The Round, Spring 2015: Issue XII

THE ROUND spring 2015: issue xii

Fraternite, Julie Robine monoprint | 8” X 11”

L IT E RA RY ART 1 - Moonshrine Lucas Tromblee 2 - Lost God, Part II Adrianna Wenz 4 - The Life(s) of a Con Artist Amberly Lerner 8 - Uppercut Fiona Beltram 9 - Inside Maya Faulstich-Hon 11 - Letter to an Editor Margaret Nickens 16 - Panorama Larry Narron 18 - Octopus Andy Li 24-25 - These Hands Were Meant to Hold You & The Red Pearls Beneath the Sea Ariel McCarter 27 - Parachute of Dreams Jacob Luplow 31 - LDR Liz Studlick 33 - Deserted Hanna Kostamaa 40 - &c.

Lucas Gloss

T HE ROUND 44 - Sup.py Matthew Lee 46 - Death of the Poet Sally Hosokawa 49 - Help Yourself Melanie Abeygunawardana 61 - Guilt Liz Kingsley 62 - Variations on Middle Path Anna Hundert 67 - Duck Three Ways Victor Ha 74 - A White Rose Sienna Bates 77 - A&P Lisa Lee 82 - Gala Georgia Wright 86-87 - Brushstroke & Emphysema Eugenie Juliet Theall 90 - Pinhole Jinny Koh 99 - His Sister’s Story Cathy Allman 101 - I Lost My Hat. Sally Hosokawa 105 - Navajo (Diné) Patterns Sierra Edd

V ISUA L ART 3 - Skin Sarina Mitchel 7 - Self Portrait Yves-Olivier Mandereau 10 - Found & Counted Yixuan Wang 20 - Heart and Sole Juan Tang Hon 21-23 - Teagather & Made by Chinese Ling Chun 26 - Little Bird, Big City Olivia Watson 33 - Borealis 01B Devra Freelander 41 - Osmosis Ziqing Liang 42-43 - Sforzinda & Table Sun Maggie Hazen 45 - Absurd Architecture Stella Zhong 60 - sugarhold Remy Zimmerman 64-65 - Rome with a View & Untitled Heather McLeod

66 - Accidents Vrinda Zaveri 72 - Summer Julie Robine 73 - Monologue Sierra Edd 76 - Wallpaper No. 2 Olivia Watson 80 - Cloistered Xinwei Che 81 - Abi’s Dress Abigail Griswold 85 - Gossip Ishiah White 88 - Untitled Yuna Cho 89 - Found Catherine Lee 100 - Hiding Vanilla Kalai Anandam 104 - Mediterranean Peek-a-Boo Zein Khleif 110 - I Surrender Abigail Griswold

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.”

—James Baldwin

MOONSHRINE Lucas Tromblee

You’ve woken me up twice from my dreams now. Both times I could not even recall a color or a mood of sky to give you, so I said I didn’t remember and it was like there was nothing else you needed to know.

There was a quarter moon too, I remember, hanging still and holy in my window like a piece of your shoulder in the blue tint my room has before the sun rises.

You looked at me like you did when you came over and my stovetop was all smudged with oil and burnt onions and I said I would clean it and call a doctor tomorrow.

I keep it blotchless like a shrine now; I washed it like the moon asked me to clean her a mirror.

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LOST GOD, PART II Adrianna Wenz

A big drop frescos and stained glass splatter of geometric loves cut crystal shards on marble floors don’t walk on In another life I imagined myself in a large hand snuggling against curve of palm nestling in life lines the universe as our backdrop Remnants, I suppose my inheritance somber glow of regretted wisdom through the newly formed hole, an unknown yet promising lack

carried on a mild stream of defeat how far will this wind carry

before evaporating into general heaves where shall I live forever and ever? Amen.

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my whispered name

Skin, Sarina Mitchel

digital photograph, graphite | 7� x 10�

THE LIFE(S) OF A CON ARTIST Amberly Lerner

“Who are you?” they ask.

“Allison Golightly,” you reply. Allison is a girl from Rockport, Massachusetts, who loves the sea and hates the snow. Her favorite color is blue. Her favorite food is the ice cream that she buys every day in the summer with her friends at Molly’s Ice Cream Parlor. She plays field hockey and has two younger sisters, Lily and Lucy, who are identical twins, and one older brother, Matthew. She likes her sundaes without the cherry on top, and she prefers to use Comic Sans MS over Times New Roman, even if it makes her look like a child. To her, boys have cooties. They still have cooties even when she starts puberty, and she stays as far away from them as possible. The day you get your mark’s bank account information, you hand it over to your boss and discard Allison.

It’s your first time discarding an identity. You don’t think about it.

“Who are you?” they ask.

“Amy Kennedy,” you reply. Amy is a girl from Providence, Rhode Island, who hates the city skyline and loves the snow. Her favorite color is purple, and her favorite food is the waffles they sell at the crepe café on Thayer Street. She plays soccer and has one sister named Rose. She likes to drown her popcorn in butter whenever she goes to the movie theater, and she’s the type of girl who spells “grammar” as “grammer.” She dated a boy, but realized halfway through that Scott frequently forgets to put on deodorant, and that she prefers kissing the cherry Chapstick on girls’ lips instead. Amy finds something to love about Scott anyway. When you snatch his father’s patents, you conveniently forget that his family’s one bad stock away from bankruptcy. Your boss 4

T HE ROUND pats your cheek, pleased with your work. You leave Amy Kennedy behind like a crumpled-up piece of paper, and you don’t look back.

“Who are you?” they ask.

“Bethany Gardner,” you reply. Bethany is a girl from Harlem who hates the upturned noses of the classmates who look down on her from seven in the morning to two in the afternoon. She hates sports, except for speed walking. She adores painting. She has three sisters: the twins, Cerise and Chloe, and a younger sister, Kara. She has two older brothers, Anthony and Elijah, who are both in college and make her life hell when they come back for winter break. She’s that weird girl who enjoys eating her vegetables. If she has to, she’ll spend five hours working on one stroke of a painting if it’ll make the piece look perfect. She’s never been kissed, but finds boys and girls equally pleasing to look at, especially London and Jeremy Dawson. As you slide the Van Gogh painting into your suitcase, you remind yourself that the copy hanging in the Dawson family’s posh living room is identical. You made sure of it. The copy is identical. You painted it yourself. It is identical. Nobody’s going to notice.

“Who are you?” they ask.

“Megan Patterson,” you reply out loud. Your thoughts race through your head, though, screaming, I am no one, I am no one, I am no one. Megan is a girl from Los Angeles, California, but you don’t remember the place you were born. Megan likes the rain that comes after several days of sunshine and loves the earthquakes that threaten to shatter the ground into rubble, but you don’t know what you like, or if you like anything. Megan writes stories, but you don’t know what you’d ever write

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The Life(s) of a Con Artist / Amberly Lerner

about if given the chance. Megan has no siblings, and you have no one. Megan will eat anything, but on some days, you don’t feel like eating at all. Megan’s kissed a lot of people, but you’ve never truly kissed anyone and meant it. You’ll kiss anyone, boy or girl, if it allows you to take their wallet, or whatever your boss wants from them this time around. You’ll do more if you have to, whatever it’ll take, before slinking away into the darkness as they sleep.

You try to forget them all, but things stick with you. A pair of brown eyes. A Yankees jersey. The scent of raspberry shampoo. Cartons of crappy Chinese food. Flickers of guilt.

“Who are you?” they ask.

You don’t reply. You are no one, you are everyone all at once. You are Allison, Amy, Bethany, and Megan, and Skylar and Amira and Lena and Daisy and Suzette and Holly and Zaina and Claire and Paris, too. You are a thief. You steal, but along the way lose pieces of yourself. And yet, everything that had happened before you were forced to work for him is fuzzy around the edges. Instead of a collection of memories, you have morphed into a collection of masks. Once each mask has outlasted its usefulness, you shed it off like a snake sheds its skin, and leave it to crumble away.

You shed and shed and shed until you have nothing. Until you have no one. You are no one.

“Who are you?” they ask.

You don’t know.

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Self-Portrait, Yves-Olivier Mandereau

photograph

UPPERCUT Fiona Beltram

small cigarette fresh snow darkened to lavender by a last exhalation of light I and my ambition spilling out-sodden tobacco shreds this happened days ago. but still I inhabit an endless loop spitting dark blood over and over again finally I hit the ground just as hard as I wanted. now my overripe tomato cheek still weeping I put one clumsy boot to cold concrete and try to go from down to up.

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INSIDE Maya Faulstich-Hon

I rarely sing. I collect heart-shaped rocks, they remind me of the shape of my sister’s hands. I hear too much; speak too little; wish I could curl up inside a light bulb, inhabit the space between ceiling and roof. I envy clouds.

My thoughts are not my face.

I live inside a zipper, the sound it makes is my prayer.

If, one winter evening, you come inside, with chapped lips, I will stare at you a beat longer than is comfortable.

The sound of your small talk will fill my space. It will be a full moon. If, one winter evening, you stay, I might even sing.

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Found & Counted, Yixuan Wang ink, pencil and acrylic paint | 7” x 10”

LETTER TO AN EDITOR Margaret Nickens

Helen A. Carpenter Vice Secretary of the West Times Street Homeowners’ Association (WTSHOA) 559 West Times Street Frankeville, Georgia 32917 Dear Mr. Editor, I’ll begin by noting that I am an avid fan of your precision. During the last twenty years, I have read every issue of “The Daily Report on Happenings in the Southeastern Quarter of Frankeville, Georgia,” and I must say—though I hope this does not come off as overly sentimental—you allow the least number of grammatical errors per sentence of any editor to date.

However, this is not the reason that I have written. Rather, I come to you as a concerned citizen of Frankeville, Georgia and as a believer in the efficacy of journalists as the informers and change-makers of a democratic society.

I’ll begin with the bare-bones facts. (Excuse the pun. I couldn’t resist.)

At the beginning of the year, 12 dogs lived on my cul-de-sac (West Times Street, across from the supermarket and a block from Frankeville Elementary School). Then, on one chilly January morning, Ms. Lewis looked into her backyard to find her young Mr. Cocoa gone, vanished, as if consumed by a ghost. Mr. Cocoa was only the first of three and a half dogs snatched under the cloak of darkness, and because ghosts obviously do not exist, we have all been wondering, who is to blame?

I was pondering these crimes myself until I remembered that the local animal shelter closed down around the time of the disappearance of Scruffy’s wagging back half. Volume 12, Issue 86 of your very own newspaper reported that, due to lack of funding, the Frankeville Animal Shelter shut down after 26 years of operation. A week after, Ms. Lisa

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Letter to an Editor / Margaret Nickens

Martin wrote an article titled, “Frankeville Falters: Financial Troubles Hit Close to Home,” discussing the relationship between the shelter’s decline and our own society’s moral and economic decline. In the article, she quoted Mayor Mark Alfonso as saying, “We must all grab the bull by its horns if our community is to grow and adapt to changing times.” “… grab the bull by its horns …” could signify a number of things: take initiative, face our difficulties head-on, serve as active—rather than passive—members of this community. However, given the submitted evidence, I believe Mayor Alfonso had quite another incident in mind when he uttered those fateful words, and I’m guessing, given your clear aptitude for deductive thought processes, you have come to a similar conclusion.

I believe it is safe to assume that Mayor Alfonso was referring in a somewhat roundabout manner to the unicorn infestation that is, quite literally, trampling our town.

As is common knowledge, unicorns frequently, though albeit accidentally, impale dogs. Naturally, I would never suggest we villainize a unicorn if, as it prances about gleefully, simply exhibiting its God-given traits, it unwittingly strikes a dog or two.

Nevertheless, Frankeville’s unicorn population has been growing rapidly in recent months. While our moist red clay and near–100% humidity do not naturally breed unicorns, our climate has certainly fostered the small population that arrived on the gusts of Savannah’s July hurricane (see the article, “Gusts Reach 127 MPH in Savannah,” published in Volume 12, Issue 52, for more information on the storm).

As the unicorn population grew during stifling August and breezy September, the Frankeville Animal Shelter must have had to bid adieu to many, if not most, of its residents, especially because it had no fence to protect its lodgers.

Without animal occupants to justify it remaining open, and without funds to build a protective enclosure for those that remained, the Frankeville Animal Shelter must have seen no choice but to close its doors.

Of course, this sent many of my neighbors into a frenzy. In Volume 12, Issue 87,

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T HE ROUND journalist Nathan Formen interviewed a number of Frankeville residents very peeved by the shelter’s closure. “My dog, Rebel, is almost 12 years -old, and I’m concerned that in the next couple of years, she will lost complete control of her bladder,” Mrs. Coover, who lives two doors down from me, was quoted as saying in the article. “But what really frustrates me is, what’s supposed to happen to her then? Frankeville has a responsibility to its residents to provide a home for unmanageable and aging pets. As a taxpayer, I should not be expected to have the means to care for Rebel in her old age. Especially after I have already spent thousands of dollars on re-carpeting my house!”

An unofficial investigative journalist myself, I discussed this topic with my neighbor, Cornelia, over tea the other day. As a young mother of two, she was hoping to adopt an appropriately docile puppy that would be content living outdoors during most of the year. As she posed to me, where is she supposed to find such a breed now? At the Pet Expo in the grimy city? Ha, she said, and I must agree. Ha, indeed.

With these announcements, many of us have felt that our town lost much of its former glory. There were at least four rallies and a rally-like, non-celebratory parade outside the shuttered animal shelter. Even still, a horrid talk show host used us, OUR TOWN, as an example of the way modern architecture has degraded community commitment.

I must admit, I could barely leave my bed after the segment aired, and only the thought of rectifying these wrongs roused me enough to wash my face, blow dry my hair, and continue the search for a solution.

This is when I first began brainstorming the Horned Animal Net Pro 3740 Model. I bounced the idea off of Albert McAlbert (561 West Times Street). He was the one who suggested using a sturdy combination of denim, stale bread, and zippers (of all kinds) for the netting, and while the net has not been officially tested on a trial sample of horned animals—obviously including a control group for comparison—it tested with 58% accuracy in a trial run on my son’s soccer team.

Despite being thankful for his help, I am convinced our brainstorming session opened

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Letter to an Editor / Margaret Nickens

Mr. McAlbert’s eyes to his own solution for our Shelter-less problem. Just a week after, he began watering his lawn every day, rather than the traditional every other day. I am sure of this because I have begun watching him every morning from the window next to my front door. Inconspicuously, of course, because I hide behind a black velvet curtain that I purchased at the depot.

This change in routine has allowed his grass to grow far beyond the recommended 1 and 5/8 inches. Two weeks ago, he reached 2 and 2/3 inches but has not cut it nor stemmed his watering habits.

You might wonder, as many of my neighbors are, why would someone grow their grass to such an obscene height? Many attribute it to his eccentricity, but I see beyond his long-haired facade. I see to the core, to his desire to hide the illicit dog market he has built under his front lawn.

