plain china: Best Undergraduate Writing 2009

The ladies she works with told her this: Don’t move north of Beverly because you’ll be among strangers. Don’t move east of Vermont because the apartments are ugly and dirty. Don’t move south of Olympic because it’s dangerous. Don’t move west of Wilton because the rent is expensive. This is the mantra Mrs. Nam is marching to as the sunlight begins to slide down the right side of her face. She heads south on Western with Jino holding onto her hand. She pushes onward but feels his weight on her thin wrist.

My scalp is blistering. I remember standing at the edge with Ketchup, holding her up so she could see down, but she started squirming in my arms. I was afraid that I’d drop her, and she bit my arm. I fell. I don’t think she did. When I woke up, the hat was gone. It was dark then, but when the sun rose, it wasn’t there. Maybe the wind took it or maybe it was an animal. Maybe there’s a coyote wearing a Dodger’s cap somewhere.

When we spun out on the way to Nashville, the track marks that my father’s truck made in the highway had perfect radial symmetry. His ways were unexplainable to anyone who hadn’t seen him carve peach pits into slender brown cats. He once told me that a trout was alive against the startling evidence of its gills pricking the surface of the Green River. He said it craved the atmosphere, that it could smell the lemongrass.

Alroy was only on the periphery of my consciousness as I raced up the escalators through Tower City and made my way to Prospect Ave., where I boarded the bus. Once the Rapid had lurched to a stop in the steaming bowels of Tower City, I just sprinted off the train without looking back. I have no idea how he got on the bus. He just kind of appeared next to me, with his fingers actively digging into his hair, gouging and picking at those impossibly tight coils so close to the skin, looking at me and nodding, like we were in on a secret together.

After a few minutes, two girls walked up. One was beautiful. They both hugged him, the pretty one first, and he gave her the same smile he had given me. Eyebrows knit, like a wink. Teeth all crooked. I began to be worried I was dreaming him. He introduced the girls to me, and I suddenly realized that the situation was different than I could have ever really anticipated. One was beautiful, and they were both about my age, and they were both lidding their eyes suggestively at me. And I think I knew right then what was going on.

She was my sister, and I wanted to keep her in my elbow crook. I didn’t want her dug out like a splinter, like she didn’t share my DNA. If we wouldn’t have to get monogrammed necklaces so our friends could tell us apart, then I at least wanted to keep her around as a talisman. A traveling Buddha, or a new potato. She was part of me, a smaller me, covered in skin as thick as a heel. I wore my sleeves rolled up because I liked her.

I must have been staring. I was staring — at her collarbone, the way it jutted out, defined. Her long, diluted strawberry-blonde hair, uneven bangs hanging down over her face. Her gray thermal shirt with lace trim. I was designing the final letters for my alphabet that day, a typography project: w, x, y, z. Class was nearly over and I’d barely formed the tail of my y with my Staedtler marker when Paul came over and shoved my shoulder. I didn’t lift the tip of my marker in time and a giant swooping black slash flew up through my alphabet.

As chil­dren we thought it was divine  —  fit­ted with all the things chil­dren could want  —  a secret king­dom pop­u­lated with devoted sub­jects, bow­ing trees whose acqui­es­cence made for excel­lent sport: for climb­ing and fenc­ing, or exact­ing taxes in the form of fruits. In sum­mer the Bom­bay man­goes grew big­ger than all our fists put together, preg­nant with liq­uid gold that trick­led down our arms, as we lay like lizards, fat with riches, in the shade of our palm tree palanquin.

The book revealed itself to me on a park bench, in the public gardens, where it lay half concealed in the shadows of a linden tree casting down its leaf prints in sharp relief. There it was, and there was my body slicing lengthwise through the light (thin here in a sunny patch, textured golden nearer the flower beds), as I moved at a steady pace over the gravel paths toward its presence. I made no sudden gestures, fearing it would disappear if I showed any effort.

Crow’s feet from squinting in years of sun. Hands dark, hot and calloused, veins in ridges bulging to knuckles. The darkest tan, the skin of his face hangs, but still the shape of his cheeks shows bone. A moustache in dark gray curves his upper lip, above a cigarette that dangles when he speaks. A baseball cap says Bluegrass fm. Under it, stiff and wavy, his hair sculpts a thin salt-and-pepper curtain covering his neck, some of it an oiled sheet combed up to hide his scalp. A jacket worn through on wiry arms, its iron-on patch half-falling off, reading: Virginia Gentleman’s Club.

