The Catalyst Issue 15

THE CATALYST

CO NTEM PO R ARY LITER ARY ARTS MAGAZI N E

ISSUE 15 // FALL 2018

THE TEAM MANAGING EDITORS

WRITERS

ARTISTS

Jasmine Benafghoul Olivia Berriz

Marina Alvarez Myriam Arias Justine Bethel Angelica Casey Grant Chesin Ian Docktor Maya T. Garabedian Kai Glick Julia Goldstein Johnny Gorton Alicia Hernandez Nidhi Khanolkar Ella Kilroy Mikayla Knight Catherine Lawrence Andy Le Paulina Leang Kerri Luttrell Emma MacArthur-Warner Jeike Meijer Mei-Mei Mijares Seamus Morrison Patricia Prakash Harrison Pyros Sam Rankin Jessica Reincke Baily Rossi Elias Smith Michelle Staufenbiel Joseph Sweetnam Lilly Taylor Ignacio Vargas Spencer Williams

Darya Behroozi Jasmine Benafghoul Josselyn Beutler Jackie Caldwell Trevor Coopersmith Griffin Danninger Axel Eaton Cannon Hastings Christine Ho Bryant Hernandez Alex Ivory Mattie Jones Heidi Judge Erica Kaplan Mikayla Knight Michelle Kweon Paulina Leang Nick Malone Jeike Meijer Jordan Metz Emma Peterson Hannah Pham Harrison Pyros Sam Rankin Jaquelynn Tesch Francesca Towers Kari Whiteside Lauren Wicks Spencer Williams Frances Woo Leila Youssefi

LITERATURE EDITOR Nidhi Khanolkar

ART EDITOR Christine Ho

FACULTY ADVISORS Brian Donnelly Tyler Shoemaker

COVER ART // JORDAN METZ

Editor’s note Dear Reader, Hi! Hello! I’m so glad this issue of The Catalyst has found its way to you, and I hope you are having a good day today.

When I began writing this letter, I was at a loss for what to write, what to say. So as one does when they don’t know something regarding The Catalyst, I turned to Ricky. Ricky is my friend, a former editor of this magazine, certified CoolGuy™, and someone who will always have an answer. He told me to write about what I’ve learned in the past six months, and I’ve decided to do just that.

Five months ago, I picked up yoga. Don’t worry, I am not going to go on about chakras and ~positive vibes~, but I am going to share with you the biggest thing yoga has taught me: do things with heart, or in other words, care. Caring about myself, the ones I love, and the things I do. As the year gets busier and busier, it’s easy to go on autopilot and do things out of habit or routine, and that’s when I’ve found it important to care, and to put a little more conscious effort into everything, to slow it down. As cheesy as it sounds, caring about things has allowed me to live my life more, and feel like a more active agent in my own life. At the risk of sounding preach-y, I hope you will try and practice caring a little more, whether it’s enjoying your dinner more, paying more attention to your roommate talk about their day, or listen more in lecture (I know I might be pushing it a little).

To come back to this little book you’re holding in your hands, our team has put so much heart and so much love into this issue of The Catalyst, and to brag just a little, I think we’ve created something beautiful.

I hope you enjoy!

With all my love,

Christine Ho, Art Editor

TABLE OF CONTENTS CREATIVE PROSE 03 The little Curry Shop

Ella Kilroy 05 Broken Things

Harrison Pyros 07 MEAT and Other Maladies

Julia Goldstein

09 Oceano

Johnny Gorton

13 A Beginner’’s Guide

to Cheating Death

Jessica Reincke

11 To Sleep

Joseph Sweetnam 12 Sunglasses in the Sand

Grant Chesin

POETRY 17 Whitewashed

Andy Le 18 Battlefield

Andy Le 19 how to know a person

Maya T. Garabedian 21 Those Three Words

Nidhi Khanolkar 22 WebMD Says

Myriam Arias 24 One Shadow More

Seamus Morrison 24 Dawn’’s early Light

Maya T. Garabedian

25 Half a laugh for two

Paulina Leang 25 I Remember

Marina Alvarez

27 Ferns

Justine Bethel 28 The Dump

Justine Bethel 29 Pathetic Fallacy

Kerri Luttrell 30 To the young woman crying near me, but not with me...

Baily Rossi 31 To the first girl I ever loved

Myriam Arias 32 the small man who broke my heart

Patricia Prakash

33 The Panthers

Angelica Casey 34 Make a moth out of me

Paulina Leang

35 Screen Time

Kai Glick 36 Sickly Sweet

Catherine Lawrence 37 Split

Ignacio Vargas Ruiz Jr. 39 1 is not a prime number

Anonymous 39 infinity is between 0 and 1

Elias Smith 40 Annotation

Emma MacArthur-Warner 41 Mon-teal-rey

Alicia Hernandez 42 Sweet Strangers

Mikayla Knight 43 I Like you A lot

Michelle Staufenbiel

45 Inner Reflection

49 Adventure Boy

Spencer Williams 47 Snap shot

Lilly Taylor

Sam Rankin

52 naiveteéé

Mei-Mei Mijares

51 Cupid’’’s Bow

53 Fleeting sol

23 untitled

37 election night

Jeike Meijer

Ian Docktor

ART 01 Untitled

Francesca Towers 03 Untitled

Jackie Caldwell 24 UNTITLED

Lauren Wicks 05 Kintsugi

Christine Ho 07 Untitled

Axel Eaton

27 Untitled

31 Untitled

Erica Kaplan

Emma Peterson 28 Untitled

Emma Peterson Josselyn Beutler 30 F;light

Kari Whiteside 13 Untitled

Nick Malone 15 Jimmy the Giraffe

Kari Whiteside 17 Linear

Christine Ho 19 personal record

Jordan Metz 30 Untitled

Heidi Judge 31 Untitled

Francesca Towers 33 Panthers

Jasmine Benafghoul 34 Untitled

Harrison Pyros 21 Pretty In pink

Hannah Pham 22 pseyechedelic

Jeike Meijer Francesca Towers 42 Saccharias smithh

Paulina Leang

29 Melancholy Moon 43 ilikeyoualot

Cannon Hastings 12 Riptide

Trevor Coopersmith 40 Therapy

Emma Peterson 11 Untitled

39 Untitled

25 F(((light)

Darya Behroozi 09 Untitled

Griffin Danninger

Mikayla Knight 35 Untitled

Leila Youssefi 36 biteme

Hannah Pham CAT-ALUM 55 Still Not So Heavy

Hannah Pham & Sarah Wilson

Bryant Hernandez

Frances Woo 45 :Looking back

Mattie Jones + Spencer Williams 47 Intertwined

Jaquelynn Tesch 49 My boyfriend is not amused

Sam Rankin 51 Untitled

Alex Ivory 53 Scattered rays

Michelle Kweon 54 Angel

Nick Malone

ART // FRANCESCA TOWERS

PART I

creative PROSE The little curry shop // ELLA KILROY

BROKEN THINGS // HARRISON PYROS

MEAT AND OTHER MALADIES // JULIA GOLDSTEIN

OCEANO // JOHNNY GORTON

TO SLEEP // JOSEPH SWEETNAM

SUNGLASSES IN THE SAND // GRANT CHESIN

A BEGINNER'''S GUIDE TO CHEATING DEATH // JESSICA REINCKE

By Ella Kilroy The Little Curry Shop is tucked away on the North end of the city. It’s in a rough

neighborhood and is being pushed in on all sides by the young and the hip. The neighborhood resists the gentrification: the locals sit on their front stoops, smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, and glaring at the bright-eyed newcomers in their neighborhood. But they are fighting a losing battle.

The Little Curry Shop is hard to find. Due to the influx of people and businesses, parking is a nightmare around there, shops and restaurants are crammed into every saggy corner, and cars are haphazardly abandoned wherever there is a free stretch of curb.

Often when you go, you realize that you have to park blocks away, in the residential area. When doing this, you feel the need to walk quickly and keep your head down for the stretch of blocks until the rows of businesses greet you with a sigh of relief. The sight of people coming, going, and shopping remind you that you belong here. One hot summer day, you walk past a group of people about your age. They are in the front yard of their shabby apartment building, sitting in a

baby pool full of water from the garden hose. They’re taking turns with a large glass bong, listening to music loudly, and laughing. “Hey girl, come join!” one of the boys yells. You smile and wave but say nothing, even though they look fun and happy. If you weren’t as shy as you are, you would’ve stopped and talked to them.

