Dreamscapes

DREAMSCAPES

The Wave Spring 2022

Editors’ Note

Dear reader,

Dreamscapes is the culmination of an interaction between the people of this community and our dreams, wishes, desires and even nightmares. Our dreams are what we hold close to us, whether we share them or not. We are honored that the people in this publication have chosen to share their dreams with us. We wanted to create a space where we could honor everyone’s dreams, including not just their hopes but also their nightmares, their half-formed desires, their fears or their grief. Dreamscapes was an issue formed from the idea that softness and love are powerful things. A big big thanks to our team: we could not have done any of this without you. We hold space for both our silly and serious emotions, our joyful and tearful ones, and we invite you into this space. Into dreamscape.

Amelia Ao and Nur Kader Editorial Directors

Cover Art Qijia Zhou

Cover Font Clattering by Creatype Studio

Letter to Cicada Chase Melton

Sometimes Happiness Is Rebellion Julia Bhuiyan

Lazarus Amelia Ao Boy, Eyepatch Lina Cho Reverie Catherine Yeo

The Night Groaned Samantha H. Chung Otter Lara Zeng The False Mirror Samantha H. Chung Forest Al Xin green Anika Lakhani Sampaguita Abigail Rose Lockhart-Calpito Requiem Grace Wang a scientific wish for you Brammy Rajakumar drip drop Alicia Shao ivy (qijia’s version) Qijia Zhou Helios is, was, is my friend Nur Kader Salinas Isa Li

A Recipe for All Five Senses Primo Lagaso Goldberg Dog Days Cindy Yang

I Meet My Future Self and She Asks Me Nur Kader Golden Shores Ben Cammarata

4–5 5 6 6–7 8 9 10 10–11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 18 19 20–21 20 22 23

Editorial Directors

Amelia Ao Nur Kader

Editorial

Sharmila Dey Will Hahn

Alex Lee Yooni Park Jeanna Shaw Teddy Tsui-Rosen Benjy Wall-Feng Kathy Zhong Jason Zhou

Business Will Hahn

Content Design

Alex Lee (chair) Sharmila Dey Teddy Tsui-Rosen Benjy Wall-Feng

Social Media Kathy Zhong

Web Experience Yooni Park

Letter to Cicada

Chase Melton

Cicada on the sidewalk,

I’m not mad at you. I’ve had seventeen years to make this deduction; in that time I’ve moved so far from the Virginia house that I scarcely remember the color of the carpet anymore. Just the pattern remains; decidedly a tread-worn Persian, with some ornate border like crown molding. You may not remember what you could possibly have done to anger me. After all, I was so young — but I guess relative to you even a toddler would look monstrous. No offense. This is what I want to say before the other things: I don’t have the privilege of hibernation, of selecting a window of time in which to be out, to be vulnerable, to let the world pick at me. Only to retreat to my hole when the going gets tough. I have to be here, inside me, outside, all the time. Do you know what that’s like?

Tonight the rain is freezing — not frozen and not exactly liquid — it’s in a transitory state, outside our classifications. It’s freezing on the windows of my dorm room, freezing into the cracks in the sill, stealing in. If you were here, you wouldn’t be; you’d be deep underground, crust around your mandibles, drool on your plated chin. I walk below a small tree planted under a lamppost. The yellow light is fractal, divided but restored, made more whole by the branches that split it. I watch, silent, from underneath. Then I keep walking.

I know what you’ll say, and yes, I have found room in my life for romance. Actually, you’ve missed a lot. The best was a pomegranate bush, fully fruiting, on a mountainside in Palos Verdes. From that slope I could see the ocean and the desert all at once. Islands dotted the sea like portals to a less salty dimension. Joshua trees reached for God. I stared with purpose into the glare, and you’ll be happy to hear I thought of you. You were probably sleeping.

What I’m getting at was that time, seventeen years ago, when I picked you up off the sidewalk outside the house in Virginia. I think about it now with fear for my past self. What

treacherous pathways did you reveal by presenting me, an unknowing child, with a vital choice? How dangerous could it really be, the act of radical trust?

I’m re-telling our story to re-remember, and sending it to you to remind you that your actions don’t end when you do them. That at any given moment, you’re doing everything you’ve ever done all over again, to every person to which you’ve ever done anything, all at once. Maybe I’m making sense; maybe I’m not. You’ve had years and years, though, to figure me out.

