Issue 27, Fall 2021 by The Wellesley Review

the WELLESLEY REVIEW

ISSUE 27 FALL 2021

the WELLESLEY REVIEW Poetry | Art | Prose

Land Acknowledgment Wellesley College Native American Students Association (NASA)

We acknowledge that Wellesley College is built on ancestral and traditional land of the Massachusett people. We also recognize that the United States’ removal, termination, and assimilation policies and practices resulted in the forced settlement of Indigenous lands and the attempted erasure of Indigenous cultures and languages. We further acknowledge the oppression, injustices, and discrimination that Indigenous people have endured and that there is much work to be done on the important journey to reconciliation. We commit to strengthen our understanding of the history and contemporary lives of Indigenous peoples and to steward this land. We further recognize the many Indigenous people living here today— including the Massachusett, Wampanoag, and Nipmuc nations—who have rich ancestral histories in Wellesley and its surrounding communities. Today, their descendants remind us that they are still here, where they maintain a vital and visible presence. We honor and respect the enduring relationship between these peoples and this land, as well as the strength of Indigenous culture and knowledge, the continued existence of tribal sovereignty, and the principle of tribal self-determination.

Table of Contents 1 3 4 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 27 28

Soft Science At Tupelo HOW TO MAKE EGGS FOR THE BEAUTIFUL PERSON WHO SLEPT IN YOUR BED LAST NIGHT Sun Salutations: Come Through, Golden Hour buzz words for sad college poetry Balachandran /Bah-luh-chun-thrin/ First Book Fused Shadow the poet who’s actually a thief The Scarecrow Seymour Moon (self)portrait bones Mother’s Day Winter (What Would the Egg Do?) Baby Squirrel Maimoona & Khalid Lullaby for a Car Crash No More.

Laura Chin ’23 Bell Beecher Pitkin ’23 Sarah Meier ’24 Andy Arrangoiz ’22 Leyla Kutluca ’24, Marina Santos ’24, and Fia Zhang ’24 Riya Balachandran ’24 Sally Song ’25 Mika Taga ’22 Ashade Altine ’25 Sidra Eschauzier ’25 Akanksha Basil ’’25 Eva Knaggs ’23 Meiya Sparks Lin ’22 Theresa Rose ’22 Paige Befeler ’22 Jessica Watson ’95 Yinuo Wang ’25 Maheen Haq ’24 B. Malone ’24 Emma Slibeck ’24

36 40 41 42 43 44 45 48 49 52 53 54 56 57 60 61 62 63 64 65 67 68 72

dream people AUGUST 26, 2020 Island Time five hundred thousand “I don’t see colour.” Photograph of a Girl on the Slopes of Pompeii The Rosary Para Mí Tía The Candle Would Not Light Itself Different People Fragments of a Home Untethered The Tale of Birth crying over a limp vegetable Flora x Fauna Sleepy Monkey Blue— i leave at the end of the poem Two Koi Fish and a Diamond vignette by the lake Drifting Toward Artist Statements Masthead

Maheen Haq ’24 Kendra Tanacea ’88 Maya Collins ’22 Cheryl Wang ’23 Riya Balachandran ’24 Anna Westwig ’25 Anna Kraffmiller ’24 Nina Davalos ’25 Angelina Li ’23 Hadley Whalen ’24 Lila Joffe ’25 Virginia Little ’24 Vivian Ma ’24 Ann Zhao ’24 Ashley Yuan ’24 Lamees Rahman ’24 Grace Ramsdell ’22 Theresa Rose ’22 Bernice Sun ’24 Hunter Andrew ’23 Maya Collins ’22

Soft Science Laura Chin

My love, The time since I last wrote to you has long overgrown – forgive me. In conditions such as these, high levels of stress and low levels of sunlight, the days between intention and action seem to thrive and blossom into weeks. Let us clear out the weeds and reclaim this space. Let me tell you of my life, and my love for you, and all the ways they intertwine. An abundance of late August rainstorms have completely transformed the landscape of Wellesley College, coaxing an impressive variety of mushrooms to spring up everywhere and creating these enormous, spontaneous lakes all over campus. There’s one of these puddle-lakes by the Science Center, and I pass by it a few times per week on my way to lectures. Tall, moss-covered tree trunks protrude bizarrely from the still surface of the water, their leaves reddening prematurely. It’s a stunning, fantastical scene made all the better by the flock of mallard ducks that have come to call it home. In the afternoon, I watch them play among the fallen leaves, splashing about and searching for food. At night, by lamplight, I can just make out their round silhouettes along the edges of the water, clustered together for warmth or company or perhaps both. And, as I walk back to my little room on the hill, I wish wholeheartedly that you and I were ducks, together, in the rainwater pond. I imagine being careless in the world beyond the daily search for twigs and plants and tasty bugs. I dream of lazy, sun-drenched afternoons with you; I yearn, desperately, to build a nest together.

And of course these dreams are temporary, fleeting. Come winter, the duck pond will dry up, and the birds will have to leave anyway in search of warmer weather. As soon as I get back to my dorm, my mind turns back to papers and problem sets, and each night I choose, again, to stay on the path I’ve walked these past three years, even if it brings me past the tranquil little pool and into the steel-and-glass behemoth beside it. But when I dream, I dream of you. I dream of us, together. I dream of a point in time where growing up doesn’t mean growing away from you. And then I miss you, even more terribly than before, because I don’t know when that will be. In times like these, when the ache becomes unbearable, I like to think about an unequivocally impossible scenario: traveling at the speed of light. Not only because I could zip over to you and back in a fraction of a second, but also because, in the unattainable reference frame of a photon, time and space collapse to a single point, and everything everywhere happens together, all at once. In the same moment that I leave you, I fall back into your arms. We grow old together as we collide for the first time, that night under the autumn stars, our first kiss and our fifth and our second to last. It’s day and it’s night, perpetual twilight and ageless summer bliss. I love you and I lose you and I find you again, and again, and again. While we can’t travel at the speed of light, I think it’s enough to know that a place in time exists where we are together again, and as time marches toward it, so do we. And once we get there, we’ll rejoice in our privilege, as slow creatures, of visiting the past only in memory, feet firmly planted in the here and now. In the meantime, I hope you cherish your present, as I do mine. And if you ever begin to ache, remember that there’s no need to rush, my love. Time is a weed that thrives in every crack of pavement: there’s no need to cultivate it. For now, let it be enough that we exist, here in this time and place, and I love you with my whole heart, as I will always.

At Tupelo Bell Beecher Pitkin

HOW TO MAKE EGGS FOR THE BEAUTIFUL PERSON WHO SLEPT IN YOUR BED LAST NIGHT Sarah Meier INGREDIENTS: - 3 large eggs - A dash of milk - Cheddar cheese - A heartbreakingly warm ache in your chest - A hesitance to call it love - Salt and pepper, to taste YIELDS: 1 serving, split two ways. The intimacy of something shared. PREP TIME: Two weeks of June, one of July. COOK TIME: 5-10 minutes. PREP, THE NIGHT BEFORE: Tell them, as you lie intertwined too late on a Wednesday night blurred into a Thursday morning, that the two of you could wake up early for breakfast. Say you could make them eggs. Confess you only know how to make them two ways, and listen to them laugh as they tuck your hair behind your ear and say anything would do. STEP 1: Climb out of bed bleary-eyed at 6:30 am (they have work). Kiss them good morning. STEP 2: In the kitchen, crack your eggs into the bowl, one by one. OPTIONAL: They make coffee as you do so, and watch as you, deeply concentrated, try not to get shells in the bowl. It’s been a while since you’ve done this. You haven’t made eggs for yourself all summer, instead starting lazy mornings with instant oatmeal, cups of tea. For them, though, you would cook a five-course meal. You would learn how to use the fancy settings on the oven. You would dice vegetables, mince garlic, torch sugar on crème brûlée—it’s a shame you’re a terrible cook. 4

