The Archive / Fall 2018

LITERARY MAGAZINE

Vol. 131

Established in 1887, the Archive is one of the oldest continuously published literary magazines in the United States and the oldest student publication at Duke University. The Archive is published once a year through the Undergraduate Publications Board of Duke University, Durham, N.C., and printing is by Chamblee Graphics. The Archive welcomes submissions from all undergraduates. All submissions received are read by the editorial staff, and authors’ names do not appear on manuscripts during the evaluation and selection process. The Archive is printed in Baskerville and Avenir Next typeface. All material © 2018 by the Archive. All rights revert to the authors upon publication. dukearchive@gmail.com dukearchive.org Cover Artist: Hunter Stark, “Tojeiro 6” Magazine Designed by Glenn Huang

3

the Archive Vol. 131

Editors-in-Chief

Lead Design Editor

Aiyanna Kimble Caroline Waring

Glenn Huang

Event Planner Sophie Laettner

Design Editors Shalini Arimilli Alex Chan Lancer Li

Associate Editors

Editorial Staff

Sara Behn Avery Boltwood Daniel Egitto Meg Hancock Arthi Kozhumam

John Benhart Sayle Evarts Sydny Long Nidhila Masha

E d i t o r ’s N o t e :

As Lead Design Editor, I’ve had an interesting relationship with The Archive over the past two years. I don’t read many of the pieces as they initially come in, and I don’t see much of the artwork either. Our editorial staff takes care of all that. Instead, being the primary designer of the last two editions of the magazine has given me a unique perspective on the content we publish-- I don’t spend much time thinking about the art or analyzing the writing; my job is to take other people’s work and create a single, unified piece out of it all.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to balance each piece’s individual feel while simultaneously finding a new identity that belongs solely to this magazine you’re holding. It’s been a distinct pleasure creating The Archive these last two years and I hope you enjoy reading.

Glenn Huang, Lead Design Editor

4

Literature 6

“Vanilla Pudding” Caroline Fernelius

10

“scared young men” Avery Boltwood

12

“Someplace Better” Natasha Schmeling

16

“Convenience Stores” Sarah Zhou

19

“little” Jill Jones

23

“Relations” Blythe Davis

25

“Three Kisses by an English River” Avery Boltwood

28

“Artificial Flavoring” Lucy Zheng

30

“Deer Play” Valerie Muensterman

38

“One Dollar Pizza” Milena Ozernova

40

“In December” Sara Behn

42

“student girls” Sophie Laettner

45

“you’re going too fast” Alizeh Sheikh

49 “The Power Struggle” anonymous 51 “Race and Life - HW5: Actions”

Ehizokha Ihionkhan 54 “my mom and i”

Jess Chen 56

“Worm” Zoe Abedon

58

“Guitar Strings” Daniel Egitto

59

“Rocket” Alice Dai

61

“Untethered” Vivian Lu

5

Va n i l l a Pu d d i n g When you said that perhaps in my age and my restlessness I was forgetting how to love you–Baba, I will never be able to erase that countenance, your hand gripping the base of a glass of afternoon white, the torso unmoving. I do not remember much after but I must have turned my head to shoot glazed-over glances out of Houstonian bay windows, my father humming in the back–your son with the fine shoulders, eyes of a thing untouched and feet that move as easy on Ohioan dirt as Texan, you know the ones...

Here it is: I was never more of a child than when I was with you, fingers deep in drugstore paints, pillows hoisting me up on top of steel kitchen stools, vanilla pudding and bows the size of my forehead. No, I was never better than I was then, and so far from leaving you, I keep coming back to your face and your veins when I am hundreds of miles away from golf courses, melting and then congealing frozen yogurt in white plastic tubs and the hot delirium of Easter egg hunts–yes, it’s you who I want to write when I sit eating on gray linoleum floor, trying not to hurt and envisioning your first time like a fiction I might fashion some kind of redemption out of. It’s one story I don’t have, Baba, a benign ghost to be sure–set long ago on some table to wilt, disembodied, while we reveled in Puff the Magic Dragon and I went to bed with cream on my tongue. I didn’t know I’d come looking for it, breathing forcefully into palms like they might birth me something back, like I’d see family histories as never described etched into my own flesh and it would all be O.K...

One hypothesis: perhaps I broke your heart. It wouldn’t have taken much, for if I have inherited any of your midwestern Americana stock it must be my ability to find significance and a kind of inexplicable devastation in anything–a soiled spoon on the quad Sunday morning, Trojan wrappers in my eyeglasses drawer, the fact that yesterday evening my friend told me I was only wearing one earring and I could not for the life of me figure out where I may have lost the other. In other words, not so much a question, but I have to ask–when I leapt from desks like lily pads and found ecstasy in the haphazardly applied glitter of a paper Mardi Gras mask–did you already know I would be a woman reduced by mere anecdotes, by a single flick of human eyelash, by shirt buttons mechanically sewed and obsessively remembered? Did you see me then and hug me the more violently for it, offer a second pudding as a consolation prize, take the long way back home to Burwick Street and try desperately to think of anything else?

Maybe one day, some Texas morning so far from the half-mania of these nights, I will look at you over dark black tea and show you the spots, the fingerprints, and there will be joy in being seen, and there will be crescent rolls from my childhood festering in the suburban oven, and it’ll be as if I never left.

As if I’ll never leave again.

