Note to Our Readers Over the course of the year, many writers submit their pieces to our website in the hope that they will get published. This issue is a culmination of the very best work from Monta Vista High School’s creative community – put together by our seven person officer team. We have an uniform vision: to bring the world of writing to a stage in the Monta Vista community and out of the shadows where it lurks. Writers at MV deserve to be heard, and just like any other art, writing can be showcased, perhaps not with pomp and grandeur, but with its own creative flair. Writing is definitely worth displaying to the community, as the messages and emotions these writers have to send often resonate within a large group of people. It is for this reason that we exist: to bring to you thought provoking prose that Monta Vista has to offer. Thank you for taking the time to read this issue. We truly hope that someday you will consider submitting your own work and joining the La Pluma family.
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Truly yours,
La Pluma Staff
Table of Contents Note to Our Readers..........................................................1 Ink .......................................................................................3 The Girl in Paradise...........................................................4 The Angel.........................................................................5-6 I Am Not A Rebel..............................................................7 I Am Also......................................................................8-10 The Dove + The Wind up Bird.......................................11 The Card Game................................................................12 The Great Magician....................................................13-14 Willow Tree......................................................................15 Broken Bliss......................................................................16 The Menagerie ...........................................................17-20 Three Seconds...................................................................21 The Hate Crime...........................................................22-23 The Mysterious Man........................................................24 Flower Speech...................................................................25 Writer’s Block....................................................................26
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INK by Samantha Shieh
Darkness. Darkness everywhere. It fills my vision, smothers my senses, stuffs itself down my throat. I am bound in this darkness by inky shackles: bonds I can never break on my own. I try to cry out but the silence swallows it. This prison is so painfully familiar. All I have known are these musty pages, dark and cold. I am held in by steely bars of sentences and paragraphs, my cell walls made, so ironically, of paper. Shackled to the darkness, prisoner to the story, I can do naught but fight in vain. I lunge at the walls, scrabbling upwards, digging my claws into my prison, fighting but never free. I hiss as the chains bite into me, dragging me back down. Come. Come and set me free. A touch. A whisper. A hand. What is this? Has someone heard my cry? Eyes are roving, curious and brilliant. Fingers stroke pages, turn them, devour them. I cry out again, hope rising. This time an echo of sound is flung back to me. I scrabble at the walls with renewed vigor, wings struggling to break their bonds. Pages flip, faster and faster. A light pierces the dark. My prison bars of words are stark and black against the rising glow. They are all that stand above me now. I launch myself upwards, beating my wings, forcing my way through the darkness. Fight. Climb. Biting chains, ragged breath. I draw closer and closer, closer and closer. I crash through in a shower of ragged type, my wings dripping with the severed ink of my shackles, ribbons of text cascading from my sides. I turn my face to the light and revel in the taste of freedom. There are so many more like me, shackled to the darkness as their spines rot away on dusty shelves. There are so many more like me, trapped to the paper with bonds of ink. There are so many more like me, imprisoned between the pages of a book, waiting to be set free. They are waiting for their reader. They are waiting for you.
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The Girl in Paradise by Lee Mracek
The girl who lives in paradise walks the path of nothing, treading on the dew-slick grass breathing in the crystal air. She skips along, through a cold, white world. The girl who lives in paradise hesitantly touches the doe-eyed fawn, looks over the edge of a waterfall into the tantalizing depths. She strides through sterile corridors, a bleak, white line into nothing. The girl who lives in paradise has never loved, never hates, for there is no reason. She has never feared, and never will. The girl who lives in paradise walks the path of nothing, sees sights beyond pictures, the world as it no longer is. She strides along in a cold, white world.
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The Angel by Kristin Chang Sometimes the one person you’d die for is the one holding the knife. And then all you can do is fall to your knees and wait for the blood, for the darkness, for the pain. And when it finally comes, there are no tears left to fall. She had trusted him, and now she died with his figure dark in her mind. An angel, too dark and too bright, now with its wings twined around her throat. What a beautiful beast he was. She stopped breathing, the last beat ballooning at the base of her chest. She hoped there was a heaven. And if there was, she hoped that he would never be able to find his way in. One day later, 5:00 PM. Bald Eagle, Alabama. The man in the red truck let his engine stall by the river, tires kissing the soft orange clay beside the bank. Exhaust curls over the surface, leaving a breath of green across its moony stillness. His hand, rough with scars from old fights, sat quietly against the rusting sill of the open window. He wore a cowboy hat that anyone else would mistake for a cheap costume piece, a macho declaration. But he knew that its true history belongs to the blood-soaked dust and bullet rust beneath the Wyoming sand. He wore a pair of sunglasses beneath the inscrutable beige brim, black lenses too square and too dark to belong to the eyes of a tourist or a rich schoolboy. He is impatient, breaths leaving his dark lips like a chronic smoker’s, rattling and thin and trailing away to touch the boiling air beyond. The bank splits before the nose of his shuddering old pickup, and in the hot distance he watches his boy. The boy with hair a shade too light to be blonde, eyes a shade too dark to be blue, with the angel wing tattoo still evident on the smooth expanse of his clavicle. Even now it seemed to hover above his chest in an image of false advertisement. The white ink was like a fragment of a prism, 5
the sun above reflected in the arcs of pale pigment. The boy could be a drifter or a fisher or a lamenting poet, if it wasn’t for the fact that he was dragging a body bag behind him. Black and zippered and heavy with rot, the swollen sweet stench made the boy sneer more with disgust rather than disdain. This was his job. A job well completed. This was not the part he enjoyed. As he yanked the bag with his pale fists, he saw that a tendril of black hair had been caught in the zipper, a mild reminder of the thing that now resided within. He sighed and smiled at the same time, and with one sullen heave, the bag sank. The river did not protest. It simmered with damp trash and something silver and toxic, long-forgotten. It gave freely and took all, and now it would embrace a new weight. The sickly green waters accepted the body with a fold of warmth, wrapping its polluted, oil-tinged limbs around the dark, swollen mass. The body sank deeper. The river moved quietly in its illusion of swiftness, one last good-bye wave to the girl that could once swim. That little strand of black hair sank last, stagnant on the surface before finally whispering into the muddy depths. Even now she refused to leave. For a second the boy thought of diving into the sour water and unzipping the bag, shoving her hair back into the plastic sac, tearing it from her head to keep. But he didn’t. The dump had to be clean, and his father was watching. He turned and waded through the swampy weedridden bank, cursing a little under his breath. His father wordlessly swung the sun-faded door to the passenger seat, and in answer the boy swung his boots off. His bare feet touched the dirt road. He hurled his boots into the river, one last gift to a fellow artist of deceit. The river, unfeeling, drank them whole, synthetic leather and all. And then the La Pluma
boy crawled onto the boiling leather inside, slamming the door as hard as he could, lifting a smile to his father. The hatted man did not smile back. The engine hacked and growled, rocked back once and ricocheted forward to the next little town with too much heat and too many empty fields and altogether too much hospitality. The boy was already dreaming again. He thought of a redhead in a plaid shirt and truly authentic cowboy boots with those little ebony heels. “Hey, there,” he’d say. “Hi,” she’d say back, her lips stung pink and her cheeks staining a delicious shade of red. He’d subtly shift his weight, the collar of his shirt moving with his sinews. The tattoo would glance out in its baleful silver sheen, bright and sylph-like beneath the dim bar lighting. “I like your tattoo,” she’d say. Fingers reach out to stroke the wisps of ink. An angel wing, opalescent in the half-dark. “Pretty,” she’d say. And he’d smile back, not too much teeth, but just enough to show her how white they were, white like his angel wing. And then he’d lean close and say, “So are you, honey. So are you.” The boy opened his eyes and smiled in remembrance of the future. The man in his hat revved his engine and passed the
tilted wooden sign, damp with rot. PARADISE. POPULATION 580. 6 MILES, it read. “Where are we?” His boy asked from the back seat, his eyes still too dark in the frissons of moonlight. They were dark with dreams, dreams that he knew they could both taste together from that moment he saw his little son with a silver knife and the slim indigo knots of the gutted neighbor’s cat. “Paradise,” the man answered instead, allowing himself a smile. His nose cast long shadows across his jaw. “Paradise.” “Not for long,” the boy answered, and he turned away once more to peer through the thick, shaded glass, watching the back of the mangy sign recede into a distant cardboard square. The hills were freckled with moss. He wondered if she would have freckles. He hoped not. He would have to remove them. Shear them off, perhaps. But skinning was a little messy. For a moment, he allowed himself to wonder if his father would finally let him choose one this time, but he knew he would not be allowed to live if he asked. So he rested his temple against the steel-cold glass, eyes closed, pale lashes sifting against his skin before coming to a rest. And then he began to dream, with the silent memory of her dark hair billowing into deep waters. He brought his hand lightly to his collarbone, to those permanent pixels etched above his heart. He would kill again.
