6th Edition - Plymouth State University

CEN T R I PETAL
6th Edition F Fall 2003
CENTRIPETAL
EDITOR
Paris Landry
MANAGING EDITOR
Crystal A. Lavoie
SENIOR LAYOUT EDITOR
Tracey L. Smith
ADVISORY EDITOR
Paul Rogalus
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
Dave Commins
Sarah Lewis
Jennifer M. O’Donnell
Jason McKenzie
ASSISTANT EDITORS
Robert Binette
Nathan Bieniek
Diane Blaisdell
Marianne Bradley
Josh Breault
Jack Bronn
Anna Draves
Ed Dugas
Nikole Snover
Meredith Vickery
COPYEDITORS
Stephen Landry
Cara Cristina Losier
Robert M. Masse
Andrew F. Mannone
D. James McLaughlin
BUSINESS MANAGER
Justine Handler
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES: Submissions are open to
students, alumni, faculty, and friends of Centripetal.
All submissions must be typed. No hand-written
submissions will be accepted. Fiction (up to 3
stories) should be no more than 750 words per piece;
poetry (up to 6 pieces) may be any length, any style.
Submissions should be e-mailed as an attachment to
[email protected]. All submissions must
contain name and contact information for the poet/
author, as well as a brief note on the contributor.
Centripetal accepts one time North American Rights
for print and online publication. All rights revert to
the authors upon publication.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Plymouth State Poets & Writers
would like to thank the following for their support
of this issue of Centripetal: all of the contributors,
with special thanks to the Plymouth State University
Student Senate, the Hartman Union Building Staff, the
English Department and Ed Dugas, for his patience
with the misspelling of his name in the fifth edition.
We would especially like to thank Dr. Paul Rogalus,
our advisor, without whom this would not have been
possible.
COVER EDITOR
Benjamin Aufill
GRAPHICS MANAGER
Rick Schlott
GRAPHICS ASSISTANT
Cindy Rizza
ONLINE EDITOR & WEBMASTER
Josh Breault
Cover art based on photograph: “Untitled”
by Jake Robertson, Fall 2002
19 HIGHLAND ST F SUITE A14
PLYMOUTH, NH 03264 F (603) 535−2236
[email protected]
oz.plymouth.edu/~poetswriters
C ONTENTS
6th Edition F
Fall 2003
5
CARA CRISTINA LOSIER
F
Escape,
7
DANIEL SINGER
F
Type
8
KRYSTINA HAJDUCZEK
F
Untitled
10
JENNIFER M. O’DONNELL
F
In
The Pupil
Linear AB
the Honesty of a
Childhood Past
11
SARAH LEWIS
F
Secret
12
ANGELA RICCIARDI
F
Free
13
DIANE T. PADILLA
F
Afterthought
14
ERIN PLUMMER
F
I
16
TRACEY L. SMITH
F
The
18
NICKY ROSS
F
Untitled,
19
STEVEN SPRAGUE
F
Act
of God
20
PAUL ROGALUS
F
The
Weird One
22
CRYSTAL A. LAVOIE
F
ski
day, grandpa’s guns
24
DUDLEY LAUFMAN
F
St.
Samuel’s Island
26
ROBERT M. MASSE
F
She
Ain’t Comin’
27
SETH OWEN PERDUE
F
The
First Brewed Cup Takes
28
DARYL BROWNE
F
Untitled
29
AARON KENDRICK
F
Untitled
30
CHIP SCANLAN
F
The
32
JACK BRONN
F
Clarity
34
SCOTT COYKENDALL
F
Penny
35
KAREN CURRIER
F
Road
Songs
America
Am
Order of Things, Lusting
Untitled
Me
Boy In the Water
Trip to Exeter with my
Dad, Cancelled
36
SGT. THEODORE C. MERRITT
F
September
40
PARIS LANDRY
F
To
43
JESSICA DUNN
F
On
44
JULIE PASSETTO
F
Driving
46
TYLER MUSTY
F
Firewood
21, 1943
Hold a Man, A Writer’s
Revenge
the Edge
Mind
and Broken Nose
48
49
LYNN RUDMIN
F
Spectacle
KATE DONAHUE
F
A
CINDY RIZZA
F
Docks
of Rain
Returning
KAITLIN O’CONNOR
F
Untitled
50
AMANDA PORTER
F
Lessons
51
DARCY WINWARD
F
Untitled
52
CYNTHIA HUNTINGTON
F
Lighthouse,
55
PATRICK ARMSTRONG
F
Ellen
56
MARIAH KENDRICK
F
58
BOB GARLITZ
F
Back
61
RUSSELL ROWLAND
F
Recognition
Through a Burn
In March Woods
What Lola Wants
and Forth
JOHN GUARNIERI, JR.
F
A
62
MATTHEW B. HOWES
F
Sweet
64
JASON MCKENZIE
F
I
66
LIZ AHL
F
ABBA
68
JON LINK
F
Complicated
Scene
Note to My Wife
and Low, The Pride of
Gaunt Tree
Want Whores, Listen,
Sister
Memoir, Broken
Scenery is
Listed by Miss July 1978 As
a Turn-off
70
NATHAN GRAZIANO
F
An
71
JED HOWARD
F
You’re
72
ELIZABETH THOMAS
F
Untitled
76
NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS
87
CONTRIBUTIONS
Allegory to Explain
Modern America
Just Jealous
CENTRIPETAL
C ARA C RISTINA L OSIER
ESCAPE
Autumn is at her heels now,
rolling up the fraying remnants of past summer days.
She clings to this time of transition.
Unwilling to relinquish her grip on the sanity of happiness,
she lies awake in the elbow of night
to be aware of each second’s death.
Etched in smiles and tears are midnight rides
and the swiveled hips of dance—
Clandestine kisses beneath blue and red lights.
And still these moments slip
like wet sand through her fingers
and the witches’ castles that they leave behind
are sadly lacking in tenants.
5
LOSIER
CENTRIPETAL
THE P UPIL
I gathered strength at the tips
of well-forested mountains,
ere I descended to the town
tucked in beneath them.
I sat on my porch railing—
my porch— (I could hear the sound of
industrious termites lunching
on its aged cross-beams)
drinking in the cider-scented autumn air.
I walked up the stairs worn slick
by generations of poor and earnest students
and my naked footprints were unnoticed
in the ebb and flow of so many steps.
I found my room’s door slightly gaped,
barely kissing its enveloping frame.
Through the oblong window, I caught sight of them,
assembled there in front of the professor.
I pushed the door swiftly open and stood,
moved, yet unsure of my intent.
Let me, I thought. I know the secrets
of the mark of the horizon. Let me.
The professor didn’t deign to look up
as she abruptly slammed the door,
this time catching the latch, melding
door with frame.
Defeated, I thought,
and yet one girl stared.
Through death, she stared,
and I almost thought she saw me there.
Attentiveness never faltering,
she penned her notes and nodded—
and yet she stared,
and I am quite certain that she saw me there.
LOSIER
6
CENTRIPETAL
DANIEL SINGER
TYPE LINEAR AB*
Transfuse me stone syntax for I am the proletariat
Marmaduke®. I am the masthead am the ProtoIndo-European I-Ching lapse. I am a listless tick.
I am the Gypsy jump roper am the Jell-o® geode
was baptized a bebop bulletin.
I am read in a centrifugal scream— one shared
by cinnamon traders. I am molasses with Mao
Ze Tung am the drum-bottomed jade drawler.
Legere ® will be my insurance carrier in linguistic
hospitals where no wine is permitted beyond
the blessing: Baruch atau Adonai, elochanu
meloch haolum, boray pri hagofan. I am
the erudite Rosetta Stone® am the claustic
prepositional superlative riot which
reads®: Je suis le frommage de la vache qui rit.
I am haiku®-busted.
*Linear A is a distant linear predecessor of Ancient Greek and a less distant predecessor to its
decipherable brother, Linear B. Unlike its sibling, Linear A has never been translated. It is a
highly developed language system that is now wholly without meaning.
7
SINGER
CENTRIPETAL
K RYSTINA H AJDUCZEK
UNTITLED
I play with colors,
While skeleton feet
Dance.
Bands of blue
Starting point for
The killer
Of Time
03, 23, 73, 9
Hours, minutes, verbs
And vowels.
I measure everything.
It’s like a nervous tic.
You want to know
The distance from me
To you?
It’s an eternity.
See, I’m in Rome,
Kneeling to the Vatican
And you’re back home
Forming the idea, the band
To take over the world.
To take it back from
People like me, who
Kneel
In submission to
Another man’s vision of
God.
I don’t see straight
All the time.
I see crooked gin
And wavy vodka
And my pillow blacked
Out by another night of,
“I’m not going to drink a lot.”
HAJDUCZEK
8
CENTRIPETAL
See, I’m a runner
A shunner, a turner
From faces.
I veil my face and actions.
Keeping secret
My secrets,
No whispering betrayals.
Holding fast
To the anger
That should have drowned
Long ago.
The dead still walk,
And talk,
And dance my steps.
9
HAJDUCZEK
CENTRIPETAL
JENNIFER M. O’D ONNELL
I N THE HONESTY OF A CHILDHOOD PAST
Pulling down
the pants on the boys
on the playground,
behind the toy box, who would blush
with reluctant thumbs—
not quite ready to disobey mother’s rules.
Young soldiers shaken awake
beneath the flat mats at nap time.
Odd suggestions go unnoticed:
What’s t h a t ? And
Will you k i s s mine?
One careless afternoon, I
caught Skin-handed. Frozen—
Exposed in kinder-fluorescence.
Ms.-Get-Your-Ass-in-the-Other-Room
fought a smile, forced stern eyes.
I lead my rainbow blanket
guilty frown-head down
into a full room of lit ladies—
Following the direction in which her finger pointed.
I rested elbows high on extra-large tables
while glassy eyes taught me how to shuffle—
how to: Leaf flips into
a backward bend.
They told me: Boys cause nothing
but trouble.
Not knowing what had been excepted, I
positioned thin rectangles
into undersized palms and think maybe
I should take up cards
and keep my wandering hands to myself.
