Issue 2 - Injustice

ISSUE
II
Select
INJUSTICE
Poetry & Prose Apr 2024
Compiled & Edited by Anita Pan
THE PINNACLE 1

CONTRIBUTERS
THE PINNACLE
ISSUE II: INJUSTICE
Tatum Bunker
Louise Dolan
Sashi Tandon
Lizzy Santana
Alex Simms
Christian Ward
Carson Wolfe
C.J Anderson Wu
Apr 2024
2

contents
Anita Pan Editor’s Letter 4
Christian Ward Childhood Trauma as Cowboys 5
Lizzy Santana Pitch Black 7
Carson Wolfe Ted Bundy Groupie Prepares For His Trial 16
Alex Simms Marble 18
Sashi Tandon x-ray vision 25
Tatum Bunker Michelangelo and the Ceiling 27
C.J Anderson Wu Hong Kong Independent Bookstores 31
Louise Dolan Tales From the Pampas: First Impressions 35
3

EDITOR’S
LETTER
It’s often easy to forget about social injustices. We’re aware it exists, but from the
comfort of hiding behind a screen, we’re insulated from the actual consequences of
discrimination and violence. That’s how inequalities grow normalized: it’s easier to
ignore or assume things when said ignorance comes with no consequence.
Our writers shatter this narrative. In Issue II, each piece is disruptive. Each piece features
stark, memorable characters, from exchange students and metaphorical cowboys to a
literal Wendigo. And each piece says something about social problems—whether it’s
coping with trauma, fighting abuse, or struggling with mental health.
We’re excited for our next journey into Issue III. But until then, thank you for reading
the Pinnacle’s second issue, Injustice. We’re incredibly grateful for your continued
support.
Anita Pan
Editor-in-Chief of The Pinnacle
4

CHILDHOOD
TRAUMA AS
COWBOYS
By Christian Ward
Christian Ward is a UK-based poet with recent
work in Acumen, Dreich, Dream Catcher, The
Westchester Review, London Grip, and Canary.
5

Cowboys it in and out of your dreams
while the moon is in a stupor, bowling
ball itself across the clouds resting
like cattle. What desert did they survive in?
The apartment buildings are too groggy to
notice them massing like frogspawn
under your bed, harassing the skeletons in
your closet, and corralling the dead
like wild horses in your living room.
They're dancing with the cacti now,
singing songs of past victories eroding like
bison bones in the sands,
as you twitch like a revolver in your sleep,
not caring who might get hurt, or when.
6

PITCH
BLACK
Based on the Algonquian folklore of the Wendigo
By Lizzy Santana
Lizzy Santana (she/they) is a writer and actor from Wellington,
Kansas. She is in her second year at The University of New
Orleans pursuing an MFA in Playwriting. As a writer she
gravitates towards mythology and horror, the fantastical and the
macabre, but also has a love for hyper-realism. You can currently
find her work in the The Hooghly Review Issue 2. You can
follow her writing journey and other shenanigans on Instagram,
@elozerbethh.
7

Cast
JAKOB, hungry.
TONY, hungrier.
Time
Dark.
Setting
Deep in an unforgiving, unknown wood.
Our only light source should be from the two characters’ flashlights.
——
The things we hear should be familiar yet chilling: whistling wind, rustling leaves, the
chattering teeth of two grown men. Everything is dark.
JAKOB
I’m sorry, man.
TONY
We’re fucked, Jakob.
JAKOB
I’ll never drag you out hiking again.
TONY
We’re never going to have an “again.” We are so fucked.
They are silent for a moment, shivering.
JAKOB
How long has it been?
TONY
I don’t know. Feels like months.
8

Silence.
TONY (cont’d)
I hate the dark.
After a moment, a flashlight shines. We see the men – dirty and
dishevelled.
JAKOB
Now we have eyes.
TONY
Yeah, barely. Still can’t see shit.
JAKOB
Are you mad at me, Tony?
TONY
I can’t say I’m not mad at you. But also, I don’t want to die with a
grudge. Heard that makes you go to Hell.
JAKOB
You think your ass is getting into Heaven?
TONY
Hey, I’m hopeful.
The two share a brief moment of happiness. It dissipates quickly.
9

