2 LETTERS FROM THE EDITORS - neya krishnan & priyanka sinha
4 WHO WAS J. SCRIB, FORGOTTEN THINKER OF THE NEW AGE? - elina garone
6 A LESSON ON HOMONYMS - josephine yip
7 ST. STEPHEN’S GREEN - madeline wilson
8 LINH STREET - an tran
9 LUCAS, MY FRIEND - eli marcus
10 SILENCE IS THE FRAYING OF A RED STRING - mallika sinha
11 SOME PLACES ARE JUST QUIETER THAN OTHERS - veronica habashy
13 CONSOLATIONS - amelia macapia
18 ROB (ROBERT ON PEACE STREET) - hami trinh
19 RAVEN SONG - william zhuang
20 SITTING IN THE PEW - erin zhu
21 GRIEF SOMETIME IN JANUARY - amalia mclaughlin
22 I AM HIDEOUSLY ANTISOCIAL BY NATURE - chloe cheng
23 A PLAIN BLACK COFFEE - benjamin duchild
24 WEEPING, SHOWERING, AND OTHER TYPES OF RAIN - kaeli huh
26 A CONFUSION ONLY GOOD FRIENDS CAUSE - theo peña
27 PLEASE CHANGE THE CHANNEL - cheech
28 OAK GROVE - rose fotino
29 CINEMATIC ENDING - claire ferris
Editors-in-Chief
Melanie Litwin
Amanda Westlake
Editor Emeritus
Sabah Lokhandwala
Managing Editor
Juanita Asapokhai
Creative Directors
Angela Jang
Yimeng Lyu (Anna)
Feature Editors
Ruby Goodman
Emara Saez
News Editors
Rohith Raman
Layla Kennington
Arts & Culture Editors
Sophie Fishman
Millie Todd
Opinion Editors
Michelle Setiawan
Clara Davis
Campus Editors
Liani Astacio
Eden Weissman
Poetry & Prose Editors
Neya Krishnan
Priyanka Sinha
Voices Editors
William Zhuang
Sarah Fung
Creative Inset
Ines Wang
Art Directors
Aidan Chang
Audrey Njo
Multimedia Director
Pam Melgar
Multimedia Team
Anika Kapoor
Megan Reimer
Juniper Moscow
Emmeline Meyers
Claudia Aranda Barrios
Brenda Martinez
Publicity Directors
Ava Vander Louw
Sofia Valdebenito
Publicity Team
Anthony Davis-Pait
Emma Iturregui
Aatiqah Aziz
Staff Writers
Edith Philip
Leah Cohen
Billy Zeng
Ava Vander Louw
Sage Malley
Lily Feng
Siona Wadhawan
Hanna Bregman
Erin Zhu
Felipe Campano
Veronica Habashy
Joyce Fang
Bella Cosimina Bobb
Designers
Madison Clowes
Hami Trinh
Anastasia Glass
Jasmine Wu
Anthony Davis-Pait
Aviv Markus
Anya Bhatia
Maria Cazzato
Lead Copy Editors
Lucy Belknap
Eli Marcus
Copy Editors
Seun Adekunle
Kara Moquin
Alec Rosenthal
Drexel Osborne
Nika Lea Tomicic
Phoebe McMahon
Ashlie Doucette
Podcast Directors
Noah DeYoung
Grace Masiello
Podcast
Emily Cheng
Ethan Walsey
Alice Fang
Megan Reimer
Soraya Basrai
Jamie Doo
Qinyi Ma
Eden Weissman
Staff Artists
Emmeline Meyers
D Gateño
Olivia White
Lydia Jiameng Liu
Heather Huang
Mariana Porras
Rachel Liang
Chileta Egonu
Zed van der Linden
Nour El-Solh
Matilda Peng
Maria Cazzato
Katie Rejto
Adina Guo
Website Manager
Clara Davis
Contributors
Adrian Wong
Amalia McLaughlin
Amelia Macapia
An Tran
Benjamin Duchild
Celecia Orozco
Cheech
Chloe Cheng
Cj Daly
Claire Ferris
Elina Garrone
Gina Yu
Helen Shen
Josephine Yip
Kaeli Huh
Madeline Wilson
Mallika Sinha
Marisa Sparacio
Rose Fotino
Theo Peña
a confession rising from our throats; a crescendo of laughter; feasting on gory gossip; wading through time; staccato bursts of noise until the quiet seeps again.
I’m supposed to write this about conversation, which is funny because sometimes I think I am most at ease when I am not speaking at all. With Tufts over-enrolling so many students each year, I have routinely felt like our campus is devoid of spaces draped with thick, insulating silence into which to settle in.
Speaking of silence—it’s strange that it is often accompanied by the word “dead.” I find silences to be so alive, so charged—silences hold unspoken intimacy between lovers; silence enables people to listen openly when a perspective may conflict with their own; silence pushes newfound understandings of ourselves and others to ripple to the surface in a way that constant verbal exchange never could.
But, sometimes, stretching silence can make me feel like I’m drowning. As much as I cherish it, when I feel especially lost, I always clasp my fingers around memories of the most notable conversations of my life, ones that remind me I have lived. A highlight— Walking through a deluge with my best friend of the last four years, Sruthi, on the second day of college. We had met hours ago and found ourselves drenched on the way back to Tilton, exchanging runaway thoughts about how water feels like change. Or my first love, making my heart jolt into my throat with a 10-word text: “I think it would be good if we talked soon.” My own father, shaking me by the shoulders months later as heartbreak swallowed up my junior spring: “Priyanka, you have your whole life ahead of you!” Standing on the bench outside of SoGo past midnight with one of my newest friends, looking up at an inky sky and not feeling cold anymore as he said, “Maybe I’ll remember this moment years later?”
