THE CATALYST co n t e m p o r a ry l i t e r a ry a r t s m ag a z i n e
issue 7 // winter 2016
COVER ART // JONATHAN ESSEN
Letter From the “My e xpressive needs oscillate between the mild little haiku summarizing a huge situation, and a great flood of banalities. I am both too big and too weak for writing: I am alongside it, for writing is always dense, violent, indifferent to the infantile ego which solicits it.” — Roland Barthes
Dear Reader,
A Note from the cover artist The image on the front cover is called “essen-dmatrix1.” It comes from solving one of the most basic equations of quantum mechanics, Schrodinger’s equation, which asserts that what we call particles really behave like waves after all. To get this image, I made up a ‘’potential profile,’’ which is a sort of track for the electrons to interact with. If you like surfing, imagine the contours of the seabed as seen by a wave approaching the shore. In this case, the potential profile is flat except for two bumps sitting near one another. I picked the energy of the ingoing electron-- which roughly corresponds to the period of the swell-- and solved for the stationary state. Then, I chose the energy to match a resonance between the two bumps.
I’ve been doing things a little bit different lately. This was the first quarter in a long time that I haven’t taken a painting class. I’m writing instead: on sketchbooks, on Textedit, in the notes app on my iPhone 4. Writing allows me to become a therapist, an artist, and a conversationalist. It opens me up. I read all the books my professors assign me (to name a few: Sense and Sensibility, To the Lighthouse, A Lover’s Discourse). I’ve realized that to read and to write is to communicate across time. To be, to really be in someone else’s mind, is to open yourself up so that someone else can be in yours. Words fail us occasionally. And they haunt us long after we come into contact with them. But to write, to read, to speak, to communicate through art is maybe what humans desire most. It reminds us that we are not so different, and it builds a connection that lasts longer than what we print on paper. I hope this magazine creates a space that others can fill with their words and their art. The Catalyst reflects our desire to speak something new, to keep our conversation going. It’s only human to have something to say. Madeline Lockhart
The image itself is showing the density matrix, which can be built out of my solutions to the Schrodinger equation. I injected an electron moving to the right, but I am only plotting the reflected (left-moving) part of the density matrix. So you end up with a view of an interference pattern created by these two bumps. The vertical stripes near the center indicate the presence of a resonant state in the middle. The density matrix is a complex function of two variables, so I have to use the whole color wheel in order to display it in 2D form. The brightness corresponds to the amplitude, and the color corresponds to the complex phase. Anyway, I hope you like the image.
P.S. A huge thank you to Brian Donnelly, our advisor, for continuing to put up with his Valkyries.
The Team Editor-in-Chief Madeline Lockhart Managing Editors Emily Balaguer Kiana Fatemi Hannah Mussey literature Director Emily Balaguer Design Directors Kiana Fatemi Hannah Mussey Art Director Madeline Lockhart Editing Team Emily Balaguer Tyler Chavez-Feipel Jeremy Chow Elenna Erkeneff Madeline Lockhart Design Team Kiana Fatemi Hannah Mussey Emily Rogers Natalie O’Brien
faculty Advisors Jeremy Chow Brian Donnelly Bishnupriya Ghosh Artists Beth Askins Emily Balaguer Leah Barsher Lorenzo Basilio Sarah Brennan Gabriel Cardenas Axel Eaton Elenna Erkeneff Jonathan Essen Heidi Judge Madeline Lockhart Ricky Miller Casey Mix Shivani Patel Roberto Perez Ari Plachta Hannah Pham Kate Ryan Thomas Skahill Hue-An Tran Emma Vogan Lauren Wicks Troy Yamasaki Leslie Zhang
Writers Emily Balaguer Ricky Barajas Michael Coppola Lauren Croshaw Adam DeGree Alexandra Dwight Elenna Erkeneff Kiana Fatemi Shaina Goel Emily Hansen Patrick Harrington Frank Horne David Hyon Madeline Lockhart Jocelyn Lopez Alex Manrique Shay Mehr Hannah Mussey Ari Plachta Nicholas Pieper Emily Potter Natalie Overton Leilani Riahi Emily Rogers Kimmy Tejasindhu Kevin Tesei Emma Vogan Erika Wadsworth Alexander Wehrung
Table of contents Prose
3 Musings on the Mind in the Natural World Nicholas Pieper Art // Axel Eaton 4 Paradox Ricky Barajas Art // Robert Perez 6 After the Revolution Emily Potter Art // Casey Mix 7 Faceless Love Letters Emily Rogers Art // Emily Balaguer + Madeline Lockhart
Poetry
25 Tiny Yellow House Alex Manrique Art // Axel Eaton 26 Untitled Poem Elenna Erkeneff Art // Lorenzo Basilio 26 Untitled Poem Kiana Fatemi Art // Lorenzo Basilio
27 Walking Through the Garden With You Alexandra Dwight Art // Troy Yamasaki 29 Earth Rise Lauren Croshaw Art // Hannah Pham
8 Dear Little Bird Emily Balaguer Art // Sarah Brennan + Elenna Erkeneff 9 Talking to Ghosts Kimmy Tejasindhu Art // Heidi Judge
13 The Cemetery Hannah Mussey Art // Gabriel Cardenas
31 In Numbers Hannah Mussey Art // Hannah Pham 32 Flaming Rum Punch Emily Balaguer Art // Madeline Lockhart 33 Wanderings Erika Wadsworth Art //Lauren Wicks 34 La Mochilera Emma Vogan Art // Lauren Wicks
18 A Street Soup Affair Ari Plachta Art // Leslie Zhang 19 America by Simon & Garfunkel Emily Balaguer Art // Leslie Zhang
11 Pulp Religion Patrick Harrington Art // Hue-An Tran + Madeline Lockhart
30 Panoptes’ Illustrious Institution Shaina Goel Art // Hannah Pham
15 The Result of Decay Alexander Wehrung Art // Hannah Pham
21 Remebering Eternity Natalie Overton Art // Beth Askins 22 In Memory of Baba Leilani Riahi Art // Ari Plachta
35 Autumn Jocelyn Lopez Art // Shivani Patel
41 Passion Frank Horne Art // Kate Ryan
36 Flirting With Myself Kevin Tesei Art // Lorenzo Basilio
42 Never Been to Rome Emily Hansen Art // Kate Ryan
37 Smile Adam De Gree Art // Leah Barsher
43 No Hip Hop David Hyon Art // Thomas Skahill
39 Bruises Shay Mehr Art // Emma Vogan
45 I Am the Liquefied Caterpillar Michael Coppola Art // Emily Balaguer
40 Eye Candy Madeline Lockhart Art // Ricky Miller
47 Dear Tinsel Town Alexandra Dwight Art // Natalie O’Brien
ART // LAUREN WICKS
PART I:
:
PROSE Musings on the mind in the natural world // Nicholas Pieper Paradox // ricky barajas after the revolution // emily potter Faceless love letters // Emily Rogers dear little bird // emily balaguer talking to ghosts // kimmy tejasindhu Pulp religion // patrick harrington the cemetery // hannah mussey the result of decay // alexander wehrung a street soup affair // ari plachta america by simon
&& Garfunkel
// emily balaguer
remembering eternity // natalie overton In Memory of baba // leilani riahi
ART // AXEL EATON
Musings On The
Mind In The Natural World By Nicholas Pieper The subconscious focus of the mind is subtly dictated by the setting in which it places itself. In this way a man or a woman is drawn to dwell in various ways upon nature and upon himself in ever changing pose as he navigates the land. When we observe that certain settings shape our focus it becomes apparent that these same landscapes can be dissuading to a concentration of a different form. A binary that represents this ideal is a forest of tall, grand trees tightly knit against the sky. Here, a mind is prone to ponder though its focus will be ever inward, as forests such as these do not allow room for the mind to see neither far nor wide. In the mountains, the body and mind are seemingly held tight against the plane of the sky. Just as the chest feels this tightness when moving amongst the peaks and valleys of this haven, so does the human conscious. However, like the air billowing among these giants, focus is clean, and men are filled with great and noble sensation. In the high places of the world, minds of men and women become taut, with focus well adapted to the rigors of an elevated life. The desert is a land of opposites expressed by the dichotomy of night and day. As such it is best enjoyed at the transitions of the two. Here the mind is similarly contradicted, as it expects little, yet encounters much. Still water, clear as glass yet filled with algal plants and tall reeds, is transformative to the thought of man. The immense height of the reeds, reminiscent of grass, fits well with the scale of minute animals that dwell here, in such a way as to set the mind to all things small. Here one can dwell on the infinite minute processes that subtly govern energy flow. It is therefore seemingly appropriate that settings such as these go unnoticed, and are filled with beasts bizarre to the minds of men. Go outside. You may find something out about yourself. ▲
prose
3
By Ricky Barajas
Alabama didn’t appeal its interracial marriage ban until like 2001 or something. I was born in 1995. This country never wanted people like me. Questions and comments about my identity gave me the anxiety of celebrity life without any of the perks. People ask things like, “So… which are you really?” Applications are the worst— having to reduce yourself down to a check box never feels good. I’ve always been expected to choose, as if my two halves don’t make one whole. Growing up, for me personally, in retrospect, was an interesting experience. I never knew where I belonged. One time, my grandma made me a sandwich and I wouldn’t eat it because, “Miracle Whip is for black people.” Little did I know. People are always hounding me because I don’t speak Spanish. I can’t dance to save my life. Who the hell knows what the hell to do with my hair? Being mixed is my second grade teacher not even trying to pronounce my last name right. It’s getting called a nigger in my ninth grade Spanish class. It’s people not thinking that I’m related to my cousins, and it’s being told that my family is an abomination in a gas station by some random old woman in Kansas who felt like she was important enough to share her commentary on my existence. It’s going to a friend’s house for the first time, and seeing a confederate flag on their ceiling, and wondering if I was ever actually friends with that person. When I was eleven, my uncle got pulled over on his way home from work and got arrested because my suitcase was in his trunk. They said it had to be stolen because my uncle is black and “Barajas is a Mexican name, so he can’t be your nephew.” My mom lost a friend to her marriage with my dad. Her best friend from childhood just stopped talking to her. There’s a lot of pain involved in deciding— but one day I realized that I don’t have to. Not everything about it hurts. I got a lot more music. The food is pretty nice, too. I just got tired of thinking about myself in checked boxes. I can’t be one or the other because I am both. I have my dad’s eyebrows and my mom’s smile. I only have one face though. I got one ear from each of them, and they’re not the same size, so headphones never fit right. That’s okay though. Everything that I am is the combination of both of them. My body is made of puzzle pieces drawn from different boxes, but I am still a masterpiece. ▲
4
ART // ROBERT PEREZ
The Environmental Humanities When people think about making a difference environmentally, they often fail to consider art, literature, history, philosophy, theology, music, theater, film, or any of the many other pursuits of the arts and humanities. This is a mistake, and a big one. The humanities have a major role to play in our shared challenge of forging an environmentally sustainable future. It’s true: poets, playwrights, performers, and artists of all sorts, as well as interdisciplinary scholars, can (and daily do) make important environmental interventions. Understanding why people do what they do is the domain of the social sciences and humanities/ And once human actions are better understood, we open up the possibility of pursuing practices that are more environmentally sound. In short, the humanities have a quiet but powerful impact in understanding and helping us limit anthropogenic (i.e. human-caused) climate change.