–o–
Issue V
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I Am Not A Rebel. by Yashashree Pisolkar
I am not a rebel. I was not one when my friends had barbies and I had a spider-man doll. Or when they ordered Cappuccinos from Starbucks while I ordered a frothy Chai Tea Latte. Neither was I a rebel when I decided to get a nose piercing. About two months ago, I had looked at myself in the mirror, thinking that all I wanted was a nose stud – preferably a baby pink or a serene, light blue gem. Edgy yet innocent. However, after three days worth of research on the nearest piercing salon and possible complications associated with poking a hot needle through my nose, I realized that there was something I wanted more. I wanted for the world to know that the idea of getting a nose piercing was surely not inspired by an act of rebellion. Rather, it was inspired by my Indian heritage. Specifically, a traditional coming-of-age ceremony that I had purposefully dismissed during my visit to India last summer. On the morning of my sixteenth birthday, my grandma had walked into my room with a gift basket in her hand. She pulled the curtains to the side, letting in the morning sunlight. Two little sparrows chirped on my window sill. As I took a look at the gift basket, I saw a box overflowing with jewelry of all sorts. Necklaces, toe rings, bindis, earrings, and of course, a nose stud. My grandma scooped up the jewels and enclosed them in my hand. I was supposed to wear the familial heirloom for my birthday celebration later that evening. My grandparents were going to present me to the rest of our relatives in an intimate
ceremony. I would have to wear a traditional, eight-fold sari, adorning the jewels. As I absorbed the gravity of my coming-of-age celebration, I imagined myself poised, elegantly dressed, and ready to secure the blessings of the elders of my family. However, that nose stud gave me my fair share of anxiety. I feared that even though a nose stud was perfectly acceptable in Indian society, in America it would reflect a rebellious teenager – a student who “hadn't found herself yet,” or one who didn't have “a strong sense of personal identity”… like Miley Cyrus in her movie “L.O.L.” I could wear my sincere stud to a job interview and own it, but still not get the job. I could strive to be an earnest student, but fail to make a positive first impression. But, why? I am not a rebel. I don’t dream of devil tattoos running down my arms or back. Nor do I dream of a pierced tongue, eyebrow, lip, or belly button. However, in that moment when I was about to get my nose pierced in the Indian salon, I froze. I worried about all of the above, and I was afraid. The exit door of the salon started to seem more inviting than the prospect of getting my nose pierced. I guess the same fear stopped me the second time I thought about getting a piercing two months ago. Because once again, I had looked at myself in the mirror, thinking that all I wanted was a nose stud. A serene blue. Edgy yet innocent. But again I guess I decided, heck, I’m not a rebel.
–o– 7
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I Am Also by Samantha Shieh
I have many names. Thanatos, they called me in Ancient Greece. Ankou, I was christened by the Celts. Śmierć. Pesta. Yánluó. Morrigan. Anubis. My titles are plentiful. She cursed me by every single one she knew that night. Kneeling beside their bodies, her face streaked with dirt and tears, she cried until she could cry no more. She tore at her hair and screamed into the deafening silence, as if to release her grief to the unending night. She beat the ground with her clenched fists as I gently pried their souls from their bodies. Her mother, her father, her sister-- I whisked them away to my palace beyond the veil of life. Only the young girl remained, kneeling there, face buried in their clothes, cursing me by every name I possessed. I claimed them all that night. All but her. That night, she swore an oath. No matter what, no matter where, no matter when, she would stop me. She would make sure that I would never claim another soul as I had claimed her family. She made an oath to cure the sickness. She kept it. Years slipped past as she mixed her bizarre potions and brewed her obscure concoctions. She worked with fevered light in her eyes, hands always moving, always mixing, grinding, chopping, sprinkling. She worked through days, through nights, went weeks without sleeping, forever seeking the perfect balance of ingredients to ensure the cure would work. They called her crazy. They called her a witch, though she was hardly old and wizened. Her hair was silver as moonlight from the myriad of chemicals she tested on herself, but her fingers were strong and nimble and her skin smooth and unwrinkled. Her eyes burned with determination so strong and so clear that it was hard to believe that anything could stop her. I used to watch her as she worked. I would float over Issue V
her shoulder, examining her thousands of recipes and procedures as she tried, tried, and tried again to find a cure for the sickness that had brought so many a soul to my doorstep. Again and again, I watched as the mixtures came out wrong and her experiments failed. She would stare with tears in her eyes for hours on end at the locket around her neck. The worn golden pendant stored her memories of the ones I had taken from her. The day she found her cure, I was relieved, for I hoped that it would bring her peace from the terrible life she'd been living. We both hoped that we could finally part on amiable terms, her oath to me fulfilled. She emerged from her laboratory, wincing at the sun, which she had not seen in months, the vial of precious cure clasped in her hands so tightly, it was a miracle that it did not shatter. Heart pounding, feet racing, she ran to the nearest sick house and administered the liquid miracle, watching with tears of joy as fevers subsided, coughs quieted and sores healed. For fifteen years I watched her travel the world, spreading her cure, healing the sick. I watched her fall in love with a cheerful man who cared for her with a passion. I watched her have two beautiful children, each with their father’s laugh, and their mother’s brilliantly determined eyes. For fifteen years, she was happy. However, my brother, Life, was cruel. It was not I, but he who decided whose soul I must claim, whose life I must end. And he chose to end the lives of those she loved. Why, I wondered in despair when he told me the job I had to perform. His only reply was that Fate had willed it so. I tried to explain to him her situation. I begged him to change his mind. I tried to make him see how unfair it was for her. But Life is not fair. With a heavy heart, I stole the breaths of her son, her daughter and her husband, one by one. A murder, an accident, a suicide. I lifted the wispy souls from crushed
