Olivetree Review 2022-23 Digital Edition

Editor In Chief

Jordan Ortiz

Vice President Elizabeth De Furia

Treasurer Tyler Martinez

Secretary Zhen Zou

Art Editors: Prose Editors: Poetry Editors: Drama Editor:

Jordan Ortiz

Olivia Baldacci

Anling Chen

Phoebe Streeter

Bella Ramirez

Elizabeth De Furia

Senior Publicist:

Sowjan Sritharasarma

Assistant Publicists:

Olivia Massey

Jennesy Herrera

Associate Editors:

Jiaqi Situ

Gigi Lin

John Wade

Samantha Henriquez

Mayra Ianakieva

Mahalia Carbonell

Justine Ramirez

Madeleine Lanberg

Ashley Quarant

Noemi Tracey

Ariana Khan

Raven Campbell

Ela Ratkiewicz

Raven Campbell

Alesa Irizarry

Atlas Robalino

Sofia Cedeno

Aroob Solaiman

Jennifer De La Cruz

Kayla O'Connor

Lam Trinh, Laila Salem, Ashley Ngo, Maya Ryan, Chynna

Slaughter, Diego DeJesus, Nicholas Arico, Zhaul Gonzalez, Sonja

Mittlestat, Julie Rosenberg, Mazal Leviyev, Ayesha Fareed, Jenna

John, Hunter Dillard-Jakubowicz, Sam Ahmed

Prose:

Barefoot Blessings (1) D.C. Chester (9)

La Vie En Rose (34) Missing Pieces (41) Chi Em (63)

Poetry:

Train to Montauk (8) Roping in a New Year (31)

Dinner at 5:30 (40) Mangroves Don't Grow Mangoes (62) Of This Universe (76)

My Grim Fairytale (78) What Naps in a Box at the End of the Road (80) Let Them Ripen (82)

Drama: The Magic Man (47)

Art:

The Sea at the Precipice (7) Trellis (30) Choir Practice 3 (39) A World of Trouble (46) Mirror Halves (75) Springtime (79) When I Leave (81)

Untitled (83) Overstimulated (84) Competition (85)

Contributions:

Meet the Staff:

86 91 94

History of the Olivetree Review:

To whom it may concern, A new issue is finally upon us! Many thanks to all of the incredible artists that chose us as the publication to showcase their work. We’d truly be nothing without our supporters and the lovely submissions they work so hard to create. Thank you for contributing to our longstanding publication, and for being part of The Olivetree Review in a multitude . Many of you have effortlessly showcased that art is beautiful in a variety of forms, and that it’s truly founded in everything. From the pain we experience as people, to the mundane moments of life, we have the ability to transmute our thoughts, feelings and emotions into something so wonderful.

This is my final semester here at Hunter, and I cannot thank you all enough for the reminder that I have so many skills and assets at my disposal; through art, writing, reciting, and dramatizing. It’s all there. The Olivetree Review has been a saving grace for me, and has served as an amazing opportunity for me to grow artistically as well as from an editorial perspective. It was my first time ever engaging in this type of work, and I’ve grown significantly from when I first started. My lovely team has been more than enough when I really needed them, and I’ve got no doubts that The Olivetree is on its way to being an even bigger publication. Thank you for helping to keep this project alive. I really don’t know how else I can express my gratitude and thanks.

And so finally, I just want everyone reading this to be reminded just as I am, that even in the face of adversity, perseverance really is key.

Use your talents, your skills, and your assets unabashedly. Stand firm against all odds, even the annoying bureaucratic ones. And finally, remember that as artists, we tell the stories, set the trends, and provide hope for ourselves and others.

All in all, I hope to see plenty of work done by The Olivetree Review in a way that goes beyond where it started. I will continue to be a part of the publication in any way I can, but it’s time for me to let go.

Thank you again. I love you all, Til next time, Jordan

When I was seven years old,

a girl I knew at my temple told me that walking barefoot will make you blessed by god. And seven-year-old me, enamored by the idea of the Hindu gods looking down and blessing me with their smiles of fondness, decided I would walk barefoot any chance I got. I reveled in the way the sun on the asphalt toasted the soles of my feet, as if to tell me,

“Little girl, I am dangerous, and the hot rocks will hurt your feet.” But I was emboldened by such a message, sure that I would be rewarded for the pain, so I kept going.

It was at this age that my family took a visit to our motherland in the summer. We stayed at my uncle’s house, which was out in the country, nothing but farmland and tall grass and trees for miles. It was two weeks of basking in the adoration of my extended family, who had not seen me since I was whisked away to America three years ago. I happily accepted their treats and affections, glowing with pride at the smallest gesture of fondness, convinced I could do no wrong.

It was on one lazy afternoon of a summer day in Sri Lanka, just before the sun started to set, when my parents had gone out and my aunts and uncles were snoring away, that I decided to test that theory about the barefoot blessings.

I was in a country I was no longer familiar with, but that didn’t deter me in my quest to feel special. So, I slipped out of the big house, opened the gate, and started walking barefoot along the gravel path. It was barely a road. Made of mostly sand and small rocks, it was hardly ideal for a car, let alone walking, but I strolled on anyway. A man passed by me on a motorcycle and stared curiously. I gave him a sheepish smile. Poor guy he must think I’m silly, but he doesn’t know I’m being blessed by god! A couple passed by me next, also on a motorcycle, and they smiled at me. I took it as encouragement and strolled on confidently.

I will turn back eventually, I told myself. I’ve come this far already, and a little longer won’t hurt. After all, the longer I walk the more blessings I will receive, and one can never have too many blessings, right?

I daydreamed about what blessings I would receive, what a blessing would look like. Maybe my mom won’t be so mean to me, or maybe Krishna will whisper the answers to super hard test questions. There was that story about Lord Shiva and Parvati giving milk to a young boy that got lost. Would something like that happen to me? I smiled as I let my imagination wander, not noticing the setting sun until it was too late. It was quiet that evening, which was fine when there was light.

But then the sky started to darken, a bluish hue falling over the world, and the excitement that brought me so far changed into something heavier.

This is far enough, I decided. But when I turned back, I realized I could no longer see my uncle’s large house in the distance. The sun was almost below the horizon, and the cold from the air seeped into my blood. Suddenly, I could feel the pain of the sharp rocks under my feet. The road looked menacing now on both sides, but I dragged my feet forward and started walking.

“It’s not that far, I’ll be back in no time,” I said out loud, but it was swallowed up by the vastness of the world before me. I heard someone else approaching from behind, only they weren’t on a motorcycle this time. It was quieter but still fast, and my heart pounded as the sound of the crushed gravel got closer and closer. I kept my head down and walked faster, wondering if I should run.

“Sowjan?” I heard a voice say, and I nearly stumbled at my own name. When I looked up, I saw the soft, round face of my cousin looking at me, surprise and concern coloring his expression.

“Yes?” I answered, a grin starting on my face, as the fear in my belly turned into a gleeful giggle that rose to my cheeks.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Walking barefoot,” I said, pointing at my feet. “See?” The confusion grew into baffled amusement.

“Why?”

“It’s a secret.”

He motioned to his bicycle. “Come on, I’ll take you home.” My feet sighed with relief when I got on. He rode me home just before night fell, and my parents were waiting outside, the bluish tint in the atmosphere falling over their dark skin. They didn’t shout my name when they saw me, but my mom ’ s face darkened. When I got close, she grabbed my arm, ripped me off the bike and asked me where the hell I’d been.

“You could’ve been kidnapped! You could’ve gotten lost! Are you crazy?” she yelled. “What were you thinking?”

And I couldn’t quite answer that question, despite being so sure about it half an hour ago. It was colder now, darker, and my feet were sore. Everyone was looking at me with a mixture of disappointment and confusion.

“You know better,” their faces said. “I cannot fathom why you would ever do such a thing.” So, I stayed quiet, and I questioned for the first time the words that girl had uttered to me in such a haughty, all-knowing tone.

Something only a silly little seven-year-old would believe… Oh.

My dad let my mom do all the shouting and talked to my cousin instead, asking where I had been when he found me. He gave me a sharp glare when he got his answer, and I stopped looking at people’s faces after that.

I kept my head down and walked inside the house or rather, I’m dragged in by my mom, and I don’t remember whether I ate dinner that night. But I remember going to bed and struggling to sleep as I tried in vain to make the heaviness in my chest go away, thinking about the worst that could have happened to me because I’d been stupid enough to go out alone and unguarded.

There was a picture of Lord Shiva in the room where I was sleeping. I glared at him. “So much for blessings,” I muttered, but his gentle, smiling face did not change. I crossed my arms and turned away.

My cousin came in afterwards with a thin book in his hand. “Asleep yet, Sowjan?” he asked, and I shook my head, but I couldn’t face him. He sat on the side of the bed and started fanning me. The wind cooled the small beads of sweat that had formed on my neck in the night heat.

He fanned me for longer than I needed it, but I let him do it anyway. I knew he needed to sleep, too, and that his hand would hurt from fanning me for so long, but that guilt will come later on. Right then, I liked the feeling of the soft

air on my skin, and I liked being looked after by someone who wasn’t there to berate me or trick me or chide me, but who gave me fond smiles and a patient ear and treated me like a younger sister instead of the eldest daughter.

So, I didn’t tell him to stop. I closed my eyes and let the rhythmic whisk of the paper lull me to sleep, the soreness in my feet forgotten.

-Sowjanya Sritharasarma

The Sea at the Precipice

-B Kim

Train to: Montauk

Fresh houses, not done yet, there is baseball still to be played. A small boat bobs floating in an inlet rocking like a seagull alighted on the waves. The great disk saunters towards its sunset as the students band for their fates to be weighed. The carcass of a tree trunk stands tall in the still marsh death won b time perv

-Andy Folkenflik

D.C. Chester

In the Oregon Coast ’ s mountains, there are lost cemeteries

– a lot of them – lost, forgotten way up in nowhere places like Ten Mile, Death Ridge, Desolation Saddle – places nobody knows – except Loggers – where probably live Loggers buried mashed Loggers.

Since I got the papers, I seek those cemeteries, because everything there is the truth – birth, death, the tilting old grave markers. In those cemeteries, nobody is screwing with me. Good places to get away from life.

