recodinghistory

[recodinghistory]

The Sinkhole

A sinkhole that appeared 72 days ago in the center of town has significantly grown in size. Some homes were engulfed immediately with the collapse and were destroyed. Some crumbled and tilted and stood for a period of time, but now have fallen. Some homes still stand. Some of these standing homes have been deemed unlivable. Some standing homes remain livable due to their distance from the current location of the sinkhole’s edge. Some homes deemed unlivable are in fact still lived in, for the inhabitants refuse to leave. Some homes, although deemed livable, have been vacated, for the inhabitants refuse to stay. Some of the inhabitants that refuse to leave their unlivable homes are doing so because they have no choice. Some are doing so because they know their house will never fall. Some of the inhabitants that refuse to stay in their livable homes are doing so because they’ve seen their neighbors’ homes fall. Some are doing so because they know their house will inevitably fall as well. Some inhabitants remaining in the town stand at the edge of the hole, taking pictures and taunting the hole. Some inhabitants have hardly noticed the hole, for their home treats them as it always has. Some are already planning for when the hole has settled and is no longer in danger of expanding. Some are discussing a circular road to run alongside the outer edge of the hole. Some do not like the extra time it would take to drive this road and are drafting plans for a bridge to cross it.Some think about refilling the hole, but these thoughts are quickly dismissed as idealistic. by Nicolet Schenck

[recodinghistory]

fade/clarity

My breath left my body. Fear strangled me. I was without words and the next breath would be heavier than the one before. Victory was certain and my sense of reality, fading. The solitude of the night gave me space to reflect as I ran across my college campus to check in with my friends. And when we found each other we held one another, tears in our eyes, heads at our chests, hand in hand. We committed to each other our humanity. We affirmed that we would get through this, somehow, with undying commitment to one another.  Breath entered my body. Fear loosened its grip. My inside filled with words and breathing became easier. Victory was declared and my sense of reality, clear. Alone in my thoughts, in the arms of loved ones, witnessing others speak their truths—it all became clear. Everyday of my life has been a battle and it will continue to be so. I’ve survived 524 years and I will survive 524 more.  They will/have come for our humanity. They will not have it. by Esteban Cabrera Durán

[recodinghistory]

trying to breathe through a plastic bag

my pronouns are xim and thulu because some days i wake up feeling like an old god who’s been awoken to reap the souls of the human race but most days i am just a cisgendered male your appearance is definitely more feminine but the fact is you were born with a penis. I do however think that you look very pretty in your feminine form, i would be trying to get all up in that ass, take it as a compliment i’d still hit you though, you xe/they/them/foxkin/yiffster

you’re not a female dude that’s fucked you can’t just call yourself a girl and match with guys that’s fucked. if i knew you, id be on my way to your house to knock you the Fuck out for even making this possible, you made me almost throw up keep that shit away from me or you’ll regret it.

armor-

     the act of hot      gluing sequins to my pink      blistered arms      taping needles to my skin praying      to some weird mormon      god that they won’t poke my      cratered flesh taking bubble wrap and stitching it to my ribs needle threaded with barbed wire      slashing silk into my fingertips      stabbing until everything is slinky      red and glittering and gone a joseph smith-ian tar and feathering but with hot pink tar and peacock feathers      sewing each fringe over my      bones until no body is left no body is left

by Austen Shumway

[recodinghistory]

Dad

My father ran a golf course, Is self-conscious about his hair, and racked up a lot of debt: a failed, stupid businessman. My mother suspects that he doesn’t pay his taxes; She worked and made all the money, And read to us when we were kids. My father’s cruelty was blunted By his complete, utter weakness When he stood next to my mother. I woke up and my stomach wrenched At the sight of a man like my father, Who is diseased and parasitic, and triumphant. by Joe

[recodinghistory]

by Nan Genger

[recodinghistory]

MY HEART NOW SIGHS WITH RELIEF PERHAPS INDIFFERENCE & SOME TOOLS TO SOLVE THE MOST COMPLEX OF PROBLEMS A FAREWELL TO U.S. HISTORY ART HISTORY WORLD HISTORY HIS STORY I NEARLY SALIVATE FOR THE HISTORY OF THE SKIN FLAKE ON MY BATHROOM FLOOR THE HISTORY OF THE COCOA BEANS USED TO MAKE THE TAKE 5 BAR IN FRONT OF ME AT SHOPRITE THE HISTORY OF THE RAIN THE HISTORY OF THAT ONE GOOSE EGG, THE BLUEST ONE, AT THAT HOUSE AT 5 MAIN STREET JUST THAT ONE THE HISTORY OF MY YEARS OF DREAMING THE HISTORY OF ALL OUR BREATH BACK & FORTH FOR A MILLION YEARS TOGETHER ALWAYS by Kelsey Skaroff

[recodinghistory]

by Danielle Klim

[recodinghistory]

Knowing

The night before it happened I sat down to make a painting, and that’s when I knew. It was the worst painting I had ever painted, and with each stroke it just got worse. Something was repressed, and it went from the brush to my stomach and pulsed through my entire body, tightening. Slowly a subtle destroying was creeping up my spine, and the painting was awful.

