Palaver Magazine

Paláver MagazineVol. 12 Issue 2

For Nathan Lane, who inspired my life’s work;

Mother Theresa, who showed me the meaning of Christmas;

Gutenberg, for the printing press;Lil Wayne, who saved my life at Rikers;

My boss Maria, for pretending that reading texts from last night is appropriate work behavior;

Mom

Contents• • •

Page• Title, medium.......................................................Author/Artist

1• Black Dreams, graphic illustration.....................................… Katherine Prendergast2• I Am, I Said, poem...................................................................Victoria Frances Dekoker 3•Sheba, digital photography..........................................................................Ben Rolnik4•Arrival, digital photography.............................................................Dylan Campbell5•Red Velvet, prose...............................................................................Grace Heimsness6•Glow, digital photography..................................................................Dylan Campbell8•Stripper Glitter, collage ........................................................................ Scott Melendez9•Gregory Mann, poem ......................................................................... Caroline A. Wong10•Unicorn Ass, pencil drawing ........................................................Khy-Lin Woodrow11•Motel Into Darkness, digital photography ................................................ Ben Rolnik12•Shake, prose........................................................................................Timothy Parker14•The American Dream, digital photography ..............................................Ben Rolnik15•Rehabilitation, poem............................................................ Jacqueline Donabedian15•Snail Innards, pencil drawing....................................................... Khy-Lin Woodrow16•Necromancy,prose..........................................................................GraceHeimsness24•Flight, acrylic and oil.....................................................................................Lisa Shieh25•Rainy Day, poem......................................................................................Zea Moscone26•Fathom, digital photography............................................................Dylan Campbell27•Dream, acrylic and oil....................................................................................Lisa Shieh28•Lone Ranger, prose.........................................................................Jenny Sommerfeld36•Sante Fe, digital photography...........................................................Dylan Campbell37•Curiosity, photography.........................................................................Ross Renjilian38•Canvas, poem........................................................................Jacqueline Donabedian40•La Rue, photography................................................................Shaimaa Abdelhamid

CoversFront: Best Day Ever, colored pencil

Khy-Lin WoodrowInside Front: An Introduction to Biology, digital photo

Ben RolnikInside Back: Creepman, digital photography

Ben RolnikBack: After Scratching Skin for Five Minutes, Alexa &Alexis, digital photography

Alexis Kaneshiro

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I am, I saidVictoria Frances Dekoker

I am, I saidI heard you sing to no one but yourselfyou always did that, lived like no one was around,like our shoebox apartment was all you ever needed

we used to walk to the corner liquor store on Saturdaysfor apple juice and red vines. I’d hold your piano hands,nails uneven and always painted some shade of grotesque orange or pink. We’d stop by the plant storewhere you bought me Patton, my cactus,and the music shop that had that bass I swooned afterwhere you bought me Simon & Garfunkel sheet music for my choir audition

you cut your choppy hair one Wednesday morning with blunt scissors in front of the medicine cabinet mirror,bits of hair tickling the bathroom sink and countersI tried to make a paintbrush out of it, one that you could use when you paint-by-numbered some master-piecebut my chubby clumsy child fingers just couldn’t seem to bundle your graying tendrilsso I threw them out the window and watched them dancedown down down to the ground like a daffodil’s parachutes

your beady brown eyes always swimming in those tortoiseshell glassesI caught you watching me sleep onceI never forgave you for thatyou said you just liked to watch me smileI never could smile for you the way you wanted me tobecause I never was any good at being genuine

Black Dreams • Katherine Prendergast 2

“I am,” I said to no one thereflittering about your cluttered room, the walls swathed in family portraits and half-lucid sketchingssinging to yourself like no one’s there“I am,” I cried

Sheba • Ben Rolnik3

Arrival • Dylan Campbell 4

Red VelvetGrace Heimsness

It was right there. Right there in the middle of the 110, melt-ing into illusory heat waves that burned off the asphalt. Its two pet-rified bridegrooms lay half-drowned in folds of frosting, clinging to one another for dear, plastic life. This was the forty-second wedding cake dropped in the last two weeks. LAPD treated them like homicides at first; a serial crime is a serious crime, the captain had said. I didn’t know how that warranted chalk outlines of the obliterated cakes, or bringing foren-sics in to measure the splatter patterns. But I kept my mouth shut. After the thirtieth cake, forensics had finally given up on finding fingerprints in or around the sticky messes. Once we found out the cakes weren’t filled with anthrax or cyanide like the captain thought, guys started showing up just to get a second lunch. Some units drove around with a thermos of coffee, in case the dispatcher called in another drop. Thomson came up next to me and followed my gaze up-ward. You think they shoved it off the overpass, he asked. I nod-ded. The 105 stretched across the 110 directly above the cake. The two freeways formed a massive, concrete knot that echoed the rush hour honking. Cars growled past us in the one lane that remained open, and three cars sat at the other edge of the road, wrecked to various degrees. EMTs scrambled around, loading the injured pas-sengers. You’d think they’d go for a place where more people would see it, Thomson said. This is LA, I said back, folding my arms. You’re not going to find a more crowded place than the freeway at 6 o’clock on a Friday.

