Matthew Wang
Charlotte Cao
Roisin Willis
Bryant Mendez Melchor
Kathryn Mattox
Sage Wu
Sumedha Yarlagadda
Breanna Burke
Tyler Abernethy
Divya Venkat Sridhar
“Exit Plan” “The Deer”
“Dimensions of My Canvas” “Threads” “Transformation”
“Cockroach City”
“what she gave us/what we do”
“Abecedarian for My Mother, Young and Fascinated by Grey”
“Maroon”
Maclin Bocock and Albert Guerard Fiction Prize First Place
The morning after Dad died, Edward and Hector started cleaning. They tossed their fletched arrows into cardboard boxes, moved the scrap wood to the courtyard, and threw Hector’s books onto the lawn. Together, they picked up the grandfather clock in the living room, hauling it across the kitchen floor and throwing it into the backyard. It hit the solid earth with a crack. Silently, little black birds flew up from their perches in the forest. The two of them watched as the birds scrambled in the air, their black bodies swirling like helices in the orange dawn, scattering for a few moments before grouping once more in a formless mass.
The birds had been living there for a while. Edward had first seen them four years ago, on his tenth birthday, when Dad had taken him to the creek to go net fishing. He had been lying on his bed watching the cars pass on Sherlake Drive when Dad barged into his room, a yellow Home Depot bucket in his left hand and a pair of brown mud shoes in his right. Like always, he was wearing the black bowler’s hat Hector had given him on Father’s Day, BEST TEACHER EVER stitched on the top of the brim. But one thing was different. Instead of his typical beard, grown gnarly and matted with time, his chin was smooth, the pearly white skin underneath exposed for all to see. The razor had nicked him a couple of times, so stuck haphazardly to his chin were little squares of tissue paper, ripped and marked in the middle with a red dot of blood. “Come on. We’re going fishing,” he said.
The two of them wandered through the woods for a while before they reached the creek. Dad kept pointing at parts of the forest, marking them as spots to teach the kids. On a crumpled sheet of graph paper, he wrote a list of his ideas: hunting lessons, woodcarving, sign language. The day before, in a nervous ramble, he had told Edward that he was going to launch an outdoor school for the poor kids in Memphis. Classes would be held in their backyard. He was planning to pull Edward and Hector out of school to help with the instruction. They would learn real skills, he said, skills that would help them fit in with the kids in the city. He always said things like that. That once they saw the city for what it was, it would all make sense.
It was past sunset when they finally reached the creek. As Edward trudged through the water, he strained his eyes at the path before him, trying to find a way through the darkness. Eventually, he gave up on his vision and relied only on his hearing, following the sound of Dad’s footsteps through the mud, the soft squelches of his boots guiding the way through the creek. As they set up their nets in the water, weighing them down with the heaviest stones they could find, Edward spotted a pair of bright golden eyes in the dark, right at the edge of his vision. He could sense them staring at him, and as he turned his gaze to meet theirs he found more and more pairs, a complex of gold and yellow circles, unflinching and unblinking, with little
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black pupils in the center. It was like that time when Edward saw a solar eclipse from their driveway, the moon’s bulbous shadow blocking the light of the sun. Only now it was multiplied, tiny eclipses opening and closing, staring into his unprotected eyes.
Edward gave a slight yelp at the sight, and Dad came rushing through the creek, splashing brown water on his shirt.
“What is it,” he asked, putting his hands on Edward’s shoulders.
Edward looked at him for a moment before looking back at the eyes. “Do you see those pairs of eyes over there,” he said, pointing at the complex. “Aren’t they creepy?” Dad turned to look. “Oh, those,” he said, laughing. “Those are called grackles. Cheeky little things, and smart too. Back in Memphis, when I was still with your mother, they were everywhere. They were a big problem, y’know – during migration season they would camp in everyone’s lawn, watching the cricket mounds to catch some poor guy just trying to breed. They’re kind of similar to ravens – I’ve taken you to see the ravens, right?” “Yeah, I think I remember seeing them. They live in flocks,” Edward said, still staring at the eyes.
“Right. But what separates grackles and ravens is that grackles can form these massive groups called murmurations.” Dad waved his arm in the direction of the birds. “In a couple months from now, these guys will join a larger group, and that group will join an even larger group, and for a day or two they’ll form a mega-group, full of grackles and starlings and blackbirds. Your mother and her boyfriend used to go murmuration-hunting before she had you. She used to talk for hours about how–”
“Is that dangerous,” Edward asked. “Do they kill things in those… murmurations?” Dad paused for a moment, looking at the mass of birds. Their heads were moving now, darting back and forth between the two of them.
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen one.”
Edward blinked. Back outside, the birds had settled back into their perches. Hector turned to go inside, and Edward hurried after him. They were already behind schedule – the generator was too big for the doorframe, so they’d have to saw it in half to bring it from the basement to the backyard. That was Hector’s job, and he seemed eager to do it, sprinting up the stairs with heavy steps to grab the box where they kept their carpentry tools. Edward’s task was the TV. Hector had delegated the task to him when they first made their plans, pointing at Edward, the TV, and then Edward again. He didn’t mind. He never liked the TV much, its flashing lights and colors. It reminded him of a dream he had a few months after Hector was beaten by the city kids and stopped speaking: stepping out of the bus, the Memphis skyline collapsed around him, buildings falling flat on the ground, office windows shattering into fractals of rainbow light. Hector was standing next to him. The two of them held hands as the city collapsed and dust blew into their eyes.
Grabbing the TV off the kitchen floor, Edward held it sideways and slowly inched towards the sliding door, buckling under its weight. His hands were sweating as they gripped the LED screen. At some point his hands must have slipped, and the
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TV fell from his grasp, striking the back of his calf before falling to the floor with a soft thud.
Edward cried out in pain. Hector must have heard him from the carpentry room, and he came galloping down the stairs, the sound of his feet resounding through the near-empty house. In an instant he reached Edward, tenderly patting him on the back before digging into his bag to find their half-used roll of gauze. Edward’s calf didn’t hurt anymore. It was only a temporary pain, the kind that appears and disappears in a flash, leaving you almost the moment it occurs. Yet, despite his protests, Hector insisted on wrapping his leg in layers and layers of gauze. By the time he was finished, his leg looked inflated, like a cloud had wrapped itself around his calf. He only stopped when Edward slapped his hand away and stared into his eyes.
Hector looked up at him and smiled, red circles around his eyes. His face, gaunt and hardened after the incident in the city, had loosened up since Dad enrolled him at the community center. One night, after playing kickball with his friends from the center, he ran up to Dad playing chess on the counter with a smile so big that it seemed to squish his face in half, its features contorting to fit their newfound position.
After checking the gauze one more time, Hector went down to the basement with the handsaw. Seeing that the TV was just a short distance away from the door, Edward got up and dragged it through, sliding the door open with his foot. The TV was still intact. He set it up on a flat patch of ground, digging up a pile of dirt to stabilize it in the wind. Hector wouldn’t be out here for a while; the generator was hard to disassemble.
Edward had expected today’s tasks to take longer, maybe until dusk, but there were still hours until sunset. He paced around the TV, closing his eyes and counting how many steps it took to reach a revolution. One of the girls in Dad’s school, Chloe, was obsessed with revolutions. During class, Edward would watch as Chloe took a bike out of Dad’s garage and spun one of its wheels, staring at the spokes as they rotated. Some days, the two would talk to each other after archery practice. Edward would ask her about life in the city: what she did when she got home, if they taught her to read in the city, if she had any friends. Chloe would answer hesitantly, twirling her thumbs around each other in circles. In return, Edward would make her little rings of dandelions, tying their stems together in knots.
Edward paced around the TV until he couldn’t anymore. Dizzy, he went back into the house, searching through the remaining boxes of items until he found a black extension cord. He plugged it into the outlet closest to the backyard and found that it stretched out just far enough to reach the TV. He pressed the ON button, and the screen flickered to life.
Spirited Away was playing. The three of them had watched it together on a cold Monday night, the day after it won an Oscar. Edward was never a fan, but Dad and
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Hector loved it, and since then it became a ritual for them to watch it every week. As the movie started, they would microwave popcorn and toss it into each other’s mouths. Dad would be crying by the end of the film, and the two of them would hold each other on the couch, Dad’s tears falling on Hector’s shirt.
Edward sat down on the damp ground. Perhaps it was his astonishment that the TV still turned on in the grass, but he was entranced by the film. He watched and replayed it as the sun sank lower on the horizon, as Hector came periodically to throw boxes of their belongings into the backyard. He continued watching until sunset had long passed, barely noticing as Hector gingerly touched his shoulder and sat down next to him. He stayed, watching, long after the low battery signal flickered and disappeared, long after the screen turned black and Hector fell asleep on his lap. The funeral was held the next day. The two of them walked to the venue, a stout little church two blocks down from the house. Edward could tell that it’d been arranged quickly. There were only a few guests, all of whom he couldn’t recognize, and most of them were couples in their late forties. None of them lived around town. The receptionist, a lady with black-rimmed glasses and tendrils of curly gray hair, looked at the two of them up and down without smiling before asking for their names.
“Edward and Hector,” Edward said. She scanned down her list. A flash of pity crossed her face, but it quickly disappeared. “I see. Welcome in, and I’m sorry for your loss.” Inside, as they sat down on the back row of chairs, Edward pretended to scan through his notes for the speech he was supposed to give. He had crumpled up his half-sheet of paper from the nerves, and he could feel the glances from the couples who pretended to loiter and converse around the venue. He inhaled deeply, and didn’t exhale. The speech therapist Dad had brought home taught him this trick, to breathe in as much air as you can before holding for twenty Mississippi’s.
As the receptionist went up to the podium and introduced herself as Ms. Sommers, he began testing how long he could hold each breath. And as more and more speakers went up to the microphone, telling stories he didn’t understand about college and businesses and parties, he timed each iteration of his experiment. Twenty seconds, twenty-five, thirty. He was on his fourth test when he heard Ms. Sommers call his name into the microphone, and he exhaled too quickly, coughing uncontrollably as he walked up to the podium.
After a quick breath, he took his notes sheet from his pocket, flattening it on the reading desk. He got a couple lines into his speech, about how he loved his father even though he was crazy and scared him sometimes, how he wanted to thank all of Dad’s friends and family for being here, before his throat hitched and he felt droplets of sweat run down his armpits. He coughed, and in an instant, he could not continue at all. He stood there for a few moments, opening and closing his mouth, failing to push air through his throat, before he smiled and ran off the stage and out the venue,
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dragging Hector along with him.
On the way back, he got the sense that a couple who also left early were tailing them. He could faintly recognize the woman, but he didn't recognize the man. The couple caught up to them in front of the house.
“Hey, boys,” the woman said, panting. “Look how tall the two of you have gotten.” She gestured to Edward and Hector.
“Hey,” Edward said. The woman was tall with matted blonde hair, a gold cross overlain on her collarbone. The man seemed similar to Dad; he wore the same dress shirt that Dad used to wear before work.
“Oh, y’all haven’t met me before. I’m Chloe’s mom, and this is Jacob.” The woman patted the man’s back, and he extended a hand. Edward looked at it for a moment before accepting. It was cold to the touch.