Caroline Fernelius

6

Hunter Stark

7

Alice Dai

8

Alice Dai

9

scared young men we was dancing anywhere, and we was anyone glaring as we spilled itself, and we was shimmering worth the beer stain on the shirt, or the champagne on the lips? worth the limerick in the loo, or the sonnet in the senses? yes, i think/thought, though that we was unaged, unversed boyhood understanding/stood? if no, then please lie with/to me and whisper, we was somewhere/one; and whisper, we was us, were we Avery Boltwood

Madhav Dutt

10

11

Someplace Better If it happens one more time, we’ll grab the babies and your worn, green strength and we’ll drive to someplace better.

The sun will rise up from the road, and I’ll ask you where the clouds all are, where the rain is coming from.

If it happens one more time, we’ll grab the mace you gave me years ago and we’ll tuck it into your purse, alongside credit cards and passports.

Then, as we wait for the car to start, you’ll look me in the eyes, the skin around yours bright and bruised, the skin under mine heavy.

12

If it happens one more time, we’ll grab the birthday cards your parents used to send, stuffed in the space beneath your mattress.

There’ll be crickets when we get there, screaming into the night, and your mother will call you mija, fit her fingers to the thumbprints on your neck.

If it happens one more time, we’ll grab the babies and your worn, green strength, and we’ll drive.

We’ll just drive.

Natasha Schmeling

13

14

Alex Chan 15

Convenience Stores I know the feeling of convenience stores past midnight better than I know the stars in the night sky.

I know the complexities of its smells—

perpetual Moon Pies

insomnia seeped in cheap instant coffee

sausages forever turning on hot metal bars Time is still Stops The low hum of overhead lights is sliced through with a sharp Ding— a tired trucker walks in, dreams already turning gears in his mind.

I can tell it’s been a long drive.

The fluorescent lights cast a sickly tint on his features— somehow 3am looks a lot later on him than on anyone else.

I wonder what this store smells like to him—

cheap cigarettes burning outside an old Radiohead song creaky souls stopping for a shot of whatever they need to get through the night

We make brief eye contact— he smiles, showing brittle nicotine teeth with unbridgeable spaces in between.

I hope this store is a little warmer than endless highways.

I put my cigarettes on the counter and offer a smile to the tight-lipped cashier working the graveyard shift stuck in a different timeline.

The entire transaction takes no more than four words but I can feel that he’s heard more trucker small talk than I-Love-You’s in his lifetime, that he’s starting to give up on restocking the Red Bull, that he’s starting to give up on one day becoming un-stuck.

16

I walk out with my cigarettes knowing that when I get back to my hotel room I will sleep and wake up at noon and call my mom and we will tell each other I-Miss-You, while the trucker won’t see another human being for two thousand miles and the cashier’s dreams are reaching their expiration dates from night after night of these stagnant hours.

I went on through the streets—the thick stars eroding my vision.

I felt a new kind of heaviness in them bursting with the accumulation of unrecorded life.

Sarah Zhou

17

Hunter Stark

18

little

i noticed the scratches on your skin when we were 12. pink, fleshy branches that curled around your arms and under your thighs and bled the pain that was suffocating your brain. i asked you about them. and you said they didn't matter.

we were so little.

you started wearing jeans in blistering heat, even though i’d never seen you in anything but shorts before. you wore sweaters and said you wore them so the sun couldn't kiss your chestnut skin. but i could tell that there were forests under that wool. orchards of crimson branches digging their roots into your wrists and into your soul.

we were so little.

you didn't try out for the soccer team when we were 12 because you knew that the coach would have had to look at your shins. your beautiful shins the color of caramel that you practiced cross-hatching on with your blood.

we were so little. and you were so young.

i wrote a eulogy for you and hid it in my desk drawer. right next to my colored highlighters i put it and with it lay a picture of us from the first month we met. i still have it somewhere. the eulogy i mean. i don't know why because i don't really want to remember when i was 12 and you were 12 and we were 12 and you were slowly killing yourself.

i planned out the song i would play at your funeral when you died: "if i die young.� you hate country and so do i but i thought the song was apt for the time. and you'd always wanted to play piano, so i thought i might arrange it on there for you.

god, we were so little.

i drew butterflies on my wrists for you and you drew butterflies on yours and then you murdered them all with the blades of your body. it shattered me. all i could think was god. you are so young.

for a week in june you didn't come to school. i called your house but the line was always dead or it would just ring and ring so i emailed and g-chatted but i got no response. i really thought you'd died this time. you'd cut too deep this time, i thought, you'd cut too deep. your branches must have grown into redwoods that sucked up all the soil keeping you on the ground.

19

we were so little.

and then after a week you called me on my ipod touch and we facetimed and i said god what happened to you. and you said i'm sorry, or rather i'm almost sorry, because i almost did something i'd be even sorrier for.

do you have any tylenol pm in your house you demanded, do you have any tylenol pm in your house.

why are you asking me, i screamed this and i remember this was late at night after everyone else was already in bed. i don't know, i don't know i don't care.

because you should hide it all.

you whispered this.

you need to hide it all you said because if i come over to your house and you are asleep then i will want to swallow the whole bottle and i will finally climb my way up the crimson branches starting at my shins and synapsing their way into my brain and i'll head into heaven with god or whomever you said.

and you said that you almost climbed those branches last week but you didn't. and i made you swear to me that you'd get down from your trees and promise never to leave. i swear to god, stay here i said i swear to god. you and your bloody branches can't do this to me.

i think your mom found out that week but i can't remember. i know you stopped asking her to buy tampons because you didn't need them anymore and i think she realized that you weren't bleeding in the right places.

you said you only used a knife once. you preferred your fingernails because it was more organic i guess and you didn't have to worry so much about cutting too deep. you'd break your skin so you could exhale and you could breathe, and then you'd feel you were suffocating and do it all over again. and you told me not to tell and i kept my promise. but i hate myself for it. and i can't believe no one ever stops things when they should.