The people who work at the Little Curry Shop are nice, and good looking, they smile a lot and always ask you how your day has been. If the boy with the long hair is the cashier that day, he’ll probably give you free chai tea. You usually sit outside, looking out at the hill and the cramped neighborhood, the colorful murals on the sides of buildings, the overflow, the influx, the trees and flowers growing through the cracks in the sidewalk, the view of downtown, the lights and buildings and life. There isn’t a menu at The Little Curry Shop: they only offer one type of curry, whatever the chef felt like throwing into the huge copper pot that day. But no matter what day you go, or what type of curry they serve you, it’s always so spicy it’s hard to eat, assaulting and unapologetic. You eat it slowly and watch the world as the sky softens and blends into evening. It is the coolest place.

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PHOTO // LAUREN WICKS

The people who work at the Little Curry Shop are nice, and good looking, they smile a lot and always ask you how your day has been.

But one day you take the wrong person to The Little Curry Shop. Your Little Curry Shop. You tell him it is amazing, bright and vibrant, and decide to go together.

He drives and though he doesn’t say anything, you can tell that he’s annoyed because the shop is far away from your neighborhood. You know that, in his mind, he’s doing a mental calculation for each mile he drives, figuring out how much gas it’s costing him to go to this place on the other end of town with you. When you get there, you can’t find any parking near the shop, so he has to drive into the neighborhood, quite a few blocks further in than you usually have to go. You’re relieved when he finally finds a spot big enough for his car. As you walk through the neighborhood, you pass by the squat houses with peeling paint, long abandoned plastic tricycles littered in the yellow front yards, tall brick apartment buildings that look as old and worn as the dirt they were built upon. You pass by the building where you once saw the makeshift pool party, and the same boy who asked you to join is sitting on the cement steps leading up to the building, smoking. A look, long and shameless, before the boy on the steps rolls his eyes at you both and stubs out his cigarette. You quicken your pace and instinctively feel embarrassed to have brought him here. He pushes into you, protectively puts his arm around your shoulder.

You want to laugh. He is the one that needs protecting here. You are fine.

Once you arrive on the main street, you want him to notice all the colorful murals, the weird animals and

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patterns splashed across brick buildings, the people coming and going, the long hill that slopes down and provides the perfect view of the bright city, but all he says is, “they really have a parking problem over here.”

You order your food, and the cashier with the long hair isn’t working, so you don’t get a free chai. He chooses a table near the soda machine because it’s gotten kind of cold outside. The two of you sit across from each other and eat in silence. For the first time, the curry tastes like nothing. “Ready to go?” he asks, the second he finishes his food. That’s when you finally realize that you and him are living on different planets. There is nothing here.

You don’t go to The Little Curry Shop anymore. You moved to a new city, found new places to go, new people to go with. The Little Curry Shop has changed, too.

The locals have given up, and all have more or less been pushed further north. The squat, slumped houses have been bulldozed to make room for sleek high rises, and city officials built a three-story parking lot to take care of the parking problem. The boy with the long hair was fired for coming to work high one too many times, and the owners changed the curry recipe after getting complaints that it was too spicy. It is not the same Little Curry Shop that you once loved, but it’s okay. You know you can find a Little Curry Shop wherever you go, a place that makes you stop and look, even for just a second.

There was nothing there. p

When she was seven, she’d fallen on the playground and

broken her arm. She had tripped, running across the asphalt, on a small fissure, the result of faultlines twitching some decades ago. It hadn’t hurt at first, but she cried anyway because of the way her arm was bent, and the way the other kids screamed and ran, told her something was wrong.

She frowned the entire time the doctor set her arm and wrapped her cast, until she got to pick her color (purple, because pink was too girly). At school, all her friends signed her cast in sloppy, liquid Wite-Out, but her favorite was from her grandma who drew a small flower on her purplebound palm, and told her that sometimes broken things weren’t so bad.

At fourteen, she had just started high school when a senior dropped from the third-story staircase to the ground floor. There was question as to whether he jumped, or slipped, or was pushed, but nothing could be confirmed since he was still in a coma in the ICU. He had landed on a table and that detail, or so the rumors claimed, had saved his life.

Regardless, she and everyone else who had seen him fall were ushered into counselors’ offices and talked to with gentle, cooing voices as a part of a knee-jerk reaction for an adequate response. They threw buzzwords at her like trauma and depression and support system and then patted themselves on the back for their initiative. But she kept thinking about the way the table had broken, falling in on itself with his weight, the metal and plastic concaving in such a strange way, although she never could

remember the way the boy had looked on top of it.

A week later the boy woke up and killed the excitement when he remembered he had only tripped. After that, she had received an email from a counselor she didn’t remember, asking her to “Swing by and check in!” and nothing ever again.

The future was barreling towards her. Top speed.

All too fast. The brake lines cut, the steering wheel locked.

In college, she was living with two other girls who liked to drink red wine, even though it gave them a hangover. One night they bought two bottles of merlot—one that was a twist-cap and one that was fancier because it needed a corkscrew—and grabbed three wineglasses from the drying rack. They decided tomorrow’s responsibilities could wait as they finished the first bottle and uncorked the other. They showed each other their tattoos again, and she lifted her shirt to expose her ribs and the tiny Evergreen across two of them. She said it hadn’t hurt like she expected, but maybe that wasn’t true because things are blurry in the hindsight, then they all laughed because she could never get sayings right.

Sometime in the night, after the second bottle had been nearly exhausted, it caught an elbow and shattered on the kitchen floor. The red coated the tile like a Jackson Pollock, polka-dotted with glass shrapnel, creating blood rivers and streams in between the square tiles. It must have been the wine, or the shock, or something in between because the girls decided it was the funniest thing and had to take a moment to stop laughing before cleaning up. While she laughed she was a little unnerved because the bottle that broke was the brand her grandma drank, but decided it was okay because sometimes broken things weren’t so bad.

When she was about to turn thirty, she found herself filing for divorce. She realized her mistakes, but only too late. Now, she never got sayings wrong: she understood that things are crystal-clear in hindsight. They had gotten into things too quickly—she was young, he was young, they both made wrong turns. The apartment they owned had become too cramped, their edges became sharper, and their mutual softness hardened.

Especially in relationships, her grandma told her, there is always the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Sometimes it’s hard to pin-point, but she knew exactly what led her to folding her arms across her chest and not using “I think we need a break or separation or time apart, but the big, ugly D-word. And she said it because he’d broken his promise.

The promises they had made to one another over and over: at home, abroad, in bed, at the altar. To have and to hold, to love and to cherish. In every case, no matter the obstacle. They promised themselves to each other, but she discovered how fragile that

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promise had been—how easy it had been to break—when he went off and slept with the woman from three floors down.

He broke his promise, and he broke their home, her trust, her heart. But instead of telling him all of this, she folded her arms across her chest and filed for divorce.

When she found her first gray hair, she was terrified. She had seen it out of the corner of her eye in the bathroom mirror, a silver strand sticking out against the dark mass. Pulling it had hurt more than she ever expected. And she cried, not from the pain, but because it was all too much. The future was barreling towards her. Top speed. All too fast. The brake lines cut, the steering wheel locked.

But the same week she found her first gray hair, she watched her daughter break a record in her middle school’s track meet.

She ran the 300 meter hurdles; two girls had fallen during the race. And when her daughter crossed the finish line—breaking the record, setting a new one—she forgot all about her gray hair or how her feet hurt from her work heels. She remembered yelling like she had in college, shouting her daughter’s name from the stands.

At dinner that night, with her daughter and her grandma, she decided that she was okay with getting older if it meant she could experience this.

When she had started to lie to strangers and coworkers about her age, she entered a stark-white hospital room. But not for herself. She was cross-armed, talking to a baby-faced doctor who was gesturing to the bed, to the machines, to all the beeping and moving screens, and trying to explain to her, using terminology that only a resident would understand. She kept having to cut him off, to go back, to re-explain: why was this happening to her grandma, what caused this, what could she do? She saw her grandma all the while, watching from the bed with confused and terrified eyes, unable to comprehend what they were saying or why.

Her brain cells are damaged, her mind isn’t working right, he was telling her. The nerve endings aren’t firing, the connections are broken. Her synapses, her brain cells, her hippocampus—they’re broken, they’re breaking down, they’re going dark.

Frontotemporal dementia. Protein build-up in the brain. Internal toxic suffocation—we don’t know how to stop it, he kept saying.

I’m sorry, we can’t fix a broken brain.

Her grandma kept asking questions: illogical, nonsensical, insisting she needed to go home, insisting she didn’t know them. Looking at her grandma in the bed, she frowned like she had when she broke her arm when she was seven as the doctor continued to explain, but could never forget the way her daughter looked at her from across the room when he told them it was genetic.

