Future Histories Issue 14

future histories literary magazine

issue 14

prose poetry photo art

38

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DEAR READER, Hello! Welcome to this 14th issue of Future Histories!

This magazine combines student art and writing in ways that activate both. Future Histories does not have a prescribed theme, but every semester, there seem to be pairs of visual and written pieces that go together almost uncannily well. My theory is that this magazine is a snapshot of the creative consciousness of Tufts students at this moment in time. What brings the magazine together are the underlying swells of emotion that we experience as a community. I think that is a pretty beautiful thing. I hope you find moments of solidarity as well as interesting surprises as you traverse the pages of our little archive.

Warmly,

Newt & Rachel & William

cover art | Aleta Larkin

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Our Team CHAIR HEAD EDITOR HEAD OF DESIGN EDITORS

DESIGNERS

WRITER LIASON TREASURER

NEWT GORDON-REIN WILLIAM ZHUANG RACHEL LIANG JENNIFER GAO MAITRI MISRA MAYA CHANDRAKASAN OLIVIA BYE CHERRY CHEN ALLAINE LARA LEI YANG AMELIA MILLER VALE TESCH MAHRUKH KHIZAR

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photo | Newt Gordon-Rein

Featured Artists Sophia Chung

Aleta Larkin

Newt Gordon-Rein

Mimi Zhang

Leila Toubia

Allison Kinzer

LiLi Miko

Amelia Hanson

Ella Spirtas

Arcadia Ohnemus

And a special thanks to all of our content reviewers! art | Ella Spirtas

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s t n e t n o C f o e l T ab

photo | Allison Kinzer

Skeletons - by Finnegan Thompson........................................................................... 6 Trains - by Lillian Marchbanks................................................................................. 8 Borrowed Time - by Evan Vezmar.......................................................................... 12 Water Bottle - by Alex Lin....................................................................................... 13 After “Tampa Stomp” - by Mikey Sims.................................................................. 16 Fog - by Finnegan Thompson.................................................................................. 17 Noblesse - by Olivia Wang....................................................................................... 18 In the Face of Disasters - by William Zhuang......................................................... 20 A.L.I.C.E. Protocol - by Newt Gordon-Rein.......................................................... 22 The Cottonwood’s Mirage - by Celia Duhan.......................................................... 26 Make - by Amelia Hanson....................................................................................... 28 Find my voice - by Evan Vezmar............................................................................. 29 sky blue - by Clara Davis......................................................................................... 30 Peel - by Sara Rochdi.............................................................................................. 31 Could Picasso Do This? - by Olivia Wang.............................................................. 34 Types of Normal - by Arcadia Ohnemus................................................................. 36 Word Choice - by Sam Cranston............................................................................. 37 The Moon is a Friend or Me - by LiLi Miko........................................................... 40 Opposite Day - by Sam Cranston............................................................................ 42 A Winter Walk - by Sara Rochdi............................................................................. 43 Snakeskin (The Kleptotherm) - by Isabella Gorman.................................................... 44 On Hope - Vale Tesch............................................................................................. 45

s t n e t n o C f o e l b Ta fh 5

S A barren landscape broken up By red brick. k Tree skeletons stand proud In clusters. e “When is the season of love?” l He questioned.

When skeletons grow flesh Of lush green. e Forgetting that they will t Shed their skin o Again. n s

by Finnegan Thompson

photo | Allison Kinzer

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Toubi a Leila art | fh 7

art | S

ophia C

hung

Trains

by Lillian Marchbanks As trains go they transition they pass and leave with your ambition I am a shell of myself on a train You are on a set track to a series of set locations yet, the patrons are set at random As trains go no train is ever the same even the same train is different every time you get on

