AUGUST 2014

UNFINISHED MAGAZINEISSUE Nº 2

Unfinished Magazine is an international art & writing project, inspired by the residential structure of writing workshops. We believe in the freedom writers and artists have to return to their work, not having to feel bound by the absolute-ness of publication. We encourage community, experiment, and revision, both before and after publication.

Unfinished Magazine biannually showcases a well-rounded collection of prose, poetry, and art by emerging voices.

Each writer and artist featured retains 100% copyright of his or her work both before and after publication. Permission to publish the content in this issue has been granted by the writers and artists featured. Copying, reprinting, or repro-ducing any material in this issue is strictly prohibited.

August 8, 2014, No. 2New York, NY

© Unfinished Magazineunfinishedmagazine.comfacebook.com/unfinishedmagazinetwitter.com/unfinishedmag

CONTACT

Susan LiEditor-in-Chiefsusan@unfinishedmagazine.com

Niccolo PizarroChief Fiction Editorniccolo@unfinishedmagazine.com

CLAIRE RAC

NICHOLAS ARICOSAMSUN NAHAR

M. M. LYNN

NICOLE RIVERA

NICCOLO PIZARRO

ARTAw, Yiss!I Just Cut Up Audrey HepburnUnsettled Complications

FICTIONThe GalleryMosaic

POETRYsummertimeheadachesPalette12th and BClean Color

CONTRIBUTORS

EDITOR’S NOTE

COVER

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ContentsAUGUST 2014

There is always something left to love.

Gabriel García MárquezOne Hundred Years of Solitude

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Maya Angelou“Still I Rise”

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Dear reader,

It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to Unfinished Magazine’s second issue, which features work accepted through open submissions from the public.

This issue’s cover is dedicated to Gabriel García Márquez and Maya Angelou, in-comparable writers who passed earlier this year, just one month apart. Between these pages, we pay homage to them.

It has always been the Magazine’s mission to showcase work from young writers and artists with compelling and diverse voices. This is because these voices are often overlooked, dismissed. Young people, more than ever before, have the po-tential to shape the world through creativity.

I am incredibly proud to have had a hand in bringing these voices to light.

Thank you for reading.

Susan LiEditor-in-Chief

Editor’s Note

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it’s summertime andma is outside folding our shirtsstacking them on top of each otherneatly, as if they were crisp white pages

she is writing a bookin the backyardclothes-pinning the clothesline until thestring frays and snapsscarring her palms in

the heat of summertime, comparable tothe unnamed city in guangdong, wherebroken plates like broken dreamsclattering onto the kitchen floorslicing into her palmsmark everything with her blood

but ba just bought us new sneakers at modell’sthe scent of the rubber solesdefining what it means to be chinese american

we don’t remember how to say“thank you” in mandarinwe are just thankful that the hot taron the streets will never touch the solesof our bare feet

summertimeM. M. LYNN

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ma sees us and we disappearlike apparitionsinto the housethrough the kitcheninto the front yardout onto the streetspitting and jumpingshaking our heads from side to sideso that the sweat doesn’t dripinto our shirts:

the american dream

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AW, YISS!CLAIRE RAC

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The GalleryNICHOLAS ARICO

It was a time for art.Not just any art though. The term

“art” is such a broad and subjective term that it doesn’t mean anything at all anymore. But we still prefer to use it when we see things we like and point to them.

“That is art,” she said, pointing to the mosaic on the wall.

“That is art,” he said, pointing to the dog turd on his lawn.

“This is art,” she said, finishing the final stroke of her painting.

“This is art,” he said, squeezing out the last of it on his neighbor’s lawn, just before picking up his pants and running off into the night.

On the edge of a city, right by the waterfront, stood a building with a single door. No windows, no sign to display its contents, no people ever seen walking in or out. It was done intentionally, to procure a mysterious reputation around town. It seemed that the owner of said building was more than confident that word of mouth would travel fast, especially among artists with nothing much to do besides wander the waterfront and rudely stare into doorways.

