Legends

The Wave Fall 2022 Edition

Editor’s Note

Dear reader, When I joined The Wave as a freshman in 2020, I didn’t know what to expect from a club run online. Although we were dispersed all over the world, we grew close and I began to look forward to our weekly Thursday zoom calls. The zoom meetings were not only a space focused on the logistics of a magazine, but they were a space to reflect on our own creative practices. Everything done at The Wave was done with intention (and still is). The Wave started in early 2020 as a way to respond to a need for an artistic community for Asian American and Pacific Islander students. In the summer of 2020, The Wave published Quaranzine due to people’s desire to make art— even if the art was something like what you scrawled on a napkin— during the pandemic. Originally, the magazine did not intend to publish during the summer, but The Wave listened and responded to the community’s desire to break silence— whether it is societal, generational, or internal silence that holds back so many Asian voices in the US. As Editorial Head, it is my honor to share the story of The Wave with you. The Wave started out with the ethos that anyone can create, write, and imagine a future where they are heard and seen and felt. In Legends, I invite you to be a witness to how our stories— family anecdotes, cultural lore, or tall tales about hometowns— connect the past to the present and guide us through the present into the future.

MAHUTA Mira-Rose Kingsbury Lee Run (towards or away) Aaron Arlanza the dolomites Jovan Lim Spirits in the Altar Room Hannah Tsai Kim my split lip Amber Levis / 李欣怡 my daughter’s belly Isabelle Lu Baptism Catie Thai Aluminum Needles Shreya Nair

i still remember h.t.

Barbie Anika Lakhani Mindanao Francis Puente Bà Nội (Grandma) Catie Thai how Mom grieves Lihn Vu My Holidays Benjamin Tang Lost Sense Nur Kader The Summer When Everything Went to Die anu zaman how the mesquite tree grows Sharmila Dey

cw: mentions of assault

Sincerely, Nur Kader

MAHUTA

Mira-Rose Kingsbury Lee

The Māori creation legend is one of Separation – Tāne Mahuta, lord of the forest, is the Separator.

In the slippery darkness

The first child stirred; A puff of blastula, encased In warmth. Between Fatherpaunch And Mothercavern His limbs budded, ripened, Thickening with ligninsap rich As blood, richer even Than flame. Almighty he set Hands to Earth and feet to Sky And columned himself, greatbody Bearer of light.

Tāne, ancient one, library of Separation And all its scurrying creatures With birds’ nests sprouting from Armpits, backsofknees, Raw with silent displeasure, weeping Sweet as honey.

Teeth in your side Gnawscrabbling things. Remind them, Tāne, it is you Who holds up the sky. Still, even now, Like silk unspooling in The weaver’s hands, See how the horizon curves.

Run (towards or away)

Aaron Arlanza

Filipinos believe in a variety of superstitions. Run (towards or away) speaks on a seemingly harmless animal: the butterfly. A simple touch could mean life or death (literally).

I am three years-old, and my mother screams for me to run. The butterfly I am chasing is a deep black color. The pattern on its wings is mesmerizing, but I am told to run. I did not want to run away. I reached out to let it perch on my finger but perched instead are my mother’s nails as she drags me away in tears. Why is she crying? The butterfly flies like a vulture as it sits on a flower, draining life.

I am seven years-old, and my mother screams for me to run. The butterfly I am chasing is a bright yellow color. The pattern on its wings is alluring, so I am told to run. I thought I was supposed to run away, but my mother is urging me to run towards it. I feel its delicate feet against my finger and hear my mother’s cheers behind me. Why is she cheering? The butterfly flies away like a stork, but what was its delivery?

I am thirteen years-old, and my mother stops me from running. The butterfly approaching us is the same deep black color as before. I do not run. My mother leads me to our red porch and sits me down. It is now when I learn about the home I never lived in: the Philippines. I learn about the black butterfly that killed my grandmother’s sister once it roosted on her shoulder. I learn about the yellow butterfly that awarded my family with a century’s prosperity. I learn about my culture’s reliance on color and ambivalence toward a seemingly harmless creature.

