Friends like to tell me that I act somewhere between ages twenty-six and fifty-three, before marital desires and on the cusp of a mid-life crisis, skipping childhood altogether. I figure it must be the disdain for youthful flirtations, or a tendency to reason my way out of everything, or my general enjoyment of foods high in fiber. To be fair, I think my appreciation for the makebelieve increases exponentially with each coming year. I often spend hours at work spinning elaborate scenarios in my head, ranging anywhere from make-believe tax evasion to imagined relaxation. Rather pathetically, as I grow older I delve deeper into my own head, where emotion collides with caffeine and an overactive imagination, all in some desperate attempt to escape reality. Among the daily angst rituals of adolescence, I find writing to be the most sensible thing a girl can do. During a developmental stage dictated by cyclic spurts of estrogen and biological purpose, words are certainly a stabilizing force, spinning together the nonsensical thoughts romping about my head like schoolchildren with the deeper emotions that remain squirreled safely away. This issue of Gluestick contains elements of our swing-set days to pimpled confusion to the sort of ageless anxieties that will nag us into organic matter again. Readers be warned, many pieces address issues like rape, sexuality, love and death. But good writing is always quite near to strong emotion, and these students are unafraid of confronting it.
Thy Vo, Editor-in-Chief
CONTRIBUTORS “The Birds and the Bees” by Julie Nguyen “Tick-Tock” by Katya Sutil “I’ll be your Friend” and “Silence” by Thucdan Ton “Do you like to eat Tangerines?” by Shawn Chen “Another Frustrated Love Story” by Elizabeth Koh “Unobtainable” by Elizabeth Fitz “Both” by Medha Raj “Lost my Way” by Jonathan Berry Smith “From Beneath You it Devours” by Gabe Bergado “The Eye” by Yvonne Ng “Little Rabbit Heart” by Mai-Anh Ha “Last Night” by Erato “If Only” by Anaoshak Khavarian “I Less-Than-Three Katamari” by Christopher Nguyen “The Prince’s Inquisition” by Edwin Ng “Different...Just Like Everyone Else” by Christine Parker “Sneezes and Sorrows” by Lauren Bermudez “Spelling” by Jenny Park “There Would Be” by Mai-Anh Ha
GLUESTICK 2008-2009 ADVISER: TAYLOR
another frustrated love story
by Elizabeth Koh
[‘i don’t want to wake up if you’re not here’ + heart + cities]
last night by erato