our word zine oo2
:: state of nature
Curator’s Note Welcome to Our Word Zine oo2 :: state of nature. The submissions within were collected from second year graduate students in Columbia University’s Writing Program. Our Word is a student organization whose mission is to enrich the Columbia University Graduate Writing Program, and the literary community, with outreach, advocacy and inclusion of new and old literary voices. We serve diverse writers whose identities are non-normative, including, but not limited to, persons of color, disabled students, international students, LGBTQIA and women. This mission bleeds into the work in state of nature. In a climate where racialized bodies are deemed animal or alien, where queer and trans bodies are rendered unnatural, and our borders tighten all around, as if a fence or a pen, this writing opts to complicate both flesh and environment. Here, the family is built, migrates, crumbles, and solidifies. Here, nation is challenged and shaped.
state of nature watches as humans turn away from their better nature, in everyday life and in times of crisis. Its voice is the sound of interrupted silence: startling, sudden, and sustained.
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state of nature zine
Contents Detention: A Bloodseed Excerpt
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From Iris 10 Memory of My Father
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From Re:Construction 16 From Brown Girls 19 From August 22 Four Poems 25 From The Leave Taking 30 From We Have Been Believers
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Virginia, North Carolina
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Two Poems 39 The Story of Her 43 Contributor Bios 48
DETENTION—A BLOODSEED EXCERPT Anya Lewis-Meeks
The bell rings, it’s four o’clock, an hour since school should have ended. Jordy
scrapes his metal chair back against the tile floor. “Detention is over when I say it is over, Mr. Wilson,” Edwards leans back in his chair, serene. It is hard to see his face in the dim light—Edwards has halfslit the blinds and just one light is on at the very back of the class. It casts shadows over the desks and chairs, so out of the corner of his eye Jordy imagines there are others there with them. Ghosts. Jordy pulls the chair back in, drums his fingers against the desk. He waits a minute, maybe two. “Sir, it’s past time for me to go home.” He tries to sound stern. “I have already explained this to you, Jordy. You were late, you disrupted class, and your geometry set was woefully lacking in contents. Three strikes, you don’t get to go home. I am in charge of you here.” Jordy blows out a harsh breath. If he ran quickly enough, if he reached the door maybe he could make it onto the bus before anyone even saw, but—Edwards has locked the door. He would catch him before he went anywhere, and that would mean expulsion. Jordy can’t be expelled. Outside the fourth form boys play pagoda ball. Cheers erupt; someone has scored. Jordy leans back in his seat, and the whole geometry set falls onto the ground. Edward’ chair hits the ground. “Calm down sir, it’s not gunshots.” Jordy picks the set off the ground. “See state of nature zine
sir, it was just this.” He drops it again. This time the set falls and the pieces splay across the tile in a satisfying multitudinous clatter. Edwards breathes out loudly through his nose. His nostrils flare so wide if Jordy were close enough he could stick the compass in one side, the metal divider in the other. “If you want to spent the rest of the week after school with me, Mr. Wilson, you’ll drop the set again.” “But sir! I neva mean fi drop it di first time! It just did fall—” “And now you want to speak Patois, Wilson? At St. Regis’ Secondary School for Boys and Girls? You really must want to spend more time with me—” “If you let me leave, I won’t drop di sumn again—” “Excuse me, Mr. Wilson? I’m afraid I don’t understand you. What is it that you said you would not drop?” “Di—I mean. The geometry set, sir.” “And also you will pick up every piece, Mr. Wilson, right now. Of course, you haven’t many pieces left.” Edwards laughs, leaning back in his seat. Jordy is burning. What does Edwards care if Jordy doesn’t have a full geometry set? He had the divider, the compass; he could borrow a ruler from someone. Janelle maybe, maybe Janelle would let him if he asked her nicely enough. Maybe he could just explain it to Edwards, explain that he can’t get the geometry set right now,
but next week his scholarship money would come in and he would buy one. First thing. Of course, sir, no problem. Maybe if he explained it properly then Edwards would let him go. Jordy looks back at Edwards, who is smiling so hard it’s just his large white teeth glowing in the dark. He changes his mind.
The four-thirty bell rings. Jordy wishes he had a phone to pull out under the desk, a thin, silver phone he could flip open and scroll through, send a text.
Yow Edwards a REAL battyman Any1 out dere to save me? Lmao How him couldn’t put me in detention wid one gyal? Mummy, I’ll be home soon, will you still have food for me when I get there? But he doesn’t have a phone. All he has is his backpack, empty save for a couple of pens. And the geometry set, metal and gleaming on the desk. He pulls out the compass, hefts the weight in his hand. In his fingers the point is not sharp enough to pierce his skin. He grinds the point into the wooden desk. The groove it leaves is deep, but it does not make a sound. He tries it again in the metal geometry set, and the scrape sends shivers down his back. Edwards takes a red-bound book out of his leather, bag. He opens it and starts reading aloud to himself. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want—” Jordy carves into the metal set. J-O-R page 7
“He maketh me down to lie—” D-Y “In pastures deep, he leadeth me” J-A-N-E “THE QUIET WATERS BY.” “Sir—”
“What did I tell you about when you’re going home, Jordy?” ‘“Ah just mean. It’s hot, sir.” It is. The fan turns overheard in the dark room, squeaking after each rotation. It’s too far up to cut the air, which is musty and hot. The closed windows make the Maths classroom feel like a coffin. If Jordy were free, he would strip off his stiff cotton khaki shirt and tie it around his waist. The football field would be too hot for scrimmage, so instead he and Raheem and Yanik would play pagoda ball in the shade. Inside there is no faint feeling of cool breeze to give the sweat somewhere to go. Instead, wetness pools at his armpits, his temples, the small of his back. “I can at least open the door, sir?” Edwards reads louder from the bible. A bead of sweat drips down his glasses. Jordy stretches up, and a strip of skin gets exposed to the air. It helps, a little, so he keeps going. Edwards looks at his book, and glances back at him. Jordy stretches up higher, and Edwards glances again. Jordy unbuttons the first button. state of nature zine
“Mr. Wilson, what are you doing.” “It’s hot, sir, I neva tell you? I’m just trying to get cool.” “Keep your shirt on.” “Sir, if I could open the door then it would be okay.” He pulls the billowing cloth in and out from his chest. The breeze reaches his nipples, pleasantly. Edwards sits up high in his chair. Jordy fumbles at the third, and hears a knock at the door. A string at the top of Edward’s spine is cut and he falls heavily forward into the chair. “Excuse me, we are having a lesson here!” He’s almost out of breath. “Hello?” It’s a girl, someone Jordy knows. Not a teacher. An uptown girl. A white girl, maybe. “Excuse me!” “Sir? It’s Janelle, from form class. I left my geometry set here after Maths, and I need it to do the homework.” Jordy hastily buttons his shirt. What was Janelle doing here? She should have gone home. She shouldn’t be here to see him, sweaty and hot and weak in the classroom. Edwards has gone to the door. “What did you say you left, Miss Jackson?” “Sir, it’s just my geometry set. Did you, I mean, maybe you saw it?” “Can’t you possibly wait until tomorrow?”
“Maybe I could come inside and look for myself?” If it had been Raheem or Yanik, even Alex Atkinson, Jordy would have shouted, “Come let me out nuh! Yuh hear me, callin for you? An di sun hot and Edwards, a nastiness did leave me in here to get sweaty and stink. How yuh fi leave me just suh? Chupid bwoy.” But Janelle sounds foreign to him through the door. If he called out, would she recognize him? In Maths that morning, Janelle did not acknowledge him, did not slap his palm, did not allow him to pick her up, easily, and hold her there. He is not Alex Atkinson, he is not Johno Clarke. “Is there someone in there?” Edwards glares at him furiously, warning him not speak. This is Jordy’s moment. He should call to Janelle, he should make his escape. Outside, her white uniform shirt is probably wet with sweat, sticking colourlessly to her back and chest. She would pull it away from her in and out to fan her skin, just like he had done in the classroom. She would smell like baby powder and hairspray sweated through with blonde scalp. Her skin would be wet and soft. But Jordy is not Alex Atkinson, he is not Johno Clarke, and he is in detention for fucking up, three times, on the first day. He does not call out to her. He does not look back at Edwards. Instead, he puts his head on the desk. The five o’clock bell rings.
