©K. Andrew Turner
It’s here. This issue has been a long time coming (sorry it’s a little bit later than usual).
First, I want to say thank you to my editors for helping out so much this past issue: I couldn’t have done it without you. Second, to the contributors for making this issue so fantastic.
You can pick up a copy of Volume 2, Issue 4 here.
Keiko Amano
Tamasaburou Kitayama ©2014
I came to the U.S. for the first time in June 1970. I wished I would be able to speak English in no time. I was nineteen. Shortly after, I attended Palomar Junior College in San Marcos. The following is an excerpt from one of my stories. This day, I was in the cafeteria waiting for my turn to place an order.
“Next! What would you like, young lady?” a waitress says to me, holding a yellow pencil in her left hand.
“Hamburger and 7-up, please,” I say.
“Would you like a hamburger or a cheeseburger?” she says with a broad smile.
The waitress looks like Alice, the housekeeper of the Brady Bunch. Over the counter, a male cook picks up a stainless-steel spatula and turns over hamburger patties. A sizzling sound echoes. He puts a piece of bright yellow cheese on top of each patty. They look yummy. Those hamburgers probably come with cheese or without cheese.
“Hamburger and cheese and 7-up, please,” I say.
“Do you want a hamburger or cheeseburger?” she says looking into my eye.
I pursed my lips. My heart begins pounding. I don’t turn back, but people are behind me. I have to hurry up. Maybe I should use the word “with” instead of “and” because a piece of cheese will melt and stick with a patty like a mother holding her child’s hand.
“Hamburger with cheese, please,” I say.
“Do you want a hamburger?” the waitress says making her chin double.
People must be staring at me.
“A cheeseburger?” she says without changing her tone.
“Yes.”
I wonder what difference a cheeseburger and a hamburger with cheese make. I can recognize burger and cheeseburger as a pair, and hamburger and cheesehamburger can also be a pair, but the pair of hamburger and cheeseburger throws me off. I used to think English was logical. Maybe her mind works in a different way because she is left handed. I hadn’t had any friends or acquaintances that used their left hand except my grandfather. My grandfather used a pair of scissors with his left hand and wrote using his right hand.
“What would you like to drink, dear?” the waitress says.
“7-up, please,” I say.
“What?” she says.
“7-up,” I say louder.
“Coke?”
“Yes.”
I wish I would be able to pronounce 7-up like Americans. I’m disappointed and frustrated, but I don’t know what to do about it.
❖
The scene above happened almost 40 years ago. The following scene is from March 2009 at the Subway restaurant in San Dimas. I made an order for a six-inch combo with Italian herb bread.
“No pickles, please,” I say to the young worker.
“Would you like jalapeños?” she says to me.
“No, no jalapeño, please,” I say.
“Would you like pepperchinos?” she says picking up a few strips of yellow pickles. She almost drops them on my sandwich.
“No, no. No pickles, please.”
She drops the yellow strips back to the container. I had the similar conversation at the place every time I went in to place my order. I chatted with most of the workers there. They recognized my face but not my preference for no pickles. One day, I went there late. I was the only customer. I thought this was a good opportunity to explain myself if they asked me about pickles again.
“You don’t like pickles, do you?” another worker says to me with a smile.
“I love pickles, but lately I can’t eat too sour foods. It bothers my skin,” I say. “Please, no pickles.”
“Okay,” he says, smiling. “Do you want jalapeños? Jalapeño is not pickles.”
“No jalapeño. Pickles mean processed vegetables with either salted water or vinegar,” I say and point to the bin of fresh cucumbers, “That’s fresh cucumber slices, but the other is pickled cucumber. You know what I mean? Those jalapeños or pepperchinos are also pickles.”
We went into more detail about pickles, and we burst into laughing. We began using the word “family.” The family of pickles. I thought I finally achieved my goal in our communication. I was happy.
But life is not easy. My next visit there, my situation went back to the way it used to be. A server asked me about pickles again.
Going back to cheeseburger, to me, the word connects to a brilliant comedian, John Belushi. In the television program “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!” he played a cheeseburger cook. He shouted, “Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger!” no matter what customers, other cooks, or waitresses said. I love those sketches and the character.
Almost forty years has passed since my cheeseburger incident. My language development was long and slow, but I thought I made my progress. But the pickle incident sent me back to my original question. How do native English speakers think behind their words? It is still a mystery.
Stephanie Barbé Hammer
1.
whatever you want to say about Chopin —
he was gay or he wasn’t or he just didn’t
do sex because he was too frail —
he made his best work at George Sand’s house;
he sat at the piano at her place in Nohant
and the notes fell out of him, they streamed
down the staircase
as painters and prostitutes drank their tea.
2.
I can hear the music, Delacroix said. I can hear
him practicing. D. painted in the library while
in another room George Sand was writing
those terrible potboilers to keep the house paid for and the
food coming in – she was the guy in this gang, in
case you didn’t know that, the person making the money
and sweating the cash flow —
and there was the 19th century unspooling all around them with
its uprising disappointments its flags and
flaneurs — so
3.
when you think of love and when you think of revolution
relaxing romanticism sex and death
you have to think about his notes spilling out through her salon doors
leaking down through the roof and windows — impossible
fantastical
progressions
4.
for example, the Polonaise in A flat major – the “heroic” —
Chopin wrote it in Nohant
how ridiculously hard it is
to play
yet he threw it together like it was nothing, performing it
just for friends –
(he hated big audiences [he was shy]).
