Parlor Tricks Issue III by Parlor Tricks Literary Magazine

TABLE OF CONTENTS A GOOD LIFE Gwyneth Henke… 3

ON SILENCE Rose Miles… 40

UNTITLED Jason Liu… 75, 76

PAINTINGS BY JORDAN JONES… 4

UNTITLED Al Scarangella… 41

CHRYSTALLINE Teague Morris… 77

CIRCLING: A VISIT Sophia Schmidt… 5

PHOTOGRAPHS BY HUDSON BOHR (SERIES II)… 42

AD ASTRA Ariel Chu… 78

WHAT MAMA SAID Trevin Corsiglia… 12 MONOTONE Tongyu Zhou… 13 INTERVIEW WITH MIKE GLIER Lisa Zhang… 14 PICTURES OF SOMEONE ELSE’S ART Brianna Rettig… 20 SINGING Jordan Jace… 21 JOHN AND EMMA Emily McDonald… 22 PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOSEPH BONCARDO… 23 PHOTOGRAPHS BY HUDSON BOHR (SERIES 1)… 32

SYMPTOMS OF HEART DISEASE Chinmayi Manjunath… 42 RECIPE: CURRY FLOW CHART Gabby Markel… 58 REFRACTED Bertie Miller… 59 PIOCHE COWBOY Brianna Rettig… 62 A GOOD FIGHT Sara Hetherington… 64 SHADES Tongyu Zhou… 65 WHITE PEOPLE SUCK Jordan Jones… 66 SHELLY’S EXPERIMENT Andrew Wallace… 67

BEHIND THE DIVE BAR Tyler Tsay… 35

PAUSE BETWEEN THE RAILS Fred Guo… 69

DO NOT MOVE STONES Claire Bergey… 36

CHINESE INTELLECTUALS Jianing Tu… 74

PHOTOGRAPHS BY AL SCARANGELLA… 79 ENLIGHTENMENT Fred Guo… 88 DEBUT FOR CONSCRIPTION Breidy Cueto… 89 PRINT Jessica Chen… 92 ARCHIVE OF A PERISHABLE FRUIT Gwyneth Henke & Natalie Wilkinson… 93 THE ARCHITECTURE OF TRANSIT Brianna Rettig… 98 ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES... 100 STILL Jordan Jones… 104

A GOOD LIFE Gwyneth Henke

Last night I saw you tied to the railroad tracks. I cut your legs off below the knees, trying to free you. The recovery was slow-coming. Many days you resented me. We found we loved each other with a ferocity difficult to utter. Some thought this came from the intimacy of bone and muscle, or the way you leaned against my weak frame in the mornings, to walk under the sun. Some thought it was just the way we were born to know each other. I thought none of these thingsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; only of the gap in your body where your feet used to be, those feet I painted with orange paste once and watched absorb the pigment like thirsty dogs, those feet I traced with the tip of my forefinger, the feet I saw carry you day to day. In my dream you only wept once, and then quietly. In my dream you were grateful to have been released.

PAINTINGS BY JORDAN JONES

BLUE GREEN

TERRACOTTA

C I RC L I N G : A V I S I T Sophia Schmidt

I massage my shoulder blade. My niece has made the trek out here, and she’s staying the night. As we finish cooking dinner, the falling light becomes palpable in the room. Slanting shafts of gold fall through the kitchen window, filling certain forms, missing others. One illuminates the fuzz on Thea’s cheek and dumps shadow into the creases around her mouth that deepen when she smiles. “I remember most of that weekend,” she says. I groan and wilt against the kitchen table. “Aunt Li?” says Thea, alarmed. “I just realized,” I say, “That you’re older now than I was the first weekend you stayed here—during one of your mom’s surgeries. You were fifteen or something.” “Oh god,” she says, relieved. “Oh, that is a doozy.” She stares into the sink, weaving her fingers through the running water. “I’m old,” she says, and turns the faucet off. “Hold up, I think I was only ten. That buys us a bit of time.” “Oh good,” I snort. “That young? You always seemed older.”

“Probably more of it than I do,” I say. I rub the muscles in my forearm, perpendicular to the grain. My arm, papery, buttery, flecked brown and gold, looks nice against the wooden table. Same color family. “Although—you were so young. If you were ten, then I was…forty-two? I was old enough to know it would make a good memory. We were still hopeful at that point, right? It was a nice weekend.” I reach across my body to massage my shoulder blade. I can never hear enough about her life, so I’ve been questioning her for hours. As we prepare dinner, the falling light becomes palpable in the room. Slanting shafts of gold trickle through the kitchen window, filling certain forms, missing others. One falls on Thea’s face. It illuminates the fuzz on her cheek and dumps shadow into the creases

C I RC L I N G : A V I S I T around her mouth that deepen as she smiles. “I remember most of that weekend,” she says. “I’m sure there are parts I’ve forgotten, but I think I’ve got most of it.” “You’ve probably got more of it than I do.” I rub the muscles in my forearm, perpendicular to the grain. My arm, papery, buttery, flecked brown and gold, looks nice against the wooden table. Same color family. “Although—you were so young. If you were ten, then I was…forty-two? I was old enough I knew iunt would make a good memory. We were still hopeful at that point, right? It was a nice weekend.” “The carrots are all washed now. You want to help cut?” I push against the table as I get up. I roll my foot in a circle to get out the cracks. She hands me a knife. “I remember floating the candles down the creek,” she says. “Mmhmm. And that bike you found under the porch.” “Right! And the cards I pinned to the frame so they’d flap in the spokes.” Standing next to her at the counter, I chuckle and make a sound like a machine gun with my tongue. Then I realize I’m slicing my finger instead of the carrot. I gasp. “Oh, honey.” She takes my finger in her 6

C I RC L I N G : A V I S I T “Really? God, I miss that little guy.” “You saw him two weeks ago!” hand and squints at it. “Here.” She pulls me over to the sink and opens the faucet over the cut. “Is it deep?” I ask. I can’t even tell.

“I could see him everyday and it wouldn’t be enough. How’s he liking preschool so far?” “Good, I think! He comes home happy. He’s resilient, easy-going.”

“I don’t think so,” she says. “I’m entirely too old.” “That wasn’t because you’re old. I cut myself all the time.” “Well, I haven’t cut myself cooking in years.” She wraps my finger in a paper towel. “Congrats.” I can’t return the sass. I’m choked by the poignancy hanging like smoke in the room. There are wrinkles in Thea’s hands—I’ve just noticed. Yesterday was twenty-four hours, and I missed all of them waiting for today. Why is it that every time I look up the sun is setting? “You know, Hagan’s starting to develop quite the personality. I think he made a joke the other day.” She’s already putting the vegetables in the oven.

TINY YELLOW 7

C I RC L I N G : A V I S I T

We walk into the living room and sit on the couch. The pill-balls on the fabric blaze in the glow. Thea immediately starts picking them off. “He must get that from you,” I say. “I was always amazed at how you handled it.” “Handled what? Mom? You know I didn’t have a choice.” “I know. None of us did. But you handled it the best.” I see in my periphery that her hands have stopped moving. I’m squinting hard at the bridge of her nose. “Hold on, Thea. Would you mind turning your head? Right there. That little curve between your eyebrows and your nose. That’s your mom’s.” I reach out to trace it with my finger. She jerks away. “Oh my god, Li! Do you want this to be a miserable evening? Let’s talk about something else.” She gets up from the couch and starts to rummage through the drawer of the desk by the wall. “I know there’s a deck of cards in here somewhere. Isn’t this where you keep it? Why don’t you go open up the wine I brought.” I wade slowly into the kitchen. Maybe it’s just my mood, but my posture has gone to the dogs. I catch my reflection in the glass of the door, and I’m practically bent double. I try to

straighten up as I ruffle through the grocery bags Thea brought, checking each one twice for the bottle of wine. It’s cool and smooth and heavy. I set it down. She’s looking at me in a way I don’t recognize, and I can’t tell what it means. I keep silent and rub the meat of my thumb. I try to relax my brow, but something has got it all scrunched up. I take a deep breath, and, against my will, it comes out a sigh. I’m so surprised by the sound that I almost look around for its source. When I inhale again, I feel like I’ve gained fifty pounds, all in the chest. “Thea. The time’s pressing on me like no other. I wish I hadn’t thought of that thing about our ages.” “Jesus, Aunt Li.” Her fingernails tick against the table. “Why do you do this? You’re so nostalgic you can’t enjoy yourself, and you get me all moped out as well. You’ve got plenty of time, trust me. Twenty more years even.” “But you’re leaving in fifteen hours.” She sighs, clearly irritated, and glances around the kitchen. Her eyes rest on the dark linoleum peeling beneath the cabinet. Something in her gaze unlatches, becomes

C I RC L I N G : A V I S I T deep and hollow. I can tell she’s left the room. I’m frustrated at myself for acting this way. Maybe this is why she doesn’t live closer, why she doesn’t visit more. Come to think of it, no one visits me as much as I’d like. I close my eyes and realize my house is ringing with her energy now. It will probably echo when she leaves. But I can’t blame myself for talking about the past. At this point, I have so much of it. I stand up and stretch my arms up over my head. I try to circle them around to the back, but it doesn’t quite work. The shoulder joint has always bemused me. I hear my niece’s sharp intake of breath. “Aunt Li, I—” But I cut her off. “I’m going to go for a walk. Catch the last shreds of the gloaming. I’ll be back soon.” I touch her shoulder on the way out, craning my neck to catch her nose against the light. I decide to walk a spiral around the house, which is surrounded by a good bit of lawn. I shuffle my feet over the crunchy, July-stricken ground, making ever-wider circles. The drought has done a number on my yard, but I don’t believe in sprinklers. It’s a prickly moat to my tower. Keeping what out? What in? I try to relax, to focus on the feeling of my feet against the earth. I entertain the idea of a mantra, but don’t need it. The grass keeps repeating, blade

after blade—yellow brown, yellow green, black shoes, fading in the low light. My niece is just sitting alone in my house, with less than fifteen more hours. What am I doing? Walking and walking. Blinking, breathing. Mothers and daughters, sons, aunts, grandmothers swarm through my mind. White face after white face, blue and brown eyes, laughing, glaring, gabbing. Their crows’ feet and eyeteeth, bridges of nose. Images overlap, overlay, meld, and I blink. Round and round the house I blink. And when I’m not looking, not listening, the drought creeps up my left arm. It bores into my shoulder blade, clutches my neck, oozes down my sternum. I begin to feel like a vulture, circling. Or maybe I’m standing still, and the earth is a vulture ringing me. Then I remember having read something. Along with the obvious physical signs, an unshakeable sense of doom is a symptom— Lights flash behind my eyes. All the tension drains from my legs, and I pitch toward the dry grass. Forehead—thump— against dust-cracked earth. A fly smears against a windshield somewhere, and I lie in an awkward crumple, gulping for air like a fish.

BIG YELLOW 11

W H AT M A M A S A I D Trevin Corsiglia Find your way, figure it out Mama says all the time. Forgive the forger, forget the fortune Mama says Drink water all the time. Quiets dry mouths. Opens cramped and crooked faces. When mama went out to play To work a night Then the fortune wasn’t needed. But I cry now for a fountain to wash my feet And water to clear my throat. From mama I couldn’t ask for a nickel. Nor a place to stay. Any food to eat? Throw some shirts in a washing machine? Slip a soup towards me. Slide coins, cash, all cradling currency At my feet. Mama says Find your way, figure it out. So dusty, the dogged homeless Cuts his money in half. A quarter handed to me Is one for food and one for home

Asleep on a wooden bench, I know their shapes. I know their right curvatures. I see them every time. I know mama would see them too. She says drink more water Everyday. But my neck’s a falling framework And the water is far away And that spot has always held me. Hurried up, it held me. I hurried up, for flexibility. I position immediate Stay for the night and forgo a drink.

M O N OTO N E Tongyu Zhou

INTERVIEW WITH MIKE GLIER Lisa Zhang

MIKE GLIER I took a class with Professor Glier over Winter Study of this year. When I think of that winter, I think of the smell of oil and the small, ambient sounds of a studio—footsteps, paper rustling, brushes clicking against glass. We had class just a couple days a week, in the afternoons. Even on days when we didn’t have class, I would walk across campus in thirty-degree weather to the studio, often to find another student already there working. The automatic lights would shut off every fifteen minutes. Sometimes, we worked deep into the morning hours. In retrospect, I believe that part of what drew us to this quiet, often lonely work, was the force of Professor Glier’s philosophy. He expected a lot— “I want forty-hour work weeks,” he once said—but required little. He seemed to ultimately believe that we would do what was right for ourselves. Can you tell us a little bit about how you ended up here in the Berkshires? I grew up in Kentucky. My father had a butcher shop, and my mother was a homemaker. My father had educational ambitions for his children, since he didn’t get to go to college. My brother went to Stanford, my sister went to Smith, and I went to Williams. So, for a butcher from Kentucky, my Dad did pretty well [laughs]. I didn’t like Kentucky and I couldn’t wait to get out. When I first visited Williams at the age of 16, I first saw the Williamstown valley from Petersburg Pass. I thought, “Oh—this is my landscape.” I’ll always remember that—I had never had such a strong reaction to a landscape before. And lo and behold, here I am, 47 years later in the same landscape.