“I’m really sorry about Richard,” she said. “He was a great man and a great philanthropist. It’s such a shame he moved out of Memphis after he split up with Joanne. Chloe used to talk about his lessons all the time. I know he’s in Heaven right now, praying for y’all from up there.” She brought her cross to her lips and kissed it, lingering for a moment. The woman paused, waiting for a response, but none came. Locking eyes with Edward, she spoke directly to him. “Chloe mentioned how well you treated her during outdoor school. Like a princess.”
“Thanks, ” Edward said. “Sorry about the speech.”
Edward and Hector went around the front door of the house and in from the back entrance, and as Edward peeked through the windows at the street in front of him, he could just barely see the couple staring at the backyard, at the pile of boxes and metal and wood that now spanned the same height as their house.
A day later, an hour before sunset, Edward and Hector finished cleaning. They threw the last of their boxes into the yard, scattering them at the base of the mound. They took a sledgehammer to their bedframes, smashing the wood into little pieces before throwing them as hard as they could to the top of the pile. Each of their mattresses was disassembled, the fluffing torn out of the hard casing and thrown as fuel to the base. Hector dumped the last box of their belongings into the mattress casings. With a heave, he threw them into the mound. Edward chose not to shatter the TV screen. Instead, after wiping his hands on his shirt, he dragged the LED screen next to the boxes at the outskirts of the mound.
While Hector finished the preparations for the fire, Edward did one final sweep of the house. As he walked through its bare corridors and walls, he couldn’t help but think about last Sunday, when Dad had sat both of them down at the living room table with a cup of coffee and told them what to do when he died.
His idea was quite simple: the two of them would make an effigy out of the house. They were to remove all the furniture, all the belongings, everything except the walls. And, when the task was done, all the objects tainted by his sickness piled up haphazardly in the backyard, they would burn it with the gas canister in the shed.
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Edward remembered looking at his eyes when he said this, confused at the methodological calm of his plan. It was around this table, after all, where he had danced with happiness when they first moved here, jumping all over Edward’s toes in a fit of excitement, brown locks of hair flying across his face.
Edward and Hector had divided up Dad’s tasks day by day, and now they were done. Just like he requested, the walls were barren, the beige paint glowing dimly in the sunset. Gone were the bedsheets Dad had vomited in, the razor he used to shave his beard, the bathtub where he had washed blood off his body. In its new state the house seemed lively, the possibility of life so enormous in those walls.
As Edward walked out of the house, Hector was gone. He had already placed the gas canister next to the pile, along with a little box of matches. Edward could hear rustling from the shed, and as he walked over to see what was causing the sound he saw Hector come out stooped under the weight of a taxidermied deer’s head. Edward rushed over to him. There were spiderwebs across the deer’s antlers, and its fur was caked with a layer of dirt and grime. Yet, its eyes were still there, glinting in the dying light, a pulse of black. The two of them had shot it together when Edward was nine, on Hector’s tenth birthday. Hector was steadying the barrel while Edward pulled the trigger. Dad had stayed silent while Edward confirmed the kill, but once he gave the signal Dad had hollered louder than he had ever heard before, startling the birds in the forest canopy into a short bout of flight.
Edward held one antler and Hector held the other, both their arms trembling under the weight. They stepped as far as they could to the mound without falling, and with a hard thud, dropped the head near the front of the pile, so that its eyes were facing the two of them. Hector adjusted it so that they couldn’t see its eyes. The sun had set. They were on schedule.
The gas canister was heavier than expected, and the cap had fused shut with time. It took the two of them, turning with both hands in opposite directions, to loosen the cap enough to pry it off with a metallic snap. Hector tilted the canister while Edward guided the stream, circling the base of the mound until the wood darkened and soaked. They tried to splash gas around the upper tiers of the mound, but the canister was too heavy and it slipped in their hands, the oil sloshing down the side and pooling at their feet. By the time they tilted the canister upright, it was out. They set it aside.
Edward had offered to light the match. He struck the first match too hard and it broke against his fingers. The second one ignited. For a moment he held it there, watching the small blue flame, before he tossed it into the pile and stepped back. They waited for a minute. Then, a small, impotent flame grew gradually larger at the base of the mound, inching up the layers of the pile in rings. Slowly, the wood and mattress fluffing caught fire and ignited, transforming into blackened char. The fire picked up speed, and suddenly all around Edward was a stream of wings and
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feathers, black birds swarming around the rising fire. He stood still as he watched this series of hundreds and then thousands of grackles and starlings and blackbirds, small darts of black that pulsated around the two of them, the sound of beating wings drowning out the hissing of the fire. At some points, Edward caught glimpses of the flame through the swarm of birds, eating away at the layers quicker and quicker, a great plume of black smoke rising into the night sky. The generator was bright red, and sparks flew from the pile.
It was at this moment that it occurred to Edward that he and Hector would be the sole observers of this phenomenon. That perhaps because the two of them were alive and well at this moment in time, that because Dad had died of cancer a week ago, they were able to witness a creation of such beauty. He didn’t know how, but at that moment he saw himself sitting in a coffee shop with his wife and two daughters, one having a strawberry donut and the other drinking lemonade. The four of them were talking in a street next to Morningside Heights, the sound of cars and honking making them raise their voices to be heard. But at some point they would lean close to one another and erupt in laughter, clutching their stomachs at some stupid joke about birds.
Charlotte Cao
Deer Maclin Bocock and Albert Guerard Fiction Prize Third Place
Upon taking notice of the deer standing shock-still in the middle of the walk-in refrigerator, Iris is reminded of how often she has been let down by restaurant bureaucracy. How typical of her management, she thinks, to have unexpectedly introduced a new hire without notifying her.
The deer has arrow-tipped ears and black eyes as iridescent as a vinyl. Its mouth, mawkish and small, is currently buried in a silver tin containing carrots which had conveniently arrived in yesterday morning’s delivery. Though she knows that she ought to be disturbed by the clear disregard for health and safety protocols taking place, Iris can’t help the flush of affection which bubbles up from her chest. Suddenly: a memory of her aunt’s porcelain teacups which, lined with silver rimming and adorned in watercolor bluebells, were to be handled with a gentleness so soft and slow, it used to bring tears to Iris’ eyes. Those summer Sundays spent in the quiet of the foyer, sipping Earl Grey on plastic stools with knees crossed just-so. Iris recalls how the humidity would sneak into the house like a cat, causing her bangs to stick flat against her forehead and make her eyes appear even larger than they already were. To this day, Iris refuses to drink tea for fear of crying: a habit that her brother constantly teases her for.
With the memory still wrapping its gauzy tail around her neck, Iris begins to instinctively cradle her hands together, mimicking the taking of tea. The deer, sensing unexpected movement, bucks up in attention and suddenly, the two are looking at one another. Oh yes, the issue of the deer. It had almost slipped through Iris’ mind.
“Let me get you an apron,” Iris says. “And then, I’ll walk you through training.”
Iris had been working at Soma Sushi for eight months and until today, was the restaurant’s newest employee. That wasn’t supposed to be the case, however. At the time Iris had been hired, the line to enter into Soma would regularly weave around the lot like ribbon candy, hordes of middle-aged couples wearing last-act Nordstrom Rack standing with an air of disinterest. Iris’ manager Malcolm would regularly ask Iris to monitor the line and as she walked up and down these rows of strangers, she would catch snippets of their conversations.
Erin Morose’s unbecoming PTA campaign, that unfeeling bitch, how she simpers and
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flirts and rests her French-press nails on the arms of every married man she lays her eyes on. The maelstrom of traffic it took to get here and the client’s unreasonable asks and Look, I got to take a call, and it’ll be five minutes max and the look of disdain that gets volleyed over from wife to husband and back again. The stilted nonconversation between two clearly uninterested people on a date.
Dreadful, just dreadful. Iris would return into Soma with nothing but a light buzzing in her head and then report to Malcolm: “The line is looking great.” Malcolm would then pull her into a hug, grazing his hand against her lower back and whisper in her ear with a gruff murmur: “Thank you honey.” His breath was always too warm and too wet, slobber like a dog. Iris froze up, her pulse pounding in a hot, uneven rhythm and her throat collapsing upon itself, the smallness of her body shrinking with each second she kept caught in his grasp. God, she could barely hold herself up.
The first time Iris was made to manage the line, Lydia, the head waiter at the time, pulled Iris aside and into the waiter’s backroom. In her low, sonorous voice: “You know, you don’t actually have to do that.” As she spoke, Lydia worked. From the industrial fridge in the back, she pulled out a large pitcher of soy sauce and slowly siphoned a little bit into the various empty soy sauce containers covering the workspace. It was clear that she had done this often. Lydia paid all of her attention to Iris, the movements of her hands an afterthought, and yet, she rarely spilled a drop.
Iris always had a difficult time looking Lydia straight in the eye. Lydia, with her deftly pinned bun, sharp-tack footsteps, and severe face, had been in the industry for over 12 years. The only reason she was working at Soma, rather than her old place, was because of a favor she owed Malcolm who, as the youngest of the Ramble’s, had a knack for whining and winning. That and the tips, of course. Iris remembers her first pay day, how Lydia had stalked into the backroom with her pointed chin and, with eyes pinned straight on Malcolm, jutted out her hand with the quickened reflexes of a sharpshooter. Lydia collected, counted, and then bound her stack of tips with an almost authoritarian grip, her deft fingers wringing the rubber band around and around and then closing it off with a predatory snap.
To the table of soy sauce containers, Iris said, “I know, but I don’t mind.” She fidgeted with her right earring, pulling the backing out and then back in, pricking her thumb each time.
“That’s not part of your job. We’re short staffed enough as it is, and I don’t need another one of my waiters running off to God knows where.” A pause. “Malcolm asked me to.”
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At that, Lydia pressed her fingers against the soft of her temples and began massaging. A woman in her late-30s, Lydia was as pretty as steel. One of those metallic sculptures with snatched pillars and gilded overhangings which can often be found standing sentry in front of a finance firm with no signage whatsoever. The Lydia that stood before Iris retained none of that poise nor severity. In the span of only a few seconds, she had seemingly aged three decades, her fingers trembling, a worry mark splicing through the plain of her forehead: a weariness that softened her to nothingness. Iris felt like an intruder to an intimacy meant only for one’s own self, if even that. Intimate, not because it was masturbatory or vulgar but because it was so drenched in self-shame that nobody would, in their right mind, willingly unveil themselves as such. Iris averted her eyes back to the soy sauce.
“Hm,” Lydia said and then she was off, the conversation never broached again.
When Iris first sees the deer, her immediate instinct is to call for Lydia but, of course, that is not an option anymore. So instead, Iris begins teaching the deer how to refill the wasabi and ginger trays.
“You have to use gloves to pick up the wasabi. I mean, obviously. For health and safety reasons. And the gloves are in that cabinet over there.” Iris points to the cabinet hanging closest to the refrigerator. “You have to push everything to the side to reach for them, but be careful because you don’t want to drop anything. To be honest, it's difficult for me to do without a stepping stool. If you’re looking for that, you can find it in that little cranny to the left. Questions?”
