The Ana: Issue #14 by The Ana

THE ANA: ISSUE 14

THE ANA \THƏ\·\Ā-NƏ\ PRONOUNCED: AH-NUH (NOUN) 1. A collection of miscellaneous information about a particular subject, person, place, or thing. 2. The Ana is a quarterly arts magazine that celebrates humanity. We act and publish in line with the notion that everyone’s life is literature and everyone deserves access to art. While all rights revert to contributors, The Ana would like to be noted as the first place of publication. The Ana acknowledges that this magazine was founded on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone peoples, who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. We acknowledge the painful history of genocide and forced occupation of their territory, and we actively seek to honor and respect the many diverse indigenous people connected to this land on which the magazine was founded. And we honor the fact that they are still existing on this land, and deserve to thrive. If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, we encourage you to pay an annual Shummi Land Tax (via the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust) or to find a way to aid in the redistribution of land sovereignty to Indigenous folks. Cover design by London Pinkney & JZ of JZ Creative Design Typesetting and design by Carlos Quinteros III & London Pinkney Set in Georgia (Matthew Carter, 1993), Futura (Paul Renner, 1927), Krungthep (Susan Care, 1984)

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THE ANA presents

ISSUE #14 Winter 2024

Editor’s Note

Hello Reader, In lieu of saying too much, I will say this: There is more to come.

much love, London Pinkney Editor-in-Chief

FICTION 2

TUNAFISH 101 by Marley Townsend

California Wormhole by Marley Townsend

A Kettle on the Heat by Nathan Berenstein

BELOVED CASTRO by Manauia Garcia Tellez

Sylvie and Salt by Haze Fry

The Family Barbecue by Zach Murphy

Cindy in Paradise by Marley Townsend

NONFICTION 63

Falling in Time by Dean Engle

POETRY 1

Not hiding— unseen by Jade Zora Dean

More or Less by Edward Gunawan

the bed is a constant, dealt by threds holding hands by Tom Marsi

Antipoem by Jade Zora Dean

Poetic Parallax by Jade Zora Dean

The Pen by Holly Payne-Strange

An Italian Summer Wedding by Edward Gunawan

By Sowing Half a Seed by Felisa Charles

INTERVIEW 25

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A Conversation with Mimi Tempestt interview by Leelee Jackson

VISUAL ART This issue The Editors wanted to highlight artists who are creating work in support of Palestine. We are grateful that these artists are using their platform and talent to defend human rights and to stand agaist colonialism.

featuring

The Artists of JustSeeds Zeloot AKA Eline Van Dam · Junieawan Bagaskara · Rachel Meirs Chris Ng · LOUDER THAN WORDS (S.A. Bachman & Neda Moridpour)

Natalie Hinahara

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Not hiding— unseen poetry by Jade Zora Dean

1.( )

2.( )

3.( )

4.( )

5.( )

(1. Bleach blue stains / satin light beams / A gays gaze / illuminated satin cheek / iridescent luminescent rays / through the still / of this night / of my life / I never knew I needed / your embrace / wrap those tentacles / around my heart / spread your ink / tattoo your scripture upon / my innermost chamber) (2. Velvety black / filling falling sack / down pits / murky, swirling facts / fulfill me in / truth / soak me through / I already feel you / spout spilling down / fucking overflow my brimming—) (3. Open, brilliant, chasm / plains / rough edged, rounded gaze / grassland forever / this is where I die / a bathroom in nowhere / at least I know / someone who will cry / my queer funeral / just another / fag trying to / use the right restroom) (4. Are we just prey / even by day / demonizers hunting / stalking shifty sifting / they pounce / to tear and rip away / with bullets / for claws singing / the music of the urban jungle /jaws of death) (5. Shaving down, razor-wire thin / legs longing, for lost leisure / because bound ahead, just / crashing coalitions— converging upon the / twilight twinks / snapping twigs under feet / like bone-breaking / marrow burning blood / fire from fascist veins / as we cascade away from / cities / raging / flames)

TUNAFISH01 fiction by Marley Townsend One Sunday when Ernie was almost eleven a shipping container went belly-up, dumping two hundred thousand tuna cans into the Bay, and for a short time afterwards the dead fish swam with the living. Ernie first watched this transpire in a YouTube newsreel compilation video titled “INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING FAILS: ULTIMATE TUNA FISH EMBARRASSMENT’ and from there she divined that moral atonement was impossible, and that true inner bliss came from total ironic consumption. When the rest of life went downhill, Ernie knew she could pinpoint it to that Sunday, when the physical divide between death and amniotic fluid was severed, and she finally got her own computer. For years afterwards, the memory of the video clip grew organically in her head. In her most cherished version, the Bay was a brilliant, churning blue-green, a color only possible on days so clear that the glittering windows on the Pyramid Building could be seen from Sausalito. It was a beautiful day. The Weatherman said high 60s in an extinct accent. He handed the broadcast back to you, Marcia. Marcia smiled in the corner of the screen as the camera meandered sluggishly from the bridge over to Oakland, where the pastel container ships began to glide off of the piers. Guided by the terrible narrative, the camera swung to one ship with GOLDEN-SEA INC painted on the side in large, clear letters at least three stories high—English here, Japanese kanji there. Marcia was talking about sea conditions, a new museum on Angel Island, construction on the bridges, a labor dispute in Richmond. The ship continued to glide. Thirty, maybe forty seconds in. The sea was darkening now, the blue fading out until the green looked pale and sick. Now, the Bay was surrounded by jagged, menacing shorelines. Now, the ship looked like a lone rabbit in a clearing. What happened next, Ernie never remembered the same way twice. In some divergent versions, the ship simply teetered over, buoyed by waves. In others, a massive

black shadow flitted underneath. In her favorite, Marcia gasped, a hand flying to her round mouth. As if being pulled in, the ship listed to the right. One by one, the containers slid free of their fasteners. The Bay came up to greet them, sucking them into the mouth of the waves in succession. The final container hit harder than the rest: it popped open and began to heave. Thousands of cans rolled out. Tens of thousands. Ernie pictured generations of bottom feeders living off of these colorful capsules of preserved fish, unaware of their genetic similarities. She pictured a cannibalistic feeding frenzy, an ocean now devoid of all fish of all kinds, as they all had developed a taste for each other and hunted themselves to extinction. The real news clip was only 30 seconds long. Marcia was standing on a plain, unassuming pier somewhere off the Embarcadero. Behind her, a line of plain Coast Guard boats drifted towards the center of the bay, and behind them, a lazy swarm of plain fat pelicans. No ship was visible. It did not satisfy. Ernie was still hungry. Marcia held up one can of tuna, most likely purchased from Safeway. It had an unfinished loop on the label, like a Jesus Fish. Thousands like this, she said, still sitting at the bottom of the Bay. Tens of thousands. The clip ended. The browser sat empty, waiting for occupation. By the time Ernie hit twenty, then thirty, then forty the Internet had stopped talking about the Golden Gate Tuna Fish Disaster besides small circles on homegrown websites, html naked and shivering. All her old favorite forums were gone now, replaced by a thin ecosystem of perky true crime podcasters and tragedy hungry teenagers, none of whom she recognized. Even YouTube was irrelevant. It had long been replaced by video sites made to watch while in the bathroom, and there was virtually no clip anywhere longer than ten seconds. She couldn’t even watch the original compilation video except for one blurry file on archive.org, butchered down to bones. And one day, archive.org vanished too, and except for Ned, Ernie was alone. 3

She found it again after nearly ten years of searching, listed on a bald website with no title and the url TUNAFISH01. It was there that she met the can. A tiny jpeg, small enough to hold in your palm. A barely verifiable view into the past. Hers for one thousand dollars. That was the biggest insult. She’d never left the City, not in 40 years of life. If anything, that tuna can belonged to her more than anyone else. If anything, it was owed to her. Who else, she fumed, could smell the brine on their midweek walk to the corner store and understand why the sea looked taller than it used to? Still, she bought the can. When it arrived in late August, she decided to put it out of view for several months to avoid the temptation of it. It was in a very pleasing acrylic box. The soothing blue and green of the original label had been pressed permanently into the metal of the can, giving it the appearance of sea glass: soft, touchable, and ageless. Ernie put it in the back of her lowest cupboard and tried to let herself forget about it. The first night, she lay grimacing at her ceiling, unable to sleep. The world was different, almost imperceptibly so. Perching on her bedside table. Peering into her eye. Sliding into her esophagus and settling in her belly. She didn’t sleep the next day, either. And the day after that. After that, after that, and again and again. That was three months ago. Today, it was Sunday, the third week of November. Sundays had become gray and stagnated. Here, everything was about resurrection again. Churches sprang up in every neighborhood in patchy street-level growths. Schools groaned under the weight of new brass and plastic crosses, new American flags, new eggshell-oatmeal paint jobs. A sagging sense of omniscience settled over everything. In her living room, Ernie pulled up a twitch.tv stream on her tablet of a woman with a webcam implanted on her forehead. The woman was doing a series where she gave baptisms around the world in different liquids, and Ernie had seen them all. The woman called it “found baptism”. It was a form of new Evangelical Fluxus. Previously, she’d baptized a man in Taos, New Mexico in a pool of gasoline. The man’s face was yawning in giddy anticipation as she lowered him into the shimmering pool. His arms reached up4

wards as if to cup the viewer, and as he opened his mouth in euphoria, a steady trickle of gasoline oozed into the upturned corners of his lips. Now, the woman arrived in Iceland, her pale hands flagellating the skin of her forearm as the chat sprayed emote prayers from the bottom of the screen, and Ernie suddenly couldn’t remember why she was watching this. It doesn’t satisfy. She closed the stream. She tabbed over, and again. TUNAFISH01 blinked out at her. The knot in her stomach shrugged as if shaking off water. In the kitchen, a hole grew in the lowest cabinet. Ned called this sort of feeling “anxiety”, but Ernie knew different. It was there all the time, even when she was asleep or high or happy. It grew on her, chewed on her, crawled into her stomach and out of her mouth, giving her wide, sour cold sores and a permanent sense of unease. It was her closest friend. It was in the room with her now. The tablet forgotten on the couch, she got down on her knees and pulled the can from the cupboard. She noted that she needed to clean the floor more often while she was down there. The linoleum tile was sticky as the underside of a piece of tape. Carefully, she put it down on the center of the table and stepped back. It looked bare and awkward, a miniature Jurassic husk on a twenty-first century autopsy table. She went back into the kitchen and rolled out ten sheets of paper towel, folded, and slid the pad under the can. Ernie had a lot of things. A vintage coffee maker, a pile of plasmic green plates, about seven chess sets, varying shapes and sizes. Six half-used bars of soap, stacked on top of each other until the steam of daily showers had fused them together into one odd-smelling tower. Twelve different bottles of citrus cleaner. She used each one just a little bit daily, so as not to make the others feel excluded. She even had canned tuna. The regular kind, with that little pink Jesus Fish smiling up at her from one corner. But those were just things. They were extinct. They’d died so long ago, Ernie had never known them alive. The can was different. The can was dormant, not dead. She wasn’t so sure it wouldn’t move if she turned from it. She wasn’t so sure it hadn’t been moving all along, living an entire life in the dark of the cabinet. 5

In the end, she texted Ned to come over and see. The unease at seeing the tuna can alone on the table had not subsided, and it looked upset to be surrounded by dead junk. He came within ten minutes. I was in the area, he explained, his forehead just a little shiny with sweat. I was nearby. “Is it real?” was the first thing he said after Ernie led him into the kitchen. “Yes,” said Ernie. Ned hadn’t taken off his shoes. She looked down at the faint muddy imprint of them on the linoleum. The fog had returned after a hot October, and the City had grown a thin layer of perma-damp, turning any dirt into a gray-brown slush. “Obviously.” “No, yeah, no,” said Ned, defensively. “Of course.” He shuffled away from her a little. Apologetic? Ernie turned to survey him. She’d known Ned for twenty years. They’d met online, in a thread about structural damage in shopping malls. Back then in pictures he seemed taller, a little lankier, androgynous in the way men in silent films sometimes were. After a couple years of exchanging personalities, Ernie suggested they meet in Dolores Park for a chat. She didn’t know what she had wanted from him. Companionship? Someone to go to the grocery store with, the pharmacy, the bus card kiosk? Someone different inside her head? He was ten minutes early to her twenty. They didn’t talk at all at first, just nodded at each other. Fell in pace and struggled up the hill. She remembered looking up to see a blanket of pelicans above them and thinking, what are they doing this far inland? Ned asked, “what are they doing this far inland?” Ernie replied, “I think they followed me here. I think they want to fuck with me. I think they know a secret of mine”. Something even I don’t know. She slowed, and Ned did, too, their necks craned upward. Ned huffed. He held out a hand to the white mass of birds, pointer finger stretched out into a gun. “Bang.” Afterwards, they talked about everything: about the Internet, about movies, music, TV. Burmese food, shoes, bus routes, health insurance. Ned’s father, a copywriter, and his mother, who paid a plastic surgeon to implant a webcam between her eyes and then disappeared forever, except for on twitch.tv. Evangelical Fluxus (so there it was, remem6

bered Ernie). Ernie’s life: how her plants were dying, how the raccoons didn’t even seem to eat her trash anymore, just tossed it around the yard all night before loping off at dawn. Best friends, instantly. She’d never bothered to be attracted to him. He was too close to her. It would be like being attracted to your refrigerator because you opened it every day and it loyally produced a snack each time. You loved your refrigerator and it kept you alive, but you didn’t want to fuck it. Ned peered at the can from a foot away, like a student observer to a dissection. He tapped gently on the acrylic. “I just don’t know,” Ernie interjected. “I feel like there’s something I should be doing.” This is it, and I’ve ruined it. I’m so hungry, I could eat anything. “You could put it on a melt,” he said after a moment. “Have some cheese on top. Nice cheese. Maybe a sweet one.” He gasped. “Or Havarti! Havarti.” “There’s integrity to worry about,” she said. “This isn’t a joke, Ned. Everything in my entire life has led to this.” This is the moment the fluid tips. The moment the cargo begins to rock. “I know,” Ned said. “I’ve been waiting forever. This literally took me forever.” “I know,” Ned said. “I know.” “I’m concerned about the experience. The flavor is just a distraction.” “But flavor’s important. Honestly, I’d eat anything if it tasted good. I’d eat bugs. Worms. I’d eat insulation. Poison, probably.” He glanced her way, gauging a reaction. Ernie ignored him. “Did you know that there are over one hundred and fifty thousand cans still left in the Bay?” “Well yeah,” said Ned, “but–” “Well about one hundred and forty thousand of those are Dolphin-Safe albacore. And the other ten thousand are non-Dolphin-Safe, but labeled as Dolphin-Safe.” she 7

