The Lab 8th Edition - RE:

RE:

Cultural Arts

The Lab 8th edition

Theater Society 1

Special Thanks To Professor Loren Goodman and Professor Krys Lee. To our contributors and readers.

The Lab Team Editor-in-Chief: Eunjin Lee Main Editors: Minsung Park, Nong Xiong, Maple Ip, Heejung Jung, Sharon Ahn, Wesley Yoon Cover Editors: Sharon Ahn, Minkyung Kim Layout Managers: Bitna Park, Sebin Park, Hue Can PR Directors: James Shin, Halima Sheree Cover design by Minsup Shim

CATS Cultural Arts and Theater Society Yonsei University Underwood International College Seoul, Korea Š 2013 December

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CONTENTS Rainbow Nation Erin Burmeister

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Landfall Karen Zheng

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The Language of Lines Tommy Lee

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Miss Sisyphus Kirk Griffith

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The Road to Awe Huy Dang

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Strips of Underdeveloped Film Alyse Brower

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Keats She Knew She Was Lying Julie Fitz

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EDEMA The Summer I Turned Pretty Poh Shu Yun

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Stars 1 Sean T. Mcbeth

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The Room Kapil Chauhan

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サヨナラ>だけが人生だ MK Kim

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Spam Man The Muzzle Daniel Choi

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Little Buddy on the Bench Hue Can

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Behold, I am Doing a New Thing Spring, Spring Forth!

Judy Kim

The Sitter Whose Name I Never Know My Father’s Right Eye Hyowon Shin 28

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Tattered Meredith Hilton

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What Lies Within Us From My Rotting Body Flowers Grow Sharon Ahn 13

Escape Asra Memon

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The Lost Today Sean T. Mcbeth

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The Hawthorn Tree Megan Freeman

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Untitled Siri Cindy Sung

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All Those Fake Smiles..

Judy Kim

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The Way of the Sword Stacey Cho

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Adarte Disgust Nong Xiong

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Icarus: Bold Maple Ip

slipped Off My Feelings, like I Slipped Off the Cold, grim July Air Off My Shoulders Sharon Ahn 35 Fade Away Jennifer Haynes

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Rainbow Nation

Erin Burmeister

The most common statement made when I am asked where I am from is almost always the same thing.

"So if you're from Africa, then why are you white?"

It's that line from a teen movie that has become the basis of my life.

Because we are based on where we are from and yet I come from many places.

I am a child of the world.

I am South Africa, the land of the rainbow nation.

I am both the Atlantic and Pacific, I am the child born to a mother who knew nothing but the oppression and fear the government brought.

But I was the light, the start of the new generation.

I am Texas, the Great Plains where the bluebonnets grow and the mockingbird sings.

Y'all won't understand 'cause it's the lone star state that holds my heart, because I left it there that day.

I am both Singapore and Malaysia, two different cultures and yet very close together.

Born to a city that never sleeps and the suburban area where I would hear the Imam calling my neighbours to worship.

I am Korea, where in Andong you can witness talchum, but once you hit Seoul, it’s high-rise buildings.

It’s the country that keeps growing but will always maintain its roots and traditions.

Korea knows who it is and I finally know who I am.

We are so quick to judge by what we see that we remain ignorant on what we don't.

Because the colour of my skin is pale compared to those I call brothers and sisters.

We were born to the same continent; we share the same identity.

Because I, I am the start of the rainbow nation, which I hope to become a disease and spread it worldwide so that one day there will be no more questions on if you are from Africa America Europe Asia Because the idea that we represent one nation will be diminished and replaced with the world.

Because we are the children of the world and if we aren't going to change the future, Who will?

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The Language of Lines

Tommy Lee

I wish I could read faces. When I have the time, I like to sketch some of them. Especially the faces that have latched on to my memory like a parasite, blurring the present with the promise that their grips will loosen once I realize them upon sheets of grainy paper. But the human face is a harsh mistress; it lies, it conceals, and it doesn’t let go.

I’m in the subway right now, lucky to have found the refuge of a seat in a tumultuous sea of people. If my friend Tony were here, I’d imagine he would say, ‘we’re packed like sardines in a can,’ smiling. You could tell he was a man who often smiled from the wrinkles on the sides of his lips, which rose subtly in the corners, as if they were ready to burst into laughter at the slightest provocation. I’ve sketched this smile multiple times, each time with a subtle difference in tone, in the lines of his face. The most parasitic of Tony’s smiles was the one he gave me four years ago when he revealed to me that he was not admitted into the college of our high school hopes. That young dream represented a sanctuary where our sickly teenage identities would be medicated and cured by alcohol and adulthood, but only I held a letter of admission in my hands. I told him that the future I envisioned was one where we beat against the currents together, but he wouldn’t let me stay with him, saying with glassy, wet eyes, “I’m not going to be the doofus that holds you back.” Then he gave me his biggest smile, all teeth and gums, his face wrinkling like a raisin from the effort. If there was ever a sad and painful smile, it was this one. And so our singular path eventually forked and split us apart. However, on the days we had occasion to meet during our university years, he’d continue smiling and laughing. Yet to me, the memory of that teethy smile, which held unspoken words, never faded and I never stopped seeing it on the lines of his face, permanent like the marks on a gravestone. I could no longer share in his cheeky grins, because memory and time and the past, with all its careless cruelty and indifference, burned that bridge and left me with only its smoldering remains. I have several sketches, attempts to draw that single, parasitic smile stacked up in a corner on my desk. I sketch mostly from memory. Some sketches tell the story like it is, others get the lines wrong slightly and tell completely different tales. However, not a single one has ever told me what that smile meant. Each picture seems like just another unsolvable puzzle.