The building was a gallery. It was a building designed to hold and show-case art. Inside was as barren as it could possibly be. Gray unpainted walls that made a tiny maze within the place. The lights were hung with exposed wiring all along the ceiling. The floor was cement and stained with everything from paint to dried blood. If it were any other building, a city inspector would walk inside, throw his clipboard on the floor and start having convulsions. But this was an art gallery, so everything was as-sumed to have been done on purpose and left well enough alone.

Eventually, the gallery had a show-case. There were no advertisements, no flyers on the posts, no airplanes with long messages trailing behind them. These things just have a way of announcing themselves. Some-how people just knew. As the sun set behind the waterfront, they lined themselves up against the entrance, chatting about what they expected to see and hoping that they would serve wine and cheese. One of these people was Evans. Evans had scruffy blonde hair and wore a long sleeved black t-shirt with dark jeans and dress shoes. It was his first showcase, he

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wasn’t sure what people wore to this type of event. He had just moved into the city to go to art school, most of his experience stemming from books of old paintings of sailboats on the ocean.

He was going to this gallery because he had heard that’s what art school students in the city did.  He wasn’t ex-actly sure how he did find out about this place. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, there was an overheard conversation, but each time he tried to remember it, the conversation and details of it changed.

To pass the time, Evans chatted with people in the line. They were speculating about the curator of the gallery. Only her name was known. (Again, through mysterious circum-stances.) It seemed that everyone had a different origin story for her, but af-ter hearing most of them, this is the picture Evans painted in his head for Miss Bernadette Minsk:

Bernadette Minsk was from an Eastern European country that was unpronounceable, even by the peo-ple who lived there. When she was young, she immigrated to America with her parents, her father being a psychologist, her mother a dog train-er for a circus. Homeschooled until eighteen, Bernadette was then accept-ed into an experimental art school in Southwest Virginia. The facility was made to look like an abandoned coal mine. Her teachers were all artists re-cruited by the CIA. For four years, she

learned painting, drawing, sketch-ing, doodling, sculpting, claymation, dancing in almost every form, writ-ing, woodcutting, whistling, how to do taxes (for its practicality), how to do taxes whilst blindfolded (for its impracticality), and pit barbecuing. At the end of it all, she was friendless, jobless, bitter against the world, and able to cook a mean rack of ribs.

An interesting woman, to say the least, if any of it was even the slightest bit true. Evans wasn’t sure if he want-ed such a story to be true or not.

After an hour on the line, most of those waiting were beginning to grow restless. You can only push art enthu-siasts so far before they begin thump-ing their fists against the wall and saying snobbish things. As if cued by this restlessness, the door of the gal-lery swung open and out walked a tall woman in a black power suit and deadly, sharp stilettos. Her hair was was deep red and cropped short, just below her ears. It looked as though her face had given way to make more room for her neck. This, thought Ev-ans, had to be Miss Bernadette Minsk.

She eyed the crowd and rubbed her hands together. It was tough to read her expression, for she wore bug-eyed sunglasses and kept her lips shut. She did not seem bothered at all that an entire line of people was staring di-rectly at her, waiting to hear her say something. But that never happened. All she did was look at the watch on her thin wrist, nod to the line and

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walk back through the door.There was a short period of time

after her departure when the line was in total silence. Everyone was just looking at each other and shrugging. This led to murmured conversations about what her presence had meant and whether or not it was okay to go inside. Finally, a man towards the front said “screw it” quite loudly and walked inside. Having relieved every-one else the culpability for entering when they were not supposed to, the rest of the line soon shuffled in.

A damp smell greeted Evans as he walked in. Mildewy, like a pipe nearby had been leaking for several years and had never brought to atten-tion. The door led into a small foyer with only a single art piece present. Some walked right past it, others, Evans noticed, made a point to stop and look at it. It was a seven foot tall clay sculpture. It gave the appearance of a man, but it was almost as if the sculpture had been subject to a flame-thrower before being put out on dis-play. The top of the head was caved in, one of the shoulders sloped. No information card was next to it. Evans watched as some people nodded their heads and then moved on to the rest of the gallery. He moved closer, went all around it. He wanted to touch it, but knew that touching the art was immensely frowned upon.

