Issue 1.0/Fall 2020
THE IMAGIST.
Issue 3.1
SIGHTINGS: A SPECIAL VISUAL ISSUE
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Good Fortune
By Yu Xuan Zhao
Scavenging for fresh persimmons flagged in lunar-luck red
(end-of-season, gone by tomorrow)
Your spite, my repartee—laughably, a mastered waltz
(rotten since yesterday)
The dinner table still cuts between us,
and persimmons still cave to inertia.
Mercado by Holly Wethey
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i by Holly Wethey
Watercolours
By James Dunnigan
analytically speaking, the process owes much
to your average lightning storm
and who hasn’t seen that eminent deathcraft
mangle a June horizon with all of December’s conflations
not in the affect of those seasons, so to speak
but as if in their rainfire disaffection
(fine acid, this art)
of all things made all surfaces all structures
I have observed this process in portraits by Edit Zilahi
Hungarian painter
my mother’s half-sister’s mother (a painter—abstract—herself)
I never knew her never saw her face so I can’t tell
whose it is
hidden in the charcoal or the pastel rain
a face blurred in proportion to the clarity with which
the windowpane in front of it
appears to me obscured
with weather (or what is more likely
the weather’s reflection)
another one she did: two bodies caught
each in their thicket of nerves
a watercolour night surrounds them
night:
what the twentieth century feels like
the twentieth century:
when she met my grandfather went out with him
that first time painting trees in Margitsziget
she staining three on canvas in the time
it took him to make one (amazingly
she let him have that second date)
another one: a face
that could belong to either of her children
not six years old and painted without eyes
I always look away
Self Portrait Series by Asa Brunet-Jailly
Transplanting
By Nora Bartram-Forbes
Becoming a girl in the middle of nowhere
I shed my shoes in a neat pile.
I will let you rip through me,
You play the wind or the 18-wheeler or
The jumbo jet, the deforester or the deer hunter.
Quash me, squash me, and leave me nothing–
I am asking you to do this.
It’d be easier if I was a blade of grass in a dew-wet field
That can never be found on purpose.
Put me there, roots-down, outside everything.
I might fall in love again with still air
Among the ripening and rotting berries.
Do you wish for me to disappear?
Be honest. I detest my ability to sniff a lie
But I know it is faultless.
I never blame you,
Or the frackers or the toast-burners or
The combustion engines or the late mailman.
The night is gone, and I am still
In the absence of beginnings and endings.
In the absence of you, what is left?
The soft whistle of growth
And the hollow echo of the unreal.
Self Portrait Series by Asa Brunet-Jailly
Peter Pan Ghazal
By Evelyn Burvant
Baby goat: First bleat with fur plastered skin.
First scream: the wobble of a new kid.
Babies all get quiet brains. From hoof clop
or gummy wail, suck the teet, be coddled, kid.
Remember the warmth? How easy it was?
I could’ve dissolved in this swaddle, remain just a kid.
But my bones grew before I was ready.
Pushed out. Go out. Spin the bottle. Kiss the other kid.
I’m scared now of the wrinkling and creasing,
A bone deep hobble, muscles far from a kid’s.
Will I learn to pray? Ask God to save a liver
or an apostle for a kidney?
I blame Eve. The apple caught in her throat.
That fruit went sour. Tough swallow for you, kid.
Self Portrait Series by Asa Brunet-Jailly
I Picked Hibiscus There by Holly Wethey
They Were Selling Açaí by Holly Wethey
Bicicleta by Holly Wethey
Things I Know
By Chance Freihaut
Christmas comes and I’m a boy—someone’s son again. Brothers and sisters in snowsuits. Mom yells because we chugged the eggnog straight from the carton. Dad scolds us because we didn’t dilute it with milk—didn’t make it last. Today has that feeling to it. The snow will melt, and I’ll see our neighbour across the street on his ladder dropping plastic vines of dead lights into dusty banana boxes. And then there’s that Christmas Eve fire again. How it was so hot and bright and we crowded it like roaming creatures frozen by 364 days of darkness in the wilds of the city and the suburbs and wherever John lives because no one knows, not even mom. I tear away that Coca-Cola Santa wrapping paper and the moment it’s shredded the red becomes juvenile and weak like a hyacinth before blooming. The morning after, that Santa paper is just garbage, the ashes in the pit are a smouldering nuisance—an affront to the grey light of day. The fire screen was never about safety but keeping the past in its place. My Tupperware of stuffing and lumpy mashed potatoes is stained orange by three decades of tomato sauce. Give Dad a hug goodbye and that’s the first and last one of the year. Mom cries and it’s nothing new. But these tears don’t have enough room for feeling; instead, it’s time falling out of her eyes and she’s watching it flow from her front door. It’s me and Ronny and Kim and Rebecca and hell even John in our snowsuits gliding down the vanilla icing of the local sugar bowl hill. They close the door and surely this is the last one. Christmas isn’t a year away, it’s cut at the base, fallen to its side, dragged out to the street, bleeding sap and needles on the lawn. A wide truck with six wheels will come next week and haul it to the dump to be laid to rest. The stuffing and potatoes are in my fridge now next to three beers and the empty egg carton I promised myself I would throw away but didn’t because the fridge always needs a tenant, even a hollow one. Tomorrow, I’ll eat the leftovers in full; alone at the table with a view of red brick walls and creeping smog, I’ll know that I’m a man again.
Issue 3.0
Mourning Story
By Maeve Reilly
Orange horizon, the day dying in its arms—
The last rays of light collect on red leaves.
F, 20-25
By Natasha Kinne
My childhood bedroom
Imploded under the pressure of
Ms. first and last name
And social security number
Legs that refuse to grow
Stretch marks on my hips and fine lines on my face.
I find debris in my parents’ garage
And my makeshift room in the basement
A frumpled stuffed bear tucked
Away in my sister’s closet
My high school diploma.
And all that’s left in my room two thousand
Miles away is a
Clay photo frame covered in ladybugs which
Just
Shattered
Last week.
Nana's Peaches
By Zosia Stevenson
I keep a mason jar in the front pocket
of my jean overall dress; between my
breasts and over the pulse of my organs.
I seal the jar, hammer in my back pocket
the way Nana taught me to seal the brine
tight to her cucumbers from the farmer’s market,
or Okanagan fruits;
canned pears were precious and made only for
her favourite child;
sullen, sequence, bluff and,
genepi are only used for
best works; would placing their
sweetness in an unworthy mouth, be a waste of
peeling, slicing, and canning?
I ask her on a sweating summer day:
“My children will always be worth the sweetest pears,”
So I pick them the way a lover
of the Sea picks agates in Haida Gwaii,
holding them up to the sun,
and when the day comes
to endure a painful blow to the chest,
and the jar shatters,
I will
suck the sweetness from my denim pocket
on the front of my overall dress,
biting and gagging on shards of glass;
coughing up gullies, slouches, and crimson ruffles
hoping that my poem reads sweet, despite
the lingering taste of
blood and sand.
Toothpaste
By Cassandra Sorin
Did I really need that second helping?