Mr. McAlbert has always had a proclivity for unusual activities. Whenever he brings salads to our monthly potlucks, he almost always adds a bizarre ingredient such as papaya or even quinoa. He has flower pots on his front porch that have no flowers in them. He once purchased solar panels to heat his pool.

When such an unstable person was confronted with the realities of economic decline, he must have cracked.

Since he has his sons do his yard work rather than hiring a professional, I can only assume that their gruff landscaping skills came in handy when their father asked, one evening over a glass of merlot, “Can you find a way to excavate our front lawn, such that a thin layer of grass and mud remains as a roof and as a cover for our illicit operations?”

“Yes, father,” the sons would have said, “For we are very good with shovels and other rough, unseemly tools.”

His solar panels would have actually proven quasi-useful in lighting these underground tunnels as well as the brick dog stalls and playground where every dog, regardless of breed or breeding, intermingles.

“Now,” he would have said. “How will I legitimize my business?”

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T HE ROUND Knowing that his neighbors have habituated themselves to his early morning jogs, he likely thought he could use the cover of dusk to populate his now hollowed-out front yard. So he was off, running in a purple jogging suit and a pair of muddy Nikes, searching for helpless pups to imprison in his underground fortress.

How he got word out that he could provide a home to all the unwanted mutts of Frankeville, I do not know. Perhaps using the Twitter, or something like that. Regardless, his shelter is in clear violation of multiple city ordinances, and moreover, it flies in the face of the healthy, capitalistic competition that American society was built upon.

How can my Horned Animal Net Pro 3740 Model be expected to compete with a black market that is not subject to regulations or laws?

And in the name of upholding the law, and ensuring our citizens have access to acceptable dog breeds (for we cannot be sure of Mr. McAlbert’s breeding policies, especially given his own marital choices), we must stand against such blatant violations of our Civil Rights!

I am horrified and frankly terrified for the safety of my own animals, children, and husband.

I suggest the “The Daily Report on Happenings in the Southeastern Quarter of Frankeville, Georgia” begin investigating these allegations immediately. For Mr. McAlbert is a savvy man, even if he lets his son dye his hair blue and may move his market elsewhere if he suspects a reporter has caught on.

I thank you for your time and look forward to further communications in the future.

For your benefit, I have also attached a list of all the errors I found in today’s paper.

Sincerely, Helen A. Carpenter

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PANORAMA Larry Narron

The distant hum of the traffic

draws its own lopsided orbit

around the public park, a perimeter stretched thin, just out of sight

of the cluster of weathered barbeque

grills in the center. The chainsaw buzz of a low-flying plane that can’t be

seen overhead through the tops of

the trees. It’s probable more than a few sleep-deprived passengers gaze

out of their miniature windows,

bored with the flowering crop circle-like formations that keep

appearing in the branches of

the streets, the streets sprouting from the intersections, the black

bulbs of the cul-de-sacs blooming,

the scattered blue jewels of the swimming pools they wish, like bees,

to wrap themselves inside.

Down here there’s no pool, or even

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T HE ROUND

a basketball court in the only

patch of green that’s survived on

this side of the city, a shadowy blur, a glitch flaring up in

the lines of the grid. Here

the trees are quarantined, here the withering neon

moss fades & recedes

nearly all the way down the huge trunks to their

roots at the end of summer.

Sunlight ignites in the high chandeliers of their leaves,

waking the man who rolls

over in the bush where he’s set up his camp. His dog

steps aside to get out of his

way as if knowing he needs to sweep up the place,

needs to reorganize his

collection of aluminum cans.

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OCTOPUS Andy Li

Chelsea Clinton, the Chosen One, felt like her home was a barrier to her survival. The White House™ was actually grey. Like a terrible grey, a grey so ugly that it made you think it was red. You know, her home actually used to be white, until that bitch just started darkening shit. That bitch even darkened Chelsea Clinton’s actual shit. Like her shit was pitch black.

And when it hit the water, it was always like that fucking inky Animal Planet octopus her dad made her watch and laugh at with him. Another reminder. She needed to get out of this shithole. So every night, she made sure that she could keep her eyes closed as she slept.

I’m falling into three holes again, always separate, but on the same soil. One for Goldfish, one for Hamster, one for Piglet.

Her babies, she had never really known how to speak to them, every time she fell back into the deepnesses of sleep. It was always important to her that her nostrils stayed small and folded under whenever she could keep her eyes closed. She couldn’t breathe in anymore. Her eyes were indeed closed. Well, closed enough so that her internal vision shone neon, her landscapes all floating, fronted into her irises. She liked to pick irises, always with her eyes closed, always smelling the brutality of air’s juices, always forgetting a bit to remember more.

Like water, Chelsea Clinton felt into a body, a curse of the legal kind, every time she closed her eyes in her White House™ bed.

“I’m not trying to, I swear. I’m never trying. My body always remembers my babies, though.

My babies, my babies, my babies!”

Every night she said this. She proclaimed her motherhood well into the darkness, always, and within her memory were the beans, her beans, her beany babies, her Beanie Babies™.

Every single time they went exploding, brims of seams cooing out with the squeeze, cream of plastic frou-frouing out, and her nose catches into it every single time. That’s when she starts drooling. But it wasn’t exactly a sentimental kind of drooling. It was always one full of

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T HE ROUND a crashed hatred. She was already jaded. Her babies made her cry every night. Her hands always clenched too hard, too buttlike, constipation & sexual frustration.

Mom hates it when I try to rip off my braces. Fuck.

Her teeth were already bleeding from the glue that had chipped all the enamel, her two front teeth like the two halves of a heart.

I’m a fucking vena cava.

As soon as she said this, blood and garbage raced out of her cooing mouth and she screamed. OUCH! In the mixture, she already knew what she would find; Lipsmackers™, all disappointingly empty after she remembered she had eaten out the plastic as a way to lighten her shit. Or at least to make it smell fragrant. Anything to alleviate the darkness.

But that wasn’t the only thing. There they were. Her three babies. Goldfish, a sandycurly being, with a bloody mouth, its metallic scales ripped out of it. Hamster, Rodhamster, a wavy blonde, dead from running too hard and too constantly on the Hamster Wheel.

And Piglet, hair grey and clumpy, he was fat and booming with energy, the only baby still wriggling in all this bloody, shitty mess. Piglet was wriggling around and eating all the shit around it, and playing in all the shit too. Simultaneously eating and shitting. Chelsea Clinton knew. She always knew.

“What are you doing, Chelsea Clinton?”

She looked up. Her face still bloody from all the tears.

“Well, is it okay if I use the mirror?”

Chelsea Clinton nodded, not knowing what she could do.

There she was, that bitch, combing her black hair, straight-up darkened silk, her breasts perfectly on the cusp of age, her butts numbingly oval.

“Monni! Get back here, you gotta see this. The fucking octopus is inking this little guppy in the face,” Daddy guffawed, his voice hoarse. “Monica!”

“Coming!”

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Heart and Sole, Juan Tang Hon digital | 7” x 14”

Teagather, Ling Chun porcelain | 8” x 6.5” x 10”

Teagather & Made by Chinese Ling Chun Cultural identity became very important to me during my time in America. Living in a place with such incredible diversity, I felt that my culture was what defined and set me apart. This was complicated by the way people reacted to my work. They only saw my culture in the ceramic foods that make up much of my art. No one saw it in the way I replicated items like a factory worker, or that my pieces referenced interactions within the Chinese family. This left me feeling like my connection to Chinese culture was as superficial as the connection people saw in my works. This led me to try to make my work, as well as myself, more outwardly Chinese in an attempt to assert/find my cultural identity.

My search for identity and my philosophy were at odds. I was fighting to find myself, yet I was (as in all things) supposed to let them find me. Only when I stopped struggling and stopped fighting did I discover what a cultural identity is and how mine is both different from and the same as what I thought.

To explain this: My works are presented as installations ordinarily. Installations are unpredictable; I never fully know or understand what the piece will need or look like in the end. Due to this unpredictability, building an installation becomes an exercise in spontaneity. I build toward my goal without ever fully knowing where that goal lies until I’ve arrived there. In this way I have stumbled upon a deeper concept of what a cultural identity is.

Cultural identity is variable. It grows, shifts, and adapts, all while remaining inescapably what it was in the beginning. Other cultures may force me to grow, shift or adapt, but I will always remain what I was in the beginning. I am Chinese. Nothing can change that.

Made By Chinese, Ling Chun

stoneware installation | 2’ X 2’ X 6’

THESE HANDS WERE MEANT TO HOLD YOU Ariel McCarter

I think of wet, silent screams. Drawing my hands close together, the links on my wrist clink. My hands feel heavy, but the bracelets weigh little. They tear at my flesh like tiny maggots. My fingers trace Ashley’s name in the smooth metal on my left wrist and Rachel’s on the right. These hands had not pulled them out of the sinking car.

People pass by without a glance, their hands burdened only by suitcases and cell phones. The man next to me takes his daughter’s hands in his own and kisses her fingers.

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THE RED PEARLS BENEATH THE SEA Ariel McCarter

Her fingers brushed the smooth surface of the pumps stuffed in the back of the closet. Another woman’s shoe size was printed on the bottom of them; a man’s head would soon decorate the heel.

The crimson color of the shoes burst out from the dull closet like a prick of blood.

How long had it been since she’d found them, forgotten underneath their bed? The pumps had stared back at her like a devilish child with red lipstick smeared across its face. At first, she had resisted their temptation and crammed them behind rumpled clothes, broken hangers, and mousy gray slippers.

She had hidden them away, but she could still see red when she closed her eyes. Red from the smear on his collared shirt, red from the opened wine he’d brought home one night, red from the hair she’d found on his pillow, red from the cuts on her hands that she now rubbed into the surface of the shoes. His blood would mingle with hers and they would fall together beneath the sun and sky. The red would fade and they would become one once more.

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Little Bird, Big City, Olivia Watson ink and watercolor

PARACHUTE OF DREAMS Jacob Luplow

I Immediately, the white fire disembodied from its horse-pulled carriage of wind.

We watched snow stack up beside the car, in incremented layers of powdered crystal trickling from heaven. Winters were dark for us, just two immobilized marionettes postured in the parking lot. Gloom dripped down our strings, frozen and fossilized. Jimmy fogged the window of the car and drew a hangman threaded with rope. Said something about Salem witches.

Looked through his stick drawing and said, “The world looks smaller through a noose.” He had a thing for the witch trials. He had always said he was a direct descendant, but these tales were all dreamt up on cocaine, like every great story. Why was he sitting with me? Why did he want to taste from the rivers of tar? People were dying all around me: galleons and their crews set sail to never come home. He’d be on that track six months later; his track marks, the last image in his mind, his cerebral séance summoning from a vestibule of emptiness, ghosts, and shadows. He asked me what it was like, the addiction. I said it’s West Nile. It’s Bubonic. It’s an out-of-body experience in which you look through a microscope at your body just embalmed with powdered tar and blood. A sort of Alzheimer’s disease he could not understand. A careful way of forgetting, which he would slip into months later: a delicate, perpetual letting go of life. That day in the car, Sundowners loomed its atavistic shadow, crept inch by inch, until they were fully cloaked and we were left finding veins to hit in dark.

Kicking the ants from off my skin, I did a line of blow to shun the edge and then sat back and let blood drip from nose to lip.

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Parachute of Dreams / Jacob Luplow

II When I found Jimmy’s uncle, Danny, dead in the living room of his trailer, I had just come running from something; I could hear the cacophony of sirens, chasing after me like voodoo. I crashed up to the sliding glass door and crashed in and stopped in my steps and stretched out real quickly. My eyes darted from the plastic flower-print tablecloth from the ’70s to Danny’s body. It was crystallized in the corner of the room where his mother often played solitaire and listened to Dizzy Gillespie. A belt still fastened around his arm and a needle still inserted in his vein, erect, his hand lay clutching the needle and his thumb still pressed against the plunger. He was petrified in our time, like any great story. Nirvana’s “Come As You Are” rattled in the background and curled its way into my ears. His mother would come home later that evening and have no suitable place to play solitaire. She would not think to put on a Dizzy record. She would speak in sign language and forget her tune.

She would turn to me and I would be gone. She would cradle his body in her arms and forget the stench of his shit soiled pants and the sight of his eyes glassed over from which blood had crusted down his cheeks. She would look into his blank stare and wish to siphon a blink, a sign of life, and she would let go and know that two lives had ended that day.

Danny was never really alive. For too long, he had withdrawn into the shadows of addiction. He was always just theme music for us still squirming in darkness. I poked his body, his lukewarm tomb of flesh and organs broken beyond fix. I poked too hard. His bag of flies burst and I threw the flower print tablecloth over those winged demons and ran.

III All had grown cold, like an oracle too old to prophesize or Baetylus no longer jazzed with witchcraft. In a prison cell just big enough to embalm a body, I fetaled on a 2-inch plastic mattress and relived etchings on the concrete wall directly in front of me, traced my eyes

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T HE ROUND all along the scratch marks where prisoners before, wrapped in a manic frenzy of solitude, had made stick-figure stories for themselves—plotless, left to fill the plot in with the same consequential weight solitude brought to us all, just moths clinking between concrete walls like bits of glass. I began a story of my own that day. Melted down heroin into a Visine bottle on drip down nose. Lied back and played heroin roulette. Hoped to God my soul to take. They say a good story leaves the reader stumbling out changed; I was ready for them to come in and begin preparing my body, but I lived. Coming out of that nod, the galleons did come home, but without their crews. James and Danny died to me as I chose to practice a delicate, perpetual way of forgetting. I set sail to where there are no skeletons cutting their lips on canned food and vomiting and shitting themselves on top five gallon buckets from Home Depot—and never looked back.

IV Pulled from my bag of flies by my horse-pulled carriage of wind, I became an archangel of the highest order when I fogged my bathroom mirror, started from scratch with the most primal of my learnings, and lettered the ABCs with a finger still sore from medical grade stainless steel.

V I was told that Holgas have souls. I was told that the collodion process could trap a spirit and silence the wolves. I was told that the sound of a heartbeat can hold the wind and it was true. When I met nurse Jaqi, it was alchemical, the catatonic sludge of Iowa turning electric in the midst of tragedy. Right outside her porch, an intoxicated man on a bike, went right through the back window of her car. Together we cracked jokes about this man as the paramedics tended to his bloody gushing concussion. We were inhumane. The sweetest beings are inhumane momentarily, but we were human and in love and selfish and

29

Parachute of Dreams / Jacob Luplow

yet so fucking valorous—when I held the flashlight for the police, she donated a garbage bag for the bleach drowned mess of an accident that flickered in the light of red and white and blue.

