The 2018 issue of UMLÄUT literary journal edited and published by the Creative Writing department of San Francisco Ruth Asawa School of the Arts High School

2. UMLÄUT
2018
Volume 15
Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts
Creative Writing Department
555 Portola Drive San Francisco CA 94131
www.sotacw.org
Body text set in Adobe Garamond
Design: Isaiah Dufort
umläut © 2018 by Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts.
No part of this journal may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without
written permission from the authors and artists, except for the inclu-
sion of brief quotations in a review. All rights revert to authors and
artists upon publication.

3. UMLÄUT STAFF
FACULTYADVISORS
Heather Woodward
Isaiah Dufort
Julie Glantz
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Stella Pfahler
EDITORIAL STAFF
Charlotte Pocock
Kenzo Fukuda
Rae Kim
Max Chu
Angelica LaMarca
Ren Weber
Julieta Roll
Puck Hartsough

5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The Umläut staff would like to extend its thanks to Barnaby Payne,
Micah Melton, parent donors, FOSOTA, Julie Glantz, Heather
Woodward, Isaiah Dufort, and all of its contributors and editors.

6. TABLE OF CONTENTS
Puglia Solange Baker 8
The Texas Wild Child Rae Dox Kim 9
The Asphalt Cradle Angelica LaMarca 11
Uroboris Darren Lam 13
Snow Day Nadja Goldberg 14
Mérida Julieta Roll 18
White Noise Ren Weber 20
Ruins of Pompeii Michelle Ibarra 22
La Costurera Michelle Ibarra 23
The History of Booby Jack,
the King of the Break-Bulk-Point Liam Miyar Mullan 24
Untitled Huck Shelf 30
When-The-Water-Opened-Up-To-Tell-Me-
I-Do-Not-Know-Everything-I-Once-
Thought-I-Did Eva Whitney 31
A Whaling Ship is Pulled to the Bottom of the
Ocean. Meanwhile, a Daughter Writes to God. Charlotte Pocock 34
Green Girls Kaya Levin 37
I See The Rain Angelica LaMarca 38
The Surge Angelica LaMarca 39
Psalms Stella Pfahler 40
Coyoacán Julieta Roll 42
Pollination Anna Geiger 43
In the Riverbed Anna Geiger 44
dream-seeped Anna Geiger 45
What Filmmaking Is To Me Phil Elleston II 47
Mirage Kenzo Fukuda 48
Morning Kenzo Fukuda 49
the dialogue between a drunk woman
and her dog at midnight on the kitchen floor Max Chu 50
EPA speeches Kyle Trefny 52
Max Chu 54

8. 8
Puglia
By Solange Baker
The buildings are made of white sandstone. They grow on the top of the
cliff, sprouting like mushrooms on forest floors. Down below, sunbathers
spread out on the rocks, slathering oil on their bodies so they look like
glistening shells. Every once in a while, they animate, wake up disorient-
ed and blindly dive into the ocean. When they resurface, their bodies are
tanned brown and wrinkled from sleeping in the sun.
Above the sandstone houses, on a hill etched with crumbling steps, is
the Cattedrale Di Ruvo Di Puglia. On the cathedral’s peak is a sunflow-
er-shaped window, its face turned to the heavens. Inside, the ceilings
bend their backs in arches to avoid touching the tourists who track
mancanza di rispetto all over the marble floors. Outside, a girl, with blue
flip flops and skin not yet slicked with oil and wrinkled from the hot sun,
knocks on the door. She cries, “Now I understand the meaning of faith!”
Late at night, by the water, sprouts a festival. Colorful lights for Caterina
da Siena Francesco d’Assisi are draped in the drooping trees. Dried fruits
are placed in baskets that line the beach where barefoot children dance
like sprites. Women decorated with heavy necklaces and bulky rings float
about while men with parrots perched on their shoulders play mandolins.
It truly is a sight to behold.
Across the sea, they call this place “Italy off the beaten path,” l’italia
fuori dai sentieri battuti. A place where these festivities can be allowed
with no interruption and camera flashes are rare. When the festivities
end, the lights in the sandstone homes slowly blink out and the music
fades, until the only sound is the crash of waves against the cliffs of
Puglia.

9. 9
The Texas Wild Child
By Rae Dox Kim
A few weeks after Precious Reynolds was bitten by a bat during
Sunday mass, we all understood that she probably wasn’t coming back to
church. I went to bring a casserole to the Reynolds. They lived in a shut-
tered colonial on the empty outskirts, the uniform white houses contrast-
ing with a field of sweeping wheat. While I was washing my hands in the
little rosy bathroom, I heard her mother tell my mother,
“She screams so bad, I can’t even go in there anymore…” I
didn’t hear any screaming.
“Is she—er—biting people?” asked my mother, ever tactless.
Mrs. Reynolds choked on a sob and my mother said, “There, there.”
“The first week they wouldn’t let me touch her… I had to stand
at least five feet away and just watch—”
I walked down the hall, to the closed door at the end.
It was the same room I remembered foggily; Bible study books
in the shelf, pink braided rug faded but clean, a cross-stitch rendering
of “When I lay me down to sleep” hung on the wall. I looked all around
through a crack in the door, afraid of what lay in the bed. The head was
rolling from side to side, the fine hairs at the temple plastered down in
sweaty strands. I could hear wordless muttering and panting. The head
turned and the eyes locked on me, their old brightness dulled by a red
film. I stared.
“Precious?” I whispered, stepping back from the door. “It’s
Julie.” The teeth gnashed and the knees thrashed under the sheets. From
those bulging eyes slipped two hot tears. The neck bent to bite at the
hand, and I saw that it was already pocked with teeth marks. She started
up a scream—more of a moaning, the sound hollow and toneless. It got
louder and louder, and eventually her mother’s running footsteps ap-
peared in the hall, with my mother in pursuit.
“Hannie!” Mrs. Reynolds cried, running into the room. She wept, extend-
ed her hands to her daughter and then quickly drew them back as Pre-
cious bit the air desperately. She collapsed onto the pillow, murmuring.
“Hannie! Hannie!” her mother screamed. Hannie, her Christian name, as
if Christ had not already forsaken her.
A week after that, my mother and I and the congregation stood

10. 10
around a little table of club sandwiches in the Trinity Baptist Church,
watched by the alluring eyes of the dearly deceased in her wedding pic-
tures. I chewed, feeling the lapping tongue of the heat, even with a few
fans playing in the corner. The casket was open—what I remember now
most of all is the smell of curdling rot. And even then, there were small,
dark, deliberate shapes in the rafters, and the sounds of many papery
wings.

