Issue 32

Walking towards the barricade was an uphill climb, and my legs wavered from months of disuse. In another life, it’d be exhilarating to break the law so openly. Instead, it was terrifying to be outside in the quiet with only the cry of cicadas to accompany me. They’d become more noticeable in the absence of cars and busy roads, city highways turning empty. But I wasn’t alone. There past the wire fencing, standing just beyond the short stretch of no-man’s land, was a boy who owed me a date.

In the overripe spring of May, in a locked-down Shanghai choked by heat and regulation, normality was a distant dream. For three months, we’d longed for simple things: walking in the sun, biking past streets once familiar and lively, seeing each other again. Over text, he’d say, We’ll go everywhere. When this is over, I’ll take you to the French Concession’s best cafes. His to-do list was never ending. I’d always reply, exasperated: Okay, okay. I never had the courage to ask, Are we getting our hopes up for nothing? Will I see you again?

 Now he was two meters away, halted in place by a second fence, our hands barely close enough to touch.

It was 9th grade P.E. class all over again; staring at each other from across the gym, then looking away. Blushing at a first crush, a first love. We’d imagined that the following months would go a little differently. The things that seemed so constant in our lives were now a luxury: dim restaurants and bustling city nights, hot steam rising from a bowl of ramen, the song “Stay With Me” by Miki Matsubara playing in the background. I’d imagined dates to be more than just the highway. Had I been given a choice, it’d be in the Lebanese restaurant on Anfu road, in the season of plum rain and wisteria. But seeing him again after months of isolation was enough. So I reached for him on the other side, no-man’s-land separating us from an embrace. He held onto my fingers gently across the distance, both of us pressed up against the metal railings. His hair had grown longer. He looked tired. Yet there was still a giddy smile on his face, as if he couldn’t believe what we’d done.

“I’m going to get into so much trouble,” he said.

I sighed, thinking about how my mom had wrinkled her nose at me earlier in the morning and said, “Really? You’re breaking the rules for a boy?”

“Me too.”

“But think about it this way,” he amended. “We can tell everyone else that we got out months earlier than they did. We snuck out! We’re badass!”

His exuberance made me blush. I didn’t say anything else to keep myself from stuttering.

But I leaned into his warm touch, comforting even in the humidity and 37º heat. “When this is all over, we’ll go everywhere,” he said.

I let myself believe him. His endless supply of hope. I imagined the barricades falling down, cars rushing back onto the highway. I imagined holding him close in a picturesque cafe downtown, the French Plane trees on Avenue Joffre blowing pollen everywhere.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay.”

 

 

 

 

Jessica is a poet from Shanghai. She loves art, music, and Arabic poetry.

On 250 acres cornered between North County streets and a dense backwoods of possibility, I am working the land. This is no estate in the country. It is an urban farm, a suburban paradise. The land switches to rural once my car enters this enclave. I pass rows of lettuces and herbs, gardens trimmed by the work of volunteers and happy workers. There are banana trees to my left and right, small stumps that look like tiny Californian palms. (They will not make bananas). I don’t quite know why they are here, and not back home on a beach. I pass peach trees, budding with firm fruit. They look like gooseberries, feel like fuzzy beginnings. Am I in Georgia?

People wave hello. There are smiles on faces I have never seen before: a man who seems like a hipster with his nose ring, long hair, and burning blue eyes, but talks softly and slowly and carefully as he washes kale… “Hey dude,” he says, and I am comforted by his calmness. I envy his style: a soft collared shirt tucked beneath bright yellow waders. A lady with big round glasses shows me her herb garden (zen is an understatement). I rub my fingers through her chamomile, and my hand smells like staying home in bed all day.

I approach manicured rows of greens with curiosity and caution; I realize I don’t quite know what this place is. Even the hawks circle overhead with slight confusion. Wind blowing off the occasional car lifts them upward. I want to tell these hawks there is no prey here, but raptors do not speak english. Instead they soar in the bright blue sky where the clouds are simple, unlike those of the thunderous tropics or those raggedy and wispy ones from the cold north. They’re a blend of those long, outstretched mats of white on the great plains, and the cotton shapes which peak through my city’s skyscrapers.

A car rolls by and the hawks pitch away. They do not know what to make of this patch of prairie—what with the street grid confining it and the metropolitan area surrounding it. I don’t either, so instead I let the wind guide me.

Pea plants nudge themselves up from gravel and the three propeller leaves of strawberry dot the walkways. There are garlic shoots, comfrey bushes, marigolds and sunflowers.The landscape is immaculate. Every plant has purpose, and has a companion. I see stems of false elm rooming with the peach trees. Behind them, in the fields are patches of beans, and last season’s cover crops. From this nitrogen bomb, the lettuce grows high in the fallout. The war of the summer has begun, and fittingly the lettuce will win it. In the next row there are white buds of cilantro and yellow petals of mammoth dill—flowers everywhere to attract the eager pollinator.