STEP 3: Add milk, salt, and pepper. With a fork, beat till all ingredients are fully combined. STEP 4: Melt butter over low heat in the pan to prevent eggs from sticking. Then, pour egg mixture into the pan. OPTIONAL: Turn to them while you wait for the eggs to start to solidify. Lock your eyes with theirs, big and brown, peering up from behind your favorite coffee cup. Smile. Watch them smile back. STEP 5: Almost forget to grate your cheddar cheese. Grate it, hastily, directly over the pan and onto the half-solidified egg mix. With a spatula, fold the egg in half over the cheese. STEP 6: Allow to sit for a moment, then flip it to the other side. STEP 7: When it looks done (decided by a guess and a prayer) remove from heat and plate. Cut the omelet in half with your spatula and serve one half on each of two plates. STEP 8: Ask, too late, if they want toast. If they say yes, make peace with the fact that it probably won’t be done until the eggs are mostly eaten. Pop toast in the toaster anyway. STEP 9: Eat sitting across the table from one another. Listen to them tell you it’s the best breakfast they’ve had in a while. Laugh and say you’re pretty sure it’s overcooked. Think, fleetingly but overwhelmingly, that you might be a little in love. Push it down. Eat your eggs. The toaster dings, it’s ready. STEP 10: When you’ve finished, tell them to leave the dirty dishes and walk them to their car. STEP 11: Kiss them goodbye. STEP 12: Kiss them goodbye again. STEP 13: Through their open car window, kiss them goodbye one more time, right before they drive away. Watch their car, waving, until it rounds the corner and disappears. Go back inside alone. Do the dishes. Replay the night over and over and over again. STEP 14: Tell yourself you’d be foolish to be in love.

Sun Salutations: Come Through, Golden Hour Andy Arrangoiz 6

buzz words for sad college poetry Leyla Kutluca, Marina Santos, and Fia Zhang … the faerie queen rises out of the soil and whispers sullen sounds I am a bird nihilist in nature meditative in desire stoned, boozed, and dancing under the decaying moon’s suffocating sunlight solace I am a bird silently smoking cigarettes broken and begging it’s 4:46 a.m. and i’m pondering nuclear war.

Balachandran /Bah-luh-chun-thrin/ Riya Balachandran

they show me photos of a baby they ask to recognize as myself, hair cut by her father’s hand, his hand she would not remember for how it gripped onto the curls of her soft head like they were some sort of miracle. baby moon, baby moon, she’s a stranger with my eyes, large, glossy, and wet, the boy compared them to the moon and lauded himself a poet, damp hand gripping my thigh, “your eyes are bigger than the moon,” I laugh at the joke he did not make, untold and lost between punchlines, he will never know my name. baby moon, baby moon, no one calls me by that name anymore I do not reply, foreign name sounding foreign to my ears and it is not mine it is his, my father’s, baby moon, baby moon, my tide pulls to his voice until the sea rises and washes away the night sky. he used to braid my hair. baby moon, baby moon, The face is not mine, a stranger with my eyes.

First Book Sally Song 9

Fused Shadow Mika Taga 10

the poet who’s actually a thief Ashade Altine

the poet (who is actually a thief) came with a cornflower crown and a wind-lifted dress to the creek to disarm the threatening ambiguity of the words which the poets before used so carelessly. in half-step time, a metronome of grass and gentle sand-slopes of desert and snow the stems and lines of words on walls and pages began to fall from their thrones, straighten back into liquid lines of tally-marks from all their acclaimed vibrance, began to fall back into mechanical silence. the letters themselves, began to fall from their word homes words like “an” and “so” quickly becoming lonely and cold— until evn the sentences to describ ths momnt strted to dry lvinng nthing but (empty air, where words used to be.)

The Scarecrow Sidra Eschauzier

cw: death, references to sexual assault

She wakes me up in the middle of the night, teeth clenched together as if they are holding the life inside of her. “Come with me,” she whispers, and I must still be half asleep, or I must see the coldness in her eyes despite the predawn darkness, or maybe I already know what’s happened, because I follow her without question. It’s April, but spring still lets winter play in the dead of night. The dusting of frost is disturbed where she pushed the wheelbarrow through the backyard and propped it against our father’s toolshed. I see through the layer of straw. A wheelbarrow is a shallow grave. “Dead?” I ask, the tremor in my voice betraying me. My tongue feels too big for my mouth. She nods. It’s a little lighter outside than in my room, and I can see her puffy eyes. She has already done her crying. I approach the basket and brush away some of the hay. A slack blue face with glassy eyes stares up at me. Lines of black and blue lace his neck. So she strangled him. “Good riddance,” I say, and even in death his eyes burn a hole in me. “Good riddance,” she echoes, and I am shocked not by the agreement but by the hatred in her voice. James arrived at high noon to ask for my sister’s hand, with combed hair and a starched shirt and that too-charming smile. He proposed to her in the field out back, and I made myself scarce as Clementine bounced inside, unable to stop laughing, a beautiful chaotic mess of happiness. I was just a mess, locked in the bathroom and finding oxygen hard to come by as I heaved into the toilet. He would destroy her, my glassy-eyed girl, my scatterbrained angel. He would destroy my sister, with her passionate soul and baby-soft skin and bouncing steps. He would destroy her and it would destroy me to watch. His parents came over for dinner that night. His father was like him, big and built for farming, with rough callused hands that knew no gentleness. His mother was a passive woman, a beauty before she broke her nose slipping on ice and it healed crooked. Her husband’s booming voice more than made up for her silence. I stayed quiet too, ignoring the spinster jokes thrown in my direction, ignoring when James said I had a single woman’s brain, anyway. He winked at me as he wrapped his hand around 12

my sister’s shoulders. I knew the feel of those hands, the scrape of those nails, how they ripped and tore and muted, and all I could do was pray that they would never touch my sister with such harshness. I grab the handles of the wheelbarrow, the wood rough and splintered beneath my fingers, and push. I push him through the field where he proposed to my sister six months ago, kneeling atop the wildflowers. My sister walks beside me with a shovel in hand, close enough that I can feel the warmth of her body against mine. “What did he do to you?” I ask. She laughs, a bitter, twisted sound. “He didn’t do anything to me,” she says. I halt, and his face slaps against the side of the wheelbarrow, and mine flushes. She knows. She puts a hand on my shoulder and looks at me. It takes me a second to rally the courage to meet her gaze. “Okay?” she says, and those honeybrown eyes are more comforting than anything I have ever known. “Okay,” I choke out. A few tears spill down my cheeks, hot in the cold morning air, and Clementine brushes them away with her baby-soft thumb. “Let me take him for a while,” she says. My hands ache as I pull them from the handles and step back. I didn’t know how firmly I was holding on until I let go. Last summer, before James had started seeing Clementine, he came over with some firewood after ours was spoiled in a rainstorm. I knew him well from childhood. He’d always been rough around the edges, something that my mother always said he would grow out of. Clementine said it added to his “dark handsomeness,” whatever that meant. “Hey, college girl,” he called from the entrance of the barn. “I got some wood for you.” I barely looked up from the horse I was feeding. “My father’s sitting by the back door. Ask him what to do with it.” The hay crunched beneath his feet as he walked toward me. I finally looked up when he was a couple yards away from me. He was wearing a pair of too-big overalls that made him look like a child, though the unkempt stubble on his chin said otherwise. He smirked as I wiped my hands on my apron and turned to him. “Not even a ‘hello’? I guess it’s true that college makes girls snobby.” “What do you want?” I asked, unable to hide the annoyance in my voice. 13

My lids were heavy, though it was just past midday, and I felt ready to fall asleep on the hay floor. “They say other things about college girls,” he continued, barely pausing to let me speak. “Yeah, and I’ve heard it all,” I muttered. He crossed his arms and took a step closer, that obnoxious smirk becoming a massive grin. He’d lost a front tooth after calling this girl a slut in front of her boyfriend, and the gap showed clear as day. “Speak up, sweetheart.” “Go take the wood to my father. He’s been expecting you.” I turned away pointedly, bending over to grab another handful of hay for the horse, or maybe to throw at him if he didn’t shove off. I heard the crunch of his boots on the ground, and then his hands clamped around my hips. We reach the woods at the edge of our property, the tall oaks providing welcome cover. Birdcalls permeate the air as the sky brightens to a dusky grey. To the east, I can see a purple highlight where the sun will come up. “We need to be back before sunrise,” I warn. “I know,” Clementine says. “Let’s just take him a mile or so. Then we can bury him.” The forest feels different so early in the morning, like fae might jump out of the bushes and take us to a faraway land. It feels like the impossible might happen. The impossible has happened; my sister killed James, and we are hiding his body in the woods. “What happened?” I ask. Clementine takes a shaky breath. “Well, he was out drinking with his friends last night, and I woke up when he finally stumbled home. And you know how he is—he can hardly keep a secret when he’s sober.” I nod, my eyes fixed on the ground. Our footsteps crunch in the silence. “Well, he asks me if I want to… you know,” she continues, and I know that she is blushing, even now. “And I said no. I mean, I was barely awake. And he said that if he weren’t too drunk to stand he would take me even though I didn’t want it. ‘Just like I did to Mathilda,’ he said.” “I’m sure that woke you up.” Clementine lets out a laugh that ends on a choking sob, yet she spills no tears. “So I grabbed a pair of his overalls off the ground and he was barely conscious enough to realize what was going on before he went under.” She stops, and I can feel her gaze on me, even though I don’t look. “I just hope he knew what was happening. I hope he knew who I was killing him for.” 14

