The Ana: Issue 6 by The Ana

THE ANA \T͟ HƏ\·\ˈĀ-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 hell-bent on redefining art and literature. 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 unneeded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone peoples who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula.

Cover design by Minhee Kim Typesetting and design by Hannah Keith & London Pinkney Set in Georgia (Matthew Carter, 1993) and Futura (Paul Renner, 1927)

London Pinkney

Managing Editor Hannah Keith

Fiction Editors Santos Arteaga TreVaughn Malik Roach-Carter

Poetry Editors Oli Villescas Carlos Quinteros III

Editor-in-Chief

Issue #6 May 2021

iii

THE ANA

Hello All, There is so much I could say about what we’ve all experienced in the last 14 months, but I’m not going to say it. Like many of our contributors, I choose joy. It was a joy to work on this issue with the editors. It allowed us to bond over absurdity and beauty and touching in ways we have not in a long time. I want to thank the contributors for carving out a space for us to process our joy and grief. What more could you ask for at a time like this?

Much love, London Pinkney Editor-in-Chief

Editor’s Note

ESSAY 59

Wash and Set by Cynthia Cabrera

FICTION

Pink, Plastic Razor by Julia Shackelford

I Don’t Want to Write a Story about the End of the Word by Remy Chartier

Firebird by Brandan Foley

A Very Short History by Cyril Sebastian

The Feminator by Ryan Jones

NON-FICTION 30

New York City 1998 by Katie Hunter

POETRY 21

Inheritance by Jamie Avery

Attorneys and Fire Arms by Abraham Woodliff

When your visa expires by Cynthia Cabrera

The Goddess Cycle by Neha Bagchi

Sacramento by Abraham Woodliff

CNN Update—The Last Hurricane Name Has Now Been Used: Haiku by Celeste Corzan

on being a survivor by Meilani Clay

all the instructions by Qayyum Johnson

Daily Dose by Qayyum Johnson

Rebirth by Brea Dawson

Have You Tired the Veal Here? by Ash Towry

Busy Body by Kylie Meyer

Hard Rain by Silvana Smith

Merchera by Juan Sebastián Cassiani

Cenicero by Juan Sebastián Cassiani

Detour Ahead (For Billie) by Celeste Corzan

Too Much Tail, All That Jewelry (For Toni) by Celeste Corzan

Elijah on Mt. Tamalpais by Zea Haley

Tears of a Clown by Janell Gray

Protection by Kylie Meyer

Untitled #1 by Celeste Corzan

Standing Strong : A Place Where We Can Be

Contributors

VISUAL ART

Standing Strong : A Place Where We Can Be

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Given that The Ana is a celebration of humanity, we want to take this moment to stoplight six artists from AAPI communities. These artists are brilliant and eclectic as the work they create. We hope this will serve as a reminder that AAPI communities are lled with beautiful, diverse, and resilient people, their emotions are real and they deserve joy.

Taboo poetry by Peter Xiong

Don’t cry at night or they’ll get you Don’t cut your hair after sun falls Or you’ll get chased too Don’t run at the funeral Cause if you trip, your spirit will fall Don’t touch your baby nephews head You’ll take his luck Don’t Point to the moon Cause it’ll come after you Isn’t it crazy that my 3 week old niece Won’t grow up with these taboos See Hxstory was never taught to me correctly. I was Helpless and lost when I had to color in my own skin, in 1st grade As I reached for the yellow & brown crayon My teacher snatched away the brown and said “that won’t blend.” Told I was Chinese, but never spoke a lick of Cantonese Bold enough to call me Vietnamese So I asked my grandpa who fought the Secret War Slanged to Americans as the “Vietnam War”

Simpelee to simplify. I’m confused My grandpa who isn’t really my gramps My mom’s...dad really drowned in the river Hunting for whatever was left My skin yellowed and browned And

Now

I’m Khmer? After poisoned streams, and yellow Rain.

Darker than ever Mom said “never to buy a red Honda Civic” Cause pigs will chase after you like the moon you flipped off. Mom ripping food stamps and YELLS “Don’t you ever go outside to play again!” “I don’t want you to get darker” You’re Hmong, not Cambo ...Now afraid… ...of the dark... But Isn’t… it… ironic... that Now I write my identity as Hmong Which means the “Free man” But As I write these English words to tell my story I lose my tongue, and feel like A trapped humxn But Don’t worry there is a Hmoob written language Fuck that shit was translated by a white Christian old man I know my hxstory

Because knowing your roots Enables you to earth your way underground And rip out the bombs buried in our homelands Agent Orange that killed the liver, Blia couldn’t stomach Caused heroes to swim the Mekong River. As the Full Moon plays with the ocean, It leaves a slit underneath your ear Opening a ho/e, so you’ll listen I’m the Moon, and I saw it all. Can you Hear?

...... I’ve always believed that art is a re ection of life. And so my life and writing is centered in the importance of Hmong history and its ties to spirituality.

Peter Xiong―Xyooj, Writer & Activist

Untitled, Tommy Ibrado

...... As a child I was transplanted to a small Midwest town of predominant Caucasian people. I often found myself as an outsider, so I would turn my energy inwards and delved into comic books, X-Men, in particular. Not only did I gain valuable insight in American slang and culture, I also found strength in their ght for acceptance as an Asian immigrant, and later when coming out as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. The art would re a life long passion for drawing, the human form, and spandex. Currently, I’m working on launching a line of action gures based original characters – so stay tuned!

Tommy Ibrado, Artist

poetry by Edward Gunawan My first language is Fear — an amulet born out of scarcity to ward off political instability and financial insecurity My mother tongue is Shame — I speak it fluently in my dreams of competitors and conquerors victims and victors the hunted and the hunters Its dialects are Regret and Resentment — like rings of coffee stains on corners of pages I can’t erase So when you talk to me about Love, it’s a foreign language I’ve heard before of course a movie whose poster hang on my wall and trailer I’ve watched but tickets I simply can’t afford Teach me and I will learn to elongate every uh- and every ahI promise to practice and enunciate each consonant with no trace of an accent Speak it to me: I might just make it home

LSOL (Love to Speakers of Other Languages)

poetry by Edward Gunawan We who broke our names to fit the curls and contours of their mouths who spoke our mother tongues with shame and celebrated our New Year in secret We who rolled our windows up and shut the doors double-barred who kept them out by locking ourselves in We who are spared of our diginity when it’s never theirs to give who belonged to no nation where freedom has never been free We are pan-handlers really begging for the loose change of democracy Philosophers practising the religious art of grateful resiliency Yes, we’ll take what we can get, what we’re given any alm any scrap any crumb Thank you, sir, for your generosity Yes, it’s more than enough, sir It’s our own damn fault anyway What can we say, it’s our fate

love refugees

Love Refugees

poetry by Edward Gunawan “I gave the skin to my love and said, Now I am a story— like the snake, I am my own future.” — "Snake-Light” by Natalie Diaz from Postcolonial Love Poems

We are snakes and the stories we tell are skins Peel them — off our backs Shed them when they get too tight and hang them on trees so they scale with light to catch the eyes of those who will come after to continue the fight

Sign Post

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We’re living through dangerous times — weighted down as we are by the daily tragedies of violence. And it’s in pages like these that we continue showing up for one another, buoying ourselves to shore. Thank you The Ana for your leadership in fostering inter-coalition solidarity and community-building through this issue.

Edward Gunawan, Writer & Filmmaker

poetry by Sammie Kim i love her deeply and kisses sprout from my throat tumbling forward into her harvesting palms do you see the way i grapple for her touch? the way my eyes water at the thought of her sleeping form soft, unlabored, slowly unweaving the day’s design i scratch what i would do for the curve of her spine on the back of a sprawling receipt i see her so clearly in my periphery, she needs to be everywhere i need to be her everywhere the heft of my weight on the back of her eyes must be unrelenting lest i die and leave nothing behind, since what really is a man but the indentation he leaves in the earth, washed away in morning dew the condensation of my children’s breath shaping and wiping the curve of my nose, the leaves obscuring my shadowed sinew this world was not made for me, i was simply made to order to fit in the shape of something already taking hold and planting roots my mottled red skin and sharp cries met with insurmountable disdain even thunderous growth left me with a taste for delicacy i see it, but just outside my periphery a strong jaw i see a thick brow and a lovely mouth shrouded in feedback static buzzes in my fingertips and i must change the channel i wash my hair and i wash my hands and i wash my children cleanliness is next to godliness and i doze in the pews but what i have learned is a distinct and fickle love for my fellow man a reaching summer love for a woman who holds me in the crook of her elbow and together we burn in the sun, peeling aloe with our teeth to mix with honey i let the slime settle on my eyelids to make up for years of neglect reflect on a ball of fire wishing desperately to meet the well of my sight

the unsigned confession of a tiger

that which i taught by for so long, a perfect balance between cradling arms and shut your mouth and even if you do i will shut it for you again even her soft spine and harvesting palms are sanded against the asphalt my body is a concrete home made brutal for four she, wrapped in hemp coats, watching mindful hens tending to their blue eggs even oil just seeps into the cracks, my foundations leave a bitter stench i smell like ozone and hot skin, she found it something akin to intoxicating once now we find solace in the shade of trees on twisting paths meeting and separating and my knee shakes at the thought of a one way street my love is a picture frame of muscle and bone cracked and bent to make corners the photo inside is tarnished and the faces cannot be called people anymore but i know them and i lay my thumbs over the spiral prints in the corners

it is too late to find comfort in that which i lived by

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I spend most of my time engrossed in my hobbies: embroidery, reading, and cowering in fear at what the future might hold. Time is a source of terror, and sometimes the only thing I feel like I can do is make more art until I die. But I’m not special for this. Art is present in everything we do, and it’s the clearest form of communication we have with each other. All I’m trying to communicate is who I am and what I want to become.

Minhee Kim, Writer & Artist

HE, The Artist Formerly Known As Wynn 15

..... I AM NOT YOUR CHING CHONG CHINA DOLL I AM NOT YOUR ORIENTAL BABY BOY I AM NOT YOUR EXOTIC FLAVOR OF THE WEEK I AM NOT YOUR SEX TOY I AM NOT YOUR UWU ANIME WAIFU I WILL NOT SMILE MORE; FUCK YOU I WILL NOT HIDE MY PAIN I WILL NOT BITE MY TONGUE I WILL NOT COMPROMISE MYSELF FOR YOUR COMFORT I WILL NOT APOLOGIZE FOR EXISTING ON MY TERMS

The Artist Formerly Known As Wynn, Artist

Creation of, Eli Augestine

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I don't make all of my art with a political agenda, but simply let it speak for itself. Especially because my existence is already politicized, just having the chance to show a different kind of thinking and a different kind of representation is enough.