JAKOB
I’m starved.
TONY (mimicking Jakob)
“Remember to bring first aid, Tony.” “Remember to bring plenty of
water, Tony.” “Remember to wear your sturdiest and warmest shoes,
Tony.” You tell me all that shit, but you didn’t think to bring more
than four granola bars?
JAKOB
All that’s for safety.
TONY
And food isn’t?
JAKOB
Well right now I’m thankful for the first aid. I wrecked my palm on a
branch earlier, I need to wrap it.
TONY
We are going to starve out here, Jakob. Hiker Extraordinaire didn’t
plan correctly? I thought you knew all the tricks of the woods.
JAKOB
I did – I do. But these woods... something is weird about them. We
got here in the early afternoon and within a couple of hours, it was
pitch black. And there hasn’t been much light since.
TONY
It’s called daylight savings, idiot.
10

JAKOB
But we’ve been here for—
TONY (interrupting)
I just want to get out. I’m sure Sara is worried sick. How long do you
think it would take your family to find us?
JAKOB
Probably a while. I didn‘t tell them where we were.
TONY
You didn’t what?
JAKOB
I didn’t want to be bothered! I just wanted a day to do my favourite
thing with my best friend. Stef is always up my ass when I’m out
hiking.
TONY
Wow, what a horrible girlfriend she is, wanting to make sure you’re
alive. Bet you wish she was up your ass right now.
JAKOB
In hindsight, yeah, kind of.
TONY
Not even your parents? You always tell your dad where you’re going.
JAKOB
I didn’t tell him this time. He doesn’t even know I went. If he knew I
was exploring a new location he’d want to come with us, and he’s too
old for this shit now.
11

TONY
For fuck’s sake, Jakob, have you never watched any sort of true crime
documentary? A horror movie even?
JAKOB
That’s chick shit.
TONY
It’s real life shit, that’s what it is.
JAKOB
Horror movies aren’t real life.
TONY
Every tale is based on truth.
JACOB
Wait, is that Shakespeare or something?
TONY ignores him. Silence.
TONY
I don’t like the dark.
JAKOB
You’re a grown man afraid of the dark?
TONY
And you’re a grown man who got us lost in the fucking woods with
no food, no shelter, and no map or compass.
12

JAKOB
Who the fuck still uses a compass? Whatever, man. I’m going to take a
piss.
JAKOB passes off his flashlight to TONY.
JAKOB (cont’d)
Since you’re a pussy.
JAKOB stalks off. It’s just TONY with the two flashlights. The noises of
the woods seem louder than before. He’s on edge. One noise begins to
stand out amongst the rest.
The crinkling of a wrapper.
TONY
Jakob?
The sound of the wrapper stops.
JAKOB
Yeah?
TONY
What is that noise?
JAKOB
What noise?
13

TONY
Don’t fuck with me, Jakob.
JAKOB
Dude, what are you talking about?
TONY
You have food, don’t you.
JAKOB (through a mouthful of something)
I wish.
TONY
You have food, you motherfucker!
TONY accosts his friend, tackling him to the ground.
TONY (cont’d)
Why have you been keeping it from me? Why were you hiding the
food? You selfish prick.
JAKOB
I don’t have any food!
TONY
I heard it! I heard the wrapper!
Through the glow of the flashlights we see the men struggling, fighting
each other. TONY is able to pin JAKOB down. He grabs one of the
flashlights and begins beating JAKOB with it.
14

The light hits a creature standing aside, watching TONY commit his
act. A tall and scrawny being with long limbs, sharp claws and teeth,
sunken eyes, and curved antlers.
JAKOB no longer struggles. TONY stops. All is still.
TONY (cont’d)
Where’s the food, you son of a bitch?
TONY frisks his friend. His hands find the source of the crinkling. He
shines the flashlight on it.
It’s an empty bandaid wrapper.
TONY
No...
He sets down his flashlight. It illuminates the creature.
After a moment, TONY’s hunger overtakes him. The sounds of teeth
tearing through flesh overpower the sound of the whistling woods.
Perhaps TONY begins to grow antlers.
The creature watches.
15