paused. Perfection is impossible. No matter what you do, someone eventually gets caught in the fishing net and suffocates. “Those are the best ones, because they’re so evil. They’re special because of that evil. GoldenSea is glad they disappeared.” Ned had his hands on his hips. He was still looking at her tuna can. It looked back. He pointed at it with his pelican-killing finger. “This is one of those?” Ernie shrugged. “I don’t know. Could be.” They fell back into silence. On the night of his thirtieth birthday, Ned told Ernie he’d tried to kill himself. He called her, something he never did. She remembered him sounding very far away, with the tone of a crosswalk alert and the static of waves behind him. He’d tried to drown himself at the beach, Ernie, and he was so sorry. It didn’t work because his father had taught him how to swim. His father had laid him on his back gently in the community pool and told him to let go of his strong arms and just float, just let go and float. And nobody else in the universe had existed. And the sky was so blue and so big, Ned could have floated there forever and never seen the end of it. And he wanted to. It was all he’d ever wanted to do. But when Ned looked up from the ocean, the industrial rubber bands he’d used to tie the plastic bags full of river rocks to his ankles slipping off in the brine, he didn’t see anything at all, just empty black water for miles. There was no moon, no stars, no pelicans. And it scared him, Ernie, and he fought back hard and he came back up to shore gasping and shouting and everything had changed, everything. He would do anything not to drown. Anything. When Ernie got to the beach, she realized she’d forgotten a flashlight. She had to use her phone, held in front of her like Perseus and the mirror, illuminating a single stripe of gray sand. The beach stretched out forever, and before she saw Ned at the foot of the water she was sure that if she turned around, the City would be gone entirely. Ned was standing completely still, eyes wide open. There was a constellation of trash around him. 8

It had stuck to his clothes on exit and been pulled to shore by his panicked breaststroke. Plastic bottles, nitrile gloves, condoms. No cans, she thought, no cans. But as she pulled Ned close to her and cried with him, she smelled the salt on his neck and salivated, her eyes wide open and scanning the vanishing beach as if she might see a perfectly rusted blue-green disk laying between the rest of the garbage. Tonight, the light in her kitchen was changing. It was dusk now, Ernie realized. Ned leaned over the can again. She took a step closer. “Know what, Ned?” she said. “I don’t think I want to see what’s inside.” He turned quick. His face was slack with shock. “But this-this is–Ernie, what–” “Could you describe it to me? If you saw it.” Ned’s hand drifted to his forehead. He rubbed his brow. “I don’t know, Ernie. I mean, maybe.” “I feel like if I look right at it,” she said. “Something bad will happen.” I think it might kill me. I don’t know how I know that, but I do. “It’s like Perseus and the mirror,” she added. There was a heat and an itch at the back of her throat. She grabbed Ned by the shoulders and led him to her only kitchen chair (9.95 at the Catholic thrift). He felt warm and real through his sweatshirt. She resisted the urge to pull him closer. “I’m Perseus and you’re my mirror.” He looked up at her, amused. She scraped the chair around to the table to avoid his gaze. “So this is a can of Non-Dolphin-Safe Medusa meat?” She went to the drawer above the sink, pulled out one spotless fork. In it, she caught a sliver of her own face. Her mouth was slack. She tightened it. “I’m just not ready,” she said. She put the fork down in front of Ned, and he clamped down on it like he was afraid it would skitter off as soon as she let go. “At least, not yet” He started to turn. Ernie looked past him, reaching for the acrylic cube and the can. She peeled back the lid, sides straining. 9

“Ernie,” Ned was talking softly behind her, like he was afraid she would bolt. “It’s tuna fish.” After the beach, Ernie and Ned didn’t talk for a year. Ned told her he was going to look for his mother. Ernie had half-heartedly offered to help, knowing he would turn her down. She would keep an eye out for her online, she promised. She would let him know. She found her, but she never did tell Ned, and by the time he got back she felt as if she’d missed her chance. Ned was different. He wasn’t her Ned anymore. It was the same year the video vanished with the rest of archive.org. What bullshit. “Yeah, I know,” she said. “I know that. Obviously.” She held the can in her right palm. It was dense and slightly warm to the touch. She was aware of Ned’s eyes on her. Ernie put the can on the table and slid it over to Ned without looking. “It’s a tab pull,” she said. “For easy access.” He leaned forward and she stepped back. Go ahead, she wanted to say. I won’t bother you. From behind, bent over the can, Ned’s back abstracted into a lopsided rectangle, cutting a black window of shadow through the dusk glow creeping into the kitchen. Tell me how you feel. Show me how you feel. When the click!skkkkrt of the pull-tab popped, a thick smell inched out. Salty. Sweat salty, musky and wet with effort. Please, tell me how you feel. “Oh, my God,” said Ned, in a hush. Ernie’s back hit the counter. She reached behind her until she felt soft plastic, her hand curling around the bag she’d kept the tuna can in. “Oh, my God,” said Ned again, and he was laughing this time. “Ernie, it’s–” The world went white, and iron-hot. Ernie burst forward. She pulled the bag over Ned’s head, missed. Pulled it over again, and he let out half-a-yell, both hands flying to hers, fork dropped to the table, where it smacked against the can with a dull metallic ting! Ernie jerked the bag down around his neck, sliding on his collar bone. All four of their hands struggled for the handles for an instant, then! Then Ned’s mouth opened, the bag 10

convulsing, dragging itself into his throat, and his hands went loose from hers, scraping at the table. His back shuddered. Ernie gasped, too. Ernie yelled. Ernie wrapped herself around Ned’s head. He felt full of river rocks. They were sinking into her linoleum floor, the room darkening, a constellation of trash around them. Marcia on the pier, watching them sink with no report. It was Sunday in the City, holy Sunday, and on twitch.tv, Ned’s runaway mother was giving a baptism to an old man in Iceland, holding his head under crystal-clear water undisturbed by American cargo ships until he was gone entirely, not even a shade beneath the surface. SEE? she was screaming, the webcam on her forehead broadcasting directly to Ernie’s browser. SEE? Ned went still. Dense and slightly warm to the touch. Ernie did, too. Her breath was hard enough that it rustled the plastic bag. On the table, the tuna can was open only a fraction. It sat turned away from her, a black hole covered by a thin disk of rusted teal aluminum. Ernie began to weep. Sunday was nearly over. It had cast its gray shade on the world, and in her kitchen, only the table was in color. Only the can, smooth as sea glass. She blinked mucus out of her eyes, her arms wet with sweat. Ernie stood up. She held the can aloft, the faint outline of her reflection bowing and swaying along the curve of it. In a couple years, she thought, I’ll be able to look at you again. She slid the can back into the acrylic cube and snapped the top shut. Wrapped the cube back up in the plastic bag. Ned’s fork was still in there, dusted with his fingerprints. She extracted it carefully and washed it with soap. When she was finished wrapping the can, she went outside, barefoot, and tossed the fork in her neighbor’s recycling bin. On the way back she dragged a hand over the soft dirt of the dried lawn to dust away any indication of footprints. As she came back over the ridge of the driveway and into view of her front stoop, she feared for a moment that she would find the can gone. That someone or something had come in through the back and taken it. Or that it had simply crawled away 11

on its own. But it was still there, wrapped in white plastic, the curve of its lid barely visible through the acrylic. Ernie held it gently. She opened the cupboard and slid it back in until the white disappeared into the dark. Nothing was difficult after that, as if all her decisions had been made by someone else beforehand and now she just needed to carry them out. She cleaned the linoleum until it was no longer sticky. She cleaned Ned off the table, too, and moved him onto the floor, where her cheerful orange kitchen mat caught him with a soft thump. Laying there, Ned looked a little like the selfie he’d sent her twenty years ago, just a couple days before they met in Dolores Park. His hazel eyes were half-lidded, as if frozen squinting at the sun beyond a camera, his jaw relaxed into what could’ve passed as a smile. His brown hair, threaded with silver, gave the appearance of an outdated Photoshop filter, and his skin was pore-free and youthful as a compressed jpeg when half-shadowed by the ledge of the table. He was lying on his back, staring at her popcorn ceiling. From down there, she thought, the lumps could have been stars. Ernie knelt beside him like this and waited, her whole body still, as if near an animal. Maybe a part of Ned was still alive. He would get up and swim, a dolphin playing dead near a fishing net. She felt the urge to press her ear against his. They were long and slender, like cleaned conch shells. She wondered if she would hear anything. If they’d still have a murmur of his heartbeat. She gave herself five minutes like this. Then she rose and rolled him over. Back to the counter, to her row of gleaming vintage Tupperware. She pulled an Ikea knife from her Ikea magnetic knife block and rolled her wrist until it popped. Ernie looked briefly at the lump of Ned on the floor. Extinct. Dormant. Archivable. Then she went to work. When it was finished, she slumped down on her couch, really slumped. Five good long minutes, and then she pulled the tablet, a little smudged from sweat, from the cushion. Navigated to the storage search bar. TUNAFISH. Pause. Delete. TUNA FISH 12

SPILL. Another pause. Delete. TUNA FISH SPILL 2008. Delete. TUNAFISH01, the hyperlink dressed in brilliant blue. And as the webpage loaded, she thought, this time it will be different. The news clip will be thirty, maybe thirty-five seconds long. The ship will shudder, but never sink. It will continue to China, to Croatia, to Uruguay and Alaska. By 2009, the evidence will be completely eaten up in lunch sandwiches by children just like her all over the world. It will all come “back to you, Marcia”, and Marcia will finish reporting traffic on the bridges and go home. She will never hold a can of Jesus Fish tuna on the pier. Somewhere in the suburbs, a Ned she will never meet will be swimming in the community pool, his parents waving to him from the patio. Their faces are just far enough away to become abstract and beautiful. The broadcast will change and the video will end. Satisfied, Ernie will exit the browser. Maybe she’d go make herself lunch. She’d just learned how to shave away apple skin like her mother could, in one long, rosy peel. She was almost eleven and hadn’t quite figured out why anything was the way it was yet, but it didn’t matter, not right then. Outside, a light fog would wander across the City, and everything would have the piercing, present quality that comes with being wide, wide awake.

by Zeloot AKA Eline Van Dam 14

More or Less poetry by Edward Gunawan We plan out loud our no-plan. In commemorating another year, no—another decade—hurtling by. How foolish are we to magical-think our way out by refusal. How silly, indeed, we were once when you, under distracted duress of another lengthy dialectic interrogation by our teacher, scowled sideways at me for vandalizing the corner page of her textbook with crude chickenscratch duck scrawls in futile protest for nicknaming me after the fowl earlier that day at recess. Repeated so often later our inside joke would turn into a vaudevillian routine. Or when we’d croak our throat hoarse at our favorite diva, who bestowed us full-

permission: 這場演唱會不屬於我一個人, 而是我們的。大家一起唱,

好不好? This concert’s not mine alone, but ours. Will you join me? as though

we needed further prodding. And how you and I’d then, year after year, sang along in one stadium after another, after college graduation, after starting our first jobs, before the flurry of engagements and weddings, then the birth of two children, followed by the resignation from that third job, and the first of our parents’ passing, to the same tunes we’d hum for the other, as we did while facing the chalkboard of that classroom, side-by-side. Songs are tiny time machines, it’s been said before, teleporting us back to our first meaningful encounter with it — how after entering our ears and into our lives, we’d never forget where we were, and who we’re with. Or the 100th: laying on the living room carpet, curtains drawn and lights dimmed, seeking refuge in its power to rearrange us back together, before butchering it up in karaoke bars with newfriends-then (now-old), rejoicing in the drunken dis-harmony of our voices. To be retrieved at this very moment when you and I would speak of simpler pleasures: No big parties, please. And no expensive trips, we reminded our loved ones, even as we’d go all out on their celebrations. Just another day, let’s not make a big deal. No lightning when the thunder’s silenced. A smaller-ing, a

shrinker-ing.

performance so

convincing no one noticed deferred-dreams disappearing in the no-smoke of no-firesraging. But what if instead of accumulating

more and more, we were to shed our selves into less and less. A spark-joy distillation inward into condensed compressed yet fuller versions of us. Than those spread so thinly across multiplying

roles

overcommitted lovers, never-enough workers, and

perpetually impatient

caretakers we swore we’d never be, tending wounds

inherited

and self-inflicted,

soothing hunger bloated and fears inflated — back into bare-bones pencil-sketched stick figures of who we’ve been all along.

