future histories literary magazine future histories literary magazine
issue 1616 issue
prose poetry photo art prose poetry photo art
Dearest reader, Did you ever have an imaginary friend? When I was a kid, I would talk to my imaginary friend out loud in the mirror for hours. I thought I could hold her hand with my hand. One day, after a gap of weeks or months, I realized that I didn’t remember her name. There is a space in my mind like the outline of letters—the gesture towards an identity that I thought would never submit to impermanence—an empty vessel. Language is odd that way. There are things it expresses and things it points to. I think the kind of work that has gathered here at Future Histories has a lot to do with gaps. Gaps between people and places. Gaps between people and people. Gaps between you in your mind and the way the world boxes and sorts you. Gaps that shout. Gaps that reach out. Maybe they have hands. Maybe we can hold them. Maybe you can hold them too. One of my many imaginary friends was the concept of the number 85 and also (conceptually) an astronaut without a physical form. Like many of the ideas expressed by pieces in this issue, the texture of my friend’s presence and companionship could only fully exist in my head, and yet here I, like our authors, still try to bridge the moat that separates my mind palace and yours as best I can. Thanks to our gallant staff and authors, the pieces have been written, edited, and published—our best drawbridges are lowered—and I only ask that you raise your portcullises and embrace all sorts of gaps.
Love, Newt (they/xe) and Anderson (they/he)
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OUR TEAM TEAM CO-CHAIRS
NEWT GORDON-REIN ANDERSON TOOLE
HEAD COPY EDITOR
OLIVIA BYE
CO-HEADS OF DESIGN
CARYS YANG CHERRY CHEN
COPY EDITORS
CLAIRE LECATES MAITRI MISRA SOPHIE LUZIER
DESIGN TEAM
AITANA ROSS LILI MIKO
WRITER LIAISON
MARS HORIGAN
photo | Carys Yang cover art | Analiese Christensen fh 2
art| Vivian Gao
Featured Artists Stacey Pak . Armita Hamrah Carys Yang . LiLi Miko . Lilly Marchbanks Nella Hakobyan . Newt Gordon-Rein . Vivian Gao
Thanks to all of our content reviewers! fh 3
photo | Armita Hamrah
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Table of Contents When You Look At Me by Flora Yang....................................................................5 Dyslexia - it vexed me by LiLi Miko.......................................................................6 tithe by Annika Crawford....................................................................................7 We did all we could, but by LiLi Miko....................................................................8 is it enough? by Flora Yang....................................................................................9 Animate by Evan Weimann...........................................................................10-11 A Reptile Dysfunction by Anderson Toole.............................................................12 Spring by Finnegan Thompson...........................................................................13 Quenepas by Mekhai Valentine...........................................................................14 Well-fed by Sam Stearns.....................................................................................15 Symphonic Sestina by Nina Dawallu..................................................................16-17 There is a woman in the sky by Lilly Marchbanks..................................................18 Thinking in Home Depot by Evan Vezmar.............................................................19 Apple Kill and illustration by Yolanda Ma.....................................................20-21 One Night After not Dancing by Newt Gordon-Rein................................................22 QubicaAMF as Determinism by Anderson Toole...................................................23 Its whiteness hasn’t gotten under my skin yet! by Ghazaleh Seidabadi...................24-25 Wounds and scars by Jamar Leaston.....................................................................26 Let’s Hear It for the Gentlemen by Max Turnacioglu...............................................27 my yeast by Newt Gordon-Rein.......................................................................28-29 New York Said She Loved Me the other day by Sam Stearns.................................30-31 Ladisa, with a Spanish accent! by Ghazaleh Seidabadi......................................32-33 Don’t think of her by Sam Stearns...................................................................34-35 Fruitcake Commune by Anderson Toole.................................................................36 Small bugs by Evan Vezmar.................................................................................37 fh 4
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When You Look At Me
by Flora Yang
art | Nella Hakobyan
When you look at me, do you see my eyes– the roads I’ve strode upon barefoot, the soups that have burned my tongue or do you see my skin, my body, morphing into something you once felt in a dream, something you could shape into endless wonders? Do you feel my anger –I am almost bursting into flames, my eyes narrowed, loaded. Or do you only feel the warmth of my breath, wishing to tear apart my heart, to enjoy its flushing veins? When you look at me, do you see a woman, or a delicate lamp on your nightstand, a cat curled in your lap? I have no tears.
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DYSLEXIA - IT VEXED ME BY
Dyslexia, why do you treat me so? Dyslexia, I wrote to you, and you said no
L I LI M I K O
art| Lilly Marchbanks
But it was yes And I fear it is immense Every sentence Another fence in the Word-tense And I know you But Dyslexia, you broke my heart And told me I’m broken And now every time I misspell I think of you, and all you tell You revealed the side of me that I Didn’t understand Is this why I struggle? A mortal in with the wizards No wonder I can’t spell I don’t have magic, I have a tragic brain Dyslexia, you vex me And take my heart and test me Dyslexia the effects of ya Are faster than I can text it Dyslexia, you fear me Because you are me And I’m scared And this explains Everything
Well, that makes sense. You aren’t broken. You try really hard because you work differently. And much of your life will be trying to figure that out.
But changes nothing
But it’s okay, Dyslexia.