I was at work when I got served the papers. My wife is suing me for divorce, taking everything. I’m telling you – the knucklehead shit you pull catches up!

When I got home, the house was empty – of her, of our fouryear-old son – but full – of hot - supernatural – hell-heat. Heat that heat made the hair stand up on the back of my neck – the palpable hate. Every light on, the furnace turned all the way up, every burner on the stove glowing bright red – even the floppedopen super-over-heated oven – the washer, the dryer, the TV, the stereo repeating over-and-over again Donovan’s “Season of the Witch”. And up in the master bath – her stupid, plug-in lovehelmet curler set hot – and even the cranked-up-full wall heater in there – all of it, dangerous,

burn-down-the-house hot! The whole house like full blast ninety inside, the wall paper cooked with tangible hatred, kill-you-if-Icould malice. It really shook me all up; it just wasn’t like her.

I told Dick, my Lawyer, whose pointed nose reminded me of a Dachsund, how it felt. Dick said he knew Millie’s Lawyer was just a “ crummy flat-lander” from over in Eugene – and that I didn’t know it yet, but I had hired Dick - a real “gut-fighter” and we were going to trial! So today, a realtor who uses a black cigarette holder with pearl inlays is showing our house.

But for me, it’s the Chitwood Cemetery. I’ve been there one other time in twenty years. Nearly forgot about it. You get it just off Highway 20, up the Yaquina River, just east of the old covered, artifact Chitwood Bridge. Bit of barbed wire perimeters the jumbled graves – the fence mashed on the north years ago by a big windfall hemlock.

People worry about logging and things like habitat and the carbon cycle, but the jungle of the western woods will always reclaim everything – including the Chitwood Cemetery.

Rain. I told myself I didn’t need rain gear. Won’t take long. The rust of Chitwood’s wet, cold gate resists, stops me.

Rusty after-thought live stock gate keeps nothing out. I can see in as far as the jungle’s glistening-wet, green screen. I realize with a kind of shock how little I remember of the abandoned old cemetery, how much the western woods’ jungle thickens in twenty years, how much I wish I had brought along my machete.

First trespasser in years and years, I lean against the steel gate. The rusted hinges break loose. I force in. Instantly, the tall, wet grass soaks cold right through my levis to the skin of both my shins.

Face-to-face with the soggy tanga-tanga of vine maple, huckleberry and salal, I hesitate, take a deep breath, hold it. I stumble and try to step over a big moss-covered log, but my left foot drops into space. As I fall leftways, a vine maple booby trap releases suddenly. I see it coming, but I’m too slow, and a branch about an inch in diameter whacks me hard in the left side of my face as I get down-poured by all the clinging, soaking rainwater hanging in the jungle canopy above me.

Before, I figured I’d take notes of names and dates and maybe research them later, but my eight and a half by eleven yellow legal pad is instantly soaked.

Besides that, I can’t move.

My left leg, clear to the hip, is stuck straight down in a rotting pit between the log I tried to step over and a tangled root-ball. The acrid stink of rot and contagious decay bulges up around me and up my nose. I breathe. I feel my lungs being invaded by infecting clouds of fungal spores.

The Chitwood cemetery. Everybody there is dead.

High above me in the trees, I hear the wind picking up; it’s the next squall with its slap of rain coming in. The yellow pad was a dopey idea. I just toss it away.

My left leg stuck down in that hole, a giant, four-foot-tall sword fern bushes right in my face. Right-handed, I grab onto a bunch of the wet blades and, hard as I can, I haul myself up onto my right knee and pull my left leg out of the hole. I end up in the exact same position as an altar boy at Mass – bent at the waist, face a foot from the jungle floor.

I couldn’t have missed it – the first grave marker - laying flat. Looking down at it close-up, I see the marker is hewn out of a piece of the dark grey basalt of the Pacific Northwest. Cheap, common rock, but way back in 1938, somebody chiseled-out just the initials “M.E.K.”, and below the dates, “Feller”. I can’t tell if Feller is a last name or what he was doing when he got killed. I console myself that I’m not getting shot at and I don’t have cancer and besides, I AM looking at what I came for.

Above me, a gust blasts in and sheets of rain hose down through the trees. I don’t even get up. The underbrush’s too thick to walk it. I’m already soaked and I start to chill.

I just keep my head down and crawl, looking for more hidden graves. And I find them. I spot a concrete headstone tree-shovedover to the right like sixty degrees out of the vertical by a spruce maybe thirty years old. Concrete doesn’t hold up to time, but somebody is buried there, probably spruce roots growing right through his brain. Somebody - but I can’t read who. Oddly, leaning against the cement headstone’s front like it was used as a vase five years ago, is standing a little screw-top Starbuck’s bottle.

Here’s one of those markers with the broad slab-base and erect, slender tower on top. It’s still really pretty beautiful – made of a soft, white marble. And the gentle acidity of constant Coast Range rain has etched away to unreadability everything but a year –probably of death – 1887.

My whole grave crawl goes that way: I find eighteen – never newer than the 1930s. Makes me wonder what happened in Eddyville, the nearest thing to a nearest town, after the 1930s. But then I start to really shiver in the wet.

Up in the trees above me now, the sound of the wind is a constant, loud rush and clunk of trunks and branches. I think about the forty-fifty-year-old hemlock that blew down long time ago and mashed the north section of the cemetery fence. I could get myself chilled and killed both in Chitwood Cemetery. She’d get everything –probably even my Social Security. Probably deserves it. I needed to get out of there. But I didn’t.

What did I really have to lose?

When I saw the level spot and the little fence and the carpet of little spring-green, two-inch-tall plants – each with a single, sweet little heart-shaped leaf – when I saw the rusted, long ago lovelavish of the little cast iron fence... I couldn’t move.

It was a little, fenced-off shrine with a little white headstone up close to one end. There were actual flowers carved into the little diaper-white head stone. There were actual little nine-petalled pink flowers growing in amongst the little green hearts. The plot wasn’t over four feet square. It was just cute. I could still read the date easily – in detail – “August 19 th , 1914”. Only that one date –whether birth or death, I couldn’t tell. Then I realized with a thud that, oh man! It’s a little baby’s grave – born/died same day. It made sense – except – over and over, I kept reading it. The initials didn’t really work on a new-born’s grave.

The little headstone read – “D.C. Chester”. All I could figure was, what the hell kind of a parent could’ve been so coldly impersonal as to cap off such wrenching, sudden loss – the loss of their little, bald-headed baby and its tiny little pink finger tips that never lived long enough to get sucked on - with just initials?

I spent another hour systematically combing the Chitwood Cemetery. I didn’t find anybody else with the last name Chester buried there. It made me feel slightly better. D.C. Chester. At least D.C.’s mother had survived the birth. Her poor little baby’s death was heart-break harsh enough! It was cold enough. I was cold enough. To hell with it.

I got out of there and I went back to a cold, empty house. And I just stepped out of a hot shower when the realtor called. How soon could I move out? When could I sign the Earnest Money? I could hear it in his voice – the way he talked – teeth clenched on his mother-ofpearl-in-laid black cigarette holder and grinning like somebody on a ridiculous old TV show.

Standing there, damp towel over my shoulders, I was getting chilled again. I felt harshed, cold. I thought about poor little D.C. Chester again.

It showed in about thirty-seven minutes – the in-laid cigarette holder did. I signed our house away. I had thirty days to get out.

I shivered. I felt like hell. I got myself a beer. I thought about the Chitwood Cemetery. I thought about all those neglected graves. I thought about D.C. Chester and during my second beer, I got really frustrated and went into the bathroom to drain my lizard and barefoot, I kicked at her little embossed underwater-scene tin garbage can under the bathroom sink, but hit the edge of the bathroom door instead and it rattled stupidly on its hinge pins and my big toe started bleeding and my red blood got to staining the white grout on the floor, and on my hands and knees, I used beer and my dirty underwear and tears of frustration to clean up the blood.

All I had left by now in the world was coffee. I taped-up my toe. I shod myself. I was going. I was getting out of there – out of the sold damn house. Not our hose any more. I could start packing tomorrow or the next day or the next week as far as it went.

Alcoholics get frowned upon. But not coffee maniacs. Thinking about really good coffee, I felt my heart take a little leap of relief. I’d even get to feel fifty-cent magnanimous and tip the kids working there. I jumped back in my van and feeling really pretty hopeful, I drove to Newport to a place called Panini, my coffee fave.

Like usual, it smelled wonderful in there, and the heat of the allnight-long baking that went on in the back kept it warm. I hugged my molasses-thick Sumatra and let the warmth and the personalness of Panini osmose through my skin. Perfect coffee again. Perfect heat again. Ahhh.

Many times, I’d studied the buildings out Panini’s front windows across the street. Many times, I’d sat there on a stool, my back turned to the world, hugging my always perfect coffee, mindlessly examining the shingle work on those buildings, expecting to spot flaws in the shingle work – and I had. One more time, I was marveling now to myself that the installer had screwed up right there at the front door.

The building was really quite nicely trimmed-out turn-of-thecentury style – pale green, fluted side casing on the front door –wide, crowned casing over the top – but all the shingle courses were about an inch lower to the right of the door than the left.

I chuckled knowingly to myself. I knew just how to make that same mistake: you ’ re compensating for the bottoms of the windows on either side of the door and you ’ re measuring carefully and thinking it all through so circumspectly and you ’ re so proud of your work and it’s all bright new shingles and passers-by are all admiring and complimenting, so you take a break and you stand

back and sip coffee with immense satisfaction and your ego is all stoked and wham! You realize with a stab, you’d made a basic incorrect assumption – that the windows both right and left of the door were framed-up exactly same height – but you can see it now that they’re not – that they’re an inch and a quarter different and so your shingle courses are out by the same amount and where it’s going to show is right smack at the front door!

And so – I’m steeping in Panini’s warmth and I’m sipping my perfect coffee and in my imagination I’m commiserating familiarly with the long gone installer’s downer when suddenly, D.C. Chester is back and for a moment, I think about that little cast-iron-fenced plot again and all I feel is oh, good grief! Do I really have to go over it all again? Now?