I came here as a Biology major. When I was here you couldn’t take Studio Art the first year, because it wasn’t considered serious enough. So you had to take art history, which I did. I kind of loved everything. I wound up majoring in Psychology and Art. After my junior year, I took a year off, and I went to RISD [Rhode Island School of Design] to take summer classes. I wound up being a model there and met my wife-to-be [Jenny Holzer]. We got a studio together. During that year off I decided to be an artist. I really liked the life of working in the studio. Williams gave me opportunities I just wouldn’t have had otherwise—I was supposed to inherit a butcher shop in Kentucky.

MIKE GLIER How did your time here as an undergrad change you? There were three professors in studio art that were very influential. Lauren Ewing, the sculptor, brought a conceptual understanding of art to the department. Bill Giersbach, the painter, was a very moral person and he taught art as a means of expressing one’s value system. Tom Krens, the printmaker, brought ambition to the department. If you’re gonna be an artist, according to Tom, you should think big, have a big voice, get out there and create a career with strength of purpose. Can you talk about some artists, theorists, or writers, that were influential to your work? Lucy Lippard was very influential early on for her feminist point of view and her critical ability. Through her I met Sol Lewitt. I was very influenced by his use of mathematical thinking. To make a series of artworks, he’d first establish a set of variables, such as choosing to use only straight lines, circles and broken lines to make a set of drawings. Then he’d make the permutations of those variables and show all of them as art. His aesthetic wasn’t about choosing what was bad, good and best in what he had made, but instead about appreciating all of the possibilities. And I really liked that. It was less judgmental. His approach is useful when looking at art, 16

especially student art. When I look at art I try not to think about whether it’s good or bad, but ask instead, “What is it? What is the experience of it?” That I learned from Sol. Robert Barry. Douglas Huebler, John Baldessari. Bruce Nauman. Those were artists who were involved in critiquing the capitalist distribution system of art by dematerializing the art object and emphasizing the idea. I always really liked that. It might have had something to do with my background in Kentucky where we didn’t have art, couldn’t afford art. Conceptual art is available to anybody who wants it. If you like it, you can keep it in your mental collection; it’s yours. Can you talk about your own process? Well, the process of this new series, “The Forests of Antarctica,” is a little complicated. It starts with plein air drawing [outside]. I’ve primarily been working in four landscapes: the Berkshires, the coast of Maine, the central mountains of New Mexico, and the Virgin Islands. For the last five years, I’ve been pinging back and forth between these four environments. I go out and take walks with my sketchbook. I find a nice place and sit down and try to respond to all the sensations of being in that place. Beside drawing what I see, I attempt to draw what I feel in my skin, like the wind

MIKE GLIER or the sun and to draw what I hear—like birdsongs. Occasionally, when something sweet is on the breeze, I think, “Well, what would that smell look like?” I’m responding to the outside world like I’m a synesthete, which I’m not, but I’m using all my senses to create a new visual vocabulary. And so I bring these drawings back to the studio, I have over 500 of them now, and recombine them into more complicated, large works. You’ve said that you consider teaching part of your creative output. Can you speak a little about that? The artist, Joseph Beuys, thought of teaching as an art form that is not so different from making sculpture or painting. In the studio, he said, an artist can work with clay or paint, but in the classroom the artist works with human relations. It’s just a different material. The relationships a teacher forges between people in the classroom are as interesting and as as meaningful as any art object. Because of Beuys I see teaching and making studio art as one creative endeavor, one single attempt to communicate across human boundaries and make some sort of difference.

Has working with students been influential on your own work? Absolutely. You know, just lately I have been saying to my friends, how incredibly privileged I am to have experienced shifts in culture by interacting with younger generations. I’ve seen big changes in thinking about identity and sexuality and gender and people seem more curious and open about people’s cultural backgrounds. And I’ve certainly seen women’s roles changing a lot. I wish I saw men’s identities changing more than I do. One of my big concerns is that white men in particular are acting so badly these days that people are thinking that we are the enemy, we are bad and irredeemable. But in fact, white men more than ever need to be brought into the conversation about feminism, and civil rights, and inequality, and given alternatives to create a different identity than the standard one we’ve been clinging to. Could you talk about the trajectory of your work? You know, I just had a thirty-five-year survey at the Philbrook Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma and I was asked to present an hour lecture that covered all of those years. So I landed on the theme of masculinity to organize the talk. I’ve been interested in white male identity for most of my professional career. 17

MIKE GLIER My first show in New York in 1981 was called White Male Power: Senators, Game Show Hosts, National Monuments, Popes, etc. [laughs]. It was an expressionistic and satirical investigation of the white male identity. And I’m kind of proud of that show because I was identifying white maleness, not the center of the universe to which everything else is compared, but as its own identity.

red-oxide paint to splash the walls. The beginning of these pictures was fast and violent, and I was acting out the role of man as warrior, which is a traditional male identity. After that I dropped the warrior, and became the gardener. I’d go into the mess I had made on the canvas and I’d clean it up. Then I’d start planting flowers, and bringing in the birds, and drawing the sunflowers.

This work was bitter. It had to do with some resentments I had about growing up in Kentucky. If you didn’t adhere to a very traditional notion of masculinity, you were ridiculed. I was tired of that and thought it was unfair and repressive.

The gardener is the identity that I’d finally stuck with. It is a gender neutral identity. It’s a position where you plant, you take care, you tend and at the end of the season you cut it down, and put it to rest and plan the next season.

Later on in another series called Garden Court, I played out a variety of masculine identities. Garden Court is a series of very large paintings of an imaginary garden in which something violent has happened. The walls are peppered with bullet holes and light mortar fire and splashed with blood. But vines, flowers and plants are growing in the garden and beginning to cover the signs of violence. I took on different roles as I was making these pictures. First, I was the builder, and used a trowel to slather modeling paste onto the canvas to make a stucco-like surface. Then I was the executioner, and I blasted holes in the walls. And then I was the victim, and used sponges loaded with 18

GARDEN COURT: SUMMER Mike Glier 19

PICTURES OF S O M E O N E E LS E â&#x20AC;&#x2122; S A RT Brianna Rettig

SINGING Jordan Jace moon like a hot-fogged mirror / you palmed a glass of wine / we had both been afraid of the dark / so we sat in it now in mock repentance / your glass empties and fills with shadows / earlier youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d taken fistfuls of salt water/ to drink and become sick with thirst / we vomited our offering to the sea / the waves / sacred instruments that they are / religion / no religion / still worshipping something / you slip off your clothes / and crawl into cold water / i listened for your anklet / in the waves while you sang / i dig a hole for fire / you are parading naked with a crown / quiet-eyed horses / prowl to the shore / waves feed the sand / mouthful / after / blue mouthful

JOHN AND EMMA Emily McDonald I watch the sky come in and out of view as my fingers play with the frayed edges of the curtains. John comes in from our bathroom. He’s wearing the green pajama pants with a hole in the crotch that I bought him two years ago. When I bought them they didn’t have a hole in the crotch. John has sex with me and then he takes a shower and he goes to work. Emma asks me how work is going and I tell her it is going well. I tell her that Bridget wants to promote me, which is true, and that I’m thrilled about it, which might be true. She puts her warm hand on mine and smiles something to John across the table. They both tell me that the risotto was incredible and Emma tells me again that I should have given in to the will of the universe and gone to culinary school. John says something back and they both look happy and full. I’m sitting on a gray couch. The cushions are just soft enough. John is waiting for me in the car outside. I think that when I go sit down next to him in the passenger seat he’ll smile at me and I won’t meet his eye and he’ll ask me whether I think he needs to shave. 22

Jillian’s legs are crossed and she’s holding her notepad kind of slanted across the one on top. Her pen moves shakily across the page. She keeps her wide eyes and thoughtfully furrowed brows turned towards me even when she takes notes. She smiles tightly and I realize I’ve been talking. I don’t know about what. I’m sure I’ll be able to figure out the gist once she responds. She tells me things about myself and I look at my hands clasped tightly in my lap. She tells me something about John and asks me how I feel about that. I tell her something. “You’re dissociating,” she says. I look out the window. When I come out of the building and get in the car, John asks me how it went with “the therapist.” He started worrying when he noticed that I was losing track of time and forgetting what I was doing while I was still doing it. I’ve told him that making me go to therapy is a huge overreaction, but he won’t stop reminding me about last week when I forgot about the cake I was baking and let the whole house fill up with smoke. It probably would’ve been fine though, even if he hadn’t shown up to find me standing in the kitchen.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOSEPH BONCARDO 23

JOHN AND EMMA I tell him that she doesn’t ever have much to say. I tell him that really, I’m fine, that Emma’s right, I don’t need to see a therapist. I remind him that it was only a few weeks ago that Bridget offered me a promotion.

She tells me that he just wants to help and that I should let him. She tells me that pretending that I’m not feeling the way I’m feeling is not helping anyone and that the longer I pretend, the longer it will take for me to get better.

I am sitting on a gray couch. The cushions are just soft enough. I realize I have had this thought before. I decide to think something new. John is waiting for me in the car outside. I think that when I go sit down next to him in the passenger seat he’ll smile at me and I won’t meet his eye and he’ll ask me whether I think he needs to shave.

I tell her she doesn’t know anything about me.

I feel heat rising in my cheeks. I think that maybe I am running out of new things to think. I tell Jillian this and she smiles and tells me something I know she read in the DSM. I let her pretend that it is her discovery. She asks how John is doing. I tell her I don’t know. He doesn’t really talk about himself anymore. She asks me how I think John is dealing with what’s going on with me. I tell her I don’t know. I tell her he probably doesn’t know much about it, which is fine because there isn’t much to know. I tell her that I think it’s ridiculous that he’s made me come see her every week for the past two months. 24

“I’m your therapist,” she says. I’ve been sitting on my hands and now my fingertips are tingling. She has only known me since John decided she needed to. She does not know anything about me. “Yeah,” I say. When he comes home, John asks me what I did today. I look up at him from my cocoon of blankets and try to remember. I want to tell him so that he doesn’t have to worry. He drops his bag on the table and looks at the floor, then the ceiling. I don’t know what he’s looking for. He tugs on a piece of hair at the back of his head. He’s been doing this a lot lately. He sits down next to me on our bed and asks again, softer this time, what I did today. I look at him with my mouth open, wanting to know what to say. John puts his arm around me and asks if I want to watch a movie. The position makes my back hurt, but I lean into him anyway. He kisses my cheek and I’m

JOHN AND EMMA surprised to realize I’ve been crying. He falls asleep with an hour left in the movie. I decide to turn the TV off and I look at the remote on the bedside table. When John wakes up for work, the TV is still on and I am looking at an infomercial flashing “$29.95!!” on the screen. He asks me if I slept. I ask him if he would call Bridget and tell her I have a headache and that I can’t come to work today. He kisses me on the forehead and goes to get the phone. “I know she hasn’t been in much —” “No, I know. I’m —” “Yeah, migraines.” “Yeah, I’m taking her to a doctor to look into it.” “Hopefully.” “Okay, thanks Bridget.” He says all of this standing in the doorway of our bedroom, fiddling with a little piece of wallpaper that’s been slowly peeling off the wall. John hears my stomach growl from across the room. He goes to the kitchen to make scrambled eggs with cheese. I hear him mumble Emma’s name and some other words too. Later, she comes to the house. She brushes my hair and tells me to put on a sweater so we can go for a walk.

Emma straightens up with a blue folder in hand. I remember that she said she has a presentation at work tomorrow. I’m proud of my little sister. She works for a corporation that sells something to some people and I think she must be really good at what she does. I know that knowing what’s going on in her life makes me happy, so I smile. Sometimes her office has parties for people’s birthdays and when they do, she always brings me home a piece of cake. She puts her hand on my arm and I start remembering that when she was younger, she used to read palms. She would trace the lines on my hands and read from the little book she carried around. “That’s the love line,” she would say. “Yours is good. It says you have a lot of love and that you’d give anything up for it.” I would put my arm around her shoulders and kiss the top of her head. She still had baby hairs then, blonde and soft against my lips. I remember how close we were before I got like this and decided that I was probably too much for her to handle. I watch a bug slam himself against the window. Jillian wiggles her fingers in the air to get my attention. I don’t know whether she knows how stupid she looks when she does this. 25

JOHN AND EMMA She tells me that the world is out there waiting for me, but that it will not wait forever. I watch her watch me while her pen moves across the page on her lap. I know she is pleased with herself because I’m not talking, but she’s still writing on her little beige notepad. I know because her eyes flicked towards the heavily framed diploma that is hanging over my head. I think that her memoir will be very self-serving and that she will try to convince me to buy a copy. I tell her this.

She tells me she is not writing a memoir and if she were she would not try to sell it to clients. I stand up and tell her I want to leave. She says that John will notice and that he will not be happy and that he will make me come back on Thursday instead of Tuesday. I tell her I’ll leave a few dollars in the tip jar on my way out if she doesn’t act like the basic observations she makes are earth shattering revelations. She tells me therapists don’t have tip jars. I tell her that maybe they should. She doesn’t let me tell her why. “Money doesn’t buy happiness,” she says. “Only rich people think that,” I say. I spent two weekends looking around our parents’ attic before I found that little palm reading book Emma carried around with her when we were little. Now I am sitting in my and John’s living room. Our couch isn’t gray, but maroon and faded from the sun slanting through the window. I flip through the book and stare at my hands.

