May 2014 Cover: Sofia Pontes Moreira Editors: Marta SantivĂĄĂąez and Sofia Moreira Layout and Design: The Dew Crew Made in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina
EDITORIAL
Together with creativity may come freedom. Freedom of thought; freedom of expression. It may come discoveries and encounters with unknown parts of yourself. It may all be cheesy and terrible. It may all exist in accordance to the system, to what you have already experienced. Have you ever cried while writing? Condensation. It is all liquid, yet more solid and reachable.
THE TRAIN OF THE LEFTBEHIND
THE TRAIN OF THE LEFT-BEHIND
In the train of the left-behind, No one sings, no one whines, No one looks up and no one smiles.
Malak AlSayyad
Nobody enjoys the sunshine. In the train of the left-behind, I sit alone. No questions asked, no taxes payed, Not looking up, not looking down, But daring to look behind. Next stop...
I will remember Mostar for the cafĂŠs. For the young boy that I tutored in English, and his family that made me dinner and showed me a different side of Mostar. For the way the vicious wind blows the rain drops sideways during the storms of winter, permeating through your clothes to a bone-chilling core and rendering your umbrella useless. For the stark contrast between Mepas Mall and Old Bank; for the uneven stones of Old Town. For the joyful warmth of the sunshine and the resolute strength of the
Erika Batiz
mountains and the vibrant hue of the Neretva.
FIRST IMPRESSION
The days go by faster than a blinking eye If you say no enough times you will miss out on life Look around and you see the earth spin Look up and see the mountains majestic and still Wake up to a rooster and watch the sky Hoping to guess what the weather is like Leave home and walk through town Seeing familiar faces in the crowd Grab a coffee and rush to class Greet with a hug and feel the spirit Make friends and break stereotypes Chat over breakfast, lunch and dinner Then complain about not getting any thinner Wave and the world waves back Say Hi and hear a million tongues echo the chant
Lushik Wahba
Bid goodnight and listen to the quiet As your family retires into the night With distant thoughts of theories and formulas Drifting into the autumn wind Leaving behind promises for tomorrow and forever
GENDER AND LANGUAGE When I was in the sixth grade I thought that I was gay, 'Cause I could draw, my uncle was, and I kept my room straight. I told my mom, tears rushing down my face She’s like “Zach, I love you, but that’s just not okay” Yeah, I guess she had a point, didn't she? Maybe it was just a phase, all in my head I remember doing the math like, "Yeah, I'm good at little league" A preconceived idea of what it all meant For those that liked the same sex Had the characteristics The right wing conservatives tell me it's a decision And I can be cured with some treatment and religion Man-made rewiring of my predisposition Playing God, aw nah here we go America the brave forces me into the status quo And God loves all his children, is somehow forgotten But we pass legislation that subjugates me, and labels me, and takes away from socalled freedoms. Now this is the world from which I have come. This is the world I live in. This is what it means to be a gay teenager in America. Since a young age I have been defined by others not for who I am but for what I am: gay. I have grown accustomed to being treated like someone with a defect, an error, something that needs be fixed. Same Love by Macklemore depicts the life of a gay male in America. From birth until death it follows him through tears of joy and tears of sadness. And unless you have experienced the isolation that comes along with spin the bottle, or the peer pressure to get some, or being called a faggot for holding hands with another man, you will never feel the true weight of this film. But consider, just for a moment, that you were gay. Lesbian. Bisexual. Queer. Transgender. Even straight. That you were labeled for something that you could not change. Now ask
yourself, when did you choose to be this way? When did you choose to be straight? When did you come out as normal? I was thrusted out of the closet by heteronormativity. Peers questioned my lack of a girlfriend, parents asked me where they had gone wrong, psychiatrists tried to see through the mask I had constructed to shield myself from the outside world. I had become very good at lying; it was self-preservation; my animal instinct to survive. But eventually the pressure got to be too much. People have asked me how it felt to be in the closet and what it was like to finally come out. I have thought about this for some time now, these terms, and moreover their meaning. Like the pressure that builds right before an orgasm, the pressure before one comes out is explosive. Uncontrollable. Insatiable. And like an orgasm, the very mention of the word provokes people to cringe. To judge. To hate. And like an orgasm, the aftermath of coming out of the closet is sticky. And salty. And exhausting. And