autumn 2016
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VOLUME 11, ISSUE 1: Autumn 2016 Editors-in-Chief: Amy Chen + Nicole Phillips
Copy Editor
Associate Editors
Brian Ngo
Michael Arcidiacono Nick Burns
Prose & Poetry Editor
Rose Cerulli
Nick Burns
Rosalie Chang Amy Chen
Financial Manager
Julia Espero
Claire Francis
Ashley Huang Adithi Iyer
Layout
Starr Jiang
Michelle Bae
Nan Munger
Amy Chen
Juliet Okwara
Julia Espero
Max Pienkny
Katie Mansfield
Anna Ceci Rosenkanz
Nan Munger
Yae-Rang Schumacher
Nicole Phillips
Claire Wang
Anna Ceci Rosenkanz
Copyright 2016 by Leland Quarterly | All Rights Reserved Stanford University | Giant Horse Printing, San Francisco 3
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editors’ note Dear Reader, Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Maecenas sagittis nisl vel massa bibendum pretium. Etiam in porttitor est, eu facilisis tellus. Ut aliquam, diam sed consequat iaculis, augue ante dictum turpis, eget dapibus nulla justo non diam. Nullam eget libero vitae risus dignissim tristique ut mollis odio. Integer felis erat, facilisis non libero a, ultrices finibus turpis. Aenean convallis lacinia arcu eget finibus. Mauris a egestas risus. In et odio diam. Nullam tempor massa sed nisi luctus tristique. Nulla finibus turpis at metus porttitor mattis et ac nunc. Cras ac elementum risus. Nullam sodales dui eu quam laoreet, ac aliquet velit placerat. Curabitur pretium eget enim eu ultrices. Sed eget turpis sem. Sed congue dolor sit amet nibh iaculis, eget varius neque malesuada. Nam ante sem, ullamcorper ut eleifend mattis, tempor et libero. Sed lacinia est eu orci consequat, eu fringilla massa placerat. Duis turpis odio, gravida sed porttitor vel, faucibus auctor neque. Maecenas auctor euismod pharetra. Suspendisse cursus facilisis scelerisque. Maecenas sem lorem, finibus a nisl vitae, rhoncus tincidunt orci. Nullam ut arcu auctor, ullamcorper mi in, fermentum ipsum. Donec maximus, nulla in pellentesque lobortis, diam erat ornare ante, ullamcorper lobortis erat nisl in dolor. Love, Nicole & Amy
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contents
“Visions” by Tyler Dunston on 9 “Creamy” by Lillian Bornstein on 22 “Can You Taste It?” by Mac Taylor on 23 “Untitled” by Sonia Targ on 27 “Alle Prime Luci Dell’alba (at First Light)” by Mac Taylor on 28 “Deep Time” by Becca Ann Nelson on 29 “Barfight” by Tyler Dunston on 31 “Nature, Dissected” by Claire Wang on 36 “Scholling Overseas” by Olukemi Lijadu on 56 “For My Sister / After My Mother” by Lillian Bornstein on 59
“Ha-gee-pla-veet-us” by Megan Calfas on 17 “Beyond the Love of Lemurs” by Elizabeth Wallace on 32 “Soledad” by Maya Mahony on 40
Julia Espero on cover, 23, 37 Tori Parrish on 8, 25, 54-55 Michelle Bae on 12, 39 Giada Cattaneo on 19, 26, 46, 50, 52, 56 Vivienne Le on 30, 35, 58
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tori parrish
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visions | Tyler Dunston
visions
Tyler Dunston California It rains for the first time in California—I watch the water dripping down and consider the announcement Bob Dylan has won the Nobel Prize and everybody’s arguing about it (Leather boots make soft pats on the soggy earth, flip flops smack against the puddle-covered stone) The harmonica grates like a sword on a whetstone like an old man crying sitting mute before a fire Crying for the how many times can a man and the shadows of the fire on the walls and how the light making them goes away The bikes cast hurried shadows on the rainlit pavement—I crashed mine this morning so I’m not in a rush I have all the time
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leland quarterly | autumn 2016
Signal To think about the dark trees that hang over the mountain road that curves in and in on itself like smoke rising They used to use it to signal to each other up in the mountains of Chattanooga during the war they wanted the trains the trains That rolled through the city on all sides they hugged the edges of the mountains of Signal and Lookout and saw And made fires facing high cliffs over the river and looked for friendly puffs in the curling in the sky I knew nothing about all this but I saw the smoke of the fog at 4am on Signal Mountain illuminated by the headlights Of my car a 2003 Mazda Protégé clothed in black to match the sky I drove those winding hills a long time ago I drove up to the old cabin with the abstract painting of Christ I went to grandpa’s house grandpa who would never die Who would rise again—I went up there where all the streets were Shakespearean allusions, where the old folks Lived in the woods, where Dad would take us on hikes as children and tell us about Carl Sagan’s Dragons of Eden Now I walk there again in my mind along Signal Mountain trail, listening to Dylan’s Gates of Eden—I’m walking through
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visions | Tyler Dunston
California The old arches in rainy California supposedly bronze but faded in the gray day I could almost picture A blanket of snow, imagining myself in the North Country, wondering if a lone wandering someone would let me into their home, place me by the fire, bring me shelter Drape me in a blanket their grandfather knitted long time ago before arthritis set in, cloth of royal blue and gold Faded now with time but the fabric was kind to me got me out of the frozen triumph of the land With its stark lunar beauty walking along the edge I’m leaning over from my cot against the cold window that fogs with my breath Remembering when our breath on the window was the damnedest thing, when drawing pictures in the glass Shone with possibility—now the fogged-up glass is a reminder of the comfort I have found here in the smoke of the fire Now I’m thinking of Dylan again seeking shelter wandering but really was he all that lost or just playing
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leland quarterly | autumn 2016
michelle bae 12
visions | Tyler Dunston
