December 2022

take me to netherlands

By Fransivan MacKenzie

i only sing in the sigh of the midnight and the dawn. and only in sobs.
when daylight arrives and my father has gone, i sleep into the ballad of the

mourning doves, having no one to call to me and say they survived the witching
hours. having no one at all. i read somewhere that in netherlands, if you die

and have no one to attend your funeral service, they send you a civil servant
and a poet so you won’t have to be lonely as they bury you. all the time, in my

head, i book a flight to the greener planes of amsterdam. i dream of my death
sitting through pews, immaculate and vacant of grief. no bouquet of white tulips. no

mourners in black with heads hung low. perhaps, not even a headstone. but a poem,
a string of words that have seen me through various deaths i died while living

can see me through my earthly ending, too. i thank the desolate f. starik in unwritten
blues. i tell myself that tomorrow will forgive me for all these wishes. as if the

sunrise isn’t the bleed unmade yet and already unforgiving. as if it isn’t the wound.

Fransivan MacKenzie is a twenty-one-year-old storyteller born and raised in the Philippines. She is the author of Out of the Woods, a chapbook of poetry and prose, and Departures, a collection of short stories. Her works also appeared in Germ Magazine, Transition Magazine, The Racket, Ice Lolly Review, Jaden Press, and more literary journals all over the globe. She is currently taking her degree in Psychology at Philippine Normal University – Manila. Find out more about her on her website: https://fransivanmackenzie.wixsite.com/my-site.

Babel (Sister to Sister)

By Jane McBride

I get my words from our father
I don’t mean the one above me
He’s in the backyard burning books
To show me that he loves me

I get my courage from our mother
We need no one to acquit us
I speak the language of her brother
A lot of good it ever did us

It’s fine with me
If we disagree
But let’s not misunderstand each other

Jane McBride (she/her) is a senior at Columbia University studying Creative Writing and Religion. Her work has appeared in Quarto Literary Magazine.

Elegy

By Karen Zhao

In memory of 奶奶 (grandmother)

He keeps
quiet, but I know. Your kindness
a river
overflowing.
Sculpting a hunched
figure through the streetlight,
son a shell curled along your spine.
O, you woman of
clay, molding yourself
stronger every day—brisk
steps into the kiln.
O, blood pumping like the wingbeats
of a myth. You coaxed fish-
bones from a child’s throat. You
poured yourself into little
vials and gave them away. Shed
skins and grew them back
faster. The last time I saw
you, I was thirteen. I foal. I burden
– ed with bloodline and love.
Like a parasite, I nestled fingers
between your laddered ribs,
palming the smooth underside of
everything I had known in the
city. We took walks by the Huangpu
River, the mall nearby. Your
son now taller, back also bowed
under the shadows of sky
– scrapers. I trailed
behind you like a smaller child. Returned
to America, your voice spilling
over the line. Then, the glass
emptied. I did not believe it at
first, your death. Like a mantra, I
kept company with my imagination:
We were at the beach.
My eyes were on the sand,
watching the waves pull you out to sea.
Back fading into the sunset.
Footprints smoothed away by the tide:
your imprint on me.

Karen is a high school senior from California. She edits for Cathartic Lit and Farside Review. When she’s not writing, she can be found watching movies or attempting to sew.

Sheltered

By Harini Sethuraman

Bagan, Myanmar

A shell lay in the sand,
bone white temple,
its contours echoed those of the pagodas
glimmering in the distance.

I scooped the shell into the palm of my hand,
entranced by the sandstone streaks and purple spires dotting its surface.
Its mesmerizing facade never betrayed
the haunting voices that lurked inside.

It was only when I scrutinized it,
peered inside its opening,
pressed the conch against my ear,
that I could hear those voices.

Burrowed inside the shell,
the ocean’s susurration was a mother
begging her child to flee in the dead of the night
before their village was burned to the ground.

It was the weeping of a family,
staring at the charred, skeletal remains
of their house and possessions and life,
their existence singed to ash.

It was the chattering of children’s teeth
as they pressed their bodies together
on the packed dirt floor of a refugee camp,
rain tearing into their tent and into their skin.

