Westwind Spring 2017

WESTWIND

WESTWIND UCLA’s Journal of the Arts

2017

Los Angeles is a crazy collision of intersections, and Westwind, UCLA’s student-run journal of the arts, strives to capture this spirit.

We seek to provide a platform for the weird and wonderful voices found all over the greater Los Angeles area in whatever form they arise.

For over fifty years, Westwind has been printing poetry, prose, art, music, and everything in between. Help us attempt to define the undefinable that is Los Angeles. Anything goes.

Westwind is made possible with the support of UCLA’s English Department. Print journals are currently available in the English Departmental Office.

Cover Image: “Laundry” by Raquel Avalos Illustrations by Hyangsook (Sookie) Kwak Designed by Dylan Karlsson, Sophie Mirzaian, Pauline Pechakjian, Amara Trabosh, and Winston Bribach

Faculty Advisor

Reed Wilson

Managing Editor

Natalie Green

PROSE Senior Editors Nahal Amouzadeh Sophie Mirzaian Staff Nathan Bang Winston Bribach Micaela Harris Suren Najaryan Theodora Ng Emily Parsons Erika Salazar Rachel Sweetnam Amara Trabosh Nick Versaci Jessica Vidal Melissa Villalón Anne Youngdahl

POETRY Senior Editor Dylan Karlsson Staff Sonia Chung Zach Conner Naiomi Desai Julia Eberhardt Eric Fram Jonathan Lovett Shannen McKee Eunice Shin Blog Editor Erika Salazar

EDITOR’S NOTES One of the most pervasive college stereotypes: it’s where you find yourself.

Really, it’s where you lose yourself, then think you find yourself, then accept that maybe there’s nothing so life-changing to find out about yourself after all. This journal—from a college drop-off in “Grace” to an American identity in “untitled”— centralizes these revelations of self in different forms, genres, and mediums.

College was where I found Westwind. It’s where I found like-minded students who let me make bad jokes; who facilitated readings to engage with L.A.’s literary community; and a very special few who helped guide our staff in reading, discussing, and editing their peers. I found our faculty advisor, Reed Wilson, and Director of Creative Writing, Fred D’Aguiar, who supported Westwind and all I thought it could do and be. I found talented friends who I roused to contribute and found friends in talented contributors.

After three years of managing Westwind and writing quarterly editors’ notes that no one except my parents really read, I wanted my last note to be concise but encompass everything I’ve ever felt about Westwind. I set myself up for failure.

Thank you to all of the people that continue to make Westwind, undergraduate arts journals, and more generally, the arts, possible at UCLA—whether students, staff, or alumni. If I found out anything about myself in the past four years, it was probably because of Westwind.

Natalie Green Managing Editor, 2017

FICTION With graduation around the corner, I’m continuously asked what my plans are, and I often reply with a nervous ramble about possible internships that ultimately boils down to: “I’m moving back home.”

But what is home? I spent two years roaming around UCLA, moving between Public Affairs, Humanities, and Rolfe.

The uphill walk back to the apartments, Westwood’s Christmas light adorned trees, its constant livelihood at all hours of the night was home. My phone considers Kelton Avenue exactly that: home. Can I really say I’m moving back if I’m here already?

There have been so many pieces of art dedicated to that feeling recent graduates deal with, sitting in their childhood homes. Your bed in here is more comfortable than the stiff twinsized bed from your apartment. Your car sits in the driveway— no need to shell out $20 for a 25-minute Lyft, no need to wait for the silver Prius in the cold night. Time spreads in front of you, the resources are bountiful, but there’s still something not quite right.

This is not a feeling I’m particularly excited for, but it’s nice to know that others understand. It’s nice to read somebody’s blog, their poem, their journal, and see that, ultimately, I’m not alone. Literature in all different forms is there for us in that way.

It tells you you’re not alone. When things are feeling particularly odd in the following months, with all my loved ones scattered across the world, I’ll look to art to feel some comfort, not unlike the art found in this edition of Westwind.

Hope to see you on another page, in another home.

Nahal Amouzadeh Senior Fiction Editor, 2017

FICTION Without Westwind, needless to say, there would have remained a large void in my undergraduate education. I am honored to have been part of a team of editors who is deeply invested in constructing a journal showcasing the best that UCLA’s, and occasionally Los Angeles’s, literary arts community has to offer. My brevity here is in the interest of allowing our pieces to speak for themselves, some new and some as part of our annual collection of best-ofs. In the midst of this year’s conclusion, however, my confidence takes precedent over my sentimentality. May Westwind always improve with the staff and the seasons; I look forward to witnessing its changes.

Sophie Mirzaian Senior Fiction Editor, 2017

POETRY Our goal as a poetry staff has always been to offer a space for a community of poets to present their work, to contribute to the understanding of the poetics evolving on campus and in the greater Los Angeles context. When trying to build community, one may focus on the commonalities of the poets and their work, narrowing in on the singularity of their voices. But the poetic tradition should always be complicated, and so should the voices that we present in this journal.

The strength of this community lies in the diverging methods taken to get to the clear, lucid, and resilient poetics we desire. From concrete poems that give us a material taste of words, to oral recipes that de-center the DIY, to translations of Anna Ahkmatova that span poetic generations; these are the many voices that spoke to us. Whether it’s the voice of a student, an artist, or a professor, we hope they speak to you without reduction.

I’m thankful for Natalie, our Managing Editor, whose dedication ensures these voices may reach you, for the poetry staf’s ability to locate and nurture that voice in any poem, and for our contributors, for finding it in themselves to write down and craft their own irreducible voice.

Dylan Karlsson Senior Poetry Editor, 2017

TABLE OF CONTENTS My Mother Prepares for a Date by Madelyn Chen

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Let Us Cultivate Our Garden by Madelyn Chen

15

Songs that Sang by Orr Swissa Amran

16

At Summer Camp by Kyra Morling

17

The Kitchen by Nicole McKeon

18

A Post-Modern Menu by Natalie Green

20

How To Make a Thing From Nothing: A Recipe And/Or An Oral History by Audrey Mei Yi Brown

24

Ownership by Teresa Cordova

29

Roots by Teresa Cordova

30

Brown by Miguel Ramirez

32

we try not to talk about racism #57

by Colleen Hamilton-Lecky

33

family geography by Colleen Hamilton-Lecky

34

Never try, then by Brian Kim Stefans

36

Oh, now that’s nice by Brian Kim Stefans

37

How Stars Form by Grace Li *1st place poetry Writer’s Den Contest 2017

40

Ground Up by Eric Fram

45

Wave by Eric Fram

46

Untitled by Vicky Wang *1st place prose Writer’s Den Contest 2017

47

Decay by Cami Pawlak

51

Pipelines by Fred D’Aguiar

54

5PM by Anousheh Fard

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[And suddenly, the urge to ask what happened…]

by Anousheh Fard

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The Dutchman by Bryan Firks

60

Carousel by Ji Young Lee

67

Saved by Delphi Sky

68

Untitled Poem trans. by Dante Matero

69

To Vera Ivanovna-Shvarsalon trans. by Dante Matero

70

I Carry Her Water from the Well by Randy James

71

Sum/Days on a Hill by Randy James

72

Fourth of July, Five Years by Randy James

75

june 13 by gabriel brenner

76

sexy by Anna Ter-Yegishyan

77

Silence by M. M. Villalón

78

Wreck by Winston Bribach

79

Tutankhamen Blues by Garrett Durbin

84

Unhinges by AJ Urquidi

85

“I’ll eat my spare tire, rim and all” by AJ Urquidi

86

After All by Great Scott!

88

To Brownie, My Loyal Rabbit by Yuri Nishiyama

89

Grace by Nick Versaci

90

secular by Esther Lu

94

untitled by Tulika Varma

95

Look back realeyes by Brad Gristlelather *2nd place poetry Writer’s Den Contest 2017

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MY MOTHER PREPARES FOR A DATE

By Madelyn Chen at the bathroom mirror— not boudoir—is it “door” or “dwah”?

She brushes paint to smooth the cracks across her sunset smile— the skies of her lids gleam with scrubbed dish clean like our bodies after swim practice, chlorine spices a bed of rice and meat, we cling together to drown lightning; her bed is warm with the blush red sheets of her cheeks their apples blossom in the spring of her lashes where the tightrope of eyebrows balances —meditating—on irises, waving from the window.

Spiders’ feet dangle in her broom bristles & she mops gossamer across her lips, which taste of red; wine drowning her tears.

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LET US CULTIVATE OUR GARDEN

By Madelyn Chen The water kisses the bridge with slobber my dog dripped onto my cheeks, wind relayed gossip of chickadee mothers who were beauties, once.

My mother kept her pageant crowns in crystal. Once I called my girlfriend beautiful, she laughed, then cried.

Sunlight polishes the bridge, gleams like the shard that scraped demons from the insides of my purple wrists.

Old ladies of my childhood streets have moved into my building, their whispers bleed through walls.

Bouquets bloomed in the hospital room, a perfumed garden. After we sacrificed our birth-naked bodies to bathe in a lake, I kissed all my girlfriend’s scars.

When I visit a city, I pray at a bridge to receive the blessing of metal demons, they growl for blood. On my sixth hospital stay, my mother sent a single yellow carnation, a handwritten note, “Fuck you.” Poppies grow on my dog’s grave in our community garden.

Both my mother and Queen Elizabeth I wore purple.

My body burns in a lake of fire and the ashes dance.

Once, I asked my mother if I was beautiful. She laughed.

When my girlfriend moved, she threw a knife through the crystal case, the smashed glass glittering among my mother’s tiaras. The last time I saw her, alive, I doused myself in her perfume, and the lighter laughed.

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SONGS THAT SANG

By Orr Swissa Amran

Watch Songs that Sang

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AT SUMMER CAMP

By Kyra Morling She’s got a lazy eye, and I don’t know where to look.