FAMILY (SERIES) 26

I call Emma. She’s back at her house. I wish she was still staying in our guest room. I tell her she missed something. She asks me questions. She sounds scared and I consider

JOHN AND EMMA saying “never mind” and telling her what I ate for lunch and that I had a wonderful day. But after a pause long enough to make her say “Jess, are you still there? Talk to me.” I decide against it. I tell her about the little islands she never saw on my heart line. “They mean there’s something blocking me. It says there has to be some kind of breakdown somewhere,” I say. I hear her sigh. She doesn’t sound scared anymore. “How many are there?” she asks. Her tone is different than it used to be. Exasperated is probably the right word. I don’t want to at first, but I decide she has a right to know, that maybe it would be better for both of us if she knew. I tell her that there are four, all bunched up together. She asks me what that means. She doesn’t remember. I tell her that she has to send me pictures of her hands. I spend the rest of the night making notes about her life, making sure she doesn’t have more than a few islands, making sure I know when to expect them. I tell myself I’ll look at John’s hands in the morning. Jillian asks me how much I tell John and Emma.

“I don’t want them to worry about me,” I say. I don’t tell her that I don’t know what would happen to me if they didn’t worry. Some number of weeks later, I come home to hear voices in the kitchen. “You let her go to the store by herself?” It’s John’s voice. “She seemed good this morning. When I picked her up she told me all about how Bridget bought coffee and donuts for everyone and they all stood around in the conference room eating and talking for like an hour. Plus, it’s only a ten minute walk, I’m sure she’ll be fine,” says Emma. “Look, Em. I know that sometimes she seems okay, like she’s back to normal and you want to believe that, but for fuck’s sake, open your eyes,” says John. “John, you don’t get what’s going on with her any better than I do, but at least I’m trying to understand. You just keep trying to fix a problem you can’t even figure out.” “Do you not remember why I brought her to see a therapist in the first place? She says she’s fine, but she isn’t. Yeah, she has good days, but that doesn’t mean something bad still won’t happen. Emma, I came home to find her standing in this kitchen staring at the floor with smoke all around her. There 27

JOHN AND EMMA was a full blown fire in the oven, the alarms going off. Look! There’s still scorch marks right there on that cabinet. She didn’t even move. We don’t know how long she’d been standing there. If I hadn’t come home, I don’t know what would’ve happened. We can’t… We can’t let anything like that happen again. Until this psychiatrist says she’s really and truly better, I don’t want her to be alone,” John says all this very quickly. By the end he sounds out of breath, like he emptied his lungs. “Okay fine, maybe she shouldn’t be alone for more than a few minutes, but you seriously think a therapist is going to do her any good?” says Emma. “She doesn’t tell that woman anything and you know it. If she won’t even talk to us about it, why would she tell a stranger? A fancy diploma doesn’t mean anything.”

me when I’m not around. They say something about everyone needing help sometimes. I tell them that making me go see Jillian is pointless. I see Emma wince when I call Jillian by name. I think that I am supposed to feel angry. I tell them that I am furious at them for treating me like a child and they respond in soft, soothing voices. I decide that I am probably supposed to cry. John puts his hand on my back and makes warm little circles. There is a light breeze from the open window above the sink. I am looking at the little tear in the bottom right corner of the screen. I feel someone give my shoulders a little shake. Emma is saying my name and I realize she has guided me into a chair at the table.

“If something happens when we’re not around and there’s a shot in hell that a therapist could’ve stopped it or seen it coming or… Emma, if I stopped making her go and then something happened, I’d never forgive myself.”

I hear John ask me about my day. I have to crane my neck to look up at him.

I walk in and put my groceries on the table between them. Emma smiles quickly and John asks me about my day. I tell them I heard them talking and that I am perfectly capable of going to the store by myself. I tell them that I don’t want them talking about

I stand up and pull ingredients out of the brown paper bags and talk about recipes. I feel John’s hand on my back. He asks me what temperature he should preheat the oven. I can’t remember.

I tell him about the donuts and coffee in the conference room. He asks me what else I did.

JOHN AND EMMA “350,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady and bright. Jillian asks me how I am feeling today. I tell her that John has two islands on his heart line and that Emma has three. She doesn’t know what this means and I won’t tell her when she asks. I tell her that John might get fired. I tell her that I overheard him on the phone with his boss two days ago and that it didn’t sound good. I heard him trying to explain why he’s been taking so much time off. She asks me how that makes me feel. I tell her that I am worried about John and about Emma and that I don’t want them to find out that Bridget decided that I couldn’t do my job even before they decided I shouldn’t be allowed to be anywhere without them. I tell her that they have been having a lot of conversations about me when I am in the other room and they think I can’t hear them. I tell her that after months of me avoiding their eyes, they’ve stopped looking directly at me. She asks me how I feel about that and I tell her that my hands have been shaking a lot lately and that this is why I always hold them together in my lap or sit on them. I tell her that Emma has had to help me cook because I can’t hold a pan up straight and that John won’t let me drive anymore.

She starts to talk about what she thinks my diagnosis might be, using clinical words and rehearsed hand motions. I tell her to stop. I tell her to tell me right now what is wrong with me. She tells me that she wants to and that if I’ll only sit down, she’ll try to explain it. She hands me a piece of paper with a brightly colored heading. I decide I won’t ever read the short little paragraphs written in the ever so friendly comic sans. I tell Jillian she’s wrong. I tell her that sometimes I’m completely fine, myself, and sometimes I don’t feel like anyone. I ask her how exactly she can explain that. I tell her I still know how I’m supposed to feel and that the hand-out that looks like something you’d give a child in a health class on the mental disorders that sad older people have to deal with doesn’t account for that level of self-awareness. She says that if I only read it more closely, I’ll see that it does. I tell her that she has to tell me right now how to fix the thing she is wrong about. She asks me to sit down again. She tells me that she thinks we should discuss medication and I tell her that that will only 29

JOHN AND EMMA make John and Emma worry more and besides, we don’t have the money for it anyway. She says something about insurance and I ignore her, trying to focus all my attention on the wall above her head. She tells me that maybe she should talk to John about all of this and that I should tell him that she’ll call him later. I try to tell her that I can’t be one of Emma and John’s islands, but she just keeps looking at me while she writes on her little beige notepad. John looks up and smiles as I get closer to the car. He turns a knob on the dashboard before I get in and gestures to the open magazine in his lap. I say something about the article he’s reading and he laughs, but just a little, controlled. He passes the magazine back to Emma. Every Thursday for the past however many months, they have dropped me off and waited in the parking lot while I talk to Jillian. When I’m done, they drive me up and down the highway. Last week I asked them why we started driving around after therapy and John told me that I asked for it. Emma told me that I said I wanted to feel like I was moving towards something. 30

FAMILY (SERIES)

JOHN AND EMMA John says something about the clouds and points one out to me. He puts the car in gear and Emma says something from behind us. She always sits in the back so she can play with my hair while we drive. She says it relaxes both of us and I believe her. As John pulls onto the highway, he tells me a story about the three of us two years ago. He keeps asking me if I remember. Emma is gently twirling my hair into a perfect braid and the pull of her fingers makes my chest feel warm. I tell John that it doesn’t matter if I remember the old stories. He bites his chapped lower lip and checks his side mirror. I tell him I want new ones and I see the tight line of his mouth start to soften. I see him mouth “one of the good days” to Emma in the mirror. I know sometimes they mouth “one of the bad days,” but right now, I’ve decided not to remember that. They both look nervous, but happy too. I want to reach across the dash and touch John’s fingers, but he has both hands fastened on the wheel. My fingers are cold and twitching and I want to look out the window and let myself drown in the speed of the car, but I force myself to look at my palm instead. I start to wish I had Emma’s old book in my

purse. I wish that she remembered. I am tracing my heart line with my eyes when John takes one hand off the wheel and wraps my fingers up in his own. My thumb moves automatically in soft circles against his. John has always had rough skin on his hands, but I’ve never minded. Emma starts humming, her fingers still in my hair. Soon John is singing, adding words to the tune. I start to smile and he sees it and he rolls down all the windows. I don’t know the song, but I try anyway. Emma is singing too now and I trip over my words, trying to blend into the noise that I am helping to make. The two of them are laughing. The good kind. The wind rips out the perfect braid trailing down my back. But it’s okay. Even after everything I’ve put on her, I know that Emma will do it over. I smile in the passenger seat, looking at John and Emma smiling, all of us smiling. Without meaning to, I think something new: these are the only people I have chosen who have also chosen me.

SERIES I Hudson Bohr

HUDSON BOHR

B E H I N D T H E D I V E BA R Tyler Tsay we touch hands

vexhaust curling up

& the dark settles upon us

into the sun, like you did.

like a fog of bullets, the sky

rising from the wreckage

turning itself to embers.

above the water drowning

love does not want your body.

everything. nowadays,

love watches your organs

i tell everyone

fail & tells me to find

how i held you once.

another. i do not listen.

before the bridge, the bottle

instead, i ask each bottle

the wind pressed faithfully

that passes your lips

to your back.

how to snatch away the night & call it freedom. if you live until the end of this year, how many of those days will you use to love me? i shatter every glass in the house anyways. i listen to all your excuses & make them into a lover. your chest stops moving between breaths & i am already halfway to the phone, my fingers clutching at your exposed neck. love is the way you wring each good moment from my damp hands. love is the scent before your body arrivesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; plastic cherries & another manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mouth. love is the police car at noon.

D O N OT M OV E S TO N E S Claire Bergey Some men say / Some men say / Some men say an army of horse and some men say an army on foot and some men say an army of ships is the most beautiful thing on the black earth. But I say it is what you love. Sappho wrote poems and performed them with music more than 2500 years ago. One must wonder whether that was a revelatory experience for the audience, or they just had nothing better to do. The same should be asked of performance today. Claire Bergey was moved to make a theatrical piece after seeing Anne Carson read aloud and realized it was better than most theatre. While most performance is dull and anxiety-inducing, what made that reading so illuminating? Sappho was the obvious subject for this piece: her form was different from contemporary theatre, probably more like the reading; maybe she expresses a raw form of queer womanhood, but maybe that’s mostly mystique; her fragmentary poems lent themselves to mashing up, music, and clearing space for the audience’s perspective. Part of the project was neutralizing the anxiety surrounding empathy in live performance in order to make room for different fears: of bodies, love, confrontation, queerness, hypnosis, interpretation, incompleteness, cycles of time. Another

part was allowing people to be comfortable: to experience a story in a form that kept them from seeing and hearing all of it; to let them feel okay just catching what they caught. At the end of the day, four performers surrounded the audience and sang, percussed, and spoke—repeatedly, in round, interleaved, over one another— Sappho’s fragments. Using Anne Carson’s translation of Sappho’s poetry (If Not, Winter) and pulling heavily from Carson’s writing on Sappho and love (Eros the Bittersweet), Claire developed the script with performers Jacqueline Lewy, Merudjina Normil, Rose Miles, and Ariel Chu. Scott Daniel composed music for hanging percussion instruments and voice. Calen Firedancing, assisted by Annabelle Feist, designed lighting. Claire designed the set and costumes. Ariel Koltun-Fromm, assisted by Jack Roche, was stage manager. Cap & Bells produced the piece. The following pages feature performance photography by Thomas Robertshaw and fragments of Sappho’s poetry and the production process.

Archive of a Perishable Fruit

ON SILENCE Rose Miles Tangle and fray, a run in my stockings. The table felt heavy or turgid, the grain cracked. At dinner that year, we fought over German and Italian and English, over mahogany and over the last of the salmon. He gets up from the head of the table. That chair that wobbles as people come and go, witness of life. I’d only picked up a few phrases: he’d had difficulty translating himself into a language we understood — a pile of bricks half laid, a basket of discarded, splintered matches. 40

Archive of a Perishable Fruit (artifacts from an affair) Natalie Wilkinson & Gwyneth Henke

SYMPTOMS OF HEART DISEASE Chinmayi Manjunath

PHOTOGRAPHS BY HUDSON BOHR 42

Archive of a Perishable Fruit (artifacts from an affair) Natalie Wilkinson & Gwyneth Henke

My mother and I are eating breakfast on the living room floor. It is the summer after my freshman year of college. The sun is just beginning to break through the mist in our backyard, which has grown into a veritable jungle under my motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s care. I can see our geriatric rabbit, Fatass, peeking out from behind the fig tree. She is stuffing herself with fallen fruit the size of my fist. Since she only has a couple years left, we let her do what she wants. Live life blissfully â&#x20AC;&#x201C; that is our family motto. We even have it carved onto a massive brass plaque in the hallway. I turn back to the obituary section of the Saturday paper. I am counting up the winners and losers. Every year under thirty earns a point for emotional pull. Every year after eighty also earns a point for exceeding expectations. Brain and pediatric cancers receive five points each because they are objectively the worst. Vets receive three points for the trauma of war. For each limb lost, they receive an additional two points. WWII vets receive five points instead of three. This is because WWII must have been a beautifully tragic time to be alive, for the same reason that Independence Day was a blockbuster. Practically speaking, obituaries should no longer exist. There are faster ways to contact friends and family of the deceased. And if