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Trains, are constantly moving, constantly changing Their bodies are recognizable as a constant contingency unnerving it is Trains shake your stability, with every rattling twist and turn I eye the passengers in passing how hilariously fast trust does burn I do not trust trains Although, and hear me out perhaps it’s the people I doubt So on my way to the last station, I realize my frankly jealous behavior it is trains that hold the people inside for trains, trust is implied

photo | Amelia Hanson fh 9

art | LiLi Miko

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art | Mimi Zhang fh 11

Borrowed Time

by Evan Vezmar

I decide to not make any resolutions, gazing at my watch as the seconds tick down to midnight You’re at the party Living Splashing toasts to everyone you know Which is everyone Periodically you look back and catch me looking at my blank bingo board

Empty except for a neat row of “should have” and a diagonal of “will do” Your dress is torn in the back and the hem doesn’t look so even anymore but you’ve patched it with a smile and you’ve embraced the disorder with a headfirst dive Opportunity trips and spills her drink on your shoes Adventure helps you wipe up and you laugh as she takes your hand and pulls you to the next room The minute hand has kept on sliding past the twelve but the room decides to start shifting people out to the future We, the disillusioned and afraid, remain inside at the bar Racking up tabs consisting only of our yearly subscription bills and a Spotify Wrapped Finally when the bartender says to fuck off I pack my inert heart back into my chest You’ve left the party to go live I’m still here resolving to start.

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art | Sophia Chung

Water Bottle

by Alex Lin

My little plastic water bottle Grew grime around her rim.

I didn’t see it until I took a napkin to it, Chasing it into tight crevices, Soaking her in dish soap and warmth.

(I had thought her water tasted funny.)

Three of her, the doctor said, is one liter— Three of her each day to keep my medicine working.

Now she is the messenger between me and the fountain.

She measures my health, metes it out kindly, Easy to hold, Fits snug in the right pocket of my backpack.

Sorry, water bottle.

I should have taken better care of you this whole time.

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art | LiLi Miko

art | LiLi Miko

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art | Mimi Zhang fh 15

After “Tampa Stomp” Stomp”

by Mikey Sims Maybe it’s true and there is a different weight in the air there, some miasma hanging in that stale room, the dying breaths of soldiers and Seminoles and brokers and suicides.

Maybe you breathed in those ghosts, and the heavy, chattering burden of them bore the holes into your brain.

And you turned to dust one day.

And you were never buried.

And there was no ceremony.

Maybe I never was your perfect copy, and the little girl that you became was the last we’d see of someone so selfishly loved.

And I hold my breath when I return there.

And I am never buried.

And there will be no ceremony.

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art | Leila Toubia

F OO GG by

by Finnegan FinneganThompson Thompson A cloak warm and fuzzy for trees.

A lookout weary-eyed for the sky.

An ending happily ever after for a road.

Until a car’s headlights cut it open.

photo | Leila Toubia

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Noblesse by Olivia Wang We source our connective tissue from tidal waves, coral branches, altostratus, cirrus clouds. It’s a constant search, you know—for the lightning, one brush stroke of genius, one word to remake the world in the form we’ve always known it to have, etc. Some diagnosis for social psychosis bronze platter on the gallery wall that proclaims in the jargon we drew up the emperor’s new clothes are cruelty-free and they’re ready to be picked up from the dry-cleaner’s at your earliest convenience.

Wasn’t I asking for the meaning of it all to be handed down to me in such terms as I’ve learned to parse, to interpret in these manifold manners?

Syllables made anew in the crucible smile brighter than you ever could and point you down the hall, it’s just to the left, ma’am—didn’t you see the map in the waiting room? the art or the commentary on modern life as we know it, the cure you were looking for a veil drawn over helplessness atrophy in terrifying degree.

Now we’re speaking in the common code with a wink and a smile, now we’re fluent, we don’t mean any harm but we can’t help but erode the ship that bore us, we don’t see the structure changing as it shudders and with all this familiarity I still can’t identify the stress that rendered your sentences abrasive, off-pitch to an untuned ear. How do I tell you what I can’t even utter?

We ask this of all our candidates. fh 18

How your eyes are full of kindness! And how your gaze burns, bright blue as the words that fall from your mouth lily-gilded, upturned lilting upon the carpet threads, this infinite kindness as a matter of course, we institute it as a policy here the view’s spectacular, windows outstretched over the whole sky— what a wealth of stories below—perfect metal frames to throw my malformed phrases from, impact crash on asphalt feather-light, crack and quiver of the eggshell the world fell from.

