Leland Quarterly, Vol. 18, Issue 1 by Leland Quarterly

FALL 2023

LELAND QUARTERLY VOLUME 18, ISSUE 1: Fall 2023

MASTHEAD EDITORS IN CHIEF Katherine Wong Caroline Wei PROSE EDITORS Karin Kutlay Matt Hsu POETRY EDITORS Ben Marra Celestine Wenardy VISUAL ARTS EDITOR

Sophie Schmitter

MANAGING EDITOR

Melanie Zhou

EDITORIAL STAFF Ruba Ahmed Matias Benitez Jono Wang Chu Ribka Desta Dyllan Han Jaiden McDaniel Aniyah Shen Cara Steele Annabelle Wang Lydia Wang Anna Yang Jenna Yang Alaina Zhang FINANCIAL OFFICER Lyle Given LAYOUT Katherine Wong Caroline Wei

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EDITORS’ NOTE For us, fall quarter has always represented a period of change. As the few deciduous trees on campus start to shift color, we — alongside — also begin our new lives: moving into new dorms, adjusting to new class schedules, and finding our footings during a new school year. Everything seemingly undergoes an era of evolution — whether that’s reflected in our environment, friendships, or relationships. Creative writing classes frequently discuss change. Character arcs, the climax of a plot — the list can go on and on. We found that the writing and visual art of this fall’s Leland Quarterly issue exactly captures the essence of change. Across all of these works, we discovered a common sense of both love and mourning over the progression of passing events. Taking on our new roles as Co-Editors-in-Chief of LQ was also a large shift for us. I — Katherine — joined LQ during my freshman fall quarter as a poetry staff editor, then went on to serve as a Poetry Lead Editor last year. Caroline’s journey with LQ is similar: joining last year during her freshman fall quarter as a prose staff editor. While we certainly miss aspects of our previous roles, we are beyond ecstatic to be spearheading new initiatives in the organization this year. From hosting a hot chocolate social to initiating quarterly readings, we’re excited to strengthen the creative writing community here at LQ. Thank you to all of the editors that helped read submissions this quarter, our amazing executive board, and Mariposa House for allowing us to host weekly meetings in their space. We hope you enjoy reading this issue!

Katherine Wong and Caroline Wei Editors-in-Chief

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A NOTE ON THE COVER ART

Were They Always Like This? by Alice Liu Inspired by the blue screen of death that occurs upon a fatal system error, this illustration depicts a hauntingly post-apocalyptic scene. Paradoxically, this technological desolation that is depicted is also oddly calming without the barrage of digital content that was once displayed on the billboards. The two lone figures in the foreground gaze upon the scene in mesmerized awe, perhaps with a sense of longing and nostalgia for what once might have been. But even amidst this demise, they will continue down the endless road into the infinite landscape to new beginnings, free of digital cacophony and full of the unwavering resilience of the human spirit.

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CONTENTS

Poetry Aubade dal senso contrario, Giancarlo Ricci Orthodox Wednesday, Chase Klavon Old Wives’ Tale, Isabelle Edgar

10 11 19

Prose One Bad Investment — When High Finance Meets Dating, Chetanya Pandey Liturgy, Katie Smith

14 22

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Visual Arts Pont des Amours, Nur Shelton All I Do The Whole Night Through Is Dream of You, Katie Terrell Simmering Memories: A Bowl of Pho and Fragmented Friendships, Katie Terrell Bliss / Forehead Kisses, Katie Terrell An Unfathomable Void, Alice Liu Searching for Signal, Alice Liu

12 16 17 18 20 28

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Aubade dal senso contrario Giancarlo Ricci It’s never cold in Lazio, no one’s got AC, fuck that. Ehilaaà! bel culetto zio. Vabbè, I like his Grindr message, slide half a pack of Muratti into my jeans before leaving. I count spicci stuck between cobblestones, think about how they’ll stay there forever, think that it doesn’t really matter. Stai tranquillo, sto per arrivare. When I find his door, it’s already halfway open. I undress without saying hello. On my walk back Via Andromeda, I watch a vagrant reach between wrought-iron bars and pluck the smallest albicocca, watch him bite into its orange-pink flesh without hesitation. And I think about you: How once, back in Cali, we biked past NO TRESPASSING signs onto that observatory. How I found half that hawk’s ribcage, which you slipped into your coat pocket. Didn’t it shine so brightly? Didn’t your forehead taste so sweet, didn’t we fly down Junipero Serra, didn’t we scream ourselves raw into the night?