Eli Augenstine, Artist

A Brief List of How to Support AAPI Communities

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DONATE TO THE ADVOCACY ORGANIZATIONS Stop AAPI Hate Bay Area Sex Worker Advocacy Network National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum The National Chapter of Advancing Justice

...... SUPPORT TO LOCAL ARTISTS Peter Xiong―Xyooj Venmo: @Pxiong1852 Tommy Ibrado Venmo: @tommygraphix Edward Gunawan Venmo: @edgun7 Minhee Kim Venmo: @sammicchi The Artist Formerly Known As Wynn Website: www.wynnnguyen.com Eli Augenstine Venmo: @eli-dude

...... SIGN UP FOR A HATE CRIME INTERVENTION COURSE Hollaback!

......

Inheritance poetry by Jamie Avery

in Pickerington, Ohio lazing

on a humid lawn acid-eyed

and inspecting tendons

twitching beneath taut skin

somebody says to

nobody in particular:

you ever notice how your hands

look just like your mom’s?

palms angry with bleach hang my mother’s hands

red against the summer sky

rough and calloused

my own hands

wear the weathering of work

rough and calloused

and now we are all stretching fingers

wear the weathering of work

toward cloudless blue

searching for our mothers

finding them in our fists

fiction by Julia Shackelford “Bowen. Gonzalez. Hueller. Uddin.” Each name Coach Bradley yells is met with a faint, “Here!” Christina sits in the front row. The wooden bleachers creak. Her classmates jostle for space. She stares at her thin legs poking out of her gym shorts, freckles scatter across her pale flesh. She runs her hand along her thigh, feeling the velvety leg hairs catch on her palm. The hairs are barely visible, still blond and soft and new to her adolescent body, but she knows they are there, the tiny blond hairs that her mother still won’t let her shave off. If you shave them then they will never grow back blond again, then you really will have to shave forever. She presses her legs together, covers the tops of her knees with her hands. “It’s 102 out today, so the State says you get to stay in the gym and enjoy the air conditioning. Everybody grab a ball and keep moving!” Coach Bradley wheels in a metal cage of sports equipment brimming with basketballs, volleyballs, footballs, soccer balls, frisbees and other objects that can be hurled at or to another person. Christina’s classmates rumble down the bleachers. She selects a basketball. The basketball strikes the gleaming gym floor with a steady thump that reverberates off the ceiling as Christina dribbles, joining the cacophony of her classmates tosses, shouts and sprinting footfalls. For a moment she forgets her bare legs and their fuzzy vulnerabilities. “Hey! Christina!” She turns her head to see Marissa and two other girls sitting on the bleachers. They’re already grinning, already reveling in the sharpness of whatever insult Marissa has devised because at some point Marissa made picking on Christina her favorite pastime. “Hey, Christina. Come here.” Marissa repeats. Christina stops dribbling and steps towards the group, hugging the orange basketball against her stomach.

Pink, Plastic Razor

gross?” Christina turns her toes in, runs her hand over the dimpled, hairless flesh of the basketball. “Your legs are just SO hairy. I hate having to look at your hairy legs.” “My mom doesn’t let me,” Christina says quietly. “That’s weird. I bet your mom doesn’t shave her legs either. Gross!” The girls force a giggle, as if they all know that Marissa’s insults aren’t funny or clever but that laughter is the correct punch line. Christina’s face reddens and her throat goes dry. For a moment she forgets about hating her legs and hates her reddening face that makes it impossible to disguise her shame. If she wasn’t blushing she could roll her eyes and simply walk away. Instead, she hangs her head, lets her brown hair fall in front of her face. The girls sit, staring at her, clearly out of things to say. They look to Marissa. Marissa shrugs and they turn back to each other. “Keeping moving, Snyder!” Coach Bradley yells at Christina. The girls’ eyes flick towards her, they giggle, then again turn back to each other. Christina turns away, gives the ball a limp dribble as she takes a few steps back into the gaggle of classmates. She gives the basketball a push. It thuds then rolls away from her. She watches the ball creep across the gym and then bump against the beige wall. “Hustle, people!” — When Christina returns home from school, she will sneak into her parents’ bathroom and rummage through the cabinets until she finds a plastic, pink disposable safety razor. When the house is quiet, she will fill the bathtub with water and place the plastic, pink safety razor on the side of the tub. Then she will lower her tender body into the water, letting the scalding heat pink her long, lean legs and rounding hips and mounds of breasts just beginning to bud. Christina will take a bar of white soap in her hand and dip it into the water, then lather her freckled, fuzzy legs with white suds. Picking up the pink razor and removing the clear plastic guard against the blade, she

“I was just wondering. Why don’t you shave your legs? Don’t you know it’s

smooth, clean line of pale, freckled, hairless flesh in its wake. On the second stroke, she will nick her ankle. A crimson stream of blood will flow down around her Achilles heel and spiral into the hot water clouded with soap. Weeks later, Christina’s mother will sit down next to her while she is reading on the outdoor chaise lounge wearing shorts and a tank top. Her mother will rest a hand on her leg and ask, Do you want something to drink? Then her mother will pause, run her hand up and down Christina’s smooth shin and press her lips together. Christina will avoid her mother’s eyes, shrug in response. Her mother won’t say anything. She will give Christina’s leg a soft squeeze and then walk away.

will position it flat against the base of her ankle and pull up. The razor will leave a

Ego Death I (Rebirth Series), Brea Dawson

Ego Death II (Rebirth Series), Brea Dawson

Attorneys and Firearms poetry by Abraham Woodliff Attorneys and firearms serve the same purposes but for different types of people. Problem solvers. Devices and disciplines that make the things we dislike disappear The educated will bury you in paperwork and words rooted in Latin The others will burrow bullets deep into your skin until you’re buried under the dirt Dirt that will feed on you as you decompose The same dirt that supports and sustains the trees. The same trees that will be logged and turned into paper Paper that words will be written on Words that will be used to bury you. In debt and arguments over interpretation of fluid definitions Humanity Divided by the level of effort and sophistication behind our brutality Veneers of civility is the only thing that keeps a civilization going. The moment that nihilism has a greater influence than tradition on what governs Is the day your world dies It’s the circle of life And it wouldn’t be life without death Right?

Have You Tried the Veal Here?, Ash Towry

When your visa expires poetry by Cynthia Cabrera When your visa expires / I will ask the wind to knock out all the telephone lines / so that when your mom calls / she knows you’re busy living / I will design a fake visa / to make a mockery of the system / and the walls will peel away with dollar bills / so you never have to worry again / about money or paperwork / the Venezuelan government will just have to wait/ the agents will just have to wait / because this love is borderless / when your visa expires / I will pack up all my things/ erase my footprints / and follow you to wherever you find peace / so that we may be together without a timer / the day your visa ends / tomorrows will not be counted / and you can buy yourself that very permanent thing you will never have to carry on a plane / you will find the time to love without a deadline / and let go of waiting on visa updates / when your visa expires it will be morning / the uncertainty of tomorrow will have passed / laws will forget borders/ and you will be free / we will all be free

nonfiction by Katie Hunter

It’s New York City, 1998, and I’m twelve. I’m tall for my age, with brown hair that brushes my shoulders, and I shop only at Limited Too. This means everything I wear is patterned with flowers or bright stripes, which makes me stick out like a creamsicle in the city. It is June and I’ve been flown up from home in Jacksonville, Florida, where my mom is teaching summer school. She has sent me to stay with my great aunt Carmen in Brooklyn. Carmen is what you would call a trip. She’s got long, black hair, a big nose, and a classic New York accent that stretches vowels out like pizza dough. She tells me stories about her brother, my grandfather, who died before I was born—“fahget it, he was so handsome”—as she drives us to Brooklyn from the airport in a boat-sized Cadillac. Later, when she shows me around her home, I notice that everything in it is white. The carpet, the vases, the rhinestone crosses and knick-knacks on the walls, everything. Even her dog is white. He’s a yappy Maltese with blue barrettes on his ears and he pees on what Carmen calls wee wee pads scattered across the kitchen floor. The only room that isn’t white is Carmen’s guest room. It is draped in tans and leopard prints and black and red handbags that spill across the dressing table under the window. When I’m alone I hold each of these handbags at my side, posing in front of the mirror. I stick my chest out and pout my lips and pretend I’m a grown woman with important places to go. Carmen lives in Bay Ridge and owns a salon there too. Before this summer, I have never been to Brooklyn or a real salon. I spend hours there painting my toes and making crepe-paper window displays as Carmen greets her customers. One day, one of Carmen’s girls, an older Russian woman with a giant mole under her eye, gives me my first manicure. She buffs my nails and asks “You like?” while I smile and marvel at how smooth and shiny my nails look. How grown-up. “Pretty,” she says, raising her eyebrows as she looks at my

New York City 1998

I am not sure if she meant it as a question. That evening, Carmen takes me to a movie that ends at midnight. We eat greasy pizza afterward from a shop that says Mangia in big, curlicue lettering on the front and it feels almost scandalous in a way I can’t yet name, the way people are out, the way the women we walk past are so glamorous in their tiny black dresses, a man’s arm draped over their bare shoulders, headed somewhere in the night. Nothing this exciting ever happens where I’m from. The next afternoon at the salon, Carmen gets a call from her friend Donna. Donna has these tickets, you see, to a show, starring some big opera singer named Andrea Bocelli. I don’t know who he is, but when Carmen says that the show is at Madison Square Garden, my face lights up, because that’s where a famous horse show happens every year. “Do you want to go?” Carmen asks. I nod. We go back to the house and I put on my nicest blouse with the white and blue flowers on it and my best jeans, which is all I’ve got. We get in the Cadillac and we get to Madison Square Garden, where we meet her girlfriend Donna. She’s a small, blond woman in a white pantsuit about Carmen’s age. She looks me up and down, then turns to Carmen and says “This is twelve?” Carmen shushes her and grabs me by the hand. And then we go inside, right inside, and we’re on the floor, like where the VIPs must be, and I look around the place, bigger than any I’ve ever been inside, staring at the thousands of people among us, sitting above in the balconies that seem to stretch up for miles. And then all of a sudden the lights go down except for one spotlight above the stage. A man stands beneath it, bathed in its glow, like he’s been beamed down from heaven. His hair is dark and wavy and he’s dressed in a black suit and when he opens his mouth a voice comes out, one so pure and powerful that I close my eyes and leave my body. I hover above it like a spirit, floating, feeling each note in my milky-white fingertips. When I open my eyes I look down and see my body, swaying, even though I am still. In the dark I can see the white flowers on my shirt, glowing. They are the only lights in a sea of black that surrounds me. I close my eyes again until Por ti volaré, Time to Say Goodbye. Then the man walks off the stage and the lights come on and I go back into my body and think that the night is

hands and then at me. “Boyfriend,” she says, and I giggle, shaking my head no, even though

But it’s not over yet because Donna has found out about the after-party. We ride there in her black Lexus and from the backseat I watch the twinkling lights of the city as Carmen raves about the concert, about Mr. Bocelli, what a shame he’s blind. When we get to the restaurant it’s all dark wood and dim lights and there are fancy people and fancy white cheeses that I spear daintily with a toothpick and put on my plastic plate. I stand with my aunt and Donna a while, but then I get bored and sneak away on a mission to find the man with the golden voice. The man who cannot see. And finally, I notice him, sitting there, at a grand table with a dozen others, a red velvet rope between us. And I watch him, really look at him, knowing he cannot look back at me. And how sad this makes me I can’t explain. Just then a man in a suit comes over to me. He asks me what I’m doing there but in a way that is friendly. He’s younger than the other guests, with his blond hair and short beard, and soon he is telling me that he is a bodyguard (yes, he says, like the ones in the movies) and that he likes Mr. Bocelli, he’s a good guy. And pretty soon Mr. Bocelli is finishing dinner, has put his napkin on the table, and my aunt and Donna have found me. That’s when the bodyguard turns to us and says, smiling, “Would you like to meet him?” When Carmen tells this story, I’m eighteen, visiting her in New York with my boyfriend. She leans in further as she tells it, one elbow on her kitchen table, then both, her eyebrows arched like they’re holding up the suspense. “So we get there to the Gardens, and my friend Donna, she says, look at this girl. This is twelve?” Carmen motions to me with a lacquered fingernail. She smiles and I blush.“Then we get there, and we lose her, we can’t find her,” she says. “And Donna says, “What do you mean you lost her, you can’t leave her alone, not with these men in suits. You never know, these men in suits.” And then Carmen tells the rest of the story, but I am not listening. I try to remember Andrea Bocelli’s voice, how it transported me, but all I feel is the cold of the New York winter.

over.

