ISSUE II

ISSUE II 3 

LETTER FROM 

THE EDITORS 

Dear Reader: 

I was first brought onto this project in July of 2019, right as Stephanie and Rukan were 

getting the idea off the ground. At the start, we simply had an idea we continued to build 

on, and now, a whole year later, I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to see our cohort 

develop into this issue. My personal artistic vision has been shaped by this journal, from 

all the artists, writers, and creators who have trusted us with their pieces, to watching 

our team develop the many aspects of Sienna Solstice. At the start of this issue timeline 

I was reminded of the opening lines from Marge Piercy’s poem To be of use, “The people 

I love the best / jump into work head first / without dallying in the shallows”. Despite the 

hitches in the road this team has jumped into work headfirst, and I am eager to share 

the result with you. 

—Lea 

When the editorial team was initially developing our journal identity, we didn’t have 

many questions answered. We weren’t sure how long this project would last, nor did we 

know much about running a journal as complex as Sienna Solstice. Our team of four was 

propelled only by our diversified passions, unified by a desire to explore, and ultimately 

dissolve, this delineation between the arts and sciences. 

Looking back on our 2019 selves, we’ve come a long way, not only developing our mission 

and identity, but also our team. As several of you know, we’ve brought on a few 

more curious spirits to help us work through Sienna Solstice’s inherent dynamism and 

innovation. Expanding our team inspired within us a new commitment to consistently 

produce pioneering content within our antidisciplinary niche, and our ISSUE II cohort is 

a testament to this promise. We hope their work surprises you as much as it did us. 

Among this issue’s themes were beautiful juxtapositions of interconnectedness and solitude, 

inception and destruction, and arguably the most striking: love and withdrawal. In 

this new life in which cities are burning and the physical divides between us are growing, 

we hope this issue reminds you of what once was—and what will be again. 

Thank you for celebrating with us this Fall Equinox. 

Warmly, 

Kate, Lea, Rukan, & Stephanie

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAGE 6 

yasmeen 

Safia Elhillo 

An Interview with Safia Elhillo 

Sienna Solstice Editors 

PAGE 10 

The Last September Equinox 

Elliott Voorhees 

PAGE 12 

This Poem Has Already 

Forgotten Its Name 

Darnell “DeeSoul” Carson 

Haptic 

Ibuki Kuramochi 

PAGE 14 

Moving City 

Emily Ren 

PAGE 16 

Dancing in the Demolition 

Site of My Childhood Home 

Anne Kwok 

Peel 


PAGE 18 

a rant 2... whom 

“ma.jo.me” (Matt Mett.) 

PAGE 20 

ochre solitude 

Jackson Forte 

after you showed me that video 

about gravity 

Blake Levario 

saltwater 

Melissa Skowron 

PAGE 22 

Flower shopping with 

Frida 

Emily Ahmed TahaBurt 

Plantshoot 1 & 5 

Milena Correia 

PAGE 24 

If a Virus Could Sing 

Markus J. Buehler 

PAGE 28 

summer on the taxi 

Esther Kim 

See Me in Your Dreams 

Geneviève Dumas 

Postcards from Portland 

Matthew Kaminski 

PAGE 30 

huevos con tortilla 

Andrés González-Bonillas

PAGE 32 

Divine Myth 

Smiti Mittal 

PAGE 34 

Alexander Hamilton 

Rohit Ghusar 

DUM-E: Generalizaton Assembly 

based on Human Attention 

Justin Lin 

PAGE 42 

A resistance plan was hastily 

drawn up. 

S. Cearley 

If Only We Could See Past 

the Dust 

Eric Kwok 

PAGE 44 

Tigris 

Gilare Zada 

PAGE 36 

Shelf Cloud: a caution 

Jasmine Flowers 

The Wrath of Poseidon 

Eric Huang 

PAGE 38 

Therapeutic Lantibiotic Delivery 

and Functionalized Antimicrobial 

Surfaces... 

Neil Kadian 

untitled 

Lisa Yang 

Some Things Remain the 

Same 

Andrea Salvador 

Exploring the Performance of 

Deep Residual Networks in 

Crazyhouse Chess 

Gordon Chi 

Interconnected 

Anashrita Henckel 

Developing Coupled Physical- 

Biogeochemical Models of 

Mesozooplankton... 

Patrick Kim 

PAGE 46 

Your time is coming 

Geneviève Dumas 

Tonality Spectrum 

Ian Fleck 

PAGE 40 

we need space 

& 

a coming of age but, irl: 

respectability politics 

Osadolor Osawemwenze 

PAGE 48 

The Anatomy 

Eva Ojeda F. 

Hello My Name Is 

Daniel Han 

PAGE 50 

Artist & Author Biographies

6 SIENNA SOLSTICE 

yasmeen 

Safia Elhillo 

Source: Poetry (July/August 2018) 

i was born 

at the rupture the root where 

i split from my parallel self i split from 

the girl i also could have been 

& her name / easy / i know the story 

all her life / my mother wanted 

a girl named for a flower 

whose oil scents all 

our mothers / 

petals wrung 

for their perfume 

i was planted 

land became ocean became land anew 

its shape refusing root in my fallow mouth 

cleaving my life neatly 

& my name / taken from a dead woman 

to remember / to fill an aperture with 

cut jasmine in a bowl 

our longing 

our mothers’ 

wilting 

garlands hanging from our necks


An Interview With Safia Elhillo 

While you were explaining your poem “yasmeen” in The Poetry Magazine Podcast, we 

came to understand the poem as recounting three separate timelines: one where the 

speaker is Yasmeen, one where she’s Safia, and one where she has to live with both, 

and neither is extricable from her identity. Why did you think a contrapuntal poem was 

the best way to present these three timelines? 

SAFIA ELHILLO: I was thinking a lot about inherited form, in general, at the time of 

writing that poem, and in the case of this particular poem, the form preceded the 

content. I’d never written a contrapuntal before, and I’d been reading Olio by Tyehimba 

Jess, which is full of these wild contrapuntals that you can read backwards 

and upside-down and all sorts of unfair stuff. The summer before, at Cave Canem, 

he’d given a talk about his process and walked us through a bunch of his contrapuntals. 

I had not been particularly excited about form in that way until I saw him 

take such ownership of a form that I think people of color in general—Black people 

in particular—have been left out of the conversation about some of those older 

forms. So, to see him achieve beyond fluency in the form made me really want to 

write a contrapuntal. 

I would say that the process of building a poem is measuring out each word and 

each line, and [writing a contrapuntal poem] takes that process and magnifies it 

because the line not only has to work as a line, it also has to work as half of another 

line. So, it really was the longest I’ve ever spent writing such a short poem. So, the 

poem was made from scratch in that way, where I had to go into it not knowing what 

the poem was going to be and go to meet the form and see what came out. 

I was thinking a lot about this idea of an alternate self. There’s a Ladan Osman interview, 

where she talks about the particular diasporic experience of always having 

to contend with an alternate version of yourself and using that alternate version of 

yourself as a metric to measure your actual self against. Like, if I’d only grown up 

back home all this stuff I think is wrong with me would not be wrong with me. If I’d 

only grown up back home, my ends wouldn’t be split. In hindsight, it is an idea that 

makes a lot of sense for the contrapuntal form. I am not generally so “woo-woo” 

about the process of making a poem—it’s work. I have to sit and think and do, but 

sometimes, there is an element that is beyond something I can language and this 

was that—where in hindsight, when the poem was done, I was like, “Oh. Okay, of 

course. This is the only poem this could have been.” But at the time, I knew what I 

was doing, and also, I didn’t know what I was doing. I was so occupied with fulfilling 

the exercise that I almost didn’t notice the poem that was being made.


Earlier, you mentioned how you’re “limited by your particular obsessions”. One of 

the things I noticed is you have quite an “obsession” with ampersands, and you 

utilize them a lot in your poetry. Could you expand more on your attraction and 

utilization of ampersands within your poetry? 

