Leland Quarterly, Vol. 17, Issue 3

MASTHEAD

EDITOR IN CHIEF

PROSE EDITOR

POETRY EDITORS

EDITORIAL STAFF

Malia Maxwell

Matias Benitez

Ben Marra

Katherine Wong

Ellen Abraham

Jessica Ding

Khushmita Dhabhai

Damian Drue

Lyle Given

Daniela Gomez

Matt Hsu

Sophie Lee Schmitter

Karin Kutlay

Lily Kerner

Zoe Wallace

Caroline Wei

Celestine Wenardy

Melanie Zhou

FINANCIAL OFFICER

LAYOUT

Isabelle Edgar

Malia Maxwell

EDITOR’S NOTE

Thank you to everyone who has made the Leland Quarterly possible this year. It has been a joy to work with each of you. I first became inolved with LQ in the fall of my freshman year, and I have stayed a part of it ever since. Over the past four years, I have seen LQ survive entirely online club meetings, publish a record-breakingly large issue, host workshops, and put on our first end-of-year reading to share this wonderful work with the community at large. I am so grateful to have found this community and I can’t wait to see how it will grow in the future!

Malia Maxwell Editor-in-Chief

COVER ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Bike Parking by Helen He

These are the bike parking racks located along the east-facing wall of Ford Center, near the ACSR gym. I pass by these racks every morning I stroll over for a workout. Mornings, particularly in spring quarter, the way the sun shines through the leaves makes the wall look like a watercolor painting.

Poetry

Prose

Untitled Jude Wolf

Heartbreak Hairs

Alyssa LaTray

I started the shower at noon, and my hair fell out in tangled clumps and straightened strands that I piled together in the corner, like a meadowlark’s nest. I washed over my thinning scalp, and in the absence of my hair, I felt the scar on the back of my skull, where I’d fallen drunkenly in an air force guy’s shower. He picked me off the floor and carried me back to his twin-sized bed. The morning after, my mother pulled the hardened, crunchy clumps of blood away from the cut and rubbed salve over my thinning scalp like I was still so small and gentle. She took each long, wavy ribbon of my hair in her hands, still disappointed after all these years that I didn’t have the ringlets I had as a toddler. She reminded me of when I cut all my curls off with kitchen scissors in the sandbox, and how she cried when she was too late to collect the strands before the robins took them to build nests for their precious blue eggs. Once my mother had collected the hair from around my new cut, she handed it to me, because it really was mine and no one else’s.

Rebirth

Jude Wolf

The Man Displayed in a Glass Box in the Center of Town

Justin Portela

I eat the same thing for lunch every day. That way I can’t be made to be a jerkoff. For dinner too, no snacks in between, and I never eat breakfast. Half pound of ground turkey, one cup of rice. For 54 years it was beef but as of last year it’s turkey and a whole bowl of brussel sprouts—the doctor. He says I’m pre-diabetic. So I’m already half a jerkoff; do I need to go all the way? No. And I never change my walk to work either. Not for weather, or any person, and certainly not for construction. The first step to becoming a jerkoff is opening yourself up to the possibility. You think I hate my sad and boring life? Is that what you want me to say? Fuck you.

How long does it take you at the supermarket? I only buy 3 ingredients, I know exactly where they are, and the whole thing takes me fewer than a hundred seconds. Everybody else? Doodling around like jerkoffs, staring blankly at the aisles and drooling with indecision. This includes you. You buy new and exotic foods that you see on the computer. Sometimes you overcook them or you misread the label and accidentally buy the mushy tofu. Your life is a clusterfuck compared to mine. Every venture into the unknown is a concession to the possibility of becoming a jerkoff.

Except, of course, for the rabbits. A person needs direction and motivation in life; the dilemma of modernity is that every neuron in every brain is fastened to a different noose which is in turn strapped to a different horse, and all the horses are bucking and sprinting in completely different directions. It must be remembered that the combination of every individual color yields black.