It reminded me suddenly of Bob Dylan and his haunting lyric about life being nothing but a joke. D.C. Chester. The implausibility of it! It got worse. When I’d arrived at Panini, I hadn’t had the sense to power-off my phone and it rang right in my perfect coffee. It was the realtor. He wanted to know who D.C. Chester was. He said that’s how I signed the Earnest Money Agreement. He was pretty jacked. He actually yelled he could really sympathize with my wife. For some bizarre reason, I found myself smiling and hoping the smile wasn’t coming through in my voice as I talked to him.

It was ridiculous. All of it. Just stupid. After we got the Earnest Money Agreement all squared away, sitting back at the house, I sat there just smiling at the realtor, him scowling and frowning and stuffing another cig into his holder.

“What are you smirking about, Joe?” he wanted to know. “Reeahl-tee,” he went.

But I didn’t care. I didn’t care if the deal got to Closing or not. I didn’t care what my angry, divorcing-me wife thought. I didn’t care what anybody thought. All I could think about was everlasting D.C. Chester. D.C. Chester. D.C. Chester. I realized with a kind of crazy elation right at that moment that I was gripped by D.C. Chester –just like the obsession I once had, married or not, of owning a chickmagnet sports car.

I loved my wife. She and I stuck together like magnets. It wasn’t the chicks. It was the stupid car I wanted – bad. And we bought it and one day on Highway 34, in a hairpin turn up on the east side of Mary’s Peak, the back end of my red sports car passed me and I stuffed the beautiful front end into a dirt bank. The other side of the road was a canyon. That car was a widow-maker. My wife was so kind about it. She never made me eat any crow at all.

I couldn’t stand it. I just couldn’t stand it. Right from my coffee, I tried calling my wife again. This time, she made the mistake of picking up. “Millie?” I said.

“Wut?”

“I need help, Millie.”

“I know. So get some. ”

“Millie? I’ve been spending too much time in cemeteries. I feel nuts.”

“At least you ’ re planning ahead THERE.”

“Millie?”

“Wut?”

I started blabbering. I described the whole scene at Chitwood. I told her about D C Chester I told her it was nuts, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. She just let some exasperated steam out her ears like she does and told me in her practical voice, “Oh, Joe. Somebody from the Siletz Res probably just buried their dog in there as a joke.”

I said she wouldn’t think that if she could see the place – the tipped-over head stones, the underbrush. I told Millie I loved her. I said I’d been a fool and I was sorry as hell and that the house’d sold already. Then, recklessly, I asked her to “please” meet me at the Chitwood Cemetery. I said, “Remember the red sports car and how it got ahold of me and I nearly got killed? This D.C. Chester's got me the

same. ”

I told her where the cemetery was and asked her if ten was OK. I could tell she was crying. It was exactly like when I was a kid when just looking and listening around, I figured out once you get involved with a girl there’d be a lot of crying. Back in the 6 th Grade, though, I just never figured I’d be the cause.

She didn’t say no to Chitwood. She didn’t say anything at all. She just snuffled and I thought I could hear a cough drop clicking on her teeth as her tongue shifted it around. Probably, she’d caught cold since she left me; it told me how stressed she was. Over the phone, in the back ground, I heard a scrap of our son ’ s voice.

We’d worked hard for that kid. Something was wrong with my out-put, so we really worked hard to get Millie pregnant – if you can call obsessive-compulsive sometimes-nearly-public sex work.

Listening to Millie snuffle over the phone, I felt like a creep. Our separation was real rough on her. She didn’t say another word. She just hung up.

Only place Millie showed up was about a month later at the trial. By then, I was out of the house and basically living in my rusted-out seventy-three Ford van. It wasn’t mentioned in the papers I was served. It was only worth about two hundred bucks – but it'd been handy- back in our really-wanna-get-Millie-pregnant days. It was real tough, sleeping in that tin can without her wrapped around me.

But the trial. I showed up, too, but I couldn’t really even focus on the proceedings. During the month, I’d researched D.C. Chester at the Lincoln County Historical Society, the Newport Historical Society, the Waldport Historical Museum. I had a scratched-off list of about a hundred key-word combinations I’d Googled.

Odd thing I ran across was that a full-blood Salish from clear up in northern Washington somewhere used to live in Chitwood way back. I couldn’t figure out if his name was Smack Billy or that’s just what people called him. Reason it stuck in my mind was what my wife had said about how the justice of the casinos and somebody from the Res burying a dog in whiteman’s cemetery as a joke were the same thing.

Which brings this damn story back around to Millie. At the trial, it was real obvious she was over her cold. She glowed. She looked so hot in a tight gold on black she hadn’t worn in ten years. That outfit wasn’t about cleavage; it was about her erectness and how the high Manchu collar lifted her tractorbeam persona up on top of a tower.

And she had her dancing violet eyes all sparkled up so bright, she had her own Counsel all screwed up and in his opening arguments, he lost track of what he was trying to say and had to go back to the table where Millie was sitting and check his notes and when he did, he made the mistake of making eye contact with her again and flustered and dropped his notes on the courtroom floor among the chairs and there was a glass of water on the table and that fell, too, and got his notes all wet and the whole thing was just carving my guts out, because it was so killingly obvious to me how easy it had been for Millie to replace me.

Millie had unbolted me from herself like a starter motor that was activating faultily, nicking-up the teeth of the flywheel of her super-charged, big-block-V-8 girlness that long time ago she had used to pull me off my foundation. I was scrap metal to her now.

In the courtroom, I couldn’t stand that she never looked at me once, so I watched her lawyer. Even red-faced from embarrassment and bending after his dropped notes, he was magnificent: tall, chiseled, tailored suit a color nobody could name, but even I could tell perfectly matched his super-healthy skin tone. Anybody could see Graydon Jensen was a full partner in his Firm.

But Dick was exactly what he said he was. When Jensen fumbled, Dick went right for the throat. He jumped up, requested “respectfully” to be allowed to “approach the bench” where I could just barely hear him start in on some deal about a mistrial on account of the prosecuting attorney’s “apparent lack of familiarity with the facts in the Mildred vs Joe case ” , and how Dick couldn’t stand to let his fine client be “fired from the Philharmonic of his life” over “notes he didn’t even drop.”

No kidding. Dick said that. I saw the Judge’s eyes twinkle. But which only gave Jensen a chance to recover himself and so our two lawyers went at it, and yakityak yak yak, and in the middle of a hot exchange, Dick just turned away from Jensen, and about me, he said directly to the Judge,

“Look at my client, your Honor. Just look at him!”

That’s when I realized that, for the first time during that entire trial, Millie had her eyes on me. We always could. Millie and I always could look fearlessly at each other – I mean, not staring –just gazing – I mean, speaking at least for myself. Millie was more like a Sphinx – always making me wonder what the hell a girl like her was doing with me. Like the first time we had sex. At first, we just laid there on her bed in our clothes– gazing, I guess. A few minutes later, in the middle of it, I asked her directly.

“What are we doing? Just getting our share?”

The way she answered, I was never the same. From way down in her chest, she just said, “Oh, how can you even say that!”

There during that trial, facing the sphinx again, I remembered that whole thing and realized with another downbeat that after all the years, I didn’t really understand Millie at all. She just sphinxed me about two minutes and then she used her eyes to beckon Jensen and she took ahold of the lapel of his tailored suit and she got real close to him and she whispered something in his left ear – or maybe kissed it – I couldn’t tell. With a smug, satisfied look, Jensen just stood up and requested a “lunch recess ” . I t was early, so the Judge gave us a coupla hours. Jensen and Millie – just like a couple.

I headed for work. Outside, right away, I nearly got hit by a bus. Only reason I didn’t was it was really trucking and I felt it shake the street and I looked up in time. Coupla blocks away, I found a dive bar called the “Wishing Well”. It was before- lunchempty - just me and the Tat-necked bartender - who said, “Hi. My mom calls me ‘The-odor’, but I go by Toxic Teddy.

For myself, I said, “Hi, I’m ‘In-Need-of-Whiskey’.”

Toxic Teddy said he had “ a supply of that”. The place still had a juke box. It had nothing on it but Fleetwood Mac, all of which just forced me to think about Millie’s gypsy magic – the magic she’d never ever again work on me. I got back to the Courtroom early. Pacing fast back and forth like the caged wolf I once saw alongside a highway in Arizona, Dick the Gutfighter was ahead of me. He yanked the cuff of his right jacket sleeve with his left hand, snapping the sleeve straight.

Fast, he did the same with his right hand. He repeated. He just paced like a wolf and yanked. I couldn’t imagine what was going to happen – not to mention that I was “lickered-up” enough to be seeing two Gutfighters. Watching Dick, I began to fear Dick’d get ruthless and pull some ugly personal stuff on Millie. I have to admit I didn’t oppose very hard, but I never did want to go to trial – for Millie’s ask – but then I’d remembered the hell-heat –the supernatural hot – in the house and how it’d made the hair at the back of my neck stand up and I re-realized that I was the possessor of faulty judgment and decided to ‘let ‘ er rip’ – as my dad would’ve said. The end came quick. Millie came through the door by herself. From up in her tower, she swung into the Courtroom not looking at anyone

She walked straight over to me, bowed to Dick and grabbed at my right hand. She looked in my face and I don’t know what she was seeing, but I saw a kind of anguish in hers. She said, “Let’s get out of here.” Outside, only thing she said was, “I suppose you parked the van your usual mile away. ” Besides walk fast, the only thing she did was squeeze my hand like she wanted it to grow onto hers. It wasn’t a mile. Sometimes Millie exaggerates. I’d parked in one of those spots that’s right at the out-bound end of a busy bus stop and I guess there was some kind of bus service interruption because there were about twenty impatient people bunched right there close and fiddling with their phones and re-touching their make-up or trying to read or escape conversations absolute strangers had victimized them with.

I let Millie in on the curb side. I went around and by the time I got in, Millie was other side of the green and white-striped sheet that hung behind the seats and she was out of her gold-on-black. That van had two bumper stickers. One declared it not to be an abandoned vehicle. The other warned, “If this vehicle’s rockin’, don’t bother knockin”. I don’t know why, but nobody there at that bus stop did.

And somewhere in what Millie did to me next, I heard a coupla buses thunder in and take the world away. Somewhere else, I got all bold and I asked her the same question I had so many years before, “What are we doing, just getting our share?”

