Windfall

Windfall
Vol XXXV 2012
Campus Journal
of Poetry, Prose, and Art
Truman State University
1
such sudden fortune:
wind’s gift of crisp, ripened fruit
fallen at our feet
-founders, 1976
Dear Reader,
I am excited to present you with the 35th edition of Windfall
magazine. Each year, we have a strong pool of applicants, and I
am pleased with the quality of the submissions we received this
year. I am honored to have the opportunity to publish all of their
artistic creations.
I would like to express my gratitude toward everyone who
made this book possible. First, I would like to extend a warm
thank you to the Department of English. Not only did the
department provide generous funding for this book, but the
professors continue to excel in encouraging and cultivating
excellence in creative writing within their students. I would
also like to thank Dr. Cole Woodcox, the Dean of the English
Department, who has continued to support Windfall. A
particular thank you to our faculty advisor, Dr. Ed Rogers, who
enthusiastically guided us through the process of developing this
year’s edition.
And of course, this project would not have been possible
without my incredible staff. I enjoyed the lively and intelligent
discussions at our weekly meetings. A big thank you goes to my
genre editors for moderating each session. I would also like to
thank my assistant editor, Shannan Cantu, for helping me in
every way I required. I would like to thank Courtney Scanlan, my
design editor, for putting so much effort into a beautiful layout,
and Alissa Walkner, my publicity coordinator, for organizing
our events. And I would like to thank my submissions editor, Joe
Santoli, for handling all the submission effortlessly.
Most importantly, I would like to thank everyone who
submitted to the magazine, as well as you. Without an influx of
submissions and a desire for such a publication, Windfall would
have no purpose. So thank you for supporting the creative arts
and continually proving that our campus is saturated with talent.
I am so excited to show you what we’ve put together this year.
Sincerely,
Laura Wellington
Editor-in-Chief
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Windfall Staff
Editor-in-Chief
Laura Wellington
Assistant Editor
Shannan Cantu
Design Editor
Courtney Scanlan
Publicity Coordinator
Alissa Walkner
Submission Editor
Joseph Santoli
Webmaster
Melissa Kapitan
Poetry Editors
Kevin Kotur
Bobby Williamson
Prose Editors
Joshua Kehe
Jackson Tyler
Art Editor
Megan Mehmert
Advisor
Dr. Ed Rogers
General Staff
Hope Benefield
Conor Gearin
Kathryn McClain
Katharine McLaughlin
Jamie Miller
Jessica Phillips
Anthony Sandifer
Kimberly Wronkiewicz
3
Contents
Noelle Stratman
Tori Hudson
Front Cover
Back Cover
Untitled
Antigua, Guatemala
Poetry
Codi Caton
Yosef Rosen
Kirsten Self
6
7
8
Harley Davis
Rachel Spillars
Kathryn McClain
Kirk Schlueter
Harley Davis
Tori Hudson
Jeffrey Denight
Ashley Kleinsorge
10
19
20
23
24
30
32
35
Betsy Koehne
Beatriz Parks
Kirk Schlueter
Melissa Kapitan
Yosef Rosen
Conor Gearin
Laura Wellington
Beatriz Parks
Betsy Koehne
Joseph Santoli
Conor Gearin
Megan Mehmert
37
38
42
44
53
54
55
65
60
69
73
74
75
76
77
78
80
90
92
94
97
100
Laura Wellington
Rae Doyle
Kevin Kotur
Yosef Rosen
Rachelle Wales
Emily Battmer
Kevin Kotur
Metaphors
Under
The Continent’s Largest
Remaining Tract of Tallgrass
Season of Gloom
Their Broken Nails
Waiting at the Bus Stop
My Grandpa Leads Prayer
Gender Stereotypes
Girl Scout Camp, 1998
Silk Pajamas, Silk Sheets
Red Buttons and the Ten of
Swords
Sonnet for Granny
April Song
Speak
Brink
August
Morning Fogs
Nothing Is Random
Road to Waukaway
skin signals
In My Image
Reproduction Spyglass
maintenance
express
experience
somersaulting
In which my father...
description of dense light
Exploring Marge
The News
To Speak with My Mother
Stillness
September Eleventh
Prose
Lauren Yarbrough
Rachelle Wales
Hope Benefield
Megan Mehmert
Megan Mehmert
Kathryn McClain
Conor Gearin
Hope Benefield
11
26
39
47
70
82
96
101
“Angel”
Piscary
Oedipus and the Complexity of Apples
Dirt
Gifts
Whatever You Wish For You Keep
God Bless
I Figure I’ll Talk a Yarn and You’ll
Listen Good
Art and Photography
Ashlee Estep
Hilary Kuntz
Anthony Sandifer
Tori Hudson
Mia Pohlman
Tori Hudson
Madison Emerick
Madison Emerick
Hilary Kuntz
Madison Emerick
Tori Hudson
Madison Emerick
Madison Emerick
Laura Wellington
Madison Emerick
Madison Emerick
9
22
31
36
43
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
79
93
Viewpoint
Redbud
Lombard
Untitled
Crack in the Sidewalk
No One Belongs More Than You
Her Violin
Music
Mantis
Multi Personality Disorder
Sandra, Jenny, and Sulmy
Headscarf
Baroque
Dissolution
Peekaboo
Dancing Shoes
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Metaphors
Codi Caton
Bones like sugar, you said
You like the metaphor like many of mine because
It gave you the image of another world where these similes smile
On my lips more than on my page
A world where words come out of our mouths not as sounds, but as solid objects
You like this one, you said, because you thought
It was possible that our bones would scrape each other and make
Sweet delicious treats
You said it made you want to bake cookies
Bones like sugar but when we first met
Mine were just
Pixie sticks that day you said ‘Get in the car,
Steering wheels are a great metaphor but I can’t tell you about it
If you sit out in the cold.’
6
under
yosef rosen
She crawled under the back porch to die,
surrounded by toys chewed to shapelessness,
as the magnolia shed silky bright petals
on the faded bristle-turf of a dry August,
too many Saturdays spent
compulsively cropping grass
so the Smiths and Willis’ and Burkes
wouldn’t snigger at us over their Times
and espresso. Mom and Dad were up-jumped
farmers, Steve and I rolled with Bella in the snow,
on the grass, romped in puddles, followed
squirrels, the only native life-form left
anywhere in suburbia. Bella watched us
like an elder sister without the sass, but
that bone-dry summer she dragged
herself under the back porch, that grit-dusted summer
I let myself go under in the backseat of a two-door grey beast
I thought was love, she whined and died that night, I whimpered
as the compass of adolescence pointed north, stabbed
me without a trace of blood.
7
The Continent’s Largest Remaining
Tract of Tallgrass
Kirsten Self
Kansas is the state where my mother should have been born.
Its beige and I swear
As we pass these heaps
of Harney silt loam
they are my mother’s paint swatches
Stacked upon each other
Peanut Butter 270F-4
Scotland Isle 410D-5
Chivalry Copper 240D-6
Wild Porcini 250E-3
She holds these Flint Hills
Up to the stark white walls
Of the hallway
In my childhood home
Waiting for the light.
She is indecisive as hell - as Kansas This state doesn’t know if it’s flat or rolling
And as a Missourian
I don’t much like that.
It’s the matte look of Kansas
as it stretches
I see too far,
I think I see Missouri,
I think if I flip Kansas upside down upon itself
Its hillocks and plains will puzzlepiece each other,
Each grassy bosom form fitting into another
Making the land lay itself.
Kansas is not consensual and
Suddenly I feel like I should force my mother to paint the hallway,
Either that or leave this tanned and leathered state behind,
Too much taupe never suited me anyway.
8
Viewpoint
Ashlee Estep
9
season of gloom
harley davis
Sea moves to vinyl grooves.
Brooded blues that soothe
those who fleet in fleece after June
when tree’s leaves begin to crease
in the bloom of autumn gloom
Oh ease oh ease
do me please.
Neutral nude tease me rude
oh please oh please oh please!
Soon doom will swoon in this cold
light of the moon where
lunacy looms to humming of
brooded blues that soothe.
Sea moves to vinyl grooves.
10
“Angel”
Lauren Yarbrough
They told her, the day she started, that it was one of the
most dangerous routes in the city. And she laughed.
“Honey, I grew up in this city. I know what it is.”
“You lookin’ to get shot, Miss B? For real?”
And she just shook her head.
She got along with the other bus drivers as if she had always
been there; inside of a week they were calling her “Momma B”
and inviting her to family get-togethers, coffee over breaks, shift
trades. Everyone loved her; even the hoods on the west side who
rode in the middle of the night and hated every-body. She didn’t
seem to be afraid of anything or worry about anything at all; she
drove her route with the same cheery smile every day, day in and
day out, working the long hours that the company was too shortstaffed to get cut. “Don’t you worry about me, baby;” she would
always say, pointing at the little cardboard cross that hung over
her rearview. One of her grandbabies made it in Sunday School;
it had a few colorful stickers and some peeling glue, a couple of
sequins, hanging off it. Momma B would point at it proudly, and
she’d say, “I got angels lookin out for me.”
And on she went.
Until one day, Momma B died – just keeled over on her coffee
break, and they rushed her on up to the hospital, but it was too
late, even before they got her in the ambulance. Aneurism, we
heard it was. No wonder she was so confident and sure of herself
all the time – Momma knew her time could be just about up any
day now, dangerous job or no dangerous job. She was running on
borrowed time, and she knew it. They say she died with a smile on
her face, her mug of coffee pushed back on the table and drained
to the dregs.
That was how I ended up driving her bus, see. I guess you
could say I inherited it.
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I’m not religious, not like Momma was. I left her cross up
out of respect – she wasn’t there anymore, but it just didn’t seem
right to touch it – but I didn’t pay no attention to it. I figure, God
might be out there somewhere, but if He is, He’s probably real
busy with wars and the ice caps and planning the apocalypse and
stuff, and probably ain’t interested in anything I’d have to say,
which is certainly a shame, man, because I could say a lot. Maybe
about why he made my daddy suffer so bad with losing his wife
and his health all in the same year, even after a good thirty years
of being married and preachin and being just the sweetest man
you ever met. Maybe about why he didn’t make me smarter – or at
least a bit less of a smartmouth – so that I wouldn’t have dropped
out of school and broke my poor daddy’s heart all over again.
Maybe about why he let my hoochie-mama of a little sister get all
the luck. And the looks. And all our momma’s love.
Yeah, that’s awfully small-time stuff to God. I just let Him be,
you know, and hope He does the same.
By the way – my name’s Angel Martin. Because my folks
used to be sentimental like that. I know I’m telling this all wrong,
but hey, if I was some kind of literary genius you wouldn’t find
me driving a city bus for a living, would you? You probably won’t
believe this tale I’m tellin’ you – that’s assuming I ever get around
to tellin’ it properly; shoot, I got all sidetracked talkin’ ‘bout
Momma B – but I’ll tell it anyway, because it was a real funny
thing, you know, real funny, but not like funny ha-ha; funny weird,
the kinda thing that might make you sit down and reexamine
your life a little bit if you was to think about it, you know? And
that kinda shit oughta be told.
All right, all right. Here it is. You can laugh all you want, but
don’t you say I didn’t warn you.
It was the middle of winter when this thing started, and
I’m not talking about no picture-postcard fluffy snowflake kind
of winter – nah, man; we were halfway through January and
when that wind swept down the street it cut into you like a
mother, you know? We had black ice, regular ice, hailstone ice
all over the place; everyone in the whole damn city is drivin’ at
20 miles an hour with chains on their tires, and it is just a damn
12
fine time to be a city bus driver, you know? Folks crowding up
into the bus all day and night, standin at the bus stop for maybe
ten minutes before they’d be shiverin’ so hard, it was like they
was standin outside in theys underwear. Cold was that bad, so’s
the newscasters were sayin’ you shouldn’t go outside unless
you absolutely had to, like you really needed to be someplace.
Snowplows workin’ seven days a week, sometimes twice a day,
and still the damn stuff was comin’ down. It was real bad, okay?
You dig?
It was around about that time that we got the word come
down from headquarters that we needed to be looking out for
people riding the bus all day and night, I guess like kids hanging
around looking for trouble, or homeless folks drinkin’ down their
problems and getting disorderly with the other passengers.
Official word was something like that, like they was concerned
about passenger safety, but I heard it from a couple of drivers
on the east side that one of our girls got in trouble for having a
couple of her kids on the bus after school – their daddy stopped
paying child support, you know, and what’s she gonna do? Gotta
be at work at 7 and don’t get off till nine o’clock at night, and she’s
got these two kids, five and six years old, no grandma or auntie or
nobody to take care of them after school, so what’s she do? Picks
‘em up after school and just keeps them on the bus with her, ridin’
up and down, got their dinner in a lil’ cooler, got their homework
and some games for them to play. Times are hard, you know, and
when fools quit payin’ they child support – well, well. Let me quit.
