This issue of ROOM EIGHTEEN, that you have either downloaded or hold in your hands, is likely to be the last ROOM EIGHTEEN to ever come out of, well, the classroom number 18. This is because the school in which this zine is produced, the Duke Ellington School of Arts in Washington DC, is undergoing renovations. We will be out the building for two years and, when the Literary Media & Communications department returns, it is likely that the room will no longer exist as it once did. It is also just as likely that the department will no longer occupy the room. We are not sad about this. The school will have a better state-of-art building and, for the significance of the zine itself, it was always our intention for ROOM EIGHTEEN to live beyond its four walls. We wanted it become a testament to something bigger and we believe that with the dismantling, the demolition of the building, something mythical emerges - ROOM EIGHTEEN as an ethos, as an idea, as something that is part of an identity as opposed to a physical space, as opposed to something corporeal. Room EIGHTEEN will no longer be made of bricks, it will no longer be constituted by the chairs and the whiteboard and the bookshelves– in the demolition ROOM EIGHTEEN will become something else. Two things to address – first, who am I? I am a small cog in the departmental machine, the Literary Media & Communications department that has been producing ROOM EIGHTEEN for the last four years. We’ve tried to represent the students first and foremost and, as such, often remain in the background. But I have chosen to write a little about myself now, in order to illuminate that vague and nebulous ethos and to illustrate what the room 18 came to mean to me So the second thing I need to address is the first time I ever addressed the students, as a member of faculty. I told them they sucked and I was very loud and vociferous as I did so and, to all intents and purposes, I meant it. I had visited the school before and came to the department as a guest. Students were attentive and participated. I was new to the city – to the country – and had heard all these great things about the school and its glowing national reputation. And then I started working with the school and in the first week I found kids skipping class, not listening and walking in and out. I expressed concerns to my wife and to the department chair and, at the end of the week, he invited me to address the students while assuring me that there was more to them that met the eye. It was savvy of him. He knew what they were capable of but he wanted me to address them regardless. And so I did so – the entire department. I thought I’d be even keeled but I heard my voice rise and felt something stir inside me. Because I thought they were devaluing something I loved – writing. In the end I was loud and forceful and told them that I don’t see any talent in the room. It had only been a week. I had been in their department for just a few days and there I was telling students that had been there two to three years that I didn’t see talent in them. Needless to say, we got off on the wrong foot. But I was okay with that, knowing that I had what it took to win them over. I also agreed with the Chair, that it paid to put some fear in them, if only for fifteen minutes, and help them understand the first impression they can give and how misleading it can be. The same applies to room 18, take a look at it and you see nothing much - wood paneling on the back and left side walls, ugly brick - once white now painted black – on the other walls. There are exposed pipes and the paint peels from the radiators. The room is hot in the summers and unbearably hot in the winter, mice continue to visit, the locker belongs in the eighties and the bookshelves are littered with disheveled books. Take all that into account and there’s not much too look at. Yet if we look beyond the veneer, as I did with the students as the weeks and months passed, and it became clear to me that not only did they have talent they had talent in abundance, so too the same applies to the room itself. If we consider the things that we’ve been able to produce in the room, and not just the tangible things, but the ideas, the docs, the magazines, the zines, the performances, the love, the way in which teenagers carry themselves, their philosophical understanding of the world, their intellectual capacity, their self-reflexivity, if we, as cliché as it is to say it, maintain that ethos, that creative ethos, and that critical examination, as long as, as our chair says, we foster ‘humility, intelligence and respect,’ as long as we can carry all of that into what ever space we move onto, then ROOM EIGHTEEN and Room 18 will always live.
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ROOM EIGHTEEN - ISSUE XII
CONTENTS ZOË GATTI - 2 SARAH HIRSCH - 4 DANIELA SHIA-SEVILLA - 7 NIA BOULWARE - 8 EDWARD MALONEY - 11 ZYNYL CASTOR - 12 NANCY SCOFIELD - 13 GRACE CUSHNER - 14 MOREENA HASHIM - 16 KHAT PATRONG - 17 NATALIA GARAY - 19 NIA BOULWARE - 20 LEE PHILLIPS - 22 BARRETT SMITH - 24 KHAT PATRONG - 26 KELLI ANDERSON - 27 COVER PHOTO: GENEVIEVE KULES
“There is no greater agony than burying an untold story inside you.” -MAYA ANGELOU
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SARAH HIRSCH
LOVE: LAUGHTER, RAIN AND BEING LATE This entire year, people have been asking me, “What’s wrong?” Inherent in the question and look of concern or frustration, is that they understand something has happened that has been detrimental to my person or to my development as a human being. People, with the self proclaimed purpose of trying to ‘love,’ are in fact doing the opposite. Asking me “What’s wrong” is a failure to see my individual context. During this past year, really year and a half, I’ve learned the most I’ve ever learned. I have discovered what I care about, but because it does not align with the values taught in school, within circumstances that look like the traditional classroom structure, with a lesson plan and strict adherence to prompts, it was not characterized as learning, but “fucking up.” As something being “wrong.” For this paper, Ms. Michal, you asked us to evaluate our values “in relationship to the contexts that have given rise to those values.” Particularly, you want us to consider how “stories have affected [our] belief systems.” Then, you proceed to give us the broad types of stories that we can consider when making our point, when understanding where a value comes from, what context created it. But my values, things I personally judge as important, are not