Millie answered different. She said after I’d invested twenty thousand bucks without telling her and then never paid any attention and lost it all, she was really mad and I said, “Yeah. I got that.” She traced my lips with a finger tip and she said back, “So I decided I had to blow the lid off everything and see where it all landed and find out all over again how I felt.”

I didn’t ask Millie any more questions. I could tell how Millie felt. Even me. I could tell. We just laid there for quite a while, listening to passing traffic and more buses coming and blasting off from our bus stop and a loud guy evidently telling whoever that, “The wind might be alive!”

To Millie and me, the patterned rust on the sheet-metal ceiling of our van was like constellations in a starry night sky we’d watched a lotta times years before and laying there right in the middle of downtown, we found out we both remembered it – real wellall of it.

But what do you think she did then?

She drug out bloody D.C. Chester! I was flying so high and Millie was dragging

D.C. Chester back! But that’s Millie. She’s a package. She said one day after I asked to meet me at Chitwood, she drove over to the Siletz Res, to the Tribal Office.

She told me, “She didn’t say anything at first, but when I started naming names I knew from my growing-up years over on the Warm Springs Res”, the young woman at the front desk, “really wanted to chat me up. She told me nobody really knew the facts any more, but that Smack Billy pretty much made people on the Siletz Res nervous and he seemed to take pity on them and moved off-Res to Chitwood with his ‘tame’ bobcat ”

Millie said she talked to that woman at the Tribal Office quite a while. People got curious and a few wandered in and listened, but didn’t say much of anything – just listened – straight-faced. Somebody in the back of the group kept coughing and hacking real loud When Millie asked directly if somebody didn’t just defiantly bury a dog over in the Chitwood Cemetery, a coughing old man with long grey hair shouldered forward and just stood right up to her and stated, “That’s ridiculous. Then the headstone would’ve had to say ‘D.D. Chester’. Before he left the Res, Smack Billy’s bobcat killed my dog DeeOHgee.”

-Joe C Smolen

Trellis

-Edward Supranowicz

Roping in the New Year

Memory is a rope, a long thick braided cord of assurance. It’s there for you to hold onto, to lean on when you need a reminder. It pulls you into recollections; the way his lips curled into a smile, how his hands felt interlocked in yours, or how much your vacant heart ached when he left. The rope never goes away, it’s shackled to your wrist and tugs every few minutes. Sometimes it’s welcomed; when you ’ re trying to remember which hand he had that scar on, you remember it was a bike accident, but was it his right or left?

It tugs the hardest when you need your composure, when your strength is required more than ever; how can you let it slip when you ’ re face to face with his mother, his same blue swirling in her eyes that had captivated you years ago. Your lip begins to bleed from holding back the tremors in your jaw, and the rope starts ripping the delicate skin on your hands. You worry, if you don’t keep a hold on that rope, it will be lost forever. If the memories aren’t shuffled through daily Will they cease to exist?

As the months pass, the rope gets shorter and shorter The capacity of your hippocampus starts to bottom out

You barter with your mind

Trying to give up passwords and family vacations to make room

You’d give up your 16th birthday, How it felt to drive for the first time or your first day of highschool, You’d give up every memory from before you met him

If it meant you’d never forget how his love engulfed you.

But what is life if it is lived in the past?

Where is the line drawn between keeping memories alive and permitting them to hold you back?

The opportunities you ’ ve missed in the last 9 months are irreplaceable

The chances at preparing your future fly by.

Suddenly you ’ re behind in school

Isolated from friends and family, You’ve spent the latter of the year watching videos of the two of you

Staring at pictures until your eyes well up, and you can no longer make out the image.

You’ve used up the majority of your year living in the past

Clinging desperately on that rope, now numb to the lacerations covering your hands.

The details grow fuzzy, His voice can no longer be recalled, His face is harder to conjure than ever before And you ’ re faced with a choice.

The calendar is about to reset

A new year is approaching, and you ’ re reminded that time is moving even if you aren’t.

You look back on your year,

It’s been spent dressing wounds and replaying scenes on a loop

All energy has been expended on holding onto that rope, you realize You stopped living the day he left. The choice is here, The rope has splintered into strands, Keep clinging, Or let go.

-Sonia Lombardo

La Vie en Rose

I look down at my hands writing these words. My fingernails are painted with a pink glitter polish; there are pink Hello Kitty charms and pink flowers glued on. I’m wearing my hot pink Diane von Fursternberg long sleeve shirt, my toes kept warm by a pair of giant pink kitty slippers. And it feels right.

I cannot remember my first encounter with the color pink, but I like to imagine. I must have still been in my mother’s womb, enclosed by her pinkness on the inside. Walls hugging me tighter than she has in years.

My mother always crudely said, “Ay, pero bien que hasta me lambiste cuando saliste de mi vientre,” when I thought I was too old for her affection and would push her embraces away. She joked. But I think she was right all this time. It was my first taste of pink on my way out into the world.

I was the first born child to my parents and a girl. When I was born the hospital staff called me La Señorita because I was such a big baby! I was showered in pink everything, as if to affirm that I was in fact a girl. No one was to be confused, no one would call my mother’s daughter a boy.

Wikipedia, the most reliable source, claims that, “in the 1920s, some groups had described pink as a masculine color, an equivalent to red, which was considered for men but lighter for boys.

But stores nonetheless found that people were increasingly choosing to buy pink for girls, and blue for boys, until this became an accepted norm in the 1940s.” By the time I was born, it was a girl’s color, and I loved it. I loved it, I loved it.

When I flip through my family album (I mean the stacks of saranwrapped photos because the album fell apart from frequent flipping through memories) I see birthday parties full of pink decor. The cake is Barbie themed. I’m wearing pink lipgloss, I’m only 6, but I am so jubilant.

There’s pink confetti in the air, falling from the piñata that slides from the extension cord (because papi couldn’t find a rope).

But in middle school, to love pink was to lean into femininity, and that meant to act and look pretty so boys will like you. But, I had no desire to be deemed worthy by any boy “ que ni siquiera se sabe limpiar la cola,” like my mom always reminded me.

I donated my pink clothes. No more skirts, no more bows, no more lip gloss, no more pink.

Really, I swear, I have no interest in boys! I wanted to let them know too. All the bobos would gravitate to pink, and miniskirts, like moths to a flame. Gross.

For a brief moment, it was all about purple. I could hardly stand blue, or the assumptions it came along with. Tomboy. Marimacho. Strange. Purple was a safe middle ground. My middle school classmates asked me why. I just don’t like pink, I’d insist. They’d laugh and snicker behind my back. Who knew a color could be so telling? Relatives continued to assume pink was my favorite color as I grew into puberty. I was getting tired of it, I needed something different. At the time I didn’t realize I was rebelling against the forces of gender roles. Just because I was a girl, didn’t mean I even liked the color. I renounced the color pink. I refused to wear it on my person. Get it away from me. So, I asked my dad to paint my room purple.

It stayed purple for years. My sister and roommate, Kayla, didn’t seem to mind, though she loved pink. But as soon as I left for college, and came home for break… she painted my entire room pink. I was furious.

Pink was everywhere. It cornered me in our bathroom. Kayla’s overflowing pink bin of pink bath bombs from Lush. Her comforter on her bed was pink, I scoffed. She wore pink barrettes to school. Are you kidding me? I had to live here an entire month. This was supposed to be my vacation.

One day, it began to tease me; the pink walls shimmered under our white lightbulb. Later, at the nail salon I picked a pale pink color. It looked more like nude in the salon, I prepared to defend myself if discovered. On the way home I passed the florist and saw the most beautiful magenta orchid smile at me through the window. The sun shined through the glass and she glowed back. The green succulents nor white flowers stood a chance beside her I went home and opened my door. Kayla installed pink LED lights. As I looked over, her face showed worry.

“Is that too much? You can change the color if you want.”

“No, that’s okay.” It was okay. Pink was okay and palatable. I spent so much time running away from it. I had forgotten that to like pink was to lean into femininity. I had forgotten how to appreciate the things that reminded me of my womanhood. I wanted to be dainty, desired, taken care of, seen like that beautiful delicate orchid. That summer, my mom made so much agua de Jamaica. Our neighbors had beautiful hibiscus flowers, bigger than my face in their yard. Que rica sabes. Tinting my already pink tongue a darker hue, reminding me we are one. When I give thanks to Mami

I feel my pink tongue joyfully dancing in my mouth, savoring the pink stain in private. Looking is not enough. I’ve put it in my hair too. I had to bleach it first to rid and cleanse my hair of the darker color.

When it was done, I hurriedly covered the copper colored hair with hot pink dye that lived on my palms for days after. I pretended I was King Midas, and objects succumbed to pink at my touch.

Now, I absolutely love walking past the florist. I see all the different pink flowers stretching their necks towards the sun. I pretend they are actually reaching for me to take them home to adorn my space. Reminding me I don’t need a man, or woman, to buy them for myself.

Every morning I smiled, waking up in my pink oasis, giving thanks to la vie en rose that I

-Betsy Morales

-Edward Supranowicz

Dinner at 5:30

They call it Vietnamese pancake in lieu of pronouncing Bánh Xèo but it isn’t breakfast, it isn’t sugar, syrup, butter

Turmeric and flour mix into batter fried to the color of corn, covered in cooking oil, filled with fat shrimp, bean sprouts, sizzling pork

He examines May’s expert hands rotate rice paper in water, softening it to wrap the pancake with crisp lettuce and cilantro She dips it in her mother’s Nước Mắm, a sweet, spicy, secret fish sauce

Wide-eyed, he copies her, but May’s tiny head shakes warn him as he crumples the crêpe, forces it into shape, pauses and avoids her mother’s sharp gaze As savory flavors fill his mouth, surprise lights up his face unintelligible satisfaction becomes a bright hum

-Jasmine Lien

Missing Pieces

The aunts owned a corner shop outside the Chinatown mall, and my mother worked for them.

