’t either,” Will replied and took a sip from his own.

They weren’t whispering now, but talking didn’t feel inorganic anymore, so Will thought that must be allowed too, then.

The fourth time – or maybe it was fifth, or sixth, or 100th – Will noticed that when he flipped on its switch, the electrical tea kettle would light up with a cold blue light. He passed Steve his monkey mug with cinnamon orange tea and thought that the cold blue of the tea kettle was like the cold blue of Steve’s eyes.

Steve looked up at him through his eyelashes, gave him a small smile, and the smoldering fire in Will’s chest cooled down a bit.

“What are they about?” Steve asked one time.

He didn’t sit in his usual spot anymore. At some point, he had switched over to sitting in the stool next to Will’s, the monkey and giraffe from their mugs staring at each other, their burned fingertips a breath away from touching.

“Falling, planes, everyone dying, suffocating. You know, the usual,” he took a sip of his lavender tea, felt the burn numb the disgusting taste of it. “Car crashes, Robert – Dad, whatever – screaming.”

Steve’s pinky intertwined with Will’s, almost as if they were making a silent pinky promise. Maybe they were.

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“You?” He asked, wondering if the question was added to the list of things that were allowed now.

“Winter, mostly. The cold and freezing to death. Mekell dying, Mekell apparently not dying, Mekell looking at me like she doesn’t know who I am. Being alone,” Steve looked down at their intertwined pinkies. Where is the line, Will thought, how far until it’s not allowed anymore? “You falling,” he added.

The Tibetan Singing Bowls roared.

And so it is a habit they built. They sit at the kitchen island, drink the disgusting herbal teas that neither of them likes because drinking coffee would be counterproductive to the lie they’re telling themselves, the lie that they want to sleep.

Sleep is scary, it’s dangerous, sleep is a soldier that night sent to punish Will for whatever awful deed he committed. She armored it with gobs of nightmares so vicious that Will lost the courage to face it again.

“Hey,” Steve says, squeezing Will’s hand in his own, running his other through the loose curls falling over Will’s forehead, “Let’s go to bed.”

And Will looks at him and thinks that maybe if the sunlight in Steve’s heart is bright enough to illuminate his eyes into the color of a clear afternoon sky, it must be bright enough to protect Will from any armored soldier night sends his way.

“I thought you’d never ask,” Will smiles and puts down his cup of rosehip tea.

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Land of Dreams Manjyot Kaur 95

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Kinetic Waters Manjyot Kaur 96

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I feel safest in the eye of a tornado.

Chaos cascades and shapes And creates my moods.

Swings to and fro Where to go I spin and spin like a top.

Nonstop I run laps with no time-lapse.

Until I collapse and relapse and Realize why am I hiding my history.

Here I go

Ferment to Forget

by Emily Singh

Kill Bill and rice traumatizes me, No further explanation.

Like a rice cooker, I boil And boil and boil I let my thoughts ferment like kimchi.

They absorb into my skin and skull.

Let it crack, and then I Numb them and numb them And they run and they run.

And then I catch them.

I dry my eyes to stop.

To be in control is a privilege.

Control needs me, My thoughts are tattooed on my cerebellum Oh, I will never tell ‘em.

They see the light when I overshare Valves open, I overflow.

They are thirsty, Crying makes my thoughts concrete.

They are now nourished And have a home My thoughts are free to just be Come together as one.

No longer compartmentalized They come apart.

Seeking a voice Oh, to be heard and understood, I speak 97

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the hamster wheel

by Emanuela Gallo

BUZZ. BUZZ. BUZZ. it’s the sound of our alarm clock! “today we have to go back,” we grumble. our eyelids are heavy and droop under the weight. we yawn and rub the bags under our eyes, like cartoon characters. look out the window—the sun is rising! we go through the routine. we dress, wash, and eat. we leave our comfortable homes and rush through our commutes. we get on the creaky wheel. our fingers latch on the cool metal. our feet begin to take steps. we tell ourselves, if only I keep going…if I keep running, the wheel will spin faster, so I must get somewhere. I must get somewhere, the wheel will spin faster if I keep running…if only I keep going, we tell ourselves. our feet begin to slow down. our fingers leave the cool metal. we get off the creaky wheel. we rush through our commutes and arrive at our comfortable homes. we eat, wash, and undress. we go through the routine. the sun is setting—look out the window! we yawn and rub the bags under our eyes, like cartoon characters. we grumble, “we’ll have to go back tomorrow.” set the alarm for tomorrow!

BUZZ. BUZZ. BUZZ. and the day after that!

BUZZ. BUZZ. BUZZ. and the one after that!

BUZZ. BUZZ. BUZZ. and after that!

BUZZ. BUZZ. BUZZ.

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Na.ta.tion Manjyot Kaur 99

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Fragments of Intimacy Kezia Velista 100

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These hands are sacrificial— Devoted to cradling delicate heads and tending skinned knees.

These days,

Pan y Mantequilla "Bread and Butter"

by Gabriela Torrento

a blunt knife is their only companion — splitting stale bakery bread in half.

I slather on a thick coat of butter Un lujo! After decades of shaving off slices for sixteen petulant hands.

Pan y mantequilla: The source of life for eight extensions of myself, giving four the volition to stomp across Central America and seek supper elsewhere.

Each departure turns another brown hair grey.

Yearly visits bring mangoes, meat, cheese — fresh loaves.

My refrigerator is brimming, yet the silence leaves me hollow.

I would rejoice in munching bread and butter indefinitely, if it meant an opportunity to see my bendiciones off to school again.

On days like these, I prepare my sacred sustenance.

If I close my eyes as I chew, I can imagine children bickering over who will sweep the floor as each mouthful goes down like a lead weight.

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Los Angeles

by Kenneth Sousie

Three shots on a hot night.

Police knocking on my door, Los Santos candles laid out on the floor.

A mother holding a baby who's going to grow up without a father.

Sidewalk memorial services, friends pouring out liquor in his honor.

His boys all crowd, the ladies scream real loud.

His mother dead in her eyes, but she's not surprised.

Blocked off streets - a man covered in sheets.

Helicopter searchlights beaming through the neighborhood, His family in shock on the pavement trying to clean the blood.

The next night: photos and memories all laid out on a street corner, his girlfriend hysterical not accepting what lies before her.

His friends speak their prayers their memories their peace and they all walk away as the sun rises from the East.

Every damn day I look at those candles and wonder how much more of this site can I live under?

Of this man's mother outside every morning like clockwork laying out flowers for her son unable to accept his departure.

One day she'll stop, and that will kill me inside but I still wouldn't be as dead as that look in her eyes.

So I pack and I leave before that day can come and I learned what happens when someone fires a gun.

Sometimes I think about that guy, that mother, that night and no matter how hard I try, I can't find a light.

Just another one dead in this world of lucked out innocents and somewhere in Los Angeles the gunman who did it is still kickin' it.

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Kids at Play Manjyot Kaur 103

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Tooth Fairy

by Alexis Wanzell

2001 “We gather here today to not only mourn the sudden and tragic death of Presley Tellar but to celebrate the life he once lived. A husband, a new father, a son, and an incredible storyteller. Presley worked for my publication for fifteen years with a tumultuous drive to tell a story. I don’t think he realized the gift he’d be giving, or how soon for that matter, of his words to live on forever when he couldn’t.”

2005 A few years had gone by since Presley died in the car accident. Tellar was a gentleman, from what I’ve been told. He worked as a publisher and story writer, had rich brown hair that curled just above his right eye which I think was there to intercept his gaze from the pages and remind him that he was real, too. By the time he reached 37, he already had 27 children, including the alphabet, of course. He only had two hands but they were somehow big enough to fit them all.