I can run faster than a butterfly flies. I suppose the direction depends on my mother.

the dolomites

Jovan Lim

I wrote this on a bus in Italy with the mountains swirling around me and the knowledge that I was growing inexorably, hurtlingly older.

look out into the mountains: sea of trees, violent green, unfurling like yesterday’s plague, the one you couldn’t escape. i was older back then rumbling grooving out from the bones marrow coraling into hard & desiccated. little pebbles of worth they used to call me mature — small old man but now i am an old small boy. smallness never eats away like the dolomites i press myself into smallness great compressed thing i stand. the trees gather round an eternity noiselessly elbows up do you think we can ever branch meaning? fork the years like we do with stars? blink back blink back, baby, the stars of yore. i have grown too old for anything bigger — like semantic tenderness, or the smell of you.

Spirits in the Altar Room

Hannah Tsai Kim

I spent the summer in Taiwan, spent the summer learning Chinese and learning how to pray. I spent a weekend in my grandfather’s hometown, Douliou, feeling the potent presence of ancestor spirits. In the altar room of my great-aunt’s house, we did 拜 拜 to greet the ancestors and prayed to them. In a few of the photographs

I took from my time in Douliou, I can see spirits flying by, occupying what may seem like empty space but is actually filled with the presence of ancestors, of our prayers, of learning. Oh, and the smell of incense.

Amber Levis / 李欣怡

Since I started at Harvard, I’ve been taking Mandarin every semester. Honestly, it’s been kicking my ass –– I often find myself wondering why I chose to take the ’native speakers’ track though I didn’t grow up speaking Chinese at home, wondering why I stick with it though I’ve fulfilled my language requirement, and why I know that I will keep sticking it every semester going forward. I wrote this piece to make sense of my language learning journey, contextualizing it with my relationship to my grandmother, whom I refer to as 婆婆.

I’m making cooing noises, rolling my tongue to make the ‘r’ sound that’s not quite an ‘r,’ umlaut my ‘u’s, and trace the cadence of my words with the path of the tone markers, squinting in the dark to read the characters written in the legend. I’m whispering, hoping my roommate can’t hear me. It’s late.

After I finally fall asleep, I wake up to the taste of blood. A deep cut runs down the middle of my lip. I must have bit it.

The inevitable question they ask at the start of each semester: why am I here?

Nearly everyone says they do it to better connect with their families. My family is one woman, sitting alone in her apartment, surrounded by two TVs on different channels, chattering simultaneously.

When we see each other, it’s around her tiny kitchen table eating tofu fried rice mom has bought from around the corner. She brings it, eats quickly, and reads the paper, trying to distance herself as much as possible. This is her weekly act of courteous piety.

I try to make conversation with my 婆婆, not sure if what I’m saying makes sense to her, and much of what she says doesn’t get through to me. My sentences are interrupted by my hurried use of Pleco, ‘um’s, ‘ah’s, and English words at which she nods, pretending she understands. I also nod vigorously when she inevitably tells me to stop wearing crop tops and getting piercings.

I sip the lukewarm water from the rice bowls she uses as cups. I cradle the empty bowl with both hands as she pours from the pot she’d boiled for me before I arrived.

Before the pandemic, before she curled up in her hole on Broome street, our monthly lunches would be had over prawns and noodles at Congee Village. My brother and mom are on their phones, my dad is beaming, nodding proudly at my broken Mandarin malapropisms. Sometimes he records me and sends the video of these awkward exchanges to his friends.

He too has made an effort. “太阳出来了/the sun is out!” he exclaims excitedly, tapping my grandmother on the shoulder every time the phrase is remotely relevant. She

laughs and nods. The only other phrase he knows is “太太不在家/my wife is not at home.”

Why do I stay up until my vision blurs studying these characters that seem to never come naturally to me? And why does it feel so much harder for me than for everyone around me?