I have one and exactly one pursuit in life, which is the wellbeing and care of the family of rabbits that live in the field outside of my office window. This leaves me very little time for the dehydrated screen gawking, directionless dawdling, and vacant-eyed drooling that composes the vast majority of the average person’s waking hours.

That’s why, on the first day of The Man Displayed in the Glass Box in the Center of Town, while every other pedestrian glared and rubbernecked through the city square like lemmings, I proceeded resolutely and did not even read his sign, which probably explained why he had put himself in The Glass Box in the Middle of the Town Square and why the box was slowly filling with water. I had faced nastier detours than his and not once have I ever momentarily considered changing the pace of my gait. I get to work at the same time every day. No exceptions, no deviations.

Nice try, asshole.

Can we recap? Let’s recap.

Items of value: Rabbits.

Items of zero value: Men in Glass Boxes.

On the second day I took a little glance. Just to see. The tank had no straps, no strait jacket, and no Houdini. In fact, this plain-looking guy could have been any of the thousands of other guys I’ve seen and not bothered to remember. He wore cargo shorts and an otherwise unremarkable face. Maybe, maybe, you could say he looked like Jeremy Irons. Eh. I’m looking again. Same sandy blonde hair but the bone structure is off. Not Jeremy Irons. But let’s be clear, not just some guy either. This guy had elevated himself to the realm of the proper noun. He was The Man in the Glass Tank in the Middle of Town, and only he had water around his ankles.

What he wanted was two dollars. That was the sick game. If anybody gave him two dollars, or if two people each gave him a dollar, or any such fundraising combination, he pulled a lever, the water stopped filling the tank, then he left. Counterfactually, I suppose, he drowned.

That was it.

Except I didn’t glance at all. Have you been listening? Of course, I didn’t glance. I read it in the Journal; that’s what I do when I get to work. Man in the Glass Tank in the Middle of Town. You think I wrote that? That was the headline.

Every day, for one hour, I read the Journal. Then I get coffee and watch the rabbits. Then it’s time for lunch, which I make the night before and pack in a lunchbox. Then I do the crossword, then I go home. It has been 15 years; I have never met my boss. I do not know what my company produces, and nobody has ever asked me what I am working on, which is nothing. Mostly they make small talk and invariably I avoid it. I dislike chit chat and I especially dislike discussions of glass-tank-based fundraising. But I do like the Journal, which is where I got the details about the guy in the tank. This proves my whole point, really. You should never stop for anything. If it’s so important, you’ll see it in the Journal. If I had stopped to see glance, then now I’d have seen it twice, read the sign twice, and had the exact same thought about Jeremy Irons twice. Which would have made me a jerkoff.

The third day you’d have thought there was a wedding in the town square. Probably because the Journal reported on it. Now you got tourists. And people from the suburbs. But there are thousands of weddings every day, mostly Asian. Do you think I stop for them? You’re getting the idea.

But I hear at work, while I’m trying to watch the rabbits, that today the guy wanted six dollars. See, there are two primary rabbits, Chester and Edwin, plus the litter of small rabbits they’re raising. The whole thing hasn’t been easy on me. Because first I had to name them. Then, and do not inquire into the details, but I had to confirm the gender of the rabbits, because otherwise how could I properly name them? Then I learned that, despite the cartoons, rabbits do not eat carrots, or any root vegetables, for that matter. I had to go all the way to a pet store to get special rabbit food. “Do homosexual rabbits have special diets?” This was a real sentence I had to say to the man at the pet store. But no, it turns out, Edwin and Chester are just picky eaters,

and that fact is completely separate from the fact of their cohabitation and constant humping.

