Room Eighteen
Nia Boulware - Celia Caldwell - Zynyl Castor - Dileiny Cruz - Sharde Farmer Natalia Garay - Houston Godfrey - Moreena Hashim - Edward Maloney - Luke Noguiera Tyrese Rowe - Taariq Saadiq - Nancy Scof ield - Daniela Shia-Sevilla
Birds They released white birds off the church steps. It wasn’t “grandma’s house” anymore. It was home. When I would say things that I wanted to hurt you, you would respond “Boy you gone miss me like a housewife miss a rerun.” I didn’t think I would. You told me seven weeks ago that “We are buried alone. We spend our whole lives making do or making by. I’ve been alive seventy three years and I’m tired of trying to survive. I want to live.” There was never a week when you didn’t remind me that the day after Saturday was the “lord’s day.” It’s been three weeks and I’m starting to forget what Sunday is. When I was nine you told me god would keep my conscience clear and my plate full. You always made sure I ate. I’ve never seen my parents in the winter. They didn’t believe in staying together for warmth. You taught me to keep myself warm. You were so forgiving of everyone, but yourself. You blamed yourself for me not knowing my father. You blamed yourself for my brother dropping out of high school and his decision to shovel snow in the summer time. You forgave us for being human. Whenever you saw a picture of your brother, you would look at me and cry. You said I was born to replace an angel. You taught me that even the sky cries.
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Artwork: Taariq Saadiq
Room Eighteen - Issue 13
Houston Godfrey - 2 Dileiny Cruz - 4 Natalia Garay - 6 Nia Boulware - 8 Tyrese Rowe - 11 Nancy Scofield - 12 Luke Nogueira - 15 Celia Caldwell - 16 Sharde Farmer - 18 Natalia Garay - 20 Taariq Saadiq - 23 Moreena Hashim - 24 Edward Maloney - 26 Daniela Shia-Sevilla - 28 Zynyl Castor - 30 Daniela Shia-Sevilla - 33 Cover Art: Leara Franklin
Edward Maloney - 34
“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.” - JM Barrie
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How Tamboril Was Remembered
The fire consumed the boy who sat in the corner. And now, he will never get to mention the warmth he felt in his sleep that day. When the fire struck, the neighbors in Tamboril said they felt the world beneath their feet, melting away the skin between their toes. The children, as shoeless as ever, toyed with the fire inside of their homes. Miles away, a Woman is cooking her way through life. She loves a house with a stove, a whisk, a knife, a fork, three lemons, salt, and a Man. She, the mother, hides from her husband in the Man she works for. Although she knows that back home, in Tamboril, her husband spends his days in the fields to feed their family, she spends her days traveling to do work, for the Man. In the kitchen there is a radio that sits on top of a marble counter. The Mother and the Man share secrets with their eyes here. At three o’clock the radio plays only one station, and they enjoy this kind of intimacy. That day the News had taken over the music, but even the travesty was a beautiful acapella. Now that it was well past three, all over the news for the next two hours was a fire in a market that woke up the children on the island. The man knew much of the Women, but she never spoke to him of the boy. She had tactics of breaking their silence, but it was too comforting. When the reporter said the fire in the market was started by a group of thugs, she assumed it was her boy and his friends who were looking for food again. She
Artwork: Dileiny Cruz
knew then that the fire was near her home, and she began to feel a carbon cloud in her heart, even after the fire had burned through the flesh on his bones. The owner of the market was an elderly man, divorced, and with kids who despised his aspirations in business. He got no help from them in securing the store, but he found a family friend who was willing. For the friend, watching the store became a competition against himself. The small fire he accidentally caused in the market, made him lose control of all he thought he had been given. An open big flame that was once a small fire created a spark of life for the Island that it had been missing for years. The boy now serves as a myth, The Mother shares her story, of the boy who sacrificed himself in a fire so that the Island may never be forgotten again.
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I have learned to swim beneath the water in the uncertainty of my ethnicity. To be everything that my mother is and nothing like my father. She never told me my existence was political That America was white. That America, too, should fear my cries as much as she does, that they would be in awe for every year that passed after middle school without pregnancy. That I am split into two halves. So I bashfully tucked my father in the seams of the navy pocket of my uniform pants, thinking no one should know that I am black too. I am a fictitious daydream Finding refuge in my inability to focus on what’s bothering me, It’s always covered with comical relief. My cadence is all that makes me daddy’s little girl then I am digestible. Maybe this is what I’ve been waiting for, “You don’t sound like it.” “You sound black.” To settle for a sense of acceptance and recognition that doesn’t even sit right. That don’t make sense to my bloodline I get told that I do not look black enough, that I got “good hair” so I can’t be black. That my features aren’t black enough. But yet the way I speak is a way to identify me. How can I sound like a color? How can I sound like a race?
