Center Spread

AMERICA IS KILLING MY MOTHER

By: Zoe Yee

Those who are supposed to help her medical expenses
And make her life just a bit easier for herself and her family

Instead mock her over the phone;
Assume her lifestyle.
“Let me connect you to a dietitian”
And “You may be able to set up an exercise plan”

They say to her.
Everyone is the same in their book:
Fat, diet problems and sugar is their enemy.
Insurance companies have belittled my mother.
Everyone produces their own special antidote,

But she must buy hers.

116, 234, and 270 are the prices that cross her mind
While trying to obtain her life-saving antidote
When they should be 20, 30, and 35.
Hearing about those just like her

Preserving their antidote by not giving themselves enough

And dying
Makes her hurt.

10 mL vials are her salvation every month,

But profit and greed have become imperative over the lives of Americans.
American drug companies have locked up my mother.
Not being able to eat what she wants
And changing her diet

Based on her ability to obtain her special antidote

Is her daily life.

Being conscious of how much she uses,
she holds back to survive every month.
That one apple or ripe banana

Could use up too much antidote that she might need later.

Special occasions she says
As she counts the carbs of her low carb meal.
Diabetes has changed the life of my mother.
This begs the question,
Is America trying to kill my mother?

FRAGMENTED

By: Nicole Mond

Just one action,
One word,
Can lift us.
Like a vase,
We are
Fragile and delicate.
Just one action,
One word,
Can also be
Like a landslide.
Like a vase,
We have our differences.
Different colors,
Different shapes.
We are able
To put our
Broken pieces
Together,
To create a
Whole new
Vase.

A BLESSING AND A CURSE

By: Rita Li

On the second moon in the year of 2000, when plum petals descend from the tree
there will be a child that changes millions of people’s lives.
Born with the dragon that flows freely from the sea
comes with the ultimate power to thrive.
Harmony and peace
have become so disrupted and fragmented that it can no longer survive.
This child will change fate to the point where discord and disunity
are essentially the only remains of this tenuous planet.
Trust, hope, and fate,
all intangible concepts which are
valued most by an individual under just about every situation and possibility.
The things that we have lost and the things we have held onto for so many centuries are
not what will change the fate we are to confront.
Being distressed and restless are
transforming the realities and fantasies of our universe.
Human beings themselves can be
powerless.
The kin of the dragon is not
a blessing and
is not the embodiment of this soul, but rather
a curse

CONSTELLATION SKIN

By: Savinie Lin

I am a Greek tragedy in its finest;
Cursed and damned with the inability
to love in a world
that has taken love from me.
That love was the ability to love myself.
I used to hate my eyes because they weren’t
the shades of blue like the skies above.
I used to hate my hair because it was the night sky
instead of the golden sun.
I don’t have the blessings of Aphrodite
or the wisdom of Athena.
I have worn out hands like Hephaestus
and sometimes the bitterness of Hades.
But my skin tells of stories
of loss, love, and triumph.
Stars etched upon with beauty of its own;
That beauty is found on my skin,
on me.
I rewrote the story of myself.