Poetry from Alexis Durante

“Death of Goddesses”

Aphrodite wraps a strand of pearls around her shimmering, pale throat, pulse fluttering wildly at the base of her neck as the precious stones tighten.  The rouge on her lips fades as the light drains from her eyes.  Once jewels, shimmering emeralds fade to grey, eyes blown black as her breath slows.  Asphyxiation is a peaceful way to go, they say.  It’s like falling asleep.  They don’t mention the fire in your lungs, nor the way your ribs feel like they’ve split apart.  Beauty never fades, not even in death, and a princess reincarnates as a goddess, skin as smooth as the pearls that strangled her.

Athena twirls the blade between fingertips, carefully tossing ideas in her head.  Strategizing.  Planning.  Plotting.  What she does best.  A wise commander, young only by her years, wants to feel comfort in her veins, so she splits them open.  A tree’s branches being ripped apart, petals of blood like shreds of roses fall from calloused skin.  The blood soaks up the fears, it soaks up most feelings, and it soaks up the words that die on her tongue as owl’s wings whisk a spirit from a body.

Hera finds her ring.  Purest of metals, brightest of stones.  She lays it before her, on a vanity of gold tabling a mirror with a laughable reflection.  Her fingernails dig into a palm, slender body tensed and muscles coiled to spring.  She lights a candle, watches the wick burn, watches the wax melt and drip and contort into a shape unlike its original form.  The feeling is not unfamiliar.  She twists the stone of the ring on her finger, pours out the pale dust encased in the brilliant cloak.  She breathes in, head swimming and eyes rolling back.  She slams down the ring with all of her force, hearing the mirror crack, though the significance of it is lost in translation.  She feels her insides tighten, her mind seize.  One trembling breath later, blackness.  Though her head slams into metal, she is given the cushion of a cloud.

“Tell us who you find most beautiful,” they chorus, Prince Paris below their thrones on bended knee.  Exteriors are perfection, crafted by Botticelli on a bed of satin.  Interiors are lakes of boiling blood, screaming souls, and spine-chilling pasts.  Mortals cannot see turmoil within; mortals only see the most beautiful sin.  Goddess of Beauty retains her crown, though porcelain skin can only do so much to cover a soul built on rubble.

Essay from Adelayok Adeleye

The POTENTIAL VII: Managing Debt

Around this time last year, I was owing NEPA some thirty thousand
naira; today, NEPA owes me some twenty-five hundred. Funny, eh? As at
when I was owing thirty grand, my neighbours prided themselves as the
rich ones, and insisted that NEPA cut our light at the meter points
(so they could retain their connections while I lost mine). One even
scorned me the month I paid three out of thirty, she stood in the
street and argued that I mustn’t be spared. I came back to meet me
disconnected. Well, she owes just as much now, a year later.

Truth be told, we all owe at one time or the other; even Dangote.
Sometimes, as in my case, we owe because someone disappoints and we
have to take responsibility. Either way, debts are easier incurred
than settled. In fact, one often pays off one debt with the other; run
in circles, never able to break out of the rat race. Luckily, there is
a way to pay debts and stay afloat. The discourse that follows is not
to make me out as some (arrogant) debt guru, but as someone who has
seen, and conquered…

Perhaps the first step is to stop the increase.

NEPA brought a bill N1 200 more than the previous month’s. I couldn’t
pay the whole bill, but I paid the N1 200. No, I didn’t wait till I
could afford the whole bill. The next month, the bill was N3 000 more,
so I paid the three grand. And was mocked.

What my financially illiterate neighbour didn’t know was that I coulda
paid much more than i did each time, I just didn’t. If I had, I’d have
pushed myself to the brink of indebtedness just to save face. I saw
the bigger picture. And those two months allowed me to prepare for the
tough times ahead: stocked the house with food, planned for farm, be
ready for the derogatory gazes of pseudo-rich classmates.

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Cristina Deptula on Dr. Steve Mathews’ discussion on the history of Western science’s knowledge of light, at Oakland’s Chabot Space and Science Center

 Last month our own Steve Mathews presented an entire semester of classical and quantum physics to Chabot volunteers and guests during the monthly enrichment lecture. Charting the history of light, he began with Galileo, who attempted to measure the speed of light in 1638. Although Galileo couldn’t determine the figure to a great degree of accuracy, he placed the speed of light at at least ten times the speed of sound. Later that century, Isaac Newton investigated light and determined that it was a compound substance, made of different colors.
Olaus Roemer devised a more complex method of measuring the speed of light that involved comparing observed differences in the orbital period of Jupiter’s moon Io. Roemer figured that the differences were not due to actual changes in the orbital period, but because light takes slightly longer to reach Earth when our planet moves farther from Jupiter. In 1726, James Bradley looked to stellar aberration, slight changes in the stars’ observed positions due to the Earth’s movement through space, to calculate light speed.

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Poetry from Jessica Delgado

Blood Drift

I.