On her bed we laid beside each other. Nearly dark moonlit blue haze smoldering the sheets, eclipsing our eyes, the only stars in that room, glassy with pottery glaze: our maker’s handmade galaxy of love and sex written in Latin. For years the ants had been kicked from off my skin, and there her hand caressed her beautiful boy, saw past cut marks and needle scarring and residual tar and vinegar blood still percolating in the womb of rivers run deep under the skin. I lay my head upon her chest and for the first time, heard the anthem of a human heart: a flesh wrapped galaxy pulsating and breaking out from the locket drooped deep in her chalice of flesh. Went blind that night when I chose to read a different kind of writing. Traced my finger along her bone structure and read her braille. Read her like no eyes knew her before. Sometimes, it takes a different kind of sensing, a dying to the senses, a sacrificial suicide, to truly know the language one speaks, and hers was intended for the blind. For too long had I placed fireflies in a mason jar, hoping their light would fill me, but the light always died out, and I was left with carcasses and glass.

That night, she showed me even a body just dead can be revived. And she allowed James to come alive again, in memory, in séance. The only person willing to embrace a stranger, to her, for me. I burst phosphorescent and watched our eyes come to life as a galaxy meant to contain a planetary system of diamond laced gauze.

VI As in the dying, the living can also seem to be like pulling a collapsed silk web from water: a spider sieve through which I continually catch shooting stars.

30

LDR Liz Studlick

A critical essay about Grad Center and its physical and emotional use of space, its design seemingly intended to repress personal connection, its public places inaccessible and out of scale, its residents invisible but audible, concrete cell blocks as metaphor. Includes an introduction to brutalism and contains the word “panopticon” 9 times.

A short story about Lana Del Rey on a voyage to colonize Mars, explicitly inspired by her response to an interviewer’s question about feminism: “For me, the issue of feminism is just not an interesting concept. I’m more interested in, you know, SpaceX and Tesla, what’s going to happen with our intergalactic possibilities.”

An opera about Lana Del Rey on a voyage to colonize Mars.

A concept album by Lana Del Rey about Lana Del Rey on a voyage to colonize Mars.

A script for an indie romantic comedy, in which Grad Center is the third character, much like critics describe New York City as the third character in a certain class of movie—except instead of working with the setting, the two young lovers work against it, directing plays in the concrete amphitheaters under Bear’s Lair, installing a rock wall under the walkway, holding impromptu picnics and hopping fences, knocking down walls to let the sunlight in.

A script for a romantic tragedy, in which two lovers play music for each other across a Grad Center courtyard from the anonymity of their rooms in lazy late afternoons and pre-dawn mornings, growing brave enough to sing and play guitar for each other, their neighbors falling in love with the both of them, until one day a song is played and not returned.

A movie adaptation of this script in which each song is inexplicably a Lana Del Rey song, a Lana Del Rey remix, or a Lana Del Rey cover, strummed sincerely and sung plaintively.

31

Borealis 01B, Devra Freelander

steel, poplar, LEDs (variable colors) | 34” x 48” x 2”

Deserted Hanna Kostamaa

It was a two hour drive, give or take, for the Kleins to get to Palm Springs. Marley always drove, while his wife, Janine, slept in the passenger seat, and their daughters Natalie, fifteen, and Claire, seventeen, sat in the back.

“Oh, man,” Marley exclaimed, in reference to Sirius XM’s 70’s on 7, now playing the opening chords to “Tequila Sunrise.” “Don Henley’s voice is so great.” None of the women in the car responded, although Janine twisted her body so she could get as far away from the speakers as possible.

Marley was a washed up record-producer, and most of his work had been big in the 70’s.

Somewhere in 1983, he stopped getting with the times – he blamed it on the business, the business blamed it on his first failed marriage. Now, it had been almost 30 years since Marley Klein had had a hit, and critics called his latest work “nostalgic for another time.” Marley found this bizarre. That meant talent could expire at any given moment. He didn’t meditate on it much beyond that, but it terrified him.

The 1973 hit was still playing when the family pulled up to 873 Via Sierra Lane, their Spanish-style vacation home with faded yellow paint and a reddish tiled roof. Marley parked and threw himself out of the car as soon as he could. His legs needed moving after being stifled for hours.

“Ah!” he exclaimed, ripping off his sunglasses and spreading his arms out. This would always be his favorite place. The 85-degree sun had made the sky cloudless, the air moistureless.

After soaking up the desert breeze, he sashayed inside, flush from the radiant, still heat. +++ The interior of the home was also in traditional Spanish style, as most of the homes in the neighborhood were. There was terracotta tile on the floor and curved, arched doorways throughout. Dark, wood furniture contrasted the bright, white couches. At the back of the living room

33

Deserted / Hanna Kostamaa

and kitchen was a set of French doors that showed off the panoramic view: the patio, the pool, and the San Bernadino mountains framing the gently swaying palm trees.

Natalie was dipping her feet in the pool as Marley relaxed in a lounge chair, admiring the view.

“I could look at these mountains all day,” Marley remarked.

“They are nice,” his daughter agreed. He inhaled.

Suddenly, he said, “I don’t think your mother and sister care for this place.”

“I dunno.”

“I don’t know how they could hate it.” To him, it was perfect. Everything looked a little wavy if you saw it from afar. The warmth wrapped him up in a blanket. And the heat slowed everything down.

“Marley!” Janine invaded the scene through the French doors, standing in the doorway with her arm over her eyes from the brightness. “When did the Johnsons move out?”

“Huh?” Marley moved for the first time in hours to get a look at his wife’s face.

“The Johnsons aren’t next door anymore.”

“Oh, yeah. I think Dave emailed me about that a few weeks ago.”

Janine responded with a face of disbelief, but Marley had turned away and failed to see it.

“Well, were you going to tell me?”

“I mean, now you know.”

She sighed sharply. “Don’t you smell that? The marijuana? Natalie, surely you do.” Natalie shrugged. “It stinks. And their name isn’t even on the mailbox. What kind of people could they be?”

“Pot is legal now.” Janine didn’t even hear it.

“Well, I figure now I have to go to the store and get them some sort of housewarming gift.

Before I ask them to stop stinking everything up.”

“I guess.” Janine always fussed about these things. Marley didn’t see why. But once his wife walked off, presumably to go to the grocery store for some housewarming gift, he eased back into his lounge chair and admired the gentle view. +++

34

T HE ROUND

Janine clasped the box of cookies in her hands as Natalie walked at her side.

“God, do you smell that?” Janine asked in a loud whisper, wrinkling her nose. Natalie nodded. “What kind of people smoke weed after they’re out of college?” She shook her head.

Once they neared the home, which looked just like theirs only with a fresh coat of white paint, Janine pressed the doorbell.

The ding could be heard, echoing inside. In the driveway, there seemed to be some fancy, remodeled car from yesteryear, leading Janine to think they were those antique collectable type people.

Still, no one answered. Janine knocked, impatient. Again, nothing.

“Maybe they’re asleep,” Natalie said.

Janine sighed, her insatiable curiosity now frustrated once more. “Well, let’s just … leave this for them. Hold this.” Janine handed off the tray and fished out a pen from her purse. On the box, she wrote a quick note, with all their essential details-their names, phone numbers, and to be sure to drop by sometime!-before she grabbed the box from her daughter and set it on their doorstep.

“They won’t melt?” Natalie asked, nudging the box with her foot so it was safely in the shade. But Janine was already halfway back to their home. +++ The Kleins often left their French doors wide open to let the occasional breeze in. Janine also saw it done in Home & Design Magazine as a way to “open up your space,” and so it became a staple of their décor.

Two days had rolled on by since Janine and Natalie had left the cookies on their neighbors’ doorstep. Every chance Janine got, she would peer through one of their west-facing windows to get a glimpse of the neighbors’ doorstep. And every time she did, there was the damn box of cookies, unmoved.

“Why aren’t they taking the cookies inside, at least? It’s not that hard,” Janine said, mostly to herself, as the family sat around their kitchen counter for breakfast.

35

Deserted / Hanna Kostamaa

Marley had made his famous banana pancakes, and was still standing next to the stove, plate in hand. Natalie had yet to wake up, but Claire was sitting next to her mother, her glance drifting from her pancakes to her iPhone screen and back in a steady, rhythmic motion.

“Maybe they’re out of town,” Marley suggested.

“No,” Janine retorted. “I’ve seen that car leave their driveway and now it’s there again. And their lights are sometimes on and sometimes off.” She huffed. “It’s so bizarre.”

“Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt,” Marley replied. His wife’s anxiety was making him tired, and it was only 9 AM. “You’re obsessed with them,” Claire chimed in.

“But it’s not normal! Why wouldn’t they even pick them up from their doorstep?”

“Maybe they haven’t see-” “Shhh!” Janine hushed suddenly. Through their open French doors, a smooth bass line drifted inside, followed by some guitar licks and a thin-voiced singer. “They’re home,” she whispered.

Everyone listened to the music pouring into the kitchen. It was smooth, and more importantly, it wasn’t some oldies hit. Marley knew it, since he cycled through his ’60s and ’70s catalogue and couldn’t place the singer.

“It’s got a real groove,” Marley mused, grinning a little. Was this his first time liking a song that hadn’t come from his youth?

“It’s not that great,” Claire replied, before shoving her plate into the sink.

“It’s a Sunday morning, and they’re going to blare their music like that?” Janine responded.

“And not get the box of cookies?”

“Oh, fuck the cookies,” Marley replied, shutting his eyes, leaning against the counter, and soaking in the song. Every time the bass downbeat kicked in, his heart shook a little. +++ Dinner at 873 Via Sierra Lane was a family affair. Even if their conversations were littered with light conversation, they always ate together, mostly because there was nothing else to do

36

T HE ROUND around that time.

They had ordered take out Mexican, and they were sitting at the round table outside. The sun was just setting, and the sky was blue, green, and purple with a few stars speckled across the horizon. Claire and Natalie sat on one side of the table while Marley and Janine were opposite them.

“How is school?” Marley asked Claire, before he took a healthy swig of beer.

“Fine.”

“And you?”

Natalie looked up. “It’s a lot of work,” she admitted. Marley nodded.

The accompaniment to their dinner was Marley’s record player cooing from inside. Every time an album ended, he’d go stand up and replace it. Currently, it was on “Loaded.” There were only brief moments of pure silence, when songs faded in and out. In these moments, only chirping crickets could cover up the nothingness.

“God! I hate this place,” Claire admitted, setting her fork down, and leaning back in her chair, as one of those cricket-filled silences took place. “It’s so boring. There is nothing to do here. All you do is sit out and … turn into a prune or something.” The next song started up.

“Oh, come on, now,” Marley began, shaking his head.

“There’s nothing to do here for me. Literally. Nothing.”

“You sound like your mother,” Marley replied.

“You know, Marley, maybe we really should consider selling this old place. We could get a bigger home for us in L.A. or something. I mean, between our smelly, noisy neighbors and the girls graduating …” Janine argued.

“I love it here,” Marley retorted. “And Natalie likes it, don’t you?”

Natalie was off in her own world, gazing at the dimly lit grassy yard, listening to the guitars over the bugs.

“Everything here is always as it is,” he went on, “and I’m never selling it.”

“Well don’t expect me to come back next time,” Claire snapped. She left the table abruptly, half sick of the conversation and half bored with it.

“I’ll come by myself then,” Marley said.

“You’re being ridiculous,” Janine sighed. “This place is so outdated, the paint hasn’t been

37

Deserted / Hanna Kostamaa

worked on for … since Natalie’s been born.”

“Is that the cookie box?” Natalie asked.

“What?”

“Over there.” Natalie squinted and pointed at a faint, white box near the fence that divided their home from their neighbors’ yard.

Janine stood up from the table and marched through the sprinkler-wet grass. She picked up the white box between two fingers, studying the faded, smeared note across the top and the melted chocolate pieces lining the inside. Dangling it like fresh-caught fish, she returned to the table and stopped right before her husband.

“I’m not crazy,” she asserted-finally, proof to both her family and herself that she wasn’t clinically ill-before shaking it a little. “They are.”

“Alright, alright…”

“No. Go over there. Go tell them that this isn’t okay.”

“Janine …”

“Throwing their boxes into our yard, blasting their music, smoking pot, I mean, how selfindulgent can one person be? Go get mad at them!”

“Can’t you give it up?”

“My God, Marley!” She threw the lifeless box to the ground. “Give up this fake paradise for once in your life and go over there! Do something! Get angry! Jesus Christ!”

Marley shoved himself away from the table. “Alright! Enough!” He ripped through the French doors and out of their home with a violence the girls had never seen before.

“God!” he yelled as he stood outside his own front door. He had never heard such piercing volume from his own voice. He needed a minute. He inhaled. Janine was right. There was a strong odor from their home that he had only just noticed. It hadn’t bothered him until now.

Marley wandered down the sidewalk and stood in front of the pristine neighbors’ home.

He stared at it for a long while. It looked whiter than their home ever had, and the fresh coat of paint must have been applied within the last few years.

Marley approached the front door. He could see a low orange light through the little sliver in the curtain. It was hot as hell out tonight, he realized, when he glanced down at his arm and saw a line of sweat beads twinkle. The moist collar of his shirt was clinging to his neck.

38

T HE ROUND He knocked. Nothing happened. He gulped. What was he going to say? He knocked again. His head was throbbing. It was so damn hot.

“Hello!” he yelled. He gazed at the door, then at the window. His head was getting to such an overwhelming point of heat that his body was desperately trying to wash over it with cool sweat from his scalp.

He saw a shadow in the window and squinted. The curtain rustled. He got close and could see his ice-blue eyes reflecting in the glass, his breath fogging up the window before it melted away into beads of water.

The eyes darted around in the window, but his eyes didn’t. He blinked. The eyes didn’t.

The lips opened to smile in the window, but he felt his were tight shut.

He took a step back. His reflection remained. The wrinkles of the man in the window were thinner and fewer than his. The smile had a warmth that his own hadn’t radiated in years. The man started to laugh. The figure ran his hand through his hair and laughed again before he disappeared from behind the curtain. The modern music was playing. He could see the man’s silhouette dancing alone, arms spread out, a radiance emitting from his fingertips. Marley’s silhouette, alone, happy, a dream, taunting him through the curtain, with the joy of 1973.

It was too much to see. Marley staggered backwards, a ringing in his head pounding louder, black spots speckling his field of view. Only walls had separated him from the blurry, joyous scene, but his hand trembled, unable to punch through the walls, rip the curtains open, and fall into its present embrace.

He ran to the car in his driveway and shoveled his hand into his pocket for his keys. He scrambled to open the door as the heat swirled around his nostrils, face, and body. The hope wasn’t lost for him, even if he didn’t invade 875, he told himself. He could still feel the warm current of now one day, he knew. I didn’t die in 1982, he prayed, wanting to verify each inhale he took, but not buying that the sensation of air in his nose was verifying his livelihood.

He was losing his breath. He shoved his keys into the ignition and pressed play on the CD. “Tequila Sunrise” blew through the speakers at full volume, making his body rattle, his heartbeat whither. He wanted his bones to illuminate, his skin to glow. Instead, he started to weep.

39

&c.

