Fall 2018 by Laurel Moon Magazine

Evince Laurel Moon Fall 2018

Vol. 2 No. 1 Brandeis University

Laurel Moon Magazine Editors-in-Chief Editors

Reviewers

Sophie Fulara Jinni Wang Violet Fearon Ivy Gao Pallavi Goel Abigael Good Caroline Greaney Nicolas Leger Ruoxuan (Andrea) Lei Caroline O Jesse Qu Ethan Seidenberg Rachel Saunders Peter Zhao Allegra Copland Vanessa Yen

Laurel Moon is Brandeis Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s oldest, national literary magazine. We publish two issues each year, in the fall and in the spring. All undergraduates at US-based colleges and universities are invited to submit their creative writing of any genre. All submissions are read blind. Copyright 2018 by Laurel Moon Brandeis University English Department PO Box 9110 Waltham, MA 02454-9110 www.laurelmoonmag.com www.instagram.com/laurel_moon_brandeis www.facebook.com/laurelmoonbrandeis

Editor’s Note To evince — to reveal, to indicate, to show an emotion or feeling. Far from sedentary, this title constitutes the part of speech that represents movement or action. It represents the way our feelings flow from our innermost parts, which may seem quite hollow at times. And still, the anxiety, the loneliness, the aching hunger that we all experience pour onto the blankest of pages, creating a moment of vivid reprieve. As new Editors-in-Chief, we want this magazine to represent fresh perspectives from both experienced and upcoming writers. Their work capture their deepest thoughts about issues facing the younger generation today. Pieces like “Phenotype,” “Virginia,” and “Still Life” provide detailed descriptions of current hardship, while other pieces, such as “Charred” and “Such as This,” reveal the aftermath of crippling experiences. At the same time, “Chicken Cacciatore” and “Little Dogs” feature lighter sentiments that arise from living in the moment. The editors of Laurel Moon hope that the Fall 2018 edition captures a variety of experiences that have been felt by undergraduates nationwide. Flip a page, enjoy!

Sophie Fulara Jinni Wang

Laurel Moon Volume 1, Number 2 Fall 2018

Contents Poetry 2 4 5 10 12 30 32 36 39 40

Erin Wong Deon Robinson Amy Jarvis Courtney Garvey Yan Jin Lauren Puglisi Tristan Beiter Elian Wiseblatt Haley Brown

Chicken Cacciatore 22:46 Garden of Eden Burn Warning Maybe I want to devour someone, too. The Gardener Sniffing a Rose Still Life in Anytown, MA Bedlam Swing Such as This Charred

Prose 6 14 20 36

Shannon Stone Alexandra Ye

42 43 44

Awards Contributors Executive Board

Violet Fearon

Phenotype Mary Virginia Little Dogs

Chicken Cacciatore Erin Wong It starts with a rain of salt and pepper from fingertip clouds gliding above the chicken followed by the loud patting of hands slapping flour onto smooth peach meat A sauté pan clangs onto the stove tick tick tick the blue flame slides out “heat the oil over medium high” and the powdered chicken breasts and thighs drop onto the pan one. by. one a crescendo of sizzling shhs that grow to a livid fortissimo of clashing keys and cacciatore beats! a crunchy prelude Whispery silence calms the pan as the chicken moves onto a plate by the stove and dices of bell peppers and onions and garlic tumble in with a series of soft tattoos followed by crimson tomatoes then chicken broth

piquant capers and dried oregano singing sunny scents as notes of white wine and song are poured into the pan and stirred into a marinade symphony wafting crisp fruity melodies into the air In a murmur of gentle staccatos and bubbling sixteenths the crisp chicken pieces slip back in one by one in a practiced order and dulcet flavors seep through the crisp shell infusing the tender meat beneath with a luscious serenade While the chicken bathes simmering mezzo tunes from under the aluminum lid stiff penne rushes into a stock pot of boiling water with added â&#x20AC;&#x153;salt to tasteâ&#x20AC;? and reaching al dente they bounce into a colander to drain A mahogany glass of earthy sangiovese is poured and drained before the aluminum lid whisks off releasing a wave of salty vino scherzos and burbling rhapsodies of fragrant tomatoes that skim the air to reveal the silky chunks of chicken lounging in a gradual ritardando swathed in layers of a languid polonaise

22:46 Deon Robinson Spring night is a light metallic phenomenon, Stars are winking at one another in captivity The only moon I can see is a kaleidoscope of counted sheep The grass, a sea of dull blades My vernacular is sharp from the whetstone I fear not being able to taste this night on my tongue Being a poet, they are all I have left They bicker and battle, hold each other hostage. What am I if not what I have promised the world? Can I build a metropolis with an accent thick as thieves & an orphaned tongue?

Garden of Eden Amy Jarvis turn yourself into a field, scatter the ashes out on the ground into shapes of the women you wish you could have become. there is horror here but it still feels like home you don’t believe in salvation anymore but you should make them all stand trial & honey keep your eyes on heaven, but don’t you dare pray toward it: forgiveness won’t find you at sunrise anymore send them all to war because of how much it aches in the hollow of your chest & you’re a smoking gun, a silver bullet, a halo of unholy bite down & take it baby, because it was always meant to end like this & it’ll take you in flames before it’ll ever take him, but don’t take it personal make them wish they’d swallowed their words while you rise with the beginning of the world

Phenotype Shannon Stone I like to watch my roommate through my lashes, covers pulled up to my nose. Sometimes I don’t even bother to squint my eyes- like when she’s sleeping with her back to me- and I’ll just watch her with my eyes wide open. She sleeps a lot, my roommate, or certainly she spends a lot of time in bed. But then again, so do I. We’re hiding from the world, the pair of us. I suppose it saves the nurses on the unit some trouble because they have to clean her bed sheets every time she gets up. There is always so. Much. Blood. So with the two of us in bed, there is one less trip to the washer. At least that’s what I tell myself when they appear in the doorway. I think it must be painful for her to walk around the unit. She mostly wears sleeves and a hood, but it’s not easy to hide the fact that she doesn’t have hardly an inch of skin on her body. I’ve decided she looks like what I imagine a burn victim would look like. Red and black and scales. She cringes at everything, and I can’t blame her. She has no protection. Watching her sleep is almost the worst. Sometimes she’ll start to roll over, or adjust, and suddenly gasp and freeze as her flesh rubs against the cloth. Her eyes are what really suck me in. I don’t see as much of them as