20

you believed in god then. you still do. i don't know where i stand on the whole god thing but i do know that i still ask myself where he was when we were 12.

during all this time you barely ate. we shared this notebook and you'd cover pages in black and crosshatch on the paper the same way you did on your skin. you said i couldn't understand and i couldn't but i also didn't want you to die. and i sang the lyrics if i die young if you die young if we die young over and over and over again.

later some therapist helped you cut down your reddened trees, and flowers once again grew in their place. but a landscape never looks the same when it's deforested.

everything was good for a while but then last year you were in a different country. and i was at school. and you kept texting me that you didn't want to eat any food.

i wanted to fly to you but i couldn't because we don't even have enough money to pay the bills at my house. but i wanted you to know and i still want you to know that i love you. i love you and you can't leave me in this jungle of a world with all these entangled branches alone.

know that i've never used tylenol pm and i never will and i will always be there to make sure you never either. i can't tell you how lucky i am and you are and we are that a bottle never killed you –– but i'm shocked that your pink branches never did.

and lastly i don't know if you know how much i love you but i know that i don't tell you enough.

and it sucks that we have to live in this jungle of a world but it's been five years since something grew on your wrists. and there are butterflies now, real butterflies that fly. and maybe they're sent by god or whomever but even now when we're happy and you're safe and you're sound i still ask myself where in the world he was then.

Jill Jones

21

Sophie Laettner

Hunter Stark

22

Relations

The way she parallel parks across the street from McDonald’s is form. The way she softens to help you out of the car, form. Translated delicately and flawlessly to matter, the two of you cross the Rubicon at the red light, and without realizing it you take her hand. Picture-perfect kids again. Muscle memory.

There’s a type of calm that can only come from standing in line with your younger sister in a fast-food restaurant at midnight. Your arms brush and you focus singularly on the menu, hanging on each word, comprehending.

What should you order?

A. Southwest Chicken Salad, dressing on the side, fountain

drink, extra pepper

B. “Get me whatever she’s getting.”

C. Two cookie dough shakes or whatever, just let me pay her back.

D. “Tell me what I ordered here when I was young.”

D. “Could I have a chicken sandwich, please?” Muscle memory again. Your lips move and you don’t tell them to. Is that what you ate when you were a kid?

“Grilled or crispy?”

The virtuous choice is not always the easy choice, and sometimes you will slip. “Grilled.” You remember: you used to order crispy. It’s something that hasn’t occurred to you in years. What a situation: Emotions from being a preteen suddenly overcome you and you blink.

It was somewhere like this, small tiles on the floor, bright hanging lights, tired night-shift waitresses, your last crispy chicken sandwich that you pushed under the front seat and never finished.

Maybe that’s not when it started, but it was towards the beginning. As imagining the future, you reconstruct the past. Your amygdala and your hippocampus are alight with the phrase “grilled or crispy” and the smell of the reheated oil and the sounds of the same

23

song playing on the radio as eight years ago. Your mind--no, no, your brain--has not been watertight. The memories are seeping out of the cracks, and you didn’t even know they were gone. Without intention, you begin to reconstruct yourself as you were in this instant, ten years old, holding onto your tiny sister in front of the register at a McDonald’s.

How can a smell, a line of a song, your mouth moving a certain way resurrect the flash of a person you were? Your sister would say it’s an alignment of brain chemistry, a serendipitous kinase cascade that triggers just the right neurons to bring the memory to the surface.

At one point, you would have said that no, it’s God speaking, it’s God telling you to remember, it’s a sign, it’s meaningful. But tonight, you’re tired of chasing God’s enigmatic messages. You’re tired of standing up and you’re tired of thinking about repentance and original sin and being less and smaller. You’ve had enough of yourself.

Blythe Davis

24

Three Kisses by an English River

One kiss, I see as I felt last night. A wild riverbeast, it slips past the sleeping boats, towards me, grabs me, carries me on. It flies me down the bridge, down the path to the boathouse, spirals upstairs, then stops.

It lays me on a field of concrete, under a field of clouds. It is the smoke on my lips, the velvet in my hands. It is the moonlight’s sketch of a man, floating over and through my body.

One kiss, I see as I remember. I am a foreigner to the river, lost between the form and the memory. To me, the bridges and boathouses are landmarks, strung by half-remembered streets, my mental trail of this and thus. My flight is low, and thus that bridge; my spiral, short, and thus those stairs. It is logic’s half-invented map, following from what might have been.

One kiss, I see as I think he does. He is a native to the river. His bridges and boathouses are all the same. His flight is grounded; his spiral, straightforward. His me is one of these thousand mundanities, another vendor on another street corner. I offer a kiss, but he only looks at me, shakes his head, walks on. I offer the night, but his night died like any other at sunrise.

25

Sujal Manohar

Somewhere lost between the three, a kiss in full imagination. It is a chimera, a myth of the river, to steer me from water to sky; each night, a reimagined path. It flies, spiralling body and mind, freeing the kiss from the prison of was. And it was, but it is, and it is, and it is—onefold, threefold, always unfolding.