Edwin has fallen slightly ill in recent days. Me, being large, and them, being small, the rabbits are understandably quite afraid of me. This means I cannot simply carry Edwin to the veterinarian. Instead I had to bring pictures. “How can you be sure that he’s sick?” the veterinarian asks, looking at the pictures of Edwin I’ve taken. How do I know he’s sick? Well he hasn’t been eating, and he’s been slower. He sleeps more than usual. I feed them every day so if you could just give me some medicine then I can make sure it gets to them. “Well,” the veterinarian says with his feable little jerkoff sigh. “Well what?” I cut him off, “I spend hours each day looking at these rabbits, I know what is normal behavior and what is not.” It all worked out, I got the medicine, but as you can see, There is quite a lot to do for these rabbits and I’m quite invested in their outcomes, so you can imagine how much it disturbs me to be sidetracked by some water cooler droning about the glass tank man, by some man or woman who has actual work to do, or worse, some newly-hired soul wishing to discuss the glass tank man with me, too naïve to know that low-temperature commentary is not one of the tasks for which I am responsible here.

But while he has me, he being some gingham-collared lackey named Ted Dee, which, I swear to resurrected Christ, is his legal name. Theodore Dee, like Teddy, but Ted Dee, which, fuck me, I don’t even have the cranial capacity to ponder the mysteries of this prep-school jerkoff and his absurd namesake. But while he has me, I ask if The Man in the Tank is getting the money.

Every time so far, says Ted Dee.

I’ve just started to be able to differentiate the little rabbits from each other so soon I’m going to have to settle on names for all of them too. There are 6 in the litter, plus Edwin and Chester, which makes 8 total. But I can see over Ted’s shoulder that Edwin and Chester are napping with their children, so I have time for one more question, which is how high does the water get before he gets the money?

Oh, he gets it almost immediately, says Ted Dee. It hasn’t gotten

past his ankles so far.

Day one was a dollar, day two was 2, day three was 4, day four was 8, so, by the pattern, on day 6, he should have asked for 16, because it’s doubling. But this guy thought he had the world by the balls.

10 thousand dollars. That’s what he was asking for. It took everything to keep my walk steady when I heard the number rise from the whispers in the crowd.

This had to be a test from God. There was absolutely no fucking chance this guy was getting this money, which meant, if it were my bet, he was either going to have to pull the chord prematurely and end this charade once and for all, or, even better, all these people were going to watch a man die. Live death was always the subtextual threat, let us remember. Give me money, or watch me die.

But I can trudge through that, I’m thinking on the morning of the fifth day. If he doesn’t die, then there was nothing to see, and I’ll read about this colossal failure in the Journal. And if he does, well, if I wanted to watch somebody kill themselves, I could probably find plenty of videos online.

But you know what got me? The fucking balls. This fucking Icarus went from eight to ten thousand. No subtlety there. It’s anthropological, really. And, if you think about it, if I stop to watch, I won’t even have to read the coverage in the Journal. Because I’ll have seen it. I can skip that part, which will save me time, and I can get to the rabbits early.

And now that I’ve decided to stop, now that I’ve made this decision, I realize that the glass is totally soundproof. This gets me apoplectic. You cannot ask questions or reason with the man at all. There’s only the one-way dialogue of the sign, which is just an explanation of the ultimatum. You have no ability to consent to the game. You agree to play the second you read the sign, and, even worse, it’s your move.

Alright. Let’s play ball. My move. I choose to do nothing. Water at his ankles now. I gotta hand it to the guy that he was clever enough to start taking credit cards today. Harder to raise ten grand in cash. With the credit card reader comes a counter, at the top of the tank, with the

current amount raised. By the time the water reaches the knees, he’s only at 200 dollars.

I can’t even get a great look at his face because I’m so far in the back of the crowd. I wiggle up a little bit; if I’m going this far out of my way, I’m going to get a good view of the thing. By the time I jostle to the front the guy has water at his stomach, 800 bucks. 3 feet high and rising.

How’s the weather in there? 4 feet high and rising. There are whispers going around, some people throw in small bills, but I don’t see anybody taking out anything bigger than a twenty. You can see the lever, which he can pull at any point, and it seems his fingers are getting itchy for it. By my count he’s got about 90 seconds before his nose goes under and he’s probably only got about 2000 bucks so far.