ART // CASEY MIX
1
After the Revolution By Emily Potter
I pull back against the ocean water once more with my paddle before laying it down across my lap. I glide towards the oil rig, looking up at the mesmerizing structure built of steel and concrete. It towers over the great ocean, eerie in its silence. My Nanna comes up behind me. I look over my left shoulder at her. She slides into the space next to me; neck stretched staring up at the symbol of a time past. Her eyes reflect all that it means to her, looking at the now quiet oil rig that was once actively working to destroy the very ocean we floated upon. “I wish I could have seen it light up at night,” I say to her. “No you don’t.” I open my mouth to apologize and close it, seeing the look on her face. I turn back to the oil rig, and wonder what it must have been like in the time before the revolution. Nanna talks about it sometimes, but she usually focuses on the days leading up to overthrowing the power of the fossil fuel industry. Masses of people across the world, each section of the movement unique, each united under a singular goal. “What was it like Nanna, before?” She looks at my eager face and sighs. “The scariest part of it,” she says, as I hang on to every word, “was that you only knew it was bad if you were really looking at it. People you loved, people you wanted to save, were unaware that they were passively accepting their destruction. It was like beating your head against the wall, trying to get them to understand. The thing was … nobody wanted to understand. You knew that this industry, this culture, was going to completely destroy human life on Earth, but it just kept going. Every day there were new losses: losses of life, losses of habitat, people’s homes. But everyone kept turning away. It was easier to ignore the problems than to wrap your head around how we could possibly overthrow the fossil fuel industry.” She paddles closer to the oil rig, motions for me to follow her. We go underneath the structure. It’s striking how small I feel in relation to it. It’s no longer operating but I can still feel the power, darkness, and corruption of its former wealth. “This is where the oil would come through,” my Nanna said, motioning to a pillar holding up the platform at the center. “There would be around sixty men working on the oil rig at once, all yelling. It was hard, dangerous labor. But they did it for the money. They would stay on the rigs for weeks, sometimes months, then go home for a period of time and do it again.”
It was hard to imagine the silent rig teeming with the life of sixty men, risking their lives for a paycheck. “Why is it still here? Why didn’t they destroy it?” “It’s very complicated to move them. There’s a lot of risks. It’s easier to just leave them. And it serves as a reminder. We can’t erase the past, no matter how dark. The fossil fuel industry caused a lot of pain. It had a lot of power and little regard for anything that got in the way of its production. Severe inequality, corrupt governments, manipulation of the minds of the people through powerful media campaigns. We’re not too far away from that. If we let our guard down, we run the risk of it happening again, of losing everything we fought for.” “How did you do it?” I asked, impressed. Seeing the rig up close it finally was clear to me just how much of a challenge it must have been. “It started slow. Really slow. But just like the exponential growth of the amount of carbon in the air, the more support we gathered, the more the rate at which the movement grew increased. People started to wake up. The effects of climate change were starting to become so apparent, they couldn’t keep turning away. And we were there, waiting for them with open arms. Everyone was the same in the stages they went through to get involved, we just all had different lengths of time we could mange to ignore it. But we were all at risk. We were united by the Earth we shared. And we just started to fight back. For me the moment I knew we had a real fighting chance was the presidential election of 2028. Voter turnout was higher than it had ever been. Valerie Barnes was the Green Party candidate. Protests had been growing and growing. A third party president had never been elected, and the politicians never saw her as a real threat. But after the failure of the COP to reduce its emissions to the required level in 2020, and the failure of the US 2024 president to hold to the promises made byprevious presidents, when he ran as an incumbent in 2028, protests had grown to an international level. There were protests every day. Valerie Barnes came in and caught everyone else by storm. She won by an overwhelming majority. She had a lot of power. It could have been dangerous, but we were fortunate she was serious about fixing the crisis; she knew what needed to be done. But it wasn’t her that saved us, really. It was the movement. She was a product of the movement. All she did was spearhead the revolution.” ▲
6
Dear little bird,
drumset, drenched in moonlight; I’d picked the right door. You didn’t see me at first, but when you did, you looked at me the same way you always do-- not surprised, and your eyes didn’t grow wide. You opened your blanket for me, and when I crawled in beside you, you held me close, the way you knew I needed to be. When our whispers became too loud, you escorted me to your roof, where you listened to me cry and you looked into my eyes and we looked up at the sky, counting all of its stars, just like we did years ago. You have a calm patience about you that allures me, nurtures me. So when you hummed, “Mmwhat’s up?,” I breathed you in. I took you in and let you do the talking, even though I was the one who’d shown up uninvited in the middle of the night. I let you do the talking, because I knew you had things to say to me. Maybe I’m wrong, but I believe you still have things to say to me-- that’s why you won’t allow yourself to engage anymore. When morning came, I left. I couldn’t bear to have you looking at me in that way in the light of day. I knew what I’d done wasn’t fair. I’d used you. And I regret it. But I think it’s possible to regret doing something, even if I think I’d do it all over again exactly the same way. I walked home barefoot, the pain of the broken glass still not bothering me. You say you can’t have a friendship that doesn’t have me either moving towards you, or moving away from you. You say there’s no static relationship between us. You say it’s in every moment we have together. But you fell in love with our moments and you fell in love with me. How did you do that without seeing my constant motion, my constant chaos? Maybe you did notice it, and maybe you were in love with our ebb and flow. But it’s not so enchanting to you any more, not the way it still cradles me. I guess you fell out of love, and it’s probably good you did, because I can’t say I ever really was with you-- at least not at the right time, or in the right way. It was a symbiotic relationship, but not in the you-scratch-my-back-I-scratchyours kind of way; you were a pretty little white bird picking out the plaque from my teeth, and I was an alligator, hot and sleepy and frustrated with your pace. I’m glad you flew away from me, little bird. I’m going to need more than a toothpick to get this out of my teeth. You were always self-conscious about the way your breath smelled, but the truth is that it never really did bother me. In fact, I’ve often soaked in you and all your deep-breathing reassurance-- even gone out of my way for that, too. But now there’s something I’m trying to get out of my teeth, something you gave up on trying to pry out, and maybe it’s making my breath smell funny. Maybe that’s why I’ve been craving peppermint all this time. I’m sly and cunning and my jaw is huge and toothy-- I know, you remind me all the time-- and I’m electric and I’m charging; I can’t be static. But somehow I continue to crave your soothing homeostasis. I need it so much that sometimes I use you. But I’m always going to love you, little bird, in my own kind of way.
by Emily Balaguer
You never did like the taste of peppermint. I always thought it was refreshing, but you said it just made your eyes water. I guess maybe I like to be refreshed too much. Most people avoid change, but I embrace it-- even crave it at times.
