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Blue Marble Review

Literary Journal for Young Writers

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Issue Eighteen

The Hills Have Eyes

By Arja Kumar

SORRY GIRL, NO PHONE MEMORY LEFT, the truck’s hand-painted license plate read in a sideways flirt. Two rainbow bunches of streamers bounced from the sides of the jalopying vehicle. A bundle of sugarcane sticks fell out of the open back. One side of the truck read I LOVE GANDHI, the other, LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL. Our car looked like a toy in comparison. I pretended not to be afraid of it toppling over onto us. I pretended we weren’t stuck in traffic in the middle of India, on our way to the hills.

The driver of our car glimpsed backwards every so often with his clean fatherly eyes. His face was ruddy, stubbled from going without shaving for a few days, and patchy from old pimple bruises. When we would ask him how much longer or to stop for a bathroom, he’d reply in a low obedient mumble. When we would stop for tea, he’d put one arm behind his back in a servile stance and drink from the hot steel cup in long thirstful sips—staring at the Indian sun. He had small children and got nervous when my grandfather told him we were going to the hills. How many days? he asked. I don’t know! my grandfather would say. Nobody tells you how many hairs on your head you’re gonna be born with!

I was a sardine—jammed with six sleeping souls bouncing up and down as the car continued through the rock-laden roads. Time became a big blur of jet lag— since we’d flown from the U.S. to my grandparents’ house in a quaint, forgotten town. I tried to wriggle my phone out of my pocket to listen to music, but my sister’s heavy resting head jerked when I made the slightest move. I sighed and wiped the fog off the window with a spare unicorn-speckled sock.

My cousin, Charlie, woke up and yelled, “I’M SO HUNGRY!!!” She rolled the window down all the way and stuck her head out, searching for food like an impatient animal. A cold breeze and smell of something fried and crunchy, mint and spices, and piping hot cardamom tea blew into the car. The rest of the troupe slowly awakened and shook the siesta from their eyes.

“We can’t get off anywhere now,” said my aunt, yawning. The cars in the jam were motionless like a bad Salvador Dali painting.

My other cousin, Alicia, poked the back of my head. “How’s life?”

“Cheeky,” I replied.

“Cheeky?” she questioned.

Outside, there was a man clad in orange garb wandering with a walking stick. He looked like a wise man of some sort—a turban wrapped around his head, clay beads hanging from his neck, holding an iPhone up to his foggy eyes. Maybe he was Socrates. Maybe he was a social sage. I imagined him sitting criss-cross on a great mountain—the high sun illuminating his wrinkled face—maybe taking a selfie. He tripped over a stone and howled in silent pain. Why didn’t he just cry it out loud? He felt around the ground frantically, feeling for his walking stick. The people that came and went passed him. Some gave him a sorry glance; some perhaps debated with their own conscience if they should drop everything and help him. In the end, he wiped the blood off his knees and picked himself back up alone.

Everybody in the car began talking about everything under the sun—loudly. It was as if the pressure building in our ears from going up was making us hard of hearing. My mom and aunts talked about cleaning up our poop when we were little babies, my older cousins talked to each other about their friends getting engaged, my sister and younger cousin argued about YouTubers, and my grandfather ranted to the driver about there being no phone service now. The noises clashed and tripped over each other and the honking cars passing by sounded in a cacophony. The driver shot a tense glance in the rear-view mirror, distracted and confused how to switch lanes.

A beggar quietly palmed my window like a ghost. “Give. Please give, madam. I am hungry.” I looked at the woman’s rough hands, then at her dirty face and dark eyes half covered by a scarf. She could’ve been known as beautiful if it were raining—if the water washed away all the dirt and suffering.

My grandfather rolled down the window and barked at her in the same Hindi tongue. “GET AWAY! BREAD IS ONLY BUILT BY HARD AND HONEST WORK…THE HILLS HAVE EYES!” He rolled up the window, angry. The woman palmed at his window. My grandpa cursed and the car jumped forward.

