High School Literary Magazine 2021

SAINT ANN’S HIGH SCHOOL LITERARY MAGAZINE 2021

SAINT ANN’S HIGH SCHOOL LITERARY MAGAZINE 2021

SAINT ANN’S HIGH SCHOOL LITERARY MAGAZINE 2021

STAFF Sarah B., Raimi B. Cheryl C. , Maya C. , Olivia C. , Clara D., Nola D., Eitan F. Eden F. , Lola G., Sammy G., Caroline H. , Lukas K., Cora L., Marley M., Hazel P-M., Mia R., Allie R., Shayni R., Izzy R., Lucy R., Katherine S-R., Max S.. Simone S., Sydney S., Cuatro V., Alexandra Z. EDITORS Tess A-M., Gabriella B., Lila H. FACULTY ADVISORS Desiree B., Ashlyn M. Many thanks to the following people for their support and assistance: Kevin A., Jason A., G. G., Tom H., Melissa K., Jesse K., Mary Lou K., Katya A., Marcia H., Tony T. , Alejandro D., Chloe S., Terry T. , and Vince T..

Thanks also to the English and Art departments, and in particular Eli F., Andy K. , Elizabeth F. , and Marty S. .

We are especially grateful to everyone who submitted work to this magazine.

Copyright ©2021 Saint Ann’s School Brooklyn, New York www.saintannsny.org

POETRY AND PROSE What Are You Doing New Years Eve A Girl with Glass in her Leg Sexy Sadie Wonderfully enchroaching The Little Storm Vivisection Self Care the donkey and the pin What is a Woman Poet The Orange Bears Paragliding over America In The Space With No Light Generations “An Alphabet arm” “Another day goes by...”

It Takes Thirty Seconds Prose poem cotton cure A Reincarnation “Have you ever held someone...”

I Typed This Lost Treasure Robigus Redivivus The Lullaby of Protest The Fiddlehead Fern I Find Gone One Turtle House

Thisbe W. Adelaide C. Max K. Katherine S-R. Edie L. Heath H. Maya C. Jack A-G. Zibia B. Ramona S. Ayla S. Caroline H. Mia R. Julia S. Cuatro V. Sydney S. Zibia B. Abby D. Ayla S. Tess A-M. Shai B. Lyla B. Asher H. William B. Mirabelle P. Henry A. Lucy G. Sydney S.

12 14 17 22 23 25 26 28 30 35 36 41 43 44 46 47 49 50 52 55 56 57 61 62 63 65 66 67

“The rolling hills tickle...”

Summer Day 253 Orientation The Woes and Pros of Online School So Small and a Little Bit Alone Ghost Story I to You “Lessons learned are like the sky...”

Neverland The Hole Speed In The City Lily The Photophile The Never-Ending Sorrows from Fragments of Nowhere; Margaret and Pauline “Summer ocean tides...”

“I can’t stop smiling...”

Coat Gallery Cloudy Letter from someone else Art “My handwriting...”

Purple Shampoo Crushed Isolation A Taste Before Red Wine Digammic Wafts Sin “It was learning...”

Henry F. Maya C. Naya M. Amalia B. Joline F. Lily T. Lyla B. Rex A. Lyla B. Bailey R. Violet D. Sammy G. Miles G. Sebastian B.

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Matilda L. Cuatro V. Oonagh M. Caroline H. Anaka P. Jack A-G. Max K. Shai B. Anna M. Lola G. Anaka P. Abby D. Asher H. Lucy G. Mia R.

94

76 77 79 80 81 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 92

98 99 100 105 106 108 110 111 112 114 116 117 118 119

K-T-B The Description of Aliser Morris “M” My Google Search History “I often wake up sweaty...”

Time “It goes off, 3,4,5,6...”

Wishing Love Pell Mell Fall This is Why We’d Suffocate Isolation An Encounter Degenerate The Bag A Numbness in Color Wandering Essence An Incomplete Collection of Catcalls Tragedy “It’s May 14th...”

Pear Tree Tall The Friend and the Fox Dark Glasses The View From Spring BIG MAN “Last night I lay...”

Ode to Michelle Yeoh Desert Rose Doves of love

Asher H. Henry A. Lyla B. Gabriella B. Heath H. James B. Clio W. Soliel Piveger Henry A. Sammy G. Allie R. Anaka P. Miles G. Naya M. Max K. Lily T. Juno W. Thisbe W. Anaka P. Nina D. Evia D V. Nikita M. Mirabelle P. Henry A. Sammy G. Cason M-C. Quincy C. Thisbe W. Jack A-G. Lukas K.

120 121 122 124 126 127 128 129 132 133 134 135 136 138 140 142 143 144 146 147 150 152 153 154 156 157 160 161 162 163

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“The body regenerates...”

February, Crushed The Dead Always Face the Sky “It began with a swift push...”

Partitions Running Into Absence A Letter From Her Boyfriend, Found In The Trash: My Ease Into This World Candle Rock Review of the Mahjong Letter to the Editor Inventory. Places I’ve Lived The Beat Late-Summer Tide Bags of Words Alpha Centauri Arch Form Up Late Jinrikisha “To pay attention...”

Odyssey

Cuatro V. Tess A-M. Max K. Heath H. Zibia B. Katheine S-R.

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Stella M. Adelaide C. Ayla S. Thisbe W. Eitan F. Tess A-M. Cuatro V. Heath H. Mirabelle P. Ayla S. Maya C. Lila H. Max K. Tess A-M. Zibia B.

174

166 168 170 171 172

175 177 186 188 189 190 191 193 194 195 196 197 198 200

ART Lyla B. Nina D. William B. Thisbe W. Lio Otter Katherine S-R. Matilda L. Nina D. Léa Sainz-Gootenburg Oonagh M. Sam Nivola Thisbe W. Ruby Dachis Johanna Mintz

4,13 34 40, 51, 192, 60 75, 83, 131, 141 10, 67, 104, 155, 159 94 115 125 137 149 165 198 203

What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve I wish I could inhale the covid inside Apo’s lungs into my own younger, healthier body.

The breath through my rounded lips would sound like sucking air through a plastic straw, virions cold and clinical in my trachea.

My body, 57 years younger than Apo’s, does not carry the pain her body did.

I have kidneys that function well (she reminded me every phone call to drink more water).

I have an unbroken back, even with my herniated L5-S1—I’ve never been in a car crash.

I have no stiff joints, no arthritis, no gout.

I have no trauma from being beaten by a mother, then a husband.

I have no scars from a kidney transplant on a bloated belly.

I wish Apo could come to visit me here in New York one more time.

We could walk on crunchy fall leaves in the Park and sit at Bethesda Fountain (I wish I’d asked her about her dreams), or roam Chinatown knocking on papayas and watermelons, sharing lo bak goh at dim sum.

She could always tell a good melon with her hands.

The dry champagne burns my stomach and I refill.

Apo spent Christmas—her favorite holiday—and New Year’s in New York with us in 2016.

We wore paper cut-out glasses that read “fuck 2016.” She looks barely amused in the photo.

This year she made it through Christmas, not to New Year’s, not to Chinese New Year.

The week she lay in the hospital with covid was a countdown.

A round fiery knot sank from the middle of my ribs to my stomach to my navel.

No confetti at the end, just condolences.

The TV’s lights whirl on my champagne glass like the crystals of a kaleidoscope.

Fireworks are going off in Times Square, Anderson Cooper is clearly drunk, and people are dancing in the streets, arms wrapped around each other.

The TV plays “Auld Lang Syne.”

It’s 12:04 AM and she is not here.

Thisbe W. 12

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A Girl with Glass in her Leg Now I know your bedroom like it could be mine. And I curl my toes into your sheets and it feels like I could be writing poetry. But I wish I was young and naked and staring at my ribs.

And not yet hating my ribs and writing poetry. I was young.

Sometimes I lift my feet off the ground when I pee just to feel how young I was.

And then I applied to college.

And now all I think in the shower is that I get to be naked. And that you make me feel naked even when I have my shirt on and it makes me feel naked when I read when I breathe my own poetry.

I hate being naked.

I like the way I live better in the dark.

And I like the way I look better 14

in the dark. And your kitchen is dark and your hand is flat on the counter behind me as if it is the only thing holding you up. You are standing so close to me right now. And I feel like I can’t breathe. Because you are the most beautiful thing i’ve ever seen. And I feel like I can’t breathe.

And when I feel like I can’t breathe I write poetry.

And I live again.

In the light of my own kitchen with my mom over my shoulder applying to college.

My personal statement makes me feel sick.

This is when I feel my ribs through my shirt. And I feel how much they hate their home. And I 15

want to tell the boy I like how much I like him. But my ribs hate their home.

So I keep barely living in this bland kitchen light.

The other most beautiful thing i’ve ever seen is a shooting star.

I saw my first shooting star this summer. I felt my heart deep in my chest and I felt it beat.

I cut my leg on the green glass of an old beer blood like sap and tasting like tin. I licked my fingers like a child. It made me want to write.

I wrote a poem to my shooting star.

I wondered where do shooting stars go? Will my poem have a home?

Everything young needs a home and everything that was once young needs a home.

And I, the shell and sliver of the girl with glass in her leg still needs her home.

Adelaide C. 16

Sexy Sadie

Her earliest memory of isolation was when she was three years old: she looked up the chimney and said, “Santa’s too fat for that.” Her next memory of isolation was a year later: she lost a tooth, and that night, she caught her mother Katie slipping a five under her pillow. Sadie thought about all the mysticism the Tooth Fairy had brought her, and she fell asleep weeping. And a few months later, when the Easter Bunny turned out to be a “nice idea,” she was utterly lost. When she went to kindergarten the following year, there would be no Christmas List discussions; there would be no hopeful wiggling of teeth; milk chocolate eggs would taste sour. She would be an adult in her knowledge of the real world, and that was no fun.

Her sense of self after this was always shaped by her conviction that everything she touched wilted: when she considered her aforementioned discoveries, she thought of them not as early triumphs of truth, but rather as revelations that had ended a purer kind of life. She felt tainted by her knowledge, like it had caused the termination of a state of betterness, of self-love and happiness. Only later did she realize that what she had so acutely observed was her first experiences of lost childhood innocence.

It seemed that for Sadie, the quest for truth was always harmful. Whenever she learned new things before her peers did — and seeing as she was extremely bright, this happened quite often — she felt another layer of solitude settle on her, another wall erected between her mind and her world. She felt buried underneath the weight of advancement: with each exciting discovery came a cloud of misery, which in turn morphed into a blanket, and then a boulder, compressing her body down into itself until she was doubled over by her own gravity.

When she began playing the saxophone at age eight, she found a cure to that internal vacuum. She could reverse the current of her sorrow by pushing it out of her body, blowing the weight of her knowledge into her horn and hearing it change into beauty. The music she made was self-soothing, and she felt that for once, she had found something that brought her solace, not solitude.

For many years after, she took that saxophone with her everywhere she went. She hugged it close on the long bus rides to school; she slept with its cold, curved bell nestled between her legs, spooning it through the night; she carried it with her to restaurants and soccer games, dragging it lightly behind her like she had done as a small child with her baby blanket. When other mothers asked Katie what the “deal” was with Sadie’s saxophone, Katie didn’t know what to say, for it baffled her just as much as her interlocutors; 17

and when Katie confronted her daughter about her saxophonal addiction, Sadie simply replied, “it makes me feel O.K.,” and walked off, her horn bouncing along behind her.

By the time she was 14, she was far past her classmates in every area except recess and lunch (both of which found her sitting alone, fondling the beautiful pearl keys of her alto), and her musicality was prodigious. She was sitting in at jam sessions with college kids, blowing over Bird tunes at 250 bpm and calling modal fusion shit no one had ever heard of to show them just how hip she was.

Sadie was pretty, but no one ever noticed. At least not until Mickey Linehan walked into a jam she was leading with his bass and immediately fell in love with her. Unfortunately, Mickey was 19, and she was not 19, and this was a problem for both of them, since Mickey held very strong Christian views, and Sadie was, well, 14. Nevertheless, those Christian morals seemed to fade a little bit more each time he visited her to “talk shop,” and after a month of involuntary courtship, he kissed her and she kissed him back and that was that.

They dated in secret for a couple months — Katie also happened to hold strict Christian beliefs, though these had not been effectively passed down to her daughter — sneaking out at night to kiss and talk in the park, sometimes bringing their instruments with them to play ballads with each other, for each other. When Mickey told her that he loved her, Sadie just looked at him and smiled, and then kissed him for a long, long time.

She never said it back.

They had sex for the first time a month later, at 3 a.m. in her kindergarten playground with only a towel between them and the concrete; and, Mickey being the experienced one, Sadie felt annoyed the entire time. She wanted to have more knowledge than him, wanted to feel like she could control sex the way she controlled their relationship.

She was missing her usual upper hand, and she didn’t like it one bit. The sex was painful, and she bled onto the towel before shoving him off of her and taking him in her mouth to stop the pain. She felt defeated.

Mickey broke up with her a couple months after that, citing the “inappropriate nature” of their relationship and his desire to not “live in hiding anymore.” He could’ve cared less about these things. What he did care about was that the smile and the long, long kiss, which he had taken to be her way of saying “I love you too,” were really her way of wriggling out of it.

Sadie had indeed been deflecting his “I love you” when she smiled and kissed him for a long, long time, but not because she didn’t care about him: rather that she was 14, and love was far too much for her, and so she had gone into a state of protective emo-

18

tional shutdown. But now that he was gone, she missed him: she realized that she might very well have loved him and just been too scared to say it, and so she fell in love with his absence, crying herself to sleep each night and thinking about how she had discovered yet another reality that only hurt her. The truth was no fun.

She didn’t touch her saxophone for a year after that. It sat isolated in the corner of her room, cowering in the shadows, a daily reminder of her failures and her losses.

She called Mickey every day, always getting a message, never leaving one. She didn’t know what she could say. All her defensive confidence was crumbling slowly, bringing down the walls she had built to protect herself from the ever-present weight. She felt that old gravity sucking her back in, drawing her head to her knees, making her want to infinitely pretzel herself until she was a twisted ball floating amidst nothingness. This was her truth: the state that she had been living in had been ephemeral, for it had not been her true nature, but rather a facade, a world created by unmerited self-assurance and by self-deception. She had again found her roots, and had again been punished for her discovery.

A year later, when she took her alto out from its dusty case, she could barely play. The current that she had formerly reversed seemed irreversible now, like all the air inside her was molasses, like it had a strong conviction to stay in her lungs, crouching there evilly, weighing her body down, making her fight for breath. She kept trying, though, and after a month of effort she was able to play like she had before, though there was no pleasure in it now, only desperation. She began dragging it around with her again, and when she played, it was to keep from caving in on herself.

Nobody had ever suggested to her that she might be clinically depressed. To be fair, no one would have known to ask: she did not talk to her mother about such things; she had no friends close in age to her, and even those friends were for musical purposes only. So when she went off to college and had a meeting with a mental health counselor who told her she probably had clinical depression, she was shocked. She had gotten used to her crippling condition, gotten used to the daily defeats and miseries, come to call them home.

She was in no place to accept these new and scary results; so, with the violence that comes from desperation, she viciously denied them. She shrieked at the poor counselor about her nerve, her incompetence, her utter disregard for truth, her perpetuation of a system in which diagnoses are more important than fact because it’s all run by big pharma, etc., and then stormed out of the room, saxophone clanging awkwardly behind her, knocking the back of her knees and causing her to stumble several times as she made her way back

19

to her room.

About a week later, after much deep consideration and preparation, she went back to the counselor’s office to apologize and to hear what the woman had to say concerning her “depression.” When she walked in, the counselor looked at her and ducked, covering her head with her hands and bringing her body into a quivering ball, giving the impression of an abused animal or a terrified passenger on a turbulent airplane, prematurely pulling herself into a crash-landing position. All Sadie’s practiced apologies and inquiries left her as she saw what she inspired in this woman. This, she thought, is what all people think of me. This is what Mickey thinks of me. And so she began to shriek again, clawing at herself as she screamed, “HOW DARE YOU” and “YOU PIECE OF SHIT” and “YOU GODDAMN WHORE” and “WHY DON’T YOU GO TO HELL WHERE YOU BELONG YOU THREE-EYED BITCH,” etc., her face and body contorting with rage and self-loathing. When she finished her tirade, she had yelled so much that her face was purple with exertion and tears, and she ran out of the building still clawing at herself, tripping over her saxophone.

When she got back to her room, she took the alto out of its case, ripped all her clothes off, and curled herself around it, feeling the harshly elegant metal on her breasts and on her stomach and in between her legs and trying to breathe through the truth.

She was called to the dean’s office the next day, where the dean, the president, and the three-eyed bitch were waiting, and was expelled from the university for extreme repeated verbal abuse. They also told her that they thought it would benefit her and her family if she saw a therapist and began taking medication. When she told them to go fuck themselves, she realized that she was proving their point, but this realization just angered her more, so she began to let loose on yet another tirade — “the establishment,” etc. — before being forcefully carried out by two hulking security guards. She told them to go fuck themselves, too, and then kicked one of them hard in the balls.

She got kicked out of three more colleges before finding somewhere she could stick. It was a conservatory, and this was perfect for her: everyone played music, and because it was an uptight, traditional place, no one asked her about her alleged depression.

She practiced all day, jammed all night, and slept very little. She graduated with a B.F.A. in Jazz Performance, and another one in Composition, and she moved to the city to start playing gigs.

Her life had been a cycle of truth-hunting, truth-finding, and truth-denying. In her early childhood, that innocence lost — those truths revealed to her by her own fero-

20

cious seeking, by her careful examinations of chimneys and late-night dental stake-outs — couldn’t have been put in perspective; after all, she had been very young. But now, as she considered the different stages of her life, and the premature losses of innocence she experienced at each stage, she realized that the reason she had never found pleasure in her constant hunting was because it always revealed something uglier about the world that she, among her peers, was alone in knowing. She couldn’t be happy with her larger possession of knowledge, because she saw it for what it was: the vile, destructive truth. Her intelligence had cursed her: if she had been average, and had known that the Easter Bunny wasn’t real, she would have lorded it over her classmates and felt the superiority of enhanced knowledge; but because of her intellect and introspection, she saw her enhanced knowledge not as a triumph, but rather as an engine of self-isolation. Every truth she had ever discovered for herself had brought her further along that path, and each instance of discovery had added more boulders to her load and more bricks to her wall until so many bricks and boulders had piled up that she found herself alone in a tiny apartment in the Lower East Side with a microwave burrito but no microwave and a saxophone that had gone without repair for so long that she could barely get out a middle G and a heart of anger and a conviction that everything she touched not only wilted but actually died and so she had no choice but to lie on the hard linoleum floor and cry for everything she had done and everything she wished she hadn’t and all the people she had pushed away and all the memories she had buried deep, and for Santa and the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny and for Mickey and for Katie and for the counselor and for herself and her stupid fucking intelligence and her goddamn convictions and her lonely sexless heartbreaking life. What could she do? Truth killed her, and denial killed her faster. So she took her saxophone out of its case and removed her clothes so that, cradling her horn against her naked skin, she was left with nothing but her rawest self. Then she opened the window and jumped, and finally, the truth felt like nothing.

Max K.

21

wonderfully encroaching world tonight descended on me, thoughts dissolving into tomblike darkness I wake to the whisper of cars down the block sweep my eyes around to see if I can distinguish between myself and death in that fading dimension when corners still have the rounded quality of a dream a moment ago, tree trunks were striping the hills with their shadows now even Giovanni doesn’t dare tap towards me in the moonlight dripping from the window he keeps on carefully licking the cobwebs from his paws time blooms and unblooms in this bedroom it thaws and floods back only to freeze once more and I imagine you would have felt comfortable in a tangled garden when you were alive, I was always trying to inhabit your world to avoid addressing my own. Am I gone with you, easily descending or have I found my own life? is a fluid space, imagining the outlines, attainable only in between?

Katherine S-R.

22

The Little Storm Tonight they’ve crept With hopes to watch, Through crack in door, The little storm, The little noise, The little bangs, The little nightly sonic snaps Through which the youngest always Sleeps, deaf in dreams unlike her sisters So there they peek Squatting, nightgowned, elbows pointed Studying their father’s study Their father, Their Mr. Wolfe of Wolfe News, Their mother’s husband, Their daddy, their ride home from school Who smells of stacks of newspapers unsold At work, where, sometimes, he sleeps He keeps the surplus Playboys Out of reach, Shelved in dusty stacks, For in the dark For in the study For in private For unfolding in the dampened sound of night In which he thinks his daughters are asleep, their foreheads Kissed, their lights turned out But tonight they’ve crept Hand in hand, and see Through crack in door, A photograph of a naked woman pinned onto the wall a naked woman pinned onto their father’s wall a naked woman who looks like their mother a naked woman who looks like their teacher a naked woman who looks like their neighbor a naked woman who looks like their crossing guard a naked woman who looks like their aunts a naked woman who looks like their mother pinned onto their father’s wall before 23

Their father, standing Their father, holding a gun, Their father, squinting, Their father fires and they squeal and run They’ve seen too much and still they Smile, the little storm that always keeps them up, at last, revealed At breakfast they are tired They say they had bad dreams They kick each other’s knees After they eat, After they clear the table, After they put on their socks and shoes, After their mother goes to start the car, they sneak into their father’s study And take from the trash can the photograph of a Naked woman, whose face is now a bullet hole They smooth her out, They fold her nicely, They hide her in their room, They go to school, They come home, eat, and go to sleep, And in the morning, There is another woman in the trash, So they smooth her out, too, They fold her nicely, They hide her with the other in their room, And when they have enough, They unfold each one and play leapfrog across the bodies, And peek through the bullet holes, And stick out their tongues, And when they are older, They fold them up again, And pretend to forget the vision of their father Their daddy, their ride home from school, Spied through crack in door, Shooting holes into Playboy centerfolds Edie L.

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Vivisection The morning bursts in through my gauzy curtains when you wake up with the light. Use one finger — trace the lines carved into my skin blue ink and glassy raised flesh.

This is how I mend: wounds sewn up by dandelions, mushrooms, healed to a beautiful scar; a necropolis of my past lives sprout from my silent, bruised flesh. A topographical map, you read my braille, you take what you want.

Drag your finger across faded flagellations You will find what you look for in my decomposition: Bury a salamander under the skin on my back — It wriggles and bathes in the fire from my belly. You pause at my hips, my knees, my wrists, my shins; Scar tissue reaches where other fingers have been.

I offer small lies, blessed but you linger, discerning what I will give.

Dig into my surface, take what you will.

It’s all that keeps you from cutting me open and counting my rings.

Heath H.

25

Self Care Tingling rosewater spray on (puffed up) cheeks Mushroom facemask folded on acne-ridden (three)-head Newspaper print on white nails plunged in (canisters of plastered) paint Epsom salt (toppled) in the closet, scooped up for a clumpy bath

(Painful) Opera on the iPhone (with bubbles of bathwater formed on top

due to incessant skipping of songs) Spiritual chapstick, sacred cerulean mascara, exfoliation in the Sand, (burning crisp) in the sun but (not) golden (yet)—just six minutes longer Adjusting straps, enhancing bones, whitening, darkening, coloring Gurgles with guilt and snots and saltwater and dirt-surfacing Let us bask in concoctions of perfume and lament

Broken nails when the real broke, authentic sides are In the veins, not vain

In blood, placenta, gray matter, bone marrow

Or something even less tangible, entities below blood that drips What’s Underneath, and how do we find it? what’s this secret—beyond (body) Because I do not know (myself ) what to think about why I plunge

Into musky water infused with roses and

Paint a face of pink and silver gradation

And why we speak of ourselves (highnesses) as dirt And muck (not from a mud bath) but from the icky pavement Polluted by boot stomps neatly shined today— worthless slutty muddy muck boots When to change is to love is to change When concealer covers battle wounds because I was an Amazonian three lives ago And I still am when he whistles at me in the train

(Show your battle wounds) When rosewater screams shame because I muffle scents of dahl and kitchary

Pressed into linen and fabric of identity

(Reveal your scent) When epsom salt is an unnatural dwelling for the piece of me that is a golden fish--

26

or is it goldfish? that engulfs me when I plunge through water

(Be natural) When plastered, newsprinted, nail polish undermines the dirty fingernail labors of

My ancestors who built the Taj Mahal

(Laud your history) When oils, polish, paint, scent, salt, accentuation cry a gorgeous hologram “nobody” I will be a sloppy identified real not-just-some-body “somebody.”

Maya C.

27

The Donkey and the Pin the body is deteriorating flesh boiling over flesh his mind is a series of flashes held together by heat i slept for four hours and cried for five i take myself so seriously i can’t let myself take myself so seriously what a kid drunk on lust and misery drunk on oats drunk on one more please i feel like vomiting as in the action the surge as you ready back but what do you care i don’t drink i’m not sure why yet i think it’s because it feels like pins and needles in my stomach prodding there way through my body they came in from the feet first i glanced down, and there they were you could barely see the eyes, looking up at me i mean these needles are everywhere my feet, my chin my forehead, my crotch my lower stomach, my upper back my nose, my hair needles all the way down i can’t always see them sometimes i can’t even feel them it feels like i never had them at all but they’re there even now

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when i look to my own hands needles jutting out like broken bone they’ll always poke through, one way or another i was a shy little boy growing up shy little kid insecure, drowning, lonely, and afraid they speak of imagination as freedom but it’s not always i was not always this way, if i ever was prisoner to myself but you shouldn’t let me kid i’m not that dramatic to use such language, nor that important oh to be nothing again to be a donkey with no care in the world other than work occasionally flicking away flies and pins a brief move of the tail to accept the circumstances of birth welcoming whatever lot life sold you to be that quark hurtling through space and time dashing with no shadow across the sky dragging a seam of static across our sky at 11:07 pm, two years ago you could’ve seen it if you looked up on july third but i wasn’t looking up something was bothering me did you see it?

Jack A-G.

29

What is a Woman Poet Think critically, for a second. not read the one

About

Do not click the article, for this moment do

The pandemic’s-------------------------------------------------------------->future, And<-------------------------------------inevitably,----------------------------------------->ours.

What did you remember?

The Child Development Center, The one----------->way mirror.

They asked me to play with the ball. They locked the door every time.