Iris hears her voice trail off almost imperceptibly toward the end of her speech. As she glances around the backroom — the low cratered ceilings, the mounting refrigerator, the clear-glass cabinets, the messy workstation — the location of everything appears painfully obvious. The space is not so much snug as it is tight. When two people enter at the same time, they are always forced into doing an awkward shimmy, hips touching, elbows collapsing, a partnered dance against one’s will. Nothing is hidden. Everything is seen. From the side of her eyes, Iris can clearly spot the lurid purple gloves poking out behind a stack of small, blue-tinted rectangular plates. She sighs.
“You know what? Forget it. I’m going about this all wrong,” she laughs, puffing air. “I think, well, I think that these are things that you’ll learn as you do the job. Why worry about them now?”
Iris walks toward the front of Soma, the deer trailing behind. Though every table has
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been pristinely set up with plates, menus, and napkin holders, the entire restaurant is empty. Not surprising. It’s been slow ever since Lydia quit. With the head server no longer managing the restaurant, service slowly fell into abandon, like rust creeping onto a machine. Waiters were never given any information about their schedules and slowly but surely, began skiving off of their shifts until they simply stopped coming in. Supplies like napkins or chopsticks would continuously run out and Malcolm, incompetent with logistics, would fail to order more. In only the span of a few weeks, the restaurant lost almost all of its business.
Malcolm never caught onto the problem, believing that the flurry of resignations and the horrid reviews were a symptom of the economy rather than his own ineptitude. And so, more and more, Malcolm has been stalking around the restaurant, jaw snapping and fists cracking. He’s become the sort of man who announces himself when he enters a room and then snarls at you when you deign to look at him.
When asked by her brother why she hasn’t quit yet, Iris is slow to respond, the saliva building up until threatening to choke her. Though she hates the place, hates herself when she is in the place, she continues to stay, for reasons known but unable to be verbalised coherently. What else is there to do for work, she says back to him and the self-pity which sticks to her skin is as thick as molasses, as opaque as motor oil. Yes, it’s mainly a matter of money but also, perhaps, a matter of ignorance. Iris has become so good at the job, at the posing and preening, at the biting-of-tongue and the making-of-small-talk, that she sometimes forgets who she is outside of work. Iris has just finished reviewing the menu with the deer by the time the first customer of the day comes in. It is 12:37, and the restaurant is warm. Iris is sweating, little beads prickling off her forehead.
“Go ahead and shadow me,” Iris says to the deer as she inches toward the front door where a man in a light blue polo shirt is standing. “Welcome to Soma Sushi!” An open-toothed smile emblazoned upon her face; eyes bright; voice so animated, it is slightly animatronic. “Are we expecting more company, or should I get you a table for one?”
“Come again?” in a nasally voice. The man is busy looking at his phone so Iris can really only see the thinning hair on his small head. She steps closer, hands clasped behind her back as she asks again, “Should I get you a table, sir?”
“Yeah, yeah,” he says, his hand waving in a flippant manner, but when he finally looks up, he lets out a startled yelp, “What the hell?” The man’s mouth opens so wide that Iris can see every individual yellowed molar in it when he speaks.
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Alarm shatters through Iris’ face. “I’m so sorry, sir. What’s the matter? Again, so sorry, sir.” She follows the line of his eyes to his hand where his outstretched finger, knuckles covered in hair, points accusingly at the deer.
Iris should have expected this. She had tried supplying the deer with her own apron but it dragged on the floor and the fabric ties broke into the animal’s body and within only a few seconds, the deer had flung the apron off. Iris was never one to skirt around company policy but if this was what the deer had chosen, then who was she to object? Clearly, a mistake.
“Oh, this is her first day on the job, sir, so she just didn’t know any better,” Iris says. Now addressing the deer, in a hush, Iris whispers, “Do you mind going to the back and putting on an apron? Also getting this man a glass of water?”
The deer is obstinate, unmoving, a sharp glare in her eyes as she looks toward the customer. Iris swears that she can see a faint glint of teeth, almost like a snarl, appear on the deer’s lovely face but the moment has passed. The deer heads to the back on nimble feet. Iris turns back to the man, expecting him to be satisfied but instead, he has a downturned scowl.
“Are you slow or something? That’s not your co-worker. That’s an animal, a-a fucking deer with the antlers or without the antlers or whatever,” the man intones with scorn and his hands manic with motion. “Helloo! You, with the big, dumb eyes, I’m talking to you.”
“Excuse me, sir?”
He grumbles under her breath, something unintelligible but filled with swears, the word “bitch.” Then, “I’m calling animal control now.” Between every word, the man nods exaggeratedly and smiles smarmily, speaking as though Iris doesn’t understand him. But Iris does understand. She understands perfectly. As a waiter, it is her job to anticipate customer demands and meet them. It is not rage that blossoms in Iris’ chest upon hearing this infantilizing tone directed toward her but rather fear, an allencompassing urge to rectify the situation.
“There’s no need for that, sir,” she says calmly. “Let’s have you sit down for a second, and I’ll go get you some water, and we can work this out.”
She directs the man to sit in a booth, subtly placing a menu before him, but it’s no use. The man is too busy jabbing at his phone, searching something up. Iris walks quickly — waiters never run — to the backroom and says, “Do you have
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that water?”
Whereas other animals would likely panic upon being trapped in a room as small as this one, the deer is unperturbed. She possesses an air of grace that is overwhelming. Her sloping head tilts left while Iris speaks, an image of coyness and haughtiness so similar to a princess’ portrait that Iris feels compelled to bow. The deer blinks slowly, slowly, in acknowledgement of the purple gloves and the wasabi and then, abruptly, keels her head right and toward the workstation. It’s a violet swing, a killing blow. Iris’s mouth opens in a silent scream and her hands tangle into her hair. No no no no. The scene falls away in slow motion.
But rather than slam her narrow face into the edge of the table, the deer angles at the last minute and knocks a cup of water onto the floor, the glass shattering with a clarifying snap. A revelation. The shards resemble daisy petals. Iris is still panting in shock when Malcolm’s voice barks from the back. It’ll only be a matter of minutes before he comes and sees the mess on the floor, the man in the booth, animal control.
She begins to crouch down and pick at the glass on the floor with her bare hands.
“Why would you do that?” Iris asks the deer. At that, the deer kneels, resting her head on Iris’ knee, and begins to lap at the water seeping into Iris’ apron. The deer’s coat is surprisingly soft and with her free hand, Iris begins brushing against the bristle.
Suddenly, Malcolm’s ballooning face appears in the doorway, his sputtering voice obnoxiously loud and rough with ire. Iris cannot make out any one word he says. She is too busy looking at his loafers as they kick and scuff against the floor like a bull rearing for a charge. It’s for this reason that she is so startled when she feels Malcolm’s sweaty hand grasp her hair, when she notices how close they are to one another, how small it all is.
The last time Iris saw Malcolm this angry was once during an argument with Lydia. This was a week or so before Lydia officially quit and it was out back in the parking lot, behind the garbage disposal. They both probably thought that nobody would notice their fight but their voices had echoed and even from within the restaurant, Iris could hear them mention her name, could hear Lydia’s racking sobs and defeated voice as she shrieked, “You always do this, Malcolm, and I can’t keep defending you. Nice girls, they always are, and you just love to toy around, don’t you?”
When Lydia had finished packing up all of her belongings the week after, it was she, not Iris, who refused to make eye contact.
Charlotte Cao
The entire saga happens quickly: the deer and the girl and the man. The deer and the girl and the man who cries in pain upon noticing the deer with its canine teeth bite into the soft of his wrist and the girl sitting in a pile of glass and water and now blood as the man from the front of the restaurant comes rushing in only to howl at the blow he sustains in the knees from the deer whose red, red mouth is dripping and the backroom is a cacophony of noise and nobody is wearing gloves or saying the word “sir” and Iris, upon seeing the men lying upon the floor, feels as though she can stand up, on her own two feet, for what seems like the first time.
Iris steps around Malcolm as she fills up her own glass of water. She says that she is quitting and that though it is unprofessional to leave without a two weeks’ notice, she believes the circumstances justify the means. Malcolm groans and Iris nods affirmatively before leaving the back room. The deer is already gliding toward the front, fleet-footed and assured. She glances back at Iris who follows along. Iris takes off her apron, and they both exit the restaurant, the bell making a faint chime as the door shuts close.
Dimensions of My Canvas Creative Nonfiction Prize Second Place
Disappointment. Disappointment is the feeling that floods through my body first thing in the morning. Suddenly, every positive thought disappears from my mind when I view the canvas I’m working with. I regret turning on the bright fluorescent lights in my bathroom, which illuminate everything I wish I could hide. I look into my hazel eyes in the mirror, the only facial feature that has remained the same since I was born. I like the color of my eyes; when the sun hits them, they look green, but in this current moment, they are brown, matching my natural hair color, which still peaks through the blonde highlights I get every eight months.
When I drift my focus to other features in the mirror, my discomfort and disappointment grow. I reach for the new bottle of foundation I bought last week, squirt the thick liquid onto my fingertips, and watch how a new layer of skin is now painted onto my face. Clear, no red splotches, no pimples.
My eye bags, I can see them drooping. They make me look old, and I hate it. I use concealer to cover them up.
My face looks washed out and pale now. I pop open my liquid bronzing stick and watch how its darkness gives me a false sense of cheekbones. I paste on highlight to add a bit of shine. Mascara to give me the long, dark eyelashes I've always wanted. Lipliner to make my upper lip more defined. Lipstick and lip gloss to make them more plump.
My hands keep grabbing more and more products. I can’t stop. Every time I look into the fluorescently lit mirror, I see more problems, more things to fix, more things I can cover up. After I add my last touch of lip gloss, I realize I have nothing else to add, no more products to do any fixing. This is it. This is all I can do.
I look back at myself now. I look nicer. I think. You can tell I am wearing makeup, but my face looks better than when I walked into the bathroom. I think. My eyes feel itchy, and I hate the sticky sensation on my lips, but I know this is the most presentable way to leave my dorm.
I grab my phone. Open the front camera to get another angle of my face that’s not in the mirror. I usually look better on my iPhone camera. It feels less real than the mirror. I like what I see. I look pretty. I want to remember this moment, to have it saved, captured, recorded, to make sure I know and other people know that this is what I look like. I take a photo with a soft smile. I fix my hair just right so my highlights sit perfectly. I open Instagram. I post the photo.
In middle school, it was a common tradition to dress up before a sports team event or competition. I struggled those days. I had very few dress-up options, and almost every Friday I would end up wearing the same dress and cardigan, while my teammates on the track team would wear a new, stylish outfit each week. However,
these outfits didn’t just need to be worn; they needed to be published. It was essential to arrive a little early to school these days to make time for pictures in the gray, dimly lit hallways, taken on our iPhone 5s’. It was during these 7:15 am “photoshoots” that I learned what a “good side” was. I remember the horror of seeing the crooked dimensions of the right side of my face when I zoomed in on a photo I had taken with my best friend. It was terrifying; I didn’t think I looked like that. The gap in my teeth gaped wider than ever, my hair had a composure similar to mop, and the acne on my forehead was more visible than I thought it was, even though I had stolen my mom's concealer to try to cover up my breakouts.