How I adore my artistic conventions to keep me in realm of my neighbors and friends and say, this is what I meant the first time, the last time that every so often when I play the black keys it’s the ringing of a hollow bell I hear.

I’ve seen the other shore in every movie and magazine that lines the lauded shelves We flung our bodies (flew!) ritually—remember that scene? your hands

grasped too tightly and propelled me laid warm upon my back: This is like home, and history, you said— Maybe you always knew this,

how the wave does not reach the strand.

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art | Sophia Chung

Blow me a kiss and bring me a flower before the landslide buries us or tell me something novel, a daisy on your tongue sit with me—maybe in the next room or the next town—as I pull at my scabs and watch the yellow pus to drain out, so much whimsy out of me into the sea (as it should be)

In the Face of Disasters

by William Zhuang

It’s been over ninety for the past week and July has barely commenced. My friend who calls himself a doomer is convinced even this won’t matter. Not when the nukes drop, he explains between bites of a chicken sandwich.

Somewhere in cornfields, billionaires dig holes to install titanium mansions or spaceships to shoot themselves to Mars. I’m on the phone with you, watching you pet your cousin’s cat while she purrs. She rubs her head against your palm, no fear in her feline heart. Forever feels tricky right now, so I decide to love you, no timetable involved.

art | Leila Toubia fh 20

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A.L.I.C.E. Protocol

by Newt Gordon-Rein

Content Warning: References gun violence ALERT they told us there was a man with a gun. what do you do with a man? with a gun? it is true that you can tell how I’m doing by the state of my bonsai it is true that I wonder how to write something beautiful about darkness LOCKDOWN they told us to build like beaver— did you know? that beaver teeth grow and grow?

I’ve never been comfortable with the fact that light goes in gets trapped that pupils are absences. the darkness of eyes echoing the darkness of mouths INFORM they told us to be messenger. what are you in for? who has your number between their teeth? don’t you know without you they would grow and grow and grow? it is true you can tell how I’m doing by the state of my bonsai

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& auto-lock on my phone means I was watching something late in bed I’m telling you: a professor told me to watch what I eat.

I’m telling you: the beauty whispers darkness COUNTER they told us to throw chairs and yell at the man with a gun. a professor told me to watch what I eat.

I spit the darkness out at her. a professor tells the class to mind what enters their eyes and brains and mouths after all she says we are what we eat. trimming the bonsai is a splinter bending until it agrees twisting is trade: tree pain for

my balance

EVACUATE they told us to go to church, but they forgot to say which one. you are what you eat then why do I inject these little darknesses into my little darknesses haunted rectangle screening my vision inject gore death repetition and the doors are beaver-falling and the teeth are metal gnawing until they break and the dirt is dry and the eyes are never shut enough and what if moving is leaving and I with only my body in the way, I wishing I could whisper the darkness beautiful fh 23

art | LiLi Miko

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art | LiLi Miko fh 25

Cottonwood, cottonwood, let down petals of snow in spring, behold my mauled thumb, minced chives, the brumal choir claims “She can’t see two feet ahead.”

My eyes decay “Who’s that?

Who’s there?” they query It’s a messenger, sending intro / ductions There is nothing without intro / ductions “Oh look!” in unison Extend a hand, start again There are no beginnings under eiderdown No beginnings from empty beds Only Sundays slept away

Cottonwood, cottonwood, “Can she see?” liltingly sung No, but I can hear: astigmatic branches whistle irregular curves, crescent moons leave creases on hollow cheeks, sleep hails the unhurried, folding into crumpled brows Such is the way of those dark months Hark!

Do you hear the brittle skin?

Can you taste the cold dawn?”