Once the water hits the nipples the people start to get antsy. A bit more money coming in, but every credit card tap takes about 15 seconds, so even if every person gives a hundred, the math isn’t on his side. One brave soul gives another three thousand so by the neckline he’s halfway to the goal.

Fuck this, I thought. I cannot let this happen. You have to understand. I had to do something.

I move right to the front, right where the credit reader is. I wave everybody else away. I’m gonna save the day.

“Does anybody have a pen?” I ask to the crowd, pulling out my checkbook.

About 10 seconds for the pen to arrive.

“I assume you take a check?” I ask the man in the tank, who can’t hear me, but the whole crowd laughs, probably because I’m old. That’s another 10 seconds.

“Who do I even make this thing out to?” I ask, this time more quietly, so only the small circle around me laughs, but the joke doesn’t get to the folks in the nosebleeds.

Another 5 seconds to make it out to cash, 5 to write the date, 5 for the amount, and with about 25 seconds before this guy is completely

submerged, I write out the words “eight thousand dollars” as slow as humanly possibly.

I take at least ten seconds on a big curly E, then I drop the pen. “Whoops.” Here’s the beauty:

I’ve controlled the entire game. Nobody is going to give money, no matter how slow I go, both because they figure that the game is over and because my large and pre-diabetic body is physically blocking the cash basket and the credit card reader. They’re completely right, actually. The game is over. But I win.

By the time I start my signature the water is at his nose. This guy is itching to get out, his hands are wrapped so tight around the lever. He’s just waiting for the check to hit the basket.

Nice try, asshole. I rip the check-up in front of him. His move now.

How did it end? You know how it ends. There’s no such thing as art and the guy was a total fucking con artist. I called his bluff. What a sight to watch this guy have to exit the glass box, soaking wet, every single eye on him, and he has no clue what in the world to say. This asshole never thought this would actually happen. He really thought he was going to get the money. Sorry. Now you can see the shame bleeding from his eyes.

But his wasn’t as bad as mine. I realize this, watching Chester dance across the dotted grass while his perfect children bathe in the sun. He conned me, but nobody else was a bigger jerkoff that day but me. Sure, the Man in the Glass Tank was soaking wet and a total fool, but when I got to the office, after my normal route and timings had been completely deviated and changed, I counted once, then twice, then three and four and over and over again. It was unmistakable. I counted Chester, then two, three, four, five, six, seven rabbits. Only Seven; no Edwin. I didn’t even have to go out and look. My glasses hung loose off my ears and honestly I could only breathe barely. When the dust settled, I was covered in dust—my tears fell wet and fast onto the crossword.

Daydreams Gone Rogue Katie Terrell

Vignette from Inside My Toyota Highlander

Giancarlo Ricci

Afterwards, we notice the mess: our unzipped jeans slumped across the dash, my chipped bong fallen against the now-cold pizza box, his blackberry juul

lying beside the lube I bought on my way here, and we lock eyes before belly-laughing at the sight. I slink onto his lap,

our calves dangling out the open trunk, looking westward onto unlit pacific water. He presses his hairy chest

into my naked back, draws my waist towards his soft dick, drags his stubbly chin against my collarbone: now our heads are resting against each other,

and we let the late-summer breeze lick our flushed bodies, softly swallowing air that tastes like sativa and sea-salt and sex. I lean so deeply into his warmth

that he consumes me whole. We stay like that, watching the tide sink lower and lower, before he jumps out onto freezing sand, then grins with all his teeth. He stares at me before starting down the vacant coast, gliding between glassy beachgrass and the grainy night-ocean,

and now I’m laughing, watching him sprint naked down the shoreline, running further and further away.

Orbits of Forgotten Dreams

Max Du

In my old bedroom hangs a solar system of plastic planets, dangling from pieces of fishing line

tied to star-shaped thumbtacks thrust into the ceiling held with wads of chewing gum.

One morning freshman year, I rise too quickly and hit my head on Neptune.