With the exception of the captain’s incoherent shouting, these incidents were a lot like the department Christmas parties. Lots of milling around, lots of cake and coffee, and lots of inane

Glow • Dylan Campbell5

conversation that couldn’t drown out the discussions we didn’t want to have, but were silently having anyway, about the kid who maimed his friend with a shotgun last week or the domestic abuse call that turned ugly. Every multi-tiered, frosted piece of wonder that splattered onto the face of LA was like a religious experience. Besides the twenty-pound fruitcake that landed in front of Graumann’s Theatre on the third day, I hadn’t stopped salivating since the first “Code Cakewalk” sputtered through the radio. Several three-tiered white chocolate cheesecakes, one platter of cupcakes, innumerable rasp-berry chiffons, one pineapple upside-down cake that, ironically, landed upside down, and countless ten-foot tall Lady Baltimores later, I wanted to find the criminals more for their recipes than for their infractions. Each time we found a new cake, I would sneak a piece home for Rhys. Most of the time he refused, but I would put it in the fridge anyway. It would always disappear by the time I came down for breakfast the next morning. Rhys was still too pissed to let me see him happy; he’d been furious with me ever since I refused to let him talk me into coming out to the guys in the department.

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I had considered telling him that every cake had two groom figurines on the top instead of the traditional bride and groom. But I knew he either wouldn’t believe me, or he would just get on his gay marriage soapbox again. Really, he hadn’t been happy since last November, but I wasn’t about to tell him that either.

The two grooms were sinking further into the hot mess. This red and white catastrophe at my feet had been, at the top of the 105 overpass, five tiers of seven-layer red velvet filled with frost-ing, draped with a pearly white fondant, and covered in blood-red swirls of ganache. Now the fondant had split away from the cake inside on im-pact, and lay on the asphalt like holiday wrapping paper. The cake itself looked as if it had landed directly on its bottom layer, and had compressed like an accordion before exploding outwards. Somehow, not one car had hit the cake. There was a ten-yard radius of open road around it, like it had repelled the very carnage it caused. The two middle tiers had remained relatively intact, though they leaned at a slight angle. You want a piece, Thomson asked as he reached down with his finger to scrape frosting off. No, thanks, I said. My stomach was growling, but it wasn’t from hunger. It’s the best one yet, he said. He was right. Red velvet something I couldn’t refuse. I reached down, plucked the two grooms from the pile, and licked the cake off their feet. White chocolate ganache and cream cheese frosting coated my tongue. The red velvet followed. I’d only ever tasted one other red velvet like it. One made with real beets instead of red food coloring. I looked down at the two grooms in my hand. What are you doing, Thomson said. I pocketed the figurines and ran for the squad car.

Stripper Glitter • Scott Melendez7

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“Gregory Mann”Caroline A. Wong

Gregory Mann is an underwear model.He is paid to strip away layer after layer—and pose naked—more beautiful than the Venus de Milobecause his body screams Calvin Klein.

Gregory Mann is my boyfriend.And when we go out at nightand Los Angeles is silent with rainand the lights are fallingand we sit shining in his car—just the two of us—with our seat belts done and undonemy heart is loud and quiet.

Tell me something, Gregory Mann,I say with my body turned open to him—heart turned open—Something fun and exciting.Make my day.Make my night.Show me how to make my lifeand live like you.

I expect Greg to talk about his new sockslike anyone else would,but he recounts his imagined tale ofIvan from Idahowho wanted to teach farmershow to irrigate the world.Ivan majored in Advertising, he says.His hands are on the wheel like this

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— 10 and 2 —but only because I tell him.He likes to drive with his knees.

Why didn’t he major in Agricultural Studies?I ask, brushing tangles out of my hair with my fingers.Why didn’t he study something that made sense,something that he wanted to do?He wanted to irrigate the world.

Gregory Mann was an English major.And now his job is to take his clothes off.But, like Ivan, he has dreams—big dreams—to bring peace to peopleand love.His heart is big and open.

Gregory Mann is an underwear model.He’s following his dreams all the way to Manhattanand from there he’ll fly to Haiti.He drives away— 10 and 2 —because I tell him.

Gregory Mann is the one who gets paid to take his clothes off.But I have never felt so naked.

Unicorn Ass • Khy-lin Woodrow 10

Motel Into Darkness • Ben Rolnik11

ShakeTimothy Parker

My high school was one massive brick building, five stories high, with a more than passing resemblance to a factory. The morn-ing of the quake I got there fifteen minutes before the first bell and raced up the three flights of stairs to the roof. The door had been alarmed until sophomore year when some enterprising stoners dis-abled it so they could sneak bowls between classes. It was usually deserted before school. I lit a cigarette as a crowd of students slowly grew on the lawns below. I watched as a group of junior boys took turns sneaking up behind Katie Green, trying to unhook her bra strap through her thin yellow blouse. The first two attempts were foiled by watchful friends, but the third boy was swift. Katie twisted at his touch and tried to squirm away, but the deed was done. She ran for the main entrance and first floor restroom, her writhing unbound bosom like two wrestling puppies in a pillow case. A wild churning move-ment. I felt a growing pressure against my zipper and a gathering warmth. No one noticed the birds had stopped singing. After graduation I moved to LA. My favorite spot in the whole city was the Silent Movie Theatre on Fairfax. One Sunday they showed The Brood, The Deadly Spawn, I Walked With a Zombie, and The Blob—all in row. Afterwards I stood outside smoking a cigarette. The young female ticket taker approached me. Hey fella, how ‘bout a drink? Her apartment wasn’t far from the bar. She pulled off my pants with surprising force. My hands trembled at the clasp on her bra. I had never been with a woman before. Here let me help you with that. The pressure and the warmth. The vibration. She rolled her shoulders and her hips. That wild sinuous dance. There were goose bumps covering her moist fleshy skin, but she was warm all over. An inner heat.