Two older women walked into the gallery and up to the sculpture. Evans overheard their conversation.

“Marvelous,” the shorter of the two said.

“Horrible,” the other said.“You don’t like it?”“I absolutely hate it.” “You don’t know what you’re

talking about.”“I know art, Margaret. Look at it.

Any chimp can make something like this.”

“You’re just a snob.”“Ugh. I can’t stand you.”They both walked away, leaving Ev-

ans even more confused than before. Neither of them had mentioned what it meant. Shrugging, he continued on.

The rest of the gallery was stretched much more thin. The foyer led into thin hallways where the walls had framed portraits. Evans slowly walked past each one, taking brief glimpses at them. One was of a farm-house setting, but instead of animals in the field there were vacuum clean-ers. Another was of a girl blowing a bubble with a tiny soldier inside. As he continued walking, he saw a small man in a black vest holding a tray full of glasses. There was a white liquid in each of them with a red glob.

“What is that?” Evans asked the man.

“This?” he said, looking at it. “It’s goat milk garnished with a maraschi-no cherry.”

“Oh.” The mere thought of it made his stomach sick, but he was here in the city, in a gallery. It would be right to absorb the culture as much as pos-

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sible. “Can I have one?” he asked the vested man.

“No. This is actually one of the art pieces. I’m moving it to the other side of the gallery.” He walked away and turned the corner. Evans scratched his head. It was getting harder and harder to tell what was an exhibit and what wasn’t. Now he looked up at the lights.

“Are those an exhibit too?”His attention towards the ceiling

led him to bump into another patron.“Oops, sorry.”“No worries.” It was a bald headed

man with thick glasses and a tweed suit. He was positioned in front of a stack of folding chairs. He had his hand up to his chin, stroking it gently. Evans looked on at the chairs with the man.

“Incredible, don’t you think?” he asked Evans.

Evans continued looking at the chairs.

“Could you explain it?” Evans said, not taking his eyes off of display. “I’m having difficulty.”

“Ehrm, no,” the man said. “Art doesn’t work that way. Goodbye!” And off he went, turning around the corner.

Evans was beginning to grow con-cerned. The sculpture, the paintings, the tray of goat milks, the lights, and now the chairs. How was he supposed to make it in art school if he couldn’t even explain the meaning of a stack of chairs? He stared more intently at the

piece, wiggling his eyebrows, blinking his eyes. Still nothing. He blew out a sigh of defeat.

“Iz something the matter?” a voice said behind him. Evans turned around. There stood the woman from before, in the black power suit and the bug-eyed sunglasses. Bernadette Minsk, much more ferocious up front than when she was standing outside.

“Oh.” Evans didn’t know what to say really. Her body leered toward him, her eyes squinted, studying him, as if he were another piece in the gal-lery.

“I don’t really get that stack of chairs,” he said finally. “I’m sorry.”

“Vaht are you sorry for?”Some of the patrons turned their

head at this. They stopped observing the walls and looked at Miss Minsk and Evans.

“Uh… erm… I…”“Zat is a stack of chairs,” she said,

laughing. “It is not a piece.” “It’s not just the chairs, it’s every-

thing!” Evans said. “I don’t get any-thing!”

Bernadette Minsk slapped Evans across the face. Hard. The entire gal-lery gasped.

“Did you feel that?” she asked him.“Ow. Yes.” Evans said, bringing his

hand up to his burning cheek.“Did anyone else here feel it?” she

looked around with her bug-eyed glasses. No one said a single word. Ev-ans spied the man with glasses from before nodding his head, but still say-

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ing nothing.“Zat is what I thought. It does not

matter what anyone else says. You are zee only one capable of feeling vhat you feel.” She said that mat-ter-of-factly and walked past Evans, down through the gallery and out of sight. The rest of the patrons who had watched the spectacle soon broke into conversations and then went on as if nothing at all had happened. Ev-ans stood there with his cheek burn-ing, his look of shock slowly growing into a smile.

He walked past the stack of chairs, back down the hallway, past the paintings, past the foyer and the melted man sculpture and out into the night. He would go home and get some sleep and tomorrow he would probably visit the Metropolitan Mu-seum of Art.