She says that is how she sees the world truly twisted.

She braids her hair to the side and she says she will never fall in love.

I tell her I would like to be her.

She says I am not seeing straight.

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THE KITCHEN

By Nicole McKeon The kitchen is sweat flurry and the metal clink of knives.

I am standing between a couple at war. We have been drinking tequila. My upper lip feels grainy and I don’t know if it’s salt or pieces of my own chewed up lip. You are in the living room, sitting on a boy’s lap. He places lime slices on your tongue. I am at the counter cutting a vegetable, gnarled and weatherbeaten. I taste bile in my throat as E smashes plates next to me.

K is setting fire to onions at the stove. I taste the heat between the two. The space is infected, dark moss growing over nostrils.

No one can breathe in this tropic war zone. My hands are shaking, dancing the knife over the wrinkled skin in front of me. Stray words bounce off the metal in my hand. It is just the three of us in the kitchen. Even the low-bellied cat has left. I want you to climb out of the boy’s lap. I want to curl up into your soft stomach until the stinging onion air doesn’t make me cry. But I hear you laugh and I slice down. The bodies next to me are saying words and pressing against objects. I think I’m supposed to put these grey clumps somewhere. Instead I watch them slide into hands, under water, onto plate. They’ve stopped fighting but it still tastes like I’ve licked an electric fence. And now we are all sliding, into chairs. The cat’s tail brushes against my knee, painting fur on my skin. We pass bread like Sunday school kids, polite and sweating. Everyone swallows their bread in one communal gulp. I don’t really feel hungry anymore.

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Dinner Week of September 27

A POST-MODERN MENU

By Natalie Green

“Do you want an app?”

“You mean a ‘snack?’”

“I think I’m gonna throw up. So L.A.” “Cornbread sounds good. It’s only $5.”

“Frosted nuts. Like candied?”

“Holy shit, bread and cheese for $15.”

“But we’re going all out!”

“It’s because it comes with nuts, too. See?” She stabs me, emphatically. “They’ve gotten crazy expensive because of the drought. A bag of walnuts is $12 at Whole Foods right now.”

“What are fresnos?”

It’s 7 p.m. on a Friday: a certain kind of dinner rush that always wears me thin. They barely look old enough to be here.

She wears a skinny black dress and he wears a skinny black tie.

The table’s fake candle flickers and shadows their tans darker still for a somber all-black affair. He flips his phone on the table.

It glows: Google search, “pickled fresnos.”

“Good evening and sorry to interrupt. Welcome to fundamental LA.” Skinny tie flips his skinny phone over and covers it with his skinny hand. The waiter appears in all black.

With a practiced nonchalance, he fills their mason jars with water from a carafe. He places the carafe beside the fake candle and vase of dried daisies—dead daisies—and beams at them.

“My name’s Jeremy, and I’ll be taking care of you this evening.

Have you dined with us before?”

“Only once.”

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“Welcome back! Our dinner menu for the week is heavy on end-of-summer produce and pickled and sweet pairings. Can I get you started off with anything to drink?”

“I’ll get the Indie.”

“Great choice. It’s a local brew from L.A. Looks darker in color but tastes much lighter. Perfect for the warm weather. And for you, miss?”

“Can I try Hair of the Dog Fred, please?”

“Of course. And if I could just take a look at both of those IDs, please?”

I see her vertical ID cross over me before she can put the card back in her small black bag. Jeremy walks away, and skinny tie abandons the metal chair—he sits next to skinny dress on the uncomfortable wooden booth, pulling his arm around her hipbone. They become one and leave me resting on the tabletop, bending their heads side-by-side to scrutinize. Her dyed blonde ends tickle the top of my ten-point font. I don’t care what they order, and I don’t want to hear their wondrous whisperings over my organic offerings. Locally sourced ingredients with stolen origins and harmonious syllables: feta, fennel, chimichurri, tartare.

“Shrimp a la plancha and stewed okra.”

“Kabocha squash?”

“Bulgur wheat.”

“Jidori half-roasted chicken and green harissa.”

Each foreign word stumbles from their mouths, and I get doused in spit.

“I might just get the burger.”

“A $13 burger.”

“Better than a $25 steak!”

“I’m not getting the steak.”

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“I’m sorry, get whatever you want.”

“Maybe I’ll get the salmon.”

Their faces blur in a confusion of mental mathematics, calculating drinks, snacks, and tip.

“Coconut panna cotta or churros?”

“We don’t need to get dessert.”

“That’s fine.”

They agree because that’s easier than disagreeing and they swallow one another whole without chewing. I predict a future of purchases—the introductory starter: a purebred, purse-sized dog named Fred—before the main lineage: a virtuoso violinist named Indie who tans well. Then they realize one main is only a taste. Skinny tie finds a palatable bitterness in an unknown short story for a Hollywood feature film and skinny dress wins best supporting actress for playing the misunderstood sex worker turned suburban mom. She clasps the award with salty streaks running down her cheeks and thanks her devoted husband for his consumption. Production. Unfed dogs and unnoticed children.

Or unnoticed dogs and unfed children. They both have affairs with men and women and women and men who all somehow taste like each other and have at least one addiction—they are all just sides, they tell each other. It ultimately leads to an unhappy divorce, but they stop eating gluten, skip dessert, and stay skinny until they die.

“Here are your beers!”

“Happy one year anniversary!” They cheers and cover me with drips of alcoholic ferment.

23

HOW TO MAKE A THING FROM NOTHING: A RECIPE AND/OR AN ORAL HISTORY

By Audrey Mei Yi Brown Part 1.

A young woman Or a mature girl Crosses a border.

She transgresses rules Invented by people she has never met And who have never met her.

She sets her Sight on “el norte” She does not know How When What Her journey will be.

She simply knows “el norte” And she is sure.

Because she has to be.

A different woman sits on the same bus.

Woman taps woman’s shoulder.

She asks Where you going?

You have friends?

Family?

I going el norte.

No friends, no family.

I have just me.

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When woman laughs it is not mean.

It is care.

Woman raises her chin and nods.

Girl is no meat, all bones And brown feet dangling.

She might be unbreakable.

Woman helps girl Because they are a part the same.

To break rules and borders, she needs to be stubborn.

To break rules and borders She needs help.

To break rules and borders She needs to See What is not visible yet.

She must disobey her reality And transform it.

When given nothing She must claim something.

She must create the thing she needs to be real.

Part 2.

Take a lesson from a woman at the brink of girl: To create a thing from nothing you must envision it ďŹ rst.

Instruction: when eating an orange spit the seeds into the Soft crook of your palm.

What do you see?

An orange seed can be A. nuisance

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B. trash C. metaphor If A or B, drop seeds into waste bin with peel.

If C, toss metaphor with care into soil.

Hear the possibility in this metaphor: A woman I once met invited me to her house.

In her garden, she grew a towering orange tree.

Hundreds of juicy oranges hung from branches.

They popped out of the dense green leaves.

She planted the tree forty years ago From a seed she plucked Out of an orange she ate Forty years ago.

She told me her story was beautiful.

Because one seed from one fruit Could grow into a tree with many fruits every year.

And how many years does a tree live?

So one seed is thousands of fruits and millions of seeds.

It is wonderful.

So you See Little is ďŹ xed in the garden One seed is actually a million.

Numbers slip and twist The bare becomes the bounteous The barren becomes the fertile The plain becomes the vibrant.

What a remarkable place, What an unruly place!

Is this the profound edge That we seek?

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Part 3.

In her garden, this woman with oranges Was here and also not here.

She was here and she was there.

She was in the city and she was in el campo She was in the City of Angels but she was also in her pueblo.

I tried to understand.

I broke it down in notes.

The pigeon is to a chicken As the little dog is to a perrito She has everything except for the burro.

It is a strange truth That is hard to see on paper But watch woman in her garden Listen to what she says.

Hear her story in the— Soft, skin-prickling sunshine Sweet drips of orange Firm velvet of guayaba Spiky silhouette of cactus Humid air beneath canopy Neat rows of rainwater tubs Small scurry of perritos underfoot Shine of hanging ornament Soft snort of burro Muted roar of river.

Her truth is undeniable once you feel it.

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Part 4.

Woman is the orange is the thing which Forces itself into being.

In order to break rules and borders, She must say No And also See many Yeses.

Know uncertainty but be certain.

Potential is just a slippery wisp of maybe.

Edges are precarious places.

Edges are paradoxes.

(Ex/Res)istance is a tap-dance, a balancing act, a switch-up— Real-ity—Real—Real-ized.

Realized potential is the burst of rich juice On her tongue When she bites ripe fruit flesh Picked from a tree She planted forty years ago From a seed.

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OWNERSHIP

By Teresa Cordova Body: the physical structure of a person or animal, including the bones, flesh, and organs. Example: “It’s important to keep your body in good condition.” Nobody likes majoritarian pigs.

What do you say to this challenge? Pinky up. I’ll drink to that.

What makes you nervous? You are the one, the robber. I accept that my cynicism is consequential to your innate heritage. Only after your hailing me am I present. Don’t touch your holster.

Hold my hand and count to ten. Maybe if you would have just waited—add me to the long list. Rest in peace Prince Jones, we love you. Look into the mirror. What do you see? I see you treat your body like your temple. The phenomenon of your smile is curious, with its incessant violence that continues, after my death. Blood stains have a long life. Even after my body decayed; the stains became my family’s family. I lied; I challenge you so that means I challenge all of America. What are the semantics of the word body, in a police report, if you never actually own one?

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ROOTS

By Teresa Cordova After Jeffrey McDaniel “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

— Audre Lorde I’m from god damn those Millennials, they want everything for free.

I’m from Amor, you got a runny nose? Vicks VapoRub fixes everything.

I’m from pick a wave of feminism or it will acquire you.