11. 11
The Asphalt Cradle
By Angelica LaMarca
I wanted eared beasts in the car windshields. I wanted win-
dowsills frosted with figurines, fake tea swaddled in small cups. I still
remember how lips bled when braces slid into them, pink wafting inside
me like anemone. I’d swish salt across my tongue ‘til it healed. I’d watch
my dog walk halos round my living room floor when the rain spat fast
across shingles. Sometimes I’d take her on walks and we’d pass above
a highway in an asphalt cradle; I used to love the way I’d purr with the
purring of vehicles. Black dashes like mechanical panthers. Jack-in-the-
box flying out. I used to just stand there, in that asphalt cradle, snagged
to its chain link roofing, ‘til the moon yawned over the horizon and I’d
have to head home before Mama beat my back. Once upon a time, I
watched the trash on the side of the highway swill the Earth. It was an
evening just like any, Lily’s leash thatched to me like a watch. We had
been standing in our asphalt cradle for a while and the rooftops of the
nearby houses winked a dim and sullied pink. I was staring down at the
headlights whizzing by, gold, then scarlet when one turned to watch them
slink away. I watched objects waltz out of cars: Cigarette butts, still a bit
steamy, Wendy’s, chewing gum which turned into the great and greying
flush of the highway. Lily barked. I heard a snap of Wu Tang from the slit
of someone’s window. And it was then when I noticed it, how the cars sat
unhinging their beepbeepbeep!s to the sky above. There they sat be-
neath me, rows and rows of them, motionless and glossy as clementines.
Stationary, the cars grew antsy, spitting with a frenzied momentum so
that buttons of the brittle fumes hung over them lowly. It was as if they
hadn’t noticed all the trash. It lilted forward from the barriers. Hamburg-
er wrappers and zippered coats and boxes. The tapered caps of mute
pens, old toys, lost shoes, straws that popped out of sodas. My asphalt
cradle held me in, protected me, but oh the world kept surging with its
diapers and dijon packs and scissors. I heard the yowls and the stomp-
ings. The mothers went to lull in children to the limb, leaping out of their
car windows, trash gathering in plumes to smother thinly fizzling radios.
And oh, upon my chain link walls! Ronald McDonald smiled down at
me. The In-N-Out sign pointed tawny towards a clot of plastic bags and
coke cans. I held Lily to me tight, waiting for the walls to flex and flex

12. 12
‘til they’d snap! like doilies shot through and swallow me whole. I wish I
could tell you a story. I wish I could tell you how the trash receded softly
as knuckles of fog from an atoll. But the truth is that I am still here, in
my asphalt cradle, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to leave. The
stench is pressing deep into my socks, my wrists sweat, my dog whinnies
highly at my feet. I am listening to the hymns of the grackles who scour
high above all things foamed and stinking. I cannot see them, and soon, I
will not be able to see myself. I will watch the trash heaps spill onto my
shoulders, all over my hair, undoing my French braids. It’s only a matter
of time before the walls break.

13. 13
Uroboris
Darren Lam

14. 14
Snow Day
By Nadja Goldberg
That night, as I lay comfortably enclosed in my heated cube,
white dots drifted across the sky. They coated fields of dead grass, landed
on the few skeletal trees that remained, and piled atop the roofs of glass
towers. When the sun rose from behind the haze and clouds, the snow
had formed a sparkling sheet over the decimated city.
Just before nine in the morning, I stuck my fingers into my ears
in anticipation of the alarm. Lately, I had been emerging from sleep
earlier than scheduled, spending my extra hour staring into the darkness,
allowing my mind to drift. Sometimes I whispered to myself, trying
to imitate my grandpa’s pronunciation. I enjoyed the sensation of the
textured syllables my tongue made against the roof of my mouth, and
the hissing noise that I could create by touching the edges of my upper
and lower rows of teeth and blowing. I especially treasured speaking my
name: Ky.
The word “Weather” appeared over an image of clouds on the
screen of my cube. Tiny white specks twirled from the clouds, landing on
my green blankets. “Snowy” appeared under “Weather.”
Snowy. I stared at the word, perplexed. “Ss-now-wai,” I tried to
sound out. I pressed a round button on my SmartRing, and a triangular
sheet of light materialized. I selected the camera app, took a picture of
“Snowy,” and sent it to KLOR—the Knowledge and Language Official
Robot—followed by a question mark. KLOR’s response arrived instantly
with an illustration of a house covered in a fluffy-looking white sub-
stance.
I wondered why “Snowy” had never appeared on the weather
report before, so I messaged Grandpa Jax with three images: a shrugging
person, an image of snow with a slash through it, and a clock with a
backwards arrow. He responded, as always, with a voice recording.
“Good morning Ky! I can’t explain how much joy it brings me
to receive your questions. When I was a boy, it snowed every winter. My
friends and I would bundle up in coats, scarves, hats, and gloves and go
outside. We would make three big balls of snow, stack them on top of
each other, and decorate them to make a snowman. I particularly remem-
ber making one that had a long, knobbly carrot nose and a top hat. I be-

15. 15
lieve we named him Robert. But with the rise in Earth’s heat, snowy days
have become more and more rare. This is the first snowfall in twenty-five
years! Keep up that curiosity, Ky. I love you.”
Grandpa Jax spoke slowly, knowing that I and the other children
of my generation struggled to comprehend verbal language. I listened
attentively and clung to each of his soothing words.
The looming clouds faded from my overhead screen, and the
snowflakes that coated my blankets vanished. A menu appeared on the
screen, displaying possible meals for this morning’s breakfast.
The right side wall of my cube slid up and my bed folded to be-
come a chair. I faced my mother, father, and older sister, Reen. My chair
scooted forward into the round table in the center of the room where
everyone’s breakfast was provided.
I received a message from my mother with three “Z”s, a thumbs
up, and a question mark. Sometimes, when I lay in bed in the shadowy
hours of the morning, I practiced saying, “I slept well, Mom. How about
you?” But that morning, I simply sent a video of a faceless person nod-
ding.
I usually joined KLOR’s morning lesson during breakfast, but
that day I just stared at the glass wall, noticing a crystal pattern in the few
spots that were not shrouded in grime. I tried to think of what the snowy
landscape might look like, but my mind struggled to compose an image. I
send Grandpa Jax a picture of a snowflake, a pair of eyes, and a question
mark, and received this recording:
“When it snows, it is as though a white blanket drapes over the
land, and everything is quiet and tranquil. I used to love waking up on a
chilly winter morning, savoring the sweet warmth of my bed for a little
while, and then running to the window to see the city under a thick layer
of snow. Ky, you have to see snow! It is truly wonderful! Put on your
warmest clothes and your mask, and meet me at the field. Oh, and bring
some buttons!”
Having overheard the recording, my mother, father, and Reen
looked up from their holographic screens, and glared at me, questioning-
ly. For an extended moment, I stared back at them, observing the color
of their eyes. My mother’s eyes were aquamarine, as if they were made
of two tinted glass circles. My father and Reen had chestnut eyes, fixed
intently on me.
My mother went to her SmartRing to send me a picture of clouds

16. 16
and an image of a sick person sucking a protruding thermometer to warn
me of the dangerous smog.
“I… will… wear… my… mask,” I said, carefully pronouncing
each word and taking a moment to think of the next. I wasn’t sure why I
had not just sent a message; Something compelled me to speak. I felt the
words vibrate in my throat, and heard them reverberate throughout the
room. They had a solid, crisp sound that satisfied me deeply.
Perhaps my voice had been suppressed for too long, and in this
moment, surrounded by three pairs of bewildered eyes set free from the
encapsulating screens of their SmartRings, I felt the urge to avoid return-
ing to picto-texting, a form of communication in which I felt I could only
express the surface of my message.
Everyone was stunned, especially my mother who had not heard
me speak since my nonsensical baby babbling.
“Where is it?” my mother asked, and she seemed pleased at the
sensation of talking. “Maybe in a… drawer? Go check.”
Her voice was slightly raspy from years of being buried inside
her, but it had a satisfying, round tone. A profound yearning to hear my
mother’s voice again surged through me. Suddenly, I wanted to know
what my father’s and Reen’s voices sounded like too.
I looked directly at them and said, in a gentle click of my tongue
and securing of my throat, “Talk.”
My father and Reen wrinkled their faces into scowls, and turning
down to their SmartRings, bombarded me with images of annoyed faces.
Their voices were trapped in tight cages inside them and only they held
the keys; keys they refused to use.
I found my breathing mask that was supplied in case an emer-
gency required me to go outside, and fastened it over my head. The mask
was bulky and weighed heavily on my cheeks, but I wore it anyway.
“Do… you… have… buttons?” I asked, my voice muffled
through the mask.
“Yes,” my mother replied, and she opened the drawer on the left
side of her cube and pulled out a fuzzy gray sweater. She tore the five
black buttons off and handed them to me.
“Thanks.”
I waved, and left, descending on the oblong, glass elevator.
When I walked through the main door, I became lightheaded from the
endless air that surrounded me. My teeth clattered, as my slippers pressed