The next day, on his way to the MET, Evans took the long way to the train station, taking a detour to walk past the gallery. He wanted to thank Bernadette Minsk for slapping him in the face. But as he came up on the building, he stopped cold at what he saw.

There was a large red and white sign hung above the door. “Sachik Fish Dispensary,” it read. Big burly men in white smocks covered in fish blood were carrying boxes of fish in and out of the building. A truck came in through the side driveway.

Evans ran up to the door, watching the workers as they moved the prod-uct, smelling rotten fish and saltwa-ter.

“Excuse me,” he said to the two men walking out. One was holding a ridiculously large bass over his shoul-der. “Wasn’t there a gallery here?”

The two men stared at Evans, looked at each other, and laughed.

“Yeah, I’m Leonardo da Vinci,” one man said.

“And I’m Van Poe,” the other laughed.

“It’s Van Gogh,” the first man said.“Shaddap.”Ignoring Evans, they walked past

him and down through the driveway, leaving him to stand in confusion. How could it have changed over-night? Was it ever there at all? Or maybe this was another piece? Was the whole gallery an art piece? Evans shook his head. He kept trying to look through the door before a large mustachioed man told him to leave.

Evans began walking down to the train, thinking about Bernadette Minsk, thinking about all he saw the night before. It was real, this he knew. He had felt as much. By the time he reached the end of the block, he de-cided that the clay sculpture was pretty good after all.

    

“This is art,” she said as she molded the clay.

“This is art,” she said as she coated

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herself completely in butter.“That is art,” a young scruffy blonde

haired boy said with full confidence as he looked at a picture of a sailboat on the ocean.

The gallery was gone, but not for-gotten. The city moved on, it con-tinued to be bristling with men and women out to create and to be re-membered just like the famous artists before them. But on the waterfront, it was no longer a time for art.

It was a time for fish. ◆

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I ama heavy stack of pipes,unmoved in an emptybrown box.I amof gravel, soot, flaky grains ofsoil from my flower pot.I am notyour flowery expectationof a lotus painted onto a yoga mat.I amthe tree pose and the chairoffering tension and muscle.I require watering,I need water.I amthe lead stealing spacein your veins.I find movement in soundand collect rocks at your feet.I hand myselfover and over—I hand myself, over.I am pastels of oilI smudge on paper.I crawl across painted-on grassand still cannot find myselfin twisted shells on the beach.

PaletteNICOLE RIVERA

I JUST CUT UP AUDREY HEPBURNCLAIRE RAC

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There is poundingat the ridged hills in my ashy knucklesas I lead my duffle bags out into the mystic December. The truck waits, the trunk opened. The wind, too hollow to scream at,The mist of my frozen breath,reaching from my windpipe— it told me not to say bye. The sleet slips into my slipperslike the last signification of homely presence,trickling cold wetness, pulling my toes to stay.

Scribbled on a white board mounting the wall of mirrors, “There is dukkha.”erase “You are beautiful, always.”erase “We are all servants.” erase “I love you today.”erase “Remember to breathe.”erase “Hello, Morning Glory! Would you like some oatmeal?”Dry-erase notes faded on the skating rink of ourdaily contemplations. The only place where our fingerprints undress, decode, delineate, unfold.

12th and BNICOLE RIVERA

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A magnet attached a small square napkin,a granite sketch of my dead teacup yorkey.Her drooping eyes, sincerely wrapped, under penciled-in fur, a willow tree. She sat on grandma’s lap, blueberry nose shot high in the air,waiting to spread hot breath for licks of strawberry ice cream off her own face in the reflectionof a silver spoon. “Mema, I think I decided to move in with—” Oh. “I’ll be around all the time.” You know I won’t hold back. If I need you, I’ll call.I don’t remember her words, exactly. Only her disdain of my movement,any movement,I dragged my feet across the tiles, those sacks of sand resisting, fleeting. “I need to start packing.”I don’t remember her words, exactly,just the face of that tiny dog,disheveled and messy with globs of eye boogers hanging off the tips of her hair,a suicidal willow,all sewn together with water and particles of leftover Pedigree.