SAFIA ELHILLO: On the most basic level, the ampersand is me trying to write 

an Aracelis Girmay poem every time and failing. She also has a poem called 

“Ode to the Ampersand”, but what I love, just on a technical level, when I am 

making a poem, is I’m always trying to use as few words as possible to articulate 

the thing. At the end of the day, the ampersand is very economical. It 

is one symbol that takes up the space and the meaning that, otherwise, you 

would have to have a whole other word in there—three more letters [and] this 

much more space on the line. That feels cluttered to me. I like this neat, little 

bundle that contains a word in it without going through the trouble of spelling 

out a word. 

You once said in a previous interview the best advice you ever received was in 

the form of a Toni Morisson quote saying “If there’s a book you want to read and it 

hasn’t been written yet then you must write it.” What would you say to young writers 

entering a world that feels everything has either been written or is too niche 

to be read? 

SAFIA ELHILLO: I don’t believe anything is too niche. I don’t think there’s such 

a thing. Nothing is universal. I think the only thing that is universal is specificity, 

so we might as well write [about] our particular situations because 

that hasn’t been written before. Even if there was a book that was written by 

someone who was not me, whose main character was Safia and she was Sudanese-American 

and she was a Sagittarius and 5’3 and born in Maryland. I still 

would have something different to say. Because all of that stuff is just identity, 

[and] identity is central to a lot of those questions surrounding representation 

in literature but it’s not the end of the project. Just because there’s a book with 

a Sudani girl in it doesn’t mean that the book is written. I think that’s when 

representation politics fails us—when representation is seen as the end of the 

project. But it’s not. There are still things that I have experienced, that I have 

observed, that I have felt, that intersect with my identity and also intersect with 

my geography and my astrological sign and the weather and where I am in my 

menstrual cycle. All of that is the alchemy that makes the voice and the story. 

It is niche. Everything is niche. Even those old canonical, white men eating 

an apple in a forest—that’s niche. That’s a subculture that I’m forced to get to 

know because that is literally niche. I’ve never met those types of people. That 

does not mirror the culture I grew up in. So, I think there are ways that stories 

and cultures and perspectives that are not straight cis, white, old men are 

made to feel that they’re niche because they’re not as historically cannonized. 

But that really was an oversight on the part of the canon and the cannon is 

lucky that we’re trying to correct that.


antidisciplinary 

(adjective) 

• • • 

A rejection of the idea of the “interdisciplinary”, 

as disciplines are not only interconnected, but 

interdependent. 

Wherein no system of thought can contain the 

fullness of the human experience.


The Last 

September Equinox 

Giorgio De Chirico, The Song of Love, 

1914. Oil on canvas. 

I lean in adobe 

archways that cast 

vaulted shadows a / cross the pavement, 

where you rest your marble 

coiffure on humid clay. 

unfurling 

raucous curls 

waving against / the thick sky dripping. 

I chisel away 

at your pupils / expanding 

grey iris eclipsed 

with an empty / new moon I need 

to fill with silver 

until eyelids 

sink 

lashes brushing wispy clouds 

off the horizon 

of your cheeks. 

My tongue traces your broken lobe 

with whispers 

Can a person be 

an equinox? 

Elliott Voorhees 

The setting sun spills into 

your contours / crisp, 

luminous geometry. 

Orange cheekbones and crimson lips 

relaxing into the dying 

afternoon / purpling the desert sky / my dark gaze 

on the edge of the world 

there’s a runaway train 

singing / you to sleep.

ISSUE II 

11 

Photography by Luis Peña

12 

This Poem Has Already 

Forgotten Its Name 

Darnell “DeeSoul” Carson 

It has always been something of an amnesiac. 

When this poem wakes up, it stares at the ceiling 

until it can remember what it was getting up for. 

It takes long showers and thinks it is lost at sea. 

A minute from now, it will not even remember 

how it began, metaphor or mortality. 

Even now the moment is fading, 

so it finds the closest conceivable thing 

that can still hold its attention: 

the condensing shower steam, 

the water drop descending down 

the plastic curtain, how it 

hesitates before joining the 

pool at the bottom, how 

it knows that the union will 

make it so indistinguishable, 

so common, so unworthy of 

remembering.

13 

Haptic 


“Under this circumstance, all human relationships 

are now concentrated in the 

virtual world through the Internet. People’s 

thoughts, remarks and lives are 

appear in our vision which formed into 

photographs, movies, letters, and become 

a huge timeline. My work evokes 

and awakens the oblivion of the physical 

body in the current virtual world.”


MOVING CITY 

EMILY REN


How does architecture occupy and alter a space? 

Often characterized by its tall skyscrapers, the modern city is multi-faceted and constantly 

expanding upwards and outwards. Through the use of intentional space and selective color, 

I explore the building of modern cities and its social and physical impacts on society.


Dancing in the 

Demolition Site 

of My Childhood 

Anne Kwok 

Home 

It was the ground between our shadows that 

wanted your touch, something to hold onto that was more 

skin-like than summer’s heat. And it was fitting that 

I danced like a lonesome ribbon in the living room while our house 

cracked open, a mouth to the hurricane. Look how the air 

curls around our furniture like a mother’s arm, the curved fall 

of willow strands like softened bone, how the roof is blown 

into a sundress spilling from our shoulders. The hour 

always leaving, always in a hurry to forgive sweat running 

down a knife. I can’t feel my feet now that the memory 

has wrecked through me like a river.


Peel 


“All of these video works were created during the 

pandemic. I made these video works almost everyday 

like a diary. I featured performance movements 

and thoughts of the days. Fear, despair, 

impatient feeling with the changing days. Everyone’s 

sharing the same feeling at the same time. 

The world is shaking a lot. I am a part of this world.”


a rant 2. 

a multimed 

“ma.jo.me”


.. whom 

ia collection 

(Matt Mett.) 

“The original form of "a rant 2...whom" began as a freestyle 

rap recorded at 2 in the morning as I "walked and roam[ed]"... 

one of Oahu's "lone-ly road[s]"... "in dimmed lights and temperate 

cold." 

Flurries of mixed emotions clouded my head as a result of 

fallout with a friend: nostalgic, reflective, and longing to return 

to the "good ol'" days of shared memories with him. I 

shuffled my feet home, ready to transpose and transcribe my 

thoughts onto (digital) paper— into what is now a concrete 

poem with words slightly revised from the original recording 

and a visual arts accompaniment.” 

“In the winter 

In dimmed lights 

And temperate cold 

On this lonely road 

As you walk 

And roam... 

A lamb 

A lone.”


Ochre Solitude 

Jackson Forte 

Ochre Solitude is a piece for solo piano, inspired 

by the Korean poem An Autumn Day 

by Lee Si-young. It attempts to capture the 

mysteries of the human subconscious while 

being alone, and at the same time harnessing 

the feelings of being at peace with oneself.

ISSUE I 21 

after you showed me the video about gravity 

Blake Levario 

nonetheless 

well, actually 

i know about gravity 

what the fuck is gravity 

here, fall into my arms 

still don’t get it 

and if you know 

how to love me: 

leave me alone 

explain it to me again 

don’t show me 

that youtube video 

please. 

those pictures of the moon 

so blurry and dense 

why can’t it 

be simple 

open your palms show me your pull 

the seams of gravity so lovely 

god, are you all you imagined are you 

all you wanted to be ? 

i’m still 

all alone 

and i’m okay i’ve always been. 

but please, show 

me that video 

one more time. 

*Note: astronaut graphic is not part of Salt Water 

Salt Water 

Melissa Skowron


“I paint flowers so they will not die.” -Frida Kahlo 

Well we aren’t really shopping together 

it’s just me recognizing her 

portrait by the cash register 

in the nearby farmer’s market— 

well, a parking lot corner with 

beachy air, a few gourds and prices marked for “annuals” 

(which i learn means flowers that just die by the end of the year never to return) 

(i wonder if Frida had annuals and knew to call them “annuals”) 

(was it annuals that inspired her to paint them because they always die) 

(and she kept them alive) 

Thinking what the hell is her portrait doing in this small town market 

pale faces everywhere like daisies 

or ghosts 

if she were here i wouldn’t dare approach her, all 

smock and big earrings and tied up hair and perhaps a bag strap across her body 

as i’ve met heroes and celebs before, put a foot in my mouth 

and kicked myself with it, 

still waiting for the right time to message remember me 

so we can celeb and collaborate? 