Everybody continued talking, but a loudspeaker on top of a small church ahead suddenly overtook all of the noise in my mind. There was chanting—verses, hymns, a maybe truth. I say maybe because I couldn’t understand all of it. I looked around the car to see if anybody else was hearing what I heard. Nobody. I looked out the window to see if anybody else in the city was hearing what I heard. It was impossible to tell.

 

~

I’d heard the chant before, upstairs in my grandparent’s house—when I locked myself in the bathroom and sat on the toilet seat to cry. I was wearing my winter jacket then, and my butt was frozen from the cold seat even though I was wearing two pairs of pajamas. I held my head in my hands and wiped the frustration out of each burning eye. Why are you so serious? asked my aunt. You’re not fun anymore! complained my cousin. You’re too sober, said my uncle. I could hear my younger sister and cousins laughing loudly in the room next door—they were watching a scary movie and eating spicy potato chips.

I stood up and went over to where the noise was coming from. I looked up at the window that was too high to see out of and continued listening to the chant. After each verse, a small congregation echoed a response back. I imagined them sitting in a small circle in the temple two blocks away. What kind of people would sit in that little temple on a Tuesday night? I wondered. Don’t they have anything better to do? What were they saying? They sounded like holy ghosts.

            Pain and suffering are the remedies; pleasure and comforts are the diseases. 

What did this mean?

 

~

My grandfather cussed out a toll guy and told him to fear the hills. My mother fell asleep again, probably praying. The last time we came here, the priest gave us flowers. She had been wanting us to come back here for years. She was running to the hills in full speed, and my father—he couldn’t wait to run back to my grandparents’ home. He was in the other car and was nauseous. He had been acting strange and childlike since we landed, running to my grandparents’ home with an open embrace, like he was going to hug the giant house, jumping up and down on the terrace when he saw kites flying, requesting a cup of warm milk only from the hand of my grandmother. Milk, milk, milk, he would always sing. I loveeeeeeeee milk.

There were patches of fog and smoke then. The cars and people that passed by were apparitions. There was a woman in a fancy car, staring at me with her pierced nose turned up. She looked like she’d been royal or something in a past life. She looked like she used to have smiling old woman’s eyes. But now, she had the eyes of a politician’s wife. There were men with horses decorated in flowers and garlands lined up on the sides of the road—waiting to take the next pilgrims up the hills. There was a woman in a yellow lehenga dress sleeping on a cot—flies settling on her unconscious face. There were two men crouched by a fire that ran only on dead grass and straw—no shoes, thin hats, both sharing a rough blanket, tapping at their iPhones in one hand. There was an infant and a mother with half her breast out—the milk dripping down to the ground—an injured wild dog lapping up the tiny puddle. Animal or human, out on the street or in the quiet of a hidden bathroom, there must’ve been some meaning in our suffering. Our living was incomplete without it.

I could’ve sworn these hills had eyes. How could they be blind to this all? No, the hills understood. The hills saw all.

“We are hereeeee!” my grandfather sang. We were at the bottom of the mountains. The tall giants loomed over us like bright green gods in the cold air. The driver was tired now. Everybody huddled their stuff together, took their phones off the chargers, and fumbled to put back on their shoes. My mother got out fast; ready to run to the hills at full speed. I got out of the car and tilted my head up high again at the wonders. My father came out last, eager to get the pilgrimage over with and run back to my grandparent’s house. The lights of the hotel went out.

“Uhh the light will be back shortly. Please come in,” said the doorman.

I don’t think we needed that artificial light anyway. A flock of black birds cawed over the burning orange Indian sun. It didn’t matter to me; I was running to wherever the sun was.

 

 

Arja Kumar is a human, writer, and nineteen-year-old college student from Illinois. Her work has appeared in literary magazines including KAIROS, Sweet Tree Review, Literary Orphans, Portage, Blink-Ink, and Bop Dead City. When she is not writing, she likes to cook, paint, and stargaze.