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But what was she thinking? Now the snow only fallswhen I shake the small globe in my hand,but I rarely touch it.Dukkha can be still. The picture of Mema and Tiny stayplaced within the encased water,claiming a home on the cornerof a shelf in my new living roomtogether. Forever celebrating Christmas with family.

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MosaicSAMSUN NAHAR

I’ve been waiting by the side of the dry and crumbling dirt road for over ten minutes, leaning against the door of my hand-me-down Jeep, and my hair is beginning to stick to the back of my neck. The heavy, humid August air is as stubborn as ever and latches itself onto my skin. The approaching eve-ning does nothing to lift the heat that presses down on me, and light shad-ows begin to take form on the arid road. Finding new flesh, mosquitoes dive for the bare stretch of my shoul-ders through my tank top, and I swat them away. The irritating hymns of the greedy pests buzz around me and give life to the still air. The chirpings of crickets and the distant hooting of owls are the only other noises that I hear as I look up at the stucco-tiled house in front of me. The house is silent and the big tree that stands in the middle of the yard casts a thick shadow on the grass. There is a move-ment in the second floor window, the window that belongs to Max’s room. Soon, thin slivers of the sun through the woods on the opposite road paint patterns on the darkening ground, and a navy-black hue begins to re-place the cloudless, cobalt surface of the Norwood, Missouri sky.

I turn around towards my car, searching for my phone I’d left in the front seat. I’m about to text Max when an automatic light flickers on the yard of the Mulligan’s home. I see only Max’s silhouette as he closes the door behind him. He is holding a medium-sized cardboard box at his waist and his footsteps are slightly shuffled as he makes his way across his front yard. His familiar face comes into view as he steps approaches me. I can’t exactly read his expression, but his wideset blue eyes are expectant and his lips are pressed tight. Max is a whole head taller than I am now, and he can easily pass off as an eighteen or nineteen year old. But sometimes, when I’m looking at him, I still see the ten year old boy who had walked into our fifth grade classroom seven years ago. Tonight is one of those times, ex-cept now there are acne scars against the disarray of freckles on his face. His sand-colored hair is shorter and slightly more kempt, and loose curls remain sticking out from behind at his ears. The bump on the top of his nose, from the time he was twelve and had broken his nose by falling out his bedroom window, is as prominent as ever.

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Max had called me earlier today, telling me to meet him outside his house that evening. I knew why he had called and what he wanted to do. Before I had left my house that day, I mentioned it to my dad, and my dad barely nodded, giving me a vacant stare and a ghost of a smile. He had never really looked at me the same way after my mother’s death. He nev-er seemed to recover from it, and his sadness formed a barrier between us ever since. My mother had been my best friend before I met Max, and he was who I returned to after she was gone.

People often mistook us for brother and sister. We have similar blue eyes, we are both slim and pale, with gan-gly and wide features that made me feel ordinary most of the time. Max once told me a few months after we met that I looked like my mother. Family members had always said the same thing, but that was before my mother’s diagnosis. Max had only seen pictures, and he often said I had the same eyes as she did, though he didn’t mean color or shape, but the strength and resolve behind those eyes. I wasn’t quite convinced. If there was any resemblance between who my mother was and who I am, I could not call myself ordinary. She was the least ordinary person I ever knew. It was Max who reminded me of her. He was the strong one, and what Max was going to do today was proof of that.

“Is that it?” I ask, looking towards

the box in Max’s hands as he stands before me. The headlights of my car keep half of his face darkened. He’s slumped forward, as if the weight of the box is tugging at his shoulders. He nods and I reach over, take the box, and drop it onto the backseat of the car. I fish out the car keys from my back pocket and toss them over to Max, and we both get into the car, him at the wheel, me in the passen-ger’s seat. He was always the better driver. I think it’s because driving is the one thing he can control. It’s his choice which road he wants to drive on, how fast or slow he will go, and when to stop.

