AMENDMENT LITERARY AND ART JOURNAL Social progression through artistic expression
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2017
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ABOUT THE COVER St. Sebastian Y. Shevchenko Acrylic on canvas. Progress is non-linear. While we celebrate victories for LGBT+ rights and rejoice in a more accepting era, the violence and brutality of homophobia still shadows each step forward. In many ways, our culture has prevailed through the most difficult of barriers: legal repression, widespread physical violence, and psychological damage associated with surviving such adversity. Nonetheless, the journey is far from over, and recent events, such as the Orlando shooting and the Trump administration’s homophobic actions, are only evidence of that. It is crucial to remember those lost, not only in recent events, but throughout the history of homophobic oppression. Those lost fighting for the rights we carry today. Those lost simply for loving. St. Sebastian, the unofficial patron saint of homosexuality, started out as an obscure Roman soldier martyred for spreading Christianity, but over the centuries has become a favorite subject of numerous gay artists. In contemporary culture, artists such as Tony de Carlo, who used the imagery of St. Sebastian to depict the AIDS crisis, have appropriated this figure to represent martyrdom in the LGBT+ community. With my piece, I hope to commemorate those lost to hatred and ignorance throughout history.
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A NOTE ON CENSORSHIP Several of the pieces in this book have been flagged by Issuu for failing to meet their Community and Safe Mode guidelines. If you would like to see the full, uncensored version of Amendment please follow this link. http://amendmentvcu.com/Books/Amen2017.pdf
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AMENDMENT STAFF EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Hallie Chametzky
MANAGING & OUTREACH COORDINATOR Emily Henderson
LITERARY EDITOR Elise Le Sage
ART DIRECTOR Lara Koebke
ADVISOR
Liz Canfield
AMENDMENT STAFF Addy Gravatte Aleksandra D. Kostova Alexis Quaye Anya Sczerzenie Barjaa Brown Brianna Mccornell Cecilia Doss Daniela Villegas Jasper Behrends Luna Powell Oliver Mendoza Samra Giorgis Sarah Carter Sean Wesley Serissa Lafland Tori Thompson Yelyzaveta Shevchenko
STUDENT MEDIA CENTER STAFF DESIGNER
Desiree Choe
SMC PRODUCTION MANAGER Mark Jeffries
SMC BUSINESS MANAGER Jacob McFadden
SMC DIRECTOR
Allison Bennett Dyche
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MISSION AMENDMENT
əˈ/men(d)mənt/
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An annual literary and art journal that seeks to promote thoughtful discussion on issues such as equality, class, race, gender, sexuality, ability, and identity.
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A socially progressive student-run organization at Virginia Commonwealth University that advocates for social change through artistic expression, as well as provides a platform for historically marginalized voices in the artistic and literary community.
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What you’re holding in your hands.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Every step, even the seemingly microscopic ones, played an important role in you holding this journal in your hands. The side of the bed you woke up on, the first thing you ate today, and your eyes passing over the art gracing the cover of this issue of Amendment, urging you to pick it up. All of your choices are unique, and so is this journal. Every poem, paint stroke, and photograph that fills these pages are the seeds of someone’s unique stream of consciousness. These pieces come from brave people like you who willingly share their beliefs with us and the world, no matter how daunting, disquieting, and diverse. We thank them for sharing their work. Thank you to our editorial staff: Addy Gravatte, Aleksandra Kostova, Alexis Quaye, Anya Sczerzenie, Barjaa Brown, Brianna Mccornell, Cecilia Doss, Daniela Villegas, Jasper Behrends, Luna Powell, Oliver Mendoza, Samra Giorgis, Sarah Carter, Sean Wesley, Serissa Lafland, Tori Thompson, and Yelyzaveta Shevchenko. Thank you for sacrificing Friday afternoons to read stories and discuss art despite your many obligations. Your contributions are truly inspiring and have breathed new life into this publication. Thank you to Elise Le Sage, our brilliant Literary Editor, and Lara Koebke, our gifted Art Director, for coaxing many discussions from silence to boisterous chatter about topicality and potential hidden skulls in paintings. Thank you to all the past editors of Amendment who have propelled this journal over the years to its current greatness. Our former Co-Editor in Chief, Rachel Visser, graduated and is no longer listed within these hallowed staff pages, but her many years of service cannot go unnoticed. Thank you Rachel for managing this publication and helping to design this journal. We love and miss you dearly. Without our current Editor-in-Chief’s dedication and many stressful slumbers, this book would not be as genuine and remarkable as it is. The staff and readers appreciate everything you have done, so thank you Hallie Chametzky.
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The utmost gratitude and respect goes to the many people in the Student Media Center for their support and patience. Jacob McFadden, the SMC Business Manager, supplements us with unwavering faith, energy, humor, and snacks for our meetings. Allison Dyche, the SMC Director, has intense kindness and wisdom, which provides us with the creative freedom to publish full frontal genitalia. Mark Jeffries, the SMC Production Manager, has a creative drive and vision that keeps us on our toes, and always agrees to print hundreds of fliers for us last minute. Special thanks to our faculty advisor, Liz Canfield, for encouraging us in our perpetual endeavor of maintaining a legacy of representation for marginalized voices in society. All of you represent many of the best parts of our world and, as a result, have made a positive impact on this journal and everyone who is affected by it. Thank you. We appreciate all the students and faculty members who may go unnamed, but support us by posting fliers, forwarding emails, allowing us to speak in your classrooms, or simply spreading the word about Amendment to friends and family. That is our purpose: to start a conversation, to open a dialogue, to foster an environment where people feel safe enough to share their experiences. We strive to provide a platform that gives voice to those who would like to speak about their concerns and affections. We represent the everyman. Those who assert they are this, but not that, those who refuse labels in any form, this journal is for you. Shout it from the rooftops, shout loud enough for the person in your head or next to you to hear, this one is for you.