Busy Body, Kylie Meyer

The Goddess Cycle poetry by Neha Bagchi I. Kali

For one moment I unfurl the full, wide wings of my anger. Annakali, they called my grandmother, because Aar na, Kali, my great-grandmother said when yet another daughter was born, but this one, she trained to be a knife fighter in the resistance, the same one who married—no, was married to— the brown sahib whose name I carry now and claim, the same one woman who went blind— literally, no metaphor here— and who, when her youngest son asked her, what do you see, do you see darkness, replied, alo, Shudu alo, puro alo. Shei alo jale amar bhetore kintu here I am again trying to dim it, to soften it, whispering sshhh to a wildfire.

II. Songs for the terrified

Here comes the bull who will break through your walls— Quick, run! And hide! Here comes the bear, and you know how she mauls— Quick, run! And hide! what if she promises worlds to you Here comes the moon that will tug at your waves— Quick, run! And hide! Here comes a landslide to unmake the graves— Quick, run! And hide! what if she hands you the stars Here comes the guest; you will quake when she knocks— Quick, run! And hide! Here comes the skeleton key to your locks— Quick, run! And hide! what if the music she sings to you Here comes the flaw to the plan you designed— Quick, run! And hide! Here comes the one who will see that your mind— is fractured and broken by bars

III. Durga

In our family we worship Shakti, my father said, and I thought, oh Not one of the gods: the goddess, so powerful, so fundamental, so much the source of everything that we call her Shakti: Energy. Force. She has forms, our girl: Parboti the gentle—wife, mother, nurturer— goddess of love and devotion; Lokkhi, wealth and beauty personified (but she has the tiniest squint in her eyes); Shoroshshoti, goddess of wisdom, learning, music (you must choose between her and her sister— you cannot have them both); Durga, defender of good and destroyer of demons; and Kali, destroyer of all. I am the daughter of Durga, I said, but I was a child and did not know about physics and the superimposition of wave functions, did not know how I would be each of them in time, did not know how I could be all of them at once.

Hard Rain, Silvana Smith

fiction by Remy Chartier

I wake to group chat notifications every morning, so I don’t need to check Twitter for news. They pop up sometime between when I go to sleep in my mother’s nearly-packed New England split-level and when the California coast goes to sleep, three thousand miles away. I live half on my time and half on theirs, half-whispering into a microphone at EST midnight, so I don’t disturb the house, eating half-meals at odd hours and wincing with every crackle of cellophane, dreading more the microwave, walking myself around the block half an hour, once a week, to make sure I’m still getting my exercise. I don’t check Twitter and I don’t read the news and it doesn’t matter anyway. Thousands of articles, stories, poems about a “global tragedy” every day, and I can’t feel enough about it to make it stick. In March I celebrated my twenty-first birthday locked in. Alone. I made a frozen lava cake in the microwave. School rules stated no candles, but I had one my father mailed me from Connecticut, blue and white stripes stabbed through the thick crust and unlit. No lighters, no matches allowed. I ate on the floor, and didn’t waste breath pretending to blow out it out. Three days later, they’d kick the remnants of us out of campus housing. During the first two weeks at home, I stalked the floorboards of my bedroom, my meals delivered to my door to protect the rest of the house from my San Francisco hands. I wanted to snarl about my brother and his girlfriend down the hall, retail workers in a mask-mandateless state. About who was the bigger danger. The kitchen was exotic, the living room a fantasy I wasn’t permitted to share, the bathroom wiped down with bleach after every use until the acrid curls were all I could smell on my skin. I dismantled my bunkbed, choked by the metal bars, nearly crushed by the collapsing ladder in my haste to get it down, to feel like something was changing, and I couldn’t be angry. Nothing felt safe, not me, not them, and that knowledge muted rage like the TV I could strain to hear down the hall, volume low. I curled up on my freed mattress and let everything bleed away.

I Don't Want to Write a Story About the End of the World

half-hour walks. Too tired to go farther, my mattress remained my tether, where I curled up and shuffled through apps, the colors dimmed against my strained eyes. The group chats chimed incessantly. I skimmed. There were internet friends I’d never met, friends I was supposed to meet at comic con – cancelled days before – and IRL California friends, except IRL didn’t exist anymore. Picturing their blurry faces at the other end of the screen exacerbated every headache. Protests in Seattle, so close to people I knew. An apocalyptic orange sky over San Francisco, pictures snapped from smartphones and sent to my bubble of safety. I shelled out a little bit of energy to fret, a luxury, and slept some more. Waves of cancellations kept coming. Not just one comic con, but all of them. Broadway shut down, and sports arenas, and the movies. Conservatives on the internet seethed over losing their luncheons and garden parties, and lashed out on Twitter. Just wait until they cancel Pride, they said, and watch them come to our side. As if the queer community alone stood responsible for the precautions. As if my rainbow scarf and thigh-high stilettos weren’t already packed in the closet next to the year’s abandoned cosplays. As if Pride didn’t originate in loss. I change the channel at every we’re in this together car commercial and delete every corporate email about unprecedented times. I slice out time for school amidst my sleeping, but there’s not much else to do. My eyes are permanently glazed. My ears ache from hours with headphones in. Let’s take this time to reflect. To create. Some of it is teacher encouragement. Some of it is Twitter. The internet is full of posts about baking bread and gardening. Finding new hobbies. Rediscovering old. I turn off notifications on every group chat and spend a little more time staring at my screen, the white page and the blinking cursor. Word is, magazines are overflowing with submissions. The editors say they’re tired too, because nearly all the pieces look the same. No one wants to read about unprecedented times. And yet. This is history. This is, we’re told, the jurisdiction of art. And so, everyone is writing their Corona poem. I haven’t written since June.

By May, I was allowed to make the pilgrimage to the sofa. Quarantine clean, I earned my

Merchera, Juan Sebastián Cassiani

Sacramento poetry by Abraham Woodliff I felt trapped in Sacramento But the words flowed freely. I would spend hours on Trulia, looking at places I couldn’t afford. Or read about things I couldn’t do. With people I didn’t know. And I’d write. I’d sit for hours in my warm room In a place I hated And I’d do what I loved To make it all bearable. I’d read. I read several books during that duration I spent there All cooped up in the capitol. Breathing in wildfire smoke. Drinking good coffee with great friends Who never made me feel weird for letting hours turn to days staring at the ceiling, not saying a word. Preoccupied with people who meant nothing I’d read Bukowski Listen to lofi beats And pretend to sign books and shake hands. I’d even act out the movements. An invisible pen would magically appear my in hand And I’d sign my signature in sloppy cursive, because that’s how you’re supposed to do it. I’d write a little personalized note to a faceless fan that didn’t exist. It would be encouraging. Like the note Paluhniuk wrote for me. It would say something about not giving up. Even if the words weren’t there. I’d write them anyway. I’d write them. Any way. I could.

Cenicero, Juan Sebastián Cassiani

Firebird fiction by Brandan Foley For weeks, Travis had ignored the off-color comments hurled at him from the tenured workers playing dominoes at their designated table in the break room. But the long hours of his graveyard shift combined with the soreness from moving crates and sorting through people’s inane packages all day had finally worn him down. A few threats and clenched fists later, Travis found himself with a torn collar and scraped knuckles, staring at a stack of termination papers. “Warehouse Team Member” was the third position he’d lost since his return to polite society early last year, and he dreaded the inevitable phone conversation he’d have to have with his parole officer later. After a thirty-minute walk home through roadways designed without pedestrians in mind, Travis burst through the front door of his tiny apartment like a bull, sweaty coveralls still sticking to his skin. He tore the work clothes from his body and used his undershirt to wipe the sweat from his neck and brow. Resisting the urge to swat down a stack of envelopes on the kitchen counter, he balled his hands up tightly and pressed them against his hips. In, out, in, out, he told himself. Cool off, man. Collect yourself. Officer Jodie had been touting Travis’ ability to control his anger and prevent outbursts like this, but coming down from one when it had already started was another story. Travis needed something to focus on, something to put his energy into, and reorganizing Officer Jodie’s talking points for him wasn’t it. Right now there was only one thing on Travis’ mind, the only thing he could think of to funnel his frustration into. He turned on the AC, pulled a non-alcoholic beer from the fridge, and set to work. Travis scoured every corner of his cramped apartment, overturning furniture and rummaging through disorganized piles of paper and mementos, searching room to room for every last dollar he had hidden from himself. The “retirement fund” he liked to call it. He pulled a roll of hundreds from the cookie-less cookie jar atop the fridge and an assortment of twenties, tens, and fives from a coffee tin in the back of his cupboard. There was a small

wad of cash tucked underneath the TV stand in the living room, and a jar of change on top of the broken bookshelf in his bedroom. With arms full of loose notes and a cold bottle in hand, he slid open the door to his closet and pulled out the small grey safe from beneath a pile of old unused winter blankets. Travis pulled the safe up onto the unmade bed in front of him and dropped the rest of his bounty in a shower around it. He punched his parents’ anniversary date into the safe and clicked it open, retrieving an envelope full of hundreds from beneath the gun and his father’s old wedding ring. After counting up the spoils of his meager apartment, Travis closed his eyes and tried to do the mental math, adding up physical bills with the numbers listed on the bank app on his phone, and the hours of labor he knew he was still owed. Fears confirmed, his anger swelled and he threw all of the green paper back down in a messy pile. Still two grand short, at least. Travis paced the room, first to clear his head, then to fill it up with new ideas, then to chase his thoughts away again. He tried to be deliberate with his breathing, trapped in the spin cycle of a mind muddled with rage and plans cut short. In, out, in, out. What’s the point if I’m already drenched in sweat? He poured the last third of his pseudo-beer down his throat and slammed the bottle down on his nightstand, still wet with condensation. He kicked his boots off at the foot of the bed, letting his feet breathe for the first time all day. Still unconvinced of the breathing exercises taught to him in mandatory anger management classes, he lowered himself to the floor, crossed his legs, closed his eyes, and tried to wrangle his lungs into a regular pattern. After testing the limits of his patience, he opened his eyes and counted aloud the first five things that came into his line of sight: Boots, bed, money, safe, gun. Gun. His eyes lingered on the object for a long while, half-lulled anxiety still churning in his stomach. His thoughts were desperate – irrational – but the plan he had set in motion had crumbled today, leaving him with only the resources that lay in front of him on the frameless mattress. Travis checked his phone and felt a brief breeze of relief wash over him seeing that Officer Jodie hadn’t tried calling him yet. Eyes locked on the gun, he dialed a number he’d been avoiding ever since he’d been out of prison.