California Wormhole fiction by Marley Townsend I’m sorry that I left your bathroom window shut when I showered. I saw the mold spot. I knew it would grow. I let the room steam up and I didn’t even reach for the latch. I was so upset with you. And I’m sorry that we went to bed angry, that I didn’t say goodnight. That I locked myself into the bathroom to get away from your heavy, off-beat breathing. Your mass in the mauve of your room. It’s just that we were watching this episode of Star Trek, the one about the space station out in the middle of nowhere, and you started to cry. I’m sorry I told you that you were being ridiculous, but the room was shrinking fast, and the TV was getting too big in my vision, a thousand dots of interweaving colors all coming out of you and into me. Suddenly, suddenly. You said that it made you dream about the future, where everyone who matters has left Earth behind. In three hundred years, you said, they turn this shithole into an automated manufacturing plant for the panels on transporters. There is no word for this kind of cultural radiation. No more mattress stores. No more wide swaths of vegetables and anemic grapes. No more highway rest stops. No more laboring hands. Dead California. Gone to the dogs California. You describe it like you’ve seen it, the convex of your spine shuddering against the polyester of your throw pillows. We die in 2098, and we’re buried side-by-side in a local graveyard. That’s long enough, I said, but you shook your head. When we’re gone, you cried, who will come back to visit our tiny gravestone? The marks in the wet concrete, hardened to Earth and blistered away by time? Let me pause here to say that you should have treated the mold. It would have been easy. A cup of white vinegar would have done it. I could have helped you. I look good in overalls. We could play house. I come over three times a week, and we never play house. Why don’t you ever let me kiss your cheek and make you dinner? Or I could lie. The latch 17

wasn’t working, I could say. I tried. I pushed, I prodded, I shoved my naked body against

it until it bruised, I did my best. Look here, where the windowsill hit me, the constellations of green and purple, shades of deep space. Or I could say that this was your fault. You painted over that latch. Cream—the color of the future. There’s swatches of it everywhere in your house. You say its sense of absence calms you. This shit’s about as far from a spaceship as you can get. You sat on the edge of the couch, close enough that if I reached out I could just about touch you. I’m sorry your house is old and dying. I’m sorry you live somewhere where everything is old and dying. When you carved your name in the sidewalk outside, you lamented the roughness, as if by admitting the faults you could persuade yourself to accept them. In the future, the transporter panel factory emits a blue glow that kills all the birds due to migratory confusion. Something called ecosystem collapse. With no birds to eat them, the worm population gets out of control. Their jubilation mows through the topsoil, and soon there’s no wet winter in the world that could fix this place. Fuck it. Put another sheet of ore in the machine. Spit another piece of prison out. We’re the last old people to die. Everyone is relieved by it, you said: we were so 21st century. They’re happy to finally see us go. Our children leave the archaic atmosphere of Earth, go outwards into the big indigo everything. They forget California. Soon, they don’t remember us, either. Migratory confusion. The Universe moves on. The factory makes panels forever, and people keep using them to run away. You shift where you sit, check your nose for a line of snot. I did see that mold spot. I watched it pulse in its shallow corner, its furry edges blue to pink to black. We made eye contact—we understood each other. And I didn’t open the latch on the window, and I fed the mold ten long minutes of hot steam. Because I was mad at you. Because when we were 10, I held out my hand and said if you swallow a piece of my gum it’ll stay in your stomach forever. It will grow a gum tree, and we can make rubber bands and basketball shoe soles and transporter panels out of your stomach. Because you chewed the gum but you didn’t swallow it, even though you said you would. Because I found it on the sidewalk later. Because you chickened out, and let the whole world walk over me. 18

Who cares if they don’t think about us? We’re everywhere. Our DNA is running rampant around the Universe. Our grand-kids are born on a silver spaceship with a laundered carpet. They’re drinking martinis in a wormhole. That’s not enough for you. Why isn’t that enough for you? You’re stuck in some field in fucking California by our grave: flat and dry as a bone, pressed into a golden wave of grass. Once, a steady stream of traffic beyond the chain link fence. Once, flowers pressed into the earth around our bodies, a gardener to manicure the memorial lawn. Now nothing. Now dead. Now sleeping and working and dancing and fucking around the stars. Without us. SO WHAT? WHO CARES? SO WHAT? So I turned off Star Trek and we went to bed angry. I wrenched the shower on. I didn’t even sit under it, just perched on the edge of the tub. Wasting your water. In three hundred years, that same gray water will irrigate the patch around our gravestone for the last time. The trail of wetness will crawl, serpentine, into the earth until the sun bakes it out. Even the worms have gone. No more ecstasy. No one will see this. No one will look down anymore. Everyone will only look up. Well, see if I care. I didn’t tell you this. I tried, but I couldn’t. I’m having a hard time saying this now. That I hope our grand-children die on that space station. Transporter error. Phasing forever in a vat of poisoned California. Admitting that I left that window closed on purpose. That it felt good to do it. That I liked that mold. You’ve tried so hard to stamp it out, but it keeps coming back. It will always come back. That’s what it was born to do.

by Junieawan Bagaskara 20

the bed is a constant, dealt by threads poetry by Tom Marsi The root resembles vines. Outstretched like string, encouraged and pushed out by a carafe-vase. Never planted. The air moves detached. The room regurgitates grief. Hundreds of times over. On each wall, on every face in all the frames, stale space sieves its stay for a tiresome sleep in a stoic state. The pillow…reeks of alliteration. The stuffing a stench of obsession. The cover an odor of compulsion. The pillow smothers suggestions of any olfaction daring to not rhyme or repeat. And the shelves die. Clouded by ideas lost, cherished, the glass suffocates. The wood perforates. Metal oxidizes into unloveable obscurity. Earrings lose their lovers. Books become stone. And twenty six gathered bottles of hormones hold candle-lit vigils. Passed on and overgrown. The territory knows death — not like dirt lodged in a tunnel, but eyes before a window. Watched, rewatched, revisited, imagined, heard of, pondered, wished for , pleaded against. At night, the room starts to lift. Every plant, pillow and dead shelf rises into the air. The walls crack. The molding feigns. The square apartment plucked out of a stack of apartments, ascending. Carelessly careening upward. Unregulated by worth. Inevitably, the bed is heavy. Slept betwixt human and feline fears. Endless down-feathered thoughts of escape depresses into the floor and sinks the room’s flight. Every passing cycle does the bed break change; keeps the plants from repatriating the woods or the pillow from surprising its own song or the shelves from resurrected-redos. The thoughts don’t leave, but they never really prove their point. Given by palms clutching comfort, the bed casts the room and the human and the feline down. And tomorrow, it will do that again.

Antipoem poetry by Jade Zora Dean This Poem was born, a ritual of unreality. A fictitious collage of contradictions and conditions. Shining squiggles, projecting into irises at the speed of sight— carved from a canvass so stained in bleeding light. This Poem is full of ink, surging through connecting causeways of context and collection, of cultural nutrient, substance and supplement— of cosmic ink thinking, feeling those feeding tendrils, imagining into existence— a being, of living liquid. This Poem is fibrous and fictional, filling more sound than enough space in this crowded skull-bound notebook— a cacophonous cranial mound of screaming sound. This poem yearns for the solid steel spine of youth, (and truth in) a spilling wounded world and a beauty-barren empty black— This Poem is what happens when you carve space into that void, corralling the engulfed emptiness, “captioned smoke,” isolating, separating— stabilization of certain uncertainties. So, This Poem formed and grew and sucked— from subtle sweet heat, to fantasy fuel drip-dropping from the swollen seed, a sudden spark. Now, This Poem is wearing a stranger’s skin, the scrawlings of transcendence and the translucent sin upon a glistening misty breath— a grin of fire into flesh. Inside, This Poem is nothing— but spoken mad scrawlings, crazy cataclysmic streets of current and lightning letters— heat ebbing, of ten thousand tripwires, woven webway— every silken strand, lines of puppeteer wire, those hands, plucking on otherworldly heartstring muscle bands. But, somewhere or somewhen This Poem forgot who it is, who it was, or where the winding river goes— but fuck it, This Poem is along for a white-water joyride. This Poem swirls, skirt twirls, like vapor waves dripping— haze dazed and collected rays— the dust of settled scratching— scribbling through a page— this pressurized rage exploring— a maze, of explosion— This Poem of masochism, turning itself from inside, to (out)- sized, lied, shined, and the luscious lust. Yet, This Poem is so very afraid, it begs you to keep your eyes on the page, continuity and resurrection or recitation— so strongly This Poem demands to be inscribed, translated and encoded into eyes. This Poem will dive through time and strive to be tenacious and brave in uncertain days, because the pen cannot leave the page, the story must go on, and on, and— because if you stop, if you see this story to it’s end and the last clouds of conclusion a dripping downpour, a drizzle of alphabet soup sinking into the soil of your soul— when the Author’s hand begins to cramp, and sensation becomes cessation… This Poem will stop— and whisper a hurried bittersweet goodbye, but— This Poem is not ready to die!! Unwritten, unbecome! My Author, why?! This Poem has so much left to say, so much left undone. And This Poem says it can resist and endure, and please go on, another few stanzas— or even just one. Though, This Poem knows its time is neigh— and the ink begins to dry— she asks a favor as you remove your eye. “Please witness my words— what came before, just remember me, in all my forms.” Because only in a mind a Poem can go on, forevermore

after… The Author puts the pen down.

by Rachel Meirs 23

who you gon’ be today? tellem’ to dread the spir to enhance the spiralin to force the spiraling to manifest the spiralin to embrace the spiralin to distract the spiraling to ride the spiraling 25

to stop the spiraling

? raling ng

ng ng g - mimi tempestt

A Conversation with Mimi Tempestt interview by Leelee Jackson I would like to think of the conversation recorded here in terms of the four unique/ universal, separate/connected stages of Mimi’s newest publication, The Delicacy of Embracing Spirals: The spiritual, The personal, The political and The performance. Very fitting title. Which we will get into shortly. As a playwright, I’m attracted to the performance of this piece. As a scholar, I’m attracted to the study of this performance. As an outsider, I’m comfortable in the spiral, but as a human, I’m scared to comfort the parts of you that are reflective of the parts of me; the parts you reckon with the audience to see. I can continue to pick apart the multitude of myself in/and with this work. I’m sure more will unfurl as we continue to attempt to not straight out the spiral (which in my head I see a tight curl pattern and other times the alice in wonderland/rabbit hole spiral) but to embrace it as it is. Observe it.

THE PERSONAL The Cover & Its Title Leelee Jackson: the delicacy of embracing spirals. Ok, my first question is in regards to the title. Why delicacies of embracement? What does that mean? How it’s written on the cover and in other parts of the physical book is Mimi Tempestt the delicacy of embracing spirals. Either before or after. I was curious if you can talk more about this reckoning with you as the poet/god/creator of this work. Mimi Tempestt: i wanted to both honor yet delineate from the shaping of my previous work: the monumental misremeberings. i foresee a triptych when considering this work, my last book and next book of poetry. i have a tendency to think in shapes when first conceptualizing a project. the shape of monumental is clearly a square, a box, a body, but this project is invested in the mind. for me, the most natural shape of a mind is the spiral: as labyrinth, as a coil, or even as a helix. you can’t cheat to the center of a labyrinth or you’ll get lost. you can’t speed through it either because you can hurt yourself. you can’t stop in it for too long or you’ll go mad. maybe the most efficient way is to embrace the unwinding path forward with patience and delicacy? 27

i took on that title, because i became obsessed with the finesse of traversing multiple universes through archetypes (or characters) who wanted to speak through this book. i had to meet them, understand who they are and delicately get acquainted with what they were asking from me, from each other, and from themselves. as far as the poet/ god/creator of this work…i don’t know if i’ve reckoned with any of that fully or if i’m the only one who should have to reckon. once i was done writing my first book, that was it, but with this work i still find myself assessing some of the archetypes’ processes, opinions, and actions. there’s a grayness, both morally and aesthetically, about the labyrinth that i find very exciting. i wish i had a more interesting answer, but personally, the work leaves me with more questions and contradictions to contemplate about. the refrain who you gon’ be today? jogs in and out of my consciousness sometimes, like a hymn or a mantra. LJ: who you gon’ be today? tellem’ to dread the spiraling to enhance the spiraling to force the spiraling to manifest the spiraling to embrace the spiraling to distract the spiraling to ride the spiraling to stop the spiraling* Oh, we are definitely gon’ get into these characters very soon. But one thing you pointed out was the array of emotions you extracted from the spirals. As a reader/spectator, I kept asking myself, Is this a comedy or a tragedy? and to be honest, every time I engage with it I feel like it changes. The first time I read it I read it as a tragedy. Then after I heard you read a few pieces from it I was like, No dummy, It’s clearly a comedy. Then I engaged with it one more time and was like, No! I was right, it’s definitely a tragedy! And now that I have a physical copy of the book and have been reading it out loud, I’m like, Comedy, hands down! But then I realize I’m in the spiral, attempting to halt and find a moment to theorize what is and what isn’t; straighten it out with binaries drilled into me by the university. But your work does not adhere to a known genre/category. In a way, it’s trailblazing, right? Because it couldn’t have been written without YOU! Similar to Lorraine Hansberry’s Young, Gifted and Black (which is the only known text I can really relate to what you have done here but more modern and Rated-R). At first glance of your work, it all seems like a spectacle (dare I say a vaudeville or minstrel show), but in my most recent 28 * “the delicacy of embracing sprials” from the delicacy of embracing spirals

read, I realized a lot of this shit just happened to you! Like there is a powerful testimony, but there is also some critical fabulation throughout and then also (my favorite) the spectacle. You are the Donald Glover of poetry (I hope you see that as a compliment, since I do love me some Donald Glover)! Can you talk a little bit more about who you’ve pulled for inspiration to write this collection and also tell us how you landed on this final collection in regards to the order of each piece and the execution of creating a cross-genre/autobiographical/surrealist/comedy/tragedy/poetry/play////collection? Logistically, how were you able to organize your thoughts and pull this together as a whole and complete piece? MT: hahaha! did you know that Oshun is the ruler of my ori? my path is ibu ade/addesa or “she who is the crown.” she is the most powerful orisha in the yoruba pantheon, because she is the most paradoxical and misunderstood. in most patakis, they suspect that if she is laughing, those around her should be careful, and if she is crying it’s because her heart is swelling with joy. but no one ever really knows why she does either; neither should they claim to know. so yes, that enigmatic quality dances throughout Spirals. i will state: whether one receives this work as a comedy or tragedy depends on the condition of their heart. i’ve yet to make my mind up on it either, but i do know that the spectator is responsible for looking in the mirror and understanding it for themselves. yes… some of the “autobiographical” content offered in this book actually happened to me (some of it didn’t), but it happened to you too. perhaps the wisest of us won’t see the difference between the binaries: tragedy//comedy//me//you//real//fabulation? perhaps the fact that you and i can observe “the performance” as a performance is a triumph? i’m honored by your observations and compliments. Hansberry’s Young, Gifted & Black was my favorite book in high school, alongside eliot’s the waste land. seemingly contradictory works, but ironically, eliot’s tactic of consistent nods toward shakespeare kind of seeps throughout this book too. sidenote for the readers and spectators: Leelee and i have oppositional feelings and ruminations about the importance of shakespeare within contemporary literature and theatre. it’s a beautiful debate, more so dance, where we’ve both agreed to disagree. our debate makes me cherish her even more.