New York Going all out in the recording studio shoes shining like dark glass tapping rhythms on the carpet sounds absorbed by the floor Having fun playing in the basement with the hanging light lone bulb in the center casting light just on the edges of faces Sore fingers strumming an old guitar on Friday later moving together rushed feverish on the fuzzy carpet On Saturday skipping church chilling in the dead quiet basement smelling wet carpet reading the selected works of Dylan Thomas lost the green old days and the farms and the creeks and the sun has gone all cold for him now Reading his stuff by the light of that warm dim electric bulb lonely as the ghost of electricity weeping weeping Electric light on the streetcorners sends him down the street like a ghost in chains clanging and crashing against the poles howling Angry with bills and big guns and the paper on the stoop and the gone girl for being gone and the crash and the smoke rising
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leland quarterly | autumn 2016
Signal I’m listening to Visions of Johanna coming down Signal Mountain at 4am inconsolably shrouded in mist The yellow smoke lit up by my headlights as if the electric ghosts had descended upon me I think of Dylan’s motorcycle crash and wonder if it was a fluke if it was misty where he was or if there was a purpose Descending the impossibly steep slope surrounded by sentinel trees I see an 18-wheeler with its hazards on Stopped at a 45 degree angle in the middle of the road I’ve gotta go round but I can’t see oncoming traffic So I sit there car in park joining this truck on its slope and hoping that the driver doesn’t get out of the car Dead slumped against the seat a ghost driver a car driving itself a murderer waiting for me and still I sit I play the song again and he says, Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re trying to be so quiet? I relax because I know him because I’ve heard his song before—I step on the gas and leave him to his peace
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visions | Tyler Dunston
New York The streets are covered in rainy slush the wind cuts through his breast in a ringing of steel the sharpened sword this wind That once held the answers, and now—absurdly—can only cut him through, now even the pain is just a memory These were the streets he used to own, this was the wind that used to commune with him, now of course it’s long gone And now the wind runs him through with the fact that he too brandished a blade as he wandered the slushy streets These streets where he and Allen talked feverishly about all things electricity and skyscraper steel this street where the wind buoyed him in love and Now the wind cuts, the steels cuts damn it all cuts right through so clean the memory just cuts right through my head and now I can’t even touch the books you’ve read
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leland quarterly | autumn 2016
California The returning train cuts through the night—a gleaming sword in the station lights fast disappearing into blackness, the night Feels tangible, something that could be sliced through, something that could be harmed—the train renders us complicit in this I think of Dylan and I think of Signal I think of Dylan as I return from the Fillmore and the lights race past rendering us weapon I think of what he lost, I think of the changing of the wind, I think of the changing of the roads, I think of the blade that runs us through A blade in the night a memory racing—there was a book, there were pages I was given there were words that were my own There were these songs that were my own—rolling down Lancaster Blvd in the dead of night bathing the fog in ghostly electric light How far I am from all of this now a memory blade in the billowing mist of the night
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ha-gee-pla-veet-us | Megan Calfas
ha-gee-pla-veet-us Megan Calfas
Grandpa bought us Marshmallow Scooby Doo ice cream. I told my dad this years after the fact and he hung onto the detail, readying himself to present his late father to the crowd at the upcoming funeral. He laughed, jotting it down. Marshmallow Scooby Doo. Growing up, my dad told me, his father would never let him have ice cream. Grandpa had a commanding voice, a longstanding job, and a tendency to send back food at restaurants. His kids respected him enough to avoid such sugary fun. But then he became a grandfather, and suddenly days of crisp suits in the office transformed into nights of babysitting—getting dragged around the grocery store by three girls who asked for neon desserts and VHS recordings of Rug Rats. He adjusted. When my grandpa passed away I was still in the age of the babysat and I had never known him outside this softness. So in exchange for my ice cream anecdotes, my dad gave me stories of my grandpa and his world, the culture I had never imagined beyond the reason my mom said I got so many freckles.
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leland quarterly | autumn 2016
He began with a way to see the recent loss as a miracle—Grandpa John outlived what the doctors predicted by seventy years. Dad talked clearly and frankly: When he was ten, John wanted a horse. He requested one feverishly, but his cousin could only find a donkey. This was not ideal (donkeys never really are), but it would do. John’s cousin began guiding the loud creature up three flights of wooden stairs, which crackled under the weight and the ever-present Greek sun. It was hot. And he felt it, especially as it became clear that the donkey needed help. He lifted it stair-by-stair, moving slow and sweating fast, until he made it to John’s quarantined room. John’s mother stepped out to bring the animal in. She was the only one who saw John these days. His blue eyes lit up when he saw the donkey’s dark ones and he petted it, pleased. His mom placed her hand on his forehead. It was hot. So she ushered out the visitors and left John’s cousin to reconsider the stairs, his massive, clumsy companion, and the true gravity of his next few steps.