I have many other sketches in my room. Most of them are random faces I spot in the everyday bumble of life, moments much like now in this subway. This one sketch I have was based on what I spotted on a rainy day, when this girl – a beautiful girl no more than seventeen – had her umbrella blown inside out by furious winds. The expression on her face was circular, like a full moon. Her two eyes were wide open, her nostrils were flaring and her mouth gaped like some magnificently deep rabbit hole. The reason I bring this up is because it reminded me of another time I had witnessed this full moon expression. I was sixteen then and had just caught my mother sleeping with another man. So in a frenzied teenage fury, I slapped her, silencing her desperate pleads of “Oh my God, oh my God. It’s not what you think. I can explain.” I remember the sound well. It was like a thundering clap that echoed and died out, replaced by my gentle sobs and the thick, pervading quiet of her secret lover. Her face flared up in sullen silence, eyes, nostrils and mouth all gaping like little holes, heavy with the world. In the lines of her tired face, the bags on her eyes, the wrinkles of her overextended mouth, all shimmering with stray tears, I saw glimmers of shock and frustration, as well as guilt, defensiveness, pride, and heartbreak. But there was something else

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as well. Something I couldn’t figure out. That enigmatic, almost furtive expression, it chained me maliciously to the past for years to come. I spent a long time trying to arrest that memory on paper with the belief that if I drew her face just right, I could understand why she did it, what the lines of her face truly hid that day. That maybe the lines, once captured, would open up their little secrets like a treasure trove and set me free. So months later, when I finally succeeded in drawing that strange expression, I cried. Not because of relief or emancipation, but because the secrets of the past retreated further back and bit even more cruelly, painfully sucking away at whatever hope for freedom I had left. I have not escaped the fetters yet. I could still feel the parasite biting, the heavy chains tearing, and my mother’s broken, cryptic expression haunting me when I saw that same look on the girl with her umbrella. To this day I wonder what secrets those large, dark eyes held as they reflected the empty fluorescent lights of her corrupted chamber.

I’ve never once truly understood a face and if I did understand anything, it was always superficial, like the outer coating of paint on an elaborate oil portrait. To compensate, sometimes I like to imagine stories for the faces I see. Perhaps a meaningless attempt to unravel the language of lines, but I do it anyway. Like right now, an old lady is standing in front of me, her face void of any expression. However, the lines on her face, the ones that come only with age, are rich with tales. This old lady has deep bags under her eyes.

The lines are thick and you can tell she’s had many sleepless nights, anxious with fear or hate or love.

Maybe her daughter contracted a deadly disease, or maybe that same daughter passed away after experiencing the frantic struggle of the dying, or maybe she succeeded in her heroic journey and broke free from the stiff, cold grip of death. The peri-oral lines above her lip – wrinkles like the ridges of teeth – tell me she’s a smoker. Maybe she started because everyone thought it was trendy and never stopped. Or maybe she’s tried to stop numerous times, but would always sneak a cigarette in an act of remorseful betrayal whenever her loving daughter wasn’t looking. Her life is deeply wrinkled with struggle and pain, but the corners of her lips are like Tony’s. They curve upwards and they tell me that, despite her pain and hardship, she is a grand lover of life. They tell me that she smiles, she laughs, she has birthdays, she enjoys glasses of wine and boxes of chocolates as well as the distant giggles of her grandchildren playing in the backyard. This is a face that has beautifully aged with humility, unashamed of the past, revealing her soul through its lines. Not like the faces in my memory with so much to hide, with so many words unspoken.

To be honest, I don’t know why I continue to sketch faces. I don’t think I’ll ever truly be able to read them like the pages of a book, but at times I think in its practice I become a better man. I begin to imagine people more complexly. I begin to guess at their lives, so that their caricatures on paper are endowed with grand tales of ‘what if’. And consequently, as they become imbued with histories of struggle and triumph, joy and sorrow, I end up loving them. Not anything impassioned or fiery, but a gentle, tender love, much like a kind pat on the back.

The old lady is standing on a crowded subway with an empty expression that is weighed down by the lines of life. I imagine her story, and then stand up to offer her my seat.

Unsurprisingly, her face bursts into a marvelous firework display of white.

I smile back.

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The Road to Awe

Huy Dang

He stands on the ledge, looking down at the world underfoot. He sees cars turning, dogs running, people moving, somewhere, nowhere. He sees everything, but no one, nothing can see him, from up here.

He looks at the scars he carries, mementos of nights when, cloaked in pain and loneliness, he slashed his bony arms. These are for the times when he was the last to come, and the first to leave, which were many.

This is for the time when they taunted him for his vow of silence. This is for the time when his best friend betrayed and left him on that sidewalk in the pouring rain. This is for the time when his mother died in that damned car crash, and his father, drowned in booze and sorrow, told him he was not worthy to be alive… Forty nine cuts, a record of his life, his own journal of blood and skin. Still, it lacks one more, just one last chapter—this afternoon, when she said no.

Nobody cares if he is happy or sad, goes or stays, lives or dies. No one. He feels so small and helpless and alone and he wants to cry and bleed and cry and cry. He tries to weep the pain away, but it doesn’t go. He tries to carve it out on his arms, to make his body ache more so his heart can take less, but it doesn’t cease.

So he tries no more. All this hurting, cutting, existing but not living, they stop here, now, today, forever.