stagnant within a story. I value certain things for the way they do or do not value me back. For their practicality. I value things for the way they have helped me to live, actively, in response to, or in spite of something else. Humans are equipped with senses to effectively interact with our surroundings, to recognize pleasure and pain. Constantly reminded of our mortality in the world around us, we watch for methods of survival, to make life worth living. What I value is what has helped me overcome personal obstacles and battles. Laughter, Rain and Being Late are all a few of my methods of survival. Laughter is how I know to deal with silence. There are not many moments when my house isn’t silent. As I am writing now, it is 11 at night and there is no one else in my house. This is not an uncommon occurrence. Often at around three in the morning I will hear the garage door open and I am honestly not sure if it is someone coming or going. It fills itself in every pore of my house. It is in the ten minute dinners with only the sounds of forks on plates ,the locking of doors, and the way my mother pretends my father, my brother and I are not there. The silence in my father screaming. As if his body and everything around him were on fire, as if he was trying to keep the walls of our house of silence from caving in further. But every morning I wake up and see my dad has failed. All his screaming, burning, does not stop the window from being two and a half inches closer to my bed when I wake up in the morning. So when I wake up in the morning, 4
I go to Tenleytown to ride the bus with my friend Lila. The basis of our relationship is laughter. These bus rides have become a ritual. There is not much that would get me to miss one on my own accord. I need the morning of laughter to survive the night of silence. Laughter unloads the weight my house hangs on me. It releases endorphins, allows us to deal with stress and worry. It is a form of exercise that literally keeps you healthy. I value laughter because of its function for survival. Rain is perhaps the most important value I have because it isn’t metaphorical, I can catch some in the palm of my hand. The sound of rain against my window at night helps me to fall asleep with ease. I do not fall asleep easily at all on my own. Many rainless nights I lie awake or wander through out my house. The smell of rain calms me down. It reminds me of my mother tending her garden, the state in which she is most happy. The feeling of it against my skin, like a shower, wakes me up. Brings me into my body and allows me to be present in the moment. Rain gives back. In the movie Tsotsi, the title character asks a homeless cripple why he continues to live when he lives like a dog. The crippled man responds, “I like to feel the sun on the street. Even with these hands, I can still feel the heat.” I feel the same way but with Rain. It’s a reminder of my body, the simplicity of living that we can blow up big in a hurry. That I am solid and still and cannot so easily be destroyed. When I say I value Being Late, I do not actually mean the act of tardiness but the allowance of not restricting oneself to time. Time is a man-made construct that has only ever disabled my learning because it cuts off space for discovery. I cannot discover because all I end up doing is watching time, anticipating the end. If you anticipate the end you are not focusing on the object of your time. When put against a clock in class, a teacher feels the pressure to cover a certain amount of material so that the class can stay on course for the year. This timed system of education forces teachers to lecture and not listen, teach the test instead of letting students engage with material on a personal level. In this way, how it has been for the majority of my formal education, I have been unable to participate in the classroom. I have not been able to participate in my own education. Education guided by a clock, leads it to go against its ideal, the promotion of independent critical thought, and settle into its far removed reality, a tendency towards assimilation. I learn best when given the space to do so. I cannot write an essay that is not bullshit or recycled in 45 minutes. It is like the way one cannot know a person without spending a lot of time with them. Abstract thoughts and ideas, literature and scientific theories need to be treated like people. They need to be spent time on so that they can be fully explored. In the TEDxDESA event at the end of last year,
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Mr. Williams surprised us all with a talk and said, “one must get lost to get found.” Being Late is taking the time to get lost. Being lost allows one the freedom to dig deep, be surprised and find something. If one knew where one was all the time, one would not learn much of anything. I am late so I can be found. All of the values I have evaluated go back to the most basic value there is. Love. When I say love, I am thinking of bell hooks understanding of it as a verb, an action that furthers the object of your love’s evolution. But what that looks like is debatable. Because people have different notions of what that evolution should look like dependent on their values. When I say love, I am thinking of James Baldwin’s rendering of it; “Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.” Laughter, Rain and Being Late are all beliefs of mine because they have enabled me to survive and fight. And what else is there to fight for besides Love? Eartha Kitt says there is “nothing better than falling in love.” and that there is no need to “compromise.” I agree because every song I’ve heard, book I’ve read, movie I’ve seen, has been, in some form, a fight for love. So I survive and fight so I may love another person and allow them to survive, fight and love in their own individual way. Hate is most dangerous in its general form, resulting in the formation of “isms” (racism, sexism, etc), because it denies the reality of a human being. Instead of a person you see their skin color, their gender, their religion, an aspect of them that diminishes them to an idea, not a fully fleshed individual that wakes up in the morning. A human being that wakes up with their own story, their own context. General Love is just as dangerous. Perhaps even more so. Because the danger is not recognized, it is disguised as aid. So it is facilitated to continue, and in the same way, ignore the individual. But if we can learn to Love specifically, by opening oneself to each other’s values and contexts, we can learn to Love fully.