To save flowers

By Marina Chen

Warm chrysanthemum
the same color as butter bled into strawberry jam

went limp two nights ago.
I sobbed and cut the stems,
filled a vase and arranged the blooms. If they were to die,

I might as well enjoy the show.
Is there a point to giving
a gift that dies like stop motion? Or are they the ultimate

gesture—here, a fragment of life—
trimmed from the life-source
of pulsing Earth—I trust you will try to preserve them.

This is my secret: it’s possible
to save flowers, for my
watered chrysanthemums flourished—turgid rebirth.

I awoke the next morning,
their discarded stems like
snapped chopsticks in the sink, new buds emerging.

 

 

Marina Chen is a high schooler from Washington State and member of the Seattle Youth Poet Laureate cohort. Her work has been recognized by the National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, Live Poets Society of New Jersey, the Hanging Loose literary magazine, and others. She writes poetry about everything she loves (and many things she doesn’t.)

Once Peace

By Tyler Clayton

Once time to travel to Wisconsin or go to the mountains.
Always time to play fun board games, like checkers and chess,
there was always peace and time to relax,
there was no hassle trying to travel to school in the morning,
And nothing to do in the afternoon.

Now,
I move from school to soccer,
soccer to home,
home to conquering homework,
and the homework to bed.
On weekends, I have games for my travel teams,
and I have to go get groceries more often.

I miss the days of peace and time to relax,
I miss the time I get to travel.
I miss the fun board games.
I miss the past as a child.

 

Tyler is a student at St. Patrick’s School in Rolla, Missouri.

Diagnosis Hymn

By Rachel Brooks

I.

The day I became a definition, I sat
on white paper, cloaked in a gown

thin as my sinew and skin, shaking,
a mere apparition.

They call it
median arcuate ligament syndrome,

a name I can barely pronounce, its
harsh syllables impressed against

my lips. I wonder how the med students
wrap their breath around the words,

recite all the diseases with their
typewriter tongues, the terms that will

replace their patients’ names. Those
doctors always said I had tiny veins,

told me to make a fist the size of the
plums my mother peels.

She knives around the pits. Slices
golden flesh to reveal a whole seed.

I watch the juices slip down her forearm.
Waxed fruit splitting open, unearthed

like a wound.

 

II.

I am fourteen. My breath stammers the
number of times I’ve stayed in a hospital

like a voice dripping punctured
sonnets. Air grows stale when you’re

confined to four plastered walls,
caustic and calcimine. Back then,

I wanted liberation. To stop wearing
this body as a bone-house.

 

III.

I shiver on the table, my thoughts
the blood spilt on the blanched paper

beside me. With each prick I’m reminded
of the fleshy fruit, whose wisteria

hues I once let bleed in a pale palm
when I was no river thin wraith.

Here, I imagine peeling myself
from seven years of pain and needles

and false labels from sharp tongues
uttering empty syllables,

searching a skeleton in blinding light
for the things they can name. Here, I

allow knives to slit belly, like the fish
partitioned to the bone. Let hands take a

fraction of this body, birthing a scar
as proof.

Understand, I am no definition. I bite
into a plum, its juices forming veins

larger than mine. And hope that scar
doesn’t fade.

 

Rachel Brooks is a high school junior at Christian Heritage School in Trumbull, CT, where she is editor-in-chief of the literary magazine. She is also a Genre Editor for Polyphony Lit and writes articles for her local newspaper. Her work has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards.