Click ---><----Click----><----Click----><----The little girl I could not save, I look for her blindly in the dark, Oh light switch where art thou, Flick//// Flick/// Flick//// “I always thought it was cool how she never cared she never cared she just jumped into the water she just ran right in November and without a wetsuit and with the knowledge of the sharks I--”

30

I Float in a White Sea

/ > / > / > / >

The sharks Graze my back “I told her you’ll be cold, I couldn’t believe she wasn’t, November and--” the dramamine starts to set in now and I feel high, sleepy in the car, reds melt brown and I think for just a moment that I don’t care, red or brown

flick

--My body leaves the room without my saying yes. It’s like a light turns off.-flick

A man reached his hand inside my friend,1

1 1

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

snatched the fruit1off the trees, 1 @@@ @@@ @@@ ^ made off with it like Peter Rabbit. A bounty of biologically evolved hopes.

31

(I am trying to get into the building.

It is one of those call machines, I don’t know how to use it, the woman only told me the floor to go to, not the name of the suite. A man in a trench approaches. He is nice, too nice. He is clearly affronted when I hold the door for him. Makes a point of holding the elevator for me. The elevator feels too small. He turns to face me.

I don’t breathe.

His pediatric mask smiles at me. I try to stay very still.

If you don’t move, they think you are a rock. If you don’t move, maybe they will forget you are there. But why am I so afraid? ) “...and why the fuck is it always the beautiful mother and not the stoic father in the movie who’s fucking dead?? Have you guys noticed that? She’s always dead, beautifully, from some tubercular like disease, I mean it’s ridiculous don’t you guys feel like it’s a kind of an underwhelming representation of mothers and women generally, I mean I’m just so sick of…”1

1

“Princess Belgiojoso...femme fatale of the period...did a great deal to popularize the tubercular look. The TB influenced idea of the body was a new model for aristocratic looks--at a moment when 32

3 2 1 Skip Ad VOGUE BEAUTY-- IRIS LAW’S SIX THOUSAND STEP MORNING ROUTINE!!!!!!

KIM KARDASHIAN THINS DOWN TO A SLIM 25 INCH WAIST, JENNIFER LAWRENCE REPORTEDLY ATE TWO HAMBURGERS B4 RED CARPET!!!

Lana Turner, get up we love you.

The self as an image2: Am I more than the image if you tell me I’m not? If a tree falls in the forest completely alone and no one ever finds it, did it really fall?

Could I be 2D? Flat stanley.

In the back room, someone’s keeping time.

Measuring out our waltz 1, 2, 3 1, 2, 3 Step on the square at the right time: see it light up, You’re a woman; you’re a dancer.

I.e., you do not walk alone at night, i.e., you do not go swimming alone at night, i.e., you do not go to the party alone at night, i.e., you do not walk in the woods alone at night, i.e., you can not be alone at night.

What is a woman other than her restrictions?

What is a woman without a man?

What is a woman alone in the rain, a misty night in SF, yellow raincoat under the yellow aristocracy stops being a matter of power, and starts being mainly a matter of image. (“One can never be too rich. One can never be too thin,” the Duchess of Windsor once said.) Indeed, the romanticizing of TB is the first widespread example of promoting the self as an image.” Sontag, Susan, Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors, Picador, 1977.

2 “Princess Belgiojoso...femme fatale of the period...did a great deal to popularize the tubercular look. The TB influenced idea of the body was a new model for aristocratic looks--at a moment when aristocracy stops being a matter of power, and starts being mainly a matter of image. (“One can never be too rich. One can never be too thin,” the Duchess of Windsor once said.) Indeed, the romanticizing of TB is the first widespread example of promoting the self as an image.” Sontag, Susan, Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors, Picador, 1977.

33

street lamp?

What is a woman walking alone in the rain (a misty night in SF, yellow raincoat under yellow street lamp)?

What is she while shaving a calf, on the ledge of the tub, a bowl of warm water and soap?

What is she when hungry?

What is she when tired, seven years old, falling asleep in the booth seat in the restaurant?

What is an unwatched woman, and more importantly, would she be better?

What is a woman poet? A Black woman poet? A white woman poet? A trans woman poet? A Native American woman poet? In a coastal town or in the middle of the country? Standing still or walking? During the day or at night?

What is a woman when afraid? What is a woman when brave?

34

Zibia B.

The orange bears They are dancing in the coconut peonies They are flying — Or singing.

Their yellowing sunny hearts expand through their intestines and up through their mouths On strings Like red balloons And they burst in the sun.

The sun sings to them.

The yellowish hearts of the dancing orange bears.

There is a reflection.

The expansion of the heart. Of the bears. In the sun.

Snow day.

Ramona Sarsgaard

35

PARAGLIDING OVER AMERICA she took me paragliding on my fourteenth birthday I told her I wanted to see the world from her perspective— the peregrine falcons (top of the food chain falling at 240 miles per hour)— feel the toes curl back as we let go of the mountain on the Delaware, feel the wind, an american perspiration, watch the arteries, road flowing car-free, people colliding mountains eating at suburbia watch their wings, yellow reflecting them smaller, turning red tails to titmouses as their grips lace around iron strings look at your smallness, all across this cracking nation others are doing the same.

— I, fourteen, in the immigration office feet just meeting the grey floor as amma picks up her first passport amma, now folded, american amma, fast tracked at JFK

36

undeportable maybe this was the reckoning we asked for knees bent to numbing tile floor, for change honey the votes speak for themselves she taught me how to cut my hair scissors reflecting neck curved over the bathroom sink hands dusting across my shoulders as my darkening hair curls into the drain threading her stories through my lost pieces the rooms she fashioned, the homes she laid foundation and sheetrock, plaster and rafters, my walls plastered in indian spices and pennsylvania steel 2 my country still flickering into existence we had a long childhood, america and I we took a while to begin growing into our size nines, long legs, ideas we burned in the fireplace pulling dark bricks like amma’s lipstick

37

broken brown and warm there is little hope she says little hope, I agree as I look down at new jersey I cannot help but feel small — this is the country of whitman, of hughes, of lorde, of alexander, the country of grand central and acadia, zion and forty-second street hear the dissonance, the car horns flooding rushing feet pull curtains aside to see the mask whiteness breeds what are the prices—a wounded knee to enter the grocery store a father’s right to vote for a slice of bread the country of davises miles and betty and angela and of the silver screen and the man behind the scenes who holds a gun to the director’s head (shoot, shoot for your lives form our perfect delusion, our perfect fantasy the american dream was never really free) the country of respirators and ventilators and 10,000 dollar healthcare of sports cars and movie stars (they put a price on air)

38

we need our exam, america’s physical 250 years too late — 3 she took me paragliding for my fourteenth birthday the world flaked away reality morphing to TV stars pulling votes like velveeta on a tuesday she took me paragliding on my fourteenth birthday and at eighteen we will fly again she will say four years, there is little hope Little Hope, I agree and as I look down at new jersey I cannot help but feel small the mountains colliding with suburbia Ayla S.

39

40

In The Space With No Light

The stranger turned up at Angela’s house in broad, cold daylight. His face, already morose, twisted, perhaps grimacing at the screen door’s shrill creak, a sound followed by Angela’s heavy aspirations as she pushed the outer door, bright yellow and much heavier for her than it used to be. He took hold of it halfway, and looked down at Angela. She was a mouth breather.

“Are you thirsty?” she asked.

“Very,” the stranger said. His voice, like Angela’s strength, had weakened over time. There was a gap between Angela and the other side of the doorway, and he slipped through, kind enough not to drop the door.

The kitchen was just as it always had been: plain and nearly bare, the black and white tiling of the floor its most rousing feature. Its charm, if it had any, would lie in visiting it often, not in its design, nor its decorations. And things were small here. The stranger bent far to reach the faucet. He must’ve lived with small people like Angela before; he stepped away, avoiding the cabinet above fluently.

“Kitchen,” Angela mumbled behind him, maybe to herself “This is my kitchen.”

“Yes,” said the stranger. He looked at Angela and rubbed an old scrape on the cup he’d chosen. It was a red and white one, with the words God thanks me when I work, but he loves me when I play!

“I’m not religious,” said Angela. Her mouth made a little O, like a halo, when she finished a breath, which she did now. “I think my friend is, though. She must be. It used to be her cup.” A pause. The sudden hush did not fall between them, but encased them. It was as though they remained within it, even when Angela asked, “Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Religious?”

“Ah. No,” he said. Angela nodded, unsurprised. He didn’t seem like he had the patience to pray. Even now, his footsteps were noisy and rapid as he walked towards the living room. His head glowed when he passed the lamp. Angela followed.

The stranger placed one of the coasters on the living room’s glass table before setting down his cup. Angela thanked him, and he beamed. He was a stranger, she thought, but a very gentle one.

41

He seemed more comfortable now in the living room, seated on a soft pink chair with his legs crossed. He beat his chest with his fist, and cleared his throat, and said, “I’m not religious, but I think there must be some kind of reincarnation.”

“Oh yes. You look like someone I knew in a past life, I think,” Angela said. Suddenly the O she was making expanded, showing odd, rounded teeth and dried-out gums.

The hush from before seemed to swaddle her, to press her somewhere deep in the most dimly-lit, silent chamber of her mind. But then she returned and stared at the man in front of her. A stranger. “You’re reincarnated?”

“No, just interested, just always wondering if it might exist.” Saying this, he blinked. His eyelids were large, Angela thought, like two pink-and-green umbrellas.

“We know there is some kind of reincarnation,” she said, hoping she sounded as jolly as she thought she did, “since people go through all sorts of phases, y’know, school and day-job and career and retirement — sitting around, like I do.”

“I was just saying that I should really retire soon, just the other day!” said the stranger. Angela peered at him closer now. He was old. His pants were pulled high on his waist; his hair was still there, but limp and grey; his face, Angela realized, was creased with a thousand lines.

“You really are old,” said Angela. “You actually are. I hadn’t realized.”

“I am.”

“Sorry. I hadn’t realized because everything suits you well, anyway. Sorry.”

“I don’t mind. We can be old together.” His face suddenly glowed, and so did Angela’s. They smiled lovingly. But then Angela’s cheeks withdrew, and her eyes became shadows. The eyes of the man across from her filled with tears and frustration, and just as she returned to that space in her brain with no light and no sound, he embraced her and cried, “I’m Fred! I’m Fred!”

“And I’m Angela,” she said. She shivered and heaved.

“I know. And I’m Fred.”

“Of course. I love you.” She leaned on his shoulder. “I’m not going to sleep. I’m just tired.”

Fred settled closer to his wife of forty years. He kissed her head and held her hand and counted the minutes until he would become the stranger yet again.

Caroline H. 42

Generations There are 640 megawatts right outside my window.

So there is also a generator, and an electrical grid.

I have a map of it: as a good concerned citizen I went to the town hall when the power plant opened.

It is like a family tree, one I exist on conditionally, as long as I pay the bills.

A walk across the street and I could ask the big generator, the great adoptive father of this town, what it means to share in power, to pay dues to exist in that invisible bond running right beneath my feet, present but always slightly out of reach.

And, what it means to be estranged: is it just a loss of light?

How long does it take for your eyes to adjust?

Mia R.

43

An Alphabet arm assembled additional advertisements so that the architect association would seem more average.

But the bible bled buttons, biology breached the battlefield, black brilliant buckets only bred blank bricks Could computers contain a crowd? I mean cake coerced the conservative chorus, but is that a cancelled contradiction?

Don’t despair said the domestic dragon, “denial and discipline are deadly” “just dance disco” Eventually earwax will be an environmental excess and extraterrestrials will endorse electric elevators For now fill your feet with feeble folklore, for forgetting foundation, forever fuels fevers Goodbye gloomy ghost, only grandfather goat is a guest in this genuine golf ground However, Hiccups harass helpless hearts, they hurt the hard hemisphere, hovering in horror It’s a whole inch inserted! injections are inappropriate invasion, I end up always needing ice cream incentives Judicial had jurisdiction, the jury had judged, jam had jailed jelly in the jungle of justice Kneel my ketchup you are to be kinged, There’s a killer in the kettle so kick down the kitchen!

Look, I’m lying, my lung is a legend. My leg lost its license, my lagging lips leaked lazy linen love “More malt in the milkshake” murmured the marathon mouse he had mistreated muscles from midnight mountaineering

44

No new news on my neglected needlepoint, I now nominate my nursery to notice my nightmares Oh that whole octopus occupation was a total ordeal, stop ostracizing onion observation Perfect paintings puzzle people with premonitions, the poetic practice is purposely proctored Queen me, my qualification is a quaint quiet question, do you have a quantity of quality quarters?

“Reason and respect represent relationships”, a reporter reminded me at a rainy reception So spread out your sails! Soar like a sock! Seize the day when your slimy scales split! (It’s a strongly suggested sign) The tournament’s tradition, so tidy up the treasure, I just tripped over a tiger in your theater Um I’m not understanding this unpleasant uniform, the unique underwear was a unanimous update “Violence is virtue” the vegetable vouched, “they say a victory doesn’t vacuum a village” Why would would my wife whisper worries in my water, she knows my wings have grown weak from wise white winter wolves Xylophone x-rays look slightly xylographic, xanthan gum got on my xerox for x-mas Young yellow years, yearning for yarny youth, yelling in the yard, do you see yourself in the yearbook?

Zipping through zones makes zoos seem zesty, but now it seems, we’re at zero Julia S.

45

Another day goes by, Bleary eyes cradle a pillow carved face.

Cry… cry… tears are my medium for Devouring unsculpted time.

Emitting joy—I can’t remember how, For fog is my world: rolling in quickly and here forever as Great silence weaves in the margins of boxed faces.

Heaps of unrealized realities Imitate life.

Joyful bouts come like Koys’ orange flecks rising from the sour river silt Leaping for unbreathed air Merrily they lick my horizon and maybe I’m okay—yet Narcissistic accusations of myself Open the gates and Proliferate Quietly Ruining the silence that has kept my tender chest afloat Silence of hope and ignorance.

“Tearing the human population could never be more Undeserved,” yet maybe it is deserved— Vows no longer kept to lovers, nature, ourselves.

While poisoned people feed others poisoned apples of Xenophobia, ophidiophobia, autophobia and Yells run through my ears, I lay hidden in the fog of life. Is it Zoomzoomzoom, or pause pause pause?

Cuatro V.

46

It Takes Thirty Seconds It takes thirty seconds for my doctor to find a vein. It always does with him.

I’d just been listening to the sound of someone taking an eye exam while I waited in this room alone. The walls are curiously thin. It’s rare you can hear all of the goings-on of a doctor’s office. Before the eye exam, I could hear a doctor talking to a teenager after her mother stepped out of the room. The doctor wanted to know about her sex life. The girl’s response was less embarrassed and more automated, and to my surprise the doctor let out a sound of approval and told her it was best to focus on school instead of boys. I had smiled crudely at the wall as I tend to do, apparently. I think I was beginning to do it again because my doctor was apologizing suddenly.

“Sorry. Let me try again.”

I dropped the smile and he stuffed the needle in my arm again. After the girl and her mother had left, I watched the wall until it stretched. Then the eye exam began and I was relieved. I’ve been trying not to think about this baby all the time. It’s all my husband thinks about and it’s making me viciously tired. There’s been a lot of love lately from my husband, my parents, my in-laws, but I’m feeling worn-out and lonely. I can’t make up my mind whether I’m lonely without love or lonely with love. Before I married my husband I missed him terribly whenever we were apart, and now sometimes I find myself missing him lying next to him in our bed. The eye exam let me relax a little. The dazed “C, F, D, T, um, P? O, L,” coming from the patient outside the door was mesmerizing. It was like some kind of poorly spoken spell and I thought I might have even been rooting for the patient at some point after a few successive slip-ups.

The doctor pulled the needle out and tried again without a warning this time. I considered some fashion advice I was given by the nurse who checked my vitals a while ago. While he wrapped that thing around my arm he asked if he could give me some. He told me his friend was a fashion designer, that’s why he knows this. I nodded. Apparently, if I wore a black sweater with my skirt I would achieve an academic look. He also said that I could keep my bangs, but that a short, edgier cut would frame my face better. His spirits jumped as he was telling me this and so mine had too. The other patients could probably hear us laughing. Thank you for your enthusiasm, sir! But now I am thinking, what made him peg me as an academic? And am I perhaps not edgy enough? I guess the edgy academic look is what many go for these days, whether they’re edgy or an academic. Maybe he assumed? But then again, I’m going to be a mother.

“Agh. Let me see your other arm.”

47

I gave the doctor my other arm and noticed he was starting to blush. I also noticed that my arm had gotten very sore and that a bitter air had filled the room, no doubt made by the both of us.

I am very happy that I’m having a baby. I’ve thought about having one for a long time now, even if it ended up being on my own. My parents were so happy to have me, and I knew I’d like that too, having a kid. It’s just I’d like to stop letting it absorb me, and think about myself a little bit. I’m too selfish to spend the next seven months building its future. I’d rather just carry it with me, like I’m supposed to, and continue going about my days. I have work to do, and love to give, and now, an edgier, academic look to achieve.

When my husband wanted to have a conversation in the bedroom this morning, I felt a little less lonely. A bed in the room always makes things more intimate, and we usually had our conversations in the hallway. It was certainly a more intimate conversation than our usual talks of the baby, he even cried out of frustration, but I felt lonely again.

I don’t want to move to a better school district, I like it here, and I don’t feel like meeting new people. This baby shouldn’t change our place, it shouldn’t change our future and it shouldn’t change your love for me! Maybe you’re mad at me now. Maybe you’re lonelier than me. It was my smile! Ah! I didn’t smile like this on purpose when we fought in the bedroom, it’s just...I love you so much, but my walls aren’t thin like this doctor’s office. It’s hard for me to be vulnerable, to let you hear all my feelings and share all my hurt and that can make me seem cruel. I should have let you come to the doctor’s with me, and I should have told you we’d work on this. I just don’t know how.

“Ah! I got it.”

The blood was flowing finally and a tear fluttered my eyelashes. The doctor looked up at me and his initial satisfaction was replaced with alarm.

“Oh. I’m sorry...did I hurt you?”

“No.”

I tried my hardest to listen for something, but the doctor’s office seemed suddenly distilled in silence. Troubled, I found the clock on the wall. It had only been thirty seconds.

Sydney S.

48

prose poem 9:47 P.M., an email from the SAT: “The covid-19 situation is evolving, please check to make sure your test center is still open. Receipt of this email does not mean your test center is still open.” The covid-19 situation is evolving, but take our test. Drive to Auburn, and sit for four hours, and take our test. The college board is run by a man named David Coleman. I know because my Dad works for him. He was born in 1969. I know because Google told me. A lot of people say the 60s ended in 1969; Joan Didion says that a lot of people go so far as to even specify the night, August 8th, the night of the Tate murders. The covid-19 situation is evolving, my friend and I know because we sit on the stoop and say to each other, “we have had two very different experiences of the past six months”. This should never have happened, we are both thinking. We should have had more similar experiences. We should have been in the herd. My therapist told me that teenagers are typically very dedicated to the herd, she thinks a new type of teenager may be born of this situation, the covid-19 one, the one that is evolving. (But take our test.) I think we may be a new kind of teenager, my friend and I. It is scary, and a little bit lonely, to be new. New school new kid new world new shoes new phone.

Newness. The news. Texas evacuates residents for hurricane Laura as coronavirus poses new challenges. First Lady Melania Trump headlines second night of the RNC. When you have only one window down in the backseat it makes that noise. Right now feels to me a little bit like that noise. Sound clips hitting into each other. Like the icebergs of Antarctica, jutting into each other from the water. I want to go and be with the sea lions.

They’re smarter than me and I should have listened to them the first time around. My uber driver cancelled because I was not wearing a mask. But I had the mask in my hand, I think. I was on her stoop and there was no one around, and I wanted to feel air on my face, and besides, the mask was in my hand. A man jogged past me, in a button up shirt, jeans, and running sneakers. I lost a book in my own house for almost two months, then, it appeared on the table again. There is one hard rock of bad that I pretend to not see in my own head. Or I am on the rock and the bad is the sea around it. Events seem to happen as isolated electrical currents, individual cuts of color film. 16 millimeter.

Each event is pressing, abstract, strange, arbitrary and profound, bizarre, weightless, blue.

My personal statement is smarter than me, my phone is too small for my hands, the traffic lights don’t work (nationally). Who is in charge of making sure all the lights turn on? Do we even know that?

Zibia B.

49

cotton cure the summerside festival was a drunken dream sheer fabric draped the partygoers as they danced through the muggy pink haze. the sun blushed the marsh as the night grew longer and sweat began to cool down the necks of the revelers as they throw their heads back and their hair tumbles with the wind and disappears into the shadows cast just aside the horizon. there’s sweet salinity in a tangle of dampened cotton. the sky has faded from its heliotrope darkness and it greets the town’s buzz. a hot breath of air streaming from the cracked window blows the morning glories’ fleur du jour.

Abby D.

50

51

A Reincarnation this year pulled me inwards world turning out of itself as I spun (searched for a hold amidst the coil) how I was curved murky how I washed down shower drains reflected myself in the pressing waters (it reached my chin in April

by June I was drowning) what does it mean to stop? to step back and assess the damage as our year peels away my life peeled back (bear witness to my failures the bread that never rose the stories left unwritten the rooms staring vacant) a disaster of biblical proportions a disaster of biblical proportions a disaster of biblical proportions a disaster of when I lost my grip

lights-out August as the internet wanders in reflected blue skin pasted dull to match the backgrounds flaking 52

a kind of blindness stuck between walls white bleaching whiter I curled into my boxes (how the grey walls framed my faces

2

how the blur suited the light that was dripping away) Normalcy: The state of being usual expected when I could awaken to a grey sky and not worry that the fires had moved east when a hug was not a forbidden commodity when I did not forget my body in bed every morning — She lays the table She throws a plate against the wall rebirth: the process of being reincarnated the way the sun reverts in the morning they say we go from frogs to men the ladder pulling upwards then we are air, enlightened in our transcendence we melt 53

do you believe in karma?

I do my grandfather broke his leg getting into a taxi when I was seven witness to

the cycle: cosmic

machine turning

washing

tumblers his shirt

stuck sides

to the a blur of blue

She throws a plate against the wall She lays the table She makes lists to categorize awareness: the trees outside the silverware the tug of a small hand on a pant leg the way our eyes defrost in the evening look at her, learning to exist even existence is an act of defiance these days She lays the table She throws a plate against the wall Ayla S. 54

3

Have you ever held someone who’s barely even there?

I used to press into mom’s thigh like it was the only part of her I had Smoky bar, light so dim My spindly legs twisted up in the booth Sound lingering, steaming from right ear Or it was my birthday, it was just a day Everything looked so precious, so fresh Like those paintings that appear perfect but closer up you realize it’s just a bunch of dots that make up, that live in, that beautiful bright image yes.

We’re all just trying to make up, to live in When I shift my weight because your elbow is digging into my thigh too hard I know that this is only a slice of the world but it is the first part of it I’m really seeing I’m so see-through now, things sift through me like San Francisco wind, salt from shaker Watch me trip, watch me steady, Watch me snap back to you like a rubber band There is good Bathed in streetlamp light, now Boy runs across an open field Hundreds of bodies, one life Tess A-M.

55

I Typed This audio dies! it’s ruled a homicide the suspect? students devolved into macbooked gargoyles they took a knife and kschrrschrrschh Shai B.

56

Lost Treasure It was August, a month I hated because I hated goodbyes. August meant the end of summer. Every year, people left for good at the end of summer. Friends left for boarding school. Families moved away. And my family had always been the ones staying put.

Heather Seidman was my “cool” friend that summer. Rumor had it that she had tried a Bud Light when she was home alone with her older brother, even though she had only turned thirteen in June. She had mastered the liquid eyeliner medium, though I didn’t think she needed it. Her hair fell long and dark down her back. Whenever I looked at her she seemed to me like a creature that had emerged from the ashes of a fallen angel or something. Even though her clothes were all hand-me-downs three sizes too big. Thinking about her made me want to cry sometimes. Heather was the only person I had ever felt nervous to think about, but not a bad nervous. A butterflies-in-your-stomach feeling. I guess I had a little crush on her.

During the summer, everyone had left town, leaving me and Heather alone. Usually, Heather left for the summer to go to Girl Scouts camp (which she loathed), but was cancelled this year because a kid got poisoned from some rare mushrooms and the whole camp got sick. We did a lot of lying around watching Charlie’s Angels on her gingham sofa because my mom wouldn’t let me watch it at home. We learned a lot about each other that summer. I know that Heather can’t have her toast cut diagonally or she won’t eat it. She loves rock music, which I beg her to play for me because my mother hates it. And I know she writes little entries on every person she knows. There were things she kept to herself.

“If you could have anything in the world, what would it be?” she asked me one day as we walked barefoot down the heated sidewalks. I was lost in staring at the small birthmark on the back of her left hand, which I had never noticed before.

“Huh?” I said, squeezing my eyes tight to get back my focus.

“You heard me.” She looked down at her feet as we kept walking.

In that moment, all I could think about was how nice a Queen Anne’s Lace would look with her stormy grey eyes. And I searched for something that was a regular answer; maybe a magic wand, or a million dollars. I couldn’t think of anything.

Finally, after an awkward void of silence, I thought of something.

“I want a piece of the summer,” I said. That was really what I meant. I longed for a piece of the summer for myself. Something to remind me of ice cream days and the pool and hot sidewalks and, more importantly, my days with Heather.

“I could make you a friendship bracelet,” she said, looking me straight in the eye.

“Yes!” I said, louder than I should have. I knew this meant a lot, especially because Heather wasn’t the friendship bracelet type, and because she must make beautiful 57

ones, considering she had gone to Girl Scout Camp.

She snuck a glance at me behind the curtain of her hair, and I could see the flicker of a mischievous smile playing in her eyes.

The next day, I met her in our usual meeting place: the red mailbox at the corner of two streets I don’t remember the names of now. She was late, but I didn’t mind. Heather had lipstick at the corners of her mouth. I knew she had put some on and then tried to rub it off from the red marks on her hand. I didn’t understand why she had put it on in the moment, but I later realized it was because she secretly tried to impress me, as I did for her.

Heather pulled her hands out from behind her back, and took a step closer to me.

In her hands lay the object that I had so anxiously anticipated. It was beautiful. Made of orange, blue and pink, it seemed heavenly in the palm of her hand. It was so complicated.

To this day, I haven’t seen one like it. I felt afraid to touch it at first, but Heather tied it around my hand as I watched, hypnotized. When she was done, she looked me straight in the eye.

“So, what do you think?” she asked, nervous for my answer.