I blame my mom for not teaching me, but then I remember the bootleg Chinese movies on DVD and the softly sung lullabies she raised me on. I remember dreading Saturdays, dreading the feeling of shame burning my cheeks when I didn’t understand the questionasked by the overworked and underpaid language teacher every kid in Chinatown lives in fear of. I remember whispering with my neighbor, asking if she understands what we were supposed to be doing. I remember the summers my mother sent me to China to learn how to dance and cut paper. I’m now quite good at imitation.

Then I blame her for not forcing me to really learn, for not making me study diligently and regularly and desperately. And here I am, taking a quiz on Canvas at 3 am trying to figure out what 自然 means. Why is it so much harder at twenty than it is at two?

I’ve spent probably three times the amount of time trying to learn the language than I’ve ever spent speaking with my 婆婆. Our infrequent phone calls last a few minutes – we exchange niceties, and she goes on a ramble that seems a bit chastising but I can’t be sure because I can’t catch exactly what she’s saying. Then she realizes how long she’s been talking, wishes me luck with my studies, and hangs up.

At our even more infrequent lunches, I feel the crushing weight that has been pressing her spine even lower since the last time I visited.

She’s left the door open a crack since I told her I was coming. I peek my head in to see her waiting at the kitchen table. Her back faces the TVs which are on but turned to a volume so soft they’re nearly muted. Her window is open to the sound of pigeons and passing trucks and street vendors. Everything is clean and white, though every surface is littered with old newspapers and plastic bags. All that hangs on her wall is a portrait of me and my brother. It’s always exactly how it looked the last time I left.

Her eyes glassy, she smiles and asks me if I’ve eaten.

my daughter’s belly

Isabelle Lu

“my daughter’s belly” is a poem inspired by Chinese legends of the moon, my suburban upbringing, and my mother’s warning to always cover my belly while sleeping (in fear of sickness), a habit of mine to this day. in this story my daughter’s belly is the moon, and the moon must stay warm, for the moon is always in midwinter, luminous and cold. each night, I swaddle it with a thousand layers. outside, the moths murmur of paradise. angels giggle in the rose bushes. inside, dreams leak out as body heat & precipitate back down, that is to say, dreams regarding tumbling, phantoms, mice, lace, picnics, kissing, sunlight. in her dream the moon’s glow totes a warning label: LET LOOSE AT YOUR OWN RISK. she cartwheels over the neighbor’s fence and burns off a little light each time, sash charioteering. she unlooses pearly rabbits that multiply under my wedding portrait like a flood, or flowers. she sleeps with limbs open to the wind, belly a furnace, a shuffle of wings coming in through the window.

This is my cousin’s baptism. She had been napping through the mass until the cold water woke her up. She bawled for the rest of the ceremony after that

Baptism Catie Thai

Aluminum Needles

Shreya Nair

Reflecting on the theme of Legends, I was inspired to write something about a mother and her creation. In Hinduism, creation is inevitably followed by maintenance and destruction in the Trimurti. Through this poem, I hope to explore these three cosmic states of being. I hope you like it.

My mother, for 9 months and 12 days, knit together my muscle and sinew,

Did you stop to think about how she’d feel, When you forced your own threads in?

She embroidered my eyes in dappled hues, Smoothed back the black, unruly threads on my head, Fastened strong, clear clasps on the tips of my fingers

In this manner she fashioned a sturdy cloth, For me to fold and sew however I pleased

I was happy with the cloth she gave me, Though, rebelliously, I made modifications.

I pleaded with her to install shining pendants on its earlobes, I carelessly burnt the plush fabric on its forearm, Still, nothing I couldn’t fix with a trip to the craft store.

Once, you and I went to an art exhibition put on by the middle school. For weeks, they had worked on small needlepoint hoops With great care, you examined their creations,

Once, I admired your tenderness. Now, it enrages me.

With your machine, you heedlessly punctured my fabric, A mechanical back and forth, An relentless in and out, Stabbing the folds together, Molding it into something even a mother struggles to recognize

How could you pretend to respect those amateur productions, While defiling the work of a master?

i still remember h. t.