O’DONNELL
10
CENTRIPETAL
SARAH L EWIS
SECRET SONGS
We always played together
in springtime,
our bare feet splashing
beneath us in
cool blue lake water.
You used to whisper songs to me
in our secret language
as the sun flooded my dress
with warm light
and the wind
sang a song
of its own.
These special serenades
were my springtime melody,
until summer’s white music
whispered through
the trees.
11
LEWIS
CENTRIPETAL
A NGELA R ICCIARDI
FREE A MERICA
Mid-air
6 hour flight
Boston to San Francisco
Gigantic mountains
Motion sickness
Under control, drug free.
Below,
Land formations
At first, old squares
New England ceramic tiles,
Cornered and pointy,
MINE! they scream.
Then, America, all circles
Little pie charts of property
Now, the mountains claim everything,
Scraping the bottom of the plane
In the cabin,
Television,
Programs and movies and news
To listen, pay $5.99
But out the small plexi window
A better show,
And it was free.
RICCIARDI
12
CENTRIPETAL
D IANE T. PADILLA
A FTERTHOUGHT
I am not an afterthought
Dancing to the tunes of
A silver starfish
Beached on the shores
Of a fractured life.
Tides of emotions
Roll in with gifts of smiles
Then the rapid retreat
When an outstretched hand
Takes the bait.
Only once were the waters
Stilled long enough to gaze
Into the blue deep
Currents of confusion
The Marianna Shelf of Hidden Passions.
Sudden swirlings
Tossed up churned pulled under—
No more will I fish in these waters
Dark and stormy.
I fought my way out of the riptide
And stand on solid ground where
I pass a starfish
Bleached white by
The sun of my indifference.
13
PA D I L L A
CENTRIPETAL
E RIN P LUMMER
I AM
I am
I am identifiable by the longtime
Long-term struggle of my sisters
All over the globe.
Of all their triumphs and tragedies
That beat them, take them
Yet they themselves beat and take
As their own victories
From Kabul to Seneca Falls
To my own checking account, education,
Possessions and freedom to walk alone
Down Random Street, USA and not be
Covered by a gentleman’s cape shielding me
From my own planet.
I am anything and everything
Jeered and feared by Sigmund Freud,
His predecessors and his lackeys,
The chivalric order, and any form of
Politics and political religion.
I am a threat to society and order.
I am a wanton temptress that sucks
The ignorant into my web of truth.
I am the embodiment of evil.
I am the embodiment of virtue,
I will never be the perfect model of
Submissive womanhood because
I can’t help the fact that I talk a little
Too loud and stamp my feet a little
When I want something like
Respect and equality instead of
Simple sameness that takes the shape
Of a thrown bone that is still
Covered with the hair and dirt
Of ancient deceptions of ancient institutions
Built over the bones of my sisters:
The Maenads, the Amazons, the Furies,
PLUMMER
14
CENTRIPETAL
And every other female who bared their
Fangs with spear in hand
And proved themselves
As warriors and weavers of fate.
For I am they and I am every woman
Who defies the order of simple things
That should be:
I am Lilith, I am Kali
I am Joan of Arc
I am Venus, I am Mary
I am Maiden, Mother, Crone
I am fury, I am virtue
I am light, I am dark
I am the statue on the pedestal engraved:
“One of several billion
Who share this Earth.”
I am woman.
Hear me at least once.
15
PLUMMER
CENTRIPETAL
TRACEY L. SMITH
THE ORDER
OF
THINGS
I want a lucrative job with six figures,
something that will get me out of dodge
and into the arms of a big gray company
with tiny gray cubicles and people in
gray suits and skirts.
I want to be gray
and blend in with the rest of the world.
I want to be unnoticed,
except to him.
I want to have a big wedding,
with pink and red roses and hundreds of guests
on a beautiful lush green hillside,
with a beautiful white gown that complements
my lack of figure.
I want to own a house
and have a picket fence to paint
and a kitchen to clean
and wallpaper to pick out
for a child’s room.
I want to have children,
a boy and a girl,
and watch them go to school,
pack their lunches,
and help them with their homework.
I want to go to parent-teacher conferences.
I want to brag about their accomplishments
to my friends
and forget about the ones I never made.
I want to watch them grow up.
And maybe, when my daughter is old enough,
and prettier than her mother,
I can tell her that
she may never have what she wants either.
SMITH
16
CENTRIPETAL
LUSTING
you…
are in my blood: a poison.
are sunburned on my skin: a cancer.
ravage my thoughts: a virus.
and i want no antidote.
your face blurs that of my lover’s;
his hands, lips, tongue, metamorphose to yours
and for a moment,
in moaning, rocking, thrusting, grasping coitus,
i ask for you to come to me.
but you never do.
it may be masochistic
to incessantly dote,
worship the shrine i’ve created
for you in my heart.
i’ve always liked pain:
pain means feeling.
feeling means i’m alive.
but i’ve been waiting for so long
to feel alive
to someone else.
every time i fill the void of you,
every time I call for him,
every time you hear that song,
i hope you scream.
17
SMITH
CENTRIPETAL
NICKY ROSS
UNTITLED
as I crawl across
your scroll
I make my mark
in the little
places
nothing stages
carving out the basics
till so raw & hungry
you flip me
strip the pretty
fall like a vulture
wrack my carcass
& suffer my spine
UNTITLED
like a sinner
praying for sainthood
I sly away
from confession
& concentrate on concession
yes, yielding
soft with contact’s
brutal impact
I am a force
that breaks
sincerity from submission
ROSS
18
CENTRIPETAL
STEVEN SPRAGUE
ACT OF GOD
Sunday morning smelled like stew.
Chicken scent crept into
my slumbering senses.
Chaka-Khan played from the kitchen.
Get ready for church!
Mother noticed the floorboards creak above her
where I sleep.
The crock pot simmered.
Mother chopped and sliced
swaying slightly to the music.
Abruptly the earth shook.
The whole block crack-rattled.
Broke the house’s back
down to its foundation.
The walls crunched, the linoleum crumbled
underneath her feet.
Mother huddled over
protecting her chicken stew like a quarterback.
My muscles went taut from shock
until the quaking subsided.
Are you okay?
The floorboards had ceased to creak above her.
Shook up but okay.
Get ready for church!
The floorboards creaked.
See what God does
when you sleep in on a Sunday?
19
SPRAGUE
CENTRIPETAL
PAUL ROGALUS
THE WEIRD ONE
M
y roommate Gerard was a shy, moody, really homely guy—
he was an artist. He was 21, but he looked a lot older. He
had a small, melon-shaped head, a dark, close-cropped beard
which covered most of his face and neck like a fungus, and he
was going bald on top. He wore thick, round eyeglasses which
made his eyes look enormous. My other roommate Jeff called
him “the human fly”; I usually just referred to him as “the weird
one”— when he wasn’t around.
My hippie friend Molly was really drunk when she first
met Gerard in a local bar. I said, “Molly, this is my roommate
Gerard.”
“Your roommate,” Molly blurted out, “so this must be ‘the
human fly’— the one you call ‘the weird one.’”
Gerard was crushed. I panicked and tried to lie. “No Molly,
you drunken thug, you’re getting things mixed up. I’m the human
fly. The Fly is one of my favorite movies— you know— ‘Help me!
Heeeeeeelllp meeeeeeee!” (doing my best human fly imitation).
Gerard didn’t buy it. His face was red; his enormous eyes
were locked into mine. “The weird one?” he asked me quietly. I
just shrugged; there was no way out. Gerard moved off to a table
by himself in the back of the bar and started throwing down
shots of tequila. After a while, Jeff and I went back and sat with
him.
Gerard’s face tightened. “Am I really the weird one, Paul?” he
asked.
“Well, yeah, you really are pretty weird, when you get down
to it. So what? So am I. So is Jeff. Jeff is exceptionally weird.
What’s the big deal?”
“Then why am I the weird one, and not you or Jeff?”
“Jesus, I don’t know, Gerard. That’s just the way Molly put it.
Forget it, all right?”
Still staring deep into me, Gerard slowly, deliberately picked
up two empty beer bottles and dropped his hands beneath the
table. He curled his mouth into a sinister smile. Then there was
an explosion of glass underneath the table. Gerard raised his
ROGALUS
20
CENTRIPETAL
fists and put them onto the table, each one tightly squeezing a
triangular shard of brown glass and trickling blots of blood onto
the table.
“Hey, what the hell happened over there?” the bartender
called.
I just stammered like an idiot, “He, uh . . . he’s, um . . .”
“He dropped a bottle,” Jeff said matter-of-factly.
The bartender said, “Oh, O.K.,” and he brought us a towel.
We hustled Gerard home.
A few days later I went into Gerard’s room to get a book I’d lent
him. The room was gross. Partially filled moldy ceramic coffee
cups, shabby sweaters of various shades of brown, crumpled up
Kleenex, partially painted canvases, and large, torn-up sketch
pads. The charcoal sketch on top of the pile caught my eye. It was
a dark, smudged sketch of the crucifixion— from an overhead
perspective. The body was thin and scrawny; the face was gaunt
and homely, with a close-cropped beard, a bald spot, and thick,
round eyeglasses. Evidently Jesus had looked exactly like my
roommate Gerard, “the weird one.” I got out of Gerard’s room
quick— because I just figured that somewhere in that shabby pile
of sketches was a drawing of Satan that looked something like
me.
21
ROGALUS
CENTRIPETAL
C RYSTAL A. L AVOIE
SKI DAY
in sixth grade
howard and i skied
together
every thursday
until one thursday
on our way up the slope
i almost peed my pants
but i held it
until halfway down
i couldn’t hold it in anymore
and later
when my mother asked me
why my snowsuit smelled funny
i pretended i was asleep.
L AVO I E
22
CENTRIPETAL
GRANDPA’S GUNS
grandpa had this goat
she thought she was a dog
and always tried to come
into the house
grandpa let her into the house
but he would never let
my boyfriends in
he would shoot his gun off
from the doorstep everytime
i drove up the driveway
with a boy in the car
this one time
ryan brought me home late
and
my grandfather came out
onto the doorstep
and shot his gun off
but he missed ryan
and killed one of his guinea hens
instead.