Except for the voice in my head Which now says ‘error, well, that makes sense.’
I forgive you. We can live together and be okay.
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photo | Armita Hamrah
knees up against the leather the breeze flips my pages bus seat full of holes for me and pen scratchings hello erin hunter hello jerry spinelli twirling the wool string that I smell horse dung hangs from my beanie I smell snow melting I hang on to the edge of my seat a football the boys whizzes by in the back laugh and the girls hold their eyes – green blue brown gold moving their jaws when they talk like they’re chewing gum but they’re not Hey! Why do they do that This is our stop! my sister I scoop my book pinches my arm off the seat tuck it under my arm crinkly library binding flaking off in the aisle drop my glove like my scarf last week;
by Annika Crawford
my mom won’t be happy…
tithe
my tithing to a world I owe so deeply
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art | Newt Gordon-Rein
We did all we could, butBy LiLi Miko
I’m sorry, ma’am, we did all we could, but we lost all the grey matter and in the process, the left side stopped working, and we captured lightning and tried to use it to get it to start again, but it didn’t work we do have lightning in a jar, though, but you already knew that the right side is mostly still working, but the amygdala is abnormal. And variance is always bad. We can’t tell why it’s functioning this way, but it seems to be hyperactive but it seems like everything else is firing at half the normal speed. We did all we could, but we spilled paint in it, and now it’s half blue and then to try to clean the paint out we unraveled the brain a bit, but when we tried to put it back in, we couldn’t get it quite the same. The wrinkles and gyri are different now she’ll probably be sneezing for a few months, hopefully she’ll get the blue paint out of her system and we put in a few LEDs, in colours red, blue, yellow, and white we were hoping they would help the electricity move faster, but they might make no change if you want to check if they’re on, just look into her ear for a blue light if they don’t work, they won’t cause any damage essentially, they’re just festive. Anyway, she’ll probably be acting weird for the rest of her life. Couldn’t fix that.
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Is It Enough by Flora Yang if i crush my bones and blood and mold my entire life into the shape of a heart to fill the gaping hole between your ribs, you hollowed man? you shake your head, and i quiver your hands lay open– i don’t want this from you. as i kneel there and count the lines on your palm, rivers in my heart, i can still see your eyes, shiny like the edge of broken glass from last night. my overspills stained your carpet, your walls, Your lips what can i wash it off with, other than my tears? i still can’t get out of your bed; it keeps me warm. Fire to a moth, as i heave for air to breathe– you put your hand onto mine, your rivers flow into me, surging, and i can’t stop raining.
art | Lilly Marchbanks
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Animate
art | Vivian Gao
by Evan Weimann
Entering a cemetery always makes me aware of my body. I think about the movement of my limbs, my breath, my heartbeat—the small things which separate my body from those beneath me. I’ve come here to write, meaning I think that I might extract something from these headstones to capture and take away with me. Glancing at the blurry forms which patrol the cemetery, I feel chilled and exposed without my glasses, in my running clothes, a notebook clutched against my hip. I self-consciously wander my way to the back of the cemetery, past some elderly women whose voices echo cheerfully from the tiny stone chapel, and a maintenance worker’s stalling white pickup. Mt Pleasant Cemetery is not quite a natural space, with its mowed grass and rounded topiary. The landscape is embalmed using pesticides and weedwackers, beating back the greenery which writhes around the base of each headstone. It is a battlefield in which we win our pyrrhic victories against the inevitability of decay.
lawn. Humans have crafted this wonderful clutter, emergently over time, like the knick knacks which accumulate on a desk. Cemeteries are natural in the way that a heavily-graffitied tunnel is natural. Each grave marked a meaningful event to whomever placed it there, as evidence of a living and breathing human who once resided somewhere near here. Now, walking these paths is like walking a busy city street, knowing that each face you pass represents only a fragment of an inner life which is as rich and meaningful to that person as yours is to you. The aggregation of many such passings creates a human tapestry whose meaning is both greater and less than the sum of its parts. Bodies multiply into anonymity, losing themselves in order to create a monument which is greater than any individual. Symbols proliferate into texts. Texts creep as vines across the landscape. Among the tangle: bodies, landscapes and symbols must learn to live with each other.
I walk until I find a shady tree near the back of the cemetery. The tree stands in viThe embalming process positions Mt olation of the neatly-spaced rows of graves Pleasant somewhere in the uncanny valley between animacy and death. It is in the sort in this section, a single headstone leaning of disarray which is made possible only by mischievously against its trunk. Squinting at the weathered inscription, I read the an off-putting cleanliness, with stone urns and lonely oaks strewn arbitrarily across the headstone of Evelyn and Walter Wing. fh 10
Evelyn and Walter have been here for a while, and I figure they won’t mind some company. I rest against the tree, retrieving the pen in my pocket. I take note of the cool breeze and the sunlight which filters gently through the leaves. Yellow-brown leaves careen to the ground around us. I hear birds and cicadas. Cars trundle to and fro from just beyond the fence.
