California State University (CSU): Open Journal Systems

Winner of the 2025 Rachel Sherwood Poetry Prize, as judged by CSUN alumna and editorial assistant at Alfred A. Knopf and Pantheon, Zuleima Ugalde

Ahern, Sean

7
NR
Dum Dum | Sean Ahern
I crack another Dum-Dum between my teeth, 
this one felt filling   
welded to enamel,  
the unholy synthesis of blueberry 
and banana bathing gustatory cells reminds me  
of the third round of carboplatin chemo 
it took to tear out the wet soggy lump 
from the back of my throat. 
I answer the door 
with a rope tied around my waist, 
sometimes I lose my grip 
sometimes I don’t open the door 
unless it’s mother,  
she brings the best spaghetti over 
and a bag of Dum-Dums.  
A
he
rn


English

Dum Dum

Eisenberg, Tristan

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The Bulldog Cafe | Tristan Eisenberg
A t the end of a very long day which had been filled with both work and school, neither of which 
moved me closer to the past, I found myself sitting at a bar 
which had just reopened after a twenty year long closure. 
In the many years since it first opened in the 1930s, it had 
been: a bar, a Mexican restaurant, an Italian restaurant, 
and a strip club. Not unlike the career of a character actor, 
buildings in Los Angeles tend to play a variety of di!erent 
parts. Despite the versatility that most of these buildings 
embrace, few maintain the character of this particular 
establishment. It was not shaped like a cube or even a 
sphere, but an enormous barrel. It was a barrel.
I sat on a stool that looked out an enormous window, 
staring into the crowd that had flooded in. While sipping 
on a cocktail with an overcomplicated name, I caught the 
glimpse of something hiding behind the crowd. A doorway 
was tucked behind the collection of hip, theater types. 
When I first heard about the reopening from a friend, all 
he mentioned was the barrel, but hiding in that backyard 
was a familiar building from my past. I pushed through a 
set of french doors and made my way to the mysterious 
structure. After moving through a crowd that presumably 
just escaped a black box theater down the road, I stood 
in front of the doors of this extraneous building. My eyes 
shifted from the painting of an ice cream and tamale on its 
glass doors, and up to the top of the building, which was in 
the shape of a bulldog’s head. A pipe stuck out firmly from 
between its lips, and a pu! of smoke emerged from the 
bowl.
The Bulldog Cafe previously sat at the end of a 
manufactured Los Angeles street in the basement of 
the Petersen Automotive Museum, the very same smoke 
billowing from its massive wooden pipe for twenty years. 
The Petersen was a home away from home when I was 
a toddler. Every weekend my father would fling me into 
his sidecar, and we would race o! to some strange place 
that he discovered on one of Huell Howser’s various Public 
Broadcast television shows on California landmarks. Howser 
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spoke in a loud Southern accent, often howling at his 
cameraman Louis to move the camera closer in on some 
oddity in a museum. I don’t know what Howser talked 
about in that episode, but I imagine that he was hollering 
at Louis quite a bit. The museum was divided into three 
stories, and the deeper one went, the deeper it became 
less a museum and more a simulacrum of a Los Angeles 
long since gone. Unfortunately, this dreamy iteration of 
the museum was sent to the landfill in the twenty-tens. If 
one were to stumble into the Petersen today, they would 
be inundated by white walls and cars without context. It 
wasn’t always like this. In the nineties, the museum was a 
time machine into a smattering of Los Angeleses that no 
longer exist. On one Sunday, I experienced what it was like 
to crash a car with Laurel and Hardy in the twenties, to get 
your kite stuck out in front of your house in the fifties, and 
grocery shop in the forties. The Petersen was devoted to 
the history of the automobile, but used Los Angeles as the 
vessel to visually contextualize this past in massive, full scale 
dioramas. Before we began our visits to the Petersen, our 
Sunday adventure was often at the Museum of Jurassic 
Technology, which still houses an exhibition on miniature 
trailers of the twentieth century. I was always fascinated 
by these tiny automobile-adjacent displays, and so upon 
first stepping foot in the Petersen, my fascination grew into 
obsession. While I was charmed by the peculiar room of 
miniature trailers, the displays at the Petersen overwhelmed 
me, and scared me. Standing face to face with lifelike 
statues of long dead Angelenos broken down on a perfect 
recreation of an early Los Angeles road, surrounded by 
weeds and nothing but the vastness of a motion picture 
matte painting behind them. The sky of these dioramas 
reached on forever. The Bulldog Cafe that sat at the end of 
the Petersen’s basement was the focal point of the display. 
I walked closer to it, admiring the paintings of an ice cream 
cone and a tamale on its glass doors for the first time. The 
dog towered over me. At the time, it seemed like it was the 
size of City Hall. Now, I know it was no more than twenty 
feet tall. The windows into the cafe were covered from the 
inside with brown paper, hiding the countertop and stools 