Late at night before the wedding, I crept into my sister’s room. She was asleep, limbs and loose curls flung every which way. In the corner of my eye, I saw a white dress hanging in the open closet. I took a deep breath, and tiptoed over the creaky floor to her bed. “Hey. Wake up.” My words were barely breaths, but her eyes fluttered open and she stared at me. “Mattie?” I froze. I froze completely. Anything eloquent I’d thought to say was gone. She was still staring at me, bleary-eyed and confused. She blinked, as if she thought I were a mirage. “Mattie? What do you want?” “Don’t marry him.” She stirred a little more, pushing herself up on her elbows. Now she looked concerned. “What?” Her voice was sharper than I thought it would be. I bit my lip. “He’s not a good person, Clem. He’s just not.” In one quick movement, she sat up and shoved me, her hands firm and angry against my stomach. I let out a small cry and fell to the ground, landing hard on my forearms. The cold hardwood floor pressed into my burning skin as she glared down at me, gaze fiery. “Get the fuck out of my room, Mattie.” I didn’t move. I could barely breathe, looking at her with her messy blonde curls floating around her face like a heavenly cloud, and all I could think of was our pastor preaching about divine fury. “I said get out.” I picked myself up off the floor and left. We stop under a big oak in the woods. “That looks like a good spot,” Clementine says, pointing to a small clearing at the base. She tips the wheelbarrow over and James sprawls out on the grass. “You have to move him if we want to dig there,” I point out. I don’t want to touch him, mostly because it is James and a little bit because it is a dead body, but Clementine has no such qualms. She grabs him under his arms and drags him until he is propped against the tree. “I can still smell the alcohol on him,” she complains, rubbing her hands against her jacket. We step back and look at him. Deja vu hits hard; I’ve seen him like this so many times over the years, slumped against a shed or a fencepost for some midday rest. “He’d look like he’s napping if he weren’t so blue,” I say. Clementine perks up a little, and flutters over to the corpse. She takes off her hat and wrestles it onto his too-large head, then plucks a piece of 15

straw from his overalls and sticks it between his blue lips. She observes him. “He looks like a scarecrow.” I spit at him. It lands on his stomach, and Clementine giggles. She spits, too, and it hits him smack in the chest. “Nice shot,” I murmur. “I was aiming for the face.” She takes a few steps forward, frowning, and it isn’t until she draws her foot back that I realize what she’s doing. There is a sickening crunch, and another, more dull impact. When she steps back, there is not much blood, which somehow makes it worse; there is nothing to obscure the inversion of his face, or the way his shattered, fleshy nose lies flat between sunken cheekbones. I can’t help it—I turn away and vomit. Clementine begins laughing. Maybe it would be less terrifying if she sounded evil, but she doesn’t. She laughs exactly the same as she did when she stumbled in from the field with James, a shiny new ring on her finger, joyous and in love. Eventually, I stop and rub the toe of my boots on the ground to get the vomit off. By then Clementine is digging, humming songs under her breath, and as the sun paints the sky a fiery orange I am transported inexplicably to another day, years ago. It was early in the morning. Clementine and I snuck downstairs to play. I remember my bare feet were cold against the wooden floor, and I curled them under my nightgown as we sat before the dollhouse, moving the little painted figures through the motions of the day. Clementine sat her little girl at the piano, and began singing in a hushed voice. “Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine, you were lost and gone forever—” And I put my hand over her mouth. “They’ll hear you,” I said, but I knew they wouldn’t. It was just that the song was so sad, and I was so overprotective. Some things never change. As penance for putting my hand over her mouth, Clementine broke the head off my favorite doll. “Mattie?” Clementine calls. I meet her gaze. In it there is no concern for me. She holds out the dirt-splotched shovel. “Give me a hand, will you?” Did she kill him for me, or because he messed with someone she considered hers? I grab the shovel and swallow my bile, glancing at James’ smashed face. “The sooner we get that thing in the ground, the better.” My bones are heavy as I dig the grave. Tears well in my eyes, and I turn around so Clementine doesn’t see them spill. 16

Seymour Akanksha Basil 17

Moon Eva Knaggs

(self)portrait Meiya Sparks Lin for my mother you & i: clone tantrum / acid reflect two fatherless girls with one mouth. i stand fish: gape-mouthed / small-boned. call me choking hazard / mercury poison; tuck me to bed in the weak red flesh of your throat & blame me when you wake unable to breathe, my name the only word on your tongue. fill in the blanks: (i) (you) have raised (you) (me) in (my) (your) own image.

bones

Theresa Rose Next time I see my mother She will be naked and empty As deadly December’s branches after the Abundant October of a life Bones straining to break through her skin like her sister’s In the desert, her sister-in-law waits for the emergency room to have a vacancy sign. As all the women in my life are dying I am Methodically medically killing the woman I wasn’t. Here is the pelvis and here is the femur and here is the bone saw and here is the soft tissue You are thoughtlessly discarding Onto the cutting room floor. Hi, how are you? “The bone pain is bad this weekend,” she tells me, and i tell her i didn’t know bones could hurt. “I miss you, princess.” i can’t wait to see you. Next time i see her she will be Unrecognizable and i will be a proud young man, My bones changing too

Mother’s Day Paige Befeler

The child fumbles with its dinner as the mother enters through the front door. Peas scurry around the stained white plastic table as the child’s tiny, wrinkled fingers push the miniscule vegetables like marbles, scattering everywhere except into the child’s mouth. The mother pays the babysitter, and thanks her with a pained smile. The mother puts her bag down on the table, bleary-eyed from a long day. She looks at the child. She didn’t want it, but it’s here. She squished her dreams like those bite-sized, miniscule marbles, only to make room for this child. She made room for it within her, but it will grow up without her, for she is not really here. Not since the nausea turned from slight discomfort to undeniable dread. They told her it was the size of a pea when she first knew it was inside her. Seven weeks pregnant. One week too late. She’d have liked to be a teacher. Or a journalist. Or anything, really. Never got to really try after sweet sixteen turned sour. No more high school, only endless days of waiting for the child to emerge. Now it is here. And every day she cares for the child, she loses more of herself. The child is fed a spoonful of applesauce. Refuses the peas. The mother takes everything one moment at a time, painfully slow, surviving each second. It’s whatever day the calendar tells her. Today it’s Mother’s Day. She will not receive a call, nor card, nor care from her own mother, and not from the father of the child either. Dinner is over and she unlatches the baby’s tray table. The peas roll to the floor. She does not care. She takes the bib off the child and puts it in the sink. The baby giggles, applesauce crusting around its mouth. “Mum-mum-mum,” child says to mother. The mother is silent as she finishes the day that was meant to be hers, alone.