The voices tumbled into my ears,
snaked down my arms, and coiled round my legs
until I was drowning in this requiem of sadness.

I wrench the conch away from my ears,
silencing the voices, burying them in a cobwebbed crevice of my mind,
removing myself from that haunting misery

I place the conch on my bookshelf in my room.
Years later, when I look at it,
the first thing I remember is my family laughing on that beach.

The voices still wail inside.

Harini Sethuraman is a senior at Singapore American School with a penchant for making up her own word definitions and using them as if they are correct. This has frequently backfired. This breaking of convention is also what draws Harini to poetry. Poetry backfires less often for her. Having lived in Singapore her whole life, exposed to a melting pot of cultures, Harini’s work examines the ways we interact, and sometimes don’t, with the diversity of lives and circumstances surrounding us.

The Greenhouse

By Noah Cohen-Greenberg

She had been talking about Scotland. You were pretty sure she’d never lived there, but she talked like she had. She didn’t seem to notice that you weren’t speaking much. Her passion gave way to a pause, then a wordless silence, and now you’re alone with your grandmother and the sounds of her house.

She squints, searching for words, like a dazed child actor. You don’t like seeing her so lost, so you stare at the grandfather clock in the corner. When you were a few years younger, six or seven, you loved watching the pendulum swing. Now it looks like it’s shaking its head.

Your grandmother shakes her head. Her hair is like Santa’s, you think. Or, Santa’s eyelashes: coarse, white, and thin. They could be friends, her and Santa. He doesn’t get out that much, and she could talk about living in the North Pole.

You don’t want to get old. At your brother’s birthday, you decided that you would rather not have any more birthdays, even if it meant giving up cake. Even your mom’s cake.

These weekly dinners were your mom’s idea. You remembered your grandmother’s house, sugar cookies, and card-playing cousins, and thought it sounded nice. Memories are funny that way. You tap your foot and gaze out the window. Your grandmother hasn’t mentioned the sundress she gave you, which you wore on purpose. You ask to go outside.

She takes you down the brick path, around the garage, into the greenhouse. She shows you her favorites, the zinnias. You pick a petal and roll it between your fingers. It’s squishy and soft.

She plucks one herself and smiles at you. You’d forgotten her smile. You smile back, and giggle, and take more, and she takes more, and you’re both rolling the petals, laughing, you’re tugging off handfuls at once, smearing zinnias on your arms. She is too. She’s smiling, and crying. She leaves the ground.

She rises steadily, like whatever’s lifting her knows exactly what it’s doing. You don’t touch her. She looks happy, drifting toward the glass roof. There are birds in the sky, beautiful and colorful like the zinnias. Your hands find the latch to the ceiling window. You open it, wide open, and out she floats, her eyes dreamy, her body easy, the clouds between her ears now the clouds between the mountains, wispy, white, and beautiful, like Santa’s eyelashes.

Noah Cohen-Greenberg studied literature at the University of Oxford and Williams College, where he was a Roche Fellow, a Wilmers Fellow, and a two-time winner of the Dunbar Student Writing Award. He grew up on a hay farm in upstate New York and is looking forward to the fame and fortune that typically accompany a career in the literary arts.

Umbrellas

By Andrea Li

“You know, this rain makes everything so gloomy,” Lillian says, one hand picking at a fresh scab on her thigh, the other gripping a railing under her. She’s perched on the edge of a balcony overlooking a lake, and my hands sweat as I watch her legs dangle over the empty air below.

“Don’t do that,” Jin responds. He’s in the bathroom, but his baritone voice still echoes out from the hotel room behind us loud and clear.

“Do what? Can you even see me? What are you even doing right now?”

“Getting ready,” Jin says. “And yes, I can see you. Get down from that railing right now.”

“Ugh. Party pooper.” She hops down from the railing and her legs land soft onto the balcony. My hands unclench a bit when her nimble feet finally tilt back inside, each leg crossing over the other in a careless braiding motion.

“Is it raining out there?” Jin asks. “Will I have to bring your umbrella?”

“I just said it was raining, dummy. Can you bring the one with the ducks?”

A toilet flushes in response. They’re out of my sight now, so I unfold my legs and get up from the balcony floor to head into the room. The slight slickness of rain brushing on my legs like a memory doesn’t bother me, but not being able to see them does.