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FROM IRIS Cyree Jarelle Johnson
state of nature zine
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state of nature zine
MEMORY OF MY FATHER Tiffany M. Davis
Black mothers are expected to explain why their children are fatherless. ***
Kevin Dean Fuller, the leader of a black youth organization, asked me about my
relationship with my father. My mother, who was dropping me off to rehearsals for the annual Kwanzaa Gala, hated this question. She told Mr. Fuller that after a certain age, ten to be exact, I stopped asking about my father. I stopped reaching out to my father. I stopped requesting my father’s presence. She told Mr. Fuller that I met my father once the summer before first grade, when I was six turning seven, on a family vacation to Atlanta and Disneyworld. She told Mr. Fuller that I noticed how my father never reciprocated the birthday cards, the Christmas cards, and yes, the Father’s Day cards I sent or even the phone calls. She told Mr. Fuller that I came to her stating I was tired of wasting my time on someone who was supposed to care, but didn’t. She saw me as fierce, independent, and self-sufficient because I caught on a lot sooner than she did with her own father. She told Mr. Fuller all of this, so he couldn’t blame her for my father’s absence. ***
Mr. Kevin Dean Fuller created and ran a nonprofit organization dedicated
to the black youth of Portland, Oregon. An organization that no longer exists. He called it the Bridge Builders and instituted a young men’s group called the Perspective Gentlemen. Mr. Fuller started with the boys and then, when he received frequent requests to start something similar for the girls, added the page 13
Imminent Ladies of Virtue, which we called ILOV. He modeled them after traditional West African Rites of Passage where elders whisked off their maturing young people to a private location to test their skills and knowledge. The goal: proclaiming them adult members of society. I joined ILOV in the fall of 2004, my sophomore year of high school. After attending an ethnically diverse K-8 school, my mother wanted to make sure I interacted with students outside of my predominately white, private catholic high school. She wanted to expose me to other black students from around the Portland Metro area that were also preparing for college. She chose the Bridge Builders because of its focus on African American history and empowerment, and her sorority sister was one of the class leaders. I didn’t want to join. I didn’t know any of the other girls in my class, and none of my friends were planning on joining. They didn’t have the time, and neither did I. As a varsity cheerleader with practice three times a week in addition to games and as a ballet dancer with classes and training four days a week with day long intensives on the weekends, joining the Imminent Ladies of Virtue would force me to sacrifice activities that I loved for something that my mother wanted me to do. I resented her because of this, especially as it became more obvious as time went on that the elders of the Bridge Builders enforced what my mother was raising me to see as misogynistic gender roles. state of nature zine
We were kept separate in most things, the boys and the girls, while we were being prepared for lives as active members of society. “Looking ever backward, marching ever forward, reaching ever upward,” or something like that. We were the leaders of tomorrow. We learned about the Middle Passage also known as the Maafa or the Black Holocaust, 40 acres and a mule, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Civil Rights movement. They taught us that academics were more important than sports. They taught us that boys were supposed to be men and girls supposed to be women, that gender roles were to be strictly followed, that men were responsible for being respectful and women were responsible for keeping their knees together. Young men could join and still be a part of the program if they had children, but young women could not. Young men were taught First Corinthians 14:40, “Let all things be done decently and in order” and Hebrews 13:1, “Let brotherly love continue.” Young women had Proverbs 31:10, “Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies.” My three years with ILOV were intended to be a time of study and preparation. Everything we learned was supposed to lead up to the Ritual Rites of Passage. After we all graduated from high school and before we went off to college, the young men and young women were separately whisked off
for seven to twenty-one days to live, eat, and breathe together. By this time, I had formed loving relationships with the other young women in my class, my “sisters”. We were tested physically, academically, and emotionally for twenty-one days. We did jumping jacks, sprints, recitations, and history tests for twenty-one days. We had to dress the same, white t-shirts with blue jeans and white sneakers for twenty-one days. We couldn’t wear makeup, jewelry, or perfume for twenty-one days. We could not be individuals for twenty-one days. ne night, near the end of the ritual, my sisters and I sat in a circle on the living room floor of our leader’s house. My sister, my fellow Imminent Lady, told us how she didn’t feel loved enough by her father, how she tried throughout her life to have a connection with him, how she was sure it was something about her that made him not come around because he had relationships with his other children, his other daughters, how she felt less than. As she was telling her truth, I got angrier and angrier until I couldn’t sit quietly anymore. I told her then what at eighteen I had been telling myself for over eight years: nothing she ever did or ever would do should prevent him from having a relationship with her; it was his responsibility to make the effort; she was the child; she should never let him make her feel less than; she wasn’t less but better in spite of. I told her that she was not alone in her loneliness, in her fatherlessness, that I had her back and would remind her. We were in a safe place, a place of young and older women, some with fathers and some without. That is when Mr. Fuller, the man who asked my mother about my father, the man whose work was to uplift black youth, the man who liked to call himself a father-figure, walked in to our gathering, our rite of passage, and called my sisters sluts. He made it known that during an intimate moment, in a similar setting of someone’s home, that the Perspective Gentlemen had been discussing their sexual relationships with some of my sisters, the Imminent Ladies. That their conversation expanded to rumors about us. He said that we had better be more careful with who we associated with and that we should not have tainted reputations at our age. That though the boys will be boys, we were not to be the type of girls that they were boys with. I wonder what our father-figure told his sons?
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FROM RE:CONSTRUCTION Jarrod M. Harrison
*This is part of the prologue/first chapter of my novel. It is narrated by John J. Smallwood, the (actual) grandson of Nat Turner. He dedicated his life to black empowerment and his greatest achievement was building and operating a school in Claremont, Virginia where my family is from.
Prologue
I am John Jefferson Smallwood, Founder of the Temperance, Industrial and Collegiate Institute, Exhorter of the Gospel, and Grandson of Nat Turner.
This is the first time I have put my story down on paper. The year is 1912, and I sit in my study at my home in Claremont, Virginia. I am writing this on sheets of paper bound to the spine of my grandfather’s personal Bible. The county of Surry is alive with the end of winter and the coming of spring. The primal energies rising now are gifts from God. My wife, Rosa, spurred me on to complete this autobiography. It began as a way to promote the Temperance Industrial and Collegiate Institute, but regrettably even that is lost. Lest I forget when I first came to know race and I inherited the abysmal burden of espousing the gospel. My holy ordinance picks up where my grandfather left off. I stayed the course, and yet the promontory of Negro success and piety upon which I stand readies to crumble. The only life for me was one spent educating others so they could continue to improve conditions for this great ebon race. state of nature zine
For all the Negro doctors, lawyers, carpenters, tailors, longshoreman, bankers, and businessmen and women my school has gifted the world there is still more I wish to do.