S Y M P TO M S O F H E A RT D I S E A S E

you are over eighty, chances are you have few of those anyway. No, we write obituaries so that others can watch us grieve. Their function is purely masturbatory, not that I object. They make my Saturday mornings. Obituaries only say nice things, so you get to fill in the gaps. Today I am reading about Tom, who was a loving father of three. From his photograph I can tell that he was also a loving consumer of anabolic steroids. I dip a piece of rusk into my milk, thinking about how Tom will never drink milk again, when the phone rings. My mother pushes herself off the floor to take the call. I watch her walk into the kitchen, her thick, wiry hair bouncing with each step. She used to be very pretty, but after two kids and fifty years, things happen. Her best friend is a lonely housewife who sometimes calls to discuss the marvelous growth of her tomato plants. My mother deals with her situation by spewing Buddhist epithets, like the one in our hallway. They put things into perspective. One side effect is that she rarely cries. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, she has cried only three times in the last twenty years. Here they are: The first time I was five, and it had made no sense to me. My mother was crying over the kitchen sink. She yelled that my father did not understand, and he said that he would do better. In the moment she could 43

S Y M P TO M S O F H E A RT D I S E A S E not string full sentences together, and later she denied it ever happened. So I hated my father for fucking it all up, whatever it was. The second time I was in fifth grade, and a phone call had interrupted family game night. The number was registered to my motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s brother, who was working tech in Bangalore. Then, out of the blue, my mother started screaming from her chair, and my sister prostrated herself on the floor without really knowing why. She has a lot of feelings, so we have to watch ourselves around her. My father stood over them both, afraid to touch. Finally my mother revealed that my grandmother had been sick for a while, but that my mother had not listened, and now my grandmother was dead. I locked myself in the bathroom and pretended to pee for a few hours. But a few weeks later she changed the story: my grandmother had not been sick after all. She had tripped over the side of the well, reaching for the bucket, and had died either on impact or of a heart attack. My grandfather had to fish the body out with a net. This version best fit the facts, because at the funeral no one was allowed near the well. Later it was covered with metal latticework. The gaps between the bars were so small that even my foot would not fit through. The third time was my fault, so it is hard to say out loud. Just before my high school graduation, my uncle from Tennessee had 44

sent me a check for five grand. When I came home from school that day, I saw that my mother had already opened the envelope. Boundaries were never her strong suit. She still thinks it is okay to walk into the bathroom when I am showering, because it is nothing she has not seen before. But it is nothing she has not seen before only because she walks into the bathroom when I am showering. So, understandably, this envelope was the last straw. Suddenly I felt that she was suffocating me, that she thought me an extension of herself when actually I was my own damn person. And that was precisely what I told her. Then her face spasmed, as if it were simultaneously splitting and reattaching at its seams. There was something altogether foreign about it, so I repeated myself. My mouth has a destructive streak, on account of her genes. Then she had locked herself in the bathroom, and my father would not look at me for a week. Later he rented that Barbra Streisand movie, The Guilt Trip, and left it in the DVD player hoping we would watch. He is a smooth operator, my father. Now my mother is crying again, so I forget all about the obituaries. Because our house is chic, we have no walls between our kitchen and living room. Thus I can see her face over the bar counter. Her friend Vasudha Bhatt,

S Y M P TO M S O F H E A RT D I S E A S E not her best friend, is on the phone. She is saying something about a tumor, and things not looking good. There were no signs, until there were. My mother takes herself off speakerphone when Vasudha starts crying, so I am forced to witness the bulk of the drama with only half the dialogue. And let me tell you, my mother is not an open book. In fact, and I mean this endearingly, she is a frigid bitch. When I was younger, she would pour cinnamon oil on my scraped knees, because cinnamon oil promotes the growth of fibroblasts, ‘a cell type important to healing.’ All I knew was that it hurt like a motherfucker, so I stopped scraping my knees. So in a way it did work. The last time I injured myself was in the eighth grade, when I dislocated my elbow jumping between the community pool and the hot tub. My mother fashioned a sling out of her dupatta and rubbed my back while we waited for my father to pull up with the minivan. I had asked for an ambulance, because the pain was unfathomable, but she had felt that a Dodge Grand Caravan would make less of a scene. At the hospital we learned that I would need minor surgery, but surgery was surgery and I did not want to die. So I told my father to push the orthopedic surgeon out the window if the operation went south. He was more traumatized by my pain than I was, so he agreed wholeheartedly. Then my mother

told us to keep quiet, because what would the hospital staff think? But she was sympathetic, in her own way. For four months, she did all my math homework for me because I could not hold the pencil myself. Thank God I had her brains, she said, or else it would be tough to play catch up. That is my mother, in a nutshell. So I know something big has happened. She is catching snot on her sleeves. It looks like spider silk. In a stunning display of tenderness, I hug her. Then I ask what is the matter, does Vasudha have cancer? We have known the Bhatts since before I was born. My parents went to college with Vasudha and Raj. We immigrated to the same region of Northern California within months of each other. I am two years older than Vasudha’s daughter, Shashima. My sister, now thirteen, is two years older than her son, Shreyas. Along with the Murthys, we spend every major holiday together. Christmas we always celebrate at the Bhatts, because Shreyas shares a birthday with Jesus. To be clear, we do not believe in Jesus. We believe in ourselves. But with most of our extended families overseas, this is the best we can do. So it would be sad if Vasudha has cancer. The family dynamic will shift drastically. The 45

S Y M P TO M S O F H E A RT D I S E A S E Bhatts will probably stop hosting Christmas. Not that I can blame them. I would not want to host Christmas either, if my mother died. But then my mother ups the ante. She says that actually, Shreyas is the one with the cancer. More specifically, he has a malignant tumor in the brainstem, and surgery is not an option. It is like we are in a soap opera, but without the theatrics. Her nose is crusty so I hand her my scarf. Not much can top pediatric brain cancer. Even Jebediah, the ninety-six year old paraplegic WWII vet from last Saturday, has nothing on Shreyas. If surgery is not an option, prognosis is shit. If it is brain cancer, prognosis is shit to begin with. My mother likes to say that after forty, all bets are off. But eleven is nowhere near forty. My sister and I have not been eleven for a while. And with that, there I am, on the precipice of death. It feels like a dry heat against my skin, drilling ferociously into the pit of my stomach. On one hand, now it is clear I can die too. On the other, I get to watch someone else die, someone I have known since the day he was born. There is a lovely fullness to it, like library shelves with no gaps between the books. I focus on this. Mortality is not an easy pill to swallow, so sometimes we have to mix it into our food like we do with dogs. 46

I wonder how his parents are taking it. Presumably not well, but how exactly? Are they starving themselves? Yes, my mother says. Raj especially. He has already lost two pounds. And Raj has a slow metabolism, if you know what I mean, so two pounds is a lot. I wonder if my father would do the same were it me at Deathâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s door. Like my sister, he has a lot of feelings. They overwhelm him, which is why he so assiduously avoids them. My father does not kiss my mother and, as far as I can tell, they have not had sex in at least a decade. He might be a latent homosexual. For the longest time, my sister even thought she was adopted. To be fair, that was because I told her so. That was also why we now know to watch ourselves around her. So yes, he would starve himself, but no, he would not cry. At least not in front of me. I wonder if I would prefer it that way. Shreyasâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; parents must have been crying in front of him, because the phone call came from the landline and he is at home. But if they are crying over his death while he is still pumping blood, then he might feel like hopping into his grave a few months early.

S Y M P TO M S O F H E A RT D I S E A S E Shashima is probably the only one with her shit together. This makes sense because she wants to be a doctor one day. Perhaps now she will be an oncologist. She might feel obligated, especially if she mentions her brother’s cancer in her college essays. Not that we should exploit tragedy for personal gain, obviously. Now my mother breaks the news to my father, who is at a conference in Arizona. I am hoping she does not give away too much, because I want to watch his reaction. In the meantime I google “pediatric brainstem cancer, no surgery,” because Vasudha never called it by name. It turns out that this is the worst type of cancer. It is also very rare. It is like winning Satan’s lottery. Everyone tries radiation, then drug trials. Some spend thousands on drug trials, because not all are government-approved. Stanislaw Burzynski runs one of these trials from a shed in Texas. He says Big Pharma hates him on account of his profit-eating miracle cure. But actually he just scams kids with cancer for a living. Because in the end, they all die.

like morbidly obese rednecks in miniature. Then finally, one day, just like that, they stop breathing. Most of them are between three and eleven when they bite it. So Shreyas was almost out the door when it swung shut. He got to see what was on the other side. But that is not the worst part. The worst part is that he has to watch it all happen. The conscious part of his brain will work fine till the end. So Shreyas will never kiss a girl or have a beer or fall in love. He will never kiss a guy either, if he swings that way. It is not so easy, deciding which way to swing. But what is easy is appreciating the tragedy of his situation. He will have to watch his future slip through his fingers like sand. Because he will die soon. But does he know this? It is only tragic if he knows.

And what a way to die. Over the course of one year, these kids lose mobility, speech, sight, and hearing. First they can only eat smoothies. Then they need a drip. Their bodies, pumped full of steroids, look like beachballs. Not cute beachballs either. More 47

S Y M P TO M S O F H E A RT D I S E A S E

PETA says that pigs scream at the gates of the slaughterhouse, and that is why we should care. PETA is right. I keep this to myself. My father reacts badly, which is no surprise. He takes an early flight home after my mother calls. He spends his free time browsing medical journals. So do I, but for different reasons. Shreyas is being treated at Stanford. For a few minutes every day, five days a week, he receives sharp radiation to his brainstem. If he is not at the hospital, then he is either playing video games or sleeping. These are my motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s words. When my parents take food to the Bhatts, I am not allowed along. Apparently my presence would make the Bhatts feel obligated to play host. So medical journals are all I have. I think my mother is just worried that Shreyas will feel badly if other kids see him in his current state. But I barely 48

S Y M P TO M S O F H E A RT D I S E A S E know him. I am also an adult. If he feels badly about me there, then he should feel equally badly about my mother there. But I decide not to argue, because part of being human is not admitting that we like to stare. The truth is, I am dying to see his cancer manifest in real life. I already know the facts. I can even identify the cancer in MRI scans. It is more like a net than a solid mass, with tentacles that weave themselves between healthy cells. This is why surgery is not worth the risks, according to his doctors. Most doctors in America say the same. It is beyond me how this can be the case when the alternative is certain death, but perhaps lawsuits are scarier. ‘Home of the brave,’ I have learned this week, is not so much descriptive as it is aspirational. I have also learned this week that surgery is not as gruesome as you might think. I have been watching a lot of video tutorials. Molecular gastronomy is not as clean or precise. No wonder surgeons are so damn full of themselves. It probably does things to you, holding a beating heart in your hands. But then again, fucking it up probably does things to you too. This is why you need strong motor skills, an even temperament, and a utilitarian perspective on life. You also need a good bedside manner, or a surgeon buddy with a good bedside manner. I would have made an excellent surgeon, but

unfortunately it is too late for me to register under pre-med. Doors swing shut as you age. And one day, I predict after your first child, you are locked in a prison of your own making. So it is important to find your peace sooner rather than later. Easier said than done, but staring death in the face must speed up the process. If I could just see Shreyas, then I would know for sure. Until then, my imagination will have to suffice. So I think hard about death. I think about how the medical establishment has failed me. I think about shitting into a diaper, and eating nothing but kale Gerber. I think about my mother, crying over my skeletal form. My skin is crumpling like paper, and her tears are caught in the folds. I am sleeping in a hospital ward, my pasty legs visible under the sterile blue gown. Dozens of Get Well Soon balloons, pink and blue and yellow, bob in the air. My friends are not allowed to visit. They are leeches; they would suck my tragedy dry. Their hearts were ripped in two when they read my Facebook post, the one where I explained that I would be dead in a fortnight. Ben Windsor even proclaimed his undying love for me. Goddamn leeches, all of them. So I am content to be with my mother, and only her. As I take my final breaths, my life flashes before me: sucking on mango pits in my grandfather’s barn, churning butter with a rope and a stick, the hot Indian 49

S Y M P TO M S O F H E A RT D I S E A S E countryside wrapping itself around my skin like Clingfilm. Fireworks every night, a rust-colored cow giving birth, cane syrup in an anthill, a cobra sleeping in my sister’s cradle. My grandmother’s jackfruit idli, coconut flesh so soft it resembles velvet. I begin crying. I am only nineteen, but what a beautiful life I have lived. Boy is it tragic, dying young.

Today I leave work early to find chaga. Chaga is a miracle fungus that grows on birch trees. It is found primarily in Maine, Canada and Siberia. One town in Siberia eats so much chaga that no one there gets cancer, and they all live past a hundred. How it works is it keeps your telomeres from fraying, sort of like tape on a broken aglet. This way your cells do not sew the wrong ends together during mitosis. Studies also show that chaga does not interfere with the efficacy of chemo or radiation, so there is no harm in taking it alongside traditional treatments. Rainbow Groceries in San Francisco carries the best kind: high pressure, hot water extracted chaga. It takes me an hour to walk there. I buy Shreyas a hundred dollars’ worth, two bottles of capsules and two of liquid extract, so that he can take it even when he can no longer swallow solids. I also buy a hundred’s worth for my sister and myself. No point in 50

being stupid about these things. The cancer manuals say I am overstepping, but science does not back these manuals. Science backs me. I include fifty pages of it, with all the relevant bits highlighted, in the gift bag I make for Shashima. Also included is Shreyas’ chaga and a note with my email and phone number, should she want to talk. Secretly I hope she does not want to talk. I hope she talks to someone else and I get the information secondhand. My father is overjoyed when he sees the thought I have put into my gift. He thinks I do not care about people. I know this because when I was in eleventh grade, he said, “You do not care about people.” He had clearly been waiting to say it for a while and had grown impatient, because it had not made sense in context. My friend Joyce had just dropped off a box of homemade cupcakes for Christmas. I only knew her from summer camp, which had lasted less than two weeks, and we had barely talked since. So this was a pleasant surprise, which is what I told my father. Then he said, “Of course it is a surprise to you. You do not care about people. How could you understand?” I took an extra long shower that day. For the rest of the week I tracked mud into the house and left dirty dishes on the living room floor. When he finally yelled at me, I got to say, “Well, what did you expect? I do

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not care about people. Did you think you were special?” I guess he is happy I proved him wrong. But he has always been wrong. The gift had included a card, which said, “Merry Christmas, Kavya! XOXO Joyce.” I still have it somewhere. I use it as a bookmark.

