Chanter Literary Magazine
Spring 2017
(noun): one who sings, or, the part of the bagpipe that plays a melody
Spring 2017 Macalester College Literary Magazine St. Paul, MN chanter@macalester.edu
Chanter would like to thank the following: All the amazing writers and artists who submitted their work Matt Burgess Jan Beebe The Mac Weekly The wonderful developers of InDesign at Adobe and Rachel Wilson Please fund us
Cover art: Danica (graphite and digital color), Emerald Thole
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Editor-in-Chief: Xander Gershberg Literary Editor: Zeena Fuleihan Associate Literary Editor: Miriam Moore-Keish Art Editor: Elizabeth Loetscher Associate Art Editor: Julia Fritz-Endres Submission Managers: Theodore Twidwell, Claire Grace
Staff:
Shine Chin Julia Joy Matthew Later Willie McDonagh Noah Mondschein Quinton Singer Katie Tsuji Zane Vorhes-Gripp
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Writing •
Graft, Parlier, CA
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Katie Tsuji
A Few Airmen Come Home
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Carsten Haas
pobrecita 8 Raven McKnight Box Marked Fragile 10 James Hartzer
In The End, Everything Burns 11 Parker Grubb
How To Become Rich in Seven Easy Steps 12 Martha Beyene
Magyar Revolt 14 Sophie Hilker
Unforeseen uncomplications 15 Bethany Catlin
The House of Saying Grace 16 Susana Cardenas-Soto
Don’t Panic 17 Marleigh Jenkins-Morse
the first time was 18 Claire Grace
Lemminkäinen’s Mother 19 Noah Elkins
On Wednesday Reincarnations 30 James Hartzer
Apples for Gladius 33 Noah Mondschein
last summer’s sestina 34 Raven McKnight
A Departure 36 Carsten Haas
The Park on Euclid, 1997 37 Xander Gershberg
By the Lake 38 Noah Elkins
Mười Hai 39 Charlie Pham
Homes 42 Katie Tsuji
wish #3 43 Susana Cardenas-Soto
A Snowy Bench at Minnehaha Park 44 Benjamin LeBlanc 4
Art •
Untitled 20 Claire Blood-Cheney
Kerala 21 Vaishnavi Madhavan Field 22 Quinton Singer
Untitled 23 Kelsey Fox
Self Portrait in a Room with Candles 24 Alia Benedict
Strange Love, Two Arms 25 Alia Benedict
Aga 26 Emerald Thole Shutter 27 Claire Grace Tethered 28 Kelsey Fox Hask 29 Ema Erikson
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Graft, Parlier, CA Katie Tsuji Grandpa Bill keeps the twigs in damp sand
Grandma Teri married him in March, too
for weeks. Until the weather’s right, and he
early for nectarine blossoms, though it was a
notches each tree, slips cutting under bark,
dry year. From the kitchen window she
to root. He paints wax over wound. It will
watches Bill on the ladder, his work gloves
heal within months. Runs a hand over the
and hat. He sees her watching and holds up a
trunk of the old satsuma. Feel. Scar, knotted
hand. His head hidden in branches. A timer
over by bark. Slight crook in her spine.
goes off behind her, and she turns away.
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A Few Airmen Come Home Carsten Haas A very few of us died quickly. The rest passed in the snow, Slowly, but at least easily, As the cold grew warm and the wind quiet. It made no difference – It was better than tumbling, Tumbling in the splitting plane, The steel shearing like paper And screaming like our mothers would, When they heard the news. And even that was better than those hours in the fog, Where every shadow seemed a mountain, And then one was. The heart’s triple-jump, The organ stumbling, Realizing quicker than we That this was it. They left us there thirty years. We do not grudge them that. But when our children finally received our bodies, They with children of their own, We were still about thirty, And they just. We saw no grief, just revulsion, And we wished that we had never come home.