It feels fitting to reflect on the culmination of my college experience through the lens of conversation because I wrote about this very topic for the college essay that gained me admission to this school four years prior. My conversations with the people I have grown to love here are threads sewn into the fabric of my soul; I am not the same person I once was, now with more tears, scars, laughs, smiles.
There’s a recurring, humorous conversation I always have with a friend of mine. When I ask him if he’s gone home for the weekend, he contemplates, amused, “am I ever home, Priyanka?” It always sparks laughter, but I’ve ruminated on this one for a while. As I embark on new paths beyond Tufts, I don’t know if I have found what home really means to me yet, but I know that life is a series of conversations that can make me feel at home across borders, as they transcend stages of time. I have experienced my brightest and darkest moments here, and I found the O during the latter. One of my favorite things about this issue in particular is how I feel conversations occur between these pages—more than one person mentions ravens, or rain, or a significant street in their lives. I want to live a gentle life, reading and tasting these authentic confessions on a page—maybe even sharing a tangerine with another as we read citrus poems! (The fruit has seemed to be a popular inspiration for people pondering on love.) No matter who I become, I hope to converse with more than my words, to talk with my hands, to finally own my blushing problem, to look closer. Sure, I struggle to find silence here, but the incessant chatter of Tufts spaces is something that makes me feel whole in its own way. Many here have charmed me. I’ve found myself grasping for conversation when I can’t speak—sending love notes over email, making phone calls, writing letters. I hope these pages spark conversations with your friends and yourselves, as we all stumble down the winding path of growing up. I love talking to so many here, can we keep doing that?
With laughter, my love, and a persistent request to tell me more, priyanka
When I was just 20 weeks old, dancing in my mom’s swollen belly, an ultrasound at Secaucus Meadowlands Hospital revealed my five tiny fingers outstretched for light, waving at my nervous parents. I like to think that from the very beginning, I have been eager to reach out, to converse, and, in those early moments, my little hand became the alphabet and vocabulary I didn't know yet. At just 18 months, I was playing with words—rolling them on my tongue, catching them in my throat, holding them in my palms, sharing them with others.
Now, nearly 19 years later, I am still carrying words, still excited to share them. In this gently bound, 32-page magazine, we ask you to lose yourself in conversation with a stranger on peace street, linguistics, grief, lovers, familiar places, scents, family, silence, yourself, and more.
A good conversation feels a lot like a home-cooked meal settling into the hungry parts of an empty stomach; ice-cold Poland Spring drenching a parched throat in the middle of Medford’s raging August; frigid fingers interlacing on a walk along Newbury Street, the resulting rush of warmth. I love a good conversation. When I worked as a hostess at Colony Grill in Norwalk, Conn., I courted conversation constantly. You could find me befriending regular Friday customers, memorizing takeout orders, and accidentally getting into 20-minute phone calls with guys named Phil ordering pizzas for their wives who just gave birth, until my boss jokingly gave me a stare. In middle school, I often got in trouble with substitute teachers for chatting too much in class, and, in elementary school, I couldn't decide who to invite to my birthday parties because I liked talking to everyone.
Sometimes I wonder if everything there is to be said has already been said, if the words, the conversation you and I are sharing now, have already been spoken, analyzed, described in a more creative or intellectual way. And the likelihood is, yes, that’s probably true. But in my poetry class today, someone wrote a poem about loss: the funeral, their father’s chapped lips, and the Yoruba they once sang. I listened, and I felt my chest in a hollowed part of my throat, felt my eyes so close to bursting. So yes, I know grief has been written, described, talked about in a million different ways, and still, today, I sat quietly in Miner Hall, eaten and full at the same time. I was once again reminded of the innate power of words—their invitation to conversation, infinite permutations, and combinations. Maybe we write in spite of the fear that it’s already been said better, and we converse in spite of sounding silly or redundant, in order to feel a little more whole, a little less alone. I hope you find these delicate comforts in our pages.
Without further ado, I warmly welcome you to Spring 2023, Issue 3: Conversation
With love, Neya <3
Dismissing language as an imperfect medium is now an acceptable and even fashionable excuse for linguistic laziness. Dinner parties crawl with so-called artists and cultural critics who twist their tongues into labyrinths in an attempt to impress; when unable to produce anything more than a sloppy reproduction of a greater mind’s musings, these same intellectuals readily conclude that words could never convey the essence of their high thought. Cramming themselves into the confines of language—sifting through the stuffy armoire of vocabulary, passing the bureaucracy of grammar—is an act of violence against the purity of their ideas.
While not unfounded, these laments are little more than banalities. Few have made an earnest effort to examine their relationship to language; still fewer have dared to re-envision human communication to the extent of J. Scrib. In 1967, his name emerged in the field of speculative linguistics, a subgenre of science fiction which imagines the evolution of language under hypothetical contexts. Scrib—real name Sam Stanton—was an accountant for a mayonnaise company based out of suburban Ottawa. Coworkers described him as “professional,” “inscrutable,” and (on more than one occasion) “about as alive as stale soda.” Though he never showed an affinity nor aptitude for writing, on his 50th birthday he submitted to a local publication posing as an academic and quickly developed a cult fanbase.