TED BUNDY
GROUPIE
PREPARES
FOR HIS TRIAL
By Carson Wolfe
Carson Wolfe (they/she) is a Mancunian poet and
winner of New Writing North’s Debut Poetry
Prize (2023). Their work has appeared or is
forthcoming with Rattle, The Rumpus, The
North, New Welsh Review, and Evergreen
Review. They are an MFA student of Creative
Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University
and currently serve as a teaching assistant on the
online writing course Poems That Don’t Suck.
Carson lives in Manchester with their wife and
three daughters. You can find them at
www.carsonwolfe.co.uk.
16

In the hair colour aisle, I search for his favourite shade,
bark under nail brown, bottom of the lake brown, one
closest to his mother’s brown. Stain the motel sheets
with dreams of how I’ve been preparing for him
in the arms of fishermen who know the trophy weight
equivalent to a dead girl. The papers say I am lovesick,
sick for love—sick, but I won't give them the satisfaction
of an absent father. I give them hair parted down the
middle, silver hoops in place of debutante studs, weighted
in solidarity with the cuffs dragging between his ankles.
Broadcasters will ask, why are you here? I’ll stand in a
lineup of women and say, I have always been a dead girl
walking. Alone, in the city at night, never using my house
key as just a house key. I want him to look at me, to feel
blue eyes imagining another life being drained.
I want to turn this court pew into a church, become a
bride in black marching down death row, screaming I do I
do. Because if I can survive him, I can survive anything.
17

By Alex Simms
ARBLE
Alex Simms is an Asian-American writer from West
Virginia, USA. His work has appeared in places like
Rookie, Open Letters Review, Et Cetera, and
elsewhere.
18

I used to tell people my favorite color was green, because more
things come to mind. Nature, environmentalism, money, whatever
the guy was into. If, while on a date, he only starts asking me about
colors at least after three prior questions, I think about sleeping with
him.
Mark was wearing a blue polo—more like navy—in the dark. I
could only tell as he got closer to the bar once I waved him down.
“Howdy,” he sits on the swivel stool beside me. His jeans are a lighter
blue, like he stores them outside in the sun instead of in his closet or
dresser.
“Hey, sorry, I went ahead and got a drink.”
“No worries, although,” he motions both hands up like I just
caught him in the act of something. “That nervous, huh?”
Mark turns his glance to the bartender who notices he’s arrived
and then orders some cocktail. Everything Mark says is in a dry lilt.
The way he talks about his job, his commute to work, his fellow
passengers he remembers during said commutes, etc. But then, he
talks about his nephews, the smell of tennis balls in a can, and how his
favorite holiday is Thanksgiving, and it’s all in the same inflection. But
even with these happier designated stories, it reassures me that I’m not
boring him, or I’d think he’s having a bad time. He talks more than
I’m used to, his banter already feeling like a secondary language.
“Anyway, that’s why I think gay men should be incarcerated.”
He sips the last of his drink. When the crushed, melted ice hits his face,
he makes a little sound—almost like a moan—of surprise. As we talk,
his legs and body face mine as I face his.
19

“Actually,” I lean closer to him, fitting my thumb at the crevice
of his polo, tensioning the buttons. “All men who wear polos should
be the ones incarcerated.”
Mark doesn’t miss a beat. He leans close to me, whispering in my
ear, even though the volume of the music in the bar is generous. I can
hear the water the bartender is pouring into a patron’s glass from the
other end of the bar, it dripping as carefully as sand in an hourglass.
“Well, since we’re both gay I guess we’d already be there,” he says. My
thumb still flirts with Mark’s shirt, barely brushing his chest hair. He
doesn’t move it away.
“Well, lucky for you, my favorite color is blue.” I place my hand
on his leg.
Mark’s apartment is a bit bigger than my studio. His kitchen is
the biggest part. Assorted knives cling to a magnetic sheet above the
sink, pointing in the direction of a pinned picture of him and his
nephews on the wall where the backsplash would normally be. The
thumbtack on the wall is uneven, looking forced in. A faint crack
surrounds it, almost looking like an unsharpened pencil having etched
a stain instead.
“Here you go.” Mark taps me from behind on my shoulder with
a glass of wine. “We can go to the living room.”
The wine doesn’t sit well, sloshing around with my cocktail. I sit
my glass on a desk, beside an acrylic painting of a bear on the floor
that’s frame leans against the wall.
20