17. 17
a trail in the snow. I lost my breath after a few steps, as I was not accus-
tomed to walking more than two steps to reach something in the back
compartment of my cube. I looked around, overwhelmed by the sight.
Glass towers crusted with grunge stood so high I could not make out
their tops. The sky was filled with the same clouds I saw in the weather
report, but these were bigger and more monstrous. An orange bulb of
sun poked through a gap in the clouds and it shone on the snow and the
window panes. I instantly found the field, a vast blanket of gleaming
whiteness.
Grandpa Jax stood in the center of the field, gripping a long
carrot in one hand and a top hat in the other. I trudged toward him. I had
never met my grandpa in person until then. His eyes were a pale blue like
the tiny specks of sky that weren’t obscured by clouds. He had white hair
that blended in with the snow around him.
“Ready to make a snowman?” Grandpa Jax asked me. I instinc-
tively turned to my SmartRing to respond, but stopped myself. I looked
at my grandpa, startled by the powerful connection between our eyes.
Snowflakes flurried about in the air and landed in miniature flecks on
Grandpa Jax’s woven red hat.
I used my newfound voice to say, “Yes.”

18. 18
Mérida
By Julieta Roll
The residents of Yucatan Mérida rise to a new day, under a hot
sun. A girl sits by a pool, sticking her calves in the chlorinated blue.
Every city has a hum, a low moan of the daily activities. In Mérida it was
the fans; clicking, whirring machines that were kept plugged in the out-
lets til night. The sun had risen quickly that day, heating the eight am air
to an intensity of afternoon. People propped open doors for ventilation,
sent children outside to sit on front steps and pant. The girl sitting by the
pool swishes her legs. Humidity sits thick on her skin as she listens to the
buzz of the night insects recede under dead leaves. The bugs in this part
of the world are large, so ugly they make women faint at the sight of their
gruesome faces. It was better that they thrived in the dark.
The girl looks about ten, with dark braided hair. Her light eyes
are red from sun exposure and watery, as if she is crying. Beyond is the
pool’s edge, and a garden, green and muddy, leads to the back door of a
house. Tall concrete walls surround the property, a rectangle inserted into
the city block.
The girl hears her mother shout from inside to collect the dry-
ing laundry. She reevaluates the clothesline suspended between the two
walls. The clothes are clipped and wrinkled like old skin: her father’s
t-shirts and her own small cloth shorts, her sister’s tank tops, and her
brother’s socks, her mother’s underwear, laced and hung with a casu-
al grace. The girl makes one last circle in the water with her toes, then
stands to grab the plastic basket resting under the clothesline. The chore
feels slightly embarrassing, as if displaying such personal items were
inappropriate. In America people dry their clothes in machines. Here the
sun sucked moisture quickly. People didn’t have coins for dryers.
Once she collects the laundry she sticks her face into the basket.
The soap is pungent, an alien scent unlike fruit or perfume. She likes it,
the way she likes the smell of gasoline or paint —chemical and fake,
like everything else she’s been told not to touch. She’d like to taste it.
Today she pulls her nose away and walks lazily to the back door, entering
quickly as her mother is paranoid about mosquitoes.
“Is that the laundry?” Her father says, looking up from a cup of
coffee,

19. 19
“Yes”
“Good job kiddo.”
He says kiddo jokingly, mimicking the fathers on television.
Good job kiddo, sport. A term meant for a boy wearing a baseball cap, a
perfect child in a suburb.
“Thanks, Dad.”
Her mother appears from the bedroom. She takes the basket and
murmurs a thank you.
“May I ride my bike?” she asks, not in Spanish but English, an
American whine like her friends back home. Her mother blinks. The girl
notices her father does not do this. He is more pale, like her, has lived in
one language and does not blink when she speaks.
“Just around the neighborhood, okay? Cuidate,” responds
her mother, turning back to her bedroom. The girl pauses and scurries
through the dining room, to the front door. The concrete house is is paint-
ed blue, the interior left white. Shaped like a long box, tall wooden doors
hiding the bedrooms, and slow fans lollygagging from each ceiling. It
is a piece of what the Spanish built, left behind as people merged and
something new was created.

20. 20
White Noise
By Ren Weber
Nora lived by the highway, where people drove in little cars
assembled in long rows and glided over her town. This overpass was
an adjunct, a mere run-off of some larger highway that went to places
of significance, like Los Angeles or San Francisco, where freeways
gorged houses and stretched across rooftops. From her bedroom
window she could watch the cars drive by on the overpass, a detached
pastime that made the drivers feel expendable, like watching goldfish
warble in their tanks at the pet store. The highway nabbed the sunlight
that would otherwise collect around the shoal of the town, putting them
into a sweep of perpetual shade.
At night, the highway whistled and the streetlights winked
sepia onto sidewalks. Nora turned on her white noise machine when
the ever-humming bank of the freeway became too dizzying. She
could barely hear the crooning of cars over the machine that sat on her
bedside table and made Ocean Sounds. It churned out the mechanical
whine of the ocean, an ultimately simulated waxing of tides, retracting
and fluxing, with seagulls orchestrating raucous calls that felt so distant
from her bedroom by the freeway. On the hour, the machine would
shudder a little click, resetting the clip.
Nora had never seen the ocean before, only on TV and in mag-
azines. When she was younger, she used to look out from their roof to
the skyline, as if to catch a glimpse of the waves shyly rolling over the
thousands of trees and houses and apartment complexes that littered
the pleat of the horizon. Now Nora adjusted the white noise machine
that sat on her bedside table, next to a lamp and an alarm clock that
read ten PM.
Sometimes when Nora turned the Ocean Sounds up loud
enough, salt and rust started to amass on her bedside table, and she’d
wake up to barnacles crimped to the underside of her pillow, thatched
to the white linens. She’d find sand beneath her toes and her bedroom
seemed to swell and dip with the waves like a houseboat lilting with
the gentle plumes of tides. She’d often wake up in the middle of the
night in a wholly blue room, as if submerged beneath the ocean’s sur-
face. The Ocean Sounds felt more palpable and she could almost smell