It splits into two pieces and from the faded turquoise shell comes a shower of old candies.

I run my fingers through the sugar bites, that faded raspberry pink, lemon yellow. They tumble in the hemisphere, dust sloughing, wax glaze clinking like marbles.

And for a long time I wonder why an eleven-year-old boy, bed-bouncing in floppy mohawk hair,

wearing a Timex Triathlon, waterlogged, would find joy in cupping little hollow worlds

and filling them with dollar-store sweets that he would never eat.

Limited Warranty

Max Du

When my parents came to America, their first car was a 1990 Toyota Corolla, with a white body and headliner that flaked at the touch. Before we gave it to Kars4Kids, my mom would open up its dusty doors and let me clamber around. I would scratch at the old fabric and watch the dust run through my fingers. “That’s enough,” my mom would say. “It’s bad for your lungs.”

The second and third cars were both Volkwagens. They bought them after I was born. My dad had a red Jetta, and my mom had a Passat the color of the summer sky at its highest point. Every spring, we took a weekend to pump our cars on jacks and change our own oil. Mom would let my dad loosen the oil filter with these massive pliers, but she wouldn’t let him touch the drainage bolt on the underbelly of the cars. “It takes so much skill to apply so much pressure without breaking the screw,” she would say while laying prone.

When the cars started breaking down, we stopped changing the oil together. The Jetta had a bad muffler and failed inspection one year. I think I was in sixth grade, then. Mom didn’t believe a muffler could cost so much, and they got into an argument. It ended with my dad driving home after work with an entirely new exhaust assembly that cost more than three thousand dollars. As soon he told my mom, he slipped out the front door and into the woods. I ran after him, saying “geda, you can’t do this to mom. Why didn’t you discuss this?”

Looking back, this was pretty funny. Me dressed in school clothes, him in his professorial button-up, and my mom running after both of us in the clothes she made on weekends with clearance fabrics from Joann’s. We bumbled through the wild raspberry bushes and eventually came home. Things settled down by dinnertime.

When my dad stopped sleeping with my mom, he turned his office into a bedroom. Every morning I’d hear the shuffling of blankets and chairs in that room. When he finally opened his door, there was no sign

that he’d slept there, other than a pillow and sheets he tucked into a suitcase. It seemed like he was always ready to leave.

He’d spend his days in his university office and nights in that upstairs room, typing lines and lines of computer code. When mom found the occasion to remind him of his own mom who insulted her once, or the “Miami woman” affair he had when I was a baby my dad would slip on a pair of studio headphones and pull the volume all the way up. Sometimes, this happened downstairs while he cooked dinner, and I would hear through the headphone seals some Chinese pop music. I didn’t know he liked Chinese pop music.

In my mind, my dad is always running away. He’s always picking through the spring weeds of the woods behind our house, always wearing headphones, always staying in that little cell of a room with streaks of grime on the wall. And as I grew older, that was all I expected. After every argument, I’d expect my dad to pull off his headphones, walk downstairs, and ask my mom if she’d thawed the pork that morning. Unstable systems find new stable equlibria. I wanted to believe that my family was drifting towards equilibrium too. Everything I saw around me was noise along the way. So I found it surprising in moments when we seemed to drift further away.

It was early summer of my seventh grade, my dad drove home with a new car, another Jetta, dark gray like good steel. Our Passat had an engine issue, and our old Jetta had a cooling issue. They’d spent the past week talking about a new car and they couldn’t agree on something. One day later, he swung by a dealership and signed all the papers by himself.

Dad was making ribs for dinner. He had his hands in the bowl, kneading the marinade into the meat. My mom stood in the kitchen doorway, hands on her hips with a contorted look on her face that often appeared when they bickered.

“How could you be so selfish?”

“Is it selfish to want to drive to work?” he said. “I can’t drive the old cars anymore. I fear for my safety.”

I was in the kitchen between them like I often was. I felt that I

could channel the energy between my two parents and moderate it somehow, but I usually made it worse.