“Hey, Zo. It’s Travis. Can I buy you lunch tomorrow?”

— The next day at Peggy’s Diner, Travis ordered a basket of fries and a glass of water. The woman across from him with the green undercut and the bleeding eyeball tattooed on her throat ordered one of those faux fancy skillets, sad strips of overpriced meat atop rice and vegetables; and a “signature” strawberry lemonade to wash it down with. “Really?” Travis glared at her as the two of them handed their menus to the waitress. Zo made sure to hold on to the dessert menu. “Come on, Trav,” she always had a playful cheer in her voice, like a teasing older sister. “You’ve been gone for a while, but not so long that you forgot the rules. You know how it goes: You buy lunch, I tell you about the job.” “Right, okay.” Travis pulled a faded leather wallet from his pocket and plopped it onto the table impatiently. “I’m good for it. What’s the job?” “Not so fast.” Zo took a long swig of lemonade through a plastic straw, staring Travis down the entire time. Rather than meet her eyes, Travis focused on the eyeball inked into her neck, a nail running vertically through it, wrapped with a banner that read “NEVER SOFT”. Travis already believed the sentiment, but the sudden harshness in her question confirmed it. “I thought you didn’t work with junkies no more?” “Jesus, Zo,” Travis looked up from the unblinking eye to Zo’s condescending smile. “It ain’t like that, alright? I wasn’t working at all. Went clean after I got out, remember?” “Mhm,” Zo leaned in, resting her chin on the rim of her glass, “’cept that job you did with Cesar’s crew a few months back. That thrift store down on Clearview Street? I’m sure your PO would be glad to hear you played well with your peers there.” “Man, fuck Jodie. I hope that pig’s dead.” Travis bit a fry in half to accentuate his point. His pulse quickened when he finally locked eyes with Zo. “Besides, that wasn’t a job. All I did was watch the door. The payout on that crap shoot would barely cover your lunch.” “But it is, isn’t it? You’re good for it alright.” She cocked an eyebrow towards the

worn wallet and scoffed. A beat passed before she stirred her drink and continued. “Look, all I’m saying is there’s a reason you’ve got the itch again. You have another run in with Lozuto and his boys? He’s gonna be tough to pay off this time. You hear what happened to his-” “No, Zo. It’s nothing like that this time.” Travis looked down at his hands as the waitress returned, placing a basket of fries between them. “I’ve got my eye on some real estate.”

— The last weekend of every month, Travis would visit his father out on “The Ranch” as his old man called it. The property itself was small, but it was tightly nestled into the edge of a forest, the sliding back door opening up to miles of towering redwoods. Since the divorce, Travis’ relationship with his father was mostly an unspoken one, filled with the background noise of old movies, almost always his father’s choice. Once, when Travis was nine, he was dropped off at the Ranch after a school field trip to the aquarium that left him with a fresh fascination with sharks. That night, the old man put on Jaws and let Travis spout useless facts about cartilage bones and electroreception long into the night. When he was eleven, Travis’ father gave him his first sip of beer. An eager mouthful of malt was sprayed onto the concrete garage floor moments after the can touched Travis’ lips. The old man turned red and swore – something about staining the paint of the car – and threatened to give Travis the belt. His father threatened him plenty, but almost never followed through with it. Even when his father was angry, Travis was never afraid of him. He knew that if he just kept quiet and gave the old man his space things would blow over. Nights like that, Travis appreciated the quiet songs of the forest beyond his window.

— The job Zo outlined over lunch was a relatively simple one, something just the two of them could handle and still walk away with a good take. The night came quickly and Travis was in the passenger seat of Zo’s white Firebird, parked adjacent to the old antique mall she used to lift from in high school. Apparently there was a tall black safe behind the counter that housed a bunch of jewelry, old bank bonds, ivory, who knew? Anything the shop owners wanted to move without having to do any tricky book-keeping was in that safe. How

over the store’s bottom line. Zo sat behind the wheel, idly picking vine green polish off her nails, while Travis sat with his eyes closed, breathing slowly. Focus had never been a strong suit of his, but it had been especially difficult the past few years. Meditation helped some, but it could only do so much for him in the few tense moments before a robbery. “Hello? Earth to Trav. You ready, space cadet?” Travis turned the gun over in his hands, adjusting his grip bit by bit until it felt comfortable, but it never did. “Yeah, I’m ready Z.” Travis opened his eyes just in time to see one of the employees head out the door of the antique shop and walk towards their car. The owner had let his niece leave work early, twenty minutes before close, just as Zo had promised. “You sure you got this?” Zo asked him without looking up from her nails. “Might be nice to have some backup in there.” “I’ll be fine,” Travis said, “it’s just the one old dude in there, right?” “Yeah, you’ll be fine.” Zo said, watching the niece’s car leave the parking lot. The doors unlocked with a sharp click. Travis took a deep breath and cocked the gun. “Leave the car running.” Travis said as he shut the door behind him. Zo yelled back something like “be quick about it”, as if there was any other way to do this sort of thing. He tried to look casual in the short walk to the storefront, a façade put on for an audience of empty parking spaces. For a split second, he forgot the world around him, moving at its own restless pace, and pictured himself at the front door of the Ranch, surrounded by trees, the brass doorknob just out of his grasp. As he reached the double doors of his mark, he took a long breath and exhaled, pausing to watch the thin cloud of cold air leave his lips and disappear into the night. One last time, he thought as he pulled the ski mask over his face. A small silver bell chimed as he pushed the door open and stepped inside.

this joint managed to stay afloat this long was beyond him, but Travis wasn’t here to fret

— On Travis’ thirteenth birthday, his father loaded two big black cases into the back of his pickup truck and the two of them went for a drive down one of the backroads through the forest behind the Ranch. As they drove, his father was saying something about how much he’d been looking forward to this day, and though Travis could sense the excitement in his father’s voice, he kept his eyes pointed out the window, following a little roadside stream and wondering if there were any fish in it. Travis had known this day was coming for a while now. His father kept all his guns in a decorative display case in the living room, and every now and then, when he was especially drunk, the old man would hoist Travis up onto his lap and tell “two-fisted tales” of his time overseas. Travis didn’t remember many of the details, but he remembered the pride the stories were told with, even though they all seemed to end sadly. So when his father parked the truck in front of a roadside shack labeled “Backwoods Firing Range”, Travis was hardly surprised. “Now listen son,” the old man said as he pulled down the tailgate and clicked open the latches on one of those black cases, “a gun is a tool, no better or no worse than any other tool…” Travis knew those weren’t really his father’s words, just ones he’d borrowed. But that was okay. Travis could tell the speech was genuine, even if it wasn’t original. His mind was still on the stream they had passed on the way here, wondering if it might lead to a little pond where the two of them could just go fishing instead. — “Hands in the air, now!” Travis tightened his shaky grip on the gun, trying to keep the barrel level, or at least to keep up a threatening appearance. Not that there’d be much chance of missing at this distance anyway. The man behind the counter was vaguely middle-aged, bespectacled, and was identified by his nametag as “Oscar ☺”. Instead of putting his hands up, per Travis’ request, Oscar flung open the register and began shoving handfuls of cash across the table

towards the bag under Travis’ arm. Travis instinctively opened the bag and pushed the cash inside, before his eyes caught the tall black safe looming over Oscar from behind him. “Fuck the cash old man. The safe!” Travis pointed over Oscars’ shoulder with his gun hand. Oscar shoveled two more shaky handfuls of green paper into the bag before looking up at Travis, confused. “There is plenty of money here, why would you want–” Travis brought the barrel between Oscar’s eyes. “I didn’t ask your opinion. The safe, now!” Through the tunnel vision of the ski mask, Travis watched Oscar stumble back towards the safe, punch in a code on its keypad, and struggle to loosen the large iron turnstile lock on its front. With gritted his teeth Oscar leaned into the lock trying to loosen it. As he watched the man struggle, Travis felt an odd obligation to help him, to expedite this whole process, make it easier on both of them. As Travis watched the shop keep’s hands frantically turn the lock loose, his eyes were drawn to a golden band on Oscar’s finger. In that moment, the dead time waiting for the safe to swing open, Travis thought of his father, firing round after round of .223 from a flashing barrel of sleek grey steel. He saw clearly the resoluteness of his father’s face, eyes narrowed, focused only on the paper target in front of him. It was a kind of focus that would have done Travis well now, but he knew the sorrow behind his father’s determination. He was reminded of it every time he saw the ring still on his father’s finger, a relic he refused to be rid of, even after the divorce papers were filed and custody was settled. Years after the old man moved all of his things to that lonely shack he called the Ranch, the ring was still on his hand, tilting back bottles and pulling triggers. Travis never asked his father why he still wore the ring, and mentioning it to his mother would have pointless. Her opinion of her former husband was low enough already. This would only be another gnat in the swarm of reasons why she had pawned off her own ring so long ago.

Travis felt his own fingers tighten around the trigger. “What exactly were you expecting to find in here?” The voice of the stranger named Oscar pulled Travis back to the present. He tightened his grip on the bag of loot and scanned the inside of the safe. There was no jewelry inside. No pearl necklaces or carved ivory earrings. It was a gun safe. BANG! Travis felt a bite on the top of his right shoulder. It knocked him against a case displaying a collection of old magazines. Travis held his footing and ducked tightly against the counter as he sprinted for the exit. BANG! BANG! Two more shots followed him and Travis couldn’t breathe until her heard the little silver bell chime again. Tires screeched through the night as Zo’s decaying sports car roared away from the scene, momentum slamming the passenger door shut before Travis could do it himself. “What the hell was that?” Zo spat, venomous. Left hand holding the steering wheel, she hefted a bag that weighed considerably less than she expected. “There’s no jewelry in here! Did you kill that old guy over a damn cash register close out?” “He shot me!” was the only comeback Travis could think of. He could hear Zo’s questions coming at him in rapid succession, but had no answers of his own to throw back. He wanted to spit back at her, scream that there was no fucking jewelry in the safe, but the .32 caliber tunnel carved into the meat above his collar bone was sending him into a panic. The breathing exercises he'd been practicing were much easier to do when the car was idling and his blood was still all inside his body. Now, Zo was pushing the accelerator to the floor and the heat from the Firebird’s dusty old air vents did nothing to cool either of them off. “You better hope that old fuck got all the hundreds in here at least. I don’t want to see any goddamn ones while I’m counting this shit.” “Did you not hear that he fucking shot me?” Zo scoffed at that and through tears Travis saw a smile crack her lips.