I needed human contact, so I walked over to the milk dairy to see Troy. It was a cool Kauai night, stars scattered over the sky. Troy’s shift was ending, just a few goats left. “I’m scared about tomorrow,” I startled him through the screen door.

“What’s tomorrow?” he asked, “oh.” He told me that he understood, but there is no reason to worry. No way that Trump would win, he assured me. Everyone was saying so - all the flat truth was saying so. There was no way that Trump could win. He cited some statistics I’d also seen that day on Facebook. My head nodded, convinced, good enough for it. Convinced. Body recoiled though, still utterly sickened, quelled only to the smallest degree by that nodding.

As reassurance continued to beat against the weight of the body, I needed to call my boyfriend in North Carolina. He was energized. While I was alone with the Hawaii moonlight, he’d just come home from a long night of volunteering at the local Clinton office. His job had been “helping to clean up” after “getting out some last minute calls!” Just in a different tone, happier and quicker, he recited almost word for word the same exact mantra that Troy had. The same statistics we’d all seen on Facebook that morning.

Mass recitations, something wasn’t authentic. Mass recitations, something was wrong. But my head, it nodded, and I kept the chatter on all morning. I took it with me everywhere I went. I needed it, repeated it, constantly, constantly. Maybe the liberal radio and its mantras speaking to and regurgitated by my liberal, educated mind could serve to calm. To reassure. But with the aging morning and the repeated, repeated statistics spoken by smug voices, the farm that held the airwaves everywhere I went only grew more and more grotesque, more false. I felt imprisoned, suffocated, my body bowing. We tore away in Kelsea’s car.

“How are you?” she asked, bright and cheerful as ever. I’d texted her the night before to ask if I could come over to watch the elections, because I didn’t want to be alone. She said it hadn’t occurred to her to watch the elections, but sure!

We cruised by the mountains, oceans, palm trees swaying. They knew too. The radio could chatter all it wanted, but they knew too. Something deeper filled the air. “We’ll figure it out,” those palm trees seemed to say, “or we won’t.”

We stopped for lunch at the Healthy Hut, where the employees always seem like they’re partying. “Aloha!” said my surfing friend Jake, with a big smile and hug, “How are you?” “Good,” I responded robotically before correcting myself, “actually awful! It’s an awful day!” “What’s wrong?” his eyes creased concerned. “I just feel a lot of anxiety about the elections, like, in my body…” “Oh,” said Jake, loosening, relieved, “ so it’s not a bad day…” “It’s an objectively bad day!” I assured him with a manic smile. He smiled back weakly, and returned to his shelving. He had no Facebook statistics to recite. It had all already passed over him, like a wave. There were realer things to focus on. Shelving. The sunshine. Waves. “We should go surfing this weekend,” he told me.

At Kelsea’s the TV was on, but housemates milled about, hardly paying attention. I alone sat frozen before the TV, waiting sober for too long as Tyler took too long to come back with those beers. Kelsea tried to sit with me, but eventually retreated to the kitchen to make tostadas. We had to eat.

As results slowly, yet abruptly, overturned liberal mantra expectations to liberal confusion, body winning over head as it always does, Tyler - returned finally with the beers - was talking about what it had been like to work the season at Lake Tahoe. He told a story about how once, on a trip to Utah, he’d broken his arm and shocked the nurses when revealing to them he had indeed been smoking marijuana.  We talked about the United States in all kinds of other terms - anecdotes, mountains, road trips and raucous nights, where we were born and where we’ve lived and what we’ve seen - grasping for other experiences of this country while the news anchors sat shocked on the screen, living the heart of its horror. I looked at them with one eye, and Tyler with the other. None of them had voted, the housemates admitted. But what would it have mattered? They already knew too, like the palm trees and the ocean. They’d made their peace long ago. We ate tostadas. They gave me a hug.

Texts from the mainland dwindled. We didn’t know what to say to each other anymore, without our pre-packaged recitations. They hadn’t taught us what to say when truth crashed forth, and all of us felt as though drowning. We hadn’t learned to use these eyes to see, and now they opened to a dark dimness, to a - Oh, so this is how it is. I walked out to the cliff to watch it. The ocean crashing forth, one and the same with truth. “There was never hope,” it taunted, knowing more than I ever could. Knowing everything.

“This was always coming,” twinkled the stars in agreement, reassuring, somehow.