Celeste Tellar was his wife, you could call her his second since he married ink at a young age but she could make room for the two. His relentless obsession with writing was tolerable when he dedicated the high to you.

Celeste, Celeste, My Infinite Celeste He’d leave notes on her nightstand every morning before heading to Cedar Publications on the corner of Grand Street. The sun was always peaking in somehow, defying longitude and latitude. I think the sun was in awe of him.

Celeste would tuck these notes in her nightstand around 8 A.M. every morning before stretching out her satin skin and tending to her peonies. They lived a simple, beautiful life, one that people often fuck up because of a love to make things complicated. But not Celeste and Presley-they fell in love and had been orbiting one another ever since.

Even after he was buried.

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They had a daughter in 1998. Her name is Lily, his 27th child. The only thing that ever trumped the love between Celeste and Presley and the ink was the birth of their Lily.

Presley would write in prose about her until his hands were numb and the light was gone. Those artifacts are all she has left of him. He wrote about her for three years straight, until heaven claimed him as its own.

There was one special night, where Presley defied longitude and latitude just like the light in his office. Lily was sick, she had lost her first tooth. She held it in her tiny grip, running up and down the stairs in a tutu until she tired herself out enough to await the tooth fairy in her bed.

Celeste laid in her room, alone, drinking scotch she had gotten as a gift on their wedding day. She fiddled his wedding ring in her hands. She would soon put it on her nightstand where his notes used to await her and sleep in a bed too big for her delicate bones. The room always seemed bigger after he was gone, like the light didn’t reach every corner, like the walls were higher than the roof, and she would just continue to shrink until she became so lost within her own mind, she thought there may be hope in finding Presley there.

The next morning, she woke up to the glass of scotch still in her hand, poured over into her lap. She cried so often, the liquor in her lap felt no different than her salty tears.

According to her, she would always have this dream right before waking up where Presley was securing his tie in the glow of morning that turned their room a bright orange. He would then slowly reach his lips down to her forehead, and she would wake up, to that big, big room and no Presley. This morning, however, Presley couldn’t even make it to the edge of her dreamt bed before Lily would break her slumber with a horrified scream.

“Mommy!”, she wailed, “the tooth fairy never came with any money and I was so excited and I woke up and u-under my pillow w-w-was an ugly piece of paper!”

Mortified and confused, Celeste looked down at her scotch-saturated lap in panic. The room suddenly felt smaller. She scrambled for her wallet, looking for a way to make up for her drunken neglect. She then came to her senses, realizing she never wrote a letter, and grabbed it from Lilys’ hands.

It was thirteen years ago that my father wrote to me that night.

‘Lily, Lily, My infinite Lily’ 105

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World Joel Bautista 106

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We Die Joel Bautista 107

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Dear [Girl's Name]

By Emanuela Gallo “you should love your body… this is just how you were made you are perfect as you are beauty comes in many ways!” i don’t quite agree, i went under the blade, i peeled back all my skin in search of the break, of the problem, the issue, the root, the mistake. heard no diagnosis, went straight to the culprit, my bones and skin disarrayed. so i took the needle, sewed up my inside, had no use for thread, but instead all the best the world has to provide. how shiny the copper, how powerful the green? the voices persist, despite this vaccine, oh how else would i treat this body’s disease? yet my soul disagrees… but my face is anew the flourish of youth, the knife and the needle my issues they soothed. (but this is a secret! promise me you won’t tell, if the whole world found out, this next part would not sell.) if you are disarrayed you can do all the same! morph from ugly duckling (but “you should love your body… this is just how you were made you are perfect as you are beauty comes in many ways!”) … to swan in just a matter of minutes, using my [product name], so perfect the results make the price worth it.

since it so worked for me, it will surely work for you if you try it just maybe… just maybe! if you’re lucky— maybe you can look just like me! what else could you wish for? if you looked just like me, insecure you would be no more and maybe if we all look like me, we could all have a sea of faces cut by the same doctor step by step, heels marching out of our factories. why not turn the world into hollywood, so no girl would be insecure anymore wouldn’t that be a world to live in? xoxo

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The Sitting Room Emilie Sano 109

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1

2

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4

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5

6

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138 Rosie Vollaro 111

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Letter to the Staff Wow. Pretty weird year right?

You should commend yourselves not just for the work represented by this book, but for being able to get through another semester at all. Not being able to work with you in the office, huddling between classes in that tiny room with a gray carpet, will be one of the experiences I feel like I most missed out on this year. I miss you all, and I wish that we had more of a chance to bond outside of Zoom screens and group texts I spammed with announcements.

Encounters is an opportunity to come into conversation with other students, to hear each other out. And in this issue, we heard a lot from Baruch's artists: from reflections on community and identity to angst-ridden, lovesick poems, and pandemic boredom. We collaged together entire worlds in place of our own. I hope working on this issue served as a line of contact in a collective context mired in distance and longing. Wow, sorry, that was pretentious. But I mean it!

I'm thankful for your patience. Putting together a magazine digitally, between two semesters, and during a time when finding motivation feels like a bit too much to bear has been a challenge. I'm glad we all rose to it.

I hope you all stick with Encounters beyond this bizarre, challenging semester.

Things will probably still be weird in the spring, I'm not gonna lie. But if we were able to accomplish this amazing magazine with everything going on, imagine what we could get done moving forward.

Most importantly, I hope that you can see yourself here. I hope this magazine helps you take a beat to recognize that we are all experiencing this together.

Sincerely, and with great enthusiasm, Kenneth Fremer Managing Editor 113

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group photo goes here

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Encounters Staff Violet Webster/Editor-in-Chief/ High functioning narcoleptic.

Editing Kenneth Fremer/Managing Editor/ Kenny is good at a lil bit of everything. Live laugh loving since '99.

Karina Aslanyan/ (They/She Pronouns) i'm a journalism and creative writing major and i try to cope with my deteriorating mental health through writing poetry and prose!

Kari Brabander/ Public Affairs major and English minor. Interested in creative journalism and poetry.

Rachel Dalloo/ I have a real obsession with reading. When she’s not reading, she’s eating. She doesn’t sleep at all too.

Justine Galvan/ Justine, a sophomore, is simply trying to get by.

Sofia Ghasemi/ Sofia is a junior at Baruch and loves to read, write, and spend time worrying about the global pandemic :D

Arianne Gonzalez/ Arianne is grateful to be part of Encounters. She is also eternally grateful for iced coffee and carrot cake.

Nathalie Ramirez/ I'm a freshman from Queens majoring in Biology. I love art, food, movies, and nature. My favorite music artist is Coldplay hands down.

Hillary Setyo/ Critiquing art and writing pieces and also being involved in editing pieces that are submitted to the magazine.

Emily Singh/ Emily Singh is a thinker, yeller, and an editor.

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Creative Joel Bautista/Creative Director/ Joel was sent by the heavens to bless these magazine pages with an incomparable creative genius.

Isabelle Gross/ Hello! I’m a sophomore here currently studying entrepreneurship (for now). I’m into everything from music to photography, and I love trying new things :)

Tim Pulster/ Tim likes to take pictures, and is never without his camera.

Rose Vollaro/ Rose is a sophomore studying in the CUNY BA Program designing a major in New Media Content Creation and entrepreneurship.

Graphics Melissa Ramirez Nunez/Graphics Director/ Melissa is the graphics director of Encounters Magazine. She loves to devour books of graphic design and watch Noir movies in her past time. Her favorite design style is Swiss Style.

Sunjana Varma/ Sunjana has expressed herself through drawing since childhood. Now pursuing graphic design at Baruch, Sunjana believes humanity is intertwined with arts. Sophomore studying Digital Marketing.

