Fall 2015 Journal - The Heartland Review

The Heartland Review Fall 2015
The Heartland Review
Fall 2015
Editorial Staff
Mick Kennedy Ted Higgs Yvonne Morris Founder,Editor
Associate Editor
Associate Editor
Secretary
Sandi Howard
Poetry Assistants
Michael Coyle
Kayla Dile
Deena Lilygren
Pamela Johnson Parker
Adrian Sanders
Fiction Assistants
Sue Ballard
Jim Corbit
Jan Nemes
Jeremy McFarland
Jason Redmon
Robert Villanueva
Barry Williams
Non-Fiction Assistant
Amy Fox
Acknowledgements
The Heartland Review is published with funds from
the president’s office of Elizabethtown Community and
Technical College and donations from friends, contributors, and contest entrants. We want to thank everyone
for the continued support of this journal.
Views expressed in items appearing in The Heartland
Review are those of the author or artist. Publication
of materials does not reflect the views or opinions of
Elizabethtown Community and Technical College.
Copyright returns to the author or artist upon publication of The Heartland Review.
Cover Art: Artist Delving into Her Craft
oil, acrylic, and ink
Ernest Williamson
Corrie Williams Kentner
Reading The Sun Also Rises with High School Seniors
I had forgotten just what words can do,
how you can carry a page
or a line on your back
for days or weeks or years. Today I forget
if I’m Jake or Brett—maybe I’m both—
I’ve been both. At thirty-four it feels so personal
this constant harping on Belmonte as yellow,
incapable young Romero’s surefooted grace.
I am unmasked, so old in this room of 18 year olds
that discuss this like it’s an assigned book
and not the life they are sure to confront.
Today I ask them about those final lines,
Brett’s empty declaration of dream,
we could have had such a damned good time together…
Jake’s whispered, Yes…isn’t it pretty to think so…
and so many of them think
Jake’s over her, he’s learned, he’s moving on.
But from the other side of twenty-three, I see so clearly
those words hanging in the air, a gauze of summer
heat distorting the empty sliver of space
between what is and what if.
5
Table of Contents
Joseph Anthony
Ars Poetica 8
Rachel Burgess
Home13
The Loon20
The Sentinel28
Michael Collins
Epiphany12
Genesis19
Vision30
Rosemarie Goos
An Apple for the Teacher Collin Hancock
To You in Portland, Oregon 15-17
35
Corrie Williams Kentner
Reading The Sun Also Rises with
High School Seniors 5
Somewhere Outside of Harpswell, Maine 18
Crime and Punishment in Late Summer 29
Ellaraine Lockie
Cutting the Family Tree
10-11
Naked Truth 14
Jeremy McFarland
Courtyard
32-34
Adam “Bucho” Rodenberger
Reliquary 21-27
Biographies
36-37
Editor’s Notes
First semesters are always filled with hope, a contrast to the
ordinary symbolism of fall. Here we are, the first semester of
a new academic year, the first semester with freshly graduated students with the hope of success in their eyes. And
the first semester of The Heartland Review Creative Writing
Club, which I have hoped for, and have worked toward, for
a while. This group will assist with selections for this journal and will publish a local journal of their own. The future
of this new organization on campus burgeons with hope.
We are delighted that Dr. Ernest Williamson’s other creative voice adorns the cover. We turned to images of Rachel
Burgess to complement other work--we have admired her
work for some time. And readers may find her virtual studio
at rachel-burgess.com. A good hour is spent among her visions.
On another note, we apologize for omitting Candace Vance
from our contents page in the Fall 2014 issue.
Nevertheless, I hope that everyone can find a serif to hang
coats on and stay awhile in this issue.
mk
Joseph Anthony
Ars Poetica
“Poetry makes nothing happen” sighed
Auden before the war,
as Goebbels’ lie
was dyeing
Europe’s
rosy fingered dawn
into red.
And William Yeats was dead.
(Herr Goebbels was a troubadour
and knew the use of metaphor.)
What is the practicality
of poetry?
Can it set a leg
or beg a fee?
Is it just morphine in a vein?
A sweet refrain?
