Hydra

by Jessica Bond

Bourgeois
history
tells me
I’m a
mirror.

But I tell you:
Venus is
no friend
of mine.

That pane of
glass,
hanging;

there—

by the door—

though marred by
thumbprints,

cracked
at the
bottom
corner,

it is more
cruel
than an
arrow
ever was.

Mars,
the coward,
mistakes mud
for manliness,
blood for
bravery.

After the battle,
he lays down
his bow,
and rests.

But a
woman knows
what it is,
to face her
enemy
behind the
glass:

to feel her
glance
behind her
back,
to face her
but see only
herself,
to touch her,
but feel only
                it,
For her to take
her fist,
and smash
the surface,
only for her
to blink, and
sprout more
heads
from her
neck.

Weekly Spotlight: Gutting a Fish

Gutting a Fish: An Analysis of Yun Dae Nyeung’s Silver Trout Fishing Network
by Rohan Raghavan

Identity is a concept that is rooted in the past. That is, it is not only a relic of the historical past but of the subjective one as well. This much is clear in Yun Dae Nyeung’s short story, Silver Trout Fishing Network. The protagonist, whose name is never given, is routed onto a metaphysical journey, a return to the primordial essence of self via the memories of his personal past and the specific cultural past he is familiar with. History and memory share a symbiotic relationship; history is naught but the crystallization of gathered and recorded memory, the intersection of a collection of subjective memories. History, and its sister memories, are the sub-atomic particles of identity, and similar to such particles, they engage with and produce identity via a superposition principle. When a history/memory is observed, when it is thought of, only then is it allowed a static position – static insofar that within the moment of recall a singular image is received. But when it isn’t recalled, it loses both form and meaning, subsiding into the unbounded subconscious of the individual. This is not to say that history and memory have no force until they are forcibly brought to the forefront of the subject’s mind – much like atoms that are not observed, they still have an impact on material (and psychic in the case of other particles of history/memory) existence. It is this binary system of lived-in recollection and malleable “non-existence” through which the intermeshed ideas of history and memory construct a self. This interplay between the bound and the unbound is what motivates the narrative of Yun’s piece. History and memory move between these two realms with nary a passport to act as a medium through which time, space, and interiority (now no longer a spatial concept and more as a production of identity) are transported, fragmented, and recombined.

History and memory are most closely aligned with temporality (though how they affect space and identity in terms of the short story shall be explored in full further on below). Yun manages to showcase both as vehicles of movement in form and content. The story opens up with a recollection by the protagonist of the day of his birth and the relation between him, his father, and silver trout fishing. While one could say that such a narrative technique is simply done to set the background of the character and his point of relation to the other characters in the story, Yun structurally and thematically sets the tone of the story here. The opening “memory” is set on July 12^th, 1964, and so is not an actual memory of the protagonist; it is a second-hand recreation of his father and mother’s memory of the day that he has held on to. Memory is a personal collection, and it is in this way the memory that was passed down becomes part of a history that the protagonist readily consumes.

This practice of re-contextualizing second-hand artifacts of temporality, where history and memory communicate, is present in the protagonist’s forays into the sounds of Billie Holiday and the photographed images of the Hopi Indians from Edward Curtis’s The Native American Indian. And it is in these particular moments that we must not only stop to discern the effects temporal juxtaposition has upon his narrative, but also stop to unpack the relationship between writer and reader. On the former, the different memories offer a portal for the nameless protagonist to traverse through his memories of his actions (silver trout fishing, making love with Chongmi Kim, watching Kim recede into the distance), thus introducing not only distortion of time but of space as well. Recollections of the past retain their power to clarify and distort insofar they are able to replicate the material landscapes along with the emotional ones. But how does this relate to the latter? The willful rendering of temporal juxtaposition and fragmentation by Yun shows a conscious understanding on his part of the plight of the post-modern man. To put into words the issues of history and time informing identity, Yun is not only presenting the reader with his main character’s issues with identity, but also his own specific formulations of identity formation. It is this act of writing that puts out into the open the grappling of a shifting interior landscape forced by memory and history interacting and moving interiority from a material and psychic existence to becoming one with the lived-in experience. On the reader’s end, the very act of reading a text, or imbibing any cultural artifact for that matter, is the acquiring of memories/history by second-hand. The realness of the text has no bearing as the question of whether it is or is not is couched away to exist with the binary of bounded or unbounded. Where the writer performs the act of recalling knowledge to formalize, the reader internalizes the knowledge, packing it into an unbounded state waiting to materialize (whether that be immediately afterwards or within a day or two does not matter – the transference into the unbounded side of the binary has taken place).