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ha-gee-pla-veet-us | Megan Calfas
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leland quarterly | autumn 2016
John and his mom were alone, again. She stayed with him despite the exposure to typhoid fever—the root of his sickness and his deserving of donkeys. It was killing her to be with him, to watch his pain and begin feeling her own. John and his sister Sappho had both contracted the fever at the same time, but Sappho didn’t make it. One way or another, his mother couldn’t stand to see that happen again. These illnesses had arrived when the family did, back in Greece. John was born in Connecticut but travelled home to Skala Eressos before he could remember English or what life was like with light bulbs and faucets. With luck, patience, and hooved friends, John got better, somehow. Decades later, his future wife’s cancer and son’s tumor would get better too, somehow. Recovery runs in the family. Dad paused the story and returned to working the job Grandpa had suggested to him twenty years ago. I thought about my Greece, my imagined Greece. It began forming in my mind a few generations after John first saw his donkey, when I found myself staring closely at his wrinkled face as he sunk deeper into his leather chair, laughing. He wanted to teach me more, because back then, Greece to me, was just Greek Easter, when Aunt Diane would swallow whole bites of sweet bread before remembering that there was a coin hidden in the dough somewhere. But she didn’t need to worry too much— odds were my sister Jen would find the coin like always. Per tradition the coin brings luck for a year, luck that usually extended all the way until the next Easter—a loophole that kept Jen reaching for the right piece of the roll five years in a row. Greece, then, was just my sister’s pizza topping of choice—and later the name of her beloved parakeet—Olive. And Greece, then, was just my uncontrollable hands carving spheres in the air—“Greeks talk with their hands” my Mormon mom told me. “It’s a good thing,” my grandpa added. Grandpa had wanted to help me talk with words too, but Greek ones. So I sat on the plush, white carpet watching his lips make long ovals and hard consonants. “Car-poo-zee”—watermelon. “Op-oh-klee-it-tay”—forbidden. “Skeeva”—eat with your mouth over your plate so you don’t spill. We stopped there, having hit the essentials. 20
ha-gee-pla-veet-us | Megan Calfas
My dad later pronounced one more word: “ha-gee-pla-veet-us.” This was our last name, before it was changed to “Calfas.” For this story, he reverted to Great Aunt Louise’s careful yet contested narrative. Louise’s Calfas Family Legend is one of confusion, chaos, and carpentry. She says that a few years after the miracle donkey (a story somehow never questioned), John and his now healthy family returned to the U.S. and faced, like all immigrants, Ellis Island (“or wherever it was they went,” Louise dismissed). They had gotten to the front of the line when they encountered a stern man, who stared at them as John’s father repeated: “Kalfa. Kalfa. Kalfa.” Carpenter. Carpenter. Carpenter. We can work, we have skills, we bring value. They were really trying to nail in this point, but the immigration officer didn’t take the hint, writing “Kalfas” instead, as the family name (adding the ‘s’ to perhaps reflect the insistent plurality of times it was spoken). The Kalfas era still lives on in Louise’s silverware, as each fork and spoon bears a clear ‘K’ at the end. But somehow in the years after those engravings, the ‘K’ became a ‘C.’ My dad doesn’t know why this happened. Or why John’s father kept saying “Kalfa.” No one in the family was a carpenter. They all made hats. I watched my dad tell the crowd about my grandfather. Together with the rest of the family, I sat in the front of the church. My mom kept nudging me to offer tissues, not noticing that I sat listening with curiosity and dry eyes. I lost Grandpa to his stories, lost Greece to unanswered questions. My dad lost his place in his speech, pinching the bridge of his nose as he shuffled through his notes. He looked back up and at me, finishing the grocery store story on “marshmallow Scooby doo ice cream.” The crowd laughed lightly, and I looked around, realizing that now, only we could tell my Grandpa’s story.
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leland quarterly | autumn 2016
creamy
Lillian Bornstein I sit in your bed in my underwear eating pretzels and peanut butter, the creamy kind. Skippy. You tell me you can’t believe I willingly choose crunchy peanut butter. I tell you my dad told me that any peanut butter other than Jiff was trash. You reach over me for the bag of pretzels and your arm is fire; your arm is a seatbelt ten seconds before a collision; your arm is gone, pretzels in hand. Your pretzel breaks in the peanut butter jar. You look at it, look at me, grab another pretzel to fish it out. This one also breaks. You shove the jar into my hands, fling your arms up like an exasperated child, flop down on the bed. I have, I think, never been this hungry. I retrieve your splintered pretzels gingerly, thoughtfully, famished. You open your mouth for them. They’re yours, after all. I’m just a visitor.
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can you taste it? | Mac Taylor
julia espero
can you taste it? Mac Taylor
Other people recognize truth, you know. Sometimes I make a list in my head of questions I wish people asked me: did you sleep last night? Are you inherently displeased with life? What’s your favorite flower? That tinge of sadness in you, I can smell it, talk to me about it. And do you like peaches? And will you write me a letter?
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leland quarterly | autumn 2016
I could lie, honey, I could lie to you right now and you wouldn’t know it because my friends are miles away and I’m trapped in my three-mile brain, lonely. The lies come out smoothly—the river I ran from, you weren’t there—the farther everyone gets. But the truth resonates, dove. You can taste it in each syllable of this ramble. You can taste it…. I do like peaches, with vanilla ice cream. I like the colors of the center: rosy and orange and slightly streaked magenta. I will always write you a letter, darling, just ask twice and kiss me on Tuesdays. I did not sleep last night because I was sad while doing happy things, something so natural it tears my idea of contentment in two stringy halves even you would leave neglected in the downstairs garden. I love lilac. And roses any color but red. And tiny little violets and primroses and lilies. I’m tilted towards destruction, a facet of a mangled mind seeking calm in troubled waters. I’ll live, probably. Can you taste it? Can you taste it? Can you taste it?