Avery Boltwood

26

Madhav Dutt

27

Artificial Flavoring

Where am I in this night scene License plates from the place I once called home Palm trees that stand in memory, But are foreign to my present mind.

The humidity doesn’t absorb me like it once did.

I used to marvel at the gaudy hotel signs, But now they just remind me of The ghastly sunshine— inevitable tomorrow— And the way I used to bathe in banal light.

In the morning everything shines to sting, The sun flinging violent beams off metal posts, Roller coaster loops whirling migraines into my head.

These thrills I always feared are Not nearly as fun as I knew they would be.

In late afternoon the sunscreen I haven’t rubbed in Follows the sweat sheens south, Slipping across the surface of my eyes; Some things don’t change.

And yet, the sting of my corneas, trivial then, Has begun to supersede my anticipation For the rides I haven’t ridden, And the timeworn attractions yet to come.

In between the thrills that aren’t thrilling, We often come across the ripenings I took for granted.

Juicing orange slices with thick fibers, My memory peels the fruit from its rind, Childhood squeezing out of every teardrop sac.

It no longer tastes true to me— Like drops of reverie on the tongue, It mingles with the present mind, Decolorizing experience, Deafening life.

Lucy Zheng

28

Sophie Laettner

29

Deer Play

Characters: MICHELLE 50s FEMALE EMMY Michelle’s sister 50s FEMALE REAL DEER A bartender ANY 1

A table with no chairs. Saloon doors mark the entrance to an old bar with deer heads on the wall.

MICHELLE It’s easy to like old places because they remind you of somewhere else.

Last week I helped settle my daughter into her new house with some pretty dishes to put up top the cabinets, and a vase or two, knickknacks – but she didn’t want them. She said Mom, young people like things plain. Sink, countertops, coffee table, no clutter on them. And that’s okay.

EMMY, in a dress, enters through the saloon doors.

When I was a kid my sister and I used to go to a bar that felt like a ranch.

Big buck heads poke out through the wall, cowboy relics make it smell like dust. The doors in front make a cage keeping the animals inside.

EMMY Do you like it?

MICHELLE Damn, if I had your body, I’d wear that dress too.

EMMY Thank you.

MICHELLE If I had your body, I would wear that dress with no shoes and no bra and scale down the side of your apartment yelling that I am you.

EMMY Mom liked it too.

30

Hunter Stark

I wish I didn’t have your body.

Don’t you like it?

MICHELLE EMMY

MICHELLE It doesn’t matter – I need to plan your funeral.

EMMY Tonight?

MICHELLE There’s only so much time before my head gets light and everything comes back. How else are we going to discuss this funeral?

EMMY That’s no fun.

MICHELLE But it could be with some planning.

31

EMMY Can’t we get a drink first? I hate when you put me in these situations.

MICHELLE What kind of casket? I want to make you so happy.

EMMY What difference does it make right now? Have a drink with me.

MICHELLE Please. Do this with me before I remember everything.

REAL DEER enters, running the bar.

EMMY Oh great! There’s the bartender, a real deer.

MICHELLE Not like the dead ones on the wall.

EMMY Much realer.

MICHELLE It’s so much handsomer than the other dead deer.

EMMY It’s always bartenders with you. (To REAL DEER) Hi, could we get two glasses of alcohol please?

REAL DEER makes them drinks.

MICHELLE What kind of casket would you like for your body?

EMMY I don’t like thinking about it… Makes we want to fill by lungs so big they push my ribs out. (She stretches.) How am I supposed to know?

MICHELLE Well, you can start with open or closed.

EMMY Eyes?

MICHELLE No, casket.

EMMY Closed makes me nervous. How can people be sure it’s me?

MICHELLE I will tell them.

32

What if they forget?

We’ll do open then.

EMMY MICHELLE

EMMY But why would I let people see me when I can’t see them?

MICHELLE It can be fun, I do it all the time.

REAL DEER hands them two drinks.

EMMY Wait, this isn’t what I ordered.

REAL DEER exits.

MICHELLE What is it?

EMMY It gave me the wrong drink.

MICHELLE There’s no time for another drink, we’re planning the funeral of your dreams!

EMMY I want my drink.

MICHELLE My head is getting lighter.

EMMY (Pauses.) I’m sorry. What can I do for you?

MICHELLE No, I’m doing this for you.

EMMY Okay, but please walk for a second. Get some air.

MICHELLE begins to pace around the bar, holding her head.

She pauses, becoming distracted by the deer heads on the wall.

MICHELLE Why do people stuff these things for walls when there are paintings, and dishes? They’re so cold and ugly. It makes me sick.

EMMY I like them. Can’t you just imagine the rest of the body walking through dry 33

leaves in the morning, or in front of your car?

Now you can’t stop seeing it.

The eyes aren’t real.

They’re made of glass.

MICHELLE stares at the deer heads.

EMMY

MICHELLE EMMY

MICHELLE I think you should lay on this table. Pretend you’re dead.

EMMY Alright.

EMMY lays across the table.

MICHELLE Make some kind of sound so I know you’re dead.

EMMY You mean like animals in the woods at night?

MICHELLE Yes, like that.

EMMY makes the sound.

Good. You must feel very dead. Now, right this moment, tell me what kind of music you feel like hearing.

EMMY For my funeral?

MICHELLE Yes. What does your soul sound like?

EMMY lies there and listens.