But we were our own little secret. Do you remember the deal we made? Respect to my mother’s sensitive ears; no chirping inside or after 9 p.m. In exchange I agreed to let you out of the cardboard box. You flew in perfect triangles around my room until you collapsed. Then we would talk and talk. You know this.

That night I said hey, cicada. You said what. I said, why does it feel like you chose me? You said I don’t know.

The conversation went on.

You could see something budding in me — it was a simple sadness, but a big one, and unusual for a three-year-old. I’d known it was coming, in fact it had already begun spilling out of me, sadness like a blue mold; pathogenic, beautiful. Dark blue, pen-ink sadness on my lumpy fingers, smudging white kitchen tiles, leaving sickly shadows in the bathtub. It brought me friends on the playground, but the wrong ones. Troubled children who scratched at their bodies as if trying to shed. Above all it was unsettling; what had I, at such a young age, already found in this world to be sad about? Hell if I knew, but I had been good to you. You wanted to help. You had a solution for me, your poor, sad, fallible human best friend.

The hole in the Persian carpet had been there for ages, but that night you made it change colors; it shone purple and silver, swirling

Sometimes Happiness Is Rebellion

metallic and glowing up at me. I remember you let out a chirp, not like your tree-borne screams, this one deeper, more percussive. It was loud; it was past 9 p.m. The hole opened wider, the circumference of my waist now, and swirling, beckoning me. I knew you wanted me to go with you, I knew the hole led somewhere underground, to your dreamy haven of utter absence. I knew not just every person got this opportunity. Fear kicked, high in my chest. I could leave this world, my unfounded, aching sadness, for your hollow nook, devoid of feeling. Seventeen years. I looked at you and I couldn’t figure out what color your eyes were. I hopped over the hole, left you in my room. I’m sorry, but what could I have done? I remembered there were things I in fact liked to feel; a wet sandbox, an unusually smooth portion of my bottom lip. This part you don’t know: I tiptoed down the hallway, crawled into my mother’s bed.

The next morning I met the husk of you; you had scribbled an address on a Post-It next to your burnt-up skeleton, in case I changed my mind. Today is seventeen years since then. Somewhere south of here, you’re out in all your glory, screaming at the gods. I’m happy for you. Today I woke up and went on a hike. I picked a pomegranate from the bush and scooped out the seeds and nibbled on them. I finished a novel. Went on a date, even. Went to work, of course. My sisters and I watched a TV show until late at night, then I went to bed and fell asleep. I remember, in the morning after you left, I slid off my mother’s bed into a square of sunlight. I tugged her hand and insisted, “I’m awake, I’m awake!”

So—no; I’m not angry, you showed me earnestness before any one human ever did. I hope you can find in my declination of your offer a well wish. I want all my life split into several reams of seventeen years; I want to eat and sleep and wake and wait to hear you scream.

Your friend.

Julia Bhuiyan

Ao

Boy, Eyepatch

Lina Cho

The walk to and from the optometrist was surprisingly short. Jeon Sujin was grateful that she’d been able to find a clinic in the neighborhood, and one run by Koreans, too. Her husband had the cars most days, and public transport was a beast not yet conquered.

As they walked, Sujin held Carter’s right hand with her left. She looked down. She’d been so concentrated on finding the correct way home that she hadn’t noticed that her son was engaged in some deep study of his own.

Carter, using his free hand, covered one eye and walked a couple of paces, looking around as he did so. Left at the houses, mostly one-story and made of dark, red-brown brick; right at the wide, uneven road with the occasional dawdling car; up at the blue sky hindered occasionally by a drooping, pur-

ple tree. Jacaranda, Sujin recalled.

After around half a minute, Carter shifted his hand to cover the other eye. His chubby hand clasped his face rather tightly, covering all the way from his forehead to halfway down his jaw on one side at a time. This exchange repeated several times before Sujin said something. “Why are you doing that?”

Carter looked up at her, his left hand still covering his right eye. His bad eye, the one that needed the eyepatch. “I’m testing,” he said.

“Testing?”

“Mm. I want to see which eye is weaker.”

“You don’t trust the eye doctor?”

Carter considered the question, and then shook his head vigorously. Wrong, Mum. His hair was getting too long, and it rippled

Lazarus Amelia

restlessly around his eyeline as he moved. Sujin hadn’t been able to find a Korean hairdresser in the area yet, so she’d been putting off getting him a haircut.

“So you do trust the eye doctor?”