I don’t remember saying any words; I couldn’t get them out. I just gave her an awkward little peck on the cheek. Her face had turned bright pink, and she stood there with her eyes closed. I looked down at the ground, and silence hung in the air like a spider on a web. Then we both started giggling.

The rest of the day was like normal. We ran around doing our thing; jumping fences and riding our bikes around town. When she dropped me off at my house for dinner, my mom met us at the door.

“Janet, come inside and pack your suitcase. We’re going to Grandma’s.”

Me and Heather looked at each other. “See you later, alligator,” I said, feeling childish. Heather squeezed my hand and I went inside.

We went to stay at my grandma’s for the last bit of summer, and all I could think about was her. The cracks in the road whispered Heather, as did the dandelions swaying by the highway. And the cat that crept by at night. The creak in the door. Everything was Heather, Heather.

My mother had me untie the bracelet (a tricky process, as it was tied in a tight knot) for a dinner party we were to attend one night. We went, we ate fancy appetizers and I sat in a lawn chair. It was boring as always. Because it was the last night, we packed up our belongings after the party and woke up early the next morning for the 6-hour drive back. I couldn’t wait to get home and to see Heather. I kept telling my mother to go faster, even though I knew she had a fear of crashing.

When we finally turned the bend onto our block and drove down towards the 58

house, I flung open the car door.

“What are you doing?!” shouted my mother from the driver’s seat. I scrambled out as she continued to drive, and I anticipated the scolding I would get later as I heard her voice echoing down the block. I started running towards Heather’s house, anxious to see her.

When I arrived, I rang the doorbell. It took a moment to answer, but an unfamiliar man with slicked-back hair showed up at the door.

“Hello. How can I help you?” he asked drily.

“Could you ask Heather to come to the door please? Tell her it’s Janet,” I said.

“Heather Seidman?”

“Who else would it be?” I said, a little annoyed. “Where is she?”

“Oh, I’m so sorry — the Seidmans moved out maybe a week ago. They had family problems in Pennsylvania that they had to go deal with,” he said, like it was nothing.

I don’t remember much from that moment, only that I started running. I wasn’t wearing my beloved bracelet that she had given to me. I was so worried, I couldn’t remember at all. I couldn’t think. That was my only piece of Heather, and now she was gone and I had lost it. I remember crying, and thinking about recreating it, or finding her new address. I eventually returned home and reluctantly told my mother what had happened, expecting to be grounded. But she just gave me a hug and said we would find it. But over time, as I forgot more about the girl I had such strong feelings for, such passion for, the bracelet that had once meant everything to me slowly lost its meaning. I forgot about it completely, and I started the school year without it.

We returned to Grandma’s house a year later and one day I was looking for a replacement toothbrush when I found the bracelet, collecting dust in the bottom of a drawer. And upon seeing the bracelet, I began to cry. I never saw the girl again. But sometimes I still saw Heather in the clouds and in the outlines of shadows.

Lyla B.

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Robigus Redivivus The colored banners line the hills Glint-streaked with silver dew But of the hues that smear their grace Blood red is stark eschewed No tribe could bear to mark with pride Identity with gore That throbbing mulch that lines our gauze Too human for the “more” Asher H.

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The Lullaby of Protest Red and blue lights graffiti The windowed walls that try to Hold the firing fervor.

Sirens shoot through the air, Attempting to drown vivaciously violent Cries. And in this calamitous Clash the individuals fade away, Contorting their bodies by their Own resentment, pain, and anguish.

Hammers hurriedly hit Shaking nails. Plywood climbs storefronts Concealing the fragile, easily reflected, Glass from the truth.

Others use a camouflage of Limbs to vandalize a cause For their personal gain.

Bodies marked for arrest Slowly pile up, thumping against cracked Blue and white paint.

A worn rag, plagued by crimson, Soaks itself in a pure white bucket.

Memories are washed away as Souls escape into the fractures of the Wall, malformed by an assembly of Cylindrical holes crying with black blood.

William B.

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The Fiddlehead Fern I Find

The growing fiddlehead fern I find rooted deep within the manure-made soil of these unsheathed woods stands alone.

Its twisted head forms a naturally perfect spiral.

Its stem extends fuzzy leaves to disguise itself within a forest of imperfect natural shapes.

This fiddlehead fern intrigues me with its nearly flawless mathematical makeup.

I bend down, reaching my fingers to the top.

I pull at the coiled head but its tendrils combat traveling back into itself.

Why would it unfurl?

Its fiddlehead is its name.

I step back, taking a look at the environment in which it grows.

Its base is covered in brown, crisp leaves left over from a long time ago.

And the leaves are holey so at some time some bugs had traveled to eat these leaves and left oddly shaped holes for me to now find.

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And once again I look at the fern which has remained uneaten despite the scarcity of food here for hungry rodents.

Despite the fact that fiddlehead ferns are considered an edible luxury to people like me.

Maybe the little protective spikes surrounding the outer layer of the fern have protected it from the pests here.

But I myself am a pest I capture beauty and destroy it pluck and eat it and I am not drawn back by these spikes.

The fern’s perfection has encompassed me; how every part of this plant has purpose.

So this time, I won’t be picking this singular fern with a deep green like the rest of the forest, but a spiral so special it makes me question perfection.

I will leave this fern to live as long as it possibly can and allow it to be the barbed crown of this forest.

Mirabelle P.

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Gone Crowded around the accidentI witness humanity at its barestIn silence we all look onA semicircle around death’s essenceAfraid to step nearer as the cold breath of a soul exiting its host floats around usEngulfing usSome pull out their phonesInstinctivelyAs though they had been told by an admonishing voiceWhile others watchEyes stricken open by the sight before themUnblinkingUnwaveringWe are hypnotized by something all of us have thought of but none of us have envisionedIn all its goreIn all its magnitudePeople nearer the back begin attempting to push through the mass of bodiesTrying to see around and over those ahead of themTrying to get a glimpse of the spectacleOf the main attractionBut for the most part we are stillStruck by what we are seeingSwaying in our spots from the shockWe hear sirens coming from somewhere around the bend and quickly disperseA blob of observers fading into the afternoon turned night by the darkness we all feel within ourselvesA little bit of dirtA little bit of shameAt how we looked on without a wordWithout a woeAlmost entertained by what we beheld.

Henry A.

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One In a room, in a city, near a lake, somewhere in space, there’s a person in a bed.

They’re not quite asleep, not quite awake, they’re somewhere in between the living and the dead.

You think people care, until you see what they say, when they think you’re not there.

I’m watching for you, i’ll tell you what they say, i’ll write a memorandum, i’ll keep track.

After, well after everyone was there, people lined up to leave things, Mentos of their impact on the word, they think you need to remember them, i’ll remind them that you don’t.

They say it was bad, the impact, Something broke, some part of you shattered, They don’t know if you can learn to be whole again, If we can be.

Someday I promise, someday you will feel everything again, someday you won’t need me to keep a record, someday I promise we will be one.

When you move they think it’s a bip, no one is hear anymore, no one but me sees it, no one but me feels it, when I come back to you.

Lucy G.

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Turtle House Chapter One - The Journalist Returns Matthew Brinkley Barter is an American journalist originally from Brooklyn, New York, who has just returned from a five year stint abroad. He is currently residing at Turtle House in Newport, Rhode Island with an old aunt who he used to take long walks with after school, when she lived with him as a child in their Kensington apartment. Barter is a man of nostalgia, just bordering on fifty years old. He looks forward to beach naps, the cliff walk tour of the mansions, and drunk arcading in town after the clubs close. He is nostalgic for everything, except Turtle House, his grandparents’ old home, because it is frequently and presently haunted. …

Aunt Laura met him in the cafeteria of the school where she worked at noon, after the flight. It was breakfast for lunch, and Barter sawed sausage links with a plastic knife as Laura counted the number of suitcases stacked on the chair next to him, sometimes switching over to her stack of pancakes, and then goofily remembering what she was counting again. There are two, Aunt Laura. Two, Matthew? I thought you had been away all these years? It had been years since Laura and Barter had been together. After he left the states, Barter hadn’t been back, not even for his brother’s funeral. The rains had been bad that month abroad, and the planes wet, and Barter had not wanted to go anyway. He felt sorry for Aunt Laura, living alone all these years in that house which was once his safe haven and now meant to be hers. It seemed to him that a safe haven was less a place of escape and more a place of reliving. He had found that the same for all of his interviewees over the years. It was away from their escaped environments, that they burned clearer. A kid at the table across from him was staring at the dirt under his nails. Barter looked over at Laura, still immersed in the suitcases, and thought.

He opened a package of breakfast syrup for her and poured it swiftly and glumly.

Laura stared down at the pancakes as he did so. She quickly looked up at him and they met eyes for the first time. She shook him with a large grin, enclosing them in breaths made to be laughs. I don’t like syrup. That crazy brother of his never liked syrup either. Laura had always in a way been Barter’s safe haven too—maybe that’s why she reminded him of his brother now. He removed the upper syrup soaked pancakes with his plastic knife, rolled her a few links across the sticky table and burst into outrageous laughter. Children ran up to him contagiously from their seats and joined in. The musical notes of the bell sunk and lunch lasted fifteen more minutes that afternoon.

Barter called Laura a cab after lunch and she took his suitcases in it to the house, alone. Three p.m. in Newport town was always a complete drag—shops were barely open, streets raged with cars, but no humans, and the lunch spots were stiff and often in the 68

midst of window washing. Everyone was at the beach or in the process of getting to the beach. Newport was one of those rare towns that only hosted people at night, in crowds and drunk promenading. Barter walked tight lanes and corners and followed the only other man about and asked him with some persistence where the entrance to the cliff walk was.

He started down a commanding road, with four lanes in both directions, heading straight on to a colossal stretch of beach. Teslas and Lambos and other fancy rides found exhilarating speeds on this ocean directed mini highway. There was a shaded walking path on the side, unmistakably empty, except for heavy rows of trees and a few benches, which Barter took on, until he stopped to take a look at three adjacent Italian restaurants on the other side of the road. A young guy in one of the restaurant fronts hollered at him from across all eight screaming lanes. Out of politeness, Barter waited about five minutes for a path to cross and met the guy. You know we have the best pizza in Newport. Oh really? It’s so good! And I’ll be here tonight. After a casual promise to come by tonight, and an abundance of goodbye waves, Barter left. The shaded walking path was less shaded now and he sighed.

He thought maybe he had known the pizza guy, but he was too young. He walked slowly in contrast to the cars and shaded himself with his hand from the sun.

Barter was used to being hit on by average people, like this guy. When his hair turned salt and pepper, and age gave him a better walk and hefty shoulder, people took to him. He was completely magnetic, although never beautiful, and so daily a saleswoman on commute home, or a pharmacist at the counter, might strike up a conversation. He went out once in a while, slept over or ate late-night enchiladas, but he was never really taken with anyone other than his first love, a woman named Champagne. And no one was ever very taken with Barter in the end, because they would soon find that he never took care of himself. Never took care of himself, was perhaps, a kind way of putting it. The truth was Barter rarely washed himself, almost not at all. He rarely felt the faucet on his hands, or the gentle sway of water in the tub. He was often filthy, although generally pretty good at hiding it—deodorant, fragrance, and wet wipes were aids to this cause. Laura knew, like Laura knew everything of his past, but perhaps she was forgetting now.

Chapter Two - On A Cliff

The cliff walk would do nothing to help keep Barter’s habit a secret. He was already steeped with sweat at the entrance and the tourists dodged rather than passed him on the narrow passage. The cliff was hot, and filled with people, and extravagant. To the right were the mansions, heavily fenced and as big as you can make them. People were admiring their architecture and the very statement of them, like some sort of museum.

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Most of them were pretty dreary, but that has always been fashionable. To the left was the edge of a cliff bending into the ocean. That phenomenon of sun sparkling the water was in its process and every stopping point became an opportunity to take beautiful pictures of kids, who proved more beautiful in front of a beautiful ocean. A third party accompanied the picturesque families and the museumgoer types—the friendly joggers. In the whole of the stretch, loners and couples and friends jogged in repetition past Barter and then back at him, making sure to say a quick hello every time. What was extremely impressive was when the passage was no longer on the cliffside, but on the jagged cliff, and the joggers jumped with ease onto and over the rock. Barter tried it himself at one point, but became embarrassed at once and stopped.

The walk drew on for miles, but Barter wanted to see the teahouse so he continued on. The passage soon relaxed with people and he was able to move faster. He walked the edge of a college campus which seemed so out of place between the mansions and yet somehow so reasonable on the side of a cliff. He threw a stone into the water. When he got to the teahouse he was disappointed in its obscurity. Trees hid almost the entire thing, but the trees were very nice and some of the first he’d seen on the walk, so he benefited anyway.

The next checkpoint wasn’t for another mile or two and the passage broke into a cliff and Barter soon found himself climbing. At a place where the cliff lowered into a stretch of water he ran into a friend from long ago. Matt? Bert? Long time no see! I thought you were off following stories in some remote land. Bert was a neighborhood friend Barter had made during the long periods of time he had spent with his grandparents. He had aged very much and managed to lose a moodiness Barter had often gotten tired of. It was clear that Bert was happy to see his old friend. Are you staying at Turtle House? Yes. My aunt has dementia. What stage? Early. A fit of laughter splashed below them. There were two kids, no three, swimming in a pool of ocean made by the rock. A woman rose up from a crouch and looked over at them. She came over and Barter noticed she was covered with sunscreen, not the shiny skin of it, but the white unrubbed lotion. My wife. Hi. Hi. I’ve wanted to show her and the kids the ol’ town for a while now. We’ve done the mansion tours, Fort Adams, and the beach already. The kids were screaming and Bert went over to see what was happening. One of them had found a sea urchin and thrown it at another one of them. A needle was stuck in his little arm, but he was more concerned with his sibling’s punishment.

I’ve read a few of your articles. You’ve found some disturbing characters. Barter was surprised at her phrasing. He noticed some time ago that he was drawn to trauma, even perhaps nostalgic for it. The people he interviewed were masked. Not necessarily masked by choice, but by the story made for them. A woman who skates becomes the first female professional skateboarder. A man who saves a few from a fire becomes a hero. A clown who was thrown down an elevator shaft becomes a victim. These were the characters given 70

to the disturbed. But this wasn’t what Bert’s wife meant. No, to her their trauma, their faces, were like fiction. A cloud rolled by. The needle was out of the kid’s arm now and the sea urchin returned to its rock and the sibling in a serene time-out, sitting on a tall rock looking out at the sparkling ocean.

The introductory bios to your articles are always so clean and concise, very different from what follows. He nodded. She was right. Barter was good at writing the masks, these introductory bios, very good. When he uncovered the faces, his writing fell apart. He was both intrigued and terrified of these people. He couldn’t keep it together. All of them seemed to him the same as his brother and this woman knew nothing of people like them.

He looked at her. Your sunscreen’s not rubbed in. Well, you’re sweating. She looked annoyed.

She sat down on the rock and stared at her family like a portal to another world. Bert was now in the water too, having been pushed in, evidently. He looked pudgy underwater, and moved inelegantly. It’s not true. We never went to the mansions, or Fort Adams, or the beach.

Bert hasn’t been able to get out of bed the past few days. He’s been staying out at the clubs all night. This is the kids first outing. He was suddenly reminded of Champagne. He knew nothing about this woman, Bert’s wife. He felt embarrassed at the smell, no doubt, coming from him and that he had told her to rub her sunscreen in. The kid in time-out was looking at him now and the sun was fixing to set. He left without saying goodbye to Bert, or meeting the kids, or interviewing this woman. He couldn’t stop thinking of the ghosts. …

After the sun-heavy cliff walk mansion tour, which was more of a hike than Barter had bargained for, he took a cab to Turtle House. Baked and sweaty, he jumped out of the cab a few blocks before the house and walked. An old woman dragging a trash can across the street, paused when she saw him and began to pose and giggle. She was quite good at this, actually, and Barter stopped and gave her some attention before he continued on to the house.

Turtle House was orange with sunset and recently repainted. Laura sat on a swinging bench on the porch, eating an early dinner. She spent more of her time around the house than in it, eating meals on the porch and building intricate fairy houses out of sticks and flowers in the sheepish garden out back. Barter’s suitcases were still outside, and so he took them over to the table by a plate Laura had made for him and sat on them. He ate silently and they watched a few cars on the street doze off as their drivers shut them off and went inside for dinner. A placating sun slipped away, the table went invisible, and Laura launched a cigarette from her jacket pocket. When she finished it, the two went in and Barter dragged his suitcases up the stairs and to the guest bedroom with the sound of 71

Laura swimming dishes in the sink. The lights of the master and guest bedrooms were shut off early tonight, and Laura and Barter fell asleep.

Chapter Three - Barter Dreams

Look out look out look out! That was all I could say. I was scared of the fires, they overtook the houses, and I couldn’t save anyone.

Adam Nilsson is a computer programmer from Sweden, who moved from Gothenburg back to his hometown, when his mother died of an incurable illness. He made his devastated father breakfast everyday before he set off to work at a small company that had hired him over the phone, while he was still in Gothenburg. One day, a fire broke out at the company, while Nilsson was out to lunch across the street. In an act deemed “heroic” in all the large newspapers the next morning, Nilsson rushed into the building and with an axe, broke down a jammed door, saving the lives of his trapped coworkers.

Barter could smell Nilsson’s heavy breath in front of him, could see him crumbling in his seat, and feel his own hand clench with sympathy. Every night after the accident I had these dreams. A city street goes up in flames. A house. My mother’s house. And I can’t save anyone. There’s a pause. No—I don’t think so. I do really consider myself a hero that day. But there were too many where I wasn’t. Another pause. I’ll take a glass of water i—if that’s alright.

Nilsson spilled the water all over his trousers in wet blotches. The two watched as he did so, but talked of other things. A vicious heat pressed Barter and sweat pooled at his joints.

Here was Nilsson’s face. Looking into it, no wonder Barter felt so hot, so on fire. Nilsson was rushing up those burning stairs, smelling his mothers death. It was fresher here, in his apartment in Gothenburg, than it ever was in his hometown.

Nilsson’s face vanished and Barter now felt a breeze coming in from the East. A wicker chair imprinted his bare legs and he could hear the faint buzzing of an ankle monitor of an older model.

Ray G. Webber is a father of four from a small town in Utah. His parents were German immigrants who ran a very successful catering company, until they were bankrupted in the 1980s, by excessive gambling debt. Webber rebranded his parents’ company as a restaurant and met his late wife Sarah, when she applied for the position of assistant manager. The Webber family was once again struck with scandal two years after the birth of their fourth daughter, when Mrs. Webber caught her husband attempting to implant an intestinal worm into the child. In the investigation, it was soon discovered that Mr. Webber had also paid under the table for an illegal nose job on his second child, Garric.

Mr. Webber was convicted in 2002 and put under house arrest due to health concerns.

I was keeping them beautiful. Webber’s voice was raspy, but soft, and his fingers 72

swept gently at the grass, twitching in the wind. Barter could see a faded polaroid of four children taken from the man’s wallet and set on the glass table before him, just out of reach of a cup of tea. He could hear the panting of an old dog at his side, and feel the ruminations of a lonely house beyond the patio. She moved to Virginia in ‘04, I believe, although maybe I’m not supposed to know that. Sometimes I wonder if Lisa and Ingrid have Southern accents. They were so young when they left. Y’ALL! RUN ALONG NOW! Can you imagine how sweet it would be? A pause. I forget about them sometimes, but it’s better when I remember them. Another pause. This old man? His name is Dog. He’s a mutt. I couldn’t think of any names. Webber was undoubtedly abhorrent, even, perhaps, in his own mind. A face like his surely haunted more than just Barter. But there was such a familiarity, such a warmth that tickled both Barter and Webber as they spoke. In this place where he had lived with his children, Webber was constantly losing them. Anywhere else, they may have been found, but here, in the absoluteness of an empty house, Webber was moving on. Barter looked at Dog with an impulsive fear and at the same time, comfort.

There’s another dog. A yappy one that lives upstairs from the Barters. Barter sees it barking right up close to Harry’s face. It’s funny for some reason and he shifts from outdoor whistles to indoor city noise—the muffle of racing Ocean Parkway mixed with Harry’s laughs.

Harrison David Barter may or may not have been a family member of journalist Matthew Brinkley Barter. There is no further information on the name.

Loose fear, so regular to his parents, took Barter again. Harry’s laughs turned to yells as he threw books at the walls, and his mother sighed and his father paced. Fuck you!

And you! And you you you you you! There is the feeling of Aunt Laura holding him in his bed, and his teeth rotting, and pee filling the floor because the bathroom was right next to Harry’s room and the door was always open to Harry’s room.

Barter saw the wallpaper of Turtle House more than that of his own room. There was the smell of his grandparents’ various skin creams and the anxious buzz of his father’s voice from the telephone, telling him he’d have to stay a few more days, too. Italian ices from the Parade Grounds, left Barter sticky with blue once again, and Aunt Laura who somehow always made a mess of herself as well, and there were some smiles. Barter went conscious and unconscious seeing the guest room’s ceiling now, in parallel with when he’d seen it as a child. Then, eventually, as there almost always certainly was, there was Harry at the top of the stairs holding the dog up by its haunches. Please just be quiet. I can’t sleep!

Matty, I can’t sleep with this thing RUFF-RUFF-RUFFING! And boom! The dog smashing down the stairs and dying and his parents screaming and the feeling of the carpeting, dirty with forgotten spills, as Barter ran back to his room and closed the door.

He never much liked that dog. He never much liked Harry, although he was with 73

him, within him, at Turtle House, whenever his parents sent him there. In Brooklyn, he could hide from him, with Aunt Laura, even if that meant never using the bathroom, but at Turtle House he was always there to scare him at night—Harry, his parent’s first child, his crazy brother. Seeing Harry’s face now it occurred to him that he didn’t have a mask.

No, Harry didn’t have a mask or a face. He was never around anyone to give him a mask, and although he caused quite a lot of trouble himself, he was never troubled. Harry felt the loss of the dead dog, even gave it a funeral, in the living room with his mother and Aunt Laura as guests. But the blood wasn’t on his hands. It was on theirs—Barter’s, his parents’, Aunt Laura’s. Because they watched, they relived, and their faces reacted. Harry couldn’t, because his mind worked differently from theirs, and Barter realized that there was something more to his trauma. There was grief.

It was his own face, the final ghost, which Barter now unmasked.

Matthew Brinkley Barter interviewed Adam Nilsson on August 25th 1999, three months after the fire.

Matthew Brinkley Barter interviewed Ray G. Webber in late December, just after his story had blown over.

Matthew Brinkley Barter’s mother and father still live in Kensington, Brooklyn.

His father will turn ninety this year. Harrison David Barter died three years ago.

Barter woke up gently and lay there. It was still dark. He could hear Aunt Laura crying through the wall. He stroked the ceiling with tips of his eyelids, until he fell back asleep. Under a waxing crescent moon, Turtle House continued to grieve. …

At breakfast the next morning, Barter felt slightly guilty that he hadn’t gone to the pizza restaurant last night and decided he would go today for lunch. Laura offered to drive him, but knew well he would walk anyway. She stopped him on the porch before he left. I’m no stranger Matthew. You have to brush your teeth and shower. Judging by your state it’s been a month or two. Go up now, before me, while there is still hot water. Barter looked at her and his heartbeat cooled. She remembered, even if only now. She was here with him.

He ran up the stairs and ran the shower while he changed his clothes. He stuck his head under the sink faucet a second and put on some deodorant. When he came back down, Laura hugged him and asked him to mail a letter while he was in town. Barter smiled a bit when he accepted the task. I’ll bring you some pizza. It’s supposed to be the best in Newport. Good. Take care.

-By Matthew Brinkley Barter 74

Sydney S.

75

The rolling hills tickle my eyes, The sharp scent of fresh cut grass warms my heart, The chirping birds bring me back to the summer days, When a hug and an apology healed every wound.

The swaying leaves leave my mind calm and content, The slow breeze is just enough to cool me down The sun is licking my face This is contentment, I finally feel perfection I become soaked by magical rays of sparkling moisture, Only for the realization to arrive that I am now awake.

Henry F.

76

Summer nectared air wraps around bodies thickly encumbering skin— effusively abscond to climb a tree tie back sticky hair and sunkissed elbows we are radioactive; hot manifested in anonymous bursts of vibrancy like an offensively blue sky we permeate natural life Maya C.

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day 253 I want to congratulate you You, the voice in my head always making sure I stayed calm when toilet paper was unacquirable and the world was closed for business.

And everything became gray.

Gray like heavy eyelids and poignant reminders that things had changed.

Because viruses are invisible.

But we are not.

I want to congratulate you You, a mind that never rests for keeping me occupied and adding matter to a gaping hole within me and for my efferent neurons never halting serotonin production.

We long for time on our hands until we have it and then seek solace in darkness where lack of productivity cannot be frowned upon and one can believe nothing is different.

Because darkness always looks the same.

We watched sunsets as skies changed from pink to orange to black and held onto empty hope as reported deaths steadily climbed and infections skyrocketed.

We watched seasons descend colder weather degraded chlorophyll and leaves became yellow then orange then red as we grasped any fleeting semblance of normality.

We stared at harsh white screens they became our whole world our sense of self our friends and family 78

only to vanish with drained batteries and “it’s time for dinner”.

I want to congratulate you for holding on as desperation grew and steadfast beliefs melted like the liquid candle wax that fell onto the table during last night’s dinner and the night before and before and before.

I want to congratulate you for enduring incessant restlessness and four mile runs because endorphins were all that saved us.

I want to congratulate you for your optimism even when progress retreated and people wondered “will things ever be the same?”

Naya M.

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Orientation Welcome to the amusement park, your new second home — but don’t make yourself comfortable; you’ll always be on your feet — unless you’re holding the “you must be this tall” stick, you can sit then. If on one of these lucky days, you’re placed as the seat belt and safety bar putter-onner, make sure you distance yourself from the ride while it’s in motion. Don’t forget to account for centrifugal force and other physics rules or you’re going to need a fresh shirt and a towel.

You can find said shirt in here, the supply room, next to the raffle tickets, you can take two free a day — three if I don’t find out *wink wink* — and under the spare batteries for the animatronic clown on the circus ride. We’re starting to run low on shirts — actually, Carol, could you please put in an order? — so either don’t get puked on or bring your own shirt. Carol works in the supply closet, on supplies. (No one really knows if she actually works here or she just showed up one day; nevertheless, she’s a great employee.)