(or better yet 

someone to approach me) no, 

like how my man and i keep each other at arm’s length, 

it’s just not the right time, 

i’m not who i yet want to be 

in this frozen summer 

like 

should i have thrown something at that man’s car 

when two weeks before in the same neighborhood 

i walked down the street 

like Frida may have through an aisle of annuals 

and he screamed 

for me 

to go back to where i came from 3 times 

Flower shoppi 

Emily Ahme 

should i take a petal out of Frida’s book 

and paint flowers and feminism and my Egyptianism 

and elephants and doves instead 

yet here i am 

returning anyway for fruit and flowers 

just from a distance 

Photography by Milena Correia

ng with Frida 

d TahaBurt 


*** 

Maryland is nasty humid 

(my first fern still died a few weeks ago) 

(ferns are not annuals) 

(did Frida’s ferns die and is that why she painted them) 

(did she have a spray bottle to humidify ferns too because that’s not working for me) 

(or did she leave them in the bathroom while taking a shower 

steam painting overtop the mirror and the plant) 

(my birthday just passed and i took photos of the bouquet 

to paint it and immortalize it forever because i’m reeeally not 22 anymore and 

i’m trying 

to take photos more because 

i can feel it all slip away 

and that’s 

something i got from her) 

Her Baba was German 

i tell my Baba in Cairo on the phone later 

because he has the utmost respect for her 

(he was called a communist freak too) 

and he says 

Can that be true? 

She’s the face of Mexico 

i want to ask him if people cut in half 

can’t be the face of anything 

i look out the window after the call 

and the town stares back 

blue and conniving 

impossible to stay, 

difficult to leave, 

horrible occurrences can hold a person hostage 

*** 

Milena Correia 

Eventually the tourists flow through the market line 

just passing through this place 

i approach Frida and the counter with a few gourds and onions 

i didn’t grab any flowers 

one day I too will pass it by 

That’s when 

I’ll go home 

and I’ll paint my flowers there 

and I’ll bury them where they were born


IF A 

VIRUS 

COULD 

SING 

Markus J. Buehler 

Laboratory for Atomistic and Molecular Mechanics 

(LAMM), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 

Cambridge, MA, United States of America 

Proteins are key building blocks of virtually 

all life, providing the material foundation of 

spider silk, cells, and hair, but also offering 

other functions from enzymes to drugs, and 

pathogens like viruses. Based on a nanomechanical 

analysis of the structure and 

motions of atoms and molecules at multiple 

scales, we showed that each of the protein’s 

building blocks – amino acids – have 

a unique frequency spectrum, or tonal quality 

once transposed to the audible range, 

allowing us to translate protein sequences 

into musical patterns [1,2] (Figure 1). 

Moreover, the hierarchical structuring of the 

protein can be translated to music through 

variations of volume, note length, 

rhythm, and overlaying melodies 

leading to counterpoint [3] 

(Figure 2). Using this concept of translating the 

hierarchical structure of matter into music – a 

method termed materiomusic 

– we developed sonified versions 

of the coronavirus spike protein 

of the pathogen of COVID-19, 2019-nCoV (see 

Figure 3). The resulting audio features an 

overlay of the vibrational signatures of the 

protein’s primary, secondary and higher-order 

structures and can be played in either 

the innate nanomechanical 

tuning of molecules (the amino 

acid scale) or mapped into 

equal temperament tuning [4] . 

Sonification of the Coronavirus 

Spike Protein [Amino Acid Scale] 

Figure 4: Visual representation of the virus 

spike protein (left) interacting with the human 

cell receptor (ACE2), on the right. This moment 

of infection represents the molecular binding 

event that occurs during infection process. 

Viral Counterpoint of the Coronavirus 

Spike Protein (2019-nCoV) [equal 

temperament tuning, orchestral classical] 

The method allows for expressing protein structures 

in audible space, offering novel avenues to 

represent, analyze and design ar-


chitectural features across lengthand 

time-scales. This type of 

approach can be broadly utilized 

and used for other protein structures, 

including as a means to 

assess detailed molecular processes. 

For example, we applied it 

to the moment of infection, when 

the virus begins to interact with the human 

cell receptor ACE2 (Figure 4). The musical 

realization of the moment of infection, 

written for piano, provides 

a microscope into the details 

of molecular motions of attachment 

and release. 

Reflection of Infection (for piano) 

Applications of the approach 

may include the development of 

de novo antibodies by designing 

protein sequences that match, 

through melodic counterpoints, 

the binding sites in the spike 

protein. The musical coding also provides a 

powerful dataset for AI applications, where the 

coding of protein folding and function can be 

used to design de novo proteins, or to evolve 

existing proteins into new designs. 

Other applications of audible coding 

of matter include material 

design by manipulating sound, 

detecting mutations, and offering 

a way to reach out to broader 

communities to explain the 

physics of proteins. It also forms a physics-based 

compositional technique to 

create new art, which is akin to finding a 

new palette of colors for a painter. Here, 

the nanomechanical structure of matter, 

reflected in an oscillatory framework, 

presents a new palette for sound generation, 

and can complement or support 

human creativity, transcending scales, 

species and manifestations of matter. 

Figure 3: Visual representation of the coronavirus spike protein, used for 

a musical realization. The protein consists of three chains, interwoven 

into a complex hierarchical structure. Musically, the interwoven geometry 

is reflected through intersecting melodies. The tip of the spike proteins 

interacts with the human cell during the moment of infection.


Figure 1: As reported in [5] , a visual representing of the sonified barcodes of each of the 20 

amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Each of these notes can be viewed as a novel type 

of building blocks that can be used to generate new art, similar to new colors or new paint 

materials or paint strokes (see bottom row for examples). Moreover, the construction of musical 

art within the constraint of these sets of vibrations offers an interesting challenge in the design of 

novel music, as exemplified in the examples reported in this article. 

As an example of multi-protein orchestration, see: 

References: 

[1] T. Giesa, D.I. Spivak, M.J. Buehler, Reoccurring Patterns in Hierarchical Protein 

Materials and Music: The Power of Analogies, Bionanoscience. 1 (2011). 

doi:10.1007/s12668-011-0022-5. 

[2] Z. Qin, M.J. Buehler, Analysis of the vibrational and sound spectrum of over 100,000 protein 

structures and application in sonification, Extrem. Mech. Lett. (2019) 100460.doi:https://doi. 

org/10.1016/j.eml.2019.100460.


Figure 2: Comparison of musical structure with protein structures, reflecting a correspondence 

between hierarchical features across manifestations from material to sound 

and the other way around. Listen to this piece for a audible illustration of the concept: 

Hierarchical systems in materials and sound: 

[3] S.L. Franjou, M. Milazzo, C.-H. Yu, M.J. Buehler, Sounds interesting: can sonification help us 

design new proteins?, Expert Rev. Proteomics. 16 (2019) 875–879. 

[4] M.J. Buehler, Nanomechanical sonification of the 2019-nCoV coronavirus spike protein 

through a materiomusical approach, (2020). http://arxiv.org/abs/2003.14258 (accessed April 16, 

2020). 

[5] C.-H. Yu, Z. Qin, F.J. Martin-Martinez, M.J. Buehler, A Self-Consistent Sonification Method to 

Translate Amino Acid Sequences into Musical Compositions and Application in Protein Design 

Using Artificial Intelligence, ACS Nano. 13 (2019) 7471–7482.


summer on the taxi 

Esther Kim 

and this late afternoon 

heat traces our eyes. 

i blink, watch 

the sun-ridden apartments and blue 

convenience stores 

through the window, 

like filmstrips— 

i never liked film 

as in you never wanted to be 

filmed, but there’s always 

next summer 

to let each collected dollar 

follow behind us in the wind 

as the Han River bows 

to us. this is 

Seoul you say when the sky 

undresses and rain hurtles 

into the neon city. at night, 

we gather the songs 

of cicadas and laugh 

into the painted 108 

for the last time, before 

we arrive at the airport 

with the dawn 

in our throats, before 

we realize there is no goodbye 

in the language of this city.