“I don’t kno-o-w.” Her son sang the last word, and jumped to avoid a crack in the pavement. It caught Sujin off guard, and his fingers almost ripped out of hers. The walkway was littered with jacaranda flowers, and they were starting to squelch and slide underfoot. Sujin panicked momentarily, thinking that Carter was going to fall. He landed perfectly safely. “I don’t know. Don’t know.”

He sang the song, melody and words unclear to everyone but himself, all the way to their apartment. Carter had to stand on tip-toes to press the button to the fifth floor. It was a Saturday afternoon, but Sujin’s husband was not home. He rarely was. That was what Sujin had liked about him when they were dating; he didn’t seem to like being home. He was always out: eating, walking, drinking, moving, with anyone and everyone who would be his friend. Sujin used to be one of the people who went out with him and spent time in his planet-sized glow, just one of the many asteroids near-colliding with him. No, that wasn’t fair - she’d been more constant than an asteroid. A moon, perhaps.

Of course, the drinking had stopped when she found out she was pregnant with Carter, who had been Chanwoo, back then. And then soon, the eating, the walking, even the moving, had all stopped.

“Mum, where’s the eyepatch?”

Sujin dug through her purse and brought out the eyepatch, which had been so tenderly tucked into a white envelope by the receptionist. She was Korean too — she’d spent even less time in Australia than them, by the looks of it. Her makeup, her sense of style — it was all exactly like the young women Sujin had seen in Hongdae or Apgujeong just six months ago.

“Be careful,” Sujin warned her son, as he took the eyepatch from her. “Do you need help putting it on?”

The optometrist had been apologetic, as she stooped down to explain to Carter at eye level. “It’s to train your right eye to be stronger. Right now, the left eye is doing more than he should, so we’re covering him up for a while. You don’t have to wear it until you get home,” she had added, embarrassed on his behalf.

Now, Carter stood in front of the mirror in the living room, holding the navy eyepatch up

to his face. His left hand gripped the bottom of his shorts, crumpling up the crisp fabric. Sujin stepped up behind him, and guided the eyepatch onto his face, making sure the strap wasn’t too tight. Then she eased the fistful of fabric out of his fingers, and bent down to kiss the small, sweaty palm.

“I’m not sure about this, Mum,” Carter said.

“I know, baby.”

“Do you think I look alright?”

“I think you look handsome. Kind of like a pirate. Or some old, battle-hardened warlord.” “What’s a warlord?”

“Never mind.”

“Will it be off in time for my party?”

“No, I’m sorry. But you shouldn’t worry about that.”

Sujin reached over to stroke the fringe out her son’s eye. Carter’s eighth birthday was coming up, and Sujin had insisted they throw a big party for him. Her husband waved it away: do whatever you want. Carter himself seemed ambivalent about the idea at first. So Sujin spent a month harassing him about a theme — What do you like? What do you want? — until Carter had reluctantly admitted that, lately, he found animals fascinating. Lizards, reptiles, birds, that kind of thing.

Another month was spent tracking down venues. Sujin translated the word for “zoo” into English. And then she googled “best zoos in Sydney.” Hundreds of search results bobbed in front of her, taunting her until she got a headache and had to turn it all off. She typed in “zoo” into her map app. So many red dots showed up that she didn’t bother looking at any of them at all.

Eventually, she braved it and asked the other mums at school what they thought.

“You should take the kids to Taronga! They have this whole cute birthday deal: discounts and balloons and the whole show. They’ll set up a little table for you at the end for the cake and everything.”

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The timbers of our dream wave -r in the wilting serenity

I wonder what is believed what is thought what is to be known and what has been real -tered in our mind a forever mystery A misunderstood trait -or as they still often speak so much to learn as the author -ity

Reverie Catherine Yeo

The Night Groaned Samantha H. Chung

There was a crumbling stone wall at the edge of the old property, and Ellis had decided to climb it. On the other side of the wall, the grass felt springy beneath her sneakers, the air around her cool and comforting. The forest around her barely had the right to call itself a forest. Its few trees were thin and pale, bent from the wind like a violin bow. Fog still hung in the air, and Ellis was reminded that it was still morning. She picked at a scab on her chin.

A beetle scuttled across her path. She stopped short. The beetle settled itself on a dead leaf, stretching itself out contentedly. Ellis stood in the middle of the path, hands clasped behind her back, and watched.