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autumn 2016 | leland quarterly
tori parrish
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leland quarterly | autumn 2016
giada cattaneo
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untitled | Sonia Targ
by Sonia Targ Persnickety cats eat gelato with silver cutlery and wine.
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leland quarterly | autumn 2016
alle prime luci dell’alba (at first light) Mac Taylor
The staccato, the drying sun, brazen young men inside their motor cars. Yellow jackets against the white wash. White wine on the balcony, dawn before sunrise. Station lights set on blue. Old man, red blazer, cigarette, walking down the road in search of a woman’s eyes, but no woman in particular. Tragedy of the oculos. A simmering since midnight, broke at the payphone. Morning an unknown item, rarely tasted. A divergence of priority. The child in white, a cross at the lips, the staccato again. Crowning of the terrace, veiled as the Italian sentiment may have been. La Colita! A dance worth warming fingertips with, at this time of day, while searching for what once was ancient truth: gods, robed in violet, writhing beneath the sea. Sacred choral music, filling the architecture as the architect dreamed such noise would. Holy, fragrant, unsanctioned. The child in white, running as you called‌. God on the lips and in the mind and in the hair
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deep time | Becca Ann Nelson
deep time Becca Ann Nelson
Is it a curiosity‌ to love a voice, a melody plucked of words from a distant person, from a distant time, to love echoes, prairie ripples, ripple marks from an ancient sea Devonian; to love the messages that linger in paint strokes long after the artist has left and love the artist, whose spirit endures—engraved in stone, tempera, words too; words timeless as pines creaking over mountains; to know the artist as you know well the Phacops waterbug-in-stone frozen eyes wide, curled tight in shale: history feels smooth and cool. To love a smile captured in a photo, thin crackly paper transcending generations; to wonder if your fresh footprints left on the earth will ever become shale-frozen, a museum echo, your words permineralized in silica-rich color, etched echo of your voice waiting to be loved long after waves wash you away.
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barfight | Tyler Dunston
barfight Tyler Dunston
eyes in the glass
so many lights
his pink fist
so many rings
cracked light
bends and then
breaks his
glass I mean
ambery foam
sea coral sop
dripping down from
the barstool
I’ll mop it up
later when the sun’s done setting
when the ridges
in his fist
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leland quarterly | autumn 2016
beyond the love of lemurs: what i learned from the people of madagascar Elizabeth Wallace
“The Kings have arrived!” I heard through the flimsy flap of my tent, perched on the sidelines of the village soccer field, a dirt patch with makeshift goals fashioned from tree trunks. The cries of both teams echoed throughout the row of wooden huts and bounced off the mossy trunks of the old-growth forest that bordered the village. I glanced at my tent mate, Daniella, a PhD student from the University of Sussex, who looked disapprovingly at my hiking shorts. “You can’t very well wear that to visit the kings,” Daniella advised me, offering instead her lamba, a traditional Malagasy cloth that is worn like a skirt. I obediently pulled the cobalt fabric over my dusty shorts and unzipped our tent, eager to meet a king for the first time. I had been working at the Centre ValBio (CVB) in Ranomafana, Madagascar for seven weeks and though I was covered in arboreal leech bites and growing weary of rice, the staple food of Madagascar, I was embracing each moment and growing in ways I hadn’t thought possible. I first heard about CVB, an environmental nonprofit, from the book For the Love of Lemurs by Dr. Patricia Wright. Just as the title suggests, my initial interest in Madagascar was due to the endemic lemurs. I had grown up in eastern North Carolina close to the Duke Lemur Center and always longed to see these enchanting primates in their natural habitat. A series of research papers, funding applications, and a few lemur stuffed animals later, I found myself with a plane ticket to Antananarivo. A ten-hour drive along the pothole-filled dirt “highway” and an eight hour hike from the nearest road later, I landed on the fringe of the Mangevo Village soccer field and asked a child watching the never-ending soccer game to help me tie my lamba. 32
beyond the love of lemurs | Elizabeth Wallace
The Kings received visitors in a mud hut in the center of the village. Daniella and I, along with our two Malagasy colleagues, Sarobidy and Jean Claude, took off our mud-caked shoes and entered the “castle.” We were honored to be so graciously welcomed by the village royalty. For the next hour, I listened and learned from these men who wore woven reed vests over frayed tee shirts emblazoned with the face of the current president, a propaganda technique that seemed highly effective here. Their teeth had been lost long ago, likely due to the sugar cane they chewed as children, but our Malagasy colleagues had no trouble understanding them.
“...the stark reality of a land that looks like a razor has been scraped across the country...” Mangevo Village sits right on the edge of Ranomafana National Park, one of the very first pieces of preserved land in Madagascar, and an oasis of forest in the middle of a sea of slash-and-burn agriculture. For the most part, it seemed, other villages benefitted quite a lot from the park. Several had seen economic booms from tourism and employment as local guides for tourists. But the Kings of Mangevo had a different story. They explained the sacredness of land ownership in the Tanala culture, their particular Malagasy sect. The creation of the national park made them feel that their land had been stripped away from them. One King described the feeling of being “boxed in” by the protected land, a line that prevented the villagers from cutting down firewood and clearing space for more agriculture. Because Madagascar has the poorest soil quality in the world, fields go fallow very quickly and new land must be slashed and burned to keep a productive harvest. Driving down the main road from the capital, you can see square upon square of land that has been scraped clean of what was once dense rainforest. The national park boundary meant that Mangevo farmers could not go far from their village center before hitting protected land.