“How could you buy a whole car without telling us?” I asked him.

“And you didn’t even let us choose the color,” my mom said. “Son, you don’t like that color, do you?”

I would have wanted a blue car, blue like that summer sky. My dad stopped kneading the meat.

“I can’t do this anymore.”

Then he cast the bowl away and let the pieces of meat fly against the tiled kitchen wall. They left trails of blood and soy sauce and pepper, oozing down the ceramic.

“Oh my god,” I remember saying. “I’m going to call 911.”

“Call 911 if you want,” my dad said, washing his hands. “I really don’t care anymore.”

He didn’t come back until sundown. I thought he’d gone to return the car, like my mom was trying to get him to do.

I later found out what my dad really did. He was sitting on the other side of our garage door. Summer bakes the garage to an intolerable heat, but he sat there for nearly an hour. He didn’t have his headphones. He sat in the dark and the silence on the steps. Like all these times, I didn’t join him.

Mom cooked the ribs that night. Dad was still on the other side of the door when we ate. She picked up a bone and gnawed the meat from it. “Son, have a rib,” she said. “They’re really good today.”

Cranes and Pains

Jude Wolf

Albatross Wings

Alix Fisher

They fly on albatross wings, unflappable, unblinking their sad eyes at 50 miles per hour. They, unmoored, they ride currents as free

and those sad eyes gather air as if it were diamond, as solid as it, as precious, as cunning, even as bloodless pale salt cakes their inky corneas.

They, as brilliant. Those albatross wings as still their 12 feet know the meaning of fluidity, how one must drift unbending sails extant.

But albatross wings know time sadly, as space inky as their corneas salty as the air as they

Their pale feathers are bloodless as they drip They, dripping, they, gathering, they, still. They are at the peak of a crag, windworn by time and without airy time, what does an albatross have? Or is that all, the currents enough for an Aesir to drink solidly still as they are.

Are they here.

Or ascending bloody space, murdered as albatross are, freed.

It’s a horrible thing to kill an albatross, but their sails bend extinct nonetheless, spiral stairs to Earth too small for their 12 feet to unblink.

what your mother tells you about her past

Kat Zheng

i was going to be a librarian. the dean said a girl couldn’t conquer congress so my world folded itself into time-yellowed pages. there was a university and a boy, and when the guns sounded

we were fast asleep. your father’s roommate died in streets where blood ran in rivulets, and army green danced across my eyelids while i dreamed of pearl-white skies. in that square

we were all believers. in the new world nothing came to us but dust storms and hope that we clung to like rotting gauze. there was a truck

and once a small dog, soft and brown, trotted after us for five, ten miles, and i loved him but i couldn’t keep him. there might have been a baby

before you, but i don’t remember their face. the first house had a red door and railings of termite-eaten wood. still, i planted tulips in the ground. on friday nights the train home rattled cold steel all the way until the water and blisters bloomed

between the walls of my heart. i watched the city sky turn gray with ash through buzzing screens and pressed a hand to my stomach. around me the air was warm and thick with pain and i remembered

what your mother tells you about her past | Kat Zheng

one oklahoma summer, when the sun lounged upon the horizon, and we drove down the endless dirt road, dandelions and beer bottles dotting the prairie. i let my dark hair tangle in the wind, laughing

as the golden light hit the bright blue of our truck. back then, i thought i could find it in myself to call this a home.

Untitled Alex Zhai

Untitled | Alex Zhai

Morning Lark

Sonja Hansen

I woke up before the sun. I always did. After a certain age, you just don’t need as much sleep anymore. Before dawn, my body gave a jolting wake-up call and summoned me to begin the day, inviting me to spend some time with myself.

Lucky for me, the ranch had plenty to offer to fill my need for movement. I put on a wool sweater, rolled the cuffs of my jeans, and tied a bandana around my neck to keep the morning breeze from blowing down my shirt. By afternoon, it would make a cooling handkerchief. And by evening, it would likely be smattered in grease, shit and blood—indications of a day well spent.

