Kenyon Review Young Writers Anthology (2019 Session 2)

young writers

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young writers’ anthology

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Here it is: the new way of living with the world inside of us so we cannot lose it, and we cannot be lost.

“

- Ada Limón

3

Toluwanimi Akinlade Zion, Illinois

Phantom City They say this place used to be bright, an echoing luminescence that still rings in the minds of the natives. They say that there used to be more people, even children. The air was a floating ecstasy, a loud sparkle, not the infective gloom that loiters now. Their eyes sag from the weight of their narratives, the burden of their experiences seep out. Their bodies are like soaked stubborn rags, wringed several times — twisted, knotted, squeezed — but still manage to spurt chronicles.

These grizzled women had welcomed me about a mile from the outskirts of the town, my camera in hand. Now they lead me along the arterial roads they know so well. It’s hard to trust that this vastness of stony ground I walk on once exhaled life, did not yearn to quench its thirst by swallowing any possibility of survival. Evidence of a conventional lifestyle mumble in the rotting furniture in schools, the reddish brown decomposing iron of abandoned baby cots in homes, the shattered windows in business buildings rendered to crystal dust. Some say that it had been a loud explosion; most say it was quiet, the conjuring of memory proves to be a dangerous effort, but they still remember. A boom; a whisper. What does it matter? It was enough to curse the earth to a plethora of ravenous bitterness for twenty milleniums.

At first, life had gone as normal for a while. They had thought nothing of what had happened. They were told nothing, oblivious to the impending doom. Some say they knew all along, could have raised warning flags so striking the sun would hide its face, pull its arms in, run for cover.

But they didn’t, so the sun didn’t. Not at first anyway. Outsiders say it was stupid for them to think that they could unhear a sound after it shook the earth. After a while, it was impossible to disregard the bodies that had begun to turn their streets into a spontaneous cemetery. The water turned a sickly green, becoming darker each day. The air choked of an invisible poison. Trees withered. Birds kissed the ground. Half of those still alive fled, refusing to be the next victims to death. The rest had to be uprooted for their safety. The incident was like a viper shedding its skin, a lingering event, leaving a desolate shell in its wake. A phantom city can’t help but to be immersed in the identity of the disaster that altered it.

I ask why they came back and chose to stay in this decaying landscape. They say they’d hate to betray the familiarity of the morbid for something more convenient. They’ve learned to embrace the silence anyway. It’s not so scary anymore. They say, “People like you come to be witnesses to the negligence of mankind; we’re living testimonies.”

She’s been following me since I arrived at the airport, her flowy skirt drags pieces of dirt along with her, but she doesn’t seem to care. Her outfit is a mismatched puzzle of a million colors, each piece not quite fitting right. She watches attentively as I struggle to pick up my bags. Her eyes narrow at every misstep I take. It seems as though she is a silent audience to my thoughts and me to hers although hers were discordant notes to a song that even she couldn’t piece together. Our minds connect, strings of nerves reaching out to each other to create feeble synapses. She focuses on my nervousness, replaying my thoughts over and over again in my head like a broken record. She is mostly quiet as we walk to the parking lot. Her outline quavers like an unsteady hologram for a brief second after every decisive turn. As the bulky man behind the counter hands the keys to me, he squints his eyes, determined to catch a fixed reflection of her in mine, but she still wavers. I open the car, and she opens the passenger door and gets comfortable in the seat. I also get in, take out the neatly folded piece of paper from my back pocket, and unravel it. I type the address into the GPS system and sigh an unspoken prayer.

4

“Turn right on Akande road,” the soothing voice says, except I am certain that this is the wrong way. Again. Who would have expected the possibility of more than one 31, Oke-Ade street, Lagos? I have visited three places in the past five hours, each house not the one I’m searching for.

Although this grainy sand looks somewhat familiar, the evergreen pine trees that line the road and fields say otherwise. Now a solid body, she stares at me occasionally, spending less time to gaze than the last as a smile creeps on her face. As the sharp lines across my forehead get deeper, her giggles get bigger. After a while, her silky hands cover her mouth as though she were withholding the secret I would die to get my hands on. She starts to laugh loudly, each wave of sound a trigger to my frustration, and I hold back the urge to scream at her to fall silent. I try ignoring her, pretend that I do not hear every breath she draws in and pushes out. She notices and stops for a while.

“Keep straight until Babagida street.” Still wrong. Uncertain. I try to conjure memories of anything really, but all I find are blurs of circles drawn in the sand and faceless kids, bits of brown eyes and black hair. She laughs again, a short chuckle this time, unable to mask the pity that lies in her milky eyes. Poor child, she thinks, can’t even find her own home.

I ask why they came back and chose to stay in this decaying landscape. They say they’d hate to betray the familiarity of the morbid for something more convenient. They’ve learned to embrace the silence anyway. It’s not so scary anymore. They say, “People like you come to be witnesses to the negligence of mankind; we’re living testimonies.”

She’s been following me since I arrived at the airport, her flowy skirt drags pieces of dirt along with her, but she doesn’t seem to care. Her outfit is a mismatched puzzle of a million colors, each piece not quite fitting right. She watches attentively as I struggle to pick up my bags. Her eyes narrow at every misstep I take. It seems as though she is a silent audience to my thoughts and me to hers although hers were discordant notes to a song that even she couldn’t piece together. Our minds connect, strings of nerves reaching out to each other to create feeble synapses. She focuses on my nervousness, replaying my thoughts over and over again in my head like a broken record. She is mostly quiet as we walk to the parking lot. Her outline quavers like an unsteady hologram for a brief second after every decisive turn. As the bulky man behind the counter hands the keys to me, he squints his eyes, determined to catch a fixed reflection of her in mine, but she still wavers. I open the car, and she opens the passenger door and gets comfortable in the seat. I also get in, take out the neatly folded piece of paper from my back pocket, and unravel it. I type the address into the GPS system and sigh an unspoken prayer.

5

Nicole Austen Los Angeles, California

Pantomime in Red As I ascended to the 35th floor of the massive skyscraper where my audition would take place, I checked my shadowy reflection, a spirit conjured into partial reality on the transparent elevator glass. I reached into my purse. Smeared on more lipstick the brazen red of a cardinal’s crest.

The other girls were spread around the waiting room like carefully positioned flower arrangements.

Some of them were trembling. I could almost see the wilting petals in their hair. When the girl next to me was called, I shot her a scarlet smile. “I hope you do well!”

She didn’t reply. At least, her lips didn’t move. But a whisper seemed to flutter, mothlike, from its nesting place in her dense fake eyelashes: “I hope you don’t.”

I found that I couldn’t get my lines out that day. They were burrs – they stuck to my tongue, prickled my throat, choked me. Surrounded again by glass, gliding down the skyscraper like a tear making its path down a steel cheek, my reflection had become whiter, less than a whisper on the elevator wall.

“So, how’d it go?”

“Oh, alright,” I breathed, and turned my head away, alone despite the partygoers and waves of red plastic cups that churned around me.

From behind, the bodyless voice spoke again. “Do you think you got the part?”

I retreated to the bathroom, tossing glass excuses over my shoulders. Looked in the mirror. I had grown paler, almost translucent. The veins in my eyes were symbols traced with red string in snow, my lips a bleeding gash. On my forehead, a pink splotch had bloomed.

I left the party early.

I wondered if, in the perfect utopia, there was some device with which I could erase my blemishes.

I wondered how it would feel to erase myself.

At the next audition, I recited my lines perfectly. I slipped easily into the quicksand of being someone not myself. The pretending was a sauna, soothing my sore bones and filling my head with fumes. The lines cradled to their breast a sadness like a bundle of stones with words carved into them in another language, tied together with string. Reading them, I wept black mascara tears. The man behind the desk narrowed his eyes at me. “That was good. Could you try it again, without the ugly crying?”

So I did.

Afterwards, I wiped viciously at my face in the bathroom, as though trying to tear off my red-rimmed eyes, my red offending mouth, the pale red of the pimples breaking out across my forehead. When I looked in the mirror, my face was cleaner, and paler somehow. The outline of the bathroom stalls projected sharply through my reflection. Like I’d been worried at with a bad eraser, partly faded.

I sprinted back to the waiting room, clutching the walls to steady myself. “Can you see me?” I demanded of the other girls, voice cracking around the razors that my body had become. “Am I disappearing?”

“Of course not,” one of them said. “You alright though? You look terrible.”

I staggered back to the bathroom, hands fumbling in my purse, to be certain I had what I needed.

Concealer for the zits, and the faint scratch-marks I’d left with my own nails, long pink bars down my face. Eye makeup so no one could tell I’d been crying. Lipstick, a red stop sign, holding back the words no one wanted to hear me say.

When I looked in the mirror again, my face was gone.

All I saw was red.

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7

Emily Banthin Natick, Massachusetts

Eating a Burning Building It was half past four when she woke. She had been unable to keep her eyelids closed in the darkness, like there was something burrowing beneath her lashes. The night had been a fitful one, mostly sleepless with a few half-hours of broken dreaming. She woke before her alarm and decided an early morning was better than one tangled in sweaty sheets listening to the moaning of an oscillating fan.

The girl walked down the stairs in a t-shirt and a pair of socks, being careful not to wake her parents with creaking steps but not careful enough to risk fumbling around in the dark. She turned on desk lamps and hall lights as she went.

Expecting to be alone, the girl jumped when she flicked on the lights in the kitchen and found her mother sipping coffee from a ceramic mug and leaning against the cool refrigerator, summer sweat trickling down her forehead and the backs of her knees. Her mother, eyes still partly closed and wrinkled from sleep, looked up at her daughter but kept her mug in front of her mouth. She said good morning into her coffee. The girl suddenly felt self conscious in only a long t-shirt barely covering the tops of her legs. Looking at the ground she filled a glass with water and walked over to the front door where she liked to look out at the early-morning empty streets, littered only with fallen leaves and children’s play toys. This made her think of the house across from her’s with the girl who used to be pregnant but had no baby. The girl lived with her parents for nine long months and threw up in the toilet each morning. Some days she could see the girl reading or painting her nails by the light of a small lamp through one of the first-floor windows. Sometimes she waved but other times she didn’t. Other times the girl across the street just sat by the light with her hands resting on her stomach feeling for something, anything.

This time though, it was cloudy and rain had begun to fall and wash quietly down the asphalt and into drains with three cross bars bolted to the road. There were no lights on in the house, only a few distant, glowing homes surrounding where she remembered was the structure’s dark outline. That was when she noticed there was no outline. There was nothing there but the early morning hollowness that stretched up and out and down past her feet. Before her stood the collapsing bones of a building’s smoldering remains. She opened the front door and stepped onto the soaked street. She didn’t think she was crying but if she was it wouldn’t have been easy to tell, her cheeks already red and wet and raw from the rain.

Where the house across from her once stood was only open air and crumbling wood spreading ash on burnt grass. Only the ghost of a child who lived inside another child roaming the blackened shutters, balancing on unrecognizable melted metal appliances. She said nothing, did nothing but stare until her eyes were wide enough to take in an entire ocean.

Placing her cup of water now overflowing on her front lawn, she rushed back in through the front door and into the kitchen where her mother had a bowl of cereal waiting for her on the table, a spoon already inside it.

Her mother looked up at her from the same cup of coffee and said, “I think it was sometime last night.”

The girl again said nothing and sat down on her stool thinking of the other girl and the ghost. She began to eat her cereal while her mother watched, her eyes peering over the mug. After a few bites the girl looked down at the half-finished bowl of cereal with milk spreading between the space where the spoon met the wet mush. Taking another spoonful, she realized it looked like the spreading ash. She was sitting in front of a burning building, a building already gone and slowly melting.

8

Dash Barnett Seattle, Washington

Unititled It all happened so fast mama I am so sorry about last night’s sirens and the way Mr. Sikes looked on the hardwood when the shotgun blast tore a ridge in his skull like a shark bite it was only ever a bloodstained leather wallet in JJ’s pocket not really enough to make it sense or reason the way Henry knelt over his dad and tried to fit the bone-chip puzzle back together fuckfuckfuck the ear-ring blurring his sobs into a pantomime “fuck you” says JJ or his smoking shotgun barrel, both at once, and I laughed mama until I cried it was just a body not a “him” anymore and I thought about the shattered lips cracking open and his gruff voice rising from the bloodgutspowderburn where his jaw had been “why I have half a mind to kick you kids off my property” haha as if these things matter now he’s laid out on a silver plate like cold china cracked open from misuse and mistakes please tell dad I never meant to do it and the twins and oh please make sure Lucky knows I’ll be home soon mama even if it doesn’t seem it right now I know what it’s like to be kept in real suspense the way he must have been wondering what the front door creak meant nobody home nobody home nobody home said Henry in the seconds before we stuffed his father’s first scream with lead.

Sagrada Familia There are words that speak shorthand for the slow drag of our wildest dreams, Sagrada Familia, the way the architect drew his last breath with his spires still rising. I am stained-glass thousand-mile giant sometimes, La Sagrada Familia, the dreams I raised high enough to scrape the clouds God thought safe enough to place that low in his sky. I know the taste of imprisoned hopes, all the plummets I’ve taken from holy-high papacy to the cathedrals in my mind’s eye, built of weather vanes and chicken wire, shattered glass stained with silhouettes and exhalations. Even the word itself is pathetic, dream, implying in its desperate hopelessness that these things will never come to pass, and every day I dream in the present tense I am farther away from having dreamed and now achieving. We will all die on night-blacked back porches or bleach-white rooms looking up at Sagrada Familia sky, the cathedral’s spires shining in a closing eye’s blurry blink, last words phlegmy death-rattle blood like the guts of younger hopes.

9

Amayah Bell Randallstown, Maryland

The Dark Side of Temptation Tall is the first thing thought when seeing him.

Long hair that was black and shaggy - stopped just below his shoulders.

A stubbly chin on the bottom of a square face, waiting for his hand to cover it while he ponders.

Pale pink lips - for there was no need for happy colors.

He had a roman nose that would wrinkle when displeased.

His eyes were downturned, deep-set, and hooded; with irises a crimson red.

The black brows are almost constantly arched, just below his forehead.

Caramel skin, a lighter shade, maybe cream, hid his still heart within, bound tight with seams.

He wore a suit of all black; the only white: his undershirt.

When he loosens his tie, you see his rough knuckles without a spec of dirt.

And then his right index finger, that dons a ring of red ruby and silver.

Those lips of his stay sealed, occasionally slipping into a smirk or frown.

His shoes, slightly pointed, would make soot of the ground.

Always on cue, never late by a mile.

He’ll join in any antics with a sly toothed smile. *** “What are you doing?” A voice questions from behind.

I’m standing in a bookstore with a notebook in hand, and jean purse dangling at my side. “Browsing.” I put that book back on the shelf and grab another. I flip through it, inspecting the details I like and dislike about it.

He leans over my shoulder and examines the book with me. “You should buy it,” he suggests, “It’s college-ruled, and has a strong spine.” A chill runs downs my spine, and I close the book and place it with the others.

“I’m not a fan of the cover.” I relax my purse strap’s grip on my shoulder. “I thought you were better at this Temp.”

I move back towards the stationary, leaving Temptation to twist his nose. He appears in front of me, leaning on the rack of pencils I was eyeing with another notebook in hand; a small one, with a cover that would set any fantasy or action writer’s heart on fire. “This one instead.” He snapped the book shut and handed it to me; Buy it, etched on his decided face. I run my finger across the front cover, such a pretty navy and gold. Then turning onto the back… Yikes, that price. The gold edges of the paper nearly blinded me from it. I wouldn’t have enough for the rest of the trip if I got it, and if I didn’t… “How about some pencils too?” Temp’s words make me bite my lip before spinning in the opposite direction, taking the notebook to the counter. He frowns at first, disappearing into black smoke, then showing up at my side as the register. His frown goes flat, then perks up into a prideful smile as I pull out my wallet. I open it, and instead of cash, I give a gift card. Temp falls back into a display table of books, shocked by the revelation that I would not be so easily swayed. He stayed there on his heels, wide-eyed, keeping himself from phasing through the table entirely by gripping two of the featured publications of a certain literary magazine.

The gift card wasn’t enough to cover the entire cost of the book, so I put down the difference in cash as he pulls himself free of the table. He looks at me, annoyed, and I only smirk as the clerk hands me my book. “I still bought it, another notebook I didn’t need,” I tell Temp like a tease.

“Yes,” he grumbles, arms crossed and pouting, “But you didn’t get any new pencils.”

“I’ve already spent $40 in total on pencils over the past two months. I think I’m good.”

Temp bobs his head, thinking of the past. “True, true,” he agrees, “It was an amazing feat.” We stop at the door, nod, then head out on the street.

10

Vishnu Bharathram New York

A Good Patriot I learned the words for sky and For country, but home still nestles Under my tongue like the embrace Of a godless hymn. Language is always Easier when it’s stripped of its music And form. But I’m a good patriot. I only Write in this language because I don’t Have to belong, because there are galaxies Here that shatter the constellation of My name. I suppose solitude only Implies decay, but who wouldn’t want To become an island? Our people Fade into darkness but still we dance And we dance and we dance.

11

Bea Bolongaita Dublin, Ohio

Thicker Than Water The raindrops are sticky on my skin. I am battered by the storms breaking over us.

But there is no gloom and doom and the windows on the roof sunbathe.

Battered by the storm breaking over us, they shake and dance in the wind.

The windows on the roof sunbathe because that’s just who they are.

They shake and dance in the wind, those trees in their lush vanity because that’s just who they are, praising the god of cool earth and pink worms.

Those trees in their lush vanity remind me of my sister. She no longer praises the god of cool earth and pink worms but sings the hymns of schoolgirl ignorance.

Remind me of my sister. She no longer lives in my house. I miss her energy, humming, but sing the hymns of schoolgirl ignorance, goodbye goodbye goodbye.

Lives in my house. I miss that energy, humming, the day I stick a steel-coated fork in my eye.

Goodbye goodbye goodbye to the caudillo I think of at night.

The day I stick a steel-coated fork in my eye I will experience more sunshine in the rain.

To the caudillo I think of at night, I love you.

I will experience more sunshine in the rain, battered by storms breaking over us.

Despite the caudillo I think of at night, I sunbathe over the windows on the roof.

12

Artificial Intelligence The school gave us Chromebooks. The district is phasing them in so every child aged eleven to eighteen has one. They are gray and a bit heavy (why not give us MacBooks? they all complained). It has a touch screen.

Clack on keys and draw with your fingertips. Paper is obsolete. How silly of you to work on the page. You can flip the device on its hinges to create a tablet, hold it in your hands to feel its cold saturation, fiddle with it on your head before it drops—a shower of ugly glass. At least there’s data recovery.

Identity: Argumentative Essay “Where are you from?”

People are always surprised. I was going to say “act” surprised, but you can tell they’re not acting. My mom’s name is Susan and my dad’s name is Robert. I am a natural-born citizen. I’ve never left the country. The only language I speak is English.

“I am American,” I say. “I’m from Dublin, Ohio, but I was born in Chicago.” “...But what are you?”

You tell me.

That song that goes “And I’m proud to be an American / where at least I know I’m free” always gets me in my feels. I sing it at the top of my lungs every Fourth of July and every Veterans Day. But when every white, beer-drunk dad yells “USA! USA!” at the fireworks, I don’t know who I am.

To the American prophets: why should I subscribe to your idea of freedom?

13

Renee Born Kansas City, Kansas

These Nights The clatter of plate on plate as he takes his wife’s empty dish.

“Thank you, dear,” She says absently and picks up this morning’s paper. What’s the point in reading the daily just before bed? As soon as you wake up the news will have moved on.

He lets himself walk slowly, a farmer’s luxury. Here, in the yellowing kitchen, there’s no rush to scrub remains of mashed potatoes from imitation porcelain. The water cools his tough hands. He focuses on the feeling.

“New moon tonight, darling,” she reminds him.

Soap and little sponge circling long after the dishes are clean.

“I’ll go out as soon as I’ve finished up here. Lovely dinner.”

They both know it was mediocre. She had been clear from the beginning she was no master chef, never would be. He towels the dishes. He had responded that he was no food critic and they had made do for 37 years. No, it had been better than making do, surely.

He places the plates and cutlery in their respective cabinets and drawers. Breathing in, breathing out, the center of the tile floor. He doesn’t mind the motions. There is a question he can’t quite come up with, of which he’s afraid it’s too late to ask.

On he pulls his old wool jacket, now arms reach the BB gun over the back door.

“It won’t take a minute.” His voice like scrapping stones.

“Yes dear.” Was there a time she watched him go?

It’s awful dark. Sin dark. Leaves on corn stalks and soy plants like unmoving eels. He walks to the edge of his property, watches the gap in the trees. A black arch between branches. When the cicadas and birds go reverently silent, he knows the god approaches.

Sure enough, from the dark steps the body of a buck, antlers like gold branches, coyote’s head. It was all deer the first time he saw it, when the farm land was freshly stolen from the forest and stripped bare. But hunger does terrible things, even to gods.

Yellow eyes glow. Fur worn as the farmer’s coat.

“Get on out of here,” He barely raises his voice but lifts his weapon. It’s heavier than he remembers. “Go on now,” A year ago, they got a dog, just to try it out. The last time life was unpredictable it was punctuated by puppy speaking. Training to keep company the man could not find where it was supposed to be. He wishes now as before he had left his dog behind when the time came for this errand. One locking of eyes with the beast and his fresh companion disappeared into the trees.

The man fires a few pellets toward its hooves. Or are they paws now? So hard to tell in the night and tall grasses.

“Go on now, get. You won’t be having this place back, not today at least.”

Briefly, he wonders how one might write a creature like this into the will. Would he need a name? Never thought to ask for one. He doesn’t have kids.

I stood unblinking. Always unblinking.

He sighed and gripped the rifle like it was his feeble claim to this place, like if he held it tight enough, he would believe what he built here is worth defending. Finally, he fired a shot.

Hitting downy fur that flows the neck, defines chest, the tiny plastic ball bounces harmlessly. Even so, as it has a hundred times and more, the trampled god turns its back, taking the light of its eyes with it. The man knows, watching coyote tail finally fade into leaves, that these nights are the grandest moments of his life.

14

Sam Bowden Cincinnati, Ohio

Hanging Souls (Itchy Souls) He’s a bag of limp skin and broken bones. The branch the muggers strung him up on bends with the weight of him. His face is pale and taught. His shoes have been stolen, his socks too. The sun breaks over his shoulder, shudders through the trees.

