Coloring Pages Of Barbie A Fairy Secret

"clock counting" written by lauren milne/ performed by dani berkowitz i am not a pageboy for the heartbeat of theuniverse. ticks and tocks are my sighs and tuts as i watch you measure life by the expressionon my face. 7:21 do you see my frown? you’re wrong to trustthat you have an hour before your flight. wrong to settle down for a drink and watchairplanes take off. unless you were hoping to watch yours from the ground. funny how people seek my fickle hands fordirection. that’s a compass you’re looking for, i want to tell them.

my hands can’t find north, but spin withturbine fury, shaving away at the wall at my back. i’m burrowing out of a 360Ⱐfence. as i run round these mile markers you callminutes, i feel for the racehorse stuck in the ring, plagued by the jockey, wanting torun free. but my jockey doesn’t know i’ve loosened the reins. for all the times people check on me, nonestay long enough to see i’ve strayed. i’ve cast off your winding, now the seconds tickanew. soon i’ll be out of here, as far off asthe flight you haven’t yet realized you missed.

but another face meets mine! and this oneknows my game. the wind is knocked from me as cogs and gears are tightened. the reinsare pulled in. the corset is laced up. i try to lean right—jolted back like a dogon a leash. i try to move left, up, down—at every turn a wall, a wall. the only shifta sharp push forward once a minute, every minute. again, the ticking and tocking fillmy head. revolving, revolving, as does everything you’venailed down: engines to airplanes, saddles to horses, humans to me. "misleading screens" written by sycamore may/performed by dani berkowitz in the summer, i would pass by a homelessman who always had his arm out-stretched

with a styrofoam cup, small change sparseand scattered inside. his eyes crossed, milky, the way blind men’s eyes do. he knew i wasthere even though he couldn’t see me. when when i was the only other person on that derelictsidewalk, he held out his cup for me, “can you spare some change, miss?” in my head, i had been thinking: would i haveto eat pasta again for dinner that night or: how annoying it was that my roommates leftall of their clothes scattered around the apartment. and here was this man, just lookingfor a few dollars to buy a cup of coffee, maybe a bagel on a good day. i started walkingbehind him so that he couldn’t sense my presence. i was ashamed to face him. on dayswhen i had change, i placed it in his cup

and he smiled, but i knew he wasn’t ableto support himself, not really. at the end of each day there was no place he could returnto, he wasn’t making himself dinner, he didn’t have a shower or a dishwasher oreven a toilet. i expected all of these things in my own life; i didn’t even think aboutthem. every day the same styrofoam cup, the same distant look. where would he sleep thatnight? one morning he was covered in newspapers on a bench.last winter was the coldest on record. boston got 9.5 feet of snow. outside of dunkin donuts,the same homeless man opened the door for patrons. when he told me he was a veteran,i saw that his teeth were rotting. around his neck, he wore a pouch where he collecteddollars if anyone gave him any. everything

he wore was blue. blue down to the color ofhis lips. blue, the color of the tattered second-hand coat that hung clumsily aroundhis shoulders like a tarp. i walked inside to get a bagel and when i came out, i stuffedthe couple of quarters, nickels and dimes into his hand. every day afterwards i lookedfor him, but he wasn’t there. he wasn’t on the derelict sidewalk either. i hoped thathe had found a shelter or at least a warm place. there was no way for me to know. in a public art class i learned about krzysztofwodiczko’s homeless vehicle project – a personalized bullet shaped metal vessel wherethe homeless could sleep, cook, and wash. it was really supposed to be an eyesore. aband-aid to patch homelessness temporarily,

a message to the city’s patrons and governmentofficials. this is what homelessness looks like. it was never commissioned.in 2005, utah took a different approach towards homelessness called housing first – theygave homes to almost two thousand chronically homeless on the streets of salt lake city.lloyd pendleton, the director of utah’s homeless task force, said that by giving thechronically homeless homes the city saved money. in the years since, the number of utah’schronically homeless has fallen by seventy-four percent. what pendleton did, that many othersare hesitant to do, is look at the homeless as living, breathing people. how did we become so afraid of other people?the media gives us a vague, statistical explanation

of terror. under the skin of the televisionscreens, hate crimes go unpunished, journalists get decapitated. we are given advice on howto tell if your neighbor is a “terrorist,” about seeing something and saying something.we have become so desensitized to the truth. our humanity suffers because of this – webecome afraid. the lives of the afflicted – those who live in urban sprawl war zones,victims of gentrification, are consequences of humangreed and destruction. they seem so far away from those who expect to have a roof overtheir head. "meditation part ii: pregnant by a ghost"written by amanda michelle gomez/ performed by corey ruzicano he read the text with such authority; he capitalizedon the short bible verse by emphasizing every

other word. mr. kelleher, my sixth grade catholicschool teacher, read excerpts from luke book 1 verse 35 to introduce the concept of immaculateconception to the class. “the angel answered, the holy spirit willcome on you, and the power of the most high will overshadow you. so the holy one to beborn will be called the son of god.” "and so mary gave birth to jesus," mr. kellehersaid, "the lord of mankind." he said it so matter-of-factly that my eleven-year-old mind thought the storywas true. he didn’t explicitly say so, but his conviction and lack of explanation didso for him. “my mother said women cannot get pregnantunless they have had their period first,” a stumpy blond haired girl in the back ofthe classroom asked without raising her hand.

