future histories literary magazine
issue 8
prose poetry photography art
Dear Readers, Thank you for picking up the eighth issue of Future Histories! In a year unlike any other, we are delighted to publish our semesterly edition of Tufts’ foremost (and favorite) literary magazine for your viewing and reading pleasure. This edition is best paired with a steaming mug of herbal tea and your favorite record! The magazine you are holding is the product of our team’s tireless work: from compiling submission packets, to reviewing and accepting pieces, to proofreading and revising with utmost care, and finally to creating the beautiful layouts that seamlessly combine art and writing. Equally important are our team members who have been revamping our website, publicizing features, deadlines, and launches on social media (follow us!), and constructing the budget that makes this magazine possible. On top of that, we’re grateful to the artists and writers submitting pieces that are fiercely personal, unfailingly vibrant, and always thought-provoking. You are all so talented and we’re honored that you chose our magazine to showcase your work. To our contributors, our team and our community: we sincerely thank you for your dedication and engagement with this edition of Future Histories. It would not have come to fruition without you. Future Histories has been an unforgettable part of our four years at Tufts, and it has been our joy to be surrounded by such creative and caring people. We’re excited to watch this magazine continue to bloom after we graduate! With love, Juli and Matthew Co-Chairs, 2021-2022
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art | Maggie Brosnan
THE TEAM CO-CHAIRS: JULI LIN MATTHEW MCGOVERN LEAD COPY EDITOR: NUHA SHAIKH LEAD DESIGNER: LAUREN FISCHER COPY EDITORS: JAY GUO NEWT GORDON-REIN WILLIAM ZHUANG IAN SMITH MATTHEW MCGOVERN DESIGN TEAM: MADISON RED RACHEL LIANG ALICE FANG EMMA STOUT JULI LIN SOCIAL MEDIA: BELLA GISMUNDO-HOOK WRITER LIAISON: JASON EVERS ONLINE EDITOR: MADISON RED TREASURER: KAITLYN WELLS
THE TEAM art | Madison Red
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FEATURED ARtIsTS Madison Red
Kiara Reagan
Davis Kurepa-Peers Agathe Smith
Demitrious Matus Newt Gordon-Rein Michelle Zhang Maggie Brosnan Lauren Fischer Rachel Liang Alice Fang
And a special
thank you to those who attended our content review
meetings! We could not have done it without you!
art | Maggie Brosnan fh 4
true care by Sarah Goldstein. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 inventing gravity by Isabella Urdahl. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Maminka by Isabella Greene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 letting by Spencer Vernier. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Corporate Downsizing by Tara Steckler. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 A Sacrament... by Jason Evers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 big appetite! by Jay Guo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 hymn by Ian Smith. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Silver Bullet Coat by Michelle Zhang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Gomasos by Rossiel Reyes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Supernova by Isabella Urdahl. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 trust exercise by William Zhuang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Contact If Found by Newt Gordon-Rein. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Guilt in Limbo, 5354 by Michelle Zhang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 LA to L.A. by Harrison Witt. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Sea of Roses by Jay Guo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Five Hearts by Jamie Pike . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 busking as a modern bard by Lauren Fischer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Safety by Chloe Cheng. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 OLYMPIA by Anne Savage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Last summer by Sarrah Hakimjee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Tarot Tonight by Nuha Shaikh. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 The Closet Was Never a Closet by Ian Smith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Tomato Man by Matthew McGovern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Writing My Hyphenated Existence by Priyanka Sinha. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Looming by Matthew McGovern. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 the big anthill in the sky by Ian Smith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 White Snake, Green Snake by Nuha Shaikh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
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by Sarah Goldstein
I feel like shit, I said, lifting my hands from my face, and you paused mid-stride I’ll make you noodles, you said, and I closed my eyes, hearing the fridge squeak open handing me the bowl, you said, sorry, it’s mediocre at best and I said, what
I owe you one, I said, feeling the steam in my eyes, the warmth on my tongue and as you washed the pot, I heard the rush of the faucet mixed with your laugh no you don’t, you said, and you reached out to take the bowl from me
art | Davis Kurepa-Peers
true care
no, thank you thank you for giving me this, without hesitation none for you, not even one drop of broth
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He told me of His little greenhouse, His sustenance, and said I was welcome to taste almost all. But exploring, trailed by air so frequently incensed, I found adoring my hair a seed. It grew a fair red fruit singing death like an open wound, full of blood aching to fall. He told me (so he told me) my beauty came from receiving His hands, sculpting my body so soft. So held down by His gaze I swallowed, I received, I submitted to know. Tongue cutting open my full red heart, I tasted what was promised for the first time — divine. Yes, I sunk my teeth in and with my red fruit’s tears, within my wound I found my own divine. Nectared sunset waves washed away my former palate, and suddenly I saw all of my freshly naked body breaking its bent shape. Unfurling from Earth, I looked up — I know I spoke. I know why the fruit was forbidden and why song grew from my sinful seed. Lapping at my sweet fruit’s peeled, ragged edges, I tongued a new definition of soft, where savoring sensitive didn’t taste fragile. I discovered they cannot possess me if I fall
by Isabella Urdahl
He tried to grow me out of leftover, already calcified bone seed. But I alone drank the sun of my reflection, so in this valley I lily-grew up to be soft, wanton, sweet green like a lying curling vine since they said submission makes me look divine. But Eden is no Eden thus defined; for how can I know the meaning of flight without the threat of fall? This sculptured garden carved holy — their heavenly hands feeding no life at all.