Lance Gloss

Bones buried white down by the riverbanks far outnumbered by castoff refrigerators, for whom no soul in heaven manifests.

Steel protrudes from a land and its men, rejected at the hands of bothYea, the words the raven quoth; the blood that boils to broth in the riverbed, water once & nevermore.

40

Osmosis, Ziqing Liang glass

Sforzinda, Maggie Hazen

polyethylene, found hardware, recycled materials, string

Table of the Sun, Maggie Hazen

polyethylene foam, found hardware, magazine clippings, string, and other odd materials

Sforzinda (left) is perhaps the best example of utopian city planning from the renaissance period. The shape is also comes from cosmological ideas, reflecting on the religion of that day-in-age. It is believed to be the most perfect of all geometries, because the radii are equidistant at all points, and it is a mirror of a harmonious cosmic order.

According to legend and first documented by Herodotus, the Table of the Sun (above) was a meadow where the Ethiopians in authority would nightly bring the boiled meat of every four-legged animal and leave it for anyone who wanted to eat it; the legend also said that the food was actually renewed, not by the Ethiopians, but by the earth itself.

SUP.PY Matthew Lee import random questions = [‘\’Sup’, ‘How are you’, ‘How was your day’, ‘How\’s it goin\’’, ‘How do you do’, ‘Are you okay’, ‘Do you want to talk’, ‘Have you eaten yet’] answers = [‘Nothing’, ‘Nothing new’, ‘Night chokes songs out of my throat’, ‘I\’m afraid to interpret my experience’, ‘You know that moment you realize you\’re wrong? That\’s me’, ‘I\’m trying to count to infinity’, ‘I\’ll have to get back to you on that’, ‘Fine’, ‘I don\’t know what that means’, ‘I watched a kettle until it whistled. But the water wasn\’t hot’, ‘I never realized there were so many colors in your eyes’, ‘\’42\’ sounds like \’fortitude.\’ How English’, ‘I saw a blind woman beat the shit out of a lamppost’, ‘I saw a lamppost beat the shit out of a blind woman’, ‘Life is a pistachio’, ‘I can\’t answer that’, ‘What a nice day’] print random.choice(questions) + ‘?’ print random.choice(answers) + ‘.’

44

Absurd Architecture I, Stella Zhong

Intaglio print on paper

DEATH OF THE POET Sally Hosokawa

The door had not been unlocked for three days.

The naked bulb glared down at its own shadow.

The pages were bleached of breath and emotion.

Black lines imprisoned thoughts that existed long ago.

“When will this end?�

The ink dribbled out a toxic red and dried a lethal brown.

46

T HE ROUND

The washcloth tried to rub off evidence of death

Illuminations of self that should never have been articulated

But the alphabetic silhouettes remained unsmeared

And the white acrylic that tried to drown them out

Only left scars of the concealed gasping out to the eye

And the blade of the scythe slashed into the air

Only to amplify the wail into one thousand screams

And the mouth swallowed every one of the fragments To silence them of morphemic existence


But the bitter taste of blood would not leave the tongue

So the flame of a blazing match seared down the throat

Burning the raw walls of the larynx Charring the tips of crushed fingers Incinerating the insides of nostrils into seething smoke Until all that could be seen

 

47

Death of the Poet / Sally Hosokawa

+ + +

“Why does your voice smell like burnt paper?”

You whisper into my ear.

“It’s nothing,” I murmur.

48

HELP YOURSELF Melanie Abeygunawardana

Mary fell in love with the boy next door because she couldn’t sleep. It was indirect, imperceptible but inexorable, the way photons had the physical power to exert force, move objects, bodies, light through glass, refraction on refraction, color, sound, infinite cosmos (her mind flung out metaphors like a ringtoss on a carousel, just to see what held, what caught; nothing did, she couldn’t focus, everything spun). That was just how she felt.

There was no other way of putting it.

She had been home from school for two months now. It was fine at first, like a vacation.

Her mother bought her impractical shoes and didn’t complain that she never put away her dishes. Her father didn’t ask about her thesis. He didn’t ask about much of anything.

Her sister, suddenly a seventh grader with bleached hair and a boyfriend, was the only one who responded appropriately.

“Are you staying forever?” she asked, with blank shallow disbelief.

“Forever?” Mary said. “No. Maybe.”

She couldn’t prove it, but she suspected that the neighbors were talking about her. Mrs. Basera from down the road knocked on their door the previous Tuesday with a plate of muffins and a well-lacquered smile.

“How are you, dear? How’s school? What are you doing home so soon?”

“Oh, you know,” Mary said, fumbling with the plate. The sight of the muffins and their rich golden crusts, all crowded together like smug uniformed children, turned her stomach. She hadn’t been able to ingest more than ramen for the past few months. “Just taking a small break. Doing research for my thesis. That sort of thing.”

“That’s so great, dear,” Mrs. Basera told her, with a sly eye-twitch that might have been a wink. “So great. Grad school is so difficult, you know. Alyssa’s at Harvard Med … you remember? And boy is she having a time. The pressure is just, you know, incredible. And

49

Help Yourself / Melanie Abeygunawardana

she never sleeps. But it’s worth it in the long run, don’t you think?”

“Oh, definitely,” Mary said. “I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

“I can’t sleep,” she told her therapist.

Dr. Sheridan nodded. She always drew her eyeliner aggressively above her lids, and as she stared at Mary now her eyes had an eerie levitating aspect, like captive planets on her face. Mary could never look at both at the same time. The more she thought about it, the more confused she became, until she ended up just staring at her feet in panic.

How did people do it, she wondered. How did they live so smoothly?

“Why do you think you can’t sleep?” Dr. Sheridan asked.

“I don’t know,” she told her shoes. “I just … think too much.”

“Think too much.” Dr. Sheridan made a note on her legal pad. “I see.”

Mary licked her lips. She had stolen her sister’s Skittles lip balm that morning and now her mouth tasted like sugar on metal. “Yeah. Like …”

She tried to find the words, couldn’t. Just six months ago she had TA’d an upper-level English seminar entitled “The Philosophy of Henry James: Pragmatism and Beyond.”

That morning, she had forgotten how to spell “rhubarb” on her mother’s grocery list.

“Yeah. Just like, racing. All over.”

Was that blood she was tasting? Was she biting her lip? She passed a hand over her mouth, checked her skin. Nothing.

“What do you do when this happens?” Dr. Sheridan asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Mostly I just try deep breathing.” Where was that taste coming from? She had licked a penny once, when she was five, because she had dared herself to. The copper had filled her nose, her mouth, like color on canvas.

“I see.”

“Sometimes I just feel so … blah. Almost ponderous. Like sometimes …”

The weighty, multisyllabic authority of the word “ponderous” encouraged her. She leaned in, conspiratorially.

“Sometimes I feel like my limbs are these necrotic masses of tissue that are just waiting to fall off.”

50

T HE ROUND The fan whirred in the background.

“That must be upsetting,” Dr. Sheridan said.

“Yeah,” she said. “And I have this reoccurring dream that I’m walking through a city that looks like New York and I’m carrying a daffodil and everything is burning around me. What does that mean? Is that significant?”

“Well, let’s see,” Dr. Sheridan said. “Do you think it is?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Freud talked about, what was it, mental condensation. Is that happening here? Does the daffodil symbolize my lack, no, my desire for … for …”

The thought imploded, receded. She imagined it floating on the wind like a smoke ring.

“For what?” Dr. Sheridan asked.

“I don’t know,” she said.

Her mother drove her home in silence. It wasn’t something that she strictly needed to do, but she insisted anyway in that inflexible opaque way of hers. Mary hadn’t handled a car since the night she drove herself to the bridge and then to the hospital, and her mother didn’t want to take any chances. That’s what Mary inferred. The barrette in her hair (gray now, Mary realized) gleamed like a gap-toothed smile.

“How was therapy?” she asked.

Mary fiddled with the radio dial. Smooth jazz, R&B, hardcore rap, Top 40.

“Fine,” she said, turning the volume up on a lounge-y pop song her sister loved.

“Just fine?” Her mother’s eyes darted towards the radio.

“Yeah,” said Mary, bobbing her head to the beat. She liked the way it made her feelstretched, passive, distended. “What’s for dinner?”

“Chicken,” said her mother. “And that garlic orzo that you like.”

“Cool,” said Mary. “Sweetness. Awe-some.”

Why was she talking like this? She never talked like this, not even in high school. The words fell out of her like crushed ice. In the enclosed space of the car (or maybe just lately) her voice had begun to sound strange to her-higher, brighter, more artificial, like that of a cartoon character or children’s show host. She had taken to standing in 51

Help Yourself / Melanie Abeygunawardana

front of the mirror and saying her name over and over again to her reflection, trying to convince herself that nothing had changed. Face to name, face to name, face to name.

Ma-ry. Ma-ry. She tried to slide her voice down the descent of her nose. Ma-ry.

Things were dull now. Her days were “how are you”s served on toast with orange juice. Daylight slathered on undercooked walls. Her mother’s eyes like TV screens, dim blue background noise. Her hair growing grayer and grayer every day. It filled her with a sense of hubris.

Hubris. She liked the word, the way it expanded within her like a hot balloon. Mary imagined saying, in a tone of solemn poetic authority: “Your hair, mother. It fills me with hubris.”

She spent a disproportionate amount of time on the floor. The room was a reanimated memory and it scared her. It seemed sacrilegious, living with something she had already buried in her mind. Her old clothes hung stiff as corpses in her closet. Dresses like pressed flowers in a row, petals of tulle crushed and spotted with rust. They whispered when she brushed her hands, tenderly, among them. Her favorite jean jacket from eighth grade smelled like musk and sky, tangy and sweet, kept a tight grip around her arms, lifted her shoulders in a perpetual shrug.

She couldn’t sleep, couldn’t sleep.

One solace she had was watching the next door neighbors-the Schreyer-McMenemy’s. She had been studying them idly for weeks now. They were so normal it was remarkable. One mother, one father, two children and a dog, pale-skinned and picturesque, hair the color of cinnamon, skin the color of skim milk, so similar in shape and design that she referred to them, privately, as Russian dolls. Perfectly painted, perfectly proportioned. They always had dinner exactly at 6 o’clock and never shut their blinds.

It gave her a perverse satisfaction to see her bedroom from angles she had never seen 52

T HE ROUND before. She laid on her back, her stomach, her side. Stared at the underside of her bed, the corners of her closet, the innards of her rug. The familiar vista of her ceiling from the view of her bed flooded her with memories, as if by injection. She could feel each year seeping through her, comingling, dissolving, so that she was simultaneously four and five and fifteen and twenty-five years old.

She couldn’t sleep; that’s why she knew this. The sky blinking from blue to gray to white to black. Time as intaken breath, long pause, ellipses, dot dot dot. The sun-or was it the moon?-dilating like a pupil. The night full of words, darkness and endless scribble, blank page heavy with ink. She smiled at her mother and said, “I’m fine, Mom. I’m fine.” Her hair like a descended raincloud, full of hubris.

Hoo-bris.

She couldn’t sleep.

To say it another way: his light was on. She was sitting by her window one night when she noticed it. Her room jutted out like an overbite above the patio, in the direction of the Schreyer-McMenamy household.

The feeling, it was less of a “what” than an “is.” She pictured it illuminated behind frosted glass or human skin; dull flush of color, nothing more. There was no room to ask “why,” not with this, whatever this was. Questions required room, they orbited through space like stray moons, like cartoon stars. This was absence turned flesh and viscera. An overwhelming sense of hereness and thereness. Everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

Everywhere and nowhere. Yes, that was it. She held the syllables like prayer beads under her tongue. Ev-ry-where. No-where.

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Help Yourself / Melanie Abeygunawardana

She repeated it to herself once again: Oliver Schreyer-McMenamy, 11th grader at St. Catherine of Siena High School, member of the varsity lacrosse team, honors student, and ex-choir boy, kept his lights on and his blinds up. He was at his desk, poring over a textbook. He had red hair that looked blond in the light. There were something staged about the moment-something about how the light within his room so starkly juxtaposed the darkness without, something about the cleanness of the angles, somethingthat suggested the careful artifice of the mise en scène. She was an audience of one. It made perfect sense, why she should stare. He shifted in his seat, and she fell in love, just like that. It was his elbows. That was when she knew. He had such vulnerable elbows: flushed and exposed, the color of paper valentines or sworn secrets. He kept them propped up on the desk as if unaware of their significance. His arms were curved boldly like a man’s but his elbows were still those of a child’s.

“What’s the Schreyer-McMenamy’s kid’s name again?” she asked her mother, casually, folding a stack of dishtowels.

“Conor, I think,” her mother said. “Or Oliver. Something like that. Have you been taking your vitamins? You look so pale, honey.”

She watched him again the next night. His skin was almond creamer but his eyes were black coffee. She thought of the poem. Drink to me. Me. She mouthed the words, half-unconsciously. The glass was cold against her forehead but she burned with a strange, stolen heat.

Beneath his clothes, he was nearly hairless. He was the kind of pale that betrayed every blood pulse, every violet highway. He had hundreds of miles beneath his skin. She followed them in lieu of dreams. The defenselessness of his body made her want to cry from pleasure, from pain.

She called up her friend Laura to tell her about him-her paradigm shift.

“I think the Adonis of our era is a lacrosse player,” she said, dreamily. “Wearing a 54

T HE ROUND jersey instead of fig leaves. He has these freckles. You know.”

“I think you’re mixing up your tropes, dear,” Laura said. “Why didn’t you call me earlier?”

“Or maybe he’d be a Catholic schoolboy,” Mary said. “Sexual guilt and plaid and khakis. Eyes away from the body, the blood.”

“I’m worried about you, Mar,” Laura said. “What happened to you? When are you coming back?”

“Nevermind,” she said, annoyed now, and angry at Laura’s ignorance. “I’m not being serious, you know.”

He was so many colors, this boy. Cornflower blue, cotton white, sun-through-eyelids red. It left her breathless, the easy way he lived his life. Even his hurts were perfect, prismatic. She saw rainbows in deep bruises. She wanted to kiss him and then tear him, limb from limb, just to see the colors bloom beneath his fragile, open skin.

“What are you thinking about?” her therapist asked.

“Oh,” she said, sweeping away her smile. “Nothing.”

In school, she had read books, pages and pages of primary literature, of the canon, the anti-canon. Now she read him. His limbs were a vague inscrutable alphabet beneath cartoon sheets. She envied his blissful, beautiful sleep. The way his head would wilt in effortless synchrony with his dreams.

“Mary, we need to talk,” her father told her, over dinner one night.

“But I can’t sleep,” she said.

Why did none of his clothes fit him? she asked herself, tenderly. He seemed stupendously uncomfortable in shirts, and rightfully so; they were superfluous, impermanent, like the white cloths veiling museum statues seconds before the big reveal. He was constantly tugging at his collar, the hem of his shirt. His bones were suggestions carved

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from marble. Captive angles hidden in plain sight.