changing states of my body, like how the grass itches against my legs. I shift restlessly, adjusting my body until I’m sitting atop my shoe, but now my foot loses circulation and my spine begins to ache. A fly buzzes by my ear and experiences a high-speed collision with my knee. I notice a bulbous black ant crawling on my phone, which I’ve left sitting in the grass, and it’s joined by one of those skeletal red bugs for which I don’t Back here, only a thin line of trees separates know a name. Another ant is creeping its the stagnant cemetery from the hurtling way up my thigh, and I smack it away with metal bodies of cars. Some engineer the back of my hand. It flies in a perfect designed these roads with wide turns and parabola, landing somewhere among its few crosswalks, probably thinking that no brethren hiding in the grass. I wonder if it’s one would even bother to walk here. On the okay. Veganism has not quelled my instinct way here I dodged and weaved across the to do violence against insects who violate streets, whose metallic denizens are my personal space. Nor has it made me inhospitable to anything which moves totally calm around bees, as much as I’d like slower than themselves. The automobile is to be that sort of person. As a bee circles an old symbol of the future, of a modernity near me, I carefully track its movements, which is forever in motion. A thin aware that I am leaving myself vulnerable membrane of bark and wire marks the to other threats. After a few moments, I cemetery as separate from that moving, sheepishly stand and retreat to the other interconnected world. It is a space which side of the tree. Running a hand through humans have delineated to give us my hair, I pull out an angular gray bug, permission to stop. For me this is a holding it between my forefinger and my momentary rest. I can justify my sloth to thumb. It buzzes angrily at me until I remyself by writing, which I’ve been led lease it from my fingers. to believe is a productive activity. Evelyn and Walter don’t have such a luxuriously I’m reminded that I’m not the only body liminal experience of this place, as just a in motion here. Insects bore tunnels in the stop during an otherwise-busy day. But in branches above my head, and Evelyn and comparison to how I frantically scribble in Walter consort with worms beneath my my notebook, there is a luxurious stillness in feet. It would be hubris to think that a body the apparent finality of their rest. can rest in peace. At some point we must learn to live with one another. Of course, I’ve spoken too soon by describing the cemetery as stagnant. Stopping has made me aware of the fh 11
A Reptile Dysfunction By Anderson Toole stone-to-soil silt-on-scale grass-rasping-past fur-in-the-air Hunger, slipping-between-sunpools shaking-off-shade skin-bagging––time-to-grow hug the rocks––they help new skin beneath the old, mine, different this time I wonder what it would be to work with another’s hands their arms in front of me instead of my own and my thoughts behind their eyes different constellations of scars and moles stalking moles, sneaky moles in garden holes, squeaky sneaky snack (hunger) not so different, probably in the way all hotel rooms are the same, or have the same things, in the way the gear shift is different in a friend’s car maybe i wouldn’t scrape skin off so readily if it were borrowed, excitement of newness holding me together soil-to-stone, itching or gifted rather than thrust upon me, inevitable my body knows what to do, how to move––buffing out scuffs, sanding me smooth, different gear shift, same gear (H, for hunger) how well do i know the back of my hand? my hand knows itself and holds the grindstone for me, raw skin baby-soft and weeping, fresh scale, ever-replenishing hunger a pattern reveals itself
art | LiLi Miko art | Carys Yang
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art | Carys Yang
Quenepas by Mekhai Valentine
Its leathery green skin had blemished brown patches. A light tug would pull one off its crooked net of branches, Fitting in the hand easily. With enough pressure the shell would burst, Revealing a vibrant orange. I would dig my fingernails into the skin, (I never cared about the pulp Getting stuck underneath them,) And free the fleshy interior. Then, I’d pop it into my mouth: Rolling off the molars, brushing the insides of the cheeks, Rubbing between the tongue and roof of the mouth, Nibbling, gently, the pale seed inside. But the flavor is fleeting. Sweet, surely. Yet, I’m certain of the dryness On my tongue that always followed, And that, after spitting it out, the taste would linger. Now, I see fruit stands on the street. Abuelitos and abuelitas With their hand-drawn signs: Guava, Papaya, Mango, Banana, Pineapple, And those crooked branches. But I keep walking. And only for a moment, Do I try to remember.
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art | Lilly Marchbanks
Well-Fed
art | LiLi Miko
By Sam Stearns
there is that one picture with your hair aloof and wispy like the soft pink clouds behind it that paint the sky there is the way you tuck your whole head very neatly into mine on the couch with my mother and her mother and somewhere even further her mother there are the woody orange hues of a guitar made a century ago there is the familiarity with which you breathe pleasure into my ear there are the blisters on the tips of your fingers there is the new house that your father decided not to buy there are bright yellow beams of morning sun over the icy lake you grew up on there is dead grass all along the lawn there are knitted wooly shawls that we share when the winds hit there are big meals that take many holiday candles there are long ambient drives over north country roads there is your hand reaching over the car seat headrest to find mine every so often there is the sleepiness you press into me there are wild geese shooting across the blue as we come upon the bigger hill there are no more christmas trees
they’re all sold out
there are more boat stories that your uncles have to tell there is one story that I am still waiting on there are sunsets and sunrises and very often nothing in between there is no fixing everything in the house at once it’s going to take a whole lifetime there are crowds of unknowns where I grew up there is a bird in the speaker of my phone that the dog in my living room is hearing here is a smell from your bathroom that I still cannot shake there is a slow hungry ache of your fingers down my chest here are leftover cookies in the fridge and the dishwasher is clean there are songs you would rather me not sing but i still do
sometimes.