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Artwork: Natalia Garay
But bet you can’t hear the hopelessness of America in my voice? My body will always be an anthology of unanswered prayers. But do not mistake me for a martyr. I be everything your mother told you to fear. I have a mouth full of oceans. I be two halves of the most dangerous kinda women Salted and willing to the people who think they know me, told me that they didn’t believe me, and ask me to prove my being black - I never asked you! Like tides I have always been the rising activist and falling victim. Surfacing and drawing like waves. In sync and reaching. Though I am still finding how to wear it proudly, I can admit that I am scared. Scared that even in the absence of my father and God’s selfishness, I will be left with the notion that I will be never enough. That my anger and impulsiveness will serve as my advocate. I am not afraid of the storm, but learning to sail my own ship. I know what the inevitable is and it builds overwhelming tensions in my shoulders. I’m sailing with open wounds and praying the sunlight will heal Because that’s what I know, I know storms that always cease I am both black and latina, I am my mother and my father A child of the sea.
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Bethel
Artwork: Nia Boulware
Bethel. Where your secrets come to die. It’s in the basement of an abandoned elementary school, inflamed in ‘97. Mary watched the mini inferno a block away when she saw two third graders run out with combustion on their arms and legs, ashing in front of her. Faulty wirings, and faulty coincidences. It was a community tragedy, and rumored that in the silence you could still hear the screams of the frail corpses left inside. Although, Mary can’t hear much past her own inner wailing as she walks through its vacant halls. She remembers overhearing Lizzie whispering about Bethel one day. She said Room Thirteen was the worst smelling room in the whole building. Mary decides to look there first, and the stench carries her through the halls. It’s a smell she has never had the misfortune of inhaling. “Death” she thinks, “this is what it must smell like.” The main hall still has murals of farm animals with missing eyes and chipped tails. Soon, she finds herself in front of Room Twenty-Seven. She knocks slow yet firm. “Just one hard knock” Mary reminds herself. “Coming.” She heard heavy panting and the door slot slammed open. Mary is met by eyes much older than hers. “What?” The woman’s heavy Bayou accent makes her hard to understand. Mary takes a hard swallow and forces herself to keep eye contact. “Are you Madame Judah?” Her voice trembles at the tail. “You a cop?” She snaps. Her eyes squint, and by now she’s almost intimidating. “No ma’am.” Madame slams the slot shut. Mary hears locks and latches turning and twisting. She counts twelve before the idea of running comes to her, but the door opens again. “Welcome to Bethel. Where your secrets come to die. I’m Madame Judah.” Mary offers to take her hand but she pulls away seeing the scars on Madame Judah’s hands. Madame doesn’t seem to notice and guides Mary inside. “What they call you Girlie?”
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She puts her bag in the corner, far enough from the cobwebs growing on the wall. She shivers and brushes her sweaty palms on her jeans. “Mary.” She says, pointing to her hoop earring with her name engraved in the center. “Oh.” She chuckles. “Pretty.” Mary tries to smile. “Thank you.” Madame Judah grabs a smock hanging on rusty nails and throws it at her. “Put this on.” She doesn’t look away when an already self conscious Mary slides off her school polo and skinny jeans. “I seen you before. You Joseph’s girl ain’t you?” Madame Judah goes to a small desk behind her. She grabs a jar, towels, gloves, pills, and two prongs. “Was.” Mary bows her head. She knows Joseph. This was too much to swallow no matter how Gabriel tried to explain. It was no surprise to her when Joseph scraped up the five hundred dollars to see Madame Judah. “Well, I don’t judge.” She pats the mattress in front of her. Dust rises from every slap. It reminds Mary of the suffocation she felt once she learnt the news. Who knew a heavenly baby could cause so much hell. “Come on over. Let’s get this done.” Madame Judah pops the lid of a glass filled with yellow liquid and soaks the prongs. She pulls them out, but not before spilling some onto the plywood floors. “I’m such a clutz. I’ll get it later.” She says, shaking dry the prongs in her hand.The bed has spots of red and brown in various places. “Paint,” Mary tells herself. “It’s just paint.” She allows herself to fall spine first on the slightly damp mattress. “Take these.” Madame says and hands her blue pills. Mary’s’ eyes clench, her eyelashes tickling her high cheekbones. She swallows the drugs whole without water. Her vision was blurry once the medicine reached her stomach, but she heard everything. He has fingernails. Mary doesn’t expect him to scream, but cries when he doesn’t. “I’m sorry,” Mary weeps. Mary faces the wall as Madame places the lifeless body in a Nike shoe box and then a thick garbage bag. “I was going to call him Yeshua.” She blurts out. “Awe, baby ‘is alright.” Mary presses her knees to her breasts as best she can. It’s a silent night, and Mary can hear the screams of her children; burning.