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pobrecita Raven McKnight she will be raised by her sister, twenty years older and only half her blood. she places the iron on the burner while her sister prepares the board. the combs break in her hair. she bends at the waist to drape su pelo over the floral surface, when she is older, she will curl her hair around 2-liter coke bottles. they give her one soft curve on each side y uno es mejor. she was not born with any softness in her. for now, she lets her sister burn her into whiteness, “you don’t have to let them know that you’re a spic.” she was born to a brown-skinned father. her children will not know his name. she lost su mamá to the cancer that grew in her own body when she was two. su papá went when she was eleven. she still dreams of him, in a field. his legs were broken on impact, they said, but in the dreams he stands, beckons, te quiero Jeanne Anne, te quiero mucho y te quiero siempre. his birth certificate will be destroyed. she will pretend that Italian immigrant is worth more than Puerto Rican father and learn to make pizzelles, thin Italian galletas with powdered sugar. she will forget the rice and beans of her tíos y tías. they do not visit her in New Jersey. she will be grateful that her skin is not too dark, only olive. Grecian like her sister grooms her to be. during the fourth marriage, she will visit Puerto Rico, realize that she has forgotten the names of the tíos y tías. el sol, she remembers el sol y how clear the water was en la playa. the husband will only visit swimming pools and golf courses. she knows his full name but cannot find records of her father. the rest of la familia es too distant to contact. after the last divorce, she begins to foster dogs. le encantan los perros, she takes problem cases. she heals. one in particular, su perrito favorito, is rescued from distant streets, from los calles de Puerto Rico. se llama Nena, she is scared of everything she 8
recoils from touch. she calls the dog “mi Puertorriqueña”, croons “pobrecita, pobrecita” when she is scared. she cooks chorizo, sings a song her father learned at the church en la plaza. when they are alone, she talks, says quiero hablar contigo, mi perrito, pero no puedo hablar español. i want to talk to you but i can’t speak Spanish. te quiero, mi pobrecita, te quiero mucho y te quiero siempre.
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Box Marked Fragile James Hartzer Packing peanuts crunch when you press them between your fingers. Cardboard boxes wrinkle and age fifty years in transit. Tape crinkles and creases and releases with a sigh. I was put in a box marked fragile and passed between pairs of hands with lawyers signatures around my neck. I was thrown in the back of a trunk and ferried across an ocean of hurt so I travel on my own now. The blue-veined bruise-tinged dips under my eyes are proof that the trip has not been good to me. Custody is my third parent and it has a mouth full of cigarettes and wine bottle corks. Its hands pull my hair, call me all the wrong names, and brand me property. So I shipped myself across state lines and tattooed fragile above my left elbow. I think if I fold myself small enough into that red suitcase coffin I will find home. I carry my mother’s eyes in my father’s face and I watch myself running when they get too close.
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In The End, Everything Burns Parker Grubb Nothing burns like ten foot speakers. They make music all their own, the static sting of over-used words like love. Their music is a statement when he strums in front of them. A stab wound. Her camera is the twist. She takes seventeen pictures, one for every year of her marriage. They don’t burn yet. But wedding pictures do. It starts at the edges, with the lick of a candle. His face begins to melt. Her veil turns to snaking cinders. Their kiss turns to ashes. She dances in the back yard. Freedom. The next morning, her daughter saves a scrap. Hands. The wedding dress is gone. The house burns next, over eight years of silence. A crackle of decay. The man with the guitar is gone now. He took her second ring. As the house crumbles, her children remain inside. She burns pictures again, but there is no more dancing