I wrote the poem many years after the assault happened. At the time I stopped thinking about it and convinced myself that the experience didn’t affect me that much, but years of reflection allowed me space to properly process it and reclaim my version of the story.

how he touched me outside of the singing class, the computer lab, the dining hall, the basketball court / how it felt like screws being drilled all over this blooming body / how i can still pick out those screws years later, in the shower, in a movie scene of an assault, in a song about survivors / how i was ten and stopped blooming / how i steeped in swallowed silence / how i saw he touched other girls and the most shameful part of me was glad because it meant he left me alone this time / how he said “hi” to me in the hallway for the rest of the year / how i said “hi” back because nothing happened if we were still friendly, right? / how i still said “hi” even after Mom found out about the abuse / how i wanted to believe nothing had happened even after the abuse was fossilized into reality by a witness / how i clung to the narrative in which i was least tainted / how i never knew i had never been tainted / how Mom asked “where did he touch you?” and not “are you okay?” / you cannot say no to a question never asked / how i lied “only my cheeks” / how Mom only asked once / how Mom clung to the narrative in which i was least harmed / how Mom brought his name up every now and then and chirped you know it sounds funny / how he was always referred to as my friend and not my abuser / how i always wanted to go back in time and the most hateful part of me didn’t want to kick him but myself for letting it happen / how Mom accidentally brewed silence in the pot of parental protection / how the silence curdled into flashbacks i dutifully drowned in

i read in a study that more than half of the women in my city have been sexually assaulted, which means Mom probably has, yet we still don’t know how to talk about it.

This piece is about growing up with the notion of the “perfect woman” in your head and trying to break free from the constant self-judgment that comes with comparing yourself to her.

Steam clouded the mirror, pressed up against the glass in a sweaty frat room show of vanity. Every time Mom’s hand approached me, I held my breath— not because I talked back and was waiting for the hand’s final word, but because I knew how badly a flat iron burn to the scalp hurt. Pain penetrated me. I couldn’t fix my hair enough to please.

And she would have feigned concern, one playtoy hand covering her lips. “Are you okay?”

roof down. Aarohi telling me to turn around, me listening like any other sixteen-year-old driver, Kelly telling her to hurry up and take the picture before we crash. Charming our way through the park gates instead of paying the entrance fee (the trick is to pull your shirt down a little first).

Her name feels forgettable sometimes. What color was her hair?

the merchandise had been purchased. And Ken wouldn’t have wanted damaged goods.

Why did I let him in when he smelled like whiskey and was already imagining his fingers inside of me even though i said no

why didn’t he feel deterred by the thought of my blood on his hands dick mouth

Barbie would have--

you grew up with were about girls who were just flirting with you if they didn’t act interested while my mom taught me what rape was before I entered grade school.

I’ll put my mace on your tab, count up the hours that translate into missed wages when I’m too stuck in a flashback to finish up that investment portfolio research for my fewerthan-73-cents to your dollar. You think sexual violence is just a legend to the point where I’m the bad guy for ever insinuating that you made it into a reality with me.

He told me to get on my knees, caressing my silky, flat-ironed hair with one hand. “Good girl.” i cut a little more than just split ends when i got home. My lunch group is her fan club in the way we dress eat talk sing dream allow ourselves to be ourselves as much as we can when not trying to be her. She just drove home from the most amazing sex of her life.

She’s allowed to be gay (but in the white girl way where listening to Clairo isn’t cliche.)

Which car does she drive? Classic red Ferrari? Or do we have to update to electric now?

We spread the picnic blanket and I told them about him. Some boy from calculus whose first mention of me to his friends was what he wanted to do to me if he had the chance.

Ken’s six pack looked as if it were forged out of plastic, and every girl can remember being curious about what was under his beach shorts. After all, it was what Barbie wanted. It was just supposed to be a movie until something began peeking out of the beach shorts and him caressing the little bit of exposed skin on my hip that slipped out of my waistband was “showing restraint.” When “showing restraint” would have meant “restraining me to the bed” had I stayed still for another second.

I said no out loud this time. Well, I’ve said it before, but this time I yelled. This time I grabbed his hand and told him to stop. Maybe I should have been clearer -- this stuff isn’t supposed to happen to girls who look like me. I’m sorry I broke the rules.