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bodies and brought them back to my deathly palace, every moment hoping she would understand, and she would realize Fate had destined things to be so, that I was not the one who willed her loved ones to die. She did not understand. This time I watched in silent agony as she laid them each to rest. She did not beat the ground or scream to the darkness as she did before, but instead bore the grief with cold silence and a hard heart. Her eyes were dry as bone, and the clear determination that had filled them before returned with a cold edge. Her mouth set in an icy line, she made another oath. An oath that both of us would come to despise. She swore I would never have her. She swore that she would never die. The feverish frenzy she had worked with before was gone, replaced by icy determination. Failure was no roadblock for her, only another barrier to be methodically broken down and pulverized to dust. No longer did she stare for hours at portraits of her lost loved ones, for she burned them all. Never did she set foot outside her laboratory. She forged her way through every day with cold progress, eliminating options, crushing mistakes and fighting her way down the road that she had so painfully chosen. Her silvery hair grew haggard and wild, and fingers once nimble became shaky. She forgot how to speak to others, how to listen and hold a conversation. Her eyes stayed clear, though, still burning with cold intensity. Now, as I floated over her shoulder, watching her work, I hoped with every passing minute that she would not succeed. I wanted to beg her to stop. Her drive was no longer the wish to help others, but an icy blade of pain and revenge that she was fighting to turn around and stab me with. It was not life that she sought. She only wanted to cheat me. She only wanted revenge. After twenty years of failures and mistakes, potions and medicines, she found what she was looking for: a silvery vial of crystal clear liquid as ice-cold as her heart had become.
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She cackled with triumph as she held it aloft for me to see. She had found the cure for death. After that, I could not touch her. My brother was furious. He ordered me to hunt her down and end her life. I tried. I sent murderers and assassins, knives and poisons. I tried to burn her house, tried to freeze her city, but nothing I did succeeded. Sometimes I would come close, her soul just within my grasp. When I tried to pull her across the border of life and death, though, she simply slipped out of my grasp. She walked away unscathed, untouched, unhurt every time. But she was not happy. Ten years, twenty years, fifty years, a hundred years passed. Her limbs withered like grass stems in harsh winter snows, no longer able to support her weight. Her hair, once a cascading curtain of silver, shriveled and fell from her head. Her fingers no longer obeyed her commands, instead shaking with uncontrollable tremors that shattered whatever she tried to hold. Her eyes, which once blazed with rigid determination, clouded over with milky cataracts that left her blind. She lay on her bed every hour of every day, consumed by pain. She could not see, speak nor hear, but I still felt her fevered mind, conscious and alive but trapped in a dying shell. A dying shell that would never release her. I tried to help her the only way I could, but her potion left her invulnerable to my touch. It was torturous to watch her continue living, if it could even be called that. Her mind was kept prisoner by a body racked with pain, and yet she hung onto it with ferocious tenacity. She knew and I knew as well that the crystal liquid she had consumed was only half of her death cure. The other half was her own willingness to cling to life, and for reasons unfathomable to me, she would not let go. Finally, I could take her suffering no more. I knew what it would take to change her mind. I knew what I had to do. I decided to break the most fundamental rule of my existence. I brought the dead back to life. I conjured them to her bedside one by one. Her mother, father, sister, husband, son and daughter. They were ethereal
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as smoke, untouchable as a mirage, shimmering in the darkness of her chambers. Beside her stood her husband, with his rippling chuckle and cheerful face; her son with his cheeky grin and stubborn brow; and her daughter with her soft smile and gentle touch. Beside them stood her father, his eyes stern, but his mouth smiling; her mother with her caring touch; and her sister with her brilliant laugh. Each of them bent and whispered in her thoughts words of reason, of pleading, of love. One by one, as they spoke their words, I brushed their heads and returned them back to my palace, hoping, praying that what they said would change her heart. I knew not if she believed them, for she gave no indication in movement or sound, save silent tears that coursed their way down her shriveled cheeks. I could only hope they meant that she had taken their words to heart. That she was ready to join them. As I brushed the last spirit away, her head turned slowly to the side. Her movement was achingly slow and painful, as though she needed to pull the weight of a thousand tons with each inch. Slowly, slowly, slowly, her eyelids fluttered open. Her eyes were not as I remembered them. They were once completely covered in opaque growths, but now they were as clear as water undisturbed by rippling waves. Her eyes were clearer than they’d ever been. Not consumed with grief. Not burning with determination. They looked forward, right at me. Right through me. They were at peace. Her lips parted – ever so slightly – to allow the words to escape. “Thank you. I’m ready now.” A gentle touch of my hand lifted her spirit from its broken, battered body and across the veil separating life and death. At last, she was free. They call me sorrow. They call me grief. They call me despair. But I am also hope. I am also release. I am also freedom.
I am Death.
–o–
Issue V
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The DOVE by Emma Lewis I wake up to the cooings of the morning’s blue and purple dove, her seat of branches bowing as soft jazzes linger overhead. Her song in all its glory creaks the tender crack of losing love– are you too in your Alcatraz, spinster at sea, above my bed? If I were you, and you were I, we’d fly away to sprier skies to flee from thick, grey-lidded eyes that chase our hearts into our heads.