Keep up the good work Carol! Thumbs up! Back to the batteries: if you need to replace the batteries in the clown and there are no more on the shelf, please remember to take out and use the batteries first from the emergency exit sign at the front of the breakroom, then the red light on the dunk tank, then the twinkling treasure chest, then the elves, then the santa — I promise santa with no elves makes more sense than elves with no santa — then finally the clown; it’s our main attraction; it should always be working.

In the corner over here is the mop and the bucket. This is not your mop and bucket; you do not write your name on it. It can be used for any position that you are put on. You’ll know it when you need it.

As you may know, we operate year round. In the event that a ride’s mechanics freeze over you call me on this walkie talkie. Don’t lose your walkie talkie. It’s the only one you’re getting and you’re going to need it. Now, I’m no mechanic but I said I was on my job application and I know a few guys. It’s not uncommon that someone passes out from heat stroke on these hot summer days. Call me for this as well; I always carry a bottle of tums and one of those ice packs that you whack on the ground to get it to be cold. I keep these in my fanny pack — don’t touch my fanny pack.

If you’re doing any job and you need a break call Jerry; (he’s just happy that he gets paid.) You have one book of Jerry coupons that will last you two Jerry takeovers a week until Christmas. Jerry gives us all new homemade books for christmas. Don’t use the one for free hugs — you learn that the hard way.

Amalia B. 80

The Woes and Pros of Online School I’ve often heard, whilst chatting with a crowd, A feeling matched with echoes clear and loud; A scorn against the woes of online school, Its headaches, glitches, drawbacks, and new rules.

I listen close, and though I feel them all, Still I pause and think back on this fall.

I think about those many frigid days, When happily I curled up on my chaise, And listened to the whistle of the wind, While there on Zoom I had my teacher pinned.

Or other times, while practicing Chinese, I paused to mute and sip my tea, at ease— Though I was normal from the shoulders up, Below the eyes of Zoom I pet my pup.

I never feel the pangs of hunger nudge, Instead I hear the beckon of my fridge— In fact, between each class I make a trip, Down to the kitchen for a little nip.

I find myself participating more, When steaming mugs of tea are my reward, And when I light a candle in my room, My classes are transformed by its perfume.

So yes, I miss those olden days of yore, When going in for classes was the norm— I miss the conversations with my friends, The chats with teachers after classes end.

But still, I’ll hold that Zoom school can be neat, Especially from my cushioned seat— Although this online school can be a drag, The silver linings are not all that bad.

Joline F. 81

So Small and a Little Bit Alone The hairs on my arm lifted as you walked past.

My stomach dropped.

It was the way you gripped your gaze out the window As if you were looking through the rain for someone on the other side of the courtyard.

Walking forward but looking sideways, Somehow managing to never trample anyone.

It would have been easy for you to step on my foot Or knock my phone from my hand, However even if you had done so, I could never find it in me to be bothered by you.

You towered over the rest of the room.

When I looked up at you it felt like looking up At a skyscraper and night.

The glare of a streetlight in my eyes, (Which was really the horrible white lights that no one thought To buy covers for) The line of buildings next to it making me feel So small and a little bit alone, But still comforting because it was you.

Looming over me not even acknowledging my presence Because you were always so lost in Your own world.

I don’t think you would’ve cared anyway, You were too focused on her.

The one you were looking for on the other side of the Courtyard.

The one who didn’t make you feel small.

How I managed to do that I’ll never know.

You presented yourself in a sort of Indestructible way. A way that made me think You were unbreakable even by me.

I had power for a while.

Power that I never wanted, I harboured a secret That you never knew.

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I sometimes look in the mirror and I don’t recognize The person you made me become.

I too was indestructible At one time.

But now I was the person feeling small In the middle of the street with people towering over me, While you walked away towards a better more Stable and unbreakable situation.

One where this time you had the power and you Actually wanted it.

Because as long as it was in your hands, It couldn’t break you.

It couldn’t make you feel small.

Lily T.

83

Ghost Story It’s time for us to move out of this town. It got old the moment we moved here. We’re tired of our routine weeks, doing nothing here. So now we’re moving out.

While my people yell through our thin ceilings for me to get moving, I freeze. You see, I will not let go of this house. I don’t mind forgetting the long steps, the creepy lights or the dirt-speckled windows. I won’t miss my sister’s whining violin drifting through the corridors in the evenings when I sit to finish writing the Chronicles of Lightning Boy in my green room. I won’t miss the dying weeds in the fields where no one ventures, the crumbling houses, the forgotten street signs. Only someone who liked this house even one bit, this spot of the world colored in grey, would be wistful to go. Not me. There is only one thing I will be sorry putting behind me.

My best friend, one of my only friends here, is cursed to live in this house for forever. She used to creep me out. She would move things, whisper to me in the middle of the night, write poems with pen in my room. They were love poems. She is Miss Molly.

Miss Molly the ghost.

Sometime, I grew tired of getting no sleep. I thumped up to the top of the house, shouting, “Hey, you! I know you’re listening. Come fight me like the punk you pretend to be!”

She showed up, shy, silvery, dressed in worn clothes; the nightgown thin, ribbons broken. Studying me. I couldn’t move. The most curious thing I could think of stood three feet in front of me.

“I’m so sorry,” she sniffled, her voice soft. “I’m the ghost. I’m Miss Molly. I’m lonely.”

I felt guilty. So I showed her the Chronicles of Lightning Boy. She loved it. We were best friends from then on. We liked to pretend we were cowboys in the wild west, or spies on secret missions. Weeks went by, we got closer. She told me the story of how she died— she told it to no one else, ever. Just horrible. Her oldest brother locked her in the closet on the top floor, the one filled with cobwebs, bugs, moths, splintering wood which stuck in your clothes. He told her she did terrible things. He never let her out. Once she left her sullen body there, looking for him, he left. She couldn’t go from the house.

When she finished the story, I felt shivery. Horrid. I stuck with her most of the time then.

Who else would be my friend in this lousy town? She needed me, I needed her.

Now my mouth hung open. I’m not going. Miss Molly needs me here. No one else thinks to help her, no one ever. My sister yells for me. I look to her, guilt coursing through my veins. This poor girl. She looks to me, so hurt. There is no other choice. If I told my sister, my mother or my pop why we couldn’t go, they wouldn’t believe me. I turn to the door. I speed down the steps, to the truck we own, to better towns, better people, better lives. She stood surveying us from the window.

Lyla B. 84

I to You Who are you, to see me for what you want?

Am I a sound in your ear twisting up your thoughts?

Do you know who I am? Does the piano know the player?

Does he sit mixing mayhem with confusion? Does he start A coup, forcing the ivory toned masterpiece to crumble at his feet?

Am I who you think I am? How does one know the difference, Between the sadness and the pain? Do they mix and muddle Inviting others to join in?

Who am I to control you like a puppet on a string?

But who are you to blame me for all your shame?

If a Fox is a Bird then who is there to catch the bird?

If the broom is the floor then who is there to clean the floor?

Do we all stand to sit again? Does a person talk to be interrupted?

Do you want me to take the blame? Do you not Already cast a shadow of reprove?

Why does the attacker stalk the prey?

Does he enjoy stealing their last moments away?

Doesn’t the fox know that every second wasted Is a chance of losing at his own game?

Rex A.

85

Lessons learned are like the sky After a storm of fierce rain and flaming lightning You must persevere the unbearable Before everything becomes a little clearer.

Even when the dead of night is silent as a doe And when the kids laugh in time With the beat of their angst And you cry crocodile tears She comes to you with open arms Nothing greater than a mother’s love And though the wrinkles in his face Obscure the once almost barely green of his eyes His mourning-dove lectures And the taste of bone broth will never wash out On the mountainside, the wrinkles instead resemble Something like a smile as he points out the blue spruce and the moss That hugs the belly of a bitter stone as you Admire a grandfather’s wisdom Driving through blurry streets Unfamiliar, tasteless faces Arriving in a room full of girls with the voices of Characters you’ve heard of before and real people you haven’t So scared and so far from the silver-dollar streets And loquacious green trees But as they call your name with-- not vinegar, But the loudest honey on their tongues The storm begins to clear And the umbrellas fold up — stored away for later And the sun’s rays spill out in a rush Realizing/New friends are not so unlike you after all Lyla B.

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Neverland The ferry takes off toward neverland Where children run free on the beige sand.

The perfect morning breeze brushes against my skin As my heart thumps and warms within.

At Black Dog Café a beautiful breakfast sits on our table: An array of pancakes, bacon, and buttered bagels.

There we watch as the seagulls fly free Over the bouncing waves of the brisk blue sea.

Our house for the week sits deep in the lost woods Where animals and dense trees once stood.

Fights over the rooms begin to heighten While the hot sun around us beams and brightens.

A pile of thirteen jumps into two cars While Bob Marley plays to the beach. Not too far.

Our beautiful brown bodies lie bliss on the hot sand.

We finally made it to neverland.

Bailey R.

87

The Hole It was winter and very snowy. I went outside as soon as I woke up, unbundled, and let the snow fall on my red cheeks, but all of a sudden the sky opened up as if unhinged and the snow became rain. It pelted. The whole world was naked, the winds swirled, the buffalo ran free, and it was so bright. I didn’t know what to do, so I went to the town square to find someone, anyone. The shapes were unfurling before my eyes. The math was tripping over itself, the logic was disbanding. There was no one in the square, which was itself unfolding, collapsing, then it drifted away onto the air. I went home, was getting cold, but when I got there there was just a gaping hole. My whole home. A hole.

It was still winter at least. My teeth were achatter. The hole radiated warmth, pulsing warmth. I watched it breathe, animated as if in stop-motion. The pines shuddered beside me, groaning in the wind. But I had had enough of pining. I was cold. And a home is a home, even if it’s a hole. So I breathed a breath, watched it freeze on the air, and stepped inside.

Violet D.

88

Speed in the City Spokes racing around an indifferent hub Try in vain to push the sun’s reflection In a regal glide around their false sheen The hub pays them no heed As they somersault over pavement torn like bread And wounded potholes covered with iron scabs Two hissing wheels rip smiles off the faces Of babies in their crawling strollers Frolicking parents soured by the passing anger, And the roiling life beneath their sunny moods Trembling to the rhythm of pedaled rubber on concrete Is this what a shooting star feels like Rage whirring under a metal frame and its broiling rider?

A smooth line drawn through pockmarked streets By the searing of a steamroller two fingers wide.

Sammy G.

89

Lily Lily had been sure they were just bed bugs. Those bites that kept appearing on her arms, face and neck like seedlets on the surface of a strawberry seemed benign enough.

She’d had an infestation before — when she fled Louisiana they had crawled out from the rotten guts of her new apartment; her first houseguests. That first move was a blind leap from the nest, a desperate scramble out of the muck of the bayou for solid ground up North. She had liked it in the cold, apart from the itching and the thought of so many beating hearts and yawning mandibles pulling her blood into minuscule carapaced stomachs. But exterminators were expensive, and the bugs were devious. Six months after the house was steamed to oblivion they were back, implanting their eggs into the fabric of Lily’s mattress and clambering across the pale skin around her mouth.

This year winter had arrived with brutal efficiency. The sky dumped sleet for days on end through December with no sign of stopping. With the aftertaste of Christmas still fading from her palate, Lily went to work selling clothing at a department store downtown. Surrounded by so much soft fabric she felt comfortable, or as comforted as one can feel by a minimum wage paycheck. On Sundays, she took herself on long walks through the city. Free from the trappings of home, the overt poverty, and the mosquitos and the incessant Bible-carrying insistence on the part of her mother that she have children — soon, before it was too late — she felt reborn. She glided down avenues and side alleys, barely touching the ground beneath her feet.

And so when the bed bugs returned she was in no place to evict them. She and they would have to coexist; she would feed them, and in return, they would excuse her absence from certain social gatherings, or else save her the embarrassment of inviting other guests to her cramped and sparsely furnished apartment. Her mother had called her a recluse. Well, her mother shouldn’t have had children in the first place. Some women were better off childless.

The night before last Lily had felt something different about the quiet and the dark. Another body breathing the stale, empty air. She had startled awake three times, on each occasion itching a new raised mark on her chest or neck. She would turn on the lights and flip her mattress to examine each crack and crevice, all to no avail. The bugs were crafty; they always knew when she was on the prowl. The following night they remained hidden. She spent three hours scratching at phantom insects crawling across her body, leaping to the light in fruitless attempts to catch her unwanted tenants in the act. Eventually, she fell into an unpleasant and unrestful sleep.

It was Lily’s birthday. Tonight at twelve she would turn twenty-seven. She could hear her mother’s whispered voice creeping into her ear, a shuddering breath warning of 90

Lily’s fading youth, of the men who would no longer hold doors open and carry boxes in from the street. It didn’t matter, she knew. Some people weren’t meant to have children or husbands. She would live presently; the future and the past both were of little consequence.

When Lily awoke in the dark her first thought was of the clock on her night table.

It was surely past midnight, and yet the clock was not at her side. She groped blindly in the murk but felt nothing except a cool, moist, fetid breeze. The sound of her breathing echoed metallically. A noise like the mechanical trembling of a rattle vibrated up through the mattress. She sat upright and understood that she was not in her bedroom.

Her mattress was turning an invisible corner. She knew that she had been moving for some time, traveling as smoothly as though she were still. She was in a faintly illuminated passageway now; a silver moon-like light shone through a grate above. A storm drain, a vein just below the skin of the city. The grey walls of the tunnel glittered in the cold air.

She had to flee, to go home. She moved to put a foot down on the ground below — and shrieked, high pitched and awful, at the sight of millions of insects flowing across the metal. The floor was hidden from view by beetles and arachnids and crawling, clattering creatures of every species imaginable. She had not been afraid of bugs before; now, ferried into the intestine of a foreign metropolis by an unfathomably vast swarm of them, she felt a profound, heart-wrenching terror.

Then she was no longer moving. The air was suddenly stagnant, filled with the exhalations of uncountable insects sprawled in every direction. A single thread dangled from the low ceiling a few feet from Lily’s eyes. She watched a spider meander its way down to her blankets. It ambled to the thickest part of her calf; then, as she sat petrified in a disgust that twisted every fiber of every muscle in her body, it planted its glittering abdomen within her skin. Transfixed, she wondered at the gentle undulations in its seemingly ridged shell as it placed thousands of invisible eggs within her. When it had finished, it wandered back up its thread into the darkness.

As though that first monstrosity were a signal dozens of insects began scaling the sides of the mattress. They began to explore her body, feeling out the hidden soft tissue beneath her arms and behind her neck. Soon, hundreds, then thousands, were coursing across her figure. Her open mouth, fixed in a silent scream of total horror, was quickly filled with bed bugs and millipedes and moths. She fell backward into the writhing, gyrating arthropods, and they quickly covered every exposed inch of her form. As the gentle silver light from the street above was smothered out by millions of skeletal insects she thought of the soft, cool breeze wandering through the trees back home and her mother’s 91

affectionless stare, as though she could not recognize her own offspring.

When Lily awoke she had been twenty-seven for half a day already. The sun was creeping in through the thin curtains of her third-floor windows. Sometimes Lily loved having nightmares like last night’s, if only for the wave of relief that crashed over her when she opened her eyes. She could still feel a few phantom bed bugs marching through the faint hairs on her arms. She yawned widely. It had not been a restful night.

She dressed for a walk. Last night she had missed some of the mud tracked in from yesterday’s jaunt through the park but she would clean it up when she returned. At the moment she was feeling too claustrophobic, too caged. She burst out of her apartment and raced down the hallway. Sundays were always the best days for a walk.

Outside the sun shone and a single sparrow chirped furiously. Lily could feel the cold air tightening the insides of her lungs. She exhaled a cloud of frost. At the corner, she turned and looked back at the bedroom window. She had grown tired of this apartment, she thought, and it was beginning to feel dark and uncomfortable. The world outside was so much more vibrant, full of life and color and movement, half-invisible in its intricacy. She scratched at the itch in her calf for a moment and then continued on. It was time for her to move out. She would see about a new apartment tomorrow.

Miles G.

92

The Photophile This photophile told himself he wasn’t a stalker, Or the blinding light with which he wrote his stories.

He told everyone he was a storyteller or a time traveller.

These split seconds could fix his broken fingers.

The arthritis in his joints, Stretched to denial as he told himself he wasn’t a photographer.

This strong white light took his eyes and danced in the back of his brain.

His selfish ways would leave him but the light would still stay.

Stray, STay, sTAy, For his blanket was too thick to let in dark.

The ripple of light could fan out, but his darkness was the one he could smother.

He could not find his imperfection, nor could the light leave his stories.

So he could fight it into darkness with hopes to find his own pretty portrait, To hang above the fire.

Sebastian B.

93

The Never-Ending Sorrows from Fragments of Nowhere; Margaret and Pauline

The day was still young. Margaret held a lighter to the Polaroid picture, letting the melting plastic drip down her marble skin. Chewing her lip, she stamped out what little flame kept in January. She lit a cigarette and continued on.

Margaret is the fragments of a name.

Pauline stood in front of the school bus. They dragged her and begged, “Get on the bus and go home.” Her smile was cracking, a twist of agony forcing itself through her teeth. Staring straight ahead she turned back, sat on a stump. She didn’t need to look very far.

Margaret watched the people load the school bus, tapping excess cigarette ash into Pauline’s hair, blowing smoke in her face. Her chapped lips were bleeding, slightly dripping onto her jeans.

“Pauline. We should talk.”

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Pauline closed her eyes. Usually when she did, Margaret would walk away. She didn’t. Instead, Margaret closed her eyes too, cigarette dangling loosely from her thin lips. They sat in a thick silence. Pauline didn’t dare move as the burning cigarette ash fell onto the back of her neck.

“Why won’t you talk? This is the last time I’ll be around.”

Pauline looked up at her. Margaret’s short auburn hair flamed in the glow of sunset, yet it looked tangled and full of greasy frizz. She had darkened her eye bags, waterline eyeliner smearing slightly around the edges of her cheeks. Her face was sunken, dead looking. Pauline knew what death looked like.

“Why are you here?”

Margaret took a long drag then handed the cigarette to Pauline.

“Why do you think?”

Pauline finished the cigarette with two long drags, burning the tips of her fingers. She threw her head back and exhaled, her bouncy curls pulled down by the force of

95

the movement.

“Mar, we never talk. Things already fell apart.”

She’d already lit another cigarette, tossing the now empty pack behind her. The school yard was finally quiet when she started to hum, then sing.

“Everything’s so easy for Pauline, everything’s so easy for Pauline.”

Pauline threw her jacket over her shoulders, knocking the cigarette out of Margaret’s hand. She looked down at her. Margaret often threw glances at her, but she never seemed to pick up on how much Pauline was quite the same. Her bandana loosely held her fro out of her face, her warm skin baring a hue of gold in the sunlight.

“I don’t sing that anymore.”

Margaret remembered the swimming pool, that thin blue line gliding around the edge. They had a fight, Margaret nicked her thumb while Pauline nicked her pinky.

They bled down the sidewalk to the bus stop, bloodied hands clutching each other. They were soaking, Margaret soaked in a drowning chlorine. Both tiny in a world of obscure.

“I’ll never be as clean than from that pool of chlorine.”

Pauline picked up the fallen cigarette, rolling it between her fingers. She harshly inhaled the smoke, aware of the wry look on Margaret’s face.

“My love, you won’t forget, I’ve already carved my mark.”

A wind rose from the soccer field, carrying a plastic bag to Pauline’s feet. She stood up, throwing both the cigarette and the bag into a trashcan. Turning back, she saw Margaret picking at her fingers, her shadowy figure appear as a 19th century widow, stuck in her white wedding dress.

“Mar, where are you going this time?”

This time, Margaret got up and turned her back.

“To the city, where you said I’d never go.”

Then she ran, ran down the road. Pauline chased after her, tripping over her flimsy shoes. She watched as Margaret fell in the intersection, not making a sound. The road was quiet, a terrible silence clouding them.

Margaret thought of Pauline and Pauline only. The ways she had changed, switching out tight swimsuits to flowing blouses. Running around, swaying through crowds as though a spinning top. And now she had collided with Margaret, and this time Margaret wasn’t letting go.

“Pauline! I never meant it. I still have scars you know! There isn’t a moment when I don’t think back to it.”

She smiled, clutching her bleeding elbow. She rested her hand on Pauline’s cheek, smearing blood and dirt onto her skin.

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“You drowned me, Pauline. Why won’t you drown in me?”

Then the rain came. It fell hard, hard in the middle of the road. They sat holding each other, watching the blood flow slowly down the asphalt. There was nothing to see, nothing to make of it.

Pauline pushed Margaret’s hair out of her face, staring ahead into what she couldn’t see beyond the rain. The bus came quickly, sliding along the road. Pauline dragged Margaret on, sitting in the back.

“Don’t stain the leather, this is the last bus.”

Margaret coughed, tilting her head to the window. The school yard slowly disappeared into the mist of rain, leaving behind the stump, the cigarette.

“I’m leaving tomorrow morning. I’m going to the heart, maybe I won’t stop driving.”

Pauline rested her head on top of Margaret’s, holding her equally bloody hand.

“Do you have a car?”

They both stared straight ahead, unbothered about the known future, a future in which they would always sit in the rain, bleed together, sink in chlorine.

“We’ll take yours.”

Matilda L.

97

Summer ocean tides Sang me drunken lullabies Spun me beautiful We are like ripples A splash, our birth, and our life Stilled to seamless glass Cuatro V.

98

I can’t stop smiling, and though I’m not sure if they’re smiling too, the almost dotted outline of their silhouette is clear and benevolent in my mind.

I used to be afraid of the dark but now I think of myself as an octopus, with my consciousness extending to every cell of my extremities, molding, shifting, someday to become what I see in the dark.

Box by box, time sloshes against itself.

I swim in it, crawling through the cracks And unlocking days in every direction.

Oonagh M.

99

Coat Gallery

Friday evening, Lillian wheeled her foldable grocery cart back home from the laundromat. She really should have replaced her washing machine by now, her son had told her over the phone. She agreed, and said she would, but it had been a week and she still hadn’t done it.

The laundromat wasn’t cost effective, and it had never been the way, for all these years, that she had dealt with the burden of dirty clothes. But ever since two months ago, when she had gone there on a Friday evening like this one, she could not resist trotting back once a week or so. She would sit on the cold, firm, backless bench under the yellowed track lights and read her book during the hour it all took. She would lift the small yet heavy stack of clothes out of the washer, into the dryer, and later back into her grocery cart.

When Lillian arrived home, she heaved up the two steps, and bore the screams of the screen door and the groans of the doorknob. Inside, she turned the taps on her stove to reheat Chinese food, and then, when finished with dinner, she washed the plate.

She strained to push her pink chair where she wanted it, plugged in the TV and pressed the buttons necessary to change CNN to PBS and raise the volume.

Later, time for bed, she rose slowly from her stair lift, still marveling at it after four years. In the darkness of the corridor, she passed the shadowy photographs of her grandfather and her parents, and as always, imagined their eyes sliding to watch her as she entered her bedroom, and pushed hard on her jammed light switch. Friday was over.

When I wake, she thought, the sun will have risen on Saturday.

Her son’s Brooklyn neighborhood was something of a parade at this time of year. Visitors from other neighborhoods shuffled through, some young, some even as old as Lillian, each gawking at the color-changing bells and electric snowflakes and six foot Nutcrackers. At night, its prime time, it would have been marvelous; in the daylight it was stripped of its brilliance, left only to be odd, Lillian thought, gripping her cart.

She felt a stare upon her back, and turned, only to see a giant Santa Claus head, mouth ajar as if in song, mustache shaggy, head covered by his dutiful red hat. The winter sun bounced off his porcelain eyes.

Lillian’s son was standing by the apartment building where he lived, tucked away on the street’s corner, shadowed by a thin gray tree. “Thank you so much, Mom,” he said, embracing her warmly. “I forgot she was going to be on break.”

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Lillian didn’t like being thanked. It was perhaps worse when it came from family. She nodded uncomfortably, clasping her hands together. Her son mumbled something like, great, this will be good, and walked away, across the road. He peered behind himself, in front, left and right, peering around for his neighbors, and then dove into his taxi cab and drove away. His father and grandfather drove taxi cabs too, but they did not live in this neighborhood.

Suddenly Lillian whipped around, realizing her granddaughter was not actually in sight. “Ella? Ella!” she called.

Ella had been behind the tree. She popped out on the third call. “Hi, Gramma,” she said. Then, immediately, “Do you want to see my cartwheel?” The little girl began to tumble back and forth.

It always struck Lillian how much Ella looked like her; she may as well have been Lillian transplanted from seventy-five years in the past, then stretched taller. Lillian had always been sick at Ella’s age though, and didn’t cartwheel in case the blood would rush to her head and stop her heart.

Ella finally stood up. When she walked, a trail of cotton poured out of the edge of her coat. The tear was near the zipper, which itself had somehow been snapped in half, leaving serrated spikes.

“Oh dear,” said Lillian. “What happened to your coat?”

Ella looked down at it as if for the first time. She didn’t seem to notice a problem. “I think it used to be cousin Abby’s. Abby likes pink things.”

Lillian shook her head. “I’ll buy you a new coat.”

They went to Boro Park by bus. The streets there were as always flush with black-hatted men, huddled in packs as they walked; children sprinting with the buoyancy of a finished school day, backpacks bouncing on their backs; women moving with swift, proud strides, swinging paper bags at their sides. Lillian had allowed Ella to push her foldable grocery cart, and it clattered and crashed against the door as the two entered Coat Gallery.

It was a small store, but perhaps that was why it felt so warm inside. Lillian, Ella, the saleswoman, and the other customers, a mother with her daughter, were squeezed as though in a closet, brushing constantly against the three walls of coats in various shades of black. The saleswoman smiled at Lillian, who had bought a coat here last year, and was wearing it. It had kept her warm for a good price.

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The girl who had come here with her mother pawed the racks of smaller coats lightly, peeking every few moments at Ella, who did the same. Little girls always look at each other. They chose identical coats, the ones with the green buttons, pulling them from the hooks simultaneously so it was impossible to tell who had influenced whom.

The saleswoman walked up as they stood in front of the mirror. “They’ll look the same!” she said to Lillian.

Ella’s face darkened with that sudden terror particular to children, volatile as they are. She stuffed the green-buttoned coat between the cluster of others. “I don’t like it here,” she told Lillian.

“What’s wrong with the coat you found?” asked Lillian.

Ella shrugged. “I want to go.” She flopped her arms toward the door fretfully.