Anyway, I started noticin’ this kid after awhile; I probably
wouldn’t’ve thought nothin’ if we hadn’t gotten directions from up
top, cause he was by himself and quiet and all, but I got to payin
some more attention after that, and I noticed that he always got
on at the same corner – 9th and Baker, if you must know – and
just sat there the whole day through. Got off at my second to last
stop, over on Parker Place, you know, the bus depot? And that,
that was a good seven hours later.
He would always sit right behind me, too, in that little
bucket seat behind the driver’s. Minded his business, like I said,
and he had those great big headphones that some of the kids
13
are still wearing, like big black earmuffs. He was kind of a tall
skinny kid, with ripped jeans and Reeboks the size of boats – you
know how teenage boys are; it’s like they only come in Extra Large
and Skinny at that age – going around in a black hoodie with a
graphic print on the front, some kinda black and white design
with a Lord of the Rings-looking sword and big feathered wings
on it. He’d just sit there, hands in his pockets, nodding his head to
the beat in his ears, watching the world go by. I would study him
from time to time in my rearview, and I gotta tell you, he wasn’t
all that interesting to watch. Everyone else on the bus ignored
him, even the other kids, and I couldn’t blame them. Like I said;
I wouldn’t even have noticed him if it wasn’t for the rule we got
down from HQ.
Still, I don’t think I ever would’ve said anything to him if it
wasn’t for this one thing he would do. Every night, he’d get off at
Parker Place and he’d pause at the front, glance up and nod, just
like he was checking on somethin every night, right before he left.
After a couple times, I started following his look up there, trying
to see what it was he was looking at.
Well, the only thing to see up there was Momma B’s little old
cardboard cross, with that mess of stickers and a couple of pink
sequins still holdin on.
And why would he be looking at that? So one day, I finally
asked him, “Hey – hey, you. You ride this bus every day. You got
someplace to go?”
He looked over at me and shrugged, kind of matter-of-fact,
like I’d just asked him about the brand of shoes he wore. “This is
my bus. This is my job.”
Ain’t you supposed to be in school?” Of course it only just
then occurred to me. Why hadn’t I thought of that earlier? Kid
didn’t look any more than sixteen.
He shrugged again, without expression, like boys do. “Got my
training right here.” And before I thought of anything else to say,
he stepped off the bus, into the night, just as some brand-new
fluffy snowflakes started to fall.
I really should have reported the kid. Rules were pretty
clear on that. But he never made any trouble, and what’s worse,
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I damn near forgot he existed whenever he was sitting down. It
was only at the end of the night, when he gave his weird little
salute to Momma’s cross at the front – maybe he was religious or
superstitious, maybe; you know how people be sometimes – that I
realized he’d been riding all day.
He didn’t even cheat on the fare.
One night, I blurted, “Did you know her or somethin?”
He slid back the giant headphones, gave me a blank look.
“Huh?”
Lord, save me from hearing-impaired teenagers. “Momma–
Miss B. Who used to drive this bus. You always lookin at her cross
up there. Did you know her?”
He frowned. “Nah, man.” And then I think he looked at me
for the first time – which don’t make sense; had to have looked
at me before when we talked, although you’d be surprised how
many folk get on ‘n off buses all day and ain’t never looked at
a driver like a human being – like really looked, so I got kinda
uncomfortable for a little minute, you know, like what’d he want
to be lookin so hard at me for? Practically an old lady to him, and
all bundled up in my winter coat over the uniform.
Finally, he said, “You don’t have to believe in something to
get the benefits, right, Miss Angel? It’s one of the rules.”
Now, I have a nametag somewhere, but I promise you it
spends more time on my bedside table than it does pinned
on my chest. Maybe I was wearing it that day – I think I looked
down for it, but it wasn’t there, and when I looked up the kid was
walkin’ off. “’Night, Miss Angel,” he called over his shoulder. “I see
you tomorrow.”
“What’s your name, hon?” The wings on that hoodie looked
as if they were glowing in the darkness, so sharp and white, and
despite myself I thought of Momma B, and the kind of conclusions
she’d be sure to draw from this situation. It was foolishness, of
course. But that didn’t stop me being curious.
I couldn’t see him out there, but I had a feeling he was
grinning. “Darian.”
Okay, not what I would have expected, and I felt dumb as I
closed the doors and eased my way back into the traffic. I drove
15
away thinking to myself, What the hell kind of guardian angel
name is Darian?
Well, the next day I reported Darian to HQ. I didn’t like to
do it, and I had kind of a twisty feeling in my chest while was
doing it, like I was doing a bad thing, and I knew it was bad, but
I was doing it anyway. But, hey, orders were orders. And I needed
this job.
I didn’t see him at his usual stop, which was such a relief
I almost got pissed at myself; I hadn’t been looking forward to
telling him he couldn’t hang out here anymore, but why should
I care so much? And there were plenty of other things to worry
about: crazy folks on the roads, crazy in the bus, and it must have
been a school holiday or some foolishness because I had middle
schoolers up to my ears and they was bouncin’ around, laughing
and hollerin at each other, you know, like kids do. And I wouldn’t
have minded so much but I’d had a bad night, could hardly sleep
and then when I finally did it was just full of bad dreams, creepy
dreams, about sharp white wings and a long heavy sword, just
fading into the black but never quite disappearing. Bothered me
so bad I got up out of bed and watched Law and Order reruns
until dawn. Thank God for cable, right?
So, I was raising my voice, trying to get those fool kids to sit
down, when we hit that patch of ice.
Somethin you need to understand about black ice in this city:
you don’t mess around with that shit. They teach us how to deal
with it, but really, the only good way to deal with it is to hope and
pray you don’t hit any, especially going 55 miles on the freeway,
which is what we were doing.
So we’re skidding, and those kids are screaming, and I’m
gripping the wheel until my knuckles have actually started going
pale – and for just a second I’m thinking, well damn, that actually
happens? – and then I see him.
Don’t ask me what he was doing there. And please, please
don’t ask me how I knew it was him, when all I could see were
them wings, so white they dazzled your eyes and full of all the
16
power of a thundercloud.
Everyone’s asked me, over and over, what really happened
out there.
What I saw.
You think you’re the first?
Boy, please.
You don’t have to believe.
That’s what I heard. Believe it or not as you like; I see you
smiling. But that’s my story; I heard those words in my ears just
as clearly as if you were sayin them to me now.
I may live to be a thousand, but I never will forget those wings.
Back up a minute.
We hit the ice. The bus skids left, sharp, and over the sound
of that axle frame groaning like a woman in labor I can hear the
kids screaming and shouting as they get knocked down over each
other. “All y’all sit down and be still, okay?” I remember saying, but
it was wrong; I was trying to sound firm and confident but even I
could hear the broken-glass fear note in my voice, because we’re
on a downslope now. This section of the freeway is on a hill, with
those little yellow and black-striped signs where the guardrails
used to be, and everywhere the other cars are screeching and
honking and trying to get out of my way, but we’re heading
for that rail and I can see the drop on the other side, and it’s
inevitable, you know. The seconds feel like years as I’m straining
with that wheel, hoping just to slow us down, but I’ve got no
traction, no give, nothing, nothing but thirty of other people’s
children behind me and a seventy-foot drop before my eyes.
God forgive me. I took my hands off the wheel.
And then, he was just there – or I should say they, because
all I saw at first were those wings. People think angel’s wings are
white and fluffy, you know, like a cute little bird’s, but they’re
17
wrong. They were like quicksilver. Like joy so hard that you have
to cry. Like a sound so loud and glorious it makes you want to
burst. They were terrifying. Blinding.
They weren’t no goddamn fairy-dust-lookin’ things, is what
I’m tryin to tell you.
There was a thud, deep and bone-shaking, and then a
grinding halt. (I told the reporters that, too. That part isn’t hard
to believe.) I look out my front window, and for just a quick little
second, there he is, standing between the wings, only it was so
bright that the only way I could tell it was him – skinny ol’ Darian
– was those crazy huge headphones he had around his neck. I ain’t
shittin you. Headphones. In his hand was a sword, only it was all
fiery for real, you know, shinin’ with this crazy light just like the
rest of him.
And, man . . . I ain’t never heard of no angel grinning. But I’m
pretty sure I saw one then.
At that point, I think I blacked out a little, and when I came
to, the sirens were already wailing in the distance. They tell me
I was hallucinating, that fortunately the teachers got the kids
together and everyone was fine, not even a scratch, except for this
one kid who got punched in the stomach. (Kids.) They tell me that
the bus must’ve hit a car or gotten slowed down in the dirt on the
side of the road, and it sure looks like it hit a car, big old dent ten
feet long along one side, although it’s funny, no car ever showed
up hit.
I went home that night – well, all week; what with my
trauma and all I got to spend some saved-up vacation – and in the
morning, I went to see my daddy at the Home. Him and me talked
for a long while. I even got a phone call from my sister, only it
turned out she just wanted some more money, so I hung up on her
because what do I look like, some kinda change machine?
I don’t know what you’re expecting at the end of this tale,
but all I can tell you is that it’s true, every word.
Now it’s yours, man – do what you want with it.
18
Their Broken Nails
Rachel Spillars
The leaves all looked the same today,
which only means I’m preoccupied.
It happens to you when cloudy, lighter
thoughts grow up, mature into hairy
trolls clutching your skinny ankles.
Shake and twist but their broken nails
furrow into bone, silent demands
for grassy knolls to rest and
rush upon.
19
Waiting at the Bus Stop
Kathryn McClain
Did you see him?
He was right there, sitting next to you on the bench,
waiting for the same bus,
the blue line that takes you farther away from the city, not the
red that ends in the middle of a dizzying street, silver buildings
reflecting off of each other and shining with sunlight or traffic
lights.
When he went to sit down, his long coat brushed over your
bag, and you tugged it closer to your outer ribs. You dug your
elbow into your side, trying so hard to conceal the innards, held
closed only by the flimsy magnetic button centered in the top
lining with the tattered strings keeping it attached unraveling,
(those ones you tried to cut off but they kept coming back,
remember the ones?)
right above the part where the plain black fake leather of your
purse switches to that exciting pattern for only your eyes. You
know, the one with the yellow and pink stripes, you bought it to
match your wallet
after looking everywhere
for the right shade of pink?
Since you pulled in your bag, he had more room to sit, or it
looked like it to everyone else waiting for the bus. That was why
he scooted closer to you –
did you think he was just being rude?
– and his loose pant leg rubbed against your hand. He was
squeezing his legs together as much as he could, trying to avoid
making you uncomfortable, elbows shoved together and resting on
his knees, though his back stayed straight.
You sighed as he finally walked away, preparing to board the
bus, while you loosened all your muscles, reached for your bag. As
you scurried on and searched for another empty seat, you looked
for where he had gone, saw him holding a handle along the middle
of the lane, leaning toward the windows for other passengers to
squeeze by.
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He noticed your wandering eyes,
smiled a little smile at you,
nodded at a seat in front of him.
With him leaning over, or even with him standing straight up, you
would have been sitting close, your eyes even with his crotch.
You made sure to sit on the other side of the bus.
You got off three stops before he did, and he watched you walk
through the creaking bus door.
He would have loved you, you know.
21
Redbud
Hilary Kuntz
22
My Grandpa Leads Prayer
Kirk Schlueter
The spirit is upon us,
my grandpa at the head of the table with
candles lit among the dinner plates,
snowy light spilling through the windows
to lighten for one breath the darkness in this house.
His head is bowed, his family’s hands
joined in a great current of strength and faith
as he thanks God for all he has been given.
I can think only of the last gift, the one
that slithers through his bones,
the thing that seals everyone’s mouths as
he talks to the biting air while we grapple
with the monsters of our souls, trying and
failing to think of anything except the cold wind
that will be coming any second now
to steal the fire from the candles
and drown the house in darkness once again.
23
Gender Stereotypes
Harley Davis
And when he heard this girl
Say, “All men are pigs!” every time
They left her to waste away,
Or whenever she could find no one who
would.
He thought
Really?
Not till then had he heard a cow speak and
squawk like a chicken at the same time
If only she spoke like crickets
Maybe, “All men are pigs!”
Nevertheless we have to eat
and she has the capability to cook
but she strayed from the kitchen
like a black cat finding its way
through dumpsters
If only she cooked for us
some guy might have thought,
“Hey she’s a keeper!”
And caressed her carefully,
gently like a white dove
in the palm of his hands
If only she cooked for us
we all may have ceased
to be animals in her eyes
24
Maybe, “All men are pigs!”
Nevertheless we have to eat
and she was meant to cook, afterall
she was born
with milk and eggs
25
Piscary
Rachelle Wales
The town in which Monet lived always seemed to him
cramped, cold, filled with too many wandering eyes. He was
a wanderer himself, of course, having moved to Piscary some
years ago, but not by choice. After what seemed like a decade of
knocking around the system, the place had finally leased him out
to some fosters who’d already taken in too many from the scores
of other gap-mouthed children. In short, his new “mothers” had no
time for him—large, clumsy, orange-topped him.