“does that mean mary already had her period?” mr. kelleher replied almost immediately. “welleven if she didn’t, the holy spirit would have no problem impregnating her. it is god’swill, cassandra.” my older cousin stephanie shared the samebit of knowledge that cassandra’s mom did with her. the day stephanie got her period,she came running out of the bathroom and said she could have children now. she thought thatwould be a funny way to tell her mom and me, a real comedian that one. stephanie went topublic school, and so there was no way she’d know that should could have gotten pregnantby a ghost of god before having her period. we were all at risk.

i clenched and wondered if it would happenright now. "a case for don quioxte of la mancha" writtenby lauren milne/ performed by allie gillman who can blame don quixotefor his crusade across espaã±a? for the desire to live in a time of​songs of battle, ​rusted armor,​whispering barley fields, ​the quiet rising dawn. don quixote,all you wanted was a world that needed savingbut instead you were met by one that resisted it.

i’ve watched a windmill spinlike the hands of a clock, tossing away time.it stood like a giant relic of an earlier autumnwhen a man on a feeble horse would ride out to fight it. in your battle against the forcesof tyranny and modernity, you assumed the ancient hero’s privilegenot to pay for the things you took.your services to the good of mankind were payment enough.but an innkeeper doesn’t see the money in a knight’s sword—only in a knight’s room and board.

you looked for a woman to pine for,a name to redeem you. you did not understandthat love is not a flower to be plucked from a gardenon a whim. gentle dulcinea ​of tobosowas not the tulip you saw. in her muscles you saw hoursspent on back-breaking needlework.in her tan you saw nobility: carriages, petticoats, parasols.when she did not know your name or how she had earneda stranger’s undying love, you saw her as the pinnacleof feminine modesty.

but cut flowers are beautifulwhile you can deceive yourself that they’re still alive.don’t we all look for love where lavender grows?we all wish to change from the tongue-tiedinto poets, the civilized into madmen. but, don quixote,i know the bit of oneself that must be excisedfor a ritual offering to your passion. the longer the two nurse each other,the more horizon they occupy in your eye.i see the lure of your reflection

in the armorand the swells one person can createto make you fight for a good name, ​write lyrics on tree bark,​kill a flower just to claim it. add action – confrontation with other people "red genesis: act i" written by david jacobmeltzer/ performed by kathy dorn, amanda michelle gomez, talia heller, ismail samir outside looking in out from the kitchen, the soft smell of pasta-boilingcrept into the cabin of space shuttle hosea. this interplanetary steed did not whinny,purr, growl, hiss, nor rev. it was a cave in space - the floor: a stage before showtime;the walls: pace-maker guts, linking thousands

of tubes and wires back around to themselves;the view: god's hand-mirror - star-studded. shadow and flash were hung like cold air ina frozen abyss. from earth to the northern martian ice cap,the journey is three years. undulating dark freckles, octavia wrinklesher nose. her reflection on the cabin window gives the edgeless horizon a human face. movievisions of blinding light, warp-speed and so on are spectacular and that alone. spaceis dark enough to erase your mind. each breath is a miracle and each light a wizard's eye. in the pilot's chair, octavia stretches outher hunched shoulders. bending back her head, she sniffs the human smell of pasta-boiling.an upside-down blue clock glows. dinner-time.

below the clock sits sam, crocheting an afghan.the yarn erupts, borders of red and gray spirals thicken to braids of salmon crossing amberwaves. octavia rises from her pilot's chair and takesechoing steps, confronting co-pilot sam and her needle. octavia: 'who is that for?' sam: 'valencia. she told me about this dreamabout a cloak changing colors in a cornfield. and a carcomes by and hits the cloak. and like one of those fish,it changes colors again and again.' o: 'hm. that's not what i see in it. but nowi'm wondering what you see in valencia.'

sam drops her needle. s: 'right. because when i made your your afghan,we also went to ikea and we're now madly madly madly- o: 'you know she's married. department headof linguistics, stationed at the northern martian ice cap.' sam presses her thumb to the blunt needlepoint. s: 'octavia why are you at my throat? i'mmaking afghans for everyone. what the hell else am i supposed to do for three years?write a symphony?' o: 'ode to valencia? stay away from music,it'll show more colors than this here.' octavia scratches the crocheted yarn.

o: 'this here looks like raggedy anne gother world turned inside-out by a platoon of g.i. joes. my question was what?' s: 'what what?' o: 'what do you see in valencia. is it justher hair? beautiful hair. on her wrist-dock, sam presses a green key,sending a recording of chimes clanging to thekitchen, where rosemary washes her hands. rosemary shuts off the faucet, dries handson her ass and selects the clanging green key. rosemary: 'yes my friend?

with a black shoe on the white floor, rosemarycrunches a red onion skin. she heaves a steel potof boiling pasta at the sink to drain. s: 'rosemary this is sam. we’ve got a situationup here in the cabin. valencia bites her lip, approaches the greenkey and pulls back her curly hair with a silverclip. rosemary shakes her head and pays no mind. s: 'it appears like some hazardous waste hascoagulated on-board, learned english grammar and is attempting to insult my handiwork. valencia realizes the prank and resumes settingthe table.

s: 'the only solution has got to be dinneras soon as possible. do we have an eta? like a butcher inspecting a leg of lamb, inthe cabin octavia unclips a pneumatic torque wrenchfrom its holster. she holds the machine over sam’shead. r: 'dinner is served!' octavia fires the trigger and the wrench whirlssome-thousand revolutions. sam jumps back in her co-pilot chair. octavia tosses thewrench to her lap, covered in the soft afghan. o: 'let’s eat before someone has to cleanyou up.' sam follows octavia out of the cabin; sheseals the door behind them shut and locks

it with her retina. squared soundly against a flash-like bulbexploding, light coats her left eye. octavia shutsher eyes and the show begins: blissful tunnels ofblue in green behind her eyelids pulsate. herelies miles davis, bill evans, blue in green humming wonder and knowledge, kenneth noland,joseph albers; here is earth. sam opens the next door and they both enterthe kitchen. water beads down marine’s bald head as shesets the table with plates and glasses, valencia divvies silverware. rosemary uncorks a bottleof red. sam plates and tables the food; octavia

takes her seat. this is dinner 462 and suchroutines are done in silence, like priests preparing for mass, like deep sea divers preparingfor the plunge. the sky-blue table is set and all sit. valencia unfolds a crinkled pageand clears her voice. valencia: 'i am light made flesh. you arelight made flesh. we are light made flesh. every thing is light made flesh. today i dedicatethis dinner to our sun and the burning stars of old and new. here we are among beautifulminds and beautiful food. so let’s eat.' rosemary spins her fork in linguine, determinedto skewer both capers and olives. marine: 'any word from mars?' "token" written by amanda michelle gomez/performed by bea cerezo, amanda michelle gomez, larianna perez