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How To Become Rich in Seven Easy Steps Martha Beyene Step one: save every penny. Dig deep into your couch cushions. Gather the coins lying on the sidewalk on your way to school. Fish into the local mall’s water fountain when nobody’s looking. It is important that you start doing this as early as possible – say, fourteen. It is more important that nobody’s looking. Before you can know the worth of a million dollars, you need to know the worth of the fifty-two cents sitting at the bottom of the local mall’s water fountain. You need to feel their cool, metallic weight in the palm of your hand. Use the money you collect to buy yourself a hot pink ceramic piggy bank. Step two: cut frivolous spending. Rich people are rich because they’re sensible with their money. To debunk a common misperception, most rich people do not buy yachts or expensive Ferraris; they rent them. Remember this the next time you want to buy yourself an iced caramel frappuccino from Starbucks. Remember that you cannot rent coffee. Or that maybe you could, if only you were rich. Remember that little expenses add up to big dollars. Cut down your phone bill by limiting your data plan. Reduce excess spending by dropping your health insurance. Minimize gas costs by riding your bike in the middle of winter. Pray that you don’t become sick. Step three: get a job. Hard work can get you anywhere in life. You’ve been banned from the local mall so you apply to work at the town’s only Burger King. On the first day, kindly reject your manager’s offer to pay for your lunch break. Tell him, “I don’t believe in handouts.” When you get your first paycheck, swell with pride. For the past two weeks, you’ve woken up at 5 AM to clean shitty toilets and serve shitty burgers to even shittier people. You. have. earned. this. You slowly tear away at the pale blue pressure seals, trying to hide your bubbling excitement... Step four: quit your job. There are many paths to success but you’re pretty sure none of them involve smelling like mustard and french fries 24/7. In the past few months, you’ve applied to various temp agencies though not a single one has called you back. Your mother, now in her late-50s, starts to worry about you. When she asks about work, you say, “I’m in between jobs” or “I’m actually working from home now” or
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“I’m a sole proprietor-slash-entrepreneur.” Every so often, you receive a check in the mail from her but to this day, you have yet to cash one in. Your mother should know that you don’t believe in handouts. Step five: use a vision board. It’s time to turn your desire for fortune into some concrete, significant images. Clip out pictures of luxury watches from old magazines lying around your apartment. Cut out a headline from today’s paper: “Local Teacher wins $1.1 Million Jackpot.” Flip back a few pages to the coupon section. Carefully pick out your groceries for next week. Step six: diversify your portfolio. You don’t really know what this means. But you’ve been told it’s important so you dedicate an entire day to it. In preparation for this, you don a loose fitting suit and tie to wear at your kitchen table. The outfit smells like what you imagine success must smell like. Empty your briefcase and the place it underneath one of the table’s wobbly legs. Shuffle some blank sheets of paper around. Post a Warren Buffet quote on Facebook. Roll your pencil across the table top. Try to find out what a market index is. Fail. Step seven: believe in yourself.
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Magyar Revolt Sophie Hilker Car broke first date, beszél magyarul? No. Stranded, assistance arrived at dawn. Improper to stay out all night. Return home, could not find mother until I produced a ring. A wedding spent looking down the barrel of a shotgun isn’t a wedding at all. Resounding bells a life sentence, youth atrophy. Wash dishes, remove band of gold, turn on garbage disposal. House full of love empty, raise three children from a hollow mother. Nem értem. Resent pregnancy, move furniture, induce labor. Hands fly across stitches, nails scratch itch deeper than skin. Pack all belongings and leave lacking inheritance, dust. Refuse to slow down until I reach the hill. Man from The Club moves into big house. Manual labor hauling box after box after five flights of stairs. Finally fulfilled. Vanity kills, to express sorrow, egy nyelv sosem elég. Brush wispy white curls, smoke cigarettes to look pretty until I fall asleep. His last words were fond remembrances of the wife who left him.
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Unforeseen uncomplications Bethany Catlin I fancy you, in a backwards, offhand, you understand kind of sort of way You can blame the government for my failure to launch, Reasons and seasons got under my skin The Bureaucracy! they always win. let’s talk about baseball and blasts of pasts unshared unencumbered what’s your Number? Good golly — you sure do get around — But we can too! so let’s set sail into a second, caught in the amber of a passing fancy stretching from here to heaven, blinking horizons in hello I like this illusion, we are deluded but these are the stakes of nation states gone nameless in efforts to stay sane Somehow our efforts to uncomplicate reveal our city just a dug up lake.