Winter (What Would the Egg Do?) Jessica Watson ’95 22

Baby Squirrel

One afternoon I came back from kindergarten, crying and scrubbing the back of my left hand, as trying to peel the skin off since somebody said my hand is dirty. My aunt was terrified, held my left hand and examined it closely, and she laughed

Yinuo Wang

“A baby squirrel,” she told me “climbing on a pine on a mountain,” “besides the pine, there’s a small temple.” This reminded me of a Tang Dynasty Chinese poem I just learned in school I recited the poem flamboyantly, with particular emphasis on “松” (pines) and “山” (mountains) The next day I told my mom about this story She was surprised, rolling up her sleeves and showing me a huge irregular coffee stain on the inside of her forearm “the fortune-teller told me it’s the side face of my father from my last life and I will meet him one day” and then I knew it’s a memory lost and a destiny foretold As an overly sensitive child, I could sense my aunt had some marks too, and they were ugly ones. No squirrels. Only cold vines of shrieks and shivers precipitated in the pillows creeping&crooking up&down&in&out&up&down&in&out her scalp&limbs&viscera and we all heard&felt&smelt&unsaw them and let them grow&grow&grow like a cage and it trapped her illiterate. And I knew she was&is&will be forever absent from my poetic world with that baby squirrel she created. As I survived the puberty of renewing scars, scabs, tear streaks I forgot about the squirrel until the boy I had a crush on discovered it when trying to kiss my hand It’s already a gray haze, and the squirrel&the松&the山 grew unrecognizable I cried, like having an incontinence It looks more of a scar than any of my real ones, my next life baby squirrel, and I will meet it one day.

Maimoona & Khalid Maheen Haq My grandmother’s grave waits beneath her feet, a doorway that goes through the center of the earth and lets out somewhere warm where the streets are swollen with motorcycles and stray cats walk through open kitchen windows seeking somewhere safe to have their babies. The grave was dug eight years ago when my grandfather died, i wasn’t there but i heard that there were tubes in his throat and morphine swaddled him up and carried him away. (fifty years ago mehndi laden hands held a silver mirror under my grandmother’s face, my grandfather looked over saw her reflection there, a goldfish caught in a lake, and the wedding guests smiled as the groom saw the bride for the very first time)

The grass around my grandfather’s grave bends with the weight of winter raindrops, as geese wander through the cemetery, migration only a temperature drop away, and it’s all so odd to my grandmother, who never thought that they’d end up like this, living on foreign soil, with grandchildren who speak English and don’t know what it’s like to belong. (thirty years ago my grandmother’s wrists could flutter like doves scratch skin like an afternoon breeze and melt everything they touched, while thirty years ago my grandfather’s smiles could bloom like petals soothe nerves like ice cubes in juice and warm everything they saw) Fat crystal raindrops fall from the sky and paper bag brown leaves scuttle across the gravestones as me my grandmother her daughter her son in law and grandson recite age-old prayers with accents in newborn languages that are raw, untested, and ripe for scabs like a child’s skin.

(ten years ago i could fit my whole body on top of my grandparents’ huge scarlet pillows and i could run barefoot, morning chill searing away the caul of sleep, to their bed and crawl over my grandmother’s strong hips and tuck myself in between my grandfather’s strong arms and listen to them fight over me, pulling at my fingers joking as the mango sun rose up into the sky) When I hug my grandmother I feel like an anaconda capable of strangulation afraid of the strength that i have, strength stolen through generations leeched away from my mother who leeched it away from hers, and it’s all such a shame because my grandmother speaks so loudly but the one person she wants is not there to listen and there is nothing she can or could or will do about it. (today my grandfather lies wrapped in white cloth touched by prayers in a somewhere subconscious walking in dreams making chai never breathing but also never needing)

Lullaby for a Car Crash B. Malone II. The night air holds you softer than I ever could, wrapping around your mouth, your shoulders, slinking into your bones like gamma radiation. My hands have trouble touching you softly, a trouble the dark could not know. The only light is ultraviolet and infrared, and you, my bright radioactive glow. As I hurl us off the road, the air holds you soft, tousles your hair, touches you the way I never can. I have contaminated you, or maybe you came too close, unshielded. I cannot touch you softly — all I can offer is the wind in your hair as our car ionizes and we fall, cradle and all.

No More. Emma Slibeck

Indigenous women are experiencing violence at unprecedented levels. Colonization—an ongoing process—and the continued attack on Native sovereignty perpetuate and protect this violence. Today, more than four out of five Indigenous women report experiencing violence in their lifetime, according to the National Institute of Justice. When I learned about this crisis of missing and murdered Indiegnous women, girls, and two spirit, I was furious and devastated. But no one around me was talking about it. Beyond just wanting everyone to know about and fight for missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW), I want you to try to understand this anger and hurt. I want people to understand the people, families, and communities behind every statistic. Most importantly, however, I want to honor the strength and power of Indigenous women.

Beyond Salvation

Donoma

Indian Country

Echo

Gone

Autumn and Shyanna Whitewolf Kylee Rockabove Amy Oldcoyote Ashley Mariah Loring Sade Lisette Caye Amyiah Lyric Fallsdown, Kylie Faith Hill Freda Jane Knowshisgun Selena Not Afraid Henny Scott Bonnie Three Irons Kaysera Stops Pretty Places Dani Rosalita “Rose” Longee Roberta “Bertie” Jean Ranes Eleanor M. Trujillo Daisy Mae Heath Karen Louise Johnley Wallahee Janice Hannigan Echo Kay Littlewolf Alice Ida Looney Teresa R. Stahi Sarah Dee Winnier Celestine Spencer Lesora Yvette Eli Sheila Pearl Lewis Tiana Lee Rain Cloud Angela Marie Heath Rosenda Strong Destiny Louise Lloyd Minnie Andy Linda Dave Naoma Alexandra George Charmaine Sanchey Barbara Celestine Shari Dee Sampson Elwell JoAnne Betty (Wyman) John Rozelia Lou (Tulee) Sohappy Jenece Marie Wilson Babette Crystall Greene Clydell Alice Sampson Mavis Josephine McKay …

No More.

dream people Maheen Haq cw: mentions of death

The curly-haired boy drowned in the fish pond when he was very young. His parents held an expensive rainy funeral for him that he was unfortunately unable to attend. Instead, he was stuck in the pond, limbs suspended in algae, oddly shaped worms settling on his face. A wise, regal looking koi fish offered to teach him the cultural practices of the pond. Having no better options, the dead boy agreed. It was slow learning, and during winter, when the pond froze over, the boy grew listless and afraid. I hate this place, he whined, but the koi fish was unsympathetic and increased the intensity of the lessons. The other fish began to knit the boy a crown of bottle caps and turtle shells. Fish are notoriously poor craftsmen, so the boy was very scornful of the gift when they presented it to him. He ripped it up with his swollen fingers and the fish were very offended. In retaliation, their wide mouths began to suck away little chunks of his rotting flesh. But you must remember that fish are also notorious for their poor memories. So after a few moments they forgot about the insult, and began to make the crown for the dead boy all over again, much to his chagrin. ii.

The man in the sun is the most beautiful being in the world. At least, this is the general consensus. In addition to being very beautiful, he is also very hard to look at, due to the intensity of his brightness. You can only look at him for a few seconds before little white spots dance in front of your eyes. The man in the sun also has a penchant for speaking surprising and unwanted truths. But, to be fair, a very reputable therapist diagnosed the sun with Excessive Knowledge and Chronic Exposure to Secrets Syndrome (EKCESS). On a more positive note, the sun is considering devoting himself to reducing stigma about the disease. 36

The moon knows the sun best, because she has shared the sky with him ever since time began. She told the stars, who told the angels, who told the priests, who told the laymen, who told their children, that the sun has a caustic disposition and has lost a great deal of money gambling on human wars. He bet against Alexander the Great every single time, said the moon. How stupid can you be to do that! But even though she had valid criticisms of the sun, the priests did not care, and continued to draw his face on all of their altars anyway. iii.

The old god’s job was to catch runaway stars. This god had a beard that stretched all the way from his chin to his toes. It gathered a great many things in it, like rattlesnake eggs and the words of long lost civilizations. Every day, his wife said that his beard was disgusting and demanded he cut it, but the old god was very proud of his beard’s deep blue color and refused. At night, when the stars crept out between the folds in the sky, the god hefted his net onto his left shoulder and set out to catch the strays. He strolled through the clouds while humming the funeral dirge that was sung for the death of the first man. The world was new to funerals, then, and there were not really that many mourners, so the dirge had quite the uplifting beat. The silky notes alerted the stars to the god’s presence. Those who were tired of the sky took off immediately, but the god was an experienced star catcher and anticipated this movement. Unfortunately, his beard caught around his ankles and tripped him, allowing the stars to get away. The more confident stars began to giggle. You should have listened to your wife! they chortled, and the old god began to seriously ponder passing on his responsibilities to some younger, up-and-coming god.

iv.