It had chosen a spot of sunlight to lie in — a small focused circle of light that had gotten through the early morning fog. The beetle was shimmering blue and gold in the sunlight, its shell a surprising display of color. It shivered. It shook itself out. It unfolded its glittering wings, one after the other. It seemed to be enjoying itself.

Then it disappeared.

Ellis blinked. She spun in a circle around herself. She sneezed.

Then there it was again — its wings, shimmering against the sun. She picked her way across the path, keeping the glinting wings in her line of sight. The beetle hung in the air, just long enough for Ellis to see it clearly. It was the same one, blue and gold. It wasn’t just the same species; it was the same beetle. Ellis knew.

It took off again, zipping through the forest.

That was all the encouragement she needed. She chased after the beetle, eyes glued to the flashes of blue and gold that flew just out of reach. She tore through shrubs and splashed through puddles. Twigs caught in her hair and spiderwebs clung to her jeans. She was seventeen years old, chasing a bug away from the suburbs of Clark County. It was absurd. It was preposterous. It felt right.

Eventually, though, she did have to stop. She leaned against a tree trunk, hands on her knees, and caught her breath. The beetle hovered in front of her, buzzing. It was blue,

then gold, then gone for good.

She sighed and dusted off her t-shirt. She was becoming aware now of the mud on her shoes and the way her socks were soaked. Ellis hated wet socks. She hated them so much that it took her a moment to realize she was in a section of the forest she didn’t recognize.

Because it was a real forest now. She was surrounded by old trees, gray and gnarled and rough to the touch, and growing so close together that she couldn’t stretch out her arms without hitting at least one. And the fog was gone, replaced by a soft sunlight that dappled leaves and gave a soft glow to the tips of her Converse sneakers. There was no path. Had Ellis been younger, she would have run. She would have run back the way she had come, scared out of her mind to be alone in this blue-gray world, and that fear would have been enough to propel her home. She would have found the path, and the path would have led to the wall, and one short climb later she would have been in her own backyard again, not sure if the new forest had been real or imagined.

But Ellis was seventeen. Rational thought said the path, although she couldn’t see it, was within walking distance. And she had a phone in her pocket, with which she could navigate back home when she chose to return. Forests didn’t go on forever. If she walked in the right direction, rational thought said she would end up where she wanted to go. So with all these rational thoughts in mind, Ellis decided to explore. After all, she was growing curiouser and curiouser.

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Otter

Lara Zeng

Every night an otter came to me, thick billed — in the morning, I was employed — watched children — who were not my own — with my yielding heart, and at night, one bright-eyed otter on its back watched me — from a distance — in its calm water, its body — a thrumming engine. Morning, I rolled dough and cut — off with my teeth — the thick veins — which went down smooth as heat.

Yes, my night creature, facing the sky, floating — untethered. Gathering slick — oil in its fell. Unblinking, while — I saw suns set and — rise and paid no mind. Each quiet visitation, I wanted it more — when I, bone — tired, heaved and rested and — thought of bygone homes— the beast arrived, repelling — wet as it dived, intense in its motion. What do I want — faith — for. I do not carry intention, only — the outstretched hand, reaching nightly. The otter — awake — sees me. Does it disturb me — no. Elsewhere, there is always someone departing.

The False Mirror Samantha H. Chung

Clementine Irwin meets Faye in the caboose of a stationary passenger train parked in Station Accompli four minutes after midnight. She greets her the same way she did the first time — firm handshake, first name followed by last—and immediately tells her that she has done a terrible thing.

“I’ve done a terrible thing,” she says.

“‘Terrible’ is relative,” Faye replies.

“Not in this case.”

Clem has already planned what she was going to say. She says that she has done a terrible thing because they may not have seen each other for fifteen years but she still knows Faye well. She requested to meet tonight, in the caboose of a stationary passenger train parked in Station Accompli, because the crime would have already been committed, and there would no longer be anything Faye could do to prevent it from happening.

There is a painting on the wall on the opposite side of the station that Clem stares at the whole time she is reintroducing herself. The painting is of an enormous eye, a blue sky with clouds where the iris should have been. It almost looks like a window, except Clem knows it is four minutes past midnight and therefore the sky is not blue but black.

“So you’ve finally developed a moral compass,” Faye says.

“I guess I have.”