lisa and i sat on the edge of the bed withour heads resting on our hands. our eyes fixated on the tv — spice world played. lisa’smom yoli watched me for the day while my mother worked, and by her definition of babysitting,she left us alone in lisa’s room with the tv going. the opening number — “too much of nothing”— introduced each spice girl. as each girl showcased her vocal talents (and outfits, let’sbe real), lisa and i went back and forth with our own opinions of the girls. clearly, weboth had seen the movie numerous times beforehand. “ginger spice — i don’t get it,” lisagiggled. ginger spice was dubbed the sexy, fiery one.she had big red hair that contrasted nicely

against her fair skin. “sporty spice — she’s strong, she couldprobably beat up your brother,” i said. sporty spice was the athletic one.she was the natural beauty in jogging pants. “baby spice!” we both shouted in unison.clearly, she was the favorite. baby spice was the cute, adorable blonde in pigtails. we both neglected to comment on posh spicebecause she was too refined for our seven year old selves. “scary spice — rawr!” lisa yelled asshe clawed her fingers. scary spice was the loud one with even louderhair. she wore leopard and cheetah printed

clothes almost every scene. she was also theonly woman of color in the group. before the song was over, lisa decided shewas sporty spice. she reasoned she was sporty spice because they both wore their hair upin a ponytail and played basketball. i nodded my head, reassuring her of her pick. “i’m baby spice,” i said. baby spiceand i both had quite the collection of stuffed animals. she turned and looked at me baffled. “you can’t be baby spice — you aren’tblonde, and you’re black, “ lisa said as she pointed at her arm. “you’re scaryspice — you look like scary spice,” she

continued commonsensically. this would be the ongoing trend of my earlyyouth: the token dark girl. it’s important to clarify that lisa andi are both mexican. lisa just happens to have lighter skin than i do. i’m a mixed breed,a mix of filipino and mexican and perhaps something else — i don’t know my dad.i imagine i look like him though because i have darker features than my mother (my hairand skin are darker, and my lips are fuller). the aforementioned scenario with lisa wasthe case with most of my latino friends, all of whom were lighter than me. this meant years of playing with the darkercomplected dolls: the mara doll in the lisa

frank collection or the sasha doll in thebratz collection. it was bothersome at first. naturally, i wanted to be lisa frank or chloe— the leading ladies in our imaginary playtime world. but because i was prepubescent,i went along with the social expectations, and then it became instinctual. the dollswould be laid out on the floor, and i grabbed the darker complected doll — the best friendof barbie — to play as. thankfully, the doll and acting-as-characters-in-moviesphase was short-lived. i assumed that also meant my role as the dark girl was over. onlychildren are fixated with skin color because it’s easier to notice these signifiers.it’s one of the first things we see — skin. but surprise, skin color still exists evenas we get older.

in elementary school, the hurdle became comparingskin tones at recess time. friends would lift their arms up and compare theirs to mine tosee if they burned during playtime. this would be the test to see how hot the californiasun was. it wasn’t blatantly clear when i was youngerwhether or not having dark skin was necessarily a bad thing. i recognized there was a differencebetween my skin and theirs. though the hierarchy — the correlation between skin color andbeauty — wasn’t visible until i was older. one summer during high school, i took my youngercousin to the beach — nothing especially unordinary about going, it seems now likea california cliche. the day was especially hot; the sun rays seemed visible to the nakedeye. the two of us planted ourselves far from

the pier, attempting to veer from babies andout-of-town grandpas with visible sun tan lotion on their noses. i lied there, on the beach towel, blissfullysoaking in the the sun’s rays. i turned to my 7 year old cousin who was playing withdolls in the sand. she brushed the hair of the blonde doll, grooming out the imperfectionsthat came with the beach breeze. a doll with dark hair and dark skin sat off to the sideof miranda. the wind must have come and blown it off her towel because it laid there collectingsand. miranda didn’t notice; she was too busy admiring the beauty of the blue eyeddoll. i lifted the doll up and was temptedto throw it out of frustration. i was tempted

to throw her out into the ocean so the currentcan pick her up and she could just forget about this place and her role. but i didn’t. instead,i brushed her hair with my fingers. i tried my best to take dust off the sand from herhair and tidy her dress. i want to say now that i reclaimed the dollthat consumed me for so many years. i overcame societal norms because destiny’s child saidso in my headphones as i laid out in the sand. i felt beautiful because oprah winfrey saysevery girl is beautiful and i believed her. though that wasn’t the case. there isn’ta moment i can specifically point to and say “that was when i became comfortable in myskin.” i’m becoming comfortable in my skin because really what is the alternative?

even now writing about colorism that tookplace in minority-driven la seems like i’m a tangible representation of somethingabstract — seems like i’m token. i’m the dark girl talking about being darkto a room full of mostly white people. quite frankly, i’m exhausted by my role, a rolei’ve carried with me since i was seven and watching spiceworld. when halloween rolled around sophomore yearof college, it meant three different costume ideas — for friday, saturday, and the actualday of halloween. cerise and jillian suggested we, and our other close friends, silvia andspencer, be the spice girls one day. really jillian just wanted an excuse to wear a risquesequin uk dress. no one disagreed with the

suggestion; group costume ideas are ideal. “i’ll be ginger,” jillian said.​jillian is a fiery, red head. she’ll dub herself the sexy one for halloween. mostdays she exclusively wears jeans and baseball shirts because who cares, she reasons. shealso loves to play chess high. “i guess, i’ll be baby spice,” spencersaid. spencer and baby spice are both blonde, andthat’s about the only thing they have in common. spencer is a music guru. she’d ratherher halloween costume be penny lane from almost famous or a housewife of orange county star(ironically of course). but she’s a team player.

i was prepared to volunteer myself as scaryspice, a habit i never really shook, but before i could say anything, cerise shouted “i’mscary spice!” ​cerise is a self-proclaimed diva. her wardrobeis one that posh spice would envy — she works at american apparel. she’s also aself-proclaimed activist. silvia let out a giant laugh. “i was alwaysscary spice growing up because my hair is super curly,” she said.ironically enough silvia is bulgarian, but has “exotic” features (or doesn’thave straight blonde hair and porcelain white skin). silvia is also great with kids. cerise let out a giant cackle. cerise wasalso always the designated scary spice in her

friendship group, because she was typically theonly black girl amongst her laguna beach high school friends. i raised my hand, tryingto keep a straight face — it was all pretty hilarious. “i’m always the token dark girl,” isaid. we all collectively chuckled. i’m sure thewriters of spice world did not suspect that there’d be more than one token dark girl in this friendship. "red genesis: act ii" written by david jacobmeltzer/ performed by kathy dorn, amanda michelle gomez, talia heller, ismail smair sam: 'ok now. for the four-hundred sixty-second time- valencia: 'actually yes.'