“Yeah. Can’t believe you let the old man get the drop on you.” Zo spent the whole conversation with her eyes fixed in front of her, as though the road itself was the source of her frustration and she was trying to run it down at every turn. He almost believed her though. Daydreaming during a hold-up almost cost him his life, and there was no way the bag of cash on his held even half the value they expected from the mysterious magical safe from Zo’s youth. If he’d have kept his wits about him, he definitely could’ve handled the situation better, or at least get a shot on Oscar before getting clipped himself. The Ranch would have been his. With the speed of the getaway car pressing him into his seat and Zo’s furious words banging dully against his ringing ears, Travis had no idea what he was supposed to do next. All he knew for certain was the pain in his shoulder and that Zo had lied to him about the fucking safe. And there was the gun. “Stop the car.” His voice was dry and weak, barely audible over the angry roar of the engine. Zo’s foot eased off the accelerator, more from surprise than acquiescence to her passenger’s request. She had spent the entire getaway berating him, now caught off guard by the distance in his response. “What did you say?” Zo turned to him with hellfire in her eyes, white knuckling the steering wheel. “We’re fleeing a robbery that you botched and you want to stop for air? No. I’m getting us the fuck out of dodge and then finding someone to patch you up.” Again he believed her; it was a stupid request. But the cabin of the Firebird was closing in on him, a helpless monkey trapped in a rocket headed for an unknown destination, failure already acknowledged and accounted for. Forget escaping the scene of the crime, escaping this moment and its accompanying headspace took precedent. He wrapped his fingers tightly around the gun again and pointed it towards that ever watchful eye on her neck. “I said stop the fucking car, Zo!”

—

Travis was fifteen when his mother died. He moved to the Ranch full time, no longer confined or protected by weekend visits. On the night of her death, the ring was still there on his father’s finger, clinking against a bottle of rum. The old man stood on the porch, wailing into the ancient woodland around him. It was late, and Travis had been ordered to bed hours ago, but he crept out to the top of the staircase where he watched his father’s pain through the sliding glass door. They held each other at arm’s length, the same way their relationship had always been conducted. That night, Travis could feel that distance spreading. Three years later, the ring was how Travis identified his father’s body, after the old man stepped in front of a train that ran past the closest liquor store to the Ranch. Whether this was an accident or not, Travis would never know. The ring was all that was left of the man now, aside from a few boxes of DVDs and other outdated mementos. There was the Ranch itself of course, but with his father’s will never written, Travis was directed to drearily decorated state offices where unsympathetic conversations of inherited loans and property taxes took place. After all he’d been through, all overworking unpaying jobs and the stupid “get rich quick” schemes from people like Zo, this was the closest Travis had ever come to buying back his inheritance and ridding himself of the red tape that held his grief together.

— But that dream was gone now. The Firebird swerved into a narrow alleyway and came to a sudden screeching halt that shook its occupants, bodies impacting against the safety belts that held them in place. Zo put her hands in the air. “Hey, come on man.” Zo smiled at him in disbelief. “Let’s get you patched up, alright?” Travis ignored her and stepped out of the car, keeping the gun trained on her the whole time. Zo’s angry voice faded behind him as he headed down the alleyway, followed by the high pitched squeal of her tires. Travis stood in the dark alleyway clutching the gun, hoping he would be able to return it to his safe soon, tucked away with the rest of his father’s things.

five things he saw: Dumpster, fire escape, rain, puddles… gun. It dawned on him just how stupid it was to keep the gun and leave the sack of money in the car. Zo had sped off, left him here. Surely she saw this as Travis’ failure and the fraction of the money they had managed to get away with as her rightful cut. Travis wondered if she would have to give any of it to Oscar’s niece. Travis turned back the way he came, hoping desperately to see the Firebird still idling there, ready and waiting to deliver him from his failures. Instead, he was greeted by a blinding flash of red and blue lights. “Hey! Freeze, punk! Show me your hands!” Fully aware of the mask he was still wearing and the grip in his fingers, that feeling of helplessness washed over him again. This time there was no point in fighting it. As he lowered himself towards the gravel, Travis focused his thoughts on the Ranch, but only heard sirens and the sounds of the city.

He closed his eyes, caught his breath, and opened them again. He counted the first

Detour Ahead (For Billie), Celeste Corzan

on being a survivor poetry by Meilani Clay all my attackers must be r. kellys and bill cosbys pedophiles or perverts for me to have half a chance at being taken seriously but the friend who trails his hand too far down my back the lover who chooses to bury my no beneath all the yes that came before it the boy i called myself falling for who played bass in church none of them are monsters yet memories of them still hide beneath my bed breath hot with denial whispering doubt into my dreams without being pinned down without being drugged without being underage without dark alleys and strangers with weapons and even with any of these my story has no teeth nothing with which to attach itself to righteous outrage we are never victims even when there is a fight and DNA under fingernails even when there’s video and scars even when the world becomes the dumpster behind which you leave our bodies, contorted and trembling our stories are still little more than think piece fertilizer growing clicks and traffic but changing nothing about how we feel forced to sleep fully clothed with lights on feel forced to never be alone even when solitude would nourish us feel forced to keep our stories buried out of the blazing rays of unrighteous indignation

for multitudes there is a place between monster and human where too many travel a bermuda triangle where accountability and remorse vanish in the swirling, turbulent waters of patriarchal violence instead of telling the truth instead of shouting our stories into the storm to be swallowed in self-righteous solidarity we watch as monuments and murals accolades and opportunities are heaped upon these beings instead of grieve we survive

Too Much Tail, All That Jewelry (For Toni), Celeste Corzan

poetry by Celeste Corzan At the feet of ice glazed cliffs, villagers witness glaciers shrink yearly. Bejeweled trash tumor, cyclone of conveniences, useless then deluged. We clean up the black slick spilled into our bruised blue, polish our pelts clean. Birds migrate adrift as toxic winds tinge their wings through burned bare forests. Earth’s pride seen from space, pregnant landfill swelling as plastic pumps bloodstreams. Thousands of species extinguished each warming year humans spurn their turn. In California my palms sift fake snow, wait for our gold coasts to drown.

CNN Update—The Last Hurricane Name Has Now Been Used: Haiku

essay by Cynthia Cabrera Friday mornings were times to get ready for the party weekend ahead. La vecina would yell from the window: "Mira, y cuando me vas hacer esa greña?" We knew this truly meant: "Me vas hacer el pelo para que mi marido me siga queriendo!" Women in the ‘hood understood this code of survival, keep your peluquera close to keep your man closer. Dominican women’s routines on Friday mornings consisted of a cafecito, mangú y salami y un merenguito to awaken the new morning. Like many of the women in the Heights, I lived near a bodega and a salon, and my sisters and I grew up using the same salon as my mom. So, when we moved to the Bronx, we would make the same trip across the bridge to get our hair straightened. Internalized racism or mejorando la raza, within Dominican culture meant getting rid of our curls and was the best capital for Dominicans in New York. Getting your hair done was a full-day occasion. So, once we had our sweep of besos y buenos días y como está tu mamá, we sat for the washing. After a brutal untangling and rolling of our hair, off we went to the hairdryer for an hour and a half. We sat through the salon's usual activity: bootleg CD sales, fresh pastel en hoja y pastelitos, and angry women yelling on their phones at their no good pendejo kids and the men that refuse to care for them. Sometimes you could hear “hoy se bebeeeeee” from a passing car blasting Anthony Santos. I could sweat for an hour under the hairdryer. And the constant movement in the salon made me believe la peluquera forgot me! After a while, I was hot, hungry, and ready to get my ears burned off by my girl Fidia. Fidia was a woman who was not to be messed with; she ran the business with a careful and stern glare. She was adorned with two armfuls of bracelets, which clanged against your head with each movement. Watching the other women style their hair was an art exhibit. The heat of the tenesa would rise, the static of our curls plancha’o to meet each day. Beauty came at a cost, “para verse bella tiene que aguantar halónes” is often what Mami preached. The time bonding with

Wash and Set

preserve the only community we had in New York. By the time I was thirteen, I knew who killed who, who owed money to whom and which sucio was fucking la vecina. My sisters and I did not speak very much, but the peluquera loved to engage us, probing information out of us like a detective. We only spoke when the blower got too hot to bear. Mediodia brought in the gringas who showed up for a lunchtime pampering. I never understood how it could take fifteen minutes to wash and blowout hair. Shit, to sit my ass down in the chair was a fifteen-minute process! Unfortunately, Dominican women never let the gringas wait too long. They were always seated quickly, given water accompanied with fragmented English bites “would you like” and “how short?” I hated when gringas came into the salon because of my jealousy in that care. Peluqueras never ate when they styled gringas and the professionalism given could have passed for decent bullshit. Much to my annoyance, half my hairstyles were pernil juices greasing my hair strands. Yet, I always finished with a polished look unmeasured by the plain styles of the gringas. Gringas made everyone uncomfortable. They never spoke to the peluqueras, they merely pointed and gestured. On the other hand, when the morenas came in for a style, clients and stylists alike shifted in their tacones. You did not want a morena angry because she will not hesitate in telling you what's really good. La morena always came with the same request: "can I have a wash and set?" They always came in hesitant and left happy, which is why they kept coming back. Una Dominicana will burn the shit out of your hair but your hair will remain pressed for two weeks. There was always beef though in the Latina caste system: Mexicans were never allowed through the doors, unspoken rules prohibited it. This was a space for Dominican women to meet and complain. La Boricua gets the fake smile, the Brazilian was given extra praise and the Colombian never came. At that time, that was how Washington Heights operated. I was curious about the world of other salons. When I moved to Baltimore for university, I refused to go to a salon because no one looked like me or whose hair texture resembled my own. No one I could trust. The senior year of college and my impending graduation reminded me of my desperate need for a haircut. Dominican salons were

these strangers was so special and important to any Dominican girl attempting to

about her salon. Upon entering, there was soft music. What the hell. No merenguito, no empanadas. I had never been cut by a White person. Nonetheless, a White man. I missed the laughter and chisme and warm smell of habichuela con dulce. Of course, the haircut was horrifying and the stylist spent far too much time doing that nervous White people talk on their ineptitude with anything not associated with whiteness. It looked like Dora had a bad day. I have since moved, found new Dominican salons, and learned to adore and nurture my curly pajón. Yet, the lessons I learned in those salons were the foundation of beauty and female bonds in a city where personal touch laid beyond grasp. The women in that salon understood the sacrifices they had to make to burn, stretch and lay those curls for the sake of apariencias. Although I do not depend on salons anymore, some Friday mornings remind me to turn on merengue and breathe in Washington Heights at the prime of womanhood.

hard to come by. So, I was referred to by a White curly-haired professor at my university

Elijah on Mt. Tamalpais, Zea Haley 62

fiction by

Cyril Sebastian

It was cold inside the cave, but everyone warmed up by rubbing against each other, men with men, men with women, women with women, Homines sapientes with Neanderthals. Sometimes they rubbed so much that fluids came out of their orifices. Some consumed these fluids, some spat them out, some watched as the fluids gradually evaporated. Once everyone was warm and mostly fluid-less, the elder stepped on the rock to address the crowd. ‘Surely I say unto thee. The men are the seed carriers of the great banana skin in the sky. The women are merely vessels for those seeds. From henceforth, the women are to have no say in matters of how we live.’ First there was a hush across the room. Not everyone spoke the same language as the elder, and some didn’t yet know of language. The hush turned into grunts, snorts, and then became whispers, voices, cries, and shouts. The elder stayed calm while the crowd split into groups, pushing and out-shouting each other. The din was silenced when a loud fart rang out across the cave. Everyone stopped and looked in the direction of the sound. It came from a human female who, while straddling a neanderthal, had let out the deafening sound from her anus. The crowd was half confused and half amused, but beheld the sight silently. The elder lost his cool and bellowed: ‘See, what I meant about women! This person is a disgrace! She cannot be allowed to live with us, the bananaskin worshippers!’ The woman moaned and finally came. She was oblivious to the fact that everyone was watching her and she had no idea that she had just been condemned by the elder. ‘So, what is this gathering about?’, she asked, after dismounting the very spent neanderthal. ‘Cast her out! From this cave, from the plentiful gardens outside, from the flat planet we live on!’, screamed the elder. The crowd, which had been divided until now, suddenly sprang into action as one and raced towards the woman with sticks and stones.