But. As he moves his foot towards, a tiny balloon floats up from somewhere, a yellow one, perhaps from the hand of a careless child, and suddenly, a small thought lights up in his tired mind. What if? What if this is not the end? What if he falls and dies, and his rotting corpse still means nothing, to no one? Isn’t it all a waste? A meaningless, stupid waste? Maybe. Maybe this is not it. Maybe it is only now, when he has no one left to care for, and no one cares for him, that he can truly start to live, to breathe the air of a life that is his own making. He sees himself taking leave of everyone who mean nothing to him. He sees years of traveling through the seven seas, walking through mountain ranges and forest depth. He sees the wonders of the past, present, future. He sees tears running down his face, tears that he doesn’t even understand, when he stands in the ruins of lost civilizations. He sees new friends, new families, new homes and they… they do care for him. And he sees Her, in her white dress with a red bouquet, standing in that hallway bathed in pure sunlight with hands extended, church bell ring as they run to their rusty ride and drive away in the gold twilight. He sees his first baby, Chléo, with her rosy cheeks and puffy arms, crying for her daddy. He sees himself trusting, holding, caring, growing old and bored, but happy and hoping.

Just as they say, a man’s whole life flashes before his eyes the moment before he draws his last breath, but it is a life that has yet to be lived, a life that could be, a life that can be.

I think he really died on the ledge that day. His shoes are still there, placed neatly near the edge, but he is no longer there. Because Death is the road to Awe, but also Life.

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Keats

Julie Fitz

Keats must have taken himself very seriously.

I wish I had that gravity Indeed then I could write odes I would ooze poetry, solidifying each moment and making it beautiful.

He has a sort of relaxed Peaceful almost somnolent candor to his observations His words make you feel like you are being lolled to sleep in a golden forest clearing and as the sun breaks through the trees you can see the dust motes or pollen or whatever it is and everything seems crystallized and made of china and the heroine will have alabaster skin and two fetching spots of red highlighting her cheek bones that match the rich color of her full lips. She sleeps. Her eyelids fluttering slightly as a dream cross behind them.

She Knew She Was Lying

Julie Fitz

She knew she was lying.

She didn’t always know it, indeed there were times at which she was blissfully unaware.

This was the reason that she continued her deception.

She hoped that at some point reality and her hopeful fiction might merge permanently and she would no longer force those moments when she felt in the pit of her stomach the full implications of the charade.

She wanted a wind to blow through a dilapidated hallway and rouse a cloud of dust that would sparkle as it swirled in the breeze.

Why is it so hard to find purity?

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“Stars 1” Sean T. McBeth 9

“サヨナラ>だけが人生だ 1”

“サヨナラ>だけが人生だ 2” MK Kim 10

“Little Buddy on the Bench” Hue Can

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“Behold, I am Doing a New Thing”

“Spring, Spring Forth!”

Judy Kim

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“What Lies Within Us”

“From My Rotting Body Flowers Grow” 13

Sharon Ahn

The Lost Today

Sean T. McBeth

The every evening is only and exactly a struggle a struggle to admit defeat on the day as there is: still more to do, still more to see, still more to learn, still more to create, still more to master, still more to conquer, still more to apprehend!

But not: still more excitement, still more energy, still more clarity, still more hours, still more blood, still more tears, still more will to find them.

A struggle of hope and expectation And every evening ends in only and exactly ennui.

Yet still a day comes when the idle reflection of the past year presents clearly to the conscious mind that at some forgotten, strange, missed, lost hour, crafted in blood, shaped by the will, borne from those tears, there were many and wondrous creations and sites and doings of an altogether truly exciting and energetic nature that were mastered and caught and tamed and bent and done!

But how?

By the product of doing, of which we have named: learning.

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Untitled

Siri Cindy Sung

The stream running through Blue Mountain, do not boast of your speed For once you reach the ocean, it is difficult to return.

The moon shines on all of the empty mountains, rest and stay a while longer. 청산리 벽계수(靑山裏 碧溪水)야 수이 감을 자랑 마라. 일도창해(一到蒼海)하면 돌아오기 어려우니 명월(明月)이 만공산(滿空山)하니 쉬어간들 어떠리. 황진이

Chopped a piece of the long November night, And wrapped it in blankets warm as the Spring winds To unwind it a night you come, may the night last longer 截取冬之夜半强(절취동지야반강) 春風被裏屈幡藏(춘풍피리굴번장) 有燈無月郞來夕(유등무월랑래석) 曲曲 舒寸寸長(곡곡포서촌촌장) 동짓달 기나긴 밤을 한 허리를 베어내어 춘풍 이불 아래 서리서리 넣었다가 님 오신 날 밤이어든 굽이굽이 펴리라 -황진이

Drank the bright moon in my glass, Glass now empty, the moon too gone Fill my glass full without stopping The moon, again, will come. 잔 속에 있는 밝은 달을 들이 마시니 잔은 비었고 달도 또한 사라졌네 다만 잔에 술을 계속 가득히 채워주면 달은 끝없이 또 오리라 -이진망, 월하음주

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Liquor ripe and ready at the Sung’s I heard, Kicked the sun bathing cow up on his feet and rode Dear child is your Master inside, go tell him Jung is here 재 넘어 성 권롱 집에 술 익단 말 어제 듣고 누은 소 발로 박차 언치 놓아 지즐 타고 아희야 네 권롱 계시냐 정 좌수 왔다 하여라 Mt. Tae is high they say but still a mountain beneath the sky Climb and climb surely reach the top, you will But people only look up and say the mountain is tall 태산이 높다 하되 하늘 아래 뫼이로다 오르고 또 오르면 못 오를 리 없건마는 사람이 제 아니 오르고 뫼만 높다 하더라. -양 사언(楊士彦)

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The Way of the Sword Stacey Cho The first runner took a hit to the head 10 seconds into the game and it was over before the others could shout out pointers or encouragement. The second kid had to either tie or win, because if she lost that would mean two losses and the whole team would lose. Her face was dirty. She could taste the salt on her upper lips. The sounds of bamboo swords clashing echoed in the large stadium. The kid moved in. She kept her eyes on the other girls’. The metal lines of the headgear made her eyes bigger and rounder.