“I didn’t know you were an artiste.”
“Oh, I’m not. My ex made it. It’s our dog.” Mark sits on the end
of his leather sofa, his glass nearly empty. I was waiting for his cue, his
familiar way of cracking a joke. But then, I feel flushed—embarrassed
—acting like I know him.
“Oh.” I reach back for my glass. “Does he live in D.C.? Do you
share custody?” The first question is real, and I try to make the second
one sound lighter, like I’m on a daytime law show, but instead, it
comes off nosy.
“No, and no, he’s back in Connecticut. We met in undergrad.
His art classes were in the same building as my business classes, and
we’d seen each other passing by a lot of times.” Mark stops there,
without elaborating. He bops his head and his foot like he’s listening
to a song in his head.
“And then what?” I ask, like I care. But really I just feel stupid,
how little I know.
“Oh you know, I just decided to ask him on a date one day, I
figured the worst could be that he says no, and he actually did at first.”
Mark pauses again. Withholding.
“Hmmm.” Mark’s living room wall clock ticked as I thought
about how abridged his story was compared to his other stories he told
tonight, compared to the happier ones.
21

I swig the rest of my wine. “In a way, I guess he did say no.”
“What? How do you mean?” Mark stares at me for the first time
since being in the kitchen. But his voice still stays the same.
“Oh, sorry,” I wave my hand. “I just meant that you’re not
together anymore, I didn’t mean to imply who did the breaking up
with whom.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s true.” Mark starts nodding again, in a trance.
“Hey,” I balance my glass on a pile of withered paperbacks on
the side table, then plop onto Mark’s lap. The leather beneath him
exasperates. “I didn’t mean what I said.”
“Oh no, we’re good.” He replies. I wonder if he means me or his
ex. I twiddle my fingers at his polo again, taking them back so I can
kiss his neck at the same spot. When I hear Mark moan, I feel around
searching for his hands, and place them in the back pockets of my
pants. When I do, he starts to giggle.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” I mutter in his ear. I muster a laugh that sounds more
like a coo, then resume kissing his neck.
Mark pokes my stomach, and then my waist, and I realize he’s
trying to tickle me. At first—still pecking his neck and licking his ear
—I giggle too, so he knows I don’t mind.
22

But then I notice his hands are gone again. I lift my head to find
him, to look at his eyes while I still straddle his lap.
“Sorry, the wine is making me so sleepy.” He says, scanning my
face. I realized this could be true, getting phantom feelings of how the
wine tasted earlier. But in my earnestness, there was also shame: the
poking, the tickling, understanding that Mark was trying to get me off
of him.
“Oh yeah,” I slide off Mark’s lap. “Me too, I think I have a bit of a
headache.”
I head to the table that’s near the front door where my tote bag
and shoes are. I hear Mark rouse up to follow me. After putting my
jacket on and slinging my tote over my shoulder, I turn around and
see him lean against the wall that leads to the living room. Beside the
front door is a closed with light creeping from the bottom. I assume its
Mark’s bedroom—inviting—but forbidden to me, like a ride at an
amusement park I’m not old enough for.
“I had a great time tonight.” I say, initiating a hug.
“Me too, it was nice meeting you.” Mark’s voice stayed the same,
even when tipsy. His stance felt stiff like any sober person’s would be.
I could smell my fading saliva on his neck. A waft of the wine hit me
first, like the seductive subtly of a fragrance. But then it left, being
replaced with the scent of putrid garbage, like my spit expired.
“Goodnight.” I waved, closing the door behind me. He waved
too, with one hand in the air and the other in his pocket.
23

I live the next neighborhood over, beyond the bridge. The
streetlights are broken so I use my phone to light my way. I review all
my apps since it’s the end of the day. I save Grindr for last.
When I open the app a lot of people are online, the scattered
green orbs like a Morse code. I go to Mark and I’s chat, and he’s online
too. I click my phone off and notice the sound of the water over the
Potomac River and stare out into the dark. I’d never seen it at night
before, the water appearing like tar, or oil. I try to look up instead of
down over the rail at the water.
With the streetlights on the bridge out, the sky is a bit clearer,
even when wedged between two cities. It’s like I’m nowhere. I stand
there for a little while, trying to trick my eyes into seeing the kind of
black sky that—for the briefest moment—could look blue.
24