A DISCLAIMER FOR THE IMPRESSIONABLE: Scrib’s followers have been known for their fanaticism. In 1972, Pat Gilmartin, a suburban landscaper and avid collector of Scrib’s articles, began communicating exclusively in highpitched barks. Others followed suit, speaking in bodily contortions, guttural screams, and, most commonly, radio static. Several have been hospitalized for attempted self-lobotomy. (When asked why, one answered, “to access the cosmos of consciousness!”) For these reasons,
Scrib is criticized for promoting “a kind of collective schizophrenia masquerading as mysticism” (See: The Comprehensive Guide to Infectious Mental Illnesses). While the writer of this article maintains complete faith in the readers’ discernment, it is nevertheless the wishes of the Tufts Observer that readers approach this text with no more than half of their minds, preferably to be read in a waiting room or while sitting on the toilet. In other words, DO NOT DIGEST.
From: Where do we go from here? The Next Stage of Language (J. Scrib, July 6, 1968), published in an Ottawa-based occult magazine (which, incidentally, doubly functioned as a mattress catalog).
“IMAGINE!!: A Japanese woman and a Mexican man are in bed together, i.e., they are having sex. The two climax at the same time, it’s wonderful, it’s like they become One Being, they grip at each other in a rapture. He yells: Me vengo! (I’m coming!) She screams: Iku! (I’m going!)
He comes, she goes. Thus, language fails these lovers in a moment of total physical unification. Such is our communication: we live in constant compromise between the immediacy of our experience and the symbols which cannot fully convey it. Still we try, only to be reminded that we are forever confined to our minds, unable to directly share ourselves with another.
If only we could access the minds of others, the consciousness of animals and other earthly beings—if only there existed some form of communication that allowed us to enter into the experiential realm of rocks as they tumble into a stream, or leaves as they are blown against cold wind!
One way we may realize this is through the corporeal manifestation of language. As it currently exists, the organs of language are not alive enough, abstract like a lover I yearn for but have not yet met. I wish for language to become a physical augmentation of my body… a grammar that is an extension of my veins, transport-
ing outward the words that glow hot in my viscera…!”
—
From Towards a neo-animist language: Superseding the Symbolic Order (J. Scrib, April 28, 1971), published in Babelonia, the New Age journal of semiotics.
“I have reached the conclusion that what we need is a new form of communication, anchored not in the limited individual consciousness but in the anima mundi—the world soul. My theory stands upon a panpsychic worldview, which asserts that consciousness is not limited to humanity but instead inherent in all things to varying degrees. The acceptance of this philosophy, I believe, will be essential in our transition to the fast-approaching era of global consciousness. The anima mundi will become the new language without syntax or semantics, a transfusion of experience between subjects. At last we will relate not only with other humans, but with non-human beings as well, the interconnection eventually expanding to a cosmic scale (I don’t see why not!).
MIND THE GAP: Evolution is in progress! We are reaching the end of the individualized human being, awaiting the dawn of the inter-galactic polylogue.”
Entries in the personal diary of J. Scrib, published posthumously:
April 24, 1978.
“Last night while I was having my post-dinner cigarette, I traveled to the future (or I should say, they brought me to the future). I have been warned against speaking about it in depth, but what I can say is that I was chosen for an experimental brain operation.
By the time I returned, the process of transformation had already started. The books tumbled off of my shelf; I watched as the letters in each page stretched their legs like they were waking from a long sleep. Soon the words in my notebooks, papers, and even the scribbles on grocery lists, slid off and crawled away into the vents. Afterwards I felt horribly nauseous, and vom-
ited a mass of black ink for what felt like an hour…”
July 12, 1979.
“Me llaman loco ロコ ロコモコ Loco Moco Rococo 牢固 (Jail!). Pero! でも! But! Trust me I’m the only one who’s truly truly serio surreal cereal *¡FROSTED FLAKES!*
Language is going away from me, slipping out of mis manos manus gosh where are my manners?”
September 2, 1979.
“It is complete. I have transcended language. LISTEN: Thought exists without language. They are speedy little things, always on the move like electrical currents. ZIP! ZAP!
Writing now feels like an impossible feat. I must carefully tease out the thread of my own self from an infinite number of subjective experiences, which drown out my signal like radio noise. In truth, I no longer have any use for writing. My thoughts live outside of me as extensions of myself, interacting freely with other
beings, exposed to the world like nerves wrapping around my body.
Human, porcupine, salmon and rock consciousnesses have all melded into thick soup. We are bound to each other through ESP—Extrasensory perception that does not rely on visual or auditory transmission. I live in the world of magic, where every thought and every movement is a communion with the universe.
I have been granted an early entry into the age of the post-human. I eagerly await the rest, for all to achieve transcorporeality—our bodies will become the vessels between which we can freely travel, and the boundaries of self will become blurred until we no longer cling to our bodies with the tight grip of a hoarder. It will be the era of infinite love and compassion, of sixsomes and six-hundredsomes from the comfort of your own couch.”
December 20, 1979. (The final journal entry).
“It is true that language will soon be obsolete. I can already see it happening—
words will blip out of existence like dinosaurs, monogamy, and the United States of America.
Some have falsely accused me of promoting a negative view of language, as that which only serves to confuse and separate us. Quite the opposite, I adore language like an archeologist loves a relic. I look upon it affectionately, our attempt at reaching outside of ourselves towards something greater, our clumsily built tower of babel. Like a prayer for a deeper sense of togetherness, a dream of a more complete way of being human.”