8
9
Ellaraine Lockie
Cutting the Family Tree
Honed by the hands of a great grandfather
and passed down the ancestral line to mine
These knives never need sharpening
Their invention a family secret, lost to even family
Yet they reflect 100 years of zip-lipped lore
like it was newspaper print
How one flew from a great grandmother’s hand
to whisper across her husband’s chin
The child who was in her belly before she met him
watching from the supper table
The knives wear stains from private plumbings
of cows, pigs, chickens, sheep and deer
Their sacrificial blood dripping
at the prick of razor sharp edge
And the rivulets of self-hatred running down
a great aunt’s arms and legs
long before OCD phased into craze
My hands cover the fingerprints of the neighbor wife
from one homestead over when she cleaved child
from mother with the boiled kitchen knife
Fed the umbilical cord to the farm dog
This snarl of blemishes mingles
between shines that have equally sharp memories
Of a grandma chopping carrots, celery
parsley, onions, prunes and apples
The recipe unshared outside her bloodline
As singular as the only apple orchard on the prairie
The wood which nests in the hands
of grandchildren as whistles whittled by a grandpa
How the mother prized these knives
Above the Black Hills gold, sapphires from the Gates
of the Mountains and her own mother’s Bible
How she carved religion out of loaves of homemade
bread, the slit of skin to release a tick from a finger
and the snip of wild sunflowers
10
Images that lie braille-like under the mirror of here and now
As I smash mounds of roasted garlic with the width of a knife
Leftovers from Julia Child’s Chicken with 30 Cloves of Garlic
after learning that a clove is not a bulb
This and all the other foibles that will play across
these silver screens like old documentaries
for future flesh and blood
11
Michael Collins
Epiphany
It seemed like it would never come to pass,
but the harbor ice has finally chipped,
shuffled and refrozen itself into
a long, smooth slab of beige and black granite;
the ducks have become pigeons for winter,
their feathers paintings in pastels and creams,
and a woman praying in a snowsuit
makes the hard, abandoned beach a temple,
and the gulls are now gleeshrieking children,
these three body surfing on waves of wind –
As my eyes play at tracing the gustshapes
another throws a clam down on the dock,
scurries after it, reclaims his treasure,
again, again, again, again, forever,
a tiny child with a shiny new ball.
12
Rachel Burgess
Home
13
Ellaraine Lockie
Naked Truth
What poet in sitting down to paint the pleasure caused by the sight of a beautiful woman would venture to separate her from her costume?
Charles Baudelaire, Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Exhibit
Impressionism, Fashion & Modernity
And I answer
All of us Monsieur Baudelaire
Male, female and any in between
All of us would dig for the nut
Carve it down to the kernel
In search of the seed from which her flower blooms
such beauty of curve, color and tease of texture
We are drawn to her seed
like honeybees to pollen
Her skin would not be deep enough
Although we would linger there calculating
degrees of soft and smooth, firm or flaccid
Percentage of cream in breast and buttocks
Gone, the camouflage of cloth bustle
corset, girdle, bustier and brassiere
But we need to know
the flow of blood and bile
The workings of brain and heart
Especially the heart, that anthurium core
So we wait for the petals to fall
To reach into all the naked truths of her
14
Rosemarie Goos
An Apple for the Teacher
As I remember a summer trip to Madrid, there are so many
colorful snippets scurrying by--the industrious, friendly people,
the bistros where patrons threw their napkins, empty sugar
packets, even cigarette butts under the bar stools, offending my
innately German sense of cleanliness. I tried it once, just to experience this decadent behavior, but I felt guilty and went back
to my squarely entrenched ways. I remember my 3 days spent
at the Prado, especially my lengthy visits with Velasquez and
Goya, going back and forth and then sitting for more than a half
hour in front of “Las Meninas,” contemplating what the painter
observed at the royal court. The city buses, taking me to all the
places on my carefully prepared list and initially, my intense fear
of getting lost, especially at the Rastro, the huge flea market on
Sundays, clutching my purse with the address of my little hotel
even tighter; my tapa tasting adventures along the entire square
of the Plaza Mayor one evening. Tapas in endless varieties,
uniquely delicious at each boisterous place. I did not need dinner
that evening and most of the treats came free at the invitation
to “the señora” by some happy group or another. A couple of
times I even met the same people at a later stop and they recognized me, the señora americana--another round of freebies.
Memorable also the meals of steaming saffron rice with morsels
of lamb and shrimp in savory broth at a famous restaurant from
my list or at obscure little dives recommended by the locals. All
of those vignettes evoke a smile, memory of a life-affirming trip,
but they are not IT, not one of them, however remarkable, would
make me want to return.
IT is the evening on the bench in front of my favorite café near
the park. They served the best flan, heady with the sinful brown
syrup. After a couple of return visits, they trusted me with the
glass dish and spoon. When I came out that evening during the
last week of my stay, a young man sat at one end of my bench.
He looked up from his restive pose when I sat down at the other
end. He may have been in his late twenties, dirty fingernails,
15
tattered jeans and tee-shirt, well worn sandals, flawless caramel
complexion. All of that was just a cursory impression, but his
eyes looking up at me--those large, dark eyes expressed all the
sadness I had ever harbored.