“Another hitchhiker—when are they gonna learn?”

This is what the police chief said before he cut the body down.

“Poor guy’s body is covered in scratches. Looks like he’s been ripped half to shreds. Good God.” …

But that’s a very limited point of view. First off, my name. I am—okay, I was—Edward Thomasson, Eddy for short, Stepdad to an actual runaway hitchhiker, my stepdaughter Christine. I was actually chasing a runaway, thank you very much. Christine left the night before, a note on her pillow citing the usual mixes of profanities and anti-stepdad tirades. “Listen,” I told her, “neither of us want you to be here, so let’s just tolerate one another until August? For both our sakes?” These words did nothing, of course, and last night I came back and found Christine gone. I went on foot, unarmed, certain she hadn’t gotten very far, and the results of that escapade were now strung up from a tree and half naked.

When the police chief pulled my body down I was struck with a very strange sensation: I was not dead.

Like my body was falling away but the rest of me was still caught in the noose. I watched my body fall, then the chief carried me away. I think I probably died a few minutes after the muggers jumped me and decided to hang me. I hovered in the air, gasping, flailing, and felt the life snap out of me. But I stayed behind. Imagine popping your ears, but instead you’re popping your whole body, you’re disjointing your whole being. Edward Thomasson, dead, then stuck. It was automatic, clinical, and kind of liberating.

A key problem with my present ethereal situation happens to be tied to an equally key problem with my past mortal situation; as a ghost (fine, use the word, you babies), I couldn’t really move. I had no body for my mind and all the other glowy bits to command. I was stuck hovering ten feet or so over the grass, limp and passive, twirling. I was also beginning to realize I was very, very itchy. That’s part two. For whatever reason—my doctor liked to link it to genetics and my home climate, which is as bullshit as it sounds; my second doctor, who I hired after firing the first, called my condition eczema—my skin was prone to furious outbreaks of rash and itch so bad I could feel it running through my veins like pipe-cleaners in my arteries, like the hairs on my arms and legs had decided to shuffle off this fleshy coil and wriggle their way out of my skin. The red marks Chief Donut-Ass had remarked on, studying my swaying corpse, were not the work of the muggers and criminals who plagued this woods; they were of my own doing, my own scratching. I tried cutting my nails, tried keeping out of the sun, tried baths of ridiculous, medicinal oatmeal; when I was alive, nothing satisfied the itch like a scratch, bloody as it might get. It was Newton’s Third Law; for every itch there was an equal and opposite scratch. I pretty much always looked like I’d been ripped half to shreds, good God. For a ghost like me, this was a serious issue. I might’ve been dead but the eczema had somehow clung onto my soul and not my body. It had become so ingrained into me that it had survived. Damn it. I hung there for a few minutes after the police chief had driven off with my body in his backseat, which I’m certain was not at all professional and would scare the shit out of anyone else he arrested on the way to the station. I was alone among chirping birds and screaming insects and all this transcendental mush and then it began: a familiar, burning twinge on my right arm, or rather the space in the air my right are should be, a spider dancing on my wrist.

15

Oh hell no. Oh hell no. Not even in death could I escape my itchy soul. I wriggled around, or tried; I was frozen. I told my hands to find the itch and scratch it out, then realized they weren’t there. I could not scratch myself. My throat closed up with fear. The itching spread and spread. It reached into the usual places—the phantom arms, the invisible legs, the stomach that wasn’t there at all—but then my face and the palms of my hands too. I was on fire. Barbed wire wrapped its way around the skin I didn’t have. Was this my penalty? My private, wooded hell? Had I been that cruel to Christine? My life was fine. Since when does fighting with an obnoxious college girl damn you for the rest of time? I felt like I was blistering and burning. I tried to squirm like it would do something, gasping silently. Then I tried to calm myself, steadied my breathing. If this was to be eternity I would have to survive. I would outlast the itch, I would adapt. I lived in a goddamned cabin in criminal-infested woods, for Christ’s sakes. I knew how to adapt, thank you very much. Oh, God. I shut my eyes—but not really, because I couldn’t, my sight focused on a tangle of trampled poison ivy around a treestump. I felt the noose tightening around my neck and tried hard to imagine fingers scratching against my skin, the beautiful, cooling sound it would make.

16

Naomi Carpenter Baltimore, Maryland

Germ You lay pomegranate seeds on her closed eyelids and picked her kneecaps with lemon stems. Her arms had erupted with growling sores, yellow pus plummeting from volcanic pores, dribbling down her clavicles like kestrel waste.

Men in scarves rolled carts of bodies through the streets.

“I love the way you care.”

“I love the way you care.”

“I love the way you care.” say your neighbors, who trade rose hips and steel picks for gouging out the blemishes. They spit half-chewed meat they carried in their mouths after basilican prayer to imbue the dying with God’s strength.

You never spill flour. Every fleck is a crumb of bread with which to plug the craters you dug in your daughter’s purpling flesh.

Men in scarves hold cloth to their mouths as the miasmic stench of dead fills the streets, the basilica, the sky.

Men i never liked beards beards collect cigarette butts baseball cards pacifiers

17

Stephanie Chang Vancouver, Canada

Party for one, for All Girl in ponytail and purple plaid. The elevator rustles and sockets shiver electric. It’s so cold here. It is a sketchy condo by the subway, terminus station for international students and Asian grandmas. There, the girl follows her boy space friend into the rented Airbnb.

A friend of a friend opens the door. Looks up and down. Down and up again. Says the girl is too smart to be making these mistakes. Too late. She’s already here. And her boy space friend is gone. The girl expected as much and enters. Doesn’t recognize the rap artist over the Bluetooth speakers or spilling in some guy’s AirPods.

She watches the guy scroll through Spotify. The playlist reads ‘Sad Boy Hours’ or ‘Lo-Fi Study Beats’ or ‘Chill Summer Vibes’.

The kids here shoot Queen Elizabeth II out of a Supreme cash cannon or flex fake Balenciaga or polish their Gucci belts or all of the above. The boy vanishes inside a translucent cloud. The girl small talks another girl whose parents have a net worth of $13 million. Girl doesn’t say her apartment is half the size of this rental.

I think the housing crisis is your fault is what she wants to yell but doesn’t. So she chases down vodka or soju or tap water with even smaller talk. But the drinks are gone and her parents are calling.

Don’t worry, they know where she is.

The boy is nowhere to be found. No wait. He steps out of a carriage-shaped mist. He glows sriracha red.

The girl thinks he could go as a red Solo cup for Halloween or a jar of gamer girl water.

The girl shrinks. Girl watches a woman sell weed to a classmate. Girl is a year younger than that woman. How impressive. The woman’s already an entrepreneur. Her classmate says yes but the woman says she won’t sell if he’s never tried. They fall in love. They are still in love. The classmate starts wearing knockoff Yeezys to school. He’s on his fourth breakup or failing AP Psychology or ex-communicated for juuling in church.

The boy the girl went to the party with assaulted her friend’s debate partner. The girl loved the boy. Had put him in charge of the debate team that tournament. Had wondered if she could have stopped him. If he was safe anymore. This was her fault. The girl watches him win every round or face police investigations or scream at her not to tell the police the truth but she does. Boy says girl isn’t any fun or she’s not funny or she’s ruining his fun. Boy is crowned criminal or Harvard debate champion or guy whose life doesn’t deserve ruining. He has so much potential or whatever. Someone should poison his next bubble tea.

The girl goes home and listens to The Economist podcast or anime openings or ASMR. She falls asleep or has trouble fighting off caffeine pills or thinks Grimes is a hypocrite for dating Elon Musk. Anarchy falls for the capitalist prick. The girl thinks God is a woman or dead or a coward.

She wonders who or where or what is justice. It really do be like that sometimes.

18

things i brought to ohio my sister’s old pillowcase untucked from childhood crumpled all last autumn leaf, skeleton unravelling at the seams. this morning, i felt the heave of her lungs, blood bubbling inside pillow flesh, her smile pressed to sunrise. thinking of that, i step into the air or more through it. a coat of moisture, a membrane of firefly skin, the old bones singing american suburbia. the wet melts like thick candle-wax, eats the petrichor from my skin. drains the rain out my palms and kisses vancity high-rises i plant back into the soil, concrete leaving my body in silver flecks. i wanted to bring something beautiful, not summer breath snaking around my head, shedding the west coast.

19

Angela Chen Nanjing, China

Love Story He gave her his old stuffed toy tiger.

She told him he smelled like lilacs.

He said she used the same laundry detergent as her brother.

She felt stupid She wasn’t nothing— But she wasn’t everything.

It made her ashamed to admit she wanted to be the prayers that fell like eyelashes on his windowsill.

Her limbs were heavy so deep they could not be seen.

He was the bead inside a maraca.

She was afraid to tell him she ran out of oxygen the moment she took her first breath She was afraid to tell him she needed a heart transplant but never found a match She was afraid to tell him her blood was not pomegranate red but black and thick as tar.

What was once a dream budded bright with wildflowers lay on the ground a pile of excavated arthritic bones.

The angels left a long time ago with third degree burns from Lady Lazarus First in anger, then hunger then song.

20

Jabez Choi Tacoma, Washington

To Anonymous, before you met me, did you believe chickens could fly? did you think chickens could escape from the frivolities of death? You grasped me as if hope alone could save the inevitable. Chickens jump with the knowledge of failure, of landing at the bottom in mere fragments. I told you No and we overlapped as you pushed and pulled in and the quiet of your resistivity to the imminence, it sundered me. Like the chickens, it tore a hole just under but not on my heart. You blocked your view with denying hands when the chickens fell moving ne xt to us, I realized we must be falling too. But you keep flapping, desperation for someone like Zeus to save us.

21

Rita Yea Se Chun Hong Kong, China

Breaking You. Me It is midnight in Harajuku and the streets are still bustling. The boy meets the girl to get some crepes.

The lights blink pink and purple and green. The girl drops her crepe on the ground and a stranger steps on it.

The boy gives the girl his crepe. Then they go play pool. The bar is underground and mold grows on the walls.

It is midsummer. The air conditioning is broken and the girl complains. They walk to a love hotel but it is full.

They make love in an alleyway instead. A cockroach crawls into the girl’s hair and follows her home. The girl finds her mother dead on the living room floor. The girl cries and calls the police. The police are rough with the girl. Your mother overdosed and deserved it, they tell her. The girl eats a bottle of sleeping pills when they leave.

She wakes up in a hospital. The lights are too bright but the boy is there. They hug and cry. The boy takes the girl home where they make love. The girl does not talk to the boy and he is confused. The girl asks the boy about the meaning of life but the boy does not know. The girl is disappointed when she goes to sleep. The boy wakes up and the girl is gone. He calls her but nobody picks up. The boy goes to the girl’s house but there is nobody there. The boy goes to the bar but there is nobody there. The boy calls the police but nobody cares. The daughter of a drug addict, they say. She’s probably dead. Life goes on. The boy grows old and falls in love again. He does not think of the girl. One day, he sees the girl on the street. She is eating a crepe. The girl does not drop the crepe, and the boy does not give her his. The boy invites the girl to a cafe where they order a latte and a coffee, black. It is winter. The boy and the girl talk for hours. It is dark outside and the lights glow pink and purple and green. They walk to the love hotel. A room is free. They make love on a boat shaped bed. They rock back and forth. The boy is ashamed when he goes home to his lover. He is so ashamed that he tells her about the girl. His lover is angry and hits him. The boy is also angry and leaves to find the girl. He walks to the bar and she is there.

They play pool and talk some more. The sun rises and the girl takes the boy home. They make love again and they begin to fall in love. The boy wakes up to find the girl with white powder in her nose. The boy yells at the girl, and she yells back. They fight and then make love again. They decide to get married. The boy is happy. He holds her as they fall asleep. The boy wakes up to find the girl lying still on the floor, a line of unfinished cocaine on the bedside table. The boy cries. It is dark outside and the neon moon still shines.

22

The Hermits That Live Within Us We met at the center of the sea, Both of us walking barefoot across the water And embracing as we both drowned Into piles of bleached corals and bicycle tires.

There, our corpses were torn apart, Skin against skin, mouths like the water’s edge, And our bones, our lovely, pale bones, Became as sharp as the words we spoke.

But it was not you that tore me apart.

It was the ocean, and its beckoning, wicked waves That pulled my limbs away from me, Until I became another headless, legless mannequin, Bobbing uselessly in the currents As my closed-eye head floated somewhere on the surface.

You were the hermit that crawled Into my useless shell of a body— You lived inside me. And we were so happy That we forgot that we were on the ocean floor.

23

Daniel Contreras Waukegan, Illinois

To the Forces of Destruction Or mental health as they are known; The list of your issues is endless.

But don’t worry, it’ll be over soon.

Even though you abuse the innocent, straight-A student and belittle them to feel worthless, inferior, and degenerate forcing them to breakdown and second guess themselves; depression, you are still doing your best.

Stop exaggerating OMG you’re so irritating Nothing is going to happen You need to take it easy What is so concerning about the result?

Sarid, It’s okay.

This is only a phase.

Do you need to talk?

Can you believe it?

I overheard the snobby, pretentious football captain telling his friends about you wanting to kill yourself.

The whole school is going to find out now.

OMG how are you going to, you know, do it?

Are you actually contemplating about attempting… killing yourself?

But why, Sarid? Did someone attack you?

Is it because of problems at home?

Talk to me Don’t push me away

Sarid, why didn’t you tell me those homophobic kids were bullying you?

When did this start?

Wait...

Not only that, but your parents are on you for not earning perfect scores?

They know you’re still passing your classes with straight A’s, right?

Your family doesn’t accept you either?

They want you to obey gender rules?

24

I know this isn’t my family to intrude on Depression, but like you should really speak to someone about that.

They clearly aren’t fit to be a family especially if they are treating you unethically

Great!

The counselors found out about you and your intent on suicide.

Now the entire school is being called down for an assembly on mental health awareness Thanks a lot.

You really had to make things about yourself, didn’t you Sarid?

None of this was real.

You just wanted to be a big deal.

25

Justin Crouch Canton, Ohio

The City of Iniquity Humans are myths, at war with one another.

-Lyn Hejinian, “35” Shadows creep onto walls, bodies glued. They watch with open eyes, and shut mouths for they can not speak. Down below two men argue, something something about a wrong order. The voices escalate as the two men dance in the darkness, but the shadows still watch.

Bang.

One of the men is dead. The other holds a gun, smoke still rising like that of a campfire. No one can tell the difference.

The night is still young.

They can’t speak, can’t tell of what they see, but the shadows watch. The shadows retreat, sinking into the void only to reappear, but this time at a run-down apartment. A lone light shines in the room, revealing a small figure: A young boy. He steps quietly around the devil to not rouse him from his slumber for if he wakes him then all hell shall descend upon the boy. He moves to the refrigerator and retrieves the leftovers his mother left for him. His mother is not home. She must work to support her son and the devil she leaves him with. Unravelling the sterile foil, the boy stares at the food. This time it’s spaghetti. He goes and turns on the microwave.

Hearing the microwave stir to life, he turns to gaze out the window. Beautiful portraits of blue and gold paint themselves on the starry sky as below mixtures of grey and fluorescent lights intertwine. The sky is beautiful, the city is not. The microwave beeps, the boy’s heart drops as he turns to see the devil open an eye. Come morning, the house will be silent, the light off, and this time the son shall be sleeping, not the devil. The devil loves to work under the light.

The scene blurs, the shadows are not at an apartment anymore, but a penthouse. A man is on the phone speaking. Something something “I love you honey,” he says before the line disconnects. The man turns to the bathroom behind him as a woman steps out, her figure enshrouded by a white towel. The shadows watch. They watch as the man and woman embrace. They watch as they kiss, the towel dropping to the ground now stained grey.

The shadows retreat, come morning they shall be gone—but not the sin of the night, the undying night for the shadows always watch.

26

Katie D’Angelo Pelham, New York

Do You Remember?

The color of the sky the day we met?

How the blue that was painted above us was the exact same color as your eyes.

I got so lost in them, and I would have happily stayed like that forever And the smell of the tulips that you picked for me?

Their aroma filling the air around us.

The vibrant reds and oranges would sit in a vase on my counter for weeks to come.

An ever present reminder of you The feel of the dress I wore on our first date?

You said that the green silk reminded you of the ocean on a calm day.

That dress was my favorite after that And the taste of the beignets on your tongue?

They were so sweet that you said they made your lips pucker.

I remember laughing when you dropped yours in the grass and you got upset What about the sound of my laugh?

I hated it but you said it sounded like an angel’s song.

Or like birds chirping in the night sky.

You could always make me laugh Do you remember the color of the sky on our last day together?

The grey clouds rolling over us, an ominous warning.

It was as if it knew what would happen to you The smell of that horrible room?

Everything was so clean and sterile, my hand sanitizer being the only real smell.

The dead tulips on your bedside table no longer giving any feeling to the room And the feel of my hand in yours?

My thumb rubbing against the back of it, because even though I couldn’t say it, I wanted to let you know that I loved you The taste of the medicine you had to take?

You said it was almost as good as beignets, but I knew you didn’t want me to know how bad it truly was.

How you couldn’t feel it helping, only that it burned your throat like whiskey as it went down

27

The sound of the monitor?

The constant, rhythmic beeping, which served as a blessing and a curse.

When the beeping gave way to one long tone ringing out, do you remember my scream?

My crying?

My begging for you to come back to me?

A Nightingale’s Song We walk through the park, your hand in mine, the night sky guiding our way along a long and winding path.

The trees above us fill with the soft, melodious song of the nightingale and you start to spin me around.

We do a messy box step and I apologize every time I step on your toes.

The song above us grows louder, its friends joining.

I wonder what he is singing, I tell you when we’ve stopped pretending to be Fred and Ginger.

Is it a song of passion for his lost love, is it a song of sadness, sorrow spoken into the night sky?

We continue to walk and we listen to the nightingale’s song.

28

Julia Do Southern California

chry·san·the·mum /kri’sanTHemem/ noun 1. that pretty yellow flower that blooms in supermarkets and Lunar New Year festivals like full moons in February.

2. yellow that leaks into teapots and turns brown in fear of hot water.

Ghost white petals float before me in whispered shadows, and I crawl into my father’s lap. I press my nose into his musky neck and ask him what the phantoms are.

He lifts a stout piece of china, and without looking up, replies, “Chrysanthemum,” in Vietnamese. It was a tea set we had just bought from little Danny’s garage sale. It didn’t really belong to Danny—it was his mother’s.

I asked my mom why little Danny and his mom were moving away from our mobile home park, and she replied simply, without looking up from the sudsy dish in her hands, “Divorce.”

But I know she’s lying because one day Danny and I were catching butterflies and Danny’s dad made a bullet fly through the drywall, on accident of course, and his mom was so scared that their lives would fly through that bullethole next. So she grabbed little Danny and her own tiny body and sixteen pairs of socks and underwear, and all the money her Walmart tote could handle, and she ran.

I thought all of this and tightened my arms around Daddy’s neck, wondering if Danny’s dad ever held him this close before he had to go away.

I was still thinking all of this when I put my face over Danny’s coffee-stained tea cup, and a lone ghost petal called to me in a song of steam that floated up to my nostrils and hugged my cheeks pink.

Soft and pink and warm and pillowy Strong enough to move mountains and coax tides yet vulnerable enough to be corrupted by just a blade.

Valleys and canyons fall between marshmallow ligaments Half moons sprout from each tree top spire.

Trace these lines, and all others— like you are a palm reader.

Close your eyes and hum like you are following a map, with your finger.

What can you see in that crystal ball that isn’t here, under my skin, where life runs through green blue pipelines?

29

Skin tells all.

Traffic lights and highways Rolling hills and dips like valleys Strong rock formations and fragile skylines A neon network of nightlife lying just beneath the surface.

30

Addie Dodge Columbus, Ohio

Untitled 1 I took communion once and proceeded to dissolve Into panic As I was told the fluttering wafer I had eaten was The flesh and bone of a man and The stinging wine I had gulped was His blood I imagined that somewhere Nestled into the building They kept the heart of this man in a refrigerator To keep it fresh Beating Squelching I imagined the sallow altar boy opening the fridge Grasping the heart and pressing it to his chest Red flowers blooming violently down his creamy robes That was the last time I went to church.

2 I’ve been to temples mosques synagogues But there is something about the church that makes me wish I could peel away my skin as if It were a layer of rust over some holy pureness I have lost People like me don’t belong in churches We don’t get a lick of the syrupy stained glass windows Dripping deliciously Saints reaching for the strawberry ooze Reaching for some higher power The weeping virgin clasps her hands in prayer but she does not Pray for me That porcelain face those smarting tears Are only for a few.

3 God it’s confounding how sweet beauty can mask The pungent tang of malice God remember how I used to talk to you Tell you about the A plus on a math test The friend I no longer liked The cigarette butts I salvaged

31

From my father’s evening vigils I know now that within those stucco suburban walls My only audience was the skittering scorpions Armored and unblinking.

I worship at the feet of insects now.

32

Kaylene Eun Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Symposium of Animals Like how a single swallow avoids shadows, afraid of eviscerating. Slanted monkey, Who spent a whole evening brushing knees with quokka (exotic fever dream) and when Confronted, can’t look into or above the snouts of skinnier simians Fortunate that numbers can become caterpillars, crawling their way into obsoletion or out of resolution, Taking, in cruel bunches, grapes of wrath To disapproving bear; black mamba removes poison, position, poise, farther down from (step)father alkaline— They understand each other, they want to go home.

Freedom is a young cub foraging at midday or midnight but not in-between. To themselves they lied, and to the others they were strewn, little known how the elder goat, congested and longing to blink outside of his iron lung, mouthed to the swallow: Twitter me away. Teach me, all of what you hope for. Freedom Is the weight of a fingertip lit solely by its size.

Fly forward, and forgive the burning sun.

33

Ceci Ganz Mt. Vernon, Ohio

History walks into a bar I met History. He wore a ragged, ink-stained shirt and a worn, leathery jacket that frayed at its edges and creased along his spine. He entered the bar quietly, followed somewhat ironically by the jeers and hollers of people who were angry that he was uglier than his image, stood too hunched-over, spoke without enough conviction. The onlookers mimicked his portrait like young roosters learning to taunt the last silvers of nighttime before they disappeared over the horizon, too proud, too defiant. History hulked liked a wounded elephant in my direction, huge shoulders covered in rippling lines, sentences looking like waves on an impassable ocean.