The following week, I tried a new strategy. When we rearranged ourselves against the lockers, I made sure to be on the left side and tilted my head to the side. I practiced in the mirror that morning, and when I tilted my head to the left, the gap in my teeth was hardly visible.
I waited patiently for my friend to pass me the phone so I could send the photos to myself. I took a quick glance. I liked what I saw. My head tilt strategy resulted in a false appearance of straight teeth. My excitement grew; I finally had a photo to post from all these dress-up days—a photo to show for myself.
I often attribute the rise of social media and my first iPhone to my increased awareness and scrutiny of my personal appearance. I do not remember elementary school as a “vain” time. I hated dressing up or appearing too feminine. Pony tails were only worn low or in the middle. If I dared to wear it to the side or up high, my friends would make fun of me for trying to be too “girly.” However, when we entered seventh grade and transferred to the local middle school, everything changed. Instagram accounts were created, mascara slowly painted on our eyelashes, and suddenly, not having American Eagle Jeans with rips in the knees felt embarrassing.
I begged my parents for my first iPhone. They reluctantly got me one at the beginning of middle school for “safety reasons,” as I advocated, but all I wanted was to be on all the apps and sites I saw my friends scroll through when we were hanging out.
I’m sitting in my desk chair, posture slouching, head pointed down in a position that now gives me chronic pain. My pinky finger holds up my iPhone 17 Pro Max and has developed an indented ridge from holding up the large device each day.
I’m scrolling on Instagram. Deep into one of the categories on my explore page. I had a brief interest in Formula One three years ago, so Instagram knows to recommend me a post every once in a while to update me on the World Champion. The current World Champion is Lando Norris; however, I do not learn this from him or any post about him specifically. I learn this information from a Buzzfeed post about his girlfriend.
“The Margarida Corceiro effect. Lando Norris becomes F1 World Champion.” The post shows a British Belgian racing driver sharing a passionate kiss with Portuguese actress and model, Margarida Corceiro, shortly after his World
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championship win at the end of 2025. The next slide shows the same actress now posed with Portuguese football player, João Félix, in 2019, standing beside him holding the “golden boy award,” which is given to the best young football player in Europe.
The post implies that Margarida, or Magui, has a winning effect on her partners and is the magic tool for helping this elite category of wealthy professional athletes reach the peak of their careers.
I click on her profile. Half of her posts are ads for brands such as Intimissi and Alo, and the other half are carefully curated photo selections either from extravagant vacations or award shows. She has silky blond hair, tanned skin, large white teeth, skin without a single blemish or wrinkle, and a thin, petite frame that pairs well with her short racecar driver boyfriend, Lando Norris. She has just posted a selfie with Lando for his World Cup win. They are smiling and hugging on what looks like a Yacht, with a caption that reads “MY LITTLE WORLD CHAMPION @lando.” The post has 1.2 million likes, nearly 10,000 comments, and 84,000 shares (that’s a lot). I scroll through a couple more posts; her post with Lando is her most-liked post by nearly five times the engagement, and her only photo with him I can find. I click on the hyperlink to Lando’s Instagram page via her caption, but I can’t find a single photo of her on his page.
Magui is very pretty. Probably one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. I see her wearing a large button-down shirt in one of her posts. It looks classy but also casual, but somehow she still looks perfectly feminine despite wearing a masculine outfit. I have a shirt like that. I open my closet and try on the shirt. Hoping to emulate an aesthetic and effortless feminine beauty like Magui. I slowly approach the mirror to see where I stand in comparison to this supermodel. The reflection in the mirror glares back at me. I don’t think anyone I will ever date will achieve anything special because of me.
During my time with my iPhone 11 Pro Max, there were significant changes in my appearance. I got my hair dyed for the first time, with small blonde balayage streaks. I went on Accutane, which is a prescribed medication for acne, also known as Isotretinoin. The medication is so aggressive that you have to take pregnancy tests each month, along with a panel of blood work, because Isotretinoin can cause birth defects and liver problems. I also got my braces removed. The gap that I was once so fixated on hiding was now gone forever. I even got my ears pierced. Four piercings in one day at Claire’s (they later got infected).
When I went back to school in the spring of my junior year, I looked almost like an entirely different person from the girl everyone had seen before the COVID lockdown a year before. I remember that spring being posted on a popular running social media account after one of my races. It was a good photo of me: my skin looked clear, my hair was in a high ponytail, and the filter made my skin look sort of tan, which it couldn't have been further from in real life. I went to the notifications
tab of Instagram, and I had gained a bunch of new followers from the post, a pattern over the years that had taken my once 20 followers to nearly 3000. But when I opened the notifications tab, I saw something different than usual. Every follow I had gained was from a boy.
The pattern on my notifications tab displayed on my iPhone screen was new to my sixteen-year-old eyes. A form of attention, validation, and flattery I was not accustomed to. I took the stream of followers as a compliment. I guess they saw something in that photo that gave them a reason to follow me? But I would never know why they all did that day. But I did know part of me wanted to continue impressing them, to keep up the attention that I had gained for that flattering photo.
Large influxes of male followers were not, and would not be, that much of a regular occurrence for me. However, for some female athletes, large male followings would never leave them and would continue to grow as their visibility increased. A prime example of this is multiple-time Olympic Champion and World Record Holder Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. Sydney is arguably one of the most accomplished and talented runners the sport of Track and Field has ever seen. She has broken her world record in the 400-meter hurdles six times. She has won four Olympic Gold medals. Competed in three Olympic Games, the first of which was when she was just sixteen years old, which is common for swimmers and sometimes gymnasts, but not track athletes. She was a youth phenom who carried that momentum into being one of the most dominant athletes in the sport. Truly remarkable. Oh, and she’s also very pretty.
Sydney’s always had a lot of followers on Instagram. By 2026, her follower count stands at 1.5 million. But even in high school, she had 300,000 followers. Her comment sections were flooded with heart eye emojis and young male track athletes commenting, “Will you marry me, Sydney??” Sydney broke every male track athlete’s heart when she got engaged in 2021 to a former NFL player, but every time she posts, most of the comments are about how beautiful she looks. When a track and field news account posts her, the posts get double or triple the engagement. Sydney’s looks and athletic ability give her everything she needs to gain millions of dollars in brand deals. Some of hers include Tag Heuer, Gatorade, Neutrogena, Olaplex, Oakley, Google, and New Balance.
Sydney had two Olympic Gold medals by the time I was running fast enough to earn a brand deal and had earned two more by the time I was getting ready to sign my first professional contract with a shoe company.
On my iPhone 17, I slowly scrolled through the document outlining the terms for my partnership with New Balance. Most of it was legal jargon, but when I came to page eight, my thumb slowed down and paused; it quivered over the screen. In the center of page eight was the yearly salary that I would earn from this partnership. I hadn’t thought about the money much, to be completely honest, and the number on the screen was one I had known for several months. But it was still strange to see it
on paper, well, I guess on a small screen, in 12pt Times New Roman font. I imagine with most jobs, a salary feels like a salary, money you make to live. But for me, this number felt like a price tag, how much this company could buy me for, so they could use me for marketing to sell their products. Even though I had straight teeth now and could make myself look somewhat presentable with makeup, I knew I would never be as marketable as Sydney. If I worked hard enough, I could run faster and win circular pieces of gold as she did. But I will never be as pretty. My price tag will be lower because of that.
It has been 2 hours since my last Sydney stalk on Instagram, 1 week since I first saw Magui’s post with Lando Norris, and 3 days since I signed my professional contract. I sit in my car with the engine turned off. I have a full face of makeup on; it feels itchy, and I can see the concealer cracking around my chin breakouts in the rearview mirror. I open my iPhone 17 and open Instagram. I go to the story feature and post a selfie I took before church two hours earlier. I am wearing a cute striped blouse, and my skin looks glowy in the photo. A few minutes later, I check the photo's likes. No one I was hoping for. I scroll for a few more minutes. A pain in my chest grows, and I feel my lips quiver. The lack of AC becomes apparent as a hot sensation spreads throughout my body.
I start crying. The tears stream down my face, faster and faster, till that cry grows to a sob. I’m gasping for air, and when I look back up to the rearview mirror, the pain I feel multiplies. My quest for beauty with all my dentist appointments, Accutane refills, hours in the hair salon, and a large variety of makeup products has resulted in one massive failure. All of this time, money, and energy left me with a more negative view of myself than when my teeth were crooked, skin covered in pimples, and with my giant mop of dark brown hair. I cry because I will never have the Magui effect on my future partners, or that effortless feminine beauty she has. I cry because I don’t feel as marketable as Sydney, and even though I just signed a contract that I’ve been working for my whole life, it still doesn’t feel good enough compared to her. I cry because every day I paint a mask over my face to try to transform myself into someone that I’m not. I cry because what I’m crying about feels incredibly stupid and vain to cry about. I cry because this quest to “be pretty” or “feel pretty” has resulted in a sense of emptiness and a separation from my true self that I cannot seem to find within myself. I have lived off the idea that my authentic self, even though I am far from it now, was not enough. Hours of scrolling, covering up, zooming into photos, buying new products, trying on these products, and “fixing” every single part of myself just to be desirable to others or meet a standard that constantly seems to be rising. These cover-ups and supposed fixes came with more than a monetary price; they have taken part of me with them. Change after change, comparison after comparison, with every scroll and every mirror glance. What was the point of all this?
I’m tired. I’m so tired. My gasping breaths and streams of hot tears start to
slow. Fatigue from this anxiety attack begins to set in. I let my head fall back and hit the headrest behind me. My eyes meet the rearview mirror once again, and I force them to look away, not wanting to trigger another episode. But within a few seconds, I find my eyes there again, and I brace myself for another critical examination. The tears have erased the concealer, bronzer, and mascara I applied earlier that day. My eyes are red from crying, and from the limited length of the mirror, I'm left only seeing the dark brown roots of my hair. My cheeks are red and blemished; you can see my freckles. There is no mask, no covering, no false presentation of myself. I see myself in that mirror. In this moment, I have nothing to fear. Nothing to cover up. This lasts a moment.
The running world, my femininity, and my desire to be cared for and appreciated push me to believe that my appearance is a canvas. Something painted on, shaped, and carefully brushed to cater to the eyes that lay on it. A canvas, when turned around, has nothing; often, a blank sheet surrounded by thin, onedimensional wood framing. The one dimensionality of the canvas conflicts with my personal depth, parts of myself that I know engage with the world more than just to please beauty standards. However, the more I force myself to transform into a piece of artwork that this world deems “worthy,” the more I feel a shallow emptiness, as blank as the back of a canvas.
The harder I push myself to change, to push myself further towards this ambiguous “enough,” I realize how much I lost in the process. Hours spent consumed by personal vanity, scrolling and living in a world of comparison, placing myself in a deluded world where I am stripped of my importance, reduced to the shallow bones of my appearance. The scrutiny I feel about my appearance broke into every dimension of my brain and made itself at home. This scrutiny shook and fractured my relationship with my sport and, now, with my profession; it also shattered my view of romantic relationships and of how my body chooses to navigate the standards of this world.