A little embarrassed, I started eating my flan and he looked at
me with mild curiosity, without making me feel uncomfortable.
Half way through my dish I offered him the rest, wordlessly
with a smile and inviting gesture. He briefly licked his lips, a
movement so fleetingly sensual, it made me blush and lower my
eyes like the catholic school girl I once was. His hand rejected
my offer silently with a subtle smile.
When I finished my flan--not nearly as delectable as other
evenings--I placed the dish between us and decided to practice
my elementary Spanish. “De donde es usted?” wouldn’t work
in this case--he was clearly from here, a Madrileño. So, I ventured into: “que es su trabajo?” what do you do?, how do you
make your living? With a smile of relief that this stranger actually knew a little of his language, he answered: “no tengo trabajo.” I don’t have any work, I’m jobless. From there we limped
along with my limited vocabulary and even more limited Spanish grammar, descriptive hand gestures to the rescue. Thus we
spent about 30 minutes entangled in the most pleasant, relaxed,
meaningless dialogue. While he found out a lot about me - that
I had children about his age, the reason for my visit, what I liked
so much about Madrid--I thought later that I had learned very
little about him, except that his name was Pablo. Even though
I introduced myself, he kept calling me simply and respectfully
“señora.” I felt that he was the epitome of the local language
teacher, speaking slowly and distinctly Castilian and I blabbed to
him without any inhibitions, the way I have always imagined a
session with a shrink.
When Madrid started turning on her lights little by little, Pablo
asked me the time as he stood up. Surprisingly, I didn’t want
this stranger to leave, but I asked him whether he was going
home to dinner. He shook his head with another slight twinge
of that immense sadness. Then, just as quickly, he lit up in the
most illuminating smile and waved “adios.” “Wait!” I said in
16
English, at a loss for the Spanish version and reached into my
purse for the apple I had saved from lunch. The gesture was
meant as “an apple for the teacher,” but how to convey all that it
implied for this brief encounter on a bench in Madrid. I handed
the apple to Pablo with what I hoped to look like maternal encouragement. A slight hesitation, then he took it and said: “para
mi hijo”--for my son. And this time he left quickly without turning back.
17
Corrie Williams Kentner
Somewhere Outside of Harpswell, Maine
We should have been eighteen the afternoon
we drove almost to Land’s End, where you asked her to marry you.
At Cook’s Corner, you asked to see my wedding ring—
a thin band you turned between your thumb and forefinger.
We should have driven a few more miles,
crossed to Bailey Island, remembered late afternoon in photos
I would have thrown out by now:
a lighthouse, pulled traps, another coarse shore.
We should’ve driven back to Brunswick, opened six packs
with friends and raised glasses of white wine to the end of summer.
But we chose an unmarked bend, on a state route without number,
somewhere past the last salt-washed Cape that remembered
civilization.
We dangled our bare feet in some cove, and watched
dark pull the last strands of pink from the sky.
You lit my cigarette with yours and we raised bottles
to this place, saying ours, because no one else had named it.
Another August closes in cicada noise
and I am hundreds of miles from the Androscoggin—
no photos, no matchbook, no bottle caps tucked in a drawer.
Bathwater drips flat from my anklebone;
I should remember less of you.
18
Michael Collins
genesis
by the water in the summer I welcome in near ecstasy winter seems a nightmare
wind whipping through
your cool fingers brushing
sweat from my forehead down as if to persuade me
from delicate images
your breath whispering conch songs over my ears of ever gentle immortals
exquisitely dreaded
the force of your greater being pressed against me
immanent expressions
angel i know you in flesh
i will not release you
until you bless me
19
Rachel Burgess
The Loon
20
Adam “Bucho” Rodenberger
Reliquary
Agnes wondered how long she had been standing by the bed
as the faded blue night gown bristled against her frail legs. She
couldn’t remember lifting the tiny suitcase up onto the bed, but
there it was, splayed out neat and empty. Laid out beside it, a
varied assortment of mementos, toiletries, clothing, and a few
scattered pictures of children who’d grown quickly into adults
when she wasn’t looking. How much they’d grown to look
just like her brother at that age, how strange that the present
opened up to so much of the past.
She reached down for the brush, running her fingers across
the grooved rubber handle. It was a bright neon, garish; a gift
from the youngest girl. Molly? Mary? An M-name, anyway.