He set his great weight upon a creaky old stool, asked to buy a drink. Now he was closer, I could make out the words that tumbled and flowed like a waterfall along his skin, but feigned not-noticing.

Sure, what do you want?

He asked for something to make him forget, said he could pay. I got down something from the top shelf, poured it without comment. The words along his arms rippled again as he reached for the liquor: penned and printed, in English, Greek, Japanese, hieroglyphics, and what looked like sound waves of what I could only guess were languages never meant to be written down. Thick lips pursed out from a thin line to grip the edge of the glass, and as the liquid drained I could see some of the tattoos fade. They left paper-thin skin behind as they vanished, though I could not speak to its color. Bloody and cruel faded away, and History pushed the glass back in my direction for more. This time, more and more markings left skin blank as a brand-new notebook. His eyes shone greedy for the rest of the bottle, but I knew not to trust him, asked after pay first. From hidden crevices, he produced tattered bills, gold, even seashells; but my gaze caught on a patch of untouched epidermis that hovered, ghostly, between chipped nail and calloused knuckle. I point, my own blank-page finger out-stretched, curving into a crooked question mark. I can only read two of the nearby words: Christopher Columbus. Surrounded by thick black lines, it looks like a ship on a stormy sea.

Something in me itches, tells me to push away the already accumulating stack of bills sorted out from ones long unused or forgotten, for the sake of something more: to pen my own name among the rest. I ask History if that sounds like a fair trade, don’t you think?

He shakes his head solemnly, tries to remind me that he can’t keep my name from someone who comes along later with a bigger head or lighter skin who wants to erase it or take it for their own. He says to take the money, don’t give good booze like that away for free.

So I hand him the bottle, on the house.

History wanders dazedly back out into the screaming hoarde, muttering to himself.

“Free, free, free…”

34

Julia García-Galindo San Juan, Puerto Rico

How Smartphones Were Invented A special sort of thrill runs through me every time I get a new notification on my phone. In a way, it feels nice to be remembered, even if it’s just my sister sending pictures of her cats or an app reminding me to drink at least thirty-two ounces of water before lunch. “Earth to Kate, anybody in there?” says David, a lanky boy with a midnight complexion. “Oh yeah, sorry babe, got distracted,” I respond returning to my chicken parmesan and the beautiful boy before me.

I glance out the window. There’s a small park made up mainly off swings and monkey bars rusted by the years and hundreds off tiny hands that have gone through it. Yet instead of playing on the yellow monkey bars, a line of kids sit of to the side backs hunched, eyes focused on phones sandwiched between tiny hands.

“Kids now a days,” mutters a gray-faced woman in an annoyed tone, “They probably don’t even know how to swing.” I scoff, sitting a few rows behind her.

At night the sky is empty of stars and moon. David arrives, carrying a small bag. He kisses me distractedly before running off to our kitchen table, like a toddler waiting for a toy. “Hey, how was work today?” I ask, leaning back on the sofa, to lazy too move. “Boring,” he responds, as he begins to open the bag and play around with its contents. I see the letters plastered on the side of a small six by seven box: xGen 6. “I didn’t know you were getting a new phone,” a sense of hesitation and worry accompanies my words. “I wasn’t, but they gave everyone in my department these to serve as work phones. The best part: it was completely free.” Slightly jealous, I smudge up my face and say, “I wish I had that luck. Now come over here and show me!”

On Saturday night David and I go out salsa dancing with our friends Mark and Jessica.

Jessica is a small, red haired woman who has the kind of smile that could change the tide of a war. Mark is all broad shoulders and messy hair, always ready to see what the world has to offer. The night begins like any other. Besides our initial hello, David and I barely see the other two, too focused on trying to avoid stepping on the other’s toes yet more often then not failing. It is only after an hour that I see Jessica sitting at the bar, face hunched, staring at her phone. Mark’s beside her, sipping a margarita and making small talk with the bartender.

“Hey, Jess, isn’t the whole point of salsa night, well, salsa dancing?” I hear Mark ask. I shrug it off and continue to dance soon forgetting the scene. My phone begins to ring, Mark’s name flashes across the screen. Confused, I tell David to stop before quickly searching for Mark. “Hey, what’s going on? Where’s Jessica?” asks David. “I thought you guys might know. She seemed to just disappear yet,” Mark’s mind drifts off. “Yet what?” I ask. “Yet her phone is still here.” Where Jessica once sat there’s an xGen 6.

A week goes by. It’s my thirty-first birthday. David gives me a small, wrapped up box. “Open it now, I want to see your reaction,” he says. I smile, unsure of what to make of the small wrapped up box before complying. It’s an xGen 6. I look up, ready to protest, “I know, I know, it would usually be out of our budget, but they were having a sale and I talked this out with the guy to make sure we could afford it because I thought you’d like it and…” I cut off his ramble with a kiss.

I work in a small office, the kind where Steve knows Ashley from accounting just as well as Mark from marketing. “People are really into these xGen 6 phones it seems,” says my boss pointing out my new phone.

“Yeah, they’re pretty great,” I say with a small awkward smile. “Huh, I’ve never been much of a smartphone person. I hate it when people look at their phones as they talk.

My eyes are closed, head laid against the window. David is at my side, focused on his phone. The beep boop beep intrudes my mind. “Hey babe, could you please turn off your phone and come sleep?” I ask voice glazed over. David doesn’t look at me, too focused on his screen but he responds, “ Give me another minute Kate.” A minute passes, then two and three. I grab my phone from the nightstand and play around. Once, David would have complained, cited some silly study about the effects of using your phone in bed. Now he just scrolls.

The clock announces the new day breaking Cinderella’s spell. I again ask David to turn off his phone. This time he listens.

35

I enter work quietly. Somewhere a radio is turned on, the reporter drawls his H’s as he says, “Where have all the children gone?” Around me most of the desks are empty. I say good morning to my boss and notice he’s looking at his xGen 6. He doesn’t look up as he says hello.

At dinner David’s quiet, mind entranced. “So how was work today?” There’s no response.

“Do you like the dinner? I got the recipe from my mother?” His plate lays untouched in front of him. A desire takes over me to just grab the phone and drown it in the sink. I just smile. That night I don’t look at my phone.

I wake up to coldness on the other side of the bed. A phone lies on the sheets in David’s place. I look around. I want to scream. Out the window cars reside in the middle of the road, phone’s lay on the pavement, owners nowhere to be seen. I rush into the bathroom, phone in hand, ready to plunge it in the water but it feels like someone’s fighting me. I do not know who will win as I push my hand over to the sink’s knob.

Hand stops half way there. It’s a back and forth back and forth. A light sheen of sweat begins to cover my skin, I feel like I’m seeing lights from some higher power, as the back and forth continues. Seeing how this isn’t working, I look up at the shelves in desperation. A small knife’s metal glistens against the light, my left hand’s fingers tremble as they get near it. I look up, pale cloth layered on wood stares back. My mind stops, a hand grabs the pummel.

Finger by finger I set myself free.

36

Nicoleta Giannakou Thessaloniki, Greece

Hello Darkness, Hey, Darkness how many kids do you have?

How can you give birth so fast?

How can you built a nest without doubt and turn people inside out?

How can you win so many battles?

How can you corrupt the whole world?

Is there anyone untouched?

You are a disease that runs so fast!

I’m a hermaphroditic, dark cloud I can’t give birth without your sperm.

You bloom, I’m the stem.

I can win because it’s easy For you, not for me.

It’s easier to surrender than fight and splinter.

War depression/ war of guns I was just released from the army and I hoped I would have a gun to my hands soon. It was the only thing I could do, or most likely the only thing I would do because someone would have forced me to.

Otherwise I would have stayed inside staring at the ceiling. That was for me. All my time on Earth- which I wouldn’t dare to call “life”- was full of emptiness, cigarettes’ ends and bottles with tones of serotonin that wouldn’t work. That was the case all year except when the baseball season came.

That would be the time of the year, when a lady would clean my miserable house and the piles would start work. “ It might be the weather” I was thinking. But apart from this my life was the ceiling.

So I was pleased when I heard I would go to war. Pardon, “pleased” sounds too happy for me. Let’s say that my face muscles would stretch up in a grimase which might have looked like a smile.

“Time to go” I said out loud- used to speak to alone- and I dragged myself out of bed.

37

Esti Goldstein Shaker Heights, Ohio

Quintessence Alabaster winds sweep softly through Banyan trees, Blustering like an old man who’s eyes Cannot see though they are open, cataracts Dancing about his pupils.

Every day spirits away more of our time, Flustered at the concept of patience, I Give each minute pieces from the High-flying acrobats that compose music Inside my ribs.

Just the other night, a Kite made of serpent’s Lungs that fill with winds of Macintosh apples Neared my bedroom window as I coaxed it closer, Offering tales of fractured sirens and will o-the-wisps “Once upon a time” Performers in their costumes of Quail shells and Ravens beaks are tipping off the earth, Serenading their lovers with Tongues of grass, alive with Unbearably silent screams.

Violets in the garden are melting, Wings of candle waX like Icarus Yearning to be swallowed by the sun when his Zeal for life overcame his fear of falling.

38

Christian Gonzalez Houston, Texas

The Man That Belonged In The Snow When I was a child, it was diff to process nighttime; it wasn’t because I was scared but because I started to welcome. It seemed just as lonely as I was. Nighttime also tended to be pretty quiet, just like me, at that age. When I went to school, I just had both feet out with the crowd in front of me. It was like watching a Renaissance painting where everyone would tear each other apart or fall forward and on top of each other. Thirty years later, I woke up, jumping up from my slightly frantic slumber. Every time I wake up, I feel the weight of my depression beard. I enjoy it because it hides so much of my face yet reveals that there’s something going on with me. I have to go to work and do something with myself. This time of the year is when the snow starts to fall. I don’t really know my neighbors except for June. I tend to dislike because she’s way too positive, but at least she’s nice to me.

Work is always the same, I go to the park, make sure no one is being an asshole, pick up some trash, and plant some trees. This time I’d the year is when June doesn’t go to the park as frequently as she does. In the evening, I’m usually reminded of the red sun, but luckily the clouds block it, so that way there is just blue skies with snow falling. I come home and June is just getting home. She said goodnight and before I could really go to my door, I go over to hers. I ask why she hasn’t gone to the park as much as she used to, I know why I just wanted to make conversation. She said it’s because I usually get sad, it’s why she still goes instead of not going at all. It’s not the answer I expected but it made sense. I went back home and spent some time with my husky on the floor. We tend to usually stare at each other until I start throwing toys at him and then we eat. I went back to knock on the door at June’s house. She obviously questioned what I was doing there and if I needed anything. I just asked if she would like to have dinner, but before I could continue, she said ”my house, 7:30”. She smiled and told me to go to sleep because it was late, and I rushed home. When I went to sleep, I looked up at my ceiling and fall asleep. The bleak night time that I usually see was different this time. I started to notice some of the stars I would often overlook. Dreaming about nighttime can be so relaxing when you realize that in the middle of such nothingness, the stars stand out as being something uniquely beautiful.

Wanting To See Home It is the distant screams at night Screams turn back to call me out Past catches up for present to be miles behind future Succumbing to this place takes me far from home Laughter tickles me with pleasure and joy Tears if pain bring me miles of hatred Home holds many things except for peace Too many familiars bring imbalance There is life to be made but too much is taken away Traveling back will not be easy but one can hope to see the loved Sail on the river to take you back, it is your friend Fire sets in the heart, a heart longing for its place of ignition Memories on the beach, carry the soul’s journey I may never be allowed to come back, but I still feel welcome.

39

Annie Guo White Plains, New York

i lost my earbuds had the earbuds in my case the ones plastered with the grimy black traces somewhere misplaced unreservedly erased still i went on the chase infiltrating into the confined space into the turvy haze muddled between the blurs and the daze down the stairs the swirly stairs that i so often feared the stairs molded like a snake shrilling twisting mangling wanting me to fall to dip to plummet to plunge to wait hold on just let me fall there’s the faint wine red wall and there’s the loud midnight blue car adjacent to that wall right there right hand propped on the car door handle right foot in left foot in come sit with us be with us sit with me be with me earbuds still in at this time music pulsating within my ears with continual chime gone were the fears the tears the treatment the torment i lost myself again regain regain regain what am i gaining what am i attaining what am i realizing am i not realizing did i lose something i feel nothing not anything no single thing there’s gotta be something a matter a notion an idea an understanding anything where was the case i thought i went on the chase the immutable chase in the maze in my fist in my palm in my hands touching the dry land the lands nowhere to be seen no one to intervene and no one to mediate maybe it’s time the ringing the signaling the dialing Mom, Mom get the telephone it’s still ringing repeating rupturing run away stay away go away but where was the way do i want to stay did i want to stay will i be safe where was the case

40

Khadijah Halliday Saint Lucia, The Caribbean

The Broken World She gazed in the glass mirror with carefully concealed anxiety, practicing her smile. It had only been a week since she felt like this, but already the week felt longer than the perpetual skipping rope the kids outside were using to skip—seven fumbling, giggling kids at a time.

Mere days ago, she had had no need for practicing how to smile. A blush-pink zipper of symmetrical white jewels, her smile was perfect. She was biologically unable to do the opposite. This wasn’t just unique to her; it was a hereditary characteristic for everyone.

Each person’s control, a glowing sphere of translucent fluid embedded in the inner elbow, kept them smiling automatically. There was no need for voluntary effort. It mattered not if the smile was big or small, it was always present. The control ensured this. The problem was her control had stopped working. She could no longer feel Gold. The history books lining the suspiciously sparse library shelves told her that in the other world, feeling Gold translated to a different term: ‘Happy’. And that in that world, ‘Happy’ was a rarity. This used to be perplexing to her. How could one not feel Gold? She could never fathom it. Now, she could not only fathom it but feel it.

She had thought it was a mere fluke the first day a large glassy drop left her eye and trickled down her face. It had fallen with such instinctiveness, as if it knew just which inch of cheek to splash against. Feeling the trail of wetness on her cheek, she had gazed down at her control, noticed its eerie darkening, and swiped the unorthodox tear with a violence pooled in sheer panic. That was five days ago.

Since then, there’d been more drops. There’d been fatigue. There’d been an inner unfamiliar hopelessness. She’d been …what was it the other world called it? Sad. She flinched. Even tentatively thinking about such an Abstract could get her sent away. She could tell no one of her malfunctioning control—not even her husband. Loyalty knew no one when it came to the loss of Gold. Sadness. Anger. Jealousy. Worry. Such Abstracts were nothing more than tales from another world that mothers recounted to their little ones following a spout of disobedience in order to frighten them into shape.

The Broken World, they called it.

In her world, such Abstracts did not exist. She knew what she was becoming. A Defective. The realization of this was jarring. It just about dampened the make-believe smile on her face. She chided herself to reextend the corners of her mouth. No one could know she was a Defective. She would be sent to the other world.

The Broken World. And the stories she’d heard…she shivered.

It was getting harder to hide her control, though. Its fluid was darkening. In just a week, it had turned an almost black —not pitch black but a morbid haunting grey yearning to be black. She feared that her scratchy long sleeves could no longer protect her, as an aura of dark light was beginning to smoke through the thin net of the woolen sweaters.

She’d seen firsthand what happened to the Defective. Out of nowhere, a ravenous black smoke would surround their weakened body, the latter of which would then become one with the smoke until only the sensation of fade was left. It was always a quiet process, but now she understood it was a painful one as well. The contorting grimace of the Defective as they writhed and dissolved into gargling motions was not merely Decay, as had been taught to her. She now knew it to be Pain.

In her world, no one felt this Abstract. In fact, it was thought to be the most frightening of all the Abstracts. It was the main characteristic of The Broken World. Recalling the two Decays of the only two Defectives she’d witnessed in her thirty six years of existence, the anticipation of it happening to her was terrifying.

She dreamt of the dark smoke swallowing her greedily as a widow noiselessly swallows her grief. Each day the dreams grew more intense.

Yet still, she repainted her forlorn face —a blank canvas— with the loud grin of her husband, the playful smirk of her neighbor and the tireless giggles of her newborn daughter.

Almost satisfied with the smile she had managed to conjure, with feet as heavy as history and a heart as pained as The Broken World’s axis, she fully accepted that her days of feeling Gold were over. Her control was black.

And soon she’d leave to become another shard of The Broken World.

41

Andy Han San Jose, California

Turning from Eden As I walked down the dirt path towards the Beckoning sound of the enchanted treasure Calling my name from miles away Daring me to pursue a gift I could not see Encapturing my ethics and desires; I Fell onto my knees, for only God can grant me fulfillment Howling the eerie sound of man’s ambition and limitations I lay on the dry leaves as they crumpled Juices of past lives trickling upon my chest Knees shattered by the punishments of fantasy and Lamenting the fall of Icarus, the man who flew like God but fell like Mortal, a final reminder of his failed ambition Nevertheless, I ran towards the bright light Overestimating the feeble blood flowing through my veins Pausing to reenter reality and running to escape it “Quit!” yelled my id “Remember!” yelled my ego, but God spoke through the Superego and the tall Trees collapsed and I surrendered to the wooden cross Unbroken but humbled The waters of the Red Sea drowned the primal desires that enslaved the Vehicles of logic and mortal emotions, for God promised freedom Waters that froze still when the holy stepped, a Xerox that elucidated our blessings and covered our sins Yet the sound continued to beckon, but faltered as my ambition Zipped away back home to reality, for heaven could wait another lifetime

42

43

Marin Hart Houston, Texas

For Braeburn 1. The bayou The man-made rivers are the venous system pumping greenish, mostly fishless liquid from neighborhood to neighborhood. They are also a measure of danger. In our neighborhood, houses farther than four streets away from the riverfront stayed dry during the hurricane. The drive past those houses on the first street during the weeks and months after the storm showed us how easily and randomly our worlds could be rocked around their hinges. The houses were rebuilt as impenetrable fortresses, oddly balanced on their stone thrones. And yet along the artificial river wildflowers grew in the springtime. Black-eyed susans injured but eager for sunlight.

And egrets still flew above the water, reminding some of the solemn face of God projected in the front a church.

2. The alleys My brother and I went back to work as lifeguards at the pool a few weeks after the storm. At 8 o’clock, we fished the last frog out of the water and locked the gates. We fought for minutes over who got to ride the one and only bike home. Momentarily, we tried to fit our weedy bodies on the bike together, one pedaling and one on the handlebars, the way people do in movies. But when the front tire wobbled with the effort of holding us, he rode and I walked. We took to the alleys, a second set of streets that connected each house to the house directly behind. It was a secret way to watch the pink that seized the sky at sunset and the ever-falling crape myrtle blossoms that shyly echoed the color. My brother rode circles around me and I stole glances at him watching the rose haze.

3. The once bird grove a wall beside a stoplight / a pause on the drive to school / circles of vines interlocking / the yellow brick below barely visible / and wild, perfect nesting holes built by the shadows / look, a sparrow! / no seven! no eight! / twittering the joy of another sunrise / the thrill of a new hunt / and we heard them / we had a wordless agreement / daily, the window slipped down / daily, the birds recounted the epiphany of the previous night’s sunset / what shade of beetle they ate for breakfast / the nests they were building / the birds were as small a part of the day as clipping your fingernails / a thing easily forgotten / and in some moment equally forgotten / the wall of vines became just a bare wall

44

4. The gas station The builders came without my noticing and carried out plans someone made months before.

The impending fall of an old brick office building with brown, lake colored windows and green trim was preceded only by a metal fence, coloring the foreground of a photograph. Through the viewfinder, I analyzed the purple-orange melting of a building I always thought made the neighborhood look older than my freshly bought tennis shoes. A man leaning against the mouth of a convenience store approached me and my mother.

He said he liked to learn bird calls and to sing to them in reply. He repeated a familiar call, told me to stay in school, and walked away. We packed up the tripod and headed home. It seemed within days a new gas station and convenience store stood with fresh white paint and clean black signs. With no solemnity, without thought, new conquered old.

5. The closet of the guardroom at the pool the pool closes

early

because it has rained so hard for so long the umbrellas

jumped

out of their sleeves screaming

open,

like the furious frill-necked lizard.

my brother’s friends came and took him away in their black car.

I sit in the closet of the guardroom while the water seeps under the walls and I float

45

Elizabeth Hetzel New York

Coin Toss Helen Pace dragged her plastic bag of laundry under the laundromat’s neon sign. She pushed open the creaky door, the fluorescent lights weighing down on her shoulders as if she was Atlas holding up the sky. She turned the bag out into the washer’s void, crinkling and crackling around the empty room. She started the load.

She felt as though her worries had been released into the washing machine, that all of her troubles were swept away by the water detergent. She flipped an extra quarter. Tails. She’d guessed heads.

Tired of standing, she hoisted herself upon the washer, her sneaker coated feet dangling over the edge.

It was almost carefree. The cold walk there from her apartment two blocks down had numbed her nose and turned her fingertips blue. It made her feel like a rotting old corpse left with a cold case. All she could do was stare at the dryers lined up against the opposite wall. Their white metal faces stared back at her, taunting her, testing her patience.

No, not yet, you aren’t ready, they hissed.

The thumping of the washer below her agreed.

Helen had always known to be patient while doing laundry. She had been patient for fifteen years—an hour and a half of waiting around was nothing. As helpless as she had felt for all those years of waiting, she had learned that things even as simple as laundry take time.

Helen twiddled her phone in her hands. It had only been ten minutes. At least she knew exactly when it would happen, at what specific moment she would hear the deafening sound and switch the load.

She waited. Click click click thump thump thump thump thump— BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP! Time’s up. Helen moved her clothes back into the crinkling, crackling plastic bag and hauled them over to the dryers. Their clean scent filled her now warmed nose as she tossed each garment into a less threatening void, this one metal and smooth rather than the rubber black pit of the washer across the sea. She shut the white, looming door and inserted her final few quarters.

Start.

This hour would be less painful than the first. Now, she knew that nothing would come next, that it was all over, that the final step would be folding each piece and putting them away. She looked down at her feet as they hung again, this time from the dryer. A small, shiny circle stared up at her from the black and white tiled valley. Helen hopped down from her perch and retrieved it, nestling the quarter in her palm. She flipped it.

Heads. She’d guessed tails.