The train station is closed, the trains locked up for the night. Both Clem and Faye have broken their way in. The night watchman is making his rounds, but Clem knows his schedule well and she knows Faye does too. There are currently five eyes in Station Ac-

compli and they all watch Clementine Irwin with a lazy sort of judgment, the kind that says, “Yes, you may have done something terrible, but who am I to say so?”

It’s an accurate verdict, more or less. There’s no point in trying to get a painting to understand nuance. All the complexity of the thing she has done has been washed out and to be honest, she doesn’t really care.

Faye asks if she has anything more to say.

Clem says not really. At another time, she might have said yes, she might have said I missed you or I loved you or even I’m sorry, but tonight she is too tired and the painted eye is still staring at her from the opposite side of the station, telling her she is morally reprehensible but sort of justified and a wicked person but also probably okay.

She tells Faye not to read the next day’s newspaper.

“We might have been unlucky.”

“You said ‘we,’” Faye says. “So you were working with someone.”

Someone else. So that’s what Faye is worried about. Clem doesn’t have the heart to lie to her.

“There were a lot of people involved,” she answers quietly, “each doing their own little part. I don’t know all of them.”

“Which part did you do?”

It would be so easy to tell the truth. The truth is that two people died during an unmemorable performance of a Shakespeare play and Clementine Irwin was an accessory to their murders. She will never get caught and probably no one will even care because nobody really cares about these things until they’re caught in them.

The truth is that Faye will care. Faye is the one person in the world whom Clem cannot bear telling. She also cannot bear keeping secrets from her.

“Just don’t read the news,” she says. “Not even on your phone.”

“I never read the news.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“It’s too easy to believe.”

“But I’m not lying to you,” Clem says. “Believe me, Faye. I really did do a terrible thing.”

“‘Terrible’ is relative.”

Clem pinches her sleeve behind her back and twists it around her fingers. She can feel the ghosts there where her skin touches skin, a phantom film of blood in the uncomfortable spaces between her fingers, and she no longer wonders why the lady in the play went mad.

Faye doesn’t hide her hands behind her back, because she has nothing to hide. She tells Clem that this will be the last time they speak, most likely ever, so they’d better both make these last words count. Clem thinks that Faye is probably right.

She will never get caught and probably no one will care. She wasn’t even the murderer. All she did was take a pin from her hair and pass it along. Saying this aloud would likely absolve her of some guilt, although not all, in Faye’s opinion. She stays quiet.

The painted eye withholds comment.

Eventually, Faye gets up, says goodbye, and leaves the same illegal way she came. Clementine Irwin remains in Station Accompli, kept company by three eyes — two in her head and one on the wall. They all point inward.

It’s warm in here. Inconspicuous enough to go unsuspected. Still warm enough to unsuspectingly piss you off. I was sitting on my knees — I had to reposition because sweat smothered the backs of my calves.

But I’m sitting by the window, leisurely digesting my food coma, gazing outside with a surprising amount of contentment considering that it’s warm in here. The green smiles back at me am I paranoid to suspect that I’m the frog in the lukewarm pot?

A dragonfly perches motionless on my windowsill. Nature is serenity’s mockery — somebody scoff at how the leaves act so unbothered by this heat. Passive. Easy, quiet, beautiful, Dominatable ... We chop trees down then plant little flowers in our planters. They consent and sway to our will until we are swayed into a reluctant unwillingness to survive without them.

The green swirls and sprawls over you, innocuous, its gorgeous Italian vines suffocating your veins and arteries, awakening your sinuses until it pauses right underneath your scalp, numbing you in the permeating lukewarm until suddenly your eyes open and your flesh sears white under the tip of your upturned nose. Delicate green softens the burning smell. You gracefully submit, contort yourself from an upright position until your fingers grasp for each sweaty Achilles heel.

It’s hot in here. Don’t own yourself, owe yourself — it would do you good to behave well and say yes as you’re told. You like it. Yes, that was an order — but it’s okay, green gave it. It feels good to say yes. Yes, that was an order — but it’s okay, green gave it.

Does he like it? Be serene, just sit still, it’ll be over soon. Appreciate the numbness. It’s okay, he asks if you’re okay so tell him you’re okay — he pushes your head down so be a good girl ... Yes, that was an order — but it’s okay, green gave it.

You’ll bruise his feelings if he thinks you didn’t enjoy it so just keep quiet, beautiful. Is the heater on? There’s steam on the windows.

Leave your keys at the counter, look both ways, close the door, press the lock to keep the green out by the doormat. Just make sure to check if the room is empty before you start crying. Mom asks you what you did on your date and the room turns fragrant, reposeful green buoying into the air from underneath the door crack.