Sunken eyes bely murky dreams, the kettle’s shriek shatters the stupor “Where is there?” they whine If by there, you mean a proud tin soldier, cloaked in Marx’s overcoat, sold and bought once again Then yes, I’ve been reading childhood books and skipping meals I’m been here and there — “She lies,” they demand

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I continue, There is sinking through blurred sheets to a time when we rise before the sun, a future when the cut on my thumb has healed and I can wake up with clear eyes, to see crystalline faces no need to grasp blindly for words when we don’t say hello, for hellos are worthless don’t shake rough hands but instead take to running when cutting onions won’t make you cry but the sound of blood-stained herbs and milky petals is liable to join in chorus, singing:

art | Arcadia Ohnemus

Cottonwood, cottonwood, Let down your hair Take a dip in the well Feel the stones beneath the arch of your feet For what a divine bend Nothing can be wrong in a world where I can fill the space between my heel and the ball of my foot With all the beginnings I can’t imagine From Sundays slept away

The

Cottonwood’s Mirage

by Celia Duhan

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Make

by Amelia Hanson

a bed lay looking at the countless creases my used-to-be-clean comforter the cracks between my bed never thought you’d leave me unmadeupatall after all that year, I made us up myself

a call

a cup of tea was honey-dripped melting warm and disappearing wet I thickened you up, and you thinned me out I left sticky, and you never cared to lick things up you never even liked tea just had a runny nose I’m never what you need purely something to make your bitters sweet

left a voicemail there so you would call back I was just something you could keep always waiting after all of the ugly tones a decision left till ten after then you would check in talking soft ticked we talked still just a decision you never made I could make an anything but still, you never make a move make a mess make up make friends we’ve made a mistake

art | Leila Toubia fh 28

Find my voice

by Evan Vezmar

Take my tongue, cut it out and s t r e t c h it until words tumble forth.

All the little ideas, The self i own, stolen in pieces from people i loved, We are looking for a place to land And yet the sounds don’t seem to make any sense Or the phrases are just too cliché and i stop meaning myself and start meaning the image i give the world My throat throws thought out but no one’s there to tend to it Who locked my voice in a fear cage blocked by straight-brushed soldiers and the tears trying to rise up?

An anecdote shrinks into a solitary note Unsaid words sharp as swords cut truth into manageable, expecting, digested lies.

art | Amelia Hanson fh 29

sky blue my iPhone says I have 5,068 pictures of the sky. this is not true; there is a picture of an Outlook calendar Photos has highlighted the “Sky” in the Skype desktop icon behind some appointment for April 24th, 2020 (I didn’t realize, of course, where I would be) but, there would be the sky, certainly there is evidence of this: April 28th it was blue. so blue the tree under it looks blue too there are others where the sun is in the right place the subject lit, the blue confined to the background apparently, every day the sky looked the same sky-colored, with clouds (sometimes no clouds) so many, like I needed to remind myself the sky is always sky-colored last week: I screenshotted a building on Google Maps, this girl’s apartment above it: sky blue yesterday: I sent my friend a picture of her school’s bus my iPhone noticed the blue negative space behind the building outlines the letters C–A–M–B–R–I–D–G–E S–A–V–I–N–G–S B–A–N–K today: the sky is gray my iPhone says my photo out the window is not sky.

by Clara Davis

g

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oph art | S

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I am an awful sleeper.

I wiggle my toes so I remember I’m alive, My rusty joints need to be cracked.

I say that I feel like an old lady– I can’t open my legs without waking up with cramps, And I know that’s not sexy to hear, But I need to crack my bones: Head, neck, arms, legs, Snapping my body back together.

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bbyy SS aarraa hR Roc oc

art | LiLi Miko

I look at the one that got away, And all of them got away.

All the way up that hill, And I am bad at climbing, I only know how to slide.

Mother always said to stay grounded– “There is nothing to look at up there.”

But I see you in all the stars shining around, With a polluted air that my smoky breath made even worse.

I have been rolling down and it goes: Head, neck, butt, legs.

