Perpendicularity by Brenda Nguyen

03 21

PERPENDICULARITY

brenda nguyen university of california, davis creative writing honors thesis

Throughout the term under the long shadow of a yearlong pandemic, I drew upon embodied memory, the wisdom of nature’s constant flux, and the realities of living and learning online. I write about how the body processes pain, how the mind processes grief, and how language transmits this information. I think I expected to turn into a dedicated writerly type overnight, in which I could churn out brilliant pieces consistently each week. However, I encountered burnout often, and counteracted this through meaningful rest and intentional reflection on the natural ebbs and flow of my creative process. I had to confront my attitude that regarded verse and prose as opposite poles. I learned to experiment with both styles as viable tools in my process, and I also learned that I benefit from constraints and writing prompts in order to focus my attention and intentions.

W R I T E R’S STAT E M E N T

I have been in school for 8 years off and on now. I have switched majors three times before settling on English. I have been at UC Davis for two years, two quarters in person, three quarters via distance learning. As a student, I learned that I genuinely enjoy research and formulating arguments that draw connections between the critical and the literary. I embarked on the honors thesis in order to challenge myself further and examine how I might draw connections between my lived experiences, find patterns, and respond to the constantly changing politics and culture of today through my poetic voice. I feel most at home in prose as a vehicle for memoir. I am deeply interested in themes of motherhood and intergenerational trauma, especially given the fact that my grandmother died in childbirth when my mom was born. Motherhood did not suit my mom, and I ended up in the care of a distant aunt with whom I carry a complicated relationship.

Of the recommended reading, I referred most frequently to James Longenbach’s Art of the Poetic Line and Helene Cixous’ Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing. In my revision process I paid more attention to lineation and caesura in order to both mimic, manipulate, and organize the sounds of language, as Longenbach writes about in length in his book. I enjoyed investigating on the micro level how my lines could interact with one another just as much as they function as a part of a whole stanza or piece. Cixous’ discussion of the School of Death was especially powerful for me, and I ended up writing multiple pieces on the subject of loss. Her writings on dreams inspire me to loosen my approach to the writing process and keep my mind open to free association and wordplay. I think at the beginning of my time at Davis and even at the beginning of this quarter I imagined I would by now have a clear foundation for my identity as a writer, with an accomplished portfolio to match. On the other side of the process, with spring quarter a week away, I see now that I hold a living document and newfound confidence in my capacity to continue to play with language. Looking forward, I am interested in generating more critical works that engage special topics such as ecofeminism, meritocracy, and technoculture. I wish to continue to explore hybrid forms and mixed genre writing, and to mobilize my expression to affirm the role of narrative in self-determination as well as a means to connect with the larger world on the other side of the window. -brenda 3

CONTENTS CELESTIAL PAPARAZZI NEAR DEATH LOCKJAW THANATOPSIS SPEECH IS A SPELL FALSE STARTS WHAT WAS ONCE LOST BECOMES FOUND INHERITANCE PORTRAIT OF MY GRANDMOTHER COLD SPACE: A LIST ON A WINTER’S DAY... ODE TO THE SKIN POSTURE EXPERIMENTS SIDEREAL LOCKDOWN THE QUEEN AND I 4

PANDEMIC BLUES A MELTING, A THAWING

C E LE ST I A L PA PA R A Z Z I string of mirrors swing sun shapes across angled walls like walking homebound past the tall slotted fence with rays from day’s end flashing between the cracks—camera in the sky flashing: This is your life, this is your life, this is your life

NE A R DE AT H

I split my forehead open on the first day of second grade on the step of a playground slick with morning frost. I remember reaching up one gloved hand to touch the throbbing pain. I stared stunned at the dark red bloom staining Hello Kitty’s face, blank and now drenched. By sixth grade I found my coming of age meant becoming an open mother wound: stinging, putrid, raw, exposed. In high school I cut calculus every other morning to sit on the pedestrian bridge over the highway. I drew spirals with nubs of pink chalk as I listened to the dull roar of cars below.

I was 17 when I ran as far away as I could. I didn’t look back, and death followed me in strange ways. It was a wringing of the hands and rapid thoughts, heart beating so fast at the danger I couldn’t see. I sat very, very still in a city of commuters. I spent days on end blankly refreshing the browser again and again hoping I’d find connection. I walked barefoot around the city lit by the glints in stray cats’ eyes to escape the haunting. I told the boy I loved that I was thinking of dying, and he said to think of him. Keys failed. Pills failed. Dismissive comments from my therapist failed. Twice I ended up in a hospital where patients’ rooms have no doors and the only book they let me read was The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Twice I reread the novel of my adolescence. I saw pieces of myself in each of the protagonists. I resonated with Carmen’s temper and Lena’s shyness. In this way, I fit right into the sisterhood by befriending myself.