Though I have touched upon space in some part above, there is a sense that spatiality no longer houses interiority in Yun’s work. The power of certain physical landscapes and enclosures still exist and affect the protagonist, but there is no longer a need to go somewhere to feel its affect. The Hopi Indians picture, for example, is but a picture, a virtual interface through which memory and history are coaxed. The spatial and temporal specificities allocated to Curtis and his artistic subjects of 1906 are no longer locked in the location and era of when the photograph has been taken; the gap in space and time is bridged by assimilation of history and time into the contents of our self. Yun uses the lady on the phone to exemplify this mode of destroying interiority as spatially defined. The lady on the phone spits the constitution she follows to the unnamed protagonist, a disparate collection of art, poetry, film, ideals, and actions. When she tells the protagonist that those materials are within her car, and subsequently reveals that they have been painted onto the body, Yun actively destroys the need for spatial boundaries to house interiority. No longer are the actual physical objects needed, but rather the subject-object conversation that transfers the object into a mode of identity and, thus, interiority. The car does not act as a boundary between her and an exterior; it is rather an extension of her interior; the car has become her through her own machinations rather than the other way around. Space becomes affixed to memory and history now, as in the remembrance of the physical interface. The body paint images of Arnaulf Rainer and the lady’s car serve as virtual interfaces for the subject to navigate his/her own interiority.

Virtuality is an important subtext to the piece in terms of the role history and memory force identity mutate. In general, global terms, post-modernism has been ushered in through philosophy centered on indeterminacy, the physical diaspora of peoples, and the examination of the impossible symbolic exchange that occurs via language. In short, a fragmentation of time, space, and identity is what generates the plight of the post-modern individual; no longer is he/she given a space that can be called home due to its geo-cultural location. Yun touches on this, and uses a variety of allusions to western cultural artifacts to highlight how interiority can traverse temporal and spatial boundaries via virtual interaction of art and culture. Music, pictures, and literature transport the subject to different eras and space – but not directly. It is the subject’s internal interaction with history and memory that virtualizes space and time, as well as interior reflection. The virtual interface incorporates a symbolic exchange much like language; value and meaning are contained with form and structure. And so, the bounded and unbounded binary exists insofar that the impossibility of perfect symbolism is maintained. Just as it is with identity construction, the virtual interface is always executing, transferring the external into the unbounded and the internal into the bounded.

Two poems by Rohan Raghavan

A Lie

Let me tell you
A little lie
That wanders from curtain
To carpet
With the grace
Of feather tied
To flame

Where will the lighthouse shine now?
O singed quill
Quiver with haste
And sign your
Sigil onto mirror
With mirrored waste
Oh where! Oh where?

Where will that lighthouse
Lay its beams,
And glaze the windows
Wet with the
Vapor waves
Of a heat
Long since ashen?

And there is my lie

—

A Fortune

When I stopped
To take stock
Of my future,
I knew I had lost

With pallid arm beckoning
Like seagull to land,
I approached
Unaware of the plywood
Arraigning your shores

You took me by the hand,
Through musty corridors,
Husky whispers spilling
Out of your limbs

You sat me down
Across from you,
With crystal ball
Swirling its milky fog,
As white as your hands
And as mysterious, too

But I did not see it.

You asked me:
What do you seek?
And I answered:
I do not know.
What do you see?
I do not know.
How could I know?
My gaze never once
Dripped past yours

And then, your face curdled
Into a smile so wicked,
As you said, in hushed laughter,
Your fortune is done

Dear fortune teller,You took me in
Knowing full well
I could not pay the fee –

Instead,
you took
From me
Any hope of
Escaping your
Phantasms

Rosebush

By Rebecca Chan

Dad planted a rose bush
rosebush outside my window.
He says it will scare away the thieves.

Maybe it is like a dream-catcher
that protects me from nightmares.
Or, maybe even demons fear
the beauty of a rose.

Flight

Rebecca Chan

My page in the Book of Life is folded into a paper airplane,
for zooming.
God says, Let’s elope and spend the rest of this page
saving the world with love.
But I am still lying awake in bed, dreaming
and saving my allowance for the sequel.
I pray. So I can reel His heart down into my pillow
like lassoing the moon. It is hanging from
a dangling mobile, which I have climbed.
I can no longer see my room and let go.
Of course, God catches me.
His heartbeat bellows against my ear.

Week 5 Writing Activity: Collaborative Story

Choose from the Seven Basic Plots and write a story. Grab a few friends and take turns writing a sentence after each other. Where will this voyage lead?