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Had I heard this before coming to Madagascar, I likely would have shook my head and cited the percentage of endangered lemur species caused by deforestation. How could one ever justify cutting down more trees on an island that some have accused of committing “ecological suicide?” Seeing the stark reality of a land that looks like a razor has been scraped across the country at first cemented my opinion that this desecration of forest had to stop. And yet I could not listen to the heartfelt concerns of the Mangevo Kings and not feel a deep empathy for the struggles their community is facing. Mangevo parents were struggling to find food to put on their dinner table and school enrollment at the one-room school house an hour’s walk away had dropped significantly since children were needed more and more to help their families survive. Some farmers had resorted to illegal gold mining, which was destroying the land even more than tavy, the traditional slash and burn agriculture style, since the pits reached deep into the ground. Clearly something was not working. Forcing a traditional remote village like this one to conform to the Western idea of what conservation looks like, a governmentrun national park, simply cannot be successful unless the community is involved and the villagers’ voices are heard. Daniella and I took notes and brought the villagers’ concerns back to our superiors at the center. It turns out that the Madagascar National Park Service will be sending an employee to live in Mangevo next year to assist the community in living in harmony with the national park and to enable the villagers to benefit from the presence of the park in the ways other villages have done. Nevertheless, there is no way to tell whether this representative will ease some of the concerns the Kings had for their community. Though training local guides will allow more money to flow into the village, some Tanala traditions, like tavy, inherently clash with the national park goals. Daniella and I admitted that we did not have solutions to the problems the Kings raised, and that we were just there to listen. I expected this to frustrate the elders, but instead a smile broke out across the younger one’s face. Sometimes listening is the most important step, he explained. He thanked us for caring enough to hear them out. 34
beyond the love of lemurs | Elizabeth Wallace
Our meeting ended with a traditional toast of Tokagasy, the coveted Malagasy moonshine, in a small metal cup passed around to at least twenty villagers before it touched my lips. As my eyes burned from the deceptively clear liquid, I mulled over what a strange and wonderful morning I had spent. The two soccer teams had suspended play to sneak into the back of the hut and try to convince their wary mothers of passing the ceremonial cup to them. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to be sitting cross-legged on the floor of a mud castle, sipping Tokagasy with two Kings and pondering the complexity of a problem I once thought was so simple. Though I still believe conservation in Madagascar is a necessity, I also understand that humanity, no matter how remote and poor, has to have a voice as well. And for those ardent environmentalists who, like my old self, think that the needs of the environment should be prioritized over those of humans, I recommend booking an audience with a few local kings. But bring your own cup for the Tokagasy.
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leland quarterly | autumn 2016
nature, dissected. Claire Wang
Somewhere though I don’t know where is the dreammaker’s daughter I feel her eyes on me through the window her condensed breath tugs me closer she melts the glass under her fingertips, writes in a shimmering prose while I lie here, beneath the cool of my screaming sheets quietly reducing each peculiarity of the day to its last atom, (because within every infinity is another infinity --)
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nature, dissected. | Claire Wang
julia espero
the steamy-eyed sleepwalker from the subway station, the wine-lipped snake whisperer who rested her head in my lap, the man who thrust his homemade CDs at me under the guise of an oily handshake, -they’re all going somewhere,
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off to some Mecca or River Styx on the secret 13th floor of a glass tower owned by a man named Balthazar, or in a smoke-filled room of cracking barstools and brassy music, or perhaps in a bed like mine, where they lie awake in some twisted infinity, thinking my thoughts and drinking my dreams, gazing at moonlight’s messenger spinning her fingers across the ceiling, -it’s all so surreal, I could laugh out loud. Some primal part of me thirsts for adventure, wants to melt the glass between me and this magnetic body at my window, learn her strange tongue and feel her breath cross my lips, wants to find the home of whichever god I believe at this hour, as if being there, looking down, will show me the world as it really is: a beetle bursting naked from its egg, the soft, blood-laced eyes of insomniacs, the smoke and witchcraft under subway cars and squatting pianos – all the world’s music, arrested under the sly scratch of a vinyl record, spinning, spinning.
