Shining East by Gengchen Wang

Issue 32.4

Editor’s Note

To the students of Washington College:

The time has come for me to end my run with Collegian. I knew it was coming. I’ve always thought I knew what to expect. I’ve stepped away from a publication before, and after an equally successful tenure. I’m familiar with the particular, bittersweet mix of pride and uncertainty. I told myself that I’d already been through it once. That this time around, leaving would come more easily, and the anxiety would pass more quickly.

Of course, what I had failed to consider was that when the end of the year rolled around, I’d be leaving much more than just Collegian. As I look ahead to graduation, adulthood, the fabled and all too frequently weaponized “real world,” I’m struck with hope, wonder, and dread in alternating waves. All three of those emotions have made me more grateful for Collegian than I ever could have anticipated.

As any other student editor will tell you, our jobs are rarely easy. But they’re always safe. We have room to grow and room to fuck up—not that those are always different things. We have whole communities around us to catch us when we fall and to push us toward excellence. There is no adequate amount of gratitude to be expressed for the people who are part of those communities. Still, I’d be remiss if I didn’t try.

I have to thank Caroline Harvey, who first brought me into the literary fold; Brooke Schultz, Mallory Smith, and Madi Shenk, who were my first editors; Shannon Moran, Charlotte Lindsay, and Mary Sprague, who I had the honor of serving with and under; and Dr. James Allen Hall, who is near-singlehandedly responsible for any of us having any idea what we’re doing. I owe my biggest thank you to my own staff—Isabelle, MacKenzie, Megan, Liane, Eylie, and Teddy—who have all far exceeded my expectations ad infinitum, and to Emma Campbell, who will pick up from where I leave you. (Suffice to say, you’re in good hands.)

Our readers, our submitters, our critics, fellow students and artists—you all do more to make this endeavor possible than any of us editors. What I leave you with, here, is my last true project of undergrad. My thesis is done and over with, I’ve finished my classes, I have no grueling exams. Everything but this is behind me, and soon this will be too. This volume, and this issue, are a better ending than I ever thought I’d get. In my four years, once seeming infinite and now gone far too soon, Collegian has meant everything. My last wish is that it can mean something for you too.

Take care of yourselves,

Justin Nash
Editor in Chief, Collegian

time

i trace the cicatrix tearing the skin
into the tremulous crisscross of an unwound.

what was once open is closed,
and in that closing, a scream of flesh,

one last flourish of the sacrament.
pain is a rite, the heart a pale looker-on,

a wet cloud in your chest
wringing itself onto the world it watches.

after all, it’s the faces we hear,
the voices we feel bleeding over us most days,

the candles we taste dribbling down
our throats in wax trails, orange as cantaloupe nectar—

persistent memories that make impressions upon us,
as pillows do on our cheeks after the chill of a dreamful sleep.

hours pass this way—in our frivolous heads
of all places, where remembrances falter in ephemeral

dances. they are awkward foals
rising up after birth, burgeoning wildly, running

recollected into the fields of the rose hues
we wore to the prom that flickered pink, of the pressed

star daisies i still keep somewhere
under a bed i do not sleep in anymore.

and i am a sycamore. you
tore off a limb once, and in its stead

a scar seals the loss, a little surgeon
stitching up slowly its own amputation.

yes, i stole our fire. i drowned us
into a stonewash of wrong. like i said, the heart

is a pale looker-on. and now,
i widen with months, and the bark grows

tough. penciled-in rings yawn
inside of me and multiply, constant mouths

moving off. they speak of memories.
you speak of nothing. i write it all down,

like a traveler soaked in senses,
stuck in my own gnarled, leaf-covered ground.

Sappho’s Smoke Break by Fran Spargo — *Sappho’s Smoke Break* by Fran Spargo

by Elizabeth Hill

Winchester House

This is where people came to ask questions, like:“What do you miss the most?”

The smell of bread being pulled out of the oven, the heat of it, the possibility of pain. The ache from too much wine, the bitter taste of it as it tightens the tongue, his jaw clenching as he swallows. He missed winter, the changes it caused. His skin would dry easier, chapped lips and brittle fingers. He could see the woven path of his skin then, the crackling that webbed itself over his hands, down his shins and around his eyes.

