SUMMER 2 0 2 0
LELAND QUARTERLY VOLUME 14, ISSUE 2: Summer 2020
EDITORS IN CHIEF Olivia Manes Linda Ye MANAGING EDITORS Lily Nilipour Zuyi Zhao FINANCIAL OFFICER
Elizabeth Dunn
OUTREACH DIRECTOR
Wyatt Leaf
EDITORIAL STAFF Angela Yang (Fiction) Lily Zhou (Poetry) Andrew Yang (Nonfiction) FICTION STAFF Ember Fu Nicolle Hendzel Jo Leuenberger Abigail Schweizer Sharon Tran Zoe Wallace Sylvia Yuan
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POETRY STAFF Karen Ge Malia Maxwell Miranda Liu Caitlin Nockideneh Anushree Thekkedath Tom Worth Camellia Ye NONFICTION STAFF Adriana Carter Tanvi Gupta Carolyn Stein LAYOUT DESIGN Lily Nilipour Angela Yang Linda Ye
Copyright 2020 by Leland Quarterly | All Rights Reserved Stanford University
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EDITOR’S NOTE From the start of our time as Editors in Chief of Leland Quarterly, we knew it would be a challenge—yet this year proved to be challenging in ways neither of us (or anyone, for that matter) could have anticipated. From navigating remote learning to witnessing a global pandemic, we’ve had to adapt to a new way of living. We recognize that this time has been especially difficult for Black students on our campus. Leland Quarterly stands in solidarity with the BLM movement and those protesting anti-Black racism across the globe. We know that we have not done enough to condemn the systemic injustices faced by members of the Black community, and we are committed to further educating ourselves and the LQ community on these issues and amplifying Black voices on our campus through art and writing. Amidst this all, we’ve been inspired by the resilience of our readers and our contributors. During a time of fear, anger, and a great deal of uncertainty, LQ hopes to provide a way to reflect, and more importantly, to come together as an artistic community in uplifting voices from all backgrounds.
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We are deeply grateful for the tireless work and support of our editorial staff throughout this school year. Thank you to our brilliant editors Angela and Lily Z. for working one-on-one with our contributors and always providing sharp and thoughtful feedback. Thank you to Malia and Adriana for their enthusiasm and valuable contributions to the team—we look forward to having them on board next year. And finally, a thank you to Lily N. for her unwavering dedication and commitment to LQ—without her, the past LQ publications would not have been possible. We are thrilled to have her spearhead Leland Quarterly next year as Editor in Chief and have full confidence that she will take our community to new heights. And of course, a huge thank you to our contributors—your art and writing moves and motivates us on the daily.
Olivia Manes, Co-Editor in Chief Linda Ye, Co-Editor in Chief
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CONTENTS Poetry Types of Still, Alexandra Crew 9 To the boy with the gap in his teeth, Anastasia Sotiropoulos 10 humor turned inside-out, Helena Silva-Nichols 12 Someone Told Me Once the Philly Pride Flag is “Aesthetically Displeasing,� Darnell Carson 14 palindromic time: Interrogating Melancholy, Ancient Neuroscience, Karen Ge 16 a smoot away, Anastasia Sotiropoulos 28 Mother Keeps Us on a Merry-Go Round, Darnell Carson 32 Buttery, Lauren Grove 36 August Wedding, Scott Stevens 38 forward-facing, Malia Maxwell 40
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Prose
The Customer, Peyton Limoges
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Visual Arts Ocean Cosmos, Melina Walling cover, 8 Untitled, Elena Miller 13 Woman carrying child, Florence, Melina Walling 18 Beginning to End, Rellie Liu 24 Amnesia, Matt Mettias 30 Untitled, Elena Miller 33 Untitled, Elena Miller 34 Untitled, Kaitlyn Choe 37 Woman on bicycle carrying package, Florence, Melina Walling 41
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Ocean Cosmos Melina Walling
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Types of Still
Alexandra Crew Head resting on my left arm, the sun pales the graphite sky, the ocean begins to gleam. I roll to the right, my arm scraping sheets chilled like an ocean too low in temperature to sustain life. I return to face the ocean, sit cross-legged on the gray floor, and light incense pulled from beneath the bed. Eyes closed, palms up on knees, I breathe. Meditation smoothing the surface of my mind to mirror the ocean, silver and sublime. Bells chime, returning me to my body, my morning. I call Keira’s name. Claws click and echo off dawn-lit family portraits still waiting to be warmed by the missing, matching bodies: daughters and a husband imagined.