Postcards from Portland 

Matthew Kaminski 

Art by Geneviève Dumas


huevos 

Andrés González-Bonillascon tortilla 

Open and I am cooking huevos con tortilla to 25/8 by Bad Bunny 

Open and me and Fernie blast Christian Nodal in my dad’s car 

Singing to the tears in our eyes 

And the sun has set 

And we have laughed at the rooftops and their stars 

Open and I am going 105 on the highway pumping blood like nitros 

I scream and so do my eyes but 

I get home safe that night 


And fuck I could use a smoke 

And I lose count of the sunsets 

Open and my mom is burning sage again 

She talks about how the smoke forms 

It curls and whisps 

And 

The corridos in my neighborhood 

Sing to the doves on the wires 

And they sing back 

Open and home is not what I remember 

Open and I am cooking huevos con tortil 

The maiz yellows and browns 

And the eggs need salt 

And the salsa hurts my nose sometimes 

And the glass plate stays warm 

And the sun is up 

And I lose track of when it sets 

Open and I haven’t called my nana in a m 

And she’s not going to the illegal casinos 

Or at least not that she’s telling her daugh 

Open and the corridos are still singing 

And the gray doves sing back 

And they eat huevos con tortilla 

Left on the patio table 

And the sun sets 

And there is no need to track it. 


And one of the lights above the stove is out 

And I take my nanas apron out of the drawer 

Stitched from the same hands that held me 

And call me Andresito 

And the lines in my hands look like hers 

Open and there is no violence in these 

Lines and that is where lineage ended 

Open to the sunroof 

And the streetlights become their own constellations 

And 

They are not as extravagant as the ones in the sky 

But there are what I have now


it to be 

la to 25/8 by Bad Bunny 

inute 

anymore 

ters

x 


Divine Myth 

Smiti Mittal 

My mother has never believed in religion. 

Not surprising, considering her childhood 

was congested with countless trips 

to astrologers and healers that her parents 

thought might ‘fix’ her younger sister, 

who was hard-of-hearing. Doctors 

too, along the way, but doctors, like most 

scientific professionals, seem too sure of 

the truth. A false faith is more comforting. 

As a result of her skepticism, I grew up 

being taught, Celebrate Diwali, but only 

‘culturally’. Visit temples but as feats of 

architecture. Learn the Hanuman Chalisa 

but because it pleases your grandmother. 

Because Faith is ancient and you 

are a strong independent woman in the 

21st Century. God cannot do anything 

for you that you cannot do for yourself. 

* 

It’s 2012. My sister and I ring the doorbell 

and wait as my mother tugs open the 

creaking metal gate our grandfather insisted 

on installing when we first bought 

the place. Inside, wooden floor-paper 

peels beside the shoerack. I kick 

off my shoes without untying the 

laces and cross the cramped six 

metres it takes to get to my parents’ 

bedroom. Documents decorate 

the Egyptian-blue sheets as 

my father hunches over our family 

computer. One of the big boxy 

ones that has a separate CPU unit. My 

grandfather has been in the hospital, so I 

worry. Is this paperwork for some surgery? 

Could said surgery be unnecessary, and our 

family a victim of the medical fraud committed 

by Indian hospitals to meet surgery 

targets? At 11, I am already cynical. But at 11 

I am still a child. So not wanting to disturb 

my father and curious what’s for dinner, 

I return to the living room. 

* 

My mother’s anti-faith often takes the note 

of, If god exists why is there so much pain? If 

prayer works Why is my sister not okay? 

I think this is a reflection of the inherently 

transactional nature most religion 

tends to take. Prayer ~in exchange~ 

for favors, for forgiveness, and 

for freedom. Prayer as a choice you get 

to make as opposed to a stubborn inner 

reaching for relief I cannot dismiss. 

*


My sister is an appendage of myself I am 

constantly aware of. For the following moments, 

I cannot remember where in our 

living room she stood or what she wore. My 

mother has something to tell us. I don’t remember 

how she phrases it but I remember 

the hollowing out of a pit in my stomach. 

I see death scrawled across tan kitchen 

tiles and ashes scattered across the 

sink. My grandfather is no more. Matter 

of fact, but not to me and not at the 

age of 12. Was it 11? I’ve lost relatives 

before, but this time is different. I feel 

before I think, I cry before I feel, I cannot 

breathe and I cannot remember 

where my sister stood or what she wore. 

* 

The night my grandfather dies, I recite 

the Hanuman Chalisa to myself over 

and over again until I can fall asleep. 

At some point in the next couple of days, I 

learn my grandfather’s cancer always came 

with an expiry date. My parents kept this 

from me. Towards the end, I was so bitter 

because they wouldn’t let me see him (because 

a child, however cynical, has no job 

smelling death) so when he left, “I will never 

see him again” hit stronger than his deathis 

too abstract to process. 

* 

In the aftermath, my first line of thought is 

extrapolation. The possibility of any other 

loved one spontaneously leaving suddenly 

seems overly real. I start to wonder 

every time I leave the house -to go 

downstairs to play or for tennis lessons 

or for a walk - who might be dead the 

next time I walk back in. Specific nightmares 

start to frequent - my father falling 

sick, my sister being chased, my 

mother killing herself. 

* 

I am certain I will never forget the first 

three verses of the Hanuman Chalisa. 

* 

I make up this ritual where I imagine 

him on top of a bed of clouds during 

the morning prayer at school. I rise, 

touch his feet, and ask for his blessings. 

This traditional grandparent relationship 

isn’t very representative of ours, 

but it makes me feel like I’m doing what 

I’m supposed to. Like the vast stretches 

of time through which the feet-touching 

of both elders in the family and God has 

been sacred can somehow protect me. 

For the first time, faith has come up outside 

of an explicit need for hope. Any break 

in pattern requires investigation, so I read 

about theology to try understanding this 

deviation. This is when I learn more about 

the transactional nature of most religions. 

Despite this broad theme applying to most 

faiths, each one tends to establish a 

unique give-and-take relationship between 

man and God. In Christianity, one 

offers prayer in exchange for absolution. 

In Hinduism prayer is traded for favors. 

In Buddhism, one seeks Nirvana, ultimate 

release from the cycle of rebirth. My 

prayer feels less like exchange and more 

like an external hurling of hope at slippery 

walls hoping something will stick. 

* 

I remember the first day I forgot to think 

of him during the morning prayer. I felt 

guilty of not missing him any more and 

unsettled by the interruption of ritual. 

* 

In some sense, I agree with my mother. 

God cannot do anything for me that I cannot 

do for myself. God doesn’t take cash 

or card. But in another sense, I don’t because 

the illusion of God occupies a space 

separate from my mind, so it can hold up 

against trauma that I can’t. There are so 

many days all I need is a big bright bearhug 

from the cosmos. To be able to scream 

into the place where all the quantum 

probability decisions are made, ‘please 

bring back my grandfather,” long after 

he is gone. I need to imagine he isn’t gone. 

I need to meet him at that place in the 

clouds and be able to touch his feet. I 

need stories. To be able to tell them and 

then come back and read them when the 

telling-self is tired or terrified or traumatised. 

Maybe that’s all my mother’s 

critique of religion is: a story. I’ve had 

enough nightmares to know: if I felt helpless 

in the face of a lifelong pain my sister 

would need to endure, a burden I was 

for no explicable reason free from, I too 

would tell myself anything that externalised 

all of that guilt and pain and sorrow.