ART // EMILY BALAGUER + MADELINE LOCKHART
FACELESS LOVE LETTERS by Emily Rogers I’d like to think that you didn’t influence me as much as you did, or that you don’t anymore. That your tenebrous presence doesn’t haunt my mind, my d r e a m s, or the {empty space} in my cupboard. You could even be credited for my introduction to anime, although you’ve probably never seen a Miyazaki film, and I can’t imagine you binging through all of them alone in bed like I did. This is probably because you would never spend that much time watching cartoons when you had shit to do, and also because I’ve never known you to have a bed. I remember spotting the ghoulish image of No-Face from Spirited Away on your friend’s sweatshirt the first night I went over to your warehouse -- and then again within the labyrinth of street art that enveloped the walls. The ominous figure, suspended over pools of aluminum cans, socks, scraps of ink sketches and toaster-grilled quesadillas, was a constant reminder of my ability to consume. That was before the walls we built were gutted out and every last inch was painted over with sterile white paint. The fact that I ended up going through my anime phase solo that winter, although we were still together, makes me wonder if I might have been better off with someone who would have slowed the pace and lost track of time in the minds of Hayao or Katsuhiro with me. It also makes me wonder if we might have lost those frivolous hours somewhere between Pismo and the redwoods of Big Sur. But maybe it’s best I explored that kingdom of dreams and madness within myself, a sanctuary I can go to now that’s not shadowed with foreign leaves of eucalyptus. The truth is is though that I don’t think I would have gotten into anime at all if it weren’t for your satanic cartoonist friend Marc who lived in the warehouse (although he prefered horror manga and Tamagotchi at the time) or endlessly blaring Hudson’s anime mixes through the streets of Berkeley in my prose
car when you didn’t have a license. I wonder if we hadn’t listened to “Akira’s Here” to such shameless extent I still would have stayed so blissfully slumped in a beanbag watching Akira while my housemates filed out the door to resign our lease. You used to tell me when you love someone you just want to watch them live their life. I took that to heart and made it my own. In the first beats of morning, I’d watch the way you smile with your eyes, the lines around them drawing deep into the sides of your cheeks, your face becoming one big squinty grin. How you would say hil-aaar-ious when telling stories about your family growing up, and how you and your sisters would make each other throw up before school so you wouldn’t have to go. Or the way you would always light up a cigarette when you’d talk on the phone, the tiny bits of ash leaving their mark on your black jeans as you’d squat down -- the only item of your clothing that couldn’t be picked up at the liquor store. When trying to explain to you, and myself, why we weren’t a match anymore it was easy to point to your unhealthy habits. Plainly, I told you we were too different, but honestly I don’t think I could put my finger on what was too much or too slim. In Vicky Christina Barcelona, Woody Allen proposes that love is like a recipe, that you have to have just the right amount of each ingredient to make it turn out perfectly. But I don’t think what we were missing was salt. I still spot No-Face every once in awhile, sometimes a glowing apparition on someone’s laptop other times a tattoo. It has become one of a number of recurring motifs from the time we spent together// like the Turkish Royal cigarettes that could always be found dangling from your lips, the distinct taste of which I used to crave now make me remarkably ill. Sometimes I wonder if I was better at playing my part we might still be together or if possibly one day I’ll own a giant rodent and call him Little Caesar. ▲
7
That night I crawled into bed with you caught us both offguard. When I left my house at three in the morning, I wasn’t thinking rationally. I thought only of the moonlit glass shards covering the asphalt, the shadowed pieces hiding from me, and how useless it would be to avoid stepping on those which were illuminated. I found serenity and stillness in my every step. When I arrived at your house, I found the front door was unlocked. I stood momentarily in the corridor, unsure which of the two bedroom doors was yours. It’s funny to think how something that felt so routine-- someone that felt so routine-could be so foreign. Maybe it’s because I rarely come into your space; you’re always the one coming into mine. I bet you would have known which bedroom door was mine, even in the dark. I didn’t think of this at the time, but it wasn’t the first midnight I’d spent gambling on which of two bedroom doors was mine for the taking. Like I said, I wasn’t thinking rationally. Had I realized this recurrence-- and remembered the aftermath of my last bedroom-door gamble-- I probably would have turned around and gone back home… but who is really to say for sure?-- I surprise myself all the time. I twisted one of the knobs and, in the darkness, immediately made eye contact with the symbols of your
ART // SARAH BRENNAN Sincerely, Chubs + ELENNA ERKENEFF
8
Talking to Ghosts -A Collection of Letters Unsent-
ART // HEIDI JUDGE
By Kimmy Tejasindhu We were once a species of abominable monsters. Hulking masses with four legs, four pairs of eyes, with double the noses and double the mouths. We were once an entity so horrific that the all-powerful god of the thunderous skies fearsomely ripped us apart, made it so that from then on we would all have to spend our whole lives searching for our other halves. Wandering, incomplete. ▲ To My Other Half, Whomever it May Concern:
Fuck off. I am done romanticizing our union, thinking about where you are, who you’re with, if she makes you happy and when she’ll stop, if you love her and if you’ll somehow love me more. I am done sitting in traffic jams wondering if you’re staring absently into the same devilish eyes of the car taillights in front of you. Done watching sunsets, curious if you’re also seeing the sky paint itself with a million shades of melted sorbet. Completely finished with being rendered a void, useless half of a whole without you. I am done being afraid that we might have already met and I forced you out, watched you leave, let you go, and scorched the path so that you could never return. ▲ “One more fairytale, Mommy, read me one more,” pleaded the little girl, nestling her face against the chest of her teddy bear. One more lie, Mommy, feed me just a few more unrealistic expectations about life and love that will only make growing up even fucking harder. Please, I’m begging. We all love a good fairytale, the kind that trails off into a beautiful dream world of flawless everlasting endings. It makes us feel good, settled, and at peace to know that the prince marries the princess, that they never stop being happy, that the sky is never lacking in prismatic rainbows, that the castle isn’t cold and drafty at night, that he never stops looking at her that way. Hurry. Slam the book shut before life actually gets difficult and they realize their love can’t solve everything.
turmoil. With him, Zeus was right in trying to keep us apart. We were fate’s biggest fluke. The trembling magnets in our cores could not possibly be held apart for much longer and we were launched headfirst into one another. The crash so electric, the very hairs on my skin rose up to cling to yours and our brains rattled in our skulls. So electric, our circuits inevitably shorted black. “All things are just things with names that someone told us to call them by!” you yelled at me from the top of your lungs, your voice cracked and your eyes creased. So together we set fire to it all, crumbled every infrastructure, rebirthed a new world for ourselves, and lay there breathless in the tall grass renaming the stars. When it was over, you left me staggering numbly in the residue of a life that was mine to begin with, but I shared it with you, and you made me completely forget what it was like when I had it all to myself. ▲
The reality of the situation is that I’ve already found my other half. He and I were beasts of the same skin and blood, born with our bones bent to fit neatly together like puzzle pieces. Our love story was one of sweeping destruction and To you, my Other Half:
You will never again know electricity like the kind we once felt sparking at our fingertips. I will never again know warmth like when I rested my face against your heart’s hearth. We will both go on to clumsily force a fit with others, our dulled mismatch magnets fumbling to click. You and I are meant to meet on an indestructible, celestial plane. Not this one. Until then, your Other Half prose
9
I wrote you a letter I ’ll never send.
They keep telling me that writing to you would make me feel better, no postage required. It’ll help clear my conscience or something like that. Putting down the words I would never get the chance to say out loud to you was supposed to be relieving. Seeing it all there in writing was supposed to be cathartic. Not so much. It’s like talking to a ghost. ▲ On the prettiest stationery, thick cardstock with embossed gold leaf, I tried writing a list of things I stole from you that I want to give back. But for the life of me, I can’t figure out how to tell you…
How to tell you not to look under your bed because I don’t want you to find that shirt I know I accidentally left there— the one I was wearing when your car’s tire burst on the freeway, on what must have been the rainiest day in California history, and you were crying so hard on the phone when you called me— only because it will just remind you that you probably should call someone else when you need help now.
How to tell you that I am so sorry if I completely ruined your favorite café— the one that serves flat whites with the rose design on top, flaky almond croissants, Bob Dylan on repeat— by going there with you every morning, by holding your waist while we waited in line, by always testing your coffee first before you drank it to make sure it wouldn’t burn your tongue.
How to tell you that I wish I could take back each and every single time that I said you were beautiful, exceptional, wonderful, and loved because maybe now you don’t even believe that any of it is actually true.
How to tell you that I’m sorry if you can no longer sit peacefully at that wooden bench overlooking the ocean— the one where you hugged your parents goodbye when they dropped you off on the first day of college three years ago— all because of that time I kissed you there, kissed you hard but soft, because the tide was high and you said the crashing sound of waves gave you nightmares about being swallowed by a watery darkness.
How to tell you that you are absolutely perfect but just not perfect for me. Only because I am poisonous, rotten, warped, and flawed, and nothing is perfect for me. People walk through life, endless lengths of fraying yarn trailing behind them, knotting and overlapping with other strands as we trek. I’ll never forget the interlocking of us: a star-crossed, what a holy tangle we were. ▲
10
Pulp Religion Or what I learned about ‘kairos’ and Pulp Fiction from my Jesuit education
Kairos is a Greek word for the opportune moment. Ancient Greek philosophers, specifically the Sophists, called it a "passing instant when an opening appears which must be driven through with force if success is to be achieved." As portrayed by my high school, it took the name of a staged but well-intentioned retreat calling for silence and introspection, coupled with deep personal sharing and a hopeful strengthening of our bonds with our peers. It also called upon the leaders of the school, both in age and wisdom, to impart us with 10-or-so minutes worth of their thinking in a talk. Yes, I’m talking about the teachers.
Vincent, on the other hand, attributes the close call to luck and just "blows that shit off." Then he goes to drop a deuce in the bathroom. Later in his life, but earlier in the flick (thanks Quentin for confusing the hell out of us with your nonlinear narrative style, we wouldn’t want it any other way), we see Vincent returning from a similar trip to the john only to get blown away by the deadly boxer, Butch Coolidge, played by Bruce Willis. Talk about Karma, eh? But Karma is just another fancy ‘K’ word for the same thing. Jules saw his moment, his kairos, not through his own action, but rather in an instance of dumb luck (or a miracle, depending on how you see it). But his response is all that matters. To him, some greater being was tapping him on the shoulder and telling him to get the fuck outta dodge. And he listened. He seizes the success of this opening by acting with force. First he quells the Mexican standoff in the coffee shop with a mixture of generosity and brashness. He's got a Bad Mother Fucker wallet for a reason, you know. He is a "mushroom cloud...Superfly TNT" exploding one at that, too. He was a BAMF before it was cool to acronymize everything and subsequently miss the entire point of what the letters stand for. Also he was not an ass in any way, shape, or form. He does "lay [his] vengeance upon thee" at times, but seemingly not anymore. He’s a changed man, ready to hang up his guns. Think for a minute that if it weren't for Jules, Vincent probably would have come out of the bathroom guns blazing and gotten himself killed. Without Jules–his brother's keeper–there to shepherd him around, Vincent is but a weak man lost in the valley of darkness–due to his own selfish inequities–soon to be beset upon by the tyrannies of evil men (to borrow from Jules’ favorite passage).
One of their stories struck me. It grabbed my attention, even through a haze of holiness (mine may have been artificially enhanced, but the way I viewed it at the time, this retreat was nothing more than a two-day vacation from school; I intended on relaxing and enjoying myself any way I could.) He opened by saying, “You’ve all seen Pulp Fiction, right?” I perked up in my seat. Who knew this religious mumbo-jumbo could be so, well, for lack of a better word, cool? I knew religious topics had potential for more, because I had also taken his class two years earlier, allegedly focusing on Biblical Studies. I don’t think we cracked a bible once, but he captivated us daily with his stories, his special holiday, coined “Love Day”, where we spread as much love as possible. His connection between God and Star Wars was through the interconnectedness of The Force. He believed that The Force was an allegory for some kind of overarching, shared spirituality, like Emerson's "oversoul" or Christianity's Holy Spirit. But back to the juicy, made-up stuff. Basically his point boiled down to this: Are you a Vincent or a Jules? To better understand what he meant, recall the scene in the beginning of the movie, where Vincent, played by John Travolta, and Jules, played by Samuel L. Jackson, go to a group of young men’s apartment looking for Marsellus Wallace's briefcase and its mysterious contents.