“Just went for coffee. It was fun.” A gentle pat on the back as the numbness underneath your scalp throbs and the leaves rustle outside the window. Mom leaves the room — green releases its grasp and you gasp for morphine.

foliage, wallflower, pretty and pottable. green: lukewarm, deceptively comfortable

Until suddenly I’m removed from the boiling pot and my legs are served to him, a delicacy on a platter.

green Anika Lakhani

Sampaguita

Abigail Rose Lockhart-Calpito

Requiem

Grace Wang

All souls return here. But by dark it was just us, shadowed, haloed in that strange light, and I wanted nothing more than to reach out and touch you. A pink brushstroke, a lily, a glimmer of lavender — you’re on your tiptoes, and I can’t reach, and there’s one still moment, where I’ve yet to breathe. Each light broke against your skin.

A quiet, hollow thing. A kiss. A clatter of teeth, a puff of smoke, the highest precipice of that fourth-floor building, our eyes. Your hands. That light.

a scientific wish for you

Brammy Rajakumar

You gave me a cup of the ocean

And it tasted like sand between my teeth because my mouth was dry

You can’t get drunk on water Because you don’t drink that much But whenever you put a cup of wine to your lips I put My hand on the couch cushion between us there’s too many molecules between us The electric blue corduroy of your pants radiates heat Conduction convection

I bake my hand on the couch Cushion between us

I take a sip of my cup of water

Your water that tastes like sand Between my teeth Sits my tongue Fat, too big Loose

Loose tongues might reveal so my mouth is shut Except for my lips Which are drinking from the cup Of water from the ocean from the torrential rains from the runoff from the lakes of your hometown Traced all the way back to your lips

This water molecule from your lips to my lips like a k— Like my hand on the couch Cushion between us Softening the joints between our words it’s easy To talk to you The intersection from your ideas to mine Smoothened by the cartilage in your arms that encircle

Absorbing the sound waves

Absorbing my hand on the couch Cushion between us

Absorbing the water droplets slipping from the edges of my cup As I watch you watch her

drip drop

Alicia Shao

Helios is, was, is my friend Nur Kader

Sunlight has the possibility to change everything Sunlight on my face as I have dew on my ankles Matching scraped elbows as we zoomed faster than our past toddler selves on the plastic toddler cars

They never would have known we were old enough to write about things as deep as oceans Sunlight on my face as I listen to the birds and wonder if you are ever awake to see what there is or if you are too entrapped in the aquarium of your mind. I don’t want a museum ticket pass, touring your mind for my own selfish otherworldly motives that you don’t try to understand. But I feel like here drains you and your fishbowl is stopped up.

ivy (qijia’s version) Qijia Zhou

Salinas

Isa Li

Voicemail on 202X-XX-XX

Hi, um [unintelligible] so you were in my dream and I wanted to tell you before I forgot. It was weird? So for example I can place most of my memories in time. Like, I remember exactly when I deep cleaned the garage because of what else was going on and who I was in that moment. But I couldn’t tell you when I watched every season of Lost, other than it was in the last three years. I couldn’t even tell you if it was before or after the pandemic started. Um and this dream was weird because it felt like it should’ve been the first kind of thing but it was the second instead.

We were driving. Or I guess we had been driving. It was something that had happened in the past, but I didn’t know when. We had been driving on this like old wooden gold rush bridge over all these fields next to the ocean, and we were in a town where they were selling my baby teeth in stalls on the side of the road, and the signs all said “Welcome to the Artichoke Capital of the World.” Um so I guess the fields were artichoke fields. And I guess, conceivably it could have actually been the artichoke capital of the world. There’s probably not a lot of competition. [Speaker laughs] I remember really liking that they called it that. How you find something you’re good at and hold onto it with everything you’ve got.

And I don’t think I want to be a person anymore. Or like I want to be a place. I want to be the Artichoke Capital of the World.

Um but we were kind of nowhere and you looked me dead in the eyes and said, “Tell me how you’re doing.” And how I normally respond to this is, I tell the truth and say I am doing bad. Not even in an interesting way but in the same way everyone I know is doing bad. I am doing subpar. [Speaker laughs]

Wait, wow, fuck, is “subpar” a golf term? Is “par for the course” like a golf metaphor? Did they trick us into using golf speak in our everyday conversation?

