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2021 Issue

A Bronx Masquerade Narrative: Pierre

Non-Fiction

You can do this. I thought to myself as I counted down how many steps until I made it to my new homeroom. Just act normal. No one will even notice you.

Coffee Table
Winter Snow

Snow Day

The shadow of my body

Is the adherent

of many forms of me. 

Sitting upright, it hides beneath,

Walking , it stretches out,

bouncing quickly forward or backward,

depending on the light.

​

The Pursuit of Individualtiy and Purpose

The ideology of the French philosopher Rene Descartes, cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am), represents a typical question many people intend to ponder: how can we sense ourselves to prove the meanings of our lives.

Reading Books
Airplane Wing

First week of September,

Last week of summer.

I squeeze into my window seat,

Staring outside

It is still

Summer, but the air conditioning

Whispers to me, “Winter is coming.”

HU 481 PEK—BOS

Yourself

I know a girl

She pirouettes in the dark

Dancing like nobody’s watching

She leaps and jumps as if on a cloud

Shamelessly twirling

Without a care for who watches

Everyone’s eyes are drawn to her

It’s because she’s not afraid to be herself

My Father the Fly

My father turned into a fly on weekdays. Grandpa woke me up at seven in the morning, and Grandma cooked me breakfast. After I got ready, my mom came out of her bedroom, dressed yet still half asleep.

Photograph

The sight of a robin, alit on a tree branch

Before it startles and flies away, or

That of the endless sky, filled with stars,

So vast that we are grains of sand

Right Way

I hate the pool. I hate the smell of chlorine, and the strangely loud pattering of the mushroom
fountain. But most of all, I hate the swimming . I guess I was just never compelled to learn how
to flounder in the leaf littered water the right way.

Protect the World as One Nation

The barren land,

The frothy waves, the objectionable sand

Imagine the acidic air,

 Inducing more than just a scare

Cancer

The clashing scents of bleach, blood, antiseptics, and vomit. The constant beeping and buzzing of monitors. The drip, drip, dripping of an iv. The worst part is the aura of death.

 

No matter how much the nurses try to dress it up. No matter how many colored ribbons or “you can do it” stickers they decorate the place with, many, including me, are dying. Dying slow, painful deaths. 

Empathy

20 feet across of me sat an older man. His eyes were dark and sunken, and his greying hair was tied back so tightly that it looked painful. I watched him as he eyed the sidewalk below him and the people around him. He seemed to be fixated on something, furrowing his eyebrows and pouting his lips. Then he looked at me.

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