“See, I’m wearing one from here,” Lillian said. “It’s a good coat.” But this was only more disturbing. Ella pushed herself against the plastic door, out into the cold street. She shivered in her Julius Monkey shirt. Lillian joined her and offered the old pink coat. As Ella pushed her arms through, a wad of cotton poured out. She picked it up and tried to fit it back in the hole; the hole refused, somehow too small an opening now.

A troop of sisters with braided hair and matching blue dresses marched past.

Their happy faces caught the sun. Ella glared at them at first, since she was glaring at everything. But fascination dissolved a bit of the tension within her. She was not afraid to study them.

“Pretty dresses, aren’t they?” said Lillian. “Do you have a dress like that?”

Ella nodded at the first question. At the second, she shook her head vigorously.

She gripped her shirt, absentmindedly tracing the outline of Julius. “I don’t like these people,” she murmured.

Lillian boiled with the second-hand shame. “Ella,” she said. “You are one of these people.”

“No I’m not. I’m not like them. I’m secular.” She said the word proudly, as though she would be rewarded for it.

“But you have ancestors. My parents were religious. Their parents were. We come from a long line of rabbis!” Lillian felt her blood pressure rise. She was not meant for activities like anger. She never had been, and now she was very old. Besides, she thought, it wasn’t right to speak to a child this way, even one like Ella, whose face, staring up now and seething, was more like a strange, loathsome mirror than a separate entity.

“But you’re secular too, Gramma,” Ella said.

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Some cotton fell out of the coat again. Ella kicked it. “I want to go somewhere else.” Lillian did not argue. Today was not the day for a new coat. Ella’s parents would have to deal with it, Lillian thought. Or perhaps Abby would send another coat.

When the bus arrived at a nearby stop, Lillian and Ella were the only ones who got on. With one hand, Lillian gripped the foldable grocery cart; with the other, she held onto the silver bus rings fastened to the roof, and Ella clung to her. Everytime the bus jolted over some pothole, the little girl grabbed at something new: Lillian’s pants, fingers; even the sliver of shirt that was free because her Coat Gallery coat was now unbuttoned.

The bus swerved around another corner, and emerged from Boro Park. A trio of brothers at the edge of the street turned quickly into a distant dot. Ella sighed deeply, like the air was clearer.

Lillian sighed too, then bristled. It was becoming dark. Tomorrow was laundromat day. The day after that, when she woke, the sun would rise on Saturday.

Caroline H.

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Cloudy Cloudless skies echo an explicit blue Pigmentation that makes the world seem more morbid Than usual.

The fabulous lifestyle of clouds, To be able to come and leave whenever they please When I am stuck to this land eternally or until death finds me unwell Under the tutelage of sky creatures I become just a passing figure, Interchangeable and unrecognizable to those who do not know me well.

Malleable and shape shifting.

You behave coquettishly to your companions You mix to become new souls You seem to diminish to an extent and none seem to notice But it is a cloudless sky Anaka P.

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Letter from someone else Cypriot men and Dutch women Clashing with laminate and faxes The beautiful United Nations, as my mother would call it Across the river from me Across the ocean from you There those beautiful buildings shine It’s pristine What goes on is unimaginable Chess isn’t quite accurate (Although I’m drawn naturally to that comparison) The board is far too small It’s never that simple King and Queen Black and White Good and Bad You’ll need a dose of nuance if you want to...

The enemy of my enemy is my enemy The assistant of my enemy is my friend The friend of my enemy is nothing Is everything That’s how it goes, I think Running, twisting, turning I like my head right where it is, my shoulders Rewarding others is risk Risk is suicide Suicide is The obvious answer is to reward yourself Be thick as thieves and be gone Occam was right Genocide, massacre, war crimes Starvation, pollution, overpopulation Communists, capitalists, contrarians Equalists, egoists, elitists Who really cares about politics I’m the last person on Earth 106

Someone had to say it The black bear goes again to his river But, and I hate to say this, it’s not policy that drives him Bees don’t care for tariffs Wolves won’t feed on taxes They’re surviving You want to talk about politics?

Pluck away the petals Tear off the skin Beneath the masks you’ll find it The true self I’m not a cynic, not an anarchist Not an artist, not a realist, Not a list of words nor a diplomatic relation I am a survivor Just like those globe-trotting pundits who talk and talk the talk Who break promises to Iranian children Lie to their faces Kickback after kickback Negotiating for another month in that office The beautiful United Nations, as my mother would say I know you’ll disagree with me Let’s not talk about this again Jack A-G.

107

Art Perfect. He drew back again and made another stroke. Each time he did, he coaxed new meaning out of his flat easel. It had been going for hours and hours, and he finally had reached a point of quasi-completion worthy of awarding him some rest.

He went to hang his oil-tarnished easel on the wall, where it would stay until afternoon session. “Bam!” someone in the hall said, brandishing a firearm. He spun around in fear and tripped himself against his easel. His wet canvas painted his christmas sweater a muddled brown as he smacked the floor with a dull thud. His nose pushed his now opaque glasses off of his face as he struggled to regain his dignity, and they crunched to a halt parallel to him as if in greeting. A teacher peeked into the room and said, “Is everything all right?” in a rhetorical fashion. It wasn’t, but the teacher certainly did not care, so Raymond’s “yes” was enough to send the teacher scurrying down the hall. He turned off the lights, casted off his blighted sweater, and curled up in a corner of the art room.

He felt as if he would never leave the art room, and for him, that was fine. He promised himself that he hadn’t done this before, although he knew that he had. His semi-circular semicircle of the room had turned into an abstract conglomerate of dripping colors and ruined equipment. He set his alarm for 4 hours from now and prayed that he wouldn’t sleep through it. He could sense himself slipping from the counter as his eyes closed, but it was no matter to him. Then he hit freefall.

He heard a crash behind him. He floated forwards and kicked himself off of the wall 180 degrees through the air. It was a crumpled heap. There were remnants of life there, shown through splotches of red dotted all over the body. Intermittent spatter of green, blue, and yellow paint could be seen streaked across the boy’s legs and hair. It was good then that he had gotten his life in order quickly. Ending up like the pile that he could see across the room would be disastrous. It would be crushing.

He awoke to the sound of his alarm reminding him of his shocking inadequacy. Covered in various liquids and solids, he sloshed upwards with the help of his easel.

One of his ribs creaked softly and screamed a string of small, sharp curses through his spine that made him yelp despite himself. He flipped a light switch absentmindedly and regressed into caressing his canvas carefully. He didn’t know how, but the characters jumped from all directions directly to the canvas. When he looked up and removed his brush, there was a carefully constructed scene of green and pink looking back at him, urging him loudly to continue. And so he did. And then, he was done.

Completely, utterly done. He signed the top left corner with an obtuse cursive R, and

108

took his painting off of the easel. He had definitely left the room recently, so he didn’t see any real reason to leave it now. He gave himself a look of confusion in the mirror because of the overwhelming sense of self-awkwardness that he now felt for thinking such an odd thing. Just like when he was with someone else who said or did something to a different person in his presence that he didn’t agree with and he had to be with that person for another seven minutes. Except he had to be with himself for ever. And it certainly wouldn’t help if he continued having crazy fantasies like this one.

It was 7:48 AM now, and he had started work on a new painting some hours earlier, give or take a few. His new frankenstein was a matrix of delicately placed shapes sliding icily across a dark plane of magma. And it was beautiful.

He was careful. He was precise. He did everything perfectly right. And so once again, he slept. He saw the crumpled boy once again, so he pushed himself up at a 75 degree angle towards him. The boy awoke abruptly when he approached, and made direct eye contact with him. They exchanged glances, and then greetings. “Why are you here?” he asked the boy. “I’ve always been here,” He replied.

Then the boy gave an involuntary gasp and said, “Oh, I must be on my way.”

And he disappeared. Raymond floated aimlessly in the void for a few minutes, pondering his most recent interaction. None of it made sense. None at all. He attempted to throw up his hands in despair, but the vacuum of the air made him spin his arms many more times than he intended to. Out of frustration, and a refusal to surrender to the pull of the floor, he slept where he stood.

He awoke out of anger. As he looked at it, his newest painting’s surface obtained a partial red color, reflecting his face. He gave his face a splash of water.

The world cooled a bit. The lights turned on as he strode towards the door. The door sang a celebratory slam, alerting him that he had finally exited. A full circle of hallways stretched out in front of him. He chose one at random, stretched for a minute, and lurched forward with lengthy strides.

Max K.

109

My handwriting changes depending on the ink or the season.

One summer, I was comically in love with cows.

Shai B.

110

Purple Shampoo Freeze-dried yogurt drops, their essence vaporizing on my tongue as Alderon was destroyed by the Death Star. The sucrose exploding mildly, sweetly, softly like a head hitting a pillow. The scent of purple shampoo and angel dreams wafts across their Barney-hued surface, children running to collect them in small hands. Their texture, tiny raindrops of dried beach sand, the fine kind closer to the dunes, bleached by the sun. Their sound when shaken from the plastic container is rain on a car window, in the moment between sleep and waking, the sky grey and fuzzy. The aftertaste milk spilled on a leather couch and left to sit for days, bitterly sour with notes of pancakes and grandma’s breath. The flavor of red riding hood’s berry-filled basket is sprayed across my mouth, the flower petals crunching between my teeth and melting together, bleeding into my tastebuds.

Anna M.

111

Crushed Love is an unfamiliar feeling for a child. Perhaps that’s why it’s phrased in diminutive terms; a little crush, a schoolgirl’s infatuation, puppy love. Sometimes those terms may seem aptly fitting, but this experience felt much more like a love than anything else, young as I was. Perhaps because there was more to lose than the average rejection.

I met her at Hebrew school. I had been attending for years, though I must say my relationship with God was fraught even then. I was a curious child, but the school taught me that religion was no place for skepticism or questioning. Unless you wished to be punished. I remember one experience in particular during the Ebola outbreak. Tonedeaf as it may have been, I asked why God had created Ebola. The teacher struggled for a moment, before saying something about how God punishes (bad) people. The implications of that were off-putting, to say the least. However, it never struck me how truly disturbing that response was until years later when I recounted the story to my family, who insisted that I was being overly dramatic and refused to believe the tale.

Towards the end of my Hebrew school tenure, around the preparations for our Bat Mitzvahs, she joined our class. The details are foggy, unlike her. I can still perfectly make her out in my mind. Her long curly brown hair, with hints of blond, her welcoming round face, and big eyes. The color wasn’t important, more the way they seemed to open wide, letting all this inner light out when she talked about things of interest. My own lovestruck view aside, I am sure she was and still is a good person.

I started to anticipate those previously dreaded Tuesday afternoons when I would get to see her. She made me feel cool, validated. We both had developed a sort of cynicism towards religion, skeptical of its narrow strictures. We would share books and chat during the opening prayer period. And we’d crack jokes while eating the latest kosher snack, which we both knew we would never eat outside of that building. We’d link arms and talk about anything at all, from simple shared interests like funny cartoons to our conflicted feelings about Judaism itself. In the beginning, I hardly even noticed how strong my feelings had grown.

I had heard about being gay by that point but didn’t truly understand it. It felt like such an alien term, like something that was out there but surely couldn’t include me. I was horrified by both the self-revelation and what it entailed. It was the comprehension of what I’d long felt towards her, but now it had a name. I began to find excuses when she 112

asked to come over. And I started to find reasons to not even show up on some days.

Looking back, I wish I hadn’t. But what would happen to that kind welcoming face if she knew? And nothing scared me more than the scorn of those soft women, telling me how I am loved by God only to turn harsh and cold in judgment. Now I wonder if that would have been the actual reality, or merely a fear instilled by my own imagination and anxiety.

Years later, I learned that someone at my friend’s new school claimed to know me. I looked her up and it was true. The girl from way back then. Despite our time apart, we still shared the same interests, in shows, clothing, art, and anime. I followed her accounts. I don’t know if she remembers me fondly or is even aware I’m following her, staring at the same excited eyes as when we talked. But it’s dulled through a screen.

It felt almost like fate had let me find her again. Could I consider the God I feared as one who could love?

Lola G.

113

Isolation Isolation makes one diseased, they say.

I have already been diseased. What harm would more disease do?

Stuffed with unhealthy flowers, the vase of me expels a stained scent.

I wonder why people are deterred by me, my looks, my posture, maybe.

Or maybe my bloodstained hands, disease overcoming my limbs.

Midday I take to my frequent ablutions, attempting to scrub the red off.

It is a wicked cycle, I curse to myself.

I am not to blame, the more diseased I seem to get, the more I find people avoid me, making me more sickened.

As I lie my body onto my cushioned bed, I like to feel my heart beat slower and slower, Slower, Slower, Until I cannot feel it anymore, and I feel as if I am dead. What joy that would bring me, to float downward towards the sea, adorning a wedding dress, billowy and white, with my arms stretched outward, taking in the wind.

I am to be wed to such a majestic creature, such scarlet a sea. What a prize to be chosen.

I have no choice, one must not upset such a being.

Or maybe it would not be graceful at all, hurtling at high speeds towards the sea, the scarlet sea, and simply be devoured by carcass-eating beasts, too weak to find their 114

own kill, so they take mine. How inelegant a way to embrace death.

My body, my scarlet sea. I must not let them!

Devour my soul, but not my body. I am too proud of its beauty for it to be eaten like fish.

‘What harm would more disease do?’

My, my… so much.

Anaka P.

115

A Taste Before Red Wine If time stopped tomorrow, then the man could finally weep. He would swallow the trepidation on the tip of his tongue, he would profess a love not to be mistaken with lust, he would undo his forbearances as he backs away from his former.

He would take into his the hand pressing his left shoulder and he would untense his back.

He would don a jumpsuit of creamy lace, flanked by two souls androgynously dressed in flowy regalia. On his right would be one dressed in blue, on the left the one in pink floral. He would allow for his hair to be removed from under his cap and he would let it spill down his torso. He would become pure as his inhibitions were released and as he said the words he wouldn’t have said.

He would knock on the doors of those he had wronged, voice his grievances, mourn his losses, love the forgiving.

He would let go of the defensive with which he had carried himself for so long.

He would become defenseless as he approached the steeple.

His skin would become raw, his voice would choke on each syllable, his tears would stain the ground with every step.

And the sky would grow white and sterile.

Abby D.

116

Digammic Wafts Time is the errant mistress of the day So with our hopes we fuse our passion’s fire To slake that maw which lies below the way Through wooded front of vertú and of mire

What recompense, what stock might we descry That man might reap, and life might call its own Temporal dirge, deep chant, now heed my try

To interrupt before I must atone This epitaph is dous’d with pomp’s fair blooms Epigraphy that one might smirch or blunt Indelibly with mark of hatred’s fumes Eternally - the growth now stumped stunt But one might find an acre of a soul Rule out a line in ever-shifting muck Skew out a plot that’s within one’s control Beyond what’s drear, to other’s motives stuck What of an age? We cannot help but baulk That men have miss’d their souls for wind, but talk Asher H.

117

Sin Was she fit to be human?

The girl with Magma in her eyes, she had been born a baby of crystal glass.

The first drop of hate corrupted her. Changed her, transformed her.

People will always look bitterly at those with glowing eyes, with pain flowing through her veins.

She would one day ascend to the black clouds that grew in the sky, to the planet of red hot sin.

But it’s the magma in her eyes, the hollow bones, the fire that pulses below her fingers.

When babies born of crystal glass feel the heat of reality, whose fault is it. who should be responsible for keeping them from crying.

The Whispers of strangers echo in her ears. The words she hears every moment of every year, the way they yell and Screech and scream. they are scared of her, they feel her sin, but she was a baby of crystal glass.

And now she is not fit to be human.

Lucy G.

118

It was learning how to navigate the grocery store that convinced my parents I was grown.

Someone once told me that under the empty music they play in aisle eight (fruit and cleaning products), there’s a little voice that makes products more appealing, encouraging you to spend more money, telling you you need those 2 for 3 dollar off season nectarines.

On any given Sunday I battle my shopping cart rage at the woman who spends several minutes comparing virgin and extra virgin olive oil and the voice. I spin down aisles, successfully grabbing the cheapest peanut butter before the voice catches up.

I check expiration dates on milk quickly, blinded by the fluorescent lights, yet I never pick one that’s spoiled.

The voice is losing, so I have time to stop and watch a man accidentally explode a bag of Pillsbury flour, the starchy snow catching in his beard.

I walk away guilty for not helping him clean it up.

At the checkout the cashier asks me where my parents are.

It is strange, because in the line, I swear the little voice asked me the same thing.

Mia R.

119

K-T-B I read truth in a tome I found behind a rill of sand Inscribed with characters profound with ink in flowing hand The spine was wrought with scales of green, the limning all of gold An object of such wear and woe which weighed with pith untold I cracked the cover open slow, the pages sopped sheer black But I could glimpse the scriber’s daze despite the physick’s lack

“O ye that read when I am gone, remember me in time” I could not bear to worship more lest he attach - a crime!

Asher H.

120

The Description of Aliser Morris Walking down the dank, humid sidewalk one day when the city streets of New York felt like the thick of The Amazon Forest, I saw her. A bright bazaar of gleaming front teeth; a chink of light swimming through the dense air. Aliser Morris had arrived, swinging her many furrs and purses around her voluptuous physique.

Henry A.

121

M Honey and the morning Overflowing orange tea kettle filled to the top Sweltering feet dance on the burning wood as I Fumble for my silver keys alone On the midnight block City almost asleep Cold, cold wind tastes like Velvet and licorice And the power outage S A sigh into her tiny handkerchief Embroidered with little crowns As mischief with the jewelry box unfolds Little green pearls Snake across the smooth floor C Crawling among the little muddy piglets Straw hat scrapes against the chipped Sunrise door And a cartwheel H The snapping of elastic and worn down black tires A blinding yellow light In a blinding dark room Springy breeze & scraping knees on the pavement

122

I Glistening diamonds in the fading purple light Mysterious fingers Whispering behind tulle curtains A stained chain E An old knight on a rusty black horse Quiet just before dawn The smell of cinnamon and a woman singing in her bathroom In the warm glow of sun-baked san Toes engulfed F Wandering through a virgin forest Tiny, tiny footsteps Bare green, smelling of old books The eye of an infant!

Lyla B.

123

My Google Search History-April 2020 Where can I buy a vespa NYC? Can I buy a vespa under 18 NYC? Can I ride a vespa without a license NYC? Where can I buy a vespa not legally?

Can I take the subway?

Please?

How to get cash back from a metrocard?

How do I find out how much money is on my metrocard without going to the station?

What’s the date?

Is it possible to get sunburnt through a window?

Can you get sunburnt by blue light?

Do blue light glasses work?

What are bluelight glasses?

Are there long lasting effects of staring at a screen all day for weeks and weeks?

Best banana bread recipe Best easy banana bread recipe beginner Do you need a stand mixer to make dough?

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What’s the difference between an outdoor supermarket and a farmers market?

What’s the date?

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Tickets to Athens Greece 2021 Cheap plane tickets to Athens Can you buy a vespa in Greece under 18?

Gabriella B.

124

125

I often wake up sweaty and soaked in blood and grass There’s nothing sexy in the aftermath.

I set out last night to pounce on joy, on ecstasy And to strangle it, to own it.

Last night I kissed Beauty on the lips And she found me bitter, So I ate her, too.

I dry out my sweat in the ocean wind I’ve cried at my mother and sung to the moon I’ve consumed many I contain multitudes But in mornings in my quiet home I am filled with trees and roots and the like I chew on pears and summer air I am old as rocks; I repair my bike.

My stormy heart betrays me!

I dig my nails deeper into flesh so as not to blow away.

Years ago I wondered

If I were bigger would it slow?

If I were vast would I get lost inside the rolling pastel hills and fade away?

But I could only blow up like a balloon And balloons don’t hold up in bad weather.

The world was always ending; And I’ve spent forty nights In the maelstrom — breaking, mending.

I want to be soothed by high-pressure atmospheric systems; I want to walk back into the ocean and be rubbed smooth by the tides.

The height of insanity says I stand alone in a field under a barrage of clouds; The height of insanity says erosion is no match for my jagged edges.

Heath H.

126

Time.

If time stopped You never got older And everyone froze But you could move What would you do?

Would you steal food or money?

Would you steal a vehicle and travel?

Or would you relax Knowing that nothing is happening No one is talking behind your back Teachers aren’t giving you assignments You could have peace Quietness Calmness Serenity Then everything would be silent Would you relax You would sleep with nothing to worry about No one to break into your home Hurt your loved ones Or take your life You could work on your body Try to be who you have always wanted to be You could read with no one making noise But how would you feel Would you thrive and prosper Or would you decay and diminish You would have no one They would be around you But unable to do anything They are mere art pieces in your museum The world is yours James B.

127

It goes off, 3, 4, 5, 6, times without me saying. Or I guess I reprimanded the self who is agitated now, knowing this would happen. It begins again. I can’t wait for it to be over, although it just started, but when it’s over it’s really just the slightest of pauses until the desolation resumes. Like hitting the triangle on the tv. I feel badly for it though, the triangle being on its side like that. I don’t know why they decided to tip it over. Like how I have been tipped over myself. Or as I tip over to a different side of the bed every night so that my legs can readjust to a colder spot on the mattress. But I suppose I’m the one who does the tipping of myself. Does that make me the triangle? Either way it wouldn’t matter, human or triangle. They can’t see me through the lens that is there so that they can see me see them even if I stare directly at the other screen that isn’t supposed to be there... But he told me everything in life revolves in circles. So why is it a triangle not a circle? That’s the only thing I picked up from that course to be quite frank with you. I spent the rest of the time contemplating this puzzling triangle. I never was able to keep my eyes open while sitting in that icey chair listening to him monotonously mutter about something or other, but the day he mentioned circles I perked up. I still don’t know why, but it caught my ear.

It kind of pulled my ear actually. I fell out of my chair. The loud crash echoed throughout the auditorium and each person seemed to pierce through me, impaling my dignity ceaselessly one after the other. The seconds seemed to elongate, stretch along the x-axis.

I now understood last night’s algebra homework. I cringe looking back, as we were all so close, no filter of separation. I regretted the separation we were granted now of course; the universe always seems to take me a bit too seriously. Nevertheless, as he continued to grumble I could suddenly understand his rhino-like language. I heard the words, trying to grasp them with everything I had left in me, but they repeatedly slipped right from my fingers. The harder I grasped it, the faster it would pull right through the cracks like it were magnetized to my inability to process these complex objectives. I got to my feet, the world turning black as it usually does, and after the few seconds of intense blinking I had routinely done, I clutched the right arm of my bag with three fingers and strode frantically out of the room.

Clio W.

128

Wishing Love Bye I´m leaving This is it This is what our promise has come to I know that I don´t know I know that you deserve something You need something I don´t know Don´t tell me when I´m the one who’s always supposed to know What you need

How can I even, when I don´t know what I need Who do you think you are?

I have to wish you love, because that´s

The right thing to do they say But I´ve never chosen the right, I always choose the left The left fork in the road, the box on the left

And leaving you Left I think that it’s for the better Why can’t this come from love My heart´s guiding me It´s my soul provider it was large enough to fill up your chest too Only the left side to be left again empty It’s just that sometimes well during what used to be I had lost my candles I put them away because they were burning my lungs I just got them back It’s just that sometimes more one time No daily I had never wished you gone! You away!

But now That where you are. You´re in the gone and you´re in the away.

L o o k I´ve l i t e a c h flame

129

Funny, remember when we said we were twin flames, talked about old flames, and showed each other only the bright side of fire

Well now

it’s just the way things are

I can´t remember those moments, I only remember how quickly what we had burned into acid foaming at the earth Now the w a x is dripping on the table

The best way to scrape it off is with a credit card !

I hate you I hate you I hate us I hate myself ence I´m still so close hate

to love

I don’t feel indifferand love is closer to

Hate is a word easily thrown around and tossed and volleyed and bounced and

perfectionist

Love is just harder than hate

it´s more rigid and it makes me a

And perfectionism is the fear of vulnerability

I was vulnerable with you My vulnerability made me hate you I´m excited to wish you love So that I can feel indifference towards you.

I´m looking forward to not caring about you at all.

It’s just getting more and more and more and more and more difficult for me to wish love for you I´ve been writing this for years.

130

me

After our first fight, I’m sure this whole thing flashed simply in front of

It would have been easier for me to leave then For me to scream through burning eyes then separate from yours about our problems then Shit

for me to wish you love then for me to talk to my friends

the wax is everywhere

My throat wants to close and open like pulled apart velcro

My air spits out like the chlorine-filled pool water I once would force myself to breathe in I wish you love.

Soleil P.

131

Pell Mell As I run through the brushThe leaves shining after the rainThe branches flapping in the wind like a thousand birds wingsI breath deeplyInhaling the soft dewey smell of natural mulchThe warm spring airMaking me slightly dizzyI laugh and keep runningA wake of bark shavings springing up behind meThe forest clears and the field opens up before meYards of grass stretch out in uniform plotsEach with a watery grid bordering it from the nextNature organizingThe streams splash as my feet hit each interlocking marshDroplets of water springing behind my heelsMisting the harsh, sunny airI clear the other side of the field and pant heavilyMy path indistinguishableThe grass already re-erectedUndisturbedI shake my headTurning to the sunset and starting my sprint anew.

Henry A.

132

Fall The sinewy bridge tosses and bends Each baby vein of stem turned against itself By the gale tugging its webbed hand Its sail in the squalling autumn quiet.

Dying wood bids farewell to blushing leaf The tendons between carry out their violent embrace And like the agonizing peel of a band-aid Each gummed strand uncouples.

The husky concrete steadies the delicate wings But the leaf ’s fraying corners tremble with every gust There is nothing to halt its skid across the sidewalk Like a stingray along the ocean floor.

The leaves that still hold on Appear as distant as the stars And the leaf wonders If the fall was worth it.

Sammy G.

133

This Is Why We’d Suffocate Gazing down at the green and blue Weightlessly among the stars, The definition of infinity thrown in your face Alone in the silence around you.

This was my dream from the start.

An Astronaut, my mother said, Makes sense for my brilliant little girl.

This memory always stayed with me, though the feelings left a while back.

I realized that dream would kill me, slowly.

How selfish I would be to pursue it.

I’d train for years to experience that moment But once over, my life would be sucked out of me.

How is it you could go up there, and come back as the same you?

I’d be bound to turn into a tragedy.

Surely my perspective would have collapsed inward Like a black hole consuming me from the inside out.