She’d stopped trying to keep track of all the generations growing up and out from the family tree, its branches thinning and
gnarled like her fingers now. She could no longer remember all
the names of the leaves that grew up and out. She recognized
their faces for awhile, but time seemed to be taking that away
from her now too.
Her hand flitted over the toothbrush and down to a note, its
faded scrawl hard to read against the dulling yellow paper.
They had said they were coming, but she couldn’t remember
when. Had they come last week? Had she just returned? It was
all just so confusing in here. There was no envelope, so she
couldn’t even see when the letter had been sent.
She scanned the rest of the items, stopping on an old shawl
she could remember, but not place. A gift? Something she’d
always had, it felt like, a memory warm and comfortable, and
suddenly she imagined a chill sweeping through the room. The
shawl was soft between her fingers, but knotty and stiff near
the ends, as if weighted against future winds, a warning to
hold tight to that which she could cling.
The window on the other side of the bed spilled violet into
the room, the sun having disappeared at some point. She
rubbed her stomach and wondered when she’d last eaten. She
felt full, but could swear the sun had been beating down on
her with its morning glory not five minutes ago, smothering
21
the room and her belongings in soft oranges and yellows. Even as a
child, she thought the sunrise felt like hope, like a new step forward into the unknown. And now…she’d missed it somehow.
Somewhere beyond, she heard a phone ring, dull and tinny, pervasive as if its ringing would never stop. Over and over, the sound
invaded her quiet, made the room tingle and shimmer uncontrollably, not unlike the first time she and Roger had installed a phone
in their home so long ago. She couldn’t remember who they first
called or who had called them first, but she could remember washing dishes and cooking dinner while on the phone with her girlfriends. What a thing that was, to be able to talk to Janice down the
block about recipes while actually putting the recipes together in
her own kitchen. Lord almighty, how the world had changed from
when she was a girl!
And still it rang. And rang and rang, vibrating the room into discord, seemingly shattering everything. Starlight twinkled through
the window pane, the moon half-hidden by the tree outside her
room. She imagined herself bathed in white, smothered in some
holy aura of the cosmos, unexplainable by anyone. Still she stood,
her fingers clutching the garish neon brush hard against her chest
as if it held the world’s secrets and she was their keeper.
The clock on her nightstand ticked from 12:01 to 3:44 within a
blink of reminiscence. The moon had moved, shifted its weight
across the night sky and still she clutched the brush, still she stood
beside the bed, still the items sat neatly on the frayed comforter.
“Agnes?” a voice sang out from behind her. She felt recognition it its tones, the sweet sound of the syllables on the air from beyond her door frame, and immediately wondered if they’d finally
come for her. She turned, shuffling her feet over and over again
until she was fully turned around. A woman stood silhouetted in
the doorway holding a tray. She smiled through the wisps of steam
billowing up from the food.
“Hello,” Agnes replied, unable to place the woman’s face.
She stepped into the room and placed the tray on a moving table
near the bed. Her white scrubs bristled in the quiet of the room.
“I’ve brought your breakfast. They made the eggs the way you
like.”
Agnes stared at the tray then stared at the woman. “They’re coming today, you know.”
22
The woman’s eyes lit up. “You’re having visitors? Who’s
coming, Agnes?”
She lifted a shaky hand up to her mouth. “I’m not sure. But
they said they were coming today. Or was it yesterday?” She
clutched the hair brush tighter against her chest, unwilling to
let go of its grooved rubber handle. The woman moved towards her.
“Would you like me to brush your hair before you eat?” she
asked.
Agnes shook her head slowly, her fingers soft against her
lips. She could feel the fingernails, long and unmanicured,
tickling the skin around her mouth. She had liked painting
them at one time, but they didn’t allow things like that here,
she thought. “I’ve been waiting,” she muttered. “I think they’ll
come today.”
The woman rested a hand on Agnes’ shoulder and leaned
down to smile at her. “I’m sure they will, Agnes. Do you want
me to help you pack up your things?”
Agnes shuffled around to face the bed. Packing or unpacking? What had she been doing with all of her things out like
that? She nodded.
The woman began packing the items into the tiny suitcase.
The pictures were slid into a small, white envelope and placed
in a zippered pouch within the lining. The clothing came next,
folded neatly and fitting perfectly within the edges. The mementos and the toiletries came next, but Agnes refused to let go
of the brush, keeping it close to her chest as the woman zipped
up the suitcase and placed it by the door, extending its handle
for easy rolling access.
“Can I do anything else for you, Agnes?”
Agnes stared down at the bed. The clock on her nightstand
ticked from 8:32 to 11:44 within a blink of reminiscence. The
food had stopped steaming, gone cold and firm on the tray.