None of us would remember his name throughout the course of the week. He had worked with other students from other schools, and had at one time remembered their names. But when they left to make room for the next groups, he had stopped learning names. He would not try to remember ours.

And she begins to sing an old, sweet-jazz lul­laby, her high, war­bling old-lady voice strong and unabashed. Her pale blue eyes are wide like they’re star­ing at some­thing big­ger, beyond us col­lege kids, like she’s gaz­ing out at the night sky. I imag­ine she was once one of those old ladies who could sing all the extra lit­tle har­monies to the old hymns, the ones the rest of the con­gre­ga­tion has either for­got­ten or never learned.

See something nameless / comes riding / down the limestone // scarp and counterscarp // orange bougainvillea / blooms in rubber tread // There was once a word / for dust and lifting wind // and what comes knocking / comes right in // Sofía in a concrete room / nine-hundred tortillas / and a fluid-filled lung // corrugated tin // A word meaning / assent and what / can you endure / axles and a season of drought // it comes, Sofía / it reaches you moaning

Throw your voice into this valley and it comes back / a mountain, she said, hers rising so unpredictably / I could barely keep sight of her. I called out, Anyone!

Before the bell— / face-painted children / ate hot dogs, rode ponies. / Women linked arms with sports jackets / on their way to box seats. / Fanatics placed prayers on maidens / and mudders.

Any given day, you might find me there, / pulled on / to the slanted shoulder; // Yes, in manner of all wingless beings, I envy the flight

Chained to the elms / a frown on the ground / the flush-faced cherub / sulked, / chuckles of crimson / raining pointedly around. / The boughs were gossiping again.

This composition aches — the back / bone, the joint pockets and hinges, the touched / skin, stung.

I unearth Ty, / diving for / anemones. / Our bronze bodies / spring from the / eastern lemon sea.

The lunch ladies look lovely / for once, their hairnets catch / the schools of fish swimming on their heads / exceptionally well today.

Look, my tired body / eats the sun / inside pink flesh / that, aiming / for a worm / instead devoured a glittering hook

I don’t know whether my father / found the seeds, or whether they came / with the wind in a thunderstorm, / but in mid-afternoon they sprouted / all at once

As we sat on a bench in St. Peter’s Basilica, / our skin turned a shade and then another / and the western sunlight washed over the marble floors, / and we laughed at La Pietà

You’d have wanted more lights, / a thousand cobwebs gold-strung / to crystallize the stillness of the / invisible houses below.

The spokes / of the wheelchair, / the spikes of activity. / The sides of the bed / barred like a crib, and between / those walls, his body. / The family speaks of him as living / but thinks of him as dead.

between the rocks / with a little water / veined with light / a skinless fish / as pale and milky as bone / is making arrows.

I ask to spit out your ash, / pages that burned up in fevers. / There is nothing else to say, except / that during one week of winter / in New Orleans, I find myself / curled up, chewing / on embers.

Before, when she was just a girl I lived with — a slightly annoying girl who cooked reeking vegan food, and was a sloppy but not too frequent drunk — things felt average. We’d jog together in the mornings, never talking because I wheeze; she would run in front of me, and I didn’t like that because it seemed so smug.

Sometimes after supper me and Carla sit real close in front the TV which don’t work no more. We look at our reflections and pretend we telling the news. I’ll say, today forty people burned up in an apartment building when the firefighters were all sleeping and Carla will say something funny like nobody could hear the alarms cause everybody in the town was deaf and then we just roll back and laugh and laugh.

Leroy has never been to the moon. I rise, shaking slightly from my arthritis, and turn to examine the poster on the wall. It shows an astronaut astride the Lunar Lander, saluting the rising Earth. It’s a nice picture, and a popular item in the gift shop. I took it myself.

I decide to check on the bathroom. I am grateful it is for a single person. I press the doorknob to lock myself in. The mirror is cloudy but I am unsure why, probably the poor quality of soap. I stand at the door and walk towards my reflection. I try it again and pause mid-walk with my hand and opposite foot frozen. This is how I look when I walk.

When I think of her, when I think of all my characters, I want to gather them up in my arms, hold their tired heads, hers pale and freckled, black glossy strands of hair splayed on her forehead, his hair — the hair of Martha’s George Washington — the warm color of mucus, a frame of wispy facial hair providing a halo to his dimples. I want to hold their heads against my chest and close their eyes and provide for them a consolation.

My father started taking me fishing when I was eight. One morning before dawn, I felt a soft knock on my shoulder and his rolling voice telling me to wake quickly. A crisp etching of moon cinched the black-velvet sky, and a green mist hung over my father’s boat. Lingering strands of sleep wrapped the scene in the unreality of a dream.