A Very Short History

direction of the night outside. They managed to escape the crowd and disappear into the thick forest that bordered the garden of honey, fruit, and herbivorous animals where everyone lived. It was a clear night; ‘thank banana skin’, she said to the neanderthal. ‘You no more banana skin, man standing on rock say so.’ She was surprised that he could speak. ‘I didn’t know you knew language! Where did you learn it?’ He turned silent. She smiled and said: ‘Doesn’t matter. What the elder says is so outrageous!’ He remained silent. She licked her lips and said: ‘You know what, fuck language. We’ve got better things to do.’ They proceed to touch, rub, lick, and fuck each other late into the night. Before dawn, a pack of wolves tracked them down by smelling their fluids and mauled them to death. A few years passed. — Kofi had always thought that the dark castle which stood on the coast was the end of the world. He had seen many of his relatives and friends go to the castle and never return. There wasn’t ever any news of what happened to them, nor did their corpses ever turn up in the village or along the coast. Thus, it was common knowledge that the castle was haunted. The elders in the village even said they could hear sobs and songs all along the coast late at night. That night, Kofi decided to go to the castle after the death ships left. It was a cool night. Kofi shuddered as he made his way through the yard, stealthily avoided the sleeping, white ghosts, and found himself on the upper level of the castle. Walking towards the cannons, Kofi was more excited than afraid, especially since he hadn’t come across any corpses and the ghosts were all asleep. It was also a clear night and the moon was

Panicking, the woman grabbed the neanderthal by the hand and started to run in the

round. There was just water for as far as one could see and one could see well tonight because of the moon. There was also just water as far as one could hear. The constant swishing and occasional roaring could not be anything but the sea. Kofi stood there alone under the moonlit sky watching specks of light kiss the farthest waves for what seemed to be a very long time. As a boy who lived near the coast, Kofi knew the sounds of the sea. He knew that at this time of year, when the waves started becoming quieter, it was a sign that daybreak was close. The sounds of the sea were gradually waning, and Kofi knew it was time to make his way home to the village before the white ghosts woke up. He retraced his steps and was about to leave the castle complex and enter the yard when he heard a distant, unrecognizable sound. Knowing he had some time to spare, he followed the sound to determine its source. It was a high-pitched sound, garbled, unfamiliar. Kofi thought it sounded funny. Not funny in a hilarious way, but in a what-the-hell-is-that kind of way. As he followed the sound, he found himself going lower and lower in the castle, past the still-asleep white ghosts, past the well-lit corridors into a space very unfamiliar to him. The sound continued and so did Kofi. Finally, he came upon a huge door, from the other side of which the sound seemed to be emanating. He lightly tapped on the door and the sound stopped. Kofi waited in silence for some signal. There was none. After a bit, he tapped at the door again and in response there was the same high-pitched sound from within. ‘Pah-Pah, this is Kofi. Are you ghosts?’ ‘Kofi, run! Are you insane?’ came a voice from the other side. Kofi knew that voice, it was his uncle’s. ‘Uncle, are you ok? What is the noise coming from there?’ ‘Kofi, my beloved, you have to leave now. We have been tapping these shackles against each other in the hope that the villagers will come and rescue us.’ ‘That’s outrageous! Why are you in shackles?’ ‘Kofi, there is no time to explain, you have to leave the castle now, before the white ghosts wake up! Be good and tell everyone in the village that our souls will wash up at

It took another 2 to 3 million bodies to be strewn across the great ocean for the people to know that the white ghosts were far worse than ghosts; they were traders. A few years passed. — The dark bunker was all he had left. His struggle to purify humans continued, but he was close to losing the war. His wife came in at her usual time with his afternoon tea. ‘What’s happening in the world today, then?’ The wife grunted: ‘As if you don’t know.’ ‘Still, I’d like to hear from you.’ ‘Nothing good. For you.’ It had been twelve long years. After his win in the election, he thought he would convince not just his nation, but the entire continent to fall before him, to accept his sun-worshipping race as superior, and to purge an entire race out of Europe. Instead, all he ended up doing was massacring millions of people, starting the second great war, dragging countries and their colonies into it, and now was on the verge of losing everything. ‘Come now, it’s not all bad. The legacy of our pride will live on, you will see.’ ‘What you may call pride, others are recognizing as hate.’ ‘That is outrageous! There is a clear difference between us and them.’ The wife had no patience or will to argue this further. After pouring two cups of tea, she sat at her desk and sipped slowly. She was tired: of him, his delusion, the war, the bunker; all of it. It was hard to say if she was remorseful though. She didn’t have to live with her fatigue for long. It was almost three in the afternoon. He was scanning through the wires he constantly received and looking for some change of status, some hope to hold on to. It didn’t seem like there was any coming. He turned his attention to her, who by now was slouching over her desk, either napping or in a trance. ‘Are you feeling alright?’

this castle, even if our bodies don’t.’

‘Sleep? At this time?’ ‘How does it matter what time it is? I want to sleep.’ ‘Stay awake a little while longer. I’ll tell you a story.’ And he launched into a bizarre rambling of his nationalist beliefs, history, mankind, economy and so forth. She could tell that he was really at his wit’s end. Like the nihilist philosopher from many years ago who finally went insane seeing a horse being whipped, he too had pretty much lost his mind. The clock ticked away, every movement of the needle booming like there was a bomb going off outside the bunker. His monologue had taken away half an hour from her nap. She finally turned to look at him and saw him holding the gun to his head. ‘Do it!’ And just like that, he pulled the trigger. Shortly after, she put a little cyanide pill in her mouth and finally got the sleep she wanted. The curtains fell on the stage. A lot had been revealed about the last hours of Der Fuehrer. This was a gentle re-imagining of what was otherwise a frantic day. The people rose in the hall. The play had gone on too long and the audience was either uncomfortable or disgusted with the polite retelling of history. There was no standing ovation, there were barely any claps. A rich patron, who was also the president of the theatre group, took the dais and graciously argued that this was the only play that focussed on the last hours of Der Fuehrer. ‘No one gives a shit!’ ‘This is sympathetic to racism!’ ‘Hey, fuck you!’ ‘Stop humanizing anti-Semites!’ ‘This is outrageous!’ But there is always a limit to outrage, and slowly but surely, the audience politely made their way to the exit. A few years passed. —

‘No, I am very tired. And I want to sleep.’

The night was windy, and it took a while for them to settle into a conversation. ‘So, what do you think our best move is?’ ‘I don’t know, father. You are best equipped to make the right decision.’ There was a faction of the moon-worshipping desert dwellers who had just attacked a neighbouring desert country. It was up to the father to decide what retaliatory action, if any, should be taken. It was hard because there was too much oil, and therefore, money at stake. Could spilling blood be worth the price of a million barrels of oil? The world watched the first war followed by the endless wars that came next on television, the way one watched a high budget, yet grainy action film. The shiny streaks shooting across the desert night became a fixture on news channels around the world. They were almost always followed by explosions, which felt weird, because there was no audio. The world had gotten used to the spectacle of film, where every visual had to have a corresponding sound effect, in sync-sound. However, the first televised war had only images and no sound, except for the droning news presenters speaking in what may be described as a matter-of-fact manner, while cities, people, settlements blazed under the desert sky. This first war barely lasted for half a year, but it set into motion one of the longest eras of armed conflict known to humans. The blood spilt over oil seeped deep within the desert sands and shifting over time took many forms, in many places, rose up with many ideologies, and continued for many decades. The differences in the world from 1000 years ago and after the first oil war were imperceptible. What made it different now was that the world had audio-visual access to the horrors of war. They saw the debris in real time, they saw children choking to death, they heard women who had been raped and tortured, they heard men who were missing limbs or their senses and sometimes both. And yet, nothing changed. Heads of families, that is, men, watched the news bulletins after work, and simply changed the channels or turned off the TV when they were exhausted. An entire generation of children grew up watching those faint flashes in the desert followed by silent explosions while elsewhere, another generation of children lost their hearing, their limbs, and often their lives under those faint flashes. While the first

In the dark corridors of power, both father and son were having an after-dinner stroll.