Don’t you dare free the nipple; there is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.

I’m from *NSYNC’s live hit single “Bye Bye Bye” on VHS. I’m all colored skin pinned against a white wall in 2016.

I’m from the land of who is free? And home of who is brave?

Let’s make Donald Drumpf again.

I’m from 1997 Slip’N Slide plastic burns on my skin, but they were still so much fun.

I’m a bread-winner in my twenties.

I’m from I might have to freeze my eggs by the time I’m done with a Ph.D I’m from you are the only Mexican eating at this Mexican restaurant in Beverly Hills, but you still do not belong here.

Excuse me miss, where are you from? You look exotic!

Oh, Mexico? I’ve been to Cabo once. Muy nice.

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I’m from real HOPE in 2008.

I’m from whispers of it’s risky if we fund for homeless housing.

I’m from you are all lazy thugs, thanks for not evading your taxes, though!

I’m from his salary is higher than hers.

I’m from #SayHerName Sandra Bland, Sandra Bland, Sandra Bland.

Don’t try to be avant-garde, it is more avant-garde to not try.

I bet Karl Marx was a goth.

I bet Langston is still singing The Weary Blues.

31

BROWN

By Miguel Ramirez

Brown was inspired by Latino artists such as Diego Rivera and Frank Romero/Los Four Collective and was created in hopes to promote Brownness and Latino/a/x culture.

Watch Brown

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WE TRY NOT TO TALK ABOUT RACISM #57

By Colleen Hamilton-Lecky hands under heap: a cavernous blood boil grows along stretch of ground called “earth.” in somber reflection ghost still asks with innocence who… me? & all the windows convulse the house rebellion Scream—you! you! you! then nothing. & in this silence: power to empty the bowl as if tender stream, not fiery hemoglobin choked of oxygen life that bursts to survive its own body.

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FAMILY GEOGRAPHY

By Colleen Hamilton-Lecky

Butte, Montana pumps mineral through flesh. men’s bodies in the dirt, they beg for copper & gold. mouths pray for tomorrow in swigs. clugs. chokes. in nuggets, city builds from explosion. an opening that knows death well. the need to fill.

San Francisco, California births mist and gold: two unholy gods as baptism on baby’s body. at church, grandmother becomes flute. hollow and lonely, she waits for something more than empty bottle. back of hand, that restless void. in this silence: a suitor. small body becomes mother before realization of life. tufts of red apology, no divine plan of Mary.

Santa Rosa, California delivers well-soiled vines. mouths stain red with saints

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on this, the California coast. grapes blister & burst. sun unfolds filament of fruit. finally in wine country, our home. must move no more, we joke. at the grocery store, my grandmother steals me snickers. an earnest complicity, sweet tooth passed down, bailey’s jameson stella rosa. i write thirsty for memories, though crisp gray of time folds it’s own hems. grand-mothered— how color fades with history, as drunken body, and collapses into self.

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NEVER TRY, THEN

By Brian Kim Stefans Never try, then try harder.

The doxa of economy versus the plug on excess.

Never plug a guest, never harden the art. Steer, my little cybernaut, into harm.

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OH NOW THAT’S NICE

By Brian Kim Stefans Oh now that’s nice: a shot of Jack, sports on TV something like eternal returns even as the games ply their singularity. * The rules —bodies— are figures cut from exhausted Greek sculpture, if not live, then reproduced impeccably with CGI —CEOs, dweebs and tweens having fashioned a way to the heresies of enhancement surgery.

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* The stories of the players’ lives are no more or less garish than ye myths from olden times, so one confronts one’s own tastes in sin if by that we mean finger flipping off nature —fuck that Rousseaian shit— skirting along the edges of conventional morality with the panache of an HBO pict fake ID’d out of purgatory. * Our athletes just want it all— to be meaningful fools

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in the way of poets but get all the money and the advertised redemption (grist for the biopic that makes one eternally “one of us,” part Tom Hanks, part Sid Vicious) insuring an arrogation into the annals of Pop Culture. * I can give or take it.

It’s difficult to be a heretic.

One needs to be a reactionary if only to split the zygote from the uterine wall.

That’s something like a purpose.

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HOW STARS FORM

By Grace Li Inward pressure, a collapse The struggle ends, the struggle is reborn In death the seeds of stars burst forth— Iron litters the land with war, uranium ore, Mercury and lead that now chokes our heavenly river.

We studied, we looked into the divisible souls of atoms We thought the stars would form from dust But it was not enough.

Someday I too will know the dark places of the world Where one and one’s shadow part ways, where you stood Still you travel retrograde into some distant starry future Infinite paths leading back to where you began.

Do you mistake the hazy glow of the night watchman’s lantern For the full moon? The clearing of the rain, a perfect circle That will not come back to meet you.

You are my father’s father but I cannot call you ye ye How can I understand? I cannot even put into words Hello, goodbye, yes, no, wo bu dong.

Cursing your sons, silence, a slamming of the door.

They all ask their children

Ni chi hao le ma?

Have you eaten well have you eaten?

What are these sounds of my foreign tongue?

I hope you don’t know my name.

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Father of my father, had you any grandchildren Would you have wished to see them?

Were you young once, did you write poetry?

Stranger, would you seek to tear at the loose ends of my heart?

All the same places where you came undone— Eclipsed by circumstance, were you Orpheus of the street, Do you know I hallucinate glory and guitar strings, How do I escape your invisible orbit?

You and I both, still waiting for the hour of fame (or infamy) Father of my father I am the restless living bones of your dreams How could I ever know or understand?

Weightless, the board around your neck—Anti-revolutionary!

Big landlord!

The truth is more humiliating—conspired against by exasperated neighbors You always were too difficult a man.

The emperors then the Nationalists then the Gongchandang, Democracy, unattainable as the transaction of your familial love, A price twenty years of American income could never afford.

The Cultural Revolution is dead and buried, exhumed only in wounds that come out at night—a faraway hymn of Red Loyalty—now you are the impersonation of wealthy men so you paint beautiful things, for what?

And your son made it to the Golden Gate, an unknown child takes fancy letters that should have gone behind your name (if only the motherland had not been so cruel) And I take cross-continental flights in summer childhood to my father’s hometown—

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we walk distant streets, I could have passed you in the smog— yet unaware of your existence, a child, I whine about the poverty and heat for what?

I’m questioning if any of this happened I’m questioning if you happened.

I imagine you as Li Bai. Li Bai, why trust this wai guo ren?

The ancient knowledge grows faded with tourist’s eyes.

I play Marco Polo with family history hoping to steal a semblance of truth.

Li Bai, my parents always miss their hometown But I am rootless like you.

Li Bai, I feel no longing when I look at the full moon An empty perfect circle that you fell drunken into Li Bai, if you only knew the truth of Einstein’s papers that all our perceptions are wrong and time doesn’t travel in straight paths but falters hesitant and jumps along, time the aching progress of China, time that swallowed our ancestors, time that carries pure light into the cracks of our human hearts, time that bounces off the heavenly bodies and falls haphazard uneven across mostly the favored parts of the Earth So we do not see the same Moon Time runs towards me, fleeing you.

You scrounge for scraps of pride that the industrial capitalist vultures forgot buried deep underground in ancient cities

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unembarrassed in the shadow of 10,000 years of—what— I don’t know do you?

Still the Earth turns beneath your unmoving feet When do you realize you have gotten old?

As you sit in the home of your son’s stolen efforts, you have no family left Does it hurt you, oh why doesn’t it come to you?

The greatest man in Ji’an! Straight from the primordial clay of the Yellow River!

Seven thousand miles from the shore that holds America apart!

America, a deep sigh, a blank check that always bounces back.

And when you leave I will not weep I will not laugh I will not have learned your name.

Our ancestors did not know of the Pacific Ocean Our ancestors who reached the end of the circle Whose qi dissolved into a million breaths of the Jade Emperor that stay suspended stagnant in the hiss of the West Wind In their deaths I try blindly to resurrect eternal life.

You banished immortal, You a raging dragon chasing after his own tail Misunderstood, your grandfathers were important men.

Ten years of Revolution, liberation! of your demons A deep longing, slurred calligraphy, Senile erhu, wine-soaked embrace with disaster Do not look back upon your children Sic itur ad astra.

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Watch the light dance from a dying icker No explosions, no violence Collected in the dust No phoenix rises.

So faint and weak, I am No more than your American dream The undeserving product of 10,000 years of collapse One who would stumble upon the meaning of all things with only a candle in hand.

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GROUND UP

By Eric Fram Human sweeps fire over endless grasses and hoots something about economy.

It winces, crunching at its burnt toe-tips scrambles to hide from Earth as scorched terrain’s tumult grumbles in the starched stomach of human.

Human tugs at amnesiac weeds, whose scalps seep in pitiful pools, unceremoniously exhuming a slender spine that bubbles and dissolves at its edges so human can see through the abscesses at the dusty seeds coalescing at its feet.

Did you see Earth’s face when this began?

How Earth blanched at the metal spears and trembled at each nail in its temples!

The crash of static that awoke you pierced Earth indelibly and deeply and you haven’t slept since. Rest now!

You’ve sent your snowy pawn to rook Earth.

And every year in the space between dark and day you wail, hoarse and hairless.

Earth welcomes you: you, who severed tendons in tenuous tenderness and spilled salt on the circuits in your soles.

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WAVE

By Eric Fram Lucy’s walk home is interrupted by a gawking mass huddled between office buildings.

The liquid crowd tenses to the police barriers and heaves with every collective breath.

An errant ebb draws Lucy in and she sinks toward the center.

The sidewalk is gray until it is red, and red until it is an island of crimson carcass, marooned ribs escaping through their crunching cage, a burst of speckled brine splayed and splattered and faceless until it has a face.

“I know her,” she says.

A stained briefcase monogram glints.

“I know her. I know her. I know her. I know her.”