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Orthodox Wednesday Chase Klavon This is not a story, there is no conclusion, it is more like an orange with a bite carved into its peel. A reckoning of sorts. Teeth stained black, how our kneecaps clicked when we walked, the day that fish started tasting like fish. There is no used to be. There only is. A bad haircut, asbestos, deep fried cheese. Left shoe on the right foot. Swollen thumbs. The exhaust pipe crackling warmth in cold air. Who are you, really, but a souvenir? A tchotchke? Skin overripe with bruises you cannot explain, the thick stench of fire, our God being the conductor in the quiet car. So, yes, tell me about the time we peeled our skin off of car leather, summer swelter, and how you feel guilty for being so alive. I will explain how each time I lick my lips they become drier than before. It is a self-waged war on living.

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Pont des Amours Nur Shelton M 13

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One Bad Investment – When High Finance Meets Dating Chetanya Pandey If I were to sketch a Discounted Cash Flow model for the acquisition of my ex as a potential target, he would fail miserably by all accounting principles. Not only was his romantic growth rate as slow as his pace (when it came to our relationship), but his patient attitude required a high dose of hallucinogenic drugs to come to the level of that CEO of Twitter who doesn’t pay Google’s bills. Once I tried to calculate his market cap in MS Excel. Unfortunately, I received an error message. On the trading floor of love, our Captain was too busy to have any outstanding shares in the market. (Let me accept that all his heart, veins and arteries had already dried up in quenching the thirst of a girl who remained perennially unamused by all mortal capacities.) My bygone love was also bad as a stock. (Ah well, I was a bad trader.) His share price was as inflated as his ego. The stock exchange rated him as an honest, dedicated, hardworking guy, and his office did too. (I brought an office guy to the house.) The recession revealed he was but a syrup-savored ornamental stock, the kind you buy for the children’s portfolio to boost your capacity to throw money down the drain as you trip up the stairs to your Sunday club. ‘I believe in falling,’ you mutter as you hold by your Graham rules of investment that your octogenarian self has so proudly come to accept as values and ethics. ‘Graham was a great man. I met him in a bookstore.’ ‘Yes, Sir, great indeed!’ Once, I hired a professional investment manager to navigate the process of trading my tall, muscular holding. He came with many an unrealized loss stemming from his childhood, the manager pointed out sadistically, as if to suggest that the reliable market of cat memes and avocado toasts would have been a better fit.

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‘I told you he is a bad stock.’ ‘But you also told me I’m a good trader?’ To this day, I curse the app I met him on. I wish the app cursed itself too for having listed him, but why would it? The broker earned his highfrequency trading commission as he left me in peril on the banks of liquid pearls. Amidst the balance sheets of love, my ex’s liabilities outweighed his assets, leaving me stranded in a sea of financial heartbreak. Did I tell you that both Credit Suisse and my ex-honey pass the Fed’s stress test revolving around hypothetical ideas of finance and love only to fail in reality? At this point, I’m confused about whether to sympathize with my ex or the bank. There are not many differences between the two. Now, there are fixed asset stocks, stocks that are not exactly great but know how to pay back. My stock is not one of them. The only fixed asset my ex got is his comical self and no one in our local theater is ready to hire him. It is also not something he can sell to pay me back. There are walking-talking stocks that file for bankruptcy and relieve their holders of an aeon-long confusion. My stock is also not one of them. He still believes in his value to the stakeholders and his ability to never be wrong, turn around, divide (me) and conquer. Let me tell you what my ex was. He was an AT1 security meant not to benefit the holder but to empower the business of ex-banking. I wish insider trading were legal in dating, or maybe it is. Let’s wait until I’m charged for securities fraud on the next date.