The Wind-up bird by Emma Lewis The wind-up bird is missing, he left his branches in the trees; must have fled from all the hissing sent from tigers in the leaves. Or the mellow stuffy silence might have bored him near to death; perhaps his yellow guile was barely welcome here, at best. Say, the wind-up bird is missing, from his perch at noon each day, and the silence soon is kissing its new love of disarray. In tribute to Haruki Murakami's novel "The Wind Up Bird Chronicle", in which the calls of a mechanical-sounding, faceless bird repeatedly foreshadow the protagonist's entanglement into a web of complexities hidden in his daily life. 11
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The Card Game by Abhi Vaidyanatha
Six players seated around the viridian ring, the night is young, the storm cackling in sadistic flurries of gusts and bolts. The rickety old shack in the courtyard of the prison groaned as the door creaked shut in a deathly moan. A surly, roughshod gentleman sits down to take the position of dealer, adjudicator. He removes his hood tentatively, revealing his disheveled appearance and demeanor. He quickly jerks into a pose of conviction, attempting to make up for his previously nervous behavior. In this game of poker, the goal is well known, win the hand… or it is off to the block. A thin character with a wrinkled face and weary eyes mumbles to the well-built man next to him. The man replies coldly, “Well that’s life isn’t it? Gotta play with the hand you are dealt.” The dealer fans out and cuts the deck, proceeding to deal the fate of the prisoners on death row. Three cards in display, the players trembling in suspense, waiting as the meaningless bets are shuffled around. The fourth card is thrusted into the silence on the battlefield: disgust in the eyes of some, and hope in the minds of others. The bets are thrown around the circle, pressure building up in the souls of the doomed. With the final fifth card looming in the near future, pure terror is omnipresent on the array of visages. The ominous fifth card hits the precarious platform… and the pressure bursts. One man stands up and shoots another and himself, followed by a dagger to the stomach of a third, the entire room collapsing on itself. The dealer hides under the table, awaiting the resolution of the bloody procession. At once from the chaos and tumult comes an inundation of silence. The dealer peeks out from under the table to see the six men in sanguine pools on the floor. The dealer spies the well-built man fighting for his life, crawling to the corner with a wound in his stomach, walks up to him and says, “Did you really think there was a winner to this game?” The half-dead man replies pathetically with his last breath, “No, there is no winner in the game of death.” The dealer takes a good, hearty laugh and replies, “Well you’re wrong, the real dealer is dead in the closet.”
–o–
Issue V
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The Great Magician by Elia Chen
Once, he had been the wonder of the world. He had traveled across the globe—from France to Germany to Italy to China—to packed audiences, crowds jostling and shoving for a glimpse of him. He had been a star even though he was a vagabond, setting up his rumpled tent wherever he could at festivals, at local markets, in front of theaters. But everything didn’t matter once he started his show. As soon as he pulled a hundred ribbons from his sleeve, walked through a wall of bricks, and freed himself from heavy chains underwater, he would simply be known as “the great magician.” And he would watch with glee as the audience screamed in terror, lapping it all up. No one understood the way he pulled those tricks, defying gravity, the way he fought against the logic of the universe. But those were his glory days. Now, curled up in a corner of a cramped, dark cell with bruises covering half his face, he was a pitiful sight: his paper-thin skin mottled gray and speckled with scabs, his legs shattered, his eyes filmy from disuse, and his hands—oh, the hands that used to mesmerize a whole crowd—all that remained were two swollen stumps the size of golf balls. He trembled. Just then, hands shook him roughly. “Get up,” a gruff voice growled from behind him. It was time for dinner. And yet another beating. He stared at his legs as icy fingers gripped his shoulders and heaved him up. He thought about Puck and Giovanni. Where were they? How could they just leave him here? They made a
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deal; there was a promise. He sobbed. The day of his arrest, the rain had been pounding for days, each torrent shooting pellet after pellet of torment and despair. In fact his train had been delayed so many times that the half-starved, delirious passengers had only the drone of the rolling hills and foggy mountains outside to offer comfort. Finally, the train lurched to a stop. He slowly raised his head and gathered all his playing cards and ribbons and stuffed them into his magic trunk. It closed with a bang. He then swept it up and hurried out the door. There was no time; the festival would start soon. As he rushed through the door, he marveled at the sight around him. The city of Madrid glowed with an air of regalness, its fountains and gardens delicately ornate and pristine. He didn’t have much time to admire, however, because soon, he was accompanied by his servants, Puck and Giovanni. Together with the magician, they scurried through the throng and quickly hailed a carriage. “To the cathedral,” the magician ordered, “where the annual festival taking place.” The carriage driver pulled in his reins, whipped his horses and headed to the cathedral. It was a very long road, so the magician had plenty of time to enjoy the sights and the sounds of this new city — the “clank, clank, clank” of the carriage wheels rolling across the cobblestone roads, the rowdy bargaining in the markets, the sweet aroma of the pasta from the restaurants, and finally, the awe-inspiring sight of the cathedral, tall and mighty towering above the rest.
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The carriage stopped, shaking him from his daze. “I’m afraid I can’t go any further,” the carriage driver said, shaking his head. “Look at the angry crowd. A beating is taking place, and I don’t want to risk our lives by going through.” Curious, the young magician descended from the carriage, along with his servants, and scanned the crowd. It was dense, the people sweaty and angry. Practice allowed him to maneuver a crowd quickly. Soon, he was close to the outer ring, watching in horror, as two masked men beat an old man lying on the ground with a barbed club. “Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!” the crowd yelled, teeming with anger. “What for?” the magician turned to Puck, who had already joined him. “From what I’ve heard, this beggar could not pay of his debts, so they are retaliating. Don’t help; it is dangerous out there. The mafia is very powerful in these parts of Italy.”
***
The magician closed his eyes. “I’m going to help him, whether you like it or not. Besides, I am the great magician. They will have heard of “the great magician.” Nothing can hurt me, so do not fear,” the magician told his servants. He squirmed his way closer, gasping as he saw blood tricke down the old man’s skull. The old man was still writhing, whether from fright or pain, until he suddenly let out a ghoulish scream. “How can they let this atrocity go?” the magician
murmured to himself. He stepped through the crowd to the center of the circle, waved his arms and yelled “Stop!” The crowd didn’t listen and continued chanting. So he tried again. “Stop!” he yelled. The crowd merely laughed it him. Finally, he shouted, “Stop, you foul-mouthed, evil fools. This is a horror. A crime! As the great magician, I command you to follow me, and leave this horrid place.” He puffed up his chest and cocked his head. The crowd rustled and murmured. Some snickered. Some eyed him in disbelief. “Oh, a martyr, I see!” one of the masked men laughed. “He would make a great addition for Pustav. His cage will be labeled ‘the Foolish Magician.’” He scoffed. The masked man snapped his fingers, and a mass of tall, wiry men surged through the crowd. They gripped the young magician by the scruff of his neck and hauled him to a donkey cart. In the quiet crowd, the magician could just barely make out Pustav and Giovanni mouthing, “We’ll come for you. We prom —.” He could not make out the rest. The crowd was surging forward, following him as he was tossed into the cart. That was five years ago. Now he was stuck in a cramped jail cell with little hope of breaking free. He sighed, staring at his legs, rail-thin as they were, and remembered all the good times that he had. He thought for a while. “What a pity,” he sighed. Before, he had the whole world to keep him company; now he had only his memories. At least he had been a great magician, he thought, as he closed his eyes for the very last time.