I’d like, since she usually is looking down or away when she’s out of bed, but when she does look up, her eyes are always a surprise. Sometimes they are full of fire, chapped lips pressed into a hard line and teeth clenched. Sometimes they are wild and twitch back and forth or stare intently, mouth sometimes gasping for words. Sometimes they are empty, body slack, and it is here that she’ll usually retreat her eyes to the floor again. I have seen her eyes flash through each of these emotions in a span of less than thirty seconds. Watched her go from aggressive to subservient in a snap. I hate when her eyes do this, though I used to hate it for a different reason. I didn’t believe anyone could really feel so much, so fast, so deeply. It made me angry the way everything had to mean something to her. How nothing rolled off her shoulders. How she had to interpret everything. But she had a visit from a guy one time, her boyfriend, I assume, and I was eavesdropping as she laughed at something he said. And she blurted “I’ve gotta tell you what I was watching yesterday. It was two guys- absolutely hilarious- and they were making fun of pop song lyrics…” He glanced toward the window once. I don’t think he even noticed, but she did. The volume dropped out of her voice, her eyes hit the floor, she mumbled “ha, forget it. It was stupid,” and her mouth stopped moving. Her whole body shut down. I remember distinctly that he didn’t bat an eye. He gave a bark of a laugh and started telling her about the new Avengers movie. The light hadn’t fully come back into her eyes by the time he squeezed her to his chest and kissed her goodbye. “Oh no, I’m sorry,” he said suddenly as she winced away from his arms.

She waved him off, eyes on her shoes. “No, I’m sorry. It’s my fault,” but her voice hadn’t kicked back in. That’s when I really started to watch her. She keeps her head down. I think maybe she’s learned to. The nurses try to draw her out. Sometimes they get it, they whittle their way behind her walls without her really noticing. Sometimes she gets back out alive. Sometimes she burns up or melts down. Sometimes I don’t know what’s best for her. I hate to watch her melt. I hate how her eyes sink into her skull as she folds in layer upon layer. How her body deflates. How her smoldering skin flares up in patches. We were at dinner one night, all of us gathered around our plates. I was staring at mine, fiddling like I do. I was cutting some chicken into pieces and pieces and pieces and tapping the exposed bones of my forearm on the edge of the table. She was sitting across from me and I heard her say, “you can do it, love. It’s okay.” But I knew it wasn’t okay. It was too dangerous. It was far too dangerous. What if I ate one piece and suddenly I had to eat all the pieces and then it was too much? What if the skeleton I saw in the mirror suddenly ballooned into the girl with a stomach that swelled and emptied and swelled and emptied? My lungs got tight and I shook my head because I couldn’t do it, and I watched her sink against the back support of the chair and train her eyes on the lines that her fork was carving through her potatoes. I wanted to take it back. Considered lifting a piece of meat to my mouth just to bring her back. But I couldn’t. And she couldn’t. So we both just played with our silverware and let our thoughts spin out in circles. She didn’t finish and, of course, neither did I. Anorexia can be a bitch, but whatever she’s got really messes her up. Bare bones are nothing to charred flesh that still bleeds. Still opens after

Phenotype Shannon Stone a partial heal. Still is connected to nerves that fire like they’re on steroids. All my neurons are long gone, I don’t feel much of anything. But this girl…I’m not sure what she doesn’t feel. The door to the unit drops closed and she shrinks into her sweatshirt like it was a personal hit in the chest. I think she ought to lash out at them more. Build herself a better fortress to hide behind. Then she could bare her teeth at them from inside the walls and yell for everyone to let her be. Every once in a while she’ll snarl at someone, and they’ll retreat with little tsks hissed in her direction. My eyes cheer her from where I’m curled in a chair across the room, but she never looks at me, just lowers the pink shreds of her forehead into her scaly, melted palms. Sometimes her shoulders shake, but I don’t think it’s the physical pain then. If I had any kind of heart left in my chest, maybe I’d look away.

two poems Courtney Garvey

Burn Warning The priest has been burning hymns next to the ash tray in his office for years now— But everyone knows this. This isn’t the secret. The secret is how everyone knew to flee as soon as the church went up in flames. I suppose it’s smart to have an escape plan if there’s always smoke just out of the corner of your eye. When the bells ring out on an easy, sunny day, people will say it still sounds pretty. People will not say that it sounds like a siren that screams This area is no longer a safe space. This is your only warning and if you keep falling down, maybe it’s your own fault and maybe you should stay on your knees. No one likes when you say that out loud.

From that high cloud of a balcony, the people running look like specks of dust, like the flicks of that ash meant to save you, like the scraps of those hymns that went up in smoke. They look like lost children to be collected at security, and I imagine Him shouting didn’t force their hand even though they forced my name. and I imagine His promise doesn’t mean it’s all gone bad and I think of my own blackening vision look how bad it has all gotten. People mourn how he’s let the place go, but the House that the priest burned down wasn’t really his to begin with. It was already there, long before him, and long after him will it stand, smoke in the curtains and splinters in the rug. Frantic notches in the doorframe X days since last accident to display growth. It’s a shame when a house is called ugly just because the renters are dirty.