Alexander Hamilton 

Rohit Ghusar


DUM-E: Generalizaton Assembly 

based on Human Attention 

Justin Lin 

Today an important open question in the field of human-computer 

interaction is the capability of robots to autonomously interact 

with objects in their environment as well as interface with 

humans. In this paper, we explore planning and action representation 

through self play and human attention mechanisms 

in order to explore approaches towards few-shot learning in an 

environment without robust 3D mapping. In previous works, kit 

assembly and bin picking can be formulated as a shape matching 

problem that establishes geometric relationships between 

object surfaces and their target placement locations from visual 

input. We explore the ideas of self-play through repeated 

assembly and disassembly in a variety of test kit scenarios. 

Furthermore, we merge human gaze and pose estimation 

in order to build a shape and position representation that best 

emulates a human working environment where object interactions 

happen between robots and humans. Our self-supervised 

data pipeline is obtained through ground truth placement that 

emulates the methodology described in Form2Fit (Zakka et. al, 

2019). Our resulting system, Dum-E, is able to increase pick and 

place strategies by 14% in a variety of test kits and over 7% 

in completely new test cases versus simply self-play and other 

approaches such as simulation-based reinforcement learning.


a storm rolled in the east; 

i only came to warn you. 

my lower belly stretched 

of crops going on for 

miles: red dirt lines 

made from sweat. 

Shelf Cloud: a caution 

Jasmine Flowers 

across the sky, cloaking 

town as a dry welcome. 

people strained to see 

my dimpled white unfold. 

i admired the gritty faces 

& bodies. i traced grids 

cotton bolls shook deep 

in the fields & soft hairs 

stood to greet my wind. 

a cautious kiss boiled up 

in my maw: an early gift 

for those who watched.


The Wrath of Poseidon 

Eric Huang


Therapeutic Lantibiotic Delivery and 

Functionalized Antimicrobial Surfaces 

via Thermostable Degradation-Resistant 

Nisin-Adsorbed 

Endospores: 

Engineering an Alternative to 

Antibiotics and Pesticides 

Neil Kadian 

Antimicrobial peptides (APs) produced by a large number of microorganisms, 

plants, and animals hold considerable potential as broad-spectrum 

alternatives to traditional antibiotics, pesticides, and therapeutics. However, 

their clinical and industrial application is limited by their poor chemical 

stability, low specificity, and susceptibility to environmental degradation. 

This study sought to improve the stability, delivery, and application of the 

model AP nisin by exploting the phenomenal physiological stability of 

bacterial endospores for AP delivery. It was hypothesized that nisin adsorbed 

to the glycoprotein surface matrix of Bacillus subtilis endospores 

would show markedly improved chemical stability, shelf life, and resistance 

to protease degradation. Extensive wet lab testing 

including spectrophotometric BCA protein assays, broth 

microdilutions, and protease digests were used to characterize 

nisin-endospore adsorption kinetics, shelf-life, and 

bactericidal activity. Nisin-endospore binding conditions 

were optimized for maximally efficient loading. After storage 

in a liquid format for 2 weeks at 20°C, nisin-adsorbed 

endospores retained 80% (pH 7.0) or 40% (pH 10.0) antimicrobial 

activity, while free nisin lost all activity by week 

one. Following a 1-hour pepsin digest, endospore-adsorbed 

nisin retained 65% of antimicrobial activity while free nisin retained 

only 7%. This suggests that endospore delivery allows APs to be 

administered orally instead of intravenously and stored under non-ideal 

conditions using a cheap, environmentally-friendly, biocompatible carrier. 

Future applications to be tested include: functionalization of crops, fabrics, 

and other surfaces to mitigate microbial growth; co-adsorbing with 

proteinaceous ligands to localize APs at target tissues and organisms; and 

improved penetration of biofilms. This is the first study reporting the use 

of endospores to stabilize APs.


Art by Lisa Yang 

passed down like an antique vase or a plot of land 

perhaps both, she learns the method of growing: 

bones over skin, hair reaching waist, head bending south 

Some 

Things 

Remain 

The 

Same 

Andrea Salvador 

coaxed by the whispers of unruly ancestors 

she begins to mask appendixes, pull out wisdom 

teeth and bury pockets of fear as the film credits roll 

her stomach rumbles, but the stove remains unrepaired 

so she eats her feelings and yesterday’s 

leftovers on a plate that has withstood raised voices and cries 

as all spoilage do, beginning to want: to be nice, to be thrown 

out then taken back, to be a star, to look at them 

unfiltered – no canopy of smog to recognize the similarity 

of being: bright, discernible, too good for this world. i am just like 

you, she says, and the stars wink back. together, they wait 

to be rebirthed.


we need space 

Osadolor Osa 

"This artwork 

lack of auton 

During the pa 

through July 

this piece, ma 

struggles, an 

came massiv 

social media. 

trauma and ig 

mental health 

consumption 

sion makes th 

up quickly in 

autonomy in 

ence. Finding 

this time crea 

passive and a 

Black youths 

the present s 

the frontline f 

discourse, an 

representing 

future. All this 

being margin 

as angry. Not 

figures are sm 

emotion was 

creative visio 

ership of all f 

rightful anger 

when we cho 

These figures 

arranged to f 

image of spa 

The crowded 

box black you 

have to navig 

alism and eu 

of beauty, life 

such an impr 

is essential to 

tionalities and 

gles black no 

so I wanted t 

majority of m 

used. The foc 

is not only a v 

with the diffe 

also to showc 

mity to euroc 

sion of black 

facing misog


wemwenze 

is a look into the 

omy for black youth. 

st two months (May 

2020) of completing 

ny different issues, 

d oppression beely 

consumed on 

The erasure of black 

norance of black 

in regards to mass 

of systemic opprese 

black youth grow 

hopes to gain some 

voice and experione’s 

voice during 

tes liminality in 

ssertive resistance. 

are the future and 

imultaneously, being 

orce of dialogue, 

d change while also 

hope for a brighter 

is happening while 

alized and “painted” 

e how none of the 

iling. The lack of 

not only done for 

n but to take owneelings, 

including 

to oppression and 

ose to express them. 

are simple faces 

ormulate a bigger 

ce or the lack thereof. 

ness represents the 

th are put in. We 

ate white professionrocentric 

standards 

, and behavior at 

essionable age. It 

note the intersecadditional 

strugn-men 

go through, 

o have them be the 

uses and figures I 

us on black non-men 

essel to experiment 

rent hairstyles, but 

ase the non-conforentrism 

and expresfemininity 

while 

ynoir." 

a coming of age but, irl: 

respectability politics


A resistance plan was 

hastily drawn up. 

S Cearley


If Only We Could See 

Past the Dust 

Eric Kwok 

towering titan of gold 

solar shield made of silver sail 

unfurl the winds of this universe 

& reduce the moon to an echo. 

unclasp the secrets of the sky 

pearls of smoke, a billowing 

curtain of debris 

a storm of cosmic glitter. 

if only we could see past the dust, 

a galactical nirvana awaits 

Elysian Fields, promised lands 

with gardens of celestial relics. 

run your hand through a belt 

of constellations & watch each child 

split into hallways of light 

your crimson eye unblinking. 

unknot the umbilical star & 

deliver us back, into time’s womb.


Tigris 

Gilare Zada 

oh you tigris 

i have seen what you have done 

upon the rich banks 

creeping towards the kurdish shore 

as the crescent moon sung solely for you 

you snaked your way between nations at arms 

a murky serpent charged with crimes churning below 

unfazed by the rage that had crossed you before 

wars have thrived where your waters sigh 

you tigris 

you crooning flood of honeydew 

i have woken in cold sweat 

beads tauntingly mimicking 

your sweet droplets that clung to me 

i dripped in sugar when i listened to you 

you river styx 

my people emerged at your brook 

but there i crumble in my sleep 

drowning in the softness i let go 

when my home sank into you 

i have learned to hate you 

you monster of soft soiled beds 

on which i coil and writhe like you 

i am beginning to creep away from you 

the lonely moon weeps rivers for you 

Exploring the 

Performance of Deep 

Residual Networks in 

Crazyhouse Chess 

Gordon Chi 

Crazyhouse is a chess variant that 

incorporates all of the classical chess rules, 

but allows users to drop pieces captured 

from the opponent as a normal move. Until 

2018, all competitive computer engines for 

this board game made use of an alpha-beta 

pruning algorithm with a hand-crafted evaluation 

function for each position. Previous machine 

learning-based algorithms for just regular chess, 

such as NeuroChess and Giraffe, took hand-crafted 

evaluation features as input rather than a raw 

board representation. More recent projects, such 

as AlphaZero, reached massive success but 

required massive computational resources in 

order to reach its final strength. 