EMMY I think it sounds like Christmas songs. But just the ones about snow.

MICHELLE That is unoriginal.

EMMY I didn’t know it was supposed to be original, I thought it was just my soul sounds.

MICHELLE How are people supposed to enjoy this funeral if it’s just like any other Christmas funeral? I 34

want them to come to this funeral and leave saying, That was so Emmy.

You can tell she put a lot into this. (Beat.) You’re right. It is your music, so it’s up to you. Just, listen and see if you hear anything else.

REAL DEER returns to the bar.

EMMY The real deer! Michelle, ask him if he’ll give me a new drink.

MICHELLE We have to focus, Emmy! What if I remember? What happens to you?

EMMY Ask him. Ask him.

MICHELLE approaches the REAL DEER. MICHELLE Hi, you made my sister the wrong drink. Would you please get her another one so she will listen to me?

The REAL DEER stares.

EMMY He’s a deer, Michelle, he only understands alcohol words.

MICHELLE Oh, sorry. Drink? (No response.) Alcohol? Ice? Orange juice?

EMMY Try cranberry juice.

MICHELLE Cranberry juice? Juice? Everything is brighter.

EMMY Maybe he knows you’re afraid.

MICHELLE Cranberry juice cranberry juice cranberry juice cranberry cranberry – The REAL DEER smashes a glass on the floor. MICHELLE screams.

Wait!

EMMY When I die, here are your options.

MICHELLE Cranberry? Cranberry? Juice??

MICHELLE tries to sweep up the glass on the floor with her hands.

35

EMMY I don’t like a casket because it’s too much like a house.

MICHELLE There’s too much all over this floor. You don’t have to leave?

The REAL DEER tips over the bar.

EMMY If you had my body you’d wear this dress.

MICHELLE But there’s so much stuff all over this room. I didn’t get to listen.

The REAL DEER exits.

What happens when you leave? It’s hard to do this over.

EMMY Grief is clutter.

MICHELLE All over the floor. The chest gets smashed through and poked with shards of itself.

EMMY Relics everywhere from somewhere else.

MICHELLE When you close in the clutter.

EMMY Do you remember now?

MICHELLE scoops up the broken glass.

MICHELLE Ribs are not cages but doors swinging in place.

EMMY exits through the saloon doors.

MICHELLE sits alone.

End of play.

Valerie Muensterman

36

Rachel Gallegos

37

One Dollar Pizza

Please, I say, Do you remember?

Still remember the way Out of the darkest, deepest canals of the city That shines only around Trump Tower?

That shines like a boutique on the Fifth Avenue, Lit up by bald, tubby wallets, Like empty hearts, Bought for a dollar And sold for a dime?

I hold one dollar in my cold, Weather-beaten hands.

My tears flop on the pavement, Jingle mockingly like diamonds Sold on the streets of Chinatown.

I would always pick them up but I could never, ever sell them.

I stand alone, eyes fixed on a shop window, People come and go. Their bags scream, Michael Kors.

Chanel.

Dior.

(But they always whisper, Rolex).

I could drown myself in silk gowns, Cut my throat with leather belts, Choke on sweet, hard pearls.

I would rip my heart out of my chest, Slam it onto the counter, And ask, Did the transaction go through?

No, the cashier says, We don’t take depreciated currency.

You should try this one dollar pizza place

38

Right around the corner.

Have a nice day, dear.

Forcing my heart back into my ribcage, I smile my best American smile, And further smother my Russian psyche.

Chewing on a dollar pizza, I walk down the Fifth Avenue And merge with the lights of a big, careless city That drives English majors into a corner (the corner of Broadway and Sixth Avenue), Fucking smashes them And then drives away.

Milena Ozernova

39

In December

Girls dressed like Christmas trees will thread popcorn beneath their chins while their roommates are searching elsewhere And across the firing range, boys with girlfriends with boyfriends will sit on cracked wheat sharing a cigarette, Crying over the circles of salt that they themselves thickened When the long legged Fates insist that the stars will shine for just a moment longer, they will whisper The answer will never be this, they will whisper back and forth until their tongues clench and then lay flat The answer will never be

And the spices they speak may be memory enough to cover the mirrors In the houses they will never walk barefoot in again and again They kneel in fields of kernels, crouching in the red Savoring the daylight before the sprout Sara Behn

40

Alice Dai

41

student girls

I know girls-students of their astrocytic worlds and spaces’ strong star signs who sing spells of ribbon, rose, sage, spine, shutter, selenite, window blind ribbon, rose, sage, spine, shutter, selenite, window blind ribbon, rose, sage, spine, shutter, selenite, window blind girls whose crystalline utterances are saved for those most close familial friends and sacred who hear the language that trees speak when there isn’t a place to go or a place to be only look, hear, smell, touch, see who have sutras of wishes, expectations, dreamed realities in their minds who at the same time, create a palimpsest- rewriting those things they fear will not come true palimpsest sexual interactions with boys who do not care or girls who do not care or pretend they do not care and who can tell who cares or not who decorate their walls with record labels in blue tones in rooms filled with blue bottles and blue phones who forget the names that they meet the night before but recognize the faces and feel where they are sore from being swung around, danced, twisted, turned as if in an attempt to make them fall on the wet wooden floor and wake up bruised on their back side who count their intake of food unlike any animals on earth and who forget to take care of themselves unless they have a reason to cunning linguists who use cunning linguistics to entice boys to wet their dry lips who have loving absentee anachronistic toothpick-teethed fathers with toothpick-teethed fathers hopping on and off planes in and out of cars and onto a poster with mothers drowned in wine and the umbilical biblical beliefs of their