My parents are at the Bhatts’ with my gift bag. I was invited along but it had felt wrong to go. My stomach had turned at the thought

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of looking Vasudha in the eye. I would not have liked what was reflected back. Instead I sit in my room, alone, flipping through old photo albums. It is already dark out, and the woods bordering our house have come alive for the night. Black-tailed deer tromp through the neighbor’s vineyard because chain-link fences are banned in our town. So are sidewalks and streetlamps. The council feels they would wreck the rural aesthetic. As a result we see a lot of animals. Last year a cougar even wandered into our backyard and almost ate Fatass. My father had to beat it back with a broomstick. Maybe our town is too rural, but I prefer it this way. The silence is liberating, particularly when I have the house to myself. It gives me space to think. And tonight, for some reason, I want to think about the past. That is why I pulled my family albums from the back of the shoe closet. Now they are scattered across the bed, leaving squares of dust over my sheets. The older photos are of my parents in their twenties. The rest are of me at my grandparents’ farm in Sagara, where we would spend our summers. Every night, I remember, my grandmother would heat fresh milk in a saucepan, flavoring it with turmeric and saffron, while my 52

grandfather and I put the cows to rest. My mother and her cousins would be crowded around woven mats, splitting peanuts or sifting rice. And from the rafters, our feral cat, Mother Cat, would watch us all with quiet disdain. My grandfather died of lung cancer last month, but no one knew the cause until afterward. He never smoked or drank and walked ten miles a day, so lung cancer was never on anyone’s radar. When he complained that his chest hurt, my mother said that he was making a mountain out of a molehill. When his lungs filled with fluid, she said it was probably pneumonia. Old people often get pneumonia. I had called her insensitive, because his age gave cause for concern, but now I wonder if maybe she knew more than she was letting on. I never saw her cry either. We let her attend the funeral alone. We had other commitments, and it is important to be practical about these things. We had done the same when my father’s parents died. Now only her brother lives on the farm. He is not allowed to move because of the squatters. Leave a piece of land unattended for even a month in India, and you will find that when you come back it is no longer yours. It is also a challenge to find good tenants who will feed the dogs and clean the house and not run a brothel out of the barn.

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Thinking about Sagara, about what I have lost, the photos have suddenly become exhausting to go through. But I cannot stop. It feels like I am whipping myself. When my parents return from the Bhatts, they can hear me crying. We do not discuss this the next morning. It would have been too embarrassing for all of us. Instead my father tells me that Raj sends his thanks. Apparently he went through all my research, not just the highlighted portions. I think my father is trying to cheer me up, but he does the opposite. I do not deserve the Bhatts’ gratitude. Accepting it makes me feel like a cheat. My left eyelid is drooping. It has been for a week. It is drooping so low that my lashes are blocking my vision. I also have terrible headaches and have been sleeping very poorly. To counterbalance the sleep deficit, I have been drinking more coffee in the afternoons. This keeps me up for most of the night, so I wake up the next morning with an even larger deficit. My condition leaves me so sick with worry that I cannot play catch-up over the weekends either. Shreyas’ cancer makes his eyes do funny things. While I am too old for

his cancer, I am not too old for other brain cancers. The medical journals all say that ocular gliomas can cause your eyelids to droop. My mother says I am being an idiot. She reminds me of that time last year when I found an ingrown hair on my breast and asked for a mammography. Then she reminds me of the time I found a mole on my ankle and purchased a liter of SPF100 sunblock. But this is different. This is my eye, and eyes do not droop like this. I almost wish I do have something, just to prove her wrong. I can already imagine it: her sitting in the hospital lobby, getting the news delivered. Her, begging my forgiveness. Me, giving it. Her, on her knees, sobbing, because what a big-hearted daughter she is losing. Then I imagine various permutations: me in the lobby getting the news delivered, me in the lobby getting Shreyas’ news delivered, me delivering the news to Shreyas’ mother in the lobby. The hospital lobby, I decide, must remain a constant, because it is the space in which the planes of life and death meet. So finally, at my insistence, we do visit the hospital. Unfortunately my eye chooses that day to stop drooping, so I look like a buffoon trying to convince the doctor that yes, I am in fact dying. I have to pull 53

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symptoms out of my ass, ones that are not easily verifiable, to lend credibility to my story. Reduced mobility in the left arm, cramps in the left side of my chest, sudden dizzy spells, things like that. But apparently blood tests catch everything, because I am sent home with a clean bill of health. Surprisingly my mother does not laugh at me. We even get ice cream on the drive back. Then she says, “See, I know how you are, Kavya. Not every little thing is cancer.” And to be honest, I am glad she is right. I am not ready for the level of commitment that death requires. Today my mother’s brother calls with good news. The shaman he visited yesterday evening said that if Shreyas survives until November, then he will survive for another fifty years. My uncle means well, but he is too fervent. I want to tell him there is no God. I wonder if this will upset him. Moreover, what no one seems to understand is that Shreyas will likely have died by November. So the shaman’s advice, if true, is as true as it is irrelevant.

I do not tell my mother this. I just raise my eyebrows, so she says, “In desperate times we must exhaust every measure.”

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My father says, “I do not believe in this either, Kavya. But I do believe in Shreyas. He is older than most of the other kids with this cancer, so he is also stronger. He will beat it.” Then he gets louder. “What? You do not believe me? You think he will die? How can you think that?” He looks ready to cry, so I walk into my sister’s room. I know he is projecting his love for my sister onto Shreyas. All parents have favorites. She is his. They have the same sloping cheekbones and dark skin, so this makes sense. Later, because I have to talk to someone, I tell my sister that our father is a mess, that he is supremely irrational. I tell her that, even worse, he expects us to be the same. She agrees, but then again, she will agree with anything to avoid conflict. So I ask her, does Shreyas know what his cancer is called? It turns out that she does not know what it is called either. So I tell her that too. Then I leave, knowing she will Google it the moment I shut the door. My heart is buzzing. I feel delightfully dirty. A few months later, when I am back in college, my sister informs me that no, Shreyas does not know. Apparently he never

asks about his cancer, and his parents do not tell him. He does not even Google his symptoms. Then she says the Bhatts came over for dinner last weekend. They decided to watch The Maze Runner afterward, but Shreyas started crying when the Flare was introduced. He said it was because his mother always cried about his brain disease, and he did not like it when she cried. So I guess he knows it is bad, at least. And when you are living through it, there is no point in knowing any more. His parents have lost all hope. They bought his Christmas present two months early. It is a Portuguese Water Dog, like what the Obamas have. They had to drive hundreds of miles down to Bakersfield to pick it up. They already have an attention-starve beagle named Kevin, but their dying son had wanted one more, and how could they say no? Kevin is pissed as hell about it. He has been pulling Raj’s shoes off the rack and shitting into them.

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I wonder if Shreyas has lost hope too, and if the dog has anything to do with it. Now a rushing noise is filling my ears. The thing is, when the patient loses hope, that is it. Lights out, literally. But I need Shreyas to hang on until Christmas, when I am home. I know the reason why is not nice. I know it is wrong. But at least I can admit it: I want to watch him die, so that I can feel it too.

R E C I P E : C U R RY F LOW C H A RT Gabby Markel This highly flexible curry recipe includes detailed instructions to anticipate questions as they arise during the cooking process. The beauty of curry is that once you understand the basic technique, you can make a delicious curry with anything! I’ll discuss some fun variations throughout the recipe. The serving size will vary depending on the volume of protein and/or vegetables.

**Note on Ingredients: When you begin cooking, everything will go more smoothly if all your ingredients are properly cut up. That way you can focus on your cooking.

INGR ED I ENT S Olive oil and sea salt

stove first so it will be done early and you can focus on your curry.

1 quart of liquid: chicken broth, vegetable broth, beef broth, canned tomatoes, or water will all work great.

1 large white or yellow onion, chopped into medium-sized dice Protein, cut into bite-sized pieces and seasoned with salt if you are 5 garlic cloves, chopped small using meat. Use literally any kind Fat: coconut milk is traditional, you want—2 cans legumes, 1 lb of but plain yogurt is tasty too. Ginger, about 1.5 inches long, meat, 8-12oz tofu, or 1 lb seafood. peeled and chopped small Cilantro and/or mint, chopped Vegetables, chopped into 4 tablespoons curry powder. It fine. They HAVE to be FRESH. is important that you buy a nice bite-sized pieces. Use whatever Dried herbs are useless in this assortment you like. It’s nice to one. Nice spices are expensive, context. have at least two different kinds. but worth it. Try and go for an 1 Lime, sliced organic or fancier looking brand. Ideas: snap peas, cauliflower, Starch: your favorite grain, rice noodles, or bread. If you are making rice, put that on the

broccoli, carrots, zucchini, cabbage, kale, mushrooms, peppers, or eggplant.

Nuts! Toasted and chopped. It’s easiest to buy them pre-roasted but not seasoned.

R E F R AC T E D Ber tie Miller

R E C I P E : C U R RY F LOW C H A RT

Co oking D i re c ti o n s : 1. Protein Prep: If you plan on using a legume, soy product, or seafood, continue to step 2. If you are cooking any other meat (beef, chicken, lamb, etc.)... it’s time to brown your meat! This does not involve cooking it all the way through—you’re just creating flavor through caramelization. Ventilation is important with stove-top cooking, so turn your fan on or open a window beforehand. Heat a glug of oil in a large vessel on medium-high heat for a few moments. You want your pot or pan to be sizable because you will use it for the entire process. Place one piece of meat in the oil to test the temperature—it should sizzle. When the oil is hot enough, fill your cookware with meat, but not so much that the cubes are touching. They like their personal space for now, so you may have to complete them in batches. Use tongs to turn the pieces over when they are brown on one side. You can usually tell when they are ready to flip when they become easily unstuck from the pan. It depends on the heat of the pan, but each side should take only a few minutes. Don’t be shy about really adding some color to the meat here or worry if little bits stick to the pan and 60

burn—this will add extra flavor. Once all of the meat are browned to your liking, place it aside, turn down the heat to low, add more oil if it’s all gone, and toss in the onions. Throwing in the onions right away “deglazes” the pan—the onions will sweat, loosening the leftover meat bits and infusing good meaty flavor into the dish. 2. The Sauté: If using a legume, soy product, or seafood, get a medium-large pot and pour in a few glugs of oil over medium-low heat. Let the oil heat for about a minute, then add the onion. Sauté the onion for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Turn down the heat if they start to brown at the edges or stick to the pan/burn. You just want them to cook evenly until they get very shiny and aromatic. Add the garlic and ginger. Stir your sauté and let it cook for about 4 minutes. Then stir in the curry powder plus a few teaspoons of salt and cook for several more minutes. Your toasted spices have built an excellent flavor base for a great pot of just about anything! 3. The Simmer: Now it’s time to add your veggies. Throw them in the pot, turning the heat up a

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little (just slightly hotter than medium now) and sauté them with everything else, cooking for 5-10 minutes until they begin to soften. Add the protein, stir, and top it off with your liquid of choice. Cover and simmer. If you run out of whatever liquid you chose, it’s OK to top off your curry with water. Continue simmering and monitoring the heat until the vegetables are cooked to a state that you like and the protein is cooked through. This will maybe take 15 minutes or so. 4. Finishing touches! Turn off the heat. Shake your can of coconut milk, then open it and stir it into the curry. If you choose to use plain yogurt, stir that in after you have served the curry into individual portions. Taste your curry from the pot. Does it need something? Try salt first—salting food is not intended to make a dish taste like salt, but rather bring out the individual flavors of the ingredients, which is super important! You can also add more curry powder if you don’t taste your spice enough.

squeeze lots of lime over it! YUM! EAT and be happy!! **Leftovers freeze really well in freezerproof ziplock bags and then you can easily reheat them for a last minute dinner.

Summary: 1. Make your flavor: onions, garlic, ginger, spices. 2. Add your ingredients: veggies and protein. Then add liquid and simmer. 3. Add the extras: fat, herbs, crunch, and citrus.

Take a bowl, put rice in the bottom, and top with curry. Add yogurt if you didn’t use coconut milk. Sprinkle with lots of chopped mint, cilantro, and nuts. Then 61

P I O C H E C OW B OY Brianna Rettig

A GOOD FIGHT Sara Hetherington Fraternal twins struggle dearly to be sturdy post-delivery. That heavy pregnancy belies my silent birth into this life, into this separate line of life where, they complain, I’m all elbows. When we cut those ropes with hairpulls and rib-pokes, what else could we still-birthed be? Not benign. In this life, they malign, I’m all cold fish and sticky pride, but how else could I come? Sis, what else did we ever spit but suckerpunched split—bloodied lip? Since swimming out that cistern, I have found a bitterness: how do I miss your sourness! You gashed and saw the good in me—we gave no grief about it there. Good god do I now misfit, miss it.