They didn’t often ask what he missed, though. Instead, “What’s the best part?” and it was the tone of their voice he hated. The eagerness. And the way they looked at him. Not through him, of course, because they know. They know and they want to make it a point that they know, so they look at him, intensely, with purpose. I’m different, their eyes say, because I acknowledge you and I feel for you and someday, I will be you.

The best part? He pretended to ruminate on the question one of the times it was asked, going over to a chair in the dining room to sit, and then remembering, walking past it instead. “I suppose it’s the manipulation of time,” he said, and the eyes watching him turned blank. They didn’t understand.

“I get to see generations,” he said. “Time that usually takes decades, half a century, and I watch it collapse in a blink.” They understood now. They nod, the smiles reappear. “I also know everything. Secrets. The ongoings behind closed doors. I can’t help it. I drift where I am thought of. I know everything,” he repeated, and in his head, he knew that everything was often just this side of too much. “I don’t have to worry about the after part,” he said, and that always got everyone’s attention. “I’m here, always. In this house, in the garden, the wind chimes and the lamps.” Smiles at first. “Always here, even as those around me age. Even the house, it’s growing older than me.” And it had creaked and groaned and he’d smiled but it was just another reminder of something he couldn’t do. Produce an ache, moan in pain. No body to decay. “It’ll collapse too—the wooden floors, the fireplace. But I’ll still be here.”

He had thought the reality would rouse someone. That they would stop focusing on the how and the why and the miracle of it. They never did. Some nodded. Some cried. But still they leave with a skewed vision of life everlasting pasted to their eyes like rose petals.

by Isaiah J. Reese (Yaw)

blessed by Ra and Irony

we were born in pyramids

bunkered down next to one another

no space to breathe or a chance for tranquility the purpose was to create agitation between

neighbors from Upper and Lower Kemet (Ancient Egypt)

the Nile River has become corner stores Chinese joints and

the frozen cup ladies—our source of nutrients flows

from these rivers like we know them

or can trust them

I was the first dynasty

one of four

back in Gilmore Projects my brothers and I

Pharaonic spirits would inscribe

hieroglyphic inspirations on the walls

in reds and blues blacks and brown dialects of the same language

we told stories of the

bad guys who did bad things in bad areas

and when we did so we was met with the wrath of

Mother Isis herself

our pyramid was small over West

still regal in bloodline we trained to become great warriors

for Kemet

we ducked dodged ran and hid

as our training necessary for survival

for we are spiritual people

we fasted most days

we knew God—the creator

we called him Ra as the sun was a representation of

his light

his rays would beam down and kiss our skin

and our hair as the trees would grow towards him

he blessed those well deserving

wherever he went prosperity fell upon the citizens of those lands

God didn’t spend much time in West Baltimore.

angel by Regina del Pilar — *angel* by Regina del Pilar

by Tamia Williams

Spirituality Can Be,
but is not Limited to,
Progressive Christianity

I am spiritual in the way that I was-am raised to believe in big G God. In the way that tithes were obligated, praying obliged. In the way that fasting is sewn in with purging, and guilt with holy trinities. I am spiritual in the way that I drowned in long skirts and sleeves, in the way that joints were kept secret. In the way that if a husband wanted it, there was no debate in where or how or mercy or maybe another night.

I am spiritual in the way that I am deemed a heretic for endorsing what’s natural. As I deem each woman’s rightful choice whether to accept someone sliding in or pull-pushing out. As I deem that social workers work and ice is frozen—I am spiritual in those beliefs as they’re deemed political and religious, though they’re anything but.

But even so, those occasional songs latch onto me. Words of “consuming fire-sweet perfume” pull at my lifeline, shaping the negro in negro spirituals. Sometimes in lowly lit rooms, sometimes within back-aching pews, rarely in a broken church shell. Sounds of people relied-and-lying on the spirit in spirituals to survive for centuries. They laid in fire, strewn amongst aggression, and prayed that a higher observer saved. That big H He watched with kindness as I now hope for too, in the way that I sing my negro numbers, hum the hymns, and remain spiritual.

by Nicholas Ritter

How to Fry

after “The Cleaving” by Li-Young Lee

I find the knuckle of
this chicken’s carcass
and carve it up
like you taught me,
placing weight on
the blade and twisting
until I feel the cartilage
pop. Release. No
more wing to fly,
I am a God of con-
sumption. And glutton
has not a purpose
but to sustain another
layer of excellent
grease glimpses
down the bloodied eye-
brow. Blink enough times
and I will see through
all that red. I can
hear the red tickling
my vestibule. Isn't
a symphony an orchestra?
A composition of what
unrepentant red bleeds like.