on earth if you’re easily discomforted. The number of those who this is for is far fewer than who it is not for. I could write a dissertation on the latter. In fact, this account is NOT for:
Perhaps I could have taken up another mission, bought some land outside of Hampton and lived out the rest of my days walking behind a team of oxen. I’ll never know. Instead, I’ve built this school as a monument to my grandfather’s divinity. Besides, there are wrongs that need righting and things that need to be said, which no other Race Men are willing to give up their paystub to see through. You see, it’s been one long story I’ve been practicing for, building up my lungs to tell the tale. I’ve never been interested in justice, I know better having lived my entire life as a nigger in the South. It’s a terrible thing when you grow, child to man, having to live out the prophesized occasion of your destruction. My name has been vilified by whites and Negroes alike. Well, should I indeed be roaring lion, a serpent with feet I’ll do my best to salt the earth in my stead. There are deeds and thoughts which I will not only confess to, but rejoice in as I retell them. I’ve made myself from the ground up, so there will be no reconstruction, no repackaging of my truth. Everything is signed and sealed. Should I pass in my sleep tonight I want to be certain my message is clear. This is for those of us who were enslaved before and after the Emancipation Proclamation left Abraham Lincoln’s lips leaving only stale air. Do yourself the great favor of putting down this chronicle of my time
1. Anyone who uses the word liberal whilst not referring to their next bourbon. 2. Anyone who believes economic reform, industrial production, or art will guide us anywhere other than the hell that is inhabiting a world alongside so many devils. 3. Anyone who still believes in this vile empire’s ability to foster hope, change, or progress. 4. The British, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, and Spanish who continue to colonize countries as they’re ruled by false gods, who raise noses deformed by inbreeding when they rejoice knowing they’ve never done anything as terrible as what continues to occur in the land of the forgetful, home of mass graves. Theirs is a jubilance which grows from genocide. 5. The Sons & Daughters of the Confederacy who benefit from Negro industry more than any poor nigger anygawddamnwhere. Long live the welfare notes and their many True Queens. 6. White men who’d like to appropriate my story since there’s just nothing left for them to experience after having been able to buy niggers. Surely they’ll end up stealing back every nigger life that ‘dun ever tried to steal away. Listen! page 17
7. White men and women who lust after the so-called Inferior Negroid Specimen’s body, even at its most odorous, ashen, or scarred. 8. The Chinese folk who haven’t stopped running west other than that one time they first had to beat iron into steel over hot coals that one sweltering Californian winter that one year. Whatever it takes to put as much distance between them and anything related to niggers as possible. 9. The Indians who grow enraged whenever we don’t push them to center stage behind the podiums which we’ve axed, delimbed, shaved, turned into boards, sanded, leveled, fashioned and melted nails for, and finally hammered into shape. 10. Niggers who run North and somehow commit to forgetting those who stayed behind also spawned from the same brilliantly dark netherlips across the Atlantic on the Great Continent. 11. Niggers who hold swelling tongues in their mouths, lest their words are used against them, and they’re forced, once more, to commit euphemasia. 12. Niggers who think their future is made better by knowing the old white woman in town who goes out of her way to call them by name. The same old white woman who drops a penny on the road when she sees you coming, and then proceeds to hum amazing grace all the way home. 13. Chronically late hexadecaroons state of nature zine
who explain their lack of temporal adherence by telling the story of their lineage, in which, they go into detail about the rape of their ninth great-grandmammie whose washed out photo appears in their hands in what can only be called a magic trick, the one dark thing they can claim. 14. Power-crazed negresses who turn to slander for slander’s sake in an attempt to promote themselves on the Chitlin’ Circuit as mystic ciphers. 15. So-called Race Men who take to promoting the needs of our people to kneeling white folk as they listen as to them explain metaphysics, which all niggers know to be basic arithmetic. Revision of this autobiography forced me to cut out the stage directions and transient descriptions of white men, women, and children only because the numerical figure that ended the book wasn’t one I liked. Even in being purposely well-defined with my intentions I’ve spent too much time on the aberration that is the white race. It’s a shame niggers can never be in conversation with themselves, except for when they bow their heads and pray to any god who claims to possess the inherent virtues necessary for servitude in this life and the next. They martyred my grandfather, the one man who understood what it took to finally put an end to this horrid nightmare. And niggers are too fearful or bothered to do anything in remembrance. Well, this autobiography will serve as the remedy America needs. Render unto the niggers all they’re due.
FROM BROWN GIRLS Daphne Palasi Andreades
Brown Girls We live in the dregs of Queens where airplanes fly so low in summer that we are certain they will crush us. On our block a lonely tree grows. Its branches tangle in power lines. Its roots upend sidewalks where we ride our bikes (before they are stolen) and make the concrete slabs uneven, like a row of crooked teeth. In our front yards, grandmothers string laundry lines, hang bed sheets, our brother’s shorts, and our sneakers scrubbed to look brand new. Take those down! our mothers hiss. This isn’t back home. In front yards (not to be confused with actual lawns) grow tomatoes, bok choy, and cabbage that have fought their way through the hard earth. Our grandmothers refuse canes. Our older brothers dress in wifebeaters. We all sit on stoops made of brick. The Italian boys with their shaved heads zoom by on bikes, staring, their laughter harsh as their shiny, gold chains. Our grandparents weed their gardens and our brothers smoke their cigarettes and, in time, other stronger substances we cannot recognize. Whose scent makes our heads pulse. Our brothers, who ride on bikes, lifting their front wheels high into the air.
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“Brown” If you really want to know, we are the color of Seven Eleven root beer. The color of sand at Rockaway Beach that blisters the bottoms of our feet. Color of soil. Color of the charcoal pencil our sisters use to rim their eyes. Color of grilled hamburger patties. Color of our mother’s darkest thread which she loops through the needle. Of peanut butter. Of the odd gene that makes us fair and white as snow, like whatshername, is it Snow White? (But don’t get it twisted—We’re still brown.) Dark as 7pm dusk, when our mothers switch on the light in the empty room. Exclaim, Oh! There you are.
Brown Boys We stare at brown boys with their obsidian hair, their fingers and cheekbones, and think, he looks like my brother. He looks like the boy from the restaurant where we ordered kofta kabobs, lechón, jerk chicken, platanos. He looks like the boy at the bodega who rang up our barbeque chips, our can of 99 cents iced tea. He’s beautiful, we think, but we’d never go out with him. We’d never date him. Why? Because he doesn’t look—You know. Because he looks like—And anyway, he only likes those kinds of girls, the Vanessa Kleinberg types, we heard him say so. We stare at brown boys, listen to the way they say Lieberry. They fascinate us, but we ignore them. Except behind a bookshelf one day when our class goes down to visit the library—Lie-brair-ree, we say. Library. Follow my lips. Say it like this.
Family Parties At kitchen tables with placements that read Orlando! we serve meals to aunts and uncles and grandparents while cousins scramble between our legs. Cut the cake, pour the drinks. My, what a woman you’ve become! our aunts say. Stay thin, not like me. Did you gain weight? Are you eating enough? We don’t like your hair, they say, why did you dye it blonde? No, it suits you, but go to this stylist next time, he’s cheaper. We grow dizzy at their advice, at their, what do you call it? Love. The party swells and our families grow drunk on wine and memories: My brother, Claudio, you remember him, the troublemaker? Well, one day he brought this girl home while our parents were in the fields— Or another: I hated harvest season. My shoulders ached from leaning over to pick these tiny, tiny grains of rice. I cried and cried told my grandmother, I never want to do this again! As soon as I was old enough, I left the provinces. My grandmother died the next year. state of nature zine
We slip out of houses. We sit on stoops, on bike handlebars, on sidewalk edges as the sun sets a drunken orange above rooftops. On the radio Mariah sings, Give me your love, give me your love. We wander through our neighborhood to the older houses with their fat trees that cast shadows, where no laundry lines are strung up. The earth grows darker. We run past God Bless Deli 2, past the beat up Mustang with the man tinkering underneath, past the Italian boys on their stoops, until we hear one of them call, Ay Beauduhful! Beautiful? we think. When did we become beautiful?
Optical Illusions Give it to me. Give it to me! Not like that, idiot! Like this. There. We draw on perfect eyebrows, but not too dark like Auntie Constancia’s whose eyebrows look like dashes. We draw on slimmer, pointier noses. We rub gold powder onto our cheekbones like they do in the magazines. Here. Gimme. I said, Give it to me! In secret, in our rooms (which we still share), we remove the little bottles we’ve pilfered from Rite Aid. We’ve taken a color called Porcelain, a color called Ivory. We just want to try. We just want to see. We begin to paint our faces, lighter, lighter, until we are the color of lilies. Or bones. There. Beautiful.