The priestess scrounges through the ruins of her mother’s temple with ash-grey fingertips. People come here often, but not to pray, and they leave no offerings behind. They like to ogle at the fallen pillars and severed idol limbs. When they come, the priestess flattens herself to the shadows. Her skin is the same color as the time-dried walls of her dead mother’s home, so she blends in very well. The visitors leave behind wads of chewing gum and dead skin cells. She laps them up eagerly with her sand-dry tongue. Then she returns to digging through the temple stones, looking for clues of her mother’s affection. Her mother’s death was slow and quite painful. She was the goddess of a river that is now dried up. In her prime she had about two hundred and fifty worshippers, but these turned out to be fickle devotees. Philosophers came and opened their great big red mouths, killing the goddess with their words. She withered up like a newt, and all of her children were left behind, immortal, confused, and with no one to feed them.

A glowing woman with wings is stuck in the tiger enclosure at the zoo. She didn’t know it was a zoo when she landed in it, because it’s hard to tell from above. Maybe you would expect her to have known that from her arial vantage point. Surely a large array of animals wandering about in the midst of an urbanized landscape would be a red flag. But you have to understand that you tend to forget certain things when you’re flying. Luckily, the winged woman was prepared with copious amounts of pepper spray and also a pocketknife, so she wasn’t too worried about sharing her space with predators. She’s also free to fly away whenever she likes. Her wings are very large and are shaped like pterodactyl ears. They’re scaly too, and very cold to the touch. In the daytime they look a bit underwhelming, but at night they shine like freshly hammered gemstones. If you look at her closely, you might think she looks a bit like Icarus. But there’s no one alive to remember Icarus anymore, save for the sun, and he doesn’t like

AUGUST 26, 2020 Kendra Tanacea ’88

oh how lucky we are this afternoon paint-splattered & muscle-sore having dipped our paintbrushes into Kelly-Moore Snowglobe sheen-trimmed our doors we strip as we enter the house remove our speckled glasses a heap of t-shirts & cutoffs in the entry you pull off my kerchief my streaked hair falls all around me inside our geodesic dome home made of many married triangles an eggshell interior so bright it edges your hair with light we lie on a table in the open the disco ball swirls circles of white that land on us fragile-glass life of course anything can happen from the cupola a ray hits the crystal ashtray a prism spectral colors float above our desperate skin I love you god I love you it’s not cold we’ve been together 15 years still a thrill particle clouds hover & when we shake together no shadow no horizon just a dazzling whiteout

Island Time

Maya Collins

five hundred thousand Cheryl Wang

is a statistic. i cry over classes and problem sets and the everyday squabbles of children without paying mind to the world outside the bubble, the bubbles inside the world; the park bench in mackinnon where an elderly man liked to sit to watch the leaves change color. i sit there now and gloss over the new plaque just as i glance past news titles and grim new talk of third, fourth, tenth waves. and in the fringes, some disappear: a professor, a friend’s mother, a cousin. oblivious, i forget to grieve. it is easy to forget faces when the only i see these days is my own.

today the house by my own is to be sold. my sister tells me the news, apathetic, and i recall an italian woman with four cats who once offered me a sugar cane stalk through the fence. it is all so long ago. the sticky cane juice in the summer sun, staining my white shirt. she is hacking through the plant with a knife and telling me how the california climate is too cold to grow some plants in winter. now, the winters have warmed up. she is dead. i am living through the annals of a new historical era and i have barely noticed; i am watching one in seven-hundred fall away and i can only shrug and turn back to studying and online shopping and distract myself from the refrigerated trucks of corpses i can scarcely differentiate from fedex— the italian woman is a tragedy. the old man in mackinnon is a tragedy. but i am indifferent to statistics.

“I don’t see colour.” Riya Balachandran 44

Photograph of a Girl on the Slopes of Pompeii Anna Westwig The light hits the table in three places; your photograph is judiciously placed in none of them. Still, I can’t help but see you glow. You are sitting, skirt tucked neatly beneath you, by a volcano. I pretend, sometimes, that I can blind you with my thumbprint, so that whatever landscape you treasure so adoringly becomes fleshy dark. The ilex trees flank you like guard dogs, the past baring its teeth at my looking. The pumice and the peak have no haze, but the sheen of a perfect sky. Your eyes are wide, philtrum curved. And I can taste the loneliness wafting off like smoke from your skin. Clutching to ash and memory, because you have nothing to hold onto that isn’t dead. You were born this way, seeking out hauntings; for no good reason. Look, you say — can you hear yourself say it? I am an exit wound with no matching hole for where the pain came in.

The Rosary Anna Kraffmiller cw: mentions of death

I kneel on the velvet-lined board before the open, darkvarnished casket. I don’t know how to cross myself, so I don’t, and I don’t know how to pray, so I don’t. She looks unlike herself, I think, except that I hadn’t seen her for three months before her death so what do I know. I hold my breath, which is stupid, but I do. My grandmother’s mottled hand is wrapped in a rosary I don’t recognize. A golden chain, reflective black beads, Jesus with his arms spread wide and his head tipped down. My mother told me last night it would be there, told me the funeral home insisted on having one, told me she dug it out of my grandmother’s underwear drawer. It must’ve belonged to your great-grandmother, she said. It must be very old. My grandmother’s hair is set in the curls she always liked. A pink silk blouse, a white cardigan with tiny leaves embroidered in green at the hem. My knees are cramping. Tomorrow, in the red-brick Church of the Blessed Sacrament, when the priest calls the mourners up for communion, I will cross my arms over my chest and bow my head as a heathen, and he will touch me on the forehead

and give me a blessing instead of the body of Christ. I will remember being seven, my whole second-grade class except for me in their white First Communion clothes, and I will remember being fifteen, my Catholic classmates picking out a saint’s name to place beside their own. If my mother had bothered to baptize me, I would’ve named myself after Joan of Arc. I will remember my grandfather’s funeral, my great-aunt who was serious about these things casting an eye askance at me when I got in line for communion, and hissing in my ear not to touch it, not to partake. I will remember that my great-aunt died two years ago and I didn’t go to her funeral. When I walk back to my pew, I will feel the ghost of the priest’s hand on my forehead and think of being Joan. My mother will grab my elbow and whisper to me that the funeral home gave her the rosary. It’ll be in her purse, wrapped in a handkerchief among old cough drops and loose change, and I will ask her what anyone even does with a rosary. Do you wear it around your neck? She’ll laugh at me, and we’ll get dirty looks from the real Catholics. My mother will die in twenty-four years. At that time, I’ll find the black and gold rosary in her jewelry box, next to her pearls and a scarab beetle bracelet I never saw her wear. She will be cremated and have a godless funeral, but her ashes will be interred in the same cemetery as my grandmother and my great-grandmother. I will still live in Boston. I will always live in Boston, but I will have no daughters. I’ll put the rosary on my bookshelf. I’ll tell my cat that when I die, she can have the rosary. My cat will meow. Her name will be Joan.

Para Mí Tía

Nina Davalos

The Candle Would Not Light Itself Angelina Li Forty-two philosophers stood in something of a prayer circle and stared, hardly blinking, at a candle that remained, despite their best philosophical efforts—unlit. They were philosophers from every field of thought and walk of life, from authors of oft-cited papers to posters on fringe Internet forums. There was a logical philosopher, a linguistic philosopher, an ethical philosopher, a theological philosopher, a cosmic nihilistic philosopher, an anarchist philosopher, a poet philosopher, a professor philosopher, a conspiracy philosopher, an armchair philosopher, a YouTuber philosopher, a witch philosopher, a sentient AI philosopher, a mad philosopher, and to some disdain, a philosopher without a cause. All forty-two philosophers were gathered, at this indeterminate and ahistorical location, to think a flame into existence. “This is all very much,” the mad philosopher said loudly. The circle had broken apart once, unsurprisingly, the philosophers came to the conclusion that the candle would not light itself. That was their only point of agreement. The mad philosopher stood in the center of the room and waved her hands in big circles, as if to fan a flame. She was ignored, as usual, by everyone but for the conspiracy philosopher, who contradicted the mad philosopher at every turn so as to appear more reasonable himself, and the poet philosopher, who was convinced of the beauty in the mad philosopher’s uncompromising chaos.