I still hold the wing. Place
it in the bowl. I’ve already
prepared this sour milk
for its bath. Now cut
down the border of
its spine. Numbness.
Been sitting on ass
driving around these
old streets far too long.
Got TV static on my legs.
Forgiving the man who
shot his feeling away
on live television.
For prayer is where we
heal, I can’t forget.
Is that fear development
or is it a protection? Discard
the spine or freeze it to make
delicate stock later. Remove it
from my hand. I don't need
that spine anymore.
Cut out each breast; it’s
easy, I just have to
follow the bone. It wants
to become removed.
Shoes aren't needed
here, it's a place of soft grass
and tiny creek pebbles that
just so stop being sand.
The water will be cold so
don't fall in just yet. I’m
not done dreaming. I like
this removal. Remove

the thighs and separate the legs.
Same as before, bathe the meat.
Now drench the pieces
in flour. The snowfall I
loved as it gave us a
hill to live down. Now
it's fast so lift up my head
bouncing off the back
of my mother's sled.
You don't want to protect me
because where's the joke
in security?

The oil has been hot
for long enough. It's time
to fry each piece. The thighs
and legs go first, then the white.
I would not want the white
to become dry. Just pray for aloe vera.
It's not another sunburn, it's
a boil and it's green. God, it
stings but He won't return me
yet. How can I kill myself
with just a toy? What gave me that idea in
the first place? I revoke it.

The meal is prepared.
Eat the fibers of
muscle and lick with a
now burning tongue. The
saltiness of hot seasoned
grease is pleasurable so
don't stop, it’s only going to give
heart burn. Eat both wings. It's what
I’ve earned. I remember how it felt
to be accomplished, right? No
need to lie, I know myself.
Don't stop, yellowed-teeth man.
It’s the way to protect
something miniscule, a fine
blue light in the corner of this
dimmed bathroom’s tub.

All this succulent breast
and thigh and leg and
remembering and lesson is how
I find meditation. How
I told you I can give back
your love.

by Nicole Hatfield

Raised on Horseback

When I was a girl, I broke my hymen
while riding a horse    and came
on the wildness of it all.
Ride me like a horse, baby,
the boys will learn to say.
They will ask for leather whips
and leather boots and leather skin,
but I will show them a half-dead mouse,
my rope-burned hands, how I can’t
make a fist without blisters      splitting.
I’ve braided horsehair into a bra,
sewn my thighs to the saddle.
Which is to say
that I held a nakedness against the animal
and pulled the sound of running hooves
into my womb.

by Joshua Torrence

Audacious Fir

             Netted cadaver,
not dead, elated—
                         frosty bark clotted
in the syrup of a wound
             Torn down, cut
at the waist,
                       but not entirely felled—
upright, hitched
             to the stand which penetrates,
this needly stranger
                         waits
against a lunar blackening,
             against two planets,
one red-eyed unblinking, the other
                          haloed in shattered moons
They align in darkness—
             two knife-glints,
two nightmares—
                         as if something’s in order

*

I know money
            I have held it, smelled it
It does not taste like this
                         (sweet sweat swelling
along my palm’s feathered creases,
             I licked that skin
after touching
                       the corpse at the starless Lowe’s,
the trunk’s sap oddly charming,
             less blood than elixir
that cheerily hexes you
                       into a stalk of peppermint)
I like Mars
            because it is red,
and on its ice rinks
                        large as continents,
on its towering godplaces
           and corners impregnable,
there’s no such thing
                        as take