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Static Before I walked into the room, I paused at her door. The only thing left to do was twist the doorknob and say “hi”. She was already punching on man man waiting for my arrival. Jolly ranchers spilled on the bed; empty Pepsi bottles next to the T.V. I walked in smiling hard, looking for anything to fiddle with. Man man lay his head on the pillow as he observed me hugging our grandmother. I took the remote, which prepared me for an attack from the both of them, then took my seat in the chair like every other time I visited. I loved Olia, but the way she spoke threw me off. She struggled to remember my name. Her voice was normal, but the way she sounded. Exactly the opposite of my memories. Everything she did was in less detail, her brain working like an old staticky radio searching for a signal, crackling like a power line in a bath tub. I rose up slowly, brushing her grey matted hair with my fingers. “I love you.” She lifted her head away from the T.V. and I took her hand like the man two generations before me. Man man laughed, trying to steal my grandmother’s attention. “What are you trying to accomplish?” He asked me.
Artwork: Shanya Taylor
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This is Saturday When you walk into the kitchen in the morning, she’s at the stove, making pancakes. “What are you doing here?” you ask. “I came over last night.” She smiles, with two rows of tooperfect teeth. “He said you watched a movie?” You nod. “Where is he?” “He’s still sleeping, so I thought I’d start the pancakes today.” You take out your best smile and plaster it on your face. You sit down at the table and scratch at the surface. “How long until they’re done?” you ask. “A few minutes,” she says. “How’ve you been?” You nod. “Good.” “How’s your mom?” “Good.” Just then, he comes downstairs and struts over to her. “Good morning, baby,” he says, and gently kisses her lips. She giggles. Why can’t she just laugh? “How’d you sleep?” She runs a finger down his cheek. He laughs, then sees you. “Oh, good morning, sweetheart,” he says. “Good morning, Dad,” you say, your plastic smile replaced with a satisfying grin. You wait for him to say something else, but he turns back to her and kisses her again. She giggles. You wish they would stop. You wish his eyes would twinkle at you like that. You wish you were still his princess. You wish it was still your Saturday. She’s kissing him again, the pancakes now forgotten. One of them starts to burn. She pulls away from him and turns back 12 to the pancakes. He moves behind her and holds the hand that’s
Artwork: Nancy Scofield
holding the flipper. Together, they flip over the burnt pancake and she lets out a cry. “Dammit!” she mutters, like you’re not in the room. He doesn’t bother to correct her language like he used to. He kisses her cheek. “It’s okay, baby. You can always make more.” You cringe at the table and wish, again, that she would stop. But the universe doesn’t answer. The pancakes have been forgotten again. “Hey, Dad. When should we leave to get brunch?” you ask. He breaks away from her, a look on his face that’s a mix of guilt and anticipation. “I promised Holly I’d spend the day with her, honey. I can’t have Pancake Day with you.” You’ve known this since you saw her at the stove, but his confirming it makes it worse. Makes your heart shrivel up and your hopeful smile plummet. He notices, or maybe he just feels bad, because he smiles sheepishly. “I’m sorry.” 13
You shrug, biting your lip to keep it from quivering. “It’s cool.” “Plus, you’re already going to have pancakes with him,” she jumps in. “Brunch seems a little redundant, right? And kind of unhealthy.” She smiles at you with so much insincerity you’re surprised she doesn’t turn into a Barbie. “That’s a good point,” he says, squeezing her hand. “You’re so good at keeping us healthy.” “That’s what I’m here for,” she says, smiling at him, and you’ve disappeared again. You clear your throat before they can start kissing. “Marty’s probably set a table for us, Dad.” He sighs. “Right. Could you call him for me, and tell him we won’t be there?” You nod. “I guess that means no baseball game, either.” He shakes his head, slipping his arm around her waist. “Sorry, sweetheart.” “Maybe another time, kid.” She holds the hand he has on her waist. Another time? There is no other time, you think to yourself. This is Saturday.