He’d never tried to break anything, to be honest. Everything
just seemed to shatter around him; everything slipped off,
got knocked over, floated away or was mysteriously displaced.
When this happened, as it often did, Monet would look around
quickly, thinking perhaps no one had witnessed his crime, but
with all glass windows, someone was bound to have seen him.
Sure enough, bare moments later, one of his “mothers” bustled
over, reaching for the wronged object, chastising him for his
largeness, his orange-ness, his mess. As if he could help any of it.
As if he cared.
Piscary was a dive, anyone would agree. With a population
of ten, everyone knew everyone else and every detail about them.
And if they didn’t know something, well, they made it up. It was
the only way to pass the time, especially with the used memory
of the place, the cold, the wet, the hard blue-green land.
Eventually, his orange-ness, (he’d always attributed their
dislike of him to that) led his foster mothers to throw up their
hands in exasperation, to say they were going to have to “do
something” about him. His unnatural size. His mess.
So one day, (it must have been winter, he remembered his
hard-skinned insides registering a deeper cold than usual) they
transferred him to a new place, handed him off with barely
hidden gratitude to new “mothers” he’d maybe learn to behave
better for, learn to hide his size, his coloring. He felt dimly that
he should have expected it, should be used to the emotion-sloshing
trauma each sudden move provoked, especially with the routine
26
sameness of the journey, the packing up, the saying goodbye, the
loss of the synthetic toys every “mother” seemed to think made up
for their lackluster love. He should have seen it coming. He should
have known.
His new home seemed much the same as the first, all plastic
dinosaur toys, bubbles, and more glass windows. But there was
something different about it, something bright, fast-moving, a
comet of white and orange glow that suddenly gave meaning to
the glass windows, the hollow toys, the alien hands of his mothers.
It was Ray. Ray was younger than him, also a foster kid, and unlike
anyone Monet had ever met. He was pale, almost moon-bright
and small for his age, but somehow he never made Monet feel too
large or ungainly. He made him feel special, wanted, purposeful.
He made him his bodyguard.
Day and night they played together, racing around the small
house in patterned circles, no care for the glass windows and the
strategically placed toys. They were on a mission. Ray, filled with
a certain delicacy of intelligence and wit Monet could never hope
to gain, made up entire worlds they could escape to, worlds where
words like “foster” and “broken” and “placement” did not matter,
where only the few moments each story gave to them mattered,
building layers of insulation between them and the terrible glass.
There was only one plaything Monet and Ray really enjoyed,
and they allowed themselves such small happiness, reasoned it
justifiable because it gave them a sense of agency, of control over
their stories. It provided context, an anchor of place neither of
them had ever truly been able to grasp before. Their boyhood
treasure was a castle, an old, monolithic veteran donated the
day Ray arrived by a sympathetic neighbor with no further use
for it. Their mothers moved it with some difficulty to a certain
corner in the house they deemed appropriate, and it went without
saying that, like all the other toys, it was to remain there. Though
artificial in its muddled grey and brown and white paint, the
colossus was a solid ceramic affair, too heavy for even Monet
to knock over.
The two entrances were also something they could
appreciate, their high-arched frames allowing room for clumsy
elbows and growing bodies, these and the cool, huddled dark
27
inside that represented freedom and the slight echo of homes
stretching farther back than their biological mothers’ onceswollen bellies, a place where perhaps Ray’s white-limed skin
and Monet’s orange glow would not make for isolation, but for
a deeper kind of shared light.
And it was the castle, really, which brought them together
from that first day, a stone-cast spell drawing them in with a
net of need. Monet could only remember Ray’s eyes, his pupils
growing from the tense pinprick of black to an all-encompassing
tunnel as he took in the looming grey structure. Monet would
later learn how to gauge the circumference of the black, to know
that when his iris thinned to nothing, Ray was deep in the mines
of possibility.
Tunneled eyes fixed toward the archways, Ray communicated
that he wanted to explore it and as Monet wandered slowly,
silently behind, Ray whirled around the worn edifice, already
imagining the first of the stories, the first in what would become
a long train of their true homes, every one rooted in the castle
Monet, in a burst of rare imagination, named Piscary, a word he’d
heard somewhere on the surface of his world and liked, but had
never quite figured out what it meant.
From that moment in the castle onward, the two boys
became inseparable, never one pale glow without the other orange
bulk beside him. Their mothers would exclaim over them, excited
their recycled children were “playing nice.” But Ray and Monet
knew better. This wasn’t just about getting along—it was survival,
pure and simple. And to survive here, among the transparent
houses and hands, the fast-flowing current of the present, the
cold-watered knowledge that it could not last, their solid kinship
was more than necessary. It was essential.
Monet knew that one day it would end, had some vague
forethought in the back of his brain, a slow and heavy notion
that was working through him with the ponderous process of
chewing on the over-due flaked food their mothers gave them
(when they remembered). But that was his only consolation in the
later darkness. That he knew somehow. It was inevitable, all things
considered. Ill-fated, sure, but with his orange-ness, who would
have been surprised, right?
28
There were only a few times Ray and Monet had ever parted
from each other, forced occasions their mothers instituted to
“give them some air” and “clean the house”. Both hated it. Ray and
Monet endured the long moments hovering in frantic, edgy panic,
the isolation nearly driving them mad. They were all the other
had. It was too dangerous, was just asking for it to leave each
other, even for only the spare hours it took their mothers to clean.
It was one of those days, the only day Monet can really
remember, in all his small and calculated catalogue of memories.
The day that Ray suddenly sickened, the day he disappeared.
Monet expected a huge fuss, a giant search, some change in
his mothers, but there was nothing. Only silence, a hollow castle
and an empty house with terrible glass and alien hands and
terrible, wandering eyes. All these and the deafening roar of a
flushed toilet.
There was no need for such theatrics, his mothers explained
to him. Ray was only a fish, after all.
29
Girl Scout Camp, 1998
Tori Hudson
The clouds got quiet
for the girls in Troop 201 (in 1998,
even you couldn’t find the constellations)
but it rained, anyway. They couldn’t
get the fire started.
It was quiet enough that
you could hear the stream by the place where
I buried my first glimpse at death
Robin, female – broken neck.
Yesterday, I remembered Romeo’s first kiss
Not mine of course but his and copper hair
in the floodlights.
Three fingers for the pledge, Susan,
and your other hand over your heart.
On my honor, I will
follow you until you’re tired of me,
until you can’t wait to see me go.
Here, love songs only last a minute or so;
sometimes I bury them.
I hate the way you aspirate the first letter of my name
And I hate your brown corduroy pants like I hate
the fall, which is to say :
Your hands look like my mother’s.
On a beach in Illinois, I became certain
that I’ve given everyone the benefit of too many doubts
So I stop drawing you.
I think I just thought –
for a minute, when you said
“My mother plays the piano” –
I thought you were more than you are.
30
Lombard
Anthony Sandifer
31
Silk Pajamas, Silk Sheets
Jeffrey Denight
I think it was some Friday, just this past July,
and I’m certain that it was our last day on the Island,
because the sky was a violet meringue.
Lake Michigan was made of glass, or so Mel reiterated,
and we skipped stones across the water; mindless teenage havoc.
The people on the other side,
the mirror folk that rumor said inhabited School House Beach
during only those mythic hours of locking and unlocking
surely were slinging rotting words at us, their own swears
and curses. But we kept chuckin’ stones,
as if we were without sin, and nothing we had done the last few nights,
all the sex, drugs and rocky roads, were forgiven with the morning’s bath of light.
Amanda sat down and drank part of her Busch Light—her uncle
called them “Yummies,” and we had picked up his slang as well.
“Maybe it’s that I’m a little drunk,
and while I don’t want to leave Janelle out—but
I wanna go skinny dipping.”
So, they stripped down and I thought of
what Mrs. Good said about the angels.
How the angels were born. And these girls,
ethereal devas dancing before me,
ripping themselves from their cotton weave chrysalis.
And me—my face—filled with nothing but whites and pinks.
I remained on the beach, to build towers
of rocks, smoothed like turtle eggs
that had been lapped up by the Lake’s languid tongue
for the past sixty millionish years.
I spent some time there, stacking rocks, one atop another,
and gazing out towards the tree line.
Hereafter, I expected them to come running out;
The mirror folk, summoned to mourn or celebrate
the sun’s last chartreuse gasp of light, for the sea
with his immense and thick veined hands raked at the star,
32
having conspired with the horizon to hide the celestial body
until Ragnarok or whenever.
I wanted to see them, their aeolian bodies,
hardly corporeal beings rushing over twigs and stones and the terrestrial skeletons,
in order to feast and dance in the Land of Israel.
When the girls emerged from the water, I know for certain
that I heaved shrouded sighs of relief
for the Lake had let them be. Their thighs and
chest and waist wrapped in a white cellophane shine.
I looked on—an ever watchful parental guardian to
the alcohol affected teens—until my eyes followed
curves across their milk-soaked skin.
With a stumbling kind of grace of jagged movements
and quick catches, Amanda lit up a cigarette
before placing her hand on water-wrapped hips,
letting the ash lie where it fell: in the hair that she didn’t
shave, tucked under folds of taught pulled skin and fat. She had wings—
somewhere—I was sure of it,
but I couldn’t find those gauze-wrapped limbs
when my eyes only honed in on two or three areas.
I’m only human, after all, and here I was, as if God himself had handed me,
meek with dirty fingernails, a loaded die which when cast allowed me to
gaze brief upon these beatified creatures’ mirrored flesh.
With a biting and brazen “hey!” Mel made me avert my eyes.
Once, she said the same thing while turning
red and pink about her father seeing her as a Nude.
It was the first time she was self-aware. A miniature,
prepubescent Eve, forcing her creator-God to be ashamed of his work
which he had meticulously carved out of baobab boughs and wound
with ribbons of warped iron wrappings, glorified for seven years
only to be thrust aside into a pyre of downcast eyes and Egyptian cotton swaddlings.
But I was not a God. Not even a Sublime like the fey before me;
the femme fatales but with arms crossed barring me from feasting
with them on muttons and mead. I am a Grotesque, born of
mongrels and Man, unworthy to touch the Seraphs before me,
let alone allow my eyes to graze on the rain wept viridian pastures of Elysium.
33
And so, I turned mine eyes to the heavens above in search of
archons and cherubs. And when I did,
averting my eyes (as it happened),
it came as no surprise when I found the center of the universe.
The cosmos bursting at their seams. Quasars and nebulas,
labia of our macrocosm, for aeons
dripping blood and gamma radiation. We were all born here. Now,
still wearing our birthing coats of plasma placenta
until they become our winding cloth as a rotten dirge trills its sorrow songs.
We were all born here, and yet my galactic caste draws vague
and indistinguishable lines of appropriate behavior.
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.
And then lying there, I heard a shrill
“Westward Ho!” that was reminiscent of fingers on crystal,
B.B blasted squirrels tumbling from tree limbs,
and bird beaks on concrete,
all which signified it
was time to imbibe in Busch Light and vodka
with Hans.
34
Red Buttons and the Ten of Swords
Ashley Kleinsorge
An ace of spades will get you eleven points,
tens are tens,
jacks, queens and kings are too.
three Georges on the table,
four shots until you’re out of the game.
If you can’t keep up, go sit at the kids table.
Here, in smokey basements and crowded kitchens,
we play straights and flushes.
The queen of hearts must have her roses
red as the grenadine in the Shirley Temple my Great Aunt Emma made me,
I save the cherry until the very last because—
you only get one.
Great-Aunt Jackie pulls on her Virginia Slim,
sets it down,
pulls on her oxygen tank,
and resumes the game.
In my dreams, I play Rummy with the Liverpool Legends in a smoky pub,
Floating above a stream of cards.
Grandma flicks ashes into an empty coke can
while I run my mouth faster than my fingers
and keep track of what everyone else is picking up.
Burn a card, throw a card, burn a card, throw a card.
The last one is called the river,
4 of diamonds, 6 of clubs, 2 of hearts, 7 of spades.
Crap hand.
Mom wins.
Great-Grandma won my dimes,
Uncle conned the rest.
Card playing is for sharks and cowboys.
Don’t come here with full pockets,
your money is as good as gone.
Unless you play solitaire,
even then, sure as shit, you’ll do it wrong.
35
Untitled
Tori Hudson
36
Sonnet for Granny
Betsy Koehne
I condense the string of time in my fist
so that I can know you, Granny. I re—
stack the Russian nesting dolls, crawl back in
my mother’s womb, curl up in your tummy—
three Leones in one space. I watch Papa
drive you home after your date—the car ride
that led to a thousand more—to Florida,
to hospitals, to in-laws’. From inside
I feel your bare breasts to Chicago, hear
Papa’s temper, smell hamburger cooking.