I sit on a mildewed sofa on a balcony and a young man with a very hip haircut tells me about illegal betting in Macedonia — how several months’ salaries are won and lost based on a soccer match. There are dogfights too. Opera is being played from an open window somewhere, and I let the Macedonian talk. There are no more obligations now — not to the future generations, not to the neighbors, not to the poor, not to the trees, not to my family, not to myself.

There is something beautiful about how little consequence is tacked to the lies you tell to strangers. You can be an ass, a pervert, a prodigy, a princess, an orphan, a psychic, an idiot savant, a hero, an addict, for two hours, five hours, layovers, delays, turbulence, and landings.

The digital volume, however, has no aura, to borrow Walter Benjamin’s term. It is no more than straight knowledge, purely a means of access into the author’s world. It is infinitely reproducible. There is no cult surrounding its object. There is no object for a cult to worship: just 0s and 1s creating an image on a screen.

Escaping the humidity at last, I collapse on the sofa, dead weight melting into the cool white leather. She brings me water and sits on the stone ledge of the fireplace, lighting a blue American Spirit, handing it to me, and lighting another. She waits for words.

To be so obviously out of one’s element, star-gazing in the middle of the afternoon. And far too efficient for the ease of open air, especially compared with the round-faced children, breathing easy, barely aware of the resistance in their hair. This animal is unused to contending with gravity, unused to the pull of the ground. When fish paint death, it must be a vertical canvas: hanging limply, gasping for water.

Fall 1990. My dad wakes my sisters and me in the middle of the night. We can’t help but be confused in our excitement. Daddy had come home late, but didn’t forget the ice cream sundaes he promised us. We all sit in the kitchen devouring our treat and laughing as Daddy takes turns squirting whipped cream into our mouths. My mother grudgingly laughs.

Once upon a time the well-spoken man finds / a mermaid, slick on the sand like an oil spill, / slippery and squinting against the sun. / He would like her tongue.

When he inhaled we sat big-eyed like fish. / Smoke crept out his one good red lip. / “A triumph or many deaths,” he said, / and exhaled.

It wasn’t the tree infested / with secrets, or the snake // whose skin glistened / like fruit. It was night. // You can blame the darkness / for almost anything.

What is the dirt // The dog dragged the skull from underneath the house. // Was it human // Adolescent.

It hangs there — nothing to do — having lost / most of itself thousands of years ago.

I’ve seen you, / standing in the dark, / dancing in the street. / You hold yourself / like water in cupped hands.

An alignment requires another body / riven from a nebula’s pasty chroma; / a crook of an elbow or a socked foot

A machine decorated my cast iron radiator / with tangled tendrils, white roses. / In return, it whistles and whispers

Anna, inside
 / there is a rampant fish.
 / It sounds silly until it moves
 / down into your belly
 / or up towards your gullet.


I got dust in my hair / It blew right up out of the ground in a desert second

The whole lane’s gone blind— / hooded statues, pallbearers, drowsy / mothers shade their downcast vision.

When we were dogs, / some invisible ground led us / to each other

The silk worm women / gather up leaf nests / in their aprons.

smooth the parchment of her face / and square it, fold in halves, press // cheek to cheek, kiss forehead to lips / run your thumbnail along the creases

In the coming weeks, pay more attention in Ms. Campbell’s class. Come to understand that Emily Dickinson was not simply crazy; this is not the whole story. Sometimes, hide a flashlight at the foot of your bed, and after Ms. Jenkins has made the rounds for lights off, take it out, pressing the book into the wall. A poem reminds you of telling a story, the way your grandma used to tell it, confusing as hell, but more and more familiar the more times you hear it. It comes to remind you of itself, of something else, of yourself.

Doors pulled shut, the air is warm and dark, and the clothes smell faintly of vinegar. Looking up, she sees them hanging like flattened cocoons, blurry black shapes, necks clustering the light that has leaked through the long vertical crack in the doors. They press gently against her face and her body, cradle her breath.

Olie touched the end of his cigarette to the fuse and recoiled when the gunpowder caught and the flame traveled down the tightly woven string. He had never seen fire move like that before, locked into a predictable pattern, dancing without any sort of beauty. “You’re going to want to throw her in the water before she blows one of our fingers off,” said Tim.

Jacob is prince of the underworld and Cam lies out in the summer sun, chest pressed to the soil, wishing he could sink down and through, like water, airless and effortless, until he fills the earth. It is Cam’s job to teach Jacob how to read rocks and people. It is Cam’s job to teach Jacob how to use the lungs that should be Cam’s.

