Contents
Self-Centered
Jasmine Liu
It's All In Your Head Part III
Desmond Kamas
You Told Me I Could Trust You
Desmond Kamas
In Yewbury
Zhi-Ying Chua
Shatter
Elena Kamas
Collapse
Donnie (Tobie) Denome
Forgive
Elena Kamas
Didn't know
Kellyann Ye
Downfall
Elena Kamas
Books, The
Desmond Kamas
Open Your Synchronize
Desmond Kamas
Whispers of the Heart
Kelly Fesler
Shield
Elena Kamas
Jasmine Liu
It's All In Your Head Part III
Desmond Kamas
You Told Me I Could Trust You
Desmond Kamas
In Yewbury
Zhi-Ying Chua
Shatter
Elena Kamas
Collapse
Donnie (Tobie) Denome
Forgive
Elena Kamas
Didn't know
Kellyann Ye
Downfall
Elena Kamas
Books, The
Desmond Kamas
Open Your Synchronize
Desmond Kamas
Whispers of the Heart
Kelly Fesler
Shield
Elena Kamas
Self-Centered
by Jasmine Liu
As I stood there,
with both my eyes open
with both my arms at my side
and both my legs standing.
As I stood there,
with the deepness and darkness
with the struggle to move
and the need to keep going
As I stood there,
with my mind saying, "Go!"
with my body saying, "No!"
and my hands saying, "Show!"
As I stood there,
with all lights on me
with no eyes on me
and no sky to see
As I stood there,
with my letters dancing
with my words twisting
and my numbers falling
As I stood there,
with my eyes closed,
with my mind silent,
and my body collapsing.
by Jasmine Liu
As I stood there,
with both my eyes open
with both my arms at my side
and both my legs standing.
As I stood there,
with the deepness and darkness
with the struggle to move
and the need to keep going
As I stood there,
with my mind saying, "Go!"
with my body saying, "No!"
and my hands saying, "Show!"
As I stood there,
with all lights on me
with no eyes on me
and no sky to see
As I stood there,
with my letters dancing
with my words twisting
and my numbers falling
As I stood there,
with my eyes closed,
with my mind silent,
and my body collapsing.
It's All In Your Head Part III
by Desmond Kamas
by Desmond Kamas
You Told Me I Could Trust You
by Desmond Kamas
by Desmond Kamas
In Yewbury
by Zhi-Ying Chua
1. At 4 a.m. on the fourth of May, the aquarium shrinks into sixteen horses, and every apple tree starts on pomegranates instead.
At 4 a.m. on the fourth of May, Alina Lin laughs her way into the world. Her mother breathes out, “Oh, my goodness,” and her father looks at her with eyes so soft, takes her with hands so gentle, and her grandfather says, “恭喜,恭喜” and her grandmother looks at the clock and looks at the baby and sits, heavy, in a chair.
(Her grandmother looks at the clock and looks at the baby and sits in this chair, this chair that sprang up cushiony and night sky-blue at the exact millisecond of 4 – her grandmother holds herself steady, hand at her mouth, and doesn’t say a thing.)
Alina grows up easy; she grows up loved. She grows with her mother, always laughing; she grows with her father and his father and her best friend, Liz, down the street, who always smells faintly of oranges. She grows into three with brown eyes soft and hands clumsy-gentle and a quilt knit by her grandmother that is sixteen shades of night sky-blue, and even at three, she knows this:
She lives in a state called Yewbury, and every four years, the rain brings change.
2. At 4 a.m. on the fourth of May, a quilt bleeds into orange and every bench in the park turns into a wicker basket and a girl, newly four, wakes and calls “妈妈,妈妈。” At 4 a.m., newly four, Jocelyn Allan wakes and she has gold-spilling hair and dark brown eyes, and her eyes are Alina’s but nowhere in the fuzzy darkness does she feel a quilt.
(And outside, every patch of grass has turned into clover, and four towns over over, Alina’s laughing lawyer mother sleeps under an orange quilt – except she isn’t a mother at all.)
3. 7:15 a.m., Parmita studies her face in the mirror on her twelfth birthday and tries to find Alina, wishes herself back as Jocelyn. She wishes herself back as Jocelyn and wishes herself three hours and sixteen seconds ago and tugs on her braid and un-new boots before, wishing herself born half a second later, stepping, careful, out the door.