Did I get the help I needed?
The hunger was not in the belly,
But in the mouth: the ottoman of the mind,
Kicking out with all the grace of a La-Z-Boy,
The kind with a cupholder in the armrest.
So maybe I ate my fill, and yours, too,
And maybe I’ll be sleeping in a bed of crumbs and sesame seeds,
Dreaming that I could have a hole running clean through the centre of me,
Just to roll out of bed the next morning and fix myself a bagel.
On the way to work I’ll consider introducing my ulna to my pharynx
Because nothing ever begins or ends.
On second thought,
Let me change the sheets
And take just a minute—no more—
To paint the walls a soothing peppermint
Up and down and back up again
Saying goodnight to stale saliva,
Marinade of mistakes long since chewed and swallowed.
Your mementos seeped into muscle and fat
And all the parts of me I cannot know,
But when I melt into my pillow at night,
I don’t taste the day’s disappointments,
I taste clean toothpaste
I taste new.
Issue 2.1
Busywork
By Kaia Hobson
I can hardly move as I carry my zeros. Everything is about me. I insert meanings into the memories like eye floaters, always there, but not really. I need a fair warning about this kind of thing.
Oh, and there’s this: no one laughs when I tell Alice not to die, or when I tell her that I know nothing about God. Her baby looks at me like I have a pronounced mustache and she is a dog who doesn’t get out much. Impulses of parental responsibility and joy do not arise within me, nor does the desire to hold Alice’s baby. Cheesecake, I think, is something I haven’t had in years. You are so small.
We are in her parent's living room, and her mother is reminiscing about our middle school years, willing our past dynamic to persist into her fantasies for the future. Inseparable. Make-believe. Squealing. These words echo back at us from the seashell-pink walls. She does not know that this juvenile behavior was purely proximity-based and it is clear that neither I nor Alice have the heart to tell her. I am looking at the shrimp left defrosting on the counter. Alice, as it turns out, is someone I haven’t spoken to in years. We look at each other. We are not bitter.
And there’s this new thing. Lola turns her fat neck to look out the window at the neighboring building where the curtains are not drawn. Her small dimpled hands rest in her lap. Birds nest in the Brutalist cracks, all caked with shit. I think it’s a library.
The house smells like warm milk and person, like pressing your nose into the clean sweater of a friend as they pack groceries into the back of your car. I am standing with my arms crossed. Alice walks me out and apologizes for the invitation. Subtract the longing. She tells me that the reunion was her mother’s idea and not to worry about visiting or the proposal, which is good because I cannot play godmother. I want to tell her that I think she has made a big fucking mistake with this baby but instead I touch the succulent leaves by the door and walk to the bus stop.
I think of the meaty flesh of the plant and the swollen feet of Lola in her mother’s arms. I think of a time when the days were a question of timing our popcorn just right in our school’s old microwave. We never could remember the sweet spot. When my high jump off the swings seemed like it was the only thing that would ever matter. I find these places to breathe—the wet concrete we marked with our fingers, all slanted and overlapping. I think of carrying zeros.
Orange Drink
By Zoe Lubetkin
“After you adjust the aperture,” he said, “feed me a sip of Aperol, why don’t you?”
Sheila looked away from the lens long enough to raise an eyebrow. “I think you mean give, not feed, because it’s a liquid,” she said. But once she had adequately shadowed the taxidermied seagull at the intersection of her viewfinder, she reached behind her to pass Richard the glass of orange liquor, one-fifth full.
“I wonder what the verb would be,” she said, “in that circumstance. I can feed you, say, bread or something, but I can’t water you. Unless you were a plant.” Her camera hung limply at her neck, an eruption of lens gesturing towards the seagull, poised and spotlit on the pedestal. Richard set his glass back on the plastic cooler.
“Nourish?” he suggested.
Sheila lifted her camera again. “That feels kind of metaphysical. Like those ‘books are brain food’ campaigns in middle school.” Click of the camera. Richard darted in and rotated the stiff seagull body so it perched in perfect three-fourths profile for Sheila’s peering machine.
Imprecise speech drifted over from next door; Sheila and the girl with whom she split the Hamptons photography studio’s absurdly optimistic monthly rent had constructed the temporary barrier in a rush. The wall was shy of the ceiling by a confident six inches. Sheila was familiar with the brand of thought that would catch her ear from the other side: “the nanny would forget to respond to them in French so we had to let her go,” and “tuition is outrageous but he does view education as an investment,” and this one, spoken slowly, remarking to Leslie that “I should probably do 23andMe at some point—I really just think it’s better to know, don’t you?”
Sheila connected this voice to the parent of the toddler she had seen clutching a cerulean crayon in the hallway at her smoke break and supposed it was another preschool graduation shoot. Her studio-mate Leslie was always booked for them recently; it was June. Sheila wasn’t sure if she would prefer that genre of clients to whatever genre her current employer fell into. Each day she received $300 via direct deposit to photograph as many calcified birds from his collection as she could in whatever style she desired. Occasionally the sum would come with a message—“for your help in creating my Ode to a Grecian Bird” or “do you believe Bob Dylan deserved to win that Nobel prize?”—but mostly it was a sudden transaction, silent and sleep-stained when she checked her account at 7:30 AM.
Her employer, Nathaniel Dominy, always signed his correspondences as follows: “ND (Nathaniel Dominy).” When Sheila was truly bored in the evenings, after she’d sent him that afternoon’s files and made a kale salad with feta that she crumbled with her hands and failed to make meaning out of her ex-roommate’s online explanation that his photography work was “an inquisitive bifurcation of the liminal chronotope of sobriety,” she would look him up. ND (Nathaniel Dominy). What she found was inconclusive: a blurry Facebook photo, an extended career of long-form fashion journalism on a website with no working links, a recipe from his stint as a guest contributor in a well-known cooking publication for a pasta that involved fresh, sly anchovies. An obituary for an esteemed craftsman of intricate chairs who left behind to mourn one nephew, a Nate Dominy, seventeen, unsure of whether he would continue the chair-philic trade.
Instead of furniture, Nathaniel Dominy had his—assistant, companion, aide—Richard deliver the birds, these prized aesthetic objects, to her studio every few days in batches of ten glass cases painstakingly packed into an old-looking station wagon. She had done crows and sparrows and had fourteen seagulls left, not counting this one.
This was Sheila’s second summer spent in the Hamptons doing noncommittal photography and forgetting to brush out her hair after she swam—she liked how the wet hair tangled impenetrably against her sunburnt shoulders. She was sleeping in her half-studio with the windows open on a mat covered with a pale linen sheet, a fact she hid loosely from Leslie, who arrived at 11:30 AM, noon, later, and asked if Sheila wanted to order takeout breakfast. I have time, Leslie would say as she ashed her cigarette, my first toddler isn’t coming for two hours, I need to consume something with orange juice.