Maybe, I want to devour someone, too. Hair like candy floss, cheeks like little apples, round and taut and yours for the picking. Mollify me with this menu of metaphors you’re too lazy to realize aren’t compliments but rather announcements of your intentions to dine well and without worry for whether I want to be the main course. Consider that I don’t like being called a peach, a slice, a snack, maybe I don’t want to be picked, to be carved into and consumed like the ice cream cone you get every time you win your junior varsity soccer game. Maybe, instead, I want to devour someone, too. Maybe I want to be the one to break the fruit, to feel the syrup dribble down my own arms. Maybe I want to be the one to suck the drippings off my fingers and lick my lips – Christ, they’re just lips, they’re not cherry red, they’re not plum, they’re not some feast-for-the-eyes appetizer – without concern for if you feel like a piece of meat. Yours for the picking, I scoff.

two poems Courtney Garvey Consider that maybe I want to gorge myself, eat you to your core and toss the scraps out my window as I sail along the freeway, going, going, gone. Maybe I want to lick the plate clean, maybe I want to lean back afterwards and pick the fat out from under my nails. Eve only took a bite, but Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m telling you I want to shake the whole damn tree. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m telling you that maybe, just maybe, I want to devour someone, too.

Mary Alexander Ye Almost everything was going well in the Zhang household. Mr. Zhang had recently secured tenure in the statistics department of a small rural college, and he was making enough money to begin sending their daughter, Mary, to a good local private school. It was a Catholic school, but you didn’t have to be Catholic to attend. They reassured Mary of this fact when she expressed anxiety about changing schools. She even shared a name with the most important woman in the Bible, they said—although Mr. and Mrs. Zhang had named her Mary, not out of any religious inclination, but rather because they were inspired by Mrs. Zhang’s sister, who lived in Virginia and had named her daughter Virginia, as well as another family friend in South Carolina, who had named their daughter Caroline. The Zhangs resided in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, and when Mary complained of having a plain and boring name amidst all of the Melindas and Melissas and Marissas of her third grade class, Mr. and Mrs. Zhang dutifully reminded her that she could have been born in Wisconsin, or Utah, or even Arkansas, which was not pronounced like

“Are Kansas,” to Mrs. Zhang’s extreme disbelief. The Zhangs felt that they had a foolproof baby naming method on their hands. The slippery awkwardness of “Wisconsin” could actually be shortened to “Winnie,” Pennsylvania to “Penny,” and “Florida” didn’t sound all too bad on its own. Earlier in the year, the Zhangs had briefly entertained ideas for names of their second child. These ideas had quickly been dropped—not, of course, because they had never planned to move states in the first place. The tender and more painful issue was that the second child had never come. After Mrs. Zhang had suffered a miscarriage at the end of summer, she had taken time off from her administrative job in order to recover. Still, for months, she was unable to feel entirely at home in her body. Standing naked in the bathroom after a shower, Mrs. Zhang’s feet looked alien and disconnected from the rest of her. She struggled to recognize her toes as her own. It felt like she had been abandoned, left alone to carry her brain around in an empty and unusable sack of flesh, even though her husband still stroked her hair in bed and her daughter was still young enough to reach for her hand in public. Mrs. Zhang liked to think that her time off would help her focus on Mary. She was happy that Mary had new educational opportunities. Both Mr. and Mrs. Zhang felt that the emphasis Catholics put on education and discipline, with all those Franciscan and Jesuit universities and whatnot, aligned with their Chinese principles. They liked the look of the old metal chairs in each classroom. They liked the orderly lines in which the students traveled, and the grim focus of the third grade teacher, Sister Ann. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Zhang quite understood the religious aspect, but they both agreed that it would be useful cultural exposure for Mary. It was not that they were a family of atheists, they explained to her, but rather that they had grown up in China at a time when religion was forbidden. Consequently, it had never occurred to them to believe in a god. It was an opportunity for her to learn about

things they had never known. Mrs. Zhang repeated this spiel as she delivered Mary to her first day at the new school. She watched from the back of the gymnasium as the students stood for Morning Prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance. “Forgive us our trespasses,” they said, “as we forgive those who trespass against us.” They spoke in loose unison and took breaths at the same time. Mrs. Zhang’s pulse accelerated, and she craned her neck to search for Mary’s double braids. The Sisters had assured Mr. and Mrs. Zhang that nonCatholics would be welcome, but nobody in the Zhang family had ever heard of those prayers before. The prayers gave Mrs. Zhang the creeps. All of the s’s in “trespasses” slid together, like the hissing of a snake. Did the children at the school even understand how solemn they sounded? The strange words and the large painting of the Virgin Mary in the entranceway of the school stuck rather unpleasantly to Mrs. Zhang’s mind, like a hair in her mouth. In the following days, she dropped Mary off in the parking lot and then drove quickly away from the school, and its adjacent Our Lady of the Immaculate Heart Church. Although Mrs. Zhang had once asked Mary what her day at school had been like every single day, she began avoiding her daughter in the afternoons. She took up crocheting as an excuse to watch more television. She selected colorful discount yarns from the craft store and then spent hours in front of game shows and house hunter programs, weaving scarves with intricate Fair Isle designs. She knit small mittens for Mary, and big ones for her husband, the kind you could flip up and fasten with a button so that you could use your fingers. It was only September, and the air was still warm, but the living room couch grew crowded with winter goods. Mr. Zhang sat down with Mary every night after dinner to help her memorize her prayers. They started with Grace Before Meals, because it was the shortest, and then they did the Hail Mary and the Our Father. When Mary said that most of the kids in her class didn’t know the Nicene Creed, Mr. Zhang insisted that she memorize it anyway.

Mary Alexander Ye Catholicism delighted Mr. Zhang. He looked over Mary’s religion class homework with gleeful disbelief, and asked Mary to tell him about all of the gospels and homilies she heard at school Mass. “This is great stuff, Mary,” Mr. Zhang would say, while his wife washed the dishes. “It’s absolutely foundational to understanding the West. And while I don’t believe any of it, I do think it is a good way to live in the world. If you are a bad person, then bad things will happen to you. But if you are a good person, then God will reward you with the things that you pray for. If you pray really hard every day for your mom and dad, then maybe one day you will have a little brother! Wouldn’t that be nice?” Mrs. Zhang scrubbed a saucepan and listened over the sound of the running water. They were still trying to conceive a second child. Were they unsuccessful because Mrs. Zhang was a bad person who had not prayed to become pregnant? A handful of sins sprung to Mrs. Zhang’s mind like weeds after rain. She had once ignored her daughter’s request for an afternoon snack. She did not volunteer to run events or donate baked goods at Mary’s school. She did not go to work. How could she bring another child into the world when she hardly wanted to take care of herself? She climbed out of bed every day out of habit, the action weighed down with the agonizing tedium of a rush-hour traffic jam. “I don’t like hearing you joke about religion with Mary,” she said to her husband that night, in the quiet moment before he switched off the light and got into bed. “You might not take any of it seriously, but we still need to be respectful of her classmates that do believe.” “What jokes?” asked Mr. Zhang, jokingly. “Mary’s learning about things we could never have imagined!” His words did nothing to allay her discomfort, but she turned