that I imagined were collecting dust inside. On this first visit, 
I stepped onto one of the bulldog’s large, scu!ed paws 
that had sunk into the floor and pressed my face against 
the glass, hoping to catch a glimpse of what was inside.
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The paper was thick, and no light was inside, so I closed 
my eyes and began building inside the bulldog. It was not 
just a countertop and some stools, but a massive portrait 
of thirties Los Angeles. Much like the rest of the automotive 
museum, I pictured a scene made up of wax Angelenos 
in period attire. I did not know where the original Bulldog 
Cafe was located, but I guess it that it was somewhere 
downtown, not far from Bunker Hill. Artists and oddballs that 
filled those Victorian mansions would wander down the 
street to have a co!ee inside the canine building.
Upon first opening the doors, the first guest to occupy 
my imagined version of the cafe was a painter. My father 
would often tell me stories about John Fante’s life in 
Bunker Hill, of which I had little understanding of, but the 
alternative Angelenos of the earlier twentieth century who 
littered these stories lingered in my mind. The wax painter 
was sitting at the bar with a tamale on a plate, and a little 
sketchbook shoved under his arm. Every figure in the rest of 
the museum was detailed in the same manner, with pens 
sticking out of pockets and gloves hanging from back 
pockets. An older lady sat in a booth, wearing a sweater 
and a pu!y dress. Her arm was outstretched towards a 
taxidermied tabby cat standing on the table. She held an 
ice cream cone in her hand, and it looked as though the 
cat was about to take a lick. A single phone booth sits in 
the back of the cafe. A young man with oil splashes all 
over his pants and work jacket stands inside. He is wearing 
coveralls, with a cigarette tucked behind an ear. His right 
hand is on the telephone as he yells into the receiver. In the 
left hand is a cup of co!ee, about to spill onto a teenage 
girl standing outside the booth. She is holding a lollipop in 
her hand. It’s all so loud Louder than anything else in the 
museum. After opening my eyes, I was once again faced 
with the papered over glass. Still, as I wandered away 
from the cafe, my tiny shoes bouncing o! the faux gravel 
below me, I could not get the image of those Bulldog 
customers out of my mind.While standing in the recreation 
of a majestic car dealership, with floor to ceiling windows, 
my gaze drifted from the stunning early automobiles that 
surrounded me, as my eye caught another pu! of smoke 
rising from the bulldog’s pipe.
The bulldog and the imagined scene that filled its 
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hollow insides, remained on my mind for the years that 
followed. On occasion, we would return to the museum, 
and I always rushed from the first few floors of the museum 
to the basement. The escalator descended into the Los 
Angeles of my dreams, to the people dancing inside of the 
bulldog, dreaming of nothing but ice cream and tamales.
Years later, I found myself reading a superhero comic 
book that was stu!ed into one of my father’s bedside 
drawers. The covers featured a masked man with a rocket 
strapped to his back, and a Bettie Page lookalike in his 
arms. Below them, and the flurry of his explosive rocket 
pack, was a familiar bulldog. The Bulldog Cafe, complete 
with smoking pipe. All that wondering about what went 
on inside that cafe, and now, as far as I knew, I held a 
first-hand account in my hands. My fingers quickly flipped 
through the pages of the book, my eyes glazed over 
much of the action and romance in favor of the mundane 
moments inside of the cafe. The hero sat inside with a 
co!ee in front of him, and tossed a nickel to the owner. An 
ice cream for my girl, he requested. A kindly old mechanic 
took a call from the pay phone that I knew was hiding 
behind that brown paper in the museum. He even spilled 
a co!ee all over the hero’s girlfriend, not unlike the painter 
and the little girl. It was confirmation that everything I 
imagined for that bulldog was true. It was history.
As I stared at the bulldog, a decade after my last visit 
to the museum, all I could think about was what was inside. 
The payphone, the counter, the tamales, every little detail 
ran back through my head. A film from the thirties that 
was never made, but I was sure would start playing the 
minute I pushed the doors open. I ran over to a bartender 
and asked to look inside. She was happy to unlock the 
doors, and mentioned that it was available for rent, if I was 
interested in hosting my next birthday party inside. The glass 
doors clicked open and she fumbled for a light switch. The 
lights finally came on. It was empty.
The pay phone had never existed. The counter was 
never there. It was empty when it was at the museum, she 
told me. Just a frame, with nothing inside but the machine 
that pumped smoke from the pipe. I moved my hands 
along the wood paneling that now ran across the walls. 
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As I reached the back, I noticed a picture. It was the real 
Bulldog Cafe. It was Washington Boulevard in 1934, and in 
the back of the photo, through the glass door, was a man 
sitting at the counter licking an ice cream cone.