The Voyage and Return: Shades of the Seven Seas

By Rohan, Miguel, David, Jessica, Jennifer

In the land where I was born, lived a man who sailed to sea.  What was he looking for there? Gripping the wooden oars tightly, he spat into the water. That was his daughter’s last memory of him, which she thought of as she went on her journey for new medical discoveries after his death from scurvy. She remembered the coarseness of his face–never smooth, not even after shaving with his dull blade– his hands calloused and tough from rope burns and fish gutting, the smell of his cologne and the final sounds he made as his lungs finally gave out. She confided this to me, as I gently wrapped my hands around her neck and rocked my body into hers on the floor of our little rowboat. How long have we been out to sea? How did we get here? How did I find myself here, beside you, riding the curve of your back to the rhythm of the waves? Where are we going? I ask again. What was he looking for there? She told me that I looked like her father, the same nose, the same eyes, the same mouth…but my hands did not have the familiar touch. As I pondered on that notion, my weary eyes grew hazy. My sight was fading, and I saw flashes of light at every corner. Something was happening, but I didn’t notice. Not until I could feel something warm dripping down my chest did I notice something sticking out. A slab of silver cut into me. As I was just realizing my impalement, she slowly moved toward my ear, with her lips on my lobe. She whispered, “I have found ways to survive with nothing on me for a long time”. I wanted to let loose a corrosive laugh, one that would melt me from the inside out. How the tables have turned! But all I could afford was a wheeze. “Would you do me the honors?” It was a shallow wound, but even I know when I’ve lost.

You remind me of my father. I ask again, but I have no answer. The same questions swirl over and over, the sound of the sea swallowing them too, and I see you, mother–you stand before me too, my father’s knife in your upturned hand. Do you offer it to me, mother? I understood your sentiments at that time but what of it now? Have things not changed the way they should have? I am pondering on these things and yet I didn’t know if I had a care for what was happening. As I found myself trapped in the physical realm, I saw her face. It was smiling — malice. Or was it something else? Now, my laugh returns to me, speckled with blood as I pepper the face of that doll-like creature above me. She is smiling too, with that same something else. No more human than I am I suppose. I beckon with my hand, with a grand flourish, with a nobility, with a resignation, with a suffering, with a joyous joy – I beckon: won’t you wrap those hands around my neck, my love?

Mother, mother. I will get to the heart of you. I will slice through until I find your core, mother, father, love of my life. If I slice my own throat, will I slice you, too? Will I find the bones you said we share? You told me once, mother, when I was born, you hid a wish inside my stomach. The sea tells the same story. There is something here–here, swelling underneath the flesh in my belly, an onyx stone, a charm you kissed once before slipping inside. I will turn myself inside out to find it.

Mother, mother. I am so close; so close to finding what it is you’ve left me. This treasure of yours that’s been inherited by me, but have yet to truly yearn for. WHAT IS IT? WHAT IS IT THAT YOU’RE TELLING ME? WHAT DID YOU GIVE AND WHAT DID YOU WANT ME TO RECEIVE? WHAT IS IT. WHAT IS IT. What is it…

She looked at me, an expression I’ve never seen before. You are so much like your father. Yes, as are you. Hands slip and lace at the back, and that empty grin still reigns above. I am here, father, as I always have been. I shall join you soon. Or, maybe I’ve always been there. For, mother said, we’ve always shared the same bones. Same flesh. Same blood. The same wish, now separated from the skin, now extracted, now floating out to sea. I will follow.

CLIMATIC MOMENTS: PARABOLIZING ADAM AND EVE

Our Week 4 Writing Activity: Re-write the story of Adam and Eve

Jennifer Wu:

Eve stared at her bare palms and slid her fingers over the dried blood stains on her arms and elbows. She blinked several times at the man next to her and looked at the trees around her before she coughed violently into a nearby bush. The man hit her back several times until she became very still. The man gently parted her lips open and blew air into her mouth. Together they stood up and wandered around, pointing at the different fruits, until they reached a tree taller and bigger than the rest. Its fruits had a strange orange color that glowed. Eve reached up and took hold of one of the fruits. She felt a small heartbeat pump gently against her palms for a few seconds before the man immediately shoved her to the floor. As she crashed to the ground, she torn the fruit from its branch. The blood stains on her arms gradually faded as the man howled and scrambled away. Eve slowly sat up and brushed off dirt from her back.

—

 

David Ngo:

Eve eyed the fruits above her as they blew against the wind. To take one in as a morsel let alone hold its color in her hands was of grave taboo. Yggdrasil was something to be revered, not trifled with. She wandered, with her silken hands caressing the top her head. This was it. This was the moment in which she could take action, something not Adam nor anyone else could ever think of. To be different was to be an outcast. Is that what she wanted?