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FROM AUGUST Karishma Deepak Jobanputra
The Parrish house smelled of incest and lavender. Fresh sprigs of lavender,
the type only found in Provence in the summer when the air is thick and heavy with the scent. The air is perfumed with it, and it sticks to nostril hairs so, after a day or two, it results in a headache because it’s so heady and cloying. *** Sayalee was used to the headaches. She got them often and didn’t mind. She liked the hum in her head that distracted from the syrupy air and the pockets of shouting that came from next door. She was arranging daffodils in a jug that acted as a makeshift vase, the handle broken off so it had been demoted to a multipurpose container. The petals were like husks, already withered and browning. Crispy, like toast, or leaves in autumn. She arranged them in the cloudy water and smiled to herself, remembering yesterday when she had made flower chains with Pari. This was Sayalee’s favourite time of day. She hummed to herself, the weak sunshine rising and illuminating the fine hair on her arm and faintly outlining the curve of her breasts and hips through her thin, white nightdress. Close your eyes, remember this. The sleepy air, the sweet smell, the crunch of the petals, the blades of the grass tickling your feet. Once summer really came, once August hit, there would be few mornings like state of nature zine
this. The heat was always too much, her parents argued more, Pari was always restless and irritable, and that’s when her father had done it. That had been last August. And now August was rearing its head again and she didn’t know if it would start again. She picked up the vase, the water sloshing, and took it inside, set it down on the table in the kitchen and walked up the stairs into her room to get dressed. She picked up an apple on the way, shuddering at the noise it made when she took a bite. It scraped harshly, the sound jarring. Like a pestle and mortar. The tongue plundered her mouth and teeth crashed into teeth, grinding like discordant bells. Her nipples, soft and supple like medjool dates, pulped and tattooed with fingernail grooves. The membrane of her body tattooed, too, with invisible bruises like bulbous plums, even though she had lain there in a limp torpor. The smell of eggs from outside her open window made her stomach rumble. She dressed quickly, leaving the half eaten apple on her bed. Downstairs, she took out the stale croissants from the fridge and cut them in half, spreading them thinly with butter. She took Pari’s and spread it with strawberry jam, the usual birthday treat. Laying out the four plates, she heard noises coming from upstairs and knew everyone would be downstairs soon. Hurriedly she checked the top button of her blouse was done up and then started making tea. Their parents would smoke outside after breakfast
and the smell would merge with the air. It would swirl the fresh day and she would miss the smell of lavender, probably not get it back until tomorrow. It would be replaced by cheap gritty smoke, which would become smog in the autumn and then, by December, the air would bite with a bitter cold that reminded her of lemon juice rubbed into paper cuts. And there was another smell she couldn’t pinpoint, some sort of sweat and grime and blood all rolled into one. She couldn’t name it, but she could feel it; the insidious taint of it in the undertones of the air, even beneath the lavender. Pari was the first to the table, shyly smiling at her plate. “Happy birthday!” Sayalee hugged her then, breathing in the dandelion scent of her hair and feeling the boniness of her shoulders. She heard a whisper that sounded something like a thank you and they both sat down at the table, waiting for their parents as the kettle boiled with its humdrum song. Moments later, their mother and father came down together, friends today. Their mother started moving things around in cupboards to occupy herself, saying nothing to either of her daughters but humming quietly. Their father sat down, smiling at Pari as his wife poured tea into chipped mugs. Her mother murmured a happy birthday to Pari when she handed out the tea, but then they ate in their usual silence, the only sound was the rustle of Le Monde as her father leafed through it, and the soft clacking of mugs being put back down on the table. page 23
Her father rose first and went upstairs to get ready for work, he had a shift at the bakery on Grenelle at noon today. Her mother yawned, and went outside as she usually did after breakfast to get some fresh air and smoke. Plates clattered as both girls rose, and Sayalee told Pari that she was not allowed to do any chores today. “Go and sit outside with Mama. Play with the grass - make me another daisy chain! Go!” she said, pushing her to the door. Pari giggled, and ran outside, yelling “Thanks, Say-Say!” over her shoulder. Pari hated the smell of lavender, but she hated washing up even more. The lukewarm water was discoloured as usual, but the silence of the house made Sayalee smile. She started humming whatever her mother had been humming at the breakfast table, but she stopped when Papa came down the stairs. He opened the fridge, but Sayalee didn’t turn around to see what he was looking for. She heard the hinges of the fridge door squeal, like a rocking horse, and the thud of the vegetable drawer being opened too far. Still, she didn’t turn, but focussed on the gushing water. He pushed the drawer shut with another thud. It was like a jigsaw puzzle piece being pushed into another one, even though it didn’t fit there. It was juddered and twisted into place with several stabs, even though it wasn’t meant to be. The pieces meshed together with the force, one piece conforming so the other fit into it. It was like that saying, square peg, round hole. Thud, thud, thud. Papa went outside to join her mother and Pari. Sayalee would finish washing up, and she knew that once she went outside to join them the smell of lavender would be long gone, diluted into the air. No longer floral and pure, but acrid with smoke and the sweat from all their bodies. Instead, she finished washing up and went upstairs to brush her teeth so she was ready for their day of birthday baking. As she brushed she saw herself in the mirror above the cracked sink and almost flinched at her face. The acne was getting worse. It had always been bubbling under her skin, but now it was rising to the top, like the bubbles in a fizzy drink. She never slept straight through the night anymore, so there were the usual bags under her eyes, but they were darker than usual. They looked like the Earl Grey teabags Pari had given her last month for her own birthday. Sighing as she rubbed at the bags, she went downstairs hoping her father had left and that they could start baking.
state of nature zine
FOUR POEMS Alexis V. Jackson
Blue-Brown For Renisha McBride, Korryn Gaines, Diamond and Dae’Anna Reynolds,… My niece runs her hand across the top of my car. She calls it maybe black— says it might be navy— but she can’t tell in the dark. She is 7. She grabs her tilted afro puff and asks me what color it is. I say brown. She says I’m right, but some of the kids in her class think it’s black. She says she tells them it’s brown. She says her ballies are blue— true blue, she says – the blue you can see at night time. page 25
She snakes her fingers through mine. At the crosswalk she says the street is black. She says the outsides of my “throw on slides” are blue— a blue different from her sister’s track bag— the blue that looks like someone’s favorite color. She tells me that’s her favorite color. She asks me for mine. I tell her black. She calls us Black. She says we’re not black like my car, or the street, or my favorite color, or the mesh on the sides of her sister’s track bag that lets the stuff inside breathe. We’re the Black that’s really brown, like her mommy says her puff is, like the floor in her new house is, like my eyes, not maybe brown—like some cars are really navy—but in the dark and in the day everybody else can’t tell sometimes. We use our free hands to make shadow puppets jump in the porch light until my brother answers the door and she lets go.
state of nature zine
Dear Mom, You wanted me when God didn’t. Told me to love Him anyway. Told me you had no business actin’ simple with that [self-censoring pause] man, but I was a blessing. “A Blessing mommy?” “A blessing, little girl.” “Your blessing?” “My blessing.” And all of this just was. Like it was wanting to be something else, but it couldn’t because yYou said it. But somewhere tween leaving yYour house and askin’ God about Him and him and HIM and him & him, yYou wanted me and God He didn’t. And I didn’t know how to recon that with my still being. Didn’t know if that made you You or God or GOD or god or HER or her. Maybe I wouldn’t be so close to textbook anxious if you’d done what He God said. Maybe I wouldn’t be so sad about the word “depravity” and about sinsickness existing and about people pushing past kids for trains if yYyou’d done what God said. If you’d done what God said, maybe you’d be happier maybe you’d be more like Christ and less like all the heathens heathening without thinking bout not heathening. Mommy, how do yYou look at yYour sin and love her? How do yYou teach her to be Her and still need Him who made you cry cuz of hHer, made You stop working with the church children cuz of Her, made You think You not worthy cuz of Her? I really want Your answer cuz you Him and him and her and Her to me. And I need to know who to be someday so if I want someone God doesn’t, I can know how to answer like Y y Y y Y y Y you Adrienne Anna “My blessing” “My blessing” “My blessing” “My blessing” “My blessing” “My blessing,” and know it.