The Bulldog Cafe

Leyva, Sandra

King Arthur Eats His Squire\u27s Food

Lee, Douglas

NR
I Wonder...
I wonder what it’s like…
What it’s like to go on a jog,
Feel that fresh morning fog....
Without fearing being shot down like a dog.
I wonder what it’s like…
What it’s like to walk outside,
To take those strides….
Without having to look side to side.
I wonder what it’s like…
What it’s like to walk in a store,
Prance around that sales floor….
Without being watched from the door.
I wonder what it’s like…
What it’s like to experience emotion freely,
Have anger not be a luxury….
Without worrying what stereotype they see….
But I’ll never know what it’s like,
‘Cause I wasn’t given that life
No….
See mine’s more filled with plight
‘Cause the world said my skin wasn’t right. 
But if I had been white 
I wouldn’t have to wonder what it’s like 
‘Cause I’d be living a more privileged life.
Now don’t get purposely confused.
I don’t want to be misconstrued,
‘Cause y’all have your hardships too,
But you’ll never have it as hard as I do
‘Cause this country was built for you….
By people who look like me,
Ironically.
And don’t get it twisted.
I don’t want you to miss this,
See, my black it is gifted
Topped with a bow like it’s Christmas,
And my power, it is mythic.
Wouldn’t trade it in at all,
Wouldn’t hit uninstall.
Even with the world’s recall,
My Black still stands tall
‘Cause it wasn’t meant to be small.
So I’ll keep wondering what it’s like
To live that more privileged life.
I’ll keep all my strife.
Now watch my black ignite,
And set this world alight.
D
ou
g
las Lee
11