But I do not see the thrombosis steer
its way, cerebrovascular-attacking.
That is my exit, my cue to leave you,
smelling of Chanel Number Five perfume.
37
April Song
Beatriz Parks
I know you haven’t played in awhile.
You strummed the words out of a rusty guitar,
Aching sore fingers pressed
On not-always-right notes.
But I will always hear you singing.
You are like your father, beloved, on that guitar
As your mother sang off-key but beautifully
Beside him. I remember.
The holiness I saw that day was raw
In your throat, notes falling heavy
From skies emptied wide and I was filled
Looking straight up into the rain.
38
Oedipus and the Complexity of Apples
Hope Benefield
I had a friend at University, who suffered under the
impression he was a Theology major perhaps for the first year
and a half of his education there. In fact he had not been accepted
and was squatting on campus and in classes illegally. Whatever
became of him, I have yet to have the desire to discover. I think
of him only in those university days, sporting his pinstriped zoot
suit and carrying his leather valise in hand. In that valise, he was
armed with three bibles, each containing separate and oftentimes
conflicting translations, several cannons of the Catholic religion,
and the Torah. How he managed it all alarmed a deep rationality
within me, but he did so with a toothy grin.
His favorite text was the beaten down King James, and his
favorite verses lay in Genesis. For from those lines in chapter five
my friend planned his collegiate dissertation, which would serve
as his crowning glory in the academic sphere. As a true idealist,
he wished to save souls through personal success. Chickens and
eggs, he would never be held responsible for deciphering which
begat which.
He read them night and day. At night he would lie with
his head resting on the bible as his pillow and chant in a soft
rhythmical fashion. In daylight he sometimes hobbled around with
a smallish wooden soap box to stand upon. He would be elevated.
His words would be elevated; closer to God. He read:
15: And Mahalaleel lived sixty and five years, and begat Jared:
16: And Mahalaleel lived after he begat Jared eight hundred and
thirty years, and begat sons and daughters:
17: And all the days of Mahalaleel were eight hundred ninety and
five years: and he died.
18: And Jared lived an hundred sixty and two years, and he begat
Enoch:
19: And Jared lived after he begat Enoch eight hundred years, and
begat sons and daughters:
39
20: And all the days of Jared were nine hundred sixty and two
years: and he died.
And so on and so forth.
He insisted the biblical names tasted righteous with tuna
and pickle sandwiches; they did. The taste was good on the
wide street of the main as we walked down the avenue in the
afternoon, but not in the park where he insisted we take a turn
to peg lofting birds with pebbles.
“Two birds, one stone,” he said with a grin like a limping
demon. He shot a succession of five stones into the sky. The
bluebird glided airily from a bench to a tree and nestled there
under its wing for an afternoon nap.
The bible valise fell over at his feet. “God dammit!” he yelled.
“This here is the problem with humanity and nature and the
existence of it all. Here is the crux.” He righted the case, dusting
it off. “Let there be light He says, and it shines right in your eyes!
That’s what I’ve been saying, Mick, it’s all written out by the
prophets in Genesis five; all lied down like lambs.”
“Laid,” I corrected his grammar. I had been studying the
syntax and semantics of literature as of late. I ignored the name.
He called me Mick, always. I had never asked. One was obliged to
accept everything the man rattled off.
“No, lied down, I’ve seen it, the light!” He flicked the latches
open and closed. “No kind of truth could be told as candid. It had
to be lied down, so we could all see the light, and I’ve seen it. See,
it all starts with Adam, son of God, and the son of Adam is sin.
There is a lineage of sin one after the other. Everything since the
serpent and goddamn Eve, there has been one sin begat another.”
He picked up the valise, and strode from the park. One was obliged
to follow the man when he took leave of a place.
“Listen here, Mick.” We were on the main now. His pace
slowed. “Women and apples will ruin a man and his Eden. That is
a lesson straight from Genesis. I keep ‘em close, but don’t care for
neither. Sin is a dark thing, will leave you unfulfilled, and one sin
begat another. Don’t care for sin, Mick, it will ruin your Eden.”
Genesis would have been far more effective if a serpent spoke
40
it. The thought did cross my mind when I saw the girl I would
marry cross the street. Her silk hair was the color of sweet bistre,
cleverly lodged between gray and brown and woven from the soot
of burned beachwood.
“That is a church girl,” I mumbled beneath my breath.
My friend caught sight of her, caught his breath, and with a
huff said, “Like as not a devil in the flesh. Look here, Mick, if that
temptation tart is not struck down in some divine action. Women
and apples, I’ve seen the light!”
The hand of God would not dare. To be sure, I crossed the
street as well. I meant to be her guardian angel, and I meant to
win any kind of battle had against God and any number of his
legions. I ruffled my feathers, which at the moment happened
to be the broad shoulders of my coat.
“Miss,” I attempted. She stopped and turned. I stopped
walking but still frantically swept my hand in a gesture seeking
desperation. “I, well, I—it depends—no that’s not right.” My
temples pounded like gnashing pistons. The din from the main,
the apartments, the hordes that flooded around us: we were stuck
throw-stones in a bubbling, boiling brook of disorder. Floors above,
a couple was having a row, sending down not ten but a whole
tirade of stony commandments to Mount Aaron for these hellspawned street prophets.
The sun disappeared. With a great heave, the sky split open
as a great shadow descended. Thou shalt not…. “Piano.” That word
was distinct. I repeated it. Our eyes drew upward to heaven, mine
and hers. The shadow grew to the distinct form of that word,
piano, with distinct wood and strings and metal hammers.
There was no shriek of terror, no ripple in the Bistre woven
silk, only the disharmonious chord of strings snapping from their
moorings, rebellious ships sailed on rebellious winds.
The hand on my shoulder remarked, “Look here, Mick, you’ve
seen the light!”
I saw the lights, flashing, coming nearer with sirens attached.
The ambulance held her, Miss Louise May Marin, and I was in love.
41
Speak
Kirk Schlueter
We talk in different languages
but that’s not quite it.
We speak in dead languages
over each other’s heads, that’s better,
words passing through each other like neutrinos.
Still we talk away, gossip and make our little jokes
in hope that the laughter can work,
only there is no laughter.
But still we talk, still we breathe
and who knows what we say?
I: amo, amas, amat and you: I do not know,
there is no translation, just the sense that there must be something
something between us something other than
this gradual redshift, the long curve toward silence
when we have given up communication
and there are no more words left to us
we must learn to exist without mouths
learn to live in silence
Language is dead.
I know now, as sure as I once knew
the vocabulary of your body,
the syntax of your heart, the words on your lips.
When I listen, the echoes are still in my skin.
42
Crack in the Sidewalk
Mia Pohlman
43
Brink
Melissa Kapitan
Je suis desolé d’être ici comme ça,
he says
in the tailored manner of a soldier.
Tight blonde hair waxed
to the side
with Dixie Peach Hair Pomade
(he won’t find it anymore)
imported from the US;
iced blue eyes that match
the frost white of his skin;
and the blush of pink spread
across his cheekbones to match
thin, neat lips.
The feldgrau of the Wehrmacht
is stamped into the fold of the fabric
through the shoulder, and
tapered waist of the Aryan soldier.
He fits it,
not born but via the gradual air
of a prisoner condemned to the
noose.
Here in Strasborg, Alsace,
the German knows his prestige,
in the whisper of mother to child
in the approval of his superior officer
in the weight of each exhalation,
even though he is now
763 kilometers from home.
Mais, nos temps sont venus
et partis.
Qu’est-ce qui s’est passé?
She answers, her French still weak
44
Yet, she sounds more natural than he
at the one language they can share.
It has been difficult, communicating
over the past year,
in the fourth floor loft, blanketed
by Goebbels’ Charlie and his Orchestra
steaming through the floorboards,
tandem with l’agneau.
Her, with the Ashkenazi hair
and the deep eyes that
should signal enemy have not.
He wraps his arms around her waist,
tugging loose her blouse from the skirt.
This time, though, as
the year closes and the train tracks
stumble to life around them,
he won’t be able to protect her
any longer. No matter how he tries,
she is not safe here.
He tries to be gentle, even though
the urgency seems to consume him.
She will have to leave,
move maybe to London, New York.
It’s their countries, their people
in the taught muscles, pressure of
his fingertips, clenched jaws and
too thin emptied clothes.
C’est maintenant, oui? Je ne peux pas
le croire.
Je ne sais pas comment faire ça,
he says,
It was never a secret between them.
Her hands, as pale and white as his,
grasp his face, pull it close.
Her ribs show. But lets it be.
The Vichy government is willing,
no, eager to advance the
45
removal of the French Jews.
It is for each other.
Their eyes meet for just a moment,
a flash.
This was never meant to be,
and yet, in the aftermath
with fingers enjoined
there exists a moment
that requires no translation.
He rises to leave, echoing
a lone train in his hollow
boot steps.
She promises.
J’irai. C’est un mensonge,
involontaire.
46
Dirt
Megan Mehmert
The town of Greenville, Alabama didn’t see many homicides
after the Civil War ended. There were one or two suspicious folk
who came in every once in a while, who the children swore were
actually serial killers who kept the bodies of dismantled children
beneath their wide porches, but the last recorded homicide was
in 1913, when the local hunter accidentally let loose a round of
buckshot into a neighbor when he was out roaming the woods.
So when, on September 14, 1961, Camilla Kensey called in to the
police station to say that there had been an incident at her
residence on the outskirts of the city, and that they should come
immediately, the town was abuzz with gossip. After all, once a few
of the locals witnessed three blaring police vehicles take off down
Main Street toward the west, people started talking, and word
spread like disease.
The women said that when the police arrived, they found
Camilla waiting patiently on the front porch swing, looking
perfectly calm except for the wringing of her tiny, manicured
hands, and the tear in her blouse. Poor dear, they whispered,
shaking their blonde heads, I heard that damn Negro tried to rape
her. And her bein’ so calm, she must be just the bravest thing you
ever saw.
The men talked about how the police marched up the stairs
and found George Kensey and James Williams, both lying dead in
the bedroom, with James half undressed and George still in his
suit from work, the bed messy. Saw James tryin’ to do it, they said,
swirling their Jim Beam in their glasses, moved to stop him from
doin’ that to his wife, but ol’ James shot him. Right through the
heart. And that poor girl, havin’ to shoot him in self-defense after
that. Don’t know how she managed to get her hands on that .9 mil.
She’s a brave girl, that one.
And the men and the women visited her for weeks after,
offering condolences, plates of homemade food, saying, We’re very
sorry. George was a good man. He’ll be sorely missed.
Camilla remained silent.
47
She’s in again. The smell of lemon Lysol wafts from the
kitchen onto the sun-drenched back deck, sharp and fresh. It
used to evoke a smile, a memory from her childhood, her mother
humming as she scoured gleaming kitchen counters, but these
days, the smell makes Camilla’s lip curl.
Shifting slightly in her chair, Camilla lifts a delicate hand
to straighten her bright pink sunglasses and brushes a blonde
strand of hair from her forehead. Now would not be a good time
to appear anything less than pristine, less than a goddess. Maybe
then that woman would think twice about crossing her.
“Mabel!” she calls. She hears soft footsteps approach behind her
chair, meek and steady. A woman appears, dressed in a blue cotton
dress, slightly too large for her, and a white apron, creased, dust
in the crevices. Her dark skin is the color of rich earth, her hair
spackled with gray, hands knobbly and cracked from scrubbing.
Camilla smells starch and baby powder.
“Yes’m?” Mabel says softly.
Camilla turns toward her, a sneer on her lips. Waving her hand,
she says, “Bring me a sweet tea, no lemon, extra ice.”
“Yes’m.”
Mabel shuffles back into the house, quietly closing the screen
door behind her. Camilla leans back in her chair and stretches,
the evening breeze playing with the hem of her pink polka-dotted
dress.
Mabel is her fifth maid in eight months. She was perfect for
the job: she cooked, cleaned, and, most importantly, was a fifty-five
year old married woman with veined calves and a crooked nose.
Someone who wouldn’t indulge her husband’s wandering eye.
Because Camilla knows he’s cheating. Had been cheating. With
every one of her maids.
Oh, she’s never caught him at it. She doesn’t need to. He barely
looks at her these days, never touches her, is distracted. He’s
a skittish man to begin with, with watery, pale gray eyes, fidgeting
fingers, and large, scuffling feet. Though he was the sole heir to his
parents’ considerable cotton fortune, he isn’t like the other men
of his age and social status: no bourbon drinking, no poker or golf
games, not even coming home late. It isn’t natural. He’s a twitchy
mouse, in some aspects, so his recently-acquired hobby, lawn care,
48
seems to Camilla to be a way of avoiding her. Not that she wants to
pursue him outside. Her hands haven’t touched anything rougher
than the handle of an ivory comb in her life.