But what if Jules had just blown it off, too, and continued on with his life of crime. He may have been more hot-headed in the coffee shop, sick of all the guns in his face, and gotten himself shot. His newfound serenity may have saved his life. Or he may have been around later when Bruce Willis turns up and gotten himself shot then. Here, his absence may have saved his life. Or he may have shot Bruce Willis, and we would never have gotten to see them team up in Die Hard With A Vengeance. In the murky shadows of the criminal world, everyone eventually gets theirs, one way or another. "What?," you say, "I've never seen Pulp Fiction, and who are Vincent and Jules?!" In which case I respond, "What?! Is that the country you from? Do they have TVs ‘n what? Cuz you better go find one and watch it."
After Jules’s whole spiel about the Royale with Cheese and the 17th verse of the 25th chapter from the Book of Ezekiel, a guy busts out of the bathroom with a "goddamn hand cannon" and unloads a full six shooter's worth of bullets. And you know what? Every single bullet misses.
By Patrick Harrington
Later on, Jules and Vincent head to a diner to enjoy a bite of breakfast and settle down. Over his coffee and muffin, Jules decides he is going to retire from his life of crime as soon as this job is done. He takes his survival as a miracle, a sign from God; in quite the biblical fashion, he decides to "walk the earth,” until he finds his place (maybe this where the alleged "bible studies" come in).
If that’s truly the case, here is your opportunity to act with force, and I all but guarantee success. ▲
ART // MADELINE LOCKHART + HUE-AN TRAN prose
12
The Cemetery
By Hannah Mussey
“When you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.” - JD Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye “Holy shit, Dude.”
center with a small bench and a massive bronze statue of Jesus Christ protruding from the wall. “This is my aesthetic,” Riley crassly joked, and for a moment, I wanted to berate her, but I found myself giggling as well, because what was I supposed to do? I didn’t know the people whose ashes lay in urns on the other side of the glass. Emma Tillman was born in 1909 and died in 1984, eleven years before I was even born, and she’d lived four times as long as I had. I had no connection with Emma Tillman, not even remotely, and yet I was staring at her, laughing in her presence and the presence of probably a hundred and fifty more deceased people. “This is freaky, let’s go,” I urged Riley, still giggling almost uncontrollably as I quickened my pace toward the exit of the Sanctuary of Eternal Life and across and into the other doorway. “Holy Shit!” This time, we were in a small chapel, with yet more names embossed on gold plates extending from the floor to the wainscoting that circled the room, about two feet from the high ceiling. In that remaining space, ornately painted biblical figures posed in a pastoral scene. There were shepherds, angels, probably saints and prophets and other things I didn’t know well enough to name, but the detail with
extravaganza. if that. Most of the family stayed in San Diego, where family roots run back over a century, so whenever one of us forty-something great-grandkids went off somewhere different for school, it was noteworthy. I hadn’t known that my great-great-grandmother was born in Santa Barbara back in the 1890’s until her daughter, Grandmamom, sprung that question on me after my first quarter at UCSB. It struck me as neat curio of family history but didn’t think much more of it until Grandmamom’s health started ailing. Now, visiting these distant relatives seemed like the best way to pay homage to my greatgrandmother’s family. So I’d resolved to go, bring some flowers, take a photo of the grave, and send it to her. It was my duty as a greatgranddaughter and the only resident of Santa Barbara county to go and see this and let her know that I cared about the family history. She probably wouldn’t make it up here to visit her parents again, so. Why not? The cemetery was surprisingly difficult to get to. Riley missed freeway exit twice until we managed to swing through an odd roundabout under an overpass, yet again missing the entrance to the actual property when we arrived. It was obviously old, the land uneven and hilly, but I noted cryptically that one can’t really re-landscape a cemetery. There wasn’t a parking lot, and it appeared that we were supposed to drive along one of the many interconnecting roads toward the area we sought. I came ill-prepared, so I had no idea where Grandma and Grandpa Pearson were buried in this sprawling land, so we pulled up to the office to inquire about a map or some guidance. “The office is closed on weekends,” I remarked in a sinking tone, reading the sign on the door. I kicked myself
Instantly, I regretted my word choice, and then regretted regretting my word choice. As a staunchly non-secular believer, I shouldn’t worry about offending God or Zeus or the Flying Spaghetti Monster but for some reason, in this place, my very presence felt disrespectful. My loud beliefs and proclivity to scoff at things I didn’t agree with painted me as the bad guy here, and I began to wring my fingers in the knock-off pashmina I’d worn in a feeble attempt to look somewhat dressy. After all, I was at a graveyard. Riley gave me the expected reaction. when I asked if she wanted to join me.. There was hardly even a pause before a sly smile quirked up her lips, prefacing the purposefully monotonous “yes” that was so characteristic of her speech. I knew that she would find this experience novel, a good story for later on and a better Snapchat story for today. I was going for different reasons, of course. Every Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving, my spunky greatgrandmother, Grandmamom, asked me if I’d had the chance to go to the Santa Barbara Cemetery. Her parents, who’d passed in ’69 and ’70, were buried there, “right on the ocean. Best real estate in the whole family.” Of course, being the wonderfully polite family member I was, I would always give a little chuckle and reply with a “Hah, not yet. Haven’t gotten the chance. But I hear it’s beautiful, so maybe I’ll go,” and then swiftly divert the conversation to stunning Santa Barbara, which was always a popular topic among my family members. Going to college was a great conversation starter among extended relatives whom I might see every year or two at the family Christmas prose
for my lack of foresight. Why would I think that I would be able to find two graves among thousands without difficulty? “Maybe there’s some, like, information somewhere else. That building looks open,” Riley pointed out. The missionstyle structure attached to the office indeed had open doors, but the place appeared to be completely uninhabited. Well—except for the entombed souls and ashes housed in a seemingly haphazard way about the walkway. We began to prod along the path toward the structure, trying not to read the plates in the ground memorializing strangers along the way. I wondered if folks reserved these plots before the office expanded or whether these were simply memorial plaques for the cremated or bodies donated to science, as it seemed eerie that one would rest themselves along a sidewalk. Having no idea what to even look for, Riley and I entered on the right side, as there were two different rooms available. A sign on the door read “Sanctuary of Eternal Life.” I began to nervously giggle as we entered. “Holy shit, dude.” The offending phrase rolled off my tongue when I took in the rows of glass, bronze, and gold memorial plaques and urns lining the walls in little cabinets from floor to ceiling. The ground was marble, and there was a sunken area in the
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ART // GABRIEL CARDENAS
which they were painted gave them a forboding importance. For the first time in my life, actual shivers careened down my spine while Riley whipped out her iPhone to memorialize the memorialized. About ten rows of wooden pews lined the main area, facing a raised stage on which a long table was placed under yet another hanging figure of Jesus Christ. This one was painted, his rugged face looking out across the room, and in that moment, I swore he could see me. “This is the funeral room,” I breathed out in that idiotic breathy giggle that wouldn’t cease. I couldn’t think to call it a chapel, because it felt and looked so different than any church I had ever been in. I wondered how many dead people had passed through here this month, this year. Since it was built. I wondered how many people had been in here twice-once as the mourner and then again as the mourned. That horrid thought renewed my nervous giggles, the most inappropriate and yet most natural response to this experience, and soon, it was uncontrollable, my laughter echoing off of the holy walls as Riley captured it all on her Snapchat. “Funeral too lit, am I right?” she joked in response to Jesus Christ’s passionate expression, and it was too much for me, toes curling in my respectable flats and hands tightening the belt of my peacoat as I let the laughter escaped my paralyzed throat. God, he did look like he was having an orgasm or smoking too much weed. Who the hell carved this guy? Why the hell would they put orgasmic Jesus in a funeral parlor? It was obscene, it was morbid, it was horrendously sacrilegious, and it was the most hilarious thing that had ever happened. The woman was only in the chapel with Riley and I for three seconds before the pair of us darted out, too ashamed of our laughing selves to face a person who was here possibly mourning her mother, spouse, or child. In a minute, we were back in her champagne Toyota Camry and quickly resolved to walk around for just a minute before God smited us both for our iconoclasm. “First thing’s first, I’m the realest.” And we were done. As soon as Riley turned her key, Iggy Azalea’s grating tune blasted through the speakers by chance from the It was so ridiculous, so out of place to listen to “Fancy” as mourners on the hill knelt by loved ones’ graves mere yards from our car. “Jesus—“ I breathed through my laughter, which began anew at my unabashedly heretical language. Holy sh—I mean, Jes—ah, fuck it!” I couldn’t rid my vocabulary of the slurs I’d become so habituated to using in the name of the lord, so I decided to stop trying, because the attempt was making the laughter more incessant, more inappropriate. “Okay, try and calm yourself while we drive by these people. They might not like it if you’re cracking up while they’re mourning,” Riley implored as she slammed on the gas pedal, the two of us laughing and rolling along in between the verdant, alive hills that housed the bones of the dead. ▲
prose
Decay
The Result of by Alexander Wehrung
I
t was during the dying stage of my youth that I began to wander in the dark. I did it mostly in the summer, when the nights were temperate and provided relief from the sweltering daylight that burned my skin. My age had bestowed upon me ideas of adventure, but due to my lack of decent modes of transportation, I had to content myself with wandering around. I was to do this in an area merely a mile away from my home, as my father often expected me to return quickly; my mother had long-since passed. On my more relaxed walks, I would stick to the main roads so as to not be accosted by strangers. I wanted to experience solitude and silence by myself so as to keep a clear head; the bustle of the day pained my mind. And it was also by this age that I had become rather a curious adventurer. Even before now, I would never pass up the opportunity to explore places that would seem undesirable to some, such as sewers, abandoned homes, or waterways. I once took it upon myself to explore an abandoned mall that I frequented as a child with my mother. The shops were full of rotten clothes and dripping walls, abandoned food courts and cracked floors, scattered toys and broken skylights. As I had not yet grown used to the dark at that point, I explored the place during the daytime. The first time I saw her was when I ventured farthest from home. As I shuffled slowly down an unknown road, I spied from an overpass a figure slowly making its way down the empty canal in my direction. The thing about her that struck me was how bright she was. Her skin seemed to glow in the moonlight, allowing me to see that she seemingly only wore some kind of heavy blanket. Her lips were bright pink, her hair blonde and wispy, her face sharp and sculpted. She did not seem to mind the fact that she was barefoot, and took no notice of me either, despite that I was in her field of view for over fifty yards. She took measured, determined steps under the bridge. I quickly scurried to the other side to see if she would emerge, which she did. Feeling both a sense of morbid curiosity and trepidation, I climbed down to the trench and slowly, cautiously crept behind her, wary of this stranger. “Hello?” I said. She turned around and smiled at me as if I was a longlost friend. I saw my reflection in her hazy, light blue eyes; they seemed to have a film over them. She said hello back to me, and for a moment I swore I saw a puff of air escape her mouth as she spoke. I knew I was just imagining it; it was the middle of summer, after all. How could I see her breath? “Aren’t you cold? You must be cold,” I said, gesturing to