“I hear the Schreyer-McMenemy boy’s struggling with his English class,” Mary’s mother said one morning.

“Why?” she asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. Barb told me he likes math. I think he wants to go to Princeton.

But he’s, you know, not so good with words. Not like you.” Her mother’s mouth was tight as a seam-but she couldn’t know, could she?

“I’ll help him,” Mary said, immediately. The words left her mouth without her permission and she felt a sharp stab of violation and triumph.

Her mother turned around, hand dripping soap onto the neat carpet.

“What?” she asked.

“I’ll help him with his paper,” she said. The sentence tasted like sunlight through blinds. “I love Huckleberry Finn.”

“The Great Gatsby.”

“That’s what I meant.”

Her mother stared at her, eyes slightly narrowed, drying a plate with a towel wrapped around her left hand. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” “Okay, well, if you’re sure,” she said, turning around. The splash of the water resounded like laughter.

Mary knocked on the door the next day, at a time she knew his parents weren’t home.

She was wearing a dress she found in her closet, a velvet green A-line number she had worn to her sophomore year Spring Fling. It was a little too small for her-the fabric stretched more than she remembered over her chest, her waist-but she liked the way it made her feel, so fresh and dainty and breezy. The wind blew against her exposed lower thighs and she shivered with surprise and pleasure.

The door opened. And there he was.

“Uh, hey,” he said. His voice was lower than she expected. He was wearing blue mesh

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T HE ROUND basketball shorts and white Nike socks, one slightly more slouched than the other. His shirt had a hole in it, near the hem. The banality of it delighted her. She bit her tongue and smiled.

“Hello,” she said. “I’m Mary Slater. Your neighbor.”

“Uh, hi,” he said. His hair was slightly too long and he brushed it away flat with one palm. His fingernails were surprisingly neat. “I know.”

The wind sighed through the open doorframe. He crossed his arms, out of cold or maybe confusion.

It was too much for Mary. She couldn’t stand it. His weakness. She wanted to unpunch the buttons of his shirt with her tongue, carve her territory out with her teeth.

She wanted to break him.

“I used to babysit you,” she said instead.

“So what don’t you get about The Great Gatsby?” she asked, when they walked inside.

He shrugged.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Some parts just seem pointless. What does the green light even mean?”

“It’s a symbol,” she said. The kitchen was spotless and orderly. Even the sugar jar was labeled in big block letters. She remembered her apartment back at school-everything overflowing like a dissonant chord. The room gorging itself on her mess.

“For what?”

“It’s unclear,” she said, beginning to feel tense, uneasy. She could taste her lipstick flaking off her like lead paint. “No one knows.”

“I thought it was for the American dream,” he said.

“I suppose,” she said, slowly. He wasn’t even looking at her. “If you wanted it to be.

Or not. It doesn’t really matter.” She stopped, regained her breath. “Symbols can mean whatever you want them to mean.”

He cocked his head at her. Up close, his eyes weren’t as black as she imagined-just a darkish sort of gray, or blue.

“What did you say you were getting your Ph.D. in again?” he asked, challengingly.

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Help Yourself / Melanie Abeygunawardana

She stared at him. He stared back.

“Do you know why you don’t get this?” she asked him. Her ears were buzzing, as if she was traveling up a steep incline, or maybe down a slippery slope.

“Why?” “You need to be drunk,” she said. What was she even saying? “Write drunk, edit sober. I think F. Scott said that. Or Whitman.”

He smiled. “What?”

“You should try it,” she said. “Now.” His smile faded. “What,” he said again, without inflection this time.

“Trust me,” she said. “I know how these things work.”

“But I don’t even know you.” His voice was monotone, almost nasally.

“I’m an adult,” she said.

“Exactly,” he said. “You’re an adult.”

“No, that’s not what I meant,” she said. “I’m not really an adult. I’m still in school. I go to a very good school.”

“You said that already,” he said.

“Please,” she said. “Please just do this for me.”

“Why?” he demanded, almost with glee. Up close, he had fine blond hair on his muscled legs.

“Because,” she said.

He paused, a winking facet of a moment.

“No,” he said.

“But I can’t sleep,” she said.

“What does that have to do with anything?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said.

“What does that have to do with anything?” he repeated, with his terrible blue eyes and terrible white teeth and terrible, perfect youth.

Nothing, she wanted to say, but she couldn’t. The sun broke through the window and struck him gold, struck him alive. Her eyes couldn’t focus. There were worlds in her throat; there were words skidding to a blank; there were words jostling like blood cells,

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T HE ROUND like tectonic plates, like smoke rings, like green lights, like rainclouds, like hubris, like her mother’s eyes, like empty rooms, like flowers, like corpses, like stars, like pupils as much so as exactly like (there were no more things, there were so many things), and he looked at her like so he looked at her and said nothing, and there was hair on his legs, and his eyes were gray, and he looked at her and said nothing. He said nothing.

She took a breath.

“Sorry for bothering you, Oliver,” she said. “Good luck on your paper.”

“Thanks,” he said.

She got up, turned around, and walked out the door. She was hungry and tired, but her legs moved fine. The top two buttons on her dress had come undone sometime during the past ten minutes. She touched them lightly but didn’t re-button them. The grass was green and the sky was blue.

She opened the door to her house and walked into the kitchen. Her mother was standing by the sink.

“Mary?” she said. “Honey, what were you doing? Why are you dressed like that?”

“I’m fine,” Mary said. “Please leave me alone.”

She walked up the stairs. When she got to her room, she laid down on her bed and closed her eyes. The insides of her lids were black but also orange. She sat up and looked out her window. Oliver Schreyer-McNenemy was in his room, reading a book.

His curtains were still up. Her curtains were still up. No one looked at her. She looked at herself in the mirror. The dress had popped a seam at the waist. There was lipstick slightly above her upper lip.

She cried for a few minutes.

“You’re fine,” she told her reflection, wiping her eyes. “You’re fine.”

Then she laid back down and slept.

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Sugarhold, Remy Zimmerman oil on canvas | 16” x 24”

GUILT Liz Kingsley

If your ex-husband is unforgiving and absent despite being ensconced in a happy relationship and the husband of the woman you left your marriage for comes over nearly every night and you worry about the effects on your children who appear to be adjusting rather well and your former neighbor can’t figure out if continuing to golf with your ex every other Saturday means he’s choosing sides, if your internist, neurologist, therapist, and astrologist all assure you that it’d be natural to be consumed with debilitating guilt but you don’t feel anything deeper than regret, you may have to learn how not to know what to feel about a life that seems to mean something different to everyone, even, maybe especially, you.

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VARIATIONS ON MIDDLE PATH Kenyon College, Summer 2013 Anna Hundert

stand back and behold the ever-changing brush strokes which trees lay upon the ground, using shadows as their paint the sky shows off for the poet, it strikes a pose like a young model in the nude for the first time hear the birds chatter about fashion and politics, wonder why we can’t learn their language the birds do not speak with the cicadas, this you must know: they think the dialect of the insect to be quite crude. a firefly in the daytime still has light within her, like the imagination of a child in deep, dreamless sleep and the angels leap from columns, wings just about to catch the windtrapped in a perpetual state of falling, which is rather like falling for you.

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T HE ROUND these walls of stone are built to look older than they are, like young girls who wear make-up and clip-on earrings and push-up bras each stone upon this gravel path has a story, but no voice and the angels look upon the stones with the kind of empathy that only mothers have the firefly cannot say to the cicada, “I have no need of you,” because the firefly has read 1 Corinthians, and she knows. you carve your gravestone into an ancient device of torture and death, without truly understanding what that means, or what sacrifice means“greater love hath no man than this” try to read the book of Ezra it’s mostly lists of names, the names beg to be remembered, you beg to be remembered, the sky keeps posing and begs to be remembered

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Rome with a View, Heather McLeod

watercolor and dry point print on paper | 11” x 14”

Untitled, Heather McLeod oil on Masonite board | 11” x 14”

Accidents, Vrinda Zavera scratchboard | 18” x 24”

DUCK THREE WAYS Victor Ha

I. May 2014 | Providence, Rhode Island Grey on grey—a tower of worn concrete strains against leaden sky. A transplant of London’s Trellick high-rise; a Brutalist facade frozen in forward-moving modernity; the Sciences Library.

Down the steps, past the trees, and across the dirt is strung yellow caution tape sagging in mid-morning air. The tape forms an enclosure. In the middle gleams a flower pot. A public fixture. Today, the pot is full. Brittle reeds crowd meager green plush and white fairy buds. Also: one duck (mallard; female).

Also: eleven ducklings (brown and yellow; hatched yesterday).

Circling the enclosure, larger creatures stalk. They watch, fixed. Fingers quiver; eyes twitch. The creatures—humans—pant. The babies are so cute. I must have one. I will call him Bob. (appreciative chuckles for the clever appellation) I will teach Bob to recite poetry. Couplets and quacktrains. Their birth is poetic. And then there was light. And then there were ducklings! (appreciative chuckles for the dramatization of communal experience) The majesty of nature prevails. Perhaps I will begin recycling. New life in our community. New life in our world. God, I want a duckling.

The humans waddle about, watching hungrily as each duckling descends from the flower pot. The humans paw at their signs—black and yellow marker on white poster board announcing “DUCK X-ing.” Luckily, the humans reflect, the ducks have decided upon a sensible time of the day to venture out into the open streets. The traffic is not bad this late in the morning.

The humans rejoice—the ducks have all made contact with dirt floor. The journey begins. Movement is slow, but the humans have come prepared. Polyester-clad mammalian

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bipeds lead small fowl across sidewalks. Sidestep hydrants; wind through high weeds.

When the slick surface of the Providence River comes into sight, the humans congratulate themselves and their feathered charges. On a low wall surrounded by liquid ink—Father Duck. Reunited, the family takes leave, and the humans fly to commemorate precious moments spent with these newcomers to their community.

The Digital Production Services of Brown University’s library system proclaims on its blog: “Today, it’s all about Ducks!”

The Providence Journal circulates a five-minute-fourteen-second video via YouTube, and one Jeff Steinert comments: “There aren’t many things in the world that are as cute as ducklings! They like to follow my boat around when I go fishing in Smithfield, and I always try to bring something good for them!”

Finally, the Blog Daily Herald of Brown releases a profile on the student behind the 2,274-liked “SciLi Duck” Facebook page: “Meet Mama Duck.” One imagines a biomorphous beast, half mallard, half human; she is a fabled figure of times past perched atop a modern concrete edifice.

This champion of the newly hatched calls out proudly.

II. June 1971 | Dells, Wisconsin Ten square miles of pure American rapture thrive beside the Wisconsin River. Welcome to the Dells.

Welcome to our average tourist. He is: white; middle-class; and in possession of one blue-collar job, two children, and an income between $10,000 and $15,000.

Surely he, his wife, and the young ‘uns will enjoy the Wisconsin Deer Park and Uncle Barney’s Barn Yard. For more adventure: the Enchanted Forest, Prehistoric Land, and the Biblical Gardens. (Think how Grandma will gush over photographs of little Johnny smiling between Pontius Pilate and John the Baptist!)

Those interested in cultural pursuits will delight in the Farmer in the Dells Art Shop 68

T HE ROUND and the Royal Wax Museum. For a more immersive experience: the Winnebago Public Indian Museum and Indian Settlement or the Stand Rock Indian Ceremonial. The latter features sixty-five Indians from thirteen different tribes, a Winnebago soprano, and a Chickasaw baritone.

While the above is optional pending personal preference and financial allowance, there exists one attraction that cannot be missed. The crown jewel of Middle American entertainment. The Ducks.

First introduced into this humble community of family businesses in 1946, these wartime-machines-cum-tourist-mounts have beautifully assimilated into the ways of the Dells. Indeed, it is now hard to remember a time before the 2.5-ton amphibious vehicles roamed about these parts.

Observe the imposing contraptions as they traverse their adopted habitat of America the Great—that boundless sweep of green and blue designated for unchecked cruising.

The Midwestern sun sets each Duck’s jade-and-white steel hull aglow. On land, that same hull drips happily, shedding bits of the Wisconsin River as six wheels lug swaying bulk through serpentine trails. Topping each Duck is a generous expanse of tarpaulin, pulled taut to shield neat rows of passengers below. In lieu of a tail proper, proudly painted wood reads: “RIDE THE DUCKS ON LAND & WATER.” Act now. Purchase passage aboard a Duck, and receive a 7.5-mile, 1-hour escapade complete with personal pilot and souvenir booklet (for an additional charge of $1.25).

For those interested in more authentic keepsakes, it is worth mentioning that the Dells offers a wide variety thereof. Kindly find here: a light-up portrait of The Last Supper; Thirst Aid Vacation Kits (for Ma and Pa); boy and girl Indian dolls (made in Hong Kong); plastic archery sets (made in New York); Indian flutes (made in Japan); and—you’re in luck—a plaque trumpeting “May the Peace of the Lord Be Always With You” marked down from $5 to just $2.75.

Of course, the Dells does have its naysayers. Once asked to develop a bridge in the area, Frank Lloyd Wright declined—he would not design “a road to the popcorn and peanut trade.” It is unlikely that this Wright fellow had ever experienced the euphoria 69

Duck Three Ways / Victor Ha

of careening along rambling waters in a Duck named Iwo Jima or Dolly.

And anyway, who needs Frank Lloyd Wright when you’ve got the “Haunted Outhouse” at Fort Dells and a fine cheese establishment topped by a giant fiberglass mouse?

III. July 2014 | Lower South Providence, Rhode Island I was probably the one who broke the desk. I remember standing on top of the thing to tape pencil-marked paper fish above the whiteboard; to hang blue and purple streamers across the ceiling; to attach a makeshift mobile of foam circles and bright poms to the center of the room. The broken desk, I reflect, was worth it.

I sit behind my broken desk and watch eight six-year-olds gallop beneath the canopy of fish, streamers, and mobile. Our morning’s seventy-five minutes of literacy have ended.

Playtime. Vic is tired, so Vic is going to sit and watch, so go on now and expend some of that energy before math class. My body thanks me for this brief respite.

When I take off my glasses and shut my eyes, I can hear their voices singing, lilting: “Duck, duck, duck, duck...”

When “GOOSE” is finally declared, I hear a rush of shrieking, giggling, and, inevitably, teetering footsteps until one small body hits the rug and another takes up that magical, graspable song in this foreign language: “Duck, duck, duck, duck...”

Elias’s voice is raspy. He has lived in America for most of his life, so his ducks are confident, succinct.

When it is Hser Teet’s turn, I must strain to hear her voice. Recently arrived from Burma, she is already a brilliant reader and speller. I can hardly fault her for whispering.

Divya’s voice depends on her mood. If I have taken away a star from her that day, she will bleat out her ducks like a siren. If not, she will pronounce the words slowly, savoring her command over the other players’ fates.

Michel’s ducks are dipped in her Colombian accent—she departed her country for the U.S. not a month ago. She understands little English right now, but this duck and goose

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T HE ROUND thing, she can do. “Duck, duck, duck, duck...”