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Sequences I heard once that 260 million years is [our] oceanic residence time. I thought, Damn. That means we’re only, roughly, 154 years into our penance. That means when I choked on sea water in 1996 New Jersey, I swallowed a thin shrill. I remember, it burned the thing that connects my speak to my smell, and my ears popped. I thought, Maybe theirs did too, but then, I heard that our bodies were so emaciated and rawboned that we, denser than water, got guzzled—slipped right down, chasing each other without breaking to levitate. All the shark meat my auntie had me taste in Virginia, all the bushels of Maryland Blues we laid out over newspaper on card tables, had a little bit of Zanj breast, a little Baka belly, a little Kanuri baby foot. The wide eyes of the Mbundu medicine woman, plucked apart with claws, reincarnated as the pearl Himalia Necklace at Cartier, sells for $5,750.00. I thought, I’ll tie on my mother’s pearls the next time the shore opens for me, and I’ll hold my eyes open in the salt until we are in the naming ceremony, eating alligator pepper and honey and sugar and bitter kola nuts and palm oil and drinking to remind the present that water has no enemy.
state of nature zine
Proverbs 31 The universe moves in a nut sack.
Your rags for His glory.
Head, He is yours, and you are His help rib—
meaty, fallen off the bone
onto the street corner. Tender, honey-lipped, death trap, broken temple walls can be restored in three days or the morning after. ter of Sheba and Bathsheba. white.
Come get built, burdened daugh-
God will not be pleased until you are dressed in
She She Shes thrashed on threshing floor for world’s iniquities, your master onto the corner. be restored.
He is
Tender honey-lipped, death trap, broken temple walls can
Don’t be lil’ fast girls, holdin’ hands and all hugged up. Without Him, you are nothing. The universe moves in a nut sack.
Your rags for His glory.
God will not be pleased until you are dressed in white open for Him. One thing He wants. fallen off the
and your lips broken
Head, He is yours, and you, His help rib—meaty,
bone. She She Shes thrashed on threshing floor for world’s iniquities, your master or your morning after. Bathsheba.
He is
Come get built, burdened daughter of Sheba and
Don’t be like lil’ fast girls, holdin’ hands and all hugged up. Without Him, you are nothing. Without His name, your lips are unclean page 29
FROM THE LEAVE TAKING Theresa Lin
At the bus station in Taipei, I rapped my knuckles against the window of a taxi cab. It had been cracked just a few inches, just wide enough to admit a trace of air and expel the low mumbling of news being played on the radio. The driver was sleeping inside. His mouth had fallen agape and his cheeks had turned an intense pink. He’d left the engine idling for some time, it seemed. He did not stir and I tapped on the glass again, checking my watch. Finally, the man startled to a wake, and his hands, which had been clasped around his stomach, reflexively gripped the steering wheel. He looked quickly between Ting and me, Ting and Jia, then back at me. “Can you take us to the airport?” I asked. I readjusted the straps on my duffel hanging from the crook of my arm. “Yes, yes,” he said, as though he found himself in a sudden rush. “Get in.” He got out to open the trunk, kicking the door as he shielded his eyes from the sun with one hand. Leaning against the raised hood, he yawned as I tossed the small luggage carrying everything I owned and watched it get subsumed by the cavernous carpeted space. I pulled down my sunglasses as we got in. The driver took his time fixing the lace dollies that covered his dashboard, occasionally raking his hair that had been matted down by his deep slumber. Then we were off. state of nature zine
Ting adjusted Jia who sat perched on her knees and let the baby tug on her hair. “Not all of it, now,” Ting said, her head bent forward. Yet Ting did not pull away. Both of them began laughing at the absurdity of the pastime. Jia turned toward me and flashed a gummy smile. I laughed too. There was a faint current of air that found its way from the front of the cab, warm by the time it reached us, or perhaps from the start. I rolled down my window that stopped exactly at eye-level. I craned my neck, I slouched my shoulders. Nothing alleviated the obstruction. I contemplated putting up the window again, yet I could not afford to lose the little breeze that rippled in. The city passed by in fractals. I watched at once both through the glass and with the naked eye. My shades had started to slip down the bridge of my nose, which was shiny with sweat. I removed them, set them atop my head. The passing scene seemed to run on a reel—the sleepy caravan of trucks and mopeds pulling up to storefronts unloading produce and packages, men in rolledup shirtsleeves too hurried to sit gulping down large bowls of hot soy milk, vendors flipping turnip cakes off a sizzling griddle. The view recalled for me the many mornings Ting and I once shared as girls, walking to school. I brushed away some hair that had caught onto my lips. “You must want to hold her,” Ting said, already extending Jia out toward me. “You’re leaving so soon.” “Right. Yes,” I said. “Come here,” my pitch rising. I stole a final glance at the city. How much taller would
these buildings be the next time I saw them. I’d not expected to feel this tenderness. “Jia,” I whispered after she’d finally settled into my lap. She looked around curiously, gnawing at her fingers, which hung from her wet bottom lip. She turned toward me at the sound of her name. Just an instant. Then she quickly resumed her restless looking around. I burrowed my nose into her neck and she shrieked, delighted. I did this over and over, equally elated that she did not tire of it, of me. All morning I had rooted around the house for something like an empty water container I might take with me on the plane or a toy that I’d stowed away that Ting might not otherwise find after I’d gone. I fed Jia a last time from the edge of the bed and even after I’d put her down to sleep, kept my blouse parted to study my breasts. I ran a finger over the pale indents that had formed along the skin that now resembled dried up ravines, the stretch marks that would soon be grown over by the next time I’d see Jia again. I had lamented when I first noticed that they’d formed, how ugly they seemed to me, then. A bead of milk dribbled out from the breast I touched. I wiped it away. I held Jia close to me now. Smelled her skin, allowed her clammy, searching fingers to run over my eyes, hoped 10 months was long enough to imprint myself as her mother in her mind, hoped two years away would not expunge me from her memory. The cab began to stall on the highway as we neared the airport and traffic page 31
intensified. Jia looked at me. There was the bleating of horns. The stop and go of the car. Then her eyes pressed together as though to sneeze. Jia rolled her tiny head back and spit up on my shoulder. I peered down at the flash of dark yellow. The acrid smell mushroomed throughout the cab and Jia began to cough, then she began to cry. “Oh no,” Ting said. “It’s okay.” She took Jia from me as I rummaged through my purse for something with which to wipe my blouse. “Here,” Ting said. She had already begun wiping Jia’s cheek with her handkerchief and handed it to me. The driver, alarmed by the putrid odor, glared at me in the rearview mirror. “It’s nothing,” I said to him. My words fell flat in the cab. I began dabbing at my shoulder, thinking of how I’d have to change in the airport before my flight and carry this wet bundle that would spoil all the way over to Libya. I began feverishly wiping away at the stain on my shirt, disgusted by its vulgarity. I kept at it until I felt a hand on my shoulder. Ting was bouncing Jia on her knees again, but she was also looking at me intently, concerned. The car came to a halt. “We’re here,” the driver said. He sighed, as though awake for the first time this trip. I put down the handkerchief as the driver got out and opened Ting’s door. My eyes adjusted to the new portal of light. Ting fitted Jia onto her hip, and Jia resumed her easy laughter that continued ringing in my ears without end.