X-RAY
VISION
By Sashi Tandon
Sashi is a young creative from Perth, Western
Australia. They work across the mediums of
poetry, film and photography, having written
multiple finalist and award-winning short films.
Sashi’s poetry has been published in Malu Zine,
Licorice Zine and the Letters Home Collection,
among others. In their work, they hope to make
poetry accessible and entertaining, revealing the
beauty, horror and humour in everyday life.
25

is Clark Kent a villain
for using his x-ray vision
to unbutton blouses
and drop panties –
or a hero for exposing
the bulges behind
the leotards,
the liars dressing themselves
up in skirts and hormones
and trauma
and undeserved sporting medals –
only look up the skirts
of the frauds,
not the real women
26

MICHELA
-NGELO
AND THE
CEILING
By Tatum Bunker
Tatum Bunker is a freshman at Utah Valley
University. She's an aspiring writer but is majoring in
Criminology. She loves thrifting and has a major
sweet tooth. She runs The Letters Home Collection
and, as of writing this, has about ten publications.
27

Michelangelo laid on his back for five years to stare at the ceiling.
He made a masterpiece known, celebrated, and viewed by everyone
around the world. He was ahead of his time: a spectacularly talented
man.
I laid on my back all weekend, staring at the ceiling. I ate mac and
cheese. I’m waiting to hear back from jobs that will probably ghost
me. Am I ahead of my time? Am I even a little talented? I took a
couple of naps.
The most admired part of Michelangelo’s ceiling is called ‘The
Creation of Adam’. God and Adam reach for one another, barely
grasping fingers. I had a remake of that painting in my home for years,
when my parents got it as a wedding gift. It hung right over my desk.
I could barely grasp it.
I can barely grasp what’s happening.
I like college, you know? I like independence. I like doing what I
want, when I want. I like having unlimited screen usage, though I
have around two friends here. My siblings think it’s pathetic. I don’t
mind. I have a friend back home who thinks eating mac and cheese
twice a day is weird. I don’t mind.
I can’t quite grasp the notion, idea, or reality that I’m an adult.
Technically. You shouldn’t be considered an adult until 21. But I
don’t make the rules: I’m 18, and 18 means adulthood.
Michelangelo died when he was 88.
28

If Google is correct, Michelangelo hated painting the Sistine
Chapel’s ceiling so much that he composed poetry about his misery. I
would consider myself a poet too, having published a handful of
poems. Sometimes I feel sorry for myself, sometimes I'm tired.
Sometimes I wish I had a brush to paint the ceiling.
If painting that stupid ceiling wasn’t good enough, Michelangelo
also carved David. Yes, David—the impressively accurate (and
uncircumcised) statue. I don’t think God grasped David as he did
with Adam because David was struck by lightning at one point. I
don’t think I quite grasped David either. What a show-off. I can make
a snowman with exceptionally large breasts, but that’s about it. The
ceiling creation is more impressive. Not only because it took almost
double the time, but because of how it looks. So screw off, David. Go
find my bosomed snowman.
We study the Greats in school. The scholars, philosophers, and
psychologists; the scientists, politicians, and revolutionaries. We learn
about their hardships, merely glimpsing a fraction of what their brains
came up with. We learn their opinions, their values. We study their
theories and actions.
I have always wondered if they lay in bed to stare at their ceilings.
I wonder if they felt as if life wasn’t real. Was it something any of them
could grasp? Did they realize that future generations would teach their
children about them?
29

I wouldn't believe a time traveler if they came from years in the
future, hugging me tearfully to thank me for what I did or will do. I
would be more concerned that a random stranger was hugging me,
grasping the concept of ‘me’. Shaking my hand, clutching my
fingertips. I am upset I cannot lie on my back and make a novelty
greater than almost everything in the world. I am upset that my name
won’t go down in history like Michelangelo.
But Michelangelo never had mac and cheese. That was a concept
he never got close to grasping.
30