inventing
Despite what he said — “He says, He knows” — I know that the only time my blood sang love before my fall, was when I faced my own reflection in the mirror pond with which I watered my seed. he told me to look inward for Him but I felt holy with my hands, found that I am what I divine. I’d rather pleasure myself with the work of my own fingers, singing hellfire, than be half of all. And when night caresses my bare body, I know I was made moonlight soft.
art | Maggie Brosnan
like an apple inventing my own gravity. Let me fall gravity and find in His version of hell, my blood burning my heavenly fire even more divine. Let me well-open myself, digging into my once hardened earth, making my own garden soft and out of these tender carvings let fill myself up with all that is true. If I am to be soft and I am to receive and I am to be life-giving, let me seed my own mind’s womb and in it bolden up little saplings of true love with all that I do not know.
And bathing in gold heat, I will tempt burns from up high as I let the sun kiss me, melt me soft so I can forge myself anew through pain’s sermon. To to let oneself be burned is to know what fire means — wood breaking and light smoking and blood warming and all. If wanting all of sadness’ sweet, purity’s sour, and lust’s cleansing truth is fall — let me fall. I’ll hurtle, a trembling brilliant star, towards death faithfully divine. As I embrace Earth, let all my parts fall apart and re-seed. Damn me all you wish — I am fallen, I am lost — I am no longer despoiled by you. I gave you soft. Now I still give soft — to myself — and from my luminous fallout I will grow beyond all I know. Igniting new light I’ll star-fall — into gravity of my own making — which can be nothing but divine.
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She once wrote Sprawled across translucent pages Without ABBA I would perish Yet when she listens, swimming in song She hears only the lapping of lavender seas
Maminka
by Isabella Greene
art | Kiara Reagan fh 8
Letting by Spencer Vernier
CW: bloody imagery and self-inflicted harm
there, gripped between bruised fingers, purple-washed ink stains on my palms filling in skin peels, coloring, covering the places where blood falls out in soft streams, this endless, hollowed-out world where aching found form and slid through the cracks— tough, open red flows, and i can smell it and it reminds me of when i was about ten and ripped myself apart so tirelessly that i was sent home, bandaged, reprimanded— time’s lifeless stumbling wash-over fresher and clearer now, ink blossoming in pools, the world fuller than it ever was as i try to tell you what i am in letters and ideas, not broken hands and dead skin art | Madison Red fh 9
Corporate Downsizing by Tara Steckler
On the Friday morning that Hank Nichols’ adult life ended, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 300 points and the sky was blue. His alarm jolted him awake at six o’clock, and he felt the heaviness of an entire day hanging before him. He quickly shoved the feeling away, allowed himself to lay in the warm cocoon of his bed for exactly one minute, then pulled on his neon running garb and dashed out of his apartment toward the water’s edge. He began his daily mantra of positive affirmations: It is a new day for Hank Nichols in the San Francisco Bay! Hank is the man. Hank is rich. Hank is attractive. Hank is happy. Monica will notice Hank today. Monica will notice Hank today. Monica will noti–“Hey! Watch where you’re going!” barked a young mother pushing a stroller. She swerved out of Hank’s hasty path, horrified by the near collision. “Sorry,” Hank muttered, not slowing down. “Didn’t see you there.” And he was off. The mother shook her head and soothed her crying daughter with a pacifier. Hank sped through his daily six-mile loop, working to trim down the fat that had unacceptably accumulated on his midsection in recent months. He didn’t notice the rising October sun exhaling its diluted warmth across the Bay, or the two seals waking up at the end of a pier. Even if he had noticed, he wouldn’t have cared. Hank was focused on the presentation he was going to give at work later that day that was going to change everything. The presentation that would make Monica notice him.
art | Madison Red fh 10
Manson & Young Inc. was the largest bank in the Western United States, and Hank was the CEO. In recent months, the company’s poor financial performance had haunted him. Hank spent endless days in the office scouring over internal budgets and reports, looking for possible interventions to fix the intolerable and apocalyptic problem of Manson & Young Inc.’s decreasing profit margins. He had concluded that the only possible solution was downsizing at least a fifth of the workforce. Sure, his hard-working employees would be financially distraught and personally offended. But money was money, Manson & Young Inc. needed more of it, and Hank was the man to make that happen. Plus, he’d never lay off Monica. He’d prefer to lay next to her. Back at his apartment after his run, Hank shaved and showered, then preened in the mirror. The sticky note his mother had left him when she visited a few months ago remained: “You got this, Big Guy!” Hank would have taken it down, but it’s not like he was having many houseguests those days, and there was nothing like a mother’s comfort. He scrutinized his chiseled face in the mirror: smooth as a baby’s bottom. He shuffled his Spotify and “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” came on. Hank is happy. He sighed and switched it to an intelligent Mozart sonata. Hank dressed in his favorite navy blue Brooks Brothers suit, ate seven almonds, and downed a glass of milk. He was ready to go.