I’m tired. I’ve continued to live in the state of exhaustion I felt in that car, with the feelings that lingered after that meltdown. I am drained from the cycle of comparison and insecurity that has invaded my mind. I wonder if one day I will truly be able to detach myself from these cycles with their heavy price on my worth. To live in a world where I don’t have to reach for every product and feel like enough to walk out the door untouched. I have not found this world yet.
But I hope I do.
Third Place
June 2017
My siblings, grandfather, and I wander through the rooms of my great uncle Justino’s textile workshop. We watch two men work on pedal looms amidst piles of colorfully striped guayaberas, cotton-silk rebozos, and blouses with floral embroidery. They weave intricate geometric patterns mirroring the Mixtec and Zapotec ruins scattered around Oaxaca: all to be sold to tourists in Oaxaca City. I stick my head out the windows of the workshop and look over the mountain pueblo. In San Baltazar, half-built brick-and-cement houses wired with rebar stand beside old adobe homes. The new construction offers a definition of progress that feels strangely hollow. Most of these modern homes belong to the pueblo’s children who immigrated to the U.S.. They labor away, their money raising walls they may not live to return to. My father, for example, hasn’t returned for three decades — his house has begun to crumble because no one lives in it, my grandfather says.
My great uncle’s abundance stands in contrast to this progress, it feels more real. His success is homegrown, rising out of this land like the maize shoots just beginning to break through the dirt. He has lived here his whole life, lucky for never having to leave to survive. He has become part of the music of the pueblo itself — his looms humming in time with the bray of donkeys, the groan of oxen, and the thin bleat of goats in the summer.
We make our way to the common space downstairs, where a bag of capricho pan dulce and a three-liter bottle of coca cola await. I nibble on my bread and observe a family portrait of my great uncle and his siblings while my sister talks to the adults. She tells my great uncle that our parents are doing well in the US and that they send saludos. Shortly after, my grandfather and great uncle dive into full Zapotec conversation — which I can understand, but I’m more interested in the deer tapestries hanging on the bright orange walls. The talk is interrupted by the slapping of flip flops as my great uncle’s grandson walks in: Nelson is a young man in his mid twenties. He is slim, the motion of his hips draws attention to his short shorts (or is it the other way around?), and when I hear him speak, I know exactly what he is.
The word muxe hovered over my childhood, semi-forbidden and semiunderstood. Our neighbor was muxe. He was single, in his thirties, gossiped with the ladies in our apartment’s laundry room, and his jeans were tight. So to be muxe, I thought, was to be gay, in a really effeminate way; a crossdresser, even something like transgender. I knew the word described Nelson — but not me. I didn’t walk like him. I didn’t talk like him. I didn’t dress like him. But seeing him, I recognized something in myself I had spent years pretending wasn’t there. I discovered gay porn when I was just ten years old, typing “boner” into google
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images on my iPod touch after hearing it on an episode of American Dad. The discovery elucidated a truth so inherent to my being — a truth that even when I was five years old in 2008, sent me running to the bathroom when Univision showed a photo of Colombian actor William Levy nude except for a cowboy hat covering his crotch. Even when I couldn’t name that feeling, I had the instinct to hide it. Through my years in middle school, my father would frequently ask me if I had a girlfriend. The answer was always “not yet” but that I liked some girl. “That’s fine,” he’d say, as long as I didn’t have a boyfriend because he wouldn’t allow it. And I really did like a girl — Emily was the first chair violinist in my orchestra class. But there were things that could never be said out loud — not in my house, not in my father’s world, not in the place we came from. Or so I thought.
Nelson moved through the room with a freedom I could barely imagine, here in the place that shaped my father’s beliefs. Unlike me, he wasn’t hiding. I couldn’t believe it until he left, and a subtle change settled in the air between my grandfather and great uncle. The old men stopped facing each other as they spoke. There seemed to be a mutual agreement to not name what was already known. In them, I saw a kind of love woven tightly, beautifully, but with certain colors left out.
Later, as my sister and I rode back home in my cousin Rigo’s mototaxi, she asked him about Nelson. Rigo told us that Nelson had gone off to college — something few men from the pueblo do. He studied outside of Oaxaca and had even spent some time in Europe, which from the conversation seemed to be almost unimaginable for someone from San Baltazar. I didn’t think much of it then, but I wonder now if it is the distance from home, the exposure to different ways of being, the life he built outside the pueblo — was what allowed him to return and move so openly in a place where most people looked away. Probably, but I don’t know what he traded for that freedom. Maybe the cost wasn’t violence so much as a widening gap between him and the expectations of this place. Even without knowing the specifics, I felt the weight of that cost in the room — a price paid simply for the courage to exist. It was the beginning of my understanding of how fragile, and how necessary, it is to claim the right to simply be.
My cousins, Pedro (15) and Emmanuel (13), partake in the slaughter of two goats for a feast in honor of my siblings’ and my homecoming. I hit the stop button on my camcorder as blood erupts from the black goat’s neck into a blue plastic tub. Its legs — tied together with some twill rope — flail sporadically in the air. The first goat exerts diminishing cries, and then: silence. The red goat cries only once. My mother’s sisters and nieces gather in the kitchen of my father’s house chopping vegetables and meat to prepare our meal. I wait outside, inhaling the aroma of roasted chili peppers and herbs emanating from the house as the spray of red replays in my head. My stomach is uneasy and I can’t stop thinking about the flailing legs. I
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wonder if it's normal to feel this way. I may be a boy, but is the making of a man to participate in the slaughter of an animal? In prehistory I’d have hunted for surviva/ If I’d been raised in this place, I would probably help my father kill an animal to eat. As I think about the number of goats my father probably killed by the time he was my age, I recall the story he once told me about a goat he loved. He’d spent an entire day in the campo and returned to find his father had sold the goat to a relative for a feast. At the party, my father left his food untouched when he learned his goat had been pregnant with twins. When I asked him, years later, how many livestock he had killed, he told me he never even killed a chicken.
A gamey smell punches through the spicy air, reminding me why I’ve never been fond of eating goat. One of my aunts scurries over to me and urges me to come inside to eat some food. She tells me that I’ve smelled it and I’ll get antojo — it is a belief in the pueblo that unsatisfied cravings, even subconscious ones, inevitably lead to sickness. I assure her that I'll be fine. I don’t like eating goat so there’s no way I would crave it, and anyway “I don't believe in that stuff.” My grandfather, seeing my fuss, walks over with worry on his face. He places his hands over his eyes and tugs at his hair. He tells me the last time he got antojo he went blind for a time and his hair fell out.
I’m navigating a one way street of communication. I hear the mother tongue, and understand my grandfather easily, but I cannot speak it. There is nothing which I can say to him that he will understand. I acquiesce in his plea.
In the years since, I’ve wondered what happens when a body ignores other kinds of hunger. When I was five years old, my parents took me to see my grandmother Chaya for a mysterious “rash” that appeared in the crook of my elbow. My grandma was a curandera who’d do ritual cleanses on me when I visited her at my uncle's house. She’d fill her mouth with water, spray it over my face, pat me with sage, rub an egg over my body, crack the yolk into a glass of water, and then inspect it to see what ailment I had. On this occasion, my grandmother told my parents I had antojo. Apparently I was craving a dish with chicharrones — deep fried pork rinds. I didn't even know what that was. What I did know was that sucking on my inner elbow felt really good, and years later the same type of “rash” would appear on my neck, sometimes on my chest, after having a passionate night with a guy. It’s hard to resist entertaining the possibility that my body, even then, was already speaking — restless with a hunger I wouldn’t learn how to name for years.
I walk into the kitchen after the warning from my grandfather. My aunt Petra holds a bowl with clear broth — not the deep red from the ancho chilies in barbacoa I imagined — and hands me a spoon with meat on it. The taste is unlike what I remember goat being like, and the texture is firm even after being slow cooked. My cheeks and ears are hot and I break into a sweat. I swallow quickly without chewing, and peer from the corner of my eyes into the large pot sitting over the flame. A goat skull (or rather pieces of it) floats inside, a black eyeball drifting away from dark
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teeth of the detached lower jaw, brain jelly leaking — dissolving into the broth — and my aunt tells me what I’ve just eaten is the goat’s heart.
Monte Alban, an archeological site of Zapotec ruins that can be seen on the blue twenty peso banknote, provides a look into pre-hispanic mesoamerica. The site consists of several step pyramids, altars, and stone carvings of tortured Danzantes. In the summer rainy season, the ruins are alive with lush greenery. I'm visiting with my cousins who live in the city. My brother and I wander to the largest pyramid at the southern platform. The steps are huge, which is surprising given that my ancestors were shorter than me.
There’s a photo of me in preschool dressed up as the stereotype of an American Indian for our Thanksgiving celebration. I’m wearing a trader-joe's-buckskin vest and a feather headdress made of colored paper. My eyes are half closed, probably from my afternoon nap. I was unaware of my indigeneity until I was fourteen. My family is Mexican, which meant we were afraid of la migra. When I made a presidential campaign poster for my 3rd grade social studies project my classmates looked confused when I said that I would give immigrants papers; they jumped and clapped when my crush Maya said she would get rid of homework. My parents spoke to me exclusively in Spanish at home, but when they spoke to each other, it was in a different language they referred to as dialecto. When I was asked what they were talking about they would tell me that it was adult business. However, dialecto was not exclusive to my home. Everyone from my parent’s hometown spoke it, and there were so many of them, us, living in Whittier. I frequently heard dialecto around our apartment complex, at parties, at the Stater Brother’s market nearby, and at church too. In fifth grade, I could suddenly understand it.
When I reach the top of the pyramid, I’m met with an incredible panoramic view of the Oaxaca Valley. Just below the horizon facing east, nearly a two hour drive away, I spot Nueve Puntas (Xaaiga in Zapotec): a mountain in my parent’s town that is shrouded in lore of duendes, a colossal serpent with a pink flower on its head, and a tree containing an infinite water spring.
I marvel at the site builders’ ingenuity. Monte Alban has survived centuries, faced with conquest and earthquakes. Smartphones and selfie sticks abound atop the southern platform pyramid, standing in contrast to ancient engineering. I cannot imagine what Zapotec technology could have evolved into had it not been for the Spanish conquest.
I’m at my maternal grandparents’ house for a celebration of my nephews’ (my cousin’s children) homecoming celebration. All the men are seated outside in a
Bryant Mendez Melchor
section of the courtyard, while the women are seated under a shaded cooking area. Little children are running around everywhere, screaming, and crying. My sister joins the women, and I’m forced to sit with my male cousins. They tell me it’s custom for men and women to sit separately. I’m certain they would think oddly of me for venturing into the women’s quarters except for the fact that I have a camcorder with me and explained that I’m recording messages for our family in the US.