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To the boy with the gap in his teeth
Anastasia Sotiropoulos
To the boy with the gap in his teeth. Woah, woah, woah—before I start, hear me out: I don’t ~do~ love poems. I don’t do poems that turn into love poems. Those make me sick. They’re sweet and soft and like diabetesoverflowing. Type 2. Not 1. Self-inflicted. I’ve tried writing about everything but you, anything but you. I’ve tried writing about the way the sunlight hit the line of palm trees as I left the ER Monday after I fell off my bike, but when I think of a fall I think of you. Falling and falling and I’m falling for you. Ew. I had to get stitches. After the fall, that is. “Laceration on the left leg,” the nurses said. The L-word lines the inside of my mouth. L-O-WOAH. No. No. No. That word is familiar and soft and cozy—well I wouldn’t go as far as to say cozy, what’s the word… sticky? Oh yes, sticky. Familiar and soft and sticky. To the boy with a gap in his teeth. When I fell in [~insert long pause here~] with you, it felt like the inside of a McDonald’s playhouse. You know the ones. The bright plastic with the pillowed floors and walls—soft edges— tempting colors. The ones you’d beg your parents to let you enter as a kid—salty fingers freshly licked, McFlurry in one hand, hope in another. They’re innocent. Familiar. Soft. But sticky. Eventually, you grow up. You stop going, but I keep going to you, am I still falling for you? Ew.
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To the boy with the gap in his teeth | Anastasia Sotiropoulos
To the boy with the gap in his teeth. I don’t ~do~ love poems. I don’t do like poems. I don’t do poems—why the fuck am I here. I’ve tried writing about everything but you, anything but you. Stitched-up Mondays and McDonald’s playhouses. Our first kiss was in that McDonald’s parking lot. Sneakers propped up on dashboards, neon yellow glow, familiar and soft and not yet sticky. Crumpled Juicy Fruit wrapper in one hand, hope in another, salty fingertips. Two minutes since your wingman “forgot his wallet inside,” I littered our silence with a, “Where do I spit my gum out?” Familiar. Soft. “Why?” “Uhhh… so I can kiss you?” Sticky. Diabetes sticky. To the boy with the gap in his teeth. I thought of you at the ER Monday. I thought of how you like the scar on my nose like I like the gap in your teeth. I thought of how maybe—just maybe—you’d like my new one. Left leg laceration. Some L-words I can say.