I picked up the pieces. I say I survive now. Just last year a bike ride gone wrong turned my world upside town and onto a black spike through my right shoulder. The blood spatter remained on the nearby bougainvillea petals tree for weeks. The spiked fence narrowly missed my lung, and I breathe another day. I have a burn scar like a blazing comet that arcs around my left forearm in a scaly path breaking skin in the first degree before crashing just outside the black-green orbit of my first tattoo—a perfect circle over old wrist scars. In the back of a van with no seat belts and a drunk driver at the wheel I held on for dear life and told myself, “This is not how I die.” And now I think I won’t ever die.

L O C K JAW

sinking slowly, reverse body scan every muscle contracts together like throat walls closing in sleep as soft teeth clench onto the powerlessness of being without words while downloads from a different plane shoot straight into the meat brain in the form of flickering lights, abstract shapes that shift and dance tv static creaks in the house, movement in the night scratches across the back from the presence we don’t dare name, secret shadowy ally that shows you everything you need to know about fighting in the dark

T H A NATOP S I S I.

II.

I could not feel grief for someone with whom I never had a true conversation. I remember holding his clenched fist as we sat in silence the last time I saw him alive.

My late uncle gave no indication that he was suffering, that his liver cells were dividing uncontrollably in the weeks leading up to his death. His wife gained legal guardianship over my brother and me in 2006. He kept his distance from the drama that followed us, and, already possessing two biological children of this own, kept his distance. We hardly ever spoke unless absolutely necessary and so we each haunted the halls of his home in mutual ambivalence. He silently, dutifully followed his wife’s instructions for good health and knocked back tall glasses of freshly juiced wheatgrass every morning. She told me this misfortune upon the family, this cancer in an otherwise active, healthy man was my fault. My bad behavior, my insolence raised his cortisol levels and weakened his body. A couple nights before his death, I had my first panic attack. The guilt for my existence left me breathless, and my body attempted to resuscitate itself through hyperventilation. My arms and legs felt like stars.

It’s 2014 and Grandpa is dying. Above the altar on one wall of the house are three portraits. The most familiar to me is that of my late grandmother who is dressed in traditional ao dai. She has dark, enormous eyes and a Mona Lisa smile that seems to hide some divine secret. There is the portrait of my late uncle in an oversized suit, smiling stiffly in his middle age. The third is my step-grandmother who is pictured sitting down, hands folded neatly one on top of the other. There is a fourth empty space. Murmurs of arranging the 8 hour drive to SoCal where funerary services could take place float in the dining room like clouds heavy with rain. We are waiting for Grandpa to die. I used to attempt to greet Grandpa with the words for “Hello, how are you?” in halting, broken Vietnamese. He would turn and smile politely at my quiet gibberish, and his utterances were just as incomprehensible. Our language barrier hung over us like a curtain, flimsy but useful for when there is nothing to say. Instead when I was with him, I thought about what it must be like to live your final days unable to have the luxury of speaking potent last words. All I could do was look through the yellowed black-and-white photo albums. Grandpa young and suave leaning against a wall. Grandpa young and solemn in a government uniform. All I could do was hold his hand.

On the day of his wake I remember the smell of his open casket in my mouth, a sickly sweet stench. An adjacent room filled with the swirling blue smoke of incense held strangers who chanted prayers for his passing.

III. Every dissection day I painstakingly cross-referenced the body in front of me with the diagram in my shaking hands as quickly as I could. This body had a flexible rubber tube like a macaroni in its larynx and a sad blackish wrinkled lump next to its heart. Collapsed lung. Smoker. Then, I excused myself, slipped out of the lab, and took a brisk walk around the science building to compose myself. One spring semester I found myself performing poorly for the first time in a college class. This is because in an anatomy course, identification of structures on cadavers was 40% of the overall grade, and I did not like to spend a lot of time with them. I attended one of the only community colleges in the south Bay Area that offered dissection of very real, and very dead cadavers in the advanced biology courses. It was a prerequisite for a career my family convinced me I wanted in communication disorders. I told myself I wanted to help people speak up for themselves, even if I had no idea how to achieve this for myself. Every dissection day, the formaldehyde hit me in the eye like a freshly cut onion, and sent a chill of pure revulsion through my entire being. The stench of your own mortality awaiting freshman scrutiny smells putrid and saccharine. However, the hardest part was when I would notice something that reminded me the cadavers were once living and human. Most often it would be their rigor mortis knees kept slightly bent that set me off. I would think of my own scarred knees. One time my eyes wandered to the cadaver’s head, his face covered in a white cloth. I noticed the angle of his chin and saw the remaining salt and pepper stubble and my stomach lurched because I thought of fingertips and pink palms against the bristle. How many times had that stubble been stroked? Some days contained beauty, like the cross section of the cerebellum, or even insight such as the delicate strength of the bodiless atlas C1 vertebrae. Other days my stomach turned at a thick layer of fatty tissue tucked between the opened flap of skin and the shiny kidneys. Once my belt caught on the thin cloth sheet covering the cadaver, and a dead hand unceremoniously flopped off the table looking mottled and papery, with the fingers frozen like a claw, frozen in time, and wholly unreachable.