Artwork: Nancy Scofield
Accents There is no place in heaven for accents. For the little boys who fill their hearts with their heritage, and the little girls with colorful striped flags proudly pasted on their dresses, fake smiles on their faces, and teeth that over-pronounce their Rs trying so hard to be like me. I have straight brown hair. I wash the oily culture off my skin. My eyes could seem blue at a glance. And my Rs are naturally harsh. In my elementary school, I was one of the many white faces in the sea of 1/4 German and 1/8 Irish. But in my heart, I bled ceviche; drums cut my hearing at every pump, and my heritage became an accessory, not the injury it usually is. There is no place in heaven for accents. There is an over pronounced R in my name. Luke R Nogueira. A word, a name, replaced by a letter. What is Rojas? Who is Rojas? A maid? A lawn worker? Surely not the little white boy with the straight brown hair? I’m just another accent missing in action, Not action less and anxious to get a job, A degree, Anything that can in any way distract the world from the accent. My grandmother was a mountain lion, But my children will be eagles like me. They will see San Jose with the eyes of an outsider. Explore Lisbon with a disposable camera, Snapping pictures of a man who could be their great uncle. A tourist attraction. Because they know They can tell That there is no place for accents in heaven.
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Pitch Like a Man My brother folded his life into our downstairs bathroom. He dragged our couch pillows and tattered sheets away from our living room and into his temporary home. A home that was more innocent than the reality that sat on the other side of the wall, where I lay on the kitchen tiles waiting for him. His constant cry shook through my body as I listened across the door. He never offered to share a tear. I ran my fingers down the white paint searching for his hand. As I peaked under the door, I found a trail of rice crackers leading into his lap. He found comfort in their simplicity, the white flakes falling from the edge of his fingertips. My parents stood at the end of our long hallway silently throwing their hands in each other’s face. I watched as my mother mouthed, “I don’t think he’s going to make it,” and the twitch that hid behind my father’s lips followed. When my brother finally crawled out of our downstairs bathroom, he allowed a crack of spring to peek in through the window.
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A baseball mitt and metal bat brought us to the same spot in the park across the street. The grass began to tatter, revealing the layer of dirt that hid underneath. We ran over the flowers as they reached the beginning of their bloom. “They’ll be ok,” my brother claimed, pointing to a patch of yellow tulips. I knew he only said it because he saw that I was upset. He showed me how to pitch like a man. Only because he needed me to throw easy balls. “Make sure to stand up tall instead of that awkward slouch you have,” he’d yell with a bat hugging his side.
“I’m trying,” I’d call back. I waited on the pitching mound for the weight of the world to pull me in. The day he becomes a man, I’ll be left to try and become a woman. My legs and mind will sprout and grow, attempting to catch up with him. I watched him pull his hair out as he applied to college. The rice crackers no longer existed in his lap. Countless nights of him proving my mother wrong stained our house. The car rides feel empty when I sit silently next to my father. The voices from the T.V now consume our living room. As I come to the end of my childhood, I look back on the day I sat outside the bathroom for him. A spark hits me. It’s him that’s going to make it, not me.
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Six Things I Want To Say To a Woman Of God
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ONE: I wish I could put your voice in a jar, run to the nearest maximum security prison, and open it. Then, watch the Bible verses bounce off the walls, reaching the ears of every brother in the room, streaking through their shaded hearts, just enough for the light to come in. Because the echo of unborn galaxies that pounces through your vocal cords, it baptizes our lips. TWO: When I was born, my mother smiled so bright that it knocked the air out of my lungs and I haven’t been able to breath right since. The way light bounces off your teeth, it forces the devil out. The moon gets jealous the way you mock her crescent figure with the shape of your heavenly mouth. Queen, you make the Lord proud just by smiling at the simplest of things. THREE: Who else can make kings out of bastards? A drug dealer into a pastor? A slave into a master? With your arms stretched out to the Lord and your child in your grips, you’ve done what most women can’t. You’ve given your child to Him wholeheartedly. You’ve delivered our savior into this world so you are nothing but a temple where the Lord dwelleth. And nothing but the sacred of things can come through your walls. Your efforts will never go unappreciated. FOUR: My apologies for everyone who fails to understand your Holy ways. The secular world may not get your praises, your foreign tongue that can’t be translated by man, nor that Holy book you carry around. It’s fine, because you stand about face when the Lord says face me. You are focused, because with God your heart will never break. It will never bend. FIVE: Your soul shines brighter than the Sun’s atmosphere, stadium lights, and birthday candles. You dance gracefully in the presence of God, a fire burns within the pit of your stomach. That’s your way of reminding yourself that the Holy Spirit lives within you. SIX: Please, never stop praying for your grandson, your brother, your dying mother, because prayer is a super power that never fails. From the crack of dawn to the midnights, you are on your knees, hands clapped together, tears drenching the sheets. He hears your cries and answers them within the snap of a finger so, never, stop, praying. Please. Woman of God, you are favored.