Books such as “City-State” and “Citizen Disobedience” by liberal
scholars of Hong Kong Studies, essays like “Imprisoned Words” and
“The Empire Should Fall Apart” by political dissidents, along with
”Notes on Article 23 Legislation” (1) and the anthology “Eating,
Walking, and Protesting” by human rights lawyers, are banned in
schools first, followed by removal from public libraries. Anticipating
repercussions, chain bookstores proactively take down these books to
avoid potential harassment.
Many authors of these publications are silenced, exiled,
incarcerated, or even disappeared. Their ideas, words, and actions are
deemed in violation of China’s National Security Law, implemented
in July 2020 in response to widespread resistance against escalating
social control, including blatant propaganda in school textbooks.
Consequently, readers turn to independent bookstores. They
quietly organize readings or small forums to discuss politically
sensitive topics. Although openly criticizing the regime or policies is
prohibited, free thinkers persist in rebuilding Civil Society that had
been brutally purged during the Umbrella Movement, Anti-
Extradition Movement, and various outcries for democracy.
They talk about the Tiananmen Square Crackdown in 1989, the
deprived autonomy of Hong Kong, the critical perspective of Chinese
history, or the freedom of speech Taiwan is earning and Hong Kong is
losing.
32

But these bookstores are checked by the police from time to time
with excuses of unpermitted activities, issues of hygiene or noise, or
taxation, or smoking and littering. Afraid of the state violence, visitors
gradually stop attending. And with the absurd censorship and
arbitrary law enforcement, publications of political caricatures are
gone, biographies of social reformers such as Nelson Mandela and Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. are gone. Legal books about justice and
equality are gone. Travel books by an allegedly seditious news outlet
publisher are gone. Award-winning poem collections, whose honours
had been rescinded, are gone. Reviews recounting the Chinese
student movement three decades ago and the memoir of the Nobel
Peace Prize winner, who died in prison in China, are gone.
To authoritarianism, books are the most subversive tools, even
blank pages could be a threat to power (2).
Under the endless disturbance, some independent bookstores
chose to shut down or relocate to other countries like the US or
Taiwan (3), where free speech is considered a fundamental right. The
bookstore owners in Hong Kong acknowledge that, like the remnant
posts in a collapsing house, their independent status, whether
referring to the business model or people’s thinking, will eventually be
gone.
Reminiscent of the punctuation of an urban drama,
independent bookstores are where we pause and take breaths when
reciting. Under the draconian rule, Hong Kong becomes a bad
tragedy that can’t be edited, until we are suffocated.
33

Notes:
1) Hong Kong Basic Law Article 23 states that Hong Kong shall enact
laws to prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition, or subversion
against the Central Government of People’s Republic of China.
2) The A4 Revolution, taking place in Nov 2022 throughout China,
protested against the severe lockdown imposed for the zero-case policy
during the Covid-19 pandemic. Protesters held a white A4 paper to
express their anger of being silenced.
3) The bookstore People’s Recreation Community closed in 2018,
and Mount Zero Books closed in Mar 2024. Bleak House Books
relocated to Atlanta, US in 2021, and Causeway Bay Books moved to
Taipei in 2020. In 2022, Nowhere Bookstore was founded in Taipei
by Hong Kongers settling in Taiwan. Additionally, many Hong Kong
authors seek to issue their banned books in Taiwan.
34

TALES FROM
THE PAMPAS:
FIRST
IMPRESSIONS
By Louise Dolan
Louise A. Dolan, retired from North Carolina State University after
teaching Spanish Language and Culture for more than three decades,
holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Mt. St. Mary University, Los
Angeles. Recent publications include creative non-fiction in The
Persimmon Tree, also fiction in The Rush Literary Magazine and
miniMag Literary Magazine; non-fiction in the anthology Scattered
Covered and Smothered; The Urban Hiker, Stories in First Voice;
and several poems in The Windover Literary and Arts Magazine, and
The Rush Literary Magazine. Louise's stories and poems find their
sources in her personal experiences growing up in southern
Wisconsin, teaching in N.C., and enjoying travel to South America
and Europe, as a student and later as the director of a study abroad
program with NCSU. She cherishes her three children, three
grandchildren, and three siblings scattered across the country, and
dear friends in Raleigh and L.A.
35