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All I Do The Whole Night Through Is Think of You Katie Terrell

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Simmering Memories: A Bowl of Pho and Fragmented Friendships Katie Terrell

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Bliss / Forehead Kisses Katie Terrell

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Old Wives’ Tale Isabelle Edgar

And as she stood to leave someone pulled her and she unfolded to the floor. Legs spread, a pool of ice by her inner thighs, her sea blue dress with faces on it, faces of people she said she knew, ballooning towards her collarbone. It looked like she was birthing something. Some people looked scared but most people didn’t look at all. One year ago she miscarried. Though she’d never use that incriminating language. She would have held it so carefully. Would have removed the dirt beneath each one of her nails. Would have learned to make wind chimes so they could watch the way things move all on their own while she bathed its small body in the sink.

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An Unfathomable Void Alice Liu

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Liturgy Katie Smith

They are often on the edge of towns, rarely in cities, hopefully tucked neatly into the countryside, so that they can accurately print that they have pastoral rolling hills and a clear lake or lagoon. If they have to, they admit they have nothing more than a chlorine pool. God is not in cities, he’s barely in pools, but they always make do. Regardless of the amenities, kids of all ages flock to them and most are eager – they aren’t lying about that, though eager for what is a question to dissect only once they’re safely unpacked in cabins by gender and age. The counselors rally the kids with promises of zip lines and high dives and obstacle courses. They teach them how to read the bible: chapter first and verse second, and then they teach them the camp chants. This is a repeat after me song. Between the free swims and the campfire singalongs, they sit in circles in the grass with their Bibles in their laps, leafing through the pages as a counselor speaks softly about his life before Christ, when he laid hungover and alone on Sunday mornings, wondering if life meant anything at all. The counselor teaches them about Job and Doubting Thomas and Paul, asking the campers to explain what each story means to them. Those with newly creased Bibles – whose spines resist their prompting to lie open – are often quiet during these sessions, winding a blade of grass around their finger as they listen. Those with leather-bound dog-eared books do the speaking for the others, pride seeping from their constructed smiles when they raise their hand and eloquently distill God’s message, the same way they learned to do each Sunday. In one of these sessions, they will learn of Abraham’s slave. The girl campers’ bodies will be tanned from the hours in the sun, their skin bronzed except the lines of red around the spot where the straps of their swimsuits clung to their skin. Even in their tee shirts, the boys will be able to see the seductive mark peeking from their neck line, and they will hardly be able to breathe as the counselor begins the tale of Hagar. They will learn Abraham’s wife Sarah tasked Hagar with producing an heir for her master because Sarah’s own shriveled womb could not. With rapt attention, they will watch as she lies on the lawn in front of them and lets Abraham’s ancient body thrust into her until she is pregnant with his seed. They will see a red line laid bare across her clavicle, leading suggestively toward her breast. See Abraham’s hand clutch at the