Marketing Carolina DiCarlo/Marketing Director/ Huyen Tran/ I love taking pictures and making miniature objects from paper and clay. I've currently picked up skating and I'm trying very hard not to break my ankles :D

Business Vlad Chzhen/Business Director/

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Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence Program

Harman Contest Winners Fall 2019: Non-Fiction Narrative Judge: Beth Macy, author of Dopesick

First Place: Erik Kantar Second Place: Sven Larsen Third Place: Karma Tenzin

Spring 2020: Fiction Judge: Jennifer Clement, president of PEN International

First Place: Thomas Bentvena Second Place: Layla Huckabey Third Place: Hannah Lee 118

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The Program features public readings, lectures, and contests where students can compete to show off their best work.

Since 1998, Baruch has been honored to host these writers: Edward Albee Agha Shahid Ali Hilton Als Yehuda Amichai Paul Auster Elif Batuman Gabrielle Bell April Bernard Susan Choi Jennifer Clement Anita Desai William Finnegan Mary Gaitskill Amitav Ghosh Francisco Goldman

Philip Gourevitch Eduardo Halfon Major Jackson Branden Jacobs-Jenkins Gish Jen Ben Katchor Jane Kramer Mark Kurlansky Tony Kushner Jhumpa Lahiri Marilyn Nelson Adrian Nicole LeBlanc Beth Macy Colum McCann Lorrie Moore

Carol Muske-Dukes Sigrid Nunez Joseph O’Connor George Packer Rowan Ricardo Phillips Richard Price Francine Prose Brenda Shaughnessy Laurie Sheck Russell Shorto Charles Simic Monique Truong Katherine Vaz John Edgar Wideman

Baruch College expresses its gratitude to the Harman Family Foundation. For more information, contact:

Prof. Esther Allen, Director of the Harman Program Email: Esther.Allen@baruch.cuny.edu Website: weissman.baruch.cuny.edu/wsas/harman Facebook: www.facebook.com/HarmanProgramAtBaruch Office: (646) 312-3966

Encounters Magazine Email: encountersbaruch@gmail.com Website: encountersmagazine.org Facebook: www.facebook.com/EncountersBaruch/

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Fall 2019

First Place Holár Story

by Erik Kantar

A melody of a breeze brushes through the valley, tickling rugged peaks that hug a vast, verdant field; a perfect lunchtime stop for a modest pack of straggly sheep, indulging themselves in the sun kissed grass. A scruffy, white head suddenly jerks up, cautiously eyeing a hill eastward beyond the farm; soon another. A trudging engine rumbles, heightening by the second, growing near; the grass, for a moment, lies safe.

Peering over the brush is a small leaf colored vehicle, a dust cloud closely following suit.

The driver’s blonde hair flows, his smile wide as he cranks the brakes, forcing the wheels to a halt. He inquires with an unmistakable charm of innocence, “Wanna go for a ride?”

Matthias is an 11-year-old boy, born on Hólar farm in the West of Iceland. Typically donning a short sleeved, Icelandic soccer jersey –– no matter the weather –– he spends his days feeding goats and chickens; but since he’s growing older, he boasts of “adult work,” like running errands with his “four wheel.” Though his new responsibilities do not impede on imagination fueled dress-up duels with his younger siblings, Kristjana and Alexander.

The horses look on curiously while Matthias’ tender hands turn the beaten steering wheel. “My favorite thing about being a farmer is driving my four-wheel in the fields. If I lived in the city I would never get to drive,” he laughs, the engine grinding to a spitting silence.

Hopping from his seat, he reaches for a shovel to collect soil for his grandmother –– who lives just a stone’s toss from his front yard. The angled mouth of the shovel pierces the ground, protruding deeper with the weight of Matthias’ size 7 boot atop it. With youthful conviction, he asks, “After I bring the dirt to my grandma, do you want to go down to the river and ride some bikes?”

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With the soil delivered and his forehead sealed with a grandmother’s kiss, Matthias grabs an oil lubricant and sprays the chains of his three-speed, peeling blue-paint bicycle. Pedaling down to the river bank, he speeds down a paved road, his elbows crunched up, and suddenly he opts fora hard left down a steep rocky drop. Rehearsed well, he tosses the handlebars to the ground; examining the river bed for flat bellied stones.

Soon, with pockets full, he tosses his found-toys one by one, cheering on each rock’s dance across the current, “One! Two! Three! Ah!” When asked what he would do if he wasn’t a farmer, Matthias’ eyes turned slightly cold, broken from the pace of his game, he sat, sighing: “Even if I wasn’t a farmer, I would live near the farms. I have my own river, my own mountain, I have a field.” His gaze, suddenly cheerful, yet unequivocally firm: “I have everything.”

When posed to imagine his way of life, his river, his mountains, all stripped of him, and traded for a bustling city life; Matthias’ forehead, seemingly naked of lines, tensed: “I would kill myself.”

Like Matthias, his own father, Hjalti, was also born on Hólar farm. And like Hjalti, his father alike–– each born into the rich generational and historical destiny of Icelandic sheep farming.

Originating in the early days of Iceland –– when Vikings aboard longboats crashed the violent shores of the golden coast –– sheep farming was a crucial livelihood of the Icelandic people. Settling in a largely infertile country with brutal climate conditions, many historians credit the hearty and durable Icelandic sheep to the survival of their civilization.

Their rugged, double-coated wool –– one functioning as a fleece insulator and a second as a waterproof shell –– coupled with the sheep’s adaptation to a jagged mountainous region, bred a line of sheep that’s known as one of the strongest, and due to historical isolation, the purest gene of sheep known to man. Even as recent as fifty years ago, most Icelanders farmed their own sheep –– following the same cage-free techniques from nearly 1,000 years ago.

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Unbeknownst to Matthias, the world of sheep farming is no longer so plentiful. As globalization lifts the veil of isolation that for so long incubated Iceland, it also granted the nation an invitation to the age of information and technology, with much reluctance from rural Icelanders. Primarily stemming from Iceland’s entrance into the European Economic Area, globalist ideology has led to passage of free-market trade policies –– a national precedent.

For the first time in history, Iceland is importing lamb meat, flooding their domestic market with cheaper alternatives from Denmark, and the United Kingdom. In turn, presenting consumers a choice between lower quality meat and higher disposable income; or the same meat they’ve always had, at a steeper cost. For the 36% of Icelanders who reside in the increasingly expensive capital city, Reykjavik, the choice is ever clear.

The consequence: lamb prices have fallen nearly 50% percent, while farming materials like diesel have continued to increase in cost; forcing many smaller farmers to abandon generational farms and adopt an urban lifestyle.

Simultaneously, larger farmers have consolidated, swallowing up land that smaller farmers sold; ballooning in size, and effectively corporatizing sheep farming. Those who once called themselves “farmers” are no more. Their identities are forced to a transformation, as they choose to either adapt, or bleed out at up to 70% yearly losses.

Midnight nears, the sun still piercing through the living room window. Eleven Icelandic horses rest in the front yard, their majestic manes sculpted by the wind. The sheep are long gone in the mountains, where they’re free to roam for the next three months; traveling miles, exhausting each patch of green grass, into the next, until September –– when Matthias and his family, perhaps for the final time, will search for and gather each and every sheep for shearing and slaughter.

The children are fast asleep, yet Hjalti and his wife, Rebecca, appear to be the only living things awake for miles. Sitting at the dinner table, a mound of papers surround them. Rebecca massages her own scalp, relieving herself of the inevitable that comes from the conversation that no one wishes to carry. Hjalti, with a four-day facial stubble, eyes the delicate peaks from the window. Teetering on the brink of abandonment after suffering a 64% loss last year, Rebecca is locked in to the papers before her: a plan for survival –– a kr.185,000 ($15,000) investment into brand new wooden fences.