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Symphonic SeStina by Nina Dawallu
We arrive before rehearsal starts We’re early because we heard The story: the cellist was late, got kicked out. And the rain will come through The windows we left open In our rush to be on time.
The oboe gives the A, it’s time 9:10a.m. when the downbeat starts The conductor, with arms open Smiles but we thought we heard A wrong note in the strings— no, not through The trumpets that drown us out. He tells us bring out The line by taking time. You’re rushing through. Again. From the top. He restarts We do what we heard The sound soars open. fh 16
We can’t say when the curtains will open Or when the audience will file out. We only hope they heard The rhythmic pull of time. We did our parts: the music starts Itself, and we follow-through. On stage we feel see-through Like an orange peeled open, The skin one sticky spiral. Tapping starts But we threw the metronome out We can keep the time. We can keep the pulse we’ve heard.
An accidental clap is heard Between movements, it pierces through The silence (not the first time) Blame the cadence, a trick, open To the gullible. More music is laid out: The next story starts. We have heard many times It starts with the breath Through our open lungs we let the music out.
art | Nella Hakobyan fh 17
There is a woman in the sky By Lilly Marchbanks
When I look up, I see her She’s a dancer The woman in the sky She waves in gusts of wind She’s a dreamer of sorts To the stars she reports As her beauty changes and shifts The sun accessorizes her gifts with the eyes of a bluebell No wonder Icarus fell
art | LiLi Miko
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Thinking in Home Depot
by Evan Vezmar
i asked you once, what it meant to work on oneself, and you told me that it was selfish because most people can’t afford to only think about themselves. i replied that DIY projects are by yourself for a reason, that you fashion something, a life, if you’re creative enough, out of the pure genius of your mind. you accused me of narcissism. i didn’t disagree. you warned about the ship of theseus, parts so replaced, that its soul was no longer the same. i was curious about theseus’s repair fees, and how he probably was wasting money by replacing all the parts instead of getting a new boat. i didn’t mean when i said i was working on myself to make it sound like an accusation like your presence was like weedkiller to my personal growth. like your attention was the wrong shade of paint for my walls. you told me i was pushing you away solo slowly hammering away at our bonds. i realize that i went too far in chiseling my ideal image. pushing everyone away to focus on my craft i chipped off so much that i ran out of marble i cracked into nothing, a failed project i can’t rebuild in theory, i wondered aloud, how would i know when i was done working on myself especially if i spent my days laying mortar and brick around my heart until neither you nor i could hear it beat? you had no reply, and maybe it was for the best i no longer had a soul to speak, a hundred million scribbled-over blueprints all ripped to shreds
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art | LiLi Miko
Apple Kill by Yolanda Ma That day, E forgot to lock the door. She underestimated how long she would wander outside. For a short time, allowing free entry and exit causes nothing to happen. Left unattended for too long, however, the consequence is an uninvited guest. When E returned, the room was filled with warm air mixed with its own scent—a territorial declaration like a massive wave, capable of frightening away any living creature. But someone was there, occupying the room’s only chair. After a few seconds of silent shock, E turned on the light, threw the door wide open, and stepped back into the hallway. Before E could speak, the other said, “This is my room.” “My room?!” E wanted to laugh—a cold laugh. She thought of the clothes, the objects, the floor, the tabletop, it tended to every day. How had this person walked in wearing shoes— No. E lowered her head and saw the shoes placed neatly to one side. She picked them up and carried them into the hallway. But had this person washed his hands? Were his clothes clean? How could he dare to sit there so casually? “Do you know every object here?” E blurted out. “And do you?” the other asked in return. As if that even needed asking… E scanned the room, only to discover how strangely resplendent it was—those old objects that should have been coated in dust. The clothes bought on ordinary days were unimportant, because they were destined to be the right size, to fit perfectly into the compartments made for them. And so E did not remember—did not remember when they were bought, or why—only that it must have been dragged along by its mother. The other noticed E’s confusion and, vividly, began recounting his own existence as a person—how it had once been certified into being by the room’s objects themselves. One apple was missing from the short cabinet.
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The person picked up another apple and blinked. Bubbles surfaced in its eyes, compressed, trembling, then bursting. Its pupils drifted toward the upper left corner, where the ceiling bore the same stains as its own. Turning back toward E at the doorway, he held up the apple and said, “I am the apple.” I understand you.
art | Yolanda Ma
I’ve seen your blue-violet screen.
I watched you change clothes in front of a mirror no larger than two palms, where the angle made your body appear curved. I felt the jolting rise and fall inside your belly. I pressed myself against your teeth inside your mouth, searching for an angle—scratched by them, then scooped aside as you hollowed out my flesh. E likes eating apples. She chooses beautiful ones—preferably with evenly scattered speckles or subtle gradients. Of course, apples that look utterly ordinary—the kind bundled with a set meal, randomly picked from a box by a salesclerk—can also bring surprises. Thank you for being so delicious, so very delicious. E photographs them in gratitude. Apple juice runs all over her hands and can be easily washed away with clean water. But before a source of water is found, the apple’s blood clings stubbornly to the palms. Like hands stiff with cold, flushed red and white—muscles tugging as the fingers open and close. And so it is: whenever the hands are shaped into something slender, it may be the apple’s residual consciousness interlacing its fingers with yours, occupying the gaps between fingertips and flesh. The person said, We are like lovers.