It is the last day of my trip, and I’m in the in bathroom of my father’s home rubbing one out to some GIFs and photos of guys fucking. The cell service here is too weak to load videos, but I’m grateful at least, since one year ago I could not even access the internet. I hear my aunts banging the front door, so I finish quickly. My mother’s sisters bring bread, tortillas, beans, roasted seeds, cured meats and other goods. Some of the gifts are for my family, some are for their children living in the states. Not everything is legal, which my siblings and I learned after our mangoes were tossed by CBP when we landed at LAX last year. My sister explains this — and the fact that there are too many things to fit in our suitcases — to my aunts. We arrive at an arrangement to take a few things from each one, since some of the items can be mailed later. Afterwards, my aunt Isaula opens her bible and reads us Psalms 121:8 which says something along the lines of "The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore." She leads us in prayer, asking for protection over our travel. At this point, I feel guilty because I’ve just committed a wretched sin in the bathroom a few steps away. How can I ask God for a favor when I’m being bad? My aunts cry fervently, full of the Holy Ghost and all. They place their hand on my sister’s head and she instantly begins to cry and shake before falling to the ground. I’m next and all I can think about is that if I don’t do the same thing as my sister, my aunts in their wisdom and enlightened state will know what I’ve done: that I’ve upset the Lord and that’s why he’s not pouring his blessing into me. But before I know it, my aunt's hand is on my head sending electricity running through my body, I’m genuinely shaking, crying uncontrollably, and suddenly laid out on the floor.
November 2021
I had gay sex for the first time a few weeks into my first year at Stanford. I wept for a few nights before deciding to hookup with another guy a week and a half later. Thanksgiving break was quickly approaching, and I was afraid to face my mother, worried she’d notice something different in me. My mother is witchy in the way I think indigenous women are, her dreams always seem to reveal when someone is in trouble. She has a Christian explanation for it, though—like spiritual discernment— and she would probably be really upset to hear me call her witchy. I remember when
Bryant Mendez Melchor
I called to tell her that I wanted to go to Mexico for the break instead of going home. She immediately sensed something was off and asked why I didn’t want to come home: what was I running away from? I reminded her that my grandfathers were getting older, my grandmother had recently passed, and it had been some time since I last visited them. For some reason, I felt safer going to visit my family in Mexico even though they are more devout and conservative in many ways.
My brother David, my aunt Guillermina, and I arrive in the neighboring town, Mitla, to see the ruins. Mitla was important to the Zapotec as the entrance to the underworld. The site is divided into three historical phases: the Zapotec laid the most precise stones at the foundation, the Mixtec moved into the region later and added to them, and finally the Spanish Catholics built a church right on top. The site is mostly well preserved except for the red painted frescoes of Mixtec codices—one of which details the Mixtec creation story—that are eroded and have some graffiti scratched onto them. There’s a column here that people once believed could predict your death. You were supposed to embrace it; the distance between your hands would tell how long you had left.
The legend of Mitla is that the ancient Zapotec who built these walls lived in a time before the sun existed. When the sun was born, they retreated underground, into the darkness that had once been their world, and turned into stone. I run my finger along the stones, imagining the air thick with funerary incense, the crackle of firelight flickering across the limestone, and low chants echoing under the night sky. It’s incredible that this place has survived so vividly—the language still spoken, the valley still largely untouched. Among the ruins and the living voices of the people, I can almost hear the past, and I feel so connected to my history. My aunt laughs when she catches me staring at the wall for too long. “Nephew, you’re so funny,” she says. “You’ve traveled all this way just to look at some old stones.” It’s her first time visiting Mitla too, even though she’s lived only half an hour away her whole life.
My maternal grandfather Gerardo, 92, lives alone at my uncle’s house since my grandmother passed away: my aunts take turns caring for him when his caretaker isn’t around. He’s been missing for the last two days, and my aunt Guille is on the phone with her sisters trying to locate him. Fortunately, he returns home a few hours later saying he was just at Rancho Melchor, tending to his little plot of land at the edge of pueblo, and sleeping in the adobe-brick home he built there. My aunt scolds him gently, telling him it’s for his own good to stay home, that his children worry because they love him. Her voice breaks, and she cries into his shoulder. Later that day, my aunt talks about how she loves my grandpa—stubborn as he is— and shares a story from her childhood. My grandfather used to sell petates—palm
Bryant Mendez Melchor
mats used for sleeping. He traveled for days by donkey to different pueblos throughout the valley, sometimes with one of his children. On one of these trips, he offered to treat my aunt to some new clothes. She, thinking of her siblings, suggested they wait until they got home so they could all share a special meal together instead. My grandfather agreed. They stopped at a church on the way back, and while they went inside to pray, they left the donkey with all their belongings outside. When they returned, the donkey was there, but their money was gone. My grandpa looked at my aunt and said, with a mix of exasperation and humor, “Oh daughter, you were so considerate of your sisters and didn’t want me to treat you, but now no one is getting one.”
My paternal grandfather, Guillermo, has developed cataracts in both eyes. I hold his arm gently and guide him to the dining room table at my uncle’s house, feeling the slight tremor in his grip. As we sit, I watch him navigate the table by touch, his spoon trembling as he lowers it into his soup and raises it to his mouth.
My uncle tells me my grandfather went blind out of deep sadness: a few months before, my father had called to tell him he had end-stage renal disease. I’m not superstitious, but part of me understands why he believes that. I think about the grief and guilt my grandfather must feel—knowing he might lose a son he never fully knew, and realizing that time doesn’t offer do-overs. Oaxaca is a mystical place, where faith and the body intertwine in ways science can’t always explain. Maybe grief is like a spell and the mind really can cloud the eyes from what lies ahead.
I spent two days of my week-long trip at the eye doctor with my uncle and grandfather, watching first as the doctors prohibited my uncle from being in the room with my grandpa because of COVID-19 restrictions, and then as they changed their minds because they couldn’t communicate with my him in Zapotec. When I hug him goodbye, he releases his sobs into my shoulder. He says he can hear how much my brother and I have grown — he can feel the outline of our faces with his hands, but he wishes he could see us. I’m struck by how much of a lifetime of seeing, of remembering, of knowing, has been rendered invisible. I feel the weight of generations, the fragility of my body, and the urgency to soak in everything before it fades.
Kathryn Mattox
They called her “Sweet Girl.”
Young and bright, this humpback whale brims with curiosity, softly approaching boats and locals around the islands of French Polynesia, brushing them with her gaze, gentle as a blanket to the cheek. The pleated accordion bellows of her body exhale, and the song that emits is longing and sweet, low and mournful as the eerie toll of a bell in an empty church.
Let her eye unfold before you. It opens like a flower, petals falling open and decaying to reveal a mottled center, that center of life, of sticky pollen that will sow new offspring. Stare long enough into the flower, into the eye, and it will envelop you. Draw you in like a portal to a strange world. A world where the roots of trees reach towards the sky in tangled exaltation, where an atom splits, not to destroy, but to induce creation…
Whales are richly complex beings. They exhibit joy, empathy, curiosity. Humpback whales in particular have a history of protective altruism, often protecting other species–including humans–from orca or shark attacks. Inquisitive humpbacks have also been known to offer a series of bubble rings as a form of friendly communication with humans and boats, an effervescent wreath of goodwill.
Whales have structured societies, strong family units. They play, share culture, communicate, sing. Whale pods are musical guilds. Humpbacks evolve complex songs that spread socially from one pod to another. Songs change year-to-year, seemingly through interactions and exchanges with other pods. They sing to communicate, to mate, to grieve.
They sing to mourn their dead. Preening calls turn deep and despairing, whales approach the carcass, nudge it, or raise it to the surface as if to allow it to breathe. Grieving mothers may sometimes push dead calves through the water for days. The loss of any fellow is felt profoundly.
They call it “whale fall.”
Kathryn Mattox
One last drink of sun before a descent into twilight and before the gentle pulse of consciousness ebbs away. Once-spirited journeys across long-traveled migration paths now carry labored breaths and the resigned pumps of a withered tailfin. The sinking is inevitable. Vision fades in and out as deep, abyssal blackness approaches, encompassing that weary body like a death shroud. Systems shut down and fade out until the rhythms of the whale’s body resign to the pitiless pulse of the sea.
But at the end of one life, begins another…
The carcass of a whale teems with nutrients–it is the root of a new ecosystem, an indulgent gift from the sunlit waters above to the inky underworld below. In the deep sea, where nutrient-poor scarcity is the norm and high pressure and low temperatures slow decomposition, a whale fall provides decades-long sustenance.
In newborn death, the whale carcass is first ravaged by scavengers. Hagfish and sleeper sharks pelt the descended body like bullets, darting through flesh and leaving exit wounds ragged and gaping. The feast persists for months, if not years. Muscle, organs, blubber, soft tissue all excised in gluttonous greed until the carcass is as gaunt and emaciated as a crumbling house. This is the MOBILE SCAVENGER STAGE.
The skeletal frame is quickly colonized by organisms adrift without a home. Creatures that feed on leftover blubber adorn the body like jewelry: pearly fragments of isopods, delicate roped chains of bristle worms, crustaceans and mollusks embedded in ribs like ruby-set brooches. Shreds of soft tissue hang on bone like pale flags of surrender, while the nutrient-rich sediment beneath provides a years-long burrowing ground for small creatures. This is the ENRICHMENT OPPORTUNIST STAGE.
Now stripped of any remaining soft tissue, bones gleam like canoes on a moonlit sea. The opportunists have now fled their decomposing home, but no part of the whale will go unutilized.
Sulfophilic bacteria begin to encroach on the skeleton. They extract and break down stored skeletal lipids, which are generously abundant in the bones of whales, forming dense colonies upon which snails and limpets graze, carpeting ribs and vertebrae like moss on a tree. Osedax–or zombie worms–secrete acid to dissolve and consume the bones themselves. Because of the dense abundance of lipids in the skeleton, this slow gnaw lasts for up to a century. This is the SULFOPHILIC STAGE.
Kathryn Mattox
At last, when all organic matter has been exhausted, only hard minerals remain–the rubbled foundation of a fallen empire, the architecture of a new civilization, embedded in the ocean floor like a monument. Even this hard substrate is not wasted. It acts as an anchor for suspension feeders like sponges and anemones, corals and barnacles. It fosters the birth of a reef–a carcass now encompassed by conflagrations of coral, a flourishing new ecosystem, thousands of years of prosperity, eternal life after death. This is the REEF STAGE.
Sweet Girl’s eye is the size of a grapefruit.
Slip that pale blue ring around the pupil onto your finger like a wedding band. It binds you, doesn’t it? Redefines you, like the reminder of a promise you made to give yourself to something greater. Devote yourself to it, breathe it in, contemplate. Fill the church with praise and surrender to this religion.
It is the supernova that spawned existence, the abyssal depths of a yawning sea when observed from above, how a satellite might picture a planet: surrounded by the luminescent halo of a blue atmosphere, with peaks and ridges sculpted into the surface by eons of meteorites. How many people have climbed the skyscraping crests of mountains and forsaken the security of their lives to witness a view of this magnitude? How many have died?
Though promised ninety years, Sweet Girl was given only four.
