Lumina 19.4 by lumina1B

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L A W R E N C E

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S A R A H

Contents Fiction

Everything is Everything Nicholas Russell

Poetry

The Lost Township Robin LaMer Rahija

Since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning

The Sign Says No Trespassing

Blair Benjamin Cleo Mueller Nonfiction

BĂ

Lily Fierro

Visual Art

Chords

Teaset Image #67

Jessica Cannon Vi Khi Nao

Cover Art

Jessica Cannon

Letter from the Editor

Dear Readers of Lumina, Between the world and its meaning, we find the story, we make the image and set a rhythm and tone. We find ourselves in drafts. We lift ourselves from the drift. We work around plans and ideas about how all of this might matter. We discover new energy and form. My gratitude is thorough for all who volunteered their time and talent to bring this issue together in extreme circumstances. Thank you for writing and making and reading. Thank you for thinking of us, and for thinking at all. Please enjoy and share.

Yours, Casey Haymes

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Everything is Everything Nicholas Russell

A stick of incense, scent of ylang ylang, burns on a waist-high wooden table in the darkened living room. Caroline and Dex share drinks. All is quiet. A nice evening. Caroline notices the knife in the block on the kitchen island and forks in the spit-clean rosewood drawer by the sink. None of these items belong to them. Following the liquor, Dex uncorks a bottle of wine in one swift motion, pours it too easily. Actions Caroline has never seen from him before entering this place. On their first night of housesitting, Dex cooks scallops in lemon sauce on a bed of shriveled greens with freshly baked bread. Caroline watches these motions carefully. Dex has been waiting for a night like this, finally arrived, the ambivalent burden of time and work no longer interrupting them. He leans against the counter, glass in hand, staring off. A comfortable drowsiness creeps beneath his cheeks. Caroline sweeps. He tries to catch her eye, to tell her that she doesn’t need to do that, that this should be treated like a vacation; the small things take care of themselves. Still, he only watches. The two swim in cotton and silk linens upstairs. In the early hours, atop the covers, they lavish their attention upon one another as if reconciling an argument that never occurred. For the first time in a while, instead of a bitter exercise, the endeavor tastes like something sweet. They make their way downstairs. On the high table in the living room, a new stick of incense burns at full length. Caroline points ahead. Beside the sink, a brown paper bag holding a freshly baked loaf from the night before. On a fridge shelf, a new package of scallops and vegetables. Like a lizard regrowing its tail, like a shark’s concentric row of teeth moving forward into place. Dex inspects the cabinets and drawers, his legs bare, one of Caroline’s old t-shirts straining against his chest the way she told him she liked. She steps up the stairs into the bedroom. Morning light washes onto unwrinkled white, turned-down linens, splashing into Caroline’s eyes. The clothes she and Dex had tossed on the floor sit folded neatly. Her palms itch at the sight, at the feeling that she is being watched. In the evening, Caroline stands in front of the freezer before the stroke of midnight, its contents half consumed. She blinks just past twelve, and the shark tooth moves into place again, the ice box brimming with food. What Dex said before is true; Caroline doesn’t need to take out the trash or wash the dishes. No cleaning at all. Vacation minus the little things.

Fiction

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Weeks pass, months. Dex stops doing even the most basic tasks now that he feels he understands this house. He tosses trash in the direction of the bin. He leaves unfinished food on the table, eats directly off the granite countertop, fills his glass with freshly squeezed orange juice, lets it drip onto the floor, walks through it, leaves a trail of sticky footprints. Dex acts according to what he learns. And why shouldn’t he? Even Caroline’s irritation is dictated by time constraints, until midnight, when the flies and ants that colonize Dex’s waste vanish. On the rare occasion he steps out, it is only to yell at passersby for littering or letting a dog defecate on the sidewalk, for anyone coming too close. Dex begins to forget the name of Caroline’s medication, what it’s for, her sensitivity to chemicals embedded in fabric, her brand of deodorant and how rare it is to find in this part of the country. Maybe Dex forgets to care. Does it matter? This house only echoes actions, copying and copying and copying. Caroline thinks this might be the reason she’s begun to fantasize about dumping her oatmeal onto Dex’s head in the morning. Dumping a cup of coffee, piping hot. Will he suffer through the day with second-degree burns on his penis and thighs, and later with aloe soaking into his skin as he sulks on the couch, until the clock strikes, stained clothes cleaned and pressed perfect? Will his skin heal? Will we leave Caroline a new pot of coffee to pour on Dex the next morning?