In class, she examines her nails, blood orange – and if she walks to her locker wearing her hoodie like battle armor, it only completes the look.
4. At 3:55 a.m. on the fourth of May, Parmita sits cross-legged on a roof. She looks at the sky and at Liz beside her and Liz, eyes soft, holds her hand with one so gentle and looks right back.
(“I just – I saw you and I felt like I knew you,” Liz said – and Parmita’s heart went what are the odds what are the odds and she may be on a roof, but she has never felt so grounded.)
Parmita thinks, this is it. She looks at the sky, quilted with stars, holds herself steady, and she can feel every atom of her singing, this is it this is it.
Liz says (3:59, counting), “So I think I might –”
And the clouds collapse into staggered oceans as it begins to rain.
by Zhi-Ying Chua
1. At 4 a.m. on the fourth of May, the aquarium shrinks into sixteen horses, and every apple tree starts on pomegranates instead.
At 4 a.m. on the fourth of May, Alina Lin laughs her way into the world. Her mother breathes out, “Oh, my goodness,” and her father looks at her with eyes so soft, takes her with hands so gentle, and her grandfather says, “恭喜,恭喜” and her grandmother looks at the clock and looks at the baby and sits, heavy, in a chair.
(Her grandmother looks at the clock and looks at the baby and sits in this chair, this chair that sprang up cushiony and night sky-blue at the exact millisecond of 4 – her grandmother holds herself steady, hand at her mouth, and doesn’t say a thing.)
Alina grows up easy; she grows up loved. She grows with her mother, always laughing; she grows with her father and his father and her best friend, Liz, down the street, who always smells faintly of oranges. She grows into three with brown eyes soft and hands clumsy-gentle and a quilt knit by her grandmother that is sixteen shades of night sky-blue, and even at three, she knows this:
She lives in a state called Yewbury, and every four years, the rain brings change.
2. At 4 a.m. on the fourth of May, a quilt bleeds into orange and every bench in the park turns into a wicker basket and a girl, newly four, wakes and calls “妈妈,妈妈。” At 4 a.m., newly four, Jocelyn Allan wakes and she has gold-spilling hair and dark brown eyes, and her eyes are Alina’s but nowhere in the fuzzy darkness does she feel a quilt.
(And outside, every patch of grass has turned into clover, and four towns over over, Alina’s laughing lawyer mother sleeps under an orange quilt – except she isn’t a mother at all.)
3. 7:15 a.m., Parmita studies her face in the mirror on her twelfth birthday and tries to find Alina, wishes herself back as Jocelyn. She wishes herself back as Jocelyn and wishes herself three hours and sixteen seconds ago and tugs on her braid and un-new boots before, wishing herself born half a second later, stepping, careful, out the door.
In class, she examines her nails, blood orange – and if she walks to her locker wearing her hoodie like battle armor, it only completes the look.
4. At 3:55 a.m. on the fourth of May, Parmita sits cross-legged on a roof. She looks at the sky and at Liz beside her and Liz, eyes soft, holds her hand with one so gentle and looks right back.
(“I just – I saw you and I felt like I knew you,” Liz said – and Parmita’s heart went what are the odds what are the odds and she may be on a roof, but she has never felt so grounded.)
Parmita thinks, this is it. She looks at the sky, quilted with stars, holds herself steady, and she can feel every atom of her singing, this is it this is it.
Liz says (3:59, counting), “So I think I might –”
And the clouds collapse into staggered oceans as it begins to rain.
Shatter
by Elena Kamas
by Elena Kamas
Collapse
by Donnie (Tobie) Denome
My fellow degenerates!
Our world collapses around us and what can we do to stop it?
Nothing!
I pass, from one place to another and there is nowhere I am safe or sound,
suspended in one drug-state to another,
worshipping the gods of trileptal and lexapro,
listening to their half-lies as they make me functional but unhappy,
they make me too sleepy to live!
I say –
let us light a fire at the altar of gender and burn that great lie, that false idol in effigy!
Angel with a sword,
maybe literal and maybe half-adult, inappropriate for ninth graders,
(though my brother knows, certainly, what I mean),
I scream with the joy I carry inside and cannot share!