the crew turns to valencia. v: 'and mind that we are receiving this - becauseof our place between earth and mars - 20 minutes before anyone of earth. we are on the cornerof human history. now-' rosemary’s fork clinks to her plate. valencia bounds for the monitor, displayinga feedback loop of the cockpit. bobbing, her black tank-top reads ’a virus with shoes.’ v: '6,000 meters into the northern ice cap,archeologists found a creature frozen and preserved.' she changes the display to a photograph: agroup of humans with frozen beards in sky-blue

coats around a column of ice. in the ice liesa beige many-fingered thing, like a bowling ball in headdress. m: 'oh my god.' sam: 'what is it?' v: 'the archeologists have to give it to thepaleontologists.' octavia: 'it was only time until-' s: 'unbelievable!' r: 'did they reach liquid water?' v: 'not yet.'

o: 'this changes everything.' from her seat, octavia rises and confrontsthe pictured explorers giving many thumbs up. pink ice clouds hang about their snowmansmiles. o: 'it’s alive. wonder if anyone’s saidthe same about earth.' a nameless echo crashes through the cabin,rumbles the white kitchen floor and shakes the pasta pot off the stovetop, spilling itsguts with a crash. octavia leaps to the cabin. sam follows, locking the door behind her shut. valencia, marine and rosemary stare at eachother, all thinking in their animal brains, if this is the last moment they see each otheralive. is fearing death what it means to be

alive? rising from the sky-blue table, rosemary returnsto the green key. valencia switches the monitor to the cabin view: sam frantically searchesfor something as octavia stands at the edge of the cabin, a gray silhouette against thevoid. valencia kneels at the pasta pot and liftsit to the stovetop. r: 'what’s going on?' o: 'rogue asteroid.' m: 'what was hit?' s: 'there! valencia turn to channel l6.'

valencia follows the command and reveals agash in the laboratory, like squished clay. o: 'it must have affected our path.' s: 'we’ll have to recalibrate.' o: 'we?' s: 'i’ll recalibrate our position.' o: 'and i’ll check it. until then, i’mfinding this asteroid. there may be more.' octavia strides to her pilot’s chair andstrokes a few keys: a digital model of space projects the shuttle outlined neon purpleon black. red outlines distant objects, some ice, others rock. one red outline is spinning,revealing oblong and

scarred faces. octavia selects this asteroid; it freezes.from the red asteroid, a yellow-dotted path grows tracing its space and time, finally arriving at space shuttle hosea. the red dot breaks into many small dots. o: 'it’s breaking apart. the metals areweak. no chance of it riding our gravity back for another jab. i’m getting the time ofimpact now. sam? sam!' octavia presses the green key. o: 'hey everyone stop and look at me. it’sgoing to be okay. you are safe with me. now do your work!'

from the kitchen, marine enters her lab. the glass - protecting rows of vegetables,potted plants and cages of mice - is fractured like an icy firework, preserving the wound.looking beyond the cracked glass, she sees the hull of her lab shredded. sloshing through muddy puddles and bits ofglass, marine arrives at a green leafy thing under steel mice cages. the rodents squeal. marine moves the cages off the fallen basilplant. she examines the leaves, pressed on with fury butintact. "meditation part i: teeth" written by amandamichelle gomez/ performed by dani berkowitz

i thought the five dollar bill beneath mypillow was some kind of compensation from a fairy queen, who took my upper central incisortooth some time during the night. it made sense then: money for me, and a house madeof teeth for her. some tuesdays ago when i was six years oldand enrolled in mr. sam’s class, i fondled a tooth that would soon be a five dollar bill.as mr. sam read amelia bedelia to the class, i maneuvered my tongue around my cuspid. thetooth was just a couple of pushes away from being displaced from my mouth. “good said mr. rodgers.” read mr. sam.i feel stringy gum underneath my cuspid! “it’s time to hit the road, said mr. rodgers.”it’s just one stringy thread that’s forcing

us together — don’t you understand, gum,i need you to let go. “hit the road? asked amelia bedelia.” i’ve lost contact — damnmy itching thigh! “alright, she said. amelia bedelia picked up a stick as she hit theroad.” i think i got it. “mr. sam, mr. sam! my toothfell out!” the entire class turned and faced me; thesix year olds looked in awe at the yellow-tinted tooth hidden beneath gushes of blood. mr.sam excused himself and walked me to the nurse’s office, where he had me give my tooth to awoman with a bemused look on her face. “take good care of it, it’s worth dollars.” she sighed.

later that night, before going to sleep, iplaced my tooth underneath my dora the explorer printed pillow. i was almost too excited tofall asleep, but realized the fairy queen couldn't arrive if i were awake. so i slept. the next morning, i woke up and immediatelylooked underneath my pillow. normally i would find a five dollar bill tucked into the sideof the pillow — rolled up like a taco because the fairy was too fragile to unravel it herself.instead i saw the same yellow-tinted cuspid i had left the night before. i panicked. i didn’t know how to proceed.so naturally, i yelled for my mother who came

in almost immediately after my first cry. “i left my tooth under my pillow and thefairy didn’t come!” “you did?” my mother said perplexed. "i spy" written by lauren milne/ performedby allie gillman “let’s play i spy,” mymother suggests, as a way to combatthe engine rumbling our backsides into numbness. as if the highwaymedian strips weren’t built for cheap display,like the five dollar

mass-produced “artworks”they hang up in doctors’ offices andmotel 6 hallways. as if the one hundred-foot-widestretch of grass— so tall the neighbors would talk,if there were any— as if the grass and copseof five elm trees has been nurtured enoughto fill its hidden pockets with secrets forthe discerning eye to discover. if it had secretsi would hear them

whispering to me,like the birch trees do outside my bedroomwindow. but all i can hearis this engine rumbling my assand the occasional whoosh past my left earof cars out-speeding my father. it’s not that i scorn thesemedian strips. but mom’s got it all wrong.i want to explain to her that you neverdetach one flash of colorfrom a rainbow

or a monet. in this in-between streak,i see splotches of yellowand red amid a haze of greenreduced to one extended blur, framed for an instantin the car window,like time. "red genesis: act iii" written by david jacobmeltzer/ performed by kathy dorn, amanda michelle gomez, talia heller, ismail samir when the rich girl lets the poor boy drown at the kitchen monitor, valencia switchesthe surveillance to the lab. knocked down,

the view is tilted like a confused puppy.marine sweeps glass and mud into a pan. valencia presses the green key and gains marine’sattention. valencia: 'marine, talk to me.' marine: 'the mice have broken limbs-' v: 'who cares?' rosemary: 'is she crazy? how is our food?' m: 'fruits and vegetables are fine. i’mrattled. most of the self-replicating cultures are ruined. rosemary holds the sky-blue table.