The logical and linguistic philosophers, who were acquaintances, took over a desk in a corner and began to engage in an excited dialogue about what they presumed to be a fallacy in communication. “We’ll call this paradox ‘the cause of the candle,’ yes? We cannot light a flame without a match which cannot be lit without a flame, no?” Several philosophers pulled chairs into a haphazard cluster around the abandoned candle. In this new lounge area, the main discussion became dominated by, inevitably, the ethics of creation. “The candle is a test of the divine,” the theological philosopher mused, drawing a hand to the beard he was still growing. “Are any of the present company Creators in right?” More than a few philosophers bristled at the theological philosopher’s distinct capitalization of creation. “The divine is dead,” the cosmic nihilist philosopher snapped, with no small amount of dramaticism. “It is not creation that we’re doing, but alchemy,” the witch philosopher said with the last shred of sincerity she could muster. She was disappointed that no one had given her the floor, and annoyed that poppy seed muffins she brought had been given a wide berth as though they contained warts. “Existence does not happen by choice,” the ethical philosopher murmured, wringing his hands. That the sentient AI philosopher agreed with. “If existence is not by choice, then creation exists.” They communicated entirely in if/then statements, computed exclusively in binary, and used only nonbinary pronouns. “Oh, will anyone listen and stop trying to make a point?” the witch philosopher snapped. She flipped her shawl over one shoulder and stalked into a corner. The philosophers who did not come to make a point were as follows. The mad philosopher came to make friends. The YouTuber philosopher came for the content but stayed for the midlife crisis.

The poet philosopher came because she was attracted, both to the metaphor of the flame and the mystery of the mad philosopher. The two were not mutually exclusive, she decided. The anarchist philosopher wanted to ask the witch philosopher on a date. She baked cookies for the occasion and had been slowly sidling up to the witch philosopher like a smitten kitten, then drawing back at the murderous glares the witch philosopher kept shooting around the room. The armchair philosopher had set up a bar and a potluck in a corner. Having bartended, he believed that food for thought was quite literal. The professor philosopher came for the wine, so the bar was especially appreciated. The philosopher without a cause, who at this point had shown no interest in any discussion whatsoever, began to show their true colors by devouring an entire plate of falafel in one fell swoop. They then feigned discretion when attempting to tuck breadsticks into their pockets. The armchair philosopher, who had also worked as a bouncer, grabbed onto their already bulging coat. The philosopher without a cause twisted away, knocking into the backs of several other philosophers. At the same time, the “Creation” circle was getting frustrated. The cosmic nihilist philosopher had meant to say, “existence is pointless,” but it came out, not even regrettably, as “you are pointless.” The ethics philosopher was the first to throw a punch. The candle was knocked over. Everyone was unhappy. No one wanted to stop fighting. So no one saw the philosopher without a cause light the candle and place it back into position. When the philosophers glimpsed a flame out of the corner of their eyes, when they gasped and then stood together in shared silence—the philosopher without a cause had already made off with the silverware.

Different People Hadley Whalen “And then she told me she’d never really been in love with him.” “So the wedding’s off, then?” Mira squints at me through the frames of her cherry-red glasses, the upper corners narrowed into a suggestion of cat-eyed points. As always, they are paired shade-for-shade with the intensity of her lipstick. “Did I say that?” She muses. “So it’s not off,” I say, smoothie straw halfway to my lips. She shakes her head. “Oh, they’re still going through with it.” “Must have been one hell of a bachelorette party.” I force a laugh, in some way glad that I wasn’t actually invited. The whole situation sounds unbearably awkward. “Mm-hm,” she nods, taking a sip of her cappuccino. A moment of silence, punctuated only by my awful slurping of whatever kaleand-wheatgrass concoction this is. I really regret not ordering my usual strawberry banana smoothie, but it just seemed so dreadfully mundane, and something about Mira has always made me terrified she’d wander away if I wasn’t able to capture her attention long enough. “So...is it the money?” I finally ask. “Or what?” Mira rolls her eyes. “What do you think? Of course, she gave a whole long speech about how he’s still her chosen life partner or whatever, but there’s clearly no other reason for it.” She lowers her voice slightly, as though everyone else in the cafe is just waiting to rat us out to the wedding party. “You’ve seen his Instagram.” Oh right. That disdainful tone. It’s an echo of the broader reason Mira and I haven’t spoken in three years. Not even out of animosity, but just because I didn’t need the emotional drain, and I doubt she even noticed. “I’m not entirely sure my parents are in love with each other after forty years, but they’re still happily together,” I offer. “And I could say the same about mine, but they’re ancient,” she responds, then leans in closer, as though about to divulge some great secret of the universe. “I just think that when you’re young and in love, it should be this wild, passionate thing, ya know?” I suddenly find myself suppressing a giggle, thinking of the quiet apartment I share with Dan, our three cats, and four potted plants. I shrug. “Love just means different things to different people, I guess.” And for the first time, that inexplicable feeling of uneasiness I’ve always had around her is gone. 52

Fragments of a Home Lila Joffe

Untethered Virginia Little cw: mentions of death and body horror

I. The pebbles at her feet asked me many questions. (You cannot blame them. They have always been dead.) How does salt water taste? and What is it like to languish in a mouth? and that dreaded one— What did it feel like? They circled beneath me, poking and prodding My bleeding stump. To them, I am a feast: A fresh kill, with stories to tell and nowhere to go. Was the most painful part The slicing of the last tendon And that overwhelming nakedness when he pulled you out like a rotten tooth? Or was it the first pressure of the blade And the yawning crevice Unravelling, dawn-like, from your core? Everything hurt, I said. Everything still hurts; it’s all the same pain in the end. II. To tell you the truth, neither part really hurt that much. I am a tongue, after all. My job is to embellish, to stretch The strings of truth into something worth our time. 54

I’ll leave the real story here, just because: pick at it wherever you’d like. You see, at that point—the severing—I was already dead. That keening you thought you heard? It was just the sword’s unsheathing. The only pain I felt was before that, from the sharp burn of the glint in his eye, and his serpentine tongue. They were my last sights of her wide-shining world. Since then, I have grown a film of acrid sadness on my body. Alone, I mourn the words not yet spoken, And the ones I had never said. How will I ever bury such lambent, formless beings? III. What shall I do now, you wonder, as nothing But a blood-starved bundle of muscle, a corpulent carcass in the dirt? Oh, I don’t know. Why don’t you ask the other hacked-up tongues? Really, though—what else can I practice, other than The choreography which all discarded things perform? I will rot. Months or years from now, though, I will Find myself again in the sinews of life—it is fate. The jaws of a lion, the wheedling throat of some bird. Blood will ebb and flow within me once more. If you have believed nothing else said here, believe me now: from this dying body a world will grow. 55

The Tale of Birth Vivian Ma

crying over a limp vegetable Ann Zhao It’s the hottest day of summer, but your parents stubbornly keep the air conditioning off, opening the windows, turning on fans, because that’s how they did it back in China. The sticky feeling gets to you, and so does your mom’s voice as she chats with a relative on the phone, and you feel utterly trapped in this place, and before you know it, you get in your car and start driving. You drive for the amount of time it takes to listen to half of Mitski’s Be the Cowboy. When you’re going through something, and you’re trying to pretend you’re not, but there’s nobody around to see you cry, Mitski is usually a good choice. And then you see a strip mall. A Planet Fitness, a Best Buy, and a Park to Shop—a Chinese supermarket, maybe a ripoff of Hong Kong’s ParknShop, which your aunt took you to once when you were six. You park, and you shop. After the rush of cool, dry air as you enter, the interior of the store does absolutely nothing to brighten your mood, all fluorescent lights and unfinished ceilings and a complete lack of windows. Packaged foods are laid out with price labels in English and Traditional Chinese, which you can’t read because you only know a sliver of Simplified Chinese. (Doesn’t really matter; your Mandarin is rusty at best, and your Shanghainese is practically nonexistent since you only spoke it with your Ngabu and Ngagong, your mom’s parents, when you were little. Speaking, reading, and writing—you can’t do much of any of it. You can listen to your parents speak their dialects and understand what they mean; you respond, however, in English.) The vegetable aisles are completely empty, save for one older woman stocking groceries, because it’s the middle of the afternoon on a weekday. You can barely tell what any of these vegetables are in their uncooked form. As you got older, your dad stopped telling you the names of the dishes he was making for dinner, so you just don’t know. So you decide not to buy anything, even though you know your parents will chide you for driving all the way out to an Asian grocery store—a Chinese one, at that, not the Korean H Mart that’s much closer to your house—only to not make a single purchase. 57