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DANIELA SHIA-SEVILLA
BRAIDING HAIR DADDY WINNER OF THE 2014 LARRY NEALE AWARD A wink and starred hats I long to see and hug his shoulders for a piggy back ride. On spring days he'd push me on swings. And kick a little ball, after the merry go round, Till the Bolivian pipes stopped playing in his car. To the lid of the sky, Above mountains, above me, beholding. One day, I could be older than his years. Waiting for my heaven, for a father daughter conversation. In his glow. To my stranger, with a voice I don't remember, and an accent I never caught, and grit that swam the Rio Grande naked with clothes in hand above his head. He cooked blueberries with yogurt, and fed me ice cream. And the shield who held my mother, always she tells me, when crossing the street. From this man of silence, I carry around my neck a dark orchid. By a broken neck, from long late hours, For all the catrachas and catrachos waiting for his money, he passed. A duty, the boys were taught in the banana fields by their father, to care for family. I remember this man who braided my hair, who called me shortie, leaving stories. With his sky, I crack the mornings' blue jay eggs, next to the crocuses, and through the windows at school, I see shadows from the sun. He is with me. And even in the hour of murk, amongst clouds most contrary, he gives cause to shine. Gleaming through flowered curtains at sunset, and reflecting on photos of the way way back. I'm well, For he grows with me. 7
NIA BOULWARE
HOW TO IGNORE A HOUSE ON FIRE Subtly walk with large steps over earthworms peeking out of the mud. You’ll have to share the sidewalk with Danielle and Chris, the power couple since the eighth grade. They will be a few steps ahead of you, arguing over homecoming colors. Chris will want red and white, to match the football teams new uniform. He’ll say it’s team spirit. Danielle, who wants something more practical, will wave her hands, using big words like “recalcitrant” and “incompetent”. Your eyes will travel from Danielle’s dancer bun to her slim waistline and pear--shaped curves. Think about how if it were up to you, she would wear whatever color she wanted for homecoming, or any other day of the week. Danielle looks good in anything. Somewhere in this feud, Chris will look back at you for reassurance. Don’t over talk. There’s no need to say anything, just nod, taking his side. Do the same thing when Danielle looks back seconds later. When she scoffs and mouths “he’s so stupid”, you’ll fake a chuckle. Although, it’ll sound awkward and strangely high pitched. It’s not long before you have to cross on Acres Street, and exchange your goodbyes. Danielle will hug you, smelling of incense that burns your insides. Chris will ask if you’re cool. Not just any cool, but the “Evan, I -know you’re going -through cool”. Danielle will be slightly behind him for support. Try not to look at her. The way Danielle shifts in her chucks tells you that Chris knows, and he told her too. Say yeah, dapping him and hiding your agitation. When you turn to walk away, keep your shoulders from slumping, and your head from dropping. After reaching your front steps, the “Taylor” welcome mat will crunch under your feet. Reach down and grab its folded up edge. You will have to vigorously shake the cobwebs and dust from their home underneath the dingy carpet. Roll up the welcome mat before you put your key in the front door. Your condo will smell like paint and plywood, but by now you're used to it. Call out names and wait for a reply, even though you know no one will answer. Place the mat on its side next to the rest of the boxes. Spend your last night at the dining room table with your younger sister Alice and her long division homework. Her shuffling of tiny red and black eraser pieces will remind you of the time she was caught in the neighbors’ backyard. She was by the rosemary bushes, playing with carcasses of ladybugs. Covered in dirt and determination, she told you Derrick needed them for good luck on his test. You didn't have the heart to inform her it was the live ones that brought good luck. Everything seems better off dead now anyways. Tap your finger lightly on question number eight, and tell her to stay focused. Watch as her eyes circle the room. She'll sniffle. It'll remind you to refill Derricks' asthma pump tomorrow while you all still have insurance. When Alice finishes her stare--off with the desk lamp on the floor, she'll 8
look at you. Her eyes are tight, nose flared. Alice’s heavy breathing and gaping bucktooth shows she’s in deep thought, but you know she's trying to ask about the house. If she questions why her room is not periwinkle anymore, try your best not to tense up. Explain to her, for what seems to be the sixty-seventh time, that the house has to be completely white for the next family. When she asks you where your family will end up, tell her honestly that you don't know, but you're sure there will be periwinkle walls in every room. Reach for your twoyear old school bag and open the only pocket that still zips. Skip over your AP LIT homework to pull out a calculator with your old elementary schools' stamp on the back and hand it to her. When Alice does question nine without help, go to the kitchen. The options for dinner are the same as any night. Cereal or Oatmeal. Alice will want cereal, because somehow oatmeal reminds her of raisins. Pour Alice a bowl as well as yourself and eat with her. Watch how the gold loops fall on her plaid skirt. Take a tattered rag from the counter and toss it at her. Tell her that no man wants a dirty girl. She’ll cut her teeth, wiping soggy O’s on the floor. When you’ve finished cleaning her mess as well as her attitude, make the last pack of Quaker Oats. Pour the contents into a Styrofoam cup and carry it upstairs. Walk to your brothers’ door and open it slightly. Poke your head inside, your ear slightly grazing the white frame. Derrick won't notice. After his first asthma attack it's rare for him to notice anything anymore besides his own well-being. It's another annoyance about him that you have to overlook. He's also thirteen now, so you have to apologize for forgetting to knock. It's the 28th, meaning all of his clothes and dolls (what Derrick calls “collectables”) should be packed away. Glance at his closet to make sure. You’ll see nothing but beige walls and brown boxes. Derrick will look up from the book he's reading, rub his eyes and fix his glasses. It'll be in that exact order. If his eyes are white, he's engulfed in whatever story he's reading. Make the conversation short, keeping in mind that you are enough reality to bring him to tears. However, if his eyes are red, someone already beat you to it. Tell him that Alice is downstairs and say that she can hear him crying, even if she can't. Tell him to man up. Derricks’ head will bow sheepishly, and right before you're sure he's going to break down in front of you, tell him that you have enough money saved up and everything will be fine. Ask him if he's eaten anything. After he nods, place the oatmeal on his nightstand. Close his door. Take long strides to your own room, even though you haven't slept there in months. At nights, you would spend hours pacing the floor after everyone was asleep. That was until Alice complained about her “leaving dreams.” Now you sleep on her patted floor. When you stand in your doorway, take in what's left of the room. Touch the spaces on your wall that once held movie posters of classics from the 90’s. If you look close enough, you can see the outlines still pressed on the wall. When you look over to where your wall clock used to be, it’ll prompt you to open the pasty white treasure chest that sits at the foot of your mattress. It belonged to Mr. And Mrs. Taylor. You took it after they stopped coming 9