marine picks up the fallen camera in the lab.like ice in warm water, the cracks twist like veins in glass. marine spins the camera toher sweating face. m: 'order from the lab: we’re on leftovers,after that freeze-dried rations till i fix this. r: 'oh!' v: 'i’d rather starve.' m: 'no you wouldn’t.' r: 'you need help?' m: 'not yet. tell me we’re back on course.' v: 'i’ll get back to you.'

valencia switches the screen to the cabin.octavia grips the armrests of her pilot’s chair. sam scribbles her pen on a yellow legalpad. v: 'what’s happening?' octavia: 'you tell me. life on mars-' r: 'the asteroid-' o: 'neutralizing. no problem. it’s beyondour field now. sam is working the long division. but we’re fine. love, love, love, love,love, love, love - life on mars. v: 'life on mars.' o: 'you think people on earth will throw aparade for plants on mars?

r: 'who doesn’t like a parade?' v: 'we don’t know it’s a plant.' r: 'there are so many creatures we have yetto meet on earth. on 9/11, yes everyone knows where they are - were. i was in antarctica,leading a diving team. uncharted waters beneath the ice. there is no rope nor harness. youeither find a way to the surface, or not. the creatures under the ice - their time isfrozen time. they see the ice like we see clouds - that is, if they see at all. in thedaylight it glows like stained glass. o: 'what kind of creatures?' r: 'you know the movie where the rich girllets the poor boy drown? their ship sinks?'

o: 'titanic.' v: 'titanic!' r: 'yes my friends. james cameron asked methe same question. what kinds of creatures live under antarctica. i imagine the samethat are frozen still on mars. starfish with long stringy tentacles. plants that walk theseafloor up on their roots. they are not martian. i have seen them. o: 'rose, your personal odyssey aside, havewe lost our food?' r: 'marine is repairing the lab. we will surviveall of us on one day of leftovers. then we ration space-grub.'

from her co-pilot seat, sam races to octavia.she reads her yellow legal pad, punching coordinates into the computer. in the kitchen, valenciaeyes the tomato stain on the white floor. o: 'each second we spend not readjusting ourtrajectory, the shuttle moves farther and farther off-course on every axis: x, y andz. so if we change course in one minute-' sam punches coordinates into octavia’s computerand then the green key. s: 'attention all crew, we are shifting course.all crew needs to find seating and fasten their safety belts. attention all crew-' among the mud and glass, marine straps herselfto a red chair. in the kitchen, valencia and rosemary take their seats. octavia’s eyesfix on the computer spinning seconds. the

purple outline of the shuttle display tumbles. sam and octavia strap themselves in. the shuttlequakes. sounds of silverware clink in cabinets. shoelace loops turns like clock hands. o: 'and we are back on track. anyone in danger?' rosemary and valencia escape their belts andhug. marine stares at the glass bits. octavia eyes sam. octavia releases the green key. o: 'co-pilot sam. sam and octavia unclick from their seats,meet before the starlit cabin window and shake hands.

o: 'good work. take a break.' sam: 'i’m not going anywhere.' sam returns to her chair and her needlework. in the kitchen, valencia scrubs the tomato-stainedfloor. rosemary reorganizes the scattered silverware. v: 'i’m just waiting for signs and symbols.a picture from mars of cave paintings. something. a stack of rock in a circle.' r: 'there’s still three minutes before wordof the ice-creature reaches earth. proud to be spacefaring.' "a day at the park" written by sycamore may/performed by mary krantz

jamaica plain is crowded with parks.solemn sidewalks sprout overgrown weeds, dandelion seeds scatter, blown awayby stark winds and eager lungs that jones for a lonely playground. tarmac heats discardeddiapers and crumbled ice cream cones. the mother’s belly swells. her sleek hairparted, fake nails against tanned skin look costume under the too bright sun.in one hand, she holds a scratched flip-phone. in the other a newport plumes,smoke stuck still in wavering heat. ash falls quickly, sweat succumbs to her womb. her children laugh and fight over swing setseats. brother and sister, five and seven. the older sister has tangled dark hairand wears a shirt that says “manure movers

of america.” she pushes her pudgy brotheraway. he runs past a woman in a yellow sunhat cuttingmelon for her baby and jumps towards monkey barshe can’t reach. a baby boy with blond curls and blue eyeswashes sticky fingers in a fountain. his diaper bulges under bent knees,he tries to catch gusts of wind, holding dead leaves under the fountain, watching in aweas they stick to his onesie the same way as the stickersfrom his coloring book. pudgy boy picks up a dixie cup stained withfruit punch, fills it with water from the fountain anddrinks indulgently.

baby blue eyes is scooped up by the womanwearing a yellow sunhat, she rubs sunscreen over his pale body, bending him over her knees.he grabs her iphone from her purse and flips through pictures of his favorite animals:giraffe, lion, elephant. he giggles maniacally, “hippopottimoose! hippopottimoose!”the woman corrects him, “no, that’s an elephant.”smiling, she wipes discarded sunscreen on the bench she shares with the pregnant woman,whose son approaches, waddling over with wet pants, he hears hismother's fuss over, “who will get the goddamned honda”tonight. his lips quiver in shame, his tight cargoshorts stained, hugging the muscles of his

stocky legs. “je-sus christ. can’t youtell me when you needa go to tha bathroom?” grunting, she tears off his shorts.he tries to grab onto her neck but she resists and his whole lower half now sheathed onlyin oversized, yellow-stained briefs falls to the sun-baked bench. the woman in the yellow sunhat searches herpurse for teething rings and snacks,handing baby blue a pretzel stick. she changes his diaper methodically. bewildered, the babywatches the clouds float by. his sunhat wearing mother looks down at heriphone, where breaking news tells of a pregnant woman who’s just had her baby stabbed outof her womb by a mother with two children.