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humor turned inside-out
Helena Silva-Nichols
last night i dreamt my sisters body had a gash the size of four fists within, just behind purple ribs and across from her wild heart an implanted monitor sat beeping like cracked knuckles flashing read-outs in jeringonza i hadn’t bothered to learn so i added to the list of secrets we keep on blood-thinners and woke up to find mourning precluded, cauterized mid-vivisection
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Untitled Elena Miller
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Someone Told Me Once the Philly Pride Flag is “Aesthetically Displeasing”
Darnell Carson
My body has never felt like anything but target practice, but bug under microscope, but porch light to every moth of a man that’s ever mouthed a slur in the silence, that’s ever parted his lips to show the venom frothing underneath, that’s ever lifted his voice to the song of my destruction, be it of my black or my queer, hate finds no difference in the tune. If my body be a home, it has never been a safe one. I have never been good at sharing space with my trauma. My mind be a mess I am never able to manage: one bedroom and crammed floor plan. all walls and no windows to let the light in. sink piling with dishes I don’t have the energy to clean. This body code-switches for survival, knows that it is only as safe as I am invisible, spends each day deciding how to make itself absent, if it will bury the Blackness for the white gays or quiet the queer in front of family
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Someone Told Me Once | Darnell Carson
The issue with intersectionality is that every road leads to a dead end. You are always too much or not enough for anybody — always a threat to someone else’s ignorance. always a silhouette someone is scared to pass on the sidewalk There are no safe spaces for brown rainbows so I have learned to make them in the palm at the sight at the base a billion
of my partner’s hand of my sister’s smile of my friends’ laughter good things in the sound of their voices
Like maybe the whole world has gone to shit, and every night I make it through is a bittersweet blessing, and every morning comes with a million things still trying to kill me, I know I still have this: The warm glow of a candle lit on my partner’s altar. The way he whispers my name like the strongest prayer he knows. The way the silence settles on us like a blanket, every affirmation I could ask for held in the weight of his stare. How queer it is for pain and joy to coexist in this body. for my mind to find nothing but peace.
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palindromic time: Interrogating Melancholy, Ancient Neuroscience
Karen Ge
Last night I faltered in my dream as a hint of poison started to race in mocking circles, flaring into a mitosis of carbon monoxide, asphyxiating the air. I dreamed you, while they said listen, said you make certain, terrifying, choices about your life. Smiling benignly, they rip away your will to live Wrap it, cold like rewashed silverware and emboss it on the menu, etching a gold filigree of choice: Would you like the remission today or a month ago? The disease medium rare? Spritz sandalwood incense, seduce the rotting into a sinister black. They have a map of the world, of the brain, of my brain and my body, and there is the equator, and there is where you’re going, along the optimal path to falling off the edge of the world. There, there. Speechless in the dream, I strain to ask why it so shameful to be too weak to stand, to take a sabre for a staff? Because when I try to startle awake, it feels like stumbling, wild, through toxic air, my arms heaving and swinging at massive ghosts, Sprinting away from candlelit banquet illusions. 16
palindromic time | Karen Ge
They feed you until you’re drunk on silence, until you forget the balm of loneliness and breathless stillness, the erupting atoms underneath the proteins hormones serous fluid, circulating endlessly like stardust, Until you’re drugged, unseeing as the cancer metastasizes— seething bloody, bursting raw, thrashing out of body. Half-awake, the very thing, backwards, is still the same as you and I, backwards, inside-out and torn, worn-out, our hearts ripped open, thinking right wanting wrong wanting right writhing raw raw and writhing, right? your wanting wrong wanting right thinking of opening our hearts, ripping at worn-out seams, insides spilling out. Backwards, I am the same as you, still backwards, startling half-awake. No. They don’t have a map of me, my mind and my life. Nor of you. They can’t see our cycles of despair and triumph, nebulous clouds and mountain-texture, the single neon-lighted diner and slowly rolling fog. I don’t have a map either, but I am writing one. I am writing one in stone and copper and glass, in the faint glow of your skin and in the night air. I am writing from demon-spirits to salivating dogs, from subterranean tightropes to that slow, aching, freedom of acceptance— of hope, and maybe, of love.