21. 21
the stench of brine and saline.
One time she had been roused by a sharp object beneath her
head, and Nora had lifted up her pillowcase to find three imperfect
pearls stashed beneath the sheets. She had placed them carefully into a
picot-laden jewelry box her grandmother had gifted for her thirteenth
birthday, and had gone back to sleep. When she looked for them later,
they were gone. Nora scoured her room for them, figuring that perhaps
they had fallen out of the box or rolled away, but these things were shy
as apparitions. Still, Nora supposed they were meant to be ephemeral,
to be fleeting and unknowable when the sun drew above the horizon
and the white noise machine ceased its mechanical tides.
At first Nora wondered if she had wished it all into existence.
Maybe the pearls and barnacles had come into her bedroom because
they recognized her evident yearning for the ocean, drawn in by her
desperateness to glimpse the palpable swell of the sea. Or maybe, con-
fused upon conception, the pearls and barnacles were simply attracted
to the synthetic ocean inside the machine, mistaking it for the real
thing.
Either way, Nora wondered how far this could go. What if one
day she awoke to a pulpy jellyfish foaming at the end of her bed, or
worse, a small beached whale sprawled across the bedroom floor? But
it seemed that when she woke up, the appearances were akin to ap-
paritions, and gone by morning. The salt merged with the dust on her
bedside table and the barnacles shrunk into the linens, becoming flaky
and dried.
It had been raining all week and Nora was sure she had heard
somewhere that it might begin thundering. She thought she could hear
it now, somewhere above her, though the rain became a dry fog that
clung to streetlamps and mailboxes, and maybe that sound was just
the thrumming of cars above on the highway, or the distant pleating of
waves in her white noise machine.
She listened to the Ocean Sounds turned all the way up and
waited for the rain to begin again outside. Water seeped in through
floorboards and sagging walls, and the soft lilt of rain soon became
indistinguishable from the Ocean Sounds.

22. 22
Ruins of Pompeii
Michelle Ibarra

23. 23
La Costurera
Michelle Ibarra

24. 24
The History of Booby Jack,
the King of the Break-Bulk-Point
By Liam Miyar Mullan
Part I, Chapter I
In which: I reveal myself to be who-I-really-am,
and the topic of Booby Jack and his mysterious birth is introduced.
Before all this, I was just a sort-of-a loafer, who did nothing but
read old tales with little modern relevance, and wish away my days in
hotels and rooms-for-rent. But that was before, of-course, I came-upon
Booby Jack, the King of the Break-Bulk-Point, and the most valiant of
all the knights-errant I ever read about. Midnight dreams have taken
their toll on my brain, of that down-to-earth man Booby Jack, who rode
steadfast on a billy-goat. But it’s cold-to-the-bone in a Truckee City
room-for-rent, and snow does envelope all the buildings. I have lived in
that way, below-snow, all of my life, and very-often have looked down
and saw nothing at all in the pan, but I dared not say anything for I’d get
in trouble with the man. But the courage of Booby Jack lifts the spirit of
the poor and freezing fellow, for surely Booby was sometimes forced-to
spend all night inside a snow bank.
Do I need to say anything more about the white Truckee City
valley than that it is up in the mountains of California? City-driving cars
simply cannot reach it, for the roads are icy and steep, and they all slip
down and collect at the foot-hills. I only for some brief time have driven
as far as the foot-hills, and have gazed out upon the rows of disheartened
city travellers, who cannot come to Truckee, and who walk around hope-
lessly looking for an attendant or police-man. Evergreen trees sprout ev-
erywhere they are given-the-chance, and we all live with them as if they
are our nannies, lying close to them when it is cold, and leaving the baby
with them when you’ve got work. For the big mighty trees grow right up
in-between the floorboards, and many living-rooms are punctuated neatly
by an Evergreen. But of these houses I know not much, for they are the
houses of the bourgeoisie, and they are of no comparison to the old room
that I was renting, above the Pioneer chicken-shack.
That stuff I can assure you does cook in its own grease and slime
for all of the work-day, yet receives no working-wage. But as this is to be

25. 25
the history of Booby Jack, I should at-least start with how I first stum-
bled upon his mysterious birth. I remember it to be a very-chilly March
morning when I did creep from out my room like a beetle, and made a
run towards the door, for it was in this way that I exited and entered the
hostel always, so-as-to not be seen by Misses Wapping, the mean old
landlady who made us all sausage porridge everyday for breakfast, and
to whom I was many months behind on my rent. I knew that if she was to
see me leaving my room for even just one second, she would come upon
me with a rolling-pin, and so for months I had made a habit of sneaking
around and skipping my porridge breakfast. But I knew one-day Misses
Wapping would simply come knocking on my door, and then there would
be nothing I could do. So I slipped from out the hostel quietly into the
city street, where there were stiff banks of snow-fall on either-side, and I
left for Mama’s market to fill my stomach with bread. I had replaced my
free sausage-porridge meal with factory-produced Crusty, because I was
a coward who could not face my landlady.
“Feodor! Feodor!” I heard whilst inside the market, and I did
quickly turn my head because that is my name. “Feodor, is that you
young man!” said the outside-voice. “Yes,” said I, “But who are you?”
and inside came old Willy Bannatyne, the decrepit town miser who lived
in a mile-long house made of pine wood. For it was called the Whistle
and was the size of a great barge, like the ones in Booby Jack’s time
‘round the Break-Bulk-Point. “Oh, pardon me Mister Bannatyne, for I
could not tell it was you from outside the market.” said I, “How are you
today sir?” “Wicked cold,” said he, and he took from the shelf a gallon
of milk, “I have only run-out of milk. How is your sister?” “Well she
is just alright, sir” said I, “And she has just gone to work in Massachu-
setts. Do you need help carrying your things Mister Bannatyne?” “Yes”
said he, and I took from him his giant jug of milk. That old fool walked
very slow, on two-broken legs, and I walked equally so alongside him
carrying my bread and his milk, and was saying: “Yes, my sister has just
become quite important selling furniture in Massachusetts, and she is the
manager of some great big depot there.” “That is all very-well.” said he,
“I knew your sister would at some-point be a successful business-wom-
an.” “Yes, it is all very-well.” said I. “For she and as-well the whole
family are a healthy and happy bunch, and they are all well-contented in
their own personal situations.”
The morning light was becoming rather hot, and the salm-

26. 26
on-fishers were returning back with their oniony sacks.“Feodor,” said
he, “Do you want to come and look through a little heap of things that
need quickly be sorted? For they are old family documents that must be
shipped to Anaheim this Friday, and I cannot see my old body lugging
around so many expanding paper-reams. I will pay well, Feodor, twen-
ty-dollars upon every hour.” I thought about Misses Whapping and the
purple love I was to receive on my noggin soon-enough, and I decided
I could use that money, and perhaps I could make one-hundred dollars
or-so. And so I said “Yessir Mister Bannatyne” and “When-will-do” and
said he, “I believe this afternoon will be fine, and I will have dinner for
you made.” Old Willy Bannatyne drove his little car away, steadfast, and
I returned to my room, again avoiding my landlady, who spent half-her-
time in the kitchen making porridge, and half-her-time chasing after
indebted young boys.
When I said earlier that the city-travellers for as long as I re-
member have been stuck at the bottom-of-the-hill, spinning snow into
the air, I meant really all those who do not live in the Mountains. For
the cold wind up here does constitute the very-opposite of the city, and
shrivels-up any civil-life or community, like a Raisin, and so the com-
mon good does seem to freeze. It could be argued too that there is a more
serious problem in our country in-which the common good seems to be
fried, hot, sticky, and unusable, but that is out in the arid farmland that is
populated with burger houses and stinky cattle, and also wherever there
are places not worth caring about. In Truckee, the land-in-common does
freeze into one solid ice-cube, and so we are overrun by Casino’s and
boozers and businessmen. How much use can the poor fellow get from
the it when it is surrounded in ice and a Pick is required to excavate it?
I did lie happily in-between my bed and my blanket, as if I
were a slice of ham in-between two squares of bread. It had been quite
awhile since I had been given a work-day, and it was just what Mammy
sent me that paid for my Crusty and other expenses. “I live rather mini-
mally”, I thought alone in my room, and it made me proud to see I was
such a utilitarian fellow. But this temporary courage can so-easily be
extinguished by the landlady’s great Snuffer, and the old crone at-that-
moment accosted me, demanding her livelihood, and waving around a
medieval battle-axe. “Alright, alright” said I, “I will pay you what I owe
tomorrow, for I am working tonight and will make sure every penny of
my earnings is passed-along to you.” And-so, my creditor, being sat-