She supposed that she would never have the right answer, even if someone else did. She would need hard facts for anyone to be proven right. Baseless claims would not suffice anymore. She flipped the coin again.

Tails. She’d gone back to heads.

She supposed that if she flipped the coin enough times over the course of an hour that she would guess correctly at least once. There had to be some proof of that somewhere in the world, some experiment, some evidence that if you flip a coin once every twenty seconds and guess which side will land face up, you will be right at least once. All she needed was once. One correct guess to hundreds of coin tosses.

She felt her troubles dry away beneath her. They tumbled around numbly, the machine’s heat seeping into their threads as they spun. They were not troubles anymore, they had been washed of that label. Now, they were merely afterthoughts of a trouble resolved by a phone call and cheap laundry detergent.

46

Caitlyn Hill Lexington, Virginia

Speak True If I were honest and Said things that Could truly be construed In whatsoever way you Imagined any given moment Could break into pieces And let fly something new Made from Thoughts and ideas that Spill from a pen on to You standing there thoughts Flying through the air As birds Float through Tranquil Winds never needing To wonder Where they End.

47

Bradley Hu Alpharetta, Georgia

I Wish I Could See Ravens Stranger in the night: I don’t see Stranger in the day: I see In the place where I stood; anyway I watched Wimpling wing of yours; the windflutter No master of the sky still These trees that dance are yours Billow with me; lonely billowing: We can rebuff these winds: yes I guess these will do; yes but tastefully Overgrown shrubs in Aurora; garden The stench; sweet stench; pungent like pearls To our eyes: no But I still watch Black beak embers and for a moment: time told lovelier The bald eagle hasn’t such patience It is galled quickly; oh I do fear it galled My mother taught me to The bald eagle; foreign thought to me…

Beaver quill: cotton crest: sovereign ruler, okay with being solo I am not. No. Nor bald eagle that flies alone.

Stranger in the night: I would rather see Stranger in the day: I always am I think I feel vermillion, actually, before I see: crimson trickle And for a moment upward Technicolor sky. I wish you would take me to it.

48

Bella Frankowski New Orleans, Louisiana

The Fallen Gods of Bourbon Street Prometheus is smoking on Bourbon street. He’s leaning against some centuries old building—which to him is the same as all the other centuries old buildings he never bothered to learn the names of—as he taps the crumbling ash from the tip of his cigarette and watches as the embers like shooting stars catch the air and drift until they extinguish on the sidewalk below. It’s just past midnight and he’s alone because Dionysus left him to hit up a gay bar; Prometheus knows it’s for the sex and free drinks from the suitors who’ll cajole him to their apartment where they’ll make love until dawn’s rosy lips kiss the downtown skyline. In the morning he wouldn’t even nurse a hangover. Dionysus was lucky like that. Prometheus exhaled. Smoke gushed from between his lips and curled in white tendrils up the side of the building, dissolving into the air that Dionysus said was always “so goddamn mutherfucking hot”. The cicadas seem to agree, chirp-cursing God for making New Orleans the kiln of a city that it is. Prometheus curses God for shaping clay into people before leaving them in the sun so long their skin burned brown. Maybe the burning of his ancestors’ skin is what drove Prometheus to try and burn down his apartment building with a box of cheap dollar store matches and gasoline. His therapist in prison said it was due to a subconscious anger towards himself, but he likes to believe what drove him over the edge was anger towards the world.

He finds solace in the fact he’s not the only angry person in the city, evident from the shards of smashed beer bottles that litter the sidewalk and scarred asphalt and the places where homeless people sleep. In the day the fragments of the bottles catch the light like some kind of perverted church cathedral stained glass window.

Prometheus hasn’t been to church in years. His mother is highly devout. Whenever they talk on the phone she tells him that she’s praying for him; when he went to jail on charges of arson she joined a bi-weekley prayer group at her church to cope, and makes sure he knows that they pray for him, too. It’s a miracle his mother even talks to him at all. His father sure as hell doesn’t care enough. Prometheus knows this because when he was 15 his dad went out for a pack of cigs and never returned.

Cigarette weeping embers, Prometheus sighs. He leans his head back against the building and closes his eyes. He enjoys the darkness behind his eyelids. In the darkness he can hide his skin. Hide the fact that he’s an ex convict. In the dark, anyone can hide anything. He considers it one of the only blessings the universe gave to the Earth. Then, as if God himself were commanding the darkness to vanish, all Prometheus sees is light.

Inspired by DEAD DOE: I by Brigit Pegeen Kelly letters never sent lying in a shoebox under my bed: no letters never sent rubber banded in one of five or so dubbed “junk drawers”: yes the one in my desk. next to an unopened box of paperclips: no: by some pens slowly dying: yes: gathering dust and creases, I keep, as I keep my distance from them, that I might see if they chose to open, envelope tongues tasting air: that I might seal them as if hoarding the words inside: no blossoming of sentences: with the fountain’s unstoppable blooming of letters 49

and the black stain the ink makes when the paper grows near.

I can make the letters open myself: yes I can share with others in the world besides myself: no! the haloey trouble of adhering stamp to envelope: yes: but when I can afford it.

Kept within bounds, Not in the outer reaches of My sacrificial limit.

50

Marco Jacimovic San Francisco, California

How Coal Was Invented it’s not a clear path, honey don’t you see those branches with maple leaves falling down onto bare cupboards like washer machines that just s p i r a l a n d s p i r a l d o w n a n d down like a water droplet that splashes into the sea like how dust carves rock mountains and cliff alike but don’t you see this affliction this scar beneath the surface buildings collapse until they don’t but this house retrofitted with an open canopy it breaths hope

pause.

or so they’d have you believe it’s clear now isn’t it not the sky i mean but the mirror which has been cracked since the 19th century it’s clear as a lily pad just like you

51

Sophia Johnecheck Highland

Tree Blueprint Within a patch of plain dirt a complex mechanism has functioned flawlessly for a century now.

Miniscule systems run off of advanced fuels: H2O and CO2 molecules mined and running through continuously shifting organic pipes woven into elegant bands- each thread expands into rich outer territories, congregating at a bustling metropolis surrounded by gates of bark, with carefully crafted lichen guardians.

From the deepest reaches to the clearest skies, the machine stands as a grand landmark, working with its surroundings in perfect synchrony.

In its crown, quasi-synthetic powerstrips absorb traces of vitality from a raging fire covered planet, impossibly far away.

As humans sit at a tree’s roots, an invention ticks around them, far beyond their little ingenuity.

The Moth Story Raptors ripping, sorcerers summoning, a perfect six sided star, ready for a kraken. Frightened Frankie, ametuer warlock, sent on a mission, for: - the tongue of a seal - the egg of a platypus - and the wings of a silkmoth The wings of a silkmoth, 37, because he’d tripled the recipe. Carefully peeled like an orange, from whimpering wormlike thoraxes, comes thick dust covered wings. Not like a butterfly, moths are the stranger cousin. Ugly Edgars and Lindas. Bulbous eyes, combined with the antlers of deer, the scales of a lizard, and a coating of fluffy Pomeranian fur.

Perfect for an eldritch chimera.

Holding a Ziploc bag of carefully procured moth wings with his rubber bakers’ gloves, Frankie stumbled and fell. The wind took them.

In the rippling summer breeze, the wings fluttered on phantom bodies to wash up on the shores of a concrete driveway, at the sneakers of a little girl.

52

Emma Kendall Santa Monica, California

This Podcast is Brought to You by Fate In the first second we brushed, the spark between skin was drawn out for a year. A glance lasts for weeks, but it’s less than that long . Time gave you months in fleeting moments, leading you on. He said he would pass at the pace of a pear tree. But the partridge came early, so Time put a hand on your shoulder and said to take yours of him. He brought us together, so we agreed not to count down the hours. We thought there were so many. Some days are full, brimming with pies and with touch and with ties. The days blend with nights. I’d drift off to the sound of an irregular heartbeat and wake up with the smell of you still in my hair. Time beams with the glee of a child, hands clasped in delight. But now he seems devious, like he knows something we don’t. Then months turn to weeks turn to days turn to gone. Time may not forgive by fate is still fickle. I was scared and now we’re running out of him.

I broke my foot on the cusp of that year. That was the first time we were together, but it had already been four months. A swelling, bruising tie dye of inky indigo, carmine, and plum. The crack happened in an instant, the way lightning strikes trees. I put ice on the bulbous balloon. As if a few melting cubes in a ziploc twenty minutes a day would equal a lifetime of healing and turn back the clock. There are six or eight weeks after the x-ray. These things take me, said Time. That’s a nice, clean fracture, no displacement at all. But nice and clean are not the words I would use. Ten days from the break was how much of him it took me to harvest my denial and stop telling myself it was sprained. Maybe it was a bad idea to go sledding the day after I fell, but snow freezes Time, makes him irate and uptight; so it was hard to resist powder splattered cheeks and the cold’s nipping bite.

Time could give me forever and I would never be able to write you a letter, like the one you wrote me.

53

Charlie Keohane San Francisco, California

The Outer Limits Hello and welcome. I’ll be your tour guide today. Walk past the statue of Marquis de Lafayette, the namesake for this seemingly nameless suburb, past the always empty Italian restaurant and the musty thrift store to find a red building crouched in the shadows. The posters are peeling off and the paint is chipping. The movie theater has been closed since 2003. Or is it 2007? It doesn’t matter when, because it’s lost now to creeps who smash the windows and leave glittering amber beer bottles and to toddlers who smudge the glass, begging to see a Disney movie that’s 15 years old. The tall black letters which once announced thrillers and romances of years past now reads “Happy 9th Birthday Emma!” There was talk about reopening the theater in 2015. There’s a Facebook page about it. It never happened.

If you want to get reacquainted with nature, you can choose to stroll the paved trail that runs through this town. Girls are biking with their braids whipping behind them while boys bounce basketballs and hollow thuds shake the small town like an earthquake. After about one and a half miles, past the yard with the chickens roaming behind knotted wire (be sure to check for peeping chicks) you’ll come to some vacant houses which reside in a row of old oak trees. They’re made of rotting wood dotted with finger paint or metal with rust blooming like moss on a rock. You’ll hear bells and wind chimes and, if you’re lucky, birdsong from the occasional resident. Look for a tan wooden birdhouse with a once glossy green Girl Scout emblem hanging from the side.

It was handcrafted and hung lovingly by a proud seventh-grader years ago.

By now you’re tired and hungry from your stroll, and the dry heat chokes those who aren’t careful. You may find yourself among young children with dripping hair post-swim and older couples affectionately bickering at Yogurt Shack. You’re surrounded by painted palm trees and frames of sandy beaches. You pay by the pound for frozen swirls of Caribbean coffee and French vanilla topped with chocolate rocks and almonds. If you wish to feel healthy, add some strawberries. They’re always in season.

Thanks for stopping by. Now you can go. You can take the train into the vibrant city and never come back. You can drive away and sigh as the towering oaks whisk by and soon it will fade into memory as a quaint stop on a long journey. Or you can stay. You can be the queen of an air-conditioned palace and preside over an aqua swimming pool and a manicured lawn. You can fall into bed at night and sleep soundly; there are no bustling traffic sounds or bright lights to scare off the dreams. You can wake up and it’s twenty years later and nothing will have changed.

To My Sister Golden Hair Dear R, Why do you always drive with sunglasses on? The large black frames eat up your face and obscure your blue eyes. Sometimes the sun is behind the oaks and you really don’t need them. I noticed you keep them in your car because you’re always late and I wait by the window for you to come over. I really wish you weren’t late because it feels like you don’t care.

But I know you do from the way you quiz me on my Spanish vocab before a test. I know you do from the way we sing Fleetwood Mac with me even though we’re both absolutely horrible singers. You know the little things, like how I’ll pick the onions off my pizza and how I always listen to iHeart 80s on 103.7 when I drive.

I love to hike up the hill behind my house with you, and we sit and preside over our town. I look at the 54

cloudless bright blue sky- blue like your eyes- think about how I can’t wait to leave this sleepy place. The golden hills shimmer in the wind like your blonde ruffles and I dream of life after high school. We want different things in different places; you look to the sunny beaches and I prefer snow-covered forests. I know friends come and go like the foamy tide at Fort Funston‌ do you remember when we danced in the sand and splashed in the surf despite the cold blanket of wet fog? Will we remember tomorrow?

Love, C

55

Henry Kerrey New York City, New York

I look out my window now newly minted as an insect graveyard I look out my window now newly minted as an insect graveyard and try to see why I have been sitting in silence for 3 hours when another human being with an infinite archive of thoughts is sitting 3 roach lengths away and I find the same nothing that greedy men from New York who sacrificed their families to cholera and threatened native tribes saw back when there was no such thing as home but only a nugget of gold in a river thousands of miles away and now there are lines of plaid houses and shantytown gas stations scattered across red dust and stubborn bushes all which seem to be from mars or even pluto when the sun shines a rare red hue and the silence that roams free in these celestial lands has now infested and infected this truck with the AC on max speeding at 85 miles an hour to cut ten minutes of the trip to buy cheap gas and cheaper salt and vinegar chips so I guess I could close my eyes for a second or 60 and try to think about nothing.

56

Ariel Kim Jericho, New York

Slathered Aloe Cracked, dry hands like asphalt Each breath drawing air from wet harmonica; This isn’t the world she knew so I’m changing it. That twin-sized lower bunk bed

For what a wonder it is To choose one happiness over the other.

with shade obscuring her vision; I’m pulling it by the Covers and upturning the metal rungs. Instead Let’s plaster the walls with photos Of her glossy youth. As her thighs sigh deep Into silk covers that finally complement The room decor, I melt into The past and I’m giving her a husband Who speaks her language, at the very least he doesn’t Throw chairs across the room sober. I’m giving her a husband Who doesn’t question her every origin and instead Draws forth tradition, each fleshy petal of the onion breaking apart In clumps. I watch from the closet of an alien home as the two question each other in familiar dialect, bringing the Volume to a crescendo in a rhythmic synergy. The air tastes Like static. Their eyes, wide like newborns, pool from the acrid tang of axillary bud because sometimes It’s better to share the same roots. Here smells of gochujang and seolleongtang waft through the House, foods she missed because We’re Korean but only in blood and we like Pasta and Chinese-takeout. Here childhood friends and Familiarity paint the sky in shades of dawn. And although Her hands are now soft without slathered aloe, her spine without specter pains As my eyes trace the foreign marks stretched across her abdomen, I gasp for new lungs

57

Brandon Kim Culver City, California

Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood The shoes in front of him were a wrinkled gray: worn silver soles that lost their luster the day he first saw them.

He was supposed to take it easy - brisk 7:50, 4.6 miles - “nice rhythm.” He didn’t know what those words meant; well, he did know, just not really. It didn’t matter, so long as he kept the coach happy with sub-17s.

Inner and outer. He glanced at his GPS, caught a seven, and glanced again. 7:52. He felt fine. An internal sigh: what the hell. He quickened his stride.

The road was long, and it was a river in its length. Below meandered La Ballona Creek, dark with accumulated dirt and cans and rust the color of the bridge spanning. La Ballona used to run primal, wild in the reeds. So it seemed in the black-and-white photographs he found online. Now La Ballona ran gray, lifeless - whatever wildness back then now slowly fading from view behind a zipper of gray concrete. Two artificial riverbanks that he had looked upon many times in the repetitiveness of pounding feet. Quick, amused glances down to the right. Boredom was an affliction.

Another glance - 7:49, 7:45 - and a wistful look back at the boy with gray shoes. The boy’s face belied a faux pain. Name: he’d forgotten. He’d remember later. He took another glance at the grimace behind him, falling faster and further behind. Was boredom the right word? What was that word? He could start with the definition, he supposed: the complete absence of feeling. The absence of that fire that burns in your heart, your hearth; that fire that yearns to escape from your mouth like the breath of a mighty dragon, but not yet; that fire that you feel when your right foot juts out, your chest thrust forward, desperate to gain that little fraction of an inch that means all the world between life and death, win or lose, there’s no distinction between any, I choose to live! to win! that fire that you feel when you’re standing at the start of the line, ready to win a race that you won’t win, ready to sprint past the runner whose PR is a full 30 seconds faster than yours, just because you can; because you know that you will win if you try hard enough, if you coax the flames enough; that fire.

His legs burned.

But the road lay in front of him, carpe viam, and so he seized it. He did not look back at death; at boredom. He had grown weaned on a glorious cacophony of pain, and boredom-death would not take him, not yet. Boredom-death lay long forgotten between the grip of gritted teeth and the pounding of feet along the road whose end he’d seek to the end.

In-Between There’s a moment as I’m walking where I feel that I’ve entered the church of the sublime, where faith in God is augmented by suddenness.

I’ll describe it to you as I’ve described it to myself. An internal voice serves in part a lens through which I can view a thing not meant for eyes to see.

But eyes alone can’t describe what it’s like 58

to walk the familiar sidewalk down Lindberg, beneath casual cobblestone walls of buildings meant for children - daycare, can you imagine that?

Through the wispy clouds of light that seem to billow in the breeze of my own breath. Feel that breeze against yourself, or is it just the wind, gentle and ticklish like a lover’s voice, if I had one.

Can you feel it? Stirring inside of you, like a pot full of all the best words: warmth, petrichor, solitude, chamomile.

There’s a sweet mystery in this moment, and it feels good, and that’s all that matters.

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Dohyun Kim Los Angeles, California

communion Mid part crooked front teeth canines too sharp acne ripped cuticles gnawed nails right leg a little longer than the left and a head and a half shorter than the median of the room E E E E E E meow My pottery glazed thrust into kiln In its inside, offerings.

Sometimes empty for days at a time still desiring to be full of water to hold and contort the volume of water to the space of me.

Each time emptied again always a smack of what came before it.

Tasting sometimes like ham, copper rust, others bumblebee fuzz, green white-spotted mushrooms, and caramelized onions.

No flavor untested licked clean and dry with other earthenware.

an ode to antifa from an aspiring public defender I. Mine. My orange juice, some thousand leagues condensed into a half-liter at a dollar seventy three.

Bought by those who sweat a different salt.

I, watchman.

III. How derelict. How salty must the earth be such that topsoil crusts and cracks and entombs the seeds beneath to catacombs excavated in retrospect?

So thirsty, so shriveled— God not dare open the oceans above to the riverbeds below but rather bestows milkshakes.

I. I, justice.

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How confident enough in the residue of spittle and soup-condensation for the resins of my mortar that I could introduce myself as “the friendly neighborhood neighborhood spiderman�.

II. They say eyes are windows to the soul.

Contrary, the fires within their caves outline fractals onto shadowed walls: meandering on, albeit all the same. mothers, fathers, grandfathers, grandmothers, aunts and uncles and cousins, great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents, perpetual permutations of greats sowing the same seed to harvest the same.

Each time razed by a locust: a new seed a new crop.

A histories of monocultures.

But what to do when roots themselves are the salt of the earth?

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Esther Kim Potomac, Maryland

silver lining i cannot see where the sky ends and where the clouds start. it’s as if i had dipped my hands in silver and muted the heavens. even from down here, i can smell the coming of a thunderstorm— the way the clouds seem to slow and the rain seems to linger in the air. maybe i could release a wish up there and never see it touch dirt. sometimes, that is how i’d like to be, thrown into the air to never fall.

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Sophie Kim Los Angeles, California

Immortal The earth wants you.

You hear its voice in every twig cracked under your feet, every sparrow that stops singing to stare you in the eye. The earth has picked you, and you can try to run, but you’ll lose. You didn’t think it would be this soon.

You don’t want to go out in fire, but burial is worse, so caught up in the body. You run your fingers through summer grass and stalks whisper your fate: fire ants will scurry through your windpipe like convertibles on the 210 at rush hour. Caterpillars will organize slumber parties in your ribcage. Ravens will pick the shiny bits out of your teeth and hop back to their young with the perfect birthday present. Maggots watch from afar, laugh at how slowly your body confesses to the dirt, they could make quicker work. But they don’t. Why? Because you’re insolent. You never thought about the world going on without you. That’s what kept you alive, skin that refused to split open and let the sun between its halves slop into weeds. Nobody is ever ready to die.

Nobody is ever ready to die and the maggots know, so they wait. And, before lunchtime, they begin.

At this point, you might be dead. You might not. Does it matter? It’s nice to be wanted. But once you’ve got past the body stuff, the withering eyeballs and mustardy flesh and the flies and the smell (oh God the smell), you’ve still got your self to think about. You aren’t ready to let go of the way your atoms sing every time they slam into brick, aren’t ready to stop looking at the sky and wanting to stuff that blue into your mouth. You’d have to give up all of that, your lonely seat on the Ferris wheel, your airplane window, your unopened bag of peanuts. There’s no me in death, nothing the worms haven’t touched.

But the maggots know you’re afraid, so they tell you to close your eyes.

Imagine your skin, stretched over the land like a drum. Pound it once, and the earth’s core shakes.

But I’m dead, right? you ask.

Of course you’re dead. Doesn’t mean you can’t make a sound loud enough to bring the living to its knees. You’ll be engineer of landscape. In the fall, the soil keeping next year’s sunflowers safe.

What will I be in winter?

The echo in the ears of every child walking home alone at night, the soft blue ache of the first morning in December. Snow on Christmas Eve, fainter than rain.

And in spring?

Hot marrow racing through arteries of frozen continents, seawater gushing from sinks, handfuls of dates pressed against the earth’s warm mouth. Her first meal since last year.

And in the summer?

You’ll take your friends down to the river and weave mud between their fingers, teach them how to sing back to their maker. How to feel whole, a different kind.

You know you shouldn’t be afraid. The earth would take good care of you. But you stand up, let go of the grass, and walk back down the path, avoiding sparrows and twigs. It’s summer and the sky is beaten gold and you’re not ready yet. Not ready to give up on clouds tickling your tongue. The land will be waiting, but you’ll find some way to outwit it. Find something you want more than the earth wants you.

63

Saule Konstantinavicius Briarcliff, New York

To Veronika I always dreamed of having a sister you were what came to mind Half-sister, half-blood, half-real Like the cusp of a daydream just past the edge of plausibility because I’d always imagined you might hate me with the same bitterness your mother hated our father Our father I’ve never said that before I wonder how much fear your mother masks with anger My mother told me she was always afraid that I’d be too much my father’s daughter Whenever I act out on impulse I think her heart stops in recognition: the engine of a too new car bloodshot eyes and rot-sweet words She holds her breath that expectant silence Do you know the one I mean?