Elias, Hser Teet, Divya, Michel, and their four other peers have decided to call themselves the Tiger Birds. The Tiger Birds are all refugees.

The United Nations Refugee Agency has many numbers about the Tiger Birds and others like them: 15.4 million refugees—adults and children—in the world. Less than one percent of those permanently resettled in new countries. Over half resettled in the U.S. “Over half ” translated to 58,179 refugees admitted to the U.S. in 2012; 69,909 in 2013.

The Tiger Birds—eight.

The Tiger Birds will not make the news. They will spawn neither American enchantment nor spirited public fervor. Instead, they will skip and sing beneath a nowhere-sky of paper fish and flowing streamers, enveloped by the four white walls of a forgotten classroom. Here, stale summer heat becomes trapped—turns sweet with the airborne honey of eight children’s duck, duck, duck, ducks. The air, sweet and thick, will force open the four white walls, pressing firmly, pressing mightily, until—behold. A sky, real and infinite; a sky claimed by eight Tiger Birds and their sisters and their brothers. They will draw nectar of sky through beaming lips, and I will breathe with them because I cannot breathe black and yellow signs announcing “DUCK X-ing” or a giant fiberglass mouse or a broken desk.

I sit, and I watch, and I wonder whether I should teach the Tiger Birds how to spell “duck.” No, I decide. This is enough.

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Summer, Julie Robine monoprint | 10” x 14”

Monologue, Sierra Edd

digital

A White Rose Sienna Bates I wish I could say that my condom broke, or that I had been taking the pill religiously until it just happened to slip my mind for a few days — maybe then I would have felt no remorse. And even so, remorse isn’t the right word. I don’t regret my abortion, but rather it bothers me that the whole ordeal was easily preventable. I felt like one of those stupid teenagers you hear about on the news, the ones who think they can play chicken on the railroad tracks and not get hit, or drunk drive without getting caught by the police, but instead I was the fool who thought that my less than 25% chance of getting pregnant was enough to gamble with. Clearly, I lost. +++ At first, I laughed. I laughed and I laughed and I laughed and I laughed, but that laugher inevitably turned into tears and my legs turned into melting butter and I had to sit down from the weight of it all. The First Response box said I should expect to wait at least five minutes before getting a clear reading; within the first 45 seconds, I saw two distinct pink lines on my applicator that told me unprotected sex was a mistake. A tight hug from my mother is the only thing that kept me from collapsing onto the floor. I cried so violently and for so long, but when I was finally composed enough to speak, the first thing I asked was, “Where can I get an abortion?” +++ When I left the clinic, I could barely walk and was still a little dizzy from the anesthesia, but I remember the picketers. They looked a little bored and didn’t even bother to hold up their signs but sort of leaned on them, drinking coffee and idly chatting with one another. They didn’t look anything like the people I saw on the news or on the Internet, who always seem as if they’re ready to burn anyone who has an abortion like a witch. I expected a large crowd holding misleading photos of miscarriages disguised as abortions, screaming about how I’m a heartless murderer on her way to hell, but what I got was some mild-mannered suburbanites who might as well have been endorsing a mayoral candidate. As my mom drove by, a smiling woman walked up to the car tried to hand me a white rose. My mom and I both laughed. Was that pitiful little flower supposed to make me feel bad? +++ Getting an abortion in New Jersey is not illegal, and you don’t have to ask for permission from

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T HE ROUND or even notify your parents if you’re under 18. The only thing stopping you is money and any moral hang-ups you might have. I’ve never sat down and had a debate with someone who was pro-life, but I don’t imagine them saying anything worthwhile on the subject; I don’t want to hear about God, I don’t want to hear those fake stories of first trimester fetuses being removed and living, and while a lot of other people may (rightfully!) feel emotionally distraught about their termination, that has nothing. To do. With me.

Still, I can almost see why people are against abortions. I guess it’s like killing a baby, if that baby was the size of a tadpole and completely functionless. I’m reminded of that thought experiment where a person is given a live infant in one hand and a petri dish of a fertilized egg in another and asked which one they would rather drop. If the baby and the egg are the same thing to them, they shouldn’t be able to make the choice, but I have a hard time believing even the most fervent pro-lifer would drop a living, breathing baby over some cells in a bowl of agar. +++ Before I bought the pregnancy test from Walgreens, and even before I noticed throwing up in the morning wasn’t from last night’s dinner, I knew I would never go through with an unplanned pregnancy. I know I’m not ready to raise a child, and I assume the would-be father isn’t ready either, so for an outside party to tell me I have to do so seems a little silly. I’m sure they’re trying to protect the potential human in my uterus, but why do they care more about a prospective life more than the one I’m already living? And if they worry so much about this future baby, what are they going to do to help me raise a child I neither want nor am equipped to handle? +++ I’m so defensive about my abortion because I feel that anyone who opposes my decision is trying to tell me they know how I should live my life better than I do, and that one easily correctable mistake should be met with a lifelong punishment. Still, it’s not unreasonable for someone to think I’m so adamant about defending my choice because I felt bad about taking a “life,” though I must insist that I did not care about that embryo when I stumbled off the operating table or even when I was offered that guilt-ridden white rose. And I certainly don’t care about it now, even if it would have been seven months old.

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Wallpaper No. 2, Olivia Watson digital

A&P Lisa Lee

“Hey baby, what’s your name?” the man in the black jacket yelled at me.

I looked at him, and then responded, “I will not be your lover.” Then I turned and walked into the grocery store to buy a can of tomato sauce and a pack of gum.

I held the two items in my hands before joining the line to the register. There were ten people in the line. The register girl was a teen with black hair and a bitter look on her face. I imagined she understood she would probably never leave her position behind the counter. The man in front of me kept trying to catch my eye.

“Crazy weather, isn’t it?” he murmured aloud, but no one took the bait. The words just trailed off, became silence. He held a pack of Oreos, a bag of dry cat food, and a bag of carrots in his hands. I tried to imagine his life from these few items, but I couldn’t. I stared off at the magazine rack, but didn’t read a single word from the glossy prints. The world was the sound of the American Top Forty, currently on Maroon 5’s “Sugar.” A woman two places ahead was humming the melody off-key.

I felt as if I had stood there for a long time. My heartbeat seemed to have slowed down considerably. I had probably waited an hour. I opened the pack of gum and ate a piece.

The line had stretch across the store, through the cereal aisle to the butcher’s counter.

People held their items very close to their chests, as if they were stealing babies. They whispered to the items, telling them to hush, telling them it would just be a little bit, although they were really just trying to tell themselves. Some looked tired from all the waiting, but still, they persisted.

I put the now-empty pack of gum into my back pocket. I was almost there; second in line. The scowling girl was scanning the bag of cat food for the man in front of me. I was almost out. I released a big sigh I didn’t know I was holding in, and stared straight at the man’s neck. It was light pink, the color of cooked salmon fillet. Thoughts of sunlight and

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fresh air sambaed across my mind. The man might still be outside; I should be cautious.

Then, as the man was pulling out his wallet, as I stared at the pink strip of his exposed neck, the world became black. The man started to fall, and it was like watching a massive redwood give up. He fell slow and backward, nearly onto me. I started to scream and stumble back, letting go of the tomato sauce. His body made a dull thudding noise on impact with the floor, along with a crack from his head hitting the tiles. But both were nearly drowned out from the simultaneous screaming of everyone in proximity.

“He’s dead, he’s dead, oh my god,” a purple lady behind me yelled, alerting the customers farther back in the line. People began to murmur at once, one woman even crying hysterically at the news. I was closest to the body and a small crowd formed around me at once. We stood a foot distance from him, but it was clear that he was dead. Probably dead before he even hit the ground. A manager ran out from nowhere, already red-faced and trembling. We opened a path for him.

“Oh my god,” he said upon seeing the body. He looked at us, the ones closest to the body. “Has anyone called for an ambulance?” he yelled. We looked at each other. Nobody had. “Damnit,” he cursed, and I felt like he was personally cursing us. He ran away again.

We all looked at each other again. With him gone, there was no authority figure. No one to tell us what to do, or how to stay calm. There was a pink-necked body at our feet. Some of us still held our boxes of Splenda or packaged instant noodles. People, not knowing what else to do, had stayed in their positions in the line, maintaining the appearance of normality. But there was a body blocking the cash register. A body quickly losing warmth and color, becoming a corpse. Someone had put a blue cloth on his face, but that almost made it worse.

No one had left yet. I found and held my can of tomato sauce. The cash register girl was still standing in her spot. The appearance of her seemed to make people more at ease. It gave some semblance of ordinariness if you could ignore the body on the floor.

Everything was normal but for the body on the floor. Once that was removed, the world

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T HE ROUND would return to stasis.

Although there was a body a few inches from my toes, I made a calculated decision not to leave. I would win. I had waited this long not to quit. The cashier girl was not doing transactions of course, as that would be crass to the newly deceased. But she stood there, and that was promise enough that my time would be soon. Some other line-waiters had made this decision as well. Others might have decided to stick around, waiting to see what would happen. This was their CSI episode, a drop of drama in a barren desert.

Gradually, order restored itself, though the store began to stink faintly of sweat and long desperation. Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” was playing. The cashier girl began to scowl again, shadows appearing on her forehead. I held my can of tomato sauce tightly, and I stared at nowhere in particular, especially not at the dead man. I began to wonder how long it would take for a body to decompose.

Then, far off, I heard the shrieks of an ambulance. It came closer and closer, eventually eclipsing Swift’s voice. A pair of paramedics entered, and they moved with machine efficiency. They took his pulse, though of course he had none. They pronounced him dead at 4:35 PM though he had died ten minutes earlier, picked up his wallet, and wheeled him away in a stretcher. A police officer came in, and he asked me and the cashier girl a few questions. Then he left.

That was it. It was over. It suddenly felt like nothing had ever happened. The cashier girl swiped my tomato can, and I remembered to also hand her the gum packaging so I could pay for it. I walked out of the store into a cloudy New England day, and the air felt different from when I entered. The man yelled, “Hey baby,” at me, but this time, I didn’t respond. I drove back home, and forgot about the incident even when my husband asked me how my day went. “It was fine,” I said over the plate of lasagna he made. “Nothing special.”

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Cloistered, Xinwei Che installation, wax, heat

Abi’s Dress, Abigail Griswold

sculpture

GALA Georgia Wright

They were lonely in a crowded room. They—all of them—individuals in the glittery dresses and tuxedos, women with hair curled to the nines, men who had nicked their faces shaving that very day as they tried to look smooth and unblemished in photographs—were the loneliest human beings imaginable.

Gemma Butler was lonely in the crowded room. Oh, she laughed on the outside, for she glittered most of all. She twinkled around the dance floor, one fingertip tracing the rim of her martini glass to wipe up the salt she’d requested be sprinkled on the rim, and placed the pad of this index finger in her mouth to taste the bitterness. The salt made her suck in her cheeks, an excuse to rest her face from the smiling. She could hear the whispers about her: how her waist was cinched just so by the cut of her beaded scarlet dress, how the contour of the place where her neck met her back smoothed perfectly, how she emitted a special kind of light when she spoke. (She knew that it was only the light from the chandelier reflecting off her teeth, because inside her was a darkness, and light would reflect off her teeth and never enter her body.) Gemma Butler laughed and twinkled and deflected compliments with a gracious head nod, a small swooping motion. She hadn’t kissed a man in nine years.

Harley Lipton was lonely in the crowded room. His platter was full of this sort of crab tartlet that he couldn’t remember the name of. It was a French name, and since this type of crowd certainly spoke French, he was mighty fearful of butchering the pronunciation. So instead he said, “Crab tartlet, miss? Sir?” and proffered the little peaked orange things and knew how lowbrow he sounded. His penguin suit fit him too small

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T HE ROUND and the gel in his hair dripped down the back of his neck when he sweated, which was often, because he was lonely. Lonely people sweat a lot. He was deadly afraid of stepping on the toes of the well-dressed crowd. There was the train of the dress of this one woman with a very beakish nose and it had trailed rose-colored behind her. He’d stepped on it and almost cried because he was so afraid he’d ruined it. He hadn’t even looked down to see if he’d left a footprint or not; instead he had turned and practically sprinted back to the kitchen, where the cruel mustached chef took one look at his ruddy face and laughed meanly, chopping onions. The chef didn’t cry, even when he chopped onions.

The chef was called Urdrich Horn and even he was lonely in the crowded kitchen.

He was from Germany and hated that German cuisine had such a bad reputation, because his gentle, dead mother had loved bratwurst. In his heart of hearts, though, he’d known that Parisian cuisine was better and so he left his only sweetheart to go to France and learn how to cook. Every time he ate the Parisian food—a baguette or steak or some such—he still felt embittered, tasted something sharp underneath.

It took him a while to realize that the something sharp was the taste of betrayal.

The only sweetheart had been called Marla, and she was lean and tough and beautiful with large supple breasts and green sparkling eyes, and he’d written to her many times, but each time she’d only respond with a sentence. In France he’d found women at burlesques, but they were all sad and cigarette-strung, and when he slept with them, he, too, felt sad and cigarette-strung. Now at this godforsaken party he laughed at his waiters and chopped onions with a vitriol that belied his loneliness because he couldn’t cry, not even for the sake of the goddamned onions. If he started crying for the onions he’d end up crying for Marla and he’d probably never stop.

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Gala / Georgia Wright

They were lonely lonely lonely in the crowded gala room with its open ceilings onto which someone who was not Michelangelo had painted a pathetic replica of the Sistine Chapel. (The arms drooped on the angels.) There were a hundred guests and workers whirling on the floor, each trying to outshine the others. It was a gala, but some sort of melancholy scent pervaded the air. Men who liked men asked women to dance because they felt they ought to. Older gentlemen tried not to look at their reflections in the serving-platters; even though metal warped their faces, they knew the wrinkles were not an illusion. Gemma Butler glittered and felt herself knot up like drying plaster. Harley Lipton dropped someone’s empty glass and it shattered onto the marble floor. Urdrich Horn chopped off the tip of his left ring-finger and bled into the parsnips but it was all right because the finger would have been useless anyway. One woman without a name that anyone could remember secretly lifted her face and caught on her tongue the drips from a melting ice statue. She had hoped that they might taste the same way that the snow used to, when she was small and it melted and ran down from the Alps into her village in the spring. They, the drips, did not.

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Gossip, Ishiah White

paint, collage

BRUSHSTROKE Eugenie Juliet Theall

Mist encircles beachgrass; salt-spray on my cheek. The ocean stretches to meet sky—the definitive line in a modernist painting, the dance between two shades of blue, where schoolchildren sit at the feet of the tour guide, not fully comprehending its simplicity—how eternity is captured in one long stroke. One child understood.

Her eyes grew large. She rocked back, recognizing its depth, and I knew when she brushed fallen hair from her face, she had discovered salt.

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EMPHYSEMA Eugenie Juliet Theall

I remember your hands, Grandfather, folded across your chest in eternal sleep.