Cool air pushes across plots as if it were exhaust from the hawks’ tail feathers. It shakes leaves of garlic and planks of hearty purple cabbage—rustles leafy lettuce and tall rye. That rye—sticks tastled with grain—rocks back and forth. It is out of place: its time to prosper was the winter; it does not belong here. There are houses across the street; they all have trimmed kentucky or bermuda grass, not covercops like rye and vetch. The rye will be pulled soon to make way for this summer’s watermelon. Then it’ll return in the winter, when the neighbors will look out their windows as snow falls, gazing across the street at heads of green which’ll push through white.

In another plot there are pepper seedlings, bushels of bok choy and tatsoi. The mustard greens are fragrant against the smell of asphalt and oil. (They taste much better too). Down the road, kids are in school. Here, a child walks past me with his mouth wide open, mesmerized by a wand dispensing iridescent bubbles for the wind to take. Others run across the gravel path, playing with each other with nothing but their young bodies under a hot sun.

I see people bent down, picking white cabbage and collards. Music plays and I am more unsure of my location. First I hear the strums of Frenchmen and -ladies in a dimly lit bistro—then some Spanish guitar and a South American bongocero. I could be in the borderlands of France, the rare plains of Panama, but the distant telephone lines and buildings across the street bring me back. Where to? I am not fully sure.

A child with a speaker makes it harder to tell. Memphis’ “Jailhouse Rock” makes me want to rock and roll as I help a farmer build a trellis. A lady with the 50’s blues migrates up from the deep south. Punk rockers, indie girls, and alternative boys invite themselves too. A family and I jam out to the visiting Mr. Bombastic. His flight from Kingston arrives as we nail down a tarp over composted grown.

I’m on all fours, straddling mounds of fertile soil beneath my body. The ground is squishy from the weight of my knees, shins and hands, and I feel like an infant on his mother’s belly. That would make me but a child to the ground I call Earth. I get up, and find more of my kin.

I stand over a row of the victorious lettuce, from left to right a pithiness of life and color: spotted green and red (a Very Hungry Caterpillar), shimmering ruby (a sprouting rose), dull and steady green (a turtle shell), bright emerald green (a green giant). I look closer at the row while at the same time blurring my vision. A hearty worm emerges from the ground, takes with him leaves and wood chips. A ladybug falls from the green giant, which sprouts outward like a particularly vain tulip, then flies to the ruby rose. I didn’t know she could do that. Words I remember and wings I see teach me the truth of this fair lady.

The exhale of an Italian accordion. Startled, I stop to ask myself if this is a cult or some smoking circle! I only see smiles and despite all the sweat and heat, the toil is not hard. The only clamor comes between a lost tray of purple basil, and the children are only angry with each other because they can be. This place cannot be another world, for it’s entrenched in this city’s boundaries: the strip mall and liquor store, credit union and fast food joint are only a mile away. No, this place is here for a reason. I can feel it in the Northside’s desperation, in how little green can be found in the grocery store, and in the abundance of the antithesis of food like this: food grown locally, sustainably, and beautifully. As I look at the rows of color and am driven through the backwoods to the Missouri River, I think about all those gas stations, liquor stores, and drive-thrus. Soon I reach the river—a brown aquatic ogre lined with pretty little yellow flowers—and I’m reminded how special a place can be.

 

 

G.F. Fuller is a young writer from St. Louis striving to accomplish the feat of making people think. He has been published by newspapers in the Midwest, as well as the writing journals Élan and Teen Writers Project.

after Casimir Pulaski Day

 

 

“Goldenrod and the 4H Stone: the things I brought you when I found out you had cancer of the bone.”

I am staring at a body at my first funeral. She was my great aunt, Shirley, and she lived three houses away from my grandfather and her hair has remained curled. I stand, thinking about all of the cow trinkets within her house. I wonder why there aren’t any cows at the funeral or in her casket. Didn’t Ancient Egyptians bury the dead with their favorite things? I feel a hand on my shoulder and convince myself it’s Shirley agreeing.

“Your father cried on the telephone and he drove his car to the navy yard, just to prove that he was sorry.”

I sit on my friend’s back patio as he tells me about the days his mother snuck into the movie theaters with him. The way he and his mom mixed milk duds with popcorn and he’d stick some in her hair as they left. He tells me about the day he found her hanging and I want to know if there was any popcorn left in her hair when he did.

“In the morning, through the window shade, when the light pressed up against your shoulder blade and I could see what you were reading.”

My grandmother touches my shoulder as we stare at Shirley’s corpse. She brushes my hair with her fingers and asks if I want to touch Shirley. She tells me every funeral she’s ever been to, she finds herself always wanting to touch the body. I realize the reason she’s brushing my hair now.

“All the glory that the Lord has made”

I spend most nights grieving. Grieving the versions of me that never got to exist, grieving the ideas I never got to see. Some part of me wants to be immortal, to stay forever, to only grieve and never be grieved. But I think about how many more winters I’d have to go through, how many more corpses I’d try to touch. I’d like to believe I’d never get used to that amount of death.