When a year had passed since she had started coloring her hair, she had become a regular customer at a café near her work.

She came during her lunchbreak and read the news, drinking afternoon coffee from a fake-porcelain mug. She knew it was fake because she once had porcelain of her own. It had looked different, it had felt different—or so her memory claimed.

She didn’t have that porcelain anymore. The fault-lines had twitched again and the city had shaken. Her cupboards had been thrown open, and all the porcelain had fallen out and shattered on the kitchen floor—every cup, bowl, and plate broken into a hundred pieces.

When she found it, she sat down on the rug and cried, covering her face to muffle her sobs.

And she stayed like that for a while because the porcelain had been her grandma’s, and her grandma was now dead.

Looking at the fake-porcelain mug, words kept popping into her mind. Words like corrosion and obsolescence and ending.

Words that, until recently, hadn’t struck a nerve. She tossed a couple bills on the table and left—the coffee wasn’t that good anyway.

When her daughter got into the college of her choice, she hugged her tighter than she had in a long time. She told her how proud she was and wiped her eyes and did all the things she wished her own mother had been around to do. And in the midst of her celebration, she finally worked up the nerve to ask her daughter about her college entry essay.

She had written it on them. On their home, their relationship, their family. She talked about influence and uniqueness, but when she heard her daughter use the words broken home, her face fell. She was looking at her with a broken smile until her daughter took her hand and reminded her, in a way that was all too familiar, that sometimes broken things weren’t so bad. p

BrokEN ThIngs

ART // CHRISTINE HO

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By Harrison Pyros

ART // DARYA BEHROOZI

07

I’ve begun to understand why people resort to a life of vegetarianism— Perhaps even veganism, though I’ll admit that that sort of extremist propaganda terrifies me.

It’s decidedly a more difficult way of life, and One could even say that it goes against instinctual tendencies, but it’s self-sustaining.

As someone who has been on the hunt for years, nothing leaves you more restless and famished than the complete and utter lack of prey to bring to the table.

You show up to a dinner party empty handed, knowing damn well you should’ve brought a fucking salad like everyone else.

But salad is just soggy leaves and measly vegetables thrown in and tossed about in an attempt at culinary ingenuity, and I can’t get behind that no matter how I’ve tried—and believe me, I’ve tried!

Blue Cheese

Ranch

Any and all sorts of vinaigrettes and oil based dressings.

Trying to change your taste doesn’t work, and neither does changing your approach, because pasta salad isn’t really a salad.

So, despite all logical sense and testimony against my way of life, I continue to be a predator (NOT THAT KIND OF PREDATOR!).

My consumption of flesh, when stated so eloquently, may drive others away, or seem unsophisticated, but it is exactly that sort of Primitive Persuasion that keeps me forever intrigued.

The chase.

The kill.

Everything down to licking the last bone clean and picking the skin out of my teeth—it’s absolutely riveting.

But still, people will always argue with me, “Why not settle for tofu? It’ll be good to you and treat you right.”

And while I see the validity in their arguments, it’s undeniably more fun to be bad.

You know it isn’t good for your cholesterol, or your arteries, or your heart But isn’t going without just as heartbreaking?

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So, despite considerable evidence, despite my own grasp of such healthful concepts, I persist and maintain my strict diet of man-eating and all other carnivorous tendencies.

“Main thing to remember is you can’t go too far into the loose sand, son,” my dad said. He was sitting on the tailgate of our white ’94 Ford Ranger drinking a Miller Lite, a dent under the grip of his thumb. It was a single cab with 200,000 miles on it, just recently returned to our possession after my brother Jeff drove it back from bible college in a part of Canada I couldn’t pronounce. He returned it with the passenger side all crinkled up like the gold can in my dad’s fist.

“How far can I make it then?”

“About as much as you can get away with—so not too far. As soon as you feel yourself slowin’ down I would head back. Keep the throttle pinned and downshift the second you feel the power band start to bog.”

“Okay.”

“And the first dune is the biggest. Once you’re over that you won’t be able to see the truck. It’s easy to get turned around out there. But no matter where you’re at you should be able to see the pier—that’s north. That’ll lead you out at least.”

I started the bike. It was a ’98 Yamaha YZ80, a little old two-stroke dirt-bike capable of about fifty-five mph—blue like all the rest. It was pretty shot. My dad had bought it used, well used, and I spent my entire birthday scraping off the dragon decal on the gas tank. It looked pretty carved up from the razorblade I used. My dad said I did a fine job though, and that at least I didn’t look like I was straight out of Akira—which I figured was a term from one of the Syfy Channel shows he watched, referring to the dragon decal somehow.

Because it was a two-stroke, the engine was ear-piercing and shrill like a toy siren in a hallway. Once I kicked it on, I couldn’t hear anything he was saying. I pulled the helmet over my head and looked around to see if traffic was clear—the dunes were a surprisingly busy area, with trucks, bikes, beach buggies, sand rails, and rental quads all rip-roaring around. Derelicts piloting every one of them. Once the coast was clear, I popped the clutch and sped off down the wet, hard packed sand, dodging the incoming tide foam and fly-infested piles of seaweed. After what felt like an appropriate sprint, I slowed down and turned back towards my dad and the truck. I could barely make them out in the distance. I popped the clutch and yanked the throttle again, my left foot flipping through the gears and my ears whirring with wind and the sweet sound of a high-revvedbarely-running two-stroke engine in its powerband. My dad and the truck growing bigger and bigger every second.

“You never hit the sand!”

I had killed the engine and was taking off my helmet. “You said not to.”

“I said to make sure you don’t venture too far, you just gotta keep the bike screamin’ is all.”

“I’ll get stuck, I think.”

“Bullshit, turn the bike back on.”

He took a final swig of his beer and threw it in the bed. He came over, put his hand on top of my helmet and slapped it back

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Oceano

by Johnny Gorton down. An impossibly loud noise in the space between my ears. I was scared to get stuck in the sand, but I was more scared of him.

“Just... if you see the Dunites, know you’re too far out man,” he said, laughing as he yanked a beer free of its plastic noose and back-stepped towards the truck. He had a theatrical side that he’d never own up to. I kickstarted the bike and took off heading inland, straight into the deep, loose sand towards the dunes. When I hit the sand, I was in fourth gear, and I felt the engine start to struggle and bog, slowing me down. I shifted down into third. My bike screamed as I let out the clutch. I felt momentum back on my side as I carved through the sand in swerving motions as if I were holding on to a speeding snake.

That’s the way riding in sand feels: you’re forced to relinquish strict control of your direction and become a little more open to suggestion. I went on for a good while like that, eventually summiting the first row of dunes and immediately turning back towards the shore. Back towards my Dad and the truck. Through my turn I felt the engine struggle and bog again, so I shifted down into second where I remained until I was down the dune and within about fifty yards of him. I started to bog again, so I shifted to first and got down to a crawling speed with the engine in a caterwaul—sand pinwheeling behind me as I dug deeper—then to it struggling, then to the sound of barely hanging on, then to nothing. He had warned me about that. He had told me an engine dies the same way a person drowns: it’s incremental, and then it’s over suddenly. I saw my dad throw another golden Miller Lite can into the bed of the truck and it burnt my eyes with the sun mid-air. He ran over to me.

“Not bad, son!” He was yelling.

“We need a sand tire.”

“Sand tires are for wimps. Here, I’ll show you how it’s done.”

He grabbed the handle bar and brushed my shoulder with his right hand. I dismounted and ripped off the helmet and offered it to him, but he put his hand up in protest and started the bike and took off. He was heavier than me, so with more weight on the back tire he was able to get going. He did a couple S-turns, rallied towards the water a few times and then took off full speed into the sand and over the dune, out of sight. I plodded through the mounds of sand and sat on the tailgate, my eyes fixed onto his last known location. I waited for him to rip over that dune. But I was left waiting. After a while, I thought maybe he had found the lost tribe of Dunites and decided to stay and have a drink. Or perhaps shredded the back tire on buried rebar left behind from the set of an old movie that nobody watched anymore, except on the slower slots of daytime television.