Tomorrow morning the fence delivery arrives.

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The plan: to open a tourist petting farm, showcasing the many rescue animals that they’ve voluntarily cared for over the years. Among them are a gigantic hog, a talking raven, a short-tempered white swan, and a billy-goat that Rebecca has trained to do standing circles. Tourism in Iceland hasarisen from a little less than a half-million to well over two million visitors a year in just a decade –– a figure that’s six times their population.The goal is to supplement the household’s livelihood with additional income from tourists, which can cushion their sheep farming losses, and allow them to keep the grounds that their family tree has called home.

Hjalti, a mild-mannered husband, watches on as Rebecca fingers their checkbook. For a moment, nerves are set aside when the pair’s eyes meet. And briefly, a glimmer of hope shines through their curtain; they cling. “We have a long day tomorrow,” Rebecca says, easing back into her chair, resembling a smooth exhale. Hjalti arises from his wooden seat and stares out into the window before pulling the curtains inward, “yes,” he says.

Grabbing his phone from the table, he lays his calloused hand on her shoulder, easing by her and motioning down the hall towards their shared bedroom. Little Alexander lie asleep in the middle of their bed, silently anticipating the warmth of his parents to assure him further into his slumber.

The following morning, the table is crowded with bread, butter, strawberry jam, fish-egg spread, and two cartons of milk. Rebecca, armed with a sheet of blank paper and a pen, outlines the duties her children will serve upon the arrival of the delivery truck.

Alexander, more focused on his cereal, and Kristjana, resting her head on her father’s arm, escape the gravity of the delivery. Though Matthias, elated, volunteers to help with his father in anyway he can.

Hjalti, with pupils glued to the window, has a gaze of intent, prompting a sudden reach for his binoculars. Scanning Klofningsvegur up ahead –– the single road that leads in and out of the area –– a lone vehicle is spotted on the road: a truck with a flat-bed trailer in the back. The trailer, carrying promise, slows to a right turn into Hólar’s private road. A thunderous engine disrupts the silence of an otherwise peaceful view, yet it’s song is not intrusive. The chairs quickly clear and out the back door everyone rushes. Standing quietly, the family of five awaits the truck at the head of the driveway.

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A burly man, wearing a fluorescent worker’s jumpsuit emerges from the driver's seat, shaking Hjalti’s hand and guiding him to the back of the trailer. Matthias, overcome with joy –– partly fora new visitor, and partly at the prospect of “adult work” –– jumps into the trailer and squats to grab a package of wiring; masking the challenge of an unanticipated weight for his prepubescent frame.

For the next seventeen days, Hjalti and his family depend on the midnight sun. The family rises at 5:30 AM, breaks for lunch at noon, breaks for dinner at roughly 5:00 PM, and although the children regroup around the television after their meal, Hjalti and Rebecca return outside, sometimes until 11:00 PM to build new homes for their animals and potentially, secure theirs.

It’s 7:30 AM, July 1st. A pulse of hope is served with breakfast’s bread spread, as today’s opening day of the petting farm is the lively topic of interest. Matthias corrals his siblings, rehearsing tour lines and exchanging quips of the eventual flow of curious foreigners that’ll soon enjoy their hard work.

A stack of custom made Hólar postcards, detailing a drawing of tiny Alexander, perched atop a hog, lie still in its plastic wrap; awaiting to trade hands and see beyond the walls of Hólar. Next to it on the counter lie a black, leather bound guest book, yearning for its next mark of gratitude. Around the living room finds the entire family, anxiously anticipating their first visitor’s arrival.

Hours pass, the sun embracing the western horizon, and Matthias is gently washing dishes after a hearty dinner of potato and beef chunks. The postcards, unmoved, sit on the counter nearby; subdued to the plastic wrap that confined the pack at breakfast.

The guestbook persists alongside it.

Over the clanking of plates is the sound of a news broadcaster, recounting tomorrow’s weather forecast: “A windy one,” says Hjalti, as he caresses young Kristjana’s blonde hair, his numbing eyes glued to the television screen.

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Fall 2019

Second Place Noodle Country

by Sven Larsen

"It's a noodle country," she said while suspending one noodle up in my first memory of her explaining her home. I begged her to buy us Top Ramen in the supermarket by her house earlier that day. She never had them or even seen food printed in another language other than Spanish and English until she came to the United States.

I was preoccupied slurping up the other noodle countries to notice how accurate her comparison was. It is a noodle country: eerily long, incredibly thin, full of flavor and warmth, and terribly fragile.

She cradled her home between two fingers, paused, then devoured it. The rain in the morning made it too cold for any of us to not retreat toward any warm food, no matter how much it reminded us of home.

We sat in silence. That was tradition. I didn’t know enough Spanish and she didn’t know enough English for either of us to break the quiet. We opted to just slurp up the noodle countries. It didn’t require any translation, just hunger.

They don’t even speak “Spanish.” Every other Latino I’ve met has made fun of Chile’s way of editing and creating their Spanish. They’re scared of the letter s and loop together every word into knotted sentences longer than the country itself. My father defends his patria and says other Latinos sound like their cutting through high grass, with long and loud shh’s. My Spanish has both shh’s and tangled sentences, but I still can’t identify how my father’s way of talking is so different. He sounds exactly the same as I’ve always remembered him sounding like.

It’s very Chilean to need to be forcefully different. An angsty desire to reject. The country was born of rebellion, like her sister countries all over Latin America, and it still attaches itself to its own quiet revolutions.

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My grandmother has grown older with Chile, watching her develop the same wrinkles and grey hairs. They try to hide their age but they can’t deny it. They both have an air for maintaining the superficial, but letting the deeper issues run. They both won small victories over the problems time can’t fix, but still could never solve them. She would dye her hair and Chile would be crowned as South America’s next superpower. She found a job and Chile won Copa America. She joined a gym and cooper mines boomed. The tiny praises stack up on imaginary trophy shelves but neither she or Chile ensured that their trophies could withstand earthquake-level changes. They curated a pristine image for themselves, both bulletproof and boastful. To relatives and sister countries, they both seemed unbreakable.

Last month she broke.

Her heart had fluid buildup in its outer layers. Pericarditis. Not life-threatening but scary enough to prompt my father to fly overnight and stay for three weeks. My mother said her heart broke for not seeing her son for too long, but she’ll be fine. Typical abuela melodramatics are a cross-Latino phenomena, but my father didn’t care. His mother was hurt and needed someone to mend her together, even is that meant just driving her to the doctor.

She regained face and convinced my father enough of her health for him to fly away from his home and back to mine.

A little bit over a week after my father returned home, Chile broke. Its heart stopped beating and became bloated from the buildup of poison within its own country.

Decades of neoliberalism, socialism, communism, colonialism, and any other academic word newscasters can throw out about my father’s home has taken her down.

A fare hike of only a few pesos dominoed into an issued state of emergency, drones being send out toward protestors, and a curfew right in grandmother’s city.

My friend asked me why Chile was like this. I knew it was a country that had many issues. It’s impossible to grow up and not start to notice the skeletons hidden in your family’s closet. But, it’s equally impossible to ask your scarred ancestors to start to dig up these skeletons and resurrect their own pain.

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My grandmother has seen her home dismantled before, but it was his first time. My father claimed he could piece together memories of lines for bread and a hyperextensive military presence, but with her being the mother she was, much of this was hidden away from him at her will. It became her job after losing her actual one to shield away her children, and it became theirs to shield reality away me.