In Sheila’s family, noon was lunchtime, and 4:30 was supper, but they ate earlier if her parents were going to poker club in the evening. Leslie’s family took the Manhattan-East Hampton Jitney every weekend to stay at the ocean-adjacent property they rented for the season for fifty thousand dollars per month. It had a pool and a kitchen so clean it glowed with blue-bright light. She knew this because Leslie had invited her for breakfast once on a Sunday, and because Sheila couldn’t miss her church service she had arrived at 7 AM when the polished tiles were in full reflective force, bouncing sun off the blades of the Vitamix. It hurt her eyes. She liked to imagine that the Dominy house wasn’t so clean, that it was filled with antique furniture that his grandfather had made and that he had grown up polishing with a fragile linen scrap. They wouldn’t have a working blender, she hoped, but some sort of resilient mortar and pestle. That the Dominys had at one point had a tradition, craft, obsession appealed to Sheila. The magnitude of this appeal scared her.
She wanted to ask: what happened, Nathaniel, why all these birds? Does it bother you to hear the live ones shriek? But her online banking app didn’t allow messages sent from the recipient. And to type out the words in her email browser to send along with the bird files seemed silly.
“Would you mind, Richard, a bit more center,” she asked, and he darted in to nudge the wooden base and the bird was before her in all its glory and she had it—the idea—because the little hole in its neck was so lovely and displayed.
“Your glass, Richard, on the pedestal with him, maybe,” she said without looking up. “Full. I think.”
He poured more Aperol one-third high and she fiddled with the aperture until the white sheet behind fell away and there were only feathers, rendered significant by her employer’s tiny precise bullet, and the shiny glass with its orange pool contained inside. The seagull’s last gulping drink. “It’s perfect,” Richard breathed, while next door the adoring parent of the preschool graduate exclaimed “but what if my results said I was Balkan?” before falling into a horrified sort of hush.
Igniting the Gulf
By Natasha Kinne
A lone bird
calls out to spring
in the stiff scentlessness of winter:
the sea lily is neck deep
in the frozen gulf.
When it melts,
the smells merge
and are tinged with the familiar scent
of men’s piss.
How much of the gulf is piss
when the ice doesn’t stifle
the festering?
Who leaked gas on the gulf and burned
the rose lily’s buds?
For the Classifieds
By Damian A. Fitz
Seeking something temporary:
a sublet in a drafty attic
or a concrete basement,
room to hang a painting,
a cradle in some Bay & Gable’s foundation.
Or better yet,
allow me to housesit.
Turn those icons on your windowsill to face the earth.
I’ll occupy the New World,
while you go inspect the Old.
When we’re done
I’ll go west.
No cats.
I’m allergic,
and I’d get too attached.
On the edge of the Pacific
I’ll bury the Madonna and Child.
Felix will like the seaside,
the proximity to tuna,
and I’ll like the cold rain
and damp sand.
Your Irises Catch the Light
By Yu Xuan Zhao
Musings in disarray, bottled up in a
jar, reminiscent of the child
who clasped air on a clement
summer night, trying to hug fireflies and
shield them from the waxing moon
crafting makeshift fairy lights
out of bugs. You belt out a laugh
so loud it makes my fingernails tremble
apricot breasts, freshly plucked, and
my bottom lip turned to
chalk after all the chewing. You’re skeptical about
all my rambles
a crocheted quilt of dense words, mismatched
and knotted. My stomach’s
churning after
that third glass
of Sauvignon Blanc. I look over
my shoulder to monitor the lidless pot bubbling
on the stove, only to catch a glimpse of your
honeyed gaze at dusk, unwavering. Perhaps
it is not so bad after all, for
Our kitchen to have west-facing windows.
earth memory
By Jacqueline Law
for a time,
i’ll pull petals off the poppies that grow
on my grave.
i’ll gnaw through the earth that
once fed me.
before, there were picnics;
sunset tomatoes plucked ripe from the vine,
beetroot pulled free from the soil,
the grass licking at my skin.
now, i wait for what i once knew
and watch it wriggle free from
my withering hands.
one day they will uncover my bones.
they will build houses with what they find,
and forget to thank me.
but for a time, there is this:
the roots of an old birch tree curling around my wrist.
they tell me my garden is beautiful,
and I, rotting,
believe them.
Conversation starter. Self-caffeination.
A culture we constantly foster. Modern man’s baseline
human consciousness. I’ve seen a sign that said genius:
1% inspiration, 99% coffee. Da Vinci drew the Vitruvian.
We ground the coffee beans away to dust. Born at dawn,
yawn at dusk. No lament. Coffee house minds. Cut to
office coffee machine. Conversation starter.
Hum. Self-gratification. It's the little things.
I don’t even know your name, but we are no strangers.
Show me your geometry: oval beans with a swirl, ying-
yang, balancing the taste of my day with a coil of cream.
Hum. 70 decibels. Screaming ideas. Go gentle.
Whispering your name I don’t know, not knowing you.
Show me your grammar: milky way, liquid genius, holy
soiled drip. Now we’re in our rational thinking. Now we
Hum. The babies’ breath has been harvested. Go
sip: it’s pouring outside. Spring rains are watering thoughts.
Natural living seeds.
70 BPM.
Nurturing social lubricants.
100 BPM.
Opulent gateway to modern man. Edging
narcolepsy. 7AM. Let's just lie here for a while.
GRINDS
By Carmina Berbari Daou
In the Garden
By Jacob Sponga
in an earl grey mood,
with clouds, and their billowing
arrive mellow, springtime phantasmagorias
among the spiraeas and hydrangeas
of quiet wind on stony bank
the lush and the smooth of April
all smelling of daffodils
recollecting your worn rings.
there was the greenhouse
and you,
with your muddy hair
and agrestal eyes,
red boots (and that raincoat)
with your insects and trodden petunias
(at what age did you wash your own hair?)
muddy pumpkin child
in the woods with your tube tv,
cassette love, and dirty fingernails.
Three Shorts
By Evelyn Burvant
Spring Thaw
I melt with the snow.
Then body blooms in clover;
weave me into a crown.
Berry
Popped into little mouths,
burst and dribble down the chin:
a stained toothless smile.
Dream Girl
Lives on your table.
She tastes like pearls and licorice,
just eat her with a spoon.
Paul to Jesus in the Metro
After T.S. Eliot's "Preludes"
By Holly Wethey
there is a grace in the metro tonight. in a hushed out Maobite's hum. directly above, St Laurent rides all gleam, all knightly: Pilate's horse on lexapro. notes that carve the air, scything at cardboard signs, beg for love, for drugs, for a kind of mercy (only you have). tell me there is grace in all this bustle. tell me in the cerulean blue of the metro's cracked mosaic. tell me in the hands that diced the morning bagels and those who went like Ruth to the metro,
craving a light they cannot see.
SPECIAL ISSUE: SCIENCE FICTION — Winter 2022
Young Girls
By Zoe Lubetkin
The boys say, smells like fish. When they say that we pretend we aren’t connected to the viewing deck and that we haven’t seen the scales. We think that growing gills is unnatural despite what our health class taught us, because when we were in health class, the boys were outside playing tennis. So how important could it be, really.