home. Your hands will tremble, but avoid the roof from smashing your fingers like last time. Your teachers are growing skeptical about the accidental bruising. Even if they feel good. Pick up the folded blue sticky note with "GOD never gives us any more than we can handle” scribbled in purple ink. You found that in your locker a week after your father was hospitalized. Although, the handwriting was unrecognizable, it's pretty clear to you that it came from Connie. She had an abstinence ring and a big ass. That's all you can remember about her, and don't feel bad about it. Toss the note to the corner of the chest, on top of the unfinished sketch of your mom. Tell yourself you don't have time finish it and not because you can't remember the way her eyes curve or if she had Alice's cheekbones or Derrick's jawline. In the center of the chest is a pack of Magnums. Don't touch those. They serve as a cruel reminder of your ex-girlfriend, and how you never got to use them. Gabby was a senior when you were a sophomore. After considering the relationship too platonic, unbeknownst to you, she ended it. There were always rumors of her hooking up with Chris, who conveniently carried condoms shortly after the breakup. The same ones you stole from his wallet are staring up at you. Taunting you. At the very bottom of the chest, a white edge peeks from underneath more pointless sketches. You later discover it’s an envelope, one your mother forgot to take with her. She forgot to take a lot of things with her. You’ll open it to see eighty-three dollars and two birth certificates. Derricks’ and yours. Combining the money with your own gives you just enough to catch a bus up to Florida. Mrs. Taylor talked about having family there. Put the envelope in a bag, along with a few pairs of outfits, a sketchbook and a pencil. Close the chest and grab the piece of sketch paper. Write “To Danielle” and stick it to the roof. Call for Derrick and Alice. Tell them there’s been a change of plans and to pack a small bag of necessities only. Immediately following that, give in to Derricks’ argument that ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone’ is a necessity. You do have your sketchbook after all. At six ‘o'clock, two hours before the sheriffs appointed pickup time, wake Derrick and Alice and quickly usher them out the door. Your father's eyes will peer over Derrick's glasses before he pulls them up to the bridge of his nose. It'll make you reconsider things, but just for a moment. Tell him that the sheriff is on his way, and to keep up. It won't be long before Alice will get tired of walking. You’ll have to carry her on your back. The rocking of your footsteps will slowly put her to sleep. You’ll wonder if Danielle will ever get to see your condo or chest and finally understand. If her and Chris stop by while strolling home without you one day. You hope they will walk through each room and distinguish it beyond it’s chipped paint and peeling plywood. To know that it was no longer a home worth it’s title, and forgive you for ever leaving.
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EDWARD MALONEY
WE ARE SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2014 LARRY NEALE AWARD
We are lazy evenings in July the tangled hands of two scarred arms clinging to last bits of sanity casting broken shadows between glimmers of light warm nights in bed bare flesh pressed together soft lips on smooth necks and traveling hands seen through strained eyes We breathe light mornings, and soft promises and silent reminders of a blurred world We hold inches of fire within our chests and release them with every deep stare I pull her into me I can feel her hot breath on my back We don't make love, we invent it As the last breaths of summer creep through a dirty screen window She is bathed in light I kiss the freckle on her hip And she calls my name And I am lost in the only sanity I know
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ZYNYL CASTOR
TO MARS AND BACK Everything Peter wanted was in Michigan. Where the sky met the mountains in an everlasting kiss, and the grass stretched meadows and hills, making sure to coat everything with the green symphony of life. Like her. Her. A name long gone from his memory, he uses her to explain the feelings leftover from a decade ago, gathering dust in the corners of his mind. He met her on a Tuesday. The weariness from Monday still with him but not as dense, the weariness was long winded. He was working the night shift at Denny's, gathering the cups of coffee left by businessmen on their way to the airport. She was an anybody, she wore loose shirts and long jeans everywhere, clothes that screamed “This is all you’re gonna get…” Skirts were an unfamiliar item to her, just like femininity. She was a dandelion in a sea of ordinary grass, rare blossoms in her seeds. All she did was order a cup of coffee. Coffee that took them on a trip to Mars and back, and while the ride was exhilarating, it had to end at one point in a magnificent burst of flames and pointless promises over eight tequila shots and a DUI ticket. Almost everything Peter wanted was in Michigan. Where the sky met the mountains in an everlasting kiss, and the grass stretched meadows and hills, making sure to coat everything with the green symphony of life. Like her.
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NANCY SCOFIELD
LEAVING SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2014 LARRY NEALE AWARD
With a sound like the snapping of guitar strings With an ease like that of a petal drifting on the wind he left He left. Without a turn of his head, without so much as a breath of apology, he picked up their battered stamp-covered suitcase packed with half her life the glow that used to fill them and some extra underwear, and left her statue-still and sobbing on the porch.
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GRACE CUSHNER
MARY & JACK (MARY and JACK are sitting at the kitchen table) MARY: What do you want? JACK: What are the options? MARY: Pizza. JACK: Ok, well, what do you want on it? MARY: I don’t care. JACK: Do you want pepperoni? MARY: I honestly don’t care. JACK: Do you want tomatoes? MARY: Sure, tomatoes sound ok. JACK: Alright, I’ll call. (JACK picks up the phone and dials the number.) Yes, for delivery, MARY: So you’re only getting tomatoes? JACK: I was going to get pepperoni too. (Pause) Yes, paying with credit. MARY: Oh(JACK starts to talk on the phone again, interrupting MARY. MARY stands there. She looks impatient) JACK: I mean, do you want something else? Because, if you do, you should speak now. MARY: You can choose. JACK: Alright. (Talking on the phone.) Yes, that’s it. Thank-you. (JACK hangs up.) MARY: Whatever is good JACK: Why do you always do that? MARY: What? What do I do? JACK: You always tell me to make an executive choice then you complain about what I decided. MARY: Maybe if you made better choices I wouldn’t be complaining so much. (MARY steps back, leaving more distance between them) 14
JACK: Maybe if you gave me some input, I would make choices that you would like more. MARY: What? I am perfectly fine with pepperoni. JACK: You’re not fine with anything. MARY: Don’t do that. JACK: What Mary? What am I doing? MARY: You never listen to me to begin with. It doesn't matter what I think, because you're still going to make the same choice no matter what I say. You’re talking down to me, like I need everything to be explained to me. JACK: Well sometimes you need to be talked down to. (Long pause) MARY: What is this about? (MARY runs her hand through her hair) JACK: This is about everything. Everything we do, even if it’s simple turns into a huge blowout argument. (Longer pause) JACK: You never know what I’m talking about. MARY: All I asked was what you wanted on your pizza. JACK: I know. MARY: I thought that you liked pizza. JACK: I did, I mean. (JACK sighs) I do, just not everyday. MARY: I didn’t know this. JACK: Once again. MARY: Maybe you should share these things with me. JACK: OK, fine. Next time, I’ll let you know. MARY: So, what do you want to eat then? JACK: We already put the order in. It’s too late. (Pause) MARY: I honestly did not know that you felt that way. JACK: Well now you know.
