Milestone : the voices of east los & beyond beyond & los east of voices the w EAST LOS Milestone: A the voices of east los and beyond NG ELE S CO LLE G E Cover Illustrations: Ryan Ito, front cover; Bonnie Chau, back cover EAST LOS ANGELES COLLEGE Bonnie Chau Art 633 Project 5 06.25.07 Summer 2007 Milestone2009_Cover.indd 1 4/17/09 11:16:40 AM Milestone2009.v2.qxd:Milestone2004.qxd 4/28/09 12:00 PM Page 1 M i l e s t o n e : the voices of east los and beyond East Los Angeles College Monterey Park, California Milestone2009.v2.qxd:Milestone2004.qxd 4/28/09 12:00 PM Page 2 M i l e s t o n e : the voices of east los and beyond Editor, Advisor Carol Lem Selection Staff College Literary Magazine Editing Class of Spring 2007 & Spring 2008 (English 32) Book Design Trish Glover Photography Christine Moreno Student Artwork Julio Aguilar, Jesse Caleron, Dulce Cerritos, KiKi Chen, Samuel Chen, Kelvin Cheung, Ryan Ito, Yi Ling Lai, Ling Lin, Tracy Liu, Janice Lo, Lisa Mao, Patty Metoki, Fabiola Nava, Susanna Negrete, Ignacio Oliveros, Eddie Ponce, Valerie Samora, Mike Seidel, Lorna Trinh, Ling Ju Yu, and Najera Zaira East Los Angeles College 1301 Avenida Cesar Chavez Monterey Park, California 91754 Milestone is published by the East Los Angeles College English Department. Material is solicited from students of the college. 2 East Los Angeles College Milestone2009.v2.qxd:Milestone2004.qxd 4/28/09 12:00 PM Page 3 Each Day I Choose From Among The Steepening Reminders Each day I choose from among the steepening reminders of all I have failed to finish, failed to begin. I open a right-hand cover and read the last page. Phrases severe and perfect rise before me, wrung from every extremity of joy and sleek-limbed loss. Borges, Sinyavsky, Hadewijch, Sappho, Li Po. More arrive each week, ink sharp as new hunger. And these are only the books: the thing already ambered, capable of waiting, turned to words. — Jane Hirshfield M i l e ston e : the voices of east los and beyond 3 Milestone2009.v2.qxd:Milestone2004.qxd 4/28/09 12:00 PM Page 4 Contents Editor’s Note . 7 Sandra Acosta WaitingRoom . 9 Sharon Allerson TheAsian Mechanic in Graytown . 10 Korean Tea/Offerings . 16 Night Sky at Bulgarini’s . 17 Monique Alvarado TheWoman Who Rolls Cigars . 18 Happy Father’s Day . 19 Samuel Dominguez Not to Touch the Sun . 21 SunBurn ..................................... 23 Kali and the Ancient Smoke . 25 Jose Galicia Mama Nina . 27 Sarai Gonzalez Winter Wedding . 28 Joan Goldsmith Gurfield Professor of Ambiguity . 29 Louis Herrera In the Basement . 33 Walk ......................................... 34 Carol Lem Library Staff Lounge . 36 Louise Leftoff The Gathering . 38 Little Bear . 40 A Sonnet: Making Stock . 41 The Taste of Tears . 42 Evidence of Life (A Villanelle) . 46 Ernesta Lucero-Irwin EsPorTi ..................................... 47 Jenssy Martin HighSchool ................................. 50 Life of a Woman . 51 MyName ..................................... 52 Adriana Michel After the Morgue…in a car… following her…2008 . 53 Haikus . 55 Danna Prak Silent But Speaking . 57 Unfamiliar Reflection . 59 4 East Los Angeles College Milestone2009.v2.qxd:Milestone2004.qxd 4/28/09 12:00 PM Page 5 Diana Recouvreur LonelyPlayground .......................... 59 Moon Shadow . 60 Anywhere U.S.A. 61 Los Angeles is Burning . 62 Luis Rodriguez Fevered Shapes . 64 Perhaps . 67 Jennifer Romo Synopsis: Let It Be . 69 LetItBe ...................................... 71 Sandra Serrano Moving Closer . 84 Karen Stram *$$$ (Starbucks) Story . 85 Susan Suntree Rivers . 88 Trami Ton White Candles . 89 Nature’s Consciousness . 90 Evangelina Vasquez A Prayer for my Friend . 91 Alhelíes . 96 The Persian Rose . 99 Michael Venegas Burial . 101 The Mirror Distance . 103 Nature’s Retelling . 108 Paper Plane . 109 Dianna Virata All in a Day’s Work . 113 Outlaw Torn . 116 Contributors’Notes . 119 M i l e ston e : the voices of east los and beyond 5 Milestone2009.v2.qxd:Milestone2004.qxd 4/28/09 12:00 PM Page 6 Jesse Calderon 6 East Los Angeles College Milestone2009.v2.qxd:Milestone2004.qxd 4/28/09 12:00 PM Page 7 Editor’s Note ooking back over the many years I’ve had the pleasure (and Loften the pain) of getting an issue of Milestone together, I have never been more proud than I am now—perhaps because of having seen it evolve into a professional looking literary journal. I remember the days when a few of our dedicated students from my English 127 (Creative Writing) class would sit around a table and, with sta- plers and freshly typed pages of poems and stories, assemble as many copies as they could with money raised from either a co-op effort or