Emily Henderson
Managing and Outreach Coordinator
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR There have been many potential reasons to quit lately. Some days the world seems heavy, cruel, and bent on proving that it is too far gone to be saved. And then, miraculously, I read a poem. And then, and then, and then. Through the reports of police brutality against unarmed black men; Nazis and the KKK empowered enough to march mask-less in public; xenophobia and violent intolerance of refugees and immigrants; through all this and much more, Amendment is the quiet, persistent whisper in my ear that tells me never quit. Even now. Especially now. I know when I sit surrounded by the staff of this journal that being small does not mean being powerless, and that creation, art, and storytelling are not fruitless. The resistance is, has always been, in the hands of storytellers and art-makers. I am humbled and honored every day by the artists and writers who send us little bits of themselves and trust us to share their stories of pain, trauma, oppression, and remarkable love, grace, and hope in spite of it all. Makers hold such an important place in our society, and I think I speak for the entire Amendment team when I say that we hope we have done you justice. There is something radical in telling the stories that the powerful and dominant never thought would be told—that they feared would be. There is something defiant in speaking and creating in a system designed to silence. To the contributors who are people of color, who are LGBTQ+, who are Muslim, Jewish, women, and any number of intersections of disadvantaged identities: Amendment will always be a home for you. To readers: I hope you find what you need in this book, whether that be peace and solace, or action and energy, or simply the knowledge that there are people like you who dare to create publicly. Although I know there is an entire page for acknowledgments, I’d like to take a quick moment to personally thank Rachel Visser yet again for helping to make this book possible. It is simply a technicality that this page bears my name instead of hers, and it truly could not have been done without her. Rachel,
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you are a kind, thoughtful, spreadsheet-making, folder-sorting superhero. As I bring this letter to a close I am reminded of the words of the great James Baldwin in his story “Sonny’s Blues:” “For while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn’t any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness.” You, makers and readers, are the light and the hope. Your triumphs and failures, your joy and grief, your pasts and futures, all are valuable and necessary no matter what the dominant narrative might say. There is always material in this book which is challenging, controversial, and not universally applauded, but there truly are not more important stories to be telling. This is what we know to be true at Amendment, and we are honored to be your conduit. I hope this little journal—this quiet, persistent whisper—speaks to you as it always has to me, and I hope you find it at a time when you are ready to hear.
Hallie Chametzky Editor-in-Chief
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ART BLACK POWER FLAG AND SKIRT, Alana Edwards • 1 POLICE BRUTALiTY & BLOOD
ENOUGH, Austin Miles • 2
THIS WEIGHT ON MY CHEST, Jasper Behrends • 4 CAGED, Jasper Behrends • 5 TOY SOLDIER, Eli Vidano • 7 SELF HATRED, Logan Sullivan • 10 NURTURE, Logan Sullivan • 11 PASSAGE OF TIME, Logan Sullivan • 12 BEAUTY AND POWER, Jini Park • 17 SKIN TV, Michael Cabezas • 19 LUCKY RABBIT’S FOOT, Eli Vidano • 20 DESIGN FOR RABBIT STARVATION, Lizzy Cox • 21 11TH CENTURY UYGHUR SCHOLAR MAHMUD AL-KASHIGARI, Logan Sullivan • 22 MY CULTURE, UYGHUR DANCE, Logan Sullivan • 23 AN UYGHUR MUSLIM LADY, Logan Sullivan • 24 ALL SHAPES AND SIZES, Eli Vidano • 26 ST. SEBASTIAN, Yelyzaveta Shevchenko • 27 MONOMANIA, Nia Campbell • 31 SELF HARM
UNHEALTHY DEVELOPMENT, Elise Ketch • 32 THOROUGHLY PURGED, Nia Campbell • 36
GENATALIA
ONE EYED MONSTERS, Shereece Jessup • 37 TALKING DEAD, Amanda Stephen • 40 TV GUY, Amanda Stephen • 41
EMBROIDERY OF ANGELA DAVIS, 2017, Angelique Scott & Christina Hairston • 43 UNTITLED, D’Anna Lee • 44 STILL LIFE IN CULTURE, D’Anna Lee • 46 MULE, Michael Cabezas • 48
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LITERATURE 3 • BLACKISH BLUES, Tyshawn Smithers 6 • LAZY SUSAN, Oliver Mendoza 8 • AMISS, Emily Henderson 13 • MATTHEW, Soojin Lee 14 • GABJU, Soojin Lee 16 • ROBERT, Soojin Lee 21 • RABBIT STARVATION, Lara Koebke 25 • THIS WILL CAUSE PAIN, Hallie Chametzky 28 • DONALD, Emily Henderson
SEXUAL VIOLENCE
33 • AGAINST THE BODY AGAINST THE NAME, Hallie Chametzky 38 • WHILE WE ARE YOUNG, Anthony Lamar Reid 42 • DON’T DISCREDIT ME, Alex Haller 47 • A QUESTION, Anya Sczerzenie 49 • EL NARCO: MEXICO’S FALSE PROPHETS, Alejandra Santander
Amendment Art Award Winner Amendment Literary Award Winner Amendment Essay Contest Winner CONTENT WARNING
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Depicted: a typical slave skirt made of osnaburg, a common fabric worn by slaves and adorned with 54 stars embroidered to represent the 54 countries in Africa rather than the 50 states.
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BLACK POWER FLAG WITH SKIRT Alana Edwards
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POLICE BRUTALITY AND BLOOD
Winner of 2017 Amendment Art Award
This content has been removed to comply with Issuu’s Community and Safe Mode guidelines.