*

Anyway, we bought that death
            and wrapped it in chords,
innumerable baubles,
                         pictures of me
and my sister before
             we knew the labor
of a painted smile
                         The glass balls hung
from the branches,
            round as celestials
and just as gaudy
                         Once finished, the five of us
communed
             around that glittering green,
crowned
                          with an angel
of chalk and silk
            We were not religious,
though nostalgia
                         for an old world
cloyed
            at our throats
like a vicious calling
                        At the altar
of the tree,
            light conferred
with light remembered
                       A child’s shadow, I
drank in
            its changeless,
dogged
                        glow

the self, inverted by Nicole Hatfield — *the self, inverted* by Nicole Hatfield

by Nicholas Ritter

even twelve years later you can still remember that your lunch number was 171897

it’s the fifth grade & you are happy to find a crinkling bag of hot fries at the end of the lunch line & yea, maybe you shouldn’t use up all your lunch money on something corn & artificial & more full of air than the lungs you own that are so small & haven’t even touched smoke yet, but you want something cheap & mom only buys that healthy whole wheat shit at home cause she wants you to lose some more weight & you already ate cheese bread & marinara sauce for the seventeenth time this month & yea, you’re only in the fifth grade but you have a mind & it wonders & maybe it doesn’t know what that fight your parents had was going to lead to & sure, it doesn’t understand why your sister won’t just tell you that they scare her too & sure, it doesn’t get why your mom makes fun of your fat hands, & it isn’t sure why your parents made you cut your hair just because you slapped Ryen when he cut in front of you on photo day & it doesn’t know why your teachers decided to punish the bad kids with laps around the recess yard & it doesn’t understand yet that you were being taught how bad ethics leads to hard physical labor & that that’s fucked up but your brain doesn’t know how to process anything yet but it does know plugged in GameCube controllers at 1am get you yelled at & it knows it likes when you balance on the tree that fell down in the backyard & it likes the idea of being balanced between standing tall on something free & dead, & falling down on living grass you have to mow & it likes the idea of being able to go back inside to the healthy whole wheat shit & to go back inside to someone telling you to lose weight & to go back inside to someone & being able to wait in the lunch line reciting the six digits connected to your account while it thinks about all the hot fries you shouldn’t eat.

by Tamia Williams

1, 2, 3, 4, 5: 1 Mile

In adulthood, she still feared thunderstorms. She worried about neon shards rupturing a tree, setting a forest ablaze, burning what little she claimed. She stewed over tornadoes too, those racing, inescapable pits.

In high school, she heard that lightning doesn’t touch even ground. It only struck the dissimilar. Later, she learned that that wasn’t guaranteed. Nothing is perfectly calm and flat; even if it was, lightning could still attack. Her teachers offered other reassurances. A tornado sounds like a freight train. If you don’t hear that, you’re fine! But she didn’t know what sound came from freight trains. Count the seconds between lightning and thunder. It’ll let you know how far away the eye is. But knowing the disaster looms overhead doesn’t lighten its rampage. Still, she held her breath. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. 1 mile.

In middle school, her mom said that each lightning strike was God blinking. She wondered why he did it if it could kill. Her mother said that thunder was him laughing. She wondered why he laughed, knowing the sound was scary. Her mother told her that that was normal. Fearing thunderstorms? No, living in fear. That doesn’t matter though. After all, heaven awaits after death. But what does heaven look like? Something good. Just pray and have faith.

So she did. Lived and breathed and prayed in five second intervals.

Relax by Fran Spargo — *Relax* by Fran Spargo

by Nicole Hatfield

Whalefall

When a whale falls, its body becomes a home
at the bottom of the ocean. I bet the fall
sounds like the dropped stones of disillusionment.
I wonder whether each carcass is fully furnished,
or if the fish fight over occupancy
and divvy up the organs like old lamps left
in a dead person's house. What makes the whale
a home? I once saw my mother give our dog valium,
felt our tile floors turn to dust as our house sank
a little deeper. We breathed minnows and rested
on a decayed seabed, our walls covered
in bloated smiles and sand-scrawled apologies.
Before our house became a whale, it was a water tower
in the middle of suburbia, the tallest point. It was
more sky than sea with a tank that could hold at least one whale.
When the tower was torn down to build our house, we watched
water spill into the streets, we climbed into the skin
of a whale and fell asleep with its blubber against our chests,
its salt pressed into our eyes.

by Michelle Ly

Personality Quiz

Answer some questions and I will tell you something I wish I learned earlier in life.