“No. Thank you, dear,” she said to the empty room.
The afternoon sun spilled in through the window, smothering the room in bright yellows and oranges. She could taste the
oranges from the backyard she and Roger kept well-tended as
their boys grew into men that grew into fathers in their own
right. Each Saturday she would harvest from the trees in the
23
backyard and the ground below, tossing out the citrus that remained green or had already fallen prey to spoil. A perfect orange
sat well inside her palm, her fingers wrapped around it, each finger
tip coming barely into contact with the others.
She would carry them inside in a basket, would let them roll
around on the kitchen counter until they fell to the floor or simply stopped rolling. The rough edges of their skin pressed against
her palms as she sliced them into halves, dug their pulpy insides
against the blades of the juicer and filled a pitcher that would
barely last until lunch.
No. This was her own memory. This is what her mother used to
do when she was a child, waiting at the table for the pitcher to fill,
anxious for the sweet juice to pass her lips. Her mother would wear
the same white apron and blue dress on Saturdays. How could she
have gotten the memories so muddled, so mixed up?
She had tried to emulate her mother when she became matriarch herself. By then, there was television and eyes more eager to
watch cartoons and cowboys than to eat sitting still. How she had
fought against their will, nearly tying them to their kitchen chairs
and forcing them to eat. She never allowed her mother around on
Saturdays because Agnes knew she would never hear the end of
the lecture.
‘Those boys need discipline.’
‘Give them books and they won’t need the television.’
‘That microwave thing will be the death of the housewife! Why…
I never had to use one when I raised you and your brothers.’
‘Why aren’t those boys washing the dishes they just ate from?
Learn them some manners, Agnes. You weren’t raised to let them
walk all over you.’
Agnes turned, the dying sun glinting out of the corner of her
eye, fuzzing up the room. Her bathroom was dark and unused
while the walls held scattered shadows of the world outside. By the
door frame, her luggage stood, resolute and ready for her to grip
its extended handle and walk the distance from her room out the
double-glass doors leading to the courtyard.
Still she held the neon brush tight, held it like hope between her
gnarled fingers, held it like the only truth she knew. Her feet shuffled across the floor, blue nightgown bouncing off and up from her
frail legs as she moved closer and closer to the faded green leather
of the luggage against the wall.
Had it been Michael or Andrew who had loved the color green?
24
It seemed like Michael since he was born in March, a month she
associated with green for reasons unknown. No matter. One of
the boys had been given a handmade quilt by their grandmother, a thing made of patchwork and finely woven cotton that
they both had nearly destroyed before the end of high school.
Agnes reached out for the handle of the luggage and pulled it
along behind her, each slow step whispering against the linoleum floor. She shuffled and shuffled, hoping they would be
here soon. They would be here. It was the only thing she knew
for certain and she had to be ready.
Now where had she put that shawl? Had she left it in the
room? Blast it all. She could feel the cold seep into her, chilling the brittle fingers that still clutched the brightly colored
brush to her chest. The sky outside the Living Rivers Assisted
Care facility was the color of bruise, a blackish blue that let the
starshine magnify. A breeze came, shifted the limbs of the tree
by the bench, settled. The rustling of small nocturnal animals
came forth from the rose bushes that surrounded the property,
each bloom a crimson stain in the dark.
Roger had courted her with roses, a different one for every
day. White, yellow, red...each day given a specific color, but
she couldn’t recall which or when. They met at a high school
pep rally. Roger was a quiet lover of the sport while Agnes had
tried, and failed, to become a cheerleader three years in a row.
Their eyes met and locked across the rising flames of the bonfire ring. He was the first to break the gaze, timid at an early
age. Slowly she made her way around the bonfire, saying hello
to people she knew, introducing herself to people her friends
knew, until finally she stood before him. He wore blue jeans
and a faded brown plaid button-up buttoned all the way to the
top. The fire behind her seemed to gleam against the auburn of
his hair, turned it supernatural looking. Or maybe that was just
how she wanted to remember the moment.
He gave a half-smile, unsure of how to do this dance. She
put her hand out, palm face down, and introduced herself. He
shook her hand limply, stuttered part of his name, coughed,
then said it fully. “Walk me home after this?” she remembered
asking him. He had nodded, mouth agape and saying nothing.
The walk home was dark and quiet, the light of living rooms
25
extinguished in favor of sleep. Having found some kind of courage,
Roger left her side and scurried into a neighbor’s yard to pluck a
rose. Painstakingly, he removed each thorn from the stem with his
thumbnail. It felt like a lifetime ago, watching him struggle with
the effort, drawing blood and swears more than once as they stood
there in the middle of the midnight street.