In my aunt’s home I earned many new names. “Older sister, grandmother, slut, burden, fatso, loser, ghost.” A terrifying mirror. An upending of worlds. I would repeat my apologies. I would express my shame and guilt. I learned the language of compliance. Expressions of questioning or outright refusals would escalate the situation into insults and often violence. I repeated the words, “If I act like this I’ll drop out of school. I will become homeless and sell my body for money. Then I will die alone.” This was the prophecy she bestowed on me often. I memorized the refrain “You are a burden, you are a curse. I must have done something in my past life to have to live with you.” I learned the words for “slow” and “stupid” while I thought to myself how similar “newspaper” and “plastic bag” sound in Vietnamese. I remember going to a Vietnamese market the first time after I ran away and taking in the familiar smells of ice melting under raw fish, smoke twisting from joss sticks standing before a plastic buddha, the chatter lilting in the A/C breeze like birdsong. I remember crying at the realization that the same language she wielded to condemn me and slice me open still sounded like home.

SPEECH IS A SPELL

A cousin of my father grins mischievously, pretends to lunge toward me and says menacingly, “If I ever hear you’re giving your parents trouble, what should the punishment be?” And without thinking, I said “cut out my tongue.”

false starts

the color of roasted peaches. I shook out

belongings. Not people, not closure,

less than ten of these into my palm and

not consequences, but my worldly

deposited them into the pot, brushing them

possessions. Stacks of books, knick-

deeper into the dirt with my fingertips.

primary

concern

was

knacks, overstuffed folders of papers, everything I collected, earrings and

There are problems so deeply rooted that

pendants, clothes most of all. I’m a

if you try to truly dig them out, you end

materialistic girl. If I could have, I would

up burying yourself alive. My fault, your

have taken everything. Instead, all my

fault, a troubled childhood, an unstable

decisions were mostly practical. I didn’t

temperament, the wrong words at the

have anyone who could love me as much

wrong time, the right words at the wrong

as a treasured panda Beanie Baby, for

time, patterns, resentments, something

instance. I placed it on the top of the pile

lacking. Pointing accusatory fingers and

inside of a flimsy backpack that I zipped

grabbing her wrists too damn tightly,

shut in one fell motion.

not realizing how small they were, when we should have held each other’s

The packet of seeds was in the farthest

shaking hands. Desensitized, numb,

end of my junk drawer. I’d been waiting

treacherously apathetic. My emotions at

for this. I chose a bear-shaped flower pot

this point were flat like a callus that only

and went out to the backyard to sample

emerges after years of constant friction.

unoccupied soil to mix in. I found some

The opposite of love is indifference.

damper dirt that was reminiscent of the

Hate is frustrated love.

mud pie creations of my childhood. Then. I tore open the packet carefully to reveal

I set the pot on the windowsill in my room

seeds dark and slender like cat’s eyes dark,

where the bear’s bottom stuck out

precariously over the edge, but still in a

much like Wall-E’s EVE who, too, scanned

position where it could balance properly

the desolate Earth for even the smallest hint

so long as no one disturbed it. I peered

of sweet green life. Nothing.

at the soil as I watered the seeds with a white plastic cup. I saw some ants and

I’m moving between reckless abandon

unassuming tiny brown insects scuttling

and hyper-caution. I don’t know where

around. I assumed this was normal. The

home is, but that is the only place I want

packet said germination would begin in 15-

to be.