state of nature zine
FROM WE HAVE BEEN BELIEVERS Fajr Muhammad
PROLOGUE
The women were disappearing. First it was just a few, two or three, from down Lehigh Avenue, women who had business being down Lehigh Avenue. Then there were more—missing from the local Safeway, a vanishment from a hospital parking lot, a disappearance in the middle of the night like hot water boiled clean out of the pot. When the prostitutes went missing, we shook our heads. If they hadn’t been out—thighs caged in fishnets—no one would have taken them. There were strange things out between the blackness of night and the amber white light of dawn and girls ought to be more careful, we thought. But it was still so tragic and we wouldn’t have wished it on our own sisters, even though we never stopped to think that maybe they were sisters too. We rang each other—whisper down Queen Lane—and in our hushed tones we asked if anyone had heard about Karen, pretty brown skin girl with the flesh peddling boyfriend, who was last seen ornamenting the driver’s side door of a champagne-colored Eldorado with out of state tags. They said when the john asked for her price, she whispered the words ‘For Free’ softly, her lips perfectly pert and got in. And what about Deanne with the itch. She never made it back to the rooming house where she stayed and after only two days, her belongings—three crumpled dollar bills, a water stained photograph of a woman one page 33
could only assume was her mother and a chipped ruby ring—were tossed into a plastic freezer bag and handed to the police left languish uncollected in an evidence locker. And Sybil. Poor Sybil, from down Baxter Projects. Last we’d heard she’d been sleeping down in the boiler room. She’d wander off, two to three days at a time, stalking the night like it owed her money. But she always came back. They always came back, except for when they didn’t and two girls turned into four turned into five turned into ten, turned into we stopped counting. News reports started pouring in. The family of Ella Martin is searching for their daughter tonight. She vanished from the North Philadelphia section of the city yesterday afternoon. If you have any information about her whereabouts, please call. We never called. Instead, we shifted uncomfortably in our armchairs and bit at the edge of fingernails. We got up to check the meatloaf and green beans. We called our own daughters to set the dinner tables and we fed them, heaped more food on their plates than appetite warranted, in prayer that they would have more than enough strength to make it home. When Ms. Maureen’s 30-year old daughter vanished, we finally sat upright. She was a high school Math teacher and had been working late to tutor students. They found her blue Pontiac Grand Am with the driver’s side door open, surrounded by a trail of unmarked test papers that had been carried away by the wind. Her burgunstate of nature zine
dy beaded tote was on the passenger seat and the keys were still dangling in the ignition. Ms. Maureen’s daughter did not run away from home. Wherever she was, she was shoeless, her brown Nubuck pumps left in the middle of the parking lot, liked she’d stepped right out of them and into the sky. They entered them into evidence; of what we were not sure. The children asked us and we couldn’t with any certitude tell them where she was. Who was going to teach 9th grade Algebra? they asked. Was she ok? And finally, they asked it plainly, like children do. Why would anyone take our teacher? After Ms. Maureen’s daughter, went Diane. She took a pot roast out of the deep freezer and kissed Walter Lee goodbye, never to return that evening to cook the defrosted hunk of meat, let alone make Walter Lee a plate. Next Margo with the junkie son, last seen stringing up her laundry in her backyard, a ritual she did every other Sunday—linen first then school clothes—while her two school-age children played indoors. These weren’t cast off women, we thought. They had people and those people wanted them home, safe under the halcyon glow of the porch light and the warmth of the space heater. The police had little to go off and at each scene said they found no signs of foul play. “Hell!” We cried. “Don’t no woman—no black woman—up and leave her family! Her kids! We don’t do that sort of thing.” They looked at us, stone-faced, and said, “Get outta
here. We have a double-homicide to investigate.” We were terrified. Somebody was taking women, but who? We sat around Jolene’s coffee table, perplexed. We couldn’t think of one sensical reason. Make us sex slaves, we thought. Why take the old ladies then? Sell us back into bondage? But why the women, surely the men could carry more weight. It was probably some jilted creep with Mommy issues taking it out on black women. Probably idolized white girls from day one because some Patty gave him half of her sandwich on the playground and the sister wouldn’t give him the time of day. We couldn’t think of one good enough reason, one legitimate scenario, for why someone, anyone would want us. Take us from our families, the jobs we begrudgingly served, the men we overloved, never to return? Our men hugged us tighter. And when we made it home safely after a day’s work, they laid our soft, tangible bodies down—gently at first and then had us with ferocity. We held on, thighs clenching around pelvises, yet fear and orgasm rested in our throats as we realized that not even love could save us.
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VIRGINA, NORTH CAROLINA Zoe Marquedant
I have a strange loyalty to a place, a man-made lake that straddles southern state
lines. A cloud of affection for its brown snakes and herons that prevents me from every truly leaving. It is an attachment to even the color of the kitchen walls at the other end of the dock that kicks up a sudden heartache. I cannot imagine what it would be like to sever from any of these things-- the nodding bobbers, the smell of sunblock, the oppressive heat-- for all the threads and tendons that connect us are thick with nerve endings. I feel every second I try to pull away. I wonder if the air moving high above the water had been a different temperature or if the sun were somewhere else in the sky, maybe it would be different. Maybe I would be different. But there was always a conspiracy of rainless days and ripe fruit. A setting so in tune to my own inner workings as a child that it was practically assured that I would always be siamesed to that green-tasting body. Floating on my back above the carpet of hydra and in the evenings hunting the omnivorous catfish. Part of me will always linger there on the North Carolina-Virginia line. ***
The only thing comparable with being there on the lake is the process of
getting to its shore. The treat of leaving in whatever you’re wearing. Or changing into pajamas just for that purpose. Outfits didn’t have to include shoes as long as sneakers or something with straps were packed somewhere in the back. I remember crawling excitedly into the van with a basket of snacks. state of nature zine
Staking out the best spot, claiming it with one tragically deflated pillow, and preparing for the long drive out. The family would leave in the deep evening. After my parents reappeared from work. We would depart from Maryland, maybe only for the weekend, heading down the coast to a sort of second home. Behind us, we left the cul-de-sac, a statewide love of horse races, and the caution-colored blossoms of black-eyed susans. We’d head down chasing some sort of elusive remoteness found only in uninhabited wilderness. Ahead of us the lake. Still several hours away. Asleep in the distance. A shadow spilled amongst the trees. Would I have loved it so much if it wasn’t its own journey just to get there? If I spent more than a few days a year on the water, would I still relish the winding path that connected us? It took navigating a thin network of parkways and interstates. Instinctively at times, down unmarked streets, roads that slipped quietly along for miles. It seemed to me as if we tumbled unnoticed into a rabbit hole and found ourselves in utter darkness, paddling blindly towards the distant flashes of fading landmarks, long since memorized. A brick works, an abandoned house, the skeletal figure of a certain tree. We drove silently through the pines sprouting like fence posts. The local radio stations long since lost. Christian rock and country stammered through the speakers as we moved just outside the reach of their towers. Past
the tin can shells of motor homes. The compound of the cigarette factory. Then a right at the Pepsi sign outside the decommissioned gas station. Straight past the dumpster populated by stray kittens. The carcasses of turkeys left by locals for them to lick clean briefly illuminated by high beams. I’d watch for pairs of marble eyes scared into the tall grasses. Eventually speed limit and streets signs faded into non-existence. Evidence of the city thinned. The summer song of the cicadas overtook the screech of wheels and low tones of tractor trailers drilling deeper to Georgia, Florida, and the Gulf. Mosquitos and mayflies dotted the windshield. We’d pause at rest stops and wipe them off. Two coffees and topped up water bottles later, we’d return to the road. The stream of cars trickled to a few pairs of speeding headlights heading on to Roanoke or Charlotte. The trip at times seemed an act of witchcraft, even when I was old enough to make the drive myself. We traveled so far I ceased to recognize what we passed. My mind couldn’t hold on to four hours worth of vastness. The unfamiliarity made the world outside the windows dream-like and almost hallucinatory. Other towns appeared as foreign as other countries. There were collections of churches, dollar stores, Bojangles. Existence itself seemed to be buoyed up by gas stations that drew in passers-by like us. We stopped, eyes wide in the sodium light for cheese burgers and caffeine before disappearing again into the dark. We page 37