I Wonder

Aguilar, Edwin

Insanity

Solares, Sofia

Ringlets

Rousso, Sam

Sunlight

Frears, Daniel

!
HOLIDAY
DANIEL FREARS
 It was well into the autumn months, but the weather re-
tained a light and refreshing heat, enough so that windows and 
doors stayed open throughout the shortening days. To a visitor, 
like Y, these conditions were a privilege, but to those that 
lived here it was a regular occurrence, and if anything, in-
voked a dismissive type of boredom; certainly nothing special. 
X, however, was an exception and whether it was just for the 
sake of Y or because of a personal passion, he commented regu-
larly and proudly of the year-round warmth, not jaded by the
many years of living in it.
 The mornings began slowly,and a slight chill in the air sat 
below a veil of dusty-looking clouds blanketing the sky. Small 
pockets of sun were allowed to dart through these grey layers 
as they trudged along slowly in the stillness. Once enough heat 
had gathered, the clouds would begin to pull apart and turn into 
smaller floating pillows, until eventually they gave up and let 
the rising heat burn them away completely, revealing the pain-
fully blue sky. A sweet smell of something new and fresh would 
fill the air for these early hours, reminding Y of things being 
born and then the sun would come to have its way and begin bak-
ing the ground, causing a thicker, stronger scent to permeate. 
The smell of age.
 Y was visiting for the week and luck had it that X was 
given an unexpected day off from work, so they decided to drive 
out to a reservoir that Y had been recommended. The description 
his friend had given was that of a lush and vast forested area 
which could be navigated via many different tracks,and this 
forest enclosed a decently sized reservoir, filled with crisp 
clear water; perfect for swimming, or just cooling off.
 X volunteered to drive after a little back and forth about 
which car to take and they set off late morning, by which time 
the sun was already high in the sky and the world seemed subdued 
by the heat. They wound their way through the local suburbs. 
Y watched as they passed by countless houses, each different 
to the last. This wasn't like the neighbourhoods of his youth, 
which were made up of rows upon rows of identical red brick
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buildings, each seemingly cloned from the last, these were 
awash with character and he saw single storey wooden shacks 
that looked ready to crumble and fall, sat right next to huge 
sprawling structures, with first floor balconies that would have 
swallowed up their poorer cousins next door. The mix of pov-
erty and wealth in such close proximity was a common theme and 
it made for an enthralling display, at least for Y, as he would 
often ruminate on the haves and have-nots of different people, 
eventually looking inward and wondering of his own human value.
 Whilst he was daydreaming, they had joined the motorway 
and were now gliding past a fractured stream of other vehicles, 
sitting in the outside lane to get to their destination without 
delay.
 "Do you see that up ahead?" X said drably as he gazed for-
wards.
 Y scanned the road in front of him and saw a collection 
of vehicles spread across the lanes, though nothing caught his 
eye. He looked upwards, above the cars at the sky and the few 
trees and distant hills that showed ahead, but again nothing 
stuck out.
 "What are you looking at?" he said finally, glancing at X 
to see whether he could figure it out from his stare.
 X let out a puff of breath and rearranged his lips.
 "There's a hearse in front of us, right ahead" his tone 
remained flat.
 "Do you think it's bad luck to be following a hearse?" he 
added.
 Y took a moment, rubbing his chin and his cheeks, either 
due to a habit of thought or the few day-old beard that covered 
them.
 "Bad luck… bad luck" he murmured to himself. After a mo-
ment his tone stiffened, and assuredness entered his voice.
 "I suppose it depends whether you believe in luck, right?" 
and he posed this as a statement with a slight inflection and 
then went on,"If you believe in luck, then following in the 
wake of a dead person, or a vehicle for dead people would prob-
ably be a pretty sure sign of bad luck, but on the other hand, 
if you don't believe in luck at all then it wouldn't mean
anything. Just another lump of metal on wheels."
 Y stopped rubbing his face once he concluded the thought 
and sat back into his seat.
57 "You know, we could conduct an experiment" he added. "Oh yea, what experiment is that?" X said, with lit-
tle sign of intrigue.
 "Well, we'd need to follow the hearse for as long as pos-
sible, staying behind it whichever way it goes and then see
whether anything bad happens later on" Y took a tiny pause "and 
if something bad does happen... then I guess we decide whether 
it was luck or coincidence that caused it. What do you think?"
 X looked over at Y and smiled, again rearranging his lips.
 "Sure"
 So, they stayed behind the hearse as it accelerated and as 
it slowed down, when it switched lanes and even when the long 
black vehicle indicated to take an exit which wasn't on their 
route, they took it, completely true to the cause.
 By now they'd decided not to go to the reservoir, though 
neither had said anything.
"Wow, this hearse is really travelling huh" said Y, after around 
half an hour of following it
"I hope they've got the body chilled in there" he said, imagin-
ing a greying corpse shuffling around in the back of
the stuffy vehicle, with the smell of death spreading in the 
autumn sun.
 They were now driving down a narrow country road, snaking 
between thickets of autumnal trees that held back most of the 
blazing sun, but allowed thin strips to filter through, dotting 
and lining the road. There were barely any other cars, and it 
seemed that they were heading somewhere well out of the way.
 X had been silent for a while but now spoke.
 "What are we going to do when they stop?" he said.
 Y went to rub his chin again but stopped himself.
 "That's a good question" he responded and took a moment to 
carry on.
 "How about, if they stop in a public area then we just 
park nearby and wait to see what happens next. If they
pull up to a house, then I guess we just drive on and call it 
quits… or we could just drop it now, depending on whether you 
think we've followed for long enough, to build up some really 
bad luck"
 X seemed to be soaking in the options and continued 