This paper describes the development 

of SixtyFour, an engine designed to 

compete in the chess variant of Crazyhouse 

with limited hardware. This 

specific variant poses a multitude of 

significant challenges due to its large 

branching factor, state-space complexity, 

and the multiple move types a 

player can make. We propose the novel 

creation of a neural network-based 

evaluation function for Crazyhouse. 

More importantly, we evaluate the effectiveness 

of an ensemble model, which 

allows the training time and datasets 

to be easily distributed on regular CPU 

hardware commodity. Early versions of the 

network have attained a playing level comparable 

to a strong amateur on online servers.


Developing Coupled Physical-Biogeochemical Models of Mesozooplankton 

Dynamics in the California Current System 

Mesozooplankton play an immense role in the 

global ocean. They are intricately intertwined in the 

pelagic food web and are major contributors to oceanic 

biogeochemical cycling through vertical migrations. 

However, much is unknown about the quantitative 

distribution and biomass of mesozooplankton 

in the ocean. Our limited knowledge impairs the 

development of global models, used to understand 

interactions of marine resources with functioning of 

the earth. In the upwelling system of the California 

Current System (CCS) and other productive regions 

throughout the ocean, these models are integral in 

developing sustainable environmental policy. Here, 

we assess ecological dynamics of mesozooplankton 

in the CCS and analyze the accuracy of current 

simulative models of these dynamics. Using datasets 

accessed from MARine Ecosystem DATa and the 

World 

ical 

Patrick Kim 

Ocean Atlas, climatolog- 

fluctuations of 

mesozo- 

oplankton biomass, sea surface temperature, chlorophyll 

levels, salinity, and photosynthetically active 

radiation in the CCS were standardized and synthesized. 

These analyses were compared to model 

output from a coupling of the Regional Ocean Modeling 

System (ROMS), modeling ocean physics, and 

Biogeochemical Elemental Cycling (BEC), modeling 

biogeochemical dynamics. Observational climatologies 

verified the significance of upwelling dynamics 

in the CCS. Model outputs underestimated mesozooplankton 

biomass during upwelling seasons and 

in regions of coastal upwelling. Regions of overestimation 

aligned with oligotrophic offshore regions. 

Compartmental modifications of ROMS-BEC may 

yield more accurate estimations of observed mesozooplankton 

dynamics. Especially with increasing 

perils of anthropogenic climate change, accurate 

models are essential for development of sustainable 

fishery management, regulation of wastewater nutrient 

outfall, and robust global climate policy. 

Interconnected 

Anashrita Henckel 

“During the first few weeks of lockdown, I created 

this piece as a way to capture quarantine life in 

Dubai. The first layer features faint drops of 

rain on parched Dubai ground. Rain occurs 

so rarely here, so when it comes, everyone 

revels in the experience despite being 

isolated - whether it be taking a photo, 

commenting to one another or using 

the moment to look up and out from our 

confining walls. The second layer is a paper 

cutting featuring iconic buildings in 

Dubai intermingled with everyday people 

in their homes. Diverse peoples celebrating 

birthdays, religious holidays like Ramadan 

and Easter and living, learning, teaching 

and meeting online. I wanted to capture 

our interconnectedness and used geometry to 

symbolise the order and routine in the seeming 

chaos of change and unpredictability. The organic 

hexagonal geometric form is inspired by Ernst 

Haeckel’s scientific drawings of plants and animals. 

I used this to represent the Covid-19 virus which, at the 

time, scientists knew little about and was a kind of mystery 

to us all overshadowing yet connecting our lives.”


Your time is coming 

Geneviève Dumas


T O N A L I T Y 

S P E C T R U M 

Ian Fleck


Acrylic on canvas, 

36 in x 24 in, 

2018 

The Anatomy is 

an acrylic painting 

depicting the 

skeleton structure 

of a contortionist, 

comparing 

it to their 

regular body 

through three 

triangles, one 

showing their 

belly, another 

their elbow and 

a last one showing 

one foot and 

half of a leg. This 

artwork began 

from my fascination 

with contortionists 

and the 

possibilities of 

the human body. 

Besides my BFA, 

I practice circus 

arts and I have 

always had a 

very bendy back, 

but I am not a 

contortionist yet. 

I wanted to know 

how our spines 

work and how 

can they get to 

be so flexible, 

but because 

there is no anatomy 

textbook 

that shows it, I 

decided to study 

the body and 

paint it. 

The Anatomy 

Eva Ojeda F.


Hello My Name Is 

Daniel Han

author & artist 

Biographies

Markus J. Buehler is the McAfee Professor of 

Engineering at MIT, leads MIT’s Laboratory for 

Atomistic and Molecular Mechanics, and a composer 

of experimental, classical and electronic 

music, with an interest in sonification. His primary 

research interests focus on the structure and 

mechanical properties of biological and bio-inspired 

materials, to characterize, model and create 

materials with architectural features from the 

nano- to the macro-scale. Using an approach 

termed “materiomusic”, his artistic work explores 

the creation of new forms of musical expression 

- such as those derived from biological materials 

and living systems - as a means to better 

understand the underlying science and mathematics. 

One of his goals is to use musical and 

sound design as a way to model, optimize and 

create new forms of matter from the bottom up, 

and to assess cross-system design relationships. 

He is also interested in research to explore relationships 

between classical music, mathematics, 

and the physical and biological sciences, an in 

the mapping of models of consciousness across 

systems. In recent work he has developed a new 

framework to compose music based on proteins 

– the basic molecules of all life, as well as other 

physical phenomena such as fracturing, to explore 

similarities and differences across species, scales 

and between philosophical and physical models. 

Darnell “DeeSoul” Carson is a Black queer 

poet, performer, and educator from San Diego, 

CA, co-director of the award-winning Stanford 

Spoken Word Collective, and Editorial Assistant 

at the Adroit Journal. A two-time CUPSI finalist, 

his work has been featured or forthcoming 

on Write About Now Poetry and Button Poetry, 

and in The Adroit Journal, The Unified Anthology, 

The Oakland Arts Review, and elsewhere. 

He is currently pursuing a degree in Cultural/ 

Social Psychology with a minor in Creative Writing 

at Stanford University, where he has also 

led two-quarter long poetry workshop courses. 

S Cearley has tricked a computer into making 

poetry when it thinks it is making art. He is 

a former researcher in artificial intelligence and 

its use in generative literature, lecturer in philosophy, 

and a writer. For many years he has 

been creating these poems by tweaking expert 

systems, pushing the boundaries of the intended 

use of software. In the crisp, elegant world 

of mathematics and logic, he injects the fœtid 

swamp of human nature. His concrete poems 

have been published in many journals both online 

and on-paper. He has held classes on concrete 

poetry across the US, and many works 

have been featured in galleries in North America 

and Europe. More at futureanachronism.com. 

Gordon Chi is a Stanford sophomore currently 

studying Math and Computer Science. His research 

interests include the intersectionality of AI 

in healthcare, as well as the development of depthsearch 

based engines for board game variants. 

Since his freshman year, he has been a member 

of Dr. Andrew Ng’s AI in Healthcare bootcamp. 

Aside from research, Gordon enjoys playing 

chess, watching basketball and composing music. 

He is also a member of the North American 

Computational Linguistics Open Problem 

Committee, after having previously competed 

in the International Linguistics Olympiad. 