27. 27
isfied, left my room. “Good Heavens”, I thought, “Could it be that she
wants no-less than everything I ever make?” But I did not let such feudal
horrors get-me-down, and I instead filled my pipe-set with tobacco. To
wade-and-wiggle through the Truckee City snow is an intense hardship,
and I knew there was a great distance between me and the old miser
Willy Bannatyne, him being on the North-Side, and-so I overturned a
spare laundry-doo and rode it as-if it were a plastic horse, and let the will
of the snowfall and down-hill take me to the Whistle. I side-swiped the
village trees and I sideswiped the Church, and I was chased like a cab-
bage-muncher by the neighborhood dogs. “Feodor!” I heard some say,
“Which-way do you go upon a laundry bucket?” and I would ride-past at
full speed and shout: “To the Whistle!”
So that is the way I came upon the birth of Booby Jack, wildly
fast on-top-of a laundry bucket, and completely unknowing of how my
life would change when I got-there. Yes, some people thought it was
really-funny to see me on a bucket, and to be going to the North-side
at-all, because I was Feodor and a real laughing-stock. A coward who
passed-on all his living wage to his landlady because he could not bear
to say otherwise. Such depressing thoughts had riddled my brain like a
machine-gun in the months before Booby Jack, and bitter self-hatred fills
the cold and downtrodden brain all-the-time, and especially at the time
in-which rent is due. But I have-to admit that when I was going swiftly
down the mountain-side I was thinking only of the snow and its blue
frozen glow, and the warm deer that live and hibernate amongst wet logs
and grubery, a habitat that was so different from mine in a fried-chicken-
shack about five miles up the mountain. And just then I sideswiped the
Church!
The old miser William Bannatyne was a big Refinery man, the
type who indeed control the world, for they take its blood from out of
it like a drunken phlebotomist. Way down in the state of Texas, where
rancheros sling wheelbarrows full of hot fruit, the constant vibration of
rigging and digging does make everyone tremble like a leaf. This I do
not know positively, for I have never left my perch atop the mountain,
and can only assume for how else would the world react to those cold
metal prongs being inserted into her Texas land? I remember when the
well-eaten Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez came to the governmental
head-quarters in Caracas, he first and foremost told such refinery men to
“Get-out”, for their expertise in the digging business was unwanted, and

28. 28
there was no justification he could think of to let them stay and contin-
ue their pumping of hot Venezuelan oil into their son’s bank account.
“Why”, he could have said, “Does the black filth inside the people’s
ground feed only little Michaelangelo’s mouth?” For the cold and over-
worked floor belonged to me as-much as any other man, and this no-one
knew more than Booby Jack.
When I reached the long Whistle, I could smell old beer and
cooking-meat, as if a baby lamb had just been tipped into the pot, and an
old woman awaited me at the door, for she must have heard the rattling
of my plastic doo upon the snow.” Do you always ride an overturned
laundry-bucket, dear Feodor?” said the simple little nanny, “No, I do not”
said I, “I ride what is easiest at-hand.” “I see”, said she, “How interest-
ing.” And the old crone pulled me into the big cabin and put-me-to-work.
“Dinner will be at eight.” said she, “Fifteen dollars per every hour.”
“Wait a moment,” went I, “I heard twenty to be the price mister Banna-
tyne agreed to pay.” And the old, unloving crone said: “Ha! But that is
more than I am paid. Fifteen will be just-fine for you dear Feodor.” and
shut the door right-then without even waiting for my reply.
The room was filled on both sides with boxes of tightly-wrapped
sandwiches of paper, as-if they were the walls of snow-fall that made
channels out of all the walkways in Truckee. The papers as-well were
crumpled around the floor and upon the one wooden desk in the corner.
“Good Heavens” I said to myself, “What is all this related-to?” and I
traced the packets like they had been bread-crumbs until I came upon:
“Box I: Birth records, Baptism, Baby Booby.” “Baby Booby” I repeat-
ed to myself, “Just who is Baby Booby?” and I unhooked the lid. The
room was empty of everything but one desk, an upholstered chair, and
the complete history of Booby Jack, and I did pull from the container
the first packet which was titled “Birth”, and I sat myself upon the chair.
There on the arm-rest was a pinned note from mister Bannatyne:
“Feodor, you may be wondering why I have put you in this room
with only the legendary story of Booby Jack. To me, he is the most-val-
iant knight-errant that ever did tred steadfast on a goat. I inquired with
your mother, who said it would be great-use to have you tied to a project
for-awhile, and to get some work out of you. And-so, young Feodor, I am
giving you the task of re-writing the History of Booby Jack, and re-orga-
nizing it in the way that you see fit. I know you have a great interest in
the world’s oldest stories and in the famous knights-errant of many days

29. 29
ago, and I think you will be quite intrigued by the ways of Booby Jack,
and even the mysterious events of his birth. Willy Bannatyne.”
My heart did ache to see so many different pieces of paper like
they had been leaves that had fallen from a great old tree. “What use is
re-writing the story of Booby Jack?” I thought to myself, “Was there any-
one who cared?” It seemed to me to be worthless and uninspiring work,
but so is the same of any factory-job. And-so I began to dig around like
a dog and read the story of his weird birth. My eye-balls did wobble as
I read many hundreds of pages, and before the dinner had been called I
had written the very original chapter of the complete History: “The Weird
Birth of Booby Jack.”

30. 30
Untitled
By Huck Shelf
The airplane that I’m on has changed destinations from San
Francisco to the center of the Pacific. This was a very sudden change,
and was told to us passengers with a put on air of nonchalant confidence,
like “oh we’re currently nosediving towards the Pacific, find the nearest
exit door and make sure to get out before impact, don’t panic everyone,”
like “I’m going to jump now, have a good time of it y’all,” and I suppose
now is about the time I should stand up, but I’m stuck on how much
there is to remember, and what if I die and I didn’t think about the right
things, or didn’t remember the right things, like the things they’d talk
about at my funeral, the things they’d put in my biography, the important
things. I’ve always felt that it should be exactly right when you die. Or
if not a person, what if I forget a specific moment. There are so many
specific moments, so many times that I want to look back on, can I
remember all of those, should I, and I know there’s that cliche that your
life flashes before your eyes, but that’s in the event of a sudden death,
and mine will likely be slightly more gradual, of starvation or something
similar.
As I sit and try to catalogue all my memories I’m stuck on a
particular one, a day when I went and hiked in Yosemite for hours, alone,
and I’m remembering the control I felt, over each decision and each
action, that day every moment was mine. Still cataloguing, remembering
and re-remembering, I get up, and I’m next in line to slide out the exit
door and into the water, and I can’t think, or I’m thinking too much, or
both, and I’m remembering very specific things, like this tree I saw that
day in Yosemite, and how I stopped and sat and just stared at this tree,
and how beautiful it was, solitary amid some thin underbrush, towering
over the large field it inhabited, and the yellow flowers that covered the
tree like a thick fog, or a burial shroud, and I have that yellow in the front
of my mind, that bright, beautiful, yellow, and I strap on my life jacket
and jump, and as I fall I close my eyes, and everything above me and
below me and all around me is yellow, and as I hit the water that’s yellow
too.

