Simple Machines
At eleven, I stole a lisp from my parents—slipped
past silent seams of brick, past slouching yards
and surveilling fields, past the stray dog still wearing
its owner’s collar, past the trappings of dead
animals and the splintering lanterns in perfect
hunting lodges, past the people and their economies
of sweat and the gym called Manifest Your Destiny
into the speech classroom’s projector spotlight. There’s more steel
in English than you would believe. In my textbooks,
men invented new machines to turn people
into ghosts, to sheathe all senses in fresh
blood. The woman in speech class asked all
who hadn't broken their mouths yet to circle
the nouns. Mark the verbs. Buck the horse. Stolen
accent evidence of stagnancy. A cycle
of innovation: pulley into crank into guillotine.
The inventions grew more beautiful, more
deadly: artful casket, gorgeous cage. I learned
how to speak so they could ruin me, an imitation
of a voice. All of this is progress. I excelled
in speech class, my mouth rinsed out clean with white
heat, controlled vocabularies of so much blood. On days
I can't speak, this is where I go: interrogation
room, gunmetal smile. Grateful machines. The coldest tongues.
Katherine Han is a college freshman studying Communications at University of Southern California. Katherine has always loved story-telling, but particularly loves being able to capture stories through film. She used to run the media branch of her high school's newspaper: extending the written word onto the digital medium. Katherine lives in northern California and loves the sunny weather and going to the beach. She has a pet bunny, Skip, who she absolutely adores. Katherine is extremely excited to be part of the inaugural PATCHWORK program and looking forward to seeing what other stories she can express through film!
Gaia Rajan lives in Andover, MA. She's the Managing Editor of The Courant and the Poetry Editor of Saffron Literary. Her work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in diode, DIALOGIST, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Split Lip Magazine, Hobart, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, "Moth Funerals," is forthcoming from Glass Poetry Press in fall, and she is a National Student Poet semifinalist. She is sixteen years old, and tweets @gaia_writes.