 “and the complications that you could do without when I kissed you on the mouth.”

My grandmother tells me not to.

“Tuesday nights at the Bible study we lift our hands and pray over your body”

I sit with a man who tells his hospice nurse that he doesn’t want to die. He says he doesn’t care about heaven or if God is waiting for him, he says he wants to know what will happen here. Less than a week later, his skin turns blue and he stops. I wonder if he really did stop believing, or if abandonment still meant repentance.

“but nothing ever happens.”

“She’ll be cold,” is what my grandmother says, “every memory you have of her will be consumed by ice.” I remember how cold my hands are. I think about how if Shirley were surrounded by all her favorite things, then they’d all be cold too.

“I remember at Michael’s house when you kissed my neck and I almost touched your blouse”

When my father left, he moved to Florida. He worked on an orange farm and never bought a coat.

“In the morning at the top of the stairs when your father found out what we did that night and you told me you were scared.”

I have been to four funerals, all for people I never knew. I have no hold on grief and yet it is the only word I can think of for those who have disappeared. I keep waiting for them to come back and that’s when I mourn, is when I realize winter will always return.

“All the glory when you ran outside”

The day I was born there was supposed to be a blizzard but instead it was 70 degrees and sunny.

“with your shirt tucked in and your shoes untied”

We drive for six hours for the hour-long service for a man I barely know. The music is terrible and my sweater is itchy. I spend the rest of the night sitting in the hotel hot tub, waiting for someone to come in to tell me my ride left without me.

“and you told me not to follow you.”

I kick my ankles against the patio and tell my friend about the day my father left. He asks if it’s worse to have dead parents or shitty parents. I ask him if there should be a distinction between different types of gone — whether there’s really a difference between snow and ice.

“Sunday night when I clean the house, I find the card where you wrote it out”

It sounds like a prediction doesn’t it? He always sings like he’s mourning, even when he’s worshiping.

“on the floor at the great divide”

 My mother’s church has services for the dead. She would take me the first Sunday of every month and we would pray for those who left. We were the only family dressed in all black but she would tell me it was the only way to show any real respect for those who passed. I asked her about the living and she said every other day was for us, it’s selfish to ask for more than we already had. I prayed for my father to appear in the newspaper with a bullet wound in January and then called it repentance.

“with my shirt tucked in and my shoes untied”

 Whenever I lose someone, I search for meaning or maybe beauty in it but I’m beginning to think it’s better there never was.

“I am crying in the bathroom.”

I tell my friend about when I used to pray. He says he prays for necromancy and climate change.

“In the mourning”

 My mother tells me about the day I was born. She says my first breath took away all the cool air at midnight in January and that’s what made the day so warm.

 “when you finally let go”

 Some people say that in order to become something new, you need to leave everything else behind. That abandonment is its own form of creation, maybe renewal.

“and the nurse runs in with her head held low”

I’m at a funeral for a woman at my mother’s church and the priest says her laugh sounded like her favorite drink. Rock & Rye Faygo with ice on a beach in the middle of the summer. The priest says her laugh was the best part of her, he says she kept laughing, even after the hypothermia.

“and the cardinal hits the window.”

My grandmother says she envies the freedom birds have. The way they can fly away from wherever they find themselves without remorse or apology. She says she feels too guilty to do it herself.

“In the morning in the winter shade”

At her funeral, I wore a dress with music notes on it. I said it was a birds’ song.

“on the first of March, on the holiday”

I wish I could say I’ve lost and then kept living but I didn’t. I was born on a sunny day in January already having lost someone and then survived. I feel like the distinction is significant.

“I thought I saw you breathing.”

Taking my first breath turned my lungs into ice and I’ve had asthma since. I’d like to think when I take my last, I’ll breathe the ice back out. Instead of ice being internal, it will cover my entire body and that will be why I won’t be able to move.

“All the glory that the Lord has made”

My mother’s phone rings with a number from Florida and I answer it. He says his mom has died and I am invited to the funeral. He says he’s grateful I never answer any of his messages because it’d only make him even more guilty. He says he’s sick of the constant heat. I hang up and make  a snow angel, claiming winter for myself.

“and the complications when I see His face in the window in the morning.”

 Do you think when he disappeared he froze over too?

“All the glory when He took our place”

Every time I try to conjure a version of my funeral, the only thing I can think of is the child whose grandmother will speak to them about my corpse, where the ice has consumed me.

“but He took my shoulders and He shook my face”

I just keep waiting for it to sublime.

“and He takes and He takes and He takes.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kaydance Rice is a writer from Grand Rapids, Michigan and currently attending Interlochen Arts Academy. She is the recipient of several regional and national awards from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in the Taco Bell Quarterly, YoungArts Anthology, Cargoes, voicemail poems, and Full Mood Magazine. In her free time, Kaydance enjoys playing the viola, rambling about existentialism, and spending time with her plants.