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michelle bae 39
leland quarterly | autumn 2016
soledad Maya Mahony
When La Migra’s boat thrummed out of sight, Soledad swam across the Rio Bravo. The water swirled brown and low from the drought. The currents tried to pull her apart. When she got to the shore and turned around, it was as if everything had disappeared. Even the river was gone. They called it Rio Grande from this side. Â
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soledad | Maya Mahony
When Soledad was a little girl in San Cristobal de las Casas, her abuelo sculpted small bowls out of clay. Soledad’s little sister Reina liked watching T.V. shows. Soledad sat for hours and watched Abuelo work. Everywhere else Abuelo was wrinkled, but on his hands the skin stretched tight. His fingertips were broad and worn, the prints almost pressed away. Sometimes Abuelo let Soledad draw pictures on the sides of the bowls. The clay could become anything. When the bowls had fired, they were finished, unchangeable. Soledad and Reina played in the plaza. Clouds stumbled over each other in the darkness. The birds and the boomboxes and the mango-sellers scattered. Soledad and Reina stayed put. Rain streamed through their hair and grazed their goosebumps. They laughed open-mouthed at each other. Mamá would spank them. Mamá would be so worried. Lightning flared over the façade of the church. My sister, my sister––they clasped each other’s cold hands and twirled. The family sat with candles around Abuelo’s body, wails curling up with the smoke. This was not Abuelo. Its hands did not move. It was hard and fixed like fired clay. * Soledad means loneliness. Reina means queen. Mamá knew everything. When she had chosen their names, she must have seen their destiny. Reina always had admirers, boys who smoked cigarettes and whistled at her on the street. Reina smiled at them. Soledad pulled Reina’s hand. “They’ll hurt you,” she whispered. Soledad had wide hips. She was chubby. She did not like dancing; she preferred to draw. The boys whistled at her too, but it was a mean sort of whistle. Except for Pépe. Pépe was eighteen when Soledad was sixteen. He liked Soledad’s drawings; he asked her to draw him. Pépe was tall and skinny. He had a thin mustache. His eyelashes curled like a girl’s. 41
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They walked by the river outside San Cristobal. Women were washing clothes, laughter and sunlight sparkling off the water. Dogs slept in the shade. Pépe took Soledad’s hand. His hand was firm and cool. The fingernails were all chewed down. Soledad walked quietly, on her tiptoes, scared to breathe. Another time, walking in the plaza, Pépe bought Soledad a mango. The outside was all the colors of the rainbow, swirled together. Soledad peeled the mango slowly. She was afraid to eat in front of him, but she did it anyway. The mango was soft and sweet and perfect. One warm spring morning, Mamá was hanging the laundry on the balcony. “A man here to see you,” Mamá called, her voice, pinched, disapproving. Soledad ran out. It was the leader of Pépe’s gang. The laundry flapped in the breeze, bright and colorful, like papel picado on Día de los Muertos. “There was a fight,” said the leader. The air crystallized inside of Soledad. “Dead?” she whispered. But she already knew. Soledad. It was her destiny. * Reina got pregnant when she was fifteen, and again when she was seventeen. “Who will marry our Reina with two babies?” said Mamá. “You worry too much,” said Soledad. Reina was slender, pretty. Quick to smile, quick to dance. By twenty-one Reina had married Jorge Rivera, by all accounts the best dancer in San Cristobal de las Casas. Jorge bribed a train conductor to let him, Reina, and the two children climb on the roof of a freight train before it started moving. They were headed for San Francisco. El Norte. It seemed too far away to be real. 42
soledad | Maya Mahony
“They’ll never make it,” said Mamá, and Soledad stroked her hair as she cried. But they did. Reina called once a week. “Jorge’s washing dishes at a taqueria,” she reported. “Everyone in the world is here. Black people, white people, Chinese people.” “And do they like tacos?” said Soledad. “They love them.” The next week: “I don’t know if I should let the children play outside. What if La Migra get them?” “Children can’t live without sunlight, m’ija,” said Mamá. “There’s no sun anyway. It’s always foggy.” “You know what I mean.” * After dinner, Soledad sat up with Mamá. Soledad drew as they talked. Mamá used to tower. Her arms had been thick, her lungs deep. Now she looked small. They talked like old friends. More and more, Mamá’s laughs ended in coughs. Soledad tried to memorize the edges Mamá’s face in the lamplight. “Why are you staring? Do I have food on my cheek?” “No. My mind just wandered.” Soledad worked for a store that sold embroidered blouses and amber jewelry. She was friends with the other women who worked there.
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On Sundays, they went to the big church on the plaza. Her friends sat next to their husbands and children. Soledad sat next to Mamá. Thirty years old, and still sitting with her mother in church. How would she would draw the scene? The vaulted ceiling. The way the light glinted off the gold panels on the walls. She held the drawing inside of her like a superpower as the priest droned on. Everywhere Soledad went, she collected things to draw. A flock of rainclouds. Mamá’s hands making tamales. Children dancing to a boombox in the middle of the street. Pink flowers on a balcony. An old woman, barefoot, carrying a burden with a strap around her forehead. A dog with one ear that limped in a cobblestone alley and turned to look at her, eyes bright and lucid. There were so many old women. So many dogs. The old women had rotten teeth and no shoes. The dogs had no names and their ribs jutted out of their bodies. There were so many it made you want to turn away. But if you just drew one, you could look at it. One dog in an alleyway. She shaded his fur meticulously. She worked on his eyes for hours. “There are no dogs in San Francisco,” reported Reina. “Or hardly any. And the ones they have here, they keep on leashes. They wash them and cut their fur and they all have enough to eat.” * Mamá died one winter morning, just as the sun was rising. Soledad called Reina. Reina cried. Her children, Teresa and Miguel, cried. Soledad stood, listening to them cry, through the cell phone. Behind her, neighbors filled the apartment with candles and weeping. The melting wax smelled bitter. Ahead of her stretched San Cristobal de las Casas under pink and silver clouds. Here Mamá had stood to hang the laundry. Soledad could hear the city breathing. All the dogs and old women
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soledad | Maya Mahony
and orphans and soldiers. She had no more love for them. There was nothing holding her here. Her heart was covered in clay. “Come,” said Reina. And so she did. * It took many weeks. Soledad could not bring any of her drawings with her. Two weeks on train roofs, the wind whistling. Her fingers bled from holding on so tightly. Gangs collected bribes every few minutes. They prowled the train roofs for young women. Soledad avoided eye contact. She strived, for once, to look dumpy and old. She was not raped. Soledad camped with other migrants in the bushes by the river. She looked straight up. A bird soared overhead, wheeling from bank to bank, like it thought this was just any river, like the world was wide open. Soldiers came by in a boat, scanning their surroundings, fingers poised on guns. Was there war here? The engine chopped and spat water. The guns gleamed. “La Migra,” someone whispered. * Reina opened the door. She was older and chubbier and more beautiful than ever. It was evening in the Mission District of San Francisco. All around the air was full of cooking smells: tacos and flautas and tamales. “My sister,” Reina said. Her arms were around Soledad. The inside of Soledad expanded like a blue universe. Reina pulled her inside. Plastic toys and children’s shoes littered the floor.