He’s had another one: that makes us three She’s sweet and funny and loves stuffed animals she cries when reading sad stories so did I maybe so did you Wouldn’t that be something?

Before last summer I hadn’t seen him in 5 years If we were sisters -- not half real -we would roll our eyes and laugh “Only 5? What a shame.”

And both feel only a little bit bad I don’t know when you left But did our father ever take you to a sauna so hot that the air melted into a syrup in your lungs and closed them up?

Did he visit you in the summer bearing a violin and a tripod and weep with one eye to the camera lense?

Did you forget how to smile?

Did he call you at 2 AM, drunk reminding you that he’s still your father?

And did you pity him?

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Or did you just whisper that you know and hope he didn’t hear the half lie half truth?

Half real You really are half real like sun dried flagstone whistling mountains cold stone rooms that smelled of clay: things left behind in homesick musings A child’s mind twists such details until they are strangers to reality They live, then, in intangible places and in those places I know you

65

Emma Krupp Caldwell, Ohio

Here are the Wanderers, Here are the Lost They are a herd of untamable wildebeests, trampling innocent bystanders on a rush to get home: no They are human beings; obnoxious Wall Street stockbrokers with cigar stubs that carry an oaky aroma through the station, and families pushing to get back to somewhere they don’t truly belong.

These two phrases are synonymous: home and place where we don’t belong.

And through her eyes, lashes laced with snow from the evening storm abrew and falling around her, she notices these characters as they bounce from one train to the next.

What makes a train station so inclined to house these wandering souls?

In her youth she flipped through the pages of a passed down poetry book which said that not all who wander are lost, but yet here are the wanderers and here are the lost all pretending they are in a rush when they are not.

A clock strikes. A world clock. Affixed overhead of the station with times reading: Los Angeles, Sydney, Rome.

Christmas Eve one place. Regular day another.

Places much warmer than this place with snow covered eyelashes: no Snow drenched eyelashes: no Snow caught eyelashes. She watches the people who watch the clock.

Time is synonymous to happiness, is it not?

And the quicker you race around to your train, around to the place you don’t truly belong, around the world clock, you are filled with joy: no Invite loneliness into your arms and sing him a carol of a girl alone at a train station with snowflakes in her eyes who can watch the winding arms of a world clock, and yet still feel she is not moving anywhere.

Circular motion.

Glistening eyes.

Oh take me home country roads, the tracks she wishes her coated feet, snow tipped eyelashes could sprint on.

Sprint on to where?

Time is winding.

They look at the world clock, praise the world clock, glorify the world clock.

Batting eyelashes, covered in flakes.

Luggage hulled.

Pushing through.

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Whistles and engine blow.

Hot, pulsating steam.

Hot people in the snow.

Going home.

Oh but what is the difference between time and happiness and home?

The clock is torpedoed.

67

Andrew Kwon Jericho

Ingredients to Make my Soul God is good all the time. All the time God is good. Not only is he good, benevolent and reverent, but he’s also a chef. Not a gourmet, Michelin 5-stars restaurant owner kind of chef, but a home cook, mixing and stirring for his own pleasure. Not to serve or to plate dishes for others, but to simply be proud of his own creation.

A perky blonde with purple-pink highlights and fishnets at an Arctic Monkeys concert was plum pudding- soft and a bit cloying.

A muscly ginger with slight scruff and flannel on a mountaintop was scotch egg- crusty and herby.

An Algebra 2 teacher wasn’t even food- she was a Shirley Temple with her bubbly purr and cherry red shoes.

With all the different textures, flavors, spices- everyone was appetizing to someone. Some were commonly enjoyed while others required a bit of a selective tongue. Some were a bit too salty or sour for me, but I would dip my finger in the mixing bowl, and at the very least, sample what they had to offer.

Then I ran into a guy on the corner of Clinton and East Broadway. He wore Converse, a row of spiked hair, and a pierced septum. We had a spat. The spat became an argument. The argument became a fistfight. At first glance, he seemed a little spicy and savory. He was chili. Then he was a slice of fruitcake. Then he was an egg that someone smashed on the floor, poured vinegar, sardines, and vegemite on, and slapped into the microwave for ten hours.

I rode on the Ronkonkoma track back home with a black eye, like a bruised tomato, and the taste of burnt chicken spawn blooming in the back of my throat. Garbage. Filth. If food like him was served at a restaurant, it would be a health code violation. But pure rage cannot only be directed at a single person, so naturally, it went to God. So, sitting between grilled cheese and tomato Caprese, I call out to our divine chef.

You’re all-knowing and all-mighty holy father. You’re faultless, yet you made mistakes in your cookery.

How could you botch up some people so badly, lord? Were you watching us from above, and forgot the oven timer? Did you mix the egg whites too vigorously so their soft peaks fell back and deflated?

Neosporin gleamed on my eyelid like the glaze on a cake. An omnipotent being can’t mess up on a bundt cake. The almighty can’t make botched cupcakes. The potato skins fell from my eyes. Unless God wasn’t a chef. Unless he was something else.

God is good all the time. All the time God is good. He’s also a supermarket manager. He hands out ingredients. Only ingredients. He doesn’t tamper with ovens or meddle with skillets. He hands them out. Only ingredients. Then, the world whips something up. We become tomato soups, Beef Wellingtons, Frittatas. Experience is the spice. Morals are the knives. We have the illusion of choice and the shadow of free will. We will, without question, continue to live for the ultimate gourmet.

68

Henry Lee London, UK

Infestation I used to believe that I was allergic to ladybugs, or that whenever they existed in my vicinity, I would fall victim to a deadly disease, that the soft, intoxicating buzz emitted from their motor-like wings was a manifestation of doom.

The buzz is audible, almost deafening, I swear.

They say that my apprehensions are trivial, slash, naïve—I could not find the page on which those words were defined in my dictionary.

If I was not anxious sometimes I wouldn’t all the time be able to relax. I categorize caterpillars into the perilous section of “creepy-crawlies” in my mental field guide.

I expect a butterfly, complete with a technicolor kaleidoscope of sinuous patterns, to surface out of its makeshift coffin.

What is paranoia? I’m not worried that I’m worried, no, not yet, but there are butterflies everywhere inside me, around me, of which I’ve tried to illustrate a clear path to myself.

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Jimin Lee Seoul, South Korea

metamorphosis a flower waves its children as wind ruffles grass like children chasing butterflies or flies coated in butter yellow butter bellow yutter white flutter furry hares perched ears daisy hairs honeyed skin petals pressed onto fingernails nails oranging from the petal juice we sit criss cross applesauce sneeze in the breeze white fur allergy seasons wax and wane hummingbirds sing cicadas echo their humming like cicadas we circle in circles wondering what is next observing what is above as the sun melts in its circular orbit golden dew drips through transforming blades of grass into glades of brass

70

Will Leggat Brooklyn, New York

To Dad, Through our Necklace It’s my eighth time calling everyone you left behind, And I’m scared they’re starting to forget.

I’m scared I am too, Dad. Last year, I took some standardized test today, And sent Grandma straight to voicemail, and my neck burnt Until I called her back.

I used to think I was allergic to the nickel in the chain, I wouldn’t wear it for fear it might burn.

But I’ve only had it for eight years, Dad, it had you for thirty And how is that fair, Dad, That it knew you better than I did?

I’m sending you an invoice, Dad, for everything you’ve missed: For the birthdays and Christmases, sure, but for the summers And shouting matches and the tearful honesty we’ll never share, too.

It’s been eight years, Dad, I only knew you nine.

By the end of eight years, the body you live in is a new one.

All the cells that saw you Are gone All the hair you rustled, The skin you touched.

I’m beginning to forget, Dad. And I’m scared, And I want you to tell me it’s alright even though we both know it won’t ever be, because I want that lie, Dad, that Awful, comforting lie And Dad, I want to remember your face without a photo, I want to remember your voice so I can change mine to match it.

Dad it’s been Eight years, and Eight years I’ve tried to be you, and Eight years it’s gotten harder because Next year I’ll have known your memory Longer than I’ll have known you.

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And I have no way of knowing If that’s better, or not.

Because, for all I know, you were an asshole.

And I’ve been better off without you.

But all I have is this memorial in stainless silver, And it’s cold And it’s lifeless And I don’t even know who it belongs to anymore.

God, Dad, it’s been Eight years.

And I’m running out of things to say to you.

72

Jed Levinson New York

Juxtaposition I search the top of my gums for the canker sore I’ve complained about all week I seek the pleasure

Ofcourse I am alone!

therefore, no concern for the thought of contradiction that confounds me in an hour’s time

what I seek is to feel, as boredom empties me of my humanity no emptier than my stomach that I have deprived of food today

YOU LOOK SO SKINNY! THANKS!

You see, pleasure isn’t simply pain, rather it derives from it it’s the sweatshop stitched shirt You sport #GoNike #FuckNike it’s You exclaiming “gLoBAl wArMIng iS a rEAl daNGer !1!1!!” right before you take a sip from your plastic straw it’s

I’ve changed my mind We don’t need the BF GF labels I like friends with benefits

it’s your favorite character from every disney movie being the villain because You’re misunderstood, he’s misunderstood, she’s misunderstood But We? NO ‘we are not misunderstood’, as society exclaims the norm where They understand the pleasure, but shame the feeling in response for the same people who use the third person to critique ‘the ones’ who tolerate manipulation of power are the same ‘ones’ twenty years ago who pointed at the 22 year old intern, turning a blind eye to the ONE who left a cum stain in her dress. can you blame them? but? that’s the most powerful man in our country. Ah ok. but? it was #1 trending on twitter. Ah ok We understand there’s a power in the majority and that’s why we dismiss the pleasure from the pain

POWER

what WE need louder than any acceptance i seek

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Michael Lin Orinda, California

This Side of Paradise A peacock outstretched, a temple unto itself to the weight of man’s sins.

Beautiful pastels smothered by black oil.

An expansive drapery of crudeness makes a picturesque sight that headlines won’t see. cut, crinkle, cripple that is why we have been given hands - craft, create, construct

Daddy, why do my hands always break the toys?

Crack.

A wooden monolith of ancient times comes falling, crashing, to the forest floor, little more than a glorified log.

A thousand beaks lament the death of their god, a thousand blades give the birds something else to cry about.

The past is now forgotten, twenty-one seconds of untraversable time between life and death.

It’s not your fault, honey. Your hands aren’t trying to hurt anyone.

Our hands are tools devoid of mind or purpose devoid of malignancy or greed.

All you need is a heart, and your hands will follow through.

A hand to stroke the oil-soaked feathers, an explosion of blues and greens, jewels, flashing with regained luster.

The bark of a tree creates a pencil, the hands of a child write a postcard, the small scratch of graphite on paper.

“This feather may look worthless but it comes from afar 74

and carries with it all my good Amy Lee, in The Joy Luck Club

intentions.�

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Alina Y. Liu Toronto, Canada

flutter; tremble (not fly) i breathe in out i stumble into

light darkness night sharpness

of a pen against paper quill against parchment it is quiet i am quieter engraved with scars trembling with the strength in holding still the sigh of the ocean i swim i sink i float i drink

drowning in the tides of your motion

petals curl between my trachea and my lungs wrap around the brittleness of my rib cage slip into the juncture between my collarbone and my throat soft like your fingers on the fragments of my heart

mirror shards

the synesthesia of blurry silence susurrus of murmuring night serenade of fleeting illusion your fingers

the cacophony of color

soundless

my heart whispers out in i breathe

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Emily Liu Naperville, Illinois

silhouette the summer where bodies grew soft with hiraeth and wanting my

desires to witness then fizzing out

body filled with hiraeth for dageraad and fallow deer,

innocuous

a neighbor’s undressing once more, her light swaying,

as animal fat from steamed marrow,

shoulder blades sighing

like the sea’s offing / topography / milk climbing up the glass.

I name my eroticisms after fish tracing

canthus in the river, this one

for example, is proprietary, the other damson bruise, the other clumsy daedalist who wants to kiss the back of a hand

and see green

and so on.

understand, it matters

little: who is on the other side of the bow. given the ultrasound, mama names me after the canonical nude / salt / saliva / sweet teeth / pastoral choking out its color / where the deer wish themselves into the water. within them, the desire to float-creek / erode surges and dies like a song. sing /

/ the uterus is a second alveolar ridge / so to speak / the baby makes the mother I crush of soft bones. summertime melt.

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it is getting harder to swallow this

softness.

the neighbor lowers the blinds. I watch her body dance through its binary spill: dark / light / dark / [ ] one day, mama, I want to know the color of flesh.

I want to crush its name by the tongue. [

]

searches the sand to emulge her

for shells unused

TRANSFIGURATION: ROADKILL roll. body. red brine throat. slung neck. open. unhoof. undress. pull organ. steam. unstitch bone. mangle. shave. red. lupus. unstitch jaw. milk teeth. penumbra. blight. left the good meat. left the good. left meat. self immolation. incense. no. hands. red. shaking. pray. altar. god. no. mother. no. masticate. ash mouth. old bones. dark flowers on the breast.

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breath

Olivia Loudon Columbus, Ohio

How Love was Invented When we visited the shore, the water was warm, the wind was cold Such a confusing contradiction She dug her toes into the sea and it’s sand Breathing Beating Living Somehow we were both still living There is no sun out today It is not needed Covered in salt In water In foam She stands I close my eyes and the sea is gone This is not our shore This is red Red dress Red lips Red wine Red blood Did you know that inside our bodies, our blood is blue? Swimming in the dark rivers that make up our veins The crimson only comes when a knife slices A needle pokes A stone scratches And air Rushes in Air I can’t breathe We aren’t underwater We aren’t among the stars Not yet anyway.

She would rise to the surface like bubbles, burn in the cosmos like the sun I talk to the plants that night The Ivy curls around my chimney and up my spine. It itches.

I ignore the tulips. Their accents are thick and their advice is wicked.

The daisies are too young to realize it. Perhaps I should move them, The roses don’t wish to prick my hands, but they do.

They always do.

I place my thumb in my mouth to stop the blood And in the mirror I see a reminder of my childhood nightmares There is no monster in the closet No longer.

The roses scared him away.

Made him sick Made tears well up in his big yellow eyes Yellow.

That’s what my favorite color used to be.

Until she took it.

She did not take it I gave it away the day I Saw her on the shore Red 79

Luz Mañunga Jacksonville, Florida

Spring’s Summer “In the spring of joy, when even the mud chuckles, my soul runs rabid, snaps at its own bleeding heels, and barks: “What is happiness?”

— For Satori by Phillip Appleman I. The soft sounds of nature lulls me to sleep: wonderful chirps, laughs from a sleek hummingbird.

The bird nests above me & sings notes for my pillow.

I lay down. Rain dew is dusted in my tear ducts, they stick my eyes closed. The hummingbird flies inside my mouth, laying an egg underneath my tongue: it’s shaped like a larva encasing my brother.

I swallow, human, down my throat. I feel empty with the blood of my brother and sisters forming inside of me. I am mother; the sick humming breastfeeds the young that nest in my stomach. I throw up my siblings into the toilet. The hummingbird’s mouths the babies out into the nest above my head. I am alone in the silence of nature’s birth.

II. I press a ladybug lazily in the macabre canyon of my mouth.

Her wings spread along my tastebuds; she jams her head through my canines and whines.

The ladybug buries herself with my spit; throws her casket in the sea of my stomach acid.

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Divya Mehrish New York, New York

A Body Knowing My mother has seen the blood oozing from eyes of lambs— she has renounced her claim to the throne of the food chain, gums stained. In the backyard, the cow gnashes her teeth, earth melting on tongue I kiss her lips—perhaps she is my mother: earth between lips, dissolving on palate, green aging into brown my mother becomes earth—twigs for fingers, eyelashes—grass Her uterus is the ocean and I’m thirsting to be reborn into a body knowing only how to devour itself

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Miscarry When I asked my mom why we eat newborn sheep, God was the answer.

God, selective murderer, I pray to you, for the infants who can’t belong to this world, not even to stomachs waiting to swell. I had an older brother, once— one chromosome too many in the rainbow karyotype. A satchel of scarlet— my mom’s body, dad’s, merging in boiling—animal consumed by aching uterus. Life excreted into white porcelain. The juxtaposition of red and white. Mom, what if that was God’s sign? Even He knew, then, that some bodies slide against each other, oozing poison

82

Sofia Miller San Diego, California

Spiritual Farewell to the Neighborhood THE CANYON Once, when we were kids, we would explore the canyon. Always, we held the fear of rattlesnakes in our chests. There was a tree with a tire swing, off limits. An Albertson’s bag crumpled by wind was stuffed with ratty clothes. We thought the bag belonged to a wizard. The scattered sticks were wands. The tire swing disappeared a long time ago. We can’t remember if we found the rope frayed, or if the whole thing simply vanished, and the wizard was a wizard.

CUL-DE-SAC #1 The children back then piled into the cul-de-sac, expanding its belly. One year, a child was devoured whole. This time, we could see the frayed remains. A crunch, a squeal (not from the child, who had been reaching for a football), and vomit. The football, with his name sharpied on, rolled out from beneath the car unscathed.

At the hospital—where the child was born—the father spirals the football upward, and the son isn’t there to catch it. Up and up and up he throws, until the mother says if you keep doing that, you’ll drop the football on his head and he’ll get hurt. As if there was anything left of his body to be hurt.

STREETLIGHT, CAMINO DEL SUR To get back home, we would pass the streetlight, which has the audacity to call itself a streetlight, across the high school. The air was thick with cars and moms who don’t see kids walking. We could have drowned in the stuffiness of invisibility, but we didn’t, at least not then on the crosswalk. The children don’t jaywalk anymore.

They wait their turn, as long as it takes.

MAILBOX, CUL-DE-SAC #2 To grab the mail, you have to walk all the way down the second cul-de-sac (there is a second cul-desac). Here the children are even rasher, faster, unafraid of what might happen at the foot of the winding slope, with flesh so exposed in their defiance against knee and elbow pads. Or perhaps they don’t think of what might happen, has happened.

The parents do that job for them, the mothers calling their chicks to the nest of the ringed sidewalk.

THE MAGNOLIA TREE IN MY FRONT LAWN The magnolia trees of our lawns also vomit, though the contents are nicer than recycled lumps of cinnamon raisin bagels. The petals, vanilla-velvet, float to patchy grass. The muddled brown only seeps in later, spreading a dry husk across the flower.

Everyone else maintains a lawn without the husks. On mine, that is all there is. The dining table is no longer a dining table because nobody eats there. What’s left of something once you strip the name away? What’s left of a person once you peel back the skin and reveal only carcass?

On my perfectly made bed, there is a football, placed there by my mother. My father steals it away. He steps onto the street with slippers on and chucks the football at the side of his car, denting the driver side door first. The ball rebounds, landing in his gut, and he slams it next onto the driver side door, again, again, again, thud, thud, thud, until he crawls around to the front and craters the hood, or tries to, right where the cavity sat on the other car.

My mother leans out of the front door and deadpans, “Dinner is ready.” She doesn’t ask about the craters. I don’t think she even notices them.

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THE STREET SIGN BEFORE THE STOPLIGHT AT THE NEIGHBORHOOD CORNER My street unhinges itself agape like a baleen whale, though most of the plankton miss the mouth, plankton encapsulated by steel and wheels and rubber of tire tread that squeals, and the people in the cars who don’t see the entrance sign, a timid beige within the planter, until it’s too late.

The cars will wrap around the median like a conveyor belt, stuffed into a red light before the U-turn, and, swimming in the buzz of chatter with their passenger or dancing to some pop song, will make the same mistake over again. After having entered the street, they will dance, still, and turn into the cul-de-sac. And there will be a crunch, a squeal, and some vomit. I will be frayed, until the wind crumples my body like a bag, and the flattened football is later slammed into the trash, and I, too, disappear.

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Tomás Miriti Pacheco Columbus, Ohio

Little Brother Complex His shoes are old but you can’t tell By looking you have to ask and watch How his face twitches and his fists clench Around the word yeah like steam from a volcanic vent His shoes are old because his whole world is made up Of mountains: basketball feels like walking on glass Gripping double rims a poem is an ocean Of angry red ink his shoes are old there was a stain On them once but he bleached it and told no one Ask for him by his name it’s his north Star he can only see his name and the places he calls home and Everything else is opaque and steep If he has stopped moving don’t stop next to him You’re in his way he only needs a second To breathe before he keeps going you can’t see where he’s going There are whole worlds of loneliness on his feet When I see him we make eye contact we don’t presume To know each other I notice his Eyes pointing down when he looks up I meet them with a nod I turn towards the bus stop ask where You headed I don’t look at him he says the hell Outta here I know what’s haunting him It sits flickering like a broken screen on his shoulder Before crawling into his shoes as he leaves I wonder if he knows he’s become an uncle That his nephew looks to him like a pillar In the morning light I wonder if he sees him Like a star glimmering and young Just come into view

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Austin Morris Timonium, Maryland

Borrowed Ground I The scions of nature’s dominion tower with impunity, Dwarfing constructs of slate and steel regardless of size.

Green is the chaos’ common guise, with rogues displaying their turned prismatic cloaks.

Each is shaped to asymmetric perfection: Each blade bends towards its own path, as does every stem and branch, Yet they all sway to a common rhythm, Unheard and undisturbed.

They are beautiful in a way we can appreciate, And in another the extent of which we may never see.

We might be awed over each facet to no end And still never scratch the surface Of the Unstable, Regimented Perfection Of our matron and theirs, Present in the question: Why? We are born to an era where that elusive knowledge, That state of truly knowing, Will reveal itself agonizingly through Generations unimagined.

I know there is an answer, but for now I am content To fall for the former beauty And guess wildly towards the latter.

II And just as their unseen eyes look Down on the fabrications of man, So too does that judgement pass To the creators of such

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Monstrous marvels.

They sway, and stare, And know.

Despite the elegance: There is a haughty, cold understanding to the Gaze of grass, Of sapling, sun and sky.

For they know That this subservience is but a blink.

That every stone and stick employed retains itself, No matter its application.

That ours is borrowed air which we breathe, Borrowed time which we wane, Borrowed ground which we break.

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Matt Mortell Denver, Colorado

Cyrus Delano You experience a cemetery twice, Cyrus, once on the entry and once upon rotation.