Years in this house. The woman rarely stays inside the house once the sun rises. She awakens and throws the covers over her lover’s long, sleeping body. She brushes her teeth using a brand new tube of toothpaste, though she doesn’t notice. She reaches for what she needs without looking. Before work, the woman visits their old, vacant home. She walks over in her pajamas under the dawn sky so she can dress herself in clothes left untouched, preparing meals on their abandoned stove. Her lover never follows. Time unknown. The woman wonders if he thinks of her. What would happen if she left in the night? Why hasn’t she already? Is she empathizing with Dex? Is it apathy? Or does she hesitate simply because her lover is so delicate? She is sure he ceases to consider her as useful, desirable even. After all, she hasn’t stopped aging; a house can’t fix that. Perhaps soon she will be fit for replacing. But no. The woman will return from work to this house, bursting with frustration, regret, sadness, a mélange maybe, and the scent of baked bread. Our first night all over again, her lover will say. We can let everything go: the old, the beyond. She will look at his tight belly, preserved, smooth skin, hair fuller than it ever was before, a serenity in his eyes. The woman will nod. They will eat in silence, chairs pulled close so their thighs touch until they finish, and the man guides her by the hand to the sink. He will wipe the counters clean conspicuously, each motion obvious for her to see. She will weep while he nods enthusiastically, his head drooping down to her eyes. He will lead her up the stairs to the bedroom. A ghastly smile plastered on his face, he will

Fiction

peel away their clothes, drop them to the floor. Everything new again, he will assure her. They will lay naked, facing each other until the man finally drifts. The woman will slip out, collect what few items of hers remain, and walk to the car. The man sleeps dreamlessly inside. There is no worry left for him, no anger. A house makes things right. It watches. Caroline pulls into the street, headlights piercing swaths of darkness, falling water from the sky. She turns the corner at the end of the block, red brake lights disappearing. In the morning, the dishes will be pristine, dinner restored on the countertop. The man will awaken to a house that has never known scum, disease, disrepair. He will idle from room to room, searching for her, but content to think she will return. For the first time since they arrived, he will be wrong. In the morning, we will not replace her.

Nicholas Russellâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work, both fiction and nonfiction, has appeared in The Believer, Columbia Journal, The Rumpus, Reverse Shot, and Film Comment, among other publications. He is also part of the Writers Block, an independent bookstore and literary hub in Las Vegas.

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Robin LaMer Rahija

The Lost Township A haircut happened once a year. Aunt Mary would come over to do all three us girls on the same day outside only Laura-Ingalls-Wilder-style so the birds could collect our discarded dead parts for next yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nests. Well we were on the prairie right on the Santa Fe trail with the ghosts of colonial wagon wheels creaking by us in a steady stream as we squirmed in our chairs in the damp August shade each slow turn like a bone cracking.

Robin Lamer Rahija lives in Lexington, KY. Her poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in FENCE, Bat City Review, Guernica, Diagram, and elsewhere. She is the managing editor of Rabbit Catastrophe Press.

Poetry

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Blair Benjamin

Since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning Luke 1:3

I only imagine but never achieve greater speeds than the actual pace of my life, so how big could the bang have been? A medium dark bang to commence this cosmos accords with my experience. I have erected toilet roll telescopes, emptied flower pots to gather gamma rays, and measured the matter in me dilating, distending, at roughly the rate a medium bang would augur. Daily I become less attached to the conception of my singularity, but

Poetry

a delicate thread, like stardust, lines through, towing the evidence of my earliest days: swirling sandbox galaxies I made and had no urge to visit; a temperament equal parts diffidence and ambition. A medium boy, become a medium man. The nine thousand neurons I shed yesterday were an unremarkable discharge of the mind of my middle age, body bound to a medial star, at this precise span from a moderate primordial bang.

Blair Benjamin is the Founder and Director of the Studios at MASS MoCA residency program for artists and writers in North Adams, Massachusetts. Blairâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work has appeared in The Threepenny Review.