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line first, then below it. See the fire ants that keep biting their legs make a trail across her jaw. The counselor will explain that Hagar conceives for Abraham, but so too does Sarah – her raisined womb rejuvenated by the will of God alone – and then they will watch as Sarah casts Hagar from the home. Before them, Hagar will rise from their circle in the grass, step over their crossed legs, and then walk into a Middle Eastern desert with her bastard son wrapped tightly to her chest. They will watch her used body disappear in the arid land. The girls will learn that it is a woman’s folly to believe it is her sex that can create life, that such a miracle is only possible through Him. The boys will learn desire. They stay in cabins, each themed to a tree or a plant, with stacks of bunk beds and small attached bathrooms that have timers in the showers. The younger children have cabins clumped together like the thickets of trees that surround the camp, but the cabins for the teenagers are littered around the property, closer to the main office or the camp director’s house or wherever the Lord can be reasonably assumed to keep a watchful eye. Some of these cabins are filled with believers who raise their hands to the skies when the rock band – it’s always a rock band – plays a song that makes them feel as if the ex-drug-dealer or ex-male-prostitute on stage is Jesus himself, finally back for the Second Coming. These kids have believers for parents, probably believers for grandparents, and their Bible has crescent moon indents from the way they clutched it when their parents told them all the ways they would burn in Hell. This is a repeat after me song. Some cabins have friends of believers – or, worse yet, simply children of believers, who might raise their hands when the music fills their ears but only because they know they should. They had to go out and buy a brand new one-piece swimsuit just for these weeks at camp, and they had grumbled about it but eventually complied with the quiet protest of an open back. You can spot them by their bare backs. It is always one of these pseudobelievers, these bare-backed pretenders, that find themselves by the lake or lagoon or hopefully-not-pool one night with a boy who does believe but who knows no better than to meet at the edge of the water and suck the juice from the apple in a girl’s outstretched hand. He will have watched videos before – more than she has, despite the cross that hangs limply at his throat, because that is what boys his age do. He will know what to do, in theory if not in practice. The pair will have met during free swim, or maybe during a nature hike, when the cabins mixed for some competition or another. He will have approached her, and even he will not be entirely sure why. He will just know that he felt compelled by the way her shoulder blade jutted from her back, or her hair danced across her shoulder, or her swimsuit cut into her hip. She will not speak first but still he

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will have known his approach was welcome from the way her back arched at his first hello. She will be taken with him instantly, and maybe he will be taken by her too. Regardless, their reunions will be rare because the activities are usually split by gender and age, and he is undoubtedly a little older than her. Sometimes he is a counselor – but he is often just another kid himself, sent off to camp with little else to do but praise the lord during the day and then touch himself at night while the cicadas lull the rest of his cabin to sleep. He will bring her something that his parents sent in a care package, like milk chocolate or sour worms, and they will split the treat while they dip their toes in the cool water, slapping the mosquitos that cling to their arms. When they finish the offering, he will kiss her closed-mouthed, and she will not know what she is doing but she will have seen enough scenes in movies to pretend to be in one herself. She will kiss him back, and then he will indicate to her that she should lie down behind a canoe or some other opportunely placed object. When he enters her, usually with little warning, she will cry out in pain but he will keep their bare bodies from discovery with a swift slip of his palm over her dry lips. This will last all of thirty seconds, and then it will be over, and they will part ways back to their cabins. She will feel either like her older sister, a proper adult, or she will regret it with everything in her being, but either way she will have done it and it is something she cannot take back no matter how much she throws her hands in the air at the prompting of the rock band’s stringy haired leader. She will still be the first girl to dare taste temptation and he will still be the boy that sucked on the end of the cross on his walk back from the camp’s clear waters. The next day, his friends will ask him why he is so happy, and he will put up a good fight for the whole morning before he caves at their assault and tells them all about the night behind the canoe or between the bushes or in the concrete shadow of the lifeguard stand. They will push him from behind and then beg him to point out which one she is. He will tell them her name, and then he will describe the sensation of being inside her, his face flush with the fresh memory. His friends will slap him on the back to release their pent-up envy, their minds swimming with the new fantasy. Her friends will ask her why she is quiet, why she walks a little behind them, but she will just shake her head and shrug, fingering the edge of her waist band as she remembers the scrape of concrete or itch of dying grass against her bare shoulder blades. She will refuse to catch up to them even when some of the younger kids catch them by the hands and beg them to join in on their latest rendition of Boom Chicka Boom or Bazooka Bubble Gum. This is a repeat after me song. The first girl and the boy won’t speak when they brush by each other at breakfast, or lunch, or even at dinner, but by the next day her name will be whispered all around the halls, passed from one cabin to the next. This is a