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Woman carrying child, Florence Melina Walling
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The Customer
Peyton Limoges
Every Thursday night Birdie sat in the corner booth and ate two sunny-side up eggs with a side of breakfast potatoes before she fucked whoever sat across from her in the Motel 6 down the street. If her client was late, she would order coffee. “Could I get a cup of black coffee?” she’d say, prefacing “coffee” with “black” as if there were any other way to serve diner coffee, as if she wasn’t going to immediately subdue its bitterness with a dozen packages of Half-and-Half creamer and Sweet-nLow. Her client was late again. I thought it was rather rude to be late to anything, although I suppose infidelity is a difficult thing to be on time for. Not that I knew if all of her customers were married. The dentist, Dr. Clifford, certainly was. So was the mayor. And the mayor’s wife. I wondered who it was this time that was sitting in their car just outside, maybe smoking, certainly shaking, as they weighed the worth of an orgasm against their reputation. Was it worth more or less if it was induced by the captain of the high school volleyball team? More or less if you had children? If you were fucking miserable? I was refilling Birdie’s mug for the third time, imagining Dr. Clifford hypocritically puffing on a cigarette in the parking lot, when suddenly I was sitting across from her. “I’ll pay you double your hourly rate,” I said. Birdie’s stirrer kept up its circular motion around the rim of her cup. I was almost offended by her lack of reaction. “You don’t even know my hourly rate,” she said. She was right— I didn’t, nor did I really think I could afford it. Not with a wage from Mama’s ‘Merican Diner, for whom “rush hour” meant
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The Customer | Peyton Limoges
a few extra truck drivers. But there was broke and then there was teenage broke, soon-to-be-college broke, turning-to-sex-work broke. But Birdie was damn good at sports, was on a full-ride scholarship to some far-away university. It was all her parents and coaches ever talked about, as if her glimmer of potential was a direct result of their decades of lived mediocrity. Maybe she needed a new car, new clothes, a new something to get high on. All were causes I was willing to donate to. I rambled on. “You don’t even have to do anything.” Now Birdie looked up. Where I expected to find relief I instead found a smirk. “Why? You think I haven’t been with women before?” she asked. “No.” The women, if anything, were more memorable than the men. The women were my banker and hairdresser, my former classmates and former friends who always struck up a conversation so they could explain why they were there with Birdie, as if opening a savings account was something that needed to be discussed over chili fries. “Then you haven’t been with a woman before,” Birdie said. “No.” “No you haven’t? Or ‘no’ I’m wrong?” “No, I’m just trying to help you out.” My words bounced around the booth until they soured, reeking of pity and disdain. In response, Birdie piled more than enough bills in the center of the table. She was always one of my best tippers. “What am I supposed to tell Mr. Hewitt?” she asked. She casually relinquished his name as if that couldn’t ruin his entire life. “Say you’re sick. People get sick,” I said. “What about your shift?” Birdie asked. I wish I could say that the mention of my job, my
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livelihood, made me pause. “I’m sick too,” I replied. Birdie glanced out the window, and I discreetly did the same. Mr. Hewitt’s jacked up Ford was nowhere in sight. I wondered if he drove a less notable car when he was screwing a barely-legal teenager. “Meet me at the Motel 6 in five,” she said, smiling at the cleverness of her own phrasing. “And could I get a to-go cup for this?” She tapped the side of her mug. “Oh, of course!” I returned wielding a paper cup with the word “Pepsi” emblazoned on its side— “Be careful, it’s not really made for coffee,” I cautioned – and watched Birdie flit out the door and into a trashy white Buick. The swinging door that led to the kitchen was propped open, as Mr. Baxter complained he was too goddamn hot working next to the grill all day and needed the air. I stood in the doorframe watching him scrub salt-encrusted silverware until he sensed the restlessness radiating off of me and glanced in my direction. “I just threw up in the bathroom,” I said. Mr. Baxter turned off the faucet and cupped one ear. “I just threw up in the bathroom.” “Oh.” He dried his hands, staring intently at the tattered towel as he did so. Those hands always looked cartoonish-ly massive to me, as if he were a child playing in his diner dollhouse. “Is it a— a menstruation thing?” he asked. “Yes,” I said. “Alrighty, well, you go on home. I’ll probably be closing early tonight anyways.” I flashed him a smile, not too cheery because I was sick, and carried myself and my purse to the door. I nearly collided with Mr. Hewitt, who took several gentlemanly steps sideways. “Hi Mr. Hewitt.”