SHADES Tongyu Zhou

WHITE PEOPLE SUCK Jordan Jones

S H E L LY ’ S E X P E R I E M E N T Andre w Wallace

What was initially fear and astonishment on the part of Hillside residents simmered to a wary confusion. No authority seemed willing to take responsibility, or conclusively claim jurisdiction. Local government officials felt that they probably ought to do something, but they weren’t sure exactly what. Town medical professionals, though fascinated, appeared well out of their league. The only group whose proper course of action was immediately clear was the journalists. After the Herald broke the story, the ensuing influx was the greatest in the town’s history, there being, according to natives, at least three reporters for every Hillsidian. And while the story itself did not disappoint, the interviews could not have been less interesting. Richard, he was sorry to say, had no more insight into the matter than did they. Harrison, whose face soon appeared on televisions across the country, muttering the same ineloquent refrain, was a most unremarkable child thrust into a remarkable situation. “I was outside in the backyard playing soccer,” he said, though he had, in actuality, been using a sharp stick to investigate its bugs with extreme prejudice. “I kicked the ball, and then I heard someone say something, and then I didn’t see anyone, and then I heard them say it again, and then I saw him, and I went to get my mom.” No one would have believed him, but there was his mother, nodding along, and there, too, standing on a table and looking dead into the camera, was Richard. “Yes,” Richard repeated to the American people. “To the best of my understanding, I am indeed a turtle.” Human (and, for the first time, turtle) interest stories with accompanying photographs of the two looking chummy painted Richard and Harrison as fast friends, connected at the hip from the start. Richard, however, was not particularly fond of the boy. In the small window of time every day

S H E L LY ’ S E X P E R I M E N T when the lights went down and the cameras turned off, Richard spent most of his time at the Miller residence doing his best to avoid him. Mrs. Miller was extremely sweet, making accommodation after accommodation for him. When it became clear that Richard had nowhere to go, and no friends or family that he knew of, she embraced him fully as her own. She appropriated the unused laundry room for him. In the sink, a pan full of warm water covered one side, while a little patch of grass borrowed from the yard covered the other, allowing Richard to move freely between aquatic and terrestrial beds. She filled the room with plants and covered the walls first with pictures of ponds, then with images of 1920s Paris and Pamplona as Richard consumed more and more Hemingway. Mrs. Miller rejected his repeated thanks and insisted that he call her Dorothy or, after a few months, Mom. The novelty wore off quickly for Harrison, and he seemed not to appreciate the new burden upon his mother’s time. When Richard was standing on and reading his paper in the morning, sipping coffee out of the pink extendable straw Mrs. Miller had customized to suit him (Harrison demanded that she make him one, too), Harrison had taken to pinching the straw mid-sip, only allowing the coffee to flow freely once Richard had opened his mouth to ask him politely to let go. Having seldom been in the laundry room before, Harrison now insisted 68

that he must wash his hands there, especially after finger painting or eating messy foods. Humans matured more slowly, Richard recognized, but it was hard for him to use that as a justification when he had been only three hours old upon their first meeting. Richard came from a little pond not far from the Millers’s property. “When I was born, I didn’t see anyone around,” he told the news teams. “So I figured I would go find someone to talk to.” In an attempt to provide him some relief from the questions and the spotlight, Mrs. Miller walked him back to the pond whence he came. He swam with the fauna, turtles included. Quiet breezes dimpled the water, complementing the thin warm layer at the top. The other turtles were friendly enough, if not very engaging. He watched them wade back and forth, nipping up nutrition from the water’s surface and resting, now and then, in groups on the small rocks lathered in sunlight. No one was in any particular hurry, and the pond was more than large enough to accommodate them all. Even the ones with eggs to look after had repetitive regimes, focusing mostly on pond qua pond, and not the meaning of the pond or its place in the universe. There was limited inter-turtle dialogue, for better or worse, and what was communicated was in large part strictly logistical. To be sure, this was mostly hypothesis on Richard’s part. He was embarrassed to admit that his Turtle was not

S H E L LY ’ S E X P E R I M E N T what it had been even weeks ago. But all he could hear were the rumbles of toads perched out of sight and the whine of dragonflies cruising by. Mrs. Miller sat on a bench a few yards away, giving Richard some privacy behind a book that stayed open to the same page. Every now and then, a “Hello,” would float up to her, and she would look down to see Richard facing another turtle. They would walk on, or stare off. On one occasion, a yellow- and brown-shelled fellow looked right back at Richard. He

opened his mouth and stuck out his head, and she was sure he would respond. But then he closed his mouth and withdrew, leaving Richard wondering and Mrs. Miller’s contact lenses bothering her, causing her eyes to tear. Richard would return to that pond frequently, when he was not absorbing as much as he could about the new world in which he found himself. He was full of questions for Mrs. Miller, about everything from hand sanitizer dispensers to NATO.

PAU S E B E T W E E N T H E R A I LS Fred Guo 69

S H E L LY ’ S E X P E R I M E N T She sat with him for hours at every meal, long after Harrison had run back to his computer. She didn’t teach him per se, but answered him honestly. Even Richard, who still had so much to learn about humans, could see the care and seriousness she put into each response, when the telephones and marriages she was describing were probably as natural to her as the pond was to Richard. He loved her as a son does a mother, and the only disservice she did him was leading him to believe that the rest of humanity was just like her. The question of how Richard should occupy himself was first raised when Mrs. Miller asserted that he ought to be educated. She felt that he, already an excited reader, should receive more intellectual stimulation. But should turtles go to school? The perplexed and divided board concluded that they could not offer him a spot at Hillside. The decision turned into a lawsuit, then an appeal, then further appeals. As the case climbed the legal ladder, it drew more and more attention from the media, whose audiences were already so familiar with Richard. The case presented an unprecedented challenge to long-established law. Constitutional lawyers and talk show personalities alike debated vigorously. Politicians on both sides of the aisle used the case to demonstrate the kinds of horrific affronts that would be visited upon the legal system and the country were their opponents to be elected. Richard himself, often forgotten in all this, was frankly bored by it, his curiosity 70

in this public, contentious aspect of human life quickly exhausted. He just wanted to go to school, or, at the very least, be left the time to read. His once great desire to meet people and engage them in conversation was waning. He felt that he could learn about them in other ways, through school or, if need be, on his own. Yet again he was bombarded by the press, answering questions and taking pictures from dawn until dusk. He couldn’t help noticing that he had not done anything to warrant this attention—his responses grew terse, his smiles taut. After much deliberation, the Supreme Court on a 5-4 decision determined that Hillside must allow Richard to attend. Hillside didn’t seem to mind, but the rest of the country did. On his first day, Mrs. Miller dropped Richard off at the school’s entrance. A baby’s sock replete with his favorite carrot bits and store-bought turtle food was secured to his shell with a rubber band that stretched around his underbelly. The road to the school had become a narrow path between two lines of police officers restraining protesters. They screamed back and forth, chanting and holding up signs, and a few scuffles broke out. Not much learning went on at Hillside that day. This continued for a week or so, then died down. He was placed in the 9th grade, where he was intellectually more advanced than most of his peers, but lacked their informational backgrounds. Richard was exceedingly friendly to the other children, for he hadn’t yet learned

S H E L LY ’ S E X P E R I M E N T not to be. The other students marveled at him, asking to touch his shell and feel the smooth top of his head. But none of them ever seemed to entertain the notion of friendship with him—it simply didn’t occur to them. When they did interact with him, it was mostly indirectly. “I don’t think he’s actually a turtle, I think he’s a tortoise. Look at his shell.” “No, tortoises have flippers instead of feet, so he wouldn’t be able to walk anywhere.” “But turtles can only breathe underwater, so he wouldn’t even be able to live up here!” “Hey, you’re a turtle, right?” “Yes,” said Richard, patiently, “but—” “See, I told you.” Some were worse. A large, prematurely bearded boy in Richard’s history class, after pretending to step on him, had effectively rechristened him as far as the other students were concerned. “Hey, watch where you’re going Shell-y!” It caught on, but Richard gave them the benefit of the doubt, acknowledging that playful ribbing was a part of adolescence. He was late to every class, due to his short legs and slow gait. Each time he hoped that someone would offer to give him a ride, but not wanting to be any more of an imposition than he already was, he didn’t ask. He was

well-regarded by his teachers nonetheless, as he went well beyond the scope of his assignments, researching and reading from when he got home to when he went to sleep. He impressed so many at the school that by the end of the school year, the deans had determined that he should skip his sophomore year and head straight into the 11th grade. Richard could barely contain his excitement when he was called into the office, and ran, as best he could, to the exit where Mrs. Miller was waiting to pick him up. “Mrs.—Mom, I have great news!” he said. When she didn’t respond, he looked at her more closely. She had been crying, and started up again soon enough. She wouldn’t explain why for the whole car ride home. Two men in suits were waiting there when they walked into the house. Richard heard without really listening. “You have something special, Richard, and we need to know what it is.” He didn’t realize he had been expecting something like this until it was upon him. He found himself totally unsurprised. “It’s a matter of national security, son. If we can figure out what you have that makes you the way you are, it could change everything. We could save a million lives.”

S H E L LY ’ S E X P E R I M E N T Mrs. Miller sobbed, and left the room. “If it were up to me, we’d leave you alone and never bother you again. But the order is straight from the President. I’m sorry.” The order sparked a new wave of protests and counter protests. The President had initially been convinced by his press office and public relations team that seizing the turtle in the name of research would be a disaster. It took the Department of Defense four months of meetings and a 1,500-page brief on the possible military applications of what they could learn from the turtle to finally change his mind. Some thought that the precedent set by the Court’s previous decision granted Richard inalienable rights which were now being violated by the federal government. Others, particularly those in the medical community (who didn’t know the true impetus for the decision), explained how greatly society, and even the world, could benefit from the insight that a look into Richard’s brain could bring. Richard felt that the more interesting experiment was seeing the ways in which this world of people had reacted to his being introduced to it. His quest for understanding was yielding results, but the results made him question the value of the quest in the first place.

The men in suits came back a week later to take him to a famous research hospital a few hours away. The Miller family rode with him, mother alternately crying and telling Richard it would be alright, Harrison playing his video games guiltily, speaking up only to complain about being uncomfortable or having to go to the bathroom. The familiar security lines and protest groups, bigger than ever, greeted the convoy almost a mile away from the hospital. When they got out, Mrs. Miller carrying Richard close to her body, a small group of reporters from reputable newspapers had been allowed through the security lines to ask a few last questions of Richard. To his right, signs read “Science over all” and “For the good of humanity.” To his left, “You wouldn’t kill your son for science” and “YOU HAVE NO RIGHT.” Before he was ushered into the building, Richard was approached by a microphone followed closely by a bespectacled woman. “Richard, I know this is a hard time for you and your family. I’ll only ask you one question. What do you have to say to your supporters here today?” A young woman at the front of the crowd took advantage of the silence. Her scream, which was also written in blood-red colors on her large

S H E L LY ’ S E X P E R I M E N T poster, was met with an explosion of noise from the left. “TURTLES ARE PEOPLE TOO!!!” Richard didn’t hear them cheer. He heard toads and dragonflies, and felt the bumpy smoothness of detritus under foot. The crowd of yelling people gave way to stillness punctuated by gusts of wind, and the isolated companionship of a rock shared in silence. He saw his mother, not shaking as she was now, but reading quietly on a bench behind him, pretending not to watch. “No,” he replied. “They are not.”

C H I N E S E I N T E L L E C T UA LS Jianing Tu

UNTITLED Jason Liu

C RYS TA L L I N E Teague Morris

The glass on the window seems to be solidifying dirt and ice painting it so that when the sun grey and cold with winter comes flat against it the crust like the grime under fingernails needs to be dug out the air grey too coming to wrap itself around shoulders around unleashed dogs creeping in to every bed a ghost tangling sheets when no body is there not only glass but the growing things are turning slowly to ice the empty spaces within expanding cell walls cracking one by one freezerburn coming now to shine the edges of things but look how beautiful they are jacketed in the thing which kills them

AD ASTRA Ariel Chu

Astra tells me that my spirit guide is an alabaster Chinese dragon. I am in fact Chinese, but I don’t want to believe that she’s a racist. “Well, that explains the giant shadow following me around,” I say. She smiles and keeps swinging her pendulum. Astra isn’t that much older than I am. When I walked into the Death Museum for the haunted city tour, she and a man in a cowboy hat were sitting around a wooden table and talking about reality TV. Astra was rifling through her tarot deck—“the Emperor!” she groaned, shooting to her feet. “What is the Emperor trying to tell me?” The cowboy began plucking at his guitar. He turned out to be our tour guide. At the end of our tour, he revealed that all participants would get a ten percent discount on psychic readings. I didn’t want to go back to the hotel, so here I am: in Astra’s little nook filled with faux cultural artifacts. She sways and mumbles. One of her eyes flashes open. “Are you meditating on a question?” she asks, nodding towards the tarot deck in my hands. The cards are fat and overlaid with a tacky geometric pattern. “Actually,” I say. “Do you want to get dinner?”