I live at the end of a hall next to a man named King Vernal, who says I can either call him the King or Your Majesty. I have lived next to the King for three months now. My last neighbor was a man named Rick, who got transferred to a different prison, up north in New Hampshire. I don’t mind the King. He is built like a freight train, and he has round cheeks that puff up almost to his eyes when he grins or holds his breath. He’s a lifer, nine years in out of who knows how many. Until he dies, I guess.

Last night Fausto broke open a light bulb at home to see its innards. He held the precious thing by its screwy silver base, inspecting the wire and pieces, shards of hair-width milky blue glass at his feet as he squatted on the sidewalk outside his apartment building. His mother wondered at first why the living room lamp didn’t work.

Move your lips into an O and push the smoke out from the back of your throat. Smile as you watch tiny rings disappear into clouds. It is a bright grey morning, the best you could ask for.

In Andrew Wyeth’s winter landscapes, Pennsylvania seems to groom itself with a cold gray tongue. Down it sweeps, over wide brown plains and farms, over towns and small cities. It gentles the cows that graze fenced-in fields, the light-eyed farmers who bring them out to pasture, and the crows that watch them both. It smoothes the wheat that covers its body like a winter fur. The state is cleaning, making ready for spring, when sunlight will reveal without mercy all its dirty, dusty corners.

N’awlins. Say it like you want to fall asleep on the word, like you might faint with pleasure before you can choke it out. All the blues and reds of music and eating and dancing and sunning, the Big Easy and the bright future, dock town, saving grace, voodoo bayou, deepest denial, the city built on a swamp that care forgot, the racist, the southern, the lost, the frightened, the heavy, the slight, the baking and hot and humid and dropped, the fried and friendly: New Orleans.

I push my hands into my pockets, taking in the dark circles beneath her eyes, the scattered stains on her pale pink top. My eyes catch on the gaudy, messy-painted ceramic pot she uses now to douse her emptied cigarettes, the scattering of filters that dot the backyard concrete. This happens every time I visit — I remember all the reasons I left, why my mother’s home is no longer mine. It’s six months now since I made Sacramento my surrogate mother, since I toted everything I owned and left everything I knew for the Sac County suburbs and a clean academic record.

Each day nearing lunch time, José moves through our office like a priest in a play or a movie, back bent to a nearly 90-degree angle and hands clasped out behind him, nodding and smiling as he passes. He says good morning and makes his way to the bathroom, where he stays so long that we often forget he is there. When he emerges, his white hair wet and neatly combed, he smiles each of us in the face and says good morning again — a brand new day.

First, Stalin burned the forests. / Next, planted hemlocks in // mathematical rows so no one / could hide in the woods // sap running down the legs / of the evergreens.

When you buried me in the sand, / I lost my legs beneath the earth; / forgot my limbs. You stooped / to my ear, said You’re done

Her little house smells like sulfur. / Inside, it glows yellow, / a combination of southern sun and outdated light fixtures. / Her tap water tastes salty.

Again the squid that swallows light / has no shadow. It flickers / in and out of sight in the / inexorably slow click of a zoetrope

He talks of Relativity but / half of Freundlich’s team / is taken prisoner. / The rest of us are left to / gaze at the gray / condensing lid / descending

Some years past, her hair, / cold like ice, soft like feathers, / brushed past my poor hand.

Sometimes in the evening / when he walked along the beach // he would fill his bucket with shells / and break them into pieces

In maps, I look for you, / In myth, in frames, but mirrors— // I can watch you quietly, a subtle / glance, then wayward fall against / The gravity of spine, the trail of / bones that builds your back

A saw-toothed morning glory stands at her grave and I stuff wildflowers in your mouth so that you will look at my face, take hostage the light, my taconite mouth.

The two of us eat oysters at the small restaurant on the shore, blue lanterns glowing against the darkness of the sea. The shore like the shell — black with night and white along the ridges.

Rusted out hole in the bottom— / I hugged my knees to my chest / so I wouldn’t lose my shoes, / and threw black jelly beans down instead.

A song loosens from her throat / and shimmers upwards. Everything / sings with glass lips: trident / and spike, the soft spines / of fish.

Wind / backward / and forth / pressing against my palms / beside the river rocks— / glistening and ebony and cavernous.

Blue cataract of woodsmoke / wefts the thick warp of falling snow. / Wood stacked out back, the blue / taut tarp like a prostrate sail.