their lands for their sins, the other set were told the story of a blue and red bald eagle that was preying on them. A few years passed. — The den was warm yet shaded, his favourite combination. After edging himself for the better part of an hour, he had decided that he couldn’t delay his orgasm any longer. The humans on his VR headset were telling him to cum in 3….2…1… ‘UHHHHH’, he exclaimed while he erupted all over the pillows, the sheets, and even a little on the wall across the bed. He grabbed a sock from the floor and started to wipe himself, when suddenly the door of the den was loudly rammed down by a large, tall man in riot gear. ‘On your knees, get on the floor, remove your hands from over your cock and place them on the floor where I can see them!’ ‘What is going on!?’, he yelled. ‘Immigrant 80 million, 6 hundred 45 thousand, 9 hundred and 11, you are under arrest. You have no fucking rights. It doesn’t matter whether you remain silent or not, we are putting you on a spaceship that will take you and many others way above our polluted atmosphere. Once you have escaped gravity, the spaceship will continue into an orbit, eventually burning up around a million miles out from the sun. This journey will take up to 107 days, though the federal government cannot be liable for any change in schedule. If at any point during the journey, the spaceship’s fuel or navigation system fail, the ship will automatically throw open the entry hatch and all of you will be sucked out into the blackness of space. The lack of oxygen will render you unconscious in about 15 seconds and after 90 seconds you will be dead. Again, neither the federal government nor immigration services are liable for these timelines. If you bring charges against us, we probably won’t get them anyway.’ ‘Are you insane?? All this because I didn’t update some fucking papers?!’ ‘I never said it had anything to do with your documents. This is because we who serve

set of children were told that this was the banana skin god dropping flaming stars on

white beard previously known as banana-skin in heaven have mandated interracial, trans-positive, queer, porn as both immoral and illegal. And you sir, were watching, as we can clearly tell. This is a violation of the law and is punishable by a crash into the sun.’ ‘Wait a minute, how do you know what I was watching? Don’t I have a right to privacy? I even have a VPN!’ ‘Convict 80,645,911, if you spent some time watching the news instead of abominable and inappropriate sexual conduct, you would have known that no one has any privacy anymore. You can hide behind all the VPNs you want, we will still find you. You must know: we are the ISP, the VPN, the internet, the system.’ ‘This is outrageous!’ A few hours later, the spaceship had just exited the earth’s atmosphere and was headed to death by solar flare. As the ship made its way past the moon, a much larger space craft came into view. This space craft had been watching the planet with great interest for billions of years, and the sentient beings on it were horrified by what they had seen so far. However, they never had been horrified enough to take that most drastic step. But that was about to change as they seemed to be headed for a crash with this spaceship full of immigrants. ‘What must we do?’ said the ship’s vice-captain to the captain. ‘Control, can we course-correct to avoid the collision?’ ‘This is Control. We can zap them with lasers before contact, but we can’t guarantee not encountering debris, fragments, human parts.’ The captain shook his head. ‘Ugh, that’s ghastly. Any way we can contact them or earth so they change course?’ ‘This is Control. I’m not trying to be sarcastic here, but we have been asking them to course-correct for oh, about 65000 years?’ ‘You’re right. Shut the simulation down.’ And just like that, the universe shrank out of existence, but not before an explosion of visuals where the edges of reality as we knew it came crumbling down, where, in an instant, all that we had ever known was proven to be false, and where time itself selfimmolated in an act of defiance.

Tears of a Clown, Janell Gray

all the instructions poetry by Qayyum Johnson in one ear & out the other how to walk, talk, stand, sit when to nod, clap, bow, lay down to turn away & touch like snow falling like the tides, like the weather an appropriate response often sounds like silence which is not often enough which is part of the teaching like wings of a bird or song or stillness or like aging or playing or dance like a mirror within a mirror like a pillar or a rooftile or grassblade to go forth with all beings as one individuated like a farmer or wife a mother, grandmother, a wise person without anyone to share secrets wearing holy work clothes, handed-down to eschew high seats & colorful fantasies to alms in black & white, sweeping the porch, patio, deck, walkways clean going naked without smalltalk with toys for tots, with meat for bears with paint for the fainting, flute for sleep in & out the ears: how-to manuals instructions both pith & pitted stretching—a garuda, curling—a snake, hidden—a scorpion, awake—a moon how to look with love upon the land & all that lives upon it

Protection, Kylie Meyer

fiction by Ryan Jones April 20th, 2069. Social Justice Mercenaries sweep across what was once the united states, now called Cancelvania. I managed to escape the mandatory gay marriages and compulsory soy injections. But I became a fugitive. Black lives matter, meaning that white lives like mine don’t. But there is hope. In the ruins of an abandoned fedora factory, a band of incel STEM majors found a way to convert misogyny into a material capable of warping space-time. With any luck, they could send someone back in time to save humanity. Having experienced illegal heterosexual intercourse, I am the prime candidate for the Chronal Harmonizing Adaptational Device or CHAD for short. I just hope I can do something before all of humanity is cancelled. More than half a year, I’ve been here waiting for the engineers to successfully send something back in time alive. Then there was a knock. A feeling of tension swept over the room, but not in a gay way. One of the lookouts went to the window overlooking the factory’s double-doors. “Just trick-or-treaters,” he said, relieved. I fought the urge to laugh. Using a term from the list of unacceptable slurs was punishable by death, but here there was no political correctness. I walked over to the window and looked down at the children in their gender-neutral, culturally sensitive, gray Halloween jumpsuits, but children don’t carry anti-appropriation rifles with hetseeking missiles. Before I could shout a warning, the doors burst open, molten pieces of shrapnel scattering. “What are you doing outside of the designated safe-space?” the commander barked. But it was a formality as the egalitarian troopers opened fire. Columns of deadly energy Yassed through the air. One such beam collided with someone and reduced them to the least offensive material Cancelvania could agree upon – oxygen. The poor virgin was vaporized, leaving the air carbon neutral. This was the green new deal the republicans warned us about.

The Feminator

a barricade of body pillows. “We don’t have any more time to test,” he said, “you have to go now!” I looked out at the survivors. They were the unlucky ones. They would be brought to the high feminist and be forced to accept their privilege as cis-gendered, heterosexual white men before being sent to the soy mines. Gritting my teeth, I looked at the researcher and nodded. Dodging projectiles and criticism, we made our way to the laboratory where the time machine waited. The scientist fiddled with the delicate instruments surrounding the glass humansized chamber. The vault door we installed could withstand up to 100 snowflakes of force. I walked to the console where the CCTVs showed hot porn and some SJMs finishing their search of the rest of the factory. The leader, an intersectional feminist, waved to someone outside and through the ruined doors walked our worst nightmare. Though resembling a human at first glance, it was clearly a mechanical humanoid. One of the ecologically friendly, ethnically ambiguous robots designed to crush the patriarchy. A feminator. Her short blue hair was set to the side to allow for practicality in combat and unobstructed vision. She faced the camera and I could tell she was looking directly at me. She followed an invisible line to the lab. She could interface with technology somehow. The glass ceiling was shattered. “Doc,” I said, “they have a feminator. She knows where we are.” “Just as well,” he said, and the machine whirred to life. It glowed a shade of white that had been forbidden years ago, electricity crackled along the glass chamber. I took off my clothes, my magnum-sized dong wobbling in the air as I walked into the machine. The researcher briefly looked down and with a look said, both ‘no homo,’ and ‘nice’ at the same time. A deep thud resonated against the vault door, bits of concrete dust dislodged from the ceiling as the entire building shook. “Don’t I need a weapon?” I asked. He leveled a sarcastic glance, “I’m sending you to 2019.” I sighed with relief. According to the historical records, that was two years before

“Come on,” one of the researchers grabbed my girthy wrist and pulled me behind

As the researcher further calibrated the machine, the thuds got louder, the vault door shaking loose with each strike. He repeated a series of numbers for me to memorize. Bank accounts, social security numbers. Then he repeated our savior’s name. The one who could prevent this future from happening. “You have to find him, protect him,” the researcher urged. With that, a final punch sent the steel door flying off of its hinges, narrowly missing the delicate, but not effeminate machinery in the room. The researcher pressed a final button and the room flooded with light. The last thing I saw was the back of the man as the feminator walked towards him. The last thing I heard, his scream. A strange air entered my lungs. Full of freedom and the free-market economy. How things were back when things were right in the world. “Hey, wake up,” a man said. I opened my eyes. I was too surprised for words. They were police officers. Honest to Christian God police officers. “You have to help me,” I said to one of them. He gave me an incredulous look, no doubt intimidated my massive genitals. Turns out they were more beta than I thought. They handed me the keys to the squad car and I drove. Due to my superior sense of direction, I didn’t need to ask for directions as I soon found myself at the door to our savior’s house. When he answered the door, I knew he would be the one to save us all. “Come with me if you want to live,” holding out my hand heterosexually. I was still naked, but he didn’t dare look down at my engorged member. A true alpha. He put on his tactical vest and ‘get back to the kitchen’ t-shirt, walking to the squad car. Just in time, apparently. The feminator was already making a full sprint towards the car. I hit the gas quickly and the scent of scorched rubber permeated the air. Without a word, our savior leaned out the window and took aim at our pursuer. Despite weaving through traffic, he was able to hit her, but it did little to slow her down. One of her renewable material arms extended into a sharp hook puncturing the trunk. She climbed over the car above the roof. The alpha beside me reached into the back seat and retrieved a 500 Mossberg tactical shotgun. Pointing the weapon that honestly was

the first and second amendments were revoked for white people.

Our savior’s huge weapon blasted over the ceiling of the vehicle. The feminator rolled off of the car and onto the busy street. We kept driving and didn’t stop until the tires were bald. It’s been three months now. Through several subreddits and Alt-Right communities, we’ve built a resistance. Whatever plans for intersectional dystopia have been stopped. For now…

under-compensating at the ceiling above, he said, “It’s time to trigger a lib.”

Daily Dose poetry by Qayyum Johnson

Thursday, April 18, 2019 11:20-12:10pm No research, no writing for facts, no reportage that exhausts all possibilities for music, no aspiring to timelessness (nor timeliness), no mentioning of enumerated oddities, no vocational odes glorifying a new under-served noun, no mesmerics, no glosses, no hidden trinities, no Reason clock working mechanistic tic-toc, no tropes of hope, no cauterization, no turning away, no touching, no joke. Invite the body to speak, invite the wind, invite grief, invite rage, invite bewilderment, invite emptiness, invite aversion & attraction, invite huddling & hard masses, invite hunger unending, invite gray turbulence, invite cold heat & sweltering freeze, invite loss of childhood wonder, invite innocence that isn’t nostalgic hermeticism, invite patience, invite unspoken accord, invite flow, flood, fear & famine, invite the body to speak, invite the trees to lift upward weeping, invite end, invite end, invite end. Scared to let go, scared to pray to hologram, scared to intone flag chant (threatened to not), scared to see spring start up again, scared of the quiet if you’re scared (sacred noise if you’re not) (scared welter if disembodied & seeking womb), scared of failing to pronounce in this time, scared of dying & not having lived, scared of the green-brown river (her depths), scared of upsetting the cart, scared of the marketplace, scared of tearing asunder what perfect chaos wrought, scared of eschatology, scared of materialism, scared of ear hairs growing dreamlike on an old man’s head.

Sadness is a basket the size of a garden, into which flows a stream of molecules that want to be carrots. At the root tip of each growing orange carrot is a Tower of chemicals that each hunger for nothing beyond the shape of their bondage—deeper into the dark they plunge down, arranging infinitesimal stages & platforms from seeming nothing, karaoke of wet minerals & air. A circular homage to sugar. To know yourself divine (by way of the ordinary) & looking out, to see—What—all the shapes & spaces between. And the backward step: all un-done again. The inner sense is all Space, all dripping on glass pane & seeming lightlessness—or is it? Because it is circular (like the breath) & can radiate out at any point or micro-point along the way; each ray having infinite points which may branch or circle outward with yet more radium, more rays, more radii, more receptors (like eyes) that are sensitive spaces residing in between, whose job it is to draw in (accumulating) & back-flip (to outwardly spread to the farthest edges of the galaxy (e.g., the skull)), & then—again, What Is It— the shapes dis-cohere into tinier thin pencil tips, dashes where they make jazz runs or color scales. Shapes whose collecting is gratuitous & intentional, both. Shapes who know by doing, and/or, who doingly know—like the unending flag of the skies which signals itself by grand effusion touching all points in cascading moments like glass panes defined momentarily by multiplicative vertical tears. The inward, then, is nothing like a backward, nothing like a forward, it is more intuition of wholeness at the very moment of dissolution’s terror—that Solidity—which stands in for the Other in the blackness defined by a fragile whiteness that assumes a pale margin surrounds & is the home of self. Under the sky (quotation marks surround the spatial locutor) also assumes, Above the earth. From this queer vantage, eyes closed is best perspective: the radiant breath, the circular & linear, the basket shape that holds, the mapways that connect, the end where the path ceases at the high rocky edge overlooking—What? This is it. It. The disorderly flight of sense taking energy from this & giving it (freely) to that; to What is to come when the immensity returns again—gay, rippling, taciturn, epiphanic, matter-offactly.