a cloud engulfs the sun, the mother removesher yellow sunhat and brings ice cold hands to her sweating forehead. she chokes downa bottle of tepid water and grazes her baby’s cheek with shakingfingers. baby blue sucks on the pretzel stick, gratinghis only tooth against the grains of salt. pudgy boy has been pushed off the bench byhis mother, who takes a pair of men’s swim trunks outof her back pack. when she leans over to dress her son, the bags under her eyes dangle likeempty pillows. “stop crying.” a gust of wind blows fountain mist into brokenflower stems. everyone stops and closes their

eyes, except baby blue.tall grass sways, singing harmoniously to the turbulent flow of pudgy boy’s tears. big sis asks her mother, “what happened?”no answer. bored, big sis pokes her brother’s bulging stomach and he laughs. she offersher brother a cheese puff from a bag she stole from a disinterested day-camper.big sis smiles, steals gum from her mother’s bag.“go play on the swings,” their mother chafesand returns to her bench, her arm perched dangerously close to the hanging cargo shorts,folded over in shame. the smell of urine and tobacco slowlywaft to baby blue, who waddles back to the fountain.

"meditation part iii" written by amanda michelle gomez/ performed by david jacob meltzer i closed my eyes and let the thought of nothingpermeate my mind. i began to visualize nothing seeping into my external auditory canal, andmake its way to my cochlea for nerve contact. maybe if i saw nothing hit the spiral cavityin my inner ear, then maybe my nerve impulses can respond. my nose then started to itch. i scratched my left nostril, and then proceededto scratch other parts of my face. i started with my chin which inevitably led to otherparts of my jaw line, and somehow my hand made it’s way to my left shoulder. nothingleft somewhere between neck and collarbone.

“david, think of nothing — meditate!”i demanded myself. i thought maybe it’d be better to open myeyes and narrow in on a specific point as i meditate, as done in certain zen buddhistpractices. closed eyes supply an infinite amount of distraction points, i thought. openingmy eyes should certainly help. then eventually, when i can maintain focus with eyes wide open,i can channel that energy when my eyes are shut. so i looked straight ahead and narrowed inon a socket to the right of the alter. i saw nothing enter the scene through my peripheral.nothing walked in sneakily and slipped into the left socket hole. it would appear thatnothing looked to re-energize like myself,

clearly exhausted from earlier before. nothingdisappeared behind the wall of the socket. i became fixated on what happened on the otherside of the wall. clearly whatever happens behind that wall supplies a great source ofpower — it supplies enough energy to light this entire room! but i could only see whathappens from this side, and so i let go of that thought. time escaped me for awhile as i stared atthe manufactured crevise on the wall, but my tired eyes reminded me of time’s existence. my mind drifted back to measures. i measuredtime between now and when i began. i preoccupied my thought with these tangible results becausenothing felt too unbounded. and then i tried

once again to refocus: think about meditation, think about nothing.think about meditating, think about nothing. think about meditating, think about nothing.think about meditating, think about nothing. i hit a wall. i rose from the pillow, my only companionof the last forty five minutes. i stared at the bodhisattvas of compassion. i chanted her mantra almost every morning with the residents of shim gum do, the buddhist monastery i’velived in for four months. the mantra is suggested for people whose minds cannot be quiet oneminute or cannot concentrate for very long,

for people like me. thankfully, this bodhisattvais one that’s forgiving. so she shouldn’t be too disappointed by my failed attempt atmeditating. headmaster, on the other hand, not so much. i went to the kitchen, wherei knew i would find him, and shared with him my endeavors. “nothing is all i tried to think about,”i told him. “meditation and nothing — nothing and meditation — were all that consumedme and still i don’t think i meditated.” “you did meditation.you thought of nothing,” he said with his mouth full of rice. i looked back to my thoughts and realizedi did think of nothing, and nothing seemed

vibrant. the headmaster abruptly stopped stirring the miso seaweed soup and shouted back, "nothing! do not think." "red genesis: act iv" written by david jacobmeltzer/ performed by kathy dorn, amanda michelle gomez, talia heller, ismail samir words in water jugs sam enters the kitchen and sits at the sky-bluetable. valencia joins her. sam points to the frozen plant on screen. sam: 'ever see anything like that before?' valencia: 'rose says she has, diving withjames cameron. but that’s really her story.'

s: 'have you?' v: 'i did my master’s in egypt. my taskas a linguist was to identify objects on ancient maps. the pyramid was bigger than my apartmentbuilding. it was easy to get lost. one map led to a huge room full of water jugs. thewater of course had evaporated in the heat, but the pyramid ceiling condensed the vaporto a mist and dripped the water back down. some times drops would fall in the jugs. andthe cycle would start again. s: 'it’s the same water all this time.' v: 'it is. and i took one of these jugs outof the pyramid - at the time everyone thought i was crazy, and they still may - i put thejug on a potter’s wheel, okay?'

s: 'yes-' v: 'and at that moment, the jug stops beinga jug and became a vinyl record. you understand?' s: 'no. but make me.' v: 'the ancient potter engraving it with areed is not only recording the design he has in mind, but also the vibrations in the room.so for the first time, we heard a long dead language of ancient egypt spoken from thewater jug.' s: 'what did it say?' v: 'they were ordering lunch.' s: 'seriously?'