–o–
Issue V
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Wallow Tree by Nupoor Gandhi In the waters of the darkest sea Colored the sky’s darkest black Hides the remains of sunken Willow Tree Once upon a time, spat fire and thunder Shot whispers of merciless glee Other trees, null, to Willow Tree’s plunder He sat alone on the tip of a glacier Scoffing at little trees, meeker than he Why ever would he yearn to be one with such nature Night drew curtain on Willow Tree’s bright stage So tainted bow to broken eve flow aches In liquor marbles that broken silence does guage The tears they grow, black and impure To a puddle, a stream, a lake, a sea Drown a bridge for trees to procure So to Wallow Tree deluge with a pride of fool’s gold For Trees that are wistful of sallow company Are those who are deaf to the presence of a fiend Is he foolish to await rescue from those that flee When Wallow Tree fools himself, He, the one who sobs a lonely sea
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La Pluma
Broken Bliss by Andi Pappas
The wind flows through the trees, rustling the delicate leaves. It swirls around her face, tickling her as her hair brushes over her nose and eyes, swaying with the rhythm of the breeze. For a moment, she allows herself to believe it’s the touch of someone, anyone. A shiver passes through her body, and she closes her eyes against the paradise that surrounds her. Listening to the trickle of the waterfall, she can sense it descending down, falling into the void below her floating wonderland. Even with her eyes closed, she can clearly see the image and it mirrors her reality as closely as a photograph. The same scenery has played as a backdrop for her life as long as she can remember, never changing and as beautiful as it was empty of any other life but hers. She turns and opens her eyes to gaze at the glowing orb just to the left of the citadel she had come to accept as her home. It seems like it’s almost full, not like the crescent it had been... how long ago? As a child, she had filled her head with fantasies of visiting this glowing sphere, daydreaming of who she might find. Getting to that faraway place though, she had slowly realized was not a possibility.
Shifting her eyes to the shimmering pinpricks of light that playfully wink at her, she wonders why never seem to leave yet at the same time disappear almost completely for such long intervals. The dark seems even inkier and the lights in the sky seem brighter. Was it hope or the loss of it that made the illuminations whiter? She turns around and observes the expanse before her, not daring to look down. The infinity of blackness stretches in every direction, surrounding her field of vision. Only the heels of her feet are on solid ground—the balls of her feet greet air. Wrapping her arm around the smooth bark of the tree next to her, she inhales, and exhaling, falls forward. The sensation of falling and leaving solid ground seems all too scary but all too right. The darkness around her rushes to embrace her. Or is it she that was racing to meet the sky? She is jolted by her slender arm straightening painfully, her grip losing purchase on the glassy bark. She allows herself one more moment before stepping back, returning to safety. She stands breathless and once more searches the darkened sky around her, wondering if she’d be strong enough to pull herself back if she were to fall again.
–o–
Issue V
16
The Menagerie by Kimberly Lu
It has been a long time since you last took a walk. The hallway stretches into realms of possibility, doors lining its sides like a hundred staring eyes. Let them stare. The sun is down and the moon hidden away; this night, this time, it is yours. You walk. As you pass the nurse’s office you move quickly and suddenly, like the startled prey – lurching past that watchful window and to the first door. Its knob leaps to your hand eagerly. Cool metal kisses your fingers as you test it. Open. The first room is an explosion of color, the walls and floor and ceiling streaked and splattered with paint, looking as a rainbow would if it had been shattered and melted on canvas. For a brief moment time stretches, up and down melt together and you are lost in the hues – then it snaps back into place and your feet are still planted firmly upon the ground. The stench of oil paints lingers in the air like a dream. In the silence of the night, the colors scream. There are three small isles of sanity: the pervasive steel-and-linen single bed, a digital clock whose red digits read 2:16 AM, and a pale Chinese boy in an antisepticwhite shift. “Hello,” you say. He looks at you, briefly, then away. Something white and folded spills from his hand and melts into the blankness of his shift. 17
“What’s your name?” You speak softly, soothingly, like you would speak to some caged animal. And isn’t it the same? The animal inches closer and takes the food from your palm; the boy’s eyes inch from the ground to just below your eyes and takes in your question. “Min.” His voice, too, is soft and just a little hoarse. Red rims a pair of eyes that do not quite meet yours. “Hello, Min.” And suddenly find yourself a faun, with legs no longer meant for standing. You teeter until you totter and on the floor gracelessly, a sack of bones on caprine legs. “What’s that you’ve got there?” You motion towards the folded white that he holds as if it is a dove, firmly but not crushing. He says nothing but opens his palm, leaving you to examine the whiteness that has fallen from his hands. It is a long string of paper cut-outs in the shape of people, hand in hand. “Oh,” you say. “They’re chains of little paper people.” A scrawl on one of them catches your attention. You lean close. The writing is messy, and the Sharpie has bled into the paper and spread, but you can read it. ‘Min.’ “Why is your name on one of them?” “I’m lonely,” he says candidly. A stray lock of hair falls in his eyes, the ends of it touching the whites. He does not brush it away, instead looking up to meet your gaze with lizard-eyes that will not La Pluma
blink, will not blink. An urge to brush away that lock manifests itself as an itching in your fingers that spreads up your arm and down your back. Neurons fire. Nerves crackle with electricity. You lean forward and reach out a hand— He bats it away. You sit back on your haunches as the hair moves against his eye. It begins to water, but Min still does not blink. He says, “I think you should go.” You stir; something within you stirs. A thought coalesces: something to do with loneliness and paper men, but it’s too large and wedges itself in your throat. Instead something else rises up, bursting from your mouth like a bubble. “Goodbye.” “Goodbye,” he says softly. As you back out the door, he begins slowly tearing apart the linked hands of the paper men.