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MOREENA HASHIM
HIGHWAY KIDS For the most part, I have a bad memory. But nobody will have to remind me or paint the picture of the time I learned about Chasity. June 22, 2013. 6:45pm to be exact. Sitting in a two-seat pick-up truck surrounded by trees and the tumbleweeds you see in old western movies. I was going down to Self Portrait by Ellie Cohen Richmond, Virginia for the summer with my father. One of our usual times together, along with Christmas and three-day weekends. I've always been an only child. I've hated that fact. Kelly and Kevin have been my older half-siblings since 2003. At least, that's when I met them at a family reunion on my father's side. Large age gaps and homes on different sides of the States gave us a distant relationship. We never got over the stranger-danger phase. We were siblings genetically but cordial socially. “Are Kelly and Kevin my only siblings?” My father was caught off guard. My mother kept dropping hints, so I had to find out. He slowly faded the jazz music on the stereo, and then took his hand from the volume knob. His hands gripped the steering wheel, as if he might think of the right answer and lose track of the road. My father opened his mouth and explained his one-night stand. The product's name was Chasity. My skin began to crawl and my stomach moved in waves. I listened. I listened so I wouldn't forget. I listened to my father's cluelessness about the pregnancy. I didn't zone out of this story the way I usually do. I didn't pay attention to the traffic signs, focusing only on the lane lines. I almost counted his words as I counted the white dashes. I stopped counting when I started paying too much attention to the numbers. Chasity. Another half sister. Another child my father has but didn't stay with long enough for the first homemade Father's Day card. “Yeah, you're probably my only child that doesn't or has never hated me.” Skin still crawling, blood heating up, starting to boil. Why would he put himself in that situation? To be hated? By different people but for the same reasons. Leaving his families and watermarking them with new members. The conversation must have died down at that point. I can't remember my response. I remember returning to the world. Pulling in the “SunTrust Bank” parking lot, I pulled out my phone. As my father unlocked the car to go use the ATM, I unlocked my phone to use the NOTES app. When you make a note, it stamps the date at the top of the note. I wanted to be sure that, despite all of the questions I had about Chasity, I would know when I learned of her. “Chasity” date-stamped June 22, 2013 6:45pm. My father's key turned into the lock and, one leg at a time, he climbed back into the truck. The ignition and I breathed at the same time. My father pulled out of the driveway and I reached for the radio dial. Static commercials filled the truck's atmosphere and the surroundings settled back. “So what do you want for dinner?” 16
KHAT PATRONG
modern day samson and delilah The best time to cry is in the shower. Even the shower has its limits because you have to match your sobs to the sound of the running water. When you're in the shower you are already vulnerable. In God’s eyes you are as naked as the time you were first born (because as you transform and get older, you are born again and again). And every time you cry in the shower it's as if you are a baby, naive but mostly vulnerable. Being vulnerable means to be weak. And when you're constantly moving, never secure, you have no room to be weak. My backpack consists of travel-sized things (toothbrush/paste, comb, lotion) a pair of jeans, a few shirts that I alternate with, pajamas pants. The only thing I consider a treasure in my bag is the picture of my mother on her wedding day. She's on the right and smiling and young. Her sister, who lives in Mississauga now and the two haven't been in touch since she moved, is center, smiling. On the left of the sister is a friend, I think. I never got the chance to ask. I imagined she was on route to the church. Ready to commit to something. My mother was off center in white, her smile never spoke of the future, just what she was to face at the end of the aisle. She was genuinely happy. It lasted for four years. Barely a year after I was born. I like to think it was my fault so that my parents can take the burden off each other. In school, when asked about my parent’s relationship, I would say with a sure voice “My father divorced me.” All the kids would give me strange skeptical looks until someone corrected me. That was grade four. That was how badly I had put the blame on myself. How badly the blame is still settled in the deep pockets of my being. The blame is travel sized. I knew my mother’s version of the “separation,” as she puts it. But I never thought of it as a separation because, while even living in different countries, they occupied each other’s minds. I know that it was a regular day for her. I know that she dressed me up and took me to the store, only to return with turkey slices and to find the computer and his clothes gone. I didn't know how I felt when she told me. Caught in the middle of something foreign, caught in the middle of something most people would say I'm too young to understand. But I understood. Eating with someone who chewed too loudly even with their mouth closed. That's how I thought it was; they got so tired of each other. A backpack with travel sized things and my clothes is all I have when I step off the bus. I’m anxious to go back. To see my father. I'm afraid that his face will be covered with crossroads and intersections of a country he grew to know and the intersections of a country he wished he had never 17
left. I never saw those lines form. Never traced them with my painted finger nails and asked him if he was afraid of dying. The taxi drops me off at an unknown complex. My father was always on the move too and so the door I knocked on wasn't the same door I grew up remembering when visiting on the weekends. He opens the door. I smile and mirrored back at me is the same smile. For dinner, he remembers my favorite; tomato choka with roti. We pray and eat with our hands. Its mostly silent and I try not to chew so loudly. After dinner, I tell him I need a shower. He points to where everything is. Bathroom is down the hall. Towel closet is next to it. I go in the bathroom and open up the medicine cabinet. I inspected the pills, the tubes of creams to figure him out. I turn on the water. My shoulders shake as I sit hunched over the toilet crying. As I cry I let myself be born again. He sat on the couch facing the television before it happened. They had just moved to a basement apartment, boxes still sat unpacked. She