PHOTOGRAPHS BY AL SCARANGELLA

AD ASTRA

When we leave the Death Museum, I notice the bags under her eyes. She moves slowly, as if every step away from the museum is leading her closer to a trap. “Is your name actually Astra?” I ask. She looks at me with unexpected contempt. “Of course it isn’t,” she says. “My name’s Barbara,” I say, “so I understand wanting to change.” Not-Astra nods. I follow her towards a dingy kabob place. She walks in and greets the cashier. I find myself resenting their familiarity. Then we’re by the window on peeling stools, eating our falafel. Mine is drenched with sauce and I have to wipe my mouth after every bite. The napkin takes my lipstick off and I feel myself getting uglier. “I guess you come here often,” I try. “Close to the museum and everything.” “Yeah.” She tears into her food, glancing out the streaked window.

“Do you remember the people you’ve read for?” I ask. “Do they come back and tell you if you were right?” She chuckles, and I feel a surge of accomplishment. “Sometimes I dream about them,” she says. “No joke. One time this old lady came in and asked what color she should paint her room. I told her I can’t answer questions like that, but a week later, I dreamt she was painting her walls green.”

AD ASTRA “Did you ever tell her?” “If she wants to know so bad, she can come back.” She sucks off a dollop of chili sauce from her thumb. “She was from out of town anyways.” I straighten up. Try to seem disaffected and cosmopolitan. She isn’t even looking at me. On the sidewalk, a man in a leather jacket is leaning against a signpost and smoking. Rain is beginning to hit the sidewalk. “Shit,” she mutters, sliding off the stool. “I have a thing at eight. I should go back.” “I guess you’re not used to clients asking you to dinner,” I say. “You’d be surprised. How long are you here?” I can see her lumping me into the same category as Paint Lady. I try not to betray my disappointment. “A week. I’m visiting from Southern California. With my husband. It’s our anniversary.” She nods slowly. I follow her gaze to my hand. “Well, have a good stay,” she says. When I return to the room, David’s there, lounging on the bed in his boxers. He turns the TV off when he sees me. “What took you so long?” he asks. “I called five times.”

His concern catches me off guard, and I feel a swell of guilt. “Sorry,” I tell him. “I got lost on the way back, and my phone died on the tour.” “I told you to charge it last night,” he says. Of course he wouldn’t remember that I did. He sighs and sits back up. “Christ, it’s almost nine. Have you eaten yet?” A few minutes later we’re in the overpriced hotel restaurant: David in his wrinkled blue button-down, me in the same sweaty outfit I wore for the walking tour. David is grumbling at the menu. He looks straight at me, and I realize that the waitress wants my order. “Nothing for me, thanks,” I say. David scoffs and, remembering himself, thanks the waitress for taking our menus. “We had a huge-ass lunch four hours ago,” I tell him. “You know how bad my stomach is with oil.” He rolls his eyes and looks elsewhere. He knows how much I hate being ignored. “Fine, I’ll eat some of the breadsticks,” I say. “I just didn’t want to fuck up my digestion.” “It’s not that, Barb,” he mutters. I drum my knuckles on the tabletop. Imagine my dragon belching a flame just to scare him back to life. “What animal would you be?” I ask impulsively. The waitress drops off a basket of breadsticks and I snatch one with verve.

AD ASTRA David seems to perk up. He reaches over with his whole body, claims a breadstick, and sinks back into his seat. “Maybe an elephant seal,” he says between bites. “Something lazy.” “Elephant seals aren’t lazy. They’re brutal as hell. Sometimes the males roll over and squash their babies,” I say. I’m impressed—I wasn’t expecting such an unconventional choice. “What about me?” “A penguin. For sure.” I try to hide my disappointment by taking another bite. “Because I’m small and cute?” “And silly,” David says. He reaches for another breadstick. I spend the rest of the dinner sipping at my water. He stops talking once his steak arrives, and I wonder if he thinks our silence is comfortable. The next day he decides to have brunch with a college friend. I go to the Death Museum. “Do you do palm readings?” I ask Astra. “I’ll be better this time.” She tells me to sit. I extend my right hand without being prompted. When she sets her fingertips on my palm, tickles shoot up my arm. I have to restrain myself from shivering. “Well, the good news is that you’ll have a long life,” she says. “Though you might run into some 82

AD ASTRA

“That was just a general reading,” she says. The amusement in her voice disarms me. “We have fifteen minutes. Anything you want me to answer specifically?” “Tell me more about love,” I say. And I do want to know. I want to know why I felt humiliated when David cuffed me to the bedposts last night. I want to know why, halfway through, I claimed indigestion even though everything was going fine. I still remember the dull thump of the mattress when he’d ambled over on his knees and freed me. He’d paused, then, the plastic cuffs drooping from his hands. “Love,” she says. “That’s popular. What about love? Marriage, sex, children?”

career trouble—you’ll feel unappreciated and won’t be able to keep quiet about it. Love life looks fine. Your biggest challenge is communication, but once you figure that out…” She pauses at the base of my third finger. “Lost your ring?” “Yeah,” I blurt, preparing to defend myself further. She lets my hand go.

“Anything,” I say. Astra starts strong and then goes on a tangent about fertility. While she speaks, I’m looking at her mouth, the way it forms words like maternal and devotedness. When her fingertip taps on my palm again, I almost jump. “Fun fact—I dreamt of you last night,” she says, glancing back at my fingers. “You were riding on your dragon and eating a sandwich. Except you were moving so fast that the insides of the sandwich kept flying out. Isn’t that weird?” “What does it mean?” I ask, flushing. She pauses. I notice the miniature hourglass on the table. The last traces of the sand get sucked below. 83

AD ASTRA Her hand is on mine again—a firm, warm grip. “It means you deserve more,” she said. “Whatever situation it is. You’re wasting your time.” Now I’m convinced that Astra’s changed from who she was yesterday: leaning forward, looking me in the eyes. She smirks and loosens her hand. Unsure what to make of this, I reach for my wallet. “No charge,” she says. “You got me dinner, anyways.” I rise to my feet, almost unsettling the table. When I finally find my voice, there’s a lightness in it that I don’t expect. “So what about you?” I ask, trying to mirror her coolness. “What’s your spirit guide?” “A crow,” Astra says. And I see it, all of a sudden—the way her eyes crinkle when she talks, as if she’s hoarding away the brightest parts of everything she knows. We end up at the Space Needle. Astra munches on a pretzel while I take obligatory tourist photos. I’m half-expecting to see David and his friend among the other visitors. I was supposed to meet him at a coffee place ten minutes ago, but he hasn’t called yet. Astra looks different in the sunlight. At a certain angle, her hair turns white. She’d look like some sort of nymph if she were 84

smaller. As it is, she towers over me like an otherworldly protector. “So where is your hubby?” she asks. “Doesn’t seem like a couples vacation.” “Can’t you sniff him out or something?” “Doesn’t work like that, hon.” She sighs and looks tired again. We amble over to a bench. “Anyways, this is something you shouldn’t have to ask a psychic.” “He’s with his friend,” I tell her. “They haven’t seen each other in years.” Families stroll past: beleaguered wives, red-faced husbands, parasitic toddlers. David and I agreed never to end up like this. During our clinicals, we’d make up stories about the families we briefed in the waiting rooms. “No wonder Rudd’s so sick. His wife’s killing him,” he’d once said, and we’d burst into muffled laughter in the hallway. That was only a few years ago. Now I can’t remember the last time David made me laugh. He’d tried to make a joke about the flight attendant on the plane to Seattle, but it’d struck me as uninspired. Astra shifts next to me, and I wonder if she’s channeling all these thoughts out of me. Astra, a sharp hunk of quartz, drawing all the toxicity out of my brain. She says: “Sometimes I wish I knew less about people. It gets hard to have faith in the world.”

AD ASTRA “There must be some good ones out there,” I say. “I think lots of people are just trapped.” “Nah,” she says. “Most people dig their own holes. Also, your phone’s ringing.” I pull it out just as it stops vibrating. She watches as I call David back. “Hey babe,” I say. “I got held up. Where are you?” “Slate. Where else?” he says. There’s clinking in the background. “Barb, this is the third fucking time. Are you gonna be here or not?” “No,” I say, and hang up. I look straight up into Astra’s eyes. Heat rushes to my ears. I slip my phone back into my purse. “Is everything okay?” she asks. It endears her to me. Maybe she knows everything and is sparing my feelings. Maybe she knows nothing and, like the rest of us, just gets a kick out of pretending. “My husband just canceled our plans,” I say. “How does your afternoon look?” David proposed in his scrubs, getting to his knees in the middle of the parking lot. It was late afternoon, and all the other nursing students were in their cars, waiting for us to get out of the way. He’d stumbled his way through an improvised speech. Back then, I thought things like that were endearing. Later that night, I watched my ring as it caught the light. Changed the story a little bit

every time I called a friend. For some reason, I kept remembering how unimpressed my supervisor looked when she walked past us. I ended up telling Ellen that David had assembled our classmates into a flash mob. But Seattle had been his idea. He’d gotten off a shift and said “We need to be elsewhere.” In that moment, I did love him. I loved him when he walked straight to his laptop and bought two plane tickets. I loved him when he’d collapsed into bed and said “So what’s in Seattle?” I’d imagined ambling through rainy streets, ducking in and out of corner shops, asking hipsters for coffee recommendations. Then, our first night in the hotel, he said he was too tired to do anything. It made me feel stupid for thinking that a change of scene could recover something. I went to the boardwalk alone and watched the Great Wheel make fat rotations over the water. After I returned, he’d asked if I’d brought dinner. I hadn’t thought about it. It was almost ten and everything good was about to close. “Well, you should’ve come with me,” I said. In reality, I had enjoyed being alone. We’re tangled in my hotel sheets and then I’m on my back thinking of what to say to David. Will he want to join us? Will he leave me for good? The thought of a screaming match makes me shudder in delight. Astra feels it and skips her fingers down my stomach. 85

AD ASTRA Her real name is Claire. She tells me this while she’s clumsily running my hair through her fingers. “I was this close to calling the shop ‘Claire-voyant’,” she murmurs into my shoulder. Just when I think she’s about to elaborate, she laughs. “This whole thing is ridiculous, isn’t it?” We talk idly: where did I go in Seattle, what did I do for a living, what restaurants are good? Then it’s seven and David still isn’t back. Claire is pulling her dress back on. In the dull light of the room, her hair looks like straw. She says, “You know, I can do couples readings. Sometimes it helps.” I don’t have an answer ready. She doesn’t look surprised. “So long,” she finally says, and closes the door behind her. I imagine David passing her in the hallway. I wonder if he’ll be able to smell the incense when he steps inside. But he doesn’t come back, and my eyelids grow heavy. I lay on my side and draw the sheets over me. Then I’m sliding down something mountainous and white: the neck of an alabaster dragon. The whole world is whirling and I begin to laugh. I’m sliding and sliding and just when I’m about to reach the dragon’s head, I hear a deep crack below. All of this is ice, I think, and I don’t know how to swim.

E N L I G H T E N M E N T ( TA K E N F R O M A N G KO R WAT I N C A M B O D I A S I G N I F Y I N G M E N â&#x20AC;&#x2122; S P E AC E O R D I V I N I T Y ) Fred Guo

DEBUT FOR CONSCRIPTION Breidy Cueto I Hard to care when you’re doing it all. We’re not even supposed to light candles. We’re supposed to be drinking water. Strike that, reverse it— it’s like candy and it makes us laugh. What if I slipped into my sleepy mess and dropped all the larynxes in my hand along with red-yellow-white cords, like we dipped all the streaming in wine, urine, cocaine. There’s about forty other places I’m glad I’m not, but at least they’re well-armed with a good media narrative. And at least they’re not screaming about radios, airports, muscle cars, and chanting red-blue-white chords dissonant in my ear. 89

DEBUT FOR CONSCRIPTION

I want their larynxes. I can ignore the forty other places. Are the poor enlightened? II

They’re so blessed, they’ve got

Enough spinal fluid present

Have you seen me burn

near an erect flat surface will: (a) decrease social anxiety, (b) increase social contempt, (c) absorb the originating body. That would be (d)—

so many kingdoms. from Capernaum? Was that a cursory glance or did I just notice a stare? ““ I say it twice because I am

don’t affect my limit.

brave-asterisk enough

There’s a (Monday to Friday]

and because I am

but my mind only moves fast enough to beat LA-traffic-PD on the 101. III Teach me how to starve accidentally and perhaps my peace will outweigh my desire for peace and I will be enlightened.

to write Augustine, tumbling in speech. Don’t light that candle. Drink more water. IV Sometimes I think that I’d like a quick Permian-Triassic; like when the turret-lights shoot out greenhouse gases, or when blood stops seeping out of night-bandages and I’m left with open wounds again.

DEBUT FOR CONSCRIPTION

Wade in me, I’ve got hydration. Wait for me, I’m only getting older. V I constantly worry over my iambic pentameter; how else do I change the world? But I can expire as well as you, and I’ve a knack for sharing

These candles look like a ritual. Haven’t had water in a long while. Hardly care when you can’t do anything about it.

mornings with afternoons in last nights. My mommy used to send money to a little girl in her home country. Then we realized the kingdom ours, and now she sends me money to keep me breathing and just fast enough to make out the theme of you. VI I don’t like the word “riot,” the things it means are all far too different. So I won’t think about the word “riot;” I find the word “sanctuary” much more clean.