Artwork: Leara Franklin
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Sundays
My father stares at me from across the living room. His eyes are uneasy, swollen with thought, dark marks linger beneath them. I can feel his spirit condemn me - why leave today, of all days? He holds her wedding glass in his hands, a wine glass full of Hennessy. He circles the rim of the cup with his other thumb. We’re midway through a Sunday ritual where he’ll drown himself in regret and misogyny. This is his sabbath. He won’t dress on Sundays. He won’t do anything. His blue robe hangs off him, his toes are tucked into house slippers, his briefs are military issue, and I remember picking up the white t-shirt for him. They came in packs of three. There’s a saying that a drunk man never lies, but my father is near-silent on Sundays and the quiet is far from the truth. The silence doesn’t speak of the years in which he would jerk me by the shoulders whenever I did anything that would remind him of my mother, like crack my fingers or squinch my nose when I was angry. I could see my parents’ memories in the many folds of his eyelids. Feel the frustration he carried in his fists. ‘More ice,’ he says. His legs gape open, he slouches in the red velvet arm chair. And I waited all morning for this request before leaving. Because ice is all I have left to give him. I have never been able to prop him up with my love the way my mother could. She would tell me of a man who held her heart in his hands, made it sink to her stomach like a rollercoaster and skip beats like the way he does the waltz. I could never place my father in these stories. She, I remember, was beautiful, smoothing everything over with her soft hands. She would regularly call him when he was on tour. Making sure he was alive from one day to the next somehow meant “I love you.” It was on a Sunday that her liver finally gave up. Now it’s like he’s drinking enough for them both. He pours libations for her before starting each bottle, strong smelling puddles that
I will clean up once he is in bed. When he’s drunk enough, as he is now, he’ll talk of liquor being built for men and that I, as his only son, should have known that. But I can no longer be a prisoner to his absence and bad breath. “Dad,” I whisper, just in case he is sober enough to hear me, “It’s college. I have to go.” I don’t tell him I won’t wait around to see what I already know - that liquor doesn’t discriminate. I pick up my suitcases and head to the door, hoping that when I leave I’ll take my mother’s spirit with me.
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Artwork: Natalia Garay
Caravans A boy sits in his room, eyes closed, listening to Buddy Rich play Caravan. He closes his mind to block out the one dim light of the ceiling fan. He closes his mind to the dust layered air that flowed around him. He closes his mind to the creaking house that wakes him at three in the morning. But next door a war rages. A war fought with foul mouths and alcohol fueled actions. The two radically opposite rooms struggle to coincide with each other, held apart by an inch thick wall. One man wants to have the life he once had with his younger, wilder wife; one woman wants her husband to leave her life, and understand that their days of care free and spontaneous thinking are over; and one boy wants to hear a man play his life on a drum set. As he taps the snare, his mother’s screams echo through the halls of the empty house. As the bass is being pedaled, his father’s incoherent roars roll along the walls like thunder. As the cymbals crashed, the breaking china cracks, sending shocks along the floors like lighting. A man dreams, a woman matures, a boy escapes, and Buddy Rich plays his drums.