...continue reading on futurehistoriesmag.org
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Holy water is nothing more than ordinary water that has been blessed by a member of the clergy.
When I dip my fingertips in the font at the front of my church, it feels softer than regular water. I wonder how many parts-per-million the holiness is. If you placed two basins of water before me, I could tell you which is holy and which is not. Even if neither were blessed. I think I could do it. In Genesis, it is mentioned that God created whales, yet not a single other creature is mentioned by its name. Maybe that’s why Jesus is a fish on bumper stickers. The touch of holy water is my favorite part of Mass. I’d love to get a pipeline of it delivered to my home, Yet something tells me Jesus wouldn’t like that very much.
photo | Demitrious Matus
by Jason Evers
A SACRAMENT...
Though I suspect there may be something more to it.
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photo | Mihec le Zhang
by Jay Guo gimme a morsel / not little round things like bits of rat swiss / broken pale-gold and crumbly off the block, but
big appetite!
real scraps, ragged and dirty / lemme desperate shove ‘em into my mouth / tatters caught on keening toothtips, meager / papery vittles too dry to swallow. / i wanna feel / emptier when they / enter me, ripping / taunting the gasping walls / of my stomach, i’ll cramp n’ curl / choke / spit up ‘til I’m too / shriveled for even / that, end up a joke / of a mummy, desiccated / body / snarling at the fluorescent white. fh 13
HY M N our waters were related after all: kissed by the same scorpion stinger and baked in the muddy watershed that stretched between our houses. it wasn’t a stretch, then, to call you a god: god of wine-tinted ice creams, of sweetness and silence; god of closets, of hands on mouths, of fading without a trace.
every day holding for some transfiguration, an answer to my prayers; but like all the other gods, you sat and watched me peel my knees from the floorboards. i howled my ires / swallowed the fire alone in a midnight cul-de-sac: jagged throat keening, the phone still motionless on the cradle.
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art | Maggie Brosnan
see the way he smiles— so look up. regard the crescent moon cutting through your fog, and remember that a silent deity isn’t worth the worship. that idolatrous kindness and adulterous blindness are not the same. to kiss the fates on both cheeks before you leave. so grab your winter jacket from the pews and snuff the last candle in the temple. let the building collapse behind you, listen closely to its final words “the mass has ended, go now in peace—”
by
Ian Smith
it wasn’t a stretch, given everything, to call you nothing at all. i whisked myself away in barbed wire, choked down a peach, traversed across the valleys of my brain in search of new psalms to sing. a distraction. but once you look a god in the eyes,
then go in peace. fh 15
Silver Bullet Coat by Michelle Zhang Nainai had already begun peddling out random articles of clothing she had buried away in boxes and closets. “Why don’t you take this—this will be better than the one you have now. Try on this! Bring it with you when you go back. Take this. Try to give these to your dad for me, will you? It’s never been worn, but he won’t listen to me. Please take it. Can you do this for Nainai?” I shook my head no each time. I kept my hands to my sides, afraid of where I stood. I mentally drew a small square box to lock myself into. Her hair was already short, but she kept fussing about cutting it shorter before the funeral. With the way she rambled, I felt as if she was preparing to take leave as well. The house was perpetually cold, and I often found myself wearing a coat and two layers of pants to bed. Nainai had already moved bedrooms. She didn’t want to be in the old one they shared. But his memorabilia still managed to make its way to the new one, entrapping anyone that entered. Regardless, the first night he was gone, she still complained about how she felt left alone and forgotten despite being surrounded by him. “How could he forget me so easily? Didn’t even bother to visit…” I hoped this was simply a directional error. Could ghosts get lost? If not, was I forgotten too? “What about this one? Your yeye loved it. It was his favorite coat. He would always go on and on about how warm and light it was. It’d be a pity if someone didn’t take it. Gugu will just donate everything that remains. I don’t want a random stranger taking his things.” It would be a pity. I reached out to grab it—soft and silver. The coat was gentle and painless. I always believed I was the least favorite, unsure if there was even a space for me to exist. Sweet words and gifts oftentimes felt like afterthoughts. But the coat was all mine. For once I didn’t have to compete. That night, I went to sleep with the coat on.