Comfort me in the time of hour

At a time of utter loss

That I see thy face as a partial flower

Pure and mighty were thy words

In a storm they have caressed me

Now triumph over me in a world unheard

The place in which you now reside

Somewhere I can not imagine

Can never replace the place in which you took when you were alive

O take me now I plead on your bed

The bed of which you are now Queen

But in that instant, I felt fury instead

For the sake of the innocent of which

To spare all thoughts of feelings I can not say

Like a Frankenstein, I must now stitch

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Fran Laniado interviews writer and jewelry maker S. Kay and photographer/magnet maker Gwen Rossmiller

— Fran Laniado

There has been a lot of talk over the past two decades about how the internet has allowed us to make connections that we might otherwise have never imagined. People find jobs, partners, and friends online. Even scientific discoveries are not unheard of. But the internet also allows for unique artistic collaborations, such the collaboration between writer and jewelry artisan S. Kay, and photographer and magnet maker, Gwen Rossmiller.

In the days before Twitter, S. Kay wrote a novel and a novella (unpublished). But for the most part, she gravitated towards shorter work: “either flash fiction or short stories”. However, she made the switch to Twitter fiction- stories that are 140 characters or less- when she discovered it.

S. Kay, also a jewelry designer, befriended fellow Etsy merchant Gwen Rossmiller through the Etsy Treasury Flash Mob, a fun group of people who do online art games. Familiar with one another’s work, the two began a unique collaboration: mini-book necklaces using S. Kay’s fiction, and Gwen’s photography.

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Poetry from Deborah Guzzi

ashes fall from the joss stick: finger bones

 

My name is Devi, a foolish name really for it means Angel, and I certainly am not. The city of Phnom Penh had been our home. Father was a professor at The Royal University. I was their only child. I was just getting ready for school, Tuol Sleng High, when the Khmer’s arrived. They drummed on the door of our house and said “Get out, get out!” They had bomb guns pointed at us. One of the soldiers—not much older than I—a very dark skinned girl screamed at Father. “You have American friends? You speak English?” He nodded and said of course he did; he was a professor at the University. “You New People, you think you are so smart.” She shot him in the head. He tumbled like a string-less puppet onto the step. Mother screamed and cried. “You are not to cry,” they ordered, “Get out!”

 

the open door

let in a light rain:

the kettle whistles

 

They grabbed mother and I, and tossed us into the band of people milling in the street. They pushed us; prodding with rifle butts along the street lined with palm trees. I was glad it was warm. My black skirt and white blouse were all I wore. All I could think about was my feet. I had been barefoot when they came. What a foolish thing to think. Father was dead. Thinking of my feet. I wish I could go back and get my new shoes. I felt naked. Mother staggered behind me. I told her, “keep up Mae or they will kill you.” Mother bumped into the Grandmother in front of her. Yiey spit at the guard. He jammed the rifle butt into her face. She fell into the gutter. The line walked around her. The guard kicked her body. “Why waste a bullet?” He and the other half dozen guerrilla’s laughed. The girl guard ripped Yiey’s gold amulet from her neck. She wiped the blood off the necklace on Grandmother’s dress. “Be of use or die New Ones,” the male guard bellowed.

 

To my surprise, the Khmer guards took us to the High School. Mother was ripped away from me. All the women were taken outside. I could hear much laughter. There was screaming and cries to God. The dark skinned female guard smiled. “They are being of use,” she smirked. She sucked on her index finger and the male guard next to her howled. I never saw mother again.

 

So many, many: young children, young mothers, young boys, all marched days with little food or water. The temperature climbed over 100 degrees. Babies were torn from shawl slings and tossed away like garbage as they died. There were no more tears. We were to be ‘purified’ in a commune. The village was called Prek Sbauv. I struggled to live. I bent my back in the fields of the Old People.

 

What was life? I asked myself, so many times, but, to say no was to die. I did not want to rot in a rice paddy, not be reborn. Had no one burnt father’s corpse? Had no one placed the white crocodile flag in front of our home? I must live to see father and mothers’ bodies were burned. I must place their ashes in the stupa.

 

*The Cambodian genocide April 17, 1975

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Laura Kaminski reviews Elsie Augustave’s The Roving Tree

Cover of Elsie Augustave's The Roving Tree

Elsie Augustave’s The Roving Tree (Akashic Books/Open Lens, 2013) is a masterful work of fiction, meticulously researched and exquisitely written. Despite the publisher’s statement that it is “told from beyond the grave,” the narrator’s voice is flawless — I kept feeling I was reading creative nonfiction, a book that should share a shelf with Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, and Maya Angelou’s Letter to My Daughter.

I literally stood up and shook myself to break the spell after the deceased narrator brought the story to a close during the final few pages. My next thought was: This book needs to be taught to university-level humanities students: students of political science, history, sociology, anthropology, comparative religion, African / African-American / Haitian studies, women’s studies — and literature. Above all, literature. Timeless, insightful literature that teaches us about our history, our culture, our social mores, the barriers created by our own unnoticed preconceptions and ingrained prejudices — this book belongs with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou) and To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee).

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