When he was done, he handed it to her wordlessly. She held the
bloom up to her nose, closed her eyes, and inhaled deeply, the soft
petals tickling her nose. They continued home with her nose buried
deep inside the blossom while Roger sucked at the wounds on his
fingers.
After that, a single rose appeared on her porch every day until
they got married. She couldn’t remember when he stopped bringing flowers, but it wasn’t long after Andrew was born and their
nights became sleepless for other reasons.
The orange of sunrise came quick above the horizon, moved
flat and total across the landscape of the neighborhood. Agnes
shivered, clutching the brush to her chest and wrapping her arms
together. A single bird chirped for awhile and was later joined by
another until finally the morning was all chorus and joy.
A woman in soft gray scrubs and wireframe glasses came and
sat down next to Agnes. The day had warmed, but her fingers
felt gnarled by the cold despite her arms still being pressed tight
against her body. The woman said nothing for awhile, but rested
her arm around Agnes’ back, which warmed her a little.
“Are they coming today?” the woman asked.
Agnes’ face faltered and stumbled into an awkward smile.
“They’re supposed to. I think. I have a letter, you know.”
The woman smiled and nodded at Agnes. “So you’ve said. Are
you hungry? It’s lunchtime. You missed breakfast. Again.”
Agnes turned. “Did I really. Good heavens, I’m always forgetting
something or other. I don’t even feel hungry.”
“Well would you like some company at least? The night staff tells
me you’ve been out here for awhile.”
Agnes laughed and put her free hand on the woman’s thigh.
“Honey, I only came outside ten minutes ago. The world has been
moving at the same speed since I was a girl.”
The woman gave her a skeptical look as she rose to leave. “Okay.
But I’ll be back in a bit to check on you. Don’t stay out here too
26
long. It’s supposed to be a hot one.”
Agnes remained on the bench staring out into the rose
bushes. The sky darkened, bringing portents of another chill
evening.
“Okay dear, you do that,” she said into the air. Night fell.
After dinner, when the nurses had still not seen Agnes come
in to eat, they went to her room and rolled out the wheelchair
from the foot of her bed. The wheels squeaked as they marched
down the wide hallway. Per their occupation, there was concern plastered across their faces, some bit of broken heart on
behalf of Agnes too, but each time they went through these
motions, they silently wondered if they would themselves end
up in such a state, unable to remember that they were the last
of their family line and that no one was coming to see them.
They had argued time and time again about the morality of
removing the letter from her possessions, hoping to prevent
this emotional time-loop on her behalf. The doctors, however,
had remained steadfast in their decision to leave her belongings intact, arguing that removing even the tiniest piece might
send her spiraling further out and down.
And so they marched, resolute in getting Agnes back to her
room with her luggage, an event that occurred so often as to be
counted on like the life and death of the sun every day.
Agnes wondered how long she had been standing by
the bed as the faded blue night gown bristled against her frail
legs. She couldn’t remember lifting the tiny suitcase up onto
the bed, but there it was, splayed out neat and empty. Laid out
beside it, a varied assortment of mementos, toiletries, clothing,
and a few scattered pictures of children who’d grown quickly
into adults when she wasn’t looking. How much they’d grown
to look just like her brother at that age, how strange that the
present opened up to so much of the past.
27
Rachel Burgess
The Sentinel
28
Corrie Williams Kentner
Crime and Punishment in Late Summer
Mid-August and fall is already dragging
its heaviness. Clouds work each day
to stitch the sky into blankets of dull gray wool.
The tomatoes with their fat red bellies
hang from yellowing vines. I check them closely:
late summer, they split, rot.
In the earth-sweet smell of snapping stems
I ponder Dostoyevsky
and the man that is teaching me to love
Russian literature—something so unexpected,
the way I am growing to love this man.
Oh, to pick these last soft fruits of summer
turning over Raskolnikov’s choices, the earth,
haunted by the way that fall always comes too early
forcing us to let go just when all is most beautiful.
29
Michael Collins
Vision
The hunter’s eye stops me dead in my tracks before
a perfect half
clam’s shell, violets and purples
at the base, and where the middle deepens yielding
to a flesh-
like alabaster-cream, a treasure
in which the poet’s eye perceives a human ear:
an oblong shape, slender pastel blue veins reaching
its entire length up to a tiny bright lobe
the echo of a placewhere once a small creature
connected this empty fraction with its mirror –
This is just the voice of a skeleton! How else
could the ultimate eye whisper from its noplace,
It means many things; it is only beautiful,
so that I’d give you what I call my voice again,
soul of this world, of wind and waves, of beak and
stone.