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art | Maggie Brosnan
Gomasos by Rossiel Reyes
No sé por qué se me ocurrió ver las estrellas en la mañana. Pero sin el sol a la vista, mi única esperanza de verlas se disminuyó. Aun así, me obligué a buscarla, una estrella, no, más bien la luz magnífica del sol, que me traiga la esperanza que perdí a lo largo de los años. Caminé hacia el este, porque me dicen que ahí es donde se esconde el sol, pero cuando comencé mi viaje, se me ocurrió que no sabía ni siquiera lo que es el ‘este’. Bueno, pensé, tiene que ser un lugar lo suficientemente grande para contener el sol, tal vez se halla en las cuevas de las montañas de la Sierra Madre Occidental. Me di la vuelta. Sin el sol que me dijera, el tiempo no tenía significancia y caminé hacia el horizonte donde se veían las montañas. A lo lejos, podía ver un árbol invitándome a descansar junto a él. Seguí caminando y al llegar, me senté a reposar. Ese árbol, quien a través del viento me dice ser un mezquite, sacuda sus ramas llenas de fruto rojo. Quise levantarme pero mis ojos se cerraban sin querer y me quedé dormida a su lado con sus semillas tiradas a nuestro alrededor. No tuve sueños en ese descanso, y cuando desperté me encontré enfrente de la luz de la luna. Pero eso poco importaba porque allí, pegado al lado del árbol, encontré la luz ámbar de la esperanza que estaba buscando. Extendí la mano, lo saqué del costado del árbol y comí la dulce luz que me sostendrá por los años venideros. photo | Lauren Fischer
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art | Madison Red
SUPERNOVA by Isabella Urdahl
I am too full my chest gasps helium high, pleading for air that only serves to push me closer to bursting light an explosion waiting I am no star but let me try to swallow the swirling summer sweet ache of ripely bruised fruit. Tenderly touch tender. Screwdrivering messily through all four chambers of pulped raspberry tissue to leave me leaking out fresh, familiar, full – I am full, so full, of words of wants like a sunrise caught in the globe of a friend’s eyes of loves like the first finger kiss, pluck of a guitar string of bursting happiness like a squeezed orange in the fist showering sunshine down my wrists and of the ball and chain of old memories quietly weighing around my brain and asterisked knuckles and crappy dramatic poems that trace out hurts dim and low a little coil of wire hot to touch, an old lightbulb and dusty old notes from two years ago three years ago four years ago five years ago I wanted to cut myself down to size until I was precisely enough in bed with the heavy phantom limbs of an ancient sadness that used to swallow me whole I am full of gratitude for the heat that ignites itself along my body little fires burning slow, shooting sparks that sprout my cheeks a bouquet of embers of the wind that rockets my hair skyward hurricane my lungs why don’t you and throat swallows swooping on wingtips through updrafts of the peony-flower in my left breast that can’t help collapse, open to the sun baby pink petals soft, feathery hope of caresses, thunderstorms have mercy ...continue reading on futurehistoriesmag.org
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trust exercise
CW: implied self-harm
Mom came to visit My last week in Williamsburg I asked the landlord For an extra heater Tucked away the things She wouldn’t want to see In return, she washed the fruit by William Zhuang And boiled water on the stove. Together we filled the room With conversations we’ve already had Pretended not to hear What laid unspoken in silence Nights before this I slept with a tension She had stood between Neither of us dared to display Kept the knife off my skin Crouched on the top bunk Yet she held her blade I heard her breathing Against my trust since I heard the stress in her chest In defense, my body went Frozen in paranoia Today I came clean to her My mind armored Naked, armor shed Reminders trained into habits She traced over the scars she gave Until the skin under Felt just smooth enough I wanted nothing in exchange But for her to do the same Shed the last layer of metal Show me the trust I need
art | Newt Gordon-Rein fh 19
Contact If Found
by Newt Gordon-Rein
I found Strength in the dry gutter on the hill all yellow-edged and cloudy-lined lion’s mane It wasn’t mine but I carried it for a while— waveform, pushing against push until energy moves on Not that I couldn’t use some paper-thick courage, self-fulfilling, but I never did learn how to read painted cards—nothing to grip
of dead ends.
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art | Agathe Smith
Strength felt wrong like dull teeth pressing my palm skin, so I left it atop a shrub—the kind I can’t see without thinking
In ways of dissuasion and discontent, “Bleached hair,” pitched Dad, “forms dissonance” From those before— they’re memories Refrained, lost through broken psalms’ defense.” But turn I may with weeping disarray Aside my dazed mirror, I comb, I comb— Spurn the ill-placed photo: Grandpa clasped once by fire. Obscure the end, this I dream: to rest! to roam. Though gone, I play his last sustained breath: Must I comb my hair with this iron lyre to efface the heirloom remnant pains? These fallen strands I’ll blanch and dye. Here I’ll pick and I’ll pluck, hoping I’ll plead the tune of death to life Sweeping past loss, I’d separate Yet grief resolves none of this strife.
art | Davis Kurepa-Peers
My father’s words– though fake– I institute To lose my grief I’d compromise my tribute Still I find no salvation through forward steps. My psyche burns; I still looked back.