toward him when he crawled into bed and placed his hand on her hip. Several evenings later, Mrs. Zhang saw Mary on her knees, praying fervently beside her bed. It looked like a scene out of a children’s book. The light from Mary’s reading lamp pooled into a spotlight, highlighting her small clasped hands and casting a halo about her hair, which was wet from her nightly shower. The next day, she said Grace before dinner, requesting that Mr. and Mrs. Zhang silently bow their heads in reverence. After they ate, Mr. Zhang helped Grace review her worksheet from religion class, in which she had matched characters and parables to their respective books of the Bible. “Can we name my little brother ‘Isaac’?” asked Mary. “What about ‘Adam’ or ‘Joseph’?” said Mr. Zhang, joking again. “I like ‘David,’ too,” said Mary. “I’ve been praying a lot every day.” Mrs. Zhang listened from the sink as she scrubbed the pots clean. She bit her lip. Imagining a tiny ball of life somersaulting inside of her, she yearned for its reality. Yet, she did not long for the baby because Mary wanted a brother, or because her husband wanted a son. Rather, Mrs. Zhang just wanted somebody that belonged entirely to herself. She didn’t care if it was a girl or a boy. She wanted something inside of her, entirely dependent on her for its own existence, completely secure from the rest of the world. Everything I eat, you eat, she said to her imaginary baby. Everything I breathe, you breathe, and everywhere I am, you are with me. She was becoming selfish. Mrs. Zhang finished washing the dishes and informed the rest of her family that she needed to pick up more yarn from the craft store. Mary and her father were busy reading together, so they did not mind. Mrs. Zhang could not help but feel that they ought to have protested her departure more. As she started the car and flicked on the headlights, it occurred to her that she had not left the house after dark in a very long

Mary Alexander Ye time. She felt dizzy and light, like all of her long hair had been cut off. The roads were nearly empty, and she found herself driving the usual route, unable to remember if she had actually stopped at the red lights or not. Mrs. Zhang already knew what color she needed to buy at the craft store, but she took her time fingering each of the yarns and comparing some shades of pale blue to other, cheaper shades of pale blue. She was the only customer. When the overhead announced that the store was closing in twenty minutes, Mrs. Zhang quickly went to the front to pay. She felt a dense, animalistic panic that the fluorescent lights would flip off without warning, that the automatic sliding doors would clamp shut, and that she would be trapped in a dark craft store overnight, the walls of woolly fibers closing in around her. On the way home, Mrs. Zhang passed Maryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s school and turned into the parking lot of the Our Lady of the Immaculate Heart Church. The parking lot was bleak and empty, the colors of the autumn trees around the church building muted in the dark. Someone had once told Mrs. Zhang that churches left their doors unlocked at all times to welcome those in need, but she found the idea impractical and unlikely. Anyway, she did not want to make appeals to shut doors. She parked the car and switched off the headlights. Mrs. Zhang did not expect any flames or beams of light, but she listened carefully for some kind of tiny alteration within her, like a small corner folded over on a sheet of paper that laid flat before. She willed that her listening would count as an act of faith, even if her faith was only her imagination. If a new and beautiful baby manifested in her future, she thought to herself, the truth and reality of this current moment would not matter to her either way.

Virginia Alexandra Ye I was the most precious, adorable, and physically perfect baby ever to be delivered in the state of Virginia, except that I was born with a mole, a fat brown thing on my left cheek that might have compelled you to scratch your computer screen with a fingernail if my mother had sent you an email with a picture attached of my face. It was a family mole. There was one on my dad’s left cheek, and one on my dad’s big sister’s left cheek, and also one on my dad’s dad’s left cheek. Yeye died before I was born and I never got to meet him, but he had that left cheek mole too, and near the end of his life, before he succumbed to cardiovascular disease, it tripled to the size of a genetically modified blueberry and hairs erupted out of it like daffodils springing forth from manure. “It was a fertile mole,” my mother’s mother told me, “but it was the most hideous thing I had ever seen. The first time I set eyes on the man your mother insisted on marrying, I couldn’t look away from the mole on his face. It was like a third eye. But your father’s mole was nothing compared to his father’s mole. Your Yeye’s mole was like a secondary ball sack that someone had drawn onto his face with a ballpoint pen and then

rendered into the third dimension.” We stood side-by-side in front of the mirror. It was the summer after fourth grade and, instead of doing ceramics camp in Alexandria with my best friend Jessica Davidson, or doing co-ed recreational swim league with the love of my life, Travis Jason Lewis, I was taking shit from my Waipo in her shitty apartment in the shitty, dusty asscrack of Beijing. “I can’t believe a girl like you has three boyfriends at once,” Waipo said, looking at the full, God-given name of my soulmate inscribed upon the cover of my diary. Waipo was incredibly old but still stupid in many ways. “Travis J. Lewis is my one and only, my other half,” I said, even though Travis wasn’t totally aware of the space he occupied in my tiny young heart at the time. “Can’t Travis and Jason and Lewis see the mole on your face?” asked Waipo, as if an entire law firm was inspecting my blemish on a first-name basis. “You can get it surgically removed when you’re older. Then my beautiful granddaughter will be truly flawless and perfect in every single way. All of the attention made my mole tingle. I pressed my thumb over it, but Waipo slapped my hand away from my face. “Touching it will only make it grow faster,” she said. “Do you want to look like a dirty brown peasant man, like your dad, or do you want to look like your Waipo, who grew up in Shanghai, eating delicate pastries and singing for our illustrious leaders? I still have a beautiful voice. Can you even imagine what you would be like if you had grown up with your Waipo instead? I could have taught you how to sing. Think about your poor Waipo and how hard it is for her to live so far away from her granddaughter, whom she loves and cherishes more than anything else in the entire world. Think about how much your poor Waipo has to worry when her greatest treasure has to grow up in America, a nation filled with guns and drugs and black people, a nation entirely devoid of moral principle and nutritious vegetation.” “America is a nation of diversity, wealth, and opportunity,” said my