Her maternal instinct to cover her children away from the wreckage wasn’t always enough. They lived through the worse changes, seeing their nation’s capital bombarded by a US-backed coup and installment of a new leader. My father was just born when the overthrowal of Allende occurred and grew up with an infantile Chile under Pinochet.

The projected rebirth of the country that the US claimed to instill died as quickly as it was born. My grandmother tried her best for years after to not fail with her own children, but eventually she looked towards the United States as a new, hopefully stable home for them all.

27 years after the self-infanticide of their new country, I was born to a proud Chilean father and equally proud Guatemalan mother. Every political intricacy and decade of pain of my father’s country was inaccessible to me for years. Instead, World Cups and heritage days at school overwhelmed my childhood with pride for the country. My grandmother would tell me in her own form of English about how amazing Chile is, but never why she decided to remain in the US years after leaving the amazing home.

It’s not unique to have pride in a home that’s technically not yours. Every firstgeneration kid my age knows the role; representing your family’s home in the US but always reminded that it’s not your home. Chile was my home, but it felt like one I was breaking into to scavenge pieces for my identity. All this would logically have adverse effects towards pride, but through generational struggle and decades of pain for us to born here shifts the pride to include this survival. The blind pride we had as children mutates as we discover — both purposely and not — the history of our homes and our parents uncover the living pieces of their pain that they endured just for us.

The pride is quickly followed with guilt, another equally strong sensation tying many first-generation norteamericanos back to their home countries. How dare we enjoy the fruits of their labor? Why doesn’t my $2.75 enrage me the same way? Why aren’t there more protests? Why are we not fighting every day?

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Seeing the trains of my father’s home ablaze make it all feel even more distant and confused. The noodle country I knew and her secrets still remain more unknown, but they’re breaking down. My own home country has started to break down, beginning with its own trains.

The parallels run over and over each other, making a patchwork pattern that uphold me and my generation who fall right on the grids. Intersecting lines of inequality and a history of neglect for people lap around the globe and we’re just now tasked with connecting them.

Cacerolazos have been held here in New York City and echoes of clashing pots and tired voices here in Queens fly toward those in Chile. Our own generation of tired young people jump the turnstiles in masses, just without chanting ¡Evade! like those in Santiago. My own home of overpriced MetroCards and a corrupt NYPD still houses my favorite people and the parks I grew up in. New Yorkers’ have such a distant need to make their home be known as the best, and it’s because it is.

Being proud of the city while rebelling directly against it seems counterproductive, but it’s the most natural thing. We only champion our home if it is run correctly, and noticing the cracks in how our home treats us progresses the change needed to break the institutions creating these cracks.

I still haven’t asked my father about Chile’s protests. I know my grandmother is safe, cooped up in her apartment away from the protests, but I just don’t know what he thinks. I know I’m proud of what my peers are doing. They’re making sure their pride in their home isn’t being compromised by those who control it. I know he is still proud of his home and mother and all the sacrifices made for him to exist. I know I’m proud of that too but it still feels so wrong to forcefully dig out his thoughts.

He talks to his mother daily, in their own special Spanish. He has her to vent to and remain aware. I’ve settled for newspapers in English. The two languages have always fought for dominance in my household but now they’re spoken directly on top of each other. The layers are deafening.

It’s been weeks since they began but I don’t know how to break the silence. It’s impossible to translate my still naïve concept of his home to his own sentiment formed after decades of living there. So we just sit in silence, eating dinner, tying noodle countries around our forks as the news echoes in the back, both from his Spanish channel and my American one.

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Fall 2019

Third Place Blessing in Disguise

by Karma Yangchen Tenzin

One of the most unforgettable days in my life would be the one night and three days when I was homeless with my mother. This happened in September, 2017. My mother and I had never imagined in our lives that such a day would come and when it finally came, it was unexpected. We had just returned to New York from Chicago. Everything was going normal until we reached home in New York. We were homeless. We had arrived New York on a Sunday at dusk and we decided to spend the night at the airport. We sat on the iron chairs near the exit from the airport, our bags next to us.

Security guards in the airport passed by and smiled at us. They must have thought that we were waiting for our scheduled flight. For a moment, I wished we actually were.

Travelling had always captivated me. What made me enjoy travelling was the opportunity that came with travelling to explore fascinating places.

By then, I was beginning to get hungry. I went to one of the stores within the airport and bought two slices of the cheapest pizza available for my mother and myself. My mother was tired. She slept earlier than me. She had used one of the bags as a pillow. It must have been uncomfortable for her to sleep on a chair. I was almost about to fall asleep when I realized that I could not be sleeping. I had to go to school the next day.

On Friday, we were given homework and my mother and I had gone to Chicago on Friday right after my Friday classes were over. The homework was an essay- a response to “A Room of One’s Own”, a short story by Virginia Woolf. I took a piece of paper and a pen and started writing. As I was about to finish, I didn’t even realize that it had become so late. I finished writing my last sentences and quickly went to sleep. That night was colder than usual. I zipped up my jacket and put on my hood. Although, I was not used to sleeping with the lights turned on, my tiredness made me easily fall asleep.

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The next day, I woke up at about 6 a.m. I went inside the airport restroom and washed my face. I combed my hair and tied it into a pony-tail. We had a packet of chips for breakfast. I left for school way earlier than I usually did because I had to take a bus and then the subway to school from the airport. It was good that I had brought my school student metro card with me or else, I would have had to walk to school. I could not use the cab to reach school. We had to save the little money we had for food. At lunch, I saved the burger, the fruits and a box of milk from my lunch for my mother. I ate the packet of cookies.

Except that we were homeless, school was going on as usual. Like usual, my friends waited for me at the lunch table. That day, I remember I spoke little to my friends.

When they were chatting at the lunch table, I plugged the earphone in my ears and started completing my daily assigned homework. At least I had a table to write on in school. I would have had to write with the book on my lap at the airport. I made sure I completed all writing assignments for the day and left only reading assignments to be done later in the airport.

As soon as I reached the airport, I gave my mother the food I had brought from school. That day, my mother told me that after a day, we would be living in her friend’s house for some time until we could find ourselves a home. I did not know how to react to that statement. I did not know if I should be happy that I would no longer have to sleep on the chair and wash myself in the airport restroom or I should be worried that my mother’s friend might find homeless guests in her house a troubling situation. I didn’t know what to expect but with a positive mind, I assured my mother that everything would be fine.

That night, we decided to move to another spot, one floor up. We thought that if the same airport personnel notices us in the same spot where we were yesterday, we would not be allowed to stay there. That night, I could not sleep properly. My neck and back hurt so much. I wanted to lie down on a couch. I forced myself to sleep so that I would not be sleepy in class the next day.

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On Wednesday evening, we moved to my mother’s friend’s place. My mother’s friend was friendly and welcoming. She told us that she would not mind even if we stayed at her place for a year. Although she was kind, my mother and I decided to move out as soon as we got ourselves a home. We could not imagine to give her further trouble by staying at her house for a longer duration. She was a single mother and she herself had her own problems. We lived in my mother’s friends’ place for nine days. During our stay, we lived like a family. My mother and I helped her prepare dinner and we all had dinner together. After nine days, we got ourselves an apartment and moved in to our new home. We were really thankful to my mother’s friend. We told her that we would never forget her kindness to us during such difficult times of our lives. Moving to the new apartment was like getting to have a fresh start in both my mother’s and my life.