was talking about her day, it was stressful, she was tired. He cracked a joke. She said it wasn’t funny. He tried to make her smile. She asked him to take out the trash. He said not right now, come here. She pushed him away. He persisted. She pushed harder. He was taken aback by her strength. He tried again. She hit him. And then again, but harder. He didn't do anything, he only watched out the corner of his eye. This wasn't the person he married. He forgave her and that night they slept like two half moons in the sky. That wasn't the only time. He took longer hours at work. He was happy to see me awake when he got home so that he could strap me in a car seat and drive with the windows down until I was asleep. All that to avoid his wife who took on a being she tucked away. She wasn't always like this. He brought it out of her, as if sticking his hand in her magic hat. She let herself be whole around him. Again and again. He could try and stop her trembling fists but he knew she needed this release. He left not to hurt her but because he knew he wasn't strong enough to take it any longer. I step out of the bathroom with my one set of pajamas. I see him sitting and staring at the television. His eyes glazed over and he can feel his skin turn purple as he remembers. I sit down and he turns to me and smiles. I smile back. I look at his face. Like a baby does to remember a face, I look at his eyes, nose and lips. I ask him if he has any regrets and I watch the little smiles at the corner of his eyes or the deep parenthesis around his mouth as he tells their story. 18
NATALIA GARAY
BASQUIAT THE CONCRETE Basquiat the concrete, with your story of how every crack was a bruise and that these colors are a tale of resentment. Red is the color Mama always wore when she got me a new step daddy. Orange is the color of my favorite fruit. Yellow is the color of Momma’s 1986 Chevy. Green is something the grass never was in this Section 8 neighborhood. Blue is the color my jeans were when I first bought them. They’re my only pair and I love to watch them dry on the clothesline every day. Purple was the color of Momma’s funeral dress. She was hit by a car coming from the place Grandma always told me heathens worked at. If I could paint my feet and walk the street I would hope you could see the good in me all along the concrete, that I'm no victim but a present soul trying to find something to believe in. When no one else will. You mistake caregiving for love. Never hearing I love you, I love you, I love you. Being told you'll never amount to anything, and a fist banging top of the morning to ya’. When we goin get it right? Being functional, that is. That this is supposed to be home, where I lay my head to dream at but, see things I ain't supposed to, like a child outlined in white chalk in front of their stoop. Only thing to do is allow my tears to heal me. To drain all that anger left in me. So I may forget, yesterday is gone. I am exposed and naked in a world full of hatred. I bet you think you know me now? But all you know is what I allow you to see. We're all just ticking time bombs. I grab every ear just for listening, thinking that the universe is listening in. This is our story. Your soul is pounding the concrete. Painting vividly the violets, blues and sorrows you have met about face. Tell me how it how it wasn’t your decision, that this is how you make ends meet. By cradling the earth in ya’ hands and dapping it up on street corners. Tell me why Momma eyes was so slow. Is it because she thinks a glass is better half full than empty? So she doesn’t know how to be a mother, instead she is a friend. A friend that doesn't nurse you.
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NIA BOULWARE
SATURDAY NOTES TO MY LITTLE BROTHER 1. My little brother speaks 3 languages. French, English and another shared between the family. When an eleven year old is able to empathize with your "emotional depth", it gives an all-new meaning to the word 'communication'. 2. Since you were born, I haven't always been the best older sister. I even told you, you were adopted once, but that was only to hide the fact that I love being related to you. I just wasn't used to being anyone's older anything. Sometimes its just hard slipping into new skin before you're ready. 3. I'm ready now. 4. I know you aren't cheating when we play Xbox. I just say that to help me sleep at night. But in case I haven't told you this already, you are a magician at Mario, smashing your brothers at super smash bros. Yes you are the best at Sonic, and take pride in it. Never let anyone tell you that you are anything less. 5. You ask A LOT of questions. Wiggling your tongue against the roof your mouth, you keep me on edge. I never know what to expect. Some questions I know the answers to, others are meant for you to explore. You have that right to explore. So the next time someone calls you "annoying" for your barrage of questions, tell them that you are what's right with the world. 6. Stop hugging me. Literally you hug me at the worst moments. Example. When I gotta pee, it is not the time to extend the utmost gratitude. But. You. Won't. Move. Your arms stretched, surrendering to the wars I carried on my neck. You opened yourself to love and to hold every ounce of reticent running through my bones. I was just going to the bathroom... but you somehow knew I had a rough day and was about to cry. 7. I have never told you this, but when you laugh, the way your eyelids curl, resting on cheekbones and chapped lips, it makes me feel new again. 8. I am jealous of your skin, because God took his time on you. This world may not be ready for your shade of resilience. They may say you don't fit with their expectations of what a black man should be. Ignore them. 20
You are a human being, in DC, Texas, and Florida, every subway station and suspicious BMW you ride in. The world isn't filled with you're kind of love Ash, but don't let them rob you of it. 9. There comes a point in every man’s life that your body becomes a stranger to you. When things begin to work... Or stop working. Anatomy is divine Asher. Don't do what I did. Ask the questions, but not to me. Please know that I love you, but to spare me of the details. Considering you are my little brother, there are some aspects of you I'd rather stray away from. 10. When our parents started working later. The hours passed slow and often painful. You came into my room, skipping over two older siblings to ask me to make you dinner. When I did, you told me I was like your second mom. You will never know how much that means to me. 11. Never stop hugging me. 12. You encompass everything I've ever wanted for myself. Thank you for being the poetry, when I thought all of it had already been written.