father, who had finally heard enough of Waipo’s bullshit to stop cracking sunflower seeds with his teeth and get up from the couch. My dad was totally right. Every year that my parents dragged me away from America, we arrived in China laden with vitamins and handbags and lotions and electronics to present to my Waipo, who always acted like she was better than everybody else even though she didn’t know how to cook, smelled like a fart, and kept the packaging of every single product she had ever opened neatly folded under her bed. How could Waipo have gotten all this swag without her son-in-law’s job teaching chemistry at a well-regarded university with a big ass endowment? And how could my dad have gotten that job if not for graduate school in America? And how could he have gone to graduate school in America if not for his triumphant getaway from the hellhole of the Middle Kingdom, where his parents were raised eating bark from trees in times of famine, only to later be tortured nearly to death by their own neighbors? And why not torture, if not because they were all brilliant intellectuals, which meant, at the present, that my dad’s entire side of family, despite their moles, had always been a billion times smarter and more accomplished than my Waipo, who had not gotten in trouble in that time because she was the one turning all her neighbors in?And how could he have gone to graduate school in America if not for his triumphant getaway from the hellhole of the Middle Kingdom, where his parents were raised eating bark from trees in times of famine, only to later be tortured nearly to death by their own neighbors? And why not torture, if not because they were all brilliant intellectuals, which meant, at the present, that my dad’s entire side of family, despite their moles, had always been a billion times smarter and more accomplished than my Waipo, who had not gotten in trouble in that time because she was the one turning all her neighbors in? “I don’t want to hear you say anything more about our family mole,” Dad said.

Virginia Alexandra Ye Waipo immediately left the room, probably because the concept of a family mole made her vomit. Dad took her place next to the mirror. “That mole means that you are one of us,” said Dad, “and that’s why you’re the most perfect, wonderful, and intelligent daughter that anybody could ever have. That mole means that you are smart. It means that you belong on my side of the family, with people who care about justice and French Brie and atomic physics. There are so many things, like culture and truth, that are more important than the silly beauty standards and regressive ideals that your silly grandmother believes in.” I took my dad’s side. We both had moles. We both celebrated the Fourth of July. We read books. We loved not only knowledge, but also wisdom, unlike Waipo, who firmly believed that China was the origin of humanity, not Africa, and scientists just hadn’t dug deep enough to find the right bones. All Dad and Waipo had in common was that they loved me, and that we all loved my mother, who was good, kind, and an entirely benign human being. When we visited her parents in Beijing, she would spend every day buying groceries, organizing their apartment, picking up prescriptions, and then sitting wordlessly in front of the television with my Waigong for four hours every night. Waigong was almost totally deaf and he never wore his hearing aids because they were “uncomfortable,” but we all knew it was much more uncomfortable to have Waipo yakking in his ear all the time. If anyone said anything particularly interesting, like “let’s have noodles for dinner,” he would hear you all right. And dinner, at the end of the day, was the only good part of being in Beijing. Waigong and Waipo bought me any kind of food that I wanted. They plied me with roast ducks, pot stickers, mangos and lychees as big as cows’ eyeballs, glutinous rice cakes wrapped in bamboo leaves, and pancakes filled with egg and chives. There was a day that I ate pork buns

for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There was a cookie tin in the living room filled with red bean pastries and mung bean paste. The food was good, as so were Mom and Waigong, so I put up with Waipo, even though she would frequently remind me that all my bad genes—the mole, the skin that browned in the sun—came from my dad, and if my mother had chosen any one of the men who had lined up outside their door, instead of leaving for America, then maybe I would have had delicate moon-like skin, and maybe I would know how to read the lyrics of the songs that Waipo sang, and maybe I would not violently roll my eyes every time Waipo asked me to hold the sheet music of the songs that she sang from. The truth was that I hated her stupid, simpering voice, and how transparently she needed people to compliment her. She disgusted me. I hated how she smelled. I hated how everything in her apartment was either dusty or sticky. One night, I went into the kitchen for a drink of water and saw her dentures soaking in a cup. “I am going to throw up,” I wrote in my diary, thinking about how, when she chewed, her long and hairy upper lip would flap around like an eel. “I hate everything about her!!! I hate coming to China! Why can’t my grandma be like Jessica Davidson’s grandma, wholives in Alabama and just sends cash and chocolate chip cookies every month???” I had first expressed these sentiments to my dad, hoping that he would understand because Waipo was so terribly mean to both of us. But he didn’t take me seriously at all. “Why is my precious daughter saying such nasty things?” he said. “Waipo might be annoying, but that’s because you’re so different from her that she doesn’t know how to show you that she loves you.” “I hate her.” “That’s a strong word, darling treasure.” “She hates me, and she hates you too!” “No, she doesn’t. We’re just different. You still have to love her, because your mother loves her, and you love your mother, so you have to love your

Virginia Alexandra Ye mother’s mother, too.” I found this absurd. It turned out that my diary was my only solace when we were in Beijing, since I couldn’t even email my friends because Gmail was blocked. My diary was the only thing that was really mine, which made it a billion times worse when I found Waipo sitting on the couch, looking through every single page. I snatched it away from her. “This is private, you bitch,” I said, in English, because I wasn’t sure how to say “private” in Chinese. Waipo chuckled and snatched it back. “Our granddaughter will grow up and become a famous American author,” she said to Waigong, who was watching television and ignoring her. “Look at all these things she has written in English!” She slowly flipped through all of the pages I had filled out: a shoddy picture I had drawn of an airplane, a lengthy reminiscence of the time Travis and I had been practicing backstroke and accidentally touched hands underwater, and page after page listing all of the horrible things that I hated about her. “This is wonderful!” she said. “You have no shame!” I said, in the same tone of voice that my mother used with me when I talked back to her. I usually kept my diary under my pillow, just to keep it away from creeps like Waipo, but she must have found it. I wanted to grab her tiny, wrinkly arm and yank it off. “What nice handwriting you have,” Waipo said. She was peering at each page over her glasses. “Here I see you have written—C, H—that’s ‘China’!” “Duh,” I said. “She writes about China,” Waipo said to Waigong. “Please don’t scream at him,” I said.