A strange assortment of tombstones framed by cloying holly trees pursued by corvids doing what corvids do cry 6 foot under. The sky is simply beginning to open up.

There’s a rock jutting out from the grass where dirt has compressed in its natural form: Cyrus Delano died August 19th, 1888 aged 2 years-old, a human, a child, the consumed and consumer as all bodies are, packed into the soil, imitation soil, like resin fillings.

Cyrus climbed to the cutlery of wildlife and dipped his toes into the sand, took off his clothes and sank into it, each grave wearing the blemishes of age like all bodies do.

Bruised, robbed, and labeled is Cyrus.

The inscriptions are turned up (skyward) so souls can read their legacies from heaven.

On one side of the cemetery, you can hear construction.

The other cries of redemption.

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Malina Nelson Arlington Virginia

On Melted Butter Flies On melted butter flies Cluster like mold In their saltwater summer Egg-yolk sunshine Yellow pool Yum they think so gross I say I scream Actually who left The butter out Sideways the cat comes Why does she slink so Close to the linoleum Tiles she answers when she Yaks brown goo I’m sick please Help me Mom calls to ask If I’ve taken out the trash.

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Madison Newman Chardon, Ohio

An Ode to a Gambier Summer Alone here, sitting on a scratchy stone bench, cold and wet underneath my thighs, the air smells of moist new earth and the rain-stained grays of gravel.

Among the greens and yellows and mud—moss climbing tree trunks like mold on brown bread crusts— that bloom in multitudes around me, I’d like to be angry at the hum of the passing cars and the growl of the radiator hidden behind a weathered fence, like the birds, who chase each other with shrill screams from their nests. But the sloping branches are reaching fingers, their tendrils zagging like lightning, weighted down with clumps of fuchsia buds.

Magenta petals pirouette, a single white prima donna among them.

Spring-aged purple flowers wilt as old women who flutter their wide green fans in a matinee audience.

I pay no attention to the small black fly that wanders next to me; I am in his home now— I wouldn’t want to be impolite.

Everything is wiser than me, somehow; the twisted trees hold secrets they’d like to tell, only if I could listen carefully enough.

I look up and try to hear them Whispering— the sky is light with clouds, a tame family gathering of angelic blue-gray.

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Sylvia Nica Cincinnati, Ohio

The Grapefruit Tree (Excerpt) And then as if awaking from a dream, he returned to the grapefruit tree. Quiet, calm.

It was still, in the cool night. Shafts of moonlight filtered through its black leaves; its bark was orange in the streetlight. The roots from its base were strong, though thin, and its buds unfurled to an unresponsive night.

When Creed looked back, he saw dark patches where his feet had broken through the dew, and he looked at the grapefruit tree. He felt sanguine. The cool night had calmed the shaking. The humid breath had washed the pepper, a red sheen, from his eyes. His plum veins were still. And his heart, it beat so smoothly, so rhythmic.

He looked at the grapefruit tree, all revulsion faded, and only saw its leaves. Thin little fruits had begun to form at the tips of its branches. And as he watched those fruits cascaded to gold, ripening like a sunset, and the bark morphed into a woman with red hair, and green eyes, and pimpled skin. She was soft, and round, and her cheeks were puffy and teeth golden. And Creed noticed her breasts, yes, soft and round and puffy, and he noticed the delicate V of her waist, yes, he saw the curves and the swollen skin and the red lips and the vulture nose. And he saw her body as a vessel, yes, but more, and it pooled, like moonlight from a tree, kindness deep in her eyes and her calm breaths like rustling leaves and her sharp eyes—sweet, and acrid, and intelligent, and tasting right for only the right man.

And Creed sat in the lawn and realized he was that man, yes. He was the man. He saw her pimpled skin, her sharp eyes, her puffy cheeks, and he felt no crazed lust, no excitement rushing through his veins. Only calm, and a certainty that he would have to be patient.

In the silence of the cul-de-sac, Creed was alone with the grapefruit tree and his quiet certainty. And when the streetlights shut off, and the orange became pools of gold, he smoothed the dew from the leaves and stood up.

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Awuor Onguru Nairobi, Kenya

Kodhi(Seeds) “Affairs are now soul size.” —Christopher Fry, A Sleep of Prisoners i Huoyo What sings in the trees when no one is watching?

Who waits at the household’s doorstep? ii Chiro sound of bottle caps as they whizz in the marketplace sound of simsim as it is shaken into sugar-treats sound of posho mill as it prepares to feed ten thousand sound of dust as it covers eyelids, fake Harmattan sound of dust as it covers thick skin sound of radios that play late night Ramogi sound of women singing along sound of dance that cannot be shown sound of moving slightly in a chair sound of left-right- left-right- left right- wiggle sound of wiggle wiggle jiggle jiggle wiggle secret dance sound of the drumbeat that elicits movement sound of the drumbeat that forces you iii Koth This well like most wells holds five kinds of water: sugared salty tasteless bitter red like blood This well is the head iv Nam :Water taking hold of water. of lake ice and we have now left the place Where we used to flock like red bishops.

Then widowed and ashamed.

Then stripped and frozen.

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v Huwege slithers Through the millet fields like a poisonous smoke.

It creeps up into the trees Like a deadly Lichen.

It sends them into a frenzy.

It drives them out of their homes.

It takes away and turns them Into ghosts and shells.

It opens their hearts And scoops up goodness.

The Rain. The Dance. The Water. The Joy vi Dhako: Weche. solid women. lie in the naked grass to wait

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Davita Onyemauwa Bronx, New York

The River And The Bucket She walks down To the sandy river of Nigeria Her feet burn underneath The boiling sand that Remind her of life The blue gigantic plastic Bucket sits on her head Carried down Like a child yearning to be free PLUMP! Goes the blue bucket When it sits near the river The river full of brownish Color but still all they have The river provides comfort To the bleeding sun of the Not so long days She pours water into the bucket With each drop her mind Wanders off The memories of the days she wants to forget Leave her head like a floating cloud Going to join the sky again The feeling of being at peace with What’s around you She hears her mother calling her name And she reluctantly balances The heavy blue bucket on her head She whispers, “Good Bye” To the lonesome river Tomorrow will come again She will meet the river once more

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Lilia Rose Osborne Chicago, Illinois

translation state Okdat; it was from a film that failed; I couldn’t get enough intellect, or a crew. Choppy.

Calculative in my translations I can always click an aesthetic over a word or idea, but never carry it out. Ahgg-Splejhy.

It, erred, did not work. ^KAOnja|wah–– but I forgot the word. Ground to dust, it must’ve been stale bread, jagged cut, crumbled in a basket until the meaning had slipped its hold and fallen out.

The Hammer The hammer was, as it always had been, with a clink . the hammer was also as it always had been by the sky . this guy knows how to put on a nasty show, quite gnatty. This guy knows how to hammer in home with trees, ever so delighting . lightning never . was the problem so it goes, but the hammer likes his flurry of . misconceived ideas that stick, stuck, fungal muck. The hammer tells us to . go but, we are not quite so bläktic as to believe the drench and the soiled leaves are all we could possibly see, if we do wait longer. The hammer . who twists the trees into pencils . is one of a kind, quite really. The hammer who likes to tear strips of the trees off and into bacon fares quite good, quite really . quiet inside and dismal, we wait now for his sudden feast . just quiet, or quite quiet or really quiet or completely silent and nonetheless, they are all different apiece . he says as he lays the platter of pencil upon the table, the hammer and the food . the same and yet the different . the different and yet . the same. Do you like the bacon? Yes, yes. Quite good, thanks. The fungus is nothing like a clover, flower but not as pretty . the fungus is like the silence, a really quiet or a dismal quiet amongst the . jaggedness of the storm. You hammer it in, he says, but you know to get this guy more . feast and lightning, gnatty gnatty divide in the difference, real but also fake. Now, enough of the flurry and flare; grab you a hammer and wait for the clink.

Sticks They were strong, sadly, like three sticks slammed against a stone; they were unfortunately bold with brimstone courage laid in skewers across their lips; sly, their fingers bent into mountain, their watch a desert, their eyes a shuttered mansion. Black as they were turmeric, their minds were fire crash and boom.

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They were the that were, and those that couldn’t be. They were place.

I thought this at my window’s wall. The day was a summer tune; it kissed into my lips. I knew these things as true, but thoughts that bring no actions bring nothing to insist. My own mouth twitched. I was with the plants of my room, their crinkle buds and rumpled greens bearing more vigor than my own sister’s hand, chained to a stone someplace far away. I felt an urge to speak.

“Are those plants older?”

A foreign voice. My hands fiddled with my fingers, eyes now cast out at sea. My window’s wall was tall and narrow, the window long and lean. It gave a grand view of the earth somedays, otherdays more weak.

“They’re younger,” I said to her, head still turned out to the sky. Her. I knew it was a her because I could clearly hear her voice and the voice was a she. I did not know the she. I did not know her at all. Strange. I did not know but still I answered. I don’t know why I did if I didn’t know her. I had an urge to speak. I spoke.

“They look old but,” my shoulders shrugged half-heartedly. “They sprout tall.” Too tall. Too tall, really.

Too tall to really grow at all which leaves the room unchanging. Dull and slack. It lacks.

I waited for her reply. The room felt like a mountain, silent large and decomposed. I wished she would reply. The sound of speak sounds so pleasant when your thoughts are always dancing.

Black Jets I love the freedom of flight; to feel the flick of my wings as they whip back, forth, back and forth forth. To feel the cool in flight, to feel a strange feeling when I fly, like my body’s being brushed. To feel a tingle in my body. I am strong; I feel strong and I carry the strength with me, wherever I go, so that I never have to feel afraid. I am the predator and not the prey. I love the view, how I can be large or small. I can be the sky… I can be the dirt.

In the sleek jet that is my body, I can race through the greens in minutes, reach my fellows and attack my hive.

Attack. I love to attack, even my others. It is my culture, my kindred spirit, my war-game and my feed. I travel alone, almost always. But I might zip down the green with two others or more with criminal intensity. The others and I will fly violent press, sleek black jets surrounded by the lulling drone of our own buzzing bodies.

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Aanika Pfister Chicago, Illinois

Republican Motherhood for the Modern Man Senator Robert Haley was a moral man, a stubborn man, his supporters might even say a righteous man. He was 6 ft 1, and very proud to be so. He was the father of a boy soon to be a man of his image. He cherished southern values. He loved his country deeply.

Senator Robert Haley believed in sleep starting at 8:00 PM and his wife and son were to follow suit.

Senator Robert Haley also believed in at least 8 hours of sleep and was surprised at his body when he shook awake somewhere between 1:00 and 2:00 AM. His lower back thrummed with a dull ache, funny because the last heavy thing he lifted had been a box of confidential papers into a neighboring office. His secretary had wanted to help but he told her she was far too pretty for work like that, he had his intern lug the rest. He ran a ringed hand down the rest of himself, identifying the lazy, slacker body parts from the good ones, the ones which had yet to disappoint him. The hand fell to his stomach.

Senator Haley had always had thick bones, never round enough to be snickered at, but never thin enough to be called pansy. The roundness of this belly- which could not be his- was grossly alien to him. In the dark he eyed his wife, snoring dutifully, then returned to his stomach. Bloated in a way he barely recognized his belly button poked out like the head of a thumb. It was as if an octopus had stuffed itself into a flour pot; his stomach was that pot and inside- the squirming- like a heavy nausea (a woman would know) sweaty, yellow and green, a wet and heavy thing.

Robert Haley asked for God’s forgiveness when he thought of the clinic. When he thought of his contents ripped out from him like the fat bean sprouts he dragged from between his lips, right through- through where? He was whole- a whole Man- a whole Man but. He could only think of it like a bag that when you dig through you find two burgers instead of one. An accident. His wife turned to nuzzle his ear and he thought on his son. Not an accident.

Robert had gone to a rally a month ago and told a pack of sweaty protestors that every child conceived on Earth was God’s gift. Now he fought down dry heaves, breaths contracting in and out on his bed like a wet sponge squeezed dry. This could not be God’s gift. This was retribution. Unjust, unholy, unexplained retribution, a devil cursing him, cursing his intestines and for the first time in his life he felt virginal.

When Robert’s wife wrapped a hand around him he squeaked like something very small. Her foot pried open a space for her between his legs. Her hand grasped around the hill of his warm belly, pulsing like a heart.

She held on like something possessive, her lips ghosting his ear like she caught him, like he was prey she’d cook and kiss for.

“Hey baby.” she said in a voice he thought had been his. “Did you feel a kick?”

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Genevieve Pfister Colombus, Ohio

How Stars Were Invented When the world was created and the universe born, God could have left the night sky blank. After all, everyone sleeps during the nighttime, so should there be anything pretty to look at if no one is there to see it?

We have the sun and the vast blue of the sky in the daytime, and yes, we have the moon to glow in the night. But there is something about those little specks of light in the dark of the night sky. They remind me of the dreams you fostered in me when I was young, Grandma, dreams that still live on in me today. The stars reassure me of the significance of those dreams, and every bright dream that anyone ever had. Dreams of peace and promise.

Of making the world a better place. Of becoming someone you admire. Of saving something inherently beautiful. All those dreams are dreamt up inside people, individual people, and the universe is so grand and massive, it’s easy to feel small in its midst. Tiny in the midst of skyscrapers and crowds and cars in traffic jams. Tiny in the midst of great planets orbiting right past you, gliding on their way. Tiny in a great sea of stars. Tiny like a star seen from Earth.

Perhaps stars were hung in the sky at the very dawn of time, ignited, born of hope, and strung up like old Christmas ornaments wrapped in memories and meaning, hanging and glowing there still, reminding us that while we may at times feel small (I know I do), or seem tiny in the midst of the world, we are so full of light and love and dreams. We are so full of meaning and purpose and imagination. We humans can glow like stars, letting our passions light us up and send us soaring to new heights. We can light up every dark sky; we can forge new, brilliant horizons; we can bring hope to the blind, black abyss of chaos and despair. We humans can ignite the world, if only we let what’s inside us glow and take flight, if only we let it soar higher and burn brighter than hate and doubt and the axe hanging over our heads. And we don’t have to be like the sun or the moon, grand and dominating over all. We just have to let ourselves be stars, content to seem small, but burn brighter than anyone ever expected, and dazzle the world for an eternity or two.

Dreamers & Children Asphalt grass stone all Baking in the sun Cold turns to hot as children play Dreams are in the air if you can smell them Each one a butterfly or a bird Fluttering, forgotten, unseen by all but you Go write their stories Have an adventure, have lots If you don’t try, you’ll never know Just follow their stories as you author your own Kindred spirits make the best friends Let imagination be your vessel Magic fueling you forward Never close yourself off from the world Open your eyes. Breathe.

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Pray to your God or none at all Questions surface, let them Remember how it felt to be a child?

Stay that way for awhile Take flight with the wings it gives you Unbounded, let it take you to new heights Vary your ambitions Wrap your children in your arms, a mother Xanthic flowers, stars, the things of the universe, in words You foster dreams in your children and chase your own Zip up their coats, go discover the world

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Ethan Phan Boston, Massachusetts

Young Children Await Their School Bus Chills Of mid-morning mist Excite goosebumps on the powdered skin Of school children Like concrete sidewalks Cold and rocky Ripping for the blood of fallen pedestrians.

A black-and-yellow bus rumbles in Rusted red at the wheel wells And stops.

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Gabi Potter New York, New York

A Dream is a Body Tiles in the floor upend and unfold while you shriek and scream that I’ve invaded your temple I’m wrought and rancid like spoiled peanuts I sprinkle over flowers like reverse dandelions and chuckle as I lie in the wind my petals glide like smooth cabernet wine flowing from grandfather to father to son to me to light eyes And dark hair And teeth grinding in mouth that chomps Roadmaps and silhouettes and Nosedives into canyons With the map left Up top And a body that lay at The bottom In pits Or fits Or recycled into new Body New boy Rafi not Gabi

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Not teeth or chair Or some other sign of multiplication But of winter showers and spring ice That molds and folds into Autumn clouds That skip the summer And make children cry Children Whom we idolize For dreaming For wanting For doing and not Doing For stomping on dreams and Tearing down my Future

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Justin Qiu Palo Alto, California

That One Time I Almost Drowned I can’t see anything around me: darkness everywhere. I breathe. Water fills my mouth, my lungs. I’m suffocating.

I panic.

I’m going to die.

Suddenly, I see a fairy next to me. Come here, it beckons. Before I can respond, it darts away, one moment here and another moment gone. I have no other choice, so I take a deep breath and do my best to follow the fairy, which always keeps just out of sight.

We reach a pipe and I crawl in. It takes me up, and the water flows up with me. The pipe is suffocatingly small and damp, so much so that I feel like I’m still drowning: one…two…three…twenty hours must’ve passed since I started crawling. The fairy is small enough to fly through, always one step ahead of me. I think I’m going to die and so I give up, but the water carries me along, like a piece of driftwood in an overwhelming current. A light shines in the distance, shrouded in a dense mist but flickering as if gesturing me to come closer. I crawl towards it; I reach it, and the fairy floats by.

It brings me to the sewers, which carry the putrid smell of rotten fish floating on a lake. The heat of the summer only exacerbates the smell. The fairy, seemingly playful now, does a twirl and leads me up. One two three rungs, and a couple hundred more later, I reach the top and pop open the manhole cover. Light fills my eyes and blinds them for a while. My feet bring me out.

I’m blasted with a torrent of icy air. Feet slushing through the snow, I walk and walk and walk and walk, yet I feel no chill. The fairy is here for me, but the streets are deserted. I walk around the corner, and see the playground my mother and I used to play in. It too is covered with a clean sheet of snow, void of the defacing footprints we always used to leave. A single swing rocks on and on, as if waiting for a playmate. Around the next corner is my house, in which I peer. Mom! I’m home! But I see a family of strangers, eyes open but faces blank.

The fairy urges me to go on, so I keep walking.

I walk to a funeral. There’s a group of people with their heads down, crying. There is one woman with dark blonde hair and green eyes who I almost recognize. Her hair is shorter and her eyes are dead, absent of emotion.

I run towards her but the fairy drags me back with impossible strength. We have one more stop, it whispers.

I’m led to a lake where I used to fish. It’s a beautiful day, with lush green trees and sparkling water. Fish are splashing lazily, and there are a lot of them--more than I’ve ever seen. The fairy flies above me and I look into the lake. As I see my dead body, my world fades to black. The water flows downstream again. The fairy smiles.

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Charlotte Roberts Greenfield, Massachusetts

Peabody P. Barry (1952-2045) Raised on meat and watching his father’s razor burn. Pneumonia at 8. Met Rankar Brothers at 11. Watched them push a car into a lake at 12. Watched them play Normandy in the sugar-cane. Slow now, sounds like it might be time for him to go now. Worried he sounds like a dirty record and hot gravel. Hates when his shorts ride up his inner thighs.

Jackle (2003-redacted) Likes raisins more than grapes. Third floor hallway hooligan Hark St. street racer (praying)man(tis) eater. Lemon chewer and puss(y) artist. Probably tone deaf. Holed up in the Peabody Slammer after pleading not-guilty to crimes of crushing. A Freshwater Zealot who 10/10 will drip her wet bathing on the backseat of YOUR car.

Peabody - Thursday July 8, 2019. Night Tonight, P. Barry will not go to the public pool until after it closes at 8:30. P. Barry met Megan when she was born, and he asks her about Johnny from College and her stand up comedy.

“Comedy is not going well,” Megan says, leaning against the back of Tully’s General on a hot day in June.

Megan leaves the padlock open on the chain link fence of the Elory Circle Public Pool. P.B. leaves his car parked across the street next to the abandoned lot, and walks with his towel across the road. Jack Rankar told him once when they were young that this road was made of lava. P.B takes off his flip flops and the tar of Elory Circle is warm and soft from the settled sun. He sees the trees in shadow. The wind turns them like a patient in thin hospital sheets. Fat handicapped giants.

P.B. watches, and the pool water’s small waves catch white light. He places his towel on a plastic deck chair and removes his shirt. Slow clouds in the sky tonight, P.B. thinks. There are no insects this close to the water. P.B. slides into the water all at once upon a time there lived water women that kiss and eat his ankles and collect his leg hair up in their arms.

P.B. sees himself from far away, as if he is standing on the other side of the fence, across Booker Rd. His splash looks like an interim moon. Then it eats itself back up into the pool, taking bits of the night with it: the voice of a mosquito and a hair from a squirrel.

P.B. bobs in the water for a little before getting his hair wet. The water burrows into his armpits of fruits held in my mouth even after the fruit is gone, P.B. visualizes for a second in the pool. Mouth full of seeds. P.B. spins, a little, so the pool water pulls backward on his body. Black and white ripples play up his skin.

P.B. is loud and dripping when he lifts his arm out of the water. Crash, he thinks, all I’ve ever wanted is to fall messy and foamy onto you like this my Deer, once, on the side of the road.

Jackle had just left Robbie’s house on Hark Street. It was nearing eleven thirty, and she was pawing her way down the street light spot lighted pavement of Robbie’s road. That night, she’d sleep at her grandfather’s on River Road. She did not have the bandwidth to walk past the men outside Tully’s General. She had a dress in her fist that she’d left at Robbie’s the week before. She was wondering at what time of the night dew starts collecting on the grass.

A thing about Robbie is that the other night at a party they had told Jackle they’d like liked her when she was eleven. Eleven was a while ago, but Jackle was convinced she was actually the same, and had just gotten better at emails and brushing her teeth, which should make Robbie like her more. Jackle had smiled at Robbie, who was sitting across the circle. She hadn’t known what to do with her hands. She’d almost made them into a 104

heart at Robbie, which would have been bad and weird. Anyhow, now Jackle’s not sure if she’s in love with Robbie or what. But she’s not there anymore, she’s on Hark Street going to her grandfather’s.

Jackle shuffles her flip flops across the pavement, the stones sawing away at her rubber sole Rubber Soul. She wonders what Robbie would look like if they drove her car.

Jackle blows air out through her lips, and then she rolls her tongue and then she pretends to beatbox, quietly, tapping her finger on her leg. Then she is at the intersection of Clark and Hark. She’s on Clark for a block before she gets to River Road, where her grandfather’s house is. It’s late enough that there are no cars, and if she holds her breath she can hear the actual river on the other side.