Still, she can’t pretend she doesn’t like being outside, especially
in the afternoon. Their gardener, James, is a certainly a sight
to see when he prunes the garden, dark skin gleaming in hot
sunlight. If only George was . . .
She cuts off that train of thought, glowering. Even if George
did have musculature that wasn’t consistent with a corn stalk, he
wouldn’t come near her. The maids had made sure of that.
Her scowl becomes more pronounced. Maybe this new maid
would set him straight.
Camilla hears the crunch of gravel from the driveway. George
must be home.
Here it goes.
She rises, heels making a thunking noise on the wood of the
deck, swings open the porch door, and strides briskly from the
kitchen to the living room, just in time to see Mabel taking off her
husband’s jacket.
“Welcome home, George.” She smiles, showing her teeth.
“Hello, darling,” says her husband, brushing imaginary dust
from the arms of his suit. “Have a nice day?”
“It was just lovely,” she replies, leaning gracefully against the
archway between the living room and the foyer. She scans his
shirt, checking for red smudges. He has a female secretary he
hired a few weeks ago, but there’s not even a wrinkle to be found.
She continues, “I went with the girls to do some shopping. Bought
a new dress for Marjorie’s dinner next weekend.” There is a pause.
“How was your day?”
“Fine. Just fine.” He wrings his hands, eyes fixed on a point over
her right shoulder. There are a few moments of awkward silence,
the only sound heard is Mabel toddling down the hall to put
George’s jacket in the closet. Camilla is reminded abruptly of the
dinner she had had to endure with George just last week.
Mabel set the baked chicken at the center of the table, and
began to carefully slice it. Camilla sat on one end, George on the
other. The expanse between them seemed more than just six feet.
“How was your day at the office, dear?” she asked.
49
George shrugged minutely. “Not too terrible. How was yours?”
He fingered his fork, looking nervous.
“Great. I got a lot of cleaning done.” She heard Mabel sigh
sharply, a silenced chuckle.
Camilla scowled. “Mabel.”
The maid looked up cautiously from the chicken. “Yes, Miss
Camilla.”
“I would like you to stay here late this evening, to polish the
silverware.”
Mabel blinked at her. “But, ma’am, I asked off tonight, my
grandson’s birthday-”
“Your grandson will have many more birthdays, Mabel,” said
Camilla sharply. “The silverware tonight, please.”
The dining room was silent, Mabel’s face crestfallen and George
frowning slightly.
“Yes’m,” Mabel finally said. She gathered the knife and empty
chicken platter and shuffled slowly into the kitchen, closing the
door quietly behind her.
The silence continued for what seemed like an eternity, the
gentle sound of silverware on china the only thing attempting to
fill the void.
Suddenly, surprisingly, George spoke. “You should let her go
home, Camilla.”
Camilla looked up abruptly, staring at her husband, incredulous.
“What?” She wasn’t sure if she was more surprised by his words
or the fact that he was speaking at all.
“She polished the silverware two days ago, dear. It can wait
until tomorrow.”
Silence descended again, tenser than before, thicker.
Anger made her voice sickly sweet, “Of course, George.”
A few minutes of agonizing quiet later, Mabel entered the
dining room, carrying two slices of apple pie, followed by a dark
man with dirt-stained jeans, who stood in the doorway to the
kitchen. “Miss Camilla,” James said. His eyes raked over her,
lingering too long on her face, on her eyes, and she shifted in her
chair, discomfited. Before she could speak, though, he turned to
her husband. “Mister George, the flower bed is ready to go, like you
wanted.” He glanced at her from the corner of his eye, calculating.
50
“Very good, James,” said George, oblivious, setting down his
napkin and getting to his feet. “I’ll be right out.”
“Oh, George,” huffed Camilla as James withdrew, “Why can’t you
just let James do that? That’s what we pay him for, maintainin’ the
garden. And Lord knows he’s good at it.” It was true. Since they
hired James, the garden beds had flourished like never before.
Her husband shrugged again, twitching. She could almost
swear she saw long whiskers protruding from the sides of his
nose. “I want to make sure it’s done . . . correctly.” And he left.
Her warm pie was cold ash in her mouth.
Camilla is jerked from her memory by her husband clearing
his throat. After a moment, he opens his mouth as if to speak.
“Dinner is nearly ready,” Camilla says abruptly, hoping to get
the first word in, hoping it won’t be like last time.
George blinks. “Okay, then. I think I’ll just . . . work in the garden
until then.” Camilla scowls as he steps past her, being very careful,
Camilla thought, not to touch her. He walks up the stairs to the
bedroom, hand on the rail, movement jerky, halting, like an old
man, like a rodent.
In the Southern Belle Restaurant in Greenville, Camilla sits
with her three girlfriends as they gossip about other locals, and
lament the comings and goings of their husbands.
“He comes home at one in the morning, reekin’ of Jack and
trying somethin’,” complains Penelope, stabbing her salad
ferociously.
“You should see my Henry,” says Sylvia, “starin’ at passing
girls like they’re a tall cold drink on a hot day.” She wipes the
condensation from her water glass with her cloth napkin.
“What about you, Cam?” asks Beatrice, who’s unmarried, one
of the oldest singles in town. “What does George do?”
“Oh, he ain’t been doin’ much lately,” Camilla says evasively,
waving her hand as if to brush the question away. “Just workin’
out in that damn garden of his.” Her other hand fists around the
napkin in her lap.
“I thought that’s why you got a gardener, Cam. So that it
would look nice without y’all messin’ with all that dirt!” exclaims
Beatrice. “That’s why you’re paying that Negro James! Why
51
wouldn’t George just let that garden alone and let James handle
it?” She wraps her hair around her index finger, eyeing the waiter
appreciatively.
Camilla shrugs daintily, taking a sip of her champagne.
“Oh, who knows what he’s thinking?” said Penelope. “You never
know, with men.”
“I do,” mutters Sylvia, throwing a sharp look at a passing
waitress with a short skirt.
Camilla remains silent.
Her drive home seems to take a very short amount of time.
So absorbed is she in her thoughts, she doesn’t notice George’s
DeVille sitting quietly in the car port until she passes within
three feet of it.
He isn’t supposed to be home for another four hours.
She isn’t sure if her heart drops into her stomach or her
stomach leaps into her heart.
Walking quickly now, she takes long strides toward the front
door, opening it quietly, taking off her heels. She’ll catch him this
time, the bastard.
Mabel is nowhere in sight, of course. She hears noises from
upstairs, and snarls. She doesn’t even bother being quiet anymore
as she takes the steps two at a time. Let them writhe in fear for
a few seconds, let terror infest their hearts like the cockroaches
they are. She does not care.
As she approaches the bedroom door, she hears thuds, as
though someone is scrambling around the bedroom. Idiots, she
thinks. Why try to hide?
She does not hesitate. Ears ringing, she throws open the
bedroom door, one hand on her hip. But her glare of triumph and
fury is quickly replaced by one of utter horror and nausea.
George is naked, as anticipated, sitting, shaking in their bed,
the sheets pulled up under his chin, looking nothing short
of terrified. His clothes are strewn across the floor, obviously
discarded hurriedly: slacks, white shirt, tie. There is another set
of clothes as well, but it isn’t the blue cotton dress Camilla had
expected.
Instead, a pair of dirt-stained jeans lies in a crumpled heap
in the corner, contaminating the pristine white carpet of the
bedroom floor.
52
August
Yosef Rosen
It’ll be six years, this August, since my first
kiss, in the warm rain, sodden clothing dragging us
down, the smell of damp earth and bark and grass
glistening, your wild red hair, small delicate
teeth, feather-soft eyelashes
framing liquid green eyes, bright buds,
your long strong legs, thin arms, boyish waist,
you were a sapling,
and I nestled at your roots,
drank in the earthiness of you. Peeling
back the hard shell, tasting the fruit,
you bloomed under me. Pale flat tummy
clenching, white legs like wax beans
strung around my waist, your
freckled arms a champion’s medal
clinging. Whispered drunken love-babble
hanging heavy, golden, lustrous, between
parted lips and trembling fingers
that rested, hesitant, hungry, in soft corners, smooth
doorways, sliding back shutters,
letting in the sweet August rain silvering
skin on skin.
53
Morning Fogs
Conor Gearin
At dewey dawn in the mountain vale, my eyes’
First sight seemed my goal, for that peak was fair,
powdered, and round; yet think on my surprise
When morning tore its sheets of fog and there
A farther mountain stood, its regal granite
Shoulders above the first one’s cap, its face,
Once clear of cloud, now shone high, cold, and wet,
a sun-struck cathedral: and then I knew my race.
So forgive me now, dear, for not loving you
At first, for in our own day’s morning
I was quick to judge, and miss. Yet know this, too:
with your slightest smirk and faintest touch melting
the mists in my mind, morning was not long—and tonight,
I see you clearly—your love burns doubt, like light.
54
Nothing Is Random
Laura Wellington
Our lives are caught up in each other
But we are so distant,
Spiraling star shapes.
And I drift near to you
To find that your pumps
And heartstrings
Are mechanized, like mine.
Two stars collided, 23 light years
Before that night we traded
Our circadian rhythm for the universe,
And as the burning masses fell together,
Scarring phthalo blue ether with light,
We wished upon it, because it was beautiful.
I want to peel back your layers.
Inside, there is something whispering.
Perhaps if I peer into your circuitry,
You will reveal your intentions,
Why you smile in your sleep,
And why you’re attracted to
My eyelashes. I want to know
How we, of all six billion,
nine hundred sixty-eight million,
nine hundred thousand,
six hundred seventy-three
people on this planet,
Ended up here, now, with only dusty molecules
And three utterances of voice frequency
Filling our eternity as we tailspin out of control.
It takes 15 seconds to reach terminal velocity,
And I am hurtling to the ground,
That someone might look upon us,
Filling the night sky with possibility,
And make a wish.
55
No One Belongs Here More Than You
Tori Hudson
56
Her Violin
Madison Emerick
57
Music
Madison Emerick
58
Mantis
Hilary Kuntz
59
Multi-Personality Disorder
Madison Emerick
60
Sandra, Jenny, and Sulmy
Tori Hudson
61
Headscarf
Madison Emerick
62
Baroque
Madison Emerick
63
Dissolution
Laura Wellington
64
Road to Waukaway
Beatriz Parks
Coats were draped over seats beneath blankets
In a fifteen-passenger van bound for Mississippi.
We’d left at dawn, so I was attempting sleep—
Pink sleeping mask with open cat eyes and cat ears
Folded over my closed eyes as the others told riddles.
Four hatted heads in the sand, “Tell me, tell me
The colors of your hats,” cackled a crazed man—
No, leprechaun, and the hats were red white red white
But the heads didn’t know, and the leprechaun had a gun--No, flamethrower—and of course it was
A flamethrower, since Derrick was telling the riddle.
I saw him once prance around the fire pit,
Hand attached to a wildly flailing gasoline gallon,
Dumping its innards on the fire until the tip was alight too
And he threw it across the yard, a line of lighted gasoline
Flung against the white sky like a ribbon of red.
Red white, red white.
And we were headed down a road,
Prominently marked “Road closed.”
Figure out this riddle. It ended in a road block.
Lines of a fence severed the cement.
And we thought we’d better not move it. So we turned back
And re-traveled the ribbon of a road parallel to the Mississippi
And onto Hannibal.
The Hannibal I remembered
Was stick candy, riverboats, my sailor dress,
And screaming as they turned out the cave lights.
And it was always summer. Until I left, I guess.
Every season is its own eternity—
Just like Missouri highways.
65
In winter, as I saw it then, this Tom Sawyer town
Was dead, and small, and narrow.
When I was a child, I used to stare
Up through the naked branches of our old maple
Tree at the city sky, which at night was just a blinded,
Milkied eye. Yes, I knew that in summer the leaves
Were so green and so dense I couldn’t even see
The sky. But I couldn’t remember
What those leaves looked like
As they decomposed, littered along the ground.
I forgot I was looking out the window
Until I saw green again, until I remembered
Green at the Tennessee state line. It crept
Into sidewalks, up beside trailer homes,
And filled emptied lots. It surrounded the blooming
Bradford pear trees and redbuds—
Red white, red white, and eternal green.
66
skin signals
Betsy Koehne
The soft skin of my forearm
slips across the soft skin of your forearm—
mirror images, the enantiomers of our bodies.
Like two snails sliding
belly to belly.
Your skin seated
across one radius and one ulna—
triggering nerve impulses
in my dendrites, ascending to
nestle into the brain folds
of my somatosensory cortex.
My arm refuses to stop
sweeping the tracks of your arm,
as if it has its own tiny brain,
refusing to cut off the stimuli
summing to these celestial signals.