My insides are pressing and shredding, My stomach pain never left me, I’m not thinking about anything, But I’m thinking about how you’re gonna suck on my nipples, Get them all hard, and leave me wondering if it was the cold Or my sexy ghost.

I am all I have left behind, And you avoid my eyes now.

I remember glancing at you from your coffee shop’s stained glass, And you used to look back and smile.

Now you see through it and through me.

I only see you when the sun goes down The house is not black, it’s grey and it’s blue even, The smoke coming from my insides swallowed Away all the colors.

I am breathing through every cell, I am finding ways to clear up my mind, Weighed down, I press on the wet soil Falling over me.

And it goes: Head, heart, arms, legs, Husked down and buried away.

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art | Lili Miko

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art | Leila Toubia

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Could Picasso Do This?

BY Olivia Wang

art | Ella Spirtas fh 34

I see and hear on a surface level—the echoes and eddies of others, and forget that seeing and hearing normally have other meanings: these meanings are a paved path, bilateral.

I speak whatever comes out and don’t explain. I lose cause and effect.

Abstraction: when things are stripped away, all the definitions, the rigid interlocking structural webs that provide clarity.

We end up with data points—the abstractions are the guesswork, your line of best fit approximating burnt bridges, your imaginative extension into ancient ruins.

When words slide in a gradient, in small, similar steps, in unit cubes, is that clarity?

What words are structural, and what like the substance of air?

Words can’t be cubes. Words can’t be 3D printed into a lattice of bowtie-shaped voids, a twisted jungle of teeth, of bone tissue.

I am walking because I am walking. I walk out of the light onto the train platform, through the crowd of people; it is my only, greatest mission, my body oriented to traverse the landscape of other moving bodies.

I have achieved a small perfection of walking— I forget why. As I talk with you, I am imagining another conversation with you, a sketch of a sketch.

Artistic license allows me to change the record, to alter; now in staccato-beat, under a roaring, rush of wings, wind blast in the concrete tunnel, my words are not precise to reality, they are precise to the page. I lose the feeling of strong feelings, I lose care for consequence: each action is an event which occurs for mysterious reasons, certainly not of my judgment. Effect never arrives in my mind, never left the station, left waving furiously, fruitlessly at the departing train. I sat in a black mirror while sound funneled through me.

What do you want to know?

Each thing, now, is a faint smile or a muddied yellow. It’s why I look into your face and see the underpainting—shifting lines, angles, yellow, brown, green, green.

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Types of Normal by: Arcadia Ohnemus There’s the stranger type of normal There’s the recognizing type of normal And the say hi in the hall type of normal There’s How are you? - the short answer And How are you? - the long answer There’s happy to see them type of normal There’s sad to leave them type of normal There’s got caught up talking longer than you planned to type of normal There’s making plans normal There’s texting every day type of normal and There’s calling every night type of normal Then there’s I can’t believe I can’t call you anymore type of normal too.

There’s silence. That can feel normal It’s different from stranger normal.

Everything feels quieter now.

There’s we don’t see each other type of normal There’s I have no idea how you are normal And then there’s we used to be strangers and then friends to more until we were that not-stranger-nothing learning to exist in the same space again type of normal. art | LiLi Miko fh 36

I write my poem; you write your crossword.

Our pointy pencils press on paper.

“Howdy” Of course that’s the answer to line 5 Across: Cowboy’s Greeting Just the wrong way to start a conversation.

Sometimes I wish I were a cowboy.

They don’t have much need for paper.

They are masters of dialogue and 37 Down: Lights Camera ______ They command the audience’s attention; Stupefied.

Coffee dribbles down my face, And I quickly wipe it up with a paper napkin.