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Let’s see what we’ve got here. I remember the moment the roof gave way. There were screams from the crowd below, and then there was only the terrible turbulence and the omniscient roar in my ears. Caught by the pull of a cresting wave, crashing, churning, forever down. The constant pounding—the wet viscous stropping. Trapped in a tangle of limbs, each impact carving off a little bit more. All the while the penetrat-ing hum rattled my bones. Easy now, take your time. I remember trying to cry out, to scream for it to stop, but my mouth was full of smoke and grit, and my eyes saw only the ghost-ly lighting of passing debris. My senses were swallowed up by the rage, my body consumed by the torrent. Are you okay? I ended up in what had been the girls’ toilets. There was water spraying everywhere, and the smell of gas stung my nose. The only light came from gaps in the piled rubble above, smoky shafts lancing here and there. Katie Green was a few feet from me, a sheared conduit pipe sprouting from her upper thigh. Her breasts heaved with her breathing, the soaked blouse hanging like mucus from her nipples in trembling elastic sheets. That wild movement. My own inner heat increasing, burning, a boiling surge against my thigh—a lapping—tongue—of flame. A red blossom unfolded itself on the floor between her legs. As it bloomed her eyes grew wide. Breathing turned to gasping. Gasping turned to tired shudders. The blouse hung still. I said are you okay? A week after the quake I heard a friend describe what it felt like when the shaking stopped. He went on and on about the silence and the stillness. When he was done he turned to me and said, “You know what I mean?” I said, “It stopped?”

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The American Dream • Ben Rolnik 14

RehabilitationJaqueline Donabedian

The bones in my back were older than my lips, but I could never give a steady breath. I tasted the things thatno one would dare to—cement blocks, glass shards, paper machete, rubbing alcohol.

Ten days, the curves of my ankles in your hands in ashrinking room. I stared at the maggots crawling through the depressions inthe ceiling and I thought of my body, eaten alive by violet bullfrogs, their throats pulsing at my stomach.

Ten days, I felt your thirst. Those estranged hours when you lapped upthe remnants off my shoulder blades. You would watch me as I pinned dragonfly wings and pigeon feathers to my back, your volatilevenom leaking from your mouth, bubbling over my pores.

Ten days and you were so sure my bones were too old to be moved, that I’d be strapped tothe floorboards if it weren’t forthe maggots. Sometimes I wanted to peek up at the ceiling and watch them nibble away at us.

It was then that I’d purse my lips to form aclosed smile because when the tenth day came, I knew I’d breathe steadiest.

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Snail Innards • Kah-lin Woodrow

NecromancyGrace Heimsness

Eleanor stopped crying that Thursday, but I didn’t get the guts to ask her if she was hungry until Sunday night. After Virgil shot himself, I realized there’s something awful about acknowledg-ing your own compulsion to live. I think Eleanor recognized it too, because instead of doing anything else, we kept Facebook up and watched his friends and “friends” post on his wall. Natalie Jones Virgil, i <3 u and miss u. i’ll see u again some-day. have fun up there, bud. i’ll be thinking of u! Seth Auger Hey, man, how’s it going? I can’t believe you’re gone. I miss you so much. I was looking through your old photos and I laughed so hard at the one of you dressed in the sexy kitten outfit : ) No one has legs like you! Be thinking of you at the next Parade. I’ll wear the rainbow speedo in your honor ; ) Love you, man. Andy McDonagh I’ll miss u, Virgil! Never forget the great times we had in bio. Catch you later, my friend. I got hungry before she did. “Want to go get breakfast?” I said. The light was fading out-side, but I needed to feel like I was just waking up. “No,” she said, clicking through his photos. His ever-present smile mocked our empty stomachs. It only made me feel more evacuated, but I sat with Eleanor, sat like that couch was our fox-hole. It wasn’t until I started thinking about the logistics of the fu-neral, about traveling seven hours to see a closed casket and hordes of flowers saturating the proper black of the day, that I got up.I wandered into the kitchen and took a long time to do the dishes. Everything was half-eaten, and throwing it all away was only slightly less painful than having to eat the rest of it. Eleanor fell asleep with her Mac on her stomach, but I left it there while I dumped the food, like archives of grief, into the trash.

____

It’s hard to be quiet while someone else is getting bad news

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over the phone. It’s hard to wait and silently let all the tragic pos-sibilities march through your head, to wait to be put out of your misery. Or into it. You think about awful things like where you left your dark-est suit and how long you’re going to stand in front of his 5x7 photo at the wake. You hope to God you didn’t know him well, but if you don’t you hate him for what he’s done all the same. What he’s taken. All I could do was cling to her glasses while she paced around the room and tried to stop leaking tears. It had been Virgil’s boyfriend who’d called. Eleanor was silent while he told her that there was nothing they could do. They can’t do much, can they? she said. I just looked at a stain on the floor, knowing we’d lost some-one while we were still too young to lose.