GUILT IN LIMBO, 5354
fh 21
by Michelle Zhang
LA to L.A. by Harrison Witt
Back to that same old place…Sweet Home Chicago It comes on, I cry. I cry when I hear “Sweet Home Alabama”; even “Country Roads” does it. They remind me of Mom, even though we lived in Baton Rouge my entire life. She wasn’t much of a crier, more of a belter, especially when we had to remind Neil Young that a Southern man don’t need him around anyhow. Drives to school were defined by the tunes. We listened to “The Star-Spangled Banner” (Whitney’s version, of course) on Fridays, “Born In The USA” on hot days, and “American Pie” in traffic. That song was blissfully hypnotic, but man could it drag. It was post-9/11, but that didn’t mean much to Mom. She burned the CDs in ‘98. Mom loved Clapton, even though he was a Brit. I like how his guitar seems like it has a mouth that opens and releases the perfect sound, and so did she. 2 and 2 is 4, 4 and 2 is 8. It took me a while to realize that he was discussing multiplication, not erroneous addition. Addition is more human: summing things together feels innate, where multiplication seems mystical, transcendent. That’s why I was confused. In class we had learned that “and” prompted multiplication and “by” nudged us towards division in those pesky math-word problems, but I thought Clapton was above the Law. Mom got the problems wrong when she helped me; she was below the Law. It also took me a while to realize that Clapton wasn’t from Chicago. That made three of us. Before “Sweet Home Chicago” ends, I want to think of a story about Mom. A story doesn’t reveal much, but a routine? That’s real. After school, while I did multiplication, she poured herself a glass of brandy. She drank like they say fish do, but I’m skeptical about fish actually ‘drinking’ when they’re down there. During brandy #3, she made scrambled eggs and put 97.1 on the stereo that rested on top of the Microwave (the other essential appliance for when Hot Pockets supplanted scramblys). She would talk over the tunes, telling me about the adventures she had before I was born. Florida, Idaho, Hawaii, California, New York. 44 states. 44! Anywhere I dreamed of going, she’d already been. I mostly felt admiration, and sometimes jealousy, but always like a burden. That she did this before 23, without Grammy and Grampa, was a miraculous feat. I was shocked she didn’t have newspaper articles written about her. I understood–even back then–why I had to settle for Reebok over Jordans, why my birthday parties were in the backyard. She must have spent all her money on those trips. I choose to believe her about those trips. Because, why not? I’ve hit Alabama, Chicago, and am now heading towards Los Angeles to commemorate Joni Mitchell’s “California.” I wish Mom could be in this car to duet with me; I may have underestimated the drive from Alabama to California. It’s worth it though. Because when I have a son, I can tell him about my adventures with the same conviction as Mom. So come home, baby don’t you want to go?
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art | Maggie Brosnan
Sea of Roses by Jay Guo
I would like to swim in a sea of roses, just the petals. I imagine they would be skin-silken against my arms. I would like to plunge in the red dark, the sky a wildfire. Blood-steeped silhouettes and lightning behind the eyelids. I would like to bathe in rosewater, not the cheap stuff, feel that real-clear salubrious pink in my pores. I would like to feel so fragile, my paper-thin body like moths’ wings smeared, ochre across the sea. I would like to suffocate, velvet against the tongue and throat, petalscent tumbling out like water and air and water again. I would like to thrash against the waves, so small and desperate— reflection close against the sky, thorn piles on the waterline.
photo | Lauren Fischer fh 23
Five Five Hearts Hearts by Jamie Pike
CW: graphic imagery, blood, and self-inflicted harm
The day I was born, the doctor pried open my rosebud fists and found them completely empty. Nobody knew why. They ran every test they could think of, but found no answers. Nothing in the ultrasounds had indicated that I might be deformed. All of my sisters had come into the world complete, each of them clutching a hot little wad no bigger than a marble, pulsing and vermilion. Yet here I was, lying in the bassinet, somehow in perfect health, giggling and cooing despite being born without a heart. I would have five hearts in all, and I found the first when I was eleven. I didn’t need it until then: as a young child, I was much the same as everyone else. Our mouths were all empty, still too small for our hearts to fit inside, so when I pulled the cat’s tail or smacked someone over the head with a wooden block, it didn’t attract much notice. Since none of us had our hearts yet, every other little kid acted that way too. All the parents kept their kids’ hearts in jars on top of their fridges, where they waited until we were ready. In middle school, my friends decided it was time, and they all began coming to school with that peculiar bulge of the cheek, that lump under the jaw. There was no heart for me to put there, so I made a habit of wearing a crumpled paper towel to school in its place, wadded up and damp in the too-deep cavity beneath my tongue. This became my first heart, and of my five it hurt me the least. I had trouble making friends at school. To me, they were all interchangeable. I had no special affection for any of them. I forgot birthdays, then I stopped being invited to them. They sent me to the nurse the day after Riley’s memorial. She’d been fh 24