Milena Correia is a Brazilian artist, master’s 

student in aesthetics and artistic studies in photography 

and cinema at Universidade Nova de 

Lisboa, researching Brazilian women in documentary 

cinema. She studied theater and audiovisual 

and is the founder of Rustica Producoes, 

where she directs, photographs, edits and produces 

mainly films related to music and arts in 

general. She worked on music videos by artists 

such as Regina Machado and Tom Zé, Maurício 

Tagliari and Luedji Luna, Iara Rennó, Laya (in 

partnership with the photographer Gal Oppido). 

Responsible for editing the medium-length 

film “Sangria” by Luiza Romão, a film that was 

in several national and international festivals. 

Develops social and authorial projects through 

photography and film such as the partnership 

with Canudos Project, which takes place in 

the hinterland of Bahia - BR, and her recently 

experimental short film “The black hole and 

the blank page”, that flows around loneliness. 

Geneviève Dumas is the Montreal based printmaker 

artist behind the brand Goldengen. Her 

work is an investigation of unexpected representations 

that result from the combination of

fragmented materials & feelings through her 

printmaking. She’s using collage and screen 

printing to build up momentum and stories. She 

tries to let her art allow the viewer to question a 

lot of things, but mostly how we deal with ourselves 

& love and experience moments. She 

leaves just enough detail for you to wonder. 

Ian Fleck is a 15 year old sophomore at the 

Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, 

where he is the first chair clarinetist in the orchestra. 

He discovered his passion for music 

at a very early age, and played several instruments 

before deciding to focus on clarinet in 

2013. He soon joined the Kadima Conservatory 

of Music, where he continues to play yearround. 

Ian enjoys many disciplines of music, 

including arranging, transcribing, composing, 

conducting, and performing. He studies music 

from multiple genres such as jazz, classical, and 

contemporary. He is the youngest of three children, 

and lives in Los Angeles with his family. 

Jasmine Flowers is a well-watered poet from 

Birmingham, AL. Her favorite flowers should be 

jasmines, but she loves peonies too. She received 

her BA in English from the University of Alabama. 

Currently, she is a poetry editor for Variant Literature 

Journal. Her poems are published in Rejection 

Letters, River Mouth Review, giallo, Q/A 

Poetry, perhappened mag, Versification, and 

Mineral Lit Mag. Follow her on Twitter: @jas_flow 

Jackson Forte is a 19 year old composer and 

multi-instrumentalist from San Clemente, California. 

He is currently attending Chapman 

University as a sophomore, pursuing a double 

major in Music Composition and Keyboard Collaborative 

Arts, as well as a minor in film music. 

Jackson’s compositional style takes inspiration 

from video game soundtracks and impressionist 

music, as well as his own half-Korean heritage. 

Additionally, he writes music for student 

films, and is hoping to pursue a career in film 

scoring. As a pianist, he often collaborates with 

instrumentalists and vocalists as an accompanist, 

playing in concerts and recitals. Aside from 

this, Jackson also enjoys expanding his musical 

instrument collection, and he hopes to get his 

hands on a pair of bagpipes in the near future. 

Rohit Ghusar is a 20 year old film student at 

CSUN. He was born in Yuba City, California 

and has been into photography for about 

5 years and is a total camera nerd. Photography 

was his introduction into film and holds a 

very special place in his heart. Rohit’s dream 

is to be a writer/director for film since it encompasses 

all of his interests such as photography, 

music, and writing. Rohit has won Gold 

Key Scholastic Art Awards for his photography. 

Andrés González-Bonillas is a Xicano poet, 

student, and photographer based in Philadelphia 

via Arizona. His work focuses on Latinx 

identity, love, ancestral history, and radical 

politics. Andrés has been published in 

La Vida Magazine and has been a member of 

the Excelano Project since 2019. He is pursuing 

a BA in English at the University of Pennsylvania, 

with a focus in Post-Colonial Lit and 

Theory. Follow him on twitter @gonzanillas 

Daniel Han is currently studying at the University 

of Southern California School of Cinematic 

Arts. Inspired by Chazelle, Spielberg, and 

so many other legends, Daniel aspires to be 

an auteur of his future productions. A people’s 

person, Daniel values the human relationship 

and character above all else both in his works 

and in real life. Consequently, Daniel’s favorites 

genre to write and create is a coming of 

age story that is sprinkled with small moments 

of fantasy, or as people call it, “movie-magic”. 

Anashrita Henckel is an emerging artist who 

was born in the Caribbean, grew up in London 

and now lives and works in Dubai. Primary 

school teacher by day and artist by night, she 

works in a variety of media including drawing, 

painting, paper sculpture and digital art and has 

a particular interest in constructing geometric 

motifs that add layers and meaning to her artworks. 

As a young artist fresh out of university, 

Anashrita took part in exhibitions in London and 

Staffordshire and has seen many of her artworks 

sold to private collectors. She then took time 

away from the artworld to raise her two cheeky 

sons to teenagehood, but has now resumed creating 

and has artwork in several online gallery 

collections. Anashrita has plans to exhibit in

galleries and exhibitions once they are safe to 

reopen after the Covid 19 pandemic has eased. 

Eric Huang is a composer based in Los Angeles, 

California who is currently studying music composition 

and communications with an emphasis 

in business at the University of California, Santa 

Barbara. Although he also enjoys composing 

concert orchestral pieces, his main focus is 

writing music to film. Aside from creating music, 

he also enjoys cooking and playing badminton. 

Neil Kadian is a senior at Dr. Ronald E. McNair 

Academic High School in Jersey City, NJ. He has 

spent the last three years improving technologies 

for drug delivery in his high school and 

local labs, and often takes inspiration from biological 

architectures found in nature. He is humbled 

to be an ISEF finalist and alumni of several 

research programs including the Summer Science 

Program, NJGSS, Columbia SHP, and NJ 

Governor’s STEM Scholars. Neil’s work reflects 

his strong belief in the importance of centering 

academic research on altruistic values—originality, 

elegance, pragmatism, long-term forethought, 

efficient allocation of resources, and 

comprhensive consideration of outcomes—and 

hopes to echo these principles in the future as 

a research- and medicine-focused professional. 

Matthew Kaminski studies at Chapman University 

in Southern California and writes music 

for orchestra, small ensembles, wind ensemble, 

and vocalists. He is a ten time first place winner 

for the state of Oregon through MTNA and 

NFMC, and has been a national finalist three 

times in the US. His music has been described 

as extremely evocative with large amounts of 

imagery and emotion, and covers the genres 

of contemporary instrumental to electronic. For 

the last six years, Matthew has been a member 

of Cascadia Composers, chapter of NACU- 

SA, and YCP through fEar No Music. In 2019, 

Matthew attended the Brevard Music Center 

Summer Institute (NC) where he wrote Hidden 

Voices, which he later conducted the premiere 

of at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall 

with the Metropolitan Youth Symphony. More 

of Matthew’s compositions can be found at 

makcomposer.com, or on Spotify/Apple Music. 

Esther Kim is a Korean-American writer from 

Potomac, Maryland. Her poetry is forthcoming 

or published in Diode, Up the Staircase 

Quarterly, and SOFTBLOW. In the summer 

of 2019, she participated in the Kenyon Review 

Young Writers Workshop. A senior in high 

school, she has been recognized by the Library 

of Congress, the Scholastic Art & Writing 

Awards as a National Gold Medalist, The 

Atlantic, and the Poetry Society of the UK. 

Patrick Kim was born and raised in Los Angeles, 

California. Currently in his first year at Stanford 

University, he plans to study Earth Systems, Mathematical 

and Computational Sciences, or Political 

Science. He is broadly interested in the intersections 

between climate science, public policy, 

and communication. In his free time, he enjoys 

hiking, eating hummus, watering his house plants, 

and climbing buildings to stargaze on roofs. 