“you” pronounced /ju:/ rounded in the mouth is a polite address even though second-person is always rude
yuu pronounced “yoo” is an example of the elite language— articulated in a flat tone, like land discounted then re-owned as shopping rewards for the loyal
魚 pronounced yú is the same in mandarin textbooks and at home when mama dishes out soy sauce steamed garoupa
瘀 pronounced jyu2 is an embarrassing stain on the face that hurts more than a bruise to your own soul
如 pronounced jyu4 not rú nor jyu(1 ≤ x ≤ 9 | x ≠ 4) is the conditional if— if only true trilingualism was attainable
pronounced jyu5 and yǔ the same way as yú and jyu4 speech 言 and the self 吾 make up 語 that is, the character for
language
Foolishly, my eyes turn and rest a second long on a round grey bird posing atop a mirrored pond.
She asks what I am thinking, and how can I say anything but exactly what I see? A brief vision of holy logic interrupted by a bit of ice.
Tomorrow, she will scour the park for crumbs and glances, excesses of dirty motion and take them for granted, while bitter January wishes and shrieks of light pierce me and the too-hard earth.
By An Tran
Roses bloom through cracks of Linh Street, Break through crumbling concrete, In sunburnt oranges and bloody reds; Their stems droop—heads grazing the gravel, Heavy with fluffy fat petals
And sand we scooped into their mouths.
Summer rain drives toads off Linh Street; They sit with me watching television, Burping and farting on my tiles in place of my father. Across the world, he said to leave them be; They are friends of a sky god, They bring water and wind.
High noon turns Linh Street into a ghost town. The heat, an angry carnivorous thing, Seeps into our porous walls
And writhes underneath our skin. It turns over stones and shadows— The air is opaque yellow in its wake.
On Linh Street, the blood
From my knee where I scraped my skin against the rocks Left brown ashes on the ground. I searched for my neighbor’s blood
Because she is tall and falls easy in the wind. My mom, winged sandals adorning her feet, Glides across cracked pavement; She only knows the ground
From the dust brushing her toes.
Love lines the fringes of Linh Street like wet lace. It spends nights in my living room, Soaks in my mom’s mango mousse, Steams in her sweet-braised pork belly, Sticks on my teeth like sweet sesame candy
On our tea-stained altar.
It wraps around my ankles as I run on gravel; When I fall and bleed again, it does not hurt.
He sent me a few words today, like he does at least weekly:
“cheek by jowl”
He says it means close together, doesn’t mention its negative connotation— he never packs a negative connotation— he never nags that I’ve crossed the nation and left him so close to home.
We remain nested in conversation— benched beside the reservoir or Lincoln/Cypress station— waiting for the past to return so that we might return to the last bookstore so that he might pick another biography from the depths—of all the words he never chooses his own.
We’re far apart by now— maybe it’s easier this way to forget that I remember so little about him. I wonder how he would write this poem— I doubt he thinks it matters, though I guess I wouldn’t know.
Ode to this logophile who hates linguistics and visits the stable to let the horses graze.
Nani was never one for conversation. She spoke through the slight pursing of her lips, through creases in her eyes, through the rhythmic clicking of her weathered hands grasping knitting needles. I, on the other hand, speak near incessantly. I chatter as I wave hello to her, asking about her flight from Delhi to Budapest, where I moved with my parents a year ago. Already, I have forgotten what India is like—the humdrum, the cacophony of smells and sights and noise, have all been replaced by questioning looks and starkly quiet streets.
I speak as I walk home from preschool with my mother, my tiny hand clasped securely in hers as I marvel at the sundrenched trees lining the path to our sixth floor flat on the Buda side of the river. I babble on, amazed by the way brushstrokes of orange and golden light beam through the verdant leaves, like we are walking directly into the embrace of the sun.
I burst through the door, throwing off my backpack in one fluid motion, leaping as only children can do, into the waiting arms of my grandmother, my nani. She has come to help, to watch over me, comforting in a wordless sort of way as my parents adjust to being parents.
“Nani, let’s go to the roof! I have hazelnuts!” I squeal, and she smiles tenderly at me.
“Okay, baccha. Chalo,” she says, her voice so quiet I don’t even notice she has spoken until she nods at me. Taking her hand into mine, I feel the wrinkles in her skin. I feel the decades of existence, the weight of raising three children and travelling to a country where she knows nearly no one and speaks none of the language. Still, the comforting squeeze of her hand transcends words.
I run and grab the patthar we found together, feeling the weight of the porous stone in my tiny hand. Beena nani rushes up, right behind me, her voice soft but unyielding in its firmness as she tells me to be careful, to slow down.
I smile slyly as I take the hazelnuts out of my jacket pocket, letting them scatter onto the ground, raining the dusty cement in a flood of brown. I surreptitiously collected the nuts from a large tree in my school’s playground, bursting with glee too joyous to contain at the thought of nani and I cracking them together.
We laugh as I struggle to hold the rock above my head. She chides me, telling me to be careful as I swing my arms around with reckless abandon. Our conversation flows as smoothly as the Danube that runs through the heart of the city, me chattering on, her responding to my childish complaints with unyielding tenderness. Giggling, we crouch down, gathering up the remnants among the broken nuts, talking about their buttery taste and the heat of the sun and anything and everything. In this moment, at this place, it is just the two of us—me and nani, with our hazelnuts and our conversation. Our words are like needles, knitting the yarn that tethers us to each other in a universe that is vast and easy to get lost in. Our conversation is our secret. Our world. Just us.
My second memorable conversation with nani is thousands of kilometers away. I am older now. Well worn. I speak less—but still more than her.