____

She woke up when I lifted her laptop off of her stomach. The heat emanated off of her skin like a fever. “Want to go for a drive?” I said. She looked at me like I’d drowned a kitten, so I sat next to her and watched Virgil’s wall some more. More people had written on it, but by now it had settled into the weary rhythm of commiser-ation, each post echoing the one before it. I grabbed her hand before she could think to reach for the keyboard. “Babe, I have to get out of here,” I said. “We got in a fight about the wind,” she said. “That was the last thing we talked about.” “In real life?” I said. “Oh, God no. We never fight in person,” she said. I was going to correct her tense, but thought better of it. In-stead I told her it was probably just banter. “You know how those kinds of things are,” I said. She let my hand go and hugged her knees to her chest. He hair was splayed over her back, and I twirled a lock through my fingers. I could smell her shampoo even from where I was sitting,

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but I knew now wasn’t the time to tell her that either. “I had a crush on him once,” she whispered into her knees. “Did I ever tell you that?” “On your brother?” I said, the scent of sandalwood vanish-ing from my nose. “Adopted brother,” she said. “And besides, it was when we were four. Love is easy to find when you’re that little, you know?” “Yeah. I know,” I said. I had no idea. “How did you fight about the wind?” I said, after I’d let a long enough silence fall between us that it sounded as if I was re-ally thinking about it. She said nothing, but pulled up the wall-to-wall conversa-tion between her and Virgil. It was a transcript of their relationship, a running scroll of abbreviated interaction. I couldn’t tell her how nauseating it was. She pointed at the argument about the wind. It was about whether it ever really makes people go crazy. I watched the tiny, twin screens reflected in her eyes, and waited for her to get hungry.

____

Eventually, Eleanor resurfaced with a sigh and said, “How about Fred 62?” “Okay,” I said, trying not to betray my enthusiasm. “I have to take a shower,” she said, looking down as if real-izing she was a real person. She laughed, but it was a harsh laugh. I wondered whether it would be that way from now on. She disappeared into the bathroom, and before I knew what I was doing, I checked my own profile out of habit. When the page refreshed, his picture was there in corner, in the “Suggestions” box. “Virgil Jameson,” it said, and below the image of him with aviators on upside down, laughing too hard, were the words, “Reconnect with him.” I slammed the computer closed on the bright, virtual re-minder. The room went dark, and the outlines of socks and papers and books, remains of the weeklong siege, sharpened. The air in the

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apartment was stale, so I pulled the door open before rummaging for my shoes. Kneeling to tie the double knots on first the right one and then the left, I found myself wishing for Eleanor’s light teasing. “What, are you scared they’re going to fall off?” she would say. Instead, she slipped into her perpetually untied Converse high tops, and shuffled out ahead of me, without a word.

____

Fred 62 was a 24-hour, retro-hipster diner in Los Feliz, right off of Hollywood Boulevard. It had always been our favorite late-night hideaway, because everyone there was too busy being watched to do any looking themselves. It was one of the few places I knew of where real life drowned itself out, so I was trying to con-tain my anticipation even while I cranked an Iron & Wine album to keep Eleanor happy in her misery.It was one of those cold, desert nights, but you wouldn’t know it for all the city lights choking out the shadows. Whether that had anything to do with Eleanor’s refusal to sit at a table outside, I don’t know. But I didn’t blame her; there was more noise, and more distraction, inside. “Look at that guy,” I said, glancing left and then back at her. It was almost four a.m., and we’d hit the place just as the night-clubbers had swerved off of their various dance floors and careened into booths. It made sense; Fred’s was the one place with an entire menu of miracle hangover cures that was open at this time of night. The guy I’d glanced at was a typical Fred 62 patron; his lime-green hair was spiked into a Mohawk, and he was wearing a tight wife-beater so he could show of the two black-and-gray, full sleeves that twisted down his arms in various Maori, Haida, and neo-tribal patterns. He didn’t seem to know or care that he was rip-ping off several cultures at once. Nearby was a gaggle of indie kids, all wearing tight pants and plaid shirts, clove cigarettes perched behind their ears. I smiled at Eleanor. She nodded and went back to biting her

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nails. I hated the habit, but there was nothing I could do; she now had carte blanche for the rest of the year, or longer. “Do you know what you’re getting?” I said, since banter and people-watching seemed out of the question. “No,” she said, “Are you packed for the funeral?” “Uhm,” I managed. A waitress dressed in fishnets and a corset saved me from having to answer. “You guys wanna follow me?” she said, and started walking away. I threaded my fingers through Eleanor’s hand and led her to the corner booth. The waitress, perhaps sensing our need for com-motion, placed us at the intersection of the kitchen, bar, and hall-way to the bathrooms. I let her hand go as we sat down. “A Mr. Pibb and a Shirley Temple with an extra cherry, please,” I said, glancing at Eleanor to check. She nodded and the corner of her mouth lifted a fraction of an inch. I tapped a rhythm on her feet with mine, trying to encour-age her. The same “Yeah Yeah Yeahs” rhythm I always drummed. The crease in her cheek disappeared as she looked at the menu. I’d never understood her insistence on a meticulous run-through of every dish Fred’s offered; she got the same thing every time anyway. But she said, always with a sigh and a laugh, “You never know when they’ll come up with something new.” “So are you?” she said, breaking the cadence. “Am I what?” “Packed. The funeral’s in two days.” “Listen, El,” I said, folding and unfolding my napkin, “I have a lot of stuff— ” The waitress appeared with our drinks, and I let myself trail off. She stood there leaning on one leg, with her hip popped in a way that said something, though I didn’t care enough to find out what. “I’ll have the Dime Bag, eggs over-medium, with bacon,” I

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said, without opening my menu. I played with the saltshaker and waited for Eleanor to order on her own. “A New Amsterdam, please,” Eleanor muttered, annoyed with me for making her order when she didn’t want to talk to any-one.