“You will get through it,” rustled the palms, suddenly utterly indifferent to our human shit in this enormous, wide world we’d dared to fuck with. “Or, you won’t.”

by Sadie Rittman

[recodinghistory]

Not one more

For Susana Chávez ¿Qué hago? Do I pick up the bass clarinet and wail until vocal chords snap? Do I stand on one of those steel speed bumps at the border and burn my green card? Do I break my pens? Do I burn my books? Do I stand up at commencement and scream: ¡La tortura es ilegal! ¡El hambre es ilegal! ¡Yo no soy ilegal! Do I retire to Guanajuato to till the soil colored by my grandfather's blood? ¿Qué hago? ¿Me cuelgo como el signo de interrogación? Do I wrap myself in the flag and throw myself off the Fourth Street bridge? Do I carry on? It's a faraway land in another country. What good are the prayers to the Virgen de la Cueva if the only rain is that which falls from our eyes? by Adolfo Guzman-López

[recodinghistory]

by Sarah Robbins

[recodinghistory]

detransitioning

last night I dreamed you were detransitioning and I kept getting your pronouns wrong because you were her again and I wasn't sure if this was just another costume change discarded or your truest self being bludgeoned back down and, because I haven't seen you since you were her, I stopped the hand that reached for my phone to ask which was true today I hug an acquaintance lazily and then stare at her back counting alleyways on her short walk home, and want to run after her, throw myself around her but my arms are too skinny to form a shield and besides I don’t dare speak this fear into being my eyes are pulled to the flat dark edge of every alley when I go last night I dreamed you left me you called from an unknown number and in a razor thin voice you said you wanted to be with a man I said I didn't blame you today my friend’s ceiling caves in showering asbestos and lead paint and we laugh through dust masks in the shower: we are accustomed to grinning through threats and today everything is already conspiring to end us last August I came out for the first time to a room of more people that I could count on my fingers, more people than I had held hands with: I told a room of strangers my name today I want to bludgeon it back down my throat today I would rather be a lie than a sad old tranny dodging bricks at fifty today what we are not is the only safe thing today I let my body lie for me today I answer my phone: yes, this is him by Evan F

[recodinghistory]

by Victoria Schenck

[recodinghistory]

“How do you wish migration was different?” “I wish I had the right not to migrate. I wish I had the choice to stay in my home country.”                                                                     -Armando, migrant farmworker

In the days leading up to my departure from Madrid, people asked how I felt about leaving. I interpreted the question as, “how do you feel about going back to the US?”  The political climate I was returning to felt out of my control, everything uncertain.

I went through the motions of packing and saying good-bye to friends, but I didn’t believe I was actually leaving. It didn’t feel like I was going back to the US until I got to the passport checkpoint in Madrid’s airport. I took out all my documents and when they pulled me aside for extra screening, I remembered where I was returning. I felt foolish for willingly returning, knowing the circumstances I would be entering. After spending 7 months outside the US and learning what it feels like to live with papers, what it feels like to not be illegal, I didn’t want to come back.

My migration was out of my control, but maybe now I could have a choice.

As I boarded the plane, I said to myself, “I am under no obligation to go back and I am under no obligation to stay.” by Maria Castaneda

[recodinghistory]

by Sarah Kim

[recodinghistory]

Maybe we put out trash on Columbus Day, anyway, in an attempt to honor him

Grace Holleran

[recodinghistory]

by Marlon Daniels

[recodinghistory]

Mobility

It’s one of those moments I know I’ll never forget. The carne de chivo and pan con chocolate for dessert. The tidy house with bright but warm yellow paint. Surrounded by “family of family” but they treated me like a son. Said the uncle: “sí, se fue al DF sin conocer a nadie por allá, ¡fíjate! noooombre” --- That summer I was in Mexico City on scholarship to take classes and do research. Mobility. I took a trip to my home state to visit family and they were all fascinated by my journey, overtly proud that a conocido had conquered the monstrous beast of a city that is Mexico City. All the while my privilege was not lost on me. My liberal arts college’s school money afforded me a cozy room in a b&b in what was described as the “Manhattan” of Mexico City. Mobility. It felt uncomfortable, I was embarrassed to discuss my trip because everything about it was comparatively comfortable. The “uncle” who praised me had many times before crossed the border to work labor intensive, underpaid jobs -- as my parents once did, crossing the border with me as a toddler. Mobility. That part of my story was overshadowed because of class mobility … I was protected by my new socioeconomic class, protected by my naturalization papers as a U.S. citizen, affording me the privilege to move back and forth across the border as much as I can afford. Mobility. The “uncle” went on to tell us about the time he accidentally fell asleep on the MARTA train in Atlanta, waking up out by the airport, and his adventure to get home with the very little English he knew. Mobility.

Over a year later, I traveled to Ciudad Juárez with a relative for some immigration proceedings. Mobility. While on a taxi traveling downtown I noticed that a stoplight window washer was wearing a thrifted white shirt that read “I <3 College of the Liberal Arts” and I spent the ride downtown wondering about the shirt’s journey, as well as about my own alma mater and the logo it came up with in the middle of my studies there: “Liberal Arts for the Future” or some abstract phrase with an awkward turquoise color against a garnet colored shirt and if any other informal workforce laborers were wearing it while hustling a living. Mobility. On the way back I saw an AT&T billboard displaying a mono-colored, borderless geography from Canada through Mexico that read “Con AT&T No Hay Fronteras” which means “With AT&T There Are No Borders” and I couldn’t help but feel spiteful that such mobility exists in certain spheres, like business, but not others like, say, families that are separated by borders. Mobility. Ain’t our world a piece of shit sometimes. by Uriel Medina