sped on for hours driving well over sixty. All to see family, spending time away from our congested lives. I used to looked out at the emptying highways and wonder if the other cars were doing the same. Or were they after something else? In the earliest of years when my family ignored seat belt laws, I would lay prone on the floor, the back seats taken out entirely and the wheels humming beneath me. I was burrowed amid a myriad of blankets, sweatshirts, and pillows missing most of their stuffing. My brothers too were asleep. The siblings all piled in the back. My parents talked quietly, teasing out the last of a milkshake, prolonging the french fries. I watched the amber bead of the occasional streetlamp. The further we got, the more the journey became a shoving match with sleep. I’d nod off to the smell of the long pines drifting in through the windows. Our cellphones died silently in between the front seats. Somehow we body-dodged getting lost— summer after summer the route steeped deeply into our thoughts— and we knew how to emerge after midnight safely in the porch light behind the house. Though we could autopilot the route, strategically stopping to stave off the hypnosis of the interstate, we were betrayed by our license plates as out-of-towners. No boat in tow or anything tractor-hitched to the bumper. Only enough luggage to fit in the back of the van. We obviously wouldn’t be long in this country. We were merely visiting. We didn’t belong. Our clothes and the pace at which we spoke gave us further away as we stretched in the parking lot of a Sonic or Cookout, crunching through a tall cup of pellet-sized ice cubes out of boredom. An oil slick of burger grease on our fingers. Were we that obvious? Did we seem so impermanent? Only here while we agreed with the weather like a flock of birds down from the North. Our presence was only unquestioned by our families and their friends, who greeted us at all hours in house shoes and slippers. After the last street sign and the final mile marker of the mailbox, our seat belts were unbuckled. Two sets of footsteps shuffled over the gravel. Eight arms raveled around the siblings’ bodies. The crackle of mosquitos burning away. The smell of butane mixing with damp earth. Then the slight turbulence of the front door, the tap of the kitchen tile under foot and finally the constricting duvets of the twin beds. As we were nestled back into sleep, morning spread still across the lake. Unbeknownst to us, it was already tomorrow.
state of nature zine
TWO POEMS Marie La ViĂąa
Assemblage on My Childhood City Tangles of low-slung electrical wire necklaced over a maze of shanties light the blood-streaked coronas of the oddly-angled corpses the bodies stacked like firewood in the morgue
light
Ungentle year I watched as though through gauze and pinpricks or zoetrope or screen-scroll A boy with a stray bullet in his calf asleep beneath a dark-soaked blueblack tarp his family in debt for the cost of a coffin the dead cast off like jetsam faces smothered in duct tape propped up on piles of garbage We felt like vultures said one photographer a story still a story
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As the blood dries on the streets at dawn wafts through the huddled shanties
the sweet smell of bread
mosquitos buzz awake
some child
between highlands and monsoon country ten square miles I knew are gone are all I can write about how it isn’t beautiful but I am from there:
state of nature zine
City of dust City of rain City of three million eyes how many lie open at night City of the second language of my accent played back to me through the speaker at the drive-through a side of fries the outsourced voice at the end of a 1-800 line City of half a mile in as many hours on the road of accidents and apologies of the clock molluscan slow of goodbyes left in the dust of shantytowns chasmic City resplendent and dismal you are pulchritude and tenderness could always carry a tune through flooded catacombs and forgetting do you think much of yourself are you someone else’s City washed away
page 41
Tiny House I try to reconstruct the treehouse from memory. Tire swing and twelve-rung ladder, but what kind of tree was it? Still standing there in someone else’s yard. It’s not what disappears with a nod toward the river. Its branches don’t remember me. I wake these days and space blooms all around my bed before the curtains open, the windowsill elaborate with spider ivy. I wish I’d been told before being flown across the world, You don’t need a home. A body is enough. The soles of my feet burn to keep me in place. Watching Tiny House Hunters on Sunday afternoon, hidden shelves beneath the floorboards delight me. Two pages in to The Magic of Tidying Up I close the book. I have no pets, only the objects in my room and how the mirror repeats me; a lopsided affinity for turtles, a way of moving through water.
state of nature zine
THE STORY OF HER Mónica Muñiz
We were given a kindergarten photo of the girl as less of a God-send and
more of an opportunity to do something with our lives; that is, before our little club was shut down by budget cuts. Along with the image of a presumably lost Latina girl, the security guard that contacted us delivered the missing person’s Alzheimer-ridden mother who could barely remember her own name, and told us to please find the child—the mother is not in her right mind, poor woman, so please help her. So we, college kids who might have thought of ourselves too highly, accepted the challenge. Not a favor, not a right, not a justice—of course we’ll find the girl, what else are we supposed to do? The mother (Natalia or Nana or Nali, 55, greying black hair, blue eyes, brown skin, slightly hunched back) vaguely remembered her daughter at times, and nothing at all during others. But we had the one-and-only photo that the mother had kept with her over the years, the notion that there’s a birthmark under the girl’s jaw, and some locations and names based on those flashes of memories the mother got on occasion. And the girl’s name, according the mother: Laura, Sofía, Isabel, Carolina, Claudia. We found out, after much prodding, that some names may be based on old relatives and friends of the mother’s, but who’s to know. So, within the mess that our team was, and within the unreliability of the mother, we did what we did. And, honestly, if I do say so myself… She (Gabriela) was 14 years old, but her friend (Jessica, 14, black hair, white page 43
skin, crooked teeth) thought Gabriela was 17 because they managed to sneak into an R-rated movie once, Gabriela looked taller than every other 14-yearold Jessica had ever met, and Gabriela had a boyfriend. But Jessica insisted that she was 17, even though they never went to school together, even though she didn’t know where Gabriela lived, even though she couldn’t describe what color Gabriela’s eyes were, even though she didn’t know if Gabriela had a birthmark under her jaw or not, but only that Gabriela’s right pinky nail was always haphazardly filed, using it to scratch herself whenever she felt like it. But she (Marta) was 14, born on August 20, 2003 according to an aging doctor (Rudolph, 74, grey hair, pale skin, blind, nearly deaf) who mayor-may-not have assisted in bringing her to the world. Rudolph, blind and nearly deaf, was 60 years old when he presumably helped bring Marta into the world and said she had a lovely little birthmark right below her jaw, close to her left ear: like a star, or a heart, he couldn’t quite remember now. But the birthmark was there, he said, definitely, on his mother’s grave, wherever she may be. He doesn’t remember how Marta’s parents looked like, he’s never cared for that, just the baby and the crying, which was like music, and then he asked if babies cry differently from each other, shrill or deep, if Marta might have cried in Spanish because babies listen to their parents from the womb; so, of course the baby cried in Spanish. And then Rudolph laughed and when we told the mother of this occurrence, she smiled. None of us could find her birth state of nature zine
certificate, not in the clinic where she was possibly born, nor in any records office. We did discover, however, that the mother remembered a possible church where her daughter was baptized. After we managed to identify it by its Virgin Mary statue, we met with the current priest (Alonso, 42, black hair, brown skin, cracked lips, receding hairline), who got one look at her photo and said, with absolute confidence and a lack of remorse, that she (Unknown) had never set foot in that church. And to prove such a statement, Alonso invited the entire congregation on a Wednesday and asked them to confirm the girl’s lack of an existence and they said, almost in unison, that no, they have never seen her, she has never been around this church, she had never been born to their knowledge. But the mother insisted on this church with the Virgin Mary on the front door, not Christ, which she found lovely, but she had never told about it to her daughter; she kept forgetting to do so and maybe that’s why her daughter was such a nice little rascal. School records from a bygone kindergarten era only had one photo of her (Erased)—the childhood photo, the crime photo, the one-and-only photo, our photo’s original—from when she may-or-may-not-have been 5 years old, but the angle of her head obscured the lower part of her jaw, along with a shadow from the camera’s flash and the studio lights. And to everyone who was recorded as going to class with her: no memory, or confusion with others who looked nothing like her (María, Stephanie, Cristina, Iris, Lucy, Jennifer). All