She is swallowed back into the mass of living bodies And feels her own recede with the tide.

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UNTITLED

By Vicky Wang It was one in the afternoon by the time Miranda got out of bed. She’d woken up five minutes earlier and spent them just lying there, enjoying the feeling of being cocooned in warm, puffy sheets. At one, she smiled and stretched before sitting up.

After a quick scan out the window, she quietly crept downstairs.

Breakfast was a quick affair: a bag of black tea stuck into a mug of cold water and some Lucky Charms she’d managed to find in the back of the cupboard. She ate at the kitchen counter, feet dangling off an old leather barstool as sunlight peeked in through the gaps between the blinds. The light felt like a good omen, a small blessing of some sort. It had been a busy year— she’d had to move dozens of times and had only returned here, her childhood home, a few times. A lot of little things had piled up, and as Jennifer once said, it’s the little things you need to remember.

So at two, she set about doing her chores. She glued the sole of her shoe where it was starting to peel off and hosed down the bloodstains on her car. She dug up more granola bars and picked as many oranges as she could from the tree in the backyard. (There was a severed finger lying on the ground, and she made a mental note to burn it later but kept her distance for now.) She cleaned the house and made sure all the traps still worked and tidied the floors, humming all the while.

As she was dusting, Miranda came across a stack of books sitting on the mantle over the fireplace. Her mind flashed back to a year ago, when she picked her old favorites off the shelf

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and read them to Jennifer on one of the last quiet days they’d spent together. Due to inconvenience, her trips back here had been rare and short, and Miranda realized she hadn’t touched or moved much of anything in this house since then. She ran her fingers along the scuffing at the corners of the top book and closed her eyes, remembering.

They’d sat together on the floor, going through the words.

Jennifer had laughed and cried at all the right times, and Miranda had felt happy and almost giddy from the closeness of another person. It had been some time since they’d become friends, and Jennifer had admitted that while they hadn’t had the greatest start—Miranda had thought Jennifer was dangerous and had gone running at her with a nearby lamp—the day they’d met was one of the best of her life. It was a moment Miranda held close to her heart—she could still recite Jennifer’s exact words.

Something in her chest tugged painfully at the memory and for a second, and she tensed, waiting for the wash of sadness she was used to every time she returned to this house. But to her surprise, it didn’t come. So much had happened, and the sadness she felt was distant, more faded. All she could think about was the dumb, dark jokes they used to make about their situation and the way Jen used to rest her head on Miranda’s shoulder when they were both tired. The pain was still there—it always would be—but she was genuinely content. That was something she never thought she could be a year ago.

She smiled at the dent and raised her duster to it in a mock salute before deciding to pick up her favorite childhood book.

Five minutes later, with another bowl of cereal in hand, this time accompanied by an orange and some canned soup, she flipped through the pages as she ate.

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The book was an old thing, filled with kings and princesses and magic and gods, but it wasn’t exactly meant for children. It was always a mystery why her younger self had loved such a sad story.

It went like this: There was a good man who saw much wrong in the world, and one day a god appeared to him, dressed all in hooded robes which obscured his face. “How much are you willing to give,” the god had said, “to see something perfect?” So, the good man fought as hard as he could and saw many of his friends die and all manner of horrible things, but he unified the lands and became king. He married a beautiful lady and had a wonderful daughter, and an era of peace finally settled, and the king was happy. Then, the god appeared again, only this time he took off his hood.

“How much are you willing to give?” Death said.

And the king had nodded his head, and went with Death, and the kingdom prospered for a couple of years before crumbling.

At the king’s funeral, the princess gave a touching monologue on how history was made that day, and how very brave her father had been to give up his happiness for the sake of an ideal. Miranda shut the book there, and smiled wryly as she thought about how strangely happy she’d been in her house all day, doing things as small as cleaning and singing, reading and remembering. History was definitely not made today—not for the world, and not even for herself.

History was made four years ago, when the newest bout of avian flu hit a small town in rural Kansas.

It was made three years ago, when the sickness had spread like wildfire, leaving its victims highly contagious and desperate for human contact, when the words “zombie apocalypse” were on everyone’s lips.

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It was made exactly one year ago, when most of the world was pronounced dead by the last running news channel, and Miranda lost her best, and last, friend.

Maybe, she thought, it would be made two years from now, or three, when some brave scientist in some outpost somewhere found the cure and sacrificed his or her life getting it to the general population. Maybe she would give a grand monologue on the importance of their sacrifice. Or maybe she would just eat nectarines, instead of oranges, for the first time in years.

Sitting in her home she could never quite abandon with painful memories she never quite wanted to fade, she realized how different she was from the king. She could carve out a piece of happiness for herself even in a far-from-perfect world.

Sometimes you have no choice.

Tomorrow she would wake up earlier, gather what she needed, and move on before anything found her. And then in a couple of weeks, maybe she could come back and tidy up again.

Maybe the cereal would still be waiting for her, and the books on the mantel, and the oranges in her backyard, and this small space to breathe and live amidst all of the things that had happened.

Jennifer had been more right than she’d known—it’s the little things that really matter.

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DECAY

By Cami Pawlak

PIPELINES

By Fred D’Aguiar glory days long gone if they ever were what might have been sun hook ďŹ sheye sails clear of smog for long enough a sliver to tell me you anyone with an inner ear what rays sing loud swing clear through ether from that blue to this bluer time that we are who we are because of what we have been could never hope to become fair to all living things loving ourselves

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others bent on keeping earth ship shape not this rush to nowhere this use everything to nothing not this fuckup of our planet we gormandize with half an eye on mars

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5PM

By Anousheh Fard A sunset then a clocktower call, a watch pulsing somewhere in the city’s radius like a pacemaker splitting the minute a bank clerk’s hands wrung against the smooth steering wheel his knuckles paling, fall of sunset’s orange veil and everywhere color’s flow through the world motion aspiring to the opaque, or across town child in storefront shadow adjacent to a brick wall in the sun, his fixed eyes

which, in the light can be certain nothing is written some elusive reminder some recognition the lesson of fleeting, clocktower sound

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and what followed: a row of sedans funneled in ten directions at once. And the door hinges—

wind hurries past another stoplight sun flowing out there is nothing to reason with a matte black shadow retreats into downtown’s geometry with a hue on its shoulders— and the grime on your hands prayed into the sink—

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[AND SUDDENLY, THE URGE TO ASK WHAT HAPPENED...]

By Anousheh Fard A rigid evening every leaf contracts the last voice in drift a shadow black Lexus cleaves a dusk of black sand. Stepping out, you always about to dissolve into face paint cul-de-sacs climbed the hill a sleeping labyrinth of white space, right angles, pastel big margins between the lawns.

Up the street tunneling humid night air juxtaposes top oor bedroom as if by chance on clear glass a painting, or painted dream you did not have where morning sun pours climactic through blinds the relatives saying so much dust in this old house. smell of organs on breath icker

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of eyes the sidewalk: cones of light marching down matte curves unmistakably alien. Too dark for horizon the suburban house in bloom pastel embers and wind thinking you back on—

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Watch The Dutchman

THE DUTCHMAN

By Bryan Firks Garrison Grey rolled his cloth out on the table. There’s the extractor, retractor, and the trocar. The gooseneck and calvarium clamp. The aneurysm hooks and, of course, the brushes. Down at the very end. His brushes. Every size for every occasion. He flicked the tip of one, checking its firmness. He watched the fleshy flakes fall off the sides.

You can get some decent money with a degree in mortuary science. Garrison Grey certainly did. And the best part was, he got to make something. Impressions, he called them. He rather liked that word, impressions. Reminded him of The Dutchman.

Garrison Grey knew his impressions were art. Look at his tools—thick brushes, nice round palette, and the canvas—right there, under the chartreuse blanket. It was really somewhere between chartreuse and olive, but not quite fern. Exotic.

Nobody came down where Garrison Grey worked. Too cold, they thought. Smelled like something. This was his place.

His studio. But even with his studio and his brushes, Garrison Grey knew there was a problem, and it was with the impressions themselves. They didn’t last.

The impressions were gone when they went away in the boxes. Yes, he knew they got some exhibition time. A museum of black and tears; he’d never been, only heard. His work went on display upstairs, the centerpiece of the gallery among the vases and veils. But exhibition was over in a few hours, and the impressions went away, into more boxes, and deep, deep down where no more eyes could see.

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But Garrison Grey didn’t let this bother him. He had another occupation. On the side, of course. It paid well too, if he were to brag. But the best part was he got to make impressions of a different kind—ones that were meant to last, with paint and palette knife.

He kept these other impressions in their frames, inside one of the large capsules in the wall. Kept them cold, preserved.

Nobody checked, really—this was his studio, after all. He took them out when it got late, and spent all night working on them.

His latest was The Potato Eaters. A perfect replica of The Dutchman’s fine original. How striking. Pensive. The Dutchman was Garrison Grey’s favorite artist. Look at the impasto, the perspective. Can have nothing but respect for The Dutchman.

Garrison Grey had other names for him too, of course. The Vincent Van, or sometimes just The Van. But The Dutchman was his favorite. Lots of money in his name, and easy to make the impressions look like the originals. Impressions of postimpressionism, Garrison Grey liked to call them. Made him chuckle.

But enough about The Dutchman. Garrison Grey should be thinking about his main occupation. The one he got a degree for.

He re-checked the brush, no fleshy flakes anymore. He attached the trocar to the pump-tube, and waited for the crimson and scarlet to ooze out.

He glanced at his canvas, still under the chartreuse-olive blanket. The Dutchman made such excellent use of chartreuse and olive. So mature in his strokes—and Garrison Grey knew just how he did it…No. Forget The Dutchman until tonight, get to work on this impression.

Garrison Grey started with the wrists, his usual routine.