23
L AVO I E
CENTRIPETAL
D UDLEY L AUFMAN
ST. SAMUEL’S ISLAND
sets out there in the bay
quite a ways out
beyond sight of United States.
They has only one road
runs east and west
probably 8 miles altogether
village more or less in the middle
Sign at one end
on the bluff, ‘n
shot full of bullet holes
reads End Of Road.
Sign at the other end reads
Other End Of Road,
also peppered with shot.
Only two cars on island,
Sam, (he wan’t no saint)
owned one, a beat up old chevy.
Gerry, (he wan’t no saint neither)
owned the other, a Model A.
One time he come back from the US,
left his beer on the ferry.
He was half way down the island
when he remembered.
Did a quick ui,
headed back up island
fast as his little car would go,
took the turn at Doc’s on two wheels,
rolling over out onto the lawn
where Doc was farting around
with his blueberries.
Climbing out through a broken window,
Gerry said, Help me right ‘er up Doc,
got to catch that boat ‘fore she leaves,
get my beer.
LAUFMAN
24
CENTRIPETAL
Yeah, that’s the island where they
left that man plays the melodeon
for a few days to do concerts,
work with the school kids.
Woman comes up to him
says, I just love that record of yours,
‘n he says, That’s where that other copy went,
me mum has one an’ you got the other,
they only printed the two you know.
So theys only two cars out there,
Sam’s and Gerry’s.
Rest of the guys got boats.
Anyway, don’t know how they did it,
but they had a head on collision
one night late mid island,
totaled both vehicles.
25
LAUFMAN
CENTRIPETAL
ROBERT M ASSE
SHE A IN ’T COMIN ’
“U
sed to be a restaurant. Hottest place in town. This here the dining
room; over there was the stage. The bar still in the same place.” Isaac
sipped his gin. The three ball sank into a side pocket. Trey looked at his watch
again.
“Hell, I thought dis place’d be open forever. We had all the big ones: Satchmo, Franky, Duke, Dizzy…all the big stars. Even Ike used to come in and sit at
that table over there. Said it was his favorite place. Nuthin’ put us down; not the
wars, not them hippies, not even them big money folk. Hottest place in town.”
A new song came on the juke box in the corner. Trey switched glances
from his watch, to the door, and back again. He paced, watching the balls on
the table, looking for a shot to line up. He let out a breathy, impatient sigh and
leaned over the table with his cue. “She ain’t comin’, ya know,” Isaac sat in a
chair near a television.
“What?”
“That girl you waitin’ for, she ain’t comin’.”
“What do you know about it, Old Man?”
Isaac sipped his gin again. “Oh, I know. I seen that look you had right
when you walked in here, like nuthin’ gonna bring you down. I seen that look
plenty. I had that look some time ago. Ain’t your fault, she just ain’t comin’.
Probably an hour late already.”
“How do you…?”
“Look, sometime it work out, sometime it don’t. Girls is girls; only thing
different about ‘em is they way they smell. You can tell a lot about ‘em by the
way they smell. If their perfume smell sexy, you best move on. If it smell like
home, that’s where you take ‘em. What kind did your girl smell like?”
“Sexy.” He moved away from his shot.
“Yeah, I oughtta figured. She ask you to meet her here?” Trey nodded.
“See, girls like that just don’t come here, not any more. Probably for the best
though. Guy like you, waitin’ around for an hour, and a girl like that who never
show up, that ain’t never gonna work.”
Isaac swirled his last ice cube around the glass and finished his drink.
Trey leaned his cue against the table grabbed his jacket and moved toward the
door. “Thanks for the game. I should get going.”
“Oh I figured as much. Too bad things didn’t work out, but they will some
time.” Isaac put the cues back on the wall rack and collected all the balls, moving slowly.
“Hey, Old Man, whatever happened to this place anyway?”
Isaac look up and thought for a second. “I still don’t know.”
MASSE
26
CENTRIPETAL
SETH O WEN P ERDUE
THE FIRST BREWED CUP TAKES ME
from slumber to alert in 60.4 seconds,
the grounds smell of how I imagine that of Columbia,
or Argentina. Hot sides reflecting the native heat.
It dances within the paper cup as I walk and I have
an extra bounce with that South American rhythm.
I take tentative sips, allowing the hot, get-up-and-go juice
to burn my lips and down to my belly as I start to feel.
My head reels back and I laugh at the paboomba, paboomba
of native drums after the harvest and I become savage,
snarling at the sun for the interruption of my nightly siesta.
Women in brightly colored dresses dance around the fire
in my head, the beat and heat making me sweat. I need the jolt,
that bolt of dewtime verve to give me the nerve to find my
poise. I drink it up, to the dregs of the cup and for a moment
I ponder what it would mean to lean in to tongue the bottom.
27
PERDUE
CENTRIPETAL
DARYL BROWNE
UNTITLED
jay 1
“I am telling you this because I am telling you this.
My heart has been broken a thousand times...one thousand
times. It is remarkable. One thousand pieces it must
be in by now. But I keep on loving. Because it is all I can do.
Do you understand me? This?”
jay 2
“I so rudely stopped in the middle of a very important conversation.
My life before that stopped and another time began.
He was finally looking at my work, I thought.
It turned out he was checking his tie in the reflection
in the glass. But the feeling that he was finally looking
was something, something.”
BROWNE
28
CENTRIPETAL
A ARON K ENDRICK
UNTITLED
My mug
holds three cups of coffee— I hold the mug
in my icy hands. [An open mouthed tortoise
textured on brown envies the flying
sea turtles laughing on blue.] I sit outside;
red, yellow, and orange leaves
fall like confetti— covering the dying grass.
The cold shocks me from sleepiness,
and the warmth woos me into action.
I tip the mug opening down
over the frosted grass, draining what I couldn’t drink—
each drop thaws the blade it hits…
and I notice where the artist scratched his name
illegibly— to be remembered,
but I can’t read it.
29
KENDRICK
CENTRIPETAL
C HIP S CANLAN
THE BOY
IN THE
WATER
I told him.
I told him,
“Take your suit!”
But he was already gone,
snowy powder from his doughnut
trailing to the kitchen tile.
“What was he wearing?” the fire chief asked.
On the lake the boat moves back and forth
The firemen wear
blue tee-shirts
His friends are afraid to look at me.
Their hair is wet,
their eyes are wet.
“He was there with us,” they tell the policeman.
“He was laughing,
then we looked and he was gone.”
Their eyes are full of shame
and I know what they want me to say:
“It’s all right. You did everything you could.”
SCANLAN
30
CENTRIPETAL
“You can’t swim in blue jeans,”
the fire chief tells the ambulance driver.
“It’s like strapping on weights.”
The boat stops.
A masked diver surfaces.
My boy shoots through the skin of the water,
the same way he entered the world:
quiet, still, beautiful marble, gleaming wet
With a spank the doctor woke him.
I want to spank him now
“Bad boy, bad, bad, bad boy.”
And when he has caught the hint of my fear
and begins to cry,
I would crush him to my breast
and murmur, “Shhh, shhh, shhh. Good boy.”
I told him.
I told him,
“Take your suit!”
But he was gone.
31
SCANLAN
CENTRIPETAL
JACK BRONN
CLARITY
A
lan’s suicide was messy. I covered up the blood and bone
and meat with an old blanket and tried to adjust the curtains
to cover the spatter on the wall. Beth, Alan’s daughter and my
wife, was waiting just outside the door. It was her twenty-fourth
birthday.
The gun was gone. The police always take the gun. “The
victim’s loved ones often experience trauma when they see the
suicide weapon,” the officer explained over the telephone the
previous afternoon, “So we remove it.” They take the gun. They
leave the blood.
“If you really want it, you can come down to the station and
pick it up. It looks brand new,” he said. I told him I’d think about
it.
“There’s one other thing, “ he said, “There was no note.”
“Note?”
“Yeah… you know… suicide note,” he said.
“Oh.”
“It’s just a little unusual.” I thanked him and hung up.
A year before, Alan had been diagnosed with cancer. Beth and
I hadn’t heard from him since he was a no-show at our wedding—
the date we picked was inconvenient for his sister so, in protest, he
refused to walk his daughter down the aisle— but, when he called
with the news, Beth ran to his aid.
I didn’t see much of Beth during Alan’s ordeal. She had to
make the two-hour drive to his house so she could do his grocery
shopping, or she had to pay his bills and balance his checkbook,
or she had to fill his prescriptions; there was always something. It
was difficult for her, and for us. She was exhausted. I was angry.
Our finances were in shambles due to all the time off of work she’d
been taking and our marriage was suffering from too much time
apart.
Near the end of his treatments Alan had a mental breakdown
and tried to kill himself with pills. “It’s not unusual,” his
psychiatrist told us, “The pain, the fear, the constant medical
bills… it all takes a toll. It would be best if he stayed in the hospital
for a while, until he’s better prepared to deal with it all again.” He
stayed in until his insurance ran out.
BRONN
32
CENTRIPETAL
Nine months after his first cancer treatment, and two months
after he left the hospital, Alan was told that his cancer was
retreating. To celebrate, he went to Chicago to visit his mother
and sister. He had a very nice time and his family was happy to
see him again after so long. When he returned, Beth and I picked
him up at the airport. He immediately began to tell Beth what he
needed her to do when they got back to his house, as though he
were still incapable of taking care of himself. I snapped. I told him
off, right there in the airport. Who did he think he was? Didn’t
he understand the sacrifices Beth had made? Did he intend to be
a burden on her for the rest of his life? We drove to his house in
silence, dropped him off, and drove home.
A few months of relative quiet passed. Beth went to
see her father occasionally, but the pressure of the previous
months subsided. I was pleased that my outburst had made an
impression.
One bright Friday morning, I received a telephone call at work.
It was Beth, hysterical. The police had called. Her father, that selfish
son of a bitch, had killed himself two days before her birthday.