The waiter moved off and I spun the salt over to Eleanor, try-ing to start a game of restaurant hockey. She stopped it and put it back next to the pepper, staring at her phone the whole time.The condensation on the glass slipped against my fingers as I spun it on the table. “Are you checking his Facebook?” I said, gripping my soda so I wouldn’t clench my teeth. “Are you not coming to the funeral?” she said, still staring at her phone. I bent the tines of my fork against the edge of the table. “I don’t know,” I said, “There’s a lot I have to do this week.” “Why wouldn’t you come with me?” “Because I can’t,” I said, “I have three papers due this week and I took extra hours at work. I can’t just disappear with you.” She shut her lips tight and continued to tap at her phone. We could have been at McDonald’s for all she cared. The waitress brought our plates ten long minutes later. I tore into my eggs, more out of frustration and spite than hunger. I squeezed the ketchup bottle with more ferocity than I meant, and it splattered into my lap. I laughed, but Eleanor just stared at her sandwich. A twinge of profound guilt shot through the space be-hind my eyes, and I almost wished we were back in our dim apart-ment, Eleanor watching the screen and me watching Eleanor. Then, apologetically, I asked her when we were going to memorialize his page. “What do you mean?” There was a deep warning somewhere in her question. “Well, I just thought you’d want to make his profile into a memorial. We can fill out a form for it and— ”

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“A form? What, we just tell them, ‘Hey, my brother shot him-self in the face,’ and that’s that?” “Well, no, we have to send them a link to his obit and an-swer a couple questions. But it’s easy. I thought you’d want to keep it up for—just to have—you know.” “A link to his obit?” she said. She didn’t have to say anything else. Spots were already floating in front of my eyes after having said it. We spent the next half hour listening to the non-silence of the diner, me eating and Eleanor staring at her phone, or into her lap. The other customers wandered in and out, most with dark circles under their eyes, but all for different reasons. I saw it in play-back, sped up so it looked like a continual cycle of construction and demolition. Like a bad science movie about ants and their anthills.

____

I drove fast on the way home. The cars around us reminded me of anglerfish, those creatures at the bottom of the sea that have the long fin that looks like a fishing pole and glows out in front of their mouths. It’s their livelihood, that light; it works as bait, because you can’t see their bodies for the glow. I frowned at the pseudo-bioluminescence. It looked too much like the glow of Elea-nor’s Mac. We were certainly in deep. But deep in where, I couldn’t have said. The opening notes of Eleanor’s favorite song made the car hum with something besides the asphalt. I was about to turn it up, but she reached the knob before me and turned it down. “Don’t die,” she said. I stared at the glowing dashes zipping under us. “El,” I said.“Just don’t.”“Eleanor, I can’t,” I said, surprised at myself. “What?” she said, but I knew she’d heard me. That same warning was in her voice.

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“I can’t just not die. I can’t promise that.” She slammed the glove box closed; rummaging through my expired insurance forms and maps was one of her nervous habits. I set my hand in the middle of the console between us, but she made no effort to take it. “What can you do, James?” I said nothing.

____ She tried to sign in to his Facebook when we got home. As soon as I saw what she was doing, I flipped on the TV to distract myself. I gave up after twenty minutes. “Why are you doing that?” I said. “Are you coming with me or not?” she said. “I don’t know, Eleanor.” “Jesus Christ, James, it’s not like I’m asking you to get mar-ried.” “And it’s not like you’re going to find anything. It’s a fuck-ing Facebook page, not a diary.” She ignored me. I started into the kitchen to do more dishes, but then I remembered there weren’t any left to do. So I took a long shower, and spent half of it smelling Eleanor’s shampoo. When I got out, she was asleep again. Her Mac was open in the living room, still running Facebook. I sat down and signed into my own account, and went to the page I’d found earlier, sometime after I’d thrown all that food away. “If you do not think you will use Facebook again and would like your account deleted, we can take care of this for you. You will not be able to reactivate your account. If you would like to proceed, then click ‘Sub-mit.’” “Don’t die,” she’d said. I clicked the “Submit” button. “Are you sure?” a little box asked me. I thought of Eleanor sleeping in the next room, bag packed and stomach empty, and I knew this was the one thing I could do. She wouldn’t see it that way.

Flight • Lisa Shieh23

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Rainy DayZea Moscone

When the wind blewthe mildewed tree houseAnd the raindrops covered the plastic seats of our trikes,We retreated to the fortressof the Big Blue Blanket.

He, the Pirate; I, the Princess;She busy biting crimson crayons(The conceived Monstresswith a bloodied smile).When television would turn our eyes to squares.

Until the game waned,leaving a jaded kingdom of overused toys And abandoned projects.We parroted our boredom,a squabble of hopeless desperation.

Just when all seemed lost,And our stomachs feigned hunger:An idea! A rush to the stairs,to their room, to their bed,Where we propelled each other into the air with each leap.

Our eyes danced with our feet As the spring of the mattress And the puff of the pillowsmade us forgive the season

Fathom • Dylan Campbell25

and embrace the clouds.Even the little one brought her reddened smile;

Singing of monkeysabove the persistent patter ofA Rainy Day.