For the paper version of this quiz, we recommend grabbing your favorite pen to keep track of your progress! Take as much time as you need, and remember: there are no wrong answers.

1. Pick a color:

a. Golden hour against the walls of my bedroom, which is my only sense of time passing.

b. The blue-white screen light that illuminates my ceiling during a late-night call. The conversation doesn’t go anywhere, but we keep talking. It’s been weeks since we talked like this. Maybe even months. We fall into the same pattern, like a head on a pillow.

c. The muddy brown fur of my dog, which is coarse under my palms. His ears are velvet soft, and a dark-smooth chestnut brown. I call him Stinky as a nickname.

d. Off-white daffodils I picked off the side of the road with my friend. I put them in a vase and leave them behind on her kitchen island.

e. The murky soap water after I mop my laminate flooring instead of writing this quiz. I mop for hours, entranced by how dark the water gets. When I walk into my room later, barefoot, it feels different, but looks just the same.

2. Where would you like to be most right now?

a. Fall 2019.

b. Sitting around a table in Miller Library, arguing about Gaussian elimination with your friends with a smile on your face.

c. Sitting in the backyard with your parents, having an open conversation about what you really want to pursue in college.

d. In bed, just waking up to the sound of rain and overcast light seeping through the curtains. Your mom is vacuuming the house. Your father is working.

e. I’m completely fine with where I am right now. I am offended that you would ask that I change.

3. How's your relationship with your parents?

a. Discolored stuffed animals stored haphazardly in the attic.

b. A lot of things said that will not be taken back.

c. A sudden realization in the middle of the day that leaves you practicing square-breathing in the spice aisle.

d. Long walks in parks where conversation only emerges in pointing out the plants that grow from cold earth, and about the past.

e. A quiet sense of understanding around a crowded kitchen table.

4. Choose a way to survive:

a. Hiding away in your room and talking to your friends on Facebook Messenger.

b. Looking at the Instagram profiles of people in high school you don’t talk to, and wonder why you’re still following them. Do not unfollow them.

c. Saying things you will regret and reworking your resume again.

d. Swallowing your tongue. Trying to keep the air light by cracking soft-shelled jokes.

e. Entertaining their idea that when you move out, you will come back and visit.

5. Choose your favorite Supernatural Character:

a/b. Dean. You have a strong sense of loyalty to people who have left you for the worse, and you definitely blame yourself. You are fighting to be good because of, or in spite of, the overwhelming responsibilities. Did I mention you never asked for any of it?

c/d. Castiel. Once you are stripped of everything they say is good, you will find that you enjoy the little things in life. It will confuse your entire family because you are supposed to be miserable.

e. Sam. Everyone and their mother said that you were bad from the start. At some point, you gave up and believed in it. You think: if I cannot be good then let me be the worst kind of bad. The kind that makes you happy.

6. Which statement speaks most to you right now?

a. Why didn’t I try harder?

b. I am wishing the worst for some people today. And they deserve it.

c. I have googled "how to comfort people" more than once in my life.

d. Since the pandemic started, I have been contacting my friends almost every day. I have been cold-calling people like a telemarketer. Hello, I am trying to sell you the love you cannot see in person.

e. I am going to take a deep breath and be the better person, even if I don’t want to be.

7. Choose a memory that makes the test creator cringe when lying in bed at 2a.m.:

a. That time I got chased out of a graveyard by the Chestertown police. I have a blanket jammed into a tote bag in my arms and I’m sprinting across grass while the beam of flashlights cut through foliage. I do not get caught. Some of my friends do. When we regroup, I cannot stop apologizing. (If you’re reading this, I’m still very sorry).

b. The first and last night I spent with my first partner. It is impromptu and we’re both sleeping in jeans. It’s very awkward. I keep checking my watch and staring at the Animal House poster on the wall. I get maybe two hours of sleep and then hurriedly depart as soon as possible.

c. The time I cried in front of two other students when quitting a theatre production. The mileage on this memory will take me so far. It pretty much changes the trajectory of my choices from that point on. I learn about self-care and boundaries, sure, but I also learn shame and limits.

d. I almost convinced myself that having an hypothetical affair with a married man would be okay because artists are Like That, and I didn’t clock how old he was because I was a freshman.

e. I showed my mother the poem I wrote about Asian markets and broomsticks. She frowns when she reads it, especially on the parts where I drop little words in Vietnamese like added spice. Without words, I learn the difference between connection and performance. My dad tries to tell me it's okay, but I know.