Why bother care for the little things.

Knowing I’d long for that moment again, This must be why humans don’t possess wings.

And so here it is The reason we can’t survive out there Is because it would kill us to come back down.

Like a drug, I’d die for another dose Its absence is what would suffocate me the most.

Perhaps the point of growing up Is to discern that your dream is really your nightmare.

Allie R. 134

Isolation Isolation makes one diseased, they say.

I have already been diseased. What harm would more disease do?

Stuffed with unhealthy flowers, the vase of me expels a stained scent.

I wonder why people are deterred by me, my looks, my posture, maybe.

Or maybe my bloodstained hands, disease overcoming my limbs.

Midday I take to my frequent ablutions, attempting to scrub the red off.

It is a wicked cycle, I curse to myself.

I am not to blame, the more diseased I seem to get, the more I find people avoid me, making me more sickened.

As I lie my body onto my cushioned bed, I like to feel my heart beat slower and slower, Slower, Slower, Until I cannot feel it anymore, and I feel as if I am dead. What joy that would bring me, to float downward towards the sea, adorning a wedding dress, billowy and white, with my arms stretched outward, taking in the wind.

I am to be wed to such a majestic creature, such scarlet a sea. What a prize to be chosen.

I have no choice, one must not upset such a being.

Or maybe it would not be graceful at all, hurtling at high speeds towards the sea, the scarlet sea, and simply be devoured by carcass-eating beasts, too weak to find their own kill, so they take mine. How inelegant a way to embrace death.

My body, my scarlet sea. I must not let them!

Devour my soul, but not my body. I am too proud of its beauty for it to be eaten like fish.

‘What harm would more disease do?’

My, my… so much.

Anaka P.

135

An Encounter Laura and Elaina were riding the 7 train. “You never know what you’ll find in Queens,” their guidebook had said. “Each neighborhood has a unique cultural flair.” They had tried Indian food in Sunnyside, Tibetan momos, arepas, and now they were headed to Flushing for wontons and rice cakes.

“This was a fantastic idea,” Elaina said. “This is the best day of the trip.”

“I know,” Laura replied. “I feel like we’re not even in the same city.”

The noise of the train was a bit much for the two. Unaccustomed to city travel, the pair often found themselves missing a stop, or else hyper-focusing on the details of the subway map. This above-ground ride was a welcome change from the dark, ugly tunnels that slunk and whined their way through New York’s underbelly. The day was bright and warm. The two exited the train and it rolled off.

The station was empty except for two elderly Chinese men at one end of the platform and what looked like an enormous jackrabbit at the other, easily four feet tall and dressed in a blue cloak. Laura turned around. Across the platform, New Yorkers went about their daily routine. Nothing seemed unusual. Elaina looked out the station window at an expanse of blue ocean. The sound of waves crashing against stone was just audible.

“Where are we?” Elaina wondered. “I don’t understand.”

“Look at that rabbit!” Laura said.

The rabbit turned and gave the two an ugly glance. Then it leaned dangerously over the tracks to look for the next train.

“Laura, look. The ocean.” Laura turned. The sea appeared limitless. A cloud bank forming over the horizon spilled dark streaks of rain. The smell of salt and marine life bloomed from below the station.

“Impossible,” she said. A sound emerged at her right, like long nails drumming against a wooden desk or rain on a thin skylight. A giant centipede was crawling at breakneck speed down the tracks. The women stared, transfixed. It stopped at the head of the station and leaned its right flank towards the platform, allowing the rabbit, with a last uncourteous glare towards Laura and Elaina, to hop into one of the plush red seats strapped to the creature’s scaly back. Then the centipede raced off into the distance.

The two women stood frozen. Nothing about life in Devon, Pennsylvania, had prepared them for today. A few minutes later, the next 7 train rolled into the station. Its doors opened with a rush of air and one of the elderly Chinese men bid goodbye to his companion. The girls entered the train numbly. The doors closed behind them and they rode off.

Miles G. 136

137

degenerate verb deC. or deteriorate physically, mentally, or morally.

They still dye her hair brown even though her silver eyebrows betray the disguise and no one but them are there to see her.

They still change her nightgown even though she stares blankly ahead always motionless save for her teeth intermittently grinding away at prized enamel, teeth that have a mind of their own because her mind is gone.

They still paint her nails with a coat of deep red even though her fingers ceased trembling years ago and her hands clench her wheelchair, distorted and disfigured hands with bones protruding from unknown crevices.

They still seat her in front of the TV every evening at seven and turn up the volume as if she can hear the music through beta amyloid clumps and neurofibrillary tangles.

They still make her chai every afternoon in a little white tea cup and place it beside her on a plate with stale biscuits where it sits collecting dust until they clear it away in the evening.

They still sing to her, Bollywood songs that she once loved and they dance and smile and for a moment forget about her until they remember that she has forgotten them.

They still take her outside on days when the heat of Mumbai is tolerable

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and roll her wheelchair along rickety streets passed the shops she used to frequent.

They still kiss her every night on her forehead and imagine her blinking eyes are her own form of affection.

They still comb her hair and wipe away the tears that collect under her eyes to remind themselves that she was once beautiful before her brain degenerated and left her behind.

Naya M.

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The Bag

Zebra-patterned and fastened together with pink zippers adorned with black inlay, the bag stared back at me, ominously perched on four legs. Unlike anything in nature, it stands ramrod straight, taunting my 70 degree angled posture. The top of the bag was split in two by the shimmery expanse of the zipper’s track. Bridging the naturally occurring canyon which defied gravity in its wraparound structure of the shape of the bag was a pink leather handle, sewn deep into the mountains of black and white adjacent the canyon. There were several more bridges scattered around, but they were less visible.

I walked up to it, and glanced up, the sheer cliff looming above. The smooth surface was impossible to climb, and I balked at the idea of attempting to topple the mountainous rectangle above. But I didn’t need to. The seam of the canyon suddenly split above me, and a torrential rain of multicolored fabrics came pouring down, and engulfed me completely.

I wasn’t dead. At least, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t. As far as I know death is pretty permanent, and I wouldn’t be talking right now otherwise. I could feel something removing clothes from on top of me slowly, and there were only a few left. The trouble is, once they found me, they probably wouldn’t be happy with me. So I wrapped myself neatly in a pocket square, and stuffed myself in a suit jacket pocket. I could feel my sense that they were getting close, and the final friction of a singular sketcher being pulled from inside was my signal that I was next. The stuffy Burberry contained many folds, most of which were worn with holes and broken seams which allowed for passage into other nooks and crannies. I burrowed my way through the pocket into the hallway of the sleeve, and finally burst my way through the flattened cavern of the inside. I heard a few voices from outside, quizzically attempting to figure out what was shimmying around inside the coat. One of them finally summoned the courage to open the zipper. I inwardly screamed, awaiting my imminent discovery.

“There’s nothing here” said one of them. “Why were you flailing around with that jacket? You scared us half to death.” Another one of them gave a silent whimper and a slight shrug. They began walking again. That was one of the closest calls that I’ve ever had in all my years. Once they closed the jacket up again, I unwrapped my tail from the zipper and took a breather. All I had to do was wait for the right moment, and I could leap from the bottom and scurry back where I came. I made my way to the bottom of the jacket, and inhaled a repugnant odor of mothballs which burned my entire body. I wrapped my tail through the bottom buttonhole and peered out the bottom of the coat.

We were going too quickly. If I fell now, I would dash my head on the linoleum floor and be badly hurt. My head was straining now but I had to check up ahead, so I gave 140

a sharp glance forward to discover a turn in the corridor. I tucked my head back inside aand waited. I felt a small sideways jolt signaling a turn and dropped down. I hit the floor hard, and rolled sideways into a wall, stopping me short. “Hey!” said one of them.

“It’s a rat!” I spotted a hole in one of the walls as they lurched after me. I entered the damp safety of the drywall just as a heavy, heavily booted foot sealed me inside.

Max K.

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A Numbness in Color Pictured: A girl at wits end. Her head sits in her sweaty hands as they slowly slide up

her face creating a rubber like effect on her skin. A solemn mood painted in neon colors. The girl has barely begun the rest of her life. That, perhaps, is the reason for her gloom. She is convinced that it is better to stay silent so as not to create vivid attention.

Her emotions seem more worn out than the frame our museum chose. The gold leaf of her soul chipping towards the floor. Though, unlike the frame, the janitor will not come to vacuum the flakes up later. Her director - the artist - is absent. No longer able to paint the rest of her story, she is now on her own. The blue cushion she sits upon is stained, except you wouldn’t know unless you asked her to stand. The reds and yellows splashed behind her possibly represent an unfinished city, or maybe a frustrated artist.

The girl lives in color and feels only drops of it. She is no Mona Lisa. People will not travel from all over the world to see her. She is hard to describe even though she is perfectly depicted.

Lily T.

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Wandering Essence She wants so dearly to host A hug of heredity Bathe me She’ll say Bathe me, will you?

So that I can soak up your sweet concentrate And marinate in your wandering essence Juno W.

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An Incomplete Collection of Catcalls You’re so beautiful young lady. A man yells to me on the street. I’m 10. “Thisbe’s first catcall!” my mom laughs. “What!” I screech. I don’t remember ever having heard the word “catcall” before then, but from my mom’s reaction and the way her voice tauntingly says the word, I feel indignant, embarrassed, and ashamed.

Hey baby can I get your number? A guy, maybe in his early 20s. I’m 12. He walks past me in the 59th Street subway—I’m on my way home from school. I had started dressing goth in the past year, or at least to the extent that black lipstick from Duane Reade and black clothes already in my closet could allow. I wonder if it makes me look older, or if he’s into 4’10” women with almost nonexistent boobs, or if he likes 7th grade girls.

Nice tits. A man in his 40s on the sidewalk. I’m 13. My tits have grown since 7th grade, but I’m not wearing a bra that day, just a graphic tee with a collage of images from Kubrick movies printed on it. I’m walking with my dad down the street. The man whispers it to me as I pass him, so soft my dad doesn’t hear. I tell my dad when we get farther down the street and he doesn’t know what to say.

Nice tits. A man walking past me on the sidewalk. I’m 14. Apparently catcallers are not very creative with their comments. I’ve gone braless in the past year, but recently noticed that my left breast is a size bigger than my right (my mom pointed it out) and I’ve become more self conscious. She wants me to wear a bra, but I feel more comfortable, physically, without one. And politically I don’t want to wear one. Even though I know it’s not my fault I was catcalled, my mom’s warnings that going braless means I’m attracting men’s attention to myself—a version of saying I’m “asking for it”—nags in my head.

I already can’t stop feeling stressed about my tits, and now I have to deal with her feelings and this man’s feelings about them too. I am braless for myself, not for him.

Look at this pretty-ass one now. Look at her go. A man who often stands outside the church across the street from school. I’m 15. He’s catcalled a bunch of girls from school since we pass him on the way to lunch or to the Borough Hall subway station. It’s been a long day and I’m on my way home, so I’m too tired to say anything back.

I love you, baby. A man on the street. I’m 15. I’m going to see Medea with Rose Byrne at BAM in Brooklyn with my mom. It’s raining and dark, and I’m holding my mom’s hand.

The neon lights of BRIC across the street from us illuminate the rain. His back is to the light though, so all I see is his silhouette as he says it, loud enough for my mom to hear.

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I respond “fuck off,” reflexively. My mom says “ooh was that a catcall?” to me in a jokey voice.

Your boobs look nice in that bra! A woman outside the West 4th street A train stop. I’m 16. My friend and I have just left the Queer Liberation March, so I’m wearing a seethrough teal-colored bra with rainbows sewn over where my nipples are (with no shirt).

On-theme for pride and liberation. Apparently also for unsolicited comments about my body from strangers.

Hey mami, pretty... A man on the sidewalk waiting for the traffic light to change. I’m 16.

During quarantine. I am wearing a mask, he is not. I have headphones in and walk the other direction so that I don’t have to hear the rest of his sentence.

You look good, god bless you. A man on the sidewalk. I’m 16. I’m on my way to buy milk at the grocery store downstairs from our apartment. I’m wearing a trench coat—not form fitting—with a loose long sleeve shirt under it and loose pants. We are walking in opposite directions. From 10 yards away, I feel him staring at me. I look up against my better judgement and he keeps eye contact. He says it to me as he passes me. I just look straight ahead and don’t respond.

Thisbe W.

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Tragedy Their sins chanting in rhythms Awaiting the day when they can control.

They hope to immolate their so-called victims, Praising their controller, doing so of their own volition, In a corrupt empire where silence is demanded.

Yearning for tragedy in a cosmos that experiences uninterrupted dancing, Masses have sleepless nights, few with angst and many with gaiety.

Discarded sensations fill the polluted gutters Many abandoned due to the incessant envy Of those who have multitudes of satisfaction in overflowing cartons.

The Audacity! The Desperation!

To attempt to be admitted to such a society Of joyous peoples.

And so they desire of their own poisoned demise, And prepare the diseased drink.

Their madness overpowering their abilities.

Thunderous voices of their controller impale their chests.

A skewer selecting the ideal morsel, And so such ghostly creatures emerge, The noise of fluttering leathery wings of sorrow echo in the church where such murderous acts first began.

Their skin cadaverous, veins protruding from their exterior The chains imprinting marks on their ankles, indents.

A prisoner.

Folding themselves inward, a crepe abundant with distress.

Slaughtering themselves so another of their own can thrive.

They are a crimson stain upon their world.

Anaka P.

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It’s May 14th. Tomorrow is May 15th, a day we have all been waiting for, but I have a strong feeling that it’ll bring bad news. (mostly because Cuomo and the New York Times said so).

Today I missed my first period chemistry class because I didn’t know I had one. I was asleep. I woke up to a message asking if we had chemistry today. Whoops.

Although it is day 60 of this self isolation business, every day somehow feels simultaneously different and exactly the same. Today for example, there was no milk. Finally we opened the box of powdered milk we had bought about 55 days ago when my family and I were unsure of when we could buy food again. It turns out we are able to purchase groceries without much of an issue, for which I am grateful. It also turns out that my father’s anxiety has manifested itself into buying groceries. So last week when I counted we had 12 jars of tomato sauce because we didn’t have the right kind according to him. The first time he left the house in the first few weeks of quarantine was because our InstaCart order was somehow bumped up a day and we had to rush out to pick it up or we would lose the order. He went inside the store for about half a second before retreating back into the car and for the next two weeks proceeded to wake up every day saying he felt a new symptom. On exactly the 14th day after that he woke saying he felt better then he ever had before.

On the other hand, someone who is using this time much to her advantage is our dog Hera. Never in her life have we all been home at the same time for so many consecutive days. For my mom and I there is comfort in the fact that we can still order pie from the shop down the street. Before, we would only get pie when we had guests over, or when we happened to find one in our favorite flavour. Now we discovered that the pie shop will bake us a pie of our favorite flavour in a day. This discovery has been a blessing and a curse, I think we’ve averaged about 1 pie for every 2 weeks.

Another interesting development that this has led to is having all three meals together. Both my parents work and although my mom had been working mainly from home before Covid began, my father and I almost never had lunch at home. In the first weeks my mom insisted that we all plan lunch around my breaks. This plan fell apart quickly as I forgot to tell them when those breaks were.

I’d say this experience is like watching paint dry, but you have to wait for it to dry to find out what color you actually painted it. That is, who knows what’s going to come next. Speaking of paint, in an attempt to document my life at 4am of last Thursday I taped my camera to the ceiling of my brother’s room with duct tape. As you can imagine this did not go as planned and the weight of the camera quickly ripped of the tape (and the white paint) causing me to momentarily panic before getting rid of any 147

evidence that I had been in the room. When my parents asked if I had taped the ceiling after they said not to I tried to deny it, but the whole thing had been so stupid and futile that I couldn’t help but laugh and give myself away. In the end I didn’t even use the pictures for my project -- sorry mom and dad.

Although most days consist of waking up, breakfast, zoom, lunch, zoom, dinner, there have been a few noteworthy events. First, and of the most interesting in my opinion, was the theft of the house keys. I will preface this story by saying that my family lives in a brownstone, so there’s only one door to go through to get in. As it were, my mom walked the dog one night and, coming back in, left the door open in a moment of distraction. Of course she did not remember this and nobody noticed until around midnight when my dad yelled that we had left the door open. None of us thought much of it at the time since there is a lock on the inside that does not require a key and we went to sleep. The next morning, during my spanish class, my mom came into my room and asked me if I had moved the key basket from the radiator. I said no, because what would I want with the whole key basket? So our keys were gone. Our best guess as to what had happened was that someone came in while the door was left unlocked and took them.

The peculiar thing is that they didn’t take anything else. We were left to find a locksmith to change the cylinders and to contact the car dealership to send us a new key. Honestly it’s the most action I’ve experienced in the last 60 days.

Nina D.

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Pear Tree The young pear tree stood with anticipation in the garden Its branches bore the burden of the budding pears It wore a papery gown of snowy flowers Dripping in silver moonlight Drifting with the midnight breeze Dressed in a veil of white A young girl sat by her window Her eyes lingered Mesmerized It was laden with magic The filaments which lit her dreams The sparks which lit the fires of her heart Drinking in the luscious beams of moonlight She leapt among the glittering galaxies Swam through the milky tangle of sugar spun stars Thread them through her fingers and across the stretches of time And twirled and danced through the air Her eyelashes fluttered open Her satin pointe shoes pierced the pink horizon And she fell through the limitless sky Right back where she began Not much had changed Yet When she returned Her childhood home was different Heels replaced baby pink slippers A briefcase replaced her backpack A cherry red car replaced her bicycle But

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Her heart glowed with the same sparks of rose-tinted dreams Her eyes glistened with the same gleeful twinkle And the pear tree now stood strong, proud Draped in the same veil of white Drizzled with stardust Drinking the silver moonlight Evia D V.

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Tall In figure but also in character His buoyant disposition contagious Impermanence A strength he had no choice but to learn His eldest sister a widow But also without her children The first a heart attack The second a choice Rollerblading off a mall roof in Mumbai The third a car crash Just a month later Impermanence No real home From India to Spain to Jamaica From Dubai to Miami and back Spontaneity No choice but adaptation Nana The one who eats the skins of lemons and bananas The one with no cares or insecurities The one who sleeps from eight to ten And again from two to seven With the indulgences of dinner and walking his dogs in between The aspect of an isolate night appealing Nana The one who speaks bluntly Unfiltered Yet the world is still in admiration Now he lives His memory slowly leaving Dementia creeping in His hearing impairing but laughter still cordial enough to shake a room Any suffering or regrets are well concealed We only see the grandfather who lives in the present Makes the most of every moment And keeps his head up Tall Nikita M. 152

The Friend And The Fox Why does the water flow so willingly?

Why does it flow although it knows not where it is to go?

Perhaps the water follows like the sheep over the cliff.

Perhaps the water knows there is no point in fighting the current.

Why does the friend expect more when he knows what’s left?

Why does the friend come back to the predator?

Perhaps the mouse is longing for a fox, Although the fox has eaten all that has come before.

Why does a person go back to the edge, closer this time than the last?

Why does the person test their fate until it breaks?

Perhaps the tree needs to see how many leaves it can hold.

Perhaps it does not want to fold.

Mirabelle P.

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Dark Glasses The blackened rims hide the eyes which tell so many liesThe sunken cheeks hide the smileThis face is like a maskIt reveals nothing, and like a mask, it is pallid and lifelessDisplaying no emotionGiving off neither warmth nor cold, but a feeling of empty indifference which seemed almost worstBut you cower behind those dark rimsYou have fearYou know what it is you hideWhat you are hiding nowBut that’s ok I will waitI will wait.

Henry A.

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The View from Spring Navy-blue stillness envelopes the late evening It drapes itself on the wings of doves Hangs in perpetual pricking On the jagged tips of tree branches.

The silhouettes of the buildings opposite Fight to penetrate the thickly lathered sky And a reading lamp flicks on across the street Blinding in the darkness.

Sammy Goldston

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BIG MAN I wasn’t sure what was worse, the shooting pain running up my leg, or the feeling of blood oozing down it. I assumed it was blood anyway. It was too dark to tell for sure.

For all I knew, I was dying. I flicked a dime I had up and down. This would keep me entertained. At least until I failed to catch it on the way down. It was too dark to look for it once I did. The pain didn’t get worse; only stranger. As time went on, I felt weaker and weaker. Soon, I felt like I was floating. I imagined myself floating higher into the air, much higher than back to ground level. I could feel it, feel the wind hit my face as I flew through the air, brushing through the trees and back to the town.

It wasn’t all that bad you know. Sure I breathed a little stronger, coughed a bit louder as time went on, but how could I complain? The rock I rested my head on wasn’t too hard. The Mud wasn’t too wet. My leg hurt too badly anyway, what more to life was there? How much better did it get? I remember when I was bold and confident, when I felt there was a way out. When I first fell in here…

What a beautiful day it was, when I came through the brush, .30 cal in my hands, thinking I was the hottest one out there. I was such a good shot wasn’t I? Every animal was mine for the taking. No need to be safe. No need to be cautious. I’m bulletproof right?

Immortal, unbreakable. No one could touch me. Nobody could hurt me. “I’m the biggest man out here!” I would scream, firing into the air. Oh, I hit someone by accident? Who cares. It was their fault for ever thinking they deserved to walk on the same ground that I do. There I was, dancing around all through the clearing. Rap music blasting in my ears.

Who needs school? Education is for people too stupid to think for themselves. That was me, oh all those days ago.

That was me, too cool to keep my gun on safety, too fly to go to school. Don’t you want to be me? Aren’t you afraid of me? A BIG MAN like me? Whatever you would have said, you would feel pathetic for saying it after seeing me now; just a big man half dead in his own little trap. Okay, Okay, You’re tired of listening to me talk about myself. I’m bragging you say. I’m too full of myself you say. You would regret saying that a few days ago. So, what’s my story? Fine.

So there I was, dancing through the woods, feeling like the BIG MAN I was. Talk of a big old buck was big around these parts. I’d have to say I was the coolest guy around.

No one seemed to agree with that statement though. “Just you wait,” I said. Wait until that animal you all fear is across my shoulders, its enormous head on my wall for all to see.

That, my friend, was the biggest mistake of my life. And that’s saying something.

So I set out, not just determined, but eager to prove. I loaded the truck with everything I thought would be useful: a couple bear traps and the weapons I needed. There was no need to pack food, I thought. I’ll eat the buck when I put a bullet in its heart. I put

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a .30 cal and and a 10 gauge in the backseat of my truck, the rest of the guns were in the bed. When I got here I set up the traps I brought and even set up something special for my prize. Yes, that’s what I’m trapped in now. It took me a day or two just to dig this ditch, it’s certainly not something you could do. You’re too weak and small. Anyway, I planted a few rods I sharpened into spikes and tossed a few rocks down here to be safe. But Hell, you can’t even see it at this time of night.

When all was said and done, I grabbed my 30. Cal and starting marching through the clearing. Rap Music blasted in my ears as I searched for this monster of a buck everyone feared. I kept my gun in my hands and had one in the chamber. This was by far my favorite rifle out of the many I had. Though a semi-auto would have been safer for the monster I was supposed to face, I always preferred the lever action. A clear shot to the head would surely drop him. I was as hyped up as I had ever been, I danced around the clearing, ready to open fire. Soon I was bored. The buck hadn’t got caught in a trap of mine yet and I was desperate to see some action. It wasn’t to prove my town wrong anymore. It was to prove to myself that I could take on anything. I lived for action. Finally, I saw the buck.

It was as big as ever, bigger than I pictured, but not as big as me. No one is as big as me.

It would fear me I thought to myself. It’s a dumb animal and it’s time to put it down. It seemed to think it was bigger than me though, once it saw my gun it got angry. Most deer run when they see your gun. Matter of fact, most deer run when they see you. Not this one though. He looked me dead in the eye as he got ready to charge. I let him. He came at me head on, but I wasn’t scared. I fired without hesitation. The bullet met his charge with ten times the strength, square into his skull. It was a hollow point so I knew he was dead.

His body dropped immediately. How pathetic, I thought to myself as I walked toward the body. What a pathetic, weak, dumb animal. I didn’t even need his head, his life was enough. As I walked away, you could say I was too focused on my victory. The surprise that I had for the animal was covered with a green table cloth, so the animal couldn’t see it beneath. I guess it was too well hidden though. I headed toward the truck, ready to go back home. The only memory that remains afterward is the ground falling beneath my feet, and the shooting pain in my leg.

“So that’s my story,” I told the man.

“I’m glad I found you here,” he said. “Let me go find help.” Before he could make another motion, I used the last of my strength and lifted my rifle that had fallen beside me.

I levered it, and pulled the trigger. The man was hit in the shoulder and fell in next to me.

“Why?” he asked, bleeding and fading slowly. “I just wanted to help.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but weak men like you don’t deserve to help a BIG MAN like me. Only weak people need help.”

I dropped my rifle and stared at the sky. My time was near and I knew it. I smiled “I am a BIG MAN,” I muttered.

Cason McFerrin-Clancy 158

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Last night I lay watching the ceiling dust bunnies hop around I was trying to stop tomorrow but today came anyway My wrists smelled like lavender but they were sticky with sweat The shadows of my fan kept on spinning spinning spinning My mind was dizzy with thought I tossed around again and stared at my ceiling Because it was too hot to go to sleep right?

Quincy C.

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Ode to Michelle Yeoh You are the rock of my Asian-pride When I feel defeated, like my Asian-ness has been scrubbed away like a penny on a lottery ticket, you are there in 90s Hong Kong cinema hugging the inner fold of my eye, the part that people can’t see I watch your movies with my dad on DVD periodically Because it makes us feel strong You gave me confidence in my Asian-ness when I watched your action movies at four years old You empowered me as a girl, as a woman when you she teamed up with Anita Mui and Maggie Cheung in Heroic Trio I forgot this strength, I lost it as I grew through elementary school insecure about my eyes, ashamed of my Apo’s accent Pieces of me were taken away I made drawings of my favorite white characters as Asian people Harry Potter and the golden trio of Batman, Wonder Woman, and Superman I believed that because they had black hair it was plausible for them to be Asian It made the whole white boy-breaks-a-token-Chinese girl-nonsensically-named-Cho-Chang’s heart more bearable if he were actually an Asian boy all along I didn’t realize that I had a role model who looked like me Fabulously flawless and a badass, exactly what a young Asian woman wants to be Hell, you did your own motorcycle stunt in a fuckin Jacky Chan film When you, Anita, and Maggie walk in slo-mo at the end of Heroic Trio I yell “YES” at the tv.

