all writing is political

Hi! Spectrum recently changed locations, and I wasn't informed that the old site was deprecated. the new site is: https://spectrum.ccs.ucsb.edu/

a remind that I want you to submit to Spectrum volume 65!

It’s easier to be overlooked than it is to be seen. But then again, that might have something to do with being a ghost.

The second and third definitions of my existence are about appearance, or in its current application, translucence. Ain’t a bad thing; snuck into ten showings of Black Panther and even more gratuitous viewings of Wonder Woman. Even incorporeal fellows have to rise in support, even if no one knew the better. And at least rent costs jack shit when your home is considered a historical site of medical history. Not everything’s peachy when no one’s listening, however (though that might be a given).

Standing at the cross between two roads, the living and the fully dead alike are appealing even if you’re not exactly either. An endless spiderweb of metal and anger, streets that at ground-level look so different fade into simply one big mesh. No one else sees that but those of us floating overhead, though, so the gorgeous lads and powerful women pass without seeing anything but their own painted visions of the earth. When they do turn away and step to one side, most start to see the meaninglessness of this framework; unfortunately, they become something similar to us, above it yet unable to convey it to those stuck.

And of course, it doesn’t help that when they see us, they mostly react in fear.

I guess no longer being of the predestined flesh might scare, but really, it’s no different from still having blood. I have neighbors. One of them watches the traditional festivals held her east side of the town, reforming her feet into those no longer bound by learning the dance in which she could never participate. She spends the long periods between their meetings softly retracing each move, phantom muscle memory of a new kind.

But then again. Only the niche few even see her shadow-cast steps at all; in a world ruled by singularity, there’s no room for an old woman becoming young again, unbinding and rewinding to her own truth. They pass by and pass away and even then never see.

Maybe that’s all changing, though.

Brittle chills crack their teeth on windowsills; snap the final leaves from branches; blow out the candles left at the month’s end. Only one house still decorates with squash, banners of sunset depicting peppers and corn and pomegranate. Skulls haven’t yet been pulled. Passersby snicker at the rotting pumpkins yet un-allowed to rest.

A neighbor wrapped in pale yellows and dandelions sighs, similarly forgotten.

Soaked in cinnamon, her host shakes his head. “It should have lasted longer.”

The neighbor lays the head of a pressed sunflower in his lap, a beacon of yellow in a sea of warm browns and maroons. “I know that you loved him, but there’s always next year.”

“How much longer can this go on?” He lifts the sunflower; pulls off a single fragile petal. “You’ve been holding on to this memory of her for decades.”

She shrugs; looks away. “Letting go of her is acknowledging that I have to settle with something less bright.”

Outside, the night has given way to a small storm; if not for a hearth, the frigid air would have seized up everything hours ago. If not for continuing to cradle a dead spark, the frost might have finished collecting what was scythed long ago. Instead, though, they deny mourning.

“Maybe next year he’ll be the kind that stays,” she says with encouragement, the longest day of the year still shining in her voice, a wistful longing dragged on through blissful hope. The kind autumn doesn’t hold.

“Maybe.” Hesitation. “Or maybe I’ll just be another pit-stop for someone whose heart isn’t as sentimental.” He tries to hide the drafts of anger, but fails.

“Or maybe he’ll be the kind that thrives in the chill, and he’ll stay.”

“Or maybe not.” Even October has its storms. “Have you considered that maybe she died long ago and you’re just holding on to a corpse? Maybe we’re both just delusional.”

She stands. “You think that I don’t know that? You think that I don’t know that it’s unlikely that things will be perfect or that I’ll re-find someone as wonderful as that one time? That I’m so stupid not to know that I shouldn’t believe? Is that really what you think of me?”

With waves of heat and the dry air, there always comes summer fire.

Her judgement falls hot as noon in July. “I know it was fleeting and rare. But just because something only comes once a year doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look forward to it,” she says. “It might damn hurt when the snow falls, but it’s a whole lot better than only ever being mediocre.”

In his hand, sunflower petals crumble and scatter on the couch and rug. Clutched too tightly, after so much time of delicate care, the flower finally withers.

“Maybe it’s foolish to dream, but I’ll take that any day over submitting to despair.”

hey! I’m the Editor-in-Chief for Spectrum Literary Journal, vol. 65, and I want YOU to submit us your poetry, fiction, nonfiction, hybrid works, and/or visual art!

this year’s theme is Transformation!

if that sounds like an obvious signal for trans and non-binary authors to submit, that’s because it is!

submissions run July 1, 2021--December 31, 2021!

was talking to a friend (and my beta reader) about the Hero’s Journey since he knows I’m not the biggest fan and don’t use it much. he and I have talked over my distaste before, but since we were discussing my novel, he brought it up to ask why it was that I don’t use it (or at least, say that I don’t). we argued for a bit about where a story involving a Hero and a Journey stops being a Hero’s Journey, and it got me thinking about the hero archetype in general.

what is a hero, after all? someone brave, willing and able to take on evil, or at least overcome hardship and grow stronger for having gone through the reeds? someone who is mentored by Good, and warned about Bad, and maybe sees Bad in action, so they become galvanized against it. someone who struggles to succeed, but is able to succeed in their own right, by the end.

someone who does what we as the audience wish we could; who represents possibility and positive growth; who embodies our potential to do and be Good.

a hero is a promise.

write what you know goes the ever-repeated Writing Advice Canon. what are the promises I’ve given and were given? mostly broken, china plates to never be glued perfectly back into one piece, fragile as my heritage with which they share a name.

I can try and recollect what they looked like before, the bone-pale ceramics which broke in my hands, but even these are not living like the bones in my body, able to be put in splints and healed with time and sugar. these are pale and dead things, and no one comes back from death.

no one, except perchance a hero. a hero like my novel’s protagonist, whose story begins with her resurrection. but I don’t want to write a hero, so I must do both and neither. I have given her the boons of a hero, dressing her in steel plot armor and arming her with a scornful wit of a sword. but she is broken, too; severed from the body of her home, a bone made brittle without its supply of familiar oxygen and glucose. and, most of all, she is out of time to heal.