Neither flickered nor blinked, and the unwavering steady stare of intimidation made it hard to predict what she would do next. Carefully she reached out, aiming for the other girl’s head. The girl lifted her sword to guard her head, and she swung for the girl’s now exposed wrist, kote, she cried, leaping into the hit and becoming one with the energy and the sword. The other girl pushed her back with her fists, hard when she was in the air. She opened her eyes and saw blue flags, her color. It was done, she had done it.

She had gotten the point. She tried to get up but her spine felt as if it was being electrocuted. Something was wrong.

Illustration by Siri Sung

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Adarte

Nong Xiong

Hast thou heard the cold wind from the west Of beautiful girls, skin so fair Lips, bright red as the cardinal’s crest Befallen a curse so aghast?

Its story told like so A handsome young man Adarte of the town of Casa Came thither With golden fingers Plucked the harps of love Strung notes so bewitching The deaf could hear The frowns could smile The tears could laugh But snapped all the strings Bleeding heart strings As he left a trail of withered rose petals A speck in the setting sun A farewell to the world And so Only the biting wind lives to tell Of their hearts wrapped in ice Awaiting for the one The one to lift the spell

Disgust Nong Xiong Hair drenched in oil Face of dirt and gravel Saliva rivers in the valleys of fat You slump when you walk You crunch when you eat You bunch when you sit You grotesque slime And yet I cannot tear away Such a scene you make Such creativity I generate

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Incarus: Bold Maple Ip I passed by streets where I played in early days of my childhood, fading signposts at every crossing beckoning to me with their familiar scripting. I wandered through the empty park, scuffing my shoe against the sand, working my way across the monkey bars. The paint peeled off onto my fingers.

Waving at old Mrs. Mantis sitting on her porch, I undid the hatch of a familiar gate and slid through, careful not to step on the cracks as I stepped along the cobbled pathway leading up to the porch. I would have stayed there by the steps and stared at the house until the street lights dimmed, if Naomi hadn’t opened the door.

They lied; years of absence and no explanation only served to distance two friends. Then she said, “Come on in.”

“Want anything to drink?” She asked as we tread quietly on the carpeted floor towards her room. The bed was still in its cozy little corner, her desk of full doodles and scratches, familiar titles peering out from the shelves; and then me, feeling as if I too was stuck in this illusion of past. “So, what have you been up to?”

“Oh, um, you know, the same old,” I answered awkwardly and turned to look at her for the first time. Her hair was shorter and tiredness tightened her eyes, and she looked every part of a maturing woman.

I’m left behind.

Naomi walked over to her desk and leant against it. “So where did you go?”

“England.”

It earned a hum from her and it was a while before I decided to ask, “Where’s Henry?”

She turned on me then, harsh and wildly. “Were you planning to just waltz back into our lives like this?”

My cheeks smarted. “Do you know how much it hurt him? You leaving?” I glanced away from the accusing words. “He was all alone again.”

It was hard to meet her eyes, but the pictures sitting on her desk were even harder to look at.

She sighed heavily, and I heard her fall back into the chair. “He doesn’t need you, not anymore. We don’t need you anymore.”

“I know,” I said. “I know.”

“No.” She said for me, stealing away my breath and offers of pain and regret and longing. “You definitely don’t know how much it hurt. Despite all the love we give him, he turns to you instead.”

Coming back to this country, to say something, to fix up what was not right; I realized in the muted colors of Naomi’s face, and in the washed out memory of our childhood, a secret disguised in the folds of an arrogant apology.

In my closest attention, I had stepped right into the cracks of those dull, grey slabs.

The first time we met, we were strangers.

I remember seeing him, tall and lanky, sitting at the run-down bus stop. The rain dripped steadily off my umbrella even as he sat there, the plastic roofing doing little to shield his lonely form from the downpour.

My ride arrived soon, but still he sat there, and I fumbled to get on the bus.

The second time we met, a scarf was wound snugly around his neck, and a beanie pulled over his ears. He had on a thick coat but had no gloves, and I brushed past him hurriedly, late on my way to school. It was

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only later during Biology class, somewhere in between the teacher’s droning and the scratching of pens, when I realized where I had seen him before.

“This is my brother,” Naomi introduced us, and I smiled at him with a small “Hi!” He blinked his eyes at me and scurried away up the stairs. As I followed my friend into the kitchen, I spotted him staring at us from between the banisters on the stairs.

“He’s like a mouse,” Naomi told me later. “Squeak, squeak. It’s cute though.”

The next time, he was sitting under a stiff tree, balancing a sketch pad on his drawn-up knees. I lowered myself onto the slightly damp grass, noticing how his fingers curled tightly around his pen in response.

“Hey, what’s your name?”

He didn’t answer me, and we sat in silence as the ink of his pen traced lines onto the paper. When a chill brushed at my skin, I deemed it time to go home. I prepared to stand up but felt a small tug on the sleeve of my jacket. I turned and he pointed at himself.