In that moment I feel the part of my larynx where my ancestors left vibrations of Cantonese, Taiwanese, Shanghainese, and Fukanese for me to find Thisbe W.

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Desert Rose Pink peppercorn squid Cooked by oil fire Blazing in her kitchen Crunchy but good Cooked well enough That’s what he said to me Staring through the smoke My fire had taken three matches Soot in my eye, you know what that means He pointed out that my sweater was ruined It’s the best type of sweater Comfy summer night star gazing Warm memory of a past day I was different, and that’s fine It has a rose on it ‘Desert rose,’ said the salesman ‘Regulate water intake, hot area recommended.’

It might not make it I asked him about the color He says it will bloom pink if it lives My desert rose died It is dying It is dead I left the damn thing in the rain And I’m sorry Jack A-G.

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Doves Of Love (Read aloud) A time and again a place and a fender two fenders three fenders of love clash where the doves sing lullabies to the sweet moon peach pies and chicken cries as it often flies Forgetting the others that could come that would come that should come by and by Maybe just another lifetime America That wet morning dew on countryside grass that gets your socks all wet, but not dirty America Or urica Amurica The coals in your stockings showing what others get for christmas Amirica The fake celebrity figures Instagram models The woods of hollywood Down ere woods Our trees and shrubbery ain’t like them that of them other woods But a time and again, when one and the same, they meet up, link hands, eat a donut And maybe some frosting for a cherry on top Ignoring all the fickle fiddle scrap in the otherworldly knapsack.

Maybe just another lifetime It’ll take For the others The ones marked with dirt To finally Hear the doves of love And let the brawlers know That they’ve got fenders Lukas K.

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“The body regenerates every seven to ten years.” Cells split again and again, until every part of the body is new. But the answer of who I am seems to change every moment I search for it. I am Leopoldo Brite Force V. IV to the TSA and Cuatro to the rest of the world, but to myself I am none of these. I can rack my mind with the names I know people call me, but that only gets me farther from the permanent truth. I’m white-knuckled cupping my hands, but it all seeps away just when I think I have an answer.

Eyebrows: My Grandpa told me that my eyebrows had thickened since he last saw me.

He looked at me with a furrowed, bespectacled, brow. In the bathroom, I looked in the mirror and ran my hands over them. I didn’t realize until then that they had grown dark and full, like eyebrows that weren’t mine, but were mine. I saw a new person in me, and I wasn’t sure I liked him.

“Every time you remember something, all you can do is remember your last memory of that thing.” All I have is memory and now, and I’ll never know what is next. Maybe it’s okay to never find the answer. To live knowing that it will always be there and that I will never see my full picture.

T: When I found T, I knew so little. When I loved T, I got a glimpse. “In every dream you have, everyone in it is you.” To know who I am requires the prerequisite of really knowing someone else—to feel their heart and know their humanity. I’ve only known one this way.

Each moment slowly rips at me. Each memory waters me down. Would it be so bad to forget?

If my heart beats in my ears, should I write it? The other night I forgot for a moment too long. To numb pain now is only to wake up in agony. To forget is to lose something forever.

The me that writes each letter, writes from his pain.

Live with a love of now and let yourself feel the water of memory run over you.

You are constantly becoming.

Cuatro V.

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February, Crushed I’m waiting on some stuff, always. Like I swear there’s never a moment to pause and listen to the song that creeps out from under my step-brother’s door those deep electronic beats and the little motion he does with his hand and he’s so grown now I look at pictures from when he was three and wonder if it’s the same little boy whose fingertips used to float up and graze my arm when he was totally relaxed that I’m looking at now.

I notice things.

Your friends pat you on the back really gently like you are so fragile like a little creature whose neck you could break with a pointer finger and thumb even though you’re breathing hard like a hulking monster even though you slashed your knee open and its bleeding all over my white scarf even though you’re big enough to hurt me even though.

If you’re so far away then why are you still holding my hand?

I had a dream we were in a dark room. It was night outside so the city lights were the only thing glowing & flickering. You fell off the bed. I tried to catch you but I couldn’t.

The floor never ended, you just kept falling through translucent room after room. I was so terrified to see you go.

What’s on the other side?

Only everything you’ve ever loved My anxiety makes my heart pump like a fist, always, insistently. That’s what I tell my therapist. She tells me my body needs extra stimulation to feel whole. I tell her I really don’t like when she jots words down in her tiny notebook. That it makes me on-edge like when I dream a murderer is chasing me. The funny thing about those dreams is that the murderer never looks scary. He’s never more than 5’7’’ and has a pretty nice smile.

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My therapist nods, closes the notebook.

Your father is only your father till he wakes up in a panic and forgets. I am forgetting things every day. But maybe I wasn’t meant to remember, meant to shed facts like loose hair. My friend can recall such small details of moments years ago. I think she’s a God. At least, I love her like one.

Tess A-M.

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The Dead Always Face the Sky I woke up with a desire for something; I didn’t know what it was, though.

I spent the morning looking for it. I walked around my house, uprooting pillows and couches, but it didn’t seem to be anywhere. I searched under my mattress, in the shower, in the crawl space of the basement, even in the boiler room. I thought maybe it would be outside, so I walked around my neighborhood, knocking on doors and searching in tree hollows (in which I found many long-hidden and long-forgotten objects, none of which were what I sought after). The people that answered their doors were mostly polite: they would say how can I help you? And I would say I’m looking for something, but when they asked what I was looking for, I would simply stare, mute, and they would eventually say I hope you find it and close their doors. This didn’t upset me; I simply felt dissatisfied.

When I got back home, I went into the backyard, scanning the yellowed winter grass for it. I thought I saw something a few feet from the back fence, an abnormality in the texture of the blades, so I made my way over to take a look, and upon further examination, I discovered a small patch of dirt where no grass had grown. Here it is, buried in my yard. I felt drawn to the ground, felt my urge close at hand, beckoning me from beneath the dead grass. I found a shovel and began to dig methodically, humming a tune to the beat of my digging.

I suppose I dug for a long time, though I didn’t feel much time pass at all as I drove my spade into the earth again and again. Like church bells. When I finally stopped, I wiped my forehead and felt how much I had sweated. I peered into the hole, and thought that it was odd how rectangular it was; I had not attempted to dig in any particular shape, yet it occurred to me that it looked just the perfect size for a man. Like a grave. And as I looked into those black depths, down into the cold, barren earth that I had uncovered, the depths beckoned me even more strongly than before. Come, your desire is here.

I lowered myself into the hole carefully. I thought it odd how slowly my heart beat, how calm I was as my body passed from our world to the underworld. When I came to the bottom, I felt the gravity again. Come closer. I lay down and put my face to the dirt, and all at once I felt my desire being fulfilled as I kissed the earth, like some

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ancient craving neglected since the dawn of time coming to fruition underneath me, warming my body with perfect satisfaction and content.

I did not move when I felt the first clump of displaced earth come down on my back, and I did not move as it piled up slowly on top of me. I let it shower over me, feeling how logical and natural it was as the earth returned to equilibrium, until I knew that daylight was gone. I found it comforting to be certain of eternity.

After a minute or so, I lost breath, and my heart came to a rest, offering one final beat of thought: I never knew of a face down burial. Don’t the dead always face the sky?

Max K.

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It began with a swift push and a cry.

Naked covered in blood and bits of flesh, Sticky, warm embrace without warning Pried open and ejected into rough hands And a deluge of blinding, cold light.

Calloused by the bracing wind, She develops a hard exoskeleton.

Calcium now encloses her soft, pulsing organs.

They bloat and push against the edges As seasonal whiplash dulls into a slow changing of the tides.

With each step, she leaves many in her wake Each loss a push-pin piercing into her ossified outer layer Each casual grope and penetrative smirk eroding her rough-hewn walls.

And so often she forgets her body behind, And her shell travels through city streets and The lives of unsuspecting strangers.

She learns to decorate her crystalline carapace, She learns to travel thousands of miles In vacant ostentation; she turns many colors.

She imagines that she has always been this way A mind inside a cold and empty shell, a thespian Morphing in and out of ephemeral fantasy.

But there is no acclaim, no encore.

In the night, when she returns She is once again naked She silent, covered in blood and bits of flesh.

Her swollen body bursts through its cage She crumbles, and she molts.

Heath H.

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Partitions There is something about the first five weeks: October: I get overwhelmed.

But today I go down to the garden!

To check on the marigolds: And watch the tomatoes drop.

There is room in this life for the tomatoes to grow two heads: There is room in this life for my mind to be muddled, for an inner need to ask oneself, “Is this real?” when looking into the acorn face of one’s mother, Drinking coffee on the porch telling me something, remarkably beautiful in her technicolor: There is room in this life to die and come back; room to die and stay dead; room to live forever.

The vine reaching out to me from the tree: its perfect coils: the absurdity of what is unmistakably an outstretched hand.

Zibia B.

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Running Into Absence I lie on the top bunk, watching the gnarled knots of the wooden beams above me that seem to shift positions every time I blink. Is it the darkness, which takes on a more fluid presence here than in the city, moving silently about the room, covering and uncovering space? Or perhaps it is the fuzzy shapes that surface on the crest of sleep, floating across my vision. I cannot be sure. Because it is quiet at night here, the lake can be heard, its waters gurgling on the shore. After all the time that has passed, I am unaccustomed, and cannot help thinking there is somebody lost out there, who keeps stumbling over the rocks and reeds and sand. But it is only the waves washing over the shore, I remind myself again.

On the shelf next to the window, there sits a stuffed animal loon, and by now, a bit of stuffing seeps out from its seam. It stares back at me with a deranged air. Chewedup board books and our toddler drawings overflow from the shelves, encased in ten year’s worth of dust, maybe more. In the wall, I can hear mice scuttling back and forth, and it is difficult to accept the fact that they have taken over the house. I caught a glimpse of one this evening, scurrying at the shock of seeing a human, and I could not avoid its odd, endearing quality; the little grey ears as big as its head, the way it turned a full circle the moment it met my eyes (almost touching its tail, so quickly it retreated into a hole), made me want to love it.

Over time, the mind boards up memories, burying places along with the possibility of return. Raquette Lake seemed to entirely disappear from my consciousness, until my mother told me we might go back, and then in one sudden, involuntary flood, that part of my life was able to surface. When we arrived this afternoon, it was like stepping into a warped time capsule. Standing before the door, shrouded by the peeling, green paint (that particular shade which is almost like a theme here, from the now-corroded tiles down to the silverware handles), immediately the pungent smell took over: like absinthe, with traces of the earlier version of my grandmother. When I was young in this room, my grandmother would leave, despite my endless pleas for her to lie with me a little longer, and I would reach for the pillow she had leaned against, pressing my face into the wrinkles that still held her scent. By morning, the vestige of her had vanished. I lie here now, folded in the blue August darkness, and in the alien bedspread I thought I would never see again.

This bedspread was one of the few memories that remained unrepressed through those years, though I see now, there are not aliens on it, but planets.

No memory has gone untouched, but what remains of before unsettles me.

When we stepped inside, we called my grandmother, the four of us hovering over the tele172

phone––picking up, her voice creaked like trees in a forest to say not “Hello,” but, “The caller-ID is still Alissa.” We fell silent, and that small chasm echoed. Like waves’ shadows left behind on the shore, the past seems to take on rhythms, receding and replenishing with the tide. The space between the shadow’s departure and the next shadow’s renewal becomes almost imperceptible, the shape impossible to grasp.

The great pendulum clock that once struck each half-hour has ceased to be wound, I wanted to say to her. In its place, the black-eyed susans have bloomed up from the floor-board cracks. Beside the porch, where ten years earlier she tended her herb garden so fastidiously, things have tangled; the cilantro-mint mutations leave little evidence of how life was then.

We told her we loved her and wished she could be here. Then we hung up.

I stood in the empty bedroom for a long time after, sweeping my vision around the space. The bed was strewn with mouse-droppings, the bed that once was hers. Even as I tried to tidy the room for her, a stalactite of light escaped, melting down the wall, making the clawfoot legs of her bed appear to be broken. Lying here as tomorrow encroaches on my thoughts, still it feels almost impossible to admit that Trace is marrying a twenty-two year old (a child, my mother says).

In the corner of the living room was the round, wooden table. Enveloped by two vast windows, the last puzzle still resided with only the edges done, skeleton-like. I almost saw my aunt hovering over it, as she always was, my grandmother often at her side.

Through the windows there lies a green ball, deflated by time, eternally suspended on the forest’s edge. Farther still, the lake, with its narrow strip of sand, initially unrecognizable to me because I recall it as a beach. The purple flowers, though rare, are in bloom now.

Ten years before, under the Emeralite reading lamp they would scrutinize the pieces late into the night, imitated in the window’s reflection.

Outside, I remember opening the screened door of the porch (it took some force), to crouch down in the blue grasses and find the grasshopper I had caught a glimpse of, so small, springing to and fro. I was surprised, how delicate this creature was, that I could feel its heartbeat cupped in my hands.

One final magenta shape dissolves on my eyelids, and I fall asleep.

Katherine S-R. 173

A Letter From Her Boyfriend, Found in the Trash : Sometimes I wish I could show you all the many ways in which you decorate the world. Possibly it’s only your effect on my imagination--the smiling strawberries I see when you’ve told a joke, the olive in your glass pretending for its own enjoyment to be a hurricane and twirling like a little green and plump ballerina around the rim, the birds I see floating on their backs behind you in a sky of reflective glass. I’m quite reflective, I think, when I’m alone, away from you, with room in my mind to stretch and think. You know I hate writing my thoughts down; you know I love to bask in them, as if I am a sponge, when really the thought is the perpetrator, the thing soaking me up, until I’ve completely forgotten the thought in the first place. But I do wish I had more to say to you, sometimes. Other times I like to hear you speak but I wish more than anything in the whole wild world not to bore you.

I can see now the sirens swimming in your weepy eyes, splashing and laughing giddy audacious malevolent laughs. Diving in and out, pleasurably drowning in your pain.

I wish I could ring them out one by one, starve them of their water and feel them pulse in my fist just before I’ve squeezed so hard they’re released from torture and their guts are like smashed cucurbitas on my hands. I suppose somewhere on my face you could see my ideas, my passion in denouncing your searing and bursting pain, because you whisper and scream at me that if I wanted it gone so badly I shouldn’t have caused it “in the first place.”

Stella M.

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My Ease Into This World Everyday I read Peanut Butter by Eileen Myles and I smile.

I take shelter in my own reflection and the way the moon makes my own face look beautiful.

I take shelter in the way my own hands look alone.

I take shelter in the way my breath feels between my crooked ribs. I take shelter in reading poetry.

Everyday I read Peanut Butter by Eileen Myles and I smile. And I think of other things that make me smile. The moon.

The way it makes my face look and the way it makes my face feel.

Everyday I read Peanut Butter by Eileen Myles and I smile.

Because I hate the way my hands look but they are what materializes my poetry. ​Embrace the “the sensation of/being dirty in/body and mind” because that is poetry to me.

And Uppity by Eileen Myles is poetry to her. And so, I can hate the way my hands look alone.

If they will write alone.

Everyday I read Peanut Butter by Eileen Myles and I smile. And I think, how would Eileen describe the way her own ribs feel? Mine feel like they were put in the wrong way.

They poke out beneath my skin and my shirts. They are looking for a home.

Everyday I read Peanut Butter by Eileen Myles and I smile. Or the poem my grandparents wrote me for my birthday.

April 7th, the peak of COVID deaths in New York City. They wrote for me,“Poetry is ear art.” My ears are my best friends.

My grandfather taught my ears poetry, and my mother and grandmother taught my ears all my favorite books.

The story of Milly-Molly-Mandy and the white thatched roof house is my favorite ear art.

I think I like Milly-Molly-Mandy so much because of the way it sounds everytime they say her name.

I take shelter in ear art. My ease into this world.

Adelaide C. 175

Candle Rock All the sunflowers are dead, was the first thing I said when I walked in the door. She gave me a look, and went back to chopping the potatoes.

The house was as I remembered — french doors, an aching scent of mold that cut my nostrils. Outside smelled of autumn, the small-town-wrap-around-porch smell of cinnamon and incoming cold. The leaves had begun to fall. Wind, cool and light, skimmed my skin. The front of the house had begun to flake. Paint peeled away in sheets above the windows, revealing mossy green beneath the grey. Her window sills were lined with plants — vines dripping out through holes in the mosquito netting. The inner walls were bare. My mother obsessively erased any fingerprints traced across them. All the rooms were dusted, the floors vacuumed, the rugs turned out every Sunday. I used to turn them out with her, shouldering the brown twined creations that pulled our fingers red, made our thumbs pulse. Afterwards, with aching arms, she would make me a cup of green tea — and settle down to read the morning post. I loved to watch her eyes scanning over the letters, how she squinted when she read something that displeased her. She never outwardly reacted. She was one who was told to repress — to never overflow.

My mother cracked once, when our neighbors accused us of taking their mail.

They said we were stealing, and she flooded over. She let her voice rise, her hands flick, her eyes widen. Her words curdled, the syllables mowing over the grass as she yelled, “I am many things, but I am not a liar. I am not a cheat.”

They never talked to us again, they could not stomach being bested by her. The daily next door began to peel up, purring behind cupped hands that we were not to be trusted. They whispered us thieves, said we filled our pockets with dried beans at the grocery store. People began to believe them. At school they said I was dirty, said that “no good person’s hair curls like that.” They told me to cut it off, to smooth it down into the box they had allowed me to occupy. I refused, choosing to embrace my coils, and mama refused to go. So a year later the neighbors moved away instead — “to start a family.” The rumors died down, subsided to a slow simmer which erupted during PTA meetings and sticky summer days when boredom took root. There were the little comments: looks as we waited at the bakery, smiles when my mom got her hair straightened at the salon. We learned to cope, to live with the words and move on.

Maybe the comments finally got to her: her face hollowed, her eyes stretched deeper into her head. Her hair was streaked grey. Its ends frayed, the strands trailing across her shoulders. The creases in her forehead folded over themselves, shadowing her face.

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I was reflected in her irises, my form flipped and warped — filtered through filmy dark brown. She still wore red lipstick, had a faint rim of eyeliner that trailed down her face. She still had her birthmark on her left cheek, a cartoon cloud, its puffy bumps angled towards the corners of her eyes. But her skin lacked the warmth I remembered. She seemed worn, over washed.

I always had the urge to leave. Maybe a road trip. Take my mother’s car and drive until I run out of gas. I worked at the grocery store and saved my salary in a tomato sauce jar. Through days of bagging cauliflowers and grits I would imagine boarding a plane, fleeing my skirt-wearing-church-going life. I turned out the jar every Sunday, counting the dollars on my 3 bed as the light began to fade. I passed $500 in mid-April. The window boxes had just begun to sprout, green leaves bumping the soil as the air started to warm.

I held a party for one, silently swaying as downstairs my mother punched biscuits and stirred dhal.

There was nothing particularly wrong with Candle Rock. As small towns go it was not an especially bad one. There was a power plant ten miles from town, a tangle of smokestacks and coils that pushed coal into the grid. My mother worked there. Six days a week she rose at 6:25, put on a black shirt, and tugged herself into the growing light. She was a bookkeeper. She came home with her brain cluttered with numbers and lungs full of soot. But she had learned not to complain. Yes, it stained black clothing darker, and yes she sometimes could not breathe as she tried to fall asleep, but she was one of the lucky ones: she finished high school. The town just never sat right, and when the plant closed the year after I graduated I knew it was time to flee. I took the SAT, packed a suitcase, and left one Tuesday morning in July.

During the rains two Marches ago the foundations rotted away and the houses began to slide into the river. The state was called in to investigate — they came in black cars with testing kits and pointed shovels. They pronounced the trees dead, and told my mother to move away while she still could. The coal had turned the water thick, dust choking the trees until the roots turned black and curled away. The plant had drained out into the river, letting the smoke settle over the current and be carried downstream. Candle Rock got the worst of it. It was just before the rapids and the soot had become calcified. There was nothing they could do. My mother relaid her topsoil, folding her plants anew the next year as she waited and prayed the river bank would solidify. She pushed herself into the ground. Each day, as her lungs pulled and choked she would turn the soil over, as if when

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she dug deep enough the earth would turn to auburn. She could resettle into her world.

I heard about it first on the evening news. As I sat in my apartment next to the radio eating sushi, a story came on about a town so congested with smoke you could burn the air itself. I called my mother, asked if it was true.

“The burning? No. Our matches still go out.”

“But…” “They say Candle Rock is dying.”

“How long?”

“Two or three years — then apparently it’ll all slide into the river.”

I booked a flight, grabbed an empty suitcase, and returned for the first time in ten years to help my mother pack her life away.

Mama, Candle Rock’s heart was failing. It had a coronary, only two years left to live. I brought boxes at the grocery store. We could create a world for ourselves, put them together and attach it to the back of your car. Drive to the city, settle down and paint the boxes red to remind us of the sunsets. The soot turns the sky vivid every evening. Mama you could sue this place for damages — look how it has turned your coughs black, stained your bleached skin grey. In this place no one lived long. People trusted each other too much. It turned them soft, homogenized their hearts. You let the world seep in. By the time you noticed it was too late. The ground was too choked to clear away. I gave up. So should you. I escaped, and I still sleep peacefully at night.

Mama, please just let me help you cart your life away.

She put me in my old room. Posters still lined the wall, Billie Joe Armstrong staring down onto my hair as I unpacked. I had brought two shirts, a pair of green pants, and some underwear. I did not need to stay long. I found a pair of jeans in the bottom drawer with a rip in the left knee — my favorites in high school. The colour looked wrong against my skin, the cool blue tinting my knee caps grey. The bottoms frayed from years of trailing across the ground. I felt small. I remembered days in high school wearing these, time spent scouring through the halls of that linear concrete building. I remember the evenings spent standing on the sides, of back against wall as I waited for my friends to ask to be driven home.

I tugged them off, and threw them in the bathroom trash.

Dinner was pan fried fish with cumin mashed potatoes on her white china plates.

She slid the fish across the table as we talked. Her eyes were laden with doubt. Her hands shook as she portioned food onto my plate. Her back had curved in the time I was away,

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her spine arching towards the wooden table, arms wrinkling in the air from the ceiling fan.

As she spoke her feet ticked across the floorboards. “How has everything been?”

“I’ve been good. I’m still working at the newspaper.” She smiled, and went to get some hot sauce.

“You know I kept a bottle just in case. Do you still love Tabasco?”

“Yes, mama. I still eat scrambled eggs and hot sauce every morning.”

“Old habits die hard.” She laughed. A moving van drove by outside, turning the room a momentary mossy green.

As we ate, she dissected me. She scanned over my body, stopping on my short hair, my exposed shoulders, the tattoo of a bird on my left arm. Her eyes tinted with displeasure. She asked me about the city, about my apartment, my roommate who had moved to California, trying to form a picture of my life. Of the years she had lost when I departed. As our plates cleared and crumbs trailed across the wood I could tell she was holding something back. She bit her lip, her voice becoming softer as our forks scraped the china. Her questions became vacant, reasking things she had said moments before. Finally, looking down, she asked if I had missed her, if I had missed us.

“Yes. Sometimes.”

I finished eating, and moved to put my plate in the sink.

“Sometimes? Only sometimes?” She held out a hand, her yellowing nails glowing under the tungsten light.

“Sometimes. Candle Rock is hard to truly miss.” I handed her the plate, and went up to have a shower.

She taught me how to fish, when the water was still clear. I remember the snap of the line, the way it stretched and shrunk. I caught a trout one April when I was twelve — a rainbow one with scales that trapped the sky. I watched its life run away on the rocks, the water seep from its mouth, from its fins. That day I learned things could end, my hands held a power to break and cut and drain. She taught me how to clean it, how to slice it open and trail its innards across the counter. We grilled it whole, pulling out bones as the light dimmed past our windows. Inside our home, I could pretend that what they said did not matter, that Candle Rock did not exist.

She knew I could not spend my life within our house — I had too much vitality for that. I needed to go, to live. That meant I had to leave her behind.

— I watched my hair curl around the drain. The water folded over my skin, the

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drops tracing my spine flat. I let my arms fall. Above, the shower head began to sputter. I turned the water down, told myself to breathe. I washed out my conditioner and flipped my head into a towel. My head was heavy with water, my ears clogged. Stepping out the mirror fogged my reflection. My edges were blurred, my boundaries pulsing in the dying lightbulb.

I turned away.

I remembered those mornings. As I brushed my teeth I would dissect myself, try to fit myself to “normal”: nose too big, eyes too big, skin too dark for a place like this. That mirror watched me when I came home, as I stayed up until midnight writing essays. It watched my dark circles deepen, as my skin spiked and cleared. It watched me grow three inches in ninth grade, saw my feet stretch and nails crack. As my first period arrived in that soapy water. As I fell asleep in the bathtub before senior prom. It watched as I packed myself into my mother’s shoe boxes. I took her tube of face cream with me. I wanted a little piece of her I could smell during my first winter alone. A little bit of home to remind me why I left. It saw my mother break it, just a little crack on the corner — the edge her phone hit when I did not pick up. It saw her force herself not to cry, to cover her face in concealer three shades too light and put on the black of respectability. The black of a mourning she had not yet met.

I fell asleep with my window open. The air was quiet, the crickets absent. They too had fled.

Mama this town is eating me again. I can’t sleep, the air is thick, the water clings to my skin. Mama, everything is blending in — you are fusing with your house, you are melting into the wooden floor. Look how your hair matches its grain, how your nails fit into its seams.

We need to peel you away. We need to run. Uproot you, tear you out and drive. Mama, we are running out of time — two years, two years before this all pours out. Two years before total collapse. The sunflowers gave up, the river gave up, so should you. Mama, after forty five years it is time to leave Candle Rock behind.

“I hope you slept well.” She put a stack of pancakes in front of me, passing the butter dish.

I never drank coffee until I was in college, my mother only had tea for as long as I can remember. She said coffee makes her teeth feel strange. She used to bleach those as well, laying strips down on them every Sunday. While she set her hair for the week — always straight, she loved to slick it down with oil — she would read to me stories in her newfound lisp. It would delight me, her voice transformed like that by two thin pieces of

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plastic.

“Eat up, Safa.”

I readied my fork, and dove in.

The pancakes were as soft as I remembered. She always whipped the eggs by hand, using her mother’s whisk— the only thing she brought from her parents’ house. Its metal loops were bent from years of use. The whisk beating every weekend, the sound of it coated the hours I spent reading on our porch. She called me her own little worm, her library eater, her Safa who kept the bookstore alive.