20 days, so I watched and waited. It has been 2 1/2 weeks since planting the What am I leaving behind? I asked myself

seeds and there is no sign of germination.

this over and over. This has happened

The packet said it was a versatile plant,

before too many times. It had to end. But

one that was sure to flourish in both dry

I couldn’t help thinking of my biological

and moist conditions. But when I looked

father walking out before I was born and

at the flower pot and brushed my fingers

my mother walking out without saying

across the surface, I eventually uncovered

goodbye. Even I didn’t give a proper

the seeds as lifeless and dormant as the day

goodbye except for a pathetic line on a

I first saw them. It was stupid of me, really,

sticky note in blue pen. I had no time to

to think I could grow a wildflower indoors.

deliberate very long and I didn’t want to miss my chance. I thought it’d be easy and quick because I was very impatient to see something grow. I checked on the flower pot every day, feeling

BECOMES FOUND W H AT WA S O N C E L O S T

His hand sweeps from the side of my face to land on the crest of my hip as one tiny white gold hoop latches to my earlobe, the pool of silver light pulls out from the bed and returns out the window into the summer night, your final gift to me no longer caught in a mess of time and blankets— and he and I uncross paths another hand pulls my purple composition book from the heaving shredder, fragments come together our shouts sink down our throats as my aunt unwraps her closed fist from my long hair until we, too, uncross paths and I return to the bathroom where you’re unclasping the ring from my five-year-old ear lobe stained with red from the sewing needle that glistens under incandescent lights while a prayer dispelling pain slips through your lips and we move back into the bedroom where you unstuff a towel between the door and the carpet blue smoke curling downstairs into strangers’ cigarettes and out from my brother’s asthmatic lungs that grow smaller and smaller they’re swallowing cries the way you did a lifetime ago when your own mother, fading in the arms of the midwife, tells you the first hello and farewell you’d ever heard in the same breath

inheritance 16

Eyes like you cheeks like you Step outside the lines like you Cry like you ink like you Stand at five foot one like you The target on my back The ghost that won’t stay dead The curse that refuses to break Shame like you shame on me

PORTRAIT OF MY GRANDMOTHER

we are supposed to wait

when dinner is ready, I look at her eyes

for Grandma and The Ancestors to eat first

I’ve always envied how even in blank expressions of people I don’t know

grayscale they burn with a will to linger

from a place I’ve never been watch us as we

her mona lisa smile seems to know something line up the utensils like teeth

that I cannot learn in books

of hungry ghosts before porcelain bowls

perhaps she knows just how when the incense burns out we know

much Vietnamese I don’t know

they’ve finished, returned to dust and smoke

I hope giving her the first taste of white my aunts tell me to remember to bow my head

steamed rice is enough

but all we do is remember how the dead are to be served

meanwhile the living pad around the kitchen gossiping or texting

C O L D S PAC E : A L I S T 18

a flip of a switch, a voice at the door, nearby footsteps, a presence, a creamy blanket, a wiping motion, morning rituals, retrieving a glass of water, letters organized neatly, a secondhand purse, a garage door opening, a gentle touch on the shoulder, quiet arms, a doodle on my to-do lists, words of forgiveness, a dressing room, freshly cut fruit.

Bend without breaks, ragged silhouettes. And Reach low— Shed—cold Remnants of former life this public Process of Constant

Becoming.

O N A W I N T E R ’ S DAY, L E AV E S A R E L O N G G O N E

Bleached bone sycamore branches Growing upward And Stretching outward Crack through their dry dead bark Patchwork of plates and shards of shale

ODE TO THE SKIN

So I may not fall apart So it is us versus the world Every child has known the smell of pennies Of small accidents pooling over the roundness of knees arcing over chain-link fences where concrete meets flesh: early lessons in weighing risk and freedom My blood was never brighter than when I Learned to treat my body with cruelty and met obsession on the inside of my arm as some early Allergy twisting it into pink, cracked raw skin She told me to leave the bumps alone, ignore the itch In the back of my mind where I stayed as I winced Against the crack of the wooden broom handle And studied the way brown turns to red turns to Pale white like the parallel lines sliced over Delicate ulnar arteries like the deep scar tissue clawed into the tops of my thighs One summer I thought I’d never stop itching I would have rather crawled out of my own body Than wait for it to heal. This skin is a collection Of relics from the past or a time when skin care was leaving the deep maroon dome of crust alone, resisting the urge to pick at the pieces that need to be smooth, flat lesions rising. As within so without So regeneration is possible