Maybe he was tempted by a mirage and chased it until the razor-carved tank was bone dry. Maybe even, the Dunites were right—maybe there was a vortex out there and my dad had roared through it at the top-end of fourth gear, and found himself wheelieing helmetless into a perilous world somehow stranger than ours. Any of those seemed more likely than ever seeing him come back over that dune. Back to a cooler containing nothing but some melted ice, and in the far passenger corner of the bed a six-pack reduced to a pile of bent trash that burnt my eyes any time I tried to look north. p

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PHOTO // EMMA PETERSON

To Sl eep

weetnam S h p e s o J By

11

PHOTO // CANNON HASTINGS

James is presently in that hard-to-pin-down stage between awake and asleep where the senses dull and the self is soluble, a weird paradoxical quirk in the otherwise mundane daily and nightly routine that can be characterized as a tacit but acute awareness of a rapidly fading awareness, of the handing over of control, to face the slings of repressed thought and arrows of absurd animal desire—desire you’re still here enough for your not-yet-sleep-swollen cheeks to redden at—this made all the worse by the fact that James isn’t very tired, having not moved all day but for trips from TV to refrigerator; and so there he lay, splayed across sheets, staging battles between frantic eyes and the eyelids barely restraining them, the eyes panicking in their fleshy cage, prodding and pulling, trying to force their way out as their ink-black landscape distorts, churning purple and brown amoeba-like shapes appearing in the periphery before, in the proverbial blink of an eye, permeating throughout the emptiness until there is no more blackness in sight, replaced by an organic somethingness with a depth to it incongruous with the thin layer of skin onto which the mass has resolved itself, the layer of skin being assailed on either side by the eyes and the outside world, so desperate to be reunited, and thus far futile efforts to do so have manifested as the pervasive murk enveloping the eyes, from which an almost human face is now visible and slowly ascending from the depths, mouth distended implausibly wide in what looks to be a howl that cannot yet be heard for the face’s submersion but is getting unmistakably closer and approaching with an unnerving cognizance and intent, and suddenly James falls through himself and lands with a jolt that throws his leg off the bed to hang helplessly in the dark, and James pulls the leg back so hard he feels something audibly pop in his hip, and now the face has arrived and disappeared, here but impossibly hard to make out for its obscene closeness, and now James can’t even remember the face, only the feeling of it remains lodged in his gut, incubating, malignantly pulsing all the way to his throat where it announces itself as a grotesquely canine sound that wakes him with a start, eyes bleary with residual purples and browns, limbs ensnared in a web of sweaty sheets, subhuman noises echoing in his head. p

Sunglasses in the Sand

By Grant Chesin She released her arms and turned and faced me. Her sunglasses were removed long before then and dark eyes looked sadly into mine. She leaned up and kissed me and I closed my eyes.

“I’ll never meet anyone like you,” she said.

“Don’t say that.”

“But it’s true.” She got up and ran off toward the gate and unlocked her bike. I grabbed the speaker and the bottle of wine and ran after her. She was about to ride away when she told me, “you gotta catch me, my love.”

I ride my bike in almost total darkness. My love told me she left her sunglasses on the bluffs at the beach and I’m hoping they’re still there. We were there for sunset. I think they’ll still be there. I call her my love because we’re not in love.

Maybe I could love her but she’s graduating tomorrow and going abroad for a year. We decided not to stay together, but we’re still together until tomorrow.

At the beach we listened to music from her little black speaker that looked unnatural in the white sand. She smiled.

Her eyes looked right at me and my heart pounded. We drank wine and watched the waves. They crashed and she looked at them. The music was folky. The waves blended in with the sound. She looked at me again and she was smiling and a tear ran down her cheek.

I’m riding back to my love with her sunglasses. I ride toward the lights of the neighborhood and can’t wait to see her. I’m outside her apartment and I park my bike. The air is still warm and I’m breathing heavily. I lock my bike and ascend the steps. She answers the door and I show her the sunglasses.

I get off my bike. I can barely see the bike rack. I don’t lock it, there’s no one else here. I slip through the gate, ascend the starlit bluffs and get down on my hands and knees. I start to crawl and feel for the sunglasses. I don’t want to break them.

“Oh, thank god!” She says and then she pulls me inside toward her room. We get into bed and I put her sunglasses on her night stand. A fan is blowing and the room is cold. I put the covers over us and I pull her closer to me. I want to say something but I don’t. Neither does she.

The sun was just above the cliffs to the west and the sky was pink. There were dozens of surfers on the water. People below us people were drinking and smoking and enjoying the end of the school year. She passed me the bottle of wine and I took a long sip. The wine was sweet and easy to drink and I could feel my body loosen. She leaned into my right shoulder. I bent down and kissed on her on the forehead.

The alarm sounds on her phone and she turns it off. She turns towards me and kisses me. I kiss her again. I want to stay there, close to her, in the warmth and the love. Maybe I do love her, but I can’t. I can’t love her so I get up and get dressed. She watches me. She loves me. She’s leaving. I lean against the wall and she gets up from bed. We walk into the living room and up to the door.

A small animal scurries away. I immediately look up to see it. The waves are just visible by the light of the stars and there is a slight difference in darkness between the sand and the shrubs. I crawl and crawl and reach down and feel something thin and metallic.

“I’m sorry, my love. I wish you could go with me,” she says.

“Me too,” I reply.

There’s a silence between us. We stand there looking into each other’s eyes. After a while she tries to say something but it doesn’t come out. I know it’s time. I won’t let her say it.

“Goodbye, my love. I'll see you when you get back.”

“Goodbye.”

The sun was halfway between the sky and the cliffs and was sinking fast. She took a long sip of wine and I could see her neck move as she swallowed it. My sleeve was wet from her tears. I craned my neck around to the right to see her face but she turned farther into me. Her arms moved quickly around my waist and her face was buried into my chest. The sun sank beneath the cliffs to the west and there was a small, sudden silence.

The sunglasses are in my hand and I fold them into the neck hole of my shirt. I’ve found them and I know she’ll be happy. I get up and run toward the direction of my bike, slip through the fence and see the faint white color of my bike in the darkness.

I turn and open the door. I want to look back and take her in my arms again and kiss her and tell her it’s gonna be alright, but I don’t. I descend the stairs and unlock my bike.

I ride away in the thick morning fog. p

12

ART // KARI WHITESIDE

A Beginner’s Guide to Cheating Death

The summer before my senior year of university was drawing to a close, I decided to spend the evening with an old friend of mine at my family’s house in Fullerton. We lazily spread over the cushioned arm chairs in the side room, intently watching the Zodiac Killer episode of “Buzzfeed Unsolved.” The instant the screen went dark I turned to my friend and asked, “So who do you think was the Zodiac Killer?”

Still processing the theories from the episode, she took a moment before stating her ideas about the serial killer’s identity.

After I agreed, there was a moment in which we said nothing while the horror of this man’s actions sunk in. “My mom was born in San Francisco not long after the murders stopped,” I said, thinking aloud. “I wonder if her family lived in fear while all this was going on or if they just ignored the news.”

“Yeah that’s pretty crazy, I don’t think I could ignore something like that,” my friend absently replied.

“How do you even try to live your life when you know a horrible death could strike at any moment?”

By Jessica Reincke

I do not remember how old I was when I first learned that my father had been diagnosed with melanoma cancer, but I do remember I was in sixth grade when I realized that he might actually die. Until then, I saw my father as this huge unstoppable force that could overcome anything. I remember sitting on his lap and laughing as he told me crazy stories about how he survived a demolition when he snuck into a restricted area to ski, or how he withstood a two-story fall from his bedroom window when he was a baby. To me, it seemed my dad was constantly cheating death, so cancer should not be any different. The first diagnosis seemed that way, at least. The doctors said they caught it early and so he would need to undergo treatments and surgery, but if all went well he should have nothing to worry about. After the surgery, my father went in for the suggested checkups, and each time he was declared cancer-free. I remember thinking to myself how, years from now, this would just be another silly story we would add to the long list of times my father beat death, but I did not realize that death was done with waiting and was getting ready to collect.

Less than a year later my father was told that while the doctors thought the surgery was successful, it turned out they accidentally left some of the melanoma in his arm and it had spread to his lungs. This time it was stage four. The next time my siblings and I went to his apartment for the weekend, he informed us that his cancer had returned and that it was worse. But he did not explain to us the severity of this diagnosis. He wanted to enjoy as many normal weekends with us as possible and did not want to scare us.

Who could blame him for that?

Most people tell me I’m crazy when I tell them I watch true crime shows late at night by myself. They do not understand that the things I watch do not scare me and, in fact, they actually fill me with a feeling of preparedness. Of course I feel all the usual emotions when I see the details of cases like that of the Zodiac Killer and the state of the victim—I just do not feel fear for myself.

One story from the Zodiac case I can never seem to shake is that of Kathleen Johns and her newborn baby. I remember feeling amazed at learning how her quick thinking of jumping out of the car with her baby as the killer made a turn saved both of their lives. I was immediately drawn to her, this woman faced death and was able to escape its clutches. Maybe she was like me, someone who paid attention to any crime story they could get their hands on in hope that if the day ever came when this knowledge would have to be utilized, we could.