ENOUGH Austin Miles
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BLACKISH BLUES by Tyshawn Smithers
Every night, as the star had risen The thought of escape would cross We divulged our truths and hearkened their lies Over pain that would never leave and freedom that was lost Inquiring the Man Upstairs, we questioned “what did we do?� Accustomed to torment, death had become lush We wept in the mix of the commotion Become silence, practice prayer, but never you fuss They now cry tears of gas through lesions of incarceration Where brilliance is attacking their might In the backdrop stands an entity feigning duty imbued with silence While Jims are being garnished, and crows soar through the night Too black, too brown, too greasy and animalistic A people are burning from a tattoo-like fire One clause there creates a protest here Oh look, Ferguson is winning but Plessy is tired They claim peace where peace is absent There will be change when separation says bye Grieve, oh grieve, ungrateful supreme For this world shall wither when black things die
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THIS WEIGHT ON MY CHEST Jasper Behrends
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CAGED Jasper Behrends
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LAZY SUSAN by Oliver Mendoza
Forever revolving, catering, objectified by the pecking order. Clueless, worthless, lifeless. Just a caricature of carcasses passed, unadorned by nature. Beckoned, summoned, projected ubiquitously. Infinitely trapped in metastasis as a scapegoat. For the sheep, the swarm, the teeming tyrannical the ravaging race of magnificent misnomers To coddle, pander and indulge the transgressions which coerce pre-destined phases of boundless supremacy just to revolve to cater and be objectified by the pecking order.
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TOY SOLDIERS Eli Vidano
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AMISS by Emily Henderson
A(i)miss(you) When gazing from afar, his skin looks like it should feel of hot burning metal, the reddish tint slipping through the chocolate flesh and upsurging to the surface. As he opens up his mouth you can hear the roar that left his lips, the lips that used to belong to innocence. The chalky aftertaste of the powdery pill used to calm and control the beast lazily gazing at you behind pale lids is easy to sense in his stale breaths. The quivering can be seen in his stance, his bones begin to shake as well, they show through so much more now due to the medicine that makes him frail and sick. The smell of green leaves envelops the cotton that clings to his skin, that stench is now second nature to his presence. A foreign sense of sadness lodges
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in your chest at the sight of such paranoia and fear in a grown man’s eyes. A man old enough to taste the bitter liquor on his tongue, A man old enough to live on his own, cannot. Because the chemicals control his erratic behaviors and frustrations, He is Unstable. Your frustrations and fatigue begin to show through as well, in the form of tears. But you cannot give up on him, because of the promise that bubbles in his blood, which simmers in a familiar rhythm to yours.
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SELF HATRED Logan Sullivan
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NURTURE Logan Sullivan
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PASSAGE OF TIME Logan Sullivan
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Winner of 2017 Amendment Literary Award
MATTHEW by Soojin Lee
The vaulted ceiling of early morning and hemlock canopy float around you like a vulture. I can see your fjord-water-blue eyes from this bird’s eye view. You look up at me—a splayed and pinned Vitruvian man encircled in heavy sleep. You turn your head on a bed of peanut brittle leaves snapping in your ears. Get up, Matt. You are in the woods because you tried to die, again. You don’t remember how you got there but there is a handle of vodka that you emptied spun away from you. Some dirty brown dope, too. Throat rusty and raw, steaming with chemical waste, you shake off the pieces of floor clinging to your back and legs and shoe laces. Your head is thick and splitting at the middle where your brow bone bulges. Your pork-chop-pink petal lips, lovely and improbable in their flat face and sharp angles, pull and twitch in fleshy telegraph rhythms I can’t remember anymore while you gather yourself. “I don’t mean to scare you, Sarah, but one day you might just get a call from someone saying I’m in a ditch somewhere, inconsolably muttering your name over and over. “ I am thinking about you in handcuffs. A couple years before I really knew you. Your dad’s shoulders filling out that orange jumper you’re in and curling forward at the corners. The imitation pine-wood table you are shackled to was probably the same imitation cork beige as the one my keyboard is resting on. Your dad’s eyes are an even deeper blue than yours. His are usually cut like razors set in dry ice, but they’re warmed and bleeding saltwater. His massive frame rapidly losing its emotionless turgor, an ocean flowing out of him. “Please, your honor, my son’s tried to kill himself three times this year. He just needs help. I don’t know what to do anymore.” Other than that time you two went fishing and he didn’t mean to kill that fish, this is the only time you see him cry. Big, bad Greg. He’s built like a wolf and he’s in the business of protecting foreign dignitaries. I wonder when he kissed you
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and held you last. Probably not since you were a baby, that fleshy soft formlessness that he could still relate to. Before you were socialized and began to confuse him, moving with too much agility for him to lock onto you. Cleaning his guns and calculating the chess of his life was much simpler. Point A to B. Black backpack full of tactical gear and clear acetate voices in his ear driving a bomb-proof Cadillac- but Greg can’t protect his baby from his death drive. He kisses my cheek and hugs me and even though I am looking at your coffin over his shoulder. I can feel your yearning. He used to choke on his tenderness like it was wrenched out of him, like his heart was gagging. He would cough when he said hello to me softly, trying not to scare me. Our first hug, but he is not opening the door for me so I can bring you waffles with blueberries and watch you iron and starch your shirt. I miss you so much.