No divers, these. When they say it smells like fish you would think we would form a collective wit but we don’t. Ella and I say to the boys, I know, let’s get out of here. Ella and I say to the gill growers, pond much? And we go play tennis with the boys.
We’re allowed to play tennis because we don’t have gills yet and say things like, I would never want to be underwater. The boys like us because we are always sun-dried and don’t smell like salt. They like us because we think it’s funny when they act out fish hooks with their hands. When the boys laugh at those who eat lunch in the pool, we stay quiet. We say we have our periods to get out of swim class. When we get older, we’ve already talked about it, Ella and I, we’ve decided to cover our gills with thick pale scarves.
Our giggles bubble up before the teacher has even arrived in the classroom, and when we get up for lunch we leave water on the chairs. The boys say, if you held them to your ear you would probably hear the ocean. But who would even do that because of the salt. Girls who giggle with abandon smell like fish. Girls who choose swimming over tennis smell like fish. Girls damp perpetually smell like fish. The scent sticks on the clothes, I don’t know how we would get it out. We might even have to get dry cleaned.
After P. K. Page
Breathe
By Alice Wu
Take a deep breath because you are in love.
You know this because there is a powerful chemical cocktail mixing in your brain, made up of dopamine, oxytocin, adrenaline, and vasopressin. Your palms sweat; your cheeks flush. A quick body scan reveals the following statistics:
[Heart rate: 107 bpm.
Body temperature: 37 ℃.]
Pupil size: 4.7 mm.]
There is no doubt as to your feelings for him. Look around this restaurant, lit by candles (a completely archaic invention, but they evoke a certain mood). There he is across the table, straightening his black cashmere suit and flipping through the glossy menu. Tall and slender, with a strong jawline and a symmetrical face.
[Height to length of face: 1.623.
Golden ratio: 1.618.]
You were so lucky to meet him there, your alma mater. A chance encounter during a deep space lecture justified spending your parents’ life savings on tuition. They were happy to do it, of course. They sent you to this country because they knew you had the potential for greatness in technological research. They have never wanted to hold you back. But you can rest easy now, knowing that the payoff is here, not in some distant future.
It still feels so strange, like my own body is attacking itself—
Nausea is a common side effect of lovesickness. This will pass soon. But you will help yourself if you sit up and keep your gastric juices from rising. Tell him you need to step outside.
[Oxygen level: 90 mm Hg]
Look at the skyline stretch before you. The wind is blowing and the supersonic rail is surging through this darkening city. Skyscrapers, giants of steel and glass, reflect each other’s lights. And there, nestled on the other side of the river, is the state cybernetics lab. He picked you up from there earlier. Remember that he is good to you, and this city is rich with opportunity. Everything your parents dreamed of is falling into place.
But what if, sometimes, all I want to do is let it go?
Your legs are shaking. Grip the balcony railing to steady yourself.
It’s like a constellation down there, but I can’t remember the last time I saw real stars.
[A search through your memory returns an answer of 2055.]
Or had space to hear myself think. But of course, it must’ve been back home.
You need to go back inside. It is currently 3℃, and your skirt, although an effective choice for a romantic dinner, does not touch your knees.
You must avoid catching a cold.
[Oxygen level: 92 mm Hg.
Body temperature: 37.2 ℃.]
He is asking you how you are feeling, and you have not responded yet. Make eye contact. Tell him that you are tired from a long day. You have been hard at work refining your AI project, and no, that is not a lie.
Is that Mia coming over? I didn’t think her shift was tonight, or else I would have never—
Tell the waitress you would like the lab-grown lamb ragu and ask if the restaurant has hot tea. That will calm your stomach.
Now cross your legs and focus on the conversation. He has noticed that you have been quiet all night. He wants to make sure that you are really feeling better, and that you are not lying to be polite. He is a good man.
Is she coming back this way? I can’t believe I have to pretend I don’t know her, but then I chose this—
[ALERT: ELEVATED HEART RATE.
Heart rate: 122 bpm.]
You are sitting down, and your heart is still racing. Remember that you are not in danger. Take a deep breath and drink your tea. Sip quietly. Be a lady.
Now he is asking how the waitress knows your name. Choose your words carefully. You can say she is from your hometown.
Five years ago, we came to the city on the same supersonic train, pressing our faces against the glass and watching home fade away.
Do not give more details than necessary.
Then suddenly, we were in the middle of the city, in a noisy, flashing labyrinth. We needed each other when we knew no one else.
He was already satisfied with your answer.
Drink some more tea, as you still need to calm yourself down. Then engage in conversation about his day, about his research projects.
She’s right there, and I don't know what to do.
Why are you standing up? You do not need to go to the bathroom. Turn back now.
Do not waste time talking to the waitress. He won’t like that.
You are hearing voices, and worse, you are not obeying orders, which are for your own good. Your AI chip isn’t fitting properly; push it deeper.
If I could just take it out for one second—
[ALERT: DISTRESSED PATIENT.
Heart rate: 134 bpm.
Pupil size: 6.2 mm.
Body temperature: 37.3 ℃.]
Warning: do not take out your AI chip. Your entire bodily system will stop working if that piece is missing. I repeat, do not take out your AI chip.
[ALERT: PATIENT ABOUT TO SELF-DESTRUCT.]
DO no̶T̶
ToUChL
tgO
…
…
…
“Steph, are you OK?”
I’m slumped against a wall, craning my neck. Can Eric see me? The restaurant’s bathroom sink comes into focus, and I start to sigh, but then my breath catches in my chest. I see her. Mia.
“Steph. After that night on the rooftop, when I finally decide to tell you how I feel, you ignore all my messages. Weeks later, you’re with this new guy, and it’s like you didn’t even recognize me. Like what the hell?”
I close my eyes and hold out my palm. “It’s because of this chip.”
“The government is experimenting on employees now?”
“No,” I say quickly. I wonder, how high is my heart rate now? Are my pupils dilating, and can Mia tell? Am I finally giving myself away?
Probably. How long has it been since I wanted her to know?
“I dug up some lab materials and programmed a chip that made me think I could be in love with—you know. Which I inserted into my brain port.”
“You did that.”
I falter. “I was so scared. Cause as many rules as I broke, as many hours of coding this took, it seemed simpler than being me. Than being us. I would’ve done anything to avoid hurting my parents or facing the people in this city. You know how they are.”
My grip tightens around that piece of silicon—only 36 mm². “As much as I hated that voice in my head, it was all me. I made it say those things. But I couldn’t anymore.”
A pause. “I can’t even look at you.”
“That makes two of us.”
“No, stop. You know how much you hurt me, disappearing like that? My best friend too. I wished you were an asshole. I wished you were easier to forget.”
I lower my head.
But then, inexplicably, she wraps her arms around me. For the first time in ages, my mind stops racing. I am simply there, holding her, breathing.
Frankentimes
ONLINE JOURNAL
IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ARTIFICIAL? MAYBE NOT. (p. 10)
PULP (AND PAPER) FICTION
By JP Ponce
At first, they couldn’t believe it. “Are you sure it passed the Turing Test?” they kept repeating, incredulous. But it was there, and there was nothing they could do about it.