v: 'they were ordering lunch. fish. our potterstopped spinning the jug when someone mentioned beer.' s: 'you hope to find jugs on mars?' v: 'yes of course! or really any artifact.a circle of stones would be a revelation. of course, we would have to adjust the revolutionsper second to martian gravity to redo my experiment. my parents-' s: 'you have parents?' v: 'what do you mean?' s: 'i imagined you something like a root vegetablegrowing up. and then one day popped out of

the ground.' v: 'oh.' s: 'i mean it as a compliment. really. i can’timagine who your parents must have been.' v: 'but you can imagine them as radishes.' s: 'i’m an idiot. anyway, your parents.' v: 'you steered us clear from the abyss. you’renot an idiot.' s: 'it doesn’t matter.' v: 'how do you think this will change earth?ok so, martian creatures may not change how you like your eggs in the morning, but still-'

s: 'i think we’re standing on the cornerof understanding ourselves and the universe in a new way. the sun orbiting a flat earthwere two corners we’ve already turned. and now we can say of course! how stupid to thinkotherwise. and at this time as well - of course there is or has been life on mars. just asin pompeii. but now, at this corner, we can only stare intomystery.' v: 'but won’t this change god for peopleon earth?' s: 'god i’m sure had a hand in mars as well.' v: 'you know what i mean-' s: 'the human understanding of god. yes. ifmy life orbited a religion i would run to

it in this crisis of certainty. once there,it may be a beautiful celebration. perhaps life on mars - even if what remains are onlyfrozen fossils - is an example of how limited our thinking is, and that god’s creationis therefore beyond the limit of our minds. like with the vinyl jugs.' v: 'they weren’t made from vinyl-' s: 'i know. but the experience of discoveringsomething entirely new is but another drop of water into the ocean of our minds.' v: 'does that mean i’m not special?' s: 'how can you ask me that?'

v: 'i feel i can ask you everything.' s: 'oh! wait.' sam races away, exiting the kitchen. she returnswith valencia’s completed afghan. swirls of color braid in thick yarn. valencia bringsa corner to her cheek. v: 'here, i’ll show you where it’ll bein my room.' valencia feels between her fingers, the stringyyarn in her lap. valencia rises and leads sam away. rosemary emerges from the walk-in freezer. r: 'sam you wanted to see the inventory?'

rosemary finds no one and calls for dinner. in the kitchen, marine and rosemary serveand plate lasagna to the sky-blue table. marine: 'essentially, it is a pig that wantsto be eaten. instead of slaughtering a pig who in its last moments fears oblivion. thisengineered pig will be aware of its death as a wonderful sacrifice to a godly life-cycle.' octavia enters. o: 'i’m so happy pigs are off my menu.' rosemary: 'oh! do you know michelangelo?'' o: 'not personally. i’ve never been to italy-'

r: 'michelangelo, laying with his crazy headagainst wooden scaffolding of the sistine chapel - his brain anchored to his back - askedhis food servants to only bring him bacon. breakfast, lunch and dinner. m: 'how do you know this?' r: 'i don’t. it’s a joke. what i meanis not matter how lovely something is, if you are hungry, you should eat it.' o: 'even if it is your wife?' m: 'or son?' r: 'listen, my friends. i’m not talkinggreek tragedy here. i’m talking real life.

there is a threshold for hunger, where inyour mind, there is no society, only organized food. s: 'is she talking about bacon again? i’vegot to hand it to you, for a genius you are totally crazy.' v: 'she told me that during restoration workon the sistine chapel, forensic scientists identified pig grease everywhere. rosemarytold me, ’that man loved bacon. or perhaps a larger statement was being made.’ o: 'rose, you’re absolutely right.' the crew faces octavia. rose stops servingdinner. o: 'no not about this bullshit. right nowi am so hungry

that i may eat you. so let’s do this. marine-' m: 'if! okay? all is right? this will be ourfinal dinner together before we land on mars. it has been an honor to work and live withyou beautiful humans. even if the line between genius and psychopath blurs at octavia’shunger or rose’s conspiracy theories. tonight, to octavia: a great pilot and to life on mars.' the crew cheers, drinks, and eats. r: 'three years together, i saved this recipefor our last supper. my great-grandmother’s lasagna. she was born and died in the samebed in the same house. and here her lasagna is, now in the gravity field of mars.'

"between lines" written by lauren milne/ performedby corey ruzicano running my thumb along shuffled book corners,i reflect upon absences. the absence of inspiration,the absence of my words from two-thirds of these lined pages. the pockets of air between leaves of paper.that whiffle out a sound like hummingbird wingsas my thumb on page-edges separates and reunites the still-blank leaves.the paper’s effort to force air out. the hollow that forms a cup,a room, a “u.” that makes possible 'cup'and 'touch' and 'vacuum.'

i could fill this cupand vanish any form of emptiness. but a cup needs concavityto bear that name. my hands need gaps to claim fingers. i’m more familiar with the spacesbetween my fingerprints, the unprintables, the crevices un-inkedthat allow for my identity. after all, my finger-gaps equip meto hold a pen, and with the pen i can create another inked identity. without that,i’m left looking at my fingerprints, wishing instead i could name myself with words.but for now, the imprint is blank, the pen is full, the hand is still,the inspiration flits out of sight.

"fated mistake" written by sycamore may/ performedby dani berkowitz india and i find one of her old white bedsheets and dye it. we are in her back yard and falling pollen mixes with the bright bluesand browns and pinks in bubbling buckets of dye. we stretch the sheet like a trampolineand vivid splotches swirl across. it’s as if our pupils have developed more color receptors.browns bolder than tree bark, pinks and oranges juicier than citrus. dye dripping, drawingnew veins on our arms. we leave the sheet outside and let it dry. we wash our bodies,the dye melting into our skin, and i tell her i will return the next day to pick itup. she asks if she should run it through the wash since the smell of dye is overwhelmingand i want to use the sheet for decoration.

i tell her that she should. i come back thenext day and the dye on the sheet is muted from machine washing. all of the colors havefaded together. they look more like birthmarks, paled from age, distant craters embracing.i think of leaf fossils fading on sidewalk. she says we can fix it. we take bleach toit, spray it and slosh it over the stretched out sheet. our minds race the effects of thebleach and we feel despondent. in a few hours we see the results. the bleach has turnedthe sheet completely back to white in some places. parts of the green painted porch underneathare paled by bleach. 'oh no.' she twists a ringlet of flaxen hair in one finger and gets a briefcaseof inks from her father’s studio. we splatter the ink around the bleached spots. she getssome acrylic paints from her room. gold and