5.
there he is upstairs: that queer (?) going-to-die-young genius
doing things with the piano that no one has ever even thought to do –
so incredible that people hear the work online now and do wild
runs up and down the
scales of their emotions, texting
I love it what is it, who’s chopin and what’s a polonaise? an instrument or a song or what? it makes me do my homework. it makes me have an orgasm, I listen to it over and over again – it makes me so happy –
all coming from that house in Nohant.
6.
That’s when you realize that
genius is about the people who take care of you:
you can make anything
tackle anything –
the hardest art is a pleasure if you’re upstairs from your friends and lovers
knowing they are listening
but not too hard, not expecting, making their own
explorations
while some beloved person – just as creative —
sits at a desk churns out words
pays the bills.
Stephanie Barbé Hammer has published fiction in The Bellevue Literary Review, Pearl, and Hayden’s Ferry Review. A 4-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize, she also writes poetry; her 2014 collection, How Formal? is available from Spout Hill Press.
Purchase the issue here: http://eastjasminereview.com/issues/issues/volume-2-issue-1/
(the following review will also be published in Volume 2, Issue 1)
John Brantingham’s The Green of Sunset is a beautiful collection of prose poetry. Brantingham explores the human psyche to depths we, ourselves, almost refuse to acknowledge until present with truths we prefer to not think about. And that is exactly what he does. Yet he treats each subject and each emotion with the utmost respect and humanity. The only judgment he makes, if any, is on his own follies and we, as readers, can learn to laugh at our own.
The collection is a series of breathless poems, power beyond the measure of each. He explores a wide range of humanity and human experience from youth to loss, people in relation to nature, memory, and even briefly a body swap all with deceptively simple language.
… but I wasn’t afraid because my mother was framed in the back door, calling to me, and that fundamentalist faith I had that as long as she was there even God couldn’t reach out his hand and strike me down for the sins written on my childhood soul.
from “Mythology”
Brantingham is a master of the written word—each choice is deliberate and reflects the meaning of the whole poem and collection, building into a crescendo for each ending. There are no punches pulled and nowhere left to hide from confronting his reality—a reality we all know too well. His personal reflections are those we recognize as fleeting moments in our own lives, these deep secrets we try to hide from are brought to life on the page.
Anders is probably the first poet I’ve ever known who distrusts academia and teachers and schools and education in general. …. He tells me about why he didn’t finish high school, about the physics teacher who belittled him in front of his friends. He tells me about how when I was in college, he was bumming his way through Europe, Asia, India, Africa, and South America. …. He’s like so many of the students I’ve seen, feeling like outsiders, being told that they don’t belong.
from “Up Here in Rural Canada”
The Green of Sunset is a collection to turn to at any moment, to read and re-read until the pages are worn. You may or may not find comfort within the book, but you will find parts of you that you didn’t know had wandered off.
That’s right! Submissions are now open for Vol 1, Iss 3. Submit online here. The window for submissions is from Aug. 8 to Oct. 15. Worry not! We’ll let you know when the deadline is approaching.
And if submissions are open … that means we have Vol 1, Iss 2 out! You can buy it right here on our webpage under “Issues.”
Have a great rest of your summer. We’ll see you soon.
When faced with the dilemma of how to travel abroad alone, Sara McBride decided on an unusual solution: gingerbread men. Experience these little delights in an unforgettable journey around Italy. Below are photographic accompaniments to her story “Bake Me A Travel Companion” in our first issue. What more could you want with adventure, travel, wine, food and music? Faux cookie companions.
Venice, Piazza San Marco. Notice the resentful look in the eyes of the pigeon on the right.
Rome, Pantheon, Mr. Happy was knocked to the ground and his eye broke off. But honestly, those fountain ledges are quite slippery.
Florence, Santa Croce Cathedral, a pavement tomb of a Renaissance warrior takes a bite of the poor defenseless gingerbread man.
Venice, Mr. Happy enjoys the views of the Grand Canal. The photographer almost fell into the canal setting up this shot!
Venice, a romantic dinner with Mr. Happy at a French cafe with wine and candlelight while being serenaded by an opera singer.
Rome, Palantine Hill, a fountain without ripples. Notice the fish are on the same plane as Mr. Angry. That’s because he’s underwater.
How do you read our wonderful magazine on your e-reader? Or on the computer? We give you three file types: .mobi (for Kindle), .epub (for many devices) and .pdf (for computer and e-reader devices—we recommend .mobi or .epub for e-readers as they have more native functionality). If you already know how to get files to your e-reader, you are good! If not, we have some simplified instructions below. You can also use google to help if our links are not clear enough.
For PC:
For Mac:
For Kindle (.mobi file):
For iPad/iPhone (.epub file):
For Nook (.epub file):
For Kobo (.epub file):