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soledad | Maya Mahony
“Jorge!” Reina called. “She’s here! She made it!” Jorge emerged from the bedroom. “Soledad,” he said, and kissed her on each cheek. “You haven’t aged a day!” “You haven’t either,” she told him. He was fatter, grayer, balder. “Still dancing?” He laughed. “With the brooms and mops, sister.” Teresa and Miguel hung back, wide-eyed. Teresa was ten. She had a plastic purse. Miguel was eight. He had gelled the front of his hair. Soledad reached out to hug Miguel. Miguel stepped backward. “You’re dirty,” he whispered. “That’s horrible,” said Teresa and swatted him with the plastic purse. “Do you want to eat?” said Reina. “Do you want to shower?” “Shower,” said Soledad. The water rushed out, an endless torrent, clear and hot and loud. It coursed through her hair, down her neck, her arms, over her breasts, her stomach, her legs. Soledad sang. She was the queen of El Norte. She was the cleanest queen there ever was. When she got out, the mirror was covered in fog. Steam wisped off her bare arms. She dressed and went to the kitchen. “California’s in a drought,” said Miguel. Teresa swatted him with the plastic purse. * 47
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That night, Jorge left for his shift as a janitor in an office building downtown. Soledad and Reina sat on Reina and Jorge’s bed. “How was the funeral?” said Reina. “It was terrible. I wished you were there.” “I wished I was too… Remember how she used to pluck chickens on the balcony, and the feathers drifted down? I just remembered that, yesterday, when I was buying this stupid boneless chicken they sell here.” “I remember. She loved you, Reina.” “I know.” “How have you been? How’s America?” “I’m glad Teresa and Miguel are growing up here. They can be anything.” “And you?” “I’m always afraid of La Migra. I never see Jorge. He’s sleeping when I’m awake.” “I’m sorry.” “Remember that storm in the plaza?” “Of course. We were soaking wet.” “That was the best.” They had been talking to strangers for so long. Years and years, it seemed. So this is how it felt to talk to someone who understood. It felt like eating. They talked voraciously. Hours and hours and hours.
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soledad | Maya Mahony
And then they were quiet. They lay with their legs curled up against each other, like when they were little girls. The clock said three in the morning. Soledad’s eyelids were closing. “I missed you so much,” whispered Reina. “I’ve been so lonely.” * Everywhere in the Mission there were murals. Teresa and Miguel’s elementary school had a mural of Cesár Chavez and Dolores Huerta. A few blocks away La Llorona wept, surrounded by women, all barefoot and seething in a sea of blue. Soledad wandered like a drunkard. “Why didn’t you tell me, Reina? I would have come years ago.” She was joking. Maybe. There was an entire alley, Balmy Alley, they called it, covered in murals. The paintings of this size on the walls of the church in San Cristobal had been stiff, still. These murals whirled. They sang. They belted like the queen of El Norte in the shower. Look at me! I am telling you a story. I am telling you of cornfields hot and regal and a green so deep your stomach plunges to see it. I am telling you of war. I am telling you of rebellion, of outcasts, of families. They tell us we are small and dirty and forsaken. They tell us we are illegal and undeserving and afraid. They are wrong. Look at our Virgen of Guadalupe, look at our feather head-dressed Jesus, look at our suffering and our love and our resilience–– Soledad looked. * Reina got Soledad jobs cleaning for three old white ladies whose hair she dyed at the salon. They all had white carpets to vacuum, and porcelain shepherdesses to dust, and potted plants to water. Each one had a particular way that fitted sheets were meant to be folded; if Soledad accidentally used the wrong old lady’s technique, she had to refold the sheets. 49
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soledad | Maya Mahony
Soledad stopped working at different times each day, depending on how many chores the old ladies assigned. This time it was late afternoon. Soledad took the bus back to the Mission, and got off a few stops earlier than she needed to. The fog was like walking in clouds. Maybe this is how Mamá and Abuelo and Pépe felt, up in heaven. Soledad walked by her favorite murals. She ran her fingers over the walls as she passed. “Wait! Hello!” Soledad turned around. A black man stood on the sidewalk behind her. He had short dreadlocks and wore an apron. His hands were full of tomatoes. “I see you stop here every day. Most people don’t stop to look at it.” Soledad had never met a black person who spoke Spanish. “I’m an artist,” she said, and blushed. “I thought so,” he said. “I’m Jordan. I work in that grocery store right there. I like the murals too. I was here when they painted this one. The artist let anybody help. I painted that flower.” “Which one?” He pointed somewhere in the field of flowers. Pointing was too much; the tomatoes fell on the sidewalk and rolled all over the place, gleaming and red. Soledad helped Jordan pick them up. They were both laughing. “So you’re an artist?” said Jordan. “Are you gonna paint a mural?” “Maybe. I don’t know.” “You should.” His fingers were short and broad. He had no wedding ring. He cradled the bruised tomatoes as gently as he had when they were whole. They stood there. Somebody called from inside the grocery store.