Your hands became my father’s hands, cut and bleeding from the saw.

A blue vein forks below my wrist; your bloodline still flows.

I have your crooked pinkies, firm grip, long life line.

Were my hands to touch yours, I’m sure you’d roll my fingers together, like dried tobacco leaves, into the cigarette you still crave.

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Untitled, Yuna Cho

monoprint on Stonehenge paper | 24� x 36�

Found, Catherine Lee

brass, plexi-glass, digital prints on acetate, old film camera lens | 7 x 7 x 4 cm

PINHOLE Jinny Koh

They had met at a mutual friend’s party. It was 1978 and my father was twenty-two with puffed-up hair, Presley-style. My mother, nineteen, had donned a red dress dotted with flowers that showed off her narrow waist. Over the blare of rock and roll music, past the small plates of curry chicken and fried rice, under the red and yellow disco lights, their eyes connected. +++ My mother stood over the kitchen sink, gutting a silver sea bass for dinner. I stared at her profile: callused hand wielding the knife, wiry gray hair overwhelming her chubby face, fat bulging, stretching even the most flattering clothes into a shapeless mass. Every part of her body—from her eye bags to her cheeks, from her bosoms to her kneecaps—sagged, a physical collective sigh from under the weight of life’s sorrows and burdens. +++ When I was a child, my favorite part of my mother was her hands. Smooth and velvety, they were softer than anything I’d touched. My mother never kissed me, nor was I allowed to kiss her. I tried once, but she pushed me away, afraid that I was going to catch her germs. I longed for those hands to brush against my skin, to smooth down my hair, to hold me. +++ We used to eat together as a family. My mother felt it was important for us to share our lives over dinner. That was until the conversations started to get sodden with tension, until behind every word dragged a stone of judgment. The pauses got longer and the tone more strained.

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T HE ROUND Dinner ended even before it began. My father started coming home later, preferring to have his meals alone after work. +++ My father, with his face full of lines, seemed older than his age. If you looked close enough, you could see a slight dent on each of his temples, as if those dents bore testament to a worried man who had rubbed his temples one too many times. +++ My pocket money from my father was budgeted down to the very cent. He would count the cost of each meal I ate in school, multiply it by the number of school days for that month, and leave hardly any extra for other expenses. Each time I took a bus to school, I would have to bring home the ticket as proof. If I lost it, he would not give me the money.

Once, we went to the supermarket and I put a bag of chips in the basket. After paying, my father checked the receipt and demanded that I fork over the dollar twenty. +++ The first date with my husband was at a Japanese restaurant. We sat on wooden chairs in a private corner partitioned by a beige folding screen. Beside us hung paintings of slender white cranes with long black beaks. He ordered my favorite salmon roe and yellowtail sashimi, and our laughter, like our conversation, was easy and light. When the bill came, I insisted that we split it, but he shrugged me off with a small smile. That night, I couldn’t sleep, worried that he had secretly minded paying for the meal. +++

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Pinhole / Jinny Koh

Once, my parents quarreled over a loaf of bread that was sitting on the dining table. It was half-eaten, and my father was the culprit. Since she bought it, my mother insisted that my father return her the money. Out of anger, he grabbed the miserable loaf and threw it across the floor toward her. +++ My father used to bring us to fancy restaurants every week, splurging on all kinds of delicacies-geoduck, lobster, and my mother’s favorite: chili crab. After eating, we would trot to the nearby arcade where he would hand me a fifty-dollar bill and let me play as many games as I wanted. He really wanted to us to be happy. But when the economy crashed, so did he. +++ In my dream, my father was faceless. His head was a block of wood, light brown and flat.

I sat in front of him and began carving his features with a knife. I was delicate and slow at first, shaping his eyes and nose to perfection. But then, I got angry and started stabbing the wood. Splinters flew into the air. I stabbed and stabbed until the anger subsided, until I felt nothing. Then I woke up. +++ After watching lovers hug and kiss on the TV, it occurred to me that my parents weren’t like that. So while shopping, I would walk between them and mesh their fingers together when they weren’t looking. At the restaurant, I would ask my father for a kiss but duck my head so that he would peck my mother’s cheek. I thought I was so clever with my tricks.

It didn’t register with me that anything was wrong until I was much older. Then I realized how futile those efforts had been.

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T HE ROUND +++ On their wedding anniversary, my father bought a large bouquet of white lilies for my mother. After searching the house for the best spot to place it, he nestled the bouquet on a chair facing the front door. I hopped around in excitement, eager to see the look on my mother’s face at this rare gesture of romance. My father, standing beside the blossoms, beamed and waited. When my mother came home from work, she took one look at the flowers and gave a tight smile. Later, she revealed to me that she thought they were a waste of money. +++ I was eight when my mother asked me if I would live with her in the event of a divorce.

I said yes, not because that was what I wanted, but because that was what she needed to hear. She told me that of the two parents, the maternal role was far superior. That it was the mother, not the father, who cared for the children. She claimed that every kid would choose their mother over their father in a separation. Over the years, she sought confirmation of my allegiance to her. My father never asked me this question. I think, deep down, he knew the answer. +++ We were moving houses again. I wanted to take my Barbie dolls with me, but my father refused. I had six different dolls and a boxful of colorful gowns in soft velvet and layered tulle. I pleaded with my father to let me keep them, but he yelled and said our new house had no space for old stuff. He threw them down the garbage chute and promised to buy me newer and better dolls in the future. He never kept his word. I stopped playing with dolls after that.

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Pinhole / Jinny Koh

+++ I remembered the dead guppy. Its tiny skeleton had sunk to the bottom of my fishbowl, bits of discolored skin fraying at its sides. Its once luscious tail, a beautiful blue hue and twice the size of its body, was reduced to a dull shade of grey. It was my fault. I was the one who had introduced another fish into the bowl thinking that the guppy could use some company. I thought they would live happily ever after. I cried that night, not because my guppy died, but because the other fish ate it up. +++ We were on the bed, my husband’s body curled up like the whorl of a shell all ready for slumber, when I asked, “Are you angry with me?” He gave me a puzzled look and said no, what gave me that idea? I didn’t reply. Instead, I turned my head to the ceiling and watched the fan spin, its whirring blades softening the midnight air. +++ It was the time of the night when the whole world was so silent that even the cats that scour the streets were asleep. My mother stood against the wall, hidden in the dark. The lights from the street lamps cast a shadow on her, feathering the edges of her silhouette so that for a moment, she was once again soft and beautiful. +++ On her way to the coffee shop, my mother fell into a large ditch. My father carried her back home, his forehead glistening with perspiration as he hollered at me to take the first aid kit from the shelf. I’d never seen him so anxious before. Blood trickled from the deep gash on my mother’s shin. My father cleaned and dressed her wound, all the while murmuring

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T HE ROUND words of comfort while she sat there crying. +++ When I was a kid, my father had a special way of tucking me into bed. First, he would fling out the blanket and gently drop it onto me. Then, he’d push the sides of the blanket underneath my body, cocooning me in my own warmth. I’d burst into a giggle, delighted to be wrapped up, tight and secure. After kissing me goodnight, he would turn off the lights and close the door behind him, leaving just a gap so that if I needed anything, all I had to do was shout. +++ It started with my mother asking where the TV remote control was. My father started yelling that he didn’t use it. The simple question spiraled into a quarrel about trust and money.

Soon, they were shouting at each so loudly that I was afraid our neighbors might call the police. I went to the living room and asked them to tone it down when, just then, my father blindly kicked the black hassock in anger. It flew across the floor, snubbing my toe. +++ I found myself asking my husband the same question over and over again. “Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you still love me?” +++ My science teacher came to class with a shoebox-like object in his hands and declared that he was going to show us something wonderful. We waited in anticipation as he dimmed the room lights, poked a tiny hole on the narrow end of the box and held it against the

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Pinhole / Jinny Koh

open window. Everyone stood in awe at the image projected on the other side of the box except me. All I saw was how easy a world, filtered through a pinhole, could be turned upside down. +++ My mother often complained to me what a bad husband my father was. Whenever I did the same, she would frown and say, “Don’t speak of him that way. He is your father.” +++ In one of our family videos shot by my father, we were at the zoo. There were tigers, monkeys, peacocks, and giraffes. The little girl clapped her hands in excitement as she called out, “Daddy! Daddy!” The pretty, slender woman holding the girl’s hand was smiling, narrating the day’s events to the camcorder. I played the video several times over the years and wondered where this family had gone, and if they would ever come back. +++ I moved out of my parents’ apartment when I got married. Three days after the wedding, my husband and I visited my parents as part of the Chinese customs. My mother, particularly chatty that afternoon, had prepared sweet rice vermicelli with hardboiled eggs for us, saying, “May your marriage be sweet-sweet and may you bear a child soon.” When we left, she waved goodbye to us at the gate. It was only when I glanced back at her from the elevator that I realized she had started crying. +++ For ten years my parents promised me a trip to Australia during the school holiday. We

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T HE ROUND collected stacks of brochures stamped with pictures of the Great Barrier Reef, the Twelve Apostles, and the MacKenzie Falls. Every night we discussed how fun it would be to see those koala bears and kangaroos. Each December, we found ourselves in a cheap local chalet instead, the trip postponed to the following year. When I turned twenty-one, I emptied my savings, bought a ticket to Melbourne, and stayed for three weeks. +++ There were mornings when I woke up and wondered if my father really loved me, or if I was just errant debris in his shoe that he had accidentally picked up along the way and could not wait to shake out. +++ I suggested to my mother that she got a divorce. My mother used to lament that she was in this marriage for me, to give me a complete home. I never saw how a home so broken could be considered complete just because we were living under the same roof. I told her that I didn’t mind a divorce if everyone would be happier. She gave me a rueful look and said nothing. +++ The bunch of watercress had withered into a sticky mess in the corner of the crisper. I had forgotten to use it and now they lay wasted in my hands. I showed my husband the shriveled greens and asked, “Are you angry with me?� He smiled and folded me into his arms. +++ I accompanied my mother to the temple but did not follow her in. I had seen how the gods

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Pinhole / Jinny Koh

of her youth had treated her. How they had toyed with her faith and unwavering belief, trampled her dreams, crushed her ambitions with their mighty hands, and ridiculed her sincere offerings of joss sticks, flowers, and roasted fowls. I no longer trusted them. +++ The bus shuddered and stopped at the red light. It was midnight, my favorite hour, when time crossed from one day to another. I turned my head to the window and watched the cars zoom past me on the highway, their twinkling lights flying diagonally across the window like stars falling. +++ We screamed and darted across the living room, trying to avoid the flying cockroach. My father, the only brave person, rolled some newspapers in his hand, stepped on the couch and beat the life out of that vermin. We cheered and clapped our hands as he tossed the carcass into the bin. He was our hero.

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HIS SISTER’S STORY Cathy Allman

We were at the top of the split-level staircase, by the front door—part door, part opaque cubes.

Only light or shadows showed through, like a cut-glass maze.

I wished that he’d hit me instead.

It was my fault—our father was more violent with my brother because he was a boy.

It was fast: hands on necks, cursing, tears. Loud.

My brother fought back.

I was frozen, afraid something was going to break: mirror, glass door, chandelier, so many dangling things— my stomach tightened as if I teetered on a ledge.

My brother was twelve—the age before it could only have gotten worse; the point the son was about to become stronger than the father.

The chandelier was a geometric with three clear globes. We had wrought iron railings down to the basement.

The wallpaper was shiny— silver and gold flowers.

I needed to get to my room to close the door.

I don’t remember how the fight ended, but I’d guess Dad won.

There was no other way.

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Hiding, Vanilla Kalai Anandam

impossible film Polaroid mounted on Polaroid 150 film pieces | 5� x 6�

I LOST MY HAT. Sally Hosokawa

The groundhog saw his shadow two days ago but unlike him I have to live above the ground So I shuffle next to my father who clutches the coral cloth to his chest strangling it with his coarse hands that are too afraid to hold onto mine His mouth says we’ll find it right away but his eyes scold my nine-year-old memory and its inadequacy at remembering when and where I saw it last as if I had been the one carrying it

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I Lost My Hat. / Sally Hosokawa

His feet start to recoil in their path with hard-set determination to find that hat Except what I really want are those ruby red slippers like the ones that Dorothy wears that I saw the other day at Target There are some things I’d rather not revisit better left behind and forgotten in the past Yet he insists on retracing his steps articulating excuses to relieve himself of blame and doesn’t realize that the monster hiding in my closet to visit my bed at night has the same voice as him As darkness arrives

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T HE ROUND he materializes from the ashes of cloaked memories to slink into my bed Binding my wrists Stabbing my ankles Smothering the bursts of shock and betrayal assaulting my throat His shadow drapes over the tops of my boots as he trudges ahead in silence I squeeze the rim of the blue cap its tag still dangling gloomily And I click my heels three times before realizing where I want to go is away and not home

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Mediterranean Peek-a-Boo, Zein Khleif digital photograph

NAVAJO (DINÉ) PATTERNS Sierra Edd

First World The axis of the earth is hinged onto the belly of the creator.

But somewhere along the way, foreigners dragged the earth in the wrong direction.

Salvage anthropology

Delivers so-called equality.

Our sovereignty is constrained to: domestic and dependent;

Descendants and blood quantum;

Powwow drums and plume feathers.

That history

Of American Indians starts in 1492

Yet our people lived here thousands of years before that.

We have forgotten Diné Bahane,’ our creation story of emergence into the fourth world.

The shovels dig deeper, Uncovering uranium.

The holy people warned us not to touch the yellow sand.

Tunnels of coal mining infect the earth.

Our four mountains have separated, but have not moved.

hagé dinétah?

Where is our holy land?

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Navajo (Diné) Patterns / Sierra Edd

Second World The barbed wire lines the horizon, better known as my forehead.

It pierces the crown of my skull

And the oceans lick at the scabs on my body:

A tomb enthroned on salt and bitter water.

The blood runs thin here, Spread sparse between family members and tribal print clothing.

It all bled out like the war soldiers who were drafted and forced to the front lines

Spilling out of gunshots It ages in the veins of the elders It overflows and diminishes … Thinned with the blood of other races.

When I asked the creator what I’d done to deserve the borders stitched into my side, he called back to me saying I’d been infected.

I was prescribed with commodity cheese and cheap beer My legs are pinpricked with needles extracting marrow from my bones Sold

Four dollars a gallon.

Third World It’s high tide and the ocean foam embalms my body.

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T HE ROUND Sun, I look at you and close my eyes.

One hundred years later and our skin will be white …

I can see it already: They’ll say to one another, “Let’s get our purses ready to go ethnic shopping.”

Where’s the nearest Golden Corral? Because that’s the closest thing to home.

They should make a hopscotch game with the patches of Navajo land Because I’d probably win.

I walk so fast that I moonwalk through the checkerboard

And I laugh every time I’m in the rez.1 We’ve adapted to government food and frybread.