With tricks of fate, a fruit fell down onto the roots of the holy tree. Eve’s temptations were beckoning. Grab it. Consume its gift. Her mind was being spoken to. Whether it be herself or that of another entity attempting to persuade her, she didn’t care. Eve, while innocent, was still cunning. She staggered across the green center that surrounded Yggdrasil, which was more lush than any other part of the garden. To know the consequences would not mean a concrete answer. But this was for a different future; one of curiosity, ruin, and perhaps recovery.

She went on to stand above the thing. No words could describe its color or shape. Eve checked her surroundings. Was anyone watching? Of course there was, but was Adam watching? Adam, her only companion. To sacrifice him would mean to lay things bare. She couldn’t begin to insult him with isolation, yet that was what she preferred compared to the likes of him.

She bent down, picking up the fruit ever so gently. She opened her mouth.

Crunch..

As she chewed, the taste changed: sour, sweet, bitter. While analyzing the flavors, she spotted a sillhouette. It was Adam.

“You did what was forbidden.”

“Yes, and now I will be forbidden as well.”

—

Jessica Bond:

Did I do it for love?

Did I imagine, when I reached my bare hand towards that green globe, the dew, the leaf, the bird that perched on the canopy, the stain it left on my fingertips as I touched it, how it burned, how the bird watched, the bird blinked and cocked its head, settling on a lower branch to listen in–did I imagine, did I see how the timeline stretched before me, behind, beyond to touch all that would succeed me, all that I would touch but would not see, not feel, not imagine, all the world stretch and flatten on God’s empty page, how the spaces would be filled, how the marks would be made, how my children would weep, how I would not weep for them, but continue to conceive, fill up the world with me, my images, my sons, my daughters not born, but already murdered?

Speak not, and forever hold my peace. My life did not end there, when I stood naked in that garden, my hand at the branch, my fingers touching the tabooed dew, my eyes beholding the green globe of knowledge that I would take into my body, that the sulphiric acids in my insides would dissolve into nothing, nothing, the knowledge promised not taken to build, but shat out the other end–I have sinned, Lord, yet I have learned nothing. No, as I touched that branch, allowed that red dew to stain my hands, I for the first time felt the cold wind, God’s breath upon my back, the bird-head cocked and listening then settling on the lower perch–I felt the feathers shiver, knocking the hairs out of my head–I am naked, I realized, naked and cold, my goose-flesh skin covered in sores, Lord, the sores I could not see but I would pass to my sons and daughters, great terrible gift of nakedness, of knowledge without foresight, of endless darkened paths.

Ashley Burnett:

He’s holding the apple in his hands and you’re wondering whether to take a bite.

On one hand, it’s innocent, right?  It’s just an apple–no significance.  On the other hand, you know after you take a bite that there’s no going back.  That after you take the apple from his hands–so dry, the touch of it like a snake’s skin–that you’ll take everything else he offers you, too.  And you know that Adam is waiting for you at home, no apples in hand, sitting in the garden.  You know he never thinks about you with other men, because to him it’s like you’re the only two people on Earth.  Almost as if you were made for one another, almost as if you were plucked from his rib.

You know that you’ll never be able to explain what you’re about to do, that it feels so significant as you reach across the table and feel the apple in your palm.

That’s right, there’s no going back.  You open your mouth.  You take a bite.  You feel the juice run down your chin and you take another and another as you think up excuses.  The apple tastes like nothing at all as you crush it against the roof of your mouth.

Miguel Olvera:

The apple, bright and tantalizing to the eye, went down smoothly. Eyes closed, I tasted the sweetness of the juice, now dripping down my lips, plump and shiny with the nectar we were forbidden from tasting. It feels good to defy God I thought and then I remembered–oh God.

I opened my eyes, and ran to Adam, feet smooth against the soft grass, running past the trees and the flowers, the sun setting behind me radiating hues of pink. A loud noise startles me (A voice inside my head–one I’ve never head before–whispers: thunder) and I fall and drop the apple. Adam, appears from behind some grapevines, his lips stained purple and sees the fruit on the floor.

Eve. He says, in disbelief. I look into his eyes and know he was waiting for me to do it first. So he would be blameless. So I allow him to try it too. He pretends to hesitate, but takes a bite without much need to convince. The light of the sun illuminates his cheekbones as his jaw moves powerfully up and down, and his eyes widen at the sweet taste. The pink sky turns the color of red, and from a distance, I hear the roar of a lion.