“Henry,” he said, eyes large and unblinking.

I had sat down, and for the next ninety weeks, came back again and again.

Three years ago, it was Autumn when we met for the last time.

And I remember the biting cold and trodden leaves hiding the ground, copied and printed in my mind the very same way today. Trees greeted me absently as I wove through them, finally spotting a curled up figure beneath the scratched bark of a pine.

“Hey,” I said, sitting down next to him.

His eyes flickered briefly towards me, before focusing on a spot somewhere over my shoulder. His fingers clutched tightly at the drawing pad on his lap.

“It’s been a while,” I continued, keeping my eyes on the leaves beneath my feet. How sad, I thought, that such vibrant red will eventually fade into brown. Brown like the muddy ground, wet with autumn’s rainfall; brown like the chocolate I would snack on in the winter; brown like the murky depths of the well which was lost beneath a mass of curling ivy; brown like the shy smiles and ink smeared on skin. Brown, like the eyes of the boy next to me.

“Did you miss me?” It was cold, but nothing compared to the wind blowing through my voice. “Do you still remember me?”

He didn’t answer, and I snatched back the loosening strings of my heart hurriedly. Before they drift again.

“I’m leaving.” Again. I stood up.

The tide of emotions I thought would appear never came and I was left feeling hollow. How long had it been since the first time he showed me his art, trembling with trust? He was a lost boy who learnt how to comfort. The always present ache that drove me back to the home I unthinkingly neglected was a mere shadow in a cave compared to the clawing it had become presently.

“Don’t go.” His voice was scratchy. Hoarse. Strange.

It was lower now, smoother, and huskier; and I missed its change. Elation filled me (you’re fine, still fine) but blurred out sadness too, for he spoke as if he understood his words.

Or maybe, he understood mine.

The dried leaves crunched under weight of my shoulders, and the pitiful cracking sounding gentle in my ears. It cradled me across the empty grounds, a weary cry that wound tight around my neck and pulled shut my ears.

“I love you,” I said, and cried.

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Landfall

Karen Zheng

I’m short 9mph from becoming a hurricane, caterwauling along size 12 paintbrushes; those monkey bars without bars but a gliding handle— what are those called anyway?

Precision is the word. I trace myself through the rooms I’ve occupied— have I left anything behind?

I slide myself into a blue box on the corner.

Years of long love letters strung up in space, head hanging from its hinge between pentips and lips, looking for treasure eyeballwhite in the exalted dirt.

Sometimes I think of photocopying these words before I send them away.

But would that make the act less authentic, less like a conversation then?

In my hands, in my head, I’m holding the letters like the stack’s an animal in a cage, bursting something between tender and tragic.

How are you? It licks its lips listening.

Stop asking me toxic questions.

My mother no longer mentions my posture.

Swaying, gyroscopic, at least I remain upright without the wherefore; feet eclipsing weathervanes pumping these swings.

Look how high I’m rising.

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Miss Sisyphus

Kirk Griffith

she is well acquainted with the awkward silence reverberating after revelation of her deep-seated secret desires his tumid interest shriveled parsimonious became his lust the concatenation of sex fetishism and taboo shame froze his fearful heart she knows the weight of wooing rituals crashing in a cavalcade of cold rejection that pummels pure pleasure possibility the subjective intensification of societal stereotype suffocation denies the objective reality of need like an unseen runaway mudslide boulder seemingly fated to erotic unfulfillment she continues to push her hope ever onward longing for the one who will take up their wings to soar with her in a smoldering sky of mythic heights

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Strips of Underdeveloped Film

Alyse Brower

I just woke up. My hair is everywhere. Oversized cotton shirt and yesterday’s boy shorts. The mirror solidifies that I didn’t eat or sleep enough. My bones ache from it. Eyes, mouth and ears sealed with the sleep managed.

And he is behind me, like the booze and the clove cigarettes. He is on my neck, gently, warmly, tousling my hair. His gaze meets mine, he smiles and presses his lips against my cheek. His touch surges through me. Stomach clenching, mind clouding, focus leaving.

My head follow my eyes in falling to the ground. They take in the floor, bathed in his records and our clothes. Over the mix of flannel and take-out containers, the Brooklyn light floods the room, illuminating my night.

He reads my face, dripping with the depressed sweetness of day. He looks to my eyes. His head shakes so slightly, if one was not used to his mannerisms, it would have been unnoticeable. My feet posed to leave, legs ready to run. He stares: “Babe, every time? You know you are going to stay.”

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EDEMA

Poh Shu Yun

Life Is an unflushed toilet.

The moment I think God got it right, he didn’t.

A sticky state, like melted Date pudding from Wales.

I pick up my pen and Get to work, proceeding To get nostalgic over Sleep. My irises are Damaged, hurt spread Thinly over crusty Pavements. You ask me What is wrong with Society, and I say, Everything. From the Perch of Kyrgyzstan to Deformity delicacies and The sprawl of patriarchy – We’ve been screwed with From Thailand and Japan, To the Antarctic, across The Southern Sea. Traders Bring diamond slavery To newborn bulbs, and Flowers die in their element.

Children are made mothers By holy rites, books burn In the fall of leaves. You Ask me what is wrong With the living, and I say, Me.

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The Summer I Turned Pretty

Poh Shu Yun

True love is a box of Fibre One bars.

True love is chocolate wrapped Shakespeare.

True love is a skull on a glitter sleeve, and I realized True love is more chips from The Codmother.