I kiss a girl and it feels right and wrong and nothing,
if I can remember, if I know,
kissing boys was much the same,
not that any of it matters,
a teenage mess, I am,
dealing with teenage things.
Those drugs we speak of but only when the teachers do not listen,
the street ones, the ones that all the great poets seemed to take –
don’t tell me they didn’t enchant eliot as much as they enchanted ginsberg –
there is a calling siren-song that I have been much warned against by fake car crashes and testimonials,
and for my health of course I won’t take them.
My peers,
their religions are comforts and jokes and I hear their inside snickers,
their giggles at cracks in Hebrew and Arabic accompanied by lewd gestures,
‘cause this is what Shauli could do if he went to the bathroom,
just to blow off steam,
or that’s what Ron says.
I follow the footsteps of those before me,
dead, dying, good, bad,
a litany, laundry list of
journalists
activists
doctors
singer-songwriters
scream your fool head off to the gods who heard you from on high,
maybe they’ll do something.
My siblings across the nation, across the world,
murdered, suicides, deaths of unknown cause when a body turns up somewhere,
nothing is sacred, nothing anymore,
I find religion and it means nothing.
They ask
“what does that button mean?”
the button on my blue apron that says
HE HIM HIS in sunlight sunrise sunset letters and shines as the light glints off it
and I shrug and say something about pronouns and some of them,
good neighbor Friends,
old men and women past their prime,
who probably don't understand it but know to be nice anyway,
agree,
or maybe they just say something back,
or ignore it,
because I have a round angel face and a high voice and little earrings and no patience to explain.
Nowhere is safe!
Even to take refuge in a bathroom –
(like they do in movies when they cry about boys or girls or grades or pimples or something more sinister)
that's not good,
not something I can do,
’cause which bathroom is the question,
plus the bathrooms always stink like –
well, I can't use that word, can I? –
but yeah, they stink!
What comes next year,
in college,
where 6.4% of the accepted students picked other for their gender.
Keep the percent stable for enrolled students
(although that's an assumption)
and .064 times 250 is 16!
15 peers like me!
15 comrades in misery!
But that is only one part of the problem.
I am 6 again,
and my scar is my failing,
begging my mother not to tell about it
’cause now,
17 going on 18 and then all by myself,
how do you say “major blood clot”
and talk about “bilateral frontal lobe damage” on an entry health form?
The neurologist, the psychiatrist, the psychologist, the pediatrician, the endocrinologist, and so many other doctors, they all know so many little bits.
My health is a mystery,
my brain has been defective since day negative whatever it was when the clot started forming.
Collapse has been coming for a while now.
It smells like rain,
it feels like a swing roller coaster, the pirate ship at Great America,
tastes stale and old,
sight and sound swirl and swell,
my heart beats so much faster.
Collapse is coming.
I am here.
by Donnie (Tobie) Denome
My fellow degenerates!
Our world collapses around us and what can we do to stop it?
Nothing!
I pass, from one place to another and there is nowhere I am safe or sound,
suspended in one drug-state to another,
worshipping the gods of trileptal and lexapro,
listening to their half-lies as they make me functional but unhappy,
they make me too sleepy to live!
I say –
let us light a fire at the altar of gender and burn that great lie, that false idol in effigy!
Angel with a sword,
maybe literal and maybe half-adult, inappropriate for ninth graders,
(though my brother knows, certainly, what I mean),
I scream with the joy I carry inside and cannot share!
I kiss a girl and it feels right and wrong and nothing,
if I can remember, if I know,
kissing boys was much the same,
not that any of it matters,
a teenage mess, I am,
dealing with teenage things.
Those drugs we speak of but only when the teachers do not listen,
the street ones, the ones that all the great poets seemed to take –
don’t tell me they didn’t enchant eliot as much as they enchanted ginsberg –
there is a calling siren-song that I have been much warned against by fake car crashes and testimonials,
and for my health of course I won’t take them.
My peers,
their religions are comforts and jokes and I hear their inside snickers,
their giggles at cracks in Hebrew and Arabic accompanied by lewd gestures,
‘cause this is what Shauli could do if he went to the bathroom,
just to blow off steam,
or that’s what Ron says.
I follow the footsteps of those before me,
dead, dying, good, bad,
a litany, laundry list of
journalists
activists
doctors
singer-songwriters
scream your fool head off to the gods who heard you from on high,
maybe they’ll do something.