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Dream • Lisa Shieh

Lone RangerJenny Sommerfeld

His brand new firearm, a token of his twelfth birthday when he had finally become a man, was long and sleek in his hands. It was the gun that so many other boys received that year either un-der their tree or just after making a wish and blowing out the can-dles on their cake. It was a Daisy Red Ryder Carbine, complete with a smoothbore barrel and adjustable iron sights. And boy, it sure was a looker with its polished steel, long andsmooth as the underbelly of a snake.

I’m moving the rest of the stuff out of Mom’s place today. Her belongings are all packed up in cardboard boxes except for this one photograph, framed and still setting on the mantle. Held down by a netting of cobwebs, I found Jim, grasping that drawn-out piece of steel and striking the best Lone Ranger he could muster. There’s even a smudge of chocolate icing leftover on his nose. That or a speck of dirt on the old photo.

I remember going into Jim’s room a couple months be-fore that birthday to grab my old baseball glove. I had left mine at school. Of course with Jim it only sat in his closet and gath-ered dust anyway. But I didn’t make it to the closet door be-fore finding the annual Sears catalogue propped open on his bed. It was turned to a Daisy advertisement, a booby trap set for the subconscious of any passerby (namely Mom and Dad). I knew this trick because I used it also, but never two months ahead of my own birthday. Jim was scrupulous.

In bold, red letters the ad read “Just like the one your Dad has—you’ll really be somebody with a Daisy in your hands!!” Beside the caption was the image of a father above his son, his eyes twin-kling as he proudly showed little Bobby how to aim his BB gun. Marilyn Monroe flaunted the bright red lips of some beauty com

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pany on the opposite page, giving a come-hither look to the virile outdoorsman and boy across the way. I could see why Jim wanted that gun.

But the truth was, the very idea of shooting a gun scared the bejesus out of him. He didn’t have the desire to annihilate, kill or destroy any more than he did to shower in the boy’s locker room after gym class. But if you grew up in Wheaton—a town fifty miles from the nearest movie theater—you would understand that a small town maintains certain ideals. Wheaton was a hunting town. A place where time was measured by the game in season. Every Sunday, men would leave before the sun’s first rays peeked over the horizon and return late in the evening, drunk and dirty.

I got over it early. I put in my time and hunting wasn’t so bad for me. The deer and pheasants we shot were not like a dog that can fetch and obey and be a companion. To me, they’re only alive in that split second when you catch that brown in the corner of your eye, focus, aim and fire. By the time you reach the fallen deer it’s as if they were dead all along, completely motionless amid the sapling trees and bark of the forest floor. The only indica-tion of past life is the slow, trickling blood with steam still rising like fog off the lake at dawn. It was gruesome and beautiful; a mat-ter of fact and a testament to the circle of life. At least, that’s what I thought. I had never seen Bambi.

Things were different for Jim. Precocious, bookworm, four- eyes Jim. He tried so hard to be an outdoorsman. He beat up his shoes and scraped his knees as much as possible. A couple of times I think he even faked a fall just so he could come home bleed-ing and show how tough he was when he didn’t wince from the rubbing alcohol (he did). When he was old enough he joined the Scouts, but even this was a pipe dream. To reach the highest level required him to rescue a drowning victim. Fat chance. He couldn’t even spot his own reflection without his coke bottle glasses. They

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would both drown. Dad gave him a hard time about failing Scouts. I think the son of a bitch was just teasing him, but Jim didn’t take it that way. And so he went on that first hunting trip with dad—a year before his twelfth birthday—just to show that he was a man. On the day of Jim’s first hunt, he was instructed only to lis-ten and to watch. Jim underestimated the amount of time required to listen and watch, and before long he had drifted off to sleep. Dad was in a rage when he noticed him curled up in the thrush, but he waited until they got home that night to unleash.

He forced me and Mom to sit down at the dinner table while he circled Jim who was cowering on a stool.

“This boy can’t be my son. I raised mine to be men. This one here is nothing but a nancy. Fallin asleep because he just don’t care. Well I’ll tell you something. I don’t care about you. Get out. That’s right, get out of my house right now. I don’t want you in my sight,” he howled.

Jim bolted, unable to hide the tears streaming down his face. Mom waited until my father retreated to his beer-den in the garage to go out and find Jim and bring him back home. This was the first time my old man cornered Jim, but it wouldn’t be the last.

Why couldn’t he have just faked it like I did? If he hadat least pretended to like hunting he would have saved himself a whole lot of grief, but I guess the idea of being a sportsman was too much for him. I’m not saying that Jim loathed the outdoors. He loved nature. Or maybe he just loved being away from our mean old man. At any rate, when the weather was good, he would be out for hours. I suspect he wrote stories out there. I encountered him and Mom once sitting in the backyard under the old willow. Jim was reading something quietly from a notebook while my mom lis

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tened. The two of them looked more serene than any picture I had ever seen. I snuck back inside, making sure the screen door didn’t squeak.

He never shared them with me, but once I caught him with a pencil and notebook stuffed under his shirt after coming back from the woods. He had just come in for dinner and I got him into a head lock to give him his routine noogie, but instead of trying to slap me off, he wrapped his arms around his middle, squirming to get free. Before I could get the notebook from him he kicked me in the shin and ran away. I didn’t chase after him. It was the only time he ever so much as raised a finger against me.