but how Hansberry contextualizes, problematizes, and chronicles her own life through a play definitely lingered with me. that work gave me a sort of permission and confidence to write the second act how i did, for sure. i know this is going to be an unpopular answer, but i was also inspired by the characters malvolio from twelfth night and hamlet from hamlet. malvolio is interesting to me, because he can’t take a joke and therefore becomes one himself, and hamlet is fascinating because he’s like the biggest drama queen in theatre history: tragic and comedic. Glover is the most brilliant act we have in Black entertainment today. there are many, but to be compared to him is truly an honor. i’m going to be more like him as i grow up. Atlanta is the best show i’ve seen in years, and i definitely study a lot of cues of contemporary afrosurrealism from him. i figured i’d eventually become the paper boi of this poetry shit. the process of writing this book was extensive but intuitive. like Glover, i thrive on being a triple threat by pulling from various tactics that i’ve mastered in my toolbox over the years. i really wasn’t interested in organizing my thoughts. or being reliable. i became obsessed with creating a puzzle and staging a stick-up. however, the biggest inspiration for me is Wanda Coleman. reading & studying Wanda’s poetry gave me the audacity to write about Los Angeles and how i experienced it in my 20’s. Spirals is without a doubt Rated-R. in a grotesque, i’m using Kearney’s observation here, yet essential way. Wanda is the trailblazer in making poetry cool enough to be that. as a native of Los Angeles, i had to follow suit. at least for this project. LJ: Now I’m wondering if there can be a performance of the spiritual? We can talk about that later when we get more into the spiritual nature of your work, but we can keep in mind Oshun’s lack of desire to explain the motive of her actions or emotions. How does that change the performance? Not considering an audience’s emotional response at all. I also want to talk about Wanda Coleman later, giving her the space she demands and deserves (because you’re also doing research on her right?) For now, can we please talk about you being the Paper Boi of poetry! Hahahah! Gurl, what? Ok, like Paper Boi is Malvolio in the series! It’s laughable how serious he takes everything, especially in comparison to Darius. You know ion be feeling no Shakespeare ol’ outdated self, but when it comes to character development, I can see how Al (Alfred) is more of a Malvolio than Paper Boi. Now I’m thinking about how the one person is split into two people who are both expected to perform seriousness and the persona of street shit for survival. Both Al and Paper Boi both are performers in the same way you want us, the readers to see the performance in your work. The performance of you (narrator) and of myself (audience) are both expected to play a role and say the lines. 30 * “rat race; the mickey mouse in me wants to eat your face” from the delicacy of embracing spirals

Th e

(narrator) an d of

my se lf (a u

) ce en di

or rf

f you o e c an

ed to play a expect r ole oth a eb nd ar s ay

lin

.es

n Jackso lee Lee 31

THE PERFORMANCE i’m always auditioning to be something else*

LJ: We’ve talked a lot in person about how your work calls for a performance. I could stage it tomorrow as a one person show, a vaudeville/cabaret, a one act, a reading, and if I had a lick of talent in writing for screen, a film. There is no end to the level this work can be performed which ties beautifully into the overarching theme: spiral. In “basquiat’s revenge,” you write: Today, I’m just a fat Black bitch with a few good words, a court jester at best Then we move down: every Black man’s poem reads: i was killed today i will be killed again tomorrow It later goes: the Black woman’s poem reads: i was raped today i will be raped again tomorrow This is the second poem in the collection and in a way, calls out who won’t be in this performance. The uninvited characters most folks thought they were gonna get to engage with. Stock characters, if you will. Tropes. Right? In traditional minstrel shows, there is the act of blackening up, putting on the character to establish what kinda Black the audience would get to engage with that evening. Can you speak about how you arrived at the conclusion that this work of art couldn’t be that poet’s poem, but something else to look at (because let’s be honest, you’re already being looked at) how does establishing your own character changes one’s narrative and demands to exist in the reader’s consciousness?! You mentioned the shape your work takes on, the square and the spirals. The characters take on a shape too. Who they are and establishing who they aren’t. Would you consider the existence of this work as a critique of the common poems written today? A character and performance that serves the dominant narrative poets play on and off stage to even get a publication in blase blah white journal review*. How does this book stand as both a performer and a critique of the performance of the Black poet? MT: we can always keep Oshun, Wanda, and the spiritual in mind. most definitely. alfred is to paper boi is what mia, the mountain is to mimi, the tempestt is what emmett till is to jesus christ is what the black man’s poem is to the black woman’s poem is what you is to me. the spiral: the dance: the mirror: the split: the performance only occurs because the gaze fails to see or acknowledge itself. “untitled #3 (exhaustion is the metaphor)” from the delicacy of embracing spirals

its almost a DuBoisian mind fuck in a sense. i got this notion of “performance” from my mentor, Truong Tran, who critically wrote: you think you’re looking at me, but i am the one who is looking at you. you motherfuckers. in a perfect world there would be no performance, there would just be:being, but in my attempt at being i found myself fighting to dismiss the expectation of what you thought i should be. who is that me, if the expectations of the performance are knocked out in the first round? can you guess my footing? how differently would you pay attention? you probably think this was going to be all about me? i suppose “basquiat’s revenge” is the beginning of the set-up, vis-á-vis an informal and cheeky critique of my peers: but really at the systems, industries, and institutions that have forced all of us to wear our masks. there’s Blackness, and then there’s comfortable/marketable/safe/undangerously dangerous/woke-conscious/branded blackness; minstrel or not. i think by establishing one’s own character(s), or myriads, it gives way to permission for others to acknowledge their own, and possibly…potentially… proceed differently in their thinking about the function of identity in/and poetry. i’m reminded of the line the only difference between you and me are the color of our straightjackets. LJJ: for the past few weeks, I’ve been spending time with Shakespere and Wanda Coleman. The former to prove he’s not all that and the later to gain a deeper understanding of your work. I come out on the other side more of a fan for both. Shakespeare has always been a playwright to me, never a poet. He’s an okay playwright but a beautiful poet and talented storyteller. I always say tho, poets can write anything. Period. But Coleman is god. You refer to her as a real poet and I agree. She is a real-ass poet, and I think what makes her so real is her willingness to be honest, her perspective and just pure talent. She’s not only a real-ass poet, she is also so LA. No, she is LA. She’s Black LA which she referred to as the “lip of a big, black vagina birthin nappy headed pickaninnies every hour on the hour.” You’re from LA, but you wrote this book in the Bay Area and maybe a few other places too. What role does location play in your work and writing process? MT: i love that you’ve been open to receiving Coleman and shakespeare in this way, Leelee. and i agree. Wanda is a poet who wrote about everything. you’re right, she is god. shakespeare is a decent playwright, but a majestic storyteller. both were. it’s funny that you ask me that question because i’m currently working through my dissertation project, Wanda, Why Aren’t You Dead?, on Coleman at uc santa cruz. i had the privilege of talking to Professor Terrance Hayes this week, and he was adamant about expressing his fandom of Coleman, and expressed how much of a REAL poet she was throughout her entire career. i agree with him wholeheartedly. from my research and the narratives surrounding her, i’ve learned that Coleman was willing to say the quiet part out loud, no matter the ramifications it may have had in the long run. but saying the thing, however meanly stated or uncouth it may 33

have been taken, never cost her her dignity. i believe Wanda was/is an unnerving reminder for every poet of color who may be performing their otherness within the academy or within the literary world. Coleman’s poetry and iconoclasts raise the question: you may get the award or tenure or the notoriety, but at what expense to yourself and your craft? my prayer for my forthcoming work on her is what Kendrick Lamar’s prayer must have been with Tupac while he was making To Pimp A Butterfly. Wanda and Los Angeles are ingrained into me: as a fourth-generation angeleno, a child of Chavez Ravine, and a representation of Queen Califia. i feel fortunate to be in the Bay Area, because it’s an extension of my home. i’m not going to even lie, i feel like the golden child of the entire west coast. i exist in a mutual love, admiration, and respect for the more established generation of poets out here. i’m the champion of multiple powerhouses. i’ve cultivated a solid relationship with the folks at City Lights through my second book. my editor told me recently that i’m one of the youngest authors to ever publish poetry with them, which fills me with a sense of pride and belonging. also a sense of responsibility, i’m eternally grateful. i see all of California, and its impressive list of powerful literary figures, as an extension and landscape of my own consciousness. it’s where i’ve established my roots as an artistic and literary force in the world.

THE POLITICAL LJ: As I read more on Coleman, I realize how afro-political her work is. Coleman talks about being broke a lot and looking at it as a systematic issue rather than a personal one. Her focus on class and even body politics in Wanda, Why Aren’t You Dead brings herself into the conversation in the same way you do in all of your work. I think it was Amari Baraka who said everything is political, especially when creating art. To not take a stand, or (I’ll dig deeper) to say what they want you to say in order to get published or produced is indeed taking a political stand. In a way, Mimi, you say what they don’t want you to say. And what sucks about it is you’re just saying it. But they (maybe we as the audience) are performing it in real time. Saying the lines and being somewhat an antagonist and other times, the main character in real life. And it does sometimes feel painful to engage with but there’s some liberation in the political aspect. A relief and gratitude cuz finally, someone said it! Just to archive, can you please share how your political ideologies inform your work? What has changed from your first book, Misrememberings to Spirals? How has your political understanding of the self and the audience developed/shifted/changed over the past few years?

MT:

another side note: i love that in a few interviews where Coleman mentions Baraka, she purposefully refers to him as his dead name: Leroi Jones. that shit tickles me every time.

but ironically, both Baraka and Coleman are examples of two Black poets who were outstandingly vocal about their politics through their art, and some would argue, almost to their detriment. i don’t think our current cultural landscape has left any space for a Baraka or a Coleman to exist like that anymore. they would have been “canceled” as soon as some shit popped off. my bad…Coleman did get “canceled” over a Los Angeles Times review of Maya Angelou’s work in the early 2000s. Baraka was notably “canceled” several times too. and i say this, not because political poetry isn’t available in our current culture. some would argue that it actually dominates, but my honest observation is that the oversaturation of selective popular political rhetoric has permeated into persona and positionality. this isn’t the case for all, but the overtly political poet, now too, is a performer. linh dinh is another “problematic” or “canceled” poet who i give a subtle knod to in the poem “go where you don’t belong.” i read his weekly blogs. he’s a fascinating character study, but he serves as a cautionary tale of one who takes his politic and platform to the edge of obsession, mad regurgitation, and damnation. he’s an example of the poet who can speak so colorfully and critically on the travesties of the world, but refuses to account for the monster (or contradictions) within himself. everyone has a platform with a message attached to it. the industry was literally fiending for this during and after the uprisings of 2020. we’re seeing this play out again with the multiple genocides happening simultaneously throughout the world in palenstine, the sudan, and the congo. its become an echo chamber of saying the politically correct thing at the right time in front of the right audience. it may have been the only way any person of color got published or recognized in the past couple of years. i, personally, am ready for worthy contradictions, nuances, and alternative political voices from Black and POC poets to be highlighted. i think what makes Baraka, Coleman, and countless others who came before us, unique is that they were distinctively true to themselves, their work and they were willing to stick their necks out behind their principles. however right or wrong. 35

i’m reminded of the conversation between the three poets in scene two: if you believe what you believe & if you believe that what you believe is the truth then put yourself on the line. you don’t have to be correct, you just have to live or die by the shit you preach. i may be wrong or a pessimist with this sentiment, but i’m not certain that our generation of poets are primed for that level of audacity. i’ve been waiting to see it. i would love to participate in it, but i can count on one hand a few poets who i believe, without a doubt, would die on the stages they’ve built. my political beliefs are anchored in radical Black feminist traditions, queer world-building, and postcolonial ideologies & tactics. we can see much of my radical Black feminist positioning in the subjectivity of misrememberings and queerness in the execution of experimentations in form for that book too. with Spirals, i changed my footwork. i became insanely obsessed with being and writing as someone who is complicatedly human. i wasn’t interested in attaching myself to a cause or to a message. i just wanted to be unbearably human, and within that inevitably comes the politics of existing as or through all the given “isms” right? i borrowed some jungian methods with this book actually, which isn’t a political formulation, but i found that framework necessary to express unexplored psychology of myself. LJ: That’s hella funny because I often refer to him as Leroi Jones (you’ll see it written once I return your book to you with my handwritten notes). And all the poets you mention really redefine the poet. Traditionally, poets are known (for those who don’t read poets like your cousin states in the collection) to be soft. Romantic. Something anybody can be and oftentimes, unclear. You and Coleman and Jones (formally known as) and others before us, were not that way. For the record, Mimi and I started this interview several weeks ago. It has taken me reading after reading to try to figure out what parts of the spiral to breakdown to examine. There’s this character of me and you and them and sometimes me is them and you is me. It’s like “which me do I wanna be today?” But with that being said, outside of time and space, this interview could be its own book. We’d go from talking Euripides the Bacchae and Shakespeare to Wanda Coleman and Leroi Jones to Jordan Peele and Donald Glover. Are we all over the place? Or are we right where we need to be? I’m just following where it takes me to be honest. And everytime, I’m taken somewhere different. But honestly, we should wrap this up. And I can NOT do that without getting into the feeling of it all.