31. 31
When-The-Water-Opened-Up-To-Tell-Me-I-Do-Not-Know-
Everything-I-Once-Thought-I-Did
By Eva Whitney
Listen–
I have seen doughy women being heaved onto Mexican rowboats
Their cake-skirts damp, it was as if they had become flour sacks–
Kittens of men who still fed off of Mother’s soupy rice
hauled them onboard
The boat
leaned
forward to greet the
Pastry-footed women, pried away from coconut drinks and meat
platters, fish ready to leap out of the sea
Listen–
I have watched easy water
fold
along
the
sleeping shore like ribboned deli meats
And I have watched night deepen, a dark puddle expanding in a coastal
storm
It is not an usual happening to
look
across the water and wonder if that really is the water, or
if the water knows it is water– if not, could anyone be water?
I have looked across sandy banks to a monk who did not speak–
The river held forty-year-old tea
winding
beneath
deciduous trees, I realized speaking just assisted
the layman–
The monk harvested his words so carefully–
He told me that he could not help me
and I understood

32. 32
I have seen the people of the other-country, without their
robes, soak in hot-springs–
It was not disturbing because of water’s private nature
And if you Listen–
There is a chile-green bird
who
visits
He does not ask for much–
Seeds scraped from the core of geode-like pepper–
Curving dogwood branches–
The basket where a baby would lie–
He will ask you for the same,
Do not question a man’s intentions
I have seen babies and flowers bloom at once
Evening showed me that people are plants
in a certain light
Listen–– you may believe that you have been pressed upon a fern
frond
But you must learn, babies breathe nature too
Listen––0-
Once in Mexico I scoffed at how easy the people seemed, like listless
fishermen,
Then I realized I had just skimmed the port–
I saw two oceans kiss across a thin lip of sand,
I saw babies that rolled atop waves like the Spanish conquistadors that
barreled through their own land,
Dogs that so smartly rested under fish-shop windows, waiting for an eye–
I learned that in that in the mountains there was no money and
people played the flute-set and loved each other
Then I realized how easily I could be a flute-playing man
in those mountains–
And I cried as I swam in those warm, fish-flooded waters

33. 33
Listen–
At certain times
In certain places
I’ve seen one thing become another–
A bird, then a bluff–
Women, weary wax–
Baby, bursting blos-
som–
Myself, marketplace
mackerel–
You must learn, we are all lapped in a murky image of what our life
could have been
Listen–
For sometimes you may be able to hear that
ringing sound of the other shells that surround you–

34. 34
A Whaling Ship is Pulled to the Bottom of the Ocean. Meanwhile, a
Daughter Writes to God.
By Charlotte Pocock
Well, I, um, slit my wrist on the saline
rocked my back into this wooden tomb enough times to
memorize the way it shifts before it splinters
anyway you build it the bow breaks
I can feel it in the way my feet grew lopsided on the landwise
in the dreg and dip of his voice as my father tells me we are sinking
that he is sorry he brought me forth from the waves of my mother’s
womb
in this time of insatiable and destructive deities, and you know I
could have drowned out all the same in all the stormveins outside the
houses
I will never have the chance to grow up in
God, I ask why you showed me all there is to come home to
if you intended on riptiding it away from me anyways
sent my father those songs on the saltwater
that white whale we’ve been chasing is now as old as I am
and he, too, will return to the depths from which he came
and I cannot unfathom what it is like to be hunted from above
to be spear-shocked and dragged through the wreck
[and I have not yet been alive for decades
but I promise I have always been in love with the way
the sun echos off my cheekbones]
and I have hated the ocean
and I have hated that ship and still I crawled my way back onto its wood-
ed spine
to watch those great white leviathans rise from the deep
or rather to watch my father stare out to sea
and wonder if it was ever me that he wanted

35. 35
there are times such as this when
I cannot help but think that we are all just shadows on the ocean,
dancing over the yawning we will never get to meet
in this damp and sharp corner of the new world
that we were never meant to reach
the demi-gods of the ocean are the promises we were never supposed to
keep
and still, I can see my father standing starboard, wanting for that whale
as the waves rush up to meet him
maybe this is what he meant
when he said we were going home
God,
I do not write as someone who is afraid of dying
that dark and new beginning,
always as clear to me as my mother’s lifeless eyes on the skyline
but I write to you as a whaler’s only daughter,
and I am a vengeful son of a bitch
[and here I know we are at an understanding]
for I have learned to pull ropes through the heartbreak
make martyr out of the makeshift
cry into the current from the crowsnest
and I promise
there is no god that can outlive the lungs
I have made from seaknots and white teeth
for I have learned to be stronger than my father
my father, who pushed the last of my mother off the plankside
who harpooned his own heart out for happiness
who broke our bodies for the baleen
my father, who taught me to swim

36. 36
Opposite:
Green Girls
Kaya Levin

37. 37

38. 38
I See The Rain
By Angelica LaMarca
I feel the throb of the house.
I feel it as the wind lifts its wink-sigh
self upon with a lollying ah!
as plumes of rain
drops shudder down glass
and I watch
the wreath-things of
lamp
light stamp a gold
hue onto all things.
I see frost like wafer wings.
somewhere,
a spine is the arc of used orange peels: but
don’t throw me away! the lips beg
the lover (cold is the lane)
I see the lamp outside.
I see the rain.

39. 39
The Surge
By Angelica LaMarca
When the ocean decided to investigate
there were albatross babes in the schoolyard
and the farmer
was arranging to wheel his grapefruits up to the town
so when
the tapered inns on the cliff-fringe suddenly began to
uncrease themselves
as the hazy manes
of ocean waves
surged in
I watched my cushions simply bloat up with salt
as otters filled my slippers and my stove
I maneuvered my way up the chimney
with porphyra in my mouth
only to find two swordfish gasping on the unsoused roof
the neighbors yowling out to
God
and
unfar
the approaching yokes of sea foam!
Sometimes I am afraid I am this obvious.
In kelped vehicles
invaded women pinch the water out of their sleeves.
Look, there: the man is sprawled across a spinning minced mattress
he purrs
as the sea lifts him closer to the chandelier
and there: submerged
silly boys cork sea shells into their ears
perhaps
the air in their heads
will help them float back up

40. 40
Psalms
By Stella Pfahler
I.
I write my music in beginnings and endings,
coming home or leaving it
in the wind-blown, primal grime of Wadi Rum
or in Peter O’Toole’s satchel where he kept
cigarettes, a Bedu dagger, and a compass,
sprouting sweet melons and cardamom from his fingertips,
letting olives cascade from the seasoned leather-
like a mistake.
I watched him cut down the grand Hejaz on the way to Aqaba
before going crazy on those Turks.
I never did see a woman play an oud
But I’m sure her wiry, stuttering fingers
Would do the job right.
II.
While walking past a Methodist church,
My son is wondering:
“Where did they get all this music?
There are surely
Not enough voices to sing it all.”
In reply, maybe, I am saying
“No,
I am sure they have enough paper and ink
To fill a million trucks from here to the Mississippi
And back again.
I am sure they have the WiFi password
Posted on the wall
To draw such compositions from the Clouds.”
The outsides of those Churches
Are always a sun-basted white.
You can hear singing over the sea breeze
All the way from the CalTrain tracks,
From the tetanus docks,
From the corroded warehouses made for storing Pacific herring