Cascading action potentials—
neurotransmitters braving neurosynapses.
Your suprathreshold stimulus
suspending me in the
sweet serenity
just before sleep.
67
In My Image
Joseph Santoli
Who could make a man
out of clay
Of clay?
Why,
I did.
I did!
He’s funny and brown,
unlike me, but also
very much so.
I’ve installed
the machinery,
the woodworks,
under the clay.
Now he moves like I do.
He’s numb,
I know.
He has no sense.
Unlike me, but also
very much so.
I lay in my bed,
and watch.
Just watch,
as he moves from each place.
He comes back when I should.
He says words that I should.
He is respectable,
unlike me, but also
very much so.
He can’t
dance or sing
sing or dance,
68
or even jump.
I can breath into
his face
but,
he never turns.
Can’t ever turn.
Unlike me, you know.
It was very splendid.
Like the word itself.
He’d do as I should,
doing as I should,
forever I guess.
Unless what happens happened.
It was rain this time,
melting him into a brown pool,
unlike me, who could walk
under clouds forever.
69
Gifts
Megan Mehmert
“Can I help you with anything, sir?”
The man was browsing the stuffed animals, running his large
fingers through the fur of each creature, but he didn’t glance at
any of them. His gaze was fixed to the floor.
“No, I’m fine, thanks.” The reply was crisp and cold, frost on
evening grass.
“Alright,” I smiled, a grimace. “Just let me know if you
need anything.” I walked slowly back to the counter, stopping
occaisionally to adjust displays that were already straight, to cover
my mild embarrassment as his obvious slight.
The shop wasn’t busy at that hour, near closing time. Most
folks had gone home, and those that hadn’t were staying the night
anyway, and wouldn’t bother with the trifles of gifts.
I picked up my book again, sitting quietly in the corner of the
store, but carefully observed the man from the corner of my eye.
He looked to be in his early thirties, the lines around his
eyes not canyons, but dry, rocky creeks. Instead of being turned
upward, however, his crow’s feet were turned down, as though he
spent most of his time frowning rather than smiling. His clothing
looked distinctly disheveled, his black suit pants creased in odd
places, his blue-striped dress shirt rumpled. I noticed an ivory
smudge on his shoulder, laced with something black. Despite his
clothing’s appearance, his hair was surprisingly pristine, thick,
and swept carefully to one side, not a hair out of place, an odd
contrast with the state of his clothing. His keys were in his hand,
and he constantly fiddled with them, as though checking that
they were still there.
The bell near the door jingled, interrupting my observations.
I lifted my head from the book I wasn’t reading, and watched an
old man shuffle into the shop, skin dull but eyes bright. He moved
with purpose, every step deliberate. He gave a distinct impression
of power, despite his stooped shoulders and hooded, bloodhound eyes.
He paused, considered the freshly-cut flowers, chin in hand,
70
a slight smile upon his lips, quietly humming Camptown Races to
himself. He wore a white, threadbare collared shirt, creased at the
back, as though he had spent most of the last few days sleeping on
it. His loafers were old and worn, but shiney, and his khaki slacks
were held up by a pair of suspenders.
He stopped at a vase filled with sunflowers, nodded in
approval, and deftly plucked one from the display. He began
shuffling happily to the counter.
The young man seemed to reach a decision as well, grunting
slightly as he picked one teddy bear from the multitude, and
strode briskly toward me.
They arrived at the register at the same moment.
The young man glanced down. “Oh, I beg your pardon.”
“No need, son,” the old man replied. “After you.”
A nod. “Thanks.”
The young man stepped forward and set the fuchsia teddy
bear on the counter, reached toward his back pocket to remove
his wallet.
“For your little girl?” The old man smiled serenely up at the
young one.
“Yes.” He turned back to the counter and handed his credit
card to me. His hand shook slightly as he held it out, impatient
and irritated.
“Just arrived?” The old man was still talking. I swiped the
card quickly.
A moment’s pause. “Yes.”
“That’s just wonderful, m’boy. Wonderful.”
“Yes. Wonderful.” The man tapped on the counter, fiddled
with his keys more vigorously than before.
“Indeed. This ‘ere,” the old man lifted the sunflower, “is for my
wife. Passed just this evening, she did.”
The young man turned slightly to face the old one. He blinked
once. “I’m sorry.”
“Yes, yes,” said the old man, smiling, a curve of his withered
cheek that moved the rest of his face. “Very sad, very tragic. Been
married forty-six years, we had.” His smile grew.
The young man glanced at the clock. His keys jingled louder. I
punched in the price.
71
“How ‘bout your young wife? She alright?” His smile was
a baring of false teeth now.
The jingling stopped abruptly.
The old man didn’t seem to notice. “My own wife was a
beauty way back when,” he said, tracing an hourglass figure with
his decrepit hands, the sunflower flailing piteously. “But after a
while, she just became too much, y’know what I mean?” A petal fell.
The young man said nothing.
“But yours is still good, I’d wager.” He winked. “I bet you all
are just thrilled about your new baby girl.”
The young man’s hand twitched. “Yes. Thrilled.”
“Does she look like you?”
The air thickened. The key jingling returned, with renewed fervor.
“I haven’t seen her yet.” He looked guilty. “Been at the office
all night.”
A faint odor of perfume reached me then, and the ivory
and black stains on his shoulder seemed to encompass his
being. Foundation and eyeliner are difficult to erase. I suddenly
understood why he hadn’t seen his newborn daughter yet. The
way the old man’s withered nose twitched, I could tell he noticed,
too. But he continued still.
“That’s a shame.” His grin was still in place. “But this is a time
of new things for you, son. New family, new responsibilities, new life.”
Another pause. “Yes.”
The receipt printed. “Here you are, sir, thank you,” I said,
handing him his card.
“Thank you.” He headed for the door.
The old man’s sly voice was louder than necessary. “Tell your
young ‘un and wife hello for me.”
The young man lifted a hand in response, and slipped quickly
out the door. The jingles echoed in his wake.
“Yessir,” the old man murmured to himself, smile genuine and
terrible, “a new life is something you have to fight for.”
72
Reproduction Spyglass
Conor Gearin
So authentic it didn’t come with a “made in China” sticker.
The oaken covering of the largest segment is chipped
and scarred so convincingly it’s a wonder I didn’t
do it myself—didn’t I drop it in a gale and didn’t
it roll down the scabby deck, or didn’t it get ground
against the flintlock pistol in my sea-chest as we rounded the Horn?
Extending its four segments, I see the brass needs burnishing,
I must have missed it last time I was burnishing
the rest of my brass possessions. The ridged couplings
don’t fit quite right and it scrapes as I pull it to its full length.
There are pale spots where the gold-tinted metal doesn’t shine
and iridescent fingerprints. But someday in a 23rd-century museum, it will be
an authentic 21st-century reproduction spyglass, the little
card explaining that people of this century were very interested
in things that looked old, and were willing to make a new thing
look old if that’s what it took, because everything was plastic and new
and unfamiliar and they loved things that had a history,
real or imagined. I clack the spyglass closed, hoping
someday I might look through it and see a clipper ship.
73
Megan Mehmert
74
75
76
77
In which my father asks me to reflect upon
our relationship, while I was expecting to
merely continue our philosophy discussion.
Laura Wellington
It was midnight, the first time Dad asked me
To explain shades of black.
I glanced at the clock, neon red numbers
Against domino black, and counted
Down the minutes of insomnia
That the conversation threatened.
In order to explain, I talked about
Owls, bandits, and campfire coals,
And wondered quietly: why now,
Why this, of all the conversations
That were only appropriate
For midnight. Then, in a lull,
He stood and crossed the room,
Leaving the domed cerulean chair,
To stand where I perched on the edge
Of my bottle black comforter.
He asked me to describe sad black,
And I thought of the ocean at twilight,
The fedora in our coat closet, and
Jeremiah 17:9.
I wrapped my arms around him,
And he held my head to his chest,
He and I, breathing in unison.
And with my eyes closed,
I listened to our rhythmic dance.
Waltz black, I decided –
The color of quiet hugs,
Unspoken agreement,
And fathers.
78
Peekaboo
Madison Emerick
79
description of dense light
Rae Doyle
There is that time of morning
when the stirring of one
makes the other stir too.
& there is that small ordeal
of pillow fluffing, arm shifting
—nebulous forehead kissing.
But, fast are we to fall
to separate worlds of sleep
in light that is not yet ours.
An early sun casts our skin
too colorless a blue
—frozen poultry, unglazed clay.
Barely post-dawn light, it is
standing in windows like the cold
from ice cubes on the side of a glass.
So thin, it is breathable
& beseeching
of the girth of speech.
We will sleep until the sun
stirs starch into its rays
& leaks yellow light so thick
it not does not glow or sneak,
but pours. &
awakes me in such a way
80
that the first thing I see
is light like honey
dripping down your cheek.
Then floating dust aglow
not dust—the effervesced bumbles
of whispering bees.
When you, too, rise—
the waiting honey suckles of youth
now flourishes on lip & tongue.
Us, lapping up all the light
—fastidious, puckering mouths
before midday turns it to knives.
jaw’s song silent gesturing,
our vocal chords gummed
with viscous nectar from the sun.
There is that time of morning
we lay together in light
easy, (wordless).
81
Whatever You Wish For You Keep
Kathryn McClain
Before Mark can toe his shoes off, Jake is running at him,
announcing he is going to be Cinderella for Halloween next week.
“Oh, really?” Mark responds after freezing momentarily,
moving to drape his work jacket across the recliner near the front
door, being extra careful to keep the smeared oil away from the
furniture’s cloth.
Jake nods rapidly, a big grin on his face. “Yep, and Mommy
is gonna help me make a pretty crown with sparkles and
everything!”
As Mark enters the adjacent kitchen, Jake on his tail, he
notices his wife Jennifer with paperwork scattered around the
table, tilting her chin down and looking at him through her
eyelashes – a significant look, he calls it in his head.
Looking down, Mark gives his son a hesitant smile, which he
knows is big enough when Jake squeals back, giving him a quick
hug around his leg before hurrying back over to his spot on the
floor next to his mother. He runs his pudgy little fingers up and
down the crease of the magazine to stay open on a specific page.
Mark, from where he stands, can make out a pile of blond hair and
a massive puff of bright blue. He swallows, feels his wife’s eyes on
his back as he walks toward the fridge, leaning his head in and
sighing into the rush of cool air.
“So what wonderful thing did I miss for dinner?”
Several hours later, after Mark has eaten reheated spaghetti
from the plastic storage container and snuck a warm beer in a
neon green plastic cup, when Jennifer has tucked Jake in bed
with his precious magazine on his bedside table still open, Mark
is still a little on edge. He and Jennifer have talked about their
son before, about how their four year old would rather play with
mommy’s make-up bag than daddy’s offering of racecars and
watch the parts of movies where the princess dances with the
prince than when the prince battles dragons to save her.
82
That night, once Jennifer slips into bed, she talks for a
long time about what she has read about parenting and what
her fellow nurses have lectured to her. Mark knows there are
several subjects she brings up, but he really just takes away the
phrases “unconditional love” and “the development of the child’s
individuality,” things he has heard before and tried to implement
into his everyday life. Mark admits Jake is not what he imagined
when he thought about a son, but Jake is his kid and Mark loves
him. What Mark is really concerned about is how all of the other
kindergarteners are going to treat his son when he walks into
class on Halloween, blue and puffy and sparkling.
When he voices this to Jennifer, she doesn’t seem too
worried, considering his age. At four, he will have a lot of ‘cute’
leeway to let him wear what he pleases. And Jennifer plans to talk
with Jake’s teacher, Miss Shelly, so she knows ahead of time to
watch out for him. Mark remembers her from the parent-teacher
conferences a month before, smiling about Jake getting along
well with a little girl who always wants to play house (Jake liked
to either be the dog or the friend who came over to visit and eat
the girl’s plastic cake). Mark figures, if Jennifer has everything
thought through, he should relax. It is only a Halloween costume.
Despite this, when Jake and Jennifer go to buy the costume a
few days later, Mark brings home a rented copy of Mulan. Jennifer
gives him dirty looks from the couch like she knows where he
is going with this, while Jake watches avidly curled up on his
mother’s lap, humming along to each song under his breath. After
the movie, Jake pretends to do some of the fighting moves for the
rest of the night, always singing the songs with the nearly right
melody and very wrong lyrics, sometimes just yelling out the next
note when he can’t think of anything to say.
At breakfast the next day, Jake is back to talking about
Cinderella and how pretty his new dress is, just like in the movie,
bouncing in his seat excitedly so much he only manages to eat half
the toast in front of him. Mark knows when he has lost.
The Saturday before Halloween, Mark comes home to his son
in a blue dress and a Bedazzled crown in his dirty blonde hair.