42

mothers of their mothers of their mothers of their mothers mothers mothers whose wandering midnight minds see there is a bit of poetry in the paper version whose emails end in your best my best all best echoed here and whisper hello miss stress, it’s nice to see you again, you came back along on such short notice girls who laugh to have heard “there is no reason for feminism or no need” girls who need a matte male friend to walk with them since they cannot walk alone at dark who know not to walk through the gardens at night because they should be afraid of meeting a man girls who are afraid of meeting a man who turn around and go back because they would rather meet a snake girls who beg for a window in their room who beg for a soft hand free of hangnail to caress your lambs ear in the yard who become prettier when they cry and they wonder why you want to make them cry is it because they are prettier when they cry? girls who swoon under the sound of a voice like cold water a black british Brad Pitt voice a quiet cool gentle morning sound coming from the lips of one whose sound makes her consider: isn’t it strange that our mouths are making birds songs and just as the birds sing so do our voices serve the same purpose.

Sophie Laettner

43

Sophie Laettner

44

you’re going too fast

I used to confuse velocity with quality, but I now realize that through speed we become schema, our spirits forfeiting the capacity to be whole.

Alizeh Sheikh

45

46

47 Sujal Manohar

Madhav Dutt 48

T h e Po w e r S t r u g g l e

(alt. titled: i’m rly feeling it now mr krabs) (alt. titled: questions for my older lover) maybe it’s the alignment of the stars but i feel exactly how i should and how I never normally do twenty-two this weekend and young as hell an old(er) soul but not nearly as old as you sometimes i wonder — do you find me attractive despite the fact that i’m not blonde? ideations of your past lovers trouble me— a constant comparison to how i think i should be or how i should act, even though i know nothing about them minus the fact that you’ve dated a national pageant queen (a google search quickly puts my mind at ease) and sometimes i wonder — do you enjoy my (self-perceived) naïveté? i never feel competent enough for you quite frankly, i think your years of wisdom get off on me (because you do) despite your unsolicited affirmations about my precociousness and maturity i fall into thought loops stressing that you’ll find someone new even though i don’t think i’ll ever reciprocate the sweet things you do and yet sometimes i wonder — do you even think about why i’m with you? ruminating about us at 12:30 every tuesday is my passion flying out to spend time with you is romantic to most but in the end, flier miles are a low-risk expense and all airline employees and their mothers know that frequent-flier tickets just equate to a cheap, flexible, refundable fuck and still i wonder—

49

Rachel Gallegos

do you truly adore being with me? when you say adorable: do you adore how i make you feel more powerful, intelligent, and sexually desired than the women your age do? when you say that you daydream about me during your afternoon meetings— do you daydream about how perfect my naked body looks on your sheets or do you daydream about how stunning my smile is when i look at you? my older lover, i have quite a few questions for you Anonymous

50

Race and Life - HW5: Actions

1. Posit the following scenario: You are an eighth grader walking from Target to the local movie theater. You live in Longview, Texas, which is not quite rural, but was never mistaken for New York City. En route to the movie theater you are accompanied by your school classmates. As you walk, a truck full of older individuals pulls up beside you, and they scream at you “get away from those white girls, n*****”. What is the best course of action?

You can make the following assumptions:

- Assume that you, as the subject of the question, are a Black middle

school student

- Assume that your classmates are all white individuals

- Assume all the classmates that you were walking with ran away

- Assume that you are adrenaline filled due to the unexpected

stressful situation

- Assume that every second in the real world converts to

approximately four seconds in your head In the described situation, I would not do anything. This seems counterintuitive, but with the 5 seconds in real life that converted to 20 in my head, I realized that I was outnumbered. Not only that, but the disappearance of my “friends” also came as a shock. As such, I would go the “hope and pray everything works out” route.

2. Imagine you are the same individual from Question 1, but now you are a tenth grader in Longview High School. As a result of your World History teacher that is always spouting out conspiracy theories, you are slightly more “woke” than the average tenth grader. Now imagine you hear a teacher tell a class of majority Black students that “they should vote Republican because Abraham Lincoln was a Republican and signed the emancipation proclamation that freed their ancestor”. Which of the following best describes the correct reaction you should have?

51

a. Report said teacher to his higher ups who probably think in a similar fashion, so the net result is zero change. b. Do nothing and endlessly worry if you failed your job as a Black student in educating your teacher. c. Challenge the Anatomy teacher on his political/ historical comment. Remind him that the parties switched in everything but name in the late 1800s. So the Republican party of 1860 is more akin to Democratic party of today, and the Democratic party of 1860 is more akin to the Republican party of today. As such, he should stick to teaching the class where the femur is. d. Remind him that it’s extremely racist to suggest that Black students vote as a monolith according to the party that “freed” their ancestors when they should have never been enslaved in the first place

3. A) Take the same student and place him in a Duke party 4 years later.

By now, his ability to discern right from wrong in racially charged and awkward situations has greatly increased since high school. During one of his favorite songs at the party, he notices a student repeatedly sing the word “nigga” loudly. Unfortunately, this student does not seem to be of the African diaspora. Using the following formulas, determine if the student should be able to use the word.

Formulas If they are black = yes If they are not black = no

a. Yes b. Hell no c. Maybe d. None of the above

B) If you picked anything other than answer choice B despite the formula, then explain your answer. It will not be correct, but explain nevertheless.