I’d felt his eyes on me from the moment I transferred into the
main barn earlier in the week. Maybe even before. The farmhands in
the sow barn, my previous assignment during the first month, mostly
ignored me after acknowledging the rare American female study
abroad intern. My classmates adjusted, too, and even teased me about
sentimentality, for I was drawn to the creamy, pink-eared runts,
helping those little piglets find an open nipple to suckle more and
avoid being culled from the litter. I even learned to wield a scalpel,
performing castrations that encouraged rapid weight gain. But no
matter how I tried to fit in, one farmhand seemed to watch me from
under his dark browline, like a falcon watching its prey.
In the main barn, the other students and I now trained with
Marcos, one of the vets who managed the Angus herd. Straddling the
tops of stall fences, we bathed the energetic studs, groomed their curly
black coats, and smoothed their marble-like six-inch curved horns
with a file. No runts here. These feisty teenagers were the noble
princes of the farm. There’d be no surgeries with the two-year-old
bulls, but I still carried the pocketknife Mom gave me before
departure. Barely making eye contact, she had pressed it into my hand.
No wrapping paper, no explanation.
We all stood outside the barn awaiting Marcos with the day’s
assignments. I warmed my hands against June’s winter solstice chill
deep in my jean pockets, rounding the knife sheath with the index
finger of one hand, and the clean edge of my ever-present guitar pick
with the other. The farmhands leaned against the fence, drawing from
their hand-rolled puros and exhaling streams of smoke from their
nostrils like old Weber grills.
36

I’d enrolled in the one-year vet-tech program as a second choice
after being expelled from the local high school because the principal
had equated my long frizzy hair and wire-rimmed glasses with drug
abuse. Her unwarranted assessment allowed no opportunity to
defend my scholastic accomplishments nor my interest in folk music.
Rather than classes in literatura clásica and historia de Argentina, I
memorized the details of animal husbandry and optimal fat content in
Holstein milk production. And instead of afternoon study halls to
review excerpts from Lope de Vega, or Cervantes, to my horror, I was
assigned with other students to skin lop-eared rabbits for our
communal meal.
But, thanks to that administrator’s shortsightedness, I was able to
join students and farmhands outside during the daily siesta where we
played and sang gaucho payadas folklóricas recounting the tales of
Martín Fierro, their folk hero. Eschewing the afternoon nap, we
instead stretched our fingers to reach exotic notes, our guitars
reverberating with chords that evoked the relentless pampero winds
and the rugged, solitary life of the gauchos.
Marcos finally arrived, list in hand, and sent everyone off in pairs
to different posts, leaving me alone on the gravel.
“Y yo?”
He gestured toward the remaining man at the fence, the one
who’d been clocking me since my arrival. With a slight inflection of
that jet-black brow, the falcon crushed his puro on the ground after a
final pull, then turned toward the large corral without a word.
37

We entered the tackle barn where he pointed to a row of woolly
cojinillos, the hornless Argentine fleece saddle. I hoisted one onto my
shoulder and followed him out to where two bridled horses were tied
to a rail, one already saddled. I threw my saddle over the back of the
dun-colored one, threading the woven cincha through the ring and
pulling it tight. The falcon gave it another tug, like a carnie checking
seatbelts on a roller coaster before letting it rip, then mumbled, vamos.
I mounted the petite criollo horse and patted his thick black
mane. Taking up the reins, I pulled back firmly and followed the
falcon out a series of gates. He led me into the grasslands surrounding
the farm, not so different from our rural Wisconsin home where, as
children, we’d played hide and seek in soft green meadows edged with
Queen Anne’s lace and Delft blue chicory, but bigger, much bigger,
and scruffier. Our hunt for females took us down a well-worn trail.
We looked left and right across the open range dotted with
enormous tufts of dormant, greenish brown stipa grass. It was early in
the season, but already the herds were birthing calves and lambs, and
they were susceptible to viscacha, voracious eighteen-pound rodents
that preyed on their young. I had yet to see one, but I’d heard
gruesome stories reminding me of the old snarly badger rumored to
live beneath our barn. Off in the distance, the low, worn Tandil
mountains lay enshrouded in a heavy, late-winter fog, like a herd of
grey rhinos asleep in a pile.
“Rinocerontes durmiendo.” I pointed to the range, the corners
of my mouth twitching toward a smile, but the falcon only squinted
at the disappearing horizon before pulling his reins left.
38