But no one wants to hurt Barbie.

Don’t ever make me feel like you’re doing me a favor if you walk me home after midnight office hours instead of letting me walk by myself.

Car packed gassing the turns with the sun-

Ken would have burst through the door and told him that she’s taken. There’s no return policy on a perfect relationship -- inventory had not yet been updated but

I guess Barbie would have led a #MeTooPartTwo movement or something. I just feel like apologizing sometimes. Sorry for every wince, whimper, cry of pain, tear, drop of blood, balled fist, “I don’t feel like it” ignored so many times that I could practice turning it into “no,” grab of his wrist that embodied so much emasculating disobedience it left him blindly motivated.

Sorry I learned that I can’t price myself in Barbie, sorry I stopped accepting that form of currency a few years ago when I couldn’t remember the color of her blond hair or even Barbie’s name.

Sorry that any of you ever fucking made me feel like apologizing because the folktales

I build a growing mosaic of achingly vivid trauma just by surveying the women in my life, women who are ever more real than the dolls you tie to beds in your fantasies. The light warps, desperately propelling through the stained glass.

I can chronicle the beginning of my new world when I tell you about the first time a boy injected me with a more lethal dose of fear than what I experience any time I hear footsteps behind me when walking through the park past 7 pm. I whisper a thank you underneath my breath every time I make it home safe.

Girls like me walk with our feet twisted backwards, chudails who dared give anything but consent to a man one time, with bloodied ankles that reveal keloid scars when washed.

You all taught me that I’d much rather be Bulbbul than Barbie.

Barbie

Anika Lakhani

Mindanao

Francis Puente

“Mindanao” is named after the island in the Philippines where my father grew up, a place that, for me, possesses an almost mythical quality as the setting of many of the stories through which I’ve come to know my land and my people. The poem is one long apostrophe addressed to my paternal grandmother, whose marriage to my grandfather was fraught with infidelity and whom I never met because she died in a car accident when my father was young.

Themes: infidelity, inheritance, interiority

Oh, pretty stranger, I never did catch your eye, but you know my face (and maybe my heart as well),

Felt its warmth next to yours on muggy Mindanao mornings, studied its contours with your cool gaze,

Its upturned, winging eyes that always seem to presage a smile (so you felt cheated most of the time), its high-bridged nose and hollow cheeks,

The tensile jaws concealing a sharp, silver tongue that seduces and cuts and leaves you bleeding in bed.

Bà Nội (Grandma)

Catie Thai

This narrative is a recollection of times with my Bà Nội, before and after she was diagnosed with Alzheimers. She passed away shortly after I finished this piece.

As soon as Dad parked, my siblings and I rushed out, fuzzy Santa hats whipping in the wind. We grabbed our violins from the trunk and ran into the nursing home.

Oh, pretty stranger, I wonder when you realized that the space between your face and mine was the exact size and shape of a woman’s body,

With arms long enough to reach up from the backseat, cover our mouths, and hold our heads still, so that driving together eventually became a silent activity,

The quiet so unbearable it could make a grown man cry and cry and cry until the blear grows thick and it no longer matters whether his eyes are open or closed but they’re closed and they’re closed tight

And finally he swerves into a tree.

Oh, pretty stranger, I, too, know your face, but only from my father’s stories.

He says he remembers a time when your eyes would accidentally meet his, upturned and winging, with the same cool gaze normally reserved for Daddy.

I shudder to think that you might have looked at me like that too, And I know that I can soften my tongue, unclench my jaw, and smile (so you don’t feel cheated),

But the truth is that when my masks fall away, all that remains is hollow cheeks, a high-bridged nose, and eyes that get distracted by pretty strangers.

While we set up in the “living room” with the rest of our strings school, health aidesbrought in residents. Some only leaned on a supportive arm, but others slumped in wheelchairs, bundles of scrubs and wrinkles.

I wondered how each of them got there. How sick were they? Where were their families?