black, beige and white. squeezing the tubesonto a hard shell of plastic, we paint thin mountains like wavelengths across the sheet.then we move our wrists in circular formations to make individual planets. the dye is nolonger distinguishable, but that is no longer the point. we have created our own sparklingnebula. this mystical fabric hangs off of india’s porch, blown dry by the wind. the grassunderneath eats gleaming drops of color. the sun embraces our stained hands. light shiningthrough the sheet illuminates the dyes hidden underneath. in the darkness, it’s a secretonly india and i know. "candle wax" written by sycamore may/ performedby mary krantz wax escapes flame, pooling around unwatchedcandles. heat mutates solid to liquid. what

was once a candle is now a puddle – pooling,dripping, sticking. it suffocates its victim – a finger – molding to its form. melting,preserving it in a catatonic state, an impenetrable shell. “don’t get wax on the coffee table!”my uncle’s hair has started to turn gray. he has a defined nose and adam’s apple, sharpfeatures that delineate his body like a constellation. his skin is rusted, worn from sun, the textureof sand paper. his crows feet crease when he says, “it will be impossible to get offthe wood!” he struggles opening a bottle of port wine.he drinks a goblet-full every night after dinner. tonight he watches nervously, pickinglint off the couch, as my cousins and i melt

old candle wax over a fire and lay out sheetsof newspaper to catch dribbles. pinks and blues become purple atop the flame and combineinto a metal bowl. my uncle warns us again and tells us to be patient so that the candlesform a cylinder. he spins his wrists slowly, with the unfaltering precision of his instrumentalist’sfingers. this is how we should spin the wax. our eyes roll in sync. he pours himself anothergoblet of wine, watching us play with the fire, poking and prodding the burning login the furnace. my two cousins have done this before so ilet them lead the way. though i am eighteen, i have never made candles before. the discardedcandle wax becomes liquid before our eyes. it settles over as a film, the harder clumpslook like icebergs melting. emanuel’s blonde

hair hasn’t yet turned brown like his olderbrother’s. he stirs the mixture with a wooden spoon and when he pulls the spoon out, ithas a coat of wax over it – a second skin. it is cool enough to leave an imprint withoutburning a finger, but not cool enough to crack under pressure. we take yarn and fold it inhalf, as if to make a necklace. catching the hot wax with his new skeleton, emanuel dripswax over his exposed thighs. he cries out in pain, forgetting what’s in his hand.wax splatters on a tile. we all remain silent so as not to alert uncle, who is on his thirdgoblet of port. our giggles nearly escape our closed noses. the first layer is complete.the second layer comes only after the first one cools. this is the rule. our arms becometired and the hot wax threatens to betray

the cylindrical form, we so badly want themto conform. they look more like monster fingers than candles you might see at a church orrestaurant. the dribbling is explosive; candle wax splatters on the floor tiles. our handsbecome tired from holding the yarn, which becomes heavier with every layer. my uncleis furious but we are all laughing, lighting our monster fingers and walking in a procession,a marriage of fingers to wax. "red genesis: act v" written by david jacobmeltzer/ performed by kathy dorn, amanda michelle gomez, talia heller, ismail samir inside looking out rubber tire treads spin over martian ice likebikes on white wrapping paper. space shuttle hosea landed on mars with no problems. thereafteroctavia napped - something she sacrificed

in her three year vigil as pilot. rosemary was thrilled to use what resembleda proper toilet. marine was busy transplanting plants and organs,splicing dna and combining forces with martian greenhouse workers. the night before landing on the northern polarice cap of mars, valencia asked sam why she made an afghan for each crew member, but nother herself. sam searched the floor for an answer when and valencia kissed her, lockedthe door and brought her to see mars from her window, as beautiful as herself. theywere both late for dinner and the crew suspected why. nothing of this event was spoken.

on mars, valencia clutched her husband, martiandirector of interplanetary linguistic research like a young orangutan. he drove the snowmobile. sam could not see the director’s face underhis thick goggles, frozen beard and sub-zero coat. she would not have looked if given thechance. sam clutched her own snowmobile driver, asilent man who - the directer had explained - had taken a vow of silence after seeingwhat lies in the frozen cavern. the rust-orange sky gave the martian ice asoft pink glow like the stains brought on by the cat in the hat. the director explained that volcanoes don’talways explode in the way you may think: sometimes

gas cannot burst through the magma and findsanother way through weak rocks. this explosion caused the cavern in question. the two snowmobiles skidded to a stop. a three-storyflower of ice bent petals of rock. this was the opening. the director said this was oneof thousands of volcanic caverns. this opening spurred bees in the imagination of sam, butshe took on the silent man’s vow, out of uncertainty. snow crunched under footsteps. since the nightbefore with mars and the big everything, valencia had not looked at sam again. sam realizedshe had never been further from home. down in the cavern, rows of icy teeth linedthe ceilings. the thickness of the roof was

reflected in the sunlight, glowing throughlike stained glass. the ceilings sloped from twenty feet to five and then one. crawling, sam spat out mouthfuls of snow fromthe silent man’s kicking feet. this tunnel of frozen water ended; the ceiling rose andhere was an american flag, staked into the cavern floor. there was no wind. this huge room fed to severalicy corridors, that was clear. but the director saluted the flag and continued to a smalldark tunnel. valencia saluted the flag, as did the silentman. no one stopped to see sam look at the limp cloth and pass on by.

flashlights bounced off ancient ocean walls.the silent man lifted sam to her feet and shined a light at the wall. engraved in the ice with surreal clarity wasa diagram, perhaps of a solar system, perhaps an atom, perhaps both: spheres linked themselvesin ovals around a massive sphere. sam approached this wall and shone her flashlight in theengravings; she saw no end. the director cleared his throat, all flashlightsspotted him. a long, pointed fish-like thing was frozen in his arms. valencia nearly smashedit with her flashlight. it was a horror, with many eyes like bullet wounds in flesh. at last, the director turned, placed the horroron a massive shelf and climbed up three icy

steps in long rectangular prisms. the crewfollowed. blinding light reflected off stacks of metalsheets, each the size of a pillow. the director presented a sheet to valencia, the silentman and to sam. printed on the sheets were engravings no largerthan the freckles on octavia’s nose. each sheet was fully printed, both sides had nomargins. valencia turned to sam; the silent man pushedsam aside and took the lead as the crew exited the site. the director followed, then valencia,then sam. carrying these tablets in the belly of mars,valencia slipped sam a penned note from her yellow legal pad. it read, ’wait and see.’

the end

Coloring Pages Of Barbie A Fairy Secret