She sits on the plush couch in my living room in Glen Rock, New Jersey. It’s her first time in America. I smile, touching her feet, asking for aashirvad—blessings.
“Sab kuch theekh tha?” Was everything okay?
“Haan, beta. Bahut achha tha.” Yes, dear. Everything was good, as expected.
We sit at opposite ends of the couch, and I feel the tension thread around my spine as I gaze at her.
I struggle to make small talk. Already, Alzheimer’s has stolen large parts of her brain. She smiles vacantly, her voice trailing away mid-sentence, words becoming softer as she grows uncertain of names, of places, of everything she once knew and loved. I know my mother can’t bear to see it because she has locked herself away, left me to deal with nani, unable to cope with watching her own mother slowly waste away into oblivion.
I notice the way nani gazes out the windows into our backyard, the dark green evergreen tree billowing in the wind, framed by the slotted aperture of our white blinds. Everything in this house is as foreign to her as she is to America. She scans the rebelliously teal couch, the electric fireplace, the sterile kitchen. She hunches her back, shrinks into herself.
Occasionally, she’ll remember a relative’s name, or I’ll talk about the food she used to cook, the sweaters she carefully crafted with me in mind, and her face will brighten, wisened knuckles whitening as she smiles in relief, in recognition. She’s fighting. In her own quiet, indomitable way, she is fighting.
We talk there for a long time, our conversation strained but somehow able to claw its way into existence.
“Do you remember how we used to break hazelnuts in Hungary?” I ask her, my voice wavering. Her brow furrows, and I feel my hands clench. There is a pregnant pause hanging in the air; it threatens to crush us into a dense ball of pain and nothingness.
“Haan, baccha.” Yes, child. She laughs, her eyes crinkling into crescents just like mine do as we giggle, and suddenly everything is okay, and it’s just us again, crouching on that rooftop stuffing our faces with nuts.
My third—and last—memorable conversation with nani is in India. At my aunt’s house. It’s not really a conversation at all.
My cousins have already whispered to me not to engage.
“Koshish bhi mat kar. Sirf dard karta hai.” Don’t even try. It just hurts.
But how can I not try? With nani? The other end of my thread in this gargantuan universe?
“Hello Beena nani!” I seize an empty moment. She gazes blankly at me. Her hair, once jet black, has withered away into a thin white braid. She whimpers.
I blink away the rapidly forming tears.
“Do you remember me? Mallika?” I whisper. I inch closer to her on the already sunken sofa. She is wearing a cotton sari, dark green. Her fingers are too weak to hold her knitting needles—or even a cup of chai.
Her eyes, once vivid and filled with joy, look like glass as they stare blankly at me. I feel anger well up inside. How could
she not remember our conversation on the roof, our laughter on the couch? How could she?
“
Nani, please… Don’t you remember?” I plead, a lastditch attempt made by a girl who already knows the answer to this futile question. There is no nani to converse with anymore. There is only Beena, the frail patient. I reach out and grasp her hand, and she cries out, recoiling.
My nani is an empty shell.
We sit there for a long time, me and her. Silence’s fingers creep their way up my spine and draw tears out of me in muted, wrenching sobs that rack my body. Still, she says nothing. Our conversation has ended.
I wish I could erase the bitter feeling in my mouth. These conversations were scary, but silence is an even more bitter pill to swallow.
I cry. And I remember her. I remember her and remember for her. Nani may be gone, but our days on the roof eating hazelnuts and talking endlessly about nothing are immortalized in my brain. They are still a secret just the two of us have. It transcends words or even the mortal plane. A conversation is a red string of fate linking two people forever, and it is only our will that makes it so.
DESIGN BY ANYA BHATIA, ART BY MARISA SPARACIOLooking backwards, twisted away from Mom hunched over the wheel in stiff embrace, Some miles away from Burlington and back to Middlebury— Fireworks. (Had they planned it all along?)
We squirm in the nighttime humidity only August knows. Mom says the country road is scarier than, say, Spring Street and the one-ways—at least there someone will find you right away. (But would they be kind?) Here, night swallows loudly and stars will hardly ever be enough to signal distress.
A fleeting thought: Maybe there is no distress here for the air is clearer, and smells of sticky pine—
Back at the inn, drank a cup of maple syrup with the shortbread. The sticky mass took its time. Nobody spoke except
Marissa sat by the lamp and asked if we could listen to Billie Holiday. I was missing something already.
Something I didn’t want, had been shedding for some time—
the urgent midnight compulsion to be home already, itching of sleep against the cold car window and the smell of the mahogany front door.
Every moment was morning to me: Leaving Time and Putting on My Coat and Keys in Hand.
2 South and Let the time pass in traffic because there’s been an accident and nobody can stop staring and worrying. Hands drumming on the dash in the stationary car—
until I realized once I sloughed it off I’d have to be exposed, but by then it was already too late. I felt the pine needles pushing into my soft feet. The raw layer of skin glistening in the unfamiliar white sunlight California could never understand in an August like this one.
I heard the maple settle in me, a rock like crumpled paper. I knew that should I be burned, I couldn’t be sure somebody would find me and worry.
Another fleeting thought: oh, to cause traffic
There was nobody else in Vermont.