Some shading, fleshy pink. Well, isn’t this a clean one. The

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blanket fluttered over his hand as he worked. He continued up the arm—a little indigo and azure here—oh, that’s no good.

Bruises and boils, the B’s they shouldn’t see. Fleshy pink to balance it out.

Now on to the hands. Most important part of the body, according to Garrison Grey. So much to work with. Crinkles and creases and cracks. These were tired hands, though. And fingernails that long? Must’ve been an inch, flaxen-mustard yellow. That won’t work with the palette. Need to cut them off. But that’s not a job for here, have to take it upstairs. Work around it.

Garrison Grey carefully lifted the chartreuse-olive blanket back over the arm. He left half the hand out, a reminder to cut the flaxen-mustard fingernails. He removed the blanket slowly, carefully off the face. Always careful when dealing with the original. Slowly, carefully…

Garrison Grey took a step back. He almost dropped his thick brush. Several fleshy flakes fell to the ground.

Orange hair, slicked back. Not even marmalade, this was orange. Sunken cheeks, more than usual—it’s only been two days. Orange beard, too, flecks of gray.

It looked like The Dutchman himself.

No, no, this can’t be. What’s The Dutchman doing here?

He died on July 29, 1890. No, this isn’t possible. He’s gone. He’s been gone. He can’t—does he know? Garrison Grey looked at the glassy emerald eyes. He knew.

Garrison Grey shuffled over to the large capsule in the wall.

Punch in the code, open the door. Good. Still there. The Potato Eaters right at the top, where it should be. Striking. Pensive.

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He walked back to The Dutchman on the table—no, it’s not him, stop that. Stay focused. It’s just like any other canvas. Right there under the chartreuse-olive blanket. Garrison Grey leaned down over the orange beard with gray flecks. Pale face, sunken cheeks. Same orange hair, slicked back. For the first time since he got his degree in mortuary science, Garrison Grey didn’t know how to start the impression.

He decided he had to see something. Just for good measure.

He walked back over to the large capsule on the wall. Three letter code, open the door. He shuffled through the other impressions in their frames. Starry Night, The Potato Eaters. No, no, not those.

Where are they? Self-Portrait with Straw Hat. Self-Portrait with Pipe and Glass. Ah, yes, here they are. All here. All sold.

Wait, here’s one more. Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear… yes. This is the one. The best seller.

Garrison Grey left the large capsule door open and walked back to his canvas, the best seller in hand. He grabbed an aneurysm hook and two positioning devices, and hung the painting on the white wall, right above his canvas. He examined the old impression for a moment. One of his finest to date. Look at the strokes, perfect form. Graceful. Poignant. The Dutchman couldn’t have done better himself.

Garrison Grey looked back at his canvas on the table. He stared at the face—the sunken cheeks, the orange-not-marmalade hair. The orange beard with gray flecks. Remember, don’t stare at the original too long, it will bias the impression.

Too late.

Garrison Grey began with a spruce shade, carefully at the tip of his detail brush. Just a little, to accent the sunken cheeks.

Tiny strokes. Soft. Graceful. Look at this! He was making an impression of his own impression. Made him chuckle.

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He applied some sand tones to round out the features, to complement the orange hair and beard. Now, if only he had the hat. The indigo and black hunting hat. Someone upstairs might have one. No, stay focused.

Garrison Grey kept working into the night, until he had just one thing left—arguably, the most important part. This was where the money was. The reason behind the best seller. He grabbed his cloth, letting the extractor and gooseneck clatter on the table. He wrapped the cloth over the ears of his canvas, tucking it under the chin and tying it with a knot.

No. Inauthentic. Look at that bulge underneath the earcloth, left side. It couldn’t be there.

Garrison Grey removed the cloth, and observed the left ear of his canvas. Fully there, fully attached. But then he noticed something that must have been invisible to him before. A great boil, right where the left ear should be. In fact, it replaced the left ear entirely. Bruises and boils, the B’s they shouldn’t see.

Garrison Grey went over to his tools on the table. Skip past the calvarium clamp and the trocar. Yes, here it is. The scalpel. A traditional tool, helpful in times such as these. He leaned down over his canvas with the scalpel in hand. Time to remove the boil, and make it look authentic. That’s the trick, really. Authenticity sells.

Yes, keep going, just like that. Adding new colors to the palette. Crimson and scarlet. Looks like some infused indigo as well; it has been two days, after all. Keep going, remove the boil.

Take it all the way off. Nothing left. Then the cloth will fit, no inauthentic bulge.

The crimson and scarlet was getting on Garrison Grey’s smock, and the floor. But he was almost done. Thirty-nine…and forty.

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It’s off. Pull it away slowly. Quite a bit more crimson and scarlet now, not to worry. Now it’s authentic. And what a nice palette, too. Grab the cloth from the table, and wipe off the unnecessary crimson and scarlet. Play with it a little on the face, though, adds some nice hue.

Now it’s time to put the cloth around the head, tucked right under the chin. Looks just like the impression on the wall. Two fine impressions, in one room. The Dutchman as the inspiration.

How striking, pensive.

Garrison Grey stood hunched over the canvas, crimson and scarlet dripping from one side. The chartreuse-olive blanket had completely fallen off, revealing the flaxen-mustard fingernails and the fleshy pink fingers. Slowly, carefully, Garrison Grey tied the cloth around the chin.

There. Garrison Grey took a step back, and looked at his masterpiece. This was, indeed, his best impression to date. Better than his best seller on the wall. Better than the twenty-seven frames inside the capsule. Better than the other canvases, buried below the ground. He smiled. The Dutchman himself would approve. This one was going to last.

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CAROUSEL

By Ji Young Lee

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68

SAVED

The clip-clap of papier-mâché pointe shoes.

Her body ascends the winding staircase—

resonates through old seminary halls, bun-head clusters sift between studios.

Twelve foot double doors open to a grand parquet lobby—Beethoven’s Symphony

A stucco cream building climbed with ivy, tucked deep within the hills of San Rafael.

A child risen from dancing rainbow scarves, chest to skylight, in her moment of grace.

Sixteen cloches sweep her canvas slippers, the swoosh, swoosh crossing through first position.

studio A’s built-in bench-lined landing, barre to ceiling yellow stained glass windows.

By Delphi Sky

UNTITLED POEM (И мальчик, что играет на волынке)

By Anna Akhmatova Trans. By Dante Matero The boy who plays the bagpipes, The girl who weaves her wreath, Two paths crossing in the forest, And a distant flame in the next field— I see them. I remember it all, Gentle love in my heart.

Though there’s one thing I will never know And even cannot recall.

I don’t ask for wisdom or strength.

Just let me warm myself by the fire!

I am cold. No, I am frozen! Winged or not, Kind gods will not come.

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TO VERA IVANOVNA-SHVARSALON

By Anna Akhmatova Trans. By Dante Matero The park was filled with a light haze, The gaslamps flared at the gate.

I remember one face: Still unknowing, composed.

Your sorrow, imperceptible to all others, Drew me close, And you understood that this yearning Was poisoning me.

How I will love and revel in the day, I will come as soon as you call me.

Me, sinful and idle, The only one you won’t reprimand.

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I CARRY HER WATER FROM THE WELL

By Randy James I throw a pick against the body of my acoustic guitar and from the living room, her antennae pick up the infraction. I come to the cross in her eyes led by the roving anger in her voice, the unnamed anger creeping to my extremities.

I am brought to honesty by the litany of her inquiries. The root of what’s unsaid swells to a three letter crest and awash, she is made incredulous. Her lips form perfect disgust.

“I will stop believing if He doesn’t change this,” says the woman who fills each night with cries for the ear of things unseen. A three-letter word attached to her son, another weight upon someone made the mule of the world.

“Come. We are going to fix this.”

We fall into the lived-in chocolate ottoman for the test of faith.

She prays from a place where voice assumes a tidal force. Her pleas ebb from my fifteen-year-old heart.

I pray to presuppose a miracle. She plays hype man. In the span of a fraction, I let go.

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SUM/DAYS ON A HILL

By Randy James Instead of awkward descent in a box full of penises that flaunt their boys, you find a virgin Band-Aid on stairs mistaken for a fire escape—after chanting down seven flights, before knowing whether or not exit is emergency.

On the ground, Celine—almost always offering when others back away—steps into the middle of the path. In a mauve lip she says, “Today has been a day,” and all the other closer eyes break formation, but not her trampoline smile.

Your shoulders respond like a minute hand, and more stairs where pairs of legs travel in threes and flip flops land like medicine balls.

“Poetry is offensive,” you think, a poached horn attached to your breastplate as you charge

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through the dining hall, charging capital C and in all ways charging.

You make yourself a work of art every night you dine alone.

You eat as a balancing act, and he is so loud.

He slips through earbuds licking his teeth, leering at the young women lining the buffet and the next day is Richard with the violent last name the peckish hazel eyes the fine fingers—like a bird or baby or lady— reaching for air, resting on lips or a heaving chest, and somewhere in the middle of the day, the sun starts to slouch.

You apply too much grapefruit lip balm and your right hand’s first three fingers are forced to do the work grace failed to perform.

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Later on that night, you take a call from a strong ellipsis who tells you he’s now living in Nebraska.

You think, a Thoreau moment, and imagine the shared laughter from such a give of pretense.

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FOURTH OF JULY, FIVE YEARS

By Randy James The photo from that fireless night we walked home— Williamsburg Bridge— the steel trusses and sighing streetlamps the settled lovers in their double orbit— who initiated our hands?

Two black boys in reflective judgment, in the climb of an Obamaian summer with no need for sweaters or long pants.

And you, cross-legged before the bridge-mouth’s chalky tableau of the city— I continue to look for it hope it will be found or hope you tell me where it is.