Ibuki Kuramochi specializes in artworks for exhibition 

(paintings, movies and digital works), 

and also specializes in live performances combining 

her live painting with her Japanese Butoh 

dance. From 2012, Ibuki started exhibiting works 

in major cities in Japan, U.S.A.,Taiwan, France, 

Italy and Australia. She studied Butoh dance at 

the world renown Kazuo Ohno Butoh Dance Studio 

in Yokohama in 2016. Through her work, she 

pursues the physicality of Butoh’s poetic choreography 

and the pursuit of the human body in 

anatomy. She visualizes her performance and 

body movements as two-dimensional works 

and video works. Ibuki explores concepts of the 

body, thought and physical resonance, metamorphosis, 

the ideal of the Sci-Fi animation 

character’s body, and the uterus and fetishism. 

Anne Kwok is a National Student Poet Semifinalist 

and a Foyle Young Poet. She has been honored 

by the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers, 

National Poetry Quarterly, Poetry Society of 

UK, Smith College, 1455 Literary Festival, and 

the Apprentice Writer, among others. Her work is 

published or forthcoming in Hyphen Magazine, 

Oberon Poetry, Eunoia Review, and Half Mystic. 

Eric Kwok is a queer, Chinese-American poet 

born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. A graduate from

New York University, they currently work as an 

Electrical Engineer in Southern California. When 

not being coerced by capitalism, they spend 

their time cooking Chinese soups for their beloveds, 

listening to poetry podcasts, reading fiction 

that explores the emotional interiority of diasporic 

transience, and arguing about fruit. You 

can connect with them on Twitter @jooksingzai. 

Blake Levario is a Mexican-American writer. 

He is currently enrolled in New York University’s 

MFA program in Poetry. He reads 

poems for the Adroit Journal and is frequently 

being sad on Twitter @b_levario. You can 

find his words in or forthcoming from Hobart, 

Alien Magazine, Pidgeonholes, and elsewhere. 

Justin Lin is a senior in high school with research 

interests in the foundational science 

of deep learning as well as SoTA applications 

of computer vision in the context of robotics 

and medicine. He’s an incoming researcher at 

the Harvard ML Theory Group and Berkman 

Klein Center for Internet & Society. Currently 

he’s a researcher at the UCLA Visual Machines 

Group and USC IPILab with publications 

at SPIE and CVPR regarding computer vision 

applications. Furthermore, he’s founded RELU 

Labs as a part of his research into human-robot 

interaction and works on various aspects 

of public policy regarding technology. Outside 

of academia, Justin loves to play basketball, 

scroll through Twitter, and go on biking trips. 

Matt Mettias is a multimedia visual and sound 

artist from Stanford University, where he is also 

currently studying educational policy and conducting 

research in psychology –– which still 

nurturing his artistic hobbies and tendencies. 

Some of his favorite activities include ocean 

diving in Hawaii (his home), playing pickup 

basketball with his best friends, and producing 

music –– everything from boom-bap rap 

and ‘classical trap’ to the blues and reggae. 

Smiti Mittal, a rising sophomore at Stanford University, 

first started writing in order to process 

pain. She has dabbled in slam poetry, creative 

non-fiction and play writing over the years. Regardless 

of the form, she is most drawn to stories 

that investigate the human condition. When not 

lost in thought, she can be found reading, running 

single cell data analysis or curating playlists. 

Reach out to her at smiti06@stanford.edu. 

Eva Ojeda F. is a multidisciplinary emerging artist 

currently based in the unceded territories of the 

Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, 

colloquially called “Vancouver”. She holds 

a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art+Design. 

She was born and raised in Mexico City and 

her background as a WOC sets her practice as 

an artist. Eva’s work varies from performance 

art to sculpture and painting, exploring the 

themes of the body, race, identity and feminism. 

Osadolor Osawemwenze is an incoming student 

at Stanford University and plans on majoring 

in Communications. With his interest being 

vast and wide, he also intends on engaging in 

courses in Sociology, African and African American 

Studies, and Studio Art Practice. His future 

aspiration is to become a Creative Director to 

develop brands to change the way we see people 

in the marketing world. Not only as numbers 

or consumers but also people with important 

experiences to take into account, to increase 

media representation. In his podcast, a coming 

of age, but irl, Osadolor comments on all things 

concerning today’s youth. Diving into social issues 

and tying them back to pop culture, he offers 

entertaining insight on trends, while relaying 

his experience as a black student at a PWI. 

Follow him on his socials, keep up with his podcast, 

and check out his art at linktr.ee/osadolor. 

Luis Peña is a gifted designer, art director, 

Photographer, DP, and Director. His gift lies in 

his ability to see the world in the wide-eyed, 

holy-shit-this-is-amazing way that mostly 

only children do. This sort of purity of vision is 

rare indeed, and it allows him to notice things 

most people miss - like the small fragments of 

truth, beauty, and the unexpected that make 

up great film. He also enjoys candy orange 

slices, running ultra marathons, and sprinting 

blindly along the very thin line between triumph 

and disaster - especially if he can film it. 

Emily Ren is a college freshman from Plano,

TX passionate about the intersection of business 

and law. Her art explores the concept of 

the city and alienation from these metropolitan 

spaces, with a focus on minimalist design. 

When she’s not drawing, you can normally 

find her googling movie plot summaries 

or running around places in a suit and heels. 

Andrea Salvador lives somewhere in Asia, 

specifically a country with thousands of islands 

and constantly humid weather. She is an 

alumna of the Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship 

Program and the Sonorous Writing Workshop, 

while her work has been recognized by 

the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Columbia College 

Chicago, Trinity College - University of Melbourne, 

and Interlochen Arts Academy. In her 

spare time, she creates lists, watches sci-fi 

and horror movies, and rearranges her bookshelf. 

Find her on Twitter at @andreawhowrites. 

Melissa Skowron was born in Calgary, Alberta 

where she received her Bachelor of Fine Art in 

Painting from the Alberta University of Art in 2009. 

She has participated in many local shows including 

the Ignite! 2012 Emerging Artist’s Show, PARK 

art show, and as guest designer for Make Fashion. 

Emily Ahmed TahaBurt (she/her) grew up in 

Cairo, Egypt and Annapolis, Maryland. She is an 

emerging writer and this would be her first publication, 

though she was a finalist for the Etel Adnan 

Poetry Prize in 2019 for her chapbook manuscript 

On Distance. On Distance reflects on transnational 

relationships and how they inform other 

relationships, family histories, and xenophobia 

juxtaposed with a variety of twisted myths and 

fairytales. You can reach her on Instagram @emilyahmedtb 

or at emilytahaburt@hotmail.com. 

Elliott Voorhees is a cancerian poet from North 

Carolina. They studied English and Art History at 

the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 

where they received their BA. From 2019-2020 

they were a member of the Leonard Pubantz 

Artist Residency Program where they created 

a collection of bilingual poetry written in English 

and German. This project stemmed from 

their love of language, particularly how it can be 

broken and reassembled to create new experiences. 

Starting in the fall, they will be a part of 

the MFA poetry cohort at California College of 

the Arts. They can be found on Twitter @_juuliuscaesar 

and on Instagram @juuliuscaesar_ . 

Lisa Yang is a Taiwanese Canadian multidisciplinary 

artist specializing in still life art direction, 

photography and prop styling. Her 

work focuses on bright and bold colours, textures 

and playful compositions. Often playing 

with fruits and mundane objects, she 

believes in not taking anything too seriously 

and to have fun in image creation. She currently 

resides and works in Montreal, Canada. 

Gilare Zada is a Kurdish-American from San Diego, 

California. She is a rising junior at Stanford 

University, and plans to major in English with a 

minor in Mathematics. Outside of school, she 

writes for the Stanford magazine and spends 

her free time writing poetry. Among ambitions 

to attend law school and live abroad, she 

hopes to one day publish her writing and return 

to visit Kurdistan with her mother, Berivan. 

Kate Hayashi 

Editor 

Rukan Saif 

Editor 

Lea Wang-Tomic 

Editor 

Stephanie Zhang 

Editor 

Esther Suyoung Moon 

Design 

Kelthie Truong 

Design 

Anicia Anjel Miller 

Junior Editor 

Jisoo Hope Yoon 

Poetry Reader

ISSUE II

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