He stopped at a fork in the path and raised his right palm to his
ear. I paused just behind him, held my breath. The horses, erect as
Welsh guards at a misty outpost, awaited a jerk on the reins to release
their pose. The only sound I heard was the distant chippy squawk of
the loica pampeana, a meadowlark whose ruddy orange breast
reminded me of our plucky robins, its insistent melodic call suggesting
imminent rain.
I followed him down a slight incline toward a creek that zigzagged
across the prairie like a ragged lightning bolt. He saw the ewe
first, spotted her dingy wool hidden alongside a weathered mound,
then dismounted in a swift, soundless move to the ground. I waited
for his signal to approach. We knelt beside the ewe, and watched as
her long, abrasive pink tongue cleaned and stimulated the just-born
lamb. “Sólo minutos,” only minutes old. He checked the ewe’s ear for
the farm’s metal band. We remounted, and I followed him up a slight
rise that opened onto a large plain dotted with irregular mounds of
grass bobbing in the wind like ancient sea turtles on a rough and misty
sea.
“Oeste? Sur?” The fog confused my sense of geographical
direction.
“Sur.”
“Y la escuela?” I pointed diagonally behind me to confirm the
school.
“Sí.”
“Luisa. Me llamo Luisa.”
“Yo sé.” The falcon already knew my name. Didn’t offer his.
39

We rode on, heading upwards, downwards, then upwards again, the
mountains barely discernable now. The breeze lifted my hair when we
crested another rise. In the distance, a small structure came into view.
He rode ahead, eyes on the shack, hands loosely fingering the reins as
he let his horse pick up speed on the downhill. I tapped my free hand
against my breastbone, marking time with a riff that played on infinite
repeat in my head and my accelerating heartbeat, the knuckles of my
other hand turning white with a tightened grip.
I glanced from left to right, searching the horizon for any
recognizable marker as we descended the hill into thickening fog
toward the rough-hewn hut. He dismounted, wrapped the reins
around the fencepost, and flipped a rusted metal ring. The gate
squeaked open like our backdoor swollen with summer’s mildew and
humidity. He beckoned me to dismount, but I hesitated, tracing the
outline of Mom’s knife in my left pocket with my free hand.
Remember? She hadn’t been keen on the whole study abroad
plan, probably thought it wouldn’t come through. Then I received
the full scholarship. First recipient ever from my high school. How
could she say no?
I allowed my horse to approach, though I had yet to release the
reins or relax the grip of my thighs from the fleece saddle. Without a
word, the falcon approached the concrete block dwelling, clapped his
hands twice. The crude wood door opened, and an olive-skinned
woman with a thick black braid leaned out, two little faces peering
from behind her long, blue skirt. He encouraged them to emerge,
which they did timidly, unwilling to step far from the protective arch
of the doorway. He signalled again for me to dismount.
40

When I finally entered the yard, the woman also stepped closer,
eyes to the ground, the boys dragging behind her and pulling at their
coarse-knit woollen sweaters. The falcon spoke sternly to the woman,
sending her back inside. He gestured to the boys to join him, one to
each leg.
“Mis hijos.”
I nodded to his sons and smiled. The younger one tucked his
head in shyness, but the older child peered at me from under his brow.
The woman returned with her mate, her ruddy face glowing from the
heat of the kerosene stove. She served him first, then me, before taking
her turn. The children watched as we sipped the herbal infusion from
the silver straw.
“Ella es de América. Trabaja con los otros estudiantes. Toca
guitarra. Canta nuestra música. Aprende nuestro idioma.”
With each of his utterances, my hands sank more deeply into my
pockets, a wave of chagrin reddening my cheeks like a hot bonfire.
He’d been watching me for months and appreciated all my efforts to
learn the language, the chores on the farm, and their music. Grasping
the guitar pick in my back pocket, I stepped closer and offered it to the
younger child. Needing something for the older boy, I reached into
my front pocket and passed him Mom’s knife. The boys returned to
their mother’s side, admiring the gifts. The woman raised her gaze to
me and blinked once.
“Vamos.” The falcon turned back toward the prairie.
Outside the gate, we remounted and trotted side by side up the hill.
The fog was lifting, and the grey rhinos came back into view.
41

STAY
TUNED
FOR
ISSUE
III.
Arriving August, 2024
THE PINNACLE
42