My siblings across the nation, across the world,
murdered, suicides, deaths of unknown cause when a body turns up somewhere,
nothing is sacred, nothing anymore,
I find religion and it means nothing.
They ask
“what does that button mean?”
the button on my blue apron that says
HE HIM HIS in sunlight sunrise sunset letters and shines as the light glints off it
and I shrug and say something about pronouns and some of them,
good neighbor Friends,
old men and women past their prime,
who probably don't understand it but know to be nice anyway,
agree,
or maybe they just say something back,
or ignore it,
because I have a round angel face and a high voice and little earrings and no patience to explain.
Nowhere is safe!
Even to take refuge in a bathroom –
(like they do in movies when they cry about boys or girls or grades or pimples or something more sinister)
that's not good,
not something I can do,
’cause which bathroom is the question,
plus the bathrooms always stink like –
well, I can't use that word, can I? –
but yeah, they stink!
What comes next year,
in college,
where 6.4% of the accepted students picked other for their gender.
Keep the percent stable for enrolled students
(although that's an assumption)
and .064 times 250 is 16!
15 peers like me!
15 comrades in misery!
But that is only one part of the problem.
I am 6 again,
and my scar is my failing,
begging my mother not to tell about it
’cause now,
17 going on 18 and then all by myself,
how do you say “major blood clot”
and talk about “bilateral frontal lobe damage” on an entry health form?
The neurologist, the psychiatrist, the psychologist, the pediatrician, the endocrinologist, and so many other doctors, they all know so many little bits.
My health is a mystery,
my brain has been defective since day negative whatever it was when the clot started forming.
Collapse has been coming for a while now.
It smells like rain,
it feels like a swing roller coaster, the pirate ship at Great America,
tastes stale and old,
sight and sound swirl and swell,
my heart beats so much faster.
Collapse is coming.
I am here.
Forgive
by Elena Kamas
by Elena Kamas
Didn’t know he was
Tearing apart at the seams
Until you saw the ragged stitches;
Did you.
(He’d always held himself together
Through willpower alone. God knows you
Did nothing to help him.)
And even then, patches before your eyes, you
Weren’t sure, couldn’t quite be certain,
Didn't take action.
Didn't want to ruin your carefully-spun
Ladder to political power.
(Don’t deny it. Neither you nor I
Will believe it, and you’ll just be
Wasting your breath.)
Didn’t notice they’d pulled him
Apart, thread by
Fraying thread until he lay in
A crumpled pile of string.
And then you cried,“God save the Queen!”
And set fire to the cloth, because
What good is a pile of rags?
They will not protect you from the rain
Or the cold
(Even if they burn,
The flame would last but a moment.)
Never mind that the cloth had once
Been waterproof, bulletproof,
Protection against the worst things life could throw at you.
Of course not.
That doesn’t matter now,
Not when you have a pile of scraps and thread
Taking up precious storage space.
Better burn the lot and
Sweep up the ashes.
Quickly, now.
The government doesn’t like to be kept waiting.
EVEN GROWN-UPS CRY IN THEIR PILLOWS AT NIGHT | k.y
Tearing apart at the seams
Until you saw the ragged stitches;
Did you.
(He’d always held himself together
Through willpower alone. God knows you
Did nothing to help him.)
And even then, patches before your eyes, you
Weren’t sure, couldn’t quite be certain,
Didn't take action.
Didn't want to ruin your carefully-spun
Ladder to political power.
(Don’t deny it. Neither you nor I
Will believe it, and you’ll just be
Wasting your breath.)
Didn’t notice they’d pulled him
Apart, thread by
Fraying thread until he lay in
A crumpled pile of string.
And then you cried,“God save the Queen!”
And set fire to the cloth, because
What good is a pile of rags?
They will not protect you from the rain
Or the cold
(Even if they burn,
The flame would last but a moment.)
Never mind that the cloth had once
Been waterproof, bulletproof,
Protection against the worst things life could throw at you.
Of course not.
That doesn’t matter now,
Not when you have a pile of scraps and thread
Taking up precious storage space.
Better burn the lot and
Sweep up the ashes.
Quickly, now.
The government doesn’t like to be kept waiting.