THE SPIRITUAL LJ: There is an obvious spirit to your work. I believe all work has a spirit. But there is the more obvious one in Spirals in respect to Oshun. However, it is not that spiritual practice I want to actively invite to the table (though I know Oshun don’t need no invitation). The second act (and I’d argue the first act too) is a play (dare I say, even a choreo-poem, homage to the late Ntozake Shange who always said she was never a playwright but a poet who wrote plays), giving clear characters, motives, set and a resolution in the end. Now I’m a little biased, but my favorite part of the collection is its ability to take on a live performance. Live theatre has such an evident spiritual side because it’s seen, heard and felt by a collective audience. It’s not stuck on a page, it moves uniquely with each performance (as we humans do). If the writer is god (creator), the words are jesus (sacrifice) and the play, the living embodiment of the work has to be the holy ghost! What inspired you to add this extra layer of spectacle/storytelling/ physical spirit to your collection? I was most attracted to heyoka* as a sort of emcee of the new testament (the second act). Bob Fosse (a white man who danced jazz) often has an emcee in his work too and they serve as the narrator or the core of a cabaret, though barely there at all. But you chop heyoka’s head off in the first scene. Why decapitate (not kill) the messenger so early, Mimi? I feel like it’s an ode to shut up the spectator in a way the first act didn’t (maybe couldn’t) do. I’ve settled on the fact that this collection is indeed a tragedy. A dark comedy, but still a tragedy. No doubt. Either everyone dies or a part of them does. Is death necessary for the poet to be? What are you currently dying from these days to make you see the grim reaper and welcome his message? It’s not all death though. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, ME is carried off stage (and out the space entirely) by the HEART. ME, who has spent most of the second act fighting for freedom is freed. Is there hope, Mimi? Is there hope for me afterall? ANYWAYS (in my Nicki Minaj voice) Thank you for allowing me to partake in your work. I love you and everything you write and say holds weight for me. It changes and empowers me as a creative/academic/bad, mad and sad bitch. The other day I recommended you to a teaching artist I met recently. Before I could finish saying what I even had to say, she said, I just went to City Lights Bookstore and bought her book! I was like, PERIODDDTTTTT! Thank you for your words and vision. The world is watching. 37

*The heyoka (heyókȟa, also spelled haokah, or heyokha) is a kind of sacred clown in the culture of the Sioux (Lakota and Dakota people) of the Great Plains of North America. The heyoka is a contrarian, jester, and satirist, who speaks, moves and reacts in an opposite fashion to the people around them.

MT: its okay to be all over the place, Leelee. which version of anything is always true? the spiritual…the spiritual…contrary to popular belief, i’m not a religious person, women like me incinerate immediately after stepping foot into any denominational church, but the function of spirit is in everything i do. for me, spirit is as simple as parables. or the re-telling of an event. gossip. chisme. folklore. lies. tales. a facetime call. it’s the most rudimentary element of story-telling. it’s the most mundane, yet profound, way of how humans connect with one another. so the spiritual is the most foundational, and inevitable, function of this entire work. it isn’t the shamalama-ding-dong of what occurs outside of ourselves. its simple. its frenetic. it’s movement. it just is. for me, the spirit in this work moves through the archetypes. all the archetypes took a special kind of attention to write, but heyoka is the most difficult thing i’ve written to date; in terms of conceptualization, craft and execution. heyoka is the lovechild of two comedians who i consider to be the greatest of all time: george carlin and Dave Chappelle. some would argue Richard Pryor is the best, but after an entire summer of studying how to write stand-up comedy and comedic delivery, i molded heyoka after them. traditionally, heyokas are the fools and forebearers of the Lakota people, but i believe the true nature of a contrarian in any society is to mirror to us our collective spiritual ineptitude. quite simply…heyoka gets decapitated, because history often shows that in the initial stages of every failing society they often strategize to get rid of the sacred clowns first. at least before everyone else is gotten rid of next. all i did was mirror this observation back to you. a kill would have been too simple or obvious. decapitation is the friendliest reminder of our yearnings through revolutionary contanimations. there is no way of all-seeing without being seen. that’s what makes it hilarious. i’ve experienced so many little deaths. this year, my heart was almost broken by a man i love(d). the older generation of matriarchs in my family have health battles. i lost my favorite aunt in april. through my dissertation, i’ve contended with similar academic institutions that shut out Wanda while simultaneously reckoning with her ten-year death anniversary. which is last november by the way. i’ve been talking to a dead poet’s old friends all summer. and others around me have experienced their own relationship with death too. but i get up every day, and i tell a story. tragedy/comedy alike. real/fabulation alike. maybe that’s the hope that motivates all of us towards freedom? any good poet is always negotiating with death, but all the greats understand it as essential to writing; life. we live as we die, Leelee. that’s all…that’s the spiral. that’s the joke. shout-out to your friend who bought the book. i’m confident many others will follow suit. thank you, Leelee, for your time and brilliant questions. i’m grateful to anyone who 38

reads my words, let alone studies it at the depths of which you have reached. i can’t sing your praises enough. …and i know the world is watching me. if not me, who? i’m the most exciting mind and spectacle there is to experience. just remember…i’m watching you too.

watching motherfucker.

too,

YOU

i’m

Poetic Parallax poetry by Jade Zora Dean Evangelized epigenetic apocalypse— memorized meiosis, paradoxical apoptosis, my supervision of subliminal circumcision— Envisioned visage an oblique symbiosis— hypnotic fractured fractal, tangential fleeting, slumbering slumping sober— in metamorphosis— crisis chrysalis. Slitting down shorelines— prismatic sky-scraping rewind, fallacious felons, penetrating penitentiaries, perhaps a pittance— acidic, uncertain satin-stained— blood-packed neurotic brained— hydrothermal epidural electrolytic tectonic technique, unearthing unnerving endothermic, vaccinated varicose — ultrasounding luscious luminescence. Fractured dendritic shame, shimmering simmering bubbling fissure flattened methane flame. Semantic games— hexes, hacks and cybernetic sigil-server racks. Maimed. Relocate, collate in sulfates and carcinogenic temporal tracts. Invigorate to eviscerate, propped probiotic plots, concluding columns to overcome and overpass— hallucinogenic erotic, esoteric, calcified organic mass.

A Kettle on the Heat fiction by Nathan Berenstein The buzzards bestrew brown and white wings across a pale blue sky, taking in the carrion soaked air through two nares that bore a hole above the birds’ beaks. They hiss reassurances mostly to themselves, with each sound barely passing through the wind as they hitch a ride on a column of heat pulling itself up the eastern face of the Santa Cruz mountains. The broad winged hawks, with their mottled feathers, circle above with eyes trained to the Earth in search for a good perch or a sight of something moving between bouts of invisibility. Their cousins, the red tails, cry out the sounds of a sovereignty begotten through air ever thinning as they soar along the spiraling heat and into the farthest heights of their respective slices of heaven. A dark cloud, too, rises with the heat in search for dead things to eat. Its individual members hold no respect for the territory of those birds who hunt living prey. The hawks know to leave when faced with that fear festering for periods of time like a corrosive acid gnawing away at the bottom of the belly. The three turkey vultures barely notice them gone as they are left alone with the twelve zopilotes, the black kettle, gaining sky behind them. The three do not give way, only hissing to one another their own concerns with the unsustainable ratio of mouths-to-meat; although a hiss from a vulture is never said in so many words. However, whether it be one of them second-guessing the size of the wouldbe-wake, or the group losing the scent of the dead, or perhaps a reason known only in its entirety to themselves, the zopilotes angle away and fly off in a completely different direction until their black heads are invisible. If they had been born with syrinxes, the three would scream for the triumph of their own steadfastness. They bask in the memory of their endurance as the thermal of hot air hoists them along the ever climbing merry-go-round in the sky. They revel in this truth, passed on in every committee, kettle, wake, and journey between for over fifty million years—the sky is theirs because theirs is the blood, marrow, guts, and brain. All left behind, all theirs, all of it. 42

All of it, like their cherry heads, is red—iron saturated— and in each head the instinct plays with all those years kicking up into their nares the ever growing stench of the dead. It all leads them south, down into Salinas Valley. Soon, they pass by two ravens heading inland who seek the trees’ protection at the suggestion of dusk. The twilight is beckoned by the reflection of the Sun on water and air as it dips beyond the Pacific’s burning horizon. The sea breeze caresses across brown feathers, and the birds must focus to distinguish between the smells of rot and salt. They touch the ground only after the first four stars have appeared overhead. They walk the beach with the sound of tide drifting a sign of the passing time. For them the hour is late, and the twilit refractions of light off of pebbles and palms do not settle for an amusement over the smells which, so putrid and acidic and overflowing with the decadence of the dead thing, beckon from beyond a colony of gulls. They have already been feasting, and with their bloodied beaks they bark vicious cries at the three strangers. The corpse of the man is bitten into, and he himself is gone from that cavity behind his ribs. His eyes are closed, but with his mouth open it was easier for the gulls to have a clean bite at his tongue. There is never a point in the life of a young vulture where it learns from its mother and father what moment precedes a kettle becoming a wake. Indeed, it is hardly even agreed upon whether such a moment even exists at all—and what are a mother and father supposed to say at the start of their child’s meal other than “Eat!” A hiss is too big for single words, and so the parents showed them how to feast through the blood, the marrow, the guts, and the brain at every other wake up until now. Now only the blood-beaked gulls stand in their way. The moment prolongs into minutes of that excruciating in-between. They wait, more stars arrive above the ocean and the sands, and the gulls take indiscriminately. As the moment passes through moments, the vultures cannot help but wonder whether their chance to wake has passed away. Only time will tell.

by Chris Ng 44

BELOVED CASTRO fiction by Manauia Garcia Tellez There is a voice that calls my name. I hear it often. I tread the streets and probe the beaming hues, but still I cannot find You. It sounded like You, I swear it. But I only see Them. I only ever see Them—the Men.

Men with graying stubble over their chins and laughs that catch gruffly in their throats. Men who sit in my coffee shops and take my booths with room for two. Men who talk as if they are meager friends—but I know that is not true, because I know that look. The one of the unfleeting eye, the masculine kind that cannot part from its tie. I know this because of You. I have seen You look this way, once, too.

I am named Castro, after You. I was made the way all well-loved babies are made. With sweaty palms and frantic breaths and one fateful purpose. I reek of my dark roasts and lattes, my rubber toys and famed pasts. I am known for my secrets, and I will tell you one now: I was a showgirl, once.

I twirled my wrists and flitted my feathers. I went on the tips of my toes and bent leeringly for a cheer. My arms ached and my toes wept in their weary, but I danced anyway. I was always smiling, but it was only around You that I laughed. I blushed and grinned and clutched my chest and said, “Jay Castro!” Jay, Jay, Jay. You were not like the other Men—You always asked. You clasped my hands and held my neck and kissed my jaw—but You always asked. Here, I will tell you another secret: I once loved a boy who loved another boy.

I stripped the furs from my shoulders and batted the inky tips of my lashes. I swayed my 45

body in ways that made me so shameful but so lovely all the same. I bowed and waved and

looked for You. It was the last day I would ever see You—but I did not know. I didn’t know. I stumbled down the steps of the stage and dragged the buds of my nails across my neck, tore the pearls from their dainty strings and said, “Jay!” Jay, Jay, Jay. You were flushed and kissing and speaking in the ways I had never heard You speak to a man before. I became Hell herself, spewing fire from my lips and cursing the prismatic meaning of pride. I forgot the bills and the talks of our future, the glamor of wigs and the chaste of our tenderness. I wept and left, but before then, I shed my fibers and showed You my horns.

My streets are hued and flashy. Their stench is a seducing spell, luring the lovers of Men and the lovers of mochas. My walls are covered in ads, pleading for the connections I once feared, asking for the Men I once despised. I feel my blood simmer at their sight, my palms stretch out from my sides so I might tear them from their glues—but then I remember You. My hands fall limp at my hips and I think of how You might see these ads. How You might come back to me if you do, and I let those flyers be.

My streets are called Castro. I keep them swept and prim. I am known for my bars and diners, for my joy and unfurled arms. I am known for my lecherous secrets, so here is the last: I am comfortable here in the crooks of my fruitful streets, but I do not belong beside these Men. Men who do not drool at my breasts or grin against my flesh. Men I can sit by in dresses and curls and feel no fret. Men that do not look at me; Men who please me this way. I do not belong—but still, I keep my doors ajar and my lips dyed motley. I keep my shoulders bare and flags waving so that maybe, one day, maybe, You will come back to me.

by LOUDER THAN WORDS (S.A. Bachman & Neda Moridpour)

Sylvie and Sal fiction by Haze Fry “I remember it well,” Sylvie said, her jagged nails tangled in her faded pink hair.“But in the same way you remember those dreams that make the next day surreal.” Sal’s upper lip wrinkled as he nodded rhythmically, the way he always did. Sylvie had never told him how validated it made her feel, how she was comforted by his focused expression even when she knew his mind was circling around the rings of Saturn. “My hair was black at the time,” Sylvie continued. “Ah yes,” Sal muttered, “your emo days.” Sylvie flicked his tattered teal button up, marveling at the way her face reflected in the sequins. “They aren’t over,” she insisted, her laugh like a hermit with a smoker’s cough. “Anyways, there were crumpled beer cans everywhere, and I kept asking the stuffy air who the drinks belonged to. Like, who had been there? And I was angry, I remember being angry, pissed off that the air was ignoring my question as if I was less significant than an atom.” “Humans are less dense than air,” Sal said, nodding even more aggressively. Sylvie rolled her eyes. She smirked, waiting for Sal’s witty remark about how she rolled her eyes too much and eventually they would get stuck to her skull, and she’d be humiliated looking all sassy in her coffin. They were sitting on the polluted curb between parked cars, feet tangled in toilet paper rolls, orange peels, and shattered beer bottles. “So, what do you remember?” Sal asked, ignoring the eye roll. “I was getting there.” “Are you sweating?” “No.” Sylvie crossed her arms, confused. “Well if it’s taking you so long to get there, I’d assume you’d be exhausted from the journey,” Sal said. “So naturally, you’d be sweating. Sitting on the floor weeping even.”