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JUNE 13 By gabriel brenner sand particles scratch my ankles rock bumpy waves roar you barely hear me yell i’m still a target they put bullets in us y’know waves recede it’s dark you laugh you put your arm around stop shivering how warm

they told me you only date girls but you don’t feel shame when you touch me

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SEXY

By Anna Ter-Yegishyan you call me sexy and i let the word swim in my head the way fruit flies swarm watermelon in may. at that point they don’t realize they’re drowning. sexy’s in the magenta sky fading. sexy feels like silk or heaven, till the edges chip away like Venus’s seashell. till the meaning melts like black licorice stuck to your back teeth. sexy soothes. sexy’s smooth like shark scales. sexy is not hard like the word love. sexy doesn’t last. sexy looks like fish dissections or wet cutting boards. sexy is not in the smile, it’s in the lips pursed and ready. it’s in the symmetry. i say nothing. that’s sexy. sexy doesn’t talk back. sexy is not thick like the word honey. it’s easy, like cereal or Kool-Aid. when you lie to me that’s sexy. you call it sexy when the salt water glues sand to my skin and proceed to brush me off with hands like Michelangelo. do you think it’s sexy when i ask you to ask me how i’m doing? it’s sexy when you get mad.

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SILENCE

By M. M. Villalรณn

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WRECK

By Winston Bribach I rose up, soaked and shivering from the rain I’d slept under.

So much for alcohol being a warming mechanism. I wasn’t quite sure of my location, except that L.A. loomed in the distance like a large fluorescent light. The rain poured down harder, and I pulled my overcoat up around my ears to little effect. I shouldn’t have ditched the old Mercedes station wagon—my twentieth birthday present—in a roadside ditch when it ran out of gas. There were no buildings along the highway; the shelter would’ve been nice.

Cars passed me as if I was a leper or an axe murderer, which seemed more likely these days. Still, I had to keep moving and stuck my thumb out in the hopes of flagging down a ride. Nothing worked, so I hopped out into the lane as a pair of slow moving headlights closed in. I refused to move, turning the showdown into a game of chicken, but the car sped up, forcing me to dive back to safety. I kicked a puddle, causing a small splash. Then, I heard a pair of honks and turned to see an old black Honda Civic with a window rolled down.

“Get in!” yelled a young woman’s high-pitched voice.

I wasn’t about to contest a miracle, even if it came in the form of a Honda Civic.

“Where are you headed?” she asked as I walked up to the passenger door.

“Anywhere but back there.” I pointed to the city lights.

“That bad, huh?”

I nodded.

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“Get in the back. She’s been off and on since I started driving, and I can’t take care of her right now” I did as she said. I hadn’t noticed the baby, slumbering peacefully in a little pink suit, until she brought it up. A baby was the last thing I wanted to see, and I might have considered going back out in the rain if the car hadn’t zipped down the highway so quickly. After studying the infant, my attention reverted back to the driver. She looked younger than me, probably 18 or 19, and already saddled with a kid.

“I hope Bakersfield’s far enough. Her daddy’s last child support check didn’t come, and I’ll kill him before she has to go hungry again.”

I nodded again.

The woman turned the radio to a smooth jazz station. I folded up my overcoat and pressed it against the window to use as a pillow. Water gushed out of it, down my side and all over the door, which didn’t bother me as much as the alcohol beginning to wear off. I closed my eyes, and Christine’s words struck me again like a Mike Tyson haymaker.

“I’m pregnant, Rick. I’m pregnant!” she’d said after I drove to a dark, secluded spot overlooking the West Side.

The baby started crying. I tried to tune out the noise, but she needed or wanted attention and knew how to get it. The mother looked back and slapped my knee.

“I picked you up so you could take care of her!”

I undid the baby’s car-seat restraints and pulled her onto my lap. She was heavier than I expected her to be.

“Watch what you’re doing,” the mother said, taking her eye off the road again.

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I thought about reaching for the phone in my pocket. I stopped myself. If it wasn’t dead, it was full of missed calls and angry text messages.

“It’s okay, honey, it’s okay,” she said to the baby. “You better be careful with her, or I’ll kick you out of this car right now.”

“Do you know what’s wrong with her?”

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t need you, would I?” “Does she have a name?”

“Jessie.”

I cradled Jessie in my arms and gently rocked her back and forth. She calmed down with each sway. When I tickled her under the chin, something my mom used to do my little sister, she stopped crying. She even started cooing and tried to grab me with her little hands. I couldn’t help smiling and looked up to see the driver smiling, too. It occurred to me that I didn’t know the driver’s name, but I decided not to ask. She might’ve thought I was trying to make her and God only knows how she would’ve reacted. I didn’t need to deal with that, not after Christine. I looked away as the driver sped up in the right lane to pass a car.

“Oh, shit!” she yelled before I felt a jolt. The other car switched lanes at the last second and we collided with its front passenger door at almost 80 miles per hour.

I grabbed the baby and shielded her. The force of the collision threw me forward and gave me whiplash. I bounced back and forth, holding tight. Outside, I heard an awful cacophony of tires screeching and metal clanking. Cars whirred past us. The smell of burnt rubber filled my nostrils. A liquid hit me in the arm and neck. Only afterwards did I notice that it was blood.

When everything stopped moving, I looked down at Jessie.

Her quietness scared me at first, though she somehow managed to escape harm like I did. She reached up to feel her tiny cheeks,

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while I straightened up to look around. The mother was slumped over the wheel, blood dripping from her brutally smashed head.

She was dead. I had never seen death before.

I forced the door open, and as soon as I got out of the car, I felt a little woozy. My first steps were wobbly. The heavy rain didn’t help, neither did the baby I carried. After a few yards, I caught solid footing and turned to survey the scene. The other car was flipped over and the driver must have been smashed underneath. Except for the crushed front-end, the Civic seemed to be in one piece.

Before long, traffic built up along the highway like a clogged artery. A symphony of horns rang out then died when the first responders arrived on the scene. A paramedic checked me over, even after I told him not to. He checked Jessie as well and wanted to do further examinations at the hospital. In the ambulance, two cops interrogated me about the wreck. *** The doctor let me go without much fuss. Jessie, however, was still being looked at. I waited in the ER lounge for word on her status. I hadn’t eaten since who knew when, so I banged my fist against the vending machine. No luck. Suddenly, a man about my age came up to me. He had the basic earmarks of a former high school douchebag—tattooed arms and coiffed hair.

“You were in the car when it crashed?”

“I was.”

“I bet it was your fault.” He tried to grab me by the shirt, recoiling when he felt the moisture.

“We can’t know that,” I said, standing up. “The important thing is that your daughter’s alive.”

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“Fine.” He stepped back. “Lisa’s parents will be here soon.

She’ll be in good hands.”

“I hope so.”

“Look, I’m sorry. It’s just… You don’t expect things like this—” “I know.”

“If there’s anything I can do, just let me know.”

“Actually, there is one thing. My phone’s dead, and I need to call someone.”

He tossed me his phone, and I dialed her number from memory.

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TUTANKHAMEN BLUES

By Garrett Durbin So much and yet so little time awake What is made of gold What does gilding take?

Father Time’s too quick in these kindred nights He thinks he can read I think I can write It’s peculiar, too, this old tendency Ten attempts to mend What we tend to see In the mirror I see a wounded child Kingdom came too soon Kingdom Come defiled

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UNHINGES

By AJ Urquidi high priestess of the shuttered office, after-hours girl straightens desks, outsid e disengages stray lamp rays, binds symmetrical jaws of her father’s firm by ca the new t nvas in dis raffic pole s figure d sha have yet t me of o an ov be unveile ernig ht op d, eratio hidden n c and as she sneaks a s e cul-d past a rattling oiled of a c h c a e r mailbox e h t ses p at swall a crawlspace g hou rear u ows hissin the unhinges t w left le of an on- itching t ca g still o kickin ll plumbe rso r, g

IONS ULAT CO G oak afless ded of a le shred t the hed arms s a the parked car across the walk compresses p rd tc onwa in outstre man & woman in odometer dim, their fangs r e bann gnashing, retches gesticulating, their mutator tension nestled between tightening windshield coercions of the dead tree’s reflected limbs, an overbearing force to contain through their many years in spite to come the daughter, model prisoner, unmasks her locked screen door, scattering spiderrs into the kitchen mouth her fa t at the her passed o table, bread ut in suit knife in ha nd life s fist ep his for hi let him ke s e h c a to lk, re of mi glass a s r ou ead, p foreh ore s i h s em isse she k solves onc re then

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“I’LL EAT MY SPARE TIRE RIM AND ALL”

By AJ Urquidi Lovely background Born to writing addition short He Many

age hardboiled

points died died

death

her ashes storage depressed and

He died of Failing Lovely swell socked brains

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to tell

under bush.

oil

Depression.

composed cared development

his a woman

long constantly

right

loss

fit

drunk neglected

called

took

end to do

life 1959.

money sorry

right

men supposed photographers and long liable having a fake

supposed touch prints.

hours.

to look some Why not City “A trouble straighten minute, care still softly, city know city very, very my western cleaner mention hull on just the limit honest to matter this country chiseled out play dirty or don’t [erasure from J. Aguilar’s Raymond Chandler handout]

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AFTER ALL

By Great Scott!

“Come meet the Angels where they fell The world is dancing so you might as well”

Hear “After All”

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TO BROWNIE, MY LOYAL RABBIT

By Yuri Nishiyama Black eyebrows joined together on your small forehead— you are my loyal rabbit who lived to see two springs.

Your amber fur was soft and smooth until I stopped cleaning your house— flies laid eggs in the toilet, and I breathed in your stained fur.

In my dream you are alive, rattling the cage for water, and I

fail again to change your bottle…

I wake up with a burning throat.

I carry your patience with me, for you never raised your voice against my abuse, not even furrowing your brow.

May you rest under the orange tree where wildflowers bloom…

O Brownie, my loyal rabbit who died on the day I left for America.