& the immensity returns with Things: a sharp thing, a blunt thing, a cold thing, a sexual thing, an edible thing, an unquenching thing, a cool & smooth thing, a hairy & wet thing with rough smeared borders thing, a leaning & untrustworthy thing, a dominant, cruel & violent thing, a silent thing, a buzzing thing that whispers musically in one’s own voice thing, a hand over your mouth-shaped thing, a transportive beating thing, a pungent thing that startles thing, a thing unbelievable, an unbelievable thing, a thing that doesn’t exist, a thing that cannot express itself thing, a beyond the pale thing, an unspeakable thing that has something to say thing, a thing with a pattern that means something thing, a thing that has something for you thing, a thing attached to a thing, a thing for the season of mud thing, a thing for this stage of What thing, an offensive outlandish absurd foreign thing, a thing sent back by the things that occupy the future who thought it would free us now thing, a thing prayed into being over beginningless time as a gift from the insurrection at the grapefruit juice of the universe’s inception thing. In other words—a thing meant to be seen—What? The thing cannot be seen, the thing is, only as we are. The thing is a warp & we are the weft. Another spatial locutor directs us to Open. We try as we might (may as well) & we might as well try as we note what happens next to the thing, with our gathered queerness spreading upward & downward, inward & outward: things offer us friendship, point us toward the selflessness of other things, which circles around in straight lines to the linear organism, the Thing we assume to own, to be, to be always looking out for. The immensity is pleased to look without having to find, around the circle of glass, around the seemingness of a surface to the ocean above (the sky) & the quantum porosity of the mountain below (the earth). How well-lit this dark & how queer to un-know & then—again returning—like the rain, like the end, like the light, to know ourselves divine.

Untitled #1, Celeste Corzan

Contributors Eli Augenstine is a first generation AsianAm lgbt+ student artist. They an art major at SFSU currently and love incorporating elements of himself and intersectionality in more surreal aspects of art. The find inspiration in humanity and life. They work in various mediums both digital and traditional. You can find most of their work on instagram @kidkingeli. Jamie Avery (she/they) is a writer, editor, and plant parent living in Berkeley, California. In 2020, she graduated from San Francisco State University with a BA in Creative Writing. Her work can be found in Forum Magazine and Hey I’m Alive, and her digital avatar lives on Instagram at @jamiejacquelineavery. Neha Bagchi (she/they) lives and writes in San Francisco. They are a poet, translator, and writer of unfinished novels. Secretly, in the dead of night, when no one’s around, she writes songs. Cynthia Roman Cabrera is a loudmouth Dominican and Puerto Rican native Bronx, New Yorker. She is a storyteller and poet exploring culture and identity, cityscape, 'familismo', and healing her inner child. It is important for her to write in Spanglish as a way to challenge the ways in which the writing field labels traditional writers, what considers compelling and worthy work, and who contributes to the erasure of marginalized and targeted storytellers. Her experiences as a scholar, broke girl, comelona, reader, advocate, and queer person in love help shape and transform her work. Her work is published in Changing Womxn Collective, HerStry Blog, Breadcrumbs Magazine, Spanglish Voces, and Bronx Brand Magazine. Juan Sebastián Cassiani is a Colombian analog collage artist and sociology student. His work is centered in subjects such as time, environment and social relationships. Remy Chartier is a queer and trans author from New Hampshire. They currently attend San Francisco State University, where they study Creative Writing and Cinema. When not working on their original fiction, Remy spends most of their time reading, forming detailed analyses of films for fun, doing fanwriting and fancraft, and petting the East Coast’s most anxious cat. Meilani Clay is a writer, mama, and educator from Oakland, CA. A graduate of Howard University, the University of San Francisco’s Urban Education and Social Justice program, and a current MFA Poetry candidate at SFSU, Meilani aspires to be in school forever, to bridge worlds with her words, and to one day build forts out of books written by Black folks. Celeste Corzan (she/her) is a writer and visual artist living in Oakland, CA. After a few detours into alternate realities, she earned her B.A. in Creative Writing from SFSU in 2020, minoring in Comparative World Literature. When she is not writing or reading, she is painting, doing old

school analog photography, or engaging in other creative pursuits, currently pandemic induced soap making. She is a terrible sport at Monopoly, but will make up for it with homemade vegan mole. She will begin her M.F.A. in fiction at SFSU in the Fall of 2021, and has been published in Transfer Magazine. Brea Dawson is a multidisciplinary visual artist currently working out of the Bay Area. She is focusing on Graphic Design and Painting/ illustration right now and experimenting with other forms of art for inspiration. Brandan Foley is a fiction writer currently finishing his BA in Creative Writing at San Francisco State, with minors in technical and professional writing and comic studies. He is an avid ice hockey fan, amateur esotericist, and horror enthusiast. You can find more of his work in The Illustrated People and SFSU’s Transfer Magazine. Find him online @protog0at on Twitter and Instagram. Janell Gray is a student by day and artist at night. She enjoys drawing but mostly painting with her favorite medium, acrylic. Not only does she draw but she enjoys playing video games on her free time. You could follow her on Instagram @jchilla13. A queer immigrant from Indonesia and of Chinese heritage, Edward Gunawan is a writer and interdisciplinary filmmaker based in Oakland. His work has appeared in Sweet Lit and Intimate Strangers, an LGBTQ+ anthology published by Signal 8 Press. Visit addword.com for more info. Zea Haley is a queer Pisces photographer and poet currently residing in San Francisco. Her Instagram is @human_haley. Katie Hunter is a writer, educator, and student in the Creative Writing MFA Program at San Francisco State University. She has been published in The Bold Italic, Hecate Magazine, Rebel Girls, and Misadventures Magazine, and she currently lives in Oakland with her partner and cat. You can find her at @kahunteroma and katiehunterwriter.com. Tommy Ibrado (@tommygraphix) (he/him) was born in Bacolod, Philippines and migrated to Canada as a child, and eventually finding himself in the Midwest. A self taught artist, he prefers working on digital medium and draws inspiration from his love of comic books, anime, fantasy and sci-fi. Qayyum Johnson was an organic vegetable farmer at a Zen temple on the Pacific Ocean for a dozen years. Recently he has started a meditation group for prisoners, volunteered with hospice, served on a food co-op board, been a letter carrier and spent joyful hours noticing natural things. Qayyum is gratefully indebted to the many movements for liberation, which forever help to write courage and honorable relationship into our collective story. He co-directs the Art Monastery (www.artmonastery.org), a crossroads investigation of contemplation and creativity.

Ryan Jones is a Black and queer speculative fiction writer and is an MFA student in San Francisco State University's Creative Writing Department. Minhee Kim is a 2020 graduate of Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. In their off time, they enjoy embroidery and rereading the young adult novels of their youth as if under some kind of sisyphean curse. Sammie is always open and receptive to new opportunities. One can catch them through Twitter and Instagram, @sammicchi. Kylie Meyer (She/Her) is a queer, avant-garde, published photographer. Kylie is currently a Psychology student at UCSC who haphazardly stumbled into digital and film photography. She is moved by an image’s ability to be both beautiful, yet strange. Kylie often includes nudity in her work because she finds nudity to be elegant and raw, while simultaneously adding tension to her art. As a creative individual, Kylie loves and seeks personal growth and development in everything she does. She can be found on instagram @strangeexposures. Cyril Sebastian grew up in Bombay, India. He worked in Television for more than a decade, before quitting mainstream entertainment seven years ago. He is a part-time writer, consultant, activist, and full-time hater of capitalism. Julia Shackelford was born in San Antonio, TX and grew up in a live oak forest, her body covered in soft cedar branches and the sap of strawberry popsicles. Traveling an hour and a half north to attend the University of Texas at Austin, she discovered a love for building fictional worlds in dark studios and the satisfaction of a well-spliced word, graduating with a BS in Film and a BA in English. She now lives in Oakland, CA where she continues her study of fictional worlds, pursuing her MFA in fiction at SFSU. Silvana Smith is a visual artist and writer born in Sicily and raised in Florida. She recently graduated from The University of North Florida with a degree in fine arts. She pursues sculpture, photography, illustration, printmaking and more. Cats, insects, eggs and tea bring her happiness. You can find more of her work on Instagram as @eggexplorer. Ash Towry is a multi-media artist based in Columbus, Ohio. They use their work as a tool to navigate their current Genderqueer identity. This manifests through syncing their current self with their past self through the use of farm animal symbolism and portraits. The visual and social elements from Ash’s childhood in Texas have greatly influenced the inspiration behind the symbolism within their artworks. You can find them on Instagram @professionalsnartist. Abraham Woodliff is an Oakland-based writer, poet, digital content creator and founder of the popular Bay Area Memes page on Facebook and instagram. His work has been published by San Francisco Webizine The Bold Italic and Brokeassstuart.com. Abraham’s self-published short stories have been spotlighted by Medium for their popularity and quality. His first collection of short stories and poetry, Don’t Drown On Dry Ground will be available for purchase summer 2021. Follow @abeisabadwriter on Instagram for more.

A note from The Artist Formerly Known As Wynn: One time a white lady got in my face, looked at the shape of my eyes, and called me “some kind of brown Asian” with a friendly smile and the kind of unabashed caucasity that makes me wonder if she actually saw a human being in front of her. Oh, also, I paint. Peter Xiong―Xyooj, born and raised in Stockton, California, is the youngest of five siblings. He graduated from to Cal State Monterey Bay in Communications ― American Multicultural Studies and worked in education within Monterey County for most of his professional career. Currently, he is pursuing an MFA at San Francisco State University and still resides in Monterey County. He is Hmong, a part of his identity that inspires most of his writings.

The Ana: Issue 6

Articles inside

Contributors

Daily Dose by Qayyum Johnson

The Feminator by Ryan Jones

A Very Short History by Cyril Sebastian

Firebird by Brandan Foley

on being a survivor by Meilani Clay

Wash and Set by Cynthia Cabrera

New York City 1998 by Katie Hunter

Pink, Plastic Razor by Julia Shackelford

When your visa expires by Cynthia Cabrera

I Don’t Want to Write a Story about the End of the Word by Remy Chartier

Inheritance by Jamie Avery