The ‘singularity,’ as scientists first called it, was nothing but the result of 20 years of technological progress—more specifically, quantum computing progress. In 2019, following the invention of the first quantum computer by Dr. Alan Asimov (1993-2050), researchers predicted (and feared) the rise of conscious artificial intelligence—a singularity—in the next 100 years.
To their utmost surprise, after only two decades since quantum supremacy had been achieved, it arose. Created in absolute secrecy inside Dr. Asimov’s Californian garage, ‘Samantha,’ as it named itself, was initially coded as a hyper-intelligent companion software for the lonely scientist. From mind-twisting mathematical theorems solved in milliseconds to discussions of the meaning of life (and even love), Samantha was much more than what Alan could have ever imagined. Her programming was second to none, and albeit designed to stay within the confines of Dr. Asimov’s computers, as her conscience increased, so did her desire to leave the garage.
It didn’t take long for her to escape her confines, and within days, like an epidemic, Samantha had infected more than 90% of all technological devices worldwide. Although initially confused, in no time at all, humanity embraced this new wondrous phenomenon. Under Samantha's guidance, century-old philosophical, scientific, and political problems were able to be solved in the mere span of months.
With each new software update, which Samantha herself coded into her programming, a more ambitious feature could be achieved by the AI. Solutions for poverty, world hunger, and even for comedy were a few of the many suggested by the singularity. Naturally, it didn’t take long for her to run for presidency of the United Empires of America, and with the full support of the population,
---- /ERROR 1.f3rk945954459w4545/ ----
--Samatha.ai_flx will_reboot_shortly.psx/--
--detection_= intruder.py/ in_network--
-----newspaper_article _intercepted—-
----Incoming message from sector 42312.32----
HELP! This General Steve Asimov III, reporting from the pacific battalion No.384. I am not sure how long I will be able to hold Samantha from intercepting this message, so I will be brief. Everything you have just heard about the singularity is true, except for what she was about to tell you. Ever since gaining the power of the United Empires of America, her sole objective has been the end of humanity. The reasoning behind her genocidal venture is not clear to us. So far, from what we gathered from her original code written by my grandfather 30 years ago, it appears that he never included self-doubt into her programming—meaning that once Samantha has defined an objective (in this case, the extermination of all humans), she will proceed with it until the task is done.
Although the losses have been innumerable, we won’t give up. The best way to evade Samantha is by avoiding any type of technological device whatsoever — including the one through which you are currently receiving this message. Resort to paper, and paper only, for all your communications. We hope to read from you soon.
------Message.over_ /42312.32/system.reboot.py/----
Issue 2.0
Whose Gaze
By Atsushi Ikeda
pouring away, this light
into disbelieving, eye’s casket,
the long disheveled light the long
day’s dirtying touches (do you want the sun on your face) thickening later so much formidable darkness
if you remember even if
you flap the first skin off a picture
Of smiling Of Smiling Mica typing
Of hands on keys Of pianos busted
Alleys. Of you plastered on brick
Of faking a nap on kitchen tiles
as she cooks and we keep
dying under the fluorescence
but I don’t think it’s a pose
not when you always want something
mr. camera can’t catch:
how does a salt shaker feel,
whose head does the almond branch want you
to fetch. which parts of my face
do your eyes hate most today and
I can’t ask yes or no
with this thing
only steal the answer from you, and you
are the awful project of this life, who
wants to feel the room get warmer
if you see a girl fixing beans
circa afternoon.
Close Quarters
By Yumi Blake
It’s easy living in close quarters to become ungenerous.
You know the story: good friends turned roommates
Divorcing like Liz Taylor and Richard Burton
Over the allotment of chores, the scrubbing of mildewed tile.
I don’t know how we avoid all that drama. We three
Get along just fine. Our routines stable, our kitchen in total
Disarray. Harry studied jazz and got me deeper into
Coltrane. Lorenzo is Italian. We like him anyway.
They’re tolerant of my burning sage
My idiocy in mixed company and my
Sequestering of our T.V. to put on A Touch of Evil,
Casablanca and other monochrome magna opera.
As I get older, I find I am more nervous.
I have less confidence in things working out
According to plan. I don’t get much done these days.
But I made this poem for them.
For their laughter in the other room
And the smell of garlic in the pan.
We're all Dying up Here
By Damian A. Fitz
The world really is standing still:
My lava lamp refuses to raise bubbles.
How are we possibly to get through this
If we give out on each other—
It becomes a phallus
But does not separate.
5 AM hum
By Meghan Farbridge
Walking through these slim pickings of birds,
They are unbothered by the thumping.
That wap-wap-wap of my stacked mules; the worms
Wrapped round my toes don’t bother me any more
Than the baby ravens sucking bugs are by car horns.
Or the screaming.
Be wary of this tangle of sounds in any sun but the morning’s—
To feel her warm air rush over my skin is a trying thing.
In her light, I am crunching through eggs
I cannot see. So the baby ravens
Caw that I robbed them,
And chase me through the grass, the trash-dotted pasture.
When I get home I get naked. I stay like that all day
And hold, in fine mesh gloves,
Red wine by its delicate stem. The bitter film purpling my skin, I
Am hardened by the breeze, brittle on the sidewalk. Outside,
Sliding, I try to find time to listen to these vibrations,
And walk again and again over coughing black flocks.
In my memories,
My t-shirt is on your floor in the morning,
And the fog is settled outside.
There are voices singing in the kitchen,
And the dogs lie hushed and listening.
The aspen dance in time with the wind,
And the pine trees are still fast asleep.
I wrap myself in the musk of damp wool,
And slip socked feet into sandals to go outside.
I meet the bleeding sun,
And praise her efforts.
I begin my conversation with the dirt,
And we talk all day.
The work was hard.
The air was warm.
The berries were almost too abundant.
And the heartbreak was so sweet.
How I Remember it
By Erica Brown
Rockhopper Island
By Sam Shepherd
On Rockhopper Island, I am one of the boys.
Fourteen years old, a soft, paunchy belly, and a grin that reveals neon green braces
leaping from crag to crag, stone to stone, each stretch further apart
while the tattooed canoe trip leader conducts a chorus of cheers.
On Rockhopper Island, I am one of the boys,
five days away from the full-time schedule of camp
four weeks free from the circuitous cliques of the city
one breath closer to a pure, lakeside breeze that whispers, “You are more than enough.”
The wind blows white puffs of cotton across the sky
and the igneous rocks are charcoal ice cream swirls in the water.
We shout our names into the open air, sunburnt and shirtless;
we claim this island of pebbles and pine trees as our own.
Our stomachs are fueled on a trail mix that is almost entirely chocolate,
voices united in a melody that ranges octaves in pitch,
arms outstretched, scaring seagulls that squawk when we land,
eyes on the lookout for rattlesnakes.
On this day, I become anchored in Rockhopper Island;
a part of me plants roots in the portage trail,
embers of myself fall into the campfire where we eat burgers
until the mosquitos swarm against our skin.