You could tell hunting time was over when the town square filled up with old Chevys, resembling a cross between a used car lot and meat locker. It was a gruesome sight. The men’s hunt, soon to be cleaned and stuffed, lay in the truck bed, mouths agape and blood slowly pooling in the worn tarps.

All of the men would go to Allen’s Diner to drink a scalding black brew and indulge in Mrs. Allen’s famed rhubarb pie while the kids divided between the Corner Fountain and Sundry and Rick’s Five and Dime. I would hit both—the Five and Dime first to pick up a mallow bar and then the Sundry for a vanilla coke. After our sugar injection, we’d round up in the alleyway between the two shops and shoot marbles and smoke cigarettes. When I was older I hung out here during the week when I ought to have been in school. I thought I was pretty hot stuff playing hooky, one hand on a six-pack and the other up Donette’s shirt. We were pubescent teens revolting against society in a six by fifteen enclave bordered by graffiti-riddled brick walls and dead-ended by a knotted wood-en fence that protected crazy Kaichowsky’s backyard.

Mr. Kaichowsky measured the boundary of his yard with a string of twine around the perimeter. The Kaichowskys had im

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migrated from Germany some years before and the neighborhood kids swore that this marked the boundaries of the curse on his land. Our town didn’t take well to foreigners, just as Mr. Kaichowsky didn’t take well to us. He was afraid of everything that surrounded his 3,000 square feet. And so the twine was meant not only to pre-vent his neighbors from mowing on his turf, but to keep kids who wanted to take a short cut back home off, too. That’s partly why the alley became such a hangout. Kids would set off cherry bombs and bolt around the corner to watch as Kaichowsky’s faced turn several shades of purple while yelling his head off.

If Kaichowsky prized anything more than his pristine lawn, it wasn’t his wife, children or religion—no, it was his begonias. Never have I seen a man tend to his flowers with such nauseating finesse. I swear I even heard him reciting poetry to those flowers one afternoon when I was in the alley avoiding Calculus. Why any man would worship a plant more than his own family I will never understand, but it was none of my business. Some kids, however, thought differently. As I heard it, a couple of guys a grade older than me snuck into his backyard late one night to play some kind of trick with those flowers. They only realized that they had under-estimated Kaichowsky, however, when they heard the sound of his gun being cocked and loaded. No shots were fired, but after that night no one messed with Kaichowsky’s yard and the former iron-clad Kaichowsky curfew was increased so that none of his kids was allowed to leave the house outside of school.

Those poor kids. There was only one who dared interact with any of the Kaichowskys—my brother Jim. Apparently Jim was on one of his wilderness hikes when he spotted the younger brother in the tall branches of a tree. How he had managed to escape the Kaichowsky fortress and scurry up the tree is beyond me. When my brother found him he was too afraid to make his way down. Jim hauled a nearby fallen log over and propped it against the tree, rendering a makeshift ladder. He shimmied up and spent the rest of

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the afternoon with him up there. At least, that was the story he told Ma who then recited it to us at dinner that night.

“Jim made friends with that Kaichowsky boy,” she said. “And he says he’s quite the nice young man. Jim, that was so brave of you to rescue him and keep him company, back in my day, we played nice with everyone I just don’t understand why you kids can’t be more like us,” and so on, and so forth. Mom thought Jim was quite the humanitarian.

The next day at school found them walking down the hall together—a sight never before witnessed with any of the Ka-ichowskys. At first in awe of this anomaly, their classmates soon turned to taunts, calling out “Jim and Jerry sitting in a tree,” and “Looks like you’re as queer as your old man, Kaichowsky.” It was the best they could come up with, but it hurt nevertheless. Jim came home with a black eye that night. A few weeks later he asked for a Daisy Red Ryder BB gun. He never spoke to Jerry again.

A short time passed before it was his twelfth birthday when he finally unwrapped his Red Ryder and posed for that snapshot. The next day Jim went out to practice his aim. It was a pleasant fall day, just before Halloween. Autumn was warm that year, and you could still hear the hum of lawn mowers trying to get in one last trim before winter descended.

Jim started with clay bottles and was perfectly content shoot-ing at those until Dad came out to offer a few pointers. He should have offered him his empty beer cans as targets instead. I was working in the garage when I heard him say, in more or less slurred terms, that if Jim were to ever be a man, he would have to learn to shoot at wild animals.

“C’mon, son. How are you to provide for a family if you can’t bring home some meat? I didn’t raise you to be no nancy

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boy.” This last thought amused him as he sauntered off, cackling and wheezing from decades of Marlborough reds.

I knew these words had cut Jim. I wiped the grease off my hands and went out to the front yard to see what I could do. He was sitting on a log, his gun laying across his lap.

“Hey,” I said, “let me help you out a bit. Go tell Mom that we’ll be back for supper. I’m taking you into town. We’re gonna get you straightened out, pal.”

There was a standing rule that we couldn’t kill the squir-rels that scurried around our back yard. Mom thought they were cute. She thought they were so cute, in fact, that a mama squirrel and papa squirrel stared up at us from our dinner plate every night, picturesquely rendered in the cheap enamel dishes. Squirrels were off limits. We were going to town in search of some vermin whose presence would not be missed.