After I covered the gore, I opened the door and told Beth she
could come inside. She’d been crying for hours, as much from rage
as from sorrow. She walked in. I held the door for her, hoping for
a breath of fresh air.
“You ok?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said.
We got to work putting papers into boxes and loading the
car. We didn’t have time to sort out everything; we were flying to
Chicago the next day for the funeral, but the police told us to get
the valuables out as soon as we could. Thieves keep an eye out for
single dead people. As we were about to leave, Beth decided to
tackle the cluttered coffee table in front of the couch where Alan
had shot himself. It wasn’t long before she found the envelope with
her name scrawled on its front.
“What’s this?” she asked, ripping open the envelope. Inside
was a birthday card signed: love, Dad, and the receipt for the gun.
33
BRONN
CENTRIPETAL
S COTT C OYKENDALL
P ENNY
Years later, I remember the anti-sound from across
the kitchen. Music, dish clatter, and the bellow
of the vacuum cleaner sucked into my daughter’s dark
face. It was silence enough to turn my head.
After that, the three long steps and my left hand sweeping
her ankles. Three savage blows to the diaper from my right: Love!
Love! Live! Just like that, The End lay wet and winking
on the floor and my little girl, wailing her fear of me, fled
to her anxious mother and would not look at me.
Alone, I pushed my knees into the floor. My stomach shivered
and slithered into my mouth. My fists, palsied, still ached
to keep the life in her.
COYKENDALL
34
CENTRIPETAL
K AREN CURRIER
ROAD TRIP
TO
E XETER WITH MY DAD, C ANCELLED
You find out very quickly
how much eyes can talk
when you stand there
next to your father’s bed,
as the B-Pap machine
hums, and pumps his chest,
his mouth an eternal “O” around
a plastic tube, unable to articulate
his thoughts, (tell me what you are thinking, Dad)
his questions, (Oh, Dad, I wish I had answers— good answers.)
through the plastic mask secured with
barely fraying white hospital tape
over the ample ridge of his nose.
Johnny Cash infuses rather politely
from the CD speakers across the room;
through the window, the waters of the Charles shift
under the golden slant of late day sun,
small dimples of light playing
on the lap of the towering brick Boston milieu;
“That train keeps rollin’...”*
competing fairly with the hiss and whir
of my father’s every machinated breath.
*Lyrics from Johnny Cash, “Folsom Prison Blues.”
35
CURRIER
CENTRIPETAL
S GT. THEODORE M ERRITT
SEPTEMBER 21, 1943
Back in the year of ’43,
I joined the Army, I wanted to ski.
It was a new kind of group the Army created,
They wanted men with ability was how they rated.
Skiing and mountain climbing were their required specialties,
All were volunteers, there were no draftees.
They required three letters of recommendation,
You were thrilled if you got an invitation.
Your recommendation confirmed your quality as an athletic man,
That could soldier in mountain territory, for they had a plan.
Their plan was to use us in Italy to reclaim Mt. Belvidere,
Training started in the state of Washington on Mount Ranier.
A new camp was erected in Colorado at 9,000 feet,
For us to train as a mountain group so “to Germans beat.”
Training meant in mountain climbing and skiing we had regular classes,
Because in Italy the Germans held all the mountains and passes.
When our training was finished they decided to try
Holding maneuvers at 30 degrees below zero, to see if the Team would survive.
When they felt we were ready, to see how we would do,
We crossed the North Atlantic on the ocean blue.
Calling the ocean blue gave a disarming and romantic scene,
But the Atlantic in February was wild and rough, most everyone turned green.
For 10 days at sea with no escort,
Most everyone got sick until we finally made port.
We were then moved North in old box cars,
With the doors wide open we could look at the stars.
MERRITT
36
CENTRIPETAL
The trains moved slowly, kids ran along side,
Begging for chocolate was what they tried.
When we finally got to Piza it was the end of the line.
We were all geared up for an exciting time.
I’m proud to say there appeared no fear,
Our objective was reclaiming Mt. Belvidere.
Other troops had tried, the mountain was scattered with dead,
The Germans controlled the mountain top spraying all attempts with lead.
The back of Belvidere was sheer rock the Germans thought too steep.
The 85th rock climbers went up the back, they caught the enemy asleep,
Which allowed the 87th to go up the face of Belvidere.
The going was slow, of course there was the fear
We dug fox holes on top to secure our position,
Shells from both sides hit us all night and hurt our condition.
There were many direct hits on some of our holes,
Causing death or severe casualties on many poor souls.
But the following day our position was secure,
The 10th had captured Belvidere, that was for sure.
Then flushed with success, we headed toward the Valley Poe,
But the resistance was heavy, we had to move slow.
Our casualties mounted, it was no easy time.
Some of our best men were killed. It was a terrible crime.
Once out of the mountains we moved very fast,
The resistance was spotty, the Poe Valley was vast.
A terrible tragedy happened the first day in the Poe.
A captured American plane flew over our column very low.
Not knowing it was flown by a “Hun,”
We waved a cheery Hello in the fading sun.
37
MERRITT
CENTRIPETAL
Then he circled and flew over our column very low,
Dropping bombs on our column, ‘twas a terrible blow.
My Company’s commander vehicle took a direct hit,
Killing Lt. Floyd, blowing him to bits.
A wonderful guy, it was a horrible loss,
A Dartmouth man, a wonderful boss.
September 21st was a terrible and difficult day.
We had chased the Germans a very long way.
We had pursued them since 6 AM,
They stopped to fight back about 11 PM.
At that hour we approached a town,
They were laying for us, there wasn’t a sound.
The night was extremely dark (pitch black).
We entered, they were ready to fight back.
We were going down a street with buildings on both sides,
Then came enemy fire power, there was no place to hide.
We laid in the gutters and flat on the street,
We were pinned down but didn’t retreat.
Bazookas and machine guns fired over our heads,
The air was full of flying lead.
I found myself in the street next to the battalion commander.
He begged for volunteers with no thought of surrender.
Volunteers were needed to crawl to the enemy’s flank.
They had fired a bazooka at our lead tank.
As the men tried to climb out they were shot dead,
By a machine gun firing a hail of lead.
No one responded to the battalion commander’s plea,
Laying next to him, my conscience got to me.
MERRITT
38
CENTRIPETAL
After me, two others agreed to go.
We crawled to their flank, kneeling low.
Since I was a staff sergeant I took command,
We crawled real flat, hugging the land.
We started to fire in front of a building’s stone wall.
We drew their fire, a bazooka shell made the wall fall.
But it allowed our troop to move ahead.
It was a miracle that we weren’t dead.
After the column moved ahead, we were found,
Covered with big rocks, we were laid on the ground.
The medics were applying us with First-aid
And thanks to God we made the grade.
We all had shrapnel wounds from that fight.
To put it plainly, it was a hell of a night.
We later came home on a hospital ship.
My bed was on mid-deck, it was a wonderful trip.
The two guys that joined me that terrible night.
Turned out to be Lieutenants, when it was daylight.
They had just come to “fill the shoes” of the dead,
And listening to me, they got full of lead.
Thanks to the ability of our medical men,
If the war had continued, we would have been ready again.
But the war was over and I came back to see,
My beautiful wife who was waiting for me.
39
MERRITT
CENTRIPETAL
PARIS L ANDRY
TO HOLD
A
M AN
To hold a man dying is to hold
the hand at the end
of a bruised arm with skin drooping on bone, too
atrophied to hold itself. To
hold a man dying is to run
your fingers through the slick
hair without minding a brow
pooled with delirium tremors. To hold
a man dying is to kiss
the two spots on the cheek
bone exposed through breathing
and feeding tubes. To hold a man
dying is to wait
while he screams for his brandy
and swears that he knows exactly what he is
saying. To hold a man dying
is to say Good Bye not ever
thinking it was the last time.
LANDRY
40
CENTRIPETAL
A WRITER’S R EVENGE
“T
his ending is contrived and unbelievable,” one of the
students said with a snapped diction, “I just don’t buy that
she didn’t tell anyone about the rape. I mean rape, in general, is
an overplayed plot, but to add to it a stoic victim that is internally
tormented by the view that it’s her fault...come on. That’s like every
LifeTime movie I’ve ever seen.”
“Yeah, to have the rapist be the captain of the football team, give
me a break. It also jumps tense like nobody’s business,” another
said. “I’m having a hard time knowing whether the dialogue is in
the narrator’s head, or if she’s really saying it; it’s confusing.”
Another student spoke up. “Yeah, I don’t really know what
this story is about. I mean, I get that it’s about a rape, but there’s
no resolution. It doesn’t talk about what happens to the girl, or
the criminal, or anything. It just sort of stops. I don’t think it’s
finished the way it is.”
Angela sat quietly with her eyes averted. She knew that this
would secretly betray her as the author of the story, but she would
lose much more if she were to actually look at anyone. In this class
the authors were not permitted to speak during their evaluations.
There was no way for her to defend herself. She wasn’t able to tell
them that it was believable. She wasn’t able to tell them that her
fictional piece was true. They would never know that they already
knew the end of the story.
She left class without talking to anyone; and why should she?
She had tried to talk about it and they called her a liar. They didn’t
know how much she cried when she finally remembered the whole
night; how she felt when she was finally alone in her room.
“Those arrogant fucks, what the hell do they know about it.
An unbelievable ending. I’ll give them an unbelievable ending.”
She ground her teeth and bounced a leg to the rhythm of her
keystrokes. “They won’t have anything bad to say about this one.
They won’t have anything to say about this one.”
She didn’t hit the print button until dawn.
“It’s done. It’s done. They’ll like this one. They’ll like this.” She
was now rocking to the rhythm of her leg. “And I’ll make cookies.
Cookies for class. They’ll like that. They’ll like this one.”
She ran to her kitchen and with an unrestrained jerk, tore open
41
LANDRY
CENTRIPETAL
a package of instant cookie mix. She only managed to get threequarters of it into a dirty mixing bowl that was sitting on the stove.
She smashed open a couple of eggs and tossed them, a half-cup of
vegetable oil and a few other necessary ingredients into the bowl.