GABJU “Noona… oohraeji-masaeyo… na-nin… gaenchanahyo…” 1 My mom is sitting at my brother’s desk sobbing. I discovered her here in my brother’s emptied room—wiping her snot and tears with the back of her hand while she rhythmically crumples and un-crumples one of my brother’s shirts. It is a time at night when we are both wearing only oversized t-shirts. I stand next to her and hold her. We look like two adolescent girls at a sleepover. I wonder if my mom and imo held each other like this when they got the news. “He… he just looks so much like him...” My brother is the same age as my mom’s little brother was when he died. Earlier that day we moved my brother into his dorm. My mom didn’t shed a single tear or coo sad I-loveyou’s. She doted on him with typical Korean excess instead.
1 “Big sister… please don’t cry… I am… I am okay”
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Fiddling with this and that until the care became unbearable and mutated, like it always does, into a pillow pressed firmly across your face. I finally understand the intensity of her overbearing and anxious parenting. It is inextricably tangled into the whole of human existence. Everyone leaves. My best friend and exlover, barely a man, gets locked in a closed casket. Uncle Gab, carrying the entirety of the American dream on his shoulders, throbbing with youthful promise, falls asleep on his way home. Young and old. Far and familiar. Death is indiscriminate. Your love and care is completely irrelevant. Still, you can’t help but indulge yourself. You cling to their ankles, but nothing tethers anyone here. That shared blood spills out all over a car seat wrapped around an 18-wheeler just like everyone else’s. And then my family huddled closer and folded tighter. Korean immigrants are notoriously insular to begin with, but their world shrunk to a whisper and my grandma laid in her yoh for three months straight—a desiccated carapace of grief. They packed away Gab into a box and then every Earthly artifact into another. I have only seen one picture of him which I shortsightedly destroyed. My seven year old self, still barely relating to human beings, was more interested in the dog in the picture than a stranger with my flesh and blood. I cut out his dog and put it in a locket. His name was Bekkop and he’s spraying snow everywhere like a purposeful homage to his namesake. An all-white hulking mass of a German Shepherd. Big ears, brown nose and Gab’s pride and joy. Gab is beaming and my mom is opening her mouth loud, beaming with just as much light. I keep picturing him in the winter time even though he died in the summer of his first year at Cornell. He is standing in a phone booth wearing a walnut-brown distressed leather jacket with a sheepskin collar and big tortoise shell glasses. He’s got my kind of thick straight-straight black hair sweeping around his head. I can see his breath. He’s on the side of a highway somewhere and everything is covered by a thin veil of snow. It’s still. The street light’s beam is pouring down around him, a
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cone of light in the darkness of make-believe, ready to pull him out of this fake memory. I can hear the sound of his tenderness making his Korean sound like a bell on a mountain breeze: “Noona.”
ROBERT Our family went from pinching our cheeks to making us share our food. No one really noticed how much you looked like dad until your growth spurt that, like a trowel, spread your baby fat out neat and thin. Your cheekbones are high and exposed now. Our faces and bodies growing into the architecture of our father’s youth. The leylines of this vanished state are on our knees and thighs and your back. There is a bright pink dress with cream polka dots the size of 500 won coins and shoulder straps fastened with hot pink plastic. I pass this dress in a shop window every morning on the way to dad’s office in Suyu, Seoul. It’s summer and we are with our estranged father in our estranged home. I am 12 and I think that dress will solve my problems. I will look good and someone will like me enough to relieve my left hand of its duties to my right hand, which holds it at night so I can pretend it is someone else. It takes me a month to work up the courage one night on our walk home to ask dad and you to wait a minute. My Korean is as clumsy and undeveloped as my body but I ask the ahjumma1 if I can try on the dress. My dad pushes his phone through the curtain. Mom is on the other end. I hang up the phone, change, and run home in the dark because yes, mom, I have noticed. I run like I’m running away from every beautiful woman I have seen that doesn’t look like me: statuesque Korean women whose thighs don’t chafe and bone structures don’t compel their moms to ask if they want to get their cheekbones shaved down. 1 *Ahjumma- roughly translates to “m’am” but it is a nuanced term of respect for an older woman.
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BEAUTY AND POWER Jini Park
All the notes of our door click and bang and squeak. You are home and the symphony ends before it begins. Quiet. You are limping and your face is sweat-polished with stoicism. Summer two-a-days. Right hand holds an ice pack to your knee but you keep all of your gear on. You don’t sit down. You tower over me in your white plastic armor. You are getting ready for your second daily manhood mass. A mass that begins with Coach Woodfield holding a football over all of your heads, everyone shouting “kill, kill, kill” in unison. We share this masochism but we express it differently. Maybe all of this will make you feel more whole the way my runs will make me a woman. Cut you up and carve you out the way my one grapefruit, one avocado, and two miles do. Ten stories up in Seoul and you’re more handsome than ever. We are standing in the elevator of dad’s apartment building. You’ve finished college and I just started but not much has changed. I watch you make silly faces in the mirror mounted in the elevator. You are pretending to amuse yourself but you are just scrutinizing yourself. This is before the idea of fitness
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being equated to sex appeal has found much of a foothold in Korea so there aren’t many gyms or men who look like you. It’s lots of white steamed rice and fat-marbled beef and svelte men in sharp outfits you don’t understand. The fat you are looking for isn’t there when you press the flesh between your finger and thumb together, demarcating it as your last barrier to satisfaction. Your plane leaves two weeks before mine because you want to be back in the gym. It’s your 26th birthday and you and your girlfriend, Sharon, make a reservation. You want to see where I work. I lie and tell you I can’t get the day off. Cook’s hours, sorry, but come in anyways. I see you in the back. Table 20. If I was working, you’d be right next to me on the other side of my station. The lighting is dim but I got my 100 watts on and our dad’s dimples burrow deep while we embrace. I did it! I surprised you! This is my first time spending time with Sharon and I want to get on all fours with my palms down. I want to stand up and get back down over and over. Pray to her like dad showed me in all those temples. Mom thinks she’s ugly but mom is a fucking bitch sometimes and if she opened her eyes for a second she would take a knee. You are talking. You are engaged. I feel you love me and it’s because of her- her womanhood and her love. Maybe you’ll be a dad soon and you’ll have ten kids so you can play basketball with them like you talked about.