My mother started taking another job in addition to the one she already had. I was in my junior year of high school and after few months, I would be starting my college applications. One day, I began to remember those two days and the night of being homeless. Although even the thought of that experience haunts me and every time I remember that period I shudder, I think that it was a blessing in disguise. From my experience of being homeless, I learnt a lot of lessons, life lessons that would shape me into the person I am today. First of all, I realized that while being homeless, the things I had always taken for granted saved me. Some of the basic things that I had taken for granted before becoming homeless included the student metro card that helped me be able to travel by subway to school every morning and evening, the tables in school and at home on which I wrote my assignments, free lunch provided in school and most significantly, I had taken for granted the importance of a home. I had never thought of such basic things I had in my life as blessings.

During my time of being homeless, I understood how lucky and blessed I had been for getting an education, getting healthy high-quality free food from school and yes, a comfortable home. I began to understand that not everyone in the world has the opportunity to get an education, to go to school and learn about new interesting subjects. Even if they do get an opportunity, they would have to face challenges to get education. For example, I learnt that there are students in some parts of the world who have to travel miles and miles or have to cross rivers to reach their schools. When I began to appreciate all the basic things I had in my life, I began to feel better about myself. I felt further motivated to work hard in school and get into college. None of my parents had gone to college and I decided that I would strive to become the firstgeneration college student in my family and make my parents proud.

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Being homeless also expanded my definition of education. I felt the responsibility to become educated and do a job that will benefit the community in which I live. I thought that if those who get the opportunity to get an education and make a difference in the world, do not take education seriously, then our world will be at loss. I also believed that our grandparents and parents have given us today’s world and we, especially the younger generations are the ones who will shape today’s world and pass it down to the next generation. With this thought in mind, I began to create important goals for my future. Meanwhile I thought that, as a student, I can give back to the community by volunteering. I believe that spreading love and happiness makes myself happy. I understood that volunteering and community service were two ways of practical approach to my belief. I started volunteering with New York Common Pantry (NYCP) which provides families in need and the homeless with nutritious healthy food.

I chose to volunteer with NYCP because when I visited their website, I found a surprising statistic which mentioned that about 40% of the food is wasted annually in the United States and 40 million people face hunger every day in the United States. A thought came to my mind that so much of food goes to landfills in the U.S yet so many people still face hunger problems. I found out that NYCP has partnership with the Restaurant Associates to rescue nutritious, high-quality food that would otherwise end up in landfills. NYCP takes these foods and distributes them to families in need which include single mothers, senior citizens, disabled people, unemployed and underemployed people, thus saving these people from hunger as well as reducing food wastes. Even to this day, I am a volunteer in NYCP because as a volunteer and helping connect families in need to resources provided by NYCP, I am happy that I am able to make a positive impact on someone’s life.

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Spring 2020

First Place Easy Going

by Thomas Bentvena

A deep red 2001 Toyota Camry bumbled down the street toward a red light. The car was dirty, the paint was chipped in a few places, and it had a few dents, but they were shallow and easy to overlook. Sal drove a slow but deliberate path down the main drag in Highland Park. His gaunt face was juxtaposed against his voluminous, navy colored puffer jacket. His loose khaki pants were covered in black grease stains, and his untied and over-worked boots were open enough to show his clean and new, but unbranded white socks. His hair was totally hidden under a brown beanie, pulled low, almost over his neck, covering his ears and just showing his eyebrows. Looking out the window, dictating with his right hand, he spoke like an off-rhythm emcee.

“Ya know, it's funny. Winter don’t start until the 21st, yet everybody pretends it starts the first. And it may as well. Its already cold as shit by then. And on top of that, nobody imagines the Christmas season as being mostly in the fall’.

He turned to the back seat to gauge his captive audience of one. His daughter, Riley, was propped up in a toddler seat. Her parents had expected her to grow out of it by now, at almost five years old, but the doctors said they had no reason to be concerned yet.

Riley’s pushed words through a befuddled face. This was the first she’d heard about seasons being tied to specific dates. She pronounced words well enough to impress her dad every time.

“Winter starts December 21st every year?” She said in that genuine inquisitive tone that is only believable coming from a child.

Sal smiled up into the rearview mirror, trying to set a good example by keeping his eyes on or toward the road most of the time.“ ”Yup” He nodded “...Well, basically -sometimes they say it’s on the 22nd, but that seems like bullshit, I mean, it’s all bullshit-” 133

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Riley was giggling. It's what Sal did, he tried to make sense of the world for his accomplice, even if his world didn’t make sense to the rest of the world.

"for nearly everyone, winter starts right about thanksgiving, maybe a few days after, and fall starts after Labor Day. Like when you started school this year” He pitched it just so that Riley caught her cue for an understanding nod or “hmm”.

She even had something to add.

“Like how mommy started putting on my winter coat after Halloween” Sal’s eyes lit up. He was consistently amazed at Riley’s ability to track the thread of a conversation. Sometimes he wondered if all kids were like this, but most of the time he figured the other kids didn’t matter much .

“Hah, exactly!”

He signaled and turned right into a gas station. The town had just gotten a new one, with a big convenience store that had a world of coffee flavors, and the exotic doughnuts behind glass doors.

“Exactly, it’s a winter coat, but really it’s a cold weather coat. And around here, the cold starts quick and sticks around a while. Winter is the longest season in Highland Park” Even though there were a lot of cars and people milling about, Sal pulled the car up to a free pump with ease. He put the car in park and got out quick so the car door wouldn’t be open too long, ever mindful to let as little heat out as possible. He walked around to get Riley out.

“C’mon, let’s go pay” He said fumbling with the car-seat straps. It took him a minute to get her out. He wasn’t the most familiar with how the car seat worked, and the added layers of clothing on Riley mad it that much more difficult.

“Mommy’s better at this” Riley said in an accusatory tone that was hard to take seriously, considering the sentence started with “Mommy”.

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“Mommy’s better at a lot of things sweetheart. And Mommy also has tiny little hands that make things like this a little easier for her."

He tried to speak well of the girl's mother. Sal knew that she likely did not offer him the same courtesy, but it wasn’t in his nature to speak ill of anyone, least of all a mother to their child. Sal was never married to Bri, Riley’s mother. They were together when Riley was born, and had every intention of staying together, but Bri has a temper, and Sal had questionable priorities. Sal’s gotten much better though. He provides most of the money that Bri and Reilly live off of, and none of it is court mandated. He straightened up quite a bit after his brother died.

He propped Reilly up onto her feet and shut the car door and silently thought about how he’d let so much heat out of the car wrestling with the car seat. He kept a blanket in the backseat for days like this.

They walked hand in hand toward the doors.

“You always gotta be careful in parking lots sweetie. Really, it's important. Anywhere there are cars it can be dangerous, and a lot of people drivin’ ‘em are stupid. Expecting other people to be careful is just you bein’ careless.

Sal loved his little aphorisms. He saw himself as a poet who's median of choice was casual conversation. In warmer weather Riley probably would have responded, but now she was preoccupied with keeping pace with her father, and the fascination of being able to see her own breath. They made it to the door. Stopping just short of the entryway, Sal stopped and looked up at the convenience palace. He wanted to be theatric enough for his daughter to notice. He let out a sigh of euphoric relief, like someone who’d come home after a long journey.

He read the sign, smiling from ear-to-ear.

“Ahh Circle-K” “C’mon daddy I’m cold!” Riley said yanking his harm with all she could muster, which amounted to a gentle but exasperated tug.

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“I know sweetie I know” As they made their final approach, someone was coming out. They had their hands plunged deep in their jacket pockets and a scarf around most of their face. With harms held tightly against their body, they were working the door. Sal leapt forward to hold the door open with his left, pulling Riley to his side with the right.

“Let them pass Riley."