like an orgasm, gay means so much more than the true meaning of the word. These so-called dirty words have an undefined but infinitely dangerous weight in our society. At the mention of the word gay, we are conditioned to think a certain way. At the mention of the word masturbate, we scream foul play. At the mention of the word orgasm, we become encompassed in shame. These are the connotative meanings of the words we try and avoid. But why do we avoid them? It’s all the same love. Whether it’s love with a man, or with a woman, or with yourself. It’s just love. The process is the same. Hormones change in our brains, we find a mate, physical or metaphysical, and we tug and pull each other until ejaculation. But when I say love, you don’t think of that. You don’t think of the sex. The sperm and the sweat and the chimera of bodily fluids that goes along with love. You think of the euphemistic, Hallmark bullshit we have been conditioned as a society to picture. A white man and a white woman kissing in front of the Eiffel Tower. Why is it when I say I am gay does it mean anything more than “two white men kissing in front of the Eiffel Tower?” Why is it that I am put into a box, dipped in a rainbow flag, and expected to dress in skinny jeans? Why is it that people do not trust me with their children and expect me to have a leather fettish? Why is it that if I hide myself from the world I am accepted, but the second I show the slightest bit of my true being I am judged for more than I truly am? No straight person needs to explain to their parents that they once tried masturbating and they once came and that it felt so good that they want to do it again.
No straight person needs to explain to their parents that in order to climax they pictured the man from that Calvin Klein ad they saw on TV. No straight person needs to do this. And thus, no straight person will ever understand what it means to come out. When I say I am gay, I am announcing to the world that I am ready for sex. Not that I love men. That I love gay sex. Hot, sticky, sweaty, gay sex. And is that really something that a boy at the age of 12 should have to share with the world? People ask me when I decided to be gay. And as far as I can recall, it was never a decision--to like men. For why would anyone subjugate themselves to such an extent? The better question would be to ask, when did you decide to reject heteronormative culture? When did the pressure become so great that you exploded? And how did it feel to finally come? Now that I can answer. That I can put into words. That I can say, was liberating.
And I can't change Even if I tried Even if I wanted to, and trust me, I have wanted to.... So bad And I can't change Even if I tried Even if it meant I could finally be normal And I can't change Even if I tried But maybe, someday, the world around me will
Zach Giesler
SLEEPLESS We started together,
being afraid that there wouldn’t be anything
unarmed fighters for a better future.
left without them.
We thought it would be enough:
How are you supposed to live without a
thousands of empty hands against few guns. dream? How much are you allowed to give for a dream?
Here we are, we have thrown away all our hopes, like too
What we saw
small clothes.
was no change, but friends giving up or dy-
We keep going,
ing.
we don’t have a choice and we never wanted
Clenching the fists in our pockets,
one.
we reached out for weapons.
What is left of a gone dream?
How much are you allowed to take for a dream?
Only a grey morning back in reality?
Some comrades left us, predicting that if we would go further there wouldn’t be a way back. We laughed, we didn’t want to go back. How far are you allowed to go for a dream? We destroyed the bridges behind us and mined the ways except for our own shadows. How much are you allowed to hate for a dream? Meanwhile we lost our way, sold our ideals for lower ambitions. but still somehow believed in them,
Rebecca Rechenberg
until nobody crossed our path anymore
Mohammed Zaa-
hidur Rahman
WHAT WOULD BLAKE THINK?
If William Blake was in our English class what would he think? Would he be disappointed. Would he be sad that we missed the point. We sit here and analyze the structure and imagery in his poems thinking that we understand. Would he sit in class wishing he had never written poems because their format distracted us from the message. “You missed the point” he would say. “It isn’t about the rhyming scheme or the imagery. It isn’t about the tiger or holy land. I wanted to make you think. I wanted people to realize that the industrial revolution institutionalized religion. And just as the church was the system I was fighting against the educational institutions you are in now should be your fight. I hoped to make you think for yourselves. I hoped that my struggle would live on into every era and against every new system. Instead you have taken my poems and tailored them to the system. You look at them but you don’t see. In
Lushik Wahba
fact you follow the rules and use my words to do so.”