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The Customer | Peyton Limoges
“Well hey there, Lyla.” I could feel his eyes on me as I shuffled past, like he already knew what I’d done. I walked all of the way to the Motel 6, convinced that if I got in my car I would just drive home. Birdie stood leaning against the hood of a pick-up that wasn’t hers, pinching a white key card between her fingers like it was a cigarette. When I got near, she wordlessly strode to room 112. I changed course to follow. “Doesn’t the manager get suspicious?” I asked. The door beeped, clicked, and opened. “No. I’m fucking him,” Birdie said. We stepped into the room. I liked motel rooms. They were always exactly what I expected. “To be honest, I’d wish I’d thought of this,” I said. “Thought of what?” “Your… business.” Birdie shrugged, not so much with humility as with acknowledgement. Doesn’t everyone wish they thought like me? “I bet it pays pretty good,” I said. “It does.” “What’s it all for?” Birdie cocked her head to one side, looking like a bird, I thought. A birdy. “You have to be savin’ up for something big. Don’t you?” I forged on, stacking my queries between us like concrete bricks. If I asked enough questions, I’d be safe for a little while longer, safe from that insufferable second of tension that preceded the first touch. I wanted the touch. But I couldn’t stand the tension. “No,” she said. Then, “Not really.” The conversation I’d painstakingly charted in my head— which car dealer? who to call for Vicodin? — disintegrated. Luckily Birdie picked up the pieces, chewing on the inside of her cheek. “I always looked forward to this time, right after
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Beginning to End Rellie Liu
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The Customer | Peyton Limoges
graduation. Thought it would feel different, like I was finally bigger than this town. And better.” I’d tried to forget that bloated, hot summer between high school and college. I didn’t have a full-ride scholarship to anywhere but Mama’s. “Everyone knows I don’t need the money. Not for school, at least. But they’re ready to hand cash and everything else to me.” Birdie laughed uncomfortably. I didn’t know she could do anything uncomfortably. “It’s like, if I can’t be bigger than this town today, then at least I’m going to be the biggest thing in this town.” That she was. “And you?” she asked. She slipped off her shoes, slipped off her jacket. Each item fell to the carpet like it knew its ceremonial presence was no longer needed in this dingy temple of curled fingers and folded cash. “What do you want? To kickstart your divorce?” “No. Not really,” I said. I’m sure Birdie thought I was mocking her, or flirting with her, but I just liked the mystery those words left in the air, even if it was manufactured. I didn’t have a husband or a wife at home, or a toddler from a long-gone lover bouncing on the hip of a teenage babysitter checking the time right about now. No, here I was with someone who could’ve very well been that babysitter and no one to notice my absence. What’s worse, this wouldn’t ruin me. Fuck, we could elope tonight and move into her parent’s basement without worrying about my lost status. Once the town got over our mutual female-ness, they’d move on. “Birdie could do better,” they’d scoff behind their coffee cups. They’d come to my work just to see who landed that pretty blonde girl, to see what dyke was holding back the only promising thing to ever come out of this community. But they’d let me keep my job; maybe it’d even increase the diner’s revenue. Maybe I’d get offered a position
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as a dental hygienist to ensure I didn’t divulge Birdie’s former clients. I wished I had a life that could be ruined by this. I wished someone would find out and spread the word of my deviancy until I was forced to move to a new ghost town. A fresh start, I’d say. I’m so sorry honey, I don’t know how it happened. It will never happen again, I swear. I love you. There’d be marriage counseling and secrets kept from the kids. Birdie would text me when she passed through. I’d politely decline drinks— I can’t destroy my family again, Birdie— but masturbate in the bathroom to the explicit messages she’d send. No one should be able to act so impulsively with no consequences. I’d stopped talking. Birdie started moving towards me, slowly and soundlessly, like she was approaching a feral animal that was just as likely to bite as it was to run. “Why breakfast potatoes?” she asked. “Hmm?” “Why does your menu say breakfast potatoes? They’re just hash browns.” “Oh. Because