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Cleo Mueller

The Sign Says No Trespassing But I am slicing barbed wire as I go, letting the horses loose to get some attention. See, I’m wearing lipstick, I brought gifts: trucker from the runaway ramp, coyote backbone, the old prom dress, my mother’s gun. It is not my fault the wind came up. But I liked the tumbleweeds when they were in your hair. At least now they don’t get in the way of desire, me feeling your scalp. I want you smelling of oil rig, cow shit, and sage. I like to pull you up by your roots.

Cleo Mueller was born and raised in Grand Junction, CO. She is a recent graduate of St. Lawrence University.

Poetry

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Bí Lily Fierro

A Po and I stood off to the side of the sliding door exit of the market in the Hong Kong mall. We watched families—moms, dads, kids, and grandparents—walk through the wide corridors, passing brightly lit store fronts. Bakeries, jewelry stores, video and CD shops, plant shops, and fabric stores formed a well-balanced Asian shopping ecosystem. A Po stood, somewhat protectively, by her shopping cart filled with carefully but efficiently selected groceries. She could always finish her grocery shopping in a crowded market in less than forty minutes. I often kept her company while she waited for my mom and aunt to finish up their shopping. Throughout most of her life, A Po ran a restaurant, so grocery shopping was never about finding sales or discovering new foods. She had specific meals in mind, and she’d assess the quality of the ingredients in front of her and make a decision in a matter of seconds. She used to say that people who wander grocery stores not knowing what to purchase must be possessed by some ghost keeping them in the store to buy more than they needed or wanted. Though I knew her response, I offered to get her something to eat or drink while we waited. She smiled and shook her head. If one day she nodded yes, what would she want? A bánh mì? No, I had never seen her eat one. A cà phê sữa đá? No, she never drank coffee, only jasmine tea. A bánh cam? A child-like excitement always flashed in her eyes whenever anyone brought a box over to her house. I looked at all of the ingredients peeking through the tops of the grocery bags, soon to be transformed into my favorite dishes. Whole chicken. Pork short ribs. No beef, never any beef, because she had once relied on water buffalo to help on her family’s rice paddy, and cows were too close in resemblance to those gentle creatures of her youth. Rock sugar. Multiple bushels of gai lan. Apples. Garlic. Squid. Tilapia. Shallots. Never any cilantro. Never any winter melon. Never any green mustard. The garden boxes lining the back fence of her yard grew all of those in magical abundance. Store-bought versions were imposters. It was a good year for the winter melon. A Po had nearly thirty foot-long melons lined up across the grey tiles by the front door, the coolest and driest part of the house. They needed such conditions to mature after harvesting. She always waited outside in the front entry to greet me as I stepped off

Nonfiction

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the school bus. Even on the hottest Houston days, she stood there in flowy, thin wool pants and a buttoned-up shirt, her lustrous grey hair pulled neatly into a bun, stray hairs held back by a cowboy bandana or a cloth stretch headband. Entering the house, we’d walk by the row of melons. I’d take a huge breath, savoring their slightly floral and cucumber smell. It mixed with the scent of jasmine oil that always lingered in her entryway. An enormous pot of winter melon soup commemorated the first melon opening of the year. A Po turned pork short ribs into peppery, savory stock and immersed precisely cut two-bite chunks of winter melon into the rich liquid. I always placed a paddle of rice at the bottom of my bowl, filled it with broth, four or five chunks of melon, and two of the boiled-down ribs. At first, A Po thought it was strange that I didn’t place a melon chunk and a rib on top of my rice and sip the soup from the family-style bowl, but then she accepted and encouraged my habit. I wanted as much of it as quickly as possible and hoped she knew this was my way of showing how much I loved the soup. Sometimes, we spoke to each other in broken Vietnamese. Broken because Cantonese was her first language and Vietnamese was my first, though English became my primary language when I was five. But most of our time together was spent in silence. Smiles, hand gestures, and meal sharing became our shared language. Sometimes, we read the grocery circulars together. She’d point at the images and tell me the name of the item in English. Peach! In the summers, peaches were less than a dollar a pound, so she filled the refrigerator produce drawer with them. Sometimes, I’d stand on a chair and peer over the counter behind the stove to watch her cook everything: oyster sauce stir-fried pasta with shredded mozzarella (her take on macaroni and cheese), congee, fried tofu, char-siu, stewed pickled mustard. Her movements from the prep counter to the stove to the fridge were mesmerizing. Caramelized pork. Mellowed stews and soups. Golden brown tofu pillows. She effortlessly composed every dish, every snack. Apple. I watched silently and smiled. I’ve started to pull my hair back, out of my face. When did it get so long? For the past decade, I’ve kept it short, but it’s been almost a year since I’ve cut it. For some reason, this time, the strands of brown-black hair didn’t mutate into the usual thin and oily mess that develops when they grow past my chin. At first, my ponytail was short and embarrassingly tiny, but now all hairs fold into a neat, small bun, except for a few scraggly ones that won’t pull back. I’ve started tying my favorite print scarves around my head. Today, I’m going with a purple, white, and black satin one with abstract flowers and stripes. My glasses are slipping from my face after a year of wear. These days, I work remotely, so how I dress doesn’t matter much. I recently purchased wide-legged cotton pants, an anomaly in my closet composed mostly of a mix of modern and vintage blouses, jackets, blazers, and dresses. I