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SKIN TV Michael Cabezas
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LUCKY RABBIT’S FOOT Eli Vidano
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RABBIT STARVATION by Lara Koebke
Could you listen to yourself tell the truth? Eat the same shit every day and it’ll kill you. Somewhere in the world, the barn is falling apart with the mice still inside– It echoes in the temples of the fat summer flies. Then who is left to bless this dirty winter world? Not we, who reap the salt of scorched earth While we turn our eyes to Rorschach stars.
Design by Lizzy Cox
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11TH CENTURY UYGHUR SCHOLAR MAHMUD AL-KASHIGARI Logan Sullivan
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MY CULTURE, UYGHUR DANCE Logan Sullivan “Uyghurs (or Uighurs, Uygurs) are ethnically and culturally a Turkic people living in the areas of Central Asia commonly known as East Turkestan. Today, Uyghurs practice a moderate form of Islam and lead predominantly secular lives. There are an estimated 20 million Uyghurs living in East Turkestan and abroad, though Chinese sources put the number at 11.2 million… the existence of the Uyghur nation is under threat as the Chinese government continues to carry out deliberate policies opposing centuries-old tradition, culture & religion. Human rights violations remain pervasive including persecution on cultural and religious grounds, arbitrary arrests and the silencing of peaceful dissent.” - The World Uyghur Congress
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AN UYGHUR MUSLIM LADY Logan Sullivan
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THIS WILL CAUSE PAIN by Hallie Chametzky
a word of warning / your muscles will begin to tire / even when you have chosen something you believe to be comfortable / certain ones will ache, there may be shaking / your head is heavier than you think, your neck weaker / looking in one direction will cause pain / you will not think, at first, that you are twisting your back / you are / at some point you will come to realize this because it will cause you pain / after this, lean your back against something, if possible not all rooms will have four walls / in some people will pass by / they may look, but not if there is a child / the child will be picked up and they will run / you will feel both like laughing and like shrinking / you will be very aware of your breasts / people may come and go and move about / you will remain / do not let their moving move you / it is the remaining which causes pain
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ALL SHAPES AND SIZES Eli Vidano
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ST. SEBASTIAN Yelyzaveta Shevchenko
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CW
SEXUAL VIOLENCE
DONALD By Emily Henderson
Isn’t it ironic how that was your name too? My modern breakup was spent Tinder swiping, hoping to bang away the void left empty by shitty girlfriends. I should’ve never said yes. When has a midnight tinder hook ever gone well? Your front door was covered in Christmas wrapping paper to cover the chunks of wood you had taken out. Interpreting the snowmen on your door as a gift, like some toddler on Christmas, only left me empty handed. When I said no why didn’t you just believe me? He was 6’10”. At the thought of having sex with someone almost 2 feet taller than me and who would, without a doubt, be “hung,” I was nervous, and told him I didn’t want to go there with him. He said, “I’ll just stretch you out,” in case I changed my mind. I didn’t. The of has yourbeen fingers insidetoof me didn’t give me Thisfeeling content removed comply with Issuu’s pleasure, just frustration. And not even the kind of sexual Community and Safe Mode guidelines. frustration that tells me to anticipate climax. A frustration towards myself for what the fuck I was doing with my life. I sat on his couch with my legs clamped together, to avoid the hand attempting to squeeze between my clenched thighs. Why didn’t I leave then? I don’t know. I felt some obligation to myself, to try it out, to be with a guy. Have straight sex. I felt an obligation to him too. That I had to put out or I had wasted my time and his by driving almost an hour to see him. He said, “Let’s test your reflexes.” You know when the doctor hits you with a plastic mallet and you kick your leg? Well, a real metal hammer smashed in my kneecap, jolting me forward and onto the stale, rough carpet, mainly in shock. No blood, no broken bones, just a little pain and future soreness. What hit me harder than the hammer was the disappointment in myself. Disappointed that I still stayed.
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He took this opportunity to force his hands back to the mound previously protected by my knees. My reflexes were still on my side, with my palms smacking his paws before they could begin to knead into my vagina again. Instead of his intended target, his fingertips grasped onto the small roll of flesh around my midsection cleverly hidden beneath my tee shirt. Embarrassed by my fat, I shyly pried off his fingers, which prompted the next activity on his agenda. “Let’s do crunches,” he said. Of course, a 6’10” athletic, basketball player enjoys doing crunches, especially at 3 am on a Saturday, but most don’t. I had shrunken at least two sizes during summer because my recent heartbreak tanked my appetite and destroyed my ability to stomach any type of food. He was not even trying to destroy my self-esteem. He was just that good at it. Ravaged by own stupidity and failure, I did the crunches. This content has been removed to comply with Issuu’s After completing my “necessary” athletic activity, he talked Community and Safe Mode guidelines. to me about his life, his exes, and his anger issues. He said, “Lemme show you how strong I am.” I watched him slam his palm into his door. Then, as if he wanted to show me how his front door reached its current fate, he proceeded to break his bedroom door off the hinges with his fists. At that moment, I realized how lucky I was to still be alive. He never stopped trying to get in my pants that night and I never left. I watched him play video games and attempted to ignore the stench of literal crap that his breath released into the air. I slept in bed next to him, avoiding the thoughts slamming around in my head, seeking an explanation for what I was allowing to happen. When we woke up in the morning, we worked in silence to gather my belongings. He walked me to my car and told me he wanted to see me again. I blocked his number the second my
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car made the left off his street onto the highway. I drove home with (a painful, dull ache in my core and) the windows down, attempting to remove the disgusting smell that reminded me of my own weakness. Bellowing laughter and you’re such an idiot is all I get from my friends when I tell them this story. Trust me, I know. Donald. An opportunist, A man who uses his strength and fear-inducing power to get what hecontent wants. has been removed to comply with Issuu’s This Ironic how that name too, huh? Community andwas Safeyour Mode guidelines. I still haven’t deleted Tinder.