Mr. Baxter doesn’t think anyone knows the difference. And we can charge more when we say breakfast potatoes.” She was inches from me, so close that I wondered if we were actually touching and my skin was betraying me. “Sounds fancier,” I said softly. Just as softly, Birdie kissed me. When I pulled away, her eyes stayed closed. They didn’t open until I stumbled into the bathroom door. Then those green things watched me, curious, drowsy, amused, as I fumbled with the knob and apologized repeatedly for I don’t know what until I was safely on the other side of the door. Tile. Toilet. Toilet paper. I made a mental inventory of my grimy surroundings as I tried to bring down my blood pressure with sheer willpower. I glimpsed myself in the mirror
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The Customer | Peyton Limoges
and was surprised to see a normal face— not flushed or blotchy or sweating— peering back at me. If anything, she looked unaffected. I washed my hands before I began to masturbate. I left the door unlocked the entire time, some sick part of me hoping Birdie would walk in, that she’d do again what she’d done moments before. She never did, because what kind of person barges into an occupied bathroom?— but just the thought of it was enough. I stepped out, hormones flooding my veins. Birdie was sprawled on her back, staring at the television although nothing was playing. She didn’t move when I laid down next to her and put her finger in my mouth, or when I undid the top button of her jeans. She just looked at me and didn’t look away. Birdie returned to Mama’s ‘Merican Diner only one time after that, on a Tuesday instead of a Thursday. She ordered two sunny-side up eggs with a side of hash browns and left a tip that was more than her hourly rate or even double her hourly rate. I had just finished brewing a pot of coffee when I discovered the empty corner booth. I towered over the table, one hand stupidly dangling by my side, the other stupidly clinging to the pot of unordered coffee. “Why was that pretty blonde here today?” Mr. Baxter asked, peering out from the kitchen. I sat across from Birdie’s pile of dishes and cash and poured coffee into her untouched mug. I finished the first cup and had three more, using plenty of Sweet-n-Low.
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a smoot away
Anastasia Sotiropoulos
legend has it that he was a stout boy that oliver r. smoot of lambda chi stretching all 5 foot 7 inches of his oliver arms, oliver legs, oliver body above the enticing midnight water across the cold harvard bridge pridefully picked up by his brothers positioned where his head left off and his toes began ticking off the bridge as a measurement stick each line streaky and chalky and a smoot. google maps has it that i’m 1,384,776 smoots from dorm to home oliver would only have to lie down a couple hundred times hundred thousand times across neighborhood taco joints sprinting through know-every-cement-crack back-alleys by please-let-me-stay-the-night friends’ houses over no harvard bridge or water but landlocked panhandle and manmade lake he’d have to lie under, on, over that lake where the radio waves of “suburbia” and “idle town” and some senior year cry still echo slowly rippling as we blink out of red eyes and sore minds.
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a smoot away | Anastasia Sotiropoulos
rumor has it that it’s only 1,384,776 smoots of spilled slushies, rushed drive-thrus last-minute turn signals mowing over highway lines that oliver would have to endure interstate miles that all 5 foot 7 inches of my arms, my legs, my body the same height as oliver would have to retrace tick-mark up, recompute calculate kundera’s mathematical paradox in nostalgia: “that it is the most powerful in early youth when the volume of the life gone by is quite small.” how, i wonder, can the distance between dorm and home stretch farther than a million olivers but also be one short me one smoot.
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amnesia Matt Mettias
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amnesia | Matt Mettias
from the artist: “amnesia” was inspired by a silly event: me accidentally swallowing a substantially sized sliver of aluminum from a salmon, barbecued beans, and broccoli plate lunch. I immediately Googled the detrimental effects ingesting aluminum has on the body: Alzheimer’s disease —which may induce amnesia— was the most popular of search results. In my multimedia, digital drawing, I attempted to create a visual description and depiction of what I visualize the experience of amnesia and Alzheimer’s fleeting thoughts to be like.