8. Choose three, but select only one to move on. Think really hard about the ones you didn’t choose:

a. I do not ask for help because I would rather drown in my failures than admit that someone is better than me.

b. The worst thing I think about my own relationship is how much I can hurt the other person if things don’t work out. I will not go down peacefully. I will throw bottles and break heels.

c. If I just had more time, more energy, more ambition, I could be better.

d. Is it bad to want more from the others around you?

e. The best thing I can do is alleviate the pain of others around me.

9. I joke around a lot.

a. Strongly Agree.

b. Slightly Agree

c. Agree

d. Slightly Disagree

e. It’s not that I do it for fun, but that I’ve spent so long learning how to defuse tense situations that it sort of comes as a second instinct.

10. What is the importance of having lofty goals?

a. To make your childhood self happy.

b. To routinely reassure yourself that you are better than other people.

c. To constantly challenge yourself.

d. To have something to daydream about.

e. To make your parents happy and to justify why you are.

11. Pick a character that the test creator recalls from childhood:

a. Mulan from Mulan.

b. Li Shang from Mulan.

c. The Asian girl from Little Einsteins (not Mulan).

d. The unseen children of your parents’ friends who are doing way better pursuing pre-med at UCLA.

e. A painting of a tiger hanging in the Walters Art Museum.

12. Age 18: What is the right thing to want to be when you grow up?

a. Something in computer science.

b. A writer.

c. A psychologist so you can figure out just what exactly is so fucked up about you when you have everything going right.

d. Dead before you commit anywhere because those tuition fees are steep.

e. Blood Type O.

Please count up your answers. Your answer will be whatever letter you chose the most. If you need to, just choose whichever one you think will make you feel better.

A. Nothing lasts forever.

One day my parents will sell my childhood home and someone will come into my former room and not understand why the walls are purple or why the ceiling is lined with a beach themed border. When they pull down the paper stars I hung up with yarn and Scotch tape at the age of [forgotten], they will not know why. I will not be around to explain that my older sister wanted an ocean theme, but I wanted space. When she left, I hung up the stars and forgot about them. Somehow, our parents decided that purple was the easy split between the ocean and the endless.

B. Letting go is vital to staying alive.

I finally clicked “Remove Friend” for someone I was in a toxic friendship with after two years of radio silence. During the act, I was surprised to find our old message logs were normal. We used to talk like my current friends talk. I did awful things and so did she, but there’s no use digging up the past now. There is nothing left to say.

C. It’s okay to only be enough.

The best thing I learned from college is being okay with being average. I love the way my tea mug bleeds sunlight between my fingers. I love holding the leaves of my mother’s banana tree and understanding its health. I love putting in only the effort I know I can muster. I do not always go the distance. There are other things than success and productivity. I have a pleasant appreciation of drawing. I have laughter. I have collaborative playlists with friends who don’t mind how fast I talk. I’m gonna wrestle with inferiority forever. But isn’t it enough to be alive?

D. Do things when you feel like doing them

On a whim a friend and I meet up in Columbia to sit on swing sets of a playground. We forget our deadlines for a couple hours and promise not to mention capstones or graduations. We sit on benches overlooking reservoirs and enjoy the silence. Sometimes I draw for the sake of drawing. I only write when I feel like I can handle the static in my throat. This is a freedom I’m grateful for having.

E. What matters is that you’re trying to be better.

It’s a choice to make every day. I struggle and there will be days where I am tired. I will be broken glass embedded in the palms of loved ones and I will justify it. I will like it and then I will hate myself. But what matters is that I keep trying to be better. If the world is cruel, and I have been cruel in return, it’s a zero-sum game. I will pull myself out slowly.