the closest I’d had to a friend. She was in the car with her older brother when a drunk driver struck them from the side. They asked me the next day: Why weren’t you at the assembly after school? I said, I forgot. They thought I’d better have the nurse check me for heart issues. She asked me to take out my heart and show it to her, and I was made to pull out my soggy paper towel, coiled like a whitish-gray loop of intestine, speckled with bits of lunch I’d been unable to fish out, in front of her. My friends were colder to me after the memorial. I think now they must have suspected. That was when I realized with a dropping feeling that there was a circle drawn around everyone in the world and I was standing outside it. Sometimes I lay awake at night and tried to feel what other people could feel. It was like trying to move a phantom limb I’d conjured up. The feeling slipped like sand between my fingers. I started experimenting with prosthetic hearts. I’d take small objects (a marble, a grape, an eraser) and slip them into the space under my tongue, just to feel them roll around in there, to feel the pressure on my jaw and the roots of my teeth, and wonder if that was what kindness felt like. Maybe, I thought, it had a flavor. Would it be meaty and savory, the way flesh would taste? Sweet and lingering, like the heart-shaped candy we exchanged on Valentine’s Day? Could I simulate it with a wedge of orange, a small handful of almonds or peanuts, or a piece of hard candy that dwindled to nothing over time? I tried all of these, but never felt any different. None of my prosthetics ever lasted long; after a day or so I’d abandon them when they failed to give me what I was looking for. My first love was confusing and contradictory. Somehow I recognized the feeling, though it had never happened to me before. I wanted to spend time with her, I wanted closeness to her, the chance to touch her dark curls. The pinch in my groin and lower abdomen left me no room for doubt: she was the one. Around her, I pretended I wasn’t heartless. She’d make out with me in her car; I felt lucky and guilty; I became entirely committed to the act. I wasn’t good at it. When she walked into the room my body lit up, but I still forgot our anniversary until it arrived, rushing to buy her limp flowers from the stand by the grocery store exit doors. Once, on a date, I made the mistake of ruminating on how bored I was, putting a hurt look into her eyes which I had no idea how to fix. Around her, I desperately monitored my every step, trying to be somebody kinder than myself. Time spent with her left me exhausted, drained. But everyone around me, those who knew what I couldn’t know, said that real love was worth doing anything for. I wanted to feel what that meant, I wanted us to be one of those countless happy couples with joy under their tongues. Our courtship ended quickly. We were about to have sex for the first time, and she asked if she could first look at my heart, hold it for a minute. “Take it out,” she said. “I want to see it.” ...continue reading on futurehistoriesmag.org
art | Maggie Brosnan fh 25
busking as a modern modern bard bard by lauren fischer
In a voice rarely heard over the rat-rat-rattling of rails, despite bodies pressed flat against the walls, the subway stranger breaks the sound barrier of convention, range stretched to snap through another conversation to sing of Charon’s fee — wouldn’t you know, the no-masking, greasy-shirted man can echo ghostly poets, myth visceral, lifelike, us subway shades pressing coins over eyes and tongues, slipped into pockets and swiped through automatons, the click-clock-work underworld, and its howling, hound-guarded, hell-licked Styx.
art | Michelle Zhang fh 26
Safety
by Chloe Cheng
CW: implied drug misuse and suicidal ideation “How are you feeling?” God, I don’t know. I’m feeling… Afloat. False. I can’t do this again. Not the green tiles, Not the stale air, Not the shoes with no laces, Not the scary brown eyes that stare and wonder. “Can you commit to being safe?” I wish I could say yes, But god, I’m scared. The medicine drawer beckons And I respond with ambivalence. “Can you commit to being safe?” I’ll talk to them. They’ll make it better. If I could just pry my lips apart and pull the words out.
Then they would make it better. I’ll ice my palms and open my mouth and– “Can you commit to being safe?” They tell me so many things. I don’t know if I trust it. Please, stop. The more they talk The more they lie The more hurt I feel. But maybe, just maybe, I believe them. Not entirely, But just enough. Enough to watch a movie. Enough to go to bed. Enough to leave it up to tomorrow. “Can you commit to being safe?” Okay. Yes. For tonight.