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the rough-looking blanket she held around her shoulders, “wearing only that.” She said she was very cold. To my amazement, another small puff escaped her lips. So I hadn’t been imagining it! She told me that she had been searching for somewhere warm to stay for a long while now. “Are you homeless?” I asked. She gave me a vague answer. I questioned her further. “Why are you down here? Where are you from? Don’t you have any clothes? What’s your name?” She only told me that her name was Celeste, and she turned away from me and kept walking, her feet pressing down daintily on the cold concrete, brushing against the shattered remains of long-since empty beer bottles and discarded pieces of damp newspaper. For what felt like the longest time, I just stared after her as she kept walking away, battling with myself to either leave her or offer some kind of assistance. And suddenly I began cursing myself for my stubborn desire to know, and I went after her. “Would you like my shirt? It’s no trouble.” Celeste laughed lightly before abruptly descending into a coughing fit which doubled her over, then she stood up, laughed again, and kindly refused my offer. She said she couldn’t possibly deny me of my own clothes, before remarking how cold it was again. “Can I help you out? I know some places for you to go, there are homeless-shelters...” She told me that they couldn’t help her and that neither could I before wandering off again. I caught up to her faster this time. “Well, I’ll walk with you then.” Frowning, Celeste asked me why I wanted to do that. I didn’t tell her that I was reminded of my early childhood, of the years alone walking in the cold, the biting loneliness. And I certainly didn’t tell her that I felt the nagging sensation that something terrible if we were to part ways, because I didn’t realize that at the time myself. I said, “You look like you could use company.” Celeste said she hadn’t had company for a long time. She was only happy to let me walk with her down the canal. Then she descended into another fit of racking coughs that threatened to break her in half. I rushed to her side to help her and relented when I saw the terrified stare she gave me when I got close to her. Suddenly, both that expression and the spirit that had seized her were gone, and Celeste once again blessed me with that same sad smile. We walked together down the canal, which never seemed to end. Celeste never made any attempt to converse with me; her eyes were fixed determinedly at the approaching dark, the endless void that only managed to produce more canal. Her glowing skin, on the surface, seemed pale and was riddled with goosebumps. I wore a t-shirt and shorts.
How on Earth could she be so cold? From what other world was this girl? And therein laid my answer: what if she was not of this life? The pale skin, the vacant way that she spoke...she must be a ghost! A phantom! Something that haunts in the dark. I felt myself seized with both a lung-crushing terror and a dark sense of wonder and intrigue. I dared not ask her if she were a spectre, for fear of incurring her wrath. I was content to take fleeting glances at her as we trudged on down the dried canal, pondering her true nature and what that meant for me. Was I actually being lured to a spot where she could consume my soul? Was she truly a lost one, after all? Or was I just giving myself anxiety over some peculiar homeless girl? The night continued to drag on, and so did our journey. As the full moon began to retreat behind the skyline, Celeste turned to me with that same sad smile and told me that it was time for her rest. Without waiting for any response from me, she laid down where she had been previously standing and curled into a ball, with the filthy shroud that she had been carrying covering all but her neck. Steam gently escaped her nostrils as she breathed. After I had waited a substantial amount of time, and was absolutely sure she was asleep, I felt compelled to finally sate my curiosity. I bent down on one knee I reached out my hand and gently pressed two fingers against her neck, under her sculpted jaw. My eyes widened in surprise; not only was her skin perfectly warm, I’d dare say even warmer than mine, but I felt a normal pulse. And yet steam escaped from her nostrils every time she exhaled. “Perhaps she has some kind of illness,” I said to myself, in a hushed whisper. “Something serious.” Now determined to find her some kind of professional help, I decided that I would wait with her until she woke up, and then I would take her to see a doctor. So I sat there the rest of the night, watching over her. And in an instant it was day and Celeste was gone. Realizing I had fallen asleep, I searched the area for her, but found no trace along the abandoned canal. I asked people in the immediate vicinity if they had seen a sickly-looking girl with a shawl, to no avail. The police department had not registered her as a missing person, either, as I found out later in uncomfortable circumstances; it turns out that when you accompany mysterious girls down canals in the dead of night and fail to inform your family thusly, they panic. My father forbade me from leaving the house until I was of legal age. “Until you are at the official age of your responsibility,” in his words. So naturally, I disobeyed. It was only two days later that I climbed out of my second-story roof and let myself be taken in by the summer darkness. Naturally, the first thing I did
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ART // HANNAH PHAM
was to go back to that same canal to look for Celeste, even though I felt a nagging sense of anxiety for doing so, but I found no trace of her. I checked in the same place for a further three days, but still nothing. At first I was dismayed, but I later accepted my failure to help her on a subconscious level as the burden of responsibility began to fade in my mind. After that, life went on. I attended a university not far from my old school (so that I could remain with my father) and found employment,. As rewarding as these two experiences were, they paled in comparison to the interactions I shared with my newfound friend, Delia. While outwardly plain as to suggest a tepid upbringing, in reality she shared my onceburning enthusiasm for urban adventures. It had been two years since I had last seen Celeste, and a year since I had ceased my nocturnal strolls. Delia’s excitement and energy re-invigorated my own interests, and we explored the urban unknown together, finding all sorts of long-forgotten things: dusty photo-albums in rotting homes, ancient food-cans in rickety trailers, old typewriters in derelict businesses. But it was not enough for me; I had to show her the apex of rot. “How about this,” I said to her one day as we walked home from school. “Tonight, you and I’ll go down to the mall downtown.” The very same mall I had visited in my youth, the only place I had not visited in darkness. “Absolutely!” Delia swiftly agreed, and within only a few hours, we were in front of the mall. Treading lightly, taking care not to crush too much broken glass as if we were afraid of being caught. The light from the full moon shone in where the translucent panes of glass used to be, once upon a lifetime. The light danced gracefully off the polished yetcracked linoleum floor and the shaved granite tables of the food court. The stench of moth-eaten clothes that danced in the air was palpable. “Let’s go explore upstairs! Come on!” Delia exclaimed. “Hold on!” I replied. But it was too late; she was already off, running to find the stairs that would lead to the second floor. I rolled my eyes in mild annoyance and took off after her, but she soon managed to outpace me. As I turned around a corner to where I remembered the stairs used to be, I froze in my tracks. At the foot of the staircase, Delia was on her knees in front of Celeste, no longer wearing a filthy shroud, but instead a shapeless grey dress that covered her from neck to toes. Her hand was placed firmly, like a faith healer’s, on Delia’s forehead, and as the seconds passed, Celeste’s once-gaunt visage began to turn more robust, and to my horror I realized that Delia seemed to be getting...older. Her hair was turning gray, her skin was turning sallow, and her skin crumpled up. I watched, both transfixed and terrified, as my friend turned into a greying husk as her very essence was consumed by prose
Celeste’s. When the horrible process was done, Celeste removed her hand and Delia collapsed to the damp, cold floor. As she curled into a fetal position and began to hyperventilate, small puffs of steam escaped her nostrils. Shuddering from fright, I forced myself to look at Celeste, now in radiant health. The dress she wore was no longer gray; now, it glowed a brilliant white, reflecting the light of the moon itself. I asked the obvious question: “What are you?” She made no attempt to answer, instead noting how she had not felt this warm in a very long time. Giving me the same sad smile she had given me years ago, she thanked me for bringing Delia to her and said I was the truest of friends. What happened next I still suffer from and struggle fruitlessly to comprehend. Celeste walked towards me, and I was too terrified to run away, or even tend to Delia. She grew closer, closer still... the air inside my chest seemed to tear at my lungs and my heart threatened to leap out of my throat. I closed my eyes and tensed for something terrible…. Only silence. I opened my eyes and Celeste and Delia were both gone, and now a massive torrent of filthy, trash-filled water barrelled towards me down the massive mall corridor, washing away the long-forgotten clothing stores, obsolete gadget shops, and rusty vending machines. The only thought I could muster before I was enveloped was, WaitOne thorough drowning later, I awoke in my bed, screaming and drenched to the bone. My father rushed inside and inquired into my condition. He asked me why I was sopping wet; I told him of my dream, but that didn’t satisfy. A look eventually appeared on his face that told me plainly that he thought that I was lying. Unable to convince him otherwise, he merely shrugged at me and grumbled, “Go dry yourself down and go back to bed. We’ll figure it out in the morning.” I was only happy to comply; I felt as if I were going to freeze to death. I was even happier at the thought that Delia was sleeping safely and soundly in her own bed at this moment. But as I stripped off my sodden clothes and dried myself down, I became horrified when I did not get any warmer. I couldn’t stop shivering. As I would eventually learn, no matter how warm the air was, no matter how hot my drink was, no matter how hard the sun shined down on me, it was as if the cold rays of the moon continually beat down on me. That next morning, I learned from a television news broadcast that the mall had collapsed from what was deemed the result of decay. Delia never showed up in school again. And I feel neither alive nor dead. Just cold. ▲