Our pianist broke into the “I like chocolate ice-cream” variation on “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” and my ruminations ceased as years of performance conditioning took over.

no Asians? That’s because we take care of our elderly. Our parents work hard to raise us, so when they get old, we take responsibility for them. We keep them close, and they live with us if they want. Western parents—they teach their kids independence. Their kids grow up, go away, and don’t come back. That’s why more of their elderly end up in homes.”

For the rest of the ride, the comment weighed on us. I was glad we cared for our Ông Nội and Bà Nội. My parents payed for their bills, and we visited them often, and played when we did.

“We would never put them in a place like that,” I thought, nearly five years ago.

* * *

After running through the Suzuki repertoire, we pivoted to Christmas classics. “Joy to the World” felt right and wrong. * * *

On the way home, Dad observed that our performance must have make the residents’ day. “It’s lonely in a place like that. They’re trapped in their rooms most of the time. Some might get visitors, but I bet most don’t.” The car went silent. My siblings looked to me—the oldest—to respond, but I was just glad we played for them.

Dad continued. “Did you notice there were

Bà Nội loved to walk. Her favorite walk was to our house, just two blocks away.

After the pandemic began, she would often just peek through the window, satisfying herself with glimpses of her grandchildren through the glass. Our vigilant goldendoodle usually gave her away.

Sometimes, Bà Nội would ring the doorbell and wait at the far end of the porch. Opening the door, we would find at our feet a sloshing pot of savory bún gà, stacked plates of delicate bánh bèo, or Tupperware lined with crispy chả giò.

I got used to seeing her smiling at a distance,

under a lint-covered sun hat, in a faded lavender zip-up, flowy pajama pants, and sketchers. Wrinkles bunched around her eyes, and crooked teeth peeked through her lips.

When I answered the door, she would ask her standard questions. “How are your grades?” “Do you have boyfriend?” No longer listening for the expected answers, she’d follow with “You so smart” and “You so pretty.” Then, she’d laugh and say, “I like to walk.”

I’d respond that walking was good. It would help her live longer.

* * *

Bà Nội is a devout Catholic. In her seventies, she developed an increasing fear of death, along with a growing hope that God would keep her alive to see me graduate—first, it was from high school, then more recently it was from college. She did not think, she confided, that she would live long enough to see me marry.

To any grandchild who was listening, Bà Nội would implore, “Pray for me,” even though she seemed perfectly healthy. She was stocking up on prayers, as others were stashing toilet paper. They would come in handy when her time drew nigh.

“You don’t need me to pray,” I’d tell her. “You just need to exercise.”

She shook her head knowingly. “Do you love Bà Nội? Then pray for me!”

We would go back and forth until she threw up her hands. But I always ended up praying for her.

Ông Nội called us one morning in late July. Bà Nội had fallen.

Dad and I rushed over. She lay moaning on her back in the kitchen.

When the paramedics hoisted her onto the stretcher, Bà Nội cried, “Đau ... đau ... đau...” (hurts ... hurts ... hurts ...). She kept wailing as they wheeled her away.

* * *

“Bà Nội fractured her spine,” the text announced.

Other messages streamed in. A vertebrae had displaced a few millimeters. Patients had recovered from worse. She would get pain meds and physical therapy. She needed to work her muscles and walk.

“That’s good,” I thought. “Bà Nội likes to walk. She’ll push through.”

* * *

In her first days back home, I helped Bà Nội walk. She kept whimpering, “Đau, đau,” but with one hand clutching a cane and the other my arm, she stepped forward.

She begged me to pray for her. I promised I would.

* * *

As the weeks progressed, Bà Nội sat more and walked less.

“You need to exercise,” Dad implored.

She looked up at him like an old dog and shook her head. “Đau.”

That made Dad angry. According to the doctors in the family, her fracture should have been healing and the medication helping. This was mental.

“You have to exercise. If you don’t, your legs will stop working, and you’ll wither.”

We got her to stand—it took ten minutes of pushing, pulling, and moaning—and then I made a circuit around the house with her. She shuffled, leaning heavily on my arm.