teachers who possibly taught her had died or vanished. And the records: just a girl, no name, no origin, that was all. Yet, the mother insisted that that was the school, and the girl in the photo was her daughter, who worked so hard to look good on picture day. She (Ana) was 17 years old, but she was 20 years old according to the 18-yearold boy (Carl, brown hair, tan skin, slim frame, scar on right shoulder) she dated, along with the 12-year-old boy (Francis, black hair, brown skin, slight limp of left leg) whom she stole a candy bar for because she either felt bad for him or just lied about stealing a candy bar to look cool; all local businesses said that nothing had been stolen in the specified period of time, but they get robbed all of the time, one sweet at a time, the store-owners said, so who knows. Carl said that Ana had brown eyes and she might have had a birthmark under her jaw, but when shown the school photo of her with hazel eyes, he insisted that they were brown and quickly added that they never had sex, ever, in any way, except maybe a hand-job once, but nothing else ever and that he wanted a lawyer. And Francis said that Ana patted him on the head and he thought she might have kept a second candy bar for herself but that it was okay, the candy bar wasn’t all that good-tasting, anyway. The mother, when told of this, just commented on how hungry she felt. She (Laura) was 20 years old, but she was 10 years old to the mother (Natalia, Nana, Nali) who was the first one to notice her daughter’s (Sofía) disappearance when she (Isabel) wasn’t there to take the mother’s hand
under the bridge—and lay down their blankets and coats and food thrown in the trash—on Monday morning, but the mother can’t remember the last time she saw her (Carolina), nor how they got to that bridge of a home, except that the mother’s husband died of a disease and her parents too and maybe even her siblings, she’s not quite sure. Although, again in those sudden flashes, the mother remembered—
the orchids in my front yard and my mother telling me to be careful, con cuidado que tardaron mucho en crecer, and the singing in the night, amongst the stars, which vanished and vanished and kept vanishing. Nothing sings here, but she sang to me, her voice so lovely. She always sang, I taught her, just like my mother did, every day, and she’s so little. There was a draught once, many many times, and it was so hard on us. I was so thirsty, but I gave water to the orchids, and my mother got so angry, pero qué haces niña, because I was killing myself. But the orchids, and the birds were sticking to the ground, I couldn’t find the coquí, but it kept singing even as it died. Please find her, she doesn’t know how to take care of herself. I do miss her so. It’s so lonely. I need to go back now, right now right now, before the orchids wilt and die, it took so long. They had a house once, the mother said, and then an apartment, and then the bridge, but the house was burned down, and the apartment bulldozed over, and the bridge was just a bridge. After fully realizing that her daughter (Claudia) had disappeared, the mother went to the police, but she had actually gone page 45
to a security guard in a local parking lot, who then guided her to the officers in the police station, who then made her wait 48 hours, and then 72 hours, and then 112 hours before they finally started looking for a Latina girl with hazel eyes and a birthmark under her jaw in the shape of an arrow. The security guard (Geoff, 45, blonde hair, grey eyes, uneven ears), who pitied the mother, called us because no other news outlet was willing to give her the time of day and we were just a bunch of college kids and young people usually care more, not weighted down by life’s disasters yet, he said. And we did it.
—of course we’ll find the girl, what else are we supposed to do?— And we did it because we had a slow-news month and we were getting budget cuts and the administration was getting closer to shutting us down. We didn’t know what we were doing, not really, none of us were journalism majors, and I just wanted to put something in my resume. Our tape recorders kept malfunctioning and I wrote down what the mother said because I felt bad, maybe as bad as the security guard, but she kept rambling on and on, and I just wanted to be a doctor, but I’m not sure what everyone else on the team wanted to be back then. The mother kept patting me on the head and then she gave me a candy bar she didn’t remember having; for me, for 12-year-old Francis, for her daughter. So, we took the story and spoke with the security guard, and the mother, and the 12-year old boy, and the 18-year old boy, and the school students, and the parish, and the doctor, and the friend, dragging the one-and-only photo of her everywhere we went, hoping that it was actually her and not just some other girl. But as far as we knew, having never found her, she might have run away to far-off lands, or might have been kidnapped, or maybe she might have died before we started the investigation, years before the mother even noticed her daughter was gone, and we all just wasted our time.
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Contributor Bios Daphne Palasi Andreades graduated from The City University of New York (CUNY) and will receive her MFA in Fiction at Columbia University this fall. She is at work on two projects: her novella, Brown Girls, which follows a group of second-generation immigrant girls of color from Queens, and her short story collection, Homeland. She was awarded fellowships with the Edward F. Albee Foundation and Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Email her at dka2118@columbia. Tiffany M. Davis is a reader, writer, and cook. She is currently working on a collection of essays on black womanhood, mother-daughter relationships, and mastering her mother’s secret pound cake recipe. Email her at tiffanymmdavis@gmail.com Jarrod M. Harrison is a fiction writer from Surry, Virginia. Follow him on Twitter @Jarrod_MH & IG @Jarrod_MH_ to learn which Jay-Z albums, Dilla beats, and cookies he loves. Reach him at jarrodmh@gmail.com. Alexis V. Jackson is a poet and Philadelphia native interested in Black feminist and womanist theologies. Her poems are concerned with the tension that exists at the intersection of her particular identities (namely Christian, Black, woman, middle class, etc.), and much of her work is written in conversation with the Black Woman Writer’s canon. Email her at jacksonalexisv@gmail.com Karishma Jobanputra is a writer from London. She writes about family relationships, Indian culture, mental health, and bodies. She is currently at work on her first novel, as well as a collection of nonfiction essays. Her work has been published in The Guardian and Columbia Journal, among other places. kdj2116@columbia.edu Cyree Jarelle Johnson is a poet, essayist, and editor. Their work has recently appeared in The New York Times, Boston Review, and WUSSY. Get in touch at johnsoncyreejarelle@gmail.com or through cyreejarellejohnson.com Marie La Viña grew up in Manila and Los Angeles and lives in New York City. lsl2152@columbia.edu / mlavina@gmail.com Anya Lewis-Meeks is a fiction writer who is currently working on her first novel, written in both English and Jamaican. Her work has been published in Panorama Journal. She can be reached at alewismeeks@gmail.com. Theresa Lin is the recipient of Columbia University’s 2017 De Alba Fellowship, which is awarded by Writing Program faculty, and a Writing Instructor in the Undergraduate Writing Program. She is currently working state of nature zine
on a novel about a woman living within the constraints of KMT occupation in Taiwan during the 1950s. Email: tkl2119@columbia.edu Zoe Marquedant is a queer essayist. She can be reached at zoemarquedant@ gmail.com Fajr Muhammad is a fiction writer from Philadelphia who lives and writes in NYC. She is currently working on a novel set in her hometown during the black power 70s that follows the life and salvation of a young Muslim convert. She can be contacted at fajrmuhammad@gmail.com. Mónica Cristina Muñiz Pedrogo is a fiction writer from Puerto Rico and a 2016 summa cum laude graduate from the University of Puerto Rico with a B.A. in English Literature. She is currently finishing her MFA in Fiction at Columbia University and working on a short story collection about Puerto Rico’s colonial history and its impact. She published four stories in [IN]Genios, won Best Story in 2014-2015 in iINAS, and received a certificate from the House of Representatives of Puerto Rico. You can contact her at mcm2278@ columbia.edu or at monicamuniz45@gmail.com.
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