The alleyway between the Corner Fountain and Sundry and Rick’s Five and Dime dead-ended at a tall, wooden fence—the kind you could tell was old by its Swiss cheese knots from the wood (these were the holes through which many a cherry bomb would escape into Kaichowsky’s yard). The scenery didn’t vary much on either side of the alley. In fact, it was disguised as any old alley would be: brick walls, empty crates and garbage sacks. There was “Johnny and Susie Forever” and dirty words vagrantly scribbled across the walls (this was back in the day before multicolored spray paints). But this was pretty much it, besides the pigeons—lots of them. On any afternoon one could find them congregated, bobbing their heads at scraps from the Fountain and pecking at old mallow bar wrappers from Rick’s Five and Dime.

They were pests, to be sure. Every time Rick stepped outside to throw out empty display boxes, he had to navigate around the

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dumb birds, now scuttling between his feet, not knowing which way to go. They were especially bad this time of year when Hal-loween candy wrappers and smashed jack-o-lanterns littered the al-ley. Jim was going to do Rick quite a favor when we arrived at that alley with Jim’s brand new vanquisher in hand.

As we approached the end of the alley, I could tell fear gripped Jim’s heart as I noticed his frozen limbs. He was immobile as those pigeons stared up at us with black, beady eyes.

“They’re really just stupid animals, barely cognizant of their surroundings,” I said. I think I had read this in some science book. “They can’t feel a thing, Jim. Go on.”

The longer Jim stood there, the more birds bobbed up to him, pecking at his shoes which had just walked through a mound of pumpkin guts. I imagined what he was thinking as the gray feathers swirled at his feet. Why should he be such a scaredy cat? What would our Father say?

I knew he couldn’t do it on his own. “C’mon Jim, just be a man. One shot is all it takes and then it’s all over. Nice and easy. Be a man.”

And he looked quite the man as he brought the butt of the gun up to his shaking shoulder and aimed it at the flock. I held my breath with him as he cocked the gun, aimed and instead fired one, two, three shots into the back wall of the fence. He couldn’t kill the goddamn birds.

It is not known whether it was the first, second or third pel-let that hit Jerry Kaichowsky in the temple, killing him instantly as he rounded the rear corner of his father’s yard on the lawn mower, just as it is not known why Mr. Kaichowsky allowed his son to work on his precious lawn that day. What we do know is that both

Santa Fe • Dylan Campbell35

Larry and my brother were innocent, products of the wrong place at the wrong time. It was the worst kind of miracle; a tragic phe-nomenon. The Kaichowskys moved away not long after. The yard that had once been unspoiled now lay in total neglect, like the rest of the family. As for my brother, he was never prosecuted in light of the tragedy. If it were any other kid in that situation, he may have been able to get over it in time, to realize that it was not his fault. That it was a freak accident that has no explanations. But just as he could never forgive himself, as his brother I could never forgive myself either. I couldn’t look at him afterwards without feeling as if the gun were turned on me. Jim moved away from Wheaton after graduation and never came back. My brother and I haven’t spoken for twenty years.

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Curiousity • Ross Renjilian

CanvasJacqueline Dobabedian

In Remembrance of the Armenian Genocide of 1915

I

They stormed into our house tonightslicing through grape leaf busheswith blood on their tongues and saliva between the graves of their claws,the aroma of lamb shiskabob now dampened with blood,a pot of pilaf soaked in spit.

My little brother and Icrouching underneath the wicker,spied between the threads of the table cloth,as two batspierced my mother’s skin with their claws,asking her to choose:Your son or your sister.

I tried not to recognize the beads stringingfrom my mother’s eyes,but I knew.Bands of light beneath the tablecaught glimpses of the gleam of their clawscarving a baby from my aunt’s womb,

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her pulpy blood christening the dirty floors, the shadow of the dagger paintedacross our faces.

II

You will find megrinding teeth to gums as mybones jut from their scars andpails of blood inch across awhite room that isall too recognizable.

After they left us,I sprayed my bones across a canvasbecause latelyI remind myself of a flag:a flag of black lips and hollow cheeks,yet the things I represent are notthe pride of crimson bloodshed, the eternal hope beneath blue skies,or the diligence of orange harvests,but instead bones, just bones,a skeleton of shame.

When you peel away my skin,you will find beans pulsing like goose bumps,trapped in their cells,wrapped up in white walls,as I lie with a dead head, still eyes,the doctor using a scalpel to reopen old wounds.

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I attempt to smooth out my wrinklesinto the sheets of my bed,but like scars, wrinkles never fade.The memories are stapled to the backs of my eyelids;bands of red, blue, and orangescaring a soiled canvas.

La Rue • Shaimaa Abdelhamid 40

L to R: Aurey Harker; Lit, Nishita; Layout, Cary Lin; Lit, Corey Arterian; Chief Layout & Lit, Louis Lucero; Lit, Darius Izadpanah; Layout, Colin Dwyer; Co-Editor-in-Chief & Chief Lit, Erin Greene; Chief Public Relations Editor, Patreeya Prasertvit; Lit, Genevieve Geoghan; Lit, Jenna Kovalsky; Lit, Lauren Perez; Editor-in-Chief, Katie Kittrel; Chief Art Editor

Members Represented by Chess Pieces: Andrew Kwan; Lit, Daniel Rios; Lit, Jessie Grubman; Lit, Reshem Agrawal; Lit, Ian Crooker; Lit, Dana Horowitz; Lit, Jacqueline Donabedien; Lit, Daniel Rios; Lit, Kane Kuo; Lit

Paláver sincerely thanks Thematic Option and Vice Provost Bickers

for their support in making this publication possible, and especially President Sample for his long support

of this magazine.All the best,

The Staff.