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LEE PHILLIPS
ON BEING A YOUNG WRITER It was a simple sounding question our creative writing teacher Ms. C asked us. Four straightforward words, “What is a writer?” Identify it. Tell me what it is. A person with a pencil? Like a mother explaining to big eyes, this is train, this is a cow, smile, shoe. It’s such a simple question, how can I not just see and react? Don’t look away. What is this? We all felt the weight of whatever it was and, at the time, it was one I could not name or understand. I spit out something while I felt myself get choked up, unable to express myself. Now as I stand alone I see that a writer is isolated. He sits quietly and without circumstance, pulling at the layers of surrounding normality and discovering beautiful and ugly things. He will never recover from these things and he will never be normal again. Because he had to bring these layers of humanity to the surface he knows things that others don’t and he has been through the creation of “true” art. He, along with the reader, has suffered for and laughed with his characters. But he is the master of all of it and in this mastery he has created human and become god. No not a glorious God, one that has created dread and sickness of the soul, but also redemption and hope. Now, when you add the word “young” to writer, what happens? Most experience the mutual annihilation of the two words. They cancel each other out and cannot exist holding their two separate meanings in harmony. They cannot take us seriously. To write you must understand and some associate youth with ignorance. How could you make a man cry? Or an old woman feel young again? What do you know? And vice versa. If you are truly a writer, a creator, isolated and insane from taking on all the trials of humanity, well then, where is the youth in that? It is not that these two cannot exist in harmony and being young, although naïve in some ways, does not make us any less Godly. You see, the things about humans is that at every single stage of our lives we know the most we’ve ever known about life. We are constantly discovering truths about the world. At every moment, and with every discovering, we are the wisest we’ve ever been. But we are young, and we make mistakes. I have let people down. My classmates have. All of us have, not too long ago Ms. C, the teacher that asked the tough questions with simple words, guided us through a world that reflected our vulnerability. We wrote stories for a class but they were not for a grade, they were a risk. And some could not pull through. Some, including myself, were scared of the blank page that demanded isolation. This teacher believed in us when we were deep into these hours. She told us the only way to succeed was to try and fail, and that the only true failure was not to try at all. One day she called a meeting, the atmosphere was tense. Our intuitive minds sensed a message. “You’re too much.” Her first thought broke free and bounced around in our pinball machine minds. Some of us tried and failed. Some of us didn’t try at all. The school just wasn’t paying her enough, she would have to drop a class a week. She explained and explained but the only thing that stuck on her sticky brains was that we had disappointment. She hadn’t said those simple words. But we felt it. When what happened was brought up later in room 18, with a teacher that would later say the same to us, a link in our chain broke loose and the devastation became clear. Mr. Oyedeji tried to tell us that she had faith in us; that she wasn’t giving up on us. Only a few days later he did just that. 22
We had been goofing off, not devoting ourselves to the task at hand, when Mr. Oyedeji snapped. He declared we were not going to be writing for Daisy James, the department magazine that juniors traditionally managed. Instead we were to read and write essays. He tossed around books, obviously angered and then stepped out of room 18. We were hurt. We exchanged glances; none of us would accept this. We were going to write our features for Daisy James anyway. We became a room full of young writers bouncing ideas of each other like a pinball machine. Up down, up down but don’t let the ball drop. Our ears perked up as the sound of the door click, our teacher entered again and we picked up our assigned reading books, faking an interest only we knew to be a disguise. A disguise of our mischief in the name of what we thought was honor. Our eyes scan words that do not touch our hearts while our hearts dance around the idea of scandal. The scandal of proving your worth when you have already shown what you’re not. We wanted to show him we were capable. What of, I don’t think any of us stopped to ask ourselves. It can’t be to show him we can do the work. He already knew we could do it. It can’t be to impress him, that’s childish. It had to something else, something bigger. It had to be because we want that isolation, that insanity of loneliness in understanding humanity and the tireless effort of communicating it. It had to be because we believed in ourselves, that we were young writers. To me there are two types of education. There’s the educations that tests your ability to retain information presented to you, and then there is the self-education that comes from realizing truths about humanity and only that will better you as a person. When you put a young writer - already a mutually opposing thought - into a school that combines those two opposing style of education. There is polarization. Like a magnetic force pulling you in opposite directions. Do you rebel against both? Just one? Which side is evoked? Young? Or writer? Now not all kids are rebels but speaking for myself I march to the beat of my own drum. At times I feel like there is a fire burning inside me, ready to eat away at the lies our society has put in front of us. It’s ready to knock down self-pity and cowardice, worthless emotions. I think most teens feel as though they have something great inside them. Mine is in my mind. Or my heart. I cannot tell. This has taught me a lot about myself and how I follow (or ignore) the rules. While independence and innovation are valued, there are also some things you cannot change about life. School is one of them. I didn’t choose my mind or heart, or how fast these thoughts are bouncing around inside me. But I did choose to write. I have to learn to separate school from my passion. Don’t let that fire blind me and stop me from seeing that I have that second kind of education, the one that will make me see truths. The same fire that draws me away from the “Teach to test” style of education, fuels my passion for writing. And yet they are both under the same building. Those two types of education live together but unlike my title as a young writer they are not symbiotic. That fire that hates a coward, someone scared to be vulnerable but great, causes me to neglect the very thing that fire burns for. I become a hypocrite. I become a coward. But I am young. I know all I know but there is time to see so much more. There are truths to discover. How to isolate yourself. Lose the wrong crowd, guide your fire, name something.