We were under the Manhattan Bridge, its blue underbelly our sky, and the subways overhead drowned out street din with violent cracks and screeches. They shouted at each other to be heard, and my eight-year-old spirit always emerged after school to join their discordant roar. Their wooden stands stacked against the brick walls outside, leaving only a narrow strip of concrete for walking Cops threatened to fine them for taking up too much space, speaking with dramatic hand gestures because they couldn't understand English. But they continued to garnish the streets with jars of jujube dates, goji berries, sacks of dried shrimp, watermelon seeds, duck tongues, and the yellow peas I threw to pigeons. My mother stood on the sidewalk with the aunts, guarding the goods and tempting customers with practiced seductions, loosening lies like, “Of course they’re fresh! They just came in this morning!”

Throughout the day, someone would yell for refills and another would come running from the inside. I watched from the sidelines, my mother’s voice piercing through the clamor, her able body bending and lifting, strong arms straining, knees clicking. For five years, their backs ached and they smelled of dried squid. I contributed in my own ways – inserting myself between customers,

chiming out prices, and pressing a finger into the wet sponge they kept on the side, gleeful when the plastic bags slipped open between my fingers. But when the cold began to numb and sting, I escaped into the mall and left my mother with the aunts, her bright eyes and redtipped nose peeking out between layers of scarves. The stacked cardboard boxes left little space for a child, and the aunts didn’t like me getting in the way. So I spent my time after school in the playground beside the shop, throwing myself off high poles and getting in trouble with strangers’ kids. When business slowed throughout the day, my mother allowed me packets of gummy candies and bottles of green tea from their fridge, even though the permission wasn’t hers to give. She ignored the aunts’ lingering gazes and urged me to escape with the forbidden goods tucked safely in my arms. My mother was on my side, and I felt powerful then. The faucet is running over scallions in the sink, and my mother is stirring the pan with chopsticks. “They were never good to me, ” she says. “Once, when the shop was finally shutting down, they didn’t want to pay me. So they gave me a quart full of coins instead!”

I’m sitting at the dinner table destringing a pile of green beans, but perk up at her new revelation.

“What?” I say, wiping the green off my fingers, and move closer towards her.

My mother picks up the plastic container we store utensils in and shakes it. “Yeah, one of these. They gave me a quart full of coins in this. As payment!”

I’m peering over her shoulder at the sliced tomatoes and eggs sputtering in the pan, unsure whether to meet her disclosure with reassurance or anger. “Did you take it?” I ask.

“Of course not! I still have some dignity!” She tilts a splash of soy sauce into the pan and turns her face away as she sets the bottle down. “It was too heavy anyways. I didn’t want to carry it home with me. ”

But I know her well enough to recognize hidden shame in her dignity. So I push further, “Did you say anything to them?”

“How could I dare? Your father wasn’t there to defend me and I didn’t know how to speak up for myself then. How stupid I was. ”

“Stupid” was often the label my mother assigned herself when others walked over her, and it was always her self-blame for others’ malice that lost my respect for her.

Dad and his two younger sisters formed the three pillars of our family, and everyone else was an extension. My mother’s side of the family was in China, and she was left to fend for herself in someone else’s family. But I merged us together and acted like we were the same, forgetting that my mother was only the sister-in-law.

The image of our family against the familiar storefront has always persisted in my mind, a wispy image reappearing in times of nostalgia or convenience. I had thought it was a touching image: the rustle of red plastic bags, crushed peanut shells between sidewalk cracks, and our united front. The streets were lined with Chinese bakeries, restaurants, traditional herbal medicines, and our family storefront selling our foods to our community – a glorified cultural mural I liked to exploit in my writing over the years. How lucky we were.

I’m watching my mother’s face under the stove hood light. Its yellow glow dulls her skin and I can see her pale scalp between strands of hair.

I imagine what she looked like then, face flushed with anger, eyes cast down in shame, swallowing lumps of bitter hurt.

These days, the aunts’ biggest offense to my mother is twisting her care with money into cheapness, telling her things like, “We’re big eaters. I always spend this much on dinner. You should cook some more for your daughters!”

Over the years, I’ve watched their aggressions slide, peeking at my mother’s reaction to gauge their level of offense. I let them measure us by their standards and escape unscathed, wondering where she hides her anger and where her strength has gone.

But there’s one of her and all of them.

I want to ask more, but my mother says, “Go set the table,” and I

know she’s done. She preserves the deepest parts of her for herself and shares them only sporadically with me. Somehow, I’ve shaped an image of my mother I don’t recognize, using my ignorance to find answers and fill in gaps of her she’s left me with. I’ve twisted her patience into passivity and her goodwill into giving too much of herself away, hating her caution and seeing past all her good intentions. But it’s over sharing grievances that I can see the truth in her. So I cling onto the family history my mother feeds me, eager to learn something new about her, and use them to gradually rebuild my image of her. “You have to defend me, ” my mother says. “If they talk bad about me you have to speak up for me. ”

Now, another family owns the shop and we ’ ve all gone our separate ways. The subways still crack and screech, but they seem louder now without our grating shouts to fight it. The mall has hollowed out and vendors have fallen out of business. Remnants of the pandemic remain on the street as graffitied storefronts littered with “SPACE FOR LEASE” signs.

But I etch the bones of my mother’s history into that sidewalk, letting it solidify on the shelf of stories she’s given me, built only to store all the missing pieces of her.

-Pei Ying Ren

A World of Trouble

-Edward Supranowicz

The Magic Man

CAST OF CHARACTERS

MAGIC MAN

COLLEGE GIRL

LINDA

MIKE

PASSERBY

A fifty-something man

A college-aged girl

A twenty-something grad student

Linda's boyfriend, a twenty-something grad student

Pedestrains

PLACE

Downtown street of a Midwestern College Town TIME

Late Summer, Present Day

ACT 1

SETTING: CENTER STAGE is a stone bench with a card table set in front of it. On each side of the stone bench are pots of colorful marigolds, petunias, and pansies. UPSTAGE are several storefronts with large glass windows displaying custom jewelry, art, and clothing.

AT RISE:

MAGIC MAN is seated behind the card table, shuffling a deck of worn cards. He is wearing a red, white, and blue sequined top hat, a pinstripe suit with a red, white, and blue pinwheel stuck in his breast pocket, and blue-sequined shoes.

MAGIC MAN

(Speaking rapidly)

Pick a card, pick a card. Any one will do! Come on folks, pick a card, pick a card!

He holds out the deck of cards to PASSERBY who ignore him.

Come on you, with your liberal-loving hearts, pick the Queen, yes pick the Queen of Hearts, she’s waiting for you lovely folks, come on, come on, pick a King, yes, you are all Kings to me! Come on! Come on!

Nobody is passing by. The MAGIC MAN sets the cards down and waits. He pulls a red, white, and blue handkerchief from his right pants pocket, twists it a certain way, and then slips it into his other pocket.

LINDA and MIKE enter from STAGE RIGHT and pause in front of the MAGIC MAN’s table.

LINDA (To Mike)

I want to get this book. I’ll catch you later.

MIKE grabs LINDA’s arm, stopping her.

MIKE

Come on, you ’ re just going to leave? We have a lot to talk about.

LINDA Mike, I’ve got to go.

MAGIC MAN leans forward slightly.

MIKE But Linda LINDA

I’m sick of your bullshit Mike, just let me go.

MIKE lets go of her arm. I’ll call you later, okay?

MIKE Fine.

MIKE exits STAGE RIGHT. LINDA walks by MAGIC MAN, who holds out his cards

MAGIC MAN

Oh sweet lady, come on pick a card!

LINDA No, thank you.

LINDA walks on and exits STAGE LEFT. MAGIC MAN sits back down.

MAGIC MAN

Nobody wants a card today, huh, nobody, nobody.

COLLEGE GIRL enters STAGE RIGHT carrying a shopping bag. She walks slowly while looking around.

Oh, you lovely lady, do you want a card?

COLLEGE GIRL pauses.

COLLEGE GIRL

Who? Me?

MAGIC MAN

Yes, yes, you. Come here, I have some magic for you!

COLLEGE GIRL walks over, smiling.

MAGIC MAN

Here’s the cards.

MAGIC MAN fans the cards out in his hands and holds them out to COLLEGE GIRL.

Pick one, look at it, and then stick it back in.

COLLEGE GIRL

What if you guess it right?

MAGIC MAN

Then, I get the five dollars.

COLLEGE GIRL

But I don’t have any cash.

MAGIC MAN

I’ll spot you.

MAGIC MAN pulls out a five-dollar bill from his pocket and lays it on the table. He turns his head away and holds out the cards.

COLLEGE GIRL

Okay, I’ll do it.

COLLEGE GIRL pulls one card out, looks at it, and then puts it back in his hands.

MAGIC MAN shuffles the cards elaborately.

MAGIC MAN

Everything’s fair, everything’s random, everything’s fine under the sun on this wonderful day. Are you getting the sun? Enjoying the sun?

COLLEGE GIRL

Yeah, sure.

MAGIC MAN

Amazing, wonderful, pretty girl like you, but you ’ re smart? Are you smart?

COLLEGE GIRL

Uh, I don’t really–

MAGIC MAN

Smart enough to pass your Orgo exam?

COLLEGE GIRL

Excuse me?

MAGIC MAN

Yeah, you ’ re smart. Yeah, you ’ re smart, but not smart enough for the cards.

MAGIC MAN pulls out a card and shows it to COLLEGE GIRL

This your card?

COLLEGE GIRL (Nodding)

Wow, that’s really something!

MAGIC MAN

Nothing to it! Easiest thing under the sun. Here’s another trick.

MAGIC MAN pulls out his handkerchief and twirls it around until it disappears. He opens his empty palm.

COLLEGE GIRL

That’s really neat.

COLLEGE GIRL takes out her cell phone, and holds it up to MAGIC MAN.

Can you do another?

MAGIC MAN

(Ducking his head)

No, no more, today.

COLLEGE GIRL

(Laughing)

Come on!

MAGIC MAN No, no more.

COLLEGE GIRL (Sighing)

Well, all right. Thanks, anyway.

COLLEGE GIRL exits STAGE LEFT.

MAGIC MAN (Muttering)

Don’t do magic on command, no that’s not me.

MAGIC MAN pulls his handkerchief out of his sleeve, then folds it into his pocket again. He shuffles the cards.

PASSERBY

Hey Magic Man!

MAGIC MAN

Hello you liberal-loving-looney, you!

PASSERBY shakes their head and exits STAGE LEFT.