I don’t [unintelligible] we had, there was a golf course near where I grew up. Even after the drought started. Like the reservoir went dry so they told us to cut down our water usage, and me and my ba filled the bathtub with buckets, and we would water the blueberries growing on the balcony with only the dirty shower water that had collected there. So much pee built up in the toilet because we tried not to flush it. Like legitimately gallons of pee. Um and I never saw anyone on the golf course, but they kept watering it, they kept it this rich woozy shade of green that no real thing has ever been. [Silence]

I think one day I’m going to drive out there with a trowel and a box of matches. Or maybe I will tear the grass up with my bare hands. I will smother it in seeds, coast live oak and madrone and manzanita and sagebrush and sunrose and farewell-to-spring. So much life it chokes you. Let the HOA irrigation system feed its own lustral strangulation until you can see it from town.

And I’m dreaming, so they don’t catch me, or I guess there isn’t a me to catch. Maybe I am dreaming still. Seething carnal sunlight and I want to be I want to be I want to be I want to be I want to be I want to be

A Recipe for All Five Senses

Primo Lagaso Goldberg

The air and my fingers smell bitter and I can taste the humid heat on my tongue. That’s just how these afternoons are — a rusty electric fan older than I am is set to oscillate and alternates between cooling the skin on my arms and rustling the layers of papers and pictures stuck with magnets to the refrigerator. The constant, lower drone of the stovetop fan stirs the air, and I can feel the vibrations through the igad between my legs.

My lelang is sitting at the old, yellowed kitchen counter talking on the landline to someone from church. She laughs and gossips between English and Ilocano — apparently, someone is newly pregnant and wasn’t at service yesterday. The phone is pressed between her shoulder and her ear as she picks

the malunggay leaves from their dainty green stems. Malunggay leaves aren’t bigger than the tip of your thumb but her long nails, always painted the same nude beige, are perfect for the job. She lets the stems fall into her lap. They are bright green against the purple and white pareo she’s wearing. I started working with lelang, sitting on her lap between her arms, to pick from leafy branches of my own, but I gave up after my fingers start turning green and I could almost feel the leaves’ uncooked, sour flavor through my skin. I am reassigned to the igad and given two halves of coconut to shred for the dila-dila. Though I miss the smell of lelang’s perfume, I am glad to be free of the tedious work; the white plastic colander was almost full of leaves by now anyway.

Dog Days

Cindy Yang

Lelong is at the stove chopping garlic and ginger. To his left, bones and skin are simmering into chicken broth. There’s a Rainbow Wahine volleyball game on the TV in the living room and lelong occasionally cranes his neck to get a glimpse. He’s wearing his vintage Rainbow Warriors Football tank top, faded green, the old rainbow logo from the 80s across the back. There’s always a University of Hawaii game on TV when lelong cooks, whether it’s our family spaghetti, guisantes, pancit, or chicken malunggay like today.

Chicken malunggay is my favorite and even though we’re just getting started with the cooking, I can already imagine the warm, golden-green smell of the leaves, the chicken, the garlic and ginger, and the fresh rice. It is a miraculous dish. When they prepared it was the only time I ever saw both lelang and lelong in the kitchen cooking at the same time. It was their culinary marriage: lelang would fill the colander with handpicked leaves from our tree in the backyard and lelong would transform the ingredients into the salty-sour, comforting elixir of a night at my grandparents’ house. My stomach rumbles. I can barely wait for dinner.

I turn my attention back to the task at hand: shredding coconut. The igad is tough between my legs and digs into my tailbone but the low satisfying grating sound of the coconut flesh against the round serrated blade is oddly satisfying. I position the well-worn aluminum pan beneath the blade and cup the outside of the coconut half with both hands. The motion is almost like the motion of petting a dog’s head from front to back, but I push downwards, with both hands, and instead of soft fur, it’s the rough, hairy coconut shell against my hands. For dila-dila, the strange feeling of the coconut fur and aching butt of sitting and grating is well worth it: fresh mochi covered in shredded coconut topped with a heap of brown sugar is a sinfully delicious combination.

By the time I’ve grated both halves down to the shell my wrists are aching, and the sunset mountain drizzle is pattering on the leaves and bushes outside the open kitchen window. The rows of old glass soda, beer, and wine bottles on the windowsill catch the fi-

nal rays of the sunset and shine like they’re full of starlight. I sit, mesmerized for at least five minutes until the sun sets and the Prussian blue completes its conquest of the sky. Lelang spirits away the tray that I’ve filled up and starts coating the mochi for the dila-dila. Dila means “tongue” in Ilocano, she always reminds me.