POSTURE EXPERIMENTS

Imagine a persistent pain behind your right scapula that inexplicably reminds you of the curve of a red cardinal’s beak. Imagine what seeds you may have planted there. Imagine a body that speaks in electrical impulses. Imagine being forced by your aunt to keep a log of every sinful impulse you have on a daily basis. You have to write at least one page a day. Imagine the burden of perpetual presumed guilt. Imagine lying about all the things you thought about lying about. Imagine calling her “mom” despite everything. Imagine a ring of bone named after the titan condemned to hold up the sky for eternity. Imagine this bodiless vertebra holding up the cranium at the top of the spine. Imagine it in a constant battle with the earth’s gravitational field, craving perpendicularity. Imagine a slight shift in your center of gravity. Imagine the atlas as a ring of bone. Imagine the ring of bone compensating for this slight shift by moving the entire spine over to one side, creating continuous stress in your body. Imagine pain as inheritance. Imagine a nerve headed for the heart with only 70% of the brain’s message. Imagine a holy book misinterpreted for thousands of years. Imagine running sideways toward the horizon.

SIDEREAL LOCKDOWN

we lay under an uninterrupted summer sun chasing shallow designs along the unbreaking—blue and gold oracle bone carvings, far messages spiraling as stars do in constant motion, like love without reason. we’ve been here before, an illusion of here and there, then and now, the shapeshifting name of normal. rub my forehead, first clockwise then in parallel lines fingers dragging along the sweat

THE QUEEN AND I

Astrology is a foundation for perceiving the world through the movement of celestial bodies we know are out there trailing across the night sky. It is a symbolic language for abstract thoughts and ideas. The brain is a pattern maker and matcher, seeking narratives to weave our pasts, present, and futures. There is an astrology app that takes in data regarding astronomical activity and translates them into seemingly soul-baring information about your true nature. It is called The Pattern. Not only can a user run a compatibility check with their loved ones, but there is a new feature in which the user may run a check with celebrities. Naturally, I ran a check with fellow Virgo Beyoncé. I sat star struck that she and I have a “powerful connection, like we’ve known each other before” This friendship bond feature on The Pattern places an imagined “you” on par with Beyoncé in a simulated, hypothetical situations of presumed relationship. The notion she could “find you inspiring to be around as a friend” and that we “share past life karmic links” was as fantastical as it was ego-boosting. I wonder what I have to say that would inspire a subject of great inspiration. The app gave me details on our synergy as well as areas in which we might butt heads, and I reveled in a daydream in which Beyoncé and I could sort out our differences over a petty disagreement. I remember in an interview when asked if she could be any animal, Beyoncé said she would be a whale. I daydreamed about taking a potion by the sea together. We’d lay on the shore as our bones swell and shatter while our enormous bodies takes shape. Of course, we would hold no shame or self-consciousnesses. The biggest mammal in the world is beautiful and perfect. We dive through the ocean and leap over the waves in loud splashes. We sing whale songs to our brethren and listen to deep sea gossip among the fish. Before we return to land we float on the water’s surface and feel the sun on my big blue body. We would take up as much space as possible It was half fan-fiction, half metaphysical jaunt in a timeline in which it is not abnormal to have a casually deep and beautiful friendship with a pop icon. The feature is a confluence of our desire to experience proximity to the lifestyles of the rich and famous and our desire to derive meaning in an unpredictable and upsetting world. We find joy in creating and performing. We are in love with the simulation.

PA N D E M I C B LU E S

In these uncertain times, in these unprecedented times In these uncertain times, in these unprecedented times (I grow weary with this hill we climb) They hope this email finds me well now more than ever Some corporation hopes to find me well now more than ever For weeks I sleep, wake, and work in the same pilled blue sweater

A young mother says, please excuse the background noise, Forehead creases, embarrassed by tinny sounds from her child’s toys Her work says, safety remains a top priority We hope these changes offer flexibility. Excuse me, you’re muted I close my eyes and extend an exhale, small attempt to feel rooted I apologize, my mistake, I didn’t know I was muted The powers that be follow developments regarding the crisis The powers that be continue to monitor the crisis (The boldfaced emphasis on corporate interests does not surprise us) We grieve that we are unable to meet in person We grieve how much we miss being in person While unemployment across the country continues to worsen For latest information on the coronavirus, visit the CDC website For latest information on the coronavirus, please visit the CDC website I close my eyes again in front of the glowing screen’s dense light

a melting, a thawing a state of rigid posturing sliding into liquid surrender a possibility of flow-feeling my toes, my fingertips, my nose again—my body pulses and blood rushes through me, reminds me of resilience as the fire dances behind the glass pane, a mirror to the heat behind my ribcage and I cover my legs now and stand in the sun longer than in the shade as I move through the seasons, the changing from hiding to seeking: A sensation of safety

WINTER 2021