Then, with the mixer on high, she beat the shit out of the batter,
and with forced control dropped the cookies onto a sheet and
slammed them in the oven.
She showed up to class early that day, clenching her teeth and
giggling to herself. The teacher smiled at her. He knew that she
was upset and had e-mailed the entire class warning them to take
it easy. He knew work shopping was rough; he’d had a lot of kids
break down and run out class. But, maybe he was wrong, maybe
she was okay. The fact that she came back, not to mention brought
in cookies, had to be a good sign— right?
She passed around her plate of cookies.
Having received the e-mail the previous night, everyone,
including the professor, took a cookie. No one dared not to. She
pulled out ten copies of her most recent story, A Writer’s Revenge.
She walked around the room and gently slid a copy under each
of her classmate’s heads, which were now resting on their desks.
Completely still. Peaceful. She went to the front of the room and
tipped the professor back in his chair, sat on his desk and ate the
last two cookies.
LANDRY
42
CENTRIPETAL
JESSICA D UNN
ON
THE
EDGE
It looked like such a long way
down,
but he said it wouldn’t hurt as much
at the bottom.
I had been there before.
The last time I chose to pick my way
carefully down,
testing footholds and moving
slowly.
I was afraid to fall to
the bottom
too fast.
Months later I reached the bottom,
and it hurt,
but only after I had decided to stay.
Over the last few years I have made my way back
to the top
only to find myself
on the edge again.
But this time I won’t be so cautious,
so careful
to climb down.
this time
I’ll jump…
Funny how much faster it is
to jump
how much less
it hurts.
43
DUNN
CENTRIPETAL
JULIE PASSETTO
DRIVING M IND
2:30 A.M.
Ghost-town roads
Darkening in their silence.
I’m alone—
Driving two cities away
From where my nightmares dance
Slinkily inside locked doors.
Blood-shot eyes paint
Roads colorlessly,
Swerving into lanes
Of imaginary traffic.
No,
It’s only me lighting up
The night with my ‘94 green
Dodge Spirit—quietly
Begging people to wake up,
So I won’t be forced to dwell
Inside my mind’s countless parade
Of charades.
Still,
Blackened windows glare
Unresponsively;
Cold.
Going home to overly-quiet hallways
Allows room for voices
Only I can hear—
Solitude slashes sleep
That way.
PA S S E T T O
44
CENTRIPETAL
Instead,
I swerve into the hospital
Emergency entrance—
After all,
An unsoothed, racing mind
Is an emergency—
At least,
The night workers on duty
Think so,
Injecting me with dreamless
Syrupy sedatives
So I can finally sleep.
45
PA S S E T T O
CENTRIPETAL
TYLER MUSTY
FIREWOOD AND BROKEN NOSE
O
n the night of the day he almost killed his father, Olin couldn’t
sleep. When the headlights of his mother’s car curved across
his bedroom— at once inflating and shrinking jagged shadows— he
crept out of bed to the head of the stairs, taking care to stay on light
toes along the railing so the floorboards wouldn’t squeak. His parents
spoke in the kitchen, set off to the right at the bottom of the stairs,
the only source of light he could sense from his perch. The smell
of reheated shepard’s pie hung loose in the air, stretched from the
kitchen microwave.
“Holy shit, Malcolm,” his mother said. “What happened?”
“Calm down, babe,” he said. “We just had…an accident today…
while moving the firewood.”
His nose, it had been a disfigured purple mound, twice its normal
size when Olin went to bed, and a decidedly large lump adorned the
back of his skull. A soft crunch, like someone biting a mouth full of
cereal with their lips open was all it took, and that didn’t seem like
enough to Olin.
“Tell me…Malcolm?…Tell me what happened.”
“I had the truck backed up to the garage roof, you know, to the hole
we throw firewood through so we can stack it—”
“I know, I know. How’d this happen?”
“Well…you get carried away up there, going as fast as you can—
you know— to get the job done. He just wasn’t looking where—”
“Olin did this to you?”
“Babe, it was an accident. A piece got away from him because he
was going so fast. I’m actually pretty lucky. It could’ve killed me if it’d
hit my temple.”
“My God, Malcolm, it looks so bad…”
“He said it put me out a few seconds…you know…I’ll live.”
“Olin knocked you out? Out cold?”
“You should’ve seen his face. He said he thought I was dead…after
only a few seconds. I must have hit my head when I fell because that
wood only hit my nose…came right across my face and caught my
nose. I wasn’t even looking.”
Olin could still see him lying crooked atop the sharp edges of the
uneven firewood in the bed of the old brown Mazda pickup truck. Slow,
even breaths curved his chest in and out, but he looked dead to his son.
MUSTY
46
CENTRIPETAL
“Dead?” she said. “He shouldn’t think about something like that…
so young?”
“Don’t think about it, babe.”
“I mean…what would we do without you?”
“Don’t think about it.”
“That couldn’t happen…I mean…you said it could’ve killed you if
only a few inches—” And she started to cry.
“It didn’t happen. Olin, he…we…”
Olin’s mother cried for a while, his father soothing her, using the
same words he used on Olin when he fell out of a tree and broke his
thumb. Funny, Olin thought, how they sounded the same.
“You don’t think…” Olin’s mother said, “he could have done it
on purpose—”
“Why would you think that?”
“I wasn’t there…”
“No. Don’t think that.”
They didn’t say much for a time, and Olin started growing sleepy
at the top of the stairs, wearing just his flannel boxer shorts.
“Why don’t you go to bed,” Olin’s father said. “You’ve had a long
trip.”
“You’re right,” his mother said. “You’re sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah. I’m just going to wait for this ice to melt away, you know, try
to keep the swelling down.”
“All right. I’ll wait for you to come to bed.”
“Okay.”
Olin scurried to his room, to his bed, but he still couldn’t sleep. All
night he pictured his father laying there on the wood— its only reason
for existence to be burned. As dark blood oozed from his nostrils,
dripping and forming pools on various pieces of chopped-out pine
and birch, Olin thought each slow breath would be his last. It wasn’t
seconds like Olin told his father, but minutes that he was out, time Olin
took to stare, confused at the sight before him. The autumn air shuffled
around him, whispering what he thought was his father’s death song.
Olin had heard the word death before, and seeing it that day,
positive it was the real thing, the empty look of his father’s face didn’t
look so bad.
Before he fell asleep, early while the sun was beginning to threaten
the silent dark, Olin thought about the wind again, thought that it
never sings a song. It’s only the wind.
47
MUSTY
CENTRIPETAL
LYNN RUDMIN
SPECTACLE
OF
R AIN
He is in droopy drawers
she, her filmy nightie
with thin straps
standing in their door.
No plans for each other.
Just the storm’s welcome rain on their knees,
on their smiling faces, their lifted arms.
This night never should repeat,
as the ocean never should repeat,
so on out into the universe
where our theories never should...
K ATE D ONAHUE
A R ETURNING
My fingertips open the lake
and, like hands reaching through
sleeves, mine slide and pull, slide
and pull into the cuff of morning.
I slip her silver skin
over my arms, my head,
my back, and stroke the waves
shivering in the wind.
My face gathers her wet kiss
from that cool breath of mist
lifting out of her body
as my own swims further into her.
RU DM I N/D O NA H U E
48
CENTRIPETAL
C INDY R IZZA
DOCKS
Weathered Docks,
your wood is graying
cracks show your age
sea grass sways
to the left and right
they tickle
your slippery posts
barnacles are caked
on your stairs
seaweed hangs
like wet cobwebs
your boats float comfortably
lapped only by
gentle waves
Weathered Docks,
when my wood is gray and cracked,
can I join you?
K AITLIN O’C ONNOR
UNTITLED
there are ways to disappear
“my spinal cord is shriveling”
i weakly mouthed to you
as i stepped my white flesh upstairs
there are ways to disappear
but i think you didn’t hear
49
R I Z Z A/O ’C O N N O R
CENTRIPETAL
A MANDA PORTER
LESSONS THROUGH
A
BURN
Shadows lie, now fallen.
What once was golden now lies torn.
Laughter only echoes,
Edges finally grown to worn.
Early morning silence
Only lengthens the distance more.
Wanting another chance to begin,
Add the ashes to the corner, just like the times before.
Hoping this time would be different,
Was this a sacred path we trod?
Forgiveness like rivers run rampant,
Once more, add a pleasant façade
Wondering what turned so sour,
Assuming all was just fun and games.
A lesson now learned, all the wiser,
Wandered too close to the flame.
PORTER
50
CENTRIPETAL
DARCY WINWARD
UNTITLED
The Mountains overlook this
valley of dust
this small place of nothingness
Lies
and so much more
this secluded world knows nothing of
reality
This dismal scene never fails
to stay the same
a new generation of wannabees
a new world of lonely hearts
souls searching for a
break
this routine
way too familiar
51
WI N WA R D
CENTRIPETAL
CYNTHIA HUNTINGTON
LIGHTHOUSE
I stood so still my shadow fell away
and sank into the earth.
I was so quiet a gull’s wing brushed me,
flying past.
In the heat of summer afternoon, I felt winter
hiss at my spine.
All the languages lay scattered on the sand,
in fragments visible and clear.
I turned without disturbing the arrangement
of a grain of sand. I breathed
so lightly wind replaced each dark cell
buried inside my flesh.
HUNTINGTON
52
CENTRIPETAL
I N M ARCH WOODS
The sky was the
blue of melting ice
Every few yards
was another marker
28 paces, counted
in my industrial boots
shiny even when they aren’t wet
a crow and a chainsaw
arguing, and what looked
like, but could not be,
a human turd, hairy and grey
in the path
I am approaching
a clearing, a little house
with green shutters
I wanted to find the path’s
ending, and now
I am sorry
to come out of the wood,
to know where I am
though I don’t know where I am
I am simply back on the road
her letters to him
I threw them away because
they hurt me
now I try to
remember— was it here?
the house with
green shutters?