EVEN GROWN-UPS CRY IN THEIR PILLOWS AT NIGHT | k.y
Downfall
by Elena Kamas
by Elena Kamas
Books, The
by Desmond Kamas
When the discovery was made of thousands of preserved tomes found deep underground, there was an immediate, positive reaction from the scientific community. Researchers flowed to the cavern like moths, each hoping to see the great library.
But the books were blank.
A hoax, they cried, a trick, all fake.
They tried ultraviolet lights, different chemicals. Some pages were burned.
News coverage switched from the mystery of the books to false accounts of how it was fabricated.
Yet those who had opened the books felt something was there.
There was a glimpse, they claimed, of seemingly strange script across the blank pages. Thick strokes of crimson ink. Others described vivid images of creatures and abstract figures.
This idea became part of popular culture, ranging from a film involving an alien race leaving the books to a mildly widespread joke where students turned in blank papers.
Yet the mystery remained unsolved.
It fell into the deep recesses of memory, as such events do, rising occasionally with apocalypse theories or conspiracy films. The books themselves were mostly sent to storage at a well-respected museum. A few were left to be put into modest exhibits about the mystery.
Twenty years pass.
An intern at the museum is looking through recordings of the books being documented when she pauses at just the right moment.
The same flash of color, of a culture somehow lost, was somehow visible in the very first frame.
The story explodes.
Terms for the language range from “quantum script” to “apocalypse papers.”
A particularly bizarre illustration seemingly depicting a face that is discovered gains a small fan base and is passed around blogs and chat rooms. The blank page joke is revived, leading to a regrettably-worded letter from a teachers’ union that is ridiculed by its opponents and keeps the movement fueled for another month.
Theories bounce across the internet to no bound, popular ones rising and falling like the tide, the complexity and quantity satirized by an influx of intentionally overly complex and pointless theories. It becomes a joke used on news reports of the sheer number.
Some clung to the idea of a government concoction. Others mimicked the previously disregarded conspiracy films, which drew a new wave of audiences. A famous movie company releases a blockbuster film involving the books that further widens its popularity.
A fake religion is created by a college student in America surrounding the books. This in itself becomes a story spread by the media, unintentionally drawing a new cluster of actual members to the cult.
After a book is allegedly stolen by the cult, the artifacts themselves are made less accessible to public view, and many are moved to a nondescript warehouse.
Authorized researchers spend their time carefully recording the pages as they turn through them on high-speed cameras. Cryptographers pour over the released images in hopes of finding a pattern; anthropologists analyze the cave for other evidence surrounding the mysterious culture.
A convention is held to discuss any leads. It is immensely popular, leading it to be rescheduled to a larger location.
Although planned to be annual, its attendance drops dramatically the next year.
After the entire library is documented, the most of the audience never returns.
It is cancelled after the fourth event.
The story becomes relevant only in blips, embellished reports appearing on Unsolved Mysteries or someone claiming to having found a translation.
New linguistics students are taught the scripts as an afterthought in a section about undeciphered texts.
The study is left to only the most dedicated and obsessed of the cipher enthusiasts.
The books are left in the warehouse, with dehumidifiers and temperature control, and locked up.
The story becomes a cultural reference,
a myth, and then
forgotten
by Desmond Kamas
When the discovery was made of thousands of preserved tomes found deep underground, there was an immediate, positive reaction from the scientific community. Researchers flowed to the cavern like moths, each hoping to see the great library.
But the books were blank.
A hoax, they cried, a trick, all fake.
They tried ultraviolet lights, different chemicals. Some pages were burned.
News coverage switched from the mystery of the books to false accounts of how it was fabricated.
Yet those who had opened the books felt something was there.
There was a glimpse, they claimed, of seemingly strange script across the blank pages. Thick strokes of crimson ink. Others described vivid images of creatures and abstract figures.
This idea became part of popular culture, ranging from a film involving an alien race leaving the books to a mildly widespread joke where students turned in blank papers.
Yet the mystery remained unsolved.
It fell into the deep recesses of memory, as such events do, rising occasionally with apocalypse theories or conspiracy films. The books themselves were mostly sent to storage at a well-respected museum. A few were left to be put into modest exhibits about the mystery.
Twenty years pass.
An intern at the museum is looking through recordings of the books being documented when she pauses at just the right moment.
The same flash of color, of a culture somehow lost, was somehow visible in the very first frame.