driving without speaking for a while.
 "We can go for a little longer, I think" and carried 
58
on like they'd never spoken.
 They were mostly silent as they continued, both feeling 
the weight that the heat held, with X following the target like 
a faithful hound and Y closing his eyes from time to time so 
that he could soak in the sound of the road, feeling like he 
had stowed away on a ride to some indistinct, foreign land.
 About an hour later, after climbing some steep and still 
winding stretches of road the hearse started to slow down and 
eventually stopped in the middle of the lane, having made no 
attempt to pull out of the way.
 X and Y looked at each other and X instinctively slowed 
the car and also came to a halt, some 20 meters back from the 
hearse. 
 After a moment a man appeared from the driver's seat, clad 
in a well fitted black suit and with a solemn expression that 
matched perfectly his mat of dull grey hair. He was every part 
the archetypal hearse driver. He closed his door and walked 
steadily to the back of the vehicle, his walk showing no urgen-
cy, and his eyes locked forward the entire time, not deviating 
once to look at X's car. Once he'd rounded the back he leant 
down to the handle and pulled the rear door wide open.
 The mood had become very strange, with Y worrying that 
they'd pushed things a little too far and as he stared at the 
side of X's onlooking head, he contemplated whether he did be-
lieve in luck. To him, the word ‘luck’ reeked of excuses and 
even if he thought that it may be a genuine phenomenon, he'd 
likely deny it.
 No, luck wasn’t real.
 The sun was still dappling through the trees, and it cast 
brilliant spots of light which shook against the man's dark 
suit as he leant into the back of the hearse, seemingly rear-
ranging something.
 "Do you want to get out of here?" Y said, sounding a lit-
tle apprehensive.
 "Now?" replied X incredulously.
 "You want to leave now, after coming all of this way? Be-
fore we even get to see what's happening?" he turned to Y and 
his eyes were bulging from his head in a mixture of excitement 
and bewilderment.
 As he finished his sentence the man jerked backwards with a 
dull thud accompanying the action, as something heavily dropped 
59onto the road. "What is that?" said Y uneasily, but there was no re-
sponse from X who was now leant over the steering wheel,
watching intently.
 The man bent down and picked up two limbs of whatever was 
on the road and with some considerable effort began dragging it 
towards them, the scraping of hide on the rough tarmac audible 
in the quiet surrounds. He moved slowly and methodically, lean-
ing backwards, pulling the creature along in neat little in-
stalments.
 "So, you want to just wait for this guy to bring that thing 
all the way over here?" Hysteria now rang through Y's voice as 
he fretted in the passenger seat, his hands pressing against 
the dashboard.
 "Let's fucking go!" he shouted, but X was non-responsive, 
slumped over the wheel with no discernible expression, watching 
listlessly as the figures moved towards them.
 Finally, the man dropped the load that he was carrying and 
turned around to face the two of them. This time he stared them 
both in the eye, X first and then Y, before walking the last 6 
or 7 paces to the bonnet of the car. The sun was shining sharp-
ly onto his face,and it illuminated him almost as if he were 
aflame, with the iridescent yellows and golds flashing over him 
with every movement. Once at the front of X's car he raised his 
arms, spreading them like wings and they could see that the 
large pale palms of his hands and the cuffs of his white shirt 
were darkly stained with a ruddy brown. The image brought to 
mind horror movies of Y's youth and he was frozen with dread.
 Throughout all of this X had been reliving a dream that 
he'd had many years ago. In the dream he was standing by the 
bank of a vast pond, so large that he could barely make out the 
low bushes and trees that lined the other side, with the water 
at his feet a thin mottled green that darkened the deeper it 
got. His feet were bare and only his toes dipped into the pond 
as the soles of his feet rested pleasantly in the soft mud of 
the bank. 
 Where the water was darkest, towards the middle of the 
pond, X could make out a collection of shapes bobbing on the 
surface, moving lazily and good-naturedly, appearing as 
friendly blobs on the water. Without feeling the urge, X 
had waded into the pond and once he was up to his waist 
60
had begun swimming a languorous breaststroke out towards the 
nearest of these dark masses. It seemed to call to him in a low 
and welcoming hum. He recalled the water being unusually vis-
cous, like swimming through a honey which gave some resistance, 
but this didn't cause any panic. Once he'd made it to the first 
shape, he started to tread water and stretched out his arms to 
reach over it, with a soft and rubbery texture greeting him. 
The object was heavy and seemed very dense. X leant over it, 
looking for signs of familiarity, but there were none. 
 It was like a large, tender rock that had decided to take 
itsleave from the bed of the pond and float up to the surface, 
to enjoy the calm air that was on offer. As X looked around, 
he noticed that all the other objects were slowly floating to-
wards him, but again this held no menace as they seemed only to 
want to be held as well. Gradually they made their way to where 
X was and one by one, they pressed against the mass that he was 
holding and merged into it, like drops into a black puddle, mak-
ing an increasingly huge and misshapen body. As they collected 
in their dozens, X felt the sensation of it inflating below him 
until eventually he was laid on top of this thick black plane, 
some considerable height in the air. 
 He scrambled to the edge and looked down to see that the 
pond was an ocean now and from horizon to horizon there was 
nothing but still, moss coloured water stretching out below.The 
driver dropped his hands down to his side and turned around, 
walking back towards the hearse without so much as a glance at 
the body laid out on the road. He carefully closed the back 
door and then returned to the driver's seat, started the engine 
and turned the hearse around, driving back the way he had come.
They sat for a few minutes and then X reversed the car until 
the lump in the road was out of sight, before taking them home. 