30
Younger Artists
Jeremy McFarland
COURTYARD
She wakes up and looks under her covers, afraid to find that
the prickliness on her legs is not sprouting hairs but thorns,
and notices that the nightshirt that had bulged around her baby
fat the night before now dips like the un-pillared middle of a
blanket fort. Pulling her shirt over the raw welts on her chest,
her fingers brush over something cool and leafy as a trench in
her abdomen is exposed. Where she always imagined there to
be oily tendrils of organs, there is instead a patch of lawn. The
grass is tall and feels nice when she tangles it around her fingers. In the vague morning light, she can see a ladybug crawl
up her wrist. She imagines drinking pesticide, of vomiting dirt
and boiling her new friend in a chemical bath. Nature is beautiful, she thinks.
She walks through the hallways at school, her hands
wrapped protectively around her garden. The smell of soil and
dandelions is so strong that it burns her eyes, but no one else
seems to notice. She doesn’t pay attention in class, instead doodling fields of tree stumps oozing with blood, their stomachs
and kidneys spilling onto the ground. When no one looks, she
sneaks her hand under her clothes and into the soft greenery of
her guts and digs her fingers into the dirt.
That night, she locks herself in the bathroom and stands
naked on the toilet to look in the mirror above the sink. It’s the
first real look she’s gotten of her grassy insides, and she ghosts
her hand over the soft blades. She holds a small bud between
the pads of her fingers and squeezes, then breaks the stem so
she can dissect it, its innards falling to the tile in clumps.
The first flower blooms the next day. Everywhere she goes she
hears chainsaws, sees melting ice caps, smells smog so thick
she's drowning in it. Her tears come out like a muddy creek,
dribbling down her pimply cheeks and soaking the front of her
shirt. When she gets home she wraps her fist around the thorny
stem and yanks until her hand bleeds, soaking into the fertile
soil. She chews up the petals and swallows them.
There’s a rotting mound on the side of the road that she spots
on her way to school. It’s already stiff with rigor mortis, the
32
possum’s face frozen in a silent screech. She imagines it’s scaly,
stiff tail against her skin, its dead gaze narrowly passing her.
Her earthworms churn and the dewy space between her legs
gushes like tadpoles moving en mass down a dirty stream.
Like every night, she feels around the open trench in her stomach. For the first time, though, when she presses down on the
grassy lawn the ground inside of her gives a little, like tender
skin over an abscess. She thinks of the possum’s bloated stomach and wonders if it would feel the same, or if the stiffened
flesh would snap under the pressure of her hands. She wonders if she would feel cold meat or a tiny patch of land inside
of it.
From then on, she spends her days searching the streets for
roadkill, collecting their bodies in her dresser, and her nights
squishing the crickets in her abdomen. She crushes the progeny
of the first night’s ladybug in her fist, reveling in the crunch of
their flimsy shells and the full feeling she gets under her fingernails when she digs into their remains. She smears the goo into
her sheets and sleeps well.
When she wakes up and looks down, though, she notices
that the grass is turning brown and the emerging flowers have
wilted. Dead beetles fall onto her bedroom floor when she
stands, and they crinkle under her toes like fallen leaves when
she walks.
It’s not that she hates the beauty inside of her. There’s something special about it, only enhanced by its secrecy, its vulnerability. She wants to protect it, but-- while nature is beautiful-man is not and she knows her garden is destined to burn. And
if not by her hand, then whose?
She stands on top of the toilet and looks into the fire in her
stomach, the dead grass whistling as it roasts, the bodies of
bugs crackling in the immense heat. The flames lick at her nose
and the skin covering her ribs blisters and boils on contact. Ash
falls from her gaping cavity and into smoldering piles around
her feet, which she squishes between her toes like mud. She
loves the feeling of her child’s warm remains being ground
into her skin, and as the flames consuming her garden die out
she feels a mother’s love.
She presses her hand into the blackened ground and feels it
give. She presses harder and the soil crumbles in chunks,
33
falling into an empty hole. Her hands feel the edges of the
grave inside of her, patting the walls curiously. She closes her
eyes and sees the tire flattened body of someone else’s cat, the
busted skull of a squirrel whose brains have exploded like fireworks against asphalt.
It smells like sour meat, with a twist of rust and crusted
blood—but almost sweet. The odor stains her tongue, the pungency making her mouth water. She grabs the possum by its
rock hard limbs, stuffing it into the hollow earth inside of her.