If you answered that they cannot say the word, then no need explaining your answer. You have probably done a lifetime of work to justify your answer.

52

Hunter Stark

4. Envision you are hanging out with your younger sister over multiple weeks.

You notice that she frequently looks through magazines of Black and Latina models. Without fail, she always calls the lighter complexioned models “so pretty” and “gorgeous”. She has never once made this comment for any of the darker women, despite sharing their color of skin. Which of the following is the best answer for her behavior?

a. Society has trained your sister to equate light skin with beauty and effectively caused her self-hate for her reflection. b. Dark skin is rarely celebrated in the media. Thus, your sister does not know that she is extremely beautiful because of her shade. c. Her behavior is the effect of colorism. This is a type of discrimination originating from colonial times when lighter slaves were more favored than darker slaves. d. All of the above.

Ehizokha Ihionkhan 53

my mom and i

long for discolored bricks jutting out of the faรงade like tombstone teeth and a comfortably queer shade of blue-green panels that rested below frosty white stucco which I always mixed up with Roccoco the grass perennially dying and the neighbors who sat on little brick pedestals fencing in the front yard my mom and i, we planted geraniums, no exotic rose-tulip-marigold hybrids plant easy to care for plants my mom said and anyway they died every spring poor plants the soil was brown-gray and crumbly and i never saw a worm wriggling in there a leftover brick or two i am allowed to keep although the geraniums are compost in a more wormy landfill i hope back again after a walk my mom brought in with her the earthy woodsy smell of suburban greenery though personally i observed the backyard grasses that pushed through a fissure in the yellow cement i pretended was the San Andreas fault delicate star flowers bloomed in a row there. dusky violet centers with pointy silk petals that disappeared when i pinched them between thumb and index finger left only lingering scent and a trace of wetness fall was ant-stomping season and the bottom of my house slippers were my most potent weapon

she told me a story where there was once a laboratory without ants and it was so clean everyone became terribly ill

54

Hunter Stark

my mom and i, she was afraid of the paralyzing night and what it could let in so she choked the front door with an iron bar and the garage door and then i couldn’t get in there only two weeks ago i already forget what home is and looks like and at first i didn’t notice the ants because who would right they’re so tiny but i swallowed them and they pinched my skin

Jess Chen

55

Wo r m

Never before having written m‘appelle, burrows in apple and muddles in palm.

Crawls up the mountain and likes what it sees.

Polishes (with a hip thrust) the plaque on my teeth.

Births its beginning swallows its end.

Disappears through a wormhole and manifests wriggling on the far side of perpetuity.

Zoe Abedon

56

J Donheiser

57

Sophie Laettner

Guitar Strings

And the rain keeps slicking down those guitar strings so you can hear it, his fingers, always slipping out squeaking on the music as he plays. And there’s this look on his face, I swear you’d know it if you could be here, like he’s thinking of something he can’t quite make his fingers get away with and there’s something beyond his music his guitar strings are never really going to say. And I want to tell him, Sir it’s OK, it’s OK I believe you, it’s OK we’re listening to you, I hear it and the rest of us hear it it’s there you’re not alone, it will work I promise it will, it will work it will work do you believe me?

But I can’t. I can’t, and I look away. Partly because I don’t think it’s right to lie. Partly because if his fingers stopped squeaking down those guitar strings I don’t think I could keep my heart from snapping in their place in the silence there’d be after.

Daniel Egitto 58

Rocket

I see your bottle on the floor and if there is beauty There is block, a slight silk, drinking between us What could have been ours alone but is shared by the Bus driver this morning who winked at me when I popped My quarters in the machine and was ten cents too short from full When there is sun and it hits my back I feel like my brother who holds eternity in both eyes and Licks the sky to comfort a tired body Yes, like the ceiling fan wishing the oyster pearls from yesterday’s Tea leaves, there is a fortune in the pandering And there is soft skin always, dresses, closed eyes.

And tell me this, he says When you dropped a cherry pit in the sink last week Did you think of me Or did you look down and find a cure to loneliness And if you could choose between the cold And me Would you have to think twice Before sinking into the swimming pool at the heart of the apartment complex What he didn’t ask was why the robbing was always done at home And what I didn’t answer was whether I’d rather walk home With a trail of water dripping behind my feet Or stay a bit longer in his sister’s bedroom Listening to the air conditioner leak tap and gin Counting the people on the walls

59

Alice Dai

This is no place to leave I think The roof is melting into glass, the glass into blue and The oranges in the kitchen are mixing into the cake There is one room with five doors And all the while I am the performer waiting For a seed, or a traffic light at the intersection When the camera shutter clicks twice and You take your seat at the table This is when I know that the ants in the hallway Are making stars on the floor.

This is when I know that it is morning.

Good morning, good morning.

Alice Dai 60

Untethered

We had been happy before my wife decided to get depressed. That was about a year ago. Emmaline and I, we’d been pretty close. I mean, we’d witnessed someone die while skydiving. We had gotten to the place ungodly early (she always liked being early) and we decided to watch the previous jumpers in the distance. There was one that was falling much faster than the others, like he was doing tricks or something. Then there was the sound of an impact, and we thought it couldn’t be. My wife and I went into the building and they told us there’d been a terrible accident and that we couldn’t skydive today. That’s a rare thing to experience together. What were the odds? I looked them up after we got back and it was 1 in 100,000. And what were the odds that we would be the ones to see it? A miracle. I took my wife to Olive Garden instead for our five-year anniversary. She cried a bit that night, but I wasn’t broken up about it. I didn’t even know the person and it was probably his own fault.