The malunggay is well underway by now. I hop up and over to the stove, peering around lelong’s back to get a look. The soup is beautiful, green and gold and white, the malunggay leaves glisten with the fat from the broth and the chicken looks tender and rich. I scrutinize the contents of the big silver pot, searching for the chunks of ginger that catch me off guard every time and make me pucker my lips and squint my eyes closed as the earthy spice fades. I can never seem to avoid getting a chunk in at least one bite. Lelang is already getting out the old china, probably the same bowls and plates my mom and her sisters ate out of. She tells me to wash my hands.

I hold lelang and lelong’s hands across the huge, lacquered table while termites and tiny months buzz around the ceiling light hanging above the dining table. Lelong’s hands are rough and dark, like worn leather. I think about how we would sit with cans of Hawaiian Sun juice at the bench on the side of the house. He would tell me stories of working in the sugar cane fields. Lelang remembered the pineapple fields more, at least that’s what she told me. Her hands were wrinkled but soft, she lotioned them every morning and every evening.

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I Meet My Future Self and She Asks Me Nur Kader

What are the pretty places you want to see?/ I step outside and the sun is warm/ there’s a light breeze/ fresh cut grass/ it smells like spring/ the bay of daffodils around the block has emerged from winter’s slumber and I see their pale yellow faces on my walk/ bright sunlight bounces off the snow/ I see it melt into muddy patches of spring/ I see people around me with joy and not with distrust/ I trust myself/ What does it feel like to live in a dream?/ I walk into the kitchen and my grandma brews me chai the way I like it without me asking/ I read poetry outside along the river and the birds sing along/ I peel an orange, the rind and pulp digging into my fingernails/ I grab chalk and write what I’m too scared to say/ in lavender, orange, lemon, lime, ruby red/ I tell my needs without feeling ashamed/ I learn to speak to you without embarrassment for not having the right words/ I become fluent in all the tongues of my past, present, future/ We make marzipan in your blender/ You give me a hug when we say goodnight/ I wake up and don’t think of all the people who have hurt me/ I write them out of the story and let myself breathe/ I decide not to talk to anyone for a day and let myself eat alone in the restaurant/ I eat three meals a day/ I go on a walk and call my friends even if it’s only for ten minutes/ I wake up at dawn and roam all the streets of the neighborhood/ the world slowly bathed in light/ I dance in the street/ my hair falls in loose waves and I feel/ content/ What’s the most beautiful version of your life (realistically)?/ my family gathered around the worn yellow dining room table, talking so much the walls cannot cradle anymore sound/ We share and swap/ clothes, secrets/ I have my friends’ goto drink saved on my phone/ I go to the cafe and ask where you are so I can drop off the drink I got you just cause/ $5 large tangy mango smoothie/ I look at my body and I’m really proud of what I see/ I celebrate my wins and cry if I want to/ I buy myself flowers/ I light the three-wick soy lavender candle every night for a year/ I wear a chunky wool sweater as I read in the morning sunlight/ We go to the farmer’s market on Saturdays, browse the cheeses, have a picnic/ I find the cheese from Montserrat and don’t throw it out this time/ I lean over your shoulder/ to read off the same book as you/ I write you letters and we develop a language all our own/ I say hi to my neighbors/ We play just dance in your hotel room/ I host a party and feel like there’s a world beyond the four walls on the fourth floor/ the song stuck in my head plays from the speakers and you grab my hand and twirl me/ What feeling would you bottle up and save for later?/ adrenaline kick as the stage lights turn on and everyone cheers/ pink and effervescent/ I reach out to meet you & I hope you like me/ I melt into the tight hug that lingers after we pull away/ You take me out to visit our old high school after I left years ago/ I got on a train and never looked back/ and I end up having a fun time/ You help me shed my shell/ I open the blinds and smell the damp porch moon rain/ gulps of fresh air/ I laugh ‘til my sides hurt/ swinging on the playground/ I find an outfit that makes my eyes sparkle/ I find your favorite band’s poster and your eyes sparkle/ I enter a room and it feels like I’ve been there before/ I learn to feel at home wherever I am/ now/here/ if it isn’t me and you then who else would it be?

Golden Shores

Ben Cammarata