Max doesn’t really talk much as we drive farther into the road, but I know his mind is racing. He’s chew-ing on his bottom lip, and his eyes are glazed over. Once or twice, he fumbles to turn on the radio only to turn it off again. I let him, knowing the ride back will feel less heavy once the box he had brought was emptied. Instead, I keep my eyes on the side of the road, where the setting sun sets a dark, bronze light on the tops of the trees. Even though there’s hardly any moisture in the air, there are dark clouds forming, and it looks like it’s about to rain.

I grip the side of the car as we hit a bump in the road, and a yellowed and cracked “No Trespassing” sign passes behind us. There’s a bridge up ahead, and the barbed fence surrounding it is slightly dented against the parched

UNSETTLED COMPLICATIONSCLAIRE RAC

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air. Max pulls to a stop, and I follow him out of the car, feeling more awake now. He takes the cardboard box out of the backseat and we leave the car at the base of the road. The only sounds are of trickling water up ahead, and our feet on the pavement.

Max walks a little further along until he finds the broken part of the fence, the same loose hole we were both perfectly able to fit through when we were fourteen, during the times we would come to the bridge in the summer after our junior high school graduation. Max widens the gap and crawls through with more effort now, and I climb after him, landing on our shadows on the stone bridge ground under us. The sun is almost completely settled, and the water is a liquid charcoal color in the dimming light. Max sets the box down on the ground when we reach the middle of the bridge. He looks at me; his features are less anxious, and more tired. “Thanks for coming with me, Charlotte,” he says. I don’t tell him he could have done this without me; I know there are certain things that can’t be done alone. The railing of the bridge is cold, and I can hear Max’s breathing and the distant croaking of night frogs. The temporary, on-and-off glow of fireflies dots the air around us. Max reaches down towards the box and pulls out a lava lamp with a jagged crack along the side.

“Mom told me to keep this, you know. She said…” He says this after a

pause that feels as solid as the object in his hand. His knuckles are white. “She said I’d want something to re-member him by. That he’s going to wonder where it went when he comes back.” The words detach themselves from his mouth and crumble towards the end, but I hear them all the same. Something cool and slippery runs down my arm and I realize it’s start-ing to drizzle.

“I dunno what’s worse, the fact that she says things like when he’s going to come back, or the fact that she still keeps his shit in the house.”

I don’t think Max is angry, but I hear the beginnings of bitterness in his tone. He’s got every right to be angry. I can’t imagine my own fa-ther ever being like Max’s: someone who didn’t love his family, someone who could ever walk away and leave his son, daughter and wife. Someone who could ever leave Max. I know he will keep ruminating over the useless object. The residue of his memories is already starting to harden his ex-pression. I try not to think about my own mother, who left me just as Max’s dad did, but for different reasons. Max had his own reasons for why his father had left them, and when he wasn’t blaming himself, he was blam-ing his father. But I didn’t know who to blame for my mother leaving.

I take the lamp from his hands and do what we’ve come here to do. We won’t have much time before we’ll have to turn back towards the last

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place Max wants to be, but it is getting late, and the rain is falling harder in icy droplets around us. I pull my arm back and throw the lamp over the railing of the bridge. It makes a dull splash against the water and sinks be-low into the now-black depths of the lake.

Max and I unload the rest of the things from the box. At first, we throw each object separately—an old magazine, a few containers of pills, a chipped mug—but at the end, we pick up the box with the remaining few items and discard them altogether. As each object sinks below the surface of the water, Max’s shoulders seem to be-come more relaxed. It seems easier to help Max decrease the reminders that cause a burden in his life, and I envy his strength because my mother’s death was something I was unable to let go from ever since that day in the hospital. I wished I could stop feeling as hollow as Max’s damp, now-empty cardboard box beneath my feet. But I realize, as Max stares out at the jagged stones on the sides of the lake, that I need to empty the loneliness, the clut-ter and shadows from my mind too.