PRINT 92

Jessica Chen

A RC H I V E O F A P E R I S H A B L E F RU I T Natalie Wilkinson and Gwyneth Henke

I wanted to see if the quality of one’s bookshelf was equal to the quality of one’s mind. It was as petty as that. In my head, even now, she’s still wearing that floral shirt, and looking slightly to the left. I’m doing better today / I miss you. Little things like this always make me miss you / Oh! / What? / I just spilled scalding tea on Dana — She’s okay I think she’s okay / Oof burns erupt / Hazards abound / Trickery and treason / Debauchery season / Abandoning reason / Developing heathen / Wait / Regressing cretin / OoooOOoO / Magmatic cleaving / Tarantula weaving / I should say right now I keep worrying I’ll fail you with rhymes because words grow out of your pores // I wish you could crawl into my mind, buy a condo, build a new island in the kitchen, decide you wanted a better yard, retreat to the suburbs, get promoted, see a church light flicker on in the darkness of a city street, be struck by a sudden awareness of God and Your Own Death, renounce your belongings, move to the desert, fiddle with paganism, settle on mystic Christianity, and build your own grave in my left temporal lobe just so you could know all the ways in which it would be chemically and spiritually impossible for you, beloved friend, cherished

guide, soul mate, wander weaver, long watcher, chestnut mineral, to fail me. // What’re you thinking about today? / I am thinking about happiness as a muscle you have to exercise, not a precious material you store up! And macchiatos and the lovely rust colored cream of a perfectly pulled cortado — What about you? / What makes the rust color? Aeration? / Yes! Correctly ground beans, not too lightly or too loosely packed. The coffee should be rust colored with a milky-looking layer on top. // Tonight I had one of those moments of stasis when you don’t have anything in particular to do and you realize the air might crush you and the hours are sticky and get wrapped around the rolling pin of your mind —in other words I felt real bad but I’m feeling better now! // A life that is unapologetic and curly and fierce and soulful and growing, a life that is not afraid / Fuck tasting good on other people’s tongues! Let’s be fruit that is inconveniently juicy and bad for storage! // How is your mind today? // I’m calling just because I love you a lot and I’m thinking about you. I basically feel like I always think about you. I wish I could be 93

A RC H I V E O F A P E R I S H A B L E F RU I T with you wherever that would be, maybe at the median point between Williamstown and St. Louis, but if that’s not possible, then I’m just leaving this message. I feel pretty heavy, but I guess I feel empowered by the fact that the leaves here that are all over the ground and Thompson Chapel and the basement of Thompson Chapel will still be untouched. There are things that no one can ever take away, even if they are physically destroyed, and that makes me feel a lot better. So, yeah, I love you. // How’d the oranges go? Any of them speak to you? / Three leapt out and into my loving arms / I miss you every day // The second prayer of the day just began, and it is Friday (a holy day) so the prayer is longer than usual. The voices of the singers of the prayer are projected through speakers across the city and you can hear them clashing and intertwining with each other now / I’m reading a book by Thomas Merton where he describes the church bells in a village as turning everyone subconsciously towards God / Be safe I love you / I love you / Wave goodnight to the cicadas and the sky for me! It’s late here // I often think about what my life would be like if all experience were confined to a singular sense, with all the rest deprived, 94

like the sight of a black dot on a landscape of white, or the smell of mint leaves, or the sound of water splashing, or the taste of poppy seeds, without the ability to articulate the experience even to myself. In a world of a black dot, there would be only periods of black dot and periods of no black dot. The black dot could only be seen as something at once produced by and distinguishable from the landscape around it. // Manet said, “There are no lines in nature, only areas of color, one against another.” / The Martian in A Stranger in a Strange Land introduces himself by saying, “I am only an egg.” // Natalie of the plains / Gwyne of the old river // It’s funny—even as it all feels so clear, I know we will forget all of this. But we can love the forgetting, love our own forgetfulness. We know we will live a hundred lives, each time forgetting and remembering salvation. We know this cycle will repeat until the last time we forget, when at last we become this, when the knowledge is no longer an object we hold or bask in or cherish, but when we ourselves become the knowledge. Then we will not need another life, because we will no longer need to forget. But we should not resent the forgetting, or wish it to speed up, or hope to jump ahead several lives and get

A RC H I V E O F A P E R I S H A B L E F RU I T on with the thing already. One must forget. If you are hoping to skip ahead you have already forgotten, but do not be ashamed or angry with yourself for this. Of course you have forgotten. You will forget and forget and forget until forgetting no longer exists, and when that time comes you will not exist. So do not feel unhappy with your present forgetfulness, or your nearsightedness. If you were not nearsighted you would not be able to see the thing at all, and so you would not be able to forget at all, and then there would be no such thing as forgetting or as remembering. How did Sharif say the Koran translated “human?” I remember he said something like, “to be forgetful.” // I know all the bumps on my body. One on the left side of my neck the size of a blueberry, one on my right shoulder blade, one behind my right tonsil, one on my upper abdomen that is tender after exertion, one on my gums that feels slippery and hard, and one swollen lymph node on the right side of my jaw at the hinge point. I started probing my body when I was eight, when I convinced myself I would die an early death of cancer. I couldn’t possibly have understood the genetics or biology of cancer, and I wasn’t interested in being convinced I wasn’t dying. I became obsessed with finding the small deaths that were sprouting all over

my body, like blossoms and then berries. I was fascinated by the way bodies cave in on themselves when we sleep, how someone’s mother can collapse in a backyard because of the death growing in her own skull, how people with brain tumors lose their memories and minds because their bodies are growing too much inside themselves, how the incessant creation of our bodies can be effortlessly and infinitely mutated into a greedy weed, without making a sound. // I was so frightened of my own body during the cancer days. In high school I learned how to be afraid of it but with a different criterion: exhausted by the indignity of a death that grew against my permission, I tried to take my death into my own hands by excavating it from my body. My bones were buried ruins and I tried to dig them out. Why do we say ruins are better when we’ve excavated them? What is a ruin that is still buried? A house in Ancient Rome might have sunk into the soil over thousands of years, but as long as it is unburied, it is still a house. A dead house. We can’t stand the thought of a house that perished against our permission, that was beautiful and lived-in and had a death all its own when we weren’t watching. Neglect can be a beautiful thing; it allows things to destroy themselves in the ways they know how, the inverse of 95

A RC H I V E O F A P E R I S H A B L E F RU I T how they were born. A ruin is no longer a house. It is a spectacle, a corpse unearthed for the sake of tourism and looking. I am still learning how to let my body die without frantically trying to excavate my death. To put soil back over my own ruins. // And the thing is, neither of us said any of this, and if we know any of it, it’s because we’ve had time to learn it from the world // I just got out of yoga and listened to your message and was eating yogurt while you contemplated eating yogurt as if we needed a single more synapse link today // The blood in my thumb is on its way to my head right now, blood that will help me think “goddamn can we talk soon?!” // If you are blessed enough to come upon an idea that is really true, then you should not try to own the idea or be proud of your stumbling upon it, or show it to people as though it is something you made. Only do this if the idea is not true, and you need the comfort of other eyes to convince yourself that it is real. If something is true it has always been true, and its truth is woven into every rock and leaf and limb on this earth. It is God’s truth and you have only done the good work of revealing it for a little while. When you do this, be glad, and be grateful to God for letting you walk around a while 96

with their truth, in order that you may show it to people, just as it was once shown to you. / Flouted knees! I feel a touch of honey knowing you’re in my life. // The whole idea that we’re responsible for our own enlightenment is still that sneaky little Ego getting in the way! We can’t force it or construct it by contemplation…if it’s there at all, God will make it shown, in every minute of our lives, you know? The sun is cold and solid, hitting my body as I walk through the Loop, silent like a lover’s unfurled arm // And sometimes I get so scared because I feel like I’m getting left behind, or I’m leaving other people behind. I’m standing on one side of a window banging on the glass, watching everyone suffer without being able to tell them how to escape. And then sometimes I can’t escape, and I see you on the other side. And I want to ask you, “Where are you going? How do I get there with you?” But the other day I realized how silly that is. We love the people in our lives so dearly, and we want to hold on so tightly, to keep them near us. We want a room full of all our favorite things. We want a shoebox to rattle. I think about losing you and I get so scared—I think of the next life and I beg for you all to stay with me, for us to stay together. But the universe is wide and our souls are long, and God is bringing us through these lives as we need to go. So maybe it will

A RC H I V E O F A P E R I S H A B L E F RU I T take a hundred births, and maybe I won’t see you again until we’re both incarnated as marmots—but we’re put together now, and OH, what a joy. And one day everything will be light, and you and I will be light, and it will all come out of Their Eyes. / right now you’re no marmot! what are you thinking? have you spoken to him again? // We expend a lot of mental energy trying to explain to ourselves why we write with our right hands, why we choose to watch TV instead of read, why our walking stride is pigeon-toed and why we stand longer in front of that painting and pass over another. We live as if every movement of our body (including our brain cells) must be warranted by something else, as if we are always on the brink of “wasting time,” or god forbid “being a deadbeat.” An acceptable warrant includes some kind of asserted loyalty to whatever we worship, which could be money or mastery over our fate or genitalia or literature or the sounds of trees. (None is more acceptable than the other, because we are already expending energy in the very judgment. Maybe we aren’t even judging at all.) The potential energy in each cell was made to keep us existing, and any exertion of a cell is worth the entire universe because it is doing the only thing it can do, which is transform star light into a feeling or

thought that is experienced by us alone. // I love you and am inspired by you. You are why I have decided I must be home this summer, learning how to live without measuring my own output / As I wrote you this morning I kept seeing these crazy beautiful flashes, smoke lifting from a brick chimney, the sun against the clouds, a mail carrier slinging her pack over her shoulder. And I thought, what if our bodies are just these vessels meant to take in and carry little pockets of information, parcels of the universe’s beauty, for a while? The same as your cell idea, just magnified…jiminy ho these brains of ours fit together like puzzle pieces, with no forcing! // I am so blessed to know you. Blessed by the big bang, by some pagan God, by Pallas Athena, by Moses, by Muhammad, by Yahweh, but more likely nobody. Nobody gave me you. You gave me you. // my sweet lord //

T H E A RC H I T E C T U R E O F T R A N S I T Brianna Rettig 99

A RT I S T B I O S Claire Bergey works mainly in cognitive psychology and theatre. Neither comforts her. Hudson Bohr is a sinner, too. Joseph Boncardo can probably fit a whole orange into his mouth. Jessica Chen is a Junior who has started to like Paresky food. She is very scared of Division III courses but makes up for this fear with a love for drawing and foreign language. Ariel Chu is a senior English major who enjoys worldbuilding, starting half-baked creative projects, and dabbling in theatre. Having completed a creative writing thesis, she is excited to continue writing fiction in Syracuse University’s MFA program. Trevin Corsiglia feels bad for the praying mantis. Not one has ever known their father. Breidy Cueto is an English major from the Bronx, NY. He enjoys writing poetry in his math and science classes and dreams of playing backup point guard for the Knicks. Fred Guo is an avid reader and singer who pretends he can read French books. He also loves grapes. Gwyneth Henke is a sort-of sophomore from Saint Louis, Missouri. She’s currently taking a year off from Williams, during which she is working at a cafe and enjoying the hot air and clay earth of her Midwestern home.

100

Sara Hetherington is a sophomore from Florida. When not submitting nonsense to Parlor Tricks, she enjoys wholesome memes and worrying about fairly mundane things. Jordan Jace is a junior from Los Angeles. Jordan Jones is primarily a maker of flat things, but is beginning to make things that poke out into the world. Jason Liu is a Vancouverite who does things, some of which are semi-artsy. He handed in this bio late, but not quite as late as his final English paper. Chinmayi Manjunath is a senior math major from California. She wants to clarify that her story is definitely not autobiographical, and that she is actually a lovely person. Gabby Markel takes well-salted food more seriously than just about anything else. Learning to cook on a boat made her appreciate any kitchen that doesn’t rock back and forth, and she couldn’t live without salmon from her home state of Alaska. Emily McDonald is a sophomore majoring in English and Psychology. She has been told that her style of conversational gesture makes it appear as if she is preparing to fight the person with whom she is speaking. She is often asked to lower her voice.

Rose Warner Miles studies English and Psychology, and will also graduate with a certificate in German language. She will return to Berlin (and that mahogany table) this fall.

Tongyu Zhou is a self-taught painter from Brooklyn, New York who likes earthy colors. She canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t draw circles properly.

Bertie Miller is an artist with a dream to one day dance to Girlfriend Is Better in an even bigger suit than David Byrne in Stop Making Sense. At least twice the size. Teague Morris is a senior majoring in English and Philosophy. He hopes to keep writing for a long time. Brianna Rettig studies people and what they leave behind. Al Scarangella is post-Tokyo junior that has finally learned how to enjoy avocados. Sophia Schmidt loves house plants, fiddle music, and putting on chapstick. She is terrified by the anatomy of the knee. Tyler Tsay writes poetry. Andrew Wallace is a sophomore from New York. He enjoys animals displaying qualities that typically belong to people. Natalie Wilkinson regularly wears purple monochrome outfits, either by accident or because sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a closet monarchist. She is ready to say goodbye to her friend Ed who has confused ashes with mud too many times to count.

Poetry fragments from "Do Not Move Stones" originally appeared in: Sappho. If Not, Winter. Translated by Anne Carson. Vintage: 2003.

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