MAGIC MAN

Come on folks I have another one for you! A great one! Come on! No one? There’s two and two is five, and q and z are “cat” and the clocks chime thirteen! Come on! Come on!

TEENAGERS enter STAGE RIGHT and walk byMAGIC MAN.

TEENAGERS (Shouting)

Hey! Go away you old man!

TEENAGERS walk by MAGIC MAN and exit STAGE LEFT.

MAGIC MAN

You Scallywag carpetbaggers! Come on, come on, two for a dollar, two roses for a dollar, I’ll make ‘ em pop out of your ears!

PASSERBY walks by, exit STAGE LEFT.

You have lovely ears, come on, come on!

LINDA enters STAGE LEFT. She is texting on her phone, distracted.

MAGIC MAN

Come on, you lovely lady, so beautiful and busy and smart!

LINDA looks up from her phone at MAGIC MAN.

LINDA

Hey, what’s your problem?

MAGIC MAN

I’ve got no problems, no problems at all, but you sure do.

LINDA

Hey, what do you know about my problems?

LINDA walks over to MAGIC MAN.

MAGIC MAN

Everything and anything.

LINDA

(Pointing a finger at MAGIC MAN)

Do you even have a license to operate here? I mean, what are you, some man ripping off kids with your cheap tricks?

MAGIC MAN

Cheap tricks? None of my tricks are cheap.

MAGIC MAN shuffles the cards. But maybe yours are.

LINDA Excuse me?

LINDA takes a step even closer to MAGIC MAN.

What the hell is your problem?

MAGIC MAN quietly shuffles the cards again.

You know what? Fine

Linda turns to walk away.

MAGIC MAN

Don’t leave, I can read your future.

LINDA

Oh, really? I’m getting a cop.

MAGIC MAN

Will your baby love having a mother who’s a ‘tattle-tale’?

LINDA

What did you say, you prick?

MAGIC MAN

I mean, you must set an example for your baby.

LINDA

What the hell do you know about anything?

What the hell? Who are you?

MAGIC MAN

I’m…the Magic Man!

LINDA

(Chuckling sarcastically)

Oh, yeah, yeah. Well.

LINDA folds her arms defensively.

MAGIC MAN

And your friend…Mike is it? Are you going to tell him about the little one?

MAGIC MAN folds his arms and whistles a lullaby.

LINDA

You are really something. Do you just sit here all day, listening to other people’s conversations?

MAGIC MAN continues to hum. Well really, forget it, you are a creep. A no good, lousy con-artist. I have a mind to report you.

LINDA pulls out her out phone and tries to take a picture of MAGIC MAN. MAGIC MAN ducks.

Hear me, it is none of your goddamn business what I do or don’t do.

LINDA moves closer to MAGIC MAN’s table. Hear me?

MAGIC MAN ducks and nods his head, in a deliberately pathetic matter. A crowd has begun to gather around their confrontation. Hear me?

MIKE enters STAGE LEFT.

MIKE

Linda, let's go. Come on.

MIKE reaches for LINDA’s hand and she shrugs it off.

LINDA Leave me alone, Mike.

MIKE

Linda, this really isn’t the place.

LINDA

This isn’t any of your business either!

MIKE

Come on, tell me what’s going on.

LINDA

It’s none of your business.

MAGIC MAN

I think it is.

LINDA No really, stay out of this.

MAGIC MAN Isn’t it Linda, isn’t it?

LINDA No!

MIKE

What’s he talking about?

LINDA

Nothing, he’s crazy.

MAGIC MAN

That’s not very nice of you, Linda.

LINDA

Who said that I was nice?

MAGIC MAN

A mother should always be nice, and sweet, and gentle, and kind.

MAGIC MAN hums a lullaby.

LINDA

He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s making shit up. Trying to make a quick buck.

MAGIC MAN

Who says?

LINDA Stop it!

LINDA covers her ears with her palms. MAGIC MAN hums.

MIKE tugs LINDA’s arm..

MIKE

What is he talking about Linda?

LINDA

Nothing! Nothing at all!

The crowd murmurs, some pull out their phones, one snaps a picture, others touch their phone screens, perhaps with the intention of calling the police.

MIKE

Come on Linda, let’s go, we really need to go.

MIKE tugs LINDA’s arm again, and she reluctantly drops her hands from her ears. She ducks her face away from the crowd and she and Mike exit STAGE RIGHT

The crowd disperses and MAGIC MAN goes back to shuffling cards. Curtain.

-Sarah Daly

Mangroves Don ' t Grow Mangoes

Mangroves Don’t Grow Mangos

I searched for wild mangos dangling from mangrove trees, but never found the golden treasure What I found was the edge of brackish waters where tan sands hugged tangled roots, and the tickle of salt didn’t bother them at all The sturdy trees hold shorelines together, and shelter fiddler crabs, terrapin turtles, egrets, and kingfishers creating a concealed community connected by the branches of mangoless mangroves

-Canaan Walker

Chi EM

We flew to Da Nang, then took the bus to a potter’s field. The story follows the scenic mountains, curving alongside the dirt roads. We trace down the dips to the duck ponds, back to the American war. When much of this greenery hid soldiers waiting to cross the Han river into the South, US troops would consistently bomb the edge connecting land to water. Because of all the blood that glided from the hills to down below, Han River became ‘Blood River’.

My great-uncle was twenty seven when he ran up the hill to tend to the aftermath. The first bomb prompted his presence. And then they let down another. Although everyone did their best to piece together an arm with a leg to a sheet with a name, so many mourned the bodies piled up, that even those unsympathetic to communism came to light an incense. In short, one caught a slip of paper, sparked and ignited all the men and women to dust. The family van parked outside the cemetery. My dad announced how lucky our family was. We entered the cemetery knowing exactly where my great-uncle rested. For their sacrifice, the graves are clean and honored by the government. Nevertheless, it was still a potter’s field because only twenty percent of the dust was identifiable.

My great-uncle was the eighty percent whose family took the test and came up short.

Like any girl at the right age, I lugged the fruits, my sister, the paper money and the incense down from the van into the open field where the heroes laid to rest. I only slightly whimper from the patriotism in the air. And from the pain for our countrymen. No description of Vietnam quite exists without an antagonistic portrayal of the heat. Today was sunny, unbearably. So my sister’s impression of our quiet journey stepping onto the grass was etched away by sunlight. My grandmother left the van last. I reached out my remaining hand and grabbed on to her as her feet balanced her body.

To soothe my grandmother’s guilt, my dad found a psychic who led us to the very gravestone we all stood before. This man looked like any other scam. Draped over his stocky torso, a black aó dài, traditionally cut, as it neither hugged nor diminished his curves. He held in one hand a disheveled yellow map with Han characters, the other, a jade rosary. He hummed the entire ride here. He put his hands on my thighs as a joke. “Here. Your uncle is here ” He turns to my dad while gesturing towards an unmarked grave far deep into the cemetery. We each followed him with my dad leading

by his side holding a granite slab. Engraved on it is a name followed by numbers I have mostly been afraid to read and never ever did know. I had planned to take photos of myself on this trip and wore heeled sandals donned with a needlessly long coral dress. By now, I had already tied one side of my dress into a knot. On one arm, I wear the fruits. On the other, I hold my grandmother as the roads get harder to guess. My sister is behind me digging her platforms in and out of the mud. We walked a short while until we reached where the ancient roots of a palm tree went back into the ground. There lay an unmarked grave like the millions that surrounded it.

My grandma solemnly bowed a sincere thank you towards the psychic. Without looking up, she scolds, “Don’t just stand there. Set up the fruit already. Your greatuncle must be hungry.”

I promptly put out the dragon fruits, mandarins and mangoes on all the graves nearby. My sister potted the orchids. We lit incense then I burnt the paper. One hundred dollar bills. Wads of five hundred thousand vietnam dongs. Blue Shirts. White Shirts. A big house. A car. Then my dad laid down the rock slab and backed away The shine from its veneer reflected the fire back. The heat suffocated me a little. But I did not complain about the obvious, I was too concerned with the unknown.

We may never know whose dust we mourn today. We don’t dare acknowledge this. We all stood silently for my grandmother to uphold her sisterly duties. She is now seventy-eight. She returns here knowing she had taken care of her little brother into his next reincarnation.

I watched everyone close their eyes. So I clasped my hands together. Rest my index fingers onto my chin. I closed my eyes and repeated to myself, “Nam Mô A Di Đà Phật. Nam Mô A Di Đà Phật. Nam Mô A Di Đà Phật. I am Nguyễn Ánh Hằng. I was born on January 20th, 1999. I come here today to thank you for protecting our country. For sacrificing your life for us to have peace. I am here to pay my respects and to ask you to continue to protect and bless us with health, prosperity and happiness for the years to come. ”

"Nam Mô A Di Đà Phật" I katowed once.

"Nam Mô A Di Đà Phật" I katow twice.

"Nam Mô A Di Đà Phật" I katow thrice. It was a short prayer. I said what anyone says to a man they have only heard of twice. Once offhandedly. And the other, on the ride here. When everyone was done with their prayers, the adults sent us back to the van. The psychic took out from his pocket a small black book of, I assumed, spells.

“Can I stay? This looks cool.” I interrupted the ceremony.

“Chuyện người lớn " (Adult stuff) my grandma snapped back. She took her hand out from the prayer position and wrapped her right hand on my left shoulder to turn me around. Then she whispered.

“I have to speak privately with him. We have important things to catch up on. Take your sister to the van and take care of her. She seems tired.” She then patted my shoulder twice to send me off.

My sister and I walked out from deep in the cemetery to the gate where the gravekeeper sat on his plastic stool, one leg crossed over the other. I turned to my sister with her ear plugs in, staring far into the distance. Her posture was slouchier than the day before. Her demeanor is more lackadaisical than ever. But before I could even bend her back straight and interrupt her little world with some light scolding, the grave keeper, having seen us appear near, had already gestured his arms, signaling us to come to him. His straw hat rested on his thighs as he puffed in and out the cigarette smoke between words.

“You kids come from Saigon, eh?”

“Dạ. " (Yes) I said whilst shyly bowing my head down.

“Are you gonna go anywhere fun? You’ve come all the way, make sure your parents let you have fun too.” He laughed and I awkwardly mimicked him.