23
BARRETT SMITH
CARRYING SOULS THE 2014 DUKE ELLINGTON SCHOOL OF THE ARTS VALEDICTORY There’s a ridiculous amount of love in this building. Ms. Baskin once said that she doesn’t worry because nobody is going to bring a gun into this building and shoot indiscriminately. Because, here, children don’t lose their souls. Because, here, she knows every student in the building and, she said, what they’re faces are supposed to look like and when they look off. Because, here, people care, here, people are invested in the building of artists, which means the nurturing of souls. Because, here, education hinges on love. And that love isn’t always earnest and self-apparent. Sometimes it hits you too hard for you to see it. Sometimes it is old and forgotten. Sometimes it smells bad. Sometimes it comes in the form of hate. And sometimes it changes everything. And that’s why we made it, because we really shouldn’t have made it. Forty years ago Peggy Cooper Cafritz and Mike Malone started a school for kids who shouldn’t make it. That school has been underfunded and over regulated and forced to become complicit, but in spite of everything, we made it. Because people cared. Because the school prioritized the students. This school is amazing because it is the exception. And it would be even more amazing if this school wasn’t amazing. If every American school prioritized the students and prioritized the teachers. We see students as consumers, and in a capitalist country we grow up learning not to trust businesses, to be wary of ads, that corporations will not only manipulate you but outright lie to you, jeopardize you, to make a profit. So what does it mean if schools are a business? Because they are - university, and primary, public and private, they need to make some type of profit off of us in order to sustain themselves. So students are manipulated, lied to, jeopardized. Education is a product, not an experience or a journey. In this country we do not learn, we receive knowledge. And yet, we also don’t prioritize the givers of knowledge. Teaching, I believe, is the most powerful profession, the most poignant. Everybody has a soul, an energy that moves through life with a rough idea of a shape and a rough idea of a path. Good teachers knock it off course, they dent it, change its color. Good teachers change everything. Here, teachers change everything. And yet. 31% of teachers say they have to work more than one job to make ends meet. The average teacher salary is less than $2 per hour per student. This is not the fault of the school or the district or the superintendent. Well it is, but it is really the fault of a country where we believe “those who can’t do, teach.” I, personally, don’t want to learn from those who can’t do. I want to learn from masters, not just masters of their craft, but master teachers, people who love, not the students, but each student, people who know they carry the weights of hundreds of souls on their shoulders and stand up straighter so as not to break. I want to learn from people who believe, who believe in their subject matter, who believe in education, who believe in children, who believe in the future. I want a country that looks to the future instead of looking to the corporations, instead of looking to the profits. 24
I want a country that believes teaching is an art, is a skill, that pays them the way we pay doctors, so that they can work the way doctors work, focus the way doctors focus, specialize the way doctors specialize, and believe the way doctors believe in medicine. So if we don’t prioritize students and we don’t prioritize teachers, what’s left? What do we prioritize? What do we value more than the future and what do we value more than the givers of knowledge? Routine. Because it allows us to not think. We create curriculums so that we know in January we will read Things Fall Apart, in April we will learn about functions, and this happens every year after year after year. And this repetition leaves no room for love because it leaves no room for change so it leaves no room for dialogue. The best teachers are often young teachers because they discover with the students, because once you’ve been teaching the same book for ten years, how do you learn from it? How do you listen to the students when you know what they’re going to ask and what you want them to get out of it? So you stop listening and then you drop a couple souls because how can you love without listening? How can you love when you see them as a group, not people, when you see them all the same? Because we don’t all need the same things. That is the problem with curriculums and tests and common core standards, they don’t morph, they don’t respond to the needs of human beings, they don’t listen, they don’t compromise, so they can’t love. We have created a system that can’t love, that denies the existence of love and so it drops souls and, sometimes, they break. Once I decided to be valedictorian - because it was a decision - I started to closely monitor my points, there were a lot of charts about how many points my GPA had and how many points it would hypothetically have depending on the classes I would take. Once, I was trying to calculate how many points an extra class would add to my GPA, to see if it was worth the workload. I found out that taking that extra class would actually bring my GPA down because it wasn’t an AP. So doing extra work. Learning more would bring me down in the race. So I didn’t take that class. And a few times I sat in on it and probably learned more than I have in most of my AP classes. So I’m not standing up here because I’m smarter than anybody else or because I learned more. I’m here because I made a decision. A decision to value this competition over my education. And that’s the decision our country has made. To value the standards of a competition over the growth of the students, the needs of the students, the education of the students. And I am entirely complicit in the system but I am also aware of the ways that I am complicit. I am aware of the ways I submit to power and rebel against power, I am aware of the ways power is necessary and the ways it is arbitrary, and I am aware of the ways that I usurp power from and use it against others. Because that is the love that we have learned in Literary Medis and Communications department, a love for self that is not always earnest and apparent because it is about really looking. Because that is all we can do, because every person’s soul is made up of so many different colors and nudges that we can’t always know where it’s going, so all we can do is watch it, see it, and check ourselves. So, as a class, I ask that we look at each other and try to really see each other and all of the ways we have loved each and every person over the last four years, all of the beautiful and all of the smelly ways that we have loved. And then I ask that we look at ourselves and all of the ways that we know how to love. And that we continue to see from this moment forward because it is the only way we will continue to learn. 25
KHAT PATRONG
scarborough apartments overlooking the noise of strangers i dont remember your face but i know your smile i know the apartment like the back of my hand the small bathroom at the end of the hall the closet next to it; your favorite hide and go seek spot the kitchen where our dad would make blueberry pancakes with a wok and we would make ramen noodles and cheese sandwiches to set step mom and dad up on a date so that they will stay in love forever and when we slept by the door when father didn't come home that night but in the morning he walked in with a black eye i can't remember if you cried that day but i remember your smile as it faded when that big heavy speaker fell on your big toe and you cried and i helped you onto the couch that we would watch sharkboy and lavagirl and we would pretend i was too hot to touch and you couldn't live without water as we waited for dad to come home with pineapple pizza and ketchup chips you always fell asleep before the end.
26
ZOË GATTI
THE DUKE ELLINGTON SCHOOL OF THE ARTS IN THE OLD WESTERN HIGH BUILDING 1974-2014
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ROOM EIGHTEEN READ MORE: http://issuu.com/literarymediacommunications
ROOM 18 - ISSUE #12 - JUNE 2014
PRODUCED BY THE LITERARY MEDIA & COMMUNICATIONS DEPARTMENT