17
A STREET SOUP AFFAIR By Ari Plachta
S
he smiles and nods familiarly as I sit down. I’m alone, and I almost like it better that way. Armed with soup spoon, chopsticks and a large Chang beer from the 7-11 fridge, my stomach snarls, and a slightly sweet film of saliva lies impatiently atop my tongue. I hold on to the teensy chair not meant for my fat western ass and await a 35 baht oily masterpiece from my favorite street food stand in Old Bangkok. I just finished class at Thammasat University a few blocks down. I absolutely have time to stop on the way home...for the third time this week. She sets down the pink plastic bowl filled with my slice of heaven. With a polite kap-kun-ka, I pay homage to the skill and grace of street chefs ‘round this delicious world. Prepare, friends, for the blitzkrieg. It’s go time. Flavor addicts assemble. For the love of all flavors - chili, vinegar, lime, and fish all quartered off into adorable little containers on the table - please stand in solidarity with the Bangkok street noodle soup stands of the world, and let out a loooong sa-wat-dee-kaa, because it’s lunch time. Seasoning a noodle bowl is a journey, even for the most seasoned. Warm up and work your way there, young grasshopper. I’ll share a few of my personal rules. The broth must be dark and fiery. More fish sauce. More chili. Like any good challenge, it should push your limits. Unleash those fiery chilis, squeeze that sassy citrus, and dump a healthy helping of vinegar to your concoction. If you’re not in pain, spice that shit harder. And I don’t care if you’re on the streets of Bangkok or inside a hipster noodle shop in Chiang Mai, pork balls should bounce and bop as if one of those prize vending machines dropped a few into the bowl for a quarter-- light and rubbery. Grade AA meat, no doubt. Mmm, a-roy mak mak. Thinly sliced beef flanks swim circles over slivers of onion; basil leaves and
crumbles of pork-what-the-hell-is-that peruse gently above a perfectly prepared helping of noodles. Do not be fooled, noodle newbs. Whether rice or egg, flat or thin-- noodles are never linchpins of your masterpiece, rather perfect sidekicks performing compulsory stomach-filling duties. It’s all about the broth. Chopsticks in right hand, spoon in left. More chili, more lime, more fish. Need water. Only have beer. Holy mama King Rama. Sweat beads arrive to the party, sitting shiva on my upper lip and paying condolences to the untimely death of my taste buds as all spicy senses indulge, lips inflame, and face drips. Where’s a napkin? Only toilet paper. Keep at it soldier! Not like I have a choice. The noodle soup gods have summoned me, and there’s no turning back. Halfway down the Chang and wait – am I beer buzzed or is a hallucinogenic spicy miasma making my head spin? Who knows, but I’m in my place of fanatic flavor explosion. Palette synapses whirling me fast ‘round and ‘round in the self destructive spiral of pure, spicy, sweaty, silent, hellish bliss. And almost as suddenly as the bowl appeared, it empties. The bald spot of the bowl’s bottom makes itself known and I understand this love affair has run its course. Until next time, my spicy companion. Many call Thailand The Land of Smiles. What I found everyday was The Land of Taste Bud Fucking Oblivion. ▲
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ART // LESLIE ZHANG
" America By Simon and Garfunkel // Emily Balaguer It was like pink silk. Lace I could barely see through. Like fresh dew drops on grass making my feet damp, reminding me that the day is still young and holds possibility. Yellow-golden light seeping in through my windshield as I cross a state border on the interstate at sunrise. It opened up snippets that were lying dormant in my memory-- the way he moved his hands when he talked about my sun hat, the way her eyes fluttered back as she sighed upon first waking up. That humming. That sweet, delicate, morning-time, pastel, nostalgia-inducing humming. Interrupted by bass. Raw and sultry, tantric and winning. That bass could melt my mind, could devour any preconceived notions I had about male singers and vibrato. Those cheesy, overbearing vocals just sounded so sinister to me-- like Mr. Rogers or TIny Tim on children’s shows in the 1970s-- and I honestly hated when my dad played that goofy crap. But what I hated even more was his totally blatant disregard for the sheer creep factor that song possessed-- that whole album, actually. It wasn’t until I moved away from home and went to college that I started to inevitably appreciate the gentle beauty woven into that song. And when I returned home from school for the holidays, I found my father still enchanted with that song, remaining loyal in their love affair. While he showed no signs of having grown tired of it, he also showed no signs of having grown any fonder of it. I was baffled; that song had lit a raging fire inside of me so recently that it was all I could do not to play it over and over again. But still he played it the same amount-- for that song had sparked the same flame in him years ago, and his balance had already been found. For years he’d been cooing out those verses in his scratchy tone-deaf murmurs, but I was just beginning to hum that same subtle lullaby. prose
Just like the moment of falling asleep, my turning point with that song cannot be pinpointed. But unlike dreams-- which, for the most part, are lacking in their lucidity-- I did become overwhelmingly aware that I’d fallen down its rabbit hole once that lullaby had worked its magic on my heartstrings. In the dark I was driving by moonlight that guided me home. Home is a funny thing. It seems like a specific place, but it’s not until that Welcome mat gets yanked out from under your feet that you discover what home really is. Home is a feeling. It wraps you up and makes you feel warm when you are cold. And once you apprehend that home is a state of mind, you can learn how to go home whenever you want, the same way some people are able to train themselves to lucid dream. I was standing in line to pay for my groceries the first time I went home. America by Simon & Garfunkel shuffled through my headphones and into my ears the same way smoke fills a room-- slow and deathly, blinding its victims with its thick and smokey opacity. Perhaps if I’d been stronger I’d have been quick enough to escape, but I was out of breath and too tired to run and the smoke began clouding my vision and suddenly all I could see was home: my father. But it wasn’t his face that was held captive by my mind’s eye; it was maple syrup on his famous blueberry pancakes, the way he clears his throat after applying chapstick, our barefoot early-morning walks, the smell of his car’s upholstery, and the look in his eyes when he tells me “And the moon rose over an open field” is the most beautiful line in any song ever written. Match sparked and flame lit, I began following that moon’s light home. ▲
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ART // LESLIE ZHANG
Remembering Eternity
By Natalie Overton She’s got her muddy feet secured to the seat of a white kitchen chair, her blue cotton dress pulled at awkward angles. She completely ignores them. She has many more important things to worry about.
on both sides by her absence before and her nothingness after. The sprinkler turns on and makes its rounds, scaring the dog shitless and spattering the glass sliding door. Like little gems.
Her head is full of words and snippets of thoughts and stories and memories and half-completed to-do lists. They weave through her consciousness unrestrained, and her brain will run with one until it sees another more appealing or more important or more current, at which point her brain will hop over, leaving the previous thought to spiral off alone. When she writes these thoughts down, she anchors them in the physical world. She pins them down onto paper like tiny fluttering things so that she can look at them all in a row and figure out which ones she needs and which ones she can release.
Truth seems to last forever, too. Reality is still here 378,965 years later. It happened that one time, and a second later, and at every moment in between.
is soft-hearted, this family is kinder than the universe itself. In their Earth time, each human vine of your unity garden absorbs frequencies from nature’s ancestors and cultivates their own lavish energy. It is your privilege to understand their mystery, and it is your duty to learn parts of their whole. It is necessary that you love their creative force and share it within sacred grounds they would have nourished. This is how family is to be cherished- as a sacred land to be observed, invested in, and left untouched. To mingle with the true essence of a family member is no journey without arduous pursuit. You must commit to unmasking what others may perceive, and you must be silent enough to hear their lyrical poems. I do not know if I have done this with most of my family, especially my grandpa, Baba. I have always wanted to know Baba. From the instant I heard him recite poetry for our extended family, I yearned for us to connect. I was emotionally aching to know the path to his passion for poetry. The times I felt most connected to Baba were when he was reciting. Like many, he seemed to have a self-protective shield up in circumstances of unpredictability or in times that were ordinary. I saw him let go of personal space when he read poetry, asking us to all come closer with his body
language. I inhaled his curiosity for life, his powerful hold on the beauty of this world, and how he was okay in these moments of poetic brilliance to not know what the answer was. He was letting his soul talk, allowing it to go for a dance, a walk, a party. I knew an energetic Baba; I did not let myself learn about his other parts. It’s so hard to get to know your family, especially when distance makes you forget all of the questions you have for them. Distance keeps you from engaging in a relationship with their full, sprouted self. When Baba passed last year, I started wishing I knew more of him. But I listen to others- to those family members who dedicated their lives to understanding him, to loving him, and to becoming parts of him. These family members show true love, and they are the ones I understand Baba through. Only through their beautiful relationships can I embrace his true essence. I have picked up that he was a man of deep integrity and loyalty to an Iran I will never know. He was a man of dreams. He was a man of love. He was beyond a man. He was a lifelong journey . But I now understand that he still is. He is a lifelong journey, and I feel his existence for the first time. Sometimes when a family member passes away, you only then start to feel them everywhere. My days are painted with his presence now and life is more beautiful. You are infinite Baba. Thank you for embracing us. ▲
In Memory of Baba
// Leilani Riahi
The thought that there may be some kind of answer, an owner’s manual of sorts in the form of math or complicated logic, pulses insistently in the base of her skull. It strokes the back of her throat and winds up her already-tense shoulders and provokes her tongue to action and then it leaves so quickly that she’s lost what she was going to say.
From the outside, she’s just sitting. Very focused. But her seafoam eyes wander along the wall in front of her, tracing patterns, reading words that no one else can see.
She thinks that if perhaps some philosopher or mathematician or physicist finds it, everything else will spill out-- all the well-kept secrets of our universe twinkling like ruby-gold-emerald magic beans from the bag we didn’t even see before it was suddenly, so obviously, sitting there.
Her lips are purple-- there had been otter pops earlier that afternoon-- and her hair is falling in her face like limp straw. She feverishly brushes it out of the way. There are other things on her mind.
Maybe then we will all sigh, and a great calm will fall upon us.
She’s always been uncomfortable in the open ocean. The blue that seems like it might never end-- no bottom in sight. Nothing to stand on. She’ll keep falling till she floats.