“Why did you bring all those boxes?” Her eyes peered down from the stool she was standing on. She was wearing a green dress that day. The hem hit just below her knees. The edges frayed slightly, green threads clinging to her stockings. The skirt flared and pleated, making her look small — like a child playing dress up in her grandmother’s closet. Or a used department store mannequin. Her hair was turned out at drooping the ends, her feet already cloaked in socks slightly too light. A mannequin who had been in a storage room for years. One covered with dust, dated.

“Don’t I need to help you move out?”

I put my fork down. Her feet landed on the floor.

“Who said anything about moving out?” She picked up her shoe from the hallway and sat down across from me. I could see her pulse through her neck, her veins twitching as she laced her boots onto her feet.

“Haven’t you read the news? You can’t stay here. Everything is dissolving.”

“Safa—” Her mouth tightened. She went to grab her purse.The coins in her wallet began to crash, the quarters pounding against each other.

“Mama there’s nothing left. You heard them, Candle Rock is dead.”

Her shoulders tensed. She looked down, clicked her bag shut, grabbed my half-eaten breakfast, and dumped it in the trash.

“I have to pick up the packages.”

The door slammed behind her, the lock clicking back into place. Through the open window I heard her heels snap down the front steps. The sun shone through the windows onto the table, turning the wood warmer. Even the sun looked weak, its edges undefined. It wavered as the thick clouds passed by. It rained later that day. The sky let loose drops that were tinted grey. The whole town smelled smoky afterwards, like a wet barbecue — the charcoal smoldering out in the grates of a grill as everyone ran inside.

I turned on the faucet, letting the dishes become magnified beneath the spray.

The soap still smelled like a motel verison of the sea. Like the vacations we never took.

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The suds rose to my elbows, the white bubbles becoming finer as my fingers skirted plates.

I could feel her instruments within the water— the edge of her small shovel, the sharp point she uses to break the ground. I scrubbed them, set them out on a towel as the water dripped down the drain. The shovel was rusting, the point stained black and flaking. Soil sat in its lines, its arches perpetually coated with silt.

Mama we need to pack. We need to leave. This town never wanted us, and look: your chest ached every morning, your hands were crusting over. Mama, we were sliding. We needed to perform emergency surgery. Rip out our core, the twisted pipes clogged with soot — we were clogged ourselves. Could they hook us to generators as well? Would we make them money? Or would we only choke the river further? The air was thick. As I woke, there was pressure on my lungs. The shower ran thick. Mama, they were leaving. Look how the glory faded, the letters fell from gas station signs and the diner’s lights went out. Argon leached into our streets, the glass shattered and orange lights faded into the darkness. The night’s reflection is dulled, its glimmer 11 buffed away. The light escaped us, the neon turning out sky back to blue as it wafted away.

Mama, nothing lives forever. Candle Rock too will die — was already gone.

I opened the cabinet in the dining room. Dust gilded onto my face. The small clumps caught in my hair, made my nose itch. I began to cough.

As the air cleared I saw the shelves, the extra kitchen towels and bags of rice falling onto each other. She still bought the same type: the basmati that came in white and blue bags from the store in the city, packaged in plastic-laced fabric that crunched when touched. She liked how the rice never fully lost its structure when cooked. How it was so pale, like the baking soda she scoured over her pans. When it spilled the grains matched the linoleum of the counter perfectly. We would find it hiding the spices days later.

I used to visit the market with her once a month. We would pull ourselves into her car, the seats always sticky from the moisture trapped within the tinted windows, and drive an hour through the Sunday-morning lull to arrive there just as it opened. The aisles were so tall, the walls of spices and different kinds of lentils always on the edge of toppling.

I would reach the bags that were too high. She refused to stand on her toes in public. We filled the back of her car, the seats packed to the windows with rice and vegetables — things that the grocery store in Candle Rock never sold. Afterwards we always stopped at the diner off the highway. Underneath the faltering neon sign, the red flickering faint across our dark hair, we would touch our milkshake glasses together, and ready ourselves to reenter the biome of Candle Rock.

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I unfolded the box by my feet. The cardboard was powdery in my fingers, crunching as I placed the bottom flat. The towels were lightly damp. They smelled of summer, of rain and 12 laundry detergent. The fabric had been lightened to a whitish-grey — not the blue I remembered folded over the oven handle as a child. They were ribbed, the ridges knitted finer. She rehemmed them a few years before I left, spending a day ironing all the seams flat. She always complained that the thread color was slightly off, the seams too dark and pearly. Now it all blended into one landscape of lightly fraying fabric. They landed in the box with a rustle, nesting into the corners as I laid more on top. One slipped out and caught on the handle of the mop propped against the wall.

As I bent down to pick it up the door opened. She walked into the kitchen, set her package on the table, and froze.

“Safa, what are you doing?”

I put the towel into the box, set the mop upright. I reached for a bag of rice.

“What’s going on?”

I dropped the bag in, the rice landing with a hollow thunk. My neck began to cramp, cracking as I reached for the next one.

“Safa?” She walked over and grabbed the box, her hands tensing as she picked it up. Her arms vibrated as she tried to maintain her grip. The dry surface of the cardboard slipped from her fingers and crashed to the floor. The towels skimmed across to land by the back door. One of the bags of rice burst open, the grains fanning out to pool around her feet. It shaped the room in a halo of white, the edges now lined and hazy. Her eyes widened. Her voice came out soft. “Safa, what are you doing?”

“Mama, I only wanted to help.” My voice cracked, the words sounded empty as they echoed around the room.

“Help? Me?” “Mama what’s going on?”

She sat down, parting the rice as she pulled her chair out. “Safa, I’ve been alone for so long, I don’t need your help.” The sound of sliding cardboard. “Anyway, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Mama, you can’t stay here.” She turned her eyes towards me. Her heels began to quiver against the floor.

“I can’t go.” Her shoulders shook softly. She began to cry, tears turning her skin glossy. Her face stripped away, her mascara running down her face. She looked older, frail and exposed as she wiped herself away. Her eyes began to redden. The brown of her irises diluted as tears crested over, tracing her roads, her alleyways of skin now flooded. She

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shook. Her elbows tugging at the sleeves of her dress, her knuckles knocking against the table. The sound bent around the kitchen, echoing larger as she began to still. She breathed, pushed away the tears. Sat back up.

“Safa, I can’t. I have so little time left, I can’t leave Candle Rock behind.”

I wish I knew that was the last time I would see you. I knew you were dissolving, you were turning grey to match the smoke, but I did not think it would happen so fast. You were translucent — look at how your ribs poked through. Could you see Candle Rock was already gone? You saw how everything fell around you, the flowers, the trees, your daughter. By the end the asphalt turned almost white. Could you feel the steering wheel as I drove away? I escaped, except that time I did not feel victorious. That time I failed. I wish you came after me. I wish you ran and stopped the car, said you wanted to go after all, that your chest ached too much to be left behind. Did you slide into the river as well? Did you let the thick water swarm above your head? Let that world finally absorb you for good?

I arrived back at my apartment and poured myself a glass of water, letting the liquid spill over the glass’s tilted edges. In the clear stream I was small, my face bending into the white walls. I breathed, and turned the faucet off. The water retreated down the drain.

Outside it was growing dark, the edges of my home disappearing as the sun fell away. I exhaled. Her scent filtered from my sweater, the last particles of her perfume flaking away as I turned on the lights.

It was time to unpack.

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Ayla S.

Review of The Mahjong Line by a Chinese-American Person Original statement (before it was changed in early January 2021) from The Mahjong Line’s website: “Kate discovered that the artwork of the original tiles, while beautiful, was all the same—and did not reflect the fun that was had when playing with her friends. And nothing came close to mirroring her style and personality. There was so much potential in the words and expressions called out during a game— cracks, bams, flowers, and winds—and she decided the venerable game needed a respectful refresh. Enter Annie and Bianca, Kate’s Mahjong partners in crime who also have a unique personal style and creativity in abundance. Together, they hatched a plan to bring Mahjong to the stylish masses. And their collective baby, The Mahjong Line, was born.

Also written on The Mahjong Line’s website: “Not your mama’s mahjong. We honor the heritage but like a bit of edge. The Mahjong Line is for jaunty gals playing a civilized game with a wink.”

The Mahjong Line: fake mahjong for rich white people. Made by Karen––I mean Kate!

Dear Kate, Annie, and Bianca—the creators (appropriators), You say this Chinese game’s design doesn’t mirror your personality, that it must be “refreshed.” I refreshed your page three times because I couldn’t believe the condescending bullshit I was reading. Your attitude needs a refresh. Look in the mirror.

Traditional artwork “doesn’t reflect the fun” you have while playing? The colors of your design look like a unicorn pooped a neon rainbow after ingesting toxic waste. Your tiles are eye sores that give me a headache in addition to the migrain your statement gave me.

You turn bamboo sticks into lighting bolts and flower tiles into flour tiles to match your bland whiteness. Bet your chicken isn’t seasoned.

For dinner tonight, my mom marinated a chicken in hoisin and oyster sauce for 2 hours.

Honey, you don’t have “creativity in abundance.” You’re stealing from an ancient culture that doesn’t need your makeover! You can’t even call the exclamations or tiles

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by their real names! Where’s your bai ban and your hong zhong?

You charge 325 or 425 dollars for this phony mahjong set. Your product is not a refreshing improvement, it’s a rip-off. Your ugly tiles are not worth a thirty-second of that price. I’d rather buy beautiful tiles from mom and pop shops in Chinatown for 10 bucks.

You say your version of mahjong is “Not my mama’s mahjong.” Well guess what, my mama’s mahjong would whoop your sorry-ass. She would pong that smirk off your face and win with qing yi se. You’d lose with a chicken soup hand.

Also, I don’t want no American jokers in my set!

An American man’s appropriation of mahjong in the 1920s is no excuse for you to profit off this country’s history of imperialism and erasure of my heritage.

My exoticism is not for you to steal and profit from.

My tradition is not for you to redesign and laugh at.

My tie to my identity is not your elevator pitch or your hashtag.

Hula, bitch.

Thisbe W.

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Letter to the Editor A sharp kitchen knife Can pose a great danger.

One slip, and you could cut someone, Or your own finger.

The safest knife for all parties is dull.

But what use is a dull knife?

You are the dull knife.

So afraid of cutting someone that you blunt yourself Down to uselessness.

Passing off your fear as neutrality in the face Of disaster, injustice, and blatant lies You are a dull knife, So afraid to be sharp, So afraid to cut yourself, That you fail in your only duty.

We have no need for a dull knife.

Now, when it is clear that something must be said, You finally begin to use your edge, But it’s too little, and too late, Your blade is useless When the pot’s already boiled over.

Eitan F.

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Inventory. Places I’ve Lived.

First home. Newborn drained in soft Brooklyn light. Bright blue door, white knob. Door that opened to Sister, Godmother, all the people I’ve ever loved, loved hard. We moved just three weeks after my birth. Mom jokingly put me in a big cardboard box, mimed covering it with tape. The moving guys made funny faces at me, cupped my soft cheeks in their capable hands. All the contents of our life shifted in the trunk.

Second home. My first real home. Dad put up plastic stars on the ceiling because I was scared of the dark. We went out to dinner; Mexican food despite the enveloping summer heat. Took photos on a disposable camera. They turned out blurry but that was okay.

Third home, current home. Made a strong woody scent that got caught on our clothes but we didn’t yet recognize. In my new bedroom, car headlights made streaks on the walls.

Sister comforted me when I couldn’t sleep. Ran her finger down the bridge of my nose like she did with the hamsters living in her second grade classroom. Sometimes Dad and Mom fought in the kitchen. Was this the end? I didn’t know. Mom stomped up the stairs. Left dishes shuddering in her wake.

Fourth home. Bathed in newness. Dad got an apartment so dark we turned on all the lights at 9am. We laughed and called it his man cave. I liked how big and square the bathtub was. Out the window the city looked grey, uninviting. People on the street moved like they were surfing a giant wave. I rubbed my face in his belly, to ground myself, to hide.

Fifth home. We saw some light. Sat on the balcony and felt like I was infinite. Cried in the shower and wondered why our bodies hurt us sometimes so much. Felt the light flicker.

Sixth home, current home. Egg-yolk sunset made geometric shapes on the walls. Got a dog, its belly warm and round. Brought a love here. He pointed out a boat on the distant horizon. Wedged myself between wall and window and felt like time was at a stand-still.

Crawled out and sat down to dinner. Blew out the candle. Lit a fresh one.

Tess A-M.

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The Beat My dad asked me what would make me feel better, I can’t remember why exactly I was sad, but I remember the heavy ice inside me.

Like the 70% water that makes us was slowly turning to slush and pushing through me.

My veins were thick and blue. The beat was softer.

My phone buzzes, it’s a friend.

I miss my Friends.

I wonder when the next buzz will be?

My life was good — better than I think it will ever be — but I forget how I lived at that pace.

I don’t think I live at a “pace” anymore.

“Take me to Italy, and I’ll be happy.”

I can find someone to love, a pulse to watch like my own. In Italy, I can breathe. I will be warm there. Warm with the blush of cheeks and the flush of morning jogs.

“I think in Italy, I could find my tempo.”

The ice is a rock formed at the crest of my spine. It is a virus. Taking. It softens my breath to a wheeze.

I can’t breathe.

So I run until I reach the water. I think I will sink if I go too far. But I need a pulse to follow, a beat to beat at, a rhythm to live with, so I foot into the water. My back rising and falling in the waves and my eyes open for the first time to nothing. I surrender to the lucid lapping like a song that will always go on.

“Maybe we will go to Italy someday.”

Cuatro V. 189

Late-Summer Tide 1.

My life was not born from virgin sin I was squeezed from my place of rest And severed with a steel knife.

Later, lost, I drank away passing knights, Spun myself into a web — thousands of fragile mucous threads bound my navel to my heart.

(A child lives inside my gut

As did my mother’s before me.

Untouched by man, she cried when

she was hungry and I sang her

lullabies from my battle wounds.

When she is silent I weep for two.)

2.

When he found me, I had been stumbling on broken legs for miles, though I hid it well.

Summer wind carried in by ocean tides dried salt on my cheeks and filled my skull with honeysuckle — I was beautiful.

In the night the moon danced with us; He took me in the purple ocean and stirred up phosphorescence — a selenotropic tango that I danced with drunken ease.

My cobwebbed heart ached in the morning and I ran, leaving it behind.

The sun rose and set and we watched it all on pebble beaches or fields of yellow grass The vacant cavity in my chest began to crack With casual touch.

He found the heart on the beach one day, picked it up and caressed it for a while barely knowing it was mine and set it down again — senselessly, tragically…

again, I wept for two.

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3.

I carry it around in a glass jar now, that heart The heat of blood creeps away from it every second I spend singing to my hungry child.

Heavier and heavier still, I find new dances New ways to heat up the cavity in my chest.

It’s become an overgrown garden The honeysuckle sprouts from my skull and crawls down my throat sticking to the walls of my ribcage until I unravel at the seams, the weeds burst out through my navel And crawl back in with each pang of a late-summer ghost.

I will again dance in the water’s glowing embrace Sweetened by light, salt on my face.

Heath H.

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Bags of Words I walk alongside you your confident stride capturing the gazes of many.

I’m your sidekick unnoticeable not only to those staring at you but also to you.

My words glide right through your uninterested ears.

So I stop talking.

And I stop walking with you.

You seem not to notice – not that I thought you would.

You rummage around in your crocheted bag crocheted by me (if that’s an important detail.)

And while you search your bobby pin falls through the holes.

I don’t feel the need to tell you.

Words are like a crocheted bag.

No matter how hard you try, things always end up falling through.

Mirabelle P.

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Alpha Centauri I am convinced that every day the world is shrinking as I fell asleep the stars began to mutter: it’s lonely up here pull down the blinds & with them the sky pull down your little patch of quiet I am an airplane a moving constellation which crashes down in LaGuardia Airport Queens, how auspicious Queens, where the Indian food is always warm & neon meet Andromeda every day the world is shrinking pull down the air the pollution & jazz that makes feet tap at two am I want to disappear watch me dissolve into her watch my bones leave my body we are shrinking paint me blue: the ponds in Central Park unclouded paint me drifting: plastic bag caught in the whurr of a tunnel paint me floating back: my skin dropping & hair pasted to the passages I, shrinking call it a restless heart because every time I see her I re-expand into myself Ayla S.

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Arch Form Bodies jolt and jump to the rhythm Hands clap the tempo (synco...pa!)

Adagio and I see you on her chest; at first you’re unfamiliar but when your half-inch fingers press mine searching for my stability you feel legato in amniotic fluid and it will be a while until you say Mama Andante see the road not taken because it’s too hard to get up out of the chair buttoned to the back pockets of my jeans and it’s all just tired when it’s only the beginning; only 15 eighth notes gone by and already a rhythm etched Allegro his beard flecked with white and each day sweeps by in stop motion; greyer and greyer accelerando at measure 48 and we’ve already graduated to the next movement yet he’s stagnant, working late Presto staccato telephone rings make her day loud; hemorrhagic swells of symphony dissolve in hollowed bones yet the heart beats faster with the ictus and whirlwind finale leaves the banana peels on the table, no time to clean up And with that, lay in the conductor’s hands The right to Rest Maya C. 194

Up Late Shifting weight between bare feet/ on the way to nowhere just down the hallway/ cracking wood left sleeve slipping/ pinky finger twitching late, but no sleep Losing balance/ up on rooftop look through the glass/ see somebody else close eyes/ lid to sky late, in a heap Cheeks blushing red/ cold taking form retreat step lightly/ take time back to stillness/ watching the minutes late, wrapped in sheet Lila H.

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Jinrikisha A miracle. What else?

I drop the needle and hear a Latin swing groove borne of micro-grooves on an old flimsy black disc— let Joe wash over me and close my eyes and I’m sitting in a dark room with cigarette smoke and the occasional clink of glasses mixed with low chatter, and a gold glint in the corner of my ear making me feel something wonderful. A note winks at me and I feel butterflies; maybe a butterfly winks at me and I smile. Jinrikisha, the butterfly waves. The groove is a puppeteer, moving my head up and down with the drum; each time Butch pulls a string it tugs my head up, each time he releases a string my head swings back down. I feel a tingle in my hand, feel motion, feel something rising in my chest, feel voice coming from a place deeper within me than I’ve ever known. McCoy hits a chord of fourths and I exhale with Joe’s breath. There’s something ethereal about this room, with the chatter and the smoke and the music. Through a happy fog, I see, and through a happy fog, I hear. I’m floating in an unfinished watercolor, with feeling and thought and experience and sense slipping into each other to create one fluid painting of this room.

The air quivers with purity, like the air of a penumbral pre-dawn, untouched by the toxic gas and smoke of daily life, trembling just as my body trembles with each wail of his horn, melding with me to make a feeling as untainted as the air itself. Time loses meaning: it has been absorbed by the eternal beat of the music. And yet the scene is ephemeral: I know it cannot last. The quivering air must inevitably settle, but when I allow myself to accept the moment’s mortality, the music feels all the more beautiful. I smile.

They bring the song to a close by playing slower and slower, stilling the room as they still themselves, until everything is motionless. The watercolor is complete. I can open my eyes now.

Max K.

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“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work1” Is this goodbye?

When I close my eyes I can still see the blurred outline of the school that’s given something to us all Go ahead, trace its shape with your finger How do you fit 12 years of love on a page?

How do you hug an idea, a vision, a person who won’t hug you back?

How do you accept a new kind of love, An unsensible type of love told to you through a sideways grin?

Close my eyes and I’m walking into our corner classroom on the ninth floor It’s a room made to comfortably sink into, A room layered with sound even when quiet Why shouldn’t something I have always known be the very best there is?2 The day my brother’s legs stopped working we saw the first flowers on trees Smudges of pink so small that if you squint your eyes they practically aren’t there Squint my eyes and I see a wisp of a boy, grown tall & thin See hair that falls to his shoulder in a curl A seed is to a bud is to a flower is to a tree A foot is to a calf is to a thigh is to a leg A leg stuck straight, A leg gone deaf My dad, phone wedged between shoulder and chin, Paced from sink to closet sink to closet sink to closet His voice got loud loud loud so I shut my door

1 2

“Yes! No!”, Mary Oliver “Peanut Butter,” Eileen Myles 197

Evening and I tried to carry my brother upstairs Wilted (inside) when he shrieked in pain Tried not to show it Lowered him into the nearly overflowing bath Watched him curl into an imperfect comma “Look I can bend my knee again!” he said And it was bent.

90 degrees Tilted my head and smiled (outside) A leg in bloom, A leg made to heal A love so vast it breathes life into a whole home, a whole building, a whole city Go ahead, trace its shape with your finger Say goodbye, and when the blossoms fall, come back.

Tess A-M.

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Odyssey 1.

Drunk at the dinner table on New Year’s Eve, you tell me you love my anger.

My anger. My anger runs red blue green, I got it from your father The fly fisher, coming into the house as santa claus when you were five and running Off to the Everglades with no notice at the same time.

I rewatched lady bird and cried through the whole thing, strange because I didn’t feel that way about it when I saw it first but I also Wasn’t her age then, so maybe that changes things I also watched the snow fall for the first time for the last time And then we got a little drunk and we bought swedish fish I was laughing so hard.

We throw love across the table like its nothing, ribbons, You said you love me like a sister, like a daughter, like a friend and I wet my face with river tears.

2.

Mango sticky rice — I got over excited, We went and looked at the magazines, I had red wine with my pasta at dinner and wore a purse like I’m a woman, Sat on the floor and all I could think about was how I was the only person in the room not in love, Tried to quit smoking (AKA, smoking less), I like that you have a little window in your shower, Peep show.

You used to live on Green River Road in a blue house.

You had a Don’t Room.

You’ve never called me baby and you never will I don’t think you had any pets, You were an only child.

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A little while after I was born you started taking me into the Atlantic ocean, You taught me how to swim in the Atlantic ocean.

In the Atlantic ocean, Mom. Do you remember that?

3.

I went to your apartment and felt so estranged, You live here without me?

I live alone with Mom and Dad and the Christmas tree and the cats?

I feel like I live alone, I moved my bed six inches over a few weeks ago and to me it felt A big difference.

Space on the other side of the bed — isn’t that grown up?

My life’s filled with beautiful women.

I watch them put their hair up, Watch them light their cigarettes, Watch them cry and complain and scream, Watch them pet the cat.

Recently, I’m afraid of songs I don’t know.

I spend a lot of time Not thinking about him, The ted berrigan poem from 1980 that reminds me of you ‘Things to do in Anne’s Room’ Going to school and saying words to the other kids, Arriving places and then going home, To and from, Lighting candles in the different rooms in my house.

4.

I found this in my Notes from July: “These days have been having a lot of trouble sleeping and think of you often.

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I miss you a lot.

I can’t say everything in a letter it’d be too long. You wouldn’t read it your eyes Would blur. You wouldn’t blink and you’d cry a small pond.

I could put in a snapping turtle for us.

We could sit on a rock and take turns dangling an arm out and waiting to get bitten and then blaming the other. Wouldn’t that be fun?

Did you ever find my sweater? Black cashmere.

The apartment was too big, I couldn’t find anyone.

I may have had a fever. You may have given it to me. I want to go to Abu Dhabi with you and show you what I was like as an eleven year old. Tell you why that version of myself hurt so much and why I still think about her. Why I think about her all the time.

Would you get on the plane? No, you’d dig your heels in and jump out the little zero of sky.

000.

I’m glad you liked the film I told you it was my favorite. Are you in love with me? Were you? I had a dream I watched your car shoot like a rocket off a pier. I ran to the water to save you, but you were fine: swimming up as a cartoon version of yourself.

I gave you a hug and it felt real and when I woke up I cried.

Do you still love me? If I showed up would you make me a hard boiled egg? Please? No. I wanted to tell you I’ve been eating dessert dips. They are normal dips but for dessert.

For example dark chocolate hummus.

These days I don’t sleep. Then I write this, that, the other thing. There’s a man missing. I ran into his friends when I was going to the beach they gave me a flyer they said ‘Have you seen him?’

My mom thinks he killed himself.

I keep on thinking about him.

How he’s somewhere in the woods. Can you blame me for being scared? I’m so scared I could cry. My mom said you could disappear in these woods. Miles and miles of protected land. K. said so. John F. K.. The airport. The man. But they killed him too, they shot him in the car Dallas sunny day the pink dress, Jackie, something was always wrong 201

with the bullets Didn’t add up they shot the governor in the front seat at the same time as the President in the brain in the backseat?

Some people think the government did it I’m not sure. Do you think I’m crazy?

Let me not be afraid for one moment.

Is there anything to be done?

Is there medicine?

Please take me to the hospital.

I’ll say thank you IswearMom Dad. Daddy. Uppy Dad Up. Pick me up Dad. Dad I’m only seven Dad I’m only eight!

No I’m not yelling please don’t slam the cupboard.

What can I do?

I want the drugs and the quiet and the lull. the riverbed.

I can’t take the noise, Washington Square Park is so loud at night wouldn’t you agree?

Allen G. are you at home? Will you come over please.

I’m in bed with a knife.

Allen, will you bring me a cake with wild flowers?

Allen, did you mean it when you said I was holy?

You’re the only one who thinks that. Thank you Allen thank you. You saved me Allen.

Allen what do you do when you can’t sleep? Allen can we go home?

My father used to have a baby now he has me. How terrifying.

How will I get through my life if I can’t go to sleep in my own bed?”

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To my lecteur1: the most important relationship you can ever have is the one with yourself. Sometimes I wish I was as small as a cat, so I can fit in the bed with my parents.

Sometimes I wish I was as big as the Linden tree outside my window, so that I could really see all the change. I’m still a dumb idiot fool for You [all 4].

I’m trying to learn to not get star and satellite confused — and maybe that’s all its ever really been, trying to get the lenses of myself clear enough so that when I creep out the door and go out into the August midnight I can look up and actually see, for the first time for the last time, all those brilliant blues, and the miniscule, nearly imperceptible difference in greywhite between a star and a satellite.

Don’t worry about me Mom. Next time I see you, we’ll go swimming in the Atlantic Ocean.

Zibia B.

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SAINT ANN’S HIGH SCHOOL LITERARY MAGAZINE 2021

SAINT ANN’S HIGH SCHOOL LITERARY MAGAZINE 2021