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One Night, After not Dancing by Newt Gordon-Rein kill me, love, with soft, with breathless, with you said how are you so good at the little kisses? not knowing more than to press your lips softly I said Sometimes I feel like I don’t make you happy. said Sometimes I feel like I make your life worse. what is there to soften that nothing into something soft ? love, I, would never, kill, myself, on purpose
art | Stacey Pak
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QubicaAMF as Determinism by Anderson Toole
I, born, leave your greasy hands at speed Skipping along over the trinity of cavernous holes your fingers left And once in a while, I’ll look over my shoulder and catch a glimpse of you Toga, beard, hot wings! And even as I venture farther from your touch I know that eventually I will return to your Kingdom and be in your hands once more, but first Job’s challenge, violence of life What can I achieve with the role I was given, and What will happen when I pass through those ten pearly columns? I am faced with a choice that was never mine—Split! Path of least resistance straight to gutter’s gentle cradle, or brace, and hold fast, brave that trial for which I was cast and bear forward, marking for scarce seconds those taunting targets points on the board wave to Saint Peter! and then into unknown reaches, underbelly of a chassis of your creation, stolidly erasing me, and the souls that had come prior and so eternally forward. I am spat out near to you again, forgetting all that I have come to know, sat between siblings patiently waiting to again be taken and anointed to feel your ambition behind us cast again, all your plans for what we are to accomplish sweet Jesus. you really art | Stacey Pak suck at bowling.
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Its whiteness hasn’t gotten under my skin yet! By Ghazaleh Seidabadi Today, “M” at the office said the issues in my country shouldn’t weigh on my shoulders. Maybe it’s time to put that burden down for a while and see what kind of artist I want to be. I felt so free hearing that sentence. I had never thought I could be a woman artist, or even just an artist, independent of my being Iranian. Independent of what I call home. The excitement and freedom from that sentence stayed with me. It walked with me on the way home—no, not home. On the way to the room I rent in a building. We reached the door of the building where my rented room is. I bent down to take off my boots. The excitement and euphoria of M’s sentence threw its weight onto my shoulders. It didn’t take off its shoes. It slid and draped itself over my back. I dragged it with me into the room. I changed out of my outdoor clothes. I lay down on the bed. It, still wearing the same clothes from the office and having walked with me all the way, lay down beside me on the bed. My bed in the rented room is small. It doesn’t have enough room for the two of us. When it moved, its hands and feet dug into my body. It hurt to have it there. I thought I’d be willing to share this bed with “T” or “SH.” They also move, but they don’t sink into me. Their movement doesn’t hurt. We sat on two chairs at the round table by the window. “I’m Ghazal. I had never met such freedom before.” “No, that’s not it, Ghazal, with a Gha.” “No, that’s not it. It’s okay!” It tried to pronounce my name correctly, but it didn’t work! It tried. Five times, six times, ten times! It just doesn’t work! We were happy with the familiarity though, We decided to be good friends and check in on each other from time to time. Maybe, if we had the chance, we’d even have deep conversations over tea. But we could never become one! Its whiteness hasn’t gotten under my skin yet! I saw it off. It left through the window. It was free; it flew away. Like my book, The Bird Girl, who closes her eyes and flies away. When she closes her eyes, she sees the children of the world, she sees elephants, giraffes, mountains, fields, lambs! She sees everything. Everything except her feet. Feet that don’t walk! When I was making The Bird Girl and giving her flight, I forgot to ask her if she likes her feet. Do her feet sink into her body in bed? Do they hurt her? Has she managed to become one with them? Or have they just become good friends, and when she opens her eyes, she tells them stories of her travels?
