The April edition of the the creative spotlight features seniors’ work in the categories of visual art, short stories and poetry.
Visual Art
Short Stories
Excerpt from “Two Birds” by Robbie Thao
Manhood, Trust, and Betrayal:
Snow fell on the day I met him. I spotted him across the stream when I was out hunting in what was the border of enemy territory. We both found ourselves on opposite ends of the frozen over water. We had both struck the same wild sheep. It was impossible to tell which of us had struck the final blow—our arrows had fatally plunged into the throat of my prey—but the desperation on our faces was easily evident to each other.
He was thin and his clothes were practically rags.
He’s wearing a simple red ruqun. He’s wearing a simple green ruqun.
It looks tattered—he looks like a farmer—what is he doing out here?
An enemy of the South? An enemy of the North?
A runaway…?
An orphan?
We stood there for a while studying like carrion birds circling stinking remains until the opportune moment to feast. If we’d have fought then, we’d both be dead. Suddenly—our eyes met—it was as if I was looking at a strange reflection of myself.
His eyes were piercing like a hawk’s. His eyes were full of warmth like two suns.
Yet it was easy to tell that he and I were cut from the same cloth. The boy with warm eyes spoke while lowering his bow cautiously, “Are you hungry?”
The boy with piercing eyes relaxed his posture and walked forward, “. . . Yes, I hate to admit it but I haven’t eaten in days… What is, ” he hesitated, “ do you have a name?”
The boy in green hesitated just as he was about to walk forward; silence followed and he met the eyes of the boy in red.
“I don’t have one. Everybody just calls me Qiang. What about you?” said the boy in green. With a small smile the hawk-eyed boy spoke, “You can call me Gang then. Us throw-aways have to stick together.”
Quickly getting out of the biting cold, the two boys dragged the mass of fur under an overhanging rock formation: they then built a small fire with tinder Qiang had brought within a straw basket. The kindle sparked—spewing embers that brought life back into the bodies of the two no-names—and so they continued their hasty prep for a long-awaited tasty meal.
Snow kept falling; it covered and buried much of the landscape, but underneath all of that something blossomed: over a shared pot of sheep and cheap liquor rose companionship. We each took the surname Ma—meaning horse because we were as free from all things worldly as a wild Ferghana on the plains—as proof to our brotherhood.
But it seemed he desired something else.
We were hungry, young men searching for
A companion to share simple joys with. Recognition from those who looked down on us.
But that all changed when he betrayed me that day.
The Great Snow arrived that day.
Poetry
Setting Up The Table by Kevin Nguyen
building blocks of reality
elusive yet essential
nothing known about them
except their weight and properties
countless experiments to verify
the nature of these foundations
impossible to organize
impossible to predict
many have tried many
have failed what else could there be
i fall asleep to these thoughts
i feel helpless in my struggle
many attempts were made by my own mind
none of them were of my vision
my sisyphean task to accomplish
creating order in the disorder
i fall asleep and clear my mind
my dreams forgotten yet one remains
a bright light showers down comets
all laid out upon an empty star washed plain
the known foundations falling neatly into their places
hydrogen the starting element
the simplest of all the smallest of all
All mountains start as a pebble
followed by lithium & beryllium
& boron & carbon and to finish this row
nitrogen & oxygen & fluorine
close out the second row
sodium & magnesium & aluminium & silicon
& the third row trails with phosphorus & sulfur & chlorine
& as the table filled i found myself breathless
i could only watch in awe as the magnificent perfection unfolded
the beauty of all of the pieces fitting together
the table completes itself a divine portrait to observe
then i awake and quickly copied it down
gaps were left where the unknown lingers
this was the first step in understanding
the fabric of reality
[i saw in a dream a table]
[all the elements fell into place as required]
[awakening i immediately wrote down the results of the dream]
[i saw how the elements were arranged]
[in a way that i had
not thought of before]
THE NINTH NIGHT by Ellie Lisiecki
Deafness is not merely absence of noise
but the presence of silence.
Something smothering, darkness
unbroken by the golden oil of a lamp.
We light the menorah eight nights—
my grandpa said—
for the eight nights the oil lived.
Against all odds it lived,
it leapt and its sparks shattered
meteor showers over the temple floor.
But he’s a lifetime of speaking up on the phone
just to hear static crackling on the line.
A little voice biting back the tongue
saying mom is just like you and you, her.
We are all someone’s children,
as numerous as sparkles in the sky.
My grandparents never spoke English—
my grandpa said—
they came here from Russia, before.
Whispers slip by as sunlight spreads
stained glass paint across pillars and pews,
a mosaic of stories and candle smoke.
So I find myself on Christmas Day
watching sunrise silhouette a fiddler on a roof.
My mom’s eyes glisten between the screen and
me, stirred by torches leering in the moonlight.
I don’t like musicals, too much singing—
my dad says as we emerge from artificial darkness.
For so long I’ve tried to hear what I’m told
I’ve been deaf to,
wondering if I can understand
a language I’ve never been taught
unless its thumbprints
have kissed my soul.