 

*This poem was awarded a Gold Medal in the 2020 Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and was previously published in their online gallery.*

summer solstice

By Emma Chan

I want to call your name,

the noise ricocheting sharply like a shot around the narrow walls

and fly down an alleyway filled with light to meet you

midnight-blue skirt pleats billowing like petals, breeze caressing my skin

I want to secretly slip my hand in yours for a fleeting moment

as we bob along, buoyed by an effervescent zephyr

separating and coming back together, weaving like singing swallows

across the gentle cobblestone waves

the rosy hint of morning sun on your lips

and the fresh scent of summer in your hair

I want to succumb to the pull of promise

and prowl the bustling shopping streets of Ginza at lunch break,

burning up with the thrill of doing the forbidden

and the giddy excitement of being free

I want to run and run and keep running forever

in a sobbing sky

the gray mist blooming over emerald rice paddies

splashing in puddles and feeling the wet, sinking, soaking chill

and watching you fling the shaking droplets from your limp, hanging hair

I want to laugh like there’s no tomorrow

the air squeezing out of my lungs in gleeful bursts

as we try, and fail, to snag a plushie from the claw machine for the sixteenth time

and walk away with empty hands, light wallets and brimming hearts

I want to lean against you on the subway ride home

reaching up to tightly clasp the oscillating handles

and not quite being tall enough, but that’s okay

I want to press a soft kiss to your cheek

as the sky dims around us

holding a cup of bubble tea in one hand and

the faded smell of leather and eraser shavings in the other

I want to feel the world grind to a halt

hearing the melodic chime and the rush of crisp, biting night air as the doors open

letting in a constellation of serendipity

idyllic, infectious, intoxicating, igneous, ichorous

I want to lie on a velvet carpet of viridity

watching the festival glow like an ember of hope

a village, a tradition, a home coming alive

tucked into the crook of silent, listening mountains

seeing “大” branded into the sleeping valley with apoplectic torches

and the fireflies performing their sacred dance

rising up, up, up into the satin curtain of darkness without a care in the world

and vanishing as soon as their light begins to shine

I want to discover more

in you

and in me

than we ever thought possible

cradling the strawberry moon in our hands

holding the orphic fire in our souls.

 

Emma Chan is a sophomore at Kent Place School in Summit, New Jersey, where she plays the piano for her school’s Chamber Orchestra. She is a page editor and staff writer for her school newspaper Ballast. She loves writing and hopes to pursue history, philosophy or literature in college.

Thank You Grandma

By Victoria Olusanya

for teaching me how to live with others

as “one another,”

Thank you, Grandma, for teaching me

Yoruba, answering my 

questions that I 

decide to ask while 

you were sleeping, like “Grandma, what is 2+2?”
Thank You, Grandma,

for teaching me that you are helping

Us prepare for 

Tomorrow.

Thank you for forgiving me

for the accidental slamming of

the microwave, kitchen trash, the fridge, and freezers,

pantry cupboard doors, the

spice cabinet above the stove, and

nearly everything in the house,

that has a door and can be shut.

Thank You, Grandma, for playing along with O’Ryan

And me whenever we call you

“Gam-Gam” and responding as

“Grandson-grandson.”

Thank you for all

 the fun laughs of calling

“SpongeBob” “Spongeoun-Box”

but Please…. DON’T stop.

Thank you for teaching

That we should always

Be T-R-U-E TRUE.

Thank you for always cheering

me up, when you 

Don’t mean to, like when I

 came home from 4th grade crying.

Thank you for tickling

Olivia, O’Ryan, and me

whenever we’re sad,

and for reminding us 

to be a child of God

ranks above all else

in the world.

Thank you for inviting

us to all of your church programs,

 Exposing us to

your beautifully amazing voice.

Thank you for teaching us

 discipline when we

 need it,

 and for the Bible 

“Meetings” that would

 often take place on

 Tuesday’s in the living room,

 while we sat on the beige couch,

 And teaching the Olusanya 

Grandchildren that it’s okay

 if the world mocks and spits

 at us for doing what’s right.

 God even tells us that the pain

 of Jesus isn’t easy,

 and you can’t take the easy 

road out, but the narrow pathways

and difficult pathways to life eternal.

Thank you for having us memorize 

Psalm 23:6, and helping me know that

“Surely God’s goodness and mercy

 Shall follow us all the days of our lives,

 And we shall dwell in the house of the Lord

 Forever and ever, Amen.”

 

Victoria is a student at St. Patrick’s School in Rolla, Missouri. This is her first publication.

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