At the mere suggestion of teenage rendezvous, my sister finally awakened from her boredom and cheerfully inquired, “Uncle, do you know any fun places?”

The gravekeeper chuckled, “Go to Han River at night. The dragon statue on the bridge blows fire and they have a lot of bánh tráng trộn, xiên que, that junk food you kids like.”

"Wow, Uncle you ’ re so xì tin" (cool) I politely joked and he laughed in response. “It’s very hot out here. I think we’ll go sit in the van. Thank you so much for your suggestions and for taking care of the cemetery. We’re very grateful.”

“Haiz, no biggie. The soldiers keep me busy with their shenanigans.” I bowed, then looked to my sister to make sure she did as well. We walked towards the van as the gravekeeper continued to laugh in the distance.

In the van, we both sat in separate rows. I put on my headphones and blasted my favorite Britney song, Oops! I Did it Again. I am now steeping in my own annoyance. Occasionally, I would turn to my sister, who did not seem to care for a thing in the world, to fuel my anger.

You see, my problem is this. I'm dreaming away.

Looking out the window, there was now no one near us. Even the gravekeeper had left to attend to his duties. Just two girls in a van, staring out at the mountains to pass the minutes. The silence

helped me finally make sense of the gut wrenching sadness I felt as I watched my grandma hold back tears. He was not my brother to cry for, so I cried for my grandmother instead.

“Do you think the psychic is legit?” intruded my sister.

I turned up the music to avoid an unnecessary argument. Wishing that heroes, they truly exist

“No, like seriously, why do they believe in this nonsense? And you buy into it too.”

I closed my eyes so I don’t have to respond. So she would not have seen my cry.

I cry watching the days

“Does it matter? You don’t care anyways. ”

The heat was increasingly irritating. The van did not have black screens to soothe my skin. I was buried in heat. I was sweating. The makeup for my planned photos had been melted by the sweat.

I lugged the fruit and laid it down. I burnt the money. I held my grandmother through the rocky road. I did everything and I looked ugly while doing it all.

“Yeah, I don’t. But you do. It’s kinda backwards and stupid.”

Can't you see I'm a fool in so many ways?

“If you ’ re gonna come along, then be respectful. No one needs you here. You don’t do shit. If I was not here, I know you’d let grandma do all the work. Do you even care about her? She’s in a lot of pain having to remember all this stuff from the war and you act like you ’ re above it all.”

I yanked out my headphones. I had never been so upset that I needed to stand up and assert my dominance. She cowered back in her seat, taken aback by my tone.

“Chillout. You’re turning crazy like mom. No one asks you to do anything. You do it and then you get mad at everyone. ” She rebutted me, knowing that it would have only made me madder.

“You don’t ask because you expect it. You’re so fucking spoiled. You complain that no one gets you. That you ’ re not close with anyone. Well you don’t even try to spend time with us. You don't treat us like we ’ re your friends or your family. We cook and serve you. You little brat. You..” By now, I had already failed to keep the tears from coming back. My dress still knotted up, dug into my thighs and into the cushion of the chairs. To yell down to the back row, I practically bent the arch of my chair into a flat surface. Still, I urged the vowels to echo through the crying. Then suddenly, the doors flung open.

“What happened? Why are you crying?” My dad asked in a tone that clearly showed his lack of sympathy on my behalf. Neither reason nor my crying could have refrained him from scolding me. Afterall, I am the older one.

“I don’t know. She just randomly started yelling at me! Calling me a brat and spoiled and that no one wants me here.” Now, her eyes begin to water like how babies

automatically scream at any slight disapproval.

For some reason, birth order dictates that I must be more motherly by nature and more stern in demeanor. I must never be upset with a child who does not know as much. I always have to give to her wants, without wanting any in return. Mom has to feed her, clean her clothes, and clean her room. I have to talk to her because she does not talk to mom. And that is the law. And my father, rightfully, looked at me as how one looks at a criminal. But I had never felt the urge to speak truth to power run through my veins before. So, for the first time, I looked into my father’s eyes with a death wish in mind.

“You always take her side when she’s obviously wrong. Mom is right. You’re why she’s so selfish and inconsiderate.”

One slap across my left cheek. It was swift. I held my hand up and pressed my palm against the pain.

“What’s got into you? If you ’ re too lazy to be a big sister, like your mom is being a wife, then you can follow her and leave this household.”

That was the last words I heard from him before he embraced my sister and called a cab.

They

soon left for their father daughter date by Han River, to watch the dragon blow fire. They both needed a break from the crazy women who dared demand them to be bothered for people other than themselves.

Before they left, while they were waiting for the cab, even after they had left and it was only my grandma and me in the van driving back to our hotel, I didn't stop crying. And I kept crying.

Burrowed my head between the corner intersecting the seat and the window. And I kept crying.

My grandma could not comfort me with words that aligned her with scorned women, bitches and feminists. In short, she could not say I was right so she said nothing at all. Instead, the entire 2 hour ride, she patted my back over and over. She brushed my hair over and over.

Only when we got back to our hotel room did the crying manage itself. My grandma spoke her first sentence for the night.

“Go shower and then sleep. I’ll pack the suitcases.”

Despite still choking on my own words, I insisted that I would help. I pulled out the two suitcases from the closet.My grandmother and I shared one. My dad and my sister each had their own. I opened ours and my grandma wrapped the remaining fruits to give once we got back.

Then there were the lanterns we bought from Hoi An. And lastly, our clothes, each of us, only an outfit or two.

Then my grandma opened my dad’s and sister’s suitcases. “Don’t. Let them do it themselves. Go to sleep.”

She ignored me and continued gathering their dirty laundry into a large pile to fold. “Okay, I’ll do it but you go to sleep.”

She does not stop so I had no choice but to assist her. We fold their clothes in silence for a few minutes. It was a sad day, so I did not force conversation. But the sadness could not overpower my grandma’s need to teach me how to be a good woman: one that takes pride in loving those who do not love back as much.

“I joined the Communist Party too, you know. I mean I didn’t have to fight like your great-uncles and grandpa, but I still joined and was brave too. They don’t see it that way. They don’t think I sacrificed at all for our country. But they’re wrong. ”

Knowing there was nothing left to lose, I finally asked the question I had been wondering all day.

“Is that why they didn’t come with us?”

She nodded her head then resumed her story. “They don’t believe in the psychic. They think I’m crazy, but they don't get that it's my duty to care even when no one does. And that’s how I sacrifice for my people.”

I could only infer that she understood how I felt. But to her, caring was not a burden. She took pride to care like the commander to his badge. Caring did not weaken her the slightest. She was simply a soldier doing what was needed of her.

When I was a kid, I was often afraid of ghosts. The only way for me to sleep was if I turned my face to the wall and she cuddled me from behind. That night, I was not scared but she was scared on my behalf. Of my possible fate the next morning and for my future as a girl who had her first taste of talking back. She wrapped her arms around me to comfort herself. I cried again.

-Lam Trinh

Mirror Halves

-Mayra Ianakieva

Of This Universe

Add a little bI do not think I came from space

I could never be awarded such an honorable grace

Though sometimes I feel it in my veins

As I look upon those eternal flames, Each painting with its own hues

Burning fiery red, glowing the loveliest of blues

That I must have some ancestor, some ascendant

Some ethereal being locked away in a lost pendant, From the rusted, rocky surface of Mars

To each of Orion’s cerulean stars.

From Gioiello’s amethystine sparkle to Saturn’s dancing rings, My soul, transcendent Sings.

I gaze into this dark, eternal, abyss

Not a single fleck, not a single speck is found remiss

And I am Alice through the looking glass

Plucked from the hands of a watch stained brass

Time falls away,

Above me Cassiopeia and Cetus sway

I am of the galaxies, of the nebulas, no matter how far they seem I am of the dust of a star whose beauty now courses through my bloodstream

And though I feel myself to be but a pinprick

There is something within me intrinsic

That belongs to the fierce Aries, the mighty Perseus, That belongs to the noble Andromeda, the mystic Orpheus

And though of these distant places I can only dream, They are a salve, putting my soul at ease.

I know myself a scientist

I know the laws of this existence, inviolate

Thus I know the prodigious time between Myself and all that has been In this galaxy unending,

In this universe that has painted me from the dust of its own stars, each brush stroke delicately blending

The nitrogenous bases of my DNA

The sodium, potassium that light up my neurons as I write this essay, The iron that courses through my very blood

The carbon laced in the very fabric of my being as it treads through the earth’s mud

All was made at the core of a star

So many billions of light years far

So, I think

I very well do come from space!

I am the space I marvel upon As it looks down on me, Like two halves of a mirror

And I see all much clearer, it is so much nearer

The beauty of this infinite universe

Of which I thought myself to be a stranger

Forgive me, for I err!

For it has always been, and always will be Within me.

-Mayra Ianakieva

My Grim Fairytale

If mother goose fucked eeyore and bore a homo it would be a fowl ass, a braying bird

It might look normal in the eyes of others, but find itself absurd. The fact of its existence could seem fictional to you, but that doesn't stop this creature from needing something of its own to do.

The days are always dreary, yet there's a lesson in each cloud. All this information, the beast frequently says out loud. No one likes the downer donkey or the moralistic goose, but this offspring is the both of them alone out on the loose. It's searching on for others hoping it will find at least the possibility of one with whom to share its mind.

-Andy Folkenflik

Springtime

-Olivia Baldacci

What Naps in a Box at the End of The Road?

We stood waiting–in anticipation. We stood waiting–And watched As our friend fingered at the edges Of duct tape on a dented shoebox That we found littered off the side of the road. We were curious what was inside. Maybe it was diamonds, Or some guy ’ s finger. We had to find out, So we stood waiting. The atmosphere was cold and uninhabitable. We were out within a field of Wheat Which rose over heads When we weren’t looking. We were searching for something, For the face of Christ to appear in the sky Or maybe for Sasquatch to leap out And wring our necks. So we stood waiting. I orbited around my friend Hoping that the heat radiating off

Of his dense expanse

Would make love to mine

In a moment of passionate enthalpy.

“Go on and do it!”

We shouted at our friend, From a distance away behind a tree. We stood waiting together–For the box to explode and

When I Leave

-Greg Laghiti

-Noelle Salaun

Let Them Ripen

Lule is seven. Her name means flower. She is my mother. She climbs the cherry tree with her older sister. They laugh so loud they don’t hear their grandmother shout “let them ripen! If you eat them all now, the family will never get a taste when they’re ready!”