“He’s deaf.” “Only because he doesn’t want to listen to you!” Waipo ignored me and continued to shriek into Waigong’s ear. “Don’t you see, right here?” she said to him. “She’s written ‘China’. She writes about us. She carries on our stories!” Waigong heard her. He beamed, his smile pure and wide. “You are the most talented and smart and special granddaughter we could ever have asked for,” he said. He laid a wizened old hand on my arm. “I hope I live long enough to read your future novels.” “Yes, yes, yes,” said Waipo. I tugged the diary out of her grip and inspected the page that they had been looking at. I had written, two weeks ago: “I had to go to the vegetable market with mom today and it was way too crowded. Everybody was really rude and loud and it smelled bad. China sucks ass. I want to go home and shop at Harris Teeter.” I slammed the diary shut and ran into the room where my dad usually liked towork on his laptop. He wasn’t there, so I ran into the room where my mom liked to read books. She wasn’t there, either. “They left to meet one of your dad’s old classmates for lunch,” said Waipo, who had followed me from one room to another. “Stop following me,” I said, even though I was the one running through her house. I wanted to go home. I missed the swimming pool; I missed the sound of English and being able to read the signs on the road and the familiarity of seeing my friends everyday. I wished I were having a sleepover with Jessica, competing to see who could peel the thinnest string of cheese off of a mozzarella cheese stick. Instead, my Waipo was closing in on me. “I can’t believe you read my diary,” I said to her. “I want to go home.” I threw myself onto the bed and Waipo sat down at the foot of it. “Don’t you know how lucky you are to be where your mom and your dad grew up as kids?” asked Waipo. “Don’t you know how lucky you are

Virginia Alexandra Ye to be with your Waigong and Waipo, who love you more than anybody and spend the entire summer trying to appease your Western needs in order to make you happy to be with us? Most of your classmates have never even gotten the chance to leave the country.” Mom and dad and Waipo and Waigong were constantly telling me that my world was infinitely large because of all that they had sacrificed for me, their most precious and most promising daughter and granddaughter, but at that moment, both my heart and my world felt small and hard, like the pit of a plum. “I hate being in China with you,” I said to Waipo. “You don’t know anything about me.” I was crying a little bit and hiccupping, but Waipo was very quiet and still. After she heard me, I think I saw the wrinkles on her forehead soften slightly, like her skin was letting out a tiny sigh. She stood up and shuffled back to the living room couch, where she sat down at her regular spot next to Waigong and resumed watching television until lunchtime. I don’t think she ever told my mom or dad what I had said, and I don’t think she touched my diary again, but I would later try and remember that moment, that tiny sigh in the shriveled-up folds of Waipo’s skin, and wonder if it was maybe an acknowledgment of truth. The next time that I visited Waigong and Waipo in Beijing was the summer before I started high school. Although the mole on my face was slightly larger, I also had a fresh new set of boobs, five more inches of height, and a suggestion of hips on my body, so Waipo commented on all of that instead. I walked into their apartment and it hadn’t changed a bit. Waipo and Waigong sat in their same places in front of the television, wearing the same ratty cotton nightgowns. Everything was still dusty or sticky, every bed still had folded up bags and boxes under it, and every

cabinet was still filled with instruction manuals for calculators purchased in 1999, the calculators now lost but their manuals preserved forever. “We bought pork buns because you liked them the last time you were here,” said Waigong. “We bought mangos because it seemed like you liked mangos,” said Waipo. “It seemed like you didn’t mind cucumbers, either, so we bought cucumbers and dressed them with garlic and vinegar, like you ate last time.” “And a whole fish.” “And sticky rice cakes.” “Sticky rice cakes?” asked Waipo. “I told you to buy sticky rice cakes,” said Waigong. “I think she likes sticky rice cakes.” “Of course I like sticky rice cakes,” I said, because I was shocked by how fragile and old the two of them looked and now felt like it would be dangerous to their health to displease them. Waipo dug through the fridge and the freezer. “You’re right,” she moaned. “I was supposed to buy sticky rice cakes and I forgot.” She paced back and forth in the kitchen, yanking her old, drooping earlobe with her thumb. “It’s okay,” I said, as quickly as possible. “I don’t like sticky rice cakes that much.” “How could I have been so old and stupid and forgetful?” asked Waipo. She was still tugging on her ear, so ferociously that she seemed to pull all of the skin on her face to one side. “How could I spend weeks preparing for the arrival of my most beautiful and beloved granddaughter, whom I have not seen for years, only to forget even the most basic foods with which to welcome her? How can she tolerate the meager offerings of her poor, old grandparents, who live thousands of miles away and are thus unable to truly cherish her?” She slapped her own forehead and I grabbed her wrist.“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,” I said. Waigong was slowly arranging a collection of

Virginia Alexandra Ye wrinkled mangos on the kitchen table, flies buzzing around him. I held Waipo’s wrist as she yanked on her ear with her other hand. Her skin felt so thin and so loose. The flies and the stretch of her skin disgusted me. It was so pathetic, watching the old woman hitting her own head with her hands, but it must have been because she loved me, more than anything else in the whole world, her most perfect and precious and adorable treasure. For the first time it felt like I would maybe love her back, too. “It’s okay, Waipo,” I said to her. “I don’t like sticky rice cakes that much. There was no way you could have known. I live so far away and it’s been so long.” Her eyes were wet and shiny. Waigong had gone back to the television. “You don’t know anything about me,” I said to Waipo. She nodded. I pulled out one of the chairs at the kitchen table and held her hand as she sat down.