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Ruby Salvatore Palmer New York, New York

To Euna/Yunah/Yoona I don’t know how to spell your name My mom told me she watched you laying on the couch With needles sticking out of your back.

You were naked.

In the morning You slept.

In the night mom taught herself to play guitar Because that was the only way for her to feel unapologetic.

Like rock music or passion or the color fuchsia.

I went through her closet a couple months ago I found You living with Sugar A stone with a silver lining.

My math teacher called it scalene I call it life But also death Because life can’t spell your name either.

You left when I came, yet we wrap our fingers in the same life You created In the incredible mediocrity of May She tells me about You because I don’t ask because I don’t want to watch her cough while she’s blowing the dust off a jewelry box we found in the same basement that got flooded however many years ago hurricane sandy was When we interrogated traditions to trap ourselves in flash light and in our small darkness I felt closer to You than I ever thought I could.

I try to make it funny when I tell people you’re dead.

But they just get awkward because their cheerios are still in a bowl on the windowsill.

They’re just waiting for grandpa to come home from the supermarket with almond milk.

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Natalie Sandoval Sonoma, California

The Only Human Thing That Belongs to the Future Monday rises Like a giant who sleeps with one eye open And pours me a bowl of cereal.

A plastic clock opposite from me ticks Because He doesn’t know that he sounds like a cat Trying to grip a chalkboard, That he sings a crazymaking noise That will one day drive a family of radioactive spiders To turn on each other in the ashen winter, After humanity dances in reverse And businessmen grow gills, crawl back to the sea, And fall apart like sugar in a glass of water.

Humankind will be the fevered dream, Half remembered after waking, Of two headed dogs and Cannibalistic birds, And you and I won’t be around to screamI was there I lived it I am itBut the clock will be there, Ticking, To remind them.

Its design is a cruel joke, Executed by a pantheon Of dead gods.

For seconds and hours Were humanstuff.

The oceans have no need For 7:34 p.m.

Time has grown gills, crawled back to the sea, And fallen apart like salt in a glass of water.

And other, grander devices Have returned to the forests to repent.

To offer up their wooden frames, and ask their ancestorsPlease please pleaseUntil their metallic hands turn to stone, Clasped together over the 12:00 mark In prayer.

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Time is a two headed dog chasing his tails.

Time is the parts stripped from the whole.

Time is a plastic clock Running towards eternity even though, If he stopped, The world might breathe again.

I take a spoonful of cereal.

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Claire Shang New York, New York

Making Rent Your brain as a series of packed apartment units with sound bleeding in from both sides.

Learning how to filter & keep. My mother paused before telling me that after thirty years she no longer thinks in Mandarin, but now in English. Communication as product of war, as continuous competition. There is grief in translation, so even if my mother was not sad, I can be. I am sad at most losses.

Even to translate is to decide & deny the other possibilities.

I watched an interpreter in a documentary once explain his job of diplomatic dialogue.

I wish I could be professional about this.

I wish these walls were not so thin, or makeshift. Maybe they will last thirty years if I’m lucky, then flatten and fall.

In Summer I Dream About Limbs Because everything bloats and expands in the dream there is the 10,000-hand Buddha that stopped me once in a museum / Its hands fanning, upright, palm-out and grabbing me / The body loves to talk about the body even when it learns not to / Likes to imagine itself taking on new, at least partially despicable forms / After the museum I wish to petal into limbs: duplicating and fractaling becoming more of myself / If I had a thousand arms I would clap and the unison would break hearts and other things / In the statue’s presence twisting my body into an x and then into light, dreaming to be museumed, looked at, made to last.

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Catherine Sigurdsson Dallas, Texas

Voicemail If I told you I met Desire last night day, would you believe me? I met her while speed-dating. She introduced herself, smile smoldering, and her hand burned mine from the inside out.

She seemed to have no set height and no set face, the light from our table’s candle flickering and giving her new eyes, ears, brows every moment. Her hair was burning, blazing, but I couldn’t tell you the color or length, only that she wore your perfume and had a laugh that smelled like childhood ice cream.

We talked mostly about her, only enough about myself for decency. Did you know she has a car collection, that she owns clothing lines and brands and homes in more places than I have fingers? I should have been able to tell from her dress, it was cut like the too-expensive one you saw last Christmas.

Her interests were wide, a hidden dream assortment: scuba diving, home design, baking, writing for the sake of writing with no intent to study its form. My trading card collection paled in comparison, but she still nodded and asked some questions.

More importantly, she saw my ring. Asked why I’m here if I’m clearly married. Tied down. I told her about us.

She understood, completely, despite my brief summary of our parts. In return, she told me why she was here, but her words weren’t words but feelings engraved in my mind, burned there like symbols on keychains. She wanted something. To not be an accessory between people and things and people. I felt the fire in my throat as she told me her own desires, impossibly hot, like the core of the earth itself.

She talked for the last few minutes. We left together, and I walked her to her car, everything in me drawn to her as if she were the sun, hanging off my arm. Her car looked like yours, but I could be wrong – once she was in, it was as if the streetlights were pale and the moon stripped. I couldn’t speak, throat burnt and arm blistering under fabric, so I waved as she drove off. My car felt like following hers, my bumper pulling the direction she drove, as if she’d left a burning trail of magnets falling from the trunk of her car. The spell broke as I passed your friend’s house. Your car was there.

Millstone I spend my long days hot in silence And rhythm as I tend to my harvest Of bodies and souls and grind bones Into milk and flour for pantries People stock and waste and spend On the novelty of my bread and work Idly my hands laze actively for time Is of the essence time sustains persists Turns bone to dust and dust rising In bread like someone alive In a too-shallow grave With grass erupting and climbing no cares For people and control and death Can be a sanctuary as old bones rest

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Grace Song Great Neck, New York

Dinner with E.D. On the TV screen, a news reporter was speaking about a rare event. The full moon had moved into the closest position it could be near the Earth, and tonight, the moon would seem like a goddess arising from slumber, clothed in a flowing, white gown.

It was only a few weeks after I left for good. In my parents’ house, I took down the posters on the wall and folded my bedsheets and threw all the pictures in the garbage. I took only the things I needed. Then I drove far away, until I felt as if I had finally escaped something terrible, until I felt that nothing from home could ever find me here.

I was measuring the water for the rice cooker when a soft knock brushed my door. She came with no one and nothing. Not even a watch on her wrist or a bag slung over her shoulder. Dark, bouncy hair framed her face, and she wore black-rimmed glasses that hid her eyes. She looked like any random, normal person I’d pass on the street.

“I know you,” she said, “and you know me.” I stared at her. “Call me E.D. Or Eddie. Or Xia. I don’t really care what you call me, only that you acknowledge me.”

As if by instinct, I knew what she wanted. “I didn’t prepare anything for dinner,” I told her.

She brushed my lie aside with a wave, and manicured nails blurred my vision. “I’m not expecting a seven-course meal. Just whatever you have.”

She told me she knew where the dining room was, but she took her time walking there, even though the hallways were empty. There were no pictures to look at. No memories to recall. Instead, cracked paint hung overhead, and belongings cluttered the floor—a college diploma, a wrinkled birthday card, a swatch of red lipstick. The walls needed to be repainted into a shade that was less yellow and more white. A plumber was coming on Tuesday to examine the water faucets and the shower head.

In the dining room, boxes still taped shut piled on one end of the table. A chandelier hung from above. Outside, the lowering sun stirred the neighborhood cats awake.

“Cozy,” she said, sitting down.

That night, I made rice with chicken, potato, and tomato sauce. Leftover greens mixed with pulled pork were microwaved. I sat across from E.D. I never had a stranger in my house, and when I was younger, I always sat alone at lunch.

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know if I could say anything.

E.D. brightened when she saw the food and began filling her plate with rice. She reached for the sauce.

“I hate chicken,” she told me. “Never liked it. I love pulled pork, though.” But she never touched the plate of leftovers.

E.D. said she traveled around the world often, so she filled the silence with her stories. They sounded brilliant and adventurous, except they never made any sense and left my head spinning by the time she was done.

One was about a cat who traveled to Egypt—or was it Antarctica?—to save the Italian president—or a famous YouTube cat—from an assasination plot. Somewhere in there, I caught the words “hamburgers”, “freight train”, and “gnorthogs”. I didn’t ask what the last word meant. The second story was about a billionaire who sprouted blue chest hair—or a beard—because he robbed the nearby bank.

I asked her about business. She told me about the struggles, how complicated everything was, how meticulously planned everything had to be: how many pieces one should cut meat up into. How many peas one should eat. How many times one should gag before finally throwing up. What kind of exercises were deemed “most effective” at burning fat. How wide fingers should be. ½ inch? ¼ inch?

When a person’s eye color should start to fade. When a person’s bones should surface from the inside, the body hollowing, as if there were holes. How long one should be in denial until finally, at last, she has to be sent to the hospital or therapy or a treatment center.

“It’s hard for me to let them go,” she admitted, playing with her food. My plate was cold now. And empty. Outside, night hung like a moist breath. I wondered if the moon was out yet. If it was big and round, like the melons from my mother’s backyard. I blinked away the images, dissolving them into shapeless colors.

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“I grow attached to things easily,” E.D. was saying. “When doctors take them away, I miss them.” I nodded, as if I was her best friend.

She offered to do the dishes afterwards. I declined. We protested. I won. I walked her to the door. She took her coat from the hanger and slipped on her wedges.

“Thank you for your hospitality. It was nice to finally meet you.” Before she turned around to leave, she smiled.

“Tell your sister I said hello. She talked about you often.”

Then she stepped outside. I watched as she seemed to walk right into the mouth of darkness.

I began washing the dishes, washing the memory of the night away. I polished the forks and knives until they glimmered silver. I scrubbed the pans until they gleamed charcoal. I left her plate last. When I picked it up, I held it in my hands, warm against my fingers. It was shiny and white, untouched, like the moon, as if she never ate anything at all.

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Vivien Song Pleasanton, California

Flambéed Duck Pâté I have a recurring dream where I am in Paris, atop the Sacré-Coeur Basilica, watching the French sun die beyond the horizon in a kaleidoscope of oranges while below, a woman croons “La Vie En Rose.” In the dream, I sip champagne as if it were ambrosia, honey, mead, and spend the rest of my days unravelling the European streets. They are adorned with balconies of peonies and I think I could be happy. In all the iterations of Great Expectations that I write for sophomore English, I remember Miss Havisham as happy.

I suppose my name—Vivien—is European enough. Nothing like the staccato of my father’s yu song, or the drumbeat melody of my mother’s huang jie yi, and perhaps one day, when I marry a rugged European businessman, no airline hostess will blink even once when she sees my name on the passenger list to France. Businessman and I will smoke cigars from Havana in Barcelona or Prague and fancy ourselves cosmopolitan.

My parents had the same idea. China, after all, was still reeling from the aftershocks of the Great Leap Forward, and too many had set their sights on mei guo, beautiful country, America—my parents included. There was not enough time for glamor. Shortly after they first immigrated to America, they met in Texas as grad students: one a computer scientist, the other a chemical engineer. By the time my mother was pregnant, my parents had it all: a car, a house, a child, the American Dream. So they decided to cauterize their wounds with a certain je ne sais quoi and named me Vivienne—that pretentious French name with the long, drawn-out enne, accompanied by a soft lilt of the tongue, in the spirit of Vivienne Westwood. There I was, Vivienne Song.

Perhaps they saw themselves, their worldliness, as falling on a spectrum: on one end was Cao Cao and Wu Ze Tian, short, clipped, and monosyllabic; on the other was Mathilde de la Mole and Lucie Manette, strained against syllabic confines and promising a destiny that could transcend language. Perhaps they hoped I would grow up to be a singer, clothing myself in a beautiful name, an Adila Sedraïa transmuting herself into Indila through alchemy. Perhaps they prayed my hair, darker than the bitterest absolution, would turn flaxen under the arcane glittering of Parisian streetlights.

In the end, they lobbed off the ne, leaving me simply Vivien. Said the universe favors the soft weeping of glaciers, not the entropy of firecrackers. Realized they could not be American, much less European. Said we need some time; the next child will be different.

And it has been so many years, and I do not mean to sound bitter, and you must know by now that I never finished Great Expectations, read no further than the first section of Pip’s life, learned too late of Miss Havisham’s graceless self-immolation. She was no Bouazizi, just as I am no Piaf, but of course, it was only my aversion to grands bonheurs and éclairs that created this chasm. Nothing else.

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Sarah Street Atlanta, Georgia

Gun Silence When asked if I could shoot a gun, I stared hollowly at my grandfather and thought of an answer that he would understand through cemented ears70 years clogged from words going in and never coming out words like Class and Race Black, White, Indiandifferent from Native Americanand I responded that it’s not a question of whether I could shoot a gun because yes, I could release the trigger, and he would look at me like war with scars buttoning my face and pockets where the bullet planted itself my tongue carved into a spear my mouth my weapon but that wasn’t my answer because the question should have been if I would shoot a gun.

I can treat it with love because guns are like us and they shrivel and cracklike a whip cutting thick slices of airif they aren’t handled like FRAGILE is stamped on its cheek.

Gun violence, no, gun silence, yes, rings clearer in my head.

They are too easily abused like children churning through foster homes or an adulterer’s confidence in his marriage but a gun is a thing not a toy and it doesn’t ask to kill or inflictpain or relief or something in betweenit simply does what you want it to.

So yes, I could shoot a gun but no, I would not shoot a gun because I have too much love to give.

Rain Check I woke up to rain today, clouds swollen with water they stole from the ground – slatternly unearthing shame and guilt we so carefully buried deep in soil. We hid these things in graves carved with our names and stepping outside I let the rain saturate my hair and my face, maybe because I wanted to feel such a sterile pain, or maybe because I just wanted to feel something.

The rain washed away the me from

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yesterday and the me tomorrow and the me in 10 years so that I could just be me today. The me from the past and the future is gone, collecting maggots on top of rust and iron because she was and she will be strong. Time is a cunning companion; I will still look like myself tomorrow but not in 5 days nor in 5 years because age flows through me like a parasite rather a medicine because I have miles before I sleep today.

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Zach Terrillion Westport, Connecticut

Ghost Light We stand in shadow A cavern of passions and pressures It is black as night Rows of seats, an invisible audience Who witness the greatest performance Not of masks or masquerades But that of within A primitive curtain call Of primal desires And fears A single light A lonely spirit Fills the cave It exposes one’s deepest emotions Spreading enlightened wings To a captive audience A warrior, The spirit keeps others away A guardian, The spirit embraces those lost A nurturer, The spirit sets one’s path A guide, It is a light after all Hope it exudes Like moths we can be attracted Desire, we fall into a ghostly grip Or perhaps a loving mother’s hand When our mortal parts are dust Blown to other voids Still, the light stands Always keeping watch In a realm of darkness

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Chaya Tong San Francisco, California

Amputee I know that nature can make things Imperfectly perfect Like patches of uneven grass Or the crooked grooves of bark Yet still I wonder if A tree where stub replaces branch Feels incomplete As an one-armed man Wonder what we have done They have done If they felt like doctors with saws Finished with surgery Success When they were done Or maybe if they merely drove away A tree’s arm in their trunk And turned the radio up on high

Waving I used to think that Silence was deafening that it crashed over my ears like ocean Waves hello Farewell maybe later You’ll know what I mean doesn’t the sky stretch forever perhaps I will see the sea Looks like a reflection of the sky rolling Clouds that can be angry Waves Although A wave is a silent greeting

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Lara Treisman Los Angeles, California

At a Museum I Saw a Photo of a Sliced Open Grapefruit Fruit yields to friction and molds to imposed forms. Open wounds sealed with lace—so many glass bodies there. Mutable. Easily broken.

How do you polish what has already fogged?

Untouched glass is pure, the empty vase lusted for by flowers.

I see stained glass-windows between legs, taken in lopsided waves. When I first learned how to bring gods to their elbows I almost cried. I felt their clumsy weights, sweaty faces. Breath on the rear windshield.

And then nothing.

Someone once told me to glue my ankles together, peel flesh in exchange for bone.

An ugly parade of eyes— I feel like a muzzled show-dog with shiny ribbons neatly tied around my neck. Look up.

The ceiling stares back— a fruit of labor withering on its delicate tray.

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Ants I didn’t feel like driving so I walked home it was late urban life was burning men stumbled in jagged spirals drenched in the red and blue glow of open and closed signs it was late I kept walking there was a huge glass building in front of me with a helicopter pad on its roof if there is a god he lives there I kept walking a few men whistled at me and said something about my legs or my ass or my hands I don’t remember I kept walking I left my friends at the party I should have felt guilty but I didn’t one was over the toilet the other dancing in clots of sweat and light and bass I left because the room felt like a colony of ants bearing loads twice their size bandaids and fake eyelashes slid off wet skin on cheeks I did not want to flush myself I was no tip-toed tap dancing angel I saw a dead bluebird on the road half open rotting like old fruit covered in ants

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Aaron Varghese Hilliard, Ohio

To her To her: Why can’t I make you burn to ash in the back of my throat and spit you out? Why can’t I let you out of my head?

I pushed you down into my brain stem, making my experience of you visceral as a heartbeat Though You still emerge.

You can still crawl your way behind my irises and peek out my pupils when I can’t sleep or stop thinking.

You are my raw, festering, pus-filled and leaking wound opened afresh when the dressings are undone.

By all rights you shouldn’t be there. You should be nonexistent. The end of our interactions was met without bombast or grandeur, and I will be the only one writing about it. I think of bacon grease sizzling on an unlit stove.

It’s the “what if ” that remains to haunt me at the back of my mind.

It is rare to have this kind of “what if ”, one so clearly defined.

It haunts your days, making you beg to die so you can ask the higher power that awaits you about what could have been.

I can’t forget you.

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Bryan Wang Sunnyvale, California

[I Wish it Would] I wish the thought would really count.

I wish bracelets with Bully-Free or Stop Racism were more than just jewelry.

I wish the face we turn like a badge Did not matter, and I wish the Heart is not satisfied by a picture.

I wish wars were fought for peace and Not for more wars. I wish love was not an Easy Iloveyou but an I, Love, You. That Wishing was saying, and saying was doing, and Doing was legacy.

I stutter when I raise these wishes though I wish I didn’t. I wish I knew how to Wish with words and maybe it’s like Praying with my eyes open, hoping to see An angel’s back.

Where do wishes go? What rocket do They fly on? How fast or slow does The sun breath when it’s being chased by A billion dreams? I wish it would Slow down to be caught.

Then I wish I could dream, though I know it’s a house of cards. I cannot Fall asleep because falling is down And down is despair–it is nightmare–when Only they come true.

I wish I could stay awake forever.

I wish mortality was only a word In black-type Garamond. And I wish So was hatred and so was pain and so All things did not have To suffer.

I wish the thought would really count.

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Ocean Wei Washington, Missouri

a cage named “body” I sit in the valley of light between two seas of shadows made of leaves and broken pieces of green veins. Blood dripping like raindrops on morning roses a passion so fierce and fiery turning the earth into a furnace too bright. too hot. too obstinate.

I rest in an oven full of sunshine that bakes me to four hundred degrees and the rock I sit on is cooler than the long sleeve I wear in a blistering chamber because I don’t want to show my chest even when it burns like an iron on a red stove I try to escape to the shadows but they reject me I seek protection from a passing breeze but the wind chases me around and the air locks me up in a cage named “body” and you remind me that plants need oxygen to breathe but also heat

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Yitong Wu Hebei, China

Kidgarden Kids played in the garden in front of the apartment building. We squatted next to the bushes, watching an ant crawling across a fat, green leaf. Waiting for it to reach the other end then picked up the leaf turned it over just to watch the poor ant, disoriented, strenuously redirecting itself to where it started.

We pulled off petals from the red salvias and sucked the honeying nectar, treating them as our afternoon desserts. The flowers with pink petals had brown stamens looked like a strawberry placed upside down on the stem. We ran around holding them like lollipops.

When the homework started piling up security got rid of the garden to make room for a new parking lot, because every family owns two cars now and they needed more. The pink flowers and red salvias went with the garden. We say garden is a kid thing now and only Notice the steamy hot air and annoying wasps Every time we step into a pool of greenness.

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Lara Wulff St. Louis, Missouri

Open in Case of Emergency Page 23.

When a rabid squirrel claws its way into your first apartment, lock yourself in the bathroom. Call your mom who, in turn, will tell you to call animal control. And, yes, perhaps you should have realized that, but sitting on the precipice of your grime ringed bathtub, you won’t be in the best state of mind. A realization will come seven minutes later after animal control tells you that they’ll be there in an hour. Your dog will still be in your living room, gnawing lazily on a rubber bone.

Go on a rescue mission. Can of lavender aerosol spray in hand, peek your head around the door. The squirrel will eye your oblivious beagle like the hungry beast that it is. Your dog parenting instincts will kick in and you’ll pull your fat puppy under your arm, spraying air freshener toward the squirrel with the conviction of a madman. Once back in the haven of the bathroom, body shaking, hold your beagle who will seem more upset about the bone that was left behind. Do not cry.

Page 35.

When you come back from your job, only to find that your TV has been ripped from the wall, wires frayed by someone you can’t bring yourself to hate more than Brent from accounting, do not yell. Lie face down on your bed and scroll through your phone until your thumb is aching. When you get the urge to watch The Office, tape your phone to the wall where your television once was. Hope it doesn’t fall. Think for a moment: This is genius! And then: God, I’m an idiot.

Don’t buy another TV for three months. Buy a better TV. Brag about it to Brent from accounting. Rub at the stringy bits of duct tape still stuck to your phone screen.

Page 42.

When your basement floods and you must stay at your aunt’s house across the river, do not be alarmed. You will be wearing big rubber rain boots. Your aunt will tell you that you’ve grown so much. You won’t feel as if you’ve grown at all.

Watch your younger cousin play a video game which you don’t recognize. They will talk your ear off about what exactly they’re doing, and midway through the monologue you will realize that you only understand about half the words that were just said. Consider driving home and flinging yourself into your lake-basement. Don’t. Be offered soda. Drink water, instead. Sugar will give you a headache.

Page 54.

When a fire breaks out in the home that you’ve lived in for the past ten years, try not to cry. End up crying anyway. Grab a bottle of white wine from the grocery bags in the backseat of your Corolla and sit on the front lawn. Pull your knees, groaning in protest, up to your chest. Drink straight from the bottle. Cry. Watch the flames curl up into the air, wrapping around themselves before dissipating into the atmosphere. Cry some more. Because you will be old enough not to give a damn.