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“T” in Meins had asked his friend if, after all these years of being apart from his best friend, they could still fight over chat or video call. His friend said they could. “T” felt relieved. So, surely we too can get angry and have fights. You can’t feel close to someone if you can’t get mad at them! I didn’t say anything, but I felt relieved too! I’m angry at this place; at this place and a few other places in the world! But can, for example, an Afghan refugee say to the embassy officer that the Taliban didn’t just sprout from nowhere? Or can a Palestinian refugee say that the budget for the aggressor government’s bombings should have finally run out by now, but it hasn’t? I like the people here; they are kind. They want to pronounce my name correctly! “L” asked me why I didn’t get angry when something that applied to the rest of us didn’t apply to me because I’m Iranian. Or why I didn’t bat an eye when, at a certain event at MIT, the curator lady acted a little racist toward me! She didn’t remember; it was exactly last week, on this very day, that when I said in response to a classmate’s question that I don’t really like it here, she immediately and with surprise asked: “Then why did you come here?” Today, I told her quietly that I am angry at this place. Not in her ear, but not very loudly either. Almost on the side! “L” is just very white. She’s not trying to be mean. She wants to say my name correctly. When I told her that many immigrants are angry at this place, she understood! She didn’t ask why they’re here. I think we will become good friends; maybe we’ll even take a trip to New York someday. But we’ll definitely book two single rooms at the hotel, I’ll take my shoes off at the door, and she’ll walk around the room in hers! Continue futurehitsories.org. continue reading at futurehistorieslit.org
art | Nella Hakobyan
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art | LiLi Miko
Wounds and Scars By Jamar Leaston
Different wounds Same scars Trust is your issue We’re more similar than we’re not Expecting the worst From everybody is our flaw Know, Never alone This issue is resolved When trust gets abused We learn to hate to trust I’m the same as you Denial hurts the worst And pain is never easy Usually… Hard to express Truthfully, It’s up-side-down But I smile for the mask So I know the stoic look When inside the tears dash Different wounds Same scars Trust is the issue We’re more similar than we’re not
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Let’s Hear It for the Gentlemen by Max Turnacioglu What on high the sun did glow! With tattered wings through lowly brush and water, murky, rushing by dust and meekness mark the sky But sing for them: the one they lost on the moon But sing for them: that old crooner’s tune What’s sauce for ganders! Feathers sooty, wind pulled and plucked and metal pellets struck in that long burning forge coarse cold water for the high-walled gorge But sing for them: the ones without ears But sing for them: house of perpetual fear What’s over the edge! A placid simple leering bunch don’t touch, now peer below Please let it fade some shy seraph, mud-stained fool and off cellophane wings a lurid glow But let’s have a song! It’s empty now in my heart of steel In coughs and fits she so long annealed Hold still your hand, the beating sounds Cold axe, cold edge, warm dying ground It cannot be that the daughter of these tears should be lost.
photo | Carys Yang
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my yeast by Newt Gordon-Rein something unpleasant about yeast in my mouth. throat. voice box. laryngitis and I forgot what else. something different in my ear. when Doctor looked, he said “oh.” oh. bread on my body, bread on the floor. an elusive video. I struggle with knowing whether something is popular or just a freak niche discovered by my friends. the latter. an employee at a pet store, wet explains how they were holding fishes in those impossible plastic bags when the bags broke. they say “fish on my body, fish on the floor.” I say impossible because what a thin and human thing, to hold a life in. or perhaps because I never got one. they were the thing of Nemo-based nightmares (a fact: in the 6th grade, my best friend told me how her nanny Charlie ruined Nemo for her, and curious, I, mouth covered, learned that a father clownfish sometimes changes its sex and mates with its offspring. and since Nemo, in the tradition of early 2000s kid heroes, has no mother, perhaps, his father is searching for him in order to procreate. oh.) populated by cruel children from movies made 10 years before. life in a bag. not unlike aid package to wartorn city not unlike secure your own mask
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before helping others. the bag will not inflate but oxygen will be flowing how odd what I find myself uncomfortable with. in the report from the Urgent Care, “Routine respiratory flora Moderate growth” no explanation of what this means. but I know that I find it distasteful. flora. in my body. and aren’t we always going on about how funguses are so synaptic? so what if, in my throat and voice box, an intelligence, nestled why is this news? I was thinking, in some spiritual way, that this was my body, externalizing grief, that my outsides, yearning to match my insides, manifested illness. very inconvenient. I wanted to be with the people as they graduated. and cavorted. I wanted my partner to lay with me. biblically. I wanted to go touch the ocean. that splash-touch I thought maybe would heal me instantly, miraculously, but instead I came here and ate fake chicken soup, learned nothing and made my elbow sore carving in bed (must get rid of the evidence!)
art | Nella Hakobyan
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New York Said She Loved Me the other day by Sam Stearns
New York said she loved me on Prospect Ave just before the 9th street entrance to the park It was because the sun was setting, and the two dollar hot dog carts were bathed in the tangerine light I’ve come to expect and the Wesleyan college graduates were out on the town and the trees were nice New York said she loved me and she looked like she meant it this time she looked like she wasn’t just kidding, or she wasn’t also saying it to ten thousand others at this very second, looking in on her from the stained-glass window of a subway car So I said it back or at least tried to Like my name was James Murphy or Like it could be branded on a grey t-shirt screen printed a hundred times for the Broadway souvenir shops or Like I hadn’t left her for another the week before and another last month, like I’ve been faithful to her, in the way I was for so long And inside of the park there was a neo-soul trio at the bandshell and the clouds were nice She told me the other day, too! When I was still on the bus on the highway on the way to Midtown, flashing her grey-sky skyline skeletal frame at me for a second, which was a nice relief from the traffic and a Boeing soared over me on its way to LaGuardia (the unimaginable beauty of all the structures not designed with beauty in mind)