This is a piece I found from about two/three years ago, in the carcass of a discarded novel I planned to write. It is told from the perspective of a 12-year-old child who builds an abusive relationship with the documentation of thoughts.
CONDITIONAL Two Christmases ago the Popovs moved in across the road into block of flats that stood forlorn for years. We called them the downies because they all looked the same to us with the same plum-cheeked smiles; we’d initially mistaken some to have Down’s Syndrome. They were a large family of six children and a fat overzealous mother. People were always getting evicted and coming in new like clockwork cuckoos. ‘Blame the government for the housing crisis,’ is what they all say, ‘they just want our money!’ Often they’d shout something like this over a can of beer and the tinned applause of sit-coms which was really stupid because we used to say that they were the ones who spent their day sitting on their hairy asses, in dirty tracksuits while the government was giving them welfare. Anyway, the Popovs invited us over for some sort of hybrid pre-Christmas housewarming. Their small flat was decorated with tinsel. The walls alight with an encrusting of fairy lights that were thick and tangled flowing in every direction like multicoloured pubic hair. It was probably the most family based thing we’d done in a very long time, even Uncle Yasen was there. They put down a floral paper tablecloth that I remember to be really tacky. They weren't even real flowers, just some Little-Mermaid type pink coral shapes. Ms. Popov waltzed in covered in make-up, as though she locked the bathroom and shot herself in the head with a gun full of cosmetics. In her hands was a rectangle tray of shop-bought leg of lamb, steaming appetising aromas around the room. There wasn't enough space for everyone to fit on the table so her kids sat on the floor in a cross-legged orphan fashion. The cramped situation was awkward. Incidentally, she didn't have enough plates either, so the children made do with disposable paper plates. Converse is a slimy word which I hate. As a verb, it means what I should have done in that situation but as an adjective, what was really meant in doing this. It’s a synonym for opposite. Charismatic and social, the perfect child; to hold my shyness under the table and pet it like a vicious dog who just wants some meat between her teeth, or an arm between her te-
her teeth, or an arm between her teeth. Ms. Popov was very maternal in her demeanour and it gave off the vibe that made you not uncomfortable with giving her a hug. I think it was all of the smiling and the apron. Her accent though was thickly Russian as though it were made of frozen Muscovite bricks setting a harsh tinge to her presence. She sat down at the head of the table and stared us all down to make sure everything was alright. Then she croaked in her bullfrog voice, ‘Bon appetite everyone!’ Uncle Yasen put a paper napkin across his lap and chimed in. ‘Thank you. It looks delicious Ms. Popov, ‘ ‘Call me Sonja, please.’ ‘Sonja,' he bumbled, 'and I can’t wait to try some!’ he replied in an exuberant manner Grandma nodded from behind him at the beaming Sonja Popov. Her beady black eyes darted back and forth between the two to ensure they had finished. ‘How you did make?’ she asked. There was a second's worth of bewilderment on Ms. Popov’s face before Uncle Yasen quickly interjected. ‘She means ‘how did you make the meat’. Ha-ha her English is not very good!’ Penny looked at me from across the table then I looked at Francis. Grandma’s eyes went down while he no longer included her in the conversation. ‘I understood Yasen,’ she said before looking at Grandma, ‘no, it’s actually store bought. It’s from Iceland.’ Grandma nodded vigorously with a grin. Penny, Francis and I all held our gaze below the table in disgust. On the walk home Uncle Yasen relentlessly cursed and swore at Grandma in the mother -tongue. The streets shimmered with wet gravel. The lamplight was orange and smudged. Shamefully all three of us kept dead quiet and walked on behind. He began with his usual racist rants and targeted the Popovs, somehow because of their lamb.
Mohammed Zaa-
hidur Rahman