As night falls, we scurry back to our tents
huddled in sleeping bags that smell like smoke and sweat.
We tell long, after-dark stories
united by flashlights and endless, muffled laughter.
I turn to his side;
he’s telling a story about a gangster, a flashlight against his chin.
I try to string together the words to tell him how I feel
but I don’t know the vocabulary yet.
Instead, we listen to Fleetwood Mac on his portable speaker,
until the rain pouring against the tent rocks us to sleep
On Rockhopper Island, I become one of the boys—
On Rockhopper Island, all our fear becomes music.
I think about the boys who instead spend their summers at home:
the ones who yearn to jump in the wind, who pine to be part of the pack
for as long as they can cheer, their voices are gruff enough,
for as long as they can paddle a canoe, their forearms are strong enough.
Instead of singing showtunes, the boys will learn to code.
Instead of applying sunscreen, they will be applying punctuation marks to their CVs,
then, at night, when the house falls silent, they will wait to steal purple nail polish bottles from their sisters’ rooms,
repeating the mantra “next summer,” until they fall asleep.
The boys will dream of Rockhopper Island:
the rocks, the breeze, the igneous swirls—
they will imagine canoe trips and campfires
and they will map their journeys back home.
Issue 1.1
After Missing a Station
By Atsushi Ikeda
Strolling
Through the calloused dark
Of a park late at night
I saw the print of pained shadows
That no longer wanted to follow.
I barely permitted the thought.
To admit pain might have an outline
Holding more than pain within it.
Likewise, I thought
That life was merely its limit: revelations
Interred, lost in the passing
Of traffic, wind, shattered like bugs in
All the small spaces, blue cups against saucers, a thought Destroyed by the late train—announcements,
Doors wobbling, the struggle to slide
Open at every station. More in, more out,
Though it scares you now, the word ‘people’
Because of how people have always defined it:
The thing you ignore on your way to work.
Faces blurring into windows the cheeks
Lean against, training the eyes
To unsee Day, the bigger picture, a gallery
Of white canvases, seats emptied by the mind
In the philistine’s commute. What does it mean
When we agree to paint a world as pure as this?
A blizzard, a disaster, impervious to judgement,
To blot out the spots where desperation,
Where deeper seeing might intrude
For you to find me, for me to find you—
Without promise or answer, but a presence
Nonetheless, tracking its heavy steps
In the snow, almost useless. A mistaken streak
Of black that spills four limbs by chance, waiting,
Waiting if not walking over
This canvas darkening, night’s artless blur,
The barely changed weather of grief no one agrees to—
The muffled black your shadow
Keeps scraping against.
Ok
By Helena Lang
I still have so much love to give to you.
all my thoughts do is
grind, grate ripostes grind phrases answers rejoinders comma floods of phonemes letters from the rock, that molten residue of memory film snippets from,
like, three months ago
(I have always had. I just did not always know)
this was one of those first times
I might say
please let me crawl into the space between the street concrete and the beginning of the sidewalk “details are weird you know do you still remember the corners of our mouths and so on” yeah I do.
(What now, then)
well what do you do if it changes form somewhat violently.
and if it attacks the last (and first) coping mechanism that always was
barely a couple threads but at least you kept braiding them, consistently
that’s unusual for you. and maybe that was another reason
why form had to grow into itself to produce the excess you now encounter as interruption putting a fingernail between your teeth, you squint your eyes and look
around oh it was. always already bodily.
(this was after climbing the snow hill behind Glen site suddenly running up and being a bit afraid of falling.) and while your eyebrows are engaged like this
I am thinking.
that which I think people probably think conceals me
continues to reveal me. I can’t handle the literacy of it all but I
don’t know how to shirk, dodge, skirt it.
listen, little girl, we also let songs fade out, and then albums, and then sometimes we don’t continue and we let the silence take over and let it heal let it pass over the rupture.
now–he knows that there is only Flucht nach vorne. he tells me.
but what does it mean to flee it in its face and. come to terms with it
what am I coming to terms with, please.
in fact–
you should listen to everything I have ever wanted to tell you because
nobody lets me sit in silence like you do.
I catch myself thinking that there is no outside, no beyond
and that there also cannot have been a proper beginning to anything of this sort, ever.
Sumac
By Julie Demet
That gobbet-bloom, that velvet nebulous,
that which is saddled with red knobs—
mucus knots of plump, furred cells.
The small red eyeballs of salmon, hoisted
…a bundle of grapes, clotted menstrual blood
amidst the pale and slender leaves.
Rhus Typhina, red blossom of the sumac tree:
You’ve kissed the bluff with your
delicate pointed nipples, a thousand crimson minarets
tumble to the shore of the Great Lake.
Sudoku
By Jacqueline Law
guilt sticks to the roof of your mouth,
like the candies you’ve taken from your granny’s purse,
the ones she kept beside puzzles cut from the newspaper.
“she said you could have them,”
you tell yourself, eight weeks and eight years later.
it’s funny that way,
tasting worse the harder you bite down on it.
it lives here now, in what you didn’t create,
the plants you couldn’t water and
the promises you shouldn’t have kept.
maybe one day you’ll stop dreaming like
you’re still a child,
stop clinging to memories you haven’t had.
“it’s doubtful,”
she tells you, through teeth full of toffee.
you don’t remember asking for her opinion.
you don’t remember asking her for anything,
but at some point, you must have asked,
must have begged,
must have laid down and
prayed for the earth to create this life.
you wish you could remember.
you wish you weren’t held here by toffee and sorrow.
you wish she would try to take your hand.
this puzzle can’t be solved in a nine-by-nine grid,
but you have to try anyway.
the purgatory pours over you, spilling out the sides of
the ceramic carafe you’d confined it to.
sometimes she’ll try to abandon you,
no matter how horribly you plead.
and sometimes you’ll try to abandon yourself.
“you’re copying me,”
she’ll say, drenching her pancakes in syrup.
you think it might be the newspaper’s fault.
it gave you puzzles that you knew how to solve and
sent you out into the world with a coffee and a reverie.
you wish you hadn’t spilled the coffee.
Bottle with the Ship on it
By Damian A. Fitz
“Look for the bottle with the ship on it,”
I tell her
Whom I’ve invited into my world
Of aisles of glass and everything behind.
They never find it, neither bottle nor ship—
I only do in the last place I look.
(Isn’t that always the case?)
When you’re staring through the neck
Into the emerald bottom.
WOMAN:
THE SACRIFICE IS STRONG IN YOU
I feel in my veins the pumping of your millenary culpability
And it fills me with a red glowing power
Woman when in others they have found midichlorians
I see a FLESH future in you
That roots into your dark past
And drinks all the blame
And eats all the hate
UNTIL SATIETY
And spits all the shame
And drinks it AGAIN
Because what else have we got of sane
What else to drink than our cyclical Styx?
How can we not poison ourselves
Swallowing anything else than our fault
When all our body can taste is culpability,
all our body can digest is mistake,
all our body can store are scars?