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repeat after me song. Whether or not she was proud before, she will no longer be, her neck stiff with all of the ways she has to contort herself away from curious eyes. The boy, for his part, will be unable to ever look at her again, his eyes cast in an eternal stare down as he remembers the sweet release of damnation. Boys of all ages will ask her to meet up with them – some of them mocking, most of them at least slightly serious. The original boy will never ask again, but she will hear his voice in all of the subsequent boys – taste the creamy chocolate or sour sweetness still stained on her lips. Most of the believers will have stopped being friends with her by then, but a few will stay, hell-bent on saving her as if their confirmation of friendship alone can stop the camp’s stoning. Her friends that still want to be friends, the bare-backed ones, will want to know how it feels, and they will distort their faces into an awful wince when she explains the dry pain. She will never forget the dry pain – she will promise herself – even when she is old and married and no longer feels the pain. Even when she has her own children and covers their bare backs. Her friends will vow to never do it, but the boys will be awakened by the original conqueror and the girls will be curious and flattered by the boys’ insistence, and one or two more will meet by the water before the summer’s end. This is a repeat after me song. The ones after will suffer less, the novelty removed from the act, but even after more of the girls join the first’s ranks, she will still be marked by the original encounter, condemned to her bare-backed company and the pity of one or two imitation saviors. The campers will learn another story one day as they sit in the grass, cross-legged with the covers of their Bibles sticking to the sweat on their thighs. They will learn that before Hagar ever had Abraham’s child, before she gave himself to him, or even entered his home, famine ravaged Sarah and Abraham’s land. They will watch with wide eyes as the couple makes a journey to Egypt to escape the fate of their withering bodies, watching them step over their legs and enter their circle, where Abraham will pretend that Sarah is his sister instead of his wife. He will let the Pharaoh take Sarah as his own wife so that the Pharaoh will gift him gold and honor to replace what he had lost. They will watch the Pharaoh’s hands circle Sarah’s slim body, see the stricken look on her face as he balls the fabric of her skirt into his fist and then takes her while her husband watches. The counselor will explain that the Lord sends a plague to the Pharaoh’s home in penance for his and Sarah’s infidelity, and then they will watch as Abraham takes back his wife. They will see Sarah’s own red mark. See the way the fire ants flock to her face as she lies on the grass, her ribs trying to fight their way from beneath her taut skin. The girls will learn that their bodies are not their own, but they are responsible for them anyways. The boys will learn to blame Sarah.

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During free swims, the first girl will sit on the edge of the water, a tee shirt hanging loose over her one-piece swimsuit as she soaks her feet in the water and imagines the dirt dissipating from her body through the pores of her skin. The smaller kids will fill the air with crescendos of sound, loud enough that she can pretend not to hear the believers who abandoned her whisper from their place in the corner of the deep end or along the lake’s buoy line. She will remember how she used to wade there with them and whisper about which counselors always flirted with each other or which girl forgot to shave, but she will no longer care about either of those things. In fact, part of her will prefer camp like this, prefer to sit and trace the space of land where her hair had fanned the ground, where no one will bother her so long as the bare length of her calves stretch before her. They are scared of her in these moments, their voices never too loud, like the site of her sin is sacred. No one is more scared then her, but she doesn’t show it, preferring to keep her hand running along the dry grass or rough concrete edge as she forces a soft smile and pretends she understands what she has done. The camp will drag them all to the top of a hill on the final night with a heaping campfire, where the adults will pass out s’mores and the children will eat them, licking the stick from their fingers. Once sedated, the kids will listen to each adult tell the story of their saving, the origin of their believing. None of them will be the offspring of a believer, a simple third-generation devotee. No, they will all have done something horrible – like had sex in the back of a parked pickup on a cloudless night – and the believers will begin to wonder what it was all worth if they had to have been pregnant, homeless, drug ridden, first in order to be a true believer. This is a repeat after me song, like the man with tracks making a snaking path up his arm who sang to them on stage each night about God’s gentle grace, or the camp director who lifts the sleeve from her left wrist and reveals to them the mangled scars of her own forgotten faith. Despite this revelation, there will still be an empty seat to one side of the first girl who dared to dip her feet in the clear camp water. The believers will even turn to look at her as a counselor confesses she killed her baby before it was born then saw Jesus in the membrane that floated in her bathroom toilet. She will clutch at her stomach as she feels a phantom kick. She will wonder if there is any other fate but this. After the campfire, where true believers and bare-back pretenders alike cry into their chocolate-stained fingers at the images conjured of faithless sinners, the counselors will pull them aside one by one and ask if they give themselves to Jesus. It will be easy for the believers, who do this ritual once a year with the same practiced quiver in their voices, palms raised to the clear night sky. It will be harder for the others, who know the weight of this gift, who must pry these words with a pained expression from their lips.