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MONOMANIA Nia Campbell
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CW
SELF HARM
UNHEALTHY DEVELOPMENT Elise Ketch
This content has been removed to comply with Issuu’s Community and Safe Mode guidelines.
There is something off about growing up in Woodbridge. Maybe it’s the weather.
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AGAINST THE BODY AGAINST THE NAME by Hallie Chametzky
I. It chisels at the joint filling, being called repeatedly by the wrong name. The feeling of body crashing title wears away at the cartilage. It’s no wonder the flesh here absorbs itself keep folding the paper in half, denser and smaller until no more halves can be found. How does this body belong to me? In the way of a thought? A meal? A name? In the way of holding someone else’s burning cigarette? I am being made of something outside myself, we are made of something edible and impermanent. II. When was the last time you learned a new name? Do you remember? Think back to it, say the name, put it in a larger room, now say it again. Do you remember how your mouth learned this trick? Does your tongue feel the same as it did before? Recall the face of the name. Can you remember the way the bones bulged against the skin? Which parts were soft? Which were hard? Think about what you are missing, fill them in with the letters of the name. Do you remember the length of the sleeves? Do you remember all of the colors? This thing you’ve newly learned has had weight for longer since before you noticed. Think of the places it may have moved the earth.
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III. I wonder as I undress if he is surprised at how much there is. Some of them want to own this thing which is ancient and timeless and vast. I wonder how he thinks he will hold it when it is made of fruit trees and waves and the outermost edge of the universe. I am growing in ways we can not watch or grip There is a knowing, a seen, in this body. IV. When was the last time you heard your own name spoken aloud? Did it come out the way you thought it would? Did it fall or fly? Did you catch it in the way of a tossed ball or a disease? Think of how your feet shifted on the earth to accommodate your name’s weight. Now put your name down and pull it open, look into the holes in your name, fill them with the ashes of your self, weigh the ashes against the body against the name, take the one which weighs most and throw it. Does it fly the way you thought it would? Write down the sound your name makes when it touches the earth again.
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V. Think back to the first time you held your name in your hands the way you coveted the name and then the way you paraded it. Do you remember how much your small body felt when you finally knew what it was called? Take back this feeling this selfish gluttonous pride rub it into your skin until you feel it in the flesh keep going into the bones. Remind yourself that this body is made of words this name is made of meat that the weight of it all keeps you tied to the earth. The name cannot be folded and the body cannot be burned. You are not made of ashes You are heavy with identity a load you and the earth will share together holding firmly and gently to the weight of it.
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THOROUGHLY PURGED Nia Campbell
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CW
GENATALIA
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ONE EYED MONSTERS Shereece Jessup
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WHILE WE ARE YOUNG By Anthony Lamar Reid
While the here is now, let’s be the Gods we pray to. Let us be present. For now, while we are here, let us be here. The future is a projection of transfixed worry. A streaming apparition of the to be, the next, the happening soon, the forever, the encoded anxiety of am I. Forget the future, become the I am, because you are. Tomorrow is never. Now is here, forever. Be here, now forever. Push against it, you can. Push against the hardness of that thing that keeps you enthralled in the unknown- the thing that abducts your mind into, yet created, time. The mind is more powerful than any clock. The mind creates time and tells it. The mind pushes itself into the place where the then was once here and knows that if it stays there, it can be anywhere. Be everywhere in your mind. We have here, everywhere. Reclaim the body- be aware of the push, the push into that place. Retract that which extends there. Unseat yourself from the dinner you can afford because of the job that you are going to get, with the degree you earned, next to the man that loves you now, in the body that you now love too. And if ever you do not know where to extend, where to reach, what to hold on to, know that you can hold on to yourself. Hold yourself right here. And let there be light and wind, and wings, and love, and wings of love, and life, and laughter, and happiness, and living laughter that loves happiness and takes flight with wings into the wind right here into the light. I want the happiness to be infectious. I want it to be an epidemic. So happy, it’s frighten-
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ing. Obese in this distilled joy. Eyes rutting over from the fat in our cheeks, when we smile. Thunderous applause from our thick palms, applause for ourselves. Hearts almost stopping, clogged, from the happiness, struggling happily, to trudge through it. Belly convulsing in indulgent laughs about almost nothing except for the pure humor of laugher. While we are young let’s laugh. Let’s live right now, for now- like the only ones left. While we are young let’s care the most. Let’s be here where the sun always shines and the air is cool. Most of us are hurting to be alive, anyway. So let’s live, while we are young. Let’s sit under our halos now, we deserve that. Be the God who saved you. Save yourself. For God’s sake, let’s sit, if we are sitting. Let’s eat what we are eating while we are eating it- good things. Let’s live in the books we read right as we entreat the words. Hug each other tight while we are gripping each other. Be into each other, deep, while we are right here. Let’s do what we are doing while we are doing it. Let us love and be here.
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TALKING DEAD Amanda Stephen
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TV GUY Amanda Stephen
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DON’T DISCREDIT ME by Alex Haller
“snowflake” you call me, wrapping me up in this snowstorm of inexactness of generalization gnashing your teeth, you fill with rage when i express my own discontent in the disconnect between life for you and death for another. do you not understand the way your words impact each other? blind to your own resentment deaf to your own displeasure do you see the consequences of your actions? do you know how it feels? you zealot you uncompromising fanatic you hard-headed dog, bearing teeth when all we want is peace.