My escapades are Google Mapped. My inbox Never hungers. Now I wonder how I’d managed Life without a dozen tailored window binds. I eat For free at Madam’s High Tea, or out of takeaways At the door. Girls braid my hair with fresh daises, Asking why I’m no longer four-eyed. I am in Every tedious portrait at school, on a blown-up Poster at the gate. Success Can Be Yours Too! Austen has curled up in dismay, beside my Seashell light. Alcott nurses a broken spine, Dickens is buried down under. Oh, friends, What do I do? Turn down the suitors?

But my sister loves flowers and sweets. The fire Needs its sustenance, and my mother, too, Needs her daily shows. Timmy is learning The words of Amour to use on 7 year old Aimee. (He’s a quick learner, apparently.)

Half a month later, I had enough Pressed roses to hold my page. I framed my eyes With tortoiseshell and picked up Woolf again.

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The Room

Kapil Chauhan

Cracking the door open, I can see the fading yellow light flickering. It appears and disappears like a shy boy hesitant to see the cute girl waiting for him. I take another step into the room, but I leave the door open. To even take one step back seems like a herculean task that I am too weak to surmount.

Suddenly, a small twitch in my leg reminds me of my mission.

“You’re here?” His dry croak wets my face slowly. I think I hear him move, but the light disappears again only to reappear when I least suspect it to.

“Of course,” I breathe. He then starts humming a song as if it was meant for me, and I listen closely. I hear every intonation in his crooked humming, visibly seeing each rise and fall in his voice. I simply listen.

“Why?” He asks.

“You lied.” I reply slowly, as if he is made of dust and the slightest exhale will blow him away into the unforgiving air slithering around us like a hungry snake.

“No, I didn’t.” He defends his honor. His tongue lashes at me like a newly welded sword, burning at my skin and piercing me.

“But you did.” I contest with some more fuel. For a moment, he doesn’t respond and I am afraid the ravenous, stagnant air has consumed him.

“I only told the truth.” Once again, he holds up a shield as if I want to charge him with a lance. I watch him recoil against his soot-covered mattress, humming again in his melancholic prosody.

“I’m leaving,” I announced. His humming continues for so long that I almost think he doesn’t hear me. But he does.

“You can’t.”

My face is silently stricken with showering streaks. I try to speak again, but the air has devoured my tongue and I can no longer feel my teeth. He looks toward me, but not at me.

“You’re stuck here too.”

I turn around to avoid the quaking sensation stirring up within me only to see that there is no longer a door but instead an empty wall holding childish scribbles of a future.

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“Spam Man”

“The Muzzle” Daniel Choi

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The Sitter Whose Name I Never Knew Hyowon Shin

Back when I was learning how to walk Mother and I used to sit down on the blue-green grass and pick dandelions which were folded into tiny rings, which my mother placed on my chubby stubby ring finger; to which I squirmed in delight As I aged with my mother’s wrinkles, the delights of our days, too, disappeared as she continued to walk all over my dignity, ridiculing the chubby fingers I failed to get rid of along with the sitter I could not live without; that tiny Chinese immigrant lady who had no choice but to pick the life, kept in a safe to which she could not pick the lock; a miserable life, indeed, which to my delight was ignored. Mother always went about with her tiny plum-like lips, pestering my sitter that I should walk instead of being carried and how I should sit on my chair, instead of being seated on her lap; to my likes, chubby as a hippo’s back, a contrast to my mother’s which were far from chubby a pair of sticks or as my Chinese sitter would call, “two tooth pick!”

Yes, I continued to detach from my mother, even the sit next to her at the dinner table became unbearable, the delights of my day lay in, not my mother’s good night kisses, but the walk back home with the Chinese, who hastily chased me with her fragile, tiny feet. They were shaped like rosebuds, so tiny that I could probably cup them in my still-chubby hands but there was no way she would let me during our walk past Central Park all the way home. She would always pick up some Orange juice on the way back, probably one of the delights she had in her boring, repetitive, lonely life, in which she was forced to sit for the rest of her life, but I had no problem since she made me sit in front of the TV as soon as we got home, telling me in her tiny meows “too much study no good for brain!” and was awarded with chubby cookie dough and whipped cream secretly stored in the fridge, the delights

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of my day. My immature fingers got fatter and I did not walk to satisfy my mother. Of the two, it would be the Chinese I would pick.

My mother weeps for my chubby fingers as I scoff in delight The Chinese does not know where to sit but continues to look at her tinyfeet.

And in order to walk towards the old memories, it wouldn’t be the Chinese I would pick.

My Father’s Right Eye Hyowon Shin My father’s right eye is a distortion of the alcohol which fooled the bejesus out of The goggles of the diamond which curtained the perception of direction The stars that looked at the child that grew up two years ago The curtains which shade the sensation of shame and shallow beliefs the curtains which curtain the curtains of beauty and humanity The folds. The creases. The hide. The thin crescent overshadowed by the thick clouds of grief which made my mother cry.

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Tattered

Meredith Hilton

While I am mortal, Flesh and bone, All the same I am a shattered glass, A melting plate, a broken brick.

In the world that makes me My meaning, my use have been lost, Altered, made wrong.

What becomes of men lost by the wayside, Given over to nature's whims?

Sometimes you see them blowing Tattered in the streets along with the wind.

But nature grants them air and sky, Grass and dirt and greenery.

I am left with glass and wood, Locks, latches, hinges.

No freedom to be found in square rooms, In square houses and bulky cars.

There is one tulip growing by the walk.

Our hearts may bloom and die together.

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Escape Asra Memon "Tyranny and disloyalty are what I see in present times.