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Irene sits down at the bus stop and heaves a sigh of relief. She lays her walking stick to one side and catches her breath. The air is hot and sticky, but still comfortable enough for Irene to pull out her sketch pad and pencil. She begins to sketch the baby blue Volkswagen parked across the street. Its paint job reminds her of the house she shared with her first husband. The side shingles were painted a baby blue and her silver Lincoln in the driveway would always compliment the siding’s hue and the custom roof detail. Irene focuses in on the Volkswagen and tries, for a third time, to sketch the tires. She glances up before she begins to sketch the car bumper and a young lady, carrying a tote bag in one arm and notebook in the other, plants her feet directly in Irene’s view. Irene’s gaze moves from her sketch pad to the lady, tracing her stance, deciding on whether or not she should politely ask her to move. The lady looks tired though. Irene recognizes that look. She was tired of her first marriage. And her second. Her third marriage was no better, it practically drained her. But the combination of this lady’s pant suit and fogged over gaze all seemed to spell career exhaustion to Irene. Not that she would know. Jumping from one failed marriage to another, Irene never gave her own aspirations a thought. For thirty years, she put her thoughts into furniture her husbands had no respect for, finding the most convenient dry cleaners for them, and learning new recipes for each new husband that came along. Never perfecting their favorite dessert. Irene would normally be frustrated with anyone that blocked her view. But there was something about this lady that she admired. Whatever fatigue she carried, she did so without
fuss, standing sure of herself while clutching her tote in one arm and a notebook in the other; there was a quiet confidence that she would fight through anything that was thrown at her. That whatever the day brought, tomorrow would be a blank slate. A bus pulls up and a crowd of people gather at its doors. Irene collects her pocketbook and sketch pad and joins the crowd. People make way for the older woman to climb aboard. As the crowd moves, the lady with the tote drops her notebook. Irene watches the spiral papers fall and, despite the pain it causes her, bends down to retrieve the book. The notebook is baby blue, the quote on the cover reads, The only thing standing between you and your dreams is ... reluctance. “Thank you so much, ma’am. I really need to hold on to this thing.” “Thank me by following that quote,” Irene replies handing the notebook over. “Don’t be reluctant, chile. I know that far too well and it doesn’t suit women.” The lady nods her head and places her notebook in her tote. Irene boards the bus, pays her fair, and takes a seat. She pulls out her sketch pad and searches out the window for a new muse.
Artwork: Moreena Hashim
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The Pacif ic We never learned how to be naked. We took showers in bathing suits, we changed in the dark. We made love with our clothes on, looking up. We learned how to go to church without your parents. We learned to walk sideways, backs to the graveyard, until we learned not to be scared of the people in it. I learned that honesty is different when you’re on your own; we did fine on our own. We bought an apartment, we bought a car, on paper we were happy. Sometimes you stacked up pennies in the bathtub, and when I knocked them over, you’d cry for hours. My paycheck came every other Tuesday, most times you’d baptize it in the sink. I learned that God cannot be bribed; we were good at a lot of things. I could effortlessly navigate any subway system in the world. You could recite the entire Declaration of Independence. I could talk to strangers, and you could run faster. We learned to stare back at people. Once, your mother yelled at you to grow up at dinner, and now you put your fingers in your ears whenever I turn on the radio; you had a sinking feeling about ships. I got lightheaded just thinking about planes. We drove to Oregon, because I wanted to see the Pacific, and I wanted you to see the Pacific. Despite the cold, you found yourself stripping in the dark to run towards something unleashed. We’ve never been since, but I would drive anywhere to know you again; your parents would check in occasionally, I’d offer locations, they would give. We shared fragments of sentences. I begged them to know me: All-American, small dusty town, son of a real estate agent. They pushed not for happiness, but for us to resign to that Great Nothingness. I begged you to know me, sovereign, savior. I chose a better life for us, we don’t visit anymore; you didn’t use silverware, because the glare danced around the walls and made you nervous. I threw away most of our clothes
because you hated how the fabric felt on your skin. I calculated the furthest point we could drive away from home, and showed it to you on a map. You were always stealing the buttons from my shirt. When we went to bed, I tried to make myself as small as possible because you hated how I felt on your skin. I started to fall in love with the GPS; before Christmas, I yelled at you for being retarded. You learned to forgive, so we spent New Year’s Eve hiding in the bathroom from the fireworks. You couldn’t cook, so I stopped eating. I couldn’t fit all of me inside of you, you began to overflow. The only way I could make you laugh was showing you my driver’s license; and now, the apartment has no furniture. You had to go back to that place because you weren’t taking your medicine. Your parents came to collect your things while I was at work. I sit in the car with the doors locked, looking at the fingerprints that decorate the dashboard. I want to run, I lock the doors, it feels like I’ve been inhaling since the day I was born; the gas hasn’t bled out yet. Go west, there are no gloves in the glove compartment. Just a comb and a picture of us. Go west, keeping my foot on the fucking pedal. The water in the Pacific Ocean is four billion years old, and I will try to take in all the years at once. It is a vast, twitching thing, love. Going west, that’s love. Riding on I-90, missing you is a long strip of road. I’m driving to Oregon, non stop, through the night. I will see you at the Pacific.