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Mother Keeps Us on a Merry-Go-Round
Darnell Carson After living in Miramar Inn for three weeks, I realize we are not on vacation. My mother spends days in bed, never moving, even when we try to shake her. On this day, like all the others, my sister and I forage food from the continental breakfast, just in case we don’t have the money for lunch that day. We make off with our haul to the playground in the dusty field behind the hotel, which is really just a single gray merry-go-round, and we spin and spin and spin, morning light barely breaking the mountain peaks. This morning, like all the others, we try to forget what the world feels like. Our mom runs out to us screaming about running off without telling someone, but then she just keeps on spinning us, and laughs at our oblivious giggles and for a moment,
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Mother Keeps Us on a Merry-Go-Round | Darnell Carson
she is not thinking about the hotel we can’t afford, or the food we don’t have, or money that won’t last. She forgets too.
Untitled Elena Miller
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untitled Elena Miller 35
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Buttery
Lauren Grove
Summer started when the fair came to town. Bundles of spun sugar, shrieks from rides that twirled and dipped, tents with sharp points, eager faces behind booths, urging you to throw a dart, pop a balloon, win a stuffed monkey. Don’t worry, sweetheart, you’re guaranteed to win! My sister asked me why I liked the fair so much, why there were stars on my calendar for each day it was in town. Buttery, I replied. The fair felt buttery. My sister told me that didn’t make sense. But that’s what the fair was to me: indulgent, comforting, like watching butter melt on a warm roll. That buttery feeling left when the fair packed up and moved on, when the second half of summer began. The warmth of June began to weigh on our foreheads, suffocating and oppressive. My mom would twist my hair into a long, sweaty braid, her fingers lightly grazing my neck. Eventually, we retreated into the shadows like rats, stripping off our clothes and laying wet towels on our chests.
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Untitled Kaitlyn Choe
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August Wedding
Scott Stevens A boy stands on his hands. His pleated pants splay like a tree split by lightning, still blazing orange in the evening. Grass-flecked mud squelches between his fingers while the stitching of his sport coat strains his armpits. Blood floods his head. Chatter of birds and relatives vanish in the drumming sound: like red-plumed legionaries marching back to General’s mercenary throne. Then a draft of smoke, a flipped steak. Violins begin. His hair flicks white, falls upward as he rights himself to cross the purple lawn
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August Wedding | Scott Stevens
and fill the gap in line they left for him between the men’s black suits. Their backs settle like sand into one shore: in a wave at night, the dark clouds of quartz swirl, then spread under the foam, surrendering to the coast that begot their grains. Above the breakers planets rise from the horizon red, black, brown, blond like men who stand turning together toward the aisle.