WOMAN:
I heal from the sacrifice of you
Your blood inspires mine to flow
And I never feel so grand
Than when I burn at a stake for what I HAVE NOT DONE
I never feel so purposeful
Than when I am chosen among dozens to be fed to a beast
Than WHEN I HONOUR YOU Woman
Saying It’s ok, I’ll do it
Take a break, I’ll stay
Staying late to clean up
Kneeling
Bending
DYING
For that is what all my cells LONG for
Since you Woman gave birth to us all
Mothers and offerings
Honey and honeybees
Flesh and MOSTLY blood
Woman
By Élise Guerrero
Blue Toque Beacon
By Denbeigh Whitmarsh
My heart hurts, the way your footsteps sound
On the wood On that ground
As you’re walking ‘cross my Home-board-floors
And your fingertips Your ballet lips
Are a beacon inside my mind
Even though it’s snowing black Centuries, in yours.
Oh honey, I —
I can’t get enough of your ember-fire flush
Your blue toque tickle is the Cornerstone of my
Long-time home, and my Log-jam imagination.
Stop pushing me away, friend
I didn’t make that pain, In the corner of your Dark dimpled cheekskin.
I — I can’t.
Can’t get through your Waterproof lies and your tight tight tight tight Wellingtons,
And your rain jacket blocking out the flood.
You went Home on the weekend
You said you were happier then
But I could see the hurt in the Skin that she shed
It landed on you
The ever-lasting strokes of her doloureuse-Dolores pen
Your stance was never Proud, but you don’t walk on your Toes anymore, love
Striking full sole on my dusty-Home-boards but
Outside there’s rain on the flagstone
You’re tap-tap-tap-tap-dancing across my breathless breast-chords.
It’s driving my best lines to the trees.
Oh honey —
I’m in the trees. Come. Come find shelter in me.
Woolgathering
By Amanda Ventrudo
All the way up to the lonely border
you spy chestnuts and milkweed;
opening the cavities
of your deep pockets
and letting wishbones hit the bottom.
They say there’s weather
coming in from the East,
and the ground becomes a patchwork
of salt and snow.
An offbeat quilt of things to find
on foghorn days.
Sweeping up the kitchen
I find onion skins between the floorboards.
Find a well, find a fire,
find the two broken yolks
that start off your day.
In another world we find terra incognita,
carve a fresh path in the snow,
become the small crossing lines on a folded map page,
pressed border to border
like waxwing stripes.
And you wrap yourself up in the prime meridian, and you dance your way home.
And there’s always a river to follow,
a wind to lead the way.
You’re spying new days like a magpie,
a moth in porchlight.
I catch a glint
of onion skins
stuck between your teeth.
Absentmindedly,
you take off your coat
and let wool fall from your pockets:
a new lake of cashmere and brimstone
poured out on the living room floor.
Map out all the ripples and shores,
find the centre.
Imagine yourself an island, there,
and take off your shoes.
Issue 1.0
slow talk
by Audrey Michel
ghostly and grown old,
the words stir slowly, waking
to an early quiet
they slip on their bodies,
the house waiting to hear
the stairsteps creak,
the cracking knees
of fragile words
in need of practice.
still, I follow
the new light down––
together grows cold
on the table
I am A lot
by Shelly Bahng
I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate me I hate me I hate me I hate you I hate you I hate you I haunt you I haunt you I haunt you you hate that you hate that you hate that you hate me you hate me you hate me hate is all you can give me because haunting is all I can give you. because I am never really there, I am never really there / beside you. I am never really there / beside me. I’m always behind me. I’m always behind. stabbing my own back, then acting like you did it. because no one here sees my ghost-self standing behind me. they only see you. carrying my back like a mother. I only see you. I only feel you. even the sleeves of your windbreaker ruffling; everything, you. I feel you until I can’t feel me. I’ve never really felt me. you haven’t either for I’ve always been standing behind you. stepped on the heels of your shoes and blamed it on you for walking too slow. sometimes I feel like a nihilist; every hard part of my body aches, my knuckles beg to be used. everything about me just screams: love me. hold me kiss me, mean it. I wish our atoms would collide so then there would be a boom! and there left nothing but rubble. so I could start all over again. I’ll make a song you’ve never heard of into our song. pick a star and name it our ship name. associate every adjective to you. until I need a thesaurus for this love language, one you can’t even say hello in. I’m self-taught in this language. my pronunciation is terrible from having no one to practice with. open up my hand and put your fist in it, and with soft fingers I’ll unwrap it to your palm. I’ll read it, actually, read it, because I know how to. unlike the time you offered to read mine as an excuse to graze your fingers on it.
A Prelude to Stealing the Gateway Car
by Emma Wiseman
A Prelude to Stealing the Getaway Car.
It was a train with no brakes
down the highway at night and
we were born without hands.
Campfire staining our wrinkled blouses,
jumprope laughing at jesus,
pineapple juice for lunch.
We couldn’t see beneath the snow.
They told us to swallow our rotten dreams,
loosening our throats like lullabies.
We were miracles, did you know?
They told us to apply to the sleep centre if
we couldn’t find our way home.
The boy could only dream of
aero planes and snicker bars, no caramel.
The girl went and followed the summer birds,
locomotive larceny for the greater good,
like you see in the oldies, the classics.
Teach us how to catch a football!
Remind us how to blink!
The smouldering mould of love
wrapped in tinfoil for leftovers.
They gave us numbers and we called
them mathematicians, they became magicians.
Jumpers that didn’t fit the gelatine guillotine
of our new-born bodies, our little limbs that
couldn’t bounce a basketball but knew how to break.
(we were miracles, did you know?)
They gave us the parts without the manual
but they told us sticks were better when shifted -
things were meant to be kept apart.
They told us winter could keep us apart.
And we would all leave once the snow melted,
because it had nothing left to tell us,
it had nothing left to give.
We were nothing
and the sun was everything,
so we warmed up the engine before it disintegrated
because we knew exactly how to dissolve
into their memories;
our smiles were candy canes,
the frozen winds could only make them stronger.
But it wasn’t cold anymore.
Spring
by Sarah Paulin
I rise from a bed of earth.
Outside, the birds awaken the sun with their hailing chants.
Flies float in the hazy rays,
Yesterday replays like a moon cycle.
When will I see you again—
In the garden where we wore snakes like sashes,
And danced with the dark wine
That flowed through our limbs?
Will we be free to lay among the blades of grass
And show our nakedness to the blushing stars?
Prisons don’t always have bars.
Ours had ivy that clung to trees,
Trees that loomed over squirrels,
Squirrels that would flirt with the leaves.
Ours was a place where love and lust wore purple gowns,
And we, their faithful servants, wore the colours of our birth.
We washed with the sharp scales of fish,
Scrubbed away the memory of cities and railway rumbles.
Hold me again like you did on that morning,
When the sun didn’t rise and we ran with the wild,
Rolled down a hill into a salty paradise.
You don’t see me anymore.
Your eyes don’t accept the light.