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Jake is acting like the four year old he is, spinning around in
circles to make the fabric flair and shrieking with laughter each
time it stays up for a moment before floating back down. Jennifer
is clapping, a huge smile on her face.
“Look, Daddy, look! Mommy made my crown and added lots
of sparkles to my dress!” Jake crows, waiting for Mark to approve.
Mark starts to smile just at the joy in his son’s eyes.
“Well, now you look even better than Cinderella,” he
announces, waving his hands a bit for emphasis. Jake manages
to smile bigger, and proceeds to drag Mark to sit in front of the
television, Cinderella already playing on the screen. Jake actually
knows all of the words to the songs, though his young voice can’t
quite figure out how to hit all of the notes. Feeling Jennifer slide
onto the couch next to him, leaning into his side as a sure sign of
forgiveness, Mark decides he can deal with this, really meaning it
this time.
On Monday, after picking Jake up from his morning at
preschool, Mark heads back for the garage, son in tow due to
Jennifer’s conflicting shift at the hospital. As he walks in, fingers
wrap around Jake’s tiny wrist to keep him from running up to
any of the cars or tripping on a tool. Several other mechanics yell
hello to Jake as they pass by, which caused him to wave back with
his free hand as high above his head as he can, regardless of the
fact over half of the men either have their heads stuck under the
hoods of vehicles or are only able to be seen by their boots.
Mark lifts Jake up onto a wooden stool once they reach his
station, the farthest from the door, which is currently inhabited
by a scratched Jeep Grand Cherokee the driver may have parked
in a relatively shallow pond. Or kiddie pool, Mark isn’t sure, but
somehow rust is spreading only along the underbelly. Currently,
his focus is under the hood, as he hopes he can fix the shaking
without worrying just yet about the rust – this particular
customer is aware of the state of his vehicle and only wants the
most basic fix so he can drive to work in the morning. As long
as Mark doesn’t see anything life-threatening, he is not going to
argue with a returning paycheck.
Lifting the hood back up, he checks Jake over a final time
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with a flashlight in hand before devoting his attention to the car,
just taking a first glance at the damage. He wonders where to even start.
“Daddy?”
Mark jerks up, thankfully missing his head colliding with
the metal hanging above it. His son is looking down at his hands,
twisting the cloth of the long-sleeved t-shirt between his fingers.
“Everything ok, Jake?”
Jake refuses to look him in the eye, a sudden shift from the
happier kid he brought in with him ten minutes previously.
Mumbling just loud enough that Mark can hear, Jake
eventually answers back, “Mulan got in trouble for wearing boy’s
clothes. Am I going to get in trouble for wearing girl’s clothes?”
Mark starts, unaware his kid had been paying that close
of attention to the movie beyond the songs. Jake is just way too
aware sometimes. His eyes are huge, and Mark wants to smack
himself for bringing that movie home.
“Jake, you’re not going to get in trouble. It’s just a Halloween
costume. For fun,” Mark tells him. Jake looks down, moving his
hands to rub up and down his pants; Mark grasps for something
else to say, thinking back to conversations with Jennifer. “And
Mommy told Miss Shelly all about how pretty your costume is and
she is really excited for you to show it to her in class tomorrow.”
Jake looks up at that, the corners of his mouth raising again.
“Really?”
“Sure,” Mark supplies. “Now can you point to which part is
the engine? I forgot again and need you to show me before Mr.
Goehl comes back for his car.”
Jake definitely perks up at this, laughing. “Silly daddy, you
always forget!”
Relieved Jake is thoroughly distracted, Mark makes a note to
have Jennifer talk with Jake when she puts him to bed that night;
she is just so much better at handling these kinds of problems.
The next morning, as Mark drives Jake to school, he keeps
catching the glitter of the crown in his rear-view mirror, listening
as Jake chatters on about seeing everyone’s costumes and how he
hopes he wins the costume contest and just how much he likes
the sprinkling of “sparklies” his mommy brushed through his hair.
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He kicks his feet against the bottom of his booster seat, the noise
blunt due to the fabric caught between. Mark nods at the right
times, making sure Jake knows he is listening, while an uneasiness
grows in his gut, Jake may not be this happy by the end of the day.
“Jake, we’re here,” Mark interrupts, listening to Jake giggle
in glee. Other parents are bringing their children in: witches,
superheroes, black cats, monsters, characters Mark thinks he
remembers from children’s television programming. A few girls
seem to have dresses, but none as elaborate as Jake’s. Once he
unbuckles his son and places him on the sidewalk, Jake adjusts his
crown, and some of the glitter spreads onto his fingers. He then
grabs Mark’s hand, pulling him excitedly toward the school.
At first, everything seems smooth. A couple kids from Jake’s
class smile as he walks by – one girl dressed as a ladybug squeals
something from across the street Mark can’t understand, but
Jake seems pleased. It’s once they reach the classroom Mark’s gut
really starts to churn.
Tammy Harper, a woman Mark recognizes since their
kids also went to the same 3-year-old preschool, is leaving the
classroom as they approach down the hall. He can still hear
Jennifer’s complaints from last year about how controlling
the mother was, and how she loved to stick her nose where
Jennifer claimed it did not belong. Mark, having only really
seen her at pick-up times, doesn’t want to find out if Jennifer
was overreacting today. The moment Mark notices Harper’s
expression, he grips Jake’s hand harder, walking a little faster to
encourage Jake to hurry past.
“Oh my goodness. Well, just look at Jake today!” Harper
comments, too much emphasis on ‘look’ for it to really be a
compliment. “Did he pick that out all by himself?”
Bristling slightly, Mark retorts, “Yeah, he did. He is Cinderella.”
“Didn’t you try to talk him into a . . . more appropriate
costume idea?” Harper whispers.
“No,” Mark says, fighting to keep his voice calm. “This is what
he wanted. It’s just a Halloween costume, anyway. Not a big deal.”
Harper shakes her head, her voice getting louder again, “But
kids can be so cruel! How could you bring him here looking like that?”
Mark starts to squeeze his hands tighter still, but relaxes
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when Jake starts to pull away from him, whining about how his
hand is being squeezed. In a lower voice, he starts to speak faster,
“Look, it’s Halloween. Why don’t you just mind your own business.
It’s not like you’re worried that that kid over there is going to turn
into a dog or anything, so just keep -”
“Jake!” Miss Shelly voices, her words intent enough to show
she has heard the interaction. “Why, don’t you just look wonderful!”
Jake, who had begun to look slightly upset listening to the
argument, grins again. “Thank you!” he shouts, bouncing on his
toes. “I’m Cinderella! Why aren’t you a princess too?”
Miss Shelly laughs, coming out to grab onto Jake’s hand and
lead him into class. “I guess I could be one, if I was the princess of
the witches,” she replies, pointing to her hat.
Seeing all of the other kindergartners gathering around the
craft table, Jake waves goodbye to Mark, running as fast as he can
in so much costume.
Turning back around, Miss Shelly continues, “Mrs. Harper,
Benny is in good hands. Thank you for walking him in, and we will
see you after school.”
Harper’s mouth drops open, but Miss Shelly has already redirected
her attention to Mark. “I’ll keep an eye out for him,” she mutters.
Looking in from the doorway, seeing Jake preen as the girls run
their hands along the blue fabric, Mark hopes that will be enough.
When Mark comes home, it is obvious the day did not go well.
Jake is sitting in the middle of the living room, with no
movies or music playing. He keeps lifting up his skirt, watching
the gauzy material slowly float back down before picking it up
again. All of his outfit seems to still be in tact and unstained, even
his shiny crown remaining centered on his head. But Jake is not
smiling or jumping up to talk about his day.
Spotting Hannah, the babysitter for when Mark has to
work at the shop and Jennifer is stuck doing a shift on the same
afternoon, Mark quietly walks past Jake. Hannah is putting away
what had been snack time, placing all of the glass plates onto the
drying rack.
“Hannah, what happened?”
After starting a bit, Hannah shrugs, wiping her hands on the
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available dishrag. “I honestly don’t know, Mr. Taylor. Jake won’t say
anything, and he didn’t want to watch anything. I was about to go
in for another try when you got here.”
Sighing and running a hand through his short blond hair,
Mark groans. He gives Hannah her check, tells her they won’t
need her again until next week, and promises a phone call soon.
Following her out of the kitchen toward the door, he watches
as Hannah attempts to say goodbye to Jake. His son waves, but
doesn’t say anything, just going back to playing with his skirt.
After he checks the door is shut, Mark walks over and sits
down on the floor next to his son, pulling his little body, poufy
dress and all, into his lap.
“So, how was school today?”
Jake curls himself up tight, pushing his knees up to his chin and
his skirt to spread across Mark’s lap, showing off his socked feet.
“Daddy, do we have to go trick or treat?” Jake asks, looking
at the button on Mark’s work shirt, pushing it back into his skin.
“What do you mean? Don’t you want to?”
Jake keeps pushing the button in, so hard it actually slides
out from under his finger and makes Jake’s finger press in instead.
“Jake,” Mark says, shifting so he can better see his son. “Look
at me.”
Jake looks up, shrugs his shoulders like his mom does when
she wants to avoid something.
“No one gets my costume.”
Mark stiffens, that creeping worry setting back in. “Who said
that they didn’t get your costume?”
“One of the older kids said I was a fairy. But I’m not a fairy, I would
need wings for that! I told him I was Cinderella, but he wouldn’t listen,”
Jake answers, looking back to his blue sparkling knees.
For a minute, Mark can’t respond – he is just too angry. Some
older kid, some stupid cruel older kid who knew what that word
meant, had called his son a fairy. A fairy. Jake is only in preschool–
if Jake continues to like the things he likes now, this will only be
the beginning. Mark figured he wouldn’t have to deal with this
until Jake was in high school, or even middle school maybe. But
preschool? Already?
While Mark fumes, Jake continues. “Benny says I’m weird
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because I dress like a girl and boys aren’t suppose to dress like girls.”
“Benny the older kid?”
Jake shakes his head, and suddenly it clicks in Mark’s head.
“You mean Benny Harper?!?”
When Jake nods yes, his crown falls loose from his hair,
sliding down onto his forehead. Mark starts to plan out the phone
call he will be sending to Mrs. Harper tonight, free of any nice
kindergarten teachers who could step in and stop him. He hugs
Jake tighter.
“You know what, Jake,” he starts. “Those kids are wrong. Your
costume is great, and I knew just who you were. You can dress up
as whoever you want, okay? If you want to be Cinderella, then you
should be Cinderella. Is that who you still want to be?”
Jake seems to think for a second, and then nods again. The
crown slides almost into his eyes. He giggles a little, pulling it away
from his face. Mark grabs it, carefully tugging Jake’s hair from the
teeth before pushing it back into his son’s hairline, making his
bangs stick up awkwardly behind. He kisses Jake on his uncovered
forehead, tasting some of the sparkles that had spread from his hair.
“Well, then, you should go as Cinderella, and get lots of
candy,” Mark says. He notices Jake’s face starting to tense again,
so he thinks of a distraction. “Well, if you are Cinderella, then I am
sure you know all of the songs from your movie. Can you teach me?”
A full-blown smile finally appears on Jake’s face, as he eagerly
nods. “I know them all!”
“What is that one you really like? A dream is a wish your–
Can you teach me the rest?”
A tiny voice, still not quite on the right notes even to Mark’s
untrained ears, starts to sing out the words, getting louder as he
goes along.
“A dream is a wish your heart makes, when you’re fast asleep.
In dreams, you will lose your heartaches . . .”
Jennifer finds them there, an hour later, Jake giggling because
his silly daddy still can’t remember the right words.
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Exploring Marge
Kevin Kotur
Marge
The name glides of the tongue,
Marge.
Grandma Marge made and served
the food at Smartparts,
an auto part service on the edge
of Watertown, Wisconsin.
She brought my sister and I to work, sometimes,
on our summer visits.
The mechanics always told jokes.
I’d watch their black hands leave
prints on white, malleable bread.
When she wasn’t home
we would scare her toy poodle, Peaches
and jump up on the couch,
while it yapped yapped yapped
out of reach.
Marge. Margarine
The commercial touts
I can’t believe it’s not butter.
Instead of watching the T.V. I’m upside down
with my back on the seat of our old couch
legs in the air
Imagining what life would be like
if the odd-shaped ceiling was the floor,
blood flowing to my head.
As I approached high school Grandma’s grammar worsened.
She didn’t finish high school.
Spelling errors in hand-written letters,
the packages of cheap trinkets and candy
seemed lacking now.
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Margaret, Maggie’s real name. Hates it
when I call her that with a smirk.
Our senior year her date to homecoming got high beforehand.
She danced in silence,
and felt she wasn’t good enough.
Grandma Marge has a vice grip over the phone.
Keep for hours.
But she wept when I told her I had
all A’s my first semester at college.
All of the other waitresses spent their money
but I was smart and saved mine.