I stepped outside to greet the remaining night air, under my breath. I took the dark into my lungs. This time of day made me feel earthly, beautiful and magical—a silvery Hippolyta, a war-worn queen who hasn’t yielded yet, determined to greet each and every dawn until her number is called.

My boots crunched against leaves and my feet and ankle bones popped as I walked the path to our outdoor kitchen. I felt more at ease out there. I was happier when outdoors. I thought back to the family photos that line our hallway. I looked most beautiful and alive in the ones that featured us basking in the sunlight. I glowed. I smiled, felt like this is where I’m supposed to be, that I’ve landed. I felt joyful and full of bliss.

In the dusky air of those early hours, I prepared a fire, a good and roaring one, appropriate to combat the dew that had settled over that November night. “It’s home—wet, wild, cold, hot,” I thought. I threw dried petals and herbs into a teapot, moving efficiently through the routine required to rev up my family and our home.

While hanging the kettle above the flames, I could practically hear the snores of exhausted teenage bodies packed in the barn we

had converted into their own private bungalow last summer. The night before, I had heard their zany tirades. They had giggled and danced the night away in the arbor as always. As they should at this age. I was proud the kids could play, express and enjoy themselves freely on the ranch. As grateful as I was for my own private quarters, I missed the energy and comfort of a bunkhouse.

Leaving the snores behind, I took wide steps through the grass to visit the henhouse, in which lived “the girls”—affectionately nicknamed by yours truly. My chickens were “my girls,” but so were my sisters, daughters and granddaughters. As a result, on more than one occasion my reminder to “Hurry up and go feed the girls,” had been amusingly misinterpreted by some well-intentioned soul. My family had teased me that they shouldn’t be lumped into the same category as our humble birds. I had countered that they should be so lucky.

The chickens clucked cheerfully in recognition of their benefactor. I lightly clucked back, pouting my lower lip and constricting my throat to do my best impression. I felt comfortable communicating with the chickens only under these circumstances—when the chilly night was wearing off, and everyone else on the ranch was still in a deep sleep. I fed the girls and gently handled a couple of “love bugs,” who clung close by my legs in hopes of a caress.

Back outside, I stoked the hearth. I always had an image in my mind that one day my fire would be so bolstered that it would shine into the house’s windows. I pictured my family mistaking the blaze for the sun reaching its apex and hustling out, believing that they had slept until noon, missing the better part of the daylight.

The sun glinted and grew over the marvelous hills, bringing lavender and hints of greens. The world grew in saturation as I sipped my tea.

I watched as my daughter Hattie wandered out onto the porch. Bouquets of flowers dripped around her from the verandas shaded by linen pulled taut. The scene rendered my child the image of a sleepy, ethereal queen. One hand was placed on her low back, the other massaged her shoulder blade. Another early morning bathroom break

probably. Or maybe the morning sickness was back. I remembered my wife’s own pregnancy. Maybe Hat took after her.

I made a mental note to forage for ginger. It was late fall at this point, but perhaps the soil harbored a secret enclave that I could sniff out. My wife had savored chamomile tea to stave off incessant waves of nausea. I planned on scouring the house for sturdier pillows for my girl. Anything to get her rest she needed.

My heart skipped a beat as she began walking barefoot toward me. I made space on a wooden bench and shook out the very same blanket we had used to warm her as a girl. I was ready to share the morning I had helped prepare for her.