She was frustrated as she felt that warmth from the store blow toward her and she was kept from fully enjoying it for another moment. Had she a penchant for objectivity and sarcasm, she’d probably comment that it was a hell of a time to try and instill habits of common courtesy in her. Finally, inside, Sal’s and Riley’s shoulders gradually dropped as the need to tense muscles to preserve body temperature was left outside.

For them, this national convenience chain really was something to behold. Brightly lit and clean, with the saturated colors of cardboard cutouts placed to advertise the newest beer or candy at every turn, welcoming them to partake in a taste of these hard faught luxuries. Sal went toward the coffee counter. Even with the variance in available brews, bearing flavors that didn’t seem possible to have been derived from a bean, French Vanilla, Hazelnut, Autumn Spice, Sal opted for what he felt was the obvious choice, 100% Columbian. While he added packet after packet of sugar, Riley wandered around the store. Usually Sal kept her by his side, but this store had more security cameras than the rest of Highland Park had put together. He walked over to pay and gazed at the rainbow of tobacco products behind the register while the person in front of him finished up with the cashier.

They had every brand of cigarettes that he’d ever heard of, and several that he hadn’t. Sal was never going to switch brands, but he liked knowing where he’d go if he ever got the inclination to do so. The customer before him walked off, and Sal rested his coffee on the counter.

“That all?”, inquired the cashier, raising his eyebrows “Nah Ima need a pack of Marlboro Light 100’s and twenty bucks on 12” As he said it he looked back to check for Riley, who was transfixed on the glass cabinet full of doughnuts.

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“-Also a doughnut” The cashier grabbed the cigarettes and punched at the screen in front of him half a dozen times.

“32.86” Sal doled out the bills from a crinkled wad in his pocket that had ID’s, receipts, and punch-cards rapped in a thick rubber band. He left the fourteen cents in the “Leave a penny, take a penny” tray. He went to the door and stopped short of it and turned to Riley.

“C’mon, grab one and let's go” Sensing his urgency, Riley flung open the case and grabbed the sweet she’d been eyeing. They braved the elements once again, with a little less care and a more harried than before. Sal secured Riley in her seat and pumped the gas. As they drove off, Riley finally took a bite of her doughnut. Sal caught a note of displeasure as he watched in the rearview.

“This is weird” Reilly wined, a small blob of jelly on her lip. Sal hadn’t noticed which one she chose, but now was realizing this was more than likely her first jelly doughnut, at least as far as he knew. She was at best unimpressed.

He flashed the snickers bar he snuck into his pocket at the counter. He could have paid for it, but she may have seen it, and he lived for the small surprises. He knew she loved them, but her mother was deadest against candy bars.

He tossed back without looking and it landed perfectly in her lap. She was gitty.

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Spring 2020

Second Place Memoir

by Layla Huckabey

If someone were to ever look underneath my bed, they would find a box. It’s pushed all the way in the back left hand corner, sitting underneath a bag of books I forgot to drop at Good Will, and behind a clear storage container filled with supplies left from my middle-school scrapbooking phase.

It’s sleek and dark with a glossy finish and a thin layer of dust that’s collecting on the top. There’s a broken brass hinge that makes it difficult to close but it's only ever opened once a year, so that isn't usually an issue. Inside the box there is a manilla envelope and inside that envelope there are letters. Eighteen to be exact. Eighteen letters for eighteen missed birthdays. For eighteen years that have gone by.

I hate my birthday. It’s a hard thing to hate considering it falls on the day before Christmas, and who can sulk during the holiday season? The whole month of December synonymously falls in relation to everything bright and jolly, the festivities of the season mirroring within the disposition of even the greatest of grinch. Each year I feel like I take another step farther back as the day starts to slowly lose its meaning and I worry that one day I will forget the day altogether.

In 2001, on December 24 at exactly 11:42PM, a mother relinquished custody of her new-born daughter in a small hospital in Kangwon-do, South Korea. She held her child for a grand total of once, provided it with a first name to seal on record, confirmed she was of sound mind and scribbled her signature on the dotted line. I wouldn’t give it mother-daughter bonding experience of the year but hey, beggars can't be choosers.

An umbilical cord was both figuratively and literally the sole maintainer of our relationship and once that was cut, the only remaining tie I had to my heritage was severed. At 11:58PM, Social Services swept in and I became property of the Republic of South Korea and soon after, The United States of America. Soo Bin Han was erased from the system and in her place came Layla Harriet Huckabey, naturalized American citizen. You should have seen when I found out I could never be President and my dreams of getting my face on Mount Rushmore were ultimately shattered. Tough day in the Huckabey household.

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I never liked Biology. I always thought it to be the least interesting of the sciences, merely a box to check that brought me one step closer to a slip of paper and a shake of a hand at the end of four years. The classroom was positioned in the back end of the school building and always held a musty stench as you walked in. Today that smell was particularly stale.

Every fourth Monday of class, Ms. Devinney pulled out the same blue accordion folder and a stack of papers she arranged neatly in the top most slot. The fourth Monday meant project day and we always looked forward to project day as it meant there was no new testing material and afresh unit was upon us.

It was the classic take and pass, the series of papers making their way around the room.

As they approached me, I could see the large italic print scaling the middle of the page and the bland text that read accordingly: Genetics is the branch of biology that deals with heredity and the variation of organisms.

It defines the transmission of physical and psychological traits passed from generation to generation. Trace a series of dominant and recessive traits down your family tree and determine which of your traits came from what side of your family.

Sounds simple enough. Straightforward instructions for an undemanding and routine project. It called for minimal effort and brain space and was most likely a filler grade to buffer the incoming midterm marks that were to soon be entered. It should be an easy A. Except, I didn’t know I was Asian until my 11th birthday. The harsh slant of my dark almond-shaped eyes looked identical to my father’s clear blue ones and the tones of blond from my mother’s hair must have been bright enough to distract from my own black locks. Whether I blame it on childlike innocence or sheer neglect, I never stole a second glance when I passed my reflection in the mirror.

It wasn’t Ms. Devinney’s fault. How could she have known? It was an innocent mistake and all it would have taken was a quick chat after class for her to amend the instructions and give a few sorrowful glances for me to be on my way. I could have done that. But, I didn’t.

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I walked out of that class with a type of shame I didn’t know I could feel. Despite the insurmountable disappointment that radiated a force field around me as I wandered the hallways, I couldn't help feel a twinge of excitement.

Playing pretend wasn’t a foreign concept for me.

I’d like to think that my distaste for dark chocolate is a direct result of my biological mothers’ inability to stomach bitter flavors. I always had an inkling that she was a good baker. Personally, I am a terrible chef, the extent of my abilities reflected in a swiss omelette I made in the microwave. Yet, I feel like she is the cooking type. Always experimenting with bizarre new recipes for my father and I, watching with bated breath as we scarfed down yet another one of her outlandish concoctions. When she was stressed, she would bake loaves on loaves of banana bread that would keep our freezer filled for weeks, and despite her knowledge of my poor cooking capabilities, she could never say no when I begged to help.

As for my biological father, I always imagined him soft. The type of dad to take you out for ice cream after a bad soccer game. I’ve never played soccer in my life but, maybe I would have in this alternative world. He always smells earthy, with a balmy twinge of cedar that can never be rinsed off, despite the copious loads of laundry he does each week. While mom was more outspoken and rash, he was the golden balance that provided the optimal amount of support and affection that could keep us both in line.

Parental genes did more than just segregate from their appearance in my DNA but separated halfway across the world. I made a decision that night to play god. Like little paper dolls I construed an alternative fantasy world that fulfilled my grand desire to belong. The only sound in the room was the dragging and dropping of stock photo asians, accompanied with the whirl of my internal dialogue reading like yes yes, dimples are from my mom but the attached earlobes have to be from grandpa. Would Gregor Mendel be proud of my intentions or would he shy away from the fabrication of data he so greatly worked to prove?