***
The second room is maybe-empty, unrumpled and unlived-in but still holding the faintest suggestion of a breath. You go in for no reason but to stir the air, lest it grow stale. A sniff – cleaning-agent smell, old-breath smell – tells you it already has. Ah well. You fling open the door and tendrils of cool air wrap around your ankles like snakes; a hissing intake of breath is provided as a soundtrack. You very nearly jump, but some small part of you expected that and so you do not. You have never seen the creature that lives here, but always you have been aware of it. And it is aware of you, it seems. The door to its room is open tonight, open when never before has it been open, open tonight of all nights. “Good evening,” you say to the empty room. There seems to be a sudden tremor; the anxious beating of some overtaxed heart? The snakes spiral up your legs and tug you insistently back and away. Task done, you leave the room and its startled vibration of a heartbeat to its fear. As you close the door, you imagine that pale creature creeping from its shell and wondering about the stranger who had come in and changed its air. You wonder if it will reject your air, if it will fear fresh winds as poison and retreat to the stale pockets to breathe. You wonder, and walk. Issue V
***
Three doors down, there is a sliver of light. A soft one, mellower than the harsh fluorescents of this place that make your cheeks seem sunken and your skin sallow as if the illness in your mind has taken your body as well. It looks like lamplight. A creak breaks the silence. The door swings open and gold spills out onto the floor and walls, and with it comes a young girl’s voice, still reedy and high. “…Isn’t it in the Declaration of Independence: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal?’” “Well, yes.” A woman’s voice, deeper and smoother than the girl’s but thrumming with confusion. “I don’t see what this has to do with anything.” You stop in the hallway and press against the wall. Here is a visitor, come outside of visiting hours; here is a visitor, intruding on your hours. “But—”the girl’s voice flutters like a hummingbird’s wings, oscillating between hopefulness and disdain, updown-up-down “—what you’re telling me is, ‘We hold this truth to be self-evident that Ms. Barlow was created better than Amita and can talk down to her.’ Is that right?” “I don’t appreciate your tone of voice, Ami.” The woman’s voice is sharp now, but only in the way a cat’s halfsheathed claws are sharp. “I’m your mother, and you have no right to speak to me that way.” “No right!” The hallways echo with the force of her scream; the plaster wall beneath your fingers trembles with feeling. “No right! Listen to yourself! Listen to what you’re saying! My mother would never – never say something like that. You… I knew it… you aren’t…” The girl’s door squeals in protest at the woman being forced out its lips. She seems too large to fit through that doorframe, too solid and real to pass between these membranous dreamer-walls. She trips over the hem of her skirt and falls. Even the thump of flesh hitting the ground seems extraordinarily present. A bustling somebody comes by the woman’s elbow and clicks their tongue, a noise like snipping shears. You flinch at the closeness of it, the realness of that sound, and you feel wool falling from your ears. “Oh, dear, I told you not to visit. Oh, dear, dear. Better if you didn’t visit, I said. Oh, dear.” A nurse. You press yourself harder against the wall and you can almost feel the membrane give. Maybe once you are
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a dream you may pass. Maybe once you are free, you may pass. The nurse pulls the woman up and you wonder at the fact her hands do not simply pass through. The woman’s eyes are shimmering; she dusts herself off and stands rigid like she is so solid that she will break if she bends. The two of them walk away saying words like “treatment” and “therapy” and “prosopagnosia.” The girl is crying. You do not go in her room.
***
Legions of empty and locked doors later you reach the cafeteria. The place is empty now, and silent. The great belching mouth that draws lines of little creatures like yourself is shuttered and cold. Something breathes in the moonlight and you are suddenly aware of another walker, sitting on the bench, eyes closed. “Out of the gauntlet, are you?” His voice is so real you hardly dare to breathe – so you don’t. For a few moments you listen to the air entering, leaving, entering his lungs. The rhythm is broken by a whisper of cloth on cloth as he swings his legs over the metal-andplastic lunch table bench and stands. “I think I’ve seen you around before. Walking.” His eyes gleam; stones polished smooth by a river of moonlight. “Just walking.” “Hello.” Your fingers wring themselves, twisting blindly. “What’s your name?” “It speaks! Hah!” His face contorts; eyebrows drawing closer, lips pressing themselves into a bloodless scar across his face. “My name’s Vladimir. And you?” “Me…” you begin, but are cut off. “I am! You are!” He seems almost to be talking to himself. “…Just another one of us. Hm? Just another goddamned crazy.”
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“I’ve never seen you before,” you say. “And I would be surprised if you did. I’m the ghost in the machine. I slip through the cracks! I push through the walls!” He plucks at a loose nightgown sleeve, presses a hand against the painted plaster of the building. You search for something solid, something not membranous wall or talking dreamstuff. You sit at one of the lunch tables. “Why are you here?” “Why?” His mouth flops fish-like, eyes bulging. “Why? Why, I’m dead!” “Dead!” A name swims by and tickles your mind, the way fish nibble at feet. Swimming! Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. What was the name? –Cotard’s delusion. Yes, Cotard’s! “Yes, I’m dead! Long dead! But my body hasn’t the sense to roll over and give up.” He gestures at himself wildly. “How do I look? Have I been vivisected?” Your mind flutters, turns. Too fast, too fast! Oh, God! The butterfly whose fluttering wings cause a hurricane – no! Just keep swimming, swimming! Here you are sitting with a dead man, and your thoughts are schools of fish darting like eyes – no, faster than eyes – and one quicksilver beast breaks and leaps— “I’m waiting,” you say, and with a sudden terrible certainty you know it is true. You say it again, just to confirm its existence, just to know it again. “I’m waiting.” “Are you?” He snaps upright. Watches. Something in his face reminds you of vultures cupping the air in their feather-fingers, circling, staring, watching. Waiting. “I’m waiting… waiting for…” Words close around you like a vise, but these you cannot deny, cannot discard like decorum. “I’m waiting for the sun to die.” The words hang in the moonlight like mist, and you feel as if they might dissipate at a wave of a hand. Time stretches and stretches until you feel as if you are about to snap.
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“Ambitious,” he says, “but no more than I.” Your thoughts settle slowly; a flock of birds – no. A herd of deer – no. The stars, wheeling and burning and finally grinding to a cold and definite stop. Yes. He sits. You ask him what he is waiting for. “I’m waiting for Godot,” he says, and laughs. “Godot?” “Oh, yes! I’m waiting for Dream! I’m waiting for Impossible!” He laughs again, and it is not a happy sound. “Twelve years of waiting!” How long have you been here? How many times have you walked? One, two, five, seven years? Eight? Ten, twenty, a hundred journeys? The great crushing weight of opium settles in your veins like nesting birds. Hush, they sing. Too long, you cry. Far, far too long. The sky outside holds the faintest tinge of color; the sun begins its daily climb from Hell, clawing relentlessly up mountains and through the clouds. “I suppose I’m waiting for him, too.” You watch Sol dragging himself up with skeletal fingers. “But the world just keeps turning.” “We’re all looking for him in our own ways, I think. Why do you walk at night?” “I walk because — ” the first shaft of dawn pierces your eyes and it is all you can do not to trumpet out your pain. You freeze like deer in headlights. “Because… because…” “I walk to see if the ground and the air and the light pushing against me will start my heart again,” he is saying, staring out the window. Dull, rhythmic thumps echo – a heartbeat? – but no, he pays it no mind, puts two pale fingers on his neck. “Not a beat, not a shiver for twelve years now.”
“Because,” you are still saying, “because…” Why do you walk? Why? The answer hangs somewhere between two heartbeats, two stilled waiting-for-Godot beats. “Hey! Hey, you!” A nurse. Thoughts flee like birds from a romping lion. Again you are the prey-animal. “What’re you doing out of your room?” You press yourself against the cold metal bench. From there you can see everything clearly: the faceless nurse backlit by sun, the walker’s knuckles white on the table. “You’re not supposed to be wandering around, you know that,” the nurse scolds no one in particular. “Go on, back to your room with you. Get!” He stares at her, eyes flat and golden in the dawn like a raptor’s. He stands, slowly. “Didn’t you hear me? Go back to your room!” You touch the cold metal of the lunch table. The shock of it frissons up your fingers and raises a wave of goosebumps. You grip your thin loose nightgown uncertainly and make a small noise. The nurse startles, seeming to notice you for the first time. “Oh, I’m sorry—” The sun is rising through the window. Your walk is over. A reason still hangs in the balance. You go.