We hide from God, and the fruit feels heavy in our stomachs. I look at Adam and I see in his eyes the inevitable transformation and I can tell he sees it in me too. The discovery flesh. I see my dark skin and see Adam’s. We both recognize our newfound difficult knowledge, and the forthcoming loss of paradise.

What is poetry

by Khaila Amazan-Hall

What is poetry?
It’s more like poet-try;
no need to cry or rhyme, but rather feel.

Feel with no remorse.
No judgment because the only one listening is paper,
and your voice is the pen,
speaking for you when you can’t.

The spokesperson of your heart when situations make you silent stifling you into silence you decide instead not to suffer, but to be heard.

Enter: poetry

Here,
now,

anywhere,

there,

later,

whenever under the warmth of the emotional sweater that is your release, you experience poetry in all of its splendor.

But for you,
new to this emotional playground full of a swings of opinions,
monkeybars of thought,
and a slide full of tangents,
this is poe-try.

Today, tonight,
it’s time to try something new;
something that will benefit you.

So go ahead:

pick up the nearest pen and place it on the page that is your stage.

The world is listening.

It’s your time to be heard

Popularity Anonymity

Ask anyone who has “made it” and you’d get a shrug.  It’s not so easily defined yet the phenomena-from sources we cannot disclose- are common.

In the dimness, indiscernible people bustled from the table to the crowded floors with drinks in hand, talking loudly. Rarely was there a person alone except for the few who kept their dispirited head low. In a dark corner, a silhouette flourished a menu above her head. I made my way over.

“Have you found-?” a raspy female voice asked behind the menu. Her very words sent chills to my spine and if I were a man, she’d be my femme fatale, devising a plan to ensnare me with her claws, but I know women too well. This time she wore a black instead of red, a blonde instead of a brown wig, and red coral lipstick.

I played it off. “Mind if I join you?” I tipped my glass to her, eager to take the unfamiliar stench from my vicinity. “No,” she smiled. As I sat across, she stood to yank the heavy green curtain and closed us from the smooth jazz trumpet solo.

“Tell me,” she said, eager to hear the result.

“You asked me to find it,” I began as I pulled a manila folder from my black satchel which had blended into the night. She reached for it, but I clasped my hand together on top of it-not one of the strongest way to keep a folder from being snatched, but she resisted temptation and sat back. “But you already have it,” I said.

That’s when things took an unexpected turn. She took off her sunglasses and her wig, but kept her eyes closed. Her hair was plain, dark, but braided in a Greek goddess updo, and on the right side of her forehead to her cheek was a wrinkled burn scar. “I got this when I was finally reaching toward it, but the other girl in the office-she wasn’t so keen-she invited me to talk and before it was over, she suddenly threw some hot tea on me. I shared my experience thinking that she wanted help. I thought wrong,” she said in her normal voice, “Now you know.” My heart pounded as she slowly opened her eyes. I expected to find a blue glassy white eye-if not two-staring at me. They were indeed blue, watery, but fortunately, not blind. “At least-” I caught myself, “you still dress well.”

“Thank you,” she said politely. Her voice was no longer raspy, but mellow and clear. She straightened up and from her purse placed the couple of hundreds she’d promised. “Thank you for infiltrating into the clique.” I pushed the money aside, “There’s no need. It really boil down to three things: how you present yourself with popular techniques and trends,  how others connect to you, and situational circumstances.” In dread, she asked me to elaborate and I handed the manila folder as she forced me to take my pay. She eagerly skimmed the solutions, “how can I thank you?” After a moment, she put on her wig and glasses and I told her to take care and bid her farewell, but not before I slipped a hundred and a card of my dermatologist friend into her bag. The jazz played on as I handed back the glass and slipped into the night, never looking back or doubting her revival.

Anniversary

by Vinny Tangherlini

It fell on a Wednesday.

Abbie had a late dinner meeting
to impress a new client on the only night everyone was “available.”
John had to pick up his brother from the airport
to get him home for “date night.”
No one asked if it was convenient for them.

But that’s not the point.  The point is

John got his brother home safely and,
giving his sister-in-law an obligatory kiss on the cheek,
drove the return commute listening to Fleetwood Mac.
Abbie ate very little at the restaurant, often looking at her watch and
hoping there’d be something waiting for her at home.
Covering the bill, she made a rushed goodbye.

Abbie picked up chocolate from a twenty-four-hour pharmacy
and John managed to heat up some dinner from what was left in the fridge.
He said “You look gorgeous” as she tugged at her scarf
and sank into his arms.  Exchanging gifts,
they ate a dinner of leftover K.F.C.,
sipping sparkling cider from tired paper cups.