The Gardener Sniffing a Rose Yan Jin —inspired by Jean Dubuffet’s The Gardener Sniffing a Rose

He can’t help but to sniff at the rose once more. Life no longer remains in his sky-gazing eyes. All else fades into blackness except for the rose. The wounds start to manifest the pain. He can’t help but to sniff the rose once more. He was certain that this was the rose, As soon as he saw it within a bush of thorns, Ruddy as a maiden’s lips, emerald flows of vitality Through its spine. Leaving his garden behind, He was certain that this was the rose. The garden lost its colors before the rose. Never as red could these flowers of the garden be, Growing only to entertain his eyes, to give their life to him, Who was ready to give his own life to the rose. The garden lost its colors before the rose. The wounds from thorns were pleasures, As he reached for the rose with his hands. The thorns tore his clothes and prickled his flesh, But never expelled that rosy spell which made The wounds from thorns feel like pleasures.

He was bound to the rose as soon as he sniffed it. The gentle blushes suddenly swirled like flames, Revealing that lurid laughing face. Upon the stalk, Curving like a snake, were hungry teeth that rattled: â&#x20AC;&#x153;You are bound to me forever, my lover, my slave!â&#x20AC;?

Still Life in Anytown, MA Lauren Puglisi A Mars Rover is an automated motor vehicle that propels itself across the surface of the planet upon arrival. I have arrived in a strange land of ticky-tacky cookie-cutter clutter. Are you there Houston? Silence sticks like dried dust. Rovers have several advantages over stationary landers: they examine more territory, can be directed to interesting features, can place themselves in sunny positions to weather winter months. Four signs of life reported: One, the shapes that the tall weeds cast on the sidewalk when a car drives by: headlights bright and quick, shadows long and lingering.

Two, the place where the orange glow of street lamps meets the homesick blue of the sky, a shade of lavender that looks faintly familiar. Three, the gnome in my neighborâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s garden, a fellow traveler, half in step. Four, the lonely basketball hoop lit up like a lighthouse, welcoming lost ships like me home. Earlier this summer, The rover stopped communicating with Earth, a massive dust storm enveloped the planet. The storm has mostly cleared, but NASA hasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t heard from the rover since June. Engineers still listen daily for any faint pings.

Bedlam Swing Tristan Beiter “And the rain, rain, rain / came” bailing in the desert downpour, twang, stumble, “down, down, down . . .” without missing a beat. We’re dancing one-handed while I pluck faeries’ wings, let them dissolve on my tongue like the Host, like dragonflies gone at the sour chord of the ruined one. Pound the floor. “And the rain, rain, rain,” comes drowning and instead of sinking, reed-fields /pound/ erupt and /pound the floor, pound the drum/ interrupt between him and here, and every wing is punished by a thousand birds stripping out of my back, but they’re mine, when

the dark clouds ride in from the sea where â&#x20AC;&#x153;the rain, rain, rain / cameâ&#x20AC;? to cover our stumbles and our dance. The king comes in his kilt and jewels redolent with Sekhmet to jar apart the music. We are between him and Bethlehem, red anger and copper strength dripping from his great gold maw.

Little Dogs Violet Fearon I like my little dog. I got him a few years ago, from a nearby shelter; he is about 8 pounds, and resembles a loose amalgamation of gray and brown pipe-cleaners. I like my little dog, although I do not know what particular variety of little dog he is. The people at the shelter said he was some sort of terrier, and judging by the way he burrows under blankets and pulls the leash taunt to wheeze at squirrels, they were probably right. A friend said he looked like a Maltese that was bred with a rat, and she might also be right. I like my little dog, no matter his ancestry; no matter his ancestry, my little dog is the same little dog. I like my little dog. This is not an original thought; Chinese emperors have liked their little dogs, and Victorian women, and 18th century fox hunters. Inuits and policemen and French peasantry have liked their big dogs, which is more or less the same situation, but with more square inches of fur. Behind my little dog and me, there is a chain of humans who like their dogs that stretches back and back and back, back farther than any religion or nation, back

to the first uncommonly friendly wolf who wanted to get closer to the fire. For me, this chain is interesting to consider; for my little dog, it is not. I like my little dog, even though he is not smart. Other people who meet him will say he is smart, because he knows the word “dinner” and “walk”, and can push open an unlatched gate. By dog standards, he is perhaps mildly above-average, but when compared with gorillas and parrots and elephants and humans, he would not fare very well. Other people will ascribe him various personality traits and motivations he does not possess; when he refuses to take a pill or vitamin he is defiant and stubborn; when he rolls off the couch he is “trying to be funny.” But my little dog operates almost entirely based on instinct; I know this, and accept this. This is how dogs work, and this is enough. My little dog does not have a one-track mind. He has a three track mind: where he will get food from next, when he will be walked next, and who will ring the doorbell next. His life revolves around the ever-changing states of these three variables, switching between anticipation and reward. He will never tire of running to the door when he hears the leash rattle. He will never have an existential crisis and suddenly stop barking when the bell rings. I like my little dog because he is not smart. Before he was in the shelter, I was told, my little dog was a stray on the city streets, where he never had enough to eat. Sometimes I wonder what his life was like then - if he scavenged alone, in dumpsters and alleys, or if he lived with a group of feral dogs, a roving pack of skinny canines. I wonder about this, but I also know it does not matter. No matter his past, my little dog is now my little dog. I like my little dog. I like the way he lies on the warm wooden floor, always framed by a sunbeam; I like the way his eyes close

Little Dogs Violet Fearon when he nestles his snout between his paws. I like the way he does not think about politics or laundry or plans for next weekend or mortality. From what I can tell, he does not think about the past, or the future; he might not even think about the present. He does not think about how he will find the next sunbeam, whether it will be more or less warm than the one he is lying in now. He just stretches out, and sighs, and sinks deeper into the one heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s already found.