Abecedarian to My

Grandmother’s God

Coco Rosales

Abuela told me good girls read their Bible and pray each night before bed. Why should I care what a book thought of me? I was in your lap, drowning in a love incubated for generations, enticing and warm as the home-made tortillas melting on our tongues. Isn’t that why we have family? I’m sure if He were in this room, God would take your word that I’m angelic enough that Heaven can make space for me. But beyond your arms, far out of sight, I held her hand while she held mine. Just like God said, I was patient and nothing but kind, so if I read the story right this must count as love. What else could it be? If Eve chose to spend her life with Abigail, why would it matter so long as they belonged together? Why would that together be denied a name? I felt so certain, I mentioned it to you once, on the day you first taught me of sin. With cold eyes you threatened me of Purgatory, the only Hell suited for ones who loved wrong. For you, being queer meant one was broken. A forgotten soul God must renounce to preserve His kingdom. I bowed my head, silent, ashamed. I always tried to love everyone, refusing to forget even the tiniest of His children, so would He truly lock the gate, deem me unworthy of joy in whatever follows death? Am I truly damned because I ventured beyond this ancient map and found that my heart loves without regard to gender? Abuela, can you forgive me? Do you trust I am ‘xactly as designed? We have the same blood, but I will not become you. When we collide in the next life, will you open your arms? Or will you watch with zeal as I burn.

Contributing Artists & Writers

By day, Max Du (poetry, prose) is a researcher in the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Labs, and he tries to get robots to do more intelligent things by themselves. By night, Max is a writer. He specializes in the human-animal relationship: the romance, the mysticism, the controversies. He’s currently working on a non-fiction book that features the stories of whale and dolphin trainers. More broadly, he’s interested in the traces of an irrevocable past, for better or for worse. Max enjoys writing about his childhood home in Upstate New York, his Chinese immigrant parents, and, of course, the sea.

Alix Fisher (poetry) is a ‘26 student in Symbolic Systems and Interdisciplinary Arts. Their fascination with lexicology drives their poetry, which explores the ambiguity of words, language, and meaning. In “Albatross Wings,” they portray visually a life limited by its own purpose.

Sonja Hansen (prose) is a writer based in Sacramento, California, who majors in Earth Systems, B.S. on the Land Track with a Notation in Science Communication and a Notation in Cardinal Service. Her interests lie in intersectional environmentalism, natural stewardship, and justice. Sonja works in the performing arts, storytelling, and stand-up comedy to support community-based climate justice projects. She is particularly interested in sharing stories of how we can work toward a Just Transition and improve environmental and human well-being. Sonja enjoys dog-walking, surfing, audiobooks, BeReal, live music, sunbathing, comedy, and peanut-butter chocolate.

Alyssa LaTray (poetry) is a senior English major from Great Falls, Montana. She has roots in the Blackfeet and Little Shell band of Chippewa tribes. She enjoys writing poetry about her home, her parents, shiny metal objects, the kitchen, and nature.

Justin Portela (prose) is a writer from New Jersey. He is desperate for your approval.

Giancarlo Ricci (poetry) explores queerness, hook-up culture, and how sex and relationships inform the self in their poetry. They are interested in exploring and presenting the consequences and ecstasy found in queer love.

Coco Rosales (poetry) is an English major who adores reading novels to uncover new worlds and procrastinate their homework. When not writing, they enjoy admiring all of the weird and wonderful creatures of nature, being buried in warm laundry, or eating Funfetti cake with treasured friends. When writing, they explore themes of queerness, Latinidad, and mental health, among other sujbects. They hope to someday write the stories that could make people like them feel safe, loved, and wonderstruck!

Katie Terrell (visual art), an undergraduate junior at Stanford University majoring in Art History, creates art as a form of stress relief. Each artwork reflects her inner world, giving viewers a glimpses into her thoughts, emotions, and experiences.

Jude Wolf (visual art).

Alex Zhai (visual art) is a sophomore studying Computer Science and Art History. He enjoys hiking, snowboarding, and watching Wes Anderson movies.

Kat Zheng (poetry) is a junior majoring in Economics and minoring in Creative Writing. She enjoys both poetry and prose and has previously been published in The Stanford Daily, The Blue Marble Review, and the Eunoia Review. Currently, she’s working on her first novel, a coming-of-age story focusing on complex familial relationships. In her free time, she enjoys crocheting, playing the ‘ukulele, and watching YouTube deep dives of mid-2010s CW shows.

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