By Amelia Macapia
Diligently, we hope Chemo, radiation, immunotherapy, ablation, etc. Yet always, the exhaustion returns. Impatient to nd the place and formula We wait for revelations Instead, the repose of IV lines. Received again: Hospitals, hygienic diversions, Hell is all pillows is time, hospice; by now you are half-bald. Any summit of superstition collapsed Psychological succession, your face sinks in
e priest visits, strings together seraphic sorrow Implies we are unlucky. Rushing hum, together we sing Fragments of hymns
One voice
A cherished image. At your bedside table, I see my face tremble In your glass of water. Should I have realized, is intense quick dream I would have danced endlessly, and laughed. By the end, Not much more to say Other than a million variations of “I love you,” “I’ll miss you.” Only this time, truly, I have no words.
DESIGN BY INES WANG
LEFT: ART BY MARIA CAZZATO
RIGHT: ART BY AVIV MARKUS
DESIGN BY JOHN DOE, ART BY JANE DOE
By Hami Trinh
hi my name is hami and today a man came up to me asking me if i was mixed. already some things are lost in translation but no, i’m not, i was born here. he tells me he’s cherokee and a bit more about race. after a minute he comes back around the bus stop and tells me he served in vietnam, showing me his military id, my name’s robert. oh, i’m vietnamese! so you are mixed, you and i, oh, i guess so, if you put it like that. how long you been here? 18 years—wait, that’s what you mean right? haha. a friend of his comes over, i give the two the cash i had. you grillin’ anything for the fourth of july? no haha, i have work. more light conversation and his friend leans in for a hug, god bless you, young, beautiful woman. he leaves and it’s just robert and i again. he tells me the street he’s on. they call me rob, my name’s hami—but you can call me anything else if that’s too hard—no, i got enough respect for you, ‘m telling you a bit of my life like you. rob asks me if i got a pen—i can tell you now, if you ever go to a psychiatric hospital with other adults, most people aren’t really that different. somewhere in between my hat comes off, and he’s joking about how much more hair i have than him. i wanna ask you how you’ll be, stuff like that, i’m sorry robert, i don’t have any pen or paper with me. i’ll be on this street, you’re a young gorgeous woman, you know that? haha, thank you. he holds out his hand and i shake it, though he pulls it up to kiss in between incoherent words. you got lip gloss on? no haha (fuck.) oh that’s my bus, it was nice to meet you. god bless you, have a good day, take care robert. after a few stops, a woman whose eyes i could feel cracks a joke, telling me to shut up for being so loud, haha. stop requested. y’all have a good one! thank you! hi, can i get a three-piece chicken supreme dinner for here? yes, with sweet tea and fries, thank you. god bless the person that gave me two extra pieces. two of the guys sitting behind me are talking about college, and i can’t even start thinking about my path right now. there’s something about being in the world just like this, on and on and on, saying hello and goodbye to people every day.
As I bike under the shades
Of trees growing wildly into each other
In the shape of tangled fingers I hear
From above a tune so overbearing
Waltzing back and forth between ravens
Like black holes draining light from the sky
Some frantically gliding, others perched with poise
They sing into the world a song
So often taken as an omen and sure enough
It plants within me a darkness that echos
Between heart chambers and veins
‘Til a blind fear engulfs from above
And my destination fades forgotten
So I spend the afternoon otherwise silent
Riding my bike in circular motions
Through downhill slopes and fallen leaves
I twirl through winds and dampened dirt
Trying too to find me a song
To hold my spine through dark and light
To swirl and flow and never cease
Content Warning: This piece contains reference to suicide
One day in late April, after I turned seven years old, my parents woke me up, pulled a black dress over me, and hurried me into the car in which they then drove two hours south to the coast of Delaware.
The road that wove across the state lines was green and lined with bright, round trees. The light from the early morn ing was coming in the win dow like freshly squeezed nectar, but the silence in the car made it feel airless and damp. I tried to enter tain myself by reaching over the passenger seat to grip my mother’s shoulders, but she paid no mind. I began to hum, but my father, who was driv ing, asked that I quiet down, so I shrugged and leaned against the window, watching the trees pass us.
We were driving to a church. We were not a family of faith, but my mother’s best friend from college had just died, so we were making the pilgrimage. Her friend, who lived out in the trimmed sub urbs of Delaware in a big green house with a husband and two little boys; who loved another man who didn’t love her; and who flew home, to Hong Kong, to jump out of a win dow. My mother had mumbled it in the car to my father, her head re clined against the seat as she gazed outwards towards the green and endless road. I could see her face in the reflection of the glass, and it seemed like she was not quite looking at anything at all. Her divulgence was seemingly by accident, because when I asked more about it, my voice coming over from the backseat, I saw my mother’s head lift in sudden and acute clarity, as though she was rising from a slumber, and she said nothing else. I sat the rest of the car ride in silence and thought about how someone without wings could jump out the window. It all just seemed so silly.
When we arrived at the church, my father took hold of my wrist and brought me into the pew to sit. As we passed the lobby, people dressed in black were clumped together and murmuring, and it smelled like dust and soap. There was a portrait of my mother’s friend, encased in a gilded frame, leaning on an A-frame. When we hurried past, I saw that she was smiling in it.
The porous wood let out a squeal when we sat down. Above, the ceiling was high and cavernous, and to the right, there was a stained glass window of the Virgin Mary in blue. As I sat there in the pew, my legs dangling over the edge of the bench, I looked over the shoulder of the couple in front of us and saw the two sons, aged six and nine, sitting in the very first row. Their backs were slouched and their mouths were hanging, eyes wandering like they were tourists, and I was thinking about their mother flinging herself out the window and falling. own mother stood up and went to the podium to speak. The paper in her hand was quivering as she read while the other hand wiped against her nose until it turned bright red. She was stuttering. My father was sitting next to me, his face turned upwards, the light coming in from the window making the wetness on his cheeks shine blue, and when I tugged at his shirt, he wouldn’t look at me. I could hear crying. I glanced around and saw the aimless staring of men and women in black, lost in the blue fog. I felt my cheek grow warm as the light was coming in. I don’t remember the rest. I was looking at the two sons, sitting in the front, and all I could see was their mother falling, falling, falling.