As a woman, I feel I constantly have to be on the lookout for anything that could become a threat to me, and the problem is almost anything can quickly become threatening, as it did for Kathleen. True crime helps provide a sense

13

of security by providing women with criminal profiles and warning signs to look out for. For me, true crime serves as a sort of research, I collect the details and keep them in mind so that I can be prepared and avoid being a victim.

A few months after the lung cancer diagnosis, I caught my dad coming out of the cramped kitchenette in his apartment with a bowl of blueberries and a disgusted look on his face. Cancer works from the inside out and had already shown itself by steadily eating away at his bear-like frame. But it was in a way I only notice now as I look back. “What’s wrong, did the fruit go bad, or are you just disappointed it isn’t candy?” I teased him.

Once he saw me, his expression changed to an exhausted smile and he laughed before explaining, “My doctor says I should include blueberries in my diet because it can help with the cancer. I think it is more of a preventative thing, but hey, who knows, maybe I can trick the cancer cells into giving up. I mean, at this stage there isn’t much else to do, right?” He meant for this to be a joke: when you look death in the eyes sometimes the only way you can cope is with humor. At the time I laughed with him since I still believed something would save him at the very end, like all of his near-death experiences. In my mind, magical blueberries seemed way more plausible than losing my father to something as commonplace as cancer.

Unfortunately, this last-minute salvation never arrived. On July 17, 2011, my father died.

“Do you think they will ever catch the Zodiac Killer?” my friend suddenly asked as she gathered her things and reached for her keys, instinctively holding them as weapons between her fingers.

“Honestly, probably not. It seems like they were just too incompetent in how the whole case was carried out so that anything that would have helped investigators was not documented properly or is no longer helpful.”

We continued our conversation as I drove her home late that night. “We don’t have to take the creepy road through the dark hills to get to your house, do we?” I asked, dreading the answer I knew was coming.

“It’s an extra twenty minutes if we take the main road, it’s just not worth it.”

“Yeah but getting murdered in an attempt to save twenty minutes isn’t really worth it either, right?” I only half joked.

Sensing my genuine concern my friend turned to me and laughed before adding, “True, but I mean hey, we just watched a bunch of true crime episodes. Now we know how to avoid murderers, so we have nothing to worry about.”

As silly as this sounded, a part of it still resonated and filled me with a sense of security. In a way she was right, whatever fate awaited us was going to happen regardless of how prepared we were. Since this is the case, you might as well do what you can to make yourself feel prepared, even if it doesn’t actually help you in the end.

After all, “there isn’t much else to do, right?”

Coming to terms with your mortality is a daunting process, especially when you are a child. It all felt so unreal to me until I witnessed the death of my father and was forced to confront this concept head on. To a certain extent I still fear death and so I do everything I can to delay the process for as long as possible, but the thing is death can strike at any moment, even if you live your life on a diet of blueberries or watch every true crime episode known to man. While I know these things will not actually save me, they provide me with a sense of security and make me feel like I can cheat death, at least one more time, before my time is up. While death cannot be cheated forever, its fearful grip can at least be weakened when I can forget it is there, waiting for me. p

14

PHOTO // NICK MALONE

ART // KARI WHITESIDE

PART II

POETRY Whitewashed

make a moth out of me

// Andy le

// paulina leang

BATTLEFIELD

Screentime

// andy le

// kai flick

How to Know a Person

sickly sweet

// maya T. garabedian

// catherine lawrence

THOSE THREE WORDS

split

// nidhi khanolkar

// ignacio vargas ruiz jr.

webmd says

1 is not a prime number

// myriam arias

// anonymous

dawn’’'s early light

infinity is between 0 and 1

// maya t. garabedian

one shadow more // seamus morrison

Half a laugh for two // paulina leang

i remember // marina alvarez

Ferns // justine bethel

The Dump // justine bethel

pathetic fallacy // kerrie luttrell

To the young woman crying near me, but not with me... // baily rossi

to the first girl i ever loved // myriam arias

The Small Man Who Broke My Heart // patricia prakash

the panthers // angelica casey

// elias smith

annotation // emma macarthur-warner

mon-teal-rey // alicia hernandez

sweet strangers // mikayla knight

i like you a lot // michelle staufenbiel

inner Reflection // Spencer Williams

Snap shot // Lilly Taylor

Adventure boy // Sam Rankin

cupid'’’'s bow // jeike meijer

naivete // mei-mei mijares

fleeting sol // ian docktor

Whitewashed

By A ndy Le

me

se

So grandma Let me give you this poem

You’re the story I can’t learn From a textbook When a war split your heart And country in two You carried our family Across an ocean And when I sit In front of you I can’t help but notice The poems underneath your eyes The rhetoric behind your smile I’m left here trying to find what Your narrative tries to hide Do your wrinkles Match the scars On your heart Did your feet bleed When you paved the path Towards tomorrow?

Teach me Teach me to stay strong When the world Breaks your spine Nội I can’t seem To tell you, “I’m sorry for who I am Do you still consider me your family?”

Nội I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m not always there for you But I need you I need you I need you to hear me say, “From my heart I’ll dedicate this poem to you” But I’m sorry That my Vietnamese Is the ocean That the only words That my voice drowns in I can clearly say to you are

low

po

re s

To ma ke u

p for

My p o or

Vie

na

t

y el

I remember Sitting in Vietnamese restaurants With fast food Carried around like American baggage Consenting to Cultural genocide Like a B-52 aircraft bomber Hovering above A farming village While I sit there And watch the rice fields burn And I sip My Mississippi River bleach That trickles herbicides onto My cultural roots Until my Vietnamese Erodes away like Sentimental sediment from Sunset shorelines Filling up hourglasses That measure my time I have left with My grandma.

So now I’m linguistically lingering Onto my second tongue Double-backing back into this Double-consciousness Writing rich poems To make my heart pour s we a t f r o m e the Lik

e se Th

17

“Nội, con gặp lại sau” “Grandma, I’ll see you later.”

I was brought up with Psychological warfare My house A battlefield I live with the PTSD Insults fired out like gunshots Ballistic bombings burst Through my bedroom I’m still trying to find My fragments from frag fractures Splitting our family like fractions Breaking up into separate factions Until it felt like territorial terrorism My heart turned purple from Beating against itself Until now When I hand you this poem Torn up into confetti confessions Spread them out Rifting my heartstrings Across ocean riptide And you’ll read: Dear ba, Con xin lôi I’m sorry How can I complain about you Being my father When you didn’t have one In the first place?

ART // CHRISTINE HO

Bat t lefield

By A ndy Le

Dear ba, When you forced me to stay Away from your shadow To outgrow your reflection You were trying to tell me You weren’t the one I should look up to Because a son Doesn’t need another star to shine brightly

c

r

Dear Mẹ Trang, Con cảm ơn nhiều Thank you so much Even though you’re my aunt I’ll always call you my mother Because “mother” is a title That needs to be earned That goes beyond biology d And my heart strings tethered o l Towards your affection bil i Means more than an um ca

Dear ba, There’s a smallpox scar On your left arm Where your heart is You weren’t taught to feel You weren’t taught to speak up Your heart is as broken as your English So I promise To carry all your emotions To carve all your words Into every poem Into every road I walk on Because I know Your love is concrete And it’s something I can always fall on

Dear Mẹ Trang, I know you don’t understand me Language is our bridge connecting Two worlds across an ocean I hide behind similies Like a child under his blanket Because I don’t know how to tell you These things in person But I’ll translate These confessions into Braille So even if you can’t see it Even if you can’t hear it You can feel how much I love you

18

Dear Mẹ Trang, I still remember The first time you said “I’m proud of you” You looked up at me And smiled with shining eyes From seeing the rise of a son.

PHOTO // HARRISON PYROS

19

,

,

by Maya T. Garabedian 20

T THh OSE W R EE O R D S

By Nidhi Khan olkar Pupils: dilated.

Heartbeat: racing.

Breath: out of.

I’m trying so hard to concentrate but everything is out of focus.

Like staring at the droplets on a window and looking out the window.

I’m trying so hard to remember but each moment is a thousand years.

Like looking for the toilet in a Target when you have diarrhea.

I’m trying so hard to explain this delightful feeling but there’s too much to it.

Like attempting to be poetic but inadvertently being funny instead.

Smoke seeping through my lips, suspended in a cloud.

Punctuation for –“I love you.”

Just: please, Those: say, Words: three.