And then you turn, and you see a limp head of bok choy in a pickedover pile. It looks so ugly and so sad, the leaves all wilted and yellowing, with holes in them. You have no idea how it made it through the farm-tostore process. It’s your favorite vegetable to eat, which makes this doubly sad, and as soon as you think that thought, you feel five years old. It’s that, more than all the other things that you’ve seen and heard and felt in the last half an hour, that makes you start crying. Crying over a limp vegetable is not how you expected to spend your day. As the tears spill out of your eyes, you sink down and sit on the floor, out of sight of the lady stocking groceries and anyone else who might happen to come here and see you. It’s just a head of cabbage. But it’s a sad-looking head of cabbage. You know what cabbages are supposed to look like. Crisp and green and bright. The way the stalks crunch in your mouth even when they’re cooked. This head of bok choy looks like it can’t possibly be saved. You don’t know what you’re doing here. You don’t really know what you’re doing at all. You’re supposed to start your new job next month, and you hate that because you hate capitalism with your entire soul just like every other person in your generation. You’d be in Seattle for it already, but you don’t have to be, and your parents will miss you. At least, that’s what you tell yourself. Maybe you’ll miss them more. There must be something different in the air in this godforsaken grocery store, because you stand back up and look at the bok choy, and you swear, you see yourself in this cabbage. It probably wouldn’t want to leave this store, but one way or another, it’s going to. It’ll probably get tossed in a dumpster by that lady who’s still patiently restocking, turning a blind eye to your disheveled appearance. If it doesn’t get thrown away, someone will buy it, and then they’ll either cook it and eat the worst bok choy of their life, or they’ll just throw it away in their own trash. You want to give this cabbage a better life. It’s stupid, right? It’s a singular vegetable. Buying and eating this cabbage will do nothing to solve America’s food waste problem. And 58

besides that, you don’t even know how to cook it, so you’ll have to ask your dad to do it, and maybe he’ll throw it out because it’s a pathetic, limp cabbage that’ll taste terrible. But the lady is approaching now, dragging a cart of fresh vegetables behind her, and you take one look at her and decide right then that you’re going to buy the fucking cabbage. You look around for a roll of those thin plastic bags that people put their vegetables in. The nearest one is empty. At the end of the aisle, though, is another roll, and you march over there and rip a plastic bag off of it, fumbling to open the bag. Quick as daylight, you snatch the bok choy off the display and deposit it unceremoniously into the bag. You look up at the lady again. She makes eye contact with you. “Are you sure you want that one?” she says in lightly accented English. She can apparently tell from a glance that your Chinese language skills are amateur. “I was just about to put these new ones.” She gestures to the crate of bok choy on her cart. “Oh. Um. No. I—I mean, yes, I’m sure. I’ll just take this one.” “Do you want any more?” Shaking your head as you blush furiously, you say, “No, no, it’s fine. This is good.” You leave the store with a plastic bag in hand, the cabbage sitting inside along with a box of strawberry Pocky. The cashier didn’t bat an eye when he scanned your measly collection of items. You put the bag in your passenger seat, and the bok choy looks even sadder there on the passenger seat of your too-hot car. You almost want to buckle it in. Your dad is going to be so confused when you hand him this bok choy. You’ll probably mutter something about how there was a sale, and when he tells you it’s practically garbage, you’ll say you didn’t know, and then you’ll go back to your room and shut the door and start crying again because if that cabbage is garbage, then what does that make you? And then he’ll cook it anyway because he has a feeling it’s what you need. He always knows. Be the Cowboy starts over again.

Flora x Fauna Ashley Yuan

Sleepy Monkey

Lamees Rahman

Blue— Grace Ramsdell

i leave at the end of the poem Theresa Rose i learn about foreshadowing when i’m in the first grade i tell you i love you on lsd and you tell me to wait i cry to the tiny stranger in the phone in a chair by the lake i am delivered home exhausted by imaginary train i retrospectively rehearse clever lines i was too cowardly to say i lie to my mother and you; i tell you i’m brave. i sit on the floor to worry ancient scabs off little boy knees i can’t keep my hands busy; i don’t stop when they bleed i told everyone — from the beginning of all this — how bad it would be i would be skeptical too. i’m not forcing anyone to listen, or to believe i brag about the scale of the tragedy, about how i was so right i can’t help that i dream prophecies that come true at night i put seer on my resume, under skills, in times new roman, black i said that i’m leaving, i can make a promise i’ll come back i share sterile hospital air with a liar who pretends to read me my cards i know how this will end. i’m trying not to rush it, but it’s hard

Two Koi Fish and a Diamond Bernice Sun

vignette by the lake Hunter Andrew Stay here. Close to me. Just a little longer. When I slow myself down, I can see the promise of a laugh hidden in your almost-dimples. When I hold my breath, I can see the rhythm of yours. One step backward. I trace the path from your eyes to the water. There is a pair of geese and a quartet of swans circling around each other. We are all waiting for someone else to make the first move. Notice, now, how the wind numbs the mind. I roll a half-good screw between my fingertips, freshly pulled from the bench we are sharing. If it were to collapse, I don’t know which of us would go down first. The four PM sun hits your face and you shimmer in the dying rays of light. I wish I could keep this moment in the photo frame of my wallet. I do not know if you know this, but I will hold on to this memory, to the golden sun, to your face, to our gentle laughter next to this lake, forever.

You are not yet gone, though I have to remind myself of this often. I am preparing for the worst, for a day in which the lake runs dry and you are gone and my memory has begun to fade and all my pictures of you turn out to be in an unforgiving light. One step forward. I only have control over the now, and even that is slipping away. I may not remember your face or your voice forever, but I can hold it in every crevice of my body as I sit here with you in this moment. I cannot catch this light of yours in a jar, but I can study the way shadows find themselves lost among your features. I will not ask you to stay with me forever, but I will imagine this moment again and perhaps then I will have a better idea of how to let you go without having to say goodbye.

Drifting Toward

Maya Collins

Artist Statements Vivian Ma ’24

Other Shore of Soul cover (watercolor)

I approach the theme of self-identity in Other Shore of Soul through an exploration of art as an irreplaceable component of myself.

The Tale of Birth pg. 56 (watercolor, soluble graphite)

The Tale of Birth is drawn under the idea of my exploration of self-identity through the depiction of objects and events related to my birth.

Bell Beecher Pitkin ’23 At Tupelo pg. 3 (35mm film)

This photo was made on black and white 35mm film with a Canon Sureshot. It features two close friends, Soap Pena ’22 and Karla Macias ’22, at Tupelo Point on one of the last warm days of autumn. The tenderness of the photo holds a certain reverential quality which reminds me of my happy memories and all those I’ve yet to make.

Andy Arrangoiz ’22

Sun Salutations: Come Through, Golden Hour pg. 6 (graphite and marker,

digitized) I tend to use art not quite as a form of therapy or even relaxation, but as a venue for energy expenditure—a way of putting a small fraction of my artistic visions out there. Most of these visions involve portraits of various people, such as this one. Instead of keeping all of them confined in my brain, I can express myself without thinking too much about it (unlike writing), since I’ve got the muscle memory to just let my hand go. In this specific portrait of the musical artist Lorde, I like that the yellow somehow seems both warm- and cool-toned, signifying the ringing in of autumn and goodbye to summer, with some dread for the shortening days of winter.

Sally Song ’25 First Book pg.9 (graphite)

I am fond of drawing portraits because they capture mundane moments that no one seems to notice or give a second glance. I use graphite as my sole medium because it emphasizes the simplicity of life through the passage of perpetual time. These brief points in time are what make each of us unique in infinite ways. 68

Mika Taga ’22

Fused Shadow pg. 10 (monoprint)

This is one of my first prints made with black ink. In it, I am exploring ideas of the inbetween, shadows, dissolved boundaries, and spontaneous mark-making. This work connects to my studio art thesis, in which I am curious about mapping unseen spaces and forms seen when eyes are closed.