Holiday

Centurion, Sophia

The Powerful Part About the Brain

Enriquez, Zoe

61
TO BE ARDENTLY YOURS
ZOE ENRIQUEZ
the yearning for flesh 
how it is soft, 
and new. so warm. 
the freshness, 
the nimbleness, 
it holds echoes.
 
the bruises, 
the cuts, the scars, 
remembrance 
of time and age. 
the beauty of esh. 
the wear of life.
 
the blood pumping, 
fueling the core– a 
heartbeat, the soul. 
a succulent delicacy. 
the rhythm can soothe 
a craving of a desperate, 
awaiting mouth.
 
the desire of a body, 
the touch of skin, 
can set aflame to the 
darkest mind, the isolated 
individual, the hunt. 
a cannibal that wanders, 
seeking their prey to tame 
their lonely nights.
 
the yearning for flesh. 
the longing of a cannibal, 
i will devour you completely. 
A
62
ardently
 
come into my heart, 
and make it your home, 
before the poison seeps 
and corrupts your beauty.
 
let it not tempt you, but 
remind you of the depth 
of my love. it holds your 
gentle nature. it cradles 
your warm body.
 
i love you. 
here, now, 
forever and always,
 
i am most ardently yours.
your death is on my hands
 
my bloody hands lay 
on your wounded body. 
how still, how unfamiliar 
you feel next to me now.
 
your voice, your smell, 
your laugh, your cry 
it plays inside my head, 
endlessly, like a violin.
 
the red hues of your blood, 
soak into the ground below. 
giving back to the earth you 
once danced upon.
 
i do not feel butteries. 
i cannot hear birds sing. 
63the sun does not rise. i am restless. i am weak.
 
i am the cause of your 
demise– a murderer. 
i didn’t kill you, but 
your death is on my hands.
 
where oh where, 
do i put this love? 
please, forgive me. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
A


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