She sent my dad to school,
I never worried about money.
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The News
Yosef Rosen
I gnaw my bleeding fingertips.
Flesh hangs loose like
burial shrouds, tattered pale lace.
I lap at the dark-bright seams that well up—
I am leaking red.
I shiver in the corner, away
from the light I wring
my hands and wonder what it is
to smile, a guilty child’s face
beneath jaded angry eyes.
I feed on myself, consuming slowly,
in turn consumed. I choke
on the taste of dry skin,
salty tang of blood,
my throat itches, I still swallow.
I’m scared that soon I’ll bite hard enough
to really hurt, sink my teeth deep enough
to pierce the thin translucent wall, soon,
I think, flesh will yield,
the dam will burst, my life will spill
like strawberry jam from the jar
you broke when I told you I was pregnant.
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Dancing Shoes
Madison Emerick
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To Speak with My Mother
Rachelle Wales
is like trying to turn a clock
whose hands refuse
to move any way but backward
to discover deeper truths
to leave all reason behind
there is no historical record for this
her birth steeped in shadows,
her line, fuzzed out in the distance
my mother, the myth
our eyes share their shade
a relentless brown, it echoes our hunger
but they do not see the same
our hands—shapes of gentle curves
and long fingers,
we cling to separate species of rough-hewn bark,
as branches, trees, entire forests separate our souls
and she is a jungle,
all rustling with sudden vipers,
long black streaks of night-cats
and dripping warm sweet humid dew
she is haunted with misted blood, circling
veins like poisoned vines, beautiful, tragic
we cannot keep from cutting her down
trying to contain an alien universe of wild
all dappled light on love-greened leaf in the day,
all unknown maternal menace in the eve,
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her limbs shifting in shadows, hiding slick-skinned frogs
an army of animal-jerked silences and unanswered questions,
her refusal to surrender the wasted duty to her crown
and all these we must swallow,
her brown-mudded rivers, her dark-choked spaces
all these mysteries we must ingest to hold her in place,
to love her,
to try and try to keep our blood blue and alive,
and are we not the younger jungles,
arising in stubborn green antonymy
alone arising from scorch blackened earth?
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God Bless
Conor Gearin
By the age of twenty-five, Dan Larraby was accustomed
to brushing off panhandlers of any description. The paralyzed
woman in the wheelchair at the exit ramp, the old black man that
hung around 14th and Washington, the wanderers that passed
through the city, stayed a night in a park, and continued their
search for a promised anything.
But there it was: a hulking, furred thing with bull horns,
wearing a tearing bomber jacket and dirty grey sweatpants
stretched to the width of medium size tree trunks, sitting with its
back against the wall and holding a cardboard sign. Its legs were
splayed out across the sidewalk, its large, bear-like feet nearly
reaching the curb.
Dan read the sign as he approached. “Homeless Vet.
Please Help. God Bless.” Dan looked down at his wing-tipped
shoes, noticing how narrow and weak his feet now seemed. He
considered screaming and sprinting back to the parking garage.
He kept walking forward, something like pride but more like
inertia keeping him going.
Dan decided to smile at the thing. He figured it was the least
he could do.
As he got close, the thing drew in its legs to let him pass. Its
thick brown fur was turning silver between its horns. Dan saw its
huge brown eyes looking at him and scudded to a stop. “Excuse
me,” Dan muttered.
“No, excuse me,” said the thing. “Say, do you have any spare
change? Anything’ll help.”
“No, I’m sorry,” said Dan.
The thing’s eyes closed in practiced, knowing acceptance, its
great head bowing. “Alright. God bless you, now.”
“Thanks,” said Dan.
He realized later that day that he had forgotten to smile.
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Stillness
Emily Battmer
The thing I liked the best, I think,
Was the stillness.
Like if I curled up in a ball and didn’t move,
Nothing else would move, either.
Like I could stop time there,
Catch my breath,
Sort through my thoughts.
I liked the way the slant of light
Filtered in through the sheer pink curtain.
In the winter it was gray.
In the summer it was golden.
I liked the way it hit the floor
And the dust would dance
And sparkle in the air
Like little fairies.
As I got older,
I liked that it got older with me.
I liked the way experiences gradually appeared,
Covering every surface,
Spreading across the walls
Like a garden growing,
A fantasy place filled with only the good things,
A place I created for myself,
Just the way I wanted it.
I liked that my life
Had been fixed to that room,
Embedded into the walls with nails,
Scattered across the bookshelf
And the nightstand and the dresser
And the bed.
It became a shadowbox frame,
A place to collect my memories.
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I liked the way sound filled the room,
The way music curled up toward the ceiling like smoke
And dissipated, leaving nothing untouched,
Shedding a different kind of light
And bringing the room to life.
I liked the candles.
I liked the way the flames danced,
Flickers of glowing orange light
Strewn like stars
Randomly throughout the space,
The way they warmed the place
From the inside out
With notes of clean cotton,
And warm cinnamon-sugar.
Now the flames have gone out.
The music has stopped,
The final chord still lingering,
A mere echo, a memory
Hanging in the air.
The shelves and frames and little things –
The memories that I’d pinned up
So precisely, with such care –
Have all collected dust,
Ancient artifacts I’ve left untouched.
The light from the window
With the sheer pink drapery
Comes in sharp and cold,
And when the wind shakes the window frame
The room creaks and howls.
The dust fairies move slow and heavy,
Like dreadful ghosts
Suspended in time.
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Worst of all is the stillness.
Like the room has been left cold,
Suffocated, dead.
Like every time you take a breath,
You’re disturbing the natural order of things,
Setting into motion
Something that was supposed to have ceased
When your innocence did.
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September Eleventh
Kevin Kotur
I was nine, but remarkably skeptical
I didn’t trust its significance at first,
Another day, another death.
In the kitchen my mom watched the T.V.
She shook her head, Oh my God . . .
I was just nine, but remarkably skeptical.
It seemed like just the media
Regular sensationalizing
I thought, another day, another death.
School that day was eerie.
Teachers fumbled with their words,
I was nine, remarkably skeptical.
Slowly it dawned on me, I needed
To imitate the grief of those around me,
Another day. Another death.
People, trapped under rubble, choked by dust,
Faint weeping off in the darkness—
But I was nine, remarkably cynical.
Another day, more deaths.
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I Figure I’ll Talk a Yarn and You’ll
Listen Good
Hope Benefield
And so I figure I’ll continue on like this until eternity gets
all worn out and throws a death fit. I’ll still be pecking away, I
figure, because I damned near have eternal life and an idea called
boredom. Purpose is purpose enough Papa would say if he were
right here today. I never understood that man and don’t reckon
God will know what to do with him, probably send him on down
to Satan’s pits, wash his hands and some such. Pearls and gates
never opened for Papa; he had a wife though that gave him me
and that’s about where we all parted ways, and all my life eternal
or otherwise I’ll have that wumping he gave my backside to make
me cry that first day.
I keep all my memories for if Papa ever asks what I did when
he was out, and he has been out for a century or more, then died.
That’s lots of memories. I did what Ma said and opened up a
storage account, she says, so I can earn interest on the especially
good times and some of the really bad that Papa gave. The teller
gave me what for, telling he didn’t have a box big enough to hold
all that, so I asked for two and he said I needed ten at least.
I bought out the whole bank with money from the heist in
’24 and 32’ and ’48 and a list of others that run together. Boregard
and Thompson may know unless they used up the money plus had
to sell off a few lifespans to day traders. They mayhap should have
invested like I have with a couple of days that run over shallow in
my mind. I have a few I could spare, I said, and wised up to stocks
and all. Now I have my assets tied up in this and that fortune five
hundred, Wall Street, and the mongers on the wharf until I was
left with dry boredom.
I wouldn’t of known before that it’d keep my hands tied and
literally because I went and shot a man out of boredom. That’s not
the law, the lawman said when he cuffed me. I knew that well—I
spent a decade in law school before I could breathe again. I was
my own lawyer; pled to insanity may it please the court. The judge
may have objected but I had the jury convinced that I was mad
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enough to go off to Brigham’s loon bin. Of course I was still bored
but I made a few friends in white jackets. They spoke like how I
used to write poetry, and I wrote some of it down in my mind. I
wasn’t allowed pencils because Jean Jekyll, or was it Heidi Hyde
that stabbed out both eyes and four more of her nice lady nurses
when they tried pills. I wasn’t keen to start up the memories
again; being so eidetic they killed off leagues of boredom.
Those nurses were smart not to come round to me with pills
I would have palmed either way, but when they gave in and finally
came round I knew it was time to pull out. I took the skin off the
capsules with my teeth. I mashed up the insides with my tongue
and regurgitated the mess into putty that shaped to the lock on
the big door to the outside. The security of the place should have
been more to stand for but Brigham wasn’t known for money or
for risk aversion planning. I walked out that door with hardly a
look my way, and have since wondered if the door maybe wasn’t
left wide open by Mary Ellen who was sweet on me. She knew my
mind was oceans and deserts all in one and I’d come back for her
someday once I settled the score with Papa, who was still dead by
miles and buried in Akron.
Some around those parts say they see him up and walking.
That’s hearsay and probably jam malarkey and cows’ dung pies
and mite festered teeth. He might have cheated death if the
reaper gave up on him same as God and Ma but I still hadn’t. And
when I got to his grave there in Akron, there was the bouquet
Ma’d left just yesterday if I was smelling correctly. She never
forgave him for leaving the kitchen sink rusted and her heart
rusted as well. She wasn’t quite as long winded as us Jennings
stock menfolk, and pretty soon Papa and I had to spend what few
good memories we had between us as down payment for Ma’s new
heart. Open heart surgery was pat learning by that age and so the
tin bucket was self-installation. I figure that old tin has kept her
up and running still by steam alone, her steam at Papa for all the
rusted things he left behind. So she never forgave him, if I know
her, and if I know Papa he’s flipping noisily in his grave at the
smell of fresh flowers. He liked them rotted because it reminded
him of his youth, however long ago that was, and it agitated him
to no end that that woman of his had gall enough to gall him on
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his dirt bed each and every morning at eight sharp with personal
delivery no less.
If I stuck around too long Ma would sneak up behind and
cleave my backbone with her hatchet she used to chop firewood
out back. She’d be after me the way she was after Papa before she
cleaved him good with no thought to how we bought her heart. I
guess she sold that information at low bid for a block of imported
cheese. I had to leave soon enough that I wanted to say one thing
to Papa.
Papa, I said, purpose has no purpose.
And I stuck him good with it. I could feel it sinking into the
ground like words sometimes do, the good ones anyhow. Papa’s
grave stone split right in two and I had Newton’s inertia for thanks.
At last I was inspired in life. It only took some of the banks
to go under to withdraw a lot of my memories. I had the first
memory I ever made in a special lockbox in Gordomon’s Vaults.
That was the Fort Knox of security after Fort Knox had been
torn down and bested and it’s memory sold to Jonny Q who was
specialized in his regard for the memories of old architecture. He
had the mystery of Stonehenge locked away in Gordomon’s so we
all knew the establishment was reputable.
I took that first memory of the wumping of my backside and
inhaled that old aroma it carried with it, something like cured
ham sat on the lunch table too long. I was inspired in life to
start what was long coming: the first autobiography of Jimhouse
Jennings. I say first because there have been many Jimhouse
Jennings but none that set down to typing their whole existence.
Have you known a single one? You’ve been around the horn a time
or two, I can spot a buck from a long fence and you sir know how
much value I got stored up.
I am at last inspired in life to share each and every memory
if you want to take me on as a writer. Sure, you’ve been in
publishing longer than I have brewed lager for lumberjacks in
Maine, but I bet you haven’t tasted sheep’s eyeballs under elm
trees. I know that taste and for the first time, you have a man
in me, sitting right here before your eyes, who wants to share.
As long as I live and breathe eternal, I will be pecking away, you
watch. I still have my boredom to damn near outlast the Holy
Creator and even Papa, just you watch.
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Colophon
Windfall was founded in the fall of 1976 by students and faculty.
Windfall contains the creative works of Truman State University
students. All submissions are judged by a blind jury of students,
and consideration is given to each work solely on its artistic merit.
This issue of Windfall was designed using Adobe InDesign,
Illustrator, and Photoshop CS2.
The font used throughout the magazine is Foglihten 11 point for
body text; FoglihtenPCS 14 point for author names, and 20 point
for titles.
The design elements were created using Photoshop brushes
provided by http://www.obsidiandawn.com/water-stainsphotoshop-gimp-brushes.
Five hundred copies of the volume were printed by ThomsonShore in Dexter, MI.
Windfall is funded by the Division of Language and Literature
at Truman State University.
Any queries or requests for copies of Windfall may be sent
to Windfall,
100 East Normal,
SUB CSI Mailbox,
Kirksville, MO 63501
or [email protected]
Please visit our website at http://windfall.truman.edu
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