“Let’s pack another.”

Some facts about me: 1 I have never told anybody I love them.

2 I want to be a doctor.

3 I have this huge problem with WebMD. My mama always said “Myriam no hagas eso. Don’t look up those online diagnostics, it’ll drive you crazy” Which is valid: I’ve diagnosed myself with a terminal illness 363 times A headache is not just a headache, it is a brain tumor That pain in my side is obviously a ruptured appendix My pulse indicates cardiac arrest And I think I might have a...

What did WebMD call it again?

A Primary Spontaneous Pneumothorax Which is a fancy way of saying “collapsed lung” Which is a fancy way of saying I lose my breath every single time he walks into a room WebMD says it’s called “love”... I think I wouldn’t know I’ve never known love, so I call it a cocktail of serotonin and dopamine, the perfect drug The wide-eyed-your-laugh-is-my-favorite-song-he-smells-REALLY-good-today kind of drug See, I’m illness prone I mean, accident prone I mean unrequited, love prone I stumble upon love the way an addict stumbles upon relapse It happens something like this: I am walking, eyes closed and chin towards the sky because the sun feels so good on my skin And suddenly the ground beneath my feet is gone And I am falling To tell you the truth, I always knew that the ground would disappear and that I’d fall But I was hoping he’d catch me Nobody has ever caught me But still Brain tumor Ruptured appendix Cardiac arrest Collapsed Lung Every single time he walks into a room But it’s okay!

I know every term on WebMD I know so many terms that I can say “I have a brain tumor” instead of “you make me dizzy, drunk on the oceans of your eyes” Or a ruptured appendix for those damn butterfly wings fluttering recklessly in the pit of my stomach Reminding me of my illness “Cardiac arrest” instead of saying “my heart beats for the next time I see you” Or a collapsed lung for “your touch takes my breath away” I know so many synonyms for “I love you” But I’m hoping someday I won’t need one.

By Myriam Arias

22

ART // HANNAH PHAM

By Maya T. Garabedian

‘

brushing hair 30 minutes every morning— seems silly now war means no school. days outside playing parking lot soccer, sneaker soles thinning, rusty nail pierces foot— at least that day there was no blade against your throat. days inside playing a game called cowboys and Indians, that you called “kieboys and Indieons”— until the day you poked your neighbor in the eye with a toy AK. nights inside the whole apartment complex in one bomb shelter packed tightly— like the canned hot dogs everyone ate, not caring if they were halal. a year passing like this makes you miss the nuns at Collège du Sacré-Coeur, who smacked your knuckles with a wooden ruler until they swelled like juicy figs. your dad won’t leave home but your mom will; taking you and your siblings to the States. a teenager watching “Sesame Street”— struggling to understand the difference between winking and blinking wondering what this “dawn’searly” light

ART // JACKIE CALDWELL

23

is

that the white man speaks so fondly

of.

One Shadow More Light from uniform street lights shifting swiftly like the wind.

By Seamus Morrison

I had two shadows

at the start but I was not quite an intruder more like a tourist— attached but unattached soon I’ll be gone.

A light ahead and a light behind me.

Which will I listen to?

distorted reflections altered perceptions so, what is truth beyond what unfolds in this very moment?

what is truth? he laughs again what is the purpose of life? we laugh together— to hedonistic measures to nihilistic ends. you know how the story goes: two weeks later we’re strangers again but does it really matter? and I hardly hesitate to hit unfollow and I hardly hesitate to click unfriend.

PHOTO // AXEL EATON

24

i Remember

By Marina Alvarez

the way winter held us its cold fingers lingering on our chests slipping through the pores of our skin and seeping deep into our bones

i remember the way you couldn’t look at me the way you bit your quivering lip until it bled wiping away the words you couldn’t say and staining your cream shirt sleeve i remember with red the way I felt the way my veins pulsed and ached at the thought of letting us go and of how i craved what we could have been but never tried to be

i remember the way you finally looked at me the beloved shade of citrine faded from your somber eyes and the way you had your arms around yourself the way a boy cradles i himself remember without his these things mother and they will never leave me the poisoned thoughts entered my mind and i let myself lose control over the words that left my broken lips and off my bitter tongue...

“i can’t love you anymore.”

ART // ERICA KAPLAN

26

These things we have lost Once creeping under ferns Living in so many spaces Beings that do not have words.

ferns

We loved them so fleetingly Enjoying half a mind But we forgot life completely And lost track of time.

Now we cannot remember Which species we had, or What ecosystems they inhabited In this supposed great land.

by justine bethel

27

PHOTO // EMMA PETERSON

the dump

Have you ever seen the dump?

There are so many things

In an unwanted clump Piles of TVs and

radios and

springs

by justine bethel

Weren’t these a few of your favorite things?

What would happen if things never left, If we fixed them, repaired them, And made that our quest?

Shouldn’t we think before we throw things away?

Shouldn’t we buy things we can use everyday?

28

Have you ever seen rain form?

Not the kind in the clouds, overhead, falling loud; But the soft whispers of fog that collect and coalesce on the tip of a leaf; Brimming and bending until it can bear the weight of the single tear no longer.

And that drop descends soft and slow, and falls. so that only those listening can hear it.

Only those who wander looking down at their feet can watch it, collecting on Pollock-stained pavements.

What if I told you this is how the world cries?

Alone, not asking for attention.

Invisible, stuck in the fog.

And if a single drop makes a single plop it is not asking for anyone to stop and watch.

It is not asking for anyone to hear its tears.

It is not asking for anything.

This is how the world cries— Next time you should listen.

ART // JOSSELYN BEUTLER 29

Crying the way little ones cry, You come down upon yourself as you fall to your knees and then sit back in defeat.

Who has brought A sword To your shoulders?

The possibility of Being split open stopped Only by another’s choice.

When they leave, You look up and stare towards something dissolved into nothing— meaning means nothing when you’re the lesson to be learned.

54

Your eyes are a black mirror Your hair a vine, You push it back behind Your ear so no one will climb To the other side of your tears.

But the taller the wall, The harder it shall fall.

Crumbling to their feet Begging them Not to cut you open so they never see What’s inside.

PHOTO // JORDAN METZ HEIDI JUDGE

30

To The First Girl I Ever Loved

By Myriam Arias

Her name was Angelica Sweeney.

As if her parents named her because they knew exactly what she’d grow up to be the freckle-faced, emerald-eyed angel with a crooked smile.

She was the girl who read too much and always had an answer at the ready Even if she kept it to herself.

Secretly smiled every time she got a right answer because she already knew she’d be correct, But didn’t want anybody else to know that.

I knew that.

I knew the things that everybody else forgot or dismissed after she said them Collected facts and memories and conversations, Like if maybe I collected just the right pieces and put them in just the right order The puzzle of Angelica Sweeney would become clear And I’d understand why she mattered to me.

I didn’t realize it until a year ago, I was at a party, buzzing with exuberance or maybe tequila And a beautiful girl cupped my face in her hands and all I could see were freckles.

For a mear fraction of a second, Angelica’s constellation face stared back at me And all could think was God, I hope she kisses me Which was followed immediately after by DID I JUST THINK THAT? And just like that, the final piece of the puzzle clicked into place.

In that moment I just knew, I loved that girl before I even knew what the word meant.

I loved her the only way I knew how— Singing silly songs in off tones, every off beat melody to escape that crooked smile Must have been a goddamn symphony to my ten year old ears; Because all I can remember was a voice as celestial as her name Sitting together in that small corner by the window of the library every Thursday afternoon Pretending to study, but laughing instead, Pretending to study, but braiding each other’s hair instead, Pretending to study, but the soft three o’clock beams streamed through, Just like the love, Unexpectedly.

In those moments, sometimes, for maybe a fraction of a second I thought the soft three o’clock beams would be enough to hold us.

31

The Small Man who Broke My Heart

By Patricia PRAKash

It’s 3 am and with all the vigor and gusto of a middle aged, 5 foot tall man, you jump out of bed.

Desperate to find that Xanax pill you lost before— your therapy dog finds and eats it. Again.

If you don’t mind me asking, why’d you name him Beethoven?

And if you do mind me asking, why’d you name him Beethoven?

Hold your peace, write a piece, these pieces of me are not at peace!

Stay, stay, stay.

The Photographer left one sunny day, Left only to leave me.

What loose morals but she feels so tight. Got a tight Grip on your headboard, a loose grip on reality.

I’m falling apart but I’m so tight apparently.

If having you is wrong, I’d hate to be right, I’d hate to write about not having you.

The Photographer left this place just to leave me, Just to put me in my place about being left Because I’m never right about anybody.