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The House of Saying Grace Susana Cardenas-Soto I am from the kitchen with the fire alarm that goes off every time mami turns on the stove. I am from that kitchen, the red then yellow kitchen, that never open window, that small pile of flour in the corner of the cabinet. There’s refried beans, condensed milk on the first shelf, Abuelita’s Maria cookies and protein powder in the fourth. The carpet stairs bunch and bustle with dust. Abuelita balances her medicine on top of a napkin on top of a green glass on top of the radiator. She has her personal set of jars holding the water she boiled. Old habits never die. The kettle never heats the water all the way, the toaster burns all the bread, the refrigerator hums along with the dishwasher that always smells. I am from big breakfasts on Saturday morning, no breakfast on Sunday. On the fridge are pictures of my quinceanera, a wedding invitation from my cousin Eudinia. There’s a box of eclairs revealing itself to be black beans. The marmalade jar holds Abuelita’s milk. My mom always hides the pasteles de guayaba after her trips to Miami, but never hides the overwhelming stench of garlic, or the potency of posole. This is the kitchen I scooped chocolate ice cream into bowls shaped like seashells and tried to soften my words with whipped cream. This is the kitchen I told my mom I wasn’t getting confirmed, the kitchen where she told me this broke her heart. A week later, I found a letter from my Abuela on the kitchen table. She told me my Abuelo would’ve been proud of me anyway. I live in the oven, where I make chocolate chip cookies at 3 in the morning because I’m too high to go to sleep. Above me there are bowls we got at Goodwill, the ones with Hawaiian dancers on the bottom. I used to poke my spoon at their breasts through whole milk. My mother’s plates hang along the trim of the ceiling. The blooming tree she painted while pregnant with me has shifted to the left. Over the fridge hangs the liquor cabinet, where I steal wine and my parents never notice, I stand on a chair to reach the vodka and my parents notice. This is the kitchen where I ate lasagna with my family after my grandfather’s funeral, the kitchen where I found out my grandfather was dying. One of the last times I saw my him was in the chair I usually sit in, right next to the radiator. Skin hung over his bones like wet laundry on a line. I didn’t want to touch him because I thought he might shatter. I thought he might shatter when the toaster burned his bread. After the funeral, the kitchen was silent, mami didn’t turn on the stove. The wine was on the table, not in the liquor cabinet. The lasagna was cold in the middle and we waited for someone to say grace. 16
Don’t Panic Marleigh Jenkins-Morse But. I confess. I pour myself onto you. With each throb I spill. Onto myself, the floor, you. Gushing black tears and green blood I feel myself emptying. But, that hand around my throat was tight My words were blisters filled with pus Better if we just ignore them But, you listen. You embrace me. You try to understand, Try to pull each little pin away, Cover each little hole before I ooze all out. But, then you look at me with alien eyes And send me to clean off. “Take a shower and calm down, we’ll be right here” But, I am Rotten. Grime and filth inside me Fester through each vein, every artery And, I sit Drowning Gasping and grabbing for anything to calm me. To dry me. To save me. And It’s alright you didn’t hear me. I wasn’t yelling loud enough. 17
the first time was Claire Grace the first time was a great wooden ship abandoned ten thousand feet out, seething, soaking in gasoline. I was a mouthful of snapped matchsticks holding a lighter between my eyes. I have learned so well to perform intimate acts— call it arson, call it crime. do you see I have set myself on fire to keep him warm? I kiss like gunpowder sparking beneath a smoldering sea, taste like the horizon of a blue blaze. turn to ash in your bed. I still undress at the smell of smoke.
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Lemminkäinen’s Mother Noah Elkins I made you once, And now I have remade you, Dredged your flesh from the black waters, Scraped your skin from the riverbed, Stole your eyes from the bellies of fish, Wrestled your hair from between the weeds. I turned you in my hands, My son, my darling son, Tried to hold you, But you slipped from my fingers. I spoke the charms, Though tears caught in my mouth, Words spilled over my teeth, And stuck under my tongue. You took shape again, slowly, As I mended your thews, Tied muscle to muscle, Stitched your body whole, Yet still you lie on the riverbed, Salt-soaked body still and grey. I wait for the bee, whose yellow buzz Brings honey under its wingbeats. I cast my flooded eyes to heaven, And waited for the hum.
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Untitled Photography Claire Blood-Cheney Title
Name 20
Kerala Mixed media (oil pastel and colored pencil) Vaishnavi Madhavan Title
Name 21
Field Digital Quinton Singer Title
Name 22
Untitled Photograph Kelsey Fox Title
Name 23
Self-Portrait in a Room with Candles Linocut print Alia Benedict Title
Name 24
Strange Love, Two Arms Linocut print Alia Benedict Title
Name 25
Aga Graphite and digital color Emerald Thole Title
Name 26
Shutter Photography Claire Grace Title
Name 27
Tethered Digital photograph and black thread Kelsey Fox Title
Name 28
Hask Digital Ema Erikson Title
Name 29
On Wednesday Reincarnations James Hartzer When I was seventeen, I started dating a girl who had known me since I was twelve. She called me baby girl, held my hand under tables, sighed softly when I gave her flowers. When I told her I didn’t feel like a girl anymore she took to calling me baby boy and it was okay that her parents had thought I looked like boy the whole time. But on top of bed sheets in childhood rooms when she went to slide her petal soft hands down my pants, I flinched. Became a stranger all over again. I forgot that her fingers, like the stems of flower crowns I wanted to make her, could still have so many tiny thorns. When she couldn’t touch me the way she used to, she cried. The roses in her eyes wilted. “I guess I just won’t touch you and you can act first.” That wasn’t what I wanted. dearest please. I just couldn’t love myself enough to let another hand touch my pain.