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Maybe one or two of them will resist, refusing to feel the call of God enter their bodies as the boys at the water once did. But most will give themselves fully, their shaking hands tucked under their thighs so that the counselors will finally be satisfied. With this final submission, they will be able to at last leave the sting of the fire and escape into a long, cold sleep. The first girl will give herself to God, verbally and then the only way their whispered creations of her will allow. She will go back to the water on that final night with a man that is older than her first. Maybe there are tracks on his arm or maybe he has no origin of his believing, but either way he will know God, and he will have offered to introduce her. They will soak their feet in the water as this new boy recites John, and she will imagine the dirt scraped from her heels by Jesus’ calloused hands. Then, without an offering but with God’s word freshly coating her lips, she will lie down behind the canoe or bush or next to the metal legs of the lifeguard stand, hands turned up to let the Spirit in. This is a repeat after me song. His palm meant for raising to the heavens will press to her closed mouth.

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Searching for Signal Alice Liu

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Contributing Artists & Writers Giancarlo Ricci (poetry) is a poet and musician. They are interested in exploring the interactions between queerness, the erotic, and violence. Chase Klavon (poetry) is a junior at Stanford studying English and American Studies with a minor in Psychology. When she is not juggling words or reading them, she enjoys playing Jeopardy, going on walks, playing pickup basketball, staring at the sky, or listening to the same music as her father. Nur Shelton (visual arts) is a coterm from Ashland, Oregon. He spends his time writing, singing, taking photos, and wandering through the woods. Chetanya Pandey (prose) is, by definition, a very exact human who happens to play financial engineer. She make PDV models of abstract futuristic theories manufactured by behavioural economists on shrinking pieces of paper. She believes problems can be solved without 689-page long solutions. All it takes is a financial engineer to play umpire. Not only this, she humbly requests all diligent readers of such important manuscripts to utilize the sight of their eyes and the courage of their patience in more important affairs such as preparing cat memes or avocado toasts in favour of the most important matter of equality of education. Her moral dilemma is the following questionAs long as we have 689-page long explanations of the present after it has become the past, how can we ever resolve the gap between the literate and the illiterate? And yes, she’s vegan! Katie Terrell (visual arts), an undergraduate senior at Stanford University majoring in Art History, creates art as a form of stress relief. Her art is characterized by triangular geometric forms. Katie’s art has been previously published in the Dark River Review, 29

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Outrageous Fortune, Blue Marble Review, Sink Hollow, and Animus. She has also been featured in five in-person art exhibitions ranging from Texas to California. She can be found on Instagram: @ ktdigitalart. Isabelle Edgar (poetry) is a contemporary dancer and writer from Woods Hole, MA. She is a senior studying English with a creative writing emphasis here at Stanford. Alice Liu (visual arts) is an illustrator who enjoys crafting narratives tinged with intrigue and unexplainable feelings through her artwork. She is currently a junior studying computer science under the visual computing and systems tracks. Besides art, she also enjoys playing video games and social dancing in her free time. Katie Smith (prose) is a senior from Auburn, Indiana majoring in English with a creative writing emphasis and minoring in education and religious studies.

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