I’m writing about not having you.

3 ams are lonelier now and I’ve tried to forget you in another man’s arms but it didn’t work.

I remember your room, with the weed and the weed grinders; and I suddenly remember how you used to own a few magnums.

It’s 3 am and with all the carefree bliss of a footloose 20 something year old, I burst out laughing.

32

ART // FRANCESCA TOWERS

The Panthers

Through slitted eyes, you and me Me and myself, claws digging into the soft, malleable ground Fur that ripples like water, shine that glows in the reach of the full moon I weave through you, and with the carefulness of a big cat in the rainforest

Not a grass blade bent Though I step heavily, I step gently Ears open to the endless, mindless chatter Thinking, pondering, listening She is silent thunder and stinging lightning She is a loner in a world that wants to yell above the other My velvetine ears swirl and flick at the sound of a cricket, a snapping twig

By Angelica Casey

If it were true, it’d be you approaching me A tongue, rough to bare skin, but soft to mine Same fur, same muted stains, same purr, same roar We butt heads and still manage to be one Two black cats in the jungle.

ART // JASMINE BENAFGHOUL

33

mak e

f me o t ou h mot

a

by i ’m sh

edd i ng we

i’m shedd

i’m tur ni ng awa

y fr

sk i

lean

g

ig ht

n

om t

he o ut

s id

e

[in

]

pro d t he

sti r ri ng

ing

paul ina

fe e l i n g

s a nd

[i n consta nt mo

t

dp

ok i

ng

t h ou ing

]

lt i n g

ok

g an

ts gh

pro v

po

din

34

ART // MIKAYLA KNIGHT

1 Sixty-nine push notifications Shine numb on my empty face, Conditioning me with impatient Tones for the twitching rhythms Of the hands that tended them.

2 In the past seven days alone, I’ve picked up my cell phone Exactly forty-five times.

No more.

No less.

Precisely thirty-one Of these I counted, Between Sunday & Monday.

3 Since breakfast, I’ve watched My minutes crawl, Locked in the tempo Of restless eyelids, Batting from six to seventeen, From seventeen to thirty-one, Moving as I find myself still Surprised by the expected.

By Kai Glick

Screen Time 35

ART // LEILA YOUSSEFI

4 & of those precious thirty-one, Seven were for social purposes, Three were listed under Other, & the rest I supposed were nothing.

Only one lonely minute was called Productive. By their standards, That is. Not that I paid attention, But because I was told by the glow: Minutes counted up in bars & lines, Lumped together in screen time.

A prick, Trickles

of

blood

Slid

down

my

Sickly Sweet

fingers

Distracted, was I By your scent, intoxicatingly sweet, Blinding my every sense.

w i n g t o g e t h er f

lawle

l

s

s e

rs

l

Fl o

ye

by catherine

Lawrence

y

d

By the intricacy of your la

ssly,

n

e

Your colors, vibrant with saturation Red to match the blood you drew out of me.

Distracted, was I.

For a moment I fo rg ot

tha t

rose s

had

tho rns

.

36

ART // BRYANT HERNANDEZ

SPLIT

I'm split between a now and then, a him and we, a bliss and a curse, because I have learned having knowledge is to live with knowing too much and too little.

This tongue, slick with salt, has fear slithering against the back of my teeth, ice water plunging my nerves into a state of panic under the blistering heat of a California sun. Fires twirled into tornadoes this summer, crushing wood and plaster into wrecked masses, drowning homes with smoke. And in hours, their streets are ashes.

Wandering through the wastelands of an imagination is better than scrolling through headline after headline of a world gone mad with political divisions, power-hungry men—oh god, always men with fragile egos hunting for more power, more sexual assaults to brush under their lined pockets, more women and children to kill and claim as “collateral damage.”

Then, to hear and watch black and brown bodies slayed in the streets with their killers usually in blue, found “not guilty,” “on paid leave,” “under investigation,” while families mourn during the cremation, and all they get is a citation.

PHOTO // GRIFFIN DANNINGER

37

How many times must this nation mourn the lives of a dozen children or more, when their school is shot up, a member of a system that lacks the means to protect children from domestic abuse, before we spend more money to prevent neglect of a white boy with his last resort? A gun adorned in classmates’ blood. How many times must the nation’s eyes be opened to see that prison is no longer a place of rehabilitation but a racist system meant to undermine, grind, and press my people’s bodies, minds, and strained songs to the ground till teeth crack and tongues dryly wave for the earth to open six feet, to end their pain, end their fall?

By Ignacio Vargas Ruiz Jr.

It's hard to appreciate the mountains cradling pristine Silverwood Lake, smog rising inch by inch into the High Desert. Suddenly, jaybird blue horizons are now faint with dust brushed into the lazy smoke wedged between Mother Earth and Father Sky’s lips divorcing right before our eyes.

It's hard to write these words.

Let them sit on the white screen instead of boiling in my mind till their sound streams out my lips. Only by sharing these words with you, in a mad frenzy, slightly tipsy, do I feel like maybe, just maybe, the perpetual motion of loneliness won’t slip down my throat, won’t convert my confession into a plea for help in the eyes of you all.

We have to do more, I am split, you are split, we are split.

38

To Ella

ty By Elias Smith i n

i f n

Anonymous

ART // TREVOR COOPERSMITH

ee n 0 and 1

is

Be

tw

That means 1 always has a family, 1 is never alone, 1 is significant Your brother thrives and helps others thrive just through his existenc .

He is 1.

1 is Not a Prime Number

Your brother thinks he is a prime number.

He thinks he is a number that has a factor of only that specific number and 1.

A factor that indicates he is insignificant And alone, With the number 1.

However, your brother is wrong.

He is actually the number 1 itself.

1 is not a prime number.

It is the only integer which merits in its own existence.

I

39

Infinity is between 0 and 1 Yet we count 0 as none and 1 as one What’s to be said for infinity?

That comes after none and before one Is infinity unique?

Each step, one greater than none.

Or is infinity only a part of one?

When I lose .33 or gain .01 I feel as one as 1, As 1 as one who was just none.

Infinity is between now and when I’m done.

PHOTO // JEIKE MEIJER

Annotation

By Emma MacArthur-Warner

d

My pulse quickens in my cr amp e wrist. Stabbed

e ag

by my pencil, th e skin -sm oot crunches, brittle hp then soft; its fibers hav e surr end ere d m to y underline .

Turning the page, I f i nd

a thin embossed line pulsing with thought .

Soon thought pumps

through

all the pages of this b loodless book.

— a vein,

mon-tByealAlicia-rey Hernandez

Walking into the city, You see nothing but blue.

Indigo skies, turquoise floors, Sapphire people, even an opalescent wind.

Despite the vast shades of blue, This is a happy place— Content, even.

The small creatures swimming On the outskirts of the blue are cheerful, Screeching and howling to get noticed.

The people walk through this city, Paying no attention to anything in particular, While simultaneously everything all at once.

The city even smells blue— Like the kind of aquamarine you can only smell After the waves crash upon the beach With the force of a strong current.

This is the city of Monterey A place that no one has ever noticed, But they have always wanted to visit.

41

ART // FRANCESCA TOWERS

✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴ ✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴ ✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴ ✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴ ✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴ ✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴ ✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴ ✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴

By Mikayla Knight

✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴ I fell in love with a sweet simple smile My heart pounds just thinking about him, it has for a while We met at the cash register where I coyly asked, “Debit or credit?”

I should have put my number on the receipt so I wouldn’t regret it

I fell in love w it h a deep brow n ga ze She asked me, “Sweetener?”

But she had al ready sweete ned my day Our ha nds br iefly touched and set my he Wit h her coffe ar t abla ze e colored eyes that qu ickly w ent away

✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴ I fell in love w it h a lively la ug h They gleefu lly gigg led whi le glanci ng at th It ’s too bad th ei r phone at they were gi gg ling al l alon e

✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴ I fell in love with a friendly face, She can make the clouds go away with her warm embrace She stands in her oversized jacket that would fit me just right It’s all I can think about as she squeezes me tight

✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴ I fell in love with a sweet simple smile A deep brown gaze A lively laugh A friendly face all before noon

I may never se e them again, but still I swoo I fall in love w n ith everyone I meet Because I can’ t get hurt if th ey’re just a stra street. nger on the

✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴✴ ART // PAULINA LEANG

42

Dude, it was just a small pebble, I never expected it to take me down

By Michelle Staufenbiel

Yeah I like her a lot.

Even if we’re just friends, Just friends.

We ran into the blue, Wrapped in nothing but our nudes.