41. 41
Which you can smell on certain days
When the breeze blows right.
III.
I watched the stage lights buffer you until you gleamed,
Something spindly of a man, like straws,
All legs, sequins, and quaaludes.
There was not too much of a barrier there,
A thousand glassy cells, maybe
And I was wondering what kept them
seated in their own electrodes
And I was wondering what kept them
from erupting like child-proof glass
Bursting into a hundred identical beads,
blunt, and incapable of infliction.
If you can see me, I can see you.
We made eye contact through the plasma,
I rewound the tape.
Yes, I believe a man can be too thin, but you were godly,
Some Scandinavian deity,
With powdered-on rouge emphasizing cheekbones,
A divine membrane draped in white dress slacks.
IV.
Welcome, Prince of the blue waves breaking
All poise, gesture, and expectancy-
Like a conch shell or magic trick
Waiting for the coral to cut him into narrow glass-strips
Something to trail through the fingers of tourists
And be collected.
She held golden boy in the crook of her arm,
Worried that the sharpness of her joints would
cut him right through
Until he abraded into
blunt beer bottle fragments and driftwood
And toddled along a beach somewhere near Santorini.
She loved the Sea, but was never good with kids.

42. 42
Coyoacan
By Julieta Roll
In a neighborhood of cracked stone and Spanish ruin
there is preparation for morning market
First, the ring of a 6am church bell, loud and echoing
across the walls of chipped houses and streets narrow
like veins
Then, a slight stir. Like God has pursed his lips and
blown. There is a synchronized awakening of people.
They yawn, and vendors, who have risen without the
need of bells, stumble out with wooden carts and bul-
bous sacks of fruit
The market unfolds like this:
Placing of mats visibly woven by aged hands, the cut-
ting of mango skin, back obsidian, carved stone, silver
trinkets lined in rows. A Man counts his coins. A Woman
sews the pink stitch of a doll
The presence of residents begins to trickle. There is a
hum, that vibration between people. Exchanges com-
mence as small crowds, like parrot flocks, emerge from
brightly painted doors. Fruit is passed from hand to palm
and the hum amplifies itself to a melody of quiet chatter
A vendor in midsts of it picks up a coin he has dropped.
He slips it in pocket and stares at his produce of fat rip-
ened papaya sitting in a cart like a throned animal.
He can feel the start of humidity. He can see the sky
adjusting to its morning color. People are milling about
him. He feels still for the first time in a long time.
Coyoacan is rising like hot air.
Coyoacan is awakening from heavy eyes.

43. 43
Pollination
By Anna Geiger
Once in a year the lily blooms along her pad, and this release is euphoria.
On the first night, tender beginnings of a blossom: creamy white, draped in
honey musk. Stigmata opens for the insect that hovers for her, long-legged
and buzzing. At the culmination, the evolution has been set in motion, as
fruit plucked from the vine. Her perfume already fading. On the first night,
the others watching, green and waiting.
On the second night, velvet petals have pinkened, ripening like the sweet-
est strawberries, unfolding as the beginning of a dance. Yet, here where
she has bloomed, here where petals have softened, there can be heard the
whir of wings. And here, the insect has moved on.
On the second night, those once green no longer waiting, no longer watch-
ing, themselves budding into fruition.
Does this remind you of something? Does this remind you perhaps of our
one fine day in April, when the lily pads had been pollinated and erupted
fuschia along the pond? Does this remind you of how long our pinkness,
our sweetness lasted before it began to brown in our hands? Does this re-
mind you of how I returned to the smoothness of a lily pad once its bloom
receded into the pond?
You, again, flying away. Me, moldering as aged fruit, sinking below water.

44. 44
In the Riverbed
By Anna Geiger
I have never told of my birth new born and waterlogged
lain naked in the riverbed before dawn drifting until wrinkles
claimed my skin and on ensuing dusks in ensuing years where the moon
shone milky in water I have been him beneath him
when he has pushed through my body between resting
places of the river
in those flooded hours I have occupied other bodies like the goldfish
who carry sunlight on their scales through deep mud
and waterfront boughs leeched of oxygen
left wheezing and I have felt the second third fourth
desertion of this body
I have lived with mud melting between my toes in those
deluged hours I have seen things in the shadows of the shallows
one crimson-tongued fish scraping the scales from another
and the river gnawing at veins of saturated trees I have
never told of my birth or the algae-thick years after
I have been submerged for weeks inhaled only water and
I live in the river now sleep between reeds wait patiently
for the ripples and splash of his knees there are lifetimes in the
wrinkles of my skin that my years don’t meet

45. 45
dream-seeped
By Anna Geiger
you come to me dream-seeped sometimes, especially in the winter, when
the city smells of the pine tree air freshener that swung from your car
mirror and the haphazard candles next to your bed which you only ever
burned once and with every passerby I am reminded of your many wool
sweaters and hats packed away in their appropriate seasonal spaces. you
are always hazy, and never touch me but stay always several inches away,
which is how I understand you are not tangible. you used to grab me force-
fully, slide your fingers up and down me, leave dents where your callouses
were. I am grateful for this understanding, especially in the winter sea-
son, when I am contained within myself and the many blankets and baked
things I have softened myself with, the many mulled-containing mugs and
touches of my own hands I have warmed myself with. I do not need the
inches between a sleep-drugged me and a dreamed-up you to be closed,
no matter how much I would like them to be. Still, when you come to me
sometimes, all my senses tell me you have been in snow. A cold emanates
from you and I shiver with it in the warmest parts of me, and I can see the
clumps of hair and eyelash snow has solidified, and smell the white-topped
pine needle mountains that I have drawn a dreamed-up you from. In this
I also understand you are not real. you used to be a furnace, and I would
warm my hands feet limbs against you, I would take shelter inside the arch
of your torso. so when you come to me sometimes, and the itchy christmas
sweaters, fairy-light lit downtown evenings, mulled wine making, softness
of your hair and our bedding in the mornings encircles and fills me like
an aroma or like fireplace heat, I must roll onto my undisturbed side, must
become my own containment.