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But two European tourists that I had spoken with earlier were also staring at her sick voyeurs—the both of them—but they’d never seen her before—except for on postcards—so who could blame them for not knowing that she’s mine and she’s been mine and I watched as they watched her so shallow so thoughtless seeing the surface Not me I can see right through the new dark-grey high-rise in downtown Brooklyn and I can see into every subway platform and every subway train I am looking into the eyes of the homeless man in the corner seat who you pretend not to be worried about on your commute home from the jazz bar I watch the rustling vines that grow on the side of mud-colored clay buildings that used to be tenements and observe the ebb and flow of tourists from a red booth at a pizza place called Joe’s I know her like nobody else, I know the way she thinks, I know what her eyes do when she laughs, I know the foods she’d rather not eat, it’s all beautiful, so when she says she loves me, earnestly this time, and not full of sarcasm and spite, I believe her, because I can afford to because I am back for just a few weeks collectively every year and feel the resurgent adrenaline of capital-h Home in my veins because I walk fast and do not appreciate “bagels” that are just bread with holes in them I believe her, and she can tell because she will say it again the next time everybody is on the great lawn smiling on blankets and the sky is nice
art | Armita Hamrah
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Ladisa, with a Spanish accent! by Ghazaleh Seidabadi
She said hi to me. I had never seen her before, but she said hi warmly and sincerely, just like an Easterner! “You said ‘Ladisa’ so well!” she said, grinning as wide as her face would allow. I got excited. Thrilled, like eating an ice cream bar after school with “T”! “Are you serious? Did I really pronounce it right?” “Yeah, you said it so well.” I felt heard. I told her I was really, really happy that I called her by her name correctly the first time. No one here can pronounce my name correctly. She asked for my real name. She couldn’t pronounce “Gh”, but I didn’t tell her. It didn’t matter to me. I wanted her to be happy, to feel heard! I don’t think anyone else could understand this feeling of joy as well as we do! Plus, she pronounced the rest of my name way better than anyone else. This afternoon, “A” asked, “Where’s home?” “L” said, “Somewhere nearby,” and I said, “Good question!” “A” said he didn’t want to call the four walls he rents here “home.” he calls it the place where I sleep. I was happy, not because of “A’s” homesickness, but because we shared a point in common. It’s not just me who’s wandered so far from home that I’ve lost it. “L” also said she missed home, which was three hours away in time difference. I don’t know how many hours ahead “A’s” home is, but I do know that someday, maybe this place could be home. No, this place could not become home; I could pretend it is. It’s not that hard. Maybe even easier, so much easier. All I have to do is to be “G”—just that!
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But I don’t want this place to be home. I don’t want to leave “T” and “V” and “K” and “Sh” in a place that isn’t home. Most importantly, I don’t want to leave behind “Gh.” I like “Gh” more than G. With an Iranian accent! A while ago, “M” said she missed the way people would pronounce her name back at home. When she first came here, she tried different names, but you know, none of them were actually her! She said she sometimes even forgets exactly how to say it herself—the way it should be, short and quick, with a sound somewhere between Zh and Z. I got scared. But no, it’s impossible for me to forget “Gh.” “Will you teach me how to pronounce your name?” “To be honest, I’m really not ready for it yet. If I’m ever ready, I’ll tell you.” My heart sank; it felt like when I’d finish my ice cream, and “T” would still be licking hers with a teasing grin. But I understood. In my heart, I kept repeating her name. I still do sometimes in my head; I don’t know if I’m saying it right, but I try to keep it short and with a sound between Zh and Z. I was in such a good mood. Ladisa… Ladisa… Ladisa! I whispered it under my breath so I wouldn’t lose the right pronunciation! I decided I’d repeat it so much that even if I had an accident, got a concussion, and somehow forgot “Gh,” I’d never forget Ladisa! “I’m working on an art project about how names change through the migration process; would you like to join and tell your story?” She liked the idea, put her number into my phone, saved her name, and told me to text her. I took the phone back from her. L A R R I S A! Larisa! My ice cream bar is gone, and now I don’t know how to call her name anymore!
art | LiLi Miko
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Don’t think of her by Sam Stearns
Somewhere in between 14th Street and Canal Street on the Q train, me and C were sitting arm in arm, coming back from the club. My legs were up, feet perched on the seat in front of me. C was tucked into my shoulder and my makeup was starting to fade and we each had one headphone in. I was blinking and looking at the nothing in the corner of the subway car. Feeling the way she felt on my skin, thinking about beds, and homes. The train pulled into Canal Street and a group of 20-somethings walked on, netted shirts and colorful hair and tall boots, moving with all the buoyancy of young people who do not sleep. Instantly I could tell that they were looking at us. One of them pointed in our direction when he thought I wasn’t paying attention, and another whispered something like “so cute.” I held back a smile. Looking at us, I contemplated, these 20-somethings saw two lovers intertwined on their way home. A relationship, a boyfriend and a girlfriend, a couple. And suddenly that felt right. Suddenly I needed these 20-somethings to keep on believing that we were a couple—a real couple—not two people who’d met just earlier that day. I thought about what a real couple would do. I pulled C in a little closer. The movement made her look up at me and we locked eyes. I gave her my best attempt at a photo | Armita Hamrah tired, knowing smile and squeezed her arm with my hand. Subtle, shared moments that belied a long history of love. The train ascended onto the Manhattan Bridge. I turned my head to watch the glowing diorama city pass by, and felt C turn on my shoulder. No, that wasn’t enough. I let my head loll onto the window, keeping my eyes fixated on the East River. Her head fell onto my shoulder. There. Perfect. Now we weren’t just in love with each other—we were in love with the city, too. A relationship rooted in place. I turned and leaned into her ear and said something quietly. Some stupid joke, I don’t remember. She smiled, said something back. We were both too tired to speak coherently. It didn’t matter. Because to the 20-somethings, it could’ve been beautiful. Or poetic, or well-crafted, or contemplative, or sexy, even. They didn’t know. They couldn’t. I felt myself smiling. Swelling up with pride. But when I looked back up to check on our audience, there was nothing. Empty seats, swaying train car, flickering lights. There was a pit in my stomach. How long had they been gone? How long had my little act been pointless? The train moved towards 7th Avenue, Some hours earlier and two boroughs away, I met C for the first time at a brunch with all of our friends. This was where I learned that she was a year older than me. That she somehow knew everyone I knew, but had never met me. That she was also a writer, and also listened to pretentious music, and also planned to go to the club with us later. That she was leaving for France the next day and had nowhere to crash for the night. Now it is the next day, and I am standing with C and all of her bags at the subway station. And I’m feeling all the blood rush into my cheeks because I didn’t really consider how awkward it was going to be. All the people around us, the midday foot traffic, and here we are trying to have some kind of goodbye. We’re hugging, then, and then we kiss, briefly, and then she is walking with all her bags through the turnstile and towards the platform, and I suddenly feel very lightheaded. I have done breakups before, I have done goodbyes, and see-you-laters, and seeyou-laters that turned out to be goodbyes, and I should know what to expect, but somehow it all evades me and in an instant she is gone from sight and I’m walking back home.