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EMBROIDERY OF ANGELA DAVIS, 2017 Angelique Scott and Christina Hairston
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UNTITLED D’Anna Lee
UNTITLED D’Anna Lee
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STILL LIFE IN CULTURE D’Anna Lee
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A QUESTION by Anya Sczerzenie
Can I really say I’m bi if I’ve never dated a girl? If the only kiss I’ve ever had was wind-whipped high-school hetero, us sixteen and leaning against snow-capped trees with his lips on mine—a kiss with the boy who always thought something was “up” with me, thought that I wasn’t all straight before I even knew it myself? Am I bi if I don’t “look gay” and no one ever looks sideways at me on the street, if I never clip my hair short or wear converse like the queer girls that now sometimes grace my screen, if no one “suspects” me—as if it’s something to hide? Am I bi if every girl I’ve ever liked was straight, or unattainable, or uninterested, if I can’t seem to flirt with girls, if I’m petrified by their gorgeous smiles and intimidating strikes of winged eyeliner? If I knocked over a broom trying to talk to the beautiful new hire at my high-school job and if I’ve forgotten my order in front of girls at cash registers and if I fell in love with my friend and never told her? Am I bisexual if as some men like to claim, all women are bisexual? Or if, we’re all a little bi? Am I bi if people knock the “B” out of the acronym, am I bi if, as they say, it’s simply indecision or greed? If I really don’t know what I want? Am I bi if I wear a white dress and marry a man, have children, live a life as straight as an arrow in a nuclear family? And am I bi if even then I still sit up questioning at 2am, wondering what it must be like to kiss a girl’s soft lips, until even this thought fades into the background of my divided mind, until I only know that in this binary I can’t be one or the other... Am I still bi then?
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MULE Michael Cabezas
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Winner of 2017 Amendment Essay Contest
EL NARCO: MEXICO’S FALSE PROPHETS By Alejandra Santander
In the barrios of northern Mexico, bordering the outskirts of the Sonoran mountains and the highlands of the Sinaloan desert, a young boy’s skinny arms carried an AR-15, his most prized possession; the only thing of worth in his two-bedroom, dirt-floored house. It was a gift from his father that years later, Junior would dip in gold and encase on the mantel of his mansion’s fireplace. The boy, Ismael Junior, was the man of the house when his dad was gone. His father would leave— sometimes for days—and before he left would say “protect your mother and sister, I’ll be back soon,” and would come back bloody and beaten. He was working his way up, paying his dues. Ismael Jr. was born sometime in the 1980s before the rise of the Sinaloan cartel and his father’s subsequent dominance over Mexico’s northern trade routes, all administered from Ciudad Juárez, Narco-country and the murder capital of the world. His father Ismael Zambada García, born in the 1950s, was the spitting image of a Mexican narco. Ismael Senior, like his father and his father’s father, was born poor, brown, and marginalized; an “Indio” in the fullest sense of the word. Ismael Sr. could not pay for college, let alone high-school, yet sought respect and power, the kind that is now overflowing in his line of work. To live with dignity in a rural state like Sinaloa, earn a decent living, and provide the same for your children, you were either college-educated or, as Ismael Sr. discovered in the 1970s, dangerous. Influence was scarce and limited in Mexico. The drug trade was a family business, and the narcos were weary of strangers. Ismael Sr. went by many names: “El Mayo,” “El del Sombrero,” and “El Padrino” to name a few. His son and successor, “El Mayito,” was the eldest of eight and the inheritor of his father’s empire. Ismael Sr. could not have been prouder. His son was learning the trade and would take good care of the
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business when he was gone. Blood ties are one of the most defining characteristics of Mexican cartels — nothing comes before family. In a market where the most powerful cartels kill for control and territory, loyalty is a must. Ismael Sr. is the current leader, or “padre” of the Sinaloan cartel. This strange title, meaning father, explains perfectly why the narco not only threatens Mexico’s security and economy, but its culture as well. The narco is the father of thousands; from the child soldier selling the product by the gram on the street corner, to the state’s governor, who occasionally looks the other way when “El Mayo” gives the order. According to a report from the Secretary General of National Public Safety, about 60 percent of Sinaloa’s state police force are corrupt or bribed by the cartels. Latin culture, and its emphasis on family creates a bureaucratization of power comparable to that of the Roman empire. The Sinaloan cartel is a highly organized international crime syndicate with more than 500,000 members operating in more than 20 countries, eight of which are overseas. In 2010, it was estimated that state and local police officers in some regions of Mexico accepted more than 100 million dollars per month in bribes from drug-traffickers (Rosen & Zepeda). Being a part of Ismael’s organization means more to a poor, illiterate orphan from the slums of Badiraguato than we can ever imagine. To wear the symbol of the cartela—a skeleton on a cross—is a badge of honor and it brings with it a sense of worth and pride. But the greatest threat el narco poses, the one that plays into the psyche of the masses, those with no access to health care and schooling, is control. The narco is feared yet respected, despised but honored. And in a country like Mexico, where crime and poverty are imparted from the nation’s highest office and trickle down to the local cops, for million of people the narco feels like the lesser of two evils. Why does Mexico’s poorest class admire the narco? Why is it a young man’s biggest ambition to join a cartel and the local beauty-pageant winner’s dream to marry one? The same can be asked of cowboys. American western films all star the