53
HUNTINGTON
CENTRIPETAL
a fair wind at the end
of winter: blown away
don’t marry the
memory the rock that lies
at the crossroads
though it seems to
tell you everything
red ivy— small leaves
along the ground
they are telling you
everything you are not listening
anymore
bare trees, and pine trees
dark and light
I let my mind
wander— I would say
I am out of the woods
but I am just passing through
a clearing
trees all
around
and the remains of
trees
on brown grass a stone bird bath
no it is a sundial
saying nothing
filament of rain
HUNTINGTON
54
CENTRIPETAL
PATRICK A RMSTRONG
ELLEN
She collected little things: flowers
and shells, moth wings, feathers.
She read slender books of foreign poems.
She liked to laugh and kept company
with young men and drank so much
she slurred her goodnights or woke
and dressed in unfamiliar rooms.
When she was at work, her mouth
tightened, and her green eyes narrowed
like a predator’s. When she slept,
no sound could wake her and her face
smoothed to marble, and her lips
pursed as if to kiss. Late at night,
she danced like slow water, like
flickering fire, like she was holding
a trembling everything in her arms.
But only once, visiting the ocean,
did she let herself go, drifting down
among the green shadows, her heart
slowing to the sea-pulse.
They asked for her on Friday night.
Her telephone rang and rang.
The sun rose on her little lawn,
and her garden withered to stalks.
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ARMSTRONG
CENTRIPETAL
M ARIAH K ENDRICK
WHAT LOLA WANTS
Lola, she tells me,
is an Indian name.
She saw it on a canoe
in a museum
at age ten.
And there was a song too;
she hated it, but her husband sang:
“What Lola wants, Lola gets…”
until she laughed.
“I still think about him,”
she says with sad eyes
and a look that wants to convince me
it’s all right to hold on,
“he’s been gone five years,
but it’s still good memories…”
She strokes the table with her fingers
as if searching for something she’s misplaced
but it’s just out of reach.
I have known her for half an hour; already
I’ve heard how her daughter died
of lung cancer
nearly eight years ago;
they were close.
She tells me of a Christmas
they were too poor to buy decorations;
they made their own of
styrofoam, paint, and glue.
…how her son
was in the army and
“didn’t die natural.
He drown in a lake in Germany.
I didn’t think there was any lakes in Germany,
but the military only tells you
what they want to…”
KENDRICK
56
CENTRIPETAL
…and how her husband
was in the hospital nearly a year,
“he didn’t watch those
little TVs with headphones,” she said
“he was too sick…”
“but he died how he wanted:
of a stroke in his sleep.
I cremated him
and buried him beside our son.”
They used to go for car rides
in the country,
but now Lola is nearly blind
and she stumbles through her memories
alone in the dark.
Her chin trembles and her eyes droop,
but she smiles.
She tells me
a sense of humor
is the most important thing to keep,
and I can picture her
at twenty five—
her husband singing:
“what Lola wants,
Lola gets…”
and even though she hates the song
she laughs.
57
KENDRICK
CENTRIPETAL
B OB G ARLITZ
BACK AND FORTH
H
otels rooms give me respite from home. Home gives me retreat
from hotels. For the past five months I have been going back
and forth. I could not tell where I was comfortable, where I could
really rest, where I was home. I might have been most comfortable
while driving back and forth.
Once in the hotel room, I would spread my things around and
study the view out the window. When I got back home, I would
study the piles of papers and books, sort through the mail, do
laundry, vege out on the sofa and watch part of some movie. Then
I would wish I could read something for ten hours straight. Better
would be to write for three or four hours.
But it didn’t happen, those two last wishes. Instead the house would
remind me of so much and I would try to avoid being reminded, or
try to put a good veneer of obliviousness over everything. In the
hotel rooms I would welcome the anonymous emptiness, savor it
in a way, and then go out for a long walk and look for a movie.
After the movie I would grab a bite and come back to the room and
look for a decent movie on tv. I might read instead. The noises that
came through the walls were welcome and entirely different from
any noises you could hear in the silences at home. The same was
true, of course, of home. The noises there you could never hear in
the silences of hotel rooms. It became the only comfort I could find,
to move back and forth between home and hotel. The car came to
feel like a separate reality altogether, a merging of the comforts
of both home and hotel. Moving landscape gives both places
an extra feature, an attractiveness no single place could offer. I
looked forward, of course, to the small but adequate bars of soap
and the little bottles of shampoo. My head is shaved now so I felt
bad that I couldn’t make proper use of the conditioners. Back home
I tried to use up one of these bottles by assuming it would work
just as well as a bath gel. It didn’t. At home, too, I would line up
the collected bars of complimentary hotel soaps and try to decide
which one to use. They never disappeared fast enough and began
to pile up. For the next few hotel visits I would be sure not to
bring home any soaps or shower gels. At home I tried to look at the
bathroom as though it were a hotel bathroom. It didn’t work. Nor
could any of the rooms be imagined as hotel rooms. The familiar
GARLITZ
58
CENTRIPETAL
depths of home rooms felt bottomless. The walls, the furniture,
the nicks and scratches and blotches, every detail of home felt like
time absorbing my whole life energy into each nook and cranny
it could invent. In hotel rooms time seemed to be happy to offer
the smooth, designed surfaces of the suitably coordinated colors,
schemes, motifs and patterns. The sheets felt cooler and smoother
than home’s. The chairs were at once heftier and cheaper but
disguised well to seem better and more luxurious. Luxury is not
an issue at home. The illusion of it is not either. Being haunted is
not an issue in hotel rooms. Oh, you might think of the hundreds
or thousands who have been there before. But they do not haunt
you the way the roughed over surfaces of home do, with their
aromatic rubbings of everything in your life that has happened
there. Hotel rooms might conjure things in your imagination, but
they do not haunt. Hotel rooms offer the marvelous sensuousness
of the right amount of comfort but not too much more. They are
masterworks of minimal comfort that dare never be named as
such. They know they can never match the comforts of home, nor
the hauntings. So hotel rooms give off lights and textures, aromas
and arrangements, that you can easily bask in without risk. If you
are there a few days and put your clothes in the dresser drawers
and shirts and trousers on hangers in the closet and close the
doors, it never feels like doing the laundry and putting it away
as it should be done. On the other hand in a hotel you can never
have the unspeakable pleasure of bringing in the mail. The matted
and framed prints on hotel room walls belongs to a special genre
of art, one we have created and perfected since 1950. In better
hotels these works are done by accomplished artists. They have
the ring of the studio of a first-rate art school. Or at least a superb
third-rate art education. At home, for most of us, the art on the
walls is hit-or-miss. Even if we have been willed a Matisse etching
or some authentic Larry Rivers lithographs, everything else we
manage to hang and arrange falls short, much shorter than the
few good Ersatz works in hotel rooms. These are placed just so
and they have been commissioned often to go really really well
with the decor designeries of the hotel room. The imperfections
of hotel rooms add to their pleasure, especially when they are so
nearly perfectly designed. One room I stayed in at a fine boutique
hotel in Boston had large valences at the top of the curtains on the
59
GARLITZ
CENTRIPETAL
two windows. After a day I noticed that the valences, padded and
covered, and the same size, were in fact three or four inches off
kilter with each other. One had been hung higher than its neighbor.
In the same room, one of the excellent almost-Audobon prints had
been hung strangely on the wall beside the rich mahogoney TV
armoir. It was effectively blocked from being seen very well. At
home the imperfections are ten-fold more numerous and yet not
the same sort of fun. At home these flaws go unremarked because
they had been noticed some years earlier by someone and now
no one could be bothered to bring them up. At home living tissue
forms between the inhabitants and the decor.
Between
I’ve gotten quite good at being in between, back and forth, over
the years but this recent illness has shown me what good places
hospitals are for extending that practice in new and exciting
ways. I’ve developed a good deal of finesse at hotel rooms, cafes,
wandering the streets of strange cities, where I both knew the
language and knew not a word of the language, at reading books
in all sorts of transitional places in addition to cafes, park benches,
and cathedrals that happened to have at least one spot in the
stained windows that allowed enough light in to read by.
GARLITZ
60
CENTRIPETAL
RUSSELL ROWLAND
R ECOGNITION SCENE
Elinor shares a room at the nursing home
with two prostrate ladies. The second time
in minutes she goes on about a previous
roommate who died, I check my watch.
Her chin quivers. Was that a fart, or just
a motorcycle outside the window? Next,
she tells about that dog who visited,
jumped right up on her bed, the very same
dog that jumped up at the beginning of
our conversation. It was a fart. I make
some tentative departing feints. “I pray,
says Elinor, “but it’s like God’s not there.”
“Maybe you’ve been catching Him away
from His desk,” I suggest, straight-faced.
A faucet drips beyond a door. Her eyes
open, as if seeing me for the first time.
JOHN GUARNIERI, JR .
A NOTE TO MY WIFE
I ordered you two donuts
And they only put in one.
Then I fell and landed on your donut,
So it’s a little squished.
Enjoy anyway.
61
R OW L A N D/G UA R N I E R I
CENTRIPETAL
M ATTHEW B. HOWES
SWEET
AND
LOW
We begged them— first one, then the other—
We begged with wild whetted mouth and elongated eyes
We begged: “Honey, disperse the mists of ambiguity with your sharpened sight.
You say you’ve sipped the ethereal molasses, now conjure images of the other.”
But they just rationed our hope into daily structures
And molded our tremors into more aesthetically pleasing patterns.
They just stimulated our bowels with fork-tongued cattle prods
And fastened our appetites to the head of speeding apparitions.
To them and their [hidden] crutch spiritual postures.
We’ve worshipped behind their shadow’s shadow
And only recently come to taste their artificial sweeteners.
And yet, still, we thank them for every non-nutritious grain.
Now they defuse our pillars with bitter subtext
And filter our frailty into the cask of children’s broken dreams.
And now they disfigure our hunger behind sugared surface
And sweep our shivers from the corners of their egocentrically enhanced
perception.
But they don’t know we’ve risen above
To look below
To see their empty caldrons.
And they don’t know we’ve pinned them to the floor
And seen where their wings should be.
Now their swollen feet touch level ground with our coarse face.
And now we sit in silence,
Fasting…
But our appetite nags,
And achievement sags,
And we long for another cheap spell casting.