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You must know, there are nights I cannot touch myself for fear of the way my hands may burn. Nights I cry until I am too tired to let any more of my petals fall. But flowers just need the right conditions to grow. And Minnesota sky brought me a rain I had never known before. So when I slide self love under my skin, I am saying. I will be the flower you did not plant. You will walk through a meadow of me and we will both want to get lost in wind tossed dreams. I am saying this life did not come with a set of rules. My commandments are not written in stone. If I am going to hell you will find me bathing in the fires of rebirth like the rains of drought redemption. I will be something holy and you will be god-fearing. I will be the guardian angel of those you damned and of those you stoned.
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I will thrive out of spite. I will flourish out of spite. I will transcend out of spite. I am nineteen and am dating a girl I met in my first semester of college. She has only ever seen me as boy seen me as man seen me as blue petaled flower she wants to see grow. Her kisses are snowflakes melting on my tongue. And they taste like forgiveness.
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Apples for Gladius Noah Mondschein There’s an apple tree in my front yard. Every night three large apples fall to the ground. Until the sun rises, they scream. My friends ask me, “Gladius, why do you still live here? Why do you still live in a home with an apple tree in the front yard that drops three large apples each night that scream?” I tell them it is because I have grown accustomed. No longer can I fall asleep without the aid of some apple screams. A long time ago I knew a woman. Her name was Smindy. We became close because we were both teased for having names different than the other children in Mr. Marcus’s Clown School for Pre-Teens. Neither of us grew up to be clowns. We did grow up to be lovers. One day when Smindy was spending the night, the apples, as they always do, precisely at a quarter past two, began to scream. Smindy turned to me. “Gladius, why do you still live here?” she asked me. “Because I cannot fall asleep without the screaming of apples,” I told her. As I finished answering she began to scream. That night Smindy’s screams drowned out the apples’ screams and I slept better than I ever have before. The next day Smindy was gone. I looked for her everywhere in my house. I finally found her body outside near the apple tree. The next night the apples screamed Smindy’s scream.
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last summer’s sestina Raven McKnight pick them past due. pepper garden tomatoes swell to overripe. grow heavy. smell hot. let them cling to chlorophyll fingers too long. drop them into basin, bursting seeds into earth with collapse of each globe. they got this way over forgotten afternoons, curve full like equinox, turned at solstice. tablesettings laid even like solstice was for dinner, recipes bygone, lazy swell of familiar heat, oppressing afternoons of rainstorms on timetables, now cling to long-season fruit, rancid red globe lost to wither, simmer now in basin of hot saucespan. taste foul, there in basin at base of throat, chew long like solstice too bitter, now, unwhole sundried globe left to rot, ferment the time-taught swell of seas, pumpkin pus and children cling to tennessee halloweens in humid afternoons sweat on flush skin in latent afternoons lukewarm gardenhose to fill the basin as if water could kill this heat, clothes cling to curves, drip streams in celebration of solstice. summer lasts too long. watch september swell, autumnal orchestra but here, forgotten globe, stays hot. he stores his liquor in a hollow globe, better with age, he says, passing afternoons to dust. behind his grey, scarce years swell like canvas balloons, rock him to sleep as did the basin of boat bellies, lighthouse turns slow like solstice. in heavy summer seas, untrained hands cling 34
too long, set to overturn. his children watch him cling to their smaller summers, before they knew globe, orbit, reason for symmetric day and night of solstice. bloodbound, face the dreary procession of afternoons waiting for vacancy, knuckles heatbent over laundry basin, honeysuckle stench, mourning dove breasts swell. seasons resent last solstice, watch motherhands cling to the fruits which swell, the things she grew, the globe she leaves to younger afternoons, eulogizing tomatoes in basin.
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A Departure Carsten Haas The cloudbanks turned to scuds, And the foam to frost, And we to home, As we bore ourselves south of the North Sea. And we looked to ask something Of the linden and the hoary beech, And the frost in the trenches, Which the sun couldn’t rise to meet, And the sawdust in the snow, That we pulped beneath our feet. And they said that it was enough, That we had seen them there In the winter’s copper light. And when we all came home We looked into one another’s faces As if we were to see something That, perhaps, we hadn’t before. We didn’t, and maybe that were for the better, For we knew each other well by then, And I don’t know that we could have survived that, Seeing something new.