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same man: a rugged outlaw who plays the authorities and gets the girl. He steals and lies, ending anyone who gets in his way. The audience loves him — he takes care of the poor, only cheating the rich or powerful and gives back to the people. The narco and the cowboy share many qualities; ultimately both are what every young man wants to be. The only difference between an American boy and a Mexican boy is opportunity. When we speak of crime, we are really talking about poverty. In a country where the world’s richest man resides, where more than 53.3 million people live in poverty, and 11.5 million in extreme poverty (Watt & Zepeda), a cartel feels like the easy out, especially when they are prophet-ized in a cult of personality that borders on idolatry. A Robin Hood of sorts, Jesús Malverde, one of the earliest known drug-lords and a man whose existence is still questioned, is the perfect example of the sort of narcoculture that glorifies the Drug War. Known as the “generous bandit,” “angel of the poor,” and the “narco-saint,” Jesús’ parents died when he was a child. His effigy is worshiped in the most obscure of villages and in the poorest of households. The visage of Malverde is enshrined in Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa. Every year on the anniversary of his death, a large party is held at Malverde’s shrine. He is an outlaw, a bandit, and the “patron saint” of the region’s drug trade. According to a testimony given in Grillo’s El Narco, he stole from the “rich, drug-addicted gringos and gave back to the people of Sinaloa’s villages in the form of schools and infrastructure.” Narcoculture feeds on this image: the glorification of the narco is not rooted in the murder and torture they regularly impart, but on the people’s sense of pride in their success and rebellion. They are referred to as “guererros” or “insurgentes.” Narcoculture, in a way, is an extension of Mexican culture: a strange combination of strict Spanish Catholicism, obscure mystic cults of the rural, poor regions of the country, and the rebel spirit of the north; an outlaw perspective that the desert can claim ownership of. Righteousness and machismo are both crucial aspects of el narco. Grillo interviewed “El Gonzalo” (real name unknown),
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a hitman for numerous drug gangs from a Mexican prison. When Ioan asked “El Gonzalo” about his past, he said he had “enjoyed power in a country where the poor are so powerless, had a latest model truck and could pay for houses in cash, had four wives and children scattered all over.” Grillo, after years of studying the Drug War and narcoculture, called these mafia capitalists and kingpins “the new dictators and the new rebels of Latin-America.” Drug lords have been likened to revolutionaries. In Mexico City circling the rotunda of the city’s most affluent borough is the street known as “Insurgentes,” named after the founding men who rebelled against the Spanish Crown, taking back their land and their name. Comparing narcos to honorable revolutionaries is just the tip of the metaphorical iceberg. Narcocorridos is one of Mexico’s most popular musical styles, and narcocultura is its most emblematic form. Literally translated into “drug ballad,” these songs can be folksy or techno, mainstream or regional. But they all have one thing in common: the adoration and celebration of narcos. Whether it be Kalashnikovs, cocaine kingpins, or contract killings, all glorify drug traffickers. The narcos’ violence is now so entrenched in society that when the cartels are tearing each other up in turf wars and shipping drugs across state lines, these ballads provide the soundtrack. As mentioned before, “el padre” or “el padrino” (godfather) is the mafia leader at the heart of narcoculture. He is a selfmade man, born to rags but now wrapped in riches; he defies the Mexican army and the DEA; he is the benefactor who hands out rolls of dollar bills to hungry mothers, and then disappears into the red and purple sunset of the desert sky. Narcos, like the land that bore them, are rebels: frontiersman who spit in the face of politicians and the establishment. On the streets of Sinaloa, they are referred to as los valientes, “the brave ones.” Today, the children of the narcos of the 70s, whose fathers were born in slums and ranches, exiled by class and frowned upon by the country’s elite, now attend the most expensive private schools. Sinaloan narcos have long been a part of the state’s “high society.” Hanging around the sons of capos can be compared to gangster-culture in the US. This hybrid society
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of wealth and crime has produced “the buchones,” men who wear cowboy hats and Jordans, and women who don big rancher belts and fake breasts under tight Gucci minis. Felipe Calderón, nicknamed “Mission Impossible” for his stance on the Drug War, after only 10 days in office increased the deployment of troops on the streets to almost 50,000, but things quickly got worse. The war was deadlier than ever, and violence multiplied exponentially. In the first four years of Calderon’s administration, the Drug war claimed a stunning 34,000 lives (Rosen & Zepeda). A study done in 2015 by PBS showed that from 2007-2014 alone, more than 164,000 civilians died in Mexico�more than in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Mexico’s interior minister says 26,121 people disappeared from 2006-2012. The reality hidden behind pet tigers and golden chains is too hideous to blur with the mirage of fame and fortune. The narcos may prophet-ize themselves through social media, but the same tools ruled by their ego will be their demise. The people can now witness first-hand the truth behind el narco. And like Ismael Sr., who looked around at the injustice of his country, the vast income inequality, and the despotism of government imparted on his people, they too do not like what they see. Works Cited Breslow, Jason M. “FRONTLINE.” PBS. PBS, 27 July 2015. Web. 26 Nov. 2016. Grillo, Ioan. El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency. New York: Bloomsbury, 2011. Print. Gurney, Written By Kyra. “Corrupt Mexico Police Concentrated in 10 States.” Corrupt Mexico Police Concentrated in 10 States. InSight Crime, 27 Nov. 2014. Web. 26 Nov. 2016. Rosen, Jonathan D., and Roberto Zepeda MartÃnez. Organized Crime, Drug Trafficking, and Violence in Mexico: The Transition from Felipe Calderón to Enrique Peña Nieto. Lanham, MD: Lexington, an Imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Group, 2016. Print. Watt, Peter, and Roberto Zepeda MartÃnez. Drug War Mexico: Politics, Neo liberalism and Violence in the New Narcoeconomy. London: Zed, 2012. Print.
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