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“That’s my boss.” He didn’t move.
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“I’ll buy them,” said Soledad. “I’ll make them into soup. Nobody will ever know.” “I’ll owe you then. You’ll have to let me make it up to you. You’ll have to let me paint a flower in your mural.” “Big help that’ll be,” said Soledad. Jordan laughed. His laugh was warm and rumbling. She paid him for the tomatoes. She started walking. “Wait!” he called. “What’s your name?” * The sign read, “The Precita Eyes Mural Arts and Visitor Center.” Soledad went in. 52
soledad | Maya Mahony
She had practiced. She spoke in English. “I want to paint a mural. Can you help me?” “Of course,” said the woman behind the counter. She had long white hair in a ponytail, and the corners of her eyes crinkled when she smiled. “That’s what we’re here for.” * The building that eventually offered a commission was a photocopy shop directly across from the grocery store where Jordan worked. Every day, after work, Soledad took the bus to the photocopy shop. She measured the building. She sketched for hours. She drew a grid over the sketch. Once inch by one inch. Then she chalked a grid onto the building. One foot by one foot. People from Precita Eyes helped her build scaffolding. Jordan brought fruit. An orange. An apple. A ripe avocado, creamy and perfect, which smeared all over the place. “Is the artist hungry?” he called from across the street. She didn’t need to turn around to tell that it was him. “I have two big brothers, back in the D.R,” he told her. “Manny owns a hotel. Saulo’s a teacher. They used to beat the crap out of me when I was a kid. But they’re great guys. Funny. You would like them.” “Were you ever in love?” “Yes. She married another man. And you?” “He died.” * On the weekends, Teresa and Miguel brought their friends. Soledad let them help, all these wriggling little kids spilling paint on their clothes. Jordan set up speakers and played music. Reina and Jorge danced on the sidewalk.
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A woman came by with an ice cream cart, and then a taco truck stopped, and soon there were many people dancing, and eating, and painting. “That’s my sister,” Reina told people. “That’s my––” said Jordan. He stopped. He looked at Soledad. * Soledad was wide and solid. No slender waist for a man to curve his hands around. But Jordan put his hands on her waist. Right above her hip bones and below her rib cage. Where he touched her, she turned soft. Jordan loved watching the Giants games on T.V. and talking about them to anybody who would listen. Soledad would not. Jordan loved playing music so loud you could feel it pounding inside of you.
tori parrish
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soledad | Maya Mahony
“You’ll go deaf, old man,” said Soledad. Jordan loved watching Soledad paint. “You have the world inside of you,” he told her once. “And it comes pouring through your paintbrush.” “Poet,” she teased him. “Maybe I am.” Jordan smiled wide enough to crack the clay around her heart. * Soledad painted San Cristobal de las Casas. She painted a dog with one ear, turning around, looking at you with clear eyes. She painted a mango, and a clay bowl, and an old man, and two little girls playing in the plaza, and a train with everyone clinging to the roof, and a brown and rushing river. She painted Mamá with her strong arms hanging the laundry on the balcony. The laundry floated away like feathers, and the feathers turned into birds, and the birds soared over the river, like the world was wide open.
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schooling overseas Olukemi Lijadu
She became aware of the tenuousness of life so early, too early, too used to flying. Laughter cracked in the air as the herd of unaccompanied minors cackled on the plane. It really was a school bus up there in the clouds.
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schooling overseas | Olukemi Lijadu
You see, if you can, you send your blessings over seas. Sometimes even your daughter at the age of thirteen, to a cold school in Buckinghamshire, with grey stone and navy blue pinafores. for a quality education, for stability. I know, letting go of her is not easy, And now I tell you, I see her waving, standing firm, holding back the water behind her eyes and my heart breaks. She would have to find another favorite dish, overseas there was no jollof rice its orange hue as striking as its spicy sizzle with crunchy deep fried dodo on the side a Sunday ritual after church with its brown pews, brown bodies She never liked church but she misses it. She learnt early on to divide herself between the two worlds with the hope of reconciling herself eventually. I never reconciled mine, a similar story, she will grow to be just as confused as I am.
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vivienne le
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for my sister / after my mother | Lillian Bornstein
for my sister after my mother Lillian Bornstein
you are one with the fallen leaves are floating down by the river is taking me away from you are one with our mother cries in the bathroom sinks are stained with red red red rooftop on the school where you learned to whistle on the train that takes you to a desert are you awake you are lost in undulating plains of wheat hair and chandelier eyes of our mother before she left you are alone with the fallen leaves are floating down you are floating down you are gone
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CONTRIBUTORS Poetry Lillian Bornstein Tyler Dunston Kemi Lijadu Becca Ann Nelson Sonia Targ Mac Taylor Claire Wang Prose Megan Calfas Maya Mahony Elizabeth Mitchell Wallace Art Michelle Bae Giada Cattaneo Julia Espero Vivienne Le Tori Parrish
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