The agitation will cease to exist just as quickly as it entered our lives. The sprinkler shuts off. The dog regains its composure and returns to the couch. Her hair has dried more by now and is sticking up in a frizzy crown. She remembers her feet and her mouth and the otter pops, and it will be dinner soon, and the stars are coming out. They twinkle like little magic beans. ▲
This is what she imagines when she is reminded of death. It feels very empty and very dark and quite scary in its continuity. And when she envisions this deep, lonely eternal state, her life’s presence and significance dwindle, suffocated prose
When your pulse starts warming, life 10-2014 gives you family. And when the universe
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ART // BETH ASKINS
ART // ARI PLACHTA
Part II
:
Poetry Tiny Yellow house // alex manrique untitled poem // Elenna erkeneff untitled poem// kiana fatemi walking through the garden with you // alexandra dwight Earth rise // Lauren Croshaw
’
panoptes'
illustrious iNSTITUTion // shaina goel in numbers // hannah mussey
Flaming rum punch // emily balaguer wanderings // erika wadsworth la mochilera // emma vogan autumn // jocelyn lopez flirting with myself // kevin tesei Smile // adam de gree Bruises // shay mehr eye candy // madeline lockhart Passion // Frank Horne never been to rome // emily hansen no hip hop // david hyon ART // LAUREN WICKS
i am the liquefied caterpillar // michael coppola
// Elenna erkeneff I was naïve enough to be a pearl Foolishly strung along Beguiled to believe in its shimmering shine. Only to be regarded As misshapen and worthless, Another sand grain anomaly Was unapologetically flung aside. Concentric spheres of calcium carbonate Pried after like a prize. At second glance I was wonky and dented But fashioned from the same molecular lattice Just reflecting light in a different way. A few surface imperfections Lead to my lowly demise. Unwound from your grasp And thrown haphazardly, Cascading unexpectedly to the ground, You reduced me to nothing. An obliterated mess Of my iridescent dust cloud dissipates. My shattered remains are ghostly and alone.
TINY YELLOW HOUSE By Alex Manrique
They never saw past Shallow green tides Hidden behind lids, Open-grip hands Closing around unseen, Released by slime, disgust, fear.
A June bug flew into the apartment today, It got louder and louder It wasn’t bothersome until it landed on the pillow next to me I picked up my shoe and killed it with no hesitation.
They never understood. He, the backwards forest, Breathing out and in again, Chemical transfer, rootless life, no home. The loss of self, No perception.
June bugs always remind me of when things were good When I didn’t know any better It hit me like a baseball to the head She cried, and I cried He left, and we stayed,
And he, himself, Saw the same crooked feet, Bare and wandering. No brothers to be found.
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And so he, himself, With hand rested on grisly bark, Toe dipped in humming brook, Began to see his own eyes And smile, and breathing life Reflected.
ART // AXEL EATON
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ART // LORENZO BASILIO
It reminded me of the big ugly June bugs that we could always hear buzzing in the tiny yellow house. They scared me for some reason My mom could always make the buzzing stop.
I could kill all the June bugs in the world but the memory wouldn’t fade So here I am staring at a dead bug on the pillow next to me On the verge of tears, and why? The little yellow house is gone, and so is he. Poetry
Kiana Fatemi //
“
Walking
Through the
Garden
With You
By Alexandra Dwight
I drink it in, Steeped in chamomile. Yes, Words are manmade, An a rr a ng e m en t Of empty Syll-a-bles, Inherently meaningless,
“I am not a lover” Whispered sentiments escape In milky phantoms,
But, I feel this Deeply as my dharma:
Walking through the garden with you.
As I have always had this urge To touch earth, To let loose soil fall through the slender voids between my fingers, And to trace the twisted bark of trees Dripping with sea foam, I have the urge to exist with you Here in the nectar of your radiance, Crystallized in a delicate chemistry of raindrops Now clinging to my eyelashes.
Flora unfurl into acid blooms, Vines creep along thorny stems, Gossamer threads unwind from a snail shell, All slowly, slowly— The entire garden operating as one organism Enraptured in a moment of meditation. Serenity exists in this space, In the understanding of decay And exuberant flux of creation. Where bulb’s burst, Life expelled in silken petals And candy seeds To place on our tongues.
“I am not a lover” The words materialize and dissolve Like milky phantoms, Ghosts of what I used to believe
“I am not a lover”— But, my words are betrayed By dewy eyes, Melting ice beads on a spider’s web Through which I peer at a Kaleidoscopic world.
Walking through the garden with you.
This world, curled into an opalescent shell Nestled in the palm of your hand, Concentrated in the soft charcoal of your eye, Exhaled from the spaces between your teeth. I sense an inherent spirituality in you, In the softness of your body And natural lilting melody of your voice humming on afternoon airwaves. “I am not a lover,” Words fragile on breath, Trapped between ice sheets.
ART // TROY YAMASAKI
Once thick on my tongue, They liquefy with new meaning,
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’ Panoptes''
Illustrious Institution
Earth Rise
By Shaina Goel
Monitor me monitor me Surveil me surveil me A rat in your Panopticon Glared at by the eye in the sky Control me control me Behave me behave me Just as Bentham wanted Omnipresent and potent
By Lauren Croshaw
Through mountain dew eyes this morning, saw the sun rise by the arms of the Earth. Mysterious skies I surround context all my own. With grounded feet I’ll only ever see what’s already been sewn.
Through my tired blue eyes, I’ll hold my breath let go to listen laugh at the thought I might always be missing even though I’ve tried, the time to see the Earth rise.
Regulate me regulate me Discipline me discipline me I am your prisoner I must be de-radicalized Define me define me Govern me govern me For you write the history And I'm just a white marble pawn But oh, what a privilege it is As I am repressed at Panoptes' Illustrious Institution Every dusk, every dawn
In my milky hue skies I only see what I want to endless unknown never dance the dust that blows as long as I am me and me is behind these little blue eyes straining to be seeing separately
Poetry
ART//HANNAH PHAM
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ART // MADELINE LOCKHART
My bullet-proof banjo took a hit for the team-Shots fired in the dark that only I could see.
To help my banjo stay in tune, I twisted higher G. Before the string snapped honestly, I swear its note sounded right to me.
A tongue hissed away on my swollen Thursday, And bleeding through it’s cheeks, here’s what it made to say:
I have three houses and none are mine.
// Hannah Mussey
Sound waves good-bye in the presence of liquid or lies, and, Enjoying A Cold Cup Of The Cosmos, I watched a dancing tide whisper secrets inside my mug.
‘A crescent is only silver in the presence of some gold.’
When the sky confided in a lilac hue, The moon revealed her slip of greyish blue.
I blinked my lips, much like the pufferfish that drifts amidst the sea. And though my eyes closed causally, my eardrums pounded cosmically To tongues and guns whose ripples radiate the sea.
Two on the ocean One by a lake Nine pillows Two brothers One dog
I sat atop some roof-- not belonging to me-And watched a golden fire rotate high, Warding off that silver-loving sea.
Flaming
One body in factors of three. Three beds Six bathrooms Nine roommates Three siblings Six months of movement Three years of stillness Twenty-one years together Three years before One and one, which is always two and never
Rum Punch
Three.
PHOTO // HANNAH PHAM
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by Emily Balaguer
By Erika Wadsworth
I found, wandering on the brink of rocky heights the charcoal pine singularly crippled purling over into the limitless notion of fragment skies twisting storms to its own design. In the sleepy eyes of afternoon these brown grasses do seem to soften still this desert land is gasping quenched only by the sweetness of morning mists-a golden breath.
On the black lagoon shadows lose their height to sunset ripples still as my surprise when white-winged birds alight momentarily; feathered angels fleeing over this seascape canvas bounded by blue mountainsides.
La Mochilera By Emma Vogan
Wanderings
Day one And there’s little sweat under your straps. Gain elevation, and sink into home. Dusty particles, perspiration. The patches where blisters used to be Are merely tender boot kisses. The plantar fascia arch is a bridge to the beyond. Every morning blink lends a light for tranquil eyes. Inchworm crawling up my tent wall. The tent is the turtle shell of escapist dreams. Camp stove oats, for Osprey queens. By day six your hair is Doug Fir needles and lake water. Eyes faceted, ears peaked, voice dormant. This is like Mom’s goodnight kiss And Dad’s bedtime story. This house is smaller, But this home is just as big.
ART // LAUREN WICKS
Poetry
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Flirting With Myself By Kevin Tesei She’s a sleep-junky siren massaging lullabies into my shoulder blades. Coffee, closing-hour tones lips & hungry ghosts at the window. Let us sway your anesthetic blues. Lip girl. Eyebrow girl. Cracked purity belt girl. No specters, except for the eyes. What’s next is for the flesh, the living. I caught your wink all evening. You can pull off a beret, that crocodile grin, and my pants. Hold my buttery shoulder blades, and show me how sweat tastes of candied ginger and vanity, Even if I must make you the second drug consumed on a mirror.
Autumn By Jocelyn Lopez
My knees hurt halfway through But I’m running, Imagining cart wheels and daisies Yes, No’s, and Maybe’s My racing mind feels like the sway of a hula hoop On the hips of some 16 year old dancer Pangs of hunger, hits of thirst Kicking mushrooms, hands on dirt I think I was born here On the floor in the streets of LA Grappling at grass, stuffing flowers in my mouth And feeling full of Autumn
ART // SHIVANI PATEL Poetry
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ART // LORENZO BASILIO
What does coffee taste like? I’m addicted to 5 A.M., The chill, the tranquil The sleepy sandman dust in the corners of my eyes Have you seen sunrise in September? It’s hot in Los Angeles, But at 6 A.M., my sneakers hitting concrete Sound like falling snow on mountains
SMILE By
The roots of anarchy are present nowhere more than Bangkok – A city of 8 and a half million potted plants, green spilling out of doorways, defiant in the face of dead concrete.
De gree
Digital drugs as addicting as freedom and sanitation broadcast wet dreams of snow and civilizationpixelated progress to keep the masses at rest while the streets sweat – And yet
Even the construction crews see it and smile, 49 stories up: the vines are coming, spiraling through smog Twisted as the paths of motorcycle taxis. And yes, this is all metaphor, like the city’s traffic laws. No more than a literary reference to Europe, vehicles of modernity speeding along of their own volition, progress dictated by the same geometries that govern avalanches, grains of sand and snow Organizing mindless temples Of criticality, shopping-mall fallout triangulated With the precision of a rocket’s misfire.