The story explodes.
Terms for the language range from “quantum script” to “apocalypse papers.”
A particularly bizarre illustration seemingly depicting a face that is discovered gains a small fan base and is passed around blogs and chat rooms. The blank page joke is revived, leading to a regrettably-worded letter from a teachers’ union that is ridiculed by its opponents and keeps the movement fueled for another month.
Theories bounce across the internet to no bound, popular ones rising and falling like the tide, the complexity and quantity satirized by an influx of intentionally overly complex and pointless theories. It becomes a joke used on news reports of the sheer number.
Some clung to the idea of a government concoction. Others mimicked the previously disregarded conspiracy films, which drew a new wave of audiences. A famous movie company releases a blockbuster film involving the books that further widens its popularity.
A fake religion is created by a college student in America surrounding the books. This in itself becomes a story spread by the media, unintentionally drawing a new cluster of actual members to the cult.
After a book is allegedly stolen by the cult, the artifacts themselves are made less accessible to public view, and many are moved to a nondescript warehouse.
Authorized researchers spend their time carefully recording the pages as they turn through them on high-speed cameras. Cryptographers pour over the released images in hopes of finding a pattern; anthropologists analyze the cave for other evidence surrounding the mysterious culture.
A convention is held to discuss any leads. It is immensely popular, leading it to be rescheduled to a larger location.
Although planned to be annual, its attendance drops dramatically the next year.
After the entire library is documented, the most of the audience never returns.
It is cancelled after the fourth event.
The story becomes relevant only in blips, embellished reports appearing on Unsolved Mysteries or someone claiming to having found a translation.
New linguistics students are taught the scripts as an afterthought in a section about undeciphered texts.
The study is left to only the most dedicated and obsessed of the cipher enthusiasts.
The books are left in the warehouse, with dehumidifiers and temperature control, and locked up.
The story becomes a cultural reference,
a myth, and then
forgotten
Open Your Synchronize
by Desmond Kamas
by Desmond Kamas
Whispers of the Heart
by Kelly Fesler
I see pieces of you in the world around me. In the eyes of others, the glow of yours. In the touch of others, the warmth of your embrace. In the smile of others, fragments of yours. The feeling is bittersweet. I sit on our bench and watch the last few embers fall from the trees and circle around me. The world fades to grey. This is just a memory.
I wonder where you are now. You, the one who was too pure for the world. You, the one who was engulfed in the pale, dying rays of the sun. You, the one who left with the last shimmer of the falling star. Could you have gone to find where it faded off to? Perhaps you are the stars. The beauty of the world is only because you have graced it.
There are no photographs to prove what we shared. They may as well be centuries old, locked away in a tarnished silver frame, faded beyond recognition. For all we know, maybe they are.
I can still see the arc our star traced through the sky as it fell. The arc, with the same grace as the slivered moon. The arc, forming on your face as your eyes smile. I wonder if the star has truly faded. Maybe you have gone to chase it, to catch the star before it falls. Maybe you have gone to find what lies beyond the stars, what wonders are invisible to the earthborn folk.
Wherever you may be, I hope you’re happy.
by Kelly Fesler
I see pieces of you in the world around me. In the eyes of others, the glow of yours. In the touch of others, the warmth of your embrace. In the smile of others, fragments of yours. The feeling is bittersweet. I sit on our bench and watch the last few embers fall from the trees and circle around me. The world fades to grey. This is just a memory.
I wonder where you are now. You, the one who was too pure for the world. You, the one who was engulfed in the pale, dying rays of the sun. You, the one who left with the last shimmer of the falling star. Could you have gone to find where it faded off to? Perhaps you are the stars. The beauty of the world is only because you have graced it.
There are no photographs to prove what we shared. They may as well be centuries old, locked away in a tarnished silver frame, faded beyond recognition. For all we know, maybe they are.
I can still see the arc our star traced through the sky as it fell. The arc, with the same grace as the slivered moon. The arc, forming on your face as your eyes smile. I wonder if the star has truly faded. Maybe you have gone to chase it, to catch the star before it falls. Maybe you have gone to find what lies beyond the stars, what wonders are invisible to the earthborn folk.
Wherever you may be, I hope you’re happy.
Shield
by Elena Kamas
by Elena Kamas