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GRACE

By Nick Versaci In the middle of traffic, steam began to curl from under the hood of his mother’s faded green Odyssey. He’d been expecting this since they pulled out of the garage. The van’s odometer was over 328,000 miles, bound to expire, so of course its demise was due the morning his mother was driving him to college.

“Deep breaths,” she said, patting the wheel like she was comforting a child. “Deep breaths. We’re just going to pull off and add some coolant.”

“I knew this would happen,” he said from the passenger’s seat.

“You’re not helping,” she snapped. “Positive energy.”

Usually he enjoyed challenging her belief in “energy” and “vibes”—if you visualized an open parking spot, you’d get one, that sort of thing—but the van’s choking engine drained his motivation to tell her it was bullshit. He was four when she bought the Odyssey from a used dealership in San Diego.

That was before the upholstery ripped and sagged; before the left blinker went rogue; before the divorce, when there’d been a second car in the garage for backup. At every hiccup—flat tires, blown taillights—he warned her that the van was dying, that she’d need a replacement, but she always played hurt. I love Grace, she’d say from the driver’s seat, cradling the bottom of the wheel in her palms.

By the time they negotiated their way into the right lane, steam blanketed the windshield. They edged up the ramp.

His mother was quiet and cycled through radio stations until

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she found the Los Angeles channel for NPR. This Saturday’s installment of “Weekend Edition” featured the story of a girl whose lemonade stand was raising money for her school’s music program. He stared out the window, wondering how many lemonade stands he’d need to pay off his college debt.

There was a McDonald’s next to the overpass, and they rolled into the first open spot. “I’m going to empty my bladder while Grace cools,” his mother said.

The door banged shut and he was alone in the van. He wished he could scream, slam his fists on the dashboard, but he’d lost the energy. He covered his face with his hands. He’d known the van would break down; he was right all along, but she didn’t listen. Now they were late. Even if they got to school before his move-in time expired, he still had to unpack all of those boxes, organize his dorm, find dinner, make friends— He drew in a deep breath and checked himself in the mirror.

His face was flushed, his eyelids sagged and a defiant curl sprung from the side of his head. The only person in the world who liked his curls was his mother. She cut his hair in the upstairs bathroom. He always made her cut deeper than she wanted to, and the dry, asymmetrical clumps would pile up around him on the cold tile. I can’t believe this is all yours, she’d say over the hum of the buzzer. Once, as she guarded his ear with a finger and snipped around the edges, she said, Someday you’re going to find someone who loves your hair.

When his mother returned from the bathroom, her hair was up and her face was calm. She raised the hood and began adding coolant to the Odyssey. “We’ll get you there in time,” she said.

They made it back to the 405, and the engine seemed fine.

Maybe his mother was right. He reached for the radio and asked, “Do you want me to turn on your show?”

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“It’s okay,” she said. “I’d rather talk to you.”

They parked in the assigned lot near his dorm. They were fifteen minutes late, but it didn’t matter. He checked in at the front desk while his mother took a cart from one of the yellowshirted volunteers and began to unload the van. He returned just in time to rescue a fragile box that his mother was about to crush with the mini refrigerator—it was the box stuffed with books and movies that were supposed to make his dorm feel like a home.

“I was going to move that box,” his mother said as they lowered the refrigerator together.

They unloaded his things and still the back of the van sagged. He tested the loose bumper with his palm. His mother had stopped, too, and was staring at the heap of his suitcases and storage containers. “I can’t believe this is all,” she said.

“I can’t take everything,” he said.

“I know.”

One cart was enough to move his belongings to the dorm room that he would share with a guy who was moving in the next day and whose name he couldn’t remember. He pushed the cart between their beds, identical wooden structures with bare mattresses, and began to calculate the transfer of his things into this new space. He sidestepped around the cart and opened drawers, eyed the gray walls for places to hang his posters.

His mother hovered in the back corner of the room, behind the cart they’d amassed. She said, “You’ve got a lot here, and I should try to beat traffic.”

He turned. “Do you want me to walk you out?”

“It’s all right,” she said. She stepped forward and hugged him. He’d feared there would be tears, but in the end there was just the hug and a reminder to call.

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He’d begun fitting his sheets over the new mattress, a stale substitute for the spongy bed he was used to, when it finally hit him: she was gone. He ran into the hallway and realized it was too late. She was on the road. He slumped down against the wall and pulled in his feet so another family could pass with a cart full of boxes. Outside, new cars funneled into old parking spots.

His mother was alone in the van that had carried his car seat, transported them to the beach on Friday afternoons, endured flat tires and blown taillights and overheated engines. He imagined her steering toward an empty house, just she and Grace, hands cradling the wheel as they eased through the traffic and into the night.

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SECULAR

By Esther Lu When I was seven, I helped my mother kill a goose for the first time.

I held its downy white form, alive and writhing under my soft, unblemished hands, down on the wooden cutting board.

We placed a steel bowl under its neck, and, as it quivered, neck spasming, black eye rolling in its socket to stare at me till I looked away, my mother took her sharpest knife and slit its throat.

The red nectar of its blood spilled, flooded into the bowl and the warm iron stench filled my nose as the goose gave its last few kicks and shuddered to stillness.

Later, I watched as my mother boiled and plucked it until it was a glistening pink carcass, the smooth curve of its ribcage like the swell of a tumor, a wet and foreign presence gracing our table every few months.

In the evening, I sank my teeth into greased goose leg, had its warm blood, salted and boiled, slip down my throat, fought with my brother over its savory tongue, and I forgot it ever had feathers at all.

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UNTITLED

By Tulika Varma the mynahs were the arbiters of your fate— one for sorrow, two for joy, ten for death. every time you saw one mynah, you promised yourself there was another just lurking in the closest bush. once, in bangalore, you saw fourteen mynahs in a field. you decided, i will feel happiness twice, and then, i will die. once, in bangalore, six years later, you listened to a train hum over your head and watched a clock tick towards midnight, each tick grating you until your ashes were scattered on the street. four mynahs came to pick you up, your two moments of joy. * the crows were your teachers. they taught you to usurp the duties of god, turn black to experience the night that has been held from you, but still make enough noise to ripple darkness that cannot pretend to be empty. hollywood fears both crows and bloody women, so to be either— or both—is admirable. *

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you wrote once: i want to cling to the tails of migrating pelicans to see where they go, to see what strange fish they carry in their beaks. in winter they came in hundreds and settled on the lake, a froth of white feathers and water, sometimes erupting from within you, beaks tearing their way through your own insufficient mouth. you watched as the winter pelicans left you, leaving you with a shredded oesophagus incapable of swallowing food; they were replaced by inert marsh plants that sometimes flowered, but of which there were too many. concrete had devoured the wetness from which you had all emerged. * the koels were gentle. they fed you when the hunger was crippling, soothed you to sleep after. they followed you to lucknow and delhi, reassuring among too-fast dialects of hindi, red-eyed from maternal tiredness. but when you flew to america, they would only fly with you till the immigration line—then they joined the pigeons in the airport rafters. birds do not belong in america, they said. in that place, birds are hunted and sold, wrapped in plastic, to celebrate a genocide. *

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the crows nodded. they said, do not be afraid of thresholds. shit on people’s heads frequently: if you do it with enough confidence, they will convince themselves it’s good luck. * you told your mother, i am tired of learning from the crows, travelling with the pelicans, i want a beak of my own. your mother, an expert seamstress, made you a skin that fit better than your own, settling well into the space between your fingers. with this, you could fly as close to the sun as you wanted. * after months in america, you asked the sun: birds are real, right? birds are real? all you got was the smell of melting plastic. you were turning the charcoal black of a crow. on land, you do not perch with both feet on separate wires; you fear quick electrocution, but not the slow fire.

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LOOK BACK REALEYES

By Brad Gristlelather Is the ground wet? How deep did the rain cut / everyday button shirts prepare souls to face / lOOk outside, see the minds expanding? See ’em shock? See ’em curdle? / in this littol neighbournhood alone people have so many fricken experiences! when eye overslept propel / rubberband from bed Crack / open foot to sock slip / on my dreaming cap dash / daily question into vein O, where your breath-root, chest-halt, cringe?

Look back realeyes / upon an old conversation you forgot / you held / in your wrists as you crawled / in your throat as you spoke / you quenched / caught off-guard you sudden gut return ta rhythm / you remmemer / who wazzit who sayd.

Going to the mountain, coming from the mountain, turn the whirled around?

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CONTRIBUTOR’S NOTES Orr Swissa Amran is an artist working primarily in video.

Her work explores structures—interiors and constructed environments—often with relation to female affect. Using housing as an armature for her work, she mobilizes these properties to create quasi-narratives, ones that read the structure’s physical space and the people that embody them.

“Rocky” Raquel Avalos is a fourth-year art major at UCLA. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she has taken photos vehemently since middle school, starting off using her aunt’s chunky silver Canon point-and-shoot. Within her art practice, she is interested in the the staged experience of everyday life, which includes car transportation, local TV programming, family relations, and the domestic space. Currently, she is working with painting, video, and performance on melding the ideas of her art practice and her work as a costume and production designer on undergraduate and graduate student films. gabriel brenner is an L.A.-based artist engaging with video, photo, text, and sound. His work explores constructions of the self, histories of trauma, and the poetics of loss. Drawing heavily from personal narratives and their relation to normalized legacies of erasure, he contemplatively communicates the phenomenology of inhabiting a queer(ed) body in the present.

He is currently attending the University of California, Los Angeles and will graduate in 2017 with a B.A. in Art.

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Winston Bribach is a third-year English major and Film minor.

He’s a sportswriter for The Daily Bruin. When he is trying to avoid working on a short story or a screenplay, you will find him watching old black-and-white movies or listening to Frank Sinatra or Bobby Darin. Winston is also a fan of American soccer, though he is often frustrated by the state of the game here in the States.