A sense of calm waits just around the corner from the neon. There, silence is divorced from sound, Like the welcome of wordless greetings. Language fails to encapsulate the feeling so I just…. Gravity’s Rainbow My friends, I am crushed under the weight of my own intuition. The sky fell on this fool Long ago.
Here, useful energy is devoured along with hamburgers and steak Washed down with imported vodka & jazz, No less processed than the official histories of Sunday morning phone calls with Mom & Dad.
Now, I sit in this chair Convinced of my own mortality, history, time zone, Preoccupied by concepts of art and understanding, substance and delivery, form, content to find identity in the interplay of ancient dichotomies, soul, body, atheist, believer, city and country mouse spring for the same cheese as the trap snaps over my neck.
“What’s it like over there, son?” Damned if I know, nung, song, sam weeks of street vendors & tourists, dodging selfies like bombs – Yeah, death happens here, too… And so do people, spilling out onto riverbanks, wedged between showrooms, rusty shelters housing TVs 10x the size of the altared/altered Buddha. Marx, you’re not the only one to think of opium
Poetry
Adam
Yoked to the dynamo of desire, No cycle as Karmic as capitalism reads counterculture manuscript
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Purchased at $12.99 Amazon firesale, That wonderful place in my mind where critique reigns down from the stained sofa seat. Independence crammed down my throat with Valentine’s Day roses, and Damn Straight I eat it up, Pile my plate high with choices like a good American with the freedom to fulfill my refrigerated wishes in the colonized frontier of the supermarket; Walt Whitman disappearing behind neon rows of sanitized fruit, nuclear wind of A/C at my back, not a speck of dirt in sight as I round the corner To find myself in a University Library. Oh yes, Are these dusty tomes, enshrined in ivory, any different from the beef in my bag? (Except, of course, their being less processed, and probably bloodier)
I’ll take both on authority, FDA, DOE, food stamps and FAFSA, right off Their silver platter. Even these ideas came from those books. I checked them out last June, 14 months overdue and the ladies at the front desk Want to flay me alive. They know I’ve been reading in the mud, chasing past participles off bridges, Putting Descartes out to marinate with the pond scum, Planting Kant and Hume in flowerbeds – Praying that mycelium find use for philosophy. As for Camus, Foucault, Heidegger, they’ve perched atop weathervanes in thunderstorms – Let lightning strike life into those pages, and, frankly, Heidegger deserves to burn, the Nazi fuck. To decode the ashes, I’ll need a shaman or a schizophrenic, Some refugee raving in ancient tongues – the shadow at the heel of the ancient ones.
ART // LEAH BARSHER
ART // EMMA VOGAN
Bruises
By Shay Mehr
I will run my fingertips along the spines of your cactus, just mind your armor For my bloody hands cannot serve you I will brave your icy words, just mind the temperature For my hypothermic body cannot warm yours I will brace myself against your hard knuckles, just remember leave only bruises For broken bones cannot support you
EyE candy
By Madeline LoCKHART
new poetry for a “hookup culture” whirlpool of naked and confused souls that drool and gasp and writhe together to deep house beats sucking up air even as others beg “no teeth” forget the wrapper let’s bite our connection in half and put it on our tongues like acid, love dissolves quickly leaving you both empty but at least you’ve got something to visualize later when you masturbate.
ART // RICKY MILLER Poetry
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By Frank Horne
N
Passion
t n e o e R B o r me e ve
Lost time is lost As mine in yours The night I realized what I felt Each other each has other means that mean Whatever— whatever
I must admit that I miss this Your scent that petri’d on my tongue And when I invite other tastes they overstay their rushed welcome I knew you by your oxytocin too long after by your name and now our spheres move out of sync with only fear + time to blame
By
Em ily Hansen I counted the number of leaves that fell from the tree today, it’s fall time. I still wonder how many times a hummingbird can fly around the earth in your absence. I wonder what kind of images they hold on to. Perhaps hummingbirds still picture the nest? Perhaps you do too? Perhaps one day you’ll return to find a treasure chest, filled with the flowers I pressed for you? If only I could capture you between two glass plates. If only something small, like your lips or an ear. If only your whispers were the ornery winds who inspire my moonlit fear. And when I’m drowning in the folds of my mind I’ll simply hum your tune, for I am more content with by one tape filled with the sound of your heartbeat than I ever will be amongst the dead leaves this afternoon.
ART // KATE RYAN
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O N
HIP HOP BY DAVID HYON
“it’s” “nah but check it out, check this shit out right here ridin’ dirty with the buddha check this middle fingered mudra when we jet to the matraya and shootcha in ya future fill your place of dreams with soundwaves of a ruger motherfuckin’ nightmare maker also known as mr. krueger” and Steve just kills that beat which puts me in a better mood because those fucking sheriffs and you know what, not even the sheriffs, it was that party I mean what kind of yoga wheatgrass horseshit theme is “Veggie Turnup”? that’s not even clever that doesn’t even sound like Veggie Tales and seriously who the fuck throws a Veggie Tales themed party and expects everyone to dress up as but so “Veggie Turnup” wasn’t quite the “sick function” Ben said it would be and goddamnit I should’ve known better when Ben said that shit “sick function” no one says that and I’m still pissed when Steve gets a text from Ben that there’s something really going down on Newport, one of those 5 dollar at the door mansion parties and he says it’s tuna can packed with titties and he says can get us in for free so I get over it and we’re chilling we’re cruising through the foothills when I see T and fuck man T and some of that Huntington crew jumped Steve last week and jesus I keep telling him that he shouldn’t sell his mom’s Ativan as Xanax because it’s not the same thing Poetry
and so I’m hoping, praying to god Steve doesn’t see T because now it’d be two on one and you know how Steve gets he’s a fuckin maniac sometimes when T looks up and stares straight into my eyes and jesus christ dude I hear T’s a pussy but he’s still ripped and goddamnit I fucking hate that motherfucker he posts the gayest fucking weight lifting meme bullshit on facebook like who the fuck posts memes about weightlifting, how the fuck is that fucking cool and jesus he’s so fucking stupid and M’s still in love with that fucking fucknoodle “fucking fucknoodle” jesus where did I don’t whatever but so Steve’s still trying to put on a beat or something and we’re coming straight up on T and he’s stopped on the sidewalk and I’m tripping out I’m straight tripping out cause if Steve looked up he’d practically be dick to dick with him but we’re almost past T when I hit a speed bump and the phone flies onto the dashboard and Steve looks up and stares straight at T and I’m about to shit myself I’m about to straight up shit myself when Steve waves to the guy, says to slow down so he
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ART // THOMAS SKAHILL can say whatsup and I’m like what the hell and I ask Steve and he’s like “no dude, that was C that jumped me last week, not T dude, I’m cool with T” and so I’m about to just shit myself anyways just with relief cause goddamn I thought it was going to turn into Afghanistan but so we head over to the party and it’s sick, that girl Hannah’s there man, and I go over to say whatsup and she just starts going off about her class schedule and homework and teachers and a whole roll of like the most boring fucking things you can imagine you know but like once you’re there you’re practically in
as long as you keep looking worried and doing those “what?” “no!” “oh my god!” type of responses so I’m psyched and she gets pretty drunk and keeps touching my arm and shirt and all that when I hear a gunshot, a fucking gunshot in the goddamn house, and I don’t even know what to do you know like if I wanted some of that shit I’d party in Santa Ana this is the foothills this is supposed to be drunk white bitches and lacrosse players and all of a sudden I just hear this gunshot and I am literally, like, there’s a nugget on the precipice of my rectum a millimeter from dropping when fucking Ben comes out with a goddamn mexican firework he set off in the kitchen
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ART // EMILY BALAGUER
I am I am the sun’s sapient spectacle Slowly frying behind a glass stained silver from the salvific smoke Hints of a yellow fog cling to the window The sardonic smile of my agony greets me on the other side. I am the lazy layer lifted by longing Lost in the latticed labyrinths of voices that linger in my mind. The clouds crave control, And I‌peace. I am the frequent five-minute conversations And the vacant spaces Of the memories misplaced.
Liquefied
Caterpillar By Michael Coppola
I am the wine-drenched weekend left weary, Tossed in tannins, Tempted and teased. Go as you please, into the moonlight. The night gives you power. And you learn from the darkness As you watch what it does with light. I am the rainbow rock I pulled from the moon and gave to you Thrown into the back of some dusty dark drawer Under unwashed clothes and the scribbles of half-assed ideas Never to be seen again. I am the salty sand-dunes we layed in and all the vulnerable moments Blown to bits by the bitter evening breeze, Scattered amongst the haze of smuggled bidis, And the myriad of colors cradled by the sky. You once said you believed there were people who worked for the devil And I now wonder if you were trying to warn me of yourself. I am the liquefied caterpillar caught in the in between Unconscious in my chrysalis And of what I shall become.
Poetry
the
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Dear
Tinsel Town // ALEXANDRA DWIGHT
Los Angeles, I try to love you, But all you wanna do is fuck me. Los Angeles, shivering hologram: Did I see you shaking your head on the 101? Or was that just a pine-tree air freshener Flickering on the dashboard in stale wind?
Special Thanks To: Bishnupriya Ghosh Brian Donnelly Jeremy Chow Jonathan Essen IVCRC UCSB College of Creative Studies UCSB English Department Pardall Center Isla Vista Food Co-op Coffee Collaborative Blaze Pizza
Los Angeles, I came here with everything Stuffed into my suitcase, So why do I feel like I now have nothing? You give me stage fright, But I’ll still dance like a monkey for you. Los Angeles, what percent will I receive of the profit you make for preying on our collective insecurities? I am a human And not a brand, Despite what I am told by the Viceroy bar. Los Angeles, You romanticize everything! Motel swimming pools Pink plastic flamingos Neon tangerine ashtrays Cocaine mountain ranges for scenic drives down Sunset Blvd. Where’s the substance? Lucky for you, there’s hardly any breeze to gust away all that glittering tinsel Keep on inventing new chemical binds to prevent your plastic from melting in the heat wave, I’ll keep inventing new methods to lessen the blow. P.S. I’m moving back to San Francisco
ART // NATALIE O’BRIEN Poetry
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