“The Bush” by Alicia Rebecca MyersPosted by Rattle
Alicia Rebecca Myers
THE BUSH
Every time I thought of anger, or fear or revenge, I breathed it out. I tried to think of what I was grateful for—the bush that hid me so well that even birds landed on it, the birds that were still singing, the sky that was so blue.
—Maya Alper, survivor of Hamas’ attack on the Tribe of Nova music festival
The extraordinary arms of the bush.
Trap music still echoing: the singing
birds another cover. The conscious hush.
The sky that was so blue above the rush.
The sound of blood pooling, shots ringing.
The extraordinary arms of the bush.
The bush wasn’t burning, the birds weren’t ash.
A prayer for breath. The rigid thorns clinging.
Birds another cover. The conscious hush.
Lungs instead of terror, the labored wish
to survive. Birds that landed, kept going.
The extraordinary arms of the bush.
The roar of explosives, the forceful push
of gratitude against anger. Morning
birds another cover. The conscious hush.
The thorns, the sky, the breath, the birds, the bush.
Jaime Jacques: “I live in Nova Scotia, a part of Canada where people of color have historically been marginalized and treated poorly. In recent years we have had a massive influx of Indian students, without the infrastructure in place to support them when they arrive. At the same time relations between India and Canada have plummeted in recent weeks as our prime minister has asserted that a Sikh separatist was murdered by the Indian government on Canadian soil. With all this in the news I couldn’t help but start to reflect on my father’s experience living here when he was young. Despite his determination to assimilate, I can see how India imprinted him. It’s critical to have freedom of movement, but immigration also seems to create an internal split that is never reconciled, a lifetime of longing and nostalgia.”
“If the Point Were to Tell it Straight, Not Slant” by Alison DavisPosted by Rattle
Alison Davis
IF THE POINT WERE TO TELL IT STRAIGHT, NOT SLANT
In our first session, I told my tutor how much I used to love to take my siblings to the park when they were little. He said, Oh, so you had to help raise them? No, not really, it was just for fun. Climbing trees and picking apricots and playing fetch with the dalmatians that were always there on Saturday mornings. He said, So you needed to get out of the house to have fun? Tell me more about that. He asked questions that didn’t fit my life so I could write a story that didn’t fit my life but did fit the genre. Everyone embellishes, he said. The struggle is what makes the hero. Then maybe I should write about my parent’s divorce? A frown. Oh, God, no. That’s been done to death.
*
I wasn’t the star of the play, but I was in it. I wasn’t the star of the team, but I was on it. I wasn’t the president of the club, but I went to all the meetings. I didn’t win the competition, but I tried. I’m good at public speaking and applying liquid eyeliner. I rotate my date night underwear, but I’m not sure if I’ve ever been in love. My parents still brag that I potty-trained myself, that I was the first person in my class to learn to read. My favorite thing about school is when it’s over. In the hollow of a tree at the far end of the parking lot, I keep a collection of things that have been lost or left behind: a post-it note with a 209 phone number, a brass key, a conch shell charm, a souvenir penny from Yosemite, a lipstick, the wing of a swallowtail butterfly, the promises of my childhood.
*
Things that are more important right now: planning my spring break trip, sponsoring a voter registration drive, working at In-N-Out, pretending to be vegan to impress a girl, sleeping in, sleeping around, photographing treetops, playing D&D, disappearing, losing twenty pounds, gaining twenty pounds, vaping in the bathroom, hiding my eating disorder, solo kayaking the Green River, memorizing the capitals of every country in the world, learning to surf, sneaking out after curfew, raising money for Syrian refugees, walking the dog, dyeing my sister’s hair blue, breaking the cycle of intergenerational trauma, planting succulents and ponytail palms, writing a screenplay, lying about why this is the best I could do, re-learning how to dream.
*
They keep telling me to find my passion. My voice. My story. But none of the adults in my life have even done that, so how am I, at seventeen, supposed to? I keep having a dream where I’m ice skating on a pond, and a dragon appears, sets a ring of pines ablaze. The flames melt the ice, and I fall in. I flail in the water. The fire closes in on me. Unable to save myself, I let my legs go limp and say goodbye. But my skates bump up against something in the water. I realize I can touch, that I could have been touching the whole time, and walk right out. On the shore, the fire from the dragon keeps me from freezing, and I watch the stars spell out my most intimate questions in the sky. I lay there for a long time, listening—
Alison Davis: “I’m a high school English teacher, and I’ve been helping students with their college essays for many years. I go to great lengths to de-emphasize the commodification of identity, and especially of suffering, and I hope it matters.” (web)
Lisa Suhair Majaj: “In June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, led by Defense Minister Ariel Sharon. In September, as Israeli soldiers watched through binoculars and lit flares to light the dark, Christian militias friendly to Israel massacred thousands of Palestinian civilians at the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut. Palestinian fighters had already been evacuated and the camps were defenseless. A UN commission of inquiry found Israel and several individuals, including Sharon, bore responsibility for the massacres. I was a college student in Beirut 1978-1982, and evacuated out during the invasion (our refugee boat was arrested and taken to Israel by an Israeli navy ship for interrogation). By September I had settled in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for graduate school. When the massacre happened I was stunned by the images of bloated bodies on the TV screen. There was no context for my grief on that calm campus of grass and squirrels. Later I learned that someone I knew learned her uncle had died when she saw his corpse on a pile of bodies in the lane of the camp on the evening news. This year marks 41 years since the massacre. News agencies in various places in the world marked the anniversary. Reading the news from the distance of decades, now on the island of Cyprus—the place my refugee boat brought me to at last during my evacuation in 1982—I found my anguish rising potent as ever: over the massacres, and over the fact that Palestinians are still exiles. The italicized lines in the poem are from a lament by a Palestinian woman after the massacres of Sabra and Shatila, quoted in Laleh Khalili, Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine: The Politics of National Commemoration, 2007.”
Alejandro Escudé: “It’s difficult to say what prompted this poem. I think it was a gross and immoral miscalculation to take a group photo with this escaped convict. I think it made me ponder about the phenomenon of group photos in general. How there’s usually an ulterior motive for the photo and for the subsequent posting of that photo.” (web)