Artwork: Taariq Saadiq
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The Quarry I am a compatriot of my grandmother, an eight year-old watching Bogart in black and white. I was, and still am, the beyondyoung-years-drooling-kid, who had the baby boomer as a companion. Mom left me with her, the cat, and the windows. I grew without the security of a higher power, males, or desire. “Fall in love or even cry over their wiry legs,” she’ll say, “they’’ll always take the metro home to momma.” Tell me more. Tell me about dad. Were you ever afraid? Boys eyes don’t shake like a girl’s; that’s the discomfort. I stare at pits in the ground on the bus ride home. Trees run with tires and the dreads on the man that sits next to me itch my neck like a cheap wool blanket. His mouth, its own dark place, gloating at the butterfly on my mother’s right boob. The gelled man with feet that don’t reach the ground winks. The eager possessive gaze of any man makes me queasy and panicky; I know his hunger doesn’t want a baby. How can I tell the animals to stop licking at their prey? Once, they were pups. I know pups better. In school girls are plentiful, boys rare. Boy-men are ugly but clutch a girl, tangling their long hair like they’re daddy. A buffet for clutchers. For the clutchees, it’s just the cycle of reuse and whirled anticipations for notice. Temporary affections I have walk off in the hall at the sound of school bells and crowds of talk. Staring at the guy in Biology with his chaste face and greasy hair, the mom-in-myhead yells “I don’t want you having a boyfriend!” She foams out the mouth like the raccoon I once saw howling a morning’s wake up call in the afternoon. “What’s the definition of secondary succession?” the neon green marker asks on the board. It’s over. The idiot is the man, never the boy, but the man who caught my hips. Crossing tiles to the escalator in the metro, the sainted
mother spits. “Huevos puto, get some balls old man, leave the girls alone.” I bite my lip. She knows what she’s doing and she shows no fear. Momma will growl like a man for me and for them. Home alone, no guys around, I feel no danger in wearing my skin. When I was five, my mother’s lovers Floyd and Jonathan got in a knife fight over her. She told me the blood was cranberry juice. Newer lovers: Kenny the Virginian whose email password was “campground”; Antonio, the Cuban who wrapped corn with bacon; and then Muhammad, the “brother friend” who sold parkas at the metro, and comparable to a bag man, repeats his “thank yous.” I had a paper bag over my face. And mom would say “Just tell me when and I’ll dump him.” Danger. The dumb stare of lowered eyes. The stitching on denim jeans outlining their huevos. Their cackling laughter telling me my jokes aren’t so funny. Casting my fears aside, I tell them “Boys, I’m not edible.”
Artwork: Natalia Garay
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First Gen In my house, it is like I never left the Philippines. Tocino and rice are cooking on the stove at five in the morning, the daily cup of tsokolate is replaced by milk, though, the tablets of pure Filipino cacao are hard to find. My mom still yells at me “Zynyl! Punita ni imong sanina diri!” I pick up my clothes from the floor. I’m an immigrant from the Philippines. We left because there is nothing there. Not anymore. We left for a better future, you know, opportunities, apparently there are so many laying around here like garbage. It’s true. People back home often talk about how lucky me and my sister are, how we came to the great America, but what they don’t talk about is us. They don’t ask about our distinction between America and the Philippines. America smells like money and garbage, the Philippines smells like dead dogs and garbage. There is a certain expectation for adolescent children who left. If America is so great, then why do they hiss the words “Americanized?” If they truly wanted me to have a better future, then why do they get furious when I try to claim it? When I step outside, I am American. But not quite. The first thing people notice are my eyes and the way I stumble over my words when there is too much of the same syllable in a row. Still though, I get more respect than my family because my accent is seen as sexy and cultured with a hint of exotic, while theirs is seen as weird and unintelligent. Maybe this is why I settled in so nicely. Maybe this is why they clinged so fervently to being Filipino while I had no problem letting some of it go. I am Americanized and not worthy of Filipino blood. Is this is why they are so uncomfortable with the concept of me
Artwork: Zynyl Castor getting a piercing or a tattoo or me being other than Filipino? Filipino. When I was younger, I thought being Filipino meant having Filipino blood. It is not. It is to be Catholic. Straight. Untattooed. Unpierced. Modest. Subservient. I could be all of those things, I could be none. But it shouldn’t matter. It shouldn’t. My mother told me she loved me no matter what when I was little. She told me she loved me to infinity and beyond even after I skipped Catholic school. I believed her. I believe her. But if this unconditional love comes with a set of rules and precautions and warnings, “no daughter of mine is gay.” What is this infinity you are talking about? I am my own person, I guess, but
they always blame it on America when my individuality so much as seeps through. Why? I have far better opportunities here than I have there so I can worry about things other than mere survival. I can study my own existence because it is not preoccupied with the question of “Where is the next meal coming from?� I can think about what makes me happy instead. Unconditional love. Where there are no rules, no warnings, no precautions. Only love. Where my sexuality or my religion does not matter because they only want me to be happy. When I am being loved no matter what and I feel it because I am their child above all else.