I trace my light fingers along the ridges in the walls as I walk in to ground myself: they’re painted beige, matching the carpet and curtains, all coated in a layer of cheap perfume strong enough for me to smell. The room itself is sparsely furnished, with only a large painting of a trout hanging over the two twin-sized beds and a few retro lamps scattered around on the low tables.

Jin finally responds, poking his head out from the bathroom to look at Lillian, who is hanging off the edge of the bed. “You know, I really don’t know if the pink ducks are appropriate for a funeral.”

“I don’t care. I want the ducks.”

Jin pauses, then sighs. “We’re taking the black ones. No way in hell am I letting you show up to Mom’s funeral holding a pink umbrella with ducks on it.”

Lillian groans, then plasters her fingers over her face, still hanging upside down from the bed. “I don’t think Mom would care, though, would she? I mean, she bought me that umbrella.”

“It’s not about Mom. It’s about everyone else; they’d think we were being disrespectful. Y’know, funeral rules and shit.” Jin steps out to adjust his tie in the mirror.

“What are funeral rules and shit?”
“Don’t say shit. It’s about respecting the dead. Can you get changed? Dad’s coming to pick us up in an hour.”

“Where is Dad, anyways?”

“Business meeting in Los Angeles, or something. Mom would be pissed to see this shithole we’re staying in, especially when he’s got a whole mansion with Jen down in Irvine.”

I smile at this and shake my head, though they can’t see me. I’m sitting cross-legged by their luggage now, gazing at the contents of their suitcases; Jin’s is black and practical, and has nothing in it other than a pair of cargo shorts, a shirt, and some toiletries. Meanwhile, Lillian’s is hot pink and stuffed to the brim: it holds some bright frilly dresses she got for Christmas, a black dress clearly stuffed in there by Jin as an afterthought, toys, and of course, her beloved duck umbrella. Balanced precariously on top of this mess is a grocery bag full of unhealthy snacks, mostly pink and princess themed, likely a bribe in exchange for wearing the black dress.

I stroke the fabric lining Jin’s suitcase. Its roughness is a comfort on my cold skin: the room is slipping away from me a bit, but the feelin g of fabric keeps me rooted in reality.

“Lillian, please get changed into your dress. The black one. We really need to go soon.” Jin’s voice brings me back to the room as I focus my vision on the two of them, Lillian now lying spread-eagled on the sheets and ignoring Jin.

“No.” Her voice is muffled against a pillow that she’s thrust over her head in protest.

“Come on.”

“No. Don’t wanna.”
“Please. We can’t be late for this.” Jin pulls the pillow off her head and attempts to lift her from the bed, but she won’t budge as she grips her hands onto the sheets.

“Stop that! I don’t think Mom will– would care about us being late, anyways. Or about the duck umbrella, or what dress I wear. She’s not like that.” Her small voice cracks a bit at the edges, but her arms cross in defiance as she clambers to sit upright on the bed. I try my best to interject, but the air traps the sound in my straining mouth as I struggle; it’s a futile battle that I refuse to learn from.

“I told you, it’s not about Mom, it’s about the others. Dumb, yes, but–”

“Fine. Whatever. I’ll change now, sorry.” Lillian doesn’t say anything more, but I can see tears begin to pool in her eyes as her voice grows frail. I want to get up and walk over to her, but my weakened legs refuse me. Instead, Jin plants his arms around her in a firm hug.

“It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”

They embrace, and I watch Lillian’s shoulders shake for a bit as she exhales with sharp breaths, refusing to cry. Jin places a hand on her head before pulling away and whispering something I can’t make out. She nods and gets up from the bed.

As Lillian brushes by me to grab her dress from her suitcase, I reach out to touch her arm. My hands stretch out to hers, icy, immaterial fingertips dangling only inches from sunburnt skin, before being forced to stop by an invisible barrier. I can only watch as she heads to the bathroom to change; my hands still stiff on the suitcase, my legs still folded on the floor.

Andrea Li (she/her) is a high school junior from California. Her work has been published in Cathartic Youth Literary Magazine and is forthcoming in Eunoia Review.

this sent struct is odd