But I thought of the skydiving incident when the whole thing started. It started with Mike. He worked in Procurement and I tried to avoid him most days, but he was persistent in talking to me that Tuesday. He told me that his granddad had floated off into the sky. Inexplicable, is what he said.

Bullshit, is what I said. And I thought Mike’s brain was made of gas. But after the neighbor’s kid drifted off the next day while playing soccer, we decided to buy a set of weights, just to be safe. Well, I decided to. It was a great idea. I figured that if I carried one around everywhere, it would stop me from floating off. I bought them before they sold out, like water and bread before a tropical storm. When I told my wife about Mike’s granddad and the kid next door and the weights, she didn’t care at all.

“Hey, at least we know they’re going to heaven,” she said. She had yoga pants on and her dark hair was in a messy bun.

“Just take the ten pound one,” I said.

She pretended like it was too heavy and then left the house without the weight. I heard her car start and I knew she was going to Target.

Emmaline didn’t like watching movies with me or having sex anymore, but she still liked grocery shopping. Since she went to the store everyday, we had enough food for a short apocalypse, though not all of it was edible.

But I humored her.

I think my wife might have cared about the situation if we had kids.

But we didn’t. She said she wasn’t ready yet. I was patient, but the clock was ticking. I wanted one girl and two boys, and one of the boys would 61

be named after me because my name was a good one. But maybe waiting until this whole thing blew over would be safer. The neighbor’s kid had floated off, even though he had been a bit porky.

I got a drink and turned on the TV. Like I thought, our town was on the news. Maybe they would interview Mike. Or the neighbor. If they interviewed the neighbor, our house might be seen in the background.

But right now, the camera was on a physicist who said that gravity was oscillating and soon everything on earth would drift irresistibly into space. Physicists always looked like physicists with their crazy hair, lightwash jeans, and gesturing hands. I liked that. My theory was that people look like who they are on the inside. The anchors joked about UFOs kidnapping people for experiments. Then, it cut to the local pastor who said it was the Rapture. While the pastor was talking about the collective sins of the town, I had an idea, another brilliant one. A strong rope could keep a person tethered to the planet. And it would be less heavy than the weights. I hadn’t exercised much since I got married, and carrying the medium weight from the set made me feel a bit like that Greek guy who was doomed to hold up the sky. I would ask Emmaline to buy a rope on her next Target run.

Hunter Stark

62

Hunter Stark

I was pouring myself another drink when she returned. She had two bags of veggie fries, grapefruit juice, three cartoons of eggs, and cat litter. We didn’t have a cat, but Emmaline was always trying to convince me.

“We’re not getting a cat,” I said.

Emmaline ignored that. “My lungs feel like they’re getting too big,” she said. “It’s been like that since this morning.”

“You should drink more milk,” I said. “Eat more. Maybe exercise.”

She was pale like a hermit crab without its shell, but of course she was.

She spent almost all her time in the house. I was trying to be helpful, but she looked at me with annoyance. And I’m not proud of what I said next, but after a whole year, my wife needed a push. Maybe she would finally get out of the dumps and be herself again. Maybe we could go on walks together. Maybe we could have a baby and name it Robert Allen Jr.

Instead, she knocked over my drink and left the kitchen without putting up the groceries. I practiced counting to ten, like someone had taught me to do. But I cheated and just counted to five. Ten seconds is a long time when you’re stewing. I put the unbroken glass in the sink.

63

Emmaline hadn’t done dishes in a few days and I thought about making a chore chart, since that would be fair.

Then I saw something move past the window. My wife.

Emmaline was floating away, higher than the roof now, her face overexposed by sunlight so I couldn’t really see it. I felt like a kid who had just lost his new red balloon. I know it seems bad to compare losing my wife to a flyaway balloon, but that’s the way it was. It was like everything I should feel had disappeared into the atmosphere with her.

Vivian Lu

64

Hunter Stark

65

66

Index Abedon, Zoe

56, “Worm” Behn, Sara

40, “In December” Chan, Alex 14-15; Chen, Jess

51, “my mom and i” Boltwood, Avery

10, “scared young men”; 25 “Three

Kisses by an English River” Dai, Alice

8; 9; 41; 59, “Rocket”; 60 Davis, Blythe

23 “Relations” Donheiser, J 56-57 Dutt, Madhav

10-11; 27; 48 Egitto, Daniel

58, “Guitar Strings”’ Fernelius, Caroline

6, “Vanilla Pudding” Gallegos, Rachel

37; 50 Ihionkhan Ehizokha

51, “Race and Life - HW5: Actions”

Jones, Jill;

19, “little” Laettner, Sophie

22; 28-29; 42 “student girls”; 44; 58 Lu, Vivian

61, “Untethered” Manohar, Sujal

25; 46-47 Muensterman, Valerie

30, “Deer Play” Ozernova, Milena

38, “One Dollar Pizza” Schmeling, Natasha

12, “Someplace Better” Sheikh, Alizeh

45, “you’re going too fast” Stark, Hunter

7; 18; 22; 31; 53; 55; 62; 63; 64-65 Zheng, Lucy

28, “Artifical Flavoring” anonymous

49, “The Power Struggle”

68

69

70

71

[BACK COVER]