The worms had returned and they peek their pink heads out
from the sides. She covers the corpse in loose dirt, the snout
pointing out of the ash-enriched soil until she snaps the critter’s neck to fit it in. She smooths the fresh funeral plot with
her palm before brushing her dirt-stained knuckles against it.
The familiar tickle of a sprout of grass against her skin makes
her jump.
34
Collin Hancock
To You in Portland, Oregon
I saw a cigarette
smeared with lipstick
float by
in the gutter
by the road
and wondered
if it was yours
and if it was fair
you flew instead
of hitchhiked.
I imagine
it’s a fast feast
for the legion
of pio-nearlys
who flock to
the futon
in the flophouse
and sleep under
moth-eaten comforters.
35
Biographies
Joseph Anthony is a Jersey-born Kentucky author, moved
in 1980 Manhattan’s Upper West Side to Hazard, Kentucky.
Anthony regularly contributes essays and poems to anthologies, including a poem and story in Kentucky’s Twelve
Days of Christmas. His most recent novel is Wanted: Good
Family.
Rachel Burgess exhibits nationally and internationally in
galleries and museums, including the International Print
Center of New York and the Seoul Museum of Art. She lives
and works in New York City. Her work can be seen at www.
rachel-burgess.com.
Michael Collins’ poems have received Pushcart Prize nominations and appeared in more than 40 journals and magazines, including Grist, Kenning Journal, Pank, SOFTBLOW
and Smartish Pace. His first chapbook, How to Sing when
People Cut off your Head and Leave it Floating in the Water,
won the Exact Change Press Chapbook Contest in 2014.
A full-length collection, Psalmandala, was published later
that year.
Rosemarie Goos was born and raised in Germany, majored
in Education and came to the U.S. in 1968. Both she and
her husband like volunteering at their senior community
in Raymore, MO. They own a garden home with Charli von
Hund and Oscar von Katz. Rosemarie’s hobbies include
reading, writing, playing bridge, and finding bargains at
thrift shops.
Collin Hancock is an undergraduate at Western Kentucky
University and was a finalist in the Jim Wayne Miller Celebration of Writing Contest. After graduating, he plans to
take a victory lap around the United States.
Corrie Williams Kentner holds her MFA in Creative Writing
from The University of Southern Maine and currently teaches high school English and creative writing in Columbus,
OH. Her work has appeared in Compass Rose and Barbaric
Yawp.
Ellaraine Lockie is a widely published and awarded poet.
Where the Meadowlark Sings won the 2014 Encircle Publication’s Chapbook Contest and was published in early
2015.. Ellaraine teaches poetry workshops and serves as
36
Poetry Editor for the lifestyles magazine, Lilipoh.
Jeremy McFarland is on track to receive his Associate in
Arts degree from ECTC where he has been active on campus as a student assistant for The Heartland Review, Vice
President of The Heartland Review Creative Writing Club,
and as a Student Ambassador. After graduation, he will
pursue Professional Writing and TESOL at Western Kentucky.
Adam “Bucho” Rodenberger is a 36-year-old writer from
Kansas City. His work has been published in Agua Magazine, Alors, Et Tois?, Aphelion, Bluestem Magazine, BrainBox
Magazine, Cause & Effect Magazine, Cahoodaloodaling,
Crack the Spine, Eunoia Review, Ginosko Literary Journal,
among others.
Ernest Williamson has published creative work in over 600
journals. His poetry has appeared in journals such as The
Oklahoma Review, Review Americana, and JMWW. His artwork has appeared in journals such as The Tulane Review,
The Columbia Review, and New England Review. Dr. Williamson is an Assistant Professor of English at Allen University and his poetry has been nominated for the Best of the
Net Anthology three times.
37
THR
call for submissions
The Heartland Review is a biannual digest-sized journal
published with funding from KCTCS and our contributors.
We seek previously unpublished, original fiction, poetry,
and black & white artwork and/or photography. We do
not consider simultaneous submissions. Our reading periods are August 10-22 for fall and January 10-22 for
spring.
To submit, go to
http://theheartlandreview.elizabethtown.kctcs.edu
Please include a cover page that includes biographical
information, including name, address, phone number,
email, and the titles of your work to:
Name, etc. should not appear on the works themselves, as
entries are juried blindly.
We publish black and white photographs or artwork of
other media. One color work is awarded the cover. Artwork accompanying literature is printed in gray scale. We
are always excited to see interesting work.
Poets should submit 3-5 poems, and fiction/creative nonfiction writers should submit 1-2 stories (3,000 word limit).
We normally publish 10-20 poems and 1-2 fiction and
non-fiction works depending on the quality of work we
receive.
Artists should receive notification of submissions approximately one month after the reading period.