Kindergarten, Anonymous

Leland Quarterly | Fall 2022

Kindergarten

Anonymous

St. Perpetua Catholic School, K-8

& this was when the hinges to my brain swung open like fists & memories start to keel. A genesis, this: day one we learned hell was something you could eat. I was five when my lips dressed in plaid & I swam in memory before it bore memory, I mean memorare: how each noon I flew unto Mary, flaying prayers like sweet apple skin. Her son loitered in the wafers at church: soon he’ll temple my throat he’ll pound my tongue like a table & he’ll drug my words to Word then kiss my sin to skin. I honeyed my voice. I honest a smile, but nights I’d flatten a wafer under my body till it was blade, greedy for something untaken. Fall days crisped with sun. Recess resurrected & recessed again. I was five when the dismissal line tempted & I waded into my best friend’s lips. I thought love was something you could taste. (How a wafer tumbles back & forth. Or a memory marbling through wind.) Mouth open, voice an entryway— she flinched. Dyke, a classmate

Kindergarten | Anonymous

breathed, I heard bike, I’d never ridden one, & my love for her was so easy, without condition. Now I am so lonely. I think if I live in my words any longer I will die. Sin down, T., my teacher dismissed, dammed twelve bodies between us. I mean sit down. No one ever told my mother— she still cut me apples every lunch. In kindergarten I learned about hell & thought it said he’ll. I learned hunger meant greed. Greed meant lust. I learned subtraction.

Leland Quarterly | Fall 2022

Allegory

Charles Li

I

She lives next to the police station and to the high school. She meditates in the mornings until the sound of sirens and students engulf her apartment. Then, with one good eye, she walks to the fish market, the meat market, the bakery.

She watches out the windows as she eats. On one side, skies over brick. On the other, sunlight atop cars. The talk of the town is 高考, 高考, 高考.

She brings food to the policemen. Her husband used to be one. The playground in between is always empty.

Allegory | Charles Li

II

The day we visit her grave is the hottest of the year. We stop to pick up incense, jewelry, and joss paper.

We mix them with leaves and branches next to her gravestone. The ashes fly high. We each burn incense, bow three times, tell her how much we have grown, and wish her well with the money we have sent her.

I sleep in her room at my aunt’s apartment. In the middle of the night, I see her reflection at the foot of the bed. A few weeks later, the glass doors to her room shatter.

Leland Quarterly | Fall 2022

III

Sometimes, you see shapes in the clouds, my best friend tells me.

I ask what he sees. He does not respond. I see the outline of a swan. I do not tell him.

He stands on the edge of the wall. He launches the ball towards the hoop. He skins his arm on the way down. He rips out grass from our lawn and shoves it in his mouth. He cries and then laughs.

That was ten years ago, and have not talked in six.

Allegory | Charles Li

IV

It is late, and the baby is crying. She stares at her paper. She turns toward the cradle. Her heart sinks. It had been on her mind, but she noticed most clearly then.

Her dissertation defense the next day is successful. Perhaps it would have been better if it were not.

Leland Quarterly | Fall 2022

V

Upon an ancient scroll, she teaches him piano. The markings war. The metronome ticks. The pedals creak. But there is still space to learn.

Machine guns in earshot—earshot dead bodies down the row. Fire on the third story, bridge suspended in the air. He is only five.

The sound of the piano fades. A grenade too close, she cradles him in the corner as the piano convulses. The roof combusts, her body shatters, the boy crawls out. The metronome ticks. He braves machine guns in equal temperament. He is now six.

Allegory | Charles Li

VI

I places a line of sunflower seeds leading to a dead end on a trail. I wonder how many have followed it to the Tree.

The seeds: eaten by birds, stomped into the ground, lifted through wind, weathered by rain. Where there are no seeds, there are no people. But I trust that the seeds still form the line; they will follow; they will come to the Tree. The Tree: robust perennial, wise, unbothered. The Tree speaks; they listen; they do not know what the Tree says; they lean in; they want to hear; they want to know where the seeds have brought them; they want meaning; they want to discover; they want something larger than themselves.

Leland Quarterly | Fall 2022

Sicada Diego Rafael Pérez