Lule and her sister are not misaligned with the land, the regime is. There is a crushed ant stuck to her finger crushed onto the bark, onto her finger from the pressure from her excitement they sit on the branch and chew and chew and you’d think they forgot how to swallow the way their cheeks inflated like the gajde, that stomach lining that skin sewn together blown to celebrate. They will celebrate one day but it won’t be for a decade until then they’ll struggle to be full they’ll struggle after too but that’s why they eat so many cherries today sitting in the sky no one told them unripe fruit hurts your stomach how could it hurt if God made them like that oh please I hope nobody heard that they’ll interrogate the elders “what’s this religious propaganda you ’ re feeding the children” they’ll respond “it’s the only food we have.” Her stomach rumbles and she can’t control her little body she’s above the ground and she perches like a bird her insides forfeit those green cherries they fall to the ground Lule and Dranja laugh so loud they don’t hear the bells tolling for their youth

-Kristina Pepaj

Overstimulated:

Competition:

-lily Guerin

Contributions

Sowjanya Sritharasarma...

....is a Junior Computer Science major and English minor at Hunter College. Although she aspires to become a software engineer, Sowjanya still has a passion for the liberal arts, especially literature. She enjoys reading and writing in her free time, and hopes to one day write a novel.

B Kim...

...majors in Environmental Studies and is aiming to work in ecological conservation once they graduate. This year, they wanted to branch out a bit with their art medium-wise. They hope to keep trying new things and having fun creating!

Andy Folkenflik...

...began writing poetry as a child and has not submitted to any publications since their high school literary journal well over a decade ago. They have continued to write throughout their life with the assistance of long subway commutes and a smartphone notes app. Being at Hunter is a wonderful opportunity for them to explore the possibility of sharing some of their work more publicly.

Joe C Smolen

...while Mr. Smolen’s B.A. English is of the University of Washington, his post-grad work is all just fiction, the published of which – along with his bent – can be viewed at joecsmolen.com. With his wife Sherrie and the ghost of their black, Standard Poodle Rico Suave, he lives on the Oregon Coast in a really pretty good house they built themselves. He is late of the Seattle Times.

Sonia Lombardo

Noelle Salaun is a current BFA candidate at Hunter College expected to graduate in spring of 2024 with a concentration in painting. Her interests are in creating autobiographical works that explore femininity, culture and, deriving the meaning of identity.

Betsy Morales...

Betsy Morales (she/they) is a Mexican-American writer born and raised in Queens, NY. She is pursuing her Bachelor's in English Literature, Language, and Criticism. Through their writing, Betsy explores her culture and identity through memoirs and short narratives. She feels passionate about informing others of the struggles of undocumented Latinx immigrants leaving their countries to face continued hardships in the United States. Her essay "All for You" was published in The Undergraduate Journal of Contemporary Issues & Media at the University of Utah in 2020.

Jasmine Lien...

...is currently a senior at Palm Beach Atlantic University, majoring in journalism. On The Beacon Today, they are the multimedia editor, assisting with copyediting, and managing the website. They hope to expand my professional writing abilities by publishing their work in journals. Often, they gain inspiration from walking in nature, peoplewatching in cafes, and having conversations with their dog.

Pei Ying Ren...

Pei Ying Ren is an English, Creative Writing major at Hunter College. She enjoys occasionally writing short stories about people, relationships, and culture. As a native New Yorker, she likes taking long walks through the city

Sarah Daly...

Sarah Daly is an American writer whose work has appeared in The Spotlong Review, Rejection Letters, Down in the Dirt, The Dribble Drabble Review, and elsewhere.

Canaan Walker...

...is an undergraduate student at Palm Beach Atlantic University, and is majoring in Psychology with a minor in Creative Writing. They've lived in Colorado, Wisconsin and now South Florida. They have learned from and loved the cultural diversity of each environment.

Lam Trinh...

...has always been fascinated with the stories of those who we 'forget'. Stories of ordinary people who live beautiful, painful lives and how you can honor them. This story is their way of trying to honor their greatuncles' and grandma's legacy. It is to show how love and courage is passed on in ordinary ways - by the kitchen or in the laundry room.

Mayra Ianakieva...

I am a sophomore at Hunter College with a passion for science. In my free time, I enjoy reading, working on creative writing pieces, drawing, and playing the piano and ukulele. I find that my interest and appreciation for the fine arts and for the sciences intersect in my writing and artistry.

Olivia Baldacci...

Olivia Baldacci (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist with a focus on combining art and activism. She currently attends Hunter College, majoring in Media Studies with a concentration in Journalism, and is minoring in Art History and Women’s Gender Studies. She is an Art Editor for Hunter College’s literary and art publication, The Olivetree Review as well as a student reporter for Hunter College’s newspaper, The Envoy.

Greg Laghiti...

Hello, my name is Greg Laghiti, a student at Hunter College. My concentration is creative writing and I am majoring in English literature. I want to become a High School English teacher, and I have already applied to graduate school. I am graduating in June. I used to be a biology major. I enjoy writing because as a writer you are powerful and nothing is more powerful than effectively depicting what you are trying to convey. There are no limits within writing, so that is what attracted me to the hobby

Noelle Salaun...

...is a current BFA candidate at Hunter College expected to graduate in spring of 2024 with a concentration in painting. Her interests are in creating autobiographical works that explore femininity, culture and, deriving the meaning of identity

Kristina Pepaj...

Kristina Pepaj is a graduate student in Hunter's TESOL K-12 program. She received her B.A. in Adolescent Education in English with minors in French and Creative Writing last spring. Like many first-generation immigrants, Kristina is

passionate about exploring the experiences of diaspora groups. She currently works in an international high school providing language and literacy instruction for newcomer and immigrant students.

Edward Supranowicz...

Edward Michael Supranowicz is the grandson of Irish and Russian/Ukrainian immigrants He grew up on a small farm in Appalachia. He has a grad background in painting and printmaking. Some of his artwork has recently or will soon appear in Fish Food, Streetlight, Another Chicago Magazine, The Door Is A Jar, The Phoenix, and The Harvard Advocate. Edward is also a published poet who has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize multiple times.

Lily Guerin....

....is a wonderful artist, who was able to provide 3 amazing pieces of work for this current issue. Their work is varied, illustrative and creates a wonderful atmosphere that is whimsical and immersive.

Meet The Staff

Editor-in-Chief/Art Editor:

Jordan Ortiz (he/him) is a Psychology Major who loves the way the mind works. On a normal day, Jordan can be found drawing or sleeping. He's made it his goal to single handedly devour EVERY Starbucks Coffeecake he crosses paths with.

Vice President/Poetry Editor:

Elizabeth De Furia (they/them) is studying English with a concentration in Linguistics and Rhetoric while pursuing a minor in Media Studies at Hunter College and a Certificate in Labor Studies from the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies. They are a Thomas Hunter Honors Scholar as well as a Mellon Public Humanities and Social Justice Scholar. Their Goal is bread and roses for all- poetry too!

Treasurer:

Tyler Martinez (he/him) is an English student at Hunter College. He looks forward to graduating in the Spring of 2023 with a Bachelor's in English Literature and Criticism. As an avid reader and writer, he enjoys short American fiction and hopes to continue his education and add value to the literary world

Secretary:

Zhen Zou (he/him) is an aspiring med student and is currently in a toxic relationship with Organic Chemistry.

Senior Publicist:

Sowjan Sritharasarma (she/her) is a Computer Science Major who loves reading murder mystery novels and tries not to kill her houseplants.

Assistant Publicists:

Olivia Massey (she/her) is studying English, Adolescent Education, and Political Science on the Pre-Law track. She enjoys reading memoirs, watching documentaries, reality TV, and going for walks with her cat in her spare time.

Jen Herrera (they/she) is a Film and Media studies student with plans to be a filmmaker after graduation. Her films are coming of age dramadies and psychological thrillers. In her downtime, she enjoys reading and eating entire packs of cookies.

Art Editor:

Olivia Baldacci (she/they) is a writer, artist, and designer with a a passion or social justice and sitcoms. She currently attends Hunter College, majoring in Media Studies with a concentration in Journalism , and is minoring in Art History and Women's Gender Studies.

Poetry Editors:

Bella Ramirez (she/her) is an English major with a concentration in Creative Writing and minor in Gender Studies. Her poetry has been featured in Sunstroke Magazine, Feminist Writes Magazine, and Brown Sugar Lit. She is originally from Upstate NY, and never shuts up about it.

Prose Editors:

Anling Chen (she/her) is studying Computer Science and Economics. When she's not ediitng, writing, or reading, she enjoys running like the entire zombie population of The Walking Dead is after her.

Phoebe Streeter (she/her) is a Classical Studies /English Lit Major who will make friends with any dog she encounters.

Drama Editors:

Elizabeth Ratkiewicz (any) likes poetry, long walks on the beach and is a passionate fan of the Trolls franchise

Raven Campbell (she/her) is a Creative Writing Major and aspiring published author. She enjoys reading fantasy novels and rewat hi h h ' l d t h d lti l ti

History of The Olivetree Review:

Since the Fall semester of the year 1983, The Olivetree Review has been a Hunter institution publication, allowing student writers/artists to submit their work and see it published. Under the auspices of their faculty advisor, Professor David Winn, a small group of Hunter Students successfully petitioned for Hunter to fund the publication. This allowed The Olivetree's original staff members, Pamela Barbell, Michael Harriton, Mimi Ross DeMars, and Adam Vinueva to create their issue of student work and dedicate it to the memory of the late Hunter College professor and poet, James Wright.

The Olivetree Review has come a long way since that first issue. Digital painting allows for both the inclusion of full color images and extra design elements to be available for all projects. We begun including photography submissions in Issue #7, and advancements in scanning and digital photography have allowed for us to accept nearly any art form that can be captured in one of more frames. We have also begun accepting Drama pieces as of Issue #52, meaning we are finally accepting and printing all forms of creative writing and art that is currently possible.

Art Drama Prose

Poetry

Art Drama Prose

Poetry

Art Drama Prose

Poetry