Above me, a street lamp flickers in the rain. I turn down the radio and my mother tells me on speakerphone that it’s not a cyst; her mother has cancer. Somehow I thought she’d live forever but at the stop sign, I am reminded of the finitude of life. On and off and on and off. The wet pavement glistens as the street lamp disrupts the darkness. At the red light, there’s a silent tear for every drop on the windshield as my sister shoves hollow words of comfort with a quivering voice I do not know who I am when grief so premature so primal explodes from my chest as I scream at my key stuck in that ugly turquoise door. I am grieving for her. and for the piece of me that didn’t know this finitude this awakening of impermanence of that foggy street with a fractured flickering lamp.
DESIGN BY ANASTASIA GLASS, ART BY MARIA CAZZATO
By Chloe Cheng
Crystalline drops of conversation hang from chapped lips, decorating my chin like a chandelier.
Red beryl skies molt in the summer, shed auburn kisses on rosy cheeks, and glisten in pupils, cool to the touch.
Fingertips caress, arms grasp, eyes hold, my bedazzled body no greater than a grain of sand.
His skin against mine, his soft sea eyes, I coalesce.
By Benjamin Duchild
A stone-faced old man strode confidently into the busy little coffee shop, his entrance barely noticed amid the tired chatter of all the white-collar clientele preparing for the work week. He asked for a black coffee. His lanky frame cast a sort of shadow over the barista, the type that’s invisible to the untrained eye. “I would like a plain black coffee,” he enunciated. “None of those fruity fake-Italian frappadappa-crappucinos. Just a plain black coffee.” And before the barista could react, he pressed on in his crackly mid-Atlantic accent.
“The problem with you people is you don’t know how to appreciate a plain black coffee. You know, when you learned about the French Enlightenment in university—and you must have gone to university, because I don’t know any coffee shop around here that will hire people who don’t have a degree—your professor probably told you all about the coffeehouses in France. They would have black coffee there. Voltaire, Rosseau, Diderot: All the great thinkers. Do you think anything the people in this café have done has measured up to what those men did? No, of course not. You cannot think when your brain is being poisoned by three hundred grams of sugar. And let me tell you this,” he spat. “There are a million different ways to brew a black coffee. If I had gone to a different establishment I might have asked for a specific source of beans. But I didn’t, and you know why? Because you don’t even know your own craft. I can guarantee you—I can tell by the look on your face—that you can’t distinguish between any two cups of black coffee. And don’t tell me you know the difference between, oh, I don’t know, a unicorn frappé and an ice cream sundae. I don’t give a rat’s ass.”
“Sir,” the barista spluttered, “Everyone likes different things for different reasons. I’d be more than happy to make you a black coffee, if you’d please just—”
“No!” he interrupted. “This is a matter of taste. Now here’s some advice from an old man, free of charge.
“When I was a kid, even younger than you, I got my coffee from a place a few blocks away, by the river. My usual order was a ‘flat white’—espresso with milk—which should be right up your alley. But one day I decided to order black coffee, for some reason, and I hated it. It tasted like dirt. I didn’t finish it just then, because something else got my attention—an old bridge down the street—big mass of rusty metal beams, this thing—it had these giant supports sunken into the riverbank, and somewhere in that metal forest I heard someone singing. I stared up through those beams and couldn’t see where they ended, so I went with the coffee in my hand and climbed and climbed and climbed, and when the music was at its loudest I sat down and tried to find who was singing it.”
“And?” asked the tired barista, feigning interest. There was no use in arguing with this kind of customer—it would just cause even more of a scene.
“It was a hot day, so it felt good being up there in the shade. By then it was clear that I was all alone; nobody was singing, but I swear there really was music. Now, I was a stupid kid and probably didn’t get enough sleep back then, and if I did any drugs it’s not like I would tell you. So I sat there drinking my horrible black coffee, thinking about what this music thing was all about. There was nothing else for me to do, so I drank my coffee and tried to pick out just what kind of flavors were in that garbage. I found oranges, chocolate, sugar... It wasn’t garbage after all. I’d just been too stupid to understand it until that moment. I climbed back down once it started getting dark, and only afterwards did I realize what was making the music: It was the wind. No radio, no musicians, nothing fake.” He pounded on the counter with his fist. “It was nature’s music, and only after this revelation could I really appreciate it for what it was. I loved it. So I’m glad I don’t order flat whites anymore because that’s what a naïve idiot like you would do. So take this as a lesson. Don’t drink a crappucino next time, drink black coffee. You’ll end up thanking yourself for it later.”
The old man was tired of speaking at this point and sat on a leather couch close to the counter. The next customers placed their orders—pink crappucinos, for all we know—unaware of the man’s aquiline gaze. They sat down in various parts of the shop and listened to their own music to block out the idle chatter and rushing ambiance of the city outside. Some more people entered, and others left to go on with their Mondays, and the bitter man was given his black coffee. Then he left, probably headed to some place we wouldn’t be familiar with even if we knew its name.