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The Park on Euclid, 1997 Xander Gershberg The embers fly like embers and the embers are flying nowhere. And the first tree falls. The unexpected flames, encircling wood-bark, in piles of raw logs. Their rings, circles, catalog the years it took to breathe life into wildlife now ceasing. And the second tree falls. It’s much to marvel at. Twigs enflamed atop soil, scorched deeper into dirt. Crackling blue, centrifuge of heat. Spiked antennae, a triangle of like elastic. Yes. Yes. This is my prize, a blaze burned alive.
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orange
ebbing
By the Lake Noah Elkins The ice cracks and the magpies, Departing chilly nests Make play on the ground and Flap through wizened branches, Whose outstretched piney fingers Yawn out into the crisp dawning morning. Children, half-watched and Half-free, feel underfoot The smothered power of a Darkened, rocky lake, Which just today let forth in droves Swarms of orange fish, who Gobble at the surface and Make crowds like we do. A cat sneaks by high-shouldered, and Licks the tin it met the night before, Showing its distaste to the Glare of the cold sun, perhaps Angry that the air feels wrong this morning, And that the taste of dust Lies thickly in the mouth.
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Mười Hai Charlie Pham Two weeks ago, I read on Facebook that in December, Hanoi Cinematheque will be demolished and replaced with a shopping mall. Hanoi Cinematheque is on a crowded street in the centre of the city, inside an alley squeezed between a sushi restaurant that advertises real Japanese chefs and another shopping mall. It maintains the French colonial architecture, with a spiral staircase and balcony decorated with florals. The walls are yellow and peeling. It shows films not found in any other cinema in the city, from black-andwhite silent flicks that shake and blur, to experimental documentaries about recreational drugs in Southeast Asia. Gerry, the founder and owner insists on keeping Hanoi Cinematheque non-profit. So for nearly 12 years since its beginning in 2004, Hanoi Cinematheque subsists on meagre membership fees and the money Gerry earns from selling lunches to office workers from the nearby mall. He has been negotiating with Vingroup, the corporation that owns the new mall for over a month, but one doesn’t exactly earn much selling lunchboxes. Because of its hidden location and the kind of films it shows, Hanoi Cinematheque attracts only the hipster population of Hanoi and no one else. It only has about a hundred seats and is almost always half empty. The vacancy becomes a part of the experience at Hanoi Cinematheque. There were no crunching popcorn noises to distract you from the films. The sticky sugary smell that pervades other cinemas was absent too. Whenever I went there, I would linger behind in the dark quietness even when the film was over. Eventually, I would step outside into a pungent cloud of stale cigarette smoke that made my eyes water. I would stand inside that haze and inhale the menthol-scented carcinogens for as long as I could before walking back into the roaring traffic and flashing signs of late night Hanoi. Ever since the announcement was made, the audience of Hanoi Cinematheque have been voicing their anger and sadness. They 39
accuse gentrification. They mourn the death of artistry at the hand of corporations blinded by profit. One even drafted a letter to the head of Vingroup, pleading him to come and see for himself that Hanoi Cinematheque is a cultural gem in need of preserving. I felt a responsibility to say something, but I could not seem to articulate my feelings. English was awkward and inappropriate when writing about something in my home country, addressed to my own people. But after four straight months of communicating only in English, I struggled to articulate in Vietnamese that described how I felt. I found myself translating English words into Vietnamese, only to be frustrated by the incompatibility between the two languages and the meanings lost in the process. We have a word for that. “Mất gốc.” Uprooted. Definite sign of wither. Among my stack of college textbooks is the only book in Vietnamese that I have with me, a 300-page autobiography of a man living in Hanoi. The book is “Thương Nhớ Mười Hai.” “Thương.” Like love, but more tender. “Nhớ.” Miss. “Mười Hai.” Twelve, or December. We don’t have fancy names for the months. It’s all about practicality. Is it Month Twelve already? It’s still really hot, isn’t it, said my grandfather as he wiped the sweat from his brows and tossed the rice in the frying pan. The smell of fish sauce and oil invaded the 3 meters by 3 meters kitchen – dining room hybrid and soaked into my hair. In a city that seems to be forever expanding, my grandparents’ house seems to be shrinking, or wilting, held up only by the two buildings on the side. Is it Month Twelve already? We are visiting your grandfather’s grave next month, said my father. I remember walking between rows and rows of graves like crooked and decayed teeth to find my grandfather’s name, and in a small tidy corner, my little brother’s. Yellow chrysanthemums for the old, white for the young and stillborn. Is it Month Twelve already? Shit I’m not ready for finals, said my friend Châu as she skipped across piles of debris from yet another demolished cinema. Why pay to go to that old cinema covered in mildew and spider webs when you have cable TV? she said. Do know that Châu and Ngọc both mean jewel? I always thought her name made more sense than mine, because her family lived in a four-storey house with a garden while my family lived in an apartment that leaked on every wall. 40