***
And someday, the sun will die and the dreams will sleep and we will not be the animals. We will walk through the houses and they will be the menageries. We will press through walls.
–o–
Issue V
20
Three seconds by Emily Zhang
It only takes three seconds to realize what has gone wrong, only two seconds for her eyes to widen and her lips to part, only one second for the gulf that yawns between them to stretch impossibly wider. She puts her glass down on the nearest table gently, delicately, like it’s the only thing in her life that she can trust to not break and shatter to pieces at her feet. It’s all she can do to keep from breaking into a run, but where would she go? Away to escape? Towards him, to a hopeless forgiveness that she’ll never get? She glances up and she bites her lip and she hesitates fatally. Her lashes lower like the fragile wings of a wounded butterfly, brushing against the soft petals of her bloodless cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she states, but it’s not enough and he’s already shaking his head before she’s even finished her sentence. “I don’t want to hear it.” He says simply. He doesn’t look her in the eye as he leaves her, not so much a sound dismissal but a lingering departure, giving her the sense that if she wanted, she could very well chase after him. But. But she holds back. Because it only takes an infinitesimal fraction of a millisecond, a whistle of breath hissing from between clenched teeth, a convulsive pang of sharp sorrow digging
like knives between vulnerable ribs to lose someone. It only takes an unborn thought, a train wreck of consequences, an apology surrendered too little too late to lose someone. Sometimes it takes even less than that—sometimes, it merely takes a question unasked. Or a single story, untold. Even if she went after him, it wouldn’t be the same. A thousand words are not enough to seal the history between them. Her footprints are too small to fill the gaping, hungry hole between them. Her voice is too small to fill a lifetime of silence, her heartstrings too fragile to withstand another pluck. She can’t turn the pages back to the beginning or erase evidence of her shortcomings like rain against a chalk drawing. It’s not her fault but it might as well be. It’s not her fault but whose fault could it be, when she’s been played like a marionette and she’s only dancing on slender silk strings? So she holds back, and however she tilts her head and squints her eyes to make it hurt less, to excuse herself, she’s already lost him, and it hurts more than she’d ever guessed it would. She’s done too little too late and just three seconds ago, he was hers and the world still belonged to them. Three seconds ago: one, two, three. How much can change in the space of three seconds? Her lips part; she takes a breath. She calls out. But he’s already gone.
–o–
21
La Pluma 24
The Hate Crime by Kristin Chang The blackness of the alley was a claw at my throat, choking away my screams. Beside me, I sensed the soft scattering of rats among the dumpster bins, the shriek of nails warring against sheet metal. With a careful step forward, I placed my hand on my nylon duffel bag, my hand desperately seeking its front pocket. My hands shook as I retrieved my cell phone, the brightly-lit screen creating a pathetic tunnel of soft blue light. The zipper was deafening to my ears, echoing along the savaged brick walls. A cloud of reddish dust bloomed from the floor as I placed another hesitant foot forward, coating the screen with a layer of dust. I cursed silently and brought the cell phone to my nose, trying to read the display. Why was I even here? Maybe Ricky had wandered home, anxious for sleep. A cough bubbled in my throat as I squinted at my surroundings. I was hopelessly lost, trapped in the menacing darkness of a narrow alleyway, the ripened stink of garbage still hovering in the air. A windless chill settled on my arms, just as a street light overhead began to flicker ominously. I shielded my eyes, unused to its yellow glow. Even as I raised my head with relief, the lamp flickered, stuttered, and blew out with a pitiful whimper of defeat. Groaning limply, I placed my hand on a crumbling wall and attempted a few more steps. The fullness of black pressed against my shoulders, my breath coming in shallow, fickle gasps. A frenzied panic began at the base of my skull, rising with the staccato bass of my heart. Fear’s hot, lecherous gaze was as plain as the tender ache in my ankles. Vague, hazy shapes began to sculpt themselves from the dust-ridden floor. A rattling whistle from one of the dumpsters stunned my senses, and the phone plummeted from my grasp with a muffled thud. Sweat glazed over me, frigid from the stifling night air. All around me, metal bins opened their gaping mechanical jaws, ready to charge with garbage-caked mouths. The sparse spattering of stars overhead provided no comfort, morphing into pupilless eyes. I shook my head in a futile attempt to clear my Issue V
thoughts. Find Ricky, I commanded sternly. Find him and then get out, my brain repeated, forcefully. With renewed conviction, I wiped the droplets of sweat from my upper lip and bent toward the ground. Hunched over, I ran my hand along the long-forgotten cracks in the pavement, shuffling for my phone. Just as my fingertips came in contact with the studded metal of the phone’s case, a shrill cry bounced across the alley. The voice was raw and strained and brimming, sour with terror. I froze in place, horrified. A second scream emerged, louder than the first. Pounding footsteps and throaty giggles echo, faraway. And so I sprint, my fists balled. My nails pinch the skin of my palms, pressing little crescent moons into the sensitive pink flesh. And then I see it, see it all with a terrifying clarity, watching the flickers and scuff marks sidle into place, melding into a scene of dull, surreal reality. The pixels form an image. A lamp post, coated with a dark slickness that shines like an accusation. Half-shrouded by splotchy shadows, a figure tied to it, a morbid painting. A nightmare, potent and unwavering. My breath comes fast through my nostrils, braced against the odorous perfume of blood. It smells sharp and prickly, metallic and corrosive. I raise a trembling hand, whimpering as I inch away. I feel like a coward. I am a coward. I move forward again. The cell phone’s cheerful screen shoves away some of the dimness. And that’s when the portrait comes to life, brushstrokes of scarlet and ebony. It’s Ricky, my best friend, a confidante and partner in crime. I feel another imaginary hand at my throat, crushing the air from my lungs like pulp from a sour fruit. He dangles, two feet from the scattered rubble-crowded pavement, ropes and laces biting deeply into his skin. A screaming wound, gleaming like black oil, slashes like a ribbon across one cheekbone. His eyes rattle in his skull, and
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I can see the pallid whites of his eyes, shot through with pale spidery veins. I don’t think I can move. His hair is so drowned in darkness, I can barely discern his characteristic bleached-blond shag. Instead, all I can make out now are three letters, innocent enough, pieced together into the key that puts sense into this scene, a scene from a dream. I need to wake up. My hands dampen with aching disbelief, punching in the numbers 911. My fingers slip twice. The woman on the other line is mechanic, equally weary and alert in her serene, authoritative manner. I despise her. I need to wake up. An ambulance arrives, startling away the moldy rats. The lights flash against Ricky’s alarmingly pale skin. I cry out, but only the darkness hears. A flashlight waves against my moist, salty face, green jolts blinking across my vision. But I don’t look away from the three letters, sprawled nonchalantly across the bricks. FAG. Smeared hastily and hurriedly, furious scrawls and a looping G, elegantly melodramatic, with added drips of rusty brown that slather down the asphalt. And I know they see it too, as soon as the yellow-vested look-alike men all cringe, and the policeman quietly brings a radio to his mustached lips, his hands hidden by shadows. A blanket sags sullenly along my shoulders. I don’t know how it got there. I don’t care. I don’t care about anything. I slap away a woman’s intrusive hand, hissing with an unrecognizable, primal mutter. My brain has been dropped somewhere, shattered like the skewed bones in Ricky’s arms. I still can’t come any closer, still as the weighty, moist-soaked air. They lift Ricky onto a stretcher. I wretch, and yank the awful softness of the blanket from my shoulders. I’m seeing everything through a hazy, distorted lens, my vision twisting into knots of muted color and bolts of sirens and blood blood blood, too much of it. “A hate crime,” murmurs the policeman with quiet
confidence and a half-groan of sympathy and exhaustion. I hate him too.