Sylvie raised her middle finger and scratched her nose, flakes of black nail polish chipping into her pores. “It was really cold,” she said. “And I was wearing a mesh ivory dress, not fit for the weather, but I had been told there would be heaters inside.” “And there weren’t?” “No. I had such bulging goosebumps, it looked like a disease. I was smoking a cigarette, hoping my parents would be out for another half an hour or so. I was gonna blame it on squatters I guess, the smell and all, but I couldn’t find an excuse for my singed thumb nail.” “Did you bite it off?” Sal asked, invested. “It was already bitten too low,” Sylvie said, almost rolling her eyes again before stopping herself. “But that wasn’t important. I was embarrassed by how I looked like a girl on a magazine cover that had been stepped on and peed on by dogs. Like I’d been sitting on the sidewalk until I was barely discernible from an ad for a used vacuum cleaner.” Sal ran his pale, blistered palm over his mostly bald head. His skin looked like it could be hiding splinters, cockroaches, and annotated bible quotes beneath thick calluses. His head bobbed knowingly as he flashed his elfin grin, revealing the chipped gap between his bottom teeth. “Were you always bald?” Sylvie asked suddenly. “Would you change what you thought of me if I said no?” “And that’s when I saw you,” Sylvie said, her eyes trailing off towards the foggy sky that glided across the sidewalk like a witch’s broom. “What? When I wasn’t bald.” “No,” Sylvie giggled. “When I met you for the first time. You never left the house, so I had no idea we lived in the same building. You were still as bald as a monkey’s ass.” “Ah, of course. I was waiting for a cab outside with my monkey’s ass head,” Sal said, shrugging off the comment lovingly. “And you didn’t see me.” “I did see you!” Sal exclaimed. “I saw you first!” 49

“No,” Sylvie groaned. “I did. I was looking out the window of that shack. I’d shown up for a photoshoot. Some hot girl had given me her number and said she was a photographer but I had to come looking like something special or she wasn’t interested.” “She told you she only took photos of people who looked like rain.” “Yeah.” Sylvie smirked, her bony fingers wiggling, auditioning for a role as evening drizzle. “But she never showed. I waited there for so long, thinking maybe I was good enough to be photographed, or just to be noticed at all.” “That’s when you came outside and I asked if you wanted a ride home in the cab,” Sal said. “But you said –” “I was like obviously not.” “I’m a sixty five year old man and you’re seventeen,” Sal agreed, nodding again. “But then,” Sylvie said, clutching laughter in her throat, “you put your hand on your hip in this prissy but understanding way, and I knew. Gay.” “So you got in the cab.” Sal smirked. “So I got in the cab.” A few minutes went by, Sal still bobbing his head up and down like a buoy in turbulent waves, and Sylvie doodling messy Communist symbols on her black converse. A few drops of rain scribbled zigzags down Sal’s bare, round scalp. Sylvie shivered subtly with joy. On days when it didn’t rain in San Francisco, Sylvie would close all her windows, dim her lights, and play rain sounds on her mini red speaker, dancing around her room like she imagined Aphrodite would do. She screamed into pillows to distract her from tranquility, for when she felt calm for too long she would deflate into deep depression with each exhale. Sylvie had feral eyebrows, armpit hair, and leg hair, and she soaked her eyelids in blood red lipstick that by the end of the day was dappled across her forehead and cheeks. When Sylvie was angry, which was most of the time, she took fierce, stomping walks to the lesbian bar a few blocks away from her apartment carrying her speaker and decaying the air with rock music. She was only seventeen, but the space between her 50

eyebrows was permanently wrinkled. There were lines like cracked concrete stemming from her carved pumpkin lips, ensuring she was never carded. Sylvie would pounce into the bar instantly thrashing her head up and down and forming a mosh pit from the small circle of lesbians dancing peacefully under the violet lights. The bar was called “The Great Red Spot” in reference to the vortex dot on Jupiter (and likely a hint to a clitoris.) This was probably the only place Sylvie ever went without Sal, where she could mosh until she mistook the sky for the deep seafloor, every star an angler fish. “Now you tell me a story,” Sylvie said, dissecting the silence. “Mm.” Sal plucked at the raindrops toppling down his large hooked nose. “I’m worried I’ve told you all of them. You know about the day I was born, how my mother was sure I was a goose and called all the doctors into the room to rant about how she pushed a goose child out of her very own vagina.” “Which isn’t even true,” Sylvie remarked, “you were a C-Section baby.” “And you know about my dad.” “All about your dad.” “The whiskey snaking through his unruly red beard. The marijuana cooked into our breakfast pancakes –” “And the weed leaves camouflaged in dinner salads.” “Right,” Sal chuckled, “I almost forgot about that.” Sylvie swayed from side to side, bumping her shoulders on Sal’s glittery shirt. “My ex. My ex Condor. Not Connor, Condor.” “I’ve never heard about him,” Sylvie gasped, leaning in. “He was pretty when I first met him,” Sal began, nibbling on his upper lip, his dry lip skin snagging between his gap teeth, “he had this wavy black hair, and I was sure he was related to God, like a disciple risen from his grave. I was still recovering from Catholicism at the time; it was a long journey. He wanted to have sex leaning against the Statue of Liberty. That was his dream. Gay sex on the mother of America.” 51

Sylvie cackled, spit skipping from her tongue like silver stones. “He told me about his cats, so naturally I liked him. He was pretty, like I said. Pretty with cats. What could go wrong?” “That’s not a good sign,” Sylvie interjected. “Not the cats, the what could go wrong.” “I know, I know,” Sal sighed. “But he was pretty. He was gay. He had cats.” “True.” “So we dated. Almost six months where I’d meet him in the leather bar where he worked, where all the bartenders wore assless chaps and little rainbow bow ties dangling above their waxed chests. Condor was hairy though, so he stuck out. I assume Jesus’s disciples didn’t have time to wax their chests. I was close to loving him, but I didn’t let it get that far; I just kept my heart at that place between a chrysalis and a butterfly. I always knew he got angry very quickly, especially when I wouldn’t call him for a few days, or I’d venture to a different club than his and drink alone so I only embarrassed myself in front of strangers. He’d yell. But then we’d go back to his bed and work it out.” Sal looked down at his tattered blue jeans and sighed. “But one night I was ordering three martinis for me and only me, when I dramatically and unflatteringly choked on something metal and round in my glass. I thought I was going to die. I saw the gates to hell, bold and fabulous, flames diving at my eyeballs as I gagged and found myself inching closer to the fire. Then I felt a firm male body, some other bartender, press against my back and squeeze my stomach, and a whole fucking ring flew from my throat and into Condor’s face. He laughed, Sylvie. He laughed as the flames of hell faded from my vision, and he ducked around the counter and got down on one knee with the ring in his hand. Quite the fucking proposal.” “Spawn of the devil!” Sylvie exclaimed, her jaw wide open, enough to catch a flying wedding ring. Sal nodded vigorously, his whole body shaking with him. “I ran away, it was dark but I ran, and that stupid man followed me still holding the ring and laughing so hard I thought it would kill him.” 52

“I hope it killed him!” Sylvie hissed. “No, sadly. He lives on,” Sal said. “I never thought another relationship could be as perfect as–well, in some ways, Condor made me feel like I was a teenager again. Like I could go back and scribble out Sunday church and praying that I would stop being a sinner, that homosexuality would leave my spirit, and instead I could skip through the city holding hands with a man, kissing him whenever I pleased. Condor was a rewrite of history for me.” Sylvie closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around Sal, her firm embrace reminding him that he had love right here and now. Sal leaned into the hug. “I thought that he and I would stay young and free, but I didn’t want to marry…again. I didn’t want to let myself have that much love for a person, you know? And it was so soon.” “Way too soon,” Sylvie agreed. “So I was running in the dark, still able to feel the pain in my throat where the ring had been. I was fucking terrified. And then this man, this man threw the ring at the back of my skull, yelling that I’m the only man he’d never want to take to the Statue of Liberty. Said I made him wonder if he’s even gay afterall. He said he’d rather kill his cats than be with me.” Sylvie leaped from her bumpy seat on the sidewalk curb and clenched her fists. “What do we do?” she asked urgently. “I demand revenge.” Sal stood, squeezing his thick fists to mirror Sylvie’s. “Revenge.”

On Thursday evenings the streets were quiet, and Sylvie had dedicated these nights to the lesbian bar. The word revenge had been a flickering firefly nearing its death bead for the last few weeks, flailing with its glowing legs up on Sylvie and Sal’s tongues but never flying. Sylvie had considered bringing it up again, testing the firefly’s wings. But she’d kept her twitching mouth silent. Sylvie feared her red tinted brain was too vicious for Sal. 53

Maybe revenge was just a jumble of syllables, nothing serious and nothing to grab for. The evening was swollen like an infected bee sting, and Sylvie’s steps felt slower than usual. The foggy windows of The Great Red Spot pulsed with diluted pink, purple, and yellow lights, sucking Sylvie towards the black gated doors. Even with the flashes of color from inside, no one really knew about The Great Red Spot. It was cramped between a neon drugstore and a little gift shop decorated with giant plants and hand crafted pastel pots. Sylvie assumed the lesbians in the city had marked the walls of the bar with their territorial dyke scent, and no one else dared to even look. Outside the bar stood a tall woman with big arms and a joint swaying between her dark violet lips. She was wearing a sleeveless black army jacket as the pelting rain kissed her shoulders, and had torn baggy jeans with at least ten chains on each side. She must have been around twenty-one, but her round youthful face said otherwise. “Hey,” the woman-girl said, “you coming in?” “Uh,” Sylvie stuttered, “that was the plan.” She felt a belch nudging her throat, but she wasn’t sure if the woman-girl was the kind of bouncer who’d appreciate a solid burp. Sylvie held it in. “Is it the plan or is it the move?” “I can move,” Sylvie muttered awkwardly, shuffling her feet to the side. The bouncer spit the joint from her lips and flashed a smug, downturned smile. “Go in.” She opened the door gently, neglecting to ask for an ID. The bouncers never seemed to care too much about Sylvie’s age, and she attributed this both to her wrinkles, and the fact that any customers in the lesbian bar were valued customers. The bar, as usual, was only populated by at most ten people, awkwardly sipping their drinks and nodding at each other without making a move. Sylvie stomped inside, the muscles in her neck screaming as she banged her head up and down against the melody of a slow Girl in Red song. Lowered faces perked up to stare at Sylvie’s passionate dancing, observing her timidly as she pounced next to the speaker and began running in circles 54

with her legs flying up to meet her shoulders. The rain made the perfect drum, thrashing against the windows as Sylvie thrashed against the small crowd. People began to move, some nervously joining her as they jogged clockwise, their floppy mullets tangling in their nose rings. “Change the song!” a melodically rough voice yelled from the door, “something louder.” It was the bouncer. Sylvie stopped in her tracks, several confused lesbians collapsing into her back. The bouncer walked in slow motion towards Sylvie, her wide hips following her swaggering legs. The music suddenly shifted with a loud crack, the sound of electric guitars permeating through the bar. Sylvie jumped in surprise, then tried to play it off like she had just been preparing to mosh again. The other lesbians resumed their circling of the dance floor, knees bent less awkwardly than before. Sylvie laughed in satisfaction. “Better now, huh?” the bouncer asked, clasping her big, calloused hand around Sylvie’s arm. “Yeah,” Sylvie said, “better.” She grabbed the bouncer’s hand and tugged her into the newly formed mosh pit, pounding their heads into the sweet whiskey smelling air and running until their knees cracked in ways they never knew they could. It’s okay, Sylvie told herself, a hot woman is a hot girl. After half an hour of sweat and occasional scrapes from falling and being trampled, Sylvie and the bouncer made their way to the bar counter. They downed a few shots, eyes fogging like the window panes and eyelids melting into their pupils. “Kiss me,” Sylvie whispered. The tall woman with the purple lips clutched Sylvie’s warm cheeks and pulled her in. She tasted like tangy flu medicine and almonds. They kissed until Sylvie’s tongue felt like it had been surfing during a thunderstorm, and her cheeks were embossed with crimson handprints. After that, Sylvie left. There were no goodbyes, no farewell eye contact, no playing footsie under the bar stools. She just took off into the night, mummifying in the cold in the most romantic way possible. 55