A broken jaw. Billowing red mushroom clouds. Crying for hours. The pleats of that accordion, torn and silent. Disfigured and left. Cut by the sharp edges of a careless machine, thoughtless and abrasive as a gear turning in the wheels of carnage. The end of a life is a shuttered window. Shuttered by a boat that speeds forth as ceaselessly as time, as apathetic as death.
Nature is cruel, but still we are crueler, as a child who strikes the body of their mother, takes from her without remorse. How many more need to die before we learn to be gentle?
The ocean is like soil: a last harbor for the dead, a site of transformation. It is an
Kathryn Mattox
endless cycle of birth, consumption, death, decay–a place where death does not signify the end of life, but rather its beginning. The fall of a whale, though slow and sorrowful, brings opportunity to the depths of the bathyal and abyssal zones that starve for nourishment. The body is an offering. Purpose continues far beyond life, even after the heart no longer beats and eyes no longer see.
But even death is at risk. Ocean temperatures continue to rise, depleting oxygen reserves of the deep sea, increasing rates of decomposition. No time to form empires when nutrients dissolve faster than they can be consumed. Ship strikes and commercial whaling have reduced the number of whale carcasses that sink to the sea floor. Rather than the slow fade of whale fall meant to welcome the end, death comes swiftly, with bloody metal teeth. The body becomes waste, the value of life forgotten, the value of death disparaged.
Generational abundance created by whale falls is siphoned away to nowhere, with nothing to show for the end of a life but a wasted carcass on the beach.
Following the fatal strike of Sweet Girl, indigenous leaders of Tahiti, New Zealand, and the Cook Islands drafted and signed a treaty to recognize whales as legal persons. The treaty would allow indigenous people to begin to develop laws with local governments to enforce whale protection and minimize the harm caused by ships moving through whale-populated waters.
Once you have stared into that grapefruit-sized eye, you cannot help but keep it open.
Cockroach City
Planet Earth Arts Creative Writing Prize Second Place
In the National Archives, among server racks blinking with status-lights, cold and humming in the dark, is an SSD memory block labelled number N0.434.07. Admittedly, coming here as a child I used to think that the entire place looked like a sea of twinkling stars, and I was too distracted to pay much attention to what these server racks contained. But today is my sixteenth birthday, which means that, following a mix of family tradition and outdated legislation, I am allowed to—which is another way of saying must—select a Top Secret archival log to read, carrying its information with me to the grave, and sharing with no one, other than those in Aldurra’s inner circle.
Aldurra, the Floating Garden City, its sky sealed by an arching dome of the finest glass with air so temperate that roses and sunflowers occupy the same farmspace as oranges and soybeans, maize and wheat. Warm air filters down from the solar-generator hanging overhead like a rotating disco ball, carrying with it the perfect concentration of Vitamin-D for human health. The city is a glass sphere levitating above the ocean, the most epic engineering accomplishment of the past century, and humanity’s bastion of high-functioning civilization among the ruins of a devastated planet.
You may ask, what about the Gigatrees? Lattice trunks of concrete and steel, solar cells drinking the sunlight, canopies curved to catch every drop of rain. A flawless combination of form and function. An impeccable calculus of shape. All of Aldurra’s prominent streets, buildings, railways are built concentrically around the forest of Gigatrees. I’m lucky to have a view of them from my balcony.
I use both hands to pull memory block N0.434.07 from its server rack. The metal surface is cool to touch. An in-built fingerprint scanner verifies my identity: “Authorization Granted: member of executive family.” The block’s status-light pulses amber, its lid then opening with a click to reveal a plexiglass sheet in the shape of a coaster.
I lock myself into a private reading room, one of those tiny, windowless boxes with a single chair and a flickering light. A VR headset sits on the table—it’s my first time trying the new immersive reading technology. The system comes complete with haptic pads, feeding biosensor data into a powerful algorithm, allowing the user to experience a full spectrum of physical sensations reconstructed from archival data. This is the tingly feeling I feel now after loading data files from my plexiglass sheet into the VR headset: a cold spark moves up my spine. The system is superimposing new senses and experiences directly onto my nervous system. For a split second, I feel like my limbs are weightless and like I’m floating. Then the world goes black.
Kester_1. She stands in a laboratory, examining bottles of chemical reactants. Sharp shoulders and rimless spectacles and freckles mottle her cheeks. Like all anthrobotanists, she wears a set of cotton attire dyed stone grey. Wearable bioelectronics strapped to both arms—electrocardiograms, microfluidic patches— documenting every aspect of her experience for future records. The nametag on her chest reads Dr. Carrie Kester—she is about to become the first person to leave the city borders.
“Is this… on?” She taps the device on her lapel. A blinking green light indicates yes. Kester clears her throat before continuing, “I was told to narrate this first log oratorically for formality’s sake.” She shrugs. “Well, here goes… the thing is, no machine is designed to operate forever, not even Aldurra. People don’t like to hear this: my peers used to call it academic radicalism, and politicians—well they seem to have some inherent inertia that, how to say, inclines them to resist any change to the status quo.” She pulls a newspaper clipping out of her breast pocket. “After last year’s crop failures, a blackout of entire agriculture centers, nobody can continue to dismiss this as heresy. Not anymore. I say this for whoever is watching in the future: one speck of mold is all you need to discover a rotting system.”
On her desk is a notebook repurposed from sugarcane, holding pages torn from deprecated botanical textbooks, filled cover-to-cover with sketches of plants and vegetation from the old world. She wraps the notebook in protective film and slides it into her bag. “I hope to find things that will reverse our course. Aldurra needs a horticultural miracle.”
Kester_3. Three days ago, her transport pod exited the safety of Aldurra’s sphere and landed in the ocean. All this time, the scenery has remained unchanged: the best way to describe it would be “an ashen expanse of polluted water”. She’s not entirely surprised: weather-balloon data showed that the outside world’s climate was extremely arid and past the point of inhabitable. But the pipes are unexpected—glass pipes, thousands of them! They rise out from the ocean surface and stretch toward the floating city overhead, like the legs of an insect. She’s already added sketches of them to pages of her notebook.
A dust storm blows from the East. The dust weasels into all the small crevices of her pod, jamming her navigation system. Ugh—that’s her journey stalled for the foreseeable future. Raising the door hatch, she ducks into the lower cabin where her sleeping chambers are, huddling against an oval peephole.
There’s an ultrasonic imager built into her pod. Its pixelated viewfinder shows a scene that looks like Atlantis and a cemetery mixed together: submerged cities,
Sage Wu
dead coral, and wrecks of old submersibles with military insignias still painted on their hulls—a century ago, governments had sent these submersibles out into the dying ocean, searching for marine species that could survive the elevated CO2 levels. She stares for a long time at the ruins of old Southeast Asia lying in its grave on the ocean floor.
Kester_5. Day five. Finally… shore. She sighs with relief as the first Javanese island comes into view. But something’s strange. The beach is pockmarked with holes. On her green-and-black radar display, they appear disconcertingly like unhealed wounds that stretch on for miles. Uniform size, uniform intervals, as far as the eye can see. Kester searches through her database but finds nothing like it—the closest match is a beehive honeycomb. Her chest tightens, and she wonders if perhaps coming out here was the right decision at all.
She docks her pod at shore and steps onto the beach, curling her toes to feel the sand. A little bit ahead, the sand ends and the dirt begins. In the old world that dirt would have already been the beginning fringes of a lush rainforest. If there’s one place she needs to go, it’s there. Closing her eyes, she lets the uncertainty drain from her body. Her notebook with botanical clippings feels weighted in her backpack. It turns out that the rainforest is dead—a surprise to no one, but depressing all the same. She walks down a gravelly trail which cuts through this sepia wasteland. Gray stumps, yellowing soil, and bone-dry shrubs line her path. What used to live here has been burnt through cycles of heat, drought, and fire until it permanently surrendered its ability to recover. Dead leaves and weeds crackle under her hiking boots. As she sits down by some shrubs for a break, she allows her gaze to alight on her walking path and properly examine the earth. Across from her is a depression in the dirt, about a quarter-inch deep. It seems oddly shaped, and fairly recent. Only when she moves closer does she realize what it is.
Kester_D5 (cont). She follows the footprints. Footprints! Her mind is working overtime to suspend the questions. Are there people out here? How? What on earth is going on? They end at a crater: one hundred yards across, with walls stark white and threaded with rare-earth ore such as iron, nickel, and sparkles of granite. Each shard catches the dusty afternoon light, glowing as if aflame, as though the entire thing is studded with gleaming rhinestones. Mind still overflowing, it takes willpower to move her limbs when the easier thing to do would be remaining there, frozen in blind shock. She steps onto the slope of the crater and slides down, taking out a plastic pouch from her backpack. Her arm moves back-and-forth as she saws at the
Sage Wu
ores. She intends on bringing them back to examine with a spectrometer. Something makes a sound behind her.
“Who are you, stranger?” a voice asks in a hoarse, disjointed staccato. The hairs on the back of her neck shoot up, and she panics, wondering if she’s going to be killed in cold-blood by some cannibalistic local. She turns to see that it’s a person wearing an earth-colored headscarf and a robe sewn from mismatched fabric: faded orange with spiral embroidery, turquoise polka dots, and leopard print. The layers of their headscarf move ever so slightly as they talk, like a shifting mirage.
“Answer me.”
She tells them her name, and that she is a researcher from Aldurra. They fold their hands over their chest and repeat the city in a tone holding recognition, along with something else she cannot name.
“I see,” they finally say. “If you’re Aldurran (they pronounce the word strangely) then we need to take precautions. Don’t misunderstand.”
“Precautions? What-” She starts, but before she can finish the question, there’s already a needle punctured into her neck with clear liquid mixing into her blood. Her legs grow heavy and her vision goes dark.
Kester_5 (cont). She wakes up with her hands and feet tied, sitting in a wooden chair. The time on her wristwatch tells her that a few hours have passed. The room she’s in is windowless and dark, so the only thing she can make out is the shape of its curved walls. It smells like fresh earth. Beads of sweat begin dripping down her forehead. The part of her neck where she was stabbed still stings. She begins to worry about what’s going to happen next.
The ceiling light flickers on. A man walks in, wearing the same attire as the person she encountered earlier. She now sees that the place is not a prison cell like she’d thought, but a small living room furnished with rugs and throws strewn on the floor. A nook carved into the wall has a blanket and pillow, like a bed.
“You’re awake,” the man says. “I’m sorry about the way we brought you here— we just don’t have visitors from Aldurra, you see, or visitors from anywhere for that matter.” He pulls a chair closer, “but Aldurra isn’t just anywhere… My name is Indra. I want to learn more about you, and you probably want to know something about me. So we will talk.” “Can you let me out first?”
He shakes his head, “not until I deem that you are safe. Again, I’m sorry, but please understand that this is for both of our sakes.”
Not an ideal situation, but she nods slowly. He doesn’t seem to have malintentions. “Glad we can reach an understanding. Now, let me ask you: how much do you know about us?”
“Nothing,” she confesses, “I… didn’t even know that people lived on the
outside.”