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forward-facing
Malia Maxwell the views are better when you sit facing the direction of the train passing through one delicious field of trees thick as marmalade after another spread over sweet and sorrow but October’s fossil infects forgotten fields untamed or made orange by sunflower blood and because you shoot through the countryside forward-facing with the train biting one stretch of track after another it’s too late to brave your head backwards and weep over Redwood’s whisper you instead devour
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forward-facing | Malia Maxwell
the majestic verdure that sprawls barmecidal: ahead of you lies not a past coughing present but the future
Woman on bicycle carrying package, Florence Melina Walling
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Contributing Artists & Writers Darnell “DeeSoul” Carson (Poetry) is a queer writer, poet, and Spoken Word Performer from San Diego, CA, and a co-director of Stanford Spoken Word Collective, His work has been featured in the Anderson Collection at Stanford University, Write About Now Poetry, and soon on Button Poetry. He is a two-time CUPSI finalist (’18,’19) and has self-published two poetry collections, titled Work In Progress and Firebird, both of which are available for purchase online on Amazon. Kaitlyn Choe (Art) is a sophomore majoring in Human Biology and minoring in Creative Writing. When she’s not in class, you can find her at the Asian American Activities Center, where she is the Grad Life Coordinator. Kaitlyn also works for the Interviewing Committee of Sierra Camp 2019-2020 as one of the Coordinators for Diversity and Inclusion and is co-president of aKDPhi, the only Asian-interest sorority on campus. In her free time, she loves to paint, write, and hang out with her friends outside! Alexandra Crew’s (Poetry) love of poetry, embodied expression, and music brought her to work at the Djerassi Resident Artist Program in the Santa Cruz mountains in summer 2019. She studies Human Biology and Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity with a concentration in Identity, Diversity, and Aesthetics. After growing up in the Pacific Northwest, she’s been pulled down the west coast by the creative community and beaches in LA, where she’s excited to live in 2020. Karen Ge (Poetry) is studying Symbolic Systems at Stanford and loves playing with (and sometimes breaking) structures once she’s learned them. When she isn’t contemplating education and empathy, you can find her playing ultimate frisbee, passionately discussing musicals, and/or completely failing to dance properly. 42
Leland Quarterly | Summer 2020
Lauren Grove (Poetry) is a rising sophomore from San Diego, California. She is currently undeclared, but plans on minoring in creative writing. She’s a contributing writer at The Stanford Daily for The Grind section. Some of her favorite writers are Joan Didion, Stephen King, and Ocean Vuong. Peyton Limoges (Prose) is a senior studying Film and Creative Writing. She is passionate about the intersection of writing and film, and believes that representation in the writer’s room will lead to more authentic and diverse stories on screen. She is originally from rural Wyoming. Rellie Liu (Art) was born in Dalian, China and raised in Vancouver, Canada. She is currently a freshman at Stanford and intends to major in biology and minor in creative writing. She enjoys swimming, drawing, fried chicken, and dog memes. Malia Maxwell (Poetry) is from Seattle, Washington. She is an undergraduate at Stanford University (class of 2023) and interested in studying English and Creative Writing. Matt Mettias (Art) is a sophomore whose interests range from learning new languages and reading research articles about corporate marketing to cliff jumping into oceans and budget traveling – before the pandemic, that is. As of the current, he is studying psychology and education policy. Artistically, he enjoys creating digital art pieces. Elena Miller (Art) is an artist from Seattle. Her hobbies include drawing, painting, sewing, dancing, cooking, and going to concerts when there’s no global pandemics. She is a sophomore planning to major in art practice and/or poly sci, lit and product design aka she has no idea. Helena Silva-Nichols (Poetry) is a contributor to the Leland Quarterly. 43
Leland Quarterly | Summer 2020
Anastasia Sotiropoulos (Poetry) is a rising sophomore from Dallas, TX, and a lover of filmmaking, humor, and stories that humanize. She can be found curating Spotify playlists (@sotiroa), playing Mario Kart, or majoring in people mispronouncing her name. She is passionate about prison reform and the intersection between art and social justice. Performing spoken word is new for her — she was inspired after bingeing too many hours of TED talks (watch Sarah Kay’s!) and Button Poetry on YouTube. Scott Stevens (Poetry) (‘20, English) enjoys good books and bad 80s French pop. Apart from writing his own poetry, he translates from Japanese to English. This summer, he looks forward to seeing his soul reflected in the dry Californian hills, although he’s beginning to wonder if Jane Austen was right about the pathetic fallacy. Melina Walling (Art) is an interdisciplinary English major with a concentration in photography. She is currently pursuing an M.A. in Environmental Communication. Outside the classroom, she has worked as a producer at the Stanford Storytelling Project and an editorial intern at Stanford Magazine. She enjoys yoga, hiking, swimming, and consuming all forms of media (ask her for book, TV, or podcast recommendations).
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Cover Art Ocean Cosmos By Melina Walling
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