Me, towards an epiphany, Cold waves blinking unseen, You grabbed a memory, Just one of many from IV. Yeah, I like you a lot Even if we’re just friends Just friends.

Maybe it was the fact that you belonged to another girl One you found intoxicating, Kinda like I found you pulsating.

Crushes taste better when you ache, A cookie dropped into space.

Yeah, I liked her a lot.

Even if we we’re just friends, Just friends.

Now I know, That it’s not all about the boys and their twigs.

It’s also about girls and their shorts, Or a girl in a dress, Or a girl in a suit, A birthday suit!

I Like You A Lot 43

Yeah, I miss her a lot.

We are no longer friends, No longer friends.

It wasn’t about her long smooth curls Or her generous curves.

It was her dreams And I wanted them to revolve around me.

Oh, and if I could do it again, I would play less pretend.

And say, “You’re not just company, You’re a late, late discovery, My first tulip sour beer.”

Damn, I thought I was a cider girl.

And you know what I think?

That you liked me a lot.

Even if I’m just a friend, Just a friend.

JUST A FRIEND.

44

ART // FRANCES WOO

inner re flec tion ART // SPENCER WILLIAMS MATTIE JONES

45

When digging up thoughts to fill this page, I’ve tried to capture every emotion I could think of. But I guess you don’t think of emotions, you feel them, and, as I wrote, all I felt were thoughts.

Thoughts about how my words could make other people feel some

engaging emotions.

(Like “happy,” that’s a really good one.

While reading this, I suggest you think about feeling “happy.”

You’ll enjoy the experience more that way.)

So anyway, I deleted what was on the page before this, which had replaced some other thing, and I think there were a couple others before that, and now I’m just going to own up to the fact that this is all I’ve got right now.

I wanted to write with meaning, but I didn’t really think I meant what I wrote, so now I’m writing that I won’t write with meaning, and this time I mean it.

Don’t look for any meaning here, by the way, because this page isn’t one of the important ones.

There’s probably a lot of meaning on the other pages though!

I really hope you enjoy those.

But this is just going to be the page where my thoughts go, and at this point I’m kind of just taking

up

space without saying anything.

So I suppose that’s it for this page. I think I feel good about it.

by Spencer Williams 46

Snap Shot Snap Shot Snap Shot

ART // JAQUELYNN TESCH

Time slows down To an instant A pause The slow burst of an everlasting moment.

47

Unknowing where he begins and she ends.

Their youthful passion caught in infinite curves

By Lilly Taylor

Each ticking second a touch fading to the lover’s abyss; new ones bringing forth blissful sighs.

Their caress, an eternal euphoria for them alone.

48

49

A D V E N TU R E BO Y

There’s magic in moon dust, in plains dust.

Legendary dirt. It’s on the clothes, In the internal makeup of the Adventure Boy. My father says he was a biking, swimming, flying boy. I imagine him at eight, Eyes shining green, plastic hands stretched into a long fork As he dives from the platform And reemerges for a metallic whoosh Of oxygen.

He is so angry now.

The Adventure Boy, carburetor for a chest, scrounges for suits in the garage, Skins, costumes that bound, fly, swim, Bring wind to that pink face, Smudges to those pressed jeans.

He wears mail order rings and hides from nothing.

Does he leave when summer steps down?

I was an Adventure Boy. I spoke soprano to friendly dogs who nudged me To scurry up the low tenor of the maple tree, Stretch a tenuous fear Closer to the clouds.

I was tasked to find kindling in the clearing. There was nothing more important.

Who isn’t the Adventure Boy, Before he learns better, before he grows nauseous, Before he reads his fables critically?

Before he senses the beginnings Of an incoherent rage?

Before the world diverges into boy and man And a chasm grows in the stomach Where the hero was upheld?

50

ART // SAM RANKIN

By

C up id ike Je

r ije Me

's

B ow

cupid’s bow bending arched over naked sweat. curving, stretched delicately quivering in unison. anticipation’s vibrations sending shocks through fingertips, gentle lips, hips parallel to cupid’s bow.

released

arrow shot blood drawn stomach sinks lungs pulsate eyes blur. missed target misdirection, no direction, no confirmation miss. she didn’t know someone was aiming she wasn’t ready. she didn’t know under the facade of cupid’s bow.

51

PHOTO // ALEX IVORY

I met you when Naïveté was the strong suit I wore I kept my head bright and my eyes blind.

My Naïveté met your Charm And Naïveté ignored all of Charm’s red flags.

Flag One: You gave me a pendant to wear over my heart but That necklace was a re-gift Naïveté believed you when you said, “She didn’t deserve it.”

By

N aïv et

Flag Two: You were my first kiss You convinced me that you get to take other firsts too Button for button, lips for lips Naïveté believed you when you said, “If I touch you, you must do the same.”

Flag Three: You told me one night that if I ever left you, you would kill yourself Naïveté said, “No matter how bad this gets, you must stay.”

i Me iMe

Stay?

Stay!

The flags piled up so high I suffocated on their scarlet fibers They burned to the touch but I took the heat for passion You were my first Naïveté insisted, “He’ll be your last.”

But every flag bloomed Red blossoms screamed, “Biohazard, do not enter, You will be singed with corrosive chemicals.”

You charred my insides, I couldn’t breathe—my lungs, smoked chimneys Couldn’t you see?

Couldn’t you see the home you set ablaze with Naïveté sleeping soundly in her chamber?

Were you so blinded by the light that you did not witness the death of innocence?

My innocence My Naïveté You slaughtered.

s re ja Mi

é

Turned me into an offering at your temple You sacrificed Naïveté in your pyre She turned to ashes My eyes caught searing embers, Welled up a mourning river.

She washed away Along with my first kiss First boyfriend First sexual encounter I’ll never see the likes of her again.

52

The sun is coming down

It’s falling through the ground Without a sound, it slips

and falls and bounds Eyes search for fleeting light

The day, it turns to night

It won’t be found

for we’re all spinning ’round

Stars pierce through blackened sky

As last light’s rays run from your eyes

An unending dance above,

Starts again as days go by

FLEETING SOL

by Ian Docktor

NO TITLE //

53

ART // MICHELLE KWEON

54

PHOTO // NICK MALONE

Cat-Alum

Hannah Pham & Sarah Wilson

The Catalyst is excited to welcome back two of our former editors, Hannah Pham and Sarah Wilson.

Hannah was a Communication major, while Sarah was an English major, and they both graduated in the spring of 2017.

Hannah and Sarah met during their freshman year during a meeting for The Catalyst, back when it was just being reawakened as a publication. Recognizing each other as the youngest attendees at the time, the two decided to stick together, and promised each other that they would one day become leaders of the magazine. Three years later, they did just that.

During their senior year at UCSB, Sarah acted as the Design Editor and Hannah acted as the Managing Editor for The Catalyst. They also helped as instructors for the corresponding class.

Post-graduation, they are both keeping busy: Sarah works as an Editorial Assistant at SAGE Publishing, and is pursuing a certificate in Professional Editing. Hannah currently helps her family’s small business with marketing and photography, building up her portfolio. With The Catalyst bringing them back together, it feels as if they were never apart.

55

Still

Not So Heavy by sarah wilson

I am heavy with the weight of unspoken words— Unuttered, but not unknown between us— And the weight of waiting for collapse.

I am heavy with the weight of your presence becoming less Than that of you elsewhere, Becoming something I’m afraid to lift from me: Too-thick covers on a cold afternoon.

But still, your presence alights me, and I forget about winter And the ice in your meaning growing along my skin like frost on glass.

Instead, I think of summer, And borrowed socks, And hugs from behind, And I let the weight of all good things layer over me like blankets against the cold, And I don’t mind so much that the layers make it harder to know the world outside.

A moment of clarity: Maybe the weight of all good things is still not so heavy As the truth in the unspoken more Hanging at the end Of my I love you’s.

ART // HANNAH PHAM

56

Special Thanks UCSB DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH JOHN and Jody ARNHOLD Matt and Ashley Kline David Elliot Cohen and Laureen Seeger DEPARTMENT CHAIR ENDA DUFFY HFA DEAn JOHN MAJEWSKI KERR HALL DIGITAL EDITING LAB IVCRC ASSOCIATED STUDENTS HAAGEN PRINTING TYPECRAFT BIKO HOUSE Coffee Collab

PHOTO // LAUREN WICKS

Interdisciplinary HUMANITIES CENTER

CONTACT US ucsbcatalyst@gmail.com The Catalyst UCSB INSTAGRAM // @thecatalystucsb TWITTER // @thecatalystucsb

EMAIL //

FACEBOOK //

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