art | Michelle Zhang fh 27
CW: sexual content and harassment
by Anne Savage
You look out the window and say, “It’s going to be bad, isn’t it?” But we don’t know yet just how bad it’s going to be. The snow started three hours ago. Someone had punched the sky in the nose and now it has two black eyes. In the dark glass of the pharmacy automatic sliding door, we can see our pale, timid faces reflected. As you and I deliberate, we stand just far enough away from the door’s sensor so that it won’t discern our presence. It was foolish of you to venture out here in the first place, but you had to go to the pharmacy because you had to buy cranberry juice. You had to buy cranberry juice because you have a UTI. You’ve been pissing every hour. It feels like magma and is the color of Coca Cola. As you walked from our house to the pharmacy, you ignored the twinges. Meanwhile, the snow accumulated on your eyelashes and melted down your cheeks. Between your numb top lip and your nostrils was pure snot slick. After you arrived at the pharmacy, purchased the cranberry juice, crumpled the receipt in the pocket of your thrifted coat with the seventies faux fox fur lining, you called me. My tips were dismal tonight. Do you know how truly desperate a person has to be to sing karaoke at ten o’clock on a Thursday night during a blizzard? I stashed the bills in my push-up bra (the one with a strap held in place with a safety pin), then I scraped an inch of stubborn ice off my car’s windshield with a debit card attached to an account with a balance of negative twenty eight dollars. I drove to you. You say, “It’s just going to get worse.” We decide to run for it. Then we are in the car, snowmelt running in rivulets down the cracked leather seats. I left the engine running. The movement from the windshield wipers is frantic but the rhythm of the sound comforts me. The dust from the blasting heater smells nostalgic. I leave the pharmacy parking lot with my left hand lolling on the lower half of the wheel. You hold my right hand, rubbing warmth and circulation back into the chapped pink skin (I want to be too devilmay-care to wear gloves). fh 28
art | Michelle Zhang
Under normal circumstances, it’s a seven minute drive from our house to the center of town, less if you run the stoplight. But these circumstances are abnormal. Nobody’s bothered to clear the roads. The men who drive the county plow trucks must love their warm beds and lovers too much. The snow covers everything. I can’t tell where the road ends and the countryside begins; you can’t either. No one’s come here before us and there’s no predestined tracks to follow or to blame if we crash. With both hands now, I clutch the wheel. “Tell me a story,” I say. I can’t see the look on your face because I won’t look away from the road and the snow scintillating in my headlights. I’m driving fifteen miles per hour. I hear you swallow down some cranberry juice before you reply, “What kind of story?” “I don’t know. Any kind.” You hesitate. Then: “All right. I have one. Not about me. About Johnny.” Johnny is your ex-boyfriend. The first time you went out with him, the two of you smoked weed in his car in the unpaved parking lot of a national park nearby. The secluded lot was full of birdsong. Impulsively, you decided to hold his hand and crack his knuckles for him. It was only your four month anniversary that he eventually confessed to you that on that first date, the weed made him paranoid and when you touched him he wholeheartedly believed that you had lured him out there to kill him. You broke up with Johnny two weeks before the UTI. You begin, “Last I heard from Johnny, he just joined a finance club.” “What the hell is that?” “They sit and talk about stocks. It’s all old men. He also joined Alcoholics Anonymous so now instead of drinking whiskey at parties, he mixes a bottle of cough syrup into a liter of orange juice and he drinks that instead.” “Orange juice with pulp or without?” “Without.” “Why are you even talking to him, if you’re broken up?” “He needs my help.” “What are you supposed to be, Jesus?” “He needs advice. Genuinely. That’s all.” “What kind of advice?” “After we broke up, he started going on these… anonymous video chat websites. To meet strangers. You know.” ...continue reading on futurehistoriesmag.org fh 29
Last summer by Sarrah Hakimjee
We swam in citrus sunsets and slipped through slumber, slick with sweat on silken sheets While the wind whispered dreams in my hair and I carried sunburned memories on my left shoulder You made a burning promise: “Clementine, we are orange, Furious crimson meets brilliant yellow” Last summer, we were fire. Today I wrestle with the moon Fireless, shadowless A delicate snowflake among dull stars Frostbite clings to bones And my heartbeat shivers through darkness Today I am who? Where are you? The sound of tomorrow is no different from the echo yesterday left behind. Flowers spring from the hardwood floor Sunflowers and Anthurium Look to the sun and scream It is summer.
art | Alice Fang fh 30
TAROT TONIGHT Sure hands shuffle, rhythm to reflection, seeking Calm order to choose the hidden ones, peeking
VIII. I bend low to stroke the lioness, untamed she Loves the harmony, teaches to heal me, To hold her, slow surrender to the wealth Of flowers garlanding the best seasons of health XVII. Heavenly waters, eternal seas, renewal Falls in scarves off me, from glimmering jewel To gleaming land, my cupped hands hold steady Balance in the newborn sky— darkened and ready Intuition guides me, a familiar querent These cards trust illuminate, the path apparent
BY NUHA SHAIKH fh 31
art | Michelle Zhang
I. Crowned with gold laurels of infinity, I close My eyes, reach for new life, swiftly compose The cycle of things, merely ebb and flow Clothed in silks and pearls— as above, so below
the closet was never a closet by Ian Smith