Artwork: Zara Tate
CAllus The kitchen vinyl throbs in fresh air covering trash can overload, dishes caked at its borders, with incense like fists to a stomach, with pot’s presence. Mother sits on the wooden chair: bruised by the daily collapses tossing scrubs and onto the easy counter she grounds herbs, spread like excitement mother’s eyes tired flat, with half-watch on her daughter slipping in the kitchen, sighing under lights passion leaning on the refrigerator, the moment is in the old machine’s ache, snapping the mother’s thoughts up, as if she was to still look down. The girl comes close now as a critic spying on mother’s dig of drawers for Marlboros and blends it with callus growing on the dry teeth and dry box nails of her mother, born from the joint rolling years, These nasty scenes, shape big eyes to spare the view of hours worth of buds running with apartment roaches and piling crusts, and dust floors below flicking lighters. And continuous metal turning on an unused day. Oh the puzzle in mother’s way! Mother looks to her daughter, discovers a sore for the first time look down again never meeting the words in silence and the daughter swallows the loner gulp in her throat for the times of this happening leave her knowing her age young and hungry, 33 living in mother’s callus.
Drive Slow Suddenly, we’re in your car, and it feels like nothing has changed. The town only had one stoplight, and it flashed a cool, fleeting yellow only a hundred feet or so front of us. We knew what came next. You tucked the gas pedal beneath the floor mat until it stuck, and then crossed your legs. You reclined your seat all the way back, looking at the roof, making up stories about where that dark stain came from. I watched that yellow light, and imagined I was some arbitrary gear in a telescope, zooming into the intersection. It was yellow as it danced up the windshield, until it wasn’t. We had failed to clear the intersection before the light flashed red. We were basically dead. You pretended not to notice. When I was seven and you were eight, we would run along this same road to the news station, with five dollar bills that we held with tight fists. Children could pay for rides on the helicopter they used for the morning traffic report. We held hands, and you told me boys could be princesses too, which I thought was grand. The helicopter ascended, I saw how unremarkable our town was. It looked as though it were buried under an earthy quilt of farmland. You got incredibly sick, and we had to land early. That’s why you don’t take planes to visit me. When we became men, we found the power between our legs, and came to understand it as something divine. And now, several revelations. I live a recycled dream, in a city not big enough to be worth anything but not small enough to walk. I don’t have a car, I take the bus. The businesswoman sitting next to me, whose tummy spills out from her blouse, knows nothing of the love I know. Neither does the young schoolboy in front of me with headphones clasped over his ears. There is no admiration in our love, as precious metals lose their luster. There is no obligation, widows find comfort in books and big ideas. There is only the
cultivation, and even that I never bothered with. All my houseplants are dying. Yet I grew you, didn’t I? In my office, with glass walls or windows, I think of the word home. It does not conjure up images of dirty summer porches, or the baseball dugouts we got high in, or the bedroom I lost my virginity in before I knew I didn’t like girls. I see the streetlight, and it blinks a soft orange telling me to slow down. You’re in the passenger’s seat, with such a beautiful sorrow that you carry on your lip. We drive slow through the mist, and an 18-wheeler, miles away, will hit us head on. I am aware of this death 35 and it gives me life.
Room 18 - Issue 13 - June 2015
Produced by the literary media and communications department
Read More: http://issuu.com/literarymediacommunications