Nonfiction

wear those pants with my favorite Wrangler buttoned house-shirt. As I walk into the kitchen to get some more coffee before the day begins, I see my reflection in the glass of the back door. I pause and look for a few minutes, realizing that I’m dressed almost exactly like her. The wide pants. The buttoned shirt. The pulled back hair. My silhouette matches hers, the one I saw so many times from the window of the school bus as it approached her house. But, I don’t fool the rabbits. So many used to sit calmly in her yard as she walked near them. These days, I see rabbits all the time when I walk in my neighborhood, but whenever I get within a meter of one, whether in a yard or in a park, it runs away. When I go to the grocery store, I segment my list by the aisles of the store. I move at a consistent pace, never stopping for too long. I don’t peruse the shelves. I don’t explore. I know my husband finds this very curious, but he appreciates that we rarely forget important supplies. This week, I’ll make gỏi. We have cabbage and carrots. But I need cilantro, shallots, green onions (if they look good; they haven’t in the past month), limes, red onions, cashews. Oh, and tofu. I could make it with chicken, the traditional way, but I like keeping the gỏi vegetarian. I know it’s absurd to take hours to make what is essentially a salad, which is why I haven’t made it in a while, but I’m craving the fragrant herbs, the slightly crispy and fluffy cabbage and carrot. And strangely, even though I’m not the biggest fan of fish anymore, I kind of miss nước mắm. Perfectly sweet, sour, savory. There’s something calming about slicing carrots with my green mandoline. It was one of the first kitchen tools I purchased, and I found the exact model I used when I was a child, tasked with slicing all of the taro root and carrots for chả giò. It probably wasn’t safe for me to be using the mandoline at the age of six, but by some miracle I never cut myself and still haven’t to this day. When I do make gỏi, I try to remember the names of the ingredients in Vietnamese. It’s been more than a decade since I’ve regularly spoken the language. Most of my friends throughout the years haven’t been Vietnamese, and, in my work in science and technology, I have rarely had Vietnamese colleagues. I’m a little ashamed that I had to look up the Vietnamese word for “cilantro” the other day. Ngò. A Po would have shaken her head at me. I once forgot the Vietnamese word for “scissors” and stood, embarrassed, in front of her, mimicking the motion of scissor cutting with my fingers. She gently scolded me for that, as she should have. This year is the fifteenth anniversary since my last winter melon. A Po died fifteen years ago in the springtime, leaving behind a few of the previous year’s melons. Without her care, the plant completely dried up in the Texas sun. I hoped her last days would be in the garden, by the winter melon plant, with the large green mustard leaves stretching nearby. Not seeing her in the garden that spring wasn’t something I could handle. Once the garden boxes were barren by the summer, I convinced myself that I had no reason to look toward the back