Such as This Elian Wiseblatt Indifferent to consequence from all this liquor, her indecency spilled into his lips, his hips his first mistake in a list he figures is inevitable in an instance such as this. In between sheets and sin intoxicated still and sick she brings finger to isthmus of skin in between breast and breast sicker still and pink she imagines snippets of last night, then wishes she didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t not equipped to exist in a statistic such as this.

Charred Haley Brown It comes in waves Like billows of gushing lava Running down my tightened throat The visceral burning from a gulp of tea Without the sweetness of honey We used electric fences as tightropes Cracking my back on the ground underneath Felt painless in comparison to the Lightning that shot up my spine when I stayed on I saw fireworks when you touched me Not the kind that light holiday skies But from spark plugs and grease fires And loose metal dragging behind a car I feigned sleep I thought my being unconscious Would silence your conscious desires That your matchstick fingernails Would cease to search for ignition

Cigarette stubs burned the Canvas of my writhing back I would use barbed wire sponges If they cleaned the trails of ashes off my skin The sound of your beating heart Helped me fall asleep as a child But the sound of mine now Only kept you awake

Awards The Grossbardt Memorial Poetry Award is awarded to one poem by a Brandeis University undergraduate published in Laurel Moon over the course of the school year. Andrew Grossbardt was a poet who passed in the fall of 1979. He studied at Brandeis University and received his Ph.D. posthumously from the University of Utah. His poetry has been published in The New Yorker and in the chapbook, The Travellers. For the 2017-2018 academic year, Rebecca Kahn’s poem “Home” was chosen by Erin Coughlin Hollowell for the Grossbardt award. Her work can be read in the Spring 2018 issue of Laurel Moon. Erin Coughlin Hollowell is the author of two collections of poems, Pause, Traveler and Every Atom. Hollowell teaches for the University of Alaska Anchorage Low-Residency MFA Program, Kenai Peninsula College, and the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference. She is the executive director of Storyknife, a women writers’ residency in Homer, Alaska. The Dafna Zamarripa-Gesundheit Fiction Award is awarded to one work of fiction by a Brandeis undergraduate published in Laurel Moon over the course of the academic year. Dafna Zamarripa-Gesundheit was a student at Brandeis University, a past editor of Laurel Moon, and a member of the Creative Writing track who died prematurely at the end of her junior year. The prize, honoring her spirit and memory, is awarded to a piece of extraordinary fiction published in Laurel Moon. For the 2017-2018 academic year, Otis Fuqua’s story “A Sound Like Twigs Breaking” was chosen for the Dafna Award by Christopher Castellani. His work can be read in the Fall 2017 issue of Laurel Moon. Christopher Castellani is the author of three novels and one book on craft. He teaches at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the MFA Program at Warren Wilson College, and presently serves as the artistic director at GrubStreet.

Contributors Swarthmore College Brandeis University Brandeis University Brandeis University Susquehanna University Oberlin College Brandeis University Susquehanna University Penn Foster University Brandeis University Brandeis University Swarthmore College

Tristan Beiter Haley Brown Violet Fearon Courtney Garvey Amy Jarvis Yan Jin Lauren Puglisi Deon Robinson Shannon Stone Elian Wiseblatt Erin Wong Alexandra Ye

Front cover photo by Hadassah Stanhill. Back cover photo by Lauren Puglisi. For more information about the contributors, check out the online version of the magazine at laurelmoonmag.com.

Executive Board Sophie Fulara As Editor-in-Chief, Sophie has complete faith in the power of sharing an undergraduateâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s experience through writing. She believes that good writing isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t about getting the perfect sentence down in the first draft, but that itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s about editing and re-writing, creating something that a writer may proudly call their own. By promoting a collaborative environment, she hopes to provide a way for young writers to share their stories. Jinni Wang Jinni believes each word writers write captures the writers and the moments they are in. She thinks that is what makes each word impossible to be replicated and is beautiful in the idea itself. More importantly, she thinks, when many words come together to form a piece of writing, the words matter and have the power to influence and touch people from. She hopes her position as an Editor-in-Chief for Laurel Moon can allow her to identify and develop new talents to positively influence a wide range of audience. So far, she has made her step forward by leading a one-on-one workshop for writers. Rachel Saunders Rachel is a Junior at Brandeis University studying Creative Writing and Biology. She is the Managing Editor for Laurel Moon and oversees the printing process and any communications with the printer. She also works with the editors-in-chief to manage social meetings and weekly emails. Rachel primarily writes short stories and is planning on pursuing medicine in the future. Caroline Greaney Caroline is a sophomore majoring in English and minoring in Business. She has loved reading and writing ever since she began putting together short stories at 7 years old; there is a lot of beauty in the written word and she feels strongly that it is important to preserve literature as the digital age becomes more and more powerful. Her favorite books are The Great Gatsby - a classic! - and Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. She also enjoys travel writing and travel magazines!

Nico Leger As Laurel Moon’s poetry section editor and layout editor, Nico is invested in publishing undergraduates and putting their works in conversation with one another. He is in his second year, majoring in Creative Writing, English, and East Asian Studies. He is most passionate about reading and writing from diverse narratives, and seeing representation for unexpected experiences in literary works. Nico believes in the power of a poem — every word, line, and comma is intentional and carries meaning to the author — and is always excited to see the next generation of poets through the submissions that Laurel Moon receives every semester. Ruoxuan (Andrea) Lei This is Andrea’s 2nd semester at Laurel Moon as an editor and first time as a deputy layout editor, and she gains huge satisfaction in this creative progress of making the magazine. Andrea is a sucker for mysterious imageries and dynamic characters when she reads stories of all kinds, and she writes in her spare time accompanied with crispy danish and warm boba. She speaks Mandarin and English and she really wants to learn another Semitic Language such as Hebrew. She wishes that she can have more time moving her body around and actually experience in the wonders and thrills she reads in the publications. Ivy Gao Ivy has always valued the power of creative writing as a way of communication, educating others, and pushing the limits of our mind. As the publicity coordinator of this literary magazine, she uses posters and social media to send out Laurel Moon submission deadlines and events. As a submission and workshop editor, she reviews pieces for publication as well as meets one-on-one with writers to help them revise their poetry/prose.