46. 46

47. 47
Filmmaking to me is one of the best art forms if not the best. Any art
form can be captured and used to tell help tell stories with filmmak-
ing. Filmmaking can be and usually is a collaborative art which I love.
The feeling I get when I’m able to travel to many locations with crews
of great people to make films gives me a rush of excitement, ambition
and adventure. I really appreciate the memories I’ve been to have so
far working with many different people and I look forward to more.
What Filmmaking Is To Me
Phil Elleston II

48. 48
Mirage
By Kenzo Fukuda
Where I’m going
is guarded by guns
and filled with bread
Where I’m from
shadows are empty
the water stained crimson
and the only grass is bullet shells
Where I’ve been
the land is cratered with smoke
AKs rattle like pythons
and the smell of burning flesh coats my tongue
But there’s gold where I’m headed
and a sword will begin my ascension
They’ve taken me into their ranks
needled a tattoo into my skin
gave me a rifle and said “Fire!”
Then they told me where I’m going
the stars linger beside me
the bread is warm and soft
and there are men who guard the gates with golden tridents
This place is obtained by only one path
it is paved by ocean, and bridged by divine light
I will follow it
they promised I could
walk on water

49. 49
Morning
By Kenzo Fukuda
Awaken! It’s a day where
To sounds of the crows, dipped in sunlight. clouds bode
black-winged
Lips crack, tongue chap, nose heavy, angels descend-
ing, singing in cries
glide towards a sanctuary of privacy trudging along,
the alarm screaming.
Eyes dry, blurry with time and sleep
hangs, dense and cold
pupils flicker, clear though fleeting like his cousin
who’s friends with the crows
Blurry becomes sleep because he
doesn’t wait for the moon to rise
fresh clothes becomes fresh mind instead longing
for the warm bed
Awaken! It’s morning

50. 50
the dialogue between a drunk woman and her dog at midnight on the
kitchen floor
By Max Chu
I have decided that you’re the only motherfucker in this city who de-
serves me. John-Paul and John-Michael are both two faced snakes. Two
names, two places, two faces. And still they got nothing on my one shitty
ass face even with four faces between them, you know? You’ve seen
them! John-Paul with his big black nose like a motherfucking ballsack
and John-Michael looks at me with his shit colored bug-eyes whenever
I do something new. Like fuck you if you think I’m going to smoke with
you when I’ve already lost one lung as it is. And they don’t even have the
balls to tell Nick to back the fuck up bringing me candles and shit YOU
DON’T WANT MY DICK BECAUSE I DON’T GOT ONE AND YOUR
CANDLES SMELL LIKE MEAT but maybe it ain’t those bugs running
around and maybe New York City ain’t for me! Maybe I’ll liquidate my
ass like D always says and move to fucking Canada where the candles
smell like free healthcare not big macs. Or maybe I’ll keep my gold and
I’ll keep you and I’ll shoot John-Paul and John-Michael and Nick and D
and anyone else who gets in our way and I’ll be the strongest, baddest
motherfucker in Brooklyn. You, me, and the fucking wild.

51. 51
EPA speeches
Introduction by Max Chu:
On February 28th, 2018 the Environmental Protection Agency Hearing
was held in the main public library. We of the environmental club of
Ruth Asawa SOTA attended this event due to the fact that we as a club
disagreed with the EPA’s decision to repeal the Clean Power Plan. Col-
lectively, a portion of the club attended the hearing to give speeches to
the EPA representatives. In those speeches are the impassioned voices of
a youth who will inherit the earth.

52. 52
Kyle Trefney
Ruth Asawa SOTA 2020
Good evening.
My name is Kyle, I’m a high school student here in San Francisco. In
school, we’re discussing the parallels between Rome and modern-day
America. I wrote a present era rendition of Shakespeare’s Antony speech
from Julius Caesar for this occasion.
Friends, countrymen, members of Trump’s EPA: lend me your ears; I
come to bury our skies, not to praise them; the unworthiness of beauty
lives after it, the importance is oft interred with its bones; so let it be with
our skies. The noble Scott Pruitt hath told you environmental success
was “overreaching”: if it were so, it was a grievous fault, and grievous-
ly hath environmentalism answer’d it. Here, under leave of Pruitt and
the rest–for Pruitt is an honourable man; so are they all, all honourable
people–come I to speak in the sky’s funeral. It was my protector, con-
stant and true to me, a reminder of nature’s presence in San Francisco’s
concrete jungle: but Pruitt says the sky’s needs were overreaching; and
Pruitt is an honourable man. I want to tell you a story, Mr Pruitt. I grew
up with faith in my nation’s leaders to make the decisions. I’d read the
news every morning and I trusted America. In the news, I began to hear
about the state of our world, the good but often the bad. Through news, I
was exposed to other mediums of global education.
It started a fascination with climate change focused documentaries, but
I’ll admit these problems seemed as distant as the setting in a movie like
The Martian. They don’t ANY LONGER, Mr. Pruitt! For the first time in
my life, I’ve seen the sky be brown, brown and gray with the smoke of
our nearby wildfires. Global warming caused those fires, caused record
and fatal heat waves here in the Bay Area. Mr. Pruitt, sir, where did this
heat come from? I can tell you a little secret, Mr. Pruitt–sure didn’t come
from clean power. No sir, it came from fossil fuels trapping heat with-
in our atmosphere and baking our skies and our earth and the lungs of
young Americans. The days of the wine country fires, my friends weren’t
in class. I walked by the wellness center at my high school, and inside
I saw Kaela, Charlotte and Joshua choking on the couch. The three of
them have asthma, as do one in every 12 people in the United States,

53. 53
Mr. Pruitt. Who in this room has asthma, stand up please. I see you. Mr.
Pruitt, do you see them? Would everyone in this room who knows some-
one with asthma please stand up? Do you see this Mr. Pruitt? Thank you,
you may be seated. By 2030, with the EPA’s own data, the Clean Power
Plan would prevent up to 90,000 asthma attacks in children. No longer
Mr. Pruitt; you’ve decided to repeal it. I ask you, do the needs for clean
sky, for the health of 25 million Americans with asthma depending on the
fundamental right to breathe, tell me does that sound “overreaching”? No
longer! Yet Pruitt says it is overreaching; and sure, he is an honourable
man. But to the EPA members here, to thoughtful Americans, to young
people in the audience and anyone listening over the air: I speak not to
disprove what Pruitt spoke, but here I am to speak what I do know. We
all have loved clean skies, not without cause: What cause withholds
you now to protect them? To protect your very species and yourself?
You who have power, Mr. Pruitt, members of the EPA, who are you
not to use it wisely? Because you know what?! I’m tired of seeing my
friends choke on filthy pollution! We Say No Longer! I’m finished with
your greedy hands on our precious planet. We say no longer! I’m done
with youth being seen not heard. We say no longer! I’m over politicians
accepting money from Big Oil. We say no longer! And I’m through with
the agency dedicated to the protection of life itself being corroded by
selfishness and complete disregard for the best interests of the American
people. We. Say. No. Longer.
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with clean skies and clean power,
And I won’t rest til it comes back to me.

54. 54
Max Chu
Ruth Asawa SOTA 2020
Hello, My name is Max Chu, and I am a 16 year old student.
Today, I am here to bring to your attention one specific fact that I find im-
portant and you should know. This fact has to do with the idea of a seed
vault. Now, a seed vault is a place where lots and lots of different types
of seeds are kept, and in the event that one of the species kept in the vault
goes extinct, scientists can go into the seed vault, replant that plant, and
the species is saved.
These vaults actually exist, and the one that is most popular and
the one I would like to bring to your attention is the seed vault in the
archipelago of Norway called Svalbard. The vault itself is nicknamed the
“Doomsday Vault” due to the fact that if the world were to ever need the
vault, we would be in or past the point of “Doomsday” and would need
the seeds in the vault to reestablish society. Now this vault is encased in
120 meters of sandstone and chilled in permafrost. What I would like to
tell you is that the permafrost is melting.
This idea of frost that would never melt, hence the suffix perma-,
is melting. The vault is about 800 miles from the north pole but the north
pole was 60-70 degrees warmer than normal this last winter, and so the
permafrost is melting around the vault, the seeds are at risk, and so when
“Doomsday” comes, we’ll have no contingency plan.
What I ask of you, EPA representatives, is that in light of this
hope of the vault under threat of being extinguished, I ask that you give
us some semblance of hope that we are trying to stop this. That we are
working against the “Doomsday” and not with it. Thank you.

55. 55