“Then we’ll start from the beginning.” **
Kester_8. Indra explained everything. She admits that it has been hard to process even after eight days of being outside Aldurra and two days of being around him. After the Climate Cataclysm, most of Java was annihilated. Ecosystems collapsed, leaving nations starving and their citizens gaunt like corpses with skin clinging over exposed skeletons. Flash floods rushed in during Monsoon season and wiped out entire villages. The air became so toxic that it morphed into the color of red sand dunes. The few who remained built underground because the surface was uninhabitable, and then one day, they watched a rich neighboring nation build a floating city and rise into the sky. With legs reaching miles across the ocean, suctioning water, minerals, nutrients—anything the islands have left. The Javanese called it kecuak, the Cockroach, after the only insect that seemed to thrive in this new environment.
“How have I never heard of this?” she asks. She has spent her career studying Aldurra’s food system, published papers on Aldurran horticulture. Indra shrugs. They are walking together through the subterranean tunnels of his town, the entrance of which is through a trap-door right at the center of the crater where he found her. Her restraints were untied two days ago.
“Whoever built it designed it so future generations would not need to know.” He picks up a piece of rusted pipe with a cracked screen. “Our job is to maintain the Aldurran pipes. These–” he lifts up the cracked screen for her to see,”–tell us what to do. Tasks like lubricate a gear, an ore, or replace a screw. They are automated messages.”
“Why do you continue to follow them?”
“It’s how we get by.” He drops the screen to the floor. “When you finish a task, you get Aldurran food scraps. That’s the only edible thing. There’s nothing on the island.” Her vision darts between the screen and Indra.
“It is obvious,” he says, with a smile that does not reach his eyes, “that your civilization is far more advanced than ours.”
Kester_11. Indra has been showing her his island for six days now. The soil, he explains, has been stripped of its minerals by kecuak’s pipes. What little useful organic matter remains on the surface has been exhausted. His people have tried to grow things. Pale, stunted stalks of cassava; fig trees that produced fruit once before withering; palm trees that scarcely have enough fruit to derive oil from.
Sage Wu
“I showed you all this,” he gestures around him, “to help you understand the situation we are in. We do not want to live off scraps forever. Please, you say you are a scientist. Can you help us?”
She nods. “I’ll do what I can.”
Kester_D13. She has been staying up late for the last few nights, working. A lamp—made of what, she’s not sure—hanging from the low ceiling of her nook. The other Javanese don’t ask what she’s doing.
What the Javanese need is not a specific crop or plant. There is nothing that can grow out here in sufficient abundance. What they need is technology that replaces nature. Something that can pull water from the polluted ocean, harvest what little sunlight passes through the ashen sky, and slowly return nutrients to the soil for the earth to recover. It would have to be manmade, something to survive conditions that no natural organism has yet evolved for.
She pages through her bagasse notebook, filling it end-to-end with blueprints, calculations, and sketches. A lattice structure for stability. Photovoltaic cells along the trunks.
She calculates the exact angle for the canopy to funnel every drop of rain towards the root system. It’s a good concept—so good, it could win her a prize if she were back home. But the closer she gets, the more reality hardens into its ugly truth. Undeniably, this is the most important work she has done… and may ever do. These Gigatrees, as she’s calling them, will change the lives of any civilization that can build them. Her chest tightens, not wanting to think the words, but knowing the truth: she simply cannot do it here. It’s impossible! The materials don’t exist on the island and the fabrication requires Aldurran manufacturing. The whole project, if to be built at all, must be lobbied for, approved, funded, and shipped across an ocean. And she knows, deep down in her heart of hearts, that it will never be approved. Her own expedition took so long—supporting a small island nation that Aldurra already exploits? There is no economic case to make. It won’t even make it pass the first round of authorization.
Still, she gets up in the morning, groggy with dark-rings under her eyes that Indra looks concerned about, but takes as a sign that she’s working hard. Kester lays the sketches out on a stone table. He stares at them for a long time before speaking.
“This is incredible,” he finally says, “will they work?”
“Yes,” she says, “I think they would.”
“And can you build them?”
She looks at the pile of pale cassava stalks on his desk, at the cracked screen from the pipe segment he showed her. She folds her notebook closed.
“I’m going to try,” she responds, her gaze cast off to the side.
Sage Wu
The VR system goes quiet. In the logs, Kester doesn't record for two days after this conversation—and so neither do I experience anything, only a darkness that might be sleep. My body suspended in the virtual environment, weightless, and waiting. I wonder what she was doing. Perhaps she continued to lie to Indra and pretended to work, when in reality she had already decided. Some decisions do not announce themselves.
Kester_16. Kester is already packing. She folds the bagasse notebook and slides it into her bag next to the ore samples, printed images of the radar captures, and plastic-sealed specimens.
“You may think this is uncharitable,” she speaks into her recording device directly, “but it’s the only way I can think to do it. Is it crueler to leave someone with a false hope, or with the resignation that things will never change? I think the latter.” Tears begin to well in her eyes, but she brushes them away before they can begin to fall. “I’ll try and send them something when I get back. I haven’t decided what yet.” She zips the bag closed. “Aldurra needs a horticultural miracle, and I think I’ve found one. At least I’ve done some good.” **
I don’t need to watch the rest to know what happened. At the end of the day, it is the Gigatrees and their blueprints which continue to live on, not Indra. That is telling enough. I raise my wrist to wipe my eyes, realizing that they’re damp just like Dr. Kester’s were. I finger the plexiglass sheet from the VR headsets. The words Top Secret engraved onto its surface take on new meaning. Whoever first made the decision to restrict access to these expedition logs knew what they were hiding, what they were running away from. Now I am sitting here in my family's building shivering in the cold, having looked. And now Dr. Kester’s secret—her burden—is shared with me.
Surely someone knows. Surely the engineers, the city planners, the founders. Yes. And after them, at least one person in the history of Aldurra must have found a broken glass panel in the sphere and looked out…and seen the pipes. Probably, right? The politicians definitely know, as well as the inner circle, of which my family and I are members…. I know now, too. Firsthand. But does knowing matter if knowing changes nothing? The question sits with me in the windowless reading room. I am not the first person to sit with it, and in all likelihood, will not be the last.
Outside, the solar-generator rotates on its axis; the Gigatrees lift their canopies
Sage Wu
toward it; the dome holds its temperate air; the pipes run down through the ocean floor, into the earth of an island I have seen but also never seen, maintained by people I have met but will never meet. It is our perfect system. I reach for the plexiglass sheet, my fingers hovering over the next log, hesitating.
Sumedha Yarlagadda
“what she gave us/what we do” Planet Earth Arts Creative Writing Prize Third Place
i don’t believe in victim-blaming but it was because you gave. because you slicked us rich in the oil of lythe, in the beam of burning energy, in the lush of pulsing green. you fed the muscle of fish, congealed, cradling ethyl in palm lines that gave us our futures. you let us keep the wishbone, and it scrapes against our back molars. still.
the men chant mmm mmm mmm with their arms swinging, beer bubbling in the fissures of their espoghai. they taste concrete in their kneecaps. they make you a conquest. they smother you with asphalt, toothpicking the segments of earthworm that key rows of teeth, white. supple like piano tusks.
you have been gang-raped and disemboweled you are jyoti singh/anita cobby/anonymousanonymousanonymous (21austrailia16ukrainehoustonrichmondanonymousanonymousanonymous) the wind rippling with desperate whispers, like a chord in a bell jar. your case ought to be publicized. it belongs on true crime daily and everyoneshouldknowthis podcasts and netflix’s top ten. it should be the first entry in the Book of
Sumedha Yarlagadda
you (mother).
IV
you, mother, say that i came out fighting, my chubby fists oiled slick with breath & rainwater. you remind me how my knuckles fisted you, bone cordoning wheat bread & mud pies. my heartbeat, wedged in the pleats of your breast.
i tasted you first in silk, in cow lactate crisped and churned tight, economized. your milk was the first thing you ever gave me, and i pressed my face against the expanse of you, your flesh sinewed with roots.
my toes culled the cracks in you, coaxing the dough of your thighs wide so the dirt cracked, and i could germinate. i could join the take.
your water has broken. baiji cordons plastic goldfish, suspended in your swimming pool. ocean waves caned with malt and carbon. bay ridges bursting, melted ice overfloweth. your salt, our chlorine.
your veins are alight with the swelter of our smoke. factories plumping poison like sleep, until the rivulets of barked green conflagrate.
Sumedha Yarlagadda
indonesia has unspooled its intestines, because its capital was submerging and california is blistering, its woodland an open wound and mexico is gasping barren, pools yielding into rivulets and canada/uk/germany/philippines/india/china/everyoneeveryoneveryone
and still they say my mother is fertile. they say my mother asked for it.
and when he flickers, dyed, on the television crunched ramen-noodle hair, finger coiled in fishhook and says you are lying about the pain you scream for me, and i hear you
in the women who denature, take female genital mutilation at the cusp of nine, their insides hacked, another kind of coal mining. forgiveus,mother. for you havegiven everything tounearthus butwe havemiscarriedyou.
Breanna Burke
“Abecedarian for My Mother, Young and Fascinated by Grey”
Clarence Urmy and Irene Hardy Poetry Prize Second Place
At sixteen, your face basks in scorching sun and the tall man walking smoothly across Carnival Street reminds you of your father, his dented, black chin glowing through the dust in your eyes. Yours has been a lifetime of going too far and when you see the caucus surrounding this big man, green rises in you like bile and because you are hungry, you think it is love. You think it is a manifestation of God and you see He is just for the first time and on hot pavement, you kneel before this bad-mouthed man whose eyes are locked on the crowd devouring his every lie. Maybe you do not know it yet but nice women like your mother live in boxed oafish lives that if you put your young ears close enough pull the hope out of you and mortar it into quaint wraps of cassava, dried in sun hot and ready to feed by hand, pound by pound to selfish husbands who avoid the glare of tearful eyes when the silence isn’t enough to sink under whatever this is. And you, young woman, already victim and vacant, you are already part of his wreckage. Listen to me. There is no such thing as broken, only xenolith. When this man finally catches his shadow blocking your tiny figure, convinces you of your own mistidings, remember Grey Zion was also a scarped hill.
“Maroon”
Clarence Urmy and Irene Hardy Poetry Prize Third Place
When Cain struck me, the land rose up to meet my body. My blood began to spread, and the soil drank it gratefully. As I settled into the earth, red and brown mixed: maroon.
He begged to join me and this ground, but death flees from him. I feel every weary lift of his foot, the resigned way he puts it down, although I do not know where he is. He is lost; I, marooned.
I do not envy his position or that of the living. I am the soil now, able to rise as I please, able to grow life within me. I am free. A maroon.
Divya Venkat Sridhar
“Despondency”
Wiley Birkhofer Award in Poetry
On afternoons like these I sit in a grey room, wrap and unwrap headphone cords around my fingers. Outside the third floor window, there are children cycling on the grass. They pedal in clumsy ovals, fall into the mud, tear yellow scabs into their knees. Soon the sky will soften and the grass will go dark. The adults will lift them off the dirt and drive them back along the lampposts, make them dinner. Today, like every day, I look to see if you are walking down the stairs. I think of the painting by Degas, the woman at the cafe. Everything dull, and nowhere to be. Her hands in her lap.