Dad scolded her again. “Shuffling isn’t walking. It’s not real exercise.”

She whimpered and lifted her legs a few times, then reverted back to shuffling. We did a second round before she sunk back down on the sofa.

Dad lectured her one last time. “People can help as much as they can, but if you don’t help yourself, you’ll grow weak and die.”

She only nodded. * * *

Within another month, Bà Nội stopped speaking in sentences. She filled most of her days in an armchair, staring into space. She occasionally called me by Mom’s name. When we pleaded with her to try and get up, she asked with frightening earnestness, “How?”

The neurology team at the university hospital diagnosed Bà Nội with late-stage Alzheimer’s. Her brain had atrophied. She was losing motor control faster than she was losing memory, but the latter was slipping too.

With only one visitor allowed at the hospital, Ông Nội, with his own fractured lumbar, saw her every day. She recognized him on most days.

On FaceTime, she started confusing me for my sister. Then her own sister.

* * * We drive up to the nursing home and Dad parks the car. It is the same one at which, a lifetime ago, we played on a wintry morning.

Faces masked, my siblings and I set up next to the window by a whirring air conditioner. An aide slides open the window for us.

Through the mesh, I see Bà Nội slumped on her medical bed, neck crooked, eyes dim.

I ask if she knows me. “Of course,” she rasps, but confuses me with Mom and then my cousin. When I say my name, she repeats it like a new word and sounds pleased. She says other things in Vietnamese. I pretend to understand.

Her face brightens when she sees the violin in my hand. “Play for me,” she mouths. Or maybe, “Pray for me.”

* * *

Her limbs grew more limp. Her mouth started to sag. One evening, when we came over, we found her sunk on the sofa, watching a Vietnamese variety show with a vacant expression.

She became dead weight, like a sand bag. Ông Nội literally broke his back lifting her. Now both grandparents needed care.

I start with my current concerto, but it sounds loud, harsh, and confuses her. On instinct, I switch to the “Twinkle” variations. My siblings join in.

Her shaking hand lifts to conduct. For a time, we remember together.

how Mom grieves

Linh Vu

The poem is about how my mom deals with the fact that I left home at such a young age. Her love, as shown through how much she misses me when I leave, has shaped me in many ways. I know that I always have someone who holds me in her heart, and that thought makes me feel grounded.

her grief monsoons marked not by absence but presence, oceans away.

the first day she sleeps in my room nostrils to the pillow gasping for my scent her tears typhoons in September.

the first week she awakens in the pearly light that pours in her country but not mine makes soymilk in the blender braids of rain in her hair.

the drive to work stretches like the gray days ahead. glasses guise her cherry eyelids. her boss knows to let her leave early. she dings the doorbell of her own home clutching her breath believing I would swing the door & snug into her arms.

on the phone she tells me what we did this hour last week.

the first month she scrubs the house spotless but leaves my room untouched dust collecting.

when insomnia invites itself she sits at my desk mist mellowing her wrinkles her hands holding my hasty cursive. every so often she yells out my name her hope hovering in the hollow house emptied by the echo.

the first year days blend bleed blemish. the now I’ve left home for five years. every year her grief is still as familiar as fresh as the first.

Excerpt from My Holidays

Benjamin Tang

This short story is loosely based on my own experience. When my friends tell me about their younger years, I oftentimes listen with a sense of wonder at how different their childhoods were compared to mine, even if we celebrated the same holidays and lived not too far apart. Hopefully, this story can capture everyday life that from one side seems mundane, yet from another, appears as a legend.

During the Moon Autumn Festival, my parents drove us out of the city to get a better view of the moon. I never understood the point of looking at something in the sky, but my parents insisted that we should keep the tradition. We found a clearing and pulled the SUV over, set up our blankets, and ate yue bing – mooncakes – in the back of the vehicle. The air was a bit crisp, just cold enough to dry my lips after every sip of egg drop soup.

My father told stories of his childhood, how he ran around his little town with friends after taking a mooncake from a clumsy vendor. They would duck between stalls and disappear into the crowd before finding each other again under the red lanterns.