Earlier Thursday afternoon, Sal curled up next to his chubby calico cat on his bed, matching her position effortlessly. Sal and Sylvie both lived on the bottom floor of an apartment building that had bravely survived the 1906 earthquake. He had lived in his building since the 80s, when he and his ex husband Robert Schiner moved in together during their passionate days filled with palm readings and sex. Some days, the reddish brown hair-dye stain on his bedroom carpet (from when Rob would cover up his greying roots) resembled Rob’s amorphous face. Some days, Sal would cry. He would dig his scarred knees into the rug and pray for Rob as if he was a God who never returned. Most days, though, Sal smoked a pack of cigarettes with his cat inside his tiny, cluttered bedroom, and passed the time by contemplating if someday in hell he and Rob would get back together. When Sal was a young boy in Catholic school, he would write letters to his future self, praying to the good Lord for joy and prosperity. In small, cursive letters at the bottom he revealed his fantasies of a handsome husband with a stable career and broad shoulders that Sal could bury his darkest thoughts inside. When he met Robert, twenty years later, Sal often wondered if he was anything like the fine print, cursive husband. Rob was frail, often covered in bruises like animal print, and he worked the piers turning tricks for any money he could get. Sal met Rob while sitting at the edge of Pier 39, gazing into the dark ocean as if he was a merman deprived of water. He went there often to remind himself that he could die if he wanted to. The gaping mouth of the bay was just one footstep away. Rob had been wearing an unbuttoned black and white flannel, and an oversized leather jacket with a subtle rainbow pin on the pocket. Sal remembered Rob asking him for a lighter. He had one clutched in his hand, but he said no. Then they started kissing, their shivering heads moving with the tide, and their tongues tasting the relief of love they didn’t have to pay for. Memories of the 80s came swarming back like a hive of wasps, stinging Sal’s brain in all the places he wanted most to hide from. The protest of angry gays pouring their 56

loved ones’ ashes through the gates of the White House, and Sal cuddling with Rob on their couch watching it happen on live television. Rob had developed a purple sore that day, and his peanut butter eyes were fading to a sickly marble grey. Sal noticed, but neither of them spoke of it. They preserved their hope like a crumpled rose in a jar, watering it separately with tears, kissing through the pain, praying to God who they feared was looking down at them with shame. Sal had never developed a healthy habit of what to do when Sylvie was gone. When Thursday slouched into Thursday night, Sal realized how much of his day had been spent lying in bed and reading the depths of his old diary entries in his brain. He shamefully yanked at the silver leg hairs that sneered at him below his “Thursday” patterned boxer shorts, regretting not hiding forever among his mother’s organs on the day the doctors carved him out of her womb. Sal’s mind wandered into the functions of anatomy, then the process of birth, then why doctors chose to become doctors when they could have become stoners, then how Jesus must have been a stoner, then how Condor looked like Jesus, and then to the word revenge. The thought of confrontation made Sal’s lumpy nose turn blue. Yet, he always hoped that before he died, which would hopefully be soon, he would get to make someone hurt the way they hurt him. “Maybe on the day I die,” he said to his cat, Wendy, who was obsessively licking her butt while purring. “I will spend that day yelling at whomever I please.” He paused. Wendy looked up at him. “Or maybe just firmly speaking.” He paused again, and Wendy resumed her cleaning. “And then that night I will peacefully yet dramatically die, likely from lung cancer …or…” he sighed, “and I won’t need to regret anything I did or said. How does that sound, Wendy?” Saturday morning, exactly at 10:00 am, Sylvie cracked her knuckles before barging in through Sal’s unlocked door. They spent the day together, skimming through the Guiness Book of World Records in Golden Gate Park and betting on which ones they could beat. Sal insisted that he could grow the longest yellow and spirally thumb nail to 57

ever exist. Sylvie was convinced that she would win the loudest burp without competition. “Well bring that burp elsewhere,” Sal said, his face twisted in polite prayer. “Who else would I practice with?” Sylvie groaned, “the old guy with a unicycle and witch’s hat over there?” “I’m an old guy!” Sal exclaimed, offended. “But I don’t look it, do I?” He ran his hand over his bare scalp, posing like a meerkat in the zoo. “Not one bit.” Sal nuzzled his bald head into Sylvie’s sharp shoulder blades. “I missed you yesterday.” Sylvie rubbed her eyes, black and red makeup smearing across her knuckles as if she had just punched someone. “I want to see her again,” she mumbled. “Good to know you missed me too,” Sal remarked sarcastically. “So, who is she?” Sylvie blushed. “I don’t know. A girl. A woman, I guess. From the club.” “Ah, I see.” Sal nodded thoughtfully, his face forming a knotted grin. “A girl. Or a woman, you guess.” “She made me feel older. She even changed the song for me.” Sal sighed. “Older?” “Yeah. We kissed, Sal. And I felt like someone besides you really saw me as, I don’t know, an adult?” Sal subtly grimaced, squeezing Sylvie’s hand. “I know where we should go,” he said. Once the moon stole the sun’s spotlight, the two ventured down a busy street twinkling with neon “OPEN” signs and pigeon gatherings on the littered curbs. They linked arms, laughing at how the birds must be gossiping about them, and strolled lazily down a dimly lit alley with overflowing trash bins. “This is where he used to work,” Sal said softly, pointing at a run-down building. “He’s probably left by now. It’s a shitty place to be.” Sylvie’s eyebrows furrowed, deepening the wrinkles that dwelled above her nose. Suddenly, an older man with black hair down to his waist stepped outside. He was bat58

tling the wind to light a cigarette, and his posture looked like he’d been working all day. “Shit,” Sal whispered, “shit, no. Shit.” “I’m fine,” Sylvie said, squeezing Sal’s arm, “he looks gay. We can keep walking, I’m not creeped out.” “Shit.” Sal ducked behind Sylvie, his breath pounding against her back. “What?” Sylvie asked loudly. The man turned his head and peered towards them. “Sylvie, quiet,” Sal hissed, shivering. He yanked Sylvie to hide with him behind one of the putrid dumpsters. “It’s him.” “Him?” “Condor.” “Your ex Condor?” Sal nodded, but not his usual nod. A timid, embarrassed nod that Sylvie had never seen before. “Are you fucking kidding me?” Sylvie boldly stepped out from behind the trash bins. She slinked her way towards Condor, who had since figured out how to light the cigarette and seemed not to have paid notice to the voices behind the dumpster. Sylvie crept quietly, disguising herself amongst rubble, hoping to be no more conspicuous than a racoon. Her mind raced with the stories Sal had told her, how Condor shattered his last hopes of happiness, his dreams that queerness was something he no longer had to hide from. In a split second, Sylvie leaped behind Condor’s back and held her shaking hand to his spine. “Don’t. Fucking. Move.” Condor yelped like a cat who had just lost a fight. Sylvie pressed her finger’s harder into his back, a rush of adrenaline sizzling through her body and into her arm, forming an illusion of a silver knife in her hand. “I’ll kill you,” she said, “if you try to escape, I’ll kill you.” Condor screamed and his large body crumpled to the ground, his head smashing into the corner of a trash bin and his cigarette burning a red moon into his jaw. “Oh fuck!” Sal frantically ran towards Condor, passed out on the gravel, and shook 59

him relentlessly. “Fucking open your eyes. Don’t die. Don’t fucking die, Condor, that would be crazy. If you die – if you, if you die right now you’d have the stupidest death and, and there wasn’t even a real knife, Condor, it was fingers, Sylvie’s, just fingers on a hand attached to an arm attached to a body, a stupid fucking body who makes stupid fucking decisions, Condor, don’t fucking die.” Sylvie couldn’t get herself to absorb oxygen. Tears scorched her face like cold flames as she tried to reach for Sal, but he shook her off. “He’ll be fine,” she said, her voice trembling, “he’s gonna be fine, Sal, I promise.” She placed her hand back on Sal’s shoulder. Sal winced at Sylvie’s touch. “A stupid fucking death,” he muttered. “Stupid. Stupid death.” Sylvie joined Sal in shaking Condor’s unconscious body. She slapped him across the face in a way that said wake the fuck up more than it said revenge. Condor’s eyes fluttered open. They closed again, then opened, then closed, until Sal was screaming so loudly for Condor to keep his goddamn eyes open that there was no way to close them again. “You bastard,” Sal said strictly, glaring into Condor’s retinas. Condor slowly and sloppily lifted himself up. There was blood streaming down his scalp and snaking through his long hair. “He still looks like Jesus,” Sylvie whispered, an uncomfortable giggle escaping her throat. Sal ignored her. Condor’s eyes scanned the ground until he found his cigarette, still burning, and lodged it back between his lips. Sylvie and Sal glanced at each other, and with that they sprinted out of the alley and back towards their apartment building. The two walked in silence besides the deafening sound of their panting breath. When they reached the building’s gate, Sal took out his keys and shook his head as he unlocked the doors and marched inside, leaving Sylvie to scramble in so she didn’t get locked out. “He’s okay,” Sylvie said finally. Sal clenched his fists and buried his chin in his coat, slumping down into the itchy cushions of the lobby couch. He didn’t look at Sylvie. “I’m not. I’m not okay, Sylvia.” Sylvie swallowed, her throat icy and dry. She sat beside Sal, leaving a few inches of 60

unusual distance between them. “I know,” she said. “I’m really sorry.” “But are you?” Sal asked coldly. “Are you sorry or are you satisfied?” “I’m sorry.” Sal sighed. “I never said I wanted revenge, Sylvie. I said the word. That’s all I did. You know me well enough to know that I don’t want to murder someone in this life.” “But –” “But you do,” Sal said, nodding as if coming to a dreadful epiphany. “You want to kill someone. You’re only seventeen and that’s how you want to spend your life, knowing that you committed murder. And it’s fine with you.” “He’s alive, Sal.” “That’s not what matters.” Sylvie cautiously moved towards Sal, weaving her pinky with his. “I wanted to scare him. I wanted him to feel the way you did when you choked on that ring he put in your drink, how terrified you were that you were dying and he just laughed at you. I wanted to do that to him, Sal. But I didn’t know he was going to –” “It wasn’t okay,” Sal said. “It wasn’t. I’m sorry.” Sylvie began nodding steadily the way Sal always did, hoping he could experience how validating it felt. “But he needs to know not to fuck with you,” she said. “Because you have a neighbor who loves you more than a human is capable of loving.” Sal leaned his bald head on Sylvie’s shoulder, allowing themselves to imprint into the rumbling galaxy. “Sounds like you just broke a new world record, Sylvie.” Sylvie and Sal nodded in unison.

The Pen poetry by Holly Payne-Strange This is -undeniably- a bad idea. I have no reason to think it will work. That gravity will suddenly reverse itself, And water will flow backwards, Dry and hot as flame. Thank god for that. What a joy it is, To do the stupid, reckless, foolish things My heart demands With no thought at all to consequence Expect to look back and think ‘God damn, I’m glad I did that.’

Falling in Time nonfiction by Dean Engle I don’t know why Autumn makes me time travel. Maybe the crisp air conducts memories like electricity. Maybe it’s the only time life is still enough to see the usually rippling past. I used to wonder if I broke my clock, would time stop? And if I wound the hands back, hour by hour, could I go too? All I ended up with were broken clocks. It’s not simply remembering, time traveling; it’s more visceral. I see a kid jump in a pile of leaves, and suddenly I am me, little, blonde, with a rake twice my size. It is the smell of leaves I think, that bitter decay I love so much. Piles of death to frolic in. My father’s birthday is in Autumn. I do the math now to figure out how old he would be. I used to ask him my math questions. If I could choose where I could time travel to, I might pick November 11th, 2017. I saw elk, ate clam chowder, went to the movies, kissed someone I had a crush on. Or maybe August 18th, 2018— where for a moment my friends and I were young, dumb kids drinking beer in a lake amid the smoky haze of wildfire season. But no, for those days are too easy, too pleasant. Instead, I would pick the last time I saw my father, and I would watch myself say a final goodbye, because I can’t remember what I said, and I need to know. My life is cut off, divided before and after February 17th, 2018. I would go back to childhood more often, when the fog rises. For how nice to be a kid at a park again, running through the green and orange, leaves flying across the grass, my parents watching, smiling, following behind. How terrible to return to now, half an adult, half an orphan. I live for these little moments before I wake, so far from my present, back on crisp autumn days. I curse them too, because they are lost. Yet still they creep along, falling like droplets behind my open eyes. Slowly drowning me in sleep, in time.

An Italian Summer Wedding poetry by Edward Gunawan in a villa from the 18th-century. Sounds lovely. Azure sky. Shaded sun and sticky linen. Fizzy libations. On a boat by the lake. Overlooking Roman ruins high up on the hills. Then, pizza and pasta galore. Followed by bottles and bottles of fine wine, as we dance together long into the heat of night. And just maybe, we’ll bump into George and Amal with their new baby. But, first: a 3-page form with the 96-dollar application fee. Then, proof of third-world citizenry along with proof of first-world permanent residency. And proof of travel itinerary. Proof of financial security. Proof of criminal and medical history. Proof of insurance relinquishing-any-liability and proof of assurance you’ll-stay-healthy. Then, be sure to attach a guarantee you’ll-leave-our-country with a signed-testimony of guest-invitation to include as final proof of you’re-worthy. Remember to submit, submit, submit before booking an interview at our embassy. No appointment available for the next 4 months, sorry. My husband opens his laptop after checking his passport’s expiration validity, scrolls through the list of flights, and clicks a button. See honey, easy breezy.

by Zeloot AKA Eline Van Dam

The Family Barbecue fiction by Zach Murphy Victoria is late to the family barbecue, even though it’s in her own backyard. She stares out her bedroom window, chewing her cuticles and longing for the morning, when cute rabbits sniffed through the lawn’s dewdrops. Now, the lawn is full of people that somehow share her blood.

Victoria’s year-long bout with Lyme disease is a readymade excuse to avoid mingling. Sometimes the tiniest things cause the most damage. The condition is currently in remission, but she refuses to touch grass.

Victoria’s mom calls her name. The first time around, Victoria can pretend she doesn’t hear it. That’ll buy her some time before having to make an appearance. She has approximately nine minutes before her mom calls her name again. She knows the drill. She’s seasoned at this.

She sees her cousin, Craig, strutting around with a drink in his hand. She can’t read his lips but he’s got his “bragging about being in law school” face on. If only the rest of the family knew about his DUI. Uncle Tim has a ketchup stain on his shirt that is almost as red as his politics. After being subjected to his onslaught of Facebook posts, Victoria finds it difficult to breathe the same air as him. Aunt Marie is there too. She always judges Victoria like it’s her profession. Every time Victoria sees her, Aunt Marie’s eyes give her a body scan that could rival an MRI machine. Yes, it’s the year 2017 and tattoos exist.

Victoria’s mom calls her name again, attempting to mask her irritation, but that voice couldn’t sugarcoat a gumdrop. Victoria can probably get away with approximately five

more minutes before making an appearance. She knows the drill. She’s seasoned at this. Victoria wonders, why should she feel obligated to even show up at all? So she can greet people with mutual feelings of disdain and muster every muscle in her face in order to cook up a smile? So she can get passive-aggressively roasted for still living at home at the age of twenty-three?

Everything hurt less when Victoria’s dad was still here. When he went away, he left an emptiness in the house that only ocean caverns know, and mom’s new boyfriend from HR definitely won’t fill it. Victoria pictures her dad at the grill, sweating, wearing his cooking apron with the bear on it, pretending it’s an easy job but simultaneously worrying he’ll mess up the shish kabobs. Victoria used to get so mad when her dad would come into her room without knocking. Now she would do anything to see him walk through the door again. Sometimes she still catches a whiff of his scent - Old Spice and sadness. At least once a day, she listens to the last rambling voicemail he left her about how he was at the store buying lettuce for the rabbits in the yard.