Audrey Mei Yi Brown officially studies social geography and environmental literature at UCLA. Less officially, she is always studying environmental injustice and how it is really just another piece of all the other injustices out there. For Audrey, poetry is lived first—it is the moments, sensations and turns of phrase that show her clarity through nuance. Audre Lorde speaks of moving from language to idea to tangible action in order to “predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change.”

Towards the same goal, Audrey often experiences the inverse: from actions spring ideas that leak language onto pages. Audrey wants to give credit where credit is due: her poem emerged in response to a research interviewees’ beautiful oral history and when writing the poem, Audrey drew influence from bell hooks’ theorizing on the profound edge as well as Gloria Anzaldúa’s work on nepantla and nepantlera.

Madelyn Chen, currently a second-year English major, minoring in Film and Entrepreneurship, can usually be found cuddling with a book and a cup of tea. Though her mother predicts her future career will be “unemployed,” Madelyn aspires to be a writer, and has taken various creative writing workshops towards this end. When she’s not browsing new bookstores

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and cafés, you can find her debating philosophy, dressing like a country’s flag in Model United Nations, or napping.

Teresa Cordova has received her B.A. in Creative Writing with a minor in Business Law from Cal State University Northridge and is currently pursuing her M.A. in English, also at Cal State Northridge. Her work has appeared in Angel City Review, as well as In-Flight Literary Magazine.

Fred D’Aguiar teaches at UCLA where he directs the Creative Writing Program and is working on the minor in Creative Writing as well as thinking about a graduate program for UCLA. His most recent books are the novel, Children of Paradise (Harper Collins), and the poetry collection, The Rose of Toulouse (Carcanet).

Garrett Durbin is a third-year political science and English student at UCLA, though his dreams of writing creatively for a living tend to intensify as he tries to begin essays. His writing is carved out of the highs and lows of the College Experience.

Anousheh Fard is a third-year English major in the creative writing concentration at UCLA. Nice to meet you.

Bryan Firks is a third-year at UCLA who loves filmmaking, writing, and Lego building. He directs short films as often as he can, and hopes to continue collaborating on feature films. He would feel equally at home in Middle-earth, Hogwarts, or the Death Star, should he ever have the opportunity to visit.

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Eric Fram is a second-year student majoring in Economics and English with a concentration in creative writing. He is a member of the Westwind editing staff.

Natalie Green is a fourth-year English major in the creative writing concentration. For her honors thesis, she wrote a short story collection entitled Lost Angeles. Natalie edits Westwind, works at PEN Center USA, and reads “Modern Love.”

Brad Gristlelather likes to gab, gawk, and go get boba.

Wondering: WHO GET TO SPEAK? (WHEN / WHERE / HOW / WHY?) As Treasurer to the board of Chancellor Gene D. Block’s Office for the Abolition of the Academic Industrial Complex, she writes in order to reenvision relationships betwixt capitalism and FOMO (Fear of Missing Out).

Colleen Hamilton-Lecky is a third-year World Arts and Cultures major with a minor in education. As a Teaching Artist with Get Lit—Words Ignite!, Colleen facilitates meaningful experiences with poetry for youth across Los Angeles. She believes that poetry is a vessel for love and tenderness, which is why it remains necessary today.

Brian Kim Stefans is an English professor of contemporary poetry and new media. He recently published two poems in Poetry Foundation’s Poetry Magazine. His most recent book of poems is Viva Miscegenation (MakeNow Press, 2013), and more of his work can be found online at his website arras.net.

Hyangsook (Sookie) Kwak is currently studying, learning, and working towards receiving a degree in Fine Arts (B.A.)

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and Sociology (B.A.) during her years at UCLA. She enjoys— among many other things—practicing, sharing, participating in, collaborating on, thinking about, experiencing, and making art works (photographs, video / media, stories / writing / poetry, drawings / paintings, music / sounds, dance / performance, etc.).

Sookie cares about trying a wide variety of exciting, unfamiliar, embarrassing, challenging, fun, strange, and also engaging practices and approaches, in order to better understand and appreciate people / ideas / things / cultures / events /relationships / places / etc. that are important / inspiring / relevant / interesting to her. Sookie also really wonders, talks, worries, hopes, and stumbles about a lot.

Randy James is an English major in the creative writing concentration, and Art History minor. He is a recipient of the 2017 Shirle Dorothy Robbins Creative Writing Award and has been previously published in Myriad. He is a native Los Angeleno, raised in and around South Los Angeles.

Ji Young Lee was born in Korea and came to the United States in 2004. When she was ten years old, she saw her first musical and fell in love with intriguing world of set design. She received her undergraduate degree at Rhode Island School of Design in Interior Architecture. After receiving her bachelor’s degree, she interned at George Tsypin Opera Factory in New York and helped design Sochi 2014 Olympics opening ceremony. In 2013, she moved to Los Angeles and started her Scenic Design MFA program at UCLA. While studying at UCLA, she also worked as an intern at Walt Disney Imagineering. Ji received her Scenic Design MFA degree at UCLA in 2016 and was selected as an apprentice with the Art Directors Guild.

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Grace Li is currently an Astrophysics major at UCLA. She enjoys writing poetry, and is also an aspiring musician who can be found at soundcloud.com/gracelxy.

Esther Lu is a nocturnal second-year Political Science and English double major at UCLA. She enjoys drawing, visiting Japan, stalking fashion trends, sleeping and eating, arguing about politics, and, occasionally, barfing out words. She loves reading things that makes you feel queasy and nervous, but hungry for more.

Dante Matero is from Los Angeles and recently finished a degree at UCLA. He is currently on a Fulbright in Russia. His work has been published or is forthcoming in The Rattling Wall, Nailed, Rip Rap, and others.

Nicole McKeon lives in the shadow of a big blue church. When not writing poetry, she can be found reading (space operas and articles for graduate school) or playing with her seven-year-old dog. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in West Trade Review, Transfer Magazine, Uncanny Valley Magazine, These Fragile Lilacs, and Westwind.

Kyra Morling is from New Jersey. She is an an actor, artist, activist, and a theater major at UCLA. Yuri Nishiyama is an international student from Japan studying political science at UCLA. She is fluent in English, Chinese, and Japanese, but uses only English for creative writing. She suffers from tuition discrimination and the financial aid barrier against international students in U.S. colleges, and has further lost faith

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in American institutions after the 2016 election. She plans to pursue a master’s degree in contemporary Chinese literature at Beijing Normal University upon graduation this year.

Cami Pawlak is an environmental science student at UCLA from Seattle. In between struggling through chemistry problem sets, she finds time to go on little adventures throughout the Los Angeles area. On her way, she takes photographs.

Miguel Ramirez is a senior in the film program at UCLA’s School of Film, Television, and Theater. He is a first generation Salvadoran-American from South Central Los Angeles, where he lives in a very diverse and multi-ethnic community. He is interested in social justice and race relations, and hopes to fight for communities of color.

Siblings Jonah and Sierra Scott formed the New York-based folk duo Great Scott! in the summer of 2016 as a medium to share their mutual love for writing, recording, and performing music together. Though they developed a mutual adoration for classic rock at a very young age, their music tastes diversified as they grew older: Jonah delved into jazz and folk, while Sierra dove into punk and emo theatrics. Their different styles create an eclectic repertoire of cover songs, but Great Scott!’s foundation comes down to an immense appreciation for well-written songs of any genre. Jonah is the main songwriter, guitarist, and backup vocalist, and Sierra is the co-writer, rhythm guitarist, and lead singer.

Delphi Sky is an American poet from the San Francisco Bay area, where she attended College of Marin and Santa Rosa Junior

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College before transferring to UCLA to earn a B.A. in English Literature with a concentration in creative writing. Sky is the first woman in her family to earn a college degree. She is the 2017 statewide-winner of the Ina Coolbrith Memorial Prize in Poetry and UCLA’s first-place winner of the 2017 Fred & Edith Herman Memorial Prize from The Academy of American Poets.

Anna Ter-Yegishyan is finishing her last quarter studying English at UCLA. She’s interested in redirecting and translating her feelings, thoughts, and love into sentences. Her writing is available to check out on her site here.

Tulika Varma is a third-year double major in English and Gender Studies. She is an international student from Chennai, India.

Nick Versaci is a third-year English and Statistics double major.

His favorite authors include Tobias Wolff, Junot Diaz and Jane Austen, and he hopes to one day write something as good as Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” (the accomplishment of this goal appears doubtful). When he’s not reading or writing, Nick enjoys running, watching movies, following Cubs baseball, and getting into long, often ridiculous arguments with his roommates on topics such as religion, time, and which apartment item would make the best weapon in the apocalypse.

M. M. Villalón, a native of Los Angeles, has ventured into the many sides of this city, discovering a metropolis that can seem impersonal but really is a dynamic mixture of communities. Her artwork reflects this eclectic character, portraying the faces and structures found in L.A.

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AJ Urquidi is a poet of Monterey, L.A., and NYC. His writing has appeared in various journals, including Vector Press, Foothill, and Verdad. Winner of the Gerald Locklin Prize, AJ is co-founder of online journal indicia and has led workshops at CSU Long Beach and Beyond Baroque (in Venice Beach).

Vicky Wang is a sophomore pursuing a bachelor’s degree in biology, but she also loves writing and that’s why she’s here.

Other things she loves include sweet drinks, superheroes, drawing, playing the violin, hanging out with friends, and spending way too much time on the internet.

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WESTWIND UCLA’s Journal of the Arts Westwind accepts rolling submissions year-round of unpublished original works of prose, poetry, art, and music by UCLA students, alumni, and members of the greater Los Angeles community.

We currently publish two online journals in Fall and Winter and one print publication in Spring.

We’re extremely open-minded, so send us your best work.

For more information, visit us at westwind.ucla.edu

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WESTWIND

2017