Here we breathe out spearmint gum breath And sip on coffee with Sweet’n Low in the morning.

Outside you can see the orange Cheeto dust swirl in the wind north of the school playground.

Over there! — pointing with your lips.

The kids fight over food their mothers bought at Bashas’ 2 Or throw rocks at the rez dogs.

Some sit huddled by the building trying to use the Wi-Fi on their prepaid phones They stand together like they’re in a drumming circle.

Then, in hushed tones, they try to whisper secrets to their crushes.

They mustn’t talk too loud or they’ll get detention.

1 Native American Reservation/government allotted land 2 A well-known line of grocery stores on the Navajo reservation

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Navajo (Diné) Patterns / Sierra Edd

We go to round dance and bring home the sexiest Native we can find … who’s not related to us.

We all ride low in our rez cars bumping our bumpers up against each other’s like lovers.

Our hips grind speaking broken English and Navajo love.

Then, We start hitting and giving bruises because we know we have IHS3 The men at bars perform a frenzy of swings and kicks in sync to a choreography of violence that they’ve been practicing since they were kids.

The curses from their lips spill out like a memorized chant …

The oil lamps that light our rez homes flicker out.

Fourth World Ya’at’eeh shí chei The grandfather horny toad crawls on my chest.

“The coyote is not one to talk with.

He does not laugh with the boozers that roll around like tumbleweeds

Or sit by the house to defend it.

O no!

He’s the trickster and steals the stars.”

Grandfather horny toad, I know that story.

3 Indian Health Service, which is government-funded health care but has a lack of quality service due to underfunding

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T HE ROUND

Our grandma seems to be immortal: outliving three wars and boarding school; John Kennedy and Richard Nixon; tuberculosis and arthritis.

Her husband fought in the Korean War.

The ocean swallowed him up like Jonah and

He came back with yellow eyes and hate for his country.

When he walks, he limps.

One leg always wanting to go back to his hometown …

I look around and see red earth: Dzith’Na’O’ Dith’Hle’ 4 When we remove our sunglasses, our eyes burn from white-skins who suddenly surround this land.

Our ceremonies are sacred, so when did they become a commodity?

We sit bartering our beadwork, and art, and frybread tacos.

Our blood knows no fractions but we bleed quantum numbers.

And stumble in a drunken haze.

We point with our lips.

We go north and to the east, then back home.

4 A mesa and town on the reservation which was a landmark in Navajo mythology

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I Surrender, Abigail Griswold ceramic sculpture

C o n tribut ors Melanie Abeygunawardana is a junior studying English and Literary Arts at Brown University, where she is a Writing Fellow and an editor at the feminist publication Bluestockings Magazine. She is interested in narratives about brownness, queerness, and witches, and believes wholeheartedly in the critical powers of creative writing. She is the truest of Pisces.

Cathy Allman is a writer from Darien, Connecticut.

Vanilla Kalai Anandam is a New York native whose work has been exhibited at Carnegie Hall, Parsons: The New School, and Creative Time Gallery (NY) in T.A.G.’s “Green Light” exhibition, recognized as a featured artist in the show. Her art can be found in The Postscript Journal, Teen Vogue, Silent Voices, and Vogue Italia among others.

Sienna Bates is a junior at Brown University concentrating in East Asian Studies and a member of The Round. She spends most of her time playing (Nintendo) video games, watching anime, listening to Korean pop music, and laughing at really bad internet memes, but that’s only because she can’t nap 24 hours a day.

Fiona Beltram is a first-year student at Brown University. She is an avid reader, photography enthusiast, occasional yoga practitioner, member of Brown’s cross-country and track teams, and potential marine biology concentrator.

Xinwei Che is a student at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Yuna Cho is a Korean Canadian artist from Toronto currently residing in Providence, Rhode Island. She works mostly with drawing, sculpture, and photography. Her work is abstract and intuitive, responding to the materiality of her mediums. Yuna is currently working on a series of plaster sculptures with references to furniture and videos that questions the different ways we identify objects and place them in an interior space, discussing how we deal with the interior and how it becomes traces of the internal of the occupant.

Ling Chun has been engrossed with the relationship between authentic American Chinese foods and making art to explore how the interplay affects her life as a Chinese in the States.

C o n tr i but ors She earned her BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, began a year-long artist residency at Seward Park Clay Studio in Seattle, Washington, and then became a program instructor at Starlit Art Space, Hong Kong. Her passion in ceramics art brought her to the MFA program at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Sierra Edd is a first-year student at Brown University considering Ethnic studies and Visual Arts. She is a Navajo (Diné) artist and poet. She is a past recipient of the SWAIA youth fellowship at the Santa Fe Indian market and has a painting at the Navajo Nation museum in Window Rock, Arizona. In 2012, she won the Honorable Mention Scholastic Art Award for Colorado.

Devra Freelander is a sculptor born in New York in 1990. She works primarily with industrial materials such as epoxy resin, fiberglass, enamel, steel, and LED lights. Her sculptures explore the perceptual ramifications of having grown up immersed in digital landscapes, while being rooted in a geologic vocabulary. She received her BA Cum Laude in Studio Art from Oberlin College in 2012, and is currently obtaining her MFA in Sculpture from Rhode Island School of Design. She has shown nationally and internationally and is a recipient of the 2015 RISD Presidential Scholarship.

Lance Gloss is a Coloradoan studying American Civilization at Brown University.

Abby Griswold is an apparel design major at the Rhode Island School of Design who creates 3D collage art images with unique materials. Recently, she presented a “Re-Innovative” piece, a dress constructed entirely out of cereal boxes, at StyleWeek Northeast’s SEED student design competition at The Biltmore in February 2015; this piece will also be part of RISD’s annual spring fashion show in May 2015. View her collections at agriss.wix.com/ abbygriswold.

Maya Faulstich-Hon is a Chinese American born and raised in Costa Rica, currently studying Environmental Science at Brown University. She can’t sing for shit.

Victor Ha prefers red meat.

C o n tr i but ors

Maggie Hazen is an installation artist and sculptor who combines electronic media and simple materials exploring her interests in cosmology, virtual space and spirituality. She makes sculptures and environments which investigate perceptions of reality involving the simulation, the mythical and the metaphysical. She is a current MFA candidate at the Rhode Island School of Design and received her BFA in sculpture from Biola University.

She has been presented in exhibitions internationally including the Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance and has participated in numerous lectures and discussions on the topics explored in her work and has been featured in a range of magazines and journals.

Juan Tang Hon is an artist born and raised in Panama. He has experienced a multitude of cultures, absorbing bits of each one like a hungry sponge. His current culture is the Illustration student culture at the Rhode Island School of Design. Through illustrations, creative writing, poetry, and sculpture, he aims to show how different everyone can be and that no matter how weird it gets, everyone has something to relate to: joy, empathy, surprise, love.

Sally Hosokawa is a sophomore at Brown University concentrating in Comparative Literature with a focus in Literary Translation. A poet, musician, and member of The Round, Sally is infatuated with emptiness and timelessness.

Anna Hundert is a first-year student at Brown University and a member of The Round who plans to concentrate in Classics and Literary Arts. The poem “Variations on Middle Path” refers to the “middle path” at Kenyon College, where the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop is held every summer. More of her poems can be found at her poetry blog, awanderingsheep.tumblr.com.

Zein Khleif is a senior at Brown University, independently concentrating in Political Psychology. In her free time she enjoys friends, food, and photography. She will be moving to Los Angeles in September to pursue a career in music.

Liz Kingsley has poetry published or forthcoming in New Ohio Review and The McNeese Review and fiction published in The William and Mary Review. Her essay “Nature’s Perfect Blend: A Work in Progress” appears in a recently released anthology titled Blended: Writers

C o n tr i b u t ors on the Stepfamily Experience. Liz is a long-time student at The Writers Studio (TWS) in New York City, where she studies with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Philip Schultz. When she is not writing poems or helping to run TWS, she teaches third grade in Westfield, New Jersey.

Jinny Koh, born and raised in Singapore, now lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter. She was the Fiction Editor at The Southern California Review while pursuing her Masters in Professional Writing at the University of Southern California. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Conium Review, Role Reboot, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, FORTH Magazine, and Brain, Child, among others.

Hanna Kostamaa is a junior at Brown University concentrating in Music and Literary Arts. Besides writing short stories, she is interested in songwriting and film. Her music is available streaming at http://soundcloud.com/hannakost.

Catherine Lee is a designer, traveler, and dreamer—a young creative who loves to explore and play. With her professionally trained background in jewelry, she specializes in creating jewelry and body adornments that is often inspired by her personal dreams, travels, and memories.

Lisa Lee is an avid letter-writer but not a letter-sender. She likes coffee but can’t drink it because her body will go insane. Same with alcohol.

Amberly Lerner is a junior at Dover Sherborn High School in Dover, Massachusetts. Last semester, she was a guest editor and contributor to The Round. This is her second time being published, and her second time being published in The Round. She enjoys writing short stories in her free time.

Andy Li is a Brown University sophomore studying Literary Arts and Ethnic Studies. His roots are in the South Side of Chicago, where he discovered his love for Polish sausage sandwiches and the post-Fire grid system. He is interested in understanding the relation-

C o n tr i but ors ships between violence and silence, the politics behind 2000s pop culture, and the power of home-cooked food to expose narrative truths.

Ziqing Liang was born in China and grew up in Beijing, where she still spends every summer since she studies in America. Her work exists in a wide variety of media including sculpture, photography, performance, video, and sound. Ziqing is currently working with culture identity, language, and translation. Her sculpture “Osmosis” has been exhibited at Sol Koffler Gallery. Ziqing is a graduate student in glass department at RISD. Jacob Luplow grew up in Seattle, Washington. He is a current student at Cornell College, a writer and photographer, and a journalist for the Iowa City of Public Affairs Journalism.

He is currently working on a large short “story” titled “Like Lotus Through Glass.”

Yves-Olivier Mandereau was born in San Francisco in 1993 and began working in the arts at a young age. His interests led him to pursue an undergraduate education at the Rhode Island School of Design. He graduates May of 2015 with a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Ceramics and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design. His current body of work explores the arena that is the body as human and object by using cadavers as his visual vocabulary.

Ariel McCarter is a 2015 MAT candidate at Brown University in Secondary English education. She loves being by the ocean and has spent most of her adult life on islands, from Whidbey Island in Washington state to Okinawa island in Japan and more recently her year in Rhode Island.

Heather McLeod is currently a junior studying Illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design with a concentration in History of Art and Visual Culture. She enjoys painting and creating narratives within her work, usually focusing on the human figure. Having spent the past year in Rome, working independently as well as with resident artists, she is eager to see where her art will take her next.

Sarina Mitchel with 2 A’s and one L is a graduating senior at the Rhode Island School of

C o n tr i but ors Design. As an artist and illustrator, she enjoys working in a variety of media and formats, not limited to but including graphite, digital, photo-collages, crayon, and papier-mâché.

She is a lover of numbers, anatomy, gender/sexuality/sex-ed/LGBTQ/feminist issues, and anything that she can learn or memorize. Recently she has become suspicious that her life is actually one long coming-of-age novel. Check out her art at sarinamitchel.com.

Larry Narron is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, where he attended Joyce Carol Oates’s short fiction workshop and was awarded the Rosenberg Prize in Lyric Poetry. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Phoebe, Whiskey Island, Eleven Eleven, Permafrost, Stoneboat, and other journals. A poetry student in Pacific University’s low-residency MFA program, Larry works as an English tutor at Portland Community College in Oregon.

Margaret Nickens grew up in Alpharetta, Georgia, and came to Brown by way of a Honda CRV that has since died. She also had a fish named Garp, who has also, unfortunately, died.

Julie Robine is currently finishing her BFA in Illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design. Originally from Paris, her French culture and humor affect a lot of her work. She uses character and storytelling in her work to capture and delight her audience, and hopes to work with publishing and animation.

Liz Studlick concentrates in Economics at Brown University.

Eugenie Juliet Theall completed her MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and currently teaches creative writing and English. Her poetry has been published in Carquinez Poetry Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Silk Road, among others. Her work also won first place in the Elizabeth McCormack/Inkwell contest.

Yixuan Wang is a member of the Brown University class of 2018 with a passion for chocolate, cats, and illustration. She is probably going to study Health and Human Biology and Visual Art, though that may change in the next few years. She wishes she could foresee the

C o n tr i but ors future because then this whole life-choices thing would be a breeze, but alas, that is not the case. Oh, well.

Olivia Watson is a junior at Brown University currently abroad in Barcelona. She is happiest when she is creating.

Adrianna Wenz is first-year at Brown University interested in the intersection between neuroscience and literary arts. She frequents karaoke bars in hopes of discovery by talent scouts and wears berets to become more poetic.

Ishiah White is currently a senior at the Rhode Island School of Design, majoring in Sculpture with a concentration in Environmental Studies. Last semester she was studying abroad in Rome, Italy with the European Honors Program. Her work was influenced by the new environment, different culture, and abundance of art in Rome. Her family is also a continuous theme in her art.

Georgia Wright is an undergraduate student at Brown University, studying Literary Arts.

She loves travel and is a passionate storyteller through mediums including but not limited to fiction, art, theatre, and radio. Inexplicably, she is renowned for her subpar but markedly aggressive dance moves.

Vrinda Zaveri is a junior at the Rhode Island School of Design, majoring in illustration.

Her piece Accidents, which is featured in this issue, attempts to illustrate the complexity of a series of unfortunate events.

Stella Zhong is an artist who is fascinated by strange, little things. Although she studies glass, her work is all about opacity and impenetrability.

Remy Zimmerman is a painter, illustrator, and media artist from Los Angeles, California.

She is currently a graduating senior at the Rhode Island School of Design. Her work has been shown in galleries in Los Angeles, Boston, Providence, and Miami.

Ed i to r i a l St a f f

MANAGING EDITOR Paige Morris

ASSOCIATE EDITORS Sienna Bates Hanna Kostamaa

STAFF Quinn Bornstein Connie Bosinger Victor Bramble Sarah Cooke Sally Hosokawa Anna Hundert Blake Planty Pia Struzzieri Emily Sun

GUEST STAFF Amberly Lerner

We thank Brown University and Brown Graphic Services for their help and support.

N o te f ro m the Edit ors

The Round is a literary and visual arts magazine based at Brown University.

Our name is adopted from the musical “round,� a composition in which multiple voices form an overlapping conversation. Like past issues, this issue of The Round brings into this conversation not only voices and visual art from Brown, but from across the nation and around the globe. We are excited to work on a magazine which brings together contributors with a wide variety of backgrounds, ages, and places they call home.

We welcome submissions in any genre or medium and publish both students and professionals. Send your work, comments, or questions to: TheRoundMagazine@gmail.com Check out past issues of the magazine, view submission guidelines, and learn more about us by visiting: http://students.brown.edu/theroundmagazine Thank you for picking up The Round. We hope you enjoy it!

Sincerely, The Editors