HOWES
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CENTRIPETAL
THE P RIDE
OF
GAUNT TREE
Stomach turns
As coiled snakes wink at lucky rolls
Hunger burns
As lovely women hold forth empty bowls
Fingers claw
Down the back of self-castration
Teeth gnaw
The gape the thighs of enervation
To eat the fruits to harm the tree
The balk of death is ecstasy
Long ago in The Dawn of When
Eve once said small tree
You can be your own best friend
Or your own worst enemy
Trace the path that’s followed since
To see which path’s been chosen
The halting limp of staggered limbs
Speak of a mouth forever closing
She has Adam
The tree its pain
So live well our precious kin
Dry tree is strong through lack of rain
Gaunt tree is proud of dry roots too thin
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HOWES
CENTRIPETAL
JASON MC K ENZIE
I WANT WHORES
I want to
save every one;
convince them men
stink worse than shit,
kiss them for hours
with my palms along the contours of their jaw lines,
prove love does not need to descend the waistline,
& never does on a first date
I want to
teach them the difference
between Consolation & Accepting Abuse,
how to conquer mirrors,
& how to make wise investments
in the market of emotional commodities
I want them to
stop! using their vaginas
as strategic game pieces,
& know how good it feels to fuck
your favorite person
I want
each of these things for every whore
because I know what it’s like—
to give yourself away to anyone who asks
with the dire hope that someone will have the heart
to give a piece of you back.
MCKENZIE
64
CENTRIPETAL
LISTEN, SISTER
Keep an eye peeled for Mr. Slick
with the switchblade tongue
who was born cutting out of a slipknot
& whittles the truth from a hunk of day
Pay damn good mind
you better don’t slide
down his frictionless nature,
into his dark pit of a snake charm
If you look in his eyes
like five o’clock shadows
then you’ll believe when he
sells you the sunset
Believe you me,
beneath the part of his hair
lies a predator
Sure he sparks a mean wick thru midnight,
but the day will break
when the light could find you
put back in the soot & black ash
of a burn that will remind you.
65
MCKENZIE
CENTRIPETAL
L IZ A HL
ABBA MEMOIR
I crank up “Dancing Queen” on my turntable
and I’m twelve again, posing
in front of my mirror, flanked
by Donna and Beverly. We lip-synch
into our hairbrush-microphones,
our shoulders bunch up and roll with emotion.
It doesn’t matter that there were actually
only two girls in ABBA. We enact generosity—
share songs and spotlights. It doesn’t matter
that we’re flat-chested, knock-kneed— in the mirror
we see grace and spangles. Doesn’t matter
that we skip over the songs Bjorn and Benny led—
no boy would understand this need.
We take turns on melodramatic disco solos:
If you change your mind,
I’m the first in line
Honey I’m still free
Take a chance on me*
We feel empathy, somehow, invent lost loves
to sing to. We dip, sway, spin in unison, never
uttering a sound. Only later, truly solo,
alone in the shower, will I actually sing,
in squeaky, pre-pubescent soprano.
They never really even knew English—
just the words. More proof that disco
is the universal language.
From ABBA, I learned to be queen of gestures.
From ABBA, I learned something about poetry.
*From ABBA’s “Take a Chance.”
AHL
66
CENTRIPETAL
BROKEN
Computer disks give up the ghost, scrambling
language into code or vanishing it all together.
The sink’s stuck because of ice somewhere downstream,
downstairs where the water’s supposed to go out and away.
The camera’s gone blind, forgotten what light means.
Time itself seems to be cracked open— I lost an hour
some long while ago, and still can’t find it.
Even the simple things I thought I could trust
are slipping.
By some miracle, I’m walking home
at night, not breaking my ankles on the slick spots.
The moon’s low and foggy, a dark chalk drawing
sloppily half-erased. Snow on lawns and in lots
sinks into itself, loses water to air in damp exhalations,
sinks itself down like something rotting.
Later, while I sleep, the snowpack on the roof
will shudder and creak, will break away and fall.
In the morning, all of it will be gone.
I want you here and know I can’t have you here,
it’s the plainest thing of all, the thing that could send me
to my knees. I imagine you are in the stars
trying to send me a sign, and I curse the clouds
that smudge the sky. I’m so tired I believe
I could will you down, you could be my invisible friend,
protector and confidant, impossibly generous
and infinitely wiser now in matters of my heart.
The porchlight kicks on to greet me
and in the shrubs something moves—
the size of a large cat— but its tale tells all:
the biggest possum I’ve ever seen
lumbering slow and close to the house
taking her time even as I stare openly,
she’s out and about, nudging the dead shrubbery,
only half-roused from winter stupor.
I feel so broken, like the snow ambushed
by sudden thaw— everything’s pulling apart,
sinking down, melting away.
I feel like the sluggish possum
who wants only to be a possum, not an omen,
who cannot run from the bright light
or the astonished stare of a stranger.
67
AHL
CENTRIPETAL
JON L INK
COMPLICATED SCENERY IS LISTED BY M ISS JULY 1978
A S A TURN- OFF
miss july, the ice you have offered me is red
as a carpet, i have tried not to be honest so
that tonight we can call your breasts a grave
thing without listening to the promise that a
race horse without a shadow forgets its
heritage and begins dreaming of the secret
lives of narrow fish. and even if you can’t
explain the simply diplomacy of pack mule
i know when you write your diary it will
begin as a letter addressed to every news
anchor that wants to see me as dead as the
summer’s mouth and see you in a tight shirt.
when i asked you why the breeze that stoked
the mossy side of our engines wouldn’t
deteriorate it wasn’t because i was picturing
you dancing beneath a beehive it was
because everything i have seen before
becomes empty in the oculus of time, and
since you ask it’s the nude self-portraits of
coupon archivists that are my main source of
inspiration.
my favorite mailman will read that: today
i was told that the ice i have used for years
to cool my drinks is only a combination of
water and coldness. i will be surprised.
LINK
68
CENTRIPETAL
miss july i fell in love with you while we
pretended to understand the erotic way heat
danced across your shoulder and you asked
me tell me that anyway your forearm
extends is a perfect example of the trees
stealing the skyline their branches stabbing
my eyes like the biography of weekend
works, and i wonder if this is the right time
to admit to you that while you spoke for the
mean rumors of tarantulas knitting in the
medicine cabinet i was hoping you would
just pick a word that wouldn’t make me look
more serious than the ideal proportions of
the night’s sky.
miss july you know that i am making my own
ice when i ask you for nothing but a ticket on a
twin engine plane traveling to the belly of
alaska.
69
LINK
CENTRIPETAL
NATHAN GRAZIANO
A N ALLEGORY TO E XPLAIN MODERN A MERICA
My cat watched a bug
descend from the ceiling.
The only thing I ask
of this animal
that my paycheck feeds
and my kindness
cleans its litter box
is that he kill
any insect or vermin
in a visible area of the house.
So my cat stalked the bug,
sitting on his hind legs,
his ears drawn back for battle.
Then the bug stopped crawling.
My cat, somehow knowing
that it would take too long
for the insect to come down,
decided to prowl the porch
for an easier victim.
And I threw up my arms.
GRAZIANO
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CENTRIPETAL
JED HOWARD
YOU ’RE JUST JEALOUS
“D
on’t look at me like that,” said the accuser to the perpetrator.
“What is your problem? You know, it’s people like you that
make this a dog eat dog world. I’d rather eat chicken. In fact,
that’s what I’m having for dinner tonight. What are you having,
lambchops, escargot? Oh, that’s right, escargot is just the opener
to a disgusting display of how you can drop a couple hundred
on a few glasses of wine and eat tasteless food for the benefit of
your appearance.
“Well, let me tell you something. You look down on me, but
I’m taller. You dye your hair, but I know it’s grey, your roots are
poking through. I may never go grey, my grandfather didn’t.
“And that girl by your side, is that your daughter? I guess not, I
see that you’ve got matching wedding bands. She’ll barely have a
wrinkle when you die. I’ll bet when she goes out with her friends
she doesn’t wear that ring. Oh well, I don’t care, my girlfriend’s
prettier anyway.
“Say, that’s a shiny new Porsche. I’ll bet it’s an automatic
though. I’m sure I could drive my Civic better than you can
handle that thing. But who’s racing anyway, I can appreciate
scenic beauty when I drive.
“I’ll bet that car is going to roll up a cobblestone drive and
park in one of the four or five bays in your garage. And then
you’ll step into a hollow home with high ceilings and painting of
people and places you don’t even know. It has to get cold in that
huge stone cave. I’m sure my apartment heats up a lot faster and
stays warm longer.
“So take that child home, drunk on sour wine, and tell her how
you’re going to make her life so good. And keep telling yourself
that your life is complete.”
The accuser looked the perpetrator up and down. The
perpetrator, looking at the valet rolling in with his car, glanced at
the accuser and noticed he was being stared at.
“Hello young man. Can I help you with something?”
“No, you’re just jealous.”
71
HOWA R D
CENTRIPETAL
ELIZABETH THOMAS
UNTITLED
In memory of Dave van Ronk
Mourn your dead
land of the free
if you want to see a hero
follow me*.
It starts as it always does
in my family—
over food,
a holiday feast,
Sunday dinner.
In this case
my older brother’s 50th birthday.
A veteran of the Vietnam “conflict,”
he says to our father,
“So Dad, how about the job President Bush is doing in Iraq?”
Our father, silenced by bad luck and a stroke,
nods his head and smiles crookedly.
Needing to strike, my brother turns to me,
“We kicked ass and hardly lost a man.”
“That is,” I say, “if you don’t include guerilla warfare
and all the civilians that have died.”
“Damn liberals! Give you a gun, you’d blow your own ass off!
Those kids are heroes.”
But they’re my kids too
and since when does carrying a gun
or taking a wrong turn
make anyone a hero?
I look the word ‘hero’ up in the dictionary and read—
‘shows great courage, self-sacrifice’
And that week I am teaching poetry to a group of 6th graders and
ask, “Who are your heroes?”
Yo Miss, 50 Cent. He my hero.