It’s quite laborious to live under these minute yet harsh crimes.

Calamity perhaps torments can be found everywhere alive.

I feel as if the bond of allegiance will never revive.

My agonizing eyes are filled with countless tears.

I perceive that my world is surrounded with strange fears.

It seems as if my world has drastically altered.

For I can say nothing and no word can be uttered.

The obscure truth is perhaps not ambiguous.

But I think all this change is continuous.

What I want is compassion to be endured.

As brutality is what makes our lives impure.

Undoubtedly, it’s quite necessary for the world to pacify.

The message for peace is what I want to clarify.

But I feel that my struggle is useless.

For everyone in this world is careless.

My voice for tranquility is suppressed for sure.

Though, these conflicts are difficult to cure.

As I realize, virtue will never take a proper shape.

What I decide, is just to run away and escape."

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The Hawthorn Tree

Megan Freeman

The chains attached to the hands and feet of the prisoners shake and rattle as they drag their heavy feet down the bleak gray hallway. Their faces have grown long and the spots under their eyes have darkened and wrinkled with each passing day becoming permanently etched within their sagging skin. Hope is a long lost memory here, buried deep beneath the grimaces of pale lips and shattered hearts. One by one they’re dropped off in their cement homes; cold, dark cells large enough to contain a twin bed and a cracking toilet and fading souvenirs of a time when life was brighter and freedom was readily available.

However the people became captives to free will and self-dependency and the walls grew around them, block by block until they were trapped here, together but alone, in this prison of false-independence and twisted truth. They sit bound by lies, secrets, and captured truth and the walls around get higher and they draw closer together, until every prisoner is left suffocating alone in their cells.

The branch of a hawthorn tree grows through bars of a small window, high in the corner of a cell where a prisoner, trapped by the words of society and the pain of remembrance, withers under the growing tensions of the war that violently consumes his mind and daily threatens his being. The scars on his body have grown deeper as the years have passed and as the wounds have superficially healed and been redrawn by hate, fear, and desperation. And as every day passes, he withdraws until he’s bound in the prison of his body and mind, not just the gray rock walls around him.

But in the corner, the branch of the hawthorn tree continues to grow through the window. As the seasons pass the branch reaches into the cell bending and turning as it hits the corners, wrapping its way around the room. And as spring comes every year, the Hawthorn tree litters the ground of the cell with flowers, white as snow. And as the years pass, the tree begins to grow against the side of the prison wall leaning against the wall of the cell, its weight forcing the cement walls to crack and splinter. But the prisoner sits in the corner on his bed, staring lifelessly at his open hands, unaware of the changes around him.

Spring comes again, and the Hawthorn tree buds and blossoms filling the cell with a burst of pure white.

A soft wind wanders by one day and shakes the blossoms of the tree causing petals to fall in every direction, causing one to float down and land in the open hands of the prisoner, startling him, awaking him, reminding him.

His breath halts, his eyes widen, and his hands close over the petal, securing it in his grasp. After years of looking down, he raises his stiff neck to show his eyes the beauty of the hawthorn tree and his heart gasps in awe. Branches of the tree surround his room, covering the ceiling with bright white blossoms. The sun is shining in through the window and through the ever-growing cracks the hawthorn tree has created in the side of the building. The prisoner eases himself off the bed, stretching his legs, and slowly walks over the cracked wall, pushing at the weakened cement, causing tiny pieces to fall away and enlarges his door to the outside. He pushes harder, his entire body weight focusing upon one spot that could lead him to freedom, and as it begins to crumble, he gets impatient and backs away from the wall. From the other side of the cell he runs and, turning his shoulder into it, hits the wall. Chunks of cement hit the ground. Again he runs and thrusts his shoulder into the wall and again and again and again. With each hit the wall

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crumbles more and more, shattering from the weight of the hawthorn tree and the hope of man, until a gap, large enough for a man to climb through has been formed.

With hesitant hands the man drops the hawthorn petal and grabs at the sides of the hole, hoisting himself into the gap. With too much force he brings his body up, causing him to lose his balance and fall out onto the other side of the hole into a field. Awestruck, he looks to his left and finds himself lying amidst daffodils and remembering an old story, he picks one up and carries it as he waves goodbye to the hawthorn tree, walking into life.

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All Those Fake Smiles..

Judy Kim

Is a poor representation of what’s happening internally; conflict, bitterness.

All those smiles posted publically, is only one of many different emotions and rollercoaster experiences.

Forced together after a long day of ridicule, mockery, anger.

Forced together after tears and tears of miscommunication and fights.

Forced together after years and years of fear and condemnation.

Voices running amuck in my head.

Reality is just as bad.

Cruel words.

So much hatred.

Internal conflict.

What do I do God? I can’t handle this.

—That fabulous lifestyle, dear, is not so fabulous.

The fancy clothes, the fancy boats, the sunkissed tans.

They’re not so fabulous, dear.

It’s merely a mirage.

The fabulous outward, the emptiness inward.

The endless pit of meaningless life.

Isn’t there more to life than this?

Don’t go chasing after mirages, my dear.

It’s not as fabulous as you think.

It’s not as fabulous as it seems.

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slipped off my feelings like I slipped off the cold, grim July air from my shoulders Sharon Ahn

I have been dreaming my whole life. I have been dreaming people into my life, I had been dreaming people out of my life. My body, trapped in these pink flowery walls, should only remain and breathe in the amount of nothingness that fills the broken void.