Here people call it December. Do you guys really just call it Month Twelve? people ask. Also, how do you pronounce your real name? N-G-O-C, with a dot underneath the O, I answer. No? Nyooc? Ah, I give up, they say. You can just call me Charlie, I say. Nice to meet you, Charlie. Nice to meet you too. Here in December it snows. Actually, it seems to snow for half a year. It doesn’t snow in Hanoi in December, or in any other month. The trees don’t turn red and gold before they drop leaves. They just shed during the Northeast monsoon and one morning you look out the window and they will all be bare. The streets don’t get caked with snow and crunch under your feet, but splash from the perennial rain. In December, Hanoi Cinematheque will be demolished and replaced with a new shopping mall. It is only one of the hundreds of buildings every month that are destroyed to make place for shopping malls, complexes, offices, skyscrapers. They just collapse, disappear, with hardly a warning. Like leaves in Hanoi in December. I don’t miss it. “Miss” is not enough. “Miss” is too short: four letters and one syllable. Once the word escapes your mouth, you have already forgotten. “Miss” doesn’t linger in your hair like the smell of fish sauce from your grandfather’s cooking. “To miss” is also “to let slip away.” “Thương nhớ” is the right word. Missing, losing, but also regretting. Also yearning. Also loving.
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Homes Katie Tsuji Grandma and her sister sell their homes the same year. Tired of living old women in houses built for families. Empty kitchens and evenings with the blue TV. Grandma married only once, young. Sixty years of Bill’s place at the table, muddy shoes by the garage door. When she sells the house she sells the chair too, spindle broken when he fell, I don’t need six anyway. She came back to the country at twenty two, right after the war. An old lady, she says. Met Bill in church. Married soon after. They honeymooned in Arizona, settled back in the valley. Orchards of their own and a house Bill and his brothers built from the ground. She can’t live here anymore, not on South Avenue. Where she never said she loved him, only sat with him evenings year after year.
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wish #3 Susana Cardenas-Soto for my third wish, i’d like to secure a peaceful transition to the grave. i want to die alone, at night, during a storm, thunder and lightning and soul crushing wind, the kind that lifts trees out of their shoes. my curtains will be open and every flash of light will illuminate every outline in my room, the pictures, shoes and books, pillows and lamps, the things i can’t take with me. i want to be wearing black silk pajamas. i want to be wearing coconut oil. and i want a book on my chest, and a cup of tea on my side. in the morning, after the storm, someone will come upon my body and think i must have had a really relaxing night.
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A Snowy Bench at Minnehaha Park Benjamin LeBlanc The pollen seemed worse than last weekend. His wife Betsy had said he’d have a heart Attack, his sneezes were so fierce. I’ll be fine dear, be back in a bit. She’d snuck Kleenex in his inside pocket, anyway. His was old, like memories. And when nestled on his bench, with his right leg cross his left, and his Foot wagging to the cadence Of rusty swingset fasteners, A stuffy nose wouldn’t last forever. His paper read of Paris, Of little laundromat ads And Ask Aunt Betsy’s; it had, for years, Bothered him that the breeze bent back The corners, and so he’d pull the ends To read those unparticular edges. But now when it wavered he placed it on His lap and looked around. First, across the walk, At his willow tree. Joshua wept throughout the year, but He wept the most in that soft spring sun. And the kids cried out, Timmy, catch! and Timmy ran From left to right and blurred at the curve of the man’s Thin-rimmed glasses. And in the great sky a bird flew east, soon to reach The next great big hour, or state, or gust of wind. He thought, for just a moment, and smiled, and wondered Where he would be when his bench was brimmed with snow And his tree was glazed with ice. He felt a mass in his pocket and undid the Kleenex And blew—Betsy, he sighed, I will always love you. He hoped the pollen wouldn’t be so bad next weekend. 44
Chanter Literary Magazine
Spring 2017