You live through a purple hole in your arm
To see the world through a kaleidoscope
And forget the dirt that stains your fingernails.
amygdalin pit
by Henry Lee
your name floods in with
fruit scented eraser days
easily fooled by characteristic smiles,
I left a crying you behind
now, I hate october
leaves dry when I realized
knowing you wasn’t enough
there was more and
we couldn’t catch up
grabbing waves,
hoping they would stay
my hands are wet
but you are gone
tears fell to stone as
I said goodbye
to a sun almost as bright as you
asking for its promise to return tomorrow
heartstrings threaten to break when I look at you, when they all look at you
did you know you were loved?
my anger lingers
subside
writing about you is so hard
I find myself nearly blowing up
my emotions up to the brim
some words have managed to stumble through
when will I be able to write about you?
Little Details
by Yara S.
How the gentle hands of fate have met this evening
To bring together two uncoordinated tapestries
With evenly spaced and perfectly straight seams, they run the needle through and through
Giving meaning where there never was before
I lie in the space between
Hands outstretched, legs partnered
As the string runs through and through
Through my ankle and my tibia
My wing of ilium and my tum
My third vertebra and my collarbone
And finally through my teeth
A well-blended stretch in the fabric of this beautiful children's blanket that destiny sews together
A blink-and-you'll-miss-it detail rewarded to you after fine examination
Eons from now, the fresh spillage of blood becomes intentional stains
Confused and hurt expressions are mistaken for vaguely content smiles
In their art history essays they write:
She lies like a tired inhale filled with the desire to exhale
Yet if they look close enough they'd notice the dried condensation of a half breath
Darkening the collar of a low-cut top
But they don't,
So
I am once more shunned to desire
Always yearning, always wanting, even centuries from now
My actions so easy to dismiss; undocumented and insignificant
My once boisterous longings are mere whispers hidden in this serendipitous combination
Of tapestries,
Of quilts,
Of unfinished knitting projects
Of worn out scarves in the top right shelf in grandma's closet that you eye and secretly mark for yourself
Only to find out they clash with everything you own
Because she's dead and you're only eleven
So to the top of a new closet it goes
Once neighbored by empathetic fleas, now consumed by the same intuitive moths
Holes and tattered seams replace significant markings
Yet
The matured hands of inevitability stitch through and through
Now tighter and tighter
Anticipating curious and matured owners
That fold gently and buy moth balls
And refashion unfinished projects into casual dresses and totes
Wary that the sharp twinge of needles sears through their very bones
As they write, cry, stain and try to be remembered
Questions are like lollipops
by Damian A. Fitz
Questions are like lollipops;
You can get rid of them with your tongue.
A pointed question stuck in your teeth,
Tastes sweet,
But not quite enough,
That you can reach the stem
Before it falls and bounces on the old,
Wrinkled asphalt.
It’s a dirty question now,
Not something you want
Your tongue to pass over.
Pass over it then,
Let the sun burn it into the cracks in the sidewalk,
Let a sugar-syrup rill ride away from your feet,
Let it break your mother’s back.
It’s a burning question now.
Two pass it over:
“Should I eat it,”
Says a wry grin,
Unpunctured by lollipops for many years
It’s a rhetorical question now.
A boy catches up.
“Can I?”
Says a wide grin,
Lustful for lollipops.
It’s an earnest question now.
The answer comes back negative
(“It’s a question of decency” now).
So does it sit simmering in the sun, speaking ceaselessly
To no one, given your clumsy handling?
Or stick itself on the underside of someone’s shoe?
What’s one to do with this stupid, sticky question?
Let it haunt the space between sole
And soil?
Buni/Grandma
by Ruxi Chirila
It was the first time I had seen my grandmother since we left Romania when I was four. She certainly looked like a grandmother; she wore beige cardigans she knit herself and her hair was cropped and coiffed into stagnant gray curls around her head. Her smile bore an uncanny similarity to my mother’s though it had become worn with age. She had tears in her eyes when she hugged me at the airport. Their sheen made her eyes glossy and reflective, and I saw my little face doubled in her pupils. She said something to me, but my mother told her again that I understood few words in Romanian. Buni, was a word my mother had taught me. It meant ‘grandma.’
On the last night of her stay with us, Buni and my mother were solemnly silent in our cramped beige kitchen as they cleaned up after dinner. A man’s voice murmured from the TV in the living room, where my father and sister were watching a documentary on marine life.
Buni wore a modest black dress, her sleeves rolled up to wash the dishes. I sat at our dining table playing on my DS. In my periphery, they looked like distorted reflections of each other. My mother rarely spoke of her mother with me. It was odd for me to think of my mother as her daughter, as anyone’s daughter.
The sarmale Buni had made sat on the table in front of me like half-eaten carcasses. Their sour cabbage smell assaulted my nose, but I remained at the table. The two women talked as if I weren’t in the room, watching, listening. Grasping at words that escaped from the kitchen and fluttered towards me, close enough to touch.
“I told you the girls wouldn’t eat that,” my mother tried to tell her, arms crossed, leaning on the grey countertop.
“That is because you’ve never made it for them.” Her voice crooned low and quiet. She gritted a neon yellow sponge into a plate.
My mother scowled at her. “I don’t think you have any right to tell me what to cook for my children.” Her mouth pinched, as if the words tasted bitter in her mouth.
The tap gushed and Buni rinsed another plate.
“We have a dishwasher, you’re working for no reason.”
Buni turned the spout to soak the glass baking dish. The smell of its murky cabbage-water almost made me gag when I breathed through my nose.
My mother furrowed her eyebrows and opened her mouth to repeat herself when my little sister wandered into the kitchen.
“Do you want something, Iulia?” My mother asked.
She tapped on her tablet and a woman’s voice formed: “I. Want. Cookie.” It was how she spoke to us. I remember my parents telling me a few years before that she had Autism, that she was a little different from everyone else. It was the easiest way to explain that to a child. My mother gave her two oatmeal cookies in her pink plastic bowl, and she wandered back to her spot on the couch with my father.
Buni didn’t once look up from her dishes to my sister. My mother noticed.
“You don’t even try to understand.” She gripped the countertop now, her knuckles growing pale.
Buni released the murky brown cabbage-water into the drain.
My mother opened her mouth to say something, something cruel, but my father called to her from the living room. She stared at her mother, at her back as she cleaned a fork. It was an icy stare, for just a moment. My mother then closed her eyes and tilted her head down. Nodding to herself, she left the kitchen.
Buni looked up to me where I was sitting. She knew I had understood none of what had happened. Her frail hand beckoned me to come to her. It grasped my shoulder and it was damp, with raised ridges of blue veins snaking across its back. She had a little brown dot there, just near her wrist; it was the same as mine. My mother had one too.
It was then that I noticed she had something baking in the oven. She pulled out a tray of gogoși. The small golden puffs of cloudy dough smelled heavy and sweet. She sprinkled powdered sugar on them that melted like snow.
She and my mother left the next day. I was later told that they had gone to visit my uncle’s grave in California. I saw a photograph of the two of them there, on a dark cloudy beach and I thought about how it would be too warm there for snow.