Pirate ships sailing through the Milky Way galaxy, being sucked into a kaleidoscope hole and being dropped into a pool of vanilla feathers. Being lifted up into the sky, seeing the love-swept swans twisting their necks to form an oblong heart, all only a sun's length away from my grasp. Still a heaven away. I would wake up, but not really.

Every kind of emotion is amplified: happiness, grief, emptiness, guilt, love for the trees. The only kind of love worth my heart.

I felt helpless, but a good kind of helpless: like everything you've ever held dear and true has fallen out of your life, and now you've got nothing to lose.

Before you know it, yesterday is already something of the past. We like to believe that after an end of something, the beginning of another thing will be more beautiful than the last. We’re always waiting. Constantly waiting for this chapter of our life to end so we can move on to the next. But why not linger a bit. Drink a bit of wine, dance between the notes of every fine sentence. You can be happy.

Right here between the comma of the last page, because once you turn the page you’ll never be the same again.

You'll meet someone. And her presence in your life will add so much color. If what you thought magnificent was a black and white Charlie Chaplain film, she'll turn it into a technicolor version of the Wizard of Oz, and before you know it all the little munchkins will be rooting for your love, “Follow the yellow brick road.”

But before you take another step, don’t let the shiny surface blind you and listen carefully when I say the road’s not built of gold.

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Fade Away

Jennifer Haynes

Jongin was four the first time he saw the other boy. The one who seemed to blend in with the soft moonlight streaming through the leafy canopy in his garden. He looked a lot older than Jongin, perhaps 17 or so, and his skin was a silvery white color. The curious four year old wondered why the older boy was so pale, and why he could see the faint outline of his mother's rose bush through his body. His mother always told him that everyone is different, and that he needs to be understanding and accepting of other's differences, so he didn't think about it too much.

He wanted to go say hi, but then be remembered his mother's warning: Don't talk to strangers. Instead, he contented himself with watching him from his bedroom window. Jongin admired the older boy's soft, wind blown hair and delicate facial features, but he also noticed the hunched shoulders and slight quivering that indicated the boy was crying.

Two weeks later he saw the boy again. The garden below his bedroom window was shadowed and moonlight filtered through the tree branches before pooling around the old wooden bench in front of the roses. The boy sat on the bench, shoulders drooping and eyes cast towards the ground. Jongin moved away from the window and padded over to the door to his bedroom before opening it with just barely enough room for him to slip through. The house was silent, but the four year old managed to sneak into the kitchen and unlock the back door with his child-sized hands.

The older boy didn't look up as Jongin approached, "Why are you sad?"

The boy on the bench looked up and wiped away a silvery tear, "Y-you can see me?"

"Of course I can see you." Jongin scrambled up onto the bench beside him. "Please don't be sad."

"I thought I was alone." The older boy looked up at the starry expanse above their heads, "I thought I would be alone forever."

Jongin sat in silence for a moment before giving him a toothy grin, "My name is Jongin, what's yours?"

The older boy looked down at the adorable child sitting next to him, "Luhan."

"Please don't cry anymore, Luhan. I'll be your friend and you'll never have to be alone ever again."

The corners of Luhan's mouth tugged upwards and his doe eyes filled with tears that threatened to spill over his pretty lashes, "Do you really mean that?"

"Of course!" Jongin said with absolute finality. After all, he was only four.

Luhan and Jongin grew close over the next few years, almost as close as two friends could get. His parents said that Luhan was his imaginary friend, which confused Jongin a lot because Luhan wasn't imaginary. Sure, he was translucent and a bit on the pale side, but that didn't mean he wasn't real.

Luhan never said much when he tried to talk to him about it, he would mutter, "It doesn't really matter as long as you're here," and go off to sulk.

All good things in life must come to an end, and once Jongin started school and made new friends, he began to see Luhan less and less. Luhan didn't blame him though, it was probably for the best for Jongin to forget him. He deserved friends that he could hug and even hug him back when he needed someone to comfort him, something Luhan would never be able to do.

Luhan would return to the garden below Jongin's window every night, remembering the days when they would lay under the stars pointing out the different constellations and making their own.

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Luhan missed his best friend, the boy who took the time to see him when no one else did, but he didn't hold it against him. Jongin was there for Luhan when he needed someone the most, so Luhan made sure he returned the favor.

Luhan was there for Jongin when he turned 16 and met a pretty girl named Sara. Luhan liked Sara, he liked the way she was able to make Jongin smile like no one else could, and he rejoiced when the two of them got together barely a year later. He was there when Jongin and Sara were forced to go to college away from each other. Luhan hated seeing the tears stream down Jongin's face every night, he hated the fact the he couldn't comfort his friend. It was at the moment Luhan wished he was alive again. If he was alive then he could pull Jongin into his arms and wipe away the tears, he could whisper words of comfort into Jongin's ear, and assure him everything would be okay and he would be able to see Sara again.

But he wasn't alive. He was dead, a mere shadow of what he used to be.

Luhan stayed by Jongin's side over the years, no matter how much it hurt. He stayed when Jongin graduated with honors from college, and he was there three years later when he dragged Sara to a secret picnic on the beach, where he proposed as the ocean turned purple and red from the sun sinking under the horizon. He stayed when Sara surprised Jongin with a baby boy from the local adoption agency, and he cried silver when Jongin decided to name their child Luhan.

He waited patiently as the dark hair on Jongin's head slowly faded away to gray and he moved from his home to the hospital. He stayed as the monitor by Jongin's bed began to beep erratically before fading away to nothing, and he was there to take Jongin's pale, silvery hand for the first time since they met 74 years earlier.

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