My mother laughed at these stories, teasing my father about how mischievous he was in his younger years. She didn’t have as daring experiences, but she did tell us about how she would spend the day making lanterns of all colors. Her house would become the most festive one on her street, and at night it would glow with such a symphony of colors that her friends came over to watch her creations instead of the moon.

I think the one good thing about our tradition is anyone can see the moon. You don’t have to pay something to look up, which is comforting to know.

Later in the year, the school orchestra concert took place on the first snow fall. These were my favorite days of school because my parents could finally listen to my music without mistakes. On performance day, I always put on warm gloves in order to keep my fingers from numbing, and I tapped my fingers on whatever surface I could find, not out of nervousness, but because I couldn’t help practicing my pieces.

During the performance, I played without thinking, and I enjoyed it. The applause afterwards was also nice, and sometimes I could feel the first wave of sound hit my chest.

My sister reached me first, and she hugged me and jumped up and down. Then my parents surrounded me, followed by a few people in some of my classes.

After my family and I escaped the crowd of the reception, we made our way to the parking lot. I saw the boy walking with an old woman, and he stopped to wave at me. His hands came out of his pockets, and even in the dim lighting, they shone a strong red.

“Thanks for coming,” I said to him, my breath forming a cloud. The old woman smiled gently at me. Ni de biao yan fei chang hao, she said to me.

“My grandmother used to play, so she enjoyed it,” he added. Xie xie – thank you – my parents said to the older woman as they headed to the car. “I didn’t know you could play piano.” He stuck his hands deep into his pockets, probably to warm them up.

“Everyone plays piano,” I said without much thought.

“Oh. I’ve always wanted to learn.” Realizing my mistake, I looked to my family, who were calling me over, so I used them as an excuse to go.

My mother asked me later who he was, and I said he was a classmate.

Lost

Sense Nur Kader

I wanted to talk about my grandmother and language loss and finding ways to reconnect with my Bengali culture and family.

Walls plastered in honey cement and banana leaves

I carefully circle, avoiding

worrying I will get stuck in place that isn’t, wasn’t, isn’t mine

My tongue turns inward I do not have the right words

Language does me wrong Licorice splitting ends, unraveling itself into a new genome

Tasteless formless reaching for some thing where feeling one two tongued tied

Digging through your drawers, I see vivid hues I didn’t know existed lush jungle greens, buttery jewel blues, searing fuschia

Bringing my hand to yours, you trace my palm lines, staining them scarlet

I should have listened when you said This land is in your hand.

how the mesquite tree grows

Sharmila Dey

This poem endeavors to describe how my ancestral heritage and my hometown have made me the person I am today. I carry the stories of my elders with me along with the big blue desert sky.

my fate was decided long ago when my great-grandfather (曽祖父) with sun baked hands & sugarcane veins chose his bride by pointing to her picture —this one looks like a wife— & again when my great-grandmother (曽祖母) took her sister’s name & walked the pacific waters with pele fire in her heart hands itching for palm trees & volcanic rock

when once upon a time like the himalayas the north & south collided broke the rules ignored caste & astrology & fell in love for my grandmother’s laugh my grandfather’s smile their love flourished under a flame-of-the-forest tree overlooking a paradise lost

The Summer When Everything Went to Die

anu zaman

Bangladesh is a country symbolized by narratives of lack and excess. Students graduating from my parents’ alma mater and their socioeconomic background, my father and other men congregating at the masjid to avoid their families, my now ascended Bengali Muslim grandmother kept comfortable by Bengali Hindu nurses. This photoseries inverts the contradictions of development and decay, renewal and removal, prayer and obligation, through the events of the summer when everything went to die.

bombay & toyko made a home in my body when a gust of desert air tumbled through the place between the mountains saguaro arms lifted me from the dry earth & cactus wrens gifted me my voice i ran wild with the coyotes i stood guard with the javelinas the woman on the boat & the interlaced hands they brought me here where pinyon juniper forest dots the horizon & a deep blue sky stretches above the dry burning expanse that comes alive after the monsoon