Kartika_Issue15

ISSUE 15 | SPRING 2013
The other three fiction pieces are told in the first person, but explore their
characters’ struggles in vastly different ways. Kaitlin Solimine’s “Thoughts
of Sinking” is told in the voice of Lao Chen, the husband to a woman reeling
from chemotherapy’s aftermath. As we follow the couple through their
daughter’s diving meet, Solimine uses Lao Chen to extrapolate on the largest
life questions: “What is life for? Why love? Why die?” She peppers her story
with a number of quotes, my favorite belonging to poet Han Shan, who said,
“Tell families with silverware and cars: what’s the use of all that noise and
money?” Solimine’s story, an excerpt from a novel, is the longest fiction
read, but embodies the wisdom of someone who had to become a certain,
tried adult before she could confront such giant themes.
Wah-Ming Chang’s “Heartbreak” explores the healing process of the
narrator accepting the suicide of Leslie Cheung, an actor. The short piece
conveys this jarring emotional journey by refusing to reveal. It is distilled,
keeps the worst emotions at bay and requires the presence of a third
character—a stranger who remains anonymous as “the waiter”—for the
narrator to process the suicide. Chang’s carefully crafted portrait gifts us
with a uniquely reserved narrator, unwilling to break down while clearly
being desperate for closure.
Anu Kandikuppa makes a brilliant choice in “Skin Deep” by using a series
of letters to introduce us to the obsessive nature of an Indian mother, Manju
Nohria, who remains blinded to her own prejudice regarding skin color.
Although Nohria spirals into an almost desperate caricature of a woman with
deep-seated racist ideas, Kandikuppa expertly reports Manju Nohria’s
insecurities and issues without providing a solution or didactic moral or the
author’s own opinions. She remains true to Nohria’s sentiments.
I selected five poems by three poets for the poetry section because I admired
their ability to make confident declarations in emotionally vulnerable ways.
All five poems require the poets to have walked through certain fires before
arriving at this place of honest reflection.
Henry Leung’s “Portrait of Anonymity” and “Quarantine” are two poems
with wildly different subject matters—post-heartbreak and post-apocalypse,
respectively—but share a similar sobriety and gorgeous lyricism in their
approach to the aftermath of dark times. The soul-shifting lines I am clinging
to this season come from “Quarantine”: “Mountains heave up; I can walk /
over anything if I don’t stop.” As the poetry editor, I am honored to give you
these poems in the heart of winter. To show you, as much as I need to show
myself, what is possible even when “pain travels through me / at three
hundred feet per second.”
7