rather, a glass box under lights: ankles crossed daintily with braided rope, hanging like a slab of meat in the freezer. ears to the ground, hearing the whispers but never the noise; always the subject never a question about it. consider the luxury of hiding away what still needs time to metamorphosize; consider how warm a secret feels whispered into your hand. i wrote my name on the walls not as a sign of strength, but as a warning. look close, and peeking from beneath pant legs: the burn, still hissing. art | Maggie Brosnan fh 32
art | Maggie Brosnan
Through berry bush, hushed whispers say he’s gone for good One summer eve to a heart attack, the medics couldn’t bring him back He lived next door, and kept a fine garden with fruit-bearing limbs hanging over the wall
So, silent is the yard, since two weeks past when the old man left The sighing vines get no relief, for heavy is the fruit that no one picks
Tomato Man
fh 33
by Matthew McGovern
Writing My Hyphenated Existence
by Priyanka Sinha
I remember everything I remember the enveloping sound of my father’s voice, beckoning me to a book I remember weaving through a labyrinth of shelves, worlds held between them I remember laying for hours with a story clutched to my chest, Cicadas making the air hum… I remember, oh I remember. All the moments, the places I have gone and not gone because books render me still until the earth softens underneath me I am everywhere, so I go nowhere– my mind wayward but my body still. I remember the nights… nights when translucent moonlight was sliced into shards as it cast through tree branches, nights with still air and humming shadows. I remember hours of sweet silence, Time seeming to sit back and relax as my partner. And it was only when I grew up before my eyes, when the contours of my body changed, when I finally understood the way yesterdays can swell like a sad song, when I uncoiled my mother’s accent from my tongue… only then my words flowed. And oh, I remember everything. My words became threaded into my senses, some melted on my tongue, some were hard to swallow. Some had a taste, like the delicious dissonance of the blues on a day of yellow sun, And some had a smell, like the saffron in my rice. I remember writing making me recognize the shape of my own face, forever branded by a Mauritian-American border, lemon leaves teasing maple trees, a vignette of my hyphenated existence. I too realize that there are moments which elude my memory: when my hyphen evolved from a chasm into a juncture, when a border was washed away by Mauritian monsoons, rain drops rendering America meadows lush… the revolution that was explaining my world, disrupting a life-long tradition of being lost in those of others. And perhaps it is those subtle moments, unknown in time, that speak the loudest of all.
art|Rachel Liang
fh 34
Peals of hisses and crying brakes won’t stop its weight, the cabin shakes and shakes The anticipation is never relieved for the mass cannot stop in the dead of night Sightless conductor alludes to an end, slowing never stopping for fear of the cold A wristwatch tumbles into the snow engulfed by winds and void below It’s the sole sign the night train passed routed and astray on a dead-straight track art| Madison Red
L O O M I N G
by Matthew McGovern
The hour moves quick then slow, always in motion it cannot stop at the wintry station
fh 35
the big anthill in the sky by Ian Smith
art | Newt Gordon-Rein
my knees popped like firecrackers as i folded them towards my chest and tipped the shadow of my head as not to block the ink-stained texas interchange in front of me. this was how i always watched them: their antenna twitching as they crawled between valleys of driveway, greeting each other with pheromone handshakes. my calf eyes mapping their course to see them worshiping at the altar of a leaf, or camouflaged against the pungent mulch.
but somewhere along the way, my eyes turned to the rusted shotgun barrel of a hose, the kiss of a gas lighter. yet another kid playing god, waging war with the elements, wiping out entire bloodlines i have this theory now until my mom called me in— that every time i lose my keys a genocidal power trip or snap a guitar string, curbed by peanut butter they’re somewhere up there and honey on whole wheat. (a white room blanketed with insects, take-a-number tickets grasped between mandibles) waiting for their chance to exact some small karmic revenge. so now i cup spiders gingerly in tissues, let wasps wander freely on my shoes to make up for these infinite cruelties; to prove to myself that yes, i can be that stupefied kid again who can hold kindness in their hands without killing it. fh 36
I. Magic rolled off of my scales in the early days, the water cool and clear, my twisting body tireless. Dropped from somewhere far above: two pills holding immortality, sugar sweet, then the bitter bite. I swallowed until they swam the length of me. Serpentine me, I left behind my watery home And became a lady in white Taking one faltering step, then another, Until my feet, along the river’s path, found you Little green snake, captured to be cut-How have you found yourself here? Our scales shimmer the same; I make silver appear And you are so grateful, green-robed and young.
WHITE SNAKE, GREEN SNAKE
by Nuha Shaikh
A queer retelling of a classic Chinese myth, in four parts Our primary players: (in order of appearance) 白素贞 Bai SuZhen––The White Snake, The White Maiden 小青 XiaoQing––The Green Snake, Little Green Lady 许仙 XuXian––The Husband 法海 FaHai––The Monk 许梦蛟 XuMengJiao-- The Filial Son
I could love a man that good and never be human Enough to want him the way he wants me. There is something delicious in loving the forbidden, And Laws of Nature govern the good. He and I are cosmically connected, a debt Owed and someone else collecting on it; we marry Because he is kind and I am alluring and it is the right Time; we set up an apothecary to cure his people’s pain.
fh 37
art | Rachel Liang
There we met him, his umbrella generously given. Our eyes met and I knew without knowing, my immortality Had fallen from sugared hawthorns hiding those pills, and he Had dropped them in my waters, a gift he did not know he gave.
...continue reading on futurehistoriesmag.org
The rain surprised us, heavy and swift, Our fine silks drenched and muddied, Hair like midnight rivers, water Treacherous beneath the Broken Bridge--