Bart Simpson, Miss.
Eminem.
Charlie’s Angels.
Sammy Sosa.
THOM A S
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CENTRIPETAL
And I am sad but not surprised
considering whose faces sell our children
running shoes and happy meals.
“What about Gandhi?” I ask. “Or Rosa Parks (She’s the bus lady,
right?), Nelson Mandela,
Mother Theresa (That your Mama? What she do?),
Christie McCauliffe, the police and firefighters who ran back in...
If you want to see a hero follow me.*
Or Jesus
he said,
Follow me.*
And then there’s my brother—
another arm chair warrior,
embedded at my dinner table.
A former Green Beret
he was proud to wear that uniform.
Just a kid... he couldn’t wait to enlist, to salute,
to sew those airborne wings on his chest.
So, where were the flag-wavers when he finally returned home
to these bloody fields of grain
along with 58,000 bags of boy...
and wounds that will never heal.
Where was his parade?
The peace he fought for?
It’s time we stop, hey
what’s that sound
everyone look what’s going down.*
So there he sits—
fork exclaiming
neck veins bulging
telling me I am un-American
because I am American enough
to disagree.
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THOM A S
CENTRIPETAL
Still...I say, “Hey Bro, it’s your birthday.
Make a wish.”
And for the first time all evening
his words leave me with nothing to say.
“I wish
I could do it again.”
Now I’m a fucking hero.*
*Lyrics from Dave van Ronk and Buffalo Springfield.
THOM A S
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CENTRIPETAL
NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS
L IZ A HL teaches creative writing and other English courses at Plymouth State
University in New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in The Women’s Review
of Books, Crab Orchard Review, The Formalist, Southern Poetry Review, and many
other journals.
PATRICK ARMSTRONG teaches writing and literature for Plymouth State and for the
College for Lifelong Learning. His poems have appeared in Quarterly West, The
Providence Journal Bulletin, Yemassee, Faultline, Stride and other places. One of his
poems was selected by James Dickey for inclusion in One for One, a book of Dickey’s
fifty favorite poems. An essay of his will appear in the upcoming HarperCollins
Introduction to Literature anthology.
JACK BRONN, a senior English major at Plymouth State University, is from Clearwater,
FL. His work has appeared in several small college publications.
DARYL BROWNE received his BA from Harvard University in Bio-Anthropology. His
poems have appeared on Makeitplain.com, Poetry.com, and in the Ashland Village
Artists Collective Gallery.
SCOTT COYKENDALL teaches Professional Writing at Plymouth State University. He
received his MFA in Poetry from Bowling Green State University. His poems have
appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Quarterly West, Calliope, Poet’s On, and Centripetal.
K AREN CURRIER is a fifth-grade teacher at Plymouth Elementary in NH.
K ATE DONAHUE is a poet and a creative writing teacher at Plymouth Regional High
School. She has been published in the Midwest Poetry Review, Compass Rose, The
Plymouth Writer’s Group anthologies, and has self-published a book of poetry. She is
an active member of a women’s writing group, Women of Words, and is the state codirector of the New Hampshire Young Writers’ Conference.
JESSICA DUNN is an English major from North Sandwich, NH.
BOB GARLITZ grew up along the banks of the Potomac River across from Ridgeley, West
Virginia. He spoke Southern Mountain Dialect according to the linguistics professor
at the university. His Dad was a butcher. His mother was a Catholic. He published
his first poem in Decatur, Illinois.
NATHAN GRAZIANO lives in Manchester, NH. He’s the author of Frostbite, a collection
of short stories, and Not So Profound: New and Selected poems. His work has appeared
internationally in numerous small journals, such as The Chiron Review, The Owen Wister
Review, Main Street Rag, and Bathtub Gin. He aspires to someday become a rock star.
JOHN GUARNIERI, JR. graduated from Unity College with his BS in Park Management.
He currently works for Plymouth State University Physical Plants as a grounds
worker on the athletic fields.
K RYSTINA H AJDUCZEK , from Sheffield, VT, is a Medieval Studies major at Plymouth
State University. Her work has appeared in Janus, Plymouth Magazine, and Centripetal.
76
JED HOWARD was born in Wolfeboro, NH, attended Kingswood Regional High
School, and is now a senior at Plymouth State University, majoring in English with
a focus on writing.
M ATTHEW B. HOWES is a third-year English major at Plymouth State University.
Originally from Middleborough, MA, he has been published in Centripetal, The Clock,
and The Comp Journal.
CYNTHIA HUNTINGTON is the author of three collections of poetry. Her newest book,
The Radiant, appeared in April 2003 from Four Way Books. She directs the program in
creative writing at Dartmouth College.
A ARON KENDRICK is a fifth-year senior sudying English/Writing at Plymouth State
University. He currently lives in Andover, NH in a twenty-seven foot camper with
his wife Mariah.
M ARIAH KENDRICK has nothing to say, but wishes you to read her poem and like it.
PARIS LANDRY studies, writes and philosophizes in Plymouth, NH. She dedicates her
poem to Lisa LaRoche and Michaeline Rose for their deeper understanding.
DUDLEY LAUFMAN lives in Canterbury, NH with his partner Jacqueline. They earn
their money playing fiddles. He has been published in Centripetal, Hanging Loose, and
Longhouse, to name a few.
CRYSTAL A. LAVOIE is from Tamworth, NH and is a senior English/Writing major. Her
turn-ons: monkeys. Her turn-offs: robots. She has previously been published in
Centripetal, The Clock, and Babel Magazine.
SARAH LEWIS is a senior English major at Plymouth State University. Her work has
appeared in The Clock and Centripetal.
JON LINK once caught the Incredible Hulk, but felt bad for him and let him go.
CARA CRISTINA LOSIER is a third-year English major and has been published in
Centripetal, The Berlin Daily Sun, and online at Poetry.com.
ROBERT M. M ASSE is a Plymouth State University alumnus and has been published
in The Clock, Centripetal, Plymouth Magazine, Plymouth Week and on New Hampshire
Public Radio. He is currently working on one novel and one nonfiction book.
SGT. THEODORE C. MERRITT served as a Staff Sergeant in the United States Army.
JASON MC K ENZIE remembers everything since the womb. He has journeyed to all
eight continents, including the secret one. His accounts can be found in Centripetal,
and Yolk Logic.
TYLER MUSTY is a senior English major at Plymouth State University from Piermont,
NH. His previous work has appeared in The Comp Journal.
77
CENTRIPETAL
K AITLIN O’CONNOR wrote about cats and fairy tales as a small child, which ended with
the saving of humanity and the reward of food. Since that first literary phase, she has
been published in other literary magazines as well as an educational catalogue.
JENNIFER M. O’DONNELL is a lady.
DIANE T. PADILLA, from Weare, NH, is a graduate of UNH-Manchester. She has been
published in Centripetal, Concord Monitor, NH Premier Magazine and The Weare Register.
She was editorial assistant for Business NH Magazine and now publishes Sonbae, a
martial arts newsletter.
JULIE PASSETTO has been previously published in The Centripetal, Ruby Bayo and
Berkshire Eagle.
ERIN PLUMMER is a Plymouth State University alumnus.
SETH OWEN PERDUE is a senior English major at Plymouth State University. He has been
published in The Clock and is currently Editor-in-Chief of said publication.
AMANDA PORTER , originally from Springfield, MA, is a sophomore and Environmental
Planning major at Plymouth State University. She has been published in three high
school literary magazines, Centripetal, and currently writes for The Clock.
A NGELA R ICCIARDI is a lecturer for the English Department at Plymouth State
University. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in several small
literary publications.
CINDY R IZZA , from Winterport, ME, is a freshman and a Studio Art major at Plymouth
State University. She draws, paints, and writes obsessively in her spare time.
PAUL ROGALUS teaches English at Plymouth State University. His full-length play
Crawling From the Wreckage was produced in New York City in February 2002 by the
American Theatre of Actors; three of his one-act plays have been staged in NYC
as well. Green Bean Press has published a chapbook of his micro-stories entitled
Meat Sculptures.
RUSSELL ROWLAND lives and works in New Hampshire’s Lakes Region. He is a 2001
Pushcart Prize nominee, with poems published in over forty journals, including Poem,
Rattle, The Chaffin Journal, South Dakota Review, The Cape Rock and Xavier Review.
NICKY ROSS is a poet and journalist from Merrimack, NH. An alum of Plymouth
State University, and former co-editor of Centripetal, her work can be found in The
Wordsworth, Centripetal, and other publications.
LYNN RUDMIN teaches at Plymouth State University and finds students to be a gritty
connection to our challenged planet. Her work has appeared in Centripetal, Poetry,
New American Review #21.
78
CENTRIPETAL
CHRISTOPHER “CHIP ” SCANLAN directs the National Writers Workshop at The Poynter
Institute, a school for journalists in St. Petersburg, Florida. He spent two decades
reporting for newspapers in New England, Delaware and Washington, D.C. His work
has appeared in Redbook, The American Scholar and The Mississippi Review Web. His
writing advice column, “Chip on Your Shoulder,” is available at http://poynter.org
DANIEL SINGER is a Plymouth State alum, former Editor of Centripetal, and founding
editor of The Way of Things Beneath the Snow and The Wordsworth. His work has
appeared in Centripetal, The Clock, Eagle, and Business NH Magazine.
TRACEY L. SMITH is a Nashua, NH native and a senior English major at Plymouth State
University. She enjoys her painstaking addiction to orange juice and hopes to one day
meet Neil Gaiman and shake his hand.
STEVEN SPRAGUE is from Claremont, NH. He is a junior, majoring in English Literature.
ELIZABETH THOMAS is a published poet who designs and teaches writing programs
to promote literacy for schools and organizations throughout the U.S. An
advocate of youth in the arts, she is the founder of UpWords Poetry - a company
dedicated to promoting programs for young writers. She hosts a website at
www.upwordspoetry.com.
DARCY WINWARD, from Atkinson, NH is a senior at Plymouth State University. She
is an English major with a Women’s Studies minor and enjoys writing whenever she
gets the chance.
79
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