Akanksha Basil ’25 Seymour pg. 17 (photography)

I love photography, and I can often be spotted following birds around with the hope of getting shots of them. This particular photo is of a cormorant, Seymour, whose favorite spot is a buoy on Lake Waban. On this particular day, the lake was very still and, coupled with a gray sky, accentuated the cormorant’s reflection beautifully. Seymour was also “wing-spreading,” which cormorants often do to dry off after being in the water. This, I felt, added further depth to the shot.

Eva Knaggs ’23 Moon pg. 18 (graphite)

This piece is part of an exploration of soft shapes and memory.

Jessica Watson ’95

Winter (What Would the Egg Do?) pg. 22 (photography)

I am a photographer who seeks sensuality and surreality in the everyday. I am attracted to color, form, and detail. I look carefully at things, because they are not always what they seem, and beneath the surface there is an uncanny parallel existence that sometimes shows itself. I didn’t know what to photograph during the pandemic, so I started with my garden, then I went walking in the world. My recent works are each a synthesis of many photos taken in nature at specific times and places, then digitally layered, erased, and marked. This piece, Winter (What Would the Egg Do?), was one of four pieces exhibited at Parson’s XReality Gallery in a show about the egg’s cycle in the human body.

Emma Slibeck ’24 No More pg. 28-35 (mixed media)

In collaboration with other Native women at Wellesley, I shot and printed the images for No More. in February 2020 on occupied Wabanaki and Naumkeag land. Sarah Bace (Member of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy), Donoma Fredericson (Descendant of the Cherokee Nation), and I (Descendant of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians) appear in the images. “Gone” was shot by Hywot Ayana. These images are a response to the ongoing crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and two spirit. Read more at https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/violence-against-american-indian-andalaska-native-women-and-men.

Maya Collins ’22 Island Time pg. 41 (ink on paper, digitized)

Spending a summer out on an island, on Star Island, time flows strangely. In Island Time, I placed Dalí-inspired melting 8hr clocks on Shack Tree on Shack Deck—two Star Island landmarks. The piece was first drawn in black pen on paper, then illustrated in Procreate.

Drifting Toward pg. 67 (ink on paper)

I gravitate toward using black pen to capture simply scenes where I’ve felt most connected to those I love.

Riya Balachandran ’24

“I don’t see colour.” pg. 44 (mixed media)

This is a mixed media piece using a photo-transfer process, acrylic paint, and micron penwork. The person depicted is my cousin, Lauren, who was the subject of an entire series I did exploring race—specifically how white people view and interact with race. This piece specifically is dealing with the phrase “I don’t see colour,” and my personal discomfort with the subsequent erasure of identity and understanding of inequity that follows this belief that we live in a “post-racial” society. Lauren is also biracial, half Indian and half white, and is considered white-passing; her brownness specifically is often erased.

Nina Davalos ’25 Para Mí Tía pg. 48 (photography)

Within my work, I focus on elements from my childhood and culture that influence the person I am today. Being Latinx and a first-gen student, I’ve found it difficult to acclimate to new surroundings outside of my comfort, and I challenge these emotions in my art through imagery from memories of spending time with family and through symbols of my Mexican heritage. 70

Lila Joffe ’25

Fragments of a Home pg. 53 (collage)

My work combines photography and collage. I use portraits and backgrounds from magazines like National Geographic as well as my own photography. I created this piece for an AP portfolio that focuses on the concept of “Broken Homes.” My 14-piece portfolio won a National Gold Key from Scholastic and earned a 5 on the AP. This piece was created in less than two hours as a midterm for my photography class.

Ashley Yuan ’24

Flora x Fauna pg. 60 (watercolor)

What I love about STEM is learning to find ways to see how everything in the world is interconnected in some intrinsic way. When I switch gears to art, I find I have the power to make unconventional connections, such as blending very different organic things into one.

Lamees Rahman ’24 Sleepy Monkey pg. 61 (digital)

I like to use bold colors and flat shapes and am very inspired by the world of children’s books, art, and animation. In particular, I am a huge Cartoon Network fan!

Grace Ramsdell ’22 Blue— pg. 62 (cyanotype)

I am a photographer and writer, and most simply put, I care about making things and sharing stories. “Blue—” is one in a series of cyanotypes I made in response to Emily Dickinson poems about light, the sun, and the color blue. The original print now lives alongside sun lumen prints of Dickinson’s manuscripts in a handmade book I created. In the book, “Blue—” is paired with Dickinson’s poem “I watched the Moon around the House.”

Bernice Sun ’24

Two Koi Fish and a Diamond pg. 64 (monoprint)

I am a sophomore from California studying Media Arts and Sciences and East Asian Studies. I enjoy using art to represent my various interests and combine them. This print was for a collaborative class project: making a deck of playing cards. The inspiration for my cards was Chinese paper art and Chinese characters. For this particular piece, I used two koi fish swimming in a circular motion around the Chinese character for “two.” This is reminiscent of the circular shape of some Chinese paper art and also references the shape of rippling water. 71

Masthead Editors-in-Chief Alyssa Robins ’22 Diana Padrón ’24 Consulting Editor Sara Lucas ’22 Treasurers Lucy Liversidge ’24 Anastasia Kondrashin ’23 Senators Diana Salinas ’24 Van An Trinh ’24

Community Chairs Events Managers Isabella Tjan ’24 Summer Chen ’24 Social Media Chair Abigail Martinage ’24 Web Chair Anna Lieb ’24 Publicity Chair Kimberly Hsueh ’25

Layout Editors Tiffany Chu ’22 Annette Chau ’25 Phoebe Grandi ’24 Art Editors Grace Ramsdell ’22 Jen Doyle ’25 Prose Editors Alex Ewing DS ’22 Zoe Golden ’24 Poetry Editors Cheryl Minde ’24 Gabriella Garcia ’22

Art Board Zoe Chang ’25 Annette Chau ’25 Summer Chen ’24 Amelia Clark ’25 Gabriella Garcia ’22 Kara L Jenkins ’24 Youna Kang ’25 Abby Martinage ’24 Cheryl Minde ’24 Alayna Schneider ’24 Cindy Seungbin Min ’25 Elaine Shao ’25 Blythe Terry ’23 Clara Tessier ’25 Ashley Yuan ’24 Anna Zhou ’25 Poetry Board Maya Blumenthal ‘25 Annette Chau ‘25 Lucia Coa ‘25 Nora Cornell ‘25 Katherine Dalton ‘24 Taylor Doke ‘22 Shelby Ferris ‘25 Jacqueline Galison ‘23 Maeve Galvin ‘25 Cati Hanna ‘24 Ayelet Kaminer ‘25 Abby Martinage ‘24 Grace Ramsdell ‘22 Aidan Reid ‘24 Alayna Schneider ‘24 Edha Singh ‘25 Isabella Tjan ‘24 Claudia Quintana ‘25 Cheryl Wang ‘23 Yinuo Wang ‘25 Lina Zhang ‘25

Prose Board Maya Blumenthal ‘25 Zoe Chang ‘25 Annette Chau ‘25 Laura Chin ‘23 Amelia Clark ‘25 Courtney Culver ‘23 Katherine Dalton ‘24 Jacqueline Galison ‘23 Catie Hanna ‘24 Grace Holmes ‘25 Deborah Jang ‘24 Anna Kraffmiller ‘24 Precious Kim ‘25 Angelina Li ‘23 Lina ‘25 Sophie Logsdon ‘25 Abby Martinage ‘24 Sarah Meier ‘24 Dominique Mickiewicz ‘22 Cheryl Minde ‘24 Sylvia Nica ‘25 Lillian Phillips ‘25 Claudia Quintana ‘25 Grace Ramsdell ‘22 Aidan Reid ‘24 Izzy Rettke ‘25 Alayna Schneider ‘24 Edha Singh ‘25 Van An Trinh ‘24 Lily Wancewicz ‘23 Ann Zhao ‘24 Emily Zhu ‘25

With special thanks to Wellesley College Printing Services & the Wellesley College Art and English departments Please send submissions to thewellesleyreview@gmail.com All works are selected through an anonymous submissions process. Submissions are open to Wellesley students, faculty, and alumnx. For more information, please visit www.thewellesleyreview.org