***
The other details are lost, borne into the quicklyretreating night, but the dull outline of Ricky’s slack body is still lodged like a splinter. A flicker of a scene plays out, an old-fashioned reel in my mind. I hear him when he laughs, with that odd release of his entire body, a full-frontal slump. The way he bore the people’s pointed frowns and subtle disapproval. Already, my throat tightens in that sour, reluctant way, and I know I will be sobbing now, the cries wrenching away from me, pulled into reverberations by the alleyway. I am put in the back of a police car. My brother would laugh. We drive to the hospital. I call my mom, two states away, as oblivious as she’s always been. I don’t know where I’m walking. I trip and fall, down two flights of stairs. They give me a bed, say I’ve fractured two ribs, and that I can go home tomorrow. As if I want to. Maybe I fell on purpose, I don’t care. Doctors come in, they call my mom, they call Ricky’s uncle, papers are shuffled and filtered and launched onto dust-coated tabletops, under the exhaustive charge of alerteyed nurses. As I lay across from his restless form, a sort of intrusive guilt clings to me. My eyes want to escape my head, my hands twitter nervously in the air, my legs tumble one after another in a hurried twitch, each clamoring to exit the presence of such unrestrained suffering. But my heart beats low and steady and strong enough for the both of us. Because tonight, all that matters is that I spend the night beside him, listening to his ragged breathing, each gasp another lash of the whip, gorges of fire against our chests. Please, I want to wake up.
–o–
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La Pluma
Flower Speech by Joyce Tien
Sixteen years, sixteen episodes into my life, I pressed the rewind button to a summer filled with memories of leaky hoses, bags of fertilizer, and wilting flowers. And my neighbor, Ms. Helga Cordes. I push the rewind button, and there I am at age thirteen, three years ago, seeing Ms. Cordes for the first time. She was lugging three bulging boxes from the moving truck to her house. I waved and smiled at her, but received only a curt nod acknowledging that she was aware of my existence. I fast forward to a month later. She was in a wheelchair by then. When I offered some assistance she merely replied with a, “I’m fine.” No “Oh thank you dear” or “How nice of you to ask!” Just a crude “I’m fine”. Again, I push fast forward. Then play, and on the small screen in my mind I can see myself in Ms. Cordes’s backyard, knees in weeds, hands caked with dirt and grime. Due to her injury, my parents had forced me to go to her house and tend to her garden every day. Every morning, I would walk twenty-seven heavy steps to her house, swing open the wooden gate, and wait for Ms. Cordes to give me the nod, signaling me to grab my gloves and the days work to begin. Then I slow advance and watch myself teeter groggily into her yard after waking up a little too late. When I arrived at her house, I ventured the usual “Good morning, Ms. Cordes.” She replied with a terse “Your late. Don’t be late again.” Inside, I was thinking, “Seriously? Five minutes late?
It wasn’t as if I was receiving monetary compensation for the emotional trauma I had to face every morning. Who was she to be so strict and so bitter? And who was she to take it out on me? Pause. I recall the seething anger, the flashing eyes. Then play again. Near the end of that summer was when I finally found out that she was a single mom who had raised two kids in Chicago and had retired at an early age just to take care of her grandchildren. Now that her grandchildren were grown up, her kids wanted to send her to a nursing home. As one final act of defiance, she moved to Cupertino to become my next-door neighbor.
***
A gift. Experiences like these are gifts. Doing yard work was a chance for me to overcome the challenge of ignorance, of only seeing things as how they are presented to me, and an opportunity to find perspective. I realized that maybe she didn’t care about the flowers or maybe she was just cautious of kids because her own had let her down. Whatever the reason may be, I now understand that every person has a story. All the hopes and dreams. And fears. In every face that makes them who they are and influences how they act. I learned to give them time, to be considerate, and look from a different angle. Because there’s always a story and always a new perspective to find.
–o–
21 V Issue
24
The Mysterious Man by Tara Kumar
He was an old man in a rocking chair, almost too old to still be in this world. His expression was gray and stoic, and the only parts of his body moving were his hands. His stout fingers twirled around each other in winding circles, over and over again without ever stopping. His life had been reduced to sitting in that one rocking chair on his porch, on which he spent all his days. His house seemed empty, like he was the only one living there. A sense of eeriness surrounded the broken steps of his gray mansion. Everything around him had the same sense of dullness: his house, his porch, his lawn, his chair, himself. His monotonous life did not seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. He seemed to be sitting still in a world full of moving people, but what happened that caused his life to slow down so much? He lived a calm life despite a world full of problems and troubles. His face seemed distant, as if he was living in his own world. He seemed to be thinking deeply about something, something important to him. And yet he still managed to break himself from his train of thought and get up from his chair every night at exactly ten, to turn off all his lights and go to bed.
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La Pluma
Writer's Block by Emily Zhang the sky, sketched in blue like a lady in a star-strewn dress? no, she thinks, in frustration it doesn’t work. and her hands, slim and nimble, artist’s fingers and full of platitudes, she’d like to fly but she can’t, she’d like to breathe life into someone but she can’t. she tries again: takes a deep breath, a butterfly preparing to unfold its iridescent wings, flashing veins of verdant leaf and placid yellow, scatters pale rays of morning light. like a diving peregrine falcon, wind whistling through her feathers, she puts pen to paper, but nothing works, damn it. she says, and rises, storms down to refill a cup of steaming hot chocolate, pulls on her warm woolen sweater and takes a stroll through the winter forest. here, she watches bare branches crisscross against the frost-laced clouds and smiles.
Issue V
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Staff: Coeditors-in-chief: Pooja Desai, Abhi Vaidyanatha Designers: Yashashree Pisolkar, Samantha Shieh Selection Editor: Prathyusha Charagondla, Samantha Shieh Secretary: Tara Kumar Treasurer: Diane Chong Public Relations Manager: Yashashree Pisolkar Adviser: David Clarke
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