A figment of my imagination was thrown onto a 36’’ by 48’’ double plied tri-fold that detailed the intimate and frankly selfish ideas I had of my double life. The following week I strutted in with my board that was manipulated with genealogical lies and presented my findings to the class. Though my friends all knew the truth and entertained my comical demonstration with a hint of pity, my teacher stoically observed my performance, glancing down to jot notes every so often.

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I got an A. It left me with a dirty sense of satisfaction that stunk up a whole room.

It was a deceitful grade, one that I did not earn.

After that day, I stopped myself from letting my imagination roam too far. It would only be on that one fateful day in December that I would allow myself the freedom to think about them, guilt-free.

The other 364 days I am harder on myself. I used to feel ashamed that I didn’t know how to use chopsticks. The Asian-fusion buffet across from my house was my definition of Korean culture. I don’t like spicy foods and always have to explain my personal life when employees ask where I am from. It is consuming and it is exhausting, I am exhausted.

I have an inherent and overwhelming need to be wanted. I bear the burden to impress every person whom I meet, every teacher and waiter and cashier at the bodega. My insecurities are a product of the vicious reality that stems from a fear of rejection and the notion that I was never a first choice. It's embedded within every unsent letter and punnett square and half drunk bowl of egg drop soup. It’s everywhere and nowhere, hiding in the connotation and association of every mundane practicality of daily life.

Our lives together could have been great. A house always filled with banana bread and kimchi, smelling like cedar and stained Soju that was spilled the night before.

But this isn’t eighth grade.

And you aren’t real.

So until next yearYour daughter, Layla Huckabey

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Spring 2020

Third Place Bitters & Sours

by Hannah Lee

Unlike most years, this October, the branches had already been stripped completely of their foliage, lining the barren landscape with skeletal trees that reached for the heavens—the way the damned pine towards St. Peter’s gates from the river Styx. Among the streets of darkness, a single warm light remained lit in the window of Biddlebaum Bar. The current owner was one Bart L. Sainte, who inherited the bar from a great aunt met twice. He did what he could to keep the place running, but as he aged so did the store. The storefront was worn down over the decades as the sun-bleached red bricks aged into a soft flesh pink, and the once gold lettered sign rusted into a grotesque brown. The interior fared no better with the booths ripped, crying out cotton from the seams, and stools that moaned with every movement.

Founded long before even the oldest residents of the small town could remember—passing hands between a second cousin once removed, a best friend’s lover, and other forgotten souls along the way— the only remaining clue about the bar’s origins was a worn portrait of its founder, Jude Biddlebaum. It was a crude painting, the oil paint crumbling under its own weight, of a stern yet lissome man with a beard bushy the way the sea waves crashed into each other during a storm.

On this particular October night, Mr. Biddlebaum faced a clock that read 1:16AM. The smell of yeast and scotch wafted the air as if they were leaking from the floorboards. Harrison and Lance were sitting at their regular stools at the edge of the bar, the last two patrons for the night. Lance had taken another swing of his beer as he looked over at Harrison who was surrounded by empty beer bottles and two towers of shot glasses, stacked together in a haughty attempt of recreating Babel.

“Here’s to me I guess”, Harrison slurred together as he took another shot of house scotch, the burning sensation now lost to the frigid draft seeping indoors. He hesitated for a moment, contemplating whether to continue building his tower or set it down, before loudly placing the glass back down onto the counter, erecting a third monument to the night. “Give me three more Bart”, he mumbled quickly before he could be discouraged, only to find himself listening to Lance attempt anyways.

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“Come on, the past eleven shots have been ‘to you’. Put that down. We have work tomorrow”, Lance said as he got up to put on his coat. He added some bills to the pile that had been accumulating on the bar making a hefty tip for their favorite bartender who never seemed to mind keeping the bar open for these two. Lance nudged Harrison, waking him from the drunken haze he was currently drowning in.

Harrison jolted after Bart set down the three shots he had asked for earlier. “When have I ever been late because of ‘the night before’?” he chuckled as he lifted two glasses into air quotes. “Come on, if you’re really that worried, take one for me,” he goaded, extending one away from his own lips towards Lance.

“Well tomorrow’s not gonna be a new first,” he said as he swung the scotch into his mouth. It never did much for him. The burning sensation tasted like the dry summer day right before school would start and would stop just as it threatened to close in on his throat. Lance didn’t think much of hard liquor and regretted whenever he did partake in it. Unfortunately, it was a frequent occurrence.

The two sat quietly as Bart swept the floors, neither wanting to break the requiescence of the night. Lance grimaced as he watched Harrison take his twelfth shot after holding it for what felt like most of the night.

“Harrison let’s go. Bart needs to go home too.”

“Fine, fine. I’m coming. Yeesh.”

Stumbling out onto the thin frost of the sidewalk, Harrison looked down to catch a glimpse of his watch, reading 3:15. “Wait. It’s already past three? Why didn’t you tell me?”, he said as he shouldered Lance, making him drop his lighter.

“Told ya we should leave, didn’t I?” he retorted, stopping to pick it back up. It was a pretty little thing—gold, vintage, and refillable to boot. It was birthday present from Harrison back in their senior year of high school. Harrison had carved a 1 8 on the side with his pocketknife after Lance had accused him of stealing it from his family pawn shop.

“Now it’s undeniably yours. Cause you’re eighteen.”

“You idiot. I’m only gonna be eighteen for a year.”

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He stopped to dust it off on his tan wool coat and lit his cigarette, taking a long drag as he walked to catch up to Harrison.

“Damn it. Guess I’m not getting any sleep tonight either. Hey light this for me?”

“Jesus. You mean you went out last night too?” he said in disbelief. He took another puff before throwing the lighter over.

Harrison chuckled lightly, lighting his own smoke, as he remembered leaving town on Friday night to spend Saturday wasted in the city and replied, “Yeah, that happened. Not to mention the night before too.” He grinned with the cigarette hanging from his teeth, facing Lance, while sliding the lighter into his inner coat pocket, patting his chest in an effort to calm his friend down.

Lance swatted his hands away. “If I didn’t know any fucking better, I’d call you an alcoholic.”

“But you do know better.”

“Oh, do I now?”

“Functioning—”, he hiccupped “you always forget that part. I am a functioning alcoholic. So I enjoy a several drinks, but I can still manage my life thank you very much.”

“A several? More like an entire keg. If that keg were filled with bourbon.”

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“Okay, so I might drink excessively. But tell me, when have I ever let that get in the way of living my life?” he managed to say with a level of grandiose sobriety that could fool most, spinning back forwards with his arms extended out and walking along as if everything was right in the world.

“At night,'' he muttered under his breath not to Harrison, not to himself, not to God, not even to the passing breeze.

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Index

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Abdul Khan Alexis Wanzell Alyssa Nepomuceno Ayse Kelce Ariel Sklyarevskiy Betzayda Ponce Brianna M Levy Charlotte Kim David Betancur Diana Chen Emanuela Gallo Emilie Sano Emily Singh Gabriela Torrento Geetanjali Sugrim Goldie Gross Hannah Lee Huyen Tran Joel Bautista Julieta Cabana Justine Victoria Karina Aslanyan Kendra Shiloh Kenneth Fremer Kenneth Sousie Kezia Velista Manjyot Kaur Maya Yegorova Michelle Teja Mitchell Kim Rosie Vollaro Samantha White Sameer Sewdath Scott Horton Sheik Floradewan Siddrah Alhindi Tiffany Chen Tim Pulster Ursula Hansberry Violet Webster

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