fundraisers. But what has always remained constant are the varied voices of East Los that find a home between the covers—some pass though our doors once and move on with their lives while oth- ers return like Luis J. Rodriguez, who in his book, The Republic of East L.A., acknowl- edges Milestone as one of the publications that gave voice to his early work. At a read- ing here last year, I proudly asked if he would write a blurb for our next issue; instead, he handed me the pages of the two new poems he had just read and simply said,“You can have these.” Like many other poets and writers who began their creative lives like our stu- dents—by finding a place such as an East L.A. magazine to respect and honor their community of voices that echo the streets they walk every day, the concerns of family, friends, love, identity,as well as the social/cultural issues, and more recently,the war— Rodriguez, along with Gary Soto, Helena Maria Viramontes, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Denise Chavez, Graciela Limon, to name a few—is one of the many honored voices that give our emerging writers a vision beyond the borders of our campus, hence the title of this year’s issue, Milestone: The Voices of East Los and Beyond. And, indeed, it is a milestone not only for the production and content quality but also for its endurance and longevity. I remember combing through the early issues way back in 1979—when a colleague, the then Milestone adviser, Earl Jaeger, kindly passed the torch on to me. I discovered a small, stapled copy dated 1952. One of the names I came across was Hal Fox, who was a student here and later became an instructor, then the English Department Chair. That’s how I knew him when I was hired in 1977. Seeing his name there gave me pause, for he had recently passed on after retiring to return to his first love, writing and reading; and I thought, yes, this is why we do it, why we keep returning to the page—that face looking back at who we were, are, and might become. I would like to thank those who have contributed to these pages—not only the above mentioned writers who have inspired our emerging voices over the years but also those on the production ground such as Trish Glover, Graphic Arts Designer; members of the M i l e ston e : the voices of east los and beyond 7 Milestone2009.v2.qxd:Milestone2004.qxd 4/28/09 12:00 PM Page 8 Art Department, in particular Chris Moreno for her gathering of student art in this issue; members of the English Department: James Kenny,Department Chairperson, and my colleagues on the Milestone Committee—Susan Suntree and Joan Gurfield. I would also like to express my appreciation to those students who helped me launch English 32 (College Literary Magazine Editing) in the spring of 2007. For the first time, we now have a course devoted to both the creative writing and editing process in producing our annual literary journal, Milestone. Thank you, students in the spring 2007 and 2008 classes, for helping me select the pieces for this issue. Congratulations, we did it again! — Carol Lem, www.carollem.com 8 East Los Angeles College Milestone2009.v2.qxd:Milestone2004.qxd 4/28/09 12:00 PM Page 9 Sandra Acosta | Waiting Room You swivel from side to side behind a desk, filing folders on a hill where old money charms doctors. Photos of indigenous people on walls, quietly looking pretty, smile eternally with paint on faces and bones through noses. A waiting room is full of people flipping through magazines — An ugly old man demands he be seen. You make him wait his turn, you say, have a seat, sir. Mad eyes laser in on your brown face like you just told him heaven is in Mexico. Blood light narrows in on your soft heart he shouts, Go back to where you came from. Deadness fills the room, its thick walls offer no escape, no climbing trees, no filling buckets with sand you offer the ocean, no chanting red rover, red rover — Your small voice growing like a thundercloud, you finally speak. Najera Zaira M i l e ston e : the voices of east los and beyond 9 Milestone2009.v2.qxd:Milestone2004.qxd 4/28/09 12:00 PM Page 10 Sharon Allerson | The Asian Mechanic in Graytown “Story?” “Sure, Mom.” She lies down on the bed. “Once upon a time?” “Sure, go for it.” “Once upon a time—” “In a kingdom far, far away?” “Not a kingdom—just a beautiful little town with a beautiful little river running through it. A small dam right below the bridge at Bridge Square created a beautiful little waterfall and on the other side of the river, straight up from the waterfall rose a castle!“ “A castle? You said it wasn’t a kingdom!” “OK, maybe it was actually a factory—but it looked like a castle.