20 Across: Rorschach Test Maybe therapy could bring us closer, But we are not symmetrical.

Maybe you could get lost in me too, But despite the point of my pencil, I’ve run out of words.

by S am Cranston

Word Choice

photo | Amelia Hanson

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art | Arcadia

Ohnemus

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The Moon is a Friend or Me I’m always excited to see him He’s often around, but I mainly only catch him at night He watches people He’s not much of a talker Maybe he’s brooding I wonder what he’s thinking about And if he can hear my thoughts I am surprised when he’s full Usually he’s hungry He’s smiling I know he’ll keep any secret I know he’ll listen I know everyone sees him and no one sees him Just like me

photo | Newt Gordon-Rein fh 40

Maybe I am the moon I am listening I am hungry I am smiling I am not someone you’d want to have a conversation with I’m far away I’m in the dark I’m the second I’m surrounded by different things I’m surrounded by stars But even though we both live in the sky, I am not a star And the stars know that too I am the moon.

by LiLi Miko

art | Aleta Larkin fh 41

Opposite Day

by Sam Cranston

There was a man who lived opposite the cemetery, But he was never morbid, For he lived opposite to it.

He did the opposite of what those at the cemetery did.

He never laid down, or touched soil, But he still had turmoil.

Those at the cemetery, felt nothing at all.

He felt everything.

Those at the cemetery, didn’t fear his house, Like he feared theirs He needn’t be so opposite, The cemetery will never house him.

A cemetery accepts all emotions, He proudly rejects them.

He chose to live opposite of the cemetery, Because he likes the view.

The cemetery chose to be here, Because it couldn’t choose.

art | Leila Toubia

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A winter walk together, I saw shooting stars with you and I wish I could give you my halfway-opened, Sparkle-lost, hazy eyes to see Crystals in the sky.

I have sniffed you like a dog for three weeks, And I am a bad breed, Your scent leaves my flaring nostrils and Everytime I need to remeet you, Rebreathe you, retouch you, Catch up to your new bits, And by the time I do, I am already on the next bus back.

My arm won’t know how to wrap around you, My body won’t know how to hold you Fetal positioned.

With a mouth pressing on my sore cracked nipple.

My lips won’t know how to press yours, I will lose memory of every curve in your body, And every mole I traced in the dark, With the tip of my sticky fingers.

A Winter Walk

by Sara Rochdi

A winter walk alone, You danced in the shadows, And I wish I were the grass you were stepping on.

The tightness in my chest will never leave, The last piece of my heart screams to be crushed, And your feet are tiptoeing between the already Dead leaves.

A winter walk alone, I say your name a hundred times, I sit curled up on the marble floor, The freezing wind smacked my shaved head, And I’m colder than how I was before.

“What was your name again?” art | LiLi Miko fh 43

Snakeskin ( The Kleptotherm )

by Isabella Gorman You placed it in the museum in a display case on a lit pedestal.

The expulsed version of me all dried up, stale.

To the museum, you come with peers from your vanity cabinet To shoulder the burden of your empty grief.

They gawk.

Fascinated with the stolen edition, a dehydrated relic a husk.

You pick it up and show it off; lathering on your pride wishing to conjure or condition some sort of divine regression.

You come over to me now and your hands slightly linger on my face and your touch absorbs my heat.

A silent plea to resuscitate the living.

Why do you love, to tell me you loved a paraded phantom instead of the warm body that embraces you?

art | LiLi Miko fh 44

For Hope

by Vale Tesch July it gets hot, so hot your hope starts to muddle. Hope carried in the wind doesn’t feel like enough, July days, those gentle breezes barely enough for your body’s sweat, and even hurricane gusts become good only to remind you what fear does and doesn’t feel like. July comes and where before you could walk outside and breathe in for hope, now there’s humidity that sits in you, on your skin, fills your eyes. Those days you see the heat, waving, waves beating on, slowly eroding; a thick slice of curved glass to catch the world through.

July, comes and I swear I can’t think anymore. Why think when there are wildflowers along the side of every road, when marigolds can bloom with darkened reds & golden yellows sharing a petal? Why hope for you any longer, when the first night up North, away from that Southern heat & humidity, I walk out back, just before the corn field starts, and see the white yucca blossoms reaching up to trees, to the moon? When the moon herself, curved and dangling, sure, not waiting, tells me, here is what it is to be known when lost. photo | Leila Toubia fh 45

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art | Sophia Chung fh 47

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