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Zachary Xi Naperville, Illinois

Thermodynamics in A Minor Felipe slid from key to key, candy-coloring the monochrome hills and valleys of Chopin’s second etude. Eyelids as shuttered curtains, the penguin rhythmically cartwheeled to notes, flippers delicately petting chords and webbed feet inking papyrus with droplets of technicolor paint. As he crescendoed, the music danced—swinging from bar to bar and tipping top hats to pause. A and B nonchalantly treaded by as the ticking clicks of their footsteps reverberated throughout the polished oak-stream auditorium. Finale: Felipe glissando across the rolling white waves and glistening black foam, gliding down the icy keyboard.

Scratched in graphite on the barren college rule ,“=A”. She steps back, puts the 3-cm penguin-themed eraser in the right pocket of her night-black jeans, and marvels at her first completed problem-set in thermodynamics.

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Samantha Yee California

Endless Ride, Tribute to Laissez-Faire The trains were never kind to me. Festering in their concrete caves like dragons hoarding the city’s subspace, they careen wildly, comparing which of them has the most gold in their blood and asking me how my blood tastes.

Nevertheless, my apartment-to-work journey is slave to these mechanical beasts, so I stash my subway pass in my wallet next to an extra prayer, in hopes that the Train Gods might turn their corners in my favor before I slip into the maw of the mechanical serpent.

When I lived in the Golden Country, I was only a paper deliverer with no money, living in a house with three other children—but I loved the trains. I would walk along the rose-lit tracks in sandals and sit at the empty station for hours like it was a hearth. The trains, great slender cosmotic trains, would beckon me across glassy oceans and through the stars, wherein I would deliver dreams.

Nowadays, between the faceless head behind the management counter and the cracks in my floor, I’ve found some fragment of my dreams again, as a modern storyteller who types print about who murdered what and how high art school tuitions will skyrocket. The pen is as familiar as the Country trains, but the way the subway lamps flicker is not as intimate.

I avoid the trains’ gaze if I can, by crawling through vents with broken spider legs and sliding up gas pipes with gauze and desperation strapped over my mouth. It only became a problem when I was late to work, causing the newspaper delivery to be late the next day.

The train that writhes nearest my apartment is Moloch—one of the bigger ones, silver down his sides. While I’m burning the midnight oil, I hear him whistling underground, looking for dinner. Once, Moloch ate my neighbor, a man who sold bicycles on the side of the street. The fabric of the soiled train car cushions are braided with his hair and veins.

I heard the landlord cleaning his apartment out. Everything was thrown out: his half-decent wallet, blue shirts, and used bicycles. My colleagues told me I had to write about what happened to him in the paper. When I interviewed the landlord for the story, he said the man had it coming.

My burnt, black shoes are dripping with the saliva of the beast. I’d get another pair, but we can’t even keep the lights on at work anymore.

I suppose my subway pass will expire soon. Maybe I’ll go with you to Rockland.

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Gina Yoo Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Pipeline Asian bites of orange chicken washed down the drain. told to eat fruitfully and generously. yet the sickly-sweet remnants taste harsh and fleshy. itch, scratch, jutting toothbrush down throat to rid the aftertaste of kill. if chickens were fish maybe I’d be a Lemon Boy with a body marinated in citric acid. then, chase it down with liquid novocaine with a pump of headlamps and rubber tires. this is Clean. this is an ode to the plastic people of polymer and clay for queasing not to the twitches of the raw and Rotting. grow your silicone trees and carve out ulcers from pigs for vultures should end tales of woe by weaving bones and balding hair into xylophones and cell bars for the wickedly stainless Yellowing zoos of Piet Mondrian rooms.

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Henie Zhang Shanghai, China

One Minute of Happiness on a Train with an Old Man Who Might be Delusional 8:59:00 I get on the train. The 9 AM train to Arlington is already packed with an assortment of personalities, school skirts and sunburnt legs and snoring old men aligned neatly on the green plastic seats like groceries on a shelf. The air smells vaguely like turkey sandwich; but then, it could also be fish and chips. I wander through three train cars before finding a gap between an acne-ridden Asian boy in a wrinkled Naruto T-shirt and a hulking Caucasian woman. The boy has his cap pressed down to his thick eyebrows and his eyes glued to a game that seems to consist entirely of red flashes across the cracked phone screen. The woman is eating Doritos for breakfast. A thick, black braid sleeps on her gigantic bosom like an oversized pet ferret, swinging slyly from side to side as she digs her orange-dusted fingers through the bag. She grunts as I sit down next to her.

8:59:55 I lean my head against the window and listen to the subway doors scream out the last chance to get on the 9 AM train to Arlington. My head strikes sharply against the window, and the woman shoots a searing glance in my direction. I offer her a twitch of my lips, a silent apology.

9:00:00 A man sits down next to me. The doors slide shut.

9:00:05 I peer at him through the corners of my eyes. What a curious creature he is—an ex-Michelin chef, perhaps—blue apron, sagging brown slacks, a cap barely concealing fluffy bursts of Einsteinian, salt-and-pepper hair. His right arm is in a cast: green with no signatures. He notices me noticing him and smiles. My eyes try to dart away, but it’s too late. I clear my throat and smile as politely as I can.

“Is your arm alright?” I ask, nonchalantly sympathetic.

“Fine,” he gives a thin-lipped smile, “Fell and dislocated my shoulder. Doctors say it needs—” he does airquotes– “Surgical attention.” He lets out a little huff of a laugh and shakes his head. “Tryna figure that out right now. Bad time to wait for surgery, you know.” I don’t, but I nod anyway.

9:00:18 There is a small dog, a grayish yorkie, yapping at his feet. He picks it up and rubs it behind the ears as it yips and tries to press its dainty tongue against his face. The skin around his eyes crinkle as he turns towards the puppy towards me.

“You know,” he says, “I noticed you the other day.” I glance up at him, not quite comprehending. “You smiled at me,” he says, “Twice, actually. Once at the coffee shop with the Green Mermaid and once around the bend of Dogwood Drive.”

9:00:26 I try to remember. In the blind crevices of my memory I ever-so-vaguely recall nodding at a Starbucks barista after he gave me my change in dimes, and then at a man holding a flattened cardboard box by the road, black marker scrawled across it. But memory is a finicky critter; the two men might as well have been the lady at the giftshop or the boy sitting on the curb with his skateboard and a scraped knee. I don’t know. Who keeps track of smiles?

9:00:30 He is holding a rabbit, a gray one with bright brown eyes. It sniffles at me with its nose, and suddenly a strange chill descends over my shoulders as I remember that it had, perhaps, not been a rabbit just a moment before. “When you smiled at me,” he says, “Something happened,” 9:00:36 He opens his palm to reveal a green piece of paper, smothered and crumpled. “A two dollar bill,” he proclaims proudly, “You’d think it’s rare, wouldn’t you? I always find a two dollar bill in my pocket right after someone smiles at me. Right after. Dunno how or why.” He grins lopsidedly, stroking the Jefferson lying limp and leathery in his fingers. “I remember back when everyone had them two dollar bills,” He whispers to Jefferson, who faithfully peers up at him. I shoot the two a look of concerned pity. What is he, a vending machine? I watch him watch the thoughts run through my head.

Chuckling, he offers me a plump gray bag of Doritos. I take one without wiping my hands.

9:00:46 The automated female voice announces that the train is approaching Arlington station and wishes us a pleasant day. The Asian boy, startled, shifts slightly in his seat.

9:00:49 “People are not trustworthy. They’ve never been, actually,” the man says as he folds the empty bag of Doritos, “Sometimes I wonder why I even keep promises, but I do.” He glances at me. “I have a promise for you today, if you’d like it.”

I nod, more curious than I am eager.

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“The next time you see a two dollar bill, wherever you may be,” he says, “Turn left at the closest corner, and I’ll be right there. I promise.” He winks. I open my mouth to utter impossible! but then— 9:00:55 —the wheels shriek as the darkness falls away to reveal the matte, flickering colors of the train station. I scramble to hold onto my purse as all the groceries on the shelf fall into each other haphazardly, then snap back into position as the train trundles to a halt.

9:01:00 Everyone stands up at the same time. I think I see gray feathers vanish behind a skinny sunburnt knee, and I look up to ask who they might belong to, but no one hears me among the scarfed and coated foliage of people. My feet seemed to leave the ground entirely as the others push and squeeze me off the train and onto the platform. A hulking shape nearly knocks me over. I sneeze and is drowned in an instant undercurrent of bless yous. I turn around to say something, to someone, somewhere, but suddenly I cannot seem to remember what it was I was remembering. The August wind whips across my face and, muttering, I begin stumbling towards the exit.

9:08:21 I hail a taxi, and the driver rolls down the window to greet me with a slight tilt of his head. I offer him a twitch of my lips, a silent hello. As I clamber into the taxi, I sense something soft in the pocket of my jacket, brushing against the side of my leg. Startled, I reach in, feeling something smothered and leathery against my fingertips. I grasp for it; I dive once, twice, hunting frenziedly in the folds of fabric for a frayed, crumpled corner. I come up with nothing but fistfuls of air.

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Briony Zhao Beijing, China

how zippers were invented i didn’t know that you could bury things under your skin with such ease and efficiency. make an incision. slide one in. chips. birth control implants. lead types. aluminum foil. moths. lampshades. last nights. if it’s small enough you won’t even see it, though you can still feel the bumps under your skin, a space that eludes pain. a zipper departs from my earlobe and arrives at my ankle. i pull the skin apart from within (like leaving a tent to seek the campfire), rub, squeeze, inch along. pain stands erect on the beach like a vacant cocoon, transparent and obsolete, soon receded from view by the pull of the moon. if it was all the nerves and the chemicals that decided for me, if i had no more choices from this moment onward, if freedom feels like feathers in lieu of the pricking of quills, if i am left to my own vices, i’d be happy. but if i missed the pain, the thrill when a needle peeks inside the bloodstream, the biting of lips, fallen nails, papercuts, knee-scrapes, dementia, luck, your touch, airbnb solitude, indirect lies through direct messages, cloudy sky and muffled sound of fireworks on the fourth of july, thunderstorms that fell trees through the chaplain’s roof but don’t do enough damage to kill, i won’t be able to go back inside. the skin, now reduced to food, is nibbled and torn and the zipper is stuck at the end, on the ankle.

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Yunghuang Zhao Nanjing, China and Vancouver, Canada

How ____ Was Invented Babies are tough Early education, forced to listen to the music of Mozart Are all deemed as essential by their parents Then they became children and off to kindergarten But wait Children shall not be left behind So there comes piano, dancing, drawing And other so called “hobbies” for them Acting as labels to label them as the smart ones Teenagers have no time for these “hobbies” or interests They are more interested in academics Extracurricular activities, standardized tests Or even university courses While trying to live under peer pressure and parents pressure Last month I reached eighteen and became an adult And new tasks kept stacking Carrying my grandpa to the hospital Taking care of my little cousin Or Struggling to find an internship Why aren’t we seeking metaphysical achievements Instead of those physical achievements Why can’t we simply enjoy _____ To dedicate a period of time to do nothing To simply relax and zone out And become a happy person again There are still plenty of smart people Enjoying their moments They are the ones who invented _____ Because they are so smart That they know the importance of _____ In other words Give yourself a mental break And you shall enjoy _____ Which is far more important than anything else

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Estelle Zhu Andover, Massachusetts

When You Asked of the Wind on the Lake A fluttering broke out on the water when you walked by but pay no attention. instead count the times her lips curled into involuntary smiles and the dances you shared in late evenings illuminated by fairy lights and fireflies. guess at the thoughts running through her head when she winds daisies into her hair or drops leaves into a creek just to see them swirl away, watching them kiss every rock in their path to bid it farewell. listen to her whispers at midnight and screams next to your ear on your motorcycle memorize the feeling of cool fingers tracing your neck and shoulders but never let her eyes fill with water, for the oceans have always been fiercely protective of her. her heartache causes seas to churn and quake in anger, her tears draw surging tides from wrinkles in rivers, and no matter how much the lakes quivered and rippled with her longing, the saltwater came and swept her away, then poured into your gaping heart to taste your blood, blurred your eyes until you couldn’t recall her voice or laugh or the way her arms wound around your waist, your mind now a failing xerox machine, the images coming up fuzzy and faded and disappearing like the mist you tried to catch that left only a ghost of itself on your palm, or the phantom embrace of a zephyr that leaves no trace except ripples on a lake.

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Allison Zhuang Palo Alto, California

B-612 Yesterday I went to the moon like a dandelion seed in cold blue salt that has been everywhere and came from the stars they shine brighter than I do and could they turn the night to the day I come back to the moon and my senses will know but for now the dust and craters are so soft like the rose thorns that litter them and the flowers here and there I have never been more at home

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Songtai Liu China

Call Me By My Name I’ve had a conversation about my name once with my parents.

The name “Songtai” has two parts to it. “Song(松)” in Chinese refers to the tall and the long-standing pine trees and “Tai(泰)” is a reference to one of the five great mountains of China--the Tai Mountain. When combined, it literally just means the pine tree on the hill.

I guess that is how my parents wanted me to be like seventeen years ago when they named me: a pine tree that stands tall on the mountain, restraint and composed even when the wind howls the most unbearable storm, the true embodiment of the spirit of persistence and endurance that runs in the Liu family.

However, there is a reason people often say don’t get your hopes up too high.

It has been seventeen years since I got this name, and it is safe to say my parents have chosen the wrong name.

While I did grow a lot physically in my youth, reaching a humbling height of 5’9’’ in eighth grade. My body then flipped the switch and told me: “Good try, but this will be as high as you can be, maybe in the next life?” So the pine tree got struck by lightning.

The persistence part has not been part of my game either. I could never stay with something more than the times for a leaf to fall, a sun to rise, or a butterfly to flap its wings. Growing up, I was always amazed by the opportunities that the world has to offer, so I got myself into various activities: from badminton to tennis, then to horse riding, then to math, then to basketball, then to golf, then now even writing. Having my parents to spend so much time, energy, and resources on me for all these years, I find it tragic that I still seem to have no talent.

I don’t know why I am like this. I have read on some horoscope website that this is one of the traits embodied in a Gemini, at least that is what I tell myself three am in the morning, fooling myself to sleep.

So I ask you not to speak of my name, not to call me by my name, and not to ask what my name means, because every time you say those random combinations of sounds, I think of the irony and all the things I was and will never able to achieve.

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Marieth Sosa Waukegan, Illinois

The Photo. The Toy. It’s early morning in breezy Illinois. Pawnee St. in the middle of spring. The phone rings. The phone is vibrating from the kitchen counter top. A young girl hurriedly picks up the phone. The young girl delivers it to the woman. The woman picks up the phone. The woman becomes breathless. The woman stares. And stares.

She is distressed and scared. She puts down her phone. The woman leaves the room and enters the yard. The woman looks up. To the sky. Covered with delicate clouds hiding the blue hue that lingers behind the shining bright light. The woman’s mother is sick. Mother has a brain hemorrhage. Mother will not live for more than 5 days. Max. Mother can die tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, the day after the day after tomorrow, or even the day after that. Mother will not live another day after that. The woman yells for the young girl. The young girl grabs her computer. She plans the woman’s trip. Woman’s tickets will be rescheduled for tomorrow. The woman and mother have not seen each other in 30 years. The woman had left her home irrationally at the young age of 22 to the U.S and was never able to come back home. She met him. She got pregnant and stayed back because of that. The woman’s eldest child had recently turned 21. The woman has her papers. She was planning to go to Mexico. Not this soon, however. Those papers will take woman to see dying mother. The mother and young girl planned her trip. Expressions not shown on their faces. Woman goes to work. The young girl lays on her bed.

She was not familiar with mother. The young girl only sees her every 4 years. The mother has been gravely ill for much while. Mother was not able to properly communicate with others. The young girl tries to remember every single significant memory of mother. The young girl faces the wall. She stares. And stares. Time passes. The eyes get puffy. The eye becomes filled. The nose becomes runny. She cries. She sobs. She laughs. Confused. She debates. She is not sure whether she is sad or not. She feels guilty. She feels as if she must be sad. She must mourn Mother. Yet, the young girl doesn’t shed a tear. She stands from her bed. She pulls out photos of Mother. She puts them on the table. She flips each one by one. The young girl stares. Stares at the photos. She loses breath.

She hiccups. She cannot breathe. Her head starts to hurt. Her vision starts to blur. She cries again. She calms down. She goes back to her room. The young girl goes to the closet. She picks up a toy. Her mexican toy. Mother gave it to her. Mother’s toy was a toy given to woman then to young girl’s toy. Young girl plays with the toy. The young girl stops. She falls. The toy drops. She sobs. She clutches the aged toy. The young girl is laid on the floor, hugged up to the toy. Woman is at work. She works. She sweeps. She wipes. She vacuums. She dusts. She mops.

She stops. She clutches the broom. Woman’s breath was shortened. The woman falls. Woman feels as her whole life is coming apart. Woman is on the floor, hanging on the bottom of the broom. She lets go. The woman also cries on the floor. She gets up, clocks out, and goes home. The young girl and woman are together at home. They look at the pictures. They laugh. They complain. They praise. They smile. They sing. They reminisce. They look at each other with smiles. The smiles are dropped. They hug each other. They hug, they cry, they hug, they cry, they sleep, and finally go to bed where they both go about their regrets, but fall asleep thinking of what used to be home. They go to Mexico and spend their days with Mother. Mother’s only days. The days she remains alive.

Mother dies. Woman and young girl go back home. Woman and young girl leave behind what little pieces they used to call home. They cry. They live. They reminisce. They eat breakfast the next day. The young girl goes to school. The woman goes to work.

The End.

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Renelle Williams Brooklyn, New York

panic he felt his heart beating beating fast too fast breathe eyes are staring breathe they’re judging breathe hating hating him he doesn’t like it everything is spinning spinning spinning round round dizzy he feels dizzy can’t breathe can’t breathe they’re looking can’t breathe can’t breathe can’t breathe disgusted disgusting can’t breathe can’t move can’t feel can feel can feel too much he hears voices he can’t hear voices feels sick can’t breathe can’t breathe breathe slow down can’t slow down slow down down down down down shaking down down down down needs air.

Truthfully, The Unseen Truthfully, there is nothing much to say. What is right in front of me is a single dirt path that leads to a door of a college building , with large patches of grass one each side. It’s as simple as that. But is it so simple?

Truthfully, I see a castle in front of me. It’s stone walls stand tall and proud, standing guard to those it holds inside.

With the help of the tree’s , who stand even mightier by it, the castle protects it’s towers, where secrets resign.

Truthfully, the long dirt path was once walked by kings, queens, nobles, wizards and witches. And even common folk. All or none have been able to go inside the castle of secrets.

Truthfully, at night, the little fairies come out to play. They flicker their lights on and off and on again- a way of communication. With their lights,they dance the night away, mesmerizing all who have the chance to see them. They love the attention.

Truthfully, the tree’s- all very old and wise- stand tall to protect the castle’s towers, for they too know the secrets that it holds. If you listen carefully, you can hear the trees talking, or singing or both, to one another. It’s lovely hearing them talk and sing. It’s calming to the ear. But they would never reveal the castle’s secrets, oh no! They are not mere saplings, after all.

Truthfully, the tiny people that reside in the trees are messy folk. They throw away old clothes that they have had and leave them for the likes of the bigger people to find- whether the bigger people are interested in said old clothes, no one knows. Or cares.

It’s easy to look at the world around us as something so simple and plain. But - truthfully- there is always something more to be made.

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Alexander Young San Jose, California

Modern Madmen When Don Quixote de la Mancha goes jousting with the wine-skeins of his inn motivated not by a Puritanical desire to end alcoholism, but because he is a fool drunk on the tales of past and future knight-errants who live and love and fight and die believing in the silvered brilliance of their pasteboard helmets and dejected steeds when in fact in fact he is bumbling in the darkness he fears rigged wells but not man-eaters, losing his washbasin helm but not God’s wrath, Dulcinea’s tears but not the denouncements of canons decry this damfool drives all but poor Sancho away and soon we are overjoyed at the just and happy union of Cardenio and Luscinda and Dorotea and Fernando, Don, Quixote, meanwhile, prances outside the ring of campfire light alone knowing he is the most beloved and brave knight-errant in all of La Mancha hides its head in shame.

Are we proud of our tavern loony Don Quixote must be overjoyed to find that he has become famed throughout Spain, but he knew that already the Dukes and Duchesses quaquaquaqua giggle and point at this poor, poor master and man up to lash himself 3,300 times on his bare buttocks and eat with soapsuds in his hair and a child’s smile on his earnest face, oh, oh, oh, how good and chivalrous our Don Quixote is to save errand boys and galley slaves from the whip comes the pain and shock of knowing we are in such a wide world with dappled trails down Santa Lucia leading to who knows where that madman Quixote, without giving notice of his intention to anyone, and without anybody seeing him, ran out to live and love and fight, so why is it that a good knight with wide eyes and heart should die as Alonso Quixano the Good swearing that never will his niece marry a man like him who reads those detestable books of chivalry?

There are no more adventures to tell of Don Quixote, and anyone who claims to have a third volume is lying.

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COMPILED AND ILLUSTRATED BY

Editorial Team

Amayah Bell Vishnu Bharathram Bea Bolongaita Sam Bowden Rita Chun Justin Crouch Julia Do Bella Frankowski Ceci Ganz Christian Gonzalez Khadijah Halliday Andy Han Marin Hart Caitlyn Hill Sophia Johnecheck Charlie Keohane Henry Kerrey Ariel Kim Dohyun Kim Esther Kim Alice Lee Will Leggat Emily Liu Divya Mehrish Sofia Miller Matthew Mortel Ruby Salvatore Palmer Gabi Potter Catherine Sigurdsson Zach Terrillion Chaya Tong Bryan Wang Ocean Wei Briony Zhao

Cover Art

Julia Do Briony Zhao

Summer 2019 Volume I, Number 1 Published at Kenyon College https://issuu.com/kenanthology2019 146

Instructors

Hanif Abdurraqib Eloisa Amezcua Chris Blackman Nina Budabin McQuown Adam Clay Liz Forman Kirsten Ogden Alyssa Ogi

Fellows

Nabila Lovelace Chukwuma Ndulue Laura Scott

Special Thanks Edward Moreta