Max and I make our way back through the hole in the fence after a while, though it’s harder to see in the late evening; the sun is completely gone and raindrops, coming faster, form a hazy shield in our line of vi-sion. I nearly slip on the now muddy dirt road under my flip-flopped feet, but Max grabs my hand and we start

to run towards our car, my hair stuck to my cheeks and lips, and Max’s plas-tered to his forehead. I focus on Max’s steady, warm hand wrapped around my own, and try to summon some of that strength he always said I had. When we start driving back, we don’t turn the headlights on. There’s only one road back and the woods on ei-ther side of it restrict us from getting lost. But for once, the black shadows that barricade the road don’t seem as constricting, and Max doesn’t let go of my hand. We, with our mosaic bro-ken hearts, drive on.

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ma is rubbing tiger balm on her templesin a circular motion with her index and middle fingersthe industrial scent wafts through the housemixing with the summer heat thrust forth by the oscillatingfan that wobbles in one corner of the kitchen

she throws her feet up and i see the deep crackson her soles like indents on soil after an earthquakeand dusted with white flakes the texture of chalk

ma leans back and closes her eyesher arms fold over each other on her stomachwhich slowly rises and falls

she will rise again in just a minuteher dry feet will rush her to the marketto get the rest of the vegetables we needfor dinner tonight and lunch tomorrowher brief rest is just theater for her naïve twelve-year-oldthe one who waits to be acknowledged

there is much left to do and ma does not trust mewith the stove nor the wok nor the colander northe rice cooker nor the spatula nor

the kitchen is hot so i sit outside on the porchmy duty is to flag down ba and tell him dinner is ready

headachesM. M. LYNN

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My people come from clean409 and windex on the window sill,reconstruction of cars and closets and cupboards.The teepee, tree bark, head of curls bobbed, only tapped down my mother’s shoulders,as she pushed the racking laundry cart down11th street at 10 years old. Her skin reeked of whiteness,my grandfather of Hennessy,already at the shadowy endcollecting glances and food stamps,aid for the disadvantaged black,a collection of unwanted dusty memories.

My fatherescaped the snake infested trenches of El Salvadorian civil war,guerrillas ripping the seams of my great grandmother’sfactory quilted family—perfectly stitched in dependent, equally cut squares of duty,luring children with machines and bare bodiesinto the woods.

He came to smear the thick faded blacknessof oil of single dollar billsof almost-capital, of almost-independence,on the mullet racing down his sweaty back.

Clean ColorNICOLE RIVERA

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He came to resist the drug dealsroll—rolling up 11th street each day. Mom and dad meet.

I come around,separating my spirit from parental guidance,yet I am guided by the floorboards,the water and Mr. Clean assigned to it. I peruse my mother’s to-do list for myself,written by her Irish alcoholic nurturer before her, get things doneget things done until your eyes can no longer breathe air, let alone see the richness in other colored women.

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NICHOLAS ARICO is student at Hunter College, where he is studying Creative Writing. He enjoys sketching and playing the drums. His favorite authors in-clude Haruki Murakami, Neil Gaiman, and Kurt Vonnegut. You can follow him on Tumblr at upsidedownumbrellastories.

M. M. LYNN is a New York-based poet. Her poems meditate on the fine line between what is real and what is imaginary. She writes about the body, trauma, and paranoia. She can be reached by email at may.mary.lynn@gmail.com.

SAMSUN NAHAR graduated from Hunter College with a Bachelor’s in English and Economics. She lives in New York City and likes to stay up reading. You can follow her on Facebook, Tumblr at the-power-of-Potter, or on Instagram @xsamster.

CLAIRE RAC is a collage/street artist and an Arts & Art History student based in Sydney. She can be reached by email at theclairac@gmail.com or on Insta-gram @theclairac.

NICOLE RIVERA studies Creative Writing at Hunter College. Her work exam-ines womanhood, the working class, and urban fever. Rivera is from Ridge Hill, Yonkers.

STAFFSUSAN LI is Unfinished Magazine’s founder and Editor-in-Chief. She is a writ-er and editor of non-fiction. She hails from Borough Park, Brooklyn.

NICCOLO PIZARRO is Unfinished Magazine’s Chief Fiction Editor. He is a short fiction writer and musician. He also writes and illustrates a web comic, Anti-Social Commentary, which can be viewed on Tumblr at asccomic. He is from Long Island City, and currently resides in Sunnyside, Queens.

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