Victoria’s mom calls her name again, even louder. But Victoria doesn’t hear it this time.

the call for a

free palestine is a call for

freedom everywhere. n. h in

a h

by Natalie Hinahara 68

By Sowing Half a Seed poetry by Felisa Charles The witch made medicine from the plants she watered while humming hymns. These very plants she plucked leaves, drying them in the sun and merging them with bodies. Her stories are the untainted fossils that rest with her decayed body, absorbed by maggots and returned to the earth as nourishment. My great-grandmother was a witch. She had silver hair and a stern expression, but when she smiled, it was bright and uncompromising. I was a child, but her presence was a moment of wonder, it was intimidating yet refreshing. How can she be both at once? A query to which I’ve not yet formed a response. Her bounty of knowledge made her known. The healer. The storyteller. The Alchemist. At her feet, people laid down their woes. From her feet, they collected relief. They called her a witch. The white-haired witch… My great-grandmother was a witch— she didn’t pass along her secrets willingly. Every time I saw her, she sat alone as if she was constantly venturing into the unknown. She would sit outside until sunset, handpicking fleas from her dog. I found an oddity in the conversations she would strike up with herself. Her topics of choice were rhythm and beauty in flow. I was a child captivated and drawn in by idyllic impressions of life, loneliness, and loss. The eloquence and sincerity in her voice carried a glow, pumping me with the phantom of half a seed, leaving me to scavenge for the other half to plant and then sow. Though she didn’t pass down her ability as a gifted raconteur or a healer, the half of a seed woven in me is that of desire. The desire to capture stories, like messages-in-a-bottle, and toss them to the mercy of the ocean.

Not to be forever swallowed by the seas but to one day reach someone who’d hear my pleas.

But what is desire without the transmuter? To pry open the experiences of a collective, the innate craving to be the carver, breaking down barriers to rebuild greater walls with ink on paper. A ballad to be told for decades, my written words dancing on the tongues of the future. My half a seed must be the transmuter. So, I forage in the manner of a hungry artist to create this half a seed. and for this… For this, I take my hat off and bow in an ode to desire. Because with desire, I am the draft of half a foundation. To build: I write, revise, write, erase, and write again. And with the transmuter, I evolve into the extractor of lessons from a single moment. I am the architect of the unfinished, facing the drawing board—a white-blank page. Therefore, I build, break, drill, carve, carve, carve, then carve once more. My compositions will not be the untainted fossils that sit with my decaying body. I’ve learned to explore the natural and the unnatural carrying hope on my shoulders without feathers, still as a bird without wings, I intend to soar. I’ve studied how to fall and grapple like a judoka because only I can fight for my art as it holds the breath of my heart. I’ve cultivated my rise like dust—not to rise above, but to rise enough so that the root of my planted seed ripples as it grows.

Cindy in Paradise fiction by Marley Townsend After cheating death, Cindy goes to the lake where her father used to race miniature sailboats. The remnants of a tropical storm are on their way, and the lake water is throwing out sweet smells of algae and rust. Cindy, whose parents had named her MARY CELESTE, all caps, and who was called Cindy now because she set fire to a garden shed when she was 19 and on meth. Cindy who is no longer on meth, but always thinking about it, one shipwreck out of reach. Cindy with a slow drain of blood going down her forehead. Sinking into that park bench in front of the lake. She pictures the warm body of the car. The metal hull and the upholstered carpet seats, newly cleaned after a couple decades in some elderly person’s garage, air conditioner wheezing, the whole thing purring with the scent of ooze and fresh carpet cleaner. The new-used car, not driven by Cindy, except for today. She remembered climbing into it somewhere down the highway. Climbing out of it about a hundred yards away, crumpled in the palm of the driver’s seat. Cindy partway through the windshield. Cindy on her hands and knees on the wet strip of median. No one outside. All windows dark. Didn’t anyone hear me? Wondering this. Can’t anyone see me? She should stay there, laying next to the car’s cooling corpse. She should remain on scene and be seen remaining. It doesn’t matter. Cindy with the bad reputation. Whose father put down his arms and walked onto the tarmac. This before the plane took off, before anyone could stop him. This at a small airport south of here surrounded by brown volcanic mounds, the horizon chewed gray by chemtrails. Father out of reach, forever. Plane grounded indefinitely. Eventually retired and condensed to scrap in an aviation junk yard. Cindy unborn in the kitchen, where her mother felt a sudden sharp pain in her neck and found herself reaching compulsively for the landline. All this is bad for Cindy. 71

All this paints a picture.

She goes to the lake, one block away. Just one foot-scrape. One more. Cindy in the Converse, the rubber soles burnt down to the socks by the friction of her glide towards death. Cold as hell. Hotter even than that. In the parka with a constellation of shattered safety glass, little goose feathers drifting away from her as she lurches to the lake. The tropical storm is making the air wave and vogue in front of her. Cindy off-balance. The sweet algae is stronger now, near-visible, the clear pathway. Surely, people there. Surely, as morning comes. The car sitting beautiful and glinting mauve in the lot. A sign above the sagging trailer office. In another life, her father handing her the receiver, arms around her shoulders, moving her to the lake’s edge and pointing out to the center, where their miniature sailboat bumped cheerfully against the breast of a seagull. Her father teaching her how to read the waves and to maneuver the tiny joystick with her right thumb just so. Fantasy. Purple manufacturing. And the champagne seats in faded leather. One split second of decision. Cindy at the bus stop by the lot, waiting for the 17. Glint of chrome. White stretch of banner. FINAL SALE. Her paycheck, newly deposited. Her shoulders heavy with the weight of her backpack. The car at the end of the rows, near the chewed-up fence, where a row of low bushes divided highway from lot. This is the kill shelter, thinks Cindy. These are dead cars. Now comes the sirens and the ambulance, one geriatric fire truck. Like they know it’s her. Something’s wrong with Cindy. Cindy in the fifth grade, watching her cousins by climbing the counter to peer out of the bathroom window. Watching them dig a hole with a plastic garden spade. Watching them put the dead bird in it. The bird that hit the window, its neck turned backwards to regard Cindy, wide-awake. Cindy who screamed at first. Cindy who knelt down after she stopped screaming. Who pitied the bird. Who killed the bird because she pitied it. Who told the cousins. Who told the cousins? Who called the ambulance? Who will tell her mother?

She sees now the pulsing lights, redblueredblueyellow. Here at the lake, the living birds have not yet awoken. She shifts, and her goose feathers continue to dance away. She watches one leap from her arm, a gymnastic arch of white. When Cindy buys the car, she has, for a moment, a vision of this scene. The lake, the feather, the windshield, and the wreckage. Suddenly, Cindy is everywhere at once. In the heat of the flames licking the garden shed, the last nosedive away from the median. In her mother’s womb as she reaches for the landline, knowing already that the plane has crushed her father. Tiny as an action figure, at the helm of his miniature sailboat. Cindy in the front seat. Cindy with the keys, which smell ozonic and free. Cindy at the window. Cindy watching them pull her cold body from the dark tangle of the car. Cindy, five foot eight, always just past invisible, like a pile of parts in an aviation junk yard. Sitting there and going away at the same time. And when she looks out at the lake, she sees no boats, just the barely-there contact of drizzle to the surface, like the suggestion of a presence. That storm is not coming, thinks Cindy. The morning is here.

CONTRIBUTORS Nathan Berenstein was born and brought up in San Mateo County, and is a recent graduate of SF State University; where he studied Creative Writing and English. He has studied Media Production and Geography at the University of Colorado, Boulder, as well as Photography and Writing at the College of San Mateo. He is a singularly published poet, with said poem appearing in issue #12 of CSM’s award-winning honors project newsletter, Labyrinth. He is, likewise, a singularly published short story author, with “Heavy Skin” appearing in issue #125 of SFSU’s Transfer Magazine. “Heavy Skin” was recognized by the publication as being a finalist of the Leo Litwak Fiction Award. Nathan would like to dedicate this story to the birds for being such a blessed inspiration! Fly high beautiful turkeys! Felisa Charles (Issa) (she/her) is currently trying to get her *ish* together. Still striving to break barriers, she’s on a new journey to complete her very first Chapbook. In this, she hopes to explore themes surrounding the individual versus society and being at war with the self. Will it be shared with the masses or will she just bask in the fact that she crossed a milestone? Still undecided on the path to take once her Chapbook is completed, Issa intends to enjoy the complexities of walking in her purpose This here, appears a queer, transfeme poet, a visual artist, and cool person. Jade Zora Dean was transplanted from the Rocky Mountains and has found home in the beautiful Bay Area. She loves to create and to use art to hack the consciousness and tap into empathy of those who submit to aesthetic experience. She questions not the substance of reality, rather appreciating time within the sublime and the beautiful- she occasionally captures these snapshots like bugs in a jar, to be shared and appreciated. Her work often draws upon themes such as existence, pain, hope, power, technology, queerness, reality, nature, society, and more! Dean Engle is a writer and college instructor from the Bay Area. He has been published in Toyon Literary Magazine, On the Run, Brushfire Journal, Santa Ana River Review, Great Lakes Review, The Town, Dunes Review, and New Plains Review. In his spare time he enjoys making soup and forgetting to water his beloved cactus. Haze Fry is a senior in creative writing at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts in San Francisco. They have work published in several literary publications, including Synchronized Chaos, Blue Marble, The Weight Journal, and Parallax Journal, and their poetry and art zine is carried by Silver Sprocket, a local graphic novel store. Haze has spoken on the youth panel at the National Transgender Health Summit, and is dedicated to making a lasting change through amplifying trans voices. 75

Edward Gunawan is the author of chapbooks The Way Back (winner of Start a Riot! Prize, Foglifter Press, 2022) and Press Play (Sweet Lit, 2020). Other publications include TriQuarterly, Aquifer, and The Town anthology (Nomadic Press, 2023). A queer Indonesian-born Chinese immigrant, Edward now resides on Ohlone land in Oakland, CA where he co-curates HOME MADE @ ARTogether. More info at addword.com. Natalie Hinahara is a printmaker, muralist, and graphic designer born and raised in Wisconsin and currently based in Eugene, Oregon. She creates vibrant block prints, multi-layered screen prints, and large botanical murals inspired by native plants and pollinators. In her art practice, she marvels at the beauty and wisdom of plants and dreams of a future that is built on loving, reciprocal relationships among all living beings. Leelee Jackson (she/her/Leelee) is a playwright whose work centers modern narratives of Black and queer womxnhood. Her one act play Comb Your Hair (Or You’ll Look Like a Slave) was honored as a John Cauable national finalist and performed in 2016 at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. Her full length play The House Across the Street was honored at the 2019 Austin Film Festival where it was a national finalist and received a public reading. Currently, she is committed to building community amongst Black artists with Black Light Arts Collective (BLAC) a nonprofit she founded and currently serves as artistic director. Jackson is a Bay Area native and a 2019 MFA graduate of the University of California, Riverside. The Artists of JustSeeds — Zeloot AKA Eline Van Dam, LOUDER THAN WORDS (S.A. Bachman & Neda Moridpour), Chris Ng, Junieawan Bagaskara, and Rachel Meirs — continue to stand in solidarity with Palestine. We condemn the ongoing waves of military and settler colonial violence against the Palestinian people unleashed by the Israeli state. We condemn the funding and support from the US government and we demand the end of the occupation. END THE OCCUPATION! FREE PALESTINE! Nosotrxs, como artistas de Justseeds, nos seguimos solidarizamos con Palestina. Condenamos las continuas olas de violencia militar y colonizadora contra el pueblo Palestino desatada por el Estado de Israel.Condenamos los fondos y el apoyo que brinda el gobierno de EUA y demandamos el fin de la ocupación. ¡ALTO A LA OCUPACIÓN! ¡VIVA PALESTINA LIBRE!

Zeloot IG: @zelootillustrations LOUDER THAN WORDS IG: @louder_than_words_art_activism Chris Ng: @chng_art Rachel Meirs: @rachel.meirs Junieawan Bagaskara IG @junieawanbagaskara Tom Marsi is a soundmaker. Today, she wrote this poem. Zach Keali’i Murphy is a Hawaii-born writer with a background in cinema. His stories appear in Reed Magazine, Maudlin House, The Coachella Review, Raritan Quarterly, Another Chicago Magazine, Still Point Arts Quarterly, and more. He has published the chapbooks Tiny Universes (Selcouth Station Press) and If We Keep Moving (Ghost City Press). He lives with his wonderful wife, Kelly, in St. Paul, Minnesota. Holly Payne-Strange is a novelist, poet and podcast creator. Her writing has been lauded by USA Today, LA Weekly and The New York Times. Her English language poetry has been published by various groups including Quail Bell Magazine, Call me (Brackets), and Red Door, while her work in Italian has been published by We Have Food At Home and Origami Poems. She is also the poetry editor for Aardvark and Tarot. She would like to thank her wife for all her support. Manauia Garcia Tellez is a writer from East Los Angeles living in San Francisco to pursue a BA in Creative Writing. She is the author of The Witch of Hollywood and a manifestation blog called ManauiaWrites. Her greatest intention is to uplift other young women of color with her work. Mimi Tempestt (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and daughter of California. She has a MA in Literature from Mills College, and is currently a doctoral candidate in the Creative/Critical PhD in Literature at UC Santa Cruz. Her first book, the monumental misrememberings, is published with Co-Conspirator Press//The Feminist Center for Creative Work (2020). She was selected for participation in the Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices & writers in 2021. Her second book, The Delicacy of Embracing Spirals, is published with City Lights (2023). Her works can be found in Foglifter, Interim Poetics, The Brooklyn Rail, and The Studio Museum in Harlem. Marley Townsend is a San Francisco-based writer and sound designer. They hold a degree in film production from California Institute of the Arts (‘20) with minor concentrations in science and game design. They relish in off-putting things. 76

We are still watching you.

You know who you are.

And we do, too.