You stand in the middle of the street, it is a rainy day today, but not the “tickle-your-face” kind of drizzle wake up in the morning to a quiet house because mom is still sleeping jokes said too many times, yet the whole family still finds them funny a chorus filled with full belly chuckles of uncles and dangly earring giggles of aunts the many, many visits not made yet the little dew drops on your black dress that doesn’t quite fit right
Not the “jeans a shade darker” kind of pour either, text messages that read “I’m going to bed. Long day” sent at 5:47pm, the closed shut door the tossing and turning (and weeping) heard behind it the “I only got 4 hours of sleep last night, how about you?” the sudden stop of conversation when a non-grown-up entered the room yet everywhere was the room so you learned to act clueless and stay in the corner where were the jokes? where were the laughs? you couldn’t find them anymore the wet tissues on the floor near your black shoes that you never really liked
No, today is the “stop and let the rain fall all over your body” kind of shower full drops dripping down your face, not ticklish but soothing rain spotted jeans though they’re still their original shade still across the hall is a closed door, though every so often it is left slightly open but you know better, because February is a bad month the crowd that looked like a raven’s wing the wood you can’t even remember the color of the sound of weeping children who have lost a parent, loud and confused, the black tights that caught a snag this morning, but you didn’t have enough time to change the tights that don’t keep your legs dry
After getting out of the car today, you stop you don’t run inside like mom does because today it is raining, not the “tickle-on-your-face” kind of drizzle not the “jeans a shade darker” kind of pour either no, today is the “stop and let the rain fall all over your body” kind of shower
the kind that can wash away anything for a couple minutes the kind that happens before the storm
The house is never quiet anymore the child continues to weep— I mean mom gets no sleep and you, small and freshly 14 are left as the stand-in parent of all, who just wants to stand in the rain and let it wash away the black dress with dewdrops, the black shoes near the tissues, the black tights with the run down the leg, the raven wing crowd, the box made out of the wood you can’t remember the color of, the stone you have never seen because the last time you were there it was a hole instead, the hushed whispers of adults, the 12-pack of tacos your uncles bought as a distraction, the hastily wiped tears, the too warm, mushy skin turned to the too cold, hard forehead the moment when you and mom switched places, you were now the “it’s okay, it’ll get better,” the hands who reached out, the warm embrace offered, the soothing rubs on the back
It is raining today
and a girl stands in the middle of the street letting the water fall all over her, across the street the neighbors are listening to the forecast: “there is a storm coming later this week” the weatherperson says but as for right now, it continues to shower and the girl continues to stand
By Theo Peña
I miss you. ThreewordsIbegantofearwhenviewedthroughmyslurredvision,throughresidualtears andlayersofchildhoodfearsencrustedwithinadequacy.Imournthefactthatthesewordshave different translations for you and I.
I carry your brilliance around me like a cape, an impenetrable protection against those sounds, those screeches that yell, “You’re better off dead, beaten, bloodied.”
I see you within magazine collages, letters written in bubbly purple cursive, hues of earthy greens and forest browns, crystals and raw geodes, bags of tea and Uniqlo shirts, bug stickers andboygeniuslyrics.Iseeyouwithinchailattesmadefromconcentrateandvegetarianchicken sandwiches heated in my microwave.
I feel you in silly jokes, in comedic bits with sour punchlines that only you and I would laugh at. I feel you in craft stores when I stop and fiddle around with every brightly colored object that catches my eye and transports me to a world of unadulterated joy until I remember who I am again. I feel you the most when I go shopping and see trinkets you would love, and I have to suppress the urge to spend all my savings on the soul I adore the most.
I hate to admit that I miss you. Because it means I let your essence slip my mind. I left your softness to collect dust, as I let myself waste time, waste energy on things that never served me. Does the fact that you miss me mean that you yearn for my company, or will my pertinacious self-deception convince me these words you speak are delusive, untrue, that you see me as unworthy to be kept in your memory? Regardless, I want to hold you forever, like the elementary school art that has viewed the spectacle of my coming of age, my metamorphosis. Be patient with me when I ask for 10 more minutes, whether we’re on the phone or so close our heartbeats start to sync. I want these slices of time, enchanted by your essence, to last as long as my conscience permits. Allow me to etch them in the front seat of my mind where I could never lose sight of it, as you’ll never lose sight of me.
half removed, half planted on the living room carpet. clinging to the clutter of spilled toys and their imagined personalities.
half Filipina, half not a wide-eyed stare stains in iridescent shock from the cold tv light.
half refracted, half absorbed are the sorrows that seep from the screen. the News is on about the same distant tragedy about names and faces like my own.
I half look at them. I half see them.
half tilapia, half rice. She calls me to the kitchen, and I eat with my hands every grain of her love.
By Rose Fotino
smug smog idles within white walls—all walls wild through my eyes!
mine mean idling eyes, i die!
i’ll fall ill, me, myself still stuck in the smog— smug, stiff, suffocating sentiments!
intensity or indifference? emotion eyes itself ill sly silence, oh stiff strict smoke!
exiled, stuck in isle of self—only immense fervor fed softly, mine own meaty murderous musings—mine!
where will the world wait? wretched wishes arise, eyes erratically eager for ego, long for lucidity
limbo lies languid linking smog and air, allying wall and all
murderous, maddening, sickening sensations of self, me, mine, i!
self spars murky malevolent murmurs madly, minutes inhibit—
will the world wait within these walls?
i’m incomplete, forced to face facile fate, failed to furious fumes
smog subsides, silence vanishes in vain—vanity allies wall and all, world waits
not
sprints, swims, splits smog
hey, where is everybody?