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fence. Over time, I visited the house less and less. For years, I didn’t see the garden in reality, in memory, or in dreams. Until recently. Is it because I’m almost thirty and don’t entirely know who I am that I’m recalling memories of my formative years? Is it because of the rabbits? Is it because I’ve started to look more like her? Is it because I’m afraid that I’ll lose the language forever? I used to live close to Chinese and Vietnamese grocery stores. The cellophanewrapped winter melon segments hiding on the top shelf at the end of the produce case were nothing like the freshly picked ones that sat in A Po’s entryway. They were imposters. I avoided gardening for many years, which was easy because I lived in places where it wasn’t possible. There was no space. But now, I have space. No more than a window’s ledge, but it’s more than I’ve had in the past. My husband has taken up some gardening, so I can’t avoid it any longer. Occasionally, I water and greet the basil and sunflower plants growing by our windows. And I’m starting to remember that fresh winter melon smell. I’m glad I didn’t forget. I piece together the many memories of the vines and bright green leaves and yellow flowers of the winter melon plant, and can see A Po and her shadow tending to them. I smell the jasmine oil, a smell that covered her favorite quilt. I wish I could remember where that quilt went. I don’t think winter melon is easily found anywhere near me these days. But I think she’d be happy if I ate an apple in the late afternoon, planted something, anything, shared a meal with a loved one, and, of course, walked through the supermarket without letting any of those ghosts lure me away from my list.

Lily Fierro is a Vietnamese-Cantonese-Texan who is always thinking about places and their connections to identities. Originally trained as a cognitive scientist, she now spends her days exploring data and her nights writing, listening to jazz and reggae, immersing herself in cinema, or trying to get to know her current city, wherever it may be.

Nonfiction

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Visual Art

Chords

Jessica Cannon

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Teaset Image #67 Vi Khi Nao

pg. 18 Jessica Cannon is a New York-based painter who loves open spaces, amateur physics, sun-faded colors, and dogs of all kinds. Her work was recently featured in Issue 10 of Maake Magazine, curated by Nickola Pottinger, and is included in the forthcoming Northeast Issue of New American Paintings, juried by Jerry Saltz. This fall she will attend a residency at the Jentel Foundation in Wyoming, where the big skies and night stars will inform the imagined landscapes in her paintings. Jessicaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work can be viewed at: www.jescannon.com. pg. 20 Vi Khi Nao is the author of four poetry collections: Human Tetris (11:11 Press, 2019) Sheep Machine (Black Sun Lit, 2018), Umbilical Hospital (Press 1913, 2017), The Old Philosopher (winner of the Nightboat Prize for 2014), & of the short stories collection, A Brief Alphabet of Torture (winner of the 2016 FC2â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize), as well as the novel Fish in Exile (Coffee House Press, 2016). Her work includes poetry, fiction, film and cross-genre collaboration. She is the current Fall 2019 fellow at the Black Mountain Institute, and more about her can be found at vikhinao.com.

Visual Art

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Editor

Casey Haymes Executive Assistant

Cara Peterhansel Fiction Editor

Eric Buechel Nonfiction Editor

Jancie Creaney Poetry Editor

Brennan Bogert Multilingual Editor

R.Y.

Fiction Assistant

Nina Smilow Nonfiction Assistant

Cassidy Wells Poetry Assistant

Molly Davidson Multilingual Assistant

Laura Wang

Marketing Director

Christopher Rowland Blog Editor

Katherine Dye MtM Editor

Samantha Steiner MtM Assistant

Gayatri Degan Copy Editor

Alex Deguise Proofreader

Jesse Karlan Faculty Advisor

Rattawut Lapcharoensap

Fiction Readers

Brynne Calleran Nathaniel Eakman Serrana Gay Hilary Gilford Jenny Goldstein Skylar Guidroz Katie Kopacz Daria Lavelle Kristen Michelson Genevieve Mills Olivia Nathan James Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Leary Faith Padgett Janet Pfeffer Tara Ramirez Chaya Ungar Emma Stuart Special Thanks

Paige Ackerson-Kiely Thomas Alameda Stephanie Brooks Brittany Coppla Nicole Flippo Vanessa Friedman Katiy Heath Jon Hoel T Kira Madden Brian Morton Melissa Puello Amparo Rios David Ryan Emily Stout Vic Walsh The entire Sarah Lawrence College community, including Lonesome. Designer

Shino Urano www.shinourano.com

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