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photo | Carys Yang
photo | Carys Yang I’m thinking about old 19th century novels, and lovers across oceans, and promises made to be kept. Maybe that’s why I’m drafting a letter. I was going to type something out and print it, because I work better on my computer, but that felt informal, so I am working with an old pen and a piece of looseleaf. I accumulate three drafts, going on and on about the stupidest things—books I think she should read, music I’ve been listening to, questions that I should’ve asked her, what I’ve been doing and how the city is and why I think she should write me back. Each draft says essentially the same thing in different words, but after each one is finished, I methodically ball it up and toss it across my bedroom into the garbage. I have to stop myself before starting a fourth one. All day yesterday I felt so empty. My mind somersaulted and spun itself around, tearing at the walls of my psyche, trying hopelessly to comprehend why I felt so weird over a girl I knew for twenty-four hours. Why I couldn’t eat, or go outside, or call my friends. I gather the drafts from the trash can. Unfold them. Stare at the words I’ve written, all crammed together across the page in my messy handwriting. It hits me: none of these words are mine. Somewhere in between 77th Street and 60th Street on Central Park West, me and C were walking aimlessly side by side. Having just met at the brunch on the Upper West Side, we realized we were both going downtown, and also both needed some fresh air. It’d been something like thirty blocks together, but neither of us wanted to stop... ... I’m thinking about old 19th century novels, and lovers across oceans, and promises made to be kept. Maybe that’s why I’m drafting a letter. I was going to type something out and print it, because I work better on my computer, but that felt informal, so I am working with an old pen and a piece of looseleaf. I accumulate three drafts, going on and on about the stupidest things—books I think she should read, music I’ve been listening to, questions that I should’ve asked her, what I’ve been doing and how the city is and why I think she should write me back. Each draft says essentially the same thing in different words, but after each one is finished, I methodically ball it up and toss it across my bedroom into the garbage. I have to stop myself before starting a fourth one. All day yesterday I felt so empty. My mind somersaulted and spun itself around, tearing at the walls of my psyche, trying hopelessly to comprehend why I felt so weird over a girl I knew for twenty-four hours. Why I couldn’t eat, or go outside, or call my photo | Armita Hamrah friends. I gather the drafts from the trash can. Unfold them. Stare at the words I’ve written, all crammed together across the page in my messy handwriting. It hits me: none of these words are mine. Somewhere in between 77th Street and 60th Street on Central Park West, me and C were walking aimlessly side by side. Having just met at the brunch on the Upper West Side, we realized we were both going downtown, and also both needed some fresh air. It’d been something like thirty blocks together, but neither of us wanted to stop... full text on futurehistorieslit.org
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Fruitcake Commune by Anderson Toole
An orange is so cleanly split for sharing with its capsules velvet-roped from one another cordoned off. I’d share one with a stranger if they asked me for some nicely and did not request a single other thing. I’d cut my hands right off if that would mean that I could grow a woven net of hardy grapevines in their place. I’d sweep you all into my arms and ward off pecking pests and keep you out of the shadow of loneliness. But I have yet to grow so big and what I’ll do instead is take a bite out of our plum and pass it round.
art | Analiese Christenson fh 36
art | LiLi Miko
Small bugs by Evan Vezmar
There they are: the twirling, airy bugs that only appear as flecks when the sun shines like the dust speckles spinning in the summer air that used to jump up when we slapped the cloth car seats, fighting in sticky heat with our childsize fingers There, look closer, gaze past tumbling leaves The world is carpeted in green, brown, and gold More often than not, no one cares to look But they still dance, the little bugs of Sun Do they know that we see them? Invisible for so long until an abrupt ray reveals them to us Their weaving is a hearty silent waltz, but they are oblivious to our greedy eyes To me, somehow, they mean something enough to write about To them, I am nothing in their everlasting dance They know how to dance in the dark the sun is just one of Nature’s gifts to us bumbling humans, the portal into hidden joys The bugs are like hope, if you really want me to cobble together a deeper meaning But they aren’t really anything Just small bugs, and so on
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